Who were the Five Thousand?

Abstract

This paper focuses on who the “Five Thousand” might have been in the oligarchic revolution of the Four Hundred in 411 BC and in the political regime of the Five Thousand 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 and that the figure corresponded to those “most able to serve the state in person and in purse” ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 29.5; Thuc. 8.65.3). Namely, those paying the eisphora who, during the first part of the Peloponnesian War, might have numbered c. 5000. During the Archidamian War, this internal tax was first exacted in 428 BC, as was perhaps also the case of the Sicilian Expedition. In the politeia of the Five Thousand, this figure referred to those who “ta hopla parechomenoi” (in [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 33 and Thuc. 8.97.1), whose composition and number can be surmised, to some extent, from the spurious “Draconian constitution” emanating from the reflection on the patrios politeia at the time (which included the revision of the laws of Cleisthenes: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 29.3).