Aristocracy in Antiquity: Redefining Greek and Roman Elites 9781910589106, 1910589101

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 THE TROUBLE WITH ‘ARISTOCRACY’
PART I: ELITES IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: APPROACHES AND MODELS
2 GENEALOGICAL AND DYNASTIC BEHAVIOUR IN ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREECE: TWO GENTILICIAN STRATEGIES
3 INVESTIGATING ARISTOCRACY IN ARCHAIC ROME AND CENTRAL ITALY: SOCIAL MOBILITY, IDEOLOGY AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES
4 ROMAN ELITE MOBILITY UNDER THE PRINCIPATE1
PART II: HEREDITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY AT ATHENS
5 WHO WERE THE EUPATRIDS IN ARCHAIC ATHENS?
6 ARISTOCRACY AND THE ATTIC GENOS: A MYTHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
7 ‘ARISTOCRACY’ IN ATHENIAN DIPLOMACY
PART III: COMPETITION AND STRATIFICATION IN THE AEGEAN
8 ‘ARISTOCRATIC’ VALUES AND PRACTICES IN AEGINA: ATHLETES AND COACHES IN PINDAR
9 A SAMIAN LEOPARD?: MEGAS, HIS ANCESTORS AND STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION IN ARCHAIC SAMOS1
10 AGONISTIC ARISTOCRATS? THE CURIOUS CASE OF ARCHAIC CRETE
PART IV: GREEK ELITES OVERSEAS
11 MODES OF COLONIZATION AND ELITE INTEGRATION IN ARCHAIC GREECE
12 DISPLAY AND THE EMERGENCE OF ELITES IN ARCHAIC SICILY
INDEX

Citation preview

‘A RISTOCRACY ’ IN A NTIQUITY R EDEFINING G REEK AND R OMAN E LITES Editors

Nick Fisher and

Hans van Wees Contributors Guy Bradley, Alain Duplouy, Thomas J. Figueira, Nick Fisher, Stephen Lambert, Olivier Mariaud, Antoine Pierrot, Noboru Sato, Gillian Shepherd, Laurens E. Tacoma, Hans van Wees, James Whitley

The Classical Press of Wales

First published in 2015 by The Classical Press of Wales 15 Rosehill Terrace, Swansea SA1 6JN Tel: +44 (0)1792 458397 www.classicalpressofwales.co.uk Distributor I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 6 Salem Rd, London W2 4BU, UK Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7243 1225 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7243 1226 www.ibtauris.com Distributor in North America ISD, LLC 70 Enterprise Drive, Suite 2, Bristol, CT 06010, USA Tel: +1 (860) 584-6546 Fax: +1 (860) 516-4873 www.isdistribution.com © 2015 The authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-1-910589-10-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by Louise Jones, and printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales ––––––––––––––––– The Classical Press of Wales, an independent venture, was founded in 1993, initially to support the work of classicists and ancient historians in Wales and their collaborators from further afield. More recently it has published work initiated by scholars internationally. While retaining a special loyalty to Wales and the Celtic countries, the Press welcomes scholarly contributions from all parts of the world. The symbol of the Press is the Red Kite. This bird, once widespread in Britain, was reduced by 1905 to some five individuals confined to a small area known as ‘The Desert of Wales’ – the upper Tywi valley. Geneticists report that the stock was saved from terminal inbreeding by the arrival of one stray female bird from Germany. After much careful protection, the Red Kite now thrives – in Wales and beyond.

CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements

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INTRODUCTION 1 The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Hans van Wees (University College London) and Nick Fisher (Cardiff University)

1

PART I: ELITES IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: APPROACHES AND MODELS 2 Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in archaic and classical Greece: two gentilician strategies Alain Duplouy (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

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3 Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy: 85 social mobility, ideology and cultural influences Guy Bradley (Cardiff University) 4 Roman elite mobility under the Principate Laurens E. Tacoma (University of Leiden)

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PART II: HEREDITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY AT ATHENS 5 Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? Antoine Pierrot (Université de Montpellier 3) 6 Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Stephen Lambert (Cardiff University) 7 ‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy Noboru Sato (University of Kobe)

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169 203

Contents

PART III: COMPETITION AND STRATIFICATION IN THE AEGEAN 8 ‘Aristocratic’ values and practices in ancient Greece: Aegina, athletes and coaches in Pindar Nick Fisher (Cardiff University)

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9 A Samian leopard? Megas, his ancestors and strategies of social differentiation in Samos Olivier Mariaud (Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble)

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10 Agonistic aristocrats? The curious case of archaic Crete James Whitley (Cardiff University)

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PART IV: GREEK ELITES OVERSEAS 11 Modes of colonization and elite integration in archaic Greece Thomas J. Figueira (Rutgers University, New Jersey) 12 The emergence of elites in archaic Sicily Gillian Shepherd (La Trobe University, Melbourne) Index

313 349 381

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The papers in this volume (apart from Ch. 1) were delivered in a panel on ‘Aristocrats, Elites and Social Mobility in Ancient Societies’, which was part of the Fifth Celtic Conference in Classics, held at University College, Cork, 9–12 July 2008 (some of them had been given preliminary trials at the European Social Science History Conference in Lisbon, February 26–1 March 2008). We are very grateful to these scholars (and also to Benet Salway, who was unable to make his paper available for this volume), and to all the other participants at Cork, who helped to make the event a success. Part of the Homeric paper which Hans van Wees read at the conference, and a little of Nick Fisher’s Aegina paper (Ch. 8), have been incorporated into what has become the introductory first chapter. Regrettable delays in completing this chapter contributed considerably to the long-postponed publication of this book, and we apologise to our contributors for this tardiness and thank them warmly for their patience. Our thanks are also due to Anton Powell, Celtic Conference organiser and publisher extraordinaire, and to his learned reader, for their comments on all the papers, and to Anton and to Louise Jones of Gomer Press, for their customary efficiency in the editing and production of the volume. This is the third volume we have jointly edited for the Classical Press of Wales, and it may well be our last. We have found our collaboration enjoyable and stimulating in equal measure, and we hope that our readers feel the same about the books that are its result. NREF and HvW June 2015

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INTRODUCTION

1 THE TROUBLE WITH ‘ARISTOCRACY’ Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher ‘The history of aristocracies...is littered with self-serving myths which outsiders have been surprisingly willing to accept uncritically’, a recent study warns (Doyle 2010, xv). Our volume shows that ancient ‘aristocracies’ and their modern students are no exception. In antiquity, upper classes commonly claimed that they had inherited, or ought to have inherited, their status, privilege and power because their families excelled in personal virtues such as generosity, hospitality and military prowess while abstaining from ignoble ‘money-making’ pursuits such as commerce or manual labour. In modern scholarship, these claims are often translated into a belief that a hereditary ‘aristocratic’ class is identifiable at most times and places in the ancient world, whether or not it is actually in power as an oligarchy, and that deep ideological divisions existed between ‘aristocratic values’ and the norms and ideals of lower or ‘middling’ classes. Such ancient claims and modern interpretations are pervasively questioned in this volume.1 We suggest that ‘aristocracy’ is only rarely a helpful concept for the analysis of political struggles and historical developments or of ideological divisions and contested discourses in literary and material cultures in the ancient world. Moreover, we argue that a serious study of these subjects requires close analysis of the nature of social inequality in any given time and place, rather than broad generalizations about aristocracies or indeed other elites and their putative ideologies. ‘Aristocracy’, ancient and modern What does it mean to label an elite group an ‘aristocracy’, or a social idea or value ‘aristocratic’? For historians reared in European countries, the standard models tend to be the titled orders or estates in European monarchies since the medieval period. Aristocracy in this sense is a ‘higher

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher class...typically comprising people of noble birth, holding hereditary titles and offices’ (the Shorter Oxford Dictionary online), a system where both status and power are concentrated in a small number of families operating under strong hereditary principles.2 There is necessarily of course a strong connection with wealth, above all in land – individual aristocrats may lose much or all of their wealth, but a class of aristocrats without substantial wealth is hardly imaginable – yet titles and associated access to locations of power are in principle determined by birth. The outstanding personal qualities deemed vital to good government of the state are supposedly found only in certain ‘noble’ families. Such a hereditary system is often institutionalised through a system of formal ‘honours’ in the gift of the monarch, delivered through things such as titles, coats of arms, banners, distinctions of dress and equipment; service in the army and in tournaments as knights, and privileged access to governing bodies, such as a House of Lords.3 On the other hand, scholars brought up in the USA or other parts of the world where the political system was originally founded on a rejection of inherited titles and privilege may be less instinctively inclined to assume that ‘aristocrats’ necessarily make claims to pre-eminence through a longstanding nobility of birth. They tend to operate with a model of a more fluid system where elite dynasties are more patently based on great wealth, landed or industrial, and where there are no institutionalised honours and privileges.4 On this understanding, aristocracy includes ‘all those who by birth or fortune occupy a position distinctly above the rest of the community, and is also used figuratively of those who are superior in other respects’ (Oxford English Dictionary, definition 5).5 Aristocracy in this sense is thus essentially a synonym for ‘elite’. Yet even in this loose sense the word surely cannot fail to suggest an especially exclusive elite: narrower perhaps, more elevated, or more distinctive than other kinds of upper class. A disadvantage of using ‘aristocracy’, as opposed to ‘elite’ or ‘upper class’, is thus that the word implies a highly exclusive group but contains a fundamental ambiguity about whether or not this exclusivity is based on heredity. There surely were some elites in the ancient world, at certain times and places, that deserve to be called ‘aristocracies’ in the narrower sense, but arguably many fewer than often supposed, and the progress of scholarship in the last 30–40 years has done much to reduce their number or significance. One notable example is the Roman patriciate, which comes closer than most ancient elites to being an aristocracy in the full sense. It is now widely accepted that what our sources present as popular agitation from 494 BC onwards to break up a stable, centuries-old monopoly on

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ power was in fact resistance against the first ‘closing of the patriciate’, i.e. an attempt to create an exclusive hereditary oligarchy, which was never completely successful and lasted only about three generations, from c. 450 to 367 BC.6 Even the local, regional and imperial elites of the Roman Empire at its most developed were not the stable, exclusive ruling classes they appear to be at first glance (as shown by Tacoma, this volume). Conditions in the archaic and classical Greek world, the main focus of our volume, were no different in this respect. First, in both archaic and classical Greece a powerful individual such as a basileus or tyrannos may be found at the head of government but such figures do not bear much resemblance to European monarchs. The powers and often the very identities of the basileis widely supposed to have held power in the early stages of Greek poleis are uncertain; however, where we may suppose basileis to have existed, so did hereditary principles.7 Many of the famous tyrants of the seventh to the fifth centuries attempted to found lasting dynasties, but any legitimacy they could claim grew swiftly weaker, and none managed to last beyond the third generation or over a century. There might be special fixed-term appointments like that of Pittakos, aisymne¯te¯s in Mytilene, normally with specific lawgiving tasks. None of these relatively weak rulers, naturally, had any powers to grant permanent privileges or honours to their friends and supporters, and so nowhere do we find anything resembling the holders of hereditary titles and positions such as the dukes, counts, knights and so on who entered the medieval world from the Late Roman empire. Secondly, our evidence for hereditary elites in archaic Greek states is very limited. We have a few elites with titles suggestive of closed groups of families who are said to have dominated office-holding. The Bacchiadai in Corinth and the Eupatridai in Athens are relatively well-attested, but we have only passing references to Penthilidai and competing families in Mytilene, Neleidai in Miletos, and Basilidai at Erythrai.8 Most of these groups are named after a city-founder or other early king, and the –idai and –adai suffixes are usually taken to indicate descent: ‘sons of Bacchis, Penthilos, Neleus, Basile’, and in Athens ‘sons of good fathers’. But the same suffixes were used for fictive kinship groups such as the association of rhapsodes knows as Homeridai, and it has been argued that in some cases, including the Athenian Eupatridai, no shared parentage was implied at all.9 Moreover, other elites were explicitly named for their wealth rather than descent: the ‘land-sharers’ of Samos and Syracuse (Geo¯moroi, Gamoroi); the horse owners of Eretria and Chalcis (Hippeis, Hippobotai).10 To label such elites ‘aristocracies’, as scholars often do, when they themselves made no claim to exclusive descent, seems rather perverse and is certainly misleading.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Alongside the evidence for hereditary elites in particular cities, Homer’s epics and Theognis’ elegies were long regarded as contemporary evidence for the prevalence of aristocracy across early Greece. In Iliad and Odyssey, we encounter beside the ‘king’ a group of basileis which many scholars have taken to be a hereditary class, reflecting the existence of hereditary aristocracies in Early Iron Age Greece. This idea was challenged by Walter Donlan, who saw basileis as ‘chiefs’ with positions based partly on birth and partly on merit within a ‘tribal’ system of ‘rank’ that predated a society stratified by social class. Others have gone further and argued that basileus can mean any man of merit, or any head of household.11 Heredity does seem to play a significant role in Homer, but personal merit is stressed at least as much and the importance of wealth is taken for granted throughout. Since the epics portray a world that is at best an idealized version of reality, we can probably conclude that hereditary privilege, and inherited personal qualities and wealth were an ideal in early Greece, but not that it was a dominant ideal, let alone the norm in real life.12 As for Theognis’ elegies, the widespread view, that the political poems of the Theognid collection represent the bitter grievances of a traditional Megarian aristocracy under challenge from nouveaux riches and an ungrateful people,13 has recently been countered with the suggestion that these poems’ idealised and generalised representation of ‘good men’ contains little that is ‘aristocratic’ in the full sense.14 If the poems reflect (or at least start from) conditions in mainland Megara in the sixth century,15 they concern a polis for which we have no evidence of any political groups or systems before the tyranny of Theagenes, in the second half of the seventh century,16 nor any sign of claims to exclusive power exercised by a group of families with genealogical names.17 Most poems in the Theognid corpus which complain about the state of politics and society do not represent an ideology in which power is justified primarily on the basis of ancestry of landed wealth and past leadership in the community. The basis of the claims to excellence is, rather, a simple – and highly dubious – assertion of superior moral values in the speaker’s group such as courage, trust, loyalty, reciprocity and justice, i.e. it is closer to a claim to ‘aristocracy’ in the strict Greek sense. When noble birth is cited as an important criterion for ‘goodness’ (arete¯), or for being one of the agathoi (esp. at 183–96), it is in the social context of a choice of marriage partners, rather than as part of a grumble about new holders of political power; there is no suggestion that ‘goodness’ lasted over many generations. Theognis’ ideology may contain what one may call aristocratic tendencies or ambitions, but it does not place noble birth at the centre of its discussion of ‘goodness’ or ‘justice’ (dikaiosyne¯ ). Thirdly, it was long held that the dominance of aristocracies in many

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ states was supported by a traditional and hierarchical structure of longstanding tribes (often called phylai), subdivided into other hereditary groups (such as phratries, patrai, etc.), which were supposedly dominated by aristocratic smaller groups (e.g. the gene¯ in Athens). This view was dealt a mortal blow in 1976 by the simultaneous and independent work of Bourriot on the Attic gene¯ and Roussel on the tribes and phratries throughout Greece.18 They demonstrated that these pseudo-kinship organisations were not survivals from earlier, pre-polis, ‘tribal’ states, but constructs which were constantly being redefined during the archaic and classical periods, as cities kept adapting their identities, their citizenship regulations, their mythical histories and their festivals. This does not exclude the possibility that in some cases at least, for example at Athens, some smaller groups which in later periods still provided priests for old-style cults and renegotiated and fought over their positions of some privilege, had had more political power in the sixth century than they did later.19 Fourthly, ancient Greek, unlike later European languages or the Latin of the Republic, did not operate with value terms which unambiguously indicate superiority, power or distinction justified primarily by birth. This might seem odd, as our ‘aristocratic’ terms are obviously derived from the Greek aristokratia, aristokratikos and aristokrateisthai. But these terms were not used primarily to indicate a class whose power is justified above all by birth.20 When they appear in fifth- and fourth-century writers (e.g. Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle), they essentially maintain their basic meaning of ‘rule by the few who are morally the best’, and noble birth only occasionally appears among the criteria of ‘moral virtue’ for such few, along with wealth, education, fairness or courage.21 Similarly the other ‘moral’ terms which could be appropriated by the rich and powerful to indicate their superiority, such as agathoi, aristoi, beltioi, kaloi, chre¯stoi, or epieikeis, are equally moralising and socially non-specific, while those terms which do suggest superiority of birth, such as eugeneis and eugeneia,22 gennaioi, eupatridai, or indicate rather wealth, such as plousioi (rich), or pachees (fat cats), or reputation (gno¯rimoi), or education and wit (eutrapeloi, charientes), are less frequently appealed to, and do not necessarily imply power-holding. As Alain Duplouy emphasizes (2006, and in this volume), to label such discussions where self-styled agathoi defend their position or values as in, say, the Theognidea as defences of aristocratic principles suppresses the interplay of many different criteria of excellence. It is probably right to see in some of these cases some elements of ‘aristocratic’ thinking, suggestions of privilege and political power for elites justified at least in part by birth, but this is a long way from a firm connection between noble birth and power.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher One particular collocation of values – kalos kai agathos, literally ‘noble and good’ – was long supposed to be the most specific term for an upper class of aristocrats, in the archaic period as well as the classical. But a strong case has been made, by Donlan (1973) and at great length by Bourriot (1995),23 that the phrase itself did not exist before the second half of the fifth century. It seems that the notion came into vogue around this time as a term of high social and moral evaluation, but with no especially strong connection with ‘landed aristocrats’; rather it was available as a term of praise for decent members of the leisured classes, moderate oligarchs, or those with cultivated tastes or specialist knowledge.24 Fifthly and finally, insofar as inherited wealth is an essential feature of aristocracy, we must question the assumption that the transmission of property in the ancient world was sufficiently stable to allow the creation of closed elites. This assumption, usually tacit, was made explicit by Finley in his account of The World of Odysseus: The economy was such that the creation of new fortunes, and thereby of new nobles, was out of the question. Marriage was strictly class-bound, so that the other door to social advancement was also securely locked... There was little possibility, under normal, peaceful conditions, to acquire new land (1954/1977, 53, 59–60).

Even for the Homeric world, the validity of these claims is questionable, and they certainly cannot be taken to apply to early Greece in general, let alone to the ancient world as a whole. Even if ‘peaceful conditions’ were ‘normal’, there was a great deal of warfare, raiding and violent internal conflict that saw landed and other property change hands. In many periods and places extensive overseas settlement or ‘internal colonisation’ brought new land and other resources into use. As early as Hesiod, we have evidence for farmers increasing their wealth by trading surplus produce overseas: ‘the bigger the cargo, the larger the profit upon profit’ (Works and Days 644).25 The evidence for ‘strictly class-bound’ marriage is in fact confined to the Bacchiadai at Corinth (Hdt. 5.92.β1) and a short-lived attempt by the patricians to institute it at Rome.26 Theognis may deplore the universal willingness to marry into wealth, regardless of all other considerations (above), but this only confirms that marriage was not ‘classbound’ in his day; we cannot infer that it once used to be the norm. What is more, whereas the primogeniture practised by, for instance, the British aristocracy helped ensure at least a degree of stability, the system of partible inheritance in force everywhere in the Greek and Roman worlds inherently tended to create instability. A property large enough to secure elite status might no longer be sufficient in the next generation when equally divided among three sons, especially when substantial dowries or

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ other shares for daughters were deducted. The twin trends that resulted were instant downward mobility for many individuals but at the same time a longer-term trend for fragmented properties to coalesce into larger estates controlled by fewer and fewer families (see Tacoma, this volume). The classic illustration of this problem is Sparta, which set a high economic threshold for full citizenship but did not allow for those whose inheritance ended up falling short of the requirement to be replaced by the newly wealthy or by outsiders: a catastrophic loss of citizen manpower resulted.27 Under the conditions of partible inheritance, any elite that tried to close it itself off on the basis of heredity, would have suffered the same fate, quickly growing smaller if less wealthy descendants were dropped, or becoming internally deeply divided if even impoverished families retained their inherited status. In sum, the political and economic preconditions for the creation of hereditary aristocracies of the medieval and early modern European type (strong royal authority, stable transmission of wealth) did not exist in most parts of the ancient world, and we have much less evidence than we used to imagine for the importance of hereditary status and privilege in general and for the existence of closed hereditary elites in particular. We have every reason to doubt, therefore, that social and political elites in the ancient world commonly took the form of ‘aristocracies’ in the full sense, or that those which did take this form could have lasted long. We should be alert to regional variations (see Whitley, this volume) and consider each state and each period in its own right, as many contributors to this volume do in examining the nature of elites and their self-justifications in Athens, Aegina, Samos, Crete and Sicily.28 Only where we can be confident that heredity really was the primary criterion for membership in the elite does it seem appropriate to use the label ‘aristocracy’. Arguably the Bacchiadai in Corinth and the patricians at their most ‘closed’ are the only elites that deserve this label, but even if we were to accept other candidates as well, we would not be justified in speaking of ‘aristocracy’ as a general phenomenon in any period of antiquity. ‘Aristocratic society’, ancient and modern If the concept of aristocracy may be profoundly misleading, how does this affect our ideas about the social structures of which aristocracies form part? Modern analogies, despite having been generally rejected as inapplicable to the ancient world, have nevertheless again, indirectly, exercised a strong distorting influence on our picture of ancient society. In modern European history, it was above all the emergence of an ever more wealthy ‘bourgeoisie’ of industrialists and merchants that reduced

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher the political power of hereditary landowning aristocracies to the point where ‘the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’, as The Communist Manifesto put it (Marx and Engels 1848, 6). Some scholars used to argue that the same thing happened in antiquity: most famously, Percy Ure in The Origins of Tyranny (1922) suggested that aristocracy was overthrown in archaic Greece by tyrants who represented a newly wealthy class of craftsmen and traders, enriched by the opportunities provided by colonization and expanding trade. This ‘deeply entrenched assumption that there must have been a powerful capitalist class between the landowning aristocracy and the poor’ has been widely criticized as anachronistic and is now widely and rightly rejected.29 Yet we still operate with a diluted version of this model insofar as scholars typically assume that the starting point of ancient social history was a situation in which aristocrats monopolized both political power and landownership, so that ‘ruling class’ and socio-economic ‘upper class’ coincided and a challenge to the ruling aristocracy could only come from outside the established upper class of landowners. ‘The hereditary ruling aristocrats’ in early Greece ‘were by and large the principal landowners’, even if their opponents included ‘some men who had become prosperous themselves’ (de Ste. Croix 1981, 280; emphasis added); at Rome, the patricians were ‘by and large...the richest landowners’, though ‘not quite all the wealthiest families’ were included ‘of course’, and the leading plebeians ‘were mainly rich men’ (ibid., 334; emphasis original).30 Hereditary aristocracy and propertied class were thus supposedly almost identical, and by implication resistance to aristocratic dominance must have come from an equivalent of the modern bourgeoisie, be it a rival elite of nouveaux riches or a broader ‘middle class’ or even simply the ‘commoners’, ‘masses’, de¯mos or plebs in general. It is not easy to demonstrate that or how any of these groups did in fact acquire the power to oppose the aristocracy, and scholars often simply posit that it must have happened, as the only possible explanation for the aristocracy’s loss of power.31 If we accept, however, that it is no more than a modern assumption that ruling aristocracies were identical with the upper class of landowners, tacitly borrowed from medieval and early modern models along with the assumption that hereditary aristocracy was the norm in early Greece and Rome, another line of explanation for the loss of power becomes conceivable. We may take as our starting point the situation which prevailed in classical and later antiquity, when the main social divide was determined by wealth, not by birth. The widely accepted conclusion of the two classic studies of ancient social and economic history, Moses Finley’s The Ancient Economy (1973) and Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Greek World (1981), is that ‘the most important single dividing line’ in ancient Greek and Roman society separated ‘the propertied class’ from the rest of the population. This propertied class consisted of those who were rich enough to be exempt from the need to work for a living, and typically lived a life of more or less ostentatious leisure.32 By far their most important form of property was agricultural land; anyone who had become rich by other means would have to convert his wealth into landed property in order to join the propertied elite.33 Wide differences in wealth and prestige within this elite – de Ste. Croix spoke of ‘propertied classes’ in the plural, divided by scale and type of property (1981, 116), whereas Finley preferred ‘a spectrum of statuses or orders’ (1973, 68) – were less important than the line between leisured property owners and the rest of the community. The ruling class sometimes coincided with the propertied class, but often it was much smaller. In later Republican Rome the ‘propertied class’ was divided into a ruling elite of senators and a ‘non-political’ class of equites (de Ste. Croix 1981, 42) while in classical Greece ruling elites were of widely different sizes and might include at their narrowest only ‘a few leading families, forming a hereditary dynasteia’ (ibid., 283). Once we abandon the medieval model of aristocracy, there is no reason to think that the earliest Greek and Roman elites were any different from their classical successors. We certainly have no actual evidence that patricians, Bacchiadai, or the like, monopolized landownership as opposed to political privileges.34 By contrast, the existence of a substantial number of rich men outside the ‘aristocracy’ is clearly implied by the struggles for the highest political offices – archonship and consulship – in sixth-century Athens and fifth-century Rome, and we have no grounds for assuming that these men of wealth were a small group or of recent origin.35 Hesiod’s Works and Days, although usually regarded as representing the world of ‘peasants’, is better understood as a reflection of the existence in seventhcentury Greece of a propertied elite which is excluded from power: the poet adopts the persona of a landowner who is not part of the ruling elite of basileis, yet is far from a subsistence farmer since he employs a minimum of four slaves and two hired labourers on annual contracts, owns a range of livestock and a ship, and aspires – beyond self-sufficiency and freedom from debt and hunger – to success in competitive accumulation of wealth.36 The tradition of the Servian Reform in Rome implies that a formal property-class distinction between the classis and those who were infra classem (as well as perhaps a legal distinction between landowning adsidui and landless proletarii) was introduced in the sixth century BC, before the patriciate tried to close itself off as a ruling class within this propertied elite (see pp. 2–3 and n. 6, above).

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher In short, it seems likely that from the very beginning of social stratification in early Greece and Rome, the upper social classes were elites of wealth, defined above all by their ability to live in leisure off the labour of others, and that the ‘aristocracies’ and other exclusive ruling classes which developed from time to time in some places were not necessarily identical with the propertied class but typically formed an elite within the elite (cf. Powell 2001, 102–3, on 5th-century Sparta). When aristocracies lost their power, therefore, we need not look for the arrival of a new social and political force, the equivalent of the modern bourgeoisie, as the instrument of their demise, but can consider it likely that their main rival for power – also the main rival of oligarchic regimes in later periods – was the politically excluded part of the established propertied elite. This has important implications. Instead of having to posit the existence of socially ostracised nouveaux riches, we can contemplate the possibility of fluid up- and downward social mobility into and out of the propertied class, as opposed to the ruling clique.37 Instead of having to assume the emergence of a powerful new ‘middle class’ or a new assertiveness by the community at large, we can consider whether the power struggles of early Greece and Rome may have been fought largely within the propertied elite, and whether the struggles for social justice and economic fairness fought by the lower classes may have been triggered, not by any new-found power of a middle class or the community, but by an escalation in the exploitation and humiliation which they suffered at the hands of the propertied classes.38 The influential notion of a rising middle class itself derives largely from a modern model. Even scholars who reject the idea that a commercial bourgeoisie ever arose in antiquity have often felt the need to identify a different form of middle class: the men who formed the bulk of the heavily armed militia and as such had the means and the justification to take a share in power. This idea was first suggested for both Greece and Rome by Martin Nilsson (1929a, b) and appears in the work of both Finley and de Ste. Croix, among many others, whether or not the militia is actually labelled a ‘middle class’.39 It was the hoplite militia, consisting of ‘a middle class of relatively prosperous, but non-aristocratic, farmers with a sprinkling of merchants, shippers and craftsmen’, that ousted the aristocracy, according to Finley, who conceded that it was ‘obscure’ how this class emerged (1970, 98–9, 103). Greek hoplites, Macedonian phalangites and Roman legionaries were credited with the same role by de Ste. Croix, who was more precise about their composition: ‘a good proportion’ came from the propertied classes, but militias ‘must always have included at the lowest hoplite level a certain number of men who needed to spend a certain amount of their time working for their living, generally as peasant farmers’

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ (115; cf. 280); he estimated the size of a Greek militia as ‘something between one-fifth and one-third of all citizens in most cases’ (283). The views of Finley and de Ste. Croix on this subject are particularly striking because their general models of ancient society do not actually have any place for hoplites as a social class. Both argued that only two classes existed below the propertied class. First, the ‘peasantry’ forming the great majority of free people: ‘self-employed workers, either as smallholders or tenants on the land, or as independent craftsmen, traders and moneylenders in the towns’ (Finley 1973, 73); ‘small independent producers’ who ‘did not exploit the labour of others to any substantial degree, but lived by their own efforts on or near the subsistence level’ (de Ste. Croix 1981, 4). Second, at the bottom of the social hierarchy, the ‘dependent’ labour force which performed the productive work from which the elite derived its revenue (see below). Militia membership thus did not coincide with the main social classes but cut across them – including a small proportion of working farmers alongside a large proportion of the propertied elite – and it was not itself deemed a social distinction worth featuring in these models of social stratification.40 If these scholars nevertheless credited the militia with ending the power of the aristocracy, it was clearly not because of a well-attested place for the militia in the social structure, but surely because an anachronistic model of the decline of ‘aristocracy’ suggested that some sort of ‘middle’ class must have been responsible, and the militia seemed the sole available candidate to play the role of the modern bourgeoisie. Ancient evidence for the importance of a middle class is confined to Aristotle’s eulogy of ‘the middle’ (to meson) as a force for stability where it is numerous enough to provide a balance (Politics 1295b3–97b29). He himself noted that ‘the middle’ was almost always too small in Greek cities to achieve such a balance (1296a23–7), and that rare ‘middle constitutions’ never lasted long (1296a37–40). How the ‘middle class’ is defined in social and economic terms remains quite unclear, except that it falls between ‘very rich’ and ‘very poor’ (1295b3) and includes the likes of Lycurgus, ‘because he was not a king’ (1296a18–21). A single passage links ‘the middle’ to the militia but does not equate the two, implying only that the middle class fell within the hoplite range (1297b16–29), while a discussion of the ideal middle constitution explains that it should include only hoplites, but not all hoplites: a property qualification must be set to exclude the poorer sections of the militia (1297b1–12). It is thus entirely possible that Aristotle’s ‘middle class’ refers mainly to a section of the propertied elite, and that the description of this group as ‘middle’ is a theoretical construct motivated by Aristotle’s philosophical ideas rather than a real-life social category.41

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher As for the hoplite militia, evidence for its membership is far from clearcut. In fifth-century Athens, there is no doubt that it extended below the propertied classes to include working farmers, insofar as these owned shields and spears and were available for mobilization in general levies. But those who were liable to serve as hoplites also in offensive campaigns overseas apparently came from a narrower group whom Aristotle called ‘the notables’, i.e. the propertied class (Pol. 1303a8–10). In Sparta and Crete, all hoplites belonged to the class of leisured landowners, and this was also the ideal of Greek political theory, including Plato’s and Aristotle’s. In Rome, the property qualification for legionary service in the highest classis, originally the only classis, was 100,000–125,000 asses: the equivalent of 1.5–2 talents of silver, easily leisure-class-level wealth. If the zeugitai in Solon’s property-class system were as wealthy as later evidence suggests and were the lowest class liable for hoplite service – both points are contested – then the threshold for hoplite service was set equally high in archaic Athens.42 It is often argued that almost as soon as hoplite armour was invented, c. 700 BC, it must have been adopted by everyone who could afford it and that this must have included numerous ‘well-to-do and middling peasants’ (de Ste. Croix 1981, 280). We cannot simply assume, however, that this category of working farmers formed a significant social and economic group in the archaic age, as it did in classical Athens (but not Sparta). And if their numbers were small in archaic Greece, the only men who could afford hoplite armour would have belonged to the propertied class.43 This is not the place to pursue these problems any further. It will suffice to reiterate that the evidence for the rise of a hoplite class below the ‘aristocracy’ or propertied class is in itself anything but compelling, and that, once we abandon the traditional model of aristocracy, we are no longer forced to identify such a class but are free to reconsider who constituted the militia, and what role, if any, they may have played in internal power struggles.44 By the same token, we are free not to regard the rise of the polis as the result of a struggle by ‘the people’ to constrain the power of long-established ‘aristocracies’ but as the creation of a propertied elite formally establishing its collective rights and privileges both against the ‘poor’ and against would-be ‘aristocrats’ amongst themselves.45 Finally, the medieval model may also have affected our traditional model of the working classes in the ancient world. Just as medieval aristocrats relied on ‘serfs’ to cultivate their land, so ancient landowners are thought to have relied primarily on ‘unfree’ or ‘dependent’ labour to work their estates. Finley posited, as if it were a well-established fact, that ‘historically speaking, the institution of wage labour is a sophisticated

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ latecomer’; in early history, a labour force beyond ‘the household or kinship group’ was obtained not by hiring it but by compelling it, by force of arms or by force of law and custom. This involuntary labour force, furthermore, was normally not composed of slaves but of one or another ‘half-way’ type, such as the debt-bondsman, the helot, the early Roman client, the late Roman colonus (1973, 65–6).

De Ste. Croix agreed that ‘the single most important organisational difference between the ancient economy and that of the modern world’ was the ‘very small degree’ to which the propertied classes used hired labour (1981, 179) rather than slaves, serfs or debt-bondsmen (133–74), or, as Finley preferred, a ‘spectrum’ of dependent statuses (1973, 66–9). This model evidently draws not only on medieval serfdom but also on the idea that the modern bourgeoisie was the first to make wage labour the normal form of exploitation, so that in antiquity hired labour must have been marginal at best. So The Communist Manifesto: In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society in various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank... The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society...has simplified the class antagonisms. Society is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes facing one another... In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed (Marx and Engels 1848, 3–4, 10–11).

Again we may wonder whether this model is really applicable to antiquity. It is true that slaves are more often mentioned in our sources than hired workers – though it may be noted that in Athenian mining and construction, at any rate, slaves were employed as hired labour, even if their wages were collected by their owners – and that in the workshops where the modern bourgeois would have employed hired men we typically find slaves in antiquity. De Ste. Croix argued at length that hired labour was so deeply despised and miserable that no free man would have been willing to undertake it (1981, 179–204), while Finley suggested that there was simply no scope for hired labour, except some extra seasonal harvesting work for otherwise independent working farmers, and ‘odd jobs as porters at the docks or in the building trades’ for the destitute (1973, 73–4). Yet both authors commit a sleight of hand in glossing over two major kinds of hired labour. They noted in passing the role of paid military service but dismissed it as an exception and irrelevance – but civic and mercenary service, especially as oarsmen in navies, provided wages for many thousands for

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher considerable periods of time from the late sixth century BC onwards.46 They further classed tenant farmers as ‘independent peasants’, despite the fact that tenants by definition do not own the land on which they work.47 A tenant paying a fixed rent might be almost as free as an independent farmer, but he would still in essence provide labour to the landowner on a contractual basis; in less favourable forms of contract such as sharecropping, it is even more obvious that we dealing with a form of hired labour. Moreover, we have numerous references to ‘hired labourers’ (the¯tes) in agriculture from the earliest Greek literature onwards, and in Homer, Hesiod and Solon alike the references are to annual contracts, not to casual seasonal labour. In the classical period, up to 15,000 stranded oarsmen were able to find alternative hired employment in agriculture on Chios and Corcyra.48 More remarkably still, the entire lowest property class in Athens was labelled the¯tes by the time of Solon, if not earlier, which at a minimum must imply that the propertied classes saw these people primarily as their ‘hired labourers’, even if many the¯tes may have had other sources of income as well. On even the most optimistic interpretation, this lowest class made up 50% of Athens’ citizen population; if our sources are right about the qualification for the next property class, it must have been nearer 85%.49 Aristotle regarded ‘the wage labourers’ (to the¯tikon) as a sufficiently important element of ‘the people’, alongside farmers, craftsmen and retail traders, to argue that their inclusion in the citizen body would alter the nature of democracy, for the worse (Pol. 1296b25–30; 1317a23–9; 1319a24–38). This is not to say, of course, that wage labour was as important in antiquity as in the modern world, or that a developed ‘labour market’ existed, but merely that hired labour may have been much more common than the model would have us believe. If so, we may also need to reconsider the scale of free ‘peasantry’ in ancient society. The claim that independent working farmers formed the majority of the free population in most periods of antiquity is not based on any attested figures, but follows from the model. If the role of hired labour was minimal, then almost everyone, apart from those who worked under coercion on the land of the rich, must have made a living independently – which in an agricultural society means largely from their own land. It was indeed a key part of Finley’s model that in many parts of the ancient world the forms of dependent labour which were originally the norm were abolished, so that the only two remaining categories were chattel slaves and free peasants. When and why this happened remains unclear.50 The reverse development, a widespread swing from free to ‘dependent’ labour, occurred according to both Finley and de Ste. Croix in late antiquity and paved the way for medieval serfdom.51 But if we allow a larger role for

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ wage labour, sharecropping, tenancy and so forth, the number of independent farmers shrinks accordingly, and the transitions become less dramatic. The allotments of Roman colonists, for example, often seem too small to sustain independent farmers, and may have been designed to ensure that the colonists would have to seek paid employment and patronage from richer neighbours.52 Independent working farmers may have been admired – though not as much as landowners who employed others to work their estates – but it does not follow that they formed the majority of free men. In sum, ‘aristocracy’ has brought with it a whole series of assumptions about the structure of ancient society, some borrowed anachronistically from medieval aristocracy and serfdom, others developed – ironically – in an effort to avoid anachronism and work out what social groups must have existed instead of a commercial bourgeoisie and labouring proletariat. Without these assumptions, a good deal of ancient evidence seems open to quite different interpretations, and we suggest that these alternatives are well worth exploring. ‘Aristocratic values’, ancient and modern The notion of ‘aristocratic values’ or ‘aristocratic ideology’ is beset by even greater ambiguities and obscurities than the concept of aristocracy as such. One often has the impression that scholars simply assume that all norms and ideals of behaviour attributed to members of the elite by our sources were exclusively ‘aristocratic’ values, which the rest of the community did not share or at any rate did not try equally hard to live by. Since we have very little evidence for the norms and ideals of the lower classes, it is very easy to slip into making such assumptions – and all the more important to avoid doing so. Some major models of the rise of the Greek polis and subsequently of democracy have been formulated in terms of a direct contest between ‘aristocratic’ (or ‘elitist’) values and non-aristocratic (or ‘middling’) ethos and lifestyle, so it is important to be precise in our use of such concepts. A fundamental distinction needs to be made at the outset between two different kinds of potentially ‘aristocratic’ value. The first kind of value serves to make distinctions, to ‘differentiate’ between groups of unequal status: such values tend to shape a distinctive lifestyle and may include the articulation of an ethos which other social groups do not share. The second kind of value serves to justify inequality of status or power, to ‘legitimate’ the existence of ‘aristocracy’ or some other form of hierarchy. Unlike ‘differentiating’ standards, ‘legitimating’ norms, ideals and principles of social order must by definition be shared by other social groups, or else

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher they could not have the desired effect of persuading the community that inequality is fair or even necessary. Ideally, the two kinds of value coincide, as when an elite shares the ethos of the rest of the community but differentiates itself by claiming to attain much higher standards than the lower classes, and legitimates itself by claiming that its ability to reach such standards brings benefit to the rest of the community. But in reality there will often be tension between the two kinds of value: an elite may differentiate itself too much and thereby undermine its legitimacy; or it may not do enough to legitimate itself and thereby limit its scope to differentiate itself without alienating those of lower status; or it may differentiate and legitimate itself in ways that seem mutually incompatible, for instance setting itself apart by a lifestyle of luxurious leisure while claiming to serve as a military elite that protects the community. These important tensions must not be glossed over by an imprecise and indiscriminate use of the term ‘aristocratic values’. For early Greece and Italy, scholars have typically imagined a ‘warrior culture’ in which values of military prowess both differentiate and legitimate the elite. The upper class was distinctive in cultivating high standards of courage, fame and honour, and of military skill and equipment, which the common man accepted as admirable even if he did not and could not himself aspire to such excellence; the upper class was legitimate because its military excellence was essential in providing protection for the lower classes. We shall argue that this picture is based on a highly selective interpretation of the evidence, guided by a model of aristocratic values based on an impression of medieval military elites. A single strand of the legitimating values found in Homeric epic has been picked out because it is reminiscent of ‘knightly’ ideology, and has been wrongly regarded as representing not only the full range of elite legitimations but also the full reality of an exclusive elite lifestyle. The same selectivity and confusion between different kinds of elite values has affected accounts of historical developments, so that scholars have posited changes in elite ideology or clashes between ideologies where there were none, while they have downplayed or overlooked ideological changes and conflicts which did occur but do not fit the model. ‘Legitimating’ elite values in Homer An attempt to improve our understanding of ‘aristocratic’ values must begin with the Iliad. Here Achilles engages in fierce rivalry with Agamemnon for ‘respect’ or ‘honour’ (time¯ ), fights Hector in battle to exact revenge, and prepares to die in combat for the sake of fame (kleos) and glory (kudos). From Moses Finley’s The World of Odysseus (1954/1977) onwards, many

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ historians have concluded that the life of early Greek ‘aristocrats’ revolved entirely around war and conflict, driven by a selfish quest for honour and fame. Homer’s heroes lived in ‘a warrior culture...and the main theme of a warrior culture is constructed on two notes – prowess and honour... The heroic code was complete and unambiguous’ (Finley 1954, 113). This code showed no interest in the wider community: ‘a notion of social obligation is fundamentally non-heroic’ (116). The elite was selfish, honour-obsessed and fame-hungry; the community ‘could only grow by taming the hero’ (117).53 Finley’s generalized formulations regarding ‘warrior cultures’ and ‘heroic’ values reveal the influence of prior assumptions,54 and the influence of modern aristocratic models in particular is clear. Finley rightly rejected the idea of ‘feudal’ land tenure in Homer, but otherwise his heroes show uncanny similarities to European knights. They maintained ‘a whole hierarchy of retainers’, explicitly compared to the hierarchy from Lord Chamberlain down to ‘noble page at some early modern court’ (58–9; cf. 103–5), whom they mobilized in violent competition with one another. ‘One princely oikos vied with another for greater wealth and power, for more prestige and a superior status’, under few constraints, because ‘a higher coercive power was largely lacking’ (105). The king ‘gave military leadership and protection, and he gave little else’ (97); his position was always precarious as ‘the nobles proposed to...keep the king on the level of a first among equals’ (84, 106). The wider community barely existed, except for the purposes of waging ‘war, defensive in particular’ (82). This is all closely reminiscent of medieval territorial kingdoms, with kings who were essentially war-leaders and often in a weak position vis-à-vis powerful barons. The exclusive ‘heroic code’ recalls the code of chivalry. Later scholarship has rejected medieval parallels, and in view of the small scale of the villages and emerging city-states of Early Iron Age Greece preferred to think in terms of far smaller households and a more prominent role for the community.55 Yet the image of ‘aristocratic’ values often remains almost unchanged, so powerful is the appeal of Finley’s model and the medieval parallels which inspired it.56 Three questionable assumptions are made about the nature of Greek ‘heroic’ values: first, that they formed ‘a complete and unambiguous’ code (113); secondly, that they were the only values of any significance to the upper classes; thirdly, that only the upper classes adopted these values.57 On the first point, a reader of the Iliad who is less predisposed to find ‘aristocratic values’ may well conclude that the heroic code is far from unambiguous. There is a genuine tension between Achilles’ desire to avenge slighted honour and the moral pressure to consider the interests

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher of his comrades, accept reconciliation, show respect for higher authority, human and divine, and to have pity – each one of these values surely shared by the common man and conducive to community life.58 Secondly, personal fame and honour in war are clearly not the heroes’ only goals. In combat, they also aim to protect the community; off the battlefield, they compete with equal enthusiasm in public speaking, offering ‘good counsel’, and arbitrating in legal disputes. Even Achilles is trained to be a ‘speaker of words’, as well as a ‘doer of deeds’; public debate is, like the battlefield, an arena ‘where men emerge as outstanding’ (Il. 9.440–3). Sarpedon’s wisdom as a judge is rated on a par with his martial prowess in defence of his people when he is praised as a ruler ‘who protected Lycia with his judgements (dikai ) and his strength’ (16.541–2). The competitive element in court proceedings is institutionalized, with a prize for the judge who proposes the best verdict (18.503–8).59 Thirdly, the upper classes are not alone in valuing excellence in war, assembly and court. Even the greatest heroes aim to win the recognition of the common man in these arenas. Sarpedon and Glaucus must win fame in war so that ‘some Lycian’ (tis Lykio¯n) may conclude that they deserve their privileges (Il. 12.310–21). Hector’s decision to face Achilles in combat rather than retreat behind the walls of Troy – often regarded as the height of self-interested ‘aristocratic’ glory-seeking – is motivated by his sense that this is the only way to redeem his reputation in the eyes of ‘the Trojan men and Trojan women’ in general, among whom ‘one of lower status’ (tis kako¯teros) might criticize him (22.104–10). Speeches are made in public assemblies and judgements are delivered in front of large crowds in the town square, so these performances, too, are assessed by the people. In short, Homer imagines the elite as playing roles in which they serve the community, and as competing for the approval of the community at large, as well as of their peers; there is no sign here of diverging upper- and lower-class values. The main threat envisaged to the community is that rivalry for honour may escalate into a damaging conflict, but the Iliad never suggests that such rivalry is a strictly upper-class obsession, rejected or at least not shared by the common man. Indeed, it is a ‘man of the people’, Thersites, who uniquely voices the opinion that Achilles should have reacted more violently to being ‘dishonoured’: ‘but truly Achilles has no anger in his soul; he lets things go’ (Il. 2.239–42; cf. 198). In a famous passage which distinguishes between good and bad ‘rivalry’ (eris), one which causes violence and another which stimulates productivity, Hesiod notes that it affects all social classes: ‘potter resents potter, and carpenter, carpenter; beggar envies beggar, and singer, singer’ (Works & Days 11–26). Rivalry for the position of ruler of Ithaca, for instance, clearly poses a

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ greater danger to the community than rivalry between two paupers to be ‘boss of the beggars’ (Od. 18.106), but that is because the stakes are higher and greater resources can be mobilized, not because the elite behaves according to a different set of ‘aristocratic’ values. The values we have so far considered serve to legitimate inequality insofar as the elite claim that they are superior to the common people in the competition to excel in bravery, wisdom and justice for the benefit of the community. This alleged gap in personal qualities even justifies different treatment. ‘An outstanding man’ will be asked to obey ‘with pleasant words’, since ‘it is not appropriate to try to intimidate you as if you were a bad man (kakos)’ (Il. 2.188–90), but a ‘man of the people’ may be physically beaten and told: ‘Listen to the word of those who are better than you; you are unwarlike and a coward; you do not count at all in war or counsel’ (2.198–202). Odysseus threatens the ‘worst’ man that next time he will strip him naked as well as beat him; ‘the masses’ praise this as ‘the greatest deed Odysseus ever did’ (2.211–78). Here, then, is a norm which we may call ‘aristocratic’, or rather ‘elitist’: inferiors may be put in their place with violence, while peers must be treated with respect. Alongside personal qualities, two other legitimating values play a role, sometimes at odds with individual merit: the status of one’s family, and ‘honour from Zeus’. Diomedes thinks that a speech offering good advice may be ‘dishonoured’ if the audience thinks that the speaker is ‘by descent a bad and weak man’ ( genos ge kakon kai analkida, Il. 14.126–7). He prefaces his own advice with the claim that ‘I too pride myself on being the offspring ( genos) of a good father’, Tydeus, son of Oineus (himself ‘outstanding in excellence’ among his brothers), who migrated to Argos, married the daughter of king Adrestos, enjoyed great wealth in land and livestock, and ‘excelled with the spear among all Greeks’ (14.113–25). In turn, Agamemnon thinks that Diomedes might pick a companion for a dangerous mission who is not the best man, but ‘a worse one, because you succumb to feelings of respect when you consider his descent’ ( genee¯n, 10.235–9). Status based on descent can thus override status based on personal merit, which may seem an ‘aristocratic’ norm. However, Diomedes does not assert that his birth into a particular family entitles him to the privilege of speaking in counsel: he merely says that his father’s personal merit and wealth entitle him, the son, to be treated with respect when he speaks. The more one’s status relies on the qualities of one’s ancestors rather than one’s own, the more ‘aristocratic’ the value system, but Diomedes’ claim is at the lower end of the spectrum, priding himself literally on a ‘good father’ and no more. The principle that one’s parents’

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher or grandparents’ reputation can enhance, or detract from, one’s own status may well apply among the lower classes, too. By contrast, ‘honour from Zeus’ is an unambiguously aristocratic principle of legitimation. The concept is that basileis, ‘lords’, are given the right to rule by Zeus, who bestows upon them a hereditary ‘staff’ which symbolizes their power and especially the right to administer justice. The Iliad emphasizes that this is what makes Agamemnon superior to all others, by presenting a detailed history of his ‘ancestral staff’ (2.46, 100–8), and having Nestor and Odysseus repeatedly explain its significance. Most clearly, Nestor tells Achilles: You should not seek to confront a basileus in rivalry, for a staff-bearing basileus to whom Zeus gave glory certainly does not have the same share of honour. It is true that you are a strong man, and a goddess is your mother, but he is better (pherteros), because he rules over more people (1.277–81).

Agamemnon’s inherited ‘honour from Zeus’ thus takes the form of power over more subjects than Achilles has, and explicitly outweighs both Achilles’ greater personal merit as a warrior and his superior parentage.60 And just as Achilles, himself a ‘lord’, must obey a ‘lord’ whose divine right is greater than his own, so a common man like Thersites is not allowed to ‘challenge the lords’ or ‘criticize the lords’ at all (2.214, 247, 277). The divine and hereditary right asserted here is not absolute, however: abuse of power results in widespread refusal to obey. Not only does Achilles refuse to serve Agamemnon any longer, but Thersites advocates that the entire army should follow suit (2.236–8) and the poet indicates that resentment at Agamemnon’s treatment of Achilles caused many Greeks to fight only half-heartedly (Il. 14.49–51, 131–2). The precarious nature of a lord’s divine right to rule, subject to maintaining the consent of the subordinates, explains how Odysseus can imply that the ‘privilege’ of lords was in the gift of the community rather than resting with Zeus, when he expresses this wish for the feasting basileis of the Phaeacians: ‘to whom may the gods grant prosperity in their lives, and may each one of them pass on to his sons the property in his house and the privilege which the people granted’ ( geras th’, ho ti de¯mos edo¯ken, Od. 7.148–50).61 A non-basileus may in fact accept the hereditary privilege of the lords to administer justice but interpret instead as legitimated by divine inspiration more than by divine right: Hesiod credited it to the lords’ inborn talent to speak eloquently and persuasively which enabled them to settle disputes (Theogony 80–92). Not only are the legitimating values of the elite in Homer thus much more complex and much more widely shared than the model of a ‘warrior

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ culture’ suggests, they are also much further removed from the ‘exclusive’ values which the elite adopts to set itself apart. ‘Differentiating’ elite values in Homer Scholars have tended to assume that claims of superiority in warfare must have gone hand-in-hand with a distinctively warlike elite lifestyle. What form such a lifestyle might have taken usually remains vague, merely implied by contrast with the ‘luxurious’ lifestyle of later elites, but it has been suggested that a central feature was the ‘warrior feast’, later replaced by the ‘aristocratic symposion’ (see below). However, if we accept that legitimating values are not necessarily the same as differentiating values, we can see beyond military ideology and find that the elite lifestyle in Homer revolves around the cultivation and display of wealth and leisure rather than of martial prowess – or of wisdom, eloquence and justice. The Odyssey shows that a typical day starts with a visit to the agora in the morning, for general conversation or for a formal assembly meeting or court session.62 The rest of the day is taken up with eating and drinking, at home or as someone’s guest, including lengthy preparations involving the slaughter of animals and roasting of meat. The meal normally ends at sunset, but may continue into the night. During the preparations, the guests may spend time in sport or games, and they may take a break from the meal during the afternoon to return to the agora for further conversation, sport or other entertainment.63 The young ‘lords’ on Ithaca variously play board games ( pessoi, Od. 1.106–8) or ‘entertained themselves throwing the discus and javelin’ (4.625–7; 17.167–9). The Phaeacians stage a public competition in discus-throwing, running, jumping, wrestling and boxing (8.100–30), after which Odysseus boasts that he can outdo them in each of these sports, as well as in archery and javelin-throwing (8.201–33). Odysseus’ wrestling feats are cited as evidence of his superior physical prowess (4.341–5; 17.132–6). That this is all within heroic norms is confirmed by the fact that Achilles’ men in the Iliad also spend their leisure throwing the discus and javelin and shooting arrows (2.773–5).64 Whatever military value one attributes to such activities, the key point here is that, apart from archery, all these sports as well as the board games remained typical leisure activities of the classical Greek upper classes. The entertainment at the dinner itself consists of music, song and dance. In the Odyssey, the lyre music and song is always provided by a professional bard, and special emphasis is given to his skill at delivering epic songs to which the diners sit listening in silence, which may give the impression of a particularly martial atmosphere. But it is clear that these bards sing not only epic tales but also songs for which the diners get up and dance, as

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher they did at archaic symposia; an example of the genre is the comical and erotic Song of Ares and Aphrodite to which the Phaeacian youth dance collectively in public.65 Public group dances are in any case a feature of life for unmarried elite youths to the point that Priam can scold his sons for being better dancers than warriors, ‘champions of the dance floor’ (Il. 24.261; cf. 18.603–6), and the bachelor sons of Alcinoos ‘always want to go to the dance floor wearing freshly laundered clothes’ (Od. 6.63–5). Moreover, on the one occasion where we hear of after-dinner entertainment without a bard present, the diners themselves make music: Achilles and Patroclus take turns singing and playing the lyre (Il. 9.186–91), a typical feature of the archaic and classical symposion.66 As for the composition of the dining group, the diners at a ‘warrior feast’ are assumed to form a military unit of sorts, either a war band of peers who regularly dine together or the retinue of a leader who frequently hosts banquets for his followers. There is, however, no evidence in Homeric epic that those who lived and fought together in war also customarily dined together at home, and by contrast some evidence that war bands included men with whom the leaders had little, if any, peace-time contact. Nor is there only one type of feasting in Homer, but a wide range including public sacrificial feasts for the whole community (Od. 3.4–9; 20.276–8), wedding and funeral banquets for large groups of people, ‘drinking parties’ (eilapinai) about which we know nothing, shared meals (eranoi) to which each diner brings his own food and drink (Od. 4.621–4), and finally meals hosted by one of the basileis for his peers, some of which are apparently held at public expense. Indeed, a crucial indication of being recognized as a basileus is that one is invited by ‘everyone’ to the ‘meals which a man who administers justice ought to attend’.67 It is significant that at this type of feast, the best attested in the epics, diners are gathered in their capacity as decisionmakers, ‘elders’ and judges for the community, not as a war band or military retinue.68 Otherwise, one could point to the carrying of swords and spears as part of ‘civilian’ dress as an element of a ‘warrior culture’, and to the practices of hunting and horse-rearing as having possible military significance. ‘Bearing iron’ did go out of fashion in archaic Greece,69 but the latter practices continued to be key parts of the elite lifestyle, and it may be noted that already in Homer they contain a striking element of displaying wealth as opposed to practical military significance. Thus, recreational hunting involved beaters and hounds (Od. 19.428–58), and hounds were kept as ‘table dogs...kept for show’ as well (17.309–10). In the Iliad, one leading man is said to have owned 22 horses but left them all at home for fear that they would not get enough fodder in war (5.193–203), which ties in with

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ the remarkably luxurious diet imagined for Hector’s horses: wheat and wine, rather than barley and water (8.188–9). Hector himself, incidentally, comes home to a hot bath (Il. 22.442–6), later regarded as an indulgence, but a normal part of the heroic lifestyle (e.g. Od. 8.248–9). While the focus of the poems, when it is not on war, is on the leisure pursuits of the elite, it emerges that upper-class men also spend a good deal of time ensuring the productivity of their estates. Of the four sons of Aigyptios, one went to war, one spent his days feasting, but the other two ‘always preserved the ancestral farm’ (patro¯ia erga, Od. 2.17–22). Telemachos expects that it may be ‘11 or 12 days’ before anyone questions his absence from home (2.373–4), because they will assume that he is out of town visiting estates and livestock, some of which are across the sea on the mainland (4.630–40; 14.100–2). There is a hint of criticism – from a slave – of those who ‘do not come to the farms and flocks at all often but stay in town’ (16.28–9), and even sons of kings regularly spend time with the herds, presumably supervising and helping their slaves.70 Laertes took an active interest in newly developing a large orchard in his younger days, and retires to it in old age, doing some planting while the slaves do the heavier work (24.205–31, 336–44). Odysseus displays notable wood-cutting and craft skills by building his own elaborate bed, bedroom and ship (5.234–62; 23.184–202). That this is not merely epic fiction is implied by the numerous vivid similes drawn from farming, herding and wood-cutting, which suggest that these activities played a part in the lives of elite audiences.71 Finally, Homer’s heroes spend time travelling abroad on diplomatic or ‘trading’ missions or simply to make friends and receive gifts from hosts, and they in turn receive visitors from abroad and make gifts to them. Having a lavish supply of ‘soft’ bedding for visitors is explicitly a distinguishing mark of a rich man as opposed to a ‘pauper’ ( penichros, Od. 3.346–55; cf. 24.188–95), while the difference between a respected guest and a beggar is that the latter can only ‘ask for scraps, not swords or cauldrons’.72 The difference is one of degree, however, not categorical, despite the modern notion, based on ethnographic parallels, that metal and other ‘treasure’ circulated in a separate ‘prestige’ sphere of gift-exchange and could not be traded for staples and other ordinary commodities, so that gifts were given and received purely for their symbolic value and exchanged within a closed circle of aristocrats. The epic evidence shows that no such segregation existed, so that one could convert agricultural surplus into valuables and treasure into food, and it was possible to seek material ‘profit’ (kerdos) as well as status in the exchange.73 Overall, then, the ‘warrior culture’ element in the elite lifestyle is quite small, even if the heroes do engage in frequent warfare and raiding, and

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher even if martial prowess is an important part of their image. There is simply a gap between ‘differentiating’ and ‘legitimating’ values: the latter might suggest a life and culture dedicated to war but the former prescribe a life of leisure activities much like those of later Greek elites: sport and games; dining and drinking; making music and dancing; hunting and travelling. Nor is it clear that this elite lifestyle has many, or any, specifically ‘aristocratic’ features. It is important that the ‘privilege’ of basileis is defined not only by hereditary ‘honour from Zeus’ and by ‘the gift of the people’ but also by the recognition of peers as shown through invitations to dinner. But equally important is the implication that young basileis who lose their fathers and their property will no longer be invited (Od. 11.184–7), but at best tolerated as beggars and at worst chased away from the meal (Il. 22.487–99). Such downward mobility surely implies the possibility of upward mobility, and the inclusion of newly wealthy and powerful men into the circle of basileis, and into elite social circles generally.74 Even if these social circles were exclusive, the lifestyle itself would be open to everyone sufficiently rich: the amount of time spent in leisure pursuits, the quantities of meat and wine consumed, the hot baths, soft beds and lavish gifts offered to guests, do all require a great deal of wealth. Moreover, the differentiation in lifestyle is not absolute, but a matter of degree. We have no reason to think that poorer men did not also dine and drink with friends, albeit less often and less lavishly. Hesiod advises that one should at least sometimes entertain guests (W&D 715), cheerfully attend meals with many guests, and remember that a meal ‘at common expense is most charming and least expensive’ (722–3). Hesiod advises against spending time watching legal disputes in the agora (W&D 29–30), but the emphasis is on legal disputes rather than avoiding the agora altogether, and it is clearly open to all to spend time there, although perhaps only the basileis have seats on stone benches.75 ‘Countless’ people, ‘a large crowd’, watch the elite compete in sports and perform dances in public (Od. 8.109–10; Il. 18.590–606). The superiority of the elite’s sporting and dancing skills is emphasized, but we can hardly assume that the common people do not exercise or dance at all: Achilles’ soldiers throw the discus and javelin like the young basileis on Ithaca; a beggar knows how to box (Od. 18.34–117); grape-pickers sing and move rhythmically to lyre music (Il. 18.561–72). A slave complies with the code of hospitality so far as his means allow, and he also dresses in fundamentally the same way as his master, wearing a tunic and cloak and carrying a sword and spear, though of course his outfit is of poorer quality. Even a basileus’ clothes are spun and woven at home by his wife and maid servants, but elite women are credited with superior weaving skills, and can afford expensive dyes.76

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ In sum, it proves hard to identify elements in Homer’s picture of heroic society that are ‘aristocratic’ in any meaningful sense. Deserving of the name ‘aristocratic’ is only the principle that hereditary ‘honour from Zeus’, symbolized by the use of staff and perhaps bench, justifies the power of basileis to speak in formal assemblies and court sessions and to use force against those who disobey. This ideal is balanced by the notions that a basileus’ position is also a ‘gift’ from the community, who will withhold their support if they see his power abused, and moreover contingent on recognition by peers, who may ‘drop’ him if he loses his wealth. Otherwise, the elite values the same qualities as the lower classes, and competes for superiority in ways which should benefit the community, even if competition can turn violent and damage the public interest. At the same time, the elite differentiates itself by a leisured lifestyle which differs from that of the lower classes, but only by degree: there is no sign of sumptuary laws, separate ‘spheres of exchange’ or other mechanisms designed to create a categorically different lifestyle for the upper class – in contrast to the model of European aristocracies with, for instance, their monopoly on hunting and bearing swords. ‘Aristocratic’ values in archaic and classical Greece? Our reading of the Homeric evidence has significant implications for the development of values in Greek history. It is commonly assumed that the crucial dynamic was ‘aristocratic resistance against the encroaching authority of the polis’ (Kurke 1999, 19). Either the elite tried to retain its ‘Homeric’ values against efforts by the wider community to impose a different code of behaviour, as in Finley’s notion of the ‘taming of the hero’ (above), or the elite developed new sets of values in order to maintain its distinctiveness and legitimacy under changing social and political conditions, as in Donlan’s theory of an ideology that constantly shifted its ground as the community ‘appropriated’ for itself a version of Homeric ideals (1980, esp. 35–75). An alternative approach, developed by Ian Morris (2000, 109–91), argues that the values expressed in archaic Greek literature represent two competing ideologies within the elite, ‘elitist’ versus ‘middling’, of which the former built on Homeric notions of elite superiority while the latter advocated an egalitarian ethos derived from ‘the values of ordinary citizens’ (Morris 2000, 163). Despite the different dynamic, this is nevertheless in essence also a contest between ideals that set the elite apart and communal ideals that deny the elite an exceptional status or authority. This central opposition is clearly difficult to maintain if, first, there is no stark contrast between ‘aristocratic’ and community values in Homer after all, and secondly, as we suggested earlier, the

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher development of the polis was in large part driven by the very elite that is supposed to be at odds with its ideals.77 Major developments in ideology and significant tensions between different sets of values certainly occurred in archaic and classical Greece, but it seems to us that many of these were not primarily created by the contest between elite and community, and that, where such a contest did play a role, we need to be much more precise about what was at issue. Confusion or deliberate conflation of ‘legitimating’ and ‘differentiating’ values is one recurring problem with the approaches cited. The ‘elitist’ tradition as analyzed by Morris consists of two main elements: a claim to excellence in war, and a celebration of ‘luxury’ (habrosyne¯ ). The ‘middling’ tradition has only one key theme: ‘moderation’ (metriote¯s) in deploying wealth or other assets. Martial excellence is supposed to legitimate elite privilege, as in Homer, and for Morris luxury and moderation are forms of legitimation, too. Luxuries, especially those imported from ‘the east’, elevate one’s lifestyle almost to the level of gods, heroes and eastern rulers, and this association with powers beyond the city-state gives the elite an ‘external’ legitimation to rule (2000, 171–85). Moderation, by contrast, creates relative equality and implies that legitimate authority derives from the community of equal citizens (2000, 114–30, 161–71). The sources, however, never explicitly say that luxury and moderation, as opposed to martial excellence, play any part in legitimating power; this is a modern assumption, which fails to distinguish between differentiation and legitimation. Insofar as the middling ideology plays down differences between citizens, it cannot legitimate difference in status or power. Even if Morris were right to posit that this ideology attributed ultimate authority to the citizen community, we would need to explain on what basis these sovereign communities then delegated authority to ruling elites, before the development of democracy. The elite ‘claimed leadership as special members of the polis’, Morris suggests (2000, 163), but the nature of their specialness remains unexplained. What is more, Hesiod, regarded as the main archaic spokesman for middling values, does not link ‘moderation’ in lifestyle with the sovereignty of the citizen community, but accepts that ‘the basilees have a divine right to settle disputes’ (2000, 166). Compelled by the logic of his argument, Morris concludes that ‘Hesiod’s instructions call for the basilees to share power’ with the community, and are oriented ‘towards secular control of law and diminution of social hierarchy’ (2000, 168), but this is clearly not true. Hesiod criticizes abuses of power only to remind the basileis to do better, not to challenge the legitimacy of their position. Hesiod’s advocacy of a relatively austere lifestyle thus has no

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ bearing on his views about legitimate power, which are as ‘aristocratic’ as anything we encounter in Greek literature. Nor is there any evidence that luxury is ever considered the basis for legitimate power, rather than a means of differentiating between levels of the social hierarchy. Morris’s argument that a fundamental change in Greek values occurs in the late sixth century BC when luxury loses its associations with higher powers and the elite accordingly loses most of the basis for claiming legitimate authority, leaving the citizen community as the only source of authority and paving the way for democracy, thus turns out to be highly questionable.78 A shift away from luxury and towards moderation in material culture does seem to happen at this time, but this is a matter of reducing the degree of differentiation in social status rather than a change in conceptions of legitimate power. The significance of the distinction may be illustrated, for example, by the consequences for Leslie Kurke’s theory about aristocratic attitudes to coinage: she argued that by minting gold and silver coins late archaic Greek city-states appropriated for the community the authority that the possession of precious metal luxury goods had previously bestowed on the elite, and that in the face of this ‘challenge’, the elitist tradition responded by studiously ignoring the existence of coinage.79 The argument is brilliantly made but based on a false premise. If gold and silver conferred status but not legitimacy, coinage did not undermine the authority of the ruling elite – who, in any case, were themselves largely responsible for minting.80 If this approach mistakes differentiating values for legitimating principles, the reverse mistake lies at the root of the idea that a fundamental change in values occurred much earlier and involved a transition of the upper class from a ‘warrior elite’ in Homer to a ‘leisure class’ in archaic Greece. This theory was developed by Walter Donlan and Oswyn Murray in particular,81 surely with the parallel in mind of the European aristocracy as it lost its military dominance in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. They assume, as noted above, that the legitimating military ideals expressed in Homer also shaped elite behaviour and that the real-life elites of early Greece accordingly cultivated a ‘warrior’ lifestyle. In the seventh century, the rise of the hoplite phalanx reduced the military role of the elite, which therefore was forced to find new ways to legitimate its power and adopted a new lifestyle. If, however, as we have argued, Homer’s heroes already differentiate themselves by a leisured lifestyle similar to that of classical elites, even as they legitimate themselves by claims of military excellence, then the opposition is false. Changes in the culture of leisure certainly occurred, most famously and tangibly the new habit of reclining rather than sitting, but these may have

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher been merely further developments within an already established system of differentiating values. As for legitimating ideals, even if the hoplite phalanx developed at the time and in the way suggested, which is a matter of dispute, the elite could still have continued to claim a superior military role and derive legitimacy from it, as Morris (2000, 171–8) argues they did. The continuing practice of single combat, the appointment of athletic victors as generals, and the battlefield tombs of individual war heroes (as opposed to collective burial of war dead) suggest that the ‘warrior elite’ ideal was still strong even in the early fifth century BC, whatever the actual nature of archaic Greek warfare and whatever the military role of the elite at the time.82 If one makes the necessary distinction between types of value, then, it seems possible that the ethos of the archaic elite remained essentially the same from Homer to the late archaic age at least. In what sense, if any, was archaic and classical leisure-class culture ‘aristocratic’ in the sense that it was confined to an elite of birth, rather than adopted by all who afford it? If, as we have argued, closed hereditary elites were rare, never coincided with the entire social and economic upper classes, and elites did not impose sumptuary restrictions to exclude others from their lifestyle, there could be nothing ‘aristocratic’ about the values that shaped their way of life. It is especially unfortunate that scholars commonly speak of aristocratic values even in classical Athens, where, everyone agrees, the upper class did not consist exclusively of an elite of birth. Josiah Ober, for example, described a complex system of social stratification in Athens, where citizens were distinguished by education, by ‘class’, defined by wealth, and by ‘status’, defined by heredity, but insisted that dedication to sport, symposia, hunting and horse-raising was the hallmark of the hereditary status elite, ‘the aristocracy’, rather than the elite of wealth, even though ‘much of the aristocratic pattern of behaviour was predicated on the possession of great wealth’.83 Even if one were to accept for the sake of argument that such a hereditary elite existed in the classical age,84 it would surely need to be demonstrated rather than assumed that these ‘nobles’ were able to exclude the non-noble but rich and educated elite from its way of life. The notion of ‘aristocratic values’, however, allows such presuppositions to slip in unchallenged.85 Abandoning the link between differentiation in lifestyle and legitimation by noble birth may solve problems of interpretation of which we will cite just one instance. A number of early-fifth-century Athenian pots by the Pioneer group (Euthymides, Euphronios, Smikros, Phintias) feature scenes of named potters or painters in gymnasia and at symposia alongside highstatus figures such as Leagros or Phayllos. On the assumption that only ‘aristocrats’ took part in symposia, Richard Neer (2002) argued that such

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ images, implying social or erotic connections between upper-class athletes and low-status craftsmen, were deeply shocking. He concluded that these painters were playing elaborate games: by putting ‘artisans’ in transgressive social situations, but also deliberately mixing in ambiguities, they managed to suggest at once the possibilities and the impossibilities of social mobility.86 But such complex interpretations are not needed if we accept that sympotic and athletic activities were not exclusive to the ‘aristocracy’ and that, at least by the late sixth century, the highly-skilled craftsmen who provided increasing numbers of symposiasts with their fine ware were sufficiently wealthy and upwardly mobile to share these social occasions with members of the elite, like the poets who might provide their entertainment. This otherwise obvious conclusion is hard to draw if one has in mind a medieval nobleman, too far removed socially from a craftsman to dine and drink side by side with him, but much less problematic if we think of men of established wealth socializing with the newly rich. ‘Those who learn a craft, and their offspring, are less honoured (apotimoterous) than other citizens, while those who refrain from manual labour are deemed noble (gennaious)’, according to Herodotus (2.167), and Aristotle argued that in what he calls an ‘aristocracy’, i.e. a political system which awards ‘honours’ ‘on the basis of excellence and merit’, craftsmen could by definition not have full citizen rights. But Aristotle also said that craftsmen could very well hold office under an oligarchy, where positions of power were allocated on the basis of wealth, ‘because the majority of craftsmen, too, are rich’ (Pol. 1278a19–25). Wealth could evidently outweigh the social stigma attached to the profession, and that may be what we see happening in the vase-paintings, too. Theognis often warned against associating with ‘bad men’ – ‘Do not socialize with bad men (kakoisi de me¯ prosomilei), but always deal with the good: drink and eat among them, and sit among them, and please them, whose power is great’87 – but such warnings imply that sharing a symposion with companions of lower status was a real possibility. Not only at symposia but even in marriage alliances, Theognis complained, ‘wealth dilutes descent’, as the ‘good’ marry the ‘bad but rich’ (183–96, 1112); archaic poetry is full of laments about limitless and excessive striving for wealth. Rather than infer that ‘aristocratic values’ rated descent and personal excellence more highly than wealth, we should again make the distinction between legitimating and differentiating values. The elite might legitimate itself with claims to superior birth and merit, but its distinctive lifestyle was based on superior wealth, and in order to excel they needed to acquire as much property as they could and make as many wealthy friends and allies as possible. Competitive acquisitiveness was thus

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher an integral part of the elite value system, and the poets reflect on the friction between this and other values. Yet ‘greed’ never features in modern lists of ‘aristocratic’ values, not even among scholars who do recognize that Homer’s heroes have an ‘almost overpowering accumulative instinct’ (Finley 1954, 121–2) and that in antiquity at large we find a ‘ravenous hunger for acquisition in the upper strata’ (Finley 1973, 56). Instead, the emphasis in such discussions has been on the limitations on the pursuit of wealth and profit by the elite, on the ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity in antiquity which meant that other, more ‘aristocratic’, values shaped the acquisition and consumption of wealth. For Homer in particular, it has been said that the material value of wealth counted for little compared to its symbolic value, as proof of physical prowess, and that the main purpose of accumulating wealth was to give it away, so that generosity rather than greed was the dominant value. For ancient elites in general, it has been stressed that ‘status’ was a key factor shaping economic activities and decisions, forcing the elite to derive its income mainly from landed wealth, as the most respectable form of property, to avoid association with profits from crafts or trade, and to use wealth primarily in conspicuous consumption rather productive reinvestment.88 It is no doubt true that there were such moral pressures, but similar pressures also operate in modern, supposedly ‘disembedded’, economies: some sources of income are more respectable than others, many forms of wealth serve as status symbols, and conspicuous consumption is everywhere to be seen. The question is why the status-bound constraints are given more weight than the basic acquisitive drive in so many modern discussions. The answer may once again lie in the assumption that ancient ‘aristocracies’ share the values of medieval and modern aristocrats, traditionally seen as in radical opposition to the commercial values of the bourgeoisie. To quote The Communist Manifesto one more time: The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has...left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm...in the icy waters of egotistical calculation (Marx and Engels 1848, 6–7).

The same sentiments are subsequently encountered in classic works of sociology that treat the profit-motive as an invention of modern capitalism. Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don asserted that ‘it is only our Western societies that quite recently turned man into an economic animal [homo oeconomicus]89... It is not so long now since [man] became a machine – a calculating machine’ (1925, 74). Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation went even further and claimed that ‘the absence of the

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ motive of gain’ characterized all pre-industrial societies; ‘the premium set on generosity is so great...as to make any other behaviour than that of utter self-forgetfulness simply not pay’ (1944, 47). So both because they were aristocrats, not bourgeois, and because they lived before the industrial revolution, ancient elites, it is assumed, must have shunned profit-making and accumulation. Such attitudes did exist in antiquity, but they were only one end of a spectrum. Aristotle’s ideal was for a man to have an ample ‘natural’ income from land, livestock and other resources, cultivated by ‘natural’ slaves, and to confine his economic activity to making decisions about how to use his revenues, limiting exchange to a necessary minimum, and dedicating the rest of his time to ‘politics or philosophy’ (Politics 1255b35–7; 1256a11–39; 1258a19–39). But he conceded that others saw ‘so-called money-making’ (chre¯matistike¯ ) as the essence of economic activity (Pol. 1253b12–14), which was concerned with acquisition rather than use of wealth (1256a11–13) and relied on exchange to make profit (1257b20–2): ‘some think that the goal of household management (oikonomia) is unlimited increase (auxe¯sis eis apeiron) of property in the form of coins’ (1257b38–41). Not only traders, money-lenders and craftsmen engaged in ‘money-making’, but also landowners, who knew when and how to sell produce and livestock ‘advantageously’ (lusiteleis, 1258b12–22). Rather than assume that Aristotle’s ideal of a ‘natural’ economy represents an ‘aristocratic’ norm while ‘bourgeois’ acquisitiveness was for middle or lower classes, we should accept that there was a genuine tension within the value system of the elite – and of the non-elite – regarding wealth. Not to concern oneself with acquisition at all was the ultimate demonstration of wealth and ‘moderation’, but open-ended acquisition was necessary to compete with others. The story of how Alcmeon became rich by exploiting an offer from king Croesus of as much gold as he could carry, loading and stuffing himself until he staggered out of the treasury ‘looking anything but human’ (Herodotus 6.125), for example, may seem a hostile account of a breach of ‘aristocratic’ ideals of generosity and physical beauty, and the author as slyly critical of a family whose reputation he ostensibly defended (6.121–31). But we could take it instead as a reflection of an acquisitive ideal, as genuine praise for Alcmeon’s willingness to endure short-term personal embarrassment in order to lay the foundations for long-term family wealth which made the Alcmeonids ‘mightily illustrious’ and funded an Olympic chariot victory that brought reflected glory to the city of Athens.90 As the Aristotelian ideal of natural householding ‘embedded’ some aspects of economic behaviour, so the ideal of unlimited acquisition may have ‘disembedded’ certain aspects of social behaviour.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Lastly, we cannot take for granted that the elite lifestyle was absolutely exclusive rather than merely relatively lavish, that elite values created a categorical distinction between the upper and lower classes, rather than a hierarchy of status which extended to the lower classes as well. It is unlikely that ‘luxuries’ and staple goods were sharply distinguished, or that only the leisure class had access to luxury goods: surely even at lower economic levels social distinctions could be made by occasional use of relatively expensive imported cloth, scented oil and wine or a few pieces of higherquality pottery or furniture.91 The less wealthy may thus have been able to hold occasional modest symposia of their own. A domestic assemblage found in the Persian destruction deposit of Agora Well J 2:4 suggests that by the early fifth century even ‘middling’ households in Athens might regularly engage in symposia: this smallish household had possessed several sets of drinking cups and bowls (kylikes and skyphoi ) along with other sympotic equipment, much of it figured, whose decoration may reflect the house-owner’s interests in athletic and sympotic practices (see Lynch 2011). Participation in sport, dance and song at public festivals in classical Athens must also have extended well beyond the leisure class, and Athens had public gymnasia which made recreational sport possible for those who only had occasional leisure and no private facilities. Indeed, stories about highly successful athletes of lower-class origins suggest that sporting talent was a possible avenue of upward social mobility.92 The symposion, sport and other elements of the leisured lifestyle were thus not ‘aristocratic’ phenomena at odds with the ideology of the (democratic) city-state, but an integral part of the activities and associations that helped constitute the community, and indicators of relative status within it. Some drinking circles might form political clubs opposed to the current regime or private gatherings aggressively asserting their social and economic superiority through acts of drunken hybris, but dining and drinking groups were in themselves a crucial part of community life. ‘No state of affairs is more pleasing than when happiness (euphrosyne¯ ) prevails among the entire people (de¯mos), and diners sit in a row at home listening to a singer... That, to my mind, is the most beautiful thing’, according to Homer’s Odysseus (Od. 9.5–11), and other archaic poets echo the sentiment.93 We are left with very few indications of ‘aristocratic values’ in the strict sense in archaic and classical Greece. The Homeric concept of hereditary ‘honour from Zeus’ which entitles a family to govern and use force against any who resist may be reflected in the story that ‘the Penthilidai at Mytilene went around beating people with clubs’ until Megacles and his supporters overthrew their ‘lordly power’ (basilike¯ dynasteia), c. 600 BC (Aristotle, Politics

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ 1311b26–9). The story suggests that they legitimated themselves in much the same way as Homer legitimates the power of Agamemnon, from whom they claimed descent via his grandson Penthilus, founder of their city, but also that by the late seventh century this ideology was no longer accepted in Mytilene and attempts to enforce it were rejected as mere hybris. Whether the other possible hereditary elites attested in archaic Greece justified their rule in the same way, we do not know.94 Nor do we have much evidence for how the wider concept of ‘good birth’ or ‘good family’ was used in archaic Greece, but in classical Athenian ideology it played much the same role as in Homer, i.e. the particular achievements, reputation and wealth of one’s family and forebears were a factor that affected one’s personal status but did not form the basis for any categorical claim to hereditary privilege. Even a person of low status could claim to be from a ‘good family’ in this relative sense, if for instance his father had a good reputation for being a ‘decent’ man even if he was poor. There is therefore no reason to regard allusions to good birth and collective autochthony in Athenian political discourse as evidence that ‘aristocratic values’ had become ‘democratized’.95 Otherwise, elite status continued to be legitimated by appeals to superior personal merit, as the language of aristoi and esthloi against kakoi and deiloi, ‘good, fine men’ against ‘bad, worthless men’, implies. It is a logical extension of this conception that one would call all citizens kaloikagathoi if one wanted to make a point about political equality (Lysias 30.14; Ober 1989, 260). As noted, the elite may have continued to claim superior martial prowess at least until the early fifth century, regardless of changes in warfare, and presumably continued to claim personal superiority in other fields as well, at least until and unless they lost their decision-making and judicial privileges. A major new form of excellence which arose in the late sixth century with the development of public finance was willingness and ability to spend money on the community, through taxes, liturgies or donations. In classical Athens this seems to have become the single most important legitimation of elite status, so that one can speak of a distinct ‘liturgical class’ within the leisured elite. The development was important but it did not involve, as has been suggested, a structural change in the source of legitimate authority whereby the status of ‘aristocrats’ was for the first time determined by the community rather than by their peers. It was, rather, a change of emphasis within a value system already found in Homer, where the elite’s claims to personal excellence are judged by the community as a whole, as well as by their peers.96 The strategies of differentiation adopted by the elite continued to centre on the display of wealth and leisure, as we have seen, and after Homer we see a trend towards ever more elaborate display, as well as criticisms of

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher excessive luxury and attempts to restrict it. Insofar as one can maintain a distinction between ‘elitist’ and ‘middling’ ideologies, their concern is essentially with the question of how far one should go in accumulating wealth and in displaying it. In archaic poetry, the emphasis is either on the joys of living in luxury or on the importance of not resorting to violent and illegal ways of becoming rich; in classical Athenian authors, the emphasis is rather on ‘moderation’ in displaying wealth, which ties in with the new legitimating ideal of spending money on the community, voluntarily or in dutiful fulfilment of compulsory liturgies and eisphora levies. If archaic Greek society was as sharply divided between rich and poor as our sources suggest, the differentiation in lifestyle will have been equally sharp. However, when a class of independent working farmers and craftsmen emerged, whether in the late sixth century as we have suggested or earlier as others have thought, they will have adopted as much of the elite’s lifestyle as they could afford; when public funding in classical Athens made it possible, people still lower down the economic scale also participated in this lifestyle to a degree. Since this lifestyle was never formally exclusive, we are not dealing with ‘aristocratization’ of the lower classes, or ‘democratization’ of aristocratic values: it was a matter of changes in the distribution of wealth allowing more people to pursue generally accepted ideals. Intense competitiveness was always liable to create problems, but what Finley called the ‘taming of the hero’ was not so much a process of controlling the aristocracy as the strengthening of legal and social mechanisms to contain violence over honour and property at all levels of society – even if such conflicts were of course most serious when they erupted between families with the greatest resources and the highest honours at stake. Alternatives to aristocracy: understanding ancient social history If aristocracy and aristocratic values in the full sense were rare in the ancient world, and if the commonly used broader, looser senses of these terms are seriously misleading, we must consider better ways of describing and analysing ancient social structures. One important corrective to casual assumptions about aristocracy is the approach adopted by Alain Duplouy in his Le prestige des élites (2006), which treats status in the ancient Greek world as essentially fluid and contested, and envisages every individual as engaged in a constant effort to construct a position of ‘prestige’ for himself or herself. Everyone’s actions, demeanour, associations and possessions are geared towards gaining ‘social recognition’ of the status to which one aspires. In his book, Duplouy brilliantly analyses a wide range of means,

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ material and other, by which Greeks staked such claims to status; in his chapter in our volume, he goes on to demonstrate in detail that even noble birth is not a ‘given’ but constructed with the aid of an entire toolkit of ‘gentilician strategies’, which aim to get one’s claim to hereditary excellence and privilege accepted as widely as possible. We must surely accept that at the most fundamental level a person’s social status is not fixed but constantly negotiated in his or her interactions with wider groups and communities – in all societies, not only in ancient Greece. A microscopic analysis, as one might call it, of individual status can do a great deal to explain the nature and development of historical societies, and perhaps especially their material culture (see for instance Mariaud, this volume). However, except in small-scale and simple societies where all status positions are informal and all forms of superiority are achieved by personal effort, a study of social inequality needs to extend beyond the level of the individual. In larger, more complex societies one may find formal social hierarchies of ‘rank’ in which certain status positions are institutionalized rather than created ad hoc, and in which status is often ‘ascribed’ by convention or law as opposed to ‘achieved’, thus placing certain formal constraints on the creation of personal standing. The most complex societies, in the developmental schemes of evolutionary anthropologists, are ‘stratified’ rather than ‘ranked’: in addition to personal status differences, informal and formal, distinctions exist between two or more unequal groups. Even in a stratified social hierarchy, one’s individual position still requires constant and intensive maintenance, of course, on pain of losing face, but if we are to understand social inequality fully we must also study the formation of hierarchies of status groups. An important, but under-researched, question is how stratified communities came into existence in the ancient world. The traditional assumption that aristocracies existed throughout the Early Iron Age meant that the only question asked was how the nobility managed to reduce the power of the king by the time the city-state emerged. Those who more recently argued for the existence of egalitarian or ‘ranked’ societies prior to the rise of the polis have not gone very far in developing a model of how or when ranked chiefs became an ‘aristocracy’ or at any rate an upper class.97 The archaeological evidence for Greece before c. 800 BC suggests small-scale communities with only a few leading men, and accordingly it seems likely that the development of stratification, rather than the overthrow of an old elite, went hand-in-hand with the formation of the city-state. The growing number of burials elaborate enough to be archaeologically visible in Central Greece and Italy in the late eighth century, for example, may in this light be interpreted as reflecting, not the

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher broadening of an existing elite (let alone mere population growth), but the first emergence of stratified communities in the Early Iron Age.98 For ancient societies which had reached this level, our question must be what kinds of social stratification existed and what concepts are more useful than ‘aristocracy’ in analysing social inequality. We have so far used ‘upper class’ and ‘lower class’ loosely, as colloquial terms which avoid the misleading connotations of ‘aristocracy’ and ‘commoners’, but these concepts are themselves quite vague, and we should consider the usefulness of ‘class’ in the more technical, economic, sense pioneered but sadly not defined by Karl Marx. Among ancient historians, ‘class’ has been notably defended by Geoffrey de Ste. Croix (1981, 31–111), and most recently by Peter Rose (2009; 2013, 1–55), against Moses Finley’s brusque rejection of the concept as ‘not very sensible’ (1973, 49). The upshot of the Marxist argument for class as an analytical concept is that property is the single most important factor in the creation of social inequality, that inequalities in property create relations of exploitation, and that ‘class struggle’ between exploiters and exploited is the single most important dynamic shaping historical developments. The main objection raised by Finley is that in the ancient world distinctions of informal ‘status’ or juridical ‘order’ in practice outweighed objective common interests based on ‘class’ position (1973, 45–8, 50–1); by implication, status rivalry rather than class conflict dominated ancient history. It is unfortunate that the debate has been cast in such polarized terms, since it seems more fruitful to give class and status equal billing, to analyze the relation between them, and to explore the conditions under which one rather than the other becomes dominant.99 This avoids the weaknesses of both approaches. Finley surely went too far in insisting that elite ideologies concerning the acquisition and use of wealth truly shaped elite behaviour to the extent that economic position was always of secondary importance in social hierarchy (1973, 51–61). For example, his discussion of how Roman contempt for professional money-lending meant that the likes of Brutus could only lend money as a furtive amateur side-line to their main career as men of politics and leisure (1973, 53–7), seems to miss spectacularly his own point that the Roman elite was nevertheless involved ‘in moneylending on a stupendous scale’ (53) and that this was not a matter of occasional ‘abuse’ but of ‘something structural in the society’ (55). Evidently the ideology of status in this instance did very little to inhibit Brutus and his peers from exploiting their ‘class’ position to the hilt.100 On the other hand, a Marxist insistence that only class is an analytically useful category quickly runs into the problem that ancient history features conflicts between groups that do not apparently stand in economic

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ opposition to one another. De Ste. Croix’s argument that there were several ‘classes’ within each main ‘class’ – he considered but rejected the label ‘sub-classes’ (1981, 42, 116) – is feeble, since on his own view there is no difference in economic interests, let alone a relation of exploitation, between for instance the Roman senatorial and equestrian orders, which nevertheless clashed during the late Republic (ibid.). Similarly, both de Ste. Croix and Rose take the conventional view that the major social struggle in early Greece was between the aristocracy and the ‘middle class’ of independent working farmers, yet this is not easy to fit within the framework of a class struggle: it is in the nature of the latter’s independence that they were property owners and that their labour was not exploited by the elite, so that in terms of class the two social groups were on the same side of the divide. One might envisage a sort of pre-emptive class struggle, with independent farmers fighting to prevent falling into dependency, but it is far from clear that this is what these scholars have in mind, let alone that this is what happened.101 It is preferable, therefore, to accept the validity in principle of both ‘class’ and ‘status’ and to analyze how and why each of these forms of stratification developed, and how they diverged or coincided in any given time and place. Class in essence divides society into three groups: those whose income derives essentially from the labour of others; those whose income derives from their own independent labour; and those whose income derives from labour performed for others.102 Or, to simplify and modernise still further: employers, self-employed and employees – bearing in mind that ‘employers’ may rely on coercion and that ‘employees’ include slaves. Clearly these classes are likely to exist in any stratified society, even where people do not consciously identify themselves as members of a class, and even where relations between them are not openly antagonistic. Whether in the ancient world self-conscious economic classes ever did emerge, and engage in open conflict, is a key point of debate. By contrast, a ‘status group’ is by definition self-conscious and consists of those who regard one another as peers in terms of ‘social honour’ or ‘prestige’; it may be an informal peer group, an institutionalized ‘order’ with legal privileges, or even a ‘caste’.103 Wealth is usually an important element of status, but ‘prestige’ may create a wide social distance between degrees of wealth or kinds of wealth, even if the owners are objectively in the same ‘class’. Moreover, criteria other than wealth may play a decisive role in creating the peer group or order: descent, education, skills, or fundamental legal distinctions between free and unfree, citizen and alien. That such distinctions existed in the ancient world is of course not in doubt, but a key question remains whether in antiquity the status hierarchy which separated people influenced

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher their behaviour more, or less, than the basic economic positions which they shared. As it happens, class and status coincide at a key point in the social hierarchy characteristic of the ancient world where they separate the propertied classes from the rest of the community: those who owned enough property to be able to live off the labour of others were not just an objective economic class but also a self-conscious status group insofar as they adopted a shared leisured lifestyle. Instead of either ‘aristocracy’, or ‘propertied class’, therefore, the most apposite label for an elite of this kind is surely ‘leisure class’ – a term coined by Thorstein Veblen in his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899),104 used repeatedly in our preceding discussion, and adopted by a few ancient historians, but not widely or systematically deployed.105 The most prominent means by which ancient elites converted their economic assets into personal status was a life of ‘conspicuous leisure’ (Veblen 1899, 41–60), and they typically converted personal status into status-group membership by forming peer relations through the dinner parties, drinking sessions and other shared leisure activities which we have discussed. As we have argued, this lifestyle was not wholly exclusive, and it allowed for differentiation of status within the propertied classes. It should also be stressed that ‘leisure’ (schole¯, otium) was often emphatically distinguished from mere ‘idleness’ and indeed that there was ‘toil’ even in leisure, in the form of close supervision of slave labour or vigorous sporting exercise which contributed to military training. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the dividing line between those who could and those who could not afford a life of leisure was fairly clear, and crucial. This dividing line was sometimes institutionalized so as to form a juridical ‘order’, in the form of one or more property classes with legally defined rights and obligations. We have already mentioned the high property thresholds for full citizen rights in the Solonian system at Athens, the ‘Lycurgan’ system at Sparta and the ‘Servian’ system at Rome, and suggested that these levels were set so high to include the leisure class but exclude everyone of lower economic status. Scholars have tended to regard such systems of classification as merely administrative constructs which allocated a narrow range of political rights and military and fiscal obligations, rather than as meaningful status groups in social life. The Solonian and Servian hierarchies indeed seem to have become somewhat detached from social and economic realities by the time our sources mention them, but may originally have reflected these more closely. In Athens, they were meaningful enough for a certain Anthemion to dedicate a statue group of himself (or his father) and a horse on the Athenian Acropolis to mark his rise from the lowest to the second-highest property

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ class (Ath.Pol. 7.4). In Sparta, where the property requirement was enforced by means of compulsory contributions to public messes, the system certainly had a major impact on social relations: it created a clear-cut distinction between those who could and could not afford a life of leisure, and created a culture of ‘austerity’ which minimized opportunities to display differences of wealth and status within the leisured citizen elite.106 Moreover, the lowest ‘orders’ in each of these systems were ‘working’ classes: the the¯tes, ‘hired labourers’, in Athens; the helots in Sparta; and the proletarii, a name implying that children were their only asset, in Rome. If we take these names seriously, rather than as gratuitous insults, it would seem that the lowest orders also coincided with economic classes. In Solonian Athens, we may even have an instance of open class conflict, resolved by formalizing the political rights of the leisure class by means of the property-class system, while relieving the ‘burdens’ of exploitation for the the¯tes through the cancellation of debt and prohibition of enslavement for debt.107 More generally, if we are right to suggest that free, hired labour was more prominent in the ancient world than has traditionally been assumed, it becomes possible that class struggle, in the full Marxist sense of conflict between exploiter and exploited, was a factor in for instance the many civil wars between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ which devastated many parts of the classical Greek world. Other informal status distinctions and formal orders did not coincide with ‘class’ boundaries. The Roman senatorial and equestrian ordines were more exclusive ‘orders’ within a wider leisure class; the nobilitas was an informal ‘status’ group within the highest ‘order’ (Finley 1973, 45–48, 51); citizenship in both Greece and Rome formed an ‘order’ which cut across both class and status distinctions (47–8); slavery was a legal status which divided the working classes (49). It is therefore entirely likely that many forms of social conflict were contests over status, but Finley surely went too far in arguing that this was ‘invariably’ so, and that no real class struggle is attested (68). When ‘the people’ of Syracuse made common cause with the native serf population against their rulers, for instance (Herodotus 7.155), we may well see a powerful status distinction being set aside on account of a shared class interest. And when the next ruler of Syracuse offered citizenship to the ‘fat cats’ (pacheis) of conquered neighbouring towns but sold their common people into slavery on the grounds that they were ‘most unpleasant to live with’ (7.156), we may have an example of class warfare on a large scale and of exceptional brutality. The vital point is not to prejudge the issue by rejecting one category of analysis or another, but to assess the relative significance of each in any given historical context.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Finally, insofar as status groups, orders and classes are not just analytical entities but were self-conscious social groups, we ought to investigate how they operated. The forging of status groups through personal interaction, habitual socializing, intermarriage and collective enterprises among individuals who regard one another as approximate equals can in principle be analysed in the same microscopic way as the negotiation of individual status. Hosting and attending symposia, for instance, or engaging in sport and hunting, was a way not only to negotiate individual status, but also to create core social circles and networks which collectively formed a status group.108 Innumerable more formal pseudo-kinship groups such as patrai, phratries, gene¯ or orgeo¯nes, were also constantly being formed and reformed, and cemented their identities by sympotic and cultic activities. Some of these groups came to be accepted as semi-official bodies and regulated admission to membership of their poleis. Other cultic but not descent-based groups, often called thiasoi and orgeo¯nes, also met in sympotic gatherings. In some cases, formal cult- and (fictive) kinship-associations may (or may not) have been hierarchically-ordered and formed a significant component of social standing.109 Property classes and other formal orders, including the citizen-body as a whole, may also sometimes have been more than abstract entities and have had public procedures to determine membership – such as the census of the Roman senate or the vote on the admission of new citizens to Athenian demes – and occasions on which members of the order assembled or even acted as corporate bodies. A study of social hierarchy thus ought to ask questions about the number, size and nature of status groups within a community. Do we find a small or highly organized set of peers which forms a fully integrated corporate body, or larger or less structured groups which form numerous overlapping ‘social circles’, or even only loosely connected ‘personal networks’? How important was acceptance by, or exclusion from, such groups as a criterion of social status? How was acceptance won and lost? To what extent did these peer groups mark themselves out by distinctive ways of looking, speaking and behaving which serve to assert membership in the group as much as individual status? Such questions will not be easy to answer, but ancient historians have barely begun to try. An illustration of the kind of evidence one might explore are the stories about Themistocles’ social climbing: he offered hospitality to a famous lyre-player so as to attract large numbers of visitors to his home, persuaded ‘well-born youths’ to exercise with him so as to raise the status of the gymnasium at Cynosarges, and set up a lavish tent at Olympia in which he hosted banquets deemed ‘above his station’ (Plut. Them. 1.3; 5.3–4). The other side of the coin may be illustrated by stories about the predicament of those

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ who sought social or political benefits from associating with the elite but did not have the assets necessary to rate as peers and risked being scorned as ‘flatterers’ and ‘parasites’ by the rich and by other non-members of the elites alike.110 The evidence for the formation of groups in social hierarchies is not as full as we would like, but it is yet another aspect of inequality that requires serious investigation. Between the instability of the distribution of wealth and personal assets, the rival demands of legitimating and differentiating values, the competing pressures of status and class, and the multiplicity of status groups and orders, many factors conspire against the creation of stable elites in the ancient world, and indeed in all stratified societies. The existence of hereditary aristocracy therefore cannot be taken for granted as the historical norm, and where it does exist, the means by which it is maintained require close examination. The same is true of a stable leisure class, not least because it relies on forms of labour exploitation, including chattel slavery and other forms of coerced labour, which might have been expected to provoke resentment and resistance. The emergence of ruling elites within the social upper class is also liable to be a dynamic process of a succession of groups trying to monopolize power until they are overthrown by rivals, or until a political system is developed that is able to break the cycle and inhibit the accumulation of power and privilege in the hands of a small group, as in classical Athens. How social hierarchies grow and change is one of the key questions ancient historians, and historians at large, should address. To answer this question vaguely in terms of the supposed rise and fall or domestication of ‘aristocracies’ is never adequate, and, as we have suggested here and as much of the remainder of this volume tries to show, is often simply wrong or deeply misleading.

Notes 1 See recently also Osborne’s rejection of applying the concept to ancient Greece (2009, 209–10), an addition made for the second edition of his book (‘The idea that there was a set of people who thought that political power was their birthright and who associated only with each other, sharing a single “aristocratic ideology”, is a modern fantasy’). Rose 2013, 52–5, expresses reservations (‘the degree to which or the point at which they claim inherited excellence...needs to be closely examined’, 53; cf. 63–76), but nevertheless freely applies the term to the elites of archaic Greece. 2 Cf. Cannadine 1990, 8–16 on the British aristocracy whose decline his book charts; Powis 1984, 6–22. 3 The British aristocracy was divided into three categories, preserved by primogeniture: a very few titled peers (dukes to barons – the ‘grandees’), the baronetcy, and the untitled landed gentry; other European systems (e.g. France, Germany,

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Austro-Hungary, Russia) tended to have a much larger proportion of titled families, of varied levels of landed wealth and power. Cf. Cannadine 1990, 18–22. 4 For the importance in US history of the initial determination of the settlers to dispense with feudal systems of land tenure and any concomitant dominance based on heredity, see e.g. Degler 1984, 2–6. 5 Eastern European traditions may be different again: see e.g. Wecowski 2014, 21–3 on a model drawn from the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 6 See e.g. Cornell 1995, 251–6; Forsythe 2005, 157–66; and Bradley, this volume. 7 See the variously sceptical accounts of Carlier 1984; Drews 1984; Ogden 1997; Mitchell 2013. 8 Bacchiadai: Hdt. 5.92; Paus. 2.4.4; Diod. 7.9; Strabo 8.6.20; Nikolaos of Damascus FGrH 90 F 57. Eupatridai: Arist. Ath. Pol. 13.2; Plut. Thes. 25.2. Penthilidai: Alkaios frr. 70, 75, 302; Arist. Pol. 1311b26–7; Neleidai: Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 52–3; Basilidai: Arist. Pol. 1305b19–21. 9 See Keurentjes 1997. For challenges to the traditional view of the Eupatridai as a closed group of ruling families, see Figueira 1985; Duplouy 2003, and in this volume; for a spirited defence of aspects of the traditional view, see Pierrot, this volume. 10 Geo ¯moroi of Samos: Plut. Mor. 303e–304c; Thuc. 8.21; with Shipley 1987, 39–41, and Mariaud, this volume; Gamoroi of Syracuse: Hdt. 7.155; Arist. fr. 586 Rose; with Shepherd, this volume. Hippeis of Eretria: e.g. Ar. Ath. Pol. 15.2; Hippobotai of Chalcis: e.g. Hdt. 5.77.2. 11 See e.g. Donlan 1980, 2–3, 9, 15–20. Rihll 1986 and 1993 for basileis as informal ‘Big Men’, whose status is based on personal achievement; Ulf 1990 for basileis as heads of households. 12 Osborne 2009, 209; Van Wees 1992, 78–83, stressed the idealized nature of Homer’s picture of social stratification, but nevertheless without sufficient justification treated heredity as the most realistic element, following Finley (1954/1977, 53, 59–60: see below). 13 E.g. Figueira and Nagy 1985; Murray 1993, 221; Lane Fox 2000, 40–5. 14 Van Wees 2000. Note that this reading of Theognis does not depend on the validity of the author’s provocative comparisons with the self-representation of Sicilian and American mafiosi. One might object that while Theognis represents a set of mainstream moral values, the moral judgements and language of mafiosi are at least in part counter-cultural insofar as their ideas of ‘justice’ or ‘law’ or ‘family values’ are at odds with those of the official state or respectable, law-abiding society. 15 See e.g. Lane Fox 2000, 35–40, Van Wees 2000, 52–3, on the setting and date of most of these poems. The poetry omits specific references to names of individuals or groups tying it to historical Megara, and it is impossible to pin the grievances down to specific occasions or political institutions as the descriptions have been carefully generalized (in contrast, say, to the political poems of Alcaeus). Hence some still follow Plato (Laws 630a) in the view that the poems concern Sicilian Megara, rather than, or as well as, that in mainland Greece. 16 The main evidence is that his son-in-law Kylon attempted to acquire a tyranny of his own in Athens shortly before the lawgiving activities of Drako and Solon, probably c. 630. 17 They probably had the three Dorian phylai, and there is some evidence for ko ¯mai organized into five mere¯ with (even more obscure) sub-groups called hekatostys (Plut. Mor. 295b).

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ 18 Bourriot 1976; Roussel 1976; more recently Lambert 1993; Davies 1996; also Duplouy, this volume. 19 For the Attic gene ¯, see also Lambert 1999 and Lambert, this volume. 20 Cf. e.g. Powis 1984, 6–8, on the difference between ancient Greek and modern uses. 21 E.g. at Thuc. 3.82.8, 8.64.3 we find the ideological claim of would-be oligarchs that they stood for a so¯phro¯n aristokratia; at Xen. Hell. 2.3.47, Theramenes calls ‘aristocracy’ the ‘good’ oligarchy he is trying to preserve against Kritias’ attempt to impose a narrower, harsher, rule; at Hell. 5.2.7 and 6.4.18 Xenophon is prepared to label the pro-Spartan oligarchy at Mantinea approvingly an ‘aristocracy’; and at Mem. 4.6.12 he reports as Socrates’ view that an aristocracy is where offices are held by those legally qualified, as opposed to oligarchy, rule by the rich, or democracy, rule by anyone; in Isocrates’ Panathenaikos 131–2 any of the three constitutions (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy) can be ‘aristocracies’ if the most competent and able are in charge; in Plato’s Republic, of course, aristocracy is the best form of government, rule by the philosophically educated with true knowledge, while in the Statesman it may be the term when the rich few rule in accordance with good laws (Polit. 301); Aristotle Politics, passim, esp. Books III–IV, defines his ‘aristocracy’ as rule by the few who are the best, in the interest of all, though he allows that some people use the term to mean rule by the rich or the ‘notables’ ( gno¯rimoi; 1293b38–40). Comedy may treat it as a slogan used by fomenters of stasis: at Ar. Birds 125 ‘wanting an aristocracy’ is a charge casually levelled at one who wants to live in a ‘comfortable’ city, and in a fourthcentury comedy by Heniochus (fr. 5 K–A), two personified abstractions, Demokratia and Aristokratia, like hetairai, are seen dwelling among recently liberated Greek cities, disrupting them and causing them to behave drunkenly and foolishly. 22 See e.g. the hints of fourth-century debates on what constituted ‘good birth’ (eugeneia) in the fragments of Aristotle’s dialogue on the topic, frr. 91–94 Rose, which suggest pervasive uncertainty on whether ‘good birth’ involves long-established families holding positions of power or wealth, or old families famous for moral virtue. Signs of a vigorous lawcourt debate on gennaiote¯s emerge from the fragments of Iphikrates’ speech against Harmodios on his grants or his statue (Lysias frr. 41–49 Carey), where Iphikrates contrasted his own noble deeds despite humble origins with Harmodios’ unworthiness despite his descent from the tyrannicide. Aristotle quotes the saying ‘there was nothing gennaion about Harmodios and Aristogeiton until they did a noble deed’ (Rhet. 1398a15–22). 23 See also on Xenophon’s usage, Roscalla 2004, 115–24. 24 Bourriot’s attempt to identify a number of specific, localised meanings of the phrase (e.g. a Spartan notion of those who deserved honours for their exceptional military service, or at Athens the idea of ‘good’ people who supported moderate oligarchy as promulgated by Theramenes) is less successful than his critique of the previous orthodoxy. 25 On Hesiod and the archaic economy in general, see Van Wees 2009. 26 Cicero, De Rep. 2.36.61–37.63; Livy 4.1–6. 27 See esp. Hodkinson 2000, esp. 399–445; and further discussion in van Wees, forthcoming. 28 See the chapters by Pierrot, Lambert, Sato, Fisher, Whitley, Mariaud and Shepherd.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher 29 Finley 1973, 49, directed especially against H. Hill, The Roman Middle Class (1952) on equites as ‘businessmen’; Ure 1922 is criticized by e.g. de Ste. Croix 1981, 280; cf. 41–2, 120. 30 Similarly on Rome, e.g. Brunt 1971, 47 (‘no doubt property was originally concentrated more in the hands of the patricians’), 55 (in 445 BC ‘evidently there were now plebeians rich enough’ to challenge for power, though only ‘a small class’; emphases added); on Greece, e.g. Finley 1970, 88, 97–8, 99, 103: ‘the closed group of the landowning aristocracy’ monopolized political power and ‘controlled much of the land (and in particular the best land)’; 1983, 12–13 (early aristocracies formed ‘an estate or order in a strict sense’ and ‘also possessed much of the wealth’); Rose 2013, 37–8, 82 (‘ruling class’ and ‘aristocratic class’ equated with ‘large landowners’), 92 (relies on ‘the assumption that the ruling class monopolized the best farmland’; emphasis added). 31 The main exception is the theory of the rise of the hoplite middle class: see below. 32 De Ste. Croix 1981, esp. 114–16, 122–3; cf. Finley 1973, 40–1; 1983, 10–11. For Greece, see also e.g. Fisher 1976, 24–30; Davies 1981, 10–14; Ober 1989, 194–6; note that the ‘liturgical’ class in Athens forms only the richest section of the propertied/ leisured class. 33 De Ste. Croix 1981, esp. 120–33; cf. Finley 1973, 52–61. 34 ‘The land was in the hands of a few’ in Solon’s Athens (Ath. Pol. 2.1, 4.5) and Eupatridai supposedly monopolized power, but no source equates the Eupatridai with the ‘few’ who owned land, and Solon’s allocation of political privilege on the basis of wealth implies that there were many wealthy families outside the hereditary elite (if the latter existed). Patricians and land: Smith 2006, 235–50. 35 Contra e.g. Finley 1983, 13: ‘a number of outsiders acquired enough wealth’ to demand a share in power; how they did so is ‘wholly mysterious to us’; Ober 1989, 58: ‘by the later seventh century, if not before, there was a noticeable group of individuals who were rich but not noble-born’ – a slightly more cautious formulation, but still suggesting that these rich men were a minority and had emerged more recently than the Eupatridai. 36 See Van Wees 2009, 445–50; in response to Rose’s ‘shocked’ rejection of this interpretation (2013, 169, 183–4, esp. n. 40), it may be worth pointing out that such an understanding of Hesiod’s work does not imply that there were no badly exploited smallholders and hired labourers at the time, merely that Hesiod(’s persona) was not one of the exploited but one of the exploiters. 37 This is in effect the view adopted by Wecowski 2014, 19–26: early Greek ‘aristocracy’ is based on wealth (rather than heredity) as displayed in a certain lifestyle and acknowledged by peers; membership in this group is highly fluid (‘precarious’). However, for reasons unclear to us, he insists that such an elite must nevertheless be called an ‘aristocracy’, not merely ‘elite’ or ‘upper class’ (23), and he continues to contrast ‘old aristocracy’ with ‘nouveaux riches’ and ‘parvenus’ (esp. 75) – perhaps under the influence of his chosen parallel of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. 38 The idea that power struggles were largely confined to the propertied elite is now well-established (see e.g. Foxhall 1997; Van Wees 2006; Osborne 2009, 209–11 on Solon), but it is not generally recognized that these may be struggles between distinct sections of the elite rather than simply between individuals and their supporters for personal power. Also, an emphasis on intra-elite struggles is often unjustifiably

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ combined with a dismissal of the struggles between propertied elite and lower classes: see Van Wees 2008; contra e.g. Cawkwell 1995; Anderson 2005. 39 De Ste. Croix 1981, 71, refused to use ‘middle class’; Finley did sometimes use the term (1970, 98; see below), but elsewhere rejected the use of this concept (1983, 10–11). 40 The major proponent of this model in more recent years, Victor Hanson, remedies this problem by suggesting that hoplite militias did include almost the entire free peasantry (his ‘yeomanry’), not just its least poor sections; he assumes that militias constituted ‘nearly half’ of the citizen population (1995, 105, 114, 207, 213, 374, 479 n.6; but ‘one-third to half’ at 208–406), and thereby implies that hired (or dependent) labour made up the remaining 50% or more. This is not necessarily wrong, but constitutes a major departure from the Finley/de Ste. Croix model, which is not defended in any detail but posited to rescue the notion of a farming ‘middle class’. 41 See in more detail Van Wees 2002b, 72–7; Morris 2000, 119, 161; Ober 1991, 119–20; cf. Finley 1983, 10–11, and Ober 1989, 27–31, denying that a distinct middle class existed in classical Athens. 42 Greece: Van Wees 2004, 37–8, 55–7; 2006; 2007. Rome: Livy 1.43; Dion. Hal. 4.16–18; Pliny NH 33.43; Aulus Gellius, NA 6.13.1; Festus 100L, with Rathbone 1993; for a different view, Bradley, this volume. 43 As argued in detail by Van Wees 2013a, contra the model proposed by Hanson 1995. 44 A political role for archaic militias was questioned for both Greece and Rome by Snodgrass 1965; for Greece, see also Salmon 1977; Frost 1984; Snodgrass 1993; for Rome, see Cornell 1995, 179–90, 257; Forsythe 2005, 113–15; Smith 2006, 275–6; Bradley, this volume. 45 Cf. Rose 2013, 79: ‘I find highly misleading the widespread assumption...that in itself the rise of the polis entailed a threat to aristocratic oikoi... Rather we need to understand the polis as the creation of the aristocracy’. 46 Finley 1973, 107–8 (naval service); de Ste. Croix 1981, 24–5, 182 (mercenary service). See Van Wees 2013b, 23–8, 69–75, 74–5, 131–2, for the development of paid military, naval and public service. 47 de Ste. Croix 1981, esp. 210–18; cf. 114, 208–26, 269–75; Finley 1973, 73, 105– 6, 114. 48 Homer, Iliad 21.444–5; Hesiod, W&D 602–3: a male the ¯s without his own household and female erithos without children are hired on a yearly basis (see West 1978, ad 602); Solon F 13.47–8. Stranded oarsmen: Xen Hell. 2.1.1 (100 ships, Chios), 6.2.37 (90 ships, Corcyra). 49 See Van Wees 2013a, 229–33; 2006. 50 Finley 1959, 98–9, 114–15; 1960, 141–3, 149; 1964, 128–32; 1965, 155–6, 165– 6; 1973, 69–70. 51 Finley 1973, 84–94; de Ste. Croix 1981, 243–53. 52 Cf. Rathbone 1998. 53 For discussions of ‘heroic’ values which largely follow Finley, see esp. Adkins 1960; Donlan 1980/1999, esp. 1–25; Murray 1980/1993, esp. 38–56. 54 Note also Finley’s comment on acts of mutilation in Homeric battles: ‘what must be stressed about Homeric cruelty is its heroic quality, not its specifically Greek character’ (1954, 119).

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher 55 Donlan 1980, 25; Murray 1980/1993, 49. Rejection of feudal tenure: Finley 1957/1981, 221–3. See also e.g. Ulf 1990; Qviller 1981; Rihll 1993; Van Wees 1992. 56 Note for example that Donlan asserts that ‘the aristocratic ideal is essentially the product of a particular class and not a national ideal’ (1980, xvi), formulated ‘both to prove the superiority of the upper class and to impose a particular set of values on the society as a whole’ (xvii; emphasis added), and follows Finley in most essentials, even as he introduces the important new model of the ‘ranked chief’ (below) and rightly concludes that the overlap between aristocratic and wider ideals was ‘not the result of the filtering down and acceptance by the many of the values of the few, but the reflection of a culture-wide homogeneity of values and attitudes which all Greeks shared’ (178). 57 The same applies to the analysis of Hesiod’s Works and Days, typically taken to reflect lower-class values: hard work, self-sufficiency, justice and piety are not the only values to which he appeals, and we have no reason to think that these values appealed only to the lower classes. 58 See e.g. Van Wees 1992, 126–38, on ‘the ethics of anger’ in the epics. 59 For competitive public speaking, see also Il. 1.490; 2.370; 3.223; 15.283–4. For the value attached to ‘good counsel’ (euboulia) in Homer, see esp. Schofield 1986. For the kings’ and elders’ judicial roles, see also Il. 1.237–9; 2.203–6; 9.97–9, 156, 298; Od. 11.569–71; 19.109–14. Finley nevertheless insisted that one should not be ‘misled’ by ‘numerous’ references to ‘good counsel’ (1954, 115), and that ‘despite some hints of royal justice’, Homeric heroes were leaders in war and ‘little else’ (97). 60 See also Il. 2.196–7 and 204–6 (all must obey Agamemnon because ‘the spirit of a lord nurtured by Zeus is great, and his honour comes from Zeus, and wise Zeus loves him’; ‘ There must be one commander, one lord, to whom [Zeus] entrusted staff and laws in order to be lord among them’); 9.69, 97–9 (Nestor to Agamemnon: ‘you are most lordly’ (basileutatos); ‘you are master of many men and Zeus entrusted you with staff and laws, so that you may make decisions for them’); 9.160–1 (Agamemnon: ‘Let him submit to me insofar as I am more lordly (basileuteros) and older’). Staffs, Zeus, kings, and justice are also linked at Il. 1.237–9; 6.157–9; 9.156, 298; 18.503–6; Od. 11.569–71. 61 Walter Donlan (esp. 1980/1999, 2–3, 18–19, 25) drew attention to the anthropological parallel of the ‘chief’, whose position is hereditary yet strongly dependent on popular approval of the way in which he acquits himself: ‘high rank with its attendant honors was, in a real sense, still the gift of the community at large’ (20). Note that kings are seen as acting on behalf of the community when they allocate ‘prizes’ from spoils or shares at public banquets: Van Wees 1992, 32–3, 294–310. 62 Informal talk in agora: Od. 17.52–72; 20.144–6. Assembly: 2.1–259; 8.1–56. Court: 12.439–40. 63 End at sunset: e.g. Od. 2.394–8; 15.452–81; 19.418–27; into the night: 8.417; 18.307–428. Sport and games: see below. Afternoon return to agora: 8.100–399 (sport and dance); 15.361–2, 466–8 (talk). 64 All these sports except jumping, and with the addition of chariot-racing and armed combat, also feature in the funeral games for Patroclus, Iliad 23. 65 Listening to epic: Od. 1.325–71; 8.62–92, 471–531. Song and dance at dinner: 1.150–9, 421–4; 17.605–6; 18.304–6; contra Wecowski 2014, 227–8, these passages are not at all ‘ambiguous’, and it can only be the guests who dance. Dancing to Song of Ares and Aphrodite: 8.250–369.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ 66 Contra Wecowski 2014, 212–13 n. 115, the scene is set after dinner (Il. 9.70–94, 225–7), even if Achilles lays on more food and drink when visitors arrive (9.202–20). 67 Od. 11.184–7; here, we are evidently to understand that underage Telemachos is invited to attend the feasts because his absent father is still acknowledged as a ‘man who administers justice’. 68 Homer suggests that such feasts are routine: a group of probably 12 basileis (Od. 8.390–1) ‘always’ drinks ‘the wine of the elders’ at Alcinoos’ house (13.8–9), and such a session is in progress when Odysseus arrives (7.136–239). Agamemnon regularly hosts feasts for the leading men, also referred to as ‘wine of the elders’ (Il. 4.259–60), and these are once said to be ‘at public expense’ (de¯mia, 17.249–50; cf. 4.343–4; 9.70– 3) For a full discussion of Homeric feasts, see Van Wees 1995; also e.g. Wecowski 2014, 191–247, who however does argue for a ‘warrior feast’ being the norm in the heroic world of the past as imagined by the poet Homer, and separates out elements suggestive of the symposion as belonging to a different ‘register’ and reflecting the poet’s contemporary world. 69 See Thuc. 1.5.3–6.3, and the analysis of archaic iconography in Van Wees 1998, arguing that carrying swords went out of fashion c. 650 BC but carrying spears not until the late sixth century. 70 See Il. 5.313; 6.25, 421–4; 11.101–6; 14.443–5; 20.90–2, 188–91; 24.29; Od. 13.221–5. 71 Farming: e.g. Il. 5.499–502; 11.558–62. Herding: e.g. Il. 2.469–71; 16.641–3; 17.4– 5; and two dozen similes featuring livestock attacked by wild animals, e.g. Il. 15.630–6. Wood-cutting: e.g. Il. 3.59–63; 11.86–9; 16.633–4; 17.742–5; 23.315–18. 72 Od. 17.222; see in detail Van Wees 1992, 228–37, and 2002a. 73 The theory of exchange spheres was mooted by Morris 1986, and is central to the arguments about aristocratic values of Kurke 1999 (esp. 12–23). The clearest evidence against it is Od. 22.55–9, where the suitors promise Odysseus ‘to give you bronze and gold, making up for everything that has been taken from your house in drink and food, each man separately contributing the value of 20 oxen’: the value of food and drink is paid for in gold and bronze, while the equivalence is calculated in terms of ‘oxen-worth’: see further Van Wees 2013b, 113, 132–3; 2002a; 1992, 222–7. 74 See Van Wees 1995, 164–79; Wecowski 2014, 19–81. 75 Il. 18.497–504; Od. 2.10–14; 3.406–12; 8.4–6. 76 Slave’s hospitality and dress: Od. 14.45–113, 410–56, 510–33. See Van Wees 1998 (on bearing arms), 2005a (Homeric dress), 2005b (home production of cloth). 77 As recognized by Kurke, who adopts the elitist-middling distinction and frequently speaks in terms of aristocracy/elite versus city/polis, but adds in a footnote: ‘I do not intend to suggest thereby that “city” and “elite” are mutually exclusive categories (since, throughout the archaic period, it is almost certainly the elites which are running the cities)’ (1999, 17 n. 46). 78 Morris does not explain what happened to the elitist legitimating claim of military excellence which, he (rightly, see below) argued, continued throughout the archaic period. For detailed critiques of Morris’s model of values, see Hammer 2004; Kistler 2004. 79 Kurke 1999, e.g. 22. She also argued that aristocrats resented coinage because it ‘breaks down the distinction between spheres of exchange entirely’ by making money a general measure of value by which ‘all goods and services can be measured’ (ibid.),

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher but as noted above the notion that a separate aristocratic sphere of exchange ever existed is disproved by the evidence. 80 Kurke stresses the association of coinage with tyrants in literature (1999, esp. 65–100), but it would be hard to argue that coinages were always introduced by tyrants in reality. 81 Donlan 1980, 49–64; Murray 1980, 80 (‘one of the most significant changes in Greek aristocratic life’); 1983; 1991; Wecowski 2014. 82 Hdt. 6.92; 9.75 (pentathlete leads a volunteer force and fights single combats during the siege of Aegina, 491 BC); 9.105 (Athenian pankratiast excels in battle of Mycale, 479 BC, and gets conspicuous burial near battlefield at Carystus a few years later). Note that, according to Krentz 2002; 2007; Van Wees 2004; 2013a, the classical phalanx in any case only took shape in the early fifth century. 83 Ober 1989, 257; see further 12, 248–92, and esp. 250–1 on aristocratic ‘pastimes’. Similarly, Donlan 1980, 155–76, argued that this lifestyle was cultivated by classical Athenian ‘aristocrats’ especially when they lost their privileges and power. 84 Ober believed that Eupatridai formed a hereditary elite in the seventh century (1989, 55–60), but see n. 8, above, and he favoured the idea that certain ‘clans’ (gene¯ ) enjoyed hereditary (ritual) privileges and status in classical Athens (252–6), for which see above, ad nn. 17–18. 85 See for example Fisher 1998; 2009; Corner 2010; 2011; Wecowksi 2014, esp. 74– 8, for arguments that athletic and sympotic activities and groups served to integrate new members into the elite. 86 See Fisher, this volume, on similarly damaging assumptions of a social chasm between athletes and their trainers. 87 Theognis 31–4; also e.g. 35–7, 101–16, 411–12, 853–4, 955–6; PMG 897 (the Admetus song). 88 On Homer, see again Finley 1954, 61–8; cf. Donlan 1980, 4–5 (acquisition of wealth ‘not prompted by greed: such a motivation belongs to market economies’; by contrast, he attributes purely materialistic motives to the common man, 22). On the impact of status on wealth, see Finley 1973, 41–61, the start of an entire school of thought making ‘embeddedness’ (a term coined by Karl Polanyi, see below) a defining feature of the ancient economy. Finley, however, did not link these attitudes specifically with aristocrats, as does e.g. Ober: ‘nobles were expected to refrain from participation in degrading occupations, such as manufacturing or commerce’ (1989, 12, 273–9). 89 However, he also spoke of the ‘individualistic economy of pure [self-]interest which our societies have had to some extent ever since their discovery by the Greeks and Semites’ (1925, 73). 90 Croesus’ reaction in the story is to laugh and double the value of his gift, surely a clear guide to the intended audience response: amused admiration rather than disgust. See further Van Wees 2002a, contra Kurke 1999, 142–6, citing earlier scholarship condemning the ‘greed’ of Alcmeon. The association with a king of Lydia is thought to be ‘ironic’ for a family that claimed to be hostile to tyrants, but Greek values were not so simple: a tyrant might be bad, but a powerful friend was good. 91 See esp. Foxhall 1998 on ‘semi-luxuries’, noted by Morris 2000, 181, but not adequately incorporated in his model of ‘luxury’ as central to elite self-legitimation. 92 See Fisher 1998; 2009; 2011; Christesen 2012, 155–60; contra Pritchard 2013.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ 93 See esp. Solon fr. 4.9–10; Xenophanes fr. 1.13–24, with Fisher 1992, 70–1, 203– 5; Schmitt-Pantel 1992; Corner 2011. Contra e.g. Murray 1990; Kurke 1999, 17–19 (‘the symposium as a kind of anti-polis’). 94 Note also Tyrtaeus’ legitimation of the Spartan kings in the late seventh century on the basis that ‘Zeus himself gave this city to the descendants of Heracles’ (fr. 2.12–13). 95 Contra Ober 1989, 260–6; also 253–9 for appeals to descent in the Attic orators. 96 So also Rose 2013, 75; contra Ober 1989, 289–92, 332–3. One may, however, still see ‘structural change’ in the classical liturgy in other respects, insofar as the element of compulsion became stronger and the ‘honours’ granted by the community more formal; on the liturgical class, see esp. Davies 1971; 1984; on the development of public finance, see Van Wees 2013b. 97 Donlan 1980, 33–4, 37–9, listed factors such as population growth, more intensive agriculture and increasing trade without spelling out how these forces combined to produce stratification; Qviller 1981; 1995 argued that pressure on chiefs to display generosity increased extraction of wealth from the lowest-ranking followers and redistributed wealth to ‘lesser chiefs’ who eventually formed an aristocracy; Rose 2013, 68–76, has added a military dimension: the development of wars of conquest rather than plunder created a need for a larger military elite which constituted a ‘new oligarchy, which now may more justifiably be designated by the self-serving term “aristocracy”’ (73). 98 Population growth: Snodgrass 1980, 19–25; broadening of elite: Morris 1987 (Greece); change in an existing elite: Bradley, this volume (Italy). Similarly, Shepherd, this volume, analyses the development of elaborate burial practices in Greek cities in Sicily in terms of a threat to existing elites from new claimants . 99 This was in fact Max Weber’s approach; the usual perception that Weber favoured status over class as an analytical concept (e.g. Rose 2013, 3–6) is not borne out by his discussion in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, where he defines both class and status (‘with some over-simplification, one might thus say that classes are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas status groups are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special styles of life’; 1922, 937), and argues that an informal status group may become a formal ‘order’ when the distribution of economic power (= class position) remains stable (933), and that status groups will actively deny the significance of ‘purely economic acquisition’ (= class position), with greater ‘sharpness’ the more their actual economic position is precarious (936). Despite our criticisms of Ober 1989, this book rightly does give equal weight to status and class. 100 On this point, Finley followed Weber, who credited status ideology with the power to cause ‘the hindrance of the free development of the market’ in antiquity (1922, 937): we suggest that this is another instance of imposing modern ‘aristocratic’ values on the ancient world. 101 Rose 2013, 37–8, 91–2, argues for a relation of ‘indirect’ exploitation insofar as the elite acquired most and best land and thus limits the opportunities of the lower classes, but says little about how these conditions resulted in a class struggle (as opposed to individual competition for land). 102 For a similar formulation, see Finley 1973, 49; cited and criticised by Rose 2013, 6–7. Rose himself, like de Ste. Croix, prefers to concentrate on relations of exploitation

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher rather than defining groups, but if class is to be meaningfully used it must surely be possible to identify specific groups as classes. 103 See Finley 1973, 45–51, tacitly adopting Weber’s concepts of Stand (‘status group’), soziale Ehre (‘social honour’, status) and their possible development into juridical ‘orders’ (1922, 932–6). 104 Veblen’s use of the term to mean ‘upper classes...by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations’ (1899, 21), where ‘industrial occupation’ is equated with ‘productive labour’ (e.g. 23), is problematic since it led him to label everyone employed in non-productive services, from domestic servants to priests and professors, as ‘vicarious leisure classes’ (esp. 55–6, 235–51). But we may redefine the term to mean ‘a class of people who derive most or all of their income from the labour of others (as opposed to self-employment or employment by others) and are thus in principle able to live in leisure, whether or not they do exempt or exclude themselves from work.’ 105 Davies 1984, 28–9, remains the only serious discussion of what ‘leisure class’ means in economic terms (a minimum property of 1 talent in classical Greece); followed by e.g. Ober 1989, 128–31; Van Wees 2001, 51. Davies argued that the ‘liturgical’ elite within this class consisted of only 400 men and therefore estimated the size of the classical Athenian leisure class at 1,200, or 4% of the free population; since it seems clear that the liturgical elite actually consisted of at least 1,200 men and the eisphora-paying class may have been rather larger still (Rhodes 1982), the leisure class must have been significantly larger. Van Wees 2013a, 229–32, argues that it formed about 15% of the Athenian citizen population. 106 See Hodkinson 2000, and for the culture of ‘austerity’ also Van Wees, forthcoming. For Finley, the Solonian property classes were a ‘classic example’ of a non-hereditary ‘order’ (1973, 48 n. 28). 107 For this interpretation, see Van Wees 1999 and 2006. 108 See again Wecowski 2014 on the symposion and Fisher 1998 on the gymnasium. 109 See, after Bourriot 1976 and Roussel 1976, e.g. Davies 1996, Duplouy 2010, Fisher (this volume) on Aegina, and, on criteria for ‘citizenship’ in archaic Greece, essays in Brock and Duplouy, forthcoming. 110 On attitudes to these at Athens, Davidson 1997, 270–7, Fisher 2008.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Brélaz, C. and Ducrey, P. (eds) 2008 Sécurité collective et ordre public dans les sociétés anciennes, Vandoeuvres-Geneva. Brock, R. and Duplouy, A. (eds) forthcoming Defining Archaic Citizenship, Oxford. Brock, R. and Hodkinson, S. (eds) 2000 Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of political organization and community in ancient Greece, Oxford. Brunt, P.A. 1971 Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic, London. Cairns, D. (ed.) 2005 Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Swansea. Cannadine, D. 1990 The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, New Haven. Carlier, P. 1984 La royauté en Grèce avant Alexandre, Strasbourg. Cartledge, P., Millett, P. and von Reden, S. (eds) 1998 KOSMOS. Essays in order, conflict and community in classical Athens, Cambridge. Cawkwell, G. 1995 ‘Early Greek tyranny and the people’, CQ 45, 73–86. Chaniotis, A. and Ducrey, P. (eds) 2002 Army and Power in the Ancient World, Stuttgart. Christesen, P. 2012 Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds, Cambridge. Cleland, L., Harlow, M. and Llewellyn-Jones, L. (eds) 2005 The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, Oxford. Cornell, T.J. 1995 The Beginnings of Rome, London. Corner, S. 2010 ‘Transcendent drinking: the Symposium at sea reconsidered’, CQ 60, 352–80. 2011 ‘Bringing the outside in: the andron as brothel and the symposium’s civic sexuality’, in Glazebrook and Henry (eds) 2011, 60–85. Crielaard, J.-P. (ed.) 1995 Homeric Questions, Amsterdam. Davidson, J. 1997 Courtesans and Fishcakes, London. Davies, J.K. 1971 Athenian Propertied Families, Oxford. 1984 Wealth and the Power of Wealth, London and New York. 1996 ‘Strutture e suddivisioni delle “poleis” archaice. Le repartizioni minori’, in S. Settis (ed.) 1996, 599–652. Degler, C.N. 1984 Out of our Past: Forces that shaped Modern America, New York. Donlan, W. 1973 ‘The origin of kalos kagathos’, AJP 94, 365–74. 1980 The Aristocratic Ideal. (Cited from Donlan 1999) 1999 The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers, Wauconda, Illinois.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Doyle, W. 2010 Aristocracy. A Very Brief History, Oxford. Drews, R. 1983 Basileus: The evidence for kingship in Geometric Greece, New Haven. Duplouy, A. 2003 ‘Les Eupatrides, “nobles défenseurs de leur patrie”’, Cahiers du Centre Glotz 14, 1–22. 2006 Le prestige des élites: recherches sur les modes de reconnaissance sociale en Grèce entre les x e et v e siecles avant J.-C, Paris. 2010 ‘Observations sur l’usage des noms en –ides et en –ades aux époques archaïque et classique’, in Lafond and Capdetrey (eds) 2010, 307–344. Figueira, T. 1985 ‘The Theognidea and Megarian society’, in Figueira and Nagy (eds) 1985, 112–58 Figueira, T. and Nagy, G. (eds) 1985 Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the polis, Baltimore. Finley, M.I. 1954/1977 The World of Odysseus. First and second editions, New York. 1957 ‘Homer and Mycenae: property and tenure’, Historia 6, 133–59. (Reprint in Finley 1981, 213–32.) 1959 ‘Was Greek civilization based on slave labour?’, Historia 8, 145–64. (Reprint in Finley 1981, 97–115.) 1960 ‘The servile statuses of ancient Greece’, Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité 7, 165–89. (Reprint in Finley 1981, 133–49.) 1964 ‘Between slavery and freedom’, CSSH 6, 233–49. (Reprint in Finley 1981, 116–32.) 1965 ‘Debt-bondage and the problem of slavery’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger 43, 159–84. (Reprint in Finley 1981, 150–66.) 1970 Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages, New York. 1973 The Ancient Economy, Berkeley. 1981 Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, Harmondsworth. 1983 Politics in the Ancient World, Cambridge. Fisher, N. 1976 Social Values in Classical Athens, London and Toronto. 1992 Hybris. A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece, Warminster. 1998 ‘Gymnasia and social mobility in Athens’, in Cartledge et al. (eds) 1998, 84–104. 2008 ‘The bad boyfriend, the flatterer and the sycophant: related forms of the kakos in democratic Athens’, in Sluiter and Rosen (eds) 2008, 185–232. 2009 ‘The culture of competition’, in Raaflaub and Van Wees (eds) 2009, 524–41. 2011 ‘Competitive delights: the social effects of the expanded programme of contests in post-Kleisthenic Athens’, in Fisher and Van Wees (eds) 2011, 175–219. Fisher, N. and H. van Wees (eds) 1998 Archaic Greece: New evidence and new approaches, London and Swansea. 2011 Competition in the Ancient World, Swansea.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Forsythe, G. 2005 A Critical History of Early Rome, Berkeley. Foxhall, L. 1997 ‘A view from the top: evaluating the Solonian property classes’, in Mitchell and Rhodes (eds) 1997, 113–36. 1998 ‘Cargoes of the heart’s desire: the character of trade in the ancient Mediterranean world’, in Fisher and Van Wees (eds) 1998, 295–309. Frost, F. 1984 ‘The Athenian military before Cleisthenes’, Historia 33, 283–94. Glazebrook, A. and Henry, M.M. (eds) 2011 Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE, Madison. Hammer, D. 2004 ‘Ideology, the symposium, and archaic politics’, AJP 125, 479–512. Hanson, V.D. 1995 The Other Greeks: The family farm and the agrarian roots of Western civilization, New York. Hodkinson, S. 2000 Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, London and Swansea. Hopkins, K. and Burton, G. 1983 ‘Political succession in the late Republic (249–50 BC)’, in K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal. Sociological Studies in Roman History 2, Cambridge, 31–119. Hopwood, K. (ed.) 1999 Organized Crime in Antiquity, London and Swansea. Jongman, W. and Kleijwegt, M. (eds) 2002 After the Past: Essays in Ancient History in honour of H.W. Pleket, Leiden. Kagan, D. and Viggiano, G. (eds) 2013 Men of Bronze: The development of the hoplite phalanx, Princeton. Keurentjes, M.B.J. 1997 ‘The Greek patronymics in –idas/–ides’, Mnemosyne 50, 385–400. Kistler, E. 2004 ‘“Kampf der Mentalitäten”: Ian Morris’ “elitist” versus “middling ideology”’, in Rollinger and Ulf (eds) 2004, 145–76. Krentz, P.E. 2002 ‘Fighting by the rules: the invention of the hoplite agon’, Hesperia 71, 23–39. 2007 ‘Warfare and hoplites’, in Shapiro (ed.) 2007, 61–84. Kurke, L. 1999 Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold. The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece, Princeton. Lafond, Y. and Capdetrey, L. (eds) 2010 La cité et ses élites. Pratiques et représentations des formes de domination et de contrôle social dans les cités grecques (VIII e s. a.C. – I er s. p.C), Bordeaux. Lambert, S.D. 1998 The Phratries of Attica, 2nd ed., Ann Arbor. 1999 ‘The Attic genos’, CQ 49, 484–9. Lane Fox, R. 2000 ‘Theognis: an alternative to democracy’, in Brock and Hodkinson (eds) 2000, 35–51.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Lord, C. and O’Connor, D.K. (eds) 1991 Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science, Berkeley. Lynch, K. 2011 The Symposium in Context: Pottery from a Late Archaic house near the Athenian Agora. Hesperia Supplement 46. Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1848 The Communist Manifesto, London. (Cited from Penguin Books edition, 2004). Mauss, M. 1925 Essai sur le don, Paris. (Cited from The Gift, trans. I. Cunnison, London 1954.) Mitchell, L. 2013 The Heroic Rulers of Archaic and Classical Greece, London. Mitchell, L.G. and Rhodes, P.J. (eds) 1997 The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, London. Morris, I. 1986 ‘Gift and commodity in archaic Greece’, Man 21, 1–17. 1987 Burial and Ancient Society: The rise of the Greek city-state, Cambridge. 2000 Archaeology as Cultural History: Words and things in Iron Age Greece, Malden. Murray, O. 1980 Early Greece, London. 1993 Early Greece, 2nd ed., London. Neer, R.T. 2002 Style and Politics in Athenian Vase-Painting: The craft of democracy, ca. 530–460 BCE, Cambridge. Nilsson, M.P. 1929a ‘Die Hoplitentaktik und das Staatswesen’, Klio 22, 240–9. 1929b ‘The introduction of hoplite tactics at Rome’, JRS 19, 1–11. Ober, J. 1989 Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, Princeton. 1991 ‘Aristotle’s political sociology: class, status and order in the Politics’, in Lord and O’Connor (eds) 1991, 112–35. Ogden, D. 1997 The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece, London. Osborne, R. 2009 Greece in the Making. 2nd ed., London. Phillips, D. and Pritchard, D. (eds) 2003 Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World, Swansea. Pinsent, J. and Hurt, H. (eds) 1992 Homer 87, Proceedings of the Greenbank Colloquium. Liverpool Classical Papers 2, Liverpool. Polanyi, K. 1944 The Great Transformation, New York. Powell, A. 2001 Athens and Sparta (2nd edition), London. Powell, A. (ed.) forthcoming A Companion to Sparta, vol. I, Malden. Powis, J. 1984 Aristocracy, Oxford.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Pritchard, D.M. 2003 ‘Athletics, education and participation in classical Athens’, in Phillips and Pritchard (eds), 293–350. 2013 Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens, Cambridge. Qviller, B. 1981 ‘The dynamics of the Homeric society’, SO 56, 109–55. 1995 ‘The world of Odysseus revisited’, SO 70, 241–61. Raaflaub, K.A. and van Wees, H. (eds) 2009 A Companion to Archaic Greece, Malden. Rathbone, D.W. 1993 ‘The census qualifications of the assidui and the prima classis’, in SancisiWeerdenburg et al. (eds) 2003, 121–52. 1998 ‘Early Rome: a peasant republic?’, in Collection of the Second International Conference on Ancient World History in China. Supplement to Journal of Ancient Civilizations 3, Changchun, 209–15. Rhodes, P.J. 1982 ‘Problems in Athenian eisphora and liturgies’, AJAH 7, 1–19. Rihll, T.E. 1986 ‘Kings and commoners in Homeric society’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 11, 86–91. 1993 ‘The power of the Homeric basileus’, in Pinsent and Hurt (eds) 1993, 39–50. Rollinger, R. and Ulf, C. (eds) 2004 Griechische Archaik: interne Entwicklungen – externe Impulse, Berlin. Roscalla, F. 2004 ‘Kalokagathia e kaloikagathoi in Senofonte’, in Tuplin (ed.) 2004, 115–24. Rose, P.W. 2009 ‘Class’, in Raaflaub and Van Wees (eds) 2009, 468–82. 2013 Class in Archaic Greece, Cambridge. Roussel, D. 1976 Tribu et cité, Paris. Sabin, P., van Wees, H. and Whitby, M. (eds) 2007 The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare. Vol. I, Cambridge. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. et al. (eds) 1993 De Agricultura. In Memoriam P.W. de Neeve, Amsterdam. Salmon, J. 1977 ‘Political hoplites?’, JHS 97, 84–101. Schmitt-Pantel, P. 1992 La cité au banquet. Histoire des repas publiques dans les cités grecques, Rome. Schofield, M. 1986 ‘Euboulia in the Iliad’, CQ 36, 6–31. Settis, S. (ed.) 1996 I Greci. Storia, Cultura, Arte, Societa. 2.1: Una storia greca – formazione, Turin. Shapiro, H.A. (ed.) 2007 The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece, Cambridge. Sluiter, I. and Rosen, R.M. (eds) 2008 KAKOS: Badness and anti-value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden.

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Hans van Wees and Nick Fisher Smith, C.J. 2006 The Roman Clan. The Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology, Cambridge. Snodgrass, A.M. 1965 ‘The hoplite reform and history’, JHS 85, 110–22. 1980 Archaic Greece. The Age of Experiment, London. 1993 ‘The “hoplite reform” revisited’, DHA 19, 47–61. Ste. Croix, G.E.M. de 1981 The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, London. Tuplin, C. (ed.) 2004 Xenophon and his World, Stuttgart. Ulf, C. 1990 Die homerische Gesellschaft, Munich. Ure, P.N. 1922 The Origin of Tyranny, Cambridge. Van Wees, H. 1995 ‘Princes at dinner: social event and social structure in Homer’, in Crielaard (ed.) 1995, 147–82. 1998 ‘Greeks bearing arms: the state, the leisure class and the display of arms in archaic Greece’, in Fisher and Van Wees (eds) 1998, 333–78. 1999 ‘The mafia of early Greece: violent exploitation in the seventh and sixth centuries BC’, in Hopwood (ed.) 1999, 1–51. 2000 ‘Megara’s mafiosi: timocracy and violence in Theognis’, in Brock and Hodkinson (eds) 2000, 52–67. 2001 ‘ The myth of the middle-class army’, in Bekker-Nielsen and Hannestad (eds) 2001, 45–71. 2002a ‘Greed, generosity and gift-exchange in early Greece and the western Pacific’, in Jongman and Kleijwegt (eds) 2002, 341–78. 2002b ‘Tyrants, oligarchs and citizen militias’, in Chaniotis and Ducrey (eds) 2002, 61–82. 2004 Greek Warfare: Myths and realities, London. 2005a ‘Clothes, class and gender in Homer’, in Cairns (ed.) 2005, 1–36. 2005b ‘Trailing tunics and sheepskin coats: dress and status in early Greece’, in Cleland, Harlow and Llewellyn-Jones (eds) 2005, 44–51. 2006 ‘Mass and elite in Solon’s Athens: the property classes revisited’, in Blok and Lardinois (eds) 2006, 351–89. 2007 ‘War and society’, in Sabin et al. (eds) 2007, 273–99. 2008 ‘ “Stasis, destroyer of men”: mass, elite, political violence and security in archaic Greece’, in Brelaz and Ducrey (eds) 2008, 1–48. 2009 ‘The economy’, in Raaflaub and Van Wees (eds) 2009, 444–67. 2013a ‘Farmers and hoplites: historical models’, in Kagan and Viggiano (eds) 2013, 222–55. 2013b Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute. A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens, London. forthcoming ‘Luxury, austerity and equality’ and ‘The common messes’, in Powell (ed.) Veblen, T. 1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York.

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The trouble with ‘aristocracy’ Weber, M. 1922 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen. (Cited from Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. by G. Roth and C. Wittich, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1978.) Wecowski, M. 2014 The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet, Oxford. West, M.L. 1978 Hesiod. Works and Days, Oxford.

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PART I: ELITES IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: APPROACHES AND MODELS

2 GENEALOGICAL AND DYNASTIC BEHAVIOUR IN ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREECE: TWO GENTILICIAN STRATEGIES Alain Duplouy It is a widely accepted idea that archaic Greek elites consisted of ‘aristocrats’ who ruled by hereditary right and enjoyed a life of leisure thanks to their riches. It is said that in the archaic age only these ‘aristocrats’ possessed full citizenship-rights, allowing them to rule their cities. Their leading position was jealously guarded by means of a gentilician social structure, until the lower social ranks, the de¯mos, challenged their right to control every political office and the whole process of decision-making. Hesiod, Solon and Theognis are seen as witnesses of this long struggle, which eventually ended, at least in Athens, with Cleisthenes’ reforms and the victory of the de¯mos.1 Various studies have deeply challenged, however, this definition of aristocracy by rethinking its relationship to political authority, nobility and wealth.2 In all these fields, ‘aristocrats’ actually seem to hold an unstable position, which has to be constantly built up. Elaborating on these milestone studies, I developed in my book Le prestige des élites the notion that enterprising individuals create and perform their own status through various strategies of distinction (modes de reconnaissance sociale). Adopting an anthropological perspective, I tried to demonstrate that social status in archaic and classical Greece was achieved rather than ascribed. Among citizens, individual status was generally the result of continuous investment in forms of behaviour which required a great deal of time, money and energy.3

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Alain Duplouy According to Oswyn Murray, such practices as the symposium, athletics, homosexuality, horse-breeding, hunting or guest-friendship were essential features of an ‘aristocratic lifestyle’.4 They are to be conceived as status symbols. However, the relationship between status and behaviour is a major issue. Is the lifestyle a mere status symbol? Or does it contribute actively to establishing social status? Engaging in these social practices can serve to establish a privileged position, rather than simply display it.5 This is my core hypothesis: in ancient Greece, status has to be defined by performance. At the origin of my hypothesis lay the observation that in ancient Greece, public esteem, granted by the community, was an essential tool in the shaping of the social order. As Oswyn Murray himself puts it, ‘In the shame culture of early Greece, honour and the possibility of dishonour are closely related to social and political status with their attendant rights and duties’.6 Social esteem and the fear of shame were thus constant preoccupations for the Greeks. In the Odyssey, Penelope’s suitors fear the gossip that men and women will spread among the Achaeans if the beggar manages to string Odysseus’ bow after their own failure (Od. 21.321–329). Hesiod gave this advice to his brother: ‘Avoid the talk of men. For Talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her’ (W&D 760–4). I could multiply examples. All would testify that many actions in ancient Greece aimed at promoting one’s standing in the eyes of others or avoiding the devastating consequences of being shamed before them. Moreover, status in the community was the object of competition. The agonistic mentality is certainly one of the most significant features of ancient Greek civilisation. ‘Always be the best and be superior to others’ is a Homeric principle (Il. 6.208; 11.784) widely adopted. No study demonstrates this as well as Jacob Burckhardt’s Griechische Kulturgeschichte and his concept of the agonale Mensch,7 even if I prefer Nietzsche’s conception of the Greek agonistic mentality.8 Whereas Burckhardt conceived it as a specific feature of archaic oligarchies that faded away in classical times with the rise of democracies, Nietzsche defined the ago¯n as a fundamental feature of Hellenism, a constant characteristic of Greek history, found across a wide social spectrum. Nietzsche’s text, Homers Wettkampf, is certainly open to criticism due to the author’s background as a philosopher rather than a historian, but his description generally fits our evidence much better. With some regional or individual exceptions, this agonistic mentality governed social behaviour throughout the Greek world and continuously shaped social hierarchy.

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece From the Geometric to the classical age, there were many kinds of prestige-enhancing behaviour. Each city favoured specific strategies, which were constantly renewed. In my book, I studied six categories of behaviour involving a wide variety of social arenas, from sanctuary to necropolis, and from birth to death via marriage. Raising one’s rank was an obsession for the Greeks. Since status had to be performed and constantly re-negotiated, and since it mostly depended on public esteem which had to be constantly built up, the result of these dynamics was intense social mobility. Of course, there were privileged people who inherited land and status from their fathers, but there was no safeguard against social decline. Some sons of aristocrats never achieved high position in the city. On the other hand, there were what we may call homines novi, ‘new men’ without famous ancestors or a large patrimony, who achieved a respectable position in society. The elite was permanently being shaped and re-shaped. From one generation to another, some of its members lost their prestige and privileged position, while others rose by successfully deploying new social strategies. There was no closed ‘aristocratic’ group in ancient Greece, and access to elite status remained fundamentally open to all enterprising individuals. Here, I will complement this general outline with an analysis of one specific category of status-related behaviour: gentilician strategies. False aristocratic gentilician structures First, I must stress that the whole aristocratic gentilician structure that once was attributed to archaic societies has been widely criticised for more than thirty years and revealed as a historiographical chimera. For many historians, the existence of a nobility, well defined and protected by specific criteria, is an essential feature of archaic society. Greek political thought never used the word aristokratia for a social class, only for a specific type of constitution, but modern historians have nevertheless assimilated the archaic aristocracy to a kind of Ancien Régime nobility. The genos, defined as an extended family, has long been regarded as the core structure of this nobility. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and Eduard Meyer theorised this social structure at the end of the nineteenth century, modelling it on the better-documented examples of the Roman gens and medieval lordship.9 The genos was thought to be a group of families who worshipped a common ancestor. The members of the gene¯ occupied a prominent position in the social structure and held all political, military, and religious offices in archaic cities until several reforms eventually deprived them of all their privileges. This gentilician conception of aristocratic leadership enjoyed great success among historians during most of the twentieth century.

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Alain Duplouy The slow decline of the gentilician city-state was identified as the dominant social and political dynamic of the archaic period. In 1976, however, two French historians, Félix Bourriot and Denis Roussel, concurred in demolishing the whole theory.10 They each convincingly demonstrated that the social features once attributed to the genos and the privileges reportedly granted to its members never existed in the archaic period. The genos as conceived by nineteenth-century historians is not attested by any ancient Greek source, but is a historiographical construction based on later Greek or Roman evidence with a regressive methodology. Fustel de Coulanges and Meyer were wrong to postulate that the genos was once a dominant social structure which had been progressively deprived of all its attributes. Of course the genos existed in archaic and classical Greece but the word never had the meaning attributed to it by so many modern historians. It mostly concerns groups which possess a technical skill, often in the cultic sphere, such as the Eumolpidai, the Krokonidai or the Kerykes to whom belong religious offices in Eleusis. But their members were not necessarily aristocrats, since their priestly duties were mostly humble. From the fourth century on it also happened that prominent families, formerly known as simple oikoi, were retrospectively given the name of gene¯ . But if we want to understand something of the archaic social structure, the loose meaning of the late classical and Hellenistic period should not be applied to the archaic period.11 For thirty years historians have welcomed Bourriot’s and Roussel’s thesis, but have found it difficult to build on their insights and reinterpret the whole archaic social structure.12 Ways of thinking about Greek aristocracy have nevertheless changed forever. It is now clear that there was no gentilician barrier in the social structure of Greek cities that would have protected ‘noble families’ from social decline or prevented the rise of others. If the former elites experienced bitterness, like Theognis of Megara, their laments were useless to the preservation of any supposed gentilician order.13 In no way were archaic cities ruled by a nobility. In addition, I have recently offered a general reinterpretation of all names ending in –ides and –ades (pl. in –idai and –adai ) in the archaic and classical periods, with specific reference to the case of the Athenian Eupatridai.14 These names are indeed commonly thought to indicate the existence of an ancestral Greek nobility: the Alcmeonidai, Peisistratidai, Philaidai of Athens, the Bacchiadai in Corinth, the Basilidai of Ephesos and Erythrai, the Penthilidai of Lesbos, and so forth. Although we generally know no more about these groups than their name, they have been credited with all the typical features of aristocracies. There are about 3,000 names ending in –ides and –ades in Greek literature and inscriptions.

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece Among them, only a very small number actually concerns lineages (such as the Alcmeonidai). The majority of them belong to other categories, which have nothing to do with aristocracy: patronymics, personal names, toponyms, sub-ethnics and names of professional associations. According to this analysis, the Eupatridai of Athens are not the old Athenian nobility, whose members were holders of all public offices before the time of Solon – which is Plutarch’s definition. They were rather the members of a political group of opponents to Peisistratos and his sons, active at the end of the sixth century, who were known as ‘defenders of the fatherland’ and whose descendants were proud to commemorate their fathers’ deeds in this way.15 This brings me to my main point: eugeneia, that is nobility of birth, is of course not a genetic legacy, and was never conceived of as such in ancient Greece. As it appears in most of our sources, it is a constructed quality to which some people pretended. Similarly, Jonathan Hall has demonstrated that ethnicity was never thought of in antiquity as a genetic feature of a population, but was a discursive and behavioural construct.16 In ancient Greece, gentilician strategies were thus aimed at stating and at creating this nobility of birth. We must in fact distinguish between two different strategies: on the one hand genealogical behaviour which uses the family past to influence present social structure, and on the other hand dynastic behaviour which tries to project present status into the future and to ensure its continuity. Both retrospective and prospective strategies are important aspects of the gentilician system constructed by the Greeks. Basic genealogical strategies Genealogical strategies are powerful tools for building or asserting one’s position in society. Three of the most common genealogical strategies, as detailed in my book, are pretending to eugeneia, citing a genealogy, and erecting an image of an ancestor. They all concern the quality of one’s ancestry. Let me present them briefly.17 Pretending to eugeneia ‘To be eugene¯s, gennaios, diogene¯s, eupato¯r, esthlos’ or sometimes simply ‘to be agathos’ were ways of describing noble birth. Such epithets were not frequent in archaic Greece. They mainly occur during the classical period, that is during a time when aristocrats are supposed – according to the general view – to have been deprived of political power. According to Walter Donlan, this phenomenon can be explained as a defensive strategy by noblemen who stressed an inborn quality that common people would

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Alain Duplouy never have.18 By emphasising this ancestral quality, noblemen justified the preservation of their position at the head of the city. According to Donlan, this genetic legacy had been so self-evident in the early archaic period that there was no need to mention it. The e silentio argument is that the nearabsence of gentilician pretensions in Archaic Greece implies the existence of a nobility. This is skewed reasoning. I would argue that eugeneia was commonly claimed by enterprising people in both archaic and classical Greece. But we must recognise that this supposed quality also had many critics, not confined to fifth- and fourthcentury democrats. Even in archaic cities there were detractors of noble birth. If eugeneia was for Theognis of Megara an essential quality now threatened by wealth, it was on the contrary a useless claim for Callinos of Ephesos (fr. 1 West) and Phocylides of Miletos (fr. 3 West), who strongly preferred bravery on the battlefield or rhetorical skill in the Assembly. This debate was still alive in classical Greece: the essential qualities of a citizen were a matter of continuous discussion among poets, philosophers, historians, tragedians and orators. Eugeneia never gained the status of an exclusive distinguishing criterion. It remained a contested pretension, which could help raise one’s rank but was never strong enough to protect anyone from downward mobility. Citing a genealogy One of the most efficient gentilician strategies has always been the stating of a genealogy. At the end of the sixth and during the fifth century professional genealogists promoted the first genealogies of mortal men: among them Hecataios of Miletos, Acousilaos of Argos, Pherecydes of Athens and Hellanicos of Lesbos were the most prominent. For example, at the request of Cimon, Pherecydes (FGrHist 3 F 2) stated that the lineage of Miltiades the Elder went back to the Salaminian hero Philaios. This pedigree was directly relevant to Cimon’s social and political propaganda. Such genealogies became so common during the classical period that Plato soon mocked all those people who ‘pride themselves on a list of twentyfive ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles’ (Theaet. 175a). Modern prosopography normally uses these lists to construct family trees.19 However, an ancient genealogy has nothing in common with a modern register of births, marriages and deaths. Ancient genealogies were not aimed at recording the past with accuracy, but at aggregating the name and renown of famous ancestors, whether they were real, mythical or even false. Discrepancies with the genetic reality – when the latter is known – are seldom unintentional or randomly constructed. They generally serve specific purposes or needs, such as replacing an embarrassing ancestor by

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece a more glorious man. For example, since the Philaidai were suspected of tyranny in early fifth-century Athens, they conveniently substituted in their pedigree Cypselos, Miltiades’ real father as we know from Herodotos (6.34), with Hippocleides, his cousin. Cypselos was probably the grandson of the Corinthian tyrant, whereas Hippocleides was archon when the Panathenaic festival was reorganised. The latter certainly was a much more convenient ancestor than the former in democratic Athens.20 Genetic accuracy is not to be sought in this kind of document. In sum, genealogies are not evidence of actual long lines of descent, but they are evidence that claiming high birth was useful in asserting a high social position. Erecting an image of an ancestor According to the generally-accepted definition of the concept, the portrayal of likenesses of individuals begins in Greek art during the fifth century, both in sculpture and painting. Some images were made during the lifetime of the individual portrayed and sometimes commissioned by himself. Others were posthumous portraits commissioned by a son or a grandson.21 Putting up an image of one’s father therefore serves the same purpose as citing a genealogy: it is a means of presenting oneself as the heir of a famous ancestor. Cimon commissioned two images of his father Miltiades the Younger, victor of the battle of Marathon: the first was a painting in the Stoa Poikile in the Athenian Agora, the second a bronze statuary group by Phidias erected in Delphi. In Athens Miltiades had to share the ‘front cover’ with the polemarch Callimachos, who died on the battlefield, and Cynegeiros, Aischylos’ brother, who had his hand cut off by the Persians. In Delphi, by contrast, Miltiades was associated with the familial heroes Philaios and Theseus and, in the absence of other Maratho¯nomachoi, he alone was praised for the victory. Of course Cimon directly benefited from this familial strategy.22 In the early fourth century the successful strate¯gos Conon was the first Athenian to be honoured by the city with a bronze statue since Harmodios and Aristogeiton (cf. Demosthenes 20.70 ; 23.196). His statue was erected in the Agora in front of the Stoa of Zeus. Some time later his son Timotheos also obtained from the Athenians a bronze image, which was set up beside his father’s. Cornelius Nepos (Timoth. 2.3) states that for the first time in Athens a father and a son were honoured side by side, adding that ‘the new statue of the son, placed close by, revived old memories of the father’ (sic iuxta posita recens filii veterem patris renovavit memoriam). No doubt Timotheos insisted that his fellow citizens should make this connection.23

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Alain Duplouy The juxtaposition of a new image with an older monument in order to compose and present a family group is also a commonplace of Greek athletic statuary. Several monuments in Olympia were erected by athletes and their sons, each victorious in successive Olympiads. Some of them eventually gained the status of a genealogical monument through successive dedications by father, sons and grandsons. Other statue-groups were end-of-the-line commissions by a dedicator who proudly commemorated a series of victorious ancestors.24 Both mechanisms were probably at work in the monument of the so-called Diagoridai (a name coined by Pausanias (4.24.3; 6.6.2) but previously unattested), which represents three generations of Rhodian athletes victorious at Olympia between 464 and 404.25 Further genealogical strategies According to Aristotle (Rhet. 1390b), eugeneia corresponds to any ‘display’ of ancestors (ἡ δ’ εὐγένεια ἐντιµότης προγόνων ἐστίν). There are indeed many ways of mobilizing ancestors for the glory of a progeny. Here I will continue my inquiry with another trilogy of genealogic strategies: recycling a famous personal name, adding a patronymic, and recalling one’s progonoi. Recycling a famous personal name No name was ever randomly chosen. Even Odysseus, who claims to be Nobody (Οὖτις) when asked by the Cyclops Polyphemos, chose with care. Onomastics has long proved to be a relevant and fruitful auxiliary discipline for the study of ethnic or social groups. Some personal names have a ring of high social status, like the compounds with –hippos, –kle¯s or –krate¯s, which suggest wealth, fame and power.26 Giving a well-chosen name to a newborn son was both a good omen and a useful tool for the future. If it was the name of an ancestor we enter the field of gentilician strategies. Herodotos (5.65) stresses that ‘Hippocrates gave his son the name Peisistratos as a remembrance, calling him after Peisistratos the son of Nestor’ for they claimed to be descended from the house of Pylos and Neleus. Similarly he explicitly states that Miltiades the Younger got his name from his step-uncle Miltiades the Elder, oecist of Chersonese (οὔνοµα ἔχων ἀπὸ τοῦ οἰκιστέω τῆς Χερσονήσου, 6.103). According to the same historian (6.131), the Athenian lawgiver Cleisthenes was named after his mother’s father (ἔχων τὸ οὔνοµα ἀπὸ τοῦ µητροπάτορος), the tyrant from Sicyon, and his own brother had a daughter named after Agariste daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon (ἀπὸ τῆς Κλεισθένεος Ἀγαρίστης ἔχουσα τὸ οὔνοµα). Thucydides (6.54.6) also notes that Peisistratos son of Hippias was named after his grandfather (τοῦ πάππου ἔχων τοὔνοµα). Last, Pindar (Isthm. 7)

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece remembers that Strepsiadas of Thebes took his name from his uncle on his mother’s side (µάτρωΐ θ’ ὁµωνύµῳ), who valiantly died on the battlefield but still bolsters the glory of his fellow-citizens. Of course Greek tradition expects the first-born son to receive the name of his paternal grandfather, and there are many reasons for this, starting with homage and reverence for the elders. But the aforementioned examples clearly show that particular names have a specific value in a family history. Homonymous descendants of famous men were expected not to be inferior to the previous bearers of their name. Such an onomastic strategy is a blatant attempt to force destiny and conveniently recalls the renown of ancestors through their names. Sarah B. Pomeroy noted this phenomenon in families of artists, whose members practised the same profession and bore the same name(s) over several generations, such as the lineage of the sculptor Praxiteles son of Cephisodotos. If ancient authors generally credited the success of descendants to inherited skill, Pomeroy stressed that ‘sometimes people deliberately created a fictitious genealogy. Although they were not related to the famous bearers of the name, they assumed it, or gave it to their children, expecting to enjoy the fame and fortune of the earlier homonymous practitioner’.27 Through a naming fiction they tried to establish a convenient link with glorious individuals of the past. Adding a patronymic Adding a patronymic to one’s name has the primary function of distinguishing homonyms within a large community of male citizens, that is to identify the person as an individual different from everybody else.28 But the reference to a father, especially if he was famous, is also a very simple and valuable strategy for improving one’s status, particularly for young adults who are yet to establish their position in the community. This interpretation arose from Cleisthenes’ reforms or rather from their Aristotelian and modern reading. According to the Athenaion Politeia (21.4) the lawgiver wanted membership of a deme to become part of an Athenian citizen’s full name, ‘in order that they might not call attention to the newly enfranchised citizens by addressing people by their fathers’ names’ ( ἵνα µὴ

πατρόθεν προσαγορεύοντες ἐξελέγχωσιν τοὺς νεοπολίτας, ἀλλὰ τῶν δήµων ἀναγορεύωσιν). If adding a patronymic could be a means to express citizen

status,29 it also helped to create a hierarchy within the citizen body. That is why patronymics did not consequently vanish in Athenian society. Since Alfred Körte’s study we know that fifth-century ostraca mention patronymics as frequently as demotics.30 And even in the fourth century, when the use of demotics had increased, the most common formula in

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Alain Duplouy epitaphs remained the combination of demotic and patronymic.31 According to David Whitehead, ‘many Athenians, particularly amongst the upper classes, refused to abandon the patronymics which proclaimed their famous name’.32 In democratic Athens the choice between demotic and patronymic is thus supposed to be an expression of political values. Demotics in the strict sense are found only in Attika, Euboia, Rhodes and a few other places. Aside from demotics there are other supplementary names corresponding to other civic subdivisions, for which Mogens H. Hansen has coined the term ‘sub-ethnics’. The significant fact here is that, except for the Athenian demotic, these sub-ethnics are scarcely used as part of the (full) name of citizens. ‘In most Hellenic poleis the name of a citizen inside his polis seems to have consisted of an onoma to which, especially in public documents, was often added a patronymic, but hardly ever a sub-ethnic’, writes Hansen.33 Consequently the ideological opposition between patronymic and demotic in classical Athens has no meaning in other Greek cities, where mention of the patronymic alone was the norm in the onomastic formula for citizens. Adding a patronymic to one’s name, though a common feature throughout the Greek world, was not necessarily a neutral act. First of all, it had not always been common. Among dedications, the first occurrence is on the so-called Artemis of Nikandre (c. 630), which remains the only instance in the entire seventh century. In fact, on dedications patronymics did not become common until the second half of the sixth century.34 Secondly, there are several types of patronymic, some with a higher social profile than others. The adnominal genitive (Περικλῆς Ξανθίππου) – with all its variations (ὁ δεῖνα τοῦ δεῖνος, ὁ δεῖνα ὁ τοῦ δεῖνος, ὁ δεῖνα τοῦ δεῖνος υἱός or παῖς, ὁ δεῖνα ὁ τοῦ δεῖνος υἱός or παῖς) – is most common in classical Greece. Alongside it, an old patronymic adjective also occurs; it is formed by the addition of a suffix to the idionym. A first suffix, -ιος (sometimes -ειος or -αιος), is traceable in Mycenaean texts and in Homer: Αἴας Τελαµώνιος, Ajax son of Telamon (Il. 2.528). It then only survived in Aeolic dialects (Lesbian, Thessalian and Boeotian). A late example is the sema of Asclepiades son of Maiandros (Ἀσκληπιάδην Μαιάνδριον), which proudly adds that the deceased had inherited the arete¯ of his father (CEG 666, Amorgos, c. 350). A second suffix, -ίδης or -ίδας (and its variants -ιάδης and -άδης), is commonly used in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It pertains to heroes, Achaeans or Trojans, and to gods: Πάτροκλός...Μενοιτιάδης, Patroclos son of Menoetios (Il. 16.760), Κρονίδης Ζεύς, Zeus son of Cronos (Il. 2.375), Ὀρέστης Ἀγαµεµνονίδης, Orestes son of Agamemnon (Od. 1.30), and so forth. The more frequently mentioned characters in the Homeric poems are even named simply by

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece the patronymic adjective used as a substantive and substituted for the idionym: so Achilles is often named Πηλεΐδης. Later, in archaic poetry and classical literature, such names in -ίδης or -ίδας remain solely associated with gods or heroes. Very few exceptions to this rule are attested. I know only two examples. Theognis, whose gentilician bias is well known, three times addresses Cyrnos by the vocative patronymic Πολυπαΐδη, son of Polypaos (25, 57, 191). And there is a Delphic oracle, quoted by Herodotos (5.92ε), which names Κύψελος Ἠετίδης, Cypselos son of Eëtion. The Homeric formula certainly conveys a distinctive attribute, normally absent in a common patronymic.35 There are also patronymic circumlocutions and other more complex expressions. The formulae οἱ τοῦ δεῖνος παῖδες (mostly in the Cycladic world and in Miletos) or simply οἱ τοῦ δεῖνος (in the Argolid) sometimes occur in archaic dedications.36 It pertains to common dedications of brothers, whose personal names are sometimes not even given, τὰ ἀγάλµατα τάδε ἀνέθεσαν οἰ Πύθωνος παῖδες το Ἀρχήγο, Θαλῆς καὶ Πασικλῆς καὶ Ἠγήσανδρος καὶ Ἐ[..]σιος καὶ Ἀναξίλεως δεκάτην τοι Ἀπόλονι (Syll.3 3a, sixth c.), but simply

οἱ Ἀναξιµάνδρο παῖδες το Μανδροµάχ[ο ἀνέ]θεσαν (SGDI 5505, c. 600–575), both from Didyma. At the 68th Olympic festival (508), the sons of Pheidolas, himself victorious in the previous Olympiad, won the horserace, and made an offering with this inscription: ‘The swift Lycos by one victory at the Isthmos and two here crowned the house of the sons of Pheidolas (Φειδώλα παίδων δόµους)’, alluding to both family victories but omitting the names of Pheidolas’ offspring (Pausanias 6.13.9–10). The same formula also appears on the famous cenotaph erected by οἱ Βρέντεω παῖδες for Glaucos the founder of the Thasian colony (SEG 14.565, late seventh century). In all these cases the dedicators considered the patronymic a very significant detail, certainly alluding to an illustrious father. Furthermore, there are several attestations of the grandfather’s name being recorded after the patronymic. If the papponym recorded on some Athenian ostraca – particularly in the case of Megacles son of Hippocrates and grandson of Alcmeonides (Μεγακλες hιπποκράτος τἀλκµεονίδο or Μεγακλες hιπποκράτος το Ἀλκµεον[ί]δο) – aimed at distinguishing homonymous persons with the same personal name and patronymic,37 such cases are extremely rare. The addition of a papponym generally has the obvious genealogical connotation of celebrating a whole lineage. In the aforementioned examples from Didyma we have in fact dedications by the children of Python son of Archegos and those of Anaximandros son of Mandromachos. In Epidauros we find an offering to Asclepios by the sons of Philomelos, himself son of Milteus (τοὶ Φιλοµέλο το Μιλτέος, IG IV2 1, 143, c. 500), and in Delos an offering to the local hero Anios by

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Alain Duplouy Therseleides son of Philarchos son of Charmophon (Θερσελείδης Φιλάρχο το Χαρµοφῶντος, ID 10, second half of the sixth century). The next step is the recording of a whole genealogy, such as the Chian Heropythos who proudly mentions his fourteen ancestors on his tombstone: Ἡροπύθο το Φιλαίο το Μικκύλο το Μανδροκ(λ)έος το Αὐτοσθένεος το Μανδραγόρεω το Ἐρασίω το Ἱπποτίωνος το Ἐκαίδεω το Ἱπποσθενος το Ὀρσικλέος το Ἰπποτίωνος το Ἑκάο το Ἐλδίο το Κυπρίο,

‘(Stela) of Heropythos, son of Philaios...’38 (second quarter of the fifth century). Finally, one can add to a mere patronymic an adjective or other expression specifying the quality of one’s father in order to enhance still further the value of the genealogical link and thus one’s own renown. For example, the Athenian Alcimachos made this dedication on the Acropolis:

Ἀλκίµαχός µ’ ἀνέ{σ}θεκε ∆ιὸς κόρει τόδ’ ἄγαλµα εὐχολέν, ἐσθλο δὲ πατρὸς hῦς Χαιρίονος ἐπεύχεται να[ι], ‘Alkimachos dedicated this statue as an

offering to the daughter of Zeus and praises himself for being the son of Chairion, a noble father’ (IG I3 618, c. 520–510). Even if we have here a common epic formula (e.g. Od. 1.115, 2.46, 3.379), there is no doubt that Alkimachos’ pride was significant.39 Similarly, Socrates alludes to some lost elegy celebrating the fame of the progeny of Ariston: παῖδες Ἀρίστωνος, κλεινοῦ θεῖον γένος ἀνδρός, ‘sons of Ariston, whose race from a glorious sire is god-like’ (Plato Rep. 2.368a). Recalling one’s progonoi Perhaps the simplest way to use the prestige of one’s ancestors is to recall their glorious deeds. In every family history there are episodes worth being proud of for generations.40 In his victory odes Pindar often remembers the principal achievements of his clients’ ancestors, especially when he works for victorious boys who do not enjoy the benefit of a long athletic career. This is true for the young Aristomenes of Aegina who ‘follows in the footsteps of his mother’s brothers’ (Pyth. 8.35–37) or for the Thessalian Hippocleas whose ‘heredity has stepped into the footprints of the father’ (Pyth. 10.12). In both cases, the victor’s ancestors have already won several panhellenic prizes. Besides athletic prizes, family recollection also concerns civic or military accomplishments. Celebrating the Olympic victory of the Rhodian boxer Diagoras, ‘who knows clearly the sound prophetic wisdom of his good ancestors’ (Ol. 7.91), Pindar also praises his father Damagetos, ‘a man pleasing to Justice’ (Ol. 7.17). Similarly, Theaios of Argos benefited from ancestral agonistic glory with at least two victorious ancestors on his mother’s side, but the poet can also remind us that ‘since Castor and his brother Polydeuces came to Pamphaës to receive a hospitable welcome, it is no wonder that it

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece is innate in their family (ἐγγενὲς) to be good athletes’ (Nem. 10.49–51), strengthening the link – as incongruous as it may seem to us – between ritual friendship and athletics. Congratulating Megacles of Athens on his victory in the Pythian four-horse chariot race, Pindar does not fail to mention, besides a list of the family’s athletic prizes, the investment of the Alcmeonidai in the rebuilding of Apollo’s temple (Pyth. 7). In fifth-century Athens Herodotos gathered two illustrious stories told about the Alcmeonidai and introduced them as follows (6.125–30): ‘The Alcmeonidai had been men of renown at Athens even in the old days (τὰ ἀνέκαθεν λαµπροὶ), and from the time of Alcmeon and then Megacles their renown increased (κάρτα λαµπροί)’. The encounter between the Lydian king Croesus and Alcmeon, and the wedding of Agariste, whose hand had been won by Megacles after a one-year contest, are well-known.41 Most of all, Herodotos takes special care to attach the fame of the Alcmeonidai to Pericles, although linked to them only through his mother (6.131). Maternal ancestors are never forgotten when they can enhance a family prestige. This was also true for Alcibiades the Younger. Inheriting his father’s trial, he sought the mercy of the jurors by reminding them of his lineage on his father’s and on his mother’s side, and of the civic achievements of his ancestors (cf. Isocrates 16.25–31). Thucydides had already written, when presenting Alcibiades son of Cleinias for the first time in his work, that he was ‘a man yet young in years for any other Hellenic city, but distinguished by the splendour of his ancestry (ἀξιώµατι δὲ προγόνων τιµώµενος)’ (5.43.2). Similarly, in the Homeric epics, in order to promote the merits of his opinion, Diomedes balanced his youth with the deeds and the qualities of his ancestors (Il. 14.113–27). The remembrance of ancestors was a commonplace in fifth- and fourth-century court speeches, even if it had no relationship with the case, as Lysias put it frankly: ‘There have been cases, gentlemen of the jury, of persons who, when brought to trial, have appeared to be guilty, but who, on showing forth their ancestors’ virtues (τὰς τῶν προγόνων ἀρετάς) and their own benefactions, have obtained your pardon’ (30.1). Thus, for example, Andocides appealed for clemency for his role in the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms: ‘I beg you one and all, then, to hold towards me the feelings which you hold towards my ancestors (περὶ τῶν ἐµῶν προγόνων), so that I may have the opportunity of imitating them’ (1.141) and further ‘for my own forefathers themselves (τῶν προγόνων τῶν ἐµῶν) played no small part in those very exploits to which Athens owed her salvation, and I therefore have the right to expect from you the mercy which you yourself received from the Greeks’ (1.143). Recalling one’s progonoi was thus an obvious strategy for an Athenian litigant.

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Alain Duplouy In death, too, a famous ancestor could make a difference for a common man or woman. A funeral epigram attributed to Simonides (AP 13.26) says: ‘I shall mention her: for it is not fitting that the glorious wife of Archenautes lie here unnamed in death, Xanthippe, great-grandchild (ἀπέκγονον) of Periander who once gave orders to the people of hightowered Corinth where he held sway’. In this case, the husband of the departed mentions his wife’s ancestor to glorify her, but also to praise himself. The recollection of a famous man can also extend to mere friendship or an even more distant relationship. So, for example, Critias claimed that Solon was a friend of his great-grandfather Dropides, who had been praised in the poet’s verses (cf. Plato, Tim. 20e; Charm. 157e = Solon fr. 22 West). And one of the suitors of Agariste, Laphanes, was proud to recall that his father Euphorion once offered hospitality to the Dioscouroi (cf. Herodotos 6.127). This remembrance of a glorious family past could also be generic, without recalling a specific ancestor. On a fourth-century bronze tablet dedicated to Zeus in Dodona the Zakynthian Agathon remembers that his family (γενεά) had held the proxeny of the Molossians for thirty generations (γενεαῖς).42 This was certainly an overstatement. But the proxeny nevertheless tended to be granted on a hereditary basis, as a guarantee of stability for both partners: long-term assistance for citizens of the foreign city and renewed honour for the host. Indeed proxeny decrees generally insist on the continuity of the relationship, starting from ancestors (καὶ νῦν καὶ ἐν τῶι πρόσθεν χρόνωι) and intended to last into the future.43 In private matters, too, a family’s continuous fame was a highly prized quality. In Athens, at the beginning of the fourth century, a Callias of Skambonidai, bearing the same name as several famous ancestors, praised himself as ἀγαθὸς ἐκ ἀγαθῶν προγόνων (CEG 484). Similarly, at the end of the century, the Cypriot physician Paidan son of Damassagoras claims that ‘his ancestors were famous since the dawn of time, as progeny of the Atreidai, commanders of Greece’, πρόγονοι δ’ ὀνοµαστοὶ ἀπ’ [ἀρχ]ῆς ἔκγονοι Ἀτρειδᾶν Ἑλλάδος ἁγεµόνων (CEG 717). To attach one’s genealogy to the Atreidai was similar to pretending to be members of this lineage. Some names in –idai or –adai were coined precisely to evoke in one simple, highly effective word the prestige and deeds of a whole ancestry. Indeed, it should be stressed that the few lineages which bear such a name have nothing to do with an ancestral nobilitas: in most cases, the generic name is a gentilician strategy building on some ancestor’s name, not an inherited family name denoting a very old and highly prestigious dynasty. This is particularly obvious for the Bouselidai, as they called themselves in the fourth century, that is the

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece progeny of Bouselos of Oion, an almost unknown citizen of fifth-century Athens (cf. Dem. 43.79).44 The name does not indicate aristocrats; it is simply a naming strategy, possibly adopted to lend prestige. The same may be true for the famous Alcmeonidai, who apparently began to call themselves by this generic name not before the late sixth or early fifth century (cf. Pindar Pyth. 7.2). At this time indeed they exploited the fictitious (because anachronistic) adventure of Alcmeon in Croesus’ treasury – which was supposed to have considerably enriched them – in order to counter the charge of dishonest self-enrichment from their commission to reconstruct the temple at Delphi.45 The artificial – that is, constructed – quality of these gentilician names becomes evident when the name in -idai or -adai actually brings together both the paternal and maternal ancestors, when it crosses the line of the patrilinear genealogy. For instance, both Pericles and Alcibiades claimed to have a share in Alcmeonid history. Similarly, Pindar often defines ‘family groups’ by including the victor’s relatives on the mother’s side: Aristomenes of Aegina and his maternal uncles (µατραδελφεοὺς) belong to the Midylidai (Pyth. 8.35–8); Timasarchos of Aegina, his maternal uncle (µάτρῳ) and his forefather (προπάτωρ) belong to the Theandridai (Nem. 4.71–90); Phylacidas and Pytheas, their father Lampon and his own father Cleonicos, but also their maternal uncle (µάτρως) Euthymenes, and a certain Themistios, who according to the scholiasts was their maternal grandfather (πάππος πρὸς µητρός), belong to the Psalychidai (Isthm. 5.55–63, 6.57–69, Nem. 5.43–54). This bilateral construction was not peculiar to victorious athletes, for Pindar also applies this schema to epic heroes: Thersander son of Argia, daughter of Adrastus, is counted among the Adrastidai (Ol. 2.47–49), to whom the tyrant Theron of Akragas, recipient of the second Olympian ode, is also linked. In genealogical strategies, both paternal and maternal ancestors are useful.46 Dynastic strategies Gentilician strategies are not restricted to genealogical behaviours. Of course, the deeds and qualities of the ancestors are at the core of the system of enhancing prestige. But, just as cities tended to ensure the continuity of a proxeny relationship by projecting it into the future, people who achieved the position in the community to which they had aspired usually sought to transfer it to their children, in order to spare them the hard work of social climbing. For the Greeks knew that social status does not automatically pass to progeny. Pindar holds that ‘hereditary qualities are like the fruitful fields, which, in alternation, at one time give men yearly sustenance from the plains, and at another time gather strength from repose’ (Nem. 6.8–11).

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Alain Duplouy Stressing that deterioration of the race is the norm, Aristotle notes: ‘highly gifted families often degenerate into maniacs’ and ‘those that are stable into fools and dullards’ (Rhet. 2.15.3, 1390b), giving as examples the sons of Alcibiades, Cimon and Pericles. A father should thus be concerned with his children’s fate. Dynastic behaviours are, then, to be distinguished from genealogical practices. If the latter put the emphasis on ancestors in order to promote one’s rank, dynastic strategies are rather ‘processes of social reproduction’ – in Bourdieu’s terminology – intended to maintain at the same level the status of one’s children. This kind of strategy has long been identified in Greek political thought as a characteristic feature of oligarchies. According to Aristotle (Pol. 1292b), ‘another variety of oligarchy is when son succeeds father in office’. The same strategy is relevant to everyone who cares about his children’s fate. According to Adolf Borbein and Brigitte Hintzen-Bohlen, gentilician strategies, both retrospective and prospective, are a characteristic feature of Hellenistic kingdoms.47 One of the first examples was the family monument commissioned by Philip II of Macedon at Olympia in celebration of his victory at Chaironea. The so-called Philippeion presented gold and ivory statues of Philip, his father Amyntas and mother Eurydice, his wife Olympias, and his son Alexander. The presence of the latter, who would become Philip’s successor, was clearly a dynastic feature, intended to establish the status of Alexander as his legitimate heir. But we are not absolutely sure that the whole family monument was finished before Philip’s death, nor that it was realised exactly according to Philip’s wishes. Alexander could have completed his father’s project and even altered the initial programme, precisely by adding his own image.48 The dynastic purpose is however absolutely obvious for the family monument dedicated by the Thessalian Daochos in Delphi in the 330s.49 Besides the statue of Apollo, there were eight figures: the dedicator Daochos, six ancestors, and his son Sisyphos. Six generations in the direct family line (stretching back into the late sixth century), as well as two collateral ancestors, were represented. The military, political and athletic achievements of his ancestors were recalled to stress the status and prestige of Daochos. The addition of his young son, still a boy at the time, was naturally aimed at transmitting to him the glory of his forefathers and at ensuring the future of this dynasty. Was this gentilician strategy really restricted to the Hellenistic period? Was dynastic behaviour less tempting than the many forms of genealogical behaviour which we have found in pre-Hellenistic Greece? Contrary to the accepted view, there were in fact earlier incarnations of this particular pattern.

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece Among the most ancient examples are some rich Geometric tombs for children which are, oddly, more lavishly furnished than contemporary adult burials. This signals an emphasis on the progeny, who should have inherited a privileged position in the society if they had not died prematurely. Tomb 168 from Pithekoussai (c. 730–720), best known for containing Nestor’s Cup, is the burial of a ten-year-old boy who received an adult funeral and a complete drinking set.50 And since we know that the so-called Rich Athenian Lady (c. 850) was pregnant,51 the extraordinary wealth of her burial is perhaps more likely to be related to the (future) child than to the woman.52 Of course emotions will also have played an important part in motivating these lavish burial customs. A direct ancestor of the Daochos dedication is the mid-sixth-century ‘-ilarches’ monument in the Heraion of Samos,53 at least from a dynastic perspective – for there is no genealogical purpose here. This family monument, which is better but inaptly known as the ‘Geneleos group’ after the name of the sculptor, presented six ‘portraits’, each with a name in the nominative: the dedicator -ilarches, his wife Phileia, their three daughters (only two are preserved, Ornithe and Philippe), and their young son (not fully preserved). This is the presentation of an archaic Samian family, with father, mother, and their four children. There may be, of course, a religious purpose to the composition of this group. But the intention to associate the children with the monument and all that it means (including prestige) is obvious. Fathers and children not infrequently make common dedications in classical Greece as well. Most examples can be identified as a subspecies of the family offerings which have been collected by Christoph Löhr in his most interesting book on Griechische Familienweihungen (I will give here, in square brackets, references to his catalogue).54 The dedicatory inscription of the Nike of Archermos in Delos, although extremely difficult to reconstruct, may be one of the earliest examples: Μικκιά[δης τόδ’ ἄγα]λµα καλὸν π[οίησε καὶ hυιὸς] Ἄρχερµωσο[φ]ίεισιν hεκηβώ[λωι ἰοχεαίρηι] [h]οι Χῖοι, Μέλανος πατρόϊων ἄσ[τυ νέµοντες], ‘Thanks to their skills, Mikkiades and his

son Archermos made this fine statue for the Farshooter, men of Chios, who dwell in the fatherland of Melas’ (CEG 425, c. 550–530?). This dynasty of Chian sculptors is well known (cf. Pliny NH 36.11), and this Nike appears as a common dedication by a father and a son, who praise their family craft. In Delphi, at the end of the sixth century, Philon offered a dekate¯ of himself and his children (δηκάταν αὐτο¯ καὶ παίδο¯ ν ) [16]. In Delos again, Eupolis dedicated a statue to Artemis in consequence of a vow he and his children collectively made (αὐτὸς καὶ παῖδες εὐχσάµενος) [19]. Similarly, a century later, Antiphilos offered several statues as offerings by

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Alain Duplouy himself and his children (αὑτο¯ καὶ παίδων δῶρα) [70]. In late fifth-century Eretria, Prexiades and his children (καὶ οἱ παῖδες) made an offering to the goddesses Demeter and Persephone [64]. To the same deities and at the same time an offering was consecrated in Catania by a man, his wife and their children ( ]ων καὶ ἁ γυνὰ αὐτοῦ Αρισ[...] καὶ τὰ τέκνα) [65]. As recorded in the Lindian Chronicle for the archaic period, Aretos and his children (καὶ παῖδες) once dedicated a crater to the goddess Athena [2], and Amphinomos consecrated the statues of an ox and a calf as a tithe in association with his children (καὶ παῖδες) [8]. The formula actually appears on preserved inscriptions from the Lindian sanctuary, such as the offering made by Telestas and his children in the second half of the fourth century [158]. At Athens, the most ancient example seems to be a tithe to Apollo around 500 [18], followed by a small but continuous series during the fifth and the fourth centuries [16, 32, 34, 81, 99]. Finally, in light of these examples, it is most probable that the word γενεά also refers to children in the following late-sixth-century dedication: Αἰσχυλ[ίδ]ες µ’ [ἀνέ]θεκε[ε Ἀθεναίαι τόδ’ ἄγαλµα] αὐτο κα[ὶ γ]εν[εας µν]εµα (IG I3 635). In none of these examples are the children individually named. They would nevertheless long benefit from the paternal connection by simply stating their patronymic. In other instances, the offspring’s names are given. From the early-fifthcentury Athenian Acropolis, we have the aparche¯ of an unknown man – his name has not been preserved – and his five sons (Epichares, Opholonides, Charinos, Charisios, and ...kles) [25], and another by Megylos and his son Chremes (καὶ Χρέµε¯ς hυὺς) [30]. In Ceos in the fourth century, Theotelides associates his five named sons with the dedication [121]. We can deduce it also from the patronymic for Παυσίας ∆έξιος καὶ ∆εξικλῆς Παυσία (Lindos, c. 400), even if the word παῖς is not explicit [72]. Sometimes the dynastic strategy even extends to a third generation: in Lindos, in the middle of the fourth century, Euphranor, his son Damagetos and the latter’s children (καὶ παῖδες) offered a tithe to Athena Lindia [123]. At the same time in Athens, Autophilos made an offering to Athena with his children and grandchildren (Αὐτόφιλος καὶ οἱ παῖδες καὶ παῖδες παίδων ἀνέθεσαν). Since the votive inscription gives the name, patronymic, and demotic of all the dedicators, we can see that Autophilos actually involved his sons and the sons of his daughters, but not the latter themselves [107]. As always, the sons are more important than the daughters, even if through the latter the lineage can also in a way – survive. This is an exact parallel to the recollection of maternal uncles in Pindar. In a few other examples girls are also associated with their father’s offering: besides the monument of -ilarches in Samos, we know of a common offering made by Chairigenes and his daughter Eudene (Χαιριγένες καὶ Εὐδένε θυγάτερ) in Eretria, c. 450 [54].

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece Two early-fourth-century Athenian dedications celebrate the choregic victory of a father and his sons. They belong to memorials for victories at rural Dionysia: Ergasos and his sons Phanomachos and Diognetos [82] at Ikarion, Timosthenes and his sons Meixonides and Kleostratos [90] probably at Aigilia.55 One wonders: does the collectively dedicated tripod commemorate the successive victories of several individuals or a single common victory?56 The explanation for shared chore¯giai in the demes, which is relatively unusual, may be poverty (Pickard-Cambridge) or family members wishing to share the honour (Whitehead). It may indeed have seemed a fine opportunity to associate one’s heirs with the commemoration. A similar trend could be at work in a fourth-century offering celebrating a victory at the Anthippasia, the Athenian contest in which the ten tribal cavalry units competed in two rival groups (cf. Xenophon, Eq. Mag. 3). Demainetos and his sons, Demeas and Demosthenes, all celebrated a victory as phylarchs of Pandionis (φυλαρχοῦντες) [108]. Since members of the same family cannot have simultaneously commanded one and the same tribal unit (cf. Ath. Pol. 21.5), the monument (a tripod-base) is generally ascribed to three successive victories.57 If so, the last one would have brought in the two earlier family victories at the Anthippasia on a common monument commissioned from a famous sculptor – Bryaxis, no less. But why would the father and his first son have waited to celebrate their victory? As we have seen, such family offerings normally develop by addition of new items to an original monument (see above for the Diagoridai or Conon and Timotheos). We should then suppose that this new monument by a famous sculptor stood beside – or even replaced – one or two earlier memorials, traces of which have not survived. An alternative solution may be that the father, a victorious phylarch himself, wanted to associate his two sons with the offering, whether or not they actually had been phylarchs, let alone victorious at the Anthippasia. Chistoph Löhr distinguishes between representations of a group of relatives (Familiengruppen), dedications for (the benefit of) relatives (Weihungen für Verwandte), and offerings collectively erected by a group of relatives (von mehreren Verwandten errichtete Anatheme). Of course a single monument can belong to more than one category. This useful taxonomy does not, however, distinguish between the various dedicators of a family monument: for example, the formulae οἱ τοῦ δεῖνος παῖδες and ὁ δεῖνα καὶ παῖδες both belong to the final category of offerings erected by relatives, but the former denotes a genealogical strategy and the latter a dynastic strategy. This distinction is of course vital to my point for the two types of dedication do not convey the same values. *

*

*

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Alain Duplouy Gentilician strategies are a dialogue between the past, present and future of the social group called ‘family’. For analytical purposes it has been useful to distinguish between retrospective and prospective practices. Of course, there is a close connection between the two categories, and some behaviours have a double dimension. For example, giving the grandfather’s name to a newborn son is a tribute to an ancestor as well as a means of using his renown; it then also becomes a useful tool for the future of the boy. In this sense, recycling a famous personal name within the family was both a genealogical and a dynastic behaviour. The two categories, however, affect the general social structure differently. Genealogical strategies normally generate social mobility by attempting to alter the actual hierarchy. They allow individuals to rise in the hierarchy and substitute for a former elite. It must be stressed that in archaic and classical Greece social mobility was the norm. It generated a ranked social order in which positions were continuously re-negotiated. Dynastic behaviours, by contrast, tend to temper mobility by crystallising the present state of society for the time to come. The latter thus favour the retention of social capital within the same lineage, and consequently lead to the establishment of a much more stratified social order.58 This temptation was certainly as old as the Greek city. When Tyrtaeus explains why the warrior who falls among the front ranks on the battlefield will remain immortal, he stresses that ‘his tomb and his children are pointed out among the people, and his children’s children and his line after them’, καὶ παῖδες καὶ παίδων παῖδες καὶ γένος ἐξοπίσω (fr. 12.29–30 West). This was of course a strong stimulus in Spartan society to demonstrate bravery or even to sacrifice oneself on the battlefield in order to ensure fame and status for one’s progeny. Dynastic strategies remain frequent in classical societies and probably become, as argued by Borbein and Hintzen-Bohlen, even more common in Hellenistic Greece. This general increase of dynastic strategies from the fifth century onwards may therefore denote a more widespread desire to transmit social status to one’s offspring. Despite their potential to stabilise society by preventing the social decline of one’s heirs, dynastic strategies never succeeded in annihilating Greek social mobility. Hellenistic society may have entered into a process of ‘aristocratization’, but did not achieve a completely stratified social order.59 The reason may lie in what Nietzsche once thought to be ‘the womb of everything Hellenic’, ‘the eternal source of life for the Hellenic state’: the agonistic mentality. As he saw it, ‘the Greek was unable to bear fame without further struggle, and fortune at the end of the contest’.60 Gentilician strategies were part of this struggle.

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece Notes 1 For example Donlan 1980; Stein-Hölkeskamp 1989; Starr 1992. 2 Since Davies 1971 and 1981; for a full discussion of the historiography, see Duplouy 2002, 2005. 3 Duplouy 2006. 4 Murray 1980, 192–208. 5 See, for example, Fisher 1998 on athletic competitions and training in classical Athens. 6 Murray 1990, 142. 7 Burckhardt 1902, 61–168, 213–19, Burckhardt 1998, 160–213. 8 Nietzsche 1973 (unpublished original 1872). 9 Fustel de Coulanges 1864; Meyer 1893, 291–320. See also Toepffer 1889 for a list of Attic gene¯ (such as the Philaidai or the Alcmeonidai), which has long shaped reconstructions of Athenian history. 10 Bourriot 1976; Roussel 1976. See also Humphreys 1982 and Patterson 1998, 5–43. 11 On this point, see also the chapter by Lambert in this volume. 12 Schneider 1991–1992 recalls the strong objection offered by Marxist historians to a theory denying the reality of class struggles in archaic society. 13 See van Wees 2000, which is the only satisfactory reading of Theognis’ poems. 14 Duplouy 2003; Duplouy 2010. 15 For a reaffirmation of the traditional view, see Pierrot in this volume. 16 Hall 1997. 17 For full details of the following examples, see Duplouy 2006, 37–77. 18 Donlan 1973; Donlan 1978. 19 For example, Wade-Gery 1952. 20 Viviers 1987, 302–6. 21 For a historical approach to Greek portraiture, see especially Krumeich 1997. 22 For full details, see Duplouy 2007. 23 For other examples, see Löhr 2000, 202 (‘Erneuerung eines Denkmals’), no. 40, 51, 86. 24 See the classic study of Amandry 1957. 25 Löhr 2000, no. 68 (Diagoriden), with full bibliography. 26 Dubois 2000. In general Bechtel 1917. 27 Pomeroy 1997, 154–8 (quotation, 156–7). 28 Cf. Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 58–9. I leave out of the discussion the status of women, whose onomastic formula normally refers to a father or a husband; cf. Vestergaard et al. 1985. 29 See the chapter by Mariaud in this volume. 30 Körte 1922, 6–7. See also Lang 1990, 8–9. 31 Meyer 1993, 111. 32 Whitehead 1986, 69–75 (quotation, 71). 33 Hansen 1996 (quotation, 179); Hansen 2004. 34 Lazzarini 1976, 65, 170–1. 35 Duplouy 2010, 311–15. 36 On this formula, Kontoleon 1964, 67–9; Lazzarini 1976, 61, 177; Löhr 2000, 207 (‘namenlosen (aber nicht anonymen) Weihungen’). One cannot however infer from

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Alain Duplouy this fact that the worshippers of Ionian sanctuaries in the sixth century are mainly ‘aristocrats’; contra Lazzarini 1991, 846 (‘frequentazione stretamente aristocratica dei santuari della Ionia Asiatica nel VI secolo’). 37 General discussion of this case, cf. Duplouy 2010, 326. Megacles’ papponym is not a hapax in ostraca; see Siewert 2002, 71 ([—] Gnathonos Echekleous). 38 Wade-Gery 1952, 8. 39 For a possible explanation of the pride of Alkimachos, see Duplouy 2003, 11–12. 40 On the other hand, there are also episodes worth forgetting, while they are remembered by one’s opponents, such as the Kylonian agos for the Alcmeonidai, under which Cleisthenes and even Pericles still suffered (cf. Herodotos 5.71; Thucydides 1.126–7). Cf. Jacoby 1949, 186–8; Thomas 1989, 272–81. 41 For a full exegesis, see Duplouy 1999, 9–16; 2006, 80–5 (with complete bibliography). 42 Athens, NM 803 (Coll. Carapanos): Carapanos 1878, 39–40; Greifenhagen 1964, 636; Löhr 2000, 197, 204. 43 Veligianni-Terzi 1997, 228–34. See further the chapter by Sato in this volume. 44 On this example, Bourriot 1976, 568–9; Roussel 1976, 56. 45 For a full discussion, Duplouy 2010, 323–4. 46 See also Wilgaux 2011. 47 Borbein 1973, 88–90; Hintzen-Bohlen 1990. 48 Cf. Löhr 2000, no. 137. 49 Jacquemin 1999, no. 391; Löhr 2000, no. 139. 50 Buchner and Ridgway 1993, 212–23. 51 Liston and Papadopoulos 2004. 52 On these examples, see also the chapter by Shepherd in this volume. 53 Löhr 2000, no. 10 (with bibliography). 54 To establish a full catalogue, see Lazzarini 1976, 62 and Löhr 2000, 206–12. I leave out of the discussion the few cases of a mother making a dedication with or for her children (ὑπὲρ παίδων or ὑπὲρ παιδός), for this perhaps mainly concerns, apart from religious purposes, the legal status of a widowed woman whose eldest son becomes her guardian; cf. Löhr 2000, no. 27, 47, 63, 83 (ὑπὲρ το ὑέος), 101, 102, 129, 168. 55 For other examples of shared chore¯giai at Ikaria and elsewhere, see A. W. PickardCambridge 1988, 48; Whitehead 1986, 216–7; Wilson 2000, 249. 56 Löhr 2000. 57 So Löhr 2000, 92–3 (no. 108). See also Davies 1971, no. 3276 (s.v. Demainetos); Wilson 2000, 49. 58 On the distinction between ranked and stratified societies, see the chapter by Whitley in this volume. The contrast between the two types of strategy may not be absolute, for genealogical strategies may also simply help to stabilise a position by keeping at a high level investment in diversified social strategies. 59 On the process of ‘aristocratization’ in Hellenistic Greece, see Hamon 2007. 60 Nietzsche 1973 (unpublished original 1872).

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Genealogical and dynastic behaviour in Archaic and Classical Greece Bibliography Amandry, P. 1957 ‘À propos de Polyclète: Statues d’olympioniques et carrière de sculpteurs’, in K. Schauenburg (ed.), Charites. Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft, Bonn, 63–87. Bechtel, F. 1917 Die historischen Personennamen des Griechischen bis zur Kaiserzeit, Halle. Borbein, A. H. 1973 ‘Die griechische Statue des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.’, JDAI, 88, 43–212. Bourriot, F. 1976 Recherches sur la nature du génos. Étude d’histoire sociale athénienne (périodes archaïque et classique), Lille. Buchner, G. and D. Ridgway 1993 Pithekoussai I. La necropoli: Tombe 1–723, Rome. Burckhardt, J. 1902 Griechische Kulturgeschichte. Band IV. Der hellenische Mensch in seiner zeitlichen Entwicklung, Berlin. 1998 The Greeks and Greek Civilization. Translated by Sheila Stern. Edited with an Introduction by Oswyn Murray, London. Carapanos, C. 1878 Dodone et ses ruines, Paris. Davies, J.K. 1971 Athenian Propertied Families. 600–300 BC, Oxford. 1981 Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens, Salem. Donlan, W. 1973 ‘The role of eugeneia in the aristocratic self-image during the fifth century BC’, in E. N. Borza and R. W. Carrubba (eds), Classics and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented to R. E. Dengler on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, Pennsylvania State University, 63–78. 1978 ‘Social vocabulary and its relationship to political propaganda in fifthcentury Athens’, QUCC, 27, 95–111. 1980 The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient Greece. Attitudes of Superiority from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century BC, Lawrence. (Second edition 1999.) Dubois, L. 2000 ‘Hippolytos and Lysippos: remarks on some compounds in Ἱππο , ιππος’, in E. Matthews and S. Hornblower (eds), Greek Personal Names: Their value as evidence, Oxford, 41–52. Duplouy, A. 1999 ‘L’utilisation de la figure de Crésus dans l’idéologie aristocratique athénienne. Solon, Alcméon, Miltiade et le dernier roi de Lydie’, AC, 68, 1–22. 2002 ‘L’aristocratie et la circulation des richesses. Apport de l’histoire économique à la définition des élites grecques’, RBPh, 80, 5–24. 2003 ‘Les Eupatrides d’Athènes, « nobles défenseurs de leur patrie»’, CCG 14, 7–22. 2005 ‘Pouvoir ou prestige ? Apports et limites de l’historiographie politique à la définition des élites grecques’, RBPh, 83, 5–23.

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Alain Duplouy Starr, C.G. 1992 The Aristocratic Temper of Greek Civilization, Oxford. Stein-Hölkeskamp, E. 1989 Adelskultur und Polisgesellschaft. Studien zur griechischen Adel in archaischer und klassischer Zeit, Stuttgart. Thomas, R. 1989 Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens, Cambridge. Toepffer, J. 1889 Attische Genealogie, Berlin. van Wees, H. 2000 ‘Megara’s Mafiosi. Timocracy and violence in Theognis’, in R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (eds), Alternatives to Athens. Varieties of Political Organisation and Community in Ancient Greece, Oxford, 52–67. Veligianni-Terzi, C. 1997 Wertbegriffe in den attischen Ehrendekreten der Klassischen Zeit, Stuttgart. Vestergaard, T. et al. 1985 ‘A typology of the women recorded on gravestones from Attica’, AJAH, 10, 178–90. Viviers, D. 1987 ‘Historiographie et propagande politique au Ve siècle a.n.è.: les Philaïdes et la Chersonèse de Thrace’, RFIC, 115, 288–313. Wade-Gery, H. T. 1952 The Poet of the Iliad, Cambridge. Whitehead, D. 1986 The Demes of Attica, 508–7–ca. 250 BC. A Political and Social Study, Princeton. Wilgaux, J. 2011 ‘Les groupes de parenté en Grèce ancienne: l’exemple athénien’, in P. Bonte, E. Porqueres, I. Gené and J. Wilgaux (eds), L’argument de la filiation. Aux fondements des sociétés européennes et méditerranéennes, Paris, 327– 348. Wilson, P. 2000 The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: the Chorus, the City and the Stage. Cambridge.

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3 INVESTIGATING ARISTOCRACY IN ARCHAIC ROME AND CENTRAL ITALY: SOCIAL MOBILITY, IDEOLOGY AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES Guy Bradley Introduction The aim of this chapter is to investigate the nature of the elite in archaic central Italy.1 It is particularly concerned with the elite in Etruria and in early Rome, and the applicability of the concept ‘aristocracy’. It aims to contextualise the study of the Roman elite within the broader trends of central Italy, surveying the evidence across the region. I will focus on the seventh to fifth centuries BC, but also aim to connect up the recent debates about the ‘aristocratic’ nature of the Roman nobility in the Republic with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the fluidity and changeable nature of elites in archaic Italy. Following the lead set out by Van Wees and Fisher in their introduction, I will argue that ‘aristocracy’ is a misleading term to use for central Italian or Roman elites, whose status was fragile and fluid rather than rigid and long-lasting. One of the key avenues for advancing our study of the topic is to consider comparative and anthropological perspectives, particularly the impact on elites of state formation, and in terms of the way that aristocracies are sustained by, and continually generate, their own myths. As a result, this chapter offers a new model for understanding the development of central Italian elites over the long term. I argue that, rather than occupying a primordial position of dominance gradually eroded by political reforms, elites in central Italy were instead increasingly stabilized as an institution by state structures. State formation made available to elites more powerful means of preserving their own position while excluding potential challengers, and more developed types of memory aids in the form of literacy, monuments and buildings. The growth of states and urbanisation therefore makes possible the formalisation of social divisions that had arisen by the mid Orientalizing period (seventh century BC), with the emergence of a leisured elite distinct from groups such as craftsmen,

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Guy Bradley peasants, debt-bondsmen, and slaves. This chapter also argues that the key characteristic of archaic elites was that they were dynamic rather than rigidly ordered over the long term, and underwent continual transformations wrought by the rapid changes of the first millennium BC. An investigation of the concept of ‘aristocracy’ in early Rome and Italy is overdue for two main reasons. The first is the changing scholarly approach to the history of aristocracies, which has undermined many of the old certainties about the myths of elite self-image. For example, the work of Alain Duplouy (2006) has questioned the nature of an inherited aristocracy in archaic Greece. He argues that the copious evidence for personal monuments such as statuary, large tombs and laudatory inscriptions attests a continual struggle for superiority amongst an elite which was very precarious in its status. He concludes that ‘no archaic or classical nobilitas existed [in Greece], but there were myriad efforts to convince people that one did’.2 There are analogous trends in work on medieval and early modern aristocracies, discussed below. The second reason is the wealth of material evidence for the elite in central Italy. Whilst we lack the contemporary literary evidence available for archaic Greece, there is increasingly plentiful archaeological and epigraphic evidence. This offers much more direct and contemporary evidence than our literary sources.3 The funerary evidence is particularly full, especially in Etruria. Epigraphic material allows us to trace mobility and migration particularly well. It is also notable that women are very well attested in the evidence for Rome and central Italy, reflecting different gender relations from archaic and classical Greece. The main area of my investigation is the Tyrrhenian coast (Etruria, Latium and Campania). But we can also examine Italic regions inland, such as Umbria, Picenum, and Sabinum. In most of these areas there is clear evidence for a shared elite culture in the Orientalizing and Archaic periods, from the seventh to the fifth centuries BC. This is visible through burial patterns, iconographic evidence and in housing.4 I will be analysing three main themes: first, the appearance and demography of the elite; secondly, mobility in and out of the elite, both in social and ethnic terms; thirdly, the elite in Republican Rome against the backdrop of archaic central Italy. The ambitions of this chapter are limited to opening up these issues for debate rather than providing a definitive statement on them. But the implications are considerable, and are relevant to much of Roman history. In short, I believe it is critically important for our understanding of Rome to explore the situation in which Rome grew up.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy Methodological considerations: problems of definition Before starting our analysis it is imperative to define our terminology. Van Wees’ and Fisher’s introduction (Ch. 1) invites us to rethink what we mean by the term ‘aristocracy’, which in a conference programme they defined as follows: Central to a strong idea of an ‘aristocracy’ we take to be an identifiable estate or order, united by a sense of hereditary exclusiveness based on lineage as well as wealth (primarily located in landed property), and ideally signalled by formal designations such as titles or heraldic emblems, which legitimises access to power; and an order conscious of sharing a coherent ideology, an exclusive set of leisure activities and social and moral values.

This is a useful methodological challenge, as the term ‘aristocracy’ is employed indiscriminately in studies of Rome and central Italy, and usually with little proper attempt at definition.5 Duplouy noted the problems of defining the term in studies of ancient Greece. He concluded that studies which focus on one criterion provide ‘over-precise and probably artificial contours of the aristocratic class’.6 It may thus be better to recognise that there is no one accepted definition that scholars are working with, and that their studies instead reveal a wide variety of different elite groups. Defining an ‘elite’ is also complex. One useful working definition is that the elite in antiquity is essentially the leisured class. Wealth obviously plays a critical role in enabling this. Despite traditional stories about austere nobles such as Manius Curius Dentatus, the mid-Republican general who refused Samnite gold, content with his humble lifestyle (Plutarch, Cato 2), it is implausible that Roman leaders did not belong to a wealthy leisured elite. Members of this group could afford to employ others to work their land, or run their commercial enterprises.7 Generally in antiquity the elite was the social level that took the most active part in politics, was educated, and played a prominent role in military affairs (for example the equites who served as the cavalry in Rome). The elite was thus above the level of independent citizen farmers owning their own property and working the land themselves. This is not a hard-and-fast definition. Even members of the elite would sometimes like to appear to work their land, perhaps even genuinely in some cases as with Cato the Elder, and slave ownership went far down the social scale.8 The distinction is also problematic when applied to wealthy merchants. They might still be physically involved in the running of their business, despite accumulating great wealth through it. They were also often denied the full social status of elite landowners, and would less commonly have inherited their position.9 Related to this is the question of the existence of ‘classes’ in antiquity. Should the elite be seen as a coherent class as well as a distinct group?

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Guy Bradley Archaeologists normally hypothesize that differentiated levels of wealth apparent in the burial record from the end of the Bronze Age onwards indicate the presence of ‘classes’, even though subordinate classes are usually invisible.10 The elite in Republican Rome is often regarded as an ‘aristocratic class’.11 Yet both elements of this formulation, aristocracy and class, are problematic, even for well-attested periods of Roman history. The usefulness of class as a concept for the later Republican and imperial period has been questioned by scholars. In modern society we mean by ‘class’ an economically similar group which socialises together and not with other classes, which shares common values and assumptions, and whose occupations have similar prestige.12 In antiquity it is very difficult to trace classes with any real coherence of interest or common ideology beyond the elite, and it is awkward to use the term in its modern sense. The most extensive attempt to apply this concept to the ancient world from a Marxist perspective, de Ste Croix’s Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), argued in essence that ancient society was divided into classes on the basis of whether they produced or took the surplus production; these classes were inevitably involved in conflict, a class struggle, ‘whether the parties to it recognise their roles or not and whether there is actual conflict or not’.13 As reviewers have pointed out, this is a very loose definition of the term, and it leads de Ste. Croix to overemphasise slaves as the key source of cheap labour for the elite, rather than the free poor.14 If the utility of ‘class’ as a concept can be strongly debated in the core periods of Roman history, then this raises particular issues for subjects such as archaic Rome for which the evidence is more limited and ambiguous. An undefined and indiscriminate use of the term can imply a coherence and shared ideology amongst the group identified for which there is normally little evidence before the formation of developed states and urban centres. Nevertheless, I still believe there is value in using an attenuated version of the concept of ‘class’ with a full awareness of its limitations. Similarly, Van Wees’ and Fisher’s premise helps us see that ‘aristocracy’ is a rather inappropriate term to use for all Roman or central Italian elites in the Orientalizing and Archaic periods, given that their status was fluid and fragile rather than rigid and long lasting, but my own view is that the term ‘aristocracy’ need not be entirely banished, provided that it is used with an appreciation of its imprecision, and without assuming that it implies longevity of privilege. It is perhaps instead better to redefine the term in an ancient context as the highest part of the elite, usually the dominant magisterial ‘class’, often with a claimed, if not real, separation from the rest of the social and economic elite, and of course the rest of society, on the basis of alleged noble ancestry or other criteria.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy Comparative evidence: aristocratic myths and models Comparative evidence is also fundamental for improving the conceptual basis from which we approach ancient elites. First, it is a useful source of models and parameters within which to situate the elite of central Italy. For instance, in his fascinating review of Hopkins’ and Burton’s Death and Renewal, the sociologist W. G. Runciman cites two modern parallels that show the wide range of possibilities when discussing the elites of established states. The Venetian nobility became largely closed to outsiders from 1381, and in consequence declined from 2,500 members to around 1,300 by 1775. This represents the narrow end of the spectrum. By contrast, the French nobility was much more open. In the eighteenth century French nobles were clearly defined by legal privileges and fixed boundaries, but through upward social mobility they also received a continuous influx of new members through the ‘thousands of ennobling offices that could be purchased by the aspiring bourgeoisie’. This led to the creation of about 10,000 new members, and the ennobling of five times as many members of their families.15 These widely divergent scenarios in well-documented societies show the dangers of searching for an ‘aristocracy’ in a rigid and monolithic sense, and of using a single model for understanding ancient elites. In addition, recent work on aristocracies in the medieval and early modern eras has revealed the importance of questioning aristocratic self-image. William Doyle, for instance, shows that certain self-perpetuating myths were vital to aristocrats’ identity: they believed their families had primordial origins, enjoyed an unbroken line of male descent, had prominence due to their high birth and exemplary virtues rather than their wealth, and had a long-standing tradition of duty to the state. Doyle argues that modern historians have proved too willing to accept ‘nobles’ own versions of who they are, where they came from, what they do, and what they deserve.’16 Although historically the elite have tended to claim otherwise, it was very difficult for noble families to pass on their property and status beyond three generations of male heirs.17 Several factors eroded the chances of successful male inheritance. There was a high mortality rate in preindustrial societies: between 1300 and 1500 a third of English children of the high elite (the peerage) died before they were 20. Warfare was endemic in late medieval and early modern Europe, and the nobility’s leading role exposed them disproportionately to danger: for instance, death in military activities accounted for half of the English peerage in the fifteenth century.18 In medieval Europe and ancient Greece and Rome (though not in Britain), partible inheritance led to the fragmentation of land holdings and the consequent diminution of the status of heirs.

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Guy Bradley Where we can properly document the survival of aristocratic families, their inability to maintain their status long term is starkly apparent. The following examples are provided by Dewald’s The European Nobility, and Zmora’s Monarchy, Aristocracy and the State in Europe 1300–1800. Region

Period

Losses of aristocratic families

As a percentage

Lower Saxony

1430–1550

‘just over half’ >50%

France

1400–1500

‘most’

c. 90%

Spain

1300–1520

49/55

89%

England

1300–1500

120/136

88%

Westphalia

c. 1150–1550

111/120

93%

Switzerland

c. 1200–1500

31/33

94%

Reference

Dewald 1996, 17

Zmora 2001, 30

Prestigious families might resort to various strategies: for example, if only a daughter survived, she might marry a non-aristocratic husband who would take the noble family name. In Rome elite families employed adoption, usually of blood relations, to continue the family name. But most commonly aristocracies operated mechanisms for the regular inclusion of wealthy outsiders, without which they would simply wither away. In practice, therefore, aristocracies were not socially exclusive, and were never a closed caste in pre-industrial societies.19 Even Venice periodically incorporated newcomers.20 Aristocrats also maintained the fiction that only newcomers with the right ‘noble’ qualities should be recruited, but in practice it was wealth that counted, given the expense of aristocratic lifestyles. As Doyle pithily puts it, ‘aristocracies function to make new money respectable’.21 Whilst emphasising the self-sustaining myths of aristocratic virtue and origins, and the fluidity of aristocratic membership, recent work has nevertheless emphasised the continuing power and importance of aristocracies in early modern societies.22 Rather than a rigid caste that decayed under the impact of revolution and political upheaval in the 18th century, flexibility and constant renewal lent surprising longevity to early modern European aristocracies as institutions. Comparative studies thus help us appreciate that it is the openness of most aristocracies to newcomers, combined with a coherent and long-propagated ideology that stressed continuity, which lies behind their success and importance. If such resilient

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy myths developed around the medieval and early modern European aristocracy, then we need to be even more alert to such problems when looking at ancient aristocracies, for whom succession data is much less easy to come by, where state structures are less developed, and where the inheritance of elite status was generally not a formally recognised principle of custom or law. The emergence and development of a hierarchy in central Italy: Etruria and Latium With these methodological considerations in mind, we can now turn to the archaeological evidence for the differentiation of societies from the Final Bronze Age and the emergence of an elite in central Italy, part of a central Italian koine that developed along the central Tyrrhenian coast by the Orientalizing period (c. 720–580 BC). Archaeological material from the neighbours of Rome provides a different, and much more contemporaneous, perspective on the process that is very likely to be mirrored at Rome. It thus helps us to avoid some of the problems with the literary sources: their wholly elite perspective, and their anachronistic colouring of early social structures. The Roman (literary) evidence comes predominantly from a period when the elite were under considerable pressure and did not monopolise authority in the state; the picture of the dominant class in our late Republican sources (made up of the patriciate and senatorial elite) is in many ways idealised and nostalgic. The most important source of relevant archaeological evidence comes in the form of burials, but it is important to recognise that we are not dealing with a straightforward reflection of society. Burial in archaeologically visible form is a choice, often expressing ideals about a person’s position in society. Burial evidence also comes and goes as funerary customs change. Etruria is the richest source of the data, particularly during the Orientalizing period. Latium sees extensive wealthy burials in the same period, until a rapid and extraordinary falling off c. 600 BC. Rome is poorly represented by burial evidence in comparison to its importance in Latium, almost certainly because it was excavated in a haphazard and unplanned fashion, with much of the material destroyed in antiquity or during nineteenth-century building work. However, as part of the central Italian koine, Rome is likely to have been very similar in its development to contemporary Etruscan and Latin cities. Other regions of central Italy also show an increasing elaboration of burial, but at a later date than the Tyrrhenian coastal districts. In general it is not really possible to establish the percentage of elite against wider population burials in any of these regions. The demography is very uncertain, both in terms of numbers of

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Guy Bradley burials in cemeteries, and in terms of numbers of people in cities. Nevertheless we can establish parameters of plausibility. Positive evidence for the presence of a wealthy elite is thus abundant, allowing us to trace the emerging trajectory of the elite within central Italian society, but it is much more difficult to gain a picture of the whole of society. Ampolo and Bietti Sestieri located the creation of stable classes in the beginning of the Orientalizing period in the late eighth century.23 But the most recent studies have pushed the (visible) emergence of a hierarchy back to the late Bronze Age. Fulminante has shown how significant markers of rank appear as early as the Final Bronze Age, in the form of infant burials with prestige objects. From the beginnings of the Iron Age or Villanovan period, c. 900 BC, we begin to find large numbers of individuals buried together in south Etruscan cemeteries, such as in the Quattro Fontanili at Veii (650 burials) and the Sorbo at Caere (c. 430 burials). Already by the end of the Villanovan period in the mid-eighth century, levels of wealth were clearly differentiated, with some graves showing a dramatic accumulation of furnishings. Fulminante has argued that an elite is already evident at Osteria dell’Osa and Rome from the early Iron Age (Latial culture phase IIa: c. 900–830 BC), in the form of knives, miniaturised vases, and capanna urns.24 She connects this with the protourbanisation of sites in south Etruria and at Rome, well before the onset of the Orientalizing period (c. 730 BC) and the foundation of Greek colonial sites in southern Italy and Sicily in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC. Carandini claims that this elite is a ‘proto-aristocracy’, which controls peripheral agricultural territories from residences in large plateau settlements from the end of the Proto-Villanovan period (c. 1000–900 BC).25 The significance of developments earlier than c. 730 BC still remains disputed and it seems unjustified to talk of aristocracies, or stable elites, before this;26 but what is clear for our purposes is that the emergence of differentiated ranks within society is already apparent by the end of the Proto-Villanovan period, and that there were already attempts to pass on this elevated status to offspring. In the Orientalizing period the expense of grave goods dramatically escalated. In the main cemeteries at Caere, seventh-century burials are marked by major monumental tumuli, ‘from which’, according to Torelli, ‘it is not difficult to recognise the confirmation of a stable aristocratic structure’.27 The chambers they contain are often called ‘princely’ tombs; they are relatively few, but their contents are often fabulously wealthy. A famous example is the Regolini-Galassi tomb (675–650 BC) containing a massive accumulation of costly items, including eastern-influenced and worked materials such as a golden pectoral with Egyptian parallels.28

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy Princely burials appear in Latium towards the end of the eighth and particularly in the seventh century, at sites such as Castel di Decima and Acqua Acestosa Laurentina. Burial patterns at Rome are much harder to discern, given the very poor state of the evidence. The most prestigious from Latium include chariot burials, and given that there are some female examples, e.g. Tomb 70 at Laurentina (c. 675–650 BC), this is presumably connected to the prestige of the deceased rather than a sign of military prowess. The wealthiest, such as the Barberini and Bernardini tombs at Praeneste, match the level of their equivalents in Etruria, and like them display a similar enthusiasm for ‘Orientalizing’ goods of Phoenician or Egyptian provenance or style.29 We also see the appearance of ‘multi-generational’ tombs in the Orientalizing period. At Caere most of the very large tumuli of the seventh century have multiple burials, and some were used from the mid-seventh through the whole of the fifth century.30 Tumulus 2 in the Banditaccia cemetery (figure 1), for instance, has four chambers used over three centuries: the Tomb of the Hut (680–640 BC), the Tomb of the Dolia (640– 600 BC), the Tomb of the Beds and Sarcophagi (600–550 BC), and the Tomb of the Greek Vases (550–400 BC), named after the 150 Greek vases

Figure 1. The entrance to the Tomb of the Greek Vases in Tumulus 2, Banditaccia cemetery, Caere.

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Guy Bradley found within. Other examples include the Tumulus of the Colonel, and the Tumulus of the Painted Animals (used c. 650 to the end of the fifth century), each with four chambers within them. This would seem to confirm the existence of an elite that could pass on its wealth through inheritance, the succession of chambers marking the succession of ‘generations of aristocrats’.31 Often, however, the picture is rather more complex. In some cases older burials were covered by later tumuli. In others, tumuli were expanded to encompass new tombs, or built to unify earlier burials. Some later tombs in Caeretan tumuli broke into old burials, suggesting the memory of the older tomb had been lost.32 In some cases the original chamber within a tumulus was used for a considerable period, such as the fifty years for the first tomb in the Montetosto Tumulus outside Caere, but then sealed while new funerary spaces were opened up in the same tumulus or nearby. The Regolini Galassi tomb is another interesting example. The original tumulus, with its chamber of the second quarter of the seventh century, was later encased by a larger tumulus, containing five burials from the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries. The later tumulus blocked the entrance to the original chamber, preserving its fabulous contents. Although it seems likely, there is no explicit evidence that burials in the same tumulus all belonged to the same family. In some cases different families seem to have been claiming a relationship to the original deceased. Continuity of family burial over many generations is thus often difficult to confirm.33 Also significant for elite ideology in the Orientalizing period is the evidence for ancestor worship. Tomb structures were gradually modified in the seventh century to enable more sophisticated rituals to take place. At the Tomb of the Five Chairs in Caere, five male and female terracotta figures were found associated with throne-like chairs, dining tables and an altar; two further thrones were left empty, perhaps for the deceased to join their ancestors, who may be represented by the terracotta statuettes. Statuettes of mourners and statues of other figures in other tombs are commonly taken to represent ancestors.34 One of the most striking is the Tomb of the Statues, at Ceri in the territory of Caere (c. 650 BC), where two large figures in relief, holding symbols of authority, were carved into the walls of the tomb’s antechamber. There is also evidence for rituals connected to ancestor cult taking place outside tumuli. At Caere, some tumuli feature stairs leading up to the top of the mound, with cippi on the top. The most extraordinary example is the ‘Tumulo II del Sodo’ at Cortona. This enormous tumulus of over 50m in diameter included a large monumental platform and steps. These structures were contemporary with a wealthy burial in Tomb 1 of the tumulus, dating

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy to the early sixth century. On the summit of the tumulus was a small temple building, known from the remains of roofing elements and architectural terracottas. Both architectural elements must have been used for rituals commemorating the dead. A later tomb in the tumulus dates to the fifth century, and there was another phase of burials in the side of the tumulus belonging to the late Republic and early imperial period.35 Another enormous tumulus with clear evidence of ancestor cult, in the form of an associated ritual trench and altar, has been found at Via San Jacopo, Pisa, dating to the seventh century.36 The positioning of visually prominent tumuli often seems to be linked to claims of ancestral control over particular territorial zones.37 The presence of broader clan groups, conventionally referred to in modern scholarship by the Latin name gentes, has been identified in some burials. For example, at Castel di Decima distinctive groups of graves and tumuli with multiple burials have been seen as evidence of gentes, including one with a prominent female chariot burial (tomb 70) in a circle with other burials. At Osteria dell’Osa, Bietti Sestieri thought that tomb groups, such as group N, found in the centre of the necropolis, and persisting from period IIB to period IVB, were clear evidence of gens organisations.38 However, Smith points out that the most distinctive group is evident from 770 to 650, and then ends; most such apparent kinship groups seem relatively transient and ephemeral.39 To sum up, the dramatic elaboration of burial display in the Orientalizing period must represent a new manifestation of the ideology of the elite, rather than its emergence, given the earlier evidence for differentiated social levels well before the late eighth century.40 This ideology emphasized the display of luxurious objects and commitment of them to burials. It was probably linked to the emergence of early settlements from the beginning of the Orientalizing period (c. 730 BC) and perhaps before, and the development of new types of associated social organisation. The growing importance of urban centres offered new opportunities for social mobility and display, providing an arena for intense elite competition and conflict which is manifested in the burial record of extra-mural cemeteries. The conscious emphasis on ancestry visible in Orientalizing tombs implies that this had also become an important element of status claims. Such claims imply the increasing stability of social divisions, but also competition between members of the elite over who had the best right to an elevated position. We have seen how claims of elite longevity are not necessarily to be taken at face value, and this sort of primordialism can be seen as a response to rapid social change. The dramatic nature of the funerary evidence thus seems to show considerable investment and effort in creating a myth of a long-lived ‘aristocracy’.

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Guy Bradley The waning of the Orientalizing period, around 580 BC, was not the end of the process. In the sixth and fifth centuries many urban communities in Etruria and in Latium were reorganised according to the principles of isonomia (‘equality before the law’).41 This was manifested in the burial evidence and in the form of housing, sanctuaries and monumental building. Burial display became regulated, by custom and perhaps also by the state, and the surplus wealth of the elite was redirected to projects of greater communal value (temples, city walls, sanctuary dedications). One of the most striking examples is in the Banditaccia cemetery at Caere, where around 530 BC new tombs adopt a much more standardised cube type (‘a dado’), arranged along straight roads that show urban-style planning (see Figure 2). The tombs have standardised interiors, and less ostentatious grave goods than the princely tombs of the Orientalizing period. Tomb plots were perhaps now distributed by the city, with regulations or customs as to the type of tomb that could be constructed. These new types of tomb were used alongside older tumuli, such as Tumulus 2, and it seems reasonable to assume that they were designed for new members of a broader elite. The last grave in Tumulus 2, the Tomb of the Greek Vases, just predates the new style of burial (being built between 600 and 550), and shows how tombs were developing towards a

Figure 2. A dado tombs in the Banditaccia cemetery, Caere.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy new interior arrangement, with an initial antechamber leading into further chambers at the rear, even within an ancient tumulus. A similar development is evident at Volsinii, although later and without the evidence for multi-generational continuity.42 The Crocifisso del Tufo necropolis has an urbanistic layout of tombs from the mid-sixth century. The broad composition of the ‘elite’ is evident from the names written above each tomb entrance in this and other cemeteries around the city. There are 124 examples, which list over 90 different families. The names indicate a variety of ethnic origins (discussed below), and also include six women. Torelli, perhaps mindful of the later rebellion of the underclass at Volsinii in 264, sees equality stretching beyond the elite, and encompassing the entirety of free adult males in this community (1984, 140). A comparison with the tiny number of tombs known from Rome shows how small a sample of the burying class often survives in the archaeological record. But in a city whose population must number in the tens of thousands (see Cristofani’s estimate, below), 124 can only represent a small group. It would seem best to envisage, more conservatively, these well-built and sturdy tombs as the burial places of an elite, but an elite which now emphasized relative equality amongst themselves.43 In many ways a similar pattern emerges from Tarquinii, although the evidence is different in nature. Vast numbers were buried in the cemeteries surrounding the city, especially in the Monterozzi necropolis. There are some princely burials to match the wealthiest examples from Caere from the Orientalizing period, with the largest, such as that at Infernaccio, having tumuli up to 38 m in diameter, and 10 m high, positioned on the periphery of the main settlement areas. Multi-generational use is rare, but the tumulus covering the Avvolta tomb is said to have had 5 other chambers built into it, perhaps representing different generations of use.44 In the late seventh century a more standardised tomb form came into use, with a small rockcut chamber reached by a sloping dromos, designed for a single couple. Tumuli were still erected on top of the tombs, but with much reduced dimensions (mostly 5–10 m). The most famous of these are the painted tombs, although they make up only around 4% of the total. Some 6,100 tombs are known overall, the majority dating to the sixth to fourth centuries BC.45 These tombs are widely seen as a sign of a new, broader elite, at least in part deriving its wealth from the commercial opportunities opening up in this era: the Tomb of the Ship, for instance, may show one such member of the elite looking over a merchant vessel that belonged to him.46 Grave goods are still often costly: vast quantities of imported sixth- and fifth-century Attic pottery have been recovered from the city’s cemeteries.

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Guy Bradley In Latium there is a much more dramatic change in burial practices in the sixth century than in Etruria, as grave goods decline rapidly in quantity and quality from around 575 BC, and Rome sees datable burials virtually disappear between the sixth and the late fourth centuries. This is not simply a case of disappearing evidence or poor excavation techniques, as is shown by Latin sites such as Ficana or Castel di Decima. Their settlement areas were occupied in the sixth century, but no material from their cemeteries can be dated later than the seventh century.47 It is interesting that a similar trend is evident in the most southerly Etruscan site, Veii, which follows the Latin pattern of disappearing burials rather than the Etruscan one of a perceptible but not dramatic reduction in lavish tomb furnishings. Colonna notes that despite the difficulty of dating tombs largely lacking in grave goods, some burials from the sixth and fifth century BC are known from Latium, such as the Tomb of the Warrior from Lavinium of c. 475–450 with its rich panoply of armour, and three tombs with monumental urns in marble and local stone from Rome’s Esquiline cemetery.48 In general, funerary practice changes quickly, and using burial goods as an expression of social position was, with a few isolated examples, no longer thought appropriate. Colonna draws parallels with Roman restrictions on funerary expenditure in the XII Tables of c. 450 BC, and argues that there was earlier, otherwise unattested, legislation which foreshadowed this. A legislated change would explain the rapidity of the shift, and why the XII Tables, said by our sources to codify pre-existing customary law, concern themselves with burial clothing, which is not evident in Latin burials from after 600 BC.49 But it seems difficult to use this to explain why all Latin city-states, not just Rome, change simultaneously. As in Etruria, the best explanation is probably a combination of government action and a shared ethos of restraint in this era, indicative of a new collective mentality which Colonna convincingly links to the isonomic ideals arising in sixth-century Greece. It is also connected to the increasing urbanism developing from the late seventh century, as resources were switched to urban sanctuaries throughout Latium, which are widely monumentalised in the sixth.50 The ending of competitive display, and its diversion to other spheres, probably indicates the increasing stabilisation of the elite. From a situation of rampant competition for status and insecurity of position in the Orientalizing period, the archaic and later periods see the elite becoming more secure and defined. Houses are further evidence for the emergence and stabilisation of an elite in central Italy. Very large-scale residences, often described as ‘palaces’, appear in Etruria in the late seventh century. The size of examples such as Murlo and Acquarossa is very striking, the former measuring approximately

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy 60m along each side of its courtyard structure when rebuilt in 580 BC. The layout shows parallels with eastern palaces such as Vouni on Cyprus and Larissa-on-the-Hermos in western Asia Minor and has acroterial sculptures which perhaps represent ancestors, given analogies with similar examples found in Caeretan tombs such as the Tomb of the Statues at Ceri.51 Plaques from both sites attest decorative schemes revealing elite concerns, with scenes of deities, banqueting and military arrays of warriors processing or departing. These palaces were short-lived, disappearing towards the end of the sixth century. Investment in this type of housing is the counterpoint of Orientalizing display in the funerary sphere, and it, too, may have been curtailed by custom and law. The porticoed form of early palaces influenced a new type of residence, which appeared in the sixth century, organised around an open atrium space. This type of house was built into the urban fabric in a way familiar from Pompeii, where some of the city dates back to the sixth century.52 Examples are known in Etruria from Roselle, in northern Etruria, and Marzabotto, in a valley south of Bologna. Marzabotto was a planned town with very large atrium houses, up to 20 by 30m long. Similar houses have been found recently at Gonfienti near Prato, which features a planned road grid.53 This type of dwelling is also known from Rome, where Carandini’s excavations on the eastern slopes of the Palatine have exposed exiguous traces of what seem to be four huge atrium houses (they measure up to 38 x 25m), built around 525 BC. This is an area renowned in later periods for its elite residences, and these examples seem to have been in use until destroyed by fire in the late third century BC.54 This new house design, found across central Tyrrhenian Italy from the mid-sixth century BC, must be a product of urbanised living conditions and, at least in sites such as Marzabotto, designed for settlers of some wealth but also relatively equal status to their neighbours. Overall, the burial evidence from Tyrrhenian central Italy indicates that coherent elites have emerged by the Orientalizing period, and perhaps before.55 The evolution of elite groups is linked to state formation and urbanisation, which had a dramatic impact on the nature of elites. Elite families do exist over several generations and seem to use tombs for family groups. But even in the most striking cases their longevity was limited to around 200 years, and was not as long-lasting as that claimed by gentes in Republican Rome. These elites were highly competitive, using burial and housing to advertise their prestige and assert an inherited right to an elite position. Tombs were used as claims to past heritage, whether expressing control over a certain territory through the positioning of tumuli, or kinship links to ancestors displayed in statuary and celebrated by rituals. The great

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Guy Bradley tomb monuments of the seventh century which did continue to be used were mostly redundant by the mid-fifth century. Sometimes ancient burial monuments seem to have been appropriated by new groups.56 In the sixth century the changing form of new tombs and of the layout of cemeteries indicates a widening of the elite, best seen as the growing influence of isonomia. This is also evident through the greater regularisation of house plots in the later sixth century. The situation was also regionally varied. Latium emerges as peculiar in its austerity. Etruria was affected by egalitarian principles, but less dramatically, and Etruscan investment in burial architecture and grave goods remains extravagant for longer. The emergence and development of a hierarchy in central Italy: the Italic regions It is worth briefly comparing developments in the Italic world, as this offers a contrasting pattern. The funerary extravagance associated with the Orientalizing period on the Tyrrhenian coast is later here, generally beginning in the late seventh or sixth century and going down to the fifth century.57 Elite burials are evident from the early Iron Age and become progressively more elaborate through the Orientalizing period. Participation in burial appears quite wide at many sites (such as the 605 tombs known at Campovalano). Some cemeteries, such as Fossa, see a very long continuity of use, from the early Iron Age (ninth century BC) down to the late Republic.58 There is generally no precipitous decline of grave goods until the late fourth century and the era of the Roman conquest. Tombs of the distinctively Apennine form of tumulus with a surrounding stone circle, tombe a circolo, are widely distributed, and last for longer than in Tyrrhenian zones:59 some Umbrian examples, for example at Spello, can be dated by the presence of black-gloss pottery to the late fourth and early third centuries BC. The most prestigious burials often feature chariots, as in Etruria and Latium, with some large-scale and immensely wealthy examples from Picenum and Monteleone di Spoleto (point of origin of the famous sixth-century chariot now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York). Most chariot burials in Picenum are concentrated in the sixth and early fifth centuries, and they again come from female as well as male graves. One of the most extraordinary cases of an Italic tumulus comes from the territory of the Aequicoli at Borgorose, in the central Apennines. It measured 50m across, with 254 tombs discovered so far. The tombs are ranged over three phases: two tombs have been identified from the end of the ninth to the early eighth century, one of which was associated with a smaller tumulus visible under the centre of the larger excavated mound. The tumulus was enlarged in the first half of the sixth century and then

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy 40 35 30 25

Intermediate Female tombs Male tombs

20 15 10 5

0 775–720 BC

675 BC

630 BC

580 BC

520 BC

480 BC

UNKNOWN DATE

Figure 3. Frequency of chariots in Picene tombs.60

received a large number of male burials, mostly with weapons, until the first quarter of the fifth century. The excavators have identified these as a group of companions in Homeric fashion interred around the heroized burials in the smaller central tumulus. In the last phase, the mid-to-late Republic, a more widely representative group was buried here, including women and children, with modest furnishings. A collective community is certainly present at some stages. But there are long hiatuses between the various burial phases, and this seems to be a case of later groups asserting a relationship with earlier, heroized figures, rather than of long-term family continuity.61 Thus traditional burial styles last longer in Italic areas, linked to the later development of the state and urban organisation, beginning in the Orientalizing period and continuing down to, and in many cases postdating, the Roman conquest. Overall, the evidence suggests a long-term state formation process in Italic areas, where the emergence of an elite is later. In comparison with the Tyrrhenian seaboard, there are fewer defining institutional structures for the elite, such as magistracies, although these do exist. Urbanisation and domestic architecture are not yet highly elaborated, so there are fewer opportunities to establish elite reputations. As a result, competitive display in the burial sphere continues for longer. The epigraphic and literary evidence for the fluidity and mobility of the elite Having surveyed the archaeological evidence for the emergence and transformation of elites in central Italy, I now want to turn to consider mobility. There is a rich vein of evidence for mobility across social and

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Guy Bradley ethnic boundaries in central Italy.62 Epigraphic material is particularly important. The presence of different languages out of their normal context, and the use of an extra gentile name, introduced from the end of the seventh century, make immigrants frequently visible in epigraphy. This evidence is significant to our theme as it implies a dynamic and fluid social hierarchy, in which inter-community movement was feasible and potentially lucrative. Much of this material is well known, but it is worth surveying in some detail here as it is less well appreciated how far it undermines static and primordial interpretations of Roman and Italian elites. One of the best known examples comes from Tarquinii.63 The Tumulo del Re was one of the wealthiest tombs found in the city, with a 35m tumulus, and a chariot burial. A painted graffito on a bucchero vase fragment from the tomb of c. 630 BC records the name rutile hipucrates, consisting of a praenomen of Latin origin (Rutilus) and a gentile of the Etruscanised Greek name Hippokrates (typically elite, and mainland or western Greek in origin). Thus the graffito attests the existence of an Etruscanised Greek with Latin links – whether he was the deceased himself or someone with whom the dead man had maintained a relationship of reciprocity – who enjoyed a high status in Etruscan society. Ampolo has pointed out the similarity between this picture and the story of Demaratus, who according to tradition migrated from Corinth to Etruria and married a local woman.64 His son Lucumo moved to Rome, where he changed his name to Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, and became the founder of the Tarquin dynasty (Strabo 5.2.2; cf. Livy 1.34). Volsinii also provides a wealth of such evidence, connected to its position on the crossroads of the routes to northern Etruria, the Etruscan coast and the Umbrian hinterland. The broad participation in the elite has been noted already, with more than 90 gentilicial names attested. One of the most fascinating features is that these gentile names reveal a wide range of ethnic origins (Torelli 1988b, 254). The majority (60%) is Etruscan, but a substantial minority (some 40%) is Italic, such as Flusena from Italic Flusa. There are also examples of Greek origins, for example Achilena (from Achilleus), as well as Katicina, an Etruscanised version of Celtic Catacus. Later on, social fluidity is also attested by Dio (frag. 10.42, in Zonaras), who describes a situation in the early third century in which the slave underclass rose to take power before the Romans captured and sacked the city and resettled the survivors elsewhere. Numerous other examples have been identified from south Etruria.65 Ate Peticina (Latin Attus Peticius) (Caere, seventh century BC) and Kalatur Phapena (Latin Kalator Fabius) (Caere, mid-late seventh century) are instances of Etruscanised Latin names: they suggest that (i) these

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy individuals were high-status Latins (already possessing elite gentile names) emigrating to Etruria, and (ii) they had not long integrated in Etruscan society. We also see the adoption of new gentile names to show origin such as Tite Latine (Latin Titus Latinius, from Veii, seventh century BC) and the straightforward translation of Latin names into Etruscan such as Tita Vendia (Latin Titia Vendia, Caere, seventh century; the name also appears in Latin in a late-seventh-century wine container from Rome), and Ati Cventinasa (where the patronymic becomes the gentile name, i.e. Attius, Quinti filius). These newly invented gentile names suggest their holders were originally of low social status, and aspired to something higher. Note also the intriguing cases of Larth Telicles (a Greek who seems to have transformed his original name Telekles into an Etruscan gentile and added to it the Etruscan praenomen Larth), and Aristonothos, the Greek painter of a famous krater depicting the blinding of Polyphemus, resident in Caere in the mid-seventh century: his name ‘best (or noble) bastard’, seems to play on his mixed origins.66 A wide range of migrants is also evident in Rome, attested by epigraphic and literary material.67 There is good evidence for Etruscan migration to Rome in the archaic period.68 We have six Etruscan inscriptions from Rome of the sixth century, with two further uncertain ones. The most important is a tessera hospitalis in the form of an ivory lion found in the sanctuary at Sant’Omobono in the Forum Boarium, the probable emporion of the city. The inscription, of 580–560 BC, reads Araz Silqetenas Spurianas. The Etruscan name Araz is known from another Etruscan inscription from the Capitol, and Spurinna features in the Tomb of Bulls from Tarquinii.69 The best interpretation is that it shows relations of hospitality between two Etruscans, one of whom may be from Sulcis on Sardinia, hence the name ‘Araz the Sulcitane’.70 There are two examples of dedications by Etruscans in Rome, an impasto sherd with the fragmentary name -uqnus, from the Forum Boarium, and a bucchero patera with mi araziia laraniia, ‘I belong to Araz Larani’, from a votive deposit on the Capitol. Another striking example is a three-letter epigraph from the Esquiline cemetery.71 This might demonstrate Etruscan residence in Rome, but the brevity of the piece makes its Etruscan nature uncertain. Literary evidence also shows similar movements. As we have seen, the fifth king of Rome reputedly came from Tarquinii and was half-Greek in parentage. On arrival in Rome he is said to have taken the name Tarquinius Priscus, from his town of origin (compare Tite Latine in Veii). He arrived with his Etruscan wife Tanaquil, who played an important part in the subsequent succession, facilitating a takeover of the throne by Servius Tullius. It is curious that marriage to a high-status local woman reputedly did not allow Tarquinius to advance sufficiently in Tarquinii,

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Guy Bradley prompting him to leave for Rome; this explanation for his move could well be speculation by later writers. Whatever the reasons, the epigraphic evidence for mixed ethnic names examined above shows that inter-ethnic marriage was probably common in this era and must have been an important passport to better status for many migrants.72 Servius Tullius, for instance, is said to have married the daughter of Tarquinius Priscus. There were various versions of his origins; in one he was the son of a slave or a war captive from Corniculum in Latium (Livy 1.39); in another, reported by Claudius from Etruscan sources (ILS 212), he was originally a certain Mastarna from Vulci in Etruria, who changed his name on migrating to Rome with his companion, Caelius Vibenna. In addition, our sources also claim Etruscan craftsmen were called in by the last kings of Rome to decorate the Capitoline temple. They included ‘builders and engineers from all over Etruria’ according to Livy (1.56). Vulca of Veii was named by Pliny as the creator of the most important sculptures.73 Similar statuary from the Portonaccio temple in Veii, dating to the same period, has been recovered archaeologically, reinforcing the veracity of this reputed link.74 Various areas of Rome were supposedly named after Etruscan settlers of the monarchic period, such as the Vicus Tuscus and the Caelian hill, which according to Claudius took its name from Caelius Vibenna. In the fifth century, names attested in the consular Fasti show that some consuls may have been of Etruscan origin. The most obvious example is C. Aquillius Tuscus in 487. Ampolo has pointed out that Aquillius probably equates to Acvilnas in Etruscan, and is likely to be related to a contemporary member of this gens, with the praenomen Avile (Latin Aulus), who made dedications at Vulci and Veii. There are also stories in early Roman history of individuals moving between Rome and Latium or Sabinum, such as Coriolanus, an elite Roman who defected to the Volsci, and Attus Clausus, who is said to have led his followers to Rome from the Sabine town of Regillum in 504.75 On several other occasions we hear of enemy armies which had foreign, presumably immigrant, generals.76 The Lapis Satricanus inscription may document a similar situation, attesting the presence of Publius Valerius, probably the Roman consul of 509, 508, 507 and 504, in charge of suodales (companions or followers), in southern Latium at the end of the sixth century.77 All this material implies that there was considerable mobility between cities in archaic Tyrrhenian Italy, with cases both of members of the elite moving and retaining their elevated status, and people moving to better their status.78 Elites were generally permeable, sometimes to outsiders with established families (as testified by gentile names) and sometimes to those without.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy The Roman Republican elite in an archaic central Italian context I want to turn now to the implications of this model for the Roman nobility, from its beginnings in the monarchy to the end of the Republic. Obviously I am unable to treat this complex topic in substantial detail.79 However, I think there is value in sketching out some of the implications for the debate about the Roman Republican nobility and the questions my model raises for further research. As we have established, Rome seems to have a similar profile to other cities in central Italy in the archaic period. In fact, its position as a crossroads of central Italy must have enhanced the fluid and immigrant nature of its population. The many stories about early Rome that involve migrants moving to the city, such as the Sabines Titus Tatius, Numa Pompilius and Attus Clausus, and the Etruscans Tanaquil, Mastarna and Caelius Vibenna, reinforce this impression of openness. Newcomers like Tarquinius Priscus, or the minores gentes whom he added to the Senate (Smith 2006, 254), could apparently achieve power or respectability with little established record (Ampolo 1976). The later existence of the patres conscripti, who formed the Senate along with the ordinary patres, show that new groups had been added to the Senate at some point, probably by one of the kings. It is uncertain if they were patricians. This openness implies that membership of the elite was insecure and unstable in a situation of developing state structures. The fluid and comparatively anarchic situation of the Orientalizing and archaic periods was slowly stabilised and formalised by the growth of state structures and increasing urbanisation, leading to new ways of classifying the population. There is a gradual institutionalisation of the elite from the sixth century BC, as new institutions in the late monarchy and the Republic allowed more formal ways of defining the elite in Roman society. This is evident in several different areas: the centuriate reforms; the Struggle of the Orders; and the emergence of a Senatorial nobility. As we shall see, these reforms create new groups and orders in Roman society which cut across one another and do not neatly coincide. In addition, these new institutions continue to be shaped by fluid social conditions, and continue to allow considerable social mobility to take place. The ‘Servian’ reforms An illustrative example is Roman military organisation and the creation of census classes. This is important because soldiers were usually selfequipped and hence the extent of military participation reflected the distribution of wealth in society. Various facts can be established, but their interpretation is controversial. It is clear from burial assemblages and

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Guy Bradley iconographic evidence that hoplite armour spread to Etruria from the midseventh century and to Rome by the sixth century at the latest.80 Hoplites were traditionally thought to have fought in a rigid phalanx, where solidarity was essential to the overall coherence of the force. However, recent work on Greek warfare has shown that phalanxes existed earlier, and more irregular hoplite fighting was common even in the classical period.81 What is significant is that hoplites generally paid for their own armour, and therefore required a certain level of property ownership. In effect, military service of this sort, a central but by no means unique part of archaic military forces, became connected to a broad wealth qualification.82 The reforms associated with Servius Tullius, king of Rome in the midto-late sixth century, reorganised the citizen body and were probably also connected to hoplite tactics. He divided the population into tribes based on place of residence, and into wealth classes, each made up of centuries which voted as groups in the centuriate assembly. In this way he linked the voting rights of classes of Roman citizens, assembled as the centuries in the comitia centuriata, to their levels of wealth and role in the army. That the comitia centuriata is connected with the army from its origins is evident because it alone elected to the offices such as the consulship which held imperium, the power of military command, and because it could only meet outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome. Livy (1.42–43) and Dionysius (4.13–21) provide detailed explanations of a complex system of five classes that Servius is said to have introduced, along with monetary qualifications for each class. Although the monetary figures are anachronistic reconstructions, the existence of property qualifications based on pounds of bronze in the archaic era is plausible and accepted by many scholars, and the monetary equivalents may have been adjusted at a later date to fit with the new system of coinage.83 Most historians have argued that a fiveclass system is too complex for the state of the economy in archaic Rome, and, rejecting the version of Livy and Dionysius, instead reconstruct Servius’ system as one of two classes: in this reading he defined the group of heavy infantry for a phalanx, known as the classis, through a property qualification, and designated those below this level infra classem.84 This hypothesis is far from certain. It is based on a passage of Aulus Gellius (6.13; cf. Paulus Festus p. 100L), explaining that Cato used the term classici to apply to men of the first class, and infra classem to refer to the second class and below, the assumption being that Cato is referring to an archaic system of only two classes. But this is weak grounds for rejecting Livy’s version, given that neither Gellius nor Cato explicitly says as much.85 In fact, the essential justification for this modern reconstruction, the belief

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy that a five-class system was too complex for archaic Rome, now seems particularly questionable. A complex and clearly differentiated society is presupposed, for example, by the colossal manpower required for building projects such as Rome’s 11km-long fortifications, and the huge podium for the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.86 It is also striking that this type of ‘rational’ reorganisation of the city was well known amongst sixthcentury cities in Greece. A five-class system, therefore, may date back to the sixth century BC. Most scholars reconstruct the Servian army as consisting of either 40 or 60 centuries, around 6,000 heavy armed and 2,400 light armed troops, with a small complement of cavalry.87 Comparing the size of the army against a Roman population of 80,000 (Fabius Pictor fr. 14 Chassignet, in Livy 1.44.2), there must have been broad participation.88 As J.-C. Richard (2005) has pointed out, recruitment must have gone well beyond the patricians, whose clients were too poor to provide the required equipment. The military class or classes were therefore composed of wealthy landowners. The proletarii, citizens who did not have the property qualification for the census, were accorded less power, as they voted in one large century, after the first class (or five classes). Curiously, six centuries of cavalry called the sex suffragia, dominated by patricians, also voted after the first class, which suggests that their power was also being diminished. The Servian system probably overlaid and came to supersede an earlier division of the population into 3 older tribes and 30 curiae, which met in the comitia curiata. Unlike the older curiate system, the centuriate system was renewed by regular censuses, at which point new residents of the city could be incorporated. The census was a key part of the reforms, because it allowed for the expansion of Roman manpower in line with its territory, and did not concern itself with the origin of new citizens.89 Newcomers to Rome were evaluated in the same terms as existing residents, and could join at any level. Thus the political reforms of Servius Tullius in the late sixth century seem to have recognised a broad and constantly refreshed propertied class of men able to equip themselves for war, and to have rewarded them with greater political power. The qualification for the top class is by wealth and property rather than birth. As Momigliano puts it, ‘Servius recognised social and economic differentiation, but no hereditary privileges, in his centuriate and tribal reform’.90 It is worth noting that similar reforms were instituted in various Greek states in this era, including Argos, Athens, where they were enacted by Cleisthenes, Eretria, Sicyon, Corinth, Cyrene, and Camarina in Sicily. Links to Corinth and Athens are apparent in Rome in the sixth century through pottery imports and through the alleged origins of the Tarquin dynasty in

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Guy Bradley Corinth.91 A recent survey of such reforms by Fisher (2010) shows that they were not the preserve of one type of regime, being enacted by oligarchies, democracies and tyrannies, and that they aimed at promoting social cohesion by creating new groups that cut across pre-existing social divisions. The ‘Struggle of the Orders’ By 500, therefore, one form of elite within Roman society was the classis that made up the hoplite army. However, the power of this group was not particularly evident in the politics of the early Republic, which was dominated by a much smaller and more powerful group, the patriciate. Patricians regarded official power as their exclusive prerogative in fifthcentury Rome, both in terms of political offices and priesthoods. Most priesthoods were originally only to be held by patricians. They also claimed that only they could hold auspicia, the auspices, which were essential to legitimising political power, and defended this right against the plebeians in the early Republic. The patricians controlled the interregnum, and therefore had a role in legitimising the monarch. During the first half of the fifth century the patricians came to monopolise the consulship and military tribunate, the highest offices of state, in a process commonly known as the ‘closure of the patriciate’. Thus the patriciate had emerged as a coherent group of exclusive gentes (clans) in the early Republic with a strong corporate identity. Their strategy was to claim to belong to unique, stable lineages, often allegedly going back beyond the foundation of the city. We have no reason to accept that their myths of primordial origins were accurate. In fact, the rights of the patricians were never accepted by their plebeian opponents, and these social divisions seem to have been the subject of continual debate rather than rigid inheritance.92 In this environment the appearance of the patriciate must be linked to a desire for self-definition against the rest of Roman society. This could be a way of marking itself out from the rest of a fluid and broad elite, and should be seen in the context of the prevalent social and ethnic mobility of seventh- and sixth-century Rome.93 Elite migrants to Rome during the monarchy, such as Attus Clausus in 504, or the minores gentes of the monarchic Senate, seem to have gained access to the patriciate. Later newcomers to the Roman elite, such as Lucius Mamilius in 458 BC (Livy 3.29.6), were made plebeians, and in 450 the eleventh of the XII Tables introduced a ban on intermarriage between patricians and plebeians (which was rapidly overturned). It is also plausible that the crystallisation of the patriciate was connected to the formation of the plebs, whose organisation can be traced back to the first secession in 495 BC.94

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy The exclusive hold of the patriciate on Roman politics and society lasted little more than a century, as the excluded members of Roman society fought back. Raaflaub argues that this was the inevitable result of the closure of the patriciate, which ended the social mobility of the earlier era for a few generations and the ‘natural integration of new gentes’ into the elite. The subsequent decline in the number of patrician families and growing pressure from the plebeians made political reform a necessity.95 As a result, a new mixed nobility, made up of plebeian and patrician families, was created by a series of laws opening up magistracies to nonpatricians in the fourth century BC. Naturally enough this new nobility then adopted some of the patricians’ old strategy, alongside a host of innovative methods of self-promotion:96 all nobles came to belong to gentes, and they started to claim fictitious ancestors with over-elaborated victories. Access for the plebeians to the consulship was legally opened in 367 BC, and by the end of the fourth century membership of the Senate, a more permanent body than it had been in the early Republic, became the means to define membership of the new mixed patricio-plebeian nobility, rather than birth in certain gentes.97 The patriciate is commonly used in modern accounts as a model for other Italian societies.98 However, the closure of the patriciate and its monopoly of office should be seen against a background of long-term social mobility that initially shaped its formation, and was ultimately responsible for its transformation (if not overthrow). As Raaflaub shows, the domination of the patriciate is effectively an untypical interlude in a longer history of social fluidity and inter-community mobility. The nature of the Republican senatorial nobility In modern scholarship the new mixed Roman nobility that emerges in the late fourth century is something of a by-word for elite permanency, and the longevity of many of its noble families is famous. Much evidence exists of Roman noble claims of distinguished ancestry stretching back for many generations, such as the Scipiones, five generations of whom were buried in their tomb on the Appian Way. It was used from the early third century, when Scipio Barbatus died, to the middle second, when a monumental façade was added to the tomb.99 Other examples are myriad. Cicero, for instance, refers to the nobility of Servius Sulpicius Rufus as ‘unearthed from the history of antiquity’, given that it stemmed from an ancestor who held the consular tribunate in the fourth century BC.100 In the mid-40s BC, the plebs called on Brutus to remember his reputed ancestor who had overthrown the last monarch four and a half centuries earlier (Plut. Brutus 9). As we have seen, patrician families all claimed an ancestry stretching back

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Guy Bradley at least to the sixth century BC. The great studies of the Roman Republican nobility from the nineteenth century onwards by scholars such as Mommsen, Gelzer and Münzer echoed these claims, emphasising the longevity of these families.101 Recent scholarship has undermined much of the traditional picture, in terms of both the accuracy of elite claims and the typicality of elite descent, although the Senatorial elite still emerges as a dominant force in Roman society.102 First, it is evident from Brunt’s study of 1982 that the key terms used by our sources, nobilis (noble) and novus homo (new man), were not used with the precision that scholars had previously assumed. He showed that nobilis, normally taken to mean those with a consular ancestor in the family, was never used in a technical sense, and that strict male descent was not necessarily a requirement.103 Putative ancestors holding high office who had the same nomen gentilicium, and therefore might appear to be of the same gens, might not in fact be blood relatives. Belonging to the same gens does not mean that a Roman belongs to the same family, although this is often taken as the same thing by modern scholars. The meaning of ‘new man’ is also more restricted than Gelzer and others had envisaged. Rather than signifying someone lacking consular ancestors, Brunt argued that it means someone lacking ancestors who held any curule magistracies.104 This therefore implies that the rarity of new men was less significant than previously claimed. Secondly, the ‘aristocratic’ nature of the Roman elite has been strongly questioned by Millar and Hopkins, although their conclusions have been disputed.105 It is evident that the Roman elite was not an ‘aristocracy’ in a straightforward sense, and that all members of the nobility had difficulty passing on their political status to their offspring. It is also clear that considerable advantage was given to candidates for the highest office (especially the consulship) by a prestigious noble background. The elite domination of the consulship in the last three centuries BC is clearly established, and the repetition of familiar names in the consular Fasti undeniable.106 Roman writers were aware of this, and generally took elite continuity as a commonplace, largely focusing on the most visible upper echelons. Nevertheless, the lower orders of the senatorial elite (who only reached lesser offices like the quaestorship or tribunate) were fluid and accessible to suitably qualified, wealthy, newcomers.107 Apparent longevity of success amongst a narrow band of some 50 families thus co-existed with fluidity and rapid turnover in the majority of senatorial families, with different modern scholars emphasizing different points.108 Hölkeskamp has validly argued that many of the findings of Millar, Hopkins and Brunt had been anticipated by older scholars, and that it had

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy never been maintained that the Roman nobility was a closed caste. He claims that it is still legitimate to see the mid-Republican elite as a coherent political class, bound together with a shared ideology: a ‘Republican aristocracy of office’.109 Nevertheless, the more critical approach to aristocratic myths developed by Doyle and other recent comparative studies raises some serious issues with this model, both in terms of the continuity and the ideological self-image of the Roman elite. As we have seen, for instance, comparative work shows that direct inheritance of a family name over many generations is less likely than the periodic reinvention of the family through adoption, intermarriage or complete invention.110 This problem was already recognised in antiquity. Disputes about the accuracy of Roman elite claims of their ancestry are as old as the Republic itself, and the unreliability of ancestry records is well known. Cicero (Brutus 62) points out, from the self-interested perspective of a new man, that funeral orations were preserved ‘to support their own claims to noble origins’, and that they include much ‘which never occurred, false triumphs, too many consulships, false relationships and transfers of patricians to plebeian status’. According to Livy (8.40), historical inaccuracies resulted from ‘funeral eulogies and fictitious inscriptions on portrait busts, when families try to appropriate to themselves the tradition of exploits and titles of office by means of inventions calculated to deceive’. In parodying such claims around 200 BC, Plautus (Persa 53–61) shows that they were commonplace, and perhaps laughable.111 (Saturio speaking): I continue, follow and cultivate with the greatest care the ancient and venerable profession of my ancestors. For there was not one of my ancestors who did not provide for his belly through the parasite’s calling. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather and his father too always ate other people’s food, just like mice, and no one excelled them in love of good eating. Duricapitones (‘Hard Heads’) was their cognomen. From them have I derived this calling, and the station of my forefathers.

This remained a feature of elite mythology into the imperial period, and such aspirations to noble status, like the claims of the patricians, should be seen in terms of the claim and counter-claim of perpetual political competition and jockeying for position, rather than as undisputed facts.112 The key feature for our purposes is the way that such claims are loudly proclaimed and yet continually necessary, a product of the way that state structures, shaped by fluid social conditions, continued to allow mobility to take place.

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Guy Bradley Conclusion Traditionally scholars have envisaged Rome and Etruscan cities as dominated by narrow self-perpetuating aristocracies enduring over huge spans of time. The exclusive patriciate of the early Roman Republic serves as the most obvious model, to which we can compare the (claimed) genealogies of some Etruscan families. But comparative evidence shows how unusual long-term continuity was in reality. Instead, such claims should be considered as an artefact of competition amongst a self-mythologising elite. It is the stabilisation of the elite as an institution, rather than as individual families or gentes, that is key. In any case, these extraordinary, almost mythical, stories of the continued and inherited success of the most prominent families in the classes are not only an unreliable guide to the reality of their own situation, they are also probably unrepresentative of the broader picture. If instead we treat the patriciate, for instance, as a selfdefining segment of a much larger wealthy class in Rome, we can see that it is not the best model of wider trends. Similar monopolistic groups must have existed elsewhere, but they represent an offshoot rather than the totality of the elites in central Italian cities from the late archaic era. The main conclusion of this paper is that early Italian elites are better characterised as unstable and fluid, rather than as primordial in origin and long enduring. The model proposed here is that the instability, fluidity and mobility of central Italian elites in the Orientalizing and archaic periods must be linked to the on-going and dynamic process of state formation. We can trace the origins of social differentiation back into the Bronze Age, but should not think of this as being the ‘formation’ of a stable hierarchy. An equally critical period is in connection with the growth of states and urbanisation in the Orientalizing and archaic periods. Like Duplouy, we should see the peak of elite status display in the Orientalizing period as a manifestation of insecurity and rampant competition within a fluid environment, rather than as evidence of the appearance or stabilisation of elites. In the late Orientalizing and archaic period (late seventh to early fifth century BC) the changing archaeological and epigraphic evidence reveals the breadth and diversity of the elite in central Italian cities like Volsinii, Rome, Veii and Caere.113 As city-states coalesced in Tyrrhenian Italy in the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries, their elites became more formalised. Urban conditions from the late seventh century onwards offered more chance of family stability, even if the odds were ultimately stacked against continuity over more than three generations.114 Such elites remain, to judge from the Roman case, competitive and fluid: war, politics and culture are all vibrant fields of elite competition. To some extent the emerging state structures seem to be in

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy tension with the earlier mobility and fluidity. Evidence for inter-community movement does become less obvious from the fifth century onwards, although this must in part be due to the changing nature of the survival of material culture.115 The evidence from Rome demonstrates, I believe, that a complex classificatory system for the whole population was in place by the end of the sixth century BC. What effect this has on mobility is unclear; movement between communities and the adoption of new citizenship was still relatively easy at Rome, where the regular census allowed for the regular enrolling of new citizens. Roman ideology promoted the acceptance of new immigrants, and the rights of Latins from 495 BC probably included the ability to intermarry with Romans and to move to Rome and take up residence there. The new settled and regulated environment allowed the elite to build up, record, and commemorate long-term memories of their ancestors’ achievements, particularly in terms of their office holding. We can also add that in this way it created fertile conditions for the emergence of aristocratic myths: intense competition within the city becomes the norm; family records are elaborated, and claims of primordialism become yet more important. The link between the fluidity of the Roman Republican elite and the mobility of the archaic period has not been sufficiently appreciated in earlier work. The Roman Republican nobility develops out of a situation of migration and instability. It develops features that reflect this, such as relative openness and a high turnover, instinctive competitiveness, and a segment of the elite (the patriciate) claiming primordial origins in the city. From the late fourth century a new mixed patrician-plebeian nobility emerged in connection with the increasing permanence of the Senate, and the opening up of magistracies and priesthoods to plebeians. Beyond the upper echelon of Senatorial families, turnover was surprisingly high in the main body of the Senate. As I hope to have shown, the picture of a fluid and competitive Roman elite that we see in the late Republic looks much less unusual when considered against the background of Italian elites in the archaic period. What provides the continuity is not the same families surviving in Italian states over the course of many hundreds of years. Rather, it is the increasingly formalised nature of urban elites, whose competition is regulated by rules and marked by membership of bodies like the Senate and whose successes are recorded in documents like the Roman Fasti, that provides the element of long-term stability. Italian and Roman ‘aristocracies’, like many others, turn out from this perspective to have been something of a mirage. Instead we need to conceive of hierarchical elites which are fluctuating and unstable in their membership. In the archaic

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Guy Bradley period this fluidity and mobility begins to be sclerotised by state structures, but the elites never reach the stable position of inherited status implied by aristocratic myths. From comparative evidence it is clear that such myths are characteristic of elite self-images, but generally dubious in historical terms. Mobility and flexibility are typical of successful and emerging elites in antiquity, however much they strive to conceal this. Individual families and their long-term power are much less important than it might first appear. But the elite as an institution is a vital and powerful feature of ancient societies, nowhere more so than in Rome.

Notes 1 I am very grateful to Elena Isayev, Gary Farney, Peter Coss and the editors for comments on this chapter, which have considerably improved it; all remaining errors and shortcomings are my own. 2 As he put it in the paper delivered at the conference in Cork; see also Duplouy, this volume. 3 For stimulating recent uses of this material, see Torelli 1988b; Cornell 1995, 81–92; Smith 2006; Terrenato 2007. 4 In fact, most studies of early Rome and Italy touch on this topic in some ways, and it is impossible to do justice to the whole range of scholarship on this subject: the view here is necessarily very selective. 5 See Hopkins and Burton 1983, 32, for a rare attempt to define it, adopting a very loose definition of the term. 6 Duplouy 2006, 25–8, noting the great variation between definitions of ‘elite’, e.g. Morris (1987) focusing on the agathoi, and Davies (1971) on the liturgical class. 7 The use of otium (leisure) and negotium, its opposite, was a frequent theme for late Republican writers such as Sallust and Catullus. 8 The comparable cases of King George III and Marie Antoinette, and the 18th century concept of the ferme ornée, show that Cato’s is a common elite aspiration; for slave ownership, see Rosenstein 2008, 5–7. 9 Inheritance of position was frequent amongst members of the Roman Republican elite, but was by no means a prerequisite. 10 E.g. Guidi’s preface to Fulminante 2003, p. x, claiming that she has demonstrated the existence of ‘a true and proper dominating class from the end of the Bronze Age’ (my translation). 11 E.g. Hölkeskamp 2010, 89, 92. 12 A definition drawn from Harris 1988. 13 Crook 1983, 71. 14 Brunt 1982b; de Ste. Croix 1981, 98–111 argued that women qualify as an exploited class in this sense (see Crook 1983, 71–2). 15 Runciman 1986, 262. 16 Doyle 2010, 22; cf. Zmora 2001, 24; Runciman 1986, 262. 17 Doyle 2010, 26. For a classic example of long-term inheritance of a title see the family tree of the Howard family, the Dukes of Norfolk, which can be traced from the

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy present day right back to Edward I. However, the complexity of family relations involved in the passing on of the title, which was taken at times by nephews and cousins, shows that even in such exceptional cases a great deal of flexibility was involved. 18 English figures from Dewald 1996, 17; cf. Hopkins and Burton 1983, 71 n. 52. 19 Eurich 1997; Dewald 1996, 17; Zmora 2001, 24; Doyle 2010, 26; cf. Farney 2007, 9 (which stimulated my thoughts in this direction). 20 Doyle 2010, 26. 21 Doyle 2010, 27. 22 E.g. Dewald 1996. 23 Ampolo 1980; Bietti Sestieri 1992. 24 Fulminante 2003, 239. 25 Carandini 1997, 469. 26 E.g. Ampolo 2000, 34. 27 Torelli 1981, 50 (my translation). 28 Sannibale 2008. 29 Important tomb finds without clear archaeological provenance are omitted from Fulminante’s otherwise comprehensive study: see the review by Ridgway 2005; Forsythe 2005, 57. 30 Torelli 1981, 54; Riva 2010. 31 Torelli 1981, 54. 32 Riva 2010, 124. It is possible that Tumulus 2 was only created well after the original chamber tomb it contains, the Tomb of the Hut, as that tomb is not orientated towards the centre of the tumulus, unlike the last tomb, and was dug down below ground level into the rock (Barker and Rasmussen 1998, 126). 33 Riva 2010, 124. 34 Listed in Riva 2010, 128. 35 Website of the Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona, at http://www.cortonamaec.org/percorsi/3_museo_5.php; Riva 2010, 131. 36 Camporeale 2004, 16. 37 E.g. at Montetosto outside Caere: Riva 2010, 126–8. 38 Bietti Sestieri 1992, 199–203. 39 Smith 2006, 147–9; cf. Cornell 1995, 84–5. 40 Cf. Fulminante 2003, 242: Orientalizing burials were the ‘last and most visible manifestation of an aristocratic class which had existed already for some time’; 250: it is less a ‘change from an equal to a stratified society than a shift on an ideological level in the mode of the self-representation of the emerging classes’ (my translations). 41 Torelli 1981, 56; 1988b, 255; Cornell 1995, 93, 105–8. For a further discussion of isonomia, see P. J. Rhodes in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1997. 42 Torelli 1981, 140. Colonna 2005, 516 sees Volsinii as an isolated example, not typical of wider Etruscan trends. 43 Similar types of tombs are found at Populonia (Torelli 1981). 44 Leighton 2004, 64. 45 Leighton 2004, 86, 100; Cristofani 1984, 31, estimates the total population at around 20,000. 46 As such it might represent the maritime source of his wealth, unless it symbolises the metaphorical journey to the underworld instead (Leighton 2004, 111, 120; Cataldi Dini 2008, 90–1). Cf. Torelli 1981, 55 on a similar example from Caere.

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Guy Bradley 47

Cornell 1980; Cornell 1995, 105–8; Fulminante 2003, 196–204; Colonna 2005 for the phenomenon in general. 48 Colonna 2005, 496–507. 49 DH 10.55.5; Ampolo 1984, 92–5. 50 Colonna 2005; Cornell 1995, 108; Smith 1996, 215–23. 51 Torelli 1981, 83–6; Torelli 1988b, 250–1. 52 Coarelli 2002, 48. 53 See, e.g. Gleba 2002, 93–4; Cifani 2008, 275. 54 The identification of some of the structures as atrium houses has been doubted, e.g. by Moormann 2001, and Wiseman 2008. But the atrium form of at least one of these houses seems likely enough. 55 Cf. Cornell 1995, 81–6. 56 Some early tumuli, such as the seventh-century ‘Heroon of Aeneas’ at Lavinium, or the Tumulo II del Sodo at Cortona, were reused in ceremonies several centuries after the original depositions (Bonfante 1986, 16 n. 59; Cornell 1995, 68). 57 See e.g. Bradley 2000, chap. 2. 58 Cosentino et al. 2001. 59 Naso 2000. 60 After Naso 2000, 120. 61 Cf. Smith 2006, 160. 62 See, e.g., Ampolo 1976, Cristofani 1996. My chapter was composed before the publication of Bourdin 2012, which massively expands our knowledge of mobility in central Italy. His analysis of a much broader range of evidence than is possible here strengthens the conclusions drawn in this section. 63 Ampolo 1976. 64 Ampolo 1976; cf. Zevi 1995. 65 Ampolo 1976; 1988, 173–4; Torelli 1981, 132–7. 66 Torelli 1981, 134: perhaps ‘best of mixed blood’. 67 For Etruscan inscriptions from Latium, see Naso 2004, 226–9, listing examples from Praeneste, Satricum, and Lavinium; cf. Bourdin 2005, 596–7, adding an example from Ardea. For Etruscan emigration, see Turfa 1986, 71–2. 68 Cornell 1995, 157. 69 Bonfante 1986, 31; Pallottino 1993, 208. 70 Coarelli 1988a, 148–50; Maggiani 2006, 321 (also publishing a cache of five tesserae hospitales from Murlo in Etruria demonstrating the personal links of the rulers of Murlo with elites across Etruria, including Caere in the south, connected to trading interests). 71 CIE 8608 snu[—]; cf. CIE 8607 ana (a name) on a ceramic fragment from the Cloaca Maxima (Cornell 1995, 157). Incidentally another Esquiline tomb has a Greek inscription, on an olpe of c. 625–600, although it is uncertain if the inscription refers to the deceased (Mura Sommella 2000). 72 E.g. DH 6.1.2–3 on the prevalence of Roman–Latin intermarriage in 495; Festus p. 174L on the marriage of the last of the Fabii to the daughter of Numerius Otacilius of the Maleventani. Cf. Coldstream 1993; Glinister 2009; Lomas 2012; Patterson 2012. 73 Pliny, NH 35.157: ‘Varro also states that Vulca was summoned from Veii to receive the contract from Tarquinius Priscus for a statue of Jupiter to be consecrated in the Capitol...the four-horse chariots on the pediment of the temple and the figure of Hercules.’

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy 74

Cf. the two Greek artists, Gorgasus and Damophilus, responsible for plaster decoration and frescoes on the walls of the cella of the Temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera, dedicated in 493 BC (Pliny NH 35.154). 75 Further references and discussion in Bradley 2006. 76 Aristodemus from Cumae leading Aricia (Livy 2.14.5–9; DH 7.5–6); Cloelius, an Aequian commander, led a force of Volsci in 443 BC (Livy 4.9.12); a Fundanian, Vitruvius Vaccus, who had a house on the Palatine in Rome, led the people of Privernum in revolt in 330 (Livy 8.19.4, Cic. dom. 101); Oblacus Volsinius, i.e. from Volsinii, led the men of Ferentinum against Pyrrhus (DH 19.12). 77 Stibbe 1980. 78 Cf. also Amann 2001 on (particularly) an Etruscan presence in Umbria. 79 I intend to address these issues at greater length in my forthcoming book on early Rome. 80 Snodgrass 1965; Ampolo 1988b. D’Agostino (1990), and Spivey and Stoddart (1990) emphasise the variety of Etruscan military equipment, arguing for the persistence of a Homeric style of battle, with the Etruscan elite monopolising warfare. 81 Van Wees 2004; Rawlings 2007. 82 Foxhall (1997) and Van Wees (2004; 2006) have argued that the threshold for hoplite service is identical with the ‘leisured elite level’. 83 Ampolo 1988, 227; Cornell 1995, 181; Crawford 1985, 22–3. Rathbone 1993 argues that the monetary qualifications were based on the coinage system used between 212/211 and 141 BC. 84 Brunt 1971, 27: ‘so primitive a state would not have collected statistics of this kind’; Cornell (1995, 187) dates the creation of a more elaborate voting system with five property classes to 406 BC; Humm (2001, 222) provides full references to earlier work. 85 Cf. Last 1945. The use of a further passage, Livy 4.34.6, to suggest that Livy is possibly calling the legionary army the classis is also largely inference (cf. Staveley 1953). 86 For the sixth-century date of both see Cifani 2008, 255–264, 290–94; cf. Coarelli 1988b, 323. 87 Coarelli 1988b, 322; Cornell 1995, 183; Smith 2006, 281–5. 88 The size of the population is estimated at 20–35,000 by Ampolo (1980, 27; 1988, 233; followed by Cornell 1995, 207). The figure in the sources of c. 80,000 is defended by Coarelli 1988b as representing the total Roman population, not just adult males as it came to do later (and as Fabius Pictor asserts it does). Cf. Momigliano 1966. For further discussion, see Bradley forthcoming. 89 Last 1945, 48; Cornell 1995, 191. The first censors were elected in 443, but earlier censuses were probably held by the king or magistrates. Down to 318 censuses were held every nine years or so (Forsythe 2005, 114). 90 1989, 106. 91 Zevi 1995, stresses the Corinthian character of the Tarquin dynasty. 92 Smith 2006, 299: ‘the patriciate is a fiction of its own making, and claims and counterclaims about it should be seen in terms of an argument, and not as statements of fact’. Note also the lack of agreement amongst scholars as to numbers of patrician gentes, recorded by Richard 2005, 107–8: Palmer: 16; Ranouil: 43; Mommsen: 54; Willems: 114; Pais: 74. 93 Torelli 1988b, 261.

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Guy Bradley 94

Smith 2006, 42, for the minores gentes; Raaflaub 2005, 191, for patricians responding to plebeian secession. 95 Raaflaub 2005, 201–2. 96 For the latter, see Hölkeskamp 1993. 97 Cornell 2000 for the change in the nature of the Senate in the late fourth century; cf. Hölkeskamp 1993. 98 E.g. Le Glay, Le Bohec and Voisin 1996, 11: ‘Etruscan society was patrician and almost feudal: a class of nobles formed the oligarchy of the principes (men of note who held power in the cities), until the rural plebeians forced their way in’. Note Riva 2010, 4, on the problems of using Roman models for Etruscan society. 99 Untypically for this era the Scipiones practised inhumation, and are more archaeologically visible than their peers as a result. See Wallace-Hadrill 2008, 220–2. Cf. Polybius 6.53–4 on Roman funerals. 100 Mur. 16; Gelzer 1969, 32; Hopkins and Burton 1983, 39. 101 These works are discussed by Jehne 2006, 4–6. For the striking example of the alleged survival of the Acilii Glabriones from the 3rd c. BC to the 5th c. AD, see DondinPayre 1993; parallels are discussed at 268–270. (For doubts, see the review by Brennan in JRA 9 [1996], 335–8.) Note that similarly (claimed) longevity of ancestry is evident in Etruria, for instance, in the elogia of ancestors stretching back to the fifth century BC set up by members of the Spurinna family during the Julio-Claudian period (Torelli 1975; Cornell 1978). 102 Jehne 2006, 14–17 provides a good summary. 103 1982a, 10. 104 Brunt 1982a, a return to Mommsen’s view. 105 On the explicit question of a Roman ‘aristocracy’, see Millar 1998, 4, with the comments of Hölkeskamp 2010, 88–9, and Jehne 2006, 16. 106 Hopkins and Burton 1983; Badian 1990; Burkhardt 1990. 107 See for instance, Hopkins and Burton 1983; Burckhardt 1990; Hölkeskamp 2010. Cornell (pers. comm.) points out that there are 10 tribunes elected each year, most of whom remain completely obscure to us. 108 Compare Hopkins and Burton 1983 and Burckhardt 1990. 109 2010, 89; cf. Jehne 2006, 16. 110 The peer reviewer points out that adoption, a key feature in the continuity of some Roman elite families, was not regarded by the Romans themselves as reinventing the family. This is an important point (which it is beyond the scope of this chapter to address), but I consider nevertheless that it does not affect my core arguments about the fluidity, mobility and myth-making of elites in central Italy. On adoption see Lindsay 2009. 111 Nick Fisher points out to me that Plautus is adding a decidedly Roman tinge to the standard Greek comedy topos of the parasite’s self-justification (passages collected by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 234–60, esp. 237–40); see further, Tylawsky 2002. 112 Cf. Juvenal, Satire 8, especially 8.131 on claiming mythical figures like Picus as an ancestor. This has been widely recognised in modern scholarship: e.g. Wiseman 1974; Hopkins and Burton 1983, 51–2. 113 See Torelli 1988b, 255, for an illuminating parallel between the roles of Volsinii and Rome as ‘frontier’ cities. 114 This offers a contrast to the picture in Terrenato 2007, who argues that the long-

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy term continuity of clan structures from the pre-urban period promoted cultural integration in the era of Romanisation: ‘Socio-political changes of the Hellenistic period must be seen in the broader context of a long-term dialectic within clans... Clan mentality in many cases came before civic loyalty and ethnic identity’ (2007, 13). 115 For a more optimistic picture, see now Bourdin 2012, 551–81.

Bibliography Amann, P. 2001 ‘Rapporti culturali fra Etruschi e Umbri’, in G.M. Della Fina (ed.) Gli Umbri del Tevere. Annali della Fondazione per il Museo Claudio Faina 8, Rome 91–107. Ampolo, C. 1976 ‘Demarato: osservazioni sulla mobilità sociale arcaica’, Dialoghi di archeologia 9–10, 333–45. 1980 ‘Periodo IVB’, in ‘La Formazione della città nel Lazio’, Dialoghi di archeologia n.s. 2, 165–93. 1984 ‘Il lusso e la città arcaica’, AION. Archeologia e storia antica 6, 71–102. 1988 ‘La città riformata e l’organizzazione centuriata. Lo spazio, il tempo, il sacro nella nuova realtà urbana’, in A. Momigliano and A. Schiavone (eds) Storia di Roma. I Roma in Italia, Turin, 203–239. 2000 ‘Il mondo omerico e la cultura orientalizzante mediterranea’, in G. Bartoloni (ed.) Principi etruschi, Rome, 27–36. Badian, E. 1990 ‘The Consuls, 179–49 BC’, Chiron 20, 371–413. Barker, G. and Rasmussen, T. 1998 The Etruscans, Oxford. Bietti Sestieri, A.M. 1992 The Iron Age Community of Osteria dell’Osa, Cambridge. Bintliff, J. 1999 ‘The origins and nature of the Greek city-state and its significance for world settlement history’, in P. Ruby (ed.) Les princes de la protohistoire et l’émergence de l’Etat, Naples, 43–56. Bonfante, L. (ed.) 1986 Etruscan Life and Afterlife. A Handbook of Etruscan Studies, Warminster. Bourdin, S. 2005 ‘Ardée et les Rutules: réflexions sur l’émergence et le maintien des identités ethniques des populations du Latium préromain’, MEFRA 117.2, 585–631. 2012 Les peuples de l’Italie préromaine: identités, territoires et relations inter-ethniques en Italie centrale et septentrionale, Rome. Bradley, G. 2000 Ancient Umbria. State, Culture and Identity from the Iron Age to the Augustan Era, Oxford. 2006 ‘Colonization and identity in Republican Italy’, in G. J. Bradley, J.-P. Wilson (eds), Greek and Roman Colonization: Origins, ideologies and interactions, Swansea, xi–xvi, 161–87. 2007 ‘Romanization: the end of the peoples of Italy?’, in G. J. Bradley, E. Isayev and C. Riva (eds), Ancient Italy: Regions without boundaries, Exeter, 295–322.

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Guy Bradley Forthcoming ‘The Rome of Tarquinius Superbus: issues of demography and economy’, in P. Lulof and C. Smith (eds), The Age of Tarquinius Superbus. Central Italy in the Late Sixth Century BC, Rome. Brunt, P.A. 1982a ‘Nobilitas and novitas,’ JRS 72 1–17. 1982b ‘A Marxist view of Roman history’, JRS 72, 158–63. Burckhardt, L.A. 1990 ‘The political elite of the Roman Republic: comments on recent discussion of the concepts of nobilitas and homo novus’, Historia 39, 77–99. Camporeale, G. 2004 The Etruscans Outside Etruria, Los Angeles. Carandini, A. 1997 La nascita di Roma. Dèi, Lari, eroi e uomini all’alba di una civiltà, Turin. Cataldi Dini, M. 2008 ‘Tarquinia. Profilo storico-topografico’, in M. Torelli and A.M. Moretti Sgubini (eds), Etruschi. Le antiche metropoli del Lazio, Milan, 88–93. Cifani, G. 2008 Architettura romana arcaica. Edilizia e società tra monarchia e repubblica, Rome. Coarelli, F. 1988a ‘I santuari, il fiume, gli empori’, in A. Momigliano and A. Schiavone (eds) Storia di Roma. I Roma in Italia, Turin, 127–151. 1988b ‘Demografia e territorio’, in A. Momigliano and A. Schiavone (eds), Storia di Roma. I Roma in Italia, Turin, 317–339. Coarelli, F. (ed.) 2002 Pompeii, New York. Coldstream, J.N. 1993 ‘Mixed marriages at the frontiers of the early Greek world’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 12.1, 89–107. Colonna, G. 2005 ‘Un aspetto oscuro del Lazio antico. Le tombe del VI–V secolo a.C.’, in id., Italia ante romanum imperium 1.2, Pisa, 493–518. Cornell, T.J. 1978 ‘Principes of Tarquinia’, Review of Torelli 1975, JRS 68, 167–73. 1980 ‘Rome and Latium Vetus, 1974–79’, Archaeological Reports (supplement to the Journal of Hellenic Studies) 26, 71–89. 1983 ‘The failure of the plebs’, in E. Gabba (ed.) Tria Corda: Scritti in onore di A. Momigliano, Como, 101–120. 1995 The Beginnings of Rome, London. 2000 ‘The lex Ovinia and the emancipation of the Senate’, in C. Bruun (ed.), The Roman Middle Republic: Politics, religion, and historiography c. 400–133 BC, Rome, 69–89. Cosentino, S., D’Ercole, V. and Mieli, G. 2001 La necropoli di Fossa I. Le testimonianze più antiche, Pescara. Crawford, M.H. 1985 Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic, London. Cristofani, M. 1996 Etruschi e altre genti nell’Italia antica. Mobilità in età arcaica, Rome.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy Cristofani, M. (ed.) 1984 Gli Etruschi. Una nuovi immagine, Florence. Crook, J.A. 1983 Review of de Ste. Croix 1981, CR 33.1, 71–72. D’Agostino, B. 1990 ‘Military organization and social structure in archaic Etruria’, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds) The Greek City from Homer to Alexander, Oxford, 59–84. Davies, J.K. 1971 Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 BC, Oxford. de Ste. Croix, G.E.M. 1981 The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, London. Dewald, J. 1996 The European Nobility, 1400–1800, Cambridge. Dondin-Payre, M. 1993 Exercice du pouvoir et continuité gentilice. Les Acilii Glabriones du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. au Ve siècle ap. J.-C., Rome. Doyle, W. 2010 Aristocracy. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford. Duplouy, A. 2006 Le prestige des élites, Paris. Eurich, S.A. 1997 Review of Dewald 1996, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 28.4, 1339–1341. Farney, G. 2007 Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition in Republican Rome, Cambridge. Fisher, N.R.E. 2010 ‘Kharis, Kharites, festivals, and social peace in the classical Greek City’, in R. Rosen and I. Sluiter (eds) Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 71–112. Forsythe, G. 2005 A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War, Berkeley. Foxhall, L. 1997 ‘A view from the top: evaluating the Solonian property classes’, in L.G. Mitchell and P.J. Rhodes (eds) The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, London, 113–136. Fulminante, F. 2003 Le ‘sepolture principesche’ nel Latium Vetus tra la fine della prima età del ferro e l’inizio dell’età orientalizzante, Rome. Gelzer, M. 1969 The Roman Nobility (translation by R. Seager of Die Nobilität der römischen Republik, Berlin, 1912), Oxford. Gleba, M. 2003 ‘Archaeology in Etruria 1995–2002’, Archaeological Reports 49, 89–103. Glinister, F. 2009 ‘Burning boats and building bridges: women and cult in Roman colonisation’, in E. Herring and K. Lomas (eds) Gender Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC. BAR International Series 1983, Oxford, 117–126.

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Guy Bradley Harris, W. V. 1988 ‘On the applicability of the concept of class in Roman history’, in T. Yuge and M. Doi (eds) Forms of Control and Subordination in Antiquity, Tokyo, 598–610. Heurgon, J. 1964 Daily Life of the Etruscans, London. Hölkeskamp, K.J. 1993 ‘Conquest, competition and consensus: Roman expansion in Italy and the rise of the nobilitas’, Historia 42, 12–39. 2010 Reconstructing the Roman Republic. An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research, Princeton. Hopkins, K. and Burton, G. 1983 ‘Political succession in the late Republic (249–50 BC)’, in K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal. Sociological Studies in Roman History 2, Cambridge, 31–119. Humm, M. 2001 ‘Servius Tullius et la censure: élaboration d’un modèle institutionnel’, in M. Coudry and T. Späth (eds) L’invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique. Die Konstruktion der grossen Männer Altroms, Paris, 221–247. Jehne, M. 2006 ‘Methods, models, and historiography’ in R. Morstein-Marx and N. Rosenstein (eds), A Companion to the Roman Republic, Oxford, 3–28. Last, H. 1945 ‘The Servian reforms’, JRS 35, 30–48. Le Glay, M., Voisin, J.-L. and Le Bohec, Y. 1996 A History of Rome, Oxford. Leighton, R. 2004 Tarquinia. An Etruscan City, London. Lindsay, H. 2009 Adoption in the Roman World, Cambridge. Lomas, K. 2012 ‘The weakest link: elite social networks in Republican Italy’, in S. Roselaar (ed.) Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic, Leiden, 197–214. Maggiani A. 2006 ‘Dinamiche del commercio arcaico. Le tesserae hospitales’ in G. Della Fina (ed.), Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo. Commerci e politica. Annali della Fondazione per il Museo Claudio Faina 13, Rome, 317–345. Millar, F. 1998 The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic, Ann Arbor. Momigliano, A. 1966 ‘Timeo, Fabio Pittore e il primo censimento di Servio Tullio’, in Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Rome, 649–56. 1989 ‘The origins of Rome’, in F. W. Walbank, A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen, R. M. Ogilvie and A. Drummond (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History VII.2: The Rise of Rome to 220 BC, Cambridge, 52–112. Moormann, E.M. 2001 ‘Carandini’s royal houses at the foot of the Palatine: fact or fiction?’, BaBesch 76, 209–212.

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Investigating aristocracy in archaic Rome and central Italy Morris, I. 1987 Burial and Ancient Society. The Rise of the Greek City-State, Cambridge. 1991 ‘The early polis as city and state’, in J. Rich and A. Wallace-Hadrill (eds) City and Country in the Ancient World, London, 24–57. Münzer, F. 1999 Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families, Baltimore (translation by T. Ridley of Römische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien, Stuttgart, 1920). Mura Sommella, A. 2000 ‘ “La grande Roma dei Tarquinii”. Alterne vicende di una felice intuizione’, BCAR 101, 7–26. Naso, A. 2000 I Piceni: storia e archeologia delle Marche in epoca preromana, Milan. 2004 ‘The Etruscans in Lazio’ in G. Camporeale (ed.), The Etruscans outside Etruria, Los Angeles, 220–35. Pallottino, M. 1993 Origini e storia primitiva di Roma, Milan. Patterson, J.R. 2012 ‘Contact, co-operation, and conflict in pre-Social War Italy’, in S. Roselaar (ed.) Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic, Leiden, 215–226. Raaflaub, K. 2005 ‘The conflict of the orders in archaic Rome: a comprehensive and comparative approach’, in K. Raaflaub (ed.) Social Struggles in Archaic Rome, Oxford, 1–46. Rathbone, D. 1993 ‘The census qualifications of the assidui and the prima classis’, in H. SancisiWeerdenburg et al. (eds) De Agricultura. In Memoriam P. W. de Neeve, Amsterdam, 121–52. Rawlings, L. 2007 The Ancient Greeks at War, Manchester. Richard, J.-C. 2005 ‘Patricians and plebeians. The origins of a social dichotomy’ in K. Raaflaub (ed.) Social Struggles in Archaic Rome, Oxford, 107–27. Ridgway, D. 2005 Review of Fulminante, 2003 in CR 55.2, 610–614. Riva, C. 2010 The Urbanisation of Etruria: Funerary Practices and Social Change, 700–600 BC, Cambridge. Rosenstein, N. 2008 ‘Aristocrats and agriculture in the middle and late Republic’, JRS, 98, 1–26. Runciman, W.G. 1986 ‘The sociologist and the historian’, JRS 76, 259–65. Sannibale, M. 2008 ‘Gli ori della Tomba Regolini-Galassi: tra tecnologie e simbolo. Nuove proposte di lettura nel quadro del fenomeno orientalizzante in Etruria’, MEFRA 120.2, 337–67, 610–614. Smith, C.J. 1996 Early Rome and Latium: Economy and society c. 1000 to 500 BC, Oxford.

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Guy Bradley The Roman Clan. The Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology, Cambridge. Snodgrass, A.M. 1965 ‘The hoplite reform and history,’ JHS 85, 110–22. Spivey, N. and Stoddart, S. 1990 Etruscan Italy, London. Staveley, E.S. 1953 ‘The significance of the consular tribunate’, JRS 43, 30–36. Stibbe, C.M. 1980 Lapis Satricanus. Archaeological, Epigraphical, Linguistic and Historical Aspects of the New Inscription from Satricum, Rome. Terrenato, N. 2007 ‘The clans and the peasants: reflections on social structure and change in Hellenistic central Italy’, in P. Van Dommelen and N. Terrenato (eds) Articulating Local Cultures: Power and identity under the expanding Roman Republic, JRA Supplement, Portsmouth RI, 13–22. Torelli, M. 1975 Elogia Tarquiniensia, Florence. 1981 Storia degli Etruschi, Rome. 1988a ‘Le popolazioni dell’Italia antica: società e forme del potere’, in A. Momigliano and A. Schiavone (eds) Storia di Roma. I Roma in Italia, Turin, 53–74. 1988b ‘Dalle aristocrazie gentilizie alla nascita della plebe’, in A. Momigliano, A. Schiavone (eds) Storia di Roma. I Roma in Italia, Turin, 241–261. Turfa, J.M. 1986 ‘International contacts: commerce, trade and foreign affairs’, in L. Bonfante (ed.), Etruscan Life and Afterlife, Warminster, 66–91. Tylawsky, E.I. 2002 Saturio’s Inheritance: The Greek ancestry of the Roman comic parasite, New York. van Wees, H. 2004 Greek Warfare. Myths and Realities, London. 2006 ‘Mass and elite in Solon’s Athens: the property classes revisited’, in J.H. Blok and A. Lardinois (eds) Solon of Athens: New historical and philological approaches, Leiden, 351–89. 2009 ‘The economy’, in K. Raaflaub and H. van Wees (eds) A Companion to Archaic Greece, Oxford, 444–67. Wallace-Hadrill, A. 2008 Rome’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge. Wiseman, T.P. 1974 ‘Legendary genealogies in Late-Republican Rome’, G&R 21.2, 153–164. 2008 ‘The house of Tarquin’, in id., Unwritten Rome, Exeter, 271–92. Zevi, F. 1995 ‘Demarato e i re “corinzi” di Roma’, in A. Storchi Marino (ed.) L’incidenza dell’antico. Studi in memoria di Ettore Lepore, I, Naples, 291–314. Zmora, H. 2001 Monarchy, Aristocracy and the State in Europe 1300–1800, London. 2006

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4 ROMAN ELITE MOBILITY UNDER THE PRINCIPATE 1 Laurens E. Tacoma Introduction This book is about the applicability of the concept of aristocracy to periods for which no clear institutionalised demarcations exist. What is at stake is ‘the usefulness, or otherwise, of the concepts of aristocracy, aristocratic lifestyles, and values. (...) Central to a strong idea of an “aristocracy”’ [is] ‘an identifiable estate or order, united by a sense of hereditary exclusiveness based on lineage as well as wealth (primarily located in landed property), and ideally signalled by formal designations such as titles or heraldic emblems, which legitimises access to power; and an order conscious of sharing a coherent ideology, an exclusive set of leisure activities and social and moral values’.2 Elites of the Roman Principate seem to conform very well to such a description of a strong idea of aristocracy. They meet all the criteria. They were organised in orders, they presented themselves as hereditary groups with a strongly exclusivist ideology in which lineage and inherited landed wealth played central roles, their membership was demarcated through titles and membership of councils of various sorts, and they shared a coherent ideology. Given the fact that these Roman elites were very visible through their formal institutions and have left abundant documentation, it comes as no surprise that they have been extensively studied. Therefore, they might be regarded as the model against which the applicability of the concept of aristocracy can be tested for other periods. If the Roman elites of the Principate serve as a model for our understanding of the concept of aristocracy, that may suggest that their structure and functioning is self-evident, unproblematic and hardly worth any further thought. Needless to say, the situation is not that straightforward. Roman elites are worth studying in their own right. It is useful to consider to what extent they actually conform to the concept of aristocracy. A crucial issue is that of elite mobility. The description used above might be taken to imply that aristocracies were fenced-off, and yet we know that

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Laurens E. Tacoma under the Principate considerable movement in and out of elites occurred. To give a complete overview would far exceed the limits of this chapter, but it may be helpful to offer a discussion of recent arguments about Roman elite mobility in the Principate. In what follows, I will analyse the subject of Roman elite mobility by dissecting it into its constituent parts, and in consequence the structure of this chapter will be straightforward. The first section (‘Elite?’) will ask how Roman elites can be described, and how social hierarchies should be analysed. The second section (‘Mobility?’) addresses the question of how the hierarchical nature of Roman social structure relates to levels of mobility. The last section (‘Roman?’) introduces into the debate some ideas advanced by recent studies of Roman acculturation processes. Several assumptions inform the discussion. I assume that the three subjects that are discussed (elites, mobility, acculturation) have a bearing on each other: mobility can only be understood in the light of elite structure and vice versa, and the same applies to acculturation. I also assume that the elites of the Roman empire can be studied as a whole, and that no matter what institutional differences existed between East and West, and between different provinces, or even different cities, the underlying patterns were roughly the same. For understandable reasons, many studies of social mobility have confined themselves to specific regions of the empire or to specific elite groups. General discussions are thin on the ground.3 Lastly, I assume that a bottom-up approach is useful, starting with the local elites and working upwards, devoting more attention to the local level than to the top. A senatorial perspective is all too often used in studies of elites, whereas I hope to show that many of the phenomena that apply to local elites help in understanding regional and empire-wide elites. Elite? By the time of the Principate we find an institutionalised demarcation of local elites in almost all areas of the Roman empire in the form of membership of city councils. In the Western part of the empire councils were introduced with the creation of cities or the conferral of city status on existing settlements. In the Eastern part of the empire the nature of elites had been changed in a slow process, sometimes taking centuries, by which the boundaries between elite and non-elite became more marked and visible. The nature of existing boulai changed according to the well-known principle that institutions retained their name but changed their content: they now comprised a much smaller section of the population, the wealthy landowning elite, who held membership for life. Greater institutional demarcation of elites increased their visibility.

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate This was not only an advantage for ancient elites, but it also provides modern scholars with a relatively solid criterion for identification of members of the elite. This is best visible in Egypt, where councils were introduced very late, only around the turn of the third century AD.4 Whereas before that period it is difficult to think of a solid criterion for identification, after the introduction of the councils we possess hundreds of names of councillors attested in individual papyri, and hence we have a relatively good view of the composition of the local elites.5 However, we should not be seduced too easily by the simplicity of this criterion, but we should ask to what extent institutional demarcation was complete. Is it legitimate to equate the local elites with the members of the local councils? The shortest route towards an answer to that question is by studying criteria for admission. There was always a minimum age, free birth was required, and only men were admitted. Although no doubt good birth (no matter how defined exactly) would help in gaining admission, lineage played only a minor role (and was not formalised in any requirement). Wealth, by contrast, was certainly the most important factor: only people with a certain amount of property were admissible, and sometimes they had to pay an entrance fee. The criteria themselves were subject to local variation, depending on the size of the city, regulations in local or provincial charters, historical developments, and so on. There certainly existed no uniform council size, nor was there a uniform property threshold, nor was the minimum age the same everywhere.6 Under normal circumstances, the property that made people eligible for membership of the council consisted of land. Other types of property certainly were also important in providing income: revenue from moneylending, trade, tax-farming. But land was what counted most and therefore, both for ideological and for practical reasons, it can be taken as a proxy indicator for all types of wealth. It is important to realise that within the elite the distribution of wealth was highly unequal. The evidence for landholding is very fragmentary, and mostly comes from Egypt, but all surviving registers suggest very steep internal differentiation. We always find a couple of extremely wealthy persons alongside others with much less land. The best example is provided by the – admittedly late – evidence from fourth-century Hermopolis in Middle Egypt, where the members of a single family formed the wealthiest landowners. Other owners held significantly less land.7 Even where councils were relatively small (say 100 persons), many councillors were at risk of dropping out for lack of wealth.8 And not all wealthy persons were members of the council to begin with. The criteria for admission indirectly provide information about those

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Laurens E. Tacoma excluded. The exclusion of many groups from the councils is in itself unproblematic – the fact that for example young persons were normally not admitted hardly needs comment. But there are also cases of status dissonance: some groups met some but not all of the criteria for admission into the council.9 It is precisely their ambiguous position that makes them important for the understanding of elite formation. The classic category is that of the wealthy freedman.10 Provided their manumission occurred according to the rules, freed slaves obtained Roman citizenship. Their integration in society was remarkable, but it was not complete: they were barred from local politics and were not admitted into the councils, despite the fact that some of them were very wealthy. Mobility was delayed by one generation, for only their descendants obtained full political rights and hence were allowed to enter the councils. It is possible that some managed to enter the council in spite of the prohibition,11 but most will have sought other avenues for the display of their ambitions. Freedmen are always mentioned in discussions of social mobility, but free foreigners are usually ignored. However, where geographical mobility was significant, as in cities with a large volume of trade (such as Puteoli, Ostia, Athens, Alexandria), their presence in local society would certainly be an issue. Such groups might have been larger than is normally supposed. In the case of the western part of the empire, it should be pointed out that a part of the onomastic evidence that is usually taken to refer to freedmen might just as well refer to resident foreigners. The problem is that many of the supposed freedmen do not carry the required tria nomina. The standard categorisation of names as slave, freed and free ignores the possible occurrence of peregrini. Especially in view of the often very large number of uncertain cases this is hardly justifiable.12 Not all foreign residents will have had access to land, but some will certainly have been wealthy. In some cases there may have been few obstacles to their entrance into elite institutions, but we may assume that normally their presence posed a problem.13 In Roman Athens, it is telling that large groups of young resident foreigners were admitted into the ephebeia – by then a somewhat elitist institution – but that they were enrolled in a separate category.14 Then there is a third category of excluded people that merits attention. Like freedmen and resident foreigners, women were not admitted into the formally demarcated elite. Or at least they were never fully admitted: in many areas of the empire, we find them as patronesses, as holders of important priesthoods, or as magistrates – though always debarred from full access to the political institutions. Much recent work has focused on these public roles of elite women. To what extent were women able to act independently, outside the familial context? How can the regional

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate variations in their public roles be explained?15 It is tempting to seek the answer to both questions in the economic position of women, which in turn was determined by their position in the inheritance system. However, the case of Egypt shows the complexity of the subject. In Egypt women were owners of substantial properties in their own right. Many women were quite wealthy, their position in the inheritance system was strong, and they were clearly operating with a considerable measure of independence within the local elites.16 And yet their institutionalised position was weak: among the hundreds of known magistrates, only a handful of women appears. There seems to be no easy explanation, but what the case of Egypt shows is that even where women do not appear in public roles, they may have an important position in society. Wealthy freedmen, free foreigners, and women were all barred from the council, and were assigned more limited roles in civic life. The presence of such groups of wealthy outsiders will have varied from region to region, but it is clear that under the Principate each group could be substantial. The council consisted of the wealthy elite, but the wealthy elite stretched beyond the boundaries of the council. Who was excluded is reasonably clear, but how inclusion worked is much less so. We know very little about admission procedures for the council beyond the fact that holding one of the lower magistracies might in some cases give direct entrance to the council, and that otherwise councillors might be co-opted. Even in the case of Egypt, where we have hundreds of documents emanating from local councils, the sources are silent on this matter. However, the silence itself is telling: much seems to have remained informal. Both in the case of assigning magistracies and in the case of co-optation, members of the council could work at their own discretion and had considerable room for manoeuvre. It seems only natural that they selected members from their own peer group. Moving up from the local elite, the existence of regional elites should be discussed: elites whose power, influence and wealth extended beyond a single city. The existence of such regional elites is the natural and almost inevitable outcome of two factors: political unification and steep stratification. On the one hand, the fact that cities were absorbed in larger political structures simply meant that they ceased to form the only point of reference for members of local elites – provincial and imperial institutions became natural playgrounds for those with enough ambition. At the same time, the very steep stratification in local society meant that some people within the cities were wealthy enough to be able to venture further up the social scale. The problem in the analysis is that, more than the local elites with their councils, such regional elites lack a solid institutionalised demarcation.

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Laurens E. Tacoma There is some overlap between the regional elite and the equestrian order, but the overlap is by no means complete. The equestrian order consisted of people with property worth over 400,000 HS; admission was by imperial grant. It is quite clear that not all people who were eligible were actually admitted. The regional elite was therefore much wider than the equestrian order. Given the lack of formal demarcations, the analysis of this group is difficult – so much so that its existence is sometimes simply ignored. It is certainly possible to formulate criteria for identification: equestrians obviously are prime candidates, but one may also think of holders of provincial imperial priesthoods. In Egypt many are recognisable because they combine local councillorship with Alexandrian councillorship. In the Greek East many of the participants in the Panhellenion belong to the same stratum.17 But there are no hard and fast criteria for all. On the other hand they form the most promising category for further research on Roman elites precisely because they are so elusive. Their elusiveness is the product of a major characteristic of the group: the fluidity created by its many ties with local elites. Although it is useful to separate regional elites as a distinct category of analysis from local elites, there was certainly no strict separation between them. As they originated from the higher reaches of the local elites, it is not surprising that they show extensive local activity, in local politics, as landowners. A good deal of intermarriage between members of local elites and regional elites resulted in family networks. Such networks also had an economic dimension. For example, estates of members of the regional elite were often supervised by the most important members of the local elite, who were also engaged in leasing and subsequent subleasing of property of members who were regionally active. Lastly, the imperial elite. In principle the imperial elite was demarcated through membership of the Senate, a body that comprised in the imperial period 600 members, with a minimum property qualification of 1 million sesterces. The rather tense relation between Senate and emperor and the reduced powers of the Senate form the main theme of much of Roman historiography, and from this perspective it is hardly surprising that many sons of members of the Senate preferred to opt out.18 With the expansion of the empire, the recruitment base of the Senate widened, with more and more senators coming from outside Italy. Both phenomena ensured that the imperial elite was wider than the Senate itself. The minimum property qualification of 1 million HS for the Senate was high: for a day labourer it represented undreamt riches, but even for many a city councillor it was unimaginable. Among senators, too, it constituted

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate a quite substantial sum, as shown by cases in which the emperor helped those in danger of dropping out of the Senate by providing them with additional income.19 Yet at the same time within the senatorial elite there were also people who were extraordinarily wealthy, easily owning 50 times as much as the minimum requirement.20 At the top of this steep pyramid stood of course the emperor himself, with ever-increasing riches. Stratification was again steep. Although its enormous wealth might easily be taken to imply that the imperial elite stood completely aloof from the rest of society, what applies to the regional elites also applies to the imperial elite: we should envisage it, not as a closed order, but as part of hierarchical networks, linked by various and complex ties, without strict separation between classes. Alongside an ever widening geographical scope of recruitment, we also see deep roots in local society. Three examples may suffice to demonstrate these points. Herodes Atticus, one of the great sophists of the second century AD, is one of the best documented persons of the imperial elite. What emerges immediately from the wealth of the evidence is that he was also an active member of the local Athenian elite, who participated intensively in local politics, and had a decidedly local base: much of his life was spent at his estate at Marathon, whereas his stays in Rome (and elsewhere) were limited to relatively brief periods of time, mainly connected to office holding. Yet his social and economic position was extremely elevated. The scale of his benefactions was unsurpassed, on a par with that of emperors. Not surprisingly, at the local level he had no peers. Yet he did have many local enemies: throughout his life he was embroiled in conflicts with the Athenians. In one case he was accused of tyranny (very interesting from a historical point of view); another conflict required imperial intervention. It does not seem too far-fetched to suppose that his many conflicts are explained not only by personal traits of character but also by his anomalous position in local society.21 Pliny the Younger’s third marriage to the girl Calpurnia is well-known from the loving though patronising terms in which he writes to and about her in his letters.22 Calpurnia was an orphan brought up by her paternal aunt, with her grandfather Calpurnius Fabatus as supervisor (and pater familias). Given the enormous wealth and status of Pliny, we may safely assume that his marriage constituted an unequal marriage. This may seem odd, and flatly contradicts notions of purely isogamous marriage among the senatorial elite, but precisely conforms to the model postulated for the regional elites, with both marriage ties and economic ties extending beyond their own group, and with deep roots in local society.

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Laurens E. Tacoma Indirectly, such marriage patterns can also be seen in a passage in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, in which Lucius’ aunt Byrrhena appears. It is quite clear from the narrative that she has a respectable position in local society. But in a brief remark she says that her sister, Lucius’ mother, had concluded a noble marriage (i.e. with someone of senatorial rank), whereas she herself had not.23 Fiction, to be sure, but illustrative both for the possibility of mixed marriage, and for the fact that daughters from a single family could have quite different fates. In studying the elites of the Roman empire, using a three-tier model of local, regional and imperial elites is helpful for analytical purposes, and there is some correspondence with the formally demarcated Roman orders. But given the degree of fluidity, elites should also be envisaged as forming hierarchical networks. The most important characteristic of such networks is that economic hierarchies were very steep. This will have led to relatively large differences, even within the elites themselves. At the same time we should envisage various types of connections of a remarkable intensity between the members of different strata. Even higher up the social scale members of the elites still had deep roots in local society, owning land, showering local society with benefactions, and even marrying locally on occasion. Mobility? If elites formed hierarchical networks with intensive and varied types of contact between their members, the implication is that the boundaries were relatively permeable. That raises the question of mobility. Underlying hierarchical elite networks was a mechanism that ensured high levels of intergenerational mobility. It consisted of two elements: the partibility of inheritances, and high levels of mortality. The combination of both led to a process of continuous fragmentation and reassembling of property over the generations. The number of living children upon the death of a parent was by and large unpredictable, and hence sizes of inheritances (and dowries) could vary considerably. In a situation in which wealth was obtained primarily through inheritance, this automatically led to substantial intergenerational differences in wealth. The crucial point in the model is variability, rather than the high level of mortality itself – though the one is a consequence of the other. Both the number of surviving children and the age of death of the parents could vary significantly. In itself this is a general feature of the ancient/pre-modern world – and therefore it is relevant to all societies studied in this volume. At the same time, in a situation like the Roman one in which wealth was a main determinant of elite status, this must have resulted in significant

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate mobility both in upward and in downward directions. In consequence, there must have been a high degree of cyclical mobility: families rose and fell easily over the generations. Some families will have been able to remain within an elite for generations, but many will have experienced significant alterations in their position, some dropping out of the elite, others gaining access to it. Despite their ideological focus on lineage, Roman elites cannot have been fully hereditary.24 To be sure, there was variation in the process itself. Within elites, the effects will have been more dramatic at the lower end of the scale, where people were at risk of falling below threshold levels. We may suppose that wealthier members simply had more resources to cushion the effects of this cyclical mobility. The idea that elites were dominated by a few wealthy families is therefore not necessarily wrong, but it needs to be modified: a large part of the elite consisted of families with only short-term membership. It is important to note that this model operates by and large independently of the sources: no matter how many success stories of continuous families may be shown by inscriptions, and how many family connections between members of the elite may be established by prosopographers, as long as our understanding of inheritance patterns and demography does not alter radically, the model of high cyclical mobility must apply. With respect to our understanding of Roman mortality, three points are worth making. Attempts to postulate a somewhat lower level of mortality for elites have proved to be a dead end. However, even if elite life expectancy had been higher, the effects on the levels of cyclical mobility are negligible.25 The very high levels of mortality postulated for the Roman world have also come under closer scrutiny from a different angle: partly in response to a dogmatic application of mortality tables, which in themselves are no more than theoretical constructs, the emphasis has shifted somewhat to analyses of variations in disease structures of regional populations. This has created an awareness that mortality patterns may have varied from region to region.26 Again this does not significantly alter the picture. Reconsideration of the way model life tables have been constructed has also led to some adaptations of the Roman mortality models, with somewhat less ferocious levels of childhood mortality, and somewhat higher mortality at later stages.27 This point is important, but again does not fundamentally affect the model of high mortality. In addition, it should also be noted that in reality levels of mobility may have been even higher, as the model only predicts a base pattern – an undercurrent, as it were. In the case of the Senate actual rates of succession may have been much lower, both through withdrawal from office, and also through imperial intervention (confiscation, murder), and because there is

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Laurens E. Tacoma a serious possibility that senatorial fertility rates were below replacement levels.28 In addition, there was a significant number of members of the elite who enriched or impoverished themselves through money-lending, trade, or investment in urban property. Property therefore would not remain intact, but might have been increased or diminished. The model of cyclical mobility applied in principle to all members of the elite alike, unless something was done to avert the consequences. A veritable tool-box of instruments to prevent fragmentation was in principle available: for example, adoption, marriage and consolidating property through selling and buying. It is intuitively attractive to assume that much of elite behaviour was geared towards countering fragmentation, towards solidifying positions. However, it appears the available instruments were only selectively used, and not necessarily for the purpose of consolidation – they rather added to the complexity. Some examples may demonstrate the point. Although the imperial elite remarried to an astonishing degree in a system that can only be called serial monogamy, this was rarely used to ensure continuity of families in a direct manner. If anything, it appears that it led to the reverse, to dislocation and fragmentation of families, and it could quite easily lead to inheritance conflicts.29 Roman wills could be used to channel intergenerational property transmission in a more coherent fashion than intestate succession would, but wills seem to have followed by and large the same conventions as were used in intestate succession.30 In the case of Egyptian local elites, we see members buying and selling property to an amazing degree, but this does not lead to consolidation of estates into larger plots.31 Strategies to counter downward mobility were certainly also used. Adoption in the case of the senatorial elite is the best example: the fact that normally adult males from within their own family were adopted is itself sufficient to demonstrate that it functioned primarily as a means to ensure family continuation.32 But it would be incorrect to conceptualise elite behaviour as solely directed towards social, economic or demographic consolidation. Elite behaviour was more complex than that. The important implication is that intergenerational changes in wealth were regarded as inevitable and were deemed by society as relatively unproblematic – which is not to suggest that in individual instances downward mobility would be welcomed wholeheartedly. Levels of mobility, then, were high, and that raises the question who filled the vacant positions. The answer, I would suggest, is simpler than it is often taken to be. Normally the origin of social mobility is located in groups experiencing status dissonance, in the groups that scored well on some criteria for admission, but not on all.33 However, if the description

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate given above of the nature of the elites is correct, with much contact between various groups and with hierarchical networks rather than closed orders, it is a plausible guess that most new arrivals were recruited from the elite’s own ranks, from within the hierarchical network, and from those just below the elites. At the same time, the upwardly mobile retained their local ties. Such ties between members of different strata helped to facilitate the process. In the case of the Senate, it is well-known that its recruitment pool widened considerably over time.34 The process can be traced by studying the origins of senators, the origins of consuls, and, famously, the origins of emperors themselves. All were recruited from further and further away, in ever greater numbers. As a consequence, senatorial families of Rome and Italy were increasingly replaced, first with families from the Western provinces, then from Eastern regions. Such new senators were often regarded with a measure of disdain, and tension surfaced a few times – most famously in the case of the admission of Gauls into the Senate by Claudius. But essentially they belonged to the same stratum, and actual conflicts are few.35 Especially in local councils (but also higher up the ranks), there is the well-known debate about the extent of intrusion of freedmen and their descendants. The problem is based on the notion that Rome was a slave society, but that slavery was ‘open’: slavery was extensive, but manumission was frequent and freedmen were integrated into society to a remarkable (if not unique) degree. The problem then became what to do with wealthy freedmen – exemplified by the figure of Trimalchio. Quite a lot of attention has been devoted to the intrusion of sons of wealthy freedmen into the council. Partly this is a technical onomastic question, and partly it is a question of the extent to which freedmen managed to acquire substantial wealth in the first place.36 But in the analysis of this problem the demography of manumission has been ignored. Female slaves were often manumitted at the end of their reproductive period.37 Given the fact that with the exception of members of the familia Caesaris there was little intermarriage between free and freed persons,38 the chances that freed slaves were able to produce freeborn descendants were slight. Freedmen might be absorbed into society, and even rise to prominence, but many of them will have been unable to produce freeborn offspring. I suspect that the late age of female manumission was just as important in the structure of Roman slavery as was the high frequency with which manumission occurred – there were limits to the openness of Roman slavery. Trimalchio’s behaviour may have been threatening to aristocratic society, but as he had no son, he was essentially irrelevant.

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Laurens E. Tacoma Status dissonance among the freedmen will have existed, but actual upward mobility of the group will have been low. If it is assumed that most mobility took place within the elite networks themselves, or from those layers directly below them, it follows that the newcomers would essentially have the same profile as those who admitted them. Models of conflict between an old aristocracy and newcomers that scholars have posited, sometimes in the form of a conflict between a landed elite and a rising merchant class, sometimes in the form of outright class-conflict, sometimes even in the form of oriental debasement through intrusion of ex-slaves originating from the East, all have little validity.39 Elite renewal occurred essentially without change. Intergenerational mobility, then, was a frequent occurrence and a structural property of elite formation, Roman-style. Despite steep hierarchies, there was much upward and downward movement. Intrusion by real outsiders was relatively slight, instead, many rose (or fell) within the ranks. Normally only small distances were covered: people were recruited from just below their own group. The extensive ties between the different strata facilitated the process, and were themselves also the product of that process. The fact that relatively little was done to avoid downward movement or stimulate upward movement suggests it was to some degree unproblematic. Roman? If the elite was essentially open, despite its steep internal hierarchical structure, what determined mobility? The traditional answer is simple, and has been given already: wealth was the dominant factor. It is, however, clear that wealth was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for elite membership. The key to a fuller understanding of stratification has increasingly been sought in the realm of culture, in Romanness. Culture functioned as a primary marker of elite identity, and by implication, served as a vehicle for advancement or as a way to maintain one’s position, or to exclude others from having access to that position. That brings us to the third and final section of this chapter: what is meant by ‘Roman’ and ‘Romanness’, and how does Roman culture operate in establishing elite identity? The question leads inevitably to debates about romanisation and acculturation processes, or rather to the arguments against the applicability and usefulness of the concept of romanisation. Over recent decades a large body of work has been produced on these issues.40 The starting point is the idea that the concept of romanisation is contaminated because it was conceived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as part of a contemporary hegemonistic colonial discourse. This has led to the question

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate whether the concept should be retained in a modified form, or whether it should be replaced with another analytical tool. What is at issue in the debate is the way processes of acculturation in the Roman empire should be described, but the discussion also has a bearing on questions of social mobility, and hence on issues of elite formation. It is impossible to do justice to the sophistication of the debate here, and I confine myself to a number of remarks that are relevant to the theme of this chapter. I would also argue that the romanisation debate, which in some respects seems to lead into a blind alley, could regain momentum by taking a fresh look at elite structure. Among the participants in the debate, there is a noticeable preference for redirecting the focus from the elites to the masses, and to advocate a view from the ground up (in many cases literally so, through the study of material culture). This is an understandable attempt to move the agency in processes of acculturation away from the leading members of society to the rest of the population. But this preference is based on an old-fashioned notion of a strict dichotomy between elite and mass which in view of the sophistication of the rest of the debate is quite surprising. The rather open nature of Roman elites is ignored. Secondly, there is a noticeable tendency to move the analysis away from institutional to cultural history, and away from measurable hard data to the interpretation of cultural constructs. So, it is not the spread of Roman citizenship, or the spread of Roman institutions, but rather the acquisition of knowledge on how to behave, what to read and eat, how to dress and speak that counts. Thirdly, one of the major arguments in the current debate on romanisation is the openness, flexibility and adaptability of Roman culture. Woolf describes Roman culture as ‘the range of objects, beliefs and practices that were characteristic of people who considered themselves to be, and were widely acknowledged as, Roman’41 – a description of presumably deliberate circularity. Roman is what counts as Roman to those who consider themselves to be Roman. Cultural identity is hence subject to construction. It is especially in the context of high levels of mobility and the continuous renewal of the elites that such openness becomes relevant. This raises two questions: one of access, one of content. Access first. It follows from the openness of Roman culture that Romanness can be acquired. Being Roman is not an inherited quality. In consequence, the acquisition of what has aptly been called cultural competence is crucial. There can be little doubt that the acquisition of such competence was instrumental in elite mobility. This is not to suggest that everyone tried to become Roman, let alone to enter the Roman elite.

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Laurens E. Tacoma We should not envisage simple processes of emulation, and not simply suppose that elite ideology was adopted by everyone in society. We should certainly also allow for divergent ideologies, discrepant experiences, perhaps even outright rejection of Greco-Roman civic ideology (though this is difficult to trace in our sources), and, more to the point, of a strategic selectivity in adopting things Roman.42 But those who so wished (and of course had the means) could make a career for themselves as ‘Romans’. The fundamental openness and adaptability of Roman culture creates a paradox in evaluating the position of the elites. The social function of culture for elites is often and rightly seen as exclusivist, and elite culture is thereby in more than one sense regarded as high culture. So, the intricacies of much of Greek and Latin literature can be interpreted from a functionalist perspective mainly as an exclusivist device that helps even within elites to draw boundaries between those who know and those who do not.43 What is striking is that the sources show that at the same time the penetration of this elitist culture down the social scale was relatively deep. A good example of this is the circulation of Greek classical literature in Roman Egypt. It is notoriously difficult to trace actual ownership of literary papyri, but the geographical distribution is telling: copies of Greek literary works have been found in villages, often far removed from the urban centres. What is usually seen as elite culture is thus hardly confined to the elite proper. At the same time, we should not be blind to the fact that writing and reading Greek was only the preserve of a certain stratum of the population and that levels of illiteracy were high. It is a safe guess that ownership of literary manuscripts should primarily be located in those circling around the elite. Next, content. What culture are we actually talking about? This chapter is based on the premise that it is possible to describe elite mobility in the Roman Empire as a whole. The empire was obviously quite large, comprising many local cultures, and with a cultural and linguistic division between the Greek and the Roman halves. Of course these cultures were not strictly separated – for example, in the city of Rome there will have been a large Greek-speaking community. What then should be understood by ‘Roman’ elite culture? Again, I can offer only some remarks on what constitutes a large and complex subject in its own right. Firstly, Greco-Roman or Greek and Roman? Should we envisage a single and unified Greco-Roman culture or speak of two cultural repertoires with the possibility to switch between them? The answer seems to be a bit of both. On the one hand, there can be little doubt that much of elite culture is a unified Greco-Roman civic culture – expressed in different languages, it shares a number of underlying principles. One may think of central civic

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate institutions, like councils, but also central notions like munificence, or even common processes like oligarchisation. The point is obvious, if not banal. But it needs to be explicitly stated, because there are also cases where Greek and Roman elements are clearly separated in elite culture. The prime example occurs in the Greek East, where members of the local elites chose to retain their Greek identity – reemphasizing, even reconstructing, their own Greek past in response to the coming of the Romans.44 To complicate matters, we should also take local cultural repertoires into account. Many, if not all, of the regions of the empire had distinct cultures of their own. If we assume that many members of the elites, even those higher up in the hierarchy, had strong local ties, the question should be raised to what extent they adhered to their local cultures. The answer seems at first sight quite simple: not at all. Local cultures are usually kept out of sight in expressing elite identity: the elite idiom is distinctly Greco-Roman, almost by definition. Hence, cultural competence was not only about selecting, but also about negating. However, the process of negation was never complete, and alternative cultural repertoires sometimes surface. Two examples may clarify what I mean. Both are deliberately drawn from the East. For obvious reasons in the study of acculturation in the Western part of the empire ample attention is paid to the interaction with local cultures, for that is what Roman culture interacts with. In the study of the East there is a noticeable tendency to ignore them, as if the only issue is the extent to which Greeks wished to remain Greek. In Egypt we may – at least for analytical purposes – identify three separate cultural repertoires from which elements could be drawn: Egyptian, Greek, and Roman. Two of these seem to be negated, though for different reasons. The papyri present a solidly Greek cultural universe, akin to that found anywhere else in the Greek East. Members of the elites hardly read any Latin literature, but they read hosts of Greek works. They read their Homer, their Menander, their Demosthenes. But above all they seem to have read their Woolf: they became Roman by staying Greek.45 However, the interest of the Egyptian case is that in many senses we are not in the Greek world. Reading too many of their Greek literary and documentary papyri easily obscures the fact that the members of local Egyptian elites were firmly rooted in local, Egyptian society. They became Roman not by staying Greek, but rather by becoming Greek, and by downplaying their Egyptian background. The idea that the Greek culture of the Roman period is itself a cultural construct is nowhere better demonstrated than here. Yet at the same time, for all their Greekness they were legally classified as Egyptians, not Greeks, in the documentary

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Laurens E. Tacoma papyrus known as the Gnomon of the Idios Logos, which summarizes formal regulations for officials in Roman Egypt 46 – showing precisely how cultural identities could be subject to quite different interpretations. A second example brings us to the symbolic heart of the Greek world, to Athens. In 114–116 AD a grave monument was erected for a man whose full name was C. Julius Antiochos Epiphanes Philopappos, a grandson of the king of Commagene. Philopappos was active in local Athenian politics but also became consul suffect under Trajan – again incidentally demonstrating the ties between the local and the imperial level. The Philopappos monument was a remarkable monument in a remarkable place: it was large even by contemporary standards and stood (in flat contradiction to normal Athenian practice) within the city walls, on a prominent hill overlooking the Acropolis, and displayed visual imagery that was decidedly Roman, both in style and content: it referred to his consulship. The choice of Roman imagery in a Greek setting must have been deliberate: it was the main source of Philopappos’ status. The monument shows in direct form how selective cultural choices could be. However, this selectivity is even more evident in Pausanias’ response to the monument, or rather the lack of it. In his description of Athens he ignores the monument almost completely: he only mentions that it was made ‘for a Syrian’, without giving name or further information, thereby relegating Philopappos back to a cultural setting to which he clearly did not want to belong.47 In gaining entrance into elites, wealth was obviously of paramount importance. Yet culture played a large role. Cultural competence helped to mitigate downward mobility, it may have been instrumental in upward mobility, and in maintaining and consolidating one’s position in society. The acquisition of such competence was in principle open to all, though one had to have the resources – in that sense there was no complete openness or freedom. The crucial point is that what counted as being cultured was subject to interpretation. There were multiple cultural repertoires to draw from: Roman culture, Greek culture, local culture, and these were selectively used. The very fact that ‘Roman’ culture was open and adaptable and that true belonging to elites was judged on the basis of cultural competence implied that much of cultural discourse was about drawing boundaries, about deciding who belonged, and who was excluded. Conclusion: aristocracies? This chapter addressed the question what a concept of aristocracy might entail in the case of the elites of the Roman Principate by studying elite mobility. It goes without saying that there was much variation between

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate regions and over time. All of this is lost in a general analysis of the type offered here. But even at such a generalised level, and even with the set of relatively simple ideas that forms the backbone of this article, the complexity of elite formation under the Principate already becomes apparent. Obviously, Roman elites consisted of three strata. However, institutional demarcations do not correspond completely with local, regional and imperial elites. An awareness of the social milieu remains in all cases necessary. Among those circling around the elite we may find cases of status inconsistency, though not necessarily of social mobility – many never obtained the opportunity to enter the elite. There were steep hierarchies of wealth. Both within and between elites there existed high degrees of stratification. Within elites, some people were extraordinarily wealthy, whereas large groups were leading a precarious existence at threshold levels and were in danger of falling out. Hierarchies were fragile. Due to the high levels of mortality and the partibility of inheritances there were high levels of social mobility. This mobility was a structural property inherent in Roman elite formation, not something that was exceptional. In many cases it was also relatively unproblematic. Most of it was by members of the elites themselves, or by those just below threshold levels. Despite formal demarcations there was much fluidity both into and out of the elites, and also internally. Both the steep stratification and the high levels of mobility make it easy to understand the intensity and the variety of the connections between members of different elite strata. Again, we are dealing with a structural property, not something that was incidental. Given the steep differences in the distribution of property, it was only natural that some of the wealthier members among the elites rose to such elevated levels that they would aspire further upwards. At the same time they kept having firm roots in the local societies from which they originated. Despite their hierarchical nature, Roman elites in the Principate were open elites which were renewed continuously. This renewal occurred without fundamental social change: people who shared the same background entered the elite. Yet the very fact that so many people entered raised problems about elite identity, and these were played out at a cultural level. What was regarded as Roman elite culture was subject to debate. The paradox was that Roman culture was both exclusivist and open: it was an elite culture that was adaptable. Hence much of the cultural discourse among the elite was about inclusion and exclusion, about drawing boundaries and about the appropriateness of cultural choices. Elites essentially co-opted as members whoever they regarded to be, by their own standards, ‘Roman’ enough.

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Laurens E. Tacoma The Roman elites hardly lived in a fixed social universe. This challenges the applicability of the concept of aristocracy, as discussed in the introduction to this chapter. Despite appearances, we must surely conclude that Roman local, regional and imperial elites were in no meaningful sense ‘aristocracies’ in the strict sense of the term. No hereditary status, no closed order, no distinctive ethos – what is left? Notes 1 This chapter was submitted in June 2009 and again with some revisions in July 2011. Only minimal adaptations have been made since then. My thanks to Hans van Wees and Miriam Groen for helpful comments. 2 Van Wees and Fisher, in the original announcement of the Cork Conference on which this book is based. 3 Hopkins (1965) is classic and highly influential; see also (in Dutch) Pleket 1971; general introductory overviews of Roman social structure can be found in MacMullen 1974, 88–128; Garnsey and Saller 1987, 107–26; a good selection of sources with brief commentary is available in Parkin and Pomeroy 2007, 3–42. 4 Bowman 1971. 5 See for Oxyrhynchos Tacoma 2006, appendix; for Italian cities López Barja de Quiroga 1995, 337 with further references. 6 Duncan–Jones 19822, 147–55; 277–87; Nicols 1988. 7 Bowman 1985; Bagnall 1992; Tacoma 2008, all with further literature. 8 Tacoma 2006. 9 The best explanation of the idea is in Jongman 1988. 10 Garnsey 1981. 11 López Barja de Quiroga 1995, 328 with discussion and further literature. 12 López Barja de Quiroga 1995, 336 is an exception and rightly regards them as immigrants, of free or unfree status. 13 See Oliver 1980 for Lucian’s response in the case of Roman Athens. 14 Reinmuth 1948. 15 MacMullen 1990a; 1990b; van Bremen 1996; and various studies by Hemelrijk, i.a. 2008. 16 The sourcebook edited by Rowlandson (1998) forms the best introduction to the subject. 17 Spawforth and Walker 1985; 1986. 18 The central theme of Hopkins and Burton 1983. 19 Nicolet 1984. 20 Duncan-Jones (19822) 17–32. 21 Ameling 1983. 22 Pl. Ep. 4.19; 6.30; 7.5; 8.10; 8.11. 23 Apul., Met. 2.3: Nec aliud nos quam dignitas discernit, quod illa clarissimas, ego privatas nuptias fecerimus. 24 So, for the senatorial elite, Hopkins and Burton 1983, 125 and passim. Tacoma 2006 for the local elites of third-century Egypt. 25 Scheidel 1999; Saller 1994.

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate 26

E.g. Scheidel 2003 for the city of Rome. Woods 2007. 28 See Hopkins and Burton 1983 for full discussion of succession rates at the very top of the senatorial elite. 29 Bradley 1991. 30 Saller 1994. 31 Cf. Bowman 1985. 32 Corbier 1991. For strategies to counter downward mobility in Greece, see Duplouy, this volume. 33 This was a central argument in Hopkins 1965 and underlies much subsequent work on freedmen mobility. 34 Hopkins 1983, 123–5 with further references. 35 Hopkins 1965, 23–4 (with Tac., Ann. 2.23 and C.I.L. 13.1668), remarking that the ‘small range of their social movement must have done much to remove aristocratic objections’. 36 Garnsey 1975 for the former, Garnsey 1981 for the latter, both with further literature. 37 Egypt, the society where we know most about Roman slavery, shows universal (!) manumission, but an age difference between men and women: women are freed around age 40, at the end of child-bearing age, men around 30. So Bagnall and Frier 1994, 158. The evidence from Italy is less clear, and substantial regional variation might have occurred, so that the Egyptian case is suggestive rather than conclusive for Roman manumission practices. 38 Weaver 1967, 126. 39 As Mouritsen 1997 demonstrates. 40 Key works include Mattingly (ed.) 1997; Woolf 1998; Le Roux 2004; Hingley 2005. 41 Woolf 1998, 11. 42 Mattingly (ed.) 1997. 43 Woolf 2003 (opening the possibility of alternative elite pursuits for those excluded). 44 Elsner 1992 and Woolf 1994 are the classic statements; further explorations and bibliography can be found in Goldhill (ed.) 2001. 45 Woolf 1994. 46 B.G.U. 5.1210. According to the Idios Logos the term ‘Greek’ remained reserved for the inhabitants of the few Greek poleis in Egypt. 47 Paus. 1.25.8: ὕστερον δὲ καὶ µνῆµα αὐτόθι ἀνδρὶ ᾠκοδοµήθη Σύρῳ. 27

Bibliography Ameling, W. 1983 Herodes Atticus, 2 vols., Hildesheim. Bagnall, R.S. 1992 ‘Landholding in Late Roman Egypt: the distribution of wealth’, JRS 82, 128–49. Bowman, A.K. 1985 ‘Landholding in the Hermopolite Nome in the fourth century AD’, JRS 75, 137–63.

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Laurens E. Tacoma Bradley, K. 1991 Discovering the Roman Family. Studies in Roman Social History, New York. Elsner, J. 1992 ‘Pausanias: A Greek pilgrim in the Roman world’, Past & Present 135, 3–29. Garnsey, P. 1975 ‘Descendants of freedmen in local politics. Some criteria’, in B. Levick (ed.), The Ancient Historian and his Materials. Essays in honour of C.E. Stevens, Farnborough, 167–80. 1981 ‘Independent freedmen and the economy of Roman Italy under the Principate’, Klio 63, 359–71. Garnsey, P. and Saller, R. 1987 The Roman Empire. Economy, Society and Culture, Berkeley. Hemelrijk, E.A. 2008 ‘Patronesses and “mothers” of Roman collegia’, Classical Antiquity 27, 115–62. Hingley, R. 2005 Globalizing Roman Culture. Unity, Diversity and Empire, London. Hopkins, K. 1965 ‘Elite mobility in the Roman empire’, Past & Present 32, 12–26. Hopkins, K. and Burton, G. 1983 ‘Ambition and withdrawal: the senatorial aristocracy under the emperors’, in K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, Cambridge, 120–200. Jongman, W.M. 1988 The Economy and Society of Pompeii, Amsterdam. Le Roux, P. 2004 ‘La romanisation en question’, Annales (HSS) 59, 287–311. López Barja de Quiroga, P. 1995 ‘Freedmen social mobility in Roman Italy’, Historia 44, 326–48. MacMullen, R. 1974 Roman Social Relations, New Haven. 1990a ‘Women in public in the Roman Empire’, in id. (ed), Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the ordinary, Princeton, 162–8. 1990b ‘Women’s power in the Principate’, in id. (ed), Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the ordinary, Princeton, 169–76. Mattingly, D.J. (ed.) 1997 Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: Power, discourse, and discrepant experience in the Roman Empire ( Journal of Roman Archaeology. Supplementary series 23), Portsmouth R.I. Mouritsen, H. 1997 ‘Mobility and social change in Italian towns during the Principate’, in H.M. Parkins (ed.), Roman Urbanism: Beyond the consumer city , London, 59–82. Parkin, T.G. and Pomeroy, A.J. 2007 Roman Social History. A Sourcebook, London. Pleket, H.W. 1971 ‘Sociale stratificatie en social mobiliteit in de Romeinse keizertijd’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 84, 215–51.

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Roman elite mobility under the Principate Rowlandson, J., 1998 Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A sourcebook, Cambridge. Saller, R.P. 1994 Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family, Cambridge. Scheidel, W. 1999 ‘Emperors, aristocrats, and the Grim Reaper: towards a demographic profile of the Roman élite’, CQ 49, 254–81. Tacoma, L.E. 2006 Fragile Hierarchies. The Urban Elites of Third-century Roman Egypt, Leiden. 2008 ‘Urbanisation and access to land in Roman Egypt’, in R. Alston and O. van Nijf (eds.), Feeding the Ancient Greek City, Leuven, 85–108. Van Bremen, R. 1996 The Limits of Participation. Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Amsterdam. Weaver, P.R.C. 1967 ‘Social mobility in the early Roman empire: the evidence of the imperial freedman and slaves’, Past & Present 37, 3–20. Woods, R. 2007 ‘Ancient and early modern mortality: experience and understanding’, Economic History Review 60, 373–99. Woolf, G. 1994 ‘Becoming Roman, staying Greek: culture, identity and the civilizing process in the Roman East’, PCPhS 10, 116–43. 1998 Becoming Roman: The origins of provincial civilization in Gaul, Cambridge. 2003 ‘The city of letters’, in C. Edwards and G. Woolf (eds), Rome the Cosmopolis, Cambridge, 203–21.

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PART II: HEREDITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY AT ATHENS

5 WHO WERE THE EUPATRIDS IN ARCHAIC ATHENS? Antoine Pierrot So much has been written about the Athenian Eupatrids, for more than a century, that to claim to say something new about them sounds a little presumptuous. The aim of my chapter is much more modest. I will, first, offer a brief summary of the debate about the very nature of the so-called Eupatrid group, and, second, give some new arguments in favour of the traditional vision of the Eupatrids as an old Athenian aristocratic class, monopolizing political and religious power in archaic Athens.1 Such a defence, I think, has now become all the more necessary as a new theory has recently emerged, which sees in those Eupatrids nothing more than a polemical and propagandist reconstruction, invented at the end of the archaic period or even in classical times by some oligarchic circles. I shall try to prove here that this new theory, which is in itself a reconstruction, is in contradiction with all the available testimonia, and should therefore be considered as much less plausible than the traditional vision. The traditional vision and the new theory about the Eupatrids By far dominant among scholars is the traditional interpretation of the Eupatrids as a political and religious class, drawn from rich and powerful gene¯ (or oikiai, if Bourriot’s revaluation of the Attic genos should be accepted),2 and monopolizing, before Solon’s revolution, political and religious offices in archaic Athens; this view is directly borrowed from the first chapters of the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians, summed up by Plutarch in his Theseus, and completed by some lexicographers.3 In that view, the Eupatrids constituted a very strict oligarchy, based on co-optation,

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Antoine Pierrot in which every magistrate had to be chosen from among a restricted number of families: the crucial criterion for getting access to political (and probably religious) power was therefore birth, not wealth. It seems unnecessary (and is probably impossible) to give an exhaustive list of the scholars who accepted – and still accept – such a tradition; one of the clearest expositions was that of H. T. Wade-Gery, in an article published in 1931.4 The idea that a closed and gentilician oligarchy existed in Athens before Solon, as was the case for Corinth at the time of the Bacchiads, still remains the common view in handbooks,5 or, for example, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition). There may be some disagreements between scholars about the exact degree of oligarchy prevailing in pre-Solonian Athens, but the important point, generally accepted, is that Athenian society was a closed, not an open, society in which merit and wealth were insufficient for the office-holding elite, if your birth was not Eupatrid. This relative consensus has been recently and vigorously attacked by several scholars, among whom I shall mention Thomas Figueira and, most recently, Alain Duplouy. In fact, a radical scepticism had already emerged much earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century, when U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf wrote that the Eupatrids never existed, since Solon does not mention them anywhere in his poems.6 In 1984, Thomas Figueira went further, proposing an original and attractive new theory about the Eupatrids.7 According to him, the latter were a group of rich and powerful families, who decided to call themselves ‘Eupatrids’ at a relatively late date, probably the second half of the sixth century, as a reaction against the Peisistratid tyranny; but they never constituted a political caste. The pre-Solonian Eupatrid oligarchy, described by classical authors, would, on that view, be a mirage. More recently, in 2003, Alain Duplouy took the argument even further, proposing to see in the word ‘Eupatrid’ not an old Attic term, but a propagandist neologism, meaning ‘good for the fatherland (patris)’, and not ‘of good fathers’, as is commonly believed.8 For Duplouy also, there was no Eupatrid class before Solon. The implications of such a radical theory are immense: the whole history of archaic Athens would have to be revised, and the very worrying conclusion would inevitably be that we have been hitherto completely wrong about the early stages of Athenian society. In this chapter, I shall try to demonstrate, first, that the whole classical tradition was unanimous in its description of the Eupatrids, and, second, that this tradition, even if late and influenced, in some cases, by confusing models such as Rome, remains the most plausible, and has also received a certain confirmation from unexpected archaeological discoveries.

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? Classical sources for the Eupatrids Wilamowitz was obviously right when he observed that Solon never used the term ‘Eupatrid’. We may add that the word is also absent from the published linear-B tablets, from Homer and Hesiod, and from the whole of archaic poetry, though its opposite, ‘kakopatris ’, already appears as an insult in Alcaeus ( frr. 67, 75, 106, 348) and Theognis (193). But to argue from this that the Eupatrids did not exist is a very poor argument. Solon does not use the term ‘archon’ either in his poems, and yet nobody would seriously conclude from this observation that there were no magistrates called ‘archons’ in pre-Solonian Athens. One should also note that the word ‘Eupatrid’ is also absent from Herodotus and Thucydides, and yet we do know that the word existed from at least the middle of the sixth century, as proved by an inscription from Eretria (on which I shall comment later), and was employed as a synonym of ‘noble’ in Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies. We have all been taught that arguments e silentio are very dangerous, and I see no reason for not applying the principle in this case. The beginning of the Constitution of the Athenians is unfortunately lost, but we have, by chance, a summary of sorts, or, at least, some allusions to the Aristotelian account, in the Life of Theseus by Plutarch (a similar account is already to be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.8, an author often praised by Plutarch): ’αλλὰ πρῶτος ἀποκρίνας χωρὶς Εὐπατρίδας καὶ Γεωµόρους καὶ ∆ηµιουργούς, Εὐπατρίδαις δὲ γινώσκειν τὰ θεῖα καὶ παρέχειν ἄρχοντας ἀποδοὺς καὶ νόµων διδασκάλους εἶναι καὶ ὁσίων καὶ ἱερῶν ἐξηγητάς. First, he set apart the Eupatrids, the Geomoroi and the Demiourgoi, giving the Eupatrids as a privilege to display knowledge of divine matters, to furnish magistrates, to be teachers of laws, and interpreters of both profane and sacred matters. Plutarch, Theseus 25, 2.

That Theseus never existed, and that he never divided the Athenian society into three classes, is very plausible, but this is not important for our purpose. Plutarch surely took much of his material from Aristotle, or from Aristotle’s sources, because in chapter 13, the Constitution of the Athenians has the following account: τῷ δὲ πέµπτῳ µετὰ τὴν Σόλωνος ἀρχὴν οὐ κατέστησαν ἄρχοντα διὰ τὴν στάσιν, καὶ πάλιν ἔτει πέµπτῳ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν ἀναρχίαν ἐποίησαν. µετὰ δὲ ταῦτα διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν χρόνων ∆αµασίας αἱρεθεὶς ἄρχων ἔτη δύο καὶ δύο µῆνας ἦρξεν, ἕως ἐξηλάθη βίᾳ τῆς ἀρχῆς. εἶτ’ ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς διὰ τὸ στασιάζειν ἄρχοντας ἑλέσθαι δέκα, πέντε µὲν εὐπατριδῶν, τρεῖς δὲ ἀγροίκων, δύο δὲ δηµιουργῶν, καὶ οὗτοι τὸν µετὰ ∆αµασίαν ἦρξαν ἐνιαυτόν.

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Antoine Pierrot The fifth year after Solon’s archonship, no archon was appointed because of civil conflict, and again the fifth year after that for the same reason there was no archon. Then, after the same interval, Damasias was chosen archon and was in charge for two years and two months, until he was expelled by force. Then, they decided, because of civil conflict, to choose ten archons, five from the Eupatrids, three from among the Agroikoi, and two from the Demiourgoi; and these men held office during the year after Damasias. Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 13.2.

The most likely conclusion from these two passages is that according to Aristotle, there was in Athens, before Solon, an oligarchy dominated by some families called Eupatrids, and that these Eupatrids were so hostile to the Solonian reforms that their agitation provoked a new civil war in the 580s.9 Such a reconstruction is confirmed by a passage of the Byzantine theologian John of Scythopolis,10 which quotes two Atthidographers, Philochoros and Androtion, in his comment about the old Areopagus Council in his prologue to the scholia on Dionysius the Areopagite. This text, however, was interpreted by Hammond (and then by Figueira and Duplouy) as contradicting the whole Aristotelian tradition: on their view, we should understand from this text that the Eupatrids were, paradoxically, excluded en masse from entering the Areopagus Council, the highest institution in the old Athenian constitution.11 As this point is crucial, I give here the full text: χρὴ δὲ εἰδέναι καθὰ προέφην ὡς οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἦν εἰς τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν τελεῖν ἀλλ’ οἱ παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις πρωτεύοντες ἔν τε γένει καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ βίῳ χρηστῷ καὶ κατὰ τοῦθ’ οἱ ἐπίσηµοι καθεστῶτες ἐβούλευον εἰς τὴν Ἀρείου πάγου βουλήν· ἐκ γὰρ τῶν ἐννέα καθισταµένων ἀρχόντων Ἀθήνησι τοὺς Ἀρεοπαγίτας ἔδει συνεστάναι δικαστάς, ὥς φησιν Ἀνδροτίων ἐν δευτέραι τῶν Ἀτθίδων. ὕστερον δὲ πλειόνων γέγονεν ἡ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλή, τουτέστιν ἡ ἐξ ἀνδρῶν περιφανεστέρων πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑνός, πλὴν ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν, ὡς ἔφηµεν, καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ βίῳ σώφρονι διαφερόντων ὡς ἱστορεῖ Φιλόχορος διὰ τῆς τρίτης τῶν αὐτοῦ Ἀτθίδων.

One must know, as I already said, that not anyone could become member of the Areopagus Council, but those who, in Athens, were the first by their genos, their wealth and their honourable life; and those who distinguished themselves by such qualities sat in the Areopagus Council; namely, from the nine archons should be constituted the panel of judges, as Androtion says in the second book of his Atthis [FGrH 324 F 4]; later, the Areopagus Council became more numerous, that is [it became] the Council of fiftyone of the most outstanding men, but only or except Eupatrids, as we said, and distinguishing themselves by wealth and a temperate life, as Philochoros recounts in the third book of his own Atthis [FGrH 328 F 20]. [Maximus the Confessor i.e. John of Scythopolis], Sancti Maximi prologus in opera Sancti Dionysii, Migne (ed.), 1857, p. 16–17

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? The key expression is πλὴν ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν. Figueira (1984, 458), following Hammond’s translation, understood ‘except from Eupatrids’, i.e. recruitment was enlarged, but still excluded the Eupatrids, a very curious comment indeed. Thus the whole sceptical argument rests on the translation of πλήν as ‘except’; yet this word was employed by Greek authors not only as a preposition – meaning ‘except’ – but also, especially from the imperial period onwards, as an adverb or a conjunction where πλήν often means simply ‘but’ or ‘yet’: dozens of examples are to be found in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.12 This use of πλήν as a simple conjunction, meaning something like ‘nevertheless’ or ‘but’, is noted by Hesychius, who gives the following two definitions in his Lexicon: ὅµως· πλήν13 and πλήν· ἐκτός, ὅµως.14 In fact, the sense of πλήν evolved from archaic to imperial times:15 if it was originally used as a preposition meaning ‘except’, its use as a conjunction (‘but’), emerged in fifth-century literature16 and became more and more common from imperial times onwards. This text was certainly written in early Byzantine times; as I said above, it is now attributed, not to Maximus the Confessor (early seventh century AD), but to John of Scythopolis, who lived in the sixth century AD.17 It is therefore much more likely that it should be translated: ‘the Council became larger, but all members had to be Eupatrids’, a reading we find, unsurprisingly, in many translations of the text.18 One could still hesitate between the two interpretations (‘except’ or ‘but’), if John had not made this decisive addition: ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν, ὡς ἔφηµεν, ‘chosen from the Eupatrids, as we said ’. He is evidently repeating a point he made earlier. In the three preceding paragraphs with which the prologue begins, the author’s main point is that Dionysius was an Areopagite, a title which demonstrates by itself his personal qualities, because not just anyone could be a member of such a prestigious Council; and he explains that in order to be a member of the Areopagus you had to be well-born, rich and honourable (πρωτεύοντες ἔν τε γένει καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ βίῳ χρηστῷ). This provides a close parallel to our passage: first, we have ‘the first by means of their genos, their wealth and their honourable life’; and second – the passage introduced by πλήν – ‘the Eupatrids, as we said, and those distinguishing themselves by wealth and a temperate life’. Purely for rhetorical reasons, the author, instead of strictly repeating what he first said, resorts to synonymous terms for the three ‘Areopagitic’ criteria he mentioned: ‘the first by their genos’ becomes ‘from the Eupatrids’, while ‘the first ones by their wealth’ and ‘their honest life’ becomes ‘distinguishing themselves by wealth’ and ‘a temperate life’. What sense would it make to add ‘as we said’, if John intended here to say the exact opposite of what he wrote three sentences before?

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Antoine Pierrot It is therefore a mistake to deduce that John of Scythopolis claims that there was an exclusion of the Eupatrids from the Areopagus. He is actually saying just the opposite: the Eupatrids were a group identified as ‘the first by their genos’, the very definition of nobility, and this nobility monopolized the access to the Areopagus Council. Yet to belong to the Eupatrids was not sufficient to become an Areopagite: one still had to be rich and honest, a condition also mentioned by the Constitution of the Athenians (3.2 and 8.2) in its description of the council’s recruitment before Solon. We must concede we have few testimonies about the Athenian Eupatrids in classical literature; but it is untrue to say there are contradictions between these texts. On the contrary, as we shall see, it is a very important conclusion that in fifth-century Athens, i.e. in the very period of democratic triumph, there was some kind of official history, according to which a group called ‘Eupatrid’ monopolized political (and religious) power in preSolonian Athens. We cannot affirm that this historical account was true, and, theoretically, it is perfectly possible that it was invented in some fifthcentury oligarchic circles, for the sole purpose of justifying their desire to change the constitution. But one could well then ask what sense it made to claim the return of a Eupatrid order, or to rue its disappearance, if this Eupatrid order never existed? And, most of all, why do we not have any protest, any alternative story about the Athenian past, in the whole corpus of the Attic orators, whose democratic conceptions, sincere or feigned, were clearly expressed in almost every speech, in order to flatter the de¯mos? Why, in all our documentation, did not a single democrat ever contest such a great falsehood that could be dangerous for the regime? As I said above, e silentio arguments are extremely unreliable. But here we are dealing with dozens of Attic speeches, full of allusions to the patrios politeia;19 and we know of some cases which prove that there could be historical debates about early Athenian history. In his Life of Solon, Plutarch says that according to some historians, the Areopagus Council was created by Solon, but according to others, it already existed.20 When Isocrates, in the speech written for Alcibiades’ son, praised his genealogy (Isocrates 16.25), saying that his father, the famous Alcibiades, descended on the male side ‘from the Eupatrids, from whose name it is easy to recognize their nobility (eugeneia)’, he was addressing a popular court, at a time (c. 397 BC) when historians, for example the Atthidographer Hellanicus, had already begun to collect Eupatrid traditions: if there had been a serious debate in Athens about those questions, it would have been rather awkward for the great orator to mention that bone of contention.21 Obviously, if alluding to one’s Eupatrid nobility was permitted even in a popular court, we would be justified in expecting such a pedigree to be

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? equally claimed in the philosophical discussions of which anti-democratic circles were so fond in fourth-century Athens. We actually do have one clear reference to Eupatrid ancestry in the Symposium of Xenophon, applied to Kallias: ὡς µὲν οὖν σοι ἡ πόλις ταχὺ ἂν ἐπιτρέψειεν αὑτήν, εἰ βούλει, εὖ ἴσθι. τὰ µέγιστα γάρ σοι ὑπάρχει· εὐπατρίδης εἶ, ἱερεὺς θεῶν τῶν ἀπ’ Ἐρεχθέως.

The polis is ready to entrust itself to you, if you want it, you should know. For yours are the highest qualities: you are a Eupatrid, a priest of the gods, of those from the time of Erechtheus. Xenophon, Symposium 8, 40

We could hardly expect a more explicit definition for the sense of the word ‘Eupatrid’ as applied to an Athenian citizen in the early fourth century. Here Xenophon implies that Eupatrid ancestry syntactically was somehow linked to the ownership of an ancestral priesthood: obviously, it is not sufficient to prove that Plutarch was right when saying the Eupatrids had ‘to display knowledge of divine matters’ from early Athenian times (see above p. 149). But it confirms at any case the gentilician connotation of the word ‘Eupatrid’ in classical times. This is not, however, the most important conclusion we should reach from Xenophon’s account; much more striking is the fact that Xenophon places the claim to Eupatrid ancestry syntactically before the title of dadouchos. Kallias was a dadouchos, as his ancestors had been too, and as everyone knew at that time in Athens; nevertheless, his Eupatrid pedigree sounded to Xenophon as an even more impressive title of nobility, which should be mentioned first. If there had been any dispute about the existence of a Eupatrid nobility in the archaic past of Athens, it made no sense to have recourse to such a controversial title, when the ownership by the Kerykes of an ancient, prestigious and hereditary priesthood was a sufficient pedigree. One could object that I am putting here too much emphasis on a purely rhetorical issue, and that Xenophon is not putting noble birth above priestly privilege, but referring to one and the same thing. However, even in this case one would still have to infer from Xenophon’s statement that being in charge of prestigious cults equalled noble birth in classical times: is it plausible to imagine things were different in pre-Solonian times? Obviously, this would not prove that they also had exclusive political privileges in addition to their religious ones, but unless one imagines that Athens was a democracy even before Solon, could we find better candidates for oligarchy than families called “from good fathers” and controlling in that name the major cults of the city?

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Antoine Pierrot Oral tradition and archaeological evidence The classical tradition about the Eupatrids therefore offers no hints of controversy or dispute about what the Eupatrids were: our sources identify them as the religious and political elite in early Athenian times, which ceased to be a closed ruling class after Solon’s reforms to become merely a group of families with hereditary priesthoods in classical and Hellenistic times. Such a tradition might be false, but I see no compelling reasons why it should be. Furthermore, the very antiquity of the word ‘Eupatrid’, attested both by oral tradition and by archaeological evidence, argues for the truth of the classical accounts. In this section, I shall try to show that the Eupatrid class very probably existed before Solon’s time, was defined mainly by the nobility of its members, and that their name was not, as has recently been argued, an anti-Peisistratid manifesto. The Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians gives some kind of proof (even if it was not intended so by its author) of the antiquity of the word ‘Eupatrid’. The heavy defeat suffered by the Alcmaionids at Leipsydrion against the Peisistratids, some time before 510 BC, was celebrated by a scolion to preserve the glory and the bravery of those who died on the battlefield, and the song provides incidentally (and very fortunately) a gloss about the word ‘Eupatrids’: Αἰαῖ Λειψύδριον προδωσέταιρον, οἵους ἄνδρας ἀπώλεσας, µάχεσθαι ἀγαθούς τε καὶ εὐπατρίδας, οἳ τότ’ ἔδειξαν οἵων πατέρων ἔσαν.

Alas, Leipsydrion, betrayer of companions, What men you killed, good in fight and Eupatrids, Who showed then from what sort of fathers they came.

While the word agathos often refers in archaic literature to wealth and economic power, it seems here to be constructed directly with the verb to fight (µάχεσθαι), and should probably be understood in its primary sense of military courage and skill. So brave warriors died at Leipsydrion; the word ‘Eupatrids’ then completes the ideal portrait of those heroes by indicating their noble birth, a sense explicitly glossed by the indirect interrogative clause οἳ τότ’ ἔδειξαν οἵων πατέρων ἔσαν (‘who then showed from what sort of fathers they came’), and the easiest etymology for ‘Eupatrids’ (‘of good fathers’) perfectly fits the gloss. We have already mentioned Isocrates’ comment about the Eupatrids, ‘whose name already shows their nobility’. The etymology was as evident for us as for the ancients, and we should not seek for any subtle reference to fatherland ( patris) in this purely aristocratic scolion. We almost reach certainty if we compare the song with three remarkable

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? epigraphic discoveries from Eretria and from Athens. These inscriptions, too, are very well-known, so my comment on them can be brief. Here is the inscription from Eretria, found in the west cemetery: Χαιρίο̄ν Ἀθε̄ναῖος Εὐπατρίδον ἐνθάδε κεῖ ται

Here lies the Athenian Chairion, from the Eupatrids.

IG XII. 9.296

The epitaph, probably from the middle of the sixth century, tells us that the dead man was an Athenian, and that he was a Eupatrid; this is a crucial point for our discussion. As the name Chairion is not common, we should most likely identify him with the Chairion who, at about the same time, dedicated an altar to Athena in Athens:22 [Tὸν βοµὸν ἀνέθ]εκεν Ἀθεναίαι Χαιρίον [τ]αµιεύον Κλεδίκ[ο hυιός].

This altar Chairion dedicated to Athena, when he was treasurer, the son of Kleidikos. IG I 3 590.

The third inscription was also found in Athens:23

Ἀλκίµαχός µ’ ἀνέ{σ}θεκε ∆ιὸς κόρει τόδ’ ἄγαλµα εὐχολέν, ἐσθλο δὲ πατρὸς hῦς Χαιρίονος ἐπεύχεται να[ι].

Alkimachos dedicated me, this statue, to the daughter of Zeus, As an ex-voto, and he prides himself on being the son of the noble Chairion. IG I3 618

Since this inscription appears to be a little bit later than the first two, we can consider it almost certain that Alkimachos was the son of the Eupatrid Chairion who was buried in Eretria, which means that in the second half of the sixth century, a Eupatrid young man describes his father as an esthlos, a Homeric epithet which means ‘brave’ or ‘noble’. There seems to be no sign of a reference here to fatherland, but rather the vanity of blue-blooded people: we could hardly hope for any better confirmation of the classical tradition about the Eupatrids. It has been argued that Chairion was buried in Eretria in exile, because of a conflict with Peisistratos, and from this hypothesis Figueira, followed by Duplouy, jumped to the conclusion that ‘Eupatrid’ means ‘loyal to fatherland’, i.e. not like Peisistratos the traitor (Figueira 1984, 454; Duplouy 2003, 11–12). That Chairion died in exile is possible, but not proved; that he fought against tyranny is even more hypothetical. As the Constitution of the Athenians (15.3) reports that during his

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Antoine Pierrot second exile Peisistratos chose to gather a new army precisely in Eretria, we should not exclude the possibility that Chairion, although a Eupatrid, was one of his partisans. If Chairion’s epitaph is correctly dated around the middle of the sixth century, he was presumably born in the seventh century when the Eupatrid class still monopolized power: one may infer, as Hans van Wees kindly suggested to me, that Chairion still prided himself on Eupatrid status because he lived at a time when they were indeed the ruling class, while a generation later, after such privileges had been destroyed by Solon, his son did not call himself ‘eupatrid’, but merely ‘the son of the noble Chairion’. A further argument against the ‘patriotic’ interpretation is the following: if a group of powerful families had really decided to call themselves Eupatrids as a reaction against the Peisistratids, we should admit that, by an extraordinary chance, our earliest documentary evidence of the word, around 550 BC, exactly coincides with the time when the word would have been ‘coined’ by this group. I must confess I am not so optimistic about our degree of knowledge of archaic Athens.24 Besides, that the word εὐπατρίδαι could have been used by the Athenian elite with the meaning of ‘loyal to the fatherland’, instead of ‘from good fathers’, seems to me almost impossible, since the Homeric poems, so highly praised by Greek aristocracy for their supposed educational virtues, already know εὐπατέρεια as an epithet for Helen and for Tyro, where it cannot mean anything else than ‘from a noble father’ or simply ‘noble’.25 It would have been quite confusing to give the allegedly new word εὐπατρίδαι a radically different meaning from that of the established εὐπατέρεια.26 That εὐπατρίδης indicated high social status is confirmed by the meaning of its counterpart κακoπατρίδης or κακόπατρις, appearing several times in archaic poetry, and especially in the following Theognidean quatrain, where it undoubtedly means ‘ignoble’: Αὐτός τοι ταύτην εἰδὼς κακόπατριν ἐοῦσαν εἰς οἴκους ἄγεται χρήµασι πειθόµενος εὔδοξος κακόδοξον, ἐπεὶ κρατερή µιν ἀνάγκη ἐντύνει, ἥτ’ ἀνδρὸς τλήµονα θῆκε νόον.

He does himself know she is of ignoble birth, And yet he takes her home as his bride, seduced by her wealth, He of good name takes her of bad name: for an urgent need Drives him, which gives a man audacious spirit. Theognis 193–6 (West)

In this quatrain, the sense of κακόπατρις is obvious: a man ‘of good name’ marries a rich girl because of her wealth, in spite of her low extraction. There is absolutely no possible reference here to fatherland; and the couple

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? κακόπατρις/εὐπατέρεια,

well established from archaic times,27 allows us to exclude such a radically different meaning as ‘loyal to fatherland’ for εὐπατρίδης.28 If we could prove that a Eupatrid class existed before the time of Solon, we could put an end to the current debate. I suggest we have a possible sign, if not proof, that the Eupatrid class was indeed very ancient, and not a sixth-century creation. We are poorly informed about the exact functions of the Athenian phylobasileis, the ‘tribal kings’, mentioned several times by the Constitution of the Athenians as members of a tribunal court presided over by the basileus. Yet they seem to appear as early as around 500 BC in one fragment of the boustrophedon calendar discovered in the Eleusinion in Athens,29 and are mentioned several times in the so-called Nikomachos calendar,30 considered by specialists as being mainly a re-publication of an old Solonian sacrificial calendar.31 Admittedly, some parts of the Nikomachos calendar are post-Solonian; but in the thirteen published fragments the phylobasileis occur eight times, throughout the whole calendar, where they appear either as recipients of offerings or as an authority in various Athenian festivals, so that there is no chance for them to be a post-Solonian institution.32 The antiquity of the phylobasileis is also confirmed by the Constitution of the Athenians (8.3), which says Solon did not change anything about the tribes: ‘There were, as before, four tribes and four phylobasileis’. As Solon is unlikely to have created a hereditary status, we can take as almost certain the existence of phylobasileis as religious officials in Athens from at least the end of the seventh century. Now, Pollux – a late source, indeed, but also a very useful one, who provides a great deal of information about the Athenian democracy – says about the phylobasileis: οἱ δὲ φυλοβασιλεῖς ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν δ’ ὄντες µάλιστα τῶν ἱερῶν ἐπεµελοῦντο, συνεδρεύοντες ἐν τῷ βασιλείῳ τῷ παρὰ τὸ βουκολεῖον.

The tribal kings, from the Eupatrids, were four and dealt mainly with sacred matters, sitting together in the Basileion, near the Boukoleion. Pollux 8.111

The Onomasticon, a lexicon dedicated to the emperor Commodus, is a very heterogeneous work, but each book has its coherence; the passage quoted above comes from the eighth book, entirely devoted to the judicial institutions of the Athenian democracy. From the 29 judicial rubrics preceding the mention of the phylobasileis, in four cases, no chronological indication is given, but the information would perfectly fit the fourth century; in the remaining 25, the context is clearly fourth century: we can

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Antoine Pierrot reasonably conclude that the information Pollux gives about the phylobasileis is referring to the same period. So the lexicographer says the phylobasileis dealt mainly with sacred matters in classical Athens: the Nikomachos calendar studied above proves the accuracy of his testimony. The lexicographer also says they were chosen from Eupatrids (ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν): if so, this law implies that in the classical democracy, it was still possible to designate a citizen as belonging or not to the Eupatrids. The Greeks were very conservative in religious matters, and we can hardly imagine such a mode of designation as a democratic reform. For example, in the fourth century the Constitution of the Athenians mentions that ephe¯boi were forbidden to go to law, except for inheriting a kle¯ros, an epikle¯ros, or a κατὰ τὸ γένος ἱερωσύνη, ‘a priesthood assigned by birth’: if there were trials about hereditary priesthoods, I see no reason why the Athenians could not decide the same way who was a Eupatrid and who was not, if the answer was required for designating the four phylobasileis. Belonging to the Eupatrids was surely not determined by democratic decision, and can be nothing other than an archaic inheritance. The inescapable conclusion, then – unless we reject entirely Pollux’ notice, rarely a satisfactory solution – is that the phylobasileis mentioned in the ‘Solonian’ calendar had to be chosen from Eupatrids from at least the seventh century until classical times. I may add that if a former Eupatrid class, even reduced to religious matters, continued to play an institutional role in classical Athens, we should not underestimate the chance that some oral traditions were still transmitted among these Eupatrid families about their glorious past: this could explain, for example, the detailed character of the Aristotelian account concerning the civil conflict in 579 BC, when the archonship was divided between five Eupatrids and five non-Eupatrids. One of the greatest and, at the same time, one of the most sceptical scholars about Attic traditions, Felix Jacoby, considered that this very event, even if distorted and difficult to interpret, could not have been invented from nothing,33 and that there had probably been some kind of civil war between Eupatrids and non-Eupatrids after the Solonian revolution. As yet, we have been dealing with literary or archaeological sources which all suffer from an important bias: they stem exclusively either from so-called Eupatrid circles, or from authors, like Philochoros or Aristotle, whose supposed ideology, or, more simply, whose physical and intellectual proximity to well-born people could make them suspect of sympathy for such families. Besides, even if I have shown that in the sixth century some families depicted themselves as Eupatrids, and thereby signified their nobility, this does not prove such well-born people really controlled political power before Solon: this is what Philochoros or Aristotle say, late

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? authors, far removed from the events. There still remains, then, the possibility – a very implausible one, in my view, but nevertheless a possibility – that the whole story about an ancien régime dominated by the Eupatrids before Solon is a forgery, a deliberate falsification of history that carried on down through the centuries, without encountering a single contradictor, until modern scholarship. The kind of evidence we need in order to trust the classical testimonies with greater confidence would be an archaeological document, giving political importance to the Eupatrids, but older than the Atthidographers’ tradition, and emanating from the de¯mos rather than from the Eupatrids themselves. This evidence does seem to exist, even if its publication – or, to be more exact, its re-publication – has not yet aroused all the attention it deserves. In 2002, S. Brenne published a selection of inscribed ostraka found in Athens, bearing names of candidates for ostracism.34 Among these ostraka, one is of major importance for our subject. Here is the inscription: ΛΙΜΟΣ ΕΥΠ{Ρ}ΑΤΡΙ∆ΕΣ

This inscription, Limos eupratrides, can either mean: ‘[I ostracise] Limos the Eupatrid’ (Limos being then a personal name) or: ‘I ostracise the Eupatrid Hunger’. In both cases, the main point is the expression of a deep hatred against something rightly or wrongly ascribed to the Eupatrids. Obviously, this ostrakon was not inscribed by a Eupatrid – unless he knew how to mislead modern scholarship. Its author may have considered himself a victim of the Eupatrids; at any case, it seems quite implausible that he took part in the group which he was, even though only implicitly, striving to have ostracized. Another ostrakon bears the following inscription: ‘ ΤΟΝ ΛΙΜΟΝ ΟΣΤΡΑΚΙ∆Ο’, meaning: ‘I ostracize Hunger’, or ‘I ostracize Limos’; since several other ostraka of probably the same period (early fifth century) designate the same Limos as a candidate for ostracism, be it the personification of Hunger or a man simply called Limos, in all likelihood all these ostraka refer to the same thing.35 I incline towards the interpretation of Limos as the personification of Hunger, since, according to the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Limos is not attested otherwise as a personal name in Attica,36 and Limos, who had a place in Hesiod’s genealogy of the gods as the daughter of Eris,37 possibly had a sanctuary in Athens.38 An interesting feature of the ostrakon inscription is the writing of the verb ΟΣΤΡΑΚΙ∆Ο, instead of ΟΣΤΡΑΚΙΖΟ, which would be the ‘correct’ and standardized orthography for the verb. Recently, Stephen Colvin convincingly argued that the replacement of zeta by delta indicates a popular way of speaking and writing, an example of what he calls a ‘social dialect’.39

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Antoine Pierrot If we accept what seems to be the most plausible interpretation – that Hunger is designated by limos – we have before our eyes, in the ostrakon bearing ΛΙΜΟΣ ΕΥΠ{Ρ}ΑΤΡΙ∆ΕΣ, the poignant expression of a popular hatred against the Eupatrids, accused of being responsible for a famine. Instead of a late reminiscence of the civil wars which ravaged sixth century Athens and were caused by rivalries between the leading families, it may evoke, much more plausibly, a severe food shortage during the early fifth century, for example after the Persian invasion and the destruction of the Attic countryside.40 The Eupatrids were probably considered – rightly or wrongly – a group of rich and powerful people, and may have been blamed for making a food shortage worse, as P. Garnsey has already argued in his study about famine and food shortage in classical Antiquity.41 Athenian authorities fought against food shortage from at least the time of Solon, whose law prohibiting the export of agricultural produce apart from olive oil implies the fear that some rich landowners might aggravate the social crisis by speculation. As a result, the best way to understand the expression ‘Limos Eupatrides’ is to suppose a popular identification between ‘rich landowners’ and ‘Eupatrids’:42 the ostrakon demonstrates, therefore, that the Eupatrids existed as a definite group, easy to identify, as early as the early fifth century, and, even more importantly, that this group was identified as such by the whole society, including the de¯mos. In other words, this group, and its importance for Athenian history in the archaic period, cannot be reduced to a sophistic reconstruction invented by Atthidographers: at the very time when democracy was triumphing in Athens, when ‘the emboldened de¯mos finally ventured to put ostracism into practice’ (Constitution of the Athenians 22.3), one of its first victims – even if only symbolically – was the hated Eupatrid class. Now, the fact that humble people hated the alleged Eupatrid class in the early fifth century does not necessarily prove that there existed such a class before Solon: one could still conjecture it was invented at the time of the Peisistratid tyranny. But then we come up against an insoluble contradiction. If we suppose that no hereditary nobility ever existed in the city, how can we explain that this invention became part of ‘official’ history so quickly? It would imply that in a span of barely three generations the collective memory of Athenian society completely collapsed. Is this really credible? Of Athenians born in the early sixth century, hundreds or even thousands were still alive around 530 BC. From their children born by 550 BC, many hundreds or thousands were, in their turn, still alive by 480 BC:43 I cannot believe that the complete rewriting of Athenian history, implied by the pure invention of a nobility, succeeded in fooling so many people who had been taught by their parents and grandparents about the

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? way of life in the city before 560, and even, for the oldest, at the time of Solon. I think there is no place for such a deep collective amnesia in Athens in a period of barely eighty years, no more than the span of a human life. Conclusion Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? They are epigraphically attested in the sixth and early fifth century as a social class proud of its origins, still strong enough to arouse popular hostility; and they are depicted by a unanimous later tradition, beginning with the Atthidographers, continuing with Aristotle, and finally ending with Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Pollux or even John of Scythopolis, as an elite who governed Athens in a very strict oligarchy before Solon’s revolution. Concerning this tradition, we have a choice between two alternatives. We can reject it as a propagandist invention, and consider that the Eupatrids were always purely a ‘religious’ elite, never a political elite, and thus that their earlier existence was real, but that the scope of the pre-Solonian powers attributed to them was, after all, an Atthidographic invention or hypothetical reconstruction. But this implies either an astonishing silence from the democratic party, well represented in the Attic corpus, or the complete forgetting of their preSolonian history by the Athenians themselves. It seems a very implausible hypothesis, when we consider they were still keeping with great care what remained of Solon’s kyrbeis in their archives, when Plutarch visited Athens. Aristotle consulted at least some of the Solonian laws – maybe also some ‘Draconian’ laws – and his historical account assigns the destruction of the Eupatrid oligarchy to Solon: I, for one, would trust his ability to see through a possible ‘Eupatrid hoax’, had there been any sign of it in the Athenian written or oral traditions. And unless one admits that Athens was a democracy from the very beginning of its history, I see no better candidates for a pre-Solonian oligarchy than such a small number of families called ‘from good fathers’, and being in charge of prestigious and hereditary cults. I therefore suggest the following historical account: from early times onwards there was in Athens a ruling class, called the Eupatrids, i.e. ‘those from good fathers’, who both monopolized religious priesthoods and controlled political power through cooptation. After Solon destroyed their privileges, replacing birth by wealth as the crucial criterion for getting access to magistracies, such a Eupatrid ‘class’ disappeared, and the term ‘eupatrid’ faded in popular usage to mean merely ‘the rich’. It nevertheless continued to have for the Athenian elite the technical sense of ‘families with hereditary priesthoods’, a status which part of this elite no longer advertised prominently, preferring to concentrate on wealth and ‘excellence’.

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Antoine Pierrot Classical scholarship in the twentieth century has been criticized for its tendency to confound Roman and Greek matters, and, especially, to assimilate arbitrarily the Roman gens with the Greek genos. It was surely a healthy and necessary criticism. But we should not, I suggest, fall into the opposite extreme and deny any validity to the Eupatrid tradition just because it resembles the patrician pattern too much. The ancients were often wrong about their own past, and they even lied when necessary: but they rarely did it with such total unanimity, and that is why we should probably trust them when they present a single view. I have said I consider very plausible the political control of Athens by an oligarchy before Solon. This does not imply social immobility: some lowborn men certainly became wealthier, by chance or by merit, and on the other hand, others obviously suffered serious loss of wealth and status. What I question here is mobility in the political structures. In a system based on co-optation, as in the designation of archons by Areopagites, i.e. former archons, the temptation is too strong to choose as magistrates one’s relations or friends instead of enemies or those one does not know. In such a system, one or two centuries of co-optation are quite enough to create a closed political caste, and we don’t need to believe the implausible accounts of the ancient sources about the creation of a Eupatrid order by Theseus in order to understand the formation of an oligarchy in preSolonian Athens. One last word: what happened in archaic Athens did not necessarily happen in the same way elsewhere, so that the debate about the role of aristocracy in Greece as a whole remains open. Notes 1 I will not, therefore, give an exhaustive list of the occurrences of the word ‘Eupatrid’ in classical literature, but only those relevant for the matter discussed here. 2 Bourriot 1976. In my opinion, the word genos could designate both religious associations and aristocratic families in archaic Greece, not only the first set, as Bourriot argued. 3 The ancient testimonia are studied below. 4 Wade-Gery 1931, reprinted in Wade-Gery 1958. 5 For example, Queyrel 2003, 24: ‘Les magistrats [étaient] choisis dans les familles nobles et riches [...]. A Athènes, on désigne cette élite de la richesse et du pouvoir sous le nom d’Eupatrides, les “Biens-nés”’. 6 Von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf 1923, II, 70. 7 Figueira 1984. 8 Duplouy 2003. 9 We know from the Lexicon Patmense s.v. γεννῆται, from the Lexicon of Harpocration s.v. τριττύς, and from a scholium to [Plato], Axiochos 371d, that the beginning of the

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? Constitution of the Athenians, which is lost, included a description of what Aristotle considered as the ancestral lines of division in early Athenian society: four φυλαί, each of which was divided into three τριττύες or φρατρίαι, themselves divided into thirty γένη.The scholium to [Plato] adds that according to Aristotle the Athenian πλῆθος was divided between γεωργοί and δηµιουργοί, and the Life of Theseus 25.2 gives a third category, the εὐπατρίδαι (who do not appear in the scholium because they were distinct from the πλῆθος). Since Aristotle is the single source quoted by Plutarch in the Life of Theseus 25.3 immediately after the description of the Eupatrid class, we can conclude that all this description was mainly inspired by the first chapters of the Constitution of the Athenians: therefore, if the three “social classes” – εὐπατρίδαι, ἄγροικοι (= γεωργοί) and δηµιουργοί – are not defined in the Constitution of the Athenians 13.2, it is not because Aristotle was unable to give an explanation about them, but because he had already defined them in the first chapters. The question of what may actually have been the so-called ἄγροικοι and δηµιουργοί in early Athenian society is extremely complex – I intend to deal with this question in another paper. Although the historical character of such ‘classes’ has been strongly criticized by modern scholars, I think one should not infer from their description in the Life of Theseus, which is basically a poetic and fictionalized rewriting of the beginning of the Constitution of the Athenians, that the Constitution was likewise removed from historical fact. If one chooses to reject them as the product of late speculation, there still remains Rhodes’ argument that a compromise was indeed negotiated between Eupatrids and non-Eupatrids (five archons for each group), and that only ‘later the theorists proceeded to divide the nonEupatrids into ἄγροικοι and δηµιουργοί’, adding speculation ‘to an authentic nucleus’ (Rhodes 1985, 183). 10 Mistakenly attributed to Maximus the Confessor in the Patrologia Graeca and in the Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, cf. Suchla 1980, 65; 1984, passim; and Rorem and Lamoreaux 1998, 39. 11 See Hammond 1961, 77: ‘The earliest reference to them as a group [i.e. Philochoros and Androtion as quoted by John of Scythopolis] says that εὐπατρίδαι were excluded from sitting on a court which was composed of members of the Areopagus Council’; and 78: ‘This passage disproves Wade-Gery’s theory [about the Eupatrids]. The εὐπατρίδαι among the Areopagites were excluded from a court dealing with bloodshed probably because they were themselves involved in the purifying ceremonies of blood-guilt [...]’. 12 For example Eusebius of Caesarea, De martyribus Palaestinae (recensio prolixior) 11.1: εἰ χρή τι θρασύτερον, πλὴν ἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν, ‘to speak more audaciously, but truly’. 13 Hesychius ο 847a Latte. 14 Hesychius π 2571 Latte-Hansen. 15 See Chantraine (1999, 827), ‘πλὴν’ (s.v. ‘πέλας’ V.). 16 For example Thucydides, VIII, 70, or Plato, Protagoras, 328e. 17 See above n. 10. 18 See most recently Costa, 2007, F20b: ‘In seguito il numero di componenti del consiglio dell’Areopago aumentò, ampliandosi cioè a cinquantuno tra i cittadini più illustri (purché Eupatridi, come abbiamo detto) e distinti per richezza e temperenza’. The same interpretation is in Rorem and Lamoreaux (1998, 144):‘who had to be of the aristocracy, as we have said’, and already in Migne’s edition, 18): ‘ex viris illustrioribus quinquaginta et uni, sed nobilibus tamen, ut diximus’. Wallace (1989,

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Antoine Pierrot 187) gives a very similar translation: ‘Later the Council of the Areopagos was composed of more – that is, the Council of fifty-one distinguished men, but only of Eupatrids, as we have said’. 19 Since none of these speeches mentions them, except for an ambiguous claim in Isocrates – see below –, the Eupatrids probably played no significant part in Athenian political discourse in classical times. This growing indifference suggests there was no debate about them, and hardly fits with a public and aggressive attempt by oligarchic circles to rewrite history. 20 Plutarch, Solon 19. Another example is the Kylonian conspiracy, c. 630 BC: Herodotus (5.71) writes that ‘the prytaneis of the naukraroi were accused’ of the murder of Kylon’s partisans, while Thucydides (1.126) deliberately contradicts him by saying that those responsible for the crime were the nine archons. 21 What Isocrates actually meant by the ‘Eupatrid’ ancestors of Alcibiades (whether he was thinking of the whole group of the Eupatrids, or a particular genos bearing the same name as the whole group) is not crucial for the question discussed here: if he meant a particular genos, he would not have compared its glorious name with that of an oligarchic falsehood; if he meant the whole Eupatrid group, it proves that its historicity was not contested by that time. However, I consider the first reading more plausible for three reasons. First, Isocrates uses an etymological link to emphasize Alcibiades’ nobility: if he meant the old Eupatrid class as a whole, saying ‘their very name – “from good fathers” – shows their nobility’ would be a sort of tautology, a rhetorical flaw which vanishes if he was in fact referring to a particular genos proudly bearing the same name as the old prestigious class. Second, the genealogical parallel between Alcmaionidai and Eupatridai perfectly fits if both refer to separate gene¯, and not a genos versus a group of gene¯. Third, it allows us to abandon the paradoxical exclusion of the Alcmaionidai from the Eupatrid class, as implied by the alternative reading of ‘Eupatrids’. I see possibly a further argument in the scholium to Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 489, where Polemon (fr. 49 Preller) is said to have written that ‘the genos of the Eupatrids’ was excluded from a sacrifice to the Eumenides (Τὸ δὲ τῶν Εὐπατρ ιδῶν γένος οὐ µετέχει τῆς θυσίας ταύτης), while another genos (that of the Hesychidai) took part in the ceremony. We also know from a Delphic inscription of the late second century BC (SIG 3 711 D 1 ) that ‘Pythaists from the Eupatridai’ were sent to Delphi, heading a list which continues with three known gene¯ (Pyrrhakidai, Kerykes, and Euneidai): it seems to me much more plausible that we are dealing here, again, with a particular genos called Eupatridai (contra Parker 2004, 323–324). 22 The inscription was found against the northern wall of the Acropolis. 23 The inscription was found against the northern wall of the Acropolis, between the Propylaea and the Erechtheum. 24 It has been assumed here, as Davies (1971, 11–13) already argued, that in IG XII. 9.296, ΕΥΠΑΤΡΙ∆ΟΝ means the Eupatrid class. If it designates a so-called genos of the Eupatrids, possibly mentioned later by Isocrates about Alcibiades’ father (see above n.21), then the hypothetical etymology as ‘loyal to the fatherland’ obviously vanishes completely. 25 For Helen εὐπατέρεια, see Iliad, VI, 292; Odyssey, XXII, 227. For Tyro εὐπατέρεια, see Odyssey, XI, 235. 26 Eὐπατέρεια is also used by Euripides (Hippolytus, v. 68) about Artemis, and by Herodotus (II, 116), again about Helen of Troy.

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? 27

Duplouy recognizes the difficulty; he therefore rejects the Theognidean quatrain as an allegedly ‘late’ interpolation: ‘La présence, unique chez Théognis, du mot κακόπατρις ne fait qu’ajouter au trouble d’un passage qui put être fourvoyé à date récente dans la collection de poèmes de diverses époques rassemblés sous le nom du poète de Mégare’ (Duplouy 2003, 10). I disagree with what Duplouy calls a ‘date récente’. If the quatrain is by Theognis, it should be dated between c. 640 and c. 540. For the date of Theognis, see West (1989, 172): ‘Theognis non sexto saeculo ut vulgo creditur sed ca. 640–600 elegias composuit’; contra Lane Fox, 2000, 40: ‘[We should] place him c. 600–c. 560’ and, in the same volume, Van Wees 52 n.2, who defends the traditional date of c. the 540s. If the quatrain is not by Theognis, it nevertheless belongs to the so-called Theognidea, dated from the seventh to early fifth century. West includes the quatrain in the ‘Anonymous Theognidae’ (West 1993, 127), as does also Cobb-Stevens (1971, 172). 28 Duplouy (2003, 12) noted that all the alleged ‘Eupatrid’ families, in classical times, pretended to be more or less involved through their ancestors in the fight against Peisistratos: ‘Il convient en effet d’insister sur une caractéristique sociologique qui semble avoir échappé à l’ensemble des commentateurs: en plus d’une illustre ascendance, les quelques personnages ainsi désignés [comme Eupatrides] dans nos sources avaient tous un lien direct avec la lutte contre les tyrans’, and concludes from this that the word εὐπατρίδαι alluded not only to their nobility but also to their loyalty towards fatherland. It can be easily replied that Peisistratos became tyrant after having defeated his aristocratic rivals – including the Eupatrids – thus giving them the best motives to fight him, as they actually did at the beginning – before some of them changed their mind to collaborate with his sons in the 520s, as a famous fragment of the archon list shows (ML 6, Meritt 1939, 59–63). 29 See Jeffery 1948, 86–111. The inscriptions were found in 1936 and 1938 near the Panathenaic way, in the precinct defined by later inscriptions as the ‘Eleusinion’. The reading [ΦΥΛΟΒΑΣΙ]ΛΕΥΣΙ or [ΒΑΣΙ]ΛΕΥΣΙ in block II (ibidem, 93 with plate 30) seemed to Jeffery to be ‘the only possible restoration’: the inscription deals with offerings to deities and officials, and the phylobasileis clearly appear as recipients of similar offerings during most Athenian festivals in the so-called ‘Sacrificial Calendar of Athens’; see next note. 30 See Lambert 2002, 353–99. 31 See Lambert 2002, 354: ‘The calendar was a product of the revision of Athenian law which took place in two stages, between 410/9 and 405/4 and [...] 403/2 and 400/399. This revision was conducted by a commission about whose activities we are fairly well informed in the literary record, principally by Lysias 30, a speech delivered against Nikomachos in a prosecution for misconduct in office as a member of it. [...] The commission was supposed to ensure that Athens performed ‘the sacrifices from the kyrbeis and the ste¯lai according to the syngraphai’. The kyrbeis were inscriptions of archaic type which were thought to contain the original (i.e. early sixth century) sacrificial calendar of Solon.’ 32 The phylobasileis appear as recipients of offerings three times (ΦΥΛΟΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣΙ) and once with the singular (ΦΥΛΟΒΑΣΙΛΕΙ); they appear indirectly four times as an authority in the festivities where the funds they controlled are mentioned (ΕΚ ΤΩΝ ΦΥΛΟΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΩΝ). 33 ‘It is hardly possible to take this for an invention’: Jacoby 1949, 175.

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Antoine Pierrot 34

Brenne 2002, T 1/75–80, 97–100. Duplouy (2003, 18 n. 47) mistakenly wrote: ‘Pour être complet, n’oublions pas ces sept ostraca assez singuliers des années 470 où εὐπατρίδης qualifie Λιµός’. Seven ostraka mention ‘Limos’, but only one of them has ‘Limos Eupatrides’. 36 Osborne and Byrne 1994, s.v. Λίµος, 285. 37 Hesiod, Theogony 226–7. 38 Epitome operis sub nomine Diogeniani, Λιµοῦ πεδίον: ἐπὶ τῶν ὑπὸ λιµοῦ πιεζοµένων 35

πόλεων. Λιµοῦ γάρ ποτε ὄντος, ἔχρησεν ὁ θεὸς Ἀθηναίοις ἀνεῖναι τῷ λιµῷ πεδίον, εἰ µέλλοιεν ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ λιµοῦ· διὸ καὶ ἐποίησαν. ‘Field of Hunger: about the cities

suffering from hunger. Once upon a time there was a hunger, and the god ordered the Athenians to dedicate a field to Hunger, if they were to be released from the hunger. And that is why they did so.’ 39 Colvin 2004, 95–108. 40 A scholiast (Scholia in Aelium Aristidem, Hyper ton Tettaron, 241, 9–11) mentions a λιµὸς in Athens as the motive for bringing back Theseus’ bones from Skyros in Athens, i.e. shortly before 476 BC. 41 Garnsey, 1988, 112. Garnsey sees in the ‘Limos’ ostraka the first proof of a food shortage in Athens after Solon’s time. 42 A fragment of Alexis Comicus (90 Kassel-Austin) shows that in fourth-century Athens only rich people were supposed to be found among the Eupatrids: ἔστιν δὲ ποδαπὸς τὸ γένος οὗτος; {Β.} πλούσιος. τούτους δὲ πάντες φασὶν εὐγενεστάτους | · πένητας δ’ εὐπατρίδας οὐδεὶς ὁρᾷ. : ‘What kind of family is this guy from?’ ‘He’s wealthy. /They say that all of them are very noble / And nobody ever sees poor Eupatridai.’ 43 We do not know the exact number of Athenian citizens living around 500 BC, but this number is generally considered as having approached 30,000. For example, Herodotus (5.97) says that at the beginning of the Ionian revolt in 499 BC, Aristagoras of Miletos failed to convince Kleomenes of Sparta, but succeeded in misleading ‘three myriads’ of Athenians, i.e. 30,000 citizens. Bibliography Bourriot, F. 1976 Recherches sur la nature du génos, Lille. Brenne, S. 2002 ‘Die Ostraka (487–ca. 146 v. Chr.) als Testimonien’, in P. Siewert, Ostrakismos-Testimonien, Stuttgart, 36–166. Chantraine, P. 1999 Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Paris. Cobb-Stevens, V. 1985 ‘Opposites, reversals, and ambiguities: the unsettled word of Theognis’, in T. Figueira and G. Nagy (eds), Theognis of Megara. Poetry and the Polis, Baltimore and London, 159–175. Colvin, S. 2004 ‘Social dialect in Attica’, in J.H.W. Penney (ed.), Indo-European Perspectives. Studies in honour of Anna Morpurgo Davies, Oxford, 95–108. Costa, V. 2007 Filocoro di Atene, I, Testimonianze e frammenti dell’Atthis, Rome.

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Who were the Eupatrids in archaic Athens? Duplouy, A. 2003 ‘Les Eupatrides, « nobles défenseurs de leur patrie »’, Cahiers du Centre Glotz, 14, 1–22. Figueira, T.J. 1984 ‘The ten archontes of 579/8 at Athens’, Hesperia, 53, 447–73. Garnsey, P. 1988 Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to risk and crisis, Cambridge. Hammond, N.G.L. 1961 ‘Land tenure and Solon’s seisachtheia’, JHS 81, 76–98. Jacoby, F. 1949 Atthis: The local chronicles of ancient Athens, Oxford. Jeffery, L.H. 1948 ‘The boustrophedon sacral inscriptions from the Agora’, Hesperia 17.2, 86–111. Lambert, S.D. 2002 ‘The sacrificial calendar of Athens’, ABSA 97, 353–99. Lane Fox, R. 2000 ‘Theognis: an alternative to democracy’, in R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (eds), Alternatives to Athens, Oxford, 35–51. Meritt, B.D. 1939 ‘Greek inscriptions (14–27)’, Hesperia 8.1, 48–82. Migne, J.-P. (ed.) 1857 Patrologia Graeca IV Paris. Osborne, M.J. and Byrne, S.G. (eds) 1994 A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Volume II: Attica, Oxford. Parker, R. 2004 Athenian Religion. A History, Oxford. Queyrel, A. 2003 Athènes, la cité archaïque et classique, Paris. Rhodes, P.J. 1981 A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, Oxford. Rorem, P. and Lamoreaux, J.C. 1998 John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus. Annotating the Areopagite, Oxford. Suchla, B.R. 1980 Die sogenannten Maximus-Scholien des Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum, Göttingen (Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, 1980. Nr. 3). 1984 Die Überlieferung des Prologs des Johannes von Scythopolis zum griechischen Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum, Göttingen. Van Wees H. 2000 ‘Megara’s mafiosi: timocracy and violence in Theognis’, in R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (eds), Alternatives to Athens, Oxford, 52–67. Wade-Gery, H.T. 1931 ‘Eupatridai, archons, and Areopagus’, CQ 25, 1–11, 77–89. 1958 Essays in Greek History, Oxford. Wallace, R.W. 1989 The Areopagos Council to 307 BC, Baltimore and London.

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Antoine Pierrot West, M.L. 1989–1992 Iambi et Elegi Graeci, 2 vols, Oxford. 1993 Greek Lyric Poetry, Oxford. Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, U. von 1923 Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen und Römer, Berlin.

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6 ARISTOCRACY AND THE ATTIC GENOS: A MYTHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Stephen Lambert ‘Aristocracy’ For the Greeks (e.g. Aristotle in the Politics), ‘aristocracy’ was the rule of ‘the best’, conceived in terms both of merit and of birth. In the modern West two slightly different usages are current in common parlance: a European one which links the term closely to the systems of elite groups of families which used to enjoy (to a limited extent in some European countries still enjoy) hereditary titles and privileges; and a looser American one, in which the term is broadly synonymous with ‘upper class’, and in which the economic aspect is more to the fore. In modern academic discussions of ancient society the idea of aristocracy = elite of merit tends to be left to one side, and the emphasis is primarily on aristocracy = elite of birth. Various questions may be asked about such elites, several of them pursued profitably in other chapters in this volume, e.g. the extent to which their aristocratic status was ‘performed’, or was embedded in constitutional systems, or was related to the possession of wealth. In this chapter, though I shall occasionally vary my usage of the term, my main focus will be on aristocracy = elite of birth. Introduction It has become fashionable in recent years to articulate the social dynamic of classical Athens in terms of relations between a ‘mass’ and an ‘elite’. This has attractions from some perspectives: it is quite easy to discern an elite of wealth – broadly, the extremely rich Athenians who were liable to liturgies1 – and one of the two principal contemporary sources, the corpus of the Attic orators, lends itself to construction of a socio-political model in which an ‘elite’ of orators and their clients were on display before, and being judged by, the ‘mass’ of their fellow citizens, in Assembly and lawcourts.2 The other major contemporary source, inscriptions, suggests a rather different model, but that would be the topic of another enquiry.3 Of more concern to me here is that this simplistic dualism fails to do justice

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Stephen Lambert to classical Athenian society; the historical reality was hugely more complex and subtle. In this chapter I shall seek to illuminate one aspect of this society, namely the formal Attic gene¯ and the extent to which they can be described as ‘aristocratic’ institutions. It is an important part of the picture because the gene¯ played a key role in the organisation of Athenian religion and for contemporaries it was above all participation in that religion that defined membership of the polis.4 If religion was in some sense aristocratically structured, then so, from this point of view, was the polis. Whether the gene¯ were ‘aristocratic’ groups has been the subject of lively debate over the last generation, stimulated by the ground-breaking revisionist study of Felix Bourriot, which undermined the old idea of the genos as aristocratic family.5 In this paper I shall approach the issue via an analysis of the socio-political status of the gene¯ as it was projected in genos mythology: in stories about the gene¯, especially stories about their own past. And in doing so I also hope to show how, despite the ‘aristocratic’ implications of some of this mythology, it helps locate the gene¯ comfortably in the context of the prevailing political ideology of classical Athens. To set the scene I begin with some background factual information about the gene¯ (sliding over some obscurities): (a) ‘Genos’ has a wide semantic range, including ‘race, stock, kin, house (in the sense of family line), offspring, caste, sort, kind, breed, species’, but in Attica it also had a formal use to designate a particular type of group of Athenian citizens. It is in this sense that I use the term in this chapter. (b) Gene¯ were descent groups, i.e. subgroups of the polis in which membership was inherited. Hereditary membership was the norm for Greek social groups; it applies to tribes, demes, phratries and to the polis itself.6 As we shall see, the members of some (but not all) gene¯ conceived of themselves as descended from a common founder or ancestor, but in the classical period the component families of a genos were not in fact necessarily closely related. (c) The total number of Attic gene¯ is unknown. 47 ‘certain and probable’ gene¯ and 33 ‘uncertain and spurious’ gene¯ are listed by Parker 1996.7 In the classical period some gene¯ seem to have been about the size of a small deme, i.e. ca. 50–100 adult males, but others were rather smaller. (d) Gene¯ were normally groups within the larger descent groups known as phratries.8 (e) Because of the role of the phratries and gene¯ in regulating entitlements based on descent, the gene¯ feature in legal cases documented by the orators, especially those in which those entitlements (to inheritance of property or citizenship) are at issue.9

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective (f ) As was normal with formal descent groups, genos identity was expressed above all in common cultic activities, but also in ownership and administration of common property (including loans to members).10 (g) The key defining feature of a genos, however, was that it supplied priests and priestesses for polis cults: e.g. the Eteoboutadai the priest of Poseidon Erechtheus and the priestess of Athena Polias on the acropolis, the Salaminioi the priestess of Athena Skiras (and others), the Eumolpidai and the Kerykes respectively the hierophant and the dadouch for the Mysteries at Eleusis. Appointments were by lot from sons or daughters of members of the genos (or sometimes of a branch of the genos), and tenure was for life.11 (h) There is no evidence that genos membership conveyed hereditary privileges in the polis outside the religious sphere, but our evidence is not of sufficient quality to rule out that it had once done so.12 (i) It seems that not all Athenians were members of a genos in the fourth century,13 but in the scheme of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia all Athenians had been genos members in the distant past.14 (j) The ‘eupatridai ’ are a shadowy and elusive group. In the fourth century they could be thought of as members of a pre-Solonian aristocracy, founded by Theseus.15 Whether, in reality, there was an institutionalised aristocracy in archaic Athens is a debated issue,16 and it is arguable that the ‘eupatridai’ in this sense were a mere historiographical construct. In any case ‘eupatridai’ and ‘genne¯tai’ were not equivalents in the fourth century.17 There is, however, some overlap, conceptually18 and in terms of membership.19 Some of the features noted above give gene¯ an exclusive or ‘aristocratic’ flavour (e.g. inherited eligibility for religious offices held for life). Others seem to point in a different direction (e.g. no evidence for inherited access to political power or office, eupatridai not equivalent to genos-members). Overall, one obtains a rather ambiguous impression of the extent to which gene¯ could be described as ‘aristocratic’. Are there ways that we can bring the picture into sharper focus? Prosopography can inform us about individual genos members and their families, but it can be dangerous to use it as a basis for inferences about the status of gene¯ as a whole. We tend to know about only a small number of members; by definition they are normally the more prominent, and this may make gene¯ seem more ‘upper class’ than they actually were. It would be helpful, of course, if there were explicit analysis of the status of gene¯ in ancient sources, but there is not. We have, as usual in Greek social history, to proceed by inference from our (mainly literary and epigraphic) sources. One set of material in these sources that has not previously been much explored in this context is the mythology surrounding the origins and early

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Stephen Lambert history of individual gene¯. The core of this material consists of stories told to enquiring Atthidographers, hellenistic antiquarians20 and later travellers, by genos members (often perhaps genos priests). They are mostly stories about the past of individual gene¯ that explain features – typically genos names and genos rituals – as they existed in the late classical and hellenistic present. Sometimes we have the stories direct from a source that seems very close to the genos (as, for example, Pausanias recording a visit to a cult site), sometimes we can access them only in a filtered and indirect way, for example as deployed by a Euripides in a tragedy, by an orator in a court case, or by a researcher such as the author of the Ath. Pol. reconstructing the very early history of the Athenian constitution. Few of our sources for these stories pre-date the late fifth and fourth centuries; some of them were no doubt in circulation in some form before that, but we should not hesitate to take genos mythology as to an extent a product of the contemporary late classical and hellenistic world, as representing the image of themselves that the genos members projected in and to that world, as an important aspect, to borrow the perspective of some other chapters in this volume, of the ‘performed status’ of the genos. From this point on, the reader may find it helpful to refer to the table of genos ‘myth’ and ‘reality’ appended to this paper. It aims to be illustrative rather than comprehensive, and owes much to the groundwork of Kearns (1989) and Parker (1996). Myth and reality: time of origin The first topic that I should like to explore is the time of origin of the gene¯. It is a subject on which genos mythology is quite eloquent. Ath. Pol. F3 presents us with a world in which, probably at the time of Ion, all Athenians were in gene¯ ;21 but it seems from the mythology of individual gene¯ that there was no idea that they were all created at the same time. Each was envisaged as having come into being in a different set of circumstances specific to the individual genos. In every case, however, the origin is projected as either timeless or located in the extremely distant past, the heroic and mythical time. In no case is there any tradition linking the origin of a genos to an identifiable real-life context. It is quite likely, however, that some gene¯ were in fact founded in the archaic and early classical periods. Why do I assert that? One might begin with a slightly different question: ‘why should gene¯ not have been created in the archaic and early classical periods?’. A possible answer might be: ‘because the institution responsible for creating gene¯ had been abolished or no longer existed’. In modern Europe aristocratic ‘gene¯ ’ are or were created by monarchs and the abolition of monarchies put an end to new aristocratic creations in those European

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective states which are now Republics. There does not seem to have been an idea that the Athenian kings were exclusively responsible for new genos creations. The origin of the gene¯ into which all Athenians are organised in Ath. Pol. F3 is obscure; they are linked there (quite artificially) with the Ionian tribes, but Ion is not explicitly asserted as their creator. In the myths of individual gene¯ the creator of the genos is generally left rather vague. Take, for example, the genos Phytalidai. Phytalos, the genos eponym (whose name connotes ‘planting’) entertained Demeter at his house and was awarded a fig-plant in return; the (hellenistic) epigram on his tomb, recorded by Pausanias, commemorated the fact that, in consequence, his genos enjoyed ageless privileges, by which a priesthood of Demeter seems to be meant.22 Who, however, in the human world, gave the genos these privileges is unspecified; the focus is on the deity. At a later point in its mythical history this same genos entertained and purified Theseus on his return from killing Sinis at the altar of Zeus Meilichios near the river Kephisos and was entrusted in return with responsibility for a sacrifice to Theseus, funded by a (historically attested) tax on the families who had been bound to send their children to the Minotaur. Here it is specified explicitly in Plutarch’s Life that it was Theseus who awarded them the sacrifice; but it is not the creation of a genos that is at issue here, but the awarding of additional privileges to an existing genos; and Theseus is present not in his capacity as an Attic king, but, like Demeter in the foundation story, as an object of genos cult. All gene¯ were thought to have a divine or heroic origin of some kind, and it was this that embedded their position in the polis. Even in the classical democracy the polis never interfered with the privileges of a genos, for they were divinely sanctioned. On the other hand the polis – which meant, in the fifth-century democracy the Assembly – was undoubtedly free to create new priesthoods and to organise systems for their appointment, as it was free to organise all other aspects of the city’s institutional life, in whatever way it saw fit. In IG I3 35, of the 440s or the 420s BC, we see it doing just that: by this decree the Assembly created the priesthood of Athena Nike and specified that it was to be appointed from all Athenian women by lot. It might, in principle, equally have decided to allocate (or, at least, to seek divine sanction to allocate) the new priesthood to a genos. So it does not seem that the Athenians ceased to create genos priesthoods because it was a constitutional impossibility, now that kings no longer ruled the city. The Athena Nike decree suggests a rather different reason: because the Assembly deliberately decided that new polis priesthoods would no longer be awarded to a genos, but that all Athenian citizens of the relevant gender should be eligible. Before the Assembly made such a decision, the

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Stephen Lambert creation of new genos priesthoods was, I suggest, a realistic action for the polis to take. Josine Blok has recently made an attractive case that Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/0 was a prerequisite for the city’s decision to create these ‘open’ priesthoods.23 No such priesthoods are known to have been created before the law; apart from the Athena Nike priesthood (perhaps the first of the new type), the foundation of several others, including the priesthood of Asklepios on the south slope of the acropolis, can be dated to the classical democracy after Pericles’ law.24 Moreover, the law’s effect was to require Athenian citizens to be of Athenian descent not only on the father’s side but also on the mother’s. A good case can be made that gene¯ must, in principle, always have attended to the quality of descent of members on the female side. They supplied not only priests, but also priestesses, so not only sons but also daughters of genos members were potential candidates for the priesthood, and a daughter continued to be eligible for a priesthood in her father’s genos even after marriage. It also seems that, in Athenian law, priesthoods, whether male or female, were treated analogously to other heritable goods: eligibility was heritable in the female line in the case that there were no eligible candidates in the male line.25 Moreover there seems to have been an idea, rarely expressed but implicit in our sources nonetheless, that pure-blooded Athenian descent was necessary for tenure of a polis priesthood.26 One might add that this logic of inheritance of property and priesthoods helps explain why phratries, which contained gene¯ within them, also paid close attention to the female line. The key communal ceremony marking marriage, the game¯lia, took place in phratries and marked the acceptance by the husband’s phratry (and implicitly, it seems, by gene¯ within the phratry) of a woman who was well qualified in relation to transmission of rights of membership, inheritance of property and (under Pericles’ law) citizenship;27 and our only documented case where formal introduction of an unmarried girl to a formal subgroup of the polis is envisaged was in a phratry and involved an epikle¯ros.28 In Blok’s view, then, Pericles’ law, by requiring citizens to be of citizen descent on the mother’s side as well as the father’s, in effect raised the whole citizen body to the level of purity of descent of genos members. Like many aspects of Athenian ‘democratisation’, the process was not one of reducing the best to the level of the ordinary, but of raising the ordinary to the level of the best. Once the whole people was as good as a genos it followed that you no longer needed gene¯ with special qualities of descent to supply candidates for any new priesthood the city might create: any citizen was qualified.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective If this is right, the converse is that before Pericles’ citizenship law ordinary citizens would not have been regarded as qualified to take on new polis priesthoods: any new priesthood would necessarily have been allocated to an existing genos, or one newly created for the purpose. Now the evidence for new priesthood creations by the polis before Pericles’ law is not strong, but a case can be made that the polis allocated priesthoods to gene¯ in the period between Solon and Pericles in at least three cases: the Salaminioi, composed, if my theory is correct, of Athenians established on Salamis in the archaic period;29 the Bakchiadai, who had functions connected with the City Dionysia (which perhaps included supplying the priest of Dionysos), a festival probably created in the second half of the sixth century;30 and the Phytalidai, whose priestly functions in relation to cult of Theseus are unlikely to have pre-dated the development of that hero’s mythology which took place in the fifth century and may, as Jacoby and Humphreys have suggested, have been created in connection with the return of the bones of Theseus to Athens by Cimon in the 470s.31 What, then, was the underlying reason for the city’s decision to open new priesthoods to all Athenians? Did gene¯ cease to be created because their ideology of inherited privilege had become inconsistent with the prevailing political ideology? This is the conventional view, and it is one subliminally influenced by inappropriate modern parallels. In modern Britain hereditary peerages are no longer created because they are ‘politically incorrect’; in other words there is broadly a political consensus that hereditary privilege is inconsistent with a modern democratic political system. The realities of fifth-century Athenian ideology in relation to citizenship and the priesthood, however, were rather different. Far from diverging from an outmoded ideology of heritable rights and privileges, it seems that, in Pericles’ citizenship law, with its emphasis on the female line of descent, the city appropriated that ideology in spades. The gene¯ were not to be repudiated, they were to be emulated. This pattern, city-emulating-genos, can also be observed in relation to another aspect of the ideology of citizenship in classical Athens: autochthony. There seem originally to have been two strands to this idea: that Attica had always been inhabited by the same people,32 and that some of the original Attic founder-heroes were sprung from the Earth.33 From about the 420s these two strands combined into a strong form of the idea: that the whole Athenian People was sprung from the Earth.34 The emergence of the strong form post-dates Pericles’ citizenship law and can again attractively be interpreted as an ideological consequence of that law’s raising the whole citizen body to the level of the gene¯, who par excellence were

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Stephen Lambert the groups which could trace their ancestry straight back to the origins of the city: γένος ἰθαγενῶν as they are described in the ancient scholarly literature.35 It has long been known that literal autochthony, the idea that one was descended from heroes sprung from the earth, was an aspect of the mythology of some gene¯ : the Eteoboutadai, for example, whose claim to ultimate descent from the Earth was advertised on a pinax set up in the Erechtheum in the late fourth century. Now, however, this aspect of genos mythology has been highlighted in striking fashion by the publication of a newly discovered inscription which reveals the existence of an Attic genos named Euenoridai, with ritual functions on the acropolis connected with Aglauros and the vestments of the statue of Athena.36 For this new genos supplies a key to understanding one aspect of an important document of the Athenian ideology of autochthony, the Atlantis myth in the Kritias of Plato. Atlantis in the Kritias is in some sense an ideal counterpart of Athens, a place with numerous Athenian attributes. These include the names of its inhabitants, which are like Athenian names. Plato signals the significance of this by having Kritias explain elaborately why: Solon, in whose papers the Atlantis myth was recorded, had found that the Egyptian priests from whom he learnt of the myth had translated the names into their own language. Solon in turn had translated them into Greek; and that, explains Plato, is why the names sound familiar.37 The parallels between Athens and Atlantis extend to the myth of origins, for like Athens, the original heroic ancestors of the citizens of Atlantis were born from the Earth; and most prominent of these autochthons, the man whose daughter married Poseidon and whose descendants became the princes of Atlantis, was named Euenor.38 In other words we can now see that Plato has very deliberately selected for the autochthonous Ur-hero of his mythical Athens-counterpart the eponym of a real-life Athenian genos. The myth of the autochthonous origins of the Athenian People as a whole was inextricably linked to the myths of origin of the Attic gene¯. This, I suggest, is the reason why there is no trace of historical genos foundations in genos myth. It is precisely because it was crucial to the identity, continuing relevance and prestige of the gene¯ in post-Periclean Athens that they were of immemorial antiquity, not in a way that essentially distinguished them from ordinary Athenians and the prevailing ideology of citizenship, but in a way that made them superior (they might claim) exemplars of the qualities of pure and ancient descent that were part of that ideology.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Myth and reality: social status This leads us onto the second aspect of genos myths that I want to consider: what implications do they have for the social status of the gene¯ within the community of the polis? Claims to ancient origins themselves generated status in a world in which the prevailing ideology was that implied by Pericles’ citizenship law and the autochthony myth; but the situation is more complex than this. Was it an essential feature of genos identity that every genos was descended from a common ancestor in the heroic and mythical time? And was that ancestor necessarily someone of high social status? The answer seems to be that there were differences in this respect from genos to genos; and I should like to suggest that there is a degree of correlation between these differences and real-life differences in the sociopolitical status of different gene¯. We are dealing with two variables: both the strength of a genos’ claim to descent from a common ancestor, and the social status of that ancestor and of the supposed original members of the genos. Gene¯ vary in their position on the scale on both counts. Right at the top of both scales are the Eteoboutadai. They explicitly claimed descent from Boutes, brother or son of Erechtheus, and towards the end of the fourth century a priest of Poseidon Erechtheus, Habron son of the orator Lykourgos, set up a pinax on which the succession of the priests of Poseidon Erechtheus in the genos was traced back to Boutes and Erechtheus, Earth and Hephaistos. They wanted to project the idea that they were descendants of Boutes in a strong sense. They were ‘genuine’, Eteo-boutadai, in contrast to the Pseudoboutadai of Cleisthenes’ deme Boutadai, but to an extent the name might also have been aimed at other gene¯, because no other genos displays quite this passion about the strength of their claim to be descended from their eponym. The identity of the eponym and the circumstances of his acquisition of the priesthood are also significant. For Boutes is not only brother, or in some versions son, of Erechtheus, one of the founding fathers of Attica; in one version of the myth the brothers were sons of King Pandion who divided their royal heritage, Erichthonios taking the temporal power, Boutes the priesthoods of Athena and Poseidon. In this version the priesthood is conceptualised as an aspect of kingship. More than any other Attic genos the Eteoboutadai sought to project themselves as a royal priesthood. Several real-life aspects of the genos and its priesthoods are consonant with this myth: its priesthoods were recognised as the two major priesthoods of the acropolis, the city’s physical and spiritual heart, and at critical moments the priestess of Athena represented her goddess in a way

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Stephen Lambert that, in effect, represented the city as a whole: confronting the Spartan king Cleomenes and ordering him out of her temple;39 encouraging the Athenians to follow Themistokles’ interpretation of the wooden walls oracle and evacuate Athens by announcing that the sacred snake had failed to eat its honey cake.40 Aeschines’ pride at being a member of the phratry which shared altars with the Eteoboutadai comes across to us as a rather pathetic snobbery, but it suggests that he expected the jury to share his respect for the great name; the prominent and religiously intensely engaged politician, Lykourgos, was a member; and there are indications that it was exclusive in the sense that it consisted of an unusually small number of families – at least, the two distinct branches of the genos which supplied the two main priesthoods seem to have been quite narrowly defined.41 Other gene¯, however, did not – or could not – assert quite such a strong claim to descent from a common ancestor. There appears to have been a genos Semachidai, which claimed descent from Semachos, who, with his daughters, had entertained Dionysos, as Phytalos had entertained Demeter, and they were rewarded by a female priesthood of Dionysos, vested in Semachos’ descendants. In the classical period there was also a deme Semachidai, but there is no sign that the genos took to calling itself Eteosemachidai. Kephisia was also a deme; its demotic Kephisieus, plural Kephisieis; again there was also a genos, Kephisieis: again a name the same as a deme, but not Eteo-Kephisieis – and that indeed would have been an unlikely name on any account since, although named for the river, Kephisos, and although there was of course a river god Kephisos, Kephisia was a geographical expression and the Kephisieis were its inhabitants, not defined by any relation of descent to Kephisos. It would be too simple, however, to equate claims to descent from an eponym with high status. For one thing, a name in –idai did not necessarily connote literal descent from the eponym.42 For another, several other genos names lack any connotation of descent from a common ancestor, and some of these, notably the Kerykes (on whom see below), and the Salaminioi, named for the island of Salamis, were far from obscure. The latter is our most fully documented genos in the pre-hellenistic record; there is no cult of a figure who can plausibly be identified as a common ancestor in its sacrificial calendar;43 but the genos certainly controlled important cults, notably those of Athena Skiras (of the festival Oschophoria), and of Aglauros and Pandrosos; and as the family of the vigorous anti-Macedonian politician and enemy of Aeschines, Hegesippos of Sounion, shows, it could boast prominent members who projected an ‘aristocratic’ style.44 Gene¯ also differed significantly, however, in their mythology about the social status of any founder-ancestor; and here the correlation with real-life

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective status can be drawn more closely. Some shared the Eteoboutad claim to royal ancestry. For example, the eponym of the Lykomidai, genos responsible for the Mysteries at Phlya to which belonged not only (to judge by his name) Lykomedes, a trierarch at the battle of Salamis, but also allegedly Themistokles himself, was thought to be Lykos, a son of Pandion who received Diakria as his portion on the division of Attica. The Eumolpidai supplied one of the two major priests of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the hierophant: in myth Eumolpos was an Eleusinian chief who led the Eleusinians in battle against Athenians under Erechtheus. These two gene¯ illustrate contrasting aspects of the dynamic that could produce claims to royal origins. The Mysteries at Phlya were a poor relation to the Mysteries at Eleusis, and the only direct evidence for the Lykomidai in the classical period is a horos on which they are recorded as creditor;45 but the genos flourished in the late hellenistic and Roman periods, boasting an array of altars and temples recorded by Pausanias. To claim not only Themistokles as member, but also descent from an Attic king, was a way to support and project an impression of ‘aristocratic’ lineage and identity at a time when ‘performing’ aristocratic status had again become sociopolitically important. The performance was probably, however, largely a mirage. The eponym of a genos called Lykomidai ought not to be Lykos; and the membership of Themistokles, whose mother was not an Athenian, would have sat uneasily with the attention the gene¯ seem normally to have given to pure-blooded Athenian descent.46 The Eumolpidai are a different case: here the descent from an ancient Eleusinian chieftain patently correlates comfortably with the status of the genos as supplier of the premier priest in the most famous and, over time, most consistently popular Attic cult of the Greek and Roman worlds, the hierophant; and in the Eumolpos-Erechtheus pairing the genos is presented as Eleusinian counterpart to the premier Athenian genos, the Eteoboutadai. The hierophants themselves, however, were not especially prominent individuals.47 The ‘royal’ status in this case is generated by the distinction of the cult, not of historical genos members, authentic or otherwise.48 Obscurer gene¯ might claim fainter royal links. The Krokonidai and the Koironidai were minor Eleusinian gene¯, their eponyms obscure figures given some mythological standing by identification as sons of Triptolemos, who, like Eumolpos, was one of the Eleusinian chiefs mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. A sort of pseudo-royalty was also conferred by the fact that Krokon was alleged to have been founder of the so-called ‘kingdom of Krokon’, which had no substance as a real kingdom, but was the name of an area of Attica between Athens and Eleusis. Minor gene¯ they may have been, but that did not prevent them from engaging in

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Stephen Lambert a legal dispute over claims to a priesthood for which Lykourgos and Dinarchos wrote opposing speeches that were famous in antiquity, though unfortunately now lost. Genos mythology played a crucial role in the dispute, each side attacking each other’s eponymous founder, the Krokonidai apparently alleging that Koiron was an illegitimate son of Triptolemos, the Koironidai that Krokon was only related to Triptolemos by marriage. This case highlights an important aspect of genos myths: they were not only antiquarian stories which explained contemporary phenomena such as the names of gene¯ and their rituals, they could have a hard edge as the basis of claims to substantive privileges in the real world. It also illustrates another way in which the ‘aristocratic’ ideology of the gene¯ sat quite easily within fourth-century ‘democratic’ ideology and practice. Real-life fourth-century Athenian courts were full of property disputes in which inheritance claims were based on allegations that an opposing claimant was illegitimate or connected with the deceased in ways that were otherwise weak or dubious. A genos priesthood was, in a sense, an item of property like any other;49 the difference in this case was that the claims and counter-claims related not to the present or the recent past but to the heroic and mythical time. In a rather special sense the dispute involved the projection onto a mythical plane of the everyday legal concerns about property and inheritance that engaged ordinary Athenian citizens. The kingdom of Krokon may have been a pseudo-kingdom, but it was a kingdom nonetheless. Some gene¯ claimed descent from quite ordinary individuals, who had no claim to any sort of kingdom, but who had performed a service of some sort to mankind or to gods and heroes. Sometimes the myth is clearly aetiological of a real-life rite or cult-role. We have already met Semachos, whose daughters entertained Dionysos and Phytalos who entertained Demeter. The reality was patently that, in the historical period, the Semachidai and the Phytalidai had charge of rites of theoxenia for Dionysos and Demeter, and the eponyms are projected into myth as the original hosts. But there is no suggestion that they were royalty or aristocrats: they are ordinary individuals who strike lucky by being visited by a god. Consistently with this ordinariness, no historical Phytalid or Semachid of distinction is known – in fact no member of either of these gene¯ is known by name. The members of such gene¯ were not, in reality, members of the socio-political elite, their cults were not particularly prominent, and they did not seek to project royal or ‘aristocratic’ origins for themselves. The genos Baridai or Embaridai seem to have held the (quite important) priesthood of Artemis Mounichia in the Piraeus. The Attic saying, ‘you’re Embaros’ ( Ἔµβαρος εἶ) meant ‘you’re a clever fellow’ and the original

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective cleverness of Baros or Embaros was to have agreed to sacrifice his daughter to Artemis to counter a plague on condition that ‘his genos’ (i.e. it seems again a genos of which he was to be the ancestor) acquired the life priesthood of Artemis Mounichia. With the guarantee of the priesthood in his pocket, he cunningly substituted a disguised goat for his daughter. Again there is no suggestion that (Em)baros was anyone but an ordinary Athenian, albeit one envisaged as living in the heroic and mythical time, who by his cleverness made good in a small way. ‘In a small way’ is perhaps worth stressing. The priesthood is certainly implied to be a desirable thing: it conferred priestly perquisites and no doubt a certain social standing, but there is no implication that it was a route to significant wealth and power or a passport to political office: it was not, in these senses, the ancient equivalent of modern ennoblement. And again no historical member of this genos is identifiable. Perhaps the clearest case of an obscure genos – as it were the opposite of the Eteoboutadai – is the Brytidai. This genos does have a patronymic-type name, but nothing at all is known about the eponym. The genos is known only from Demosthenes 59, where the speaker argues that its refusal to accept the son of Phrastor of Aigilia by Neaira’s daughter Phano shows that Neaira was not of Athenian citizen descent. Of the seven genos members named in the speech just one is known to be from a family of the liturgical class,50 and Phrastor is described by the speaker as ‘a working man, who scraped a living’.51 The image conveyed is a simpleton peasant, certainly not an ‘aristocrat’. Significantly, this is a case not of self-projection by a genos member, but of depiction by an orator for whom Phrastor’s naivety is important to his argument. The point remains, however, that an orator might judge it plausible to present the jury with such an image of a member of this genos. One can scarcely imagine an Eteoboutad being presented in such a fashion.52 Problem cases: Kerykes and Gephyraioi I should like to finish with a look at two cases where the socio-political status of a genos or of genos members, in myth or historical reality, is in some sense at issue. The genos Kerykes supplied one of the two major male priests of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the dadouch (torchbearer), and it contained one of the most prominent families of classical Athens, two of whose members, grandfather and grandson, both named Kallias son of Hipponikos, held the dadouchy.53 They fit all the criteria of the ‘aristocratic’ family, conceived in the broad sense to include not only high birth, but also vast wealth and political eminence; and they are explicitly stated in our sources to be eupatridai.54 Now membership of the genos Kerykes might indeed signify

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Stephen Lambert ‘good birth’ and the dadouchy might bestow a dignified religious authority,55 and it was doubtless mainly for this reason that they sought out tenure of the dadouchy;56 but this family strove so hard to ‘perform’ aristocratic status that they were felt, it seems, to have overplayed their hand. Already in the sixth century the first known member of the family, Kallias son of Phainippos, was not only winning equestrian victories in the Pythian and Olympic Games, he was indulging in ‘canting self-advertisement’ (Davies 1971) of these victories by naming his son Hipponikos. Davies shows clearly that the main sources of the family’s wealth were agricultural landholdings, supplemented in the fifth century by income from the silver mines of southern Attica, with revenues from the dadouchy itself making an additional contribution, unquantifiable, but probably not negligible given the popularity of the Mysteries. Whatever role it played in the economic foundations of the family’s fortunes, however, it is clear that they sought to deploy the dadouchy, as they deployed their Olympic victories, to make an impression. As Davies notes, the obvious rationalization of the early-fifth-century Kallias’ nickname, Lakkoploutos (‘Pit-wealth’), is that he was one of the first men to get rich from the silver mines of Laureion; but there were a number of more or less mischievous explanations of it in circulation. In one of these, recorded by Plutarch, at the battle of Marathon the elder Kallias made such an effect on the Persians by appearing in full priestly regalia that, after the battle, some barbarian, ‘thinking him a king because of his long hair and headband, bowed to the ground before him, took him by the hand and showed him a heap of gold buried in a pit’, whereupon Kallias promptly killed the man and took the gold. A contemporary source for such a prejudicial anecdote seems very likely, and Clinton’s suggestion that it originates in a scene in a comic play is attractive;57 but the satire was surely directed as much at Kallias’ overplaying of his display of the dadouchy as part of his attempts to ‘perform’ aristocratic – indeed royal – status, as it was at the allegedly dubious sources of his wealth. On the Athenian embassy to Sparta in 371 the younger Kallias was still deploying the dadouchy in his aristocratic ‘performance’, emphasising in the speech attributed to him by Xenophon on this occasion his status as Spartan proxenos, which in due aristocratic style, Kallias claims had been passed on from father to son in his family since the time of his greatgrandfather. He also emphasises the bonds between Sparta and Athens created by the traditions of the Mysteries which Kallias served as dadouch, including the myth that Herakles, founder of Sparta, and the Dioscuri, citizens of Sparta, were the first foreigners to whom Triptolemos, ‘our ancestor’, as Kallias insouciantly describes him, revealed the Mysteries

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective of Demeter and Kore.58 Xenophon points up the satire by a waspish introductory comment: Kallias was ‘the sort of man who enjoyed no less being praised by himself, than by others’.59 That this ‘royal’ status of the dadouchy was something performed, indeed overperformed, by the Kalliases, rather than something intrinsic to the office, gains confirmation from what we know (or rather what we do not know) of their fourthcentury successors in the dadouchy. Two are attested: Hierokleides, who with the hierophant determined the boundaries of the sacred orgas ca. 350,60 and Pythodoros, who resisted the improper admission of Demetrios Poliorketes to the Mysteries in 302.61 That is all we know about them; their families are wholly obscure, their anonymity, in contrast to their predecessors, striking and eloquent. As far as the mythology is concerned, a genos to which Kallias’ family so self-consciously belonged, ought, one feels, to have had a distinguished common ancestor, a royal figure like Boutes for the Eteoboutadai. But there was a problem, as the Kerykes were named not for an ancestor, but a function.62 Kallias’ assertion in 371 that he was descended from Triptolemos is rendered the more preposterous when one reflects that it is doubtful whether the genos as a whole actually laid claim to descent from this or any other divine or heroic figure. That seems to be the implication of a long Athenian decree of 20/19 BC or thereabouts honouring the dadouch Themistokles. Among other things the inscription contains a list of previous dadouchs; it names ten predecessors of Themistokles, back to ca. 200 BC and then ‘before all of these Hermotimos and Hierokleides who were dadouchs before the writing up of the Kerykes in the register (grammateion).’ The source of the list in the inscription appears to be the register of the Kerykes and that register apparently began to be kept only in the hellenistic period. It has a superficial similarity to the pinax of Habron set up in the Erechtheum, but in fact they are different animals. Habron’s pinax was put on display and the point it was intended to make about the divine and heroic descent of the Eteoboutadai is clear; it is ‘performed status’ in action. The grammateion of the Kerykes was a private register of members, and it has no deliberate point to make at all about the quality of the Kerykes’ ultimate ancestry. There is not even any attempt to link them with the famous Kalliases of the fifth century, let alone with heroic or divine ancestors. By itself the absence of such ancestors from a register of this sort would not be decisive. More indicative is that the same decree honouring Themistokles lists all the (many) priesthoods of the Kerykes, and there was no priest or cult of a genos founder or ancestor. And yet by the late fifth century such a figure had been generated in the form of Keryx, a hero, it seems, quite without independent cult or identity, but defined

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Stephen Lambert above all by his parents and by what those parents were intended to convey about the character and status of the group. In a tradition that cannot be traced back further than Euripides’ Erechtheus, Keryx is the product of a union between Hermes and one of the daughters of Kekrops. Hermes, who was Patroos for Eleusinians (as Apollo was for Athenians), expresses the genos’ Eleusinian identity; and the Kekropid descent in the female line connects the genos with Athenian citizen mythology by giving it an autochthonous Athenian ancestor to rival Boutes and Erechtheus. The artificiality of the construct is patent and is confirmed by points of variability and contention. The Eleusinian gene¯ were liable to disputes among themselves over their various privileges. We have already noted the one between the Krokonidai and Koironidai; also in the fourth century the hierophant Archias was condemned for officiating at a sacrifice at the festival Haloa which was a privilege of the priestess of Demeter.63 Though Eumolpos appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, there is no mention in it of Keryx.64 Whether or not the Kerykes were in fact latecomers to their function in the Mysteries, this absence from the Hymn might have helped generate claims that the hierophant was the senior priest; and one can easily imagine how such claims might have been deployed in disputes and have given rise to the alternative tradition that Keryx was merely a son of Eumolpos. There was also a tell-tale degree of uncertainty about which Kekropid was mother of Keryx, all three being claimed as such in different later sources. The quality which, above all, is potentially problematic – ‘genetically incorrect’, as it were – in an Attic genos, is foreign origins; and one of the most complex and multivalent myths relating to a genos is that of the tyrannicides, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, both members of the genos Gephyraioi. This genos, according to Herodotos (5.57–61), were foreign immigrants (ejected from Tanagra on the arrival of the Boeotians in his view, but he notes a variety of opinions on their ultimate origin) who settled in Attica, where they were admitted to the citizenship on terms which excluded them from ‘numerous but insignificant’ privileges (by which is perhaps meant the sort of privileges, including Attic genos priesthoods, from which later groups enfranchised en masse were also excluded).65 The Athenians in turn were excluded from the Gephyraian cult of Demeter Achaia in north-east Attica, an exception which incidentally seems to prove a rule that genos cults were normally open to participation by all Athenians and demonstrates clearly the ideological link between common descent and participation in common rites.66 Now the genos affiliation of the tyrannicides, although discussed at some length by Herodotos, is generally thought of as rather incidental to

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective the tyrannicide myth. It is not even mentioned in Thucydides’ account (6.54–59);67 and in modern discussions too the emphasis generally lies elsewhere, e.g. on the importance of the myth in the development of Athenian ideology of same-sex practices.68 We can, however, perhaps trace the impact of their genos-affiliation and its foreign origins on aspects of the myth. Hipparchos, to get his own back at Harmodios for rejecting his advances, refuses to accept Harmodios’ sister as a kane¯phoros in a procession (perhaps that of the Panathenaia)69 on the ground that she is unworthy (διὰ τὸ µὴ ἀξίαν εἶναι, 6.56.1). This incident of course has a perfectly good logic in terms of the personal relations of the protagonists; but one wonders whether Hipparchos might have had a pretext for this exclusion because Harmodios’ sister, as a Gephyraia, was excluded from performance of such a role in Athenian festivals. This is precisely the sort of ritual exclusion that might have been among the ‘numerous but insignificant’ privileges from which their grant of Athenian citizenship excluded the Gephyraioi. If this is right, it may serve as a corrective to the statement, often glibly repeated in modern literature on Athenian festivals, that the kane¯phoroi had to be ‘aristocratic’. For this claim derives from statements about the need for them to be ‘worthy’ in Philochoros (FGrH 328 F8, note the use of Thucydides’ ἄξιος terminology), which in turn become transmuted into statements about the need for eugeneia in later scholarship,70 statements which may all derive ultimately from the tyrannicide narrative.71 It is possible that, in the classical and hellenistic periods, the kane¯phoroi did indeed have to belong to the gene¯ (there is no explicit evidence on the point); but in the context of the tyrannicide myth the point may be not that they had to be ‘aristocratic’, but simply of pure-blooded Athenian origin, and not members of an immigrant group. Second, Thucydides makes a point of specifying that Aristogeiton was ‘one of the townsmen, a middling citizen’ (ἀνὴρ τῶν ἀστῶν, µέσος πολίτης). The significance of this is not entirely clear from his narrative; the effect may have been to make Aristogeiton ‘ordinary’ enough to serve as a universal Athenian hero of democracy, and perhaps too of a democratised pattern of same-sex relations, but I am again inclined to think that Aristogeiton’s status as Gephyraios may be relevant, for the Gephyraioi may have been a genos, but they traced their origins not to an earth-born founder hero of Attic myth, but to a group of ordinary migrants, of no very elevated status.72 Conclusion In a world in which, as other contributors to this volume have emphasised, socio-political status was something achieved to an extent by effective

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Stephen Lambert performance and enactment rather than something embedded in formal constitutional structures, myths about gene¯ and their members played a significant role in determining and projecting such status. A uniform aspect of genos myth concerned their origins: gene¯ collectively and individually succeeded in projecting myths of origins that were timeless or located in the heroic and mythical time, and were characteristically (if not uniformly) linked with the autochthonous founder-heroes of the city. Such a mythological construct was of fundamental importance to the identity of gene¯ and the status of their members as exemplary citizens in a world in which the parameters of Athenian citizen ideology were those set by Pericles’ citizenship law and the myth of Athenian autochthony, parameters that the gene¯ themselves had decisively influenced, and this mythological construct may in some cases obscure real origins in the late archaic and early classical period. That said, there were significant real differences in status between individual gene¯ as regards the popularity and profile of the cults they served, and in the prominence and distinction of individual genos members, and these can be observed reflected in significant differences in the mythology of individual gene¯. A genos like the Eteoboutadai, which controlled the two most prestigious priesthoods in Attica, could claim and display descent from founding kings and heroes, successfully projecting themselves as something close to a royal priesthood. Other gene¯ with prominent cult-roles or prominent members might plausibly do likewise; and such mythology and claims to prominent past members might be emulated by lesser gene¯ aspiring, as it were, to a slice of the same statuscake. Sometimes, however, the cults served by a genos might be more or less obscure and its members might not be specially prominent; in such cases the ordinariness of the genos might be reflected in a myth of foundation by an ordinary Athenian. Finally we saw, in the cases of the Kalliases and the Kerykes and of Harmodios and Aristogeiton and the Gephyraioi, some of the tensions and problems that could arise from incongruities in and between mythical projections and status realities. It might perhaps be helpful in the context of this volume to return, finally, to some broader observations about the gene¯ and ‘aristocracy’. The argument of this chapter is consonant with the view, for which I have argued elsewhere from the perspective of a more traditional style of institutional analysis, that gene¯ did not collectively wield formal power by controlling access to community membership and participation in cult; and that, in the classical period, it was not so much genos membership in general that generated high status as membership of specific gene¯ that controlled particularly prestigious priesthoods (e.g. the Eteoboutadai).73 Nevertheless, there are three ways that, in classical Athens, membership of any genos could

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective be seen as status-generating: all genos members, even those who could present themselves as from relatively poor backgrounds (as Euxitheos of Halimous in Demosthenes 57) could lay claim to the quality of eugeneia; all enjoyed eligibility for one or more specific old polis priesthoods that was not shared by citizens who were not members of the relevant genos; and all enjoyed another sort of exclusivity in that not every Athenian citizen in the classical period was a member of a genos at all. If Josine Blok is right, however, all three of these exclusive qualities were to a large extent neutralised in the classical period by Pericles’ Citizenship Law and the consequent extension of eligibility for polis priesthoods, and the mythology of autochthony, to all citizens. They were also neutralised rhetorically in the egalitarian and collectivist ethos of the classical democracy such that, for example, in the long series of inscribed decrees of the Council and Assembly honouring state priests and priestesses that begins in the 330s, genos priests and tenants of the post-Periclean ‘democratic’ priesthoods are indistinguishable in the description of their qualities and attributes, and there is no indication in any decree before the Augustan period that a genos priest enjoyed special qualities of birth. It was by and large only in privately generated commemorations of genos priests that their qualities of lineage and other ‘aristocratic’ features, such as their tenancy of priesthoods for life, were emphasised.74 There were at least two other features of the gene¯ that mitigated social exclusivity: appointment to genos priesthoods by lot did not prevent monopolisation of tenure for longer or shorter periods of time by families such as that of the Kalliases of Alopeke in the case of the dadouchy in the fifth century, or by descendants of the orator Lykourgos in the case of the Eteoboutad priesthoods in the hellenistic period.75 In the case of the Kalliases we do not know how this was achieved; in the Eteoboutadai it seems to have been linked to the restriction of eligibility for the two major Eteoboutad priesthoods to two quite narrowly defined genos branches. But in principle allotment was a ‘democratic’ appointment mechanism in that it spread chances of appointment among a group that normally extended beyond a single family line of descent, and the effect of this can be observed for example in the relative obscurity, noted above, of the tenants of the dadouchy that followed the younger Kallias in the fourth century. From an economic perspective it is also an important feature of this system that it should generally have militated against the accumulation of wealth derived from lucrative priesthoods in single families from one generation to another, a phenomenon I hope to explore more fully elsewhere in a broader study of wealth and the gene¯. If appointment by lot helped spread the priesthood and its benefits

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Stephen Lambert among different families in the genos, the capacity of membership to be transmitted in the female line was an important driver of social mobility in another sense, enabling genos membership to be acquired by those who were descendants in the male line of non-genos families. This is observable with particular clarity in the context of the revival of the gene¯ after 166 BC, when new families that typically came to prominence on the back of wealth associated with Athens’ re-acquisition, thanks to the Romans, of control over the commercial centre of Delos, bought into the eugeneia that genos membership conferred by strategies of marriage and adoption with genos families, enabling, in the process, less affluent genos families to boost their socio-economic status. As I have observed elsewhere, it is in the conditions of that period that a convergence of wealth and eugeneia, and a concentration of political and religious office-holding among a relatively restricted group of families, created a narrow ruling elite that can, perhaps for the first time in Athenian history, justifiably be designated as ‘aristocratic’.76 Acknowledgements I am very grateful to my fellow panellists in Cork, whose own papers and comments on the day were of immense help to me in working up this paper; to subsequent audiences in Lampeter and Utrecht for helping me to improve it; to Josine Blok for acute suggestions on drafts; and to Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees for wise advice at the final stage.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Table GENOS AND ARISTOCRACY: MYTH AND REALITY Genos Aigeirotomoi

Myth of Origins Not known. Name means ‘Pine cutters’.

Reality Real genos named for an occupation (cf. Kerykes)? Spoof genos derived from a comic play (cf. below, Pheorychoi)?

Amynandridai

Not known. Eponym alluded to by Plato Tim. 21 a–c.

Supplied priest of Kekrops (Parker 1996, 285–6).

Bakchiadai

None known.

Supplied officiants (including priest?) for cult of Zeus Eleuthereus at City Dionysia? (Lambert 1998b).

Bouzygai

From Bouzyges, first to yoke oxen and use them for agriculture (Bekker, Anecd. 1.221.8 etc.); a legislator (Lasos of Hermione, 6th cent. BC, PMG 705). Cf. Schol. Aeschin. 2.78 etc.

Performed sacred ploughing each year below acropolis and uttered curses (Parker 1996, 286–7). ‘Bouzyges’ = distinguished title. Held by: Demostratos, proponent of Sicilian expedition (Ar. Lys. 397; Eupolis Demes F 103, F 113); Demainetos, general in Corinthian war (Aeschin. 2.78, cf. Davies 1971, pp. 104–5).

Brytidai

Not known

Genos members gave evidence that they had refused to admit Phrastor’s son by Neaira’s daughter, Phano (Dem. 59.50– 61). One of the seven genos members who gave evidence was from a wealthy family (Davies 1971, 508), but Phrastor himself was ‘a working man, who scraped a living’ (Dem. 59.50).

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Stephen Lambert Genos (Em)baridai

Myth of Origins Reality (Em)baros obtained lifeApparently supplied priestess priesthood of Artemis for of Artemis Mounichia. genos descended from him by offering to sacrifice daughter to stay a plague. Substituted a disguised goat (Paus. Attic. F 35 Erbse etc.)

Erysichthonidai Erysichthon: for Plato one of the Attic heroes whose name is preserved, but whose deeds have perished (Kritias 110a); son of Kekrops (Apollod. 3.14.2, Paus.1.2.6); traveller to Delos (Phanodemos FGrH 325 F 2); led theo¯ria to Delos (Paus. 1.31.2), constructed temple of Apollo there etc. (see Kearns 1989, 162).

From Augustan period supplied life priest of Apollo on Delos (probably a revival of classical practice; from 166 to ca. 100 the priesthood had been annual). Cf. Aleshire and Lambert 2011. No members known before 1st cent. BC.

Eteoboutadai

Supplied priest of Poseidon Erechtheus and priestess of Athena Polias on acropolis. Cf. Blok and Lambert 2009 s.v. Eteoboutadai. Priestess of Athena ‘speaks for Athens’ at critical moments (e.g. invasion by Cleomenes, Hdt. 5.72, or the Persians, Hdt. 8.41). Aeschines (2.147) proud to be member of the phratry which shared altars with the Eteoboutadai. Most prominent genos member: Lykourgos the orator. Eligibility for priesthood apparently restricted in classical and early hellenistic periods to two different branches of genos, each quite narrowly defined (Blok and Lambert 2009).

Descended from Boutes son of king Pandion I and Zeuxippe and brother of Erechtheus. On the death of their father the brothers divided the inheritance, Erechtheus receiving the kingship, Boutes the priesthoods of Athena and Poseidon Erichthonios. Apollod. 3.14.8–15.1. (Other genealogies: Kearns 1989, 153). Habron son of Lykourgos the orator and priest of Poseidon Erechtheus set up a pinax in the Erechtheum displaying succession of priests of Poseidon Erechtheus in the genos back to ‘Boutes and Erechtheus son of Earth and Hephaistos.’ [Plut.] X Orat. 843e.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Genos

Myth of Origins

Reality Name, ‘real Boutadai’, suggests desire to claim superiority to deme Boutadai (and to other gene¯ ?).

Euenoridai

Euenor, name borrowed by Plato for autochthonous Ur-inhabitant of Atlantis whose daughter married Poseidon and whose descendants were princes of Atlantis (Plato Krit. 113c–d).

Genos with functions relating to Aglauros and to Athena’s vestments (Malouchou 2008; Lambert 2008). Cf. Aleshire and Lambert 2011.

Eumolpidai

Eumolpos = an Eleusinian chief (H. Hymn Dem. 154, 476); led Eleusinians in battle against Athenians under Erechtheus (Eur. Erechth., Thuc. 2.15.1, killed by Erechtheus, Apollod. 3.15.4).

Supplied hierophant at Eleusinian Mysteries (Parker 1996, 293–97). Cf. Blok and Lambert 2009 s.v. Eumolpidai. Many members attested, little sign of wealth or political prominence in classical period (cf. Parker 1996, 296–7, and above n. 47).

Gephyraioi

Expelled from Tanagra on arrival of Boeotians and emigrated to Attica (Hdt. 5.57–61. Other versions: Parker 1996, 288).

Granted Athenian citizenship, but excluded from ‘numerous but insignificant privileges’ (Hdt.). Controlled cult (and presumably supplied priestess) of Demeter Achaia, from which other Athenians excluded (Hdt.). Famous members: Harmodios and Aristogeiton, tyrannicides.

Kephisieis

None. Named for a location Nothing known. (cf. deme Kephisia).

Kerykes

No claim to descend from Keryx or cult of Keryx attested. However, Keryx = son of Eumolpos (FGrH 10 Andron F 13, Paus. 1.38.3, presumably according to Eumolpidai);

Supplied dadouch at Eleusinian Mysteries (Parker 1996, 300–302). Cf. Blok and Lambert 2009 s.v. Kerykes. Athenian decree of 20/19 BC honouring dadouch Themistokles names his 10

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Stephen Lambert Genos

Myth of Origins according to Kerykes = son of Hermes and one of the daughters of Kekrops in a tradition that starts with Eur. Erechth. F 65, 113–4 (Pandrosos, FGrH 325 Androtion F 1; Aglauros, Paus. 1.38.3; Herse, Kaibel Epigr. Graeca ex lapidibus collecta, Berlin 1878, 1046.32–4). In 371 Kallias the (younger) dadouch claims Triptolemos (Eleusinian hero who distributed Demeter’s gift of corn to mankind, Kearns 1989, 201) as ‘our ancestor’, Xen. Hell. 6.3.3–6.

Reality predecessors in dadouchy and ‘before all of these Hermotimos and Hierokleides who were dadouchs before the writing up of the Kerykes in the grammateion.’ (Clinton 2005, no. 300, 50–2). Prominent members: extremely wealthy and prominent family of Kallias son of Hipponikos (Davies 1971, no. 7826; Clinton 1972, 47–50). According to one anecdote the wealth of the elder Kallias, ‘Lakkoploutos’, derived from heap of gold buried in a pit, pointed out to him at battle of Marathon by a Persian who thought he was a king because he was dressed in his priestly regalia, and whom he kills (Plut. Aristid. 5 and 25, cf. Schol. Ar. Clouds 64).

Koneidai

Koneides was paidago¯gos of Theseus, Hesych., Plut. Thes. 4.

Presumably supplied priest of Koneides who received a sacrifice on day before Theseia (Parker 1996, 302).

Krokonidai and Krokon and Koiron = sons Koironidai of Triptolemos, one of Eleusinian chiefs mentioned in H. Hymn Demeter (153, 474, cf. above on Kerykes). In legal dispute about a claim to a priesthood for which Lykourgos and Dinarchos wrote speeches, Krokonidai apparently allege that Koiron was illegitimate, Koironidai that Krokon not son of T. but husband of his sister Saisara (Bekker Anecd. 1.273.7, Harp. s.v. Koironidai,

Supplied functionaries at Eleusinian Mysteries (Parker 1996, 302–4). No well-known members.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Genos

Myth of Origins Reality Paus. 1.38.1–2 with Kearns 1989, 67–8 and Parker 1996, 302–3). Krokon founder of ‘kingdom of Krokon’, area of Attica between Athens and Eleusis (Paus.).

Lykomidai

Lykos = son of Pandion who received Diakria as his portion on the division of Attica (Sophocles TGrF 4.24; ARV 2 259.1; Paus. 4.20.6–8).

Controlled Mysteries at Attic deme Phlya: Paus. 1.31.4 (cf. 9.27.2, 30.12, 1.22.7, 4.1.5). Famous members: allegedly Themistokles (Plut. Them. 1.4); Lykomedes, trierarch who dedicated spoils from battle of Salamis in shrine of Apollo Daphnephoros at Phlya (Plut. Them. 15.3, cf. Davies 1971, pp. 346–7).

Phreorychoi

‘Genos at Athens or those who dig wells’, Hesych.

Real genos named for an occupation (cf. Kerykes) or spoof genos mentioned in Philyllios, Phreorychos? (Cf. Parker 1996, 317; above, Aigeirotomoi).

Phytalidai

Phytalos entertained Demeter and was awarded fig-plant and his genos (i.e. genos descended from him) ‘ageless privileges’ (i.e. apparently a priesthood of Demeter), Paus. 1.37.2, Hesych. Later they purified Theseus at altar of Zeus Meilichios and were rewarded with sacrifice to Theseus financed by families who sent children to Minos (Paus. 1.37.4, Plut. Thes. 12, 23.5, Agora XIX P26.479).

Priestess of Demeter (?), who presumably performed rite of theoxenia. Sacrifice to Theseus, awarded to Phytalidai by Cimon of Lakiadai (where Phytalos’ tomb located located), after bones of Theseus recovered from Skyros in 470s? (S. Humphreys ap. Parker 1996, 169).

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Stephen Lambert Genos Salaminioi

Myth of Origins Reality None. Genos named for Well documented in location (island of Salamis). epigraphical record (See Lambert 1997a, 1999a, 2003; Rhodes and Osborne 2003 no. 37; Parker 1996, 308–16). Not mentioned in literary record. Genos formed from Athenians who occupied Salamis in 6th cent.? (Lambert 1997a, 1999a; for other theories see Rhodes and Osborne 2003 commentary to no. 37). Supplied priests of Eurysakes, Herakles at Porthmos, priestesses of Athena Skiras, Aglauros, Pandrosos and Kourotrophos. Well-known members: Hegesippos (‘Krobylos’), vigorous anti-Macedonian agitator (ally of Demosthenes against Aeschines), and his brother Hegesandros (full list at Lambert 1999a).

Semachidai

Descended from Supplied priestesses of Semachos, who, with his Dionysos (who presumably daughters, entertained performed rite of theoxenia). Dionysos. Steph. Byz. s.v. Semachidai.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Notes 1 See above all Davies 1971 and 1981. 2 Ober 1989. Note, however, the rather different (to my mind more persuasive) analysis of the orator-jury dynamic offered by Todd 1990. 3 I am thinking here mainly of the potential implications of an analysis of proposers of inscribed laws and decrees. The large number attested sits somewhat uneasily with a dualistic elite-mass socio-political model (see Hansen 1989, which needs updating in light of more recent epigraphical work). 4 Note in particular the widespread definition of ‘citizenship’ in classical Athenian sources in terms of participation in the hiera and hosia of the polis, Blok 2009a and 2014. 5 Bourriot 1976. My own contributions (especially Lambert 1998a and 1999b) have run in a broadly revisionist direction, though arguing in favour of a unitary model and against Bourriot’s distinction between sacerdotal genos and genos as local community or genos-ko¯me¯. 6 According to Blok and Lambert 2009 the principles of inheritance of genos membership were the same as for other types of property, i.e. it was normally transmitted in the male line, but could be carried by an epikle¯ros into the oikos of her husband. This was different from the Cleisthenic tribes and demes, in which membership was transmitted strictly through the male line. 7 Add the newly discovered Euenoridai, Lambert 2008. On other gene ¯ see also Lambert 1996, 79–81; Lambert 1997b, 192–203; Lambert 2003; Lambert 2008 (also on the Praxiergidai). 8 Lambert 1998a, 17–18. Like gene ¯, membership of phratries could apparently be transmitted via epikle¯roi. See Isae. 3.73 and 76 and further below. 9 See especially And. 1.125–7; Isae. 7.15–17; Dem. 57 and 59.59–61. 10 Common cult and property: most fully documented in the genos Salaminioi, Rhodes and Osborne 2003 no. 37 with Parker 1996, 308–16, Agora XIX L4b with Lambert 1997a. Lending to members: e.g. IG II2 2670 (Lykomidai), 2723 with Parker 1996, 320 (Glaukidai and Epikleidai), Finley 1952, 160 no. 147 (Gephyraioi). 11 Blok and Lambert 2009. 12 In Lambert 1999b I explored two possible theories about the origins of the religious functions of the gene¯ : that they were a ‘privilege’, perhaps a relic of wider privileges that the gene¯ had exercised in the archaic polis; and that they were simply a natural expression of genos-community which the genos continued to exercise when their cult was incorporated into the religion of the polis as a whole. 13 At Lambert 1998a, 61 n. 12, I noted that this was the apparent implication of FGrH 328 Philochoros F35 (which refers to a measure which provided that phratries should automatically admit genos members and orgeo¯nes, but not, it seems, Athenians generally), and of the fact that some Athenians who feature in cases in the orators where descent qualifications were at issue do not appear to have been genos members. Aleshire in Aleshire and Lambert 2011, 564, notes that this is also implied by decrees of the classical period creating new citizens, which admitted them to phratries and demes but never to gene¯, and by Aeschines’ remark (2.147) that he belonged to a phratry which shared altars with the Eteoboutadai (but was not apparently himself a genos member). See also n. 21. 14 Ath. Pol. F3 (probably relates to the time of Ion), cited in n. 21, with Lambert 1998a, Appendix 2.

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Stephen Lambert 15

Ath. Pol. F2 and F3 with Lambert 1998a, Appendix 2. Duplouy 2006 argues that there was not. See now his and Pierrot’s chapters in this volume. 17 Clear inter alia from the scheme of the Aristotelian Ath. Pol. in which the early city was divided into three classes, eupatridai, geo¯rgoi and demiourgoi, and separately into tribes, trittyes/phratries and gene¯, below n. 21. 18 Eugene ¯s, ‘of good birth’, could be associated with genos membership (e.g. by Euxitheos of Halimous, defending his Athenian citizenship qualifications at Dem. 57.46–8) and is similar in meaning to eupatrides, ‘of good ancestry’. 19 E.g. Kallias, priest (dadouch of the Kerykes) and eupatrides (Xen. Symp. 8.40). See further below. 20 I am thinking here, for example, of the authors of the works on the Attic gene ¯, FGrH 344 Drakon and 345 Meliton, which were both perhaps written in the period of genos revival in the late second century BC (cf. Parker 1996, 284–5, Ismard 2010, 375–8, Aleshire and Lambert 2011, 557), though almost nothing of these works survives and it is unclear how far they were based on ‘field work’ and how far on research in written texts. 21 ‘In the old days, before Cleisthenes’ re-organization of the tribes, the Athenian People were divided into geo¯ rgoi and demiourgoi...as Aristotle relates in the Ath. Pol., as follows: “they were distributed into four tribes, in imitation of the seasons of the year, and each tribe was divided into three parts, so that there were twelve parts altogether, like the months of the year, and they were called trittyes and phratries. Thirty gene were marshalled into each phratry, like the days of a month, and each genos consisted of thirty men.”’ Lex. Patm. s.v. genne¯tai. See Lambert 1998a, Appendix 2. I would not interpret this to imply that Aristotle bought into a post-Periclean view that all Athenians were entitled to cult-functions; the implication is rather that not all contemporary Athenians could trace their citizenship back to the early days of the city. Whether by legitimate means (as e.g. the immigrant Gephyraioi, on whom further below, or those made citizens by decree) or illegitimate (as e.g. those alleged to have been dubiously enfranchised by Cleisthenes, Ath. Pol. 21.4) there were fourth-century Athenians who were not genos members. 22 ἐξ οὗ δὴ τιµὰς Φυτάλου γένος ἔσχεν ἀγήρως. The characterisation of a priesthood as τιµαί tends to confirm a hellenistic origin for this epigram, cf. Kearns 1989, 205, and on the hellenistic tendency for religious and political offices to be monopolised by a narrow elite of wealth, Aleshire and Lambert 2011. 23 Blok 2009a; Lambert 2010b. 24 See, in detail, Lambert 2010b. 25 See Blok and Lambert 2009. 26 This is apparent from the restrictions imposed on foreigners made Athenians by decree. The earliest such decree awarded Athenian citizenship to the Plataians who escaped to Athens in 427 and who were to ‘share in everything in which Athenians share, both hiera and hosia, except for any rite or priesthood that belongs to a genos or the nine archons’, Dem. 59.104. Though the authenticity of the precise wording of the decree presented in this speech is debatable, the prohibition on access to priesthoods is also emphasised in the body of the speech as a feature of the Athenian law on the creation of new citizens (Dem. 59.93 and 106). See further Blok and Lambert 2009. A similar emphasis on eugeneia as a qualification for priesthoods is apparent in other 16

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective contexts, e.g. Dem. 57.46, where Euxitheos of Halimous implicitly ascribes to his eugeneia his pre-election to the pool from which a deme priesthood of Herakles was appointed by lot. 27 Lambert 1998a, 181–5. On the connection of game¯lia with legitimacy see also Ogden 1996, 85–7. 28 Isae. 3.73 and 76 with Lambert 1998a, 178–88. The logic by which phratry and genos concerned themselves with the female line is clear, but this does not imply that they invariably in practice scrutinised the wives and daughters of members with rigour. The case of potential introduction of an epikle¯ros to a phratry in Isae. 3 stands remarkably alone in the evidence and 3.76 shows that procedures might vary from phratry to phratry. Moreover, orators could impute lax procedures where it suited their case, as e.g. Andocides, for whom the acceptance by the Kerykes of Kallias the dadouch’s son by Chrysilla (allegedly both Kallias’ mother-in-law and his mistress), some time after his alleged rejection by Kallias’ phratry, was an embarrassment (1.126–7, cf. Lambert 1998a, 68–71): ‘the Kerykes voted according to the law they have whereby the father may introduce a child when he swears that the child he is introducing is his...taking hold of the altar he swore that the child was his legitimate son, by the daughter of Chrysilla.’ This type of contentious assertion by an orator provides an insecure basis for reconstructing the actual procedures of the Kerykes on this occasion (which may have been more rigorous than Andocides implies), or of the gene¯ more generally, or for the view of Ogden 1996, 116–7, that the incident suggests that ‘gene had less formally strict entrance requirements than phratries’. 29 See Lambert 1997a and 1999a. Cf. Rhodes and Osborne 2003 no. 37. 30 Lambert 1998b. I am not persuaded by Sourvinou-Inwood 2011, 312–39, that ‘there was no traditional gentilicial connection between the genos Bakchiadai and the City Dionysia’ (339) and that it was ‘more likely’ a new genos, ‘created in the context of the gene revival in the second century BC.’ (Similar suggestion by Ismard 2010, 367–8). I can not do justice to her careful argumentation here; but I have made at Aleshire and Lambert 2011, 557–8, the case for doubting that new gene¯ were created in the second century. Foundation of the City Dionysia: Parker 1996, 92–3. 31 Jacoby ad FGrH 327 Demon F6; Humphreys ap. Parker 1996, 169–70. The tomb of Lakios, eponym of Cimon’s deme Lakiadai, was close to that of Phytalos, Paus. 1.37.2; Kearns 1989, 180, 205. 32 Hdt. 7.161, Thuc. 1.2, 2.36, Ar. Wasps 1071–8 etc. 33 FGrH 323a Hellanikos F10; FGrH 328 Philochoros F92; Apollod. 3.14. The two strands and their combination are elucidated by Blok 2009b. 34 The ‘strong’ idea of Athenian autochthony appears first in the Erechtheus (late 420s) and the Ion (ca. 410) of Euripides. 35 The term is applied to Attic gene ¯ by Hesychius, who glosses its meaning as αὐτόχθων, γνήσιος. Cf. Parker 1996, 284–5; Blok 2009b; Ath. Pol. F3 (above n. 21). 36 Malouchou 2008; Lambert 2008. 37 Krit. 113a–b. Plato had displayed a similar preoccupation with the names of genos eponyms and heroes associated with gene¯ at Krit. 110a–b (Kekrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonios, Erysichthon); and at Tim. 21a–c he alludes obliquely to the eponym of the genos responsible for the cult of Kekrops, Amynandros. Cf. Lambert 2008, 24–5. 38 Krit. 113a–b. 39 Hdt. 5.72.

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Stephen Lambert 40

Hdt. 8.41. Blok and Lambert 2009. 42 Kearns 1989, 72; Lambert 1998a, 9–10. 43 See Rhodes and Osborne 2003 no. 37; Parker 1996, 308–16. 44 On the members of the genos Salaminioi see Lambert 1999a; on the family of Hegesippos, nicknamed ‘Krobylos’ for his archaic-aristocratic habit of wearing his hair long and in a bun, see also Lambert 2010a, 234–5; Davies 1971 no. 6351, revised in Davies 2011. 45 Above n. 10. 46 Admittedly, one cannot be certain how far, before Pericles’ law, gene ¯ lived up in practice to the ideal of preservation of the pure blood-line. Cf. n. 28. 47 Eight hierophants are known from the fifth and fourth centuries, most no more than names. One of them, Archias, had a friend who was an oligarch in Thebes in 379 (Plut. Pelop. 10, Mor. 596e, Nepos Pelop. 3.2), and another, Lakrateides, married into a family of liturgical class (Isae. 7.9, Davies 1971 no. 1395), but none is known to have belonged to such a family in his own right (on the vague references to Archias’ liturgies at Dem. 59.117 see the remarks of Parker 1996, 296 n. 37). Cf. Blok and Lambert 2009 s.v. Eumolpidai. 48 Compare the Bouzygai, where there was both a prominent cult role, and real prominent members in the late fifth century, and a founder who appears very early in the written record as a legislator. 49 See n. 6. 50 Nikippos of Kephale, syntrierarch in 322 (Davies 1971 no. 10833). 51 ἄνδρα ἐργάτην καὶ ἀκριβῶς τὸν βίον συνειλεγµένον, Dem. 59.50. 52 Another obscure genos with a relatively low-status eponym is the Koneidai. 53 See above all Davies 1971 no. 7826. Dadouchy: Blok and Lambert 2009, s.v. Kerykes. 54 Above n. 19. 55 For example, in the real world, the Kerykes and Eumolpidai would seek to deploy their authority to oppose the recall of the profaner of the Mysteries, Alcibiades (Thuc. 8.53.2). 56 Since appointment was normally by lot from the genos, the family may well have needed to exert itself quite strenously to secure the office (cf. Blok and Lambert 2009, 101). 57 Clinton 1972, 47. 58 Xen. Hell. 6.3.3–6. 59 Xenophon’s remark about Kallias is generally, and surely rightly, taken as critical of his self-importance (e.g. by Dillery 1995, 243). Gray 1989, 124, points out that Xenophon does not seem elsewhere to have had a negative attitude to those who praise themselves (cf. Agesilaos’ opinion reported at 8.2), but does not convince me that Xenophon intended here to give the impression that such behaviour was a virtue. 60 FGrH 324 Androtion F30; 328 Philochoros F155. 61 Plut. Demetr. 26. 62 It seems as ‘heralds’ of the mystic truce, cf. Athen. 234e–f = Solon Nomoi F 88 Ruschenbusch; Parker 1996, 300–1. 63 Dem. 59.116. 64 Cf. Richardson 1974, 7–8. 41

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective 65

Lambert 1998a, 53. Cf. above n. 26. As André Lardinois suggests to me, the historical fact was most likely the mutually exclusive cults, and the foreign origins were an aetiological myth designed to explain it. On the Gephyraioi see also Lambert 2010b, 152–3. 67 Was this because, for some, the fact that these heroes of democracy were of foreign origin was an embarrassment? 68 See e.g. Fisher 2001, 277–8. 69 Asserted by Ath. Pol. 18.2, though Thucydides seems to imply another festival (because, after the insult, Harmodios and Aristogeiton ‘wait for the Great Panathenaia’, 6.56.2). Hornblower attempts, in his note on 56.1, to press the authority of Thucydides on this point. The comment of Gomme, Andrewes and Dover is more judicious: ‘Ath. Pol. makes this the Panathenaia, which is obviously not what Thucydides has in mind’. We are dealing with different versions of a myth, not with factual accounts that can be adjudicated as to their historical accuracy on such details. 70 Hesych., scholia ad Ar. Ach. 242 etc. See Jacoby’s note on FGrH Philochoros 328 F8. One thinks in this connection of Aristot. Rhet. 1.5.5, 1360b 30–3: ‘Eugeneia, for a nation (ethnos) or a city ( polis), is their being autochthonous or ancient...’. On no account were the Gephyraioi autochthonous. 71 Thucydides does not explain in what way the girl was alleged to be ‘unworthy’. In Francophone scholarship the idea that it was related to her status as immigrant Gephyraia is widely accepted. See e.g. Brulé 1987, 303–5; Ismard 2007, 25–8. An alternative view, currently fashionable in the Anglophone world (e.g. given a fair wind by Hornblower 2008, 448–9), but more forced in my judgement, is that the insult impugned the girl’s chastity. The cognate usage at 54.3 (see next note) rather supports a status-related interpretation here. 72 Harmodios in Thucydides is ‘brilliant’ (λαµπρός, 6.54.2), in which there may be an element of class-connotation, by contrast with Aristogeiton, though the main idea is of physical and all-round attractiveness. The point about Aristogeiton's status serves a narratological purpose, being picked up by Thucydides at 54.3, when he comments that Aristogeiton plotted against the tyranny, ὡς ἀπὸ τῆς ὑπαρχούσης ἀξιώσεως, ‘i.e. so far as his influence as a µέσος πολίτης allowed’ (Gomme, Andrewes and Dover 1970 ad loc.). This connection with 54.3 goes against the (to my mind forced) suggestion of Davidson 2006, 41 (cf. Hornblower 2008, 442), that µέσος πολίτης relates to Aristogeiton’s age-class (in contrast to the younger Harmodios). 73 Lambert 1998a. Crucial here is the interpretation of the ‘Demotionidai decrees’, most recently discussed in a fine contribution by Carawan 2010. 74 On this see Lambert 2012. 75 See Blok and Lambert 2009. 76 See Aleshire and Lambert 2012, 559; Lambert 2011. 66

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Stephen Lambert Bibliography Aleshire, S.B. and Lambert, S.D. 2011 ‘The Attic gene¯ and the Athenian religious reform of 21 BC’, in J.H. Richardson and F. Santangelo (eds), Priests and State in the Roman World, Stuttgart, 553–75. Blok, J.H. 2009a ‘Pericles’ citizenship law: a new perspective’, Historia 58, 141–70. 2009b ‘Gentrifying genealogy: on the genesis of the Athenian autochthony myth’, in C. Walde and U. Dill (eds), Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen. Festschrift Fritz Graf, Berlin, 251–75. 2014 ‘A covenant between gods and men: hiera kai hosia and the Greek polis’, in C. Rapp and H.A. Drake (eds), The City in the Classical and Post-Classical World: Changing contexts of power and identity, Cambridge, 14–37. Blok, J.H. and Lambert, S.D. 2009 ‘The appointment of priests in Attic gene¯ ’, ZPE 169, 95–121. Bourriot F. 1976 Recherches sur la nature du génos, Lille. Brulé, P. 1987 La fille d’Athènes, Paris. Carawan, E. 2010 ‘Diadikasiai and the Demotionid Problem’, CQ 60, 2010, 381–400. Carawan, E. (ed.) 2007 The Attic Orators, Oxford. Clinton, K. 1972 The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Philadelphia. 2005 Eleusis. The Inscriptions on Stone. IA Text, Athens. Davidson, J. 2006 ‘Revolutions in human time: age-class in Athens and the Greekness of Greek revolutions’, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds), Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 29–67. Davies, J.K. 1971 Athenian Propertied Families, Oxford. 1981 Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens, New York. 2011 ‘Hegesippos of Sounion. An underrated politician’, in S.D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man. Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, Swansea, 11–23. Dillery, J. 1995 Xenophon and the History of his Times, London and New York. Duplouy, A. 2006 Le prestige des élites, Paris. Finley, M.I. 1952 Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, New Brunswick. Fisher, N.R.E. 2001 Aeschines. Against Timarchos, Oxford. Gomme, A.W., Andrewes, A., Dover, K.J. 1970 A Historical Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. IV. Books V 25–VII, Oxford.

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Aristocracy and the Attic genos: a mythological perspective Gray, V. 1989 The Character of Xenophon’s Hellenica, London. Hansen, M.H. 1989 ‘The number of rhetores in the Athenian ecclesia, 355–322 BC’, GRBS 25, 1984, 123–55, reprinted with Addenda in The Athenian Ecclesia II, Copenhagen. Hornblower, S. 2008 A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. III. Books 5.25–8.109, Oxford. Ismard P. 2007 ‘Les associations en Attique de Solon à Clisthène’, in J.-C. Couvenhes, S. Milanezi (eds), Individus, groupes et politique à Athènes de Solon à Mithridate, Tours. 2010 La cité des réseaux. Athènes et ses associations VI e-I er siècle, Paris. Kearns E. 1989 The Heroes of Attica, London. Lambert, S.D. 1996 ‘Notes on two Attic horoi ’, ZPE 110, 77–83. 1997a ‘The Attic genos Salaminioi and the island of Salamis’, ZPE 119, 85–106. 1997b Rationes Centesimarum, Amsterdam. 1998a The Phratries of Attica, Ann Arbor (2nd edition). 1998b ‘The Attic genos Bakchiadai and the City Dionysia’, Historia 47, 394–403. 1999a ‘IG II2 2345, thiasoi of Herakles and the Salaminioi again’, ZPE 125, 93–130. 1999b ‘The Attic genos’, CQ 49, 484–9. 2003 ‘Two documents of Attic gene¯ ’, Horos 14–16, 77–82. 2008 ‘Aglauros, the Euenoridai and the autochthon of Atlantis’, ZPE 167, 22–6. 2010a ‘Connecting with the past in Lykourgan Athens: an epigraphical perspective,’ in H.-J. Gehrke, N. Luraghi and L. Foxhall (eds), Intentional History. Spinning Time in Ancient Greece, 225–38. 2010b ‘A polis and its priests: Athenian priesthoods before and after Pericles’ Citizenship Law’, Historia 59, 143–75. 2012 ‘The social construction of priests and priestesses in Athenian honorific decrees from the fourth century to the Augustan period’, in M. Horster and A. Klöckner (eds), Civic Priests. Cult Personnel in Athens from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity, Berlin, 67–133. Malouchou, G.E. 2008 ‘Νέα ἀττικὴ ἐπιγραφή’, in A.P. Matthaiou and I. Polinskaya (eds), Μικρὸς Ἱεροµνήµων. Μελέτες εἰς µνήµην Michael H. Jameson, Athens, 103–15. Ober, J. 1989 Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, Princeton. Ogden, D. 1996 Greek Bastardy in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods, Oxford. Parker, R. 1996 Athenian Religion. A History, Oxford. 2005 Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford. Rhodes P.J. and Osborne R. 2003 Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 BC, Oxford.

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Stephen Lambert Richardson, N.J. 1974 The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Oxford. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (edited by Robert Parker) 2011 Athenian Myths and Festivals, Oxford. Todd, S.C. 1990 ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Attic Orators: the social composition of the Athenian jury’, JHS 110, 146–73. Reprinted with ‘Retrospective (2005)’ in Carawan (ed.) 2007, chapter 12.

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7 ‘ARISTOCRACY’ IN ATHENIAN DIPLOMACY Noboru Sato Introduction It is hard to imagine a society without political elites and leaders. A small number of people always exercise more influence within their community than others, because they have more ‘political capital’ than the rest of the community, i.e. they have resources such as wealth, religious authority, military or administrative offices, specialised knowledge, sophisticated skills, or degrees from high-ranking universities, from which they derive power and authority.1 At one end of the spectrum, most political capital is inherited and restricted to a small number of families, and we have an elite of ‘aristocrats’ ruling an ‘aristocratic society’.2 At the other end, the chances of obtaining political capital are open to many members of the community, so that social mobility is high, and the families who produce political leaders change from generation to generation. Political capital takes many forms, and different communities have different ideas about what constitutes political capital. These ideas, moreover, vary and change even within a single community. In Athens, the dominant form of political capital changed throughout its history. W.R. Connor claims that most Athenian politicians before the age of Pericles were from traditional leading families and derived influence from personal connections with other such families. In the late fifth century, however, newly-rich men made themselves influential by cultivating the support of the people through public speaking and generous spending on liturgies.3 In other words, new and relatively ‘open’ forms of political capital (eloquence and largesse) replaced the traditional and exclusive form (i.e. friendships with other leading families). Over a longer span of time, according to J.K. Davies, Athenian political history witnessed three phases: first, families who held hereditary control over particular cults exercised power; then, rich men won the support of the people by conspicuous expenditure; finally, rhetorical and administrative skills enabled those with no inherited advantages to be dominant in politics. That is to say, Davies considers hereditary control of cult, wealth, and rhetorical and administrative skills as successively the most influential forms of political capital from the

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Noboru Sato archaic period to the late fifth century.4 These theories have been expanded and refined,5 but scholarship has generally agreed that the influence of hereditary forms of political capital almost disappeared in Athens under democracy in the late fifth and fourth century, with the exception of inherited wealth, which must have remained more or less important. One important form of political capital in Athens’ changing political scene has not attracted much attention: friendships with foreign kings, elites, and countries. Foreign affairs were, needless to say, enormously important to citizens in the ancient world, all the more so because they were themselves soldiers and experienced frequent wars and military or political interventions. That personal relations played an important role in international politics is well established, notably by the studies of Gabriel Herman and Lynette Mitchell,6 but the significance of friendships, xenia and proxenia as political assets within Athens, has been little studied. In this chapter, first of all, I elucidate the importance of international personal friendships as a form of political capital for Athenian politicians in the late fifth and fourth century, the period when the power of hereditary forms of political capital is thought to have declined. Next, I look at the extent to which personal international ties were hereditary or affected by social mobility. Personal international connections as political capital In order to gauge the importance of personal friendships with foreign kings, leaders or states as a form of political capital, let us begin by examining the roles of international connections in Athenian decision-making. Athens established a democratic process for foreign affairs as for all other matters. Athenian ambassadors were elected by the people’s assembly. While they were abroad, they were expected to behave in accordance with the people’s instructions. When they came back home, they were required to submit to an audit.7 When foreign ambassadors came to Athens, they were formally accepted by the prytaneis and the council and made speeches before council and assembly.8 After the ambassadors’ report and debates between Athenian politicians, it was the citizens in assembly who made the final decision by a show of hands. It was, however, obviously impossible to eliminate from the formal decision-making process the use of informal political influence through personal contacts. First of all, Athenian politicians apparently had private negotiations with various people, including ambassadors or politicians from foreign states, before they sat at the formal negotiating table in council or assembly. Some episodes illustrate the importance of such informal preliminary negotiations.

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy Aeschines often mentions Demosthenes’ private negotiations with foreigners before the formal process. In 348/7, when Antipater of Macedon visited Athens, Demosthenes was said to have advised the ambassador on his speech beforehand (Aeschin. 3.72). He was also said to have negotiated in advance with ambassadors from Chalcis about the contents of the Athens-Euboea alliance, which was officially proposed by Demosthenes himself, and to have prepared a speech for Callias, the tyrant of Chalcis (3.91, 95). Aeschines also claims that the letters and ambassadors sent by the leading men of Asia and Europe, ignoring council and assembly, came to private houses, and that certain citizens who received ambassadors and letters boasted of them before the people (3.250). Here the orator clearly insinuates that Demosthenes had private contacts both with Persia and with certain major Greek states.9 While it is not certain that the origins of these personal connections between Demosthenes and foreign politicians preceded their putative private meetings, more or less long-term friendships between many Athenian politicians and foreigners are attested before they had informal meetings. Dinarchus suggests that Theban ambassadors privately met Demosthenes in order to mobilise the Arcadians against Macedon in 335, asking for a huge amount of money, which is described as a small part of the gold received from the Persian king (Din. 1.20). By this time this Athenian politician seems to have already obtained a proxenia from the Thebans (Aeschin. 2.131, 134) and played an important role in forging an Athenian-Theban alliance in 339/8.10 In 422/1 BC, Alcibiades privately met Spartan envoys including Endius, his xenos, after the council meeting but before the assembly (Thuc. 5.45).11 According to Thucydides, the ambassadors made a speech in the council to assuage discord between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, stating that they had come with full power (autokratores) to reach an agreement. This made Alcibiades worry that the Athenians would be persuaded and reject the alliance with the Argives and their allies for which he had been paving the way. Before the assembly met, he persuaded the ambassadors to conceal their full powers, promising that he would help them achieve some of their objectives. Although the ambassadors relied on Nicias as a champion of the peace treaty between Athens and Sparta and they must have known that Alcibiades was in opposition to them,12 his friendship with Endius presumably enabled him to meet them. In the assembly, as a result of Alcibiades’ intrigues, the Spartan ambassadors were discredited and the movement towards the alliance with the Argives prevailed. Alcibiades could also have had preliminary negotiations with the Spartans for the peace treaty in 423/2. At the Spartan assembly, according

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Noboru Sato to Thucydides, Alcibiades complained that the Lacedaemonians neglected his hereditary connection to their state and honoured Nicias and Laches by negotiating the treaty with Athens through them instead (Thuc. 6.89).13 Alcibiades was, however, neither a military officer nor an ambassador in 423/2. This episode thus suggests that the Spartans could negotiate with an Athenian with personal connection to Sparta, even if he was not officially elected as a representative for the people of Athens. In 390/89 BC, Aristophanes, son of Nicophemus, privately hosted and entertained the ambassadors from Cyprus (Lys. 19.27). Presumably Aristophanes did not just offer them food and hospitality. First of all, he can be plausibly connected to Cyprus, or Euagoras, the ruler of Cypriot Salamis. Although there is no clear evidence of any close connection between them before this date, Aristophanes’ father Nicophemus lived in Cyprus with his close friend Conon, who was clearly connected with Euagoras.14 Moreover, in 393, when Conon wanted to send someone to Sicily in order to connect Dionysius with Euagoras by marriage, Aristophanes undertook the task with Eunomus, a xenos of the Syracusan tyrant (19.20). Besides, he was thought to have involved himself with public affairs as well as his private business (οὐ µόνον τῶν ἰδίων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν κοινῶν ἐβούλετο ἐπιµελεῖσθαι). And in 390/89, when the Athenians voted to assist the Cypriots, Aristophanes himself went to Cyprus as an ambassador (Lys. 19.23). It seems highly likely that such private negotiations were common. Foreign ambassadors were evidently free to meet with Athenian citizens, including politicians. Ambassadors from foreign states were not under surveillance in Athens except at reception parties (xenia).15 There was no public residence for foreign ambassadors in Athens. The polis seems to have relied on private persons, especially proxenoi, to entertain foreigners. Private houses of proxenoi were such common places for foreign ambassadors in Athens to stay at that Athenians (and presumably other Greeks) could easily find ambassadors there, as Xenophon suggests (Hell. 5.4.22).16 The proxenoi in Athens and other Athenians who hosted ambassadors were often themselves active in politics. Callias, a Spartan proxenos, who received the Spartan ambassadors in 378, had been sent to Sparta three times as an ambassador (Xen. Hell. 5.4.22; 6.3.2, 4). Meidias, a proxenos for Eretria and maybe a friend of the Eretrian tyrant Plutarchus, was active in foreign affairs to some extent (Dem. 21.110, 171–4, 200). Aeschines called Demosthenes a Theban proxenos in his speech of the year 343 (Aeschin. 2.141, 143). This political rival of Demosthenes was, in turn, said to be a proxenos both for Eretria and for Oreus, and hosted envoys from these states in 342/1 (Dem. 18.82–3). Callippus, a Heraclean proxenos in the late

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy fourth century, seems to have been active in politics ( politeuomenou kai ouk idio¯tou ontos [Dem.] 52.28, cf. 3, 9, 25). Epigraphical evidence also suggests that not a few leading Athenian politicians, such as Conon, Androtion of Gargettus, Leodamas of Acharnae, Aristophon of Azenia, and Cephisophon of Aphidona, were proxenoi.17 Although there is no information on whether these Athenians hosted ambassadors or politicians from the states that granted them proxenies, such foreign states would plausibly expect them to care for their fellow citizens visiting Athens. Private negotiations must have been useful both for foreign ambassadors and for Athenian politicians. The latter presumably expected to obtain updated and relatively reliable information from them, though there must have been a risk of deception. While some scholars have emphasized the importance of proxenoi as informants to the foreign governments that appointed them,18 they must also have been well-informed sources of information to their own governments. For the foreigners, preliminary negotiations must have been important especially because they could not move a resolution in Athens by themselves but needed suitable Athenian instigators and movers in the council and assembly. Ambassadors could also gauge Athenian public opinion and citizens’ moods through private negotiations with the locals. As well as in informal preliminary negotiations, private international friendships were important in the formal diplomatic process, though it is often impossible to distinguish the formal negotiations from the preceding private discussions. Callias son of Hipponicus, one of the ambassadors sent to Sparta in 371 in order to persuade the Lacedaemonians to make a peace treaty, started his speech by declaring that he was a Spartan proxenos (Xen. Hell. 6.3.2, 4–6). This suggests that proxenia was to a certain extent effective in winning the favour of the people of the state which had granted the honour. Theopompus says in the tenth book of his Philippica, ‘When five years had not yet gone by, a war having broken out with the Lacedaemonians, the people sent for Cimon thinking by his proxeny he would make the quickest peace. When he arrived at the city, he ended the war’ (FGrH 115 F88; cf. Aeschin. 2.172; Andoc. 3.3). Other sources give different accounts of this episode, but the principle that a politician’s personal friendships could strongly affect the people’s choice of ambassador is clear. In 330, when prosecuting Demosthenes, Aeschines says, ‘in other days many men who stood in the closest relations (malista oikeio¯s) to the Thebans had gone on missions to them’ (3.138) and lists the names of politicians elected as ambassadors.19 Arrian relates a similar episode concerning ambassadors sent to Alexander. Just after the destruction of Thebes, on the motion of

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Noboru Sato Demades the Athenians chose those who were known to be most friendly (epite¯deiotatous) to the Macedonian king and sent them to him (Arr. 1.10.3). These anecdotes suggest that, especially when they were choosing ambassadors to the big powers which were hostile or at least not friendly to Athens, the Athenians carefully selected the men most acceptable to these states. There is no reason to assume that the Athenians did so only with large states like Sparta, Thebes or Macedon. According to Thucydides, the Acarnanians asked the Athenians to send a son or kinsman of Phormio, who had influence over the people in the region and probably formed a xenia relationship with an Acarnanian. The Athenians sent his son, Asopius, as general in command of thirty ships (Thuc. 3.7.1).20 As Mitchell shows, while conflict between factions within the polis undeniably affected ambassadorial appointments and general elections, many Athenian ambassadors and generals had personal connections with the states to which they were sent.21 The better one’s chances of being elected as an ambassador or general, the more easily one could join in the decision-making process concerning foreign affairs, which in turn enhanced one’s status within the polis. The ambassadors did not just deliver a report in the Assembly when they came back home. From time to time they made proposals themselves concerning their mission, as did Philocrates and Andocides (Dem. 19.47–8; And. 3). Demosthenes made a speech in support of Callias the ruler of Chalkis, saying that he wished to speak concerning Arcadia, where he had just been sent as an ambassador (Aeschin. 3.97–100). When he had finished his report, he moved a resolution on the alliance between Athens, Chalcis, Oreus and Eretria.22 In fact, Athenian citizens seem to have thought highly of their leaders’ personal international connections. In 400/399, Andocides, trying to win the citizens’ favour in court, referred to his personal ties with Macedonian kings and other important persons. I have been on terms of familiarity with many, and I have had dealings with still more. In consequence, I have formed ties and friendships with kings, with states, and with individuals too, in plenty (ἐµοὶ ξενίαι καὶ φιλότητες πρὸς πολλοὺς καὶ βασιλέας καὶ πόλεις καὶ ἄλλους ἰδίᾳ ξένους γεγένηνται). Acquit me, and you will share in them all, and be able to make use of them whenever occasion may arise. (And. 1.145; cf. 2.11; Lys. 6.48)

This passage suggests that many Athenian citizens would have generally regarded such personal connections with foreign kings, states and individuals as beneficial to their own polis. In 338, after the battle of Chaeronea, Aeschines openly claimed that he was a xenos and friend of Philip II of Macedon (Dem. 18.284, cited below). It is likely that Aeschines made use of his closeness to the Macedonian king in order to win the

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy favour of the citizens, either at the election of the ambassador to Macedon, at the assembly concerning the peace treaty, or on both occasions.23 These examples, as well as the anecdotes telling of private preliminary negotiations and the evidence of ambassadorial elections, clearly show that personal international connections were one of the most valuable political resources in democratic Athens. Heredity and mobility in personal international connections In principle, international personal relationships were hereditary in the ancient Greek world. Several Athenian politicians, including Alcibiades, Andocides, and Callias, clearly inherited xenia or proxenia from their fathers or ancestors.24 Nicias’ xenia with Pausanias is said to have played an important role when Nicias’ nephew and grandson met the Spartan king (Lys. 18.10). Aristophanes’ connection with Cyprus came from his father Nicophemus and his friend Conon. The Theban proxenia of Thrason of Erchia may have something to do with his family. His brother Lysiteides is named by Plutarch as pro-Theban (Mor. 575e), and his maternal uncle was probably Thrasybulus of Collytus, the man most trusted by the Thebans (Aeschin. 3.138). Demus, son of Pyrilampes, inherited from his father a golden cup granted by the Persian king and plausibly his xenia as well (Lys. 19.25). The reason Asopius, son of Phormio, was dispatched to Acarnania was that he was the offspring of a general who had influence over the people in that region (Thuc. 3.7.1). Moreover, according to fourth-century inscriptions, the proxeniai granted to Athenian citizens were automatically bestowed on their descendants as well. With a few exceptions, almost all proxeny decrees contain a phrase such as ‘record both the man (=honorand) himself and his descendants as proxenos and euergete¯s (ἀναγράψαι πρόξενον καὶ εὐεργέτην καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ ἐκγόνους)’, or similar expressions.25 The descendants of proxenoi were, therefore, automatically in possession of this valuable political resource through their families. Alcibiades’ grandfather is the only person whose hereditary proxeny is known to have been renounced (Thuc. 5.43.2, 6.89.2). This exception may prove the general rule in the Greek world that the proxenies were normally transmitted from the first honorands to their descendants. According to Alcibiades, moreover, it was his grandfather himself, not Sparta, who had renounced the proxeny.26 We have no evidence of a proxeny which was officially dissolved by the state that had granted it. In his Rhetoric Aristotle says that the newly rich cause more annoyance to the people than those who have long possessed or inherited wealth, and the same applies to offices of state, power, numerous friends, virtuous children, and other advantages of the same kind (1387a15–26). This may

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Noboru Sato suggest that the people tended to feel more indignant about, or more envious of, those who acquired new foreign friends than those who inherited from their ancestors. Nevertheless, the literary and epigraphical sources for the fourth century suggest that this form of political capital was in fact not exclusively hereditary but rather widely open to new politicians. First of all, foreign states did not always expect the same Athenian families to liaise between the people of Athens and themselves. According to various sources, foreign states often had more than one channel to negotiate with Athens. Not a few foreign kings and politicians had many xenoi and friends in a foreign state at the same time, and they were not necessarily of the same family. For example, Perdiccas the Macedonian king had several xenoi in Thessaly (Thuc. 4.132.2). Archidamus, the Spartan king, and his son Agesilaus each had a Phliasian leader and his followers as their xenoi (Xen. Hell. 5.3.13). In order to show intimacy with a fellow citizen who left a fortune, a Siphnian says that he had the same policies, friends and xenoi as the deceased (Isoc. 19.7): in other words, several foreigners had at least two xenoi in Siphnus. Although there are not many who are known to have several xenoi in Athens at the same time, sharing xenoi does not seem to have been uncommon in Athens or in other parts of the Greek world.27 Euagoras, the ruler of Cypriot Salamis, was close to Conon, and presumably Nicophemus, a friend but not a relative of the former, became acquainted with the Cypriot through his friend (see above). Philip II of Macedon was a xenos of Aeschines of Cothocidae (Dem. 18.284; 19.314) and Demades of Paeania also seems to have had close relationships with the king.28 The same was true of proxenies. Carthaea, one of the Cean cities, listed its proxenoi, including Aristophon of Azenia and several other Athenians, in an inscription (IG XII 5.542),29 which clearly shows that this small polis had more than one Athenian citizen as its proxenos at the one time. Several proxeny decrees show that more than one person was sometimes granted a proxeny for a state at the same time or within a short period. Xanthippus of Erchia and Philopolis of Deirades were honoured by the Olbians and obtained proxenies at the same assembly (I. Olbia 5). Leodamas of Acharnae, a politician of the mid-fourth century, was honoured with a proxeny by the Parians just before Aristocrates of Thoricus became another Parian proxenos. The separate decrees which honoured them were inscribed on the same stele (SEG XLVIII 1135). While Leodamas is known to have been still active by 355 at the latest (Dem. 20.156), Aristocrates may be identified with his namesake in a decree of the tribe Acamantis in 361/0 (SEG XXIII 78).30 It is plausible that these two Athenians were Parian

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy proxenoi at the same time. Although foreign states do not seem to have lavishly or routinely granted proxenies to visiting Athenians, it is clear that they quite commonly had more than one proxenos.31 When Aeschines and his fellow ambassadors stayed in Euboean cities in 347/6, they could expect to obtain proxeniai from the people of Oreus (Aeschin. 2.89; cf. Dem. 18.82; 19.155). In this case, moreover, while Oreus had Aeschines and presumably others as its proxenoi, the city seems to have privately negotiated with Demosthenes concerning an alliance between Athens and Euboea (Aeschin. 3.102–103).32 Rivalry between Orean political groups may have resulted in such plural negotiation channels. While Demosthenes claims that Aeschines accepted envoys from Philistides of Oreus, ‘a puppet tyrant of Philip’ (Dem. 18.79, 82), Aeschines states that Demosthenes negotiated with Gnosidemus, son of Charigenes, who had been once the most powerful Orean (Aeschin. 3.103–105). Gnosidemus seems to have belonged to those who were preparing for the Euboean-Athenian alliance promoted by Demosthenes and Callias, the tyrant of Chalcis, which is bitterly criticised by Aeschines.33 These examples show that foreign states often had several Athenians as their negotiation channels. This lack of exclusiveness of negotiation channels must have given new politicians chances of obtaining international personal relationships for themselves. Indeed, we have already come across examples of Athenian politicians of the fourth century who were not from established leading families yet became foreign proxenoi. Aeschines became proxenos of Oreus and Eretria, as noted above, and his relationship with Philip of Macedon is portrayed by Demosthenes as follows: But no sooner had the news of the battle reached us than you ignored all your protests, and confessed, or rather claimed, that there were friendship and hospitality ( philia kai xenia) between Philip and you, substituting those names for your wage-earning (mistharnia); for with what show of equality or honesty could Philip possibly be the host or the friend or even the acquaintance of Aeschines, son of Glaucothea the tambourinist? I cannot see: but the truth is, you took his pay to injure the interests of your countrymen. (Dem. 18.284)

Although Demosthenes surely exaggerates the asymmetrical relationship between Aeschines and Philip, it is generally accepted that Aeschines came from a family without any previous political record.34 The difference between a king and an upstart presumably enabled the orator to resort to such rhetoric.35 As for Demosthenes himself, it is unlikely that he had inherited his Theban proxenia from his homonymous father, who was not active in politics, though we do not know how he obtained it (Aeschin. 2.141, 143).36 Demades of Paeania also appears to have had personal

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Noboru Sato connections with Philip and other Macedonian politicians through his own political activities, not inherited from his ancestors.37 As these examples show, elite networks in and beyond the Greek world were not exclusive to established families but open to newcomers. As far as epigraphic evidence goes, Athenians who were granted proxeniai by foreign states are often prosopographically obscure or otherwise wholly unknown.38 This does not necessarily mean either that most of them came from outside established political families or that their descendants were not active in politics. It is better to avoid an argument ex silentio. However, the large number of decrees of cities newly granting proxeniai to Athenians in the fourth century shows at least that foreign states were not content with whatever traditional connections they may have had, but kept trying to find new Athenian friends, who could liaise between themselves and Athens in order to consolidate their relationships. In 394, Conon, one of the most important Athenian military and political leaders of this period, was honoured with proxenia by the Erythraeans (RO 8 = I. Erythrai und Klazomenai 6). At that time, Conon was touring the Aegean with Pharnabazus after the victory of the naval battle at Cnidus. Since they had remained allied to Sparta until that time, the Erythraeans may have been eager to establish a good relationship with Athens through this general.39 What is more, the inscription reveals that the city had just experienced a civil war and expelled oligarchic groups. This must have also made the Erythraeans eager to make friends with the Athenian politician on the spot. The people of Arcesine granted Androtion of Gargettus proxenia in the middle of the fourth century, because he was generous and behaved well as an Athenian governor of the island (RO 51=IG XII 7.5). Aeschines may have been granted proxenia during his visit to Oreus because, although still at the beginning of his political career, he had the support of Eubulus, one of the leading politicians of the time.40 These examples suggest that, when Athenian leaders and ambassadors visited foreign states, the people there often seized the opportunity to make friends with leading Athenians, though they did not routinely do so.41 Nothing even hints that foreign states held back from friendships with visiting Athenian politicians out of consideration for existing inherited proxenies. Foreign states could and did choose more suitable Athenian politicians as circumstances demanded. They did not have to negotiate with Athens through families who had hereditary connections with them or with their leaders. As already mentioned, in 422/1, the Lacedaemonians did not choose Alcibiades, despite his hereditary xenia with Endius, a Spartan ephoros, and the hereditary Spartan proxenia that his family had once had. The Lacedaemonians chose, probably on their own initiative, Nicias and

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy Laches (Thuc. 4.118.11; 5.16, 43.3). Nicias was, according to Thucydides, not just one of the Athenian generals but the most influential statesman and the most fortunate general of his time (5.16.1). Thus foreign states and leaders that wanted to negotiate unofficially with Athenian politicians would take into consideration these politicians’ current power or reputation within Athens. That is to say, if an Athenian citizen had neither hereditary xenia nor inherited proxenia but was influential because of other forms of political capital, he could be chosen by a foreign state as a new and effective channel for opening negotiations with Athens. As has been suggested, various forms of political capital, such as wealth and rhetorical skills, gave those who were not from a family of pedigree opportunities to be active politicians, which in turn could earn them recognition from foreigners. In some cases, a minor politician may have been acquainted with foreigners through the leader of his political faction in Athens. Since political groups seem to have nominated their own members for ambassadorial elections from time to time, the chances to build personal friendships abroad were open to new and minor politicians as well.42 Political circumstances, especially civil war or constitutional change, in foreign states also affected the ability of Athenian politicians to make political capital from their international connections. Aeschines hosted the Eretrian ambassadors in 342/1 as their proxenos in Athens (Dem. 18.82). He probably obtained the status in 347/6, when he was sent to Philip but stayed in Euboea for a while with his colleagues (Aeschin. 2.89). A couple of years earlier, however, it was Meidias of Anagyrus who acted as an Eretrian proxenos (Dem. 21.200). In 349/8, when Plutarchus, the tyrant of Eretria, requested Athenian intervention in a rebellion, Meidias supported the request and promoted the expedition.43 He seems to have been closely connected not only with the Eretrian state but with the tyrant himself, as suggested by Demosthenes, who calls Meidias a friend and a xenos of the tyrant (Dem. 21.110). This close relationship must have been a doubleedged sword. His connection with the state was presumably seriously weakened, if not officially terminated, when Plutarchus was expelled by the Eretrian ‘democrats’ in 349/8. If so, the overthrow of the tyranny in Eretria caused one Athenian to lose and another to gain political capital.44 One more important point should be added. Personal international friendships were not always an asset, but could sometimes harm politicians. Personal friendships with foreign states were valuable political resources when Athens was on good terms with those states, and even more so when the Athenians wanted to restore relations with them, as in the case of ambassadors elected when Athens was eager to make peace with the enemy. But the reputation and status of a politician with connections to a

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Noboru Sato particular state could be damaged when its relation towards Athens became hostile. The Athenians knew well how much personal connections affected their leaders’ political behaviour, and often suspected politicians of making proposals only for the benefit of the foreign states to which they had personal ties. The Attic orators often make negative comments on personal international relationships (e.g. Dem. 18.284, cited above; 21.110, 200). Demosthenes fends off possible attacks and suspicions by denying any personal link with the Rhodians (15.15). The same cautious stance seems to be applied to his relationships with Thebes. He does not give any indication of his own close connections to the Thebans in his surviving speeches, while his status of Theban proxeny was associated with his ‘treacherous’ diplomacy by Aeschines in his oration in 343 (Aeschin. 2.141, 143). This rival politician even censured Demosthenes for being a Boeotian sympathiser (Boio¯tiazei ), in the same speech, given the increased unpopularity of the Thebans at Athens after their alliance with Philip II (2.106).45 Aeschines himself, according to Demosthenes, denied any relationship with Philip while Athens was at war with Macedon, though this was possibly overstated (Dem. 18.183–4). As early as the mid-fifth century, Alcibiades’ grandfather may have renounced his proxeny for Sparta in order to allay public suspicion, facing a deteriorating relationship between Athens and Sparta and his own ostracism in the late 460s (Thuc. 5.43.2; 6.89.2).46 Pericles also made a speech before the Athenian citizens to dispel their concern regarding his xenia with Archidamus, the Spartan king, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war ( Thuc. 2.13.1). Therefore, whether they inherited personal international friendships or obtained these for themselves, politicians needed to handle this form of political capital with care. Conclusion Athenian diplomacy in the late fifth and the fourth century had an ‘aristocratic’ aspect but also reveals high social mobility. Personal international friendships were valuable and hereditary as a form of political capital in Athens, as elsewhere in the Greek world and beyond. While personal connections with foreign states and leaders were theoretically hereditary, they were in practice not exclusive to a limited number of established political families but open to newcomers. Foreign states sometimes chose their channel of negotiation with Athens irrespective of hereditary personal connections. Other forms of political capital, such as wealth, rhetorical skills and military achievements, created high social mobility within Athens, which foreign states could not overlook. This social mobility was enhanced by political instability outside of Athens: war

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy could turn relations that had previously been assets into liabilities and vice versa, while civil war could overturn existing networks and create the opportunity and need for new links, and thus for new political capital. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Prof. N. Fisher, Prof. H. van Wees, Dr. H. Bowden and Prof. P.J. Rhodes for their comments on my paper. I am grateful to the Canon Foundation in Europe, whose research fellowship enabled me to do research on this topic in UK, and to the Department of Classics, University College Cork for its support during the Celtic Conference in Classics.

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Noboru Sato LIST OF FOREIGN PROXENIAI HELD BY ATHENIANS s. = son of; d. = deme

No Polis

Date

Name

Source

Sosistratus s. Phileas (LGPN (6), IG IX ii 3b otherwise unknown) = SGDI II 1429

1

AENIS post (HYPATA) 323

2

AETOLIA

3

ARCADIA 360s

4

ARCESINE 357/6? Androtion s. Andron d. Gargettus RO 51 (LGPN 3 = PA/APF 913 +915) = IG XII vii 5

5

ARGOS

6

BOEOTIA just after 338?

7

CARTHAEA 4 cent. Theozotides s. Nicostratus d. IG XII V (CEA) Athmonon (LGPN 3 = PA/APF 542.43 6915, a chore¯gos in Dem. 21.59, a grandson of a homonymous politician in the late fifth century) Hieronymus (LGPN 4, otherwise unknown) Democrates s. Menippus d. Acharnae (LGPN 18, maybe = LGPN 19 = PA/APF 3522, if so, a councillor in 360/59) ?Chabrias s. Ctesippus d. Aexone (LGPN 2 = PA/APF 15086) Nicodemus s. Euctaeus d. Xypete (LGPN 52 = PA/APF 10872, his son was a victorious chore¯gos in IG II2 3055) Aphareus s. Isocrates d. Erchia (PA 1 = PA/APF 2769, a poet and speech writer [Plut.] Mor. 837f.)

4 cent. No name

late 4 cent.

SEG xxv 615

Phylarchus s. Lysicrates (LGPN RO 32 1=PA 15041, otherwise unknown) = IG V ii 1

Pamphilus s. Aeschytes d. Xypete, SEG XXX 355 (LGPN 104, PA/APF 14785, a ko¯marchos and ko¯maste¯s at the Tetrakomoi in IG ii2 3103.5, 8) Callippidas s. Theocles (LGPN 6, SEG XXVII otherwise unknown) 60

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‘Aristocracy’ in Athenian diplomacy No Polis

Date

Name

Source

Aristophon s. Aristophanes d. Azenia (LGPN 19 = PA/APF 2108) 8

CAUNUS

late Nicocles s. Lysicles d. Cydantidae SEG XLVII 4 cent. (LGPN 33 = PA/APF 10903, 1568 = IG II2 1597.4; SEG XXXIV 157.16; Kadmos IG II2 417; defixio Zieberth no.1) XXXVI 37 Lysicles s. Lysimachus (otherwise unknown, but his father may be named in IG II2 4555)

8

CNIDUS

1st half Amphares s. Demotimus of 4 (LGPN 1, otherwise unknown) cent.

10

CORCYRA 4 cent.? Dionysius s. Phrynichus (LGPN IG IX i 682 3 cent.? 25 = PA 4128, otherwise unknown)

11

CORINTH ca. 325– (cf. Jones 275 1980, Salmon 2003)

12

DELOS

end Chaerites s. Polymedes d. 4 cent. Myrrhinus (LGPN 2, otherwise unknown) Antiphon s. Theodorus (Chaerites’ brother, LGPN 15, otherwise unknown)

13

DELOS

end Callias s. Callippus d. Thorae ID 75 4 cent. (LGPN 199, otherwise unknown) Hieron (LGPN 76, otherwise unknown, Callias’ son) Eretrieus (LGPN 3, otherwise unknown, Callias’ son)

14

DELPHI

4 cent. Timocrates s. Nicomachus d. Acharnae (LGPN 29, otherwise unknown; his father may be identified with a tamias in IG II2 1470.3)

IKnidos I 50 = SEG xxxix 1117

Xenocles s. Hagnotheas, (LGPN SEG XXX 990 15, otherwise unknown) Pausimachus s. Democles d. Colonus (LGPN 6, otherwise unknown)

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ID 74

SEG XXV 568

Noboru Sato No Polis

Date

Name

Source

15

DELPHI

336/5

Neo[cleides] s. Nicias d. Eroeadae? (LGPN 12, otherwise unknown)

SEG XVIII 170 = SGDI II 2656

16

DELPHI

350– 325

Demades s. Demeas d. Paeania, (LGPN 4=PA/APF 3263)

FD III iv 383 (no proxeny is mentioned)

17

DELPHI

end 4 cent.

Casandrus s. Theophilus (LGPN FD III iv 140 1, otherwise unknown)

18

DELPHI

338/7

Celaenus s. Polycratides (LGPN 1, otherwise unknown)

19

DELPHI

4 cent.? [Philocra?]tes s. Phil[on?] d. Pergase

SGDI 2655 = BCH VI 64 (p. 229)

20

DELPHI

324

Charidemus s. Charidemus d. Paeania (LGPN 51), may be identified with LGPN 50=PA/ APF 15392, diaite¯te¯s in 330/29 (IG II2 1924.6), syntrierarch in 322, (IG II2 1632. 260, 311, 70)

BCH 52 (1928) 217 = BCH 75 (1951), 305, 330–2

21

DELPHI

324/3

Epiteles s. Soinomus d. Pergase (LGPN 11 = PA 4955+4963, cf. naopoios in CID ii 32; mover of a decree IG II2 365)

FD III i 408

22

ELIS

early Diphilus s. Melanopus (LGPN 8, I.v.Olym. 30 (SGDI 1183) 4 cent. cf. PA 4471