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Aratos' attack on Cynaetha (Polybios IX, 17)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

F. W. Walbank
F. W. Walbank
Affiliation:
The University, Liverpool
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Extract

Polybios, in the course of a long fragment on the knowledge necessary for a general, preserved in the Codex Urbinas (IX, 17), has an account of an ineffectual attack on the town of Cynaetha in North Arcadia by Aratos during one of his early generalships. Aratos, he tells us, had made full arrangements for a simultaneous attack on the town from traitors within and Achaean troops without, and as a signal to the latter a man was to go and stand on a certain hillock dressed in a cloak. Unfortunately a sheep-owner, while looking for his shepherd, went and unwittingly stood on this very hill, whereupon the Achaeans attacked too soon and were disastrously repulsed. What was the cause of the failure asks Polybios, and answers ‘῾τὸ ποιήσαοθαι τὸν στρατηγὸν ἁπλοῦν τὸ σύνθημα, νέον ἀκμἡν ὄντα καὶ τῆς τῶν διπλῶν συνθημάτων καὶ παρασυνθημάτων ἀκριβείας ἄπειρον,᾿’ because the general was still young and ignorant of the principle of signals and counter-signals.

The incident has been inexplicably neglected: Beloch, Tarn and Ferrabino omit it entirely; Niese omits it from his article on Aratos in Pauly-Wissowa, and in his large work writes simply ‘Aratos unternahm einmal einen Versuch, sie (sc. Cynaetha) zu überrumpeln,’ vaguely indicating a date in the neighbourhood of 245–40; Pieske writing on ‘Kynaitha’ in Pauly-Wissowa, has a bare reference, and Freeman, mentioning it in a note, declares that the attack was one of the first of a series of events leading up to Cynaetha's joining the Achaean League. The words νέον ἀκμὴν ὄντα can, he adds, refer only to one of the earliest of Aratos' generalships, or possibly to some subordinate command held before he was general. In short, the incident has been almost completely ignored, and no attempt has been made to set it in its historical context. The purpose of this paper is to shew that it offers important evidence both for the date of Aratos' birth, and also for Achaean and Aetolian policy during the years 245–35.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , 1936 , pp. 64 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1936

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References

1 Beloch, Gr. Gesch.; Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas; Ferrabino, Arato di Sicione.

2 Gr. und Maked. Staaten, II, 261Google Scholar; for the view of Niccolini, , La Confederazine Achea, 28Google Scholar, see below, note 51.

3 History of Federal Government, Ed. 2, 314, n. 4.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Arrian, , Tact. 1Google Scholar and Aelian, , Tact. I, 3, 19Google Scholar.

5 Walbank, , Aratos of Sicyon, 6 seqGoogle Scholar.

6 In Plut., Aratos 36Google Scholar, for example, the brief reference to Aratos' defeat on Mt. Lykaion, followed by a full description of his capture of Mantinea, probably reproduces the version given by the Memoirs.

7 As these words occur in Polybios' own comments at the end of the chapter, it is most improbable that he is merely reproducing an expression by which Aratos might have sought to minimise his own age.

8 Xen., Mem. I, 2, 35Google Scholar.

9 Pol. II, 43, 3; cf. Walbank, op. cit. pp. 168, 175. I remain unconvinced by those writers who wish to put the date of Aratos' birth in 275 or 276 (e.g. Beloch, op. cit. IV, 2, 228 seq.; Porter, W. H., Hermathena, XXII, 1932, 158 seq.Google Scholar). Mr. Porter following Cavaignac (Histoire de l'Antiquité, III, 254, n. 5Google Scholar) sets Aratos' capture of Sicyon in 255, and the union with Achaea in 251. He assumes that Polybios (II, 43, 3) confused the two events, and so claims to explain the statement that in 225, or by his reckoning 224, when Aratos was elected στρατηγός αὐτοκράτωρ, he had been thirty-three years in Achaean public life (Plut., Arat. 41Google Scholar; Cleom. 16); the thirty-three years are from 256 to 224, reckoning inclusively, for ‘whether the date be 256 or 255 is a minor matter.’ The objections to this theory are obvious. First, as Mr. Porter himself admits, Aratos had not been thirty-three years in 224; to get this figure, one has to assume that Plutarch made the same mistake as Polybios, in confusing the date of the freeing of Sicyon with that of the union with Achaea—a most suspicious coincidence, which is not explained away by the excuse that Plutarch ‘is a biographer and a moralist, not an annalistic historian,’ or that ‘Polybios was writing not a biography of Aratos, but a history of the Roman world in forty books; he did not need to be precise about Aratos' age in 251.’ Secondly, these thirty-three years have already been adequately accounted for by Klatt, (Quellen und Chronologic des Kleomenischen Krieges, Appendix III, 122Google Scholar; cf. Walbank, op. cit. 174). Thirdly, this theory ignores the word ‘φέρων’ in Plut., Arat. 9Google Scholar, 4 —Aratos thought it best to attach the city promptly to the Achaean League. Finally, the main object—to avoid having Aratos under thirty during his first generalship—loses all point in view of the present passage (Pol. IX, 17), where Aratos is expressly referred to as νέος and στρατηγός on the same occasion, and when, as is shewn below, the historical situation makes it necessary to take νέος in its strictly defined sense of under ‘thirty.’

10 Plut., Arat. 30Google Scholar; Pol. II, 44, 5; cf. Beloch, op. cit. IV, 1, 632.

11 Polyaenos II, 36.

12 Cf. Beloch, op. cit. IV, 2, 224; Ferrabino, op. cit. 273; Tarn, , CAH VII, 745Google Scholar.

13 Op. cit. II, 261, n. 3.

14 Op. cit. IV, 1, 632, n. 2.

15 Polybios IV, 20 has an interesting account of the haracter of the Cynaetheans described from the point of view of a fellow Arcadian.

16 Op. cit. 178–80.

17 Tarn, , JHS 1909, 365Google Scholar seq. and CAH VII, 718.

18 Plut., Arat. 16Google Scholar: Pol. XX, 4, 5.

19 Following Tarn, (CAH VII, 223Google Scholar) I formerly placed Antigonos' overtures to Aratos, mentioned in Plut., Arat. 15Google Scholar, after this recovery (op. cit. 43). After reconsidering all the evidence I have come back to the view of De Sanctis, (Klio, IX, 1909, 1–9)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, an with him and Porter, W. H. (Hermathena, XX, 1930, 293Google Scholar) place these overtures immediatel y after Aratos' journey to Egypt, and before Alexander of Corinth revolted in 249. This theory gives a more consistent picture of Gonatas behaviour from the time Aratos freed Sicyon—the βασιλεύς of Plut., Arat. 11, 2Google Scholar, who gave Aratos twenty-five talents being Ptolemy, and not Antigonos (cf. Levi, M. A., Athenaeum, VIII, 1930, 508seq.Google Scholar)—and explains the otherwise awkward passage in Plut., Arat. 9, 3Google Scholar. On one point I disagree with Porter—on the attacks made by Aratos on Alexander of Corinth (Plut., Arat. 18Google Scholar). These Porter sets after Alexander's revolt and regards them as ‘probably a private adventure at the head of Sicyonian troops.’ It is, however, generally admitted that Alexander was a protégé of Ptolemy, and Aratos was drawing money from Egypt. Is it likely that Ptolemy would pay Aratos to attack Alexander—even in a ‘private capacity’? Hence I infer with Ferguson, (JHS 1910, 198Google Scholar) that the attacks were against Alexander as representative of Gonatas, and not as independent monarch. Ptolemy may have employed this final pressure to force Alexander to the point of revolting. My revised chronology for these years would be:—

251 January. Nicocles tyrant at Sicyon.

May. Aratos frees Sicyon. Megalopolis freed about the same time.

Summer. Subsidy of twenty-five talents from Ptolemy.

Battle of Mantinea (?).

Autumn. Sicyon joins the Achaean League.

Aratos goes to Egypt.

250 Spring Aratos returns from Egypt.

Gonatas' overtures to him from Corinth.

Autumn. Aratos' attacks on Alexander, Gonatas' governor at Corinth.

250–49. Revolt of Alexander.

249. Alexander makes peace with Athens and Argos.

End of Gonatas' power in the Cyclades.

248. The ‘Second Ptolemaiaea’ vase festival at Delos.

20 Beloch, op. cit. IV, 1, 619; Niese, op. cit. II, 258; Walbank, op. cit. 43 seq.

21 Plut., Cleom. 7, 3Google Scholar.

22 Pol. II, 54, 12. August 224, i.e. the summer before Sellasia, which I date 223 (op. cit. 195 seq.).

23 Livy, 28, 8, 6; 32, 5, 4.

24 Cf. Beloch, op. cit. IV, 1, 620; Niese, op. cit. II, 258 seq.

25 Pol. IV, 77, 10; cf. Pausan. V, 6, 1, which shews an Aetolian general, Polyperchon, using Samicon in Triphylia as a centre for raids on Arcadia.

26 Pol. IV, 77, 10; Pausan. V. 6, 1.

27 Cf. Ditt. Syll. 3 504: the original κ[λητορ]ί[ω]ν has proved to be an impossible reconstruction, since the ί has now been shewn to be a τ. Dittenberger's third edition (which Beloch quotes along with his argument from Cleitor) reads κ[αφυια]τ[ᾶ]ν, and the inscription is to be dated between 228, when Aratos took Caphyae, and 227, when Lydiades perished at Ladoceia.

28 Telphusa: evidence from coins, cf. IG V. 2, p. 98; Cleitor, cf. Pol. II, 55, 9.

29 Cf. Pol. IV, 70.

30 Cf. Ditt. Syll. 3 472, which is probably to be dated about this time. It gives the terms of an agreement for ἰσοπολιτεία between Phigaleia and Messenia, with the Aetolians coining in as the allies of the Phigaleians. By the time of the Social War the ἰσοπολιτεία had become συμπολιτεία (Pol. IV, 3, 6).

31 Pol. IV, 6, 11. : and cf. the last note.

32 Beloch thinks that Aetolia made direct acquisitions in the ‘Arcadian Corridor’—Tegea and Orchomenos (op. cit. IV, 1, 621). More probably these cities were ceded later by Achaea to preserve the Aetolian alliance (Tarn, , CAH VII, 747Google Scholar; Walbank, op. cit. 67).

33 These are particularly stressed by Polybios (IV, 17, 4).

34 Plut, . Arat. 16Google Scholar.

35 Tarn, , CAH VII, 734Google Scholar; Beloch, op. cit. IV, 1, 621; Walbank, op. cit. 45.

36 Op. cit. 53.

37 Pol. II, 45, 1; IX, 34, 7; 38, 9.

38 Plut., Agis 13Google Scholar.

39 Beloch, op. cit. IV, 1, 623, n. 4; Tarn, , CAH VII, 734Google Scholar.

40 Plut., Arat. 24, 3.Google Scholar Walbank, op. cit. 183; Tarn, , CAH VIIGoogle Scholar, loc. cit.

41 Plut., Agis 15, 2Google Scholar. i.e. June or there abouts; cf. Boethius, , Der Argivische Kalendar, 16Google Scholar, where the author shews that May is the usual harvest month in the Argolid.

42 Plut., Arat. 25, 4Google Scholar.

43 This followed immediately upon the death of Gonatas, which is dated 239 by Tarn, (CAH VII, 744Google Scholar) and Beloch (op. cit. IV, 2, 113), 240 by Dinsmoor, (The Archons of Athens, 108–9)Google Scholar.

44 CAH VII, 734.

45 Op. cit. 280.

46 Cf. Tarn, , CAH VII, 734Google Scholar. ‘When his anger cooled, he (sc. Gonatas) declined thus to stultify his life's policy an d left Aetolia to act alone.’ Does Mr. Tarn mean that Gonatas cancelled the agreement ? I can hardly think that if the Aetolians had been successful, he would have rejected his stipulated share.

47 Plut., Arat. 31Google Scholar; Agis 14–15; cf. the confused version of Pausan. II, 8,5, in which it is Agis who takes and loses Pellene—undoubtedly a recollection of the Isthmus incident.

48 Cf. in this respect his repeated attempts on Argos.

49 IX, 17, 8.

50 Plut., Arat. 33Google Scholar.

51 Niccolini, op. cit. 28, thinks that Cynaetha joined the League after Leonidas' death and Cleomenes' accession in 235, and connects this with Aratos' raids on the parts of Arcadia nearest to Achaea, mentioned in Plut., Cleom. 3Google Scholar. I have, I think, shewn that this date is too late, and the raids in question, if we accept Plutarch, must have been directed against the districts of Arcadi a nearer to Sparta, whom they were intended to provoke. But in fact Plutarch is here to be rejected, since he is following the untrustworthy tradition of Phylarchos, which sought to make Aratos the aggressor in the Cleomenean War.