Conspiracy of Cinadon - Protagonists

Protagonists

Cinadon was a young and valiant man. He was a military officer who carried out important missions for the Ephors; he had a Scytale in his possession which was used to direct Hippeis, members of the elite Spartan guard. He was well-educated and because of his job he should have been a valued and respected person likely (according to Xenophon and Aristotle) to be a member of the peers (Homoioi). In fact, he was a member of the "Inferiors" (hypomeiones), those Spartans who had lost their civil rights either through cowardice, or poverty (for example, inability to pay their dues to the syssitia), as it was the case for Cinadon, who had a humble background. He aspired, as he rebuts in the course of his trial, "to be a Lacedaemonian inferior to no one".

He assembled other hypomeiones around himself of whom the most dangerous, according to Xenophon, was the seer Tisamenus, a descendant of an Elean of the same name who had received Spartan citizenship after the Greco-Persian Wars. He had also lost his civil rights, probably because of poverty. These two plotters were not members of the oppressed classes, but had been stripped of their usual rights as citizens.