Ameinias the Phocian

Ameinias the Phocian (flourished 277/272 BC) was an ancient Greek pirate and mercenary leader in the service of king Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedon.

Ameinias was from the region of Phocis in Central Greece. In his earlier career he had been a pirate captain, gaining a certain reputation, but in the year 277 or 276 BC Antigonus Gonatas employed him to overcome the cruel tyrant of Cassandreia, Apollodorus, who had resisted a Macedonian siege for ten months.

Ameinias accordingly proceeded to gain the trust of the tyrant, pretending to reconcile him to Antigonus and settle the dispute between them. He also supplied him with provisions and wine and thus convinced him to lower his guard. Meanwhile he secretly prepared an army of two thousand men and a task force of ten Aetolian pirates under the command of Melatas (or Melotas). Observing that the walls of Cassandreia were thinly guarded, the pirates climbed to the parapet between the towers and fixed the ladders for the two thousand men, who immediately advanced and conquered the place. Ameinias then invited Antigonus to take possession of the conquered city.

In the year 272 BC Ameinias was still in the service of the Macedonian king, being attested as the garrison commander of Corinth, who led a mercenary force into the Peloponnese to aid the Spartans against king Pyrrhus of Epirus. A year later Ameinias was probably substituted by a new governor, the historian Craterus, and his name is not mentioned any further.

References

• Polyaenus, 4, 18.
• Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 29, 6.
• G. T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 1935, p. 67.
• William Kendrick Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Berkeley and Los Angeles, London, 1991, p. 342.
• John D. Grainger, The League of the Aitolians, Leiden, Boston, Köln, 1999, p. 22.
• Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge, 1999, p. 47.
• Michael D. Dixon, Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Corinth, 338-196 BC, New York, 2014.