Athenian coup of 411 BC

The Athenian coup of 411 BC was the result of a revolution that took place during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The coup overthrew the democratic government of ancient Athens and replaced it with a short-lived oligarchy known as The Four Hundred.

In the wake of the fiscal crisis caused by the Athenian military's failed Sicilian Expedition in 413 BCE, some high-status Athenian men, who had long disliked the broad-based democracy of the city-state, sought to establish an oligarchy of the elite. They believed that they could better manage foreign, fiscal, and war policies.

The movement towards oligarchy was led by a number of prominent and wealthy Athenians who held positions of power in the Athenian army at Samos, in coordination with Alcibiades.

By the time of the Peloponnesian War, the democracy in Athens was around 100 years old. Most of the upper class accepted this form of government, while either vying for positions of leadership within it, or remaining aloof outside of it. Until the war, most of the leading Athenian politicians had come from noble families. However, the democratic form of government in the city state of Athens remained an anomaly, as the rest of the Greek city states were either run as tyrannies or most often by oligarchies. Both Thucydides and Aristotle wrote that "the revolution was provoked by defeat in Sicily."

Despite the democracy in Athens, Greek tradition remained aristocratic, and the works of Homer celebrated an aristocratic world view, where the nobles made decisions and the commoners obeyed.

The poems of Theognis of Megara (from the sixth century BCE) and the Theban poet Pindar (of the fifth century BCE) were popular among the Athenian nobles at this time, casting democracy as an immoral and unfair situation where the good (which was equated with noble-birth) were artificially forced into equality with the base (which was equated with common-birth). The poems maintained that virtues such as judgment, moderation, restraint, justice, and reverence could not be taught, and that such inborn qualities were limited to a few, leaving the rest "shameless and arrogant". These poets compared the masses with the noble born who were inherently superior at their birth. The gap between them could not be overcome by education.

...
Wikipedia