Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wpx84 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-01T06:43:47.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The ephebic oath in fifth-century Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

P. Siewert
P. Siewert
Affiliation:
Institut für Alte Geschichte, Universität des Saarlandes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To defend the fatherland, to obey the laws and authorities, and to honour the State's cults are the principal points the Athenian citizen promised to fulfil in his oath of allegiance—called ephebic, because he took it as a recruit (ephebos)—at least since the second half of the fourth century B.C. (Lycurg. Leoc. 76). These duties are fundamental for the citizen's attachment to his polis, so one will hardly assume that the content of the oath depends upon the existence of the Athenian institution of cadet-training (ephebeia) which is attested by inscriptions not earlier than 334/3 B.C. Some ambiguous passages in fifth- and fourth-century authors give no reliable clue to determine the form or origin of the ephebeia. I shall consider sworn civic duties and the organisation of military training as different things, and shall treat the oath independently from the disputed question of when the ephebeia came into existence. My purpose is to draw attention to some fifth-century allusions to the oath which seem to have remained unnoticed so far.

This oath is transmitted by Pollux (viii 105 f.), Stobaeus (iv 1.8), and a fourth-century inscription from the Attic deme Acharnae. I give the epigraphic version, following G. Daux's text. I omit the first part of the whole inscription (lines 1–4: dedication of the stele by the priest of Ares and Athena Areia, Dion of Acharnae) and the last part (lines 20 ff.: oath before the battle against the Persians at Plataea).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 97 , November 1977 , pp. 102 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

To Georges Daux as an inadequate response to his repeated request for a detailed study of the ephebic oath (most recently REG 84 (1971) 370).

Acknowledgements Elizabeth A. Fisher and Victoria M. Rubino revised my German English of the first draft, Hannelore Jarausch and the Editor that of the second. I owe most valuable comments and suggestions to correspondence with Max Treu (Munich). B. M. W. Knox and A. E. Raubitschek and the Editor improved the manuscript by helpful criticism. In the amiable atmosphere of the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C. I could work and discuss some of what follows with the Junior Fellows of 1974/5. To all I owe many thanks. The faults are my own.

Abbreviations The following works are cited by their authors' last name only: H. Bengtson, Griechen und Perser (Fischer-Weltgeschichte Vol. 5) (1965); G. Daux, Le serment des éphébes athéniens, REG 84 (1971) 370–383; C. Pélékidis, Histoire de ľéphébie attique (1962); J. Plescia, The Oath and Perjury in Ancient Greece (1970); L. Robert, Études épigraphiques et philologiques (1938); P. Siewert, Der Eid von Plataiai (1972).

1 The inscriptions on two blocks, published in Ἀρχ. Ἐφ. 1965 [1967], 131 f., belong to the same stone, as Mitsos, M. Th. (Ἀρχ. Ἐφ. 1975, 39 f.)Google Scholar has now shown against Mitchel, F. W., ZPE 19 (1975) 233–43Google Scholar, who separated them. The first decree is of the year 361/0 B.C.; the second, which is an ephebic document, dated by a different archon (name lost), is still to be assigned to Lycurgean times because of its letter forms (Lewis, D. M., CR 23 (1973) 254Google Scholar, though doubted by Mitsos p. 40, but without arguments).

2 Discussed at length by Pélékidis 10; 19–49.

3 Cf. Pélékidis 7–79; Reinmuth, op. cit. pp. 123–38, but his main support has vanished (see n. 1).

4 First published by Robert 296 ff. The text, mostly with commentaries, is also published in Tod, GHI II no. 204; Pélékidis 112 f.; 75–78; Daux, G. in: Charisterion A. K. Orlandos i (Athens, 1965) 80 ff.Google Scholar; Siewert, 5–7; 29–32; 34; 36 (stylistic remarks); Merkelbach, R., ZPE 9 (1972) 277–83Google Scholar.

5 Daux 370 ff. Daux 373 gives a useful juxtaposition of the epigraphic and the literary versions (but read; ‘Pollux, ed, Bethe, II, p. 134; Stobée, ed. Meineke, II, p. 88’).

6 Daux 373.

7 I have used Plescia's (16 f.) English version, but changed several phrases according to my understanding of the epigraphic text.

8 For the difficulties see Daux 371 ff. Cf. also the different translations by Daux, G., Permanence de la Grèce (Cahiers du Sud, 1948) 63Google Scholar (non vidi), (repeated in Daux 372, and copied by Pélékidis 113 and Garlan, Y., La guerre dans ľantiquité [1972] 193)Google Scholar; by Marrou, H. I., Histoire de ľéducation dans ľantiquité 3 (1955) 153Google Scholar; by Bengtson 138 f.; and by Plescia 16 f.

9 Robert 305; Marrou, op. cit. 153; Bengtson 139; Pélékidis 77 f.; Plescia 17; Ostwald, M., Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (1969) 14Google Scholar.

10 Charisterion A. K. Orlandos I 82; cf. Daux 372 f.

11 Charist. Orlandos 82.

12 Daux 375.

13 For the archaic date of the oath see n. 16 and Appendix.

14 Hignett, , Hist. Ath. Const. 274Google Scholar; 83; 90 f.; 200; Martin, J., Chiron 4 (1974) 30–33Google Scholar.

15 Cf. the Solonian Law F 70 R(uschenbusch) = Plut. Sol. 19.4.

16 Robert 306 f.; Bengtson 139; Guarducci, M., Epigrafia greca II 382 fGoogle Scholar.

17 See Appendix.

18 The concept of bequeathing something undiminished or enlarged was a principle highly esteemed even outside the Greek inheritance law, where it originates. So this obviously effective topos was also used in other speeches, but without any recognisable relation with the ephebic oath: Thuc. i 71.7; ii 36.1–3, 62.3; Hdt. vii 8 a. 1–2; Isoc. viii 94.

19 Similar patterns of concluding a speech, but hardly relevant to the wording of the oath, in Thuc. i 71.7 (see n. 18) and i 78.4.

20 Stob. iv 1.8; Poll. viii 106: (sic!)

21 Cf. Appendix, §1.

22 Jebb, R., Sophocles. The Plays and Fragments, III: Antigone 3 (1900) 127Google Scholar.

23 Goheen, R. F., The Imagery of Sophocles' Antigone (1951) 22Google Scholar.

24 Both Thucydides ii 37.3 (in ) and Sophocles here use the concept of ‘listening’, as does the epigraphic oath, and not the common (cf. a few verses infra, Ant. 676: ).

25 The ancient attribution of the saying to Solon (27.D. = 205 Martina = 30 West, who adds ‘vix genuinum’) is very problematical, cf. also Müller, Gerhard, Sophokles Antigone (1967) 152 f.Google Scholar; for an anonymous parallel, P. Oxy. 3006, col. I, 10, see Diggle, J., ZPE 16 (1975) 76Google Scholar.

26 As has often been assumed since Hegel. For a survey of the interpretations of Creon's role, see Funke, H., Antike u. Abendland 12 (1966) 29 ff.Google Scholar, who reaches similar conclusions to mine (esp. 43 ff.) by other arguments.

27 Ehrenberg, V., Sophocles and Pericles (1954)Google Scholar did not take the oath into account (despite Jebb's suggestion on Ant. 670 f.), though it would have supported his argumentation very well. Cf. pp. 54 and 59.

28 Broadhead, H. D., The Persae of Aeschylus (1960) 231Google Scholar: As a military term is the soldier who stands beside one in the ranks; cf. the oath taken by the Attic (quoted by Jebb on Ant. 671), Here the word is used of those who were intimate associates of the King.'

29 One might object that abandoning dead comrades is not considered a fault, but cf. the oath before the battle at Plataea on the same stone (text e.g. Robert, 307 f.; Tod GHI II, no. 204; Siewert 5 f.), lines 25 ff.: Aeschylus' words 964 f., illustrate the fact that Xerxes has left his comrades unburied.

30 Pericles' first speech contains several points found in Ps.-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. 1.19 f. (=Thuc. i 143.1 f.); 2.4 f. (=143.4); 2.14–16 (=143.5); 2.1 (=143.5). Cf. Gomme, , Hist. Comm. on Thuc., ad locc. I 460–62Google Scholar, and his inference from this (More Essays in Greek History and Literature [1962] 131): ‘Thucydides could and did, sometimes at least, keep to the sense of what had actually been said’. This would support the view that the historical Pericles did use the civic oath in one (or more) of his speeches before the outbreak of the war. But certainty cannot be reached in this disputed area, cf. Luschnat, O., ‘Thukydides’, PW Suppl. XII (1970) 1175–83Google Scholar. Recently Raubitschek, A. E. in: Stadter, P. A. (ed.) The Speeches in Thucydides (1973) 32–48Google Scholar and Kagan, D., YCIS 24 (1975) 71–94Google Scholar, argue for the general authenticity of some speeches. For the fundamentally opposite view, see e.g. Strasburger, H., Hermes 86 (1958) 19Google Scholar, repr. in Herter, H. (ed.), Thukydides (Darmstadt, 1968) 500Google Scholar.

31 See Appendix §5. The same ‘zeugma’ in the epigraphic text and Thuc. ii 37.3, and the absence of the word which in the literary versions is used to avoid this zeugma (cf. n. 20), would indicate the epigraphic version as the ‘source’. But if the duty to prosecute any violation of the laws, inserted in the literary versions (cf. Appendix §5), could be recalled by Thucydides' phrase following the allusion to the oath in ii 37.3 (above p. 104), (sc. ), (for its interpretation see Gomme, Comm., ad loc.), as i consider possible but not probable, this would suggest an echo of the literary version. Neither of these contradictory arguments is conclusive.

32

Plutarch's source, I suggest, may be Theopompus' excursus on Athenian demagogues in his Philippica, which he knew (Them. 19.1; 25.3; 31.3 = FGrH 115 F 85–7), but did not indicate verbis expressis in his Alcibiades (32.2 will refer to Theopompus' Hellenica). Cic., Rep. iii 15: Athenienses iurare enim publice solebant omnem suam esse terram quae oleam frugesve ferret, seems to have the same source. Cicero was familiar with Theopompus' works (cf. FGrH 115 T 36–40; F 286; Leg. i 1.5 ( = T 26, which may be added to F 381) and was particularly interested in the oratory of the Athenian demagogues (Themistocles, Pericles, Cleon, Alcibiades, Critias, Theramenes, etc., are treated in Brut. 27–9; Alcibiades also in De Or. ii 93; Div. ii 143). A further argument is provided by the fact that Theopompus studied the Oath of Plataea (115 F 153) which appears to be linked officially with the ephebic oath, since both oaths are connected in the inscription from Acharnae and in Lycurg. Leoc. 76–81. So there is some probability that Theopompus was acquainted with the text of the ephebic oath, of which a part is quoted verbatim in Plutarch and summarised in Cicero.

33

34 Lycurg., Leoc. 76–8Google Scholar uses the oath in court to prove Leocrates a deserter, apparently in default of any specific law applicable to Leocrates' moving abroad after the defeat at Chaeronea.

35 Cf. also Lycurg., Leoc. 79Google Scholar.

36 Some possible allusions: Aesch. Sept. 14 (cf. 582); Ag. 212; Ar. Eq. 576 f.; Eur. in Lycurg., Leoc. 100Google Scholar, v.15 (=fr. 50, 15 Austin (Novafragm. Euripidea [1968] p. 26)); Lysias xiii 62; cf. xii 95; Pl. Lach. 190d; Lycurg., Leoc. 149Google Scholar. A plain allusion is Arist. Eth. Nic. 1130a30 (I owe this information to Christopher Rowe):

37 Aristoteles u. Athen (1893) I 191–4.