Wandering Greeks

by Garland, Robert

  Later, in ca. 457–56, the Athenians transported them to Naupactus, a port at the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf which they had recently seized from the Ozolian (or Western) Locrians (Thuc. 1.103.1–3; cf. D.S.11.84.7–8; Paus. 4.24.7). Naupactus thus became a kind of colony of runaway slaves, though the analogy is not entirely apt. An unpublished inscription suggests that the exiles coexisted peacefully with the indigenous population, both groups placing themselves under the protection of Athena Polias (Lewis 1992, 118).

  The descendants of the refugees fought alongside the Athenians both against the Spartans at Pylos in 425 and against the Syracusans in Sicily in 413 (Thuc. 4.9.1; 7.57.8). Following Athens’s defeat at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405, however, the Messenians, as they continued to call themselves, were expelled from Naupactus by the Peloponnesians. Pausanias (4.26.2) claims that some of them went to live with their relatives in Sicily and Rhegium, but that the majority departed for Libya, where they gave military assistance to the inhabitants of Euesperides (modern-day Benghazi). And there they remained for at least a generation.

  After the defeat of the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 Epaminondas advocated that a polis should be established for the Messenians in the foothills of Mount Ithome. He evidently chose this site both because it was the strongest natural fortress in the region and because it was a site of great patriotic significance. He was hardly motivated by humanitarian concerns for a dispossessed people, any more than the Athenians had been in the 460s when they settled the Messenians at Naupactus. On the contrary he envisaged Messene, allied to Megalopolis, as a way of containing the Spartans in the southeast Peloponnese (see earlier, chapter 4). His plan succeeded brilliantly, and the Spartans were reduced to a power of minor military significance.

  What percentage of those who settled in Messene claimed descent from those who had been exiled in 464 is unknown. Pausanias reports the tradition that when summoned back to their homeland the Messenians “collected together more quickly than anyone might have expected, due both to their longing for their homeland and to their hatred for the Spartans” (4.26.5). This seems highly dubious, to put it mildly. Recalling a people who had been dispersed over a wide geographical area would have been an arduous and time-consuming task. Nor is it by any means obvious that repatriation would have seemed a particularly attractive proposition, involving as it did living in close proximity to the hated Spartans. Many who lived abroad may well have been content to recount tales of Messenian prehistory and stay rootedly put. After all, very few—if any—had ever set foot in Messenia, and they can hardly have felt much attachment to its soil.

  Most of the settlers probably came from the ranks of those who were already living in Laconia and Messenia, and from soldiers who were serving in Epaminondas’s army. We know that some of those who took up the offer were of proven non-Messenian ethnicity because Diodorus Siculus, following the contemporary historian Ephorus, explicitly states that Epaminondas did not restrict citizenship to those claiming to be of Messenian stock but registered “all those who wished”—a further indication that the offer of resettlement may have had only limited appeal (15.66.1).

  As ever in this study, many questions remain unanswered. How long did it take to build the wall and the houses, and to provide the new city with a proper water supply and other essential facilities? Who footed the bill? (Probably Epaminondas did, on behalf of the Boeotian Confederacy, but we do not know this for certain.) Assuming that the city was still being completed when the first settlers began to arrive, how were they domiciled? Was any upper limit put on the number that was permitted to relocate? How were they distributed inside the polis? Were social and/or ethnic distinctions observed in the allocation of allotments? (Presumably those claiming descent from the original exiles had first choice, though again we do not know this for certain.)

  Mass Enforced Repatriation

  The enforced repatriation of large groups of people was sometimes used by a besieging army as a weapon of war, in part because the swelling of the citizen body increases the number of mouths that need to be fed, thereby fomenting unrest, if not a complete breakdown of the social and political order. Xenophon, for instance, tells us that toward the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan admiral Lysander, following his naval victory at Aegospotami in 405:

  sent the Athenian garrisons [that is, the cleruchs] and every other Athenian whom he saw anywhere back to Athens, granting them safe conduct on condition that they sailed to that destination alone but not if they sailed anywhere else, in the conviction that the more people who gathered in the Piraeus and Athens, the sooner there would be a scarcity of food (Hell. 2.2.2).

  The tactic was successful, and a few months later Athens was forced to surrender. Likewise, after the Thirty Tyrants had established their rule, the Spartans decreed that “Athenian exiles should be returned from everywhere and that those who prevented their return should be deemed enemies of Sparta” (Plu. Lys. 27.2). In this case enforced repatriation was intended to keep the city weak and divided by increasing the number of Spartan sympathizers.

  Enforced repatriation inevitably causes massive legal and logistical problems. A case in point involves the repatriation of the oligarchs of Phlius, a town in the northwest Argolid, who had been driven out by their democratic opponents in 382. Eventually the democrats voted to reinstall the exiles because they feared that the Spartans, who sympathized with the oligarchs, would exact reprisals. So they agreed to restore their property and compensate those who had acquired it in the interim at public expense. Disputes between the current owners and the returning exiles were to be settled in a court of law (Xen. Hell. 5.2.10).

  Once their fear of Spartan military intervention had receded, however, the democrats reneged on the deal (5.3.10). They refused to hear any complaints in an impartial court (viz one made up equally of democrats and oligarchs) as they had originally promised. Instead they made the exiles plead before a popular court. Since this was composed of the same people who had previously refused to hand over the confiscated property, it was unlikely to deliver a fair verdict. “What kind of justice is this,” the oligarchs indignantly demanded, “where the guilty are also the judges?” So saying, they went into exile a second time, this time voluntarily, accompanied by others who were sympathetic to their cause.

  The oligarchs presented their case to the Spartans, who agreed to come to their rescue. When Phlius fell in 379 after an eighteen months’ siege, the Spartan king Agesilaus proposed peace on the following terms (5.3.25):

  Fifty men from the restored exiles and fifty men from those at home [that is, the democrats] should first determine who should be left alive and who should be condemned in accordance with due process, and secondly establish a constitution under which to run the state.

  The episode starkly reveals the problems that returning exiles sometimes caused, particularly when they were able to seek support from an outside power. Even without that complication, however, their attempt to repossess their property would have put enormous strains on the social fabric of the polis, as it does at the end of the Odyssey when Odysseus seeks to repossess his home.

  The Exiles’ Decree of Alexander the Great

  The most comprehensive instance of mass enforced repatriation was that undertaken by Alexander the Great. At the beginning of his reign Alexander had taken steps not to aggravate the refugee crisis that he had inherited as the leader of the Greek world. So in 335 he summoned a convention at the Isthmus of Corinth and declared that there should be “no executions or phugai [banishments] contrary to the laws of the city-states, no seizing of property, no parceling out of land, no cancellation of debts, and no freeing of slaves for the purpose of bringing about a revolution” ([Dem.] 17.15). In the spring of 324, however, facing the threat of insurrection, he announced to his army at Opis in Mesopotamia that all his generals and satraps were to disband their mercenary armies. The consequences of this action were dire. The release of mercenaries always presented a threat, but A
lexander’s disbandment was on an unprecedented scale. As a result, as Diodorus Siculus reports, “mercenaries released from service were running wild throughout the whole of Asia, supporting themselves by plunder.” Many of them gathered at Taenarum, a major center for mercenary recruitment, where they placed themselves under the command of the Athenian general Leosthenes, Alexander’s sworn enemy (17.111.1–4).

  Had Alexander not foreseen the implications of his decision? Perhaps he determined that there was no alternative. At any rate he sought a public venue to make his ruling binding on all those Greek cities—how many we do not know—that now would have to deal with the consequences of exiles returning en masse. Accordingly at the commencement of the Olympic Games in late July 324 he promulgated what is known as the Exiles’ Decree. The decree established a panhellenic amnesty for all refugees by requiring them to return to their native cities and regain possession of their property. It took the form of an open letter that Nicanor of Stagira, Aristotle’s adopted son and future son-in-law, handed to the winner of the heralds’ competition to read to the assembled audience. Diodorus, who quotes a contemporary historian called Hieronymus of Cardia, has preserved the text of the letter, which was concise to the point of terseness (18.8.4):

  FIGURE 16 Silver tetradrachma struck in the name of Alexander the Great, 325–23, though as Price (1991, vol. 1, 88) notes, “the attributions of lifetime issues are purely tentative.” The obverse depicts the head of either Heracles or the deified Alexander in the guise of Heracles, wearing the skin of the Nemean lion, which the hero had slain. The reverse depicts Zeus, Heracles’ father and Alexander’s ancestor, seated on a throne holding a staff in his left hand with an eagle perched on his extended right hand. A wreath is to the left. Alexander coins were minted principally to pay soldiers.

  Alexander the king to refugees from the Greek cities. We were not responsible for your exile but we shall be responsible for your return to your own homelands, with the exception of those who are under a curse. We have written to Antipater [Alexander’s viceroy in Europe] about these matters so that if any of the cities are unwilling to receive you back he will compel them to do so.

  ”Those who are under a curse” included an unknown number of felons and other criminals, as well as others whom Alexander himself had driven into exile. Of these the largest group comprised the Theban deportees whom he condemned to a life of wandering when he laid waste their city the previous year. Many of them had probably fought against Alexander as mercenaries in the Persian army.

  The reaction of the crowd is said to have been ecstatic. Diodorus alleges that all the exiles had assembled in Olympia and that they numbered more than 20,000. But he can be thinking only of those who were within easy reach of Olympia (Badian 1971, 28). The total number is likely to have been considerably larger, especially if we include women and children, because only men were permitted to attend athletic contests. Alexander also took the opportunity to pension off 10,000 veterans who were serving in his army (D.S. 17.109.1–2).

  The contents of the letter had no doubt been leaked well in advance to give time for a large and appreciative crowd to assemble. Alexander was nothing if not a consummate self-publicizer. In fact Diodorus claims that his purpose was “to enhance his fame and to win the support of many people through favors in the event of revolution and rebellion among the Greeks.” We should therefore perhaps see the Exiles’ Decree as intended to win him partisan support throughout Greece. He had previously been solicited by exiles from Heraclea Pontica and Samos for permission to return to their homeland, so he would have been fully aware of the potential benefits of gratifying the returnees. He may even have hoped that their assimilation would prove a distraction.

  Implementing the terms of the Exiles’ Decree must have been a bureaucratic nightmare, however, involving as it did the return of landed property that had been appropriated by those who were politically at odds with the returnees. It has been suggested that the procedures governing the reinstatement of the exiles were set forth in a more extensive document than the proclamation itself (Poddighe 2011, 118). Even if this were the case, however, each city-state would have been left to its own devices to work out the messy details.

  To comprehend the legal complications, let us turn to a decree that relates to the repatriation of exiles to Tegea in Arcadia. “The returning exiles are to be furnished with the paternal property away from which they went into exile, and women are to be furnished with their maternal property in the case of unmarried women who owned property and did not have brothers,” it declares (ll 4–7, Heisserer 1980, 205–18 = SIG3 306 = Harding 122 = Rhodes and Osborne 101). It then goes on to state that each returning exile is to receive a house. If the house has no garden, the returnee is to be assigned one that is nearby. If there is no adjoining garden, she or he is to receive half a garden. The current resident, viz the person who had acquired ownership of the house, is to be paid two minae in compensation (ll. 10–21).

  The Tegean decree made a distinction between (1) daughters and widows who had gone into exile with their fathers and husbands but who had returned after their fathers and husbands had died, and (2) daughters and widows who had remained in exile after the latter’s death and were only now returning. The former group, having already had their marriages annulled, were to be treated preferentially, and had already, it seems, been permitted to inherit their former husbands’ property; the latter group, however, were to be subject to investigation regarding their entitlement to inherit (ll. 49–56).

  Given the limited nature of written records, many disputes must have come down to verbal claims about ownership. The lawyers, or rather the speechwriters, must have had a field day trying to settle all the claims. Violence no doubt occurred when the previous owner was forced to evict the family that had taken possession of his property. Many of those who were evicted may even have found themselves homeless—hardly a recipe for amicable relations.

  For the sixty days following the promulgation of this decree, a “court composed of foreigners” in nearby Mantinea was to adjudicate the settlement of disputes (ll. 24–36), evidently because it was thought more likely to exercise impartiality than a court composed of Tegean citizens. To alleviate tensions, the decree ends with an oath taken in the name of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Poseidon, in which the citizenry promises “to be well disposed toward the returning exiles … and not to bear a grudge against any of them” (ll. 58–60)—a pious hope if ever there was one and one that reminds us that when returnees reconnect with their former friends, communities, and ancestors, much pain and anger will come to the fore, since “there is no such thing as a genuine, uncomplicated return to one’s home” (Edward Said, quoted in Long and Oxfeld 2004, 15).

  The Exiles’ Decree represented a flagrant violation of the cherished autonomy of the Greek city-states. That autonomy had been enshrined in the charter of the League of Corinth, established by Philip II after the Battle of Chaeronea, which Alexander had pledged to honor. He had certainly interfered in the inner workings of individual cities on previous occasions, but this was on an unprecedented scale. Evidently he no longer cared to mask his contempt for public sentiment. To make matters worse it was around this time that he either requested or demanded that the Greeks recognize him as a god. Hardly surprisingly, some six months later a number of cities sent ambassadors to his court to present arguments against the return of exiles. Diodorus tells us that Alexander “did his best to send all of them away satisfied” (17.113.4). What exactly this amounted to is anyone’s guess. We do know, however, that some states were successful in petitioning to introduce changes in line with their individual circumstances. The decree from Tegea, for instance, states explicitly in the introduction that it was promulgated “in accordance with corrections that were made by the city-state regarding issues in the diagramma (regulation) to which objection had been made” (ll 2–4).

  In conclusion, though the Exiles’ Decree addressed a very great social evil, it would be naïve to
assume that a humane concern for the welfare of his subjects featured remotely in Alexander’s thoughts, as some modern commentators have suggested. It is equally clear, too, that Alexander never thought through the devastating practical consequences of this measure for the recipients of the exiles—or that if he did, decided he had little choice but to propose their return.

  The Return of the Samians

  We may well wonder how many exiles returned to their homes as a result of Alexander’s decree. Diodorus’s claim that “most Greeks welcomed the exiles” seems highly improbable. Clearly many Greeks would have deeply resented the turmoil that their return occasioned, particularly those who had to relinquish their residences. The most vigorous protest came from the Athenians, who were required to give up an important overseas possession (18.8.6).

  In 365 the Athenians had conquered Samos and expelled its population. Four years later they established a cleruchy on the island, composed exclusively of Athenian citizens. Then in 324, acting on the advice of one of his generals, Gorgus of Iasus, Alexander announced to his army that he was “giving Samos back to the Samians.” It was an evocative turn of phrase and one calculated to earn the goodwill of exiles everywhere, especially those who were serving in his army. Gorgus’s goodwill toward the Samians went further. He took it upon himself, presumably with the agreement of his polis, to proclaim that Iasus would cover the travel expenses of the returning exiles. We learn this from an inscription passed by the Samian dêmos some time between 334 and 321, honoring him and his brother Minnion for the services they had rendered to the exiles (SIG3 312.20–23, rev. Heisserer [1980, 184–86] = Rhodes and Osborne 70).

  The Athenians had probably heard of Alexander’s promise to the Samians shortly before the promulgation of the Exiles’ Decree. Being “in no way willing to give Samos up,” they promptly sent a delegation to Alexander, hoping to make him change his mind. The Samians meanwhile had taken Alexander at his word, and a number of them now crossed from the mainland, where they had been living, to Samos. Learning this, the Athenian dêmos ordered the general in charge of the island to round them all up and send them back to Athens to stand trial. On their arrival, they were imprisoned and sentenced to death. We learn of these events from a decree honoring a certain Antileon of Chalcis for his support in securing their release (Habicht 1957, no. 1).