Herodotus holds an honoured place among the pioneers of Greek epigraphy. We seek in vain for earlier signs of any appreciation of the historical value of inscriptions, and though we may conjecture that the antiquarian interests of some of his contemporaries or near-contemporaries might well have led them in this direction, our view of the beginnings of Greek epigraphical study must be based on Herodotus, whether or not he truly deserves to be regarded as its ρχηγέτηϲ. Apart from its significance (...) in the history of scholarship Herodotus' use of inscriptions may be expected to throw some light on his methods and on his conception of his task. He cites epigraphic evidence throughout his work and in relation to a wide range of topics; if his use of this material suggests any general conclusions, we do not need to allow for the bias of a single source or the effect of peculiar local conditions, as we must when we consider his accounts of individual episodes or areas. We are relatively well placed to assess his procedure. We have a reasonably clear idea of the general appearance of the various scripts concerned , and in this respect enjoy a considerable advantage over the majority of Herodotus' original audience. Three of the inscriptions which he cites have been wholly or partly preserved, and thus provide a simple gauge of his accuracy in reporting such evidence. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aeschylus' Eumenides presents a coherent geography that, when associated with the play's judicial proceedings, forms the basis of an imperial ideology. The geography of Eumenides constitutes a form of mapping, and mapping is associated with imperial power. The significance of this mapping becomes clear when linked to fifth-century Athens' growing judicial imperialism. The creation of the court in Eumenides, in the view of most scholars, refers only to Ephialtes' reforms of 462 BC. But in the larger (...) context, Athenian courts in the mid-fifth century are a form of imperial control. When geographically specific jurisdiction combines with new courts, it supports and even creates a developing imperial ideology. Moreover, the figure of Athena and the role she gives the Athenian jury emphasizes a passionate pro-Athenian nationalism, a nationalism that the text connects to Athens' geographic and judicial superiority. This imperial ideology did not spring from Aeschylus' imagination fully formed; it reflects a trend in Athens of promoting her own cultural superiority. This sense of cultural superiority in fact disguises the realities of Athens' developing power and increasingly harsh subjection of her former allies. (shrink)

Scholars have disagreed about whether the Great Dionysia was celebrated in 404 BCE, despite the grim circumstances in Athens on the eve of the city's surrender to Sparta. This article reconsiders the problem and reviews the positive documentary evidence for the festival's celebration. The evidence indicates that the festival was indeed held, which speaks to the centrality of the Great Dionysia to Athenian civic life. The article then re-examines the conditions in Athens in the spring of 404, the practical consequences (...) that these may have had for the festival, and the celebration of other festivals during times of war and crisis. Despite the evidence that the Great Dionysia was celebrated, the scale of its festivities must have been reduced. The first regular celebration after the war did not likely take place until 402/1, when the posthumous premiere of Sophocles' Oidipous at Kolonos would have served partially as a symbolic proclamation that Athens' great theatrical tradition would continue undiminished. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the role of ostracism in democratic Athens. I argue that the frequent expulsion of aristocrats by rival aristocrats in the predemocratic polis is the key to understanding the function of ostracism in the democratic polis. I show that aristocratic "politics of exile" was a fundamental political problem in the archaic polis and that democratic political power, symbolized by the institution of ostracism, was the polis' solution to the problem. In the archaic polis, the expulsion (...) of aristocrats often led to an endless cycle of exiles and returns and consequent political instability. In 508/7, the Athenian demos usurped the power over decisions of exile by banishing Isagoras and recalling Cleisthenes from exile. By taking control of decisions of exile, the Athenian demos took over political power insofar as power over decisions of exile had become synonymous with political power. The creation of the institution of ostracism, whereby the people decided collectively whether to banish a single citizen for ten years, provided not only a mechanism for the symbolic expression of democratic power, but also a means for the practical and ideological distinction between oligarchic and democratic rule. While aristocrats had banished their opponents without limit in numbers and duration of exile, the Athenian democracy decided each year whether to banish a single individual for a limited time period. In most years, the Athenian demos chose not to exercise the power of exile. Nevertheless, the annual question in the assembly served to remind aristocrats that the demos held the fundamental political power, and hence deterred aristocrats from attempting to overthrow the democracy. The limited nature of ostracism further deterred exiled aristocrats from attempting to return by force. Finally, the infrequent and moderate use of exile as a means of resolving political conflict helps to explain the extraordinary stability of the Athenian democracy. (shrink)

This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the (...) theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality and marginality of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status embodies the social position of other “marginal” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings. (shrink)

The basic contention of this article is that, contrary to a widely held and influential view, the Chalkis Decree does not constitute evidence that Athens tried to impose democracies on rebellious allies after their subjugation. It contains an exchange of oaths between Athens and Chalkis, confirming an 'agreement' (homologia), the contents of which are lost. The oaths show Athenian concern for the protection of the Athenian democracy and its friends at Chalkis, and impose some judicial but no political restrictions on (...) Chalkis to secure Athenian domination and assure the priority of Athenian interests. In fact, the Athenians acknowledge the right of the Chalkidians to insist on the performance of civic duties in Chalkis on the part of aliens (xenoi) resident there. The Athenians among these resident xenoi, who are exempted from these obligations, are neither colonists nor kleruchs, as is sometimes alleged, but most probably individual settlers who had been given land in Chalkidian territory by Tolmides in the 450s. (shrink)

According to several fourth-century Athenian sources, the Spartans were a boorish and uneducated people, who were either hostile toward the written word or simply illiterate. Building upon such Athenian claims of Spartan illiteracy, modern scholars have repeatedly portrayed Sparta as a backward state whose supposedly secretive and reactionary oligarchic political system led to an extremely low level of literacy on the part of the common Spartiate. This article reassesses both ancient and modern constructions of Spartan illiteracy and examines the ideological (...) underpinnings of Athenian attacks on the ostensibly unlettered Lacedaemonians. Beginning with a close analysis of the available archaeological and literary evidence on Spartan public applications of literacy, it argues that the written word played a central role in the operation of the Spartan state, which utilized a variety of documents and required routine acts of literacy on the part of Spartiate commanders and ocials. Both the broad eligibility for the ephorate and the Lacedaemonians' chronic oliganthropia demonstrate that not all of the important public functionaries whose duties customarily involved reading and writing were members of the Spartan elite. The fact that Spartan office-holders acquired their literacy skills from a compulsory and comprehensive system of public education, which promoted the creation of a collective identity, further argues in favor of a literacy that was more broadly based than previous scholars have concluded. The article then accounts for these representations of Spartan illiteracy by locating them in the context of the changing relationship between orality and literacy in fifth- and fourth-century Athens. It argues that as the written word played an increasingly important role in Athenian democratic practice and ideology, it began to performtwo interconnected functions: as a signicant component in Athenian self-denition and as a key indicator of cultural and political dierence between Athens and its Peloponnesian enemies. (shrink)

The article explores the question whether there was a possible dialogue between ancient Greek and Mesopotamian chronography. This is an interesting albeit challenging subject due to the fragmentary preservation of the Greek texts. The idea that cuneiform tablets might have influenced the development of the genre in Greece lingers in the background without having been the subject of detailed discussion. Notably the Neo-Assyrian limmu list has been suggested as a possible blueprint for the Athenian archon list. In order to examine (...) this topic further, a thorough analysis of ancient Greek chronography starting in the second half of the fifth century BC, when eponymous dates in various literary compositions begin to appear, is required. A close examination of the fragmentary evidence shows how difficult it is to trace the supposed annalistic style in the local histories of Athens (Atthides). In the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the eponymous limmu officials served as the chronological backbone, but there remains a huge time gap between the seventh century cuneiform manuscripts and the Athenian archon list from the fifth century. A comparison of the Neo-Assyrian Eponymous Chronicles with the preserved Greek chronographic traditions in Eusebius’ chronicle (fourth century AD) shows that the similarity is mainly confined to an abbreviated style, as the entries clearly point to the different cultural and political settings. Apart from the Neo-Assyrian sources, the Neo- and Late-Babylonian chronicles deserve further attention in the present inquiry. Looking for a connection with ancient Greek chronography in the fifth century, the lack of wholly preserved texts on both sides in the corresponding time constitutes an unsurmountable obstacle. Presenting and scrutinising the textual evidence both for ancient Greek and for Mesopotamian chronography enables an improved understanding of similarities and differences alike. To exemplify this point, Greek and Akkadian temple histories serve as test cases. (shrink)

Athenian officials in the fifth century maintained careful records of treasure owned by their gods, and of the expenditures and receipts of sacred moneys and dedications. These records are conventionally divided into two main types: ‘inventories’ or annual lists of the treasure located in a particular repository, and ‘accounts’ or documents recording the receipts and expenditures of sacred treasuries over a given period. A few documents seem to combine both these elements, and have been called ‘accounts-inventories’ In a well-known example, (...) Athena's treasurers maintained records of valuable items located in three cellae of the building moderns call the Parthenon. Moreover, they published their records of these items in three separate series of inscriptions, one each dedicated to the pronaos, the hekatompedos and the parthenon; these records are conventionally referred to as the ‘inventories’ of Athena's treasure and are extant from 434/3. (shrink)

Through a specific example, this paper explores the problems of empiricism and ideology in the uses of material-cultural and visual evidence for the writing of ancient history. The focus is on an Athenian documentary stele with a fine relief from the late fifth century bc, the history of its publications, and their failure to account for the totality of the object's information—sculptural and epigraphic—let alone the range of rhetorical ambiguities that its texts and images implied in their fifth-century context. While (...) the paper reflects on the Samos Stele, it also considers the broader hermeneutic problems of approaching the different discourses ofword and imagewithin antiquity andworries about the distortions introduced into ancient history by modern formulations, descriptions, and translations of the past. (shrink)

While leaders in many times and places from ancient Greece to today have been called to account, it has been claimed that leaders in ancient Athens were called to account more than any other group in history. This paper surveys the distinctive ways in which Athenian accountability procedures gave the democratic people as a whole a meaningful voice in defining, revealing, and judging the misuse of office, and in holding every single official regularly and personally accountable for their use of (...) their powers. By then assessing a drastic case of unaccountability in a certain moment of Athenian history – the rule of the Thirty in 404–403 BCE – and how accountability was ultimately imposed on them, the paper concludes with thoughts about what might deepen and restore trust in the accountability of public officials today. (shrink)

The chorus¿ depiction of Ares as a ¿gold-changer of bodies¿ and trader in precious metals underscores the increased intersection of finances and war in fifth-century Athens. The metaphor¿s details point to three contemporary developments (in addition to the patrios nomos allusion noted by Fraenkel): the increased conscription of citizens, the institution of pay for military service, and the payment of financial support for war orphans. And as leader of the Delian League, Athens itself resembled the war-god, establishing equivalents between men (...) and money, and profiting from its acceptance of tribute payments in a variety of currencies. Taken together, the metaphor¿s contemporary dimensions probably had an unsettling effect on the Athenian audience. (shrink)

Athenian officials in the fifth century maintained careful records of treasure owned by their gods, and of the expenditures and receipts of sacred moneys and dedications. These records are conventionally divided into two main types: ‘inventories’ or annual lists of the treasure located in a particular repository, and ‘accounts’ or documents recording the receipts and expenditures of sacred treasuries over a given period. A few documents seem to combine both these elements, and have been called ‘accounts-inventories’ In a well-known example, (...) Athena's treasurers maintained records of valuable items located in three cellae of the building moderns call the Parthenon. Moreover, they published their records of these items in three separate series of inscriptions, one each dedicated to the pronaos, the hekatompedos and the parthenon; these records are conventionally referred to as the ‘inventories’ of Athena's treasure and are extant from 434/3. (shrink)