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Strategia and Hegemonia in Fifth-Century Athens 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Extract

Those who have studied the Athenian system of command in the fifth century have confined themselves almost entirely to the period after 440 B.C. They have raked over the evidence to discover signs of double representation of one tribe on the board of strategi, or of a supreme among the or of a chairman at least of the board of strategi. On the other hand little attention is paid to the progressive diminution of the military functions of the archon polemarchus within the state and to the great problems created in external affairs by the Persian Wars with the formation of the Greek League and then of the Athenian Alliance. Yet these matters are vital to the evolution of the system of command which can be seen in operation after 440 B.C. In particular the decisive steps were probably taken in 480–466 B.C., when Athens' national system of command had first to be integrated into a command-system of combined forces headed by Sparta in the Persian Wars and then adapted to take over the command of combined forces in continuous warfare against Persia. In this article I try to study the whole field and to avoid applying to the early part of the period the theories which have been evolved hitherto with special reference to Pericles in 440–428 B.C. The article consists of the following sections. A, Strategos and Hegemon in 501/0. B, C, current ideas on the modern term D, the historical origins of the so-called E, summary of conclusions.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1969

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References

page 111 note 2 Hignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952), 169 f.Google Scholar gives a good summary of the interpretations and the elaborations of this sentence in Ath. Pol. 22.

page 111 note 2 . He himself opens the discussion with these words: ‘as the polemarch had previously been commander-in-chief of the army, the final clause of the statement must mean that his position was not affected by the change’. It seems to me that neither of his two points is implicit in the sentence and that both of them are disproved by the evidence of Herodotus, to which I shall come later.

page 112 note 1 I quote the views of E. M. Walker because they raise many of the issues which have been associated with this passage. Many others have expressed similar views. Meyer, E., GdA iii2. 745,Google Scholar ‘im J. 502 wurden zuerst zehn Strategen als Kommandanten des Aufgebots der einzelnen Phylen gewählt … Mit dem Polemarchen zusammen, der den Vorsitz hatte und den rechten Flügel kommandierte, bildeten die Strategen den Kriegsrat.’ von Wilamowitz-Moellen-dorff, U., Aristoteles und Athen ii. 78,Google Scholar ‘die Feldherrn immer noch Regiments-Commandeure unter dem Commando des Polemarchen blieben.’ Glotz, G., Histoire grecque i. 482,Google Scholar ‘la nation eut a sa les dix stratèges qui exerçaient chacun le commandement supérieur sous l'autorité aisormais nominate du polé-marque.’ Ledl, A., Studien zur älteren athenischen Verfassungsgeschichte 339,Google Scholar ‘Aus Arist. Ath. Pol. 22. 2 lernen wir daβ die Athener im Jahre 502/1 zum ersten Male … die zehn Strategen phylenweise … erwählten, während der Polemarchos noch immer Kommandant des Gesamtaufgebotes blieb’ (adding in a footnote that the strategi were originally ‘nur Phylenobersten’). Busolt-Swoboda, , Griechi-sche Staatskunde 881,Google Scholar ‘der Polemarchos behielt auβer gewissen Ehrenrechten Stimmrecht und Vorsitz im Kriegsrat der Strategen, Oberbefehlshaber war er nur noch nominell.’ This last view is followed by Schwahn, W., ‘Strategos’ in R. E. Suppl. vi (1935), 1073.Google Scholar

page 112 note 2 So Busolt-Swoboda, , op. cit. 881Google Scholar (’seit 501/0 wählte jedoch die gesamte Bürger-schaft die zehn Strategen und zwar je einen aus jeder Phyle’), and Accame, S. in Riv. di fil. lxiii (1935), 342.Google Scholar It is probable that the tribes each elected their candidates and that the Assembly elected the ten strategi from these candidates, the strategi thus being (a method such as is stated in Ath. Pol. 31. 1).

page 112 note 3 So Wade-Gery, H. T. in C.Q. xxvii (1933), 28,Google Scholar ‘I argue … that Kleisthenes created the Strategoi c. 500 B.C., as a Secular Executive destined to displace the Archons: the Archons’ degradation was a corollary of the creation of the Strategoi, yet this corollary was postponed for fourteen years, since Kleisthenes lost power c. 499 B.C.’ On the other hand Hignett, C., op. cit. 172,Google Scholar ‘although the positive evidence is weak, the strategoi must have existed in the Solonian state, if not earlier.’ So too Schwahn, , loc. cit. 1071,Google Scholar argues that the strategi were not state officials but tribal officials in Solon’s state, because they are not mentioned in Ath. Pol. 7. 3. His argument is not conclusive, because the list in Ath. Pol. 7. 3 is not complete; for it mentions no military or naval officials and not even the naucrari, who figure in 8. 3.

page 113 note 1 Indeed it would be absurd to suppose that military commanders had been appointed before 501 B.C. by any method other than election; the principle laid down by Ath. Pol. 43. 1 is applicable to the sixth century as well as to the fifth and the fourth centuries:

page 113 note 2 For Solonian see Ruschenbusch, in Historia Einzelschriften 9 (1966), F 79–80,Google Scholar and for see Archilochus 58. 1 and Aeschylus, Septem 816. Herodotus used of commanders generally and it is clear that he was not always using the word local to each country; but the meaning in each case is that the strategi are commanders of a state’s forces or of a coalition’s forces and not of a contingent. Thus we find When he had occasion to speak of the commander of a contingent, he used the word for example of the insubordinate subordinate officer Amompharetus at Plataea (9. 53. 2), although the word was probably used not at Sparta but at Athens (it occurs first in Aeschylus fr. 182).

page 114 note 1 Sophocles, Ajax 1105, puts the matter in a nutshell: Cf. Arist. Pol. 1322a40 f. contrasting with subordinate officers; and also PI. Lg. 755 b.

page 115 note 1 Gr. Gesch. i. 616; quoted with approval by J. E. Sandys in his commentary on Ath. Pol. 22. 2.

page 115 note 2 The meaning of the passage seems to be misunderstood by Busolt-Swoboda, , op. cit. 1121,Google Scholar where this one general is said to have ‘commanded the army outside the boundaries of Attica’ (‘der das Heer auβerhalb des Landesgrenzen befehligte’). Such an interpretation is refuted within the same chapter in section 4 where we learn that disciplinary powers over the hoplites were executed not by one strategos but by In practice too there is no indication that only one general, one ‘Oberbefehlshaber’, always commanded the hoplites in a campaign outside Attica—even at as late a date as the campaign which culminated in the battle of Chaeronea (D.S. 16. 85. 2 ).

page 116 note 1 Our text of the speech comes from D. H. Lysias 23 f. of which there are numerous manuscripts. Modern texts are based on differing selections of manuscripts. For example in 1899 H. Usener and L. Radermacher selected five of which only one (G) while in 1912 C. Hude selected a different five of which only two (G and T) had this reading. The editors themselves read respectively (in the Teubner edition) and (in the Oxford Classical Text). The record of readings adopted by some of the other editors of Lysias is as follows: C. Scheibe and E. S. Shuckburgh F. H. Baynes, C. G. Cobet, and Th. Thalheim U. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff The lectio dijficilior is certainly and the sentence then has the point, not just that the wealthy Diodotus was on the hoplite register (e.g. for which Lysias in fact uses other expressions at 14. 7, 15. 7, and 9. 4), but that he was registered for service with Thrasyllus on a campaign outside Attica; it was this knowledge, then, which prompted him to make his financial settlement. There are, however, points to be made on the other side. I am grateful to Professor K. J. Dover who brought the complexity of the problem to my attention.

page 116 note 2 Whatever else may have been involved in the proclamation of Alcibiades as (X. HG I. 4. 20), this function of hegemonia was performed by him on the march to Eleusis. The position of Alcibiades is discussed by Beloch, K. J., Die attische Politik sell Perikles (1884), 286 f,Google ScholarJameson, M. H., ‘Seniority in the Strategia’ in TAPA lxxxvi (1955), 84 f.,Google Scholar and Dover, K. J., in JHS lxxx (1960), 62.Google Scholar The words of Xenophon should be interpreted in the light of the context, which shows that Alcibiades was not sole general but one of a board of generals and that after this proclamation he was accompanied by Aristocrates and Adeimantus (HG I. 4. 21). See further, p. 139 below. The privileges conferred by the term did not include, or did not necessarily include, superior command over one’s colleagues, since Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus were all (Th. 6. 8. 2), but they did involve freedom from some routine checks such as the each prytany (Ath. Pol. 61.2) and the dependence on the Boule (Th. 6. 26. 1). Plu. Nicias 12. 6 summarizes the purpose of the psephism which conferred these powers on Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus as

page 117 note 1 as in LSJ9 I. 2.

page 117 note 2 As in the routine agendum of the Assembly (Ath. Pol. 43. 4),

page 117 note 3 Probably to one general in view of the fact that responsibility for important financial matters was put upon one strategus, namely Pericles, on several occasions. Incidentally with regard to the in Thucydides 2. 24. 1 I disagree with Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides 2 (1956) 81, ‘they must be garrisons outside mainland Attica’.Google Scholar

page 117 note 4 X. Anab. 3. 2. 12; Arist. Eq. 660 f. with Scholia.

page 118 note 1 Thucydides 2. 35. 5 cites the burial at Marathon as exceptional to the (already established) custom.

page 118 note 2 Such a speech was almost inevitable among Greeks and a formalization of the practice is attributed to Solon by Anaximenes (FGrH 72 F 24) and the Scholiast to Thucydides 2. 35. 1. The validity of the attribution is doubted by Ruschenbusch, , Historia Einzelschriften 9 (1966), F 144 and pp. 46, 49, 57, but Solon was certainly concerned with funerary customs. See also below, p. 142, n. 1.Google Scholar

page 118 note 3 Hdt. 6. 109. 2 indicates that the pole-march of 490/89 had been chosen by lot; I discuss this passage in JHS lxxxviii (1968), 48.Google Scholar

page 119 note 1 Dover, K. J., loc. cit., has shown very clearly that in such a context means one of ten generals, and it is obvious from the account by Herodotus that the ten generals had equal powers. As Dover says on p. 70, ‘Herodotus cannot mean that Miltiades was superior in authority to the other nine.’Google Scholar

page 119 note 2 For the other evidence on this matter, see my article The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon’, JHS lxxxviii (1968) 13 ff.Google Scholar

page 120 note 1 Most scholars have supposed that a had to be a supreme commander, and in consequence they cannot accept the idea that Callimachus was hegemon but Miltiades was commander on the day of battle, or again that Demosthenes was hegemon but the Acarnanian generals shared the command with him (see, for instance, Dover, K.J., loc. cit. 72, who thinks Herodotus was inventing,Google Scholar and Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides 2. 241Google Scholar implies that Hagnon was to lead the Athenian army when it arrived’ and 2. 422 ‘Demosthenes was in command (107. 2) but on a political question of this nature the Acarnanian leaders would certainly want to be consulted’). For the operations in Amphi-lochia see my article in BSA xxxvii. 128 f.Google Scholar

page 121 note 1 For Thucydides’ use of hiatus see D. H. Comp. 12, of vivid tenses see Longinus 25, and in general see my article in C.Q. N.s. ii. 129.Google Scholar

page 121 note 2 Gomme’s suggestion, that the men referred to in Thucydides’ words at 3. 107. 4 ‘must be hoplites, not archers, and very likely the epibatai from the twenty ships’, seems to rest upon a mis understanding of the situation. His remark ‘that only hoplites are in question here, in the regular line of battle’ overlooks the mention of the in the line of battle. His proposal to transfer the marines from the fleet to the land forces would not only weaken the twenty ships which lay within sight of the Ambracian fleet but would also cross the lines of command, since Aristotle and Hierophon commanded the Athenian ships, not Demosthenes.

page 122 note 1 I have commented on this idiom in JHS lxx. 53Google Scholar and C.Q. N.s. vi. 124 f.Google Scholar

page 123 note 1 Herodotus uses of prehistoric times at 1. 171. 2; 1. 173. 1 and 2; 7. 59. 2; 7. 59. 2; 7. 91; 7. 129. 1 57. 176. 3 and 8. 31; of the dark age or the early archaic period at 4. 11. 1,5. 88. 1, and 7. 59. 2 ; of the earliest period at Naucratis probably c. 615–610 B.C. rather than c. 566/5 B.C. (see Cook, R. M. in JHS lvii (1937), 231,Google Scholar who noted the difficulty of taking to refer to Amasis’ reign and thought Herodotus likely to have known the early history of Naucratis); and of the Samian attack on Siphnos c. 525 B.C. It appears then that he used as Aristotle later used (see Dunbabin, T.J., The Western Greeks 57 n. 4Google Scholar), to apply to the sixth century or earlier. If at 6. 109. 2 does mean 490 B.C., it is unique. In fact Herodotus writing of the Persian Wars as his main theme thinks of the wars as near-contemporary and not as ‘in the old days’.

page 123 note 2 Seep. 112, n. 1 above and Ehrenberg, V.A.J.P. xvi (1945) 116 f.Google Scholar

page 123 note 3 In consequence some writers limit the study of a system of command to the latter part of the fifth century (e.g. Ehrenberg, , loc. cit. 132Google Scholar simply says with reference to the period before 440 B.C. ‘it cannot be decided whether the election was known before Pericles’ rule, but it is not likely’) or discuss the position, for instance, of Themistocles at Salamis as if it concerned Athens alone.

page 124 note 1 Like many others, Gomme, , op. cit. 3. 560Google Scholar takes hegemonia to mean being president or chairman of a board (’presidency of the board of boiotarchai changed regularly’); but the Greek verb for this is and not (cf. Th. 4. 118. 11). He doubts whether the change of hegemonia was made daily and between all eleven boiotarchs; here we must be guided by the analogies of daily rotation, such as the cases of Marathon and the Nemea river and at sea at Arginusae and Aegospotami (D.S. 13. 97. 6 and 13. 106. 1 ), and by the analogies of equality of function among members of a board, an idea of equality which was inherent also in the Boeotian system of rotating boulai. In the naval battles the hegemon should be thought of as the flag-officer of the day, who made the signals and led the formation. A one-day hegemonia is not a matter of supreme command, though the words are often mistranslated so (e.g. in the Loeb edition of D.S. 13. 97. 6 ‘who held the supreme command that day’). The hegemon of the day was normally stationed on the right wing, as in a land battle; D.S. 13. 97. 6 refers apparently to the day before the battle when Thrasyllus (mistakenly Thrasy-bulus in the text) was flag-officer, and on the day of the battle according to Xenophon, HG 1. 6. 30, the right-wing officer was Proto-machus and Thrasyllus came next to him. The dispositions in Diodorus differ from those in Xenophon; he puts Thrasyllus on the right wing. See Dover, , loc. cit. 71 on hegemoniaGoogle Scholar at Arginusae and Aegospotami, and Jameson, , loc. cit. 80.Google Scholar

page 125 note 1 The election was a (Plu. Nicias 12. 5). Presumably someone nominated X and a show of hands voted him in or out; then Y; then Z and so on to the re quired number.

page 125 note 2 The contrast between is as in Aeschin. 2. 178 Plutarch does not use in the phrase because the emphasis contained in avros is unnecessary; for the same reason it does not occur in Hdt. 6. 103. I The meaning ‘one of two’ is contained in However, Dover, , loc. cit. 73Google Scholar takes Plutarch to say that Nicias was elected com mander of the expedition () and then that Nicias had been appointed second-in-command This involves Plutarch in an absurd inconsistency within the space of a couple of chapters. Dover thinks Plutarch committed the inconsistency open-eyed ‘for dramatic effect’. My opinion of Plutarch is different. The translators of Plutarch’s Lives in 1880, A. Stewart and G. Long, seem to me to have understood Plutarch’s meaning correctly: ‘Nikias, who was nominally Lamachus’ colleague, but really absolute’. See also the discussion by Jameson, , loc. cit. 83 f.Google Scholar

page 125 note 3 See Kierdorf, W., Erlebnis und Darstellung der Perserkriege (1966), 63 f. on this passage.Google Scholar

page 126 note 1 I disagree here with K. J. Dover in his edition of Thucydides VII (1965), p. 12. He distinguishes between the three ‘full’ generals and the two generals who were appointed mid year when they were at Syracuse, and he considers that the latter held ‘temporary and local military command’ and were associated with the ‘full’ generals (when Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived) at the discretion of the ‘full’ generals. This distinction is not borne out by the instance of Cleon appointed mid year and his relationship to the ‘full’ general Demosthenes (Th. 4. 29. 1). The sentence at Th. 7. 16. 1 ‘until the arrival of other fellow-commanders duly elected’ is not, I think, a restrictive condition of the election of Menander and Euthy-demus but an explanation of its purpose that in the interim Nicias should not be alone in his illness and distress. The normal practice, I imagine, was to elect a man general until the end of the year and not to supersede him except for misconduct. In practice too Menander and Euthydemus are after the arrival of Demosthenes and Eurymedon. Thus at 7. 43. 1 Demosthenes persuades where the plural refers to Eurymedon, Euthydemus, and Menander; and at 7. 69. 4 Demosthenes, Menander, and Euthydemus embarked as for the last naval battle. The report of the attitudes of Demosthenes, Eurymedon, and Nicias to withdrawal at 7. 49 is inconclusive; for the argumentum ex silentio, that Euthydemus and Menander were not present because their attitudes are not reported, is not a valid one. It is in fact likely that Menander was present and gave Thucydides the report of the generals’ meeting, if, as is generally supposed, Menander survived to serve at Aegos-potami (X. HG 2. 1. 16).

page 126 note 2 So Dover, , loc. cit. 64,Google Scholar ‘VI. By naming one member and making no mention of the rest’ and ‘(iii) its use is virtually certain in passages which describe action by a member of a board on such a scale that we cannot believe that all his colleagues were left behind with nothing to do, e.g. Th. ii. 31. 1 (iv) There are many other passages which are similar to (iii) but permit a greater variety of opinion on the likelihood of action by a single member, e.g. the campaigns of Cimon mentioned in Th. 1. 98 ff.’

page 127 note 1 Schwahn 1079 seems to me mistaken in supposing that Plutarch’s use of is ‘mit R¨cksicht auf römische Verhältnisse gewählt’. Cf. Dover, , loc. cit. 73.Google Scholar

page 127 note 2 They are, of course, not examples of an ‘Oberkommando’ as Schwahn 1080 supposes, citing Syll. 2 192 = Tod, GHI no. 156 (357/6): The Assembly chose one or more generals from the duly elected board of generals to undertake a particular mission (in this case ; those not chosen stayed at home or were sent on other missions. We see a similar case in 446 B.C., when Pericles went as general with the force to Euboea (Th. 1. 114. 1) and Andocides went as general with another force to the Megarid (this being the usual interpretation of IG i2.1085Google Scholar = Tod, GHI no. 41). As Jameson 64 puts it, ‘the archairesiai and psephismata assigning a command were complementary but separate steps’.

page 127 note 2 The supposition that Pericles was chosen by the Assembly to conduct the defence of Attica does away with the need to suppose either that ‘Pericles speaks for the whole body of strategoi’ or that ‘Pericles, though with no special legal powers, yet by his influence prevailed with the boule (and his fellow strategoi) not to call the normal ekklesia’ (Gomme ii. 76; cf. Hignett 246 f.). When the invasion was impending, the Assembly had to appoint one or more strategi to conduct the defence, including a if the provision in Ath. Pol. 61. 1 was then in force (see p. 142, below), and grant some exemptions from normal procedures under emergency conditions, so that he or they were in the fifth-century sense. Political justice pointed to Pericles as promoter of the policy which had precipitated the invasion (cf. Th. 2. 59. 2). In Tod, GHI no. 42 11. 76–78 ‘the generals’ are made responsible for the defence of Euboea (446/5 B.C.).

page 127 note 3 In 430 B.C. we find a similar situation: Pericles took the same line when the enemy invaded Athens (Th. 2. 55. 2), and he also took counter-measures, namely the expedition to Epidaurus. Pericles alone is responsible. Later in the summer the forces which he used were taken over by two of his colleagues on the board of strategi, Hagnon and Cleopompus, who sailed off to Potidaea ( Th. 2. 58. 1). Gomme, in his Commentary ii. 165, is correct when he says ‘this——implies not only that they had been elected at the same time as Pericles’, but I see no justification for his further words ‘but probably that they had also been his colleagues on the previous expedition’. Thucydides could not have made his meaning clearer: Pericles ‘on the one hand’ acted as before and ‘on the other hand’ put to sea with 100 ships [not indeed ], and the two generals took over the forces which he had used [not which they had used].

page 129 note 1 Those who hold that the expressions following in this part of the Ath. Pol. refer to the constitution only after 404/3 would maintain that the passage in 61. 1 rules out the election of any generals before 404/3. But the distinctions between the past practices and the present practices are broad ones and do not always mention intermediate variations or exceptions (e.g. concerning the archons in 55. 1), which occurred between the time of Cleisthenes, for instance, and 404/3.

page 129 note 2 Hignett 349.

page 129 note 3 Id. 352, following the view of WadeGery, in C.Q. xxiv (1930), 38.Google Scholar

page 129 note 4 FGrH III B 1. 149.

page 129 note 5 Lenz, F. W. in TAPA lxxii (1941) 232.Google Scholar

page 130 note 1 Dover, , loc. cit. 76,Google Scholar ‘he (Thucydides) thinks it necessary not only to inform us that Pericles was general but to remind us that he was not an autocrat but a member of a board of ten generals. The insertion of the words in 1. 116. 1 and ii. 13. 1 achieve this purpose.’ For the earlier interpretation that meant commander-in-chief, see, e.g., Schwahn 1079–80, Ehrenberg, in A.J.P. lxvi (1945), 116, Hignett 353.Google Scholar

page 130 note 2 Wade-Gery, C.Q. xxiv (1930), 38, ‘The exceptions to the "one per Tribe" rule which meet us from 441 onwards are due, I think, to this system, whose original purpose was to allow an exceptionally eminent man like Pericles to be elected "from all Athens", and not permanently bar preferment in his own Tribe.’ Hignett 352, ‘the choice in any par ticular year of a single general was simply an expedient to surmount the difficulty created by the continuous reelection of Pericles’; see also p. 355.Google Scholar

page 130 note 3 Wade-Gery, in JHS lii (1932), 219Google Scholar dates the introduction immediately after the ostracism of Thucydides: ‘the need for both Policy and Executive to be continuous is now recognised, and Perikles enjoys henceforth a virtual principate, expressed constitutionally by his special position amongst the Strategoi.’

page 130 note 4 In C.Q. xxv (1931), 89.Google Scholar He supported his view by taking as a possible analogy the method of selecting the Exegetae in Plato, Laws 759 d-e; I have argued elsewhere, in C.f. ii (1952), 4 f.,Google Scholar that his interpretation of the passage in Plato, Laws is not the correct one. Jameson, in TAPA lxxxvi (1955), 66 f.Google Scholar sees some of the difficulties raised by Wade-Gery’s view. So does Staveley, in Ancient Society and Institutions (1966), 279Google Scholar, but I do not find the method he proposes any more probable, nor that of Accame, S. in Riv. d. Fil. lxiii (1935).Google Scholar

page 131 note 1 The view of Lenz, in TAPA lxxii (1941), 229,Google Scholar that ‘Pericles had Glaucon elected as his proxy’ and the proxy acted as commander- in-chief, if Pericles was not present, seems incompatible with Athenian democratic ideas; Jacoby, , FGrH III B 2. 135 rejects Lenz’s view.Google Scholar

page 131 note 2 Hignett, 355.

page 131 note 3 In TAPA lxxii (1941), 226 ff.Google Scholar His text is reproduced by Jacoby, , FGrH 324 (Androtion) F 38.Google Scholar Lenz saw another case of eleven strategi in Th. 1. 57. 6 but the arguments for the text being unsound seem to me conclusive. In his commentary on F 38 Jacoby supported Wade-Gery’s proposal that the words were alternative suggestions for the corrupt word in this proposal requires the corrupt word to have been corrupt at an early date, and it assumestacitly that the position of the two entries in the consecutive order of tribes is accidental, being due to an alternative suggestion for a corrupt word.

page 132 note 1 There have been attempts to obtain more precise information about the position of the which I have not discussed, as I believe in the existence of such a strategus and yet do not think we can obtain any precision in detail. Wade-Gery’s bold restoration, given exempli gratia but adopted by some, of IG i2. 114,Google Scholar lines 43–5 C.Q. xxv (1931), 89Google Scholar imports all the words he wants and leaves —which is in the text—unexplained. His publication and restoration in C.P. xxvi (1931), 312,Google Scholar adopted in ATL ii. 73,Google Scholar of the end of IG i2. 50Google Scholar = Hill, , Sources for Greek History 2306Google Scholar provide another example of Pericles and a fellow tribesman being generals. Westlake, H. D. in Hermes lxxiv (1956), 110 f.Google Scholar and Jameson, M. H. in TAPA lxxxvi (1955), 70 f.Google Scholar have drawn from the story in Plu. Nicias 15. 2 the deduction that Nicias was chairman of a board meeting of the strategi. Now the story goes like this. When the colleagues were deliberating together in the strategion the poet Sophocles was bidden by Nicias to speak first and replied ‘I am the greatest in age but you are the greatest in prestige.’ Now this story is told to illustrate not any power or form of chairmanship but the unofficial prestige——of Nicias which enabled him to dominate his fellow general Lama-chus; and the story is precisely in point because it shows the prestige of Nicias being stressed by his fellow general Sophocles in a meeting of colleagues. Indeed the words emphasize the fact that officially Sophocles and Nicias were (equal) colleagues, and the joke turns on the double meaning of ’most august’ in years and in prestige. As regards Nicias bidding Sophocles speak first, this can happen in any meeting of equals with or without a chairman; someone has to initiate, and it often takes the form of asking someone else to initiate. During the war I was with small groups of E.L.A.S. in which three men shared the command equally; there was no chairman. On one occasion we sat above Kalabáka and watched the Germans burning villages below because the three ‘strategi’ talked interminably, but on most occasions it worked well—and on the basis of true equality.

page 133 note 1 Hdt. 6. 132 implies that the Parian expedition came at once after the victory at Marathon, that is in early summer 489; and the story of the carte blanche given to him, similar in kind to the story about Themistocles in Polyaenus 1. 30. 6, is more suitable to the months after the victory.

page 133 note 2 Hdt. 7. 143. 1

page 133 note 3 See my History of Greece 2, 225 for references.

page 134 note 1 In case it is argued here that Herodotus names one general but means the board of generals, we may note that, if Pausanias had had to consult ten Athenian generals, five (as in Th. i. 29. 2 and 1. 46. 2) or more Corinthian generals, and so on for 24 states in all, he would have had to deal with and issue orders to well over 100 generals!

page 135 note 1 For the chronology see my note in Historia iv (1955), 384 n. 1.Google Scholar

page 135 note 2 We do not know whether an Athenian force served under Leotychidas in northern Greece in 478 B.C.; if it did, the commander may have been Themistocles as he spoke for Athens against Sparta at a meeting of the Delphic Amphictyony in which the Medizing states were under consideration, probably in 478 B.C. (Plu. Them. 20. 2).

page 136 note 1 As Herodotus tells the story, the system of command is not brought out (9. 44 f.).

page 136 note 2 Little attention has been given hitherto to the effect of the Persian Wars and the Delian Confederacy on the Athenian system of command. The usual comment is that of Hignett 247: ‘The principle of strict collegiality was early violated, for the needs of the Persian War compelled the Athenians to confer supreme authority within the board for a whole campaign on a single general, who then acted as the representative of Athens on the war-council of the patriotic Greeks.’ So Busolt-Swoboda, 891 n. 2: ‘Themistocles Aristeides und Xanthippos waren 480 und 479 besonders bevollmach-tigte, ihren Amtsgenossen ubergeordnete Strategen.’

page 136 note 3 There is perhaps a similar implication of unusual or excessive trust in Th. 2. 65. 4 when after their attack on Pericles the Athenians .

page 137 note 1 One is apt to forget that the first ten years of the Athenian Alliance's history were full of action against Persia and are not represented at all by what Thucydides says in the Pentekontaëtia. It was not the sort of sporadic activity in which Athens would appoint now and then one or more strategi for a specific mission; and, as we have seen in the case of Eisenhower, continuity of leadership at the head of combined forces is of the first importance in terms of confidence as well as effectiveness. The Allies themselves probably continued to appoint one commander each for their own contingents, as they had done under the Spartan system; we have an example at the battle of Arginusae where the Samian contingent fought under a Samian commander, Hippeus, (X. HG i.29).Google Scholar

page 137 note 2 The prominence of Aristides in the formation of the Alliance (Ath. Pol. 23. 5; D.S. 11. 47) and in the critical task of assessing the resources of the allied states makes it probable that he was at work well into 477 B.C. and particularly in months when sailing was not difficult. He might thus have continued as commander until midsummer 477 B.C. On the other hand all the military operations are attributed to Cimon, and such operations must have started, one imagines, in midsummer 477 B.C. at the latest.

page 138 note 1 They were evidently commanding an Athenian force which was preparing the way For the joint colony of Athenians and allies (Th. 1. 100. 2–3). For the fragmentary casualty list IG i 2. 928Google Scholar see p. 139, 11. 2 and Gomme's, comments, i. 297.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 See my arguments in Historia iv (1955), 377 f.Google Scholar

page 139 note 1 Athens seems to have summoned aid from Chios and Lesbos by virtue of individual treaties of alliance and not through a meet ing of the Allied Congress (Th. i. 116. I and 116. 2 and 117. 2).

page 139 note 2 The casualty list gives allied casualties elsewhere but ‘none, so far as we can tell, in Thasos or Thrace’ (ATL iii. 109Google Scholar); this accords with the Thasian War being conducted by Athens alone and not by the Athenian Alliance. There is nothing surprising in the large number of generals used on this very critical campaign. In 433 B.C. Athens sent two groups of three generals each to Corcyra with 30 ships (Tod, GHI no. 55) and eight generals were at the battle of Arginusae (X. HG 1. 6. 2930).Google Scholar

page 139 note 3 Jameson 65 f. gives a list of cases where there were two generals from one tribe and discusses doubtful cases, e.g. Cleophon on pp. 86 f.

page 139 note 4 For this matter see Jameson 84 f. and A. Andrewes in JHS lxxiii (1953), 3.Google Scholar Adeimantus goes into action at Andros (X. HG 1. 4. 21Google Scholar), i.e. in the Attic year 407/6.

page 140 note 1 Thucydides i. 126. 8 states that, when Cylon's supporters were holding the Acropolis, the Athenians entrusted to the nine archons . As this was normally a responsibility of the strategi, it seems likely that the board of strategi was not yet in existence. . Herodotus 5. 71. 2 mentions as taking Cylon and his supporters from the altars.

page 140 note 2 See p. 118, n. 3, above.

page 141 note 1 Before the discovery of the Ath. Pol. it was thought that the archairesiai were held in the ninth prytany. It is surprising that they were in fact held so early; the occasion of the Persian Wars and the need to produce a commander in the spring may have caused the date of the elections to be put in the seventh prytany.

page 142 note 1 Kierdorf, W., Erlebnis und Darstellung der Perserkriege (1966), 83 f.Google Scholar, makes a strong case in support of Diodorus against Jacoby in JHS lxiv (1944), 55Google Scholar, supported in ATL iii. 109–10.Google Scholar But he changes the date of the law from after Plataea to after 478 B.C., because he considers that the ‘Tatenkatalog’ of the Amazons, Adrastus, and the Heracleidae is more appropriate to the propaganda of the opening years of the Delian Confederacy. I am inclined to keep the date as in Diodorus, because the law is probably cited originally from a dated psephisma, and because the greatest occasion for the glorification of fallen patriots was in 479 rather than, say, in 475 B.C.

page 143 note 1 The evidence for this lies in the presence of Pericles and a fellow tribesman on the board of strategi perhaps in 439/8 (doubtfully restored), perhaps in 435/4 (restored), certainly in 433/2 and 432/1, and probably in 431 /o.

page 143 note 2 Two matters which lie outside the fifth century have sometimes been used by students of the strategia and need brief discussion. The first is the phrase with which Herodotus described Cleisthenes' first reform before Isagoras called in Cleomenes: (5. 69. 2). Some, including LSJ° s.v. II, have seen these as commanders of the cavalry provided by each tribe, and others, as noted by How and Wells ii. 36, have perceived strategi lurking ‘under a strange name’. The defects of the first view are that a fully organized cavalry force, based on the new ten tribes, cannot have existed in 508/7 before Cleomenes intervened (it is doubtful if such a force existed even at the time of Marathon), and that the words of Herodotus must refer to major officials and not to subordinate commanders of one part of the armed forces. The defect of the second view is that Herodotus speaks elsewhere and often of Athenian strategi as and had no reason to call this military flower by another name. Now the sense of what Herodotus says in this passage rds is paralleled in the expressions in Ath. Pol. 8. 3 and in Ath. Pol. 41. 2 In each case the Greek manner is to mention first the tribes and then the major tribal official, whether he is a or a . I take it then that Herodotus means by at 5. 69. 2 the major tribal officials. This is indeed the general meaning of , for instance, in Xen. Cyr. 1. 2. 14 and Arist. Pol. 1301b23. Herodotus then referred to the major tribal officials of the ten new tribes in 508/7 and not to military commanders of the army or of tribal contingents, as has been supposed by some and most recently by Staveley, E. S. in Ancient Society and Institutions (1966), p. 276 and p. 284.Google Scholar

If, then, the ten strategi are ncirc;ot to be projected back to 508/7 under the cover of Herodotus' word , how was the army organized in the years 508/7–501/0? In the first place the meaning of the entry in Ath. Pol. 22. 2 under 501/0 is that the change in the higher command during Cleisthenes' acts of reform came then and not earlier. Why did it come about so late? A glance at military events provides one answer, namely that the years in which Athens was at war with Sparta, Boeotia, Chalcis, and Aegina and was so hard pressed that she tried twice to gain the alliance of Persia, were not years in which one would change radically the method of choosing the higher command and perhaps also of organizing the forces; but by 501/0 the dangers had largely passed away. If we ask how the army was commanded in 508/7 to 501/0, we can only say that at a time which followed some thirty-six years of tyranny and three years of stasis we do not know what was done but that the Assembly is likely to have elected one polemarch and several generals. It has been suggested by Staveley, loc. cit., that in these years ten strategi were elected ‘by the ten separate tribal assemblies’; for this I see no evidence nor indeed much probability as the new tribal assemblies cannot have started with a sufficiently intimate knowledge of their members for the purpose of making so important a choice. They took time to shake down, and the new Boule came into action probably in 504/3 (Ath. Pol. 22. 2) because, as Sandys remarked, ‘the reforms of Cleisthenes may have taken three years to get into complete shape’.

The other passage is Ath. Pol. 61. 1 The meaning is that the ten strategi are elected ‘now’ from all Athenians and, as Sandys remarked, ‘without the distinction of tribe’, which had existed ‘previously’; the fuller expressions are used at Ath. Pol. 56. 3 and 57. 1, in each case in contrast to election from a subdivision of the people. The upward definition of ‘now’ is uncertain in the context (our knowledge of lists of generals suggests a possible terminus post quern in 335/4 or 329/8), but the downward definition is certain, that is in 327–324 B.C. (cf. Day, J. and Chambers, M., Aristotle's History of Athenian Democracy 195 f.Google Scholar). As regards the statements of the Ath. Pol. on contemporary conditions we may quote Sandys's words: ‘There can be no question as to … the completely trustworthy character of the Second Part’; and if anyone suspects corruption in at 61. 1 we have the words in the citation of Pollux 8. 87. As it happens six generals are known for the next year, 323/2. Three of these are from one tribe, and this illustrates the operation of the contemporary system of electing . If I am correct in my interpretation, this passage does not cast any new light on fifth-century practice, and I am therefore unable to accept the view of Staveley, loc. cit. 282, that reference to his supposed fifth-century system of electing one or more candidates who polled 80 per cent or more of the votes as and the rest of the ten at one a tribe (i.e. ) ‘is contained in the words of Ath. Pol. 61. 1’. Those who look to Plato's Laws for analogies to Athenian practice will note that the three strategi of the ideal state were elected without distinction of tribe on straight votes (755 d)j and the twelve taxiarchs or tribal commanders with distinction of tribe were elected on straight votes likewise.