Ancient Cos: An historical study from the Dorian settlement to the Imperial period 9783666251467, 3525251467, 9783525251461

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H Y P O M N E M A T A 51

HYPOMNEMATA U N T E R S U C H U N G E N ZUR ANTIKE U N D ZU I H R E M N A C H L E B E N

Herausgegeben von Albrecht Dihle / Hartmut Erbse / Christian Habicht Hugh Lloyd-Jones / Günther Patzig / Bruno Snell

Heft 51

VANDENHOECK & R U P R E C H T IN G Ö T T I N G E N

S U S A N Μ. S H E R W I N - W H I T E

ANCIENT COS An historical study from the Dorian settlement to the Imperial period

VANDENHOECK & R U P R E C H T IN G Ö T T I N G E N

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen

Bibliothek

Sherwin-White, Susan M. Ancient Cos: an histor. study from the Dorian settlement to the imperial period. - Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. (Hypomnemata; H. 51) ISBN 3-525-25146-7

© Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen 1978 - Printed in Germany. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, das Buch oder Teile daraus auf foto- oder akustomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen Gesamtherstellung: Hubert & Co., Göttingen

Preface The origins of this study in a doctoral thesis, begun in 1969 and submitted in 1973, are not perhaps totally eradicated. My aim has been to give a documented and systematic account of the typical features, character, and development of local Coan civilization and to place these aspects in an historical context. I have tried to make full use of the rich body of archaeological and epigraphic material discovered on Cos within the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it merits further attention and justifies an attempt to give the Coans their due place on the map of the ancient world. The bulk of the material belongs to the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the heyday of Coan civilization and the main setting of this book. Because the prehistoric period has little to do with the history of the classical polis, I have omitted the prehistory of Cos, which has been the subject of much attention over the years, especially since the discovery of the important Mycenean cemeteries at Eleona and Langada on the south-west outskirts of the town and the Mycenean settlement at the Serraglio, within the modern town of Cos. 1 Although there may be continuity in some aspects of the island's history, it is difficult to trace and in most, if not all, cases is entirely lost. The story has a natural beginning in the Dark Ages with the colonization of Cos by Dorians, who came according to tradition from Epidaurus. The typically Dorian ethos of Coan civilization continued throughout classical antiquity. 2 An historical break comes with the synoecism of the Coans in 366 BC, when the new capital, Kos, was founded. 3 Coan political history thus begins afresh with the development of the new state. Cos was one of a number of Greek states which first began to prosper in the Hellenistic period. The favourable contrast of Coan material and cultural wellbeing during the Hellenistic period with the island's fifth century backwardness in the Athenian empire provides some modification of the usually gloomy estimate of the fate of the Greek cities under the Hellenistic kings. What 1

See L. Morricone, AS A A NS 2 7 - 8 , 1 9 6 5 - 6 , pp. 5 - 3 1 1 . For the long duration of the Doric dialect in Cos sec, for example, PH 8 5 - 8 7 (dedications for Gaius Stertinius Xenophon: reign of Claudius). For the continuing use of the Coan calendar in late antiquity see P. Oxy. 2771 (AD 323). The original copy of this document, which concerns the disposal by Coan owners of a slave, was drawn up in Cos and was dated by the Coan and Julian calendars to the Dorian month of Agrianios and the month of June; τοις €σ|ο|μει>οκ έ[κ τ\ρίτου ύπάτοις προ ύκτώ \ καλανδών 'Ιουλίων ei> rfj λαμπρά Κωων | πόλ!ε]ι μηνός 'Ayptaviov | — )| Αύρηλεία Άρτεμωυίς Κφα αδωκα έντολήν τω άνδρί μου. 3 The spelling 'Kos' is always used to refer to the city founded in 366 BC. 'Cos' is used for either the island or the Coan state. 2

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essential difference did it make to a small polis whether Athens, Alexandria, or Antioch, was the centre of civilization and culture? Whether the predominant contemporary power was an imperial and aggressive democracy, or a king? In terms of exploitation there was often little to choose. In terms of patronage, rehabilitation and foreign aid, the kings' record is usually better. The quality of life in the cities in the Hellenistic period needs perhaps to be assessed city by city, reign by reign, since it varied depending on the particular kingdom and the particular king with which a city was associated, the particular circumstances and history of the individual polis. But the smaller cities clearly were able to benefit from their inclusion within the sphere of influence of an Hellenistic kingdom. In the plan of this book the first three chapters are concerned with preliminary matters, a survey of the sources and an account of the background political history. They provide the setting for the rest of the book which is devoted to a study of the different aspects of Coan society. As the manuscript was completed by the end of 1975, I have not always been able to utilize publications issued since that time. My debts are many. It is a pleasure at last to record my deep gratitude to Mr P. M. Fraser for stimulus, generous help and constructive criticism since I began this work. I owe much to my former college tutor, Dr. L. H. Jeffery, for advice and encouragement. Professor C. Habicht, as an Editor of the Hypomnemata series, made several corrections and suggested other improvements, which have been incorporated in my revisions. I am grateful to Miss Virginia Grace, who has kindly given me much information on the Coan wine trade; to Professor Pugliese Carratelli for a valuable discussion of Coan inscriptions; to the former Custodian of the Coan Museum, Mr Nikolaides, and to his staff for their friendly co-operation and tireless aid on Cos. There can be few pleasanter places to work in than the apothekai and enclosures of the Castle of the Knights of St. John, in the modern town of Cos. My thanks are also due both to the staff of the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul and to Dr. R. Higgins for facilitating my access to Coan material in the Archaeological Museum and in the British Museum. I also owe especial gratitude, for generous subventions to help to meet the cost of publication, to the British Academy, the Craven Committee (Oxford University), the Jowett Copyright Trustees (Balliol College), the Hugh Last Fund of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, and the Trustees of the Maud Hay Fund (Lady Margaret Hall). Finally, I should like to thank warmly Professor Habicht, Mr Hellmut Ruprecht and the staff of Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, for the attention and care expended on the production of this book. Oxford, November, 1977 6

S. M. Sherwin-White

Contents Abbreviations

8

Map of Cos

10

Plan of the Asclepieion

11

Chapter 1: The Character of the Sources and Archaeological Remains.

13

Chapter 2: Historical Outline I

29

1. Early Cos (from the Dark Ages to the End of the Fifth Century) 2. The Fourth Century to the Death of Alexander Chapter 3: Historical Outline II

29 40 82

1. From the Death of Alexander to the Defeat of Demetrius I of Macedon (323-286) 2. Cos and the Ptolemies (c. 286-197) 3. Cos and Roman Supremacy (c. 197-32 BC)

82 90 131

4. Cos in the Roman Empire

145

Chapter 4: The Social Structure of the Community

153

Chapter 5: The Coan Constitution

175

Chapter 6: Economic Aspects 1. General Background 2. Trade and Other Occupations 3. The Wine Trade 4. The Coan Silk Trade 5. Coan Perfumes 6. Direct and Local Trade 7. The Population

224 224 229 236 242 242 243 245

Chapter 7: The Coan School o f Medicine

256

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The'Foundation'and Early History of the School The Organization and Role of Physicians in Hellenistic Cos The Physicians and the Cult of Asclepius The Coan Doctor as Leibarzt The Decline of the School

256 263 275 278 280

Chapter 8: Coan Religion

290

Epilogue

375

Appendix 1: A Coan Revolt between 4 4 6 / 5 and 4 4 3 / 2 ?

376

Appendix 2: The Silk Trade o f Ancient Cos

379

Onomastikon of Coan personal names

385

I. General Index

553

II. Index of Inscriptions

564

7

Abbreviations This list of abbreviations includes only those works to which constant reference is made and those which are not sufficiently clear in themselves.

ASAA = Annuario della scuola archeologica di Atene, 1914-· Asylieurkunden = R. Herzog and G. Klaffenbach, Asylieurkunden aus Kos, Berl. Abh., 1952. Choix = F. Durrbach, Choix d'Inscriptions de Delos, Paris 1921-2. CI. Rh. = Clara Rhodos, studi e materiali pubblicati a cura dell' Instituto storico-archeologico di Rodi, 1 - 1 0 , 1928-1940. GHS Dodec. = Geographical Handbook Series, Dodecanese, 1941. Gymn. Agone = T. Klee, Zur Geschichte der gymnischen Agone an griechischen Festen, Berlin, 1918. HG = R. Herzog, Heilige Gesetze von Kos, Berl. Abh., 1928. Hist. Num. = Β. V. Head, Historia Nummorum, Oxford 1911. Historia = Historia: Studi storici per l'antichitä classica, Milan, 1927-1935. Holleaux, EE = Stüdes d'Epigraphie et d'Histoire Grecques, I, 1938, III, 1942, IV, 1952. IL = C. Blinkenberg and K. F. Kinch, Lindos, fouilles et recherches 1902-1914, II. Inscriptions, i-ii, Copenhagen-Berlin, 1941. Inst. Sei. = Ε. J. Bickermann, Institutions des Seleucides, Paris 1938. KF = Koische Forschungen und Funde, Leipzig, 1899. LSAG = L. Η. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, Oxford 1961. LSAM = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees de l'Asie Mineure, Paris 1955. LSCG = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques, Paris 1969. Magie, RRAM = Roman Rule in Asia Minor, 2 vols, Princeton 1950. Maier, Gr. Mauer. I = Ε. G. Maier, Griechische Mauerbauinschriften I Texte und Kommentare, Heidelberg 1959. Meiggs and Lewis = R. Meiggs and D. M. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B. C., Oxford 1969. Modona = A. N. Modona, L'Isola di Coo nell'Antichita classica Memorie pubbl. a cura dell' 1st. storico-archeologico di Rodi, I, 1933. Moretti = L. Moretti, Iscrizioni storiche ellenistiche, Firenze 1967. NDRC = G. Pugliese Carratelli, apud Synteleia: Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz II (1964), 816-819, Nuovi documenti della romanizzazione di Cos. NS = A. Maiuri, Nuova Silloge Epigrafica di Rodi e Cos, Florence, 1925. PH = W. R. Paton and E. L. Hicks, The Inscriptions of Cos, Oxford 1891. RC = C. B. Welles, Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period, Yale 1934. RDGE = R. K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East, Baltimore 1969. Robert,^?. Anat. = L. Robert, Etudes Anatoliennes, Paris 1937. Robert, Etudes Ep. Phil. = L. Robert, Etudes Epigraphiques et Philologiques, Paris 1938. SEHW = M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 3 vols, Oxford 1941.

8

SERod. = G. Pugliese Carratelli, Annuario NS 1 4 - 1 6 (1952-4), 247-316, Supplemente Epigraphico Rhodio. Die Staatsverträge = Die Staatsverträge des Altertums II, Munich 1962, III, Munich 1969. TC = Μ. Segre, Annuario NS 6 - 7 (1944-5), Tituli Calymnii. T.Cam. = M. Segre - G. Pugliese Carratelli, Annuario NS 1 1 - 1 3 (1949-1951), 141-318, Tituli Camirenses. Vreeken = W. A. L. Vreeken, De lege quadam sacra Coorum, Groningen 1953. Will, HPMH = E. Will, Histoire Politique du Monde Hellenistique, 2 vols, Nancy 1966 (I), 1967 (II).

(0 ο 3 Ο LL υ

ο

Plan of the Asclepieion

CHAPTER 1*

The Character of the Sources and Archaeological Remains The local historian is not necessarily handicapped by his subject's lack of importance and interest for the main classical historians' primarily political histories. One of the familiar symptoms of particularism was the proliferation of local histories, albeit of varying quality and truthfulness. Of the known local historians of Cos, Macareus wrote, perhaps in the third century, at least three books of Κωιακά. 1 Only one attributed statement survives. It is a comment from the third book on Coan prohibition of slaves from the temple of Hera and from sacrifice to the goddess. 2 Macareus may also be behind another more interesting account of Coan customs and taboos - Plutarch's description of the transvestism of bridegrooms in Cos. 3 Apart from its value as evidence of unusual ritual, the description has further interest in the possibility that it reveals an old custom introduced by the Dorian settlers of Cos. Transvestism was uncommon in the marriage customs of ancient Greece; its occurrence therefore at Dorian Argos (and Sparta) may be significant for the origin of the Coan practice.4 But the general scope of Macareus' writing on Coan antiquities is *A11 dates are BC unless otherwise stated. 1 F. Gr. Hist. III Β 456; cf. Laqueur, RE sν Makareus (5), 622. The nationality of Macareus is not attested directly. Wilamowitz, H. £/., 1884, p. 259 n. 22 inferred his Coan origin from the appearance, in a Delian inscription, of one Macareus of Cos as architheoros (ID 421, 62, c. 190 BC). As Jacoby noted, F. Gr. Hist. III B, Text p. 306, Noten p. 189, Macareus is a common name in Hellenistic Cos, perhaps due to the connection with Cos in local legend of Macareus, son of Crinacus, the son of Zeus. After the flood of Deucalion, Macareus is said to have settled in Lesbos and thence sent colonists to Cos and Rhodes (Diod. ν 81). The name's local popularity (see further the Coan onomastikon) is the strongest argument for identifying Macareus as a Coan, but is not conclusive as the name is found elsewhere: e. g. Pros. Att. nos 9652-9655 (Athens); Inschr. Did. 258,14 (Didyma); IvPr. 37,65. 123.125; 485 (Priene). 2 See p. 296 for the cult of Hera on Cos. 3 Quaest. Gr. 58. See W. R. Halliday, Plutarch, Greek Questions, Oxford 1928, pp. 2 1 2 - 2 1 9 , for a thorough discussion of the tradition in which derivation either directly, or indirectly, from Macareus is suggested. 4 For discussion of the evidence of transvestism at marriage ceremonies in ancient Greece see W. R. Halliday, BSA 16, 1909-10, pp. 212-219, at 215-216, where the marriage customs of Cos, Sparta and Argos are adduced. The practice in Sparta and Argos was the opposite to that of Cos. At Sparta the bride was disguised as a man (Plutarch, Lycurgus 15) and at Argos the bride wore a beard (Plutarch, Mul. Virt. 245 F). For the cult of Hera Argeia in Cos see p. 296.

13

unknown, a fact that renders uncertain whether he is the source of other descriptions in classical authors of Coan tradition and history. Nothing has survived of the late Κωιακά of Philip of Amphipolis, who lived in c. the fourth century AD. 5 Philip's work comprised at least two books; whether it was historical, or a work of fiction, is not known. Local historical writings do not survive to be a fruitful source of information about ancient Cos. The major classical historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius and Tacitus, contribute a number of incidental references to the outline of Coan political history. From the Coan standpoint this random documentation tends to result in disconnected glimpses of Coan fortunes, usually at moments of crisis and change, when more detail is desirable than the mere fact of an event. What, for example, were the issues when the Coans dramatically decided to protect the Romans from Mithridates VI in the First Mithridatic War by sheltering them in the Asclepieion, although the Pontic king was soon to arrive at the island? 6 It is the exception to have descriptions of political debates of the Coan Assembly, to know the personalities and their policies. Polybius' description of the pro-Macedonian and anti-Roman movement on Rhodes and Cos, on the eve of the Third Macedonian War, gives a welcome sidelight on conflict of policy and Coan political leaders. 7 The surviving historical sources for Cos are inevitably a grabbag of scattered texts. The danger is of over-elaboration of their import and distorted estimation of the importance of something that does happen to be attested. But enough survives to see the major external influences on Coan life. Besides the historians' evidence, there is a wide variety of testimonia from many classical authors. The importance of the Coan School of Medicine is fully recognised by classical writers, quite apart from the internal evidence provided by the School itself and embodied in the Hippocratic Corpus. 8 The Latin love poets' many references to Coan silk garments are the main source for the existence and prosperity of a valuable local industry. 9 Pliny's mention 1 0 of the excellence of Coan pottery is of interest for the quality of local crafts. His statement has a special usefulness in helping to fill a gap in the material background, since the lack of excavations of Hellenistic and Roman cemeteries in Cos means that little Coan pottery of the Greco-Roman period has been found. 1 1 Pliny's well-known story of the Coans' commission of an Aphrodite

5

F. Gr. Hist. Ill A 280. See p. 138. 7 XXX, 7,9-10. " On the Coan medical school see pp. 256ff. » See p. 233. 10 NH XXXVI 20ff. 11 Until recent finds were made, there was a comparable dearth of Rhodian Hellenistic pottery: cf. G. Konstantinopoulos, Archaeology 21, 1968, pp. 120-123. 6

14

from Praxiteles 12 gives a rare measure for estimating Coan economic prosperity in the fourth century and also an insight into Coan character. The Coans' choice of the draped statue (severum id ac pudicum arbitrantes), in contrast to the Cnidians' more adventurous preference for the innovating nude, may be another reflection of the well attested conservatism of the Coans in cult and custom. 13 A separate category of literary evidence consists of authors, writing in different genres, who have a special concern with Cos, either as Coan writers or as foreigners writing in or about Cos. The Hippocratic Corpus is the largest body of writing which includes local authorship and is, backed by the epigraphic evidence, the supreme source for the achievement of Coan physicians, their medical practice and indeed for the Coan intellectual climate of the fifth and forth centuries BC. As a source for information about other aspects of Coan history — topography, agriculture, the population — the harvest of incidental comment is meagre. The Epidemics are the best source of local history since the patients' names, homes and sometimes their professions are recorded. The habit of pinpointing a patient's address by reference to some locality, the temple of Hera, the Founder, 1 4 gives a wealth of local detail, while reference to patients' professions, who range from soldiers and sailors to slaves, is informative for local life and for the social range of a doctor's clientele. But most of the case histories contained in the Epidemics are set abroad and are irrelevant to Cos. It is the Ps. Hippocratic writings and speeches attributed to Hippocrates' son, Thessalus, which appear to offer abundant material for the local historian. These documents are a medley of anachronism and fiction — fruit of Coan rhetorical writings of the Hellenistic period. 15 Ps. Thessalus' Presbeutikos is a good example of the fictitious element in this source. It is a speech purportedly delivered before the Athenians, in the late fifth century, 1 6 to win assurances concerning the security of Cos. Ps. Thessalus' description of the Coans' refusal to submit to the Persian Great King, Darius, and their subsequent resistance 17 is as worthless as the Rhodian tradition enshrined in the Lindian Temple Chronicle of the prolonged resistance of the Lindians to a Persian siege in 490 BC. 18 Herodotus' statement that all the islanders submitted to Darius, except for Naxos, which resisted for a time, exposes these local stories as later re-writing NH XXXV 161 (cited by PH p. XLVI). Cf. pp. 371ff. 14 Hippocrates I (ed. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb), Epidemics I 333; I 130. ,s Cf. p. 190. On the Hellenistic date of Ps. Thessalus cf. R. Herzog, KF p. 216; U. v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, Pindaros, 1922, p. 72 n. 2. 16 HC 9 (ed. Littre) p. 422 (the speech is set after the Sicilian expedition and, since Athenian influence over Cos is assumed (p. 424), before Athens was defeated by Sparta in 405 BC). 17 HC 9 (ed. Littre) p. 414. " Cf. IL I 2 D 1 (C. Blinkenberg, Die Lindische Tempelchronik, Bonn 1915; F. Gr. Hist. III Β 532). See Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, Arch. ΑηζΛ913, pp. 4 2 - 6 , for an excellent discussion of this fabrication. ,J

13

15

of history. 19 On the other hand, Ps. Hippocrates' letter to the people of Abdera contains a description of an annual festival for Asclepius, some of the details of which can be corroborated for the Hellenistic period. 20 Extreme caution has to be applied in utilizing this source; it is unwise to accept any of its evidence without separate examination, or independent verification. The poets Herodas and Theocritus both resided on Cos in the course of their careers and used a Coan setting for some of their work. It tends to be the incidental comment and factual detail, not the subject-matter of their work, that provides Coan information. Herodas' Pomoboskos, for example, is the only mime of which the scene is indisputably Cos.21 But the story of the court-case between a rich slave-trader and a poor immigrant brothel-owner, lively and bawdily brilliant though it is, could have happened in the port of any Greek city from the Piraeus to Alexandria. The theme does not derive from peculiarly Coan experience, but does contain some authentic Coan detail. 22 A richer harvest is culled from Theocritus, primarily his Seventh Idyll. The details in this poem concerning Coan toponyms, traditions and cult, are largely due to Theocritus' special debt to and reliance upon his tutor Philitas, whom he chose to honour in his poem and on whose work he drew in this Idyll. 23 Some of the detail is independently verified by the evidence of inscriptions; 24 its accuracy is not surprising in view of Theocritus' own easy access to local information. Sadly little of Philitas' elegies and epigrams survives.25 The poem Demeter, a deity who had an important cult on Cos, is plausibly thought to have been concerned with Coan legend.26 A fragment names the ancient spring of Bourina, discovered according to legend by the mythical King Chalcon. 27 The spring is identified, probably correctly, with one called Vourina, situated on a hillside " Hdt. VI 4 8 - 9 . HC 9 (ed. Littre) pp. 3 2 4 - 6 . 21 See pp. 94ff. 22 Herodas, Mim. 2, 25—7, cf p. 95.1; 40, a reference to the prostates, perhaps a member of the Coan magistracy, or else the defendant of the metoikos, cf. P. Gauthier, Symbola\ Les etrangers et la justice dans le cites grecques, Nancy 1972, pp. 129-130; 11. 95ff. refer to Coan legendary figures, Thessalus, Kos, Merops and Heracles, on the Coan cults of whom see pp. 317ff, 332, 334. 23 Cf W. Kuchenmüller, Philetae Coi Reliquiae, Borna-Leipzig 1928, pp. 2 0 - 2 1 . 24 See p. 312. 25 For the collected fragments see W. Kuchenmiiller, op. cit.; A. Nowacki, Philetae Coi fragmenta, Münster 1927; J. U. Powell, Coll. Alex. pp. 90ff. 26 See W. Kuchenmüller, 53ff.; P. M. Fräser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford 1972, II p. 917 n. 290 (= Ptol. Alex, hereafter). 27 Kuchenmüller, F 15; on Chalcon's role see Theocritus, Idyll VII, 6ff. A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus II p. 133, plausibly identified Chalcon with Chalcodon, son of Eurypylus, whom Heracles wounded (Apollod. 2,6,1) in the latter's attack on Cos. Chalcon's descent via Eurypylus from Poseidon made him, as Gow pointed out, a suitable founder of a spring. 20

16

south-west of the town of Cos.28 There is some doubt as to whether the name is a survival. It may rather have been revived after the spring's identification by travellers in the early nineteenth century. 29 Vourina now provides the main water supply for the modern town of Cos. In antiquity the spring was housed in an elaborate monument. An ancient springhouse, with a bee-hive chamber, has survived, cut into the hillside and entered by a dromos 35 m. long; a second dromos, above the latter, ended in a room a window of which opened onto the spring-house.30 A vertical shaft from the spring-house chamber came out on the hillside. The date of the building remains a puzzle in the absence of other archaeological finds from the site. The shape of the bee-hive chamber has led to comparison with Mycenean chamber-tombs and belief in an early date, 31 but the lack of Mycenean finds at Vourina, or in the vicinity, tends to discount this possibility.32 Philitas' reference to the prochoai (mouths) of 'black-rocked Bourina' does not give the impression of an artificially constructed spring-house, but a spring in a natural state. But there is no reason to suppose that Philitas was describing the contemporary condition of Bourina. The fragment cannot be used with any confidence as a terminus post quern for the date of the spring-house. A Hellenistic or Roman date of construction seems more likely, but has not at present been corroborated. Philitas also, interestingly, wrote on the subject of a Thessalian settlement of Cos.33 The tradition of a pre-Dorian, Thessalian colonization of Syme, Rhodes and Cnidus, was treated by Callimachus and a Rhodian historian, perhaps the third century Zenon. 34 Syme and Cnidus were thus settled by Triopas from Thessalian Dotion, while Rhodes was colonized by the lapith, Phorbas. Cos too is linked with the legend of Triopas' colonization of Cnidus and Syme through Triops, who was said to have been a king of Cos; in this tradition Triops was also named as the eponym of the Triopium, the promontory which lay in Cnidian territory. As such he must be identified as Triopas, the founder of Triopium.35 The theme of early Thessalian colonization of Cos and other places in the neighbourhood appears to have been a current topic of investigation among local third century scholars. The question arises of what historical realities lay behind the legends. In the case of Cos, the traditions of Thessalian colonization may well 28

Cf. R. Herzog, KF p. 159. See R. Herzog, ibid. , Κ. S. F. Gow, Theocritus II, p. 133. 30 Cf K. Sudhoff, Kos und Knidos, Munich 1927, p. 242, fig. 1. Sudhoff, pp. 240-245, gives a good description of the site; cf. also Gow, p. 133. 31 Cf. L. Ross, Reisen a. d. Gr. Inseln 3, pp. 131, 134; R. Herzog, Arch. Anz. 1905, p. 13. 32 Cf. R. Hope-Simpson and J. E. Lazenby, BSA 65, 1970, p. 58 n. 34, where reports of Mycenean finds at Vourina (cf. Fimmen, Die Kretisch-Mykenische Kultur, Leipzig, 1921, p. 16) are shown to be mistaken. Hope-Simpson and Lazenby tentatively suggest a Hellenistic date for the spring-house. 33 Cf. p. 309. 34 Callim. Hymn to Demeter, 25; Zenon, F. Gr. Hist. III Β 523 F 1 (57). 35 Schol. in Theocr. XVII 68/69 b. 29

2 Ancient Cos (Hyp. 51)

17

be supported by the existence in Cos of Thessalian place-names, which can plausibly be explained as an inheritance from early Thessalian settlers. 36 The great Syrian poet and anthologist, Meleager, settled on Cos in his maturity, in the late second or early first century; he was given Coan citizenship as a token of esteem and passed his old age on Cos, where he died. 37 The poems written during his Coan residence include epigrams which reflect his personal experience and offer occasional insight into Coan life. A pleasing epigram illustrates how the merchant ships sailing the route down the coast of Asia Minor, from the Black Sea and Hellespont, had to pass within close reach of Cos and could easily put in; 'Well-cargoed ships of the high sea, who ply the passage of Helle, taking to your bosoms a goodly north wind, if perhaps at the shore you see Phanion on the island of Cos, gazing over the blue sea, give her this message, good ships, that desire carries me there not on ship-board but as a traveller on foot. For if you tell her this, good messengers, immediately shall Zeus blow favourably into your sails.' 38 It has been convincingly suggested that this epigram is likely to describe a real occasion when Meleager was at the Hellespont, on his way to Cos, and had to tell his mistress that he was coming by land instead of by sea. 39 His crossing-point to Cos from Asia Minor was Halicarnassus, or somewhere in its neighbourhood. Apart from the position of Cos on the north-south trading route, we also learn indirectly from these lines of the route to Cos from Caria, probably from Halicarnassus, which was a convenient crossing-point for traders and visitors from Caria and elsewhere in Asia Minor, as it is today.

36 See PH pp. 3 4 6 - 7 on the incidence in Cos and Thessaly of the toponyms Pele and Oromedon (cf. Theocr. Idyll VII 46). Paton and Hicks, p. 346, observed the assimilation of Coan Eumelus to Thessalian Eumelus, king of Pherae and son of Admetus and Alcestis, in a version of the myth which contained the basic elements of the Admetus legend; Hyginus, Astron. 16, substituting Merops' wife for his son Eumelus, has her punished for neglect of Artemis by descent alive into Hades, the penalty suffered by Eumelus' father Admetus. See PH pp. 3 4 4 - 7 for further Coan links with Thessaly through the Homeric Eurypylus, king of the Thessalians (Iliad 2, 734ff.) and ruler of Cos (ibid. 676ff.), and through Thessalus, the son of Heracles and Eurypylus' wife, father of the Homeric commanders of the Coans' Trojan war contingent and eponym of the Thessalians. A Coan predilection for the name Thessalus may well derive from the influence of the Iliad·, see the onomastikon, sv. In comparison e. g. to Athens, where only three occurrences are listed in Kirchner, Pros. Att. (nos 2307-2310), the incidence in Cos is large enough to be noteworthy. See pp. 3 1 3 - 4 for a Coan cult of Eumelus. 37

Cf. A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams I, Cambridge 1965, p. 216, III-IV (AP 7, 418-19). Ep. Ill {AΡ 7, 418) gives the essential biographical details. For Meleager's chronology (c. 140-c. 70 BC) see F. Susemihl, Gesch. Griech. Litt, in der Alexandrinerzeit, Leipzig 1891, I pp. 4 6 - 7 ; Gow and Page, op. cit. I, pp. XIV-XVII. The exact dates of Meleager's Coan residence are unknown. His death on Cos is referred to by Schol. Anth. p. 81. 38 A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams I, p. 234, LXVI (AP XII 53), cited by PH p. XXXIV. 3» Cf. A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams II, pp. 592, 6 4 2 - 3 .

18

One Nicanor of Cos wrote a commentary on Philitas' work, 40 which contains useful evidence; Nicanor's reference to the Coans' extension of citizenship to refugees after the Theban destruction of Orchomenus (364 BC) is informative both for contemporary Coan politics and for the composition of the Coan population in the early years of the new polis.41 The remaining known Coan scholars and poets are little other than mere names. Sisyphus, a Coan of uncertain date, is known to have written about the Trojan Wars, but the little that survives does not embrace specifically Coan tradition. 42 Socrates of Cos, whose chronology is also uncertain, wrote Ε π ι κ λ ή σ ε ι ς Θβών in at least twelve books. 43 Bar one fragment, this work has not survived, so that the extent to which Socrates was concerned with Coan cult cannot be established. Finally, the Coan Damocharis was a poet and grammaticus in late antiquity. He was a pupil and friend of the scholar Agathias (c. 532-580 AD) and a friend of the poet and court official, Paul the Silentiary.44 Four epigrams survive.45 Damocharis' extant poetry is not about Cos. As his friends were both eminent literary figures of the court of Justinian, it is possible that he too resided at court within the course of his short life and made his career there and not in Cos. 46 The scattered and uneven character of the literary sources is greatly compensated by the wealth of Coan archaeological material: sites and artifacts, coins and inscriptions. Over one thousand five hundred inscriptions alone have been found on Cos. Their main span is from the late fourth century to the JulioClaudians. They naturally constitute the most valuable documentary source for Coan history in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Only a handful of earlier inscriptions has survived. Their paucity has various causes. It is conceivable that for reasons of economy, or convenience,47 some 40

See Gow, Theocritus I, p. XXVII n.2;c/. Scholia in Theocritum Vetera (ed. C. Wendel, Lipsiae Teubner 1914), VII 6, k, o. 41 Scholia in Theocr. VII 21a. See pp. 64ff. 41 F. Gr. Hist. I 50. Cf. R. Herzog, KF p. 211; Schmid-Stählin, Gesch. Gr. Litt., Munich 1924, II 2 p. 812. 43 DL II, 47. Cf. Susemihl, I p. 59, 59 n. 134; R. Herzog, KF p. 211. For the fragment see Müller, FHG IV p. 499 (Suda sv Κυιη)ειος) F 16. 44 For Damocharis' Coan origin see AP VII 588 (Paul's epigram for Damocharis); cf. Susemihl, p. 151; i f F p. 211; A. Cameron, Agathias, Oxford 1970, p. 7. 45 For Damocharis' surviving work see AP VI 63; VII 206; IX 633; XVI 310. For Agathias' other Coan acquaintance, the doctor Callignotus, see AP XI 382; cf. pp. 2 8 6 - 7 . 44 On Damocharis' early death see the lemma to AP VII 58 (cited by A. Cameron, Agathias, p. 7 n. 2). The suggestion of Damocharis' pursuit of a career at court would be corroborated if his identification with the homonymous proconsul of Asia, honoured at Ephesus by the Ionian bankers, was certain (F. Miltner, Anz. Wien 95, 1958, pp. 8 4 - 5 ; SEG 18 474); for the identification see A. and A. Cameron, JHS 86, 1966, p. 11. But see R. C. McCail, JHS 89, 1969, p. 89, for criticism. " There were two types of marble quarried locally in Cos in antiquity. One was a dark grey marble which Mr Nikolaides, the Custodian of the Coan Museum, informed me came

19

other perishable material, e.g. wood, was used in place of marble. It is more probable that the dearth can be explained by other factors. Firstly there is the chance nature of the survival of the inscriptions, many of which are surface finds. Secondly, the earlier inscriptions provided material for Hellenistic buildings, many of which have not survived, just as Hellenistic inscriptions were used as material for building in the Roman period. Thirdly, there is the political factor of the discontinuity of Coan history arising from the foundation of the new city in 366 BC on the north-east coast of the island. The creation of a new capital to be the centre of Coan government and the transfer to it of Coans from their former communities, in particular from the old town of Astypalaea, which was tucked away in the remote south-west corner of Cos, meant a momentous break with the past. Any earlier decisions or agreements with these communities were rendered redundant by the foundation of the new polis, which became the policy-making centre of the unified state. The motive for preserving political records of the old communities was immediately diminished. Finally, the concentration of widescale excavations on the ancient city of Kos, which lies under the modern town, also helps to explain the small number of surviving archaic and fifth century inscriptions. For the ancient city (with its related sites, such as the Asclepieion) has been the main source for Coan inscriptions. Since its life as a capital did not precede 366 BC, a potentially fertile and well-explored source of early inscriptions is removed. Had the archaic and fifth century buildings of the acropolis of Astypalaea survived sufficiently intact to be systematically excavated, the documentation for the early history of Cos might be very different in character and extent. Another hindrance to reconstruction of Coan archaic and fifth century history was a hungry lime-kiln at Astypalaea, fed in the late nineteenth century with many inscriptions. Paton and Hicks recorded their fate. 48 The Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions are informative for many aspects of Coan history. The public inscriptions are valuable for the political history of Cos. Inscriptions are the main source for internal organization, the administrative institutions of the municipalities and the constitution of the polis. Epidoseis, membership lists of cult associations, dedications by office-holders and decrees of the third to second centuries BC furnish a wealth of prosopographic information which encourages examination of the membership of the Coan upperclasses. In such an examination there is the danger of homonymity which often from a quarry near Kephalos. The other was a white marble which derived from a quarry on Prophitis llias, near Cardamina. By the Hellenistic period both marbles were being used extensively. It was suggested by W. K. Pritchett, BCH 89, 1965, pp. 4 0 0 - 4 4 0 at p. 424, that the quarry on Prophitis llias had not yet been opened in the fifth century. There are few surviving examples of work in marble from archaic and fifth century Cos. Analysis of the marble Coan architectural fragments (ch. 2 n. 121), the late fifth or fourth century dedication to ? Demeter (ch. 2 n. 120) and the Charites relief (ch. 2, n. 59) is necessary before judgement can be given concerning the marbles used in classical Cos. 48 PH p. 285.

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makes it impossible to establish, in the lack of absolutely dated documents, whether the recurrence of Coans with the same personal names and patronymics in different documents, which illustrate different spheres of civic activity, attests the widespread activity of the same individual or the continuing activity and importance of the same family down the generations. The long lasting distinction of Coan families can be established in a few cases by the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period. Inscriptions also add a new dimension to the literary accounts of one famous Coan; the local prominence and importance of Gaius Stertinius Xenophon, the personal physician of the Emperor Claudius, who according to Tacitus was implicated in the emperor's death, is fully recorded in Coan dedications, honorific inscriptions and in the monuments of the Asclepieion. 49 Xenophon emerges in the role of a local millionaire who became a great patron of his city. A list of holders of the priesthood of Apollo and a list of members of the Coan gymnasium, dedications and tombstones of the Imperial period allow assessment of the changing social structure marked by Roman settlement on the island. 50 The piecemeal and diverse nature of the literary sources for local Coan industry, trade and agriculture, is remedied to a certain extent by a number of Hellenistic inscriptions; they deal in part with the financing of public cults through obligatory sacrifices paid by different elements of the population. 51 Professions and trades are also illustrated by tombstones. In the case of the Coan physicians, whose profession has been well described as the national pursuit of the Coans, honorific decrees and dedications set up both abroad, e.g. at Delphi and Delos, and at home in Cos, demonstrate their especial prominence. 52 Dedications, sacred laws, cult calendars, decrees recording public decisions about state cults, charters regulating the sale of priesthoods and priestly duties provide an extensive body of material for analysis of the pattern and development of religious life. One drawback for the historian of Cos is the still unpublished state of a number of Coan inscriptions. It is hard in the absence of any published statement to give a precise estimate of the size of this mainly inaccessible material. The number awaiting publication is, however, considerable in spite of a steady output, since the late nineteenth century, from scholars such as R. Herzog, W. R. Paton, E. L. Hicks, A. Maiuri, M. Segre, G. Klaffenbach and G. Pugliese Carratelli. It is invidious to carp at the fact that the discovery of some of these inscriptions dates back to Herzog's excavation of the Asclepieion (1900-1905). R. Herzog has contributed more perhaps than any other scholar to the study of Coan history. With

49 50 51 52

T a c , , Α η η . XII 67, 1 - 2 . For the documentary evidence see pp. 150ff. See pp. 253ff. See pp. 23Iff. Pp. 263ff.

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Koische Forschungen und Funde, Heilige Gesetze von Kos and Kos 1, the joint publication with P. Schazmann of the excavations of the Asclepieion, as well as many articles, he has made a profound and fundamental contribution to Coan history. The situation is hardly that which Cumont desired to avoid with the prompt publication of his great volume, Doura-Europos, Ί1 vaut mieux s' y exposer que de ressembler au dragon de la fable, dans Γ antre oü il garde jalousement un tresor st£rile.' 53 Eventually the rights of publication of the Coan inscriptions passed to M. Segre, who tragically died in 1944. Subsequently Professor Pugliese Carratelli accepted the responsibility of publication, a responsibility which had been greatly increased by the discovery of new inscriptions after the severe earthquake in Cos of 1933. The unpublished material, to which many references have been made by Herzog, Segre and Pugliese Carratelli, ranges over the whole compass of documents, the scope of which has already been outlined. New details are added and many aspects of Coan history enriched. No doubt some of the statements and suggestions in this book may be invalidated as in time new material is published, others may be confirmed. But I have been assured that there is nothing which seems to change fundamentally our outlook on Coan history; such of this material as I have seen and is relevant, I must thank Professor Pugliese Carratelli for permission to cite. Coan amphora handles are another important class of material which supplement the literary sources. Analysis of the distribution and chronology of the handles is informative for the trade itself, its geographic extent, size and duration. Miss V. Grace's promised corpus of Coan handles will provide the definitive publication of these objects. In its absence publications of the finds of individual sites, with statistics of the handles of different provenance, provide a large though still incomplete body of material, that allows some conclusions to be drawn about the general development of the Coan wine trade and its local importance. Coins are also a useful source for Coan history, institutions and cults. Much, but not all of the Coan evidence has been examined in individual publications. J. P. Barron's study of the fifth century silver diskoboloi of Cos has established the chronological termini (470s—c. 450 BC) and standard of these beautiful and artistic coins, minted as triple sigloi on the Persian standard. 5 4 This standard was used in the fifth century at Aenus and Colophon and also, significantly, at Halicarnassus. 55 The proximity of Cos and Halicarnassus and the close relations

53

F. Cumont, Fouilles de Doura-Europos, Paris 1926, p. VII. J. P. Barron, in Essays in Greek Coinage presented to Stanley Robinson, Oxford 1968, pp. 7 5 - 8 9 . 55 Cf. J. M. May, Ainos, its history and coinage (474-351 BC), London 1950, pp. 13, 2 6 5 - 9 ; J. G. Milne, NNM 96, 1941, p. 36 (Colophon); Ε. V. Babelon, Traite des Monnaies Grecques et Romaines II 1, Paris 1907, p. 4 2 3 (PI. CXIV no. 15) Halicarnassus. 54

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of Cos with the latter city at the time of the Persian wars make it possible that the Coans adopted the standard from Halicarnassus, when still under Persian influence. The termination of these coins in c. the mid-fifth century may be associated with Athens' promulgation of the so-called Coinage decree, which enforced (inter alia) the use by its allies of Athenian silver coinage. After the cession of the diskoboloi the Coan mint remained closed until the mid-fourth century, when coining in silver was resumed. The opening of the mint is usually and plausibly explained by the foundation of the new capital. Silver and bronze coins were minted on the standard conventionally called 'Rhodian'; this standard continued to be used through the third and into the second century. Basic classification of the coinage types and chronology was achieved in two publications: Β. V. Head, Greek Coins of the British Museum: Caria, Cos, Rhodes etc., London 1897; W. R. Paton and E. L. Hicks, The Inscriptions of Cos, Oxford 1891. Detailed analysis of the chronology and duration of the different series has not as yet been executed. The absence of a comprehensive and up to date study of Coan coins of the fourth to midsecond century limits their usefulness as historical evidence, but they do provide much incidental information. The Coan onomastikon is considerably enlarged by the appearance of magistrates' names on the coins. The iconography is informative for Coan religion since the choice of deity to appear on the coins reflects a god's importance in civic cult. 5 6 A major group of Coan Hellenistic coins is the series of silver tetrobols, which has been fully published by J. Kroll. 57 The coins' chronological duration has been defined (c. 1 4 6 - 8 8 BC) and their standard recognised (tetrobols on the Attic standard; hemi-drachmas on the 'Rhodian'). Their main historical significance lies in the confirmation of Coan political independence in a period of Roman hegemony. 58 Lastly, Cos boasts a rich heritage of archaeological sites. They are mainly of Hellenistic, Roman and later date. The fine early Christian and medieval monuments are beyond the scope of this study which is concerned only with classical antiquity. The sites which have been excavated are typical of an ancient Greek city; temples, theatres, an agora, a gymnasium and, from the Roman period, an Odeon, baths and large villas. The remains allow a general impression of the ancient city and outlying sanctuaries to be recovered to supplement the valuable, but brief, descriptions of the city given by Diodorus and Strabo. 59 .

56

See pp. 75, 259ff. " A. Num. Soc. Mus. Notes 11, 1964, pp. 8 1 - 1 1 7 . It should be constantly kept in mind that the lower terminus of 88 BC is a purely conventional date, depending on an almost certainly incorrect belief in Coan loss of libertas (and so of the right to coin in silver) under Sulla; see pp. 139ff. 58 Cf. p. 140. " Diod. XV 76,2; Strabo, XIV 657.

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The Italian Archaeological Service began excavations of the ancient city of Kos after the earthquake of 1933. The excavations continued between 1935 and 1943. Because much of the ancient city lies directly under the modern town, excavation was understandably limited to the zone of earthquake damage. In consequence an insufficient amount of the city has been excavated for reconstruction of the town plan to be possible. By contrast in Rhodes, after the Second World War, the Greek Archaeological Service managed to begin, under the guidance of J. Kondis, a programme for the systematic exploration of the ancient city. 60 This policy has successfully resulted in establishing the plan of ancient Rhodes, which is now recognised to have been built on the Hippodamian plan. In Cos too little is known for the town plan to be reconstructed, or its architectural relation discovered to the cities of Halicarnassus, Miletus and Priene, which were rebuilt probably within the same generation as the founding of Kos. Nevertheless, the Italian excavations made a considerable contribution to knowledge of the physical layout and organization of the city. The ancient agora and harbour area were partially uncovered. 61 It should not be surprising that little of the fourth century city is left beneath the more extensive Hellenistic and Roman town. A section of the fourth century agora was reached under the Hellenistic and Roman levels. As the excavation of the agora has not been fully published only a rough outline of its development is possible. The agora was built on a peristyle plan (c. 150 m. X 80 m.). 62 Of the fourth and third century plan the following elements have been identified; the interior stylobate of the north side, part of the eastern one, and rooms lining the east portico. Government buildings (archeia) were located in the agora 63 but were not identified in the excavations. Among these buildings are likely to have been the bouleuterion and the prytaneion which are mentioned in inscriptions. The agora was built conveniently close to the sea and harbour area of ancient Kos to facilitate trade. This practical planning was common in coastal cities. It was adopted e.g. in Thasos and, contemporarily with Kos, at Halicarnassus in the midfourth century. 64 With the growth of Coan wealth and commerce in the Hellenistic period the agora was enlarged (ii BC) and redeveloped with new shops and extended stoas on the eastern side.65

60

J. Kondis, AM 73, 1958, pp. 1 4 6 - 1 5 8 ; idem, AD 18,1, 1 9 6 3 , pp. 7 6 - 9 4 . L. Morricone, Boll. dArte 35, 1 9 5 0 , pp. 5 4 - 7 5 especially pp. 6 9 - 7 3 (figs 2 1 - 2 9 ) . 62 L. Morricone, op. cit. p. 6 0 (figs 1 , 2 4 - 2 5 ) ; R. Martin, Recherches sur I'Agora Grecque, Paris 1951, p. 4 0 8 (fig. 56). 63 Cf. R. Herzog, HG p. 46. The bouleuterion and the prytaneion are mentioned in unpublished Coan inscriptions of the Hellenistic period. 64 Cf. R. Martin, op. cit. p. 284. For Halicarnassus see Vitruvius, De arch. II, 8,10. 65 L. Morricone, Boll. dArte 35, 1 9 5 0 , 71ff. The fragmentary inscription NS 4 4 0 (late i v - i i i BC), in which reference is made to a fish-market, cannot be Coan, though classified as such by Maiuri, since it is in koine. "

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The fortification of Kos is attested by Diodorus, who refers to the 'costly walls' built by the Coans. 66 Excavations in 1936 and 1940 uncovered part of the ancient circumference wall and fortifications. 67 The wall was built of local travertine and volcanic stone, the material used for the Hellenistic theatre of Kos, as Antigonus of Carystus records. 68 The theatre itself has not been excavated. 69 An interesting feature of the wall was a polygonal tower of which the foundations are preserved. 70 The use of stone and the construction of fortification towers in the course of the walls corroborates Diodorus' statement of the expense of the ancient walls of Kos. The excavations where also informative for the size of the city at the time of its foundation. In 1936, the fourth century wall was found to extend to the harbour on the north side of the city. 7 1 Subsequent excavations were undertaken in 1940 to estimate the extent of ancient Kos. Excavation southwards from the modern town unearthed further lengths of wall identical with the early fortification wall discovered in the harbour quarter in 1936. The discovery of the wall's north and south limits made possible a rough estimate of the walled area of the fourth century city, which was approximately one kilometre in breadth. In the course of the Hellenistic and early Imperial period the city expanded beyond the old small limits and beyond the limits of the later medieval city. Due south of the agora excavations revealed the ground plan of a Hellenistic temple and adjacent altar. 72 The latter has been plausibly and possibly correctly identified with the altar of Dionysus, which is mentioned in a Hellenistic inscription. 73 Due west of these monuments lie two major Roman sites, Roman 66

Diod. XV 76,2. Cf. L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, p. 59 (fig. 5), pp. 6 0 - 6 2 , p. 244 (fig. 81); H. Megaw, Archaeology in Greece, 1 9 3 5 - 6 , p. 28; T. W. French, J HS 65, 1945, pp. 102-104. 68 Callim. I (ed. Pfeiffer) F 407, 161; F. Lasseire, Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos, Berlin 1966, p. 124 F 363. 67

69

For description of the Roman remains of the theatre see R. Herzog, KF pp. 1 5 6 - 1 5 8 . For the theatre's location, due south of the modern town and near to the Church of the Trinity, see Modona, Cartina Speciale no. 12; ibid., Carta Generale, Long. 27,17, Lat. 36,53. Herzog's suggestion that the Roman theatre was built over the Hellenistic one is plausible in the absence of other evidence for the latter's site. For reference in the Hellenistic period to the theatre see PH 10 a 25 (c. 200 BC). 70 Cf. T. W. French, J HS 65, 1945, p. 103, fig. 2, for a photograph of the foundations of the tower which was built into the course of the wall. The site was subsequently covered over. See J. Kondis, AD 18 1, 1963, pp. 7 6 - 8 (fig. 1) for the obeliskoi of the Coan wall, a device for water drainage by means of openings in the wall, a feature also of the Rhodian city-wall (Diod. XIX 45,3). 71 L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, pp. 6 0 - 6 2 ; T. W. French, JHS 65, 1945, pp. 102-104. 72 L. Laurenz i, Boll. d'Arte 30, 1936, pp. 137ff. (fig. 15); L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, pp. 5 4 - 5 5 . 73 PH 10 a 28 (c. 200 BC).

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baths with a finely preserved hypocaust and the site of the 'Casa Romana', a large Roman villa. 74 The villa was built on top of a Hellenistic house. One of the best mosaics found there was a beautiful, polychrome fishscape mosaic of Hellenistic date (unpublished). The villa has been extensively reconstructed; it is one of the most attractive of Coan sites today. Spacious and resplendent with mosaics, the Roman villa is a striking example of luxury in Roman Cos. Further west, beyond these monuments, a small Roman Odeon was found and excavated in 1929, where musical events, public conferences, lectures and recitations could be held. 7 5 Inscriptions from the site showed that the Odeon was one of the places favoured for the exhibition of public records. 76 Honorific dedications of the boula and ekklesia and dedications of the gerousia were found on the site. In a westwards direction, on the opposite side of the modern road from the Odeon, stretch the most extensive remains of Kos. They are known in guidebooks as the Western Excavations, being situated on the western side of the modern town. These excavations comprise one of the quarters of the Roman town. 7 7 The site has not yet been fully published. The Western excavations and the Casa Romana have a particular importance in that they substantiate Strabo's description of Kos as a city which, though not large, was finely planned, of most attractive appearance and prosperous. 78 The site lies below a low hill, the acropolis, which stretches along its northern side. It is traversed on the western side by a well-paved Roman road from north to south. This road is intersected, at its southern end, by another paved road running east-west along the south edge of the excavations parallel with the modern road. On the north side of the east-west road a residential area was excavated extending up towards the hill. Ruins of numerous Roman houses have been uncovered in varying degrees of preservation. A number were decorated with mosaics ascribed to the third century AD and with frescoes in 'Pompeian' style. The most important was the so-called House of Europa, named after a floor mosaic; the house has a special interest for the local art of the period because of

74

L. Laurenzi, Boll. d'Arte 30, 1936, pp. 1 3 8 - 1 4 0 (figs 1 6 - 2 2 ) . L. Laurenzi, Historia 5, 1931, pp. 5 9 2 - 6 0 2 (figs 1 - 6 ) . 76 Cf. M. Segre, Historia 8, 1934, pp. 4 2 9 - 4 5 2 , for publication of the inscriptions from the Odeon. 77 See L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, p. 55, pp. 2 3 4 - 2 4 6 (figs 5 8 - 8 0 ) . For the ancient stadium of Kos, located north of the Western Excavations at 31 March Street, in front of the tiny Church of Aghia Anna, see R. Herzog, Arch. Anz. 1901, p. 134, fig 2, Kos I, p. xxv; L. Laurenzi, Historia V, 1933, p. 611; L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, p. 54, p. 219 (fig 31, photo of the aphesis), pp. 2 2 2 - 2 2 4 . Morricone, op. cit. p. 224, gives a date of the second century BC for the construction of the aphesis. This starting-gate can be seen today. 78 XIV 657. 75

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the wall paintings and sculpture it also contained. 79 On both sides of the northsouth road were public buildings and facilities for the residential quarter. These included a vast thermal building of the Roman period with well-preserved hypocausts and a large Christian basilica of the fifth century AD. On the westernmost edge remains of a building were found, dated to c. the second century BC on the basis of the architectural style. 80 A portico (177m. long with 81 supports) was associated with this building, which inscriptions found in the immediate neighbourhood identified as a gymnasium. On the right hand side of this road are remains of buildings, which have been identified as taverns, and the restored forica, or baths, a magnificent latrine built round a peristyle court. 81 The Roman remains of the Western excavations reveal impressively the wealth of Roman Kos. They end the survey of the main sites of the ancient city. The most famous of all the Coan sites is the Asclepieion, which is situated at c. 4 kilometres north-west of the ancient city and modern town. Strabo, describing the sanctuary in the early first century AD, said that it lay in the suburb of the city. 82 By this time the suburb reached as far as the sanctuary, another sign of the growth of Kos. The material remains of the temples and buildings of the Asclepieion provide the physical setting of the Coan cult and also give valuable information for the sanctuary's chronology. A full description of the sanctuary and cult is reserved for the last chapter. 83 Excavations have also been fruitful in the Coan country districts where buildings of both public and private character have been discovered. In 1902, Herzog excavated a small temple of c. the fifth century BC on the acropolis site of classical Astypalaea, centre of the later Hellenistic deme of Isthmus. 84 It is, at present, the earliest Coan temple to be found. In 1928, L. Laurenzi excavated a Hellenistic theatre and small temple of the Doric order (13.65 m. X 6.60 m.) on the hillside a short distance south of the acropolis.85 Excavations 79

L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, pp. 2 3 6 - 2 3 9 (mosaic, fig. 64; wall-paintings, figs 6 4 - 5 ; sculpture, figs 6 6 - 7 4 ) . 80 L. Morricone, op. cit., pp. 2 2 4 - 2 2 7 (figs 3 3 - 3 6 ) ; J. Delorme, Gymnasion, Paris 1960, pp. 1 1 9 - 1 2 1 . " ibid: pp. 2 2 7 - 2 3 4 (figs 3 7 - 5 7 ) . " 657. 63 Cf. pp. 334ff. . 84 Arch. Anz. 1903, pp. 2 - 4 . Herzog ascribed the temple to Demeter on the basis of epigraphic finds which have not yet been published. For the location and remains of the site of ancient Isthmus/classical Astypalaea at Aghia Palatiane, near Kephalos, see D. Mackenzie, BSA 4, 1897, pp. 9 5 - 1 0 0 ; R. Herzog, Arch. Anz. 1901, p. Iff.; G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 122; G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASAA NS 2 5 - 2 6 , 1963, pp. 1 4 7 - 2 0 2 , at 1 4 8 - 1 4 9 . G. E. Bear, and J. M. Cook, loc. cit. p. 121, noted that the survival of the name Stampalia at Kephalos precludes the need to consider proposals of alternative locations for the site of Astypalaea. 85 Cf. Historia 5, 1931, pp. 6 2 5 - 6 2 6 (figs 1 5 - 1 6 ) . For reference to another nearby temple of the Hellenistic period, found in 1940, see L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, p. 328.

27

produced evidence of archaic and later Greek cults at Kakiskala and at the cave of Aspripetra. 86 Below Astypalaea near the sea, at the modern village of Kamares, there are remains of a Roman villa with pebble mosaic floors, which I visited in 1969. 8 7 The villa is situated on a hill behind the seaside restaurant. At the foot of the acropolis of ancient Halasarna (modern Cardamina), L. Laurenzi excavated a small theatre, considered to be of Roman date. 8 8 In 1929 a small sanctuary of the Eleusinian gods was excavated between the modern villages of Pyli and Asphendiou, at Kyparissi, on the foothills of Mt. Dicheo. 89 The sanctuary was of modest character consisting of an altar for Demeter, hewn from blocks of rock, and a single building erected, without foundations, on a square bed of chalk (6m. X 6m.). The building contained seven statues; three of Demeter, three of Kore and one of Hades, dated from c. the second half of the fourth to the third century BC. 90 They provide the approximate duration of the building, which eventually collapsed, perhaps, as the excavator suggested, because of an earthquake. Dedicatory inscriptions on the surviving bases show that the statues were not cult images but the gifts of wealthier patrons of the sanctuary. 91 At modern Pyli (ancient Pele), the remains of an elaborate Hellenistic heroon were excavated by Herzog and Schazmann. 92 The heroon and associated cult is described later in the context of Coan religion. 93 Our knowledge of the history, culture and religion of the Coans and of the material development of the city and demes is considerably increased by the archaeological evidence, which constitutes a fruitful, if inevitably uneven, source for Coan history.

86

Cf. D. Levi, ASA A 8 - 9 , 1 9 2 5 - 6 (publ. 1929), pp. 2 3 5 - 3 1 2 . The building, which has not been published, was referred to by G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, p. 182 no. XXV. 88 L. Laurenzi, Historia 5, 1931, p. 625 (photo p. 622, fig. 1). This is another Coan site which has not been published. Laurenzi, ibid., gave a brief description of the theatre; 'Esso e addossato alia collina ed e conservato nella cavea per 6 ranghi di sedili e per tre quarti dello sviluppo della curva (fig. 14). Delia scena resta un podio, innalzato con tutta probabilitä in etä romana, alto metri 0.50 e profundo m. 2. I sedili di tufo lavorati con grande accuratezza hanno le sollte dimensioni: m. 0.40 di altezza e m. 0.70 di larghezza. 87

La scena doveva avere la lunghezza di circa m. 14.'The cavea was subsequently covered over, as I found on a visit in 1970. There is much Roman coarse-ware pottery on the surface in the site's vicinity. 89 Cf. G. Jacopi, CI. Rh. 5, pp. 1 5 7 - 8 , for a report of the excavation on which this description is based; L. Laurenzi, Historia 5, 1931, pp. 6 2 3 - 5 . 90 See G. Jacopi, CI. Rh. 5, pp. 1 5 9 - 1 8 9 , for publication of the statues and bases from the Demetrieion. 91 Cf. p. 312. 92 See P. Schazmann, JDAI 49, 1934, pp. 1 1 0 - 1 2 7 (figs 1 - 1 1 ) . 93 See pp. 3 6 5 - 6 .

28

CHAPTER 2

Historical Outline I 1. Early Cos (from the Dark Ages to the End of the Fifth

Century)*

Cos was traditionally colonised by Dorians from the Argolid at an uncertain point in the Dark Ages. Herodotus mentions the tradition of immigration from Dorian Epidaurus when describing the forces of Cos, the Calydnian islands, Nisyrus and Halicarnassus, which fought for the Persians in 480 under the leadership of Artemisia of Halicarnassus; 'the places I described as being under her rule are all Dorian - the Halicarnassians being colonists from Troizen, and the rest from Epidaurus.'1 The traditional derivation of the Dorians of Cos from the Argolid is supported by archaeological evidence. Between the Mycenean settlement on the site of the Serraglio in Kos and the Protogeometric cemetery discovered above it, there was a distinct chronological gap, which ended when the site was first used as a burial ground in c. the mid-tenth century. 2 The close ressemblance of material objects from the Protogeometric cemetery (pottery and metal pins) and the similarity of burial customs to those of the Argolid demonstrate an interconnection between the two places, which can be associated with the Dorian immigration to Cos from the Argolid. 3 •Though inevitably out of date, the best survey of Coan history is still Paton and Hick's admirable account, Inscriptions of Cos, pp. IX-LII. 1 Hdt. VII 99. 2 On the as yet unpublished late Protogeometric and Geometric cemeteries from the Serraglio see L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 35, 1950, pp. 3 1 0 - 2 , figs 9 1 - 3 , 95; A. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece, Edinburgh 1971, pp. 7 5 - 8 , 95, 163, 247; V. R. d'A. Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages, London 1972, pp. 172-178. 3 On the similarity of pottery and funerary customs (inhumation after late Mycenean cremation) see A. Snodgrass, loc. cit.; V. R. d'A. Desborough, loc. cit. Cf. A. Snodgrass, op. cit. p. 329, for the Argive hand-made pottery found at the Serraglio and the link with Asine in the Argolid. See Snodgrass, p. 242, for the comparison of Coan Protogeometric 'standard' pins (with iron shafts and bronze globes) with Argive products. On the funerary customs cf. Snodgrass, p. 163. See L. H. Jeffery, LSAG pp. 153-4, 3 5 3 - 4 , for the kinship between the Argive alphabet and the script on early seventh century inscribed pottery, of cast Greek character, from Calymnus. The significance of the relation between the alphabets is problematic and can only be resolved by future finds providing new evidence on the character of the Calymnian alphabet; but whether immigrant Argive craftsmen worked on Calymnus, using their Argive alphabet, or whether the alphabet was the original Calymnian alphabet and the source of the Argive (cf. LSAG loc. cit. for discussion), the interrelationship between the Argolid and the Dorian Sporades in the early archaic period is attested.

29

The comparative importance of Cos among the Dorian cities of the southern Sporades, in the archaic period, is illustrated by Coan membership of the Dorian Hexapolis, a religious league formed early on which corresponded to the Ionian league of the Dodecapolis. 4 The original members were Cos, Halicarnassus, Cnidus and the three cities of Rhodes, Camirus, Ialysus and Lindus. The league was exclusive and membership therefore brought prestige. An island comparable in size to Cos (109 sq. mis.), such as Carpathus (118 sq. mis), was not included, nor was the smaller Calymnus (49 sq. mls), s though both were eligible for membership on the basis of their Dorian character. The members met regularly at the Cnidian Triopium, in the sanctuary of Apollo, for religious festivals. After the expulsion of Halicarnassus, allegedly for a Halicarnassian's refusal to dedicate his victory tripod, 6 the remaining five members admitted no new candidate to replace Halicarnassus. The policy aroused local hostility, as is shown by the nickname Araiai, Cursing Ones, given to a group of three islands situated between Syme and Cnidus for the curses they showered upon the Pentapolitai. 7 But the Pentapolis appears to have gradually diminished in importance, perhaps because of the growth of the members' local sanctuaries. After an attempt by Ptolemy II to revitalise the Pentapolis, its festival was eventually incorporated as a local Cnidian festival. 8 Cos was and is a fertile island and was renowned as such in antiquity. 9 Mainly devoted to agriculture, the Coans participated little in trade and ventures overseas until the fourth century. Their mode of life was in this respect quiet and

4

See Hdt. I 144,3. The figures are taken from GHS Dodec. If Carpathus was incorporated in a Rhodian city already in the archaic period, its absence from the Dorian league is readily explicable. For discussion of the existing evidence on the status of Carpathus before the Rhodian synoecism (408/7) see G. E. Bean and P. M. Fraser, The Rhodian Peraea, Oxford 1954, pp. 1 4 1 - 4 ; judgement there inclines in favour of Carpathus' incorporation before 408/7. Coan incorporation of Calymnus could also explain the latter's absence, but see p. 32 for discussion of the evidence, which does not admit a firm conclusion. 6 See PH, p. XII, for the suggestion that Halicarnassus' diminishing Dorianism under Carian and Ionian influence was in part responsible for the city's excommunication. The high percentage of the Carian population at Halicarnassus, in the fifth century, is 3 well illustrated by the Halicarnassian list of purchasers of sacred property (Syll. 46; ν BC), in which there is a large proportion of Carian names. On the Greek and Carian names at Halicarnassus see O. Masson, Beitr. z. Namenf. 10, 1959, pp. 1 5 9 - 1 6 0 . 7 Steph. Byz. s. v. Άραϊάι (cited by PH, p. XVIII). On the islands' location between Syme and Cnidus see Athenaeus, p. 262 E. * On Ptolemy II's patronage of the festival of the Pentapolis see Schol. on Theocr. 3 XVII, 6 8 - 9 a . For the local Doreia at Cnidus see PH 104, 1 5 - 6 (Syll. 1065), Δούρεια τά ei> Κιηδω (i AD). On the decline in importance of the Dorian festival at the Triopium, in the third century, see W. W. Tarn, JHS 30, 1910, 213ff.; K. Hanell, RE VII A 1 7 4 - 5 , sv Triopia. * Cf. Strabo 657. On farming in Cos see pp. 227ff. 5

30

unadventurous. The Coans did not join the states, including neighbours such as Halicarnassus, Cnidus and the three Rhodian cities, which founded the trading settlement of Naucratis in Egypt. 10 They sent out no independent colonies in the early colonization movement of the archaic period. A percentage of Coans joined the Rhodian colony which settled at Elpiae in Daunia on the coast of Apulia in Italy. 11 Coans may have joined other colonies but their participation was not on a scale large enough to be remembered in the surviving traditions of colonial foundations. The lack of trade was due in part to a deficiency of harbour facilities12 and to the absence of a well-developed coastal city positioned on a main trade route; the situation was not changed until the foundation of Kos itself in 366, on the island's north east coast, and the contemporary construction of an artificial harbour for the city. 13 Kos was admirably suited for the purposes of trade, commanding the straits between Kos and Halicarnassus and the sea-route down the coast of Asia Minor from the Black Sea to Palestine and Egypt. The smallness of the Coans' colonizing effort indicates that at this early stage they did not require settlements abroad for trade or land on the scale needed by many Greek states, but were in the archaic period content with their island's resources. It is notable that the Coans do not appear to have possessed a peraea on the adjacent coast of Asia Minor in antiquity. There is a complete dearth of evidence, literary and epigraphic, to suggest the existence of Coan territory in Asia Minor. The lack of any Hellenistic (or later) inscriptions from sites in Asia Minor near Cos, or from Cos, which attest the existence of Coan territory in Asia Minor, is significant given the relatively large number of surviving inscriptions of Hellenistic and Roman date. This silence should, probably, be taken as evidence of the non-existence of a Coan peraea in the Hellenistic and Roman period. The fact that Strabo makes no reference to a Coan peraea in his description of Cos supports this conclusion.14 The Coans' non-possession of a peraea can justifiably be regarded as rather striking both by reason of the acquisition of a peraea by other islands lying off Asia Minor, such as Tenedos, Lesbos, Samos and Rhodes, and by reason of the Coans' own relative importance in the Dorian Sporades. The correct explanation is uncertain. The presence of Halicarnassus opposite the east coast of Cos, coupled with Cnidian control of the Triopium peninsula, which faced the old Coan city of Astypalaea across the Gulf of Cos, may have acted as a disincentive to the Coans, who were never bold in establishing their influence abroad. 10

Hdt. II 1 7 8 - 9 . " Strabo 654. On the colony see Leipzig, 1914, pp. 2 0 5 - 6 , 382ff.; colonization in the fourth century 12 Cf. PH, p. XI. On the harbours 13 See p. 68. 14 657.

M. Mayer, Apulien vor und während der Hellenisirung, R. L. Beaumont, JHS 56, 1936, pp. 1 7 2 - 4 . On Coan see pp. 8 0 - 1 . of Cos see p. 52.

31

If the evidence of Coan control of neighbouring islands in the archaic period was not ambiguous, possession of nearby islands could be used to explain the absence of a Coan peraea. The islands concerned are Calymnus and Nisyrus, which in the Iliad were ruled by a Coan king. 15 This tradition may conceivably reflect a historical Coan possession of the islands. There were ancient ties between Nisyrus and Cos, revealed by the existence in the Hellenistic period of a Coan gentilicial group called the Nisyriadai. 16 The tradition of ancient links between Cos and Nisyrus may suggest that Nisyrus was absorbed for a period by Cos. Additional evidence for Coan control of Calymnus is controversial and depends on whether the Coan incorporation of Calymnus at the end of the third century, then described as a 'restoration' of a union, was a reversion to the Homeric situation, or, as seems more probable, the re-establishment of a situation which occurred within the contemporary Hellenistic context. 1 7 If these two islands were Coan possessions at an earlier stage, they were both detached from Cos (perhaps by Athens) by c. the mid-fifth century, since they both appeared independently of the Coans in the Athenian Quota Lists. 18 The evidence for the political history of Cos is, as has already been noted, discontinuous and brief for all periods. To a great extent this lack of information is due to the island's abiding lack of importance as a political and military force. As was the fate of many of the small islands lying off the coast of Asia Minor, the political fortunes of Cos changed as different powers established their domination in Asia Minor, or in the Aegean. Subjection to, or close affiliation, stopping just short of dependence, with a foreign power was the

15

ii. 676ff. PH 368 VI 3 8 - 9 (ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 1 8 1 - 2 0 1 , XXVI Β VI 4 1 - 2 ) . There is no evidence that Nisyrus, which was absorbed by Rhodes by c. the end of the third century, was incorporated by the Rhodians at an earlier time; cf. G. E. Bean and P. M. Fräser, The Rhodian Peraea, Oxford 1954, pp. 1 4 7 - 1 5 1 . Nisyrus is small (18 sq. mis) and volcanic, the crater dominating the island: cf. GHS, Dodec. p. 122. Ancient tradition held that the island had been formed when Poseidon broke off a chunk of Cos to the overwhelm the giant Polybotes; see Strabo 489; Paus. I 2,4. Pausanias draws on a local Coan legend which associated Polybotes with Cape Chelone. The latter name is not otherwise attested for Cos. PH, p. XII η 2, suggested that the cape was the promontory of Cos nearest to Nisyrus (viz. the promontory west of modern Cardamina, now bearing the name Chelona on local maps) but that is named Lacetor by Strabo, ib. Given the volcanic origin of Nisyrus it is possible that the legend of the island's formation from Cos may contain an element of truth. Poseidon's overthrow of Polybotes with a gigantic rock from Cos, destined to become Nisyrus, was a popular scene on Attic Black Figure vases; see U. Heimberg, Das Bild des Poseidon in der griechischen Vasenmalerei, Freiberg 1968, p. 144. For the tradition of Coan colonization of Nisyrus see Diod. V 54. 17 Cf. R. Herzog, Riv. Fil. NS 20, 1942, p. 5 no 2 (TC XII, plate 2; Die Staatsverträge 545). For discussion of the third century incorporation of Calymnus see pp. 124ff. 18 Cf. ATL ii p. 10, QL III 1, 10 (first appearance of Kalydnioi, among whom the Kalymnioi were numbered (452/1); cf. M. Segre, TC p. 7, IX); ATL ii p. 15, IX 1, 5 (first appearance of Nisyrioi: 446/5 B.C.). 16

32

dominant theme of the Coans' political history in antiquity. In the late archaic period and in the fifth century, the Coans' weakness is illustrated by their subjection initially to Persia and to the Lygdamid dynasty of Halicarnassus, and by their subsequent status as a tributary ally of Athens. When the Lydian empire fell to Persia in c. 546, the Greek cities of Asia Minor rapidly came to terms with, or were reduced by the Persians; Caria, too, swiftly succumbed. Cos was under Persian suzerainty by the time of the first Persian invasion of Greece and perhaps earlier. 19 Herodotus reveals that a tyrant called Scythes was in control of Cos in the 490s, before his son Cadmus, whose own abdication had taken place by 490, took over; 'Cadmus, having received from his father the tyranny over the Coans, which was firmly established, willingly and under no man's compulsion but from a sense of justice gave up to the Coans their sovereignty and went to Sicily.' 20 Cadmus settled at Zancle, between 494/3 and 490/489, with a group of Samians who had left Samos after the battle of Lade in 494. 2 1 A group of Coans accompanied their former ruler. 22 The Coan dynasty appears to have been one of the Persian supported tyrannies established in the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands after the Persian conquest. 2 3 Cadmus' abdication may perhaps be associated with the crushing of the Ionian revolt in 494, in which significantly the Coans are not known to have played any part. Herodotus states that the Persian general, Mardonius, put down the Ionian tyrants, whose unpopularity was regarded as a contributary cause of revolt; 'democracies' were to be set

19

HC (ed. Littre) IX, pp. 4 1 4 - 6 . VII 164. Scythes has been identified with the homonymous tyrant of Zancle, whose overlord was Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela: cf. R. W. Macan, Herodotus I (1), Macmillan 1908, pp. 229-231; L. Pareti, Studi siciliani e italioti, Florence 1914, pp. 7 5 - 7 ; T. J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, Oxford 1948, p. 384. Scythes was ousted by the Samians who arrived after the battle of Lade in 494. Disgraced because of his failure to hold Zancle, Scythes was imprisoned by Hippocrates, but escaped to Darius' court (Hdt. VI 2 2 - 4 ) . The year 494 is thus the terminus ante quern for Scythes' departure from Cos, if the identification is correct. But Herodotus does not connect the homonyms, which, together with difficulties involved in reconciling the stories of Scythes and Cadmus, if they were father and son, makes the identification less straightforward: see A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks, Arnold 1962, pp. 309-310. Burn believes that there were probably two different men called Scythes, one of whom died on Cos and left Cadmus the tyranny. The question should be left open. This early occurrence of the name Scythes is interesting. On the wide dispersion of the name by the Hellenistic period see J. and L. Robert, REG 75, 1962, Bull. Ep. pp. 1 9 3 - 4 no. 248. " For detailed discussion of the chronology of the Samians' occupation of Zancle sec T. J. Dunababin, The Western Greeks, pp. 391ff; J. P. Barron, The Silver Coins of Samos, London 1967, pp. 4 1 - 3 . " Cf Suda sv. 'Επίχαρμος. " Cf. R. W. Macan, Herodotus 1(1) p. 229. See H. Berve, Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen II, Beck 1967, pp. 571-590, for a full list of the tyrants of the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the islands. For a tyrant at Calymnus, in 480, see Hdt. VII 98, VIII 87. 20

3 A n c i c n t Cos ( H y p . 5 1 )

33

up in place of tyrants, but were not in all cases actually established.24 Cadmus' decision to abdicate may be linked with the new Persian policy of favouring constitutional government in the Greek cities. By 480, the dynast of Halicarnassus, Artemisia, had established her hegemony over Cos and the neighbouring islands of Calymnus and Nisyrus.25 With contingents from Nisyrus, Calymnus and Halicarnassus, the Coans fought under Artemisia's gallant leadership, on the Persian side, at the battle of Salamis in 480. Herodotus gives a glimpse of the type of incident that Persian control and the fortunes of war entailed. He recorded the story of a Coan woman, who was seized on Cos for his harem by the Persian Pharandates, son of Teaspis, who commanded the Mares and Colchi, in 480, for the Great King.26 After the battle of Plataea, the woman went from the Persian to the Greek camp and appealed to Pausanias, the Spartan general, for her life. The Coan woman, who was described as the daughter of Agetoridas, son of Antagoras, appears to have been the daughter of a high-ranking Coan since Pausanias was described as her father's guest-friend. There is, in general, little evidence of contact between Sparta and Cos at any point in antiquity so that it seems likely that the friendship arose somehow from personal contact. 27 The woman was spared and sent to Aegina at her wish. It is uncertain how long Cos remained subject to Persia, or when the island joined the Delian Confederacy founded under Athenian auspices in 478 against Persia. There are some indications that after 480 Cos may have stayed for a time under the influence of Halicarnassus, whose Lygdamid dynasty endured until the mid-fifth century. The choice of Aegina by Agetoridas' daughter may possibly indicate that Cos was still under Persian domination in 479, 28 though simple reluctance to return, as an ex-concubine, may be a factor. The series of silver diskoboloi which Cos minted on the Persian standard, beginning in the second quarter of the fifth century, reveals the Coans' eastwards orientation for purposes of trade and is indicative of their continued movement within the orbit of the Persian empire when the choice of standard was initially made. Whatever the case, Cos is firmly attested as a member of the Delian Confederacy by 451/0, when the Coans appear for the first time on the Athenian Quota Lists.29 Hereafter, except for a possible break in the 440s, 30 Cos apparently remained an ally of Athens until the end of the fifth century. 24

Hdt. VI 4 3 , 3. Hdt. VII 99. 26 Hdt. IX 7 6 - 7 ; Paus. III, 4 , 9. For Pharandates' command see Hdt. VII 79. 27 For relations between Cos and Sparta in the Hellenistic period see Asylieurkunden 4 (S£G 12 371: 2 4 2 BC). 28 Cf. J. P. Barron, a pud Essays in Greek Coinage presented to Stanley Robinson, p. 87. 2» Cf. ATI ii p. 11, QL IV, 4, 15. 30 See Appendix 1. 25

34

The minting of silver coins is a mark of the economic well-being of Cos. The Coans had issued a silver coinage in the sixth century on the Aeginetan standard, with the traditional Coan badge, the crab, on the obverse and an incuse square on the reverse.31 Now they issued the splendid diskoboloi, with the crab removed to the reverse and a frontal view of a nude athlete, throwing a discus, gracing the obverse. A tripod, standing upon a base, shows thereby its character as a dedication at a scene of victory. 32 A legend, adopted for the first time on Coan coins, attests that the coins were minted in the name of the island and the Coans at large.33 The high artistic standard of the coins reveals the quality of local craftsmanship in a period when few other works survive from the island. The interpretation of the diskobolos emblem as the original creation of the designer, or as a copy from a statue, depends upon the reason for the emblem's choice. Agreement has not been reached upon this issue. It has been suggested that the diskoboloi were minted as a special issue to commemorate the celebration of the festival of the Dorian Pentapolis 34 and perhaps a Coan victory. An alternative possibility, which does not necessarily exclude the former explanation, is that the diskobolos was based on a contemporary statue. 35 This view is especially plausible since athletes in frontal view (e. g. Myron's discus-thrower) were sculpted within the first quarter of the fifth century. If we remember the Coans' later commission of an Aphrodite from Praxiteles, it seems not impossible that they may also have purchased a sculpture earlier on. The Coans' particular decision to advertise the diskobolos on their coins, which requires explanation, would then illustrate that it was a Coan acquisition. Whatever the true reason for their selection, the minting of the diskoboloi gives at least some indication of the Coans' relative prosperity at the close of the archaic and beginning of the classical period. This index is not out of key with the rough yardstick provided by the Quota Lists. The tribute assessment of the Coans in the first and subsequent quadrennia was five talents. 36 The sum is equal to that paid, in the first assessment period,

31 Cf. GCBM Caria, p. 193, 1 - 5 (plate XXX); Β. V. Head, Hist. Num. p. 632; SNG, 1947, Part I, nos 6 1 5 - 6 ; SNG, 1962 nos 2 7 4 5 - 6 ;Bruxelles, La Collection Luden de Hirsch, Brussels 1959, no. 1547. 32 Cf. J. P. Barron, op. cit. pp. 7 5 - 8 9 . 33 See pp. 45ff. 34 Cf. Β. V. Head, Hist. Num. p. 632; P. Gardner, JHS 33, 1913, p. 164; J. P. Baxron, op. cit. p. 76. Cf. J. P. Barron, ibid. p. 83, for the argument that the diskobolos represented a live athlete because it was not on a base. The diskoboloi usually have their feet resting on the lower ring of the surrounding dotted circle of the coins; lack of space could have been the reason for the base's omission by the craftsman. 35 For the contemporary parallels see L. H. Jeffery, LSAG p. 352 n. 6; J. P. Barron, op. cit. pp. 8 4 - 5 . 34 See Α TL ii, pp. 1 - 3 9 .

35

by trading cities such as Cnidus and Chalcis, and notably more than Halicarnassus' one talent, four hundred drachms. 37 The Coans enjoyed a modest but by no means bottom position among the league cities. In contrast the assessment of states such as Aegina, Byzantium and Lampsacus, which pay thirty, fifteen and twelve talents in the first assessment period, reveals the wealthier of the Greek states and the Coans' comparative lack of development. The Coans appear to have played their small part in the Peloponnesian war. Cos was loyal to Athens in 432/1, on the eve of war, as the island's tribute payments, and Thucydides' general statement of the adhesion of the Dorian states in the Carian districts show. 38 Nothing further is heard of Cos until the beginning of the Ionian war. The failure of the Athenians' Sicilian expedition had opened up for their allies in the east Aegean realistic possibilities of secession from the Athenian alliance, and led directly to the outbreak of the Ionian war: Athens and loyal allies fought against Sparta, the latter's allies and some former allies of Athens, with Persian support going to Sparta for most of the war. At the beginning of the war, in 412, Cos was evidently still on the Athenian side. In that year the Spartan admiral, Astyochus, in a naval campaign that was to end in Rhodes' secession from Athens, sacked Cos on his way to Cnidus and Caunus, as Thucydides described, 'Descending at Kos Meropis in his voyage, he sacked the city which was unwalled and in a state of ruin because of an earthquake which they had suffered (being the greatest in living memory), the men having fled to the mountains, and cleared the country in forays, except for the free men; these he let free. From Cos he arrived at Cnidus.' 39 Cos lies in a seismic zone and has suffered repeatedly from earthquakes throughout its history. Thucydides regarded the earthquake which had destroyed the Coan city by 412 as the greatest in present memory. Yet the seriousness of its effects is hard to gauge. The ruin of the polis had meant immediate material losses for the city's inhabitants. But Thucydides' account shows that Coans still survived and there was booty for both Astyochus and, in the following year, Alcibiades to capture. The earthquake's damage may have been restricted to the city and for this reason been less widespread. It is not until after the revolt of Rhodes from the Athenians, in 411, 4 0 that Cos is next mentioned. In 411 Alcibiades sailed with a fleet of twenty-two ships from Samos to Halicarnassus, where he exacted a large sum of money and moved thence across the Gulf of Cos to Cos. 41 The hostile treatment

37 38 39 40 41

36

Cf. ATL iii, pp. 2 0 - 2 8 , for the figures given in the text. (Thuc. II 9,4.) See η 6 3 o n IG XII (I) 977. VIII 4 1 , 2 . Thuc. VIII 4 4 , 2 . Thuc. VIII 1 0 8 , 2 ; cf. Diod. XIII 4 1 , 2 - 3 .

meted out to the Coans suggests that the Rhodians' secession had undermined Coan loyalty to Athens. Cos was sacked for the second time in two years, fortifications were built and an archon established to keep control. It is against this background of close Athenian control of Cos that a boundary stone, or horos, found on Cos, marking a reservation of the temenos of Athena, Queen of Athens, is to be considered.42 The horos resembles in content those found elsewhere among the allied cities, notably on Samos and at Chalcis.43 They have been associated with Athens' confiscation of allied territory for cult purposes and with the establishment of cleruchies in instances of revolt. 44 The relevance of the horos to Coan history has been doubted because of uncertainty as to its true provenance. Its similarity to the horoi of Samos had led some to believe it to be a stray from Samos.45 Cos has certainly been the recipient of a number of pierres errantes\ the horos could clearly be one of these. 46 Analysis of the marble has shown that it was not a local Coan marble. 47 But Cos still cannot be ruled out as its home since the marble could have been imported. As similar inscriptions were also found at Chalcis it is unnecessary to accept automatically the attribution of the Coan stone to Samos. There is also some evidence to be cited in support of its Coan provenance. The horos was found in the countryside, built into a well, a few kilometres north of the modern town of Cos, on the coast road leading to the west of the island.48 The later discovery of another horos in the same vicinity, inscribed simply with the single word ΗΟΡΟ[Σ], and datable on its letter forms to c. the second half of the fifth century, 49 gives reason to suggest that horoi may once have been erected in the vicinity, and adds support to the view that Cos was the original provenance of the horos of Athena's temenos, though certainty cannot be attained.

42

PH 148 (with a facsimile, reproduced by J. P. Barron, JHS 84, 1964, p. 43; W. K. Pritchett, BCH 89, 1965, p. 440, photo, fig. 15). On the date see η 50. 43 For comprehensive treatment of the horoi see Barron, JHS 84, 1964, pp. 3 5 - 4 8 (plates iii-iv); R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, Oxford 1972, pp. 2 9 5 - 8 . 44 See R. Meiggs, loc. cit., for criticism of J. P. Barron's interpretation of the establishment of the Athenian cult in Samos as a spontaneous act of loyalty towards Athens. See Thuc. Ill 50, for the award to the gods of tithes from confiscated land, after the revolt of Mytilene (427). On the establishment of temene on confiscated land, when an Athenian cleruchy was sent to Chalcis (446) after the latter's revolt, see Barron, op. cit. n. 43, p. 35. 45 Cf. Foucart, quoted by PH p. 160; see also E. Erxleben, Archiv. Pap. 21, 1971, p. 157. 46 Cf. ? Ρ Η 74; G. Jacopi, CI. Rh. 2 p. 212 no. 50 (from Myndus: cf. L. Robert, REG 45, 1932, p. 203 n. 2); see L. Robert, REA 65, 1963, p. 320 η. 1, for an unpublished decree of Iasos, found on Cos, in honour of a citizen of Aradus. 41 Cf A. Georgiades, BCH 89, 1965, pp. 4 4 0 - 4 4 9 ; see also ch. 1, η 47. 48 Cf. PH p. 160. 49 NS 486; cf. Maiuri's comment, ibid, on the discovery of this inscription in the same locality as PH 148. The horos has rounded rho and, as in PH 148, the aspirate is used. The inscription can be dated approximately, on the basis of lettering, to c. 4 5 0 - 4 0 0 .

37

The date of this horos, which can be placed within the last quarter of the fifth century on the basis of lettering, supports the view that the consecration of Athena's sanctuary is linked with the period of known Athenian activity on Cos in 411. 50 If the horos was originally from Cos, we can infer that the dedication of land for the Athenian imperial cult was a symptom of the Athenians' close control of the island in the late fifth century, but there is no evidence yet to show that a cleruchy was ever established on Cos. In the spring of 407 Lysander touched at Cos on his way to Ephesus, the Spartan base, after an expedition to Rhodes to get ships.51 In the summer of the same year Alcibiades plundered both Rhodes and Cos. 52 From this it looks as though the Coans had already broken with Athens, although it happens to be only in 394 that their alignment with the Spartans is attested. 53 Cos must anyway have joined the latter after the defeat and destruction of the Athenian navy at Aigospotami, in 405, amid the general secession to Sparta of Athens' remaining allies. The Coans' political role in the archaic period and in the fifth century was undistinguished and was matched by an absence of commercial and political development. But the adhesion to the old traditional ways and general lack of material progress was strikingly redeemed by the Coans' entry upon a period of intellectual enlightenment in the latter part of the fifth century. The rise of the Coan School of Medicine occurred. Wandering physicians had been practising their skills for centuries already in Greece; Coan doctors healed in their cities before the advances of the fifth century. On Rhodes, which had a short-lived school of physicians, a group of medical instruments, found in a grave of c. 500, also attests the activity of an early practitioner. 54 But it was, as ancient tradition attests, the Coan Hippocrates (fl. c. 460—c. 370) who laid the foundations of scientific medicine, establishing medicine as a science organized into systematic knowledge and a discipline governed by rational prin-

50

P H 148 has been dated to c. 450 on the basis of the angular rho of Paton and Hick's facsimile; cf. J. P. Barron, JHS 84, 1964, p. 43. Personal examination of the stone on Cos revealed this to be one of the rare occasions of inaccuracy in PH's transcripts. Rho is not angular but rounded ( c f . BCH 89, 1965, p. 440 fig. 15, photograph of PH 148). The inscription is not stoichedon, pace JHS loc. cit. The letters are closely spaced, unlike the generous spacing employed in the mid-fifth century. The rounded form of rho and close distribution of letters over the stone's surface suggest a date toward the end of the century, in c. 4 2 5 - 4 0 0 . Cf. PH p. XXVI, pp. 1 6 0 - 1 6 1 for the historical context. 51 Xen., Hell. 1, V, 1. 52 Diod. XIII 69,5. 53 Diod. XIV 84, 3 - 4 . 54 See pp. 2 5 6 - 2 6 3 on the early history of the Coan and Rhodian Schools. For the medical instruments from a tomb at Rhodian Ialysus see G. Jacopi, CI. Rh. 3, pp. 239ff., nos 1 - 3 .

38

ciples. By his teaching he encouraged the growth of a local medical school on Cos, which played a lasting part in the advance of medicine in antiquity. 55 The impressive breadth of the School's intellectual outlook is well illustrated by the Hippocratic treatise, Airs, Waters and Places. The view that the environment has an important role in the problems of human biology, medicine and sociology has rarely been stated with greater clarity. Geography, history and medical thought are incorporated in this book in a manner reminiscent of Herodotus' masterly combination of geography and ethnography with history. The Coans' contribution to medical knowledge and practice is the main and original element of their cultural achievement. Their interest in art, which appears to have been an enduring Coan taste, in so far as it is possible to generalise, is another feature of their culture. In the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, the Coans' pleasure in sculpture and mosaics is emphasised by the industry of local schools. In the archaic period, when the evidence is sparse and mainly restricted to private monuments, wealthier Coans chose and could afford to commemorate death, or notable events in life, with a monument. Two fine Coan reliefs survive, dated to c. 500. A fragmentary relief, probably funerary in character, depicts a young boy holding a cock in his right hand and saluting with his left. 56 The second stele is a remarkable symposium relief, whose character as a funerary monument, or dedication, is uncertain. 57 The subject matter is original for treatment in sculpture; a pipesplayer stands on the left in profile, while a naked girl lies on a couch in the arms of a lyre-player. In the foreground are two men on the verge of coitus.5* The diskoboloi coins reinforce an impression of the Coans' appreciation of visual art. A beautiful relief from the end of the fifth, or early fourth century, dedicated to the Charites, affords a splendid token of an individual's sensibility and piety. 59 From this brief note of the Coans' cultural and intellectual development in the fifth century, we may progress to consider a new epoch in Coan history.

55

See pp. 257ff. See E. Berger, Das Basler Arztrelief, Mainz 1970, pp. 120-121, fig. 140;c/. L. Morricone, Boll. d'Arte 44, 1959, pp. Iff. 57 L. Laurenzi, CI. Rh. 9, pp. 73ff. (plate 6, figs 4 6 - 8 ) ; C. Kaiousos, AM 77, 1962, pp. 121-129 (plate 35); E. Berger, op. cit. pp. 5 9 - 6 0 . See C. Karousos, loc. tit., for comparison of the content of the relief with an erotic Hellenistic epitaph (GV 1181), and the possibility of the relief's character as a funerary monument. 58 On Dorian tolerance of homosexuality see P. M. Fräser, Ptol. Alex: 1, p. 790; II p. 1101, n. 532. 59 Cf. G. A. Konstantinopoulos, AD 23, 1968, Chron. p. 449, plate 416; idem, AAA 3, 1970, pp. 249-251, plate 1 -cf. J. Frei, AAA 3, 1970, pp. 366-371, at 3 6 9 - 3 7 1 ; W. Peek, AAA 4, 1971, pp. 4 1 2 - 4 1 3 ; J. Bousquet, ZPE 7, 1971, p. 229. 54

39

2. The Fourth Century to the Death of Alexander The greatest historic occasion for the Coans in the fourth century was the synoecism of 366/5. This event resulted in the Coans' foundation of the capital city, Kos, which was to thrive in the Hellenistic world and survive to be a prosperous provincial town in the Roman empire. The background to the synoecism is however obscure. There is no evidence for the political situation on Cos in the immediate aftermath of the Athenians' defeat at Aigospotami. It is probable, as has been seen, that Coan adhesion to Sparta (attested in 394) followed soon after the Spartan victory. 60 Until the resurgence of Athens as a naval power, no alternative to Spartan domination was foreseeable. But before the Athenians had built up a fleet again, the Phoenician navy was mobilised, under the joint command of the Athenian Conon and the Persian Pharnabazus, to check Spartan successes in Asia Minor. The Persian presence in the locality enabled the Rhodians to expel the Spartan fleet from Rhodes between the years 397—6.61 A democratic pro-Athenian revolution followed in c. 395. 62 It was not until the Spartan navy was defeated by Conon and the Persians at Cnidus, in 394, that other islands, including Cos, followed the Rhodians' example. Diodorus named the cities which revolted from Sparta; 'After the battle Pharnabazus and Conon set out with the whole fleet for the allies of the Lacedaemonians. And first they brought the Coans to revolt, then the people of Nisyrus and Telos. After this the Chians expelled the garrison and joined Conon's side. Similarly the Mytilenaeans, Ephesians and Erythraeans changed their alignment. Such an enthusiasm, as it were, for change fell on the cities, some of which expelled the Lacedaemonian garrisons and kept their liberty while others joined those with Conon.' 63 There followed a period of intense political unrest in the Greek

60

See p. 38. Diod. XIV 79, 4 - 8 ; Paus. VI, 7, 6. " Hell. Oxyr. 10, 1 - 3 . See I. A. Bruce, CQ NS 11, 1961, pp. 165-170; P. M. Fraser, BSA 67, 1972, pp. 113-124 at 122. 63 Diod. XIV 84, 3 - 4 . For the emendation of the MSS reading Τηίους by Τηλι'ους see F. H. Marshall, The Second Athenian Confederacy, Cambridge 1905, p. 2 n 4; later and independently L. Robert, RPh 8, 1934, pp. 4 3 - 8 (Op. Min. I, 1969, pp. 569-574). For the evidence of the relations in the late fourth century between Telos and Cos see p. 88. Cos was not among those places, which included Rhodes, Cnidus and other cities, known to have issued the Heracles-type coins, most but not all of which were inscribed with the legend ΣΤΝ. On the probable date of the ΣΤΝ coins after the battle of Cnidus see G. L Cawkwell, NC 16, 1956, pp. 6 9 - 7 6 ; J. M. Cook, JHS 81, 1961, pp. 6 6 - 7 2 ; G. L. Cawkwell, JHS 83, 1963, pp. 1 5 2 - 4 (IG XI1(1)977 (Syll.3 129; forthcoming IG I 3 , Tituli Attici extra Atticam reperti no 2) is now dated in the 440s or 430s, instead of the 390s. In this Athenian decree for the koinon of the Eteocarpathians the Coans are required (11.28ff.), with the Cnidians, Rhodians and other allies, to help the koinon when necessary and as they are able). 61

40

cities over the question of attachment to Athens, or to Sparta, from which the Coans, who do not appear in the historical accounts of these years, are unlikely to have been immune. The Coans may have been further preoccupied by a war with Hecatomnus, the native satrap of Caria.64 The story is told in the Suda of how Hecatomnus summoned the eminent Coan doctor Dexippus, a pupil of Hippocrates and author of a medical treatise on the cause of disease, to cure his two sons Mausolus and Pixodarus, whose lives were despaired of. 6 5 Dexippus did so in return for Hecatomnus' pledge to end a war. The war was ττρός Κάρας. Beloch, followed by other historians, suggested the emendation of Κάρας by Κώους. 66 This correction makes good historical sense and should be accepted. The point of the story is the bargain of lives between Hecatomnus and Dexippus — the satrap's sons for Dexippus' fellow countrymen. A war against the Carians is irrelevant in the context. 67 The lack of evidence of a Carian uprising during Hecatomnus' rule and the logic of the story suggest that the war was waged against the Coans. The war's duration and course are not known. Dexippus' intervention shows incidentally the political influence that physicians could win. Nothing more is attested of Coan history until 366/5. The Coans' alignment is thus disputable in 377, when the revival of Athenian naval power was given

M

The terminus ante quem for Hecatomnus' accession as satrap, after the rule of his father Hyssaldomus, is 390 when Hecatomnus was ordered by the Great King to command the Persian fleet against Euagoras of Salamis (Theopompus, F. Gr. Hist. II Β 115 F 103, 1 - 4 ; Diod. XIV 98). Mausolus' succession to Hecatomnus occurred in 377/6: cf. Diod. XVI 36, 2; W. Judeich, Kleinasiatische Studien, Marburg 1892, pp. 2 2 6 - 7 . 65 Suda, ed. A. Adler, Teubner 1931, s. v. Λΐξιππος. Bernhardy translated by 'adversus Coos' but, apparently by mistake, retained Κάρας in his text. On Dexippus as a pupil of Hippocrates see H. Schöne, RhM 58, 1903, pp. 5 5 - 6 6 at 57, 1. 18; Galen (ed. Kühn) I, p. 144; XV pp. 478, 703, 744; cf. W. H. S. Jones, The Medical Writings of Anonymus Londinensis, Cambridge "1947, p. 14. See Anon. Lond., op. cit. p. 54, XII 8 - 3 6 , for the attribution to Dexippus of a medical doctrine on bile and phlegm as a cause of disease. 66 Gr. Gesch. III (1) p. 237 η 2, followed by G. Glotz, P. Roussel, R. Cohen, Histoire Grecque IV, Paris 1938, pp. 16-29 at p. 25; Modona, p. 37. The emendation was rejected by Judeich, Kl. Stud. p. 234 (followed by G. Bockisch, Klio 51, 1969, pp. 117-175 at p. 138) for inadequate reasons which are discussed below. 67 Judeich, op. cit. p. 234, who favoured the retention of the reading Κάρας, identified the war as a war against the koinon of the Carians. At the time at which he wrote the documentary evidence had not yet been discovered which revealed that Hyssaldomus and not Hecatomnus was the first satrap of Caria (cf. L. Robert, Le Sanctuaire de Sinuri, Paris 1945, pp. 98-100). Judeich found the background for a war against the Carians in the probable hostility of the latter to the reorganization of Caria as a separate satrapy. Since the reorganization took place before Hecatomnus' accession, the occasion for a Carian uprising, inspired by the change was during Hyssaldomus' administration. There are no other signs of Carian dissatisfaction with their satraps until 367/6, in Mausolus' reign; see ch. 2, η 208.

41

new incentive by the foundation of the Second Athenian Confederacy. 68 The new Athenian league was directed against Lacedaemonian imperialism with the objective of ensuring that the Lacedaemonians 'allow the Greeks, free and autonomous, to enjoy peace in the secure possession of all their property.' The Coans' name is not preserved on the decree recording the confederacy's aims, rules and membership, either among the founder members, which included Rhodes, or among those states added at a later stage. 69 Calymnus, Nisyrus and Telos, all of which were members of the Delian Confederacy and with the exception of Calymnus known to have joined Conon in 394, are missing too. 10 Samos, generally accepted as a non-member, is also absent. The absence of the Coans (and their neighbours) is explicable either in terms of the list's incompleteness, 71 or in terms of non-membership. Consideration of the Coans' treatment in the sources suggests that they were, like the Samians, non-members. The case for their non-membership does not depend only on argument a silentio. The Coans later joined Athens' discontented allies, Rhodes, Chios and Byzantium, under Mausolus' pressure, in the war of c. 357—5 against Athens. 72 But the Coans are consistently omitted when the revolting allies, Rhodes, Chios and Byzantium are mentioned in the context of the war by the contemporary sources Demosthenes and Isocrates.73 The omission of the same

" IG II II J 43 (Syll.3 147; GHI 123; Die Staatsverträge 257). The anti-Spartan objective of the league is given in 11. 9 - 1 2 . 65 Ibid. 11. 79ff. 10 Cf. above. Little is known of the history of Calymnus at this time. The island had been included with the Kalydnioi as a member of the Delian Confederacy (see ch. 2, η 18). It is notable that Calymnus is omitted in Diodorus' list of neighbouring islands which joined Conon. Calymnus did not issue coinage in the fourth century, which may suggest that it was not independent. Its geographic proximity to Caria makes its escape from Hecatomnid control very unlikely. The discovery on the island of a large number of Hecatomnid coins, including those of Mausolus (cf M. Segre, TC p. 8), is the only clear evidence of Hecatomnid influence. The Coans' loan in c. 360 (on the date see n. 220) to the polis of the Calymnians shows that Calymnus was not incorporated by the Coans at that stage. 71 See Μ. N. Tod, GHI pp. 6 7 - 8 . 75 See pp. 7 Off. 73 The argument for the Coans' non-membership of the Second Athenian Confederacy, which is adopted here, was propounded by P. M. Fraser, Studies in the History and Epigraphy of Hellenistic Rhodes, MSS D. Phil. 1950, Bodleian Library, Oxford, II p. 43 η 25. In his account of the beginning of the Social War, Diodorus (XVI 7, 3; cf. ibid. 21, 1) says oi 6' Αθηναίοι Χι'ων και' 'Ροδίων και Κώω>>, έτι Se Βνξαντίων άποστάντων eveneoov είς πόλεμοι» τον ονομααϋίντα συμμαχικός, which may be taken to indicate that Cos was regarded as a member of the Confederacy by his source, but in his description of the battle of Embata (ibid. 21, 2), he refers to oi 6e Xioi και 'Ρόδιοι και Βυζάντιοι μετά TCJV συμμάχων. In Demosthenes, XV 3 and the scholiast on Dem. III 28, p. 36, 10, again only the Chians, Byzantines and Rhodians arc mentioned; in the scholiast their allies are described as erepoi τίνες. These three states are again the only ones named in Isocrates VIII 16. In XV 6 3 - 4 , Isocrates also only mentioned the

42

belligerent in two contemporary sources requires explanation. Accame's belief that the Coans were left out because of their relative unimportance is inadequate since Cos was significant enough to be mentioned separately by Diodorus' source on the war. 74 The most convincing reason to be given for Demosthenes' and Isocrates' non-inclusion of the Coans is that the Coans' status differed from that of the rebel allies: Cos was an ally of the revolted states but was not an Athenian ally in revolt. The Coans had not therefore joined the Second Athenian Confederacy. Into the explanation of the Coans' attitude towards Athenian imperialism it is tempting to introduce the late fifth century marker of the cult of Athenian Athena, which, if of Coan provenance, attests the dedication of Coan land for the imperial cult and may have signified an Athenian plan to send a cleruchy to Cos. 75 It is conceivable that Hecatomnid influence also deterred Cos from joining Athens' league. There is however insufficient evidence to permit a picture of Coan and Hecatomnid relations between the 390s and 370s to be built on the basis of Hecatomnus' probable war with the Coans. The general impression is that after Hecatomnus' death (377/6) relations between Cos and Mausolus did not become close until the 360s, in the era of the synoecism.76 It is reasonable to infer that pro-Spartan sentiment was a factor in the Coans' non-participation in the anti-Spartan confederacy. The difficult internal situation on Cos in the ensuing decade is revealed by the outbreak of stasis, or civil war, in 366/5. 77 The revolution resulted in an event of epochal importance for Coan history, the foundation of the new capital of Kos on the island's north-east coast. There has been considerable divergence of scholarly opinion over this event. Was it the original synoecism of the Coans, or a change of capitals in an already unified state? The question of the political organization of Cos prior to

Chians, Byzantines and Rhodians. A papyrus fragment of Isocrates VIII, 16 (Laistner, CQ 15, 1921, pp. 7 8 - 9 ) has και Κνώίονς after 'Ροδίους. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Isocrates 16, in a quotation of this passage from Isocrates, has και Κψους after Bufαίτιους. Laistner believed that και Κώους was the original reading of the de pace. But, as Fraser pointed out, the MSS readings of the passages of Isocrates (VIII 16; XV 6 3 - 4 ) support each other and indicate that Isocrates did not include the Coans. I agree that the most probable reason for the Coans' consistent omission is that they were in a different position from the others - being belligerents, but not revolted allies of Athens. The Coans are also absent in Pomp. Trogus, prol. 6. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 142, adopted a similar view of the Coans' non-membership of the Second Athenian Confederacy. 74 S. Accame, La lega ateniese del sec. IV a. c., Rome 1941, p. 189. On the Hellenistic date of Diodorus' source on the war (XVI 7, 3 - 4 ; 2 1 - 2 2 , 2) see N. G. L. Hammond, CQ 31, 1937, pp. 8 3 - 5 . 75 See p. 41. 76 See pp. 68ff. 77 Diod. XV 76, 2; Strabo 657.

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366 is discussed here before consideration is given to the character, causes and immediate background of the move of 366/5. The literary evidence, which is not extensive, is open to different interpretations. The paucity of Coan inscriptions before the late fourth century is therefore particularly lamentable. 78 A Coan decree of earlier date than 366 could be expected to reveal the political state of Cos as a synoecised, or non-synoecised island. The main testimonia are furnished by Diodorus and Strabo; Diod. XV 76, 2, "Αμα δε τούτοις πραττομένοις Κφοι μετφκησαν εις την νϋν οίκουμένην πόλιν και κατεσκεύασαν αυτήν αξιόλογοι · πληϋός re yap ανδρών εις ταύτηνή&ροίσϋηκαί τείχη πολυτελή κατεσκευάσ&η και λιμήν αξιόλογος, άπό δε τούτων τών χρόνων αίεί μάλλον ήυξήϋη ττροσόδοις re δημοσίως και τοις τών ιδιωτών πλούτοις, και το σύνολον ένάμιλλος eyevew ταϊς πρωτευούσαις πόλε σι ΙΛ Strabo 657, Ή δέ τών Κφων πόλις έκαλεϊτο το παλαών 'Αστυπάλαια, και φκεϊτο έν αλλω τόπω ομοίως 'επί ϋαλάττη - έπειτα δια στάσιν μετφκησαν εις την νϋν πόλιν περί τό Σκανδάρων, και μετωνόμασαν Κών ομωνύμως τη νήσω. ή μεν ούν πόλις ου μεγάλη, κάλλιστα δε πασών σννωκισμενη και ϊδέσϋαι τοις καταπλέουσιν ήδίστη. Thucydides' description of Astyochus' sack of Cos in 412 is also relevant: VIII 41,2, Και ές Κών την Μεροπίδα εν τώ παράπλω άποβάς την τε πόλιν άτείχιστον ούσαν και υπό σεισμού, ος αύτοϊς έτυχε μέγιστος γε δη ών μεμνήμεϋα γενόμενος, ξυμπεπτωκυϊαν έκπορ&εϊ, τών άν&ρώπων ές τα όρη πεφευγότων, και την χώραν καταδρομαϊς λείαν εποιείτο, πλην τών έλευύέρων ·τούτους δε άφίει. εκ δε της Κώ άφικόμενος ές την Κνίδον κτλ. On the dual criteria of the fifth century coins, issued in the name of Cos and the Coans, and the Athenians' description of the Coans in the Quota Lists as Koioi, R. Herzog concluded that the move described by Diodorus and Strabo was simply a change of capitals from Astypalaea to Kos, not the original synoecism.79 M. Segre adduced as further evidence of the synoecised state of fifth century Cos the island's appearance as a single member of the Dorian Pentapolis, in contrast to Rhodes with its three cities of Camirus, Ialysus and Lindus. 80 Segre added a new perspective with his argument that the fifth century capital was not Astypalaea but Kos Meropis; a fragment of the Athenian coinage decree, found in the modern town of Cos, was used as evidence of the nearby location

78

See ch. 5 n 79 for reference to two fragmentary and unpublished Coan inscriptions of c. 350, of which one certainly and the second possibly was a public document. They are unfortunately too fragmentary to contribute materially to Coan history. 79 HG p. 44; cf. Beloch, Gr. Gesch. I (2) p. 257. 80 a. Rh. 9, pp. 1 5 1 - 1 7 8 , at 1 7 6 - 8 .

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of a polis, which was identified as Kos Meropis.81 The move of 366 was taken to be from Kos Meropis to Kos. The main weakness of this reconstruction is that the testimony of Strabo and the role of Astypalaea are left unexplained. In 1957, Pugliese Carratelli offered a fresh interpretation, utilizing the advance in knowledge about Geometric settlement in Cos which resulted from excavation of the Geometric cemeteries at the Serraglio, in the modern town of Cos.82 As before, Cos was regarded as already synoecised in 366. The settlement was plausibly suggested to have been the island's main polis, predating by c. two centuries the evidence of Geometric settlement at Astypalaea. 83 The Serraglio necropoleis ceased in c. 750. The period from c. 750-c. 500 is archaeologically blank for north-east Cos. 84 The dearth of evidence is taken to indicate the decline of Kos Meropis and explained by the growth of Astypalaea, which affords evidence of continuous habitation from the mid-ninth century onwards. Thereafter Astypalaea was the Coans' capital until the revolution of 366. In a contemporary article, G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook also independently reached similar conclusions on the general outline of Coan history down to 366. 85 Paton and Hicks, in a minority, believed that the political synoecism of Cos took place in 366; prior to that year the island had several townships, which included Kos Meropis and Astypalaea.86 The main criteria by which Cos has been regarded as an unified state in the fifth century are the fifth century coins, nomenclature in the Quota Lists and membership of the Dorian Pentapolis. None of these criteria constitute decisive tests of the synoecised condition of Cos. The legends on the earliest of the three series of diskoboloi were ΚΟΣ or ΚΩΣ, and on the two later series ΚΟΣ, ΚΩΣ, or ΚΩΙΟΝ (sc. νόμισμα87). The choice of the name of the island and the ktetikon shows that the coins were issued not in the name of one city on Cos, but in the name of the island and the Coans at large. The practice of Lesbos, as a non-synoecised island in classical antiquity, provides an apposite parallel. Individual cities such as Mytilene and Methymna generally coined independently. But from the end of the sixth to c. the mid-fifth century, a period embracing the minting of

81

See p. 50. PdelP 12, 1957, pp. 333-342; cf. idem, ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 1 4 7 - 9 . For the Serraglio cemeteries see n. 3 above. 83 For an excellent survey of the archaeological material from Astypalaea see G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, pp. 5 8 - 1 4 6 at 121-123; see also G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASAA loc. cit. pp. 148-9. 84 Sec pp. 5 2 - 4 for description of the late sixth and fifth century evidence from northeast Cos. 85 BSA 52, 1957, pp. 5 8 - 1 4 6 , at 119-127. 86 PH p. XIX, a view subsequently adopted by Modona, p. 20. 87 Cf. i . P. Barron, The Silver Coins of Samos, London 1966, p. 51 η 6; idem, op. cit. η 28, pp. 7 7 - 9 (Group A), 85. 82

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the diskoboloi, the Lesbians issued a common coinage which carried the legend ΛΕΣ, short for the name of the island or ΛΕΣΒΙΟΝ, and not the name of any one polis.88 The Coan diskoboloi can equally be regarded as evidence not of political union but of a monetary agreement, by which a common coinage was to be minted for the use of more than one independent community on the island. The evaluation of the nomenclature of the Quota Lists is also open to two interpretations. The Athenians' description of the Coans under the single name Koioi reflects the status of Cos either as a single political unit, or as a mere syntely for tribute paying purposes. Their procedure concerning the assessment of non-synoecised islands varied. The communities of Rhodes and Carpathus were assessed individually.89 In other cases the Athenians preferred to assess and tax independent communities as a syntely, as is shown in the cases of the islands of Ceus and Amorgos.90 Herodotus' description of Cos as one of the five poleis constituting the Pentapolis can be shown to be similarly ambivalent. Herodotus described Cos as one of the members of the Pentapolis in the following terms, δια ταύτην την αίτίην cd πέντε πόλιβς, Αίνδος και Ίήλυσός re Kai Κάμιρος και Κώς τ€ και Κνίδος, έξεκλήισαν της μετοχής την εκ τη ν πάλιν Άλικαρ νηοσόν.91 The contrast between Cos and the non-synoecised island of Rhodes is clear. At the time of the league's formation (and thereafter) the Coans were allowed only a single voice in the Pentapolis. The single representation does not necessarily prove that Cos was an integrated and unified state, with no independent communities. Halicarnassus is a case in point, included here under the title poleis. The mid-fifth century decree from Halicarnassus, issued by ö συλλο[γ]ος ό Άλικαρνασσέ[ω]ν και Σαλμακιτέων και Λύγδαμις, reveals that two communities exist, though linked in a sort of federal state, enjoying one set of state officials. Halicarnassus was not yet fully synoecised.92 It can be further shown that Herodotus 88

Cf. E. Babelon, Traite des Monnaies Grecques et Romaines II, 1, Paris 1907, pp. 339ff.; Β. V. Head, HN p. 558. Cf. IG XII (2) 1 (GHI 112; Die Staatsverträge 228; early 4th cent.) for the provisions of an agreement between Phocaea and Mytilene to mint a common coinage. " See Α TL I Gazetteer, p. 481 (Διακρωι ev 'Ροδομ); p. 492 (Ίηλΰσιοι); p. 495 (Καμειρης); p. 513 (Λιυδιοι); cf. p. 497 (Καρπάθιοι, Έτβοκαρπάϋιοι, Άρκε'σσεta, Βρυκούντιοί). 90 On Ceus see D. M. Lewis, BSA 57, 1962, pp. 1 - 4 , esp. p. 2; on the syntely of the Amorgioi see Α TL I, p. 468 sv Άμόργιοι. On the three poleis see Ps. Scylax, GGM I, Periplus, 47, 58. " I, 144,3. 92 Syll.3 45 (GHI 24; Meiggs and Lewis 32), 1 - 8 , 41; cf. G. E. Bean, Turkey beyond the Maeander, London 1971, pp. 103-4. On Mausolus' later synoecism of Halicarnassus see pp. 6 9 - 7 0 . In an Athenian decree of 409 reference is made to the community of the Halicarnassians, but the word used to describe it (demos or polis'?) is not preserved; see IG 1 1 110 a, 8ff. The Athenians appear to have regarded the Halicarnassians as a political unit at this date.

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did not restrict himself to communities which were strictly poleis, in the technical sense of unified city-states, when listing places as poleis. His description of the cities which shared in the foundation of the Hellenium at Naucratis gives a cogent parallel to his account of the membership of the Pentapolis, αΐ'δβ πόλιβς eioi ai 'ώρυμέναι κοινχι, Ιώνων

μέν Χίος και Τ έ ω ς και Φ ώ κ α ι α και Κ λ α ξ ο μ ε ν α ί ,

Δωριέων be 'Ρόδος και Κι>ιδος και 'Αλικαρνησσός και Φάσηλις. 93 Poleis here applies in the technical sense to independent states in every instance except for Rhodes; in its application to non-synoecised Rhodes, polis must be understood in a looser sense, meaning something like 'place'. When Herodotus lists a number of places, the meaning of polis may vary from case to case and need not consistently bear the technical sense. In Herodotus' account of the Pentapolis it is notable that Cos is the only place not to be described by the name of the capital city (e. g. Astypalaea, or Kos Meropis). Instead Herodotus used the name of the island. This usage would come naturally if Cos was synoecised. But, as the Hellenium passage demonstrates, Herodotus occasionally names an island instead of the relevant cities (or in this instance city) on it. His usage by no means entails that the island of Cos was technically a polis. The difference between Coan and Rhodian membership of the Pentapolis was that the Coans, qua Dorians, only qualified as a single member. In terms of Coan history this could be explained by the supposition that only one Coan city (e. g. Astypalaea) fulfilled the qualifications of Dorianism, failure to maintain which has with reason been thought to have been a cause of Halicarnassus' expulsion from the league.94 The origins of Kos Meropis are relevant to the question of the possible exclusion of Coan communities from the Pentapolis on the grounds of non-Dorian character. The ancient, pre-Hellenic and pre-Dorian origins of the name Meropis are generally accepted. 95 Kos Meropis derives its name from the pre-Dorian inhabit-

' 3 II 178,2. M See ch. 2, η 6. ®5 Although there have been various attempts both in antiquity (cf. Hesychius sv μέροπες; P. Oxy. 1802, 48, a glossary of the late second or early third century AD) and in modern times (cf. PH pp. XIX, XXVII, XLIX-LII) to construct an etymology for the word Meropes, none has proved convincing; communis opinio seems to be that the word cannot morphologically be broken down into Greek elements, and belongs to that series of words characterised by the root -on, which cannot be related to the IndoEuropean *Ok w 'to see', and is therefore supposed a pre-Hellenic word (cf. P. Chantraine, La formation des noms en grec ancien, Paris 1933, pp. 259, 260; idem, Melanges Franz Cumont, Brussels 1936, pp. 121-128 (with previous bibliography); P. Ramat, Atti dell' Acad. Toscana Col. 1960, p. 131). The name Meropes is regarded as an ethnic and belongs to a group of linguistically similar names borne by the tribes Δρύοπες, Λόλοπες, "Ελλιοπΐΐ and Άεροπβς - non-Greek and perhaps Illyrian or Thracian in origin. It is the ethnic for the early settlers of Cos. We may note here Plutarch's contrast of the Meropes with the Greeks (Heracles and his marauding band; QG 58). On the evidence of pre-Dorian, Thessalian colonization of Cos see p. 17.

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ants of Cos, the Meropes, who were already by the fifth century traditionally regarded as the early inhabitants of Cos.96 The main settlement before Dark Age immigration was that of the Mycenean period on the east coast of Cos at the Serraglio,97 a settlement area which has therefore a strong claim for identification as the home of the pre-Dorian inhabitants of Cos. In the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo Cos is described as polis tön Meropön.98 The description häs been taken as an allusion to a pre-Dorian city of Cos in so far as the hymn is thought to

9i In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 42, Cos was described as πάλις Μερόπων ανϋρώπων. Pindar, describing Heracles' battle on Cos, refers to the latter's slaughter of Meropes (.Nem. IV, 26, cf fr. 28 (OCT = Quint. Inst, viii 6, 71), fr. 29 (= Strabo, fr. 58, Meineke). A version of one of the tales about the Seven Sages, which were probably formed by the end of the fifth century, is set in the midst of a Coan-Milesian war and the Delphic oracle is made to speak of πόλεμος Μερόπων και Ιώνων: Diod. IX, 3, 1 - 3 (Η. W. Parke and D. Ε. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, II, Blackwell 1956, no 248); cf. Plutarch, Solon, 4; DL I 32 ( c f . The Delphic Oracle II no 247). See J. W. Wiersma, Mnem. III 1, 1934, pp. 1 5 0 - 1 5 4 ; Η. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, op. cit. I pp. 3 8 7 - 3 8 9 , for the different versions of the story, their provenance and date. For later poetic use of Meropes see: SEG 11 435, 5 (IG IV J (1) 616; iii BC); Meleager, AP VII 418 (A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams I, p. 216, III), 3ff., cf. AP VII 419 (Hellenistic Epigrams I p. 217, IV); GV 864,2 (iii BC); GV 1158 (KF 169), 8 (i BC). See now L. Koenen and R. Merkelbach, Apollodoros /"ΠΕΡΙ ΘΕΩΝ,/, Epicharm und die Meropis, pp. 3 - 2 6 , in Collectanea Papyrologica, texts published in honor of H. C. Youtie I, Bonn 1976, for publication of a papyrus of the first century BC, containing part of an Hellenistic commentary (argued by the editors to be f r o m Apollodorus' Περί Θεών) on an epic poem entitled Meropis. Meropis deals with a favourite episode in Coan heroic tradition - Heracles' invasion of Cos and his battle with the Meropes (see Plutarch, QG 58). In this new poem Heracles is saved by Athena from the mighty onslaught of Asteros, one of the Meropes. Asteros is invulnerable (άτρωτος), but Athena succeeds in killing him with her spear. The goddess then uses his skin for her aegis. The theme is a local variation of the Pallas-myth. The poem was anonymous (line 19).

The editors favour a date in the second half of the sixth century BC for the composition of Meropis. The subject-matter reveals the local origin of the work. If correct, this early date would naturally be of considerable interest for the cultural history of archaic Cos. On the other hand, could Meropis be of Hellenistic date, a product of the Coan literary circles of the late fourth and early third centuries BC? The ancient commentator considered the poem to be recent (line 42, έδόκει Se μοι τά ποήμα[τα] νεωτέρου τινός elvai), preserving it because it added Asteros to the other Meropes whose names were preserved in Coan tradition (lines 2 0 - 2 2 ) . (I note that the name Asteros does not otherwise occur in the Coan onomastikon, unlike e.g. the names of the Meropic Eumelus and Eurypylus) Furthermore, the choice of subject-matter fits well the early Hellenistic period when contemporary Coan interest in the traditions of individual of the Meropes is independently documented in Theocritus, Idyll VII,3ff (see p. 49 with notes 9 5 - 6 , 1 0 1 - 2 ) , in the Meropis preserved by Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 15 (see p. 290), and in Herodas, Mime 2 , 9 5 - 8 (see p. 332). The pervasive Homeric influence in the poem could be Hellenistic imitation. On the use of m y t h in Meropis see also A. Heinrichs, ZPE 27, 1977, pp. 69ff. Cf. p. 17 . »» 42. 97

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reflect Homeric geography of the period before the migrations of the Dark Age;99 whether or not polis here refers literally to a city, the description could refer to the pre-Dorian 'Meropic' era of Coan history. The population of the north-east of Cos was considerably diluted by the advent of the Dorians, whose arrival may be identified with the establishment of the settlement attested by the Geometric cemeteries at the Serragjio (c. 1050— c. 750). This settlement, as has been seen, appears to have been subsequently diminished by a movement to Astypalaea, where Geometric settlement is first attested in c. 850. The survival of a remnant of the pre-Dorian population of Cos after the Dorian immigration 100 helps to explain the persisting importance in Coan mythology of Merops, the eponymous founder of Cos, after the Dorian character of Coan culture had been firmly established. Merops continued to be a significant figure in local myth through the Hellenistic period. 101 The argument for a surviving pre-Dorian element may be supported by Theocritus' portrayal in Idyll VII of the two Coan nobles Phrasidamus and Antigenes, sons of Lycopeus, who claimed descent from the pre-Dorian Coan king Chalcon, the son of Eurypylus and Clytia; the Coan Clytia was the daughter of Merops. 102 There is little reason to doubt that Theocritus, as elsewhere in this Idyll, is describing a Coan reality, the survival into the Hellenistic period of Coan families who traced their descent back to the pre-Dorian 'Meropic' era. 103 A comparable pride in their genealogies was exhibited in the Roman period by distinguished members of three surviving Coan families of Asclepiadai, who traced their illustrious descent back to Heracles and Asclepius. 104 The presence of

99

Cf. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 123. Later study of the Geometric finds from the Serraglio (for bibliography see η 3) has made implausible the suggested association (BSA loc. cit.) of the later settlement at Astypalaea (and not the Serraglio site) with the initial Dorian immigration. Both the break between the Mycenean settlement at the Serraglio and the cemeteries, which succeeded to the latter site, and the links with the Argolid of the Protogeometric material from the Serraglio, provide the strongest of arguments for identifying the Dorian immigration with the establishment of the settlement using the Serraglio cemeteries. 100 G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 125, adduce the possible survival of a pre-Dorian element at Mcropis, in a different context, to support their conjecture of the Athenians' establishment of a base there in the mid-fifth century. For discussion of the latter view see p. 54. 101 For the various mythological figures called Merops see Dibbelt, Quaestiones Coae Mythologae, Greifswald 1891, pp. 1 - 1 7 ; see also Der Kleine Pauly III (1969), col. 1234, sv Merops. For the Coan Merops see also Herodas II, 95; Steph. Byz. sv Κως. On the role of Merops in Coan cult and mythology see p. 334. 102 3ff. For Merops, the father of Coan Clytia, see Schol. Theocr. VII, c - g . 103 On Idyll VII as a source for Coan information see pp. 312ff. 104 See NS 461 (i AD). Cf. G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASA A NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, p. 151, for reference to an unpublished inscription in honour of the Coan Ti(3e'lριον Κλαυδ\ιον Ti/3epio[u ΚλαυδίΙου υΐάν Ά]λκίδαμου Ίου[λιαι>οι>] \(άπ&γον\ον ' Ασκλϊ)ΐκο[ϋ μέι>] I [άπό y\eveiäv λε, Ή[ρακλε] I [ους 6e] ν' • • • • On Ti. CI. Alcidamus see further ch. 3 4 Ancient Cos (Hyp. 51)

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descendants of the pre-Dorian population in settlements on the north-east coast provides a possible alternative explanation, to synoecism, for the exclusion from individual membership of the Pentapolis of one of the two known Geometric and archaic Coan communities. The apparent decline of the north-east settlement after 750 provides another. The fragment of the coinage decree can also be accommodated with a nonsynoecised Cos. Athenian procedure in the fifth century over the publication, in the empire, of decrees concerning the poleis is given in general terms in the coinage decree. Provision was made for copies of the decree to be set up in the agora of the poleis', a copy was thus to be set up in the agora of each polis of the Confederacy. 105 It is not until the fourth century, with the greater abundance of inscriptions, that the procedure can be tested in a way likely to illuminate Athenian practice in relation to the communities of a non-synoecised island. In the period of the Second Athenian Confederacy the dossier concerning Athenian relations with Iulis (362/1) shows that the Athenians ordered copies of the stelai to be inscribed at Iulis, as at Carthaea. 106 The publication of copies in all the cities of Ceus is further implied by the fact that the stelai contained a record of agreements between the cities of Ceus and the Athenians. Athenian procedure has not changed greatly from the practice in the coinage decree of having decrees set up in each polis. The presence of a fragment of the coinage decree, granted that its find-place was near its original location, should normally indicate that its original location was a polis, but does not entail that it was the island's only polis.107 The Coan fifth century coins, the nomenclature of the Quota Lists, Herodotus' inclusion of Cos in a list of poleis, the Coans' single membership of the Pentapolis and the fragment of the coinage decree are not indisputable criteria of the political unification of Cos in the fifth century. These factors are compatible both with the view that Cos was synoecised and with belief that it was not. It is ultimately the literary testimonia and archaeological evidence that provide the material for reconstruction of the political organization and demography of Cos before 366. Diodorus' and Strabo's accounts are complementary. The similarity of the general description of the foundation of the new city shows that they are talking of the same event, 108 for which Diodorus, drawing either on the contemporary Ephorus, who is his main source in Book XV, or on his chrono-

n 329. For Gaius Stertinius Xenophon's descent from the Asclepiadai see Tac. Annals XII 61. 105 ATL II D 14 V, 2ff. (Meiggs and Lewis 45, 10). 106 Cf. IG II (2) 111 (Syll.3 173; GHI 142), 17ff. 107 Cf. pp. 5 4 - 8 . 108 Cf. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 120, where decisive arguments against Segre's view are given.

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graphic source, 109 provided the date of 366/5. Diodorus makes no explicit reference to the earlier political structure of Cos. His use of the verb μ€τοιΚ€Ϊν, which both he and Strabo employ to describe movements of populations from old settlements to new, 110 implies the existence of previous settlements but their number and character is not inferable. 111 Strabo is more satisfying in this respect; his account gives the cause of the move, a brief statement about settlement before the change and sufficient details of topography to make the event intelligible to his readers; like Diodorus, he gives a short description of the new city. Strabo's affirmation that the name of the polis of the Coans, before the metoecism, was Astypalaea,112 seems to imply that the Coans had one city previously, which in turn appears to imply that Cos was already synoecised. The crux of the whole question of the Coan synoecism is how Thucydides' reference to Kos Meropis is to be interpreted and accomodated with Strabo's account. Is the city which Thucydides describes Kos Meropis itself, as communis opinio has tended to accept, or is he referring to the island of Cos by that name? The former view suggests the significant consequence that Cos was then bipolis in the fifth century. 113 Reasons of linguistic usage, strategy and archaeological evidence suggest that Kos Meropis was the polis to which Thucydides referred. Grammatically re should not be a simple connector in this passage, linking a fresh statement about a polis distinct from Kos Meropis to the participle describing the act of landing, because there is no second participle parallel to άποβάς. The re links the sacking of the unwalled township to the plundering of its territory, 114 relating both to the preceding mention of the city-name. 109 G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, ibid. p. 124, favour Ephorus, saying 'his (Diodorus') account of the rapid development of the new city almost seems to reflect the first-hand observation of a writer contemporary with the events.' On the other hand there is no mention in Diodorus' text of the speed of the city's development. The emphasis is on the consistency of the increase of Coan wealth from the metoecism onwards (into Se τούτων των χρόνων aiei μάλλον ηύξήύη). This fact and the concluding statement of the attainment by Kos of parity with leading cities, which fits Hellenistic Kos best, suggests rather the bird's eye perspective of a non-contemporary. See E. Schwartz, Griechische Geschichtschreiber, Leipzig 1957, pp. 38ff, for the suggestion of Diodorus' use here of his chronographic source. 110 Cf. for example Diod. XV 94, 3 (synoecism of Megalopolis); Strabo 616 (synoecism of the Gergithans). 1,1 Pace G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 120. 111 See R. Herzog, KF p. 168 η 1. 113 In 657, Strabo uses the participle συνφκισμέντ) of the new polis. Thucydides' use of συνοικίζω in relation to Sparta (I 10, 2) shows that this verb can be employed when a political unit already exists, a point for which I am grateful to Dr D. M. Lewis. No argument for the unsynoecised state of Cos before 366 can therefore be based on Strabo's use of the verb in relation to Kos. 114 After sacking the city, which was an easy target as it was unwallcd, in ruins and deserted since its inhabitants had fled to the mountains, Astyochus went on to clear the

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A survey of Thucydides' use of the particle re shows that the use of the doublet re και to mean 'both . . . and' is rare in Thucydides. 115 It is therefore remarkable that he employs the doublet both in this sentence and that immediately preceding it to make clear the unity of the point on which he enlarges. This usage suggests that there is no reference here to a second and anonymous city distinct from Kos Meropis. The location of this polis on the north-east coast of Cos has been recognised to fit most conveniently the tactical and geographic requirements of Astyochus' route. 1 1 6 Astyochus left Miletus for Caunus, where he was to meet reinforcements. After Cos he put in at Cnidus and, as things turned out, did not go on to Caunus since the relief force met him at Cnidus. 117 Beginning his voyage at Miletus, Astyochus' route lay down the coast of Asia Minor. The north-east corner of Cos lay directly on his path and was an obvious staging-point on a journey continuing south. Before 366, when an artificial harbour was built for the new city, the beaches of the coast had to suffice for shelter. The alternative is to suppose that on reaching Cos, Astyochus sailed on round the island's south coast to the polis of Astypalaea, where the bay of Kamares provides a landing-point. With the exception of a natural harbour at Halasarna, which is also sheltered by the island from the prevalent northern winds of the sailing season, the south coast of Cos is otherwise unwelcoming and is lined by precipitous cliffs and dangerous rocks. 118 This route, which involved the Spartan fleet in a long and unnecessary detour from its direct voyage to Cnidus, is open to serious objections as Astyochus' sailing course. Both grammatical and geographic criteria support the belief that Thucydides' city was Kos Meropis and not Astypalaea. Independently of Thucydides, archaeology attests the existence of an inhabited site on the north-east coast in the archaic period and fifth century, when the Serraglio cemeteries had ceased to be used. The site itself has not been discovered. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook surveyed the area from the Asclepieion to the eastern side of the modern town of Cos without discovering the classical site. Their conclusion that it must have been situated within the modern town, in the vicinity of the Hellenistic site, is in the circumstances to be accepted; the location of an

chora. I take chora here to be technically the territory of the polis (Kos Meropis), as the particular use of the doublet r e . . . και seems to suggest. The territory of Kos Meropis would include the fertile plain surrounding the modern town, which was immediately accessible to Astyochus. 115 Cf. J. D. Denniston, Greek Particles, Oxford 2nd ed. 1954, pp. 4 9 7 - 5 0 0 , 5 1 6 - 5 1 8 . 1,6 Cf. PH p. XXV; M. Segre, CI. Rh. 9, pp. 1 7 6 - 8 ; G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, p. 121; G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 1 4 8 - 9 ; J. P. Barron, Essays in Greek Coinage, p. 86. 117 Thuc. VIII 42, 4. 1,8 Cf. GHS. Dodec. pp. 15, 1 0 3 - 1 0 4 .

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archaic sanctuary on the northern outskirts of the town supports their view. 119 The existence of a settlement is established by the discovery in and around the modern town of a substantial amount of archaic and fifth century material. R. Herzog excavated a small fountain sanctuary on the northern outskirts of the modern town, in which were found vases and terracottas dating from the late sixth or early fifth century onwards; terracottas of Demeter, a dedication and a statue-head of Core indicate the close association of these deities with the spring.120 Archaic architectural fragments and mouldings found elsewhere in the town attest the existence of at least one other building.121 The symposium relief and funerary stele of c. 500, and an archaic funerary epigram inscribed on a capital were discovered built into modern houses of the town. 122 The epigram has additional interest in being the earliest surviving Coan inscription. A horos of Apollo Pythios, datable on its lettering to c. 450, attests the fifth century practice of the cult of this deity. 123 Coan attendance on Delphian Apollo may be presumed both from the privileges extended at the Delphian sanctuary to the Coan Asclepiadai early in the fourth century and from provisions concerning the dispatch to Delphi of theoroi in a late fourth century cult calendar, which codified traditional Coan cult practice.124 The horos was found built into the wall above the gateway of the Christian cemetery of St. John, south-west of the town. The two horoi of the

119 Cf. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook, BSA 52, 1957, pp. 120-121. The authors found pottery of the first half of the fourth century on the slope east of the Asclepieion which they described, op. cit. p. 121 η 236, as follows, 'Tile fragments, Hellenistic amphora sherds, and sigillata may be picked up at many points; we found classical coarse ware and black glaze of the first half of the fourth century on the flat crest east of the Asclepieion, but the site was in any case not that of a substantial settlement.' 120 R. Herzog, Arch. Anz. 1901, pp. 134ff. Herzog published here the text of a fragmentary dedicatory base from the sanctuary inscribed -ωνος I [?Δήμ)ητρι, which he dated to the end of the fifth or early fourth century on the basis of lettering. It is notable that if Demeter's name is correctly restored, and the association of the sanctuary with Demeter- and Core strongly supports the supplement, the usual (for Cos) Doric is not used, a fact that would suggest that the dedicator was not a Coan. 121 See L. Shoe, Hesperia 19, 1950, pp. 338-369, for a fundamental survey of the Greek mouldings of Rhodes and Cos. Cf. ibid. p. 354, no 4, 1 for a Coan epistyle marble crown of an Ionic building of the late sixth century (plate 108, 1); ibid. no. 5, 9, a late sixth or early fifth century marble anta capital (plate 109, 2). 122 For the symposium relief and funerary stele see p. 39. See M. Segrc, CI. Rh. 9, p. 177, for reference to the as yet unpublished funerary epigram. This inscribed capital is on view in the Museum of Cos. The letters, which include alpha with sloping cross bar, crossed theta, four-bar sigma, angular rho and omega, provide new details of the letter forms of archaic Cos. For the use of 'cross-bun' theta at Rhodes see LSAG, p. 345. m KF 36 (plate 2); DGE 248; LSAG plate 69, no 39. The late sixth or early fifth century inscription, SGDI 5773, attributed to Cos in LSAG, Addenda, p. 378, is from the island of Astypalaea and not the Coan town of that name. 124 I'or the privileges at Delphi see J. Bousquet, BCH 80, 1956, pp. 579ff. no 7, plate 10 (SEG 16 326), c. 360 (lettering). For the provision concerning the dispatch of theoroi to Delphi see HG 5 (LSCG 156: c. 325-300) B, 16ff.

53

second half of the fifth century, found in the countryside on the road to Pyli, have already been mentioned. 125 The fragment of the mid-fifth century Athenian coinage decree came from a house-wall in the modern town. Archaeology attests the existence of a settlement with cults, art and architecture, but not its physical size or status. On its material record this site seems to have been a small town, notable for its artistic tradition but of limited enterprise, as the contrast of the extensive building of city-walls and a harbour undertaken in Kos, after 366, suggests. The problem of the town's political status could be unravelled by establishing whether Thucydides used polis to describe Kos Meropis in the technical sense of independent city. Thucydides takes trouble to describe places by the appropriate word (e.g. polis, polismata, chorion, polichnion). A study of his History shows that he uses polis carefully to apply to a constitutionally unified state, though that need not be a physically unified settlement as the well-known case of Sparta proves. 126 A possible exception to this usage is provided by a passage in Book V, where opinion divides over whether Thucydides has used poleis to apply to Sparta's perioecic cities, which were not poleis in the strict sense, or to its allies. 127 The historical problems of this passage are not clearly resolvable so that Thucydides' use of polis here remains uncertain. The fact of a possible exception weakens somewhat the reliability of the argument from Thucydides' usage for identifying Kos Meropis as a city-state, though it remains true that his usual practice favours taking polis, in the Kos Meropis passage, in its technical sense. There are further factors which may support the belief that Kos Meropis was a city-state. The fragment of the coinage decreee has to be fitted into the historical reconstruction. The fragment was a surface find. It could be one of the pierres errantes, which found their way to Cos, and therefore be irrelevant to Coan history. The question of strays has already arisen with the fifth century horos of Athenian Athena, suspected perhaps unnecessarily of being a Samian stray. 128 If the fragment's find-place was near to its original location, that location would have been a polis if the provisions of the decree had been followed. 129 The fragment constitutes a considerable problem for believers in a synoecised fifth century Cos. G. E. Bean and J. M. Cook explained its provenance by the conjecture that there was an Athenian station at Kos Meropis, in which 'it would not have been surprising for the Athenians to set up

125

Cf. p. 37. See n. 113. 127 Thuc. V 54, 1. See A. Gomme and A. Andrewes, Commentary on Thucydides IV, Oxford 1970, pp. 7 3 - 4 , for the view that poleis here applies to Sparta's allies; see G. De Ste Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Duckworth 1972, pp. 3 4 5 - 6 , for identification of the poleis with the Spartan perioecic cities. 128 See p. 37. 129 Sec p. 50. 126

54

a copy of the decree in Attic script'. 130 But there is no evidence of an Athenian base at Kos Meropis in the mid-fifth century. The intensification of Athenian activity concerning Cos, attested by Alcibiades' construction of a fort in 411 and perhaps by the establishment of the Athenian imperial cult, follows the Rhodian secession, which increased the strategic value to the Athenians of Cos, and can be understood as a direct consequence of Rhodes' revolt. 131 If the findplace of the fragment was its original location (and it may not be), then the simplest explanation is that the place was a polis. The explanation is consistent with belief that Cos was not synoecised. There is other evidence that may bear on the institutions of the north-east settlement of Kos Meropis. In the post-metoecism period a Coan lex sacra of c. 325—300 attests that asebeia, or sacrilege, in cases of desecration of the sacred cypress grove (situated on the site of the Hellenistic Asclepieion) were conducted in accordance with 'the sacred and mastric law.' 132 The mastroi were in origin disciplinary cult officials concerned with offences against religious law. By contrast, in other places the office had lost its association with sacred matters; after the synoecism of Rhodes, for example, mastroi were the councils of magistrates of the old cities. 133 From the concern of Coan mastric law with the original function of mastroi, it seems possible that in Cos this body of law was a survival, deriving from the institutions of an old Coan city. In non-synoecised Cos, the nearby settlement of Kos Meropis, in whose territory the grove was situated, has a strong claim as the home of this institution, which is not otherwise attested for Cos.

130

BSA 52, 1957, pp. 1 2 3 - 5 . This account of Coan/Athenian relations in the mid-fifth century is now slightly out of date, being written before J. P. Barron's updating of the diskoboloi from c. 4 5 0 - c . 420 to c. 4 7 5 - c . 450. 131 Cf. pp. 3 6 - 7 . 132 HG 11 (LSCG 150 A), 7ff. This inscription is inscribed stoichedon. The supplement in 1. 11 of μασ|τρικόν), which fits exactly the remaining number of letter spaces, need not therefore be doubted. This inscription was dated by R. Herzog, followed by Sokolowski, op. cit., to the end of the fifth century. Examination of the stone, which is in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, showed that this early dating is mistaken; the lettering is a fine 'monumentale Schrift' but the thickening of the letters at the ends of strokes, the incipient apices, the width of the letters and very close spacing employed find their parallels in the lettering of the latter half, in particular the last quarter of the fourth century. Comparable lettering in Coan inscriptions is afforded by the dossier of documents honouring Antigonus Monophthalmus' Coan officer, Nicomedes (cf. pp. 8 6 - 7 ) . Outside Cos, at Miletus, Milet I (3) 137 (Abh. 77), c. 323 BC, provides a close parallel for the lettering of HG 11. On mastroi and masteres see H. Swoboda, revised ed. of K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Staatsaltertümer, Tübingen 1913, p. 153; G. Busolt, Gr. Staatskunde I, pp. 4 8 7 - 8 . 133 On the Rhodian mastroi see Η. Van Gelder, Geschichte der alten Rhodier, Haag 1900, pp. 237ff.; H. von Gaertringen RE Suppl. V col. 770. See p. 212.

55

Given the sparse, sometimes ambiguous and inconclusive nature of the evidence, there cannot perhaps yet be a sure solution to the respective roles of Kos Meropis and Astypalaea before 366, or to the question of the date of the political unification of the Coans. But the explanation that alone has the merit of creating a consistent historical pattern from these membra disiecta and reconciling the anomalies, is that the archaeological settlement of northeast Cos, which argument suggests should be identified with Thucydides' Kos. Meropis, was in the full sense a city-state, with its own chora and characteristic institutions. There remains the relation of Strabo's testimony to that of Thucydides. The geographer gives a brief account of the present polis, the island's size, location, its famous monuments and distinguished men. 134 He prefaces his account with remarks to explain that the Coans' polis had not always borne the name Kos. With the exception of his opening comments on the metoecism, Strabo relates nothing of the island's early history. His brevity here contrasts with the generous treatment given e. g. to pre-synoecism Rhodian history and mythology. 135 In this respect Strabo's account of Cos before 366 is extremely bare, consisting only of the sentences on the metoecism; 'The polis of the Coans was called Astypalaea in ancient times, and was situated in another place likewise by the sea; then, because of stasis they moved to the present city at Scandarium and changed the name to Kos homonymously with the island.' The description of Kos follows. Strabo's account is open to two different interpretations. His line of thought can be taken as simply the explanation of the change of capitals and change of names arising from the substitution of the present capital (Kos) for Astypalaea. The consequences of this view are the implication of an already synoecised Cos and the birth of the problems of Thucydides' polis (Kos Meropis) and the north-east settlement. The inadequacy of this interpretation is that the two related implications of Strabo's language are left unexplained; that a city already existed at Kos and that it was previously known by a different n a m e 1 3 6 (μετώκησαν

eis την νϋν πόλιν

. .. και μετωνόμασαν

Κών

ομωνύμως τχι νήοω). Acceptance of these implications has to commend it the fact that archaeology has shown there to have been an earlier town in the vicinity of the fourth century Kos, for which Thucydides probably provides the name of Kos Meropis. Strabo significantly did not state that the Coan's polis was Astypalaea as he could have done. He chose instead to say that it was called Astypalaea. The first statement would be directly contradictory to the implication of another polis preceding Kos. The second is not, provided that

134 135 13
ός ΈρμαφροδίγΙου] I (c) Διός Φίλιου I Θεών Σωτήρων I ' Ερμα ΓΙροβάκχον I ΙΙείιϊοΰς Νικερωτος I (d) Διός Νεμείου I ΙΙοτειδάνος Ίσιϊμιο[υ| I Άιϊάυας Νικάς I μνάμας Ηρακλείτου I και Οίνοπί&α. Cf. pp. 3 6 2 - 3 . 94 On Coan deisidaimonia see pp. 371 ff. On the early phase of Greek cities' worship of Hellenistic kings, see A. D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2, Oxford 1972, p. 721 n. 4, from whom this apt phrase is borrowed. 95 Cf. P. M. Fräser, Ptol. Alex. I, p. 118.

101

argument against the possibility of their prejudice against voting cults for kings. A comparable Coan restraint over the type of honours decreed for the rulers with whom the Coans were associated seems to be reflected in the fact that they did not, in the Hellenistic period, name a month or city-tribe after a Hellenistic king, although so closely linked with the Ptolemies in the third century, and although this was a common way of honouring the kings. Only after the establishment of the Roman empire is there any change in the traditional Dorian names of the Coan calendar, when months named after Roman emperors are attested. 96 The links of Coans as individuals with the Ptolemaic dynasty is hardly less important than their formal ties in assessment of the close interweaving of Coan history with that of the Ptolemaic kingdom in the third century. The intellectual interchange, by which Cos contributed both as a literary and as a medical centre to the development of Alexandrian science and literature, is fundamental. 97 Philitas had personal ties with Philadelphus, whose tutor he had been in the early years of the third century, and himself laid the foundations of Alexandrian literature and criticism.98 Theocritus, who celebrated his Coan master, Philitas, in Idyll VII, remarked that his own work had attracted the attention of a great eminence, who can safely be identified as Philadelphus in a poem with a Coan setting. 99 In Idyll XVII Theocritus expounded, not without self interest, the allurements of Philadelphus' patronage for the literary 100 . The Coan Xenocritus pioneered the beginning of critical work on the Hippocratic corpus and thereby, as a grammarian, opened up a new field of Alexandrian scholarship.'"1 In the field of medicine the younger Praxagoras, who worked probably in Cos at the end of the fourth and beginning of the third century and was the last great creative Coan student of medicine, was the teacher of Herophilus, the outstanding figure of Alexandrian medical studies.102 After Philitas' and Praxagoras' contributions to the early development

9
έλάντω Πάμφυλοι πράτοι, εν άγοράι δε συμμίσ\[Ύ]ονται • ό δε ιερεύς καθήσθω [παρά] rfä]^ τράπεζαν έχων τά[ν σ]I τολάα> τον ιερόν, τοί δέ ίερ[ονοωί έκατ]έρω τας τραπέξας ·Π[άμ]Ι[φ]υλοι δέ έπελάντω βοΰ[ς τρεις τοι)]ς καλλίστους, αί μ[έγ κα]Ι τούτοχγ κριθήι τις ·αί δε [μή, Τλλβϊς τρ]εϊς έλάντω, αί μέγ [κα τ\\[ο]ύτω^ κριθήι τις αί δέ μ[ή, Δυμανες τρ]εϊς τονς λοιπούς, αϊ [με] Ιγ κα τούτων κριθήι τις · αί[δέ μή, άτερους] έλάντω ές τον ά7[ο]Ι[ρ]ά^ και έπελάντω κατά τα[ϋτά, αϊ μ]έγ κα τουτωγ κριθήι τ[ις] · lot δέ μή, τρίτον έπελάντω κατά τα[ϋτ]α·αί δέ κα τούτος κρι[θήι] I μηδείς, έπικρινόντω βοϋν έκ χι[λιασ]τύος έκάατας·έλά[αα]\ντες δε τούτους συμμίσγον[ταιτοϊ]ς άλλοις και εύθύ κ[ρίνΊ]\οντι και εύχονται και άποκαρύ[οαο]ντι ·επειτα ενελαντ[ι αυ]1τις κατά ταύτά °θύεται δέ, αί -μέγ κα υποκύψει,τάι Ιστίαι.32 Let priest and hierophylakes and archeuontes make the announcement; let hieropoioi and the heralds go down the chiliastyes and drive nine oxen, an ox from each ninth, from the A. . . . eis and Pasthemidai Pratoi and Nostidai. Let the Pamphyloi drive the oxen into the agora first, and let them mix the oxen together in the agora. Let the priest sit at the table wearing his holy garb, and let the hieropoioi Sit on each side of the table. Let the Pamphyloi drive up the three finest oxen, if perhaps one of these might be chosen. If not, let the Hylleis drive three, if perhaps one of them might be chosen. If not, let the Dymanes drive the remaining three, if perhaps one of these might be chosen. If not, let them drive others to the agora, and let them drive them up in the same way, if perhaps one of these might be choscn. If not, let them drive up oxen a third time in the same way. But if none of these is chosen, let them choose another ox from each chiliastys. Let them drive these oxen and mix them with the others and immediately make a selection and pray and make a proclamation. Then let them drive the oxen up again in the same way. He is for sacrifice, if he bows his head, to Hestia. The hieropoioi and heralds had to go down the assembled chiliastyes and drive nine oxen, one from each enata. After the officials had marshalled ox candidates from the tribes, the tribes, led by the Pamphyloi, were required to drive their oxen to the agora, where all the oxen were collected and mixed together. The process of selection of an ox for sacrifice then began. The Pamphyloi drove forward the three finest oxen from the whole number of oxen, followed, if none was chosen, by the Hylleis, and then by the Dymanes, who drove up the remaining three ([τρ]εϊς τούς λοιπούς). The procedure could be repeated three times. The relationship of the chiliastyes and enatai is not made explicit in the text. Since each enata, or ninth, provided one bull and there were nine bulls 31

HG 1 (PH 37; Syll.3 1025; LSCG 151 A), 4ff. 159

selected in all in the first instance, it follows that there were nine ninths, as might be expected. Herzog's conclusion that the ninths were divisions of the Dorian tribes 33 seems valid in view of the Dorian tribes' role in the cult ceremony. In a tripartite tribal system it follows that each tribe had three ninths. The identity of the chiliastyes as enatai is suggested by the content of the lex sacra. The provision for obtaining new ox candidates, in the case of failure to select from previous oxen, was that fresh oxen were to be chosen from each chiliastys, for a final time. The procedure resembles that of the first march down the chiliastyes and the initial selection of nine bulls, one from each enata, and points to the equivalence of the chiliastys with the enata. Francotte's view that the enatai were component parts of the chiliastyes is incompatible with the data afforded by the lex sacra and should be rejected. 3 4 He suggested that each tribe was divided into ninths, three to each chiliastys, of which there were three to each tribe. There were thus nine ninths to each tribe, twenty seven in all. This thesis is not cogent since, if it was correct, twenty seven oxen should have been produced by the tribes at the first presentation of the oxen to the priest, before repetition of the procedure, as each enata contributed one ox. But only nine were envisaged being brought to the agora initially, as is shown by the prescription for the Dymanes to drive up, last of the tribes, the remaining three oxen, after the Pamphyloi had driven up three oxen, and the Hylleis their three oxen. Those remaining for the Dymanes were the last three of the first selection. Herzog's identification of the chiliastys wtith the enata is compatible with the detailed procedure for the choice of ox candidates and should be accepted. 35 The difference in nomenclature can be explained by the point of view from which the division is regarded. In relation to the whole citizen body the divisions were individually a ninth. In relation to each tribe they were not and merited a different name; for their role as tribal subdivisions they were termed chiliastyes. There were thus nine chiliastyes/enatai: three to each tribe. Their names were given in the lex sacra. Three proper names (A . . . έων και ΤΙασθεμώάν -πράτων και Νοστώάν) appear in apposition to the phrase βοϋν έξ ένάτας έκάστας after reference to the collection of nine potential victims from each enata. 3*' Were the enatai named here? If so, why were only three named? The equation of the named divisions with subdivisions of the enatai, and the hypothesis of the contribution of an ox by each of the three subdivisions of each of the nine ninths is ruled out by the fact that only nine oxen were picked for the first presentation - to descend to divisions of a lower level was

33

HG, pp. 4 2 - 3 . La Polis grecque, Paderborn 1907, p. 126; Francotte was followed by M. Wörrle, loc. cit. n. 18, p. 27. 35 Cf. HG, p. 43. 36 HG 1,5-6. It is possible that the letters ΕΞΑ . . . ΕΩΝ all belong to the name of the division ( Έ ξ (or Έ £ ) . . . eiov). 34

160

irrelevant. The correctness of the punctuation of the text, after the phrase έξ A ... έων κτλ. is not in doubt. That this phrase was in apposition to βούν έξ ενάτας έκάστας and divorced from the succeeding sentence (ες δε I [τ]άν ά[γο]ράν έλάντω Πάμφυλοι πρατοι) is shown by the particle δε, which indicates the beginning of a new clause. We cannot take the named divisions as the three enatai of the Pamphyloi. The alternative explanation is that all the enatai were named. If all the enatai are named, and only three names are given and there are nine ninths, three from each tribe, it follows that in each tribe there were three homonymous chiliastyes/enatai - Nostidai, Pasthemidai Pratoi 37 and A . . . eis. If the interpretation of the three named divisions as chiliastyes and of the allocation of homonymous chiliastyes through the Dorian tribes is correct, we are justified in seeing in the ninths, or chiliastyes, the unit by which the intermixture of the Coan population was achieved, on a principle analogous to the Cleisthenic trittyes system but not identical with it since the Coan enatai cannot be related to the demes. Each of the three Dorian tribes contained three chiliastyes or ninths; we could suggest in explanation of the use of homonymous grouping that the chiliastyes were originally divided into three classes, Nostidai, Pasthemidai and A . . . eis, and that each tribe contained one chiliastys from each of the three categories. Each chiliastys was composed of triakades and pentekostyes. The argument for the independent function of the three divisions, Nostidai, Pasthemidai etc., is further supported by an altar plaque of third century date for the cult of Apollo Cameius. The plaque bears the inscription Πασθεμώάν I και Νοστώαν ι 'Απόλλωνος ί Καρν [β]ί[ο]υ.38 37

See Μ. Guarducci, loc. cit., p. 98 η 8, for the recognition that the whole phrase, Pasthemidai Pratoi, was the title. See L. Robert, Hellenica 5, pp. 1 0 - 1 2 , for realization that the use of the ordinal πρώτος implied the existence of (at least) two groups of Pasthemidai. Homonymous grouping in combination with numbered subdivisions is common; see W. G. Forrest, BSA 55, 1960, pp. 174ff, on the division of the Chian Totteidai and Chalazoi into -πρώτοι and Sedrepoi; see L. Robert, BCH 59, 1935, 480ff (Op. Min. Sei. II, pp. 749ff), on the Samian chiliastys Eüßoieojv ή μείζων, which implies the existence of a 'lesser' chiliastys; see Wiegand, SB Berl. Ak., 1904, p. 85, for the Milesian φυλή Άργαδεωΐ', which was designated πρώτη', see R. S. Stroud, California St. CI. Antiq. I, 1968, pp. 232-242, for the division of Corinthian tribal groups into numbered segments. The implication is the same in all cases, viz. the reorganization of a particular division into plural groups, either on the same or on a different level, often connected with the democratization of the social structure of a state. ,8 HG 35 ρ (Syll, 3 928; G. Manganaro, ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, p. 344 no 48 (fig. 311, iii BC). Although Πασ06μι[α]δαι> and not Πασθεμώαν has always been read and taken as an alternative form, it may be doubted whether this is the correct reading. Manganaxo's photograph of the stone (now on Patmos) shows that there appears to be a fault in the marble at the point of the disputed reading. Manganaro's reading of the plaque, which is very worn, showed that the text continued in the fifth line, where the letters ΝΤΣ were read. The names of none of the Dorian tribes fit these remains. The most probable restoration would be the name of another deity to whom the altar also belonged, for example Dionysus. 11 Ancicnt Cos (Hyp. 51)

161

Since each tribe appears to have had three homonymous chiliastyes, to inscribe the altar with the names Pasthemidai and Nostidai hardly established ownership by particular chiliastyes. The absence of any details of tribal affiliations can be explained by the altar's ownership by all Nostidai and Pasthemidai, a chiliastys of each of which belonged to each Dorian tribe. The comparative lack of importance of the chiliastys as a social entity and its main function as a link between the Nostidai, Pasthemidai, A . . . eis and the Dorian tribes is perhaps implied by their omission from the tribal divisions into which new citizens were enrolled. The numerical basis of the divisions chiliastys/enata, triakas, pentekostys is evident. The chiliastys, which is alien to Dorian tribal systems and common in Ionian cities, such as Ephesus, Miletus and Samos, 39 was used to mean a (notional) thousand. 40 Although the Coan chiliastys has been regarded as an addition to an older gentilicial system, retained in the triakas and pentekostys,41 the common quantitative character of the names of the subdivisions suggests rather that the whole structure of the tribes was contemporary and consistent. The term pentekostys means a fifty, a group of fifty.42 The triakas, which is linguistically comparable to words like dekas, can mean either a group of thirty 4 3 or a thirtieth part. 44 There is no direct parallel to the Coan tribal structure to aid its elucidation. Too little is known of the tribal system of states neighbouring Cos, such as Halicarnassus and Cnidus, to assess the possibility of influence on Coan institutions and the extent of similarities. The existence of tribes at Halicarnassus is attested, one of which was the Dorian tribe Dymanes, 45 but nothing is known about Halicarnassian tribal subdivisions. The character of the Cnidian

39 See n. 37. For Ephesus see G. Busolt, Gr. Staatskunde, p. 259. R. Herzog, HG, p. 42, compared the Samian four-tier system of tribal divisions (phyle, chiliastys, hekatostys and genos). As the significance of both Cos and Samos having a four-tier system is difficult to resolve in the absence of more evidence of the working of each of the two systems, it is naturally hard to draw any conclusions on the question of Samian influence on Cos. The Samian system is not attested until after the Samians' return to Samos in 323 but see H. Swoboda, Festschrift O. Benndorf, 1898 Vienna, pp. 2 5 0 - 5 , for strong arguments for its introduction in 412. 40 See Η. T. Wade-Gery, Essays in Greek History, Blackwell 1958, pp. 82, 84. 41 Cf. G. Klaffenbach, Gnomon 6, 1930, pp. 2 1 5 - 1 6 . 42 See A. Toynbee, Some Problems of Greek History, Oxford 1969, pp. 3 9 1 - 2 . 43 Cf. L. Robert, Hellenica 5, pp. 1 1 - 1 2 ; see Pollux, VIII, 115, εκάστου Se έθνους -γένη τριάκοντα έξ ανδρών τοσούτων, ä έκαλεΐτο τριακά&ες. 44 The use of triakas to mean the thirtieth day of a month shows its dual use both as a group of thirty days and as the thirtieth part of the month. Hesychius' explanation of the term(si> triakas, ή τριακοστή τοϋ μηνός: και σύστημα τι τύν πολιτών), which does not give a numerical equivalence, is not decisive, but is compatible with the employment of triakas to mean either a thirtieth part of something, or a group of thirty. 45 Steph. Byz. sv 'Αλικαρνασσός.

162

tribal structure is at present completely unattested. As Cnidus had close and friendly ties with fourth century Cos and as it underwent a constitutional settlement in the mid-fourth century, in approximate contemporaneity with the Coan synoecism, this lack of information is especially unfortunate. 4 6 Comparison might be made with Dorian Argos, where the social organization of the citizen body remained tribal in the fourth century and Hellenistic period, as at Cos. The citizens were enrolled in four tribes, of which three were the Dorian tribes, and tribal subdivisions, phratries and pentekostyes.47 But none of the Argive pentekostyes are named as such, and the relation between the Argive phratries, the Argive komai and the pentekostyes is uncertain, as, in consequence, is the identity of the pentekostyes as divisions based on territorial, or personal groupings. Both triakades and pentekostyes interestingly occur at Sparta, where they were military units. 48 So little is known about the Coans' military organization that we cannot rule out a military function for these divisions, but their prime use in Cos appears to have been as social divisions. Triakades occur elsewhere in the Greek world, mainly in Dorian states, but again too little is known about the institution elsewhere for its occurrence outside Cos to illuminate the Coan institution. 49 In Cos the chiliastys was the largest tribal subdivision followed by the triakas, of which the pentekostys was a constituent and therefore smaller element. It is clear that if the triakas was used to mean a group of thirty, it was not of thirty men, since pentekostys, as a notional group of fifty, would have been the larger division, which the order followed in citizenship decrees and leges sacrae refutes. 50 To make the triakas equal thirty pentekostyes will not work since each triakas would (theoretically at least) have been a larger unit than the chiliastys. The alternative is to take the triakas as a fractional division, a thirtieth, as Herzog did. 51 Herzog's view of the structure of the Coan tribal system was represented by the following table: 52 sympas damos phyla chiliastys (enata of damos) triakas (l/30th of phyla) pentekostys

9000 3000 1000

100 50

46

For Coan and Cnidian relations see p. 89. Cf. W. Vollgraff, Mnem. NS 44, 1916, pp. 6 4 - 7 1 (Schwyzer 90; Moretti 41). See also M. Wörrle, loc. cit. pp. 1 1 - 3 1 . 48 Hdt. I, 65 (triakades). See A. Toynbee, Some Problems of Greek History, pp. 3 9 1 - 2 , for a detailed discussion of the Spartan pentekostyes (with previous bibliography). 49 See L. Robert, Hellenica 5, pp. 1 0 - 1 2 , on the triakades of Sicilian Acrae, of an unnamed Dorian state, which was probably Phocis, and of Athens. 50 Cf. p. 155. 5 ' HG, p. 43. " ibid. 47

163

Without numerical equivalences, the relationship of the tribe to component divisions can be illustrated as follows: phyla chiliastys triakas pentekostys

{enata of damos: 1/3 of phyla) (1/10 of chiliastys'. 1/30 of phyla) (subdivision of triakas)

The possibility that the triakas was l/30th of the damos, not the phyla, and thus the equivalent of 1/10th of a tribe, is incompatible with the division of each tribe into three chiliastyes, which continued into the Hellenistic period. 5 3 This fact is sufficient for the possibility to be rejected. The identity of the triakas, on Herzog's system, as a thirtieth of the phyla on the other hand fits the tripartite tribal division and gives ten triakades per chiliastys. Next came the pentekostyes as subdivisions of the triakades. The question arises as to how far, on the introduction of this system, the exact numerical size of the chiliastys and pentekostys, implicit in the terminology, was kept. The existence of nine 'thousands' or ninths, if taken literally, meant a citizen body of nine thousand. We have, unfortunately, no available figures (or necropoleis) to establish the size of the citizen population in fourth century and Hellenistic Cos, or at any period save the present, 54 so that we cannot tell whether nine thousand was a notional figure when first adopted, or approximately correct. The idea of a citizen body of nine thousand came from Dorian Sparta. 55 We may reasonably conjecture that just as the Coans may have borrowed their terminology of triakades and pentekostyes from Sparta, so too they may have shown their adherence to Dorian institutions by taking nine thousand as the nominal size of their damos. We may doubt that the Coans in fact based their tribal system on a damos of a fixed size. Although in accordance with their terminology the damos was divided into nine ninths, the point of the term enata seems to have been precisely that the Coans did not say that the damos was divided into thousands; it was the tribes that were split into chiliastyes. If Coan terminology did not regard the damos as a composite of a fixed number of thousands we may be mistaken to do so. For the Coans the function of the chiliastys and triakas seems to have been in their use as a fractional division of the tribe and not an exact numerical size. Adopted at a stage when the division of, for example, the chiliastys, tended to lose the exact numerical equivalence implicit in the name and when the terminology came to be used to denote bodies

53 See p. 162 for the continued functioning of the Pasthemidai and Nostidai in the Hellenistic period. 54 See GHS Dodec., p. 108, for the Coan population of 17,000 in 1912; 20,169 in 1937; see D. Hatzeamallos, Κ ω ς , το νησί τοϋ Ι π π ο κ ρ ά τ ο υ ς , Athens 1952, p. 65, for an estimate of the whole population at c. 20,000. 55 See W. G. Forrest, Λ History of Sparta 9 5 0 - 1 9 2 BC, Hutchinson 1968, pp. 4 0 - 6 0 , especially 4 5 - 7 , for a brief account of the Spartan constitution and Lycurgan reforms.

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of greater or less size than the actual names ordained, we may doubt that the Coan divisions numerically stood up to their names. It is possible that a fractional relationship of the pentekostys as half a triakas was maintained, in which case the size of each pentekostys may have varied but not initially their number. The concern for the division of the citizen body on a quantitative and not kinship basis is revealed by the names given to the tribal subdivisions in as much as the Coans were free, but chose not to employ old gentilicial terms such as phatry, genos or patra. We cannot get any further in trying to understand the nature of the relationship between the phyla and its subdivisions, or the composition and size of the latter, until we have more tribal documents and lists of tribal divisions and component parts such as have survived from Chios and Rhodian Camirus. s6 It was in the introduction of divisions based on number that the influence of old kinship groupings was broken down, coupled with the fact that tribal membership was enjoyed by all male citizens of a certain age. The intermixture of the citizens was probably achieved by their distribution into Nostidai, Pasthemidai and A . . . . eis, and by the division of members of each of the latter units through each of the Dorian tribes. We can relevantly recall the Coans' later care to mix together new and old elements in the citizen population at the incorporation of Calymnus, at the end of the third century. The Coans distributed the Calymnians through each of the Dorian tribes and ensured a thorough intermixture of Coans and Calymnians by dividing Calymnians from the same Calymnian deme between each of the three Dorian tribes. S7 The names of a number of Coan social divisions have been preserved ending in the gentilicial termination of -idai and -adai. The majority of these names are attested on a series of altar plaques without further description of their identity and without details of tribal affiliation. The plaques range in date from the fourth century to the late Hellenistic period. Their span attests the divisions' persisting existence. The altars were set up on the site of the Asclepieion and constitute part of the evidence for the site's development as a sacred place after the foundation of Kos, in 366. s 8 Other names of similar type are vouchsafed by leges sacrae.and by literary evidence. The names can be listed alphabetically as follows; Alkeidai, Amphiareidai, Andromnestoridai, Astyklidai, Etymobousiadai, Euryanaktidai, Hippiadai, Kallindai, Karindai, Laistrapidai, Nebridai, Nestoridai, Nisyriadai, Nostidai, Orphikidai, Otobalidai, Pasthemidai, Pothelidai, Pdaxidai, Pollondai, Simondai, Phyleomachidai. 59 Many of the names are genuinely

s
] I Λαιστραπώαν. 81 Ined. [Π]οσειδ[ώι>ος] I Γεραστιο[υ] I Όρφικώαν (iii BC). It is difficult to connect the name Orphikidai with the personal name Orpheus in view of its composite nature; the collective name combines both the adjectival termination -ikos and the patronymic ending -idai. If it does denote a group of followers of Orpheus, ie. initiates, the name is unlikely to be of great antiquity. We can compare the Thasian patra Neophantidai, attested in the fifth century and derived by Rolley, BCH 89, 1965, p. 461, from neophantes (the newly initiated) of the Orphic hymns. But the oddity of the combination of an adjectival epithet with a patronymic termination argues against the derivation of Orphikidai from Orphikos. The name may have been based on some unknown word, or compounded from orphos, as for example the name Orphondas was, cf. Bechtel, loc. cit., p. 508. 82 HG 35 k (iii-ii BC), Πδα£ιδ[άκ] I Διός. 83 Ined. Διός ΙΠατρώιου I Ποθελιδάυ (iii BC). 84 ASA A NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, p. 183 no XXVI (PH 368) VI, 39, ne'reari Se Ιμοι καΐ Ν ισυρια6«f; HG 35 t (iii-ii BC), quoted η. 63. 85 Cf. ch. 2 n. 16. 86 For Karis as an ancient name of Cos see Steph. Byz. si> Κως. 87 Seep. 156. 76

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Simondai 88 are probably taken from eponyms, Pollon and Simon. In the case of the Simondai the eponym could be identified as the homonymous member of the Telchines, the mythical and autochthonous inhabitants of Rhodes. 8 9 The identity of the divisions must now be discussed. The Nebridai is attested as a genos. Pasthemidai and Nostidai were, as has been seen, two of the three names of the homonymous chiliastyes of the Dorian tribes. 90 The Pollondai and Hippiadai were pentekostyes.91 The Nestoridai, a group that had several altars for different cults, has been identified as a triakas.92 The divisions named on the altar plaques were thus not homogeneous. If the remaining unidentified groups were units of the Dorian tribes they must have been triakades, or pentekostyes. That some of the altars belonged to non-tribal divisions is possible, but for the following reasons improbable. Had phatries survived intact in Hellenistic Cos they would be candidates for ownership of a few of the altars, namely those belonging to Zeus Phatrios and Athena Phatria; 93 but the absence of any other documentation of phatral activity in Cos, when abundant material has survived of the Coan tribes' social and cult activities, constitutes a considerable obstacle to belief in their survival outside the Dorian tribes. Secondly, in comparative material, the owners of these 'ancestral' altars, as they are described in a Coan decree, 94 were the particular society's regular civic subdivisions. A group of altar plaques from Thasos forms a good parallel for the Coan series.95 The Thasian plaques, which belong to the fifth century, were inscribed, like the Coan stones, with the name of a deity and the name of the citizen division to which the altar belonged. The groups were the patrai, the only divisions into which the citizen population of Thasos was divided. 96 A plaque of similar type from Lindus was engraved Tpevva&av ! 'Αβάνας Φρατρίας. 9 7 This group can be identified from other inscriptions as one of the Lindian patrai, the subdivisions of the local tribes of Lindus. 98 The plaque incidentally provides a good example of the danger of inferring a social group's continued life as a phratry from the survival of a cult for a deity bearing the epiklesis Phratrios or Phratria. The Coan

88

HG 35 a(PH 149; Syll3 929, iii BC), Διός Ίκεσώυ | Σιμωνδαν. It is conceivable that Pollondai was derived not from the stem Poll-, one of the forms of names compounded from πολυ-, but from Apollon, with initial alpha dropped. 89 Suda sv Τβλχίνες. 90 See p. 161. 91 Cf. p. 156. 92 Cf. p. 156. 93 For altars of Zeus Phatrios and Athena Phatria see n. 28. 94 PH 384 (iii BC), 16ff. 95 See C. Rolley, BCH 89, 1965, pp. 4 4 1 - 4 8 4 . 96 ibid. pp. 458ff. 97 IL 615 (iii BC). 98 Sec IL (2) 391, 27 (early i AD); 392 a, 10, b, 13 (early i AD). See also A. Andrewes, BSA 52, 1957, p. 31.

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groups, whose identity is unknown, were probably likewise regular civic subdivisions, i e. triakades and pentekostyes. The gentilicial form of these Coan names points both to their considerable antiquity and to their original function as names of old kinship divisions. The cult prerogatives and priesthoods of certain of the Coan divisions can also be attributed to these divisions' original character as kinship groups. The privileged position in Coan public cults of certain of the Coan triakades and pentekostyes suggests that some of the old Coan phatries and gene may have kept their identity when absorbed in the new system, while others were filled up on a numerical basis from as many families as was necessary to reach the required size. The fact that the basis of citizenship was tribal membership, not membership of a deme, and the absence of correlation between the subdivisions of the Dorian tribes and the divisions of the demes, show that the triakades and pentekostyes were not in the fourth century and Hellenistic period territorial units of the demes. Their character as quantitative divisions and the enrolment of the whole citizen body into triakades and pentekostyes suffice to indicate that old gentilicial groupings must have been supplemented, with new members added and new divisions formed. Only a small percentage of the proper names of the triakades and pentekostyes have been preserved. It would be of great interest to see how remaining divisions were named. How many more names of gentilicial type were there? How much reduplication of names occurred? The use of numbered divisions, as revealed by the title Pasthemidai P r a t o i , " suggests that the practice of using divisions which were homonymous, but differentiated by numerals, may have been adopted in other instances too. It is most probable that the 'old' gentilicial form of name was supplemented. The civic importance of the Dorian tribes of Cos lay primarily in the fact that membership of a tribe validated citizenship. The tribes had few political functions. Certain magistrates and officials, e.g. the board of agoranomoi and ad hoc commissions of three, may have been chosen from the three Dorian tribes. 1 0 0 The main magisterial boards, the prostatai101 and stratagoi,102 which were composed of five members, were most probably elected ex -πάντων, from the whole citizen body, as other officials are attested to have been. 1 0 3 The general impression in the present state of evidence is that the Coan tribes, and their subdivisions, were largely divorced from political life; citizens exercised political influence in the assembly as individual members of the damos and not in tribal blocks. The corporate activity of the tribesmen was mainly restricted to cult, which became part of the tribes' real raison d'etre and provided some continuity

99 100 101 102

103

Cf. n. 37. See ch. 5, η 242. See pp. 199ff. See pp. 205ff.

Cf. HG 8 (LSCG 154) A, 7. 169

with the past. The Coans competed at the Coan Dionysia in their tribes. 104 The tribes provided the ox sacrifices for the annual state festival for Zeus Polieus.105 Certain of the triakades and pentekostyes had special cult privileges.106 Tribal divisions set up altars in the Asclepieion. The only corporate activity of the Coan chiliastyes, triakades, pentekostyes to be attested is limited to the realm of cult. The tribes had leaders with cult obligations and the duty of feasting the tribesmen; they are generally described in Coan inscriptions as archeuontes or archeusantes and not referred to by a title. 107 Their office was the phylarchia and was one of the Coan liturgies.108 A third century list of tribal leaders honoured by their tribes after office gives us some of their names. 109 Their membership of the Coan office-holding class is attested by the tenure, either by themselves or by members of their families, of Coan magistracies and public offices, priesthoods and ad hoc commissions, and further substantiated by their contributions to public subscriptions. 110 The prosopography of the Coan 'governing' class is discussed later in the context of the Coan constitution. 111 The prominence of the tribal leaders must have contributed to the continuing vigour of Coan tribal institutions, which, in the Hellenistic period, provided a cohesive force for Coan social life. The Dorian tribes survived in Cos in the Imperial period but their activity is little attested. The sigla of the Hylleis and Pamphyloi are found on a dedication of the early Imperial period, offered to the Theoi by Coan stratagoi.in We know of the continued existence of the Pamphyloi and of the office of phylarchia from a public dedication for a certain Xanthippus of the second or third century AD. 113 This constitutes the sole evidence from the Imperial period on the Coan tribes. While it is clear that the Dorian tribes lasted on into Roman Cos the dearth of evidence is striking when contrasted with the material of Hellenistic date. The lack could be explained in terms of the general unevenness and incompleteness of surviving epigraphic material. But we may also hazard the conjecture that the emphasis of Coan social life had altered by the Imperial period. The gymnasium, the hallmark of the Greek

104

See PH 45 (list of victors of the Coan Dionysia: iii BC); KF 13 (iii BC). Cf. p. 158. 106 Cf. p. 156. 107 See PH 44 (c. 200); see also PH 384 (iii-ii BC);ASAA NS 25-6, 1963, p. 201 no XXVII (iii/ii BC). ,0 * For discussion of the Coan leitourgiai, which included the phylarchia, see p. 213. 105 Cf. n. 107 above. 110 These generalizations are based on the prosopography of the individual tribal leaders attested in PH 44. A glance at the Coan onomastikon shows the widespread public activity of the tribal leaders of PH 44 and their families. See further pp. 2 1 4 - 2 1 . 111 See pp. 2 1 5 - 2 1 . 1,1 PH 65: see also ch. 5, η 193. 113 PH 108,16ff. 105

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way of life, had naturally been important in Hellenistic Cos, particularly in the second century when it became the object of royal patronage. 114 The dominance and vitality of the gymnasium in the Imperial period is marked distinctly by the number of dedications made by its various officers and by the institution of a presbytika palaistra.115 Herod the Great, a philhellene par excellence, endowed the Coan gymnasium with funds to subsidize the Coan gymnasiarchia.1,6 The establishment in the Imperial period of a Coan gerousia, the social institution that became common and fashionable in the Roman east, provided a new focal point for social activity which also helped to make the Dorian tribes redundant. 117 The Coan tribal organization differed from that of the Rhodians although both states had the superficial resemblance of having a double tribal system. There were local tribes on Rhodes at Camirus and Lindus, as well as the three state tribes of Ialysia, Camiris and Lindia. 118 But in Rhodes membership of the local tribes of the 'old cities' was related to membership of the tribes of the polis, as deme membership determined tribal membership in the 'old cities' and thence membership of the state tribes. The Coans did not, it appears, link tribal membership with membership of a territorial unit in the manner of the Rhodians and Athenians. Part of their motive for refraining from the adoption of a Cleisthenic type of structure may have been the fact that a system by which deme membership governed tribal affiliation (and was hereditary) was destined to obsolescence within a few generations, when, with the passage of time, actual residence and deme membership no longer corresponded. Also Cos was territorially far smaller than both Attica and Rhodes, with its incorporated territory, so that a simpler deme structure could be employed. At present the tribal structure of Cos seems to be unparalleled in other Greek states and appears as the peculiar creation of the Coans. It must, however, be remembered that comparative evidence is far from complete. After this examination of the organization of Coan citizens we may now consider the categories into which the other inhabitants of Cos fall. The various divisions of the free inhabitants of Cos are listed in two Hellenistic inscriptions: 1. Syll.3 398 (c. 278) 34ff, έν άι δέ κα άμέραιτάν θυ\αίαν ποιώνται, iepav τάν αμέραν ημβν και Iστ€φαναφορβϊν τους πολίτας και τους iπάροικους και τός άλλος τός ένδα\μβϋντας έ~γ Κώι πάντας. 2. ΡΗ 10 (c. 200), 7ff, δβδόχΟαι έΙ[π]αγγελλεσθαι τός δηλο\μένος των re πολιτάν και I κολίτιδων και νόθων και πα\[ρ]οίκων και ξένων.

114 1,5 116 117 118

See pp. 135-8. See pp. 27, 214, 253. Josephus, BJ 422. See p. 223 for the Coan gerousia in the Imperial period. Cf. H. von Gaertringen, RE Suppl. V 766.

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As is clear from the second inscription the umbrella term τοί ένδαμεϋντες embraced xenoi and nothoi. The main division was the distinction between citizens and free non-citizens common to Greek states. Nothoi, who suffered certain limitations of citizen rights, were differentiated as a class from those of full citizen birth. Their status varied from state to state and might include both the legitimate offspring of citizen and non-citizen unions and the illegitimate children of citizens. 119 The application in Cos of the criterion of citizen birth for three generations meant that children of mixed (citizen and non-citizen) marriages were not citizens. Rhodes established a separate class of matroxenoi to cater for these people. 120 As no comparable category is attested in the Coan lists of citizen and non-citizen categories, or elsewhere in Coan material, it seems probable that the Coans did not follow Rhodian practice here, but treated this class either as nothoi or xenoi. Coan nothoi are met, outside the lists, in the wartime epidosis in which Coan fathers subscribed on behalf of their bastard sons, who are described individually by the word paidion instead of huios, the term used for the legitimate citizen son. 121 There is also no evidence that the Coans graded citizenship by instituting a class of people with inferior citizenship, attested in Rhodes and Alexandria by individuals bearing city ethnics and not demotics. 122 The city ethnic is not used of Coans in Coan documents. 123 There were two classes of foreign residents, the xenoi, the temporary foreign residents without rights, and the paroikoi, who were the permanent residents of Cos. 124

119

See G. Glotz, La solidarite de la famille dans le droit criminal en Grece, Paris 1904, pp. 345ff.; A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens, Oxford 1968, pp. 6 1 - 7 0 (with previous bibliography). 120 Cf. H. von Gaertringen, loc. cit. 766. 121 Cf. PH 10, b, 9ff, ΠρωΙτοφάυβυς Χαιρεφάνευς και ύπέρ I τον νίοϋ χ. Εύ'δα/,.ος Πυθαγόρα κα[ί] ύπβρ των παιδιών Χ. 122 See Ρ. Μ. Fräser, Ptol. Alex. I, pp. 47ff, on the question of inferior citizenship in Alexandria and Rhodes. 123 The only exception to the non-employment of the Coan ethnic in Coan documents is provided by the victory lists of the panhellenic festival of the Great Asclepieia, Gymn. Agone, pp. 3 - 1 6 , I - I I , where Coan victors occasionally bore their ethnics. As the victors were drawn from many different cities and all were described by their appropriate city ethnic the occasional use of the Coan ethnic in an international context is comprehensible. It is irrelevant to the question of graded citizenship. 124 See H. Schaefer, RE XVIII, 1 6 9 5 - 1 7 0 7 , sv paroikoi, on the use of the term paroikos in the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the islands to denote in the Hellenistic period that class which, in Mainland Greece, and notably in Athens, was commonly described by the word metoikos. For an isolated instance of the term metoikos on a Coan tombstone of Imperial date see NS 503. For the use in the Imperial period of metoikoi to describe the foreign resident class of Cos see PH 344 (SGDI 3698; IGRR IV 1087 (reign of Augustus), Iff, Έπι μο(νάρχου) Άντάνορος, lepeως Be ΑύΙτοκράτορος Καίσαρος 0eoO ι>ϊο[ΰ] I Σεβαστού Neiκαγάρα τοϋ ΔαλιοΙκλεους, μη(ι>ός) Ά(ρ)τ(αμιτίον) δ' ί(σταμενου), τοί κατοικίΟντες I ev τωι δάμωι των ' ΑΧεντίων και το[£] I ένεκττ\μένοι και τοι γεωργβΰιτείς] I ev "Αλβκτι και Πελτ)(ι), των τι noXeiτω> I και Ί'ωμαίων και μετοίκων, έτβίμαοαν Ιοτΐφάνω(ί) χρυσεωι

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A steady ebb and flow of xenoi was provided by traders who called at Cos, by visitors and pilgrims to the Asclepieion, by foreign scholars drawn by the literary circle and medical school of Cos, and no doubt by casual travellers whose boats put in at Kos en route to other ports. The composition of the resident foreign community of Cos is discussed at a later stage in the context of Coan trade and the role in Coan life of the non-citizen inhabitants. 125 The paroikoi probably suffered the usual impairment of rights of free non-citizen and permanent residents in Greek states: this included disabilities such as the liability to taxation, inability to own land except by a specific grant and lack of political rights, compensated, as was normal, by judicial rights.126 The Coans' enforcement of a ban on the ownership of land by non-citizen residents is shown in Augustus' reign by the existence of the class of roc ένβκτημένοι, which consisted of citizens, metics and Romaioi, who possessed the right of έγκτησις γής και οικίας. 127 A notable absentee from the list of different divisions of inhabitants enumerated in the Coan lists is the class of manumitted slaves. We know from Coan Hellenistic inscriptions of the practice of sacral manumission and the process of apeleuthrerosis is referred to in public documents. 128 The absence of specific reference to a class of apeleutheroi may mean that in the Hellenistic period they were absorbed within the metic class.129 By the early Imperial period it looks as though a separate class

Ίοίδωρον Νεικάρχο(ιι) I ίατρόν δαμοοιεϋοντα άρβτας eveκα τάς I περί τάν τέχναν και τον αύτον βίο[ν] I και εύνοιας τάς ες αυτός, άνδρα παοαν I evSeSeiypevov ποτί πάντας εννοιαν I Kai σπονδάν. Καθειέρωοαν Se τά[ν] I στάλαν παρά τάν καθειδρυμέναν |ei]I κόνα τοϋ Σεβαστού. Ααμαρχεΰν Ιτος Νειχομάχου τον Άνθ ίππου I τοϋ Β. 125 See pp. 245ff. 126 The theme of Herodas' Pornoboskos was, for example, the suit between the aliens Battarus and Thales. 127 See PH 344,5-6, quoted n. 124 above. For a brief discussion of this inscription see Mommscn, apud Mommsen und Wilamowitz Briefwechsel 1872-1903, Berlin 1935, pp. 4 4 2 - 3 nos 3 5 1 - 2 . For the class of τοί ένεκτημενοι in Calymnus see KF, pp. 197-199 at 198. For a metic's tenure of land in Cos see PH 152 (ii-i BC?). 128 For sacral manumission on Cos see P. M. Fräser, BSA Alex. 40, 1953, pp. 3 5 - 6 2 , especially 5 0 - 6 2 ; cf also PH 36 (HG 10) a (iv BC). For reference to Coan apeleutherosis see PH 29 (LGS 139; LSCG 160; iii-ii BC), 4ff. See F. Börner, Unters. Sklaven II, Mainz I960, p. 116, for comparison of the Coan practice of obligatory sacrifices to the Athenian custom of the dedication of phialai exeleutherikai after manumission. 129 See P. M. Fraser, loc. cit. p. 58 η 1, for the argument that apeleutheroi were absorbed into the Coan metic class. The evidence adduced, besides the absence of apeleutheroi from Coan lists of the different categories of the population, is Herodas, Pornoboskos, 8ff, in which, if Knox' restoration is acceptcd (ed. Loeb, 1929), the slave-trader Battarus describes himself and Thales, an ex-slave, as a metic (. . .]ος μετοι(κός) έοτι της [πό|λιος κή-γώ). This implies that freedmen in Cos were treated as metics. However the correct reading here is still uncertain; Cunningham's re-examination of the papyrus in his edition of Herodas' Mimiambi (1971) has left the crux unresolved, and readings compatible with at least two other restorations besides that of Knox have been proposed. The classification of apeleutheroi in Hellenistic Cos remains at present uncertain.

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of apeleutheroi was instituted. The evidence for this suggestion is afforded by a series of manumissions from Calymnus of the first century AD. The description in the manumission texts of the manumitted slaves as apeleutheroi demonstrates the existence of the category of apeleutheroi in Calymnus at this date. 130 Since Calymnus was still incorporated by Cos, as the employment in the manumissions of dating by Coan eponyms shows,131 it should follow that the apeleutherotikoi nomoi132 governing manumission on Calymnus were Coan laws and that the status of apeleutheroi was now recognised as a separate category in Coan law. We do not have the evidence to decide why this change took place, whether because of an increase in the practice of manumission, or for some other reason. The last and most lowly element was the slave population, universal in Greek cities. The earliest evidence of Coan slaves is Thucydides' notice of their capture in 412 by the Spartan admiral, Astyochus.133 Other references to the Coan slave population are given in the inscription Syll.3 1000 (ii/i BC), where women slaves are mentioned. 134 We also learn from this inscription of the use of skilled slave labour for Coan viticulture.135 Of individual slaves, other than those named in sacral manumissions, we know little because of the difficulty of interpreting the main source of evidence - the funerary inscriptions. It is rarely possible to establish, particularly in the case of humble and roughly made grave-markers and cippi, whether the dead were slaves, or poor citizens.

130 JQ 152-212; see TC 153, 164, 171 and 177 for use of the term apeleutheros. For studies of the Calymnian manumissions in relation to the practice of manummission in general see P. Roussel, REA 44, 1942, pp. 217-223; L. Robert, REG 64, 1951, p. 181; M. Segre, TC, pp. 169-180; A. Babakos, Familienrechtliche Verhältnisse, Köln 1973. 131 See, for example, TC 167-174. It is not worthwhile to list all the instances of monarchos dating on the Calymnian manumissions. For the Coan incorporation of Calymnus see pp. 124ff. 132 For reference to apeleutherotikoi nomoi see TC 167, 169, 176, 189, 190, 196. 133 VIII, 41, 2. 134 8ff. 135 ibid. On Coan viticulture sec pp. 231, 236ff.

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CHAPTER 5

The Coan Constitution The study of the Coan constitution depends almost entirely upon epigraphic material. Aristotle's constitution of the Coans, if such existed, has not survived and other literary evidence is sparse.1 Our examination is again limited by the evidence mainly to the Hellenistic period. The important formative years from 366 onwards, the year of the foundation of Kos and of the creation of the new city's constitution, are barely attested since the antiquities of the fourth century polis have been almost completely obliterated by the Hellenistic and Roman city. What is missing, and what, in the case of Athens, Aristotle provided with his information on Dracon, Solon and Cleisthenes, is the identity of the lawgiver, his ideals and the character of his constitutional settlement. 2 The Coan lawcode, TOI Κ,ώιων νόμοι, which was employed by Teos and Lebedus at the end of the fourth century, 3 is known by name, but the man or men responsible for its codification, their aims and the nature of any subsequent alterations are unknown. Other states' adoption of the Coan laws established their reputation as good laws but does not reveal why they were held to be good. The original character of the constitution is missing and its historical development cannot be traced. It is nevertheless valuable to have a substantial number of public documents from the Hellenistic age since it was the period when Cos flourished as a city-state; the Coans were fortunate in their affiliation with the Ptolemies to tread smoothly the delicate path between subjection to, and independence of, the Hellenistic kingdoms, retaining their autonomy and constitution, as we have seen. The outline of Coan constitutional machinery can be elucidated with

•For a useful outline of the Coan constitution see R. Herzog, HG pp. 4 4 - 6 . See pp. 64ff. for the constitutional background to the synoecism of 366. 1 Cf. Müller, FHG ii, p. 161. 2 See L. Cohn-Haft, The Public Physicians of Ancient Greece, 1956, p. 9 n. 26 for a decisive rebuttal of R. Herzog's thesis of the Coan adoption of the laws of Charondas, the seventh or sixth century lawgiver who legislated for Catana and other Chalcidian cities of Sicily and Italy. Herzog's case (KF, p. 204, n. 3), which is ingenious but entirely hypothetical, was based on the citation of 'Charondas' law of αΖκει'η' in Herodas, Pornoboskos, 41ff., which is set on Cos. For the probability that Charondas was chosen as the name of a typical lawgiver see F. E. Adcock, Cam. Hist. J. 2, 1927, p. 95. Herodas' play with names is also shown by his choice of the name of the Milesian sage, Thales, for the comic villain of the mime. 3 See p. 85.

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the help of the inscriptions, and, where that falls short, by analogy with practice in other Greek states, while Coan public decrees provide material for examining the actual process of government in Hellenistic Cos. The Coan constitution was a democracy in the Hellenistic period, the form of constitution favoured as a general rule in Greek cities by this time. Its name, damokratia, is attested in third century inscriptions. 4 The constitution merited its description in so far as it fulfilled three basic criteria of Greek democracy. Firstly the citizen body, the damos, was composed of all male citizens above a certain minimum age, regardless of class. There was no exclusiveness within the citizen body. The possession of full political rights by all citizens is clearly shown by the oath sworn by the whole Coan citizen body on the incorporation of Calymnus, at the end of the third century. 5 Every citizen was obliged to swear to act with justice and impartiality as juryman and citizen in voting and making decrees. All citizens were envisaged as enjoying the right of participation in jurisdiction and government in the assembly. Secondly the damos was the sovereign authority, with the final decision on policy. Thirdly, the magistracies were popularly elected, but probably not by lot. Restriction on the use of the lot for the election of magistrates was characteristic of Hellenistic democracy, less radical in this respect than classical democracy as exemplified for example in fifth century Athens. The popular assembly, the council and the popular juries were the basic democratic institutions of the Coan constitution in the Hellenistic period. The damos and boula were the chief policy-making organs of government. We consider their function first. The sovereignty of the damos lay in the right of decision over policy, which it realised through the right to discussion of proposals, the right of voting upon them and of final decision. Examination of Coan decrees of the Hellenistic period shows that there were four basic procedures adopted in the making of decrees. Firstly a considerable number were probouleutic decrees, moved by a private citizen and passed through the boula, before being brought before the damos\ this practice is attested in the prescripts of Coan decrees by the formula έ'δοξε τα ι βούλα ι και τώι δάμωι ·ό δείνα ehe.6 Omission of probouleutic procedure was often illegal; in the democracy of fifth and fourth century Athens it led to graphe paranomon.7 In Cos, as will be seen, probouleusis was not obligatory, but was usually practised. Secondly, the chief magistrates, the prostatai, exercised considerable initiative in proposing decrees. They presented their proposals (gnoma prostatan) to the damos in two ways; their presentation of gnomai to the boula before the damos is shown by the formula έ'δοξβ rät βουλάι και τώι

4

Cf. Syll.3

398 (c. 278), 26ff.;ÄiV. FH. NS 20, 1942, p. 5 no. 2 (TC XII; Die

verträge 545; c. 200). 5 Cf. pp. 1 2 6 - 7 . 6 PH 1 (end iv BC); KF 187 (iii BC); Atf 437 (iii-ii BC); TC 74 (iii BC). 7 Ath. Pol. 4 5 , 4.

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Staats-

δάμωι · Ίνώμα προσταταν,8 This method resulted in double probouleusis; firstly by the magistrates' deliberation, which passed into a resolution if it culminated in an unanimous decision, as the phrase gnoma prostatan reveals; secondly by the boula. The right of magistrates to present bills as a college, in magisterial capacity, appears to have been symptomatic of Hellenistic democracy in which greater power was vested in magistrates than had been acceptable earlier on; 9 magisterial bills were for example rare in fifth century Athens, where the aim of that prototype democracy was to limit the competence of magistrates as much as possible. 10 The second way in which the prostatai brought forward bills was by bringing them directly before the damos, omitting the boula. This procedure appears to be illustrated by the prescript of the ship-building decree of the end of the third century, in which only the decision of the damos was referred to after the formula gnoma prostatan, and not that of the boula as well. 11 The ability of a college of magistrates to omit probouleutic procedure was not common elsewhere in the Hellenistic period. 12 Among all the Hellenistic decrees of Cos this is the only surviving instance. 13 The wartime background of the decree may well be relevant to the explanation of this isolated example of the Coan magistrates' apparent neglect of the process of probouleusis. The remaining form of decree to be discussed is the Volksdekret,14 proposed by a citizen in the assembly and ratified by the damos. There is a group of Coan decrees which qualifies for consideration as 'demos-decrees'. They are recognisable by their prescripts which begin with the proposer's name and continue with reference to the decision of the damos alone, and without the usual reference to the joint decision of boula and damos. The Coan decree of c. 278, in which thanksgiving sacrifices were voted after the Gaulish invasion, falls into this category. The decree begins with the proposer's name, Diocles, son of Philinus, and his proposal, and the decision of the damos is then recorded in the twentieth

« PH 2 - 3 (iii BC); 13 (iii/ii BC); Kl< 188 (iii BC);JVS 432 (iii-ii BC); 436 (iii BC); Hellenica 5,_p. 104, 43ff. (182/1); IOSPE I, 77 (iii BC); CI. Rh. 10, p. 37 no. 4 (end iii BC); Historia 8, p. 429 no. 1 - 2 (iii BC). ' Cf. A.H.M. Jones, The Greek City, p. 166. 10 For Athenian examples of gnome strategon see Die Staatsverträge 186 (423/2); /G II 2 27 ( c f . Hesperia 8, 1939, p. 68: 416/5). 11 Riv. Fit. NS 11, 1933, p. 365, l l f f . 12 Cf. OGIS 229 (Die Staatsverträge 492; Smyrna): c. 246-242 BC\lvPr. 14; 18 (Prione): iii BC; GIBM 786 (SGDI 3500; Cnidus): iii BC; IG XII (3) 172 (Astypalaea): i BC. See H. Swoboda, Die griechischen Volksbeschlüsse, Leipzig 1890, pp. 116ff. 13 Another example of a Coan magisterial bill is probably furnished by the honorific decree, Sylt.3 567 (GIBM 259; TC 64), 2ff, of the end of the third century BC. The prescript, which is not fully preserved, shows that the bill was presented as a joint proposal. The explanation of the plural proposers (see M. Segre, TC toe. cit.) as the college of prostatai is to be accepted in view of the parallel provided by the gnoma prostatan. Whether or not the bill was presented directly to the damos is uncertain. 14 See H. Swoboda,/oc. cit. pp. 7 5 - 6 . 12 Ancicnt Cos (Hyp. 51)

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line with the formula äyadäi τύχω., δείδόχβαι τώι δάμωι.15 A decree of the first half of the third century relating to the establishment of a treasury in the new third century temple of Asclepius is of the same type. 1 6 A somewhat later Coan decree of the third to second century - issued in honour of a Coan doctor is of the same form as we see from the following extract; 'Praximenes spoke; since Xenotimus, son of Timoxenus, both in the past took care of the citizens by his medical skill and showed himself zealous for the safety of the sick and in the thick of the present plague of dangerous epidemics, when even the public physicians in the city were also ill as a result of the hardships they endured because of their care for the sick, gave succour to people, as they needed it of his own initiative, electing to help all those who were ill without preference yet by his efforts for all the citizens saved many, the damos has decided to praise Xenotimus, son of Timoxenus, and crown him with a gold crown for his goodwill and concern for the citizens.' 17 Further details of the honours bestowed on Xenotimus followed. The decree proposed by Diocles, son of Leodamas, for the publication of the wartime subscription list furnishes another example of the same form of decree. 18 We must now consider the interpretation of this group of documents. Their identification as demos-decrees is open to the objection that the omission of reference to the boula is merely haphazard, occurring in the recording of the decree, thus not reflecting actual procedure. 1 9 On the other hand we may equally feel that we are dealing with an established process, even if one that is seldom used. It might be further objected that the right of bringing bills directly before the damos without the check of probouleusis was a strongly democratic feature

15 16 17

Syll.3 398; c / p. 107. HG 14 (LSCG 155), Iff. P H 5 (iii-ii BC).

18

Cf. PH 10 (c. 200), 2ff. Λιοκλης I [Λεωδ]αμαυτος είπε κτλ.: cf. 7, δβδόχΰαι έΙ(π|α77ελλεσ0αι τός δηλοΙμεΐΌς των re πολιτάν κτλ.. Cf. ρ. 121. F o r a g r o u p of public inscriptions of related form see HG 12 (LSCG 150 B); M. Segre, Riv. 1st. Arch. 6, 1938, pp. 1 9 1 - 8 (LSCG 152: mid. iii BC). These three inscriptions all begin, in the first line, in the same way; the formula b belva ehe is followed by the speaker's proposal. In none is there any reference to the decision of the damos, or of the damos and boula. These inscriptions include only the texts of the proposals and the name of the proposer. None of the usual procedure involved in the passing of decrees is mentioned. They clearly are not of 'abbreviated' form in the sense in which honorific decrees, when inscribed, were shortened. With the latter, the content of the decree was abbreviated: see H. Swoboda, loc. cit. pp. 47ff. In the Coan group it is a matter of the non-inclusion of prescripts or of reference to the damos' decision. It is possible that in these cases the record of the damos' decision was inscribed on another stone. " Cf. G. Klaffenbach, Griechische Epigraphik2, Göttingen 1966, pp. 7 4 - 5 . Klaffenbach believed that the omission of reference to the boula was due to abbreviation. See n. 18 on the usual practice, which was to shorten the content of decrees as a whole, not merely a phrase.

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of the constitution and one inconsonant with Hellenistic democracy. It meant that the damos possessed an initiative in the decretal process not even enjoyed by the democracy of fifth century Athens, where probouleusis was compulsory. Although demos-decrees were not frequent before or during the Hellenistic period, they are found in states other than Cos. Zelea, Oropus, Miletus, Ithaca, Corinth and an unidentified Dorian city, provide examples from the fourth and third centuries. 20 We cannot justly object that the practice of the direct introduction of bills to the damos, if that is what this really is, was too democratic a feature for the Coan democracy of the Hellenistic period. Such an argument is a petitio principiv, furthermore if we look more closely at the decree of Diodes, son of Leodamas, we can see how radically the Coan damos was behaving under Diodes' leadership in the wartime period of c. 205-201, 'Diodes son of Leodamas made the proposal; that on each occasion citizens' contributions to the common security may be known, it is decided to canvass those willing of the citizens, citizen-women, nothoi, paroikoi and foreigners, and to announce the names of those being canvassed immediately in the assembly. Let the damos vote on the value of their gift and, if it so decides, accept.' 21 The names of subscribers whose contributions were accepted were to be engraved on three stelai of marble, which were to be set up in the theatre, in the Asclepieion and at the altar of Dionysus. The decree then turned, in remarkable vein, to the treatment of the subscribers; let them (the poletai) inscribe the stelai with the names of those who have been voted upon (/'. e. those whose contributions were accepted) and let them deal with any whose offer is refused. If any are late for the proclamation (of his gift) it is possible for these to enter themselves as subscribers at the next assembly.'22 There follows a'list of subscribers and their contributions, crowned by Diodes' name. The names of citizens and non-

20

Sylt.3 279 (Zelea; c. 334/3); Syll.3 258 (Oropus; iv VC) , Milet I (3) 37 (Miletus; end iii BC); 139 (Miletus; end iü BC); I. Mag. 36 (Ithaca; iii/ii BC); ibid. 42 (Corinth; iii/ii BC); Hellenica 5, 1948, p. 6 (decree of an unidentified Dorian polis; cf. L. Robert, loc. cit. pp. 6ff.; ii BC). Consideration of the prescripts of the Hellenistic Milesian decrees in Milet I (3) shows the majority to have been probouleutic. On the exceptions, which have been cited above, see also A. Rehm, Milet I (3), pp. 197ff. On the formulation of Milesian decrees see H. Müller, op. cit. ch. 3n. 254. 21 PH 10 (GIBM 343), a 2ff., Διοκλης I [Λεωδ]άμαι>τος είπε 'όπως I έκα]στου καιρόν φαίνωνΙ[ται τ]οί πολϊται αυναντι\\λα\νβα[ν]άμ€νοι τάς κοινάς I (ασφαλείας, δεδόχύαι έΙ[π]αγγε'λλεσι9αι τός δηλοΐμε'ρος των τε πολιταν και I πολιτίδωι» και νόϋων και πα\[ρ]οίκων και ξε'κωυ, των δε έπαγΙγειλαμε'ι>ωμ τα ονόματα I άνα-γορευσάντω παραΙχρήμα έν τάι ΐκκληοίαι, ό δ[έ] Ιδάμος διαχειροτονείτω ταν άξίαν τάς δωρεάς I [κ]αί, el' κα δοκχι, λαμβαμ[ε]Ι[τ]ω. 22 ibid. 22ff., rot πωληται I e-γδόντω στάλας έρ·γάξαα\ϋαι τρεις και αναΟέ[ντω μ]ι'1αμ μέν ev τωι ϋΐάτρωί, τάν δέ I αλλαν ev τώι Άσ[κλα] πιίει'ωι, τίν δέ τρίταν έν τάι άγοΙράι παρα τον βωμον τον τοϋ I Διονύσου, των δε χειροτοΐνηϋέντων τά όνόματα άι>[α]1γραψάιτω [ές] τάς στάλας, I καταχρημα\τι]σάντω δέ κα[ι] I et' (κά τ]ινων άποχειροτορηlöfj ά επαγγελία · αί δε' κά τι Ινες ϋστερώιτι τάς έπαγγελΙΙί]ας έξήμευ αύτοϊς και έν τάι εχομέναι έκίκλησι'αι έπαγγελλβσϋαι.

179

Citizens willing to subscribe were immediately announced in the assembly. The individuals announced the size of the sum they intended to contribute and the assembly voted in each case whether to accept or reject the offer; the publicity of the procedure alone provided a compelling incentive for generous subscriptions, while the public disgrace of the people's refusal of an offer as inadequate was a guarantee for the damos to wring from citizens contributions proportionate to their wealth. Although the subscription was voluntary, the damos evidently claimed the right to refuse donations obviously insufficient. 23 Its competence in this respect was radical. Furthermore the poletai had responsibility for 'dealing with' those whose contributions were not accepted; how we are not told. 2 4 We may remember here the Athenian practice of censuring defaulters to public subscriptions by publication of their names as defaulters. 25 The publicity of the whole procedure of vetting contributions in the assembly is reminiscent of the procedure for public subscriptions in classical Athens. 26 Diocles, we may remember, held the Coan stratagia in the war years of 2 0 5 - 2 0 1 and directed Coan affairs through this period; 27 he was rich, as his contribution of 7000 dr. (1 talent, 1000 dr.) to the epidosis for war funds shows. 28 His is the largest donation to be recorded on the surviving list. Diocles' role through this critical time, high-lighted by his decree, was that of a real prostatas of the damos. In this context the concept of a Volksdekret is at home. We may note that all the decrees qualifying by their form for consideration as 'demos-decrees' were concerned with notable events, good and bad, in the history of Cos. It is also interesting that in the two 'demos-decrees' in which we happen to know more about the proposers than their mere names, that is in the decrees proposed by Diocles, son of Philinus and Diocles, son of Leodamas, both were either prominent in their own right or belonged to a distinguished Coan family, and were both no doubt political leaders of their time. 2 9 It seems perfectly consonant with the evidence that we have of the working in practice of the Coan democracy that the right to legislate directly in the ekklesia, without probouleusis, little used though it was in the Hellenistic period, did exist, and appears to have been used by eminent Coans at significant moments in Coan history. The procedure was radical and may have derived originally from the early days of Coan democracy after the synoecism. Freedom of discussion was a concomitant of the sovereignty of the damos in passing decrees and a fundamental feature of Greek democracy. The Coans'

23

Cf. the useful discussion in GIBM, loc. cit. n. 21. Cf. n. 22. 25 Isaeus, V, 3 6 - 8 . M Cf. Plutarch, Alcibiades, 10, 16; cf. Theophrastus, Char. XXII, 3. " See pp. 119ff. " PH 10 a, 38. n See pp. 107 (Diocles, son of Philinus); 216 (Diocles, son of Leodamas). M

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possession of this right is illustrated by a citizen's right to suggest amendments to bills in the assembly. 30 It is presupposed by a prohibition against a magistrate's or private citizen's alteration, or reversal, of a sacred law concerning the sacrosanctity of the cypress grove of the Asclepieion. 31 The practice of ensuring permanence to decisions, when so desired by the damos, by invoking sanctions against offenders, was universal among Greek states. 32 The Coan use of this procedure is not noteworthy. The competence of the damos embraced all affairs of state. The damos dealt with foreign policy. It received foreign ambassadors as decrees reveal which record the application of foreign ambassadors for access to the boula and to the damos.33 It ratified alliances; the homopoliteia inscription of the late third century refers to treaties with Coan allies that had been ratified by the Coan damos.34 The decision of peace and war will also have resided with the damos. The damos also dealt with a wide range of matters of varying importance relating to the internal administration of the state. It had supervision of the state finances and reserved the power of decision over the size and objects of expenditure. A second century inscription refers to the assembly's power of decision on the building to be undertaken on the temple of Aphrodite. 3 5 A lex sacra refers to the right of the damos to decide annually the amount to be expended from the aparchai on repairs or building in the temple of Aphrodite. 36 In the sphere of secular finance it was the task of the damos to decide the value of crowns to be granted to honorands in accordance with the limits laid down by the laws. 37 We have already seen the claim of the damos to vet the size of contributions to an epidosis, in wartime, and reject offers that were less than the donor was believed capable of affording. The damos controlled the extension of political rights by its power of ratification of grants of citizenship; the late third century tribal decree from Halasarna described the legal basis of the citizenship of new citizens as depending on a grant of ά πολιτεία κατά τίνα νόμον ή δόγμα KOWOV τοϋ παντός δάμον.38 The qualification implied by this clause was the rule that the assembly of the polis, not that of the individual Coan deines, alone had the authority to give citizenship. It was in relation to the demes that the sovereign assembly of the polis was described as ο σύμπας

30

Cf. Atti PAR 17, 1941, pp. 2 9 - 3 0 , for the amendment to the inscription concerned with the cult of Dionysus Thyllophorus, cited ch. 3, n. 169. 31 HG 12 (LSCG 150 Β; iii BC) 8ff. 32 H. Swoboda, Die griechischen Volksbeschlüsse, pp. 8 6 - 7 . 33 Cf. e.g. KF 190, 13 (iii BC); SB, Berl. Ak 1905, p. 9 8 2 , 6ff. (c. 205 BC). 34 Riv. Fil. NS 20, 1942, p. 5 no. 2 (TC XII; D/e Staatsverträge 545), 18ff. 35 See R. Herzog, Archiv Rel. 10, 1907, p. 211 (SEG I 344). 36 ibid. 37 Cf. PH 5, 20ff (iii-ii BC). 38 ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 183ff. no. XXVI A (PH 367; Syll.3 1023; LSCG 173), III, 37.

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δόμος. 39 The establishment of this centralised form of government was one of the results of the synoecism. The use of the title ό συμπάς δάμος for the sovereign assembly of a state in relation to demes does not appear to have had a wide distribution. It is attested at Rhodes, Stratonicea and Mylasa.40 A similar usage is implied by the phrase τό σύμπαν πλήθος τού πολιτεύματος, which was used at Magnesiaon-Maeander.41 The suggestion has been made that Stratonicea, which became a Rhodian possession in the third century, followed Rhodian practice. 42 It is possible that the Coans' adoption of the same nomenclature and their subordination of the deme assemblies to the authority of the polis was also modelled on Rhodes' example. The synoecism of Rhodes and organization of its territory preceded the foundation of the Coan polis by over four decades, and provided a paradeigma for the Coans to adopt in 366. 43 Other features of the Coan constitution, to be discussed shortly, may also have been adopted from Rhodian institutions. 44 Each deme had a basically uniform administrative organization of damarchos, local ekklesia and tamiai, though there were some institutional variations in certain of the demes. 45 The municipal organization is attested most fully at Halasarna, Isthmus and Antimachia. At Halasarna a board of three napoiai seems to have taken the place of the damarchos as the chief official of the deme. 46 The presence of the napoiai at Halasarna is partially explained by the existence of Halsarna's temple of Apollo and the important cult attached to it, with the administration of which they were concerned. 47 But the board

39

Cf. PH 9, 7; KF 210, 4, cf. Syll.3 567, 4; Syll.3 569, 30, 35. Cf. G. E. Bean and P. M. Fraser, The Rhodian Peraea, pp. 9 0 - 9 1 , 1 2 8 - 1 2 9 n. 4. 41 Syll.3 695 (/. Mag. 100), l l f f . cf. ibid. 40. 42 Cf. n 40. 43 See p. 67. 44 Cf. p. 200. 45 For the damarchos see PH 344 (Haleis; reign of Augustus), cf. PH 347 (Haleis; Imperial); ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 1 6 1 - 3 , no. VI (iii-ii BC), from Isthmus. For the tamiai, see PH 9 ( i i - i BC: decree of an unknown deme); PH 382 (Antimachia: iii BC). For the deme assembly, the convention of which is presupposed by the formula, eSoije τώι δάμωι, of deme decrees, see Syll.3 568 (Halasarna); cf. also the unpublished decree from Halasarna, cited by G. Pugliese Carratelli, ASAA loc. cit., p. 154. 46 See Syll.3 568 for the number of the board, which is known form the prescript in which three napoiai are mentioned and their personal names and patronymics given. Pace G. K. Oikonomos, AD 22, 1964, pp. 2 5 8 - 3 4 6 , at 283, the Coan napoiai were not magistrates of the polis, a belief that he bases on PH 373, a dedication in honour of Nero. The damos which honoured Nero, διά υαποαυ I [τ]ών σύι> 'Αττάλου, was not the damos of the polis, but the deme of Halasarna as the inscription says. 47 See ASAA NS 2 5 - 6 , 1963, pp. 183ff. no. XXVI A (PH 367; Syll.3 1023; LSCG 173), 28ff. (registration with the napoiai of tribesmen eligible for the cults of Halasarna); 40

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had extensive duties in local administration too. It had the right to present proposals to the deme assembly as a γνώμα των vanoiäv to be ratified, or rejected, by the vote of the demesmen in their assembly. The procedure is illustrated in the final clause of a decree of Halasarna, ψόφοι ταί κυροϋοαι ταν -γνώμαν

των

ναποών

° στβρεαί,

I διακόσιοι

τεσσαράκοντω

όκτώ·έναντία,

ουδεμία. 48 The proposal by the napoiai of honorific decrees for benefactors of the deme in secular contexts, such as are exemplified by the decrees for Theucles and Diocles for their help to Halasarna in the wars of 2 0 5 - 2 0 0 , shows that their competence was not restricted to cult affairs and documents their role as substitutes for the damarchos.49 Another of their tasks was supervision of the engraving of the deme's decrees. 50 The deme of Isthmus also had an idiosyncratic feature in the local office of monarches.51 It will be seen that the monorchia of Isthmus was probably an old office deriving from kingship in the pre-synoecism era, when Astypalaea was a polis.52 The explanation of the competence of the napoiai of Halasarna, which extends beyond the sphere of cult to secular matters dealt with elsewhere in Coan demes by damarchoi, may also lie in their pre-synoecism origin, for otherwise it is difficult to see why in the post-synoecism organization of the Coan demes Halasarna was not given a damarchos

too.

The authority of the muncipalities was limited to local administration. Policy was made by passing decrees, described as psaphismata, in the deme assemblies by majority vote. 5 3 There is no reference in the Coan deme decrees to the need for ratification by the polis; this could simply be a matter of omission, κύρωσις may have been de iure obligatory but not always practised. 54 It seems to have been regular practice for deme decrees issued in honour of Coan (and non-Coan) benefactors to be taken by a delegation from the deme to the polis, where application was made through the boula and ekklesia for the decree to be read

ibid. 46ff. (announcement by the napoiai, at the Herakleia, of the forthcoming census); ibid. 91 ff. (supervision of the election of the priest of Apollo); ibid. 104ff. (payment of the anagrapha from sacrcd monies). 48 See L. Robert, REA 65, 1963, p. 305 n. 3, for reference to this unpublished inscription. 49 Syll.3 5 6 8 - 9 . 50 See n. 47. 51 See pp. 191ff. * See pp. 189ff. 53 Cf. Syll.3 5 6 8 - 9 . 54 There is no certain reference to the process of kurosis in Coan deme decrees. In PH 383 (iii BC), 2, reference is made to τό ψάφιομ]α τό Kvpwdiv hni κτλ. The inscription is concerned with financial transactions between the polis and the deme; it is not clear whether the psaphisma referred to was a decree of the polis, or that of the deme. If the former, κυρωύέν was used in the sense, which is well attested, of 'vote': cf. SGDI 3505 (Cnidus). If the latter, then it could either refer to the process of ratification by the polis, or could simply mean 'voted'.

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out, publicly, at the appropriate state festival. 55 The practice has nothing to do with the ratification of a deme decree. What the denies could not do was to issue decrees on matters of policy which required the vote of the whole people, as has been seen. The Coan damos also had judicial responsibilities. It is attested in the fourth century as the body that heard indictments for impiety in connection with the illegal use of timber from the sacred cypress grove. 56 The role of the damos in cases of sacrilege leads to the question of jurisdiction as a whole. The popular lawcourts of Cos are not directly attested in the Hellenistic period. Their existence in the fourth century is securely attested by Aristotle in the Politics, where he described how radical demagogues on Cos used the lawcourts to prosecute rich and propertied Coans until the latter class united and engineered an oligarchic revolution. 57 The successful prosecution of members of the upper classes presupposes the ability of the poorer element among the Coans to sit on the juries. The dikasteria to which Aristotle referred must have been popular courts in which juries were drawn from the whole citizen body. 5 8 That popular dikasteria also existed in the Hellenistic period is implied by the homopoliteia inscription. The dual duties of the citizen as dikastas and politas are assumed in the oath sworn by the whole citizen body at the end of the third century; Ί shall be both a just juryman and a fair citizen in voting and making decrees without bias.' 59 The right of every Coan citizen to act as dikast leaves little room to doubt that the Coan lawcourts were manned by the whole citizen body. The survival into Hellenistic and later Rhodes of popular lawcourts and payment for jury service (of which there is no evidence for Cos) provides a parallel for the Coan popular lawcourts of the Hellenistic period about which so little is known. 60 Payment of public office is one important area in which there is a total lack of information for Coan practice. 61 There is no evidence from Cos on the number of times the assembly was expected to convene each year to execute its business. The number of regular meetings in a year varied from state to state, depending on the size and importance of the polis\ the assembly of the great city of Athens had as many as forty regular meetings a year; other states might have one or two meetings a month. 6 2 Dating on Coan

55

Cf. PH 9 (ii-i BC); SB Berl. Ak. 1901, p. 478, no. 2 (iii BC). HG 11 (LSCG 150 A), 7ff. 57 Politics 1304 b 25ff. 58 Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1317 b 25. 59 Riv. Fit NS 20, 1942, p. 5 no. 2 (TC XII;£)/e Staatsverträge 545), 27ff. 60 See P. M. Fräser, BSA 67, 1972, pp. 119-124, for publication of a group of Rhodian Hellenistic dikast pinakia and for discussion of the state-paid jury-courts of Hellenistic and Roman Rhodes. 61 Sec ch. 2 n. 188 for the uncertainty of whether Aristotle's description of the Rhodian dikasteria as misthophora in Politics 1304 b 27ff. applies also to Cos. " Cf. G. Busolt, Gr. Staatskunde, p. 447. 56

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decrees establishes, some of the months within which the damos met, but inevitably affords an incomplete list. Meetings of the assembly are attested in six of the twelve Coan months. 6 3 Out of these four fall within the tfepirä έξάμηνος of the two periods into which the official Coan year was divided. 64 In view of this fairly high proportion of meetings in one of the two six-month divisions, it seems plausible to suppose that the Coan damos met approximately once a month in the summer half of the year. The total frequency of meetings cannot as yet be established. The presidency of the assembly is recorded in the prescript of a third century decree. 65 Although it is not mentioned again it cannot be doubted that this very basic duty continued. In the absence of a prytany system, an institution that the Coans did not employ in the Hellenistic period, and which in classical Athens had provided the chairman of the ekklesia, it seems most probable that the chairman of the prostatai acted as president of the assembly. 66 The work of the ekklesia or damos was expedited by the function of the boula as a committee. The main area in which the activity of the Coan boula is attested is in the practice of probouleusis, documented in the formula έ'δοξβ ται βουλάι και τώι δάμωι.67 Probouleusis naturally covered all fields. The Coan boula had a secretary whose title, boulas grammateus, is epigraphically attested. 6 8 His term of office and method of election is not attested. His duties would not have varied much from those of secretaries of the boula elsewhere. The prime task was keeping records of the business transacted. The reception of foreign ambassadors and envoys from the Coan demes was another bouleutic sphere of competence. The boula was probably also responsible for the scrutiny of magistrates

63

Decrees are attested as having been passed in the following months; Batromios (PH 27 (Syll. 3 1012; LSCG 166); Gerastios (unpublished inscription in honour of a Coan dikastagogos: cf. Arch. Anz. 1905, p. 11). For the rest of the evidence see below n. 64. It should be noted here that the prescript of PH 27 (Syll.3 1012), 2 (δυω]δ