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Cimon, Skyros and ‘Theseus’ Bones'1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

A. J. Podlecki
A. J. Podlecki
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University/Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

Thucydides reports the capture of Skyros ‘next’ (ἔπϵιτα) after that of Eion under the generalship of Cimon, as the first events in his digression (έκβολή) on the Pentekontaëtia. Further details are added by Diodorus (presumably following Ephorus) and Plutarch. It is of some importance to try to determine the date of this event, of even greater importance to see it in correct perspective for Cimon's rising star and Themistocles' falling one.

The only specific indication of time we have is Plutarch's reference to an oracle ‘given to the Athenians when they made an inquiry after the Persian Wars in the archonship of Phaidon’ (i.e., 476/5 B.C.). This has generally been taken to provide a date for the capture of Skyros, and the transference of the bones of Theseus to Athens, which Plutarch says followed it. But it is worth pointing out again, with Busolt, that Plutarch's words give a ‘date’ only for the oracle. Diodorus dates the Skyros campaign (along with Eion before and the Eurymedon victory after) to the archonship of Demotion, 470/69, but his evidence is worth very little on a point of chronology such as this.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 91 , November 1971 , pp. 141 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1971

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References

2 Thuc. i 98.2.

3 Diod. xi 60. 2; cf. P. Oxy. 1610, frs. 6–7 (cf. fr. 35).

4 Plut. Thes. 36, Cim. 8.

5 Thes. 36.1.

6 Griech. Gesch. ii 1 (1897) 105–6 n. 2. Busolt himself suggested that the capture of Skyros may have occurred as late as 474/3 or 473/2 B.C.

7 Smart, J. D. (‘Kimon's Capture of Eion,’ JHS lxxxvii [1967] 136–38)CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests that there were two versions of the archon list, and that the oracle and the expedition to Skyros are to be dated to 469/8; I am not quite convinced.

8 This point is well brought out by Wells, J., Studies in Herodotus (Oxford, 1923) 133–35Google Scholar.

9 Σ Ael. Arist. ὑπ. τ. τϵττ, iii. p. 688 Dind. (λιμός); Aristoph, Σ. Plut. 627Google Scholar (λιμός καί λοιμός) and apparently referred to the time immediately following the murder of Theseus by Lykomedes.

10 The account is given with a suspicious fullness of detail by Plutarch (Cim. 8.1–2) who, at Thes. 36.1 refers to their ‘unapproachability and savagery’. This may be post factum justification by the Amphictyons, glad to be rid of a troublesome branch of their own kinsmen. (Diodorus calls the inhabitants of Skyros ‘Pelasgians and Dolopians’).

11 (Diod. xi 60.2); ᾤκισαν αύτοί (Thuc. i 98.2, with Gomme's comment ad loc.: ‘it became a true cleruchy of Athenian citizens, and did not pay tribute to the League’). Walker, E. M. long ago noted that Skyros ‘was a position of considerable strategical importance, lying as it did on the route to Thrace and the Hellespont’ (CAH v 51)Google Scholar. See also Wells, , Studies in Herodotus 133.Google Scholar

12 Plut. Cim. 8.5. (Was Cimon, by this exploit, posing as the ‘new Theseus’?)

13 Nepos, Them. 2.3.

14 Diod. xi 60.2.

15 Paus, iii 3.7, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Loeb Classical Library); my italics.

16 Hdt. i 67–8.

17 Forrest, W. G., Rev. Belge de Phil. et. d'Hist. xxxiv (1956) 541–42Google Scholar (I have had the benefit of examining a photograph of the stone and discussing it with Forrest who suggests that an analysis of letter-forms may yield a closer date).

18 (Cim. 8.7).

19 Paus. i 17.6. This is also the suggestion of Ephorus' account, where, after Cimon's capture of Skyros in P. Oxy. 2610 fr. 6, Lycomedes is mentioned in fr. 7.

20 Plut. Thes. 36.3.

21 Jacoby gives a good deal of miscellaneous information, along with some speculation, about the festival at FGrH iii b. Suppl. i 207–209 (on Demon 327 F 6). I suggest that some of the material which Plutarch gives at Thes. 36.4–5 may also come from Demon (whom Plutarch mentions at Thes. 19.1 and to whom Jacoby assigns Thes. 23), along with Diodorus the Periegete, whom Plutarch cites (probably for the building).

22 The paintings in the Theseion might have been by Polygnotus; see Robert, C., Die Marathon schlacht in der Poikile (Halle 1895) 46 ff.Google Scholar; Rumpf, A. in EAA vi 294–95Google Scholar.

23 Pherecrates, , Doulodidaskalos fr. 49Google Scholar; Aristoph. Eg. 1312, fr. 567 (from Hõrai); cd. frs. 458, 459.

24 On the epic Theseid, see now Huxley, G. L., Greek Epic Poetry (London 1969) chap. ix.Google Scholar

25 The scholia on Aelius Aristides and Aristophanes mentioned above (note 9) are in practically verbatim agreement.

26 Thes. 35.8.

27 See, in general, Amandry, P. in Θϵωρία—Festschrift Schuchhardt (Baden-Baden 1960) 6–8Google Scholar; Forrest, W. G., CQ n.s. x (1960) 237 n. 4.Google Scholar

28 Paus, iii 3.7 (though the reference is not specifically to the oracle).

29 It may be significant that there appears to be some confusion in the scholion on Aristoph. Plut. 627 between the Theseia and Synoikia.

30 Σ Ael. Arist. ὑπ. τ. τϵττ. (iii p. 446 Dind.).

31 Thuc. ii 15.

32 Arist. Eq. 84 b (II) (Koster, et al. , Scholia in Aristoph. i 2, p. 31Google Scholar), tentatively ascribed by Jacoby to Possis of Magnesia (FGrH 480 F 1).

33 This may be nothing more than an embellishment of the λιμός which followed Cimon's death at Kition (Thuc. i 112. 4).

34 Plut, . Cim. 19 finGoogle Scholar. (Nausicrates of Kition has generally, although not very plausibly, been identified with the fourth century rhetorician and pupil of Isocrates, Naucrates of Erythrae.)