CRITIUS, one of the thirty tyrants set over Athens by the Spartans. He was eloquent and well bred, but of dangerous principles, and cruelly persecuted his enemies, whom he put to death. He was killed about four hundred years before the Augustan age, in a battle against those citizens whom his oppression had banished. He had been among the disciples of Socrates, and had written elegies and other compositions, of which some fragments remain.