Who Were The Five Thousand?

Abstract

This paper focuses on who the “Five Thousand” might have been in the oligarchicrevolution of the Four Hundred in 411 BC and in the political regime of the FiveThousand four months later. In both cases, the “Five Thousand” were nominal groups.During the despotic rule of the Four Hundred, it seems that they never existed at all andthat the figure corresponded to those “most able to serve the state in person and inpurse” ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 29.5; Thuc. 8.65.3). Namely, those paying the eisphora who, duringthe first part of the Peloponnesian War, might have numbered c. 5000. During the ArchidamianWar, this internal tax was first exacted in 428 BC, as was perhaps also the caseof the Sicilian Expedition. In the politeia of the Five Thousand, this figure referred tothose who “ta hopla parechomenoi” (in [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 33 and Thuc. 8.97.1), whose compositionand number can be surmised, to some extent, from the spurious “Draconianconstitution” emanating from the reflection on the patrios politeia at the time (whichincluded the revision of the laws of Cleisthenes: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 29.3).