The Thirty Tyrants and the restored democracy at Athens, 404 to 399 BC: HSC Ancient History

A 4-mark "outline" wants a sequenced, dated chain, roughly one mark each.

Defeat and surrender

In 404 BC Athens surrendered to Sparta, ending the Peloponnesian War; the terms included pulling down the Long Walls and surrendering the fleet (1 mark).

Spartan pressure

The Spartan commander Lysander backed the oligarchic faction and pressed the Assembly, under duress, to hand power to a commission (1 mark).

The commission of Thirty

Thirty men, nominally appointed to draft a new "ancestral constitution," took control of the state in 404 BC; Critias and Theramenes were the leading figures (1 mark).

The Spartan garrison

The Thirty secured their position with a Spartan garrison of about 700 men under the harmost Callibius on the Acropolis, so their power rested on foreign arms, not consent (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the defeat, Lysander's role, the appointment of the Thirty, and the Spartan garrison, rather than a vague statement that Sparta "took over."

A 5-mark "outline" needs the correctly ordered stages of the resistance and settlement.

Exile and Phyle

Democrats driven out by the Thirty gathered under Thrasybulus, who seized the border fort of Phyle on Mount Parnes with about 70 men in the winter of 404/403 BC (1 mark).

Growth and the Piraeus

His force grew, defeated a detachment of the Thirty, and moved down to occupy Munychia in the Piraeus (1 mark).

The battle of Munychia

In the fighting at Munychia in 403 BC Critias, the extremist leader of the Thirty, was killed, breaking the oligarchy's nerve (1 mark).

Civil war and Spartan intervention

The Thirty were deposed and replaced by a board of Ten; the "men of the city" and the "men of the Piraeus" fought on until the Spartan king Pausanias intervened and brokered a settlement rather than let Lysander crush the democrats (1 mark).

Restoration and amnesty

In 403 BC the democracy was restored and both sides swore an amnesty "not to recall past wrongs" (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the Phyle-Piraeus-Munychia-reconciliation sequence with Thrasybulus, the death of Critias, Pausanias's intervention and the amnesty, not a general story of "the democrats came back."

A 6-mark "explain with a source" needs the source USED, own knowledge added, and an explicit limitation.

Use the source

Source A shows the Thirty targeting wealthy metics for their money, arresting without charge, seizing property and slaves, and executing without trial, a picture of an oligarchy funding itself through terror and the collapse of legal protection (2 marks).

Own knowledge

This matches the historical regime of 404/403 BC. Xenophon (Hellenica 2.3) and [Aristotle] (Athenian Constitution 35 to 37) describe confiscations and executions, and the ancient tradition (Ath. Pol. 35, echoing Isocrates) records perhaps 1,500 people put to death in a few months. The reconstruction mirrors Lysias's real speech Against Eratosthenes (Lysias 12), in which Lysias, himself a metic, prosecutes a member of the Thirty over the arrest of the metic household of Lysias and his brother Polemarchus, who was forced to drink hemlock (2 marks).

Limitation

A forensic speech is adversarial and one-sided: it is composed to win a case before a jury, so it selects, dramatises and omits, presents the speaker sympathetically, and cannot be assumed accurate on numbers or motive; it is evidence for how a victim framed the regime, not a neutral report (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward the specific abuses in the source, corroboration from Xenophon, Ath. Pol. and Lysias 12, and a limitation grounded in the genre of forensic oratory rather than a generic "it may be biased."

A 6-mark "explain" needs developed significance, not a narrative of the civil war.

What it was

As part of the reconciliation brokered by the Spartan king Pausanias, the "men of the city" and the "men of the Piraeus" swore an oath "not to recall past wrongs" (me mnesikakein), barring prosecution for acts committed under the Thirty (2 marks).

Who was excepted

The amnesty was not total: the Thirty themselves, the Eleven who had run the executions, and the Ten who had governed the Piraeus were excluded, though even they could submit to a review or withdraw to Eleusis, which remained a separate oligarchic enclave until about 401/400 BC ([Aristotle], Athenian Constitution 39 to 40) (2 marks).

Why it mattered

The amnesty is one of the earliest recorded in history and was decisive: by legally forbidding revenge it stopped the cycle of reprisal, let the democracy be rebuilt on a shared civic identity rather than on faction, and became a model of political reconciliation. Its limits also shaped later events, since prosecutors could not attack a man for his conduct under the Thirty directly (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward the "not to recall past wrongs" principle, the named exceptions, and a judgement about why it stabilised the restored democracy, not just a definition.

A 6-mark "explain" needs the causal significance of the split, not two biographies.

Two positions

Critias led the extremist wing of the Thirty, pressing violence, confiscation and dependence on Sparta; Theramenes, nicknamed "kothornos" (the buskin that fits either foot) for shifting sides, argued for a broader, more moderate oligarchy and objected to the killings and to the narrowness of the privileged body (2 marks).

The Three Thousand and the break

When the Thirty enrolled a body of Three Thousand privileged citizens and disarmed the rest, Theramenes attacked the number as arbitrary and the disarming as dangerous. Critias answered by striking Theramenes from the roll and having him condemned before the Council; Theramenes was dragged from the altar and forced to drink hemlock, reportedly toasting "to the noble Critias" (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.56) (2 marks).

Why it mattered

The killing of Theramenes removed the last internal check on the extremists, exposed the regime as a narrow terror rather than a reform, and alienated moderates whose support the Thirty needed, helping drive the drift towards the resistance under Thrasybulus (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward the moderate-versus-extremist contrast, the specific circumstances of Theramenes's death, and the consequence for the regime's legitimacy, not a retelling of who said what.

A Band-6 response sustains a judgement on "to what extent," ties argument to dated evidence, and uses historiography.

Thesis

The Thirty began with a plausible programme of oligarchic "reform" of the constitution, but under Critias it radicalised into a self-serving reign of terror; the regime is best judged as a reform project that became terror, with terror as its dominant and defining reality.

Argument line 1: the reform claim was real but thin

The Thirty were appointed in 404 BC to draft an "ancestral constitution," and [Aristotle] (Athenian Constitution 35) records an initial phase of apparently sound legislation and the removal of "sycophants," which won early support. The enrolment of a Three Thousand-strong citizen body gestured at a Spartan-style narrow oligarchy of the "best" men rather than pure lawlessness.

Argument line 2: terror quickly dominated

The reform gloss collapsed into confiscation and murder. The Thirty secured themselves with a Spartan garrison of 700 under Callibius; they killed for money and for safety, targeting wealthy metics such as Lysias's brother Polemarchus (Lysias 12), and democrats. The tradition (Ath. Pol. 35; Isocrates) of about 1,500 dead in a few months, though an ancient estimate, signals scale. Xenophon (Hellenica 2.3) presents the regime as increasingly murderous once opposition appeared.

Argument line 3: the internal purge proves the terror

When Theramenes urged a broader, less violent oligarchy, Critias had him executed on hemlock (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.56). A regime that kills its own moderate architects has abandoned reform for the retention of power by fear.

Argument line 4: historiography

Peter Krentz (The Thirty at Athens, 1982) resists the simple label "tyrants," arguing the Thirty had a coherent, if brutal, oligarchic programme and distinguishing an earlier, more moderate phase from the later terror. Against a purely hostile reading, this warns us that our sources (Xenophon, favourable to Theramenes; Lysias, a victim; the later Ath. Pol.) are shaped to condemn. Yet even Krentz's more analytical account concedes the descent into violence, so the reform framework qualifies rather than overturns the verdict.

Model paragraph

The clearest test of whether the Thirty were reformers or terrorists is what they did to their own. Theramenes had helped bring the oligarchy to power, yet when he objected to the killings and to the arbitrary Three Thousand, Critias struck him from the roll and forced hemlock on him (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.56). A government that murders the colleague pressing for moderation is no longer legislating an "ancestral constitution"; it is defending a narrow clique by terror. Krentz is right that the regime began with a programme, but the killing of Theramenes marks the point at which reform became, decisively, a reign of terror.

Judgement

To a large extent it was a reign of terror. A genuine but short-lived reform impulse existed, and Krentz rightly complicates the "Thirty Tyrants" caricature, but the confiscations, the killing of metics and democrats, the Spartan garrison and the murder of Theramenes make terror the regime's defining character.

Marker's note: Band 6 answers weigh reform against terror with dated evidence (404/403 BC, the 700-strong garrison, Lysias 12, Theramenes's death), use Krentz as argument rather than decoration, and reach a limiting verdict instead of asserting the Thirty were simply evil.

A Band-6 response sustains a judgement, anchors it in sources, and uses historiography, in a plan plus a model paragraph.

Thesis

The formal charge was religious, but the trial is only fully explained by the politics of a traumatised post-war Athens; it was a religious prosecution carrying a political charge that the amnesty of 403 BC had made it impossible to state openly.

Argument line 1: the charge was framed religiously

In 399 BC Meletus, Anytus and Lycon prosecuted Socrates for impiety, not recognising the gods the city recognised and introducing new divinities (his personal daimonion), and for corrupting the youth (Plato, Apology; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1). On its face this is a religious indictment tried before a large citizen jury.

Argument line 2: the political subtext

The context is the recent oligarchy. Socrates had been the teacher and associate of Critias, the leader of the Thirty, and of Alcibiades and Charmides, and he was known for questioning the democratic use of the lot and mass judgement. Because the amnesty of 403 BC forbade prosecuting a man for his conduct under the Thirty, resentment at these associations could not be charged directly, so it was channelled into the religious and "corrupting the youth" counts. Anytus was a prominent restored democrat, which points to the political animus behind the case.

Argument line 3: religion and politics were not separable

In a Greek polis, impiety was itself a civic offence: to reject the city's gods was to threaten the community's safety and its bond with the divine. Robin Waterfield (Why Socrates Died, 2009) reads the trial as scapegoating in a city seeking to restore its relationship with the gods after defeat and civil war, so the religious charge was genuinely felt, not a mere pretext.

Argument line 4: historiography

I.F. Stone (The Trial of Socrates, 1988) argues the democracy acted defensibly against a real and persistent critic of popular government, treating the trial as substantially political. Others stress the religious anxiety of the moment. The sources are themselves apologetic: Plato (Apology, Phaedo) and Xenophon write to defend and idealise Socrates, so the "political martyr" reading partly descends from his own pupils.

Model paragraph

The decisive clue is the amnesty. Athens in 399 BC had sworn "not to recall past wrongs," which legally barred anyone from prosecuting Socrates for having taught Critias or for his known scepticism about the democracy. That prohibition explains why the indictment is religious in form yet political in force: the resentment that could not be voiced as "he trained the tyrants" was recast as "he does not believe in the city's gods and corrupts the young." As Waterfield argues, the charge also answered a real hunger to make the city right with its gods after defeat, so the trial is neither purely political nor purely religious but the two fused under the constraint of the amnesty.

Judgement

The view is largely, but not wholly, correct: the driving force was political, yet the religious charge was sincerely meant in a polis where impiety endangered the community, and the amnesty is what forced the politics into religious form.

Marker's note: rewards the amnesty as the hinge, correct naming of the accusers and the charge (Plato, Apology; Xenophon, Memorabilia), and named historians (Stone, Waterfield) used to adjudicate the "political versus religious" question rather than listed.