INSCRIBING THE PAST IN FOURTH-
CENTURY ATHENS
THE PAST IN THE HISTORY OF FOURTH-CENTURY ATHENS
The past might feature rather prominently in the narrative that a modern historian would construct of the history of Athens in the fourth century BC. From an external perspective, that of Athens’ role and status in the Greek world, the dominant feature before 338 was arguably the Second Athenian League – a deliberate attempt to resurrect Athens’ fifth-century maritime empire, to make the past present. After 359 the main story was the astonishing growth of the power of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander, of Athens’ vigorous attempts to resist, culminating in a decisive defeat at Chaironeia in 338 and a subsequent process of adaptation to a new world order in which the city’s political status was radically reduced. I have argued elsewhere that an intense engagement and preoccupation with the city’s past, particularly, but not only, the glory days of the fifth century, runs as a golden thread through a number of the key developments in the city’s policy-making through this traumatic later phase.1 For example, an impetus to connect with the past through the myth and ritual of religious practice contributed to a surge in the attention being directed by the city to its religious life in the Lykourgan period, to its sacrifices, festivals and theatre. The last of these highlights that this was a phenomenon that operated at more than one level: the events played out on the tragic stage connected the audience with a heroic and mythical past; but the political focus on the theatre as cultural institution – the building works, the statues of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and so on – also served to connect the city with a period of its own history that was acquiring heroic and mythical qualities: the glory days of the fifth century. The city was seeking to emphasise and enhance its role and status as leading centre of Greek culture, a role that was rooted in the fifth century, at a time when its political power and military status were ebbing away. In a longer perspective, one which arguably runs to the present day, this second phase was much more important than the first: it marked the secular transition of Athens from a city whose external identity resided primarily in its contemporary political and military power, to one whose external identity resided primarily in its cultural heritage and prestige; a city, in other words, defined more by its past than its present.
From an internal perspective too the past loomed over Athens’ fourth-century present. The prevailing democratic system and culture, in fourth-century Athenian minds, were those created by the political heroes of the past – Solon, Cleisthenes, Pericles – and inherited in their main features from the fifth century. What was new was that, outside the philosophical schools, this system and culture were no longer contentious, and that was in part because the traumatic experience of the regime of the Thirty, the narrow and brutal oligarchy imposed on Athens by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War, had made everyone a democrat. But as the growth in Macedonian power had a traumatic effect on Athens’ external identity, so it transformed the city’s internal political landscape. Following the failure of Athens’ rebellion against Macedon after the death of Alexander in 323, Antipater had the leaders of the resistance executed, abolished the ancestral democracy and replaced it with an oligarchy in which possession of wealth was a prerequisite for political participation. The long-term effect, however, was not to uproot and destroy democracy as an aspect of Athens’ distinctive identity, but to embed it as part of the city’s ‘heritage’ from the past, to be self-consciously reactivated and reintroduced, with greater or lesser cynicism and artificiality, on several occasions over the following century, usually at the instigation or at least with the co-operation of a dominant external power.
INSCRIPTIONS AS SOURCES FOR STUDY OF DEVELOPING ATTITUDES TO THE PAST
So, my thesis is that the past played an important role in fourth-century Athenian history and that the development of collective Athenian attitudes to it is accordingly an interesting and worthwhile topic of investigation. One can of course pursue it in many media, including monuments and physical artefacts of many kinds, as well as written sources.2 I propose in this chapter to pursue it in a medium which is both a physical artefact and a written text: inscriptions, specifically inscribed laws and decrees. They are a type of written evidence which has some advantages, for example over the works of historians and philosophers, which reflect individual authorial or elite perspectives. Inscribed laws and decrees, I would contend, reveal much more clearly the collective attitudes of the citizens. Admittedly they were proposed by individual politicians; but they were also agreed by a majority of the citizens present and voting. And those citizens not only voted them into law, they also gave them a special significance (by no means accorded to all) by having them inscribed and set up as monuments – mostly on the Acropolis, the sacred space at the heart of the city. They are a deliberate and significant expression of the collective Athenian mind.3
The importance of inscriptions as a source for developing attitudes to the past is also apparent from the way that they impinge on other contemporary written sources. Beginning probably in the context of the revision and reinscribing of Athenian law in the last decade of the fifth century, a culture developed of searching out, discovering and indeed inventing ‘documents’ of the past, many of them inscriptions. It is a culture which develops and intensifies over the course of the fourth century, reaching a climax in Lykourgos’ Against Leokrates. This speech contains a remarkable catalogue of examples from ‘history’, several of them ‘documented’ by inscriptions, designed to impress on the jury the importance of patriotic behaviour, with the objective of convicting a man accused of fleeing Attica in the aftermath of the battle of Chaironeia. We can also observe this development in the epigraphical record. Two of the documents referred to by Lykourgos are the ‘ancestral oath of the ephebes’ and the ‘oath which the Greeks swore before the battle of Plataia’; and we also have inscribed versions of these two supposed ‘documents’, set up in the temple of Ares in Acharnai at around the same period.4
This phenomenon is eloquent witness to an increasing intensity of interest in the past as the fourth century progressed; and to a focus on inscriptions, authentic or otherwise, as sources of knowledge of the past; but the inscriptions I am going to discuss do not belong to this category of discovered or invented ‘documents’ of the past. They are all genuine contemporary laws and decrees, proposed by individual politicians and passed by the collective of Athenian citizens sitting in plenary as the Assembly or in committee, as the Council or as nomothetai. Over 750 such inscriptions survive from the fourth century. Most of them belong to one of three categories: inter-state treaties, religious regulations and, easily the most numerous, honorific decrees.
Honorific decrees are not only the most numerous category, they are also the most liable to include explicit references to the past, because the honours are invariably justified in terms of past actions. Sometimes these are simply the past actions of the honorand, but quite frequently they include the actions of his ancestors. The highest honour Athens normally bestowed on foreigners was the Athenian citizenship, by definition a hereditary status, and other honours were also often hereditary, including the most common awarded in inscribed decrees, the proxeny, which formally bestowed on the honorand the duty of representing Athenian interests in his home city. This hereditary tendency meant that honorific decrees supplied a natural peg on which to hang references to the past, and this retrospective aspect can be expressed in the physical arrangements for inscribing them: it is not uncommon for the text of a decree to refer to an earlier one in the same location honouring an ancestor, and for the later decree to specify that it be inscribed on or next to the earlier one.
I made a start on this topic elsewhere, where my focus was specifically on the Lykourgan period.5 This chapter reports the results of a survey I have now carried out of all the c. 550 inscribed Athenian laws and decrees of 403–321. The Appendix lists the thirty-three which I have identified as of interest. I have not strictly listed every reference to the past in every inscription – that would include every justification clause for every honorific decree and would not have yielded very interesting results. What I have done is to identify those which contain references not only to the immediate past circumstances of the decree, but to a more distant past, or which are otherwise interesting or significant. I have covered systematically only the period to 321, a restriction driven by practical limitations on what can realistically be covered in a single chapter, but I have included as the last item on the list one rather significant and illuminating case from the last decade of the century.
DEVELOPING ATTITUDES TO THE PAST IN INSCRIBED FOURTH-CENTURY LAWS AND DECREES
We may establish immediately that, before about 350, there is virtually no specific or explicit reference to any past event beyond the immediate context or rationale for the decree.
No. 7 nicely illustrates the potential for references to the past that the hereditary nature of honours created. It honours Sthorys of Thasos for his services as a seer at the battle of Knidos in 394, awarding him the Athenian citizenship. The wording of the decree makes clear that the service at Knidos was the culmination of a series of good deeds not only by himself but also by his ancestors, who were Athenian proxenoi, and it is specified explicitly that the new decree is to be set up next to previous decrees that honoured him, but nothing specific is said about his previous services or those of his ancestors. The focus is on the immediate context.
The main – practically the only – exception to this general silence about the past is references to the Thirty. The first six inscriptions on the list are all renewals of proxenies stated to have been destroyed by the Thirty.6 This is consonant with other indications of the power of the memory of the Thirty in the early years of the fourth century, and of the tendency for people to define themselves and to be defined by others with reference to their relations to that regime.7 In a remarkable number of the extant speeches of Lysias of the 390s and 380s the speaker is concerned to attack or defend actions and attitudes in relation to the Thirty; and it is an impression also conveyed by the rest of the epigraphical record. The most notable set of inscriptions from the decade following the restoration of democracy in 403 is a group specifically honouring the heroes of the restoration.8 One of them (SEG 48.45) includes an epigram celebrating the collective efforts of those patriots who risked their lives by opposing the Thirty, or rather ‘those who had sought to rule with unjust laws’, and the extent to which these inscriptions entered popular consciousness is shown by Aeschines, who in 330, and intent on contrasting these heroes of democracy with the cowards of Chaironeia, cites this very epigram from this very inscription (Aeschin. 3.187–90).
These proxeny renewals show that in the 390s and 380s Athenians were defining not only their relations with each other in terms of attitudes to the Thirty, but also their relations with foreigners. Interestingly in at least two of the six it is (unusually) the honorands themselves who pay for the reinscription of the proxenies; it is as if they have something to prove to a new democracy still preoccupied with defining people by their attitudes to the hated regime. It may also be relevant here that, as Julia Shear has emphasised, although the Thirty were Athenians, they were not only installed with Spartan support, they were articulated in commemorative terms as if they were foreign, external enemies of the city – enemies from whom foreigners wishing to cultivate Athenian good will would, it seems, need to be careful to distance themselves.
The enduring importance of the memory of the Thirty in the first half of the fourth century is confirmed by the decrees for Eukles and Philokles, no. 17 on the list, inscribed at the same time on the same stone at some date in the decade or so before 356. Philokles has just been appointed herald of the Council and people in succession to his father, Eukles, and has had not only the decree recording his own appointment inscribed, but also the earlier decree, dating a generation earlier, which had originally appointed his father. The earlier decree justifies Eukles’ appointment on the grounds of services performed by him in relation to the restoration of the democracy in 403, and the later decree includes a reference to the earlier appointment and its rationale in wording which echoes the earlier one. Your or your father’s participation in the restoration of the democracy was something that was patently still guaranteed to make you popular in Athens a generation after the events. Interestingly, there are (uncertain) indications that Eukles may originally have been a foreigner who was awarded the citizenship for his services; and interestingly too, like the restored proxenies, it seems that the decrees were inscribed at the honorand’s own initiative and expense. This is not so much the city making a statement about the democratic credentials of Philokles and his family as Philokles making a statement about his family’s own democratic credentials.9
Before 350 the only other specific references to a past that is at all distant from the immediate context occurs in decrees concerning relations between states, and the reference is invariably to the King’s Peace, made in 386 (and subsequently renewed), or to events in the Greek world that have taken place since the King’s Peace. In no. 9, of 384/3, Athens is very anxious to put across the message that its alliance with Chios is not intended in any way to threaten or undermine the King’s Peace made two years earlier, and the decree refers explicitly to that Peace, and in quite a wordy fashion. In no. 10, the Prospectus of the Second Athenian League in 378/7, eight years after the Peace, the Athenians state explicitly that one of the purposes of the new League is ‘so that the peace and friendship sworn by the Greeks and the King in accordance with the agreements may be in force and endure’; and the collective weight and significance of these inscribed words is confirmed by the fact that, at some subsequent point in the history of the League, they were deliberately erased from the stone. Ten years later, after the Spartan defeat at Leuktra had shaken up the balance of power, pushing Athens into alliance with Sparta against Thebes and raising questions in people’s minds about the continuing relevance of the Second Athenian League, the King’s Peace is still being referred to as the setter of the diplomatic framework. When envoys from Dionysios of Syracuse come to Athens in 369/8 (no. 13) they are praised not only because they are good men with regard to the people of Athens and the allies, but because they ‘come in support of the King’s Peace, which was made by the Athenians and the Spartans and the other Greeks’; and when, in the same year, envoys from Mytilene come to Athens inquiring about the future of the Second Athenian League (no. 14), Athens carefully spells out in its reply that it had led the league against Sparta ‘when the Spartans were campaigning against the Greeks, contrary to the oaths and the agreement [= King’s Peace]’.
After 386 Greek cities were operating quite consciously and deliberately within the diplomatic framework of the King’s Peace: it set the parameters of Athenian inter-state relations just as the United Nations Charter, the North Atlantic Treaty and the European Union treaties set the parameters of the inter-state relations of western European states in the modern world; and it was natural for international actions to be justified with reference to it – especially perhaps international actions that might otherwise be vulnerable to criticism.
There are some apparent allusions to practices common in Athens’ fifth-century empire in decrees relating to the Second League: e.g. in the prohibition on Athenians owning property in member states in the Prospectus (no. 10) and in the provision in no. 12, of 373/2, that the Parians should send offerings to the City Dionysia and the Panathenaia; but the fifth-century empire is never explicitly mentioned.
After c. 350 we begin to get more explicit references to a more distant past in honorific decrees. As we have seen, in earlier decrees there are vague references to the services of ancestors. After midcentury these begin to become more specific.
The path-breaker is no. 19, of 347/6, honouring Spartokos and Pairisades, brothers who had recently succeeded their father, Leukon, as rulers of the Bosporan kingdom, a crucial source of supply of Athenian grain. The decree not only names the honorands’ father, but also their grandfather, Satyros, who had ruled the kingdom between 433/2 and 389/8 – more than forty years previously. A number of factors are relevant here: the references to this ruling family in Demosthenes 20, Against Leptines, show that their crucial role in Athens’ food supply gave their names currency in the Assembly and law-courts. Moreover the effect of this decree is to confirm for the new rulers honours, including the Athenian citizenship, which had originally been granted to Satyros and Leukon; and the text of the new inscription provides explicitly that it is to be inscribed (in fact in Piraeus) on a stele and set up ‘near the one of Satyros and Leukon’. Not very many state decrees were set up in the Piraeus and it sounds as if the ‘stele of Satyros and Leukon’ was something of a Piraeus landmark. One wonders whether it might also be relevant that the proposer of this decree with its quiet historical allusions was Androtion the historian of Attica.10
This is the earliest fourth-century inscription to mention by name a foreigner whose services to Athens extended back beyond what one may perhaps characterise as the psychological hurdle of the regime of the Thirty and into the Peloponnesian War period, and it does so very unobtrusively. The defeat by Philip at Chaironeia nine years after Androtion’s decree and its profound consequences in terms of the reduction of Athens’ status and power – including the loss of the Second Athenian League – intensified the backward-looking tendency in the collective Athenian mind: the past – in particular the glory days of the fifth century – were a better time than the present and held powerful lessons for present conduct. This is illustrated very well by two inscriptions which go much further than any earlier inscribed decree, not only in that they allude in a more detailed way to events located in a more distant past, but also in that there is a clear agenda and purpose in terms of the politics of the present. The inscriptions are no. 21, a decree providing for the repair of a statue of Athena Nike originally dedicated from the spoils of Athenian victories in western Greece in the 420s, and no. 22, honouring two brothers, Phormio and Karphinas of Akarnania. I shall deal with these decrees quite briefly here.11
I have included a full translation of no. 21 in the Appendix. It sets out in detail the precise circumstances in which the statue was originally dedicated, mentioning specific campaigns that can be verified from Thucydides. This Nike was probably in bronze, but the measure is of a piece with one of Lykourgos’ proud achievements: the restoration of the golden Nikai on the Acropolis which had been melted down for coin towards the end of the Peloponnesian War.12 One of the elements of restoration was apparently the ‘raising’ of the statue (probably by increasing the height of its base). This is not only a textbook case of the use of a religious vehicle or cover to express collective national aspiration at a time when explicit expression of such aspirations was difficult – raising Victory at a time of defeat; it is also characteristic of the Lykourgan period that it does so in a way that reaches back to the past for inspiration and example, and not just to a vague, generalised past, but to a specific, ‘documented’ episode.
No. 22 is a more subtle case, and the past-connective agenda is less explicit, but in essence it is doing much the same thing. The two brothers being honoured in this case were leaders of a small Akarnanian contingent that had fought with the Athenians at Chaironeia and they are now being welcomed as exiles, in effect activating the honorary Athenian citizenship that had originally been awarded to their grandfather. One of the pair is named Phormio and the grandfather who had originally been granted Athenian citizenship was also Phormio. This elder Phormio was undoubtedly named for the Athenian general Phormio who campaigned successfully in western Greece during the Archidamian War – precisely the same area and period as the one alluded to by the decree about the statue of Athena Nike. And again the text of the decree refers explicitly to the earlier decree which had awarded the elder Phormio the citizenship (which must have been passed in c. 400) and which, the decree states, was ‘inscribed on the Acropolis’. The past-connective agenda here is confirmed by the identity of the proposer, the forceful anti-Macedonian politician Hegesippos of Sounion, probable author of [Demosthenes] 7, and known by the nickname ‘Topknot’ (Krobylos) for the archaic fashion in which he wore his hair. As John Davies has emphasised,13 this should not be seen as a mere sartorial affectation, but as an eloquent symbol of a political agenda. Hairstyles, like religious statues, could be potent signifiers.
My survey has yielded just one other significant case of a historical reference in the decrees of the Lykourgan period. Again it occurs in an honorific decree and again it relates to ancestors of the honorand. It is no. 30, of 327/6, which honours a member of a famous Rhodian family of mercenary commanders, which had married into the Persian aristocracy, and one of whose members, Barsine, bore a son, Herakles, to Alexander the Great. The identity of the honorand is uncertain, but the wording of lines 29–34, in which Mentor is described as ‘the father of Thymondas’, suggests that it may have been this Thymondas, who is best known for commanding the Greek mercenaries for Darius against Alexander at Issos in 333. Thymondas’ father was well remembered for his favourable treatment of Greek mercenaries in Egypt in the 340s, some of whom one can perhaps imagine among the Athenians who voted for this decree; but the decree also mentions two other ancestors of the honorand: Pharnabazos, satrap of Daskylion 413–387, who had co-operated with Athens in the 390s when Sparta was fighting Persia; and his son Artabazos, who had co-operated with Athenian general Chares in the 350s, when Artabazos was in revolt from the Persian king.
There does not seem here to be a deliberate attempt to connect with the fifth-century glory days: the historical points of reference all seem to be post-403. The context is military and one might perhaps construct this as, in a way, the linear descendant of those passages in Homer in which two heroes on the battlefield stand and recite their ancestry and discover their family connections. But still we have the specificity – the named ancestors – which, as we have seen, is absent from decrees of the earlier part of the century. There was a clear fashion for connecting with specific past events and people in the post-Chaironeia world, and this decree should be seen as part of that trend. One might suspect that there is also intended to be a reassuring comfort-value in these particular references. In the real world, following first Chaironeia and now Alexander’s conquest of the east, Athens had in ten years been reduced from big fish in the Greek pond to political minnow in the vast new eastern Mediterranean world created and dominated by the Macedonians. But Pharnabazos and Artabazos were big names to conjure with: they were indeed classic names of powerful Persian satraps, borne not only by the two specific individuals referred to here, but by a succession of Persians stretching back for as long as Greeks had had to do with Persians. The world may have changed very fast, but this decree surely projected a nostalgic reassurance – in truth perhaps an illusion – that actually it had stayed the same: there was still a Pharna- or an Arta- – or at least a descendant of one – out there; the Persian Empire had, in a sense, not disappeared after all; and Athens could still deal with its potentates on equal terms. The parallels between this decree and the one honouring the Akarnanians are rather striking, and there is perhaps another connection: Hegesippos, proposer of that decree, is best known as a virulent anti-Macedonian. The proposer of our decree is unfortunately unknown, but it is unlikely to be irrelevant that Thymondas was best known for leading the Greek mercenaries against Alexander at Issos. If connecting-with-the-past implied an aspiration to restore the Athens of its glory days, that also had implications for current attitudes and policies towards the Macedonians, a subject which divided Athenians after Chaironeia no less than it had before.
Though I do not have the space in this chapter to extend my systematic survey of historical references in Athenian laws and decrees beyond 321, I have included, as no. 33, what is, I think, the most striking example of past-referencing in the inscribed decrees of the final decades of the century. It is a decree of 307/6, proposed by the leading politician Stratokles shortly after the ousting of Demetrios of Phaleron and the so-called restoration of democracy under the aegis of Antigonos and Demetrios Poliorketes. It honours posthumously the politician Lykourgos, who had died in 325. Athens had started regularly honouring its own citizens with inscribed decrees in the 340s, but there is not one such decree among items 1–32 in the Appendix. That is because they do not mention past events, ancestors and such-like: such subject matter was part of the culture of relations with outsiders, not of relations between the equal citizens of a democracy. In contrast no. 33, the earliest extant decree awarding the so-called ‘highest honours’ to an Athenian (including a statue and sitesis in the prytaneion), does refer to the honorand’s ancestors, Lykomedes (his great-grandfather) and Lykourgos (his grandfather), commemorating their public burial in the Kerameikos and their manly virtue (andragathia). This is significant in a ‘democratic’ context, because we are told that Lykourgos’ grandfather was killed by the Thirty,14 though, interestingly, this is not explicitly asserted in the text of the decree itself; and because the family belonged to the distinguished genos Eteoboutadai, though this too is not explicitly asserted, a perhaps more readily understandable reticence.15 This decree, however, is past-connective in the more radical sense that it is wholly about a dead man, a figure of the past, and makes a series of striking statements about him and his achievements, asserting a heroic role for him not only on the domestic Athenian scene, but as a major figure in the wider world. The decree panders to Athenian aspirations to freedom and autonomy and to be a big player on the international stage, all of it to an extent a mirage in the world of 307/6; and there is also an element of mirage in the assertions made about Lykourgos. Consistently with the other post-Chaironeia decrees we have been considering, there is a strongly anti-Macedonian flavour about this past-connective decree; but there is little sign that, in reality, Lykourgos had pursued the openly confrontational approach to Alexander that the decree implies. There are no statements of defiance in his extant speech or in his inscribed laws and decrees; his opposition to Alexander was more subdued and implicit.16 But the most significant point for our purposes is that it was Lykourgos who, more than anyone, was responsible for the backward-looking culture of Athens in the post-Chaironeia era; he who established authoritative texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and had their statues erected in the theatre; and his speech against Leokrates that marks the high-water mark for the practice of adducing documented, historical examples to inform the present. Lykourgos the great citer of historical examples has now himself become one big historical example, a role he was to continue to perform in Hellenistic Athens.17 Stratokles’ decree honouring Lykourgos is the clearest possible sign that Athens would, for the future, be living off its past.
REFERENCES TO THE PAST IN INSCRIBED ATHENIAN LAWS AND DECREES, 403–321 BC
Abbreviations:
Ag. 16: A. G. Woodhead, The Athenian Agora. Vol. XVI: Inscriptions. The Decrees (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1997).
Davies (2011): J. K. Davies, ‘Hegesippos of Sounion: An underrated politician’, in S. D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man: Essays in Greek Social History in Honour of Nick Fisher (Swansea: Classical Print of Wales, 2011).
Lambert (2004): S. D. Lambert, ‘Athenian state laws and decrees, 352/1–322/1: I Decrees honouring Athenians’, ZPE 150 (2004), pp. 85–120 = Lambert, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 BC: Epigraphical Essays (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 3–47.
Lambert (2005): S. D. Lambert, ‘Athenian state laws and decrees, 352/1–322/1: II Religious regulations’, ZPE 154 (2005), pp. 125–59 = Lambert, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 BC, pp. 48–92.
Lambert (2006–7): S. D. Lambert, ‘Athenian state laws and decrees, 352/1–322/1: III Decrees honouring foreigners. A. Citizenship, proxeny and euergesy’. ZPE 158 (2006), pp. 115–58, and ‘B. Other awards’, ZPE 159 (2007), pp. 101–54 = Lambert, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 BC, pp. 93–183.
Lambert (2007): S. D. Lambert, ‘Athenian state laws and decrees, 352/1–322/1:
(ed.), Le législateur et la loi dans l’antiquité: Hommage à F. Ruzé (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2005), pp. 187–200; P. J. Rhodes, ‘“Lycurgan” Athens’, in A. Tamis, C. J. Mackie and S. Byrne (eds), Philathenaios: Studies in Honour of Michael J. Osborne (Athens: Greek Epigraphical Society, 2010), pp. 81–90; and M. Faraguna, ‘“Lykourgan” Athens?’, in Azoulay and Ismard, Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes, pp.67–88.
17 As emphasised most recently by Eric Perrin (E. Perrin-Saminadayar, Éducation, culture et société à Athènes: Les acteurs de la vie culturelle athénienne (229–88). Un tout petit monde (Paris: de Boccard, 2007).
IV Treaties and other texts’, ZPE 161 (2007), pp. 67–100 = Lambert, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 BC, pp. 184–218.
Lambert (2010): S. D. Lambert, ‘Connecting with the past in Lykourgan Athens: An epigraphical perspective’, in H.-J. Gehrke, N. Luraghi and L. Foxhall (eds), Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. 225–38.
Moreno (2007): A. Moreno, Feeding the Democracy: The Athenian Grain Supply in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Nat.: M. Osborne, Naturalization in Athens (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1981–3).
RO: P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; 1st pub. 2003).
Scafuro (2009): A. C. Scafuro, ‘The crowning of Amphiaraos’, in L. Mitchell and L. Rubinstein (eds), Greek History and Epigraphy: Essays in Honour of P. J. Rhodes (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2009), pp. 59–86.
Whitehead (2008): D. Whitehead, ‘Athenians in Sicily in the fourth century BC’, in C. Cooper (ed.), Epigraphy and the Greek Historian (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 57–67.
1. IG II2 6; SEG 29.83
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny for Eurypylos and four brothers [from Thasos?]
Proposer: Monippides (not otherwise known)
Text: . . . since the stele on which was their proxeny was destroyed under the Thirty, the secretary of the Council shall inscribe the stele at the expense of Eurypylos . . .
2. IG II2 52
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny for grandson of Xanthippos
Proposer: –
Text: . . . since his [grandfather?] Xanthippos was proxenos and the Thirty destroyed the proxeny, the secretary of the Council shall inscribe them as proxenoi and benefactors of the Athenians . . .
Comment: The original stele for Xanthippos may be IG I3 177.
3. Ag. 16.39
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny
Proposer: –
Text: . . . the secretary of the Council shall inscribe the decree on a stone stele on the acropolis, since the stele set up for them previously was destroyed under the Thirty . . .
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny
Proposer: –
Text: . . . since the stele set up for them previously was destroyed under the Thirty, the secretary of the Council shall inscribe . . .
Comment: The original decree (of 410/9?) was perhaps inscribed below this decree.
5. IG II2 66c; SEG 14.40; 15.83
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny for a Kaphyan
Proposer: –
Text: . . . from Kaphyai [in Arcadia] and . . . since the stele was destroyed under the Thirty . . .
6. Ag. 16.37
Date: After 403
Description: Restoration of proxeny for family from Ialysos
[Rhodes]
Proposer: –
Text: . . . since their [father?] was proxenos and benefactor and the stele was destroyed under the Thirty, the secretary of the Council shall inscribe him and his brothers proxenoi and benefactors at the expense of . . .
7. Ag. 16.36; Nat. D8
Date: 394/3
Description: Citizenship grant to the mantis Sthorys of Thasos, for services at sea-battle (= Knidos)
Proposer: –
Text: . . . since his ancestors were proxenoi and benefactors . . . since Sthorys has continued his previous enthusiasm for the Athenians . . . he is a good man . . . and his ancestors previously . . . inscribe this decree at the expense of Sthorys on a stele where the previous decrees for him have been inscribed . . .
Comment: Sthorys is mentioned c. 389 in decree honouring Thasians, IG II2 24.14–15.
8. IG II2 31; Nat. PT 31
Date: 386/5
Description: Decree honouring Hebryzelmis, king of Odrysian Thrace
Text: . . . he shall have everything granted to his ancestors [? citizenship ] . . .
9. IG II2 34; RO 20
Date: 384/3
Description: Alliance with Chios
Proposer: –
Text: . . . the common discussions which took place among the Greeks, have been mindful to preserve, like the Athenians, the peace and friendship and the oaths and the existing agreement which the king and the Athenians and the Spartans and the other Greeks swore [= King’s Peace, 386] . . . there shall remain in force the peace and the oaths and the agreement . . . make the Chians allies on a basis of freedom and autonomy, not contravening any of the things written on the stelai about the Peace . . .
10. IG II2 43; RO 22
Date: 378/7
Description: Prospectus of the Second Athenian League
Proposer: Aristoteles (minor politician)
Text: . . . so that the Spartans shall allow the Greeks to be free and autonomous, and to live at peace occupying their own territory in security [[and so that the peace and friendship sworn by the Greeks and the King in accordance with the agreements may be in force and endure]] . . . for those who make alliance with Athenians and the allies, the people shall renounce whatever Athenian possessions there happen to be, private or public, in the territory of those who make the alliance . . . for whichever of the cities making the alliance there happen to be unfavourable stelai in Athens, the Council . . . shall be empowered to destroy them . . .
11. Ag. 16.46
Date: 375?
Description: Alliance with Kephallenia
Proposer: –
Text: . . . anti-Athenian laws in Kephallenia to be destroyed and erased. . .
12. RO 29
Date: 373/2
Description: Decree relating to Paros
Proposer: –
Text: . . . in accordance with tradition (kata ta patria) and (the Parians shall) send for the Panathenaia a cow and panoply and for the Dionysia a cow and phallus as a commemoration (mnemeion) since they happen to be colonists of the Athenian people . . .
13. IG II2 103; Nat. D 10; RO 33
Date: 369/8
Description: Decree relating to Dionysios of Syracuse
Proposer: Pandios (minor politician)
Text: . . . praise Dionysios the archon of Sicily, and the sons of Dionysios, Dionysios and Hermokritos, because they are good men with regard to the people of Athens and the allies, and come in support of the King’s Peace, which was made by the Athenians and the Spartans and the other Greeks . . .
14. IG II2 107; RO 31
Date: 369/8
Description: Decree relating to Mytilene
Proposer: Kallistratos (politician)
Text: . . . reply to the envoys who have come that the Athenians fought the war for the freedom of the Greeks and when the Spartans were campaigning against the Greeks, contrary to the oaths and the agreement [= King’s Peace], they themselves went in support, and they called on the other allies to go and render the support due to the Athenians, abiding by the oaths, against those contravening the treaty . . .
Comment: Context is that Mytilenean envoys have come to Athens with questions about future of the Second Athenian League following Sparta’s defeat at the battle of Leuktra.
15. IG II2 216 + 261 =SEG 14.47
Date: 365/4?
Description: Decree about paradosis (formal handover by treasurers to their successors) of sacred objects on Acropolis
Proposer: –
Comment: Decree refers to archonship of Kalleas (377/6) in context of paradosis of the statue (agalma) and processional vessels (pompeia) and everything else on the Acropolis from one year’s treasurers of Athena to the next. Also refers to a decree proposed by Androtion which dealt with these matters.
16. IG II2 111; RO 39
Date: 363/2
Description: Decree concerning Ioulis on Keos
Proposer: Aristophon (general who had imposed settlement on Ioulis after revolt)
Comment: Text contains extensive detail about background to decree: Chabrias had settled the island after initial revolt; then there had been a counter-revolution by men who had thrown over the stelai (i.e. those recording the settlement imposed by Chabrias), killed members of pro-Athenian party etc.
17. IG II2 145; Nat. T20; Ag. 16.52
Date: 1. 402–399 2. before 356/5
Description: 1. Decree of 402–399 appointing Eukles herald of the Council and people – inscribed on same stele as no. 2 and at same time
2. Decree of before 356/5 appointing his son Philokles to same post
Proposers: 1. Eurippides (politician)
2. Melanopos (politician)
Text: 1. . . . since Eukles was a good man concerning the Athenian people and the return (kathodos – i.e. in 403/2) and the freedom of the Athenian people, he shall be herald . . .
2. . . . since Eukles the father of Philokles was a good man concerning the Athenian people and the return and the freedom of the Athenian people . . . and since he seems to be suitable and orderly . . . he shall be herald like his father . . .
Comment: This succession of heralds continued in the same family to 140/39.
18. IG II2 172; SEG 32.67
Date: Shortly before 350
Description: Decree honouring Democharis of N-
Proposer: Kratinos (minor politician?)
Text: Since Democharis son of Nymphaios of N- is renewing the proxeny which he shows was granted to his ancestors, be it decreed by the Council, since his stele has disappeared (ἠφάνισται αὐτῶ[ι ἡ στήλη])
. . . [proposal] . . . to praise Democharis son of Nymphaios because he is a good man concerning the Athenian people, both himself and his ancestors . . .
19. IG II2 212; RO 64; Lambert (2006–7) no. 3; Moreno (2007) 260–79
Date: 347/6
Description: Decree honouring Spartokos and Pairisades sons of Leukon, rulers of Bosporan kingdom (shortly after they succeeded their father)
Proposer: Androtion of Gargettos (historian of Attica, FGrHist 324)
Text: Decree maintains reciprocal relations between Athens and the ruling dynasty of the Bosporan kingdom. Mentions Satyros (ruler 433/2–389/8, grandfather of honorands) and Leukon (ruler 389/8–349/8, father). Stele to be set up near stele of Satyros and Leukon (in Piraeus).
Comment: Dem. 20Against Leptines confirms relations with this dynasty were crucial for Athenian grain supply.
20. IG II2 283; Lambert (2006–7) no. 85; Lambert (2007) 83–4; Whitehead (2008)
Date: c. 337?
Description: Decree honouring Ph- of Salamis
Proposer: –
Text: Honorand had brought grain cheaply from Egypt, ransomed citizens from Sicily and sent them home at his own expense, and donated a talent for the phylake (protection of the city).
Comment: The donation for the phylake is perhaps a reference to the epidosis following the battle of Chaironeia in 338. The context in which citizens had been ransomed from Sicily is obscure (cf. Whitehead).
21. IG II2 403; Lambert (2005) no. 3; Lambert (2010) 226–8, 232
Date: 340–330
Description: Decree on repair of statue of Athena Nike
Proposer: – of Lakiadai (unidentifiable)
Text: . . . concerning the statement of those who were appointed by the people about the repair of the statue of Athena Nike which the Athenians dedicated from the Ambrakiots and the (10) army at Olpai and those who stood against the Corcyraean people and from the Anaktorians, that the Council shall decide: that the – shall bring them before the people [-] at the next Assembly (15) and put the matter on the agenda, and submit the opinion of the Council to the people, that it seems good to the Council both concerning the sacrifice to the goddess that the priestess of Athena should perform the propitiatory sacrifice on behalf of the people, since the exegete (20) requires it . . . the money . . . that – of the people shall give . . . since the statue-maker
. . . made . . . higher . . . (25) . . . of the Athenians the . . . (30) [to praise] the statue-maker, – of Boeotia because . . . of the city . . . [just as?] in the . . .
Comment: The statue was originally dedicated from spoils of victorious campaigns in western Greece during the Archidamian War (420s) (Thuc. 3.85, 106–12, 114; 4.2–3, 46, 49). The wording was perhaps taken from that on the original statue base. For this type of wording cf. IG I3 522 (inscribed shield dedicated in Agora c. 425):
The Athenians [dedicated this] |
22. IG II2 237; RO 77; Lambert (2006–7) no. 5; Lambert (2010) 234–5; Davies (2011)
Date: 338/7
Description: Decree honouring Phormio and Karphinas and other Akarnanian exiles
Proposer: Hegesippos of Sounion (leading anti-Macedonian politician, probable author of [Demosthenes] 7, known as ‘Topknot’ (Krobylos) for the archaic fashion in which he wore his hair
Text: . . . since Phormio and Karphinas are ancestral friends of the Athenian people and preserve the good will towards the Athenian people which their forefathers handed on to them . . . since the Athenian people made Phormio the grandfather of Phormio and Karphinas an Athenian, and his descendants, and the decree which did this was inscribed on the Acropolis . . .
Comment: The honorands had fought with the Athenians against Philip of Macedon at Chaironeia.
23. SEG 12.87; Ag. 16.73; RO 79; Lambert (2007) no. 14
Date: 337/6
Description: Law permitting the killing of anyone attempting to overthrow democracy and set up a tyranny
Proposer: Eukrates of Piraeus (executed when Macedonians abolished the Athenian democracy in 322/1)
Comment: This law seems to re-enact earlier anti-tyranny laws (e.g. law attributed to Solon by Ath. Pol. 8.4) and adds a prohibition on sessions of Areopagos during a revolution. However, there is no explicit reference to earlier laws.
24. SEG 16.55; Lambert (2005) no. 8
Date: Shortly after 338/7?
Description: Makes arrangements for a festival (to celebrate Peace of Corinth?)
Proposer: –
Comment: Refers to ‘the stele about the Peace’, i.e. the Peace of Corinth with Philip II, 338/7.
25. IG II2 373 + 242; Lambert (2006–7) no. 34
Date: 337/6 and 322/1
Description: Decrees honouring Euenor of Akarnania (a doctor) Proposer: Diophantos of Myrrhinous (politician)
Comment: The later decree is inscribed in a different hand but on the same stone as earlier one. Euenor was later awarded citizenship, IG II2 374.
26. IG II2 337; RO 91; Lambert (2005) no. 4
Date: 333/2
Description: Decree granting Kitians from Cyprus right of ownership of a plot of land to build a temple of Aphrodite
Proposer: Lykourgos of Boutadai (leading politician)
Text: . . . about what is decided to have been the lawful (35) supplication of the Kitian merchants who are asking the people for right of ownership of a plot of land on which to found a sanctuary of Aphrodite, that the people shall decide to give the merchants (40) of the Kitians the right to own a plot of land on which to found the sanctuary of Aphrodite, as the Egyptians have founded the sanctuary of Isis.
Comment: The reference is probably to a recent foundation of a temple of Isis and not to a measure of Lykourgos’ fifth-century BCE ancestor, nicknamed ‘the Egyptian’ (Aristophanes, Birds 1296, PCG Kratinos F32, Pherekrates F11).
27. IG II2 VII 4252; Lambert (2004) 107; Scafuro (2009)
Date: 332/1
Description: Decree honouring the god Amphiaraos
Proposer: Phanodemos of Thymaitadai (historian of Attica, FGrHist 325)
Text: . . . since he takes good care of those Athenians and others who come to the sanctuary . . .
Comment: This wording is normally used for (human) foreign honorands who have been hospitable to Athenian visitors.
28. IG II2 351 + 624; RO 94; Lambert (2006–7) no. 42
Date: 330/29
Description: Decree honouring Eudemos of Plataia for contributions to building of Panathenaic stadium and theatre
Proposer: Lykourgos of Boutadai (leading politician)
Text: . . . previously offered to the people a donation of 4,000 drachmas ‘towards the war’, had it been needed . . .
Comment: The reference is perhaps to the failed revolt against Macedon led by king Agis of Sparta in 331.
29. IG II2 399; Lambert (2006–7) no. 56
Date: 328/7?
Description: Decree honouring Eurylochos of Kydonia
Proposer: Demades of Paiania (leading politician)
Comment: Names [father] as earlier benefactor.
30. IG II2 356; RO 98; Lambert (2006–7) no. 103
Date: 327/6
Description: Honorific decree; honorand’s name not preserved (Thymondas?)18
Proposer: –
Text: . . . previously his ancestors Pharnabazos and Artabazos continued to benefit the Athenian people and were useful to the people in the wars and Mentor the father of Thymondas rescued the Greeks who were campaigning in Egypt, when Egypt was taken by the Persians [in 343/2] . . .
Comment: Pharnabazos: Persian satrap of Daskylion 413–387. Had co-operated with Athens against Sparta in 390s (see RO no. 9, no. 10 and no. 12, with notes)
Artabazos: co-operated with Athenian general Chares in 350s (Diod. 16.22.1).
Mentor: mercenary commander for Persians in Egypt, winning over Greek mercenaries fighting for Egypt, 343/2; fled with Darius after Gaugamela, 331; went over to Alexander, with most of his sons, 330; satrap of Bactria, 329; governor of rock of Arimazes, 327 (Diod. 16.42–51 etc.)
Thymondas: commanded Greek mercenaries for Darius against Alexander the Great at Issos, 333 (Arr. Anab. 2.13.2, Curt. 3.3.1 etc.)
31. IG II2 360; RO 95; Lambert (2006–7) no. 43
Date: 325/4
Description: Decree honouring Herakleides of Salamis
Proposer: Demosthenes of Lamptrai (minor politician)
Text: . . . the secretary . . . shall inscribe this decree and the other praises which there have been for him on stone stele and stand it on the Acropolis
Comment: The decree of 325/4 is duly followed on the stone by four earlier decrees honouring Herakleides, dating back to 330/29, which had not been inscribed at the time they were passed and had apparently been retrieved by the secretary from the state archive.
32. IG II2 365; Lambert (2006–7) no. 107
Date: 323/2
Description: Decree honouring Lapyris of Kleonai
Proposer: Epiteles of Pergase (minor politician)
Text: . . . the secretary of the Council shall inscribe this decree on the stele on the Acropolis on which is inscribed the proxeny for Echenbrotos of Kleonai the ancestor of Lapyris.
Comment: The earlier stele referred to is extant (IG II2 63), inscribed in 402–377, and this decree is inscribed not on it, but on a separate stone.
33. IG II2 457 (= [Plut.]Lives of Ten Orators 852)
Date: 307/6
Description: Decree honouring Lykourgos of Boutadai (who had died in 325)
Proposer: Stratokles of Diomeia (leading politician)
Text: . . . and Lykourgos’ ancestors, Lykomedes and Lykourgos, both while living were honoured by the people, and on their deaths the people granted them public burial in the Kerameikos on account of their manly virtue . . . [Lykourgos] built the arsenal and the theatre of Dionysos and the Panathenaic stadium and repaired the gymnasium at the Lyceum and adorned the whole city with many other buildings, and when the Greeks were beset by fears and great dangers when Alexander overpowered Thebes [in 335] and conquered the whole of Asia and the other parts of the inhabited world, he continued implacably to oppose him on behalf of the people and showed himself unimpeachable on behalf of the fatherland and the salvation of all the Greeks throughout his life, striving for the freedom and autonomy of the city by every means . . . etc.
S. D. Lambert, ‘Some political shifts in Lykourgan Athens’, in V. Azoulay and P. Ismard (eds), Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes: Autour du politique dans la cité classique (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011), pp. 175–90. |
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For a recent survey of appeals to the past in the fourth century, mostly in the orators, see P. J. Rhodes, ‘Appeals to the past in classical Athens’, in G. Herman (ed.), Stability and Crisis in the Athenian Democracy: Proceedings of a Conference in Jerusalem, 2009, in memory of A. Fuks (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2011), pp. 13–30. |
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The weight of this significance is illustrated by the first six inscriptions listed in the Appendix, which all restore the title of proxenos to men whose awards are said to have been annulled by or under the Thirty; in no. 2 the proxeny actually is the stele. The city expresses its collective will by erecting inscriptions which express it or pulling down earlier inscriptions which contradict it; e.g. in the Prospectus of the Second Athenian League (no. 10), any stelai at Athens unfavourable to any city that joins will be torn down. See also no. 11, no. 16. |
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P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; 1st pub. 2003), no. 88. On the discovery, invention and fabrication of inscriptions of the past at this period see especially J. K. Davies, ‘Documents and “documents” in fourth century historiography’, in P. Carlier (ed.), Le IVe siècle av. J.-C.: Approches historiographiques (Nancy: de Boccard, 1996), pp. 29–39; also C. Habicht, ‘Falsche Urkunden zur Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter der Perserkriege’, Hermes 89 (1961), pp. 1–35. |
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S. D. Lambert, ‘Connecting with the past in Lykourgan Athens: An epigraphical perspective’, in H.-J. Gehrke, N. Luraghi and L. Foxhall (eds), Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. 225–38. |
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Whether no. 18 should be added to this list is unclear, as the circumstances in which this proxeny stele had ‘disappeared’ are not made explicit. |
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See for example A. Wolpert, Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), in relation to the orators; J. L. Shear, ‘Cultural change, space and the politics of commemoration’, in R. Osborne (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 91–115, on the significance of the regime in the development of the monumental topography of the Agora; P. J. Rhodes, ‘Stability in the Athenian democracy after 403 BC’, in B. Linke, M. Meier and M. Strothmann (eds), Zwischen Monarchie und Republik: Gesellschaftliche Stabilisierungsleistungen und politische Transformationspotentiale in den antiken Stadtstaaten (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. 13–30, on the contribution made by the memory of the Thirty to the stability of the fourth-century democracy. |
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Well discussed by Shear, ‘Cultural change’. |
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The monuments erected on public initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Thirty had, as far as Athenians were concerned, carefully emphasised collective resistance to the Thirty, not the actions of specific individuals. |
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It is not coincidental in relation to the topic of this chapter that another historian of Attica, Phanodemos, was to be one of the most prominent Athenians in the epigraphical record of the Lykourgan period (e.g. proposer of no. 27). |
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I have previously discussed the decrees in Lambert, ‘Connecting with the past’, and returned to them in Lambert, ‘Some political shifts’. On no. 22 see also J. K. Davies, ‘Hegesippos of Sounion: An underrated politician’, in S. D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man: Essays in Greek Social History in Honour of Nick Fisher (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2011), pp. 11–24. |
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[Plut.]Lives of Ten Orators 852b, cf. Paus. 1.29.16. |
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Davies, ‘Hegesippos of Sounion’. |
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[Plut.]Lives of Ten Orators 841a–b. |
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Contrast the pinax set up by Lykourgos’ son, Habron, in the Erechtheum, and illustrating the succession of priests of Poseidon Erechtheus in the genos (including himself) back to Boutes and Erechtheus the son of Earth and Hephaistos ([Plut.]Lives of Ten Orators 843e–f, cf. J. Blok and S. D. Lambert, ‘The appointment of priests in Attic gene’, ZPE 169 (2009), pp. 109–14). Reticence about genos membership is a marked feature of Athenian decrees honouring Athenians, even those which honoured priests who were appointed from gene (cf. S. D. Lambert, ‘The social construction of priests and priestesses in Athenian honorific decrees from the fourth century BC to the Augustan period’, in M. Horster and A. Klöckner (eds), Civic Priests (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 67–134). |
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On the extent to which this decree distorted historical reality see the recent papers of P. Brun, ‘Lycurgue d’ Athènes: Un législateur?’, in P. Sineux (ed.), Le législateur et la loi dans l’antiquité: Hommage à F. Ruzé (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2005), pp. 187–200; P. J. Rhodes, ‘“Lycurgan” Athens’, in A. Tamis, C. J. Mackie and S. Byrne (eds), Philathenaios: Studies in Honour of Michael J. Osborne (Athens: Greek Epigraphical Society, 2010), pp. 81–90; and M. Faraguna, ‘“Lykourgan” Athens?’, in Azoulay and Ismard, Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes, pp. 67–88. |
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As emphasised most recently by Eric Perrin (E. Perrin-Saminadayar, Éducation, culture et société à Athènes: Les acteurs de la vie culturelle athénienne (229–88). Un tout petit monde (Paris: de Boccard, 2007)). |
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The usual identification of the honorand as an (otherwise unattested) Memnon should be rejected. The traces once visible in l. 11, and taken by Kirchner in IG II2 to be from that name, were probably from the name of the proposer of the decree. See IG II3. |