In 404 b.c. the Peloponnesian conflict eventually got here to an finish, whilst the Athenians, starved into submission, have been pressured to just accept Sparta's phrases of hand over. almost immediately afterwards a gaggle of thirty conspirators, with Spartan backing ("the Thirty"), overthrew the democracy and validated a slim oligarchy. even though the oligarchs have been in energy for less than 13 months, they killed greater than five percentage of the citizenry and terrorized the remaining by way of confiscating the valuables of a few and banishing many others. regardless of this brutality, contributors of the democratic resistance circulate that regained keep watch over of Athens got here to phrases with the oligarchs and agreed to an amnesty that secure collaborators from prosecution for all however the such a lot critical crimes.

The warfare and next reconciliation of Athenian society has been a wealthy box for historians of historical Greece. From a rhetorical and ideological point of view, this era is exclusive end result of the notable lengths to which the Athenians went to take care of peace. In Remembering Defeat, Andrew Wolpert claims that the peace was once "negotiated and developed in civic discourse" and never imposed upon the population. instead of explaining why the reconciliation used to be winning, as a fashion of laying off gentle on alterations in Athenian ideology Wolpert makes use of public speeches of the early fourth century to contemplate how the Athenians faced the troubling thoughts of defeat and civil conflict, and the way they defined to themselves an contract that allowed the conspirators and their collaborators to move unpunished. Encompassing rhetorical research, trauma reviews, and up to date scholarship on identification, reminiscence, and legislations, Wolpert's research sheds new gentle on a pivotal interval in Athens' heritage.