Epigraphy and the Athenian Empire: Reshuffling the Chronological Cards

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Epigraphy and the Athenian Empire:Reshuffling the Chronological Cards1

Nikolaos Papazarkadas

Methodological problems, chronologicalquestions and new(ish) answers

The story, long and convoluted, is no doubt well-known, but a synopsismay not be out of place. It was the publication of the monumental AthenianTribute Lists that arguably marked the single most important develop-ment in our understanding of the Athenian Empire.2 But informative as itwas, the four-volume work by Meritt, Wade-Gery and McGregor containedthe treacherous seed of what was going to be one of the most misleadingobsessions that has ever haunted any period of Greek history: the three-bar sigma lettering criterion. The authors of ATL assumed that no Athe-nian public document containing this letter form, as opposed to the morefamiliar sigma of the Ionic script, could postdate the year 446, when athree-bar sigma appeared for the last time in the long series of theaparchê-inscriptions (in IG I3 265).3 A similar argument was also made inrelation to the tailed rho, but at least in that case sweeping pronounce-ment was withheld. The three-bar sigma criterion acquired an almostaxiomatic validity; major works were shaped on this basis: from Meiggs’The Athenian Empire to the authoritative corpus of pre-Euclidean Atticinscriptions, IG I3. It seemed that fifth-century Athenian history wasentirely occupied by the three-bar sigma legionnaires. Not entirely: onelone scholar of indomitable spirit still held out against the invaders. Awayfrom the prestigious academic centres of Loxbridge and the Ivy League,Mattingly fought for years a seemingly lost cause to show that the three-bar sigma criterion was a severely flawed concept that gave unwarrantedpriority to technical assumptions of a disputable value rather than toplausible historical considerations.4 And then came the year 1990 and thepublication in the Zeitschrift für Papylogie und Epigraphik of a short, butground-breaking, article by Chambers, Gallucci and Spanos. Using photo-enhancement and laser scanning techniques, this small interdisciplinarygroup forcefully argued that the name of the archon on the Egesta decree(ML 37 = IG I3 11), which contained both three-bar sigmas and tailed rhos,was Antiphon, the eponymous archon of 418/7, as had already beensuggested more than once by Mattingly.5 Predictably the orthodox camp

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refused to capitulate without a fight despite the scientific verdict.6 But themirror had cracked and soon more corroborating evidence started to cometo light.7 To cut a long story short, the beginning of the third millenniumhas seen a dramatic reversal. Mattingly’s views appear to be the neworthodoxy; however, this applies solely to his epigraphical observations,not necessarily to their possible historical ramifications, which remain tobe investigated.

The idea for this paper was first conceived in the form of some simplequestions: what would, for instance, P.J. Rhodes’ and David Lewis’ chap-ters on the history of the Athenian hegemony look like in a future versionof the Cambridge Ancient History? How up-to-date is Meiggs’ fundamentalmonograph on the Athenian Empire, and does it still do justice to itssubject? More practical concerns soon arose: when we ask our students toconsult the texts and accompanying commentary in Meiggs and Lewis’paramount Greek Historical Inscriptions, are we sending them to the rightplace or are we misleadingly reproducing the same old erroneous doc-trines? To provide a straightforward linear narrative of the Athenianempire is, for the time being, practically impossible. Most of the subtlearguments underlying the reconstruction below have long been presentedeither by Mattingly, or, ironically, by his opponents in their efforts todeconstruct Mattingly’s reasoning. Thus I must from the start that mypaper has no claim to absolute originality. For obvious reasons, the focusis on the most controversial fifth-century historical documents, especiallythose included in Meiggs and Lewis’ landmark collection. Despite the titleof the paper, I have not only attempted to reshuffle the chronological cards,but also to add a couple of new ones to the deck of the Athenian empire.

But before embarking on an epigraphical exploration, a concise list ofdating criteria has to be offered.

(1) Historical contextualisation should always take precedence overother considerations.

(2) Grammatical observations can be good guidelines: similarity indiction, syntax, idioms and similia offer good comparison anchors.

(3) Archon names appear in the prescripts of Attic decrees from 421/0onwards. Clearly, something caused the Athenians to reorganise theirbureaucratic protocol and one can think of nothing better than the Peaceof Nicias.8

In 441/0 Athens became involved in a fierce military confrontation withone of her most significant allies, Samos.9 The punishment for the rebel-lious islanders was harsh: demolition of the city-walls, surrender of thefleet, payment of war-indemnities, confiscation and subsequent consecra-tion of Samian land to Attic divinities. The last is amply attested in aseries of boundary-stones in Attic script, some of which do have three-barsigmas.10 Samos’ subjugation marked both calendrically and conceptually


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the commencement of the 430s. Before the decade had come to an end,most of the Greek world would be entangled in a war destined to changethe political map for ever. We know from Thucydides the four aitiai, thereasons that gave rise to Sparta’s fear of Athens’ increasing power andeventually led to war: incidents involving Corcyra, Poteidaia, Megara andAigina. Epigraphically, the most famous document assigned to this periodhas so far been the first decree of Callias (ML 58). Cavanaugh recentlymade a strong case for another well-known text to be placed in the sameperiod: on the basis of a detailed analysis of the Eleusinian nomenclatureshe concluded that the First-fruits decree (ML 73) should probably beplaced in the mid 430s.11 In the Eleusinian text the Athenians still respectthe authority of the Delphic oracle, which sanctions Athens’ decision to callon her allies to provide the first-fruits of their grain for the glorification ofthe Eleusinian sanctuary. Quite importantly, a similar polite request ismade to all the Greek cities, though none is compelled to comply.12 Fortu-nately, there is no serious reason to dissociate the first decree of Calliasfrom this period, although scholars still dispute the exact year: 434/3, or433/2? It really makes little difference. On either date Athens was tidyingup her finances in anticipation of the imminent war.13 The diplomaticexchanges between Athens and Sparta, famously immortalised in Thucy-dides’ first book, were simply a procrastination of the inevitable. Butsignificantly, it seems that yet another of those three-bar sigma docu-ments belongs to this period: IG I3 32, the Epistatai-decree, thus namedbecause of the creation of the homonymous board with the aim of control-ling the finances of the Eleusinian sanctuary. Therein, just as in Callias’first decree, the Athenian polis appears resolved to transfer control of hersacred finances from local executives to the central administration.14

Once the Peloponnesians invaded Attica in 431, all hell broke loose.From the war front new material has now come to light: the pertinentpiece of evidence is a hitherto unpublished funerary stele from the exca-vations for the new Athens metro.15 The stele contains an epigram and twoseemingly separate lists of dead cavalrymen arranged, in good fifth-cen-tury fashion, under tribal headings – the first (inscribed on the lower partof the monument) in Attic script, the other in Ionic. This concurrentexistence of two different scripts is another good argument against expec-tations of an exceedingly rigid development of fifth-century Attic lettering.Now, the Attic-alphabet list enumerates 21 cavalrymen who, on theevidence of the heading, fell at Tanagra and Spartolos. According to theprovisional interpretation offered by the excavator, the toponyms refer tothe two well-known battles fought in 426 and 429 respectively.16 Yet itseems at least odd that casualties from two different encounters separatedby three years would have been recorded together.17 Either, then, the newmonument is an oddity – and there are indeed several irregular traits init.18 Or, what I consider to be more likely, the two battles were fought inthe same year (429 or 426), in which case either Tanagra or Spartolos will

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refer to some hitherto unattested military operation.19 Two things, then,we have to keep in mind: first that the Athenian cavalrymen not onlyparticipated in the defence of Attica as part of the Periclean strategy, butthat they also shed their blood in long-distance operations. Secondly thatThucydides could not, in fact he did not intend to, give us a full account ofevery single skirmish of the Peloponnesian War. This is not a criticism,only the realisation that there is a limit to what a historian, howevermeticulous, would choose to relate.

Take for instance Thucydides’ scattered references to Athens’ opera-tions in the Argolid. In 430 the Athenians ravaged the coastal area,targeting in particular Epidauros, Troizen, Halieis and Hermione – aseemingly un-Periclean venture instigated by Pericles himself.20 Now the430s campaign was almost replicated in 425. I say almost, because oneparticular area was spared: Hermione.21 In what was probably his lastpiece of work, the late Michael Jameson convincingly showed why thiswas so: because of the immunity Hermione enjoyed by virtue of thealliance IG I3 31 (unmentioned by Thucydides), which has been tradi-tionally dated to the 450s on account of its three-bar sigma, whereasnow it has to be placed in the early 420s. A year later, in 424, Halieisfollowed the example of Hermione, by entering a similar alliance withAthens, recorded in IG I3 75.22

As it transpires, Thucydides’ silence may be disquieting, but not culpa-ble. But what about instances where the historian does provide adequateinformation? Here, the unmistakable example is Thucydides 3.34. Theyear was 427 and the Athenian general Paches, alarmed by a Peloponne-sian fleet under Alcidas, was operating in the eastern Aegean. Making thebest of his presence there, Paches interfered in the territory of Colophon,which had been suffering from stasis since 430, and made a settlementfavourable to the Athenians, who subsequently sent a colony.23 The storyoffers a formidable context for the Athenian decree concerning the Colo-phonians ML 47 (IG I3 37), a context that, needless to say, was promptlyruled out because of the three-bar sigmas.24 This is not the only ‘eastern’document that has to be brought down in the Archidamian War. Considerthe decree regulating Phaselis’ relations with Athens, the well-known IGI3 10. Few, if any, would question the importance of this document for ourunderstanding of Athens’ treatment of her allies, judicial procedures etc.When the Phaselis decree was first discovered its Ionic lettering misledscholars into dating it to the fourth century, and it was only Wilhelm’slegendary genius that moved it back to its real fifth-century setting.25

Wilhelm might have failed, though, by insisting that the decree belongedto the middle of the fifth century. The date has barely been contested, nodoubt because a plausible historical context could be found in the cam-paign at Eurymedon, when the Athenians brought the Phaselitans over tothe Delian League. Jameson, however, aptly moved the decree to itsrightful setting: the Archidamian War, or a date a bit earlier. The proposer


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of ML 31 can be plausibly identified with the orator Leon of the Hermionetreaty (IG I3 31). But, as we have already seen, the latter dates to the early420s. Leon is also to be identified with one of the oath takers of the trucewith the Peloponnesians in 422.26 One last feature seems to reinforce thelow chronology. The script may be Ionic, but the language is certainlyAttic. In line 5 the short dative plural Fashl8taij is indicative of a lowdate: such short forms are very rare before the 420s.27 We have then to stopthinking of the Phaselis decree as a source of information on the earlyhistory of the Athenian empire, or even of the nature of the Ephialticreforms, as has so often been done in the past.

The third ‘eastern’ decree that certainly belongs to the same turbulentstage of the Archidamian War is that concerning Miletos (IG I3 21).Amongst other things the decree stipulated the contribution of Milesiansoldiers to Athens’ allied forces, trials of Milesians at Athens and so on.28

IG I3 21, with its three-bar sigma, is a prime example of the historicalcrimes committed in the name of the notorious lettering criterion. At leastone unequivocal reference to the archon Euthynos, of 426/5, should haveleft no doubts about the date of the inscription. Yet the three-bar sigmacriterion led epigraphists to go to such great lengths as to suggest that thearchon list of Diodorus was flawed and that Euthynos was also the nameof the archon in 450/49, which Diodorus – or his sources – had erroneouslymisspelt into the similarly sounding Euthydemos.29 As a matter of fact, wedo have the indirect consequences of the Miletos decree in Thucydides’account of the campaign in Corinth in 425: the Athenians, the historiantells us, were accompanied by their allies, prominent amongst which werethe Milesians. Also noteworthy is the substantial contribution of the 2000Milesian hoplites in the capture of Cythera in the following summer.30 The425 and 424 campaigns are the first time we explicitly hear of Milesiansparticipating in Athenian expeditions, and this is surely not coincidental.31

Last, a brief mention has to be made of a document that was recentlypublished in the latest volume of Die Inschriften von Miletos:

[R]esolved b[y the boule and the assembly, Aka ] mantis was the pr[ytany, so and so - - - - - - - - - ] [wa]s the epistates, E[- - - - - - - - was the archon ] [Here is] what the syn[grapheis drafted; the Mile] [s]ians should ser[ve? row? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ] etc.32


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The German editors recognised it as the Milesian copy of a set of Athenianregulations concerning the Ionian city, although they did not go as far asto suggest that this is the Milesian counterpart of IG I3 21. Such anidentification is undoubtedly difficult, albeit not impossible. There seems,however, to be some overlap between the decree’s provision for Milesianmilitary (nautical?) service (ll. 4-5) and the similar provisions in IG I3 21.There are some other problems about the restored prescript of the decree,and it has now been reasonably suggested that a secretary, rather thanthe eponymous archon, should be envisaged in line 3.33 At the least the newMilesian document reminds us that unexpected epigraphical gems mayoften appear outside Athens.

The allegedly imperialistic content of the regulations about the Mile-sians invite us to reassess a series of other seemingly ‘imperialistic’decrees. One such document is the so-called Coinage decree, the mostsubstantial part of which stipulated the obligatory use of the Attic silvercoinage, but also of the Athenian standards and weights, by members ofthe Delian League (ML 45 = IG I3 1453). Fragments of the decree have beenfound in Aphytis, Cos, Syme, Siphnos, Olbia (?), Hamaxitos, and anotherone, nowadays lost, was seen in Smyrna in the mid-nineteenth century,although it certainly came from elsewhere.34 In 2004 the Coinage decreewas the object of a highly specialised, albeit fruitful, Oxford conferencethat was called following the discovery of a new fragment at Aphytis.35 Theverdict was unanimous: pace most previous opinions, the decree probablydates to the mid-420s at the earliest, though some would favour an evenlater date because of an allusion to the decree to be found in Aristophanes’Birds from 414.36 Here is the place to mention a recently published latefifth-century decree, the rather defective editio princeps of which wasconsiderably improved by Gauthier in the Bulletin Epigraphique andStroud in SEG.37 At first glance, the text in question is yet anotherinconspicuous proxeny-decree. Its importance, however, lies in the penul-timate line, where one has to restore either some form of katall£ttw or ofthe cognate noun katallag. The verb katall£ttw, ‘exchange money’,has unambiguous monetary connotations and has so far appeared onlyin the Coinage decree and the so-called Second Coinage decree (ÉG I3

90, l. 14). We might take a bold, but not unreasonable step: one couldplausibly assume that the honorands are given the privilege of exchang-ing money at the same rate as Athenian citizens rather than asordinary foreigners.

If so, what we have here is the first reverberation of the otherwiseelusive Coinage decree. But with it we have already entered the economicrealm. The similar phraseology between the Coinage decree and Cleinias’decree for the tightening of the tribute collection (ML 46) drags almosteffortlessly the date of the latter. The reconstruction of Athens’ financialdealings is then as follows: in 426 it was decided to rationalise thetribute-collecting system. Individual collectors were to be appointed in


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each city or each tributary territory. An amendment stipulated the elec-tion of epimelêtai for the supervision of possible judicial action takenagainst intransigent payers (ML 68). This was promptly followed byThoudippos’ reassessment decree in 425/4 (ML 69). Athens’ optimism andarrogance following the unexpected capture of Pylos had reached unprece-dented heights. The third part of the new financial policy, clearly theresponse to earlier inadequacies, was probably Cleinias’ decree. Tradition-ally dated to 447, ML 46 is part and parcel of Athens’ financialexperimentations in the Archidamian War.38

There still remains a document that seems firmly fixed in its traditionalchronological setting, namely 52 (IG I3 40), the famous decree concerningAthens’ relations with Chalcis. It is almost unanimously accepted that theEuboean revolt following Athens’ defeat at Coroneia and its subsequentcrushing by Pericles offers a very satisfactory historical background.39

Oaths are exchanged between the two cities, with the Chalcidians beingforced to remain loyal to Athens, to abstain from any machinations and topay as much tribute as appropriate. An amendment contains Athens’vague reply to a previous request: the situation of the hostages will remainas it is for the time being (ll. 47-9). Things appear to be so straightforwardthat attempts at downdating this text defy common sense. There is afundamental problem, however. Once we start lowering the datings ofother decrees, the Chalcis settlement suddenly becomes a one-off, anisolated case floating in an inscriptional vacuum. Mattingly thought thatthe decree could indeed be placed in the Archidamian War, and connectedit to an expedition in Euboea allegedly reported by Philochorus.40 He alsoadduced a very compelling prosopographical argument. In Aristophanes’Peace, produced in 421, Hierocles, a character in the play, is dubbed ‘theoracle-monger from (Euboean) Oreos’ (crhsmolÒgoj oØx ,Wreoà), and thetemptation to connect him with the Hierocles who offers oracle-sanctionedsacrifices on behalf of the Athenians in ML 52 (ll. 64-6) is hard to resist.Interestingly, a year earlier, Eupolis had staged a comedy entitled Cities,in which he had mockingly referred to Hierocles as ‘the best lord of oraclechanters’.41 Clearly this was a period when Hierocles qua oracular expertwas active enough to merit two derisive references by the two greatestcomic playwrights.42

More recently Mattingly returned to ML 52 with further technicalarguments – epigraphical parallels concerning phraseology and nomencla-ture, as well as prosopographical links.43 There have been two furtherarguments in support of this theory. First is IG I3 418, an Athenian list ofsacred estates located at Euboea. Ever since Raubitschek’s editio princepsthe inscription has been placed in the period between 430 and 410 on thebasis of the lettering, and this dating has hitherto remained uncontested.Raubitschek saw the list in question as due to expropriation of propertiesfollowing the Athenian expedition in Euboea recounted by Philochorus.The other piece of pertinent evidence is also Aristophanic: a joke in the


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Knights makes the Chalcidians appear as prone to revolt.44 Now theKnights was produced in early 424. Does the chronological proximity givemore credibility to Philochorus’ Athenian invasion in Euboea in the ar-chontic year 424/3? It certainly could. The events of 446 can be instructivenot as a context for the decree, but as a parallel for its context. Troublesand Athenian defeat in Boeotia led to widespread unrest and eventualrevolt in neighbouring Euboea, in a way that might anticipate the eventsof 424/3 following Athens’ defeat at the battle of Delion. Admittedly, themajor problem in downdating the Chalcis decree was, and continues to be,Thucydides’ silence. Could the great historian have possibly overlookedsuch a major event? After all, the overtly imperialistic overtones of thedecree, most historians believe, suggest the response to a major upheaval.One cannot negate the impact of such obvious points as the Athenians’sadistic refusal to resolve the hostages’ fate. What may strike one asparticularly lenient, though, is the punishment clause at the end of theChalcidian oath: ‘Whoever does not take the oath is to be deprived of hiscivic rights and his property shall be confiscated and the one tenth shallbe the sacred property of Zeus Olympios.’ Now, we are not explicitly toldwho was to benefit from such a confiscation. We are told, however, that thetithe had to be paid into the sacred treasury of Zeus Olympios. But this isthe sacred treasury of what was presumably the most important deity inChalcis: according to the publication clause in lines 61-63, the Chalcidianstele containing the oath was to be erected in the shrine of Zeus Olympios.It appears then that the one-tenth of the property of the potential violatorwas to benefit not the sacred treasury of Athens, but that of Chalcis – nota very predatory resolution on behalf of the Athenians. It is a fair guessthen that the fund to benefit from the 9/10 of such properties would havebeen the demosion, the public treasury, of Chalcis.45 At all events, it seemsthat Athens trusted at least one sacred establishment that was not underher direct control. Perhaps the whole notion of ‘a widespread Chalcidianrevolt crushed by unforgiving Athens’ is seriously misleading. Perhaps oneshould pay fresh heed to the diallag2, the reconciliation mentioned in line51, and think in terms of a Chalcidian stasis, with the victorious partysupporting Athens.46 The active po2sosi, instead of the middle po2sontai,arguably portrays the Athenians as relatively impartial arbitrators,rather than as one of the parties involved. There is, however, not muchpoint in isolating specific clauses that might strengthen the lower datingof the Chalcis decree: the process could go on for ever. We can only concludethat an Archidamian War context is not out of the question.47

In 422 the Athenians passed yet another of their numerous honorificdecrees for a Siphnian benefactor called Polypeithes. Abundant prosopog-raphical evidence establishes that the honorand’s family had a constantentrepreneurial presence in Athens over a period of two centuries, astriking reminder that honorific decrees, far from being superfluous for-malities, often reflected very tangible links.48 In any case, few in the


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assembly would have noticed the proposer, yet in less than a decade hisname was to be in everybody’s lips, mostly for the wrong reasons. Thearrogant young proposer was struggling to make an impact on Athenianpolitical life, or so Thucydides informs us, but for the time being he had tocontent himself with this inconspicuous piece of external politics. Hisname was Alcibiades and the new decree is the earliest evidence for theflamboyant politician’s participation in Athens’ public domain.49 Inciden-tally the association of the secretary Archicles with the eponymous archonAlcaios, as attested in the Alcibiades decree, requires two proxeny decreesto be brought up to this year, whereas most scholars other than Mattinglyplaced them in the 410s.50 One of them acquires thereby an enlighteninghistorical context. The proxeny of Callippos from the Thessalian cityGyrtone, which, one ought to note, was passed on a gnèmh strathgîn, aproposal by the generals,51 can now be very satisfactorily associated withthe Thessalians’ blocking of the Peloponnesian expeditionary force led byRamphias in 421 (Thuc. 5.13).52

There is little need to emphasise that the text that has featured mostheavily in the discussion about the chronology of Athenian public docu-ments is IG I3 11, Foedus Atheniensium cum Segestanis. Both theclassificatory label and the Latin caption prove to be misnomers; not onlybecause the number 11 places the text very early in the series of Atheniandecrees – in the archonship of Habron, in 458/7 – but also because the textis not in fact an alliance, but an exchange of oaths between the Atheniansand the Egestans.53 After a long-standing fierce debate the matter has nowbeen settled to most scholars’ satisfaction, and few would refuse to placeIG I3 11 in the archonship of Antiphon in 418/7.54 The picture that emergesconcerning Athens’ action on the western front before the ill-fated Sicilianexpedition is the following. In 433/2 envoys from Rhegion and Leontinoiarrived at Athens, exchanged oaths and signed two separate alliances inperpetuity (ML 63 and 64). I note that these were first-time alliances, notrenewals of pre-existing ones. In the summer of 427 the Athenians werecalled by Leontinoi and their allies to help them in their war againstSyracuse on the basis of their kinship and of an older alliance (Thuc.III.86). We surely have to understand that the older alliance is that of433/2. A contingent of 20 ships was readily dispatched under Laches. Itnow becomes all but certain that it was on that occasion that the Atheni-ans concluded a treaty with the Egestans.55 In 418/7 oaths were exchangedbetween the two parties, clearly a renewal of the 420s alliance.56 Atapproximately the same time the Athenians made a treaty with anotherElymian city, Halicyai, which they inscribed on the same stone as that ofthe oaths with the Egestans (IG I3 12). Clearly the Athenians werestrengthening their network of alliances with Sicilian cities at least threeyears before their gigantic expedition of 415. The new reconstructionacquits Thucydides of the accusation that he failed to mention the allianceof 418/7. It also provides a more nuanced picture of what was going on


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during the Peace of Nicias, by allowing for a longer spawning period forthe Sicilian expedition.

Epigraphically Athens’ western engagement per se has won nothingnew, and in fact it may have been deprived of something if Kallet is rightin her claim that the content of ML 78 – the fragmentary decrees that arethought to refer to the Sicilian Expedition – cannot be reconciled withThucydides’ account, at least not with that of the assembly of 415.57 Butthe aftermath of Sicily is now reputed to have acquired a new crowning inthe form of a recently published casualty list, arguably the most importantnew text concerning the Peloponnesian War. Discovered near the ErianGate, the casualty list in question preserves two separate catalogues ofnames, all probably of the tribe Erechtheis.58 It is worth noting thatwhereas the lower catalogue has three-bar sigmas, the upper one does not.Although no titular designations are preserved, onomastic evidence, espe-cially patently Boeotian names, has led the excavator to connect the list tothe dead of the Sicilian expedition. Her interpretation is mainly based onPausanias’ description of the DhmÒsion SÁma (the Public Cemetery). SuchBoeotian names as Hieroitades, Melidoros, Cleimelos etc., the editor be-lieves, belong to the Plataeans honoured along with the Athenian fallensoldiers after Sicily.59 It is hard to say whether this analysis is right. Theeditor’s tentative identification of Callistratos with the homonymous hip-parch who died in Sicily is patently erroneous because the tribal affiliationis wrong.60 She seems, however, to be right in arguing that the new listbelonged to the same monument as the funerary epigram IG I3 1163; butthe latter is thought to have been inscribed either for the dead of the battleof Coroneia (446) or for those who fell at Delion (424). The whole questionought to be revisited.61

Less dramatic has been the impact of redatings on the last stage of theconflict between Athens and Sparta, the so-called Ionian War. Here be-longs one of the lengthiest Athenian documents, the honorific navalcatalogue IG I3 1032, that enumerates the crews of eight triremes. With itsextensive entries of slave rowers the record in question had long beenthought to refer to the battle of Arginousai, but Graham masterfullyprovided an earlier context, the naval expedition of the general Strom-bichides in the eastern Aegean in 412.62 If, as I believe, Graham is right,not only do we gain a unique glimpse into what was in effect the earliestAthenian attempt at securing the empire following the first desertions of413/2, we can also correct a major misunderstanding concerning themanning of the Athenian fleet. Slaves, accompanying their masters, wereemployed en masse as rowers even before the battle of Arginousai.63 Thethranitês leos, the bench-mob of Athenian drama, appears to be an ideo-logical construction, at least as concerns its alleged civic exclusivity. Lastbut not least, the unpublished casualty list from the Athens Metro exca-vations mentioned above, or at least part of it, could also find achronological fix in this period. Following the excavator’s provisional


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remarks, we might accept that the list in Ionian script along with itsaccompanying epigram commemorate the successful Athenian invasion ofthe Megarid of 409/8.64 Once more, we must plead for a prompt fullpublication which will allow proper historical analysis.

Greek scholars may be familiar with Sigeion either in a late Archaiccontext, or from historical accounts of the Ionian War. Nevertheless, it haslong been thought that 451/0 was the year when Athens decided to honourthe citizens of Sigeion for their goodwill, as well as to offer them protectionagainst any possible wrongdoings perpetrated by people in the Continent(presumably Asia Minor). Revealingly, the crucial text is IG I3 17, or AgoraXVI no. 1; in other words, it appears to be the earliest extant decree fromthe American excavations of the Athenian Agora. But the traditionalrestoration that has the archon An[tidotos] of 451/0 can be readily dis-missed: an archontic formula has no place in the prescript of such an earlyAthenian decree. Predictably Mattingly opted for the archon An[tiphon] of418/7. The fact that the Sigeion decree seems to have been cut by the samemason who carved the treaty with Hermione, from the early 420s, as Ihave already mentioned, seems to support Mattingly’s interpretation.65

But there is yet another late-fifth-century archon whose name can besupplemented in IG I3 17, namely An[tigenes] of 407/6. I hope to showelsewhere that the latter has to be preferred on epigraphical and historicalgrounds. The Sigeion decree then would be the by-product of the constantstate of emergency Athens found herself in throughout the Ionian War. Itis almost a world apart from the imperialistic mentality of the 420s, but aworld visibly reflected in a series of lenient settlements found in othercontemporary inscriptions.66 Political weakness and realism meant thatlate fifth-century Athens had been transformed into a very humble andgrateful ruler indeed.

Some provisional conclusions

With this first conclusion, treatment of individual documents will have tostop. It was selective, and at places insufficient, given the self-evidentspace restrictions. For instance, no mention has been made of the Athe-nian Tribute Lists, the most important Attic inscriptions ever discovered,as Stroud branded them in his recent David Lewis Memorial Lecture atOxford.67 At least I hope to have shown that, occasional new finds aside,the extant documents with no internal chronological indications need tobe reviewed in their totality. I also hope to have made clear that such areview has the potential for a domino-effect, which is hardly surprisinggiven that the system of chronological classification is of an interactivestructure: once we rearrange a considerable number of parts of thisstructure others will have to follow. Consequently, the question that arisesperforce is: how do the new chronological cards affect our understandingof the Athenian empire, if at all? To begin with, there is a rather unfortu-


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nate side-effect: as it happens, the notorious Pentekontaetia becomes evenless-documented. To mention only some of the least controversial redat-ings, the Coinage, Miletos, and Egesta decrees tell us nothing whatsoeverabout the period preceding the Peloponnesian War. Sad as it is, we haveto learn to live with an even more defective knowledge of pre-430s Athe-nian history. At least we still have Thucydides’ first book, Diodorus andPlutarch’s (problematic) accounts, and echoes of the Athenian political –some might even call it imperialistic – discourse in Attic drama. There isalso some good epigraphical evidence, namely casualty lists, financialaccounts, the early series of the Tribute Lists, and some other inscriptionsthat are firmly fixed in the pre-Peloponnesian War period. The mostnotable such example is the regulations concerning Erythrai (ML 40). Onecan hardly feel confident enough to pronounce on a text that has not beenseen since Fauvel copied it more than two centuries ago. Instinctively, Iregard it as rather unlikely that one single ‘imperialistic’ text was pro-duced in the 450s, and I wonder whether the Erythrai decree could not beplaced along with those concerning Colophon, Miletos and Phaselis nearor in the Peloponnesian War.

In his introduction to Mattingly’s Athenian Empire Restored, Chambersnoted that the Athenian Standards decree in its low chronological settingadvocated by Mattingly is ‘part of a policy of the strict administration ofthe Athenian Empire that probably began in the 420s, not in the 440s’.68

This is questionable, however. To use a cliché, the absence of evidence isnot evidence of absence. The fact that very few ‘imperialistic’ documentspredate the Peloponnesian War does not mean that before 431 Athens wasa peace-loving benevolent polity that sought to promote democracy andprotect liberties against the dark forces of oppression and backwardness.69

It is misleading to see any substantial difference between Periclean andCleonian Athens. After all, in his last speech to the Athenian assembly,Pericles could blatantly and unequivocally state to his audience that ‘bythis time your hegemony has become like a tyranny’.70 But if so, how arewe to account for the evident increase in the number of decrees producedfrom the 420s onwards? My impression is that we have to look for abipartite answer. Part of it may lie in the proliferation of the so-calledepigraphical habit.71 The Athenians started recording increasingly largernumbers of their public resolutions on permanent material. Here the sameold questions will arise: should we see the Athenian demagogues, thescorned successors of Pericles, behind this tendency? In other words, is theexpanded epigraphical habit the outcome of the proliferation of radicaldemocracy?72 Or, alternatively, did Athens’ new habit result from theparlous war conditions? Or even, did the two go hand in hand together?The other possibility, not incompatible with the possibilities I have justmentioned, is that the Athenians actually passed more decrees in thisperiod. Here we can briefly focus on one specific category: it is my convic-tion that a fresh re-examination of all fifth-century Athenian decrees, an


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undertaking I could not possibly carry out in these pages, will bring downthe chronology of numerous proxeny decrees.73 To be fair, this exercise hasalready been undertaken by a German scholar whose work has beenunjustifiably overlooked.74 Of course, proxeny was not a new institution.But, somehow I suspect that it underwent a dual, qualitative and quanti-tative, transformation in this period. Those enjoying the honour of beingproxenoi and benefactors of Athens increased in number, but the overallstatus of such men probably dropped. No longer the old upper-classaristocrats, at least not in their majoriy, the new proxenoi were Athens’henchmen, the people who secretively helped Athens administer an em-pire in constant turmoil.75 It was not an easy job, and many of them wouldhave provoked the hatred of their less servile compatriots, as the abundantprotection clauses preserved in proxeny decrees make clear.

Of course this cannot be the end of the story. John Ma, for instance, hasprovocatively spoken of epigraphical snapshots.76 Is this then what inscrip-tions boil down to, mere snapshots? To an extent the answer will be in theaffirmative. Still, these are snapshots that allow for a more nuancedpicture of fifth-century history. And once we put the fragments togetherwe can hopefully aim at providing a more reliable answer to the questionwhat the postmodern, postcolonial, post-Cold-War, post-Iraq-War, andeven neocon Athenian empire is about. Historiographically, the twenty-first century Athenian Empire has the potential to be an excitingly novelentity.77 Chronologically, however – and this is the paradoxical conclusionof this paper – it stands much closer to some nineteenth-century modelsthan does its post-ATL predecessor.

Notes

1. I wish to thank A. P. Matthaiou and R. Stroud not only for their help, but alsobecause their recent work on the epigraphy of the Athenian empire was my mainsource of inspiration. I also owe gratitude to P.J. Rhodes for sharing with me hisarticle ‘After the three-bar sigma controversy: the history of Athenian imperialismreassessed’ (Rhodes 2008) before publication. I am glad to say that, although ourconclusions are not identical, they, more often than not, overlap.

2. ATL.3. The authors of ATL were not the first to advocate this principle. Köhler (1867)

17 is an early example; for a fuller treatment see Rhodes (2008). The fame of theirwork, however, was such that all but silenced any dissident voices. In his reviewof ATL, the great Marcus Tod saw it coming; Tod (1949) 106: ‘Before leaving thisdecree (i.e. the Coinage decree), may I appeal to the experts, and primarily theauthors of this book, to reconsider its date before the weight of their authority givesunquestioned validity to their present view?’ Alas, Tod’s appeal was effectivelyignored and the rest is, as they say, history.

4. His relevant contributions have been conveniently collected in Mattingly (1996).5. Chambers, Galluci, Spanos (1990); cf. Chambers (1993). Previous advocates

of the low chronology include, apart from Mattingly, Smart (1972), Wick (1975),and Cataldi (1984).


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6. In particular Henry (1992), (1998) and (2001), who still stands for the oldcause with admirable and valiant spirit, adducing some admittedly cogent argu-ments.

7. See below, p. 000. The results of Chambers, Galluci, Spanos had sufficed toconvince a few, e.g. Vickers (1996). Even (a previously cautious) Stroud (1999) 132appeared receptive to the new redatings. See now Rhodes (2008), a self-confessedconvert.

8. Mattingly (1974a) 90-3, 102; response by Henry (1979) (‘Archon dating isregular, but not mandatory, after 421 BC’); and now J. Morgan apud Henry (2001)98-9. See also Sickinger (1999) 84-5.

9. Concise account in Shipley (1987) 113-20; for the chronological particularssee Fornara and Lewis (1979).

10. IG I3 1492-9. For the low, post 439, date of these three-bar-sigma horoi seeTod (1949) 106; Mattingly (1961) 149-50; Tsakos (1977) 76-8; Smarczyk (1990)73-83; and now Gallo (2005) 250-2.

11. Cavanaugh (1996) 29-95, with copious secondary bibliography.12. IG I3 78.30-6, esp. l. 33, 1>n bÒlontai (‘if they wish’).13. 434/3 is the orthodox date. Samons (2000) 129-33 favours early 432, whereas

Kallet (1989) thinks of the summer of 431. There are still some, however, whochallenge the opinio communis; see, e.g., Kennelly (2003) (either before 437, orduring the Peace of Nicias). And Humphreys (2004) 137-9, while accepting thetraditional date, dissociates the decree from any security concerns.

14. See Cavanaugh (1996) 19-27.15. What follows is based on the long preliminary report provided by Parlama

(2000). Ho8de ,Aqena8on Hippej ¢p2qano[n] 1n Tan£grai ka< 1SpartÒlo[i] (‘thefollowing Athenian cavalrymen died at Tanagra and at Spartolos’) is the textoffered by the excavator.

16. Tanagra (Athenian victory): Thuc. 3.91.3-5, with Gomme (1956) 394; Diod.Sic. 12.65.3-4. Spartolos (Athenian defeat): Thuc. 2.79, with Fantasia (2003) 537-9.

17. Cf. Meiggs (1966) 86: ‘We know that war casualties were recorded by thestate for each year’s fighting.’ The fact that the two battles would have beenrecorded in reverse chronological order is equally disconcerting.

18. Cf. Low (2002) 104.19. I note that the chronological reconstruction offered by Badian apud Moreno

(2007) 100-1n.114, though considerably different (Tanagra = Delion, Spartolos =unattested battle, both 424/3 BC), is based on similar premises, thus reinforcingmy main argument.

20. Thuc. 2.56.5. As Westlake (1945) has long shown, such raids were actuallycentral to Periclean strategy, but have often been overlooked because of Thucydides’tacit disapproval of them. For a more nuanced view see Holladay (1978), esp. 400-3.

21. Thuc. 4.45.2.22. Unsurprisingly, Mattingly (1961) 173, was the first to argue for the low

chronology of IG I3 31, only to be dismissed by Meritt and Wade-Gery (1963) 103.Jameson (2000-3) 27-8 seems to have settled the issue for good. Amongst modernThucydidean commentators, Hornblower (1996) 204 was impressed, but not wonover by Mattingly, whereas Fantasia (2003) 451-2 now favours the reconstructionof events advocated here, independently from Jameson.

23. Thuc. 3.34.3: ‘(Paches) then gave Notion to the Kolophonians other than theMedising party. Later the Athenians sent founders and settled Notion underAthenian laws, collecting all the Kolophonians from the cities’ (translated byRhodes (1994)). The Thucydidean ‘founders’ (o9kist£j) would arguably be the


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same as the ‘founders’ (l. 40, o9kista8) of the inscription (Mattingly (1961) 175).This reconstruction is now accepted by Rubinstein in Hansen and Nielsen (2004)1078 (s.v. Colophon).

24. On the traditional dating (summarized in ML 47), we should duplicateAthens’ colonial undertakings in the area of Colophon, certainly an uneconomicalassumption (but see Rhodes (2007) 22, and Bolmarcich (2007) 32, both defendingthe high chronology). Pace Meiggs and Lewis, the decree does not prove thatColophon (as opposed to Notion) was in Athenian control.

25. Good synopsis in ML 31.26. Jameson (2000-3); for Leon see Thuc. 5.19.2, with Hornblower (1996) 489.27. Threatte (1996) 96-9.28. Gorman (2001) 226 offers a good summary of the various interpretations,

but herself remains agnostic.29. It is a regrettably forgotten fact that the first editor to deal with the

inscription, Koumanoudes (1876) 82-5, very reasonably assigned to it a date after426/5. It was only with Kirchhoff in IG I Suppl. 22a that emendation of the archonlist started. Regrettably, Oliver (1936) 182 took Kirchhoff’s chronology for granted,and others have followed suit. Wade-Gery and Meritt (1957) 183 is a clear case ofmethodological double-talk (they use the evidence of IG I3 21 as a proof thatDiodorus was wrong, but of course this begs the question); see also Bradeen andMcGregor (1973) 65. The latest adherent to the high chronology is Gorman (2001)225-6. Matthaiou (2004) 120, and Stroud (2006) 17, now urge a return to Kouma-noudes’ date. Last but not least, it has to be made clear that the archonship ofEuthynos provides not the date of IG I3 21, but a terminus post quem. Therestoration of an archontic formula in line 3 of the decree is far from certain:re-examination is badly needed.

30. Thuc. IV.42.1: ‘of the allies men joined them (i.e. the Athenians) fromMiletos, Andros and Carystos’; IV.53.1: ‘The Athenians in the same summercampaigned against Cythera, with sixty ships, two thousand hoplites and a fewcavalry, and taking from the allies Milesians and some others’; 54.1: ‘With tenships and two thousand Milesian hoplites they captured the coastal city calledSkandeia’ (translated by Rhodes 1998). Commenting on these passages Gomme(1956) 489 astutely observed: ‘Doubtless Ar. Eq. 361 is an allusion, obscure to us,to their (sc. the Milesians’) present activities’. I think that the connection canstand, but is indirect. The Aristophanic verse (¢ll, oÙ l£brakaj katafagënMilhs8oij klonseij) makes better sense in the context of IG I3 21, even thoughthe allusion remains as obscure today as it was to Gomme.

31. The counter-argument of Meritt and Wade-Gerry (1963) 101-2n.14 isirrelevant.

32. Inschriften von Milet VI 3, 1021. The stonecutter appears to have appliedsyllabification across lines; toÚtwi in line 7 is tempting. More interestingly, thesequence of letters KATO in line 6 could belong to some form of the verbkatÒmnumi. If so, an oath is envisaged. But Matthaiou (2008), who also ponderssome form of the verb katoik2w, may well be right.

33. See Thonemann (2007) 545 and, in more detail, Matthaiou (2008), both ofwhom restore l. 3 as E[!.c.8!. 1gramm£teue]. This small point has implicationsfor the date of the inscription.

34. The old fragments can be found in IG I3 1453, the copy from Hamaxitos inMattingly (1993); new (second) fragment from Aphytis: Hatzopoulos (2000-3).

35. Hatzopoulos (2000-2003), strengthening the low chronology and discountingmany of the theories advocated by Figueira (1998).


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36. Ar. Av. 1040-1041: crÁsqai Nefelokokkugi©j to!j aÙto!j m2troisi ka<staqmo!si ka< yhf8smasi kaq£per ,OlofÚxioi, with Dunbar (1995) 567-9. Seealso Kallet (2001) 218 with n. 133, for a rather diffident support of this very lowchronology.

37. Editio princeps: Inglese (2002) 231-2. As reported in SEG LII 43, the textwill soon be fully published by Matthaiou.

38. 424 seems to be a reasonable date: see Mattingly (1961) 153; Mattingly(1970) 131-2; Samons (2000) 188-93.

39. In the latest major exploration of the decree Ostwald (2002) 136 affirms:‘That the date of the decree is 446 BC is almost universally agreed.’

40. S in Vespas 718: <t>> per< t]n EÜboian dÚnatai ka< aÙt> sun®dein ta!jDidaskal8aij: p2rusi g>r 1p< ¥rcontoj ,Is£rcou 1str£teusan 1p, aÙtn, æjFilÒcoroj. ‘The events concerning Euboea can also be reconciled with the perform-ance (of the Wasps); for it was in the previous year, in the archonship of Isarchos(424/3), that they (sc. the Athenians) campaigned against it (sc. Euboea), asPhilochorus (attests)’.

41. Kassel and Austin F 231. For the date see Storey (2003) 216-17 (butKyriakidi (2007) 20-1 prefers the year 420 BC).

42. Ar. Pax 1046-7; cf. Flower (2008) 62-3, who, however, prefers the highchronology for ML 52.

43. Mattingly (2002).44. Ar. Knights 236-7: tout< t8 dr? tÕ CalkidikÕn potrion; oÙk 4sq, Ópwj oÙ

Calkid2aj ¢f8staton. The ancient scholiasts were uncertain as to whether theEuboean Chalcis or Chalcidice is implied here. Sommerstein (1981) 155 thinks ofthe former, citing the evidence of the Chalcidian drinking-cups kept in the Parthe-non (e.g. IG I3 299, ll. 50-1; 301, l. 23; 350, l. 81 etc.; cf. Harris (1995) 101).

45. Cf. the neat note by Balcer (1978) 72, who, however, did not draw thepresent inference.

46. The dominant yet unsatisfactory view (diallag as a renewal of hostages)is that of Garlan (1965) 332-8, who, while providing ample testimonia for the useof diallag as reconciliation, refused to endorse that interpretation, no doubtbecause he was exclusively thinking of a confrontation between two cities. But,ever since Dreher (1995) 113-31 has convincingly argued that the term diallaga8(plural) in RO 29 can only refer to an interstate agreement mediated by the SecondAthenian League (cf. Low (2007) 49), Garlan’s rejected premises received furthersupport. It is noteworthy that Dreher (1995) 119 could only cite one example of theterm diallag designating an international arbitration, that of the Chalcis decree(on the authority of Garlan).

47. Just to bring some outside authority, Knoepfler (2001) 73n.285 now believesthat the redating might fit better the developments in late fifth-century Eretrianhistory.

48. Editio princeps: Matthaiou 2000 (SEG L 45).49. Criticism of Alcibiades’ young age: Thuc. 5.43; for the statesman himself see

Hatzfeld 1940.50. IG I3 91 and 92, with Mattingly 1974a, 91, who made the simple observation

that the absence of an archontic formula from the prescripts of the two proxeniesexcluded any date post 421 (cf. p. 000 above).

51. That is, the context of IG I3 92 must have beem military. The introductoryformula is extremely unusual, but one might wish to consider Thuc. 2.12.2 (Ãng>r Perikl2ouj gnèmh prÒteron nenikhku!a kruka ka< presbe8an m]prosd2cesqai Lakedaimon8wn 1xestrateum2nwn), which certainly refers to a pro-


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posal by Pericles qua general, although Thucydides’ penchant for the term gnèmhmay be at play here. But then again Thuc. 4.122.6 uses the similar expressionKl2wnoj gnèmV peisq2ntej (persuaded by Cleon’s proposal) to describe a decreemoved by Cleon, when the latter probably served as general (cf. Mattingly 1974c,383-4). The topic merits further investigation.

52. For some subtleties underlying this passage see Gomme 1956, 657-8, andHornblower 1996, 457-8. Gomme, in particular, played down the Thessalianinvolvement contra Steup.

53. Matthaiou (2004) 107.54. For a thorough treatment of the text see now Matthaiou (2004) summarised

in SEG LII 41.55. Thuc. 6.6.2, as scrutinised by Matthaiou (2004) 113-117.56. I note that the year of Antiphon fell ten years after the original alliance.

But, perhaps more pertinently, it was also a Panathenaic year. When in 420 theAthenians made an alliance with Argos, Elis and Mantineia, the latter undertookto renew it via oaths to be taken ten days before the Great Panathenaia (i.e. everyfour years): Thuc. 5.47.10, with Gomme, Andrewes and Dover (1970) 61. Interest-ingly the first renewal of oaths on behalf of the three Peloponnesian cities wouldhave taken place in the archonship of Antiphon. Could the Egestans have abidedby a similar clause in the original alliance of 427/6 when they sent their own envoysto Athens in 418/7 with the aim of renewing the treaty?

57. Kallet (2001) 184-95.58. Ed. pr: Tsirigoti-Drakotou (2000) = SEG LII 60.59. Tsirigoti-Drakotou (2000) 94 and 98-100, citing Paus. 1.29.11-12: ‘After

those who were killed at Corinth, we come across elegiac verses declaring that oneand the same slab has been erected to those who died in Euboea and Chios, and tothose who perished in the remote parts of the continent of Asia, or in Sicily. Thenames of the generals are inscribed with the exception of Nicias, and among theprivate soldiers are included the Plataeans along with the Athenians’ (translatedby Jones 1918). But the passage is problematic, if not corrupt: see Pritchett (1998)44-53; idem (1999) 59-60.

60. Tsirigoti-Drakotou (2000) 99, but the hipparch Callistratos, son of Empedos,mentioned by Paus. 7.16.5-6, was of the deme Oe and therefore of the tribe Oineis(see LGPN II, Kall8stratoj (94)), whereas the new Callistratos is listed underthe tribe Erechtheis.

61. 446 is the date of IG I3 1163 given in the corpus. Delion: Mattingly (1963)261-2; idem (1966) 176-7, 191-2. Griffith (1988) has argued that the epigram wascomposed by the Chian tragedian Ion.

62. See Graham (1992) and especially Graham (1998); an early date had alreadybeen argued for by Jordan (1975) 71-2. Laing (1965) was the first to establish thateight triremes were recorded in IG I3 1032, and the number fits well the informa-tion provided by Thuc. 8.15-16.

63. Ironically, this view was dominant in nineteenth-century German scholar-ship, but later, starting with Sargeant 1927, the opposite position (minimal use ofslaves) prevailed (see, e.g., Amit (1965) 31-7). The thesis supported here hasrecently been defended by Hunt (2006) 25-9.

64. Parlama (2000) 399, citing Diod. Sic. XIII.65.1-2; one should add Hell. Ox.(Florence, Fr. A, col. 1) with Andrewes (1992) 486. However, Badian apud Moreno(2007) 100-1n.114 would place this Megarian skirmish in 424/3 BC.

65. Mattingly (1963) 270-1; idem (1974b) 349-51, 283-4; idem (2000) 132-9.Accepted now by Rhodes (2008).


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66. See Smarczyk (1986), esp. 5-34.67. Stroud (2006) 10. On 26-32, the author cunningly treats another challenging

(three-bar sigma) text omitted in the present study, namely the so-called accountsfor the construction of the statue of Athena Promachos. On the numerous uncer-tainties surrounding the traditional interpretation of the Athenian Tribute Listssee Kallet (2004).

68. Chambers apud Mattingly (1996) x.69. Athens and democracy: see Brock in this volume.70. Thuc. 2.63.2: see now Meyer (2008) 23-4 with n. 53, for some earlier

interpretations.71. Cf. Hedrick (1999), who, however, submits that the number of published

documents dwindled in the last quarter of the fifth century. His inferences mayhave to be reconsidered, if my main argument is sound.

72. Epigraphy and democracy: Pébarthe (2005), a subtle discussion.73. See, for instance, the fragmentary honorific (proxeny?) decree IG I3 30.

Disregarding the presence of three-bar sigmas, Morgan (2001) now urges thedowndating of the decree from the 450s to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War,connecting it to an otherwise unattested operation when an Athenian expeditionunder Cimon’s son Lakedaimonios forced Thera into Athens’ alliance. And Mat-tingly (2007) 107-8 has now launched another of his fierce attacks onthree-bar-sigma documents, by lowering the date of IG I3 27 (proxeny of Del-phians?) to c. 430.

74. Reiter (1991). Walbank (1978), who bases his reconstruction on the three-bar sigma criterion, is certainly cited more often.

75. On that I disagree with Reiter (1991); some of the conclusions of Gerolyma-tos (1986) seem preferable.

76. In one of his interventions at the Oxford seminar that gave rise to thepresent volume.

77. Related issues are dealt with by Kallet in this volume.

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Epigraphy and the Athenian Empire: Reshuffling the Chronological Cards

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