‘THE EYESORE OF AIGINA’ ‘T E HE YESORE A ’ OF IGINA A -A NTI THENIAN A G , TTITUDES IN REEK H ELLENISTIC AND R H OMAN ISTORY Editors Anton Powell and Katerina Meidani Contributors Kostas Buraselis, Christy Constantakopoulou, John K. Davies, Martin Dreher, Dorothy Figueira, Thomas Figueira, Nikos Giannakopoulos, Ioanna Kralli, Dominique Lenfant, Lynette Mitchell, Maria Plastira-Valkanou, Anton Powell The Classical Press of Wales First published in 2016 by The Classical Press of Wales 15 Rosehill Terrace, Swansea SA1 6JN Tel: +44 (0)1792 458397 www.classicalpressofwales.co.uk Distributor I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 6 Salem Rd, London W2 4BU, UK Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7243 1225 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7243 1226 www.ibtauris.com Distributor in North America ISD, 70 Enterprise Drive, Suite 2, Bristol, CT 06010, USA Tel: +1 (860) 584-6546 Fax: +1 (860) 516-4873 www.isdistribution.com © 2016 The authors All rights reserved. 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CONTENTS Page Introduction vii Acknowledgements xiii 1 The allies’ viewpoint on the Athenian empire: the evidence of Plutarch’s Lives 1 Dominique Lenfant 2 Aigina: island as paradigm and counter-paradigm 19 Thomas Figueira 3 Aiginetan attitudes (c.500–424 BC): Athens as eyesore? 51 Anton Powell 4 Anti-Athenian attitudes in fifth-century Sicily? 81 LynetteMitchell 5 Theopompos on Athenian policies and politicians 95 John Davies 6 Anti-Athenian attitudes and the Second Athenian Confederacy 113 Martin Dreher 7 The shaping of the past: local history and fourth-century Delian reactions to Athenian imperialism 125 Christy Constantakopolou 8 In the shadow of Pydna: incorrigible Athens as an opportunity for the Achaeans 147 Kostas Buraselis 9 Attitudes to Hellenistic Athens: to sneer or to revere? 163 Ioanna Kralli 10 The image of Athenians in the Greek epigram 187 MariaPlastira-Valkanou v Contents 11 Condemning the Athenian past, rejecting the Athenian present: aspects of anti-Athenian discourses in the early imperial period 199 Nikos Giannakopoulos 12 Reading Greece: travel narratives, aesthetic sensibilities, and the Aiginetan marbles 223 Dorothy Figueira Index 251 vi INTRODUCTION GeorgeGroteinvertedPerikles’dictum,accordingtowhichindependent Aigina was the ‘eyesore of the Peiraieus’: for Aiginetans, according to Grote,thevastandfortifiedAthenianportwas‘inamuchstrongerdegree’ aneyesoreforthemselves(below,p.51).ThiswascharacteristicofGrote’s comprehensivevisionofGreekmentalities.Inthe(almost)twocenturies since Grote composed what is still, perhaps, the most impressive history of Greece in the English language, such breadth of vision has become harder to attain. Historians’ areas of specialism deepen and grow further apart; their works have understandably tended to concentrate on the classicalperiodandonthetwogreatestcommunitiesonwhichourancient evidence chiefly focuses. Athens, and in most recent scholarship Sparta, have predominated. Studies of other communities, sometimes tellingly classed as ‘regional’, have indeed been performed with distinction, especially in recent years. But perhaps even they on occasion have, in resistingtheAthenianandLaconianvortex,over-compensatedbytending to play down those aspects of ‘regional’ mentalities which were directed towardsAthensandSparta. The set of studies here presented aims to acknowledge and explore negative views concerning Athens among non-Athenian communities and individuals of the Greek, Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman worlds. Inunderstanding,andreconstructing,thoseviewsinformationonAthens itself has been liberally, indeed necessarily, applied. What results, the authorshope,ismaterialwhichmaysupplybridgesbetweenmanyareasof modern specialism. It is not only students of non-Athenian mentalities who may find instructive the ideas of outsiders concerning Athens; specialists in the history of Athens itself may, by focusing on how Atheniansappearedtooutsiders,betterunderstandtherationaleandeffect ofAthens’ownpoliciesconcerningtheexternalcommunitieswhichthat citysooftenaddressed. ThepresentworkbeganataconferenceofSeptember2010,symbolically held on Aigina. That island was chosen as involving what may seem an extreme case of an ancient community with negative attitudes towards Athens. Those attitudes, in Aigina’s case, were intense, closely-informed and determinant of the community’s fate. Such thinking has, of course, been largely effaced by the Athens-centred literary tradition as well as by Athenianmilitaryaction.But,itisherecontended,importantelementsof theislanders’thinking–and,inconsequence,theeffectsofthatthinking vii Introduction upon Athens itself – can now be reconstructed. Three chapters of the present volume focus upon Aigina. But while this is a book concerning Aigina,itisnotabookonAigina:thenineremainingchapters,thatisthree- quartersofthework,areconcernedwithattitudesinotherplaces. The chronological scope of the work also extends far beyond the classical period of Greece. This broad canvas, we believe, can itself be fruitful for understanding not only the Hellenistic and Roman periods which several of our authors study but also the Greek classical period itself. For, it may be suspected, in the classical period so potent was the combination of Athens’ military influence (actual or anticipated) and of literaryandoralattitudesgeneratedinthegreatcitythattheexpressionof anti-Athenianattitudeswouldberestrainedinspeechandrarefromwriters hopingforthemselvesortheirworkstocirculatewidely.Inshort,itmay be feared that such attitudes are largely irrecoverable, from the classical period of Greece. However, in the Hellenistic age, and still more clearly in the Roman, critics of Athens might think and speak more freely on the subject. Not only had Athens’ military power dwindled to little or nothing, but even the city’s potency as a centre of literary opinion was overshadowed first by Alexandria then by Rome. From Hellenistic and Roman times, as the authors of our chapters 8–11 show convincingly, anti-Athenianattitudessurviveincolourfulvariety.(Itmaybenoaccident thattheauthorsoftheseimpressivefourchaptersareallscholarsfromthat most Athenocentric of cultures, modern Hellas.) Much of this opinion from later Antiquity concerns the history of classical Athens, and may reflect thinking of non-Athenians in the classical era. Chronological breadthmay,then,provideanotherbridgebetweenscholarlyspecialisms. Attitudes directed towards a very large population, such as that of ancientAthens,mayinvolve–modernexperiencesuggests–stereotyping. Howdothestudiesinthisvolumefind,onthisquestionandconcerning Athens? What may emerge is a significant lack of fixed and widespread ethniccaricature–orprofiling.ThecontrastwithclassicalSpartaisstriking, thecitizenpopulationofwhichwaswidelyagreedbyotherGreekstoshare suchqualitiesasphysicalcourage,formulaicbehaviour,aptitudeforgiving andobeyingorders,andmendacity.HerethestereotypeswhichSpartans andAtheniansissuedaboutthemselvesmayseemtohavebeeninfluential,or eventoadegreerealistic,withtheformerinsistingonthehomogeneityof their homoioi while the latter – in deliberate contrast – were described by their most trusted politician, Perikles, as individualistic and versatile. In the classical period of Greece the studies here do not detect widespreadandpotentnegativestereotypesofAthens.IntheHellenistic and Roman periods some widely-shared criticisms of Athens, and viii Introduction some stereotypes, are detected, but they prove to be – to a degree – self-contradictory. DOMINIQUELENFANT,inexaminingpossibleevidencefromPlutarch’s Lives for anti-Athenian attitudes under Athens’ empire, insists on the limitations and complexity of the biographer’s non-Athenian sources. Thesetendedtobepro-oligarchic,yetfriendly,evenadmiring,towardsthe leadersoftheemerginghegemonicpower.Lenfantwarnsagainstprejudice inherent in the modern term ‘imperialism’. She concludes that, while the history of the early Delian League is largely obscure, there is – with the significantexceptionofSamos–anoteworthylackofhostilitytoAthenian ruleinsource-materialsurvivingfromthewiderAegeanworld.However, Plutarch’sownattitudetowardsthemeritsofbygoneHellasmaywellhave caused him to select material which yielded a misleading picture of AthenianvirtueandHellenicconcord. THOMASFIGUEIRAwritesanauthoritativesurveyoftheinfrastructureof independent Aigina in the period of its rivalry with Athens. He gives a critical review of modern scholarship thereon, engaging with works of GeoffreydeSte.CroixandMogensHansen.FigueiraarguesforanAigina densely populated, with a ruling elite intimately committed to maritime trade, and thus to the possession of a military navy. He thereby demonstratesthattheinfrastructureandthepoliticalcultureoftheisland lentthemselvestochallenging,nottosayintimidating,Athensinthelate ArchaicandearlyClassicalperiods. ANTON POWELL seeks to reconstruct the outlines of complex anti- AtheniancalculationsandsentimentsofAiginetansfromthelateArchaic period,throughtheabolitionofindependentAiginabyAthensin431,and farintotheperiodofthePeloponnesianWar.Heinsistsonthefruitfulness ofseekingtolimithindsight.Aiginetans,unlikemodernhistorians,hadno reason to see enduring subordination to Athens as inevitable. He argues thatHerodotosmakesavigorouslypartisancasetotheeffectthatAiginetan impiety led to divine punishment through the medium of Athens in 431; Powell suggests that this effectively pro-Athenian bias of Herodotos can beusedpositivelytoreconstructelementsofAigina’santi-Athenianrecord. LYNETTEMITCHELLexaminesthehistoryoffifth-centurySicilyforsigns of anti-Athenian thinking, and finds that such was neither common nor widespread. Instead, the communities on the island tended to ‘keep themselves to themselves’ and to concentrate rather on their internal rivalries or enmities. Even after Athens had come close to capturing Syracuse in 415–4, Syracusan pursuit of anti-Athenian strategies in the Aegeanworldwasnot,Mitchellsuggests,whole-hearted.Herstudyraises the possibility that the democratic qualities of the greatest power on the ix