But polis history is above all about people and place with an intense interest in locality: this is best pursued by looking more closely at the histories of particular areas. I turn now to some particularly revealing case studies to examine more closely the variety and local significance of ‘local history’: we will examine Delos as a fascinating case where local history-writing seems to reflect local independence and pride; and the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Miletus, and (briefly) Chios where we seem to find a mass of lively and mutually contradictory tales of origins which raise important questions about the role of polis histories.

This tiny island was treated by Herodotus and Thucydides with reverence when its activities impinged on the wider Greek world: compare the famous contradictory remarks of both about what was supposedly the ‘first’ and only earthquake on Delos, a portent of disaster—Herodotus putting it at the beginning of the Persian wars, Thucydides at the start of the Peloponnesian War (Herodotus 6.98.1, shaken after Datis’ visit; Thucydides 2.8). But Delos actually had several local historians, both Athenian and Delian, who concentrated upon Delos in her own right.

It is tempting, then, to see Athenian political and religious interest in Delos as mirrored in the beginnings of Athenian ‘historical’ works about the island: when Athens had a large stake in Delos, Athenians wrote about it, perhaps appropriating it on some level. With the island’s independence from 314, it started to honor poets who wrote about it, and to produce its own local historians. The appearance of polis history for Delos seems to symbolize and reflect the growth of Delos as an entirely self-generating and upstanding polis. This is most clear from the overall pattern of authors, and from Semos of Delos.

It is tempting, then, to suspect a combination of local pride, sheer love of polis, and a determination to record traditions, dedications, and cults before they might disappear, to set in writing the critical elements which were part of Delos’ religious identity at a time of continuing powerlessness in the wider world. Perhaps an act of memorialization and nostalgia combined. Perhaps a product of self-absorption in the period of ‘independence’ as an act both of defiance to outside powers and of self-advertisement to persuade them to treat the Delians with respect. The two might be intimately connected. The very act of writing a work on Delos was a statement of self-assertion.

It is difficult to know how much of this messy recent history was treated by polis historians of Ionia, but what is clear in the extant testimony is an intense preoccupation with origins and foundation myths, and it is these we concentrate upon here. They are particularly interesting because the remaining fragments have much to do with intermarriage and mixtures of peoples, and we might guess that their situation on the edge of the Persian empire and larger non-Greek areas of Anatolia gave particular urgency and piquancy to their stories of Greek origin. It reminds us forcefully that such a preoccupation with remote stories of origin was not a feature of Herodotus’ time and Histories which then went out of fashion. More than this, however, it gives us a glimpse of non-Athenian poleis’ views of their own origins, stories that are sometimes very surprising. The fragments, and indeed the whole topic of these cities’ ‘origins’ are immensely complicated, and we can only examine a fraction of the material here (we will also have to consider versions not strictly attested in local historians but very probably related to their versions). I wish to take each city separately (Ephesus and Miletus especially), since this is most illuminating, and to make no attempt to combine the different and often incompatible accounts that exist even for a single city.

Let us take Ephesus first: there are several versions of ktisis from various authors that suggest political anxiety and rivalry in claiming origins between Athenian (or Athens-based) writers and the Ionians themselves.

But we may note the idea that a single, separated group founded Ephesus, and that they had difficulties at first. In other traditions about the Ionian colonization we get the impression of a single large expedition for the whole of Ionia. In Pherecydes of Athens from the early fifth century, paraphrased by Strabo, Carians and Leleges lived in the land first of all, then “Androcles, legitimate son of Codrus king of Athens, was the leader of the Ionian colonization . . . and he became the founder of Ephesus” (FGH 3 F 155, from Strabo 14.1.3). For Hellanikos, in the late fifth century, Neleus the son of Codrus founded the 12 cities (FGH 4 FF 48, 125). This sounds like the version favorable to Athens and her fifth-century claims to the Ionian cities of Asia as colonies of hers.

The various stories about the ktisis of Ephesus imply strongly that the citizens of Ephesus maintained—and continued to develop—their own tales of foundation, tales that were tied precisely to the prominent buildings and natural landmarks of the place. Each area probably had a story. The grand legend of Ionian colonists all setting out from Athens had given Athens a suitable prominence in Ionian history and assumed a neat linear line from Athens, but these are contradicted by the traditions propagated by the Ionian cities themselves (and quite how Herodotus fits in with his claim that the Ionians were expelled from Achaea by the Achaeans [1.145] is unclear). We have just seen four different versions of the founding of Ephesus, one with Androcles as leader of the whole expedition (Pherecydes), one with Neleus as founder of all 12 cities (Hellanikos), {252|253} one claiming foundation by Samian slaves (Malakos), and the story narrated by Kreophylos from Ephesus itself, of the founders as a group.

Pausanias is a relatively late source: we do not know which local historians he used here, and he may well have used later transformations of the traditions, as well as early poets (this is a question which needs more attention). But in the late seventh century Mimnermus of Colophon retold the tale of the ktisis of Smyrna as a direct journey straight from Pylos in the southwest Peloponnese to Colophon, and then on to Smyrna; in other words, with no sojourn in Athens (F 9 W = Strabo 14.1.4). This at least makes clear that the fifth-century version of the Athens-based colonization of Ionia was not the sole or canonical version even then. It is, of course, another version of the founding of Smyrna that we may contrast with the Ephesian story in Strabo mentioned above. And Pausanias disagreed with Pindar’s (evidently at least fifth-century) claim, that the sanctuary of Artemis at Ephesus was founded by Amazons (Pausanias 7.2.6–9).

Indeed one can suggest that the Ionian cities perpetuated the traditions that they themselves originated from layers of different peoples for several reasons: in part they were not (or were no longer) attracted by the idea of single Athenian origin after the fifth century, when the loss of the Athenian empire made that version both less attractive and less necessary. A second suggestion is that their very make-up and geographical situation meant that they were living cheek by jowl with Carians, Lydians, Lycians (cf. Herodotus 1.147.1, mentioning Lycian kings descended from Glaukos son of Hippolochos). They had to explain through legend how the political dominance of the Greek speakers had emerged, for example by Ionians coming and killing or expelling Leleges, Carians, and others. The importance of Amazons as founders or original inhabitants of some cities (see Blok, above) brings out clearly and symbolically their recognition of the indigenous female contributions. Thirdly, they also reflect the communal need to explain through narrative how they all came to be Ionians, the 12 special cities, and how they came together in the Panionion. The interlocking myths and legends of rivalries, and of oikist groups moving from one area to another seem to create an image of conflict, the overcoming of difficulties, mutual accusations of siding too much with the non-Greeks, perhaps even heroic struggle. This would be politically useful or powerful as a charter myth for Greeks holding tight to the edge of a non-Greek-speaking continent. The combination of early poetic treatments of ktisis and rich local histories in prose imply elevated, even heroic, treatments of these origins. The links with different parts of the Greek world other than Athens could then go on to facilitate alliances and contacts with many other places. But the heroic forging of ‘Ionia’ out of these conflicts between Greeks and between Greeks and Carians or Leleges or Cretans, would no doubt be a powerful charter myth for the Panionion. One can well see how it was that Ionian Greeks of Asia produced early histories of ‘Ionia’ and of their cities. It would have been all the more necessary during the fourth century of Persian rule of the mainland of Asia.

The vast numbers and geographical spread of polis– and local-histories in the fourth century and later demands a political-cultural explanation that rises above the internal literary developments of the genre of historiography. Yet individual case studies seem to show a diversity in content and emphases which must also reflect the rivalries between neighboring city-states, played out in their differing sources of pride and identity. Delos’ powerful cultic role in the Greek world was celebrated by its historians particularly in its period of independence, and this late independence gave room for what we must call an overflowing of local patriotism. The tangled web of stories of origin and foundation of the poleis of the Ionians seems by contrast to tell a tale (or rather many tales) of struggle and interaction between Greeks of many different origins and the Anatolian peoples already there; and it is significant that such tales continue to be told for generations.

To call this antiquarianism seems to beg the question—this is not really an answer, but rather a categorization that implies an explanation. This type of historiography does not offer or partake of the grand march of international Greek history, but in the fourth and third century there could be many sensible reasons to reject that: compare the aporia of Xenophon at the end of his Hellenika, faced with the collapse of the world order he knew. Successive hegemonies could perhaps engender historiographical indifference to the tradition of the grand Greek narrative. Individual poleis and their customs and history seem to have become an acceptable topic for written literature, indeed a much sought after topic in the fourth century and later. Ancient history and present day cults could all be useful in diplomacy, inter-polis relations, and relations with the kings. There is also a large element of simple escapism and local patriotism, even nostalgia. The loving enumeration of Delian cults and the traditions of place seems to testify to simple love of homeland as well as to the international or diplomatic uses of such tradition. There were, after all, other possible routes in historiography not taken here: for example elaborate family histories, {258|259} histories of grand houses and their families, a genre familiar in English history, and other sub-genres which were also divisive. These local histories of the Greek world are, it seems, mostly about community and unity: they are community building. In the Ionian cities, the conflicts and struggles are in the remote past, part of the story of how they came to be as they were now. This could be vitally important in an era of violence, stasis, external interference from greater powers, successor wars—and the need to impress a powerful overlord. When the present and future were so uncertain, origins and one’s own polis could be more comforting, an area of familiar certainty. Origins would be even more useful and reassuring when the future posed real threats. But the ‘polis’ being presented here is a different kind of polis from the more political animal of the mid and late fifth century. The origin tales gave literary and concrete form to the idea of an imagined community that fed both interest in the remote past and a need to foster the sense of polis in the present. {259|}