In time of war Athens required citizens who could afford armor and weapons to serve as hoplites, if called upon. At the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C), some 18,000–24,000 men were eligible for service. While most eligible citizens probably complied – if not always enthusiastically – with conscription, some evaded service. This chapter seeks to assess evasion of hoplite service in Athens both as a historical phenomenon and as an ideological problem for the city. In Athens, as in modern democracies, evasion of compulsory military service was a real temptation and possibility. Consistent with this is Attic tragedy's frequent treatment of evasion and tensions concerning compulsory service in connection with recruitment for the Trojan War and other martial endeavors. Tragedy, I will argue, provided an imaginative vehicle through which contemporary audiences might come to terms with the tensions surrounding compulsory military service and its evasion within a democratic society.

The first section of this chapter will make the case for taking draft evasion seriously as a problem for the Athenian democracy. The second section will explore tragedy's intriguing engagement with evasion and tensions surrounding compulsory military service.

DRAFT EVASION AND COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE

Modern scholarship rarely addresses draft evasion in Athens or elsewhere in the Greek world. This may reflect the assumption that the martial orientation of Greek society and the high premium it placed on honor made evasion unlikely.