The New International Encyclopædia/Critias

CRITIAS, krĭsh′ĭ-as (Lat., from Gk. Κριτίας, Kritias) ( ? –403 B.C.). An Athenian orator and poet, the pupil both of Socrates and of Gorgias of Leontini. He was a leader in the oligarchical party at Athens, and was exiled after the downfall of the Four Hundred in B.C. 411, but after the subjugation of Athens by the Spartans he returned, and, in B.C. 404, became head of the Committee of Thirty, known as the Thirty Tyrants. In 403 he was killed in the general revolt against their excesses. His literary activity was varied in the fields of oratory, tragic and elegiac poetry, and historical prose. Fragments of his elegies are in Bergk, Poetæ Historicorum Græcorum, vol, ii, (Leipzig, 1900); of his historical work, in Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, vol. ii. (Paris, 1868–83).