CALLIAS  and HIPPONICUS, two names

borne alternately by the heads of a wealthy and distinguished Athenian family . During the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. the office of daduchus or torch-bearer at the Eleusinian mysteries was the hereditary privilege of the family till its extinction . The following members deserve mention . 1 . CALLIAS, the second of the name, fought at the battle of Marathon (4go) in priestly attire . Some time after the death of Cimon, probably about 445 B.C., he was sent to Susa to conclude with Artaxerxes, king of Persia, a treaty of peace afterwards misnamed the " peace of Cimon." Cimon had nothing to do with it, and he was totally opposed to the idea of peace with Persia (see CIMON) . At all events Callias's mission does not seem to have been successful; he was indicted for high treason on his return to Athens and sentenced to a fine of fifty talents . See Herodotus vii . 151; Diod . Sic. xii . 4; Demosthenes, De Falsa Legatione, p . 428; Grote recognizes the treaty as a historical fact, History of Greece, ch. xlv., while Curtius, bk. iii. ch. ii., denies the conclusion of any formal treaty; see also Ed .

Meyer, Forschungen, ii.; J . B . Bury in Hermathena, xxiv . (1898) . 2 . Hn'poNlcus, son of the above . Together with Eurymedon he commanded the Athenian forces in the incursion into Boeotian territory (426 B.c.) and was slain at the battle of Delium (424) . His wife, whom he divorced, subsequently became the wife of Pericles; one of his daughters, Hipparete, married Alcibiades; another, the wife of Theodorus, was the mother of the orator Isocrates . See Thucydides iii . 91; Died . Sic. xii . 65; Andocides, Contra Alcibiadem, 13 .

3 . CALLIAS, son of the above, the

black sheep of the family, was notorious for his profligacy and extravagance, and was ridiculed by the comic poets as an example of a degenerate Athenian (Aristophanes, Frogs, 429, Birds, 283, and schol . Andocides, De Mysteriis, 110—131) . The scene of Xenophon's Symposium and Plato's Protagoras was laid at his house . He was reduced to a state of absolute poverty and, according to Aelian (Var . Hist. iv . 23), committed suicide, but there is no confirmation of this . In spite of his dissipated life he played a certain part in public affairs . In 392 he was in command of the Athenian hoplites at Corinth, when the Spartans were defeated by Iphicrates . In 371 he was at the head of the embassy sent to make terms with Sparta . The peace which was the result was called after him the " peace of Callias." See Xenophon, Hellenica, iv . 5, vi .

3 ; and DELIAx

LEAGUE .