ABSTRACT
Multiple ancient authors provide us with evidence for the regime of the Thirty Tyrants and its aftermath. Lysias, a prosperous Athenian metic,1 was present when the Thirty came to power but soon fled to save his life (Lysias 12.8ff.). Xenophon, a moderate oligarch who remained in Athens throughout the reign of the Thirty, treats the period in Book 2, Chapters 3 and 4 of his Hellenica, a history of Greece from 411 to 362. The pseudo-Aristotelian Constitution of Athens (abbreviated Ath. Pol.) covers the Thirty in Chapters 34 through 41. The later narratives of the Thirty in Diodorus (14.3-6, 32-33) and Justin (Epitome 5.8-10) both derive ultimately from the fourth-century historian Ephorus, whose work survives only in fragments.
