Wandering Greeks

by Garland, Robert

  Meanwhile the oligarchs had destroyed most of Leontini and migrated to Syracuse, where they received citizenship. After a while, however, they fell out with their hosts. So they returned to what was still standing of their old city and seized an outpost in a nearby region called Bricinniae. In 422 the Athenians sent a representative to Sicily, warning the islanders of Syracuse’s imperialistic designs and urging them to join a coalition in order to “save the people of Leontini.” Realizing that the mission was fuelled by Athens’s own imperialistic designs, however, the Sicilians declined. A curious irony lies in the fact that the oligarchs who had taken refuge in the ruins of Leontini were now joined by “most of the deported democrats.” For once attachment to polis seems to have trumped political affiliation.

  We next hear of Leontini when the Athenians were debating whether to undertake the Sicilian Expedition in 415. Some of the phugades had allied themselves with a native Sicilian people called the Elymnians and were requesting that the Syracusans be punished for depopulating their city (Thuc. 6.6.2 and 19.1). The Athenians agreed, and made it one of their principal objectives to rebuild Leontini after their victory. Since the expedition failed, however, the city was not rebuilt until 405/4 by citizens of Gela and Camarina (D.S. 13.114.1; cf. Berger 1991, 137).

  Deportation by the Thirty Tyrants

  One of the terms of peace that was imposed on Athens by the victors at the end of the Peloponnesian War was the return of all exiles. This included many members of the oligarchic government known as the Four Hundred, who, after being expelled from Athens in 411, had fled to Decelea, occupied at the time by a Spartan garrison (Thuc. 8.98.1). Their recall was evidently intended to intimidate the democrats because of their pro-Spartan sympathies. The exiles probably began returning in March or April 404 (And. 3.11–12; Xen. Hell. 2.2.23; Plu. Lys. 14.3–4). Some six months later the Spartan-backed Thirty Tyrants came to power. According to Xenophon, “more than half the population,” including most of those who were well-to-do, fled from Athens to escape being massacred (Mem. 2.7.2; cf. D.S. 14.5.6–7). Though “more than half the population” is an exaggeration, the fear engendered by the policies of the Thirty no doubt did indeed occasion a mass exodus.

  More dislocation was to follow. In December the Thirty drew up a roster of 3,000 citizens who henceforth constituted the restricted dêmos. They followed this up three months later by banning those who were excluded from the roll from entering Athens and depriving them of their land (Xen. Hell. 2.4.1). As Krentz (1982, 64–66) has suggested, it may be that they intended the 3,000 to replicate the Spartan citizen body known as the homoioi (peers), which also comprised about 3,000 at this date, and further that the excluded should take on the same status as the Spartan perioikoi (dwellers round about), in a move to increase the size of Athens’s agrarian population. How the Thirty would have redistributed the land they intended to seize, however, is unclear. Whatever the intention behind these measures, they were ill-conceived because the deportees could now more easily make common cause with the opponents of the Thirty. Under the leadership of Thrasybulus, the latter gained control of the strategic outpost of Phyle, situated on the southern slope of Mount Parnes on Athens’s northern border. Thrasybulus’s force would eventually include many deportees.

  The scale of the disruption caused by the deportation must have been enormous. Probably most of those who were forced to leave Athens found refuge in the Piraeus as internally displaced persons, as we would call them. Others left Attica entirely, seeking refuge in Argos, Boeotia, Chalcis, Corinth, Megara, and Oropus (Krentz, 1982, 69 with refs.). We catch a revealing glimpse of the plight of those who remained in Attica from Xenophon’s unflattering portrait of Aristarchus, a resident of the Piraeus, who complained to Socrates of having to give shelter to his sisters, nieces, and cousins. “It’s hard to see one’s relatives die” he observed wearily, “but impossible to look after so many people in times like these” (Mem. 2.7.2). We do not learn what his thoughts were about having to accommodate his dependent male relatives, assuming he had any.

  What would Xenophon’s readers have made of Aristarchus? His text gives no indication. The portrait may well be drawn from real life, however. And if a well-to-do individual like Aristarchus felt resentment at providing refuge for his closest female relatives when the alternative was to leave them to fend for themselves, what was the fate of those with no family members to turn to?

  Diodorus Siculus tells us that to prevent the Athenian deportees from obtaining support abroad, the Spartans passed a decree requiring “that phugades be brought back from all over Greece and that anyone who obstructed this should be liable to a fine of five talents.” He continues: “Although the decree was harsh, all the states obeyed with the exception of the Argives, who hated Spartan cruelty and pitied the misfortunes of the aklêrountes (displaced persons) and therefore provided shelter for the exiles out of humanity.” The fact that the Argives are portrayed as partly motivated by pity is impressive since we rarely hear of Greeks responding to refugees in this way. Even so, we should not discount the possibility that an unflinching adherence to democratic principles was partly responsible for the Argive response. Diodorus also tells us that the Thebans passed a decree that “anyone who witnessed a refugee being led off and failed to render assistance to the best of his ability should be fined” (14.6.1–3).

  We do not know how many Athenians were forced back to Athens at this time as a result of the Spartan decree, nor what fate awaited them at the hands of the Thirty once they were returned to Attic soil. Their discomfiture would have been short-lived, however, since the government of the Thirty fell soon afterward. In accordance with the settlement of 403 that followed, partisans of the Thirty were permitted to withdraw (exoikein) to Eleusis, while retaining their rights as Athenian citizens ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 39). They were given ten days to signal their intention to do so and ten more to take up residence in Eleusis. Those abroad at the time of the amnesty were granted the same number of days after their return. Our sources do not indicate how many took up the offer. Eleusis now became in effect a semi-independent state for oligarchs who refused to live under the restored democracy. In other words, the Athenian state underwent a dioikismos, viz the separation of a formally unified polis. The two communities were reunited in 401.

  Laws Ordering the Expulsion of Foreigners

  In wartime some Greek states introduced an emergency measure known as xenêlasiai (a plural noun meaning “expulsion of foreigners”). They did so because they suspected that foreigners were likely to reveal important military secrets to the enemy or undermine the morale of their citizenry. The Athenians claimed that the Spartans passed a law to this effect on the eve of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 1.144.2; cf. Xen. Lac. 14.4). Since the Spartans only rarely permitted foreigners to settle permanently within their borders, however, its principal target, assuming the charge is authentic, must have been temporary visitors.

  The Athenians responded by declaring that they would lift their controversial ban excluding the Megarians “from the harbors of the Athenian empire and the Attic agora” (Thuc. 1.67.4, 139.1) only if the Spartans revoked their decree in turn. In his Funeral Speech delivered the same year Pericles made much of the fact that the Athenians permitted foreigners to remain within their borders in wartime, stating, “We make our city common to all men and never by the expulsion of foreigners prevent anyone from learning or seeing anything” (Thuc. 2.39.1). Pericles’ claim amounts to propaganda. It certainly served the interests of the Athenians to promulgate the belief that they promoted openness and tolerance toward strangers and that the Spartans exhibited the opposite tendency. But though the Athenians did not expel Peloponnesians residing within their borders at the outbreak of war, they may well have subjected them to prejudice, thereby prompting them to take flight.

  The Massacre and Enslavement of Prisoners of War

  According to the conventions of Greek warfare, the inhabitants of a conquered city were treated
very differently from prisoners of war. Before a siege began, they were free to depart with their belongings. Once a city had fallen, however, it was customary to carry out andrapodismos. Typically this meant massacring all the men of military age and enslaving the survivors, though occasionally the men would be spared (see appendix E). The enslaved were either given to the soldiers who had taken the city or sold off at a public auction. The city was then either razed to the ground or given over to new settlers. Andrapodismos was the fate meted out by the Spartans to the Plataeans in 427, and the fate, too, that the Athenians almost meted out to the Mytilenaeans later that year. It is what the Athenians did to the citizens of Torone and Scione, and later to those of Melos.

  Very possibly the women would have been raped before they were sent off into slavery, though our sources, perhaps self-servingly, suggest that the perpetrators of this atrocity were for the most part non-Greeks (for example, Hdt. 8.33; D.S. 13.58.1). But why should we believe that women would have been protected from the lust of Greek soldiers? There is some evidence to indicate that a more humane attitude evolved over time, at least among the Macedonians. Philip II is not known to have massacred the population of any town he conquered. When, for instance, he took Amphipolis by siege in 358/7, he “exiled those who were disaffected but treated the rest humanely”(D.S. 16.8.2).

  Soldiers captured on the battlefield were either ransomed, exchanged for prisoners on the other side, or kept in captivity to exert political pressure. In this last category were the 292 Spartan hoplites captured on Sphacteria and the 700 male survivors from the siege of Torone, who were kept in Athens as hostages before being released at the end of the Archidamian War (Thuc. 4.38.5, 5.3.4). Humane standards did not always apply, however. On the eve of the departure of the Sicilian Expedition the Athenian generals took the decision that in the event of victory they would enslave both the Syracusans and the Selinuntians and impose an annual tribute upon the rest of Sicily (D.S. 13.2.6). More egregious yet was the slaughter of all their Athenian prisoners by Sparta’s allies after their naval victory at Aegospotami in 405 (Xen. Hell. 2.1.31–32). The allies took this drastic step because the Athenians had voted before the battle to chop off the right hands of all their prisoners and had drowned the crews of two triremes they had taken.

  1 “They once received us as guests and brothers,” commented a Syrian refugee living in Jordan. “Now they see us as a curse” (cited in the Guardian [April 23, 2013] in an article subtitled “Solidarity with Northern Neighbours Wanes as Jordanian Government Says Cost of Hosting Refugees Could Reach $1 Billion.”)

  6

  THE EVACUEE

  The Logistics of Evacuation

  In time of war civilian populations become a handicap, especially if they happen to be living outside the city walls. Vulnerable to the enemy, they are also a distraction since they are liable to prevent the military from pursuing a coherent plan of action. They must be protected, but how? Two options are available: either they can be conveyed to a friendly community nearby or brought inside the walls, although the latter course is feasible only if there is enough space to accommodate them. Whichever option is adopted, the logistics of evacuating thousands of people in the lead-up to the outbreak of hostilities was one of the most challenging exercises a polis could undertake. Very often the decision would have been taken only in the teeth of great resistance by the inhabitants, many of whom, like Aeneas’s father Anchises, would have found it impossible, at least initially, to conceive of a life elsewhere. “You who still have your youthful vigor and strength, take flight,” he advises. “If the heavenly powers had wanted to prolong my life they would have preserved my home” (Verg. Aen. 2.638–42). Many families, faced with the need to make an immediate decision, must have found themselves similarly riven by discord. Rarely, too, would an entire population have made it to safety. In 409 the Syracusan commander Diocles decided to evacuate half the population of Himera on board his fleet of triremes and transport it outside the borders of their territory to escape the Carthaginians. The remainder was forced to trek to Syracuse—a distance of about 120 miles (D.S. 13.61.4–6). Many no doubt perished along the way or else fell into the hands of the Carthaginians.

  Greek historians give little attention to wartime evacuations, even though they must have been commonplace. Indeed it may well be because they were so frequent that they provide only the briefest commentary.

  The Evacuation of Attica before the Battle of Salamis

  As soon as they heard of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480, the Athenians were thrown into panic. They knew they could expect no mercy from the Persians. Ten years previously they had defeated Darius’s army, sent to punish them for supporting the Ionians in their abortive revolt. The Peloponnesians had agreed to make a stand in Boeotia if they were forced to retreat from the pass at Thermopylae but they had reneged on their promise and retreated to the Isthmus of Corinth, some 40 miles to the southwest of Athens. So now the Athenians had to evacuate their entire population, about 150,000 in total. This was in accordance with the advice that Delphi had given them in the form of two separate oracles (Hdt. 7.140.2, 141.4):

  “Leave your homes and the high peaks of your wheel-like city and flee to the ends of the earth.”

  “Don’t wait for the cavalry and the huge army that is coming from the mainland, but withdraw and turn your backs on them.”

  In other words, Apollo left them no choice. Or had he? Though the first oracle urged the abandonment of Attica, the second refrained from recommending such a drastic course.

  In actual fact the Athenians had probably decided to evacuate as soon as they caught wind of the fact that Xerxes was marching on Athens. After the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium, fought on the same day in late August, however, they knew there was no alternative. All the women, children, and resident aliens were to be transported either to Troezen, a polis on the northeast coast of the Peloponnese, or to Aegina, an island in the Saronic Gulf. Both destinations were about a day’s sailing from Athens. The men of fighting age and the elderly were transported to Salamis, an island that lies only a mile from the Attic coast. Salamis and Troezen were obvious destinations (see later). Aegina was not. Indeed part of the reason why Athens, in Thucydides’ memorable phrase (1.93.4), had decided to “attach itself to the sea” was her hostile relations with Aegina (Hdt. 7.144.1). Perhaps, as Strauss (2004, 60) has suggested, the island now “wished to make amends for its past,” though why remains a mystery.

  MAP 5 The evacuation of Attica before the Battle of Salamis.

  An inscription found at Troezen, whose lettering is of early third-century date, purports to reproduce the text of the decree that was passed by the Council and the Assembly regarding provisions for the evacuation. Though the authenticity of the document, sometimes known as the Themistocles Decree after its prime mover, has been questioned, it is nonetheless thought to contain a “historical kernel” (ML p. 50). Either way it sheds an important light on the manner in which the evacuation was envisaged to have taken place in retrospect. The relevant portion reads as follows (ML 23.4–12 = Fornara 55):

  The city is to be entrusted to Athena, the protector of Athens, and to all the other gods for them to guard and defend it against the barbarian on the country’s behalf. All Athenians and xenoi [foreigners] living in Athens are to settle their wives and children in Troezen…. [Elderly people and] possessions are to be deposited on Salamis. The treasurers and the priestesses [are to remain guarding the possessions] of the gods on the Acropolis.

  If the decree was passed as soon as the Athenians learned of the Persian advance in late June, there would have been time for a relatively orderly evacuation—if indeed any evacuation can ever be described as orderly. What remains problematic is whether the decision to evacuate was taken well in advance of the arrival of the Persians but only put into effect much later; or whether two separate evacuations took place, one in late June and relatively orderly, the other in early September and more frantic. Whichever w
as the case, it would have been a very difficult and time-consuming operation. Indeed nothing comparable had ever been attempted before. The metoikêsis of the Phocaeans, which we considered earlier, had been a much smaller operation.

  For several weeks families of refugees made their slow and halting way through the Attic countryside to the port of Piraeus, currently undergoing fortification, and to the open bay of Phaleron to the east, where they waited to be conveyed to safety. They had abandoned not only their homes but also everything that was precious to them. All the valuables that they could not take with them—their pottery, their glass bowls, and the images of their gods—they had hastily buried in the ground. They knew the Persians, bent on revenge, would spare nothing—and so it proved. When the invaders advanced through Attica, they smashed all the funerary monuments that lay in their path and destroyed all the temples on the Acropolis (D.S. 11.14.5 and 16.2). The Athenians who had been conveyed to Salamis would have had a ringside view of the conflagration.

  FIGURE 10 Attic silver tetradrachma (coin worth four drachmae), second half of fifth century. The obverse depicts the head of Athena, wearing a helmet adorned with three olive leaves, perhaps commemorating Athens’s victory at the Battle of Salamis in 480. On the reverse is an owl and an olive twig with a waning moon of uncertain significance to the left. The Attic tetradrachma became ubiquitous in the fifth century due to Athens’s political and economic hegemony. The population of Attica was evacuated during both the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. A sizable proportion of her citizens was also deported by the Thirty Tyrants in 404.