Stairway To Heaven

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Part I
Early Hellenistic Responses to Classical
Athenian Democracy and
Political Thought
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Stairway to Heaven
The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens
Nino Luraghi
To the memory of my father Raimondo (1921–2012),

historian and freedom-fighter
2.1 A THENIAN P OLITI CS AND THE P AST
The image of Athens ‘school of Hellas’, and thereby indirectly fountainhead of

the Classicist intellectual tradition, was ultimately a product of Athenian
culture itself. Needless to say, there is no denying the crucial role of Roman
imperial culture, from the Augustan age to the Second Sophistic and beyond,
in consolidating and transmitting the powerful corpus of symbols and texts
that formed and supported the Classical tradition through the centuries.1 Still,
there is abundant evidence that the Athenians themselves, especially during
the fourth century, were very much involved in creating an image of their history
and culture, ultimately an image of themselves that was going to serve as a matrix
for centuries to come. What happened immediately thereafter, though, is more
controversial. Wilamowitz famously judged that Alexandrian culture defined
itself against the Athenian model, and it is certainly the case that so far students
of the Hellenistic world have been less impressed by the survival of the myth of
Classical Athens during the third and second centuries BCE. Nevertheless, a case
can be made for a reassessment of the impact of the Athenian cultural and
political model in the centuries that followed Alexander’s death, as the present
1
For this crucial phase in the transmission and transformation of the cultural heritage of
Classical Greece I may be allowed to refer the reader to the dense and powerful synthesis offered
by Spawforth 2012.
22 Nino Luraghi
collection of essays shows. An important step towards such a reassessment is to
investigate how the Athenians themselves reflected on their past, or perhaps
more accurately, how the past was a part of the living horizon of the Athenians of
this period, how they, or some of them, deployed it in order to cope with the
present without giving up their sense of themselves. What follows is meant to
offer some preliminary thoughts towards such an investigation.
The use of the past, recent and distant, in Athenian public discourse is
hardly a new topic. All too often, however, scholars have been inclined to
regard it either as purely decorative and rhetorical (as though rhetoric were
nothing more than functionally useless ornamentation), or as a way to disguise
a realistic and utilitarian approach to political decision-making—and clearly
the two approaches are compatible rather than mutually exclusive. In the wake
of a new wave of studies on tradition and memory—now labeled as ‘collective’
or ‘social’—the readiness to think in terms of a shared repertoire of facts (no
matter how accurate or inaccurate) and notions, themselves incorporating
values and social norms, has paved the way for a reassessment of the impact of
the past as a real force in Athenian politics. Even though not all scholars may
be ready to follow Ernst Badian and believe that fourth-century Athenians
were possessed by the ghost of their fifth-century empire,2 the assumption that
notions and interpretations of their recent past had a real impact on the way
Athenians at any given time assessed their present situation and decided how
to cope with it has been gaining traction in recent research.3 The age of the
great orators, with its wealth of public speeches, judicial and political, offers a
particularly fertile ground for such an approach. The present contribution
moves towards the boundary of that age, investigating a period in Athenian
history that was characterized by an especially volatile international context
and, as a consequence, faced the Athenians with particularly stark and sudden
choices. Without underestimating the weight of other factors, the political use
of the past and its social impact on Athenian decision-making between 323
and 269 will form the focus of the present discussion. The starting point will be
the event that concluded the period: the Chremonidean War.
2.2 THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR, OR,

W H A T ’ S I N A NAME
Telling wars apart is a notorious problem for the political history of the early
Hellenistic period, and nowhere is the problem felt more acutely than in the
2
Badian 1995, a characteristically sharp contribution, but one that subscribes implicitly to a
radically utilitarian view of human behaviour which not every historian would be prepared to
share; it falls squarely within the ‘realistic’ camp as defined by Steinbock 2013: 33–5.
3
See especially the lucid introductory discussion of Steinbock 2013: 30–43.
The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 23

history of the third century, where the absence of a continuous narrative from
antiquity creates endless difficulties for the scholar attempting to turn a rich
corpus of epigraphic evidence into a coherent story. In such a situation,
historians are so relieved whenever the written sources allow them to isolate
and identify a specific war, that they may feel less keenly the urge to question
the identification and to regard it as a historiographical problem. The Chre-
monidean War is a case in point.4 We owe its name to a fragment of
Hegesander of Delphi, probably a contemporary of Polybius and otherwise a
rather shadowy figure. As far as we can tell, Hegesander was no historian in
the proper sense of the word: he seems to have collected curiosities, anecdotes
and noteworthy sayings from a wide array of earlier authors.5 Hegesander
appears to have been known to Plutarch, even though the latter does not quote
him by name, but it is Athenaeus’ banquet that saved him from falling into
total oblivion: Hegesander shows up as many as forty-five times in the
conversations of the Deipnosophists.6 Among other dinner-related things,
Athenaeus was interested in flatterers, and here Hegesander offered him a
peculiar example: rather than flattering individuals, the Athenian demagogues
flattered a whole community, the Athenian demos.7 This happened, according
to Hegesander, at the time of the Chremonidean War. The name of the war
appears only here, and it took the ingenuity of Barthold Georg Niebuhr,
piecing together a handful of passages from more or less obscure authors, to
identify it as the war between the Athenians and Antigonus Gonatas, in which
the former were supported by the Ptolemaic admiral Patrocles and by the king
of Sparta Areus I. Niebuhr’s insight was later brilliantly vindicated by the
Chremonides decree, which confirmed that the name of the war was indeed
derived form the Athenian politician Chremonides son of Eteocles of the deme
of Aethalidae, who proposed in the summer of 269 an alliance with Sparta that
is generally thought to have touched off the war.8
4
What follows is strongly indebted to Prandi 1989, a contribution that would have deserved
more attention than it has received (Italicum est, non legitur).
5
Hegesander fr. 9 Müller, in Athen. 6.260f. A victim of Jacoby’s mortality, Hegesander did
not make it into any edition of the FGrH so far; see however Jacoby 1912. Hegesander may not
have been particularly friendly to the Athenians, see Prandi 1989: 25–6 and n. 11 (but the
fragments she refers to seem more suggestive than conclusive).
6
Murray 2014 provides a precious introduction to this complex and idiosyncratic work.
7
The flattery of the Athenian demos, let it be noted, was an old theme, going back to
Aristophanes’ Knights and running through fourth-century Athenian political discourse; see
Isocr. On the Peace 8.3–5. In other words, the roots of Hegesander’s take on Athenian politics lay
in Athens itself.
8
Niebuhr 1828 (originally published in 1826). As we wait for the publication of further
documents relating to the war, the standard work of reference for the Chremonidean War is still
Heinen 1972: 95–213 (adding Buraselis 1982: 119–51 for the chronology of the notorious battles
of Andros and Cos). Habicht 2006: 161–7 provides a synthesis and in nn. 68 and 78 a precious
compilation of what is currently known about the unpublished decree from Rhamnous for
Aristeides of Lamptrae (on whom see Habicht 1994: 344–6, adding the new date of IG II2 2797 to
280/79, Byrne 2006/7: 170–5), who according to the decree commanded the fortresses of Eleusis
24 Nino Luraghi
Even in the woeful scarcity of information about this war, it is clear that it
really was part of a long-drawn power struggle between the Ptolemies and the
Antigonids.9 The strategic aim of Ptolemy Philadelphus during the war was to
prevent Antigonus Gonatas from rebuilding his father’s hegemony over
Greece and potentially threatening Ptolemaic control of the Aegean, and his
immediate goal was to evict Gonatas from the Piraeus and thereby to deprive
him of a crucially important naval base, one of the very few he controlled
south of Euboea.10 For this purpose, a converging attack on Antigonid bases in
Attica by Areus king of Sparta and by the Ptolemaic admiral Patrocles was
mounted, to which the Athenians lent all the support they could, paying in the
end the highest price for their daring. Even though the Athenian contribution
to the war should not be underestimated, it is clear that the bulk of the troops
involved came from the Peloponnese, where Areus had somehow managed to
put together a surprisingly extensive alliance, almost a new Peloponnesian
League from which only Sparta’s traditional enemies Argos, Messene, and
Megalopolis remained aloof—and of course, also Corinth, under the direct
control of an Antigonid garrison.11 Overall, it would not be wrong to say that
Athens was a pawn in a power struggle that went well beyond its horizons.12
In light of this, it is not exactly clear why such a conflict, or even the part of
it that involved directly the Athenians, should be called ‘the war of Chremo-
nides’. Based on the evidence, it seems unlikely that the war might have taken
its name because the Athenian Chremonides had a leading role in it.13 Not
without reason, scholars have long ago observed that the naming of the war
and Rhamnous in successive years during the early phase of the war and previously went on an
embassy to Antigonus Gonatas in Asia.
9
See Will 1979: 220–1 and Buraselis 1982: 157–8. Recently, O’Neil 2008: 84–9 has argued
that the war was a rather low priority for Philadelphus, based on the fact that he does not appear
to have engaged more land troops in it.
10
It is not entirely clear whether Antigonus controlled Megara in the years immediately
before the war. See the lucid discussion of Heinen 1972: 70–2, add especially Buraselis 1982: 157
n. 160, and O’Neil 2008: 81, and note that the inscription from Rhamnous for Aristeides of
Lamptrae (see n. 8) appears to speak of Antigonus attacking Eleusis from Megara in the first (or
second?) year of the war.
11
On the Spartan network in the Peloponnese, its roots in previous political relations, and its
development in the course of the third century, see Marasco 1980: 140–1.
12
According to yet another view, the war may have been caused also by the desire of Arsinoe
Philadelphus, the wife of Ptolemy II, to replace on the Macedonian throne Antigonus Gonatas
with Ptolemy, the son she had had from her previous husband Lysimachus. This notion may
have been more common in older scholarship, but see now Hauben 2013: 41 and 48, who favours
it, if in a moderate way, and notice that the new chronology of the archon Peithidemus argued
for by Byrne 2006/7: 175–9, and accepted by Osborne 2009: 89 (and consequently in IG II3
Fascicle 4), does away with the awkwardness of having Arsinoe mentioned in the Chremonides
decree (IG II3 1 912, ll. 17) after her own death.
13
As suggested by Sartori 1963: 119. Marasco 1980: 142 n. 18 advanced the even less likely
suggestion that the name of the war derived from Athens’ leading role in the Persian Wars,
evoked as a model in the Decree of Chremonides (see 2.5).

betrays at the very least a significant overestimation of the role of the Athen-
ians.14 We can go one step further and note that, based on what we know
about the attitude with which the Athenians entered the war, this can hardly
have been a name of their choosing, if not as a way retrospectively to distance
themselves from a failed venture. It seems far more likely, though, also in light
of Hegesander’s relatively strong interest in Macedonian affairs, that the name
actually came from a hostile source that looked at the war with the eyes of the
Macedonians, and was meant to reduce it to the deceitful and/or self-deceiving
political schemes and dreams of a single Athenian demagogue.15 Who might
be responsible for this trovata is difficult to tell, but some scholars have
indicated a rather plausible candidate in the long-living Antigonid historian
Hieronymus, especially plausible because he is known to have played a very
similar trick on another occasion, as we shall see in a moment.16
With this possibility in mind, we shall now turn to the demagogues and to
their slogan—current, according to Hegesander, during the course of the war.
The slogan had two parts: everything else was common to all Greeks, but only
the Athenians knew the way that takes men to heaven.17 The first part may
sound opaque at a first reading, but its meaning, if somewhat implicit, is made
clear by what follows: the Greeks, taken together, were all superior to the rest
of humanity, i.e. to the barbarians—and we can bet that the latter category in
this case included the Macedonians. It was a statement of Panhellenic pride
and unity that resonates with the text of the decree of Chremonides, as we
shall see in a moment. The second part is straightforward and striking: only
the Athenians knew how to achieve heroic immortality. It is significant that
the slogan was not, according to Hegesander, circulating before the outbreak
of the war. In other words, the purpose of the flattery of the demagogues was
not to persuade the Athenians to enter the war, but to convince them to
14
See already the comments of De Sanctis 1970 (= 1893): 282 n. 6. We cannot exclude, based
on the evidence available, that in antiquity the name actually designated only the part of the war
that was fought in Attica, along the lines of the ‘four-years’ war’ of 307–304 BCE.
15
Decisive observations on this point in Prandi 1989: 27. In light of what has been observed
(n. 7), we should also entertain the possibility that the name might have originated in Athens
itself, among the kind of people described in D.S. 18.10.1 as opposed to the Lamian War; it is not
entirely clear, though, how much we can rely on Diodorus’ characterization of the factions in
Athens in socio-economical terms, which might itself be a projection of a pro-Macedonian view
(p. 000–00 and nn. 26 and 27); for what it is worth, Chremonides and his brother Glaucon
appear to have been wealthy landowners, see Pouilloux 1975: 380
16
Thus far, I follow Primo 2008; in my view, however, he overlooks significant differences in
what he calls ‘Athenian propaganda’ at the time of the Chremonidean War and of the Lamian
War respectively. On Hieronymus of Cardia and the Lamian War, see n. 26.
17
I have been unable to locate in modern scholarship any discussion of the actual meaning of
these sentences; Sattler 1962, 59 n. 12, to whom Heinen 1972, 207 n. 456 refers, is rather vague; in
any case, from the wording and the context it seems relatively obvious to me that the Athenian
demagogues were not referring to the possibility of storming Olympus, as Sattler may be taken to
suggest.
26 Nino Luraghi
endure it. It is not too much of a leap of imagination to speculate that it might
have circulated when Athens was under siege.18
Two orders of observations are prompted by this promise of apotheosis for
the Athenians. First, the references to the demagogues and to flattery alert the
reader to the generally hostile tone of the passage. Accordingly, one wonders
if, in the original context in which it was transmitted to Hegesander, the slogan
may not have been framed by the surrounding narrative so as to provoke a
deflating effect—so that the words of the demagogues would sound even more
clearly like an empty, irresponsible boast. This is at any rate an impression one
gains even from Hegesander’s own words as reported by Athenaeus. We know
terribly little about the actual events of the Chremonidean War, but there is no
sign of martial feats on the part of the Athenians that in hindsight might make
the notion of obtaining heroic immortality seem obviously justified. The
Athenians appear to have been mostly busy fending off attacks and raids in
the part of their countryside that was still under their control, and then
withstanding the siege. One can easily see a hostile author pointing with
sarcasm to the mismatch between the grandiose slogan and the down-to-
earth realities of facing starvation inside a beleaguered city.
Second, assuming that the slogan, while reported for hostile purposes, did
indeed circulate in Athens at the time of the war, its implications should not go
unnoticed. Heroic immortality presupposes physical death. It is the reward
promised to soldiers facing death in battle—the reward for those who fall, that
is, and the only reward in case of defeat: overall, not a terribly optimistic message.
The social plausibility of such a message lay on a twofold foundation. On the one
hand, there was the collective ritualized memorialization of the citizen-soldiers
that had fallen in battle, without discriminating between victory and defeat, that
was characteristic of the political culture of the Athenian democracy ever since
the time of the Persian Wars.19 On the other hand, the slogan of the demagogues
relied on a particular strand of Athenian political discourse that developed in the
aftermath of Chaeronea and is enshrined most famously in Demosthenes’ On the
Crown, which maintained that it behooved the Athenians, because of their
historical heritage, to fight for the freedom of the Greeks with all their forces,
whatever the odds, whatever the consequences, and regardless of the attitude of
the other Greeks. The recently published fragments of Hypereides’ speech
Against Diondas show that such notions were not merely Demosthenes’ own
creation, while Demosthenes’ comments on Aeschines’ speech during the debate
on the Peace of Philocrates may point to the more distant roots of this theme.20
18
As suggested by Prandi 1989: 26.
19
For a comprehensive investigation of the commemoration of the war dead in Classical
Athens, see Arrington 2014.
20
See Todd 2009: 165–6 with references to earlier studies of the topic. At this point, the
present contribution respectfully parts ways with Badian 1995; after Chaeronea at the latest,
there cannot be question of the Athenians reacting to appeals to their glorious past out of

For the politicians who had supported the war against Philip, the most
immediate goal in formulating this discursive strategy was to fend off the
attacks of the internal political opposition, and in particular the accusation
that in the alliance with Thebes the Athenians had been induced to contribute
well over their fair share, engaging in war when their vital interests were not
really threatened.21 On a more general level, though, this interpretation of
Chaeronea had a broader scope, in that it strove to domesticate defeat in the
framework of the Athenians’ traditional vision of their past and their place in
the world, and for this reason it was destined to have a lasting impact on
Athenian political discourse.22 In fact, this take on the Athenian past is
characteristic of the half century that goes from Chaeronea to the Chremoni-
dean War. Two key texts from this period, and precisely from its beginning
and from its end respectively, allow the modern observer to focus on the main
features of this discourse, and at the same time to observe its development over
time. To these texts we shall now turn.
2.3 THE DECREE OF THE DEMAGOGUES
Even though the details escape us, scattered indications make it clear that in
the years after 338, with varying degrees of intensity, some leading Athenian
politicians were thinking about a revenge against Macedon. In the last years of
Alexander’s reign a combination of conditions made the thought more and
more acute. The Harpalus scandal, which caused some disruption inside the
Athenian political leadership, clearly had something to do with the idea of
using an unexpected windfall in order to fund a new war against the Mace-
donians. The shattering of the Persian Empire and Alexander’s campaigns had
left splinters of various sorts floating around the Eastern Mediterranean,
including especially rather large numbers of Greek mercenaries without em-
ployment, some of whom may have become mercenaries in the first place
after/because their home poleis had been absorbed into the Macedonian
unconfessed desire to regain their empire. According to Dem. 19.16, during the debate in 346
Aeschines had said (half-seriously, one supposes) that he intended to propose a law forbidding
the Athenians to help any Greeks who had not previously helped them; this sounds very much
like a rejoinder to Demosthenes’ altruistic view of the Athenians’ mission, and may suggest that
such a view in fact pre-dated Chaeronea (cf. Harris 1995: 70–7).
21
See Hyp. Against Diondas page 5, 176r ll. 3–8 Carey and Dem. 18.238.
22
As pointed out by Todd 2009: 165, Hyperides’ and Demosthenes’ strategy turned away
from the standard Athenian practice of individuating a special non-structural cause for defeat,
typically treason. Note also that the reaction of the Athenians to the Spartans’ victory in the
Peloponnesian War appears to have been totally different, focusing on the excesses of imperial
domination as the cause of the failure of the empire (i.e., essentially assuming responsibility for
the defeat).
28 Nino Luraghi
orbit.23 The combined impact of Alexander’s exiles decree, announced at the
Olympics in the summer of 324, which basically compelled the Athenians to
evacuate Samos, and, rather more importantly, of the news of the death of the
king in Babylon in June of 323 swayed the Athenians into spearheading a
Panhellenic revolt against Macedonia.
A passage in Diodorus’ Book 18 describes the Athenians’ decision to
mobilize army and navy, a decision opposed by the propertied class, says
Diodorus, but carried through by the demagogues, irresponsibly exploiting
the irrational impulses of the Athenian demos. A damaging role was played
also by unemployed mercenaries, people for whom, in Philip’s words
quoted by Diodorus, war was really peace and peace war. A decree drafted
by the rhetores, which Diodorus poetically says gave a body to the wishes of the
people, was promptly approved by the assembly.24 It is a true pity that
Diodorus has not preserved the memory of the man who proposed it. His
preference for a vague ascription may reflect the attitude of his source, which is
explicitly against the war and sides with the wealthy. Diodorus’ summary, in
any case, clearly preserves some of the actual wording of the decree, and likely
derives from an author who provided the complete text. The decree stated
emphatically that the Athenians cared for the common freedom of the Greeks
and accordingly intended to expel the garrisons from the cities. For this
purpose, they were going to launch two hundred triremes and forty tetreres,
and to mobilize all Athenians up to the age of 40, sending seven tribal
contingents out and keeping three to guard the city. Meanwhile, they were
to send ambassadors all around Greece, reminding their fellow Greeks that the
Athenians in the past, regarding Greece as the common fatherland of the
Greeks, had fought off at sea the barbaroi who had invaded Greece in order to
enslave it.25 By the same token, they were now going to fight on land and sea,
with all their resources, for the common freedom of the Greeks. Diodorus
concludes by mentioning the views expressed at the time by the wisest among
the Greeks (18.10.4): the Athenians had deliberated well from the point of
view of glory, but poorly from that of expediency; this was not the right
moment to fight the Macedonians, who were unconquered and at the peak
23
The careers of the Athenian generals Chares, Charidemus, Ephialtes, and Thrasybulus, all
of whom were in Persian service at some point, offer a fascinating perspective on the upper
echelons of this group; see the detailed study of Landucci Gattinoni 1994. Two of them returned
to Greece after the defeat of the Persian forces in Asia Minor: Chares is found in command of a
group of mercenaries at Taenarum, presumably after the death of king Agis III of Sparta in 331
(Badian 1961: 26) and possibly immediately before the Hellenic War (Landucci Gattinoni 1994:
53), and Thrasybulus was strategos in Athens in 326/5 (Landucci Gattinoni 1994: 58 with
reference to IG II2 1628 ll. 40–1).
24
The passing of the decree is narrated in D.S. 18.10.
25
Athenian patriotic rhetoric traditionally underestimated the contribution of the other
Greeks to Salamis, and to naval operations during the Persian Wars more in general; see
Nouhaud 1982: 186–90.

of their power. In spite of their reputation for cleverness, the Athenians had
not even learned the lesson from the destruction of Thebes. Nevertheless,
Diodorus continues, thanks to the usual rhetorical skill of their ambassadors
the Athenians were able to move to war most of the other Greeks.
Diodorus’ sour comments doubtless echo those of his source, clearly an
author who had more sympathy for the oligarchs and for the Macedonians
than for the Athenian political leadership at the time of the revolt.26 It is
probably the same author who invented the name ‘Lamian War’ in the first
place, a name that greatly reduced the scope of the war and completely glossed
over the fact that the decisive battles of it were fought at sea.27 The general
consensus identifies him with Hieronymus of Cardia. The Athenians actually,
as we know from several inscriptions, referred to this war as ‘Hellenic War’, a
terminology that is also found in one literary source.28 The bad timing of the
decision that Diodorus somewhat cryptically refers to is presumably judged in
hindsight: if the Athenians had waited, our author must have meant, the
diadochs would have started to fight against one another over Alexander’s
empire, making a revolt against the Macedonians in Greece that much easier.
The nameless Athenian demagogues, however, were not looking at a future
they could know nothing about; they were looking at the past, and deploying it
in skilful ways for their political purposes. The potentially threatening impli-
cations of what amounted in fact to a bid for Panhellenic leadership were
neutralized by insisting on the supposedly traditional altruistic motivations of
the Athenians. At the same time, by reminding the rest of the Greeks, but even
more importantly their fellow citizens, of Athens’ role in the Persian Wars,
they were recasting the ancient glories of the city into a mission for the
present, almost a manifest destiny of sorts: fighting for freedom was crucial
for the identity of the Athenians. The plausibility of this discursive strategy
depended directly on the reinterpretation of Chaeronea already discussed
(section 2.2).29
The attempt announced in the decree at removing foreign (i.e. Macedonian)
garrisons from the Greek cities points to what might seem like a paradox, that
is, to the fact that Athens was not itself garrisoned at this point. In other words,
the Athenians had no pressing reason to unleash a Panhellenic crusade just
now, unless we believe that the trigger was the exiles decree and the impending
26
See Lehmann 1988: 133–4. I agree with Lehmann’s views regarding the sources of Dio-
dorus’ Books 17 and 18; for a different take on the issue, see Poddighe 2002: 12–16 with further
references.
27
Correspondingly, Diodorus’ narrative says very little about warfare at sea during the war;
see the comments of Lehmann 1988: 139–40. The naval side of the war is discussed in Bosworth
2003.
28
The evidence for the name of the war is collected and commented in Ashton 1984.
29
I should say that I am less inclined than Badian 1995: 105 to attribute the success of the
demagogues to the Athenians’ longing for their lost fifth-century empire.
30 Nino Luraghi
loss of Samos. This is indeed what Diodorus suggests, emphasizing the
convergence of interests between Athenians and Aetolians, but such a notion
may be little more than one further product of the bias of Diodorus’ source.
The Athenians were certainly not insensitive to this point,30 but it seems
necessary to acknowledge that their move in the summer of 323 was some-
thing they had been working towards, more or less consistently, for years, as
witnessed by the buildup of their navy. Obviously, the unforeseeable loss of
Samos cannot have motivated the Athenians’ preparations in the years be-
fore.31 It is immaterial whether we think that their goal was realistic or not.
The Athenians had faced the Persian Empire in the past and may have thought
that the fact that it was now ruled by the Macedonians made little difference.
The outcome of the war was a close call after all.32
For the Athenians, the consequences of the defeat were drastic. For the first
time since the age of the Thirty Tyrants, the democratic constitution was
abolished and replaced by an oligarchy. Antipater removed from the city
thousands of poorer citizens and entrusted its government to a clique led by
Phocion and Demades, while at the same time installing a garrison in the
fortress of Munychia in the Piraeus. Leading Athenian politicians were hunted
down by Antipater’s killing squad and murdered, after Demades had got
through the Athenian assembly a decree condemning them to death.33 Even
though in hindsight the battle of Chaeronea seemed, and still seems to most
historians, the actual turning point in Athenian history, for the Athenians
themselves the impact of the capitulation to Antipater must have felt even
harder.34
2.4 F ROM THE LAMIAN WAR TO

THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR
Even though, upon Alexander’s death, the rifts between his former lieutenants
that later snowballed into the diadochic wars became immediately obvious, the
Hellenic War was in many ways the last war of an age that had reached its
conclusion: the Hellenic League formed by the Athenians faced an essentially
30
As shown also by the diagramma of Philip Arrhidaeus (D.S. 18.56.7), which gave them
back Samos.
31
See the comments of Badian 1995: 105.
32
Lest the reader wonder why the present discussion ignores Hyperides’ speech for the fallen
in the Lamian War, I should say that I am persuaded by Canfora 2011 that this text is not
authentic.
33
Plut. Dem. 28.2; see Brun 2000: 118.
34
Poddighe 2002 provides an extended discussion of the capitulation and of the conditions
imposed on Athens by Antipater.

unified Macedonian foe, as it had been in the days of Philip and Alexander.
The future was going to be very different. For the half century that followed,
Athenian foreign politics can be said to have consisted by and large of
choosing with which one of the diadochs to side at any given time, and in
most cases the choice was not free. In the summer of 307, after Demetrius of
Phalerum was compelled to abandon Athens by Demetrius Poliorcetes and the
garrison of Cassander in Munychia capitulated, the democratic constitution
was reestablished and the Athenians could celebrate freedom regained; but in
fact Athens was now solidly in the Antigonid sphere of influence, where it
remained for the next twenty years, with an interlude of five or six years after
the battle of Ipsus. After the insurrection of 287 against Demetrius Poliorcetes,
however, and thanks to a series of factors including the deaths, in rapid
succession, of Demetrius, Lysimachus, Seleucus Nicator, and Ptolemy Ceraunus,
the invasion of Macedonia and Northern Greece by the Gauls, and finally
the return of Pyrrhus from Italy and the ensuing struggle with Antigonus
Gonatas, for almost two decades Athens regained a level of independence it
had not experienced since before the Hellenic War.35 The fact that the Aegean
was solidly under control of Athens’ friends the kings Ptolemy Soter and
Ptolemy Philadelphus also contributed in a positive way.36 Various fortresses
of Attica, although probably not all of them, seem to have returned to
Athenian control in the course of the eighties, and by the time Gonatas seized
the Macedonian throne it is possible that only the Piraeus with the fortress of
Munychia and Salamis were still garrisoned.37
In these years, two interesting developments took place. First of all, in the
relative calm that the external circumstances afforded, the Athenians seem
once again to have concentrated on their past in an attempt at coming to terms
with their sketchy recent history, as if to reestablish the continuity of demo-
cratic memory. Key to this development seems to have been the return to
Athens in 286/5 of the politician Demochares of Leuconoe, Demosthenes’
35
Earlier scholarship, working mostly based on dates of inscriptions which were later shown
to be wrong, had postulated various phases of Macedonian control over Athens in these years;
see Habicht 1979: 68–75.
36
Meadows 2013 provides a new appraisal of the growth of Ptolemaic power in the Aegean;
see also Hauben 2013, building on his previous works and focusing on the careers of the
Ptolemaic admirals Callicrates and Patroclus.
37
The fate of the Athenian fortresses in this period, with the exception of Eleusis (recon-
quered by Demochares soon after his return to Athens) and Rhamnous (which was in Athenian
hands at the beginning of the Chremonidean War), is rather obscure; see the diverging views
expressed in Habicht 1979: 80–1 and in Habicht 2006: 248, and compare Oliver 2007: 125–7 with
further references. Note that the decree for Philippides of Cephale, from 283/2 (IG II3 1 877, ll.
35–6), speaks of the wish of the Athenians to recuperate ‘the fortresses and the Piraeus’, while the
decree for Euthius, from the following year (IG II3 1 881 = Agora XVI 181, ll. 30–1), mentions
only the Piraeus (but, then again, in 285/4 IG II3 1 871 ll. 32–4 mentioned the Piraeus only; see
also the reference to recovering the Piraeus in Agora XVI 176, too fragmentary to allow any
conclusion).
32 Nino Luraghi
nephew, who had been in exile since 303. After his return, Demochares
appears to have regained a leading political role in the city. In 281/0, he
presented a request for the grant of highest honours to his uncle Demosthenes,
which led to a decree of the Athenian assembly and to the famous bronze
statue of Demosthenes by the sculptor Polyeuctus, known to us thanks to
many Roman copies in marble.38 The practice of proposing highest honours
posthumously, while in itself not new, was a peculiar one, and had a strong
political meaning, as shown by the two precedents known to us: the grant of
highest honours to Phocion passed at some point during the dekaetia, the
ten years during which Athens was controlled by Demetrius of Phalerum, and
the decree for Lycurgus presented by Stratocles of Diomeia in 307/6, soon after
the ‘liberation’ of Athens by Demetrius Poliorcetes.39 The decree for Phocion,
sentenced to death for high treason in the spring of 318,40 amounted to an
explicit rehabilitation, while the one for Lycurgus was meant to mark the
return of democratic legitimacy after Demetrius of Phalerum was ousted and
to reestablish ideological continuity with the age of the Hellenic War.41
Clearly, rewriting the past and making pointed statements about political
continuity and discontinuity between past and present were among the pur-
poses of this practice.
In Demochares’ proposal, various aspects of Demosthenes’ biography were
subtly or not-so-subtly rectified, probably against the unfavourable assess-
ments put in circulation, especially by Demetrius of Phalerum with the likely
contribution of Theophrastus.42 Demosthenes is presented, in so many words,
as the politician of his times who had acted best for the sake of freedom and
38
We do not have the text of the actual decree that was passed by the Athenian assembly, but
only that of Demochares’ request, preserved in the famous documentary appendix to the Lives of
the Ten Orators, a short collection of biographies transmitted in the corpus of Plutarch but
generally recognized as spurious (on these documents, see especially Faraguna 2003). For a
commentary on the text of Demochares’ proposal, see Marasco 1984: 217–21. The proposal is
dated to the archonship of Gorgias (Plut. Mor. 847 D–E), while the decree for Demochares
himself, quoted immediately afterwards, is put in the tenth year after the one for Demosthenes
and in the year of Pytharatus. Pytharatus is firmly dated to 271/0, but the archon Gorgias appears
nowhere else, and Byrne 2006/7: 172–3 makes a persuasive case for emending the name to
Ourias, the archon of 281/0. On the statue of Demosthenes, see now von den Hoff 2009; on
Polyeuctus, 198 n. 20. On this decree and its contents see also Wallace, Chapter 3 in this volume,
pp. 000–00 and Canevaro, Chapter 4, pp. 000–00.
39
The reference to statues (in the plural) of Hyperides in P.Oxy. 15.1800 Fr. 8 Col. ii.30–4
may point to posthumous honours for him, as well; unfortunately this is an isolated piece of
information with no reference to a historical context, let alone a date.
40
19th of Mounychion, Plut. Phoc. 37.1.
41
Lycurgus actually passed away before the war, but Stratocles’ decree made of him the
mastermind of it, as pointed out in Luraghi 2014: 211.
42
In Dem. Phal. fr. 156 Stork-van Ophuijsen-Dorandi = Plut. Dem. 14.2 Demosthenes is
described as a coward and as incorruptible only to the gold from Philip or Macedon, not to that
from the Persian king or from Harpalus; see Cooper 2009: 316–17 and Canevaro, Chapter 4 in
this volume, pp. 000–00 for this decree as a response to contemporary criticism of Demosthenes.

democracy.43 The great orator was not famous for his physical bravery, so
Demochares made a point of stating explicitly that he had died with honour.
Countering accusations that Demosthenes had been in some sense responsible
for the fate of Thebes, trumpeted by the prosecutors in the trial for the
Harpalus affaire, Demochares stated that in that very occasion Demosthenes
had been able, making use of his personal skills and resources, to prevent the
Peloponnesians from intervening on Alexander’s side against the Thebans.44
Interestingly, it does not seem to have been necessary any longer to vindicate
Demosthenes for the policy that brought the Athenians to the battle of
Chaeronea, as though that part of Athenian history had become uncontro-
versial, and the same is true for the accusation of embezzlement in regard to
Harpalus’ money, which had cost him the exile from Athens—Demochares
repeatedly mentions Demosthenes’ generosity towards the community, but
the word ‘incorruptible’ is never used.45 On the other hand, Demosthenes’
unshakeable loyalty to the Athenian demos is emphasized by pointing to his
exile by the oligarchy that had subverted the democratic constitution, which,
strictly speaking, is not true: the decree that condemned to death Demosthenes
and other anti-Macedonian politicians, proposed by Demades, was passed
immediately after the capitulation of Athens, at which point the oligarchic
reform requested by Antipater cannot have been implemented yet. This subtle
distortion has the certainly not unintentional implication of likening Demos-
thenes’ fate to that of other politicians who, like Demochares himself, had been
exiled and returned to Athens only after 287. At a deeper level, the tendency to
resolve the opposition of freedom and lack thereof into an alternative of
democracy versus oligarchy, canceling out entirely the role of foreign domin-
ations, resonates with what we read in other documents from these same years,
where external factors in political events of the recent past are constantly
represented in terms of internal politics.46
43
According to some scholars, this statement implies a negative judgement of Hyperides,
arguably the most prominent Athenian politician at the time of the Hellenic War; see Culasso
Gastaldi 1984: 153.
44
See Marasco 1984: 220–1. According to Deinarchus, Dem. 18–21, Demosthenes had
refused to use, in order to get the support of the Arcadians for the Thebans, money he had
received from the Persian king. The only surviving fragment of Stratocles’ speech (Phot. Bibl.
Cod. 250, 447a), delivered before Deinarchus’, shows that Stratocles probably alluded to the same
accusation (see already Aeschin. 3.239–40). Interestingly Hyperides, who at the time of the
destruction of Thebes was a political ally of Demosthenes, does not appear to have mentioned
this accusation (but his speech against Demosthenes is very fragmentary). Demochares’ claim is
somewhat perplexing, in light of the general hostility to Alexander widespread in the Pelopon-
nese according to D.S. 17.3.3–5.
45
Was that by now water under the bridge? Notice in any case the defense of Demosthenes in
Paus. 2.33.3–5.
46
See as an example the systematic obfuscation of the role of Ptolemy Soter in the account of
the Athenian insurrection against Demetrius Poliorcetes in IG II3 1 911, the famous decree for
Callias of Sphettus; on this I may be allowed to refer the reader to Luraghi forthcoming.
34 Nino Luraghi
In many ways, the decree for Demosthenes amounted to a pointed state-
ment about the recent past. True models of democratic political life had to be
looked for in the age before the Hellenic War—the credentials of more recent
heroes were thereby implicitly questioned. Ten years later, the posthumous
decree for Demochares himself, drafted by his son, would make this question-
ing explicit.47 But Demosthenes was a peculiar choice as an icon for the now
free Athenians: put in simple terms, he was an icon of defeat. He could be
depicted as a consistent and unbending defender of democracy, but the fact
remained that his political activity was most memorably associated with
the devastating defeat of Chaeronea—whatever one thinks of the two-line
epigram that various ancient sources associate with the statue. The portrait of
Demosthenes created by Polyeuctus did nothing to conceal this: the pensive
countenance of the orator and his decidedly non-idealized features evoke with
striking realism a defeated hero.48
The other development alluded to above, while caused by an accidental
external factor, may have contributed in bringing the Athenians’ mind back to
their glorious past. In the fall of 279, the Athenian Callippus of Eleusis led a
unit of one thousand picked soldiers, accompanied by cavalrymen, to tackle a
band of Gauls who were marching south from Thessaly towards Central
Greece.49 Pausanias’ report of the episode, which contains a wealth of circum-
stantial and reliable information, has certainly been filtered through a pro-
Athenian author, and it is accordingly difficult to peel off the exaggeration
and assess the actual role of the Athenians in the episode. The army that faced
the Gauls included, alongside the Athenians, contingents from Boeotia, Phocis,
Locris, Megara, Aetolia, and two units of mercenaries sent by Antigonus
Gonatas and Antiochus the First.50 Pausanias claims that the Athenians con-
tributed also a fleet of triremes and that Callippus was chosen as commander-
in-chief in recognition of the Athenians’ record as protectors of Greece against
the barbarians. Both pieces of information have been often rejected as later
embellishments, and the fact that no reference to them is made in the decree
with which the Athenians accepted the institution of the commemorative
penteteric festival of the Soteria by the Aetolians in 249 speaks strongly for
47
Preserved in the documentary appendix to Pseudo-Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators
(Mor. 851F; see n. 38), the text of the proposal submitted by Demochares’ son Laches said,
among other things, that Demochares was the only politician of his generation who had never
tried to subvert democracy—thereby implicitly questioning, and not without reason, the demo-
cratic credentials of other prominent politicians of the early third century, such as for example
Olympiodorus (on whom see Habicht 1979: 102–7).
48
See the comments of von den Hoff 2009: 205–12.
49
Callippus was one of the most prominent Athenian politicians of the period between 287
and the Chremonidean War; see the evidence assembled most recently by Bayliss 2011: 189.
50
Pausanias provides the list of the contingents, with their numbers and the names of their
leaders, in 10.20.3–5; see the comments of Habicht 1979: 88.

this view, as many scholars have observed.51 Scholars have not noticed,
however, that the Athenians might have had a reason to present their partici-
pation in the defence of Central Greece in 279 in somewhat vague terms: the
attempt to block Thermopylae was somewhat less than successful, as shown by
the fact that the Gauls were able to penetrate into Phocis and attack Delphi.
When the Athenians in 249 accepted the new Panhellenic games instituted by
the Aetolians, some embarrassment as to their contribution to the common
effort may not have been out of place, and passing over in silence their leading
role in what could be construed as a failed attempt to keep the Gauls out of
Central Greece seems like a reasonable course of action—all the more tactful,
since the Aetolians had themselves offered a rather ineffective contribution to
the blockade of Thermopylae. With this in mind, we may want to go back to
the list of contingents initially assembled at Thermopylae according to Pausanias,
a list taken for reliable by the most skeptical readers of his text, and ask
ourselves: considering that at the time the Aetolians were favourably inclined
to Gonatas, while the Boeotians are generally thought to have been hostile to
him, how likely is it that the Boeotians would send 10,000 hoplites, the largest
contingent in the army, to fight under the command of an Aetolian general?
And by the same token, how likely is it that the Aetolians would fight under
the command of the Boeotians?52 And yet, the army must have had a
commander: an Athenian might have been the most logical choice, irrespect-
ive of Athens’ ancient glory, considering that at this point Athens had good
relations both with the Aetolians and with the Boeotians, as we know thanks to
epigraphic evidence.53 Be that as it may, it is certainly true that the Athenians
celebrated their participation in this Panhellenic campaign against the bar-
barians: a painted portrait of Callippus was seen by Pausanias in the bouleu-
terion at Athens, while the shield of Cydias son of Cybernis, who fell in the
battle at Thermopylae, was dedicated to Zeus Eleutherius in Athens (10.21.5).
Ultimately, due to the uncertainties surrounding Pausanias’ report we cannot
tell whether the description of the Gauls as the new barbarian foe of Hellenism,
heirs to the Persians, which later became popular thanks to Aetolian and
Pergamene propaganda, was already present in Athens of the seventies.54 Even
if this was not the case, however, participation in an enterprise that must have
51
IG II3 1 1005; See Nachtergael 1977: 143–5 with further references. Add Habicht 1979:
91–2 and Bearzot 1992: 108, along the same lines.
52
This argument was formulated long ago by Tarn 1913: 151, and is brushed aside somewhat
unceremoniously by Nachtergael 1977: 145 (whose comments on the epilektoi are out of place
anyway, cf. ISE 7). By contrast, the arguments used by Bayliss 2011: 197–200 to defend Pausanias
on this point strike me as not terribly persuasive.
53
See Habicht 1979: 77 with references to the relevant texts.
54
For what it is worth, it may be pointed out that the funerary epigram that accompanied the
statue of Euanoridas of Thebes, ISE 68, while referring to the defense of Delphi, says nothing
about the enemy. On the other hand, already a year later, in the decree of Cos from the spring or
summer of 278, announcing a double thanksgiving ceremony to be performed at Delphi and Cos,
36 Nino Luraghi
counted as in some sense Panhellenic cannot have gone without some amount
of symbolic elaboration. In this sense, the participation of the Athenians, in
whatever capacity, to the defense of Central Greece in 279 surely helps to
contextualize the striking Panhellenic rhetoric of the decree of Chremonides.55
2.5 THE DECREE OF CHREMONIDES:

DECLARING WAR, BETWEEN PAST AND P RESENT
Approved in the summer of 269, the decree of Chremonides is a highly

peculiar document. In substantive terms, it amounted to an alliance between
Athens and Sparta, with their respective allies—but only the allies of Sparta are
listed, and an impressive list it is, almost a Peloponnesian League reborn, with
the addition of some Cretans. The inscription, however, included much more
than a simple description of the enactment. In a motivation clause that runs
over almost thirty lines, Chremonides explained that the new alliance was
advisable in light of the fact that, in the past, Athens and Sparta, with their
respective allies, had established a common alliance which had permitted
them to fight and defeat in many battles those who were attempting to enslave
the poleis; thereby they (Athenians and Spartans that is) had won glory and
secured freedom for the other Greeks. Now—the clause continues—Greece
found itself is a similar situation due to the actions of those who were
attempting to overthrow the traditional political institutions of each polis.
Furthermore, in accordance with the policy of his ancestors and of his sister,
King Ptolemy was clearly engaged for the common freedom of the Greeks.
Then the fact that both Athens and Sparta were allied with Ptolemy is
mentioned, and the other Greeks are encouraged to follow them on that
path. Since now the Spartans had come to Athens offering alliance, the offer
should be accepted so that, thanks to the establishment of a common concord
(homonoia koine), the Greeks might become eager combatants alongside king
Ptolemy and all together, against those who had wronged and betrayed the
poleis and might for the future preserve their poleis in concord.
Over fifty years after the Hellenic War, the resemblance between the
Panhellenic rhetoric of the Decree of the Demagogues and the Decree of
Chremonides is obvious and has been pointed out several times. It is certainly
striking that in 269, having lost control of important portions of Attica itself,
cut off from their main harbour, the Athenians might still be sensitive to this
the Celts are already referred to as barbaroi, with no further specification (text and translation in
Nachtergael 1977: 401–3).
55
See Bayliss 2011: 110–11.

rhetoric and to the call for Panhellenic leadership it implied: what in 323 was
wishful thinking by 269 had become utter self-delusion. On the other hand,
the war against Antigonus was an uphill battle—and a steep hill it was—and
one may find it less than surprising that such an endeavour would require a
significant symbolic effort to appear worth it. The slogan of the demagogues
discussed above points after all in exactly the same direction.
On a general level, both decrees share what we could call a hermeneutic
mobilization of the past in order to promote an interpretation of the present.
In the process, both past and present are manipulated so as to correspond to
the political agenda at hand. In both decrees, evoking the Persian Wars was a
pointed, maybe even paradoxical statement about the present situation, and
the historical precedent had the purpose of eliciting the same kind of reaction
famously elicited by the Persian invasion, namely Panhellenic unity and
resistance to a stronger enemy, and held the promise of attaining the same
final result: needless to say, victory. It was a sophisticated operation, going well
beyond the crudeness of a slogan. On the face of it, and in spite of the explicit
statement to the contrary in the decree of Chremonides, in 269 the political
situation in Greece did not significantly resemble the Persian Wars, any more
than it did in 323, as already pointed out above (section 2.3). Greece was not
facing invasion by a foreign army; in fact, in 269, just as in 323, the enemy does
not even appear to have been particularly inclined to wage war sua sponte. The
Athenians and their allies, one could say, were in both cases the true aggressor.
The politicians who formulated the decrees were perfectly aware of all these
differences, and it is probably no accident that in the Decree of Chremonides
the Persian Wars are alluded to rather than mentioned explicitly, and the word
barbaros is not used at all. In fact, to say that the decree depicts Gonatas as a
new Xerxes does injustice to the political finesse of the Athenians.56
In the texts of the decrees, the past is subtly manipulated so as to mirror the
present. In the Decree of the Demagogues, Athenian initiative and the decisive
importance of the navy to the upcoming war made Salamis and naval warfare
in general the natural focus of the reference to the Persian Wars. On the other
hand, the centrality of an alliance with Sparta in the decree of Chremonides
reflects the different circumstances of 269, and so does the silence on the
traditional strength of Athens, the navy—nobody wanted to hear about that
with the Piraeus occupied by a foreign garrison. At least in the decree of
Chremonides, however, we can tell that the present itself was also manipulated
so as to be a plausible correlative of the past. The traditional conceptualization
of the Persian invasion as an attempt to deprive the Greeks of their freedom,
which went back to the immediate aftermath of the war, is here used as a
correlative to Gonatas’ politics in Greece, which consisted in installing loyalist
56
Cf. Habicht 2006: 163; my own formulation in Luraghi 2012: 368, while less explicit than
Habicht’s, is imprecise, too.
38 Nino Luraghi
regimes, usually characterized by our sources as tyrannies, in the poleis he
intended to control. The loss of political freedom functions as a precarious link
between two completely different historical situations.57
Beyond the common focus on the freedom of the Greeks, seen in both cases
as an unquestionably unitary notion, there are important differences between
the two decrees. The Decree of Chremonides speaks a very characteristic
political language, which lacks close parallels in earlier Athenian documents.
The key concept is the concord among the Greeks: it is first introduced as a
precondition for the Greeks to fight eagerly against their oppressor (ll. 31–2),
and then as a desirable result of a victorious fight (ll. 34–5). Now it could be
said that it was not necessary to spell out the importance of concord in the
presence of friendship and alliance among the Greeks, for friendship and
alliance could not come about without concord. The insistence on a concept
that appears logically superfluous calls for special attention.
Understandably, for the Greeks the value of concord seems to have been
most obvious in the context of the individual political communities, where
civil strife was almost endemic. To regard the relations between the poleis in
terms of concord or lack thereof was somewhat less obvious, but the thought
must have been facilitated by the radical opposition of Greek and non-Greek,
in which framework no less a thinker than Plato could speak of conflicts across
the ethnic border as the only true wars, while conflict between Greeks were
really to be categorized as civil strife.58 The concord of the Greeks was a key
theme of fourth-century Panhellenism, and as such is best represented in the
works of Isocrates.59 Up to this point, however, there is no real proof that
concord among the Greeks, as found in the Decree of Chremonides, had
become part of a more broadly shared political discourse within Athens or
in the Greek world at large.
A cornerstone for the history of concord in Greek political thought and
discourse is associated with Chremonides’ elder brother Glaucon, who was,
among other distinctions, agonothetes (possibly twice) and strategos of the
hoplites twice or three times, including during the Chremonidean War, in
266/5.60 According to a decree of the common council of the Greeks in
Glaucon’s honour, at the time when he was in the service of King Ptolemy
57 58
See Jung 2006: 313 and 315 n. 59. Plat. Rep. 5.470c.
59
See Thériault 1996: 102–12.
60
See SEG 51.144, edited by Habicht 2000–3. The precise reconstruction of Glaucon’s career
in Athens depends on the date of IG II2 3079, which lists (most of) his achievements; the archon
is Nicias, indicating either 282/1 or 266/5 (see Humphreys 2007: 70–2 and Paschidis 2008a:
510–13 with comprehensive discussion of the problems involved). Furthermore, Glaucon had
been made a proxenos of the Delphians (FD III 2, 72) and participated in a diplomatic mission to
the Peloponnese alongside Callippus of Eleusis and Aristeides of Lamptrae (see n. 8) immediately
before the outbreak of the war (ISE 53 is a decree in their honour from Orchomenus in Arcadia).
His victory with the chariot in Olympia, documented by IvO 178 and Paus. 6.16.9, may belong to
the period after the war, when Glaucon was a high-ranking Ptolemaic officer, as suggested by

(i.e., after the capitulation of Athens to Gonatas in 262) Glaucon had contrib-
uted in various ways to the cult of Zeus the Saviour and of the Concord of the
Greeks in Plataea. His contributions consisted of dedications and also of a
foundation whose yield was to finance the sacrifice to Zeus the Saviour and
Concord and the competitions held in memory of those who had fallen
fighting against the barbaroi for the freedom of the Greeks.61 As far as the
biography of Glaucon is concerned, the decree confirms what we knew from
various other sources, namely that after the capitulation of Athens he and his
brother had become high-ranking officials of Ptolemy Philadelphus.62 The
chronology of the decree, which ranges between 262/1 and 246/5, is a terminus
ante for the institution of a cult of Concord in the context of the celebration of
the memory of the battle of Plataea.
In the absence of any direct evidence to this effect, there is general agree-
ment that the cult of the Concord of the Greeks came to join the original cult
of Zeus Eleutherius at some later stage of the development of the memorial
celebrations held in Plataea.63 The decree for Glaucon however provides
merely a terminus ante for the expansion of the cult, and scholars have been
debating about the most appropriate historical context for such an expansion.
At present, the discussion seems to have polarized around the time of the
reconstruction of Plataea by Philip and the creation of the Hellenic League and
the period immediately before the Chremonidean War. Both positions have
been argued for eloquently, and no consensus is in sight.64 Epigraphic evi-
dence however, which should carry a special weight in this discussion, points
to the later context. More specifically, already the scholars who provided the
standard edition of the decree for Glaucon, Étienne and Piérart, pointed to
the insistent recurrence of the goddess Concord in documents associated with
the Ptolemaic sphere of influence in the Aegean during the third century.
Nafissi 1999. The wealth of the family is confirmed by the fact that Glaucon’s father, Eteocles,
had himself been an agonothetes, as shown by IG II2 3458.
61
The standard edition of the inscription, found in 1971, is Étienne and Piérart 1975.
62
The high rank is confirmed by the fact Glaucon was eponymous priests of Alexander and
the Sibling Gods in 255/4 (like Callicrates of Samos and Patroclus the Macedonian before him;
see Hauben 2013: 39; on the general importance of the holders of this office, see also Bagnall
1976: 84) and Chremonides is found leading a Ptolemaic fleet at the battle of Ephesus (Polyaen.
5.18). According to a diatribe on exile by the otherwise unknown Teles, the two of them became
close advisers of Philadelphus (Teles fr. III.23 Fuentes González). A statue of Glaucon was
dedicated in Olympia by Ptolemy Euergetes in reward for Glaucon’s service under his father
(SEG 32.415). On Chremonides’ career after the capitulation of Athens, see Sartori 1970.
63
Note, however, that none of the sources that talk about the original institution of the
celebrations mention homonoia, with or without capital, as pointed out by Jung 2006: 321; see
especially the detailed description of Plutarch (Nic. 19–21).
64
The recent contributions of Jung 2006: 298–343 and Wallace 2011, arguing for the later and
the earlier date respectively, provide easy access to the relevant bibliography. Étienne 1985
delivers a spirited and to my mind persuasive defense of the interpretation of the document
put forth by himself and Marcel Piérart; Thériault 1996: 115 cautiously favours this solution, too.
40 Nino Luraghi
Their list includes the altar of Concord in the temenos of Ptolemy instituted by
Artemidorus of Perge on Thera and an inscription from Cos.65 Other docu-
ments point to the association of concord, with or without a capital letter, with
Ptolemaic possessions or high-ranking Ptolemaic officers. Philocles of Sidon,
who has been called ‘the main architect of Ptolemaic thalassocracy in the
eighties’, wrote to the Samians in 280 or thereabouts in order to promote
concord within the city.66 In a decree of Nagidus from the time of Ptolemy
Euergetes a cult of Concord is mentioned, in a way that gives the impression that
this cult was seen as a token of Ptolemaic loyalty in the relations between Nagidus
and its sort-of-colony Arsinoe, founded during the reign of Philadelphus and
before the Second Syrian War, which began around 260 BCE.67
Together with the wording of the Decree of Chremonides, this evidence
suggests the likelihood that the concord of the Greeks might have been an
ideological building block that accompanied Ptolemaic expansion in the
Aegean in the last years of Ptolemy Soter and during the reign of Philadelphus.
Two further elements may support the suggestion of reading the wording of
the decree in relation with Ptolemaic propaganda. The first is the fact that
defense of the ancestral constitutions, which were endangered by the unnamed
enemies mentioned in the Decree of Chremonides, is one of the benefactions
attributed to the late Ptolemy Soter in the famous Nicouria decree, the
document with which in 280 or thereabouts the League of the Islanders
accepted the newly instituted penteteric festival of the Ptolemaea, founded
by Philadelphus to honour the memory of his father.68
The second element is a six-line fragment of Alexis of Thurii, one of the
most prominent poets of the Athenian new comedy, that appears to be a toast
for Ptolemy, his sister, and concord. The comedy from which the toast comes
cannot be dated except based on the toast itself, which puts it between the
marriage of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, in 279 at the earliest, and the death of the
queen in July 268.69 The fragment speaks of emptying four vessels of unmixed
wine and praises the mixture of same with same. The reference is ostensibly to
the wine, but it can hardly not extend to the sibling spouses. Considering the
cultural implications of drinking unmixed wine, one has the strong impression
that Alexis’ toast conveyed at least mild disapproval of the incestuous mar-
riage. Now, obviously the concord of the sibling spouses is not the same as the
concord of the Greeks and yet, in light of the later popularity of concord, in
65
Étienne and Piérart 1975: 71–4.
66
The quote is from Hauben 1987: 419; see SEG 1.363 ll. 6–8 with Bagnall 1976: 80.
67
SEG 39.1426 l. 38; on this inscription see Jones and Habicht 1989 (for the date of the
foundation of Arsinoe, esp. 336–7). Note that the counterpart in Arsinoe of the cult of Concord
in Nagidus is the cult of the Sibling Gods (ll. 39–40).
68
IG XII 7, 506; see Meadows 2013: 28.
69
Alexis PCG fr. 246. For the date, see Arnott 1996: 686–9. My interpretation is set forth in
more detail in Luraghi 2012: 367–9.

different formats, in the political language of the Ptolemies, it would be quite
extraordinary if Alexis’ choice of words were due to mere coincidence. After
all, it has to be recognized that concord was not the most obvious concept for
Alexis to use for his purpose—not the most obvious, that is, unless the concept
was already associated with Ptolemy for some other reason. The conclusion
would be that the ideological language of the decree of Chremonides, unex-
pectedly, may turn out to represent a case in which Athens was a recipient
rather than a producer of symbolic goods.
2.6 THE END OF AN AGE —I N S OM E S E NS E
Many elements converge in suggesting to scholars a view of the Chremonidean

war as the end of an age.70 For one thing, it was the last time the Athenians
tried to regain control of their territory by force of arms—when the Piraeus
did in the end return to their hands, it was thanks to the funds provided by the
Achaean League and the willingness of the commander of the Antigonid
garrison, Diogenes, to be bought off. If we turn from politics to the cultural
life of Athens, the impression grows even stronger. Epicurus died immediately
before the war, Zeno close to its end. Attic New Comedy ended with the death
of Philemon immediately before the capitulation of the city. Philochorus, the
last of the Athenian Atthidographers, was apparently killed because of his
opposition to Gonatas. Ever since Niebuhr brought the Chremonidean War
back to life, an impressive line of highly authoritative scholars, from Droysen
to Ferguson, have stressed this notion.71
Surely we need to resist the latent desire to subdivide history into tidily
separate boxes, which is perhaps the strongest force motivating the impulse to
periodize. The present contribution, selecting one specific aspect of the polit-
ical culture of the Athenians, has attempted to trace a hypothetical trajectory
that allows us to see the turning point constituted by the Chremonidean War
as an accelerated phase of a longer process with roots in the interwar period
between Chaeronea and the Hellenic War and a starting point of sorts in the
Hellenic War itself. The documents and events discussed shed light on one
side, if arguably a very important and revealing one, of a larger and much
more complex process.
From the dissolution of the Second Naval League to the battle of Chaeronea,
the Athenians were confronted with an unprecedented series of setbacks that
undermined the cornerstones of their political ideology. In the years between
70
Niebuhr 1828: 462 memorably wrote: ‘Der chremonideische Krieg ist die letzte Lebensre-
gung Athens, sein Ausgang der Zeitpunkt des geistigen Absterbens der griechischen Nation.’
71
Few voices have contested it, most notably Treves 1955: 91–2 and 106 n. 49.
42 Nino Luraghi
Chaeronea and the death of Alexander, they reacted to this threat in the most
logical way, namely by searching their past history, as they understood it, for
the symbolic and intellectual building blocks necessary in order to recreate
their greatness of yore.72 This reaction is usually associated, perhaps simplis-
tically or at any rate in too univocal a way, with the name of Lycurgus. It
involved aspects of the life of the Athenians ranging from cults, festivals, the
training and education of the youth, and the establishment of the texts of the
three tragedians, to the financial measures that created the means for rebuild-
ing the fleet, in the past the foundation of Athenian power. Most crucially,
this policy clearly had a high degree of plausibility: the Athenians accepted it
with enthusiasm.
The first failure of this effort in the Hellenic War did not really change the
trajectory of Athenian political culture, it merely reinforced its momentum.
The years that follow the Hellenic War saw a spectacular efflorescence in all
the fields of Athenian cultural life—the list includes philology, antiquarianism,
historiography, comedy, and of course philosophy, which soon became the
jewel of the crown.73 The almost frantic creativity of Athenian culture in these
decades was the most remarkable epiphenomenon of the Athenians’ attempt
at standing their ground in the world, which in their terms meant protecting
freedom and democracy.74 In the meantime, the world was changing at a fast
pace. Alexander’s empire, the largest conglomeration of power ever seen on
the coasts of the Mediterranean, soon gave ground to a plurality of kingdoms,
immensely powerful and in continuous conflict. All of a sudden for Athens, as
for most Greek poleis, protecting or regaining freedom and autonomy meant
choosing which king to side with. And yet, as the Athenians looked at their
political life, they kept describing it to themselves in old-fashioned terms,
pervasively replacing external political factors with internal ones in their
official shared utterances, the decrees.
Throughout the half century from the Hellenic War to the Decree of
Chremonides, the attempt to extract from the past the resources needed to
cope with the present, an attempt of which the theme of the Persian Wars
in the two decrees we have looked at is an obvious example, was a dominant
concern for the Athenians. It was an all-abiding concern that invested
72 73
See the remarks of Lambert 2011: 187–90. See Habicht 1994: 231–47.
74
This does not mean, of course, that the whole of Athens’ intellectual production in this
period was involved in the effort to bring back the city’s past glory; far from it. Some of the key
players, in fact, were working in a directly opposite direction, as is the case with the Peripatus in
the last years of Aristotle and under Theophrastus. Van Wees 2011 has argued that the
constitution of Dracon found in the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians was a blueprint
of sorts of the oligarchy of Demetrius of Phalerum, and even though not all his arguments seem
acceptable, the general thrust of his approach is correct. The constitution of Solon described in
the Constitution of the Athenians may be argued to have had a similar relation to the constitution
imposed upon the Athenians by Antipater after the Hellenic War, as I plan to show more in
detail elsewhere.

symbolic as well as material aspects of their communal life. Demochares, the
politician who passed through the assembly the proposal to honour Demos-
thenes, is also usually held responsible for the reconstruction of the Athenian
fortifications in 307, documented by an amazingly detailed decree.75 It was the
last attempt to bring the Long Walls back to life, in order to defend Athens’
lifeline, the connection to the sea, in good Periclean fashion—the last attempt
before the old fortification system that had made it possible for Athens to
withstand the Spartans’ serial invasions of Attica finally fell victim to the
spectacular new developments in siege warfare, which in the end made it
unviable.76 Just as the Long Walls progressively lost their capacity to protect
Athens’ access to the sea, over this period of fifty years Athenian political
discourse increasingly focused on defensive goals, and the Athenians came to
regard their past as a blend of splendid victories and honourable defeats held
together by an overarching unity of purpose—the defense of freedom and
democracy. At the end, Athens lost to Alexandria even the most ancestral of its
prerogatives, the formulation of the ideological language of Panhellenism. In
the future, the Persian Wars would become a theme in the propaganda of the
Aetolian League, then of the Attalids. Athenian monopoly was over.
In the struggle to come to terms with the new reality of the age of the
diadochs, Athens became something of a cultural supernova, irradiating
innovation throughout the Mediterranean world and impacting in a decisive
way the formation of Hellenistic culture. By the end of the process other
centres, created mostly at the courts of the kings and largely with fragments
from the Athenian fallout, had replaced Athens as the cutting edge of Greek
culture. One cannot but admire the powerful mobilization of intellectual
resources that took place in Athens in the decades after the death of Alexander
the Great, second only to the actual mobilization of those Athenians who
fought for freedom and democracy as they understood them, embarking on
the way that takes men to heaven.
75
Best consulted in Maier 1959: 48–67 nr. 11, with extensive explanatory notes; this is phase
IV of the Long Walls in Conwell 2008: 161–70.
76
Note however that the traditional view according to which the Long Walls were simply not
defensible any longer has been questioned by Conwell 2008, 165–9; if his views are accepted, then
it would not be the progress in siege techniques, but simply the chronic scarcity of resources and
the presence of foreign garrisons in the Piraeus that in the end induced the Athenians to abandon
the Long Walls. Regardless of one’s view on the matter, Conwell’s discussion is extremely helpful
in assessing what the Athenians may have thought they were doing at that point.

Stairway To Heaven

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by: Kalaimathy Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0003143333 Date:6/6/17 Time:11:39:10

To the memory of my father Raimondo (1921–2012),

2.1 A THENIAN P OLITI CS AND THE P AST

The image of Athens ‘school of Hellas’, and thereby indirectly fountainhead of

2.2 THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR, OR,

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 23

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 25

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 27

2.3 THE DECREE OF THE DEMAGOGUES

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 29

2.4 F ROM THE LAMIAN WAR TO

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 31

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 33

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 35

2.5 THE DECREE OF CHREMONIDES:

Approved in the summer of 269, the decree of Chremonides is a highly

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 37

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 39

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 41

2.6 THE END OF AN AGE —I N S OM E S E NS E

Many elements converge in suggesting to scholars a view of the Chremonidean

The Politics of Memory in Early Hellenistic Athens 43

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