In our generation there have been few who have made such a consistent and successful attempt to see Athenian life as a whole as the author of The People of Aristophanes. In gratitude to him I offer for his inspection an investigation of texts which have attracted his attention in the past. The main purpose of the investigation is to see in practice the workings of one part of the Athenian administrative system when faced with problems of unusual size and complexity.

Our texts concern the aftermath of the mutilation of the Hermae and the profanation of the Mysteries. We need not retell here the story of the crimes and their investigation. Partly to serve as a framework, a few facts may be recalled. Within the archon–year 415/14, the mutilators of the Hermae were condemned to death, their names were put on stelai and their property was confiscated. For the profanation of the Mysteries, Alcibiades was condemned to death, his property was confiscated, his name was put on a stele, and all priests and priestesses were instructed to curse him. All of them duly did so, turning to the west and waving red sheets, except one priestess who said she was a praying priestess, not a cursing priestess. Most of these penalties can be reasonably extended to the other celebrators of the Mysteries. That all this is to be taken perfectly seriously is to be deduced from what happened when Alcibiades came back in 407. The stele on which the con– demnation was recorded was thrown in to the sea, and the people formally requested that the priests withdraw their curse.

Athens was Alexander Fuks' first love, and it is a matter of regret that he never carried out a plan to translate what he affectionately described as his ‘Hebrew Zimmern’. I offer here in his memory a short note to show how much in the dark we can still be about the most central issues.

It has been generally assumed that the robe (peplos) offered to Athena at the Great Panathenaea was placed on the olive–wood statue of immemorial antiquity, which was certainly small and portable. The view recently expressed by H. W. Parke, that by the late fifth century the peplos was of colossal size and offered to Pheidias' chryselephantine statue of Athena, dedicated in 438 BC, has been treated as heresy by at least one reviewer, G. T. W. Hooker.

The matter seems to me to be more open than that.

Parke is clearly relying on fragment 30 (Kock = Edmonds = Kassel and Austin) of the Macedonians of the Athenian comic poet Strattis; the date is uncertain, but cannot be far from 400 BC. The translation must be something like ‘This robe with ropes and windlasses countless men haul up like a sail on its mast.’ Hooker comments ‘We do not know the context, nor whether there is any element of comic exaggeration here; but the speaker is not saying that the peplos was as big as a sail, only that it was hauled up in the same way.’ But the countless men are outside the comparison, and, whatever the exaggeration, it seems hard to think that many men would be required for a small peplos.

The standard books on the Greek city either have no treatment of public property at all or take it for granted in treating public finances. This is an attempt to fill some of the gap. It is concerned mostly with classical Athens and operates with a rather narrow definition, pursuing the key Greek word for ‘public’, demosios. It will emerge in the course of the paper that other forms of communal ownership operate functionally in a very similar way, in that the city can exercise control of their administration and revenues.

In the Appendix, I review some current views about the history of the word demos, and conclude that it can, very early and certainly before the word demosios starts appearing, simply mean the whole citizen body with no programmatic nuance of ‘lower classes’ or implications of democracy.

The earliest relevant appearance of demosios is in Solon fr. 4, the unjust hegemones (leaders) who steal and snatch, sparing neither sacred nor public property (outh' hieron kteanon oute ti demosion pheidomenoi, 12–13). It has been suggested to me that there maybe some elements of persuasive definition here, with a transition from the property of individual members of the demos to that of the demos as a whole, but I incline to think that the lines do establish the concept of public property for Solon's time, as well as the use for it of the word demosios; we may also recall the statement, generally passed over, that Solon's seisachtheia involved the abolition of debts, both private (idia) and public (demosia) (Arist. Ath. Pol. 6.1).

I am naturally delighted that Franz Willemsen (AM 106 (1991), 144) has announced his adhesion to the view that Megakles (IV) son of Hippokrates (I) of Alopeke was ostracised twice and that the major part of the find of Kerameikos ostraka belongs to the 470s and not to the 480s; this was argued by me (ZPE14 (1974), 1–4) and Peter Bicknell (AC44 (1975), 172–5). This is apparently not the end of the matter, for, on 4 December 1992, at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens conference on The Archaeology of Democracy, Stefan Brenne exhibited ostraka of Kallias Kratiou Alopekethen physically joining ostraka of Megakles and others from the find. The 718 ostraka of Kallias must also move to the 470s.

Yet another argument for this date can now be added, from the new list of Kerameikos ostraka provided by Willemsen and Brenne. The three hitherto unreported ostraka for'Αρίϕρoν χσανθίπo (AM 106 (1991), 150) can only make sense after the death of Xanthippos some time after 479. That Ariphron was Xanthippos' older son was argued by J. K. Davies (Athenian Propertied Families 456); it is now clear that at least three voters thought that he, and not Perikles, would be the political heir of Xanthippos.

Much now needs to be done to elucidate Athenian politics of the 470s, but I confine myself here to a point of detail. It concerns an ostrakon, Kerameikos 3469, which Willemsen publishes to support the case for a second ostracism of Megakles (AM 106 (1991), 144–5 with Taf. 26.3).

Fragment of Pentelic marble, preserving part of a double moulding at the top, brought in from the vicinity of Evangelistria Street (Judeich, Topographie von Athen, Plan I, squares G3–4) on 27 May 1938.

• Height, 0.326 m; width, 0.37 m; thickness, 0.111 m.

• Height of letters, 0.005 m, in a square chequer pattern of 0.0103 m.

• Inv. No. 15477.

See Plate 4.

Content, lettering and spacing all make it certain that we have here the top of IGii2 334 (E. M. 7153). It will be seen that it contains a law relating to the financing of the Lesser Panathenaia. The old fragment contains a decree of the demos about the organisation of the festival, apparently in amendment of a probouleuma of the boule, which also must have stood on the stone, since lines 16–17 of the old fragment presuppose information which cannot have stood in our law. This combination of a law and a decree on the same stele is unparalleled, but is justified by the permanent nature of the provisions of the decree.

Unfortunately, although the length of the lines is certain, the horizontal position of the new fragment cannot be precisely fixed, since it has no edge to left or right. Broken surface extends to the right sufficiently to make it clear that there were at least five letters to the right of the last preserved letter, and I assume, for reasons which will appear, that there cannot have been many more.

[Θ E] o [ί]

[Eπί …. c.9 …. a]ρχoνΤoς

[…… 16 ……]o[‥4‥].'AριθΤóνικoς 'Aρι[σΤoΤέλo]

[∪ς Mαραθώνιoς ɛiπ]ɛν. ΤUXηι aλαθñι Τoũ δήμoU [Τoũ'Aθη]

[ναίων oπως aν Τñι]'Aθηνãι n θ∪σία ώς καλλίσΤ[η nι Πανν]

This volume grew out of the work now published as Athenian Agora xv, The Athenian Councillors, which contains its primary epigraphic evidence. It effectively replaces a great deal of earlier work, and will be needed wherever Athenian institutions are studied.

Traill establishes that the number of constitutional demes in Cleisthenes‘ system was 139. One new deme was created on or soon after the foundations of each of the tribes Ptolemais, Attalis and Hadrianis. Other demes attested in ancient evidence or hypothesised by scholars are discussed and rejected, except for some used quasi-officially in lists of the Roman period.

The evidence here collected suffices to establish the representation of these demes in the Council until about 200 BC. The evidence is still unsatisfactory for the tribe Kekropis, and figures for Hippothontis before 307 BC have to be partly inferred from later evidence. There was no redistribution of representation until the foundation of the Macedonian tribes in 307 BC. After 200 BC fixed quotas of representation were abolished.

Traill makes a substantial attempt to determine the relation of representation to actual population; a similar, more speculative, treatment, not used by him, has been made by P. J. Bicknell, Studies in Athenian Politics and Genealogy (Historia Einzelschrift 19,1972). Apart from some rather doubtful evidence from ephebe–lists, the comparison still has to be with tables based on Kirchner's Prosopographia Attica of 1898–1901. Traill points out some ways in which these tables could be misleading, and more could be added; I do not think the comparison serves more than very general purposes.

I shall try to define, from an epigraphic viewpoint, the effects that the two periods of Athenian political hegemony in the classical period and Athens' more continuous and longer cultural hegemony may have had on the Greek world as a whole. The subject could hardly be more important, but it is in some ways very neglected. The only major work I know in which the topic of the diffusion of Athenian institutions is a principal theme is Swoboda's Griechische Volksbeschlüsse of 1890, a work remarkable not only for the immense labour which must have gone into it but also for its general good sense.

Swoboda was entirely concerned with decrees, and they will also be my main concern. They provide the bulk of the evidence. As Finley points out in an article to appear in Annales, there is simply nothing, outside the major sanctuaries, to match the amount of administrative and factual detail which Athens found it necessary to put on stone. This fact is in itself significant and has something to tell us about the political climate of states outside Athens. I only happen to know one text, from Ephesos c. 300 BC (Inschriften von Ephesos 4. 20–4), where publication of documents is ordered so that O (βO∪λóμɛνOς Τwν πOλιΤwν may know, in this case, about the sale of land. The question of what it was thought necessary to publish extends to decrees themselves. The topic must be studied both chronologically and by subject. Swoboda complained of the infrequency of texts earlier than the Hellenistic period.

Even in Athens, our understanding of matters to do with landholding is imperfect. I discuss here a group of texts which raise problems which are interesting and intractable.

The number of fragments of stone with which we are concerned is fifteen, which have gradually accumulated. They have been shamefully neglected; their bibliography is short, and, with some major exceptions, unhelpful. Their basic pattern is clear. They name sellers, the designation of the real property sold, the purchasers and the price they paid. When the sellers only sell one property, the note EκαΤoσΤή followed by 1 per cent of the price, exactly calculated, follows. When they sell more than one, their entry ends with a total and then the EκαΤoσΤή on that. In two places only, totals appear which evidently cover a group of individual sellers. These too are followed by the EκαΤoσΤή.

One such fragment was known to Boeckh,2 from a slightly inaccurate copy. Apart from some unlucky tinkering with badly read figures, his contribution was to make the association of the text with the fragment of Theophrastus3 which says that at Athens you have to register a sale of property with the magistrate not less than sixty days before completion and that the purchaser has to put down a EκαΤoσΤή of the price so that there shall be an opportunity for anyone to dispute the transaction and that the legal purchaser may be clear by reason of his payment. I do not wish to discuss this fragment, though it would be pleasant to be sure whether it is the seller or the state who gets the EκαΤoσιή,

There has been much recent work on Cleisthenes. The justification for yet another article lies, I hope, in its different approach, from the land of Attica itself and the framework which Cleisthenes gave it. I hope also that this difference of approach will excuse what may seem a somewhat cavalier attitude to my immediate predecessors, whose arguments will seldom appear, although I have read them with attention and profit. The argument of this article proceeds largely from survivals, and leads to the paradox that we can understand Cleisthenes' work best in the places where he failed. These failures, however, give us clearer light not only on his aims, but on the woven texture of tradition and innovation which is formed by the life of classical Athens.

REGIONAL PARTIES IN SIXTH-CENTURY ATHENS

Let us begin by sketching our evidence for regional divisions in Athenian politics before Cleisthenes' reforms. The parties of the 560s have regional names, acquired, we are told, from the places where they farmed. We should emphasise that parties may include members from outside the original area of the nucleus. When Peisistratus waited at Marathon in 546, supporters came to him from Athens itself as well as from the country–villages. This should also act as a warning against any easy assignment of single economic or even constitutional motives to a party. The party may be a complex of driving–forces held together by its leader; such a complex is in fact sketched for Peisistratus' party by Aristotle. However, even with these qualifications in mind, it is legitimate to look for the nuclei.

In arriving at the same solution for Herrmann's a 21–2 as that of Gschnitzer reported by Professor Merkelbach above (ZPE 46 (1982), 212), I formed a clear preference for δi[ακOσ][o] σ over [ξ|ακOσ][O] σ in a 16–17. Both will fit the stoichedon pattern, but the photograph seems to show in a 16 the base and part of the right diagonal of delta in the penultimate space and the bottom of a vertical in the last space.

That the quorum should be 200 in Teos and 500 in Abdera will be some guide to their relative sizes at this point. Mathematically, it produces an engaging coincidence, since the proportions of their normal tribute to the Delian League, 6 and 15 talents, are exactly the same.

The closest parallels for the use of ovv in this text are Delphic (see Roux, L'Amphictionie, Delphes et le temple d'Apollon 65–71; cf. L. Lerat, RP3e série 17 (1943), 70–9). Closest of all to our text is CID i 13.32–7: Τά[δ]ε δO|ξ-[ε]ν Δ[ε]λϕOĩς πάτρι[α] μ[ε]ν ΤOĩς Σκιαθ[ί]Oι[ς] σÙ ΤεΤρακα|[Τ]α[ι]ψήϕωι καì πλ|[έO]ν

I need not join the argument as to whether, at Delphi, ‘400 and more’ indicates the figure which is bound to be a majority of the citizen body. It is clear to me that, in our text, 200 at Teos and 500 at Abdera are intended to be the quorum of the court or of the assembly acting judicially which will be required for the imposition of these penalties. Cf, at Chios, DGE 688. 21–5: κaγδικασάν|Των ΤριακOσ|ίων'λάσσO|νɛς aνιρίθɛ|ΥΤOι EÓνΤɛρ, for a property dispute.

Toni was one of my first graduate teachers when I arrived in 1951 at what, after two years in the army, seemed only just this side of paradise, and he has been a steady support and solace ever since. It is the greatest possible pleasure to join in his birthday celebration.

This is not a wide–ranging investigation of Herodotus' interest in or attitude to the Persian Empire or the Persian character. The questions involved are about Herodotus the investigator and narrator, and are not new. They concern the methods by which he was able to know so much about that empire, and they involve the oldest questions of all: How much trouble did he take in the search for truth? Did he in fact have any conscience about the truth at all?

Historians are not unaware that Herodotus' truthfulness has been challenged from time to time, but on the whole they take no notice. To speak frankly, they have to ignore such criticisms or be put out of business, particularly when dealing with Persian history. Historians abhor a vacuum, and narrative sources on the Persian side are virtually non–existent. We only have the Babylonian texts which cover Cyrus' occupation of Babylon and the Behistun Inscription to cover the accession year of Darius. The result is that, if one is to write a narrative account of the reigns of Darius and Xerxes at all, there is || no alternative to using Herodotus' narrative as the core of that account.

There is a personal anniversary for me besides that which we all celebrate, since it is just twenty-five years since Meritt answered a piece of undergraduate scepticism of mine, sent on to him by Tod, with infinite thoroughness and courtesy. In the years between, his care and patience with my troubles have never failed, my errors have been firmly dealt with, my occasional intransigences have been readily forgiven. I cannot begin to estimate my debt to him.

I define an entrenchment-clause as a clause inserted in a decree in an attempt to give it greater permanence and to limit any future attempt by those who might think it δɛιν ɛiναι ɛi μè Τις Eάσɛι Τòν πράΤΤɛιν O aνβoύληΤαι to reverse the decree by making it impossible or at least very difficult and dangerous to do so. There are a fair number of examples and the phenomenon seems to me of some importance for the development of Athenian ideas on legislation. In a period in which, at least for current legislation, the distinction between νóμoς and ψήϕισμα was far from clear, such clauses seem to constitute an interesting experimental approach to the problem of reconciling the demands of certainty and popular sovereignty. They are, however, as far as I can see, remarkably neglected. Since a clear paragraph by Busolt in 1920 I find nothing but a brief collection of largely non-Attic material by Tod, and their non-appearance in Hignett's History of the Athenian Constitution and in Kahrstedt's discussion of the development of Athenian law-making suggests that it may be justifiable to attempt to collect and understand the material.

No fewer than three of the inscriptions in the second volume of Dr Tod's Greek Historical Inscriptions are directly concerned with Keos, and this encourages me to hope that he may find interest in this investigation. It arises from an inscription from Ioulis, published by Dunant and Thomopoulos, which is a close parallel to IG xii. 5 594 (Tod 141), the sympolity–treaty between Keos and Hestiaia. It is nearly certainly a treaty with Eretria. It raises several interesting problems, but I should principally like to draw attention to the remarkable federal constitution of Keos which the two inscriptions taken together reveal.

I repeat the new text for convenience with some slight alterations. It is stoichedon, uses o for ou, but the letter–forms can hardly fix it closer than 390–340.

[— Eάν δέ O ΚɛĩOς βόληται πO|λιΤɛÚɛσθα]-

[ι ν‘EρɛΤί]ηι, π[Oγ]ραψᾱ[αθω Τò oνoμα Τò αUΤ]-

[õ, oi ξέ σΤπ]αΤηγOί ϕΥλήν κ[αί χρoν α]-

[Τι ν] ι aμ μέλληι πoλιΤɛΎ[σ]θαι Eaν ξE O]

[‘EρɛΤρ]ιɛΎς [βóληΤαι Eπ ΚEωι πOλ[ιΤɛΎɛσθαι]

[aπoγ]ραψaσθω πρòς θɛσμoϕΎλακ[αςτò αU]-

[ΤÕo]νoμα,oi δE θɛσμoϕΎλακɛς δóνΤω[ν αUΤWι]

[ϕΥλή]ν καί ΤριΤΤΎν καί χWρoν v v v v v [? vacat]

[….]v Τnι πρoσάψαι πρ[….9….]

[….9…,]i

This confirms Hiller‘s view that thesmophylakes and not nomophylakes were mentioned in lines 4–5 of the old inscription and makes it necessary to restore there [Καi χwρoν]in line 6. Dunant and Thomopoulos give a revised text of lines 3–11, but the unevenness of their line-length and the three later places in the old text where omission of words has been assumed make me wonder whether the whole inscription should not be restored with a rather longer line.

It is a pleasure to contribute to a volume in honour of Malcolm McGregor and to be able to repay in some degree the debts I have contracted over the years to his helpfulness and co–operation, never more strongly manifested than at the time I write. He has always liked the central topic, however apparently well explored, and I hope that he may find something here to interest him in an inevitably simplified investigation of a very central topic indeed, the first major conflict between Athens and Peloponnesian states.

That a topic is central does not mean that it is well studied. About twenty years ago, the Oxford examiners put the question: ‘Examine Athenian strategy in the First Peloponnesian War.’ The result was disastrous. As they reported ruefully later, ‘Of the 52 candidates who answered this question, 38 answered it as if it referred to the Archidamian War. We concluded that we could not fairly penalise this mistake.’ The candidates were not indeed to be blamed. Their tutors had been anxious to get on to the Peloponnesian War, and most of the text–books give up on the First Peloponnesian War, confining themselves to a bald paraphrase of the military operations recorded by Thucydides, without troubling to think much about the implications of these operations. There has been a good deal more solid thinking since 1959, but there may still be more to be said.

Most of the trouble, of course, arises from the fact that our connected tradition rests on only seven pages of Thucydides, pages chiefly composed of a plain narrative of facts, sparing in ascriptions of motive and in general explanation.

With over 2,100 texts published, the Persepolis Fortification Texts in Elamite, transcribed, interpreted and edited by the late Richard Hallock, already form the largest coherent body of material on Persian administration available to us; a comparable, but less legible, body of material remains unpublished, as does the smaller group of Aramaic texts from the same archive. Essentially, they deal with the movement and expenditure of food commodities in the region of Persepolis in the fifteen years down to 493.

There is no up–to–date general account of these texts. Hallock's own contribution to Cambridge History of Iran ii (1985) is unchanged from a preprinted version circulated in 1971, and a good deal has happened since then. Besides substantial linguistic contributions by Gershevitch and Hinz, I single out one article by Hinz on the details of the administration, one by Dandamaev on dependent populations, one by Sumner on the settlement patterns of the Persepolis plain. There is a book–length treatment of the evidence of the tablets for religion by Koch. The names in the tablets have been fully discussed by Mayrhofer, but we badly need a prosopography; most of my own published work on the tablets concerns prosopographical matters. Some of the material has begun (very slowly) to enter the more general literature. It is not only the text of the tablets which is important. The sealings which they bear provide one of our largest coherent bodies of seal material, capable of throwing a flood of light on seal–usage and arthistory. Hallock devoted a preliminary article to this; a full publication is in the hands of Margaret Cool Root.