Critias

Critias (c.460–403 BC), at Athens, an extreme oligarch, from an aristocratic family, a cousin of Plato's mother. After playing a part in the oligarchic revolution of the Four Hundred in 411, he went into exile c.406, but returned when Sparta defeated Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War (404). Being strongly pro-Spartan he became one of the Thirty Tyrants; he may have helped to bring about the death of his more moderate colleague Theramenes. He was killed fighting at Munychia in the civil war that ended the tyranny of the Thirty. In his lifetime he associated with the sophists and with Socrates. He wrote elegiac poems and tragedies, some fragments of which survive. Plato, who disapproved of the excesses of the Thirty, nevertheless made him figure in his dialogues Protagoras, Timaeus, and Critias (see PLATO 2).