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Critias (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 , 460-403 BC), born in Athens
Classical Athens

The city of Athens during classical antiquity was a notable polis of Attica, Ancient Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League....
, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants
Thirty Tyrants

The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Classical Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty"; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians....
, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose works. Some, like Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....
, believe that Critias authored the Sisyphus fragment
Sisyphus fragment

The Sisyphus fragment is an 42-line excerpt in iambic trimeter from an ancient Greek satyr play written either by Euripides or Critias. The words are spoken by Sisyphus, a character in the play....
; others, however, attribute it to Euripides
Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
.

Critias appears as a character in Plato's dialogues Charmides
Charmides (dialogue)

The Charmides is a dialogue of Plato, in which Socrates engages a handsome and popular boy in a conversation about the meaning of sophrosyne, a Greek word usually translated into English as "temperance", "self-control", or "restraint"....
 and Protagoras
Protagoras (dialogue)

Protagoras is a dialogue of Plato. The main argument is between the elderly Protagoras, a celebrated sophist, and Socrates. The discussion takes place at the home of Callias, who is host to Protagoras while he is in town, and concerns a familiar theme in the dialogues: the teaching of virtue....
, and according to Diogenes Laėrtius
Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
, he was Plato's great-uncle (Diogenes Laėrtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes La?rtius, written in Ancient Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD....
, III:1).






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Critias (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 , 460-403 BC), born in Athens
Classical Athens

The city of Athens during classical antiquity was a notable polis of Attica, Ancient Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League....
, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants
Thirty Tyrants

The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Classical Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty"; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians....
, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose works. Some, like Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....
, believe that Critias authored the Sisyphus fragment
Sisyphus fragment

The Sisyphus fragment is an 42-line excerpt in iambic trimeter from an ancient Greek satyr play written either by Euripides or Critias. The words are spoken by Sisyphus, a character in the play....
; others, however, attribute it to Euripides
Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
.

Critias appears as a character in Plato's dialogues Charmides
Charmides (dialogue)

The Charmides is a dialogue of Plato, in which Socrates engages a handsome and popular boy in a conversation about the meaning of sophrosyne, a Greek word usually translated into English as "temperance", "self-control", or "restraint"....
 and Protagoras
Protagoras (dialogue)

Protagoras is a dialogue of Plato. The main argument is between the elderly Protagoras, a celebrated sophist, and Socrates. The discussion takes place at the home of Callias, who is host to Protagoras while he is in town, and concerns a familiar theme in the dialogues: the teaching of virtue....
, and according to Diogenes Laėrtius
Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
, he was Plato's great-uncle (Diogenes Laėrtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes La?rtius, written in Ancient Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD....
, III:1). The Critias character in Plato's dialogues Timaeus
Timaeus (dialogue)

Timaeus is a theoretical treatise of Plato in the form of a Socratic dialogue, written circa 360 Before Christ. The work puts forward speculation on the nature of the physical world....
 and Critias
Critias (dialogue)

Critias, one of Plato's late dialogues, contains the story of the mighty island kingdom Atlantis and its attempt to conquer Athens, which failed due to the ordered society of the Athenians....
 is often identified as the son of Callaeschrus - but not by Plato; and given the old age of the Critias in these two dialogues, he may be the grandfather of the son of Callaeschrus.

Critias was a very dark person in Athenian history. After the fall of Athens to the Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
ns, he blacklisted many of its citizens as a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants
Thirty Tyrants

The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Classical Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty"; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians....
. Most of his prisoners were executed and their wealth confiscated. He proved to be a tormented personality, displaying many complexes and much hatred (in contrast to the Platonic figure described as the student of Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
).

Critias was killed in a battle near Piraeus
Piraeus

Piraeus is a city in the periphery of Attica, Greece, and a municipality within Athens urban area, located 10 km southwest of its center....
, the port of Athens, between a band of pro-democracy Athenian exiles led by Thrasybulus
Thrasybulus

Thrasybulus was an Athens general and democracy leader. In 411 BC, in the wake of an oligarchy coup at Athens, the pro-democracy sailors at Samos Island elected him as a general, making him a primary leader of the successful democratic resistance to that coup....
 and members and supporters of the Thirty, aided by the Spartan garrison. In the battle, the exiles put the oligarchic forces to flight, ending the rule of the Thirty.

Critias asserted that "religion was a deliberate imposture devised by some cunning man for political ends."

Citations



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