polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 35 (2018) 499-522 brill.com/polis Xenophon’s Hipparchikos and the Athenian Embrace of Citizen Philotimia Benjamin Keim Pomona College, Department of Classics, 551 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711 USA [email protected] Abstract Although negotiations over the competing claims of honour (timê) and awards of instantiated honours (timai) were central features of Athenian democracy, the danger- ous ambiguities of philotimia meant that only from the 340s BC were the Athenians explicitly embracing this love of honour and celebrating its display by citizens and non-citizens alike. Here I argue that a close reading of Xenophon’s treatise on cavalry command, Hipparchikos, advances our understanding of this embrace of public-spir- ited honour in three ways. First, Xenophon founds the success of the cavalry on the training of knowledgeable officers who are able to harness the Athenians’ extraor- dinary love of honour, on display and on campaign. Second, he reveals the diverse roles played by timê and philotimia throughout the entire institution of the Athenian cavalry, fostering competitive excellence as well as community amongst cavalry, polis, and gods. Third, Xenophon’s arguments about the nature and negotiation of Athenian honour anticipate the ideological and institutional embrace of citizen honour that, amply attested by epigraphic and literary records, was central to Athenian flourishing during the Lycurgan and Hellenistic eras. Keywords Athens – honour – philotimia – democracy – decree – cavalry © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/20512996-12340177Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 09:32:00PM via free access 500 Keim … Ἀλλὰ μὴν φιλοτιμότατοί γε καὶ μεγαλοφρονέστατοι πάντων εἰσίν Indeed the Athenians are the most honour-loving and high-minded of all peoples … Xen. Mem. 3.5.3 … διατελοῦσι δὲ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάν- τ[α] καὶ ἰδίαι καὶ κοινεῖ φιλοτιμούμενοι περί τε τοὺς ἱππεῖς καὶ τὸν δῆμον· … and in everything else they continue to show love of honour both individually and collectively concerning the cavalry and the People SEG 21.525 ll. 21-3 (tr. AIO) ∵ In his classic discussion of philotimia in democratic Athens David Whitehead explores the ambiguities inherent within the ancient Greek love of honour, as well as the evolving ways in which the Athenians encouraged such ambitions for the good of their community.1 Drawing on diverse literary sources as well as the honorific decrees enacted by dêmos and demesmen alike, Whitehead reminds us that good philotimia focused on the interests of the community (dêmosia), bad philotimia on the interests of the individual (idia). While the love of honour features prominently – if not always explicitly – from the earliest lines of the Homeric epics through the fisnal perorations of classical Athenian oratory, the middle decades of the fourth century BC saw significant changes in Athens’ public acknowledgement of citizen philotimia.2 By the 340s, 1 D. Whitehead, ‘Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: φιλοτιμία in Democratic Athens’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 34 (1983), pp. 55-74, with further elaboration on developments within the demes at D. Whitehead, The Demes of Attica, 508/7 – ca. 250 B.C.: A Political and Social Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 234-52. 2 For recent discussions of these changes see especially P. Liddel, ‘The Honorific Decrees of fourth-century Athens: Trends, Perceptions, Controversies’, in C. Tiersch (ed.), Die Athenische Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political ThoughtDownloaded from35 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 499-522 09:32:00PM via free access Hipparchikos and the Athenian Embrace of Philotimia 501 merely a decade or so after its earliest epigraphic attestations,3 philotimia was enshrined as one of Athens’ cardinal civic virtues and was regularly extolled within decrees honouring citizens for their financial and administrative efforts on behalf of the community.4 Although Whitehead acknowledges Xenophon’s interest in the theory and evolving practice of honour, his opinion of the Athenian polymath as ‘that lat- ter-day champion of the old virtues’ leads him to underestimate the richness and dexterity, and indeed the prescience, of Xenophontic thought.5 Rather than dismissing Xenophon for promulgating a ‘simple, unproblematical idea of philotimia’, we should recognize his anticipation of Athenian honorific practices, not least their celebration of philotimia as the ‘appropriate virtue … of those holding office.’6 Thus in this article I argue that a close reading of Xenophon’s Hipparchikos, a treatise composed in response to the perceived failings of one Athenian institution, the cavalry, advances our understanding of Athens’ broader embrace of citizen philotimia in three significant ways. First, Xenophon argues that the restoration of the cavalry requires officers who are Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert – zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016), pp. 335-58, with further bibliography at nn. 2-3, and the articles collected within S. Lambert, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes: Historical Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Lambert assesses the implications of key epigraphic innovations (e.g. the near-simultaneous appearance of ‘hortatory intention’ clauses and explicit men- tions of philotimia), while Liddel addresses the diverse – and often divergent – epigraphic and literary testimonia. On the broader development of Athenian honorific practices across the fourth century, see P. Gauthier, Les cites grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs, BCH Suppl. 12 (Athens and Paris: École française d’Athènes, 1985), pp. 103-12, and the arguments for the Archaic origins and Classical evolution of ‘euergetism’ by M. Domingo Gygax, Benefaction and Rewards in the Ancient Greek City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 3 For text and discussion of SEG 42.112, a deme decree from Halai Aixonides containing the earliest (ca. 360 B.C.) epigraphic evidence endorsing the philotimia of an Athenian, see P.J. Rhodes and R. Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404-323 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), no. 46; later fourth-century comparanda for Athens’ public endorse- ment of philotimia are discussed by Rhodes and Osborne at nos. 89, 95, and 100. 4 The fourth-century canonization of Athenian civic virtues is discussed by D. Whitehead, ‘Cardinal Virtues: The Language of Public Approbation in Democratic Athens’, Classica et Mediaevlia, 44 (1993), pp. 37-75; for philotimia as ‘perhaps the Athenian cardinal value par excellence’, see J. Miller, ‘Euergetism, Agonism, and Democracy: The Hortatory Intention in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Athenian Honorific Decrees’, Hesperia, 85 (2016), pp. 385- 435, p. 406; on the democratisation of philotimia see discussion at n. 22 and after n. 48 below. 5 Whitehead, ‘Competitive Outlay’, p. 57. On the subsequent scholarly reevaluation of Xenophon’s merits see C. Tuplin, ‘Xenophon and his World: An Introductory Review’, in C. Tuplin (ed.), Xenophon and his World (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), pp. 13-31, and now the contributions to M. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 6 Whitehead, ‘Competitive Outlay’, pp. 56, 65. Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political ThoughtDownloaded from35 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 499-522 09:32:00PM via free access 502 Keim not merely knowledgeable but are also capable of harnessing their Athenian charges’ extraordinary love of honour. Good leadership in ancient Greece – whether within infantry or cavalry, the Assembly or the oikos, the historical Athenian experience or Xenophon’s idealising treatise – was initially moti- vated by individuals’ appropriate desires for honour, and thereafter realised through careful negotiation of honour(s) by those individuals as leaders.7 Second, because Xenophon portrays the integral roles of timê and philotimia throughout the institution of the Athenian cavalry, careful consideration of this treatise helps us revivify the formulaic and yet fundamental vocabulary of Athenian honorific decrees. Within Hipparchikos we catch glimpses of what it might mean for Athenian cavalry commanders to ‘continue to show love of honour both individually and collectively’ (διατελοῦσι … φιλοτιμούμενοι) and be celebrated for their ‘excellence and love of honour’ (ἀρετῆς ἕνεκα καὶ φιλοτιμίας),8 or for other Athenian officials to display their own ‘fine love of honour’ (καλῶς καὶ φιλοτιμῶς). Third, Xenophon’s arguments about the nature and functions of Athenian honour foreshadow the recognition and renewed celebration of Athenian honour – manifested by polis and politês alike, in their literary and their epigraphic testimonia – that would become fundamental to Athenian self-definition and flourishing during the Lycurgan and Hellenistic eras. Although we cannot justly crown Xenophon for instigating or even inspir- ing these changes to Athenian honorific behavior, we may rightly praise this treatise – with its sensitive emphasis on honour, that ‘powerful driver of the political actions of individuals and communities’ – for enabling us to grasp more readily the theory and the practices of Athens’ embrace of citizen philotimia.9 7 On the role(s) of timê within Xenophontic leadership see V. Azoulay, Xénophon et les graces du pouvoir (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004), pp. 99-107, and B. Keim, ‘Honour and the Art of Xenophontic Leadership’, in R.F. Buxton (ed.),