THE HORSEMEN OF ATHENS PUBLISHED FOR THE CENTER FOR HELLENIC STUDIES GLENN RICHARD BUGH The Horsemen of Athens PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright © 1988 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NewJersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bugh, Glenn Richard, 1948- The horsemen of Athens / Glenn Richard Bugh. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0—691—05530-0 (alk. paper) : i. Cavalry—Greece—Athens—History. 2. Athens (Greece)— History, Military. I. Title. U33.B84 1988 357'.!'09385—dci9 88-3210 Publication of this book has been aided by the Whitney Darrow Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotron Sabon Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections, are not usually suitable for library rebinding Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX INTRODUCTION xi ABBREVIATIONS XV 1. Aristocratic Horsemen of Archaic Athens 3 2. Cavalry of Empire 39 3. The Peloponnesian War 79 4. The Year of the Thirty Tyrants 120 5. The Athenian Cavalry in the Age of Philip of Macedon 154 6. The Horsemen of Hellenistic Athens 184 APPENDIXES 207 Appendix A: Ages of the Horsemen of the Pythais 207 Appendix B: The Hipparch to Lemnos 209 Appendix C: The Hipparcheion 219 Appendix D: Hippotoxotai and Prodromoi 221 CATALOGUS HIPPEUM 225 INDEX 263 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (,following page z6z) FIGURE I. "Dokimasia Painter," Courtesy of Antiken Museum, Staatliche Museen, Berlin FIGURE 2. "Thalia Painter," Courtesy of H. Cahn, Miinzen und Medaillen A.G., Basel, Photo by D. Widmer FIGURE 3. Parthenon frieze, W. Slab XII.22—24, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens FIGURE 4. Parthenon frieze, (a) W. Slab IX.16-17; (b) W. Slab VI.11-12, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens FIGURE 5. Cavalry archives, sample tablets, Courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations, Athens FIGURE 6. Bryaxis base, one of three victorious phylarchs, Courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens FIGURE 7. Leontis anthippasia relief, Courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations, Athens FIGURE 8. Pheidon, Hipparch to Lemnos, clay tokens, Courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations, Athens FIGURE 9. Parthenon frieze, W. Slab IV.7—8, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens FIGURE 10. Eleusis relief, Pythodoros, hipparch, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens FIGURE II. Athenian casualties at Korinth and Koroneia, (a) cavalry; (b) all military forces, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens FIGURE 12. Dexileos relief, Courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute, Athens ACKNOWLEDGMENTS EVERY BOOK is a collective effort in spirit and substance; mine is no exception. I owe special thanks to my mentors and friends, Achilles Avraamides, who inspired my love for ancient history, and Ken Holum, who guided this study through its dissertation stage. During my year at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1976— 77,1 received much good advice and support from Professors M. Wal­ lace, who has to accept the credit (or blame) for suggesting a new study of the Athenian horsemen, W. K. Pritchett, A. Raubitschek, C. Edmon­ son, and E. Vanderpool, who graciously shared some of his personal correspondence dealing with the grammateis of the Athenian cavalry. And I am grateful for the warm hospitality shown me by Dr. D. Peppas Delmouzou, Director of the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, and her able staff during visits in the spring of 1977 and the summers of 1981 and 1985, and in this country by Professor Ch. Habicht, Director of the Epigraphical Library at the Institute for Advanced Study at Prince­ ton. In the past three years, Professors S. V. Tracy, J. H. Kroll, and Μ. H. Hansen have generously clarified a number of technical points. The research for this book was funded by the Department of History and the Small Project Grant program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; a summer stipend from the American Philosoph­ ical Society, 1981, for work on Lemnos and in Attika; and a Junior Fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C., 1983-84, where I compiled the Hellenistic material and wrote much of the book. I am deeply indebted to its two directors, first Professor Bernard Knox for providing such an ideal working environment, and then Professor Zeph Stewart for his acute editorial suggestions. Of course, I accept full responsibility for any remaining flaws. For the process of "computerizing" the manuscript and then pa­ tiently answering my endless x-editing questions, I am indebted to our secretaries, Patty Mills, Debbie Rhea, Teresa Phipps, and Laura Hall. For help on the index, my thanks to Russ Friedman. No one has been more supportive over these long years than my wife, Suzanne. To her I lovingly dedicate this book. Blacksburg, Virginia May, 1987 INTRODUCTION FIRST OF ALL, let me state what this book is not. It is not a study of the various equestrian competitions dominated by the upper classes of Athens; fortuitously, a very recent book by D. G. Kyle (Athletics in Ancient Athens, 1987) covers this ground, at least for the Classical period. And it is not really a study of battlefield tactics or campaign strategies, although some discussion appears where appropriate, nor is it a study of military equipment; very fine books by Anderson, Pritch- ett, and others have dealt with these matters at great length. My inter­ ests lie elsewhere, in people, institutions, and society. This book is a history of the Athenian cavalry from the Archaic pe­ riod through the Hellenistic age. Within it is a story about the rise and fall of the Athenian cavalry. Imbedded into the narrative is a detailed administrative and prosopographical analysis of a military and social organization whose members came predominantly from the upper classes of Athens, whose outlook, consequently, was fundamentally aristocratic, and whose loyalty to the Athenian democracy could and did fluctuate with the changing fortunes of Athens in the Greek world of the Classical and Hellenistic periods. This is a study of the changing images of the cavalry within Athenian society. What will become ap­ parent is that Athenian attitudes towards the cavalry and cavalry serv­ ice were not static in these periods. In the larger sense, this book ad­ dresses the issue of the uneasy relationship between aristocratic and democratic ideologies. Certainly, to speak of the Athenian cavalry is not merely to define a military institution, but a social class with polit­ ical expectations. To understand the dynamics of the Athenian cavalry and its personnel is to grasp a little more firmly the unique character of the Athenian democracy. A new study of the Athenian cavalry is clearly warranted. The last major study devoted exclusively to the subject appeared in 1886 (M. A. Martin, Les cavaliers ath6niens). Moreover, this book appeared before Kenyon's 1891 publication of Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia, which provides critical information on the administration of the Athe­ nian cavalry in the fourth century B.C. This work has elicited a good deal of debate over the years. For example, Aristotle's authorship, the chronological development of the Athenian democracy in the early chapters, and even the static analysis of Athenian institutions in the xii Introduction fourth century have been criticized, and at times simply labeled as propaganda or historically inaccurate. In the following chapters I my­ self will have occasion to argue that certain sections are chronologi­ cally ambiguous, most notably for the Athenian cavalry at 49.1-2, but the work, whether by Aristotle or his school, remains the starting place for all serious discussion of the administration of the Athenian cavalry. Each piece of information must be evaluated on its own merits, on its own historical reasonableness, and the onus of proof that it cannot have happened as described rests with the critic. This same principle applies to other slippery sources, particularly the fourth-century Attic orators whose aims are to persuade, not necessarily to tell the truth, and to the lexicographers of the Roman and Byzantine periods. The small monograph by M. W. Helbig (Les hippeis ath6niens, 1902) was really only a response to Martin's conclusions concerning the date of the establishment of a genuine Athenian cavalry corps. Fur­ thermore, Helbig's interpretations of the evidence from vase paintings have now been convincingly discredited. More recently, two very use­ ful works have appeared: J. K. Anderson, Ancient Greek Horseman­ ship, 1961, and P.A.L. Greenhalgh, Early Greek Warfare: Horsemen and Chariots in the Homeric and Archaic Ages, 1971, but they address themselves generally to the issue of cavalry and horsemanship, with Athens being but a subset of the overall topic. The need for a new study of the Athenian cavalry is even more clearly demonstrable by the discoveries from the excavations in Ath­ ens. Since the 1930s, the American excavations of the Athenian Agora have yielded important epigraphical evidence directly relating to the Athenian cavalry. And new material has appeared within the last three years. The finds from the Agora are especially instructive in the areas of cavalry personnel and administration. In 1971 a deposit of thin lead tablets recording the names of the horsemen and technical information about their mounts was discovered. This cavalry archive duplicates in part a deposit unearthed in 1965 by the German archaeologists in the area of the ancient cemetery of Athens.