Phantom Euboians: A decade on (2011)

Euboea and Athens

Proceedings of a Colloquium in Memory of Malcolm B. Wallace

Athens 26-27 June 2009

2011

Publications of the Canadian Institute in Greece Publications de l’Institut canadien en Grèce

No. 6

© The Canadian Institute in Greece /

L’Institut canadien en Grèce 2011

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Euboea and Athens Colloquium in Memory of Malcolm B. Wallace (2009 : Athens, Greece) Euboea and Athens : proceedings

of a colloquium in memory of Malcolm B. Wallace : Athens 26-27 June 2009 / David W. Rupp and Jonathan E. Tomlinson, editors.

(Publications of the Canadian Institute in Greece = Publications de l'Institut canadien en Grèce ; no. 6)

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-9737979-1-6

1. Euboea Island (Greece)--Antiquities. 2. Euboea Island (Greece)--Civilization. 3. Euboea Island (Greece)--History.

4. Athens (Greece)--Antiquities. 5. Athens (Greece)--Civilization. 6. Athens (Greece)--History. I. Wallace, Malcolm B. (Malcolm Barton),

1942-2008 II. Rupp, David W. (David William), 1944- III. Tomlinson, Jonathan E. (Jonathan Edward), 1967- IV. Canadian Institute in

Greece V. Title. VI. Series: Publications of the Canadian Institute in Greece ; no. 6.

DF261.E9E93 2011 938 C2011-903495-6

The Canadian Institute in Greece Dionysiou Aiginitou 7

GR-115 28 Athens, Greece

www.cig-icg.gr

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JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS

“Phantom Euboians” — A Decade On

In 1997 I published a paper laconically entitled “Phantom Euboians” in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology.1 Reactions to the paper ranged from apoplexy and disgust to mild curiosity and, occasionally, nodding approval. The purpose of this paper, dedicated to a scholar who devoted much of his intellectual life to the great island of Euboea, especially southern Euboea, is to review the basic tenets of “Phantom Euboians” and to see not only where the original arguments stand after a decade, but what might be added if the paper were to be written today. My aim in the original paper, as it is today, was not to make Euboeans “disappear,” but to argue that we should use material evidence more judiciously. In order to avoid any misunderstandings as to the contents of this paper, I append below the abstract of the original paper, which serves well as an abstract for “Phantom Euboians: a decade on.”

“This paper examines critically interpretations of social and economic pre-eminence and ethnicity in the eastern and central Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age. More particularly, it challenges the conventional view of Aegean, especially Euboian, primacy in early maritime trade and colonial ventures. To focus on one particular group — whether Greek, Levantine or other — to the neglect of others, is to miss the broader Mediterranean perspective and to impose national and nationalistic concepts which shift according to scholarly notions. Against the backdrop of a less-centralized and growing world-system, in which fluid boundaries allow for mobility of people and ideas, communities throughout the Mediterranean were affected and drawn together

1 In dedicating this paper to Mac Wallace, I acknowledge the many hours of fruitful discussion I had with him, not only on things Euboean but myriad other topics, in Karystos and in Athens.

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in a variety of ways. The process of “blending” was more profound than merely combining two or more cultures. The only way to understand the complexities of multi-ethnic communities is to examine the entire cultural milieu and assemblage, not just certain aspects of the material record, and to recognize the interplay of ethnic, class, gender and other divisions.”2

In scratching under the surface, I soon found out that the often knee-jerk reaction to “Phantom Euboians” was more of an objection to the title than the contents of the paper, and I am not even entirely sure that some of its most stalwart opponents even read the paper or, if they did, whether or not they read all of it. So it would be useful to begin by reviewing some of the more vigorous reactions, which also serve to reintroduce and reinforce some of the basic tenets of the original paper. Select Reactions to “Phantom Euboians”

As recently as 2007, David Ridgway stated, “….in some quarters the Euboeans are seen these days as the embodiment of all that was wrong and even sinister, in what Martin Bernal has called ‘the fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985.’ John Papadopoulos has called them ‘phantoms’…..”3 This is a classic knee-jerk reaction to the title of my paper. Although my title was provocative, what I actually said in the text was: “Beware Greek painted pottery, and especially those phantom Greeks — or Euboians — bearing it.”4 My meaning was straightforward: pots do not equal people, and a Euboean or Athenian or Corinthian pot found in the coastal Levant or in Italy or Carthage was not necessarily carried there by a Euboean or Athenian or Corinthian. In fact, not including the title and the acknowledgments, I used the term “phantom” only twice in the main body of the original text. In addition to the passage

2 Papadopoulos 1997b, p. 191. 3 Ridgway 2007, p. 147. 4 Papadopoulos 1997b, p. 193; cf. Papadopoulos 1996.


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already cited, the only other time I used the word “phantom” was as follows: “However prominent the Euboians may seem in the greater Mediterranean, their visibility in the Aegean, outside Euboia, is far from clear. Take away the Euboian pottery, which is rarely found in great quantities outside its home region, and one is often left chasing literary phantoms.”5

In the same year, and in the same volume, Nicolas Coldstream wrote, “We can dispense quite briefly with the supposition that a large quantity of imported orientalia in the richer tombs [of Lefkandi] must necessarily indicate the presence of merchants from the Eastern Mediterranean (as, e.g., Papadopoulos). NO: these eastern exotica take their place in the richer tombs beside fine imports from Athens and elsewhere, and are better explained as displaying the eclectic tastes of a local aristocracy.”6 Having said this, Coldstream went on to argue that six Egyptianizing faience vessels found in Tomb 39 at Lefkandi, in the so-called “royal” Toumba cemetery, was enough to qualify the occupant of that grave as a Near Eastern bride marrying into the local aristocracy, “royalty” no less.7

When I argued that the Egyptian, Cypriot, North Syrian, and Phoenician objects — including stone weights of a Phoenician standard produced somewhere in the Cypriot/Levantine sphere, as has been recently established by Jack Kroll8 — might indicate that the grave (Lefkandi, Toumba Tomb 79) might be that of a resident alien at Lefkandi, this was clearly WRONG!9 Yet six Egyptianizing faience objects in another grave (Toumba Tomb 39) in the same cemetery, also of Early Iron Age date, qualify the occupant of that grave as a resident alien, a bride.10 Quite apart

5 Papadopoulos 1997b, p. 205. 6 Coldstream 2007, p. 135; with reference to Papadopoulos 1998. 7 Coldstream 2007, p. 135; see further Coldstream 1998, p. 356. 8 Kroll 2008. 9 As argued in Papadopoulos 1996 and 1998, and as reiterated in Papadopoulos 1997b. Lefkandi, Toumba Tomb 79: Popham and Lemos 1995; Nijboer 2008. 10 A general theme also discussed elsewhere by Coldstream, e.g. Coldstream 1993. Although we await publication of the text volume of Lefkandi III, the excavators assign Toumba Tomb 39 to Late Protogeometric, Tomb 79 to Sub-Protogeometric II: Lefkandi III, p. 207, color plate.

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from the fact that the Toumba cemetery has somehow now achieved “royal” status, it seems that female resident aliens are permissible, but male ones not. One of the issues I pointed to in the 1997 version of “Phantom Euboians” was the lack of methodological rigor in much of Early Iron Age archaeology; this lack of rigor remains an issue.

Discussion of the wealth of orientalia at Lefkandi has become entangled with scholarly agendas, so rather than review the evidence once more, I would prefer to look at two pots with Euboean connections, and in the process ask a simple question. General consensus would see the celebrated “Cup of Nestor” found at Pithekoussai as an East Greek Late Geometric drinking vessel (a kotyle) with an inscription in Euboean epichoric (Fig. 1a–b).11 General consensus would also have it that the inscription, in metrical verse, was probably scratched on the surface of the pot by a Euboean — let us call him or her a resident alien rather than colonizer — living in Pithekoussai. This is a consensus view with which few scholars, including myself, would disagree. But what about the fragmentary Euboean Middle Geometric cup recently published from a settlement context in Eretria with inscribed Semitic letters: KPLŠ (Fig. 2a–b)?12 Whether the inscription is Cilician, Phoenician, or North Syrian, could this cup have been inscribed at Eretria by an Eastern resident alien? Or would consensus insist that it was inscribed by one of those Semitic wives, or by a polyglot Euboean?

Coldstream’s reluctance to accept male resident aliens at Lefkandi is matched by that of Kroll.13 Although Kroll finds

11 Cup and inscription are well illustrated in Arena 1996, pp. 189–191, with illustrations on p. 192; for a recent interpretation of the inscription, see Faraone 1996. 12 Kenzelmann Pfyffer, Theurillat, and Verdan 2005, pp. 76–77, no. 66 (FK90657). 13 Coldstream’s reluctance to accept male resident aliens at Lefkandi seems odd, particularly given his acceptance of such persons, including goldsmiths, at Knossos: Coldstream 1988, p. 30. Hoffman (1997, pp. 191–245) discusses the identity of the occupant of this tomb in some detail; cf. Burkert 1983. Elsewhere in Crete, evidence is growing for the presence of Phoenicians at Eleutherna (Stampolidis 1990a, 1990b) and at Kommos, especially the Stele Shrine (Shaw 1989). Near Eastern contact with Crete, including immigrant presence, has been


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something of value in Carla Antonaccio’s suggestion that the occupant of Toumba Tomb 79 might be a proxenos, a (Greek) notable responsible for assisting the interests of Eastern merchants, or in Nino Luraghi’s idea that the individual in the same tomb fits the profile of early Greek pirate-traders, “adventurers who with their ships and men opportunistically sought their fortunes overseas by violence as well as by peaceful means,” the possibility that the deceased in Tomb 79 might be an Easterner is denied.14 Although dutifully noting that the use and place of origin of the Levantine/Cypriot weights in Tomb 79 have no bearing on the ethnicity of the “well-armed trader” with whom they were interred, Kroll concludes: “they [the stone weights] reinforce, about as concretely as any kind of artefactual material can, awareness of how profoundly Euboeans were engaged in this eastward trade. Unlike the indirect, albeit abundant, evidence of ceramics and other transported goods, the Tomb 79 weights — the very instruments of commodity exchange — provide relatively direct, arguably even personalized evidence for active Euboean involvement in the Cypro-Levantine world.”15 Kroll’s insistence that the occupant of Tomb 79 could not be a resident alien — or a Cypriot or Phoenician assimilated into the local community — is simply that, insistence. It does not constitute proof.

In fact, there is no shortage of Easterners, particularly Phoenicians, in the Early Iron Age Aegean, from the perfume-merchants of Ialysos and the resident Eastern glass-makers of Rhodes, to the Phoenician mineral prospectors of Thasos and the quintessential Eastern resident alien, Kadmos, who married a Greek girl, Harmonia, and ruled over Thebes.16 Moreover, several

explored by Gail Hoffman (1997, esp. pp. 153–189, 252–260). The evidence for Levantine resident aliens is even stronger in Early Iron Age Corinth, where several Phoenician-style stele shrines were found in the Potters’ Quarter: Morris and Papadopoulos 1998. 14 Kroll 2008, pp. 37–38. See also Antonaccio 2002, pp. 28–29; Luraghi 2006, p. 34; and note Lemos 2003. 15 Kroll 2008, p. 44. 16 For the Phoenician perfume industry of Ialysos and the Eastern glassmakers of Rhodes: Coldstream 1969; 1982; Bisi 1987. For Thasos, Herodotus (2.44, 6.47) reports both a Phoenician cult of Herakles on the island and Phoenician

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areas of coastal Asia Minor were known as Φοινική, while the eastern Aegean was just one locale that called inscribed letters τὰ Φοινικήια and applied the title φοινικογράφος to magistrates; the Milesians even laid claim to the invention of the alphabet.17

The commodities that these Easterners exploited in the Aegean were varied, not only perfume and glass, but metal ores and even human slaves. I suspect that the Phoenicians whom Homer (Od. 15.415–416) referred to as “famous seafarers, gnawers at other men’s goods,” who captured Eumaios (Odysseus’ swineherd) on the island of Syros in the very heart of the Cyclades and sold him into bondage, were not athyrmata-plying wimps, but armed pirate-traders.18 Had any of these Phoenicians perished in the Aegean, what would their graves look like?

Eastern, specifically Phoenician, presence in the Aegean was not limited to the eastern reaches of the sea and to its north (Thasos and Thrace), but also to the western Aegean. The island of Kythera was also called “Porphyroussa,” as if the Phoenicians made it famous for their purple industry, and as Sarah Morris has further noted, the “cult of Aphrodite Ourania on Kythera, the oldest in Greece (Paus. 3.21.1), was founded by the Phoenicians (Hdt. 1.105), and the island’s name derived from Semitic names according to ancient and modern arguments.”19 To the south, that other great Greek island, Crete, had no shortage of Eastern realia, from the Eastern jeweller in the Tekke cemetery near Knossos and the material from Eleutherna to the stele shrine of Kommos already noted. The evidence for Eastern presence on Crete was not limited to mere archaeological finds, but central to the legends of the island: let us not forget that Crete was once ruled by Minos, the child of Europa, the Phoenician girl — sister of Kadmos — who gave Europe its name.20

exploitation of Thracian and Thasian mines; see further Morris 1992a, pp. 143–146. Kadmos: Morris 1992a, passim. 17 FrGH 1 F20; further discussion in Morris 1992a, pp. 146–147. 18 For a critical perspective on Homer’s Phoenicians, see Winter 1995. 19 Morris 1992a, p. 135, with n. 142 (full references). 20 In Euripides (fr. 472,1–2: Kannicht 2004, p. 505, F 472), Minos’ Levantine parentage is clear: “son of Phoinix-born Tyrian, child of Europa.” Cf. Il. 14.321.


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Phoenician presence was, moreover, not limited to islands, even large islands like Crete and Euboea, as Thucydides observed in his discussion of Sicilian antiquities (Thuc. 6.2). Quite apart from Kadmeian Thebes, in the heart of central Greece — a stone’s throw from Euboea — Phoenician resident aliens were well known at Corinth. Indeed, Phoenician presence in the Corinthia was well outlined already by classicists working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.21 Building on the earlier contributions of scholars such as Ernst Maass, Henry Theodore Wade-Gery, Lewis Farnell, and others, Thomas Dunbabin wrote:

“An older generation, accustomed to seeing Phoenicians everywhere, regarded them as the bearers of Oriental culture to Greece. For them, Melikertes, the hero whose tomb was shown at the Isthmus, was Melkarth; the cult of Aphrodite, with its sacred prostitutes, was of Phoenician origin; Medea also and the cult of Hera Akraia, with its human sacrifice implied in the slaughter of Medea’s children, were Phoenician. Athena was worshipped at Corinth with the title Phoinike [Schol. Lyc. 658; Steph. Byz. s.v. Φοινίκαιον], for what that is worth; and there was a month Phoinikaios at Corinth and in Corinthian colonies. These Oriental elements, more strongly concentrated at Corinth than elsewhere in the Greek world, must have been introduced now, in the second half of the eighth century, when Corinth’s commerce expands and orientalizing influences appear in her art. Whether they imply that men from Phoenicia or Syria settled at Corinth may be debated.”22

The evidence for resident aliens in our literary sources,

including the very articulation of words such as metoikos, which goes back to the Mycenaean Linear B tablets, is abundant.23 Whether or not the individual in Toumba Tomb 79 was an Eastern resident alien, or a Euboean proxenos, or a pirate-trader, is not the

21 Morris and Papadopoulos 1998, p. 257. 22 Dunbabin 1948, p. 66. 23 The term me-ta-ki-ti-ta (PY 54=An 610) in the nominative plural refers, as Ventris and Chadwick (1973, p. 561) note, to a class of men: “metaktitai ‘fellow or new settlers’; cf. ki-ti-ta,” which they compare with μέτοικος, μετανάστης.

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central issue. The critical issue is that the reality of resident aliens in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Aegean, coupled with the wealth of Eastern exotica at sites such as Lefkandi or Knossos, to mention only two, certainly makes it possible that there were tombs of resident aliens, Phoenicians no less, in addition to North Syrians, Cypriots, and even Westerners from the Italian peninsula and Sardinia, in various parts of Greece.

Reactions to “Phantom Euboians” do not stop with Ridgway, Coldstream or Kroll. A scholar of the standing of Sir John Boardman has gone as far as to offer a virtual psychoanalysis of scholars who have doubted the central importance of Euboea in the Early Iron Age. Boardman writes:

“Papadopoulos (Greek/Australian, now resident in the USA) has expressed critical comments on European ‘Euboean men,’ as we have seen. He has himself excavated in what antiquity regarded as the Euboean colony of Torone, and worked on Zagora on Andros, which a colleague of his (then Swiss in Australia, but a ‘Euboean man’ through excavating at Eretria) had described as an Eretrian colony. One might understand the feeling of being beleaguered by Euboeans, mainly championed by native Europeans. R. A. Kearsley (Australia) had cut the Euboean pendent-semicircle-cup culture down to size by down-dating its appearance at Al Mina in the east (with some justification), but also prolonging its life unduly and suggesting that much was made in Cyprus and Syria. But she is not essentially anti-Euboean at all. A more determined anti-Euboean scholar, J. Y. Perreault, is French/Canadian. A former Oxford doctoral student, Franco De Angelis (Canadian), has pointed out what might be evidence of a colonial approach to archaeological evidence on the part of T. J. Dunbabin (Australia) in The Western Greeks. When this was being worked on, pre-World War II, colonialism was viewed with less passion than it is today, when it is unfair to compare the colonial and post-colonial conditions of some countries, and any non-dominant partner must always be on the side of the angels. (Dominant peoples are racist: non-dominant are at worst prejudiced.) I notice that serious study of South Italian (colonial Greek) red figure pottery has become an Australian virtue, for


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which we are all deeply grateful. A major conference whose papers are entitled Greek Colonies and Native Populations was held in Australia in 1985, very conscious of the possible special contribution to such studies of Australia, ‘both a colonized and colonizing power.’ I hope it is not churlish to voice the suspicion that such a background might prove as distorting as illuminating when antiquity is under review, but could hardly insist that a European one might be any better. A scholar ought to be affected by neither.”24

Quibbles aside, such as the fact that I never expressed any

comments on “European Euboean men,” as women were also under my purview, or that I do not believe in a “Pendent-Semicircle-Cup Culture” (or is it Kultur?), it is heartening to see a scholar of such a calibre express himself so frankly. The only obvious conclusion to be drawn from Boardman’s statement is that issues of colonialism can only be properly treated by Great Britons; Australians: certainly NOT! Canadians: probably not; French-Canadians: clearly not, though Anglo-Canadians, especially former doctoral students at Oxford supervised by Boardman, are probably okay. Furthermore, anyone who has ever hinted at anything that even remotely resembles post-colonial theory is certainly not fit to discuss issues of colonialism, because for such scholars “any non-dominant partner must always be on the side of the angels.” Franco De Angelis is certainly correct in pointing to both an ancient past and an imperial present in Dunbabin’s The Western Greeks, but I suspect that there is something equally subjective in Boardman’s The Greeks Overseas.25 Isn’t it odd that Euboea, like Great Britain, is a long and narrow island off the coast of Europe, not quite Europe (certainly not continental Europe); Euboea in the Early Iron Age, like Great Britain in the more recent past, was a society of seafarers, warrior-traders, boasting a great navy; and Euboea, like Great Britain, was the primordial colonizer.

24 Boardman 2002, pp. 11–12, with reference to Descoeudres 1973, pp. 87–88; Kearsley 1989, 1995a, 1995b; Perreault 1993; De Angelis 1998. 25 Boardman 1980.

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Perhaps the sun did set, occasionally, on the Euboean Empire, but the residents of Chalkis or Eretria or Lefkandi, like those of Britannia, “never never never shall be slaves!” (refrain from the song Rule, Britannia!). More to the point, I recommend that archaeologists eschew psychoanalysis: it is not our forte. But there is one statement with which I completely concur with Boardman: “I hate being misquoted or misrepresented but am well used to it by now; and I can do little about my instinctive intolerance of the intolerant, or desire to ridicule the ridiculous.”26

Even more recently, in a long article (over 150 pages) published in 2008, Michalis Tiverios reviewed the colonization of the north Aegean. In his discussion of the early Euboean colonization of the Chalkidike, which he places immediately after the Trojan War, he writes: “The Euboeans must have been the most numerous population group in Chalcidice. This conclusion is easily reached because it satisfactorily explains not only why it was Chalcis which gave its name to the region, but also why Euboean wares outnumber Attic pottery and why most of the ‘good’ pottery found in northern Greece from the Protogeometric and Geometric is directly or indirectly related to the Euboean pottery.”27 For Tiverios, pots still = people; we have not outgrown the equation pots = people, despite Ridgway’s comments to the contrary.28 More to the point, history has been written, as it continues to be written, on the basis of pottery and its distribution; it is, however, a colossus with feet of clay. But if we look at the evidence for central and southern Greek interest in the north Aegean, the importance of metals — what I consider the critical commodity, which gave its name to the Chalkidike — continues to be overlooked in various scholarly circles.

As I argued in 1996, the whole question of the exploitation of metal in the Chalkidike has historically not received the attention that it deserves.29 In 1979, Noel Gale listed various districts in

26 Boardman 2002, p. 16. 27 Tiverios 2008, p. 16. 28 Ridgway 2007, p. 147. 29 Papadopoulos 1996. For early discussion of metals in Macedonia, see Casson 1926, pp. 57–97; Davies 1932a, 1932b, 1935, 1939; and Forbes 1964.


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Macedonia and Thrace in a group as one of the four main centers of lead and silver attested by ancient authors (the others being Laurion, Siphnos, and Thasos).30 In the Chalkidike, and within the chora of Classical Torone, are two disused mines within five kilometres of the modern village of Sykia, plus the Early Iron Age site of Koukos, which has yielded clear evidence of metalworking in the period.31 Several other mines are known on the mainland of eastern Chalkidike, including those near Stratonion and Olympias, which are rich in both copper and lead/silver ores.32 In particular, the lead ores of the Chalkidike, high in silver content, have a lead isotope composition distinct from similar ores from other parts of the Aegean.33 It has even been suggested that six of the fourteen silver objects from the Shaft Graves at Mycenae reveal lead isotope data consistent with the Chalkidike.34 This evidence is critical: it suggests that part of the Chalkidike was exploited for metals, with southern Greek involvement, as early as the period of transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age, if not already in the Middle Helladic period or even earlier. The Early Mycenaean pottery (Late Helladic I–II) found at Torone — still the earliest Mycenaean pottery found in Macedonia — may well be direct evidence of this early contact, some seven centuries prior to the

30 Gale 1979, p. 15. 31 Wagner et al. 1986; Pernicka 1987, esp. p. 655, fig. 23; Wagner and Weisgerber 1985. Koukos: Carington Smith and Vokotopoulou 1992, pp. 497–499, 502, pl. 6 (mould); note also the nodules of melted bronze: Carington Smith and Vokotopoulou 1990, p. 447; French 1992–1993, p. 54; Nixon 1992–1993, pp. 184–185. 32 Stos-Gale and Macdonald 1991, esp. pp. 267–268, 272, 280; Pernicka 1987, p. 190; Wagner et al. 1986; for the Byzantine and later use of these mines, see Matschke 1991–1992. 33 Stos-Gale and Macdonald 1991, p. 272; Pernicka et al. 1983. 34 Stos-Gale and Macdonald 1991, pp. 273–279; of the fourteen objects analyzed at Oxford, three were also analyzed by Pernicka et al. 1983: Table 1, fig. 2. The six objects assigned to the Chalkidike are all from Grave Circle A: Stos-Gale and Macdonald 1991, pp. 285–287, nos. 151, 479, 481, 605, 863, 867 (with references to Karo 1930–1933).

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“era of colonization,” which is generally assumed to be the time that this region was “Hellenized.”35

In the Shaft Grave period, what the Mycenaeans were after in the north was not land or wild boars or slaves or timber, but copper (chalkos) and silver, which the Peloponnese did not have much of but which the Chalkidike, together with Pangaion, did. This was the most likely time for the Chalkidike to be named after chalkos, not in the period immediately after the Trojan War, as maintained by Tiverios, or in the Early Iron Age. Nor was it named after Euboean Chalkis.

The problem I have in accepting the thrust of Tiverios’ arguments is twofold. First of all, he states: “Both the ancient written tradition and the archaeological finds indicate that the first Greeks settled the north Aegean immediately after the Trojan War.”36 The evidence I presented in 1996, further supplemented in 2005, shows that there are strong indications of a central and southern Greek presence in the Chalkidike much earlier, during the Middle Helladic and Shaft Grave periods.37 Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we should not read Homer as a direct historical analogue; we tread a slippery slope if we do, and, as Irad Malkin and others warn, we need to regard the Nostos traditions of heroic returns not as “history” but what they are: legendary literary traditions, often created for clear political gains in the historic era.38

The most recent reaction to “Phantom Euboians” that I am aware of was published in 2009. In an erudite and far-ranging study, Robin Lane Fox sweeps “Phantom Euboians” under the carpet by stating, “But Euboea was the centre: I do not accept the radical proposals of J. K. Papadopoulos, “Phantom Euboians,” JMA 10 (1997), 191–219, which have been widely answered and are therefore omitted in my text.”39 If Lane Fox has been reading the

35 For the Early Mycenaean material from Torone, see Cambitoglou and Papadopoulos 1993. 36 Tiverios 2008, p. 124. 37 Papadopoulos 1996, 1999, 2005 (esp. pp. 588–592). 38 Malkin 1998. 39 Lane Fox 2009, p. 388.


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same critiques of “Phantom Euboians” that I have, there is much that remains moot, as I hope to have shown above. But Lane Fox does a great deal more. Following in the footsteps of Martin West, he not only relocates Homer to Euboea — together with virtually all of Greek mythology — but he elevates Euboea to the rank of omphalos gēs.40 Time will tell how Lane Fox’s opus magnum is received; it is certainly a stimulating read, even if not convincing in its primary conclusions. But if there is any kernel of truth in a Euboean Odyssey, first championed by West, it has much to do with the Oriental associations of Euboean legends, and here I dare say that it was the wealth of Levantine material at Lefkandi that inspired, at least in part, classical philologists to revive the Oriental origins of Greek epic, and even to postulate a Euboean Homer.41

It is clear that “Phantom Euboians” hit a sensitive nerve, perhaps more so in Oxford than anywhere else. But before closing, I want to note, albeit briefly, what I might add were I writing “Phantom Euboians” today. What I would add were I writing “Phantom Euboians” today

I begin with chronology, by asking another question: what is the date of the celebrated Warrior Vase from Mycenae and the end of Late Helladic IIIC? Well, it depends on which chronology you prefer to follow. Anywhere between 1125 and 1080/1050 B.C. for the terminal date of Late Helladic IIIC.42 On account of the systemic divide between Aegean prehistory and Classical archaeology, we have come to view LH IIIC as “Mycenaean,” often forgetting that it is post-palatial. As far as Euboea, Attica, and much of central Greece are concerned, LH IIIC has emerged as an exciting period; in addition to Lefkandi, recent excavations and discoveries at 40 Lane Fox 2009; West 1985; 1988, esp. p. 172; 1997. 41 A Euboean Odyssey: West 1988. For the Oriental associations of Euboean legends, see esp. West 1985, pp. 145–146 and 149–152. 42 Summarized in Papadopoulos 2005, pp. 409–414. See further Mountjoy and Hankey 1988; Weninger and Jung 2009.

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Mitrou, Kalapodi, and Kynos, to mention only a few sites in central Greece near Euboea, are producing exciting results for the period of transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age.43 Since LH IIIC is post-palatial, a strong argument can be made for attaching LH IIIC to Protogeometric rather than to the earlier — palatial — Mycenaean periods, and to regard developments in LH IIIC as contributing to the social, economic, and political developments that ultimately lead to the rise of the Greek city-states, and this before any putative “Dark Age.” For many scholars, the ceramic transition from Late or Final Mycenaean to Early Protogeometric is more important than the transition from palatial to post-palatial; here is another colossus with feet of clay.

If I were writing “Phantom Euboians” today, I would place greater emphasis on the importance of LH IIIC as a critical period in the development of the Early Iron Age, stressing that LH IIIC is the first post-palatial period. This would allow for more continuity, particularly in Euboea and central Greece, from LH IIIC through the Early Iron Age into the Archaic period. This would also permit the collapse of the Mycenaean way of life to contribute more directly to the political experiments that were to follow.

Following on from this first point, I would also place far more emphasis on the fact that, as far as I know, there is no Mycenaean palatial center on Euboea, at least not yet, and in so doing I would place more importance on Boeotia than is currently conceded. The latter, particularly in the Early Iron Age, is often neglected and even subsumed within the orbit of Euboea. As Thomas Palaima has recently shown, the only Euboean centers mentioned in the Linear B tablets from Thebes are Karystos and Amarynthos.44 Although it is clear that Karystos and Amarynthos interacted with Thebes, whether or not they fell within Theban palatial territory is impossible to tell from the extant Linear B data. Of particular interest is the fact that the available Linear B tablets associated

43 The LH IIIC settlement at Xeropolis, Lefkandi: Lefkandi IV. Mitrou: Van de Moortel and Zahou 2005; Kramer-Hajos and O’Neill 2008. Kalapodi: Jacob-Felsch 1996; Nitsche 1987; more recent bibliography in Kalapodi II. For Kynos (Livanates), see esp. Dakoronia 2003. See further Lis 2009. 44 Palaima (this volume).


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with both sites refer to pigs: Wu 58 (group C[5]) mentions “Pig finishing work of qe-ri-jo” associated with Amarynthos, while Wu 55 (group H[2]) reads: “Male pig ‘at Karystos.’”45 These Mycenaean references to pigs are all the more interesting given the importance of swine in Classical Boeotia, and “the old reproach that telleth of ‘Boeotian swine’.”46 Perhaps the bous in both Boeotia and Euboea is misplaced. More to the point, the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial center at Thebes might well have provided the impetus for a more fragmented but independent network of settlements in LH IIIC, a pattern that was to continue throughout the Early Iron Age. Were I writing “Phantom Euboians” today, I would certainly make more of the close relationship between Boeotia and Euboea. And let us not forget that Hesiod himself, from Boeotian Askra, performed at the funeral games of Amphidamas at Chalkis on Euboea (Op. 651–659).47 Moreover, the importance of Thebes in the Late Bronze Age cannot be underestimated. Joachim Latacz, following Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, cogently argues that Thebes was the seat of the ruler of Ahhijawa, adding: “Should the Thebes hypothesis prove to be true, then inter alia….the old problem of why it has to be that the catalogue of ships begins with Boeotia and the Theban region and why the fleet assembled at Aulis is at once explained: Thebes dominated Mycenaean Greece at the time, and Aulis, for reasons of physical geography in the region, had always been the natural harbor of Thebes.”48

Thirdly, many scholars, perhaps most vocally Irene Lemos, have spoken of a Euboean koine comprising Euboea, much of the

45 Palaima (this volume). For the new Linear B tablets from Thebes, see the various papers in Deger-Jalkotzy and Panagl 2006. 46 Pind. Ol. 6.89–90, trans. J. Sandys, Cambridge, Mass., 1915. As Paul Cartledge (2000, p. 400) elaborates: “Already long before the time of Pindar (Ol. 6.151–152; cf. fr. 75 [Snell]), the phrase ‘Boeotian swine’ had a pejorative, anthropocentric application — one that Pindar, himself a Boeotian from Thebes, was hardly keen to endorse, let alone warmly embrace.” 47 One of the few personal references Hesiod provides in his works; he went on to win a prize at Amphidamas’ funeral games, a tripod he subsequently dedicated to the Muses of Helikon. 48 Latacz 2004, pp. 242–243.

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coast of central Greece, Thessaly, and islands such as Skyros in the Sporades, together with several Cycladic islands.49 This koine is another colossus with feet of clay, for it is ceramic, not political. An Early Iron Age Euboean koine is about as edifying as an Athenian [red-figure] koine in the Classical period. Athenian red-figure pottery was closely copied in many centers, including, among others, Corinth, Ambrakia, the Chalkidike, and at many different workshops in south Italy (Apulia, Lucania, Paestum, Campania, Sicily), but does such a koine make any sense outside the narrow confines of pottery production? Moreover, I would certainly decouple Thessaly from any such koine, as Thessalian Protogeometric and Geometric pottery, when viewed holistically (not just from the point of view of the pendent semicircle skyphos) is clearly distinguishable from Euboean, with many more northern and northwestern influences in both shape and decoration. Similarly, I would decouple the Cyclades from any such koine, since there are Attic influences on the Early Iron Age pottery of the Cyclades that are as strong, perhaps even stronger, than the Euboean ones.50 This would leave Skyros, and perhaps the site of Oropos, which is in the peraia of Eretria, and probably in Boeotian rather than Attic territory in the Early Iron Age, in any putative ceramic Euboean koine. Without labouring the point, Skyros and Oropos were hardly cultural centers in the later Bronze or Early Iron Age.

If we look at Euboea in the Early Iron Age territorially, I do not see a unified whole. Beginning with the historic divisions of Euboea, I see noteworthy differences between Chalkis and Lefkandi in central Euboea, on the one hand, and Karystos in the far south on the other, where the Early Iron Age material — especially that from Plakari — has more in common with Attica

49 E.g. Lemos 1986, 1998, 2002, pp. 212–217. The idea of such a ceramic koine was first aired by Desborough (1976), but it has been over-promoted by scholars like Lemos. 50 Especially useful here is the work of Richard Catling (1998), which traces the imports of Athenian Protogeometric pottery through mainland and insular Greece, showing how numerous Attic imports were, especially in the Cyclades.


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and which in time became an Athenian cleruchy.51 Similarly, thanks to the excavations of Efi Sapouna-Sakellaraki, we know that Euboean Kyme has traits in the Early Iron Age that differ from the material in west-central Euboea, and Anne Kenzelmann Pfyffer has shown that there are important differences even between the pottery from Lefkandi and Eretria in the course of the Geometric/Sub-Protogeometric period, when Athenian influences are considerably stronger at Eretria than they are at Lefkandi.52 One might even speak of an Athenian Early Iron Age koine on Euboea and elsewhere. In northern Euboea, Histiaia-Oreos, the place closest to Chalkidike, remains the least known archaeologically (it also became an Athenian colony in 446 B.C.). These differences that we see in the material of the different parts of Euboea may well be linked with the three legendary tribes of the island: the Ellopians in the north, the Abantes in the center, and the Dryopians to the south. Can we really speak of an Aegean Euboean koine when there is a good deal of diversity within the island of Euboea itself?

Finally, were I writing “Phantom Euboians” today, I would stress the important work on “networks” most recently brought to the fore by Malkin. The concept of “network,” as Malkin articulates it, “emerged with studies of the brain where the network appears as more important than its component parts, with changing connections and ‘by-passes,’ with fluctuating importance, and no hierarchical center. The ‘network’ concept is filtering everywhere, changing sets of values and assumed hierarchies of centers and peripheries….it presents a new vision of geography and human space. The ‘network’ model is quickly replacing the common botanical metaphor of the 19th century: the ‘tree’. We no longer trust trees of genealogies, races, and

51 Plakari: Sackett et al. 1966, esp. p. 81; Keller 1985, pp. 102–107, 180–187; Talalay et al. 2005; Chidiroglou 2003–2004; Cullen et al. forthcoming. 52 For Euboean Kyme, see esp. Sapouna-Sakellaraki 1998; for Attic influences on the material from Eretria, see Kenzelmann Pfyffer (this volume).

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languages. The network functions as networks do — without a center” (emphases are mine).53

For Malkin, if anything resembled a “center” in Archaic Greece, it was cultic and symbolic, expressed in the Delphic Oracle and the role of Apollo Archegetes in Greek colonization. If we look at the world of post-palatial Greece in LH IIIC, throughout the Early Iron Age, and into the Archaic period, if we turn beyond the Aegean to the eastern, central, and western Mediterranean to what was happening in Anatolia, the Levant, north Africa, the Italian peninsula, and beyond, Malkin’s concept of “networks” works well. I think it appropriate, therefore, to end where I began, with the conclusion I wrote for “Phantom Euboians” in 1997, for although there are aspects I would add to “Phantom Euboians” were I writing it today, there is little I would omit or change; this is especially true for the conclusion. Concluding Remarks

In the concluding paragraph of “Phantom Euboians,” I wrote: “The Early Iron Age Mediterranean, down to 500 B.C. formed a series of well differentiated zones within a world-system. This has been well set out by Sherratt and Sherratt, in what is probably the most important single contribution on the growth of the Mediterranean economy in the early first millennium B.C.54 Local exchange cycles and routes of long-distance trace were determined by active intervention and response, and the Mediterranean as a whole can be seen as a single interacting system. Much depends on input, in the form of maritime expertise and capital concentration, from the east, especially Phoenicia. However, the input of any advanced economic organization — Phoenician, Greek, Punic, Italian or other — drew together or

53 I. Malkin, pers. corresp.; see further Malkin, Constantakopoulou, and Panagopoulou 2009, pp. 1–11. Note also the comments in Crielaard 1998. 54 Sheratt and Sheratt 1993; cf. Sherratt and Sherratt 1991; see further Kopcke 1990.


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affected the fortunes of communities throughout the Mediterranean.55 The pattern of development in the Early Iron Age Mediterranean can best be described ‘as co-evolution within the extending limits and zonation of a growing world system.’56 A similar view, though very differently worded, is expressed in Purcell’s model of the early Greek world, where fluid boundaries allow for mobility of people and ideas.57 This is the thrust of both Burkert’s and Morris’s arguments.58 Ecology, history and society all find a new role through a shift in focus from the exclusively regional to the more broadly Mediterranean.”59

55 Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, pp. 374–375. 56 Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, p. 375. 57 Purcell 1990. 58 Burkert 1984; Morris 1992a, 1992b, pp. xvii–xviii. 59 Papadopoulos 1997b, p. 207.

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Figure 1a–b. The so-called Cup of Nestor, an East Greek Late Geometric kotyle from Pithekoussai: a) Photograph; b) Reconstruction of the Euboean metrical

inscription. After Arena 1996, p. 192, no. 21


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Figure 2a–b. Euboean Middle Geometric cup fragment from Eretria (FK90657) with Semitic inscription KPLŠ (retrograde), published in Kenzelmann Pfyffer,

Theurillat, and Verdan 2005, pp. 76–77, no. 66. Courtesy Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece

Phantom Euboians: A decade on (2011)

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