Oligarchia Revisited

Abstract

This article revisits an ostensibly important monument in Classical Attic historiography: the so-called Tomb of Critias, as preserved in a scholium note in Aeschines’ “Against Timarchus” (1.39). We survey prior scholarly positions on the realia of this monument, suggest it is a fiction, and consider the possible sources for the hexameter verse associated with it. We argue that the poetic composition from which the entire tradition derives, rather than being an inscription on a tomb, may in fact be an oligarchic commemoration, perhaps an encomium or epitaphios logos recited at Eleusis in the aftermath of the fall of the Thirty. As such, the verse composition may allude to a historiographical tradition that viewed the Thirty as a subversive hetaireia/kōmos group led out to govern the unruly dēmos. The reception of this composition generates a ‘lieu de mémoire’ in the historical imagination of later readers. The composition offers a piece of comparanda for the political views expressed by other Athenians with pro-oligarchic tendencies, an extreme formulation that strongly contrasts with the extant writings of Critias, Plato, and Xenophon. In revisiting this short anecdote we highlight the relevance of both scholia and monuments in our understanding of Attic historiography.