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Milesian Politics and Athenian Propaganda c. 460–440 B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

John P. Barron
John P. Barron
Affiliation:
Bedford College, University of London
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Extract

The political history of Miletos in the mid-fifth century has until recently been reconstructed from five pieces of most reliable evidence, four of them epigraphical, of which three are contemporary with the events concerned.

I. The First Quota-List

From this it appears that Miletos failed to pay tribute to Athens in 454/3: instead (col. vi 19–22), three talents were found by Μιλεσιοι | [ε]χς Λερο and a further sum by [Μι]λεσιοι | [εκ Τ]ειχιοσσε[ς. There are no Milesian entries for 453/2, and Miletos herself only resumed payment in 452/1, as recorded in List III (col. ii 28). From this, and from comparison with the contemporary situation at Erythrai and with later events at Kolophon, it is inferred that Miletos was in revolt in 454/3, the loyal, pro-Athenian, party having taken refuge in Leros and Teichioussa, and that the revolt had been put down in time for the collection of 452/1.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 82 , November 1962 , pp. 1 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1962

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References

1 For statements of the earlier view, see Dunham, A. G., A History of Miletus (London, 1915) 132–8Google Scholar; Oliver, J. H., TAPA lxvi (1935) 177–98.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor A. Andrewes and Mr Russell Meiggs for reading and discussing drafts of this paper.

2 For the text of all lists, see Meriti, B. D., Wade-Gery, H. T., McGregor, M. F., The Athenian Tribute Lists i (Harvard, 1939)Google Scholar; or SEG v.

3 For Erythrai, see Meiggs, R., JHS lxiii (1943) 23–5Google Scholar; ATL iii (Princeton, 1950) 252–5. For Kolophon, 431/0 B.C., Thuk. iii 34.1, and the quotalists of Kolophon and Notion at the time; ATL iii 253, n. 36.

4 First suggested by Dunham, loc. cit.

5 SEG x 14; ATL ii D 11 (Pl. iv); Hill, , Sources 2 B 30Google Scholar; Oliver, op. cit. The archon's name, restored in line 3, appears in full at line 63. On epigraphical and historical grounds I cannot accept the recent attempt to date this decree 426/5, by Mattingly, H. B., Historia x (1961) 174 ff.Google Scholar

6 Tod, , GHI i 235Google Scholar; SIG 3 58; Milet I. vi 100 ff., no. 187, with photograph.

7 Cf. the Athenian decree against Arthmios of Zeleia, quoted by Dem., Phil. 42, αὐτὸν καὶ γένος.

8 Wiegand, Th., Zweiter Bericht, Sb. Berl. Akad. 1901, 911Google Scholar: note lines 2–4. For the other tribe-names, cf. Wiegand, , Siebenter Bericht, 1911, 66 f.Google Scholar

9 Schol. Aristoph., Equit. 855: also at Argos and Megara.

10 Cf. Dunham, op. cit., 135 f.

11 Cf. Meiggs, op. cit., 27; ATL iii 150, 257. For the nature of the Milesian offices, see Sanctis, G. de, ‘I Molpi di Mileto’, Studi in onore di P. Bonfante (Milan, 1930) ii 671–9.Google Scholar

12 Loc. cit.

13 ATL iii 257.

14 Loc. cit.; ibid., 35–6, 49.

15 Earp, A. J., ‘Athens and Miletus ca. 450 B.C.’, Phoenix viii (1954) 142–7, esp. 144 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Tod, ad loc.; Meiggs, op. cit., 26 f.; ATL iii 256.

17 Op. cit., 146—i.e. a joint tyranny of Nympharetos and Stratonax. Notice that they themselves are not outlawed, and so may be presumed dead already. One Nympharetos served as Aisymnetes in 503/2 (Milet I. iii no. 122).

18 Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. 1906, 511 ff.; see also Wilamowitz, , Gött. Gel. Anz. 1914, 75.Google Scholar Glotz further suggested that the upper part of the stele contained an earlier (sixth-century) banishment of the Neileids: but this must have been destroyed when they returned.

19 Schol.BIliad xi 692.

20 Cf. Robert, L., Etudes Epigr. et Philol. (Paris, 1938) 199 f.Google Scholar; citing BCH xxv (1901) 317, no. 15d.

21 SIG 3 57; cf. Hill, , Sources 2 B 115.Google Scholar

22 Milet I. iii no. 122.

23 Odyss. xi 237: the founder of Minyan Iolkos, and father of Neleus' brothers Aison, Pheres, and Amythaon.

24 Kretheus' tribe of the Boreis may have been especially Neileid: the name Boros is attached to only three legendary figures, of whom one was a descendant of Pylian Neleus and ancestor of the Kodrid family (Hellan., FGrHist 4 F 125; cf. Paus, ii 18.8—slightly discrepant; and, for a different view, Sakellariou, M. B., La Migration Grecque en Ionie (Athens, 1958) 256 ff., 73 ff.).Google Scholar Of the other Prosetairoi, Agamedes and his father Aristokrates may have claimed Minyan descent, for the names are Orchomenian; while Paus, iv 2.5 tells us of the tomb of the Messenian Lykos in Sikyonia (but all three names are common elsewhere).

25 In connexion with the fact that the loyalists in 454 were resident at Teichioussa, it is interesting that an inscription relating to one Philodemos, (SGDI 5501Google Scholar; cf. Haussoullier, B., Rev. de Phil., xxi (1897) 38, no. 7)Google Scholar, Aisymnetes in 67/6 B.C., describes him as ‘of the deme Teichioussa, the lineage of the Neileidai, the clan of the Pelagonidai’. (Pelagon was a Pylian leader mentioned in Iliad iv 295.) It seems likely that Teichioussa was the traditional seat of the Neileids, and in the fifth century perhaps still their actual home.

26 SIG 3 57.3–4, with Milet. I. iii no. 122. Like Kretheus, he had represented the possibly Neileid tribe of Boreis.

27 The dating of the revolt does not depend solely on an argument from silence. Miletos was attacked by Samian oligarchs in 441/0, and was surely then democratic. She paid tribute in 443/2 and 442/1. If her failure to pay in 448/7 is to be explained otherwise, as I believe (supra, p. 2 and n. 13), then there is no room for the oligarchic revolt and imposition of democracy except during the years 446/5 to 444/3.

28 But the Linear B tablets have shown that many names, Trojan in Homer, were in use in Mykenaian Pylos: cf. Gray, D. H. F., JHS lxxviii (1958) 45 f.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Meiggs, op. cit., 27.

30 Respectively lines 5, 11, 10, of GHI i2 35. For this office elsewhere, cf. Szanto, REs. v.‘Epimenioi’.

31 The treatise de Natura Mulierum (the word occurs in sect. 13) is of course pseudo-Hippokrateian and late.

32 Mr Meiggs suggests to me that the title may have been changed after the Samian Revolt, when Athens had completely secured Miletos.

33 ATL iii 253.

34 Alkmeon was a Pylian Neileid, Paus. ii 18.8. For Hipparchos, cf. the Athenian Peisistratids' claim to Neileid descent, Hdt. v 65.3.

35 On the date, see Meiggs, op. cit., 29 n. 42; Gomme, , Comm. i 370Google Scholar; ATL iii 168 f., 178; Busolt, , Gr. Gesch. iii 328 n. 3.Google Scholar

36 Forty, following the account of Ktesias, , Persica 63Google Scholar, from a source independent of Thuk. i 104.2 (who is ambiguous here), since he names the Athenian commander Charitimides; and fifty διάδοχοι, Thuk. i 110.4, of which most were destroyed. We do not know how many were Athenian, how many allied.

37 Cf. ATL iii 254 f.

38 SEG x 11 ATL ii D 10; Hill, , Sources 2 B 261Google Scholar lines 33, 27.

39 Hdt. ix 97, cf. i 146 f.; see Sakellariou, op. cit., passim.

40 Cf. Jacoby, F., Mnemosyne Ser. III xiii (1947) 33Google Scholar, arguing for publication between 508/7 and 476/5. In FGrHist 3 F 155 Jacoby omits the bulk of Strabo's account, retaining only that part which made Androklos of Ephesos the leader of the Migration: I cannot here retail the very cogent arguments against such an exclusive view; nor enter into discussion of the reputedly contemporary (or even earlier) of Kadmos of Miletos. Of other pre-Herodotean accounts, note that Panyasis (Suidas, s.v.) wrote of Kodros, Neileus, and the Ionian Migration. Milesian acceptance of the tradition should be at least as early as the naming of Hipparchos, father of the Aisymnetes of 457/6 (supra, n. 34).

41 IG i2 94 (418/7 B.C.), line 3, (See now Wycherley, R. E., BSA lv (1960) 60 ff.Google Scholar) The cult of Ion and the Eponymoi (cf. Hdt. v 66.2) Αθενεθεν at Samos (Hill, , Sources 2 B 96Google Scholar (d) ii–iii) will have been introduced in harmony with the same propaganda.