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Patterns of Name Diffusion Within the Greek World and Beyond*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

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

Thucydides the Historian identifies himself as the son of a certain Oloros (4.104.4) and, since Thucydides was by birth an Athenian (1.1.1), and Oloros is a Thracian name, the question arises how he acquired this Thracian patronymic. According to the view which has gained almost general acceptance, Thucydides of the deme Halimous in Attica owed his Thracian patronymic to a connexion by marriage. The hypothetical reconstruction of the family tree is that Thucydides' Athenian grandfather had married a daughter of Miltiades the Athenian and Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian ruler Oloros, and a son of this marriage was called Oloros after his maternal great-grandfather. This Athenian Oloros became, as shown in Figure, the father of Thucydides the historian – an Athenian with a Thracian patronymic.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 349 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 For the stemma, see Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, 1971), pp. 234–5Google Scholar (hereafter abbreviated as Davies, APF), which is an adaptation from Cavaignac, E., ‘Miltiade et Thucydide’;, RPh 3 (1929), 281–5Google Scholar. The following works are also cited in abbreviated form: Bechtel, F. and Fick, A., Die Griechischen Personennamen (Göttingen, 1894) = Bechtel and Fick, GPGoogle Scholar; Fraser, P. M. and Matthews, E., A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford, 1987) = Fraser and Matthews, LGPNGoogle Scholar; Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1945–1981) [vols. 4 and 5 with A. Andrewes and K. J. Dover] = Gomme, HCTGoogle Scholar; Herman, G., Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City(Cambridge, 1987) = Herman, RFGCGoogle Scholar; Herman, G., ‘Nikias, Epimenides and the question of omissions in Thucydides’, CQ 39 (1989), 83–93 = Herman, NEQOTCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D. M., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1969) = Meiggs and Lewis, SGHIGoogle Scholar; Poralla, P. and Bradford, A. S., A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians (Chicago, 1985) = Poralla and Bradford, PLGoogle Scholar; Seyrig, H., ‘Quatre cultes de Thasos’, BCH 51 (1929), 178–233 = Seyrig, QCTCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walbank, M. B., Athenian Proxenies of the Fifth Century B.C. (Toronto and Sarasota, 1978) = Walbank, APGoogle Scholar.

2 Herman, , RFGC, esp., pp. 19–22Google Scholar.

3 In addition to the assumptions concerning Thucydides' ancestry (n. 1 above and n. 36 below), see, for example: Dittemberger, in Syll 2285Google Scholar accepting Homolle's suggestion of regarding the name Gorgionos, Damaratos (Syll. 3381)Google Scholar as a testimonium affinitatis between the descendants of two Greeks who at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. took refuge at the Persian court and were rewarded with estates, Damaratos the Spartan and Gongylos the Eretrian, father of Gorgion; Seyrig, , QCT 218–19Google Scholar, interpreting Thracian and Greek names from sixth- to fourth-century Thasos alternating as personal names and patronymics (e.g. Argeios Pyrios – Pyre Argeiou) as owing their origin to marriage alliances between Greek and barbarian families at the moment of colonisation (but see the criticism of Graham, A. J. in ABSA 73 [1978], esp. 92–3, which rules out colonial contextGoogle Scholar); Vanderpool, E., Ostracism at Athens (Cincinnati, 1970), p. 19Google Scholar, assuming that Kallixenos son of Aristonymos of Athens was related through marriage with the Sicyonian tyrant Kleisthenes, son of Aristonymos; Murray, O., Early Greece (Glasgow, 1980), p. 220Google Scholar taking Psammetichos son of Theokles (Meiggs and Lewis, SGHI no. 7) to have been born of a mixed marriage between a Greek Theokles and a daughter of king Psammetichos.

4 The peculiarity of the Hellenistic Age with respect to foreign names may be illustrated by, e.g., Bowman, R. A., ‘Anu-Uballit-Kefalon’, American Journal of Semitic Languages 56 (1939), 231–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarkisian, G.Kh., ‘Greek personal names in Uruk and the Graeco-Babylonian problem’, in Harmatta, J. and Komoróczy, G. (eds.), Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im alten Vorderasien (Budapest, 1976), pp. 499–503Google Scholar; Robert, L., ‘Documents d'Asie Mineure’, BCH (1983), 497–599, esp. 498–505Google Scholar; Sherwin-White, S. M., ‘Aristeas Ardibelteios: Some aspects of the use of double names in Seleucid Babylonia’, ZPE 50 (1983), 209–21Google Scholar.

5 See Herman, , RFGC, pp. 16–29Google Scholar. In my forthcoming book The Origins of Godparenthood I systematically explore these similarities.

6 Hdt. 6.131, Loeb transl.; cf. Davies, , APF, p. 357Google Scholar.

7 For the maternal grandfather, see Bremmer, J., ‘The importance of the maternal uncle and grandfather in Archaic and Classical Greece and early Byzantium’, ZPE 50 (1983), 173–86Google Scholar, Herodotus' astonishment at the Lycian custom of naming themselves after their mothers, not their fathers (Hdt. 1.173), shows that he thought this to be highly irregular: it was ‘shared by no other men’. Pembroke, S., ‘Last of matriarchs’, JESHO 8 (1965), 217–47Google Scholar, has argued that this was unusual even among the Lycians.

8 For another Thessalos, son of Peisistratos from a presumably Athenian woman, see Davies, , APF, p. 448Google Scholar.

9 Thuc. 8.6.3, adapted from the Loeb transl. See Gomme, , HCT v 19Google Scholar for the textual aspects of this passage, and cf. with vol. iv.50 (ad 5.43.2): ‘The Spartan connection is mentioned again in 8.6.3. Since Alcibiades is there said to be a Spartan name, the relationship goes back at least to the father of Alcibiades I, born in the middle of the sixth century. This is likely enough at a time when the Peisistratidae were the xenoi of the Spartans (Hdt. 5.90.1)’.

10 In reconstructing Alkibiades' ancestry I follow Davies, APF, Table I. As I am here concerned with general patterns or models, I avoid throughout this article making references to other ramifications of a line and to further intrusions of foreign names into an A–B–A–B or A–A–A–A pattern of name inheritance. I do not claim that all the concrete genealogies tally exactly with these basic patterns.

11 Plut, . Pelop. 10Google Scholar, adapted from the Loeb transl.

12 Iliad 2.527–30 and Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Artemis, 1981), i(l).338–9Google Scholar; cf. Herman, , RFGC, pp. 20–1Google Scholar.

13 See Herman, , RFGC, p. 20Google Scholar for Lichas and Arkesilaos, and Herman, , NEQOT passim for Nikias and Epimenides, and p. 89Google Scholar for the fourth-century Athenian and the third-century Milesian Menestheus, son of Iphikrates.

14 Diod. 14.13.5, Loeb transl. The name Libys is independently attested: Xen, . Hell. 2.4.28Google Scholar, cf. Poralla and Bradford, PL no. 490.

15 In actuality, such a succession of names did not take place since Lysander fathered only daughters, cf. Poralla and Bradford, PL no. 504.

16 Other names of this type are listed in section (c). Further examples of localities named after persons: Diod. 5.48.1 (Saon after the island); Lygdamon in Mysia named after Lygdamis, see below.

17 Thuc. 1.3.2, transl. by R. Warner. Thucydides seems to assume that the whole country was then named after these ‘Hellenes’. For localities named after persons, cf. Thuc. 1.9.2 (the Peloponnese named after Pelops); Thuc. 6.2.4 (Italy named after Italos, king of the Sicels); 6.4.1 (Megara Hyblaea named after Hyblon, another Sicel king); Hdt. 4.148 (the island Calliste renamed Thera after Theras, its colonist); Paus. 2.16.1 (Argos named after Argos, the grandson of Phoroneus); Veil. Pat. 1.3.1 (Thessaly named after Thessalus).

18 This association between power, ritualised relationships, and the diffusion of a name is interestingly illustrated in early medieval Europe by godparenthood. Cf. Bennett, M., ‘Spiritual kinship and the baptismal name in traditional European society’, in Frappell, L. O., ed., Principalities, Powers and Estates: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Government and Society (Adelaide, 1979), pp. 1–13Google Scholar, at 10: ‘Since men of rank, wealth and power doubtless acted as godparents to a much larger number of children than did the average person, over the generations, by a process of natural selection, a limited number of names would become dominant.’

19 cf. Zgusta, L., Kleinasiatische Ortsnamen (Heidelberg, 1984), p. 725Google Scholar.

20 Hdt. 3.55, adapted from the Loeb transl.

21 cf. Poralla and Bradford, PL nos. 150, 151, 658 and 659, cf. Cartledge, P. A., ‘Sparta and Samos: a special relationship?’, CQ 32 (1982), 243–65, esp. at 259Google Scholar. The phrase ‘his father had borne the name Samios because he was the son of that Archias who was slain fighting gallantly at Samos’ seems to suggest that the adoption of the name occurred at a time when his father was old enough to grasp the symbolism of such an act. The implication might be that within the context of xenia names were not necessarily given at birth. There is no explicit evidence for this, but I suspect the ceremony took place at the hair-clipping ritual. The custom is closely paralleled in the early European Middle Ages.

22 For the relationship between marriage and ritualised relationships in other cultures, cf. Tegnaeus, H., Blood Brothers: An Ethno-Sociological Study of the Institution of Blood-Brotherhood with Special Reference to Africa (Stockholm, 1952)Google Scholar; Goody, J., The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lynch, J. H., Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar; Macrides, R., ‘The Byzantine godfather’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 11 (1987), 139–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 cf. Herman, RFGC, ch. 3.

24 Arist. fr. 549, Rose = Athen. 13.576a–b, adapted from the Loeb transl. Note the name of Euxenos' and Aristoxenes' son: Protis, not Nanos, the nam e of his maternal grandfather. For a confused reproduction of the same story, see Justin 43.3. This case was omitted from Herman, RFGC.

25 The omission of this detail from some descriptions of foreign marriages (e.g. Hdt. 6.128ff., Thuc. 2.29.1) does not invalidate the argument. The necessity of xenia as a prelude for marriage was so obvious that it could be taken for granted.

26 cf. Davies, J. K., Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens (New York, 1981), pp. 118–19Google Scholar; Gernet, L., ‘Mariages de tyrans’, in Droit et institutions en Grèce antique (Paris, 1968), pp. 229–49Google Scholar.

27 For the question of motivation, see Gernet, L., ‘Les nobles dans la Grèce antique’, in Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968), p. 342Google Scholar; Humphreys, S. C., ‘The nothoi of Kynosarges’, JHS 94 (1974), 93–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Austin, M. M. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Economic & Social History of Ancient Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980), p. 95Google Scholar; Patterson, C., Pericles' Citizenship Law of 451–50 B.C. (New York, 1981), pp. 99–100Google Scholar. Murray, O., Early Greece (Glasgow, 1980), pp. 43–4Google Scholar, takes the view, rightly I think, that ‘Throughout the archaic period marriage outside the community was common between the aristocrats, and contributed considerably to their political power …[the law proposed by Pericles] was a popular, anti-aristocratic move …’

28 Iphikrates' marriage, cited earlier (p. 352 above), dates from this period, and there are some late fifth- and fourth-century tombstones enshrining the memories of Athenians married to foreign wives. Epigamia, a juridic act whereby ‘the right to contract marriages with Athenians (men or women, we must suppose) was conferred on the whole citizen body of some other state’ (Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens, i (Oxford, 1968), p. 29Google Scholar) was in the Classical age exceptional (see also Thalheim, , Ἐπιγαμ⋯α RE vi (1909), 62–3Google Scholar). Only in the Hellenistic Age was it to become more common: Gawantka, W., Isopolitie (Munich, 1975), p. 34 n. 72Google Scholar.

29 A unique exception to this rule would be the Spartan woman by the name of Parthenion, characterised as the ‘beloved wife of Phanokles’ on an Athenian gravestone from between the fourth- and first-centuries B.C., cf. Bradford, A. S., A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C. to the Sack of Sparta by Alaric, A.D. 396 (Munich, 1977), p. 336Google Scholar.

30 cf. Willetts, R. F., The Law Code of Gortyn (Berlin, 1967), pp. 18–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Herman, , RFGC, p. 170Google Scholar. More than six, since in Phlius Agesilaos had more than one xenos, Xen, . Hell. 5.3.13Google Scholar.

32 See Herman, , RFGC, pp. 130–56Google Scholar for Greece in general and Cartledge, P., Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London, 1987), pp. 245–6 for Sparta in particularGoogle Scholar.

33 Thuc. 5.43, 6.89; Plut, . Alcib. 14Google Scholar; cf. Wallace, M. B., ‘Early Greek proxenoi’, Phoenix 24 (1970), 189–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Herman, , RFGC, pp. 140–2, with Appendix BGoogle Scholar.

35 This case is analysed in a different context in Herman, , NEQOT 93Google Scholar.

36 On renewal of xenia, see Herman, , RFGC, pp. 69–72Google Scholar.

37 IG ii2. 237, cf. Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens, 4 vols. in 3 (Brussels, 1981–1983), no. D16Google Scholar. This case is further explored in my forthcoming ‘Treaties and alliances in the world of Thucydides’, PCPhS (1990).

38 Gomme, , HCT, iii. 605Google Scholar. The name Lakedaimonios was clearly given neither on account of a proxenia, as suggested by A. W. Gomme and T. J. Cadoux (in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. ‘Kimon’), nor on account of Kimon's sympathies, as suggested by Mosley, D. J., in Athenaeum (N.S.) 47 (1971), 431Google Scholar.

39 Some later authors attributing Thucydides' patronymic to a connexion by marriage (Plut, . Kimon 4.2Google Scholar, Marcellin, . Vit. Thuc. 19Google Scholar) draw clearly on nothing besides Thuc. 4.104.4, where all that is said is that the historian's father was Oloros. Their motives are not hard to guess: foreign descent seems to have been a mark of nobility, cf. Diog. Laert. 2.31. Some modern scholars (e.g. Grundy, G. B., Thucydides and the History of his Age (London, 1911), p. 15Google Scholar; Davies, , APF, pp. 233–4Google Scholar; J. de Romilly in her introduction to Thucydides in Coll. Univ. France, vol. i (Paris, 1953), viii n. 2; Russu, I. I., ‘Die Herkunft des Historikers Thukydides’, BIAB 16 [1950], 35–40Google Scholar) have expressed extreme scepticism as to the validity of this inference, even though they were unfamiliar with the mechanism of xenia. Others have upgraded a conjecture into a ‘fact’. See, e.g. Bury, J. B., The Ancient Greek Historians (London, 1909), p. 75Google Scholar: ‘Thucydides belonged by descent to the princely family of Thrace’ …(my ital.). The right possessed by Thucydides of working the Thracian gold-mines (Thuc. 4.105.1), which has sometimes been adduced as evidence for his family connexions, can serve as an even better pointer to an ancestral xenia, cf. Herman, RFGC, ch. 4.