CRITIAS  , Athenian orator and poet, and one of the

Thirty Tyrants . In his youth he was a pupil of Gorgias and Socrates, but subsequently devoted himself to political intrigues . In 415 B.C. he was implicated in the mutilation of the Hermae and imprisoned . In 411 he helped to put down the Four Hundred, and was instrumental in procuring the recall of Alcibiades . He was banished (probably in the democratic reaction of 407) and fled to Thessaly, where he stirred up the Penestae (the helots of Thessaly) against their masters, and endeavoured to establish a democracy . Returning to Athens he was made ephor by the oligarchical party; and he was the most cruel and unscrupulous of the Thirty Tyrants who in 404 were appointed by the Lacedaemonians . He was slain in battle against Thrasybulus and the returning democrats . Critias was a man of varied talents—poet, orator, historian and philosopher . Some fragments of his elegies will be found in Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci . He was also the author of several tragedies and of biographies of distinguished poets (possibly in verse) . See Xenophon, Hellenica, ii . 3 .

4 . 19, Memorabilia, i . 2;

Cornelius Nepos, Thrasybulus, 2; R . Lallier, De Criliae tyranni vita ac scriptis (1875) ; Nestle, Neue Jahrb. f. d. kl . Altert . (1903) .