Classical Views, vol. 32, no. 03 (1988)

              ISSN 0012-9356
ECHOS DU MONDE QASSIQUE
0 ASSICAL VIEWS
XXXII- N.S. 7, 1988
SPECIAL ISSUE
PROBLEMS AND METHOD IN GREEK HISTORY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
SOCIETE CANADIENNE DES ETUDES CLASSIQUES
No.3
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ECHOS DU MONDE CLASSIQUE
CLASSICAL VIEWS
XXXII, n.s. 7, 1988
PROBLEMS AND METHOD IN GREEK HISTORY
(edited by K.H. Kinzl)
Editor's Foreword
No.3
C.G. Starr, Why we can write early Greek history ..A. 285
E. Badian, Towards a chronology of the Pentekontaetia down to the
renewal of the Peace ofCallias 289
H.B. Mattingly, Methodology in fifth-century Greek history 321
E. Will, Poleis hellenistiques: deux notes 329
D. Hobson, Towards a broader context for the study of
Greco-Roman Egypt 353
H. Saradi-Mendelovici, The demise of the ancient city and the
emergence of the mediaeval city in the eastern Roman Empire 365
K.H. Kinzl, Gawantka's Sogenannte Polis: and some thoughts a propos 403
BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS
Franr;ois Chamoux, La civilisation grecque a /'epoque archai"que
et classique (Gabriel Ouellette) 413
PJ. Rhodes, The Greek City States: A Source Book (K.H. Kinzl) 414
JohnS. Traill, Denws and Trittys: Epigraphical and Topographical
Studies in the Organization of Attica (Malcolm McGregor) 415
Thomas R. Martin, Sovereignty and Coinage in Classical Greece
(Edouard Will) 417
Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World:
Competition, Violence and Culture (F.A. Beck) 420
J.S. Morrison & J.F. Coates, The Ancient Trireme: The History and
Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship (P. Daniel Emanuele) 424
J .S. Richardson, Hispaniae: Spain and the Development of Roman
Imperialism 218-82 B.C. (L.A. Curchin) 430
S. Ireland, Roman Britain: A Sourcebook (Anthony A. Barrett) 432
Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Susan Treggiari) 434
Marie-Laure Freyburger-Galland, Litteratures anciennes: textes traduits,
commentaires et guides d'analyse (Etienne Gareau, O.M.I.) 437
Mark W. Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad (Achille Joyal) 438
In Memoriam-E.T. Salmon 443
Announcements/ Annonces 444
Books Received/Livres rer;us 448
Editorial Correspondents!Conseil Consultatif: E. J. Barnes, C. W. Jefferys
School. K. R. Bradley, University of Victoria. P. Brind'Amour, Universite
d'Ottawa. R. J. Clark, Memorial University. R. L. Fowler, University of
Waterloo. M. Golden, University of Winnipeg. D. Hobson, York University.
B. Inwood, University of Toronto. K.H. Kinzl, Trent University.
G. R. Lambert, University of Western Ontario. J. I. McDougall, University of
Winnipeg.
REMERCIEMENTSIACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Pour l'aide financiere qu'ils ont accordee a Ia revue nous tenons a remercier I
For their financial assistance we wish to thank:
Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada I Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada
Societe des etudes classiques de I' ouest canadien I Classical Association of the
Canadian West
University of Alberta
Brock University
University of Calgary
Carleton University
Concordia University
Dalhousie University
University of Guelph
Universite Laval
University of Manitoba
Memorial University of Newfoundland
McGill University
University of New Brunswick
University of Ottawa
University of Regina
University of Saskatchewan
University of Toronto
Trent University
University of Victoria
University of Waterloo
University of Western Ontario
Wilfrid Laurier University
University of Windsor
FOREWORD
The words "method" and "methodology" occur mostly in the absence of
either. The ancient historian (of the pre-historiographical periods1 at any rate) is
the prisoner of the subject matter, its sources and its traditions. One cannot do
without method or methodology but, by rigorously practising them, one may
succeed only in knocking down the foundations (f0r what they are worth) of
one's studies. Whilst I would applaud such a result, I have failed so far in
creating for myself a comprehensive set of rules or guidelines which might be
termed a "methodology"2 and which would at the same time satisfy my
"hypercriticsm". "Hypercriticism", however, of the literary sources-not by way
of literary criticism (often encountered, in the guise of a modem source criticism)
but on the historian's terms-appears the only safe starting position.3
Some seasons ago I learned of a presentation at one of the regularly held
conferences of our field which seemed to me to be directed at some of the
concerns that preoccupied me at the time.4 At the 1985 meeting of the editorial
correspondents of Echos du monde classique!Classical Views, I hopefully
suggested that we should repeat the feature of a "Special Issue" ,5 this time on
"Methodology in Greek History". The editors and fellow correspondents
graciously granted me licence to mount my hobby-horse; I am indebted to them
for their generous indulgence. I had hoped to obtain an improved version of his
paper from the scholar whose presentation first provoked my plan. But for a
variety of reasons this paper could not be delivered in time to be included in this
fascicle. Its absence opens a chasm, as it were, though this chasm may be
symbolic of the state of archaic Greek history as I would view it. I must
apologise, however, to Professor Starr whose contribution6 was composed on the
1 The paradox of the unfolding of history in the absence of a historical
consciousness (as represented by the historian) has, for all intents and purposes,
been left unexplored. Cf., for at least a tentative pointer, C. Meier, "Das
Politische und die Zeit. Wahmehmung und Begreifen der politischen Welt ... ",
ch. C, pp. 275 ff., of id. Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen
(Frankfurt 1980).
2 I have attempted developing it in some of my numerous short reviews (in
Gymnasium, this journal, and several others such as CR. Gnomon, AAHG, etc.)­not
infrequently, I fear to the disapproval of the respective authors to whom I
collectively apologise for any disagreeable note.
3 Cf. M.l. Finley's remarks in the article quoted 412 n. 25, the most
authoritative statement on the subject to date.
4 See 410 n. 23 below.
5 Cf. the Special Issue, "Studies in Roman Society", ed. Keith Bradley, EMC
n.s. 3 (1984) 327-499.
6 "Why we can write early Greek history", 285-288 below.
presumption that he would be putting forward a counter-position, rather than the
only position represented.
Many other areas have remained unrepresented as well.7 I discovered that of
those scholars who are prepared to write on methodology most already had, as
one of them put it, "shot their arrows" and did not wish to approach the topic
afresh. The present collection nonetheless succeeds in reminding us of the range
of Greek history, and of its context in history. We are taken to distant
boundaries by our authors, both in geographical and in chronological terms.8 It
is not least for this reason that I hope the fascicle will be received as an
instructive addition to our bibliographies. The authors' unique qualifications
ought to guarantee success. There seems no need to introduce the scholars9 who
have put me in their debt by coming forward with contributions.
K.H.K.
7 It goes without saying that I accept responsibility for these omissions: I am
not attempting to explain away errors of judgement in planning my approach to
this ambitious undertaking.
8 Over the area of the entire eastern Mediterranean and Near East, through
some one and a-half millennia. Although some may take issue with the starting
point, it was never my intention to extend the scope of this issue to beyond the
first millennium BCE (see, e.g., F. Schachenneyr, Griechische Friihgeschichte: Ein
Versuch, frUhe Geschichte [my emphasis] wenigstens in Umrissen verstiindlich zu
machen (Wien 1984) 9 ff. (regarding the author, see the "WUrdigung" by
A.B. Bosworth, S. Deger-Jalkotzy and myself, commissioned for AJAH)), if
merely for reasons of expertise.
9 Cf., incidentally, E. Badian, "Chester G. Starr as a historian", in The craft of
the ancient historian: Essays in honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J.W. Eadie and J.
Ober (Lanham, New York, London 1985) 1-20. - H. Saradi-Mendelovici, broadly
trained in all areas of Classical Studies, read Byzantine Studies with
D.A. Zakythenos (Athens) and N. Oikonomides (Universite de Montreal) (with
A. Kazhdan as an external adviser). The combining of the Byzantinist's
perspective with that of the Classicist is already in itself of methodological
significance.
It may seem imprudent for the editor to contribute: I am doing so because of
the unique relevance of Gawantka's book in the first instance, and because I fear it
will attract less attention than it surely deserves; my own thoughts appended to
the review ought not to interfere with its principal purpose.
Echos du Monde C/assique!C/assical Views
XXXII, n.s. 7, 1988, 285-288
WHY WE CAN WRITE EARLY GREEK HISTORY
285
Across the past three decades an ever increasing number of students of Greek
history have come to devote careful attention to its earliest phase, the centuries
from about 1000 to 700, which may be called the Dark Ages or the Homeric era
(though the latter term fortunately seems to be disappearing). Yet there remain
scholars unconvinced that we can reconstruct early Greek developments;
A.H.M. Jones thus once informed me that for him one could begin only with
Solon.1 Since I view matters rather differently a few methodological remarks
may be useful to suggest that we can say something valuable about the earliest
stage of Hellenic history, and also that it may be desirable to do so.
It is true that the greatest scholar ever to write a history of Greece was
sceptical about presenting a survey of its earliest centuries. Grote was firm that
"the laws respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the same for ancient
times as for modem." Although he commenced with the traditional date of 776
he made it clear that he would describe the legends without pronouncing on their
historicity-"the curtain is the picture." In discussing Sparta he began with
Plutarch's life of Lycurgus and noted "ominous words" that Plutarch found much
disagreement. Plutarch borrowed from the early poets "less than we could have
wished"; while he used Aristotle he omitted Herodotus and Ephorus. Grote did
accept the discus bearing the names of Iphitus and Lycurgus, on the authority of
Aristotle, but the view of Muller and others that it was to be dated about 880
"would be at variance with the reasonable probabilities resulting from Grecian
paleography." Momigliano properly praised Grote for his "combination of
passionate moral and political interests, vast learning, and respect for the
evidence. "2
Of late not all writers on early Greece have heeded Grote's warnings, but have
manipulated legendary material to construct a gossamer of inferences and
suppositions which display chiefly the ingenuity of the authors. If an example
must be given, consider the study of early Spartan history which presents an
eighth-century Spartan noble, Charmidas, who was sent to Crete to settle its
discords. The only evidence for this individual is a passage in Pausanias written
1 V. Ehrenberg wrote a well-known book entitled From Solon to Socrates
(London 1968; 2nd ed., London 1973), but he did fmd it necessary in his opening
pages to review earlier developments.
2 A. Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History (London
1952). The quotations from Grote are from his introduction and Book II, chap. 6,
"Laws and Discipline of Lykurgus at Sparta," which incidentally draws a parallel
between Spartan initiation and the rites of the Mandan Indians-anthropological
interest is not entirely novel in recent generations.
286 CHESTER G. STARR
almost a millennium later.3 Equally unhelpful is another method of approach
used in a study of archaic Greece, heaping up miscellaneous facts for one
geographical area after another; one will learn more about the cultural
characteristics of the era from the same author's magnificent study of early forms
of the Greek alphabets.4
Yet there are scholars who seriously believe that we can reconstruct early
Greek history. In the English-speaking world one might name Finley, Murray,
Snodgrass, and, I trust, myself, all of whom have written one or more
illuminating studies of the Dark Ages down to 700 and then the archaic era or
age of expansion to 500.5 Why can we now go further than could Grote?
The answer is simple: the archaeological investigation of many sites in the
past century since Schliemann began at Troy and then Mycenae. The single
most important excavation has been the methodical German exploration of the
Kerameikos cemetery on the edge of ancient Athens, the graves of which extend
from just before 1000 down into classical times; one must wonder whether the
Philadelphia textile magnate Gustav Oberlander, who underwrote much of its
costs, realized how valuable a yardstick for cultural development was being
uncovered.6 When one adds the contributions of the French at Argos, the Swedes
at Asine, the English at Lefkandi, and other foreign and Greek archaeologists, the
Kerameikos material gains added dimensions of breadth and depth.7
Much, no doubt, remains to be discovered; it would be unwise to be dogmatic
in asserting that this or that did not exist in the centuries which we are
considering. After all, no significant building from the tenth century was known
until the discovery at Lefkandi of a heroon with a chariot burial.8 Yet we can
now date relatively, and to a reasonable extent chronologically, the steady
evolution of Greek pottery through its Protogeometric, Geometric, and
Orientalizing stages.9 We cannot psychoanalyze ancient potters themselves, but
3 G. Huxley, Early Sparta (Cambridge, Mass. 1962), 27-28. In "The
Credibility of Early Spartan History," Historia 14 (1965) 257-272 (now in my
Essays on Ancient History [Leiden 1979] 144-159), an essay delivered at the 1964
international classical congress, I assessed the value of our varied sources.
4 L.H. Jeffery, Archaic Greece (London 1976); The Local Scripts of Archaic
Greece (Oxford 1961).
5 One might add V.R. d'A. Desborough to this list, but though he wrote three
books on the earliest stage of Hellenic civilization-and each study had a more
historical title-his major interest was always in Protogeometric pottery itself.
6 G. Karo, An Attic Cemetery (Philadelphia 1943), is an engaging essay on
the Kerameikos.
7 W.R. Biers, The Archaeology of Greece (Ithaca 1980), is a recent survey.
8 Archaeological Reports for 1981-82, 16-17; for 1982-83, 13.
9 See for example A.N. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Chicago 1977);
J.N. Coldstream, Greek Geometric Pottery (New York 1968); R.M. Cook, Greek
Painted Pottery (2nd ed., London 1972).
WHY WE CAN WRITE EARLY GREEK Ill STORY 287
from the beginning of the Protogeometric style, as I have observed elsewhere,
certain fundamental characteristics are clearly visible in their products: a
synthesis of clearly defined parts, which had a dynamic quality; a deliberate
simplification of form and decoration into a structure capable of infinite
variation; an emphasis upon rational principles of harmony and proportion (as
Western civilization has understood these principles ever since); a sense of order
in which the imagination was harnessed by the powers of the mind-all of
which were marks of Greek civilization thenceforth.to
In recent years scholars have tapped other aspetts of the growing physical
evidence to create solid monographs on Greek pins, figurines in clay and bronze,
arms and armor, gold bands for jewel boxes, and a variety of other objects, all of
which throw added light on the cultural progress of Hellenic civilization from its
inception in the Dark Ages down to the fully-evolved structure which served as
the base for the great classic outburst of the fifth and fourth centuries. Many
students of the ancient world, indeed, do not feel comfortable in relying primarily
on archaeological testimony; their point of view was well summed up by
Momigliano, "The literary tradition, however doubtful, must still be our
guide ... no necropolis, however rich, can ever replace the living tradition of a
nation."11 In rebuttal it may be observed that the Kerameikos cemetery goes a
great deal farther in illuminating the early centuries of Greek progress than does
the stitching together of legends. The scholars whom I named on a preceding
page stand in general agreement on the picture they draw of this evolution and its
tempo, though naturally they often disagree in details or in relative emphasis; we
may thus hope that their reconstructions are valid and go far to lift the obscurity
with which Grote had to contend.
It will be noted that I have spoken in terms of cultural changes. Those
historians who continue to view their subject in Thucydidean terms as a political
and military narrative will properly object that pots and pans give them no
evidence, and indeed there could be no political history in the early centuries after
1000, when Greece was a land of tribes which at most engaged in cattle-reaving
and woman-stealing. For this stage Homer's epics stand alone; since they do not
otherwise enter into my framework to any major extent I may simply suggest a
general consensus in recent years that they do reflect the closing centuries of the
Dark Ages in general social and cultural terms; but we must always remember
that Homer, especially in the Iliad, was a poet, exploring human passions, not
an historian.12 Epic testimony is not always compatible with the physical
evidence, but one can usefully compare its poetic method of composition from
10 Cf. my Origins of Greek Civilization, 1100-650 B.C. (New York 1961) 89-
106.
11 Journal of Roman Studies, 53 (1963) 98.
12 This point is well stressed by F. Hampl, "Die llias ist kein
Geschichtsbuch," Serta philologica Aenipontana, 7-8 (1961) 37-63.
288 CHESTER G. STARR
very limited metrical variants and their logical structure with that employed by
the great masters of the contemporary Dipylon vases.t3
True political history could begin only when the more advanced areas of
Greece moved from the tribal level to the consolidation of that political,
religious, and social structure which is called the polis, and even after its
appearance in the late eighth century written evidence was long limited and
episodic. As I have argued in a recent book, however, it is at least possible to
see the forces which led to the crystallization of the polis and then to analyze the
stages of its evolution down to the complex world of Sparta, Corinth, Athens,
and other states by 500 B.C.14 Only with Herodotus and Thucydides,
nonetheless, can the interplay of these units be discussed in any continuous
terms.
Yet history is not a matter just of "past politics." For a citizen of the
modem Western world the most important aspect of ancient Greece is its creation
of a human-centered, rational outlook which is the base of our own civilization,
and this almost incredible advance can now be explored in detail for over half a
millennium from the fall of Mycenae to the invasion by Xerxes. In this sense
we can truly write the "history" of early Greece and most certainly should make
the effort to communicate its major aspects to our students.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CHESTER G. STARR
13 A.N. Snodgrass, "An Historical Homeric Society?" Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 94 (1974) 114-125, points out several disagreements between Homeric
and archaeological testimony, against M.l. Finley, The World of Odysseus (rev.
ed., New York 1978). Amusingly enough G. Kubler, The Shape of Time (New
Haven 1962) 27, in arguing against the concept of Zeitgeist, uses as an
illustration the difficulty in equating Homer and Dipylon vases, whereas parallels,
as noted in my text, are easily visible. See T.B.L. Webster, "Homer and Attic
Geometric Vases," Annual of the British School at Athens, 50 (1955) 38-50;
R. Hampe, Die Gleichnisse Homers und die Bildkunst seiner Zeit (TUbingen 1952)
esp. 23-26.
14 Individual and Community: The Rise of the Polis 800-500 B.C. (New York
1986).
Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views
XXIII, n.s.7, 1988, 289-320
289
TOWARDS A CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENTEKONT AETIA
DOWN TO THE RENEWAL OF THE PEACE OF CALLIAS•
• It is not my aim to give an extensive bibliography, in a field where so much
has been written over so many years. The old masters (Busolt, Meyer, Beloch) are
still worth reading. Among many more recent articles, I have learnt a great deal
from a few, and would here like to acknowledge the following debts, some to
recognised classics, some to work unaccountably negljlCted: .
From N.G.L. Hammond, Historia 4 (1955) 371-81, I first learnt to take
Plutarch's report of two Athenian expeditions in connection with the Messenian
Revolt seriously (it is a pity that that article was not included in the author's
collection Studies in Greek History (1973)-if necessary, in place of one or two
others);
from Raphael Sealey's note 'The Great Earthquake in Lacedaemon", Historia 6
(1957) 368-71, I learnt the correct and inescapable meaning of Thucydides' phrase
{nro -rov fEVoJlevov C1£1C1Jlov (I 101,2), and first saw that there could be a
reasonable chronology on that basis (see his pp. 370 ff.);
from Mary E. White, "Some Agiad Dates", JHS 84 (1964) 140-52, I learnt that
the death of Pausanias ought to be put later (she suggested 467/6) rather than
about 470; and I was confirmed in thinking that, contrary to what had recently
become fashionable, more than one campaign might be put in a given year (see
her p. 148);
Mabel L. Lang, "A Note on !thorne", GRBS 8 (1967) 267-73, memorably made
this important point (p. 268) by saying that events do not "occur like beads on a
string"; in particular, she noted that the siege of Naxos may have gone on for
more than one season, so that, if its outbreak precedes Eurymedon, its end need
not (p. 271); above all, she seems to have been the first to see that Thucydides
tells us nothing about the date of the disaster of Drabescus, but merely fmishes off
the story he has begun (pp. 269 ff.)-an important point that seems to have been
overlooked since;
C.W. Fornara, "Some Aspects of the Career of Pausanias of Sparta", Historia
15 (1966) 257-71, showed, perhaps for the first time in the English-speaking
tradition, that Justin's story of Pausanias' seven years' stay at Byzantium after his
return from Sparta must be taken seriously and is not contradicted by other reliable
evidence; this seems to have been generally accepted by German scholars, from at
least Meyer (Forschungen II (1899) 132) to H. Schaefer, RE 18 (1949) 2572 ff.­but
without much serious investigation. such as Fornara provided;
fmally one must mention that excellent Mary White thesis by Philip Deane,
Thucydides' Dates, 465-431 B.C. (1972), which develops a way of reading
Thucydides in the light of probability and without making him say what he does
not.
I shall not repeat these references when I come to the problems listed above,
and I shall not explicitly state the limits of my agreement with these various
scholars, or particular points of disagreement, since I am chiefly concerned to
state my own case in the light of the texts: I merely wanted to acknowledge the
principal obligations of which I am conscious. Nor shall I refer to numerous
other articles in which I found little to learn or to agree with, unless a specific
reference seems to me to be needed.
290 E.BADIAN
It is clear, and generally agreed, that a full and detailed chronology of the
"almost fifty years" (118,2)1 between Xerxes' retreat and the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War cannot be established. No such chronology, in fact, existed
even in antiquity. Thucydides wrote his sketch of the period late in life,
apparently as an insertion within his first book, which-at least in the form in
which we have it-was itself composed near the end of his life.2 By that time,
close to the end of the century, precise dates on events two generations earlier
were not easily to be had by the examination of witnesses, which was the only
method he used.3 Hellanicus, who had published his history (whatever, in detail,
it looked like) not long before,4 was clearly not much better off: in fact,
Thucydides, in the first instance we have of what was later to become a
commonplace of professional jealousy, blames him for (i.a.) inaccuracy in his
chronology. There is, of course, no indication that Thucydides himself-not to
mention anyone else-had taken any notes during the "Fifty Years" or considered
writing their history at the time: he plainly tells us that it was at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War that he recognised its likely importance and started on
its history (1,1), and the thought of adding the excursus on those years probably
did not occur to him until, revising his frrst book as a full preface to the war,
and, after defeat and revolution, worrying about how it all came about (just as
Germany, after similar events in 1918, began an interminable discussion of the
Kriegsschu/dfrage), he found that he needed a selective sketch of this period in
All references in this form will be to chapters and sections in Book I of
Thucydides. References to other books of Thucydides and to other authors will be
given in full.
2 I regard the late date of Book I, at least as we have it, as one of the few
reasonably assured points in the old "Thucydides problem" (which I do not
propose to discuss). As Eduard Meyer already thought (KI. Schr. II (1924) 280), it
is surely "tiber jeden Zweifel erhaben". That the excursus on the Pentekontaetia is
an insertion can be made probable in various ways. First, 89-118,2 could be
excised, without disadvantage and with some profit, since 88 is not wholly
consistent with 118,2 (the deciding motive there being the Athenians' interference
with Sparta's allies) as they stand. Also, note that Pericles is formally introduced
before his great speech (139,4), where he was obviously intended to appear for the
first time, with powerful artistic effect. However, he appears with no annotation
in 111,2; 114 (twice); and three times in the Samian War (116-7), as well as in
127,1-the story of the "curse" which serves as an introduction to the Pausanias­Themistocles
excursus, again clearly an insertion. (In this case matters are more
complicated, since we must assume that the curse, on each side, was briefly
explained. But the duplicate explanation of Pericles' position at 127,3, antici­pating
the artistically necessary and effective one at 139,4, shows that 127,3 is
an addition in its present form.)
3 Cf. 20,1 and 22; and see further below.
4 See Jacoby, FGrHist illb Supplement I, pp. 2 ff. (esp. 5 f.); and see further
n. 7 below.
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 291
order to establish his thesis of Sparta's responsibility for the war and the
correctness of Pericles' vision.5
It is significant that we have no precise statement on lapse of time until
101,3, where we are told, nearly thirteen chapters and over fifteen years after the
beginning of the excursus, that Thasos surrendered in the third year of the siege.
After this, and as a counterpart to it, we hear that the Messenians at !thorne
surrendered in the tenth year (103,1)-a statement that, as need hardly be
illustrated, has caused a lot of trouble to some modem scholars who approach
Thucydides with preconceived theories. ;
We soon have two examples of intervals, uniquely measured in days: 105,6
the Corinthians, twelve days after a defeat, try to set up a trophy, but are driven
off by the Athenians; next 108,2 gives us an interval between two major battles.
The examples are instructive: the unexpected precision must surely be due to the
fact that an unusual, and unusually glorious, event was precisely remembered by
responsible contemporaries and had not faded from memory fifty-odd years later.
Other intervals, on the whole, simply were not-or at least not with the kind of
reliable precision which would enable the historian in search of akribeia to trust
his witnesses and commit himself.
The impression that Thucydides, on the whole, gave us precise intervals
when he could be sure of them, for events that he thought important (which
would be the only events over which he would go to the trouble of making those
difficult enquiries), is strengthened by the fact that such intervals and durations
now, after the middle fifties, become noticeably more common (though not as
frequent as we should like), even where the historian's own memory cannot be
involved. The very first in this series of statements concerns the expeditionary
force in Egypt: the siege ofProsopitis lasted a year and six months (109,4) and
the whole Egyptian campaign six years (110,1). We then return to Greece,
where Thucydides himself could no doubt remember with occasional precision,
though again it is clear that he also thought he had got reliable information
where he was not present. We have a chapter (111) on assorted actions in
Greece, followed by what appear to be three whole years without (at least
significant) military action by either side, formalised by a five years' truce
(112,1). After another bout of intense action when this expires, and with no
further precise times given, we hear of the Thirty Years' Peace (115,1) and, in
the sixth year of the Peace (115,2), of the beginning of the Samian War. Here
Thucydides again has, and provides, precise information. The Samians at one
point gained control of their own waters for about fourteen days (117,1), but,
unable to face the full strength of Athens and her main allies, they had to
surrender in the ninth month (117,3). Surprisingly, Thucydides does not try to
tie this last event discussed in the excursus into his main narrative: he merely
tells us that the events concerning Corcyra and Potidaea (themselves, of course,
5 For further development of this see my essay mentioned in n. 24 below.
292 E.BADIAN
not all that close to each other) which immediately led to the war came within "a
few years" after this.
This last statement illustrates the fact that we simply cannot fully account for
Thucydides' choice on what precise chronological statements to give us: it is
clear that he could have worked out the actual interval from the end of the
Samian War to the appeal of Corcyra to Athens, had he chosen to do so. He
evidently did not think that it mattered. We must remember that he was not
writing a history of those years: he was writing a history of the Peloponnesian
War, and the excursus had got into it, as it were, only at two removes-as an
insertion within a preface. As Gomme and others have pointed out, he never
gives us archon dates, even where (as for the Thirty Years' Peace: cf. 87,6 and II
2) he could easily have worked them out. It is not precise dates, but sequence,
that he seems to be mostly concerned about. Our initial impression that he tells
us what he knows, though (I think) still correct in its negative form, must be
modified accordingly. His interest in precision appears to be limited, even where
it was attainable: confined, on the whole, to details of sieges and (as we saw) a
significant sequence of battles, to the proposed duration of truces, and to events
that were clearly unusual and therefore worth detailing as (we might say)
paradoxa: the longest overseas expedition ever known, ending in the most
memorable disaster; or an unusual lengthy stretch without a truce, yet without
military operations worth mentioning. The principles of selection, now that we
have established them, are not what we should expect, even against the
background and the genesis of the excursus. But it is useful to have established
them, above all (perhaps) because it helps once more to underline a fact too often
forgotten in dealing with this author: that both his pUI'JX)ses and his methods are
not those of a modem historian-indeed, in their way they are probably more
remote from ours than those of Herodotus.
What, we must now ask, is the point of his criticism of Hellanicus? For,
apart from being motivated by odium academicum, it must have a point I think
the chronological constituent (which alone concerns us here) can be disengaged
from the context. For straight after the comment on his predecessor's
chronological inaccuracy (97,2), he proceeds to list, in careful order, the frrst
operations of the newly-formed League: Eion, Scyrus, a lengthy war against
Carystus; then the revolt of Naxos (98) "after this" and (after an excursus on
revolts and the tightening of Athenian control, sparked off by the fact that he has
come to the first of them) "also after this" (i.e. after the settlement with
Carystus) the battle of the Eurymedon (100,1);6 and the record continues with the
revolt of Thasos, "some time later" (100,2).
6 This chronological indication has usually been misinterpreted. For full
argument see my discussion in JHS 107 (1987) 5 f. I should add that, in my
criticism of the article by Ron Unz in CQ n.s. 36 (1986) 68-85, I ought not to
have stated (op. cit. 4) that he overlooked the point regarding Thucydides' JlETiz
tavta. In fact, he mentions it p. 72 n. 23, to justify his suggestion that the
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PEN1EKONTAETIA 293
It seems clear that what Thucydides has been concerned about, and careful to
get right, is the sequence of events: it is this that (in his opinion) Hellanicus
must at times have got wrong. Unfortunately nothing of Hellanicus' treatment of
this period survives, so that we cannot see for ourselves whether the criticism is
justified (yet we must surely assume that up to a point it was, since contempor­ary
readers would make the comparison), and how serious the errors were. But it
is easy enough to believe that this polygraphic author, whose Atthis was only a
small part of his work and whose treatment of this peyiod would only be a small
part of that, did not take as much trouble as Thucydiiies presumably did to estab­lish
the order of events in a generation beyond living memory, whether or not
(as has been maintained) he in fact tried to introduce archon dating for this
period.?
battle of the Eurymedon precedes the revolt of Naxos: "Under this interpretation,
the pedx Taiha introducing the Eurymedon campaign would (ambiguously) be in
reference to any of the Athenian actions described in 1.97-perhaps the
subjugation of Karystos-rather than the last events described in 1.97-8, namely
the surrender of Naxos and the later subjugation of all Athens' remaining allies"
(my emphasis). I can only ascribe this to confused reminiscence of discussion in
a tutorial. That the phrase should be taken as asserting that the battle follows all
the revolts by Athenian allies discussed in the generalising chapter 99 is absurd.
Yet there is no reason why that chapter should be forgotten and the reference be
taken as going back to the end of 98. Even if it does so, if we ignore Thucydides'
JC:a{, as Unz joins the communis opinio in doing, this lands us (precisely) with
having to maintain that the battle followed the end of 98, i.e. the subjugation of
the other allies, as it happened in each case. (Why he should propose to go back
to 97 (which has nothing to do with Athenian campaigns), I also fail to
understand.)
Unz argues that Naxos and Eurymedon cannot be in any sense con­temporaneous,
since Cimon could not have sailed to Asia Minor "while powerful
Naxos was still holding out in his rear" (70). This seems to show lack of
appreciation of some basic facts. Once the Naxian fleet had been put out of
action, as that of Thasos was, and the land forces shut up within the city, with a
siege wall completed from sea to sea, only a few ships and a screening force on
land were needed to maintain an effective siege: indeed, a larger force would
merely involve additional expense and difficulty over supplies. (At Thasos, a
large part of the forces must have been detached to help the new colony founded
during the siege.) It is difficult to believe that the Eurymedon campaign preceded
the siege of Naxos and that Thucydides knew it (which is really all we can argue
about). See further p. 294 f. and n. 12 below.
7 Kurt v. Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung I (1976) ch. 6, building
on what Jacoby had suggested, makes Hellanicus the first to attempt to set out the
whole of Athenian history under archon years, going back to the beginning of the
official list of archons. As far as I can see, this theory is based on two references
(F 171-2) to adjacent archon years during the Peloponnesian War, which will
hardly bear the weight of that construction. On the other hand, that the point of
Thucydides' objection to his lack of akribeia in the Pentekontaetia may have been
(if I understand the argument correctly) that Hellanicus tried to attach archon dates
294 E.BADIAN
The actual sequence of the major events could almost certainly still be
established, with sufficient diligence, at the time when Thucydides began to
make his enquiries. We have no reason to think that he got it wrong where he
chose to give it.8 Where he found that no precise sequence was obtainable, he
merely put things at "about the same time", without committing himself as to
which came earlier. But there were inherent problems in such a method, for
events simply do not happen neatly in sequence: they are lines in time and not
points, so that there is inevitably considerable overlap. Let us take the example
of the revolt of Naxos and the battle of the Eurymedon. Thucydides puts both of
them after the settlement with Carystus; since he does not tell us their sequence,
it is quite possible that he had not been able to find out. However, a battle
approaches being a point in time, while a siege does not: wherever we have the
information (Sestos, Thasos, Samos, Mytilene-to mention only sieges
conducted by the Athenians), a siege of a major city would go on for some time.
This is not surprising. A major city would normally lay in stores to last it
through the winter, when no food could generally be grown or even imported.
Hence, unless the attacker surprised it before the harvest, a siege was bound to
last at least until those supplies ran out, some time after the winter. A city
actually expecting an attack, of course, could lay in extensive stores. Thus
Thasos, despite defeats at the very beginning, which seem to have prevented the
collection of any further food, managed to hold out through two winters. Naxos,
undertaking a revolt and no doubt feeling strong enough to succeed, would have
made good preparations, and we can be sure that its reduction took more than one
season, although Thucydides is not concerned with the details. Where, within
the "line" of that siege (whether it went on over one winter or two), the "point"
of the battle was to be placed, he may well not have been able to find out with
real certainty: hence perhaps the uncertainty of his phrasing, not even explicitly
relating the two to each other.
to events where Thucydides knew it could not be done may well be in part correct.
However, we do not Jcnow of any events in this period (or indeed in most of what
survives of his history of Athens) to which Hellanicus attached archon dates.
8 Although I am prepared to believe that Thucydides might distort mere facts
for the sake of his main thesis, I think that J.H. Schreiner, "Anti-Thukydidean
Studies in the Pentekontaetia", SO 51 (1976) 19-63, and "More Anti-Thukydidean
Studies Lot the Pentekontaetia", SO 52 (1977) 19-38, goes much too far in
charging Thucydides with wholesale omission and rearrangement of dates without
any really adequate motivation and in preferring the chronology he disengages
from Ctesias (not a very trustworthy author) and later tradition. He fails to
comment on the confusion in the oral tradition on the events of the
Pentekontaetia that can be demonstrated by about 400 (see below), or to note the
connection of one of his preferred chronological items (the Eurymedon campaign
under Artaxerxes--deliberately misdated by Thucydides!) with plain myth. See
next note, with text.
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAETIA 295
The battle of the Eurymedon, of course, seems to have been woven into
Athenian legend at quite an early stage, and this no doubt made it harder to get
accurate information by the end of the century. The version that amalgamated it
with Cimon's Cyprian campaign at mid-century and that appears (even though
Ephorus did not pick it up9) in some of our later sources, was integrally tied in
with the story of Themistocles: it was Artaxerxes, planning the counter-attack
that led to the battle of the Eurymedon, who called on Themistocles (who, in
this version, may have arrived in Asia under his predecessor) to make good on
his promises and lead the attack against the Greeks; the result of which was
Themistocles' suicide by drinking bull's blood. Since the story of the suicide
was known to, and rejected by, Thucydides {138,4), together with at least the
general motivation supposed to have led to it, it is likely-and the case has
recently been strongly argued10-that it all goes back to the fifth century: an
illustration of the difficulties that Thucydides would have to contend with when
he came to look for accurate information about famous events of a couple of
generations back.
Not that we have in fact been unaware of them. It is well known how, about
a decade later, a politician and member of an old political family, who was
himself active in the years when Thucydides gathered his information, could
present an utterly garbled version of much of fifth-century history, including
some in his own lifetime and some in which his family had taken part, and
expect no superior standard of knowledge from his audience: what is more, how
Andocides 3,3 ff. became a classic presentation of the whole period and was later
used almost verbatim by Aeschines (2,172 ff.). Eduard Meyer long ago notedll
that this proves "wie gnnzlich unflihig die miindliche Tradition ist, auch nur die
Hauptpunkte einer historischen Entwickelung festzuhalten". What has not
always been appreciated is how this kind of "oral tradition" was all that
Thucydides and others had to go on when they came to write the history of this
9 I hope to have established this art. cit. (n. 6 above) pp. 15 ff. I must.
however, retract the statement that Aristodemus omits the battle of the EIJJ)'medon:
he describes it in chapter 11 and makes the campaign to Cyprus and Egypt its
consequence. He links it with the story of Themistocles' suicide by reporting that
the Greeks attacked the army he had prepared and thus liberated the cities of Ionia
"and the other Greek cities" from Artaxerxes, after which Cimon sails to
Pamphylia and wins the battle of the Eurymedon. My point that such major
chronological confusion cannot properly be ascribed to Ephorus still stands.
Aristodemus has contaminated Ephorus (whom he uses later, and indeed in much of
his work) with another source, since he explicitly reports Themistocles' arrival at
Susa after Xerxes' death (10,4), whereas Ephorus was one of those who reported an
~terview with Xerxes (Plut. Them. 27,1: if Plutarch's list of sources is complete,
1t would follow that Aristodemus here used Charon of Lampsacus).
10 By Schreiner, in the firSt of his articles cited n. 8 above.
11 Forschungen II (1899) 132.
296 E.BADIAN
very period. It is not surprising that Thucydides could not supply precise dates
or intervals for much of it, or that an outsider like Hellanicus, for whom this
was only a very part-time interest, might make mistakes that Thucydides could
justly reprove. That there were plenty of documents available (even after the
destruction due to the long war and the revolution) is beside the point: had they
thought of it, Thucydides and his contemporaries could have written their history
of the Athenian Empire infinitely better than we can, and with no worry about
the shape of the letters. However, they did not think of it. Despite some
beginnings of the inspection of monuments in Herodotus, Thucydides never
mentions them when he propounds his methods in the first book, and it is clear
that, apart from treaties-and not many of them: there is no reason to believe
that he ever saw a stele of the Thirty Years' Peace, which Pausanias still saw at
Olympia (V 23,4)-he never considered documents as sources for historical
information. We need hardly doubt that he was not alone in this.
Once he felt confident of his facts (as he seems to feel where he gives them),
there was still the problem ofpresentation.12 We have already touched upon the
problem of overlap: an important situation will not usually be completely
resolved before the next one starts happening. Every historian has to face the
technical problem of how to deal with this elementary fact of his material. But
nowadays, of course, our technique is flexible enough for us to be rarely
conscious of the problem at all. For Thucydides it was a really major problem
in his account of the actual war, where he wanted to report strictly by seasons,
and he consistently tore his history to shreds in order to achieve such precision.
But in the Pentekontaetia there was no real need for him to do this. As we have
seen, he was obviously aiming at getting the sequence of events right; but he
was not dividing his account into even and historically arbitrary sections (years
or seasons), and so there was no objection to finishing off a story that he had
begun in its right place, even if he then had to go back for the beginning of the
next item he chose to report. Fortunately, Greek campaigns (the main stuff of
what he chose to report) were short and did not overlap, though they might (of
course) coincide (in which case they could be marked as having occurred "at the
12 Composition and artistic presentation were obviously important
considerations for Thucydides. If one wanted to argue that the battle of the
Eurymedon preceded the siege of Naxos and he knew it. yet deliberately reverses
that order in his reference to the two events (for that suggestion see Unz, cited n.
6 above), one would do best to invoke a compositional argument: had he
mentioned Eurymedon before Naxos, to which (as the first of the revolts) he had
to attach his general consideration of revolts (ch. 99), he would have had to report
the revolt of Naxos, insert the general chapter, and then proceed to the revolt of
Thasos as his next item, which would not have been aesthetically satisfactory.
Still, I do not think this sufficient motivation for his deliberately reversing the
order in which he mentions the two events which he describes as essentially
contemporaneous.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PEN1EKONTAETIA 297
same time"). But some of his events did overlap; noticeably sieges, one of
which went on for over nine years, and the Egyptian expedition. His technique
appears clearly in both cases. The Egyptian expedition is treated in just two
chronological slices (roughly at its beginning, 104, and at its end, 109). The
first one probably does relate only the events of the first season, but the second
quite explicitly takes in a space of several years, indeed strictly speaking all the
remaining five years. It is quite clear that we are not meant to deduce that events
in Greece stood still during those years. Simi~arly !thorne: his famous
statement that the siege ended in the tenth yeaf (103,1) must be taken to
anticipate, no matter how we use our abacus on the Messenian Revolt-hence,
of course, the long tendency to emend, among those who fail to see the author's
general practice in such (admittedly few) cases. Indeed, we might note that
within the chapter that tells of the end of the Revolt he has incorporated an
earlier event: the oracle already in the possession of the Spartans which,
although it did not really fit the case, they apparently chose to apply to it when
the gods were clearly against them.13
As we have seen, the nature of his material, as he interpreted and selected it,
fortunately saved him from having a large number of such problems. But there
is indeed another instance, where the technique has usually been misinterpreted
and the finishing of a story has been taken to be sequential narrative. And here
we come to the next problem-{)ur problem, this time, and not the author's.
There is, in Thucydides more than in most authors, a tendency to make him say
what he clearly does not; this is in part due to this being a genuinely difficult
author, on whom very little of the basic grammatical and stylistic work has yet
been done, even though books have appeared in plenty ,14 and in part to a natural
13 The oracle, which Thucydides tells us had been given to the Spartans at an
earlier time, was presumably among the collection kept by the kings. Since it
speaks of "the suppliant [singular] of Ithomean Zeus", it was clearly intended for a
man (perhaps an escaped Messenian helot) who had sought refuge at the altar of
the god. Its application to the Messenian army that had defended the mountain no
doubt helped to save face.
14 That general books on Thucydides appear at the rate of about one a year
does not require demonstration. As in many other cases, it is easier to write
another book of general interpretation than to do detailed and laborious work,
which alone would make such interpretation genuinely valid and useful. That there
is a dearth of work of the latter kind is unfortunately easy enough to demonstrate,
in one striking instance. Nearly a century ago, Friedrich Hultsch (editor,
grammarian and metrologist) published a series of major studies entitled "Die
erziihlenden Zeitformen bei Polybios" (ASA W 13 (1893) 1-210, 347-468; 14
(1894) 1-100: occasionally obtainable bound together as a book). It is a classic
of stylistic investigation and an essential tool for understanding Hellenistic
prose-presumably helpful for Classical prose as well, since superficial
observation confirms the existence of some of the phenomena he noted. But there
is still no such work on Thucydides, whose "erziihlende Zeitformen" are often
cheerfully interpreted by those who write about him.
298 E.BADIAN
tendency to get as much as possible out of the most reliable source, for a period
where there is on the whole regrettably little to be got But we must read him
patiently, as indeed we must every source, and (to the best of our, at present
limited, ability) take the text and meaning as we find them, except for the few
cases where emendation is necessitated by nonsense--avoiding the temptation to
read what is not there.
The disaster of Drabescus is twice mentioned by Thucydides. In 100,3, a
colony is sent to the site of the later Amphipolis as soon as the Thasian fleet
had been eliminated and the Athenians were on the island, at the beginning of its
revolt; he tells us that the settlers, proceeding inland, were destroyed by a
combined Thracian force. In IV 102, in connection with Brasidas' capture of
Amphipolis, he gives (presumably from local records) a history of attempts to
colonise the site, with precise intervals, but no dates: first, by Aristagoras,
"fleeing from King Darius" and destroyed by the Edonians (the site was in their
territory: I 103); thirty-two years later, by the Athenians, with ten thousand
settlers (here he reports that anyone who wished could join, while in I 100 it was
only Athenians and allies-a difference that has exercised Thucydidean
fundamentalists), who were destroyed by the Thracians at Drabescus; finally, in
the twenty-ninth year after that, Hagnon succeeded in founding Amphipolis. A
scholiast on Aeschines 2,31, listing nine disasters the Athenians suffered at this
site, incidentally supplies several dates from an Atthidographic source, two of
them relevant here: the destruction of the force under Leagros (the name is
variously corrupt in the MSS, but known from other sources) is dated under
Lysicrates (453/2) and the founding of Amphipolis under Euthymenes (437/6).
The latter, for what that is worth, coincides with Diodorus XII 32,3 and has not
been doubted. The former has never been taken seriously, except in infelicitous
attempts to distinguish it from Drabescus. Unz, recently summarising the
communis opinio, is representative: "Thucydides says that Drabeskos took place
twenty-eight years before the successful founding of Amphipolis." (He adds the
date from the scholiast.) " ... this dating places Drabeskos in the archon year
465/4, and indeed this date (or one in the two preceding archon years) is
supported by the scholia." It is only a footnote that informs the reader of the
reason for the remarkable uncertainty as to what the scholiast supports, namely
that he in fact gives 453/2.15 As it happens, the years 467/6, 466/5 and 465/4
do supply three similar archon names, although only one of them (465/4:
Lysitheus) can be reconciled with Thucydides' intervals: although the date of
15 Unz, art. cit. (n. 6) 71, with n. 19, which simply states that the scholiast's
date "is apparently an error either for Lysistratos .. . , Lysanias . . ., or Lysitheos
... " The "apparently" is not explained, nor is there any comment on the odd
"fact" that the date gathered from Thucydides is "apparently" supported by the
scholiast on only one of these three emendations, and contradicted on either of
the others even if one chooses to emend.
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 299
Aristagoras is conveniently flexible, the twenty-ninth year before 437/6lands us
firmly with Lysitheus. It is, in fact, a key date, in that it gives us (within a
year, at any rate) a date for the outbreak of the Thasian revolt. But it is clear
from Thucydides' presentation, on each occaison, that what he is dating is the
attempts to found a colony on the site, and that what happened to the colonies
that failed {that of Aristagoras and that of the frrst Athenian settlers) is only
incidental, explaining why another foundation became necessary.
Mabel Lang's demonstration of this point twenty ,years ago has had no effect
on the fundamentalists and their adapters. Thucyclldes simply does not imply
that the colony was wiped out in the year when it was founded. He is merely
finishing off the story. Diodorus XI 70~5 tells us that the colonists were for a
while successful in controlling the Thracians, but when they "later" proceeded
inland into Thrace, the invaders were destroyed by the Edonians. (Pausanias, in a
brief summary, I 29,4, adds that they were destroyed in an ambush.) Herodotus
(IX 75), in the course of a eulogy of Sophanes, one of the commanders, tells us
that the disaster occurred in a battle over the gold mines at Datus. {lsocrates
8,86 repeats this name, but probably from Herodotus.) Now, Datus is on the
east side of the Pangaeum range and is the site of the later Philippi, which indeed
had the mines within its territory. It is a long and difficult way from
Amphipolis. All this has been ignored by those who try to fit Thucydides'
account into preconceived theories. Indeed, it has even been said in an (at one
time) authoritative account of work on this period that the date of Drabescus is
among only five flrffi dates in the whole of the Pentekontaetiaf16 We have seen
that, in this respect, nothing had changed by 1986.
Those who retail this error can hardly have properly envisaged the founding of
a colony. This, with its survey and distribution of land, the building of a city
wall (no doubt after an initial defeat of the barbarians, as implied by Diodorus),
and the sowing and harvesting of supplies to store against the expected attacks
(not to mention varied religious business), was not a job for one season. Those
considering the matter might do well to ponder (e.g.) the history of the early
settlers in Massachusetts. The colonists would not dump their rucksacks under a
token guard and proceed on a long and difficult march inland without even a
rest.17 It was only after the colony was settled and appeared to be secure that a
16 T. Lenschau, Bursians Jahresbericht 253 (1936) 128. - I have not been
able to get an accurate figure for the distance between Amphipolis and Datos or
Drabescus; but the campaign would certainly involve crossing the Pangaeum
passes, and the distance appears, as far as I can judge it on a map, to be at least
60-70 km. Herodotus' eulogy of Sophanes is presumably derived from his family,
not too long after his death.
17 It is highly relevant that an earlier attempt to settle a colony in the area, at
Eion on the coast, had been prevented by the Thracians, apparently even before
the site was fortified to the necessary strength: compare the disaster at Eion,
listed in the same Aeschines scholia under Phaedon (476/5), with Plutarch's
300 E.BADIAN
large force of the settlers could leave it on a march to seize gold mines far
overland. It was too ambitious an undertaking, and the disaster left the colony
too weak to defend itself. The later Amphipolitans learnt the lesson and never
tried to seize those distant, but perhaps tempting, mines.
That the colony survived for at least a few years can be shown even
independently of all this. Thucydides tells us that it was established as soon as
the Athenians had landed on Thasos (i.e., no doubt the decision to send it out
assumed the successful setting up of the siege of the city, which indeed
followed). On his return to Athens after the fall of Thasos, two years later,
Cimon was prosecuted for not having invaded Macedonia when it appeared "easy"
to do so (Plut. Cim. 14,3). That charge would hardly have been made if the
Athenians had just suffered, in that same area, much their worst disaster in their
history to date.
It is clear that the only date for Drabescus that we have is the one given by
the scholiast. Now, a scholiast may, of course, get an archon's name wrong: in
this particular note, the last of the five is in fact wrong-but it is a scribe's
error, for we have gibberish (KaA.aJ.llVOt; for KaAAlJ.l~oovt;) and not another
name. Until we have a better date to set against it, we should surely accept the
date he gives us, which gives the colony a perfectly plausible life of about
twelve years, instead of proposing emendations that, whatever their
palaeo graphic plausibility, do not make historical sense.
Another case where Thucydides has been similarly treated is that of
Pausanias. Not too long ago, few scholars doubted the statement in Justin (IX
1,3) that he stayed in Byzantium for seven years after "founding" it Thucydides
does not contradict this. In the Pentekontaetia excursus he tells us nothing
about Pausanias after Sparta's decision not to send him out as commander-in­chief
again (94,5-6): his later actions were not relevant to Thucydides' theme in
the excursus. It is only in the detailed Pausanias story that we learn of his
sailing unofficially, on a trireme of Hermione, to Byzantium, to continue the
Hellenic War (128,3; 131,1: in Thucydides' opinion, of course, to continue his
plotting), until he is expelled by the Athenians, who take the place by siege. He
then withdraws to Colonae and continues his intrigues, until the Spartans send
him an ultimatum and force him to return. The length of his stay at either place
is not mentioned: it may have been weeks or years, for all we can tell.
It has been shown, especially by Fornara, that the events ascribed to his flrst
stay (quite apart from the inherent plausibility of the reported correspondence)
cannot be fltted into the few months that is all we can allow for it on the
statement, in praise of Cimon, that his capture of Eion (which should be put in
the year 477/6) opened up a rich area for Athenian colonisation (Cim. 7,3). The
precedent was bound to be in the minds of the settlers of a neighbouring site a few
years later. (Gomme (HCT I 297) sees the difficulty, but his attempt to meet it is
implausible.)
302 E.BADIAN
Byzantium, although a thorn in Athens' side, was at least unofficially (and
perhaps quite officially, once he was there, whatever the manner of his departure)
supported by Sparta, where not all were happy to see the increasing and
unchecked power of Athens' new League:19 after an, the skytale recalling him
could have been sent at any Lime, had the ephors chosen to do so; but no college
did, as long as he was in Byzantium. It is clear that he could not have been
expelled except at the risk of grave offence to Sparta (which Cimon would not be
prepared to give) or even a war.
In 471/70 (if the seven years are counted from his first arrival) the Spartans
allowed Cimon to expel Pausanias from Byzantium, but allowed him to settle at
Colonae. We obviously have not nearly enough evidence to penetrate behind the
secrecy of whatever negotiations must have preceded this major event It cannot
be that the Spartans (or the great majority of them) had been genuinely
convinced of his Medism, else the interlude at Colonae would not have been
permitted. But we do not know how long he stayed at Colonae. In Sparta
policy could change with the election of a new board of ephors, and the simplest
view is that, within a year or two, those ephors hostile to him were in a
majority and thus sent the ultimatum to Colonae which recalled him. But the
final recall no doubt also had something to do with the need for help from
Athens after the earthquake and the helot revolt: we shall consider these matters
very soon.
471/70 was also the year of Themistocles' ostracism, at least as Diodorus
found it dated in his source. Unfortunately we have no idea how Ephorus
arranged his history (except for the unhelpful statement that it was by subject
matter20), but we have no reason to believe that he gave no dates at all.
Diodorus, fo11owing him, at Limes has obvious difficulties in slicing his model
into plausible annual layers, but much of the time he seems in fact to have a key
!9 Diodorus' statement that the Spartans were considering war against Athens
in order to regain their lost prostasia and were dissuaded by one Hetoemaridas (XI
50) may be elaborated in detail and is obviously put in the wrong year (475/4,
when there was no reason for any such challenge), but that this picture of serious
division of opinion within Sparta is formed around a kernel of truth should be
obvious. Much of the consistent support for Pausanias may have come from
Spartans who felt that he was right to have reasserted Sparta's claim. An armed
attempt to expel him from Byzantium when he had never been officially disowned
or recalled (no matter how he had got there) would have been seen as a major
confrontation.
20 Diod. V 1,4, i~plying that each book dealt with a single topic. This has
been taken as the basis of all reconstructions of Ephorus' work. See G.L. Barber,
The Historian Ephorus (1935), esp. chapters 1 and 2, with discussion of earlier
treatments (including Schwartz and Jacoby). The conclusion sometimes drawn
from this, that Ephorus wrote entirely without dating anything and that Diodorus
had to make up all the dates that he gives us himself, clearly goes quite absurdly
beyond the evidence and is in itself highly implausible.
302 E.BADIAN
Byzantium, although a thorn in Athens' side, was at least unofficially (and
perhaps quite officially, once he was there, whatever the manner of his departure)
supported by Sparta, where not all were happy to see the increasing and
unchecked power of Athens' new League:19 after an, the skytale recalling him
could have been sent at any Lime, had the ephors chosen to do so; but no college
did, as long as he was in Byzantium. It is clear that he could not have been
expelled except at the risk of grave offence to Sparta (which Cimon would not be
prepared to give) or even a war.
In 471/70 (if the seven years are counted from his first arrival) the Spartans
allowed Cimon to expel Pausanias from Byzantium, but allowed him to settle at
Colonae. We obviously have not nearly enough evidence to penetrate behind the
secrecy of whatever negotiations must have preceded this major event It cannot
be that the Spartans (or the great majority of them) had been genuinely
convinced of his Medism, else the interlude at Colonae would not have been
permitted. But we do not know how long he stayed at Colonae. In Sparta
policy could change with the election of a new board of ephors, and the simplest
view is that, within a year or two, those ephors hostile to him were in a
majority and thus sent the ultimatum to Colonae which recalled him. But the
final recall no doubt also had something to do with the need for help from
Athens after the earthquake and the helot revolt: we shall consider these matters
very soon.
471/70 was also the year of Themistocles' ostracism, at least as Diodorus
found it dated in his source. Unfortunately we have no idea how Ephorus
arranged his history (except for the unhelpful statement that it was by subject
matter20), but we have no reason to believe that he gave no dates at all.
Diodorus, fo11owing him, at Limes has obvious difficulties in slicing his model
into plausible annual layers, but much of the time he seems in fact to have a key
!9 Diodorus' statement that the Spartans were considering war against Athens
in order to regain their lost prostasia and were dissuaded by one Hetoemaridas (XI
50) may be elaborated in detail and is obviously put in the wrong year (475/4,
when there was no reason for any such challenge), but that this picture of serious
division of opinion within Sparta is formed around a kernel of truth should be
obvious. Much of the consistent support for Pausanias may have come from
Spartans who felt that he was right to have reasserted Sparta's claim. An armed
attempt to expel him from Byzantium when he had never been officially disowned
or recalled (no matter how he had got there) would have been seen as a major
confrontation.
20 Diod. V 1,4, i~plying that each book dealt with a single topic. This has
been taken as the basis of all reconstructions of Ephorus' work. See G.L. Barber,
The Historian Ephorus (1935), esp. chapters 1 and 2, with discussion of earlier
treatments (including Schwartz and Jacoby). The conclusion sometimes drawn
from this, that Ephorus wrote entirely without dating anything and that Diodorus
had to make up all the dates that he gives us himself, clearly goes quite absurdly
beyond the evidence and is in itself highly implausible.
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 303
date and, probably quite consciously, arranges a large and coherent body of
narrative around it This is what he clearly does under 4 nno, when he tells the
whole tale of Themistocles' last years, clearly without being under the
impression (or trying to convey it to his readers) that all those events took place
in a single year: like Thucydides (at times), he is merely telling a coherent
story, attached to a crucial date. What he found dated is not difficult to see. For
one thing, it is quite clear from Thucydides (and it should never have been
doubted) that the actual conviction of Themistocles, promptly followed by the
demand for his extradition, found him still based dit Argos (135,3); whatever
political events may have taken place at Argos during this time (and some of the
speculations linking Themistocles with anti-Spartan movements in
Peloponnese, and trying to trace political events at Argos itself, may well be
correct21), it is clear that he did not give up his Argive domicile until the demand
for extradition made it unsafe.
After this, he first turned to the west-a sure indication that there was no
foundation for the charge of Medism. (Indeed, we may well believe that there
was a prize set on his head by the King, as Plutarch tells us (Them. 26,1).) He
found no safety at Corcyra, which was open to pressure from Athenian ships,
and fled overland to Admetus; there he may have been safe for a while, but before
long (137,1) the envoys calling for his extradition caught up with him. From
there he went overland to Pydna and then by ship straight to Asia Minor. Since
he arrived in Asia some time in 465, and his journeys must have taken at least
several months (we may conjecture that he was safe at Admetus' court over the
winter) but not more than a year, his conviction, and final departure from Argos,
must come in 466. Hence what Diodorus found under 471/70 was his ostracism.
Diodorus himself actually makes this plain to the careful reader: at the end of
his whole story, which has led him to Themistocles' death, he comments on
how strange it is that his city (this must be understood as the subject) chose to
deprive itself of such a man (XI 58,4-5).22 The date should be accepted, and
some connection with the expulsion of Pausanias from Byzantium in the same
21 See especially W.G. Forrest, CQ n.s. 10 (1960) 221-241, with mistaken
chronology. Note, however, the warnings of M. Wtirrle, Untersuchungen zur
Verfassungsgeschichte von Argos im 5. Jahrhundert vor Christus (1964) 120-122,
showing the great uncertainty surrounding most of the evidence and the highly
speculative nature of all such theories.
22 For details of my views on the chronology of Themistocles' arrival and
stay in Asia, see my article cited n. 6 above, pp. 6, 20. Unz, art. cit. (n. 6
above) 68, once again may be taken as representative of the communis opinio,
claiming to illustrate "Diodorus' chronological blunders ... by a single example
from this period. The single archon year of 471/0 is given over wholly to the
narrative of the latter years of Themistokles ... a span of perhaps twenty years"
(my emphasis). He, and those scholars whose views he repeats, would do better to
read what Diodorus actually has to say on this excursus and in it
304 E.BADIAN
year is an obvious possibility, in view of the attested later connection between
the fates of the two men. Moreover, it is possible-although, as so often, we
cannot be sure that we can separate truth from later embroidery-that
Themistocles was ostracised after an attempt to prosecute him had failed: this, at
least, is stated by Diodorus (XI 54); Plutarch seems to have a similar story in
his source, but found this unsuccessful prosecution after the ostracism (Them.
23,4 ff.: after Pausanias' death-but the presentation is not very clear, and
Plutarch seems to be trying to make sense of two different sources that he
remembered). In any case, further speculation would be pointless: whatever in
fact happened, there was no one to record it. The return of Pausanias from
Colonae, however, may with some confidence be put in 468 (469/8 or 468n and
his death in 467/6, not later than early spring 466, if we are to have time for the
evidence against Themistocles to be found and transmitted to Athens and for the
trial and conviction there to be arranged, all by the middle of the year or not long
after (see above).
Finally, the only other problem that needs extended discussion is, of course,
that of the Spartan earthquake and the helot revolt I avoided discussing it when
writing about the Peace of Callias, since the views I tried to develop on that
issue do not depend on the way one chooses to resolve this problem. However,
let me now say that it seems to me another case where Thucydides' admittedly
idiosyncratic way of telling his story in the excursus has been misunderstood.
Hammond's attempt to disentangle the evidence, reinforced by Sealey's analysis
of Thucydides' text, has been comfortably ignored by the fundamentalists, and
will no doubt continue to be; but it is obviously necessary to draw attention to
the facts in this context, and above all to proper ways of approaching the
evidence.
Hammond started by noting that Plutarch's accounts of two different Athenian
expeditions in connection with the revolt, which had always been written off as
doublets due to his inability to handle his sources, are in fact clearly
differentiated. For the first expedition, which he places when Archidamus had
just saved Sparta from being overrun by her subjects after the initial disaster of
the earthquake, he not only uses the evidence in Aristophanes' Lysistrata 1137
ff., which we also have in full and where Pericleidas is shown as a suppliant
sitting at the altar and appealing for help, and Cimon is said to have marched out
with four thousand hoplites and saved Sparta, but he also had a reported speech
by Ephialtes in opposition to aid, and Ion's report of Cimon's famous metaphor
about the yokemates (Cim. 16), both implying that Sparta was in serious
danger. (As we can see in the case of the Lysistrata, the whole context would
probably make this point even clearer than Plutarch's excerpts do.) It is on his
return from Peloponnese "after aiding the Spartans" that Cimon has a brief
altercation with the Corinthians. There is then another appeal to the Athenians,
this time to aid Sparta against the Messenians and helots at lthome (clearly the
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENTEKONTAETIA 305
appeal mentioned by Thucydides), and this time the Athenians are soon sent back
and regard this as an insult, so that they now adopt an anti-Spartan policy.
The date of the earthquake and (by implication) the first appeal is
unfortunately not to be gathered from Plutarch. He puts the earthquake in the
fourth year of Archidamus; but the dates of the Spartan kings at this time, and
their treatment in ancient lists, are a notorious crux, and we do not know what
dates he had for the reign of Archidamus. Diodorus, as is well known,
consistently gives dates that are several years toq early, even though they
conflict with his actual narrative: thus Archidamus iS made to succeed in 476/5
(XI 48,2) and to die in 434/3 (XII 35,4), but he then quite propedy appears in
the Archidamian War. We cannot tell whether Plutarch had what appears to be
the true date, six years later than Diodorus'. He certainly tells the story of how
the king saved Sparta in almost the same way as Diodorus.
Diodorus has the account of the earthquake and its consequences under 469/8
(XI 63-64): once more, he includes the whole story under that year, saying at
the end that the war at !thorne lasted ten years. He gives only one appeal to
Athens, but seems to imply that the Athenians stayed for some considerable
time before they were sent home (64,2: two stages are distinguished, first a
successful one, later one in which the Spartans began to suspect the Athenians
and fmally sent them home). We cannot argue from his silence, of course. We
must always remember that what an ancient writer (be he Thucydides or
Diodorus) chooses to omit or to include may not accord with what our own
choice would have been; and Diodorus was, after all, a large-scale epitomator,
who had to find space for the outline of the story, plus his doses of moralism
which he considered his important contribution, by omitting some things. I
have previously tried to show23 that he omitted the Peace of Callias negotiated
after the Eurymedon, either because he genuinely did not realise that there were
two such treaties at different times or from choice, since the first one was soon
broken and had no long-term effect. Mutatis mutandis, similar arguments may
explain why he might choose to report only one appeal, even if his source gave
two. His date for the outbreak is slightly impugned by his later putting the end
of the war "about the same time" as the periplous of Tolmides, under 456/5 (XI
84,8). But this is a piece of background to the settlement of the Messenians at
Naupactus, which he ascribes to Tolmides, and the chronological phrase is
almost certainly his own addition-just as some modem scholars have thought
that the settlement of the Messenians must immediately follow the end of the
Ithome war. We may confidently take it that 469/8 was the date that he found
for the earthquake in his source, attaching the whole account to it in his usual
fashion.
23 See art. cit. (n. 6 above) 15 ff.-perhaps not sufficiently allowing for
deliberate choice.
306 E.BADIAN
As has often been pointed out, there is support for that date. A scholiast on
the Lysistrata passage we have noted in fact dates the lemma Kimon (line 1144)
to 468n, in two convergent ways. He tells the story of the earthquake and the
revolt "until Cimon came because of the appeal and saved them" (repeating the
poet's words). The scholia get their dates from the Atthis tradition, and the
author just mentioned in another connection is in fact Philochorus. The
Atthidographers undoubtedly used archival material, and their dates are usually
regarded as good tradition. There is no reason to doubt that this date should be
·accepted. (Of course, it is not a date for the earthquake: what the Atthidographer
would find dated was the Spartan appeal and Cimon's expedition, and indeed the
date, as we have seen, is attached to Cimon's name.)
Such a date would normally have been accepted as a matter of course. But we
note with surprise (or perhaps no longer with surprise) that in this instance it
has been thought to contradict Thucydides and has therefore been almost
unanimously ignored by the fundamentalist tradition. (I have noted two
exceptions honoris causa.) What date does Thucydides give?
He does not give a date at all, of course, any more than for anything else.
Any dates derived from his Pentekontaetia excursus are put in by modern
calculation and argument, based on certain principles of interpretation of
Thucydides and occasionally on evidence from other sources, which is readily
accepted if it does not seem to contradict Thucydides. (We have commented on
the colonies in Thmce and the date of Drabescus, one of the best illustrations of
this modern method.) Thucydides brings up the earthquake in a peculiar way, in
a context which is intended as a showpiece of his theory in Book I that Sparta
was responsible for the war and was constantly plotting and intriguing against
Athens, long before she thought the time ripe for starting it.24 It comes into the
notorious promise to aid Thasos by invading Attica (100,2), which Sparta is said
to have formally made, and have been preparing to carry out, but the
consequences of the earthquake made it impossible.
The story is strategically placed in his argument. Chapter 99 makes the case
that the Athenians, although strict taskmasters, did nothing illegal to the allies,
and that the allies were themselves responsible for their enslavement; 100 starts
with the great victory at the Eurymedon, the greatest achievement of the alliance,
and goes on to register the revolt of Thasos, for reasons that are obscurely and
ambiguously worded. (The wording skirts round the fact that the revolt started
over Athenian attempts to deprive the Thasians of their rich Peraea.) Then (101)
comes the appeal to Sparta, which the Spartans unhesitatingly accept (keeping it
secret from the Athenians): as we have seen, they are on the point of carrying
out their immoral promise when the consequences of the earthquake make it
24 I have discussed this pervasive aim of his in my essay, "Thucydides and the
outbreak of the Pelopormesian War: a historian's brief" (to be published in the
proceedings of a colloquium held at Ohio State University in May 1987).
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 307
impossible; and in the next chapter (102) the Spartans appeal to Athens for aid,
under the terms of the very alliance which they had been on the point of
breaking.
This remarkable concentration of special pleading must make us look at the
text with special care: any author trying so hard to palm off an essentially
implausible argument25 is likely to use obscurity of expression in the service of
the cause, just as he in fact can be seen doing in the case of the revolt of Thasos.
Yet although few (fortunately) have believed the story of the Spartan promise,
about to be carried out-it may be said to have become the test case of diehard
fundamentalism: parallels in other fields will readily occur-those who have not
(and who have tried to preserve Thucydides' innocence and his competence-no
easy task, in this instance-by a variety of arguments) have not drawn the
necessary conclusion from the implausibility that they refuse to accept.
It was the singular merit of Raphael Sealey, in an unpretentious note, to draw
attention to Thucydides' phrase, that the Spartans were prevented from carrying
out their promise vno -roil revop.ivov O'ElO'J.I.OV. Sealey showed, by analysis of
Thucydides' usage, that this must mean "by the earthquake which had
(previously) happened"-the obvious prima facie meaning for (say) an
elementary student of Greek, but rejected by his betters because they preferred to
know what Thucydides "must have" meant Indeed, the application of standard
philological method to the phrase thirty years ago, which would normally have
been accepted as decisive, has in this case been largely ignored, or even rejected
with arguments that illustrate the victory of prejudice over philological method
and linguistic training.26
25 To repeat summarily what is developed art. cit. (last note), the story of the
promise to Thasos is implausible because it must have been well known (to the
Thasians among others) that the Spartans could not carry out such a promise on
their own: even if we ignore the machinery of the Peloponnesian League, as we
see it working in 440 and again in 431 (it may not have existed in this form in
the sixties), it had been obvious ever since Cleomenes that Sparta's ability to act
against Athens depended on Corinthian co-operation; and that could not be taken
for granted. (Thucydides does not report the slight friction between Corinth and
Cimon of which we hear in Plutarch.) What is meant by Jrai lp.eA.A.ov is totally
obscure: were they about to consult the allies? or to call out the ban? or are we
still merely talking about a genuine intention? The vague phrase fits in well with
the rest of this story.
26 For a striking instance of the latter, see the (not very useful) article by
D.W. Reece, JHS 82 (1962) 111-120, where (116 f.) an attempt is made to refute
Sealey, so as (i.a.) to be able to accept the promise to Thasos, which Sealey
rejected. It is opined that the phrase uno -roii yevop.evov uetup.oii should mean
"by the occurrence of the famous earthquake"-which shows, at the least, that the
author had not read Sealey's argument, which demonstrates precisely that it cannot
mean that. (The author also calls the theory of two expeditions by Cimon "a
desperate remedy"-using the strong language, in lieu of argument, characteristic
of the fundamentalist who sees his beliefs under attack.) This unfortunately needed
308 E.BADIAN
Sealey's note ought to have marked a turning-point in discussion of this
matter, and ought to have opened up more general questions regarding
Thucydides. It is time to rescue the argument and to put it within its context:
only thus can the strictly chronological problem be resolved. Thucydides is
indeed saying that the Spartans were prevented from carrying out their nefarious
promise "by the earthquake which had (previously) happened"-i.e. (to follow
Sealey further) by the consequences of that earthquake, which (as was surely well
known) had happened some time before the Thasian revolt: after all, in its
religious context (see, e.g., Paus. IV 24,6; Aelian, VH VI 7) as later interpreted,
it was indeed, as Diodorus describes it. JleraA.71 K"ai napa8o~oc; croJLrpopa, and
such things were precisely what would long be remembered. But everyone
presumably also knew that the immediate consequence of the earthquake, which
flattened much of Sparta and seemed to leave her helpless, had been an attack on
the city, which was saved by the resolution of Archidamus and by the loyalty of
Sparta's allies. All this is not mentioned by Thucydides, in his search for a good
reason for Sparta's failure to fulfil the promise. What he does say is that she
was prevented by the earthquake which had happened, "when the helots ...
went to It home in rebellion against them" .27 In other words, Thucydides has not
mentioned the first and most dangerous consequence of the earthquake (no doubt
well known to his contemporaries), because he did not want to use it in this
context.28 As throughout the excursus, he only selects and presents to us what
will contribute to his thesis. Surely not even the fundamentalist should be
surprised at the omission of what was not relevant to the immediate point As
in many such cases, his contemporaries would know, and later generations, for
his purposes, did not need to know. Having made his actual point, he goes on
to hammer it home (101,3): "Against those at !thorne a war had developed for
the Lacedaemonians; but the Thasians, in the third year of the siege . . .
(surrendered, on terms)." It was the unexpected long-term consequence of the war
setting out, as that article has sometimes been referred to with praise and
agreement.
V It should perhaps be explicitly stated, to prevent misunderstanding, that iv
r}) cannot have C1EIC1JlOV as an antecedent and mean that the helots (etc.) went to
!thorne during the course of the earthquake. The phrase must have its usual
meaning as a temporal conjunction.
28 It is just possible that if he knew of Cimon's two expeditions (as I am
suggesting), he omitted the flrst one not only because the whole of the first phase
of the revolt was irrelevant to his point, but because it would perhaps have been
too much to expect his readers to believe the hypertrophy of Spartan villainy
suggested by framing the promise to Thasos between the two Athenian
expeditions to aid Sparta. However, the purely compositional motive suggested in
the text, and fully in line with Thucydides' normal practice, suffices to explain the
omission, though perhaps not the trace of ambiguity that has misled so many of
his modem readers.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PENTEKONTAETIA 309
at Ithome (a war which, as he next goes on to say in 102,1, became drawn out)
that is connected with the failure to fulfil the promise to Thasos.
It is the best that Thucydides could do to resolve the problem he had created
for himself with the promise to Thasos-not a perfect solution, because we
must surely suppose that the Spartans making the promise knew that the war
they were fighting at home was by no means finished, even if they were later
surprised by the resistance at !thorne. Perhaps Thucydides missed a chance of
implying that the promise was not made in good fl!ith towards the Thasians.
But that would merely have weakened his case: wliat he wanted to show was
that it was a flagrant piece of treachery towards Athens, followed by the flagrant
piece of hypocrisy of the appeal; so the intention to carry it out had to be
genuine and unalloyed. By suppressing the well-known immediate consequence
of the great earthquake, he gives the impression that the development of the
!thorne war was indeed something new and unexpected, sufficient to account for
the fact that the Spartans evidently did not aid Thasos, and yet making the report
of the promise to do so (and the positive preparations implied) acceptable to
those who whished to believe. That those who did not know the facts (or Greek
grammar) might also be misled into thinking that the earthquake itself
intervened, and that the withdrawal of the helots etc. to !thorne was in fact its
immediate consquence, would be irrelevant to what he wanted to convey-or
might be all to the good.
To sum up: nothing in Thucydides should prevent us from believing the
well-attested date for the great earthquake, followed by the acute danger to Sparta,
which we might well have imagined for ourselves, but which happens to be
amply attested. It did not last very long, and was followed by the withdrawal of
the rebels to !thorne, where a reasonably mobile war (with the rebels, we are
told, terrorising the countryside from their secure base) seems gradually to have
developed into a Stellungskrieg, tying down much-needed Spartan forces without
hope of progress. The circuit of !thorne was simply ample enough to enable the
rebels to grow their supplies, and the war thus settled down to a stalemate. The
withdrawal to !thorne as a base can probably be dated with some confidence. If
Cimon's expedition took place in 468n (see above), i.e. presumably in the
spring, it is likely that the rebels were beaten out of the open country by the end
of that season and fortified their position at !thorne in the winter of 467/6. In
the end, the Spartans decided that the situation must be resolved, and this could
only be done by a direct assault. For reasons not entirely clear to us, the
Athenians-so Thucydides (102,2) and Herodotus (IX 70) concordantly tell us­had
a reputation for skill at assaulting walls (-retzoJLazefv). We do not know
what happened-whether assaults were tried and failed, or whether the Athenians
decided it was not worth attempting {after all, they had just gone through a siege
of over two years, rather than try a costly assault, and they were not likely to
take greater risks for the sake of Sparta). In any case, the Athenians'
performance was disappointing, and this must be the factual background to
310 E.BADIAN
Spartan dissatisfaction. Whether or not the rumours of possible sympathy for
the enemy that our sources report are true (see Diod. XI 64,3, probably based on
the more cautious assessment of Thuc. 102,3), the plain fact was that, since it
was customary for the ally calling in aid to pay for the expenses of those who
followed the call, the Spartans would see no reason to keep the large Athenian
force there if they had failed in their main purpose of ending the war by an
assault The reason they are said to have given for sending the Athenians home
(102,3 fin.: that they did not need them any longer) may be taken as literally
true, although put with the Spartans' customary lack of diplomatic finesse, and
so giving rise to the possibility of hostile interpretation, which was obviously
seized by Sparta's Athenian enemies and which found its faithful recorder in
Thucydides. The Athenians went home, mortally offended, and before the end of
the year Cimon was in exile, his policy in ruins, and Ephialtes triumphant. We
are in 462/1.
Having presented my personal views on what seem to me the principal
problems--both general methodological problems and some detailed problems
concerning particular incidents--in the chronology of this period, I can now
proceed to set out a tentative chronological list of some major events. It will
not aim at including ali-or even all important-events. Thus it will omit
practically everything that is only epigraphically attested. Even though such
contemporary attestation is in principle superior to (e.g.) Thucydides, it is well
known how parlous the dating of inscriptions of this period at present is, and it
would take me much too far to discuss it Almost the only secure date for a
major event during this period provided by an inscription is the date of the first
payment of Athena's quota of the tribute of the allies, which must (although this
has been doubted) give us the date when the League treasury was actually
transferred to Athens. That date, at least, is secure; as are the very few dates (I
think) which go back to the archival researches of the Atthidographers of the
fourth century, as collected for us (usually) by Philochorus, who seems to have
been the source of most of the scholiasts for actual dates, where they give any
explicit source reference at all. Other dates can usually only be tentative: we
have seen that even Thucydides could not easily discover them, and that he did
not agree with what Hellanicus claimed to have been able to do.
Where I think a problem has been adequately discussed (for chronological
purposes) above, I shall not give the same references again. In some other cases,
brief annotation will be offered. One problem that I have found totally
intractable is that of the battle of Oenoe. It will be recalled that it is known to
us only from two different references in Pausanias (I 15,1 and X 10,3): in
Athens it was depicted in the Stoa Poikile (in fact, it seems to have been the
only non-mythical battle apart from Marathon-which developed into the
foundation myth of Athenian greatness-depicted there), as a battle between
Athenians and Lacedaemonians; at Delphi, the Argives commemorated it as a
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 311
victory by Argives over Lacedaemonians, although they acknowledged some
Athenian aid. The Athenian commemoration was unique, the Argive one
perhaps uniquely lavish: bronze statues of the Seven Against Thebes, and (so
Pausanias adds) perhaps the Epigoni as well, though he apparently found no clear
evidence (such as a dedication) for this. Yet the battle is not mentioned in any
historian. Needless to say, it has been all the more discussed in modem times,
but not to much effect, since the data make the problem at present insoluble.
Most of the explanations offered have suggested that Pausanias must be
mistaken: perhaps the battle depicted in Athens was not that of Oenoe at all
(which would certainly be helpful in explaining Thucydides' silence); perhaps it
was the brilliant victory of Oenophyta-a site dedicated to a nymph called
Oenoe; or perhaps it was really a mythical battle.29 Meiggs, in the most
29 The latter is the suggestion of L.H. Jeffery, ABSA 10 (1965) 50-57:
asking some useful questions, and drawing attention to various interesting details,
but not to be followed in her suggestion that Pausanias misreported the painting.
There is little doubt, surely, that the paintings were properly inscribed. Of course,
it could be argued that the mistake was official and had arisen during the centuries
from the original painting to the time when Pausanias saw the picture. But it
would have to be explained why an error should produce an otherwise totally
unknown battle. It is also difficult to suggest (and she did not try to do so) what
mythical battle would be depicted in the form of two lines of hoplites approaching
each other, which is what the painting actually showed. - The idea that it is in
fact the great battle of Oenophyta, which certainly deserved commemoration (we
have seen that it is one of only two cases in which Thucydides found an exact
interval in days remembered; and Diodorus indulges in a splendid piece of
ecphrasis over this battle (XI 82), explaining why he thinks it a greater feat than
Marathon or Plataea, but with characteristic confusion in his actual account of the
campaign)-that idea was, according to Meiggs (see next note), first advanced by
a certain Uiwy; however, its principal proponent, usually cited for it, was Meyer's
pupil H.E. Stier, in an essay separately published and entitled Eine GrosstaJ der
attischen Geschichte. Die sog. Schlacht bei "Oenoii" (1934). His view aroused
fierce controversy and gained prominence, and some acceptance, by the chance
that it was picked up and endorsed by Lenschau in his survey of 1936 (see n. 16
above); though it was rejected by several reviewers, including Taeger. It is
certainly at first sight an attractive solution. But it involves a mass of
improbabilities in detail, especially regarding Pausanias' supposed confusion.
First, a battle he explicitly locates near Argos has to be transferred to Boeotia;
next, the enemy whom he calls Spartans have to become Boeotians; fmally (since
the Argive dedication also has to be accommodated) the Argives have to be made
to assist the Athenians at Oenophyta (for which there is no evidence), instead of
(as they claimed at Delphi) having been assisted by an Athenian contingent in
their own territory. The idea was therefore forgotten. but was bound to be revived,
and now has been: by I. Busche, in the second of two studies published as a
convolute in Studienreihe Humanitas (1974). He adds the further "proof' that
Pausanias, when actually describing Oenoe in the Argolid, does not say a word
about the battle. He does not seem to be aware of the fact that this is quite
312 E.BADIAN
sensible discussion to be found,30 has collected the main views expressed down
to about twenty years ago, and I am not aware of any new ones since. His own
suggestion avoids paradox: he thinks it was a minor engagement, soon after the
Athenian treaty with Argos around 460, which at the time seemed important and
memorable, but was almost forgotten by the time Thucydides wrote his
excursus. It nonetheless remains surprising that the Athenians should have so
strikingly commemorated a minor battle in which they played only a minor part
(for the Argive version is surely to be preferred, since Oenoe was an Argive
village), and chosen to ignore the real victors; and that (even ifThucydides chose
to omit it, for whatever reason-perhaps precisely because it was not really an
Athenian battle, but wrongly claimed as such-in his brief account of Athens'
rise to greatness) Diodorus did not find it celebrated in Ephorus. After all, it
must have been the one battle, apart from Marathon, which everyone living in
Athens or visiting the city could literally never overlook.31
I have also ignored most of the events attested for Peloponnese, as in most
cases dates are impossible to obtain with any degree of confidence. And I must
again stress that the table that follows is intended only as a working model: few
of the dates are intended as precise, although I should be surprised if a great deal
of change were possible in most cases.
common in Pausanias; thus in his long description of Tanagra (IX 20-22) he has
not a word about the great battle, which he reports elsewhere.
30 R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972), devotes an appendix (Appendix 5:
pp. 469-472) to this battle, collecting the various views on its date and nature,
and showing the improbabilities in Jeffery's view in particular. Busolt's idea (see
Meiggs 470) that the battle may go together with the capture of Troezen (also
absent from Thucydides' account, though undoubtedly a major achievement) and
would thus fall in the year after Tolmides' periplous is attractive: there is
something to be said for a date after Tanagra. But it does not explain the (to us)
paradoxical importance attached to the battle. I can see no explanation for this
and no pointer as to the date or occasion. - For newly found remains identified
with the Stoa Poikile see T. Leslie Shear Jr. in Hesperia 53 (1984) 5 ff.
(chronology 13 ff.): the remains fit in with the literary tradition, dating the
building around mid-century. (Deposits dating from the second quarter of the
century were used as a building fill.) He also gives the most recent opinions on
the nature and placing of the paintings.
31 It is a separate question, of course, whether the original paintings survived,
even in "restored" form, for the millennium from the time when they were frrst
displayed to the time, just before the visit of Synesius (see, conveniently, Shear's
account, cited last note), when they were removed. But this does not seem to be
relevant to the problem of the battle of Oenoe.
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 313
LIST OF EVENTS
DATE EVENT
478-7 Pausanias' campaign and recall;
Delian League founded.
477 Pausanias' acquittal and return to
Byzantium, where he is received
into the city.33
4 77/6 Cimon 's capture of Eion, the first
operation of the League (Thuc.)
476/5 Attempted colonisation and dis­aster
at Eion. Capture of Scyrus.
(Probably) Transfer of "Theseus'
bones" to Athens. Cleruchs sent.
? Agreement with Carystus.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
(where not discussed above)32
Both Diod. XI 60 and FGrHist 10
F191 (an Ephorus epitome) put
Eion and Scyrus straight after the
capture of Byzantium (hence
477?).
Schol. Aesch. 2,31; Plut. Cim. 7.
Plut. Thes. 36,1.34
Thuc. 98,3 puts this straight after
Scyrus, but speaks of a long war,
settled by agreement.
32 I shall normally give the main references and not try to clutter the page
with late reports of no independent value. Where discussion is needed, it will be
in the notes. Archon years will be given in the form 499/8; durations will be in
the form 499-8.
33 In addition to the earlier discussion of this, we might note that there is no
evidence that any Dorian cities were original (or early) members of the League.
Meiggs (Ath. Emp. 55 f.) thinks that some were, but admits he has only "a little
foundation" (55). The suggestion (by MacDowell) that Aegina was an early
member is regretfully rejected by Meiggs (51 f.). It is not worth serious
discussion. However, Byzantium, because of her strategic position, may well have
been afraid of being forced into the League, as indeed she was as soon as she lost
Pausanias' protection.
34 Plutarch's discussion of this is rather confused: there are contradictions
between the mention in Theseus and in Gimon. It is not clear whether, at Cim. 8,
he wants to connect the appointment of the generals as judges in the theatre with
Cimon's discovery of the bones of Theseus. The former is dated to Apsephion
(469/8). The matter has been debated since the nineteenth century: Eduard Meyer
thought there was a connection, Wilamowitz rejected it. For discussion of various
possibilities, see J.D. Smart, JHS 87 (1967) 136-8, with an intriguing textual
suggestion by H.B. Mattingly: that Apsephion's unusual name may have been
corrupted to Phaion (whom Diodorus gives as archon for that year), with further
confusion with Phaedon (476/5). (But Smart's chronology does not seem to me
acceptable.)
314 E.BADIAN
471/0
468
469/8
(Operations to recapture cities lost
to Persian counter-attacks are
likely at this time: see text, p.
301.)
Ostracism (after unsuccessful
prosecution?) of Themistocles.
Expulsion of Pausanias from
Byzantium (he moves to Colonae).
Recapture of Sestus by Cimon.3S
Recall of Pausanias to Sparta.
Great earthquake at Sparta, fol­lowed
by attack on the city.
468n Pericleidas' mission to Athens.
Cimon's expedition to Laconia
{spring 467).
Argive war (assisted by Tegea and
Cleonae) against Mycenae.
467/6 Messenians and their allies with­draw
to lthome.
If Diodorus (Ephorus) had evidence
for this date. (He may have
deduced it from the next item.)
Diad. XI 65 {when Sparta could
not help because of the earthquake;
the war seems to go on into the
next year); cf. Str. VIII 6,19;
Paus. VII 25,5-6 (Mycenaeans
expelled).
Probably in autumn, after defeat
by Sparta's allies, fortifying the
site over the winter.
35 The anecdote reported by Ion of Chios (see p. 301 above), linking the
capture of Byzantium with that of Sestus and showing that Cimon was in charge of
both operations, has been cheerfully rejected by scholars whose theories it did not
fit. It should be obvious that the attestation is as good as much of what we have
for this period, since Cimon himself is quoted for a matter that was presumably
public knowledge, by one who claims to have heard him and who was certainly in
his circle. The story cannot refer to the events of 478 (the first capture of Sestus
and of Byzantium), since neither Cimon nor the Delian League had anything to do
with those. It therefore attests a recapture of Sestus (as I have noted, it is not
surprising that this is not attested anywhere else, since our record of all
comparable events is thin and chancy) .rround the time of Cimon's capture of
Byzantium from Pausanias. Presumably most of the Asian upper-class prisoners
who provide the point of the story were taken at Sestus, which the Persians would
have garrisoned. (The Athenians, after its first capture, did not, as the accounts
both in Herodotus and in Thucydides make clear, and this is probably why it was
lost again.) But it is not unlikely that Pausanias, who by this time was certainly
on friendly terms with the Persians, used Asian troops. After all, he had no
Spartans or (as far as we know) other Greeks available.
314 E.BADIAN
471/0
468
469/8
(Operations to recapture cities lost
to Persian counter-attacks are
likely at this time: see text, p.
301.)
Ostracism (after unsuccessful
prosecution?) of Themistocles.
Expulsion of Pausanias from
Byzantium (he moves to Colonae).
Recapture of Sestus by Cimon.3S
Recall of Pausanias to Sparta.
Great earthquake at Sparta, fol­lowed
by attack on the city.
468n Pericleidas' mission to Athens.
Cimon's expedition to Laconia
{spring 467).
Argive war (assisted by Tegea and
Cleonae) against Mycenae.
467/6 Messenians and their allies with­draw
to lthome.
If Diodorus (Ephorus) had evidence
for this date. (He may have
deduced it from the next item.)
Diad. XI 65 {when Sparta could
not help because of the earthquake;
the war seems to go on into the
next year); cf. Str. VIII 6,19;
Paus. VII 25,5-6 (Mycenaeans
expelled).
Probably in autumn, after defeat
by Sparta's allies, fortifying the
site over the winter.
35 The anecdote reported by Ion of Chios (see p. 301 above), linking the
capture of Byzantium with that of Sestus and showing that Cimon was in charge of
both operations, has been cheerfully rejected by scholars whose theories it did not
fit. It should be obvious that the attestation is as good as much of what we have
for this period, since Cimon himself is quoted for a matter that was presumably
public knowledge, by one who claims to have heard him and who was certainly in
his circle. The story cannot refer to the events of 478 (the first capture of Sestus
and of Byzantium), since neither Cimon nor the Delian League had anything to do
with those. It therefore attests a recapture of Sestus (as I have noted, it is not
surprising that this is not attested anywhere else, since our record of all
comparable events is thin and chancy) .rround the time of Cimon's capture of
Byzantium from Pausanias. Presumably most of the Asian upper-class prisoners
who provide the point of the story were taken at Sestus, which the Persians would
have garrisoned. (The Athenians, after its first capture, did not, as the accounts
both in Herodotus and in Thucydides make clear, and this is probably why it was
lost again.) But it is not unlikely that Pausanias, who by this time was certainly
on friendly terms with the Persians, used Asian troops. After all, he had no
Spartans or (as far as we know) other Greeks available.
466
466/5
465-3
465
465
CHRONOLOGYOFTHEPENTEKONTAET~ 315
Battle of Tegea (after destruction of
Mycenae)?
Revolt of Naxos. Investment of
city. Death of Pausanias. Con­viction
of Themistocles.
Battle of Eurymedon.
Peace negotiations between Athens
and Xerxes. (Spring 465) Peace of
Calli as?
Naval expeditions by Ephialtes and
Pericles.
(Early summer?) Themistocles'
arrival in Asia.
(By August) Death of Xerxes.
Artaxerxes gradually confirms his
control.
Fall of Naxos (after midsummer).
Hdt. IX 35,2.36
See JHS 107 (1987) 1 ff. (Also
for releyant items below.)
#
36 One of the agones of Tisamenus, repeated from Herodotus by Pausanias.
The decision to challenge Sparta is obviously connected with the great earthquake
and Sparta's troubles, but since Diodorus does not report the battle of Tegea, we
cannot be sure whether it preceded or followed the Mycenaean war. I have put it
after, since it is unlikely that the alliance between Argos and Tegea survived the
decisive defeat at Tegea. The battle of Dipaea (another of the agones, not
recorded-except in passing by Paus. VIII 8,6 and Isocr. VI 99-in any other
tradition) cannot be dated at all, except by its position in the Tisarnenus list, i.e.
between Tegea and a mysterious battle ("at Isthmus"?) against the Messenian
rebels-a famous textual crux in Hdt. IX 35,2 (where the text is certainly in some
disorder), apparently copied by Paus. ill 11,8, which we cannot discuss here. If
this records a real battle (whatever the name of the place), it must be the battle
that secured control of the countryside for Sparta and turned the !thorne war into a
siege, thus relieving the strain on Spartan forces. The date would be some time
before 462, when the Spartans tried an assault on the fortifications because the
siege was already dragging on (Thuc. 102,1), but should be put fairly close to
467/6 (see chronological table), allowing room for the battle of Dipaea between
Tegea and "Isthmus". This is as close as we can get to it. As has often been
noted, !socrates records, as a well-known Spartan achievement, that the Spartans
won at Dipaea with only a single line of hoplites to put in the field. It must have
been fought before the rebels were confmed to their defences at !thorne. I would
very tentatively put Dipaea in 465 or 464, "Isthmus" in 464 at the latest, in fact
not long after Dipaea: since Dipaea eliminated the major challenge to Sparta's
control of Peloponnese by her organized enemies, she could now concentrate on
dealing with the raids on the countryside by the rebels, and it should not have
taken her undivided forces long to beat them out of the field.
316
465/4
464
463
463/2
462
462/1
E.BADIAN
Revolt of Thasos. Investment of
city. Colony at Ennea Hodoi
(later site of Amphipolis).
(Summer?) Callias' mission to
Artaxerxes.
Fall of Thasos.
(Winter) Prosecution of Cimon.
(Spring) Cimon's Ithome
campaign.
Reforms of Ephialtes. Death of
Ephialtes. (Spring 461) Ostra­cism
of Cimon, after struggle
over the reforms. 38
The supposed appeal to Sparta
(perhaps genuine) and the Spartan
promise (certainly not) should be
put here.
Athenian war against Aegina??37
The reforms in autumn 462, if
Plut. Cim. 15,3 is historical; but
perhaps rather after Cimon's dis­grace,
connected with anti-Spartan
reaction.
37 This is reported only by Diod. XI 70,2-3. It is usually ignored, and indeed
one cannot feel entirely confident about it. But I am averse to postulating
"doublets" in Diodorus as freely as has been the custom (they can often be
differently understood by the attentive reader), and a flare-up between these two old
enemies may have occurred at any time. Diodorus reports it under 464/3, just after
his report (in one sentence) of the Thasian revolt, and he does not tell us its
outcome. The date need not be correct, even if there was such a brief war. One
might conjecture that the Athenians had to abandon it when Thasos rebelled­which
might help to account for the later hope on the part of Aegina's allies that
they might again be forced to do so if attacked elsewhere (see Thuc. 105,3).
Thucydides' failure to report such a campaign has no bearing on its historicity: if
it was abandoned, he would in any case almost certainly omit it.
38 As I have indicated above (p. 310), I am inclined to write off the report of
the passing of Ephialtes' legislation in Cirnon's fortuitous absence (with Cirnon,
on his return, trying and, naturally, failing to reverse what had happened) as part
of a later myth, linked with the "democratic" explanation of Sparta's decision to
send the Athenians home as "revolutionaries". It would take too long to discuss
this in full here, but the story is full of improbabilities-especially (and crowning
them all) that the Spartans should think Cimon and those with him responsible
for what had been done, in their absence and ex hypothesi against their own will
(as Cimon would have plenty of time to tell them), at Athens. It has been
suggested that Cimon himself wanted to go home to undo the reforms. But this
will not really work: if there is one fact we ought to believe, it is Athenian
indignation, led by those concerned, at being singled out by the Spartans for
dismissal (for which, as we know, no proper diplomatic reason was given). It
seems to make much better sense to ascribe the dismissal to the Athenians'
obvious failure to do what they had been expected to, and the Spartans'
unwillingness to continue supporting a useless force (see p. 31 0): the Spartans
probably told the plain truth at the time, with their customary bluntness. The
reforms fit best into the whole reversal of Athenian policy caused by the
consequent indignation. That indignation, and the development (by Thucydides'
day) of the myth, may in part be due to the later Athenian democracy's naturally
318 E.BADIAN
45817? End of lthome war and departure of
Messenians. 42
(Winter) Athenians begin to build
Long Walls.
457 (Spring) Spartan invasion of cen­tral
Greece with large force: defeat
of Phocians and establishment of
Theban power. Battle of Tanagra
(May-June?) and Spartan with­drawal,
followed by four months'
truce. Surrender of Aegina (June?).
Thuc. 107,1.
Thuc. 107,2-108,2; Diod. XI 79,5-
80; and cf. 81.43
42 This date can only be approximate, as we have no precise date for the start
of the !thorne war. Thucydides' (and Diodorus': XI 64,4) ten years do not seem to
refer to the whole of the war that followed upon the earthquake, but (in Thucydides
explicitly) to the time since the withdrawal of the rebels to !thorne (Time. 100,2-
3: see pp. 306 ff. above). I have suggested that this may have taken place in
467/6, which would give 458/7 for the end of the revolt. In fact, Diodorus (the
only source to give a date) mentions it under 456/5 (XI 84,8), but in a context
that makes it quite likely that this is only his own conclusion from what he did
find dated in that year: the settlement of the Messenians at Naupactus. Still: my
suggested date is only put in exempli gratia, to show one of several possible re­constructions,
all within narrow limits and all implying that Thucydides 103,1 ff.
is anticipating and fmishing off his story.
An interesting alternative possibility should be mentioned. I have pointed out
above that it was probably the battle of "Isthmus" that finally converted the war
into a mere siege of the rebels at !thorne (see n. 36 above), and that a likely date
for that battle, on grounds quite independent of this calculation, is 464. If the ten
years we are given refer to the stage when the war was a siege war, 465/4 for the
date of "Isthmus" would make Diodorus' date of 456/5 for the end of the siege
correct. That date would also coincide with the beginning of the revolt of Thasos
(see above), and one might argue that the Spartans thought the battle had
practically finished the war and were genuinely surprised when it still "dragged on"
(102,1). But although this ought to be set out, I am not convinced that it is more
than coincidence.
43 Diodorus does appear thoroughly confused here. But his report of a Spartan
plan to build up Theban power against Athens should be taken seriously. (The
fact that he links it with the presence of a large Spartan army at Tanagra shows
that it comes from a discussion of the Tanagra campaign, the only occasion when
this was in fact so.) The size of the force sent across the Gulf of Corinth (1500
Lacedaernonians and 10000 allies: Thuc. 107,2) shows that it was not intended
merely to deal with the Phocians, and that the decision to continue eastward was
not due to the sudden realisation that they could not get back, as Thucydides would
have us believe. I am inclined to discount Thucydides' allegation that some
Athenian oligarchs had promised to betray Athens to them (107,4), which appears
in Plutarch in connection with the suspicion against Cimon's friends, disproved
by their brave deaths. These are stock tools of propaganda (one might compare
the charge of shield-flashing against the Alcrnaeonids), and no names are
mentioned, nor (as far as we know) was anyone ever prosecuted after. The
456
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PEN1EKONTAETIA 319
Recall of Cimon?44
(Autumn) Myronides' campaign in
centtal Greece.
Periplous of Tolmides; capture of
Naupactus and (or, if Naupactus
already held, at least) settlement of
Messenians from !thorne there.46
Plut.Cim.17,8; FGrHist 115 F88.
Thuc. 108,2-445 Diod. XI 81-3.
Thuc. 108,5; Diod. XI 84 (details
differ); Paus. I 27,5 (showing
Thuc. is very sketchy).
Athenian attack on the Peloponnesian force was not due to fear of betrayal.
It has often been pointed out (e.g. by Gomrne) that the fact that the Athenians
had to send ships round Peloponnese in order to prevent the Peloponnesians from
recrossing the Corinthian Gulf (Thuc. 107,3) shows that they had no ships
stationed at Pegae. This suggests that Megara's alliance was fairly recent. The
idea (advocated by Gomrne and other fundamentalists) that the Athenians already
held N aupactus as well as Pegae and yet had no fleet in the Corinthian Gulf should
hardly need refuting. The Tanagra campaign, in fact, gives us a terminus post
quem for the seizure of Naupactus and makes Diodorus' connection of it with the
periplous of Tolmides very attractive. To the question of why Thucydides omits it
on that occasion we can only reply by pointing out that he also omits the
important acquisition of Cythera, reliably reported by Pausanias I 27,5.
44 There is little point in going over the confused tradition on this and the
truce negotiated by Cimon with Sparta. For my general opinion, see JHS 107
(1987) 12 f. I have got no further in sorting this out.
45 Thucydides' J.IETa -raiha (108,4) does not, I think, imply that the surrender
of Aegina took place after Myronides' campaign. It is mentioned as another event
(JCai) which, like that campaign, followed upon the retreat of the Peloponnesians.
(Compare the correlation of Naxos and Eurymedon, in relation to Carystus­though
there the intention is made much clearer by the repetition of the phrase.)
Diodorus' attachment of the campaign on behalf of Orestes to the campaign in
Central Greece is implausible and almost certainly due merely to the fact that they
occurred together in a list of Myronides' actions, as indeed Diodorus here uses
them. The list has been inserted together in the year after Tanagra (clearly in
error), and the original association with the Tanagra campaign can still be seen.
(See n. 43, init.)
46 The scholiast on Aesch. 2,75 (Aeschines' absurd reference to a march by
Tolmides through the middle of Peloponnese!) confirms the date of 456/5 for the
periplous. That Tolmides captured Naupactus on this occasion, as Diodorus
reports, is an attractive possibility (see n. 43 above). That he settled the
Messenians there must surely be true, and should be accepted, since it is beyond
belief that this story was attached to him when he had nothing whatever to do
with Naupactus. And since, as we have seen, Naupactus cannot have been captured
until after the Tanagra campaign, there was certainly no time for anyone else to
settle them there, even if it had been taken (say) by Myronides. (But Myronides,
to our knowledge, never got near that area.) Thuc. 103,3 does not say or imply
that the Athenians already held Naupactus when they received the Messenians as
refugees, although (of course) this is compatible with what he says, and he may
even have thought so. (yve have noted that he does not mention the actual capture
of it.)
320 E.BADIAN
455/4 (Autumn?) Attempt to restore
Orestes to Pharsalus.
(Spring?) Pericles' campaign in
northern Peloponnese and Acar­nania.
(Presumably before news of
Egyptian disaster reached Athens.)
Egyptian disaster late 454.
453/2 Disaster of Drabescus.
451 Cimon's (official?) return; five
years' truce with Peloponnesians
(midsummer or autumn).
450 (Spring) Cyprian-Egyptian cam­paign.
450/49 (Autumn) Death of Cimon.
(Winter) Supply difficulties and
decision to abandon Cyprus.
(Spring) Battle of Cyprian
Salamis.
449?
449
"Sacred War" over control of
Delphi.
Renewal of Peace of Callias.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Thuc. 111,1; Diod. XI 83,3-4:
joined to Myronides' campaign of
457. (Myronides' name should be
correct)
Thuc. 111,2-3 ("a short time after"
the Thessalian expedition); Diod.
XI 85,1 (cf. 88,1 and Plut. Per.
1947).
Schol. Aesch. 2,31; see pp.
298 ff. above.
Thuc. 112,2; cf. n. 44.
Thuc. 112,1 ff.; Diod. XII 3; Plut.
Cim. 18.
Thuc. I.e.; Diod. XII 4; Plut.
Cim. 18-19. (On all this see JHS
107 (1987) 38 f.)
Thuc. 112,5; Plut. Per. 21. (Not
really datable, but some time be­fore
late 447 (?-see Thuc. 113,1).
See JHS 107 (1987) 1-39.48
E.BADIAN
47 This is one of the most confused episodes. Diodorus (XI 88) associates
Pericles' colonisation in Chersonese with his attack on Peloponnese (under 453/2)
after reporting what appears to be the same attack on Peloponnese by itself two
years earlier (XI 85). Plut. Per. 19 shows a tradition associating Pericles'
campaigns in Peloponnese (and periplous of it) with his Chersonese campaign
(though they are not put in the same year); Diodorus may have come across this
and, as in the case of Myronides (n. 45 above), have been misled. He records
Tolmides' establishment of colonies in Euboea and Naxos at the same time
(453/2). Meiggs (Ath. Emp. 120 f.) thinks that Pericles' Chersonesian
colonisation cannot antedate 448 and he is inclined to reject the date for Tolmides'
colonies as well. In view of Diodorus' manifest confusion, no firm judgment is
possible, since there is no other relevant evidence.
48 I should like to thank the Clavel-Stiftung at Augst, and Professor v.
Ungem-Stemberg, who mediated their hospitality for me and put the resources of
his seminar at my disposal for putting this paper, long meditated but never written
down, into some shape. Thanks are also due to Professors Latacz and Graf for
encouraging my use of their seminar as well.
Echos du Monde Classique!Ciassica/ Views
XXXII, n.s. 7, 1988, 321-328
METHODOLOGY IN FIFTH-CENTURY GREEK HISTORY
321
In this period we simply must combine epigraphic, numismatic, artistic and
literary evidence and hence difficult methodological problems face us continually.
Considerable experience in the field has forced me to establish certain guiding
principles, which I shall hope to illustrate in the foll<_?wing pages.
~
We owe much to the sheer expertise of the epigraphist. David Lewis recently
took a very broken Ionic text found at Delos and showed that it was the opening
of an Attic decree, probably proposed by Aristophanes' butt Kleonymos;
Kleonymos was busy as a Councillor in 426/5 B.C. That was a good rescue
operation, but we can safely go further.! In 426/5 B.C. Athens "purified" Delos
and set up the four-yearly Delian festival. We may now surely associate
Kleonymos with this policy and hope that further fragments may turn up in the
island, where a second copy of the decree was naturally placed.2
Epigraphists understandably often interpret their material for themselves; but
they need watching. Pouilloux and Salviat, following a suggestion from Lewis,
identified the Liches Arkesileo of 398/7 on the Thasian theoroi list as the
famous Spartan. Since Thucydides knew of Lichas's death, the historian must
have been still alive and writing in the middle-to-late 390s.3 Paul Cartledge has
demolished this theory in a devastating short paper.4 Their basic methodological
flaw lies in their forced treatment of Thucydides 8.84.4-6, the meaning of which
looks plain enough: "the Milesians were angry with him [Lichas] both for this
reason and other similar behaviour and when he subsequently died of disease they
would not let him be buried where the Spartans present desired." Further on we
find that Tissaphernes, bent on travelling to Aspendos to collect the Phoenician
ships, urged Lichas to come with him; but soon from Aspendos he was asking
for someone else and was sent Philippos, who reported back in very gloomy
terms. This narrative section suggests that Lichas was prevented from
accompanying Tissaphernes either because of severe illness or by death.5
1 See ZPE 60 (1984) 108. He observed that "it would be hazardous to guess
about its context."
2 For Athens and Delos see Thuc. 4.104. One copy of the proxeny decree for
Leonides of Halikarnassos (/G 13 156.23-29)) was to be set up in his own city: so
too the Eteokarpathians were to display a copy in their temple of Apollo (Tod ii,
no. 110, 34-8 = SJG3 129).
3 CRAI 1983, 316-403.
4 Liverpool Class. Monthly 9 (1984) 98-102.
5 This point is essentially made by Cartledge (above, n. 4) 101; I. and
L. Robert, REG 1983, 409; Gomme, Andrewes and Dover, Thucydides 5 (1981)
85, 279 f., 289, 342 on Thuc. 8.39.2; 84.4-6; 87.1 and 6; 99.
322 HAROLD B. MATIINGLY
We are driven back upon internal evidence for any chronology of Thucydidean
composition and that really must still start with 5.26.1 and 4 f.6 We face the
same challenge with Herodotos. Many scholars have assumed from a few late
passages that he was living and writing at Athens in the 420s. In one Herodotos
asserts that the demesmen of Dekeleia enjoyed s