Classica et Mediaevalia

Foreword

2024-05-10T10:48:45+02:00

No abstract

Plataia between Light and Darkness

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The special significance of Plataia already before the famous battle of 479 BC (in the mythical tradition connected with its site) and afterwards in the vicissitudes of the inter-Greek developments after the Persian Wars is analyzed to illustrate the bipolar importance of site and city as both a celebrated, dexterously manipulated symbol of unity and a bitter paradigm of practical disunity in Greek history.

Plataean Remembrances

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This article focuses, in a regressive approach going back in time from the Imperial to the Classical period, on the physical markers which became places of commemoration on the territory of Plataea after 479, and their significance in terms of the memory of the battle and the persistence (or otherwise) of a Panhellenic landscape. These markers fall into three categories: trophies, the altar of Zeus Eleutherios, and the graves of fallen soldiers. Trophies, initially ephemeral monuments celebrating a victory, were monumentalised before 380 BC to become concrete manifestations of Panhellenic values. The punctual sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios on the agora was perpetuated by the construction of a marble altar and was enriched by the addition of a goddess, Homonoia, at least in the Hellenistic period, but perhaps as early as the end of the 5th century BC. Finally, the tombs of dead soldiers were the object of sacrifices that seemed to change in nature between the Classical and Imperial periods, with the enagismos ritual so well described by Plutarch. Two ceremonies are also discussed, the Eleutheria and the dialogos, which further encapsulate the memorial importance of the battle, perhaps as early as the end of the 4th century BC for the contest and the end of the 2nd century BC for the dialogos.

Running for Remembrance

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Plataiai is a lieu de mémoire, and the Eleutheria, an athletic agon held every fourth year, played an important part in activating and reshaping the memory of the battle of 479 BC. According to Strabo, Plutarch and others, the agon had been founded directly after the battle, but this is an invention; the earliest reliable evidence dates back to the third century BC. From this time onwards, the Eleutheria formed an important event in the Greek agonistic system, the festival being attested in numerous agonistic inscriptions. In addition to the usual gymnic disciplines, a race apo tou tropaiou was held, in which the contestants had to run a long distance of 15 stadia with heavy armour. Sucha race was unique in Greek athletics, and Philostratos writes about a very peculiar rule: athletes who had won this race and tried to repeat their victory were killed if they failed. The Eleutheria refer both to the battle of Plataiai and to the unity of the Greeks and are thus of crucial importance for the topic of this volume. This contribution collects the scattered evidence and discusses, first, the position of the Eleutheria in the system of Greek athletics and, second, the symbolic power of the peculiar hoplite race mentioned by Philostratos.

A Brief Essay on Sport and Greek Unity in the Late Archaic and Early Classical Period

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This essay argues that athletics contributed significantly to whatever unity there was in the Greek world in the late archaic and early classical period. It does so by considering the significance of the so-called Panhellenic sanctuaries as one of the few contexts in which the collective appellation ‘the Greeks’ was appropriate and by emphasizing that what the four great sanctuaries of the periodos had in common was athletic competitions of great prestige. The crowds which assembled for the contests at the Panhellenic sanctuaries were discursively constructed as ‘the Greeks’ by contemporary sources. The athletic centrality of the four Panhellenic sanctuaries was a reflection of the fact that the festivals here were the ones that the athletes of the leisured elites valued most highly. By the classical period the agon gymnikos on the model of the Olympics had, by peer polity interaction, become a Panhellenic phenomenon and this allowed athletes to travel from festival to festival and compete in their chosen speciality.

Greek Deities as Single or Plural Figures?

2024-05-10T11:27:48+02:00

Greek deities are a valuable touchstone for assessing the opposite or complementary notions of ‘unity and diversity‘, and the same issue could have been be raised from the perspective of sacrificial ritual. In the context of ancient Greek religion, but also of Greek culture as a whole, no generalizing statement can be made without testing it against the fragmented evidence from several hundred cities. Some scholars have therefore come to consider that we should speak of ‘Greek religions’ in the plural in order to reflect the fragmentation, considering both the representation of the gods and the rituals performed in their honour. Focusing on the divine world, this paper asks the question: which dimension prevails in the (ancient as well as modern) way of dealing with a Greek deity, the apparent unity given by its theonym or the diversity of its cultplaces, images, cult-titles, etc.? The argument here is for addressing together unity and diversity, singleness and plurality when studying Greek gods.

Divine Intervention and the Unity of the Greeks during the Persian Invasion

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Herodotus’ Histories shows that the Persian invasion of Greece of 480-479 BCE revealed divisions among Greek city-states. Despite these divisions, this article argues that the work also relates how Greek gods and heroes remained united in repelling the Persians, providing a lesson to Herodotus’ Panhellenic audience. To this end, the paper examines the sacred topography related to divine interventions in four narratives in the Histories: the Sepias shipwreck, the Persian siege of Delphi, the burning of the Athenian
Acropolis’ olive tree, and the battle of Plataiai. Through an analysis of these narratives and their topography, the article explores how the Histories emphasizes the unified force of Greek divinities in the conflict.

Unity and Diversity in Ancient Greek Law

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In the twentieth century there were several works that assumed the essential unity of Greek Law: Griechisches Bürgschaftsrecht by J. Partsch, Griechisches Privatrecht auf rechtsvergleichender Grundlage by E. Weiss, and The Greek Law of Sale by F. Pringsheim. In a review of Pringsheim’s book, and in an essay on the topic, however, M.I. Finley challenged the notion of the unity of Greek Law. Finley observed that the Greek world was divided into hundreds of different city-states, each with its own political institutions, laws, and legal procedures. According to Finley, there was just too much diversity in the laws of the Greek city-states to justify any discussion of ‘Ancient Greek Law’ as a unified body of statutes and legal concepts. He did however allow that there might have been some unity in commercial law. More recently, M. Gagarin has claimed in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law that there was unity in the laws of the Greek poleis in respect to procedure but not in respect to substantive provisions. This essay revisits this issue and shows that there was a considerable amount of unity in the laws of the Greek poleis in substantive and constitutional matters. The article examines several areas of unity: marriage law, contracts, real security, the status of freed persons, the accountability of officials, and the relationship between Council and Assembly. It will also examine the unity of Greek law in regard to legal terminology. On the other hand, it will show that there was considerable diversity in legal procedures, which often varied according to the political constitution of a state.

Unity versus Diversity in the Hellenistic Period

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This paper offers a full description of the koinon hellenikon nomisma of the Hellenistic period and of almost all other coinages of the same period. The koinon hellenikon nomisma was issued on the Attic standard, while all other coinages were struck with different standards: Milesian, Aeginetan and reduced Aeginetan, Corinthian, Corcyrean, Persian, Nesiotic, Chian, the standard of Rhodes, that of the cities of Apollonia and Dyrrachium in Illyria, and of the kistophoroi. The use of these different standards pointed to previous monetary backgrounds of the cities and koina in question. It aimed, as was the case during the Archaic and the Classical periods, mainly to create different monetary zones, thus revealing, through the local circulation of coinages struck on the same standard, a sort of regional unity. This was not the case of the many Attic weight standard coinages. Alexanders, Antigonid, Seleucid, Attalid and other royal coinages, as well as coinages of cities minted with civic types and on the Attic standard, could circulate all around the vast Hellenistic world. The choice of kings and cities to mint on this standard and hoard evidence reveal that this was in fact the koinon hellenikon nomisma of the period. Epigraphic evidence supports this view: Alexanders – and other Attic weight coinages – served various military needs such as the payment of siteresia, the repair of walls, the payment of ransom to free prisoners, travel funds for theoroi and ambassadors, money for public subscriptions (epidoseis), and funds for various religious and other obligations. These were the needs that the koinon hellenikon nomisma of the Platonic Laws (742a-e) was supposed to fulfil. Thus, the Attic standard coinages refer to unity, while all others to diversity.

Greeks Drawing Lots

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The drawing of lots in ancient Greece was an institution that expressed the egalitarian values, practices, and mindset apparent for three centuries before the emergence of the Athenian democracy. Constituted by a large-scale mixture lottery, classical Athenian democracy with its choice of magistrates by lot, would never have seen the light of day without the broad spectrum of drawing of lots that preceded it. The first part of this article, by Irad Malkin, presents drawing lots’ distributive (e.g., land, booty, catch, inheritance, colonial plots), selective (e.g., magistrates), procedural (e.g., taking turns), and mixture functions. The concept of ‘equal portions’ moves from the concrete equal sharing of portions (isomoiria) to the abstract sharing of equal portions of the law, isonomia. A mindset with strong egalitarian features is revealed with a tendency to make equality and equity as close as possible: Equal chances before the lot and, when possible, equal outcomes. The role of the gods is mostly not to determine results, but to grant validity and legitimacy to a procedure under their auspices. The following section, by Josine Blok, examines why drawing lots for office created difficulties not encountered in the other, common uses of lots, how nonetheless this practice spread across the Greek world and due to the variety of political systems of the poleis came to highlight the diversity in ancient Greece.

Intertemporal Memories of a Shifting Unity

2024-05-12T12:03:36+02:00

In ancient Greece, a metropolis and its apoikiai constituted a form of kinship unity. In Thucydides’ view, at least in his era, particular bonds of kinship connected the Corinthian apoikiai on, or in the vicinity of, the Ambracian Gulf with Corinth itself, and literary tradition endowed Ambracia, Leucas and Anactorion with a special cultural unity. Modern research ranging over political institutions, foreign policy, ideology, economic factors, cults, myths, calendar and burial customs has shown that these poleis regarded themselves as members of a Corinthian colonial family. Initially highly dependent on Corinthian policy during the archaic period, by the end of this period the western apoikiai had admittedly begun to diverge from a Corinthian-centred economy and to move away from Corinthian traditions. Internal social diversification also caused these poleis to move away from Corinthian institutions and habits. Nevertheless, despite various political fluctuations, western Corinthian apoikiai remained within the Corinthian sphere of influence and after Timoleon’s campaign they revived old Corinthian traditions and institutions. Indeed, other Greeks of late classical times regarded the citizens of these poleis as if they were indeed Corinthians. The area remained under Corinthian economic influence throughout Hellenistic times and memories of affinities with and ties to Corinth survived in her apoikiai. Lastly, Hellenistic monarchs and even Augustus himself took advantage of the peculiar Corinthian identity of these apoikiai for their own ends.

Patterns of Relationship between Metropolis and Apoikia in Dorian Sicily

2024-05-10T12:30:59+02:00

This paper explores the relationship between Dorian metropoleis of Sicily and their colonies there during the archaic and early classical periods. We will concentrate on three case studies and different topics such as political organization, attitude towards the indigenous populations, alphabet, foreign relations, burials, and material culture. The three case studies are the following: (a) Syracuse and its three colonies, Akrai, Kasmenai and Kamarina, (b) Megara Hyblaea and Selinous, and (c) Gela and Akragas.

Unity and Diversity in Greek Art

2024-05-12T14:01:54+02:00

Athenian art was more or less dominant in the visual culture of the Greek world in the classical period but not in all areas. We explore here the influence of Athens on the art and architecture of regions that had developed their own local traditions. This
happened in times of crisis, political as well as social. Such crises can be detected in the last decades of both the fifth and the fourth centuries BCE. We will begin by examining the impact of the Peloponnesian War on the artistic development of Arcadia and Laconia
and conclude with the aftermath of the Macedonian conquest of Athens after the Lamian War. It appears that in the last twenty years of the fourth century the Macedonians hired Attic masons to reproduce Athenian buildings in Macedonia, and the ban on luxurious grave monuments imposed on Athens by Demetrios of Phaleron drove Athenian artists to emigrate to Macedonia.