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Representations

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography: the Case of Thucydides

I!"##$% X&'!(!)*!%Aristotle University of +essaloniki

ABSTRACT

+is chapter analyzes the criteria +ucydides used to de,ne Greek and native communi-ties by examining his representations of the Macedonians, +racians, Scythians, and Il-lyrians, who inhabited the coastal regions of the northern Aegean and beyond. It focuses on the period from the mid-5th-century BC until the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BC). +is study argues that the colonial context exerted an important in-uence upon the southern Greek concept of these peoples during the 5th century and under-pinned the contemporary distinction between Greeks and barbarians. +e latter may be de,ned as those peoples who ,rst came into contact with the Greek colonies on the Aegean coast and the Propontis; evidence for these cultural encounters may be traced back to the 8th century BC. Consideration is also given to a speci,c Athenian ideology which developed following the Persian Wars, and which found expression in +ucy-dides’ writing. Finally, given that the notion of “ethnicity” is itself a product of 20th-cen-tury ideological concerns, this discussion reconstructs ancient perspectives by focusing instead on the precise terms and descriptive vocabulary found in the relevant sources.

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2 Ioannis Xydopoulos

THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY

De,nitions of the concept of community are problematic and the subject of considera-ble debate in the social sciences. One useful framework isolates three general categories employed in anthropology. ‘Community’ may be characterized in terms of: (i) com-mon interests among people; (ii) a common ecology and locality; or (iii) a common social system or structure. Besides interests, ecology or social structure anthropologists have also traditionally emphasized an essential commonality as the logic underlying a community’s creation and perserverance. Communities have been regarded as empirical things-in-themselves, social organisms, as functioning wholes, and as things apart from other similar things. Nevertheless, notions of ‘community’ have changed, as anthropol-ogy has responded to functionalist and structuralist approaches. For example, Anthony Cohen has argued that community should be seen ,rstly as a symbolic construct and a contrastive one, and secondly, as a product of the situational perception of a boundary dividing one social group from another. In his view, awareness of community depends on consciousness of boundary. According to Cohen’s dual argument communities and their boundaries exist not as social-structural systems and institutions, but as worlds of meaning in the minds of their bearers1. Community is an aggregating device, which both sustains diversity and expresses commonality. It encapsulates both closeness and sameness, as well as distance and di.erence. Members of a community are related by their perception of commonalities, and equally, they are di.erentiated from other com-munities and their members by these relations and the patterns of association to which they give rise2.

As far as ancient Greek history is concerned, I think that Cohen’s description accords perfectly with the one given by Catherine Morgan. Morgan has stated that community in its ancient Greek context should be treated as “an innocent de,nition of a group with which individuals identify, resting on, and re-ected in factors such as shared residence, cult, or subsistence needs. A community is thus an entity that implies at once perceived similarities and di.erences and thus has clearly recognized boundaries”3. Morgan’s de,-nition highlights the fact that we are dealing with groups which may de,ne themselves in more than one way. Community is strongly related to the Greek terms of polis [city-state] and ethnos (the English language possesses no term for the concept of an ethnic group or ethnic community, so when we use the word ethnos [ethne in plural] we refer to people; however the adjective ethnic is used). Community may be understood in a politi-cal sense, with regard to the variety of common relations implied in residence arrange-ments, adherence to laws, warfare, cult and subsistence strategies – that is the areas which the Greek sources themselves identi,ed as central to the expression of shared identities. However, polis does not provide a synonym for this political sense of the term4. Instead, it covers a variety of usages. All of these apparently share the common denominator of the sense of a number of people living together and acting together. While ethnos has a simi-lar meaning, it refers to cultural, rather than biological or kinship di.erences; hence like cultural attributes are held to identify a group as an ethnos. As groups of men and women interpret and express their collective experiences, these interpretations and expressions

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cohere into cultural practices and attitudes over time, which are then handed onto the next generations, who modify them according to their own experiences and interactions. +e continuity and survival of these ethnic dimensions of communities are key elements underpinning the formation of nations in the modern era. In fact, some scholars have studied the rise of contemporary nations in the context of their ethnic background. Nev-ertheless, the complexity of ancient Greece does not permit such analysis.

In recent years the nature and role of ethnic expression in Greek antiquity have been among the most debated topics among both archaeologists and historians. One con-clusion of these debates is that it is essential to gauge the contextual complexity of this topic. Every ancient Greek belonged to a multiplicity of groups, which included: the family and household; the neighbourhood or village; the military unit; the community and its political subdivisions. +e meaning of ethnos ranges across these diverse social sub-groups. As a result of this complexity, what is required is systematic analysis of everything in the available documentation that pertains to ethnic consciousness. +e importance of this question cannot be overstated. It provides a crucial new dimension to the process of de,ning ethnic communities in pre-modern eras. +e study and con-sideration of the various contexts outlined above is a valuable, indeed necessary sup-plement to the framework of precise criteria used to de,ne ethnicity that have been identi,ed by Anthony Smith: (i) a collective name; (ii) a common myth of descent; (iii) a shared history; (iv) a distinctive shared culture; (v) an association with a speci,c territory; and (vi) a sense of solidarity5.

HELLAS, HELLENES AND BARBARIANS

De,nitions of ethnicity may be divided into two categories: subjective and objective. +e former treats ethnicity as a process by which tribes, ‘races’, or nation-states identify themselves, other groups, and the boundaries between them, while the latter relies on criteria such as physical characteristics resulting from a shared gene-pool6. According to social scientists the criteria for determining ethnic self-consciousness would have been physiological similarity, as well as a cultural matrix of shared geographical origin, ances-tors, culture, modes of production, religion, values, political institutions, and language. Di.erent ethnic groups privilege one or more these above the others. It may in fact be argued that ethnic stereotypes, both ancient and modern, are signi,cantly more reveal-ing about the community that produces them than those they are intended to de,ne.

+e Greeks’ subjective de,nitions or ideology of their own ethnicity have been the subject of considerable discussion. E. Hall has categorized the four main hypotheses developed in the course of this debate as follows: (i) the notions of Hellen and barbaros (barbarian) already existed before the completion of the Iliad; (ii) the emergence of these two notions was simultaneous and occurred between the 8th and the late 6th cen-turies; (iii) the Persian wars created a collective Panhellenic identity; and (iv) although a sense of ethnicity already existed in the Archaic period, the polarization of Greek and barbarian was magni,ed a/er the Persian wars7. In my opinion, this ,nal hypothesis is

4 Ioannis Xydopoulos

the most probable one for linguistic reasons, as Greek speakers could distinguish them-selves from speakers of a non-Greek language in the Archaic period. Re-ections of this linguistic di.erence between Greeks and barbarians are encountered in archaic litera-ture. +e presence and use of the word barbaros (barbarian) in the literary sources up to the 5th century BC also supports this hypothesis. A thorough search through archaic literature has revealed three passages in which barbaros or its derivative forms are used. +e presence in the Iliad (2. 867) of the words barbarophonos (of foreign language) to refer to the Carians and barbaros in an opaque fragment of Heraclitus of Ephesus (22, B 107) is su0cient proof of the Greeks’ consciousness of their di.erence, linguistic and cultural, from other ethnic groups8. A similar distinction is also encountered in Pindar9. As well as revealing the historical development of the word barbaros itself, these sources support the argument that the distinction Hellen-barbaros existed in the Archaic period, even though the diametric opposition between Greek and barbarian did not evolve until the 5th century10.

It is di0cult to identify in the epic genre any clear articulation of ‘Hellenic’ conscious-ness. Despite the fact that epics such as the Iliad celebrated the confrontation between Greeks and Trojans and Homer, as has been noted, used the word barbarophonos, it is important to note that the opponents sacri,ce to the same gods. +ere is little evidence for the Trojans being the stereotyped ‘other’ in the way the Persians would become so in the 5th century11. +e model that is constructed through such oppositions is not an ethnic one. From the 8th century onwards new conceptions of space and territoriality emerged as populations became more sedentary. Two key factors explain the Greeks’ prioritisation of the linguistic criterion for the self-determination of their ethnicity. Firstly, as a result of colonization Greek speakers could always distinguish themselves from those who spoke a di.erent language. +e available evidence strongly suggests that the Archaic period witnessed a considerable degree of interaction between Greeks and those who would later be categorized as barbarians. For example, the mother of +emistocles was either from +race or Caria, while Cimon’s mother was a +racian princess. Secondly, it may be argued that the privileging of the linguistic criterion for ethnic self-determination countered the heterogeneity of Greek social customs and practices, political allegiance, cult and traditions, which derived from the di.erent communities, whether Dorian, Ionian, or Aeolian. It is especially important to high-light the Aeolian di.erence, because it is usually ignored in discussions of Hellenic self-consciousness.

Although Homer provided the Greeks with an ordered representation of their past, the Homeric texts are also evidence of a time when the Greeks did not use a collective name (i.e. Hellenes) to describe themselves12. +e heterogeneous social customs men-tioned above are indicated in the various tribal names Homer refers to. In the Iliad, dif-ferent ethnic groups mentioned include the ‘Aetolians’, ‘Cretans’ or ‘Boeotians’. Other collective terms used comprise the ‘Achaeans’ (occasionally ‘Panachaeans’), ‘Argives’, and ‘Danaans’. In the Homeric text the Hellenes are still the inhabitants of the original Hellas, a district in +essaly. +us Achilles comes from ‘Hellas and Pthia’ (9. 395). It

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is obvious that in the Iliad (as well as in the Odyssey – 1. 344 ‘throughout Hellas and Argos’) the meaning of the term Hellas was limited to the geographical region in the north of Greece13. Between the creation of Homer’s epics and Hesiod’s Catalogue in the early 6th century, the signi,cance of Hellas (Hesiod, Opera et dies, 653) shi/ed to refer to the whole of mainland Greece. +e Greeks, in turn, came to identify themselves as Hellenes. +e concept of an extended Hellas must therefore have existed by at least the beginning of the 7th century, and possibly even earlier14.

As the discussion so far has indicated, there is su0cient evidence to con,rm the view that a Hellenic self-consciousness emerged between the 8th and 6th centuries. Several factors contributed to this development: colonisation brought the Greeks into contact with all the countries of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions; the colonies es-tablished retained ties to the mother city; the di.usion of the alphabet and of the epic poems themselves extended their linguistic identity; and the foundation of Panhellenic institutions and cult centers articulated a socio-cultural presence, as well as providing important media for ideological expression. Regarding the latter the games at Olympia are a case in point. Although they may originally have been an exclusively Peloponne-sian a.air, by the 6th century competitors were coming from Greek cities as far a,eld as Ionia and Sicily, and the judges were called the Hellanodikai. Consideration of the term Panhellenes is important for an understanding of the di.usion of a Greek identity. +e word occurs only once in the Iliad (2. 530), where it may be understood in a broad sense (as in Odyssey, 1. 344’s use of the term Hellas) to mean the whole of the Greeks15. +e term also occurs in Hesiod (Opera et Dies, 528), Archilochus (Fragment 102) and Pindar (Isthmia II. 38; IV. 49; Paean 6. 62) and in these contexts it signi,es that Greeks of disparate provenance lived together in newly founded settlements. It would seem probable that an awareness of community existed in the Archaic period and that this was re-ected by the emergence of a concept of Panhellenism. Nevertheless, this earlier awareness of community had little to do with the full signi,cance of belonging to a wider Greek family, which only became apparent when most of the Greek-speaking communities came under threat from Persia16.

+e Greeks’ ‘ethnic’ sentiment, developed during the period of colonization, did not evolve to the extent that it could easily be directed against the peoples in the newly discovered areas of the northern Aegean or the Black Sea. However, the opposition of Greeks and Persians in the 5th century decisively altered the relationships of the former with foreign cultures. +e direct confrontation with ethnic di.erence foregrounded, for the Greeks, the importance of reformulating their theoretical re-ection, especially of socio-political structures17. +rough their confrontation with the Persians the Greeks developed a growing sense of superiority and managed to de,ne their own ethnic iden-tity, which they set as criteria for the de,nition of barbarians or the stereotyped other18.

+erefore, it may be argued that what changed between the Archaic and the Classical periods was in fact the mechanism of Greek self-de,nition: a stereotypical, general-ized image of the exotic, slavish and unintelligible barbarian was established, and Greek identity could thus be de,ned through opposition to this image of alterity. To ,nd the

6 Ioannis Xydopoulos

language, culture or rituals of the barbarian desperately alien was immediately to de,ne oneself as Greek19.

Herodotus’ Histories made a signi,cant contribution to the growth of empirical knowl-edge about the non-Greek other, through geographic and ethnographic digressions on the populations with which the Persian Empire had come into contact. Despite the strangeness of many of these customs, the narrator respected them as expressions of di.erent systems prevailing among each people. It may be suggested that his text signals an awareness that being a barbarian was relative, and that it questions the idea that the Greeks were superior by nature – a notion which, as has been mentioned, emerged a/er the Persian Wars. F. Hartog has persuasively argued that what Herodotus sought to achieve through his work was to ‘hold up the mirror’ to his Greek audience. Displaying a series of images of barbarian practices would serve as a re-ection of Greek customs20. Hartog also suggested that Herodotus’ ethnographic accounts of ‘the other’ were imag-inary mirages informed by contemporaneous socio-cultural concerns. For his Classical Greek readers, the de,nition of their own special culture against an exotic background was paramount and these concerns would have shaped Herodotus’ authorial intentions as well as the reception of his writings.

+ucydides also subscribed to a cultural de,nition of Greekness, but on rather di.erent terms. Herodotus’ cultural conception of Greek identity operated on an unambigu-ous inclusion/exclusion basis. In contrast, +ucydides viewed Greeks and barbarians as polar opposites. In a passage referring to the Eurytanians, who formed a great part of the Aetolian ethnos, +ucydides’ description of these people strongly suggests much broader Athenian prejudices towards northern Greece as a whole. +ucydides’ com-ment that the Eurytanians ‘spoke a completely unknown tongue and ate raw meat’ (+uc. III.94.5) emphasizes linguistic and cultural criteria to di.erentiate between the Greeks and the Eurytanian ‘other’. +e form of +ucydides’ classi,cation of the Eury-tanians is encountered in other examples such as the following passage from the begin-ning of his work:

Up to this date, the people in many parts of Greece, the Ozolian Lokrians, the Aetolians, the Akarnanians, and those of the neighbouring mainland, live in the ancient manner. +e habit of carrying weapons has remained with these mainlanders as a vestige of ancient brigandry. For the whole of Greece used to carry weapons, because the settlements were unforti,ed and the encounters insecure; so they used to live in arms just as the barbarians (+uc. I.5.3-I.6.1).

Like Herodotus, +ucydides was neither an ethnographer, nor concerned to elaborate his representation of the world. A/er all, he declared in the beginning of his work that, to his mind, ‘the ancient Greeks were living in a fashion similar to the existing barbar-ian one’ (I.6.6). +is implies that the ‘modern’ Greeks were de facto superior to the bar-barians, and that it was impossible for the latter to reach the Greek status of living21.

Regarding the ethne under examination, the Macedonians and the +racians during the 5th-century BC, the period addressed in this paper, the question of evidence is problematic. As scholars have already demonstrated, few sources shed light on the

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Macedonians’ conception of their own identity22. Nor is there written evidence con-cerning the self-consciousness of the +racians. +erefore, as the main sources for the period are the texts of Herodotus and +ucydides it is important to bear in mind the fact that these identities were ascribed by the southern Greeks, mainly +ucydides. A second limitation, which also needs to be foregrounded, is that the concept of community discussed so far refers almost exclusively to a sense of ethnic conscious-ness at a national level. +e lack of written evidence regarding these ethne during the Classical period prevents discussion of their sense of community. According to Morgan, our knowledge of their self-de,nition is limited to the geographical factor for the +racians and the speci,c context of the period of the Peloponnesian war for the Macedonians.

Having established these theoretical parameters, as well as their limitations, the task of the following sections is to explain +ucydides’ view towards the peoples residing in the northern areas of the Greek peninsula, namely the Macedonians and the +racians (references to Illyrians and Scythians are too rare to allow any ,rm conclusions). +e ,rst ethnos to be addressed is the Macedonians. In addition to examining +ucydides’ representation of them I will also consider whether contemporaneous de,nitions of the Greek community a.ected +ucydides’ narratology.

THUCYDIDES AND THE MACEDONIANS

In 2006 I published a study of the representation of the Macedonians and their country by the historian of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)23. In it I suggested that +ucy-dides’ references to the Macedonian people and their country have a clearly circumstantial character. Furthermore they are informed by the Poteidaea incident (432/1), the inter-vention of the +racian king Sitalkes (429), and the military operations the Spartan gen-eral Brasidas undertook in the area (424/3). +ucydides frames his representation of the Macedonians with the Spartan general Brasidas’ reference to them in the speech he made to his troops. In his harangue Brasidas clearly classi,ed them as barbarians: ‘you should learn about these barbarians whom now you are afraid of, a part of them you have already fought against, the Macedonians among them, that, from my own estimate of them, and what I have heard from others, they are not strong’ (IV.126.3)24. +ucydides further estab-lishes this view in his narrative of Brasidas’ and Perdikkas’ campaign in Lynkestis in 424/3 B.C., when he wrote that “the Chalkidians and Macedonian cavalry [came to] nearly a thousand, and there was also a large mass of barbarians”25. +ese passages have provoked considerable discussion, especially during the late 20th century. Regarding the question of ethnicity, the question is: were the Macedonians Greeks? Or, rather, did +ucydides think of the Macedonians as Greeks or as barbarians? Most recently Simon Hornblower has argued in his Commentary on Qucydides, that “in the present passage […] +ucydides meant to suggest that the Macedonians were intermediate between Greeks and (utter) barbarians” (392)26. In my opinion, +ucydides did not intend to ascribe any negative value to the Macedonians. Furthermore, as Hornblower has indicated, and as shall be argued later, Brasidas’ speech, or +ucydides’ rendition of it, employs the appropriate lan-

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guage a leader would use to rally his soldiers for an imminent battle. Besides consideration of +ucydides’ concern to create a credible narrative it may also be argued that it is un-likely that he would consider the Macedonians “barbarians”, or even “intermediates”, since this ethnic group’s royal dynasty had already been recognized as Greek in Herodotus’ account, which +ucydides also accepted27. In addition to this it was also known, again from Herodotus, that in the early 5th century BC the Macedonian prince and later king, Alexander I, was allowed to participate in the Olympic Games, a/er having his Hellenic descent proved to the Hellanodikai. Admission to and participation in these Panhellenic Games were undisputed criteria of ‘Greekness’. +us it may be asked whether the Greek perception of this ethnos, the Macedonians, was mediated by their complex relationships with, on the one hand, the Greek colonies on the +ermaic Gulf and the coasts of north-ern Aegean and, on the other hand, the inhabitants of the Macedonian kingdom? Perhaps the explanation for +ucydides’ use of the term barbarians may be found in this interac-tion of ethne. It would not seem fanciful to suggest that the answer to these questions may be found in this colonial context, which was a stage for acting out con-icts and competi-tions between local barbarians and the various Greek communities.

An examination of some characteristic passages from +ucydides’ text o.ers a frame-work within which these questions may ,nd answers. +ucydides’ account of Brasidas’ expedition in the Chalkidike peninsula records that it was

a peninsula which runs out from the canal made by the Persian King, and culminates in Athos, a high mountain which projects into the Aegean sea. +e cities on Akte include Sane, an An-drian colony… (and) the others are +yssos, Kleonai, Akrothooi, Olophyxos, and Dion. +ese are inhabited by a mixed population of barbarians ‘barbarian ethne’, speaking Greek as well as their own language. A few of them are from Euboean Chalkis, but most are either Pelasgians (descended from the Tyrrhenians who once inhabited Lemnos and Athens) or else Bisaltians, Krestonians or Hedonians. +ey all live in small citadels28.

It has been argued that in this passage +ucydides emphasizes the linguistic criterion, which was not of great importance to him29, as we shall argue in detail later. His use of the word diglosson (speaking two languages), should be interpreted as meaning speak-ing Greek and non-Greek languages. One important cause of this linguistic condition was the fact that these barbarian towns were established on the site of previous Greek settlements in the area30. It has also been suggested that +ucydides’ intention was to state that in his days a homogenous population, whether of Greeks or barbarians, no longer existed. It is impossible to move beyond speculations such as these regarding +ucydides’ intentions. Although this passage reveals little about +ucydides’ speci,c view of the Macedonians, as he would have had no reason to refer to them in regard to Akte, it nevertheless gives an impression of the contempory Athenian perception of the whole area. Considered in this sense the text shows ,rstly, that the Macedonians were not classi,ed with these ‘barbarian ethne’, and secondly, that +ucydides distinguished between barbarians and those who spoke Greek.

+ucydides’ references to the Macedonians need to be examined very carefully. On the one hand, when he writes “Perdikkas led his own Macedonian army and a force

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of hoplites supplied by the Greek inhabitants of the country” (IV.124.1), the Mace-donians and the Greeks are clearly distinguished. However, two other passages reveal that he also considered them separate from the barbarians: “...the entire Greek hoplite force came to about three thousand, the Chalkidian and Macedonian cavalry [came to] nearly a thousand, and there was also a large mass of barbarians...” (IV.124.1); and “... the Macedonians and the mass of the barbarians...” (IV.125.1). +e opposition between IV.126.3 (cf. above) and IV.125.1 is obvious: the Macedonians are clearly distinguished from the barbarians31. Simon Hornblower has, in my opinion rightly, suggested that +ucydides’ view was inconsistent. As has been commented, Brasidas’ incorporation of the Macedonians into the barbarians may be explained by the fact that his speech was meant to encourage his soldiers and it was not a representation of +ucydides’ own opinion of the Macedonians32. A contrast is o.ered by +ucydides’ classi,cation of “a large mass of barbarians” in (IV.126.3), which implies that these barbarians were other tribes and of a totally di.erent status to the Macedonians. In addition to this, the de,nition of the Macedonians’ native allies as barbarians (IV.124.1) clearly establishes their di.erence from both the Macedonians and the Greeks. Furthermore, +ucydides provides a narrative of the Macedonian expansion in the region, and describes how the Hedonians, Bottiaians and Krestonians were among the people conquered or driven out by the Macedonians. In this account he clearly con,rmed the region’s multi-ethnic character:

It was the Macedonia of today – the Macedonia by the sea – which had been acquired ,rst by Alexander, the father of Perdikkas, and by his ancestors, being Temenidae coming from Argos in early times, and they reigned expelling by force of arms the Pieres from Pieria, who later settled Phagres and other small places beyond the Strymon under Mt Pangaeum (indeed the land be-tween Pangaeum and the sea is still called today the Pieric Gulf ), and the so-called Bottiaei from Bottiaea, who now live as neighbours of the Chalkidians. (4) And they acquired a narrow strip of Paeonia alongside the river Axius, running down from inland to Pella and the sea. Beyond the Axius they cultivate the land called Mygdonia as far as the Strymon, having driven the Edones out. (5) And they expelled also the Eordi from what is now called Eordia (the majority of them perished and a small part of them have settled by Physka) and the Almopes from Almopia. (6) And these Macedones acquired both from the other tribes the places which they still hold to-day, namely Anthemous and Crestonia and Bisaltia, and from actual Macedonian tribes a large amount of land. +e totality is called ‘Macedonia’, and Perdikkas was king of them (i.e. king of the Macedonians) when Sitalces was invading33.

THUCYDIDES AND THE THRACIANS

In connection with both Brasidas’ campaigns and the Macedonians and Sitalkes the second ethnos +ucydides frequently mentions (twenty-one citations) is the Qra-cians34. For ancient writers, especially those writing in the Classical Period and later, the +racians, who as is now known spoke an Indo-European language35, were considered a primitive people. In the sources, they appear to comprise the warlike and ferocious tribes living in the mountains of Haemus and Rhodope, as well as the peaceable inhabitants of the plain. +e latter were those who had ,rst come into contact with the Greek colo-nies on the Aegean coasts and the Propontis. By the 8th century B.C. Greek settlements

10 Ioannis Xydopoulos

had been established at Abdera, Maroneia, Aenus, Perinthus, Byzantium, Apollonia, and Mesambria36. +e river Axius formed the western boundary of the +racian tribal region for both Hecataeus (FGrHist 1, F 146) and Herodotus (VII.123.3). Hecataeus mentions Chalastra, +erme, and Sindonaei as the ,rst three towns of the +racians east of Axius, although Herodotus di.ers and sites the Mygdonians there. From the Early Iron Age there was also a strong +racian presence in Pieria, which is con,rmed both by archaeological ,nds and by the literary evidence. +e +racians, who took on the name Pieres from this country, when Methone was founded by Eretrian settlers on the coast, came into contact with them37.

+ucydides’ text also reveals the emergence of Qrace as a geographical term. It appears this way in ,/y-three cases, along with three uses of the adjective Qracian. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss all these citations in detail, some comment on the term Qracians is called for. +ucydides uses the term Qracians with a range of senses or meanings: ,rstly, as a military force (in ,ve cases); secondly, as the Odrysian king Sitalkes’ subjects (in three cases); and ,nally, in a general sense (in three cases). He also refers to other +racian tribes, which he calls autonomous (seven cases)38. Two explanations may be given for the semantic range and versatility +ucydides confers on the term. Firstly, it further con,rms the fact that he was a +racian and northern expert, and so knew the ethnography and geography of the region and its tribes39. Secondly, it corroborates the view, articulated by Herodotus, that the +racians lacked political unity, even though in +ucydides’ time the Odrysian kingdom was established. +e question of +racian unity is signi,cant as it would have made them invincible40. It may be argued that +ucydides’ mention of the di.erent +racian tribes provides plausible support for the following hypothesis: in his narrative +ucydides uses the general term Qracians to denote all the tribes which were Sitalkes’ subjects, and he treats separately all the other remote +racian ethne, o/en described as autonomous to indicate that they were not controlled by the Odrysian king41. +e most characteristic example of the latter is the case of the autonomous mountain +racians, who inhabited Rhodope and who bore knives (machairophoroi) (+uc. II.96.2 and VI.27.5).

It is important to highlight +ucydides’ clear di.erentiation between +racians and Greeks. He almost never calls the former ‘barbarians’, except in one instance, when he discusses a +racian mercenary force which had come to help the Athenians in their 413 Sicilian expedition. It is a striking case. Despite their arrival the Athenians decided not to employ the mercenaries and sent them back. Not only had the +racian men, who belonged to the ‘autonomous’ tribe of Dii and resided above the Rhodope moun-tains (II.96.2), arrived late in order to depart for Sicily, but the price for their services would be too high for the almost devastated Athenian economy (+uc. VII.29.1). +e Athenian commander Diitrephes was instructed to escort the mercenary force back to +race with clear instructions to in-ict as much damage as possible in Boeotia. However, the Athenians were not prepared for the brutality the +racian mercenaries unleashed in the infamous incident of the attack on the village of Mykalessos. +ey killed almost everybody, including the pupils of a school and then razed the village.

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 11

Representations

+ucydides comments on this incident twice, terming it as the most unfortunate of the whole war42. +ucydides accepted that war produced atrocities, but only between the ,ghting forces. What happened at Mykalessos broke the rules and conventions of war that innocent people were not to be killed43. +e combination of blood-thirst and cow-ardice with which he characterises these +racians were common topoi used in literary de,nitions of barbarians. +ucydides’ description of this case signals a clear conception of cultural di.erence between Greeks and barbarians: the latter lacked areti [virtue], a characteristic virtue of the former. Although the memory of this slaughter probably informed the subsequent connection, in tragedy, of any unfortunate incident with +racian cruelty44, +ucydides, despite being critical, appears reluctant to classify these mercenary +racians as barbarians. He wrote: “the +racians, when they are not afraid, like most of the barbarians, are blood-thirsty”. I think that the use of word ‘like’ (omoia) is signi,cant. +ucydides frames the whole incident as an exception, albeit striking and brutal, to the normal course of war. It was also an exception to the normal behaviour and attitude of the +racians. A political intention may be underlie +ucydides’ apolo-getic position: not only were these +racians mercenaries employed by the Athenians, but their commander was also Athenian, and thus responsible for their behaviour. Had +ucydides unequivocally termed these +racians, and in e.ect their Athenian com-mander, as barbarians in a text addressed to the Athenian public45 he would be acting against the ideological supremacy Athens had been developing since the foundation of the Delian League and which he himself upheld. It was in Athens’ interest to promote a negative image of the barbarian to justify the League’s and its own leading role against the threat of the exotic barbarian46. +ucydides clearly sought to avoid blurring the cul-tural de,nitions that underpinned this ideological position. Attic tragedy of the second half of the 5th-century re-ects this ideological representation. In plays from this period a more generalised and negative image of the barbarian is encountered in the guise of a uniform genos (genos here suggesting kinship, not culture)47 with determined modes of behaviour instead of any speci,c enemy, such as a Persian or a +racian48.

Another factor that may have informed +ucydides’ treatment of the +racians was that many +racian metics were living in Athens. +e community had grown as a re-sult of the extensive relations between Athens and the coastal colonies on the north-ern Aegean. +ucydides himself was half-+racian in origin, which would most likely have in-uenced his representation of the +racians. However, the fact that +ucydides introduces himself as an Athenian in the very ,rst sentence of his work should not be overlooked. Simon Hornblower has pointed out that +ucydides did not use his deme (demos) name, although it was part of his o0cial name, as this would have been inappropriate in a work intended for the wider world. +ucydides appears to have dis-tinguished between his personal identity and his identity as a historian. In book IV, when describing himself and his own actions he acknowledges his +racian origins. +ucydides calls himself “+ucydides, the son of Olorus”. +e latter was a royal +ra-cian name, which also helps to explain +ucydides’ ,nancial interests in +race49. +us the fact that he expressly declares himself an Athenian suggests that this identity must

12 Ioannis Xydopoulos

have been the dominating in-uence on his representation of these ethnos. One may go on to posit that his own partly +racian origins had little in-uence on the expression of these views.

THUCYDIDES’ VIEW

It may be suggested that +ucydides’ writing was informed by three Hellenic perspec-tives. Firstly, the so-called ‘colonial’ perspective, through which his fellow Athenians, as well as other southern Greeks, viewed the inhabitants of the north Aegean re-gion. +e Greek colonies located on the shores of Pieria and the Chalkidic peninsula doubtless contributed to the image of these lands as inhabited by barbarians. +is was certainly the case in Epirus, for example, where the colonists refused to accept its Greek inhabitants as Greeks50. As is characteristic of colonial societies the na-tives residing in the newly discovered areas were perceived by the colonists as the ‘other’ with whom they had either to cooperate with in commerce, for example, or to cope with in disputes or war. +e fact that some of these natives were Greek-speaking probably mattered little; the same was the case of the Sicilian Greeks, whom +ucy-dides calls Sikeliotai (III.90.1), a term not found in Herodotus, who, when referring to the Sicilian Greeks, writes “the Greeks living in Sicily”. +e Sikeliotai could be regarded as a ‘sub-Hellenic’ entity, whose identity coalesced in the colonial sphere of southern Italy. However, as territory serves as a criterion of ethnicity, by providing a homeland to the Sikeliotai +ucydides implies an ethnic dimension to this identity. Furthermore, the existence of other native Sicilians needs to be considered in this construction of a speci,cally Sikeliote identity. +e presence of native Sicilians living within the self-proclaimed boundaries of Sikeliote territory would have enforced the Athenian view of them as outsiders and consolidated their colonial identity. Return-ing to +ucydides’ view of them as the native allies of the di.erent Greek powers, it is apparent that he de,nes them as barbarians in contrast to both the ‘colonial’ Sikelio-tai and Italiotai and the Greeks of the ‘old country’. +erefore it may be argued that the Greek colonial experience played an important role in the crystallization of both aggregative and oppositional notions of Greekness. Needless to say, in this process native ethnic groups were seen as opponents51.

+e ambiguity of the boundary between Hellas and barbarism is most apparent in the case of the communities on the northern periphery of Greece. +eir ethnicity was ques-tionable, especially when their speech – Herodotus’ second criterion of hellenicity – was not intelligible to Greeks from further south52. In addition to this, certain traits of these indigenous populations must have contributed to this barbarian image: all these ethne certainly had their own material cultures, languages, cults, and other customs53. Even in the example of Aetolia, it is worth mentioning those populations +ucydides considered Greek: the people of Ambracia (II.68.5, 80.5) and Amphilochian Argos (II.68.3-5), in other words, the inhabitants of colonies. Colonization meant helleniza-tion, and this is vividly depicted in the preceding passage (II.68.3-5)54.

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 13

Representations

+e second of the hellenic perspectives, the geographical factor, would have informed at the very least the Athenians’ conception of their region, if not that of others: Qrace, which included Macedonia, was outside the geographical boundaries of Hellas. Un-fortunately, the identi,cation of the geographical area of Hellas is problematic. In my opinion, it was still limited to the south of +essaly, although in +ucydides’ time the term had taken on a wider meaning. Herodotus’ comment that +ermopylae is ‘the gateway to Hellas’ (VII.176.2) suggests the validity of this argument. Similarly, the 4th-century Periplous, written by Pseudo-Scylax, indicates that +essaly was understood to be the northern frontier of Hellas: “Hellas begins in Ambracia and reaches up to the Peneios river (in +essaly) and the Magnesian city of Homolion”55. Other literary sources, from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC, reveal the survival of this geographically limited understanding of the term Hellas. +ucydides’ view is that of an outsider. His construction of a speci,c Macedonian or +racian identity was in-uenced by the presence of other non-Greek populations with-in the boundaries of what had become known as Qrace in the era of colonization, part of which was during his time Macedonian territory. +e Greeks used the general name Qracians to refer to the local tribes, although some of them were not of +racian ori-gin56. Further evidence that the southern Greeks designated the entire area, especially the Chalkidike peninsula and the various ‘Greek’ cities on its coasts, as Qrace is re-corded in the Athenian Tribute Lists up to 438/7. +e entries for the Chalkidian cities belonging to the Delian League are recorded either as ‘tribute from +race’ or simply ‘+racian tribute’. Besides the epigraphic evidence, literature con,rms this geographi-cal perspective through the many references to the Greek colonies in Macedonia and +race57. Furthermore, ,/h-century tragedy re-ects the shi/ing physical “boundaries of Hellas”, though it develops poetic landmarks symbolic of the gateway from Hellas to barbarism, such as the Symplegades, the ‘crashing rocks’ which guard the way into the Black Sea58. +us it appears that in accordance with contemporaneous criteria the tragedians regarded parts of western Asia and the Aegean islands as Greek. However, for Greeks the most problematic boundary between Hellenism and barbarism was lo-cated among the tribes of the mainland in northern Greece, where Hellenic in-uence was at its strongest. A passage in Aeschylus’ Supplices describes the extent of mainland Hellas as stopping short of the +racians and Illyrians, but including the Aetolians and Ambraciots. Unfortunately, Aeschylus’ description does not make clear whether the Macedonians were to be included59.

+e third hellenic perspective informing +ucydides’ text was political. +is was the decisive criterion for +ucydides. Use of the Greek language was apparently insu0cient to characterize someone as ‘Greek’. For the Athenian historian, the polis-perspective was the determining in-uence. +e foundation for his thinking was that of a polis with its distinctive political culture, lifestyle, and institutions. For +ucydides an ethnos’ politi-cal system was a fundamental criterion. Basileia must have le/ the Athenians with bitter memories, since in literature it is always connected to the term barbaros. +ucydides’ text clearly illustrates this: in describing the Peloponnesian attack on Akarnania in 429

14 Ioannis Xydopoulos

BC, he writes that “the Hellenic troops with Knemos consisted of Ambraciots, Leukadi-ans, and Anaktorians, in addition to the one thousand Peloponnesians with whom he ar-rived. He had also contingents of barbarian troops: there were one thousand Chaonians, a tribe that is not governed by a king”60. +e Macedonians and the Odrysian +racians also had kings, which begs the question why did +ucydides not characterise them also as barbarians? Two arguments may be advanced regarding the status of the Macedoni-ans. Firstly, they could be regarded as a ‘sub-Hellenic’ entity, since their genealogy was comparable to that of other Greek ethne (see note n. 27). Secondly, the Macedonians had acquired territory, which by providing a homeland served as a criterion for ethnic-ity. However, this territory was also inhabited by other ethne, such as the +racians and the Illyrians. +ucydides himself, in II.100.5, clearly distinguished between +racians and Macedonian cavalry, which clearly supports the idea of at least a military distinction between Macedonians and outright barbarians. +e Macedonian collectivity satis,ed the two criteria for ethnicity identi,ed by J. Hall, namely territory and descent. It may be argued that their identity remained consistent due to the presence exerted by the native barbarians and the Greek allophylloi [belonging to another ethnos]. On the other hand, the +racians, whether living either in Athens or on the +racian coasts, were not, in my opinion, perceived as exotic barbarians. Neither were they considered Greeks, which leads one to surmise that they were treated as intermediates, like the Macedonians, who were Greeks in origin, but not considered Greeks by all southern Greeks. Perhaps, some of the +racian metics were even among the xenoi [foreigners], who participated in the funerary procession at the end of the ,rst year of war (+uc. II.34.4), thus making them-selves less xenoi and more intermediate in the eyes of Athenian citizens.

Noting that in 5th-century literature Hellenes was a label used to designate ‘the whole Greek-speaking world’, E. Hall went onto argue that ‘it was then and only then that the barbarians could come to mean the entire remainder of the human race’61. +ucydides does not say how barbarians were recognized in his times, which was probably due to the fact that like most ancient writers he did not bother to state the obvious. +ucy-dides’ emphasis on the linguistic criterion of non-Greek speech as de,ning barbarism62, may also explain his distinction between the Macedonians and the barbarians. Recent research revealing that Macedonian speech was in fact a Greek dialect which may have borrowed +racian and Illyrian technical terms, casts doubt on this63. In the 5th cen-tury it is apparent that a Greek dialect was classi,ed as ‘barbarian’ if it was found su0-ciently unintelligible. When for example in Plato’s Protagoras (341c) Prodicus implied that Pittacus’ Lesbian tongue was di0cult to understand, he called it ‘barbarian’. Such a classi,cation is striking as the Hellenic descent of the Lesbians was never questioned and Lesbos was inside the boundaries of Hellas64. In contrast the Macedonians lived in what E. Hall has termed the grey area between Hellas and +race. +is geographical factor together with their use of dialect explains why, in the works of +ucydides and other contemporary writers, other Greeks perceived them as di.erent65. +us, it may be argued that it was the multi-ethnic character of the Macedonian kingdom that made +ucydides the historian, as well as other writers, clearly distinguish between Macedo-nians and Greeks.

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 15

Representations

MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THUCYDIDES’ VIEW

Readers of ancient Greek history from the mid-19th century to the present will recog-nise the authors’ attitudes towards the distinction between Macedonians and Greeks, by the way they present the signi,cance of the Macedonian kingdom for Greek history. In many histories of ancient Greece, the author’s opinion is revealed by the chronology adopted. +at the year 338 BC, when the Macedonian king Philip II defeated the coali-tion forces of Athenians and Boetians in Chaeroneia, represented the end of Greek his-tory is a position associated with the so-called ‘classicist’ conception of Greek history. +is was ,rst articulated by the Greek historiographers of the Roman Imperial period, when Greeks and Macedonians were considered two distinct ethne. Both political rea-sons and the need for the Greeks to express their ‘national’ sentiment explain this his-toriographical construct. However, the reasons for its resurrection in modern times are rather complex and cannot be fully addressed in this present chapter. Undoubtedly, the inter-European con-icts of the second half of the 19th century, which centered around powerful, emotive concepts of nationhood, frequently exerted a powerful e.ect on the treatment of ancient Greek history. Indeed, one of the founders of history as a critical science, B.G. Niebuhr, viewed Alexander the Great’s achievements negatively. He con-sidered him and the ancient Macedonians as alien to the Greeks. It may be claimed that Niebuhr’s views were shaped by his personal experiences, as he drew a parallel between Alexander, as conqueror, and Napoleon. Examples such as this clearly show the necessi-ty of a critical awareness and revision of the historiographical treatment of Macedonia’s role in history, as well as how much work remains to be done in this regard.

A thorough study of the use of the term ‘national’ in modern Greek historiography is similarly beyond the scope of this article due to its breadth and complexity. Neverthe-less, a telling instance of the in-uence of this term on modern Greek historiography, with particular regard to the ancient Macedonians, signals the signi,cance of this topic. By the end of the 18th century, the ideas of the European Enlightment had gradually begun to penetrate the Ottoman Empire, with the result that some Greek intellectuals realised they were heirs to a great past. Consciousness of this history became one of the stimuli for the Greek revolt of 1821. While early Greek nationalists based their ideals almost completely on the classical past, this changed midway through the 19th century under the in-uence of Spyridon Zambelios and Constantinos Paparrigopoulos, whose writings had a profound impact on Greek historiography. Both Zambelios and Papar-rigopoulos, despite their di.erences, re-ect the ideology of mid-19th-century Greek society. In particular, they sought to tackle the major un,nished tasks of the liberation movement that had started back in 1821: the restoration of a dubious continuity of the Greek nation based on the consciousness of a united Greek ethnos and the creation of a strong Greek state encompassing all Hellenes. Following that line of thought, there appeared a tendency in the historiography of the period to place the concept of the ‘na-tion’ at the centre of Greek history. To counter the skepticism regarding the ‘Greekness’ of modern Greeks as expressed by some European historians, such as J.P. Fallmerayer, and to provide the young kingdom with a means of national identi,cation, Paparrig-

16 Ioannis Xydopoulos

opoulos developed the so-called ‘continuity thesis’. According to this interpretation, there exists an unbroken connection between the ancient and modern Greeks by way of the Macedonian kingdom, the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church. +us the small Greek state of the mid-19th-century became the heir to a great past and as such it inherited the duty to strive for the resurrection of the Byzantine Empire. According to the continuity thesis, which is still the basis of mainstream Greek histori-ography, the ancient Macedonians were rightly classi,ed as Greek, for they belonged to the same broader nation as the southern Greeks.

Moreover, Alexander the Great was a powerful symbol of what Greek genius and perseverance could achieve. Today, it is known both from the literary and epigraphi-cal sources of the Classical and Hellenistic periods that the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians cannot be disputed on a scienti,c basis, especially since from a lin-guistic point of view the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect. It cannot be denied that the nation-centered tendency of modern Greek historiography created a kind of ‘o0cial’ historiography. +e national oversensitivity of the 19th and early 20th cen-turies, when the main political issue was the uni,cation of the Hellenes, soon became a feature of political abuse. Nevertheless, this tendency has been displaced during the last three decades by a new historiographical trend which has adopted new theoreti-cal approaches and concepts66.

Modern scholars, considering ancient population groups and trying to de,ne ethnicity, tend to apply anachronistic criteria, such as a shared language, which can be problem-atic. For example, it may be claimed that it is inappropriate to apply the term ethnicity, invented in the mid-20th century, to an ancient phenomenon67. It has been argued that in the Archaic period of the Greek mainland, the culturally authoritative criteria of eth-nicity were descent and homeland, not language. +ere is evidence of the importance of the criterion of descent for the Macedonians, as at least two genealogies ascribe a Greek descent to their eponymous ancestor, Makedon68. Since, on the other hand, one cannot deny that ethnicity, for anthropologists and sociologists, includes ‘culturally based col-lective identities’ of ‘indigenous groups… based primarily on religion, language, politi-cal organization, [and] racial categorizations’69, we must assume that the term ‘barbar-ian’ would not have lost its original linguistic sense in the Archaic period in order to ,nd it again in the Classical period.

Recently, J. Hall has denied that Macedonia was a ‘melting-pot’ for ethnic groups. He based his objection on three arguments: i) it is not language, religion, and culture that ultimately de,ne ethnic identity, but a shared kinship; ii) Macedonia was not in the periphery of a consolidated Greek world, since other (non-Greek) populations resided in the Greek peninsula and the Aegean islands and were not considered Greek; and iii) the 5th century constitutes a transitional phase ‘during which the form (aggregative>oppositional) and the content (ethnic>cultural) of the Greek identity underwent a profound development’70. Although he is right in assuming that Macedonia was not peripheral to a Greek world, the fact that the sources themselves, such as Herodotus, +ucydides, or Strabo71, refer to various pre-hellenic peoples or ethne actually living in

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 17

Representations

the northern region of the Greek peninsula, some of whom were later incorporated into the Macedonian kingdom, disproves his rejection of the ‘melting-pot’ theory72. In addition to this, archaeology also provides strong evidence for the progress of accul-turation among the various peoples on the shores and in the hinterland of the northern Aegean. Burials in Sindos, Trebenishte, and Duvanli indicate that these interactions date back as early as the 6th century73. It is therefore no coincidence that on the island of Samothrace inscriptions in a non-Greek language, although written in Greek script, have been discovered. !ese have moreover been interpreted as !racian74. Not only do these dedications clearly show that both Greeks and non-Greeks used the Samothra-cian sanctuary of Kabiroi from the second half of the 6th century but they are an early and interesting example of mixed settlements, which may be compared to those on Akte, mentioned by !ucydides75.

Absolute boundaries are di"cult to draw for the historian, and as E. Hall has stated, ‘ethnic groups shade o# into one another and interaction and interdependence have led to a high degree of acculturation’76. !e case of the ethnos of the Bottiaei, re-siding in the Chalkidike peninsula, is one example that justi$es E. Hall’s remark and proves that Macedonia (or !race) was a melting-pot. !e crucial issue here is that it cannot be determined whether they were of Greek origin or not. While some scholars take their Greek origin for granted others have suggested, on the basis of archaeological $nds, that the Bottiaei were not Greeks, but instead a hellenized ethnos almost identical to the Greeks77. P. Flensted-Jensen has recently advanced the following conclusions: the Bottiaians understood and spoke Greek; they were considered as Greeks in Classical times; and they were early hellenized barbarians78. !ucydides, who always referred to them in close connection to the Chalkidians in !race, does not make any comments about their origin, probably because he also thought of them as Greeks.

CONCLUSION To sum up: !ucydides approached the northern communities of the Macedonians and the !racians from a Hellenic perspective. However, he treated neither of these ethne as extremely exotic and barbarian. Irad Malkin has argued that this treatment resulted from the fact that the outskirts of the Greek world, once reached, explored, and colonized, probably seemed not so much absolutely alien as more of ‘the same’. !e Greek world was geographically close and known through maritime contacts, and its communities were approachable through personal relations and trade. Nor did religion display sharp distinctions. !ere the primary di#erence a#ected rituals and priorities, rather than mental outlooks79. !is treatment could be easily understood in the Ar-chaic period of Greek history (8th-6th cent. BC), when a strong Hellenic center, which would have created bipolar di#erences, had not yet been established. In the Classical period, when !ucydides wrote his Histories, there was a clear recognition of a ‘we’. As far as the Greeks were concerned, their sense of identity rested on three pillars: the colonial view, the geographical factor, and the political criterion.

18 Ioannis Xydopoulos

NOTES1 See in general, A. Cohen, Qe Symbolic Construction of Community, London 1985.2 N. Rapport, J. Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology. Qe Key Concepts, London 2000, pp. 62-63.3 C. Morgan, Ethne, Ethnicity, and Early Greek States, ca. 1200-480 B.C.: An Archaeological Perspective,

in Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, I. Malkin (ed.), Cambridge (MA) 2001, p. 77.4 C. Morgan, Early Greek States beyond the Polis, London 2003, p. 12.5 A. Smith, Qe Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford 1986, pp. 21-31.6 W. Isajiw, DeRnitions of Ethnicity, in “Ethnicity”, 1974, 1, pp. 111-124. 7 E. Hall, InSenting the Barbarian: Greek Self-deRnition through Tragedy, Oxford 1989, p. 6.8 Homer, Iliad 2. 867. For the Heraclitus fragment see H. Diels, W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokra-

tiker, Bonn - Leiden 1951, v. 1, 22, fr. B 107. 9 Pindar, Isthmia VI, 24.10 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., 1989, p. 8; J. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge

1997, pp. 45-46.11 W. Burkert, Herodot als Historiker Temder Religionen, in G. Nenci, O. Reverdin (eds.), Herodote et les

peuples non grecs, Entretiens Hardt 35, Geneva 1990, p. 5; Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., pp. 21-25; Hall, Ethnic Identity cit., p. 46.

12 K. Meister, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung. Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Hellenismus, Co-logne 1990, pp. 14-15.

13 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 7; R. L. Fowler, Genealogical thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes, in “Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society” 1998, 44, pp. 9-10; J. M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, Chicago 2002, pp. 127-128.

14 M. Finley, Qe Use and Abuse of History, London 1971, p. 125, remarks: “It was Hesiod, apparently, who ,rst gave literary expression to the belief that all Greeks had a common progenitor, Hellen. Hence the collective name, Hellenes”. See Hesiod, Fragmenta, 9.1. See also I. Weiler, Qe Greek and non-Greek in the Archaic Period, in “Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies”, 1968, 9, p. 23.

15 H. C. Baldry, Qe Unity of Mankind in Greek Qought, Cambridge 1965, p. 22 among others, argues that these lines have long been regarded as an interpolation. Otherwise, it may only refer to the population of northwest Greece as opposed to the Peloponnese. See Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 7.

16 +is is vividly depicted in Herodotus’ argument that there was a feeling of kinship between the Greeks from the point of view of origin, language, religion and customs (Herodotus, VIII.144).

17 W. Nippel, Griechen, Barbaren und “Wilde”, Alte Geschichte und Sozialanthropologie, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 283.

18 Nippel, Griechen cit., p. 283; I.S. Moyer, Herodotus and an Egyptian Mirage: the Genealogies of the Qeban Priests, in “Journal of Hellenic Studies”, 2002, 122, pp. 71-73; Burkert, Herodot cit., p. 5; Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., pp. 21-25; P. Cartledge, Qe Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others, Cam-bridge 1993, p. 38; Hall, Ethnic Identity cit., p. 46.

19 Hall, Ethnic Identity cit., p. 47, though I cannot agree with his over-simplistic distinction between an “aggregative” ethnic identity before the Persian Wars (i.e. built up on the basis of similarities with peers) and an “oppositional” identity a/er the Persian Wars.

20 F. Hartog, Qe Mirror of Herodotus. Qe Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, Berkeley -Los Angeles 1988. See also Cartledge, Qe Greeks cit., pp. 55-56; Hall, Ethnic Identity cit., p. 45.

21 I.K. Xydopoulos, Koinonikes kai politistikes scheseis ton Makedonon kai ton allon Ellinon, +essaloniki 20062.

22 Hartog, Mirror cit., pp. 356-357; Nippel, Griechen cit., p. 25.

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 19

Representations

23 Xydopoulos, Koinonikes cit., pp. 56-61. Some preliminary thoughts on the Athenian attitude towards the ‘barbarian states’ in the north of the Greek peninsula were expressed by E. Badian, Philip II. and Qrace, in “Pulpudeva”, 1980, 4, pp. 51-71.

24 See +uc. IV.126.3. 25 +uc. IV.124.1 and IV.125.1.26 S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Qucydides, vol. II, Oxford, 1996, pp. 390-393 and especially p. 392.27 Herod. V.22.2. See also +uc II.99.1-3 and V.80.2. For the views expressed by scholars on these passages

see Xydopoulos, Koinonikes cit., p. 51 n. 86. 28 +uc. IV.109.1 ..29 B. Funck, Studie zur der Bezeichnung H=$H#$%2, in E.C. Welskopf (ed.), Soziale TypenbegriUe im alten

Griechenland und ihr Fortleben in den Sprachen der Welt, volume 4, Berlin 1981, p. 39.30 A.W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Qucydides, Sol. III, Books IV-V24, Oxford 1966, pp. 588-

589, argues that these were foreigners who spoke Greek as well as their own tongue and were not com-pletely hellenized. For the populations in the region and their treatment by the early Macedonian kings see N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia. Sol. I, Oxford 1972, pp. 437-439; N.G.L. Hammond, G.T. Gri0th, A History of Macedonia Sol. II, Oxford 1979, pp. 62, 64-65; M.B. Hatzopoulos, L.D. Loukopoulou, Recherches sur les marches orientales des Temenides (Anthémonte-Kalindoia) 1ère partie, Athens 1992, pp. 30-31.

31 Gomme, Historical Commentary cit., p. 612, argues that these were the coastal cities which “were pre-dominantly Greek but had long been within the Macedonian kingdom, Strepsa, Pydna, and others”. About this Greek hoplite force, see M.B. Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Institutions under the Kings. A Historical and Epigraphic Study, I-II, Athens 1996, pp. 106-108 (esp. p. 108, n. 1) who argues that there were along the coast “if not genuine Greek colonies, mixed Greco-barbarian settlements, such as Pella, Ichnai, Chalastra, Sindos and +erma” and that it was probably these cities which provided the bulk of the Macedonian hoplite forces mentioned in 5th-century sources.

32 Hornblower, Commentary cit., pp. 390-393.33 II.99.3 [trans. by N. G. L. Hammond, Qe Macedonian State, Oxford 1989, p. 51]. For the Macedonian

expansion see Hatzopoulos, Institutions cit., pp. 169-171; also Hammond, Macedonia cit., vol. I, 192-193 (for the Bisaltians), 179-182 (Grestonia), 427-428 (Hedonians); Gomme, 1996, p. 589. Contra J. Hall, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within EvolSing DeRnitions of Greek Identity in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge MA, 2001, p. 165..

34 See I.57-58, 62, 65, 100, II.96-101, IV.7, 102, 107, 109, V.6.35 C. Brixhe, A. Panayotou, Le thrace, in F. Bader (ed.), Langues indo-européens, Paris 1994, pp. 179-203.36 J. M. Ross Cormack, s.v. Qrace, in S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth (eds.), Qe Oxford Classical Dictionary,

+ird edition revised, Oxford 2003, p. 1515.37 Strabo VIIa.1.11.1. See Hammond, Macedonia cit., vol. I, p. 417.38 See +uc. II.96.1-3.39 See Hornblower, Commentary cit., vol. II, p. 339 for the other citations from +ucydides’ work, which

prove his expertise.40 +e locus classicus in Herodotus is V.3.1. 41 A.W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, K.J. Dover, A Historical Commentary on Qucydides, Sol. IV, Books V25-

VII, Oxford 1970, p. 405.42 +uc. VII.29.1 .. See also Z.H. Archibald, Qe Odrysian Kingdom of Qrace: Orpheus Unmasked, Ox-

ford 1998, p. 100.43 J. de Romilly, Les barbares dans la pensée de la Grèce classique, in “Phoenix”, 1993, 47, pp. 287-288;

Archibald, Qe Odrysian Kingdom cit., p. 100.

20 Ioannis Xydopoulos

44 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., pp. 107-110, 122-126; Archibald, Qe Odrysian Kingdom cit., p. 100.45 For the historians and their audience, see A. Momigliano, Qe Historians of the Classical World and

Qeir Audiences: Some Suggestions, in “Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa”, 1978, 8, 1, pp. 59-75 (for +uc. esp. p. 66).

46 Hall, Hellenicity cit., p. 187.47 F.W. Walbank, Qe Problem of Greek Nationality, in “Phoenix”, 1951, 5, p. 47.48 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 161; W. Nippel, Qe Construction of the “Other”, in T. Harrison

(ed.), Greeks and Barbarians, Edinburgh 2002, p. 291.49 S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Qucydides, vol. I, Oxford 1991, pp. 4-5.50 I. Malkin, Greek Ambiguities: “Ancient Hellas” and “Barbarian Epirus”, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Per-

ceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge (MA) 2001, pp. 187-212.51 C.M. Antonaccio, Ethnicity and Colonization, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity,

Cambridge (MA) 2001, pp. 113-157, esp. 120-121.52 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 177.53 Antonaccio, Ethnicity cit., p. 121.54 Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions cit., p. 196.55 C. Müller, Geographi Graeci Minores I, Paris 1882, pp. 35-36.56 A.J. Graham, Qe Colonial Expansion of Greece, in Cambridge Ancient History III, 3, Cambridge, 1982,

p. 115. As Hammond, Macedonian State cit., p. 48 has suggested, when the defeated Persians withdrew in 479, ‘the Chalkidians drove the +racians out of the middle prong, Sithonia, and the Athos penin-sula became a refuge for small communities from Crestonia, Bisaltia, and Mygdonia’. He thinks that Al-exander I had promoted the policy of Macedonian coexistence with the natives east of the Axius river. It is there, he assumes, that the Greek language was adopted and the annexed peoples were becoming bilingual in the mid-5th century, as well as in the communities of the Athos peninsula.

57 See, e.g. Plutarch (Vuaest. Graec. XI) and his description of the adventures of Eretrian colonists, who sailed in ‘+race’, founding Methone around 730 BC; Herod. VII.123.3; +uc. II.99.4; See also Ham-mond, Macedonia cit., pp. 425-426.

58 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 166.59 Aeschylus’ Supplices 250-258; Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 170.60 +uc. II.80.4-5. See S. Hornblower, Qucydides, Baltimore 1987, p. 194 and Hornblower, Commentary

cit., vol. I, p. 80 for his commentary.61 Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., pp. 11 and 170; cf. pp. 166-167.62 +uc. II.3.4, 2.68. In her study of the invention of the barbarian, Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p.

179, remarks that the word barbaros originally referred solely to language, and simply meant “unintel-ligible”. +at it could retain this sense in the 5th century is shown by the use of a cognate in the descrip-tion of the clangor of birds (Sophocles, Ant. 1002).

63 On the Macedonian language see e.g. C. Brixhe, A. Panayotou, Le macédonien, in F. Bader (ed.), Langues indo-européens, Paris 1994, pp. 205-220; C. Brixhe, Un “nouveau” champ de la dialectologie grecque; le macédonien, in Atti del III Colloquio internazionale de Dialettologia Greca, “Annali dell’Istituto univer-sitario orientale di Napoli”, 1997, 19, pp. 41-71.

64 +e meaning of the term Hellas has been treated repeatedly. See J. Hall, Qe Odrysian Kingdom cit., pp. 125-171 for the most recent (to my knowledge) conclusions – despite some exaggerations – on the subject as well as the previous bibliography.

65 See Xydopoulos, Koinonikes cit., pp. 60-98 for these references and their various explanations. 66 For a brief overview of how the term nation has been used in modern Greek historiography, see N.

Svoronos, Analekta neoellinikis Istorias kai istoriographias, Athens 1982, 77-18. For a thorough search

The Concept and Representation of Northern Communities in Ancient Greek Historiography 21

Representations

regarding Macedonian studies in particular, up to 1980, see M. Hatzopoulos, A Century and a Lustrum of Macedonian Studies, in “+e Ancient World”, 1981, 4, pp. 91-108.

67 M. Todd, Migrants and InSaders, Charleston 2001, p. 14; I. Malkin, Introduction, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge (MA) 2001, p. 3.

68 Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr. 7. 69 S. Jones, Qe Archaeology of Ethnicity, London - New York 1997, p. 61.70 J. Hall, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within EvolSing DeRnitions of Greek Identity, in

I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge (MA) 2001, pp. 165-167.71 See, e.g. the mention of various tribes in these northern areas in Herod. VII.110-115; +uc. II.99.3;

Strabo, Geogr. VIIa.1.11.1.72 See, e.g., Strabo VII.1.41.1... Hammond, Macedonia cit., vol. I, pp. 405-441 undertakes full-scale

analysis of the sources and of the presence of various (non Greek) tribes and ethne in Macedonia and +race.

73 Hecataeus (FGrHist 1, F 146). For mixed Greco-barbarian settlements see Hatzopoulos, Institutions cit., pp. 106-108 (for Sindos, p. 108, n. 2; for +erma, p. 108, n. 3); J. Bouzek, I. Ondrejova, Sindos-Trebenishte-Duvanli: Interrelations between Qrace, Macedonia, and Greece in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, in “MedArch” 1 (1988), pp. 84-94.

74 For their language, see G. Bonfante, A Note on the Samothracian Language, in “Hesperia”, 1955, 24, pp. 101-109; A.J. Graham, 1982, p. 118; K. Lehmann (ed.), Samothrace, vol. II, pt. 2, New York 1960, pp. 8-19.

75 Cf. note 28.76 E. Hall, InSenting the Barbarian cit., p. 170; Jones, 1997, ch. 5.77 P. Flensted-Jensen, Qe Bottiaians and their poleis, in M.H. Hansen, K. Raa-aub (eds.), Studies in the

Ancient Greek Polis (Historia EinzelschriWen 95), Stuttgart 1995, pp. 109-110 for the references. 78 Flensted-Jensen, Bottiaians cit., p. 110.79 I. Malkin, Introduction cit., p. 14.

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