The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C. 0472113208, 9780472113200

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THE ATHENIAN EXPERIMENT

THE ATHENIAN EXPERIMENT building an imagined political community in ancient attica, 508–490 b.c. greg anderson

The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan  All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America ∞ Printed on acid-free paper    

   

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anderson, Greg, – The Athenian experiment : building an imagined political community in ancient Attica, – B.C. / Greg Anderson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN --- (Cloth : alk. paper) . Athens (Greece)—Politics and government. I. Title. JC .A  ′.—dc 

For Mum & Dad

PREFACE

The present study offers a revisionist approach to the history of preclassical Athens. It aims, above all, to show how, in a relatively small space of time, the course of this history was dramatically altered. Entering the last decade of the sixth century, Athens was a city-state of little more than middling importance, plagued by chronic military vulnerability and recurring bouts of political turmoil. By  B.C., this same state had been transformed almost beyond recognition: it was now guided by what would prove to be an exceptionally stable form of popular government, and it was poised to enjoy an unprecedented in×uence over the shape of Greek history and culture in the decades to come. This book seeks to understand what happened in the meantime. The ideas presented here have been long in gestation. Some I have lived with since the late 1980s, when I µrst arrived in the United States from the United Kingdom as a graduate student and began to take a serious interest in the cultural and political history of Athens. The project took shape as a doctoral thesis, completed in 1997, and the core µndings of that work reappear largely intact in this one. The presentation is, however, quite different. In the hope of reaching an audience a little larger than the three who were lucky enough to read my dissertation, I have tried hard to make the arguments accessible to those with only a general knowledge of Greek history. This has not always been easy, given the intractable nature of some of the evidence. But at least the reader’s patience will not be too exercised by Greek words, phrases,

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and quotations, which are all translated (by the author) and appear in transliterated form wherever possible. As for Greek names and places, I guarantee only that each instance is spelled consistently throughout. I am very grateful to the institutions that have sustained me over the last thirteen years: to the Departments of Classics at Johns Hopkins and Yale, where I did my graduate study, and to Elmira College and the Departments of History and Classics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where I have since taught. The book was largely completed by Fall during my time at UIC. In Fall , a new position in the Classics Department at Wright State University made it possible for me to join my wife and family in Dayton, Ohio, where the manuscript was prepared for publication. Thanks are also owed to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. My experiences there during the summer of  and the academic year – did much to make the realm of archaeology less intimidating. For help with the comparative perspective that informs this study, I am indebted to Alex Wendt and Juan Linz, professors of political science and sociology, who supervised my independent researches into nation building and political identity formation during my time at Yale. I feel a particularly deep sense of gratitude to my dissertation advisors: to Victor Bers, for his keen attention to detail and his all-purpose humanity; to Jerome Pollitt, for his unstinting support of my nonspecialist efforts to grapple with archaeological evidence; and to my supervisor, Donald Kagan, for encouraging a project with which he was not initially too sympathetic and for pushing me to produce a piece of work more compelling than I thought possible. Findings from the study have been presented in a variety of settings—conferences, workshops, symposia, and job talks—and all comments have been much appreciated. For invitations to participate in very lively symposia at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, I am especially grateful to Sara Fordyce and to Bob Wallace, my former teacher at Johns Hopkins, who µrst stirred my interest in Greek history. No one has done more to help ease the transition of this work from thesis to book than Kurt Raa×aub. It has beneµted immensely from his matchless judgment and knowledge. His generosity to younger colleagues is exemplary, and I thank him sincerely. Thanks, too, to the anonymous readers of the University of Michigan Press, for helping me to strengthen this book in numerous ways, and to the successive editors at the press, Ellen Bauerle and Collin Ganio, for their expertise and forbearance. Many have helped me with the burdensome task of assembling permissions, plans, and photographs for the illustrations, particularly Jan Jordan and Craig Mauzy at the Agora Excavations in Athens. More generally, among those who have taken an interest in my work over the years, I should

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acknowledge Michael Alexander, Ewan Anderson, Liam Anderson, Dave Berkey, John Camp, Jonathan Hall, James Hanley, Peter Jones, Phil Kaplan, Soo-Yeon Kim, Ann-Marie Knoblauch, Tom Marier, Nanno Marinatos, John Ramsey, P. J. Rhodes, Vasily Rudich, Sevi Triantaphyllou, and David West. The ultimate debt must always be to one’s family. My brothers, Linus and Jim, remain the best friends that one could imagine. Alpana, my wife, means more to me than I feel comfortable saying; without her sel×ess support and love in the latter stages, this book would not exist. It is dedicated with love and humble thanks to my parents, Sian and Ewan Anderson, who have given me so much for so long.

CONTENTS

List of Figures xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction 1

part 1  

political change

11

From City-State to Region-State 13 In Search of Popular Government 43

part 2  

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physical setting

85

The Agora: Showcase for a New Regime 87 The Acropolis: New Departures among Old Certainties 104

part 3

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imagined community



Tribes, Heroes, and the “Reuniµcation” of Attica 123  The New Order at War 147  The Festival of All the Athenians 158  Ritual Ties between Center and Periphery 178  Change and Memory 197 Conclusion 212 Notes 219 Bibliography Index 299 Plates 309

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LIST OF FIGURES

 Classical Athens  Attica  Find-spots of evidence for funerary kouroi and korai in Attica, ca. – B.C.  The “Anavyssos kouros,” ca.  B.C.  The system of demes, trittyes, and tribes after / B.C.  Peisistratid structures in the southwest corner of the Agora area  The “Old Agora” northeast of the Acropolis  Modiµcations to the west side of the Agora, ca.  B.C.  The Agora, ca.  B.C.  The Old Bouleuterion, ca.  B.C.  The Stoa Basileios, ca.  B.C.  Reconstructed pediments of the “Bluebeard temple,” ca.  B.C.  Temples on the mid-sixth-century Acropolis  The “Peplos” kore, ca.  B.C.  Plan of the Old Athena Temple, ca. – B.C.  Reconstruction of Gigantomachy pediment of Old Athena Temple, ca. – B.C.

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List of Figures

 Theseus and Prokrustes (?) from the Athenian Acropolis, ca. – B.C.  Theseus slays the Minotaur on black-µgure amphora, ca. – B.C.  Attic red-µgure cup showing six deeds of Theseus, ca. – B.C.  Theseus and the bull in a metope from the Athenian treasury at Delphi, ca.  B.C.  Pyrrhic dancer on a black-µgure pelike, ca.  B.C.  Apobate–s on a black-µgure lekythos, ca.  B.C.  Plan of the City Eleusinion with temple of Triptolemos (erected ca.  B.C.)  Telesteria at the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis  Triptolemos scene on a red-µgure hydria, ca. – B.C.  Statues of the Tyrannicides by Kritios and Nesiotes, / B.C.

ABBREVIATIONS

For ancient authors and their works, I generally used the abbreviations recommended in The Oxford Classical Dictionary3 (Oxford, ). The most notable exceptions follow. A. AP Diod. E. Harpoc. Hesych. Lyc. P. S.

Aeschylus [Aristotle] Athenaion politeia Diodorus Siculus Euripides Harpocration Hesychius Lycurgus Pindar Sophocles

Since this book covers quite a wide range of subject areas, I include the following comprehensive list of abbreviations for periodicals, works of reference, and museums. AA ABL ABV AC Acrop.

Archäologischer Anzeiger E. Haspels. Attic Black-Figured Lekythoi. Oxford, . J. D. Beazley. Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford, . L’Antiquité classique Acropolis Museum, Athens

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Agora AHB AJA AJAH AJP AM

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Abbreviations

Agora Museum, Athens Ancient History Bulletin American Journal of Archaeology American Journal of Ancient History American Journal of Philology Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung AntK Antike Kunst ArkhDelt Arkhaiologikon Deltion ArkhEph Arkhaiologike Ephemeris ARV  J. D. Beazley. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford, . AW Ancient World BCH Bulletin de correspondance hellénique BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies BM British Museum BSA Annual of the British School at Athens CA Classical Antiquity Cab. Méd. Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris CAH Cambridge Ancient History C&M Classica et Mediaevalia CJ Classical Journal CP Classical Philology CR Classical Review CW Classical World DABF J. D. Beazley. The Development of Attic Black Figure. Cambridge, . EM Epigraphic Museum, Athens FGrH F. Jacoby, ed. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and Leiden, –. GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Hesp. Hesperia Hist. Historia HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology HThR Harvard Theological Review IG Inscriptiones Graecae JdI Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae

Abbreviations

MEFR MH MM NM OpAth Para.

Philol. PMG P. Oxy. PP RA RE

REA REG RhM SEG TAPA TGF WS ZPE

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Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École française de Rome Museum Helveticum Metropolitan Museum, New York National Archaeological Museum, Athens Opuscula Atheniensia J. D. Beazley. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford, . Philologus D. L. Page, ed. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford, . Oxyrhynchus Papyri La parola del passato Revue archéologique A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, eds. Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart and Munich, –. Revue des études anciennes Revue des études grecques Rheinisches Museum für Philologie Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum Transactions of the American Philological Association B. Snell et al., eds. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta.  vols. Göttingen, –. Wiener Studien Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

INTRODUCTION

SINCE

THE VERY EARLIEST OF TIMES , the city of Athens and the surrounding region we know as Attica were locked in a seamless embrace of political and cultural communion (see µgs.  and ). Or so the Athenians themselves would like us to believe. Only rarely do we catch a glimpse of a slightly different reality, one of lingering local pride in the towns of the rural periphery, stirred apparently by memories of an erstwhile autonomy before all was forever subsumed within the polis of Athens. One such glimpse is afforded by Thucydides (.). After reminding us that the majority of the people in the Athenian polis in his own day lived outside Athens, he goes on to describe the feelings of this majority as they were forced to evacuate their homes and seek refuge within the city walls at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War just before the Spartans’ µrst invasion of Attica in  B.C.

They were heavyhearted and unhappy as they left the homes and the ancestral sanctuaries they had always possessed since the time of their self-government in days long past [ek te– s kata to arkhaion politeias] and prepared to change their whole way of life, each one thinking that he was forsaking nothing less than his own polis. Despite the enduring vitality of local forms of cultural expression in Attic towns and villages, it is highly unlikely that any developed form of self-gov-

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ernment had ever existed in the region outside Athens itself. There is no evidence that the strong particularist sentiments described by Thucydides actually posed a serious threat to the integrity of the polis at any time during the classical period.1 But it is still striking how little room there actually was for the expression of such sentiments in the public discourse of classical Athens. There was indeed no single ethnic noun to distinguish the totality of the region’s population from its urban minority. By a kind of metonymy, all were simply “Athenians” (Athe–naioi). This sublimation of the periphery to the center was also expressed in the ofµcial name given to the peninsula as a whole, the Attike– or Atthis ge–, meaning the “land belonging to the Athenians.” Thus, even if there was once a time when Athens did not control all of Attica, any possibility of a group identity for the rural majority that was not in some way deµned by their urban counterparts had been effectively erased from the language by the classical period. Linguistically and politically, the two were indissolubly fused. AN EXTRAORDINARY POLIS

This kind of fusion of urban and rural populations was hardly unusual in the Greek pattern of political development. But fusion on this scale was quite extraordinary. Most poleis were relatively simple, face-to-face communities. The average Greek state, it is reckoned, had only between four hundred and nine hundred male citizens living in a territory of µfty to one hundred square kilometers. The polis of the Athenians was as many as µfty times larger than the mean. On the eve of the Peloponnesian War, it had a total population of perhaps two hundred thousand, dispersed over an area of approximately , square kilometers, and a citizen body of around µfty thousand adult males, making it a different species of polity altogether. The Athenians clearly were not a face-to-face community in any conventional sense. Since they could never hope to meet or know more than a fraction of their fellows, theirs was necessarily an “imagined community.”2 Even among the leading city-states of the classical era (ca. –), Athens was exceptional. In terms of territory and population, it was roughly double the size of Corinth and four times larger than its neighbor Megara. The polis of Argos may have been more populous than both of these, but its territory was still relatively small, encompassing only those towns in and around the plain of Argos, like Nauplia and Mycenae. Sparta, meanwhile, never had more than ten thousand full citizens. Though it controlled a large portion of the southern Peloponnese (ca. , square kilometers) for much of the archaic and classical pe-

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riods, it needed coercion and a purpose-built military apparatus in order to do so. Boeotia (ca. , square kilometers), an area of comparable size to Attica, was home to a plurality of poleis. Despite the introduction of federal institutions in the s, relations between Thebes and the rest were rarely smooth. A degree of political unity was achieved for a period of around forty years in the fourth century, though even then, traditions of local autonomy inevitably prevented the Boeotians from enjoying the kind of easy corporate solidarity that the Athenians in Attica had long taken for granted. It is certainly possible that the population of Syracuse in Sicily surpassed that of Athens at the end of the µfth century, after the latter had suffered very heavy casualties in the Peloponnesian War. But by that point, the Syracusans’ sixty-year experiment with a form of democracy was over, supplanted by what would prove to be a fairly durable tyranny.3 That the Athenian political community was consistently larger and more dispersed than the citizen body of any other major state was remarkable enough. That the Athenian state was also more consistently and more radically democratic than any rival over a span of nearly two centuries, from the late sixth to the later fourth, was little short of astonishing. Only the Athenians, it seems, ever developed institutions that allowed citizens throughout an area the size of Attica to play a regular and meaningful role in the political and military life of their state. The result was not so much a city-state as a region-state, a polis without real parallel or precedent among its contemporaries. It surely was no accident that this extraordinary polity, with all the resources, human and natural, of an entire region at its disposal, came to leave a deeper stamp than any other on the political and cultural fabric of classical Greek antiquity. All of this raises an interesting question: If, as is generally believed, the state µrst acquired its anomalous scale fully two or more centuries before the classical era, why do we see so few signs of impending Athenian greatness in earlier times? This question has never been satisfactorily answered, and the ancients themselves have hardly encouraged us to ask it. The Athenians had absolute faith that theirs was a glorious history, one that stretched back all the way to the gilded age of Theseus, and beyond Theseus to days of snaky-tailed ancestor-kings who, the story goes, were born literally from the soil of Attica. Fortunately for Pericles and his µfth-century contemporaries, precious few documents had survived from earlier centuries to disavow them of these happy fancies. No less fortunately, such prominent nonAthenian authorities as Herodotus (e.g., .) and Plutarch (e.g., the Lives of Theseus and Solon) were content for the most part to take them at their word. For the realities of early Athenian history were a little less impressive. Down to the last decade of the sixth century, Athens was a city-state of modest—at

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times, even negligible—signiµcance. True, Attica was already widely recognized as a center of ceramic production, and µne sculpture could be seen in the region’s more important cemeteries and sanctuaries, commissioned by a relatively small, wealthy elite. But in  B.C., there were few buildings of any great distinction in Athens, and the city had produced only one writer of any real note, the lawgiver-cum-poet Solon. Athens was not yet a major force in interstate relations. Its involvements in external affairs were generally limited in scale and only local in their ambition—a squabble with Megara, a smaller neighbor to the west, over the island of Salamis may have lasted for as long as a century. And the state seems to have been chronically vulnerable to threats from without. A series of insurgents, from Cylon in the s to the Spartan king Cleomenes in /, were all able to take the Acropolis with disconcerting ease. This military vulnerability was compounded by a domestic political situation that was only µtfully stable at best. However sophisticated the state apparatus bequeathed by Solon in the early sixth century, the operations of its institutions are almost entirely invisible in the events of subsequent decades. Public life down to  was little more than a loosely regulated arena in which a highly personalized contest for power was waged by the dominant families and individuals of the day. Theirs are the voices we hear time and again on the grander grave monuments and on the more opulent dedications that then littered the Acropolis. Of the single collective voice of the demos, so well known to us from countless classical monuments and inscriptions, we hear not yet a trace. If we then fast forward a mere twenty years, to , things begin to look quite different. We see an assembly of Athenian citizens dispatching some ten thousand hoplites to confront a much larger force of Persians at Marathon on the Attic coast, where a stunning victory is achieved. Only ten years later, an Athenian navy, the largest in Greece, helps to turn the tide of Xerxes’ invasion at Salamis. Leadership of a huge alliance of Greek states follows, then imperial hegemony over much of the Aegean basin. From the revenues of empire, a building program of unprecedented extravagance is initiated, and fully half of the citizen body, we hear, is employed in the service of the state.4 By , only the Spartans come close to rivaling the military capability of the Athenians, and Athens is unchallenged as the cultural capital of the Greek world, a status it will not relinquish until the rise of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Why then did Athens emerge so rapidly as a major Hellenic power in the µrst half of the µfth century? Why did this not happen sooner? To answer these questions, I believe we need to look more closely at domestic developments in the years between the fall of the Peisistratid “tyrants” in / and the battle of

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Marathon. Invoking the name of the man responsible for the most signiµcant of these developments—a program of political reforms—we might refer to this time frame, purely for convenience, as the age of Cleisthenes. Specialists working in a number of different areas are increasingly inclined to see this as a time of comprehensive change, both within and beyond the realm of the political process. Yet more than thirty years have passed since the publication of the last monograph in English on any aspect of the period. Clearly, there is a pressing need for an up-to-date synoptic analysis that examines all of the evidence, written and material, for innovation during this era. The present study is intended to µll that gap. Its ultimate purpose is to show how the many changes implemented during the age of Cleisthenes would profoundly alter the course of Athenian history.5 THE ARGUMENT

The book begins by suggesting that the late rise of Athens to Panhellenic prominence may not be so surprising after all. There is a very good reason why Athenian power and in×uence were not commensurate with the size of the population and territory of Attica in the years before  B.C.: the incorporation of the region into the polis of Athens had not yet been fully accomplished. Only in /, with the passage of Cleisthenes’ political reforms, did a uniµed Attica become a functional reality. At this point, for the µrst time, mechanisms were created that made it possible and even obligatory for indigenous adult males throughout the peninsula to enroll as citizens of Athens and play a regular part in the political and military life of the Athenian state. In other words, only in the last decade of the sixth century did Athens begin to operate effectively as a region-state and command the kind of resources that would allow it to exert so heavy an in×uence on Greek politics and culture in the years to come. I then go on to show how Cleisthenes’ landmark reforms precipitated a whole series of innovations elsewhere in the life of the polis during the years –, all of them re×ecting or reinforcing in some way the new political realities. From military organization to ritual practice, from physical environment to the more intangible realms of collective memory and identity, almost no area of public interest or signiµcance was left untouched by this wave of change and renewal. The process of transformation, I argue, is perhaps best understood as a bold exercise in social engineering, an experiment designed to bring together the diverse and far-×ung inhabitants of an entire region and forge them into a single, self-governing political community of like-minded

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individuals. The immediate aim was to correct the political instability and the military vulnerability of earlier times. The result was the creation of a new order, a citizen state on a scale previously unimaginable. This book is divided into three parts. The µrst part subjects the contents of Cleisthenes’ reforms to a thorough reexamination and offers a new reading of their historical signiµcance. Here, for convenience, those measures that were designed to facilitate the political incorporation of Attica (chap. ) are treated separately from those that primarily concerned the institutions of the central government in Athens (chap. ). I then turn to look at efforts to adapt the city’s primary public spaces to the needs of the new order. It appears that Athens was witness to a major program of construction during the age of Cleisthenes, and the evidence for it is discussed in some detail in part  of the book. Particular attention is paid to the various new buildings and commemorative monuments that were then erected in the Agora area (chap. ) and on the Acropolis (chap. ) and to the ways in which the existing fabric of these two sites was modiµed to provide a suitable setting for the new arrivals. In the third and µnal part of this study, the focus is broadened further still to cover innovations in other areas of public life. A diverse range of new initiatives are analyzed, the most important of which are: the creation of Eponymous Heroes for the ten new tribes and the promotion of Theseus as a founding father of the Athenian state (chap. ); the institution of procedures for levying a new citizen army and the development of media for commemorating death and victory in its battles (chap. ); the invention or reinvention of major “national” festivals (chaps. –); and the commemoration of Harmodius and Aristogeiton as “tyrannicides” (chap. ).6 Due attention is also paid to the prehistory or possible prehistory of all of the developments addressed in the book. Almost every one of these innovations has at some point been assigned by at least one authority to an earlier era, usually to the eras associated with Solon and the Peisistratid “tyrants.” In some cases, the developments were indeed prepared or anticipated before the late sixth century, even if their form and function changed signiµcantly after /. In others, the higher date, however conventional, is founded on no more than supposition and/or excessive faith in the value of our ancient literary sources. In all cases, the evidence for the higher date is considered carefully and, I hope, fairly. METHOD AND APPROACH

Any work on the politics and culture of – B.C. must confront a formidable array of methodological problems. Many pieces are missing from the puzzle and will most likely remain so. My efforts to plug the gaps necessarily in-

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volve working assumptions, inferences, and suppositions that might not be shared by others. With this in mind, a few words on method seem appropriate. The book does not consciously follow the prescriptions of any one particular approach or “school.” Nor is it driven by any larger theoretical agenda. Rather, it aims to combine the kind of inquiry one µnds in conventional political histories with the more contemporary preoccupations of cultural history. Hopefully, it has some of the virtues of both approaches. Like much recent work on ancient history, the book makes extensive use of archaeological evidence. Here, this is not just a point of principle but an absolute necessity. The literary sources for sixth-century Athens are not especially abundant or informative. Nor are they consistently reliable. For reasons that will be made clear in the chapters to come, scholars studying this period have in general put greater trust in the historical accounts of ancient writers than those accounts probably deserve. Through judicious use of the material record, we can not only form a clearer picture of the cultural milieu in which political events took place but also, in some cases, compensate for the misapprehensions and anachronisms found so often in the ancient texts. Of course, archaeological testimony presents its own problems, not the least of which is dating. In that area, I depend largely on the published opinions of others; the alternative course would all too easily invite suspicions of prejudice and parti pris. But the dates of a number of the items discussed remain controversial, and I am all too aware that claims advanced on such evidence must be expressed with due caution. This book also has much in common with recent work on ancient cultural history. Though I have taken some pains to recover the objective details of change in Athens during the age of Cleisthenes, I am also just as interested in exploring the ideological dimensions of this change and the contemporary mentalité. By and large, historians to date have been content to view the outcome of Cleisthenes’ political reforms as a relatively straightforward constitutional change, usually “the birth of democracy.” But as I try to show, the animating spirit here was more collectivist than egalitarian, and the shift to a more popular form of government was ultimately only one part of a larger, more ambitious experiment in community building. To have any hope of success, the authors of this project needed to do more than reform institutions. They had to address the values and attitudes of the people of Attica and try to refashion allegiances and identities. Thus, as we study the innovations that comprised the Athenian experiment, it becomes clear that the perception of change was every bit as important as its reality. Of course, at this distance we cannot hope to enter the minds

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of ordinary men and women and see the new order through their eyes. Even if all signs indicate that they responded positively to the transformation, their exact perceptions must remain largely a mystery. But we are in a good position to know how this transformation was represented to them, that is, how leaders intended the new order to be perceived. This is an ongoing concern in parts  and , where the focus shifts toward the analysis of architecture, imagery, verse inscriptions, mythical traditions, and the like. As I shall show, it is precisely in the area of representation that we can µnd plausible answers to two fundamental and related questions: why was there apparently such a high level of consent for so radical a break with the past and why, after the failure of Isagoras’s brief coup attempt, was the legitimacy of the new order never seriously challenged? Yet despite this book’s modish interest in issues like identity and memory, its approach to the larger issue of historical causation might seem distinctly unfashionable. To explain what happened in Athens between  and , I have generally looked more to the designs and actions of human agents than to the impersonal, environmental, or structural forces of the longue durée.7 The preference here is not dogmatic; there is no single correct way to explain a complex historical change. “People make their own history, but they do not do it under circumstances of their own choosing.”8 Historians may choose to look either at the how those circumstances were shaped or at the human response to those circumstances. Both approaches are equally valid, even essential if a given change is to be fully understood. The present study follows the latter course because the transformation in question seems to have been unusually abrupt and because detailed analysis of contemporary innovations can provide much new information about the nature of the change. From this close remove, it would, I think, be deeply unsatisfying to attribute any individual initiative to some kind of abstract structural predetermination. The study of long-term environmental conditions may help to explain why a major politico-cultural transformation was possible in Athens in / B.C., but it cannot in itself account for a speciµc initiative like the commemoration of the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, or for the extreme artiµce of the new system of demes, tribes, and trittyes. These and all the other developments of the era were part of a highly creative and fundamentally unpredictable response to a given situation. To explain the logic or rationale behind them, we must consider the conscious aims and decisions of interested actors—albeit actors who were products of their society and who were operating within the constraints of a particular set of circumstances.

Introduction

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9

Even more unfashionable, the aims and decisions that this book seeks to recover are generally those of elite political leaders. Again, this choice is not dogmatic, and it certainly does not imply the endorsement of any naive or antediluvian “Great Man” approach to history. Rather, the preference for seeing the decision-making process as working in a “top-down” rather than a “bottom-up” direction is based on the contents of the political reforms themselves, which do not look like the spontaneous products of any revolutionary mass fervor. It is also based on what I believe to be a realistic assessment of how new initiatives are likely to have been conceived and implemented under the new order. Even if some innovations required the formal approval of a majority of citizens in the Assembly, they would still have been essentially elite initiatives, framed as proposals, amendments, or riders by those with the interest or capacity to do so. It would be facile to ignore the key role played by ordinary Athenians—as voters and, ultimately, as soldiers—in the establishment of the new order in /. But it would be equally facile to imagine that the masses were in any meaningful sense responsible for, say, the choice of the architectural idioms used in the Agora or the design of the pedimental schemes that adorned the Old Athena Temple.9 That said, I am not suggesting that the Athenians were duped or forced by their leaders into accepting the many changes of the era. Nor am I suggesting that we should see as crude propaganda the means used by these leaders to reshape beliefs and attitudes. As far as we can tell, the new order was broadly welcomed by the citizen body. And if we can at times detect attempts to manipulate perceptions of a changing reality, we can only imagine that most Athenians were all too willing to suspend their disbelief. Identifying the individuals who actually were responsible for the style and content of the new order is still no easy matter. If our main sources are to be believed, Cleisthenes himself was ultimately responsible for the political reforms and the creation of the Eponymous Heroes, though he was presumably aided here by a circle of associates, a group that must have included his kinsman Alcmeon, who would become archon in /. Beyond this, nothing is certain. The little we know about Cleisthenes could be summarized in a single paragraph. We have no record of any speeches he gave; know nothing of his character, personality, or appearance; and cannot be sure how or even when he died.10 Nor do we have anything more than a vague idea about the political scene in Athens between  and . However, given the obvious thematic links between the political reforms and the various other innovations in public life, it seems reasonable to infer that all were framed and implemented by

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Cleisthenes and/or members of his circle and/or their like-minded successors. The evidence may not point to the existence of a single master plan or grand design hatched back in /, but it does encourage us to view the many initiatives of this period as contributions to a single process of transformation, an ongoing experiment that lasted for the better part of two decades. Whatever the validity of the approach to causation favored here, this work hardly claims to have exhausted the issue. The book is simply intended to add some new brush strokes to an ever richer picture of change in late archaic Athens, a picture that must ultimately be composed from multiple different perspectives. Finally, I should make some mention of what is without question the single most important in×uence on the ideas and arguments presented in this study, namely, the specialist literature on modern nation formation. Whether written from the perspective of history, sociology, political science, or cultural studies, this literature offers the student of late archaic and classical Athens a wealth of comparative data on the building of complex citizen states. I have found especially useful its treatment of issues like political identity formation, the construction of public memory, and the relations between state and political community. Some no doubt would consider the parallels here self-evident, while others would µnd even the suggestion of such to be horrifyingly anachronistic. Either way, I stress that this is not intended to be a comparative work and that none of its arguments depend on the viability of any national model. Parallels are discussed explicitly only at the very end of the book, even if their unseen presence may be felt at various points throughout the text.

1 FROM CIT Y-STATE TO REGION-STATE

What exactly do we mean when we say that Attica in the classical period was politically “incorporated” or “uniµed”? If, for the purposes of analysis, we unpack the idea of the polis, we can distinguish three essential levels or sources of political unity in the Attic peninsula. First and most fundamental, the reach of Athenian state institutions extended to the territorial limits of Attica, and this apparatus was recognized as the ultimate locus of political authority for the entire region. Second, all free, native-born, adult males in Attica were eligible to become citizens of Athens, entitling them—even obliging them—to participate in the civil, military, and religious life of the polis. From / on, enrollment took place locally in one of  town and village units, or demes, scattered throughout the peninsula and was administered by one’s fellow demesmen. Third, despite the unusually large size of the polis, citizens appear to have been bound to one another by a powerful and at times distinctly chauvinistic form of collective consciousness or identity. Each citizen was encouraged to imagine himself a member of a single, extended, undifferentiated community of “Athenians,” sharing with his fellows a common history, culture, and destiny that set them apart from all other such communities. For most modern authorities, these distinctions will seem artiµcial and perhaps anachronistic, since it is widely felt that, unlike the nation-states of our own times, the Greek polis in general and the Athenian instance in particular 13

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represent an almost inseparable union of territorial state and citizen body. In this view, the Athenian “state” was in effect no more and no less than the sum of the individuals entitled to share in its administration, and thus its territorial reach cannot meaningfully be distinguished from the geographical spread of those who enjoyed the rights of full citizen membership.1 If this is correct, it should follow that the uniµcation of Attica by Athens was accomplished not so much by extending the reach of impersonal institutions but by admitting an ever wider portion of the region’s population to the Athenian citizen community. In other words, uniµcation must have been realized simultaneously on the µrst two levels identiµed. Was this in fact the case? Or did the institutional incorporation of the region actually precede the enrollment of individuals from all parts of Attica as citizens? Whatever the answer might be, most would accept that uniµcation on the third level, which required transformation not of institutions but of human minds and emotions, would have been somewhat more problematic and cannot be assumed to have taken place simultaneously with the admission of all eligible males to citizenship. For this reason alone, we should not expect to µnd that the full political incorporation of Attica was accomplished overnight in a single transformative instant. When, then, was the critical step taken to extend the reach of Athenian laws and institutions to the limits of Attica? At what point were inhabitants of the periphery µrst routinely enrolled as full citizens of Athens? And since the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens in Greek antiquity are sadly now all but inaccessible to us, when do we µnd the µrst conscious attempts to encourage these individuals to share in a speciµcally Athenian form of political identity? Given the enormous impact of the incorporation of Attica on the historical destiny of Athens, it is clearly of some considerable interest to us to know how and when the remarkable region-state we see in classical times µrst came into being. VIEWS ANCIENT AND MODERN

Ancient authors do not distinguish different stages in the uniµcation process but, rather, see it as a single act of institutional centralization, or “synoecism” (sunoikismos). From Thucydides (.) on, they are unanimous that this synoecism was accomplished by royal µat of the legendary king Theseus, long before the eras of Solon, Peisistratus, and Cleisthenes. Perhaps in×uenced by the seeming antiquity of this tradition, modern observers generally view political relations between Athens and Attica in the historical period as unproblematic. Most suppose that the process of incorporation must have been completed by

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the end of the Dark Age (ca. –), while some scholarship would place the development as far back as the Mycenean period (ca. –).2 There are three a priori reasons for questioning these reconstructions. First, such an overtly political construct as the Thesean synoecism tradition surely arose at a time when the full subsumption of Attica into the polis of Athens was not yet taken for granted. As a clear attempt to naturalize this process, the tradition presupposes a level of political self-consciousness that seems wholly out of place in the eighth or any earlier century. If, as now seems possible, the tradition was not invented until the last decade of the sixth century, we would have good reason to doubt the purported antiquity of the historical uniµcation of Attica.3 Second, as I have already mentioned, we might legitimately expect that a united polis in Attica could draw on sufµcient manpower to make it an assertive—even dominant—force in Greek affairs of the archaic period (ca. –). Yet it is generally agreed that before ca.  B.C., Athens was relatively insigniµcant on the wider stage. Even down to the end of the Peisistratid period (ca. /–/), Athenian military ventures were essentially limited and ad hoc in nature and, as Frost () has shown, probably did not involve anything we could call a regular citizen army. Around the beginning of the sixth century, the Athenians were still in a position to lose to a much smaller rival like Megara in their contest for control over the adjacent island of Salamis. At the same time, they were manifestly vulnerable to hostile insurgency from within and without: Cylon in the s, Peisistratus in the late s and mids, and Cleomenes in / all managed to storm the citadel of Athens with quite astonishing ease. Although the forces of Cylon and Cleomenes were soon overcome, in none of the four cases of insurgence do we get any impression that the Athenians had regular mechanisms in place for defending themselves against internal or external aggression.4 Some may seek to explain these shortcomings by claiming that the Athenians of the archaic period, already possessing more extensive farmlands than most other Greeks, had little to gain by expanding elsewhere and thus no need for organized military force. But this idea is belied both by the turmoil experienced during the era of Solon (archon in /), which seems to have been precipitated by what Manville (, ) has termed an “agrarian crisis,” and by the nature of sixth-century military operations abroad, most of which, as Frost (loc. cit.) has shown, were driven by a demand for land. Alternatively, it might be suggested that the political instability that plagued Athens from the later seventh to the late sixth century effectively hindered the state from realizing its full military potential. This is certainly a more compelling idea, though

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it is still insufµcient in itself to explain why there seems not to be a single moment during this entire period when the power of the Athenian state is commensurate with its size. In the end, if the archaic Athenians were so unable or unwilling to translate the unusually large human resources at their disposal into a concrete military advantage, one is left to ponder what exactly a prehistoric synoecism would have involved and why it was even undertaken in the µrst place. Evidently, it was not about the creation of citizen soldiers. Third, in the late sixth century, we see the implementation of a series of measures that seem expressly designed to ensure that constituents in all parts of Attica were full and equal members of the Athenian political community. The reforms of Cleisthenes the Alcmeonid in / included not only the introduction of a procedure for enrolling new Athenian citizens in local units, or demes, scattered throughout the peninsula but also the creation of new mechanisms—in the form of ten highly artiµcial phylai, or “tribes”—that were calculated to encourage region-wide participation in the political, military, and ceremonial life of the polis. Again, if there was still a need for such institutions at this very late stage, one is reasonably entitled to wonder what the purported prehistoric synoecism had actually accomplished. There are, as we shall see, a number of other, more concrete reasons for believing that the synoecism of Attica was not fully accomplished before the late archaic period. The story of uniµcation turns out to be a good deal more complex than is generally supposed. THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL UNION

Certain factors made the evolution of a fully integrated region-state more likely in Attica than elsewhere in Greece. Though the failure of any rival state to emerge in the peninsula is hardly proof that the process of uniµcation was completed sometime during the prehistoric era, it clearly helps to explain how such a process was ever feasible. Moreover, the region does appear to have enjoyed a certain level of cultural homogeneity from the very earliest periods, and we can only suppose that intercourse of various kinds between the center and the periphery was regular and frequent from the time that Athens µrst acquired a preeminence in the peninsula. That said, the full incorporation of the entire region within a single polis structure was hardly a natural or inevitable development. At least four major impediments had to be overcome in the process. The µrst and most straightforward of these was size. As noted earlier, no other polis ever developed durable institutions capable of embracing a citizen community on this scale.

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The majority of the population lived outside Athens itself, some perhaps as far away as a two-day journey. We cannot be surprised when Thucydides (..) tells us that individual citizens would have been unacquainted with most of their fellows. The citizen body was too large, it seems, for a plenary gathering to have been considered feasible; at least, we do not know of a single occasion when such a gathering took place. The style of collective consciousness that prevailed among this group was therefore necessarily that of an “imagined community,” and such a consciousness can hardly have arisen spontaneously. Like modern national consciousness, it must have been carefully constructed and cultivated from the center before it could take on a life of its own.5 A second impediment was topography (see µg. ). The uniµcation of this peninsular region, separated as it was from its neighbors to the north and northwest by Mounts Parnes and Cithaeron, may seem, with hindsight, to have been inevitable. Yet the internal topography of Attica was less conducive to this process than was the topography of several regions that never attained the same degree of political integration. As Andrewes (, ) comments: A unitary state the size of Attica is not normal in the Greek pattern of settlement, even when there was no division of race: Boeotians, Arcadians and Thessalians were conscious enough of racial unity, but did not unite in the Attic manner. The three plains of Attica are separated by barriers, easily surmounted but more marked than any in the Boeotian plain, or the plain of eastern Arcadia, and they could well have supported three or more independent states in a loose union or none at all. A third impediment was the fact that rural Attica was not “virgin” territory. For the Athenian state to exert full control over this land, it had to eclipse the in×uence of numerous networks of authority and dependency that had long prevailed in the region’s periphery. Our knowledge of these networks is very limited. But most accept that there is some truth in the brief sketch of pre-sixthcentury Attic society in the Aristotelian Athenaion politeia, or Constitution of the Athenians (henceforth AP). That work describes a largely agrarian population, the majority of which depended to varying degrees—both economically and in the broadest sense politically—on a small landowning class (AP .).6 Reinforcing these local hierarchies were a range of socioreligious organizations, chief among them being the phratries. These entities were typically dominated by in×uential clans, all of which appear to have used claims of kinship— whether real or µctive—to sanction existing power relations between themselves, their retainers, and their particular locality. Given these strong per-

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sonal bonds between local elites and nonelites in archaic rural Attica, it seems far from likely that the latter would have automatically looked to state institutions in Athens to resolve major issues affecting their daily lives. As for the four so-called Ionian tribes that preceded the ten Cleisthenic phylai, we can only speculate about the role they might have played in early Attic society. But it seems safe to infer from the fact of their replacement in / that this role was not conducive to the region’s uniµcation and most probably hindered it.7 Finally, if the size of the region did little to help the formation of a collective identity among Attica’s inhabitants, the existence of deep-rooted particularist sentiment in rural localities may actively have impeded the process. Granted, some broad homogeneity of material culture, dialect, values, and practice had probably long prevailed in Attica. But such empirical commonalities could not in themselves be relied on to forge a self-consciously held, speciµcally Athenian identity—still less to inspire feelings of loyalty to or a willingness to die for a larger collective cause. We certainly cannot assume that the inhabitants of, for example, Aphidna, Brauron, and Anaphlystos would automatically have thought of themselves as members of a single extended political community, let alone as “Athenians.” As late as the classical era, we can still µnd evidence for strong feelings of cultural particularism in different parts of Attica, even some lingering traces of ethnic distinctions within the population as a whole. This evidence has been discussed in a stimulating essay by Connor ().8 His conclusion () bears repeating. Being an Athenian was not the automatic result of being born into a society in which all of the members shared the same genetic and cultural inheritances. Civic identity could not be taken for granted; it had to be constructed and reconstructed in each generation by shared myths, by participation in cults, festivals and ceremonies, and by elaborate techniques of “mixing.” In sum, the incorporation of this diverse, dispersed, and anomalously large population into a single cohesive political unit, more region-state than citystate, was hardly a foregone conclusion. The process would have required not only a conscious effort on the part of those in power in the city but also, one suspects, a state apparatus of unprecedented sophistication. What evidence do we have, then, that the early Athenian state was willing or able to extend its administrative reach to the physical limits of Attica?

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THE REACH OF THE EARLY ATHENIAN STATE

Even if the lords of Mycenean Athens did establish and rule over a uniµed kingdom in Attica, there is little chance that this unity survived the transition to the Dark Age. With the collapse of the hierarchies of political authority and economic exploitation that would have sustained this kingdom, society in Attica, as elsewhere in Greece, appears to have become heavily decentralized and localized. The region is, however, believed to have experienced a marked increase in population and settlement during the µrst three centuries of the µrst millennium B.C. Working from contemporary archaeological evidence, a number of authorities would like to relate this growth to an “internal colonization” of Attica by the Athenian state, a policy that, it is claimed, brought about full political uniµcation by ca.  B.C.9 In support of this case, some scholars would point to evidence for homogeneity of material culture in the region, seeing, for example, the tenth-century spread of Protogeometric pottery throughout Attica as an index of advancing Athenian hegemony. Other suggested epiphenomena of colonization include a sudden increase in the value of Attic grave deposits in the ninth century and the establishment of cults in Mycenean tombs at Eleusis, Thorikos, Menidi, and Aliki Glyphadas in the eighth century. Still other scholars would see the hand of an expansionist Athenian state behind the ninth-century opening of silver seams at Thorikos and the eighth-century foundation of sanctuaries at Eleusis, Brauron, and the Academy.10 There can be little doubt that rural Attica experienced considerable migration from elsewhere during the course of the Dark Age, and it is not unlikely that some of these immigrants came from Athens itself. But the colonization hypothesis cannot inspire great conµdence as long as it requires us to overlook a number of troubling and currently unanswerable questions. For example, how can we tell from the archaeological record whether, say, the sanctuaries at Eleusis or Brauron were initiatives of national or merely local signiµcance? After all, these and other suggested symptoms of colonization, such as the tomb cults, could easily be explained without reference to any larger pan-Attic scenario. It is just as likely, if not more so, that they re×ect the efforts of an emerging rural aristocracy to express their elite credentials within their own immediate localities. And even if the agents concerned were actually Athenians, how can we distinguish archaeologically between initiatives driven by the private interests of an in×uential family and those representing the public interest of an Athenian state? It is difµcult enough to make this distinction in

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the sixth century, where we have little evidence for genuinely “public” initiatives before  B.C., so how can we hope to make this distinction with any conµdence in the eighth century?11 Besides, at a time when hard evidence even for settlement in Athens is difµcult enough to come by, what would an Athenian “state” actually have looked like? Was it already the relatively mature, self-reproducing organism we µrst see clearly in the later seventh century? In other words, was Athens now governed by nine annually elected archons and a deliberative body known as the Areopagus Council, made up of ex-archons? Or was this state still no more than a preinstitutional ad hoc coalition of ruling elites whose “interests” were indistinguishable from those of the dominant family at any given time? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between these two poles, though we can hardly know exactly where. Either way, there is no evidence whatsoever for the kind of binding and durable institutional ties between the center and the periphery that might allow us to speak meaningfully of political “uniµcation.” We should seriously doubt whether the state was yet capable of developing the political mechanisms necessary to overcome the various impediments discussed above and sustain stable, lasting control over an area the size of Attica.12 In sum, the colonization hypothesis rests on a whole series of questionable assumptions about the larger sociopolitical environment in Dark Age Attica. The hypothesis would gain considerable weight if we had evidence from the seventh or early sixth century indicating that a uniµed Attica was already a µrmly established political reality. But this is hardly the case. As we enter the archaic period, the likelihood of uniµcation actually seems to recede. So marked is the decline in settlements, cemeteries, and sanctuary activity in seventh-century Athens and Attica that some now seriously doubt whether any kind of developed state apparatus could have existed in Athens at this time, let alone one capable of governing an entire region.13 I am inclined to agree with two recent studies which suggest that a systematic political incorporation of Attica could not have been attempted much before the later seventh century, a time when the µrst secure traces of state institutions in Athens begin to emerge from the shadows of prehistory.14 Before this point, as Manville (, ) observes, the reach of the state in Attica was probably very limited and ill deµned. [T]here is no reason to believe that [the] state had yet established for itself clear territorial boundaries. No traces of these survive from very early times, and . . . one cannot assume that the recognised frontiers of a later age had existed from time immemorial.

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Manville argues that the existence of such boundaries are µrst attested in a clause of Draco’s homicide legislation, conventionally dated to the late s. We µnd there not only a reference to “frontier markets” but also what seems to be our earliest evidence for the term “Athenian” (Athe–naios) as a recognized legal category. For Manville, this evidence marks the emergence of a new selfawareness among the Athenians—an awareness that they formed a community with legally enforceable social and territorial limits. This judgment may well be correct.15 But unfortunately for our purposes, the clause does not state explicitly where these territorial limits actually lay at this time, and we still cannot assume they yet encompassed the entire peninsula of Attica.16 We confront a similar problem with the evidence from the Solonian era. As Manville (, esp. –) has well shown, this period almost certainly saw further attempts to clarify the nature and composition of the Athenian political community, allowing us perhaps for the µrst time to speak of a formally deµned concept of “citizenship.” But we know all too little about enrollment procedures at this time, and the consensus view that this citizen body already included individuals from all over Attica is no more than an assumption, for which there is no conclusive support either in Solon’s poems or in ancient accounts of his various laws and reforms.17 We also cannot µnd there any evidence for new institutions or administrative mechanisms that were obviously designed to extend the reach of the Athenian state in the peninsula. It might be claimed, by analogy with the later Council of , that Solon’s Council of  was a “national” institution in this sense, drawing delegates from all over Attica to prepare the agenda for the citizen Assembly. But we know far too little about this body to make any such claim, and even its very existence is a matter of some reasonable doubt, as we will see in chapter .18 I am not suggesting that Attic localities possessed their own developed forms of self-government. There was by now probably a kind of de facto Athenian hegemony in the region, leaving no room for any rival state to emerge. Such species of authority as did exist in the towns and villages would have remained prepolitical in the strictest sense. I also am not suggesting that relations between the center and the periphery were in any sense hostile. Contact between the two was presumably regular and frequent, and wealthy Athenians may well have possessed landholdings in the countryside. But peaceful—even productive—coexistence between urban and rural areas is one thing; complete institutional fusion of the two into a single political entity, especially one of such wholly anomalous size, is quite another. There is no good reason to suppose that areas that lay much beyond the plain of Athens were fully incorporated into the Athenian polis by the early sixth century.19

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THE PEISISTRATIDS AND ATTICA

The very earliest evidence we have for initiatives designed to establish formal institutional links between the center and the periphery comes from the period when Athens was under the stewardship of Peisistratus (ca. /–/) and his sons Hippias and Hipparchus (ca. /–/). Even these initiatives appear somewhat unsystematic and limited in ambition, illustrating the sheer practical difµculty of extending the reach of the state at this time. From AP (.), we learn that Peisistratus himself used to go “into the country” [eis te–n kho– ran] to resolve legal disputes in person and that he sent handpicked magistrates to serve as “jurors among the villages” [kata dêmous . . . dikastas]. Then, in the last quarter of the sixth century, sometime between the late s and his assassination in , Hipparchus set up along the roads of Attica a series of milestones in the form of herms. Each one of these “Hipparchan herms” (Hipparkheioi Hermai) was intended to mark the halfway point between towns and villages in the periphery and the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora, a monument recently erected by Peisistratus the younger to serve as the new symbolic center of the city. The one extant herm, found near modern Koropi, marks the midpoint between Athens and the village of Kephale in southern Attica, implying that the new milestones covered the region fairly comprehensively.20 It is also quite widely suggested that the Peisistratids used national cults and festivals—notably the Great Panathenaia, the City Dionysia, the Brauronia, and the Eleusinian Mysteries—to establish ritual or symbolic links between the city and surrounding areas. While, as we shall see in the chapters to come, the majority of the proposed ceremonial developments should probably be dated to the later sixth or early µfth centuries, a more modest Peisistratid Religionspolitik along these lines is certainly possible.21 Many interpret these various political and cultural initiatives as attempts to reinforce a preexisting state of unity within Attica, though few scholars have asked why there was any need for such reinforcement at this particular time. In view of the absence of any concrete evidence from earlier periods for the creation of enduring institutional links between the center and the periphery, it is certainly worth considering the possibility that these were in fact among the very µrst tentative steps taken in this direction. Since all of our sources maintain that Peisistratus worked within the established framework of Athenian government, we can only presume that he devised such institutions as the “jurors among the villages” because no such outreach mechanisms existed from earlier times. As things stand, we have no way of knowing how successful the

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Peisistratids were in furthering the de jure uniµcation of Attica by these means, but it seems fair to conclude that their efforts represent a formative, rather than an advanced, stage in the process. Whatever the Peisistratids accomplished in this area, the kind of initiatives with which they are credited do not appear to have included any regular means for admitting individuals from the periphery into Athenian citizenship. Any uniµcation that occurred would have been imposed from above, without any corresponding expansion of the political community. Nor is there any serious likelihood that this or any earlier era saw a signiµcant growth in what we might call a “civic consciousness,” or a shared Athenian identity, among people in all parts of Attica. To begin with, the Peisistratids conspicuously refrained from constructing a distinctively Athenian identity for themselves, let alone for others. In claiming a prestigious descent from the Neleids, the royal family of Pylos, they were comfortable presenting themselves as non-Athenians, and they seem to have shown a marked preference for symbolic association with the Panhellenic Heracles over the local hero Theseus. More importantly, it is expecting far too much of the Peisistratids to imagine that they would ever have pursued the long-term interests of the Athenian state at the expense of their own immediate private interests and their own highly personalized form of authority. Since their interests evidently did not include developing a citizen army or advancing the cause of popular government, they would have had no incentive whatsoever to build a new style of thought around such ideals as political equality, popular sovereignty, and self-determination, the hallmarks of Athenian identity in the classical era.22 New festivals, symbols, and the like may have stirred some rather vague and limited collective imaginings among the people of Athens and Attica during the Peisistratid period. But without any distinctively Athenian coloring or meaningful political content, these imaginings can hardly have amounted to any kind of shared “civic consciousness.” The process of constructing a shared form of political identity in Attica, one that would bind together the inhabitants of the entire region into an imagined community of “Athenians,” must have been still very far from completion. The evidence discussed so far may not be decisive, but it should be sufµcient to cast some doubt on the widely held view that the synoecism of Attica was accomplished long before the classical period. At most, we see only very modest and piecemeal efforts in this direction during the Peisistratid era. That said, the case depends heavily on arguments from silence and on interpretations of texts and materials that could conceivably be read otherwise. But it would obviously

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gain considerable strength if we had some more positive evidence from the years down to  that parts of Attica still lay beyond the effective reach of the Athenian polis. We will now look at three items or bodies of evidence—all relating to the sixth century—that may well support this conclusion. THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL UNION: EVIDENCE FROM THE SIXTH CENTURY

The µrst and most straightforward of these items is a brief inscription on a grave monument set up some thirty or forty years after Solon’s reforms, on the road between Athens and Acharnae. In standard fashion, the epitaph enjoins the passerby to mourn the deceased—in this case, one Tettikhos. What may be revealing here is the choice of language used for the appeal, since it imagines the wayfarer to be either “a man of the city” [astos] or “an outsider” [xenos]. As Frost (, ) points out the location of the tomb on a local road out of Athens rather than on a major thoroughfare out of the region as a whole indicates that the category xenos here must include inhabitants of rural Attica as well as “foreigners” from outside the peninsula. If so, the fact that mid-sixth-century Athenians still thought of their rural neighbors as “outsiders” hardly suggests that the latter were yet considered full members of the citizen community.23 Signs of a striking discrepancy in funerary behavior between the center and the periphery during the sixth century may also re×ect contemporary political relations between the two areas. Of the various kinds of burial marker used in Athens and Attica, grave stelai by far were the most common at all times during this century in all parts of the peninsula. Not surprisingly, use of the expensive kouros and kore statues in this function was considerably less frequent. But what is perhaps surprising is the very uneven distribution of these statues between city and rural cemeteries over the course of the century. In Athens itself, we have good evidence for the use of kouroi in funerary contexts at the end of the seventh century and in the early years of the sixth century.24 But these burial markers seem to disappear abruptly from city cemeteries during ca. – B.C. Although numerous grave stelai from this same period have been recovered from the Kerameikos area alone, not a single certain funerary kouros or kore from these years has been found in any part of Athens.25 And of the even more numerous grave monument bases from the period that were discovered in the city, only two look likely to have supported a kouros or kore, and both of these date toward the very end of the time frame concerned.26 In ca. , the sequence appears to have been restored, and we

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have evidence for three further funerary kouroi from the last quarter of the sixth century.27 When we look at the evidence from the rest of Attica for the same period, the contrast is striking (µg. ). The sequence again begins ca.  B.C. or shortly thereafter, but then proceeds seamlessly through the course of the sixth century, without any observable discontinuity. For ca. – alone, we have remains of as many as ten funerary kouroi and korai, including some of the µnest examples of both types, such as the so-called Phrasikleia and the kouros from Anavyssos (ancient Anaphlystos; see µg. ). Perhaps equally unexpected, all of these monuments are clustered in the southern portion of the peninsula, below an imaginary line we might draw from Vourva on the east coast to Phoinikia on the west coast.28 Drawing conclusions on the basis of this relatively slender evidence is somewhat hazardous, but the pattern here seems sufµciently pronounced to make the attempt worthwhile. What, then, are we to make of this apparent sixtyyear discrepancy in mortuary behavior between the center and the periphery? Part of the difference may of course be a result of preservation bias, given the multiple disruptions experienced by city cemeteries, especially those of the Kerameikos, in later years. That said, the same period sees no visible decrease in the use of other kinds of marker in these locations, and the absence of bases for kouroi and korai cannot be so easily explained away when those for so many other monuments have survived. Other possible explanations are even less compelling. The likelihood that urban tastes in burial markers underwent some kind of temporary shift while those of the countryside remained stable seems distinctly remote. Nor can we simply put the discrepancy down to a wealth differential between the two areas. It is generally and plausibly believed that the greater part of the Attic elite would have established residency in Athens by the sixth century, and the unprecedented number of buildings and other monuments set up on the Acropolis during ca. – testiµes eloquently to the quantity of disposable wealth possessed by this group at this time. We might therefore reasonably have expected to see an equivalent extravagance in contemporary Athenian cemeteries, sufµcient to offset at least partly the vicissitudes of preservation. And we do in fact see increasingly elaborate stelai and other burial markers set up in the Kerameikos during the period concerned (see Morris , ), which only makes the absence of kouroi and korai from this location and their conspicuous presence in the poorer periphery all the more surprising. On the other hand, it may be possible that some of the statues in rural cemeteries were set up by wealthy Athenians returning to their ancestral bur-

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ial grounds. But this still would not account for their absence from the city or their concentration in only one area of Attica. Nor can family piety adequately explain why competitive elites should have preferred a relatively remote location like Anaphlystos over, say the Kerameikos for the dedication of such lavish and ostentatious items. This would seem to defeat much of the purpose of a kouros.29 Since the dictates of elite competitive display and such variables as taste and wealth would seem to favor, rather than discourage, the presence of kouroi and korai in the cemeteries of sixth-century Athens, we should face the possibility that their disappearance from these locations for a period of some sixty years was probably the result not of choice but of force. Laws curbing funerary extravagance were a recurring feature of Greek social life, and it is not hard to see how the expensive and rather provocative practice of adorning human tombs with an image like the kouros, conventionally used as a dedication to divinity, would have been a ready target for such legislation. By happy coincidence, we do have some evidence that various items of sumptuary legislation were passed in Athens in the early sixth century, and they apparently included provisions about grave monuments. The laws are associated with Solon and thus, by most estimates, should belong to the s, precisely the time of the break in the kouros/kore sequence in Athenian cemeteries. The ban seems, therefore, to have been imposed relatively soon after the statue type was µrst used in this context and to have remained in place down until roughly the time of the death of Peisistratus in /.30 If this reconstruction is broadly correct, it would also shed new light on political relations between Athens and Attica at this time. The continuing use of kouroi and korai in the cemeteries of a sizable portion of rural Attica throughout the period concerned would mean that the inhabitants of at least some part of the periphery were still not fully subject to Athenian laws. It would clearly strain credibility to try to gauge the precise extent of the state’s reach on the basis of this evidence alone. But it does seem reasonable to conclude that this reach was still limited even as late as ca.  B.C. This general conclusion can only be further encouraged by the fact that all the cemeteries in question were located in the south of the peninsula, the area of Attica that lay furthest away from the city itself. Before moving on, one µnal question about this material should be raised: what exactly were a signiµcant number of extremely wealthy families doing in such relatively remote locations in southern Attica at this time? Some were perhaps members of a residual rural aristocracy, while others may have been residents of Athens who possessed ancestral burial grounds lying conveniently be-

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yond the reach of Athenian law and who were still willing to lavish expense on a tomb of a dead relative that would be seen by so few. But at least one of the families concerned was probably in the area for an altogether different reason, a reason that sheds further light on sixth-century relations between the center and the periphery. The family in question are the illustrious Alcmeonids, the family of Cleisthenes the reformer. Close study of evidence for their movements and activities over the period ca. – gives us further cause to believe that parts of Attica still lay beyond the effective reach of the Athenian state at this time. Since I have already presented the relevant evidence and arguments in some detail elsewhere,31 I will merely summarize the case here. During the µfth and fourth centuries, the primary residence of the main branch of the Alcmeonid family was located in Alopeke, just to the south of Athens. They were registered here as demesmen, and there is no suggestion, in any source, that they lived elsewhere as a group at any time during this period. And given their probable possession of extensive property holdings in this same area, the enrollment of cadet branches of the family in the nearby demes of Agryle and Xypete, their apparent Eupatrid status, and their long involvement in Athenian political life, which dated back at least to the third quarter of the seventh century, there is every chance that by ca.  B.C., the Alcmeonids’ principal homestead in Attica was µrmly established in the belt of agricultural land lying to the immediate south of the city.32 However, another body of evidence suggests that the family also had close connections with an area of the Attic coast far to the south of Athens, centered on the towns of Anaphlystos and Sounion. In accounts of the aristocratic inµghting that gripped Athens in the middle decades of the sixth century, Megacles II, son of Alcmeon I, appears as the leader of a “party” not from the city but from the paralia (“coast”), a term believed to refer primarily to the littoral and hinterland of southern Attica. In addition, quite a wide range of monuments from this locality have been associated with the family, including the unprecedented colossal kouroi from ca.  that were dedicated in Poseidon’s sanctuary at Sounion and three of the aforementioned funerary kouroi from the neighborhood of Anavyssos—one of which resembles the Sounion examples in style and date, while the other two are probably from the later s or s.33 The likely base of one of these later statues, the “Anavyssos kouros” (µg. ), has also been found in the same vicinity, with an epitaph bidding the passerby to mourn the dead Kroisos, who was apparently killed “in the front ranks” [eni promakhois]. Because of the opulence of this burial marker and the epitaph’s probable allusion in the name of the deceased to a historical relationship with

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the Lydian royal house, it is widely assumed to be an Alcmeonid monument. Other items possibly linking the family with this same area include the socalled stele of Megacles and a base for a stele dedicated by one Peisianax, a rare name that appears in later Alcmeonid generations. Both of these monuments date to the s and appear to have been carved by the same mason. Finally, an ostrakon from the s bearing the name Megakles Anaphlystios is open to a number of interpretations, but all point to some kind of connection between the Alcmeonids and the Anaphlystos area in the later sixth century.34 How, then, do we reconcile two bodies of evidence that appear to suggest that the Alcmeonids had homelands in two quite separate parts of Attica? Since none of the evidence for links with the south coast relates to a time later than the sixth century, some have supposed that the family must only have moved to the Alopeke area shortly before the µrst deme registrations in /, perhaps for political reasons.35 But while it is possible that they may have hailed originally from the Anaphlystos area, the evident length and strength of the family’s associations with Athens and the area to its immediate south before the late sixth century would seem to rule out so late a move to the city. At the same time, the presence of funerary items among the evidence from the Anaphlystos area strongly suggests that the family’s domicile there was not merely a country estate but their primary residence in Attica, at least for much of the sixth century. The only reasonable way to accommodate all of this evidence is to conclude that the Alcmeonids for some reason temporarily shifted their base of operations from the plain of Athens to the south coast at least once between ca.  and ca. , ultimately moving it back again in time to register in city demes in /. But what might have prompted such drastic relocations? The answer is surely exile, which the family is known to have experienced on more than one occasion in the sixth century. And this solution is born out by the dates of the evidence from the south coast, which neatly coincide with two periods when the Alcmeonids were probably banished from Athens. The µrst of these periods of exile began in ca.  B.C., when the family was expelled “in perpetuity” for its role in the massacre of the Cylonian conspirators some thirty years earlier.36 As far as we can tell, it lasted until ca. , when Lycurgus, head of the Boutad family and leader of the “party” from the “plain” (pedion) of Athens, allowed the Alcmeonids to return to the city in exchange for their help in deposing Peisistratus, who had just mounted his µrst coup. If we suppose that this exile of roughly forty years was served not outside Attica but in the far south of the peninsula, this would put us in a good position to explain not only the presence in that area of the extravagant Sounion dedications and the cognate kouros from the cemetery at Anavyssos

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but also why later authors saw the urbane Megacles II as leader of a “party” from the “coast” at the time of Peisistratus’s µrst bid for power.37 The second exile came some µfteen years later, after the Alcmeonids’ defeat by Peisistratus at Pallene in ca. /. Since it is unlikely that the family would have returned to the city before Peisistratus’s death in / yet clear that they had done so by /, when Cleisthenes assumed the archonship, this second banishment probably lasted for a little under twenty years. Again, all of the later remains from the Anavyssos area have been independently dated to precisely this same twenty-year period, suggesting that this was for a second time the family’s base of operations during a time of exile. If so, we also have a particularly satisfactory aetiology for the Kroisos grave monument. Presumably, he was killed “in the front ranks” at Pallene, but his family’s defeat in the battle and their subsequent departure from Athens meant that he could not be buried until their return to the residence-in-exile at Anaphlystos.38 On the basis of these striking correspondences, it can be stated with some conµdence that the Alcmeonids’ historical associations with the south coast of Attica in the sixth century derived directly from terms of exile spent in that location during the periods ca. – and ca. – B.C.39 For the purposes of our larger inquiry, this µnding is obviously signiµcant. It is universally assumed by ancients and moderns alike that exiles from Athens at all times during the historical period were required to leave Attica altogether. But this appears not to have been the case. Even as late as the s and s, they were free to set up residence in marginal areas of the peninsula, where they lived, it seems, undisturbed by the state or its laws. We can therefore hardly avoid concluding that these areas were still considered to lie outside the Athenian polis proper at this time.40 The Alcmeonids were not the only family to experience exile during the course of the sixth century. If the preceding reconstruction of their movements is along the right lines, we might expect to µnd some evidence that other prominent families also spent time as exiles in the Attic periphery, evidence that would conµrm the overall argument while also perhaps giving us a general idea of the limits of the state’s reach in Attica at this time. There are in fact a surprising number of distinguished families who have known links with peripheral locations, and the concentration of expensive funerary kouroi and korai in the far south of Attica in the sixth century suggests that the Alcmeonids may not have been the only exiles in the margins during the period.41 Two other plausible candidates are the Gephyraioi—the family of the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton—and the branch of the Lycomidai to which Themistocles belonged. Both are known to have controlled time-hon-

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ored cults in the plain of Athens, suggesting that the two families enjoyed deep roots in that area. Yet, for some reason, both were registered as demesmen in distinctly marginal locations far from the city and with which neither is known to have had any other kind of signiµcant association—the Gephyraioi at Aphidna, near the border with Oropia; Themistocles’ family deep in the south of the peninsula, at Phrearrhioi. Since the Gephyraioi certainly went into exile under the Peisistratids and since Themistocles’ Lycomidai conceivably suffered the same fate, we might infer that they registered in these areas only because they had moved there as exiles and had not yet had time to reestablish themselves in the city before deme enrollments began in /.42 The Alcmeonids aside, perhaps the clearest illustration of exile within Attica is provided by the Peisistratids themselves. Peisistratus has often been seen as an outsider in sixth-century Athenian politics, a kind of provincial warlord who took advantage of turbulence among more established families to raise his own family to power. Yet not one of our main sources for the family’s activities—Herodotus, Thucydides, and AP—characterizes the Peisistratids in these terms. And everything we hear about them before Peisistratus’s µrst coup in / suggests that they were in fact a well-connected Eupatrid family of considerable accomplishment and, as prominent actors in the Athenian political scene, must have long made their base in the city. Peisistratus himself had earlier been elected polemarch and appears to have led some kind of military venture against Megara. An ancestor of the same name, perhaps his great-greatgrandfather, is said to have served as archon more than a hundred years earlier, in / B.C. The tyrant was almost certainly a relative of the illustrious Solon, and more than one source reports the tradition that the two were also lovers. Meanwhile, on the wider stage, the Peisistratids seem to have been established members of that glittering Panhellenic set that pursued interstate marriages and equestrian competition.43 If the Peisistratids were very clearly not provincial arrivistes in the mid– sixth century, why have moderns so often portrayed them in these terms? The main reason seems to be their association with the area of the deme Philaidai— around Brauron, on the east coast of Attica—and the assumption that this, rather than Athens, was the site of their primary residence in the region. Yet there is no explicit evidence for any ancestral property at Brauron, and not one of our three main sources for the Peisistratids ever refers to a permanent residence outside Athens itself. Granted, we have the testimony of two sources (one minor and one late) where we µnd the vague claim that the family were simply “from Philaidai.”44 But as we shall see shortly, the value of these reports may be minimal.

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The only other evidence we have for an association with the Brauron area is found in AP (.–) and the text of Herodotus (.), where it is recorded that Peisistratus was the leader of a “party” from the “hill country” during the trilateral stasis with Megacles and Lycurgus that apparently marked the years before his µnal rise to power in /. If, as most believe, the term used for “hill country” in AP, diakria, refers to the northeastern portion of Attica, extending south along the coast possibly as far as Brauron, there may be some grounds for thinking that the Peisistratids were provincial outsiders. But even this testimony is problematic.45 To begin with, the stasis of the second quarter of the sixth century was probably not as our sources describe it. As Hopper (, esp. –) has demonstrated, the existence at this time of three regional “parties” of the plain, coast, and hills, each with its own distinctive political and economic agenda, is improbable. In any case, neither Herodotus nor the author of AP expressly states that Megacles and Peisistratus were actually “from” their respective party localities or even resident there at the time; the latter (AP .) is in fact careful to suggest that they merely “farmed” there. As we have just seen, Megacles’ presence in the paralia in / was most likely the result of exile. Though he doubtless had supporters in that area, there is no reason to believe that his “party” from the coast was anything more than his own extended family, which he wished to have restored to Athens. Meanwhile, the “party” of Peisistratus is an even more nebulous entity, playing no visible role in any of his attempts to take power in Athens. Aside from a reference to the landing at Marathon just before his victory at Pallene in / (Hdt. ..), there is no speciµc mention of the diakria or its inhabitants in our accounts of the three coups. In the case of the µrst, Peisistratus is clearly already in Athens, and since all the action takes place in and around the city itself, it seems reasonable to conclude that he was living there at the time. The second coup (such as it was), in /, sees him recalled by Megacles from an unspeciµed place of exile, and he appears to have returned alone. As for the third coup, Herodotus (.) tells us vaguely about “partisans from the city” [ek tou asteos stasio– tai] and “others from the villages” [alloi ek to– n de–mo– n] who joined Peisistratus at Marathon before the march on Athens. But the main body of his force seems to have been made up of non-Athenians (see also AP .).46 There is, then, no good reason to doubt that Peisistratus and his family were established residents of the city by the middle of the sixth century. But if he was not operating from the diakria during these years and if no groups or individuals from the area seem to have supported his political activities, how did the tradition of the “party” of the “hills” arise?

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One of the more signiµcant details omitted by our sources for this sequence of events is the location of Peisistratus’s µrst period of exile, from ca.  to ca. . However, we do have one tantalizing hint about this location. As Sealey (a, –) has pointed out, Herodotus’s (..) description of Peisistratus’s second departure into exile emphasizes that on this occasion he “left the country [i.e., Attica] altogether” [apallaseto ek te– s kho–re– s to parapan], which indicates that his µrst exile was spent somewhere on Attic soil. The ease with which he was later recalled by Megacles adds weight to this supposition. Since this is the only point in the narrative of Peisistratus’s rise to power when he cannot be localized either in Athens or outside the peninsula as a whole, I propose that the site of his residence-in-exile was in the diakria, perhaps in the area of Brauron. Whether he was also based there during the second exile must remain an open question—though, as the Alcmeonid case attests, wide involvement in affairs abroad did not necessarily preclude a residence in the Attic periphery at this time. Either way, we have a compelling explanation for Peisistratus’s otherwise murky association with northeast Attica, which seems to derive not from long-term residence but, like the association of the Alcmeonids with the south coast, from experience of temporary exile in the area. If we accept this explanation, we can also safely dismiss the tradition of a tripartite regional stasis in the middle decades of the sixth century. By the time that Herodotus came to record our earliest version of the tradition, it was widely believed that Attica had always been uniµed and thus that exile from Athens had always entailed expulsion from the entire peninsula. Though it was clearly remembered that Megacles and Peisistratus had links with different areas of the periphery, the nature of these links were no longer understood. Hence, to explain the incongruous presence of such urbane individuals in the eastern and southern margins of Attica, surviving memories of a genuine interfamily rivalry between Boutads, Alcmeonids, and Peisistratids were in×ated to suggest a larger regionwide struggle. The result was an appropriately grand, mostly µctitious narrative of an elemental con×ict between the men of the plain, the coast, and the hills. As for the tradition—µrst found in the Platonic Hipparchus (b)—that the Peisistratids were “from Philaidai,” it may mean no more than that the family was thought to have come from there at some point in the distant past before moving to Athens, much as the Gephyraioi were said to be originally “from” Boeotia or Eretria (Hdt. .). But another explanation is also possible. I have argued that the primary residence of the Peisistratids in Attica during the sixth century, times of exile aside, must have been in Athens itself, not in the diakria. Pinpointing their location within the city is far from easy. But

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it is striking that three separate individuals associated with one particular part of Athens, the Kollytos neighborhood, appear at important points in later records of Peisistratid family history. First, there is Hipparchus, son of Charmus. Archon in / and the µrst person known to have been ostracized from Attica (in /), Hipparchus was the most prominent representative of the extended Peisistratid clan left in the city after the expulsions of . As a grandson of Hippias—and perhaps even a direct descendant of Hippocrates (the father of Peisistratus), through a cadet branch of the family—he is the closest relative who is known to have enrolled in a deme. His deme was Kollytos.47 Second, we have the woman at the center of the well-known Phye ceremony, the preamble to Peisistratus’s second coup. Herodotus (..) claims that she was from the deme Paiania, while AP (.) records a rival tradition that traced her origins to Kollytos. It is hard to fathom why this seemingly innocuous detail should have become a matter of dispute, but a known Peisistratid association with Kollytos would conveniently explain why the variant tradition took the form it did.48 Finally, there is the supporter of Peisistratus who notoriously proposed that the future tyrant should be awarded a bodyguard in the Assembly, thus precipitating the µrst coup in /. Two variants of his name have come down to us, Aristion (AP .) and Ariston (Plut. Sol. .). Given the ignominy this act would have brought his descendants, it is not hard to imagine how different versions of the name might have arisen. I suggest that the more likely original version in the tradition was Ariston, a name linked with the family of Plato (it was held, in fact, by Plato’s father), who was deµnitely related to the Peisistratids and whose members also registered as demesmen at Kollytos.49 We might infer, then, that the author of AP either reproduced or directly invented the less embarrassing variant Aristion out of deference to the family of Aristotle’s teacher.50 As speculative as this reasoning may be, the links of all three of these Peisistratid associates with the Kollytos neighborhood make for a particularly suggestive coincidence. In the absence of any compelling alternatives, I tentatively propose that this was the location of the family’s residence in Athens during the sixth century. And it may be an equally suggestive coincidence that the earliest work known to assert expressly that the Peisistratids were “from Philaidai” is associated with Plato, himself a relative registered at Kollytos. Whether the claim is based on knowledge of an early ancestral connection with the Brauron area or is merely a hopeful inference from Peisistratus’s well-known, though actually very tenuous, links with eastern Attica during the stasis of the mid–sixth century, it would clearly have helped to distance Plato’s family from their troubling personal association with the tyrants of old.

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Whatever the case, we have good reason to believe that Peisistratus himself spent at least one period of exile, from ca. / to /, at a location in the Attic periphery, presumably somewhere in the diakria, possibly at Brauron. If so, we can add this case to the growing body of testimony from the second and third quarters of the sixth century that suggests that large sections of rural Attica still lay effectively outside the polis proper at this time. While we cannot hope to plot the territorial limits of the polis with any precision, the concentration of funerary kouroi and korai in southern Attica and the presence of exiles in places like Anaphlystos, Aphidna, and perhaps Brauron seem to indicate that these limits did not lie a great distance beyond the plain of Athens and the natural boundary formed by Mounts Aigaleios, Pentelikon, and Hymettos.51 Putting all this together, we have no evidence that any conscious attempt was made before the Peisistratid period to create institutions linking the center and the periphery of Attica, and we do have various items of testimony that suggest that substantial parts of the Attic periphery lay beyond the de jure reach of the Athenian state down to the last quarter of the sixth century. It is likely that the tyrants made some effort to extend this reach. But their initiatives seem limited, unsystematic, and concerned more with promoting the family’s own highly personalized form of authority in the region than with building any durable, meaningful form of citizen community. Unless the tyrants pursued other, similar initiatives of which we are currently unaware, it seems reasonable to conclude that in / B.C., when they were µnally forced out of Athens, the uniµcation process was still some way from completion. It would not remain so for long. THE REFORMS OF CLEISTHENES

In the end, it took only a brief siege of their Acropolis stronghold by a combined force of Spartans and Athenians to depose the Peisistratids and expel them from the city.52 Though the main branch of this family would long occupy a unique place in the bestiary of Athenian public memory, they would never again play a role in the running of the city they had dominated for the best part of three and a half decades. While our two principal sources for events in Athens in the late sixth century, Herodotus and AP, are hardly extensive, they are sufµciently detailed to allow us to outline the developments that immediately followed. With Hippias and his family departed for Sigeion on the banks of the Scamander, a power vacuum inevitably emerged. De facto leadership of the state was contested by two individuals of noble birth, Isagoras, son of Teisandros,

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and Cleisthenes the Alcmeonid, a man known to have held the archonship in / B.C.53 According to our sources, Isagoras won signiµcant majority support among the elite, which would explain his election to the archonship for / B.C. Undaunted, Cleisthenes then took the extraordinary step of appealing beyond this constituency to ordinary Athenians, in the hope of securing mass support. In exchange for their favor, he proposed a radical reorganization of political life in Athens and Attica that seems to have met with wide approval.54 The proposal bypassed the traditional legislative channels and was ratiµed, it appears, by popular acclaim in the citizen Assembly;55 implementation of the reforms duly began. Outmaneuvered in this surprising fashion, Isagoras appealed in desperation to his friend King Cleomenes, hoping to use Spartan force to strangle the new order at birth. Cleomenes immediately dispatched an order demanding the expulsion of Cleisthenes and his family from the city on the pretext of the Cylonian “curse,” before materializing there himself with a small armed force to intimidate the Alcmeonid’s supporters into following suit. The king then turned his attentions to political institutions, ordering the dissolution of the Council of , the heart of the new order, apparently intending to install an oligarchic regime of three hundred under Isagoras in its stead. Here, however, he met with unexpected resistance from the µve hundred councillors, prompting him to occupy the Acropolis. This move succeeded only in provoking even more unexpected hostility, precipitating what seems to have been a largely spontaneous two-day assault on the citadel by the population at large. Overmatched, Cleomenes and his cohorts were escorted from the city under a truce, while Isagoras’s coconspirators were imprisoned and ultimately executed. What would prove to be the last coup in Athens for nearly a century was thus brought to a violent, if decisive, conclusion. Cleisthenes and his fellow exiles were recalled, and in the absence of any further opposition, the transformation of the Athenian state could safely continue. In the following year, Cleisthenes’ kinsman Alcmeon was elected archon, further conµrming that the reformer and his associates were the dominant political force in the polis.56 Reconstructing the contents of this transformation from the combined testimony of Herodotus, AP, and other items of circumstantial evidence, we see a wide range of innovations in political life. Those that pertained primarily to the operations of central government in Athens will be examined shortly in chapter . But of more immediate interest is the introduction of a series of institutions that were expressly designed to link Athens with settlements all over Attica (µg. ). The point of departure here was probably the creation of what Ostwald has termed “a new political substratum” of demes (de–moi). These were

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 mostly small settlements and neighborhoods throughout Attica, which were specially designated to serve as political units on the local level. Each adult male with a native-born father was to enroll in his local deme as an Athenian citizen, and the demes were henceforth assigned the primary responsibility for controlling admissions to the citizen body and for recording enrollments in ofµcial registers, known as le–xiarkhika grammateia. Membership in one of these new units, the basic prerequisite for citizenship, was to be hereditary, and each demesman was to use a “demotic” (a moniker derived from the name of one’s deme) as part of his own public identity. The demes were also to enjoy a limited degree of self-government, each with its own assembly, cults, and demarch and the right to contribute a µxed quota of delegates to a new national council.57 As satellites of the central government in Athens, the demes thus collectively formed a new grassroots level of public administration, offering a range of opportunities for individuals in all parts of the peninsula to participate directly in the political life of the polis. At the same time, ongoing interaction between elite and nonelite as citizen-equals in these miniature corporations must have helped to neutralize the political dimension of the various forms of personal dependency that had long deµned the relationship between the two groups in the localities of Attica. The institutional space between local and central government was then bridged in the µrst instance by creating thirty intermediate political units, known as trittyes, each comprised of a number of demes, from one to as many as nine. To give these new associations some immediate substance, they too, like the demes, were assigned their own property and cults. The trittyes were then themselves used as components in the creation of larger, more complex political units. Three trittyes—one each from the city, the coast, and the hinterland of Attica—were combined by lot (see AP .) to form ten new phylai, or “tribes.” For the tribes to become anything more than highly synthetic institutional mechanisms, they had to be given some cultural substance, and they were accordingly endowed with features—such as eponymous heroes, cults, and assembly places—reminiscent of the hereditary and pseudohereditary socioreligious associations that had long been a feature of the Attic landscape. Not the least important of these older groups were four shadowy entities known as the Ionian tribes, which, according to the sources, Cleisthenes new phylai were expressly designed to replace.58 The immediate purpose of the new tribes was twofold. First, each of the phylai was to supply µfty delegates on an annual basis to a national council (boule–) in Athens that was to form the institutional heart of the new order. This

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so-called Council of  was apparently designed to replace an earlier Solonian Council of , and its functions were probably limited in its µrst phase to probouleusis, that is, to setting the agenda of motions to be submitted for deliberation in the popular Assembly (ekkle–sia). Each tribal delegation of µfty was made up of contingents supplied by the constituent demes according to their relative size within the tribe, and it was thus ensured that all localities in Attica were represented at this important stage of the political process. However, since it is likely that councillors were chosen by election rather than by lot before / B.C. and that eligibility was limited at least initially to members of the top three wealth classes, the new Council would in reality have been somewhat less than fully representative of the citizen body.59 Second, the ten tribes also formed the organizational basis for a national citizen army. First introduced in / or shortly after and remaining little changed down to the end of the classical period, the new system required each phyle to furnish one of ten annually elected generals (strate–goi), along with detachments of infantry and cavalry. While participation again was limited, likewise excluding members of the lowest wealth class, the thetes, who were too poor to supply their own equipment, the new procedure for levying a citizen army may well have been the µrst such to be instituted in Athenian history.60 But why was the new system of demes, trittys, and tribes so remarkably complex? Both at the level of the trittys and at that of the tribe, we can see a degree of self-conscious manipulation that must be explained if we are to understand the larger rationale behind the reforms. We should look µrst at the trittyes. While the majority of these entities were simply aggregates of demes from the same general locality, modern research has revealed a number of striking anomalies where one or two demes were located some considerable distance away from the bulk of the demes in their trittys. To take a well-known instance, the deme Probalinthos was not assigned along with Marathon, Trikorynthos, and Oenoe—its fellow members of the Marathonian Tetrapolis—to the coastal trittys of the tribe Aiantis, nor even to the adjacent coastal trittys of Aegeis; rather, it was assigned to the trittys of Pandionis, which had its center at Myrrhinous, far to the south. Such “unnatural” groupings can only have been deliberate, and a variety of explanations for them have been proposed.61 Most would agree that there was some attempt here to neutralize the in×uence of the localist sentiment associated with cult organizations like the Tetrapolis on national institutions, especially the new Council. Similarly, the so-called Tetrakomoi—Piraeus, Phaleron, Thymaitadai, and Xypete— were distributed among three different tribes, while Hekale and Pallene, which

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served as signiµcant cult centers in their respective parts of Attica, were both linked to trittyes far from their immediate localities. More problematic are attempts to relate this kind of “gerrymandering” directly to the Alcmeonids’ own partisan political interests.62 Clearly, it may have damaged the ability of those families who controlled the cults in question to draw political capital from their position.63 But until we µnd conclusive evidence that families hostile to the Alcmeonids were singled out for such treatment, it is probably better to see this institutional separation of elites from their traditional constituencies simply as part of a more general concern to limit the impact of local interests on the political process.64 As for the suggestion, frequently made, that Cleisthenes sought to give his family members a privileged position in the new order by having them enroll in city demes that would give them a foothold in three different tribes—Erechtheis (Agryle), Cecropis (Xypete), and Antiochis (Alopeke)— the case again is far from watertight. In Alopeke, where the main branch of the Alcmeonids was enrolled, their fellow demesmen included a number of other prominent families whose consistent support and friendship could not necessarily be assumed, while both Xypete and Agryle were located some distance from the center of gravity in their respective trittyes.65 But in general, we know far too little about the other families registered in these various demes and trittyes to draw any µrm conclusions, and we cannot even be sure that the distribution of Cleisthenes’ family among demes of three different tribes was not in fact a positive disadvantage, as is often presumed to have been the case for other families or local organizations supposedly split up in this fashion under the new system. At the same time, the assignment of the coastal trittys that included Anaphlystos to Antiochis may well have helped to reinforce Alcmeonid in×uence over that one particular tribe, though if the report that trittyes were assigned to tribes by lot (AP .) is correct, any beneµt here will have been the result of good fortune rather than self-interested contrivance. In any case, as Raa×aub (a, ) points out, the wide consent apparently enjoyed by Cleisthenes’ reforms should caution us against looking too hard for blatantly self-serving elements in their design.66 The inclusion of such elements cannot be discounted, and few would deny that some form of gerrymandering took place in the assignment of demes to trittyes. But to focus almost exclusively on a handful of anomalies (as some modern accounts do) and reduce the reforms as a whole to an elaborate exercise in partisan politics is to ignore the overall architecture of the new system. The trittyes, after all, were no more than an administrative convenience, devised only to bring

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the new tribes into existence. Hence, the rationale behind the “unnatural” composition of some individual trittyes is essentially incidental or secondary to the larger rationale behind the unusual decision to create all ten tribes from three distinct units of population, one each from the city, the coast, and the hinterland. Turning to consider this larger rationale, we should clearly ask µrst why the tribes were not drawn simply from ten different subregions of Attica. Ancient sources are of little help here; only two of them (AP .–; Arist. Pol. b –) offer any kind of explanation, and their suggestion that the purpose was merely to “mix up” [anameixai, anamisgesthai] the population of Attica raises more questions than it answers. Part of the explanation, as has long been recognized, surely relates to a need to ensure that all tribes contained a contingent from the city, where most politically experienced and in×uential families were concentrated.67 But why, then, were there three components in each tribe and not merely two, one rural and one urban? Most observers are agreed on the larger purpose at work here. This has been variously expressed as an attempt “to transcend local barriers . . . and to develop a sentiment of union and friendship [throughout Attica]” (Hignett , ), to “restructure” the regional community and give citizens from all over the region a “political” or “civic presence” in Athenian public life (Meier , –), or simply to encourage “the uniµcation of the state” (Rhodes , –). The view is perhaps best summarized by Ostwald (, ). Each tribe contained . . . a cross-section of the whole of Attica, since every region was represented in it. It embodied yet transcended the limits of locality, and will have helped each member of a tribal assembly to view Attica as a whole. What regional differences there were could thus be settled at tribal meetings, so that they would not surface on the state level and cause the constitutional structure to be riven apart by disparate local interests. These explanations are surely along the right lines, but they all beg a further question: if Attica had long since been uniµed, as all seem to believe, why was there still a need in the last decade of the sixth century to “transcend local barriers,” to neutralize “disparate local interests,” to nurture sentiments of “union and friendship,” to “restructure” the extended citizen community, and to encourage “the uniµcation of the state”? If all of these tasks were still to be completed, how meaningful is it to speak of a united Attica before this point? Even as late as /, it seems, the work of synoecism was far from over.68

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In view of the evidence presented in this chapter, it makes much better sense to see Cleisthenes’ reforms not as a kind of reinforcement of a preexisting state of unity but as the decisive step in the process of uniµcation itself. As far as we can tell, this was the µrst systematic attempt to establish binding institutional links between the center and the periphery and incorporate all of Attica formally within the Athenian polis. The result was less the restructuring of an old political community than the creation of a new one. Through the new demes, even the most far-×ung inhabitants had immediate access to Athenian citizenship and were now, for the µrst time, routinely enrolled as full members of the polis community. At the same time, the new tribes provided unprecedented, institutionally secure opportunities for all eligible males to participate directly in the political and military life of the city. So, too, the tripartite composition of the phylai not only ensured that no tribe fell prey to the interests of a single locality or subregion but also encouraged all citizens to see themselves as part of a regionwide political community as they rubbed shoulders with fellows from very different parts of Attica in the new tribal assemblies, Council of , and national army. We might see the Council itself as the cornerstone of the whole system, the critical link between the center and the periphery, where the multiplicity of diverse local interests could be negotiated and resolved into a single national agenda. The presence here of delegates from every locality in the peninsula helped to guarantee that all constituencies, even those who were too busy or lived too far from Athens to attend the Assembly, would always have a voice, however indirect, in the deliberative process. Hence, the outcomes of this process could with some reason be said to represent the collective will of the entire community. In the end, it seems that the uniµcation of Attica did indeed take place on two levels at once. The Athenian state µnally extended its institutional reach throughout the peninsula precisely by setting up the µrst regular mechanism for admitting the inhabitants of the periphery to Athenian citizenship.69 However, uniµcation on the third level cannot have taken place overnight. While the highly artiµcial composition of the new tribes would certainly have paved the way for an emerging pan-Attic collective consciousness, only time, shared experience, and not a little active encouragement from the center would forge this unusually large and diverse citizen body into a cohesive community of “Athenians.” This process of identity construction will be a recurring focus in future chapters as we look at a range of other innovations in public life that were introduced over the subsequent two decades.

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Three problems remain, and all relate to our sources for the reforms. First, it is true that neither Herodotus nor the author of AP directly associates Cleisthenes’ measures with the process of uniµcation in Attica. However, this difµculty can be easily removed when we consider the extraordinary appeal of the Thesean synoecism tradition. Not coincidentally, as we shall see in chapter , this tradition was probably invented in the last decade of the sixth century, precisely the time the new national order was µrst established. And by the time that Herodotus came to inquire about Athenian history, it would not be surprising if the historical signiµcance of the reforms of / had been eclipsed in the collective memory by the more resonant purported achievement of Cleisthenes’ heroic predecessor. Second, what evidence is there that the Athenian citizen body was substantially increased—perhaps even doubled—in the late sixth century, as my reconstruction implies? Neither of our main sources describes a mass enfranchisement of rural citizens in their accounts of the reforms. However, to explain Cleisthenes’ supposed enforcement of the use of new demotic titles in place of patronymics, the author of AP (.) does refer to the enrollment of what he must have thought were a substantial number of “new citizens” [neopolitai] at this time. He is distinctly vague about the identity of these individuals, though he presumably equated them with those described elsewhere (.) as “men of impure descent” [hoi to– i genei me– katharoi], who were apparently deprived of citizenship following a “review” [diapse–phismos] held shortly after the expulsion of the Peisistratids. Meanwhile, with similar vagueness, Aristotle (Pol. b–) tells us that Cleisthenes “enfranchised many free and unfree resident aliens” [pollous . . . ephuleteuse xenous kai doulous metoikous]. Perhaps the only safe conclusion we can draw from these notoriously problematic passages is that the number of neopolitai enrolled in / was large; this is stated as a fact in one source and clearly implied in the other. We then have to wonder what so many “resident aliens” or “men of impure descent” were doing in Athens at this time. As others have noted, the most likely candidates for this status are the immigrant craftsmen apparently lured to Athens by Solon (see Plut. Sol. .) and the former mercenaries employed by the Peisistratids. But surely the numbers of men involved in either case would not have been particularly signiµcant. If, then, our sources’ identiµcation of these new citizens as resident aliens is probably no more than an assumption based on knowledge of later practice, who exactly did comprise the large group of neopolitai apparently enrolled in the late sixth century? If, as I have argued, it was only at this point that inhabitants of rural

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Attica were µrst routinely registered as Athenian citizens, the question would then have a very neat answer.70 Third, while neither of our main sources for Cleisthenes’ reforms equates the measures with the synoecism of Attica, both associate them µrmly with the evolution of democracy in Athens,71 but it is hardly self-evident how the reforms as they describe them might have brought about this particular outcome. This problem needs to be addressed in somewhat greater depth. In chapter , I will look in more detail at the politics of the regime that governed the newly united Attica, before drawing conclusions about the overall motivations behind the transformation of /. There can be little doubt that Athens had been the dominant settlement in Attica for some centuries before the Cleisthenes’ reforms. We can certainly believe that the city and its surrounding region throughout this time enjoyed an unusually close relationship, resulting in regular contacts of various kinds and quite a high level of cultural homogeneity between the two. But none of these factors presupposes the full political integration of the entire peninsula or makes this process a foregone conclusion. Not until the Peisistratid period do we see the µrst tentative attempts to establish the kind of de jure institutional links necessary to make uniµcation a political reality. But the success of these efforts was apparently very limited. If the arguments presented in this chapter are plausible, we cannot meaningfully speak of a functionally united Attica before /. Even at this late date, it still required an institutional apparatus of unprecedented complexity and sophistication to overcome enduring impediments to uniµcation and transform the Athenian polis from a city-state into a fully integrated region-state, a polity far larger than any hitherto seen in the Greek world.

2 IN SEARCH OF POPUL AR GOVERNMENT

If the unification of attica was ultimately a more complex and problematic process than is usually recognized, the Athenians themselves preferred to gloss over any untidy or inconvenient details. The tradition of the Thesean synoecism reduced the process to a straightforward bureaucratic act in the distant past, and no one, it seems, ever saw the need to challenge this version of events. By contrast, there was not always such easy unanimity about that other momentous chapter in Athenian political history, the evolution of democracy. While it was generally accepted that de–mokratia was the “traditional mode of government” (patrios politeia) in Athens, the precise nature of the original de–mokratia became a matter of heated dispute at certain points in the classical period. If deµned in its most basic sense as “the collective control of the state by the demos, or people,” the idea was of course open to some breadth of interpretation according to how the notions of control and demos were deµned. And as rival groups competed to establish their own particular political visions as the true descendant of “ancestral” democracy, more than one account of the origins of de–mokratia in the state inevitably emerged. Needless to say, memory of constitutional developments, like any other form of collective memory in classical Athens, was all too easily manipulated to µt the needs of the present. It is therefore essential to allow for this instability of constitutional memory when we confront ancient opinions about the role played by Cleisthenes’ reforms in the story of Athenian democracy. After 43

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all, even the earliest of these opinions (that of Herodotus) was recorded at least seventy or eighty years after the event. And we should remember that the reforms themselves were passed at a time when Greek historiography was still some way short of its infancy, and at a time when it was still not yet standard practice to keep permanent records of the business transacted by the Athenian state.1 So most if not all of our literary testimony for the political changes of / derives ultimately from an oral tradition that was less than reliable. Regarding the speciµc details of the tribal reform, discussed in the previous chapter, our sources’ dependence on oral material probably had little effect on the quality of their testimony, since it would have been easy for authors to ×esh out their accounts with inferences from contemporary practice. But on larger questions, such as the overall historical signiµcance of Cleisthenes’ measures and their impact on the development of democracy, ancient authors are likely to be less helpful. An informed judgment on such issues will have required not only a clear understanding of what transpired in / but also a sound working knowledge of political arrangements in even earlier eras, a level of knowledge that was perhaps already unattainable by the time that the likes of Herodotus and Thucydides began work on their texts. Turning, then, to our own inquiry into the contribution of Cleisthenes’ reforms to the history of popular government in Athens, it seems appropriate to begin by looking in a little more detail at the problems presented by our primary sources. Here, we should try in particular to get a sense of the different oral accounts of Athenian constitutional history that were circulating in the later µfth and fourth centuries, accounts that may well have in×uenced how contemporary writers chose to characterize Cleisthenes’ achievement. DEMOCRACY AND MEMORY

Among the relatively small number of ancient authors who refer to Cleisthenes, there appears to be a general consensus on both the content and the larger historical signiµcance of his reforms: they were associated in some way with development of democracy in Athens; and their most important provision was for the creation of the intricate system of demes, trittyes, and tribes that was to become such a familiar feature of Athenian public life. As a rule, scholars have been inclined to accept both of these claims at face value and have then attempted to identify some kind of causal relationship between the two. Many believe that we can µnd anticipations of popular rule in earlier times. But the general consensus, found in most textbooks, is that Cleisthenes’ measures in fact marked the effective birth of democracy in Athens, and that the main ev-

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idence for this conclusion is to be found somewhere in the details of the new tribal system. The conclusion itself may well be correct, but this use of the sources is problematic, for at least two reasons. To begin with, even our most informative sources—Herodotus and AP—are disappointingly vague on the question of how exactly Cleisthenes’ tribal system made Athens more democratic. And it must be admitted that the nature of any such causal relationship remains less than self-evident.2 Granted, as two of our sources (AP.–; Arist. Pol. b–) maintain, the system involved some “mixing up” of rich and poor in the demes and tribes. In the demes in particular, political life does seem to have been somewhat egalitarian from the very beginning, with even the very poorest citizens entitled to the same rights and privileges as any of their more distinguished brethren.3 But the primary purpose of this mixing seems to have been to generate a stronger sense of common interest and purpose within the citizen community as a whole. And here, as we saw in chapter , the simple need to overcome physical distances between citizens was at least as urgent as the need to soften distinctions of wealth and status. In any case, it is hard to see how the presence of different socioeconomic groups within each tribe will have made the political process in Athens itself more democratic. Mixing may have left some mark on the composition of the Council of , but it will have had no direct, tangible impact on any other organ of the central government. Alternatively, some modern authorities believe it is possible to detect a broadly democratic sensibility in the geography of Cleisthenes’ tribal system. By distributing the members of powerful families or local cult organizations among the trittyes of different tribes, the new order, it is held, will have diminished the ability of the elite to exploit these traditional sources of support in the national political arena, or at least in the new Council of .4 There may be a measure of truth to this claim, though we know of too few certain instances of such manipulation to conclude that the tribal system as a whole was inherently “democratic,” even in this very limited sense. Besides, we might reasonably expect any democratic reforms worthy of the name to be more concerned with raising the level of political rights and opportunities for poorer citizens than with simply trimming back those previously held only by the rich. Certainly citizens of the hoplite class were an integral part of the new order. Yet, as noted in the previous chapter, it is highly unlikely that those of the thete class would have had any part to play in either the Council of  or the citizen army, the very institutions whose organizational basis the new tribes were expressly designed to provide.

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In short, the tribal reform would seem to be a strangely oblique way of realizing democracy in the Athenian state. This cannot have been its larger purpose. We may be able to identify some degree of leveling in the new system, even a trace of egalitarianism. But this would not have made the reform democratic as such, unless we maintain a rather loose deµnition of the term de–mokratia. We shall return to this question of deµnition shortly. In the meantime, our sources present another serious problem for those who contend that Cleisthenes instituted democracy through the tribal reform. For a mountain of impressive inferences and suppositions cannot hide the fact that only one ancient author, in a single statement, comes close to claiming that Cleisthenes actually was the founder of Athenian democracy. This author is Herodotus, and the statement (..), surprisingly, does not come at the point in his text where the tribal reform is explicitly discussed. Instead, we µnd it tucked away near the end of the following book after the colorful account of the events that led to the marriage of Cleisthenes’ parents, Megacles II and Agariste of Sikyon. In the standard translation, it reads as follows. Of this union was born Cleisthenes, the man who established the tribes and the democracy for the Athenians [ho tas phulas kai te–n de–mokratie–n Athe–naioisi kataste–sas], and who was named after his maternal grandfather, [Cleisthenes] the Sikyonian [tyrant]. At µrst sight, the statement seems straightforward enough. The only problem is that even this testimony may not be saying quite what we would like it to say. The difµculty comes with the all-important verb form [kataste–sas], which could mean “established (from scratch),” but could also mean simply “set in order,” or even “reestablished,” implying that democracy had already existed in some form in Athens at some earlier time. And regarding the other object governed by this verb (“the tribes”), these alternative translations would certainly be more appropriate, since Herodotus makes it clear elsewhere (..) that he saw Cleisthenes’ ten phylai as a reorganization of the existing -tribe system, not as something entirely new. Sadly, what we do not µnd elsewhere is a deµnitive statement about the kind of political arrangements, which the author believed had prevailed in Athens before the Peisistratid tyranny. In the absence of such conµrmation, Herodotus’ intent in .. must for now remain unclear. We will be in a better position to clarify his meaning at the end of chapter , when evidence adduced during the course of this study should help us to settle the issue with some µnality.

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So if Cleisthenes was not widely seen by the ancients as the founder of Athenian democracy, who did they think was responsible? Two different claims about the origins of popular government in Athens seem to have been current in the classical period. The more tendentious of the two probably entered circulation in the late µfth century, emerging during the period of domestic turmoil that followed the disastrous demise of the Athenian campaign in Sicily in . It seems to have been a product of an ongoing debate over the nature of the “traditional mode of government” (patrios politeia) in Athens. This was a debate waged initially between supporters of the current, radical democratic (“demotic”) regime and the followers of Theramenes, who sought to replace it with what amounted to a moderate form of oligarchy. The latter group brie×y prevailed, and in Cleitophon’s rider to the decree of Pythodorus that established the short-lived regime of the Four Hundred in  B.C. (AP .), we µnd an injunction to seek out as guidance “the traditional laws” [tous patrious nomous] drafted by Cleisthenes when, again in the standard translation, “he established the democracy” [kathiste– te–n de–mokratian]. According to AP, the rationale here was that this democratic constitution associated with Cleisthenes was “not radical” [ou de–motike–n] but “similar to that of Solon” [paraple–sian . . . te–i Solo– nos]. If this statement re×ects arguments that were actually made at the time of the decree, it would constitute our earliest—albeit oblique—evidence, for the claim that the poet-lawgiver Solon was actually the author of some form of democracy, since he is not explicitly characterized as a constitutional reformer in any source written before this time.5 As for Cleisthenes’ role in this scheme, it is clear enough from the context that he was seen not as the original founder of democracy but merely as the man who restored it after the Peisistratid tyranny. Hence, we should probably emend the standard translation of the text of Cleitophon’s rider in AP .. In this instance, the verb kathiste–, a form of the very same verb (kathiste–mi) used earlier by Herodotus to describe Cleisthenes’ contribution to Athenian democracy, must mean “reestablished” not “established (from scratch).” The claim that Solon was in some sense the founder of Athenian democracy would prove to be extremely durable. In an effort to counter the force of this new historical charter for the constitution preferred by the Therameneans, supporters of radical democracy ultimately devised a very similar precedent for their very own version of de–mokratia. Following the restoration of this “demotic” democracy after the fall of the Thirty Tyrants in , it was resolved in a decree proposed by Teisamenos (see Andoc. .–) that inter alia the polis be governed “according to traditional precedent” [kata ta patria], and be sub-

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ject to the “laws” [nomoi] of Solon, with some role even foreseen for the “ordinances” [thesmoi] of Draco. Thus, whatever the actual historical achievement of Cleisthenes, it was Solon who came to be celebrated as the preeminent democratic reformer and Athenian history’s µrst true “champion of the people.”6 But assuming that Solon was not cast in this role until the later µfth century, how were the origins of democracy in Athens understood before this time? According to the earliest unambiguous testimony for a founder µgure, the Athenians apparently believed that the µrst steps toward popular government had been taken long before the times of Solon and Cleisthenes, back during the reign of the legendary king Theseus. Perhaps nurtured in the less partisan, more “imaginary” realm of state funeral orations, the beginnings of this tradition are very hard to pin down. But it was certainly current by the s, when it is µrst visible to us in the Suppliants of Euripides (esp. –). Thereafter, it is attested more frequently, appearing implicitly or explicitly in a number of fourth-century sources, and it seems even to have in×uenced Thucydides’ conception of the early Athenian state.7 How then did the Athenians of the fourth-century reconcile memories of three different moments of political rupture—those associated with Theseus, Solon, and Cleisthenes—and organize them into a single coherent narrative? The best-attested reconstructions of early Athenian constitutional history from this time are found in AP and in the works of the reactionary pamphleteer Isocrates. In the µrst part of AP (.–.) we µnd a highly nuanced, if not always accurate or consistent overview of Athenian political developments down to  B.C., concluding (.) with a summary of eleven successive changes of government [metabolai] identiµed by the author. The second of these is characterized as “shifting slightly away from absolute monarchy” [mikron parenklinousa te– s basilike– s] under Theseus, though the eventual abolition of the monarchy is not included in the scheme. What then follows represents something of a compromise between the “demotic” and oligarchic versions of constitutional history. Thus, after a probable interpolation concerning the supposed constitution of Draco, the third change comes when Solon lays down the “foundation of democracy” [arkhe– de–mokratias]. However, we learn from elsewhere in the text (.) that this development involved only limited gains for ordinary citizens, the “most demotic” [de– motiko– tata] reforms being a ban on taking loans on the security of the body, the right for anyone who so wished to seek legal redress, and the right to appeal a legal decision in a dikaste–rion. Meanwhile, in the µfth change it is left to Cleisthenes to revive the democracy after the fall of the Pei-

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sistratid tyranny and give it a much more radical character (cf. .). Although further steps in this direction would be taken by Aristides and Ephialtes in the seventh change in the sequence, the author of AP clearly felt (.) that the decisive shift towards radical democracy had already occurred decades earlier, when Cleisthenes “won over the demos by handing over control of the state to the people” [prose– gageto ton de– mon, apodidous to– i ple– thei te– n politeian].8 An altogether less nuanced and more partisan synthesis of constitutional history is found among the copious writings of Isocrates. More concerned to in×uence contemporary affairs than the author of AP, Isocrates was inspired by a nostalgic longing for what he thought was the traditional constitution of the past, arguing throughout his career for its revival and the abandonment of the degenerate constitution of his own day. Though his preferred regime is repeatedly described as “democracy,” it in fact resembles nothing more than the kind of moderate oligarchy once favored by the Therameneans. As for the history of this avowedly “aristocratic” version of democracy, he imagined it had been µrst introduced to Athens “not less than a thousand years” earlier at the time of Theseus (cf. ., ). But the real hero of the story for Isocrates seems to have been Solon, described as a “champion of the people,” whom he credits with µnally writing this constitution into law. Cleisthenes, too, is presented in a very positive light. However, unlike in AP, he is not seen as any kind of innovator, his achievement being rather to restore the Solonian regime after liberating Athens from the Peisistratid tyrants. For Isocrates, therefore, it was not until well after the reforms of / that the constitution µrst began to be tainted by “demotic” elements, the ultimate result being the debased form of popular government all too familiar to his fourthcentury contemporaries.9 Whatever the differences of detail between these two reconstructions, the overall scheme in each is similar. In both, it is Theseus who makes the µrst signiµcant move toward popular government, but Solon who makes this commitment essentially irrevocable by writing democracy into law. Both charter traditions were thus accommodated into a single satisfying narrative. As for Cleisthenes, his role was simply to restore Solon’s political arrangements after their abandonment by the Peisistratids. Dispute remained only on the question of whether he gave democracy a more radical ×avor in the process. We should of course like to know better what others in the fourth century came to believe about Athenian constitutional history, especially Atthidographers like Cleidemus and Androtion. But in so far as we can recover an “ofµcial” version of events, it does not seem to have diverged signiµcantly from the overall pattern found in Isocrates and AP.10 While, for obvious reasons, the

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state may have placed more emphasis on the achievements of Theseus than on those of Solon, the contributions of both were deemed worthy of public celebration. Thus, extant fourth-century funeral orations routinely appeal to the “ancestral” democracy of the heroic past, and there was probably an allusion to the foundational moment of this democracy in a mural executed in ca.  by Euphranor in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. Here, in the µrst known monumental commemoration of an event in the earliest, formative phase of Athenian constitutional history, the artist conspicuously juxtaposed a Theseus µgure with personiµed images of Demos and Demokratia. But equally conspicuously, when, at some point before the early s, a decision was made to memorialize the achievements of a more recent constitutional reformer, it was Solon who was honored with a free-standing bronze statue in front of the Stoa Poikile in the Agora.11 There was then, it seems, a broad consensus about the outlines of Athenian constitutional history by the fourth century, with individual writers generally echoing the ofµcial line, namely that democracy was no recent, progressive innovation but an almost timeless feature of the Athenian cultural landscape. The achievements of Cleisthenes, meanwhile, were now seen as no more than a footnote in the larger story of the Athenian state. His decisive role in the political uniµcation of Attica was eclipsed by the synoecism tradition, and his contribution to the cause of popular government was judged to be a more or less straightforward revival of practices initiated by others. And since Cleisthenes was never accorded the kind of permanent public recognition that was lavished so freely upon Theseus and Solon in the classical era, interest in the Alcmeonid declined appreciably thereafter.12 Apparently the only monument to him still visible when Pausanias came to record the sights of Athens in the second century A.D. was a grave memorial in the state cemetery in the Kerameikos. The travel writer (..) passes over it in about half a sentence, noting merely that Cleisthenes was the man responsible for “the present arrangement of the tribes.” And it comes as no surprise when Pausanias implies elsewhere in his text that even this limited achievement would no longer have been common knowledge among his readers.13 We shall have more to say in due course about the formation of a shared constitutional memory in Athens (see especially chapter ). For now it is enough to observe that the vagaries of this memory in the classical period, alluded to above, make it extremely difµcult to assess the historical contribution of Cleisthenes’ reforms to democracy in Athens. Even the earliest and most reliable of our ancient guides were forced to depend to a great extent on an oral tradition that was all too vulnerable to the in×uence of political expediency and patriotic fancy. Most if not all of them may therefore have made assumptions

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and inferences that are fundamentally ×awed, requiring us to exercise unusual levels of caution and skepticism when handling their accounts. Perhaps the ancients were correct in their view that Cleisthenes did little more than reassemble an older order dismantled by the Peisistratids, though we cannot assume that they were. Whatever the case, our sources understandably show greater interest in the more illustrious achievements of Theseus and Solon. And their relative lack of interest in the Alcmeonid raises a further problem that is both more straightforward and far harder to overcome, namely, the paltry quantity of information that has come down to us about the career of Cleisthenes, the content of his reforms, and their historical context. Still, these problems need not be insurmountable. As I hope to show in the remainder of this chapter, there are other kinds of evidence on which we can draw to compensate for the shortcomings of our main literary sources and complete our picture of Cleisthenes’ reforms. But µrst, we should clarify an important semantic issue raised earlier. What exactly did de–mokratia mean in the Athenian context? To speak of the term as if it referred to a single, monolithic idea seems unhelpful, not to mention unrealistic. Ancient and modern authors use the word with such latitude that it is probably preferable to think of a continuum of meaning along which at some point we must locate the contribution of Cleisthenes’ reforms. At one extreme, we have the regime described in AP and elsewhere as “demotic” democracy, with its sovereign citizen Assembly (ekkle–sia), powerful mass-jury courts (dikaste–ria), routine public scrutiny and review of all state ofµcials, payment for jurors and magistrates, and use of the lottery in the selection of most ofµceholders. Under this radically egalitarian system, almost all distinctions in privilege between rich and poor would, in theory at least, be eliminated. But what were the bare minimum requirements for democracy? In other words, where does the continuum begin? This question continues to be the object of an ongoing and vigorous debate, since the way we choose to answer it determines, in large part, where we locate the decisive break in the evolutionary progression from an older, more aristocratic form of government toward a genuinely popular regime in Athens. While some are content to equate the emergence of democracy with the µrst signs that nonelite citizens are playing a meaningful role in the political process, others insist that a regime cannot truly be described as democratic until it features at least some of the more obviously egalitarian practices mentioned above, such as the selection of ofµceholders by lottery.14 Of these two points of discontinuity, the former is clearly the more historically signiµcant, marking the moment of irreversible shift from a state in which

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the deliberative process is conducted largely by elites in camera to one in which nonelite citizens µrst begin to contribute to major political decisions on a regular basis. Deµning this moment in the Athenian context requires the fulµllment of two conditions: the Assembly must have acquired ultimate authority over key matters of policy and legislation from the institutions that hitherto dominated the state, the archons and the Areopagus; and all citizens must be allowed to attend, speak, and vote in meetings of the Assembly, so that its resolutions can be deemed to represent the will of the entire demos, regardless of the numbers and class identity of those actually in attendance on any given occasion. Whether or not these conditions match all of our own criteria for “democracy,” they would seem to fulµll the minimum requirements for de–mokratia, that is, the claim that the demos collectively ruled in Athens. However, to avoid confusion and contention, I will refer to this scenario by the less loaded term “popular government.” DEMOS AND ASSEMBLY UNDER THE NEW ORDER

Is there then any evidence to associate Cleisthenes’ reforms with the elevation of the Assembly to supremacy in the state? Though the accounts of Herodotus and AP contain no explicit notice of any overall change in the powers and competence of the ekkle–sia with respect to those of other institutions, there are several hints in these sources that the Assembly did assume a far more prominent position in Athenian political life after the reforms and that this was part of a greater emphasis on collective (over individual) authority in the new order.15 First, there are the circumstances of the introduction of the reforms themselves. It seems beyond doubt that Cleisthenes, in his capacity as a private citizen, proposed the measures in the form of a pse–phisma (resolution to be voted on) presented for ratiµcation in the Assembly. Both sources emphasize the critical role played by the support of the demos in the passage of the reforms, and it is hard to imagine how this support could have had any meaningful political impact unless it was expressed institutionally, in the ekkle–sia. Since Herodotus elsewhere uses the word de–mos in effect as a synonym for the Athenian ekkle–sia (e.g., ..–, ..), he may be alluding to this speciµc procedure when he tells us, in the crucial phrase, that Cleisthenes “won the de–mos over to his side” [ton de–mon prosetairizetai] (..). In any case, it seems likely that ratiµcation in the Assembly was thereafter required to make binding any new item of legislation.16 But was this the µrst time that the ekkle–sia had provided the ultimate sanction for a resolution of such far-reaching signiµcance? We cannot know the an-

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swer to this question for sure and shortly will look at evidence for its role under earlier regimes in Athens. Second, our sources mention another Cleisthenic innovation that seems to hint at a greater role in the new order for ordinary citizens and for the Assembly in particular: the introduction of the practice of ostracism (see AP ., ), whereby one political leader a year could be expelled from Attica without loss of citizen’s rights for a period of ten years.17 Whatever the original stated purpose of the procedure, it clearly would have helped to ensure the accountability of leaders to the citizen body as a whole, since the right to call a vote on whether to hold an ostracism was reserved exclusively for the Assembly and since a quorum of six thousand citizens was required for the procedure to be initiated in any given year. Even if ostracism was not actually used for the µrst time until some twenty years later, the very existence of such a mechanism strongly suggests that the collective will of the demos was now held to take precedence, at least nominally, over the will of any particular individual, however in×uential.18 Third, possible evidence that citizens of all social backgrounds were now actively encouraged to participate in the deliberations of the Assembly comes in another passage of Herodotus (.). Having just described the sudden upturn in Athenian fortunes on the battleµeld that followed soon after Cleisthenes’ reform of the state, the historian directly associates this newfound military prowess with the political transformation, in particular with ise–goria— literally, the equal right of all citizens to address the Assembly. While, in the context of this passage, the meaning of the term is clearly generalized to suggest a broader idea of “equality” or “freedom” (i.e., from the rule of a tyrant), some have concluded that Herodotus is also using ise–goria in its narrower sense here, as one of the signature innovations of the new order.19 If so, this concern to make the ekkle–sia more representative of the entire citizen body can be taken as a further sign of a new emphasis on collective (over individual) responsibility for decision making in the Athenian state as a whole. Finally, we have the creation of the boule–, or Council of  (see AP .)— at µrst sight, perhaps the best available evidence for the Assembly’s enhanced role under the new order. Though, in its earliest phase, the council was probably limited in function to probouleusis (the drafting of motions for deliberation in the ekkle–sia), that there was even a need for such a body, let alone one of this size, is obviously indicative of the large volume and signiµcance of the business that was now to be transacted in the Assembly. But here we run into another problem confronted by those who would trace the rise of popular government in Athens to the transformation of /.

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For there is some evidence that a very similar kind of probouleutic council had been operating in Athens since the time of Solon, which suggests that the ekkle–sia had already acquired a prominent, if not dominant, position in the state more than eighty years before Cleisthenes µrst proposed his reforms. Again, this evidence will be examined more closely in due course, when we come to look at earlier political arrangements in the city. In the meantime, if we turn our attention away from the accounts of Herodotus and AP and look further aµeld, we µnd a range of other testimony from the time of the reforms and the years immediately following that seems to corroborate our µndings so far. In the µrst place, it can hardly be a coincidence that spacious new quarters for both the Assembly and Council were constructed in ca.  B.C. As we shall see in chapter , these structures were to form the centerpieces of a new civic center created at this time in the area of the Agora. While the Council was to be housed in a handsome columnar building in the Agora itself, the ekkle–sia would henceforth meet in a specially modeled theatral area located on the nearby Pnyx hill. This site, containing space sufµcient to seat around µve thousand citizens even in its earliest phase, clearly presupposes a deliberative process in which mass participation would be a key ingredient. It is unfortunate, but perhaps also revealing, that not a single memory or physical trace survives of any predecessor to either structure. The practice of recording the decrees of the Assembly in permanent form, a sure index of this body’s growing stature within the state, may also have been introduced in the immediate aftermath of Cleisthenes’ reforms. Not a single document of this kind survives among the large number of Athenian inscriptions we have from earlier times, nor is there any reference in our written sources to decrees that will have been published before /. Probably the earliest known instance is a fragmentary decree recovered from the Acropolis (IG I3 ) that appears to include instructions to the “governor” [arkho– n] of Salamis on the administration of Athenian settlers, or cleruchs, on the island. The letter forms on the document allow a date anywhere between  and , and some would place it toward the lower end of this time frame. But if, as Meiggs and Lewis (, –) have suggested, it in fact belongs to the brief period between Cleisthenes’ reforms and the Athenian defeat of the Chalcidians in ca. , we would have good reason to see the publication of Assembly decrees as an innovation of the new order. The content of the Salamis decree is also revealing. Like all future documents of this kind, it describes itself as a resolution not of the ekkle–sia but of the de–mos itself. Thus, whatever the reality of the numbers and backgrounds of those present on the Pnyx on this or any future occasion, each deliberative

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outcome is now ofµcially claimed to embody the will of the citizen body as a whole, again suggesting a new concern to present the political process in Athens as a collective undertaking and to assert the Assembly’s role as its primary conduit.20 Some indication of the extent of the powers enjoyed by the ekkle–sia can also be seen in the subject matter of this and another early decree (IG I3 ), a set of regulations from / that concerns the management of the Hekatompedon precinct on the Acropolis. Evidently, if an Assembly vote was now routinely required to ratify legislation on matters as diverse as the settlement of cleruchs and the conduct of ofµcials and citizens at a major cult site, its competence was extremely wide-ranging. But perhaps most important of all, as Ostwald (, ) notes, the two decrees reveal that “[t]he people as a whole, nobles and commoners, now gave directions to magistrates.” Meanwhile, evidence for a more fundamental revaluation of the authority of the Assembly within the state may be visible in a fragmentary inscription from the late µfth century (IG I3 ) that is widely believed to be a republication of measures enacted sometime during the period between the reforms of Cleisthenes and those of Ephialtes in /. What survives appears to be a document deµning the powers of the Council of  relative to those of the ekkle–sia, including a list of matters of state where no µnal action can be taken “without [ratiµcation by] a full meeting of the demos of the Athenians.”21 The document appears to describe how the Assembly holds ultimate jurisdiction over such critical areas as the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace (–), as well as (perhaps sitting as the Heliaia) the imposition of the death penalty in certain circumstances () and of tho–ai, µnes for offenses whose nature remains unclear (–). If we combine this evidence with the testimony of literary sources, a case can be made that at least two of these powers were exercised by the demos as early as the s. First, it emerges that the right of the demos (whether as ekkle–sia or Heliaia) to in×ict the death penalty may have been exercised in conjunction with a broader authority over serious crimes against the state. The case has been argued in some detail by Ostwald (, –), who examines the evidence for six political trials concerning µve prominent individuals, from that of the tragedian Phrynichus in / to that of Cimon in . In each instance, it appears that the µnal verdict was delivered by a popular body, described variously as “the demos,” “the Athenians,” or “a law court” (dikaste–rion). Presumably, this body deliberated after an initial hearing before the Areopagus, since the latter had apparently been given exclusive jurisdiction over trials of this kind by Solon (see AP .). Ostwald (, –) concludes that a new stipulation, whereby any crime against the state that would incur a serious penalty had to

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be referred for µnal consideration before a mass tribunal believed to embody the collective will of the demos, was introduced “either by Cleisthenes himself or soon after his reforms.”22 Second, we have good evidence that as early as  B.C., the Assembly was already playing a decisive role in declarations of war and the determination of what we would consider “foreign policy.” When, at that time, Artaphernes, the Persian satrap at Sardis, demanded that the Athenians take back Hippias or face the consequences, “it was resolved” [ededokto] by “the Athenians,” says Herodotus (..), “to become open enemies of the Persians.” And when, shortly afterward, Aristagoras of Miletus came to persuade the Athenians to join the Ionian revolt against Persia, Herodotus (.) explicitly states that he made his appeal “to the demos” [epi ton de–mon]. Dispelling any doubt that the mention of the “demos” in this instance refers to the Assembly, Herodotus then tells how the Milesian, upon securing the support he sought, playfully remarked how much more successful his entreaty had been with thirty thousand Athenians than it had with one single Spartan, King Cleomenes, on an earlier occasion. Herodotus concludes the episode by noting that it was “the Athenians” [hoi Athe–naioi] who “voted” [epse–phisanto] to send the fateful twenty ships to Ionia, thus conµrming that the ekkle–sia was now ultimately responsible not only for receiving the appeals of foreign emissaries and making declarations of war but also for determining the details of the military response to any given situation. As a µnal indication of a general shift toward collective popular rule under the new order, we might brie×y note a contemporary change in nomenclature. Ostwald (, –) has traced to the late sixth century the displacement of the term thesmos by nomos as the word for “statute” in ofµcial parlance, and he suggests that this change re×ects a fundamental reconceptualization of the legislative process in Athens, whereby laws were seen no longer as “imposed” from above but as “accepted” by common consent. As Ostwald puts it elsewhere (, ), Just as the law on ostracism was contrived to let the people as a whole decide which of two major policies was to be adopted by temporarily banishing from the political scene the most prominent spokesman of one of them, so the disappearance of thesmos from the ofµcial vocabulary of the new constitution indicates that imposition of laws by a ruling class was to give way to laws ratiµed by popular acceptance. In sum, there are many indications in the historical record for the late sixth century that the signiµcance of the citizen Assembly within the Athenian state

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was substantially increased in / and the years immediately following. The authors of our main literary sources do not talk about this transformation in as many words. Indeed, it seems that they were largely unaware of any such change. But hints in their texts, along with a variety of circumstantial evidence from elsewhere, do suggest that a fundamental shift of political gravity away from the archons and Areopagus and toward the Assembly took place at this time. As part of a broader emphasis on collective (over individual) responsibility in the management of the state, resolutions on most if not all major items of policy and legislation now required ratiµcation in the ekkle–sia. And while this far-reaching competence would be extended still further in the years to come, especially after the reforms of Ephialtes in /, it looks very much like the Assembly had already become the primary arena of political engagement in Athens by the end of the sixth century. Henceforth, all aspiring politicians would have to defend their programs and agendas before an audience of thousands on the Pnyx, and henceforth their success would be measured in popular votes. With politicians thus accountable to their fellow citizens on an almost continual basis, and with all resolutions of the Assembly deemed to represent the will of the entire demos, it seems that popular government now held sway in Athens.23 But just how sudden or dramatic was this elevation of the Assembly to supremacy in the state? Much of the evidence I have discussed suggests that this was indeed a wholly new departure and that nonelite citizens before / played little part in the political process. But many modern authorities believe that some form of popular government predated the reforms of Cleisthenes, and some, notably Wallace (), have argued that de–mokratia itself was already in place more than eighty years earlier, seeing it as a direct outcome of measures introduced by Solon. To reach a more informed judgment on the historical signiµcance of the developments of the late sixth century, we clearly need to examine these claims and look in more detail at earlier political arrangements in Athens. THE SOLONIAN STATE

The problems in our sources for Solonian interventions in the political domain are again formidable. Aside from what he tells us in his own poems, almost everything we know about Solon as a political and legal reformer comes from the fourth century or later. By this time, any items of legislation passed before the republications of the late µfth century were referred to generically as “laws of Solon,” making it hard for our sources to distinguish the authentic from the

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inauthentic Solonian measures.24 Moreover, if, as we noted earlier, he was not widely viewed as a signiµcant agent of political change until ca.  B.C., we might have further cause to suspect the authenticity of the various constitutional reforms with which he is later credited.25 That said, for the purposes of discussion, we should grant our sources some beneµt of the doubt and assume that at least some of the “laws” they describe were genuinely Solonian, whether deriving ultimately from the wooden axones in the Prytaneion (see Paus. ..; Plut. Sol. .–), the stone kurbeis in the Stoa Basileios (see AP .), Nicomachus’s republications in the late µfth century, or from some other public document. We might start by noting two developments of very broad signiµcance for the evolution of Athenian political life that Solon almost certainly did encourage. First, if even a very small portion of the individual laws credited to him are correctly assigned, it seems fair to associate Solon with an increasing willingness on the part of the state to intervene in areas previously considered private. For example, his laws regulating marriage and the begetting of children (see Manville ,  n. ), his economic prescriptions concerning exports (see Plut. Sol. .) and weights and measures (see AP ), and his formal instructions for the conduct of religious ceremonies suggest an overall concern with deµning what we would consider a public domain. Nevertheless, as a salutary reminder that this process of deµnition was still very much in its infancy, it is worth pointing out that not a single extant documentary inscription from before  B.C. records an item of business enacted in the name of the “the Athenians,” let alone “the demos of the Athenians.”26 Even the Acropolis dedications from ca.  that are generally associated with the administration of the Great Panathenaia (see Raubitschek , nos. –), the most important single occasion in Athenian public life, appear to have been offered by private individuals in their own names. Second, as Manville (, esp. –) has shown persuasively, a range of Solonian measures imply the establishment of some kind of criteria for determining who was and who was not an Athenian citizen.27 Here too, however, we should not suppose that the procedures involved were necessarily as comprehensive and systematic as they would become after /. Very little is known about the administration of citizenship before the reforms of Cleisthenes, and for reasons outlined in chapter , it seems unlikely that individuals who lived beyond the plain of Athens were yet routinely enrolled into the Athenian citizen community.28 But our chief interest here is in the political content of citizenship at this time. What role, if any, did nonelite citizens play in the political process?

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Our primary accounts of Solonian constitutional arrangements are found in AP (–), Aristotle’s Politics (b–a), and Plutarch’s Life of Solon (–), the µrst and last of which credit Solon with a range of political innovations, introduced presumably around the time of his archonship, /.29 Unfortunately for our purposes, neither AP nor Plutarch says anything about the competence of the citizen Assembly at this time, while Aristotle tells us that its functions were merely “to choose magistrates and call them to account” [tas arkhas haireisthai kai euthunein].30 We do, however, learn that Solon introduced a “Council of , [made up of ] a hundred from each [Ionian] tribe” (AP .; cf. ., .), whose function was to prepare the business of the Assembly (Plut. Sol. .–). Since the very need for such a body implies that the Assembly met regularly and played a meaningful role in the conduct of state business, these reports, if accurate, would constitute very strong evidence that a form of popular government was in operation in Athens long before the reforms of Cleisthenes. In the absence of any other straightforward evidence, the veracity of these reports comes to assume considerable importance. Most observers, it seems, are content to accept them at face value and suppose that a predecessor of the Cleisthenic ekkle–sia/boule– complex in×uenced the deliberative process in Athens as far back as the early sixth century, perhaps serving as a kind of counterweight to the archons and Areopagus, which were still exclusive preserves of the elite. Others remain more skeptical, and though their arguments are often dismissed as “extreme,” the overall case actually has considerable merit.31 To begin with, it must be admitted that there is a strange reticence about this institution in our sources. Aristotle discusses Solonian constitutional arrangements in some detail, giving particular attention to the claim that Solon founded the “traditional democracy” [de–mokratian . . . te–n patrion] in Athens (Pol. b–); yet the probouleutic council, an institution central to so many modern interpretations of Solon’s reforms, does not appear once in the discussion. Meanwhile, in AP and Plutarch, the only details we hear about this council, spare statements of its function (probouleusis) and composition (by tribal contingent), could simply be inferences drawn from knowledge of the later Council of . Even if the powers of the Assembly at this time did include the rights “to choose magistrates and hold them to account,” one is entitled to wonder why an effective standing committee of four hundred councillors was required to facilitate the execution of such modest functions. However we choose to resolve this problem, it is truly astonishing that the author of AP fails to include the creation of a new probouleutic council in his list (.) of “the three most radical features” of the “Solonian constitution” [te–s

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Solo– nos politeias tria . . . ta de–motiko– tata]. Why was the signiµcance of this development, self-evident to modern observers, so lost on a highly informed ancient student of Athenian political history? It is tempting to conclude that the author’s sources for Solonian constitutional arrangements were considerably less informative about the Council of  than they were about, say, the Areopagus or the selection and duties of magistrates. The incidental, almost evasive manner in which he refers to the institution, along with his complete failure to integrate this council into his broader picture of the state apparatus in the Solonian era, suggests a distinct lack of self-assurance on the subject. This vagueness, along with the absence of any explicit evidence for the activities of a popular council in Athens between / and /, has understandably raised suspicions in some quarters about the institution’s historicity, especially since it is quite easy to pinpoint a particular moment in later Athenian history when a tradition of the Solonian Council of  might conveniently have been invented.32 As Hignett (, ) pointed out many years ago, such a moment came with the introduction of what AP (.) describes as the “interim constitution” [politeian en to– i paronti] formulated by oligarchic forces in  B.C. According to the new arrangement, a Council of , established “in accordance with traditional practice” [kata ta patria], was to be installed with broad competence over the constitution, the laws, and the appointment of magistrates. To legitimize this new institution by representing it as the reestablishment of a “traditional” body, its designers, Hignett contends, invented the precedent of the Solonian Council of .33 To this reconstruction, it may be objected that such a µction would hardly have been in the oligarchs’ best interests; while the number four hundred, as an easy multiple of four, suggested authentic origins in the pre-Cleisthenic tribal system, why would they make the number so “democratically” large if they were free to use any multiple of four they chose?34 To answer this question, I think we have to envisage the physical space in which this supposedly Solonian council was imagined to have convened. This surely was the structure occupied at that time by the Council of , the so-called Old Bouleuterion in the Agora, a building we now know to have been erected in ca.  B.C. But from evidence elsewhere, it seems safe to suppose that this and other earlier structures in the Agora area were thought by later Athenians to be somewhat older than they actually were. If, then, the Old Bouleuterion could plausibly be claimed to have housed a Solonian council by , the oligarchs clearly had to come up with a multiple of four large enough to make this “original”

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council a credible occupant of a building that was actually designed to accommodate µve hundred men.35 Defenders of the Solonian Council of  typically resort to three items of independent evidence to bolster the slim testimony in Plutarch and AP, though none of these is decisive. First, in response to the claim that a popular council could not have coexisted alongside a more aristocratic body like the Areopagus in the early sixth century, defenders point to an inscription from ca. – found on Chios that appears to attest to precisely such an arrangement. But, to quote Sealey (a, ), “Athens was not Chios,” and the feasibility of the arrangement elsewhere hardly proves that it was actually implemented in Athens by Solon.36 Second, there is the somewhat more compelling suggestion that the coexistence of the two councils in Athens may in any case have been alluded to in one of Solon’s poems. Certainly Plutarch’s statement (.) that Solon intended the pair to function as the “twin anchors” of the state could re×ect a metaphor used by the poet himself, but it need not do so. Again, this is hardly formidable evidence.37 The µnal claim in the case for the Council of  derives from our two accounts of the troubled events in Athens following Cleisthenes’ ratiµcation of his reforms in the Assembly. Herodotus (..) and AP (.) both tell us that Cleomenes tried unsuccessfully to dissolve “the council” before leading his forces to storm the Acropolis. Neither author speciµes whether this was the Council of , the Council of , or, for that matter, the Areopagus. Clearly, it makes most sense in this context that the body concerned was the Council of , the embodiment of the new order that had prompted Isagoras’s appeal to Cleomenes in the µrst place. While we may wonder if there was sufµcient time to install the new council before the king’s intervention, it is not hard to imagine that a pro tempore version of the boule– might already have been convened by this point. Since the argument for seeing this episode as evidence for the existence of the Council of  consists solely of eliminating the other two possibilities, we must again conclude that the case is less than compelling.38 A neutral observer of this debate about the Solonian council would probably pronounce it inconclusive. The evidence in favor of the council’s existence is not negligible but is too riddled with problems to be even moderately persuasive in itself. Unfortunately, the issue cannot simply be ignored, since our understanding of the evolution of the archaic Athenian state depends to a considerable extent on how we choose to resolve it. The choice is a stark one. The introduction of such a council by Solon presupposes an abrupt, even radical

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shift toward popular government, with an energetic citizen Assembly playing a signiµcant role in the political process; without such a council, our picture of the state apparatus in the early sixth century looks dramatically different, still dominated most likely by the archons and Areopagus, with little room for any meaningful participation by nonelite citizens. With evidence for the council being so problematic and evidence for the activities of the Assembly at this time being almost non-existent, our next step must be to look at what our sources tell us of Solon’s other political reforms for clues about his overall aims. By any objective reckoning, Solon’s innovations in the political domain, the council aside, suggest that he was in general concerned more with standardizing received institutional practice, curbing abuses of power, and quelling tensions within the elite than with radically transforming the state. Hence, the system of the four tele–, or wealth classes, which he either introduced or reµned, provided legally enforceable criteria for ofµce holding. Leading magistrates, such as the archons and the treasurers, were henceforth to be chosen only from the top two classes, while members of the lowest class, the thetes, were still excluded from all forms of political participation except attendance in the Assembly.39 Indeed, Solon seems to have been less interested in empowering ordinary Athenians than in simply protecting them from elite malfeasance. Aside from his well-known cancellation of debts and ban on taking loans on the security of the body, he is also credited with an important procedural innovation that provided some form of legal recourse in the event of abuses of power from above. This was the mechanism known as ephesis, whereby it was possible to appeal against a magistrate’s decision by having the case referred to a popular court—at this point, presumably the Heliaia. However, the larger claim—expressly stated in Aristotle’s Politics (b–a)—that Solon established a system of “jury courts composed of all citizens” and thus “founded democracy” [eoike . . . ton . . . de–mon kataste–nai ta dikaste–ria poie–sas ek panto– n] is probably anachronistic, re×ecting the distinctive concerns of fourth-century speculation about Athenian constitutional history.40 As for the distribution of prerogatives between the various organs of the state apparatus, Solon seems to have effected little, if any, change to the existing system, perhaps merely standardizing established practice. As before, the eponymous archon served as the ofµcial head of state (see AP .). But more signiµcantly, the Areopagus, according to AP (.), was responsible not only for general oversight of the laws and constitution (nomophulakia) but also for “most of the greatest matters of state” [ta pleista kai megista to– n politiko– n], just as it had been in earlier times (see AP .).41 Since the actual production of policy and legislation in the Solonian state is nowhere explicitly discussed in

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AP, perhaps the author simply assumed that these all-important functions fell ultimately within the wide-ranging compass of the archons and Areopagus. If so, it would seem there is little room left here for any role to be played by the citizen Assembly beyond holding the elections and possibly the performance reviews (euthunai) speciµed in the Politics (a–). Solon’s overall concern with standardization, stability, and continuity would not lead us to expect otherwise. If the Assembly was not yet routinely involved in the production and ratiµcation of policy and legislation, it is extremely hard to visualize a meaningful role for any kind of probouleusis in the political process at this time, let alone for a standing committee of four hundred councillors. Perhaps it was also hard for the author of AP to visualize the role played by the Council of  in Solonian Athens, thus explaining his apparent reluctance to draw attention to its signiµcance and tell us more about it. That said, the evidence for the “Solonian constitution” is problematic, often ambiguous at best, and interpretation is all too easily in×uenced by presupposition. Both those who defend and those who oppose the idea of Solon as a major political reformer adduce passages from his own poems in support of their claims. And even if the poems provide no concrete information about any constitutional change, their authenticity, at least, is rarely questioned. Of most immediate interest are the verses referring to the acute social unrest of this period, which was prompted, it seems, by the increasingly unrestrained abuse and exploitation of poor smallholders and agricultural laborers by members of the landed elite. Solon’s own attempts to resolve this situation in his capacity as diallakte–s, or specially appointed mediator (AP .; Plut. Sol. .), are described only in rather general and allusive terms. For our purposes, the value of the poems therefore lies less in their factual content than in what they reveal of their author’s broader cultural assumptions—especially concerning the “common people” (de–mos)—and thus of his likely attitude toward the idea of radical political reform.42 As Wallace (, ) has emphasized, Solon is at times sharply critical of the conduct of the elite in his poems, chastising them for their arrogance, their greed and their disregard for justice (e.g., .–, c.–). But Wallace’s conclusion that Solon was part of a “popular revolutionary movement” is not easy to sustain. Elsewhere, the poet makes it clear that he remained staunchly unaligned in the con×ict and sought only to restore equilibrium in Athens. This position is expressed unambiguously in poem  (lines –): dhvmwi me;n ga;r e[dwka tovson gevra~ o{son ejparkei`n, timh`~ ou[t¾ ajfelw;n ou[t¾ ejporexavmeno~:

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oi} d¾ ei\con duvnamin kai; crhvmasin h\san ajghtoiv, kai; toi`~ ejfrasavmhn mhde;n ajeike;~ e[cein: e[sthn d¾ ajmfibalw;n kratero;n savko~ ajmfotevroisi, nika`n d¾ oujk ei[as¾ oujdetevrou~ ajdivkw~. [For I gave to the common people as much privilege as is sufµcient for their purposes, neither adding to nor detracting from their dignity. And as for those who held power and were distinguished for their wealth, I decided they too should have nothing disgraceful. I stood with my strong shield cast around both groups, and suffered neither side to gain an unjust victory.]43 What exactly did the two sides “deserve”? What was “just” here? As far as we can tell, in Solon’s poems, as elsewhere in archaic Greek thought, “justice” (dike–) means little more than the “established order,” the divinely ordained dispensation of hallowed tradition.44 Thus, in poem  (lines –; cf. , ), Solon asserts his belief that wealth is an inalienable gift from the gods that only passes from one man to another when “persuaded by unjust deeds” [adikois ergmasi peithomenos], and even then does not go “willingly” [ouk ethelo– n]. So, too, in political life, the demos should be followers, not leaders (.–); given the innately inadequate intelligence of the demos, the alternative would result only in chaos: dh`mo~ d¾ w|d¾ a]n a[rista su;n hJgemovnessin e{poito, mhvte livan ajneqei;~ mhvte biazovmeno~: tivktei ga;r kovro~ u{brin, o{tan polu;~ o[lbo~ e{phtai ajnqrwvpoi~ oJpovsoi~ mh; novo~ a[rtio~ h\/i. [The common people will best follow their leaders thus, if neither too much unleashed nor too restrained. For excess breeds insubordination whenever great prosperity comes upon men whose minds are unsound.] Far from identifying with any popular cause, Solon takes credit in poem  (lines –) precisely for not being the kind of leader who would have encouraged deµance in the “common people” and thus deprived society’s “milk” of its “cream.”45 And far from empathizing with the aggrieved masses, Solon seems to think of them collectively as being a kind of unruly transport animal that needed “restraint” (see .–, .–). This metaphor is articulated more explicitly in poem , where he makes the much quoted claim that he wrote “or-

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dinances for lowly and noble alike” [thesmous . . . homoio– s to– i kako– i te k’agatho– i] (line ). Less often quoted are lines that follow soon afterwards (–): kevntron d¾ a[llo~ wJ~ ejgw; labwvn, kakofradhv~ te kai; filokthvmwn ajnhvr, oujk a]n kavtesce dh`mon: [But if another man, one of evil intentions and greed, had taken up the goad like I did, he would not have restrained the common people.] A man who speaks of having to “goad” the “common people” into abeyance and preserve the “cream” of society, and who clearly saw his task as the defense of the established economic and political order against pressures from both above and below is not likely to have abruptly entrusted the destiny of the state to popular institutions.46 To judge from the evidence of his poems, Solon was less interested in radical change than in simply restoring equilibrium and stability to a polis in turmoil. His slogan, if he had one, was not “revolution” but the altogether less radical idea of eunomia, or “good order,” famously celebrated at .–: tauta didavxai qumo;~ ÆAqhnaivou~ me keleuvei, wJ~ kaka; plei`sta povlei Dusnomivh parevcei: Eujnomivh d¾ eu[kosma kai; a[rtia pavnt¾ ajpofaivnei, kai; qama; toi`~ ajdivkoi~ ajmfitivqhsi pevda~: traceva leiaivnei, pauvei kovron, u{brin ajmauroi`, auJaivnei d¾ a[th~ a[nqea fuovmena, eujquvnei de; divka~ skoliav~, uJperhvfanav t¾ e[rga prau?nei: pauvei d¾ e[rga dicostasivh~, pauvei d¾ ajrgalevh~ e[rido~ covlon, e[sti d¾ uJp¾ aujth`~ pavnta kat¾ ajnqrwvpou~ a[rtia kai; pinutav. [My heart bids me teach the Athenians how Disorder brings most ills upon a polis, while Good Order renders all things decorous and agreeable, and frequently binds the unjust in fetters. It makes what is harsh smooth, checks excess, blunts arrogance, and parches the budding ×owers of destructive madness; it makes crooked judgments straight, tames overweening deeds, halts the works of faction and puts to rest the anger of grievous strife. As a result of Good Order are all things among men made perfect and wise.]

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The consistently conservative tone of the sentiments expressed in poem  and elsewhere in Solon’s verse broadly bears out the conclusions reached earlier. We can easily believe that the author of these words might have introduced basic legal protections and minimal political rights for ordinary citizens. But he was primarily interested in preserving, not overturning, the established order, and thus is not likely to have sanctioned any kind of signiµcant shift toward popular government in Athens. Is there any further way to corroborate this conclusion? Discussions of the Solonian state tend to focus almost exclusively on his poems and on ancient accounts of the reforms themselves, though most scholars would acknowledge the limitations of both forms of evidence. To date, modern observers have been surprisingly reluctant to pursue what would seem to be a plausible route out of this impasse, namely, to gauge the nature and signiµcance of Solon’s reforms by looking for signs of their impact on the actual conduct of politics in subsequent years. If the reforms were even moderately progressive, we might expect to µnd evidence for a discernible shift toward a more inclusive political culture. If no such shift is apparent, we have further reason to believe that the signiµcance of the reforms has been overstated, either because they were somehow ineffective or because they were less progressive than was later claimed. In the following section, I pursue this line of inquiry by looking in some detail at the broader political culture in Athens during the decades after the s. Since no lasting constitutional changes seem to have been made between the s and /, Solonian political arrangements presumably prevailed in Athens for more than eighty years, a period long enough, one would think, to be a valuable source of evidence for how these arrangements might have worked out in practice. This approach does, of course, have its problems. The latter part of the time frame in question, from ca. / to /, was dominated by the Peisistratid family, and though they apparently refrained from any constitutional change, it seems safer, for the purposes of analysis, to exclude this period from the inquiry. As for the earlier part of the time frame, from the mid-s to the later s, apart from a few anecdotes referring to domestic political turmoil and Athenian relations with Megara, we know too little to be of much service. But excluding these periods still leaves a window of some µfteen years, from ca. / to ca. /, the one extended stretch of time for which we do have something resembling a sequential narrative in our sources.47

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POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE MID–SIXTH CENTURY

We can begin by dismissing as µction the impression conveyed by both of our main sources (AP .–.; Hdt. ..–.) that these µfteen years saw Attica engulfed by a trilateral regionwide stasis. As we saw in chapter , power in Athens was keenly contested during these years by three leading families, the Boutads, the Alcmeonids, and the Peisistratids, but they almost certainly did not represent “parties” from the “plain,” the “coast,” and the “hills.” Nor is there any reason to believe that the machinery of government was suspended at any point during this period. Archons continued to be elected, and aside from Peisistratus’s recourse to force in / and to the threat of force in /, there seem to have been no major constitutional irregularities.48 At the beginning of this period, in /, Lycurgus and Peisistratus were in Athens, while Megacles and his family, as I argued in chapter , were living far to the south, in the Anaphlystos area, where they had spent some four decades in exile. If, as I also argued, the polis proper did not yet extend much beyond the plain of Athens itself, the tradition that placed Lycurgus at the head of the “party” from this “plain” presumably contains some recollection of his historical role as de facto leader of the Athenian state at this time. We have no way of knowing when or how Lycurgus and the Boutadai µrst acquired this level of authority. But a surprising wealth of independent testimony allows us to conµrm his family’s preeminence and trace it back at least to the earlier s. I refer here to the substantial body of evidence that broadly corroborates the ancient tradition that the Great Panathenaia, the most important single public occasion in the Athenian calendar, was founded in ca.  B.C. Since the Boutadai controlled the cult of Athena Polias, the goddess honored at the festival, it takes no great leap of faith to suppose that they played a decisive role in bringing the new quadrennial celebration into existence, and so were probably a dominant force in Athenian politics for at least half a decade before Peisistratus’s “µrst tyranny” in /.49 The extent of Lycurgus’s in×uence at this time is further suggested by the manner in which Peisistratus µrst took power. As we also saw in chapter , Peisistratus was certainly not an outsider in city politics and does not appear to have drawn once on the support of any “party” from the “hills.” But despite being from a well-established Athenian family, he evidently lacked the political capital necessary to gain wide support among his peers and supplant Lycurgus by conventional means, and so was forced to resort to an armed occupation of the Acropolis.

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Our main sources tell us only two things about Peisistratus’s “µrst tyranny”: it was unsuccessful, being short-lived and without deep foundation; and it was conducted wholly within the constitutional constraints of the day. In the words of AP (.), Peisistratus governed the state “in a civil fashion” [politiko– s], rather than “in the manner of a tyrant” [tyranniko– s]. The truth of the matter therefore seems to be that this distinctly ephemeral event was no tyranny worthy of the name but merely a brief coup. It certainly began with a display of force, but the style of leadership employed by Peisistratus thereafter was probably no different from the highly personalized, but essentially legitimate, form of de facto authority hitherto exercised by Lycurgus. Only in retrospect did it seem like an ominous anticipation of later tyranny.50 At all events, this short-lived coup ended when Lycurgus appealed to the banished Megacles and offered to restore the Alcmeonids to Athens in exchange for whatever kind of support was necessary to oust Peisistratus. Unfortunately, we have no idea what form this support took; both sources tell us only that the Boutads, the Alcmeonids, and their allies expelled him (exelaunousi min, Hdt. ..; exebalon auton, AP .). Evidently, this was not a particularly dramatic or violent event. If, as seems likely, Peisistratus actually withdrew voluntarily from Athens when he saw his political position was no longer tenable, the ease of his capitulation would further conµrm the tenuousness of his authority in the city at this time. Whatever the case, he seems to have departed for a safe haven in the Attic periphery (see Hdt. ..), perhaps in the Brauron area, where a period of residence-in-exile would help to explain his later associations with that locale. Back in Athens, the Boutads could now resume their hegemonic position, with the Alcmeonids serving presumably as junior partners. Thus, when a power struggle broke out between the two some four or µve years later (see AP .; Hdt. ..), it must have taken the form of a challenge to Lycurgus’s leadership by Megacles. It is against this background that we should view the extraordinary incident that soon followed. Peisistratus’s return to Athens in / is one of the relatively few events in archaic Athenian history for which we have some detailed information. Apparently, an exceptionally tall and beautiful young woman named Phye was µrst dressed up in the warrior garb of Athena and then driven in a chariot by Peisistratus through the streets of Athens and up to the Acropolis. The Athenian onlookers were, by all accounts, genuinely awestruck, believing themselves to be in the presence of true divinity. What was the purpose of such a charade? Those who accept the historicity of this intriguing event have exercised considerable critical ingenuity in teasing out its meanings and nuances. Some have

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suggested analogies with ancient kingship rituals or “sacred marriage” ceremonies, while others have supposed that Peisistratus sought merely to suggest that he enjoyed some kind of special favor with Athena, much as Heracles and Odysseus had done before him. But common to almost all interpretations are two assumptions: that Peisistratus orchestrated the whole stunt and that he himself was the ultimate focus of the ceremony, with the presence of “Athena” serving, in the end, only to provide a kind of public sanction for what is usually seen as his “second tyranny.” Both assumptions are shared by our two main ancient sources. But the details they describe seem to tell a rather different story.51 First, it is abundantly clear, from the information provided by both Herodotus and AP, that Megacles, not Peisistratus, orchestrated the spectacle. The former was maneuvering to supplant Lycurgus as the dominant µgure in Athenian politics, while the latter, still in exile from the city, was hardly in a position of strength. It appears that Megacles offered Peisistratus the task of driving “Athena” in the chariot as a condition of his safe return to Athens. Since it is very hard to believe that the ambitious Alcmeonid wanted to restore his erstwhile rival to power at his own expense, we can only conclude that Peisistratus was here serving Megacles’ purposes rather than his own.52 The suggestion that Megacles was in control of the whole situation seems to be conµrmed by the other condition of Peisistratus’s return, namely, a marriage alliance with the Alcmeonids. Given that this alliance would have required Peisistratus to divest himself of his recent, second marriage to Timonassa of Argos and would have damaged his potentially signiµcant relations with that state in the process, the arrangement was not necessarily to the future tyrant’s political advantage. Further conµrming Megacles’ control is the dissolution of his third marriage immediately after the Phye ceremony, on the grounds of nonconsummation, along with Peisistratus’s apparent powerlessness to prevent his own subsequent return into exile. It makes little sense to believe that he might have entered into the marriage without actually intending to produce children by his new wife (as our sources imply) and thus willingly gave himself no choice but to depart again into exile. Clearly, we must infer that he was no more responsible for sundering the alliance than he was for initiating it in the µrst place. In the circumstances, the claim of nonconsummation, supported by a more lurid charge of “unnatural” intercourse (see Hdt. ..–), looks a lot like an Alcmeonid pretext for getting rid of Peisistratus once he had somehow outlived his usefulness.53 But what are we to make of the Athena ceremony itself, with its apparent attempt to convey divine favor enjoyed by Peisistratus? Here we come to the

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second false premise behind the standard accounts. For according to the cultural logic of the ceremony described, it was Athena, not Peisistratus, who was in fact being restored to Athens. After all, it is the goddess, not the mortal, who belongs on the Acropolis, and as more than one source reveals (AP .; Cleidemus, FGrH  F), Peisistratus was merely the humble driver of the chariot. The armed “Athena,” meanwhile, like an Iliadic hero borne off to battle, played the starring role of warrior-passenger, or paraibate–s (cf., e.g., Il. .).54 As Connor (, ) notes in his now classic discussion of the episode, “Peisistratus is not seizing the kingship but serving as . . . Athena’s attendant, a brave but subordinate charioteer.” Nor should we ignore the other participant in the ceremony, whose presence is usually overlooked in discussions of the episode: though Megacles is later airbrushed out of the µnal tableau, both major sources indicate that he actually led the procession in person, either riding ahead or as a fellow passenger in the chariot.55 Why did Athena need to be restored to the Acropolis? How did this apparent hoax serve the interests of Megacles? The answers to these questions must lie in the contemporary political situation and in Megacles’ bid to challenge Lycurgus for de facto leadership of the state. It seems safe to assume that Lycurgus’s authority drew much of its force and legitimacy from his family’s control of the cult of Athena Polias and that his special association with the goddess would only have been reinforced in the years since the founding of the Great Panathenaia in ca. . Clearly, for Megacles to supplant his rival, he had to µnd some means of countering this powerful alliance of goddess and mortal. I therefore propose that we see in the Phye ceremony a highly elaborate attempt by the Alcmeonids to undermine this alliance by suggesting that Athena had deserted the Acropolis some time ago and therefore needed to be restored in appropriate style. Megacles, it seems, was only too happy to oblige. But where exactly on the Acropolis was the goddess restored to? Obviously not to the cult site of Athena Polias on the north side of the citadel, which was controlled by the Boutadai, and which at this point was probably occupied by a very modest seventh-century temple. But archaeologists have long suspected that a second Athena temple, considerably grander than the µrst, may have been erected somewhere on the Acropolis in ca.  B.C. Sometimes known as the “Bluebeard temple” from a µgure found among surviving pedimental sculptures, it is thought by some to have replaced the small seventh-century structure on the north side, only to be itself replaced by the so-called Old Athena Temple later in the sixth century. If this were indeed the case, we would be able to associate the “Bluebeard temple” fairly closely

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with the establishment of the Great Panathenaia and to see it probably as an initiative of the Boutadai.56 But as others, notably Dinsmoor (), have pointed out, the µt between what is known of temple and the surviving northside foundations is not exact, raising the possibility that the temple may in fact have been located elsewhere on the Acropolis, presumably on the south side, on the site later occupied by the Parthenon. Debate continues, though Dinsmoor’s argument seems to be µnally winning the day.57 Still missing from the picture, however, is any satisfactory explanation for the sudden appearance here of this second, far larger Athena temple in ca. . I tentatively propose that we see it as an Alcmeonid initiative, built to accommodate Athena in suitably grand style after her supposed restoration to the city by Megacles. After all, if the logic of the Phye ceremony suggested that the patron deity had previously deserted the more humble precinct administered by the Boutadai, it also required alternative accommodations on the Acropolis to which she might be willing to return. The “Bluebeard temple” will have µlled this need admirably. Seen in this new perspective, the ceremony as a whole was not, in the end, the elaborate hoax described in our sources; it did have a serious ritual purpose. But the ritual pattern to which it conforms closest has nothing to do with sacred marriages or kingship. Rather, the ceremony recalls nothing more than those processions at festivals where a mortal would don the garb of the celebrated divinity with no intent to dupe onlookers into believing that the god or goddess was now literally present among them. Megacles, I suggest, simply adapted this style of procession to create his own ritual of restoration. Only in retrospect, once Peisistratus’s posthumous reputation as a proverbial tyrant-trickster had been secured, did this event come to assume very different implications.58 Overall, this reading of the ceremony as an attempt by Megacles to counter Lycurgus’s politically proµtable association with Athena allows us to abandon completely the idea that the event was in any sense a preamble to a “second tyranny” of Peisistratus. Far from being a powerful insurgent making an ostentatious bid to take control of the city, Peisistratus was here little more than a pawn in a larger contest for hegemony between the Boutads and the Alcmeonids. His roles in the Athena ceremony and the marriage alliance suggest that his support was of some value in this contest. But having served his purpose, he was powerless to resist a humiliating exit back into exile. If the tradition of Peisistratus’s “µrst tyranny” has little in the way of historical substance to commend it, the tradition of his “second tyranny” has no substance

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whatsoever. Again, hindsight lent events a signiµcance that they did not at the time possess. It would be ten more years before Peisistratus would attempt to come back to Athens. Apparently, he spent much of this time cultivating important connections elsewhere, repairing his relations with Argos, and building up military resources, recognizing that a return on his own terms would now require force. Sadly, our sources tell us almost nothing of the Alcmeonids and Boutads during these years, though both Herodotus (..) and AP (.) imply that they reconciled soon after the Phye ceremony. Whatever the case, the presence of the Alcmeonids at the battle of Pallene and their subsequent return to their residence-in-exile in the paralia after their defeat by Peisistratus suggest that they retained a dominant position in the state throughout this ten-year period.59 Thus, the overall impression conveyed by our sources that the years ca. /–/ were a time of turbulent stasis punctuated by “tyrannies” does not stand up well to close scrutiny. Once we remove from these accounts the thick interpretive overlay imposed by later interests and presuppositions, we are left with a rather different picture, one of a vigorous, but for the most part conventional, competition between two families for de facto leadership of the Athenian state. The Boutadai appear to have been dominant from at least the earlier s, only to be challenged and perhaps displaced in the mid-s by the Alcmeonids, who clearly remained a powerful force in the city for the next ten years or so, down to the battle of Pallene. Peisistratus, meanwhile, was probably in Athens for little more than a year of the µfteen-year period in question, spending the rest of the time in exile in rural Attica and elsewhere. He surely was not an insigniµcant µgure, as his Argive marriage and other foreign connections attest. But his coup in /, his short-lived later alliance with Megacles, and his ultimate recourse to violence suggest that he as yet lacked sufµcient support among his peers at home to challenge the hegemony of the Boutads and Alcmeonids by conventional means. The ominous shadow that he appears to cast over events in the µfteen years before Pallene is more imagined than real. The idea that this µfteen-year period was a time of robust political competition rather than one of lawless stasis is also borne out by the contemporary material record. The Acropolis, in particular, experiences a dramatic increase in building and votive activity during these years. In the words of Hurwit (, –): Between  and , the Acropolis, which had been for so long the modest sanctuary of a provincial polis, became a grandiose spectacle of

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the µrst order, the visible expression of a city that was now entering the µrst rank in Greece . . . The picture we can draw of the Acropolis in the s and s . . . is of a suddenly busy and increasingly rich place, acquiring the accoutrements of a major sanctuary, with Athenians . . . beginning to compete with one another for the gods’ (and their fellow Athenians’) attention through the wealth of their dedications. One might guess that this wholly unprecedented ×urry of activity was stimulated above all by the establishment of the Great Panathenaia. It seems reasonable to suppose that the major developments associated with the festival, such as the erection of a massive ramp some eighty meters in length up to the entrance of the citadel and the possible remodeling of the entranceway, were overseen by the Boutadai. Meanwhile, for reasons I have discussed in this section, it makes good sense to see the new “Bluebeard temple,” the µrst monumental stone temple to be installed on the Acropolis, as an Alcmeonid response to their rivals’ bold attempts to advertise their links with Athena. But the site was not the exclusive preserve of these two families. No doubt inspired by the sudden transformation of the citadel into one of Greece’s more impressive urban sanctuaries, a relatively large number of their peers also chose now to lavish wealth on expensive dedications. Votives from this period are numerous and assume a wide variety of forms, from life-size marble statues, such as the well-known Moschophoros and the earliest korai, to several marble relief panels, a bronze Palladion, and high-quality vases painted by the likes of Sophilos and Cleitias. Of course, few of these items can be assigned with conµdence to known families or individuals. But it is clear enough that a signiµcant proportion of the Athenian elite were willing and able to embrace the opportunities for public self-advertisement now presented by the Acropolis, with some presumably motivated by the political capital that might accrue from such display. The scale of their investment, along with the open, self-regulating, and essentially peaceful nature of this form of competition, surely presupposes a stable and well-ordered political environment. Despite all its obvious material inequalities, this was not a society that was being torn apart by endemic civil strife.60 Putting all this together, it therefore seems safe to infer that, the coup of / aside, there was nothing particularly anomalous or “extraconstitutional” about political behavior in Athens during the µfteen or twenty years before the battle of Pallene. To later writers, who clearly misunderstood the style of archaic Athenian politics, it may have seemed like there were no rules. But this was in fact politics as usual, played, we must assume, according to the arrangements laid down by Solon a generation earlier. What, then, does the record of

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the mid–sixth century reveal of these arrangements and, in particular, of the role played by ordinary citizens in everyday government? While our ancient accounts for the years /–/ are hardly exhaustive, the general impression they convey is that there were distinctly few enforceable constraints on the political behavior of leaders at this time. The archons may have been the most important individual ofµcials in the state (see AP .), but the power wielded by these annually elected magistrates was of signiµcantly less consequence than the ongoing de facto authority exercised by the likes of Megacles and Lycurgus. We can certainly imagine that this particular form of authority would have depended to some extent on a leader’s performance within the conµnes of state institutions—for example, on his ability to secure magistracies for his own associates or to persuade archons and Areopagites to follow particular courses of action. But the political culture was hardly limited to the institutional arena, and much of the business of politics was evidently conducted elsewhere. As far as we can tell, leadership was contested and legitimized primarily through a combination of private negotiation and public display. Major sources of political capital included alliances with in×uential families at home and abroad, equestrian victories, and the sponsorship of lavish buildings, monuments, festivals, and other spectacles—activities that clearly lay outside what we would consider to be the constitutional domain. And while de facto leadership must have required the consent and support of other leading families, it appears that there were as yet no regular institutional channels through which such authority could be safely challenged or even held to account. The stakes in the political game were thus formidably high. For those—such as Peisistratus in /—who tried and failed to supplant an established leader, the only remaining options were to resort to arms or to withdraw from the state entirely. As for nonelite citizens, they can hardly have been much more than spectators in the theater of archaic Athenian politics. Whatever their political sympathies, they had no visible role to play in major developments, such as the recall of the Alcmeonids from exile in the late s or the banishment of Peisistratus in / and /. The sum total of evidence we have for measures actually passed in the Assembly before the reforms of Cleisthenes are the accounts of how Peisistratus duped the ekkle–sia into decreeing him an armed bodyguard, which he promptly put to service as a private army when mounting his µrst coup in / (see AP .; Hdt. ..–; Plut. Sol. .). Despite the extraordinary nature of this decree, some would see in the anecdote a suggestion of wider powers enjoyed by the Assembly at this time. But surely the more interesting implication of the story (if it is true) is precisely the

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minimal signiµcance of popular support in the politics of the era. Like Cleisthenes later in the century, Peisistratus confronted a situation where he lacked sufµcient backing among his social peers to challenge the position of his rival by conventional means. But unlike Cleisthenes, Peisistratus evidently saw little point in trying to outmaneuver his opponent by appealing to nonelite constituencies for support. Thus, instead of courting its favor, he merely deceived the Assembly into supplying him with the means necessary to pursue an altogether more dangerous course of action. It would be left to Cleisthenes to break the mold of Athenian politics more than µfty years later. Otherwise, the only major public interaction between elite and nonelite we hear about from this time comes during the Phye ceremony, and it is equally revealing. Far from suggesting the “closeness” or “rapport” between leader and people seen here by Connor (, ), this very public attempt by Megacles to assert his family’s special association with Athena precisely illustrates the yawning ideological gulf that still separated the two. And as long as the elite were perceived to enjoy a privileged, almost mystical relationship with the state’s presiding deities, a similar distance would continue to separate the political culture of this era from its classical successor. Nonelite Athenians in the mid–sixth century were thus still a long way from a time when they might confront a Megacles or a Lycurgus on the ×oor of the Assembly or law courts as even nominal political equals. The ekkle–sia may have elected the archons and other magistrates each year, but it is hard to believe that it would have strongly opposed candidates favored by the de facto leaders of the moment. And these leaders will have remained essentially unaccountable to the demos as long as the Assembly had no role in the production of policy and legislation. If a probouleutic Council of  did exist at this time, it would have been little more than an irrelevance. The real business of politics took place elsewhere, much of it conducted far from the gaze of ordinary citizens, in the private realm of the wealthy. Whatever their actual content, Solon’s reforms, it seems, had little radical or lasting impact on the realities of Athenian political life.61 As noted earlier, ancient accounts are unanimous that institutional arrangements in Athens remained essentially unchanged through the Peisistratid period (ca. /–/). In fact, aside from the upheavals of the battle of Pallene and its aftermath and the reported autocracy of Hippias at the very end of the period, we hear very little to suggest that the family’s leadership was qualitatively very different from the kind of authority exercised earlier by Lycurgus and Megacles:62 it was simply more enduring and successful. In the early years, their hegemonic position was no doubt helped when major rivals

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withdrew from Athens, voluntarily or otherwise, after Pallene. But the archon list for the years immediately following Peisistratus’s death in /, which includes the names of the Alcmeonid Cleisthenes and the Philaid Miltiades, shows conclusively that the Peisistratids had by now established a broad-based coalition of supporters that included their former rivals. Clearly, the family did make some effort to abide by existing institutional arrangements. Equally clearly, these arrangements were not, in the end, capable of preventing an unusually effective group or individual from dominating the Athenian state for a period of several decades or more, accountable only to their peers. To regard the regime of the Peisistratids as a wholly anomalous tyranny is therefore to overestimate the capacity of the prevailing Solonian constitutional provisions to constrain their in×uence. The rules of the political game, it seems, were still relatively loose. THE MAKING OF MASS POLITICS

Even after the reforms of Cleisthenes, a peculiarly successful elite politician, like a Pericles or a Cimon, could exercise a decisive de facto in×uence over the direction of the state for a decade or longer. To be sure, this in×uence would still have depended to some extent on the support of privately assembled coalitions of peers and on lavish public displays of various kinds, albeit displays that now emphasized a politician’s public-spirited muniµcence rather than simply his elite credentials. But the critical difference between politics before and after / is in the contribution made by nonelite citizens. After this point, as I showed earlier in the chapter, there arose an entirely new emphasis on collective (over individual) decision making in the conduct of government, allowing ordinary citizens not only to expel a political leader of their choosing each year through the procedure of ostracism but also to vote on the highest affairs of state, as the Assembly and new Council of  increasingly assumed control over the production of policy and legislation.63 As a result, with the overall direction of the polis now a matter for open, public deliberation, ambitious elites were forced to compete with one another for the minds and votes of their more lowly fellows if they wished to exercise in×uence over political outcomes. And as individual success in politics came increasingly to be measured in terms of popular appeal, so elite politicians became more directly accountable to nonelite citizens than ever before.64 Meaningful participation by ordinary Athenians in the day-to-day running of the

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state was thus for the µrst time an institutional reality, and the elite stranglehold on the political process had µnally been broken. In its place, a new era of mass politics and popular government had just begun. But it would be a mistake to believe that the beneµts of the new style of politics were all one-way; the position of the aspiring political leader was now considerably more secure than it had been in the past. As I noted earlier in this chapter, under the high-stakes, almost zero-sum conditions of the old system, those who tried and failed to supplant a dominant µgure like Lycurgus or Megacles, were faced with the stark alternatives of either resorting to force or departing from the state altogether until a leader emerged who might sanction their return. After the reforms of Cleisthenes, by contrast, as the ongoing contest for de facto leadership came increasingly to be determined by voting patterns in the citizen Assembly, it became possible for opponents to challenge established leaders within the relatively safe and regulated conµnes of an institutional arena without fear of serious repercussion. For the unsuccessful challenger who stayed within the law, the most serious consequence he could expect was now ostracism, a temporary expulsion from the state without loss of property or rights. Indeed, this new procedure is probably best understood as part of a larger design to replace the high-stakes politics of the past with a lower-risk and altogether less wasteful alternative. In the short term at least, the practical political outcome was the same: the strengthening of established leaders by the elimination of rivals. But the expulsion process was now subject to the kind of institutional constraints that were sorely lacking in the past, with only one such expulsion allowed per year and with the loser’s fate determined not by the whim of a small group of his social peers but by the collective will of thousands of fellow citizens. Even if victories in the game of politics were now less absolute than they once might have been, and though winners were now accountable to a larger segment of the population than ever before, a political career was a far less risky undertaking than it had been earlier in the sixth century.65 Exactly how and when was the new mass politics inaugurated in Athens? Pinning down the precise moment of the shift is not easy. As noted earlier in this chapter, our main sources for Cleisthenes’ reforms do not include in their accounts any explicit mention of a formal change in the competence of the Assembly. At the same time, such innovations as ostracism and the new council clearly presuppose a strong ekkle–sia. And as we also saw earlier, within a few years, the Assembly was playing a decisive role in such key areas as the regulation of cleruch settlements, military deployment, and foreign policy. This raises

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two possibilities. Perhaps the elevation of the Assembly was indeed an item in Cleisthenes’ original “reform bill” proposed in /, but the detail has simply been omitted from our sources. Alternatively, there may for some reason have been no formal enactment deµning the new role; conceivably, Cleisthenes himself irreversibly reordered the political process in Athens when he chose to ratify his transformation of the state in the Assembly, in effect setting the procedural precedent for the passage of all future legislation. Either way, a change of such magnitude will certainly have required some form of justiµcation, and an explanation for how this critical innovation might have been presented in / will emerge during the course of the coming chapters. Did the new emphasis on collective responsibility in government amount to de–mokratia? We can be fairly sure that it was not advertised as such, since the term itself had probably not yet been invented. If there was a single concept, principle, or banner associated with the new regime, it was more probably isonomia (equality before the law, equality of political participation), though even this cannot be proved. That said, with the Assembly now assuming direct control over state policy and legislation, the cornerstone of later de–mokratia was effectively laid, whether de jure or de facto, by Cleisthenes’ reforms, raising the possibility that the new regime was indeed essentially democratic, even if it could not yet be described as such by contemporaries.66 Some, most notably Ober, would go further than this. In a pair of papers (, ), Ober has argued not only that a genuinely “demotic” form of de–mokratia was inaugurated in Athens in / but that it was also in effect installed by the people en masse when they successfully resisted the interventions of Isagoras and Cleomenes. This act of resistance he reads as a spontaneous, “leaderless riot,” even a “revolution,” which was driven and shaped not by elite leaders but by ordinary Athenians armed with a distinctively “demotic vision of a new society” (, –). Ober thus emphasizes the role played here by citizens below the hoplite class, while at the same time “decentering” the µgure of Cleisthenes in our narrative of change, seeing him less as a primary agent of reform than as a mere “interpreter” of the will of the masses (, ). In this view, the institutional innovations of / did not so much effect a change as re×ect a more profound transformation that had essentially already occurred. This transformation he describes (, ) as an “epistemic shift,” meaning a fundamental change “in the ways that people think, speak, and behave towards one another.” Though long in the making, this shift, he believes, was “crystallized” in

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the “leaderless riot” of the masses. Ober (, ) therefore concludes that democracy in Athens “was not a gift from a benevolent elite to a passive demos, but was the product of collective decision, action, and self-deµnition on the part of the demos itself.” These papers offer a forthright reminder of the crucial part played in the events of / by nonelite citizens, and as such their arguments are important and well taken. But Ober’s attempt to go further and see the political transformation as the direct outcome of a popular “revolution” is more problematic, for at least three reasons.67 To begin with, Ober shows surprisingly little interest in the actual content of the political reforms introduced at this time, taking it largely as fact that they brought about immediate “democracy” and must therefore have been animated above all by the kind of egalitarian impulse one would expect to µnd behind a revolutionary popular agenda. But this chain of assumption is hardly secure. To be sure, members of the lowest, thete class were entitled to enroll as citizens in the new demes and were presumably not actively prevented from attending proceedings at the Assembly’s new site on the Pnyx hill. However, as noted above, they probably would have had no role to play in the new council or citizen army and would still have been excluded from the archonships and Areopagus, however diminished the stature of these institutions had now become. It is thus hard to see how sub-hoplite Athenians were yet considered full members of the political community. In short, there are still too many sources of inequality in the new system for egalitarianism to have been the dominant impulse behind it, or for any fully “demotic” form of democracy to have been the practical result.68 Second, it is one thing to claim that there was a general will for political change among nonelite citizens at this time, but it is quite another to suggest that this will effectively shaped and drove the transformation itself. The evidence Ober produces for his “demotic vision of a new society,” into which Cleisthenes was supposedly “absorbed,” is tenuous at best.69 How, in any case, might such a vision have arisen in the µrst place? To judge from the evidence discussed so far in this study, the little we do know of Athenian political culture in earlier times hardly encourages us to believe that, as Ober suggests (, ), ordinary citizens could have organized themselves enough to develop their own independent political agenda distinct from that of any leader “during the course of the sixth century.”70 Nor when we look closely at the reforms themselves do we see the obvious imprint of any revolutionary, “bottom-up” movement for change. Inequalities would persist, while the deme/trittys/tribe reform, the very fundament of the

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new order, was not in itself an egalitarian measure but an initiative designed, as we saw in the last chapter, to furnish the kind of institutional apparatus necessary to bring about the political uniµcation of Attica. Whether we assign responsibility for this particular initiative to a single leader or to several, we do not have to subscribe to some outmoded “Great Man” view of history to see here all the hallmarks of centralized and essentially “top-down” planning.71 Third, if the Acropolis siege was in fact, as Ober (, ) claims, the “signal moment in the history of democracy,” why do the Athenians themselves appear not to have remembered it as such? In all of extant Athenian oratory, including funeral orations, there is not a single reference to the incident, let alone to any armed democratic “revolution.” And the only classical source other than Herodotus and AP that does mention the siege, written less than a century after the event, treats it as a straightforward military action devoid of any “revolutionary” political signiµcance.72 If, moreover, the demos in / was fully capable of “collective decision, action and self-deµnition” independent of their political leaders (Ober , ), it is surely extraordinary that they overlooked the chance to commemorate publicly in some way their own contribution to the shift from “tyranny” to “democracy,” preferring instead to monumentalize an act of limited historical signiµcance by a pair of otherwise unremarkable aristocrats (see chap. ). Perhaps the masses had little control over the public memory banks at this time, but this only begs the question.73 We should probably then agree with Raa×aub (, a, b), who, as Ober’s primary opponent in recent debate on the issue, argues with equal vigor that democracy “in the fullest sense of the word” was not realized in Athens until after the reforms of Ephialtes in /. Only from this point on can we detect traces of the more radical egalitarianism we associate with “mature” Athenian democracy, implicit in such practices as the widespread use of lottery in the selection of magistrates and the payment of jurors and ofµceholders. By comparison, the Cleisthenic polity is perhaps better seen, to borrow Raa×aub’s phrase (, ), as a kind of “republic of hoplites and farmers.”74 That said, to consider Cleisthenes’ reforms purely in terms of their contribution to the cause of political equality would be to miss their larger historical signiµcance and to misapprehend their overall intent. While Ephialtes’ goal in / was merely to eradicate inequalities still lingering in the national political community, the reforms of / were responsible for deµning that community in the µrst place and for establishing the institutional foundations for its operation as a cohesive political unit. The shift toward democracy at the

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end of the sixth century was an essential part of this larger project but was not an end in itself. For this reason, of the two sets of reforms, those of Cleisthenes were by far the more momentous. Before the playing µeld could be leveled, the game itself had to be invented. The new order was not shaped by some utopian vision of an egalitarian society, only to fall some way short of realizing this imagining. The reforms were no more the product of an enlightened idealism than they were a vehicle for shameless gerrymandering. The guiding vision here was of the state as a collective enterprise, and the goal was to create channels through which citizens from all over the region could contribute to the common cause, regardless of whether some contributions were more signiµcant than others. We might see the result as a reaction not so much against the shameless inequities of the past as against the rampant, sometimes destructive individualism of archaic Athenian political culture. The state would no longer be simply the arena for an exclusive contest among competing private interests, its direction resting in the largely unfettered hands of a Megacles or a Peisistratus. Henceforth, it would be a forum for the negotiation of a single collective interest, and its destiny would now be the responsibility of the community as a whole. We do indeed see here the seeds—the ideological predicates—of de–mokratia in Athens. But before “mature” democracy could be realized, the very idea of the “demos,” the collectivity of all citizens in Attica from the lowliest thete to Cleisthenes himself, had to assume concrete, institutional form. This was the work of Cleisthenes’ reforms. In sum, the measures introduced in / were not just a set of narrow, constitutional prescriptions or merely the latest in a series of steps along a path that led gradually, but inexorably, toward democracy in Athens. They mark instead, as Ober (, esp. –) has urged, the decisive “point of rupture” in Athenian political history, the critical moment of discontinuity between the archaic and the classical state. But the new order was not the spontaneous creation of a popular revolutionary fervor, however much the support of nonelite citizens might have been crucial to its success. Rather, it should be seen as a massive, ingenious, and artfully self-conscious exercise in social engineering—the product, in short, of a vision from above, not from below. But exactly whose vision was it? Unfortunately, we know the name only of Cleisthenes himself, though he was surely helped in the design and implementation of his program by a group of associates, which presumably included his kinsman Alcmeon, archon in /. Of course, these were not free-×oating individuals acting outside history. All were products of the very speciµc envi-

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ronment they sought to change, and their actions were no doubt at once encouraged and constrained by longer-term structural conditions and processes of which they may or may not have been aware. Clearly, there was at this time a growing demand for change among nonelite sections of Athenian society, and there are signs elsewhere in the Greek world, especially in Ionia, of an increasing willingness among elites to involve their lesser fellows in government, a development that may itself have been encouraged by an emerging egalitarian strain in elite values.75 Yet it would be wrong to see the radical changes of / as the inevitable— even predictable—outcome of some impersonal structural logic. In the µnal reckoning, environmental forces, however signiµcant, cannot account for the precise timing and speciµc content of the transformation in Athens. We must acknowledge the role played by the conscious designs and decisions of interested, in×uential individuals, creatively responding to the circumstances in which they found themselves. What immediately prompted the decision to push for change was the political self-interest of Cleisthenes himself and the need to garner the support of the Assembly in his struggle with Isagoras. However, once presented with a popular mandate to reform the state, it seems that Cleisthenes and his associates saw a historic opportunity to author a series of initiatives that would not merely reward their nonelite supporters but help to resolve perhaps the two most fundamental and intractable problems that faced the Athenians at this time: chronic military vulnerability and recurring political turmoil. Their solution to these two related problems radically changed the shape and fortunes of the polis almost overnight. A city-state that had for generations been a somewhat timid and marginal player on the wider Panhellenic stage was abruptly transformed into a very different kind of polity, one that could harness the human potential of an entire region in its efforts to become a more secure and assertive force in the interstate politics of the day. The social and geographical distances that had for so long separated the elite from the nonelite and the urban from the rural were now bridged by a series of highly artiµcial, but binding, institutional ties, laying the foundations for a formidable citizen army and an integrated political community that was quite unlike any other in Hellenic experience. Henceforth, individuals of widely divergent backgrounds would enroll in the same demes, serve in the same tribal regiments, convene in the same national council, and vote in the same national assembly, as partners in an improbable, regionwide experiment in collective self-rule. The in×uence of this experiment on the

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course of Athenian and Greek history in the decades to come would be most profound. The preceding reading of the content and signiµcance of Cleisthenes’ reforms does of course beg a number of further questions. Of these, three would seem to be especially important. First, if this reconstruction is broadly accurate, why did so little memory of this massive discontinuity survive into later times? Why are so many key details omitted from our sources, and why, in particular, is no mention made of any change to the Assembly? Second, for all the wide consent apparently enjoyed by the new order, how were its designers able to legitimize so dramatic a departure from past practice and allay deep-seated cultural suspicions of “revolution” (neo–tera pragmata, neo–terismos)? Finally, and perhaps most fundamental of all, how could a national community so abruptly and artiµcially contrived ever acquire authenticity in the eyes of its own constituents? Citizenship could be legislated, but loyalty, fellowship, and a sense of belonging could not. In practice, the new institutions might help to break down social and spatial distances between citizens and perhaps even to bridge the almost mystical ideological distance that had for so long separated elite from nonelite. But it is hard to see how this bold experiment in political community would succeed without a more fundamental change “in the ways that people think, speak, and behave towards one another.” Collective self-rule could only thrive if rooted in values, assumptions, and expectations that were shared by all members of the citizen body in all parts of Attica. As we have seen, evidence that this particular “epistemic shift” had already occurred in the region before / is at least questionable. How, then, could a shared identity, a shared sense of mission and of commonality, be constructed around the bare bones of the new institutional apparatus? How, in short, could this become a community that was “imagined” as well as lived? Our answer to this question should also help us to resolve the previous issue, since the legitimacy of a given political community depends precisely on the capacity of its members to feel a common bond of identity. All of these questions require us to consider a larger issue that has all too rarely been raised in this context, namely, the contemporary response to political change. If we are even to begin to answer them, we must shift our attention away from objective realities to the more elusive realm of mentalité and try to understand how the new order might have appeared to Athenian men and women at the time of its inception. In the absence of eyewitness accounts, we can of course only speculate about popular perceptions of change. How-

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ever, we are in a good position to assess how the new order was µrst represented to its constituents. It is now increasingly clear that the reverberations of institutional change were felt in many other areas of public life. A surge of cultural energy, unprecedented in the city’s history, produced a host of new buildings, ceremonies, commemorative practices, and mythical traditions over the course of the next two decades. Close study of the design of these many artifacts of change affords invaluable insights not only into the contents of the new order but also into its overall style. This issue of style and representation will be a recurring concern in the chapters to come, as we broaden our focus beyond the strict conµnes of state institutions and explore innovations introduced elsewhere in Athenian public life during the years –.

3 THE AGORA: SHOWCASE FOR A NEW REGIME

For Athenians who were witness to the dramatic events of / and their aftermath, the most visible sign of change would have been the many buildings and monuments of the new order that soon began appearing in the city center. During the years –, the physical setting of public life in Athens was irreversibly transformed by what was to date probably the most ambitious building program in the city’s history. The bulk of the construction took place in the areas of the Acropolis and the Agora, and the changes made to these two sites form the subject of the second part of this study. The greatest single concentration of new structures was built in and around the level area lying east of the Kolonos Agoraios between the Areopagus hill and the Eridanos River. Though this site had been cleared for public use some years earlier, only now, it seems, did it become the true political and commercial hub of the city, functions it would retain for the remainder of antiquity. As if to draw attention to its special place in the scheme of the new order, the area was now formally distinguished from surrounding space by a series of stelai, each one inscribed with the legend “I am a boundary marker of the Agora” [úovro~ eijmi; te`~ ajgora`~].1 But it is not only the larger historical signiµcance of the new political center that should interest us here. If seen, in effect, as the physical embodiment of the new order, the Agora complex can also tell us much about the repre87

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sentation of political change. By studying the details of its design, especially the treatment of earlier buildings on the site, the architectural language used in the new buildings, and the symbolic links between these structures and other monuments elsewhere in the city, we can begin to form an impression of the overall style of the new order and its purported relations with previous political arrangements in Athens. As background, we should look µrst at the earlier history of the site. THE AGORA AREA BEFORE / B . C .

The Agora, like democracy itself, came over time to be seen as an almost timeless feature of the Athenian civic landscape. Ancient authors had no difµculty imagining that Solon’s laws were µrst published in the Stoa Basileios (see AP .) or that Solon himself laid down his arms before the Strategeion in protest at the “tyranny” of Peisistratus (see Diog. Laert. .). And for µfth-century tragedians, there was nothing wildly incongruous about the idea that a cult of Zeus Agoraios, patron deity of the Agora and the Assembly, might have been present in Athens during the heroic era (see A. Eum. –; cf. E. Hcld. –). But for all its later historic resonance, the Agora area seems to have remained predominantly residential in character down to ca. . Only thereafter does it begin to assume the appearance of a public square. Since this development falls broadly within the period when Peisistratus was the unchallenged master of Athens, it was in all likelihood an initiative of the “tyrant” himself.2 During the third quarter of the sixth century, the western ×ank of the site, deµned by an ancient street that ran along the foot of the Kolonos Agoraios, was substantially redeveloped (µg. ). Two small temples or shrines were set up just to the north of a preexisting structure (Building C), while the space to its immediate south was brie×y occupied by Building D. But the most signiµcant new structure was a large, irregularly shaped complex (Buildings F, G, H, I) which now arose in the square’s southwest corner. Linked to Building C by a retaining wall, this complex consisted of a large courtyard surrounded by a number of smaller rooms and ancillary structures. Its size and its location on the site of the later Tholos have caused some to suppose that it must have been a public building of some importance during the Peisistratid period. Yet the irregular plan and the large quantity of domestic artifacts recovered from the site suggest otherwise. This rather grandiose structure looks altogether more like the residence of a prominent family, perhaps even the Peisistratids themselves.3 Whether or not they ever actually lived there, Peisistratus’s sons continued the development of the Agora area as a public space. At some point during the

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s, a fountain house was erected toward the eastern end of the street that marked the south side of the square, a building which Pausanias (..) later attributed directly to Peisistratus himself. And Thucydides (..–) tells us that the younger Peisistratus, son of Hippias, dedicated the Altar of the Twelve Gods during his archonship, probably the year / B.C.4 The altar is signiµcant for two reasons. First, situated at the northwest corner of the Agora area, where the street running north-south along the west side met the Panathenaic Way, the altar formed the apex of a triangle of Peisistratid structures that followed the lines of the neighborhood’s preexisting street pattern, essentially µxing the spatial scheme of the Agora down to the Hellenistic period. Second, as the new symbolic center of the city, the altar reinforced the growing stature of the Agora area within the public space of the city as a whole. Henceforth, this would be the point from which all distances to places beyond the city walls were measured. Within a few years, the altar would be linked to settlements all over Attica through the system of milestones in the form of herms set up by Hipparchus.5 But despite its emerging importance, there is very little to suggest that the square was yet associated with the commercial, political, or judicial activities with which it would be so closely identiµed in the centuries to come. As Shear (, ) has recently written, The implied centrality of the altar [i.e., the Altar of the Twelve Gods] suggests that the stage was set for the development of the classical Agora in the last quarter of the sixth century; but it is equally clear that no demonstrably public buildings had yet been built. In short, the open space created between the Areopagus and the Eridanos by Peisistratus and his sons was not yet an agora in any conventional sense of the term. In so far as there was an agora in Athens at this time, whatever remains of it is now thought to lie concealed under the modern neighborhood of Anaphiotika, to the immediate northeast of the Acropolis (µg. ). Located here was a cluster of the state’s most venerable public buildings (known as the arkheia). These buildings included the Prytaneion, which housed the eponymous archon and the sacred hearth, and the Boukolion and Epilykeion, the seats of the archon basileus and the polemarch, respectively. Here, too, could be found the sanctuary of the Dioscuri known as the Anakeion, along with the Basileion (where the phylobasileis, the leaders of the four pre-Cleisthenic tribes, were ofµcially accommodated) and perhaps the more mysterious Bouzygion.6 These buildings would later be joined by the Theseion (probably established in /

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by Cimon) and the Gymnasium of Ptolemy. That there was still space available in the area after  B.C. for these two additions may suggest that large outdoor gatherings, such as Assembly meetings, were also held here in earlier times.7 When the Peisistratids laid out their new square on the level ground east of the Kolonos Agoraios, their aim evidently was not to replace or supplant the old civic center northeast of the Acropolis. What, then, was their intention? Drawing on a range of earlier scholarship, Camp (, –) suggests four possible answers to this question. According to Camp’s µrst suggestion, the family’s immediate concern was to create a space for theatrical performances. It is true that in later years, an area in the center of the Agora was known as the orkhe–stra, apparently recalling a time when the contests of the City Dionysia were held in that location before the construction of the theater of Dionysus. But as we shall see in chapter , evidence for this festival before the last decade of the sixth century is far from secure.8 Rather less compelling is the second suggestion, that the square was developed to serve as a kind of parade ground for military drills and training. There is no evidence that the Peisistratids maintained a standing army or even established the kind of mechanisms required to raise a citizen force on a regular basis. As far as we can tell, they relied on non-Athenian allies and mercenaries to µght their military actions, and these were levied only on the very few occasions when the need for such a force arose. And even if they did retain an armed bodyguard throughout the period of their preeminence, it is hard to imagine that it was the kind of force that required a large, open space for ongoing military training.9 Third, it may be that the space was cleared to serve primarily as a venue for athletics. The only material evidence we have for a running track in µfth-century Athens are the remains of a starting line found in the northwest sector of the Agora, and it is possible that games were staged here on the Panathenaic Way in earlier times, when the neighborhood was still predominantly residential in character. But there is no evidence linking the Peisistratids speciµcally with the promotion of athletics. While the area’s established role as a venue for games may have encouraged the family to develop it as a public square, the range of monuments they erected there suggests that they saw it more as a multipurpose facility.10 For this reason, the µnal explanation raised by Camp is more compelling, in that it seeks to relate the new square more generally to contemporary political culture. But the speciµc suggestion that the space was somehow an expression of Peisistratus’s “democratic tendencies” is problematic. There is nothing necessarily democratic about creating a space to hold large gatherings

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of people, and we should need to know more about what went on there before pronouncing it the project of an enlightened despot. As we saw earlier, Peisistratus’s “democratic tendencies” are not self-evident. Even if he was the “most populist” [de–motiko– tatos] (AP .) of contemporary leaders, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that this populism directly advanced the cause of popular government in Athens. The initiative is surely better seen as the latest in a series of self-promoting grands projets pursued by prominent families during the course of the sixth century. Like the monumentalization of the Acropolis in the second quarter of the century, the creation of this new space was, in the µrst instance, an advertisement for the public muniµcence, power, and wealth of its sponsors. Unlike the Acropolis developments, however, the square was an ambitious ex nihilo initiative and the work, it seems, of a single family. Whatever mass spectacles and gatherings were held here—which surely included festival processions, athletic contests, and possibly drama (though not yet as part of the City Dionysia)—the Peisistratids’ manifest presence in the physical setting will have given each of these occasions a distinctly personal coloring, reinforcing, in the process, their status within the elite as primi inter pares. The new square may not yet have threatened the place of the old arkheia in the city’s political life. But we might see in the Altar of the Twelve Gods a conscious attempt by the Peisistratids to supplant the Prytaneion as the symbolic heart of Athens and reorient the cultural life of the polis around a space with which they were now so intimately associated. These were bold moves by a family that was clearly determined to leave a lasting impression on the fabric of the city. Certainly, the creation of a spacious venue for mass spectacles and the provision of amenities like the shrines and fountain house reveal the beneµcent, populist side of the Peisistratid regime. But as we see all too clearly in the colossal temple to Olympian Zeus planned for the southeast quarter of the city, their beneµcence was not disinterested. Contemporary political culture required expansive displays of power and largesse by leaders if they were to keep their rivals at bay and retain de facto control of the state without recourse to coercion. When they chose to play within the rules, Peisistratus and his sons were among the most skilled practitioners of the art of politics in this era, and their development of the large, open square between the Areopagus and the Eridanos was arguably their masterpiece. The square would of course long outlive the political forces that produced it. A decade or so after the installation of the Altar of the Twelve Gods, Hippias and his immediate family were expelled from the polis in perpetuity. Their regime was now publicly viliµed by its successor: the vast Olympieion was con-

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sciously preserved in its unµnished state as a memorial to the folly of their “tyranny,” and a stele was installed on the Acropolis listing the names of Peisistratid family members and condemning them for their “crime” [adikia].11 It is all the more surprising, then, that this same successor regime should have chosen to develop the area of Athens most indelibly associated with the “tyrants” as a showcase for its own very different style of government. In the years –, the square would be irrevocably transformed into the civic and commercial center of a dynamic region-state, a true agora in every sense of the word. But before examining the various new structures now erected in the area, we should µrst look at how the delicate issue of lingering Peisistratid associations was negotiated. PEISISTRATID MONUMENTS IN A NEW POLITICAL CONTEXT

The men charged with transforming the Peisistratid square into the political and economic heart of the new order adopted three different approaches to the preexisting structures. The two shrines and the fountain house they chose simply to preserve intact presumably out of respect for their value as public amenities. At the same time, Building C, Building D (if it still stood at this time), and the northern wing of the Building F complex were completely demolished to make way for new structures on the square’s west side.12 Most intriguing, however, is the third approach, that of modiµcation, especially since it was applied to the two structures most redolent of the Peisistratid past. Even if the tyrants did not use the Building F complex as a residence, this unusually grand and elaborate domestic structure would surely have been the square’s most distinctive and prominent landmark. Whatever its function, its association with the family must have been particularly strong. But the designers of the new Agora elected not to level the entire complex outright. Instead, it was substantially remodeled (µg. ), losing its northern wing, while gaining an additional ancillary building on its southern side (Building J) in ca.  B.C. More remarkable, the modiµed structure was now physically attached by a new parapet wall and a broad esplanade to the so-called Old Bouleuterion, the home of the ×agship institution of the ×edgling national government, which was erected at around the same time on the site formerly occupied by Buildings C and D. The implication of these links must be that Building F was to play some kind of role in the operations of the Council of . Though the material record offers no clues as to the nature of this function, the bold as-

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similation of the archaic domestic structure into the fabric of the new Agora would certainly have helped to diminish its “tyrannical” associations.13 A very similar approach seems to have been adopted toward the Altar of the Twelve Gods. The Peisistratid resonance of this monument, which was dedicated by the younger Peisistratus and apparently intended to serve as a new symbolic center for the city, could not have been more pronounced. But these troubling associations seem to have been at least partly dissipated by a process of physical assimilation. To the immediate south of the altar and on the same orientation, a second altar was constructed in ca.  B.C., this one in the form of a hearth, or eskhara. Its scale (. by . meters) and location point to a signiµcant role in the scheme of the new Agora, though again the exact nature of this role remains unclear.14 Some have thought it might be the “precinct,” or temenos, of the Aiginetan hero Aiakos that is mentioned by Herodotus (..), since the Aiakeion at Aegina seems to have featured an altar of this same eskhara variety (see Paus. ..–). But the Athenian Aiakeion was probably located elsewhere in the Agora area. More attractive is the explanation proposed by Sourvinou-Inwood (, ). She suggests that the eskhara and the Altar of the Twelve Gods should be seen as components of a single “ritual nexus.” Together, they reproduced the functions of the old Prytaneion in the new civic center, the eskhara serving in effect as a duplicate of the city’s original sacred hearth (hestia). This conjunction of altars will have drawn further attention to the new prominence of the Agora area in the political and ceremonial life of the polis. At the same time, the addition of the new altar will have helped to neutralize the familiar Peisistratid identity of its older neighbor to the north.15 It is also possible that signiµcant modiµcations were made to the Peisistratid altar itself at around this same time. The enclosure surrounding the altar is known to have had two distinct phases before the Hellenistic period. The earlier peribolos is very similar to the eskhara in orientation, ground level, materials, and workmanship, suggesting that it, too, was a product of the general reconµguration of the Agora in ca.  B.C.16 It is highly tempting to relate this development to the post-Peisistratid rededication of the altar mentioned by Thucydides (..–) in his brief discussion of the monument. And among those who held the annual archonship at Athens was Peisistratus, son of the tyrant Hippias, who took his name from his grandfather. While in ofµce, he set up the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Agora and that of Pythian Apollo. Later, the demos of the Athenians ex-

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tended the size of the altar in the Agora and erased its inscription [kai to– i men en te– i agorai prosoikodome– sas husteron ho de– mos Athe–naio– n meizon me– kos tou bo– mou e–phaniseo toupigramma]. Thucydides does not tell us when these alterations were made. But it seems safe to infer from the wording that his information came from a second inscription that replaced the µrst and that the extension he describes was therefore contemporary with the altar’s rededication by the demos. What was the nature of this extension, and when was it added? Archaeology reveals two signiµcant adjustments to the fabric of the altar in later years, but neither qualiµes as the extension described by Thucydides. After suffering damage during the Persian sack, the altar was renovated in the third quarter of the µfth century, though with no apparent change to its overall design; about a century later, a new enclosure was added. Thucydides’ extension must then predate the Persian Wars and presumably refers to the construction of the earlier peribolos in ca. .17 If this reconstruction is correct, we can conclude that the altar underwent a fairly complex process of modiµcation during the early years of the new regime. On the one hand, it was considerably aggrandized; the addition of the peribolos and the eskhara formed a kind of functional duplicate of the Prytaneion, thus facilitating the general shift in the city’s center of gravity from the old arkheia to the new Agora. At the same time, these additions, along with the rededication of the older altar and the removal of its original inscription, reveal a conscious effort to divest the monument of its Peisistratid stigma and make its presence at the physical heart of the new order somewhat less incongruous.18 Thus, in their efforts to transform a Peisistratid grand projet into a suitable setting for a new form of popular government, the designers of the Agora exercised considerable discretion in their handling of structures erected by the “tyrants.” Some were preserved intact, and others were demolished, while the least politically neutral of these monuments were carefully assimilated into the new setting. The signiµcance of this intriguing interplay between continuity and discontinuity will be explored shortly. DESIGN FOR A NEW AGORA

Any doubts about the new regime’s “ofµcial” attitude toward the Peisistratid past would have been promptly eliminated by Antenor’s statue group, which was probably among the µrst monuments erected in the new Agora (µg. ). With its immodest celebration of the violent death of the Peisistratid Hip-

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parchus at the hands of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the monument conveyed the strongest possible repudiation of the previous regime, branding it forever an illegitimate “tyranny.” Located at the physical heart of the new order, the group of course tells us less about the true nature of Peisistratid rule than about the self-image of the regime that replaced it. The new order needed an explanatory narrative to make sense of the recent political transformation, and Antenor’s composition captured the purported moment of change in vivid style. The invention of this tyrannicide tradition will be explored in more detail in due course.19 Turning to more functional monuments, the new identity of the old Peisistratid square and the corresponding rise in its signiµcance were advertised on a series of horoi that proclaimed themselves “boundary markers” of the Agora. Like the other monuments and artifacts described in this section, they are generally dated to the years around  B.C. Remains of four horoi have been found, two of them in situ in the southwest corner, at points where streets from the south and west entered the square. The discovery of another horos of similar date and format in the northeast corner of the Academy precinct suggests that all were part of a comprehensive scheme to reorganize and deµne public space in and around the city center at this time.20 The erection of horoi at the entrances to the new Agora served both a religious and a practical purpose. First, they marked off the area within as a sacred precinct. As such, the square was off-limits to the “polluted,” a category that in classical times included not only homicides but also those guilty of certain crimes against the state, such as treachery, desertion, and the avoidance of military service. As at any major sanctuary, the entrances would also have featured ritual washing basins (perirrhante–ria), where those who were admitted could cleanse themselves before going in—though our earliest evidence for these basins in the Agora dates only from the mid–fourth century.21 On a more practical level, the horoi would also have deµned the area from which was excluded a range of quotidian activities, such as the construction of private buildings and the dropping of refuse.22 Collectively, then, these boundary markers not only announced the square’s new role as the ofµcial center of political and economic life in the polis but also marked a more fundamental shift in its character, from a privately developed utility to a publicly administered sacred space. Beµtting this elevation in status, the square also seems to have undergone some infrastructural improvement in the years around  B.C. At least one of the neighborhood’s thoroughfares was either surfaced or resurfaced at this time, and others may have experienced the same treatment. More important, it was also during this period that the µrst systematic attempt was made to ad-

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dress the area’s serious drainage problem. The so-called Great Drain now installed under the old street running north-south along the square’s west side was constructed with an exceptionally high level of precision and workmanship. Filling was used at various points along its course to create a smooth northward gradient, and its ×oor and walls were lined with µnely worked polygonal stone slabs. The Great Drain would retain its function as the central artery in an ever growing network of drains and side channels for the remainder of antiquity.23 With the transformation of the square into a fully functional agora, one would expect that economic activity established itself fairly rapidly in the area, especially in and around the east side, where business seems to have been concentrated in later times. In the era before the construction of the great stoas, commercial structures are of course less archaeologically visible than their civic counterparts. But the remains of what are thought to be retail premises dating from the end of the sixth century have been unearthed in the northeast corner of the square, and further traces of mercantile activity from around the same time have been detected in the Agora’s eastern section. Predictably, given the proximity of the city’s famous potter’s quarter, the earliest visible activity on the east side seems to have involved the sale of ceramics.24 Fortunately, evidence for the erection of a series of new civic structures in and around the square in ca.  B.C. is rather more extensive. Not the least important of these structures was a large theatral area on the slope of the Pnyx hill, designed as the meeting place for the new national assembly. Though located some four hundred meters to the southwest of the square proper, it may safely be regarded as an “appendage of the agora,” as Wycherley (, ) observes.25 The slope of the hill was quarried and dressed to form a cavea, and a retaining wall was erected to contain the earth µll, from which a ×at terrace was then created to serve as the podium area (be–ma). The result was a large public space of around , square meters, believed sufµcient to accommodate up to µve thousand citizens. Though debate continues about the precise chronology of the site, majority opinion would assign this, the earliest phase, to the µnal years of the sixth century, when, as we have seen, the competence of the Assembly was dramatically expanded. Presumably, the construction of the cavea was an integral part of a larger building program that also brought about the substantial redevelopment of the west side of the Agora at around this same time.26 Chief among these new structures on the west side was the so-called Old Bouleuterion, home of the Council of , the critical link between the deme/trittys/tribe system and the central government in Athens (µg. ). Its

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date is the subject of ongoing debate, but the most recent work on the remains bears out the traditional assignment of the Old Bouleuterion to ca.  B.C.27 The building’s foundations, made of limestone blocks, measure . by . meters, and its plan featured a broad entrance lobby on the south side. The interior is thought to have included rows of seating ranged along the north, east, and west sides, around the µve columns that supported the roof. Meanwhile, the exterior of the building has now been restored in the Doric order, with a facade featuring µve columns in antis and with a µnely executed triglyphmetope frieze decorating the entablature on all four sides.28 As noted earlier in this chapter, the Old Bouleuterion was linked by a parapet wall and an esplanade to the Peisistratid Building F, which underwent substantial remodeling at around this same time. Though the two structures appear to have functioned together as a single complex, the role that the older building played in this scheme remains unclear. Thompson (, –) originally suggested that, like the later Tholos on the same site, it served as the accommodations for the prytaneis of the Council. But since serious doubts have now been raised about the existence of a prytany system before the reforms of Ephialtes (see Rhodes , –, –), when the powers of the Council were signiµcantly expanded, Thompson’s idea is no longer so attractive. More appealing is the suggestion that the building was adapted to serve as the ofµcial seat in the new Agora of the college of archons, who would have convened and presided over the Council in the years before the prytany system was introduced. Like its predecessor in the arkheia to the northeast of the Acropolis, the modiµed structure was probably known as the Thesmotheteion. As such, the building was now one of a surprising number of monuments and artifacts in the new setting that explicitly recalled or reproduced landmark features of the old civic center. Further illustrations of this continuity, both symbolic and functional, along with its larger signiµcance, will be discussed shortly.29 The other major civic structure built on the west side at this time was the Stoa Basileios, the seat of the archon basileus (µg. ). In this function, it replaced the Boukolion, which stood near the Prytaneion in the old civic center.30 Again, the date of the building is contested, though the chronological proµle of the sherds used as µll in its foundations seems to resemble that of the µll used in the Old Bouleuterion.31 The remains of the stoa are more substantial than those of any other contemporary structure in the Agora; they include the stylobate, the stumps of both antae, and blocks of the triglyphmetope frieze. Like the Old Bouleuterion, the stoa was constructed in the Doric order, with an east-facing facade of eight columns in antis and, initially, two interior columns supporting the roof. To judge from what survives of its

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architectural details, an exceptionally high level of workmanship was lavished on the structure.32 The building also has interesting symbolic links with the old arkheia. First, it was here that the designers of the Agora chose to display the laws of Solon, inscribed on stone tablets, or kurbeis. The texts of the laws were presumably copied from the original wooden documents, known as axones, which stood in the old Prytaneion. The kurbeis were most probably mounted on the stone platform that appears to have lined the interior walls of the stoa from the time of its construction.33 Second, Shear (, –) has raised the intriguing possibility that the large, unworked poros block found in situ in front of the stoa’s east facade was itself once a prominent landmark in the old civic center. Several sources refer to “the stone” (ho lithos) in the Agora where the archons swore oaths of ofµce before commencing their public duties, and Pollux (Onom. .) speciµes that it was located at the Stoa Basileios. Shear argues that this lithos should be equated with the “herald’s stone” that stood in the neighborhood of the old arkheia. And given the apparent antiquity of the archons’ swearing-in ceremony, it seems highly likely that a similar procedure was followed in both locations, whether the lithos used in the Agora was merely a facsimile of an older stone or, as Shear suggests, was physically translated there from its original setting in ca.  B.C. Either way, the installation of the lithos in front of the Stoa Basileios has an obvious symbolic signiµcance, re×ecting the recent shift in the city’s political center of gravity, while at the same time vividly illustrating the designers’ concern to emphasize links and continuities between the old arkheia and the new Agora.34 The last of the major new structures was a large open enclosure (. by  meters) located toward the west end of the street that ran along the south side of the square. The height of the walls remains unclear. But what survives indicates that they were made from well-cut squared blocks of Aeginetan limestone and were surmounted by a cornice decorated with a pointed hawksbeak molding. The cornice proµle and the pottery associated with the peribolos make it roughly contemporary with the other structures already discussed, and it may be that the soft bedrock removed from the interior when the ×oor was leveled was later used to raise the ground level at the site of the Old Bouleuterion.35 There are no artifacts or inscriptions from the site to help us identify the function of the enclosure. Size, location, and quality of workmanship point to its signiµcance, while its general plan suggests that it must have served as a venue for large gatherings of some kind. Thompson and Wycherley (, ) remark, “By a process of elimination one is virtually drawn to the conclusion

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that [it] was a law court.” And support for this idea may come from Building A (ca.  B.C.) on the east side, a similarly large, open, rectangular enclosure located under the Stoa of Attalus, which is thought to have served this same function. For these reasons, the traditional identiµcation of the peribolos as the Heliaia still seems the most attractive available. As we saw earlier, the popular court of that name, like the Assembly, seems to have acquired somewhat broader powers after /, a direct result of the new regime’s emphasis on mass participation in public life. The peribolos would have amply µlled the need for a structure large enough to accommodate a judicial body that was now considered to represent the will of the entire demos. But pending more decisive evidence for the identiµcation, such conclusions must remain speculative, however tempting.36 The Agora building program of ca.  B.C. also seems to have included a number of religious monuments. In addition to the new eskhara mentioned earlier, a small temple (. by  meters) was erected on the west side, between the archaic apsidal temple and the Old Bouleuterion.37 The building has plausibly been identiµed as the original Metroon, the temple of Meter, the Mother of the Gods, whose cult would long be associated with the Council of . According to standard reconstructions, the cult was actually relocated to the Old Bouleuterion after the temple was destroyed by the Persians. Following the erection of the New Bouleuterion toward the end of the µfth century, the original council chamber combined the role of cult center and record ofµce, itself acquiring the title “Metroon” by at least the middle of the fourth century. Later, during the second century, a sprawling Metroon complex was constructed over the sites formerly occupied by the Old Bouleuterion and the original temple.38 Whence this rather incongruous link between the goddess otherwise known as Cybele, an imported Phrygian deity, and a sober deliberative body in the Athenian state? As Parker (, ) has written, “Cybele in charge of the state documents is an image no less startling than that of Dionysus wedded to the archon basileus’ wife.” Whether or not the Athenians themselves were startled by this image back in ca. , it is clear that Meter’s role as a kind of patron divinity of the Council and its operations became thoroughly unremarkable over time.39 This domestication of the goddess probably began in northern Ionia, where her cult seems to have entered the Greek world during the course of the sixth century. And it may be that the Athenians’ surprising choice of Meter to perform a political function in the new Agora was in×uenced by the practices of their neighbors in eastern Greece, since there is some evidence that she played a similar role in Smyrna and Colophon. But beyond this, we can say little.40

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A comparable function may also have been performed by the goddess associated with our µnal new monument from this period. In , just across the Panathenaic Way from the Stoa Basileios, excavation brought to light the remains of an elaborate Cycladic marble altar measuring . by . meters. The use of island marble and the associated pottery point to a date of around  B.C. The altar is believed to have belonged to the precinct of another domesticated import, Aphrodite Ourania. Its proximity to the stoa, like that of the Metroon to the Old Bouleuterion, suggests that here, too, cult was being used to give some kind of divine sanction to a political institution. Why this particular divinity was chosen for this role is again not entirely clear, though Aphrodite is known to have served as a guardian of magistrates elsewhere in Greece.41 In sum, the level area east of the Kolonos Agoraios was µrst cleared and developed as a space for communal activity during the Peisistratid era, but not until after Cleisthenes’ reforms did it assume the character of a true agora, a publicly administered sacred space serving as the center of political and commercial life in the city. Although the earlier format of the square was retained and the Peisistratid monuments were for the most part preserved intact or carefully assimilated, a series of new structures was required to accommodate the institutions of the new regime and to rehouse the ofµcials uprooted from the old arkheia northeast of the Acropolis. The building program pursued in the years around  B.C. transformed the appearance and signiµcance of the area almost beyond recognition. Exotic new cults were added, commercial activity began to take root on the east side, and infrastructural improvements were implemented to cope with the greatly increased demands now made on the square. But most important of all, the creation of spacious meeting places for the Assembly, the Council of , and possibly the Heliaia offered visible evidence of the shift to a new era of mass participation and collective responsibility in public life.42 CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES

The creation of a new kind of polity in Attica in / thus motivated comparable discontinuities in the form and function of public space in the center of Athens. But our interest in these physical discontinuities goes well beyond their historical signiµcance. The civic center that replaced the old Peisistratid square was also a richly symbolic environment—in effect, a showcase for the new regime. Its fabric can tell us much about how the political experiment of

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the late sixth century was perceived and represented at the time. How, then, was the idea of the new order articulated in the material culture of the Agora? We can begin to answer this question by considering what must be the two most unexpected features of the new civic center. In the µrst place, we have the relatively large number of items that either recalled or directly reproduced prominent monuments and landmarks from the old civic center. Since the buildings in the ancient arkheia would continue in use and since antique structures like the Prytaneion would retain a special place in the symbolic life of the community long after /, the incorporation of so many features from this site into the fabric of the new Agora seems a little excessive, even redundant. Logistics or convenience may account for some, like the creation of the second Thesmotheteion. But antiquities like the lithos and the second copy of Solon’s laws appear rather out of place in the home of a regime that represented so profound a break with the past. Our expectations are also confounded by the strikingly mild treatment administered to the existing Peisistratid monuments. Again, expediency may well explain the preservation of a utility like the fountain house, and no doubt partly accounts for the decision to locate the new civic center in this area in the µrst place, given that it had already been cleared and developed for communal activity. But the relatively minor changes made to the Building F complex and the Altar of the Twelve Gods, the two monuments most redolent of the Peisistratids, defy any straightforward explanation. One would think that a new order that publicly celebrated the violent end of the previous regime as an act of tyrannicide might have sought to distance itself much further from its predecessor. A clue to the reason for these puzzling incongruities may be provided by a third, no less striking feature of the new Agora: the architectural idiom used in the major civic buildings. The earlier Peisistratid structures in the square were not especially distinguished for the quality of their workmanship, typically featuring walls of unworked stones surmounted by unbaked bricks. The contrast offered by the new buildings could hardly have been more marked. The Old Bouleuterion, the Stoa Basileios, and the building usually identiµed as the Heliaia all featured regular courses of precisely fashioned poros blocks, along with an attention to ornamental detail that was traditionally reserved only for sacred architecture. As Shear (,  with n. ) points out, these are in fact the earliest known examples of the use of monumental stone architecture outside conventional sanctuaries, and the stoa and the bouleuterion were possibly the very µrst structures of purely secular function to be built in the Doric order.43

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Why, then, was this sacred architectural idiom deemed appropriate for the landmark ediµces of the new Agora? The square’s status as a sacred precinct may well have in×uenced or encouraged the choice, and these buildings were clearly felt to be of sufµcient importance to merit the kind of workmanship that was usually lavished only on major temples. But it would be surprising if the choice was not also in some sense a statement about the character of the regime these buildings were designed to serve. Shear (, ) himself is certainly willing to read a political signiµcance into the use of sacred architectural language in this context. He suggests that this signiµcance lay in the “celebrated equilibrium of proportion and monumentality of form unique to the Doric order,” which he sees as a “perfect visual metaphor” for the concept of isonomia. He goes on to explain, “Architectural form and political function thus coalesce in [the stoa and the bouleuterion], and the Doric order makes a signiµcant contribution of its own to the nascent ideology of democracy.” This explanation is attractive, if not entirely persuasive. The proposed relationship between form and function seems a little too academic and oblique. One wonders if the Doric order’s proportionality was, for an ancient viewer, its most suggestive feature. It is, in any case, not entirely certain that isonomia really was the guiding principle, stated or unstated, behind the political changes. As we saw earlier, the immediate concern of the reforms of / was to redeµne the state as a regionwide, collective enterprise, not to eradicate inequalities for their own sake. I believe that it was an altogether less recondite quality of this particular style of architecture that made it so attractive to the designers of the Agora. Shear (, ) in fact alludes to this quality a little earlier in his article, when he speaks of how the architectural language of the Doric order “is governed by certain laws framed in long usage and tradition.” It is not the order’s sacred resonance per se which explains its appeal, nor its “equilibrium of proportion and monumentality of form.” The appeal lay rather in its suggestion of the traditional practices and cultural permanence associated with the structures hitherto built in this idiom. Much as the Capitol building in Washington and the Houses of Parliament in London use traditional sacred architectural language to lend an aura of hoary antiquity to the institutions within, so it seems that the Doric order was self-consciously applied to civic buildings in Athens in the late sixth century to suggest some kind of political continuity with the distant past. If correct, this interpretation also helps to explain the two other distinctive features of the new Agora discussed above. By retaining most of the preexisting monuments and reusing them in the new scheme, the designers of the

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Agora drew on a further source of physical continuity to reinforce a general sense of the new regime’s links with the past. Of course, the site’s earlier identiµcation with the “tyrants” was problematic. But only the most overt of its Peisistratid associations could be removed or neutralized if the overall impression of continuity was to be sustained. This same impression was also encouraged by reproducing monuments and landmarks of the old civic center in the new setting. The incorporation of features like the lithos and the laws of Solon into the fabric of the Agora was as much symbolic as it was functional, visible evidence of the new order’s links with the traditions of government represented by the cluster of venerable structures around the old Prytaneion.44 With so much effort made to invest the new space with an aura of tradition and continuity, later observers, like the author of AP (e.g., .), can certainly be forgiven for believing the Agora to be older than it actually was. There were of course some genuine institutional continuities between the old order and the new; the Assembly had existed in some form since long before the reforms of Cleisthenes, while the Areopagus and the major magistracies would all survive long thereafter. But the essential character of the regime after /, with its emphasis on mass participation and government by regionwide community, was radically new. Thus, there appears to be something of a disjunction between the realities of the new order and its representation in the visual scheme of its primary physical setting. The larger message here is, I think, clear enough: Cleisthenes and his associates consciously refrained from presenting their experiment at face value. Rather, they chose to emphasize its reassuring continuities, real and imagined, with Athenian political traditions. In other words, they made it appear as if they were not founding any brave new order but were simply restoring an old one, the traditional order that had supposedly been suspended or dissolved by the Peisistratid “tyrants.” What better way to allay suspicions of “revolution” than to deny the existence of any progressive change at all? This emphasis on tradition and continuity is in fact a recurring feature— almost a leitmotif—of the various other innovations in public life that followed Cleisthenes’ reforms. Its appearance in a range of different contexts will afford us further opportunity to analyze the representation of political change in the chapters to come, and to explore in more detail the public characterization of relations between the new order and previous political arrangements in Athens.

4 THE ACROPOLIS: NEW DEPARTURES AMONG OLD CERTAINTIES

The sacred space on the Athenian Acropolis was in many ways as anomalous as the state that controlled it. By the end of the µfth century, it ranked with the most prestigious Panhellenic sanctuaries for the opulence of its buildings and the sheer quantity of its votive deposits. Yet for all its impressive grandiloquence, this was very much a local space. Alongside the monuments of Delphi or Olympia, with their expression of numerous different voices and perspectives, the material culture of the classical Acropolis seems narrowly monophonic and distinctly parochial. Its buildings and votives were dedicated for the most part by citizens of the host state, and there was little need to heed the sensibilities of others. Here, the Athenians’ vision of past and present could be freely articulated without disturbance or challenge as they volubly celebrated their gods, their heroes, and, in no small measure, themselves. The story of the site’s evolution, from modest Mycenean citadel to perhaps the most bombastic and self-regarding sanctuary in the Greek world, is still imperfectly understood. But it is becoming increasingly clear that an important chapter in this story was written in the years – B.C. To help us understand why, we should µrst brie×y review earlier developments.1

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FROM HABITATION TO SANCTUARY

For all but the last century or so of the long period stretching from the end of the Bronze Age to the Periclean era, the material assemblage on the Acropolis offered little hint of the grandeur to come. Granted, the citadel’s formidable Cyclopean walls, erected in the later thirteenth century, would survive largely intact down to the time of the Persian sack. But the Mycenean palace complex had ceased to function by the end of the Bronze Age, and it would be at least µve hundred years before another truly monumental structure arose within the fortiµed enclosure. The palace complex itself, of which only the merest suggestion remains, was not so much destroyed as abandoned. Parlous evidence from the time indicates that it was joined on the citadel by a modest settlement that ×ourished brie×y during the late Mycenean period. But with the return of inhumation to the site (for the µrst time since the Middle Bronze Age) in the Submycenean era (ca. –), the Acropolis entered its own dark age. Except for a few scraps of pottery, the material record is almost completely blank for the next two and a half centuries. And while later disturbances may help to explain the relative absence of visible activity from the Protogeometric period to the Middle Geometric period (ca. –), it seems safe to conclude that the landmark shift in the function of the Acropolis, from fortiµed settlement to uninhabited sanctuary, was still some way from completion.2 This conclusion gains further strength from the abrupt manner in which the near silence is broken. By earlier standards, the Acropolis of the Late Geometric period (ca. –) is a hive of activity, and the manifestly votive character of the numerous deposits conµrms that the site now functioned as a sanctuary of some signiµcance. Whatever forces lay behind this development were not conµned to central Athens. Elsewhere in Attica, the same period saw new sanctuaries spring up at Eleusis, Brauron, and the Academy, while a sudden rise in cult activity is also generally visible further aµeld in Greece, especially at the emerging Panhellenic sanctuaries. But among the Attic sites, none comes close to matching the number and wealth of the items that were now dedicated on the Acropolis. To judge from the huge quantity of sherds recovered, the µne local vases of this period were a particularly popular form of votive. More expensive items are also attested, not least some early bronze µgurines and around seventy fragments from the legs and handles of tripods. However, not until the seventh century do we µnd evidence for building activity of any kind. This comes in

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the form of a pair of rather primitive limestone column bases found at the site of the later Old Athena Temple, several decorated architectural terracottas, an inscribed marble roof tile, and what appears to be a bronze disk akroterion. Even if all these items did not belong to one building, it seems reasonable to infer that we have among them remains of the µrst substantial sacred structure on the Acropolis, most probably a modest temple of Athena Polias, the city’s patron goddess.3 Curiously, this signiµcant development seems to have taken place at a time of general cultural recession. Though the range of votives visible on the seventh-century Acropolis is not unlike that of the Late Geometric period, the quantity declines sharply. The entire century has yielded barely a hundred sherds and around ten times fewer tripod fragments than we saw in the eighth century. But it is also clear that these lower numbers do not re×ect any decline in the relative standing of the sanctuary, since there is a marked decrease all over Attica in the numbers of settlements, active cemeteries, and sanctuary deposits during this same period. When the end of this recession µnally came, it did so in dramatic fashion. The monumentalization of the Acropolis sanctuary in the second quarter of the sixth century (referred to in chapter ) marks the second major ef×orescence on the citadel since the collapse of the Mycenean system. But only now are intimations of its future grandeur readily apparent. A key element in this transformation was the construction of a ramp—some eighty meters in length—that led up to the west entrance and would have greatly improved access to the summit. Possibly, the old Bronze Age gateway was also adapted to allow for greater trafµc in and out of the sanctuary. And sometime between  and , the crown of the old Mycenean bastion that abutted the southern ×ank of the ramp was restored, and the site was converted into a small precinct for Athena Nike, complete with a cult statue and an altar set up by one Patrokles.4 Meanwhile, the area within the colossal circuit wall was undergoing its own transformation. Most conspicuously, the primitive seventh-century temple of Athena Polias was now in all likelihood overshadowed by a new structure erected on the south side of the site (µgs. –). The “Bluebeard temple” is generally restored as a peripteral structure in the Doric order, about forty meters long and twenty meters wide. Its more distinctive features included the use of both marble and poros metope panels (some of them decorated) and two brightly painted pedimental compositions, both of which were centered on lion-and-bull groups—one perhaps ×anked by large serpent µgures, the other ×anked by a Heracles-Triton (?) group in the left angle and the mysterious, eponymous “Bluebeard” µgure in the right.5

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Other structures were also added at this time. Though no suitable foundations have been found, the superstructural remains are quite substantial. They include terracotta materials from as many as µve different buildings from ca. –, a range of Doric architectural membra, and a series of small, poros pedimental groups, which depict such themes as Heracles’ battle with the Lernaean Hydra and the same hero’s later apotheosis. According to the consensus view, at least some of these remains belonged to the buildings referred to in a later inscription as oike–mata (“chambers”), which perhaps functioned as the treasuries of prominent Athenian families.6 Consonant with all of this building activity, the sanctuary also experienced an abrupt increase in the quantity and extravagance of its votive deposits. Most notable are the life-size marble statues that now appear on the Acropolis for the µrst time. These include not only the well-known male µgure, the Moschophoros, or “calf-bearer,” but also the earliest examples in the site’s impressive sequence of korai. Among other highlights of the inventory from this period are a marble frontal four-horse chariot group of unknown function, vases decorated by such master painters as Sophilos and Cleitias, and a bronze Athena statuette of a Palladion or Promakhos type, the µrst in what would be another distinguished series.7 As others have observed, this monumentalization of the sanctuary must relate in some way to the foundation of the Great Panathenaia in ca.  B.C. Just as the festival in many ways aped the format of the new Panhellenic games recently founded at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea, so it seems the Acropolis, the ritual locus for the Panathenaia, now aspired to the condition of a Panhellenic sanctuary.8 But we probably should not imagine that the newfound grandeur of the site was the product of any coordinated public policy. Signiµcantly, when ofµcials made dedications at this time, they did so as individuals, not in the name of any larger, more impersonal body, such as “the demos” or “the Athenians.”9 As noted in chapter , what fueled the sudden transformation of the sanctuary in ca. – was not so much collective planning and deliberation as competition. Like the sites at Olympia and Delphi, the Acropolis had provided since the eighth century a suitably public context for the competitive display of elite credentials; on the Acropolis, though, the competition was conµned exclusively to the great families of Athens.10 For reasons also noted in chapter , it is surely probable that the Boutadai, the family that controlled the cult of Athena Polias, played a decisive role in the foundation of the Great Panathenaia. If so, it would be surprising if they were not also responsible for a number of other developments that may relate to the

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festival, like the ramp, the new Nike sanctuary, and at least one of the oike–mata that were erected at this time. But for all their in×uence, the Boutadai did not monopolize activity in and around the sanctuary. If, again on the Olympic or Delphic model, some or all of the oike–mata were in fact treasuries, they were presumably built and operated not by different states but by several rival families.11 A case was made in chapter  for seeing the “Bluebeard temple” as an Alcmeonid initiative, and the wide variety of names visible on other large monuments suggests that the group of elites vying for public recognition in mid-sixth-century Athens was actually quite extensive. The monumentalization of the Acropolis was largely a result of the energies generated by this spirit of rivalry. Following the comprehensive victory of Peisistratus at Pallene and the departure of his defeated rivals into exile, one would expect that this competitive spirit diminished appreciably in the years that followed. And a decrease in votive activity would have been all the more likely if, as some have maintained, Peisistratus actually took up residence atop the Acropolis. But there is really no evidence to support this idea, which, in any case, seems to rest on a rather extreme interpretation of the nature of Peisistratus’s authority. As it stands, the material record for the years /–/ is not especially impressive, though it is hardly negligible. It may include up to three more oike–mata, along with early examples of the large-scale equestrian monuments with which the site would come to be so associated. A number of korai also appear to belong to the period, including one—the Lyons kore—that may have served as a caryatid. Not one of these items can be securely linked to Peisistratus himself. Assuming that at least some were dedicated by others, we might conclude that the appearance of competitive rivalry, if not perhaps its reality, was maintained during the µrst phase of the tyranny.12 This is even more true of the second phase, when, as the archon list makes clear, the Peisistratids enjoyed better relations with erstwhile rivals like the Alcmeonids and the Philaids. The Acropolis inventory for ca. – is unprecedented for the number, quality, and variety of its monumental dedications, ranging from the splendid seated Athena, commonly thought to be the work of Endoios seen by Pausanias (..), to the image of a mounted hippalektryon, a fanciful beast, half horse and half cock, which enjoyed a brief vogue in contemporary vase painting. But no doubt the most deµnitive dedications of this period were the korai, which enjoyed an unprecedented level of popularity from the time of the “Peplos” kore (ca. ) on (µg. ).13 At the same time, for all the sanctuary’s prosperity while Athens was under the stewardship of Peisistratus’s sons, members of the preeminent family are conspicuously absent from the register of known dedicators. And if, as

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many now think, the Old Athena Temple should be dated to the end of the sixth century, it appears that the citadel saw little building activity between / and /.14 Indeed, reviewing the evidence for the tyranny as a whole, one is most struck precisely by the absence of any fundamental change in either the appearance or the character of the city’s premier sanctuary. Established patterns of display by the wealthy continued largely undisturbed throughout this period. In fact, there is little suggestion here of any “tyranny” at all, perhaps a further sign that the regime did not, in the end, mark a dramatic departure from the norm. Of course, our failure to identify any Peisistratid buildings or votives hardly proves that there were none, and it remains possible that a temporary decline in votive activity took place in the aftermath of the battle of Pallene. But the ×ood of dedications after  more than compensates for any earlier falloff. Evidently, in so far as the Peisistratids did feel the need to express their preeminence through monuments, these statements were reserved for another public space in a different locale, the open square between the Areopagus and the Eridanos, which they themselves seem to have developed especially for this purpose. In the meantime, as far as we can tell, it was business as usual on the Acropolis. IMPRINT OF A NEW ORDER

Though the old Peisistratid square underwent a more drastic facelift during the years –, the Acropolis was similarly, if less obtrusively, stamped with the mark of a new political culture at this time. The ravages of the Persian sack would of course deny the period any lasting in×uence on the physical appearance of the sanctuary. Yet in the years following Cleisthenes’ reforms, there is a discernible shift in the function and resonance of the space, the µrst visible intimations of that distinctive character we associate with the Acropolis of the high classical period. At the outset, it should be emphasized that there was little change made at this time to the overall layout of the sanctuary, its perimeter, or its monumental approach. The Nike bastion was apparently left untouched, as were the circuit walls and the gateway. Within the walls, the existing oike–mata were also preserved, though one structure from the Peisistratid era appears to have had its roof replaced.15 Of the innovations, by far the most visible took place on the city’s most hallowed site, the precinct of Athena Polias on the north side of the citadel. Here, the primitive seventh-century temple, venerable witness to the Acropolis exploits of Cylon, Peisistratus, Hippias, and, more recently,

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Cleomenes, was µnally dismantled after more than a century of service. In its place arose, at some point during the µrst decade under the new order, a far grander successor, a limestone peripteral Doric structure over forty meters in length, known generally as the Old Athena Temple, or the Arkhaios Neos (µg. ).16 Together, the new building and the “Bluebeard temple” would dominate the Acropolis skyline until the early s, when the latter was demolished to make way for the ill-fated predecessor of the Parthenon. The date of the Arkhaios Neos has long been a matter of dispute. Though it has traditionally been assigned to the s and seen as a Peisistratid monument, a number of scholars would now date it toward the end of the sixth century. Certain features of the temple, such as the single-step (as opposed to the standard three-step) stylobate and the double-cella plan do seem to recall earlier structures. But other features look forward with equal insistence. With sides of six columns by twelve columns, the building anticipates the broader, shorter proportions of early classical temples. And various technical details, such as the echinus proµles of its capitals and the moldings and painted palmettes of the sima, collectively suggest a date close to  B.C.17 There is perhaps greater unanimity about the date of the temple’s marble pediments. A growing number of scholars would place the sculptures after  B.C., even if some maintain that the temple itself is somewhat earlier.18 Perhaps the most arresting feature of the pediments is their willful anachronism. In the case of the well-known Gigantomachy (Acrop. ), Stähler () and, more recently, Moore () make a compelling case that two horse protomes (Acrop. , ) should be restored to the center of the composition as part of a two- or four-horse chariot group, with Zeus and perhaps Heracles riding as passengers (µg. ). If this reconstruction is correct, the result, as Childs (, ) points out, would have seemed distinctly old-fashioned by about  B.C., since the frontal chariot motif seems to have reached the peak of its popularity years earlier, in the middle decades of the sixth century.19 The archaism of the second pediment, now sadly fragmentary, is even more pronounced. Though stylistic details again favor a date toward the end of the sixth century, the pediment’s central scene, a group of two lions savaging a bull, looks like a direct allusion—perhaps a gesture of homage—to the very similar tableaux in both pediments of the “Bluebeard temple.”20 More generally, the use of such a highly traditional heraldic format in a temple of this late date can only be, in the words of Childs (, ), “a purposeful repetition of earlier pediments.” This striking conjunction of a traditional pedimental scheme with a more contemporary one reinforces the overall impression of a distinctly Janus-faced building, one that simultaneously anticipates later developments

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and acknowledges considerable debts to the art and architecture of an earlier time. The more progressive aspect is also visible in what seems to have been another feature of the temple’s decorative scheme. Several marble relief fragments—one featuring a well-preserved charioteer µgure—are stylistically contemporary with the Arkhaios Neos and apparently formed part of an extended frieze composition, the earliest known in Athens. The only plausible context for a frieze of this scale (. meters high) at this time would be a temple, and a number of authorities would restore it to the Arkhaios Neos as a decoration above both porches or as a continuous frieze running around the entire cella wall. Either way, this innovative Ionicism on an otherwise orthodox Doric structure obviously looks forward to the Parthenon and may well have directly in×uenced the Ionic decorative scheme of the later Erechtheion, since at least part of the cella building of the Old Athena Temple probably continued to occupy the site down to the time of its eventual successor.21 Though by some distance the most impressive, the Old Athena Temple was not the only new structure erected on the Acropolis during this period. Roof materials of two (possibly three) other, smaller buildings from the era have survived, along with some poros masonry from a large oike–ma known as Building B, which was recovered from the foundations of the classical Propylaia complex. The most striking feature of the latter is its apsidal plan, perhaps suggesting a purposeful archaism.22 Some would also assign the µrst phase of the entrance courtyard that preceded the later Propylaia to ca. , but this date would be inconsistent with the chronological scheme presented here so far.23 However, two other infrastructural projects do seem to have been undertaken at this time. These took the form of a cistern (perhaps around eight meters wide), located under the site of the classical structure known as the Northwest Building, and a small spring house (dedicated to the nymphs and, later, to Pan, Hermes, Aphrodite, and Isis), which was built on the south slope of the Acropolis in the area of the later Asklepieion. Both structures date to the end of the sixth century.24 Three µnal candidates for inclusion in the list of building initiatives pursued by the new regime in the general area of the citadel should also be mentioned at this point: the temple of Triptolemos in the City Eleusinion, the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus, and the Acropolis precinct of Artemis Brauronia. All three initiatives relate to the foundation or development of festivals that reinforced linkages between Athens and different parts of Attica, festivals which are usually thought to have been promoted by the Peisistratids. But as we saw in chapter , it is not self-evident that the family did in fact aim to promote a

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broader sense of national community in the region, and it is even less clear that it was in their best interests to do so. As it happens, a reasonable case can be made that the associated building projects were all pursued after, rather than before,  B.C. The pertinent evidence and the evolution of the three festivals concerned are discussed in more detail in chapter . To judge from the extant remains, the Acropolis also saw a huge number of smaller monuments installed during the period. The great majority of these were private offerings. But altogether more historically signiµcant was a small handful of monuments that mark the emergence of an entirely new voice in the sanctuary, the somewhat impersonal, collective voice of the demos-state. For centuries, the site had resounded with competing verbal and visual statements made by families and individuals; only now do we hear the µrst strains of a voice that rose above sectarian and private interests and purported to speak for all citizens. The most unusual items in this group were two stelai that referred to events of the recent political past. One, already mentioned in chapter , listed the names of Peisistratus’s immediate family and denounced them for their “crime”; the other likewise condemned the actions of the followers of Isagoras. Similarly unprecedented was a third item, the Assembly decree from the late sixth century regulating the conduct of cleruchs on Salamis (IG I3 ; see discussion in chap. ). Since it would become common practice to display copies of decrees in this particular location, one can safely presume that a number of these public documents would have been visible here by .25 But by far the most visually impressive of the new public installations was the extravagant dedication set up to commemorate the Athenian victories over the Thebans and Chalcidians in ca. . This thank offering to Athena consisted of a four-horse chariot group in bronze surmounting an engraved plinth; the elegiac quatrain solemnly described how the “sons of the Athenians” [paides Athe–naio– n] successfully subdued the hubris of their opponents with “chains of iron.” To emphasize the point, the actual chains that had held the enemy captives were displayed as a trophy on a wall nearby.26 The considerable body of marble sculpture from the period may yield the remains of other public monuments. Among the more likely candidates is a small Gigantomachy group that appears to have adorned the pediment of a small building and that could well have been in×uenced by the more substantial version of the battle in the pediment of the Old Athena Temple.27 Meanwhile, a plausible case for a somewhat larger pedimental composition of similar date has now been made by Triandi (). Featuring a central Athena µgure ×anked by riderless horses and a pair of kneeling youths, this group, if correctly

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reconstituted, must have belonged to a building of some scale and signiµcance, presumably an otherwise unattested temple erected in ca.  B.C.28 It may also be at this juncture that the presence of Theseus began to be felt on the Acropolis. Shapiro () has made a compelling case that the original version of the Marathonian Bull dedication seen by Pausanias (..–) was dedicated here by the demesmen of Marathon in the closing years of the sixth century. Working from images of shield devices on vases of the era, Shapiro suggests that the monument took the form of an unaccompanied bull µgure, perhaps cast in bronze. Meanwhile, Theseus himself likely makes his debut in Athenian monumental sculpture in a statue group erected around this same time. A nude male torso with traces of the hand of another µgure on its left shoulder has long been thought to belong to a group that showed the hero wrestling with one of the foes he encountered on his journey from Troezen to Athens, possibly Prokrustes (µg. ). Whatever the group’s original context and function, it is hard to imagine that it was part of a private monument. As we shall see in chapter , Theseus came to enjoy an extraordinarily exalted position in the years following the reforms of Cleisthenes, as a kind of talisman or symbol of the new pan-Attic order. One therefore suspects that it would have been unacceptably presumptuous at this time for any family or individual to exploit the hero’s likeness in this most public of settings for their own self-aggrandizement.29 This is not to suggest that self-aggrandizing monuments ceased entirely in /. Indeed, established votive practices continued almost seamlessly from the Peisistratid period down into the early µfth century. Some dedications, such as what appear to be a pair of Gigantomachy reliefs, no doubt responded to recent iconographic developments. Others, such as a curious series of seated male statuettes, may re×ect larger changes in the political environment.30 But the great majority of private dedications made after / conform to the preferred types and styles of earlier times. Equestrian images were still favored by the wealthy, as were korai, a type that would retain its appeal all the way down to the time of the Persian sack. The inventory for the years – also features a number of distinguished freestanding male µgures, including several (of various scales) that resemble the kouros type.31 While more modest items, like vases and relief plaques, are also very much in evidence, it is clear that no steps were taken at this time to restrain the extravagance of private dedications and that the change in political culture did not precipitate any immediate shift in the votive behavior and tastes of the citizen body. One group of monuments may, however, be a conspicuous exception to this general rule. I refer here to a number of surprisingly lavish items dedicated

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by artisans during the period, artifacts that have come to be seen by some as symptoms of the egalitarian ethos supposedly prevalent in Athens around the time of Cleisthenes’ reforms.32 The offering of a kore to Athena by the likes of a fuller named Simon is certainly a remarkable development. The unexpected intrusion of ordinary citizens into an arena traditionally dominated by the elite must re×ect some kind of broader shift in the social environment. But it is hard to relate this discontinuity in any straightforward way to the political changes of / B.C. In the µrst place, it is apparent that this kind of votive behavior among nonelites did not suddenly begin in the last decade of the sixth century; it starts at least a decade earlier. Accordingly, even if the dedications by artisans were now more extravagant than before, the key variable here must have been something other than the political climate. Besides, there is nothing conspicuously egalitarian about wealthy artisans mimicking the self-aggrandizing practices of their social superiors; had a genuine egalitarian ethos prevailed at this time, it surely would have encouraged the elimination of such ostentatious behavior altogether. I do not deny the possibility of any linkage between these nonelite votives and the founding of a new political order in Athens. But instead of seeing one of these developments as a simple consequence of the other, it is probably more realistic to regard them both, in some sense, as products—direct or indirect—of longer-term structural forces. Not the least of these forces, it seems, was the growing af×uence and self-assurance of the commercial classes.33 STOREHOUSE OF SHARED MEMORY

Would the Acropolis have looked much different in  than it did in, say, ? There were certainly important changes in the fabric of the site, including the replacement of the seventh-century temple of Athena Polias by a more imposing successor, the construction of a handful of smaller buildings and facilities, and the addition of a series of public installations, the very µrst of their kind. But it is nonetheless clear that the overall appearance of the citadel, unlike that of the Agora, was not drastically altered during the period. How, then, does the new regime reveal itself in the material culture of the late archaic Acropolis? Again, the accent seems to have been very much on continuity. Despite the historical signiµcance of the new public monuments, they would still have been physically overshadowed by the sheer mass of private dedications—some of them highly expensive—that µlled the sanctuary much as before. And while this continuity might be seen as the result more of inertia than of any conscious choice, evidence from the one large-scale building erected during these years suggests otherwise.

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If the architectural details, the proportions, and the innovative Ionicism of the Arkhaios Neos reveal it to be a building very much of its time (perhaps even a little ahead of its time), other features, especially the heraldic lion-and-bull pediment, have to be considered deliberate archaisms, the intention presumably being to blend the temple seamlessly into its timeworn setting. This combination of retro design features and a general reluctance to disturb the existing fabric of the surroundings is of course exactly what we saw in the Agora, but here, in the city’s most hallowed sacred space, it is even more pronounced. So far as this tells us anything about the public image of the new order, the compound effect must again have been to imply a reassuring conformity to the traditions of Athenian government, however those were now conceived. Though helped by a little trompe l’oeuil, much of this impression of continuity was of course sustained by a very real continuity of practice. A citizen who wished to ×aunt his piety and af×uence in a prominent public setting was just as free to do so on the Acropolis in  B.C. as his ancestors had been in earlier decades. The lavish private dedications of the period, whether made by elites or nonelites, should caution us against searching too hard for traces here of any genuinely egalitarian ethos or spirit. Clearly, this regime was not entirely uncomfortable with the continuing expression of inequities of wealth and status within the citizen body. Is there, then, no distinctive new ethos or spirit animating the Acropolis monuments of the new order? The signs are not numerous, but they are there. To µnd them, we must shift our attention away from the glamorous offerings of the rich, to the small, but interesting, group of artifacts deposited here in these years by the demos-state. The group included items that were, by any standards, unconventional votives. Over the centuries, all manner of deposits had accumulated in the sanctuary, from the humblest of vases and µgurines to some of the great masterpieces of archaic Greek plastic art. But ultimately, whatever their form, the objects in this vast, diverse assemblage were bound together by a common purpose: all were in some sense thank offerings to divinity. Drafts of Assembly resolutions and edicts proscribing enemies of the polis do not self-evidently belong in this company. These are not expressions of the piety of any group or individual; they are simply state documents. So why display them in this particular space? The choice begins to make sense when we consider the ulterior motives behind the placement of artifacts in sanctuaries. Dedications were more than just prayers of thanks cast in stone, clay, or bronze. They gave the dedicator an opportunity to indulge in self-commemoration, to leave a permanent visual

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record of his or her god-fearing character and socioeconomic status and, often, of the events or achievements for which the gratitude to divinity was due. As the premier location for votive deposits in Athens, the Acropolis was also the city’s primary memory site, a sprawling monumental archive of the names and deeds—lofty and humble—of times gone by. The presence of a series of state documents in this setting may not therefore have seemed quite so incongruous at the time as it does to us now. These, too, were entries in the citadel’s inventory of memory, albeit singularly novel ones. It is not just that they mark the µrst appearance of the collective voice of the demos-state among the monuments of the Acropolis, they are also the µrst items to recognize and commemorate the citizen community as a historical agent. This development is signiµcant, since it may be our earliest evidence for a conscious attempt to build and organize a scheme of collective public memory for the community as a whole. Before , memory, like politics, was, for the most part, a highly individualized and presumably competitive business. The actions remembered on Attic votive and funerary monuments were invariably those of families, small groups, and individuals. We get no sense that any of these events, even deaths in battle or civic benefactions, were seen as contributions to any larger, shared historical cause. They are merely an assortment of episodes in a great number of essentially autonomous personal histories. Nor, more generally, do we yet see signs in the environment at large of any great interest in recovering and celebrating the exploits of Athenians in the more remote past. The interest shown by vase painters in the deeds of Theseus, which begins in ca. – (see discussion in chap. ), is quite exceptional. Other early kings of Attica, like Cecrops and Erechtheus, who would play such an important role in the formulation of the later Athenian claims to autochthony, do not establish themselves in local iconography until after the sixth century. And when sixth-century political leaders did seek to manufacture impressive associations with µgures from the age of heroes, they showed little regard for geography. Those responsible for the various pedimental tableaux that adorned the buildings of the mid-sixth-century Acropolis very plainly felt that Heracles better articulated how they themselves wished to be perceived than did any local Attic hero. It seems that the sheer force of Heracles’ image prevailed over any possible anxiety about his non-Athenian background. Similar priorities probably helped to shape the glamorous heredity claimed by the Peisistratids. A number of Athenian families would go on to boast of a descent from the Neleids of Pylos, albeit with the Attic kings Codrus and Melanthus inserted at a reassuringly early point in the genealogy. But the name

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Peisistratus, which obviously recalled that of the fabled prince of Pylos in the Odyssey, was especially cultivated by the family. This ×aunting of exogenous origins shows all too clearly that an “authentic” Homeric pedigree was still seen at this time as more useful to a family’s public image than was any thoroughbred Athenian lineage. There is little hint here or elsewhere of that almost fanatical pride in a native heritage that would so infuse the art and culture of classical Athens; the Athenians, it seems, had yet to discover their glorious shared past.34 The µrst compelling signs of an emerging collective historical consciousness come shortly after . As we have just seen, commemorations now describe how military campaigns, like those against the Thebans and Chalcidians, were waged and won by the “sons of the Athenians,” while resolutions of the Assembly are credited to the entire demos. Even monuments which memorialize individuals re×ect the new perspective. The Tyrannicide group in the Agora, much like the later Acropolis dedication erected in the name of the polemarch Callimachus after Marathon, celebrates the honorands not just for their own admirable qualities but also for their contributions to the larger national interest.35 At the same time, the edicts issued against the Peisistratids and the supporters of Isagoras further reinforced a sense of this shared historical purpose by consigning those who had opposed it to the fate of perpetual ignominy. The sudden new awareness of their own collective accomplishment seems to have aroused in the Athenians an equally unprecedented level of interest in the deeds of their more distant predecessors. It cannot be a coincidence that this same period sees an astonishing rise in the level of cultural signiµcance accorded to the Theseus µgure, a development that will be explored in more depth in chapter . For now, we need only observe that Heracles was probably as much a victim of the new perspective as Theseus was its beneµciary. The superhuman exploits of the former may have had a peculiar appeal for leaders at a time when the power of a hero’s image depended more on his Panhellenic prestige than on the strength of his local connections. But as an outsider, Heracles could never play more than a tangential role in the highly particularistic new vision of the past that now began to dominate Athenian historical consciousness.36 Altogether better suited to the new vision of course was Theseus, whose Athenian credentials were well established. And if Theseus did not yet possess the glamor of his Panhellenic counterpart, his career could be creatively embellished in the decades to come, especially in the years following the transformative experience of the Persian Wars. But evidence for his rising cultural

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proµle is already visible somewhat earlier, not least in his µrst appearance on the Acropolis in the statue group of ca. . The new interest in the seminal µgures and events of early Athenian history may also help to explain the prominence of Gigantomachy scenes on the citadel at this same time. The theme was not a new one in Athenian art; Athena’s role in the battle had held pride of place in the iconography of the Great Panathenaia since the inception of the festival in the s.37 But by the time of its appearance in the pediments of the new order, this elemental con×ict must have assumed a fresh signiµcance. No longer was it simply an emblem or marker of the power of the city’s patron divinity—an iconic tableau from a world beyond the laws of time. After , the cultural resonance of the Gigantomachy would derive largely from its place at the very beginning of a historical continuum, one that linked all Athenians with what could now be seen as the formative events in their distant collective past. From this new vantage point, Athena’s contribution to the victory did not merely symbolize her distinguished position in the divine order; it now seemed to anticipate the manifestly glorious destiny awaiting her favored people. We shall see further examples of this new style of historical consciousness in the chapters to come. But it is on the Acropolis, long the region’s primary memory site, where the early traces of this development are perhaps most explicit. Whether commemorating recent deeds (like the victories of ) or the ancient exploits of Athena and Theseus, the public monuments erected here between  and  helped initiate the µrst systematic effort in Athens to give some kind of order and meaning to shared historical experience, real and imagined. The past was no longer the sum of the discreet personal and family histories of individuals, an unstructured environment without larger shape or purpose. It was now organized around a new vision of national heritage, the cornerstone of an emerging corporate identity, an as yet inchoate narrative in which the collectivity of the Athenians was both subject and principal actor. Henceforth, Athenian citizens were encouraged to see themselves as part of a storied fraternity, a historic community moving forward together through time. In the process, a new realm of memory was created—what we might call a historical imaginary. Through this diffuse, if essentially linear, sense of the past, the Athenians would be repeatedly confronted by mirror images of their own actions conducted by ancient simulacra of themselves. And sustained as it was by permanent public records, this particular realm of memory, unlike any others, now came with the “ofµcial” sanction of the state.38 Thus, the new regime’s engagement with the past was far from casual. The insistent message of continuity embedded in the fabric of the Acropolis and

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the Agora, whether through preservation or contrivance, was more than just a crude or superµcial device for substantiating the claim that an old order was being revived. It was part of a larger, more ambitious project to fashion a suitably traditional environment for a citizen body that was now urged to see itself as a political community of great antiquity. In part  of this book, we shall pursue this aspect of the Athenian experiment further, examining efforts to reshape other areas of public life along similarly traditional lines. The Acropolis would retain its time-honored roles as fortiµed stronghold of last resort, major cult site, and arena for competitive display well into the classical period and beyond. But during the course of the µfth century, in such monuments as the Nike temple, the Erechtheion, and, above all, the Parthenon, one senses a signiµcant change in the overall tone and character of the place. The polyphony of earlier eras becomes less audible beside the ever more assured—at times bombastic—voice of the demos-state, staking its conµdent claims to a proud heritage in both word and image. And so the sanctuary increasingly assumes the guise of an unapologetic advertisement for the glorious accomplishments of the Athenian past, an exercise in brazen self-celebration. This shift in character was no doubt accelerated by the momentous triumphs of the Persian Wars and the subsequent exhilarations of empire. But its relatively unobtrusive beginnings can be detected somewhat earlier, during the age of Cleisthenes, when, for the µrst time, the acts of families and individuals were joined by collective deeds of “the Athenians” in the city’s great storehouse of memory.

5 TRIBES, HEROES, AND THE “REUNIFICATION” OF AT TICA

The subject of greek associations has recently been described by one specialist as “intractable.” As he puts it, these groups are usually “difµcult to deµne and, once deµned, difµcult to study owing to the scarcity and peculiar characteristics of the primary evidence.”1 This is certainly true of the ten Athenian phylai or “tribes,” introduced in /, which are notoriously hard to µt into modern analytical categories. On the one hand, they appear to belong to what we would call “civil society,” that broad, loosely deµned stratum of social life located somewhere between the individual citizen and the ofµcial organs of government. Here, they took their place alongside a wide range of social organizations that had long been familiar features of the Athenian cultural landscape. As was the case in, say, the phratries, the gene–, and the orgeo–nes, membership in the new phylai was hereditary. Like these and other older groups, the tribes were essentially self-governing, self-µnancing entities, whose corporate life was organized around regular cult practice.2 But unlike these other kinds of association, the new tribes were also inseparable from the Athenian state. The term phyle– was widely used in the Greek world to describe the groups into which a given citizen body was divided, usually for military and/or political purposes, so that all citizens by deµnition belonged to one or another tribe. At least in known historical instances, these en123

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tities thus did not originate, as it were, organically, willed into existence by their members, but were collectively installed from above—fully formed—at a single, speciµc moment in time. The Cleisthenic phylai were no different, and they now provided the operational basis for a range of new national ventures, notably the citizen army and the Council of .3 According to current orthodoxy, translating the term phyle– as “tribe” is therefore misleading, since the very existence of phylai presupposes the emergence of a centralized, “posttribal” form of political organization, however rudimentary. Given their inherently civic, or “public,” character, phylai should therefore be distinguished quite sharply from the more obviously “organic” and “private” Greek associations. But at least in the case of the Cleisthenic tribes, the best-attested of all phylai, it would be a mistake to press the distinction too far. Notwithstanding their synthetic origins and inseparability from the state apparatus, these groups still shared many characteristics with independent cultic organizations and descent groups. This was probably no accident; it appears that a great deal of effort was invested in making them look and feel just like “private” associations from the very start. To understand why, we should look at the role played by the tribes in the overall scheme of the changes attempted in /.4 ORIGINAL RATIONALE

The immediate raison d’être of the phylai was, as I have already noted, to provide the organizational structure for state initiatives like the citizen army and Council of . But it was not preordained that complex, purpose-built “tribes” had to be used to perform such functions, let alone tribes made up of trittyes drawn from three different parts of Attica. The reasons for using units of this particular kind become clear when we consider the larger goal of the reforms of Cleisthenes and the radical changes necessary to achieve this goal. This larger goal was integration, the creation of a new kind of region-state in Attica. The viability of this region-state required more than the passive consent of a large and far-×ung citizen body; it was predicated on the citizens’ willingness to participate, directly or indirectly, in the very mechanics of government on an almost continual basis. Given the traditional quietism, parochialism, and effective political exclusion of much of this population in earlier times, the mass participation necessary to animate the new order could hardly be taken for granted. The full incorporation of Attica needed more than a few strategic adjustments to the state apparatus in Athens. Unlike the changes authored by Ephialtes or even Solon, it required a fundamental shift in consciousness. The experiment begun in / could only succeed if free, native-

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born males throughout Attica embraced a new vision of political community and adjusted to new ways of seeing themselves, their fellows, and the world around them. And this adjustment probably would not take place unless new patterns of behavior could soon be established in areas outside the strict realm of the state as well as within it. Hence the decision to blend the ten phylai into “civil society.” Each tribe was conceived, in effect, as a kind of microcosm of the citizen body, drawing together three discreet groups of individuals from three different areas of Attica to form a single miniature community. The rationale behind this brazenly artiµcial scheme was at once to neutralize the in×uence of localist sentiment on affairs of state and, more positively, to foster the growth of a collective consciousness in the region as a whole, by giving citizens the chance to interact with fellow tribesmen from other districts on a regular basis. Evidently, it was thought that individuals were more likely to feel that they were part of the larger national community if they were µrst able to form attachments with a small, but representative, sample of that community, such as each citizen would now µnd within his own tribe. Thus, important as the speciµc political functions of the phylai may have been, their unorthodox composition points to a larger, more general socializing function. And unless we take them seriously as associations and see that this is what they were intended to be from the very start, we can barely begin to appreciate the critical role they were to play in the new order. A social organization can still be genuine, however arbitrarily or synthetically created. The only real measure of authenticity here is the extent to which members feel themselves to belong to the organization. In the case of the Cleisthenic tribes, the development of a sense of fellowship and belonging among members was, for reasons I have already stated, unusually signiµcant. But it was also, by any standards, unusually problematic. THE DESIGN OF THE TRIBES

In the normal scheme of things, there was little earthly reason why citizens who lived in Sounion would have forged a special association with men from Skambonidai in central Athens and Paionidai on the slopes of Mount Parnes. But in /, as newly minted members of the tribe Leontis, they were expected to do just that. And here we see the principal difµculty facing those responsible for implementing the new phylai: how might a genuine group sentiment arise among such disparate and far-×ung segments of the population? Clearly, conditions favorable to the growth of this sentiment would have to be manufac-

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tured and built into the design of the tribes from the outset. Though no exact precedent for these particular tribes was available to guide the designers in this task, existing associations in Attica and elsewhere in Greece did provide a range of proven formats for possible imitation. It appears that elements were borrowed from a number of different models. First, the name. As noted above, phylai were traditionally the most broadly inclusive of all Greek social organizations, serving, in effect, as administrative divisions of the citizen body; this, presumably, was why the term phyle– was applied to the entities introduced by Cleisthenes. Of course, four groups called phylai already existed in Athens at this point, the system of Geleontes, Aigikoreis, Hopletes, and Argadeis, which was also found with some variations elsewhere in the Ionian world. We can be almost certain that these venerable bodies now lost whatever major administrative functions they might once have held, even if they managed to maintain a vestigial presence in the symbolic life of Athens long afterward. Unfortunately, too little is known about these functions or about the corporate life of the Ionian tribes for us to assess the extent of their in×uence on the design of their successors. The little we do know actually points more to difference than to similarity. While there is good evidence that the older groups were also comprised of subdivisions called trittyes, the one surviving trittys name (Leukotainioi, meaning “the men with white headbands”) suggests that the Ionian tribes bore little resemblance to the unusually complex territorial entities created by Cleisthenes. Likewise, the new tribes had no equivalent of the phylobasileis, the “tribal lords” of the older phylai, who operated as a kind of priestly college, performing sacral and judicial functions on behalf of the entire polis community. Nor should we assume that the later tribes simply inherited their political and military functions from their predecessors, since it is unlikely that any probouleutic council or a well-developed mechanism for levying a citizen army existed in Athens before /. Overall, though long experience of tribal life under the old system must have in×uenced the shape of the ten Cleisthenic phylai to some extent, this in×uence may not have been as great as is sometimes supposed.5 In every sense, the deµning features of the younger tribes were the ten Eponymous Heroes, and here again the new phylai conformed to a familiar, time-honored pattern. All manner of social entities in the Greek world—from kinship groups and small settlements to larger regional or ethnic populations, like “the Ionians”—identiµed themselves with an illustrious hero or ancestor, whose name they collectively bore and whose memory they celebrated. The rationale behind the practice is well described by Kearns (, ):

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[T]he eponymous hero had a special signiµcance to the group; the coincidence in name signiµed a coincidence in substance, and the hero was in some sense the projection of the group itself onto the plane of myth or cult or both, and its expression in a uniµed, individualised form. In the case of the new tribes in Athens, the need for this kind of group “expression” was even greater than usual. Just as the highly artiµcial and arbitrary composition of the phylai made them innocent of any preexisting loyalties to people or place, it also made them essentially interchangeable. As a result, the ten heroes were really the only features that distinguished one tribe from another and, thus, the only source of difference on which an individualized corporate identity could be built.6 Inevitably, the initial assignment of heroes to phylai was as artiµcial and arbitrary as the tribes themselves. Almost everything we know about this process is contained in a single sentence in AP (.): And [Cleisthenes] assigned to the tribes ten eponymous heroes whom the Pythia had chosen from a preliminary list of one hundred founding fathers [arkhe–geto– n]. Brief as it is, this passage gives us some idea of the effort invested in making the tribes feel like authentic associations from the start. The decision to seek Apolline sanction from Delphi for the phylai perhaps deliberately recalled the longtime practice of Greek colonists, who likewise hoped to lend an instant legitimacy to their new ventures. The result, as Parker (, ) observes, was that the new tribes were “not really artiµcial because not really man-made.” Reinforcing this impression of authenticity was the manner in which the role of the epo–nymoi was now presented. Though, in reality, the relationship between any given hero and his tribe was largely arbitrary, the characterization of these µgures as arkhe–getai suggested otherwise. The epo–nymoi were to be more than inanimate tokens or emblems, serving merely to distinguish the name of one phyle from another; they were cast as the imagined “founders,” “leaders,” and, so to speak, “progenitors” of the new groups.7 This conceit of the hero as Stammvater was obviously intended to give each tribe the air of an extended kinship group, along the lines of associations like the phratries and the gene–. Where once only the clans of the traditional elite could claim the privilege and prestige that accrued from heroic forebears, these entitlements were now extended, in a sense, to the citizen body as a whole. And

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the familial image of the tribes will only have strengthened over time, with admission to membership, through the demes, determined—except in extraordinary circumstances—by heredity. By the fourth century, it is actually possible to µnd the phyletai of a given tribe referred to as “descendants” of their eponym, using a plural patronymic form based on the hero’s name.8 A remarkable passage in the otherwise unremarkable Demosthenic funeral oration (.–) describes the phyletai of all ten tribes in these terms and goes on to suggest that the performance of tribal units in a recent battle, possibly Chaeronea, was characterized in each case by qualities “inherited” from their “founding fathers” [arkhe–goi]. A rhetorical trope perhaps, but one that was only effective if a meaningful sense of attachment had in fact developed between the phylai and their epo–nymoi. The notion of common corporate descent may have been no more than a well-worked metaphor, but the vitality of the metaphor bespeaks a genuine group solidarity. As Parker (, ) comments on the use elsewhere of the patronymic Antiokhidai to describe the phyletai of the tribe named for Antiochus, son of Heracles: This is not to say that anyone “really believed” that a social unit µrst constituted in the late sixth century in fact carried the line of Heracles, but that no difµculty was experienced in applying to it the idiom of µctional kinship in which phratries too, for instance, were traditionally conceived. The artiµcial creation had become no less natural than its predecessors. Also favoring this process of naturalization was the fact that the “founding fathers” were not obscure, generic heroes but, for the most part, established luminaries of Attic lore and cult. The Pythia’s inspired selection included four µgures (Erechtheus, Cecrops, Pandion, and Aegeus) who were now—if not earlier—deemed to have ruled in Athens as kings. Also chosen were a kinglike µgure (Leos) associated with a prominent local landmark, the sons of two of the most storied characters in Greek legend (Acamas and Antiochus), two “culture heroes” (Oeneus and Hippothoon), and a Homeric warrior of the µrst rank (Ajax). The omission of Theseus aside, the list could hardly have been more impressive, and it presumably owed little to Apollo’s promptings.9 As a result, each of the ten tribes inherited not only a “founding father” of some distinction and a kind of vicarious prestige from the legends attached to their hero but also a certain patina of antiquity. Just as the metaphor of common descent helped to bridge the prohibitive geographical and social distances that separated the members of each phyle, so this association with existing

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Athenian traditions must have helped to offset the experimental novelty of the tribes and to ease their assimilation into the fabric of society. And even if some of these traditions were not especially familiar or impressive, they were now, one suspects, clariµed, modiµed, or embellished accordingly. While an established visibility must have been the primary criterion for inclusion on the µnal list of ten heroes, it is also striking how many of these heroes were (or could be) implicated in some way with the territorial integrity and/or the uniµcation of Attica. Although Theseus, the synoecist par excellence, was absent from the list, his presence is keenly felt through others who were included, notably his father, Aegeus, and son Acamas. At least in later traditions, Pandion µgures as the hero’s grandfather, while Leos, Antiochus, Ajax, and Hippothoon appear to have been associated with Theseus in some fashion by the early µfth century. Meanwhile, two other epo–nymoi were deemed to have prepared the way for full political incorporation: Cecrops apparently took the µrst step toward syneocism, by bringing together the twelve independent states of Attica into a federation known as the Dodekapolis; and Erechtheus later overcame the most signiµcant opposition to the federation, when he defeated the forces of Eumolpus and Eleusis.10 We might also note that several of the heroes had historical links with areas that were either marginal or adjacent to Attica. The selection of Pandion, Ajax, and Hippothoon as epo–nymoi was especially provocative in this regard, since it carried with it implicit Athenian claims to control the Megarid, Salamis, and Eleusis, respectively. The full “Atticization” of these heroes served to clarify in no uncertain terms where the Athenians now believed the historically contested western borders of their polis to lie.11 Thus, in these different ways, almost all of the µgures installed as “founding fathers” of the tribes brought with them memories or traditions that drew attention to the idea of Attica as a single, uniµed political entity—the very idea the tribes themselves were designed to promote. Presumably, this was not a coincidence. The arbitrary, unorthodox composition of the phylai was the most serious impediment to their success as associations; if the image of regionwide communion could somehow be made attractive, citizens might be inspired to lay aside their seasoned localism and develop a sense of solidarity with their fellow phyletai in distant demes. Hence came the decision to choose epo–nymoi whose legendary deeds, local origins, and/or family connections would lend an appealing glamor to the pan-Attic character of the phylai and would perhaps advance the larger cause of national integration in the process. The new tribes also drew heavily on existing models in their corporate life. Though most of our evidence comes from the fourth century, there is no good

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reason to doubt that the kind of organizational apparatus we see described in our sources was in large part already in place soon after the tribes themselves were introduced. At any one time, the phylai were served by a number of functionaries, such as secretaries, treasurers, and heralds. But executive authority appears to have been concentrated in the hands of ofµcials known as epimele–tai, or “caretakers.” Three—one from each trittys—were selected annually and served together as a college or board. Their primary responsibilities included representing the tribe’s interests on the national level, convening tribal assemblies, and managing the group’s cult life and funds.12 As far as we can tell, the phylai were µnancially independent. While there is later evidence that at least some of them received income from land leases, it is perhaps safest to assume that they relied largely on the muniµcence of wealthy phyletai for funding in their early days.13 Tribal cult practice was essentially an exclusive, internal affair.14 It may be that most—perhaps all—of the epo–nymoi were honored with some kind of sacriµce by their phyletai during the performance of larger state festivals with which the heroes were connected. But this public expression and afµrmation of the special bond between phyle and arkhe–gete–s is securely attested only for Pandionis at the Pandia, a major festival of Zeus.15 Otherwise, the religious activities of the tribes took place away from the public gaze, within the sacred precinct of each epo–nymos. Two features of the tribal cults are particularly interesting. First, their location. To the best of our knowledge, up to four of the shrines (those of Erechtheus, Cecrops, Pandion, and possibly Aegeus) were on the Acropolis itself; two (Leos and Ajax) were in the Agora area, and two were located a little further from the center, in the districts of Kynosarges (Antiochus) and the Kerameikos (Acamas). Of the remaining two shrines, one (Hippothoon) was certainly situated outside Athens altogether, in Eleusis, while the other (Oeneus) may likewise have been some distance from the city, in Acharnae.16 Given that the new system of phylai was introduced, fully formed, at a single moment in time, this relatively uneven distribution pattern is somewhat surprising. More surprising still is the apparent lack of interest in ensuring that all the precincts were located in demes belonging to the phylai that actually controlled the cults, especially if the shrines were also to serve as the principal sites for tribal “gatherings,” or agorai.17 Clearly, these were not new, purpose-built precincts. Rather, it appears that the phylai simply took over existing cults and shrines of the heroes concerned and reused them for their own purposes. And where the hero had no previous cult in a suitably accessible location, established precincts

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of close relatives were adopted, as seems to have been true in the case of the tribes Aiantis, Antiochis, and perhaps Leontis.18 The second noteworthy feature of the tribal cults concerns personnel. Evidence from the fourth century and later reveals that three of the phylai (Erechtheis, Cecropis, and Hippothontis) were served by “priests of the epo–nymos” who were not actually members of the tribes in question. Apparently, in /, the tribes inherited more than just the cults and shrines of the heroes. The priests of Erechtheus and Cecrops were presumably members of the (Eteo-) Boutad and Amynandrid gene–, who are known from elsewhere to have controlled these cults. The identity of the family that presided over the cult of Hippothoon is not known, though the priesthood appears to have remained gentilician down to at least the second century B.C.19 Unless some special dispensation was granted to these three families, it seems reasonable to infer that the priesthoods of the other existing hero cults were also retained, at least initially, by their original patron gene–, regardless of their tribal afµliation under the new order. As Kearns (, ) notes, control must then have been “severally and sporadically transferred from genos to tribe during the period between / and the late fourth century, when the relevant evidence begins.”20 TRIBES AND HEROES IN A CHANGING CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

In an effort to understand the cultural logic of the Eponymous Heroes and their overall contribution to the symbolism of the new order, some authorities look to parallels with Greek colonial ventures. According to this view, by installing the epo–nymoi as tutelary hero-arkhe–getai of the tribes, Cleisthenes gave the impression that his project was not to reform the state but to found it afresh, much as he would a new settlement abroad. In this task, he himself assumes the guise of oikiste–s—intermediary between his community and the god in Delphi, as well as architect of civic space and cult life for his new foundation. As such, he was in effect asking his fellows to abandon their past and join him in a new kind of political enterprise; but unlike literal colonists, the Athenians would not have to leave their homeland to participate.21 The parallels here are certainly suggestive; the hero-arkhe–getai, the appeal to Delphic authority, and the reconµguration of the Agora area could point to the play of a colonial metaphor. And there can be no doubt that the Cleisthenic project actually was a dramatic departure from earlier practice, a discontinuity of far-reaching signiµcance. However, we should be careful not to extend the

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metaphor too far. The realia may have been all about innovation and experiment, but the representation was less straightforward. To begin with, it is far from clear that Cleisthenes presented himself as the author of bold new beginnings. As we saw earlier, the literary tradition is curiously ill informed about the Alcmeonid; he is generally remembered only as one of a series of reformers, and the momentous importance of his measures seems to have become quickly forgotten in time. For this reason and others to be discussed in chapter , one suspects that he probably did not much advertise the signiµcance of his own role in the transformation, let alone glamorize himself as some pioneering oikiste–s µgure. It is, in any case, hard to believe that a leader who was apparently so reluctant to draw attention to the novelty of his reforms might have sought to portray himself as an arch-innovator. Certainly, he and his colleagues oversaw a major reconµguration of civic space in Athens. But far from ×aunting any novelty, the scheme and fabric of their new Agora communicated above all an unwavering µdelity to the practices of the past. A very similar approach was taken toward the new phylai. Just as the existing buildings and monuments of the old Peisistratid square were left largely undisturbed to afford the Agora a degree of physical continuity with earlier eras, so the new tribes were inserted into a “civil society” that, at least on the surface, was otherwise little changed. The phratries, the gene–, local religious associations like the Marathonian Tetrapolis, and even the original Ionian tribes survived the transition to the new order in some form. And this was the result not of chance or inertia but of conscious choice by the political leadership, as AP (.) attests.22 To have abolished the old groups would have been to threaten the overall appearance of cultural continuity that the leadership was so eager to sustain. Perhaps there was, in any case, no real need to abolish them. The old loyalties and afµliations could be allowed to persist alongside the new ones, because the values, the assumptions, and the social relations that gave them meaning were no longer of much political relevance. At the same time, every attempt was made to ensure that the new tribes themselves did not disturb this carefully composed image of continuity. Just as even the new structures in the Agora appeared to be more redolent of tradition than innovation, so almost every feature of the ten phylai seems to have been shaped and measured to make them feel like ancient confraternities, rather than the bold, experimental entities they actually were. For their basic format, elements were drawn from a variety of proven organizational models; in style, these most synthetic of groups thus bore a reassuring resemblance to Attic associations of yore. And in most—if not all— cases, the cults and shrines of the epo–nymoi (the focus of tribal corporate life)

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were already familiar features of the Athenian landscape, giving the phylai, in Parker’s words (, ), “a pleasing, natural-seeming diversity.” No less important, the reuse of existing hero cults also offered a very visible link to the practices of earlier times, especially in instances where priests were still supplied by the families who had traditionally controlled the cults, even when these priests were not actually members of the tribes in question.23 Here again we see signs of a distinct and willful aversion to starting afresh and building from scratch. In creating a suitable cultural setting for their new order, it seems that Cleisthenes and his associates preferred, wherever possible, to preserve the legacy of the past and to reuse old spaces, monuments, and practices to serve new purposes. The epo–nymoi themselves offer another good illustration of this approach. Earlier, we saw how monuments in the Agora and on the contemporary Acropolis were used to stir in the Athenians a deeper sense of their collective heritage. The aim, it appears, was to immerse them in an environment saturated with historic references and images, to build around them a cultural landscape that at least purported to bear the marks of their long and slow, but essentially continuous, evolution as a political community. For the time being, the story of this evolution, the history of the Athenian people, was perhaps no more than a series of vague historical imaginings. But even this somewhat inchoate vision of the past still needed µxed beginnings, and this is where the epo–nymoi came in. Though already present in the environment in cult and myth, these µgures were now, as it were, recycled and invested with new meaning. No longer were they just faceless names, timeless numinous powers of mostly local signiµcance. Embraced by a new, emerging historical consciousness, they were collectively transformed into “founders,” not of any new order introduced by Cleisthenes, but of the traditional old order that Cleisthenes now claimed to be reviving. With just a little sleight of hand and adroit manipulation of half-remembered tales, they were recast as formative µgures in the story of the Athenian people, heroes whose deeds had shaped or anticipated the realities of the present in the late sixth century. As a group, the epo–nymoi thus helped to anchor a burgeoning collective memory, giving citizens a relatively concrete and vivid point of contact with the shared origins that they were now encouraged to imagine. This conclusion is admittedly speculative (evidence from the period hardly allows otherwise). But given the style and cultural logic of other contemporary innovations, along with the general interest in raising historical consciousness, it seems reasonable to infer that the creation of the Eponymous Heroes was ultimately prompted more by the need to construct a suitable past than by any

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particular desire to glamorize the present. Appealing as the colonial parallel may be, the primary role of these heroes was to establish a measure of continuity between the Athenians and their earlier history, not to distance them from it. If there was a dominant metaphor at play here, it was that of the family. In earlier times, the possession of a glorious past had been the exclusive preserve of the great aristocratic clans. Through forms of ancestor worship, genealogical claims, and orally transmitted memories of the deeds of their forebears, these extended families had deµned and perpetuated their exalted place in the world. Likewise, through the cults, the claims, and the memories offered by the new tribes, all Athenians now had a share in a distinguished national past that deµned and shaped their identity in the present. With all the ties of blood, interest, and accomplishment that linked the ten “forebears” of the phylai to one another, it was not difµcult to see each tribal history as but one strand in the story of a larger, more inclusive “family,” the manifestly ancient collectivity of the Athenian people.24 It would be idle to pretend that we can form anything more than a general impression of the scope and contents of “ofµcial” collective memory in the early years of the new order. By this point, if not earlier, the more illustrious of the ten heroes were presumably seen as “kings” ruling in some kind of dynastic order, and one can imagine that fairly standardized accounts of the deeds of the epo–nymoi, their genealogies, and their relations with people and events in Attica and elsewhere were in wide circulation. But about one particular detail of this vision of the past we can be more certain. Since it is possible to associate almost every one of the epo–nymoi in some fashion with the territorial integrity or uniµcation of Attica, we can infer that the synoecism of the region was now widely seen as an achievement of the heroic age; political union was thus deemed, in effect, to be Attica’s natural birthright. However, the question remains whether this tradition was a recent invention or the creation of some earlier era. THESEUS AND THE SYNOECISM TRADITION

Our earliest and best source for the synoecism is Thucydides (..–). Though the historian elsewhere scorns the value of received traditions about the distant past, this particular legend, it seems, was above suspicion. For during the reigns of Cecrops and the µrst kings down to the time of Theseus, Attica contained [a number of ] independent states [Attike– . . .

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kata poleis o– ikeito], each one with its own town hall and government ofµcials [prutaneia te ekhousas kai arkhontas]. Except in times of danger, they did not come together to deliberate with the king [in Athens]. Rather, they were all autonomous and used to determine their own courses of action [autoi hekastoi epoliteuon kai ebouleuonto]. Some even fought against the kings, as did the Eleusinians under Eumolpus against Erechtheus. When he was king and had established himself as a ruler of intelligence and power, Theseus, as part of his reorganization of the country [te– n kho– ran], brought everyone under the sway of the single state that now prevails [in Attica] today [es te– n nun polis ousan . . . xuno– ikise pantas], after dissolving the councils and ofµces of the other states and creating one single council chamber and town hall [hen bouleute–rion apodeixas kai prutaneion] for all. And though individuals were allowed to retain the property that they had hitherto held, he compelled them to use this one state [for their political life] [e–nankase miai polei taute– i khre–sthai]. And with all now contributing to it, this state became powerful and was handed down as such by Theseus to his successors. To commemorate his accomplishment, the Athenians to this day celebrate the Synoikia, a public festival in honor of Athena. If the institutional details of Thucydides’ account owe something to the author’s characteristically rich, but disciplined, historical imagination, the general picture of the uniµcation process he presents is consistent with that found in all later sources. Apparently, no rival versions of the tradition were ever formulated. By the later µfth century, we infer, it was simply axiomatic that Attica had once been home to a number of independent states and that the farsighted king Theseus had peacefully amalgamated these states into a single political entity centered on Athens; thus was created, in a single administrative stroke, the distinctive, formidable region-state inherited by the classical Athenians.25 So when was this tradition invented? Given its unusually stable place in collective memory, the story could have been in circulation for centuries before Thucydides came to write his account. However, it can scarcely have been an artifact of the Dark Age or some earlier period. The institutional incorporation of Attica is far from a conventional epic or folkloric exploit; the invention of a tradition of this kind presupposes a certain level of political self-consciousness and a recognition that the Athenian state had its own interests and history beyond those of the families or individuals who happened to control it at any given time. The synoecism tradition cannot, therefore, have been created much before the era of Cylon and Draco, when a developed state appara-

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tus is µrst fully visible in Athens. As for a terminus ante quem, there really was no cause to invent a legend of prehistoric uniµcation after about  B.C. The primary purpose of political traditions like this one is to help legitimize an action that is in some sense problematic, and there is no evidence to suggest that the issue of a united Attica was especially contentious or controversial following the reforms of Cleisthenes.26 Political logic therefore places the genesis of the synoecism tradition somewhere between the later seventh century and the end of the sixth. Can we be more precise? Depending on one’s view of the evolution of the Athenian state, it would of course be easy enough to observe some resemblance between the actions of Theseus and those of a Solon, a Peisistratus, or a Cleisthenes and then date the tradition accordingly. But the question demands a more satisfactory resolution. While we may lack any unambiguous evidence for the synoecism story in the art or literature of the archaic period, the relative abundance of evidence from this time for other Thesean feats offers a further line of inquiry. The preeminence of Theseus among Athenian heroes during the classical era was unchallenged. His many illustrious deeds were recounted in dithyrambs, eulogized in funeral orations, reenacted in plays and ceremonies at festivals, celebrated on innumerable vases, and immortalized on major public monuments. At least part of his extraordinary appeal he owed to what might best be described as a composite heroic persona. As a fearless adventurer in the tradition of Heracles, he was a proliµc slayer of monsters and brigands, often in distant, outlandish locales; as a constitutional monarch, he led his countrymen in defense of Athens against Amazon attack, invented or reinvented a range of important public institutions, and, of course, united Attica. It remains unclear whether the Athenians themselves felt there to be any contradiction between the world-traveling vigilante Theseus and the more sober ruler-reformer who did so much to shape the political destiny of his homeland. Perhaps they simply saw these two dimensions of his character as mutually reinforcing. What is clear is that this composite hero µgure was the product of a long and fairly complex evolutionary process; Athenian perceptions of Theseus and his heroic persona change steadily during the course of the archaic period. In the hope of µnding some oblique or implicit evidence for the invention of the synoecism tradition, we should now look at this process in some detail. It is widely recognized that the ascent of Theseus to the heroic µrmament in Athens was a relatively late development. Even if authentic, the small handful of incidental references to him in early epic do not necessarily represent him

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as an Athenian, since Thessaly and probably Troezen also had strong claims to him at this stage.27 More telling still is his surprisingly tenuous foothold in Athenian cult.28 We know of only one sanctuary of Theseus within the walls of Athens itself during the classical period, and this may not have been established until the mid-s, when Cimon needed a suitable home for the bones he had recently “repatriated” from Skyros, the supposed site of the hero’s demise. Even at the height of Theseus’s celebrity, the Herakleia in Attica conspicuously outnumbered the Theseia. The Athenians were not oblivious to the discrepancy, nor were they troubled by it. With characteristic legerdemain, they simply explained it away as a product of their hero’s fabled generosity.29 But most revealing is the ceramic evidence. To judge from this testimony, Theseus did not begin to attract much interest in Athens until the second quarter of the sixth century, conspicuously later than elsewhere. He was already something of a minor µxture in Greek art by the time the µrst images of his exploits began to appear on Attic vases in ca. .30 Even then, we do not yet see any real signs of a distinctively Athenian contribution to the hero’s iconography. For now, Attic artists seem to have been content to follow the lead of others, conµning themselves to scenes from the small cluster of traditional stories associated with Theseus’s Cretan adventure and his partnership with the Thessalian Peirithoos, king of the Lapiths (µg. ).31 But during the period –, the picture changes quite sharply. Ceramic images of Theseus deeds, especially the battle with the Minotaur (µg. ), are now produced with far greater frequency in Athens, suggesting an appreciable rise in local interest. No less signiµcant, it is also during this time that we see the µrst hints of a conscious effort among Attic artists to assert the hero’s Athenian identity and to control his iconography and take it in new directions. A once narrow repertoire is now expanded to include a number of new episodes, notably the struggles with the Marathonian Bull and Krommyonian Sow and the rape of Antiope. What should we make of these developments?32 A number of authorities believe that they must re×ect the formal adoption and promotion of Theseus as Athenian national hero, most likely by the Peisistratids.33 The idea is certainly tempting, especially given the tradition that the family sought to embellish the hero’s image by tampering with the texts of Homer and Hesiod (see Plut. Thes. .–). But it must also be qualiµed. If there was such a thing as a national hero in Athens at this time, it is beyond question Theseus who held that honor; no other indigenous hero enjoys even a comparable level of popularity in the art of the Peisistratid era. However, it is also plainly apparent that Theseus was still very far from being the hero most celebrated in Athens. For the time being, at least, he was forced to

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exist in the shadow of another, the very formidable cultural shadow cast by Heracles. As we saw in the last chapter, it was Heracles not Theseus whose image adorned the pediments of the mid-sixth-century Acropolis. And for all the growing fascination with the deeds of Theseus during the Peisistratid period, Attic vase painters were still at least eight times more likely to put Heraclean exploits on their pots in the years before .34 That said, even were the differential somewhat narrower, such evidence would not in itself bring us any closer to tracing the genesis of the synoecism tradition. Raw measures of popular appeal can tell us only so much; we also need to see evidence for a signiµcant shift in the nature of this appeal. In other words, did the Theseus µgure of this time still conform to the traditional paradigm of muscular, individualistic heroism? Or are there hints here of a new persona, one that also included a more political and public-spirited dimension? Was he yet seen as the kind of constitutional ruler who might once have overseen a far-reaching reform of his home state? It is possible that he was, but unlikely. And the primary reason, again, is the long shadow of Heracles. It hardly needs repeating that many of the details in the biography of Theseus bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Heracles. It is generally agreed that the career of the former was in many respects modeled on that of the latter. Never is this more apparent than in the years ca. –, when for the µrst time the Theseus µgure is fully deµned and developed in Attic art. Every one of the major new episodes that enters the repertoire during these years seems to have been directly inspired by a similar Heraclean feat: the Cretan Bull reemerges as the Bull of Marathon; the Erymanthian Boar is transformed into the Krommyonian Sow; Hippolyte becomes Antiope.35 The rationale behind this extraordinary, slavish imitation is not difµcult to comprehend. The era was nothing if not competitive; Athenian elites were as eager to compete with their rivals elsewhere in Greece as they were with each other. And in Theseus, the Peisistratids evidently saw the makings of an Athenian version of Heracles, a native hero who, if suitably promoted, might develop into a lucrative source of Panhellenic prestige both for themselves and for their city. This kind of initiative was not new. The marketing of Theseus to a wider Greek public recalls a similar exercise in self-aggrandizement from a generation or so earlier, when Athenian leaders contrived to produce their own facsimile of the Olympic Games, another cultural product of proven mass appeal. Indeed, so keen were the organizers of the Great Panathenaia to establish the Panhellenic pedigree of their new games that they took the unprecedented step of offering valuable prizes to victors, hoping that these might encourage the best athletes in the Greek world to come to Athens to compete.36

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Whether or not the Peisistratids went to comparable lengths in their promotion of Theseus and actually inserted references to the hero into the canon of Greek epic poetry, they do seem to have prompted the creation of several new stories about him during the years of their hegemony in Athens. But these new stories surely did not include the synoecism tradition. Despite the importance of Theseus’s Athenian identity, his historical engagement with his home state was still minimal at this stage. There are no signs of any attempt to politicize his career and present him as a constitutional monarch, let alone as a visionary founding father.37 In fact, there is little discernible change in his heroic persona at all; the new deeds assigned to him in the years ca. – are of much the same traditional stamp as the old. For the time being, the exigencies of Panhellenic appeal and µdelity to the Heraclean model required him to remain essentially a “prepolitical” hero, a glamorous adventurer still preoccupied with tackling the world’s monsters and outlaws. It was suggested earlier that there would have been little political need for a synoecism tradition after around  B.C. We have now seen that, for very different reasons, the story probably could not have been invented before the fall of the Peisistratids in /. And since the parallels between the legendary uniµcation of Attica and the historic reforms of / are self-evident, we can conclude that the synoecism tradition was in all likelihood created around this same time.38 If so, we might expect to see that Theseus was now viewed by his countrymen very differently than before. Crediting him with an achievement of this momentous historical and political signiµcance will have transformed Athenian perceptions of the hero almost overnight; in a single mythopoeic stroke, the monster slayer of fable is improbably reinvented as a farsighted ruler-reformer—in effect, the founding father of the Athenian state. This abrupt transformation must have left some trace in the contemporary record. There is certainly very good evidence that the popularity of Theseus reached an altogether new order of magnitude during the last decade of the sixth century. It is at this point that the µrst “cycle vases” were produced, most of them cups, which show the hero battling with a succession of three or more adversaries on the same vessel (µg. ). Several of the opponents (the Minotaur, the Marathonian Bull, and the Krommyonian Sow) are familiar. Some are entirely new: Sinis, Skiron, Kerkyon, and Prokrustes—all outlaws who made the fatal mistake of challenging the youthful Theseus as he made his way from Troezen, his birthplace, to join his father, Aegeus, in Athens. Over twenty such vases are known from the period ca. –, and seven of them date from  or earlier. Here, the artists’ use of multiple adjacent scenes on a single sur-

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face to convey the idea of an entire cycle of deeds is unprecedented in earlier Greek art.39 It is also during the last decade of the sixth century that the deeds of Theseus µrst appear in Athenian monumental sculpture. As we saw in the previous chapter, a commemoration of the combat with the Marathonian Bull and a statue group (see µg. ) showing the hero wrestling with Prokrustes (?) were probably erected on the Acropolis in the closing years of the century. Still more impressive was the metope series that adorned the southern ×ank of the Athenian treasury in Delphi, a building erected probably around  B.C. These sculptures represent our earliest certain evidence for the promotion of Theseus on an Athenian state monument. One of the nine panels is badly damaged, and its subject cannot be identiµed. The other eight feature three of the older episodes (the Minotaur, the Marathonian Bull (µg. ), and the Amazon), the four new combats seen on the cycle vases (with Sinis, Skiron, Kerkyon, and Prokrustes), and a remarkable central panel that shows the hero with Athena, apparently in a quiet moment between exertions. If doubts still lingered around Greece about the local identity of Theseus, the treasury metopes put them conclusively to rest.40 But for our purposes, perhaps the most striking feature of the treasury is its juxtaposition of Theseus with Heracles, whose own, more storied labors decorated the metopes on the building’s northern side. As if to emphasize the former’s independence from the latter and his emergence as a major hero µgure in his own right, there seems to be a conscious effort to avoid duplicating accomplishments in the two metope series, with both the Krommyonian Sow and the Cretan Bull episodes omitted. And as scholars have often observed, it is the exploits of Theseus, not Heracles, that were displayed on the building’s more visible and prominent southern facade. It is almost as if a cultural displacement of Heracles by Theseus were taking place before our very eyes. As it turns out, this process of displacement is broadly conµrmed by contemporary vase painting. As noted above, Athenian artists were over eight times more likely to depict Heracles than Theseus in the years before  B.C. Thereafter, the proportions shift quite dramatically: Theseus appears on a full  percent of known Attic vases in the µrst quarter of the µfth century, Heracles on only  percent.41 Taking all of this evidence together, the Theseus portrayed in Athenian art of the last decade of the sixth century is an altogether more exalted and more secure µgure than the Theseus of the recent past. Freed from the shadow of Heracles and adopted as an ofµcial emblem of the state, he was, for the µrst time, clearly without rival as national hero of Athens.42 The invention of the

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synoecism tradition early in the decade would of course go a long way toward explaining the sudden elevation of Theseus and his subsequent eclipse of Heracles. It would also explain two fundamental changes in the way that he is now perceived. First, in its careful blending of new stories with old to form a cogent sequential narrative, the deed cycle attests to an emerging interest in Theseus as a concrete historical individual. Granted, in earlier images of the three older stories, there seems to have been a growing consensus that he performed these deeds in his youth, and he had always been generally identiµed with those, like Heracles, who “lived” in the generation before the Trojan War. But we get no real sense before  of any conscious attempt to organize the events of his career into a coherent “biography” and give larger order and meaning to his existence. His “life” was then little more than an assemblage of heroic tableaux, an accumulation of power statements and claims to Panhellenic renown. But after , an episode like the encounter with the Krommyonian Sow was no longer just another self-contained demonstration of arete–; it was now one of a series of formative experiences—deµnitively located in place and time—that brought the young hero from boyhood to manhood. Theseus had µnally entered history. Second, the cycle reveals a new emphasis on Theseus’s engagement with Attica and its environs. Aside from the Marathonian Bull episode, all of his traditional accomplishments had taken place at some remove from his native land—probably the further away the better, if, like Heracles, he was to enjoy a genuinely Panhellenic celebrity. And where Theseus’s older exploits usually celebrated little more than the hero’s personal triumph over adversity, the new struggles on his journey around the Saronic Gulf showed him in his µrst sustained role as a benefactor of Athens, removing all manner of threats from the western approaches to his home state. No less important, the cycle also re×ects a very contemporary concern with territoriality. As we saw earlier in this chapter, more than one of the Eponymous Heroes had links to areas on or beyond the western margins of Attica (notably Eleusis [Hippothoon] and the Megarid [Pandion]), and their selection as eponyms carried with it a compelling Athenian claim to control of these locales. Such claims can only have been strengthened by the placement of three of the four new Thesean deeds (the combats with Skiron, Kerkyon, and Prokrustes) in these same disputed areas. It seems that the hero’s actions were now laden with political implications of a kind we have not seen before.43 But the best evidence for the politicization of Theseus in the last decade of the sixth century is actually negative, namely, his omission from the list of

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Eponymous Heroes. The presence of less illustrious relatives (e.g., Pandion, Aegeus, and Acamas) on the list tells us all we need to know about the reason for his omission: he was now, in the words of Ostwald (, ), “too much revered as the hero of all Attica to give one tribe the signal honor of worshipping him as its mythical forebear.” And since the list included several µgures (not least Theseus’s own father) who were recognized now, if not earlier, as rulers of the ×edgling Athenian state, it is inconceivable that Theseus himself was not also seen as a onetime king of Athens by this time. In short, there appears to have been an abrupt shift in Athenian perceptions of Theseus in the last decade of the sixth century. Only at this point do we see the µrst real traces of that signature ruler-adventurer persona, the persona that would secure his unique place in Athenian consciousness for decades to come. Realistically, there can be only one explanation for this sudden image makeover and precipitous rise in acclaim. While it may not be possible to prove conclusively that the synoecism tradition was invented at this time, it does not take a rich imagination to identify signs of its impact everywhere in contemporary evidence. As we have seen, the genesis of the tradition could only have come after a certain point in the evolution of Theseus’s heroic identity and under certain, speciµc political conditions. If there was ever a timely moment for these two axes to intersect, it came shortly after the fall of the Peisistratids. I would guess that the tradition originated roughly as follows. To help legitimize the deme/trittys/tribe reform that µnally sealed the political uniµcation of Attica, Cleisthenes and his associates sought a precedent from the distant past. Casting around for a suitable agent of this prehistoric synoecism, they chose Theseus. The choice was not necessarily an obvious one. Though more colorful than the shadowy Cecrops or Erechtheus, Theseus was hitherto known primarily for individual feats of Heraclean derring-do. Moreover, he perhaps retained a suspect association with the previous regime. But yet again, the interests of continuity prevailed over political sensibility, and the hero was somewhat improbably recast as the founding father of the contemporary Athenian state, in the process ensuring his own exclusion from the ranks of the epo–nymoi and the inclusion of several close relatives. In an effort to make this abrupt identity shift more credible, attention then turned to organizing the details of Theseus’s earlier life. The new cycle of youthful deeds was a remarkably artful exercise in mythmaking. Combining a number of purpose-built new episodes with several existing stories, the cycle was designed to serve as a coherent account of the hero’s development from adolescence to kingship; hence the decision to end the sequence with the Minotaur episode, the event that precipitated Aegeus’s suicide and Theseus’s

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ascent to the throne.44 Along the way, the cycle both confronted and resolved the problem of the hero’s birth in the Argolid, addressed the embarrassing shortage of ventures conducted in and around Athens itself, and anticipated his later concern with the territorial integrity of Attica. The result was a vivid and historically satisfying portrait of the formation of a future national hero, precisely the kind of individual who one could now imagine would go on to shape the political destiny of his homeland. Evidently, Athenian vase painters and their symposiast clients found the new cycle instantly appealing, and it is not hard to see why. An important question remains: how was the new synoecism tradition publicized and promoted? No doubt it became a recurring topic in contemporary political discourse. The selection and assignment of the Eponymous Heroes would have inevitably given rise to public discussion of events in the early history of Attica, and we can only suppose that the region’s original uniµcation by Theseus would have been a constant point of reference. But was the synoecism recognized or memorialized in some more permanent form? It seems distinctly unlikely that the event was directly commemorated in any form of public monument. The synoecism did not particularly lend itself to artistic representation, and we know of no attempt in this or any other era to render it in painting or sculpture. Somewhat less unlikely is the possibility that a literary account was circulated at this time, one that perhaps included the synoecism among other old and new details in Theseus’s now impressively cogent life story. In their efforts to explain the hero’s sudden rise in visibility in the last decade of the sixth century, scholars have long speculated that a major epic poem, a Theseid, must have appeared around the year . But while more than one poem of this name is attested, none look to be this early. And besides, unless we can imagine such a thing as an “ofµcially” commissioned epic, a contemporary Theseid would only have re×ected the popularity of stories already current; it would not have been a vehicle for their initial dissemination.45 Another possibility is that the legend of the prehistoric uniµcation of Attica was promoted in a regular public ceremony. This idea is altogether more attractive, not least because we know of a festival that served just such a purpose. The Synoikia is not particularly well attested, but surviving sources from Thucydides (..) on leave us in no doubt that it commemorated the synoecism. Supposedly dating from the time of Theseus himself, it was held annually in the middle of the month Hekatombaion, appropriately just before the Panathenaia, the festival of “all the Athenians.” Otherwise, we can be sure only that the sacriµces performed at the Synoikia were offered to Zeus Phratrios and

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Athena Phratria, that they were decidedly modest in scale, and that representatives from the old Ionian tribes played a signiµcant role in the proceedings.46 The presence of the old associations has encouraged a general assumption that the Synoikia must have been a festival of some considerable antiquity. The assumption is an easy one to make and may well be correct. But given that the Athenians of the late sixth century were quite adept at dressing up cultural innovations in the garb of timeless tradition, one wonders if the issue might not be a little less straightforward. Further complicating matters is our earliest evidence for the festival, a lex sacra from the second quarter of the µfth century, which reveals that the deme Skambonidai offered a mature victim at the Synoikia.47 Though there are as yet no signs that other demes participated, the fact that even one of Cleisthenes’ new local units did so arouses further suspicion that the festival known to Thucydides was not a relic from the distant past after all. At the very least, it must have been substantially reinvented—if not invented ex nihilo—relatively soon after / B.C. The prominence of the old Ionian tribes at the festival need not contradict this conclusion. We are not told how the act of uniµcation was µgured in the ritual of the Synoikia. But it seems a reasonable supposition that the ceremony involved a symbolic reconciliation between different parties in Attica. And given that the Ionian tribes apparently constituted the principal divisions in Athenian society prior to / and had since been all but eliminated in the name of unity, it is hard to think of any entities better suited to representing the various fractions of the primeval community united by Theseus. Supporting this inference is unambiguous later evidence that the old phylai were thought to have been associated with ancient territorial divisions of Attica. It appears that the tribes underwent several changes of name in the remote past before they µnally became known as the Argadeis, Hopletes, Aigikoreis, and Geleontes, during the reign of Erechtheus. In their two earliest phases, under Cecrops and Cranaus, their names featured a combination of three toponyms (referring to the standard regional divisions—the coast, the hinterland, and the city) and one eponym (referring to the king who oversaw the naming process).48 Since the Synoikia was one of the very few contexts in which memory of the old tribal system was preserved, it seems distinctly likely that the purported territorial origins of the Ionian tribes were somehow articulated in the ritual of the festival, presumably to represent the disunity resolved by Theseus. One µnal thought on the details of the festival. An emphasis on the territorial identity of the older phylai may also help to explain the presence of what is perhaps the most mysterious element in the Synoikia: the Leukotainioi, “the

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men with white headbands,” a trittys of the tribe Geleontes, who participated in the festival’s preliminary sacriµce. Taken in context, this ritual recognition of the old trittys system suggests that the image of pre-Thesean Attica recalled by the festival involved not just a fourfold but, ultimately, a twelvefold political division of the region. It is very tempting to see here a reference to the primeval Dodekapolis, the loose federation of twelve independent poleis established by Cecrops that supposedly prevailed in the region before the synoecism. Though the precise identity of the twelve states was probably never standardized, the Dodekapolis tradition seems to have been universally accepted by the Atthidographers and other antiquarians.49 Since the whole purpose of the tradition was to project some intimation of political unity back to the very beginnings of Athenian history while still allowing Theseus the decisive role in the uniµcation process, the idea of the Dodekapolis presumably does not predate the creation of the synoecism tradition.50 We might speculate that this idea, like various other innovations of the new order, was in×uenced by practice in Ionia, where a historical federation of twelve states provided an appropriate model.51 Be that as it may, it is not hard to believe that the Attic Dodekapolis tradition was µrst conceived in tandem with the synoecism tradition and that both traditions were originally disseminated at the Synoikia, a festival that must have been at least revamped, if not invented outright, in the aftermath of Cleisthenes’ reforms.52 The logic of the Athenian experiment required, inter alia, a transformation in the way Athenians apprehended what had gone before. Exclusions and divisions of earlier times had to be forgotten; the past had to be made to re×ect and anticipate the new solidarities and collectivism of the present. Over the course of the last three chapters, we have been able to form some idea of how the authors of the new regime set about this task of shaping public memory. The construction of a suitable past began with the suture of the most important division of all, the somewhat nebulous line that separated the area directly controlled by the Athenian state from the rest of Attica. If the new order was really to be seen as no more than an older order restored, then its signature innovation, the creation of a fully integrated region-state in Attica, would have to be projected back into the crepuscular recesses of early Athenian history. The synoecism tradition was thus invented to serve as a kind of historical charter for a united Attica. And, in the process, the cultural resonance of Theseus in Athens was forever transformed, with the ancient act of union displacing victory over the Minotaur as the deµning moment in his career.

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More generally, the preoccupation with the question of uniµcation in the late sixth century ensured that the emerging vision of an Athenian past was essentially organized around this issue. This is apparent not only in the extraordinary prominence accorded to Theseus, the eventual agent of uniµcation, but also in the choice of epo–nymoi, a reliable guide as to which other heroes were now considered to have been signiµcant players in the evolution of the early state. Just about every one of the eponyms was associated in some way with the territorial integrity of Attica or with the person of the synoecist. The earliest of the chosen heroes was Cecrops, the archetypal father of the Athenian state and the founder of the Dodekapolis federation, while the latest were Acamas and Antiochus, the sons of Theseus and Heracles. Thus deµned, the decisive, formative period in Athenian history came to a fairly abrupt end in the generation after Theseus; it is almost as if the organizers of this sequence began to lose interest in their task once the uniµcation issue had been conclusively resolved. But the seeds of “ofµcial” memory had now been sown. Animated by a new historical consciousness, Theseus and the epo–nymoi supplied the initial substance and color for this ×edgling account of a shared past, an account that would be µlled out with the re×exes of future triumphs and anxieties in the decades to come. And henceforth, no ancient voice we know of ever doubted that some kind of unity, whether intimated or fully realized, had prevailed in Attica essentially since time immemorial. Thus, to all appearances, the aim of Cleisthenes’ reforms was not so much to unify the region as to reunify it, to restore it to the condition long ago bequeathed by Theseus. Ironically and perhaps inevitably, the representation of the reforms in this fashion all but ensured that their true signiµcance would lie hidden from view for the rest of antiquity.53 Once the core elements of a suitable past were in place, it remained to forge visible signs of continuity between the Athenians of the late sixth century and the putative founders of their historic citizen community. This would be achieved by making sure that almost every innovation in public life under the new order had a certain traditional ×avor. We have already seen the contributions of the Agora, the Acropolis, and the new tribes to the creation of an appropriately “historic” cultural milieu. Further examples of this wholesale invention of tradition will be seen in the chapters that follow.

6 THE NEW ORDER AT WAR

King cleomenes of sparta may already have foreseen the likely impact of Cleisthenes’ reforms on interstate power relations in Greece when he intervened to help Isagoras in /. By , with the Athenian experiment well under way, he can have been in no doubt at all; the creation of a fully integrated citizen state in Attica almost instantly gave the Athenians a military capability to rival that of any polis on the mainland.1 Recognizing this serious threat to his own state’s preeminence, Cleomenes acted decisively. In a coordinated mobilization of allies, the Chalcidians and Thebans were detailed to invade Attica from the north and west, respectively, while the king himself arrived from the south with a Peloponnesian force, taking up a position near Eleusis. But the devastating three-pronged assault was not to be. With all of the allied armies safely established in Athenian territory and poised to strike, µrst the Corinthians at Eleusis and then Demaratus, Cleomenes’ fellow king and cocommander, abruptly deserted the cause, forcing Cleomenes to withdraw. Galvanized by this unexpected good fortune, the Athenians promptly went out to meet the Thebans and Chalcidians. Both adversaries were defeated in successive engagements, and a measure of security against future incursions was achieved by the annexation of valuable territory on Euboea and in the sensitive border area between Attica and Boeotia. Two monuments were then erected: a burial mound near the Euripus for the those who had fallen in the 147

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struggle with Chalcis and a bronze four-horse chariot group on the Acropolis, a thank offering to Athena for the twin victories.2 The new regime had survived its µrst stern test from without. With hindsight, we can also see that the triumphs over the Thebans and Chalcidians in  mark the beginning of an important shift in the balance of power on the Greek mainland. A more assertive, interventionist Athens would increasingly overshadow neighbors like Thebes and Megara and would even come to challenge Sparta as the dominant force in interstate affairs. Within a few years, the Athenians would be emboldened to venture further aµeld and lend their support to the Ionian revolt against Persia, inadvertently paving the way for their µnest hour—at Marathon in . The primary reason for this newfound strength and conµdence was the creation of a citizen army organized according to the tribal system established by Cleisthenes.3 The new form of military organization required each tribe to furnish a regiment (taxis) of hoplites from among those phyletai who possessed sufµcient means to provide their own arms. Leadership was also to be assigned along tribal lines; each year, a board of ten generals—one from each phyle— was elected to oversee all military operations and command in the µeld.4 Indeed, the key structural role played by the phylai in the mobilization and administration of the army has suggested to some observers that military considerations, rather than political ones, might have been uppermost in Cleisthenes’ mind when he µrst conceived the deme/trittys/tribe reform.5 We shall return to this issue shortly. A more immediate concern is to consider the novelty of a citizen militia in Athens. Was the new form of military organization simply an overhaul or adaptation of an existing system, perhaps one that had fallen into disuse under the Peisistratids? Or did it in fact represent the very µrst attempt by the Athenian state to institute a regular mechanism for mobilizing a national citizen army? CITIZEN SOLDIERS

It is widely believed that some regularized form of citizen militia did exist in Athens before / B.C. Many scholars would probably concur with Ostwald’s assessment (, ) that “however the army may have been organised early in the sixth century, the fact that the Peisistratids had depended largely on the support of mercenary soldiers will have made a new organisation desirable.”6 Presumably, any earlier system would have been based on the old Ionian tribes.7 That said, the evidence for military campaigns waged by the Atheni-

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ans before  is astonishingly meager and tells us little of value about how their armies were mustered in earlier times. There may be a simple explanation for this reticence. After scrutinizing the pertinent evidence in some detail, Frost () argues persuasively that the Athenians actually had no standardized procedure for raising a citizen militia before the reforms of Cleisthenes.8 As he notes, the reliability of our sources for external military operations during this period is questionable on several grounds. In some cases, like the Athenian involvement with Sigeion, ancient authors obviously confuse and con×ate the events of more than one era. In others, such as the early wars with Aegina and Eleusis and the so-called First Sacred War, the sources include elements that can be dismissed as “wholly fabulous” (Frost , ). Still other con×icts—those with Megara over Salamis and Nisaea—were really no more than raids or skirmishes, and the participants in them, like those who went on Miltiades’ expedition to the Chersonese, were probably volunteers drawn by the prospect of booty or farmland.9 More revealing are ancient reports of Athenian defensive responses to hostile incursions from without, none of which suggest the existence of any institutionalized levy. The initial reaction to Cylon’s seizure of the Acropolis back in the seventh century was, in Frost’s words (, ), “evidently spontaneous.” Cylon’s force met with no resistance until it had occupied the citadel, whereupon it was apparently besieged by people arriving “en masse” [pande– mei] (Thuc. ..) from the µelds. And the slaughter of the conspirators at the shrine of the Erinyes that ended the coup attempt was universally regarded in later times as an action not of the state as such but of the archon Megacles and his family members, allies, and retainers (cf. sustasio–tai at Hdt. .). The Athenians were no better organized some seventy years later, when Peisistratus mounted his brief coup in /; his control of Athens was secured when a mere µfty men armed with clubs took the Acropolis unopposed. Fifteen years after that, when Peisistratus returned to Attica after a decade of exile, his relatively formidable force set out from Marathon for Athens and encountered no resistance whatsoever until it reached Pallene. Moreover, the Athenians who opposed him in the fateful battle that followed seem to have been drawn only from the city of Athens and were soon dispersed.10 If the Athenians actually had a system for mobilizing a citizen army before , it is truly remarkable that there is so little evidence for it in our accounts of earlier engagements; we hear nothing of tribes, phratries, or any other groups who might have provided the organizational basis for military ventures.11 True, the ofµce of polemarch seems to have been genuinely antique, and we do hear of men serving as “generals,” though there is no reason to think that these were

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elected annually to the kind of board we see in later times. More likely, they were appointed as and when the need arose.12 Likewise, the troops under their command seem to have been mustered on an ad hoc basis, whether from volunteers, from retainers and dependents, or, in the case of defensive actions, simply from those who were around to help. And much as we would expect from the µndings in chapter , there is no evidence that Athenian forces routinely included contingents from all parts of Attica before the last decade of the sixth century. It seems, then, that the system devised by Cleisthenes and his associates for raising a genuinely pan-Attic citizen army had no real precedent in the earlier history of the state. Only after / did the Athenians µnally µnd a way to exploit the manpower potential of their region to the full. Theirs was now a formidable presence in the world of Greek interstate relations, as the Thebans and Chalcidians would shortly discover. Let us return now to the question raised earlier: is it possible that the tribal reform of Cleisthenes was motivated primarily by military considerations? There can be no doubt that the ad hoc arrangements of the past had limited the state’s ability to intervene and impose itself elsewhere, while also rendering it particularly vulnerable to incursions from without. However, as I showed in chapter , the need to address the chronic political instability of earlier times was no less urgent. In any case, the twin problems of vulnerability and instability were fundamentally interconnected. Engaged in ongoing political competition with their rivals, leaders had little incentive to change a system that gave them the freedom to raise what were essentially personal armies of volunteers and retainers. At the same time, the relative absence of any µrm institutional structure in military life left the Athenians powerless to prevent these leaders from resorting to violence and destabilizing the state, as is so vividly illustrated by the coups of / and /. Neither problem could be decisively resolved in isolation from the other; the reform package of / was surely designed to address both. The creation of a system for mobilizing a national army was ultimately only one part of a larger experiment in collective self-rule. In a single stroke, the tribal reform made it possible for all citizens throughout Attica to share responsibility for defending the polis as well as for governing it. Of course, the shift to a muster system that routinely required large numbers of men from all parts of the peninsula to bear arms for the state will have been one of the more problematic innovations of / in the eyes of the average citizen. After all, given the Peisistratid dependence on non-Athenian manpower, few Athenians of the time had much battleµeld experience, and

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those that did had fought either out of naked self-interest or out of loyalty to an individual leader. Henceforth, all Athenians of sufµcient health and means would be expected to serve a collective national interest, an altogether less familiar and more abstract cause. How, then, was this cause articulated and promoted? How was it related to the larger framework of values and attitudes that made up the symbolic and ideological universe of the new order? Here, it may be instructive to examine evidence for two military commemorations from the period: the mass grave and the victory monument that were set up after the twin victories over the Thebans and Chalcidians in . DYING FOR THE CAUSE

Among the Greek epigrams assembled by Planudes in the early fourteenth century and later assigned to book  of the Palatine Anthology is the following epitaph.13 Divrfuo~ ejdmhvqhmen uJpo; ptuciv, sh`ma d¾ ejf¾ hJmi`n ejgguvqen Eujrivpou dhmosivai kevcutai: oujk ajdivkw~, ejrath;n ga;r ajpwlevsamen neovthta trhcei`an polevmou dexavmenoi nefevlhn. [Under the cleft of Dirphys, we were subdued, and upon us was piled a grave mound near the Euripus at public expense. This was not without due cause, for we lost our lovely youth when we welcomed war’s rugged cloud.] The original provenance of this text is not entirely self-evident. But most would agree that style and content seem to identify it as an Athenian military epitaph from before the s, when the remains of battleµeld casualties were µrst repatriated to Athens for burial in the state cemetery, or Demosion Sema, on a regular basis.14 The most likely context for the verses would then be a polyandrion, or mass grave, for those who fell in the engagement with Chalcis in .15 If so, the text is very signiµcant indeed. It is our earliest evidence for the Athenian practice of burying and commemorating casualties en masse without regard for individual rank or status. In fact, it is our earliest evidence for the exercise of any kind of institutionalized control over the disposal of the war dead by the Athenian state.16 Before this point, as Clairmont (, ) suggests, responsibility for the retrieval of the fallen was presumably left to the survivors, who would have conveyed the remains to the appropriate families for burial.

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It is obviously not an accident that the new funerary practices appear in the years immediately following the creation of a new citizen army and the establishment of a new, more inclusive form of citizen state. Collective rule was manifest in collective burial, and the obligation to go to war for a shared cause in turn obliged those who survived to honor the remains of those who did not. Responsibility for disposal of the war dead had passed decisively from private to public hands as “[t]he demos took over the part of the father of the family,” and “all fallen soldiers were honored in the same way.”17 The language and imagery of the Euripus epitaph also sheds interesting light on how the idea of a citizen army was represented to the Athenians in the aftermath of the reforms that µrst made this idea a reality. One is µrst struck by the epitaph’s acute consciousness of its own novelty. Its entire structure is organized around a defense (“not without due cause”) of the use of public funds to bury wartime casualties, a concern that is readily understandable if no real precedent existed for the practice. And then there is the word de–mosiai (at public expense) itself, which occurs only here in commemorative verses of this kind. As Clairmont (, ) observes, this unusual lexical preference probably re×ects the pride taken by leaders of the new order in giving a public burial to the war dead for the µrst time in Athenian history.18 But for all the epigram’s self-aware novelty, its diction and content also profess a heavy debt to poetic idioms of earlier times, both epic and funerary. Several words in the epitaph gain nuance and ×avor from their Homeric pedigree. For example, while the verb damao– (subdue), used in the µrst line, was obviously chosen to soften the brute fact of violent death with an appropriate euphemism, it may also recall Homer’s use of the verb and its cognates, thus adding a sense of the great effort required to “tame” or “overpower” the warriors of Athens.19 Likewise, Homeric usage could well inform the choice of kheo– (literally, “pour”) to describe the erection of the burial mound, suggesting that the tomb possessed a kind of supernatural weightlessness as well as an appropriately “heroic” scale.20 More vivid still is the cloud metaphor in the closing line of the epigram. The arresting combination of the noun nephele–n (cloud) with the epithet tre–kheian (rugged) conveys an image of the “cloud of war” rolling toward the waiting Athenians like some giant boulder, much like the rocks sometimes thrown by gods and heroes in the heat of epic battle. The implication of these various verbal echoes is transparent, if improbable: the novice citizen soldiers of Athens are being equated with those who took part in the titanic struggles of the legendary past.21

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The form and thought of the Euripus epigram also recalls earlier epitaphs composed for the tombs of wealthy individuals in Attica and elsewhere, texts that routinely draw on epic diction and imagery.22 Its central conceit, where the deceased address the passerby from within/beyond the grave, is a case in point. Perhaps the best-known precedent is the poignant mid-sixth-century epitaph for Phrasikleia from modern Merenda in Attica.23 Sh`ma Frasikleiva~: kouvrh keklhvsomai aijeiv avnti; gavmou para; qew`n tou`to lacou`s¾ o[noma. [The grave of Phrasikleia. Ever shall I be called maiden, having drawn this lot from gods instead of a marriage.] The novelty of the Euripus epitaph is of course that it extends the conceit from the single voice of an individual to the collective voice of the fallen Athenians. The grave admits no distinctions of wealth or status; the privilege of an impressive burial is bestowed on all alike, and in death, all speak as one. But the primary model for the Euripus epigram was surely the verses composed to commemorate members of the archaic elite who were killed in battle, like the epitaph for Tettikhos mentioned in chapter .24 ei[te ajstov]~ ti~ ajnh;r ei[te xevno~ a[lloqen ejlqwvn Tevt[t]icon oijktivra~ a[ndr¾ ajgaqo;n parivtw ejn polevmw/ fqivmenon, neara;n h{ban ojlevsanta: tau`t¾ ajpoduravmenoi nei`sq¾ ejpi; pra`gm¾ ajgaqovn. [Whether he be townsman or an outsider from elsewhere, may he [who reads this] proceed on his way with pity felt for Tettikhos, a noble man who died in war and lost his youthful vigor. Once you have mourned these things, acknowledge the nobility of his deed.] Much like the Euripus epigram, these lines contain a number of Homeric echoes (see, e.g., Il. .; Od. ., .) that help to build an aura of heroic death around the deceased. A more speciµc resemblance occurs in the third lines of the two epitaphs, where a sense of the tragic untimeliness of death in battle is conveyed by phrases that recall epic formulae for the loss of life in war (e.g., psukhas olesantes, “losing their lives,” and the like).25 But in the epigram for the citizen soldiers, there is perhaps the hint of a new element. It comes in the word dexamenoi (“when we received”or “welcomed”), which implies that the Athenians gave their lives willingly for the good of the homeland. Hence,

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unlike its private predecessors, which dwell only the pathos of youthful death, the Euripus epitaph does not request that the casualties be pitied or mourned by the passerby. Perhaps we see here the µrst intimation of what would become a recurring feature of Athenian discourse on the war dead in the future: the praise of willful self-sacriµce for the polis as cause for celebration as much as for lament. Thus, while the epigram draws much of its force and effect from established epitaphic idioms, it also subtly reworks these conventions to produce an altogether new ideal of heroic death, one that was collective and essentially sel×ess.26 And the expression of this ideal was not conµned merely to the realm of words. To judge from the internal evidence of the poem, the grave itself was purposely designed to recall the tombs of warriors who fought in earlier eras. Consisting of a large tumulus crowned with a stele, it clearly imitated elite private burials visible in Attica since the seventh century. Like the latter, it must ultimately have been inspired by imaginings of the landmark tombs of the Homeric world, such as that of Ilos on the plain of Troy.27 We might then see the heroizing polyandrion for the victims of the battle with the Chalcidians as an immediate ancestor of the famous soros for the Marathonomakhai. Whitley’s comments (, ) on the soros might just as easily be applied to the tomb near the Euripus:28 Particular burial practices are being used as metaphors for heroic courage and prowess and so as suitable means for honoring the dead. . . . The tumulus of Marathon depends for its effectiveness on previous mortuary forms and widespread ideals of heroic virtue. . . . The Euripus war grave thus µts very comfortably into the general scheme of politico-cultural change in Athens in the late sixth century. Much as the new tribes offered all Athenians a share in the kind of glorious past that was once the preserve only of the great families, so each citizen soldier was now assured a burial µt for an Attic lord or an epic warrior. And through the adaptation and reuse of time-honored elite mortuary practices, a direct continuity of arete– was intimated, one that extended back from the new national army of the present to the legendary µgures of Homer’s distant past. Whatever the unglamorous realities of late archaic warfare, the humble Athenian hoplite and his fellows could at least share in a glamorous death. Athenian sepulchral arrangements for the war dead would evolve considerably in the decades ahead, and it seems that the heroizing battleµeld tumulus had effectively been abandoned by the end of the s.29 Thereafter, the

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remains of all casualties were repatriated and interred with due pomp in the soil of the Demosion Sema, which served in effect as a vast polyandrion. Evidently, as the frequency of Athenian military interventions increased with the rise of the Delian League and as the demands on manpower rose accordingly, political leaders saw potential symbolic capital in creating a compelling public spectacle around the burial of those who gave their lives for the polis. The result was the institution of a lavish annual state funeral, featuring a two-day prothesis (a formal display of the war dead), a horse-drawn cortege for the tribal cofµns, and a program of athletic contests, as well as the familiar graveside oration. In other words, the occasion was essentially a full-scale, µfth-century reproduction of the heroic funeral ceremonies so memorably described in epic poetry and vividly rendered on Late Geometric amphorae, which had marked the graves of aristocrats in this very same location centuries earlier.30 We might note that some have seen the pageantry of the state funerals as a sign of the troubling persistence of a dominant aristocratic ethos in democratic Athens; others see it as evidence of the power of “the democracy” to appropriate and adapt aristocratic values to its own purposes.31 There is some truth in both views. But both may also miss the larger point. When we consider the state funerals against the background of earlier arrangements for fallen citizen soldiers, it becomes clear that any apparent opposition or tension here between aristocratic practice and democratic context is of less signiµcance than the more general interplay between past and present. Elements like the horse-drawn cortege and the funeral games were included in the spectacle not for their “aristocratic” associations per se but for their manifestly traditional and, above all, heroic resonance. The point was to suggest continuities of military prowess with the age of heroes; the mortuary practices of the archaic aristocracy simply provided the most readily available means to that end.32 And though this heroizing mode of funerary commemoration would not reach its fullest expression until the Cimonian era, the cultural logic behind it is already visible years earlier in the relatively simple tumulus and epitaph set up near the Euripus in , when the new citizen army met and overcame its µrst serious challenge in the µeld. A TRADITION OF VICTORY

A very similar cultural logic informs the other monument erected by the Athenians in connection with the battles of , a thank offering for the twin victories, dedicated to Athena on the Acropolis. It probably stood somewhere near the entrance to the citadel, and was clearly regarded as a landmark of some his-

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torical signiµcance; after suffering damage at the hands of the Persians, it was replaced by a replica at some point in the mid–µfth century. The monument took the form of a bronze four-horse chariot, with the following epigram inscribed on its base.33 Desmw`i ejn ajcnuoventi sidhrevwi e[sbesan u{brin pai`de~ ÆAqhnaivwn, e[rgmasin ejn polevmou e[qnea Boiwtw`n kai; Calkidevwn damavsante~: tw`n i{ppou~ dekavthn Pallavdi tavsd¾ e[qesan. [With grievous chains of iron, sons of the Athenians quenched excessive aggression, after overcoming the hosts of the Boeotians and Chalcidians through deeds of war. They dedicated these steeds to Athena from a tithe of the ransom.] Like the Euripus tumulus, the victory memorial was singularly unprecedented. As I noted in chapter , it seems to have been the very µrst commemoration in Athens of a collective military achievement. Along with the Salamis decree, it was probably one of the µrst public installations of any description to be set up on the Acropolis. Again, it is surely no coincidence that this particular style of commemorative practice—the celebration of victory won by the group—emerged only a year or two after the introduction of the reforms that deµned the group and provided the organizational basis for the group’s military ventures. Much like the epitaph for the fallen Athenians, the memorial epigram from the Acropolis uses a distinctly Homeric style of diction to lend heroic stature to the citizen soldiers and their accomplishments. Whatever the actual scale of the battles, their opponents are not simply “Boeotians” or “Chalcidians” but whole “nations” or “hosts” [ethnea], suggesting con×icts of truly epic magnitude.34 More interesting still is the characterization of the home forces as “sons of the Athenians” [paides Athe–naio– n]. This phrase recalls Homer’s familiar practice of designating “national” armies as “sons of the Achaeans” [huies Akhaio– n] and the like and must consciously echo the description of the modest Athenian contingent in the Iliad’s Catalog of Ships as “youths” or “sons of the Athenians” [kouroi Athe–naio– n] (Il. .). The continuity of arete– intimated in the Euripus epitaph is here made more explicit: the citizen soldiers of the late sixth century are the linear descendants of those Athenian warriors who graced the battleµelds of yore, speciµcally those who fought at Troy. But it will have been the monument’s sculpture that made the most immediate impression on viewers. Like the thought and language of the epigram,

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the image of a four-horse chariot stirred visions of a world that was very far removed from the realities of contemporary battle. Chariots were certainly not a feature of Greek hoplite warfare in the late archaic era. Nor is it likely that they played anything more than a ceremonial role in eighth-century society, when they became a µxture of battle scenes in art and epic poetry.35 Fascination with these vehicles seems to have been prompted by the sustained encounter of the Late Geometric Greek elite with the material remains of the Bronze Age past, an engagement that also led to, inter alia, the widespread reuse of Mycenean tombs as cult sites for ancestor-heroes, the imitation of Cyclopean masonry, and the deposition of arms and armor of Bronze Age style in contemporary graves.36 Whether or not chariots were regularly used in warfare in Mycenean times, knowledge of their military function seems not to have survived into the Iron Age.37 But representations and perhaps remains of chariots in Bronze Age tombs will have given them a prominent place in the grander, more “heroic” world that was evoked in the eighth-century mind by the visible residue of a civilization long since defunct. This of course was the world imagined in the Homeric epics, and perhaps more than any other medium, these poems µxed the image of the chariot in Greek culture as the conveyance par excellence of gods and heroes, both in war and in peace, and thus as one of the deµnitive markers or signiµers of the divine and the heroic.38 In other words, the four-horse chariot that adorned the Acropolis victory memorial was an unambiguous iconographic restatement of the idea found in the monument’s epigram. Word and image combined to represent the novice citizen soldiers of the new national army as worthy successors of the storied Athenians who fought at Troy and elsewhere. With its emphasis on shared continuities, the victory monument was very much a product of its age. It sat easily amid the cavalcade of equestrian imagery that had in recent decades come to engulf the Acropolis, while for the µrst time using that same imagery to celebrate a group accomplishment. And just as the fabric of the citadel and the Agora now proclaimed the restoration of an older, “ancestral” style of political community, so the victory memorial announced that an ancient tradition of collective martial prowess had been successfully revived. The new shared cause was thus glamorized: the obligation to take one’s place in the Athenian phalanx became an opportunity to tread in the footsteps of heroes. At the same time, the Acropolis dedication, along with its sister grave monument near the Euripus, established a verbal and a visual language on which the Athenians would increasingly draw for all forms of military commemoration in the decades to come.39

7 THE FESTIVAL OF ALL THE ATHENIANS

Demosthenes (.–) may have been exaggerating when he claimed in

 B.C. that the Athenians devoted more energy and resources to just two of their festivals, the Great Panathenaia and the City Dionysia, than to all of their military operations. But this rebuke to his opponents and fellow citizens at a time of impending crisis well illustrates the important place occupied by festivals in the culture of classical Athens and the signiµcance of the Panathenaia and the Dionysia in particular.1 Even by Greek standards, the Athenians were remarkably busy in their religious observations; it is generally reckoned that some form of festival activity took place in Athens on almost one in three days each year. The single most important of these festivals was the Panathenaia, the “[festival] of all the Athenians.” It was the principal occasion for honoring Athena Polias, the patron goddess of the polis, and was held annually, a few weeks after midsummer, toward the end of Hekatombaion, the µrst month in the Athenian calendar. As the Great Panathenaia, it was celebrated with special extravagance every four years; a smaller ceremony, known as the Lesser Panathenaia, was held in the years between. By the classical period, the grander, penteteric version of the festival appears to have evolved into one of the Greek world’s more impressive mass spectacles.2 I say “appears to” because we lack any deµnitive eyewitness account of the festival’s contents and cannot even be certain of the precise order of events. 158

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However, long-term study of a wide miscellany of written and material evidence has made it possible to reconstruct a fairly detailed picture of the program of the classical Panathenaia. The result reveals a complex, multifaceted occasion, made up of several distinct, if not entirely unrelated, ingredients.3 The µrst of these was the ritual component, the core of the festival. This took place on  Hekatombaion. It began with a sacriµcial procession (pompe–) along the Panathenaic Way, starting at the Dipylon Gate, at the northwest edge of the city, and proceeding through the Agora, up to the Acropolis. There, large numbers of victims were offered up to Athena at the Great Altar, and in the Arkhaios Neos, her small olive-wood idol, or xoanon, was draped in a new peplos. The sacriµcial meat was later distributed by deme, and all Athenians present partook of the feasting that followed.4 Then there was what we might call the panegyric dimension. Despite all the local signiµcance of the festival’s ritual content, the organizers of the Panathenaia actively sought the participation of outsiders. In particular, they aimed to attract those same luminaries of athletics and music who competed in the stephanitic, or “crown,” games at Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea. Though never considered part of the prestigious Panhellenic festival circuit (periodos), it featured a full program of traditional contests in both disciplines. And to encourage leading athletes and musicians from all over Greece to take part in these contests, the organizers of the Panathenaia offered the added inducement of lavish prizes, from large sums of cash to decorated jars of olive oil. Ironically, such efforts to stir comparison with the “crown” games only helped to ensure that the Athenian panegyris was forever somewhat distanced from that company. But perhaps what distinguished the classical Panathenaia most from its stephanitic counterparts was its overtly political content. The Eleusinian Mysteries aside (see chapter ), there was probably no event in the Athenian calendar that brought more outsiders to Athens, and it seems that the Athenians saw here an opportunity to make a deµnitive ceremonial statement of their collective place in the world. The line between worship of the patron goddess and celebration of the collective self was always a µne one; at the Panathenaia, it was all but invisible, as the very name suggests. The “festival of all the Athenians,” with its unusually inclusive procession, was above all an occasion for parading the solidarity of the polis and the shared characteristics on which that solidarity was based.5 Not the least of these characteristics was military prowess. During the era of the empire, the consequences of this prowess were visible for all to see in the procession itself, where representatives from subject states in the Athenian “alliance” marched alongside individuals from all sec-

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tions of the greater polis community, including contingents of the army responsible for their subjection.6 This somewhat chauvinistic militarism was extended even into the athletic arena, where a range of non-Olympic competitions were contested exclusively by citizens of the host state. Spectators bore witness as Athenian “warriors” engaged in individual displays of martial dexterity, like the apobate–s race for chariot dismounters and the contest for javelin throwers on horseback (hippakontizontes), and events for teams drawn from the ten tribes, such as the pyrrhic dance and the boat race. These tribal contests seem to have been speciµcally designed to promote group loyalties and to demonstrate the kind of cooperative virtues that underpinned collective rule by the demos. At the same time, the events for “warriors” as a whole offered Athenians and non-Athenians alike a forthright, if stylized, statement of the martial arete– that had secured for Athens its position at the forefront of the Greek world.7 A heady cocktail of Athena worship, Olympic-style panegyris, and political showcase, the classical Panathenaia was an unusually rich and complex festival worthy of its status as the premier ceremonial occasion in Athenian public life. But how did it come to acquire this complexity? Were its disparate ingredients all present in some form from the very beginning? Few participants or spectators in the µfth and fourth centuries would have given much thought to these questions. Despite the festival’s unorthodoxy, it will doubtless have appeared to them to be a timeless and seamless organic whole. While acknowledging that important changes were made to the Panathenaia over time, modern commentators are also inclined to assume that its curious hybrid character was essentially µxed at some early stage, long before the classical period. There are, however, good reasons for thinking that it had experienced more than one signiµcant overhaul by the early µfth century and that its more politically charged elements were only a relatively late addition. GAMES FOR ATHENA

A state festival as signiµcant as the Panathenaia required distinguished beginnings and a long history. The Athenians themselves believed that it went all the way back to the time of Erichthonius, its putative founder. But there is no solid evidence for the festival before the s. An annual sacriµce to Athena Polias had probably been staged since at least the later seventh century, when the µrst temple was built on the Acropolis. Conceivably, some form of regular offering had been practiced since the Late Geometric period, when the citadel was µrst established as a major sanctuary. Athena is explicitly linked with the Acropo-

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lis in a pair of passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey, one of which refers to annual sacriµces. If the traditional date of the Homeric poems is accepted, we may then have a terminus ante quem for the predecessor or original form of the Panathenaia, in the latter half of the eighth century. That said, it seems safe to infer that the celebration down to the s cannot have assumed anything more than very modest proportions, since throughout this early phase, the Acropolis was accessible only by winding paths and narrow entrances. Nor is there any hint in the material record of this period that the ×edgling Panathenaia might have involved anything more than a simple sacriµcial act.8 The picture then changes quite dramatically during the decade –. If a small local festival for Athena Polias existed before this time, it was now transformed into something quite different. Access to the citadel was signiµcantly improved at this point, making possible a much enlarged sacriµcial procession for the festival. As noted in chapters  and , a vast stone ramp some eighty meters long now superseded the winding paths on the western approaches to the sanctuary, and the west entrance was possibly widened.9 Signs of an innovation in the ritual of the Panathenaia are also visible in contemporary vase evidence. One of the events commemorated at the classical festival was the victory of Athena and the gods in the Gigantomachy, and a scene of the armed goddess overpowering a giant was regularly woven into the garment used in the annual peplos ceremony. As it happens, such scenes suddenly became popular on Attic vases right around  B.C., and the earliest examples come from the Acropolis itself. It is not self-evident what prompted this new interest, but the introduction of the peplos ceremony at some point in the s seems the most likely stimulus. If the ceremony was added at this time, we would be in a good position to explain why the striding, armed Athena image comes to dominate the iconography of the goddess in Athenian art during the middle decades of the sixth century and why, in particular, this image was chosen to adorn the Panathenaic prize amphorae, which also enter the record in ca. .10 The idea that the Panathenaia underwent some kind of overhaul around this time may also be supported by a small handful of literary and epigraphic sources. But the beginning of the sequence of prize vases is itself the most unambiguous evidence for a fundamental shift in the character of the festival in the s. For it surely marks the integration of the µrst athletic contests into the festival program and, hence, the birth of the Great Panathenaia.11 Evidently, the new games and the new amphorae precipitated a surge of demand among the Athenians for scenes of athletic competition on vases. Images

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of athletes appear on local ware in the s with unprecedented frequency, not only on the prize vases, but also on other types of vessel, including those known as pseudo-Panathenaics, which are of a shape and scheme similar to the prize amphorae. If, as seems likely, the contests depicted on these various vases broadly re×ect those that were visible at the Panathenaia, it appears that the new games very quickly came to resemble their counterparts at Olympia, featuring a full range of traditional track-and-µeld and equestrian events, as well as boxing, wrestling, and the pankration.12 Also added in the s or shortly thereafter was a series of musical contests. At least in later years, the awards to victors in these events were cash and gold, so we should perhaps not expect to µnd scenes of musical competition on contemporary prize vases. But signiµcantly, from the s on, we do µnd images of auletes and aulodes, kitharists and kitharodes, on a range of Athenian amphorae, including pseudo-Panathenaics and vases with Panathenaic motifs. Again, it seems that a series of new contests at the Panathenaia had caught the imagination of local spectators and the artists who catered to them.13 The rhapsodic competitions apparently had a similar effect. These were a distinctive feature of the Great Panathenaia, and were traditionally associated with Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus, whom posterity remembered as philomousos, “a lover of the arts” (AP .). Whether or not Hipparchus himself actually instituted the contests for rhapsodes, the vase evidence suggests that they too were a µxture at the festival by the end of the s.14 In sum, we can be unusually conµdent that the Great Panathenaia was part of the calendar by around  (presumably, it was founded in either  or ) and that within twenty or so years, the ritual and panegyric components of the mature festival were already essentially in place. It must also have been at this point that the distinction arose between the Great and the Lesser Panathenaia. If we can assume that the new penteteric festival had its origins in a preexisting annual sacriµce for Athena Polias, we might infer that the Lesser Panathenaia was little more than a continuation of this earlier rite, supplemented by the peplos ceremony and perhaps a somewhat larger procession.15 But why was a festival like the Great Panathenaia founded at this particular moment, and by whom? Here, our evidence is less helpful. It is true that one late ancient source (schol. Ael. Arist. ..– [. Dindorf ]) credits the innovation directly to Peisistratus. But a date in the s effectively rules out this possibility. A leader who had to resort to armed force in / to bolster his bid for power in Athens clearly lacked the political capital necessary to establish a major state festival in  or . Only after the mid-s was his

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position secure enough to stage an event of this kind. An altogether more likely founder was suggested in chapter . This was Lycurgus, who appears to have been the most powerful man in Athens during the s, and whose family, the Boutadai, controlled the cult of Athena Polias.16 And we do not have to look far to µnd his immediate motivation. The previous µfteen or twenty years had seen the foundation of a series of new Panhellenic games at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea (in ca. , , and , respectively), and the success of these ventures must have encouraged the Boutadai to mount a rival spectacle at Athens. In their choice of format, they diverged little from the precedents supplied by the circuit. As at the three junior festivals, the program of contests at the Great Panathenaia was built around a core of athletic and equestrian events that, by this point, were µxtures of the games at Olympia, the original athletics panegyris. And like the Pythian festival at Delphi, it was held every four years, in the third year of each Olympiad; its relative infrequency gave it an instant signiµcance, while its timing showed the necessary deference to the senior games. In its incorporation of musical contests, the Panathenaia also followed the lead of Delphi, where, according to one tradition (Paus. ..), the competitions for aulodes and auletes were µrst staged in  B.C. (Ol. .). As for the new peplos ceremony, a variety of in×uences are possible. Given its location and sporting associations, the comparable ceremony held at Olympia during the quadrennial Heraia was probably the most appropriate model. The latter festival, which featured footraces for unmarried females, also had a certain currency, since it, too, seems to have been a product of the sudden vogue for Panhellenic gatherings which arose in the µrst quarter of the sixth century.17 But not all was derivative. Aside from the novel rhapsodic contests, which may not have been added until the s, the lavish prizes offered to victors set the Panathenaia sharply apart from the other major athletics festivals. Whether this was a bold attempt to rival and perhaps eclipse the three younger “crown” games in prestige or merely a means of compensating for the exclusion of the Panathenaia from the circuit, we know of no certain precedent for the use of valuable awards to lure elite contestants to participate in a public athletics gathering.18 Nor was there any real precedent for staging a festival of this kind in the middle of a large settlement. The other major games all took place in extra-urban sanctuaries, most of them in distinctly remote locales. These peculiarities must have given the Great Panathenaia a distinctive tone or ×avor. One suspects that it seemed like a brash, urban newcomer in the conservative world of Panhellenic festivals. But otherwise, in its format and in its

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essential character, the Panathenaia was still, at this point, a highly orthodox Greek panegyris. In particular, there is no observable trace of the political concerns that so infused and deµned the classical festival. This is not to deny that the sponsors of such an opulent spectacle stood to gain handsome political capital from their endeavors. The Great Panathenaia surely did wonders for the standing of the Boutadai in the eyes of their peers and rivals in Athens and elsewhere. But it did not yet have any overtly political content. While the overall splendor of the pageantry re×ected well on the city and its leaders, there was no attempt, at this stage, it seems, to insert items into the program that threw a bright spotlight on the qualities of the Athenian people. We have no evidence for any of those later contests that showcased the collective and individual talents of Athenian “warriors.” In fact, there is no good evidence for much of a military presence at all. And unless the procession now made a point of including representatives from all parts of Attica, which it is not known to have done even in the classical period, it is hard to see in the festival any larger association with the political uniµcation of the region. The name Panathe–naia appears to point in this direction, but the title is not actually attested until the µfth century.19 The original format of the Great Panathenaia must have been µrmly in place by around . What then of the following three decades? What mark, if any, did the Peisistratids leave on the content and character of the festival? A spectacle of this kind lent itself easily to the Religionspolitik that is often associated with Greek tyrants. One would expect that the family took full advantage of the many opportunities for self-aggrandizement that the festival presented. Presumably, they served as the chief sponsors of the festival during the years of their domination, and their creation of a new public square around a section of the Panathenaic Way in the s will have allowed them to put a personal stamp on the procession and on whatever other associated activities were now staged there. But did they make any signiµcant changes to the substance of the Panathenaia in the process? There is very little to suggest that they did. Even if Hipparchus was responsible for the introduction of rhapsodic contests, these would not have altered the character of the festival fundamentally. And there is no evidence that they added any other competitions to the program. Otherwise, there remains only the slim possibility that Peisistratus and/or his sons were the µrst to arrange for armed infantrymen to march in the procession. The evidence comes in a passage of Thucydides (..–, ..–). Here, he reports that the day of the Panathenaic procession was chosen for the assassination of Hippias precisely because there were armed men taking part in the proceedings. Ac-

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cording to the historian, these men would have provided some cover and perhaps a source of spontaneous support for the conspirators. In the absence of any compelling evidence for troops in the procession in the early years of the Panathenaia, we might then conclude that the Peisistratids were themselves responsible for their presence in later times. Skeptics may wonder how Thucydides could possibly have known this information. But a more serious problem for his testimony is presented by another account of the incident, that of AP (.), which makes a point of correcting Thucydides on the very detail in question. In support, the author then goes on to explain that the addition of hoplites to the procession was in fact an innovation made later by “the demos.” There is no satisfactory way to reconcile the two accounts; one of them must surely be wrong. Since the author of AP went to the trouble of correcting one of his primary sources on this relatively incidental matter, and since the language of his correction suggests that he knew of a published Assembly decree on the subject, the simplest way out of the impasse is probably to assume that Thucydides’ claim was no more than an inference from later practice. The likelihood is therefore that hoplites did not become a regular part of the Panathenaic procession until after /.20 If so, we can only conclude that the Peisistratids left the Panathenaia much as they had found it: a conventional Greek panegyris that, above all, courted comparison with the four games of the circuit. But changes were again afoot. GAMES FOR ATHENIANS

Given the momentous innovations seen elsewhere in public life between the years  and , it would be truly surprising if the state’s premier festival were not also touched in some way by the Athenian experiment. We cannot be sure that “the demos” authorized the addition of hoplites to the procession during this period, even if the creation of a new citizen army gave them a compelling reason to do so. However, with the replacement of the humble seventhcentury temple of Athena Polias by the Arkhaios Neos around  B.C., we can be sure that the setting for the festival’s climactic ritual moments was grander than ever before. As the home of the ancient xoanon and site of the peplos ceremony, no building was more closely associated with the Panathenaia. And through the innovative Gigantomachy pediment, the designers of the Arkhaios Neos ensured that the temple would be deµned by this association from the start. Most likely, the Gigantomachy was placed in the temple’s west gable, henceforth affording all who entered the citadel sanctuary an immediate visual reminder of Athena’s greatest martial feat and her greatest festival.21

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More signiµcant for our purposes, it seems that the period – also saw innovations in the program of the Panathenaia. I refer here to the addition of the µrst contests for Athenian “warriors.” The range of these contests varied somewhat over time. Some, such as the pyrrhic dance and the rather bizarre apobate–s race for chariot dismounters, were among the festival’s signature events. Others, such as the anthippasia, a mock cavalry battle between tribal squadrons, are less well attested and may only have been held occasionally. But all excluded non-Athenian competitors, and all appear to have had a pronounced martial ×avor that placed them µrmly outside the realm of traditional Olympic-style athletics. Our best single source for these competitions is a partially intact prize list for the Panathenaia from ca.  B.C. (IG II2 ). Under the heading “[contests] for warriors” [polemiste–riois] (), we µnd two broad categories of events. Contests for individuals (–) included a horse race [kele–s], a two-horse chariot race [hippo– n zeugos], a procession for two-horse chariots [zeugos pompikon], and a contest in throwing the javelin from horseback [aph’ hippou akontizo–n]. To these, we should add the apobate–s race, the best known of the events for individual “warriors,” which may have featured in a missing portion of the inscription. The list goes on to record prizes for a series of events contested by teams from the ten Cleisthenic tribes (–): the pyrrhic dance [pyrrhike– orkhe–sis] for boys, youths, and men; an event known as the euandria, or “[contest in] manly excellence”; a torch race [lampade–phoria]; and a “contest of ships” [neo– n hamilla].22 So when were the µrst contests for Athenian “warriors” added to the Panathenaic program? For the years before the classical period, the most likely source of evidence for these events would be vase painting. As we saw earlier, the foundation of the Great Panathenaia in the s apparently inspired a sudden surge of interest in athletic subjects among Attic artists, which carried over into the Peisistratid era. If any of the “warrior” contests had been introduced in the early phase of the festival, we might reasonably have expected at least one or two images of pyrrhic dancing or the like to surface on contemporary vessels. For this reason, the absence of such images before the last decade of the sixth century seems signiµcant. In any case, one feels instinctively that events that were limited to participants from the host state would have held little appeal for the festival’s organizers in earlier times. It is not impossible to imagine contests for teams from the four Ionian tribes. But it is hard to believe that Athenian leaders in the years – would have considered them suitable for the Panathenaia. Their overwhelming concern here was to gain the widest possible recognition for them-

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selves and their city by mounting an impressive Panhellenic spectacle in the tradition of the Olympics and the other “crown” games. Prestige required the presence of the best competitors available in all of Greece, whether rhapsodes or pankratiasts. Nontraditional events that expressly excluded outsiders, let alone team events, would have done little for the cause. As it happens, evidence for the tribal team contests begins to appear right around the time of the tribal reform. It comes from vase painting and is assembled and discussed in a recent paper by Jenifer Neils (). Best attested is the pyrrhic dance. Though images of this contest do not appear with any frequency until the early classical period, the pyrrhic makes its debut in Attic art shortly after the end of the tyranny. Two of the earliest scenes occur on the two sides of a black-µgure pelike by the Theseus Painter that dates to ca.  and is now in San Antonio (µg. ). Like the majority of later scenes, both depict a single hoplite dancing to the accompaniment of an aulete. Whether we see here a µgurative representation of a team performance or merely the practice maneuvers of an individual dancer, the nature of the activity is clear enough. A more conclusive piece of evidence comes in a scene on a fragmentary Attic red-µgure skyphos found by French excavators on Thasos. Dating to the last decade of the sixth century, it features a full team of µve pyrrhic dancers, or pyrrhikistai, ×anked on the right by an aulete and on the left by a multiple herm, leaving us in no doubt that the performance was competitive and that it was staged in Athens, presumably at the Panathenaia.23 The euandria, or “contest in manly excellence,” remains something of an enigma. We have no eyewitness descriptions of the event, and scattered references in sources reveal only that competitors possessed an attractive appearance (see Athen. .) and perhaps unusual size and strength (see Xen. Mem. ..). The euandria probably was more than a simple beauty contest, though the kinds of challenges it involved are far from self-evident. All manner of suitably “manly” activities have been suggested, from acrobatic displays and shield juggling to choral performance, but a consensus has yet to emerge.24 Tracing the early history of such an elusive event in art is obviously problematic, though Neils (, –) may have found a neat solution. Instead of searching for suitable images of euandria competitions in progress, she identiµes a series of scenes that might depict the awards ceremony for victors in the contest. Typically in these scenes, the central µgure is a nude youth who is festooned with µllets and holding branches. In some, he is being crowned by a draped, bearded ofµcial; in others, he wears a distinctive pointed cap or is about to receive one from Nike. Since these scenes are often accompanied by kalos inscriptions and lack the usual attributes that help the viewer to identify

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the nature of the victory, one assumes that the youthful victors are being honored for some kind of bodily prowess. And since one of these images occurs on a vase of Panathenaic shape, it is tempting to infer that they represent victories in the euandria. The earliest of these vases are from the late sixth century, and Neils therefore suggests that the contest may have been µrst staged at the Panathenaia, along with the pyrrhic dance, soon after Cleisthenes’ reforms. She could well be right.25 Neils adopts a similar approach to vase evidence for the boat race, or “contest of ships.” Images of ships on vases are never especially common due to the constraints of the medium, and no known archaic or classical scene of a boat race survives. However, picking up on an observation by Webster (, –), Neils proposes that victories in the neo–n hamilla may be alluded to on µve vases and two votive shields from the period ca. –. Each one shows a female µgure (Nike, Athena, or an unidentiµed woman) holding an aphlaston, “the curving high stern of the trireme with a standard in front of it” (Neils , ). Just as musical victories were commemorated by images of Nike holding the pertinent instrument, so, she argues, by a similar metonymy, the aphlaston motif could stand for success in the contest of ships. If Neils’s proposal is correct, it may be that the contest was added to the Panathenaia within a decade or two of Cleisthenes’ reforms. But perhaps the most likely stimulus for the new event was the consolidation of the Athenian navy by Themistocles in the later s.26 Torch races (lampade–dromiai) were a popular feature of festivals all over the Greek world. By the end of the µfth century, they were an integral part of several in Athens, notably the Hephaisteia and the Prometheia, as well as the Panathenaia. For this reason, it is not always possible to tell which, if any, particular race was intended when a torch race appears on an Attic vase. But for our purposes, the problem is moot. No preclassical scene of the event is extant, and the earliest certain depiction of the Panathenaic torch race occurs on a bell krater that dates to the s.27 As a natural team event, the race would not have been out of place among the original tribal contests at the Panathenaia, and it may be the case that the staging of a lampade–dromia at Athena’s celebrated panegyris encouraged the adoption of the practice at other appropriate Athenian festivals. But for now, the date of the µrst torch race at the Panathenaia must remain a matter for speculation.28 The apobate–s contest aside, the events for individual Athenian “warriors” are less well known than their tribal counterparts. One suspects that they had about them a rather different ambience. Funding for the team events came from ofµcial state liturgies, and the participants competed for the honor of

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their phyle and the recognition of their polis, not for private gain. The prizes for the victors were little more than tokens: in ca.  B.C., one hundred drachmas and a bull were shared by the winning team in each of the pyrrhic dance contests and the euandria. The individual “warrior” events, however, were an elite preserve. All were equestrian in nature, and competitors were presumably responsible for supplying their own horses and equipment. The rewards, too, were different. Victors in the individual contests, unlike those in the team events, were awarded valuable, prestigious prize vases. Apparently, such men required more substantial, tangible incentives to compete.29 Sadly, all too few prize vases with images of these individual events have survived. In fact, most of the contests have left little impression on the historical record at all, making it extremely difµcult to pinpoint the moment of their introduction to the festival. The contest for mounted javelin throwers, or hippacontists, is something of an exception.30 While the earliest depiction on a prize vase dates only from the late µfth century, images of hippacontists are found on a series of four early classical red-µgure stemless cups, all credited to an artist who takes his name from the event. Earlier still is a scene from ca.  B.C. of a hippacontist in the company of a long jumper, a discus thrower, and a competitor in the armed footrace. The scene appears on a red-µgure cup from Athens painted by an artist in the wider circle of the Nikosthenes Painter. Though one hesitates to place too much weight on a single image, the date of the vase and the interesting conjunction of a mounted javelin thrower with more conventional athletes may suggest that games at Athens around the end of the sixth century, presumably those at the Panathenaia, featured a hippacontist contest.31 We can be less circumspect about the apobate–s race, the best documented of the individual “warrior” contests. The precise details of this event may still elude us, but the general idea is clear: hoplites driven at speed in four-horse chariots dismounted at a certain point on the course and ran to the µnish line. While in later times this curious contest was staged in a range of locations around the Greek world, it was associated above all with Athens and seems to have been invented there expressly for the Panathenaia. Over time, the race came to be emblematic of the festival and was even woven into its mythology. In one tradition, a fully armed warrior arrived at the inaugural Panathenaic gathering in a chariot. His identity is not recorded. But the driver was King Erichthonius, who thereby gave his imprimatur to the new festival, while at the same time inspiring one of its distinctive signature contests.32 For all the rich historical associations that cluster around the event, the apobate–s race is not securely attested before  B.C.33 However, the event comes

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to enjoy considerable popularity as a subject among painters of lower-quality black-µgure ware in the µrst quarter of the µfth century. Perhaps the earliest images occur on a pair of black-µgure lekythoi by the Diosphos Painter. Soon afterward, the race is adopted as something of a stock motif by the artists of the Haimon Group; almost identical scenes of apobatai appear on not less than thirty-µve of their surviving vases, all again black-µgure lekythoi (µg. ). True, there are no speciµc indications that these artists were responding to a new Panathenaic event. But we can be almost sure that they were. The very same group of artists is also responsible for a series of eleven similar scenes on lekythoi that substitute a female µgure for the hoplite. In almost every case, the female can be identiµed without much difµculty as the goddess Athena.34 Two things are particularly interesting here. First, the artists who produced these lekythoi were certainly not catering to the kind of individuals who might actually have taken part in an apobate–s race. Exports aside, the principal market for these relatively cheap funerary vessels will have been poorer Athenians. Far from being alienated by the frivolous elitism that a contest in chariot dismounting might easily represent, these humbler folk, it seems, were all too keen to identify with the local grandees who took part in the event. One suspects that they saw in the vases a chance to add a touch of heroic glamor to their otherwise modest obsequies. Also interesting is the timing of this sudden demand for images of apobatai: production of the lekythoi began to peak in ca. . Since tastes at the lower end of the market probably did not change overnight and since artists took time to respond to shifts in demand, the original stimulus for the new images, the µrst staging of the apobate–s race at the Panathenaia, must have occurred somewhat earlier. A time lag of around ten to twenty years seems reasonable. We can then conclude that the race was invented in the s, perhaps even as far back as ca.  B.C.35 POLITICAL THEATER

It is not easy to gauge the impact of Cleisthenes’ new order on the state’s premier festival. We have no documents from the years – that might shed light on the issue, and must rely instead on the more opaque testimony of a slender and dispersed material record, abetted on occasion by later anecdotes and allusions and by chance epigraphic µnds. But we can be sure that there was some impact, and more than likely the changes we can recover were accompanied by others we cannot. Among the most important was the transformation of the Panathenaic cult site itself with the construction of the Arkhaios Neos. More intriguing, though, were changes made to the actual content of the fes-

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tival. Probably only a few new contests for Athenian “warriors” were added at this time: the pyrrhic dance, the apobate–s race, and perhaps the euandria and the hippacontist contest. But their signiµcance should not be underestimated. Previously, the Panathenaia had been scrupulously, resolutely Panhellenic in its orientation, going as far as to offer valuable prizes to encourage the attendance of leading athletes and musicians in the Greek world. The glittering prizes and the Olympic-style open contests would of course remain an integral part of the festival for centuries to come. Only now they were joined by a new category of events that owed nothing to the conventional panegyris model. Indeed, they could be said to represent an altogether different vision of the nature and purpose of public athletics. The team contests for the ten tribes marked an especially bold departure from the ultra-individualistic ethos of Olympic competition. But in some ways, the larger decision to create new events contested exclusively by participants from the host state was bolder still. Prestige for the polis was still a dominant concern. Yet here the prestige would derive not from the presence of elite outsiders but from the skills and prowess displayed by Athenian citizens. We have no way of knowing how many non-Athenians, whether competitors or spectators, journeyed to Athens for the Great Panathenaia at this time, though perhaps only the Eleusinian Mysteries attracted more. The festival thus provided a golden opportunity for the new order to ×aunt its credentials before a captive Panhellenic audience. Together, the new “warrior” contests offered a colorful, if oblique, demonstration of the military strength that the polis, with its new citizen army, now possessed. And the team contests proudly embodied the ultimate source of this strength, namely, the spirit of cooperation and solidarity that now united the political community in Attica. No less important was the impact of these displays on the Athenians themselves. At least in the early days of the new order, the “warrior” contests must have been directed at least as much toward local spectators as toward outsiders. It is not difµcult to see how the team contests might have helped advance the cause of Cleisthenes’ reforms. That the tribes were so soon given a role at the Panathenaia only underscored the critical role they now played in society at large. And the sight of fellow citizens striving collectively for the honor of their phylai must have reinforced the allegiances to tribe and state on which the new order so depended. Less obvious is the similar role played by the individual “warrior” contests. In daily life, it may have been hard for ordinary Athenians to feel much sense of commonality with the more privileged citizens who took part in these events. But in the sporting arena at the Panathenaia, when, for a few days, the eyes of

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the Greek world were trained on Athens, the equestrian exploits of the elite did apparently inspire a certain collegial pride among their poorer fellows, as the popularity of the apobate–s motif on cheap lekythoi so amply demonstrates. Also interesting is the form of the new “warrior” events. However visually appealing, the skills on display in the pyrrhic dance and the apobate–s race, the two contests best attested at this time, were of little practical utility for late archaic warfare.36 The pyrrhic was an attempt to render in dance the kind of postures and maneuvers one might have seen on the battleµelds of the legendary past. It was performed in “heroic garb”—dancers were nude and carried only a round shield and spear—and featured balletic leaps, evasions of imaginary missiles, and the reenactment of speciµc maneuvers described in the Iliad, like the hupaspidia, or advance under protection of the shield.37 Also prominent were choreographed allusions to moments in the “life” of the goddess Athena, notably her birth and her battle with the Giants, the two historic events commemorated at the Panathenaia. The very practice of pyrrhic dancing supposedly derived from the armed dances that the goddess herself had performed on those two occasions, and in one tradition, her name Pallas was prompted by the kind of arms brandishing (pallein, pallesthai) that was apparently imitated in the dance.38 Elsewhere, the invention of the practice is credited to Achilles, Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus, or the more shadowy Pyrrhikhos, though it was of course Athena who sanctioned the contest at Athens.39 As for the apobate–s contest, its highly traditional appearance has encouraged modern commentators to see it as a genuine relic from Athenian prehistory.40 However, the lack of any signiµcant evidence for the race before the early µfth century suggests otherwise. We should probably see it as no more than an artful exercise in antiquarian fancy, a contest inspired by a style of chariot warfare that had only ever existed in the imagination.41 Nevertheless, the Homeric or heroic “authenticity” of the event helps to explain its rapid assimilation into the mythology of the Panathenaia and its considerable later prestige. This equation of Homeric resonance with prestige is well expressed in our best literary source for the contest, the fourth-century Erotikos traditionally ascribed to Demosthenes. Here, the author (.–) commends the virtues of the apobate–s race to one Epikrates. You have chosen the noblest and µnest of contests and one especially suited to your natural gifts. For it is an event that has been made to resemble the realities of warfare [tois en to– i polemo– i sumbainousin ho– moio– menon] through acclimatization to weapons and the exertions

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of running and to simulate the might of the gods through the greatness and majesty of its equipment. Moreover, it makes for a most attractive spectacle . . . and has been deemed worthy of the greatest of prizes. For, in addition to those actually offered, merely practicing and preparing for this event will prove to be no small prize in the eyes of those who are even moderately eager for excellence [arete– s]. The best evidence for this may be found in the poetry of Homer, in which he represents the Greeks and barbarians as µghting against one another with this kind of equipment. And still even now [eti de kai nun], it is the custom to use this equipment in games staged in not the humblest but the greatest of Greek cities. The phrase “still even now” tells us all we need to know about the success of a tradition that was probably not invented much before  B.C. In their efforts to transform the political culture of their home state, Athenian leaders in the years – might have been tempted to pursue a complete overhaul of the state’s single most signiµcant festival to make it better re×ect and reproduce the assumptions and priorities of the new order. Instead, we see yet another example of the cautious, creative use of innovation that seems to be a hallmark of the age. The existing fabric of the Great Panathenaia was left essentially unchanged, with only a fairly minor addition made to the program of events. Even this new category of contests, limited to Athenian citizens, will have blended almost seamlessly into the spectacle of the festival. Much like the army commemorations of ca. , the contests µgured the citizen soldiers of Athens not as phalanx hoplites but as “warriors” from the age of heroes. Like the new tribes and the new structures on the Acropolis and in the Agora, they played a part in creating an appropriately “historic” cultural milieu for a regime that purported to have roots in the distant past. No doubt, it soon became impossible to imagine a time when events like the apobate–s race and the pyrrhic dance were not a part of the Panathenaic program. But, appearances aside, these contest were boldly nontraditional and, in their own way, historically signiµcant. For they represent the beginnings of a fundamental shift in the character of the Panathenaia as a whole. No longer the straightforward panegyris of the past, the festival had now became a richer confection. With their highly visible message of military strength and corporate solidarity, the “warrior” contests mark the µrst conscious attempt to politicize the content of the Panathenaia. Further steps in this new direction were taken in the decades to come. More “warrior” contests, tribal and individual, were added, and hoplites marched in

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the sacriµcial procession. In time, they were joined there by representatives from the subject states of the Athenian empire, bearing symbols of their allegiance to the hegemon. By the Periclean era, this unique, composite festival thus became a sophisticated, if somewhat chauvinistic, form of political theater, as bombastic, in its own way, as the contemporary Acropolis. Originally shaped by the personal aspirations and Panhellenic outlook of the archaic elite, it was now animated by the sensibilities of a very different age—more socially inclusive and corporate-minded, but also more jingoistic and, in some ways, more self-assured. Over the course of barely a century, a festival whose stature was once built largely on the talents and energies of non-Athenians had evolved into the supreme ceremonial expression of Athenian collective identity. Perhaps inevitably, this process of evolution mirrored the shifting imperatives of a restless political culture. And in the Panathenaia, as in the political culture at large, it is during the period –, the years of the Athenian experiment, that the µrst intimations of a new, recognizably “classical” mode of practice seem to appear. This conclusion prompts one µnal question: If, in the aftermath of Cleisthenes’ reforms, the character of the Panathenaia underwent the kind of reorientation I have described, is it also possible that the festival underwent a corresponding change of name? The question may seem a little far-fetched. But ancient accounts do preserve memory of a name change, and our period is as good a time as any for the change to have taken place. FROM ATHENAIA TO PANATHENAIA?

There is welcome unanimity among ancient authors about the legendary origins of the Panathenaia. Allusions to a founding µgure occur in nine sources, the earliest being Hellanicus (FGrH a F). Though one (Plut. Thes. .) credits the foundation to Theseus, all of the others, less predictably, associate the µrst staging of the festival in some way with Erichthonius, son of Hephaestus.42 The picture is, however, complicated somewhat by three sources who maintain that the festival was later refounded. In one (Istros, FGrH  F), the agency behind this initiative is unclear, while the other two (Paus. ..; schol. Pl. Parm. a) both link it with Theseus. Further interesting details are noted in passing by various writers. All three authors who suggest that Theseus was either the founder or refounder relate his actions to the synoecism of Attica, and two sources (Marm. Par., FGrH  A; Plut. Thes. .) even link the establishment of the Panathenaia with the naming of the state and people of Athens. Last but not least, two of the sources for the refoundation (Istros,

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FGrH  F; Paus. ..) record that the festival was renamed in the process, the earlier Athenaia (ta; ÆAqhnai`a), “the [festival] of Athens” or “the [festival] of Athena,” becoming the Panathenaia (ta; Panaqhvnaia), “the [festival] of all the Athenians.” What are we to make of these sundry traditions? With so much ancient agreement on the main details, we can be conµdent of recovering what apparently became the standard account. Essentially, this claimed that Erichthonius µrst established the festival, which at the time was known as ta Athe–naia. After effecting the synoecism, Theseus then opened up the festival to the entire population of Attica, restyling it as ta Panathe–naia to re×ect the new political reality.43 How might such an account have come about? The easiest explanation is that the whole tradition of renaming and refoundation had no correlate in historical reality, that it was simply a µction invented, presumably by an Atthidographer, to reconcile two rival versions of the foundation of the Panathenaia.44 This compromise would have had the great virtue of conveying the all-important sense of continuity with the very beginnings of Athenian history, while still linking the ultimate form of the festival with the talismanic Theseus and his landmark synoecism of Attica. In other words, there never was an Athenaia, so no genuine memory of it could have survived; the tradition is mere academic musing, an all too obvious attempt to µnd a suitable name for the “festival of all the Athenians” before “all the Athenians” were politically united. This explanation has a satisfying economy and may well be correct. It is certainly not impossible to believe that the festival was always known as the Panathenaia, even if it is hard to detect any allusion to the uniµcation of Attica in its program in the s or earlier times. Greek pan-festivals, like the Panionia and the various Panhellenic gatherings, clearly did not always presuppose full political union among members of the cultic community. That said, our sources do insist on an association between the name of the festival and the synoecism. And one also wonders whether it really was left to pedantic antiquarians to establish how the ×agship occasion in the state calendar came into existence. Surely this was a matter of some public interest, especially for a polis community that was more than a little preoccupied with its own past. It is not inherently unlikely that the standard account of the genesis of the Panathenaia arose in a more public context. We might then be tempted to entertain another, more intriguing explanation for the details of this account, namely, that they are, after all, a re×ex of genuine historical events; at some point, agencies responsible for reorganizing ta Athe–naia and redubbing the festival ta Panathe–naia sought an attractive

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precedent for their actions. This must have taken place some years before the mid–µfth century, by which time the name Panathe–naia is µrmly attested. The most plausible moments for the invention of the precedent would be either in the s or during the age of Cleisthenes, when signiµcant adjustments to the festival are known to have been made. For a number of reasons, the latter time appears the more likely. Only after , when the festival is µrst used as a vehicle for celebrating the strength and unity of the greater Athenian community, does the name Panathe–naia seem truly appropriate. Such was the prevailing spirit of imitation in earlier times that we would actually have expected the panegyris founded in the s to go by the generic name ta Athe–naia, by analogy with ta Olympia, ta Pythia, ta Isthmia, and ta Nemeia. The later date is also favored by mythopoeic considerations. As I tried to show in chapter , it is only in the last decade of the sixth century that Theseus came to be seen as a founding father µgure who left a deep impression on the Athenian politico-cultural environment. The Dodekapolis/synoecism legend, intimately bound up with the refoundation tradition, dates only from ca. , as perhaps does the Synoikia festival, which, signiµcantly, was held immediately before the Panathenaia, in the month Hekatombaion. In short, if the memory of a name change from Athe–naia to Panathe–naia does have some basis in historical reality, the new name was almost certainly an innovation of the period –. Proving the case is another matter. As noted, we have no contemporary evidence for the name of the festival before the µfth century. We do, however, have some evidence for how its identity was conceived and represented in the sixth century. The µrst items are three Acropolis inscriptions from the middle of the century (Raubitschek , nos. –), where presiding ofµcials [hieropoioi] appear to commemorate their dedication of early Panathenaic gatherings to Athena. All three speak of a dromos (racetrack, running?) made for the goddess [te`i qeo`i], while the µrst two also refer to an ago–n (games) dedicated to the “grey-eyed maiden” [glaukovpidi kovrei]. Second comes evidence for another offering, the base of a statue dedicated in the mid–sixth century by Alcmeonides, brother of Megacles and uncle of Cleisthenes, to Apollo at the Ptoion sanctuary in Boeotia (IG I3 ). The monument commemorates a recent victory in the chariot race at the Panathenaia and describes the festival simply as “a festive gathering for Pallas at Athens” [ÆAqavnai~ Palavdo~ panevguri~]. Finally, we have the ofµcial tags on the Panathenaic amphorae, which identify each vase and its contents merely as “[one] of the prizes from Athens” [to`n ÆAqevneqen a[qlon].

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The most arresting feature of these items is precisely the absence of the word Panathe–naia on any of them. This is especially true in the case of the private dedication and the ofµcial vases, where the inscriptions were written by Athenians, primarily with non-Athenians in mind. If the panegyris truly was known as the “festival of all the Athenians” in the mid–sixth century, one would have thought that some recognition of its distinctive character was desirable here. Yet we do not even µnd reference to “the Athenians” whose unity the festival supposedly celebrated. Instead, the spectacle is identiµed simply by its location and its divine honorand—appropriate if it went by a generic title like Athe–naia, but strangely vague otherwise. Clearly, no µrm conclusions can be drawn. But the point still seems worth making: there is no concrete evidence for the name Panathe–naia—and no obvious need for it—before  B.C. Was this, then, another innovation of the period –, when the name suddenly begins to make a lot more sense? Was it in these years that the refoundation legend was µrst invented, a suitably Thesean precedent for a change in the character of the state’s greatest festival? It is not hard to see that it might have arisen in conjunction with the Dodekapolis/synoecism tradition, which, in structure, it so obviously resembles, and with which, henceforth, it would be so closely associated. If so, perhaps the model here was the Panionia; along with the new Agora cults, the concept of isonomia, and the very idea of a Dodekapolis, this could be another example of East Greek in×uence on the style of the new order in Athens. Whatever the case, it is only after  B.C. that the distinctive contours of the classical Panathenaia, a festival quite unlike any other in the Greek world, µrst come into view.

8 R I T UA L T I E S B E T W E E N CENTER AND PERIPHERY

With the panathenaia coming barely a week after the Synoikia in the µrst month of the sacred calendar, the Athenian year always opened with a kind of extended ceremonial homage to the idea of pan-Attic communion: the ofµcial celebration of regionwide fellowship at the “festival of all the Athenians” followed a public commemoration of the act that made this fellowship possible. But these were not the only occasions in the calendar that brought to mind the political integrity of Attica. Other major festivals addressed the issue in a somewhat different fashion. Whereas the unity of the region and its people was presupposed in the ritual of the Panathenaia, an established fact that needed only to be celebrated, other festivals explored the underpinnings of unity by drawing attention to relations between Athens and outlying areas of the periphery. Each year, in their respective rituals, they rearticulated the bonds between the center and particular locales in the Attic margins, underscoring, in the process, the unusually inclusive regional character of the Athenian polis. The best known of these festivals are the City Dionysia, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Brauronia, and they too show evidence of important discontinuity during the age of Cleisthenes. CITY DIONYSIA

Along with the Panathenaia and the Eleusinian Mysteries, the celebration known as the Great Dionysia or City Dionysia was one of a small handful of 178

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Athenian festivals that drew outsiders to classical Athens in signiµcant numbers. It was held each year in the early spring, over several days in the middle of the month Elaphebolion, and its ostensible purpose was to commemorate the introduction of the cult of Dionysus to Athens by a certain Pegasus from Eleutherai, a settlement on the northwest border with Boeotia. Accordingly, the ritual component of the Dionysia included a ceremony of welcome for the xoanon of Dionysus Eleuthereus at the hearth altar (eskhara) in the Agora, as well as sacriµces at his sanctuary on the southeast ×ank of the Acropolis. But the primary reason for the festival’s popularity with locals and non-Athenians alike was the diverse array of spectacles that accompanied these rites: a colorful sacriµcial procession (on a scale similar to the Panathenaic pompe–) featuring, inter alia, the carrying of phalloi; contests in dithyrambic performance between choruses formed from the ten Cleisthenic tribes; a ko–mos, or “revel”; and, of course, tragedies and comedies. Though such opulence made the Dionysia the single most signiµcant Dionysus festival in the Athenian calendar during the classical period, the ancients recognized, correctly, that its origins were relatively recent. Just how recent is a question we should now consider.1 The standard account of the evolution of the City Dionysia is easily summarized: The developed form of the festival, with its tragic contests, was an innovation of Peisistratus, established sometime in the mid-s B.C. The tribal dithyrambic contests were added to the program not long after the fall of the Peisistratids. Then, just before the turn of the century, responsibility for producing tragedies was assigned for the µrst time to choregoi, wealthy sponsors who funded productions on the state’s behalf. The classical form of the program was µnally rounded out in / B.C. with the addition of competitions in comedy.2 However, the earlier portion of this sequence has been challenged by Connor (), who makes a compelling case that the foundation of the festival should be downdated to the last decade of the sixth century.3 The view that the City Dionysia was established in the s depends largely on the authority of a statement on the Marmor Parium (FGrH  A), an inscribed third-century chronicle from Paros, which appears to place the µrst tragic performance somewhere between  and  B.C.4 The text is usually taken to read as follows: ajf¾ ou| Qevspi~ oJ poihth;~ [uJpekrivna]to prw`to~, o}~ ejdivdaxe dra`m[a ejn a[]stei, [kai; a\qlon ej]tevqh oJ travgo~ . . . When Thespis the poet, who produced a play in the city, µrst acted and the goat was set up as a prize . . .

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This is in fact the only item of testimony that connects the proverbial Thespis explicitly with the production or performance of drama in Athens itself.5 The key phrase in the statement, “a play in the city” [dra`m[a ejn a[]stei], is apparently of questionable authenticity. It turns out to be merely a conjecture for a word group no longer legible on the original inscription, and it bears very little relation to accounts of the text given by early commentators who examined it when some letters were still visible.6 Further evidence for dating the beginnings of tragedy at the City Dionysia toward the end of the sixth century comes from the so-called Fasti (IG II2 ), a public document that records the details of dramatic and dithyrambic victories at the festival, along with the names of the winning choregoi. The µrst productions referred to in the extant portion of the inscription date only from / B.C. Even if we take into account the two or three columns that are missing from the beginning of the text, the list of victories would still commence only in ca.  B.C.7 Those who believe that tragedy was already a part of the festival before this date are forced to suppose that this was merely the year when the competitions were µrst organized on a choregic basis. But it would be far more straightforward to assume that the tragic competition itself was introduced only at this point.8 What of the festival as a whole? A tantalizingly incomplete reference in the heading of the Fasti suggests that there was a period, before tragedy was added, when the program of spectacles at the Dionysia was limited to “revels” [ko– moi].9 Clearly, the festival was established at least a few years before the turn of the century. But when exactly? Since the xoanon of Dionysus Eleuthereus in Athens appears to have been genuinely ancient and was presumably removed from the god’s precinct in Eleutherai with the consent of the locals, the festival cannot have been founded before Eleutherai was considered part of Attica, which clearly was not always the case. Pausanias (..) reports a decision made by the people of the town to seek Athenian citizenship as protection against the hated Thebans. He also mentions the translation of the xoanon from Eleutherai to Athens, surely the centerpiece event at the inaugural celebration of the City Dionysia. Unfortunately, Pausanias gives no hint of a date for either the annexation or the removal of the statue. But it seems reasonable to suppose that the latter came sometime after the former, and we can be almost certain that the annexation did not occur during the Peisistratid era. Any attempt at delivering Eleutherai from the Theban sphere of in×uence would surely have threatened the friendly relations that the family appears to have enjoyed with the Boeotians. And as

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Connor argues, the absence of the town from the company of Attic demes seems to point to a date after / B.C. for its incorporation. We might add that there would have been something highly irregular about the inhabitants of a settlement located this far from Athens seeking or being offered Athenian citizenship en masse at any earlier time.10 The most appropriate context for the incorporation of Eleutherai would then be the series of border con×icts with the Boeotians and Chalcidians in  B.C., which clearly put an end to any earlier cordiality between Athens and Thebes. Allowing some time for the µrst phase of the festival, when spectacle events were limited to the “revels,” we can conclude that the Dionysia must have been founded in ca. . Dithyrambic choruses, introduced to Athens a few years earlier, were perhaps incorporated into the original program as part of the ko–mos. Presumably, they were staged in a contest format from the start, with teams supplied by the ten new tribes. The tragedy competition was then added around  B.C., with comedy following in the s.11 There may be further support for this reconstruction in the associated archaeological evidence. Among the older remains in the sanctuary of Dionysus on the southeast slope of the Acropolis are the foundations of a structure that is generally thought to be the god’s earliest temple at this site. The remains are conventionally dated to the time of Peisistratus or his sons. However, the masonry and use of Z-clamps in the foundations resemble work done on the Stoa Basileios, which, as noted in chapter , was built around  B.C. A fragment of poros architectural sculpture (featuring a satyr and a maenad) that appears to belong to the temple could also µt this date.12 The original format of the City Dionysia might then be reconstructed as follows: The xoanon of Dionysus Eleuthereus was µrst translated from his sanctuary to a precinct in the area of the Academy. From there, it was carried in a procession to the Agora. Presumably, this ceremony recalled the god’s µrst arrival in Athens, symbolically retracing the last portion of his journey from Eleutherai to the city.13 In the Agora, the xoanon was given formal rites of welcome (xenismos) at the eskhara, the ofµcial hearth in the new civic center. These rites probably included sacriµces and choral singing.14 In the short period of time before the µrst theater of Dionysus was built in the early years of the µfth century, the tribal dithyrambic contest and, perhaps brie×y, the tragedy competition would also have been held here, most likely in the area still known later as the orkhe–stra.15 The festival then seems to have concluded with the return of the god by torchlight procession from the eskhara to his temple, a ceremony that continued to be observed long after the contests were transferred to the new theater.16

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Connor’s case for downdating the creation of the City Dionysia to the late sixth century may be less than watertight—the nature of the testimony hardly allows otherwise. But his article raises serious problems for the conventional Peisistratid date, while also offering a persuasively coherent alternative.17 It remains to consider the rationale behind the new festival and its contribution to the transformation of public life in the years –. Why did the Athenians suddenly feel the urge in ca.  B.C. to celebrate the µrst arrival of Dionysus in Attica? Why, for that matter, did they create a new festival of Dionysus at all? At least four such festivals (the Oschophoria, the Lenaia, the Anthesteria, and varieties of rural Dionysia) already existed, adequately covering the god’s traditional provinces. What did the City Dionysia add to the picture? Connor (, –; ) believes that the Dionysia was intended to serve, above all, as a “celebration of freedom” after the end of the tyranny. In view of the god’s associations with the idea of liberation, this suggestion is certainly worth considering. Even so, it seems a little too convenient that the Athenians happened to acquire control of a cult of a “god of liberation” at precisely the time when they might have wished to mark their deliverance from the Peisistratids with a new “freedom festival.” Besides, as Raa×aub (, esp. –) emphasizes, there is no evidence that the Athenians actually had begun to associate Dionysus and the Dionysia with the concept of freedom before the classical period. One suspects that the original rationale behind the Dionysia was probably a lot more straightforward. Given the contemporary preoccupation with territoriality (see especially chap. ), the incorporation of Eleutherai was itself reason enough to create the new festival. The acquisition of this strategically signiµcant possession from the Thebans must have been one of the more noteworthy and concrete gains from the recent border campaign. Since it seems that the town was originally named after the god and his cult and thus, in a sense, deµned by them, the celebration of Dionysus Eleuthereus in Athens amounted to a ritual commemoration of the annexation. The god’s xoanon will have been greeted in the city as a kind of spoil of war, and the stylized annual reprise of the statue’s arrival in subsequent years will have functioned as a ceremonial equivalent of the equestrian victory monument discussed in chapter . Each, in their different ways, provided a compelling visual statement of the newfound strength and reach of the Athenian state.18 In other words, the original dedication of the festival to the god Dionysus was somewhat fortuitous. The impulse to create the new festival owed less to the peculiar power or appeal of this god than to the heady mood of triumph

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generated by the victories of the citizen army in . Had a different deity been prominent at Eleutherai, he or she would perhaps have found themselves the object of similar devotions. And if the genesis of the Dionysia was driven more by political circumstance than by any strictly religious sentiment, it certainly becomes easier to account for some of the festival’s more unconventional features. To begin with, it helps us to explain why the persona of Dionysus Eleuthereus is so notoriously elusive. The festival’s ostensible purpose—the commemoration of the µrst arrival of the cult of Dionysus in Athens—had no organic connection to any of the god’s traditional provinces.19 Unlike older Dionysus festivals, such as the Anthesteria and Oschophoria, which were deµned and constrained by such a connection, the Dionysia was free to embrace a more synoptic vision of the divinity. With its xenismos ceremony for the cult statue and its aetiology about Pegasus of Eleutherai, the festival was not so much a celebration of the god himself as a celebration of Athenian worship of the god, seen in all his different aspects at once. It was, in a sense, a ritual performance about ritual performance, a kind of “metafestival.” Dionysus Eleuthereus was thus less a persona than a convenient moniker, an umbrella term for the aggregate of the god’s multiple identities. In itself, the title said nothing about the nature of the god that was not already said at other Dionysus festivals. At the same time, the rather diffuse identity of Dionysus Eleuthereus made possible, in large part, the rapid rise of the Dionysia to preeminence over these other festivals. Clearly the intention from the start was to construct a landmark festival like the Panathenaia, building on the xenismos ceremony, the ritual core, to produce a grand state occasion. And the somewhat open-ended character of the cult of Dionysus Eleuthereus made this a relatively easy task. All manner of popular Dionysiac practices could be grafted onto the festival to lend it the requisite ambience and the savor of authenticity. Some, like the ko–mos and the dithyrambs, seem generic; others, such as the phallic procession and, within a few years, the tragedies, were probably chosen for their prior association with the rural Dionysia of Attica. The result was perhaps the most synthetic festival in the Athenian calendar. But its spectacular content, however loosely related to the central ritual purpose, doubtless gave the Dionysia an instant mass appeal. Finally, the speciµc historical circumstance that prompted the foundation of the festival may help us to account for certain features of the program that, at least at µrst sight, appear to have nothing to do with Dionysus whatsoever. I refer here to the multiple ways in which the political and military life of the state became implicated in the format of the Dionysia during the classical

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period. One thinks especially of the various ceremonies held in the theater before the performance of the tragedies and comedies: the preliminary sacriµce by the board of ten generals, the parade of war orphans reared to manhood at public expense, the display of the imperial tribute on the stage, and the awards to public benefactors. One thinks also of the delegates from the subject states of the Athenian empire who were required to take part in the phallic procession, and the festival’s possible role in the preparation of ephebes for citizenship and military service. Then there are the dramas themselves, whose complex interplay with contemporary political culture has been the subject of such intense recent interest. It is hardly self-evident why a festival of Dionysus should have been chosen to bear the weight of so much political and military signiµcance. But this was no ordinary festival of Dionysus. If, as mentioned above, the Dionysia was born in an atmosphere of martial triumphalism, its surprisingly intimate engagement with the political and military domains was probably µxed from the very beginning.20 To conclude, the City Dionysia is perhaps the most representative product of the Religionspolitik practiced in Athens in the period –. With the possible exception of the Brauronia (discussed later in this chapter), it was the only major festival established ex nihilo during these years, and the distinctive style and priorities of the new order are readily visible in its character and content. We see, for example, the familiar concern with the political integrity of Attica, most obviously in the use of myth and ritual to historicize and perpetuate Athenian territorial claims along the sensitive border with Boeotia; together, the story about Pegasus and the xenismos ceremony conveniently suggested that the area around Eleutherai had really been part of Attica all along. We also see in the Dionysia the new order’s characteristic emphasis on corporate solidarity. As in the revamped Panathenaia, the sacriµcial procession afforded an unusually inclusive vision of Athenian society. Here, too, there were tribal contests, and here, too, the attendance of non-Athenians was encouraged, a ready audience for the festival’s “advertisement of the wealth and power and public spirit of Athens.”21 Last but not least, we should again note the era’s preoccupation with tradition and continuity. None of the conventional Dionysiac features of the Dionysia would have looked out of place at older festivals. Even the new xenismos ceremony, with its accompanying aetiology and its primitive cult image, hardly smacked of novelty. Like so many other artifacts of the period, the real novelty of the City Dionysia lay not in the artifact per se but in the animating spirit that gave it life and meaning.

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ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

A little less politically charged than the Panathenaia or Dionysia, the Athenian festival which held the most appeal for non-Athenians was probably the Eleusinian Mysteries, with its promise of a happy afterlife for all. By the classical period, its reach was genuinely Panhellenic, and one later observer, Pausanias (..), believed that only the Olympic Games offered a spectacle of comparable luster and prestige. As in the Olympics, preliminaries for the Mysteries began with a declaration of a sacred truce, µfty-µve days in duration, to allow Greek-speaking nonAthenians to attend and return in safety. Envoys (spondophoroi) dispatched to all parts of Greece invited individuals to come for initiation and requested that states send thank offerings of µrstfruits to Demeter for the gift of grain. The festival proper began in early fall on  Boedromion, with the sending of a detachment of ephebes to Eleusis to escort “the sacred things,” the hiera, back to the city for storage in the adyton of the City Eleusinion, a sanctuary on the northwestern slopes of the Acropolis above the Agora. Further activities in Athens on subsequent days included the “gathering” (agurmos) of new initiates in front of the Stoa Basileios in the Agora, their ritual puriµcation at Phaleron, a state sacriµce to Demeter and Kore at the Eleusinion, and a day of retirement indoors. The procession of initiates and ofµcials then set off along the Sacred Way with the hiera, for three days of fasting and ritual in the sanctuary at Eleusis itself. There, climactic revelations about the afterlife were made in the teleste–rion, a large, roofed hall. Once all the rites had been completed, the new initiates were free to disperse or return in a more informal procession to Athens.22 With so many non-Athenians participating directly in the Mysteries, the festival must have had a more cosmopolitan ambience than any other event in the calendar. This is not to suggest that the festival was entirely politically disinterested. As Clinton () has shown, its original Eleusinian identity is steadily discarded during the course of the classical period, just as its identiµcation with Athens is increasingly emphasized. The Mysteries, after all, had important implications that the Athenian state will have been only too keen to exploit. Control of Demeter’s sanctuary at Eleusis allowed Athens to represent itself as the beneµcent supplier of grain and agriculture to humanity and, thus, to assert its claims to cultural leadership in the Greek world. Meanwhile, on a more local level, the festival’s ritual links between Athens and Eleusis offered yet another ceremonial expression of the ties that bound

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the center to the periphery and gave the Athenian polis its distinctive regional character.23 The Mysteries, like the Panathenaia, came into existence some years before the period that is the focus of this study. But, again, close examination of the evolution of the festival reveals signs of signiµcant discontinuity during the years –. Evidence of change is especially visible at the Eleusinion, the locus of the ritual activities held in Athens before the initiates departed for Eleusis. Although the eastern portion of this site remains concealed beneath modern structures, a detailed account of the excavated western section, along with a reconstruction of its early history, has been provided by Miles (). The area was µrst cultivated as a sanctuary at least as far back as the seventh century, and seems to have been home to a cult of Demeter from the outset. Evidence for signiµcant construction at the site begins around the second quarter of the sixth century, when a peribolos wall, executed with well-worked polygonal blocks, was built to enclose the sanctuary, marking it off within what seems to have been a relatively busy residential neighborhood. While the exact location of the east side of the wall has yet to be determined, the western section is around  meters long, and substantial portions of the north side ( meters) and south side ( meters) have been exposed. Whatever the original eastward extent of the peribolos, the development of the sanctuary indicates that the cult within for some reason came to enjoy a new level of importance in the years –. And this importance continued to grow steadily in subsequent decades, since the site underwent signiµcant expansion around  B.C. At this point, an adjacent terrace downslope to the north was cleared of habitation and leveled to make way for a new temple, and the perimeter was extended (µg. ). As far as can be discerned, the sanctuary was now more than double its previous size. Miles reconstructs the temple as a tetrastyle amphiprostyle structure of the Ionic type; it measured roughly  m. by  m. and was oriented north-south. Primarily on the strength of a pair of passages in Pausanias (..–, .–), she conµrms earlier suggestions that the temple belonged to Triptolemos. It seems reasonable to suppose that a temple of Demeter and Kore, in whose adyton the hiera were stored during the preparation stage of the Mysteries, also existed by this time. Whatever remains of it must lie further east, in the unexcavated part of the sanctuary.24 To make sense of these changes, we should also consider the sanctuary at Eleusis itself, where there are interesting parallels with the development of the Eleusinion in Athens. The cult of Demeter at Eleusis appears to have been established some time in the eighth century, the date of the earliest votives and

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of the slim remains of what may be the site’s µrst temple.25 Some time after  B.C., the appearance of the sanctuary changed considerably. The terrace on which the Geometric temple had stood was extended to the east and south and supported by new retaining walls of polygonal masonry. On this terrace was now built the µrst of a series of teleste–ria, the sacred halls in which the secrets at the heart of the Mysteries were revealed. A plain rectangular building whose walls featured mud bricks in the upper courses and polygonal stone courses below, the telesterion was approximately  m. long and  m. wide. Long considered “Solonian,” it now appears that the new temple and its terrace should be dated to the second quarter of the sixth century, making it roughly contemporary with the original peribolos wall at the Eleusinion in Athens. Given the marked resemblance in the polygonal style of masonry used at both sites, developments at the two sanctuaries are probably not unrelated.26 Somewhat later in the century, the µrst telesterion at Eleusis was demolished and replaced by a far more imposing structure (µg. ). Unlike its relatively unostentatious predecessor, the second telesterion was almost square in shape and was made entirely of stone. It consisted of a large hypostyle hall with a front portico built in the Doric order. With dimensions of . m. by . m. excluding the porch, it was over twice the size of the older building. No less impressive was the site’s new fortiµcation wall, some  m. long, which dates to around the same time and now enclosed the entire sanctuary and much of the hill behind it. Clearly, Eleusis was no longer just a settlement of some religious signiµcance. It was also seen as a key strong point in the defense of western Attica. These and other contemporary embellishments have traditionally been assigned to the era of Peisistratus and interpreted as a key component in his program of Religionspolitik. But recent work has once more called this line of interpretation into question. Opinion now inclines toward downdating this phase of the sanctuary to the years immediately after , when the need for a fortiµcation wall would have been more acute than before.27 Again, important changes at Eleusis coincide with important changes at the Eleusinion in Athens. How should we read this evidence? About one thing we can be virtually certain: the mature, classical form of the festival, with its preliminaries in Athens and its procession to Eleusis, was µrmly established by the early µfth century. The synchronized development of the two sanctuaries implies as much, and the implication is corroborated by the earliest documents to come from the Eleusinion in Athens. A pair of inscriptions from the site that date to the late sixth or early µfth century (IG I3 , ) contain sacred laws that pertain especially to the operations of the

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sanctuary and the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, conµrming that the space now served as the festival’s ritual locus in Athens. And if, as is thought, these documents are republications of older texts, the Mysteries must have already existed for some time before the birth of the new order.28 To gauge the signiµcance of the changes made during our period, then, we should µrst try to pinpoint the origins of the festival and get some sense of its earlier history. Few scholars today would agree with those, such as Mylonas (, –), who trace the genesis of the Mysteries back to the Mycenean era. We saw above how solid evidence for cult activity at Eleusis begins only in the eighth century, and as Clinton (, –; ) has stressed, the Mysteries were neither the only nor, most likely, the earliest festival associated with the sanctuary; the Thesmophoria, for one, was almost certainly older.29 That said, Clinton himself is still comfortable with the idea that some form of the Mysteries, conducted from Athens, might have been founded as far back as the seventh or even the eighth century. However, his case rests on rather weak foundations, relying heavily on ancients’ perceptions of events and practices in their own distant past. And as Sourvinou-Inwood (, –) has recently insisted, there is in fact no concrete testimony for the Mysteries before the construction of the µrst of the two archaic telesteria, distinctive cult buildings that seem to have been designed expressly with the peculiar needs of this festival in mind. For want of any comparable signs of discontinuity from earlier times, I would agree with her suggestion that the new structure represents our surest evidence for the genesis of the Mysteries at Eleusis.30 The suspicion that the festival may have been instituted as late as the second quarter of the sixth century can only be encouraged by the contemporary evidence from Athens. Here, too, perhaps an existing sanctuary of Demeter was adapted to µt the needs of a new festival long after the cult of the goddess was µrst introduced. Such a date may also help to explain why the Mysteries play only a minor role in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The body of the hymn serves to explain how a cult of Demeter came to be established at Eleusis, and Clinton (, –; , –) argues persuasively that the ritual practices that correlate most closely with the mythical narrative are not those of the Mysteries, as was long supposed, but those of the Thesmophoria. The foundation of the former is in fact represented as a separate development and described only brie×y toward the end of the hymn (–). As Clinton (, ) puts it, the account of the creation of the Mysteries is “piously appended by the poet to a traditional story that re×ects the ancient Thesmophoria.” Assuming that the text was composed around  (perhaps the lowest acceptable date), it would then make sense that the passage that describes the

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founding of the Mysteries reads like an afterthought, hastily added. The festival had probably been invented only a few years earlier; it had not yet had time to eclipse the Thesmophoria and make its own deep impression on Eleusinian lore.31 It seems, then, that the Mysteries were an Athenian production from the start; there was no local Eleusinian prototype as such. But why was the festival created at this particular time? Here, we should look to the larger cultural environment in Greece and to an important shift that had been taking place since . Though no single factor can in itself account for such a complex innovation as the Mysteries, the growing interest in Panhellenism must have played a critical role in the decision to institute the new festival.32 True, there is no incontrovertible evidence from either sanctuary that the Mysteries aspired in the early days to a Panhellenic reach. But from elsewhere in the Athenian landscape, there is evidence aplenty that the elite in the years – were keen to emulate their peers in other states and act on the new impulse toward Panhellenic cultural production. It was precisely at this moment that the Great Panathenaia was born; that Heracles, the Panhellenic hero par excellence, began to loom large in the pediments of the newly monumentalized Acropolis; and that the claims of Theseus to international celebrity were µrst voiced in Attic art. Surely the very same impulse lay behind the invention of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The innovation certainly conforms well to the pattern seen a few years earlier at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea and imitated at Athens in the Panathenaia, whereby existing cult practices and facilities were modiµed to provide the basis for a new kind of spectacle, one that was purposely designed to attract spectators and participants from all over the Greek world and, thus, bring a measure of re×ected glory on the organizers and their city. And evidence from contemporary art seems to conµrm the impression that the Mysteries did indeed have a distinctly Panhellenic thrust from the very beginning. Scenes with Eleusinian themes µrst appear on Attic vases soon after the middle of the sixth century, and among the earliest, we µnd allusions to a pair of myths that were plainly devised to promote both Eleusis and the Mysteries outside Attica. The µrst myth centers on Triptolemos. As one of the local “lords” [basileis] whom Demeter µrst instructed in her secret rites, Triptolemos was only an incidental µgure in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (, , ), but he enjoyed an increasing visibility in Athenian culture thereafter. By the classical period, he was a full-×edged culture hero/god, with his own temple in the Eleusinion and a starring role alongside Demeter and Persephone in Eleusinian mythol-

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ogy and iconography. The primary reason for this transformation, it seems, is the invention of a new tradition, the story that Triptolemos was dispatched by Demeter on a mission to bestow her gift of grain on a grateful humanity. There are no hints of this tradition in the Hymn, but unambiguous evidence for its existence can be found very soon afterwards. Images inspired by the new story begin to surface on Attic vases right around  B.C., perhaps only ten or twenty years after the Mysteries themselves were instituted. A canonical scheme for representing the mission soon emerges: a mature, bearded Triptolemos is seen sitting on a curious, wheeled throne holding ears of wheat, while around him stand anonymous individuals who have either received or hope to receive the gift of grain. With some interesting adjustments and variations (discussed later in this section), scenes of the mission would remain popular until well into the µfth century. At all events, the original purpose of such a myth must have been to install Eleusis and its cult µrmly at the center of Panhellenic consciousness. And since the myth looks to have been invented very soon after the creation of the Mysteries, it is not hard to equate this purpose with a general effort to publicize the festival abroad and draw non-Athenian initiates to the sanctuary.33 The very same can be said about another myth that makes its debut on Attic vases at around the same time, namely, the initiation of Heracles himself into the Mysteries. This rather preposterous new story even came with its own motivation: apparently, Heracles sought to ingratiate himself with Persephone before his storied journey to the Underworld to snatch Cerberus. The two legends are linked in a number of later literary sources, and as early as  B.C., they are juxtaposed on the same vase, as if to emphasize the connection.34 It seems that in their efforts to attract outsiders to Eleusis, Athenian mythmakers fabricated the most archetypal precedent imaginable and then artfully accommodated the new story to the body of established Heraclean myth in order to give it an instant credibility.35 Evidently, the organizers of the Mysteries were not content simply to wait and see if the new festival might be appealing to Greeks from other states; they took surprisingly aggressive and creative steps to ensure that it would be. In trying to reconstruct other details of the early history of the Mysteries, plausible speculation is our only recourse. For example, we cannot know for sure which men were responsible for bringing the festival into existence, though it is not unreasonable to suppose that they must have included representatives of the Eumolpidai and the Kerykes, the families who directed the initiation process.36 Nor is it self-evident why, in particular, the cult of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis was deemed to afford promising foundations for a new

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spectacle of Panhellenic proportions. Presumably, the sanctuary already possessed a special signiµcance or prestige in the days before the Mysteries were established. Even if the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was only composed around  B.C., its mythical claims regarding the unique place of Eleusis in the goddess’s affections must be somewhat older, making the cult and the sanctuary ripe for exploitation by those in Athens who were looking to tempt the gaze of all Greece with extravagant, eye-catching displays.37 Having established that the Mysteries were probably an artifact of the years –, another product of that elite yearning for Panhellenic recognition that is so characteristic of the era, we can return µnally to what now look like the µrst signs of real discontinuity in the history of the festival and consider the main questions at issue: why were the sanctuaries at Athens and Eleusis substantially aggrandized in ca.  B.C., and what signiµcance are we to read into these developments? It seems safe to assume that the new, more spacious facilities at the two sites were a response to an increased demand for initiation, whether real or anticipated. So who were all these prospective initiates? Clinton () believes that they were non-Athenians. As he sees it, the expansion of the sanctuaries attests to a dramatic “acceleration” in the “process of Panhellenization” under “the early democracy” (). In itself, the suggestion seems plausible enough, especially in view of the momentum that this process must have already acquired in earlier years. However, one or two circumstantial considerations should make us hesitate just a little before accepting this eminently straightforward explanation. To begin with, there is some cause to think that the Mysteries might not have been promoted as heavily at the end of the sixth century as they had been in previous years. Relations with neighboring states at this point were unusually strained. And one wonders if the Athenians really would have been courting larger numbers of non-Athenian initiates at precisely the moment when they were turning Eleusis into a major defensive strong point. There is a certain incompatibility between these two objectives. One also wonders why Panhellenic demand for initiation should have suddenly increased at this particular time. Clinton gives no reason as such, and none is self-evident. We know of no contemporary occurrence comparable, say, to the famous apparition before the battle of Salamis (cf. Hdt. .; Plut. Them. ), an event that assured Eleusis a distinguished place in the mythology of the Persian Wars and, in so doing, probably helped generate the need for the colossal telesterion that was erected there later in the µfth century.38 It therefore seems worth considering the possibility that the new facilities of ca.  were not built primarily with non-Athenian initiates in mind.

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Some—perhaps most—of the new demand must then have come from within Attica itself. And this conclusion makes good contextual sense. For reasons discussed in the µrst part of this study, there were probably signiµcant numbers of people in the region (especially among the poor) who had taken little or no part in the public life of Athens before the reforms of Cleisthenes were enacted. We cannot assume that men and women of this background had been routinely initiated into the Mysteries since the very beginning. Perhaps only after  B.C., when all indigenous males in Attica were enfranchised as Athenian citizens and obliged to engage actively with the city’s political culture, were these people expected and encouraged to come to Athens and participate fully in the festival. Be that as it may, it is likely that the Mysteries became more politically charged in other ways during this period. Though the festival revolved ultimately around the acts, needs, and hopes of individuals, it had probably always had a certain communal and civic dimension. The sacriµce to Demeter and Kore in Athens was a major public occasion, and state ofµcials marched with the initiates in the grand procession to Eleusis, as did many Athenians who had been initiated in previous years. No doubt, this civic dimension will have received even greater emphasis under the new order. Moreover, the format of the Mysteries was obviously consonant with the political reorientation of the late sixth century. With its ritual links between Athens and the most signiµcant settlement in western Attica, the festival now visibly underscored the new order’s efforts to afµrm the political integrity of the region and build a sense of collective mission among its inhabitants.39 Since denizens of Eleusis were now citizens of Athens, it may also be at this point that the Athenians µrst recognized the great political capital to be gained by downplaying the Eleusinian identity of the Mysteries and emphasizing their own stewardship of the festival. Certainly, whatever distinctive local character the Mysteries may once have possessed was gradually discarded over time. Clinton (, ) has shown that by the fourth century, Eleusis had become little more than “a special attribute of Athens.” Writing in the µrst quarter of that century, even a relatively well-informed Athenian like Isocrates (.) could blithely speak of how “our ancestors” performed services for a distressed Demeter and how “our state” subsequently administered the twin gifts of grain and the Mysteries to humankind, all without mentioning Eleusis at all. Apparently, a similar elision occurs in Attic art. Down to the third quarter of the µfth century, scenes on vases represent the Mysteries as but one of a number of cult practices staged at Eleusis. Some of these scenes are even graced by personiµcations of Eleusis herself, as if to ensure the viewer’s recognition of the

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locale. After something of a lull in the latter part of the µfth century, Athenian artists recovered their earlier interest in the Mysteries in the fourth. But as Clinton demonstrates, they now show very little interest in identifying the festival with any broader Eleusinian realm. Triptolemos, a mainstay of these scenes, is no longer depicted alongside a personiµed Eleusis; he is more liable to be seen in the company of Athena. In the eyes of these fourth-century artists, it seems, Triptolemos was now “our ancestor” (cf. Xen. Hell. ..), and the Mysteries were no less characteristically Athenian than, say, the Panathenaia or the Dionysia. In other words, over the course of more than a century, as Athens gradually assumed the properties of Eleusis for itself and as the Mysteries acquired a prestige all their own, it looks like the festival was forced to discard the very local associations that had once given it life and meaning and that its founders had actively cultivated in their efforts to produce a compelling Panhellenic spectacle.40 It is not easy to pinpoint when this interesting shift in the representation of the Mysteries began, though it seems to have started a long time before the fourth century. Again, important clues are found in art. Several studies have drawn attention to the changing image of Triptolemos in the µrst quarter of the µfth century. Scenes of his mission are now suddenly more popular than before, and the central motif in these scenes has undergone some modiµcation. Triptolemos himself is reimagined as an altogether younger, beardless individual, and his wheeled throne has grown wings, perhaps suggesting a more potent, more global µgure. No less interesting, in ca. , a new variation on the theme appears, indicating that the purpose of his mission has been reconceived (µg. ). These new images catch him at the moment of departure, engaged in a libation ceremony with Demeter and Kore. Most agree that there is here a deliberate allusion to the role of the spondophoroi (the “libation carriers” or “truce carriers” who traversed the Greek world summoning men and women for initiation) and thus a reference to what is seen in later literature (cf. Xen. Hell. ..) as the second purpose of Triptolemos’s mission: to publicize Demeter’s gift of the Mysteries.41 These scenes are our earliest evidence for the new version of the mission story, and the innovation is signiµcant. Since the Mysteries had always been organized from Athens, and since the festival was now directly linked to the mission for the µrst time, making Triptolemos, in effect, an agent of the Athenian state, it appears that the Athenians were already beginning to think of him as “our ancestor” in the µrst quarter of the µfth century. And it cannot be a coincidence that the new mission tradition was invented perhaps in ca.  B.C., just as work was beginning on a new temple for the divine emissary in Athens

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itself. Clearly, with the history of Eleusis now no more than a strand in the larger story of Athens, Triptolemos, much like his fellow Eleusinian Hippothoon, was no longer deµned only by his associations with a particular locality; he was embraced by all Attica. Reimagined thus, he would henceforth serve, in Miles’s words (, ), as “a ‘national’ hero for the Athenians, a symbol of the city’s cultural leadership.” From here, it was but a short step for the Athenians to assume for themselves a new and politically lucrative claim to be the mythical donor of grain to humankind. While it would be many more years before Eleusis was effectively airbrushed out of the picture, the process was clearly well under way by the early µfth century—the logical consequence of a new kind of political order in Attica.42 BRAURONIA

The festival of Brauronian Artemis did not have the Panhellenic signiµcance of the other festivals discussed so far, and we know far less about it than we do about the Panathenaia, the Dionysia, or the Eleusinian Mysteries. That said, the Brauronia was still important enough to be staged in a special, expanded format every four years. As a festival that featured an important rite-of-passage for the females of Attica, the Brauronia could shed some much-needed light on the experience of women under the new order. It is especially regrettable, then, that the evidence for the festival from our period remains minimal. Nevertheless, this testimony is just sufµcient to suggest that the Brauronia, like the other major festivals examined so far, was either modiµed or invented outright during the age of Cleisthenes. The Brauronia was staged every spring in the month of Mounychion. In its expanded version, it was managed during the classical period by the board of hieropoioi (festival organizers) who were responsible for all of the state’s quadrennial celebrations except the Great Panathenaia. Like the Eleusinian Mysteries, the festival involved a long procession from a satellite precinct in the center of Athens to the cult’s principal sanctuary in the Attic periphery—in this case, from the Brauroneion on the Acropolis to the great sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron in eastern Attica. Though detailed evidence for what then took place at Brauron is scarce, the festival almost certainly included the arkteia, alluded to above, a premarital initiation rite performed by ten-year-old girls dressed as she-bears.43 Turning to the history of the Brauronia, we again confront spectral traces of the hand of Peisistratus. Predictably, given his family’s associations with the

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Brauron area and his supposed predilection for creating national festivals, Peisistratus is widely seen as the architect of the Brauronia.44 But, as often, the case rests on little more than wishful presupposition. To begin with, as we saw back in chapter , the exact nature of his family’s connections with the Brauron district is open to question. Even if the Peisistratids did hail originally from this locale, they were long established in Athens itself by the time of Peisistratus’s rise to political prominence. And it is hard to maintain the notion that a Peisistratean “party” from the “hill country” used Brauron as a kind of power base when it is highly unlikely that such a “party” ever existed. If Peisistratus ever did live in eastern Attica during his early career, it may have been only for a few years after , when the would-be tyrant left Athens to begin his µrst spell of exile.45 Of course, none of this necessarily rules out the possibility that Peisistratus established the Brauronia later on in life when his circumstances were more favorable. An atavistic connection with the sanctuary at Brauron, perhaps further nourished during four or µve years of exile in the area, may have stirred in him the idea to insert a festival for Artemis Brauronia into the Athenian calendar. Yet no evidence from the sanctuary itself suggests as much.46 As at Eleusis and on the Acropolis, cult activity at Brauron seems to have begun in the later Geometric period, when the sanctuary of Artemis was probably established. It is possible that an early form of temple was erected at this time to house the xoanon of the goddess. But it would be many years before any further attempt was made to develop the site. If Peisistratus did build a major pan-Attic spectacle around the cult at Brauron, his efforts are archaeologically invisible.47 As it happens, there are no indications of any signiµcant change in the use of the sanctuary until the very end of the sixth century. By common consent, the µrst monumental stone temple for Brauronian Artemis dates from around  B.C., making it yet another item in the steadily growing inventory of major construction projects commissioned by the leaders of the new order.48 Does the new temple coincide, then, with the founding of the Brauronia? The idea is certainly not unthinkable. The festival can hardly have been founded much after , and there are no striking discontinuities in the development of the sanctuary that might point to an earlier time. But to conµrm the date, we would at least need to see some signs of a corresponding rise or change in activity at the satellite sanctuary in Athens, much as we saw in the case of the Mysteries. Sadly, evidence for the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia on the Acropolis is even harder to interpret. The site has been successfully traced to the southeast corner of the citadel, though the earliest remains are not easily datable. The

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only µrm conclusion one can draw here is that the sanctuary must have been in operation before the mid–µfth century, since its plan appears to have been modiµed to accommodate the Mnesiclean Propylaia.49 However, a modest number of artifacts found in and around the Acropolis area and seemingly associated with the cult may help to clarify the picture a little further. First, we have a number of fragments of krateriskoi, cult vessels that were especially associated with the worship of Artemis. We cannot be certain that these particular examples were used in rites held at the Brauroneion, though their µnd-spots hint that they were. The later items in the series belong to the µrst half of the µfth century and were recovered from the Agora, while all the earliest fragments, which have been dated to the period – B.C., were found on the Acropolis itself. Then, there are the remains of the sculptures of two dogs, one of them extremely well preserved. Since both come from the Acropolis, it is very tempting to link them with the citadel’s Artemis sanctuary, and a number of scholars have done so. And since they are thought to have been produced sometime between  and  B.C., the two dogs, like the early krateriskoi, seem to attest to a rise in the level of interest in the cult toward the end of the sixth century. Whether this new interest was spurred by the actual foundation of the sanctuary or merely by a change in the sanctuary’s signiµcance remains to be seen.50 Either way, the chronological coincidence between the evidence from Athens and Brauron is certainly suggestive. At the very least, the investment in the new temple at Brauron conµrms that the Athenian state was now actively involved in the cult, and this involvement presumably means that one or more state festivals were staged at the sanctuary by ca.  B.C. In the absence of any earlier signs of similar activity, we can tentatively assign the creation of the Brauronia—perhaps an Athenian ampliµcation of an existing local festival— to the last decade of the sixth century. If this is correct, we would have a further illustration of how well-established cults in the Attic periphery were used at this time to develop festivals that both embodied and helped generate a new, regionwide sense of political community.

9 CHANGE AND MEMORY

A longside some of history’s other great political shifts, the Athenian experiment was a distinctly orderly transformation. The Acropolis siege aside, the process lacked the popular activism, the violence, and the terror one usually associates with radical progressive change. As carefully managed as it was farreaching, this was a revolution without Jacobins or Sansculottes. Yet for those in Attica who lived through the years of the experiment, the experience of all this change must have been exhilarating and at times bewildering. Some aspects of public life looked and felt much as they had always done; others now seemed quite different. But the most unsettling change will have been in the beliefs and the assumptions that nourished and sustained the system as a whole. Here, many of the old certainties—comfortingly familiar, if seldom equitable—were suddenly rendered irrelevant or discarded completely. In their place arose a new set of common understandings, promising hitherto undreamed-of privileges for many, as well as obligations and responsibilities that were perhaps a little daunting. And all people were now called on to embrace shared loyalties and a sense of collective mission that seemed to disregard the ingrained local and economic distinctions of earlier eras. So how was the signiµcance of this dramatic, if orderly, transformation to be understood? As ever, in times of radical discontinuity, there was a pressing need for explanation, for an authoritative narrative that would help men and women make sense of their new politicocultural surroundings. 197

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We already have some general idea of the form taken by this narrative—a tale of revival, of reassuring continuities with the distant past, of reconnection with the Athens of Theseus and Erechtheus. But how was the moment of change itself woven into this narrative? How was it to be remembered? In the end, of all the incidents and events that contributed to the transition from Peisistratid domination to popular rule, only one was deemed µt for a permanent place in ofµcial memory;1 and at µrst sight, at least, the choice was a surprising one. Overlooked, for example, was the mass siege of the Acropolis that ended the insurgency of Isagoras and Cleomenes. No matter that Cleisthenes’ reforms were already well on their way to implementation by this point, it is still easy to imagine how the story of popular struggle against Athenian reactionaries and non-Athenian aggressors could have been turned into a stirring, patriotic foundation myth, ideal for a regime that was built on the idea of collective responsibility. Yet the siege would never be ofµcially memorialized by a monument or a regular ceremony. Also overlooked were the achievements of Cleisthenes himself. Given the Athenian genius for mythmaking, it is not unthinkable that his successors might have seen µt to celebrate him as a visionary founding father. A simple posthumous statue and inscription in a prominent public space would have sufµced to µx his place in memory for all time as a farsighted author of bold political departures. But again, this is not what happened. Aside from awarding him a public grave in the Kerameikos at some later point, the Athenian state never recognized Cleisthenes’ achievements in any ofµcial form of commemoration. Instead, it chose to mark the political change of the late sixth century by celebrating an altogether different kind of accomplishment, a murder no less, whose perpetrators did not even live to see the new form of government introduced. The celebration of Harmodius and Aristogeiton is such a familiar feature of the Athenian cultural landscape that it is easy for us to lose sight of its essential improbability. The details of their story can be quickly summarized: these two otherwise unremarkable members of an aristocratic clan take it upon themselves to kill the Peisistratid Hipparchus in /, apparently for petty, personal reasons; they succeed in the attempt, but are themselves killed in the aftermath. In itself, this is hardly the stuff of legend. But in the hands of skilled mythmakers, the murder became one of the deµning events of Athenian history. Never mind the deed’s rather dubious motivations, and never mind the fact that it did not end the Peisistratid domination of Athens; by the classical period, Harmodius and Aristogeiton were widely seen as brave and sel×ess heroes who had delivered Athens from the clutches of “tyranny,” transforming the political fortunes of their home state in the process. With barely a nod to

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historical reality, a senseless act of violence was now ofµcially embraced as a patriotic act of tyrannicide. But why go to all this trouble, especially when commemoration of an episode like the Acropolis siege would have required far less distortion or embellishment? Why did the Athenians choose to memorialize the end of the “tyranny” and not the birth of the new order that followed so soon thereafter? As we shall see, to make full sense of this tyrannicide tradition and its grip on the Athenian imagination, we need to view it in relation to the larger scheme of ofµcial memory that was beginning to emerge in Athens in the late archaic period. First, though, we should look at how and when this rather unlikely tradition was originally contrived and promoted.2 THE AFTERLIFE OF HARMODIUS AND ARISTOGEITON

It is worth stressing at the outset that a range of oral traditions concerning the events of the late sixth century, some of them ×agrantly at odds with the ofµcial story, were still in circulation many years later. To judge from various sources from the late µfth century, it was still possible at that time to recall, for example, that Hipparchus was actually the junior of Hippias and that the tyranny continued for four years after the former’s murder; that when the end really did come (in /), it did so only with the help of Spartan troops, and that their assistance was only secured when Cleisthenes bribed the Pythia at Delphi; and that the Athenian Isagoras had again called in the Spartans in his efforts to reverse Cleisthenes’ reforms, before the climactic siege of the Acropolis µnally ensured that the people of Athens were masters of their own political destiny.3 This is not to suggest for a moment that these popular memories took the form of a coherent sequential account, µxed µrm in the minds of all. Oral traditions are by nature ×uid. And as Thomas (, –) has shown in her perceptive and detailed treatment of these particular strands of memory from the late sixth century, they could easily be massaged to µt the needs of the moment. Some details could be emphasized or improved and others conveniently forgotten. This is especially true in the fourth century. By this time, fading recollections were more inclined to exclude or modify actions that were un×attering to the Athenians, and as Thomas demonstrates, they were often colored by more recent memories of the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants. Thus, in the orators and other authors, we µnd allusions to a story that Cleisthenes did no more than borrow money from Delphi to pay for the Spartan intervention in /, reducing Cleomenes and his men to the status of mere mercenaries in

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the process. More bizarre, he then apparently “restored the demos from exile” (like some erstwhile Thrasybulus), before embarking on his reforms.4 But whatever this continuing fascination with alternative accounts of the liberation, they plainly were not felt to be incompatible with the ofµcial narrative. Unlike the more skeptical Herodotus and Thucydides, the orators invariably refer to Harmodius and Aristogeiton in positive—even glowing— terms. While their interest in other possible versions of events seems to diminish progressively over time, the deed of the Tyrannicides remained an important historical touchstone in public speech all the way down to the end of the classical period, its appeal seemingly undiminished.5 Though popular memories that might have undermined its appeal were still current well over a century after the events in question took place, the tyrannicide tradition proved to have a remarkable resilience. To what did it owe this durability? Doubtless, glamor played a part, as did the tradition’s essential simplicity. By compressing or ×attening history and reducing what was a highly complex and not always palatable sequence of incidents to a single, vivid, patriotic act, the story was, to say the least, memorable. But surely the main reason for its success was institutional support. While recollections of, say, the Acropolis siege survived only in oral tradition, memory of the “tyrannicide” was permanently and indelibly seared into the Athenian cultural landscape. The most visible memorial was of course the statue group in the very center of the Agora. This landmark possessed a singular potency. The rampaging troops of Xerxes made a point of sparing Antenor’s original bronzes from destruction so that they could be shipped home as a trophy. In response, the Athenians, who were content to wait decades before restoring other monuments victimized by the Persians, commissioned Kritios and Nesiotes to replace the Tyrannicide group almost immediately (µg. ). These were in fact the only public portrait statues to be erected in Athens before the fourth century, and even thereafter, measures were passed restricting the placement of other statues in their vicinity, thus reinforcing their singularity.6 No doubt enhancing the second monument’s appeal to the imagination was the particular way it represented the state’s unlikely liberators. Extant copies and reproductions of the statues in other media reveal that the pair were captured in sculpture—heroically nude—moments before the killing, as they advanced, with swords drawn, on their victim. From what survives of the epigram, we can get some further sense of how the public image of the Tyrannicides was constructed. Part is preserved on a fragment of the base, part in a quotation by the metrist Hephaestion.7 It reads:

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[h\ mevg¾ ÆAqhnaivoisi fovw~ gevneq¾, hJnik¾ ÆAristo-] [geivtwn I{ pparcon ktei`ne kai;] Armov J dio[~] [ ] [ pa]trivda gh`n ejqevthn. [Truly, there arose a great light for the Athenians when Aristogeiton and Harmodius killed Hipparchus . . . made their fatherland . . . ] We note in passing the text’s Homeric ×ourishes, which reinforce the timeless heroism of the act commemorated. The emotive opening, the light-of-deliverance metaphor, and the closing phrase all seem to be chosen for their epic—speciµcally Iliadic—×avor. In other words, these men were not assassins or murderers but true warriors in the tradition of the great heroes. More interesting, though, is the epigram’s presentation of the historical signiµcance of the deed. Incomplete as the text may be, the “light of deliverance” metaphor carries with it an implicit claim that the killing of Hipparchus “liberated” Athens from “tyranny.” Here, in this compressed version of history, we have the ofµcial line, cut in stone for all to see in the political hub of the city.8 The general message is echoed in another epigram, this one probably the epitaph on the public grave of the Tyrannicides, which was situated at the outermost extremity of the Demosion Sema. The evidence for the text comes from an incomplete inscription found on Chios, and it is usually printed as follows, with Lloyd-Jones’s restoration of the missing portions of the µrst distich.9 Sth`sai tou`to ejdovkh[sen ÆAqhnaivoisin ÆAristo-] geivtono~ aijcmht[ou` sh`ma kai; Armodiv J ou,] oi} ktavnon a[ndra tuvra[nnon ] yuca;~ parqevmeno[i ] [The Athenians resolved to set this up as a grave for the spearman Aristogeiton and Harmodius, who killed the tyrant . . . offering their lives . . . ] The format of the epitaph is certainly novel; the verse rendering of an Assembly decree is without any known parallel in Attic funerary epigraphy. But the content is more familiar. Again we have the compression of history, again the epic diction; and the ofµcial line is forcefully restated. The killing of Hipparchus was not a senseless act of ad hominem violence. Rather, it was a self-

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less military action perpetrated by heroic warriors, who thereby transformed the political fortunes of their state.10 To emphasize the point that these men were, in effect, gallant war heroes, the Athenians instituted regular cult honors for the Tyrannicides, much as they did for the slain Marathonomakhai. An enagisma, a chthonic ritual offering reserved for the heroized and the dead, was administered by the polemarch and performed each year at their tomb. And it is likely that these rites came to be celebrated as part of the Epitaphia, the festival for the war dead, thus further legitimizing the killing of Hipparchus as a military accomplishment.11 Other, less visible honors could also be listed, among them the special public privileges awarded in perpetuity to the immediate descendants of the assassins, such as free meals in the Prytaneion (site–sis) and immunity from µscal burdens (ateleia).12 Sufµce it to say, the Athenian state went to considerable lengths not just to perpetuate the memory of Harmodius and Aristogeiton but also to stipulate exactly how they should be remembered. Whatever the realities of their deed and its motivations, they would always be seen ofµcially as sel×ess benefactors of the polis and heroic agents of political change. And there are many signs that the ofµcial view of the Tyrannicides and their deed was very eagerly embraced. Local vase painters were particularly enthusiastic in their response to the promotion. By the s, scenes of the illustrious pair, including images of the replacement statues, were well established in the repertoire. Indeed, it seems that the group by Kritios and Nesiotes became something of an iconic motif in Attic art. Most notably, from around , Theseus himself can sometimes be seen assuming the poses of the Tyrannicides in vase scenes, especially in those that depict his struggles with Skiron and the Krommyonian Sow. And it is likely that this idea of having Theseus “anticipate” the actions of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was µrst developed by artists commissioned to work on major public monuments. Clearly, the Tyrannicides were now associated with the very highest traditions of Athenian heroism.13 A series of skolia, or popular drinking songs, also celebrate the Tyrannicides in much the same terms as the ofµcial commemorations. However, the exact nature of the relationship between the songs and the public honors remains unclear. It is widely assumed that the former were composed relatively soon after the death of Hipparchus, before the ofµcial promotion of the killers as tyrannicides began. It is also widely assumed that the songs were partisan political statements, functioning, in effect, as propaganda for the claims of one group or another in the struggle for power that followed the expulsion of the Peisistratids. Neither assumption is easily justiµed. I would agree with Thomas (, –) that efforts to date the skolia precisely and assign them to par-

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ticular sources are probably futile. The very nature of the genre prevents us from knowing exactly when or in what circles these drinking songs were originally produced. Besides, there is a good chance that they did not possess the kind of political signiµcance often assigned to them.14 Two claims made in the skolia especially stand out: that Harmodius and Aristogeiton changed the course of Athenian constitutional history by killing the tyrant and making the Athenians “equal before the law” [isonomous] and that the pair thereby earned a place in the Isles of the Blessed among fellow warrior-heroes like Achilles and Diomedes. Much the same claims were of course made, implicitly or explicitly, in the ofµcial public commemorations. So did popular sentiment in×uence state policy, or vice versa? Both claims, I suggest, required such a suspension of disbelief that they can only have been the product of a willful, concerted effort to transform perceptions of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. They surely were not the spontaneous creations of symposiast revelers, and the songs, we can presume, were simply part of the warm, popular response that apparently greeted the state’s promotion of the new tyrannicide tradition.15 All of which raises an important question: when did the Athenian state actually begin its promotion of this tradition? Though we know the exact year (/) when the group by Kritios and Nesiotes was installed in the Agora, it is harder to establish when the various other public honors were introduced. There is no µrm evidence for any of the descendants’ privileges before the middle of the µfth century, and the public grave presumably does not predate the creation of the Demosion Sema, a development most scholars would place somewhere in the s. Be that as it may, many believe that the enagisma for the Tyrannicides was µrst instituted somewhat earlier, during the last decade of the sixth century.16 And it is very probable that Antenor’s original statue group was set up in the Agora around the same time. A range of dates for the latter are certainly possible, anywhere from , when the situation in Athens had µnally stabilized, to the early s. But a number of factors favor the upper part of this range: the elder Pliny (HN .) synchronizes the dedication of the monument with the expulsion of the kings from Rome; Pausanias (..), who saw both Tyrannicide groups together, observed that the original bronzes looked “old-fashioned” [arkhaioi]; and Antenor is not known to have been associated with any project commissioned after  B.C. Moreover, on the issue of date, the objections of the minority, who support a date lower in the range, have been satisfactorily answered by Castriota (, –). On balance, it seems reasonable to conclude that Antenor’s group was dedicated between  and , precisely

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when the Agora area was being reconµgured to serve as the primary center for the city’s political life.17 Assuming, then, that both the cult and the µrst Agora monument were in place by around  B.C., it looks like the whole tradition of the Tyrannicides—reimagining the hapless Harmodius and Aristogeiton as titanic “warriors” and sel×ess agents of political change—was an early innovation of the new order.18 Henceforth, in the ofµcial view of the transition from the Peisistratid regime to popular government, the decisive event would not be the mass siege of the Acropolis nor even the reforms of Cleisthenes, but the killing of Hipparchus. So why did the leaders of the new order choose to place so much weight on this particular moment and go to such lengths to create a special place for it in ofµcial memory? MAKING SENSE OF THE TYRANNICIDE TRADITION

For all the lively debate over such issues as the political signiµcance of the skolia and the date of Antenor’s statues, there is general agreement about the larger function and purpose of the Tyrannicides in Athenian culture. Most scholars believe that the rationale behind the heroization of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was to turn them into “symbols of the new democracy” or the like (see, e.g., Ehrenberg , ; ). Close analysis of the symbolic language used in the cult and monuments has produced some interesting variations on this theme. Kearns (, ), for example, suggests that the cult conforms to the traditional pattern of veneration for heroes as protectors of communities. And since the deed for which the Tyrannicides were heroized “related only to internal politics” and not to some external threat, she believes that they may have been seen and promoted as protectors “not of Athens in general, but of Athenian democracy.” Others, like Taylor (, ), see parallels with hero cults established for ktistai and oikistai, the “founders” of towns and colonies. In Taylor’s view, cult worship of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was established “because founding heroes were required by the new democracy.” A more reµned version of this opinion is offered by Castriota (, ). I suggest . . . that Harmodius and Aristogeiton were never meant to be understood literally as the destroyers of tyranny or as ktistai of the new egalitarian constitution, but rather as something more subtle, as archetypes or preµgurations of these innovations, the way in which a generation or two later the mythic Athenian protagonists of Attic rhetoric and public programs of visual art were deployed to preµgure the heroic de-

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fence of Greece against the Persians. Thus the Tyrant Slayers would have celebrated the emerging democracy along the more allusive or indirect lines suggested here for the µfth-century Athenian victory monuments. There is certainly a measure of truth in all of these views.19 From the testimony discussed earlier in this chapter, it is abundantly clear that the Tyrannicides came to be associated in the popular mind with the regime that was built on Cleisthenes’ reforms, whether we call it “democracy,” isonomia, or simply “the new order.” But none of these suggestions really comes to grips with the deeper cultural logic behind this association. With all the beneµts of hindsight, we can see that the regime that came into being in / was quite different from anything that had preceded it; popular government was something entirely new. But did the Athenians themselves see it this way? In all probability, they did not. During the course of this study, we have come across numerous indications that this momentous political shift was not represented at face value. There are, it appears, very good grounds for thinking that the citizens of Athens were strongly encouraged to see their new order as no more than the restoration of an older, ancestral order that had been suspended or dismantled by the Peisistratid “tyrants.” And once we understand that they perceived the political shift in these terms (as a resumption of the traditional scheme of things), it becomes easier to appreciate why, in their eyes, the landmark moment in the shift was the end of the tyranny, not the events that followed. From their perspective, the reforms of Cleisthenes and the Acropolis siege served only to recodify and preserve the time-honored practices of a distant past. Thus, if there really was a choice over which particular transformative moment to commemorate, the only possible alternative to the killing of Hipparchus was the event that truly did end the tyranny, namely, the expulsion of Hippias and his family from Athens by the Spartans. The latter was obviously unsuitable. Hence the strenuous efforts by Athenian mythmakers to magnify the signiµcance of what Harmodius and Aristogeiton accomplished and to commit to ofµcial oblivion the four inconvenient years of tyranny that followed. In other words, the reason the Tyrannicides came to be associated with democracy was not because their act was thought to have triggered a sequence of events that led ultimately to the introduction of a new, more popular form of government in Athens. The association was actually much less oblique and more immediate than that. According to the prevailing logic, because the tyrants had only to be removed for the normal course of Athenian constitutional history to be resumed, Harmodius and Aristogeiton were themselves directly responsible for the

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recent political change. They were not seen as the “founders of democracy” or as preµgurations of such, since popular government in Athens was now deemed to have been founded long before they were moved to commit their fateful act. While people may have come to celebrate the pair in the broadest terms as “symbols” or even “protectors” of democracy, the original cause for celebration was much more speciµc: they had given their lives to have the old order restored. In this way, the Tyrannicides came to play a central role in the representation of political change in the late sixth century. They were, in the end, a device created by leaders to help de×ect attention from the novelty of recent innovations and, thereby, to forestall any harmful accusations of “revolution.” Memorialized with an ostentatious monument in the heart of the city and an appropriately traditional species of cult practice, Harmodius and Aristogeiton duly took their place in the ever swelling imaginary pageant of Athenian history. A REVOLUTION FORGOTTEN

Before closing, it is worth looking at some possible longer-term consequences of this general disavowal of the novelty of change by leaders of the new order. Their efforts to manufacture some kind of historical charter for their reforms came at an extremely formative moment in the construction of an ofµcial collective memory in Athens. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that the results of these efforts would have a profound impact on the way future generations would perceive what had gone before. This is especially evident when we consider later understandings of the synoecism process. In chapter , I showed how this particular issue appears to have been all but settled back in the late sixth century, after which point it was simply axiomatic that the polis had been transformed from a city-state into a region-state during the reign of King Theseus. In the case of ideas about the evolution of popular government in Athens, there seems to have been more room for differences of opinion, as the debates of the later µfth century illustrate. Yet even here, I suggest, certain fundamental assumptions were effectively µxed during the age of Cleisthenes and rendered nonnegotiable ever afterwards. Most fundamental was a strong, shared sense of constitutional continuity, the belief that some form of collective popular rule had prevailed in Athens since the very distant past, interrupted only by the Peisistratid “tyranny” and two brief periods of oligarchy in the late µfth century. Lacking as we do any record of political oratory from the early years of the new order, it is impossible to ascertain exactly how the leaders of the time framed their historical charter for reform. How did they envision the origins of the popular government

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they claimed to be reviving? It is certainly possible that they left its beginnings vague and unspeciµc. But to judge from the manifest contemporary interest in Theseus, Triptolemos, and other µgures from early Athenian history, there is a good chance that they either intimated or asserted that this regime was very ancient indeed. So, even if the synoecist Theseus had not yet been ofµcially burdened with the further role of “founder of democracy,” the conceptual basis for seeing him as such—belief in a long and almost continuous tradition of popular rule in Athens—was probably current by the early µfth century.20 To appreciate just how µrmly ingrained this particular belief became, we need only consider the words of three prominent authors of the later µfth century. Thucydides was evidently quite exercised about the ofµcial characterization of the murder of Hipparchus as a public-spirited act that ended the tyranny. But even he seems to have taken it for granted that when the tyranny µnally did fall, traditional democratic practices were automatically resumed. Thus, the historian notes (..) that when the oligarchs persuaded the demos to abandon their democracy in , this brought to an end a century-long chapter in Athenian constitutional history that had begun with the expulsion of the Peisistratids. To him at least, the novelty and momentous signiµcance of Cleisthenes’ reforms was no longer apparent. And if his comments elsewhere (..–) are any guide, it looks like Thucydides could scarcely imagine a time when there was not some degree of popular involvement in affairs of state. While he represents the synoecism of Attica very much as a change imposed from above by a powerful Theseus, he suggests that the uniµcation was actually accomplished by encouraging men from all over Attica to participate in the political life of Athens. They were, in his words, “to use this one state” [miai polei taute–i khre–sthai] instead of the multiple local states that had ×ourished in the past. As for the institutional details of this process, Thucydides envisions Theseus insisting that there be only “one council chamber” [hen bouleute–rion] for the entire region. And since Athenians of the late µfth century will have associated this kind of building more readily with a democratic body, like the Council of , than with, say, the elitist Areopagus, the mention of the bouleuterion here presumably means that the historian saw popular deliberation as a key ingredient of political life under the new Thesean regime. Even during the monarchic period, it appears, the Athenian state was a democracy waiting to happen. The general conviction that the Athenian constitution was much the same after the tyranny as before it can also be found in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, performed in . The plot and setting of the play prompt characters, on several occasions, to muse about the tumultuous events of the late sixth century.21

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One such occasion comes when Lysistrata herself tries to get the Athenians and the Spartans to ponder their historic debts to one another. After reminding the latter of how Cimon had led an Athenian force to help them when their state was threatened by the twin perils of an earthquake and a helot revolt, she bids the former to re×ect on how the Spartans were their “only” allies on the day the tyranny fell, adding, “and they freed you, and instead of a sheepskin, they draped your demos with the civic cloak again” [humas . . . ke–leuthero– san kanti te–s kato– nake–s ton de–mon humo– n khlainan e–mpeskhon palin] (–). Like others alluded to earlier in the chapter, this passage is certainly good evidence for the survival of memories that ×atly contradicted the claims of the tyrannicide tradition. But more interesting for our immediate purposes is the word palin, “again.” Clearly, the assumption here is that the demos simply resumed its earlier control over the state once the tyrants had been expelled, even though this means, in effect, crediting the Spartans with the restoration of popular government in Athens. Equally clearly, this understanding of events left little room for any far-reaching intervention by Cleisthenes. A similar case of amnesia comes somewhat earlier in the play, when the chorus of old men, the embodiment of the spirit of Marathon, recall their siege of Cleomenes on the Acropolis (–). Though they are obviously proud of this exploit, they conspicuously fail to see its larger political implications, remembering it only as a patriotic military action. But, again, if the antiquity of Athenian democracy was by this time an article of faith, we cannot be surprised that the true signiµcance of the events of / was now forgotten. It is against this background that we should return, µnally, to the testimony of Herodotus and reassess his characterization of Cleisthenes’ contribution to democracy in Athens. As we saw at the beginning of chapter , the historian’s deµnitive statement on the subject at .. (recognizing Cleisthenes as ho tas phulas kai te–n de–mokratie–n Athe–naioisi kataste–sas) is generally thought to mean that he saw the Alcmeonid as the true, original author of Athenian democracy. As we also noted at the time, this interpretation, if correct, would make Herodotus the only ancient author who had at least some sense of the landmark signiµcance of Cleisthenes’ reforms. Was Herodotus so singularly perceptive? Was he alone able to see through the carefully constructed illusions that sustained the Athenians’ proud claims for the antiquity of their constitution? If Herodotus really did intend to challenge Athenian constitutional memory by stressing the momentous novelty of Cleisthenes’ reforms, it is fair to say that his case is less than convincing. Though his account of the measures (., ) does stress their broad popular appeal, his discussion is limited to a sketchy description of the new demes and tribes, and there is a striking absence, at this

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point, of any editorial comment on the larger historical signiµcance of the new system. Stranger still, the historian’s impassioned defense of the Alcmeonids as “tyrant haters” (.–) does not even mention the fact that it was Cleisthenes, one of the family’s most illustrious members, whose reforms laid the basis for the collective rule of the demos in Athens. Instead, his case focuses only on the Alcmeonids’ role in the expulsion of the tyrants, where their primary contribution, it seems, was to secure Spartan assistance by bribing the Pythia (..; cf. .., .., ..). Then there is Herodotus’s well-known pronouncement (.) that “political equality” [ise–gorie–] helped the Athenians to defeat the Boeotians and Chalcidians, making them “by far the most powerful” [makro– i pro– toi] state in central Greece. How did they acquire this equality? Not, apparently, as a result of any major constitutional reforms. Rather, according to Herodotus, it came with the freedom won when the Athenians “got rid of the tyrants” [apallakhthentes turanno– n]. As in Thucydides and Aristophanes, the implication here is that the privileges of collective popular rule were essentially an Athenian birthright, unjustly suspended during the tyranny and immediately reclaimed thereafter. It is therefore hard to avoid concluding that Herodotus had no wish to challenge official Athenian memory after all. Nothing in his text is inconsistent with the overall scheme of constitutional history that had been promoted and developed in Athens since the late sixth century. The only possible evidence to the contrary is the single, brief statement at .., words that are widely understood to mean that Cleisthenes “established” democracy from scratch. But even here, the key verb form [kataste– sas] is ambiguous. And it is surely no coincidence that authors who maintain more explicitly that popular government in Athens predated the tyranny use forms of the very same verb (kathiste–mi) to describe Cleisthenes’ contribution to the history of de–mokratia (see, e.g., AP .; Isoc. .). In their texts, the word can only mean “set in order” or “restore.” I suggest that Herodotus is using it in much the same way here: Cleisthenes was not the author of any new political reality; he simply reorganized the tribes and the ancestral democracy. The representation of the new order as a revived regime from the past certainly goes a long way toward explaining why later observers were more interested in how the tyranny ended than in the constitutional reforms that followed soon afterwards. Even among the more learned, inquisitive, and skeptical of these observers, it seems, there was no longer any memory of the true novelty of Cleisthenes’ reforms. And it is against the backdrop of this prevailing view of constitutional history, shaped in the late sixth century, that we

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must understand the debates over the “traditional mode of government” (patrios politeia), that arose in connection with the oligarchic revolutions of  and . In the minds of those who were determined to preserve democracy at all costs, their preferred form of regime was sanctioned by the full weight of tradition (see, e.g. Thuc. ..). And since this had been the consensus view in Athens for the better part of a century, the proponents of more oligarchic forms of government faced the tremendously difµcult task of challenging a cherished shared memory. To claim the all-important ancestral precedent for their proposed changes to the constitution, they, too, had to represent their program as de–mokratia—supposedly the original, true form of Athenian de–mokratia, which had evolved at a time when the composition of the demos was somewhat less inclusive. To give credence to the claim, they tried to relate their version of the “traditional mode of government” to the existing body of laws and to the likes of Draco, Solon, and Cleisthenes, the names associated with the oldest items of legislation known to the Athenians. The implication, of course, was that the radical democracy of the late µfth century had no historical charter, since it had strayed from the course ordained by these great lawgivers of the past (see AP ., ., .; Diod. ..; Xen. Hell. ..).22 Following the brief civil war of , the debate became moot. Classical de–mokratia was restored, and the received view of constitutional antiquities was promptly reafµrmed and given new substance (see Diod. ..; Xen. Hell. ..). In the words of the decree of Teisamenos (Andoc. .), the Athenians were to be governed “according to traditional precedent” [kata ta patria], using “the laws of Solon” and “the ordinances of Draco.” Most likely, none of the genuine seventh- or sixth-century laws still current in Athens contained anything that we would recognize as a “constitutional” prescription. But this was beside the point. What mattered most was to reassert a sense of continuity with the pre-Peisistratid past by establishing some general kind of link, however specious in reality, between the µrst Athenian lawgivers and contemporary radical democracy. As far as we can tell, this way of looking at Athenian constitutional history as a long, almost unbroken continuum was never again seriously questioned. Given all the confusing historical claims and counterclaims of the later µfth century, not to mention the probable unavailability of the kind of hard evidence that might have settled the matter, it is no small wonder that fourth-century researchers like Aristotle and the author of AP were able to piece together a remotely coherent picture of preclassical political arrangements in Athens. True, the accounts of both authors are obviously colored by the assumptions

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of the age. Both see Solon as the primary architect of Athenian democracy, and both largely avoid addressing the evolving role of the Assembly, arguably the single most critical issue in early constitutional history. Presumably, the two authors—like Thucydides and perhaps Herodotus before them—simply could not envisage a time when the ekkle–sia was not a central component of the state apparatus. Yet, for all their understandable shortcomings, the accounts in the Politics and AP are impressively detailed and nuanced, a tribute to the rigor and intelligence with which the authors tried to recover a history that was by their time all but unrecoverable.23 Far less surprising is the failure of these authors to comprehend the full magnitude of the political transformation that began three years after the fall of the Peisistratids. Earlier writers were no more enlightened on the subject, and by the latter half of the fourth century, the truth was even further from reach. It is entirely µtting that the ultimate responsibility for this collective amnesia should lie with the very men who orchestrated the transformation. Surveying the evidence discussed in this and earlier chapters, we can only conclude that Cleisthenes and his cohorts preferred their singular contribution to Athenian history to go largely unrecognized. Better this than the suspicion of “revolution.” It may strain the modern imagination to think that their radical experiment in political community could have been so successfully passed off as a revival of an older, traditional regime. But for the Athenians, apparently, this improbable µction was all too irresistibly attractive.24

CONCLUSION

The Athenian equation of democracy with tradition and antiquity offers an interesting counterpoint to modern assumptions about the innately progressive character of popular government. But it probably should not surprise us. The leaders of the new order were hardly the µrst authority µgures in human history to justify their actions with an appeal to the past. In Greece itself, it had been common practice for generations among the ruling class to reafµrm their place in society by claiming links with the age of heroes. What is unusual about the Athenian case in – is the attempt to extend these kinds of claims from the family or clan unit to an entire political community, especially one so inclusive and far-×ung. In this respect, as in so many others, the Athenian experiment broke new ground. So when did this experiment come to an end? One could say that it lasted all the way down to  B.C., when the µnal hope for preserving meaningful democracy in Athens expired on the battleµeld at Crannon. In the intervening period (the better part of two centuries), the Athenian state remained something of a work in progress, with new ofµces and procedures added and old ones adjusted as circumstance allowed or required. Then again, the tribal system, the core innovation of /, would endure in some form for centuries more; spectral traces of it are still visible as late as the third century A.D.1 Here, at least, the in×uence of Cleisthenes’ reforms on civic life in Athens and Attica continued to be felt for almost the remainder of antiquity. 212

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But for the purposes of the present study, it would be just as well to draw the line at  B.C. By this point, the critical innovations of the new order— political, military, ceremonial, and ideological—were all µrmly in place. The menfolk of Attica found themselves assailed from all sides by the echoes of a shared past never before suspected, bidding them to lay aside what divided them and rise, as one, to new responsibilities. As citizen soldiers and as the sovereign demos of Athens, they were charged with directing a common cause. Public business multiplied accordingly, allowing them to venture into areas that were once the exclusive preserves of the wealthy, like the commissioning of ostentatious buildings and monuments and the management of hero cults and war graves.2 The temper of the age was deµned by a new collective consciousness, and they could now begin to imagine themselves a community. The shift from city-state to region-state was all but complete. And with their victory at Marathon in  (an eventuality unimaginable only twenty years earlier), the Athenians came to reap the full dividend of their new political reality, announcing their arrival as a dominant force in the Greek world. The year  also marks a signiµcant shift in the character of Athenian politics. With the trial of Miltiades and the ostracisms of the s, we see the return of µerce political rivalry to Athens for the µrst time since the defeat of Isagoras, a sure sign of the maturity of the new polity. The unusually broad consensus that had prevailed for nearly two decades, allowing the new order to take root and ×ourish, had clearly served its purpose. The great rupture with the past was effectively accomplished, and the basic shape and texture of Athenian public life would remain largely unchanged down to the end of the classical period. The immediate purpose of this book has been to explore this rupture—to establish its dimensions and rationale and to recover some sense of how it was perceived and represented at the time. But since the claims made here also have consequences for how we view what went before, the ultimate purpose of the book has always been somewhat more ambitious: to suggest a new reading of Athenian politico-cultural evolution in the archaic period, an alternative to the more gradualist approach found in the textbooks and in the work of most modern authorities. The new reading is less dependent on the capricious testimony of ancient authors—riddled as it is with the assumptions and preoccupations of later eras—and more inclined to make use of information gleaned from the material record. It is concerned less with narrow constitutional issues and more with the dynamics of a “political culture” (understood in the broadest possible sense

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of the term). Overall, it places greater emphasis on the continuities that prevailed from the time of Cylon to that of Hippias and Hipparchus and on the discontinuities that emerged thereafter. Without wishing to minimize the signiµcance of Solon and the Peisistratids, it is deeply unlikely that either party was responsible for the kind of wholesale renewal of political culture that we see in the age of Cleisthenes. Nor, most likely, did they aim to be. Solon’s reforms probably did furnish ordinary Athenians with some modest political gains and protections, but only as many as were required to restore equilibrium, or eunomia, to a state in turmoil. Likewise, Peisistratus and his sons favored the status quo. Though they may, at times, have strained the rules of the political game to breaking point, they had no great incentive, given their success, to change them fundamentally. Once the layers of later calumny are peeled away, we see that their style of leadership was not qualitatively different from what had gone before. Aside from the occasional resort to arms, all that really distinguished the Peisistratids’ authority from that of a Megacles or a Lycurgus was its longevity. And even if we can think of reasons why they might have wanted to promote a sense of regional community in Attica, evidence that they actually did so is wanting. Their role in the development of the major national festivals remains debatable at best, and the very complexity and artiµce of Cleisthenes’ tribal reform indicates that the inhabitants of the region were still very far from sharing any instinctive collective consciousness when the Peisistratids left Athens in /. In the end, perhaps the family’s greatest contributions to Athenian history and culture were entirely inadvertent: to highlight the urgent need to reform the system that had produced them; and to represent the deµnitive antithesis of what the Athenians later believed their government to be all about, to be forever tyrants. If we insist on looking for evidence of signiµcant discontinuity in the decades before , we could do worse than focus on those decades that separate the era of Solon from that of Peisistratus. We know all too little about the political scene during these years, yet it manifestly was a time of some energy and innovation. The monumentalization of the Acropolis sanctuary, the appearance of the µrst sizable stone temple on the citadel, the founding of the Great Panathenaia and the Eleusinian Mysteries, the vigorous promotion of Heracles, and the µrst traces of a growing local interest in Theseus are all developments that fall within the period –. Together, they reveal an Athens that was increasingly alert to Panhellenic currents, if not yet shaping them. Future work on this relatively forgotten corner of the sixth century could bear valuable fruit. Ultimately, however this study’s larger revisionist claims are received, I hope that the µndings presented here might stimulate others to look again at

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the age of Cleisthenes, to see it in a fresh light and to adopt a broader, more synoptic approach to what must be considered a deµning period in Athenian history. This book offers one particular way of looking at the assembled evidence, but many others are available, and still others are surely possible. As a measure of the healthy diversity of opinion that is now represented in the ongoing dialogue about Cleisthenes’ reforms, one might think again of the very different perspective found in the recent work of Ober (; cf. ), whose reading of the events of / in Athens prompts him to draw points of comparison with the early days of the French Revolution. If challenged to seek comparanda from further aµeld for my own interpretation of the political change in Athens, I would begin by noting some intriguing parallels with one of the other great transformations of antiquity. At µrst sight, there may not be too many obvious resemblances between the Athenian experiment and the creation of the Roman principate. But whatever the different outcomes, the aims and methods betray some striking similarities. Both initiatives were pursued in states that had hitherto been dominated by a relatively small group of elites, and in both cases state institutions had proved inadequate to prevent aggressive feuding between rival leaders and chronic political instability. In Rome as in Athens, the challenge was to reorganize the state in ways that were sufµciently decisive to end the instability yet not so violent or radical as to alienate those on whose consent the success of the new order would most depend. The solution in Athens was to extend political responsibilities to a far broader constituency; in Rome, to concentrate them in the hands of a single individual. Yet in both cases, the delicate balancing act was achieved by representing radical change as a return to an older order, and in both the reform of the state precipitated a wave of innovations elsewhere in public life, especially in the religious and military domains. However, perhaps the most compelling comparanda are to be found in more recent historical experience. The specialist literature on modern nationbuilding, nationalism, and national identity formation offers a peculiarly rich source of evidence for the construction—both institutional and ideological— of complex self-governing political communities. The parallels with ancient Athenian developments are, I believe, highly instructive.3 One must be careful here not to sail too close to the winds of anachronism; nations are after all an exclusively (perhaps inherently) modern phenomenon. But for all the very obvious circumstantial differences between the Athenian polis and a modern nation, there is, I think, little meaningful difference in the style of collective consciousness that animates and deµnes these entities. To borrow Benedict Anderson’s well-known formulation (, ), it is not just

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that the classical Athenians were an “imagined community,” but that they imagined themselves speciµcally as an “inherently limited and sovereign political community.” Moreover, these core political self-imaginings, with their distinctly modern resonance, were supplemented by a range of other identity sources, the most important of which have also played an identical role in the formation of modern national consciousness. These include shared myths of origins, shared collective memories, and a sense of a having a shared “historic” homeland, as well as a common economy, common legal rights and obligations, and a shared public culture believed to be distinct from all others.4 While there is inevitably some difference in the techniques and media used in the ancient and modern worlds to encourage a sense of belonging to these imagined political communities, some even of these are strikingly similar: the invention of new traditions, the creation of symbolic spaces for the commemoration of national heroes and achievements, and the organization of the calendar around annual celebrations of national unity and fellowship. Whatever their root cause, such correspondences cannot be entirely fortuitous, raising the possibility that study of specialist work on modern nation formation may afford novel and useful insights into the equivalent process in ancient Athens. Two such insights seem to have particular signiµcance for the subjects covered in this book. First, while there may be an innate need in humans to identify themselves with various kinds of suprafamilial social groups, there is nothing especially natural about imagining oneself to belong to an extended political community on the scale of a modern nation. Historically, the kinds of shared beliefs, assumptions, and aspirations that typically animate national consciousness do not spontaneously evolve in the minds of a nation’s would-be members; for the most part, they have to be constructed and promoted from above, usually through mass media and political movements. As the statesman Massimo d’Azeglio observed at the µrst meeting of the new Italian parliament following the Risorgimento, “We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians.”5 So, too, it is hard to believe that the very similar shared beliefs, assumptions, and aspirations of the classical Athenians were wholly natural or spontaneous in origin; a sense of fellowship—even kinship—among this relatively diverse and dispersed community had to be consciously and carefully constructed from above before it could be reinforced through lived experience. The very beginnings of this process—the process of “making Athenians”—are precisely what I have tried to document in the chapters of this book.

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Second, study of the modern comparandum may also help to shed some new light on the historical relationship between the formation of a “national consciousness” in Attica and the evolution of Athenian democracy. In her acclaimed work on the emergence of early forms of national consciousness in Europe and the United States, Greenfeld (, ) has the following to say on the equivalent relationship in the modern world. The location of sovereignty within the people and the recognition of the fundamental equality among its various strata, which constitute the essence of the modern national idea, are at the same time the basic tenets of democracy. Democracy was born with the sense of nationality. The two are inherently linked, and neither can be understood apart from this connection. Nationalism was the form in which democracy appeared in the world, contained in the idea of the nation as a butter×y in a cocoon. Thus, in the case of, say, France, while a meaningful, lasting commitment to the idea of democracy was not actively pursued until  (when the franchise was permanently extended to all French males), the essential ideological predicates of democracy had been present in the environment since , when the idea of an inclusive French “nation” µrst stirred the call to revolution. Likewise, in Athens, I suggest, democracy was not actually the conscious or express objective of Cleisthenes’ reforms, nor would it be fully realized in the polis until some decades later. Rather, these reforms were shaped primarily by what we might call a national idea. But embedded in this idea, even in /, were the seeds of a new form of government, one the Athenians would come later to know as de–mokratia.

NOTES

introduction . Similar sentiments are found in a number of Aristophanes’ plays from this same time, most conspicuously in the Acharnians. Though writing from rather different perspectives, both Mikalson () and Connor () provide good examples of the continuing strength of local practices and traditions through the classical period. . Population of Athens: e.g., Gomme ; Hansen ; a. Figures quoted for the average polis: Raa×aub , . For problems with Finley’s claim (, –; cf. , –) that the Athenian polis was in fact “a model of a face-to-face society,” see Osborne , –; Ober , –. In his well-known work on the emergence of modern national consciousness, Benedict Anderson (, ) coins the term “imagined community” to describe the condition whereby “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” While this deµnition might accurately be applied to the political community in Attica as a whole, it should also be stressed that political life in and around the institutions of central government in Athens remained in many ways a faceto-face affair. . Population µgures for classical Greece cannot be determined with any great accuracy. Mostly, they are inferred from the size of military contingents. The µgures suggested here are based either on consensus judgments, where such exist, or on the more temperate estimates, avoiding the higher and lower extremes. For Corinth, see Salmon , –; Megara, Legon , – with n. ; Syracuse, Loicq-Berger , –. Lesbos was the largest of the Aegean Islands (around , square kilometers); it supported µve different poleis. There was only one polis on the island of Chios, but it was considerably smaller ( square kilometers) and less populous (with a free population of somewhere between , and ,) than Attica.

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. Cf. AP .. . Specialist bibliography is cited in the pertinent chapters. Sufµce it to say for now that this study, like any other on the period, owes a great deal to the detailed, specialist work on the archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the tribal system that was introduced in / (e.g., Eliot ; Traill ; ; Siewert ). Other important studies can be found in three collections of essays published in association with the recent “Democracy ” celebrations: Coulson et al. ; Ober and Hedrick ; Morris and Raa×aub . As for earlier monographs that focus primarily or exclusively on the age of Cleisthenes, the most recent in English is Ostwald ; Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet  is a slightly revised version of a work published originally in French in . Until a year or two ago, the qualiµcation “in English” would have been unnecessary. But an important new study, likewise based on a  dissertation, has just appeared in German. Though this monograph came to my attention too late to have any in×uence on the arguments presented in this book, I am gratiµed to see that Rausch () also considered developments in Athens in the late sixth and early µfth centuries worthy of a book-length study and that many of the materials we discuss are the same. That said, our approaches are quite different. Rausch’s work covers a somewhat longer period (from  down to ) and documents a greater number of innovations outside the political arena. My study devotes more space to interpretation and is more inclined to reevaluate the aims and signiµcance of Cleisthenes’ political reforms in the light of changes elsewhere in public life. Hopefully, the appearance of two new books on late archaic Athens will stimulate others to pursue further inquiries into this crucial, dynamic period. . I employ the term “national” throughout this study to describe practices and institutions that pertained to all of Attica. Like others, I µnd the term more convenient than cumbersome formulations such as “pan-Attic” or “polis-wide,” and less ambiguous than “regional,” which could be construed as applying to only one part of the peninsula. This does not mean that the word is used casually. As I suggest elsewhere (see the end of this introduction and, especially, the conclusion), the style of collective consciousness that prevailed among citizens in Attica was not signiµcantly different from that which animates the imagined community of a modern nation. The use of “national” in the ancient context thus serves to underscore the point that we are dealing with a political community that was similarly imagined rather than face-to-face. That said, it would be anachronistic to claim that the Athenian polis community was literally a nation in the modern sense; the analogy must remain a loose one. The use of the word “national” without quotes hereafter is merely a convenience. . For an interesting recent example of a longue durée approach to political change in Athens in the late sixth century, see Morris ; Morris attempts to show that “democratic institutions were merely one response to the emergence of broader egalitarian attitudes and ideologies” (). . Evans , . Evans is a prominent British historian who studies modern Germany. . The issue of popular involvement in the political changes of / is complex. While Ober’s efforts (, ) to draw attention to the important part played by ordinary citizens in the birth of the new order are most welcome, I remain unpersuaded by his attempt to “decenter” the role of Cleisthenes and argue that the political reforms were shaped by a “vision” of change that issued ultimately from the masses. These matters are addressed in some detail on pp. – in chapter .

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. Cf. Cromey ; Hansen . The entry for Cleisthenes in the most recent edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary runs to about the same length as the entries on catoptrics and ancient beekeeping. Occupying barely one-third of one of the dictionary’s , pages, his entry is distinctly shorter than those for his fellow countrymen Solon, Themistocles, and Cimon and is positively dwarfed by the entry on the Athenian pamphleteer Isocrates, which covers nearly two full pages. A further reason for later authors’ relative lack of interest in Cleisthenes will become clear during the course of this book. See especially chapter .

chapter  . On the inapplicability of the modern distinction between “state” and “society” to the ancient polis, see, e.g., Meier , –; Manville , –; . . Incorporation complete by the end of the eighth century: e.g., Hignett , –; Jeffery , ; Snodgrass ; Andrewes , –; Diamant ; Morris , . Mycenean synoecism: e.g., Padgug . Osborne (a) would bring the process down to the seventh century, and Manville () and Frost (, ) appear to favor a date early in the sixth century. . For further discussion of the synoecism tradition and the date of its invention, see chapter . . Throughout this study, I follow Rhodes’s reconstruction (; , –) of the chronology of the Peisistratid “tyranny.” The question of military organization before the reforms of Cleisthenes is considered at some length in chapter  below. . Majority of inhabitants lived outside Athens: Thuc. ..; cf. Frost , . No plenary gatherings: Carter , . . On economic and political relations in early Attica, see e.g., Cassola , –; Rhodes , –, Manville , –. Cf. Connor , –, on traditions of local autonomy in Attica. . Rhodes  (–) and Manville  (–) provide suitably cautious, but nuanced, discussions of the various socioreligious organizations that prevailed in pre-Cleisthenic Attica. Broader surveys of the evidence for these associations can be found in Parker  (–) and Jones . See also the discussion at the beginning of chapter  below. Generally on phratries: e.g., Andrewes a; b; Lambert . Attic phratries before the reforms of Cleisthenes: Lambert , –. Territoriality of phratries: Hedrick . For speculation on the process by which µctive claims of kinship between landowners and retainers might have become established, see Frost , –. For further discussion of the Ionian tribes, see p.  in chapter . . See also the observations of Strauss (). More generally, on “regionalism” in archaic and classical Attica, see e.g., Sealey a; Mossé ; Osborne . . Mycenean uniµcation of Attica: Padgug ; Stubbings a, ; b, –. Cf. Polignac , –. Dark Age decentralization and localism: e.g., Sealey a; Mossé ; Snodgrass , –. “Internal colonization”: e.g., Whitley , –. . Spread of Protogeometric pottery: e.g., Snodgrass , . But cf. the pronounced mortuary variability in Late Geometric Attica (ca. – B.C.) noted in Morris , –. More valuable grave goods: Coldstream , –. Reuse of Mycenean tombs as sites for hero cults: Coldstream (). Snodgrass (, –) would see the es-

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tablishment of such hero cults in rural Attica as part of an attempt by new arrivals in these areas to assert µctive ancestral connections with the land, while Morris (, –) interprets them as expressions of resistance by longer-established elite inhabitants to colonial encroachments by the Athenian state. Antonaccio () would classify this reuse of Mycenean tombs simply as “tomb cult”— distinct from the “true” hero cult found at, say, the Menelaion in Laconia—and emphasizes the relative infrequency of the practice in Attica. Silver mining at Thorikos: Coldstream , . New sanctuaries: Morris , –; Osborne a, –. Morris argues that the new sanctuaries would have provided an “ideological underpinning to the newly emerging polis,” perhaps in apposition to the new national sanctuary established on the Acropolis at this time (cf. Snodgrass , –). Polignac () sees this kind of center-periphery pattern of cult behavior as a key index of the rise of the polis in Greece generally, though he admits (–) that it is not as easily visible in Attica as elsewhere. . These objections would also apply to Osborne’s effort (a) to show that cult activity at sites outside Athens in the seventh century should be seen as attempts by the center to assert claims to authority in the periphery. He suggests as a model the case of the genos of the Salaminioi, members of which, he proposes (), were “selected” in “around  B.C. or shortly after” to establish a cult site at Sounion and stake such a claim. But as Osborne himself admits (), material remains from Sounion for the early seventh century are negligible. In general, homogeneity of material culture between the center and the periphery may have a political signiµcance (see Morgan and Whitelaw ) but could also arise from straightforward migration and other less obviously political forms of intercourse between the two. Either way, evidence from as late as the classical period for the survival of major sources of cultural heterogeneity within Attica, whether relating speciµcally to cult (see, e.g., Mikalson ) or more broadly to identity (see Connor ), should caution us against reading too much signiµcance into isolated instances of homogeneity from much earlier periods. . For similar skepticism, see Manville , –. Archaeology has revealed only one substantial Dark Age structure in Athens, a small oval building known simply as the “Dark Age house” (see Burr ). Evidence is tenuous at best for a Late Geometric “national” temple on the Acropolis (see Snodgrass , –; cf. Wycherley , ; Hurwit , –), though the existence of a major sanctuary there at this time is not in doubt. Among proponents of a Dark Age synoecism, Diamant (, –) is one of the few to consider the nature of the “state” in Athens at this time. He argues that the “strong commercial foundations” laid in Athens during the period suggest that the contemporary state was sufµciently mature to have directed a complex process like uniµcation. However, of the three commercial developments he adduces in support of this claim, only one—apparent Athenian dominance in the µeld of ceramic production in Greece from the eleventh to the eighth centuries—can be identiµed securely before  B.C. . Doubts about a developed state apparatus in the seventh century: e.g., Hölscher , ; Whitley , . Morris (), who argues for the emergence of a uniµed polis in Attica in the eighth century, concedes that the initiative seems to have been abandoned in the seventh century. . See Manville , –; Frost , –. . Text of Draco’s homicide legislation: Stroud . The text is heavily restored, from a combination of a late µfth-century inscription (IG I3 , believed to include a republication of a seventh-century law) and quotations found among speeches of Demosthenes.

Notes to Pages 21–23

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Draco’s legislation as evidence for emerging community consciousness: Manville , –; cf. Frost , –. It should be noted that only the last two letters of the all-important term Athe–naion are securely attested. . Manville (, –) plainly makes this assumption. . I here discount the value of casual references, since there is too great a chance that they may be the product not of knowledge but of anachronistic assumption, as when, for example, Plutarch (Sol. ) tells us that Solon issued a ban on the export of all produce except olive oil from “Attica.” Later writers believed that Attica had been uniµed since the age of Theseus, so it would have been only natural for them to assume that such provisions as the export ban applied to the entire region. Manville (, ) conµdently asserts, “Athenaioi, as the word appears in Solon’s poetry, now µrmly meant the people of all Attika and the society that spanned it.” But as far as I can tell, he produces no conclusive evidence to support this claim. Moreover, in contrast to scholars who believe that citizenship in Athens before the reforms of Cleisthenes was administered through the phratries, Manville concedes (e.g., ) that there was probably no µxed or “centralized standard” for determining who was and who was not a member of the community before /. . Solonian Council of : AP ., ., .; Plut. Sol. .–. Solon’s political measures are discussed in more detail on pp. – in chapter . . For a view similar to my own, see Fornara and Samons , –. Fornara and Samons adduce a variety of evidence from Solon’s poems, including repeated references to “men of the city” (astoi), in support of their argument that Athenian political life at this time was conµned largely to those living within the plain of Athens and that the stasis Solon resolved was essentially an urban, rather than a regionwide, phenomenon. . Even after the reforms of Cleisthenes, the problems of directly governing the periphery from the center were not fully overcome. The institution of the “jurors among the villages” was, it seems, revived in / and again at the beginning of the fourth century (see AP ., .; Rhodes , ). Hipparchan herms: [Pl.] Hipparch. b–d; Hesych., s.v. Hipparkheios Herme–s; Harpoc., s.v. Hermai; Suda, s.v. Hermai. Altar of the Twelve Gods: Thompson and Wycherley , –, µg. , pl. a. The altar was set up during the archonship of Peisistratus, son of Hippias (Thuc. ..–), the date of which thus provides a terminus post quem for the herms (cf. Meritt , , no. .). Koropi herm: Kirchner and Dow , –. The Platonic Hipparchus (a–b) also mentions a herm seen “on the road to Steiria” on the southeast Attic seaboard. . See, e.g., Kolb ; Stahl ; Eder ; , –; Shapiro . Shapiro (loc. cit., ) admits that reliable evidence for this Religionspolitik is not especially extensive. The only Athenian cults that can be µrmly associated with Peisistratid innovations are those of Olympian Zeus, the Twelve Gods and Pythian Apollo. Cf. the remarks of Garland (, ) and the serious doubts expressed by Osborne (a, –). At the same time, although the character of the Great Panathenaia during this period was quite different from that of the classical era, it is possible that Peisistratus and/or his sons did develop the festival, adding contests in music and rhapsody (cf. Shapiro , ). The history of the Panathenaia down to the end of the archaic era is discussed in chapter  below; for the Eleusinian Mysteries, the City Dionysia, and the Brauronia, see chapter . . Those who argue for a rise in civic consciousness at this time include Stahl (), Eder (), and Manville (, –). Neleid genealogy: Hdt. ... The Peisistratids and Heracles: Boardman , . The evolution of the Theseus µgure in Athenian cul-

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ture is discussed in some detail on pp. – below. The family’s style of authority is well illustrated not only by Peisistratus’s own personal interventions in local affairs but also by the Hipparchan herms. Apparently, all the herms bore the legend “This is a monument of Hipparchus” [mnh`ma tovd¾ ïIppavrcou], followed by rather peculiar injunctions to moral behavior, like “Do not deceive a friend” (see [Pl.] Hipparch. 229a–b). Although the author of AP is clearly better disposed than most toward the Peisistratids, he also goes out of his way to stress the lengths to which the tyrant was apparently willing to go to keep ordinary Athenians out of politics (see AP 16.3–5). . The full text of the inscription (SEG X 431; Friedländer 1948, no. 135; Peek 1955, no. 1226; Richter 1961, no. 36, µg. ; Jeffery , no. ) can be found on p.  below. The epitaph is inscribed on a stepped base that was probably designed to support a stele. It was found at Sepolia, a northern suburb of Athens, just north of the Kolonos hill. Jeffery (, ) dates the inscription to ca. –. . Richter () assigns all of these remains to her “Sounion Group,” which she dates to ca. –. They include the “Dipylon head” and accompanying hand (Athens, NM , ; Richter , no. ), four fragments of a single kouros from the Agora (Agora, S , , , ; Richter , no. ), and a fragmentary head and body from the Northwest Gate area (Athens, NM ; Richter , no. ). . Surviving archaic stelai from the Kerameikos are cataloged in Jeffery , –. With varying degrees of conµdence, Jeffery would assign to Athenian cemeteries the remains of eight kouroi and korai from this period, though all are of uncertain provenance and/or function. Two items, a kouros and a kore (Athens, NM , ), were apparently recovered from Moschato in the Phaleron area, where no cemetery has yet been found, while the head of another possible kore (Brussels, Musée de Mariemont G), also from Phaleron, could belong to a sphinx. Four other items (Richter , nos. , , , ) may not actually be from Athens, and the last of the group, a miniature kouros measuring only  centimeters from shoulder to lower thigh, would hardly have made for an impressive grave monument even it was funerary. . See Jeffery , –, no. ; –, no. . The latter is dated to ca.  B.C., while the former may be a little earlier, though it features a punctuation device paralleled in a grafµto on a vase from ca. . . We have two kouros bases from ca. – (Athens, NM , ) and a kouros from the last years of the sixth century that was found built into the Piraeus Gate (Richter , no. ). . The µrst in the sequence, a kouros apparently from Anavyssos and now in New York (MM ..; Richter , no. ), dates probably to the s. The rest come from ca. –. All ten of these were found either in cemeteries or in areas that are known to have had functional cemeteries at the time. The instance from Vourva consists of a base with remnants of the feet of a kore. Otherwise, the “Berlin goddess” from Keratea and the “Phrasikleia” from Merenda are korai, and the rest are kouroi. I here list the µnd-spots of the statues in rough chronological order, including the locations of the statues and, where appropriate, their catalog numbers in Richter : Markopoulo (Athens, NM ; no. ), Kalyvia Kouvara (Athens, NM ; no. ), “near Sounion” (New York, MM ..; no. ), Keratea (“Berlin goddess”: Berlin, Antikensammlung ; see Jeffery , –), Merenda (kouros: Athens, NM ; “Phrasikleia”: Athens, NM ), Keratea (Athens, NM ; no. ), Vourva (Athens, NM ; see Jeffery , ),

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Anavyssos (?) (“Munich kouros”: Munich, Antikensammlung ; no. ), Anavyssos (“Anavyssos kouros”: Athens, NM ; no. ). Four other possible Attic kouroi from this period are referred to in Richter  (, nos. , –). . Also unlikely is the idea that Athenian graves might have been adorned with bronze kouroi, of which no traces now survive. The technology necessary for forging lifesize bronze images had barely been developed by the end of our period (cf. Mattusch , –). Clay molds for a bronze kouros-type statue of the mid–sixth century (Agora, S , ; Mattusch , –, µgs. .–) have been recovered from the area of the Apollo Patroos precinct in the Agora. However, the image was signiµcantly less than lifesize and, given the provenance, may have served as the cult statue for the small sacred structure that occupied the site at that time (see p. , in chapter  below). Generally, on the form and function of the kouros type, see e.g., Pollitt , –; Hurwit , –; Stewart , –. . Solonian sumptuary legislation: Plut. Sol. . Cf. Cic. Leg. ..; Kübler , . . See Anderson . . For individual family members, I follow the dynastic numeral system found in Davies (, – with table ). Family “headquarters” at Alopeke: e.g., Ar. Vesp. –; AP .; Hopper , –; Lewis , ; Davies , . Property holdings: Davies , . Registration at Agryle: Davies , ; Léve– que and Vidal-Naquet , , ,  n. . Registration at Xypete: Stamires and Vanderpool ; Davies , ; Bicknell , . Megacles I was archon at the time of the Cylonian conspiracy, which took place in one of four Olympic years between / and / (see Moulinier ; Cadoux , ; Rhodes , –). For even earlier times, a tradition is recorded (see Castor, FGrH  F) that a Megacles and an Alcmeon were respectively the sixth and the thirteenth of the life archons who succeeded the kings in Athens. Another tradition (see Harpoc., s.v. Alkmeo–nidai; Hesych., s.v. Alkmeo–nidai) reports that the family were descended “from the Alcmeon [who lived] at the time of Theseus” [ajpo; tou` ÆAlkmevwno~ tou` kata; Qhseva]. Some have doubted whether the Alcmeonids were among the city’s traditional elite, since they are not known to have controlled a major cult in Athens. But the archonship of Megacles I would seem to conµrm their Eupatrid status (cf. the comments of Thomas [, –] on traditions surrounding the family’s early history). . Sounion kouroi: Richter , –, nos. –, µgs. –. On the unprecedented scale and workmanship of these sculptures, see Stewart , ; Camp , . The case for an attribution to the Alcmeonids: Camp , . Three funerary kouroi: (a) New York, MM .. (Richter , no. ); (b) Munich, Antikensammlung  (Richter , no. ); (c) Athens, NM  (Richter , no. ). For further discussion of all this evidence, see Anderson . . Kroisos base and epitaph: Athens, NM ; Peek , no. ; Jeffery , –. Alcmeonid Lydian connections: Hdt. .. For the argument identifying the “Anavyssos kouros”—Kroisos base as an Alcmeonid monument, see Jeffery , ; Eliot , –. “Stele of Megacles”: New York, MM .; Richter , , no. ; Jeffery , –, no. . Peisianax base: Athens, EM ; Jeffery , –, no. . Jeffery (, ) suggests that the lettering on the “stele of Megacles” and the Peisianax base was carved by her “Mason B.” The ostrakon: Willemsen .

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. So Hopper (, –), Eliot (,  n. ), Davies (, ), and Bicknell (, ). As for the presumed political motives behind the move, the beneµts are not obvious. Would the family necessarily have gained by having its members split between three different tribes (Alopeke, Xypete, and Agryle were all in different city trittyes) or by locating its main branch at Alopeke, where many other prominent families (e.g., those of Aristides; Thucydides, son of Melesias; and the Kerykes) would also register? . Initial expulsion “in perpetuity” from Athens: AP ; cf. Hdt. .; Plut. Sol. .–; Thuc. ..–. For the date, see Rhodes , ; Camp , . Plutarch claims that the Alcmeonids, along with the bones of those who were responsible for the massacre and had since died, were expelled “beyond the borders” [uJpe;r tou;~ o{rou~] of Attica. But this detail is not reported in any earlier source and could easily be an anachronistic assumption based on knowledge of later practice. . The only recorded activities of the family during the forty years in question take place outside Attica. They include Alcmeon I’s command of a force in the First Sacred War (Plut. Sol. .), the help he offered the Lydians at Delphi (Hdt. .), his victory in the four-horse chariot race at Olympia in  (Hdt. .; Isoc. .; schol. P. Pyth. ), and the marriage of Megacles II to Agariste of Sikyon in ca.  (Hdt. .; cf. McGregor , –). Considering the unprecedented extravagance of the Sounion dedications and the cognate kouros, Camp’s suggestion (, ) that they were paid for from the lavish reward given to Alcmeon I by the Lydians for his help at Delphi (cf. Hdt. .) is especially attractive. This would give us a terminus post quem for the monuments, somewhere in the late s. Though it is widely thought that Lycurgus belonged to the Boutadai, that belief is based only on the identity of his name with that of the famous fourth-century politician. Assuming the belief to be correct, the sixth-century Lycurgus would be the family’s earliest known member (cf. Davies , –). . Defeat at Pallene and subsequent exile: AP .; Hdt. .–. Archonship of Cleisthenes in /: Meritt , , no. .; Meiggs and Lewis , no. . Kroisos monument aetiology: cf. Jeffery , ; Eliot , –. The proposed scenario might also explain why Alcmeonides, brother of Megacles II, dedicated his victory in a Panathenaic chariot race (presumably that of ; cf. Jeffery , ) to Apollo at the Ptoion sanctuary in Boeotia (IG I ) and not, as he had done for victories during the previous µfteen years, to Athena on the Acropolis (cf. Athens, EM ; Raubitschek , , no. ). Given the family’s interest in the sanctuary, it may be no coincidence that a kouros almost identical in date, style, and workmanship to the two later examples from the Anavyssos cemetery has also been recovered from the Ptoion (the “Ptoon ” kouros: Athens, NM ; Richter , no. ). All three statues are signature members of Richter’s “Anavyssos–Ptoon  Group.” . The Alcmeonids also seem to have endured a relatively brief third period of exile following the assassination of Hipparchus in . Whether they spent this time based again in the Anaphlystos area must remain an open question. However, from the point of view of the larger argument here, it may be signiµcant that they, along with other families who went into exile at the time, were apparently able to fortify a position at Leipsydrion—a location inside Attica, probably on the southern ×ank of Mount Parnes—in preparation for their armed resistance to Hippias (see AP .; Hdt. .; Isoc. .; Thuc. ..). Presumably, the family was still banished at the time of Cleisthenes’ well-known negotiations with Delphi in / (see AP .; Hdt. ..–.). Alcmeonid associations with Delphi and the Anaphlystos area at this and other times of exile might help to explain the relatively wide

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range of mythical, ritual, and historical links between Phocis and Attica (in particular, southern Attica) that have recently been cataloged and discussed by Camp (, –). . For a rather different narrative of Alcmeonid fortunes in the sixth century, see Fornara and Samons , –. Fornara and Samons believe that the µrst period of exile must have ended by the later s, when we hear of Alcmeon I leading a force of “Athenians” in the First Sacred War (see Plut. Sol. .). But as Frost () has shown, there is no need to believe that this or other military ventures before / were “ofµcial” actions of an Athenian citizen army. In view of Cleisthenes’ archonship in /, Fornara and Samons reject the tradition of the second exile entirely, contending that Herodotus (..) simply confused it with the third period of banishment following the assassination of Hipparchus. Thomas (, –) goes even further and doubts whether the Alcmeonids spent any signiµcant time in exile at all during the Peisistratid era. Certainly, the claim that they were in exile for the entire period (see Hdt. ..) was a politically expedient exaggeration. But despite the propensity of leaders to manipulate memory and oral tradition in µfth-century Athens, it seems highly unlikely that such a claim could have had no basis in fact. . Allusions to exiles during the sixth century: e.g., AP .; Hdt. .. Families with links to the periphery: Sealey b, ; Bicknell , –. . For further discussion of these and other possible examples, see Anderson . Herodotus’s discussion (.) of the Gephyraioi and their “rites established in the city” [hira en Athe–ne–isi hidrumena] takes place against the broader backdrop of the arrival in Greece and early history of the Kadmeioi, suggesting that these rites were believed to be of considerable antiquity. Themistocles himself is said (see Plut. Them. .) to have restored his family’s telesterion of Demeter and Kore at Phlya after damage in×icted by the Persians. He also founded a sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule at Melite (Plut. Mor. C–D; Them. .–), the deme where his urban residence was located (Dem. .; Plut. Them. .), and he had sacred property in Piraeus (IG II2 .), the site of his tomb (Diodorus FGrH  F; Paus. ..). His family’s conspicuous absence from the political scene before the µfth century has caused some to suspect that the Lycomidai must have “laid low” as opponents of the Peisistratids (see Davies , –; Shapiro , ). Exile seems a reasonable alternative explanation. . The fullest account of the Peisistratids’ history and genealogy can be found in two essays by Schachermeyr (a, b). Polemarch and Megara campaign: AP .; Hdt. ... Archonship in /: Paus. ..; Cadoux , ; Davies , . Solon and Peisistratus as relatives (apparently, their mothers were cousins): Diog. Laert. .; Heracleides Ponticus fr.  Wehrli; Hdt. ..; Plut. Sol. .; Davies , –,  with table . Solon and Peisistratus as lovers: Ael. VH .; AP .; Plut. Sol. .–. Peisistratus’s second marriage (see Davies , –) was to Timonassa, daughter of Gorgilos of Argos and exwife of the Cypselid dynast Archinus of Ambracia (AP .; cf. Hdt. ..). There is no direct evidence for horse rearing or chariot racing by the family. However, the only known anecdote (Hdt. ..–) about Hippocrates, father of Peisistratus, takes place at Olympia, and the recurrence of names preµxed with Hipp- in the family genealogy all but conµrms their interest in equine pursuits. Davies’s caution on the matter (, ), based on an argument from silence, seems unnecessary. . [Pl.] Hipparch. b (Peisistravtou . . . tou` ejk tw`n Filai>dw`n); Plut. Sol. . (Filai>dw`n . . . o{qen h\n Peisivstrato~). There was a tradition that associated Peisistratus with a temple in the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron. But our only source for the story is

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very late—the Lexicon compiled by the ninth-century Byzantine scholar-patriarch Photius (s.v. Brauro–nia)—and the only known temple at the site was probably not built until more than twenty years after Peisistratus’s death (see pp. – below.) Other possible evidence linking the family with the Brauron area has been discussed and dismissed by Lewis (, –). . Herodotus (..) calls the members of Peisistratus’s “party” the “men from beyond the hills,” or huperakrioi, while other sources, including AP (.), tend to describe them simply as “men of the hills,” or diakrioi. Both terms are believed to refer generally to the northeastern section of Attica. . For similar reasons, Lavelle (, ) has described Peisistratus’s diakria party as “a chimera.” First coup: AP .–; Hdt. ... Second coup: AP .; Hdt. ..–... Third coup: AP ; Hdt. ..–... . Archonship: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. ... Deme and ostracism: AP .; cf. Androtion, FGrH  F. Relative of the Peisistratids: AP .; Lyc. Leoc. ; Plut. Nic. .. Grandson of Hippias: Davies , ; cf. Rhodes , –. Direct descendant of Hippocrates I: Beloch –, :. . As Rhodes (, ) notes, the third tradition recorded by AP (.; cf. Athen. .)—that she was actually a foreigner, speciµcally a Thracian “garland-seller” (stephanopo–lis)—need not be taken seriously. Only marginally more credible is the story found in Cleidemus (FGrH  F) that she was married to one of Peisistratus’s sons. . Plato’s father’s family, like the Peisistratids, was one of a group of families who claimed to be Neleids descended from the early kings Codrus and Melanthus (Diog. Laert. .; Hdt. ..; Plut. Sol. .; cf. Davies , –, –). Plato’s mother, Periktione, belonged to another of these families, as a cousin of the philosopher-tyrant Critias, whose immediate family was believed to descend from Codrus and Melanthus through Dropides, archon in / (see Cadoux , ; Davies , –). . The author of AP was clearly not above such partisan manipulation of the facts. His astounding omission of Critias, a relative of Plato, from his account of the regime of the Thirty Tyrants was presumably motivated by similar concerns. Cf. Rhodes , –. . The position of Eleusis in this scheme is hard to establish. It seems that the Eleusinian mysteries, which featured a procession from Athens to Eleusis, were established at some point in the period –. However, this need not imply that Eleusinians were routinely considered Athenian citizens at that time, especially since emphasis on the Athenian identity of the festival did not begin until the end of the sixth century. See pp. – in chapter . . See AP .–; Hdt. .–. . See AP .–; Hdt. ., ..–.. Cleisthenes was presumably among the exiled Alcmeonids who mounted an armed resistance to Hippias at Leipsydrion, on the slopes of Mount Parnes, following the assassination of Hipparchus (see AP .; Hdt. .; Isoc. .; Thuc. ..). He was the son of Megacles by Agariste, daughter of Cleisthenes of Sikyon (see Hdt. .–), and his sister was brie×y married to Peisistratus himself (see AP .–.). Nothing further is securely known of the background of Isagoras. . Mobilizing mass support: Hdt. .. (Kleisqevnh~ . . . to;n dh`mon prosetairivzetai). From paraphrases in AP (proshgavgeto to;n dh`mon, .) and elsewhere in the historian’s own account (to;n ÆAqhnaivwn dh`mon . . . pro;~ th;n eJwutou` moi`ran proseqhvkato, ..), it seems that Herodotus’s distinctive phrase must mean something

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along the lines of “Cleisthenes . . . won the people over to his side.” I see no justiµcation here for Ober’s attempt (, –) to construe this phrase as evidence that the leader was “absorbed” into a popular movement for change. On the novelty of Cleisthenes’ political strategy, see, e.g., Hignett , –. . For a speculative, but plausible, attempt to reconstruct the form of the “reform bill” proposed by Cleisthenes in the Assembly, see Andrewes ; cf. Wade-Gery , –. . Ober (, ) provides a detailed reconstruction and analysis of the details of the coup. His arguments are addressed in more detail on pp. – below. I broadly agree with Ober’s chronological sequence, though as Curtis (Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet , xiii–xvii) and Raa×aub (b, –) point out, his argument that the reforms did not become a political reality until after Isagoras’s coup is not borne out by the sources. Archonship of Alcmeon and its signiµcance: Poll. Onom. .; Hignett , –; Rhodes , . . The fundamental works on the size and locations of the various demes and trittyes are Traill  and . Role of the demes in the reforms of Cleisthenes: Ostwald , ; , –. The number of demes remained a constant  down to / B.C. (see Traill , –, –). Introduction of “demotic” names: AP .. Deme self-government: Hopper . Deme assemblies: Haussoullier , –; Whitehead , –. Deme quotas in the council: Hignett , ; Rhodes , ; Traill , –, –; Whitehead , –. Cf. AP .. Importance of social diversity in the demes: especially Bradeen ; Martin , –, . Requirements for citizenship were made more stringent in /, when a law was passed (e.g., AP .) that required citizens to have two native-born Athenian parents. Whatever the motivations for the law (see e.g., Davies /), one of its effects, as Patterson (, –) notes, was to transfer the ultimate responsibility for determining citizenship eligibility from the demes to the central government in Athens. . Use of the lot in the assignment of trittyes to tribes: AP .. This report has met with some skepticism (see, e.g., Eliot , –; Siewert , –). A recent defense of the tradition has been provided by Ostwald (, ). On the heroes and cults of the new tribes, see chapter  of the present study. . See AP .. For discussion of the tradition of the Solonian Council of , see pp. – below. On the limited powers of the new council in its earliest phase, see Rhodes , –, . As Rhodes suggests, the division of the bouleutic year into ten prytanies, where each tribal contingent served in turn as the presiding committee, may not have occurred until after the reforms of Ephialtes in /, when the functions of the Council were considerably expanded. On the idea that participation in the Council of  was probably limited to members of the top three wealth classes, see Rhodes , ; Ostwald , ; Ostwald , –. Exclusion of poorer citizens will only have been encouraged, at least in the earliest phase of the Council, by the lack of any compensation for a year’s lost earnings and probably by the use of some form of election in the selection of councillors (see Rhodes , –, –). . Stability of the system throughout the classical period: Rhodes , –. Both the date of its introduction and its novelty are discussed in some detail on pp. – below. . On the varying numbers of demes in each trittys, see Traill , –. The classic discussion of the “anomalies” is in Lewis .

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. Gerrymandering and Alcmeonid self-interest: e.g., Lewis ; Forrest , –; Bicknell , –; ; Stanton . . Other features of the reforms are sometimes adduced in this connection. They are the use of the names of prominent families or clans as deme names (e.g., Boutadai and Philaidai) and the manipulation, occurring in probably more than one instance (e.g., Erechtheis), of the assignment of demes to trittyes in such a way as to ensure that a family who traditionally controlled the cult of the eponymous hero of one tribe would themselves be members of a different tribe. See Lewis , –. . The suggestion that some trittyes were designed to neutralize the in×uence of powerful local organizations need not necessarily contradict the hypothesis of Siewert () that the trittys system as a whole was conceived primarily with military considerations in mind. Assuming that each trittys was to provide a regimental company, or lokhos, for the new national army, Siewert believes that the principle underlying the assignment of demes to trittyes may have been their proximity to a common road to Athens, thus facilitating military mobilization. But cf. Rhodes  and Ostwald ,  n. . Develin and Kilmer (, –) suggest that such “enclaves” as Probalinthos were a post-Cleisthenic development, the result of later efforts to produce a more even distribution of citizens among different trittyes and tribes. . Other prominent families registered at Alopeke included the Kerykes and the families of Aristides, Thucydides, son of Melesias, and Lysandros, a later ally of Themistocles. Xypete, a suburb of Piraeus, was linked to Melite and Daidalidai—the former located within and the latter just outside the city walls of Athens—while Agryle was placed in a trittys that, to judge from later bouleutic quotas, was dominated by the much larger Halimous, some way to the south. . See also Kinzl , . . See especially Gomme , –; Bradeen . . It might be argued that the reforms were designed essentially to repair the lingering wounds of disunity wrought by the intraregional stasis of the mid–sixth century. But as we saw earlier, such stasis as there was at that time was not actually the convulsive panAttic con×ict that our sources describe. . Cf. the similar conclusion reached by Fornara and Samons (, –), who also seem to believe that inhabitants of the countryside had not been routinely enrolled as Athenian citizens before /. Even Manville (), who goes to great lengths to show that it was Solon who “created the polis” (), later concedes, “It was not until the reforms of Kleisthenes in / that citizenship was brought to the local level of every citizen, and not until then that the town and countryside of Attika were wholly uniµed, making fuller and more tangible what Solon µrst intended” (). . For discussion of the relevant passages, see Rhodes , –; Manville , esp. –. Rhodes concedes that Aristotle’s reference to resident aliens “tells us little” and that the numbers of immigrant artisans and Peisistratid mercenaries will not have been large. In any case, it looks like many of the artisans may have come from locations elsewhere in Attica itself, rather than from outside the region. Plutarch (Sol. ) tells us how Solon speciµcally insisted that those who wished to move from rural areas to the city should take up a trade, and Solon apparently required the Areopagus to enforce this directive. Meanwhile, despite the relatively small numbers of “men of impure birth” who were probably present in Athens at the time, Manville (loc. cit.) sees the diapse–phismos as a “reign of ter-

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ror” (), which he believes would have engendered widespread anxiety about citizen status. This anxiety, he suggests, helps to explain the popularity of Cleisthenes’ reforms, since they would have offered the security of “a new legal deµnition of citizenship” (). . See AP ., ., .; Hdt. .. Cf. Arist. Pol. b–.

chapter  . Of course, some written “laws” from the archaic period were still extant in Athens in the later µfth century. One thinks especially of those on the wooden axones in the Prytaneion and on the stone kurbeis in the Stoa Basileios (see Stroud ). But it was probably no longer possible by this time to distinguish easily between the laws of, say, Solon and those of Cleisthenes. The reference to Cleitophon’s rider (see p.  in this chapter) at AP . suggests that the exact contents and wording of Cleisthenes’ “traditional laws” [patrious nomous] were no longer easily recoverable in  B.C. And even if extant laws from the archaic period did occasionally allude to political institutions, they clearly did not address what we would consider to be constitutional matters in any systematic or comprehensive fashion, thus making possible the vigorous debates over the nature of the “traditional mode of government” (patrios politeia) that arise in the later µfth century (see, pp. – below). On the indiscriminate use of the term “laws” (nomoi) in classical sources to refer to the entire range of recorded state regulations (the aggregate of which made up the politeia), from constitutional prescriptions to legislation on matters like assault and battery, see Finley , –. . For good discussion of the problem, see Meier , –. . Democracy at deme-level: e.g., Forrest , –; Ober , –; Meier , –. . The principal items of evidence for this argument can be found in Lewis . For the argument, see e.g., Finley , –. For insightful critique, see Kearns , –. . For discussion of the passage and relevant bibliography, Rhodes , –. Despite some ×aws, Fuks  still provides the most thorough analysis of these developments. Cf. Jacoby , –; Finley , –. Earlier sources (e.g., Ar. Nub. ; Hdt. .–; cf. ..; ..; ..) characterize Solon as a poet, lawgiver and general sage who was sympathetic to ordinary Athenians. Solon himself alludes to political interventions in his own poems, but there are no unambiguous references to what we would consider constitutional change, let alone to democracy. Nor is there a compelling reason to believe that anything we would recognize as a constitutional prescription could be found among whatever genuine Solonian laws were still extant in the later µfth century. For further discussion of the laws and the poems, see pp. – later in this chapter. . E.g., Aeschin. .; Dem. .–; .–; Hyp. .–; Isoc. .–; .–. For a good overview of the role of Solon in fourth-century Athenian political memory, see Fuks , esp. –. Cf. also Ruschenbusch , –; Mossé ; Hansen . However, Ruschenbusch’s efforts to downdate Solon’s emergence as a major “democratic” reformer to ca.  are not persuasive. . E.g., Dem. .–; .; Isoc. .; .–; Theophr. Char. .. Generally on the origins and development of this tradition, see Ruschenbusch , –. It is true that Thucydides (..–) portrays Theseus as an assertive autocrat. But his account of the

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synoecism of Attica centers upon the establishment by the hero of a single city hall [prutaneion] and council chamber [bouleutêrion] for the whole region, public buildings which both seem to presuppose a broader participation in the political and symbolic life of the polis. See p.  for further discussion of this passage. . A somewhat similar overall approach can be found in Aristotle’s Politics. The nature of Solon’s constitution is discussed at b–a, where it is likewise suggested that the democracy he founded was based on only minimal gains for ordinary citizens: the rights to serve in the law courts, elect magistrates, and hold formal reviews (euthunein) of their periods in ofµce. Elsewhere (b–) Aristotle credits Cleisthenes with “desiring to expand the democracy” [boulomenos auxe– sai te– n demokratian], and would include the resulting regime among examples of the most extreme form of democracy, the last and least commended of the four categories of democracy he identiµes. . Different elements in this sequence are stated with minor variations at Isoc. .; .–, , ; .–. For discussion of the various fourth-century interpretations of the “liberation” of Athens, Thomas , –. More generally, on the contribution of Isocrates’ assumptions about Athenian constitutional history to his political outlook, see Wallace , –. . In this study, I use the term “ofµcial memory” to mean the sum of the historical narratives and traditions whose “authenticity” was permanently and publicly endorsed by the state, usually through art, ceremonies, and inscriptions. Though not necessarily coherent or internally consistent, it should be distinguished sharply from, say, “popular memory,” which might also include any number of stories omitted from or contradicted by the “ofµcial” version(s) of history. See Thomas , esp. –. . Heroic era “democracy” in funeral orations: Dem. .; Lys. .–; Pl. Menex. B–A. Euphranor’s mural: Paus. ..–. As Castriota (, ) notes, the presence of the mural in a building associated with “freedom” (eleutheria) is presumably signiµcant. The statue of Solon is µrst alluded to at Dem. .. For the location, see Paus. ... . Later references to Theseus as founder of democracy: e.g., Diod. ..; Marm. Par. FGrH  A; Plut. Thes. ., .–.. Allusions to Solon in this role are also found in several post-classical texts, e.g., Plut. Sol. .; Mor. A. . At .., Pausanias refers his readers to the text of Herodotus if they wish to know the name of the man who “established ten tribes instead of four and substituted new names for the old ones.” Other references to Cleisthenes from the Roman era are listed in Develin and Kilmer , – nn. –. None of these present him unambiguously as the founder of democracy; some recall him vaguely as a “lawgiver” in the tradition of Solon. . For a representative sample of the wide range of opinions on this issue, see the essays of Wallace, Ober, Raa×aub, and Eder in Morris and Raa×aub . . Others, too, have suspected that Cleisthenes’ reforms must have involved constitutional and/or judicial measures that, for some reason, are not reported by our sources (see, e.g., Busolt , –; Bonner and Smith , –). Hignett (, –) and Rhodes (, ) are more skeptical. . Cleisthenes’ reforms ratiµed in the Assembly: e.g., Busolt ,  with n. ; Hignett , –; Wade-Gery , esp. –; Andrewes ; Rhodes , ; Ostwald , –; , –. Reforms establish precedent for ratiµcation of legisla-

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tion in the Assembly: e.g., Ostwald , . Ober’s rather different understanding of the phrase ton de–mon prosetairizetai (, –) is discussed below on pp. ,  n., and  n.. . Cf. also Ael. VH .; Philoch., FGrH  F. Because of the time lag between the reported date of its introduction and the earliest known instance of the use of the procedure (the ostracism of Hipparchus, son of Charmus, in /), some have doubted whether ostracism was, as AP claims, a Cleisthenic innovation. But as Thomsen (, –), drawing on Dover  and Sumner , has shown, the one ancient source that appears to contradict the testimony of AP (Harpoc., s.v. Hipparkhos) merely misrepresents the account of Androtion (cf. FGrH  F), the very same source most probably used by AP. It may, in any case, be entirely possible, as Kagan (, –) suggested, that the two accounts do not contradict each other after all. Among those supporting a Cleisthenic introduction of the procedure are Kagan (), Thomsen (, –), Jeffery (, –), Rhodes (, –), Ostwald (, –), and Manville (, – n. ). . The practice was understood by ancient authorities—and no doubt advertised at its inception— as an “antityrant” measure, and some scholars (see, e.g., Ober , ) are content to take this explanation at face value. Others, such as Rhodes (, ) and Ostwald (, ), view ostracism in more systemic terms, seeing the procedure as designed to stabilize the political process by forestalling any possible stalemate between two rival courses of action. More concretely and perhaps more realistically, Kagan (, –) contends that it was primarily intended from the very start to be used as the political weapon it so obviously became, whereby the dominant politician in any given year could strengthen his position by persuading the demos to expel an opponent. Cf. also Martin , –. For further discussion of the rationale behind ostracism, see p.  later in this chapter. . This interpretation of the passage is supported by, among others, Ostwald (,  n. ), Nakategawa (), and Manville (, ). Grifµth () believes ise–goria to be an Ephialtic innovation. For a somewhat different interpretation of this passage, see p.  below. . The claim is seen in the opening formula “the demos has resolved . . .” (e[docsen to`i devmoi . . . ). Recognition of the Council of ’s role in the deliberative process (i.e., e[docsen te`i bole`i kai; to`i devmoi . . . ) did not become standard until after the Persian Wars. . The phrase used repeatedly is a[neu to` devmo to` ÆAqenaivon plequvonto~. See especially Wade-Gery /; for more recent discussion and bibliography, Ostwald , – with n. . . The earliest of the six cases that certainly involved consideration of the death penalty was that brought by Xanthippus against Miltiades for his “deception of the Athenians” in  B.C. According to Herodotus (.), Xanthippus prosecuted Miltiades, “impeaching him on a capital charge before the demos” [thanatou hupagago– n hupo ton de– mon], and the same “demos” later saw µt to reduce the penalty to a µne of µfty talents. Ostwald sees the shift of µnal jurisdiction in such cases away from the Areopagus to the demos as an extension of the principal of ephesis (referral, appeal) introduced by Solon (see AP .; Plut. Sol. .), whereby a citizen could refer a verdict issued by an archon for reconsideration before a popular court, presumably the Heliaia. The demos assumed control

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over the entire prosecution process for crimes against the state after the reforms of Ephialtes in /. . For an opposing view, contending that the Council of  and the Assembly functioned merely “as an institutionalised check or counterweight” to the power of the Areopagus and archons all the way down to /, see Raa×aub a, –. It may be the case, as Raa×aub states, that the latter continued to supervise and scrutinize ofµceholders down to the late s. But political leadership in Athens did not, at this or any other time, necessarily depend on the holding of any particular ofµce. Even for those leaders who held ofµce before the reforms of Ephialtes, one wonders if the kind of ongoing accountability exercised by the Assembly, to which all politicians were subject, was not already more politically signiµcant than any formal accountability procedure. . See especially Hignett , –. Testimonia for all known “laws of Solon” have been assembled by Ruschenbusch (). . It is striking, for example, that Herodotus presents Solon simply as a traditional lawgiver and sage. For this and other reasons, Hignett (, –) argues that the whole tradition of Solon as a major political reformer was a late µfth-century development. Ruschenbusch (; , –, –, –) is similarly skeptical and would date this development as late as the mid-s. Other skeptics include Hansen (; , –) and Mossé (), who offers an interesting analysis of the creation of the “myth” of Solon as the “founding father” of Athenian democracy. Those more credulous of the tradition include Stroud (, –), Rhodes (, –), Manville (,  n. ), Murray (, –), and Wallace (, esp. –). . See Jacoby , –, –; Raubitschek , ; Camp , . . The introduction or standardization of the four wealth classes at this time (discussed later in this chapter) must imply the existence of a relatively well-deµned and stable community. This community’s sense of itself will only have been reinforced by the importation of foreign-born slaves after Solon’s abolition of debt bondage for Athenians (see Manville , ). The possible introduction at this point of laws regulating the conduct of “outsiders” (xenoi) in Athens (see, e.g., Dem. .) indicates that there was now some means of distinguishing such individuals from natives, while the forfeit of citizen rights (atimia) incurred by those who remained neutral in times of stasis (see AP .; Bers, ) clearly presupposes the existence of such rights. But whatever criteria did exist for determining citizenship, Manville himself (, e.g., ) doubts whether they yet amounted to any kind of “centralized standard.” . Lambert (, –) has argued that citizen enrollments before  were administered through the “phyle/trittys/naukrary structure,” though he acknowledges the limitations of the evidence. Since the phratries certainly existed before Cleisthenes’ reforms and played a role in the registration of citizens thereafter (cf. Lambert , –), it is widely thought that they were responsible for the administration of citizenship in earlier times. But as Manville repeatedly stresses, we should not imagine that µxed, standardized procedures for registration were yet in place. . In general, I have no difµculty believing that most of Solon’s reforms were passed during the year of his archonship and that in this same year he was appointed as mediator (diallakte–s) to resolve the ongoing social unrest (see Rhodes , –). . Arist. Pol. a–; cf. b–. The author of AP tells us (.) that members of the lowest class, the thetes, were now entitled to attend the Assembly, though he also in-

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sists (.) that magistrates were selected by lottery at this time. For discussion of the con×ict here with Aristotle’s account, see Rhodes , –; Rhodes favors the testimony of AP. . Those who favor a Solonian Council of  include Rhodes (, –; , –), Jeffery (, –), Ostwald (, – n. ), and Manville (,  n. ). Hansen (b, –; , –; , ) is more circumspect. In perhaps the strongest statement to date in support of seeing Solon as the founding father of Athenian democracy, Wallace (, ) vigorously argues that he “gave the demos by law the power to control the government in Athens” through the Assembly, the Council of , and the law courts. Among those who doubt the existence of the Council of , Hignett (, –) presents the fullest case. See also Sealey a, –. . The only possible evidence for such a council during the period between the reforms of Solon and those of Cleisthenes comes in a late reference to developments in ca. /. We learn from Diogenes Laertius (.–) that Peisistratus enjoyed the support of “the council” when he confronted Solon on the ×oor of the Assembly prior to his occupation of the Acropolis. But the historicity of this episode is questionable to say the least (cf. Rhodes , –). . As Hignett (, ) also notes, this tradition will likewise have appealed to opponents of oligarchy, who would have found in it “a Solonian anticipation of the Council of , the citadel of the developed democracy.” . Cf. Wallace , . . A good illustration of ancient misapprehensions about the age of Agora buildings is provided by AP ., where the author imagines the Stoa Basileios, another structure erected in ca.  B.C., to have been in use in Solonian times. Restoration work on both the stoa and the Old Bouleuterion after the Persian sack, along with the self-consciously traditional features incorporated into their original design (see pp. – below), will only have encouraged later perceptions of them as “antique,” pre-Cleisthenic buildings. . See Meiggs and Lewis (, no. ). The inscription is assumed to concern contemporary arrangements on Chios itself. The text refers only to a “popular council” [bolh; dhmosivh] (C.–, –), but the speciµcation is generally thought to presuppose the existence of another, more aristocratic form of council. Hignett (, ) describes the inscription’s value as evidence for contemporary arrangements in Athens as “manifestly inconclusive,” before going on to note how the Ionians of Asia Minor “were politically mature enough to experiment with constitutional novelties which would have been incongruous in a community just emerging from aristocratic control.” . The suggestion that Plutarch here draws on an originally Solonian metaphor was µrst made by Schömann (, ). . The case for seeing this “council” as the new Council of  has recently been restated by Chambers (, –). Hignett (, –) makes the case also but concludes, like Sealey (a,  n. ), by opting for the Areopagus. Those who believe it was in fact the Council of  include Rhodes (, –; , ), Ostwald (, – n. ), and Wallace (, ). Argument for the existence of a pro tempore Council of  before Cleomenes’ intervention: e.g., Hignett , ; Andrewes , –. . The four wealth classes: AP .–; cf. Arist. Pol. a–. Plutarch (Sol. .–) indicates that the system of wealth classes was a Solonian innovation, contradicting AP’s claim (.) that it already existed. Most believe that at least three of the four categories—all

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except the pentakosiomedimnoi—already existed in some form but were now simply invested with a new level of signiµcance (see, e.g., Rhodes , ; Andrewes , ; Manville ,  n. ). Restriction of leading ofµces to the top two classes: AP .; Arist. Pol. a–. Right of thetes to attend the Assembly: AP .. AP states that thetes were entitled to sit in dikaste–ria, though the term is more than likely anachronistic for this period. Treasurers were still chosen only from the ranks of the pentakosiomedimnoi in the fourth century (see AP .), while zeugitai, the third category, were not eligible for archonships until the early s (see AP .). . Solon’s seisakhtheia (shaking off of burdens) seems to have consisted of two basic measures (see AP .): a ban on the lending of money on personal security (danizein epi tois so–masin), a measure probably intended to assist ailing independent smallholders; and a cancellation of debts (khreo–n apokopai), which would have released the hekte–moroi (cf. AP .) from their obligation of giving up a sixth of their produce to a landlord. Cf. the similar conclusions reached by Rhodes (, –) and Manville (, –). The introduction of ephesis: AP .; Plut. Sol. .–. The Heliaia is widely believed to have been a plenary meeting of the demos sitting as a law court—in effect, the judicial equivalent of the Assembly (see MacDowell , –; Rhodes , ; , ; Ostwald , ). On the anachronism of the term dikaste–ria for this period, see, e.g., Rhodes , . On the intrusion of fourth-century constitutional preoccupations here, see Raa×aub a, . . As evidence for the nature of political arrangements in Athens before the time of Solon, the account of the “Draconian constitution” in AP  should clearly be discounted. The authenticity of this “constitution” has long been doubted (see, e.g., Linforth , –, –; Hignett , –; Sealey , –). For an interesting argument that the Areopagus functioned only as a homicide court before Solon’s reforms, thereafter assuming broader powers and supplanting an earlier aristocratic council, see Wallace , –. . Solon appears to use the word de–mos exclusively to refer to the “lower orders.” See Lewis . Cf. Larsen , ; Wallace , . Throughout this section, I follow the text and numbering of poems found in West . . On this and other images in the poems (cf. ., .–) that emphasize his powerful, but nonaligned, stance in the con×ict, see Loraux . . Generally on this notion of “justice,” see Lloyd-Jones , esp. , , –, –, –, –. . On the milk metaphor, see Stinton , –. . Wallace (, ) acknowledges the problems raised for his view of Solon by the unambiguously impartial and often outright conservative sentiments expressed in many of the poems. He tries to get around these by suggesting that the performance of the poems before aristocrats at symposia would have required Solon to present his reforms as being more moderate than they actually were. . Ancient sources are unanimous that the Peisistratids worked within existing constitutional arrangements (see AP ., ., ; Hdt. ..; Thuc. ..–), though not all modern observers are ready to accept this testimony (see, e.g., Berve , :). AP . notes that Solon’s laws had fallen into disuse under the tyranny. It appears that no archons were elected for the years / and / and that Damasias, elected to the ofµce in /, held on to it for more than another year before being forcibly removed and replaced by a

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temporary board of ten men (see AP .–; Rhodes , –). Throughout the next section I again follow the chronology established by Rhodes (; , –) for all dates. . The author of AP clearly had access, direct or indirect, to an archon list like the fragmentary document from ca.  found in the Agora (Meiggs and Lewis , no. ), and he reports no anarkhia for these years. From references in AP and elsewhere, Cadoux (, ) assigns µve archons to this period: Komeas (/), Hegestratos (/), Hegesias (/), Euthydemos (/), and Erxikleides (/). . For a discussion of the evidence relating to the foundation of the Great Panathenaia, see pp. –. . Armed occupation of the Acropolis: AP .; Hdt. ... First “tyranny”: AP .; Hdt. ... Rhodes (, ) believes it probably lasted only for “a few months.” . For ancient accounts of this well-known incident, see AP .; Hdt. .; Polyaenus, Strat. ..; Val. Max. ... The most in×uential modern work on the episode is still the  essay by Connor, which contains a fairly full discussion of earlier scholarship and eliminates any lingering doubts about historicity. Intimations of “sacred marriage”: Gernet , . Kingship ritual analogy: Burkert , –; cf. Connor , . Peisistratus as Heracles: Boardman , –. Parallels with Odysseus: Else , –. . Herodotus (..) and AP (.) agree that Megacles initiated the scheme by “sending a message” to the exiled Peisistratus. Modern observers willing to recognize that Alcmeonid interests must have played a role in the episode include Berve (, :–), Kinzl (, ), Fornara and Samons (, –, ), and Lavelle (, –). . Marriage to Timonassa: AP .–. Though the date of Peisistratus’s second marriage was a subject of ancient dispute, the marriage seems to have taken place during Peisistratus’s µrst period of exile, in “c.  or very soon after” (Davies , –). Given that one thousand Argives apparently helped Peisistratus to defeat the Alcmeonids at Pallene (see AP .; cf. Hdt. ..), Megacles’ wariness about his rival’s relations with Argos would prove to be entirely justiµed. One can only suppose that the damage caused to these relations by the brief marriage alliance with the Alcmeonids was not ultimately fatal. Dissolution of Peisistratus’s third marriage, ostensibly on the grounds of nonconsummation: AP .; Hdt. ..–. Despite AP’s chronology, Peisistratus’s return to Athens between periods of exile was evidently very short (see Rhodes , ), lasting perhaps no more than a few weeks. . In Herodotus (..–), the chariot is preceded by heralds announcing that Athena is “restoring” [katagei] Peisistratus “to her own Acropolis,” but Herodotus does not suggest that the “goddess” actually drove the chariot. . Herodotus (..) describes how Megacles and Peisistratus dressed up Phye as Athena, put her in the chariot, and together “drove into the city” [e– launon es to astu]. AP (.) is more speciµc, stressing that Megacles “adorned the woman to look like a goddess” [te– n theon apomime– samenos to– i kosmo– i], then “led her [into the city] with him [i.e., Peisistratus]” [suneise– gagen met’ autou]. Frost (, –) also emphasizes the role played by “Athena” in the ceremony, though he still believes that Megacles was helping Peisistratus to take control of Athens rather than the other way around. Connor (, ), meanwhile, agrees that the ceremony implies the return of Athena “to her proper place and traditional role as Athens’ protector” after a period of withdrawal from the city. But he nevertheless insists that the spectacle itself should be seen as an “eloquent” reversal of an “ancient kingship ritual,” which helped afµrm “the establishment of a new civic order” under Peisistratus.

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. For concise recent discussion of the remains and issues of chronology, provenance, and interpretation, see Shapiro , –; Hurwit , –. Arguments in favor of locating the “Bluebeard temple” on the Arkhaios Neos foundations: e.g., Schuchhardt /; Plommer ; Beyer ; Beyer and Preisshofen . For further discussion of the “Bluebeard temple,” see pp. ,  n.. . Dinsmoor (, –) suggests that the temple was known as the “Hekatompedon,” a title later borne by the Parthenon, its putative successor. A decree dating from the mid-s and inscribed on two metopes from the “Bluebeard temple” (IG I3 ) distinguishes between a neo–s and a hekatompedon, though it is not clear whether the latter name refers to a temple or to an open precinct. Dinsmoor’s reconstruction is supported by, among others, his son (Dinsmoor , –) and Ridgway (, ); according to Childs (,  n. ), it “appears to be regaining popularity at this time.” It is also favored by Korres (a, ), whose recent efforts to investigate beneath the platform of the Parthenon have revealed the existence of as yet unidentiµed archaic materials. . It is true, as Sinos () has argued, that great efforts seem to have been invested in making “Athena” conform to the particular image of the armed goddess that had come to dominate her iconography in the late s. But for all this “authenticity” and the colorful details about awestruck onlookers added by our sources, it is very hard to believe that Megacles did in fact intend to deceive the Athenians into thinking they were witnessing a real divine epiphany. Our records of Greek epiphanies, which come from all periods of antiquity, suggest that the ancients believed gods were most likely to appear to them in times of sleep or extreme stress (especially during battles), or in marginal, out-of-the-way locations. And in the vast majority of these instances, deities appear only to chosen individuals or to small groups of people. Few, then, would have been taken in by an attempt to stage an epiphany in the middle of a city before thousands of onlookers. Festival processions with mortals dressed as divinities: e.g., Hdt. . (Libya); Paus. .. (Patrai). . Peisistratus’s activities during his second spell in exile: AP .; Hdt. ..–. The Alcmeonids erected at least one major dedication in Athens during this same period, a thank offering to Athena on the Acropolis for athletic victories by Alcmeonides (Raubitschek , , no. ). . See Hurwit , –, for a good survey and discussion of the Acropolis material record for the second quarter of the sixth century. The evidence is summarized on pp. – below. . Wallace (, –) acknowledges that there is precious little evidence for popular involvement in government during the µfty or so years after Solon’s reforms. He suggests that “once their immediate grievances had been resolved, . . . the people went back to farming . . . and did not greatly care if the aristocracy sought to maintain its traditional leadership role.” . The care taken by the Peisistratids to ensure that ofµces were held by family members is identiµed by Thucydides (..) as one of the relatively few extraordinary features of their regime. But even this kind of behavior was probably an established practice among leaders in earlier times. . Some scholars maintain that the archons and the Areopagus retained effective control over the state until the reforms of Ephialtes in the late s, their authority only somewhat tempered by the growing power of the Assembly and the Council (see, e.g., Ostwald , , –; Meier , , ; Raa×aub a, –) . There can be no question that

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the two popular bodies would come to enjoy wider powers in later years. But the key issue is where policy and legislation were determined, and it is very hard to believe that a probouleutic council might have been established in / if its function was merely to forward decisions already made by archons and Areopagites for token µnal approval in the Assembly. The relocation of the center of political gravity in Athens away from the old site (to the northeast of the Acropolis) to the Agora area (see chap. ), along with Herodotus’s account of Aristagoras’s visit to Athens in , all but proves that the political process was now µrmly rechanneled through the new ekkle–sia/boule– complex. . For discussion of the importance to later Athenian democracy of this ongoing, “informal” accountability, as distinct from formal procedures, such as euthunai, see Finley , –; , –; Ober , –. . For a stimulating and wide-ranging discussion on the rationale behind ostracism, one that in some ways resembles my own, see Forsdyke . . Coinage of the term de–mokratia after the Persian Wars, probably in the late s or s: e.g., Hansen ; Raa×aub a, –. Isonomia as the organizing principle and goal of Cleisthenes’ reforms: e.g., Larsen ; Ostwald , –, –; Sealey ; Rhodes , ; Bleicken , –, –; Raa×aub . On the emergence of this and other iso- compounds in aristocratic discourse of the archaic period, see Raa×aub . . Further criticism can be found in Curtis’s foreword to Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet  (xiii–xvii) and in a series of papers by Raa×aub (, a, b). Curtis’s objections are addressed largely to a number of internal inconsistencies in Ober’s argument and to the inability of his limited evidence (taken mostly from Herodotus and AP) to support the weight of his claims. Evidential inadequacies are also pointed out by Raa×aub, whose primary concern is to show that the major “point of rupture” in the history of Athenian democracy were the reforms of /, not those of /. . Regarding Ober’s interesting comparison of his “revolution” with events in France in , we might note that the French equivalent of thetes were not fully and permanently enfranchised until , nearly a hundred years after the storming of the Bastille. . As far as I can tell, the nearest thing to evidence for the “demotic vision” comes from Herodotus’s description (.) of the demos (or part of the demos) besieging the Acropolis ta auta phrone–santes. This phrase is most naturally taken to mean “united in purpose” or, if alluding to the resistance of the Council mentioned a little earlier, “with the same intent [as the bouleutai]” (cf. Raa×uab b, ). We might note that Herodotus (..) uses an almost identical phrase (twjuto; fronhvsante~) elsewhere to describe how Megacles and Lycurgus, “united in purpose,” decided to put an end to Peisistratus’s µrst “tyranny.” In sum, Ober’s proposal (, ) that the phrase ta auta phrone–santes “supports the idea of a generalized and quite highly developed civic consciousness among the masses” seems exceptionally strained. Similarly strained is his attempt to read Herodotus’s distinctive phrase Kleisthene–s . . . prosetairizetai ton de–mon (..) as evidence for the view that the leader was “absorbed” into a popular movement for change. From paraphrases elsewhere in Herodotus (ton Athe–naio–n de–mon . . . pros te–n heo–utou moiran prosethe–kato, ..) and in AP (Kleisthene–s . . . prose–gageto ton de–mon, .) it is clear that Cleisthenes, not the demos, was seen by both authors as the active principle behind the transformation and that Cleisthenes “won the demos/Assembly over to his side,” rather than the other way around. There may have been a popular movement for change at this time, but there is no unambiguous evidence for such in our sources.

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. Anticipating this objection, Ober (, ) cites a number of studies that appear to favor his view that the evolution of such a vision over the course of the sixth century is at least conceivable. Some of these works (e.g., Morris ) posit an emerging egalitarian strain in elite values during the archaic period, while others (e.g., Manville ) try to trace the growth of “citizen self-consciousness” in Athens during and after the Solonian era. Quite clearly, some sections of the Greek elite had become more receptive to the idea of popular participation in politics by the end of the sixth century, and some wealthier citizens in Athens may even have come to share an inchoate form of collective consciousness with their poorer fellows before /. But neither of these developments comes close to explaining how nonelites were now able to organize themselves and form their own group interest and identity, let alone evolve an independent political vision or agenda. . Even after the transformation of /, there is precious little evidence that nonelites were capable of developing and articulating their own distinctive agenda. I broadly agree with Eder’s () overview of political evolution in Athens, which insists that elite domination of politics in Athens continued at least to the end of the µfth century. . Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (–) recalls the siege patriotically as a hoplite assault on a Spartan occupying force, conveniently ignoring the presence of Isagoras and other Athenians among the besieged. There is, of course, no need to believe that the siege was really a fully coordinated military action. But the Lysistrata was written for a mass audience, and its failure to recall the participation of citizens of subhoplite class does not encourage us to believe that the event itself was quite the spontaneous “leaderless riot” that Ober portrays. . For a full discussion of the genesis of the tradition of the Tyrannicides, see chapter . . Eder () would date the establishment of democracy “in the fullest sense” even later. He claims that “democracy reached its fully developed form” in the fourth century, “because politics by then had become the people’s affair, while in the µfth century the demos had been engaged primarily in the affairs of competing aristocrats” (). . For an interesting attempt to trace the evolution of an egalitarian “middling ideology” in archaic Greece, see Morris . For a critique of some of Morris’s claims and a more cautious approach to the evidence, see Robinson , –; Robinson discusses evidence for the emergence of democratic regimes in a wide range of Greek states between the late seventh century and the end of the classical period.

chapter  . For the historical evolution of the Agora area down to the beginning of the µfth century, I generally follow the chronology found in Shear’s extremely valuable  article. His account is broadly accepted by, among others, Camp (), Castriota (, ), Ober (, –), and Hurwit (, ). Lately, it has also been embraced and elaborated by Rausch (, –). For a critique, see Raa×aub b, –. . Clearance and redevelopment: Shear , –; , –; Camp , –. . Building C: Thompson , –. Despite its modest scale ( by  m.), some scholars have thought that Building C, from the early sixth century, may have housed the Solonian Council of . See, e.g., Thompson , –. Cf. Boersma , ; Travlos , –; Thompson and Wycherley , –. The two shrines, located on the sites of the later precincts of Apollo Patroos and Zeus Eleutherios: Thompson , –, –. The Building F complex: Thompson , –; cf. Shear , –. Thompson (, )

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µrst proposed that the Building F complex may have served as a Peisistratid residence, though he later retracted the suggestion (see Thompson , ). The idea has since been quite widely entertained by others (see, e.g., Boersma , –; Shear , –; , ; Camp , –; , ). . Fountain house: Thompson , –; Travlos , –; Thompson and Wycherley , –; Camp , –; , . Pausanias refers to the fountain house as the “Enneakrounos,” a structure that may have been located elsewhere in Athens, though Thucydides (..–) believed that it, too, was a Peisistratid monument. On the problem, see Wycherley , –, . Archonship of Peisistratus the younger: Meritt , –; Cadoux , , . Altar of the Twelve Gods: Crosby  (cf. Wycherley , –; Thompson and Wycherley , –, µg. , pl. a; Camp , –; Gadbery ). . Altar as central milestone: Hdt. ..–; cf. IG II2 . By the end of the sixth century, the altar had already become a destination for foreign suppliants who sought Athenian protection (see Hdt. ..; cf. Thuc. ..). On the larger historical signiµcance of the Hipparchan herms, see above pp. –. . This site may be the “Old Agora” (arkhaia agora) referred to by Apollodorus (Harpoc., s.v. pande–mos Aphrodite– [= FGrH  F]); cf. the reference to an agora Kekropia at Plut. Cim. . (citing the poet Melanthius). A stele honoring a third-century priestess of Aglauros was discovered under the large cave at the east end of the Acropolis in  and µrst published by Dontas (). With the site of the Aglaureion thus µxed, the original civic center can be localized through a chain of textual inferences (see Dontas , –; Robertson , –; Shear , –). For attempts to construct a plan of the early civic center, see Robertson , , µg. ; Shear , , µg. . On the connotations of the term arkheia, see Wycherley , . Prytaneion: Paus. ... Boukolion and Epilykeion: AP .; cf. Hesych., s.v. Epilykeion. Anakeion: Paus. ..; Polyaenus, Strat. ... Basileion: Poll. Onom. .. Bouzygion: Shear , . Theseion: AP .; cf. Andoc. .. The assignment of the early political center to this particular area is also conµrmed by Pausanias’s account (..) of his route from the Prytaneion along the Street of the Tripods around the eastern end of the Acropolis and by the discovery in the Anaphiotika area of inscriptions referring to the Prytaneion (see IG II2 ), the Theseion, and the games of the Theseia festival (see IG II2 ., ., .–). . This point is made by both Robertson (, –) and Shear (, , – n. ). For the date of the Theseion, see pp. , – n. below. The size of the precinct is suggested by various references to large-scale gatherings of citizens and cavalry at these locations in the classical period (see, e.g., Aeschin. .; Andoc. .; cf. Thuc. ..). The Gymnasium of Ptolemy was adjacent to the Theseion: see Plut. Thes. . (cf. Cim. .–; Paus. .., ). . The orkhe–stra: Eust. Od. .; Phot., s.v. ikria, orkhe–stra (cf. Pl. Ap. d–e; Poll. Onom. .). The theory that the performance of drama in the Agora was intimately linked with the area’s evolution as the city’s primary civic space over the course of the sixth century has been most fully articulated by Kolb (, –). It is obviously not favored by the likelihood that the focus of political life was elsewhere in Athens during the eras of Solon and the Peisistratids. Also problematic are the key roles played in Kolb’s scheme by the archon basileus and the Lenaia festival. There is no good evidence at any time for a sanctuary of Dionysus Lenaios in the Agora area, and it seems likely that the

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ofµce of the basileus was not relocated here from the Boukolion until ca.  at the earliest (see pp. – below). . On the creation of a citizen army in / or shortly after, see chapter . Non-Athenians were levied by the Peisistratids for major engagements in / (see AP ., .; Hdt. ..–) and in / (see AP .; Hdt. ..–). It is unclear who fought for them in the minor action at Leipsydrium. . Agora starting line: Shear , –. Racetracks in the early agoras of Corinth and Argos: Camp ,  n. . The earliest organized games in Athens were most likely those of the Great Panathenaia. On the evolution of the festival’s program of events during the course of the sixth century, see chapter . . Olympieion preserved unµnished: Wycherley , –. Stele condemning Peisistratid “crime”: Thuc. ... . The two shrines were subsequently destroyed by the Persians (see Thompson and Wycherley , , ). Demolition of Buildings C and D and the northern wing of the Building F complex: Thompson and Wycherley , –; Shear , –. . Changes to the Building F complex in ca. : Thompson , –; , , –; Shear , –; , . On the construction of the Old Bouleuterion and on the new role of Building F, see pp. – later in this chapter. . The new eskhara: Thompson , –; Wycherley , . . The eskhara as the Athenian Aiakeion: Thompson ,  n. ; Thompson and Wycherley , . Cf. Pritchett , ; Stroud in Sourvinou-Inwood , . Following Kolb (, –), Sourvinou-Inwood goes on to suggest that the Agora eskhara, rather than its counterpart on the Academy (cf. Paus. ..), was the starting point for the ceremony of the “introduction from the hearth” (eisago–ge– apo te–s eskharas) at the City Dionysia (cf. IG II2 , , , ). For further discussion of this possibility, see pp. ,  n.  below. . Similarities between the earlier peribolos and the eskhara: Thompson , ; Thompson and Wycherley , ; Gadbery , –. . Three archaic poros blocks from the altar proper have so far been recovered (Agora, A , a–b; Crosby , , pl. .). Crosby (, –) originally thought that Thucydides’ “extension” referred to the construction of a second enclosure in the third quarter of the µfth century. But as Gadbery () has shown, the altar was only renovated at this point, using original materials; the second enclosure was not built until the third quarter of the following century. . Lavelle (, –) has suggested that the removal of the original inscription from the Altar of the Twelve Gods was part of a larger program of damnatio memoriae directed against the Peisistratids. Though attractive, the parallel with Roman practice seems inexact. The original inscription on the altar of Pythian Apollo is still visible to this day (see Meiggs and Lewis , , no. ). More generally, it seems that the family was consigned not so much to oblivion as to a special place of perpetual infamy in public memory. The Peisistratids’ folly was conspicuously memorialized by a range of monuments, most notably the “stele commemorating the crime of the tyrants” [ste–le– peri te–s to– n turanno– n adikias], on the Acropolis (Thuc. ..); the colossal Olympieion, preserved in its unµnished state; and the Tyrannicide statue group in the new Agora. The new order needed an “other” against which to deµne itself, and with some manipulation of history, the Peisistratids provided a suitable

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antonym. For further discussion of the role of the Peisistratid “tyranny” in later memory, see chapter . . See chapter . For a concise and compelling restatement of the arguments against dating the statue group to the s, see Castriota , esp. –. . Agora horoi found in situ: Agora, I  (Shear , –); Agora, I  (Thompson , –). Cf. Thompson and Wycherley , –, pll. , a–b). The upper section of the third stele in the series (Agora, I ; Shear , ) was found in the area of the Hephaisteion, while a fourth uninscribed fragment (Agora, A ; Holloway ) was recovered from a disturbed context outside the southeast corner of the Agora. Academy horos: Travlos , . . Agora as a sacred precinct: Aeschin. . and schol.; Dem. . (cf. Aeschin. .; Andoc. ., ). Since all of the offenses described entailed the forfeit of citzens’ rights (atimia), entry to the Agora was presumably included among these rights. Generally on atimia in Athens, see Hansen , –; MacDowell , –. Agora perirrhantêria: Aeschin. . and schol. (cf. Aeschin. .; Dem. ., ., .). . Evidence for such ordinances comes from elsewhere. Private buildings were excluded from the new Agora in fourth-century Sounion, since its predecessor had become too built-up over time (see IG II2 ). An ordinance against littering is known to have been enforced in the agora at Piraeus (see IG II2 .). . The Agora street system is discussed by Thompson and Wycherley (, –). The earliest surface on the nearby Street of the Marble Workers dates to the late sixth century. Great Drain: Thompson and Wycherley , –. . The northeast corner retail building: Shear , –, µg. . In the mid-s, a large quantity of pottery sherds dating from the late sixth and early µfth centuries was recovered from a well found in front of the Stoa of Attalus (see Thompson , –). The size, date, and location of the µnd suggest that it was probably a refuse deposit used by one or more pottery retailers after the Persian sack. . In the words of Thompson and Wycherley (, ), the “Pnyx and Agora remained closely linked in function and spirit,” with the latter acting as a kind of “foyer” to the former. . Pnyx excavation: Kourouniotes and Thompson . Date of the µrst phase: Kourouniotes and Thompson , ; Travlos , ; Wycherley , . Thompson (a, –) has latterly challenged the consensus, suggesting that the µrst phase should be dated to the time of Ephialtes’ reforms. Cf. Camp , . . In his initial publication of the remains, Thompson (, –) dated the Old Bouleuterion to just after  B.C., though he would now assign it to the second quarter of the µfth century (see Thompson a,  with n. ). After detailed study of the pottery sherds used as µll in the building’s foundations, not a single one of which certainly postdates the sixth century, Shear (, –; cf. , ) has conµdently reasserted the case for a date of ca.  B.C. He notes that this date is also supported by the lettering on a shallow marble basin (Agora, I ; Thompson , , µg. a) found just south of the building, which bears the legend t]o` bouleu[terivo (“of the bouleuterion”). In perhaps the most intriguing challenge to the orthodox chronology, Miller () suggests that the Old Bouleuterion should be reidentiµed as a temple of Meter, which he styles the “Old Metroon.” He believes that the Council of  met in the open air until late in the µfth

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century, when the New Bouleuterion was erected. Cf. Shear’s pointed counterarguments (). . For recent restorations of the interior and exterior, see Shear , –, µgs. , . Shear reconstructs forty-eight wooden benches, each four meters in length, arranged in rows six deep, yielding sufµcient seating for  individuals at half a meter per seat. Portions of two triglyphs and two metopes have so far been recovered. . For the argument, see Shear , –. Shear also draws attention to the duplication of several features of the old civic center in the new Agora, but he does not explore the larger implications of this phenomenon at any length. On the presence of Thesmotheteia in both the old and the new civic centers, see Robertson , –. The structure that replaced the reworked Building F in this function following the Persian sack was most probably to to–n arkhonto–n oike–ma (“the archons’ chamber”) referred to at Dem. ., itself replaced at a later date by the Stoa of Zeus, built in ca.  (cf. Robertson , ). . Preliminary discussions of the stoa: Shear , –; Thompson and Wycherley , –. Ofµcial seat of the archon basileus: IG I3 .–; Paus. ..; Pl. Euthphr. a; Tht. d. Though the Boukolion was now supplanted in this function (see AP .), it continued to serve as the venue for the “sacred marriage” (hieros gamos) between the wife of the basileus and the god Dionysus at the Anthesteria festival. . Shear (, –) originally assigned the stoa to the mid–sixth century, primarily on the basis of the style of its architectural remains. He has since dated it to ca.  B.C. (see Shear , –; cf. , –,  n. ). Thompson (, –; a,  with n. ) and Raa×aub (b, ) argue for a lower date. For Shear’s response to the challenge, see Raa×aub b,  n. . . See Shear , –, µgs. –. . Solon’s laws in the stoa: AP .. Wooden axones in the Prytaneion: Harpoc., s.v. axoni; Paus. ..; Plut. Sol. ., .–. For the reconstruction, see Shear , – (cf. Stroud , esp. –, –; Robertson , –). The tradition that both sets of documents were stored on the Acropolis before Ephialtes transferred them, respectively, to the Prytaneion and the Agora (see Anaximenes of Lampsacus, FGrH  F; Poll. Onom. .) probably alludes to an emergency measure, whereby they had previously been moved to the citadel for safekeeping just before the Persian sack. . References to the lithos in the Agora: AP ., .; Plut. Sol. .. The “herald’s stone”: Plut. Sol. .–. . The peribolos still awaits µnal publication. Available accounts include Thompson , ; , –, no. ; Thompson and Wycherley , –, µgs. –; Camp’s account in Boegehold , –. According to Camp (loc. cit., ), the closest parallel for the molding is found on a raking geison contemporary with the Old Athena Temple on the Acropolis, which is widely considered to belong to the µnal decade of the sixth century. . Parallel with Building A: Camp in Boegehold , . Camp refrains from endorsing the traditional identiµcation, though he concedes that the enclosure probably housed a law court. Boegehold himself (, –) suggests that the peribolos may be identical with the large court building later referred to as the “precinct of Metiokhos” and the “greater court.” . See Thompson , –, –; Travlos , –; Rhodes , –; Thompson and Wycherley , –, ; Camp , –. The orientation of the temple is identical with that of the Old Bouleuterion, and the two structures share a cross wall

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and similar foundations of Acropolis limestone. Little survives of the temple’s superstructure, but it perhaps featured a distyle-in-antis facade. . The famous cult statue of Meter by Phidias (Arr. Peripl. M. Eux. ; Paus. ..) or Agoracritus (Plin. HN .) is believed to have stood in the Old Bouleuterion. On the changing role of the Old Bouleuterion after the construction of its successor, see Thompson , –; cf. Wycherley , –. The earliest reference to the building as the “Metroon” is found in IG II2 .– (/ B.C.). The identity of the archaic building as a temple of Meter has been challenged by Shear (, –), while Miller (, – n. ) casts doubt on its very existence. . Cf. Dinarchus’s later comment (.) on how Meter was “established as the city’s guardian of all the rights [recorded] on state documents” [to– n en tois grammasi dikaio– n phulax te– i polei katheste– ke]. The incongruity is discussed by Loraux (, –). . There is no evidence for any cult of Meter in Attica before  B.C. Origins of the cult and its importation into Greece: Burkert , –; , –; Graf , –. Meter cult in Attica: Parker , –. Meter in Smyrna and Colophon: Graf , . . Excavation and discussion of the altar: Shear , –; Camp , , µgs. –. Pausanias (..) saw the sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania, with its Phidian cult statue, at some point on his walk from the Hephaisteion to the Stoa Poikile. Aphrodite Ourania as an assimilation of Astarte, the Phoenician queen of heaven: Burkert , ; Parker ,  with n.  (cf. Hdt. .; Paus. ..). Dedications to Aphrodite by magistrates elsewhere in Greece: Sokolowski ; Croissant and Salviat . Aphrodite Pandemos may have played a similar role in the old civic center in Athens (see Harpoc., s.v. pande–mos Aphrodite–; Shear ,  with n. ; cf. Sokolowski , –). . One or two of the new monuments discussed here may at some point be shown conclusively to belong to a later time. But the key issue is surely the date of the shift in the general function and character of the square, from Peisistratid grand projet to publicly administered agora. The downdating of the odd individual item would not greatly affect the overall chronological scheme favored in this chapter. But those who would insist on bringing the larger shift down further into the µfth century must not only confront the evidence for the wide range of items that can reasonably be assigned to ca.  B.C. but must also explain what happened to the preexisting monuments in the meantime. If the Peisistratid square was essentially preserved intact for some twenty or thirty years after /, this would seem to be a fact of some political signiµcance. . The only known instance of an earlier nonsacred structure built in the Doric order is the northern half of the bouleuterion in the sanctuary at Olympia (Shear ,  n. ). . A similar point is made by Shear (, ), though he does not pursue its implications at length.

chapter  . The literature on the topography and monuments of the Acropolis is vast, though there are surprisingly few synthetic works that offer a general overview of the site’s history and signiµcance. They include Hopper ; Schneider and Höcker ; Rhodes . Hurwit’s  study is comprehensive, stimulating, and highly readable. My debt to it in the pages that follow is considerable.

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. Evidence for Acropolis developments during the Bronze and Dark Ages is lucidly summarized by Hurwit (, –). . The column bases were long thought to be Mycenean. But see Nylander (), who suggests that they might have formed an eastward-facing temple porch some eight meters wide. Architectural terracottas: e.g., Acrop. K  , K  , K  . Winter (,  n. ,  n. ) dates the anteµx and eaves tile remains tentatively to ca. – B.C. Bronze gorgoneion disk, possibly a temple akroterion: Touloupa . . Ramp: Vanderpool . Most observers assume that the form of the west entrance remained little changed from the end of the Bronze Age to the early µfth century (see, e.g., Dinsmoor , ; Wright ; Eiteljorg , –). The original gateway is generally thought to have looked much like the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae. For slightly different reconstructions of its form and orientation, see Wright  and Eiteljorg , –, µgs. –. For the Nike sanctuary, see Mark , –. Mark tentatively assigns the so-called A-architecture to the site, reconstructing a simple temple about µve meters wide, with a distyle-in-antis facade. . The assignment of the “Bluebeard temple” to the site later occupied by the Parthenon, where it was perhaps known as the Hekatompedon, is proposed and defended at greatest length by Dinsmoor (). The architectural and sculptural remains were µrst assembled and discussed by Wiegand (, –, –, –), who sited the temple on the inner, blue, Acropolis limestone foundations of the later Old Athena Temple (see µg. ). The discovery thereafter of further sima fragments prompted Schuchhardt (/) to reassign them to the outer, pink limestone foundations. Dinsmoor’s principal argument against this idea—an argument that still stands—is that both sets of foundations were worked with a toothed chisel, an implement that was apparently not yet in use at the time the “Bluebeard temple” was erected. For more recent discussion of the issues involved, see, e.g., Plommer ; Shapiro , –; Hurwit , –. Pediment reconstructions: Schuchhardt /; Dinsmoor , –; Beyer . The historical circumstances that prompted the building of the temple are considered above on pp. – in chapter . . Terracotta remains: Winter , –, –, nos. –, –. Among the other materials generally dated to the second quarter of the sixth century are the Doric architectural assemblage known as Building A (assigned by Mark [, –] to the Nike sanctuary) and the Red, Olive Tree, Apotheosis, and Hydra pediments. For cogent recent discussion of the materials and related problems, see Shapiro , –; Hurwit , –. . For an overview of the votive inventory from the second quarter of the sixth century, see Hurwit , –. Moschophorus: Acrop. ; Brouskari , –; Hurwit , –, µg. . The earliest korai include Acrop.  (Payne and Young , , pl. ., ),  (Richter , , µgs. –),  (Payne and Young , –, pll. ., .–),  (Richter , , µgs. –),  (Richter , , µgs. –). Four-horse chariot group: Acrop. , –; Payne and Young , –, pl. . Athena statuette: Acrop. ; Shapiro , , pl. .b–c. Niemeyer () has argued that this type may have been inspired by a contemporary cult statue, also represented in the Athena µgure on Pananthenaic prize vases. But cf. Shapiro , –. . For further discussion of the foundation and early history of the Great Panathenaia, see chapter .

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. See, e.g., the inscription from ca.  (Raubitschek , no. ) recording the construction of a dromos—“racetrack” or, possibly, the new “ramp” (?)—and the dedication, by at least µve named ofµcials (the hieropoioi of the Panathenaia?), of the ago–n (games) to Athena. . On the role played by elite competitive display in the development of the sanctuaries at Delphi and Olympia, see especially Morgan . . See Hurwit , –. . Peisistratus resident on the Acropolis: e.g., Raubitschek , ; Travlos , ; Kolb , . Parker (,  n. , ) and Hurwit (,  with n. ) are more skeptical. Architectural terracottas for the period: Winter , –, nos. –. The so-called Rampin Rider (Acrop. ; Paris, Louvre ; Payne and Young , –, pl. .a–c), originally one of a pair and usually dated to ca. , is the µrst major freestanding equestrian monument to be dedicated at the site. A slightly later example (with no catalogue number, but perhaps associated with the fragments Acrop. , , , ; see Payne and Young , , pl. .) is dated by Eaverly (, –, no. ) to the years –. Korai from the period include Acrop. , ,  (Richter , –, µgs. –). Lyons kore: Lyons Museum (torso and head) and Acrop. ; Payne and Young , –; Richter , –, µgs. –. Function as caryatid: e.g., Ridgway , –, –. . “Endoios Athena”: Acrop. ; Payne and Young , –, pl. . Hippalektryon with rider: Acrop. ; Eaverly , –, pll. –. “Peplos” kore: Acrop. ; Stewart ; µg. . . The architectural terracottas of a single small building of unknown function and location survive from the period (Winter , –, no. ). For the Old Athena Temple, see pp. – later in this chapter. . On the possible installation of a new entrance court before , see pp. ,  n. . Winter () suggests that a roof she dates to ca. – (, no. ) served as a replacement on a building originally put up sometime between  and  (–, no. ). . The foundations were µrst examined and discussed by Dörpfeld (, , ) and are hence sometimes referred to as the “Dörpfeld foundations.” For the original publication of the architectural remains, see Wiegand , –. More recent treatments of the monument include Gruben , ; Travlos , , µgs. –; Childs ; Hurwit , –. My own discussion owes much to the essay by Childs. . Those who favor a post-Peisistratid date for the temple include Stewart (, ), Childs (), and Hurwit (, –). The temple of Hera at Olympia (ca. ) likewise has only a one- or two-step stylobate, while the overall plan and scale (. by . meters) of the Arkhaios Neos resemble those of the earlier Apollo temples at Corinth (ca. ; cf. Stillwell ) and Delphi (ca. ; cf. Courby ; Childs ). Architectural details: Childs , , µgs. –; cf. Stewart , . A date of ca.  is also supported by the style of a surviving lion’s-head waterspout (Acrop. ; Travlos , µg. ; Childs , ). . Supporters of a date after  include Stähler (; cf. ), Stewart (, –), Childs (), Moore (, ), Castriota (, ), and Hurwit (, –, µgs. –). . Cf. the Acropolis chariot group of the s (Acrop. , –; Payne and Young , –, pl. ). Other examples from earlier years, including a votive relief also from the Acropolis (Acrop. ), are cited by Childs (,  with nn. , ).

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. The principal fragment shows the eye of the savaged bull (Acrop. ; Payne and Young , , pl. .). For discussion of the details and date of the associated fragments of lion’s mane, see Childs , , µg. . . Frieze fragments: Acrop. , , –; Payne and Young , –, pl. . Supporters of the restoration include Stewart (, ), Ridgway (, –), and Hurwit (, ). Childs (,  n. ) is less sanguine. . Roof materials: Winter , –, nos. –. Winter cautiously assigns the terracottas of the two later buildings to ca. –, though she suggests parallels that would locate them at the higher end of this range. Building B: Travlos , , µg. ; Hurwit , . The building is usually thought to have stood on the site of the later Pinakotheke, where the poros blocks were discovered. But cf. Eiteljorg ,  n. . . The entrance courtyard must postdate the demolition of the “Bluebeard temple,” since marble metope panels from the latter were used as revetment slabs in the former. Hence, for the temple to have been demolished by ca. , it must have preceded the Arkhaios Neos on the north side of the citadel, a possibility that does not µt with the larger picture of archaic temple construction favored so far in this study. Assuming the temple actually stood on the south side and was not taken down until just before work began on the predecessor of the Parthenon, the courtyard cannot have been built before the early s. So argue, for example, Dinsmoor (, –) and Eiteljorg (, –). This might make the µrst phase of the courtyard rather unrealistically close to the second phase, the so-called Old Propylon, which is conventionally dated to the s. But Eiteljorg (, –) suggests that this latter phase probably postdated the Persian sack. . Archaic cistern: Tanoulas ; Wright . Spring house: Travlos , –, µg. . . Peisistratid stele: Thuc. .. Stele condemning the followers of Isagoras: schol. Ar. Lys. ; cf. Wade-Gery , –. . For more detailed discussion of the victory monument, see chapter . . Gigantomachy group: Acrop. , , ; Payne and Young , , pl. ; Hurwit , –. . Triandi does not attempt to identify the scene with any particular myth or to assign the pediment to an attested building. The principal components in the reconstruction (Triandi , –, µgs. –) include fragments of the two youths (Acrop. , ), the Athena (Acrop. ), human and equine feet (Acrop. –), and the impressive horse µgure (Acrop. ), of which the front half is largely intact. The Athena is reckoned to have been some . meters tall. The reconstruction is supported by Korres (b, –). . Theseus and Prokrustes (?): Acrop. ; Payne and Young , –, pll. –; Hurwit ,  with n. . . Gigantomachy reliefs: Acrop. , ; Payne and Young , , pl. .–. Seated males: e.g., Acrop. , , ; Payne and Young , , pll. .–.. For recent discussion of these unusual µgures, see Triandi , –; Triandi would restore two head fragments (Acrop. ; Paris, Louvre  [the so-called tête Fauvel]) to the largest µgure in the series (Acrop. ). In view of their late-sixth-century date and novelty, she would like to associate the µgures with recent political change, suggesting that they may have represented secretaries of the Council or Assembly. Others have seen them as treasurers or procession marshals, though neither role would necessarily link them to institutions of the new order.

Notes to Pages 113–24

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. Equestrian monuments: e.g., Acrop. , , ; Payne and Young , , pll. .–, , –; Eaverly , nos. , , . Korai: e.g., Acrop. , , , . The latest in the sequence of korai (e.g., Acrop. ; Richter , –, µgs. –) date to ca. . Among the more striking remains of the male µgures are the bronze head of a warrior, now helmetless, perhaps from an original life-size statue (Athens, NM ; Mattusch , –, µg. .), a bronze kouros-style statuette (Athens, NM ; Richter , , µgs. –), and several marble torsos (e.g., Acrop. ; Richter , , µgs. –). . Those who would read a political signiµcance into these dedications include Raubitschek (, ) and Hurwit (, –); cf. Camp , . . By way of a comparison, we might think, for example, of the preposterously grandiose grave monument erected just outside Rome’s Porta Praenestina by the baker M. Virgilius Eurysaces in ca.  B.C., a structure that was hardly the product of any new, more egalitarian political environment. . Some sense of a collective past seems to be present in Solon’s reference (a West) to Athens as the “oldest land of Ionia” [presbutate– n gaian Iaonie– s], and the same claim may have underwritten Peisistratus’s later interventions on Delos. But this seems to be exceptional. Peisistratid genealogy: Hdt. ... . The inscription on the Tyrannicide monument (Agora, I ; Meritt , , no. ; Shear , ; Shear , ) compares the deed of Harmodius and Aristogiton to a “great light” of deliverance that “came upon the Athenians” [meg’ Athe–naioisi phoo– s geneth’]. For further discussion of the monument and inscription, see pp. – in chapter  below. Epigram of the Callimachus dedication: IG I3 ; Meiggs and Lewis , no. . The text of the inscription is fragmentary, but the µnal line suggests that Callimachus’s actions were seen as yielding some kind of beneµt “for the sons of the Athenians” [paisin Athe– naio– n]. . Appropriately enough, the only Acropolis image of Heracles from the period is a small, badly damaged µgure from ca.  B.C. (Acrop. ; Payne and Young , pl. ; Brouskari , ). Its context and function are unknown. . See, e.g., Shapiro , –. . For “ofµcial” memory, see pp. –,  n. . The phenomenon is discussed further in chapters  and .

chapter  . Jones , vii. . “Civil society” in Athens and Attica: Connor . There is still some uncertainty about the nature and functions of gene– and orgeo–nes. The former term is used by the ancients to refer both to sacerdotal families (e.g., the Eumolpidai, who served Demeter and Kore at Eleusis) and to traditional cult organizations whose members claimed descent from a common ancestor. The orgeo–nes seem to have been hereditary associations that grew up around hero cults. Bourriot () documents the evidence for many known gene–. For a useful summary of what is known of the gene– and the various local and “private” religious associations in Attica, see Parker , –. For a fuller treatment of the subject, including discussion of the more “public” demes and phylai, see Jones . . In his work on the associations of Athens, Jones’s own solution to the problem of deµnition is to resist the use of absolute categories altogether. He prefers to position each

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group on a series of scales, between the extremes of, for example, “public” and “private” or “voluntary” and “nonvoluntary.” . The classic work on Greek phylai is Roussel , which has largely shaped the current orthodoxy. The most systematic recent work on the character and organization of the Cleisthenic phylai can be found in a series of detailed and insightful studies by Jones (; ; , –). Jones (, ) willingly concedes that these “internally organized segments of the state” could and did function simultaneously as “more or less self-contained and autonomous associations.” But he suggests (–) that they only came to do so during the course of the classical period, as the need arose among the far-×ung citizen body for “instruments” that might represent their interests on the central stage in Athens. In general, he seems unduly reluctant to consider the possibility that the phylai might have been consciously intended, from the time of their creation, to function like “autonomous associations” and even to serve as “instruments” of representation. . For speculation about the nature and role of the Ionian phylai in Athens, see Latte ; Roussel , –. Arguments for and against the existence of a Solonian Council of  are covered on pp. – in chapter  above. The question of when the Athenians µrst installed a regular mechanism for raising a citizen army is explored in chapter . . Generally on the phenomenon of eponymous heroes in Greece, see Nilsson , –; cf. Kron , –. . Signiµcance of the role played here by Delphi: Kron , –; Kearns , , ; Parker , . For other examples of the use of the oracle to sanction political change, see Kron , . The signiµcance of the parallel with colonial ventures is explored by Habicht (, –), Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet (, –), and Rausch (, –). The earliest reference to the epo–nymoi as arkhe–getai is found in Ar. fr.  (Geras). For discussion of the implications of the term arkhe–gete–s when applied to the ten heroes, see Kron , ; Kearns , ; Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet , –; Parker , –. A broader survey of the term’s semantic range can be found in Malkin , –. . E.g., [Dem.] .; Cleidemus, FGrH  F. For further references from a range of periods, see Parker ,  n. . . Kearns (, ) describes the heroes chosen as “suspiciously ‘signiµcant.’” Cf. Nilsson , ; Kron , . Evidence for the heroes prior to the tribal reform is discussed by Rausch (, –). With the exception of Ajax, none of the epo–nymoi are particularly well attested before , and the four early kings are not referred to as such before Herodotus (., .). But this does not necessarily re×ect their local signiµcance. Relatively few heroes of Panhellenic stature had long-standing associations with Athens, and before , Athenian vase painters rarely took their subjects from local legends. Assuming that Theseus himself was never considered (see pp. – below), it seems that no obviously outstanding candidates were omitted from the µnal list. On three possible unsuccessful candidates (Araphen, Polyxenus, and Cephalus), see Kearns ,  n. ; Parker ,  with n. . . Obviously, all these various associations with the uniµcation of Attica presuppose the existence of the Thesean synoecism tradition. The crucial question of when the tradition was actually invented is explored in detail later in this chapter. For discussion of the links between Theseus and individual epo–nymoi, see Rausch , –. . On this process of Attisierung, see Rausch , –.

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. Evidence for functionaries: Jones , – with nn. –. Generally on epimele–tai in these and other forms of association, see Oehler . On the epimele–tai of the ten Athenian phylai, see also Traill , –; Jones , –. One epimele–te–s per trittys: Traill , –. Annual ofµce terms: IG II2 .–; .–, –. Responsibilities: Dem. . (representing phyle interests); IG II2 . (convening tribal assemblies), .– (µnancial oversight), .– (cult administration). . Rent from land leases: e.g., IG II2 .– (the identity of the tribe is not known). At some point, the funding for certain activities, such as the training of a chorus for the dithyrambic contests at the City Dionysia, was supplied through ofµcial liturgies. But since it remains unclear when the liturgical system was introduced, µnancial responsibility for these and other, more quotidian commitments, such as cult offerings and the publication of tribal documents, was presumably assigned on a more informal, ad hoc basis. . There was almost certainly a collective cult of the epo–nymoi in the Agora (see Agora, I  = SEG XXVIII ; Rotroff ; Kearns , ; Jones , –), but it appears to have been managed by the state rather than by the tribes themselves. The date of the introduction of this cult remains unknown, as does the date of the well-known statue group with which it must have been associated. The extant base of the monument has been assigned to the early years of the second half of the fourth century (see Shear , –), while the µrst certain reference to it in literature is found in Aristophanes (Pax –). The possibility that the original monument may have been set up all the way back in the late sixth or early µfth century is considered by Mattusch () and Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet (, ). . IG II2 . The addition of the Pandion sacriµce to the program of the Pandia probably postdated the tribal reform (see Kearns , ; cf. Kron , –). Kearns (, ) believes that the practice may have been more widespread: “it seems very likely that all or most of [the heroes] received a subordinate sacriµce at some public rite, at which the tribe would then be present in strength.” Elsewhere (p.  n. ), she explores the possibility of several other instances. . For evidence for the locations of the shrines, see n.  below. . Since most of these sites were in or near the center of Athens, it seems inherently likely that the tribes used them as their administrative centers and primary venues for agorai. On occasion, the tribes may have convened away from their shrines. A decree of Hippothontis (IG II2 ) found on the south slope of the Acropolis calls for identical stelai to be set up in the hero’s precinct at Eleusis and in the Asklepieion in Athens, the latter being presumably the document we possess. Given that Hippothoon’s shrine was located further from the heart of Athens than any other, his tribe’s use of a more central alternative site for meetings would certainly be understandable. However, as Kearns (, ) points out, the duplication of the decree in question may also be explained by the fact that its honorand was a priest of Asklepios. Tribal assemblies appear to have been relatively infrequent, meeting perhaps no more than a handful of times a year. At least in later times, the principal items of business included µnancial matters, the selection of ofµcers and liturgy holders, and the voting of honors for benefactors. See especially Jones , –. . Generally on the location of the heroa, see the relevant sections of Kron . Cf. Kearns , –; Parker , ; Jones , –; Rausch , –. Evidence comes mainly from the µnd-spots and contents of tribal decrees. Least disputed are the sites of the shrines of Erechtheus, Cecrops, and Pandion on the Acropolis, that of Antiochus in

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Kynosarges, the site of the well-known Herakleion (see SEG III –), and that of Hippothoon in the sanctuary at Eleusis (see Hesych., s.v. Hippothoo–nteion; Phot., s.v. Hippothoo–nteion; Paus. ..; IG II2 , , , .–). The discovery of a lex sacra of Leontis near the Hephaisteion and of an ephebic decree of Skambonidai (a deme in the city trittys of Leontis) in the northeast sector of the Agora (IG I3 ; Agora, I ; Kron , –; Thompson b, ) suggests that the hero’s shrine was somewhere in the vicinity of the civic center, possibly within the Leokoreion, a precinct associated with his daughters. A third-century altar found near the Dipylon Gate and dedicated to, among others, Acamas (IG II2 ; Kron , ) may µx the site of that hero’s shrine in the Kerameikos district, though the discovery of at least one and possibly two decrees of Acamantis in modern Kallithea (ancient Xypete?) points to a different location. References in Pausanias (..) and Plutarch (Thes. ) could place the shrine of Aegeus either at the western end of the Acropolis or in the Ilissos valley, near the Delphinion (see Kron , –). The discovery of a decree of Aegeis on the citadel (IG II2 ) would seem to favor the former site. The shrine of Oeneus is particularly elusive. It may have been at Acharnae (an inland deme-trittys of Oeneis), the µnd spot of a stele relief (see Kron , ) that possibly depicts the hero as a hoplite. Finally, the earliest certain references to an “Aianteion” occur in a pair of second-century ephebic decrees (IG II2 .; Agora, I ) from the Agora. Since a decree of Aiantis from / (Agora, I ; Ferguson , ) requires the stele to be set up “in the Eurysakeion,” a precinct located near the Hephaisteion in the deme of Melite (see Harpoc., s.v. Eurusakeion; Plut. Sol. .; Poll. Onom. .–), it is widely thought that the tribe initially used the shrine of the hero’s son as its primary cult site. It remains unclear whether the later Aianteion was located here or elsewhere in the Agora area. . For general discussion of the issue, see especially Schlaifer , –; Kearns , –; , –; Parker , –. The pertinent decrees can be found in Meritt and Traill , nos.  (Erechtheis); , , ,  (Cecropis); ,  (Hippothontis). Amynandrids as priests of Cecrops: IG II2 .. Possible evidence that the priesthood of Acamas may also have remained gentilician after / is considered by Schlaifer (, ). . Kearns explains elsewhere (, ): “Presumably before / each of the eponymoi had received some cult on the old gentilician pattern. . . . What other cult could they have had, unless it was completely sporadic and unconnected? This pattern was plainly not abandoned totally; while it is possible that the priesthoods of some cults were transferred immediately to the tribes in /, it is perhaps more likely that the changes occurred disparately during the course of the µfth century, for which we have no evidence, or even later.” Cf. Schlaifer , –. . See especially Habicht , –; Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet , –; Rausch , –. . “[Cleisthenes] allowed the gene–, the phratries, and the priesthoods each to continue in the manner sanctioned by tradition [kata ta patria].” . In fact, in the three known instances where families retained control of the cult of an eponymos in this fashion, none of the priests concerned would have been members of the tribes they now served. And perhaps this should not surprise us. Since an individual who served as the priest of his own tribal epo–nymos would have acquired an instant in×uence for himself and his family within the new phyle, one suspects that a conscious effort was made to avoid this situation. If so, the appropriate measures will have been taken either when the

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demes and trittyes were assigned to tribes or when the heroes were assigned to the phylai, whichever process came later. . Explicit visual evidence for the recasting of the heroes as erstwhile Athenian statesmen emerges only about a generation later, in ca. , when groups of the epo–nymoi µrst begin to appear on Athenian vases, usually bearded and dressed in the staid, “civic” garb of the µfth century. For a summary of the iconography of the epo–nymoi, including discussion of the vases in question, see Mattusch . . For other references to the synoecism, see Charax, FGrH  F; [Dem.] .; Diod. ..–; Dio Chrys. .; Isoc. .; Paus. .., ; Paus. ..; Philoch., FGrH  F; Plut. Thes. ; Xen. Cyn. .. For discussion of the tradition, see especially Herter , –; Moggi , –. . The earliest visual evidence for a tradition directly associated with the integrity of Attica may be a scene on a calyx krater from the late s (Acrop. ; ARV  .). It features Pallas, Orneus, Lycus, and Nisus, the four sons of Pandion among whom the region was at one point divided. Aegeus later replaces Orneus in this scheme, a variant µrst alluded to in a fragment of Sophocles, possibly from his lost Aegeus (TGF F). . Theseus in early epic: Il. .; Od. .–, ; Hes. Aspis ; fr.  Merkelbach and West; cf. Plut. Thes. .–. The claim that Theseus was born in Troezen must be early, since it was never apparently challenged, even by the Athenians. Presumably, the tradition that his father was Poseidon also arose in Troezen, and it cannot be assumed that the alternative version, which assigned paternity to Aegeus, was Athenian in origin. Meanwhile, the descent to Hades with the Thessalian king Peirithoos apparently featured in the epic known as the Minyas (Paus. ..) and in a work of Hesiod (Paus. ..). An epic fragment (Hes. fr.  Merkelbach and West) in which Theseus explains to the deceased Meleager the rationale for the descent could well come from the latter. The abduction of Helen by the pair, a related event, may already have been known by the time of the Iliad (see .) and was later featured in works by Alcman and Stesichorus (Paus. .., ..). Since antiquity, suspicion of interpolation has surrounded Theseus’s appearances in early epic. See, e.g., Davison ; Walker , –. On the hero’s non-Athenian associations, see especially Herter , –. In the µrst chapter of his monograph on Theseus, Walker () insists that he was always seen primarily as an Athenian. . Ceremonial commemoration of Thesean deeds was a feature of several older festivals, such as the Pyanopsia and Oschophoria, though it was surely not an original part of the program of these events. Parker (, ) identiµes a number of festivals that apparently “underwent an interpretatio Theseana” in later times. From a radically different perspective, Simon () attempts to show that Thesean associations with various Attic festivals were ultimately Mycenean in origin. . Many sources (see Wycherley , –) refer to “the Theseion” in Athens without any further qualiµcation, suggesting that there was only one such sanctuary in the city itself. Koumanoudes () argues that this precinct was distinct from the “sacred enclosure of Theseus” (the The–seo–s se–kos referred to at Paus. ..–, ) that contained the bones, but the case is not persuasive. A scholiast to Aeschin. . speaks of “two Theseia in the city,” though the passage is widely considered corrupt. Theseus was said to have handed over to Heracles all but four of the plots of land (temene–) he possessed, in gratitude for his safe delivery either from Hades or from King Aidoneus of the Molossians (Philoch., FGrH  F; cf. E. HF –). The other three plots/shrines appear to have been located near the Long

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Walls (Andoc. .), in Piraeus (IG II2 ) and at Kolonos Hippios (S. OC –; Paus. ..). For discussion of these sites and possible evidence for further shrines at Lakiadai and Phaleron, see Kearns , –. Pausanias (..) states that the Theseion in Athens was built by Cimon expressly to house the hero’s bones. Peisistratus is reported by AP (.) to have disarmed the Athenians at a muster “in the Theseion” shortly after the battle at Pallene. However, the detail is incidental, contradicted by another source (see Polyaenus, Strat. ..), and most likely an anachronism based on knowledge of later practice (cf. Thuc. ..). . The Minotaur episode was far and away the most popular Thesean episode in archaic Greek art. See Steuben , –. Small µgures with a bull’s head and a man’s body appear as cauldron decorations as early as the eighth century B.C. (Paris, Louvre C; Athens, NM ). From the seventh century, µve gold relief plaques from Corinth (Berlin, Staatl. Mus. GI –) certainly depict the episode, as does a shield band from Olympia (Olympia, B ). The descent to Hades µgures on another shield band from Olympia, from ca.  (Olympia, B ), while the abduction of Helen was among the multiple mythological scenes that decorated two later, well-known archaic artifacts, the chest of Cypselus (Paus. ..–) and the throne of Apollo at Amyclae (Paus. ..). . Shapiro (, –) suggests that Theseus was µrst elevated to national hero status in Athens during the Solonian era. But his attempts to identify various Thesean exploits as mythical re×exes of historical events from the period are very speculative, and the apparent absence of such exploits from Attic vase painting before the second quarter of the sixth century only weakens the case further. Among the earliest images of Theseus in Attic art are a pair of scenes on the François Vase of ca.  (Florence, Mus. Arch. ; ABV .), in which he is seen battling the centaurs and leading what may be the famous “crane dance” on Delos. . For an overview of Athenian innovations in Thesean iconography during the period, see Neils , –. The Marathonian Bull episode may appear as early as ca.  on a black-µgure amphora now in Paris (Cab. Méd. ; ABV .), while the combat with the sow enters the repertoire around a decade later (cf. the red-µgure cup dated to ca. – from Cerveteri: Rome, Villa Giulia ; ARV  .). Scenes of the abduction of Antiope, some of which feature Peirithoos (cf. Pindar fr.  Snell and Maehler), enjoyed a relatively brief vogue in Attic vase painting during ca. –. One of the earliest images is on a red-µgure cup now attributed to Euphronius (London, BM .–. [E]; ARV  .). Another episode, the rescue of Theseus’s mother, Aethra, from Troy by his sons, is µrst depicted in ca.  on an amphora in London (BM B; LIMC I, s.v. “Aithra,” no. ). The letters AQE on the shield of one of the two sons seems to indicate a new self-consciousness about the Athenian identity of Theseus and his family among local artists. Likewise, from the s on, the goddess Athena increasingly features in Athenian depictions of the Minotaur episode, an early example being the scene on a hydria in Leiden (Rijksmus. PC ; ABV .). . The fullest case for a Peisistratid promotion of Theseus is made by Herter (). Cf. Connor , esp. –; Shapiro , –; Tyrrell and Brown , –. Peisistratus may have been drawn initially to the Theseus µgure by the hero’s links with Delos, the site of the “crane dance,” and may have cultivated an association with him as part of a larger effort to assert his own (or Athenian) preeminence in Ionian Greece (see Johansen , –; Herter , ). The tyrant is said to have puriµed the island of burials (see

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Hdt. ..; Thuc. ..) and organized the Delia festival (see Thuc. ..). Cf. the contemporary popularity of the “Delian Triad”—Apollo, Artemis, and Leto—in Attic art, well described by Shapiro (, –). . So Boardman (, ). Though he excludes certain categories of vessel from the reckoning, Boardman (, ) calculates that Heracles appears on an astonishing  percent of Attic black-µgure vases before . In a series of articles, Boardman (see esp. , , ) ascribes much of this popularity to Peisistratus’s efforts to cultivate a “direct identiµcation” (, ) between himself and Heracles. That Peisistratus sought some kind of general association with the hero seems beyond dispute. But he was not the µrst or the only Athenian leader to do so. Since the “Bluebeard temple,” where Heracles features prominently in one of the pediments, was most probably not a Peisistratid monument (see pp. – in chapter  above), it seems that links with Heracles, much like those with Athena, were keenly contested by the leading families of the day. . The debt to Heracles is acknowledged, wittingly or otherwise, in the occasional replacement of the sow by a boar in vase scenes (e.g., on an early red-µgure cup in London [BM E]) and in the memory that the bull wrestled by Theseus came not from Marathon but from Crete (Apollod. Bibl. ..; Diod. ..; Hyg. Fab. ). A similar confusion surrounds the name of the abducted Amazon queen (see Gantz , –). A rival tradition dating back at least to the time of Simonides (see Apollod. Epit. .) recalled her name as Hippolyte not Antiope. . See chapter  for further discussion of the evolution of the Great Panathenaia. . Theseus’s connection with the Athenian royal house was surprisingly precarious. While there was an obvious appeal in claiming Poseidon as his father, the link to the royal bloodline had to come through the mortal Aegeus. Aegeus’s own insertion into the family tree as son of Pandion seems to have been a relatively late development (see Kearns , –). According to Plutarch (Thes. ) and Apollodorus (Bibl. ..), Aegeus was only an adopted son of Pandion, prompting the later dispute over the throne between Theseus and the sons of Pallas, another son of Pandion. . A similar conclusion is reached by Kearns (, –). . For a list of these vases, see LIMC VII, s.v. “Theseus,” nos. –. Among the earliest are a pair of red-µgure cups in Florence (Mus. Arch. ; ARV  .) and London (BM E; ARV  .). For detailed treatment of the iconographic development of the cycle, see Neils . A µfth new opponent, Periphetes, encountered near Epidaurus, does not seem to µgure on the vases. With the possible exception of the combat with Kerkyon, all of the other new episodes also appear as individual scenes on vases soon after the µrst cycle vases are produced. A small number of cups dating from the decade before  and featuring more than one of the older stories, sometimes in combination with a scene of the younger Theseus µghting an unidentiµed adversary, might be seen as anticipations of the cycle cups proper (see Neils , –). The cycle deeds µrst appear in extant literature in the eighteenth ode of Bacchylides. . For the statue group and for the dedication featuring the Marathonian Bull, see p.  in chapter . The sculptures of the Athenian treasury are published in Coste-Messelière . Deeds of Theseus more prominent than those of Heracles: see e.g., Boardman , ; Calame , . Theseus may also have featured in the Amazonomachy depicted in the metope series on the east facade. The abduction of Antiope was certainly the subject of the west pediment of a slightly earlier building, the temple of Apollo Daphnephoros at

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Eretria—at the time, a close ally of the Athenians. According to Pausanias (..), the treasury in Delphi was built from the spoils of the battle of Marathon. But many believe that the structure’s art and architecture point to a somewhat earlier date, just before or after  B.C. Recent advocates of this view include Schefold (, –), Büsing (, esp. –), and Rausch (, –). . For the µgures, see Boardman , –; . . A similar conclusion is reached—with varying degrees of conµdence—by, among others, Schefold (, ), Brommer (, –), Neils (, ), Ostwald (, ), Kearns (, ), and Calame (, ). For a thorough reexamination of the issue, yielding much the same µnal result, see Walker , chap. . . On the political signiµcance of the location of the new cycle deeds, see Nilsson , –; Rausch , –. Of course, the cultivation of Theseus during the Peisistratid period was “politically” motivated in a broad sense. But with the possible exception of the “crane dance” on Delos, his older deeds did not in themselves possess any particular political resonance. . Despite the antiquity of the Minotaur tradition, the story that Theseus failed to change the color of his sails upon returning from Crete and that Aegeus thus committed suicide is not attested before Simonides (fr.  PMG). The legend of Theseus’s victory over one or more of the sons of his uncle Pallas, a kind of overture to the synoecism of Attica, is placed by Plutarch (Thes. ) before the departure for Crete. Most sources, however, put it after Theseus’s succession to the throne, and this is the version found in Euripides’ Hippolytus (), our earliest allusion to the tale. . The same qualiµcation applies to Rausch’s suggestion (, –) that knowledge of Theseus’s embellished career might have been disseminated initially through early dithyramb and tragedy and subsequently in the Attika of Pherecydes (see FGrH  F–). These media may certainly have helped to draw public attention to the hero’s new prominence in Athenian history, but it is hard to see them as any kind of ofµcial mouthpiece of the state. The earliest reference to a Theseid is in Aristotle’s Poetics (a). For a summary of other ancient references, see Calame , – n. . The most vigorous case for the existence of a Theseus epic in the late sixth century has been made by Schefold (). However, the idea is seriously doubted by most recent observers (see Ostwald , –; Kearns , ; Rausch , –). For a bibliography of earlier views, see Brommer ,  n. . . Mention of the Synoikia in ancient sources is almost invariably accompanied by reference to the synoecism (see, e.g., Charax, FGrH  F; Plut. Thes. .; Thuc. ..). Cf. Parker’s very sensible comments (,  with n. ) on attempts to interpret the festival otherwise. Plutarch (Thes. .) tells us that it took place on  Hekatombaion (though he mistakenly calls the festival the “Metoikia”). According to a surviving portion of the late-µfth-century republication of the Athenian sacred calendar, a biennial sacriµce involving the sacriµce of a pair of young bullocks took place on this date and was paid for apparently out of a fund controlled by the four Ionian phylobasileis. On the preceding day, another ceremony, perhaps a prothuma (preliminary rite) for the Synoikia (see Ferguson , –), was similarly administered and included the sacriµce of a young ewe. The Ionian tribe G(e)leontes seems to have played a prominent role in both ceremonies, while a trittys of that tribe, the Leukotainioi (“men with white headbands”), participated in the sacriµce on  Hekatombaion. But since the text for events on the fol-

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lowing day is incomplete, we cannot be sure that all four of the old tribes were not involved. Neither ceremony is named in the inscription, but because of their date, it is generally assumed that they together constituted a slightly more elaborate version of the annual Synoikia. Text of the inscription: Oliver , , no. , –; Sokolowski , no. A, –. For discussion of the text, see especially Ferguson . Cf. also Parke , –. . IG I3  C. Since, as Ferguson (, ) notes, Skambonidai was only “an artiµcial subdivision of the asty” and presumably had no corporate existence prior to Cleisthenes’ reforms, its involvement with the Synoikia must have begun after /. . Pollux (Onom. .) records four successive name changes supposedly undergone by the tribes during the reigns of Cecrops, Cranaus, Erichthonius, and Erechtheus. The assignment of two toponyms referring to the coast in the µrst phase, along with two referring to the hinterland in the second, is presumably the product of an error in the transmission of the tradition. The earliest extant reference to the tradition is made by Apollodorus (FGrH  F), who mentions the original names by which the tribes were known in the time of Cecrops. A presumption that the Ionian phylai were associated with particular areas of Attica also seems to underlie AP’s rather clumsy attempt (.) to explain how, if Cleisthenes had chosen simply to base his new expanded tribal system on the twelve old trittyes, the desired goal of “mixing” would not have been achieved. . Of course, the name Leukotainioi does not obviously refer to any particular Attic township. But the apparent lack of interest in establishing a canonical list of the Dodekapolis member states suggests that the number twelve was for some reason more important than the identity of the speciµc states involved (see Jacoby a, –). The most complete list is found among the fragments of Philochorus (FGrH  F), who reports only eleven secure names. Other sources that refer to the federation include Charax, FGrH  F apud Steph. Byz., s.v. Athe–nai; Etymologicum Genuinum, s.v. epakria kho–ra; Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. epakria kho–ra; Marm. Par., FGrH  A; Steph. Byz., s.v. epakria; Suda, s.v. epaktria kho–ra. Thucydides (..–) seems to have been aware of a tradition of an early Attic federation, as Jacoby (a, ) points out. He infers that the tradition was recorded by all Atthidographers “from Hellanikos downwards.” . See also Kearns , . . So Busolt (, ) and Jacoby (a, ). The Athenians would predictably go on to claim that they themselves had originally exported the dodekapolis idea to Ionia when they µrst “colonized” the region. See Hellanicus, FGrH a F. Ionian Dodekapolis: Hdt. .–, . For discussion of the history of this federation, see Roebuck . Though often believed to date back to the time of the “Ionian migration,” the earliest secure evidence for the Dodekapolis refers to collective actions taken in the aftermath of Cyrus’s invasion of Lydia in ca.  B.C. The altar in the Panionion, where delegates from the twelve states convened, appears to derive from precisely this time (see Kleiner, Hommel, and MüllerWiener , –). . Some kind of connection between the Ionian trittyes and the Dodekapolis has long been suspected. More than a century ago, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (, ) pronounced the federation an Atthidographic “Akt der Forschung,” motivated by the need to provide local origins for the twelve trittyes. See also Busolt and Swoboda , . More recently, Hommel () suggested that the trittyes might actually have been linear descendants of

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the twelve ancient poleis. None of these authors was aware of the role played by the Leukotainioi at the Synoikia, and none suggested any connection with the festival. . This last point is developed further in chapter .

chapter  . By the time of the battle of Marathon, the Athenians could µeld an army of around nine thousand to ten thousand men. In , the total number of Spartan homoioi available for service is reckoned by Herodotus (..) to have been around eight thousand, though these men were presumably better trained than their Athenian counterparts. We are pitifully ignorant about military organization elsewhere in Greece in the late archaic period. But it is quite possible that when Cleisthenes originally proposed his reforms, only the Spartans had permanent structures in place for mobilizing a citizen army. . The primary source for these events is Herodotus (.–). According to the historian, Cleomenes’ motivation for devising the three-pronged assault was ultimately personal: he felt insulted by the treatment he had received from the Athenians when he had attempted to install an oligarchy under Isagoras in /. More realistically, when the Spartans later contemplated a second allied assault on Attica after the defeat of the Thebans and Chalcidians, Herodotus (..) notes that the growing in×uence of Athens moved them to propose the reestablishment of the Peisistratid tyranny. On the annexation of the border territory between Attica and Boeotia, see also pp. – in chapter  below. . According to AP (.), the board of ten generals was not established until the archonship of Hermokreon (/). Some scholars (see, e.g., Rhodes , –; , ; Ostwald , ; Manville , –) have taken this to mean that the new form of military organization as a whole was not introduced until the last year of the sixth century and hence was not in force when the Athenians defeated the Thebans and Chalcidians. While tenable, this view seems overcautious. As we shall see, the two commemorations associated with those victories are laden with the values and priorities of the new order; a fundamental presupposition of both is that the army that fought the battles was representative of the entire citizen community. In any case, as Bradeen (, ) long ago pointed out, the reform mentioned by AP need only have involved a change in the way the ten generals were appointed. From / to / it was the responsibility of each tribe to choose their own general; thereafter, they were appointed as a group by national election. . Tribal taxeis: e.g., Hdt. ..; Thuc. .., ... On the introduction of the board of generals, see n.  above. The polemarch appears to have had at least a nominal supreme command of the army down to ca. . Callimachus, who held the ofµce at the time of the battle of Marathon, was given the casting vote when the ten generals were divided over where to confront the invading Persians. The posthumous monument erected in his honor on the Acropolis presumably assigned him some credit for the victory (see IG I3 ; Raubitschek , no. ; Meiggs and Lewis , no. ). . See especially Bicknell ; , –; Effenterre ; Siewert . Assuming the number of Athenians at the battle of Marathon to be around nine thousand, Bicknell (, – n. ) infers from references to lokhoi of three hundred men (Hdt. ..; Thuc. ..) that each of the ten tribal taxeis was made up of three lokhoi, one from each constituent trittys. Accepting this idea of the trittys/lokhos, Siewert (, –) goes on to propose that demes were originally assigned to trittyes in such a way as to ensure that each

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shared a common road to Athens, thus facilitating the mobilization process. But cf. Rhodes ; Ostwald ,  n. . . See also French ; Bicknell , ; Manville , . Use of mercenaries by the Peisistratids: AP ., ., .; Hdt. ., .. . So argue, for example, Bicknell (, –), Andrewes (, ), and Siewert (, ). Frost (, –) suggests that the phratry register (phraterikon grammateion) might have served as a muster roll in the years before , though he concedes that this scenario is purely hypothetical. . See also Effenterre ; Rausch , –. . Involvement with Sigeion: Hdt. .–; cf. A. Eum. –. Wars with Aegina and Eleusis: e.g., Hdt. .–; Thuc. ... First Sacred War: Aeschin. .–; Marm. Par., FGrH  A; Paus. ..–; Plut. Sol. . Robertson () has argued that this war was entirely “mythical.” Even if it did take place, it is probable that Alcmeon, the leader of the Athenian contingent, was in exile at the time (see pp. – in chap.  above) and, thus, that the force at his command cannot have been “ofµcially” mustered by the Athenian state. Salamis con×ict: e.g., Dem. .; Diog. Laert. .–; Paus. ... Capture of Nisaea: AP .; Hdt. ... Miltiades’ expedition to the Thracian Chersonese: Hdt. .. According to Herodotus, Miltiades took with him “every Athenian who wanted to take part in the expedition” [Athe–naio– n panta ton boulomenon metekhein tou stolou]. . Cylonian conspiracy: Hdt. .; Thuc. ..–; Plut. Sol. .–. The coup of /: AP .; Hdt. .; Plut. Sol. .. The rival tradition that the men with clubs numbered some three hundred (schol. Pl. Rep. B; Polyaenus, Strat. ..) was perhaps invented to make the Athenian capitulation seem somewhat less abject. Pallene: Hdt. .–; cf. AP ., .. Herodotus describes the Athenians as coming out from the city “with their whole army” [panstratie–i]. But as Frost (, ) points out, the term used may be nontechnical, equivalent simply to the term meaning “en masse” [pande–mei] used by Thucydides (..) in his account of Cylon’s coup. For speculation about military organization under the Peisistratids, see p.  and  n.  above. Lavelle (, –) argues persuasively that Athenians may have served as bodyguards (doruphoroi) during the tyranny. But it does not necessarily follow that they also served the tyrants as “regular” soldiers. We have detailed reports of the forces used by the Peisistratids in two engagements, the battle of Pallene and the resistance to Cleomenes in /. In both cases, there is clearly a heavy reliance on non-Athenians, whether mercenaries or allies from other states. The “wars” referred to by Thucydides (..) remain largely a mystery. . There remains the somewhat complicated case of the defeat of Thebes by hoi Athe–naioi (Hdt. .) that led to the storied alliance with Plataea. Thucydides’ (..) claim that the Spartan capture of Plataea in  came “in the ninety-third year” after the alliance would put the battle with Thebes back in  B.C. However, scholars have long sought to lower this date to the last decade of the sixth century. There is no mention of the Peisistratids in Herodotus’s account of the events that led to the alliance, and the Athenian actions look to be more characteristic of the policies pursued in the years immediately following the fall of the tyranny. Shrimpton () may therefore be right to assign the battle to ca.  (when the Athenians are known to have fought the Thebans on more than one occasion) and the alliance to  B.C.—emending “in the ninety-third year” to “in the µftythird year” (i.e., ejnenhkostw`/ to penthkostw`/) in the text of Thucydides.

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. So maintains Rhodes (, ), against Hammond (, –), who argues for annually elected ofµcials. . The epitaph is found only in this source (Anth. Pal. .), where it is attributed to Simonides (fr.  Diehl). Cf. Peek , no. ; Page , –; Clairmont , –, no. ; Rausch , –. . It is still unclear exactly when this repatriation became the norm. Pausanias (..) speaks of a grave in the Demosion Sema for those who fell in a con×ict with Aegina “before the campaign of the Mede” [prin e– strateusai ton Me–don]. But Athenian casualties at the battles of Marathon (see Thuc. .), Salamis (see Clairmont , – n. a), and Plataea (Hdt. .; Paus. ..) were certainly buried in situ, as perhaps were those at Artemisium, Mycale, and Sestos (see Clairmont , ), suggesting that the practice of repatriation did not become standardized until after . If the word pro–toi (µrst) at Paus. .. has a temporal, rather than a spatial, sense, it may imply that those who fell at Drabescus (ca. ) were the µrst casualties to be treated in this fashion (see, e.g., Jacoby ). Noting that Pausanias also saw a memorial for the war dead of Eurymedon (early s?), Clairmont (, , –) argues that repatriation began “in the late s or the early years of Kimon’s rule.” Stupperich (, esp. ) believes that state burials in Athens were a Cleisthenic innovation. For the restoration from newly discovered fragments of a commemorative monument for the Marathonomakhai that once stood in the Demosion Sema, see Rausch , –. . So, for example, Jacoby (, –), Peek (, no. ), Clairmont (, –), and Rausch (, –). A number of scholars (see, e.g., Friedländer ,  n. ) have challenged this consensus on the grounds that it violates contemporary conventions by naming the battleµeld without identifying the deceased. But Page (, –) well demonstrates that the convention was not rigidly followed. Against Page’s view (, ) that the epitaph memorialized the Chalcidians who fell in the battle, see Clairmont , –. . Both Solon, who was not a casualty of war (see Ael. VH .; Plut. Sol. ), and Tellus, who fell in an ancient battle with Eleusis (see Hdt. .), supposedly received public burials. But there is no evidence for any earlier mass war graves set up by the state. Even if there is some truth to the Tellus tradition, it need be no more than the exception that proves the rule (see Clairmont , ). Those who believe the Euripus polyandrion to be the µrst public mass war grave set up by the Athenians include Jacoby (, ) and Clairmont (, ). A number of archaic Attic funerary epigrams for individual warriors are known, all of them apparently from private contexts (see, e.g., Peek , nos. , , ). . Stupperich , . . See also Jacoby , – n. , on the signiµcance of this word and its association with the new regime. He notes: “the battle was the µrst military feat of the new democratic army and the poetical epitaph was a new device which is stressed purposefully by dhmosivai.” . Page (, ) believes damao– here refers to the “defeat” of the tomb’s occupants. But as he himself concedes, this reading would make the Euripus epigram unique among all known public military epitaphs. . Forms of kheo– in the Iliad most commonly refer to the “spreading” of mist, cloud, darkness, or µre (e.g., .; .; ., ; .). It is also used to suggest the vastness of the snow drifts sent by Zeus (.) and of the pile of dead sheep killed by a lion (.).

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At Od. ., as in the Euripus epigram, it describes the “piling up” of a grave mound, in this case for the unfortunate Elpenor. . As Page (, ) points out, the image of a “cloud of war” recalls the akheos nephele– (“cloud of sorrow”) that overcomes both Hector after the death of Podes (Il. .) and Achilles after the death of Patroclus (.). At Il. .ff., Athena is sent by Zeus to rouse the Greeks to battle draped in a mantle of cloud that is expressly compared by the poet to the rainbows dispatched by her father as a portent of war. At Il. ., ., and ., forms of the adjective tre–khus characterize the huge rocks thrown by opponents at Diomedes, Hector, and Athena. The only other occurrences of the word in the Iliad also connote “rockiness,” referring to the “rugged” topography of the towns Aigilips (.) and Olizon (.). . The µrst inscribed Attic grave stelai date from ca.  B.C., a very early example being SEG X  (see Guarducci in Richter , , µg. ). For a summary of the evolution of the grave stele in Attica, see Richter , –. . Text: Friedländer , no. ; Jeffery , no. . The corresponding kore statue, mentioned on p.  in chapter  above, is generally dated to around the mid–sixth century. For other examples of sepulchral inscriptions in which the dead “speak,” see Friedländer , nos. , , . . SEG X ; Friedländer , no. ; Peek , no. ; Richter , no. , µg. ; Jeffery , no. . For other examples of epitaphs for dead warriors from sixth-century Attica, see Friedländer , nos. , , . . Expressions of this kind would remain a staple of Athenian military epitaphs in the decades to come, as in the µrst line of the Eurymedon memorial, where the deceased are said to have “lost their splendid youth” [aglaon o– lesan he– be–n] (Peek , no. ; Clairmont , –, no. c). . The ideal receives its most well-known articulation in the funeral oration assigned to Pericles by Thucydides (esp. .–). As Rusten notes (, ), the fallen are presented there as having made “a complex, digniµed and rational decision to offer their lives.” On this passage in the context of the funeral oration genre as a whole, see Loraux , –. The more general theme of dying for one’s country can be found as early as the poetry of Tyrtaeus (e.g., fr.  West), though in this case, self-sacriµce seems to be represented less as a cause for celebration than as a means of avoiding shameful public reproach. . In Homer (Il. ., ; cf. Od. .), burial “by tomb and by stele” [tumbo– i te – – stelei te] is described as “the dead’s desert” [geras thanonto– n]. Tomb of Ilos: Il. .; ., –; .. On earlier elite tumuli in Attica, see Kübler ; Morris , –, –. . See also Whitley . . One of the most distinctive features of these arrangements was the casualty list, which recorded the occupants of Athenian war graves by tribe. The earliest known example of such a list was set up on the island of Lemnos and dates from the µrst few years of the µfth century (IG XII Suppl. no. ; Hdt. .–; Clairmont , –, no. ; Rausch , –), raising the possibility that a similar document may have been part of the Euripus memorial. Similar lists adorned the soros at Marathon (see Paus. ..), suggesting that the practice was standardized by the end of the s at the latest. . Format of the state funeral: Thuc. .. The associated program of athletic contests, the epitaphios ago–n, is discussed by Clairmont (, –), who believes that it was probably part of the funeral ceremony from the very beginning.

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. Troubling persistence of an aristocratic ethos: especially Loraux , –, –, –. “Democratic” appropriation of aristocratic values: e.g., Seager ; Ober , –; Connor , . . This conclusion is generally borne out by Stupperich’s  paper on the iconography of Athenian war graves in the classical period. Though working from rather slim evidence, Stupperich concludes: “Those fallen in war, although not called heroes, were treated like heroes. One of the ways this was accomplished was the creation and adornment of state burial. The iconography for these burials was taken, at least partly, from that used by the archaic nobility” (). He goes on to raise the interesting question of whether an alternative, more intrinsically “democratic” imagery would have been conceivable at this time. He believes it would not, and this is surely true in the reductive sense that no innovation in any µeld of endeavor can ever be entirely original. At the same time, there can be no question that the values that sustained and were sustained by Athenian mortuary arrangements for fallen citizen soldiers required some considerable modiµcation of earlier practices; to this extent, they were new. Given that the premises behind classical Athenian practices were shaped in the last decade of the sixth century, a time when links with the distant past were actively sought and cultivated in many areas of public life, it would probably be a mistake to underestimate the degree of conscious choice involved in the design of appropriate mortuary forms. . Unlike the Euripus epitaph, the original inscription on the Acropolis monument has survived, albeit in fragmentary form: see IG I3 ; Friedländer , no. ; Raubitschek , no. ; Meiggs and Lewis , no. A; Clairmont , –, no. A. For discussion of the crux at ajcnuoventi in the µrst line, which is known only through the literary tradition, see Page , . The replacement inscription, though similarly fragmentary, has also survived (see Raubitschek , no. ; Meiggs and Lewis , no. B) and is cited in several ancient sources (e.g., Anth. Pal. .; Diod. .; Hdt. .). For some reason, it reverses the order of the two hexameters. The later monument, perhaps like the original, occupied a site “on the left-hand side as you enter the propylaia” (Hdt. .). Its letter forms suggest that it was put up in the middle years of µfth century, perhaps in the mid-s, after the recent success over the Thebans at Oenophyta (see Raubitschek , –), or in the s, as part of the general program of reconstruction on the Acropolis. The fetters referred to in the epigram were hung on a nearby wall and were still apparently visible in Herodotus’s day, despite some µre damage. . To convey a sense of the vast scale of the Greek army at Troy, a simile at Il. . compares the constituent contingents to ethnea (“swarms”) of bees. See also, e.g., Il. ., , ; .. . See, e.g., Snodgrass , –; Greenhalgh , –. Webster (, –) doubts whether the use of chariots in Late Geometric Greece extended beyond racing. Anderson () draws on British and Cyrenaic evidence to argue that Homeric descriptions of chariot warfare may re×ect eighth-century realities. But cf. Greenhalgh , –. . For an overview of the range of this engagement, see the essays in Hägg . For a general discussion of the “use of the past” during the period, see Whitley . Reuse of Mycenean tombs: Coldstream ; Whitley ; Antonaccio . Imitation or adaptation of Bronze Age structures at Thermon, Koukounaries, Keos, Tiryns, and Argos: Hurwit , –. Attempts at Argos and Eretria to reproduce Cyclopean masonry: Wright ; Themelis , ; Antonaccio . “Myceneanizing” bronze panoply of the late eighth century from Argos: Courbin , esp. –.

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. Evidence from Linear B tablets suggests that the palace at Knossos had an extensive ×eet of chariots at its disposal under the Myceneans, though the terrain in Crete and Greece would surely have limited the vehicle’s utility in any age. Generally on the use of chariots in the Bronze Age, see Littauer ; Crouwel . On art and artifacts associated with chariots in Geometric and archaic Greece, see Hill . Homeric misunderstandings of the nature of chariot warfare: Greenhalgh , –. In the Iliad, the chariot is generally seen as little more than a grandiose form of horse, allowing the hero to arrive in style at the battleµeld before the real combat takes place on foot. . Sinos (, –) discusses the divine-heroic resonance of the chariot and chariot procession in archaic Attic art as background to her analysis of the Phye ceremony. As she notes, in art as in ceremony, “the chariot procession effects a dissolution of the normal boundaries that distinguish mortals from gods and heroes” (). . On the two monuments as a “true precedent” for µfth-century commemorations, see Jacoby , . To single out just one example, we might note the set of three herms erected in the Agora to mark Cimon’s victory over the “sons of the Medes” [Me– do– n paides] at Eion in ca.  B.C. (see Jacoby , –; Clairmont , –, no. A), where the action is explicitly compared to the efforts of Menestheus and his Athenian force at Troy.

chapter  . The remark was politically motivated. Demosthenes’ opponent Eubulus controlled the theo–rika, a fund of public money that was originally designated to help poorer citizens attend major festivals, such as the Dionysia, but that latterly had come to be used to underwrite a wide range of public works. Demosthenes wanted to end the practice of assigning public surpluses to this fund instead of leaving them available to µnance military ventures like the war over Amphipolis. . Alternatively, the Panathenaia may originally have been “the festival of Panathena” (see Davison ,  with n. ). There is, however, no evidence that Athena was ever styled thus. The names of Greek festivals (e.g., ta Panathe–naia) are typically plural in form, but it sounds more natural in English to speak of them in the singular, and I follow this practice throughout. Unless otherwise noted, I use the term Panathe–naia as did the ancients (see Davison , ), to refer to the penteteric celebration, not to its smaller, annual counterpart. The bibliography for the festival is extensive. The more signiµcant works include Mommsen  (–), Deubner  (–), Ziehen , Davison , Parke  (–), Simon  (–), and Neils c and b. . The most valuable single item of evidence we have for the many athletic contests staged at the Panathenaia is an extensive, if incomplete, list of prizes awarded to victors, dating from ca.  (IG II2 ; Neils a, , µg. ). The best source for the participants in the procession remains what survives of the Parthenon frieze. See especially Brommer  and, for illustrations, Robertson and Frantz . Even if the rendering of the event on the frieze is decidedly oblique or allusive, those scholars who have argued that the subject is something other than the Panathenaic procession (see, e.g., Connelly ) still fail to persuade. Cf. the analyses by Kardara (), Kroll (), Castriota (, –), Osborne (b), Harrison (), Neils (a), and Maurizio (). . For the date, see Procl. In Ti. B; schol. Pl. Rep. A. Neils’s reconstruction (a, –) of the daily order of events at the festival is plausible. She believes it to have begun

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with the musical and rhapsodic contests on  Hekatombaion, ending a week later on  Hekatombaion with the award ceremonies and the feasting. . Parker (, ) calls the Panathenaic procession “the supreme example in the Greek world of civic pageantry, of a society on display before itself and the rest of Greece.” But the procession did not represent Athenian society in any straightforward fashion. See the stimulating discussion by Maurizio (). . Maurizio () would downplay the political character of the procession, primarily because the processants as a group were not a representative sample of the citizen body: the elite are overrepresented; the thetes feature little, if at all; and many in the pompe– were technically “outsiders” (women, metics, allies, and perhaps slaves). This understanding of the “political” seems to be too literal and narrowly constitutional. I also do not see any strong support for her claim that the vision of Athenian society on display in the procession “challenged,” in a meaningful way, the prevailing democratic order. There was nothing politically problematic about the inclusion of the “outsiders.” One of the procession’s conceits was surely that all these various groups willingly embraced the roles assigned to them by a society that regarded them as less than full members. Likewise, in the “imaginary” Athens of the Panathenaia and the funeral orations, so well described by Loraux (), all male citizens were part of a collective elite, regardless of their economic and social position. Even if genuine inequalities of wealth and status were underscored by the procession, the ×aunting of privilege did not necessarily threaten the notion of the “collective rule of the demos,” as long as the privileged were seen to serve the common interest. . In the surviving prize inscription (see n. ), all events reserved for Athenians are grouped under the heading “[contests] for warriors” [polemiste– riois]. . The foundation legend is discussed in some detail on pp. – later in this chapter. For speculation on the character of the Panathenaia before the s, see Davison , –; Brelich , –; Robertson ; , –. Simon () believes that the festival originated in the Bronze Age. Athena and the Acropolis in the Homeric epics: Il. .–; Od. .–. A survey of the Acropolis material record from the later Bronze Age to the early µfth century can be found in chapter  above. . See pp. –, –. . In later times, the peplos ceremony was part of both the annual and the penteteric versions of the Panathenaia. An oversized facsimile of the peplos was used as a sail on the ceremonial ship that was added to the procession of the Great Panathenaia at some point during the µfth century, perhaps soon after the Persian Wars. For discussion, see Barber , which draws on the work of Mansµeld (). Panathenaia as a commemoration of Athena’s role in the Gigantomachy: schol. Ael. Arist. ..– (. Dindorf ); Vian , –, –; Pinney . On the µrst appearance of Gigantomachy scenes on Attic vases and the likely association with the peplos ceremony, see Shapiro , –. More generally, on the sudden popularity of the striding Athena image, see Shapiro , –; Shapiro believes that a further stimulus here may have been the installation on the Acropolis of a predecessor of Phidias’s later Athena Promakhos statue. Among the very earliest prize vases is the Burgon amphora of ca.  (London, BM ; ABV .; Shapiro , pl. a). . For general discussion of the transformation of the Panathenaia in the s, see, e.g., Davison , –; Kyle , –; Shapiro , –, ; Neils a, –. A series of three mid-sixth-century inscriptions from the Acropolis (Raubitschek , nos. –) appear to commemorate early performances of the Great Panathenaia. Though

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none mentions the name of the festival, each one records that sacred ofµcials [hieropoioi] “made” [epoie–san] a dromos (racetrack?) for Athena. Two of the inscriptions (nos. –) go on to state that the same ofµcials dedicated an ago–n (games) to the goddess, and one of these (no. ) notes that the ofµcials in question were the “µrst” [pro– toi] to do this. In Jerome’s Latin version of Eusebius’s Chronikon, the entry for the year / (= Ol. .– [a–b Helm]) records simply that “athletic games, known as the Panathenaia, were held” [agon gymnicus, quem Panathenaeon vocant, actus]. Also assigning this or a similar development to the mid–sixth century are Marcellinus (Vit. Thuc. , a rather corrupt passage that apparently cites Pherecydes), who claims that the Panathenaia was founded [etethe–] in the archonship of Hippocleides (cf. Hdt. .–), and a scholium to the Panathenaicus of Aelius Aristides (..– [. Dindorf ]), which credits Peisistratus with instituting the Great Panathenaia [ta de megala [sc. Panathe–naia] Peisistratos epoie–sen]. . Scenes on the prize amphorae are the most reliable guide to the contents of the Panathenaic program in the archaic and early classical periods. Even if the images on these vases did not necessarily represent the events for which they were awarded, artists as a rule restricted themselves to painting only those contests for which amphorae were awarded at the Panathenaia. Hamilton () notes only µve possible exceptions to this rule, none of them straightforward. “Pseudo-Panathenaics” betray their noncanonical status in a number of ways, of which two may be said to be most deµnitive: they are often distinctly smaller than the genuine article (usually under µfty centimeters high, while prize vases are almost all over sixty centimeters), and they lack the ofµcial inscription to–n Athe–ne–then athlo–n (“[one] of the prizes from Athens”). See Shapiro , –; Hamilton . The Burgon amphora depicts a two-horse racing chariot (suno–ris), while an early pseudoPanathenaic in London (BM B; ABV .; Shapiro , pl. a) shows a horse race. The footrace is shown on a prize vase of similar date in Halle (Inv. ; ABV ; DABF, pl. .). For mid-sixth-century depictions of other contests, including boxing and wrestling, on Siana Cups, see Brijder . Brijder (–) emphasizes the “enormous” interest of the C Painter and his colleague the Taras Painter in athletic subjects during the years ca. –, an interest Brijder is “tempted” to relate to contemporary Panathenaic developments. . Plutarch (Per. .) seems to imply that musical contests were an innovation of the Periclean era. But Shapiro () argues persuasively that they were introduced at or near the time the Great Panathenaia was founded. Cf. Davison , –. Early illustrations of musical contests are found on a number of vases from the s. Aulode: New York, MM ..; Neils c, , cat. no. . Aulete: Austin, .; Neils c, , cat. . Kitharode (?): San Antonio, ..; Neils c, , cat. . Kitharist: London, BM B; Shapiro , , µg. . . In the pseudo-Platonic dialogue that bears his name (b; cf. Lyc. .), Hipparchus is credited with laying down the regulations for the performance of the Homeric poems at the Panathenaia. The pertinent literary and ceramic evidence is discussed by Shapiro (, –; ). An early scene of rhapsodic competition can be found on a pseudo-Panathenaic from the s that is in Liverpool (..; Shapiro , , µgs. a–b). . Cf. schol. Ael. Arist. ..– (. Dindorf ), where the Lesser Panathenaia, apparently founded in the time of Erichthonius, is said to be the older [arkhaiotera] form of the festival.

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. Jacoby (b, ) is characteristically forthright on the reliability of the Aelius Aristides scholium, dismissing it as “a pure autoschediasm” that is “of no value for the history of the Panathenaia.” For more detailed discussion of the political situation in Athens in ca. –, see pp. – in chapter  above. . As Morgan () has argued, “the formalized framework of pan-Hellenic cult activity” emerged only in the early sixth century—the result, Morgan suggests, of efforts by states to regulate the actions of aristocrats at the major sanctuaries. For the in×uence of the younger Panhellenic games on the format of the Great Panathenaia, see also Davison , . The date of the µrst Olympic Games continues to be a subject of some debate. Mallwitz (), a recent director at Olympia, believed that the festival was established in ca.  B.C. However, it would probably be anachronistic to suppose that it would have yet possessed either the Panhellenic reach or the highly structured program of athletic contests that we see in later times. Ritual garment offerings may be Mycenean in origin. See Barber , –. Ceremonies known to have featured such offerings include those at festivals for Hera at Argos and Apollo at Amyclae. See Barber , , citing Mansµeld , . Pausanias (..–) reports a tradition that would date the foundation of the Heraia to the earlier s (the forty-eighth Olympiad). As Golden (, –) notes, that Khloris, a Theban, was a victor at the µrst Heraia (see Paus. ..) suggests that the festival was Panhellenic from the start. . Even in its early days, the Great Panathenaia seems to have succeeded in attracting non-Athenian contestants from the Greek mainland and beyond. See, e.g., Neils b, –; Golden , –. By the fourth century, non-Athenians appear to have won most of the open events. See IG II2 –; Tracy , ; Tracy and Habicht , . Kyle () believes the introduction of valuable awards consciously recalled the tradition of prize giving at aristocratic funeral games, as seen, for example, in Iliad . But, as he adds, where the prizes at the funeral games of Patroclus were simply recycled prestige items, the Athenians took the novel step of creating “self-declaratory prizes of material and symbolic value.” . The history of the name of the festival is considered in some detail on pp. – later in this chapter. The only possible evidence for a military presence at this time comes in a scene on a band cup from the s, which is now in a private collection in London (Simon , pll. ., .). Here, a sacriµcial procession is seen moving toward an altar, where a priestess ×anked by a statue of Athena awaits. The processants include offering bearers of various kinds, musicians, a horseman, and a small group of hoplites. The procession may be thought to take place on the Acropolis, and the offerings appear to be for Athena. But there are no unambiguous markers of the Panathenaia, such as the peplos, and the statue is not the xoanon of Athena Polias but an armed Promakhos type. If this is the Panathenaic pompe– and not some generic or composite procession, why did the artist not make the identiµcation more explicit? Those who favor an association with the Panathenaia include Straten (, –) and Maurizio (, –). Shapiro appears to do the same at one point (, –) but seems less certain later (, ). Simon (, ) resists any such identiµcation, describing the scene simply as “an amusing procession in honor of Athena.” . The two accounts are discussed by, among others, Mommsen (, – n. , –); Day and Chambers (, –); Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover (, –); Rhodes (, ); and Robertson (, –). Thucydides’ (.) claim about the anomalous character of the Marathon burial shows that he was quite capable of erring on rela-

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tively recent matters, even when a modest level of research might have helped him avoid the mistake. Assembly decree as evidence for the claim in AP .: Mommsen , – n. . Cf. Thuc. .., where the reference to the extension made to the Altar of the Twelve Gods by “the demos of the Athenians” was also based presumably on an inscription commemorating the initiative. . On the placement of the Gigantomachy in the west pediment, see Childs , –; Childs draws on Lapalus’s “principle” (, –) whereby, if the two schemes are combined, a hieratic scheme is generally used in the east pediment and a narrative scheme in the west. . For a photograph (with English translation) of the inscription, see Neils a, . Johnston (, ) restores the entry for the apobate–s prizes between those for the horse race and the race in armor in the section that deals with the open events. The anthippasia is µrst attested on a fourth-century relief base signed by Bryaxis (Athens, NM ; Tzachou-Alexandri , –, no. ). It probably was not introduced until after the formal establishment of the Athenian cavalry in the later µfth century (see Bugh , –). For discussion of the event, see Reed , –. . Pelike by the Theseus Painter: San Antonio, ..; Para. ; Neils c, , cat. no. . Skyphos from Thasos: Poursat . Poursat offers a helpful survey of the artistic evidence for the pyrrhic dance. . On the euandria, see Crowther a; Reed ; , –; Kyle , –; Boegehold , –. The association with shield juggling arises from a reference in AP (.; cf. IG II2 .) to the award of shields to victors in the event and from scenes on a pair of vases that have been thought to depict the euandria: a mid-sixth-century amphora of Panathenaic shape in Paris (Cab. Méd. ; Neils , , µg. ) and a prize vase from the early µfth century that was formerly in the collection of Nelson Bunker Hunt (Neils c, , cat. no. ). While it is hard to know what to make of the former scene, which shows a man with two shields jumping onto a horse’s back, the latter almost certainly shows preparations for a different event, the hoplitodromos, or race in armor (see Neils , –). There is no evidence that prize vases were awarded to victors in the team events, and given that teams were competing for the honor of their tribes and did not need extra incentives to participate, it is hard to believe that such vases ever were awarded. A very different interpretation of the euandria has recently been proposed by Boegehold (, –), who tries to equate it with the Panathenaic choral contest alluded to by Lysias (.–, ). In support, he would emend the obscure pro–tophorein in Athen. . to read pro–tokhorein, thus making “dancing in the front rank” one of the principal requirements of the euandria. He also suggests that the group of seven draped µgures seen in one-half of the relief on the so-called Atarbos Base (Acrop. ; Boegehold , , µg. .) may be a victorious team of competitors in the event. The other half appears to show a winning team in the pyrrhic dance, also sponsored by Atarbos. . See Neils , –, µgs. –. For a fuller list of these vases, see Webster , –. Good examples include a red-µgure kylix by Douris (Dresden, lost since ; ARV  .; Neils , , µg. ), on which the youth wears the distinctive cap, and a red-µgure amphora by the same artist, in St. Petersburg (Herm. ; ARV  .; Yalouris , , µg. ), on which the kalos inscription adorns a ribbon attached to a similar cap. Neils suggests that this curious headgear may have been peculiar to the euandria. The amphora of Panathenaic shape is in Boston (Museum of Fine Arts .; ARV  .; Neils ,  µg.

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). In support of Neils’ interpretation, it is tempting to revive Valois’s suggested emendation of Athenaeus’s pro–tophorein, to ptorthophorein, meaning “to carry branches.” . See Neils , –. The only specialist studies of Greek boat racing I am aware of are by Gardner (a, b). The Panathenaic event is discussed by Kyle (, ). In later times, small rowing boats, not triremes, were used (see Gardiner , ). The seven items of evidence adduced by Neils are listed in Webster , . A representative example of the aphlaston motif can be seen on a red-µgure lekythos by the Brygos Painter, in New York (MM ..; ARV  .; Neils , , µg. ). For the comparison with scenes commemorating musical victories, see the bibliography in Neils ,  n. . As Neils notes, the presence of a Nike µgure with an aphlaston on the columns of a prize vase from / B.C. (Oxford, Ashmol. Mus. ) seems to conµrm the association between the motif and the festival. Cf. Eschbach , –, pl. .–. . For bibliography on torch racing in the Greek world, see Crowther b, –. Athenian torch races: Deubner , –; Herbert ; Parke , , , –, –; Simon , –, –; Kyle , –. Representations in art: Webster , –. The bell krater referred to is in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard .; ARV  .; Neils c, , cat. no. ). It shows the runners arriving at an altar ×anked by the sacred olive. The festive context of the event is conµrmed by a hydria, the prize for the Panathenaic race (see IG II .), which stands nearby. . The earliest literary allusion to torch racing comes in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (–). Webster (, ) suggests that the same author’s Prometheus Pyrphoros, also from the early s, may have been written to commemorate the µrst torch race at the Prometheia. The lampade–dromia at the Hephaisteia is unattested before /, the date of an inscription (IG I ) that records regulations for the staging of the race. In Aristophanes’ Frogs (ff.), Dionysus and Aeschylus comment on the declining standards in Athenian torch racing, especially in the Panathenaic race, which indicates that the event was already seen as a time-honored µxture of the festival by the late µfth century. Some have contended that the lampade–dromia at the Panathenaia may have been a Peisistratid innovation (see Parke , –; Robertson , ). But cf. Davison ,  n. . . However, prizes awarded to the winners in these individual contests in ca.  were generally less valuable than those given to victors in the more traditional Olympic-style events. For example,  amphorae were awarded for µrst place in the open two-horse chariot race, while only  were awarded to the winner of the equivalent race for “warriors,” the same number as that given to the boys who won the open contests in boxing, wrestling, and the pentathlon. . The merits of throwing javelins from horseback as military training are recommended in several sources: e.g., Pl. Meno d; Xen. Hipparch. ., ., .. . Cups by the Hippacontist Painter: ARV  .–; e.g., Bowdoin .; Ure , , µg. . The µrst image of a prize vase is on an amphora in London (BM .–.; ABV .; Kyle , , µg. ). Cf. also ABV ., from the late s, and ABV ., from the mid-s. Cup with hippacontist and athletes: ARV  .; Jüthner , pl. . . Evidence for the contest: Kyle , –; , –; Reed ; , –; Crowther . Although the race is conspicuously absent from the fourth-century prize list, we know that it was one of the events from which non-Athenians were excluded (see [Dem.] .). The most informative literary source is a passage in the Erotikos traditionally ascribed to Demosthenes (.–), which is addressed to Epikrates, an experienced apobate–s. The

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text notes vaguely (.) that the event was held in “the greatest” [tais megistais] Greek cities. Harpocration (s.v. apobate–s) maintains that it was conµned to Athens and Boeotia. Evidence for contests held further aµeld: Crowther ,  n. . Foundation myth with apobate–s: [Eratosth.] Cat. . Cf. Marm. Par., FGrH  A, where Erichthonius is credited with inventing the chariot, and Hyg. Poet. astr. ., where he is remembered as a participant in the Panathenaic chariot race. The various traditions about the foundation of the Panathenaia are examined on pp. – below. One indication of the symbolic importance of the race in the festival is the prominence of apobatai in the Parthenon frieze (slab nos. N. –, S. –). I take the frieze to be a timeless, heroizing rendering of the mid-µfth-century Panathenaic procession. . Cf. the comments of Beazley in Richter , . Scenes of “departing warriors”— armed men mounting a chariot before being driven apparently to battle—are relatively common on Attic vases of the second half of the sixth century (see Wrede ; Richter , –), and a similar tableau occurs on a well-known grave stele in New York (MM ..; Richter , –, µgs. –). But these images should not be taken as evidence for the apobate–s contest. See Reed , –. . The earliest known images of apobatai in red-µgure art are on a pair of early classical column kraters by the Naples Painter (ARV  .–). The µrst prize vase to show the event is an amphora in Malibu (.AE.; Kyle ,  µg. ), which dates from /. Diosphos Painter lekythoi: ABL .–. Haimon Group lekythoi: ABV .–. Beazley describes these generic scenes in the following terms: “Chariot at the gallop, driven by a charioteer in a long robe; a hoplite has alighted and runs beside the chariot. There is usually a goal, so the apobates race, although the hoplite is sometimes given a spear.” Examples include lekythoi in Paris (Cab. Méd. ; ABV .), Cambridge (GR.– []; ABV .; see µg. ), and Brussels (A; ABV .). Haimon Group lekythoi with Athena: ABV .–. . General characteristics of late black-µgure lekythoi and their market are discussed by Boardman (, –). . In her recent monograph on Greek “war games,” Reed () contends that both contests, along with the euandria, hoplitodromos, and hoplomachia, played a signiµcant role in Greek military training in the classical period. A close relationship between armed dancing and warfare is presupposed in several sources (Athen. .f; Dio Chrys. .–; Lucian, Salt. ; cf. Borthwick ; ,  n. ). However, there is no evidence that the Panathenaic pyrrhic dance served a training function in classical Athens. Given its components (to be discussed shortly), one would think that its value to aspiring hoplites would have been little more than symbolic. Of Reed’s µve “war games,” only the hoplomachia, which simulated hand-to-hand armed combat, seems to have been of any practical utility. Even this activity was probably not part of any public training regimen at Athens until the early Hellenistic period. See Wheeler ; Anderson . . Movements included in the pyrrhic dance are described in Pl. Leg. .a; cf. E. Andr. –. “Heroic garb”: Pinney , . For a more detailed discussion of the equipment used, see Poursat , –. The general style of the pyrrhic dance seems to have been inspired by the kind of leaping we see at, for example, Il. .–. Homeric hupaspidia: Il. .–, –; . (cf. Diomedes .. Keil; Tyrtaeus, fr. .; Borthwick , ). . Links with the birth of Athena: Lucian, Dial. D. ; cf. Apollod. Bibl. ..; Ap. Rhod. .; schol. Ar. Nub. –; P. Ol. .; Borthwick , ; ,  with n. ).

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Links with Gigantomachy: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. ..; cf. Vian , . According to an Oxyrhynchus commentary on an Old Comedy (P. Oxy. ), one part of the dance was known simply as skhe–ma te–s Athe–nas, “Athena’s look” or “Athena’s gesture,” which most likely alludes to the aversion of her head while slaying the Gorgon, an event sometimes associated with the Gigantomachy (see Borthwick ). Etymology of “Pallas”: Pl. Crat. d–a (cf. Ar. Ach. –; E. Ion ; Lucian, Dial. D. ). . Achilles as originator: Arist. fr.  R. Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus: Borthwick . Pyrrhikhos: Athen. .e; Strabo .. Athena’s sanction: Pl. Leg. .b. . Thompson (, –), for example, believes that the event had its origins in the “cult of the heroised dead” practiced in the Agora area during the eighth and seventh centuries. Burkert (, ) is willing to reach further back. He claims it “represents a continuation of the Bronze Age chariot µght” and commemorated the moment when King Erichthonius took possession of the land of Attica (cf. [Eratosth.] Cat. ). More imaginatively, Robertson (, –) suggests that the race developed after , around the transfer of sacred µre from the Academy to the Acropolis. . On the cultural resonance of chariots in post–Bronze Age Greece and misunderstandings about their use in warfare, see pp. – in chapter . . Two of the eight—Androtion, FGrH  F, and Hellanicus, FGrH a F—are cited by Harpocration (s.v. Panathe–naia), while a scholium on Ael. Arist. ..– (. Dindorf ) credits the Lesser Panathenaia to Erichthonius and the penteteric version to Peisistratus. The other sources are Apollod. Bibl. ..; [Eratosth.] Cat. ; Marm. Par., FGrH  A; Philoch., FGrH  F–; schol. Pl. Parm. a. . See also Davison , –. Even Plutarch’s account, which makes no mention of Erichthonius or an Athenaia, is not necessarily inconsistent with this reconstruction, since he claims that Theseus created the Panathenaia expressly for the whole population of Attica. . So argues, for example, Jacoby (a, ), who considers this explanation “obvious.”

chapter  . For a full summary and discussion of the contents of the Dionysia, see PickardCambridge (, –). Thucydides (..) speaks of the Anthesteria as “the older” [ta arkhaiotera] Dionysia, presumably in contrast to the Lenaia, which was staged in the same location, and the City Dionysia. In the text of AP, the Lenaia itself is numbered among the “ancestral” festivals administered by the archon basileus (.), while the City Dionysia is characterized as one of the younger festivals organized by the archon eponymos (.; cf. .). . Date of foundation: Marm. Par., FGrH  A. Among those who accept this testimony and believe it to refer to the establishment of the City Dionysia are Pickard-Cambridge (, , ), Hammond (, ), and Herington (, ). The date of the µrst dithyrambic contests also derives from an entry on the Marmor Parium (FGrH  A). Without specifying a context, the text refers to the establishment of “choruses of men” [khoroi andro– n] during the archonship of Lysagoras, which would appear to have been in / or /. Choregic reorganization: Capps , ; Pickard-Cambridge , . Addition of comedy: Suda, s.v. Khionide–s; Pickard-Cambridge , –.

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. West () is also skeptical about the purported Peisistratid origins of the festival. Rausch (, –) believes that the Dionysia was founded during the tyranny and substantially reformed after its fall. Likewise, Wilson (, –) is inclined to believe that the last decade of the sixth century was “an epochal moment in the history of the Dionysia,” suggesting that the publicly administered choregic system, the subject of his monograph, was an innovation of these years. . The Suda entry for Thespis seems to support this date, putting his µrst production somewhere in the sixty-µrst Olympiad (/). For arguments against the reliability of this entry and those for Choerilus and Phrynichus (assigning their µrst productions to the sixtyfourth [/] and sixty-seventh [/] Olympiads, respectively), see West . Even if correct, these dates could refer to productions at rural Dionysia, as Connor (, ) points out. . In other sources, where a context for his activities is either stated or implied, Thespis is invariably associated with plays held in the countryside (see Dioscorides, Anth. Pal. .; Hor. Ars P. –; cf. Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. thumele–). Presumably, these memories are not unrelated to a pair of well-known traditions that made his hometown of Ikarion in northeast Attica the venue for the µrst tragedy and comedy and the site of the µrst epiphany of Dionysus in the region. See Hyg. Poet. astr. ., citing Eratosth. Erigone; Diog. Laert. .; Suda, s.v. Thespis. On Ikarion and its associations with drama and Dionysus, see Pickard-Cambridge , –. . For a useful summary of the history of this part of the text and its transmission, see Connor , –. The disputed phrase dra`m[a ejn a[]stei is a conjecture made by Boeckh, who apparently never examined the stone µrsthand. Earlier accounts of this section report that the only visible letters were NAL . . . STIN. Boeckh’s conjecture has, however, been widely and, it seems, uncritically retained, by e.g., Snell TGF  (Thespis) T and Pickard-Cambridge (, ). Further diminishing the likelihood that this testimony refers to the City Dionysia is the statement that a goat was awarded as a prize, an award otherwise unattested for the festival (see Connor , – with nn. –). . Another record (IG II2 ) lists tragedians according to the date of their µrst victory at the Dionysia. The µrst extant entry is for Aeschylus (), and there is space for about eight earlier winners (see West , ). “Fasti” entries for tragedy begin ca. /: see Pickard-Cambridge , –, following Capps , . Both Pickard-Cambridge and Capps infer that this marks the reorganization of the competition on a choregic basis. . If the Suda entry for Pratinas (describing a contest between Pratinas, Aeschylus, and Choerilus) can be believed, we have a µrm terminus ante quem for tragic competition in the seventieth Olympiad (/), probably the year . See West ,  with n. . . The heading of IG II2  is usually reconstructed as PRW]TON KWMOI HSAN T[WI DIONUS]WI TRAGWIDOI D[ (“for the µrst time, ko–moi were held for Dionysus, tragedies . . . ”), implying that “revels” at the Dionysia preceded the addition of tragedy. . Mythical beginnings of the Dionysia: schol. Ar. Ach. ; Paus. ..; Suda, s.v. melan. Pausanias (..) brie×y discusses the decision made by the people of Eleutherai to align themselves with the Athenians for protection against the Thebans, though he gives no hint of the date of this event. Annexation as a post-Peisistratid development: Shrimpton , ; Connor , . . Many have supposed that the khoroi andro–n (see n. ) established in Athens during the archonship of Lysagoras (/ or /) were dithyrambic choruses (see Pickard-Cam-

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bridge , –; , –). Connor (,  n. ) infers, then, that tribal contests in dithyrambic performance were inserted into the program of the Dionysia in the earliest years of the festival. For the possible association of these khoroi with the reforms of Cleisthenes, see Wilson , –. . Foundations of the earliest temple (?): Travlos , ; Wycherley , . Peisistratid date: Kolb , ; Travlos , . Resemblance to Stoa Basileios: Connor , –, citing the authority of Shear in support. Dating the sculptural fragment: Connor , –. . For the relocation of the statue to the Academy sanctuary, see Paus. ... If the return of the statue to the city center was not the so-called introduction from the hearth (see n.  below), it makes much more sense, given the explicit purpose of the festival, to see it as the pompe– proper, the exact route of which is not described in any source. See Connor , –. . On these rites at the eskhara, see Sourvinou-Inwood , –. For the eskhara itself, see pp. – in chapter  above. Sacriµces and choral singing: Xen. Hipparch. .. . The Suda (s.v. Pratinas) records that the temporary seating (ta ikria) used in the Agora for the Dionysia collapsed between / and / B.C. (in the seventieth Olympiad). This prompted the construction of the µrst permanent theater alongside the temple, on the southeast slope of the Acropolis. Other sources mentioning ikria in the Agora as the place from where the audience watched dramas before the theater was built include Hesych., s.v. par’ ageirou thea, ageirou thea; Phot., s.v. ikria. Very little, if anything, survives of the µrst theater, the sole possible traces being a series of six polygonal limestone blocks that appear to form the arc of a circle. Dörpfeld (, , µg. ) considered this wall portion to derive from the early µfth century and inferred that it was set up to create a terrace and ×at circular space for the new orkhe–stra. This interpretation is accepted by, for example, Dinsmoor (, esp. –), Hammond (, –), and Wycherley (, –). For references to the orkhe–stra area in the Agora, see Wycherley , –. . The ceremony was known as the “introduction from the hearth” (eisago–ge– apo te–s eskharas). It is usually thought that the eskhara in question was located in the Academy area (see, e.g., Pickard-Cambridge , ). More likely, it was the one installed in the Agora in ca.  B.C. (see Kolb , –; Sourvinou-Inwood , ). The eisago–ge– is referred to in a series of second-century ephebic inscriptions (e.g., IG II2 , , , ) and presumably took place after the pompe– had escorted the statue to the center of the city and after the sacriµces and choral dances had been performed in the Agora (see Xen. Hipparch. .). . Connor’s reconstruction has been challenged by Sourvinou-Inwood (; see also Parker , –), who contends that the festival and its tragedy competition predated the reforms of Cleisthenes (though she seems reluctant to specify a date for the foundation or the agency responsible). However, her principal objections are not immediately persuasive. She contends that the City Dionysia’s foundation myths and “ritual grammar” reveal it to conform more to the xenismos (ritual welcome) model of festival than to any “integration/annexation” model. Thus, she would dissociate the festival’s origins from any historical connection with Athenian interests in the area of Eleutherai. But surely a festival of this complexity was not based on any one single model (see Connor , ). Sourvinou-Inwood’s other main argument rests on a chain of inferences regarding the shape of early Greek theaters. She claims that the apparent preference for rectilinear caveae over curvilinear ones

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supports the idea that tragedies were staged in Athens before the appearance of the µrst dithyrambic choruses in the city; hence, the City Dionysia must have already existed when the khoroi andro–n were µrst introduced in the archonship of Lysagoras. Yet, as Wycherley (,  n. ) observes, evidence for the form of early theaters in Greece is highly problematic. Recent opinion indicates that the rectilinear theater at Thorikos, a key item of evidence in the argument, was originally intended to be a space for worship and/or political meetings rather than dramatic performances (see Mussche , esp. ). . Nilsson (, –), among others, would also emphasize the importance of the annexation in the genesis of the festival. Connor (, –) recognizes the Dionysia’s function as a “festival of integration” but lays more stress on its identity as a “freedom festival.” On the etymology of Eleuthereus and the likelihood that the place-name Eleutherai was taken from the god’s epithet rather than vice versa, see Raa×aub ,  with n. . . Sourvinou-Inwood (, ) emphasizes: “The focus of the myth is not the introduction of the cult of Dionysus Eleuthereus from Eleutherai to Athens; the myth is about the µrst introduction of the cult of Dionysus in Athens . . . and it is this introduction of the cult of Dionysus in general that the City Dionysia celebrates.” . For a fuller list of the ways in which the political and military life of the state was implicated in the festival, along with a concise overview of recent work on the subject, see Said , –. On the ceremonies held in the theater before the plays were performed, see especially Goldhill . Generals’ libations: Plut. Cim. .–. Tribute displayed onstage: schol. Ar. Ach. ; Isoc. .. Parade of war orphans: Aeschin. .; Isoc. .. Awards to benefactors: Aeschin. .–; Dem. .. For a wide-ranging exploration of the festival’s associations with ephebes, see Winkler . . The quote is from Pickard-Cambridge  (), where a useful summary of the details of the procession can also be found (–). On how the pompe– of the Dionysia “resembled [that of ] the Panathenaia in articulating, and being articulated by, the whole Athenian polis as one unit,” see Sourvinou-Inwood , –. See also Winkler , –. . For detailed accounts of the contents of this festival, see Mylonas , –; Parke , –. The spondophoria: e.g., Aeschin. .; Isoc. .; Mylonas , –; Clinton , –. As Price (, –) suggests, the practice of requesting the offering of µrstfruits from other states probably began in the imperial era, when the Athenians would have insisted that their allies send offerings as a token of loyalty. It is thought that the so-called Lesser Mysteries, a cult of Demeter celebrated at Agrai on the Ilissos in the springtime, was originally distinct from the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis. At some point, however, the two cults seem to have become fused, with initiation into the former serving as a kind of formal preparation for initiation into the latter. See Mylonas , –; Parke , , . . IG I3 , a list of regulations governing the public conduct of the festival from the second quarter of the µfth century, explicitly refers to the participation in the ceremonies by non-Athenians, suggesting that the festival already enjoyed a certain “international” appeal by this time. Cultural leadership associated with control of Eleusis: e.g., Isoc. .–. . See Miles , –. The earliest signs of activity at the sanctuary consist of seventh-century deposits that include terracotta µgurines and other small votives. Among the µgurines, “plain columnar” images of females are especially common, supporting the idea that the sanctuary belonged to Demeter from the start. Earlier authors who identiµed the exposed foundations as belonging to the temple of Triptolemos include Boersma (,

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–), Thompson and Wycherley (, ), and Hayashi (, ). There are no superstructural remains of a date comparable to that of the foundations. The earliest such remains are marble roof tiles that seem to derive from a time nearer to the middle of the µfth century, when the sanctuary was probably restored after the Persian sack. . Against the older view (see, e.g., Mylonas , –) of a continuity of cult at Eleusis going back to the Mycenean era, see especially Darcque . Traces of a curved wall found under the remains of later telesteria have been thought to constitute evidence for an eighth-century apsidal temple. See Mylonas , –, µgs. , . . Evidence for the “Solonian” phase at Eleusis is described thoroughly by Mylonas (, –). For the new date, see Miles ,  with n. ; Miles also notes that some mid-sixth-century architectural fragments described by Clinton (, –) may belong to the building. . Some time ago, Shear () suggested that the second archaic telesterion should probably be dated to the time of Peisistratus’s sons. Others now favor a date closer to the end of the sixth century. In addition to the building’s general resemblance to the Old Bouleuterion, there are similarities of architectural detail with the Arkhaios Neos in Athens (see Hayashi , –). As Clinton (, ) points out, the new fortiµcation wall surely belongs to the years immediately after . Cleomenes had sacked the sanctuary in that year (see Hdt. ..), and Athenian relations with neighboring states seem to have been quite strained for some time thereafter. . The inscriptions are published by Jeffery (). They are thought to have been parts of altars at the sanctuary. See Miles , , for details of contemporary mud-brick foundations that might have supported one of these altars. . The question of the foundation of the Mysteries should probably be kept separate from the larger issue of the uniµcation of Attica. The latter issue is fraught with problems (see chap. ), and, in any case, the best evidence for relations between Athens and Eleusis is found in testimony for the festival itself. This testimony may indeed suggest that the Athenians controlled the cult and sanctuary before the time of Cleisthenes’ reforms (as is discussed later in this chapter), but it need not imply that all Eleusinians routinely became Athenian citizens before /. . For a summary of his case, see Clinton , –. The argument hinges on two factors: the claim that a “law of Solon” (Andoc. .) dealing with the conduct of the Mysteries is genuinely Solonian and the presumed force of AP’s report (.; cf. .) that the festival was one of the “ancestral” sacriµces administered by the archon basileus. I venture that neither source is necessarily inconsistent with the notion that the festival was founded only in the second quarter of the sixth century. Sourvinou-Inwood (, –) also draws attention to the signiµcance of the space in front of the µrst telesterion, a space that, by virtue of the expansion of the supporting terrace, was much larger than it had been when the old apsidal temple was still standing. She proposes that this space was created speciµcally to accommodate ritual components of the Mysteries, like the pouring of liquid from vessels known as ple–mokhoai, which took place on the last day of the festival. She retains the traditional “Solonian” and “Peisistratean” dates for the phases of the sanctuary associated with the two archaic telesteria. . The date of the hymn remains a vexed issue, with estimates ranging all the way from  to . One further advantage of the reconstruction offered here is that it minimizes any problem presented by the hymn’s notorious failure to mention Athens. Whatever po-

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litical relations existed between Athens and Eleusis in the archaic period, I have no difµculty believing that their respective sacred calendars were essentially separate until the second quarter of the sixth century. In other words, the Mysteries will have been the µrst speciµcally Athenian festival to involve use of the sanctuary at Eleusis. Given that the great majority of the hymn is concerned with stories that evolved within the autonomous cultic realm of Eleusis, and given that the Mysteries appear only ×eetingly in the text, it is no great surprise that Athens goes unmentioned. . Rise of Panhellenism in the early sixth century: Morgan . Sourvinou-Inwood (, –) makes the interesting observation that the festival’s eschatological concerns may also re×ect the emergence around the same time of a new Greek attitude toward death, namely, “one of greater anxiety and greater concern for the survival of one’s memory, a more individual perception of one’s death.” . There are around  Triptolemos scenes on extant Attic vases. For analysis of the iconographic evolution of these scenes, see Dugas ; Schwarz ; Hayashi . For discussion of the µrst images of the mission, see also Boardman , ; Shapiro , –; Clinton , –; , –. A good early example is a scene by the Swing Painter on an amphora in Göttingen (Archäologisches Institut der Universität J ; ABV .; Clinton , , µgs. –). . The descent of Heracles to the underworld is attested in Homer (Il. .ff.; Od. .ff.) and µrst appears in Greek art in ca. . Sources linking this story with the initiation tradition include Diod. . and E. HF –. Cf. Lloyd-Jones’s discussion () of the papyrus fragments of a poem—thought to be by Pindar—that mentions Heracles’ initiation in the context of a larger narrative about the descent to Hades. On links between the two traditions in archaic Attic art, see especially Boardman . Boardman (, ) notes that the images on the extant fragment of the vase mentioned (Reggio, ; ABV .; Boardman , pl. a) are “in the manner of Exekias (very close to the master, I would judge, if not his).” They are discussed by Shapiro (, –), who believes that the initiation scene will have been set in Agrai, not Eleusis. His argument alludes to a rival tradition that Heracles, as a non-Athenian, needed to participate in preliminary rites at the Lesser Mysteries before he could be fully initiated at Eleusis. However, that story is found only in later sources (e.g., Diod. ..; Plut. Thes. .) and probably derives from a much later time, when Athenians were more secure about the Panhellenic status of the Mysteries and were thus free to imagine that the festival in its earliest manifestation might have been a purely local affair. . The celebration of the Mysteries is only one of many distinctively Athenian practices with which Heracles is explicitly linked in sixth-century Attic art. See Boardman , –, for a summary of the evidence. The purported engagement of Heracles with these practices at a formative stage in their evolution was presumably felt to glamorize Athenian public life and make it more impressive in the eyes of outsiders. . The Eumolpidai claimed descent from the early “kings” of Eleusis and furnished the hierophants for the Mysteries, the priests who conducted the rites of initiation in the telesterion. A proverbially wealthy branch of the Kerykes genos supplied the torchbearers (daidoukhoi) and the sacred heralds (hieroke–rukes) for the festival. See Mylonas , –, for further information on these functions. . There is a good possibility that another festival of Panhellenic aspirations was established by Athenians at Eleusis around this same time, a more conventional panegyris

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known simply as the Eleusinia. Like the Panathenaia, it was an annual festival that was celebrated with especial pomp every fourth year, when it featured musical and athletic contests (see AP .). A mid-sixth-century inscription from the site (IG I3 ) commemorates the dedication of a dromos to Demeter and Persephone by one Alkiphron, archon of Athens; and a pair of inscriptions from the site (IG I3 , ) seem to come from sixth-century victory dedications. On the history of the festival, see Simms . . “Periclean” telesterion: Mylonas , –. According to Shear (), the Athenians had already dismantled the second archaic telesterion and begun work on a much larger successor by , when the sanctuary was sacked by the Persians. . Good descriptions of the procession can be found in Mylonas  (–) and Parke  (–). For further discussion of the festival’s civic dimension, see Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel , –. . For relevant vases, with illustrations, see Clinton , –. . Dugas  is the seminal work on these scenes. See also the treatments in Schwarz , Shapiro  (–), Clinton  (–, –), and Hayashi . Early examples from ca.  can be seen on a hydria by the Berlin Painter in Copenhagen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ; ARV  .) and on a skyphos by Makron in the British Museum (E ; ARV  .). . Perhaps it was also at this point that Athenian claims to a special relationship with Demeter were inscribed into the climactic ritual of the Mysteries. According to Isocrates (.), details of the services performed by “our ancestors” for Demeter in her hour of need were included among the legomena, the secret “words” spoken during the rites of initiation in the telesterion. . Generally on the Brauronia, see Deubner , –; Parke , –. Quadrennial celebration: AP .. The procession from Athens to Brauron: Ar. Pax . The initiation rite: Ar. Lys. – with schol. . See, e.g., Kolb , ; Shapiro , –; Frost , . . Two sources ([Pl.] Hipparch. b; Plut. Sol. .) claim that the family was actually “from” the Brauron area. Questions about the meaning and reliability of this testimony are raised under on pp. – in chapter  above. . While the site has yet to be fully published, sufµcient remains have been excavated to form a general idea of its chronology and principal monuments. For a summary of the remains, see Travlos , –. Peisistratus is linked with a temple at the sanctuary in the Lexicon of Photius (s.v. Brauro–nia). But the source is very late, and there is no archaelogical support for this claim (see below). . Travlos (, ) dates the µrst temple to the end of the Geometric period on the basis of vase evidence. The xoanon: Paus. .., ... . Date of the late archaic temple: Coulton ; Travlos , ; Shapiro , . . In the most recent analysis of the remains, Dobbins and Rhodes () identify three distinct phases of construction without assigning µrm dates to any of them. For other references to the site, see Travlos , ; Wycherley , . . The krateriskoi: Kahil , . The sculptures are published in Schrader  (–, nos. –). Links with the Brauroneion: Kahil , ; Shapiro , –; Stewart , –, µg. . For the date, see Stewart , –.

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chapter  . For “ofµcial” memory, see pp. –,  n. . . Fornara (,  n. ) has difµculty accepting that this was an “ofµcial” tradition, but his reasons for doing so are, to me at least, a little obscure. . See especially Ar. Lys. –, –; Hdt. .–, .–; Thuc. .; .–. For a full list of ancient sources for the Tyrannicides, see, e.g., Brunnsåker (,  n. ). . Borrowing money from Delphi: Dem. .; Isoc. .. Cf. AP . and Philoch., FGrH  F, where it is suggested that the money came from a contract with the Alcmeonids to rebuild the temple of Apollo. Of the four sources cited above only AP explicitly states that the money was used to hire Spartans. Restoration of the demos from exile: Andoc. ., .; Isoc. ., .; cf. Dem. .. . See, e.g., Andoc. .; Dem. ., ., .; Din. .; Hyp. .–; Isae. .–; Lys. frr. , a Thalheim. . The monument was located in the center of the Agora, in the area known as the orkhe–stra (Tim. Soph. Lex. Plat., s.v. orkhe–stra; cf. Paus. ..). Stolen by the Persians: e.g., Arr. Anab. ..; Plin. HN .. The original group was later returned to Athens after Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire. The successor was erected in /, during the archonship of Adeimantos (Marm. Par., FGrH  A). A statue of Conon was the next public portrait to be mounted in Athens (Dem. .). Restrictions on the placement of other statues in the vicinity: IG II2 b.– (/ B.C.), .– (/ B.C.). Cf. Diod. ..; Dio Cass. ... Remains of extant reproductions and allusions to the Tyrannicides in other media are listed and described by Brunnsåker (, –, –). . Base fragment: Agora, I ; Meritt , , no. ; Shear , ; , . Hephaestion (Encheir. ) attributed the epigram to Simonides (= fr.  Diehl); unfortunately, he omits the second distich because only the µrst was necessary to illustrate his discussion of enjambment. . On the distinctly Homeric resonance of the epigram, see, e.g., Friedländer , ; Taylor , –. Emotive utterance opening with h\: e.g., Il. .. Light of deliverance: Il. ., ., ., ., .. Comparanda for closing phrase: e.g., Il. ., , , . . Text: SEG XVII ; Trypanis , . For discussion of this epitaph’s original purpose and context, see Day ; Taylor ,  n. ; Lebedev ; Raa×aub , –. A late-µfth-century four-line verse inscription whose third line begins in identical fashion to the third line of this epitaph was recently unearthed at Olbia. On its relations to the Chios epigram, see Lebedev . For a helpful, sober evaluation of attempts to insert charged political terms into lacunae in both inscriptions, see Raa×aub , –. Grave of the Tyrannicides: Paus. .., ..–; Clairmont , , µg. . . Since the time of Homer, the term aikhme–te–s (spearman) could serve as a kind of code word connoting “brave warrior,” the implicit contrast being with timid or cowardly bowmen (see, e.g., Il. ., ., ., ., .; Hesych., s.v. aikhme–te–s). Cf. the very same contrast made in lines – of the epitaph for the Athenians who fell at Eurymedon (Page , no. ). . The enagisma: AP .. Cf. Poll. Onom. .; Burkert , , –; Kearns , –. Part of the Epitaphia: e.g., Mommsen , ; Deubner , ; Taylor , –.

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. For biographical evidence for later members of the clan of the Gephyraioi, see Davies , –; cf. Taylor , , – nn. –. Privileges: e.g., IG I 3 ; Andoc. .; Isae. .. It also seems that calumnous remarks against the Tyrannicides were prohibited (see Hyp. .) and that their names could not be given to slaves (see Aul. Gell. ..; Lib. Declam. .). . The µrst known image of the statue group on an Athenian vase comes on a blackµgure lekythos from the s (Vienna, Österreiches Museum ; Brunnsåker , –, pl. .). An early attempt to render the killing of Hipparchus in a more “naturalistic” fashion can be found on a red-µgure stamnos by the Copenhagen Painter, also from the s (Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum ; ARV  .; Brunnsåker , , µg. ). Theseus in Tyrannicide pose in vase painting: Kardara ; Taylor , –; Castriota , –. Taylor (, –) also attempts to track the history of Thesean “anticipations” of the Tyrannicides in the art of major public monuments, notably among the reliefs of the Hephaisteion (ca. –). . The four Attika skolia on the Tyrannicides are assembled by Athenaeus (.a–b = PMG, –, nos. –). The contents of the other twenty-one songs in the collection suggest that they could have been composed at any point between the Peisistratid era and the time of the Persian Wars. Clearly, the “Harmodius song” was proverbial by the s (see Ar. Ach. , ; Vesp. –). Observers who claim an early date and some kind of political signiµcance for some or all of the skolia include Jacoby (, ,  n. ,  n. ), Ehrenberg (, ; ), Podlecki (), Ostwald (, –), and Brunnsåker (, –). . Fornara’s insistence—in an otherwise helpful discussion ()—on seeing the tyrannicide tradition as “a natural and straightforward creation” is a little mystifying. . Though their reasons for doing so may be quite different, the following would all assign the creation of the cult to the last decade of the sixth century: Weber (, ), Jacoby (,  n. ), Ehrenberg (, –), Fornara (, ), Brunnsåker (, ), Clairmont (, ), and Taylor (, –). Rausch (, –) plausibly suggests that the cult honors were performed initially in the Agora near the site of the statues and then moved to the Kerameikos area sometime after , when the grave was constructed. . Supporters of a date at or around the end of the sixth century for the µrst statue group include, for example, Meritt (, ), Schefold (, ; , –), Seltman (, ), Jacoby (,  n. ), Ehrenberg (, –), Ostwald (, –), Brunnsåker (, –), Thomas (, –), Taylor (, –), Castriota (, –, –), and Rausch (, –). For arguments for a date in the early s, now answered by Castriota, see Corssen ; Raubitschek ,  n. ; , –; Richter ,  n. ; S. Morris , –. Pausanias had a reliable eye for stylistic detail in sculpture (see Pollitt , –). On the connotations of arkhaios as a term in ancient art criticism, see Pollitt , –; Hurwit , . On the basis of Pausanias’s words, it is quite widely thought that Antenor’s bronzes will have resembled kouroi (see Raubitschek , ; Rumpf , ; Robertson in Ridgway ,  n. ; Boardman , ; Taylor , ). . This conclusion would be conµrmed beyond all doubt if it could be shown that the epigram inscribed on the base of the second statue group was a faithful reproduction of the legend on the base of the µrst. This almost certainly was the case. We see precisely this kind of reproduction (with only a minor change of line order) on the replacement for the Acrop-

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olis victory dedication of ca.  (see Meiggs and Lewis , A, B). As implied earlier, I believe that the representation of the killing of Hipparchus as a military action was dictated primarily by the need to legitimize what might otherwise have been seen as a cowardly private act. More positively, Rausch (, –) argues that the pair might also have been consciously presented as “prototypes of the citizen soldier.” . That said, there is, I think, a general problem with Castriota’s approach (, ) to legendary subject matter in Athenian state art. His insistence that, say, the Athenian battles with the Amazons and the centaurs were understood primarily as “mythic analogues” or “preµgurations” of “actual” historic events, such as the Persian Wars, seems to me to import a distinction between myth and history that is quite alien to the ancient imagination. At our great distance from antiquity, we can see all too clearly how Athenian mythic traditions were shaped and colored by actual historical experiences, and it is quite possible that ordinary Athenian men and women in the µfth century would have seen parallels between, say, the defense of Attica against the Amazons and the heroic resistance at Marathon. But that is surely not all they would have seen. For them, the Amazonomachy would have been just as thrillingly real and historical as any battle with the Persians. It was not just some coded “allusion” to a more “genuine” historical event; it was a glorious event in its own right. To reduce such traditions to mere “analogues” or “allusions” is to underestimate how seriously the Athenians took the purported accomplishments of their remote past. As I have tried to show in this study, they took this past very seriously indeed. . There is possible corroboration for this conclusion in an interesting series of scenes on red-µgure kylikes from ca. –. They show Greek heroes at Troy dressed like Athenian citizens in long chitons, using voting pebbles or beans to adjudge the contest between Ajax and Odysseus over the arms of Achilles. As Spivey (, , ) notes, these are “Homeric heroes playing at democratic citizens.” “[A] powerful and perhaps innovatory political mechanism has been rooted in the epic past.” The evidence for Theseus’s later associations with democracy is discussed on pp. – in chapter  above. . See Thomas , –. . For bibliography and further discussion of the patrios politeia debates in the late µfth century, see pp. – in chapter . . The testimony of Aristotle’s Politics and AP is examined in some detail on pp. – in chapter . . We might have here another possible answer to the familiar puzzle about why the Athenians never apparently developed a body of theoretical work that systematically explained and defended the idea of democracy. What need was there to explain and defend something that had endured almost uninterrupted since time immemorial?

conclusion . The system is known to have undergone modiµcations in /, /, and / and in A.D. /. Records of it survive up until the time of the invasion by the Heruli in the s. . It may also be the case that the public domain now, for the µrst time, encompassed the minting of coins. The date of the µrst “owl” tetradrachms remains a vexed issue, though most believe the sequence began sometime in the last quarter of the sixth century, when the old aristocratic Wappenmünzen would have been replaced. See Kroll and Waggoner ,

B.C.

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Notes to Pages 215–16

–; Shapiro . Shapiro notes how the very earliest examples are slightly different in design from the rest, and he suggests that the change may have come shortly after the fall of the Peisistratids. He also draws attention to a recently published vase, perhaps from ca. , that features owls on both sides and the legend DEMOSIOS. It seems to be the earliest known example of an “ofµcial” Athenian measuring vessel. There is also the possibility that the Athenian experiment had a broad impact on burial practices. Extravagant elite mortuary practices declined in ca. – (see I. Morris , –). On the possibility that sumptuary legislation was passed in ca. , see Kurtz and Boardman , –. It may be in ca.  that space was µrst set aside in the Kerameikos district for public burials (see Young ; Stupperich ). How all this new public business was funded is unclear. At least some of the funds may have come from the silver mines at Laureion, a suspicion that is encouraged by Camp’s argument () that the mines would have been controlled at this time by the Alcmeonids. . Among the works I have found particularly useful are Gellner , , Kohn , Hobsbawm a, b, , Anderson , Smith , Greenfeld , Breuilly , and Gillis . Cohen () also sees the potential utility of this particular comparative perspective, though his book appeared too late for me to consider his µndings in this study. . This list of identity sources is compiled by Smith (, ), who considers them to comprise “the fundamental features of national identity.” . Quoted in, for example, Hobsbawm , .

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INDEX

Academy, , , ,  Acamas, , , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Acharnae, ,  Achilles, ,  Acropolis, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , ; archaic cistern, ; Arkhaios Neos (Old Athena Temple), , , –, , , , , , ; artisan dedications, –; Asklepieion, ; Athena Nike, precinct and temple of, , , ; Athena Polias, seventh-century temple of, –, –, –, , , ; “Bluebeard temple,” –, , , , ; Brauroneion (see Brauroneion); Callimachus dedication, ; circuit walls, , , ; dogs, sculptures of, ; Eleusinion (see Eleusinion, City); Erechtheion, , ; Erinyes, shrine of, ; Great Altar, ; Hekatompedon precinct, ; hero shrines, ; korai (see Korai); kouros-types (see Kouroi); Marathonian Bull dedication, , ;

Mycenean bastion, , ; Mycenean palace, ; oike–mata, , , , ; Palladion statuettes, ; Parthenon, , , , ; Persian sack, , , ; Propylaia, , ; ramp, , , , ; Salamis decree, –, , ; siege of /, , , , , , , , ; spring house, ; stele condemning followers of Isagoras, ; stele condemning Peisistratids, , ; Theseus and Prokrustes (?) group, , , ; victory monument for battles of , , , –, ; western entrance, , , ,  Aegeus, , , , –. See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Aegina,  Aelius Aristides,  Aeschylus,  Agariste of Sikyon,  Agora, , , , , –, , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, –; Altar of the Twelve Gods, , , , –, ; Aphrodite Ourania, altar of, ; Building A, ; Building C, , ; Building

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Agora (continued ) D, , ; Buildings F, G, H, and I, , –, , ; Building J, ; commercial structures, ; early shrines/temples, , , , ; eskhara, –, , , ; Great Drain, –; Heliaia (?), –, ; horoi, , ; lithos, , , ; Metroon, , ; New Bouleuterion, ; “Old Agora” (see “Old Agora”); Old Bouleuterion, , –, , –, , , , ; orkhe–stra, , ; southeast fountain house, –, , , ; starting line, ; Stoa Basileios, , , –, , , , ; Stoa of Attalus, ; Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, ; Stoa Poikile, ; Strategeion, ; streets, –, , , , ; Thesmotheteion (?), , ; Tholos, , ; Tyrannicide groups (see Tyrannicides) Agryle, ,  Aiakeion at Aegina,  Aigaleios, Mount,  Ajax, , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Alcmeon I,  Alcmeon II, archon /, , ,  Alcmeonidai, –, , , , , , –, , , , , . See also Cleisthenes; Megacles II Alcmeonides I, brother of Megacles II,  Alexandria,  Aliki Glyphadas,  Alopeke, , ,  Altar of the Twelve Gods. See Agora Amynandridai,  Anaphiotika,  Anaphlystos (modern Anavyssos), , , , , , , , ,  “Anavyssos kouros,” , ,  Anderson, B., – Andocides, ,  Androtion,  Antenor. See Tyrannicides Anthesteria, ,  Antiochus, , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic

index Aphidna, , ,  Aphlaston,  Aphrodite, ,  Aphrodite Ourania. See Agora Apollo, ,  Apollo Ptoios,  Apollo Pythios,  Arcadia,  Archons, , , , , –, , , , , , , , ; archon basileus, , , ; eponymous archon, , ; polemarch, , , , ,  Areopagus, , , ,  Areopagus Council, , , , , , , , –, , , ,  Arete–, , , , ,  Argos and Argolid, , ,  Aristagoras of Miletus,  Aristides,  Arist(i)on, associate of Peisistratus,  Aristogeiton. See Tyrannicides Aristophanes, –,  Aristotle, , , , , , , – Arkhaios Neos. See Acropolis Arkheia. See “Old Agora” Arkteia,  Army, Athenian. See Citizen army Artaphernes,  Artemis Brauronia, , –. See also Brauron; Brauroneion; Brauronia Assembly, , , , , , , –, , , , –, , –, , , , , , , , , ; resolutions and decrees, , , –, , , –, , , , , , ,  Athena, –, , , –, , , , , , –, , , , , ,  Athenaeus,  Athenaion politeia, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , , – Athena Nike. See Acropolis Athena Phratria, –

Index Athena Polias, , , , , , –, , . See also Acropolis; Panathenaia, Great; Panathenaia, Lesser Atthidographers, , ,  Attica, passim; cultural homogeneity, , , ; “internal colonization,” –; localism within, –, –, , , –, , –; ritual links within, , –; size and population, –, –, ; topography, ; unification, –, –, –, –, , , , , , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , ; unification in legend, , , , , , , –, –, , ,  Autochthony,  Axones, ,  “Bluebeard temple.” See Acropolis Boedromion, month of,  Boeotia, , , , , , , , . See also Thebes Boule–. See Council of ; Council of  Boutadai, , , –, , –, , –, , , . See also Lycurgus Brauron, , , , –, , , , , , – Brauroneion, –, , – Brauronia, , , , – Callimachus,  Camp, J. M., – Castriota, D., ,  Cecrops, , , , , , , , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Cerberus,  Chaeronea,  Chalcis, , –, , , , ,  Chariots, cultural resonance of, , –, – Chersonese,  Childs, W. A. P.,  Chios, ,  Choregoi, ,  Cimon, , , , ,  Cithaeron, Mount, 

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301 Citizen army, , , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , –, ; battles of , , , , –, , , , ; Euripus grave for war dead, –, –, ; generals (see Generals); state funeral for war dead, , –; victory monument for battles of  (see Acropolis) Citizenship, –, , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, –, –, , –, , , , – City Dionysia. See Dionysia, City City Eleusinion. See Eleusinion, City Clairmont, C. W., ,  Cleidemus, ,  Cleisthenes, –, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –; archonship, , –, ; public grave, , ; reforms of /, –, , , , , , –, –, , , , , –, , , , , –, –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , . See also Alcmeonidai Cleisthenes of Sikyon,  Cleitias, ,  Cleitophon, rider of,  Cleomenes, , , , , , , –, , , –,  Cleruchs, –, ,  Clinton, K., , , , – Codrus, – Colonization, , –, –,  Colophon,  Comedy. See Dionysia, City Connor, W. R., , , , – Corinth, ,  Council of , , , –,  Council of , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Cranaus,  Crannon,  Cylon, , , , , –, , , 

302 D’Azeglio, Massimo,  Delian League, . See also Empire, Athenian Delphi, , , , , , , , , ; Athenian treasury, ; Pythia, , , , ; Pythian games, , , ,  Demaratus,  Demes, after /, , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, – Demeter and Kore, –. See also Eleusinian Mysteries; Eleusinion, City; Eleusis Democracy, , , –, , –, , , , –, ,  De–mokratia. See Democracy Demos, , , , –, , –, , –, , –, , , , , , –, , , –, , , , ,  Demosion Sema, , , ,  Demosthenes, , ,  Dikaste–ria, , , ,  Dinsmoor, W. B.,  Diodorus Siculus,  Diogenes Laertius,  Diomedes,  Dionysia, City, , , , , –, , ; ceremonies before plays, –; comedy, , , , ; dithyrambic contests, , , , , ; ko–mos, , , , ; procession, , , ; tragedy, –, , , ; xenismos ceremony, , , ,  Dionysia, rural, ,  Dionysus, , , – Dionysus Eleuthereus, –; temple and sanctuary, –, ,  Diosphos Painter,  Dipylon Gate,  Dithyramb, , , , ,  Dodekapolis (legendary Attic federation), , –, – Draco, , , –, 

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index Ehrenberg, V.,  Ekkle–sia. See Assembly Elaphebolion, month of,  Eleusinian Mysteries, , , , –, –, , ; initiation, , , ; Panhellenic promotion of, –, –; spondophoroi, ,  Eleusinion, City, , , –; temple of Demeter and Kore, ; temple of Triptolemos, –, ,  Eleusis, , , , , , , , –,  Eleutherai, , –, – Empire, Athenian, , , ,  Endoios,  Ephebes, ,  Ephialtes, reforms of /, , , , , ,  Epikrates,  Epitaphia,  Eponymous archon. See Archons Eponymous Heroes. See Phylai, Cleisthenic Erechtheus, , , , , , , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Eretria,  Erichthonius, , , – Eridanos River, , , ,  Euboea,  Eumolpidai,  Eumolpus, ,  Euphranor,  Euripides, ,  Euthunai, ,  Fasti,  First Sacred War,  Four Hundred, regime of the, , , , – France,  French Revolution, ,  Frost, F. J., , ,  Funeral orations, , ,  Geleontes. See Phylai, Ionian Gene–, , , , 

Index Generals, , , –,  Gephyraioi, –, . See also Tyrannicides Gigantomachy, , , , , , ,  Great Dionysia. See Dionysia, City Great Panathenaia. See Panathenaia, Great Greenfeld, L.,  Haimon Group,  Harmodius. See Tyrannicides Hekale,  Hekatombaion, month of, , , ,  Heliaia, , , , ,  Hellanicus,  Hephaestion,  Hephaestus,  Hephaisteia,  Heracles, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , ,  Heraia (at Olympia),  Hermes,  Herodotus, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , –,  Hesiod,  Hignett, C., ,  Hippalektryon,  Hipparchus, son of Charmus,  Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, , , –, , , , , –, , , ; herms of, , . See also Peisistratidai Hippias, son of Peisistratus, , , , , , , –, , , , . See also Peisistratidai Hippocrates, father of Peisistratus,  Hippothoon, , , , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Homer, , , , , , , , –; Iliad, , , , –, , ; Odyssey, , , – Homeric Hymn to Demeter, –,  Hoplite class, ,  Hopper, R. J., 

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303 Hupaspidia,  Hurwit, J., – Hymettos, Mount,  Iliad. See Homer Ilos,  “Imagined community,” –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, –, , –, –, –, , , , , –, –, –, , , , , , , , – Ionia, , , , ,  Ionian revolt, ,  Isagoras, archon /, , –, , , , , , , , ,  Ise–goria, ,  Isis,  Isles of the Blessed,  Isocrates, , ,  Isonomia, , , , ,  Isthmia, Isthmian games, , , , ,  Istros, – Italy,  Jacobins,  Kearns, E., –, ,  Kephale,  Kerameikos, , , , ,  Kerykes,  Kollytos,  Kolonos Agoraios, , , ,  Korai, –, , , , ,  Koropi,  Kouroi, –, –, , ,  Krateriskoi,  Kritios. See Tyrannicides Kroisos, ,  Ktistai,  Kurbeis, ,  Kynosarges,  Lenaia,  Leos, , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic

304

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Lesser Panathenaia. See Panathenaia, Lesser Leukotainioi. See Phylai, Ionian Lewis, D. M.,  Le–xiarkhika grammateia,  Liturgies, – Lloyd-Jones, H.,  Lycomidai, – Lycurgus, , , –, , , , ,  Lydia, – Lyons kore,  Manville, P. B., , –,  Marathon, –, , , , , , ,  Marathonian Tetrapolis, ,  Marathonomakhai, ,  Marmor Parium, , – Megacles I,  Megacles II, , –, , , , –, , , , , . See also Alcmeonidai Megakles Anaphlystios,  Megara, , , , , , , , ,  Meier, C.,  Meiggs, R.,  Melanthus,  Memory, Athenian collective, , , –, , , , –, –, –, –, –, , –, –, –, ,  Menidi,  Merenda,  Meter,  Miles, M., ,  Miltiades, , ,  Mnesicles,  Moore, M. B.,  Morris, I.,  Moschophoros, ,  Mounychion, month of,  Mycenae,  Mylonas, G.,  Myrrhinous,  Nation formation, , , – Nauplia,  Navy, Athenian, , 

index Neils, J., – Neleids, , – Nemea, Nemean games, , , , ,  Neopolitai, – Neoptolemus,  Nesiotes. See Tyrannicides Nicomachus,  Nike, ,  Nikosthenes Painter,  Nisaea,  Nomoi, , , , ,  Nomophylakia,  Ober, J., –, ,  Odysseus,  Odyssey. See Homer Oeneus, , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Oenoe,  Oikistai, –,  “Old Agora,” –, , , , , , ; Anakeion, ; Basileion, ; Boukolion, , ; Bouzygion, ; Epilykeion, ; Gymnasium of Ptolemy, –; “herald’s stone,” ; Prytaneion, , , , , , , , , , ; Theseion, –, ; Thesmotheteion,  Old Athena Temple. See Acropolis Old Bouleuterion. See Agora Olympia, Olympic games, , , , , , , , –, , ,  Olympieion, – Oral tradition, , , , –. See also Memory, Athenian collective Orgeo–nes,  Oropia,  Oschophoria, ,  Ostracism, , , , , ,  Ostwald, M., , –, ,  Paiania,  Paionidai,  Palatine Anthology,  Pallene, , , , , , –, , , 

Index Pan,  Panathenaia, Great, , , , –, , , , , , –, , , , , , , ; contests, for Athenians, , , –; contests, open, , –, , ; hoplites in procession, –, –, –; name, , –; participation of “allies,” –, ; peplos ceremony, , , , , ; political content, –, , –, –; prizes, , –, , , , –; procession, –, , –, – Panathenaia, Lesser, ,  Panathenaic Way, , , , ,  Pandia,  Pandion, , , , , . See also Phylai, Cleisthenic Panhellenism, , , –, , , –, –, , , , , –, –,  Panionia,  Parker, R., , , , – Parnes, Mount, ,  Paros,  Patrios politeia, , –, , – Patrokles,  Pausanias, , , , , , , –, , , ,  Pegasus of Eleutherai, , ,  Peisianax,  Peisistratidai, , , , –, –, , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , , , –, , –, , –, –, , , –, –, , , , , , –, . See also Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus; Hippias, son of Peisistratus; Peisistratus Peisistratus, , , , , , –, –, –, , –, –, , –, , , , –, , , , , –,  Peisistratus, son of Hippias, ,  Peloponnesian War, ,  Pentelikon, Mount,  “Peplos” kore, 

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305 Pericles, , , ,  Persia, , , , , , , , , –,  Persian Wars, , , ,  Phaleron, ,  Philaidai (deme), , ,  Philaidai (family),  Phoinikia,  Phrasikleia, kore and epitaph for, ,  Phratries, , , , , ,  Phrearrhioi,  Phrynichus,  Phye, , –,  Phylai, – Phylai, Cleisthenic, , , , , –, , , , , –, , –, , , , , , –, , ; Aegeis, ; Aiantis, , ; Antiochis, , , ; Cecropis, , ; cult practice, , –, –; Eponymous Heroes, , , –, –, ; Erechtheis, , ; Hippothontis, ; Leontis, , ; Pandionis, , ; tribal contests, , , , –, , , , ,  Phylai, Ionian, , , , , , , –, , ; Aigikoreis, , ; Argadeis, , ; Geleontes, , –; Hopletes, , ; Leukotainioi (trittys of tribe Geleontes), , – Phylobasileis, ,  Piraeus,  Planudes,  Plato, , ,  Pliny the Elder,  Plutarch, , , , , , , , , , ,  Pnyx, –, , ,  Polemarch. See Archons Pollux,  Probalinthos,  Probouleusis, , , ,  Prometheia,  Prytaneion. See “Old Agora” Prytaneis,  Pylos, , – Pyrrhikhos, 

306 Pythia. See Delphi Pythian games. See Delphi Pythodorus, decree of,  Raaflaub, K. A., , ,  Raubitschek, A., ,  “Revolution,” suspicions of, , , ,  Rhodes, P. J., ,  Risorgimento,  Rome, ,  Rural Dionysia. See Dionysia, rural Sacred Way,  Salamis, , , , , , , ,  Sansculottes,  Saronic Gulf,  Sealey, R., ,  Shapiro, H. A.,  Shear, T. L., Jr., , , ,  Sicilian expedition,  Sigeion, ,  Simon,  Skambonidai, ,  Skyros,  Smyrna,  Solon, , , , , , , , , , , –, , –, –, –, , , , , , , –,  Sophilos, ,  Sounion, , ,  Sourvinou-Inwood, C., ,  Sparta, , –, , , , , –, , , ,  Stähler, K.,  “Stele of Megacles,”  Stoa Basileios. See Agora Synoikia, , –, ,  Syracuse,  Taylor, M. W.,  Teisamenos, decree of, ,  Tetrakomoi,  Tettikhos, epitaph for, ,  Thasos,  Theater of Dionysus, , 

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index Thebes, , –, , , –, . See also Boeotia Themistocles, , ,  Theramenes,  Theseid,  Theseion. See “Old Agora” Theseus, , , , , , –, , –, –, , –, , –, ; founds democracy, –, ; and Panathenaia, –; unifies Attica, , , , , , , –, –, ,  Theseus Painter,  Thesmoi, , , – Thesmophoria (at Eleusis), – Thespis, – Thessaly, ,  Thete class, , , , ,  Thirty Tyrants, regime of the, , , , – Thomas, R., ,  Thompson, H. A., , – Thorikos,  Thrasybulus,  Thucydides, –, , , , , , , –, –, , , , –, , , , ,  Thymaitadai,  Timonassa of Argos,  Tomb cults, ,  Tragedy. See Dionysia, City Treasurers,  Triandi, I.,  Tribes. See Phylai; Phylai, Cleisthenic; Phylai, Ionian Trikorynthos,  Triptolemos, –, –, . See also Eleusinian Mysteries; Eleusinion, City Trittyes, after /, , –, –, , , , , , –,  Troezen, , ,  Troy, Trojan War, , , – Tyrannicides, , , , –, , , –; cult, , –, ; grave, , ; skolia, –, ; statue

Index

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307

group by Antenor, –, , , , –, ; statue group by Kritios and Nesiotes, –,  Tyrants. See Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus; Hippias, son of Peisistratus; Peisistratidai; Peisistratus

Whitley, J.,  Wycherley, R. E., , –

Underworld, 

Zeus, ,  Zeus Agoraios,  Zeus Eleutherios,  Zeus Olympios. See Olympieion Zeus Phratrios, –

Vourva,  Wallace, R. W., ,  Webster, T. B. L., 

Xenophon, , ,  Xerxes, ,  Xypete, , , 