Aristion (died 86 BC in
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
) was a philosopher and
tyrantIn classical politics, a tyrant is one who has taken power by their own means as opposed to hereditary or constitutional power. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny....
of Athens from 88 BC to 86 BC. Aristion joined forces with
Mithridates-Early reign:Mithradates VI was the son of Mithradates V , who died when he was a boy. During Eupator's minority, supreme power was exercised by his mother queen Laodice, whom he eventually deposed and committed to prison...
against the Romans under
Lucius Cornelius SullaLucius Cornelius Sulla Felix , or simply Sulla, was a Roman general and politician, holding the office of consul twice as well as the dictatorship....
in the
First Mithridatic warThe First Mithridatic War was a conflict fought between the Kingdom of Pontus and revolting Greek cities—Athens being the most prominent—led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Bithynia...
, but to no avail. On March 1, 86 BC, Athens was conquered by Sulla and Aristion was executed. He is called
Athenion by
PosidoniusPosidonius "of Apameia" or "of Rhodes" , was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age...
, and he may be the same person, or he may be a second tyrant whose story became confused with the first.
His early history is preserved by
AthenaeusAthenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The Suda only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus Athenaeus (Ancient Greek - Athếnaios Naukratios, Latin Athenaeus Naucratita), of Naucratis in...
, on the authority of
PosidoniusPosidonius "of Apameia" or "of Rhodes" , was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age...
.
Aristion (died 86 BC in
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
) was a philosopher and
tyrantIn classical politics, a tyrant is one who has taken power by their own means as opposed to hereditary or constitutional power. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny....
of Athens from 88 BC to 86 BC. Aristion joined forces with
Mithridates-Early reign:Mithradates VI was the son of Mithradates V , who died when he was a boy. During Eupator's minority, supreme power was exercised by his mother queen Laodice, whom he eventually deposed and committed to prison...
against the Romans under
Lucius Cornelius SullaLucius Cornelius Sulla Felix , or simply Sulla, was a Roman general and politician, holding the office of consul twice as well as the dictatorship....
in the
First Mithridatic warThe First Mithridatic War was a conflict fought between the Kingdom of Pontus and revolting Greek cities—Athens being the most prominent—led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Bithynia...
, but to no avail. On March 1, 86 BC, Athens was conquered by Sulla and Aristion was executed. He is called
Athenion by
PosidoniusPosidonius "of Apameia" or "of Rhodes" , was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age...
, and he may be the same person, or he may be a second tyrant whose story became confused with the first.
Life
His early history is preserved by
AthenaeusAthenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The Suda only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus Athenaeus (Ancient Greek - Athếnaios Naukratios, Latin Athenaeus Naucratita), of Naucratis in...
, on the authority of
PosidoniusPosidonius "of Apameia" or "of Rhodes" , was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age...
. Posidonius calls him Athenion and makes him a
PeripateticThe Peripatetics were members of a school of philosophy in ancient Greece. Their teachings derived from their founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The name refers to the act of walking, and as an adjective, "peripatetic" is often used to mean...
philosopher, whereas others,
PausaniasPausanias was a Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between...
,
AppianAppianus , of Alexandria was a Roman historian who flourished during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. He is commonly referred to by the anglicised form of his name, Appian....
, and
PlutarchPlutarch, born Plutarchos then, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 – 120, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, call him Aristion, and Appian calls him an Epicurean philosopher. There is no universally accepted resolution to this confusion, and it is possible that there were two separate tyrants who held power in Athens in quick succession during the First Mithridatic War whose stories became conflated together.
Athenion (or Aristion) was the illegitimate son of a Peripatetic philosopher, also called Athenion, to whose party he succeeded, and so became an Athenian citizen. He married early, and began at the same time to teach philosophy, which he did with great success at
MesseneMessene is a town in the prefecture of Messinia in southern Greece. In antiquity, it was a Doric Greek city-state founded by Epaminondas in 369 BC, after the battle of Leuctra and the first Theban invasion of the Peloponnese...
and
LarissaLarissa is a city and the capital of the Thessaly periphery of Greece, and capital of the Larissa Prefecture. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transportation hub, linked by rail with the port of Volos and with Thessaloniki and Athens...
, On returning to Athens with a considerable fortune, he was named ambassador to
Mithridates-Early reign:Mithradates VI was the son of Mithradates V , who died when he was a boy. During Eupator's minority, supreme power was exercised by his mother queen Laodice, whom he eventually deposed and committed to prison...
, king of
PontusPontus or Pontos is a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area, and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Pontos...
, then at war with
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, and became one of his most intimate friends and counsellors. His letters to Athens represented the power of Mithridates in such glowing colours, that his countrymen began to conceive of hopes of throwing off Roman rule. Mithridates then sent him to Athens (c. 88 BC), where he soon contrived, through the king's patronage, to assume the tyranny. His government seems to have been of the most cruel character, so that he is spoken of with horror by Plutarch, and classed by him with
NabisNabis was ruler of Sparta from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the War against Nabis. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, he sided with King Philip V of Macedon and...
and
CatilineLucius Sergius Catilina , known in English as Catiline, was a Roman politician of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catiline conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic, and in particular the power of the aristocratic Senate.One of the most enigmatic figures of Roman history,...
. He sent
Apellicon of TeosApellicon , a wealthy native of Teos, afterwards an Athenian citizen, was a famous book collector of the 1st century BCE.He not only spent large sums in the acquisition of his library, but stole original documents from the archives of Athens and other cities of Greece...
to plunder the sacred treasury of
DelosThe island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
, though Appian says that this had already been done for him by Mithridates, and adds that it was by means of the money resulting from this robbery that Aristion was enabled to obtain supreme power. Meanwhile
SullaLucius Cornelius Sulla Felix , or simply Sulla, was a Roman general and politician, holding the office of consul twice as well as the dictatorship....
landed in Greece, and immediately laid siege to Athens and
PiraeusPiraeus is a city in the periphery of Attica, Greece, and a municipality within Athens urban area, located 10 km southwest of its center....
, the latter of which was occupied by
ArchelausArchelaus was a general and possibly a son in law of Mithridates VI of Pontus in the First Mithridatic War...
, the general of Mithridates. The sufferings within the city from
famineA famine is a widespread scarcity of food that may apply to any faunal species, which phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality...
were so dreadful that
cannibalismCannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other humans.The word can be extended into zoology to mean any species consuming members of its own kind, and used outside of biological fields in a metaphorical sense: "Cannibalization" refers to the reuse of parts or ideas, such as...
was reported. Eventually Athens was stormed, and Sulla gave orders to spare neither age nor sex. Aristion fled to the
AcropolisThe Acropolis of Athens is the best known acropolis in the world. Although there are many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification...
, have first burned the
OdeonAn Odeon, from the ancient Greek Ωδείον is a name for several ancient Greek and Roman buildings built for singing exercises, musical shows and poetry competitions. They were generally small in size, especially as compared to a full-size ancient Greek theatre....
, in case Sulla should use the woodwork for
battering ramA battering ram is a siege engine originating in ancient times to break open fortification walls or doors.In its simplest form, a battering ram is just a large, heavy log carried by several people and propelled with force against an obstacle; the ram would be sufficient to damage the target if the...
s and other instruments of attack. The Acropolis, however, was soon taken, and Aristion dragged to execution from the altar of
AthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, peace, warfare, strategy, handicrafts and reason, shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour...
and poisoned. Pausanias attributes the unpleasant disease which killed Sulla as divine vengeance for this impiety.