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Cyrene and Persia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

B. M. Mitchell
Affiliation:
St. Anne's College, Oxford

Extract

Arkesilas III succeeded to the throne of Cyrene after the royal power had been considerably curtailed. In the reign of the previous king, Battos III, Demonax of Mantineia had carried out a tribal reorganisation and constitutional reform which was, according to Herodotus, democratic. But since the leading opponents of Arkesilas III were the nobility, it is likely that the reforms of Demonax were supported, or at least acquiesced in, by the aristocrats. As Chamoux argues, the system of tribes created by Demonax will not have diminished the local influence of the aristocratic landowners, although the more recent colonists who arrived from all parts of Greece in the reign of Battos II were given a place in the new constitution. The arrangements of Kleisthenes a generation later at Athens provide both a comparison and a contrast. He added the Athenian δῆμος to his aristocratic faction for political reasons, just as the Cyrenaean nobility accepted Demonax, and similarly the democracy of 508/7 was principally a tribal reform. But, at Athens, after the fall of the tyranny, there was a pressure towards democracy which could not have existed at Cyrene a generation earlier, and it was precisely because he had to break down the local influence of the nobility that Kleisthenes devised the system of trittues, which is not paralleled at Cyrene. The Demonax reform resulted in constitutional power for the landowning class at the expense of the monarchy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1966

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References

1 161.3.

2 For this view of Demonax see Chamoux, , Cyrène sous la Monarchie des Battiades 138–42Google Scholar and cf. Lewis, D. M., Historia xii (1963) 39.Google Scholar

3 165.2. Cf. Hdt. iii 13.4, which must refer to the same occasion.

4 Hdt. ii 181. The alliance was made soon after Amasis' rebellion against Apries in 570 and reversed Apries' hostile attitude to Cyrene. Ladike was perhaps a younger sister of Arkesilas II. She cannot in any case have been much under 70 in 525. See note ig.

5 165.3.

6 163.2. The Battiads are to rule for not more than eight generations. This is obviously post eventum. The rest of the oracle is obscure enough to be genuine, but if refers to the double murder of Arkesilas and Alazeir, which seems likely, this is probably post eventum also.

7 167.1. The name ‘Amasis’ may be wrong, as the Maraphioi were a Persian tribe, Hdt. i 125.3. But this is not sufficient grounds for conflating Arsames' expedition against Barka in c. 482 with the Libyan expedition of 513. See p. 108 and n. 48.

8 145.1. It did not take place while Darius was beyond the Danube, cf. Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks 112.Google Scholar refers to Megabazos in the Hellespont, and the synchronism is much more likely to be true than if Herodotus had made a schematic connexion between Darius' Scythian expedition and the Libyan expedition. For the date of the Scythian expedition, see Wade-Gery, , Essays, ‘Miltiades’, 159 Google Scholar and notes, and Cameron, , JNES (1943) 313 n. 32.Google Scholar

9 E.g. Macan, , Hdt. iv–vi i 118 n.Google Scholar, Chamoux, op. cit., 147 ff.

10 Attempts to fill the gap or stretch Herodotus' narrative have not been successful. Macan, loc. cit., notices the difficulty and suggests that Pheretima's rule in Cyrene may have lasted some time. Chamoux, 149, supposes that Arkesilas spent some time in making punitive expeditions from Barka against the aristocrats who opposed him. But his revenge on his opponents and the cruel burning alive of his enemies in Aglomachos’ tower preceded his exile in Barka (164.2–3). Chamoux also accepts Hiller von Gärtringen's identification of the votive graffito found near the older building south of the temple of Apollo Karneios in Thera, as a dedication by Arkesilas III's mother, perhaps made on her Cyprus voyage. (IG xii 3, 369, Hiller, Ephem. Arch. 1937, i p. 56 Google Scholar; RE VA, 2293, RE xix 2038 f. s.v. ‘Pheretime’). Σ has already replaced san, which is consistent with a late sixth-century date in Theraean script, but could also be later. See Jeffery, L. H., Local Scripts in Archaic Greece, 33.Google Scholar The single name is unlikely to be the record of a royal dedication, and the name ‘Pheretima’ may have been fairly common in Doric communities, cf. ‘Pheretimos’ at Teuchiris in Cyrenaïca, , SEG ix 435.Google Scholar Pheretima would be unlikely to approach the Theraeans for aid since they were anti-Battiad: the prisoners sent by Arkesilas to Cyprus were rescued by the Knidians and sent to Thera, where they were presumably welcomed (164.2). So the graffito cannot be held to suggest that the voyages of Arkesilas and Pheretima were more extensive, and took more time, than Herodotus reports.

11

12 Aryandes was appointed satrap by Cambyses, and served also under Darius until he rebelled some time after 513. The rebellion is placed in 166.1, where τούτων refers to the Libyan expedition. Herodotus marks his return to the direct narrative with τότε δέ at 167.1.

13 See A. R. Burn, op. cit., 96 f. On the Egyptian revolt, which was put down by Aryandes, see Cameron, , JNES ii (1943) 311 f.Google Scholar

14 Euelthon will have been an old man, but could still have been ruling in 518 or 517. 569, his acces sion date according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, can hardly be right, and seems only to rest on the accession of Amasis of Egypt, who made Cyprus tributary to Egypt, Hdt. ii 182.2. Siromos (? = Hiram, king of Tyre c. 550–30) must be removed from Herodotus' geneaology of Onesilas (v 104.1), since even if the earlier dating for Pheretima's appeal to Euelthon were right (c. 530), Euelthon could hardly be the great-grandfather of Onesilas, who was king in 498. If we assume Chersis to be the son of Euelthon and that Siromos, whose name is surely not Greek, has been wrongly inserted into the line of the Greek kings of Salamis, the stemma becomes intelligible. See How and Wells on Hdt. v 104, and RE suppl. IA col. 1834 s.v. ‘Salamis’ 2.

15 The expedition of Otanes is generally dated c. 517. The travels of Demokedes, first to Sousa after the fall of Oroites and then to the Greek coast-lands on his reconnaissance expedition for Darius, all precede the capture of Samos in Herodotus' account (iii 129–39). The Samian thalassocracy is superseded by the Spartan in 517 in the list of Eusebius as revised by Myres, (JHS xxvi (1906) 99 f.).Google Scholar The revolt of Babylon synchronized with Otanes' expedition by Herodotus (iii 150.1), cannot be identified with either of the revolts of Babylon which took place in Darius' first year and are recorded on the Behistun inscription, because of the 20-month siege of Babylon in Herodotus' account. Either Herodotus' Babylonian revolt was a later one, or he is giving a highly-coloured and inaccurate account of the first, major revolt and did not know its date.

16 Hdt. iii 142.3. But γῆς ἀναδασμός does not necessarily have the revolutionary connotation of redistribution of land which we find in Hellenistic times. Cf. iv 159.2, where Libyan land is being divided. There was plenty of land available, and Arkesilas was not necessarily thinking of dividing up the estates of the nobles to settle his mercenaries.

17 Strabo p. 638.

18 Cf. 152.5 and the Korobios story.

19 Apries had led an Egyptian army against Cyrene, and was defeated at the battle of Irasa, c. 570. Amasis became the leader of the resulting rebellion against Apries, succeeded him, and reversed the policy of Egypt towards Cyrene by marrying Ladike, Hdt. ii 161, ii 181 and iv 159.

20 See pp. 104 ff.

21 Hdt. i 77.1–2.

22 Hdt. ii 182.2.

23 Hdt. iii 19 and 34.4 imply that Cambyses conquered Phoenicia and her fleet before he invaded Egypt. Cyprus capitulated and joined the Egyptian expedition, iii 19.3.

24 165.2.

25 203.1.

26 We do not, however, have to follow Beloch, (Gr. Gesch. i 213–14)Google Scholar, in supposing that the opposition to Pheretima in Cyrene was a fabrication, or that she did not have to flee to Egypt, but simply asked Aryandes for help in conquering Barka and Euhesperides.

27 FGH 270F5 (iiiA p. 84).

28 Polyaenus, , Strat. viii 47.Google Scholar

29 FGH iii pp. 224–5.

30 Menekles knew Herodotus' account, since in F6 he criticises his story about the foundation of Cyrene as too mythical, and prefers another which is ‘more convincing’

31 Cf. Hdt. ii 181.5 (the position of the statue sent to Cyrene by Ladike and still there in Herodotus' own time). He knows that the Barkan women eat neither beef nor pork, but he might have got this from elsewhere (iv 186).

32 Arist. fr. 611.16; Aen. Tact. 37.6. For his date, based on internal evidence from the treatise, see RE s.v. Aineios Taktikos, and Oldfather's introduction to the Loeb edition.

33 For Menekles' date, see Athenaios iv 83, p. 184 b–c. Menekles and Andron of Alexandria are quoted for the fact that the Alexandrian scholars became the educators of ‘all Hellenes and barbarians’ after being expelled by Ptolemy Phiskon (146–118). Ptolemaiïs was founded earlier, by Ptolemy III (246–221). Skylax, , Periplous (ed. Gronov, .), p. 109 Google Scholar, mentions the λιμὴν Βάρκης. Strabo, p. 837, speaks of Barka as one of the πολίχνια in the peripoly of Cyrene, the πόλις μεγάλη. Full literary references to the history of Barka are given in Thrige, , Res Cyrenensium (1828) 138 ff.Google Scholar See also RE s.v. ‘Barkê’.

34 Hdt. iv 204. The story has been doubted, but some Barkans were probably removed to Baktria.

35 Hdt. v 47.1. Philip set out from Cyrene to accompany Dorieus and eventually died with him in Sicily. is deliberately emphatic. Cf. Chamoux 162–3. Contra Dunbabin, , The Western Greeks 348 ff.Google Scholar

36 For the chronology, see Dunbabin, op. cit. 349. Dorieus kept his expedition together, and took his followers to Sicily at the same time as Sybaris fell, i.e. in 511 or 510. So the Kinyps venture can hardly have been earlier than 514. Dorieus was driven out in the third year by Libyans and Carthaginians (Hdt. v 42.3). Presumably the Cyrenaeans remained conveniently neutral.

37 Hdt. vii 158.

38 Hdt. v 42–3.

39 Hdt. iv 178–9. Tritonis was in Libya, not far from Carthaginian territory. The oracle may well be Pythian, since the Jason story, told in the same context, has Delphic connexions.

40 Pyth. iv 21–99 (Medea's prophecy).

41 Hdt. iv 150.3. Battos the Founder is described as

42 Bowra, , Pindar 140–1Google Scholar, holds that Pindar, too, was apologizing for Delphi, and that the Cyrene legend, like the Jason story, was incidentally part of the excuse for Dorieus' failure.

43 Cameron, , JNES ii (1943) 307 Google Scholar, cf. Wade-Gery, , Essays 159 note 2.Google Scholar For the identification of Libya with Putaya see Posener, , La Première Domination des Perses en Egypte 48 and 186.Google Scholar Cf. Kent, , JNES ii (1943) 302 Google Scholar and Cameron, ibid. 309, note 12.

44 Hdt. iii 13.3 and iii 91.2.

45 Cf. Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks 108 ff.Google Scholar

46 Compare the conditions described in Xen. Anab. iii 15 (the Kardouchoi or Kurds).

47 Hdt. iv 203; Hdt. vii 71 and 86 (Libyan infantry and chariots with Xerxes). Thuc. i 104.1 (Inaros).

48 Polyaenus, , Strat. vii 28.1.Google Scholar Beloch, (Gr. Gesch. i 213–14Google Scholar) disbelieved in the double capture of Barka by the Persians and associated this Polyaenus passage with Pheretima's attack, identifying Amasis with Arsames. But Polyaenus mentions Pheretima's attack in viii 47, whereas vii 28 refers to an expedition occasioned by the Barkan refusal to provide chariots for Xerxes' invasion of Greece and must therefore be dated to c. 482. Chamoux 164 ff. gives good reasons against the identification of Arsames with Amasis. Aesch. Pers. 36–7 calls him and Herodotus says he com manded Arabians and Ethiopians (vii 69), but he was probably a subsidiary governor, not the satrap. Herodotus says Achaemenes was appointed satrap by Xerxes early in his reign after the end of the Egyptian revolt and he remained in office until he was killed by Inaros (vii 7; cf. iii 12). Arsames was the son of Darius and Artystone, a daughter of Cyrus (Hdt. vii 69), and Achaemenes a full brother of Xerxes (Hdt. vii 7).

49 She is absent from Herodotus' catalogue of Xerxes' forces in Hdt. vii.

50 Hdt. iv 167.1.

51 Coins in BMC iii Cyrenaica (E. S. G. Robinson). For the temple of Zeus, see Chamoux 320 ff.

52 Pyth. iv 64–5 (Arkesilas is in the flower of his youth), and Pyth. v 34 (his wisdom is greater than his years). The date of the victory, the 31st Pythiad, is given in the inscriptiones of the scholia on Pyth. iv and v. ( Drachmann, , Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina ii 92 and 171Google Scholar). For Euphamos, see schol. Pyth. iv 256 (455e). On his death and Karrhotos' leadership, see schol. Pyth. v 26 (34).

53 For the dates of his victories, see schol. Pyth. ix inscr. a and b. His father's name was Karneades, (Pyth. ix 71–2)Google Scholar, but he need not be related to the Battiads, who were Aigeidai and brought the Karneia to Sparta and thence to Thera and Cyrene (Pyth. v 74 ff.). There is no evidence that ‘Karneades’ was a Battiad name. It could have been given to a child born during the festival.

54 It is not possible to give an exact parallel for a Persian subject competing at the games, but Alexander of Macedon (though probably before 490), had to prove his genealogy, not his politics, before competing at Olympia, Hdt. viii 137 and v 22. An Argive δημόσιος κέλης won at Olympia in 480, when Argos was neutral (Ox. Pap. ii 222, Hill2 p. 151). It would be odd if no member of Diagoras' family, which won so many Rhodian victories in and after 466, had even competed in the generation before, and other Cyrenaeans may have competed before Telesikrates. Competitors, as distinct from victors, have not survived in the records.

55 Hdt. vii 7.

56 The literal interpretation of Pyth. v 10–11, which led Chamoux, 182, to date its performance to spring, 461, after the winter storms, seems to be excluded by the end of the poem, where Pindar prays to the Kronidai to keep Arkesilas safe in his deeds and counsels

(v 120–1)

The end of the poem is clearly metaphorical, and must explain the sense of χειμῶν in line 10. Pindar thanks Kastor for protecting Arkesilas in the past (10–11), and prays to both the Dioscuri to protect him in the future (116–21). The metaphor of the ship of state in the storms of civil war is familiar and older than Pindar, cf. Horace, , Odes i 14 Google Scholar and its model, Alcaeus, fr. 46A, discussed by Fraenkel, in Horace 154 ff.Google Scholar

57 Pyth. iv 299–300.

58 Wilamowitz, , Pindaros 376–7Google Scholar and Bowra, , Pindar 137–41.Google Scholar Bowra argues that Karrhotos, who is praised for his wisdom in Pyth. v 109–14, as well as his driving, is hinted at in Pyth. iv 277–9 as the source of the good advice given by the poet to Arkesilas to pardon Damophilos:

But the Homeric proverb can be taken as a parallel, to show how the poet's Muse is enhanced by the Tightness of his message. It seems simpler to connect ἄγγελον closely with δι' ἀγγελίας and to take the messenger to be Pindar himself.

59 Lattimore, , Classical Weekly xlii (1948) 1925 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argued that Pindar's main reason for writing Pyth. iv was to plead for Damophilos, since here are two odes on Arkesilas' victory, and that Jason's delayed homecoming is a subtle illustration of the Arkesilas-Damophilos situation.

60 Damophilos, though an enemy, may have been related to Arkesilas, but the scholiast's remark on Pyth. iv 467, is obscure. It could refer, more reasonably, to Pindar's own remote connexion with the Aigeidai ( Pyth. v 76), which made him specially fitted to reconcile Arkesilas to Damophilos. If the subject of ἦν is Pindar himself and not Damophilos, there is a logical connexion between this and the preceding sentence on Damophilos' commission of the poet.

61 For the dating of the Egyptian revolt, see Gomme, , HCT i 410 ff.Google Scholar

62 Schol. Pyth. iv inscr. b: (sc. King of Cyrene) Arist. fr. 611.17, Hill2 p. 42: Just conceivably, this Battos was a son of Arkesilas IV who died before becoming king. See Chamoux 206.

63 See Chamoux's convincing arguments against Wilamowitz, op. cit. 195–6. Cf. Wilamowitz, , Pindaros 376.Google Scholar Wilamowitz, however, took the ‘demos’ at Cyrene to be different from the demos at, say, Athens or Syracuse, since it was composed of landowners.

64 See Jacoby, , RE ii Suppl. col. 254.Google Scholar

65 It is not possible to discuss here the composition of Herodotus' history. I am assuming that he began by collecting material for ‘logoi’ of an ethnographical kind.

66 Chamoux 202–10.

67 Quoted in note 62.

68 The head was discovered in 1926 during the Italian excavations of the temple of Apollo at Cyrene. Pernier, (Afr. It. ii (1929) 70 Google Scholar) took it to be a portrait of Arkesilas IV and tentatively explained the diadem as the result of Persian influence at Cyrene. Chamoux 386 compares it to the Parthenon sculptures in style and also identifies it as a portrait of Arkesilas IV, which fits with his late dating of the end of the monarchy. He is followed by Richter, Gisela, ‘The Greek Portraits of the Fifth century BC’ in Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archaeologia xxxiv (19611962) 37.Google Scholar The head was among precious objects from the Cyrene museum removed to Rome by the Italians during the war, but has now been returned to Cyrene.

69 Diadems or crowns of various kinds were worn by the victors at Greek festivals and at banquets, weddings and funerals. They were not specifically royal until Alexander the Great adopted the practice of wearing one from Persia, after he had conquered Darius III. How long the Persian kings had worn crowns is uncertain. They seem to have adopted the diadem from Egypt, but presumably not from the time of Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt in 525, since Darius wears a tall cap in the Behistun relief, c. 520. If Arkesilas IV was still a vassal of Persia he would be unlikely to have worn the same insignia as the Great King. On the other hand, if, as Chamoux thinks, Cyrene had broken away from Persia earlier, in the reign of Battos IV, he would be unlikely to have worn a Persian headdress at all.

70 Chamoux 166 ff. suggests that the Ammonsilphion coin-type, classified by Robinson as BMC series II, is indicative of the liberation of Cyrene in the reign of Battos IV, c. 480, because of the superiority of these coins to the earlier types minted there. Jenkins, G. K., Num. Chron. xv (1955) 150 Google Scholar, has more recently published a coin to which Dr Colin Kraay has kindly drawn my attention. It is a fine example, probably, according to Jenkins, not earlier in date than the Persian wars, but slightly earlier stylistically than the coins of BMC II, and transitional between BMC I and II in the Cyrene coin-series. The obverse shows the head of Zeus-Ammon, the reverse KYR with the head and neck of a bridled horse and the silphion plant. Jenkins suggests that this issue, rather than the coins of BMC II, is the symbol of freedom from Persia. Surely the discovery of the transitional style suggests that neither issue is political? Both show the sources of Cyrene's wealth (this explains the horse as well as the silphion on the earlier coin), and Cyrene had been coining independently since about 525 with no sign of Persian influence in her issues, even after 514, when she was most firmly under Persian control. The development of the fine BMC II coins (which Jenkins wishes to attribute to Arkesilas IV's reign, since the transitional coin, on his dating, now occupies the 480 + period) seems to be due simply to improved technique and increased prosperity, and does not require a political explanation.

71 Thuc. i 110.2.

72 Ar. Pol. 1319b 17; Diod. xiv 34.

73 Though she had her hoplites as well. The 7,000 hoplite casualties in the battle against the Libyans in the reign of Arkesilas II (Hdt. iv 160) seem too large to be credible, but show that Cyrene fought hoplite battles. Telesikrates won as a hoplite at Olympia in 474.

74 Cf. Pyth. iv 17–18, where Medea prophesies that the Theraeans who are to found Cyrene will exchange sea-faring for horses and chariots:

75 Aristophanes, , Plut. 925 Google Scholar mentions The scholiast ad loc., quoting Aristotle, says that the Libyans gave the silphion plant to the first Battos (Arist. fr. 528). The famous Arkesilas cup, Laconian ware found at Vulci, may illustrate Arkesilas II exporting silphion, but this has been doubted. See Shefton, B., BSA xlix (1954) 309 n. 14Google Scholar, and Arias, P. E., A History of Greek Vase-Painting pl. xxiv and pp. 309–10.Google Scholar The material being weighed under Arkesilas' supervision may be wool and not silphion, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the ‘Arkesilas’ in the vase-painting is Arkesilas II of Cyrene and not another Arkesilas, otherwise unknown.

76 Thuc. vii 50.

77 SEG ix 3, line 11. Graham, A. J., JHS lxxx (1960) 95 Google Scholar, and Jeffery, L. H., Historia x (1961) 139 Google Scholar, discuss the problem of the ‘Founders' Oath’ quoted in the document. The lettering is early fourth century.

78 SEG ix 1, line 6: See Cary, M., JHS xlviii (1928) 222 ff., esp. 234 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For other references see SEG ix. The constitution described in the document was referred by Sanctis, De (Riv. Fil. liv (1926) 145 ff.)Google Scholar to the foundation of the κοινόν of Cyrene by Ptolemy II, c. 250, but most now think it is the work of Ptolemy I and place it in 322/1 or a few years later. Cf. Cary, op. cit. 222–3.

Note: The chronological problem discussed in the first part of this paper was first raised for me by some unpublished work of Mr Oswyn Murray. I should like to thank Professor H. T. Wade-Gery, Professor A. Andrewes, Mr A. J. Holladay and Mr W. G. Forrest for reading earlier drafts of this paper. They have given me much helpful advice and criticism.