The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

by Ober, Josiah

  9. For a range of views on Cleisthenes, the revolution, and the reforms, see Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet 1996 [1964]; Siewert 1982; Fornara and Samons 1991; Anderson 2003 with review of Pritchard 2005; Hammer 2005; Azoulay and Ismard 2012.

  10. Regional population estimates are from the fourth century data: appendix I; late sixth century numbers were probably lower in each case.

  11. The fundamental works on the Attic demes and deme/trittys/tribe organization are Traill 1975, 1986; Osborne 1985; Whitehead 1986. The geography of the demes has now been modeled in a brilliant new study: Fachard 2014.

  12. Rhodes 1985a remains the fundamental account of the historical development and functioning of the Council of 500. On the Council’s role in building social networks and useful knowledge, see Ober 2008, ch. 4, with literature cited.

  13. In 462 BCE, the Areopagus was relegated to a court that tried certain murder cases; see ch. 8.

  14. The word demokratia was probably coined some time in the early to mid-fifth century, although it is not impossible that it was used as a slogan during the revolution itself; see Hansen 1986b.

  15. On the evidence for other early Greek democracies, some of which might antedate Athens, but none of which is well documented, see Robinson 1997.

  16. The events of 506: Herodotus 5.74–78. No regular Athenian army before this date: Frost 1984. My mental image of the Athenian army of 506 is the ragtag thirteenth century Russian peasant army that confronts Teutonic invaders on a frozen lake in Sergei Eisenstein’s great 1938 Soviet propaganda film, Alexander Nevsky.

  17. A slightly different claim is made a few chapters earlier, at Herodotus 5.66.1: “Athens, which had been great before, now grew even greater when her tyrants had been removed.” While, in the earlier passage, Herodotus seems to offer a more positive assessment of Athens’ earlier standing, the association of growth with liberation is the point of both passages.

  18. The puzzlement has quite often led to mistranslations, or even to philologically unwarranted emendations of the Greek text.

  19. The developed “Cleisthenic” constitution: Hansen 1999. On the boom in Athenian public building after 508 BCE, see Paga 2012.

  20. Battle of Marathon: Herodotus 6.94–117, with Krentz 2011. Importance: Mill 1846. The decision about the silver windfall: Herodotus 7.144.1–2 with Labarbe 1957. van Wees 2013b: 66–67 argues that Athens had built a navy of 50 triremes in the era of the Cleisthenic reforms and thus that the decision of 483 was a continuation of earlier policy, rather than a change of direction.

  21. Athenian decision-making in 481: Ober 2013a; the battle of Salamis and its historical context: Strauss 2004.

  22. Civic associations and trust: Kierstead 2013. Oath-taking: Teegarden 2012. The regional “thirds” by which each tribe was constituted remained essential administrative units but never developed strong identities of their own. Olson (1965, quoted in ch. 3) notes the relative ease with which collective action is achieved within groups small enough to ensure mutual monitoring.

  23. Athens as a polis defined by its social networks: Ober 2008, ch. 4 (building on the fundamental work of Granovetter 1973 and Burt 1992); Ismard 2010. Absence of patronage in classical Athens: Millett 1989.

  24. The discussion of knowledge and expertise in this section draws on Ober 2008, 2013a. The problem of (rational) collective ignorance: Caplan 2007. The problem of how best to use expert judgments along with “collective wisdom” within a democratic framework continues to be a research frontier; see for example http://www.goodjudgmentproject.com/.

  25. Collective wisdom drawing on elite experts without elite capture, with reference to the decision of 481: Ober 2013a: 115–118.

  26. This is the argument of Forsdyke 2005, the best and fullest recent discussion of ostracism and its origins. Notably, the ostracized man’s family was not expelled with him, nor was his property confiscated, and he resumed full citizen status upon his return.

  27. Histories of ancient Greek Sicily: Finley 1968; Berger 1992; Luraghi 1994; De Angelis 2003. The most important single source for ancient Sicilian history before the late fifth century is the historian of the first century BCE, Diodorus Siculus; on Diodorus as a historian and his sources, see Sacks 1990. Thucydides and Herodotus are earlier and vitally important but less comprehensive sources. The history of Greek Sicily is augmented by rich numismatic and archaeological evidence, but the Greek cities of Sicily left very few inscriptions.

  28. Sicilian agriculture and its role in economic and political development: De Angelis 2000, 2006, 2010.

  29. History of the tyrants of fifth century Sicily and their epicracies: CAH 4 ch. 16 (by D. Asheri), 5 ch. 7 (by D. Asheri); Luraghi 1994.

  30. Meiggs and Lewis 1988, no. 27.

  31. Simonides F 106 Diehl. See note by W. Oldfather on pp. 194–195 of the (1946) Loeb edition of Diodorus.

  32. Meiggs and Lewis 1988, no. 29.

  33. Pluralistic ignorance as a goal of modern authoritarian governments: Kuran 1995; pluralistic ignorance as a problem that ancient democracies sought to overcome: Teegarden 2014a.

  34. Koinon dogma: Teegarden in progress. Rise of rhetoric in Sicily: Kennedy 1994.

  35. On the fifth century democracy at Syracuse, see Rutter 2000; Robinson 2000, 2011: 67–89. Syracuse instituted a lottery for some offices in a constitutional reform in 412 BCE and instituted a council in the mid-fourth century: ch. 9.

  36. D. Asheri in CAH 5 p. 167 estimates Syracuse’s mid-fifth century population as 20,000 citizens, with a total population of ca. 250,000. Syracuse seems to have employed the three traditional Dorian tribes in organizing its army (i47: p. 228), but these did not have the civic functions of the Cleisthenic tribes in Athens. Contrast the establishment of Athens-like demes, grouped into tribelike organizations, at Eretria: Knoepfler 1997; Fachard 2014, and this book, ch. 9.

  37. The generally salutary role played by public speakers at Athens: Ober 1989; see also this book, ch. 9.

  38. Forsdyke 2005, Appendix 2, pp. 285–289, suggests first (contra Diodorus), that petalism might have been an independent Syracusan invention and, next, that petalism might have been used whenever the Syracusan demos felt that a public figure was acting inappropriately. She surveys possible evidence for ostracism and ostracismlike institutions at Argos, Miletus, Megara, Ephesus, Chersonesus, and Kyrene.

  39. As we see (this book, ch. 9), the contrary proposition, that eastern Greece could not have foregone grain production at a level high enough to feed its population without Sicily, is false: in the mid-fourth century, when Sicilian production declined, the eastern Greek poleis found a ready supply of grain from other sources.

  CHAPTER 8 Golden Age of Empire, 478–404

  1. History of Greece in the fifth century BCE: CAH 5. Ehrenberg 1973; Osborne 2000; Hornblower 2002; Rhodes 2010. Ancient sources: Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983. Meiggs and Lewis 1988.

  2. Wreckage of Athens: Thucydides 1.89.3; Athenian minting, 480–449 BCE: Starr 1970.

  3. The ordinary equipment and training of hoplites were not well suited to siege operations: Ober 1991. The role of mobilization and fortifications in sustaining state independence is a recurring theme in this book: see especially ch. 11.

  4. Persian wars and Athenian strategy: Strauss and Ober 1990: ch. 1.

  5. The conflicted relationship of Persia’s sometime Greek subjects with the Persian Empire: Starr 1975; Debord 1999; see further this book, ch. 9.

  6. Some of Sparta’s Peloponnesian League allies did, however, command considerable naval forces: Kelly 1982.

  7. The concept of escalation dominance is applied to Roman history by Luttwak 1976.

  8. Foundation of the Delian League, first tax assessment: Meiggs 1972 chs. 3–4; funding ship-building and naval operations with taxes on allies: van Wees 2013b: 104–106.

  9. Kallet 2013 surveys the early history of the Delian League and emphasizes that the league’s naval forces were, from the beginning, employed to further specifically Athenian int
erests, notably in the northern Aegean.

  10. Early operations against defectors from the Delian League: Meiggs 1972 ch. 5; Kallet 2013.

  11. Azoulay 2014 is an excellent biography of Pericles, covering his political career and opponents in detail. Intensification of democracy: Fornara and Samons 1991; Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace 2007: ch. 5.

  12. Ostracisms of the fifth century: Forsdyke 2005: 165–177.

  13. The high imperial era of the 450s and 431: Meiggs 1972 chs. 6–10.

  14. On the empire as a “greater Athenian state,” see Morris 2009, 2013a, emphasizing smallness of scale and ethnic homogeneity of rulers and ruled. Scheidel 2006: 8–9 describes Athens’ relationship with subject poleis as a hybrid of hegemony and empire (see this book, ch. 2 n. 21 for definitions), suggesting that the completion of Athens’ development as an imperial state was preempted by military defeat in the course of the Peloponnesian War. Important studies of the empire include Meiggs 1972; Rhodes 1985b; Mattingly 1996; Boedeker and Raaflaub 1998; Constantakopoulou 2007; Ma, Papazarkadas, and Parker 2009.

  15. Persian influences in fifth century Athens: Miller 1997. Raaflaub 2009 goes further, arguing (p. 97): “with few exceptions, the entire range of Athenian instruments of empire was derived from Persian models.” Athenian emulation of some Persian techniques is plausible, but the instruments in question (tribute, garrisons, destruction as punishment for rebellion, imposition of officials and regimes, use of naval power) are common to empires very widely separated in time and space.

  16. Some 51, or about 1/6 of the poleis of the Delian League are ranked as less than fully Hellenic, i.e., “Hellenicity” β or γ. See table 2.4 for discussion.

  17. The principal-agent problem, first identified as an issue in the management of business firms, has been generalized to a wide range of both economic and political environments: Stiglitz 2008. Cf. Xenophon (Anabasis 1.5.9): The king’s empire is strong in size and population yet weakened by the fact that it is “dependent on the length of roads and the inevitable dispersion of defensive forces.” See further Starr 1975: 69–71.

  18. Ionic ideology: Connor 1993; Morris 2009. Greek ethnic identity: Hall 1997.

  19. Roman citizenship: Sherwin-White 1973. Difficulties in creating city-state Empires and distinctiveness of the Roman approach: Scheidel 2006.

  20. The Athenian citizenship law: Patterson 2005; Blok 2009. Girls born to mixed marriages might be offered in marriage with a dowry but were very unlikely to find an Athenian husband.

  21. Simonton 2012. De Ste. Croix 1954 inaugurated a long scholarly debate (discussed in De Ste. Croix 1972) by arguing that democracy, as protection against exploitation by oligarchs, was more valuable to most people within the empire than was local autonomy.

  22. Athenian imperial policy and democracy: Brock 2009; Robinson 2011: ch. 4.

  23. Mediterranean piracy in antiquity and its effects on economic activity: De Souza 1999; Gabrielsen 2003.

  24. Hedrick 1994 discusses the monumental nature of the “first stele” and its role as an imperial monument, but, to my knowledge, its potential role as a long-horizon signaling device has not been noticed.

  25. Of the 318 known states of the Delian League, 209 have size estimates. Of these, 154 were size 3 or below; 55 were size 4 or above. Eteokarpathians: Anderson and Dix 2004.

  26. Rational calculation in classical Greek thought: Ober 2009. Economics of the empire: Finley 1978; Kallet-Marx 1993; Kallet 2001, 2007; Figueira 1998; Samons 2000; Erickson 2005.

  27. Assuming total imperial taxes at 1,000 T (talents) (Xenophon Anabasis 7.1.27); ca. 550,000 families with daily income of 0.5–1.0 dr/day. Morris 2009, using different figures, suggests that Athens’ subjects paid for security about half of what was paid by the subjects of imperial Rome.

  28. Value of trade and markets: Bresson 2000, 2007. Cabotage: Horden and Purcell 2000.

  29. Standardized weights, measures, and coinage: Figueira 1998; Johnstone 2011: ch. 3. Minting: van Alfen 2011; Ober forthcoming: n. 16 with references cited.

  30. Greek navies were not good at large-scale and sustained naval blockades for operational reasons discussed by Gomme 1937; Harrison 1999.

  31. Athens’ imperial cleruchy system: Meiggs 1972: ch. 14; Moreno 2009.

  32. Imperial era Athenian building: Boersma 1970; Wycherley 1978; Camp 2001: 59–116. Labor and wages: Loomis 1998.

  33. Athenian mining and industry: Hopper 1953, 1979; Conophagos 1980; Bissa 2008.

  34. Athenian demography in the fifth century: Hansen 1986a, 1988, 2006c.

  35. Ehrenberg 1973; Harris 2002.

  36. Culture in imperial Athens: Boedeker and Raaflaub 1998.

  37. Morris 2009; Netz in progress.

  38. Warships: Ober 2010b. Finance: Davies 1994; Kallet-Marx 1993, 1994; Samons 2000.

  39. Sophists and their claims to expertise: de Romilly 1992; Cole 1991. Pyzyk forthcoming considers the question of Greek theories of expertise in detail.

  40. Thucydides as a political scientist: Ober 2006b; Ober and Perry 2014. Cf. Reynolds 2009 for Thucydides’ epistemology.

  41. Chance and intelligence in Thucydides: Edmunds 1975.

  42. Newness of Athenian power and its conditions: Ober 2001.

  43. These Periclean speeches are analyzed in more detail in Ober 1998: ch. 2.

  44. Limits of Pericles’ authority: Ober 1996: ch. 6 On Pericles leadership, see further Azoulay 2014.

  45. Pseudo-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. The arguments of the “Old Oligarch” are analyzed in more detail in Ober 1998: 14–27.

  46. The “Corinthian assessement” is discussed in detail in Ober 2010b. Different evaluations of the origins of the war and the events leading up to it: Kagan 1969; De Ste. Croix 1972; Hanson 2005; Lendon 2010.

  47. Pericles’ strategy: Ober 1996: ch 6. The early stages of the war: Kagan 1974.

  48. The Athenian plague was identified as typhoid on the basis of DNA tests by Papagrigorakis et al. 2006, but their identification has been challenged by other specialists; see Littman 2009 for discussion.

  49. Mytilene was among the handful of states within the empire that still contributed ships rather than tribute. It was also, like Chios (i840) and Miletus (i854), for example, both big and oligarchic.

  50. Thucydides notes that this summer (428) saw a record number of Athenian ships in service, some 250 in all, and that the expense was immense (3.17): The passage is regarded by some as spurious or misplaced. Cf. discussion by Hornblower 1991 ad loc.

  51. On the high level of skills demanded of the trireme rower, see Coates, Platis, and Shaw 1990; Rankov 1993; Strauss 1996.

  52. The ideology of the fifth century Athenian hoplites is sometimes imagined as sharply distinguished from the ideology of the lower class citizens who served as rowers, e.g., by Raaflaub 1996 and Samons 1998. But see Hanson 1996; Pritchard 1998; Strauss 2000.

  53. See, further, Ober 2010b, from which the previous several paragraphs on the Mytilenean campaign are adapted.

  54. See further Price 2001.

  55. Development of the tribute system under the empire: Meiggs 1972: chs. 13, 18; internal eisphora war tax on Athenians: Thucydides 3.19.1.

  56. Kelly 1972 explores the complex maneuvers by various parties interested in renewing hostilities.

  57. On the Melian dialogue, see Morrison 2000.

  58. The destruction of Melos was long remembered by the Greeks as a particularly brutal moment in Athens’ imperial history, but it was not unique: Skione (i609, size 2) had been treated similarly after a revolt five years before (421 BCE): Thucydides 5.32.

  59. Kahneman 2011: ch. 26, and Ober and Perry 2014 on Thucydides as a prospect theorist avant la lettre. On the Melians’ choice, see further Orwin 1994: ch. 5, emphasizing the emotion of shame (at the prospect of loss of independence).

  60. Thucydides on the Sicilian debate: Ober 1998: 104–113.

  61. Similarities of Athens and Syracuse: Thucydides 7.55.2 and Ober 1996: 79–80.

  62. Campaign
in Sicily and the role of Gylippos: Thucydides books 6–7 and Kagan 1981.

  63. Athens in the wake of the Sicilian disaster, and the oligarchic interlude: Thucydides book 8 and Kagan 1987.

  64. Xenophon Hellenica 1.6.31 claims that in 406 Bce Athenian crews were inferior to the Peloponnesian counterparts: It is unclear whether the change was due more to the loss of skilled rowers on the Athenian side, or the growing experience of their opponents.

  65. The late stages of the Peloponnesian War: Xenophon Hellenica Books 1–2.

  66. Athens in the immediate aftermath of the war: Strauss 1986.

  CHAPTER 9 Disorder and Growth, 403–340 BCE

  1. Detailed histories of the Greek world in the fourth century include Hammond and Griffith 1979; Tritle 1997; Rhodes 2010; CAH 6; Buckler 2003. Documents: Harding 1985; Rhodes and Osborne 2003.

  2. New poleis on Anatolian coast: 19/115 (9%). Island poleis: Rutishauser 2012.

  3. Knoepfler 1997; Fachard 2012: 47–49, 2014. Like Athens, each citizen was a member of a deme and tribe, citizens were called by their demotic, deme membership was hereditary, and each deme was governed by a demarchos.

  4. Greek federalism: Shipley and Hansen 2006; Mackil 2013. Role of market-preserving federalism in economic development: Weingast 1995.

  5. Expertise and mobility: Pyzyk forthcoming. Artillery: Marsden 1969; Campbell 2011. Military architecture responds to artillery: Ober 1987. Military innovations of the fourth century and rural fortifications in Attica: Ober 1985; rural fortifications in Eretria: Fachard 2012. Rational foreign policy at Athens: Hunt 2010. Interstate cooperation: Ryder 1965; Low 2007.

  6. The diffusion of Greek science in the fourth century. Netz in progress.

  7. Individual expression: Morris 1992: 128–144. Individuals as opposed to collectivities regarded as agents of change: Ferrario 2014. Spread of democracy: Teegarden 2014a. Honors to individuals: Shear 2011. Individual responsibility, example of the trial of Socrates: Ober 2010a.