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Miltiades

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

H. T. Wade-Gery
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Extract

The red-figure plate in the Ashmolean Museum bearing the inscription Μιλτιαδες καλος (Fig. 1) has been ascribed, by the scholar to whom these pages are dedicated, to the Cerberus Painter; and dated to 520–510 B.C.

We ask ourselves inevitably: is this the great Miltiades? and he who tries to answer is unusually incurious if he does not ask the second question: is the beardless mounted archer, here depicted, Miltiades himself? He looks to be under twenty, Marathon was fought twenty to thirty years later. What age was Miltiades at Marathon in 490? what age was he between 520 and 510 B.C.?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 71 , November 1951 , pp. 212 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1951

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References

1 ARV p. 55, Cerberus Painter 8. CV Oxford 1 (1927) pl. I, 5, text p. 2. Cf. Schoppa, , Die Darstellung der Perser (diss. Heidelberg 1933) p. 23.Google Scholar The inscription is not visible in the photograph: it describes a semicircle round the top half of the field. I am greatly indebted to my wife for advice and help throughout this paper.

2 Berve, devoted Hermes, Einzelschrift 2 (1937)Google Scholar, to Miltiades (henceforward cited by author's name only). Inevitably my references are mainly to disagreements.

3 The passages of ancient authors (chiefly Herodotos) can be found in Kirchner, P(rosopographia) A(ttica), nos. 8426 and 10212. Add, for the Skythian invasion of Chersonese, Strabo XIII. 1. 22; and for the capture of Lemnos, Diodoros X. 19. 3, Hesychios Zenobios III 85, and Charax in Stephanos (Fgr H 103 F 18: the parallel passages are quoted in the commentary).

4 Plutarch, Cim. 4Google Scholar: He three times achieved the height of earthly ambition, and never had the wit once to enjoy it in his own name and his own home.

5 ‘Der dritte Olympiasieg ereignete sich nach Peisistratos' Tod’ (Berve p. 40 note 1). No: it is the murder which is after Peisistratos' death: the Olympic victory is not necessarily so. It cannot of course have been much earlier.

6 E.g. Kirchner PA no. 8426: Berve loc. cit. But Cadoux, in JHS LXVIII (1948) p. no note 217Google Scholar, gives what I believe the correct dates.

7 The fragment of archon-list covering the early years of Hippias', reign was published in Hesperia VIII (1939) pp. 59–65Google Scholar: SEG X. 352. See below, p. 217.

8 Dionysios, Aut R VII. 3. 1Google Scholar: the name is also in the inscribed list (note 7). See Cadoux, JHS LXVIII (1948), p. 110Google Scholar, note 216.

9 Herodotos VI. 103. 3: Olympic victors dined in the Prytaneion: Preuner, , Hermes LXI (1926) pp. 472 ff.Google Scholar

10 ‘Transparency’ characterises the Attic skolia, the Hipparchos herms. For the kind of quarrel (as I suppose it) see the following note.

11 This date is of course quite arbitrary: it does not affect the argument. The type of quarrel matters more. I am supposing something like the stage quarrels, between Oedipus and Kreon, Theseus and Hippolytos: sc. that Kimon, like Kreon or Hippolytos, stood close to the throne, was its natural prop. The sequel is less bizarre if this is so.

12 See Berve, pp. 41–2.

13 Kent, , JNES II (1943) pp. 302 ff.Google ScholarOld Persian Texts IV: The Lists of Provinces; Cameron ibid. pp. 307 ff. Darius, Egypt, and the ‘Lands beyond the Sea’. The Persepolis list (Darius Persepolis e) is no. II on p. 302. Line 14, hitherto misread and mistranslated as ‘Lands in the east’, is here given as dahyᾱva: lyᾱ: para: draya: (terrae quae trans mare). This is the first time European subjects are mentioned: later they are specified, as Skudra (Thraces), Yauriᾱ: tyaiy: paradraya: (Graeci qui trans mare), etc.: see Kent's Table 2 on p. 305 [I venture to disagree with his separation of Yaunᾱ in cols. 3 and 5 from the relatives which follow]. This unspecific mention of ‘Lands oversea’, and the absence of Putaᾱyᾱ (sc. Libyans: see Cameron p. 309 note 12), indicate that Dareios' campaign is still recent and that Aruandes' simultaneous campaign in Libya (Herodotos IV. 145. 1) is not yet digested. Cameron observes that the Canal Stelai from Egypt (evidently of the same date) complete the picture: they list Libya but have no oversea people.—For the sense in which the stone which bears the Persepolis list is a ‘foundation stone’, see Cameron, p. 312, and for a further description of it, p. 307. The earliest extant ‘Fortification Tablets’ are of 511 and by then the terrace was in use.

14 An earlier date (517) is suggested in CAH IV, mainly in the belief that the Danube campaign was mentioned and dated on the Behistun Rock, OP col. V. The best available text of this column (pending Cameron's publication of the whole) is Kent's in JNES IV (1945) pp. 40–1. The campaign was certainly in Turkestan and probably in Dareios' third year: it is mentioned in Polyainos VII. 11. 6 and VII. 12. Polyainos also (VII. 11. 7) mentions a visit of Dareios to Egypt, when the sacred Bull was being mourned. The sacred Bull no doubt died more than once or twice in the reign, but we know of one such mourning in autumn 518 (JNES II p. 311); this may be when Dareios came, since the Canal Stelai say that he visited Egypt early in his reign. That visit has of course no connexion with Aruandes' quarrel with Dareios much later (Herodotos IV. 166), and gives no date (unless perhaps post quem) for the Danube campaign.

Polyainos' knowledge of Dareios' early years is perhaps derived from Deinon, a fourth century writer.

15 The interval (528 years) is computed from A.D. 15/6. The compiler speaks of the Kimmerian Bosporos, a venial error.—I do not think there is any reason a priori to respect his synchronism more than his absolute date: the synchronism happens to be right.—Note that B 6–9 have four Persian items in succession: Kyros captures Sardis (date lost), Kambyses conquers Egypt (525/4). Dareios crosses into Skythia (513/2), Xerxes crosses the Hellespont (date incomplete).

16 Berve p. 35 speaks of this alliance as the culmination of constant hostility between Sigeion and Chersonese. He starts from his belief in the ‘fortdauernde Feindschaft zwischen den beiden Familien’, and finds any other relation between the two places ‘denkbar unwahrscheinlich’. I do not know how he understands Thucydides' words (VI. 59. 3). I understand them to mark the singularity of the act. See note 36.

17 Thucydides VI. 59. 4: Unless Herodotos is wrong (V. 91–96) it took him some years to reach Sousa.

18 Koês suggested guarding the bridge (IV. 97), Histiaios preserved it (IV. 137). Their rewards: Koês is made ruler of Mytilene, Histiaios is given Myrkinos on the Strymon (V. 11). A ruler of Mytilene favoured by Persia was a danger to Sigeion: see, for a generation earlier, V 94–95; and the possessions of Mytilene in the Troad a generation later can be measured, roughly, from the ‘Aktaian cities’ ceded by Mytilene in 427: ATL I [or II], A9 III 124–141, A 10 IV 14–27, ATL II, D 22, lines 13–15.

19 Between Hipparchos' murder in August 514 and Hippias' expulsion probably in spring 510, we should probably put the Alkmeonid attempt at Leipsydrion in 513, the Spartan seaborne attack (Anchimolios) in 512, the preparation of a land approach (sc. Megaris) in 511.

20 Dobree's correction is supported with very strong arguments by Enoch Powell, CQ XXIX (1935) p. 160. Note, also, how like the restored sentence is to V. 2. 1: etc. For further corrections introduced by Powell in his Translation, see the next note.

21 The two comparanda are evidently (a) the trouble he had encountered at his first arrival (described in ch. 39) and (b) the worse trouble which came two years later, namely the Skythian raid on Chersonese. For (a) neither of the two variants and sounds quite right: perhaps Herodotos' felicity deserted him. There is, to my ear, a rather uneasy play on the verb 38. 2, 39. 1, 40. 1, He was sent to take charge of the situation, but it took charge of him? In his Translation Powell proposes to change to this rather violent change destroys the sense, since so far as Herodotos has told us Miltiades left no troubles at Athens (39. 1).

22 Unless we alter the text this Skythian raid is only two years after Miltiades' arrival, and is therefore less than two years after Dareios' campaign. It was surely a pursuit (though by translating ‘pursued’ I beg this question). Strabo XIII. 1. 22 confirms that the Skyths reached Chersonese, but gives no further precision about the date. The Skythian embassy to Sparta (Herodotos VI. 84), if it belongs to this occasion will imply that they stayed more than a few weeks.

It is clear that Dareios was in some trouble: the Bosporos bridge was broken, Byzantion, Chalkedon and Perinthos all required punishment (V. 1. 1, V. 26): this is evidently why Dareios crossed, in this tumultuary fashion, at Abydos. Did Miltiades help at this point, and so escape his punishment? or was he, when Otanes came, still in flight from the Skyths? Perhaps Chersonese was for Hippoklos to deal with: whether he did so, how he did so, why he did no more, are questions we cannot answer.

23 Mustilli, D., L'occupazione ateniese di Lemnos e gli scavi di Hephaistia, in Studi – offerti a E. Ciaceri (1940) pp. 149–158.Google Scholar Cf. also Passerini, A., Miltiade e l'occupazione di Lemno (1935).Google Scholar Herodotos says nothing of Hermon, for whom see the authors named in note 3.

24 He called at Imbros on his way home in 493, Herodotos VI. 41. 2, 104. 1. In the Attic tribute lists, Imbros was probably, down to 447, one of the items covered by Cherronesitai: see e.g. ATL III p. 46.

25 The alternative date is 510–508: after Hippias' fall, and before the new alliance with Sardis made in 508/7 (Herodotos V. 73) and voided after the second embassy in c. 500 (96. 2, 97. 1). To judge by its position in Diodoros X. 19. 3, Ephoros told the story of Hermon [notes 23 and 3] as part of, or a pendant to, the Danube campaign. But so far as we can judge Ephoros' principles of arrangement, this is no reason for preferring the earlier date. It is to be hoped that eventually the material from Hephaistia will be decisive.

26 BCH XXXVI (1912) pp. 329–338 (photographs): ATL III pp. 290–291.

27 VI. 54. 6: I accept Schwartz' argument for changing the text in 54. 5: we must read [misread as ] The subject of this sentence will thus be ‘the tyranny’, not ‘Hipparchos’; in the next clause will mean ‘Peisistratos and Hippias’ (not ‘Hippias and Hipparchos’), and these will be the subject of in 54. 6.

28 See note 7 above.

29 I use the term ‘Kimonid’ for Kimon Koalemos and his descendants. Modern scholars usually call them ‘Philaids’, but no ancient writer does and the term as applied to them is meaningless. Miltiades senior was descended in male line from Philaios (Herodotos VI. 35. 1, Pherekydes, Fgr H 3 F 2) and may be thought therefore to belong to the genos Philaidai (for which see Suidas, but the only known tie of blood between Kimon Koalemos and Miltiades senior is the woman who married first Miltiades' father and then Kimon's. That tie of blood, though it did not make Kimon a Philaid, did nevertheless bind the half-brothers very closely: Miltiades senior being childless looked for heirs not among his father's relations but in his mother's second family. I expect this means that her family was important, perhaps more important than the Philaids. The Philaids were not (I think: see note 39) Eupatrids; but the pre-Solonian archon Miltiades (PA no. 10205: cf. Cadoux, , JHS LXVIII, 1948, p. 90Google Scholar note 86) shows that Miltiades was an Eupatrid name, which perhaps descended through this woman. E.g. thus:

This whole group (which includes all the Kimonids and also Miltiades senior) may be termed ‘the Miltiades house’. This is the house whose dealings with the Athenian tyrants we have to clarify.

30 Jacoby, , Atthis p. 171Google Scholar and note 20 on p. 346.

31 VI. 123. 1. For the sense of see note 38.

32 He was indicted under the current version of the law whose earlier and later formulations we have in Ἀθ.π. 16. 10 and Andokides I. 97. But the trial was surely argued by both parties, and decided, on political grounds.

33 Plutarch, , Arist. 2. 5Google Scholar: BSA XXXVII, pp. 268–70.

34 Herodotos VI. 39. I: As I say in the text, this was no doubt a prosecutor's allegation; but no doubt also true.

35 Cf. Herodotos I. 64. 1. No doubt VI. 40 is also prosecutor's matter, especially the closing words ‘such is his past record: and now here he is again on the run’ (see note 20 above). It is like Herodotos, to echo both parties with this impartial gusto.

36 Berve's contention, in his Kapitel I, is that these Athenian colonies were something quite distinct from the Athenian state and must not be presumed to have common interests. I think this is totally false: the quarrel between Sigeion and Mytilene is, for Alkaios and Herodotos and no doubt for Periander also (Herodotos V. 95), a quarrel between Athens and Mytilene: that between Chersonese and Lampsakos is, for Thucydides (VI. 59. 3: see note 16 above), between Athens and Lampsakos. This is not of course true of all colonies (the word does not define any strict international status: see Herodotos IX. 106. 3, Thucydides I. 38. 3), but of these particular colonies it clearly is.

37 Elaious, at the southern point of Chersonese, is the modern Cape Helles (which appears on early maps as Eles Burun). In ATL III p. 289, note 75, we quote ps. Skymnos 707–8:

where the MS. gives The corruption was probably caused by a confusion (very common in Byzantine hands) between upsilon and beta. This produced or (υν misread as βο)

38 Herodotos VI 34–36. When Miltiades left Athens, ‘Peisistratos was supreme (35. 1); after arrival, Miltiades had time to enjoy Croesus' friendship before Sardis fell (37). Herodotos (I think) considers Peisistratos' first two attempts relatively unimportant: in VI. 123. 1 certainly does not include them, nor (almost certainly) the ‘36 years' rule’ in V. 65. 1: I do not think he refers to them here (in VI. 35. 1). The 36 years began in 546 with the victory at Pallene, which Herodotos puts perceptibly earlier than the fall of Sardis: Croesus had heard about Pallene before he sought Sparta's alliance, a fortiori before he attacked Kyros (I. 56 84). See CAH TV.

According to Herodotos, then, Pallene was in 546 and Sardis fell perceptibly later. Either he is wrong, or else the conjecture is false in the Babylonian Chronicle which makes Kyros march against Lydia in 547 and kill its King: see Smith, Sidney, Isaiah ch. XL–LV (Schweich Lectures for 1940), p. 36 and notes on p. 135.Google Scholar Although I cannot judge the conjecture, I prefer Herodotos. I think the battle between Argives and Spartans at Thyrea was in 544, separated from that at Sepeia (in 494) by a 50-year truce: and Herodotos synchronises Thyrea with the fall of Sardis (I. 82). If Pallene was in 546 and Sardis fell in 544, there is time enough between for Miltiades to be taken prisoner at Lampsakos, and for Croesus to demand his release (VI. 37).

39 Both Miltiades senior and Peisistratos claimed descent from Homeric heroes (Aias and Nestor): I do not suppose any Eupatrid house claimed to have entered Attica later than the Trojan War. Before Solon only Eupatrids became archons (Plutarch, , Thes. 25Google Scholar, no doubt from Aristotle): Solon admitted all families which had sufficient landed wealth. (I hope some time to improve what I wrote on this subject in CQ XXV, 1931, pp. 1 ff., 77 ff.)

40 The name Hyperakrioi (Herodotos I. 59) no doubt indicates the periphery of Attica, outside the ring of Hymettos, Pentelikon, Parnes, Aigaleos: opposed to the Plain and Coast inside that ring and visible from Athens. Brauron on the east coast is peripheral. Peisistratos probably retired there between his two first (relatively futile) attempts at tyranny: it was only after the second failure that he ‘left Attica altogether’ (I. 61. 2). Early collaboration between the two Brauronian families may perhaps be seen in the fact that the great Panathenaia were begun in Hippokleides' archonship (Pherekydes, Fgr H 3 F 2). I suggest above (note 38) that Miltiades senior left Attica in 546; his race at Olympia could then be 548. The hypothesis is too uncertain to pursue much further, but I should like to know whether he shared Peisistratos' exile. He may have done; it would have given him Thracian interests, and exiles could train horses and win races (Herodotos VI. 103. 2: cf. Pindar, , Pyth. VIIGoogle Scholar): but I rather suppose he has stayed in Attica. The whole Hyperakrian faction did not emigrate.

41 That is, the Peisistratids and the ‘Miltiades house’: see note 29.

42 Herodotos VI. 39. 1: No doubt a prosecutor's allegation (cf. notes 34, 35), but the substantial fact was the archonship, notorious to all in 493. Herodotos on the other hand was very likely ignorant of this archonship, as he certainly was of Kleisthenes'.

43 Kirchner, PA no. 10212, suggests that the second marriage came after the Danube episode: and though this is not what Herodotos says (VI. 39. 2) it is surely possible: the second marriage will then mark his breach with Hippias.

44 If the archon of 522/1 be Hippias' son Peisistratos (as I believe: Cadoux, , JHS LXVIII, 1948, pp. 111–2Google Scholar), it is possible that he too was under thirty when archon. But I am very doubtful of this: Hippias may have married in the middle 'fifties (Kleidemos, Fgr H 323 F 15).

45 This would put his birth in 548/7, within a few months, perhaps, of Miltiades senior's Olympic victory (see note 40). If so, we may see why he took his uncle's name (Herodotos VI. 103. 4) although not he but his elder brother was to be that uncle's heir (VI. 38. 1). But there are many ifs here, and some of them not easy: I think in fact that he was born much earlier; and that his name was a family name (note 29), requiring no such occasion.

46 Beardless youths in archer's dress are frequent in late bf. painting, and frequently accompany hoplites (as aides-de-camp?): a catalogue of both bf. and rf. examples, Schoppa (as in note 1), pp. 9–24.

47 I use this name because (as Payne points out, AMS, p. 52) Epiktetos has made a careful drawing of the horse. The drawing (ARV, p. 50, Epiktetos no. 18) completely changes the action: the cavalryman is dismounted and leads his horse.

48 The references on p. 235 to Abb. 261 and 262 seem to have been transposed in error.

49 There are I think some small inconsistencies in his datings especially on p. 228. He there says (a) 316 is ‘only a little’ earlier than 313: (b) 316 cannot be before 520 B.C. (see p. 237): (c) 313 is 10 years later than 316: (d) 313 is about 520 B.C. Conceivably ein Jahrzehnt in (c) is a misprint? But even so: if 316 is after 520 B.C., and 313 is (even a little) later again, this should bring 313 somewhere near 515 B.C., yet he says (p. 228) that since Miltiades did not go to Chersonese till 516 or 515 there are chronological difficulties in connecting 313 with that event. Finally, (p. 231) 314 is ‘at least 10 years’ later than 313 and this brings 314 ‘into the last decade, or rather to the end, of the century’.

The treatment of the chiton in Akropolis 568 (which Schuchhardt ascribes to 316) cannot possibly, I believe, be much earlier than 520 and Schuchhardt thinks it later. If we hang his chronology on that, we get the following: 316, c 520– B.C.: 313, c. 515 B.C.: 314, c. 500 B.C. The snag is that 500 B.C. is very late for 314 if Epiktetos drew his horse from it.

50 The Megakles pinax, I think, represents the son of a returned exile (Pfuhl, pl. 175).

51 A rough likeness, but I think a real one, in spite of considerable differences, e.g. in what the rider wears: Payne p. 52, Schuchhardt p. 228. The marble, relatively unfinished on the left side (e.g. horse's left ear, rider's left foot), was meant to be seen from the right; sc. he appeared to be moving to the spectator's right: the drawing quite systematically inverts this. (The Amphiaraos crater seems likewise to have inverted what stood on the kypselos chest. What, incidentally, was the time-interval here between original and copy?) Schoppa, p. 24, thinks that the marble is part of a group which included an adult horseman, presumably on the archer's left. Even so, since the archer's body is turned to the right, the right is no doubt the ‘Hauptansicht,’ at least for him (and indeed, so far as I can envisage Schoppa's group, for the whole composition).