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Treaties and alliances in the world of Thucydides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Gabriel Herman
Gabriel Herman
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
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Extract

An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. [Sir Henry Wotton (Seventeenth century).]

A seemingly straightforward passage in Thucydides' history offers a good point of departure for the elucidation of an ambiguity which bedevils ancient texts but has received little attention in modern research:

After the disaster in the Sicel country (413 BC) the Syracusans gave up the idea of an immediate attack on the Athenians. Meanwhile Demosthenes and Eurymedon, now that their forces from Corcyra and from the mainland were ready, crossed the Ionian gulf with the whole of their expedition to the headland of Iapygia. Setting out from here, they put in at the Iapygian islands called the Choirades, and took on board 150 Iapygian javelin-throwers of the Messapian tribe. Then, after they had renewed an old friendship (ἀνανεωσάμενοί τινα παλαιὰν φιλίαν) with Artas, the local ruler who had provided the javelin-throwers, they went on and reached Metapontum in Italy. (Thuc. 7.33.3–4, adapted from the translation by Rex Warner, as are all quotations from Thucydides in this article)

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 36 , 1990 , pp. 83 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

NOTES

I am grateful to Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Brent Shaw, and Frank Walbank for their helpful criticism of this paper.

1. Bengtson, H. and Werner, R. (eds.), Die Staatsvertraege des Altertums (1975)Google Scholar no. 198. To Bengtson's list of modern publications on the subject, all of which take the inter-state theory for granted, add: Pagliara, C., ‘La presunta alleanza tra Atene e Messapi e la tradizione relativa ad ’, AFLL 4 (1967/1968–1968/1969) 33ff.Google Scholar; Braccesi, L., ‘Ancora su IG 12 53 (Un trattato fra gli Ateniesi e il re Artas?)’, Arch. Class. 25–6 (1973–1974) 68–73Google Scholar; Lupino, E., ‘ξενία e προξενία a proposito di (Thuc. 7.33.3–4)’, RSA 10 (1980) 135–43Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Adkins, A. W. H., ‘“Friendship” and “self-sufficiency” in Homer and Aristotle’, CQ n.s. 13 (1963) 33–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taillardat, J., ‘ΦΙΛΟΤΗΕ ΠΙΣΤΙΣ et FOEDUS’ REG 95 (1982) 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On philia in general, see now Blundell, M. W., Helping friends and harming enemies (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Price, A. W., Love and friendship in Plato and Aristotle (1989)Google Scholar.

3. Now possibly to be dated 418/7 BC, see Mattingly, H. B., ‘The alliance of Athens with Egesta’, Chiron 16 (1986) 167–70.Google Scholar The earlier literature of the inscription is assembled in Fornara, C. W., Archaic times to the end of the Peloponnesian war ed. 2 (1983) no. 81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. It seems impossible to reach any degree of certainty regarding an extremely fragmentary inscription which it has sometimes been suggested bears on the subject. Dubbed Atheniensium et Philippi Macedonisfoedus in IG 12. 53 (published 1924), restored by Braccesi (n.l) as a treaty between Athens and Artas (published 1973/4), the inscription appears under the title ‘Foedus Atheniensium cum Mytilenaeis' in IG1.3 67 (published 1981).

5. But cf. Diod. 14.94.2: ‘Thrasyboulos … made Medocos (i.e. Amadokos) and Seuthes … summachoi.’

6. As will later become apparent (section 6 below), the occurrence of the word xummachikon (paraphrased as summachia in Diod. 13.11.2) does not invalidate this statement.

7. As I argue in ‘Patterns of name diffusion within the Greek world and beyond’ CQ n.s. 41 (1991)Google Scholar, Thucydides' patronymic can more readily be accounted for by a xenia than by a connection by marriage – the conventional explanation for both his patronymic and his concessions in Thrace. A pact of xenia was in any case a necessary preliminary to a marriage outside the community.

8. IG 22. 237 = Syll. 3 259, cf. Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens II (1982) 84–5Google Scholar. The euergesia in return for which the grant was made was, not surprisingly, a supply of troops made up of exiled Acarnanians to the Athenian general at the battle of Chaeronea; cf. Schwenk, C. J., Athens in the age of Alexander (1985) 12Google Scholar.

9. For Phormio's movements in this period, see Ehrenberg, V., ‘Pericles and his colleagues between 441 and 429 B.C.’, AJPh 66 (1945) 113–34Google Scholar.

10. Cf. my Ritualised friendship and the Greek city (1987) 18–22Google Scholar and ‘Patterns of name diffusion …’ (n.7).

11. See below section 6, and Cargill, J., The second Athenian League (1981) 97 ff.Google Scholar for instances of co-operation between Athens and foreign rulers which were not backed, as far as we know, by inter-state treaties.

12. For the vocabulary of what I have termed ‘ritualised friendship’, see Herman (n.10) ch. 2.1.

13. On which see below, p. 97ff.

14. Hdt. 9.64.2. On the reading ‘Aeimnestos’, instead of ‘Arimnestos’, in the standard editions of Herodotus and Plutarch (Hdt. 9.64.2 and Plut. Arist. 19.1), see my ‘Nikias, Epimenides and the question of omissions in Thucydides’, CQ n.s. 39 (1989) 83–93, at 93Google Scholar.

15. Such a possibility is discussed in my ‘Nikias, Epimenides’, (n.14).

16. Cf. Herman (n.10) table 2.

17. Suda a 4051: . Cf. Luppino (n.1).

18. Finley, M. I., The world of Odysseus ed 2 (1979) 100Google Scholar; cf. Herman (n.10) 118–128.

19. Finley, M. I., Early Greece: the Bronze and Archaic ages ed. 2 (1979) 90Google Scholar, his italics.

20. Or repeat tenure within an unduly short time span, cf. Meiggs and Lewis, SGHI no. 2.

21. Further examples: spondai and permanent philia between Athens and the Great King thanks to Epilykos who went on the embassies (Andoc. 3.29); Pollis of Argos joining the embassy to the King's court on a private basis – presumably he had xenoi at court (Thuc. 2.67).

22. Adcock, F. and Mosley, D. J., Diplomacy in ancient Greece (1975) 157Google Scholar.

23. The families of Nikias the Athenian and Pausanias the Spartan had been connected through xenia, Lys. 18.10.

24. Strauss, B. S., Athens after the Peloponnesian war (1986) 134Google Scholar, rightly suggests that Eunomos ‘may have been picked for the mission solely because he was a guest-friend of Dionysius’.

25. Adcock and Mosley (n.22) 177.

26. Overseas land: see Davies, J. K., Wealth and the power of wealth in classical Athens (1981) 56–60Google Scholar; B. S. Strauss (n.24) 52–3. It is my assumption that some of these large holdings (as opposed to the land in cleruchies) were acquired through the machinations of citizen-xenoi. Fortresses: Alkibiades in the Chersonese (Xen. Hell. 2.1.25). Concessions: Thucydides in Thrace (above, p. 87); Andokides in Macedonia (Andoc. 2.11). Money: Siphnian aristocrats having a large portion of their property deposited with the xenoi of one of them in Paros (Isocr. 19.18); Poseidonios (Ap. Athen. 6.233F) saying that rich Spartans kept their money in Arcadia, cf. Cartledge, P., Agesilaos and the crisis of Sparta (1987) 88Google Scholar.

27. On the eve of the battle of Artemisium, the Athenian Kleinias brought 200 men and a ship of his own (Hdt. 8.17). Phayllos of Croton, according to Plut. Alex. 34 (though not Hdt. 8.47), fitted out at his own cost a ship which fought at the battle of Salamis. According to Plutarch, Perikles in the first years of the Peloponnesian War had a trireme of his own (Plut. Per. 35.1). Kleinias' more famous great-grandson, Alkibiades, set out for the expedition to Sicily also with his own ship (Thuc. 6.50). In a speech by Isaeus, one Makartatus is said to have sold his land, bought a trireme which he manned, and sailed away to Crete (Isaeus 11.48). Later on, men of the stamp of Meidias, Demosthenes' arch-enemy, are said to have commanded private triremes (Dem. 29.160, 165, 174). For the theory that Athens did not possess state-owned warships before 483, see Hignett, C., A history of the Athenian constitution (1952) 70Google Scholar and Amit, M., Athens and the sea (1965) 106–7Google Scholar.

28. I have here selected from a much longer list the most conspicuous cases in which the inter-state treaty hypothesis offers only a poor explanation of the passages' intended meaning. I list the works on which I have drawn: Morrison, J. S., ‘Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias’, CQ 36 (1942) 57–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westlake, H. D., ‘The medism of Thessaly’, JHS 56 (1936) 12–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his Thessaly in the fourth century B.C. (1935); Gomme, A. W., A historical commentary on Thucydides, 5 vols. (1945–1981) [vols. 4 and 5Google Scholar with A. Andrewes and K. J. Dover]; Busolt, G. and Swoboda, H., Griechische Staatskunde ed. 3 (1926) II.1480–2Google Scholar; Hornblower, S., The Greek world 479–323 B.C. (1983)Google Scholar, corr. impr. 1985) ch. 7.

29. Cf. Hornblower (n.28) 82: ‘But the alliance with Athens must have been renewed before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War when Thessalians fought on the Athenian side again (Thuc. 2.22).’

30. Thessaly, it should be noted, is not listed in Thuc. 2.9 among the allies of Sparta, nor does it figure among the allies of Athens, in spite of an explicit reference elsewhere (1.102) to such an alliance.

31. A good parallel is [Dem.] 23.199: Menon of Pharsalos is said to have given the Athenians twelve talents and three hundred of his mounted serfs (penestai) for the war at Eion (476 BC) at a time when there was no question of a treaty between Athens and Thessaly (or Pharsalus, for that matter).

32. For this incident, discussed from a different point of view and with a different emphasis, see Herman (n.10) 146ff.

33. Philocharidas was involved in the diplomatic moves leading up to the peace of Nikias: Thuc. 4.119 and 5.19.

34. As has been shown by Missiou-Ladi, A., ‘Coercive diplomacy in Greek interstate relations’, CQ n.s. 37 (1987) 336–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the term presbeis autokralores did not merely imply that the envoys had sovereign power delegated to them by their states so that their acts required no ratification, but that they were given written instructions, or a draft of a treaty previously approved by their states. It was precisely because of this basic restriction that they were authorised to reach agreements. I find myself in total agreement with her judgement that ‘it was the procedure that ensured that the will of the people would not be thwarted by the envoys’.

35. See, for instance, Kagan, D., The peace of Nicias and the Sicilian expedition (1981) 70Google Scholar.

36. Kebric, R. B., ‘Implications of Alcibiades' relationships with Endius’, Mnemosyne 29 (1976) 72–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, though offering by far the most coherent of the existing explanations, carries his argument too far: there is no evidence that in 418 BC Alkibiades and Endios intended to overthrow the governments of their respective cities and set themselves up as absolute rulers. On the other hand, the goods and services exchanged within the framework of xenia, together with the mores of the institution and a long list of parallel cases (Herman (n.10) esp. chs. 4 and 5) seem to provide an adequate explanation for their behaviour.