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The Archaic Athenian ΖΕΥΓΙΤΑΙ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Whitehead
David Whitehead
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

It seems to be widely agreed by modern scholars that when Solon created his four census-classes (τ⋯λη) in early sixth-century Athens (Plut. Sol. 18. 1–2) he gave to at least three of them – the ἱππεῖς, the ζευγῖται and the θ⋯τες – names which were in pre-existing use there. But what, if so, did the names signify, before being assigned their new, official, quantitative (and semantically colourless) Solonic sense? The archaic Athenian θ⋯τες were presumably recognizably akin to their Homeric and Hesiodic namesakes; and despite the etymological obscurity of the word in any event, in practical terms it will have denoted men who by all relevant social, economic or military tests scored a negligible rating. In the case of higher scorers, however, it becomes important for us to discover precisely which criteria are being applied, and so it is the ἱππεῖς and the ζευγῖται who have always posed the main interpretative puzzle. For the ζευγῖται Ehrenberg put it succinctly enough: ‘the zeugitai can be explained either as those who owned a pair of oxen under the yoke (zeugos) or those who are joined to their neighbours in the ranks of the phalanx’. Both these explanations – for convenience I shall (for the moment) call them the agricultural and the military – have indeed long had, and continue to have, their adherents. Most of the great nineteenth-century students of Staatsaltertümer took the agricultural line, usually without argument; and the standard lexica still do. In 1894, however, Conrad Cichorius made out a strong case for the military explanation, and he has had many followers, both witting and (I should guess) unwitting.

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Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , December 1981 , pp. 282 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

1 The problem of the πεντακοσιομ⋯διμνοι is a special and distinct one, and I leave it aside as such.

2 This is of course not the same as believing that the τ⋯λη themselves were pre-Solonic; here the modern consensus would be that the author of the Ath. Pol. (4. 3, cf. 7. 3) was led astray by his sources. (Aristotle, Pol. 1274a 18–21 proves nothing either way.)

3 e.g. Homer, , Odyssey 4. 644Google Scholar; Hesiod, , Works and Days 602Google Scholar; see Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (2nd ed.London, 1977), pp. 57–8 and 71Google Scholar; cf. Plato, , Politicus 290aGoogle Scholar, Aristotle, , Pol. 1278a 13Google Scholar.

4 Ehrenberg, V. L., From Solon to Socrates (2nd ed.London, 1973), p. 402 n. 33Google Scholar. Curiously, whereas in the text to this note (p. 65) E. chooses the second alternative – ‘yoke-men…that is to say…phalanx of hoplites’ – he goes on in the note itelf to allude, briefly, to evidence which ‘might be significant’ in favour of the first. I discuss this below.

5 Boeckh, A., The Public Economy of Athens (transl. Lewis, G. C., 2nd ed.London, 1842), p. 496Google Scholar; Gilbert, G., Handbüch der griechischen Staatsalterthümer i (2nd ed.Leipzig, 1893), p. 143Google Scholar; de Sanctis, G., Atthis: storia della repubblica ateniese dalle origini alle riforme di Clistene (Rome, 1898), p. 225Google Scholar; Busolt, G. and Swoboda, H., Griechische Staatskunde ii (Munich, 1926), 822–3Google Scholar.

6 e.g. LSJ (ninth edition, 1940), p. 753; Boisacq, E., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (3rd ed.Heidelberg-Paris, 1938), p. 307Google Scholar; Frisk, H., Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1960), p. 610Google Scholar.

7 Cichorius, C., ‘Zu den Namen der attischen Steuerklassen’, in Griechische Studien Hermann Lipsius zum sechzigsten Geburtstag dargebrachl (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 135–40Google Scholar. His arguments extended to all four classes, but I restrict myself here (as explained below) to the ζευγῖται.

8 e.g. Meyer, Ed., Forschungen zur alten Geschichte ii (Halle, 1899), p. 523Google Scholar (cf. Geschichte des Altertums iii (2nd ed.Stuttgart, 1937), p. 605Google Scholar); Beloch, K. J., Griechische Geschichte i. 1 (2nd ed.Strassburg, 1912), p. 303Google Scholar; Lehmann-Haupt, C. F., in Gercke, A. and Norden, E., Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft iii (2nd ed.Leipzig, 1914), p. 20Google Scholar; Andrewes, A., The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956), p. 87Google Scholar; Bengtson, H., Griechische Geschichte (2nd ed.Munich, 1960), p. 108 n. 2Google Scholar; Hammond, N. G. L., A History of Greece to 322 B.C. (2nd ed.Oxford, 1967), p. 160Google Scholar; Volkmann, H., RE x. a (1972), col. 249 (apparently)Google Scholar; Jeffery, L. H., Archaic Greece: the city-states c. 700–500 B.C. (London, 1976), pp. 93 and 107 n. 6Google Scholar; Murray, O., Early Greece (London, 1980), p. 186Google Scholar (tentatively).

9 e.g. IG i2 45, lines 40–1; Raubitschek, DAA no. 372; the nomos in Demos. 43. 54. Cf. Aristot, . Pol. 1274a 20Google Scholar; Ath. Pol. 4. 3, 7. 3–4, 26. 2.

10 loc. cit. (note 4, above) – with the documentation taken from his People of Aristophanes (Oxford, 1943), p. 76Google Scholar.

11 For the moment, therefore, it will not be irrelevant to note (as did the lexicographers, e.g. Photius, ζε⋯γος) that ζε⋯γος need not invariably, even if it does normally, signify a pair of yoke-mates: witness ζε⋯γος τρ⋯δουλον (Aristoph. fr. 576), ζε⋯γος τριπ⋯ρθενον (Eurip. fr. 357) and ζε⋯γος τ⋯θριππον (Aesch. fr. 346; cf. Isoc. 16).

12 Photius, Hesychius, Suda, ζευγήσιον; Etym. Mag., ζευγ⋯σιον; Bekker, , Anecd. Gr. i (= Lex. Seg.), 260. 33Google Scholar.

13 op. cit. (note 5, above), p. 823 n. 1.

14 Andrewes, A., JHS 98 (1978), 1–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Burford, A., Econ. Hist. Rev. series 2, 13 (1960–1961), 1–18, at p. 16Google Scholar.

16 Burford, A., in Parthenos and Parthenon, suppl. to Greece and Rome 10 (1963), 23–35, at p. 33Google Scholar. The italics are mine.

17 e.g. Plato, , Laws 847bGoogle Scholar; Pollux 3. 55–7 (the metoikion).

18 The ζευγήσιον/ζευγ⋯σιον discrepancy might possibly be more significant than it looks, i.e. ζευγ⋯σιον might be the census (as in Ath. Pol. 7. 4) and ζευγήσιον the tax; but obviously it would be foolish to press the point.

19 Chantraine, P., La formation des noms en grec ancien (Paris, 1933), p. 311Google Scholar.

20 e.g. Hdt. 6. 117. 3; Xen. Cyr. 3. 3. 59; Polyaen. 2. 10. 4; Aelian, Tact. 11. 4.

21 e.g. Thuc. 5. 68. 3; Polyb. 1. 45. 9, 3. 81. 2, 18. 29. 5; Pollux 1. 126–7. It is never, admittedly, called a ζε⋯γος, but the υ/ευ shift, here as elsewhere, is of no importance. The best possible proof of this (if proof were needed) is of course the ζυγ⋯της, one of the three mysterious categories of rower on board a trireme (θαλαμῖται, ζυγῖται, θρανῖται); such, at any rate, is the spelling of their name in the various scholia on Aristoph. Frogs 1074 – but the scholiast on Thuc. 6. 31. 3 has ζευγίτης.

22 See most recently on this Cartledge, P. A., JHS 97 (1977), 18–24Google Scholar.

23 Tyrt. fr. 10 line 15, fr. 11 line 11. For the actual distances between one man and the next see Pritchett, W. K., The Greek State at War i (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), pp. 144–54Google Scholar.