Nicholas Sekunda (Nantes 2023), ‘Athenian Peltasts in the Fourth Century BC’, Video Recording, from Session 3 of Fourth-Century Athens at War: After Claude Mossé: An International Conference at the Nantes IAS (France). (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the eve of the Peloponnesian War Pericles famously advised the Athenians how they could win (Thucydides. 2.13.1). He reassured assembly-goers that they already had the required funds and armed forces for victory (3-9). The first corps that Pericles mentioned was the 13,000 hoplites (6). The next two were the 1200-strong cavalry and the 1600 archers (8). The last corps of which he spoke was the navy of 300 triremes. This chapter’s aim is to go behind Pericles’s famous numbers. For each corps that he mentioned it studies the legal status of corps-members and their social background. The chapter explores how they were recruited into the corps and subsequently mobilised for campaigns. It establishes each corps’s history and organisation. By comparing all military branches this chapter reveals the common practices that the dēmos (‘people’) used to manage their armed forces. It explains the common expectations that they brought to this management.
Atene&Roma, 2023
In Thuc. II 36, 1-3 Pericles structures the entire Athenian history into three phases, clearly distinguished through their respective merits: the age of the progonoi, that of the pateres, that of the present-day men. This is a great difference with the other logoi epitaphioi, where the Athenian past is an undifferentiated continuum; on the contrary, the tripartite climax in Thuc. II 36, 1-3 aims to give greater prominence to the last two phases, when Athens acquired and then developed the arkhe. Despite the overall clarity of the text, scholars have been puzzled by the exact identity of οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν mentioned in 36, 2 (and therefore by the definition of the chronological boundaries between the three groups). In this paper, strong arguments are given in favor of the thesis that the age of the pateres includes the Persian Wars: above all, the comparison with Thuc. I 144, 4 and the need for internal coherence between Thuc. 2, 36, 1 and Thuc. II 36, 4 (with its reference to the struggle against the “barbarian enemy”). Therefore, if the sixty years between 490 and the end of 431 are divided in half, the boundary between pateres and ‘present-day men’ can be placed around 461 BC: an actual turning point in the fifth-century Athenian history. Anyhow, this question is not only merely exegetical: the attribution of the Persian Wars to the pateres is consistent with the viewpoint (widespread in fifth-century sources) according to which the Persian Wars were the first step in the acquisition of the arkhe; the absence of a minimal reference to the Persian wars (a central theme in contemporary Athenian propaganda) seems to match the Periclean Athenian foreign policy, which put an end to the wars against the Persians, focusing on the hegemony over the allies and on the confrontation with Sparta and her allies.
Periplous - A Journey through the Ancient Mediterranean
Periplous - A Journey through the Ancient Mediterranean, 2021
In this book you will find the stories of people who sailed their ships through the ancient Mediterranean. It is about sailors who crossed the wine-dark sea for an exploration, or for a home-coming journey. It is about how they entered into dialogue with anyone they met, and built “thalassocracies”; seaborne empires. My interest for these matters was raised already at early age when I enjoyed sailing my boat over the lake near the house where I grew up. During summer breaks I read my brother’s prose version of the Odyssey and wondered who the sailors and builders of those ships were. How could it be that they were so antagonistic to the gods which they resembled most? What was the role of women, parents, children? How could these 2500-year-old texts contain metaphors that appeal to people up to today? Many years later, I was given the opportunity of making a journey to Ithaca on board of a sailing ship. My wife and two friends, Hennie and Peter, joined me. The travel was inspiring and the story of it is contained in the two parts which are the chapters 1 and 24 of this book. In the years after that, I had some time for reflection and continued reading the stories about ships and the sea that ancient Greek writers have to offer. The recount of myth and history, the pieces of art and the fragments of poetry which make the content of this book, illustrate that even though little is known about the ancient Greek seafarer, with study and inspiration some of it can be brought back to life again. I am deeply grateful to all who joined me on the journey to recall them. After the travelogue of our sailing journey to Ithaca, the book continues with a discussion on the ship of Theseus, as that seems to be the logical point of departure for any story on ancient Greece. It is the story of the “theoretical ship”; the ship that is used to sail the journey that is known as a theōriā; a ‘sacred journey’ that leads to the achievement of a mystical vision. The traveler on board of the ship has a vision both on the ship and on where it is going. One thousand year after the journey of Theseus, the execution of Plato’s Socrates was delayed because this same theoretical ship had to stay in port. The weather was too bad for the ship to leave on her annual trip to Delos and while she was in port no executions were allowed. When his followers doubted that this ship was the same ship as the ideal ship in which Theseus had sailed to Delos—because every nail and piece of timber had been replaced since—Socrates answered: “theoretically it is still the same ship”. After that, the theoretical ship stayed the metaphor for ideas that do not die, and the word “theory” started to develop towards its modern meaning. The question of whether an object is still the same object after all its components have been replaced is known as the Paradox of Theseus. The ancient Greek ship and the sea through which it moves, can be the metaphor and metonym for almost everything that is important in life. The concept of the Essential ship is discussed in the context of the fragments of a beautiful kratēr made by the so-called Dipylon Master. The vase—a grave-marker and one of the high points of the Ge-ometric period—is decorated with scenes of a funerary event; a corpse ’s procession showing the deceased passing silently through the streets of Athens on a bier flanked by mourners. Everything suggests that the deceased was a naucraros: a member of the Athenian maritime nobility. The section below the handles of the vase shows an elegant vessel with a slender hull, a curved keel contour and a large stem with horned stem post. The representation of the ship is embedded in a compartmentalized system of metopes and triglyphs and surrounded by the decorative theme of the meander. The artist decided on dimensions, aspect, and relative placement of the various elements on basis of essence rather than in attempt for realistic representation. Everything that matters is reduced to its essential ingredients, and the decorative theme of the meander is the binding element. Next the Sacred ship, the Crowned ship, the Straight-horned ship and other themes are discussed and demonstrated by examples from ancient art and literature. After that, the book continuous the narrative in a chronological way where such a thing is possible. The described geographical locations reach from India in the east, to the Fortunate Is-lands in the west. The recount of the Greek maritime history starts in 594 BCE. The situation for the aver-age person had become extremely grievous. The poor, along with their wives and children, were in slavery to the rich. All the land was in the hands of a few. The time was there for a savior to arise: a strong man trusted both by the poor and the rich and his name was Solon. In his legendary role of lawmaker and mediator, he became the first “people's champion”. Later Cleisthenes—a member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid clan—assumed leadership over Athens. He is credited with increasing the power of the Athenian citizens' assem-bly and for reducing the power of the nobility over Athenian politics. He installed isonomic institutions—assuring equal rights for all citizens—and became the founding fa-ther of the Athenian democracy. He changed the four traditional tribes of Solon, which were based on family relations, into ten tribes according to their area of residence. A ship was then named for each of the ten tribes that he created. The political structure of Solon’s 48 wealthy ship-commissioners [naukraría] was replaced by a people’s assembly consisting of 50 demarchs. This recount of history culminates in a description of the Persian Wars; a train of events that ends in September 480 BCE, with a decisive Greek victory at Salamis. The victory of the states that had been threatened by the Persian expansion policy was sealed with an agreement on collective defense, whereby its independent member states agreed to a mutual defense in response to a potential repeated attack by the Per-sians. After that the hero of this story is the Athenian Strategos Kimon (510-450 BCE), a con-servative and aristocratic leader. He is remembered for his sound economical insight, and for his support to the development of the fleet and a mostly direct democracy. He was committed to a good relationship with Sparta. He supported the religious values of Athens by having the southern walls of the Acropolis build and by preparing her for the build of the Parthenon and other religious buildings. He supported the rise of the tal-ented radical democrat Perikles as the new leader of Athens, despite he must have re-membered how the father of Perikles, Xanthippes, had prosecuted his own father, Mil-tiades. After the death of Kimon, the Hellenes would not be military successful any-more, but, incited by the popular demagogues, they would instead fight their former allies. Much of what I describe considers the male species of humanity. To compensate for this, I also included the stories of Kalypsō, Pênelópê, Dido, Sappho, Xanthippe, Elpinice and The Women of Troy. They tell us the part of history and myth that Odysseus and Achilles, Kimon and Perikles, Socrates and Aristotle tend to forget in their strife for reason and argumented dialogue [logos]. No one could tell a story like this by his own. At the end of this book, I therefore acknowledge the debt that I owe to all that inspired and supported me on this journey. None of them should be supposed to agree with my arguments, let alone share responsibility for any of my errors or abundancies. I tried to make due reference when I used or paraphrased text written by others.
Epiteichismos in the Peloponnesian War
War have mostly failed to recognize the full significance or import of the Epiteichismos (Greek; "to build upon") strategy and its contribution to the rise and the imperialistic ambition of Athens, and Athens' subsequent defeat during the Peloponnesian War, owing perhaps to their different motive, orientation, philosophy, targeted audience and aim for writing. (De Ste. ). Notwithstanding the fact that Thucydides is the primary source with respect to the account of the Peloponnesian War, traits of the intendment of the Epiteichismos strategy are equally scattered throughout the history of antediluvian warfare. Using a critical analyses of primary and secondary sources, this paper noting the deficiencies in existing secondary sources makes an attempt to give not only a systematic and coherent outline of the significance of the Epiteichismos strategy as the war unfolds, but to also show how both Athens and Sparta exploit this strategy to their respective advantage in the Peloponnesian War.
The Greek Ephebate in the Roman Period
This study concerns itself with several aspects of citizen training systems in Greek cities during the Roman imperial period, a largely neglected area of study. Problems of interpretation such as the noticeable decline in epigraphical evidence are confronted and possible solutions proposed. The scope and significance of athletic and military training are surveyed and the likelihood of a connection with the Roman army assessed. Finally, the fates of ephebic systems and the physical plants associated with them under the Christian Empire are briefly sketched.
In this book P. analyses the military organisation of Athens and a number of related social, economic and cultural issues. As pointed out in the preface, each chapter (except Chapter 3) expands, updates or summarises earlier publications from the author. In Chapter 1 P. convincingly locates the main reasons for Athens' fifth-century military 'revolution' in her large population, economic advantage and democratic constitution. In regard to the latter, P.'s intelligent and stimulating approach is based on recent statistical findings by political analysts, which show how modern democracies, while generally avoiding fighting each other, tend to wage wars as frequently as other forms of government and to perform better: in turn, ancient Athens provides solid comparative ground to test modern theorisations of democracy and its war-making policies. P. rejects the long-settled idea that democracy emerged from military participation, although he acknowledges that social reforms tied to (esp. naval) warfare facilitated the process. Chapter 2 analyses in detail Athens' four military 'corps' (Thuc. 2.13). P. explains how hoplites were recruited and organised by tribal affiliation, but only briefly addresses the presence of metics among their ranks (p. 52), as attested by Thuc. 2.13.7 and possibly by the non-citizens recorded on tribal casualty lists. Archers are treated as the only regular (non-tribal) light corps: P.'s analysis would have been further enriched by a proper account of the role of other light troops (whose importance is acknowledged, pp. 78-81), which were clearly distinguished from the archers (e.g. Thuc. 8.71.2). The interesting case of the cavalry, which was often regarded by ancient literature as a safer service and concerningly attached to anti-democratic sentiments, would have benefited from a more extensive discussion of the evidence provided, for example, by dedicated casualty lists (SEG 48.83, IG II 2 5221-2: see P. Low, 'The Monuments to the War Dead in Classical Athens', in P. Low, G. Oliver, P.J. Rhodes [edd.], Cultures of Commemoration [2012], pp. 13-39, at 18-19) and public dedications (IG I 3 511-12) on the peculiar status and identity of the corps. The fourth-century decline of the archers and the cavalry is addressed mainly in terms of economic and political issues: these were certainly relevant, but there were also other detrimental factors, such as poor leadership, motivation, training and physical shape (e.g. Xen. Mem. 3.3.3-4, 3.5.5-7; Hipp. 1.13-14; B. Keim, 'Xenophon's Hipparchikos and the Athenian Embrace of Citizen philotimia', Polis 35 [2018], 499-522). Lastly we find the 'sailors' or, more correctly, the navy, for which P. highlights the interactions of different roles and social classes. His argument about the navy being an unappealing corps for farmers (pp. 45-6) does not seem to consider that the fleet regularly used to embark plenty of infantry, which means that infantrymen too, not just rowers, were often destined on overseas campaigns. This chapter, the longest in the book and one of the most engaging, convincingly dismisses assumptions about Solonian classes rigidly regulating access to Classical Athens' armed forces. Chapter 3 discusses ancient comedy and the navy. P. adopts a comparative approach with tragedy, historiography and especially forensic oratory, as a reflection of widespread popular views. The chapter explains why hoplite-centred warfare figures only as a part of Aristophanes' depictions and that his positive acknowledgement of the navy is consistent with the arguments of the orators.