Cleinias
(Κλεινίας.)
1. Son of Alcibiades, who traced his origin from Eurysaces, the son of the Telamonian Ajax. This Alcibiades was the contemporary of Cleisthenes [Cleisthenes, No. 2], whom he assisted in expelling the Peisistratidae from Athens, and along with whom he was subsequently banished. Cleinias married Deinomacha, the daughter of Megacles, and became by her the father of the famous Alcibiades. He greatly distinguished himself in the third naval engagement at Artemisium, B. C. 480, having provided a ship and manned it with 200 men at his own expense. He was slain in B. C. 447, at the battle of Coroneia, in which the Athenians were defeated by the Boeotian and Euboean exiles. (Hdt. 8.17; Plut. Alc. 1; Plat. Alc. Prim. p. 112; Thuc. 1.113.)
2. A younger brother of the famous Alcibiades. Pericles, the guardian of the youths, fearing lest Alcibiades might corrupt him, sent him away from his own house and placed him for education with his brother Ariphron; but the latter sent him back at the end of six months, finding it impossible to make anything of him. (Plat. Protag. p. 320.) In another dialogue (Alc. Prim. p. 118, ad fin.; comp. Schol. ad loc.) he is spoken of as quite a madman.
3. Son of Axiochus, and the same who is introduced as a very young man by Plato in the " Euthydemus," was first cousin to No. 3 and to Alcibiades.
4. The father of Aratus of Sicyon. The Sicyonians committed to him the supreme power in their state on the deposition, according to Pausanias, of the tyrants Euthydemus and Timocleidas, the latter of whom, according to Plutarch, was joined with Cleinias as his colleague. Soon after this Abantidas murdered Cleinias and seized the tyranny, B. C. 264. (Paus. 2.8; Plut. Arat. 2.) [Abantidas.] [E.E]
(Κλεινίας), a Pythagorean philosopher, of Tarentum, was a contemporary and friend of Plato's, as appears from the story (perhaps otherwise worthless) which Diogenes Laertius (9.40) gives on the authority of Aristoxenus, to the effect that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus which he could collect, but was prevented by Amyclas and Cleinias. In his practice, Cleinias was a true Pythagorean. Thus we hear that he used to assuage his anger by playing on his harp; and, when Prorus of Cyrene had lost all his fortune through a political revolution (comp. Thrige, Res Cyrenensium, § 48), Cleinias, who knew nothing of him except that he was a Pythagorean, took on himself the risk of a voyage to Cyrene, and supplied him with money to the full extent of his loss. (Iambilich. Vit. Pyth. 27, 31, 33; Ael. VH 14.23; Perizon. ad loc. ; Chamael. Pont. apud Athen. xiv. p. 623f.; Diod. Fragm. lib. x.; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. i. pp. 840, 886.) [E.E]
- son of Alcibiades, his distinction at Artemisium: Hdt. 8.17