Crises and changes in Athenian democracy:

Theramenes' action between opportunism, legalism and the ‘third way’

Abstract

This text examines the political performance of Theramenes of Athens as narrated by Thucydides, Xenophon, Lysias and the Constitution of the Athenians attributed to Aristotle, so as to map the guidelines that converged to make Theramenes paradigmatic for the ancient Greek political thought. The four sources were selected since they were the chronologically closest to the character among the remaining sources and, above all, because they conditioned the reception of his trajectory by later authors. The paper aims to highlight the features of the character that fostered his identification as a quintessence of the turncoat, on the one hand, or of the firm legalist, on the other, as well as the implications of this posture for the configuration of Athenian democracy in the last quarter of the fifth century BC.