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EXEMPLARITY AND POLITICS OF MEMORY: THE RECOVERY OF THE PIRAEUS BY OLYMPIODOROS OF ATHENS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2021
Abstract
The article discusses Pausanias’ obscure statement (1.26.3) that the early Hellenistic Athenian general Olympiodoros ‘recovered the Piraeus and Mounychia’. By understanding the feat as an episode within the wider context of the Athenian stasis of 295 between the ‘tyrant’ Lachares and Olympiodoros’ democratic resistance, the article shows that the narrative of the enterprise (most likely based on an honorific decree) aimed to i) establish a parallel between Olympiodoros and the illustrious democratic recovery by Thrasyboulos, ii) rehabilitate Olympiodoros as a democratic hero after his involvement in the oligarchic years of the second regime of Demetrios Poliorketes in Athens, and iii) serve as a call to action to recover the Piraeus, which was under Macedonian control when the honours were bestowed.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I am grateful to Mirko Canevaro, Andrew Erskine, David Lewis and CQ's reader for their insightful comments. All ancient dates are b.c.e.
References
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2 See Oliver, G.J., War, Food and Politics in Early Hellenistic Athens (Oxford, 2007), 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘the history of the Athenian polis in the third century can be read as a struggle to recover control of the Piraeus’.
3 Thus first Habicht, C., Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1985), 90–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see, more recently, Ma, J., Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 2013), 277–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luraghi, N., ‘Documentary evidence and political ideology in early Hellenistic Athens’, in Börm, H. and Luraghi, N. (edd.), The Polis in the Hellenistic World (Stuttgart, 2018), 209–27, at 211, 214–15Google Scholar. The existence of honours for Olympiodoros is postulated also by Wheatley, P. and Dunn, C., Demetrius the Besieger (Oxford, 2020), 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar (who, none the less, date the decree to the mid 290s). It cannot be ruled out that Pausanias’ account on Olympiodoros is based on a literary source, whose identity is irretrievable. Proposals include Philochoros or Demochares; see Bearzot, C., Storia e storiografia ellenistica in Pausania il Periegeta (Venice, 1992), 91–2Google Scholar. Should Pausanias’ ultimate source be a historiographic source of this sort, it would any way reflect a contemporary and pro-democratic (albeit non-documentary) representation of Olympiodoros’ deeds.
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7 IG II/III3 881 (= ISE 1.14 = Agora 16.181).
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9 See the anonymous chronicle P.Oxy. 2082 (= FGrHist 257a), fr. 3 lines 13–16.
10 As that regime labelled itself – IG II/III3 911.82–3.
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18 Cf. also IG II/III2 1201.8–9.
19 For the use of fifth-century historical paradigms in the political discourse of early Hellenistic Athens, see J.L. Shear, ‘The politics of the past: remembering revolution at Athens’, in J. Marincola, L. Llewellyn-Jones and C. Maciver (edd.), Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras (Edinburgh, 2012), 276–300.
20 Von den Hoff (n. 4), 177.
21 Wolpert (n. 15), 79.
22 IG II/III2 448; S. Wallace, ‘History and hindsight. The importance of Euphron of Sikyon for the Athenian democracy in 318/7’, in H. Hauben and A. Meeus (edd.), The Age of the Successors and the Creation of the Hellenistic Kingdoms (323–276 b.c.) (Leuven, 2014), 599–629, with bibliography.
23 IG II/III2 448.62–4 νῦν δὲ ἐπειδὴ ὅ τε δῆμος [κατελ]|ήλυθε καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀ[πείλη]|φε ‘but now since the People has [come back] and has [recovered] its laws and democracy …’. On the legacy of the ‘return of the dēmos’ image, see Shear, J.L., Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar.
24 Rhodes, P.J. and Lewis, D.M., The Decrees of the Greek States (Oxford, 1997), 46Google Scholar.
25 Olympiodoros, then, belonged to that group for which historians, inclined to analyse Athenian political history through the lens of party politics, have coined the label of nationalists. For a rebuttal of this approach, see Luraghi, N., ‘Stratokles of Diomeia and party politics in early Hellenistic Athens’, C&M 65 (2014), 191–226Google Scholar. A similar degree of political transformism can be also observed in the career of Phaidros of Sphettos; Shear, J.L., ‘An inconvenient past in Hellenistic Athens: the case of Phaidros of Sphettos’, Histos Supplement 11 (2020), 269–301Google Scholar.
26 See IG II/III2 1629.622–9 and IG II/III3 339.8–9 with J.K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 b.c. (Oxford, 1971), 163–5.
27 IG II/III2 457 + 3207 ≈ [Plut.] Mor. 851F–852E; E. Culasso Gastaldi, ‘Eroi della città: Eufrone di Sicione e Licurgo di Atene’, in A. Barzanò et al. (edd.), Modelli eroici dall'antichità alla cultura europea (Rome, 2003), 65–98, at 68–81. Those honours not only bolstered the prestige of Lykourgos’ family, most notably his son Habron; they also provided the city with a model of Athenian ethos, in the context of the latest democratic recovery following the ousting of Demetrios of Phaleron.
28 N. Luraghi, ‘Kallias of Sphettos between two worlds’, in M. Dana and I. Savalli-Lestrade (edd.), La cité interconnectée dans le monde gréco-romain (Bordeaux, 2019), 273–85. On Kallias’ decree in general, see Shear (n. 5).
29 See n. 7 above.
30 The otherwise obscure passage of Polyainos (5.17.1) is thought to be referring to this feat. It describes a failed assault on the Piraeus which resulted in the slaughter of 420 Athenian soldiers who managed to get in the harbour stronghold, but then were betrayed. Oliver (n. 2), 58–60 places the event in 286. However, as Osborne, M.J., ‘Kallias, Phaedros and the revolt of Athens in 287 b.c.’, ZPE 35 (1979), 181–94, at 194Google Scholar rightly notes, the assault makes far more sense in 281 or thereafter. If that is correct, Polyainos alludes to the (attempt of) recovery which the decree for Euthios and other decrees of that period foretell.
31 For Piraeus and democracy in the fifth century, see J. Roy, ‘The threat from the Piraeus’, in P. Cartledge, P. Millet and S. von Reden (edd.), Kosmos. Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1998), 191–202.
32 Taylor (n. 6), 210; contra, Garland, R., The Piraeus: From the Fifth to the First Century b.c. (London, 2001 2), 45–8Google Scholar.
33 Oliver (n. 2), 54.
34 Tracy, S.V., Athens and Macedon. Attic Letter Cutters of 300 to 229 b.c. (Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 2003), 12Google Scholar: ‘The presence of a Macedonian garrison in Piraeus … could have been very repressive of the exercise of real democracy, even if its outward forms remained in place.’