Loomis, 'Excursions in Epichoric History: Aiginetan Essays', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9412
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9412-loomis-excursions
Thomas J. Figueira, Excursions in Epichoric History:
Aiginetan Essays. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993.
Pp. 433. $67.50. ISBN 0-8476-7791-5 (cloth). $29.50.
ISBN 0-8476-7792-3 (paper).
Reviewed by William T. Loomis -- University of Michigan
In the past dozen years, Figueira, a professor of Classics
and Ancient History at Rutgers, has been the most prolific
scholar working on the history of Aigina. To two previous
books, Aegina: Economy and Society (New York
1981/2) and Athens and Aigina in the Age of Imperial
Colonization (Baltimore 1991), he now adds a third, in
which he collects eleven earlier articles (here revised) and
three new pieces.
The Introduction ("Aigina and Epichoric History")
announces F.'s goal: not only to investigate the local
("epichoric") history of Aigina, but also to "force an evaluation
of the thesis that epichoric history compels a reconsideration
of mainstream, Athenocentric, or panhellenic Greek history."
In Chapter 1 ("Aiginetan Independence"), F. takes the
beginning of Aiginetan coinage ("after c. 600" [p. 29], but cf.
"580-550" [p. 10] and "540 at the latest" [p. 63]) and the
foundation of the Aiginetan sanctuary at Zeus at Naukratis
(after 610) as termini ante quem for Aiginetan independence.
After surveying (arguably) contemporary events in Epidauros,
Corinth, Samos and Argos, he places the "Argive domination
of Aigina" in the period before "c. 640 (?)" and "Epidaurian
control of Aigina" under the tyrant Prokles in the immediately
following years down to "c. 618-613," when he begins the
"independent oligarchy on Aigina". Because so many of the
underlying "facts" and "dates" are uncertain, the argument is
necessarily hypothetical at several crucial points.
F.'s late seventh-century date for Aiginetan
independence leads him in Chapter 2 ("Herodotus on the
Early Hostilities Between Aigina and Athens") to place
Aigina's first war with Athens, the origin of their E)/XQRH PALAIH/.
(Hdt. 5.81.2), in the years "c. 595-590," about a century later
than the usual date of "hardly ... later than the early seventh
century" (A. Andrewes in CAH III2.3 372, citing
T.J. Dunbabin, ABSA 37 [1936/7] 83-91), and also
later than the "black and white" style pottery which S.P.
Morris (The Black and White Style: Athens and Aigina
in the Orientalizing Period [New Haven 1984], 36,
112-116) argued had been produced on Aigina c. 670-40 in
response to an Aiginetan ban on Attic pottery imports. But
he sees no need to suppose continuous hostility from c. 595
down to the Aiginetan raids on Attica in c. 506 which began
the p_lemow _k.ruktow (Hdt. 5.81.2-3, 89.2), the latter
motivated in F.'s view by contemporary commercial and naval
rivalry.
In Chapter 3 ("Athenians, Aiginetans, and the Solonian
Crisis"), published for the first time in this volume, F. argues
that, although the tradition that Solon had replaced the
Pheidonian/Aiginetan systems of weights, measures and coins
has been shown by archaeological evidence to be
anachronistic, the tradition is understandable "as a symbol of
the Solonian differentiation or alienation of Athens from
Aigina." He boldly hypothesizes (a) that the Aiginetans had
been offering Athenian aristocrats "status-raising" luxury
goods and foreign slaves in exchange for Attic grain and
hektemoroi to be used as slaves on Aigina, (b) that Solon
ended this trading relationship with sumptuary legislation (not
really supported by the evidence cited: [Dem.] 43.62-3;
Athen. 15.687A), a ban on most Attic agricultural exports,
and the repatriation of enslaved Athenians, and (c) that the
result was the E)/XQRH PALAIH/.
In Chapter 4 ("Aiginetan Membership in the
Peloponnesian League"), after noting that there is no positive
evidence for Aigina's membership, F. sets out to make "the
best possible case" against membership, and indeed for a
consistent Aiginetan policy of aloofness from both the Spartan
and the Athenian alliances. Among his most interesting
arguments are (a) that Corinth, as an undoubted ally of
Sparta, would not have made a bargain sale of twenty ships
to Athens for use against Aigina (Hdt. 6.89) if Aigina also had
been an ally of Sparta, (b) that Sparta, as a distant land
power, would have been less appealing than Argos as an ally
to Aigina in its (almost exclusively naval) rivalry with Athens,
and (c) that even if there were a clause in the Thirty Years
Peace guaranteeing autonomy to Aigina (Thuc. 1.67.2, 139.1),
which F. denies in Chapter 10, it is difficult to see how
Aigina, as a member of the Delian League without
fortifications or fleet after c. 456, could have qualified as
"autonomous", or a fortiori as a member of the
Peloponnesian League: "Spartan concessions to Athens in the
Thirty Years Peace take on a much more limited extent.
Sparta handed over to Athens no ally." This seems to me to
be one of F.'s most convincing chapters.
In Chapter 5 ("The Chronology of the Conflict
Between Athens and Aigina in Herodotus Book Six"), F.
argues, principally against N.G.L. Hammond
(Historia 4 [1955] 371-411; CAH IV2 498,
501-2), that most of the events recounted by Herodotos
(6.49-94.1) took place after the Battle of Marathon. Although
F. makes a number of detailed points (including that Sparta is
unlikely to have asked Athens to return the Aiginetan hostages
[Hdt. 6.86] before Marathon), his main argument--which I
find persuasive--is that it is difficult to cram so many events
into the fourteen months from July 491 to September 490,
and he thinks that Herodotos himself was uncertain about the
chronology of these events.
Chapter 6 ("Xanthippos, Father of Perikles, and the
Prutaneis of the Naukraroi") concerns the ostrakon which
attacks Xanthippos as one of the "accursed prytaneis" (Meiggs
& Lewis #21, p. 42 [with Wilhelm's supplements]). F. argues
that these were the prytaneis of the naukraroi, originally
"accursed" because of their connection with the execution of
the Kylonian conspirators (Hdt. 5.71.2), and now attacked
because their failure to provide "battle-worthy" ships had
caused the failure of Nikodromos' coup on Aigina (Hdt.
6.88-93). One wonders, however, why there was a four-year
delay between Nikodromos' coup (dated by F. in Chapter 5 to
488) and Xanthippos' ostracism in 484 (Ath. Pol. 22.6).
Chapter 7 ("Residential Restrictions on the Athenian
Ostracized") concerns the requirement, instituted in c. 481,
that ostracized citizens dwell inside [or outside?] Capes
Geraistos and Skyllaion (Ath. Pol. 22.8: "outside"
requires emendation). Drawing on (a) the literary sources, (b)
practical considerations (ease of communication by boat
within the Saronic Gulf), and (c) the known residences of
ostracisees before (esp. Aristeides) and after 480, F. offers a
very careful and comprehensive defense of emendation,
concluding that the new restriction forced the ostracisees to
dwell outside the capes in order to prevent their meddling in
Athenian politics from bases nearby, viz. (it will not surprise
the reader by now!) Aigina.
Chapter 8 ("Thoukydides, Melesias, and the
Aiginetans"), published for the first time in this volume,
suggests that Thoukydides inherited his father Melesias' role
as mentor/advocate of aristocratic Aiginetans, and that after
returning in 433 from his ostracism (not spent in Aigina, F.
argues in Chapter 7), Thoukydides ("the wrestler") led the
attacks on Perikles, and also may have advocated a reduction
in Aigina's tribute and her "autonomy within the
arkhe" (p. 222, cf. Chapter 10, where it is argued
that "autonomy within the arkhe" is incompatible
with tribute-paying status).
Chapter 9 ("Draco and the Attic Tradition") deals with
the notice in the Suda (DRA/KWN, A)QHNAI=OS NOMOQE/THS [d
1495 Adler]) "which recounts a journey of Draco to Aigina in
order to legislate that ended in his suffocation at the hands of
over-ardent Aiginetan admirers." F. sees this as a pejorative
reworking by Athenian democratic imperialists of a story by
which the Aiginetans had attempted to link their own
oligarchic regime with the patrios politeia of the
Athenians themselves. It is in this context that F. also locates
the story of "Draco's constitution" (Ath. Pol. 4).
In Chapter 10 ("Autonomoi kata tas spondas
[Thucydides 1.67.2]"), F. argues in greater detail (than in
Chapter 4) that Aigina could not have qualified under the
Athenian definition of AU)TO/NOMOS at any time after c. 456,
and that the autonomy asserted in 432-31 derived not from
the Thirty Years Peace of 446 but from pledges made at the
formation of the Hellenic League in 481 (Hdt. 7.145.1) and
later repudiated by the Athenians in 463/1 (Thuc. 1.102.4).
In an "Endnote" F. argues that the existence of Aiginetan
coinage after c. 456 is no indication of "autonomy" (but he
had regarded it as an indication of "independence" in
Chapter 1).
Chapter 11 ("Four Notes on the Aiginetans in Exile")
collects and discusses the evidence for communities of
Aiginetans at Thyrea, Kydonia (hypothetical) and Naukratis,
after their expulsion from Aigina by the Athenians in 431. A
new section (pp. 308-310) takes into account the recently
published SEG XXXIX 370, where, however, the
donor on the Side, lines 15-19, is probably a Spartiate rather
than a Lokrian.
Chapter 12 ("Aigina and the Naval Strategy of the Late
Fifth and Fourth Centuries") makes a useful distinction
between Athenian "fleet raids" and Peloponnesian privateering
("entrepreneurial, opportunistic and low risk"--and largely
ignored by Thucydides), and goes on to study Aigina's
relations with Philip II and Alexander.
Chapter 13 ("An Aiginetan Elite Family of the Fourth
Century B.C.") is a reconstruction of the activities of two
Aiginetans named Onesikritos, both connected with seafaring.
F. is inclined to date the involvement of Onesikritos I and his
sons with Diogenes the Cynic (Diog. Laert. 6.75-76) to the
350s, before Diogenes was captured off Aigina and sold into
slavery, and he suggests that Onesikritos II, the Alexander
historian, is the grandson of Onesikritos I.
In Chapter 14 ("Notes on Hellenistic Aigina"),
published for the first time in this volume, F. concludes that
"the Aiginetans focused their energies on staying out of the
grasp of the incumbent ruler of Macedonia, moving away
from Cassander into the Antigonid camp; then possibly
moving toward the orbit of Egypt; and finally aligning
themselves with the Greek leagues when suitable opportunities
presented themselves.... It was the location of Aigina that
made it significant for the balance of power in the late third
and early second centuries and not (it seems) by virtue of any
physical or human maritime assets."
A reflective "Conclusion" reemphasizes F.'s theories that
before the Peloponnesian War some members of the Athenian
upper class acted as "patrons" of Aigina on a continuing basis,
and that Aigina's insular locale in the Saronic Gulf strongly
affected its internal development and its relations with its
neighbors. This is followed by a useful "Chronological
Table," a "Select Bibliography," a "Select Index of Sources"
and an "Index." The Bibliography and Index would have
been more helpful had they included all books, articles and
names mentioned in the book.
There are relatively few misprints in this well-produced
book, but the English prose is sometimes arresting, e.g. (p.
161): "But alas, hindsight advised the composer of the distich,
and given Xanthippos' ostracism, to an extent, presumably a
majority of the Athenians, that this action was gravely unjust."
F. accomplishes both goals announced in the
Introduction. First, he "throws a concentrated beam" (p. 322)
on so many epichoric details that almost all future
investigations of Aiginetan history will have to take his work
into account. Second, by looking at the (mostly Athenian)
evidence from an Aiginetan perspective, he has stimulated a
reconsideration of that evidence: its fragmentary state allows
him to do a lot of speculating and some readers will feel that
he strains too hard to find an Aiginetan connection with every
possible episode in Greek history, but his book is a salutary
challenge to our usual Athenocentric view.