In Ancient Greece, the word “traitor” carried a weight that echoed through history. Among the golden pages of Greek civilization lie darker chapters marked by betrayal—stories of men who turned against their homeland, their people, and the noble ideals of Hellenism.
To be labeled a traitor was no trivial matter in Ancient Greece. Ethics and morality were regarded as the highest human virtues, and betraying one’s city-state, friends, or family was seen not only as a moral failing but also as an offense against divine law.
Though acts of treason were rare in the ancient world, their consequences were profound, shaking the very foundations of city-states. The names of these betrayers became as well known as those of heroes, yet unlike heroes, they were condemned and cast out from society. A traitor in Ancient Greece was not only someone who aided foreign invaders but also one who betrayed his own people for personal ambition, greed, or vanity.
Ephialtes of Trachis, one of the most infamous traitors of Ancient Greece
Ephialtes of Trachis is remembered as the most notorious traitor in Ancient Greek history, his betrayal forever linked to one of the boldest displays of Greek courage: the Battle of Thermopylae. He stands among the three central figures of the battle immortalized in art, literature, and film—alongside Leonidas, king of Sparta, and Xerxes, king of Persia. Unlike the others, however, Ephialtes chose a path that sealed the fate of the Greek defenders in favor of the enemy.
In 480 BC, when Xerxes and his Persian forces invaded Greece, the vastly outnumbered Hellenic coalition led by Leonidas held the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae in Phthiotis against hundreds of thousands of invaders. The 300 Spartans fought with extraordinary valor, killing thousands and holding the pass as the rocky terrain limited the Persians’ advantage. Their stand might have succeeded had Ephialtes not betrayed his fellow Greeks, revealing a hidden mountain path that allowed the Persians to flank the defenders. Trapped between the invading forces, Leonidas and his men fought to their last breath.
The heroism of Leonidas and his 300 men became legendary. Yet the name of Ephialtes endured as a symbol of treachery. Herodotus recounted: “Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus, a man of Trachis, came to Xerxes, hoping for a great reward, and informed him of the path that led over the mountain to Thermopylae” (Histories 7.213).
According to Herodotus, Ephialtes was driven by greed and self-interest alone, and his name became synonymous with betrayal. As he wrote, “The name of Ephialtes is held in infamy by all Greeks” (Histories 7.214). When Ephialtes was later killed by a fellow Greek, his death was widely interpreted as divine retribution for his treason.
Demaratus of Sparta
Sparta was the only city-state in Ancient Greece with two kings simultaneously. This dual monarchy existed because the Spartans were almost constantly engaged in warfare: while one king led the army in battle, the other remained in Sparta to handle administration.
At the beginning of the 5th century BC, the two kings were Demaratus (r. 515–491 BC) and Cleomenes I. A dispute arose over Demaratus’ legitimacy due to questions about his parentage—his mother had been previously married. The kings also disagreed on Spartan policy toward Athens. Cleomenes sought to punish the leaders of Aegina, who had allied with Persia, but Demaratus refused to support the campaign.
Demaratus’ stance angered the Spartans, who eventually moved to replace him with his brother, Leotychides II. Exiled from Sparta, Demaratus fled to Persia, where the Persian king granted him the city of Pergamum and surrounding territories, appointing him as an advisor.
Ten years after his exile, Demaratus became a traitor to his homeland when he accompanied Xerxes on the Persian expedition against Greece. Despite this, he was one of the few advisors who openly expressed doubt about Xerxes’ chances of victory. Herodotus recounts numerous consultations between Xerxes and Demaratus, in which Demaratus consistently refrained from flattery and offered honest assessments of the military situation.
Yet, regardless of his caution and counsel, the very act of siding with the enemies of Ancient Greece cemented his reputation as a traitor.
The enigma of Alcibiades
Like Demaratus, who joined the Persians after his exile from Sparta, the Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades fled to the enemy camp after being ostracized from Athens. During the Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), Alcibiades aligned himself with Athens’ principal rival, Sparta. Ironically, his aristocratic Athenian family had roots in Sparta, and even his name, Alcibiades, was of Spartan origin.
Alcibiades was a remarkably gifted politician and general, yet he was also a victim of his own vanity. Renowned for his striking appearance and eloquence, he captivated audiences and fellow citizens alike. According to Plutarch, he studied under several famous teachers, including Socrates, who reportedly took him on as a student hoping to curb his vain tendencies.
Alcibiades’ loyalties were notoriously unstable. His charisma and rhetorical skill allowed him to persuade the Athenians to recall him after his first exile, only to be ostracized again later. After his second exile, he sought refuge in the Achaemenid Empire, this time plotting against the Spartans. No other man in Ancient Greece betrayed both Athens and Sparta. Yet his persuasiveness was so powerful that he was never punished by those he had wronged. As Aristophanes wrote, Athens “yearns for him, and hates him too, but wants him back.” Alcibiades eventually died in Phrygia, with the identity of his killer remaining unknown.
Plutarch captured this paradox in Life of Alcibiades: “He was a man who could neither be ruled nor rule himself, yet whom neither his country could spare, nor long endure.”
Hippias and the Persians, a traitor of Ancient Greece during a time of peace
While other traitors in Ancient Greece turned against their homeland during wartime, Hippias betrayed his homeland in peacetime. Hippias, the tyrant of Athens, ruled with moderation, as opposed to his father, the famous tyrant Peisistratus. When his brother Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 BC, he became more oppressive in order to control those against him. After the assassination of his brother Hipparchus in 514 BC, his regime grew oppressive.
When the Spartans took over Athens in 510 BC, they expelled Hippias, who turned to the traditional enemies of Athens, the Persians. Herodotus wrote in Histories 5.93 that he “fled to the Persians, hoping that with their aid he would recover the tyranny.”
Hippias’ collaboration with Darius and later Xerxes amounted to a betrayal not merely of his city, but of the very notion of Greece’s liberty. Herodotus writes that at the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), Hippias accompanied the Persian forces and even pointed out to them where to land their troops in Attica.
Plutarch viewed Hippias as an example of how personal ambition could corrupt public virtue. “When tyranny could no longer be maintained by justice,” he observes, “Hippias turned to foreign arms, bringing barbarians upon his own country” (Moralia, On the Malice of Herodotus).
When the Athenians defeated the Persians at Marathon, their triumph was twofold: it was not only a military victory but also a moral one, reaffirming their democratic identity against the treachery of tyranny. Hippias’ name thus became inseparable from the Persian enemy, an emblem of a man who, having lost power, betrayed his polis in an attempt to regain it.
Pausanias: Was the victorious general of Ancient Greece a traitor?
The Spartan regent Pausanias, one of the generals of the Greek alliance that defeated the Persians at Plataea in 479 BC was at the. He was the head of forces from the city-states of Sparta, Athens, Corinth, and Megara. The war hero was later charged with conspiring with Persia and even planning to overthrow Sparta’s government.
After the war, Pausanias was accused that he grew arrogant due to his success at Plataea, irritating other Greeks. Thucydides writes that Pausanias “secretly sent a letter to the King, offering to subject Sparta and all Greece to his rule, if the King would give him his daughter in marriage” (History of the Peloponnesian War 1.128).
When the Spartans discovered the plot, they pursued him to a temple where he sought sanctuary. There, trapped and denied escape, he died of starvation at its threshold. Plutarch commented that his death, though pitiful, “was a fitting punishment for one who, after saving Greece, would have enslaved her” (Life of Cimon 6). Pausanias’ fall illustrates how swiftly Greek society could transform its saviors into villains when personal ambition appeared to eclipse communal duty.
In his defense, Herodotus notes that Athenians were hostile to Pausanias and wished him removed from Greek command. Athenians were similarly hostile to Pausanias’ Athenian counterpart Themistocles, publicly ostracizing this other great general as a threat to democracy there.
A. R. Burn speculates that Spartans were becoming concerned with Pausanias’ innovatory views on freeing the Helots, a slave class who were subjugated by the Spartans.
In conclusion, it will never be known if Pausanias did in fact betray the city-state of Sparta to Xerxes. If he did indeed betray Sparta, was it because he faced such opposition from his own people that he gave up trying to work within the system?
Self-interest and virtue
All the well-known traitors of Ancient Greece—Ephialtes, Hippias, Alcibiades, Demaratus, and Pausanias—found themselves at the point where self-interest outweighed virtue. They betrayed their polis, their community, their gods, and even the foundations of Greek identity. This tension between personal ambition and civic duty defined treason in Ancient Greece. To betray one’s polis was to renounce the very essence of Greek identity: active participation in the communal life of the city-state.
Aristotle writes, “The citizen belongs to the polis, as a part belongs to the whole; whoever destroys the polis destroys himself” (Politics 1253a). In this sense, treason was not merely political but ontological—a rupture in the fabric of what it meant to be human.
The tragedians Aeschylus and Sophocles dramatized the conflict between loyalty to the state and devotion to personal interest. Herodotus condemns Ephialtes while acknowledging the universality of human weakness: “No man is so foolish as to choose war over peace, for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons” (Histories 1.87). Treason, then, is not simply weakness; it is a manifestation of human moral fragility.
The Greeks, who deeply valued freedom and community, recognized that betrayal could never truly be erased—but it could be interpreted. Each act of treason became a mirror through which the polis examined its own values: courage, moderation, loyalty, and the limits of ambition.
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