In 426, five years after the outbreak of its great war with Athens, Sparta founded a colony near Trachis, a short distance from Thermopylai – Herakleia Trachinia. By 394 decolonization had begun there, and by 370 nothing Spartan was left of it. The story of this colony is one of mismanagement, arbitrary rule, ethnic tension, and shifts in the control and composition of the citizenry. The foundation was marked by memories of Sparta’s Dorianism and Herakleid heritage. The myth of Herakles functioned in this colonization both through its geographical localization and through its content: Herakles spent his last days at Trachis as the guest of its king and died on the pyre on Mt Oita. In the more political versions of the myth Herakles becomes the original founder of Trachis, the conqueror and destroyer of the abhorrent brigands who infested the land. In slightly later versions which probably belong to the decolonization era, these same native ’brigands’ become Herakles’ friendly companions, the co-founders of Herakleia Trachinia.

I loathe everything to do with The People,’ writes Callimachus, and this (public) turning away from the public poetry of the fifth century is a stance, a gesture, repeated in a multiformity of guises throughout the texts of the Hellenistic period. Although the practices of literary production, performance and circulation are known in even less detail for this period than for the fifth century (and many questions about, say, the constitution of the public of Hellenistic literature are simply not answerable with any security), none the less there are much-discussed and highly significant shifts both in the conditions of literary production and in the presentation of the poet’s voice which require some brief introductory remarks.

Two horned gods, similar in their iconography yet different in their cultic significance, seem to have expressed notions of foundation and territoriality. The cult of Apollo Karneios forged a chain linking Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene and thus expressed, in Greek terms, what often eludes the observer: the Greek awareness of the ’world of Spartan colonization’. Zeus Ammon became the national god of Cyrene and his cult spread to Sparta and other Greek cities. The metaphorical perception of the ’precinct’ of this god and the locations of his cult-sites also delimited Cyrenaica, the Greek colonial territory in Libya. Libya belongs to the world of Spartan colonization in both reality and aspiration. As we have seen, in the Archaic period it was believed that Sparta had founded Thera and thus was grandmother city to Cyrene, Thera’s colony in Libya. The three cities were consistently regarded as a single chain of foundations. It has also been suggested that Sparta had an active role in the settlement of Cyrenaica, perhaps even by sending Chionis as a co-founder with Battos. Even if one rejects any real Spartan participation, Greek perceptions of Sparta’s role as a colonizer in North Africa will still seem coherent and long-lasting.

Philoctetes is the most ethically complex of all Sophocles’ plays. Philoctetes, Odysseus and the background figure of Achilles present various paradigms for the young Neoptolemus, who must decide in the course of the play which, if any, to adopt as his model. Philoctetes and Odysseus are both endowed with established convictions, but Neoptolemus’ moral character is still in the process of formation. Moral argument and choice take on a peculiarly dynamic role in the plot as we see him exposed to the influence of each of the two older men in turn. Odysseus has come to Lemnos to steal Philoctetes’ invincible bow, which, according to the oracle of Helenus, is necessary for Greek success at Troy. But he knows that Philoctetes hates him bitterly (75f.), so his plan requires the cooperation of Neoptolemus. Odysseus characterises the scheme as a joint one (25), but also makes his own controlling role quite clear. Neoptolemus is to serve (15), and to listen while Odysseus explains his plan (24f.).

In ancient Greek culture of all periods, the notion of kleos is linked in a fundamental way to the poet’s voice, and no adequate discussion of that voice could ignore this topic. Itranslate kleos by ’fame’, ’glory’ or ’renown’, but some further glossing of this complex term is immediately necessary. Kleos is etymologically and semantically related to the verb kluo (’I hear’) – kleos is ’that which is heard’, ’a report’, even ’rumour’. So Telemachus, when he returns to Ithaca, asks Eumaeus for the kleos from town. Kleos is applied to what people talk (of), and an object like Nestor’s shield has a ’kleos which reaches heaven’, and heroes’ armour is often described as kluta (’with kleos’, ’talked of’). ’Things, places and persons acquire kleos as they acquire an identity in the human world, as stories are told about them.’

Greek popular thought is pervaded by the assumption that one should help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. These fundamental principles surface continually from Homer onwards and survive well into the Roman period, and indeed to the present day, especially in international relations. They are firmly based on observation of human nature, which yields the conclusion that most human beings do in fact desire to help their friends and harm their enemies, and derive satisfaction from such behaviour. Thus Xenophon’s Socrates can count benefiting friends and defeating enemies as one of the things which bring the ’greatest pleasures’.

A verse of the Midrash, commenting on the quarrel of Cain and Abel, says that the sons of Adam inherited an equal division of the world: Cain the ownership of all land, Abel of all living creatures – whereupon Cain accused Abel of trespass.’ Bruce Chatwin filled his notebooks with references like this to illustrate the two alternatives of human social existence: nomadism and sedentary life. The connection of an organized, sedentary community with the land is never self-evident; images and metaphors are needed to invoke it. Abel roamed the land and struck no roots in it, while for Cain all land became his possession, his ’territory’. Whether one is perceived as autochthonous (’as old as the moon’ like the ancient Arkadians), or as a late-comer who ’strikes roots’ in a place, both images attempt to link two inherently distinct elements – man and the land he inhabits. Often, the connection is in need of further articulation, answering such basic questions as: Why here? Why us? Were we always here and, if not, when did we come, and why? Did our settlement involve conquest and displacement of others? And so on. The aim of this book is to discuss the way myth was used in the ancient Greek world to answer such questions, mediating between the Greek city-states and the territories they inhabited, colonized, or aspired to possess.

Electra presents us with a world in which Help Friends/Harm Enemies remains unquestioned. In the prologue Orestes announces his intention ’to shine out like a star against my enemies’, and when he reappears, declares that he will stop his laughing enemies in their tracks. Electra expresses similar sentiments, and makes loyalty to friends a cardinal principle. Like Orestes, she assumes that their enemies are indulging in hostile mockery. Clytemnestra prays that if her dream is hostile it may recoil on her enemies, and that she may enjoy prosperity with her present friends. The chorus console Electra with the assurance that Orestes is ’noble (esthlos), so as to help his friends’, and their general approval of Electra’s values is clear from their praise and sympathy. When they advise her to moderate her hatred, they are thinking of her welfare, and add that she should not forget it entirely. Neither they nor Chrysothemis, in their efforts to restrain her, maintain that she is wrong in principle. Clytemnestra does suggest that Electra should not treat her philoi as she does (518), but she casts no doubt on Help Friends/Harm Enemies – in fact her criticism of Electra depends on it.

Menelaos, king of Homeric Sparta, was something the Dorian Spartans of the Archaic period could never hope to be: a Peloponnesian and a Spartan even before the Trojan War. He was believed to have descended, through his father, Atreus, from the eponymous Pelops and Hippodamia (and through his mother, Aerope, from either Minos or Lykaon). Thus he stood in sharp contrast to the ’real’ Spartans, who thought of their national history as having begun only with the Return of the Herakleidai. Reaching back to Menelaos through myth and cult was probably for the historical Spartans a response to the challenge both of their national youthfulness and of their relatively brief and recent possession of their country. Reaching back to mythic-historical times could, of course, only go so far. Greek tradition and the Homeric epic were too explicit and too widely disseminated to permit a direct linkage: Menelaos was clearly dissociated in time from the later Spartans. He was neither the founder of the Spartan state nor a progenitor of great Spartan families, nor even the mythical founder of any Spartan colony. Kleomenes’ exceptional contention that he was an Achaean, not a Dorian, was as far as one could possibly go. But Menelaos was no Herakleid either.