Chronological Table: Archaic Megara, 800-500 B.C.

[This article was originally published in 1985 by The Johns Hopkins University Press as an appendix to Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (ed. by T. Figueria and G. Nagy) 261–303. Baltimore. This version is updated from that made available at the Stoa Consortium. In it, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{261|262}” indicates where p. 261 of the printed version ends and p. 262 begins.]

This table has been compiled with a specific goal in mind, namely to organize chronologically the data available on the history of Megara during the archaic period. It is my hope that the table will prove useful wherever historical events are discussed in this volume and will serve as a reminder to the reader that the evolution of the Theognidea was open to influences, now irrecoverable or nearly so, from other poleis. Naturally, my views on the generic, ideological, and pan-Megarian character of the Theognidea entail that much of the reading of specific, externally-attested political situations into the corpus is to be discarded. The table, therefore, should be read together with Ch. 5, where the relationship of Theognis and Megarian society is investigated. On the basis of the arguments to be presented below, it will become striking how much can be known about archaic Megara and its chronology, once a biographical reading of the corpus is avoided. I should like to draw the reader’s attention to the following works, which I have found especially useful in compiling this chronology: Hammond 1954; Highbarger 1927; Legon 1981; Oost 1973; and Salmon 1972.

*A (before 750) An important piece of evidence about Corinthian hegemony over Megara is Plutarch’s description (based on the Constitution of the Megarians) of the connotation of the Megarian term doruxenos (Greek Questions 17). In Attic usage the word means a military ally (Aeschylus Choephoroi 562; Sophocles OC 632), but it can also denote the tie that unites a warrior with his captured enemy (Suda s.v. “doruxenos”; Eustathius on Iliad III 205–207, p. 405). Plutarch gives to it this latter meaning, with the added explanation that this type of xeniā was created when Megarians were taken prisoner by other Megarians and were entertained by their captors until they were ransomed. The historical setting for the custom is a time when the five kōmai ‘villages’ constituting Megara fought each other. The Corinthians fomented these conflicts. This situation suggests an early date, before Megarian sunoikismos, when each of the five kōmai was a separate political entity. A date before sunoikismos is congruent with the convention (mentioned by Plutarch) that those working the land were not to be molested. This suggests a date {262|263} before the adoption by the Megarians of the hoplite phalanx. The effectiveness of hoplite warfare depended in large part on threats to an enemy’s farmland, forcing him to a set battle in defense. The preservation of a tradition about the doruxenoi may be attributed to a situation in which Megarian aristocrats sought to uphold a heritage of individual combat in the face of political claims based on participation in the phalanx (see Note J below).

It would be most interesting to know by what means the Corinthians were able to incite the Megarians against each other. Gift-giving (through guest-friendship), which selectively bypassed the leading village at any one time, might induce a weaker village to tackle this leader. The Megarian system of ransom and mutual hospitality would have been a well-designed antidote to Corinthian interference.

Further evidence for early Megarian subjection to Corinth is predominantly proverbial and centers around explanations for the expression Dios Korinthos ‘Corinth of Zeus’ and a sometimes connected expression dakrua Megareōn ‘Megarian tears’ (used for insincere mourning). The antiquity of Dios Korinthos is not to be doubted. The expression was known to Pindar (N. 7.106), and the scholia to this line offer an explanation congruent with the sense of the text (scholia Pindar N. 7.155a–b; cf. scholia Plato Euthydemus 292E; Suda s.v. “Dios Korinthos”).

The fullest account is given in scholia Pindar N. 7.155b, which is based on the Atthidographer Demon, who lived c. 300 and wrote a work On Proverbs (FGH 327 F 19, cf. F 4). The Megarians, inhabitants of a colony of Corinth, were forced to obey the stronger Corinthians and to provide mourners for the funerals of members of Corinth’s ruling Bacchiad clan. That Megara was an apoikiā is a motif suggesting the perspective of Corinth, which refused to recognize Megarian independence. Corinth aspired to hegemony over its colonies, unusual for the classical period (Graham 1983.233–234, cf. 118–153). Corinthian hubris reached such a point that the Megarians revolted. A Corinthian embassy came to remonstrate with them and stated that Dios Korinthos would be angered if the revolt went unpunished. These remarks drove the Megarians into a rage, and they attacked the ambassadors. When further reinforcements arrived from Corinth and a battle was fought, the Megarians, victorious, pursued their beaten enemy with cries of Dios Koriothos. Demon uses the anecdote to illustrate Corinthian arrogance.

The story was a popular one, appearing in differing versions, as can be seen in the variants offered in a scholion to Aristophanes (scholia Frogs 439). In another scholion to Pindar (N. 7.155a), the phrase Dios Korinthos is brought into an explanation of the proverb {263|264} dekhetai kai bōlon Alētēs ‘Aletes receives the clod of earth’ (cf. Hesychius s.v. “Dios Korinthos”). This proverb is explained by the story of the Dorian occupation of Corinth. As can be seen from the version of the Dios Korinthos story based on Demon, the phrase Megareōn dakrua could be worked into the same explanatory complex. The phrase does not appear, but its explanation is implicit (cf. Suda s.v. “Megareōn dakrua”). In the scholion, the provision for the Megarians’ attending Bacchiad funerals is made into a piece of Corinthian policy. In another version, the proverb is particularized. A Megarian king Klytios, otherwise unknown, has married his daughter to Bakkhios, a Corinthian (Zenobius 5.8). When the daughter dies, Klytios forces Megarian mourners to go to Corinth. This story is not very different, inasmuch as Bakkhios was the royal ancestor from whom the Bacchiad clan claimed their descent and authority. The variant, rather than explaining Megareōn dakrua, gives a rationale for the custom of enforced mourning by the Megarians. One might well imagine a Corinthian arguing for the justice of such a requirement by pointing to its origin in a voluntary act of a Megarian king. The same cannot be said for another version of the story, which explains Megarian tears as tears for their own kings (Diogenianus 6.34). This is banalizing, and it removes all point from the proverb. It is perhaps merely the result of careless abbreviation. Hammond (1954.97) believes that the source for the explanations of these proverbs was Aristotle’s Constitution of the Megarians.

It is not necessary to judge the authenticity of explanations of such cryptic expressions. It is sufficient to observe that such explanations could have been plausibly stated only if Corinthian control of Megara was granted by most Greeks. The forced attendance of the Megarians at Bacchiad funerals indicates that they were the personal subjects of the Bacchiad clan, whose adult male members constituted the Corinthian government. This meshes with what is known about the closed oligarchy at Corinth and with an eighth-century date (the Bacchiads ruled 748–657). Herodotus reports a similar institution at Sparta, where the Helots were compelled to attend the funerals of Spartan kings (heroized after death) and to make highly formalized shows of mourning (Herodotus 6.58.2-3; Pausanias 4.14.4). Such an institution exists in order to create feelings of dependency, forcing the subjects to dissociate their outward behavior from their inner feelings, and to emphasize distinctions between the elite, for whom grief is strictly controlled, and the dependents, for whom immoderate behavior is mandated. The Megarian and Spartan customs appear to be parallel adaptations created to institutionalize dependency roles. Intrinsic to the data on Corinthian designs on the Megarid is the underlying {264|265} resistance of the Megarians. Corinthian hegemony may have been only fitfully brought to bear. There is no reason to think that the relations between the two cities implicit in the proverbial stories and those involving the doruxenoi are irreconcilable or must be chronologically removed from each other.

*B (c. 750) Plutarch’s discussion of Megarian doruxenoi provides valuable information about the constituent units of Megara after sunoikismos. As for the period before sunoikismos, the five original kōmai ‘villages’ were inhabited by the Heraeis, Piraeis, Megareis, Kynosoureis, and Tripodiskioi. First, note that these five divisions differ from the five towns that the Megarians held to have been listed in the Catalogue of Ships as grouped with the contingent of Ajax (Strabo 9.1.10 C394). Two of the kōmai involve no difficulties in their location. The Megareis are to be associated with the later polis center of Megara, which presumably, because of its political importance, gave its name to the whole community. The Tripodiskioi are undoubtedly from the town of that name, to the west and inland of the city of Megara on the east slopes of Geraneia (cf. Thucydides 4.70.1–2). One of the kōmai, moreover, that of the Heraeis, has been localized in the Perachora Peninsula. The name “Heraeis” is to be connected with the Heraeum at the tip of the peninsula.

Early Megarian occupation of Perachora has been associated by Hammond with the stages of cult activity in the worship of Hera at that site (Hammond 1954.93-102). For Hammond the cult of Hera Akraia was succeeded by the cult of Hera Limenia c. 725, a change contemporary with the abandonment of the temple near the harbor and the movement of the cult to a site further inland. Hammond wished to see this transition as marking the occupation of the Perachora Peninsula by the Corinthians. His attempts to bring to bear archaeological data have come under attack by Salmon (1972), who shows that the sites are probably part of the same cult and that activity continued at the earlier sanctuary near the harbor. Therefore, the neat division of activity at Perachora into Megarian and Corinthian periods cannot be true.

However, while the archaeological record fails to support Hammond’s contention that Megarian control of Perachora ended in the late seventh century, Salmon’s view that Megarian influence at the site was dominant before the foundation of Corinth is equally problematical. The continuing fivefold division of the Megarian state an the continued use of at least one of the kōmai names (Kynosoureis: IG IV² 42.18) argue that the traditions of the five kōmai were still very much alive at the time of the creation of the polis of Megara. {265|266} Salmon would put the loss of Perachora so early that such continuity would be hard to explain. For political units below the level of the tribe, such continuities, spanning the Dark Age, are unparalleled. Moreover, the proverbial traditions that refer to Megarian subjection to Corinth in the archaic period would have to be discarded.

If Dark Age Megarians were under strong Corinthian influence, as the anecdotes cited above argue, their ritual behavior might well have been indistinguishable from that of the Corinthians. It may well be that the inhabitants of the Perachora Peninsula had been (when compared to other Megarians) particularly under Corinthian influence, so that in a sense the Corinthians had continuous control of the cult of Hera at Perachora. Nevertheless, the nature of this control may well have changed. Before the independence of the Megarians, Corinthian hegemony over the peninsula was expressed through dominance over the Heraeis. After Megarian independence the Heraeis (or a sizeable number of them) withdrew from the peninsula to territory under Megarian control, thus giving the Corinthians a more direct control of Perachora. They may have chosen at this time to build a new temple to express their greater interest in the cult.

Hence Corinthian colonists could establish a cult of Hera Akraia at Corcyra (founded c. 735) shortly after its foundation (Salmon 1972.181–182, 202; Kalligas 1969). It is also possible that cults of Hera in Megarian colonies, established on promontories, were cults of Hera Akraia, as Hammond has suggested (Hammond 1954.98), but this reorganization does not mean that independent Megarians had ever really held this peninsula, so close to Corinth’s harbor town, Lekhaion. It does mean that the inhabitants of the peninsula could be described as Megarians at a moment when all the Megarians were dominated by Corinth. The inhabitants saw themselves as Megarians, and the habitation of a place so near Corinth by self-proclaimed Megarians contributes to a redefinition of what the term “Megarian” implied in the eighth century. Megarians inhabited the predominantly marginal agricultural land to the north and east of Corinth. The newly autonomous polis of Megara probably never exerted authority over the southern portions of this area. Therefore, it is fallacious to visualize the foundation of Megara as a pure sunoikismos. The term “in-gathering” better describes this phenomenon. Those who identified themselves as Megarian revolted from Bacchiad rule, but they could not manage to hold on to all the territory where an appreciable portion of the population was Megarian.

The location of the Piraeis has been put on the Megarian border with Corinth because here is the location of Peiraion, which is mentioned in the context of the Corinthian War (Xenophon Hellenica {266|267} 4.5.1). It has been placed on the northeastern shore of the Perachora Peninsula near the Isthmus (Sakellariou and Faraklas 1972.22, figs. 17a, b), and it has even been equated with the entire region of northern and eastern Perachora (Wiseman 1978.32-33). Hammond associates the name with the adjective peraios ‘opposite’ and believes it to be a term used generally (in the Bronze Age!) for Greeks of the Peloponnesus. Salmon argues that only the region of Perachora (which he would reserve for the Heraeis) and the area south of the Isthmus near Kenkhreai might seem to be opposite to Megarians, from Krommyon eastward (Salmon 1972.195–196). There is no reason, however, to accept the assumption of Salmon that the peninsula could not have contained two kōmai. The connection with peraios ‘opposite’ need not mean that they must have received their names from a vantage point within the Megarid. Megara as an independent polis need not have existed at the time of the naming. Yet Salmon is troubled by the lexical difficulty in equating Piraeis with peraios ‘opposite’. He introduces a verbal communication of G. Huxley, who noted a Cape Spiraion in the southeast Corinthia (Thucydides 8.10.3; cf. Ptolemy Geography 3.14.33; Pliny Natural History 4.12.57; Salmon compares P. Oxy. 1247.42 [Thucydides 8.6.3–11.2], where the cape is either Speiraion or Peiraion). Salmon notes a Spiraion in a third­century Epidaurian inscription (IG IV² 71.4, 18) for a place in the border region of the Corinthia and Epidauria. Thus, there is a possibility that the Piraeis, perhaps Spiraeis to be correct, may be associated with Cape Spiraion (cf. Wiseman 1978.33, 41n109, 136–140). So the Piraeis might be associated with the southern Megarid. How far south their territory extended is unknown, as we do not know whether they occupied places like Sidous and Krommyon on the Isthmus and also the area around Kenkhreai, Solugeia, and Cape Spiraion, this last bordering on Epidauros. There is no reason, however, to think that the Piraeis lost their land before the foundation of Corinth. If a connection with Cape Spiraion is maintained, they could have been extruded from their southern holdings in stages, finally losing Sidous and Krommyon in the late seventh century.

The Kynosoureis have been generally associated with the northwestern Megarid (e.g., Halliday 1928.98). The peninsula southwest of Aigosthena could well appear as a kunosourā ‘dog’s tail’ (a common name for a peninsula). Sakellariou and Faraklas, citing the Spartan village of Kynosoura, believe that the name “Kynosoureis” need not describe a topographical feature of the Megarid (1972.22–23). They opt rather for the procedure of finding a habitation site, the name of which is unknown, and thereby locate the Kynosoureis in the northeast Megarid along the border with Eleusis. {267|268}

That, subsequently, the fivefold division was continued for constitutional organization (e.g., the five stratēgoi, polemarkhoi, aisumnātai, dāmiourgoi) suggests that consolidation of population may have taken place. [1] Hammond notes a decree (IG VII 1 [c. 300]) that juxtaposes city and kōmē (Hammond 1954.95). The older kōmai were possibly incorporated into a civic order based on hekatostues ‘hundreds’. Kynosoura was a hekatostus in the third century (IG IV² 42.18).

Megara conceptualized itself on the paradigm of the five kōmai. The verse that the Megarians wished to claim as part of the Homeric Catalogue of Ships also presents Megara as being a union of five villages (Strabo 9.1.10 C394). This group (Salamis, Polikhna, Aigiroussa, Nisaea, and Tripodes) portrays the actual situation (the original five kōmai may have continued to exist in constitutional terms) in the late seventh and sixth centuries. Among the Megarian communities, Salamis is included, although probably not absorbed into Megara before the last third of the seventh century. On this list Tripodes may stand as a variant (one is tempted to say deliberate archaism) for Tripodiskioi (cf. Pausanias 1.39.5). Nisaea could be the port of that name, but it also could be an archaism for Megara (cf. Pindar P. 9.91; N. 5.46; Euripides HF 954). Polikhna, a diminutive of polis, which can mean fort, cannot be placed. Conceivably, it could be another variant for Megara (E. Kirsten RE 21.2.1371–1372). But if Polikhna is to be envisaged as a fort, it may have been located on the slopes of Geraneia along Megara’s border with Corinth, or, even better, where the Perachora Peninsula joins the Isthmus near the site of the Corinthian fort of Oinoe (Xenophon Hellenica 4.5.5; Strabo 8.6.22 C380; see also Wiseman 1978.28–32). Aigiroussa was also known as Aigeiros (Stephanus Byzantius s.v. “Aigeiroussa”; cf. Theopompus FGH 115 F 241). It is to be identified with Aigeiroi, where the impious Megarians called ‘wagon-rollers’ (Plutarch Greek Questions 59 [Moralia 304D–F]) ambushed a Peloponnesian sacred embassy on its way to Delphi. This incident is supposed to have taken place on the shores of a lake. The only remaining lake in the area, Vouliagmeni, is south on Perachora, but a lake that would have been northeast of Pagai is hypothesized by Hammond as the setting (Hammond 1954b; cf. Sakellariou and Faraklas 1972.32–33, figs. 15a, b; Wiseman 1978.26–27 against a location near Akra Mavrolimni on the Corinthian Gulf south of Pagai). None of these villages can be put {268|269} farther south than the territory actually held in the fifth century by the Megarians. These relatively modest claims make sense when it is remembered that this list is meant to make credible a claim to Salamis. Whatever the true feelings of the Megarians may have been about territories lost to Corinth, the inclusion of current possessions of Corinth in this group would only serve to undercut a claim to Salamis. Whether this verse is contemporary with Solon or merely with the late sixth-century Spartan arbitration (see Note S below), the Megarians were limited to their fifth-century boundaries at the time of its application to the dispute.

*C (750–725) To establish a date for Megarian independence from Corinth, it is necessary to consider the checkered career of the Megarian colonists in Sicily. According to Thucydides, they originally settled at Trotilon, on the shore to the east of Leontini (Thucydides 6.4.1; Gomme HCT 4.215–216). To Thucydides, the Megarians became associated with the Khalkidian colonists who founded Leontini. In another tradition, they were associated with the Khalkidian colonists of Naxos (Ephorus FGH 70 F 137; Strabo 6.2.2 C267). The link between Megarian and Khalkidian colonists is significant if the ties between Khalkis and Corinth are remembered. Corinth and Khalkis acted cooperatively in their colonization in the West. The Corinthians expelled Eretrian colonists from Corcyra (Plutarch Greek Questions 11 [Moralia 293A–B]). Topographically, Syracuse stands in a complementary relationship to the Khalkidian colonies, and it contains place names redolent of Euboia (e.g., Arethusa), suggesting that the site was scouted by Euboians. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Megarians would have been included in a Khalkidian venture if they were at odds with the Corinthians. The role played by the Megarians at Leontini is also noteworthy. The Megarians were to subjugate the indigenous Sicels on behalf of the colonists (Polyaenus 5.5; cf. Strabo 6.2.2 C267). In time, the Megarians were expelled by the Leontinians and founded a settlement at Thapsos. From there they may eventually have been expelled by the Syracusans. Next, they made a more permanent foundation at Megara Hyblaea with the support of the Sicel king Hyblon, who betrayed (?) (prodontos) the land to them. In interpreting this episode, it is important to note that composite colonies were the rule rather than the exception (Figueira 1981.192–202). The Megarians at Leontini were probably meant to be content with subordinate status, perhaps indicated by their employment as shock troops against the natives (oaths inhibiting the Leontinians themselves are cited in Polyaenus). When they founded their own settlement, they took the surprising step of taking the name of their {269|270} mother city for their new colony, necessitating the byname of Hyblaea. This act of naming is unusual (cf. the derivation of the name “Lokroi”) in the early period of Greek colonization.

Thucydides says that Leontini was founded five years after Syracuse (734–733, a date supported also by the Eusebian chronographic tradition). Therefore, Megara Hyblaea would have been settled (after the successive moves of the Megarians) around 729–725. If Megara and Syracuse were approximately contemporary, then it is not hard to see why the Sicels aided the Megarians as potential allies against the Corinthians at Syracuse. [2]

The Megarians were not free agents in Sicily. It may be that even in their settlement of Trotilon, they were acting as auxiliaries of the Khalkidians. Those Megarians who were induced to join a Khalkidian colonial venture probably recognized the authority of the Bacchiad government at Corinth. So too did the inhabitants of the upland village of Tenea provide the bulk of the settlers at Syracuse, founded by the Bacchiad Archias (Strabo 8.6.22 C380). Otherwise one must assume that the Megarians were pioneers and became colonizers almost before they had a Corinthian example in Syracuse to follow. The breakdown of cooperation between the Khalkidians and the Megarians mirrors the state of relations between the Megarians and Corinth. With the circumstances of the colonization of Megara Hyblaea in mind, one is less surprised that Megara and Megara Hyblaea have the same name. The Megarians in Sicily chose the name of Megara for their new foundation because Megara in Greece was barely (if at all) established as an independent polis. Like the Euboian colonists of Cumae, who named their city after a town dominated by Khalkis (Stephanus Byzantius s.v. “Kumē”), the Megarians in Sicily took their colony name from some part of their mother city, in this case the name of Megara, their home district in the polis of Corinth. The Megarians in Sicily founded Megara Hyblaea between 750 and 725. The commonly accepted date for Orsippos, who recovered some territory for independent Megara, is after 720, so that Megara was independent by the last quarter of the eighth century. By {270|271} the first quarter of the seventh century, the Megarians are traditionally said to have been colonizing in the Propontis. Therefore, the movements for independence both by the Megarians of the Isthmus and those in Sicily were roughly contemporary (cf. Legon 1981.75). We cannot be certain about which group made its break first. Nevertheless, if war was being fought by Khalkis and its ally Corinth against Eretria over the Lelantine Plain (see, in brief, Jeffery 1976.64–67), the timing of the sunoikismos and rebellion of the Megarians might be explained. It is noteworthy that the Megarians never by themselves colonized in the western Mediterranean again but confined their efforts to the East where Miletos, Eretria’s ally, was beginning to become the dominant colonizing, if not commercial, state. That Megara and Megara Hyblaea were coevals helps to explain how the Theognidea could be the product of both cities (see Ch.5 §§19, 21, 35, 61–62). The foundation of both communities had the same political context, so that their institutional histories thereafter may have been more nearly parallel than was customary between colony and mother city.

*D (725–700) A Megarian general named Orsippos captured territory from one of Megara’s neighbors (Pausanias 1.44.1). This accomplishment is commemorated by an epigram inscribed on the base of his statue. The epigram is known both from literary sources and from a late (second century A.D.) inscription found at Megara, certainly a copy of an earlier inscription probably seen by Pausanias (IG VII 52; for vv. 1–2, 4–6, cf. scholia Thucydides 1.6.5). [3] The epigram and the statue were erected by the Megarians in obedience to a Delphic response. The epigram states that Orsippos defended the boundaries of Megara in the face of enemies appropriating a piece of territory. Both Pausanias and the epigram record that Orsippos won the stadion race at Olympia. He was reportedly the first of the Greeks to run ungirt. This detail may be juxtaposed with Thucydides’ statement that the Spartans were the first to practice athletics naked (1.6.5). Other sources suggest that Orsippos ran ungirt accidentally (Etymologicum Magnum s.v. “gumnasia”; cf. Pausanias 1.44.1).

The priority of Orsippos as the first naked Olympic victor is not without challenge. A connected problem is reconciling the two {271|272} traditions about his date. According to the chronographer Julius Africanus, preserved in Eusebius (Chronica p.91 [Karst]; cf. Hesychius s.v. “zōsato”), Orsippos won the stadion in 720, but Akanthos, a Spartan, won the dolikhos ungirt. This is not merely a textual error, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus credited Akanthos with the first victory ungirt (Antiquitates Romanae 7.72.3; cf. Pausanias 5.8.6; Philostratus De gymnastica 12). An apparent confusion of Orsippos and Akanthos can be read in the Etymologicum Magnum, which speaks of Orsippos the Spartan. A more troubling variant detail is also provided by Homeric scholia (Iliad XXIII 683 B’; Eustathius on Iliad XIII 683) and dated by an Athenian archon date. According to the scholia, running naked was enjoined by decree at Olympia when Orsippos, encumbered in a race by his loincloth, died. Moreover, Orsippos could well be dated to 652/1 (Etymologicum Magnum; scholia Iliad XIII 683 D). In any case, a confusion over Orsippos’ date is hard to understand, if he won the stadion, since victors in this event provided eponyms for each Olympiad, and their canonical list was well known (cf. Jacoby FGH Komm. 3b 399–400; Noten 236–237).

Any statement on Orsippos, then, must be conjectural. The date at which running ungirt at Olympia began seems better established than the name of the inaugurator of the practice and its circumstances. It is possible that, to defend a Megarian claim, Orsippos, a Megarian victor in 652/1, was moved to 720. Yet one is reluctant to posit two men named Orsippos, one a victim in 720 and another a victor in 652, not only a priori, but also because the discrepancy in dates might result from a confusion between Hippomenes the ten-year archon (723/2–713/2) and the unknown archon of 652/1. I prefer to think that an anti-Megarian commentator (an Atthidographer?), faced with irreconcilable traditions about Orsippos and Akanthos, made Orsippos the first naked (albeit accidentally) runner—only to make him perish in a mishap so that Akanthos could claim priority in the next race, the dolikhos. That anyone would have bothered to compose a variant with Orsippos as a victim indicates Orsippos’ place in Megarian patriotic tradition.

If the facts about the athletic accomplishments of Orsippos are irrecoverable, it is still profitable to return to the attitudes toward him of later Megarians. To them he was undoubtedly a great military figure. At an eighth- or even seventh-century date, it is probably more sensible to see Corinth as his adversary rather than Athens or Boiotia (Legan 1981.62–63). In fact, recovery of land cut off (verb: apotemnō; cf. Palatine Anthology 7.720) by a neighbor may have been a code phrase for hostilities against Corinth, since much land that had once been occupied by the Megarians was now in Corinthian hands. {272|273} However, if the legend of Orsippos was for the most part fabricated in the sixth or fifth century (in connection with the receipt of a Delphic response), the identity of his opponents might have acquired significance only from this later context. From the standpoint of sixth-or fifth-century Megara, Athens becomes a more credible alternative to Corinth, and this may explain why a tradition existed that Orsippos died at Olympia.

After his death, Orsippos was given heroic honors and was buried within the walls of the city, as the inscription instructs us. Thus, he was treated like the oecist of a colony. The extraordinary character of this honor may suggest that Nisaean Megara was in a real sense as much a colony of the Megarians as was Megara Hyblaea or Byzantion. Orsippos received the same honors after death as Koroibos, who founded the Megarian town of Tripodiskioi (Pausanias 1.43.8; cf. Palatine Anthology 7.154). [4] The tombs within the city sacralized and politicized its territory (Bohringer 1980). When later Megarians had recourse to Delphi, they were exhorted to revive or strengthen honors to Orsippos. Such a response may have been especially appropriate if the later Megarians were facing a threat similar to that confronted by Orsippos, namely Corinthian hostility. What with sixth­century Argive military help to Megara, the coupling of Orsippos with the Argive Koroibos may be significant. It is, in any case, proper to look for a late sixth- or fifth-century date for the Delphic response, as well as for the epigram (note the possibility that Simonides was its author). These honors fit an Orsippos of the late 700s. Nevertheless, it is possible that he was active in the mid-seventh century. At that time Corinth was weak, because the Bacchiads were unpopular, at odds with Argos, and soon to be expelled by Kypselos.

*E (eighth and seventh century) The fact that Megara became a colonizing state deserves to be stressed. After independence, Megara does not seem to have moved in a line of evolution different from its former hēgemōn, Corinth. Instead, its evolution is parallel. By contrast, Aigina, already a complement rather than a mirror image of its erstwhile hēgemōnes Argos and Epidauros, experienced an accelerated divergence from their social and economic patterns (Figueira {273|274} 1981.166–192). The most apparent similarity between Corinth and Megara was the tradition of colonization of both states. Megara colonized in its own right and cosponsored foundations with its colonies.

Whether the Megarians had any part in sixth- or fifth-century Heraclean colonization is unknown (Panelos, Kallatis in the sixth century; Khersonesos in the fifth). The received chronology of {274|275} Megarian colonies cannot be trusted. [5] Note that Kalkhedon is said to have participated in colonizing Astakos, whose traditional date precedes Kalkhedon’s, and that several dates are handed down for Byzantion. Most of the colonies in the Propontis and the Black Sea have seen little excavation. At Byzantion, where later building effaced much of the earliest levels, Corinthian pottery of the late seventh century is the earliest material discovered to date. It would not be surprising if future excavation led to a down-dating of Megara’s colonies in this area (Boardman 1980.238–246; Graham 1982.118–121, 160–162). If the Megarians were truly listed on the Thalassocracy List preserved in Diodorus (7 fr. 11), as Burn suggests (reading “Megareis” for “Kares”: Burn 1927), they would occupy the period c. 666–599. This would suggest that Megarian colonization (excepting Megara Hyblaea) took place after c. 666 and that the thalassocracy ended with the defeat at Perinthos.

While Megara may have lost territory to the Corinthians in the eighth and seventh centuries, I find it improbable that overpopulation of the remaining Megarian territory was the most important factor in Megarian colonization. Megarian population could have followed the normal Greek pattern in rising between the seventh and the mid-fifth century. Throughout Greece in the seventh century there was much colonization, and, on the whole, generally little in the fifth century. To colonize was, for the most part, a sign of vitality. The chronology of the Megarian colonies does not suggest that population pressures predominated. At least one generation, possibly two, separated Megara Hyblaea from the seventh-century colonies in the Propontis. Surely the refugees from Perachora must have been absorbed or have perished from want long before the seventh-century wave of colonies got under way (Legon 1981.75–81). The presence of Boiotians from Tanagra at the sixth-century Megarian colony of Heraclea indicates that a Megarian apoikiā need not have been exclusively composed of Megarians. [6] {275|276}

Here it is appropriate to recapitulate my views expressed elsewhere on the rationale for colonization (Figueira 1981.192–202). Colonial powers sought to encapsulate citizens of their own city as a ruling elite surrounded by second-class citizens and dependent classes made up of immigrants from other poleis as well as natives. For Megara, a pool of those anxious to emigrate may have been available in nearby Boiotia. One more possible background detail ought to be noted regarding Megarian colonization, namely the role of Miletos. Miletos was the friend of an enemy of Corinth, Eretria, and the enemy of a friend of Corinth, Samos. Megara and Miletos predominated as the Hellenizers of the shores of the Propontis and the Black Sea (Boardman 1980.238–246). Their shared enmity for Corinth and the common area for their colonization could indicate that their activity overseas was coordinated.

*F (640/630–600) Few chronological data are known about Theagenes. However, he must have been in power at the time of his son-in­law’s coup d’état at Athens. Kylon’s uprising was in an Olympic year (636, 632, or 628; see Okin Ch.1§§2–3). He had been Olympic victor in 640. It is known that Theagenes did not found a tyrant dynasty. Aristotle does not list him among the long individual tyrannies (Politics 1315b11–39). If he meant his list to be complete and he had Theagenes in mind, then Theagenes cannot have ruled for as many as eighteen years. He is usually assumed to have followed an aristocratic or oligarchic government. [7]

The record of Megarian colonization may tell us something about the dates for Theagenes. If Theagenes had followed the model of the Kypselids to his south, he would have set up members of his own family or, in their absence, henchmen in the newly founded colonies. One should expect some trace to have been left of them, as in the case of the Kypselid foundations. The foundation of Byzantion is usually dated to c. 660–657, but a later date of 628 is also attested (Johannes Lydus De magistratibus 3. 70). One may believe either that 628 is the correct date for the foundation of Byzantion or that only a reinforcement to the colony was dispatched at that date. All Megarian colonies in the Propontis are dated by Roebuck on the basis of the scant available data to 650–625 (1959.114). They were in any case in place by the time of the conflict with the Samians at Perinthos. It is, therefore, possible that seventh-century Megarian colonization ebbed {276|277} around 630–625. One might speculate, then, that Theagenes took power by c. 630 and that his supremacy began a hiatus in Megarian colonization. Perhaps the internal policy of Theagenes compensated for the suspension of colonization in some unknown manner. If colonization, as seen from the perspective of poor Megarians, was a form of patronage by the elite, its end may signal the first fissure in Megarian social integration (see Figueira Ch.5 §§50–65). Later Megarians believed that their city’s fountainhouse and aqueduct were the work of Theagenes (Pausanias 1.40.1, cf. 1.41.2). This date for the fountainhouse has not been borne out by archaeology, which would put the surviving remains in the late sixth or early fifth century (before 480; Gruben 1964.41). We know little otherwise about the foreign policy of Theagenes except that he believed Kylon’s attempt to seize power at Athens important enough to support him with Megarian troops (Thucydides 1.126.5). Theagenes gave way to the so-called regime of sōphrosunē, assumed to be a moderate oligarchy (Legon 1981.104–105, 112–115), but, in fact, of an indistinct character in the surviving evidence. Even its claim to moderation merely serves to make of it a foil for the succeeding, much maligned democracy. It does not appear to be an unreasonable conjecture that Theagenes is hardly likely to have weathered the crises of the Solonian capture of Salamis and the defeat of the expeditionary force dispatched against Perinthos. Arguments from silence (as always, weak) suggest that Theagenes was no longer in power at the time of these events.

*G (625–600) One may infer from Strabo that at some point the Megarians lost Krommyon to the Corinthians (8.6.22 C380; cf. Xenophon Hellenica 4.4.13, 4.5.19). Krommyon could be described as a border area between the Ionians and the Dorians before the Dorianization of Megara (Strabo 9.1.6 C392), that is, a border area between Megara and Corinth. Sidous was also at some stage Megarian, since Stephanus of Byzantion describes it as a kōmē of the Corinthia and also a harbor of the Megarid (s.v. “Sidous”). I assume, perhaps arbitrarily, that it was the polis of the Megarians that lost the two towns, not the Megarians at the beginning of their independence. Perhaps Orsippos had upheld Megarian rule over them. If I am correct that these two locations were not included in the Megarian list in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships (see Note B above), they must have been lost before the period of the Spartan arbitration of Salamis (c. 510?), and perhaps before the Solonian effort to recapture Salamis c. 600, which possibly prompted the Megarian claim that their boundaries were validated by the testimony of Homer. At first the Saronic {277|278} Gulf had been less important to the Corinthians than the Corinthian Gulf, which their city directly adjoined. The diolkos, the grooved track along which wagons and perhaps undercarriages for carrying warships could be drawn, was built at the beginning of the sixth century (Verdelis 1956; cf. Cook 1979.152–153). Kenkhreai must have become critically important to the Corinthians at this time. The information that Periander possessed squadrons of triremes on both seas (Nicolaus of Damascus FGH 90 F 58) is important for determining a date for the loss of Sidous and Krommyon. The Megarian loss of this area should be before 600, and, given the importance to Periander of Kenkhreai (near the eastern terminus of the diolkos), one might guess further that this Corinthian conquest may have taken place early in his reign—his accession was c. 629–628 {Sakellariou and Faraklas 1971.62; cf. Wiseman 1978.18, 38n17). By the late sixth century, the inscriptions from the area of Krommyon employ an alphabet that has its closest affinities to the Corinthian rather than to the Megarian letter style (Salmon 1972.196n227).

*H (625–600) The beginnings of the confrontation between Athens and Megara are most likely to have ensued after Athens had incorporated Eleusis and thus had given the two cities a common and disputed border. Significantly, a struggle with Megara over Eleusis was put in the time of Theseus. [8] Furthermore, the Megarians celebrated games in honor of Diokles, an Eleusinian ruler who fled to Megara (just as Eurysakes came from Salamis to Athens) (scholia Theocritus 12.27–33f; cf. Theocritus 12.27–33; Aristophanes Acharnians 774 with scholia; Hymn to Demeter 153, 474; scholia Pindar N. 3.145; see Highbarger 1927.57–58). Yet, other mythological evidence strongly suggests that the Athenians of the classical period believed that early Eleusis and Athens had themselves come into military confrontation (Thucydides 2.15; Pausanias 1.27.4, 1.38.3; see Mylonas 1961.24–29). In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we seem to glimpse a stage in the evolution of the Eleusinian cult at which Athenian influence did not yet predominate (e.g., the Kērux ‘Herald’, later an important official at Eleusis, is not introduced; Richardson 1974.7–10). While it is customary to date the Hymn (followed by Athenian control of the sanctuary) to the second half of the seventh century (Mylonas {278|279} 1961.63–64), its most recent editor sees no terminus ante quem before 550, when Athens began to show greater interest in the Eleusinian hero Eumolpos and when the Hall of the Mysteries was rebuilt (under the sponsorship of Peisistratos?) with an orientation establishing that Eleusis was under Athenian control (Richardson 1974.9–10). An earlier date for the Hymn and for the end of independence for Eleusis depends on a passage in Herodotus (1.30.5). Here Solon rates as the most happy of men Tellos of Athens, who fell in a battle against the Eleusinians: genomenēs gar Athēnaioisi makhēs pros tous astugeitonas en Eleusini boēthēsās …, ‘As a battle took place for the Athenians against [their] neighbors in Eleusis, [Tellos], coming as an ally …’. Although there has been some discussion of the interpretation of this phrase, an examination of parallel phraseology suggests the following. The phrase genomenēs … Eleusini constitutes a unit, and boēthēsās is to be construed absolutely. The word pros should mean ‘against’ (cf. 1.39.2 [esp.]; 4.111.1; 5.49.8; 7.226.2; see Powell 1938.320–321).

Placing much weight on this piece of evidence is, however, made difficult by the chronological improbability that Solon and Croesus as king can ever have held such a discussion. The confrontation of Solon and Croesus is an elaboration of conventional themes appropriate to a wise man’s advice to a hubristic potentate. The tradition is to be classed along with other apocryphal material in Herodotus associated with the careers of the Seven Sages. It is possible that an earlier variant of the story (one more sensitive to chronology) had some other Lydian or barbarian ruler as the beneficiary of Solon’s advice. The question to be raised, then, is whether the authors or compilers of earlier variants would have appended a seventh-century conflict between Athens and Eleusis as an incidental detail. From the context one may infer that Tellos was at least a contemporary of Solon (having several grandchildren at the time of his death). Solon was born not later than 640 (Sosicrates at Diogenes Laertius 1.62; cf. Phainias F 21 [Wehrli]), so that Tellos could have fought the Eleusinians in the late seventh or early sixth century. Unfortunately, it is therefore impossible to determine whether the Athenians first had cause for grievance with the Megarians over Salamis or over Eleusis. A more superficially sensible sequence would be that the first break with the Megarians occurred over the border with Eleusis, but there is no reason to believe that such a chronology is necessarily or arguably true.

The standard charge later leveled by the Athenians against Megara was that the Megarians encroached upon land sacred to Demeter, the Hiera Orgas (e.g., Thucydides 1.139.2). That the dispute between the two states resolved itself into these terms indicates its early archaic {279|280} origin. To incorporate the territory of a community into a unity under the protection of the gods, its borders were sacralized. Thus the ephebes swore by the borders of Attica (Tod 2 no. 204.20). Where external threats to a community were most intense (i.e., disputed borders), the land in question became especially holy and was left fallow to signify this.

*I (before 600) The evidence of epic seems to suggest that Salamis was inhabited by a small community dependent on seafaring, perhaps in the form of piracy, but the Salaminioi seem to have exempted Athens from attack, alone of their neighbors (Hesiod fr. 204.46–51 MW; cf. Strabo 9.1.11 C395). At some moment, presumably before 600, the Megarians took Salamis. They claimed that Salamis was a Megarian village in the Catalogue of Ships (Strabo 9.1.10 C394). For Megara, the possession of Salamis kept open Megara ‘s access to the outside world by sea, and its arable land was valuable in and of itself. It is possible that Theagenes undertook this aggression. It is also possible that Salamis was an alternative field for Megarian expansion, so that Megarian possession of Salamis may be connected with a possible cessation of Megarian colonization c. 630–625. If there is anything to Athenian claims that they incorporated the Salaminians into their society (see Note S below), the Megarians perhaps expelled the Salaminians and settled the island themselves. In the Megarian version of the Solonian capture of the island, the Megarian settlers on Salamis are called klēroukhoi ‘lot-holders’. The term ought to mean that they had replaced the original settlers, if it is used analogously to the concept of later Athenian cleruchies.

Plutarch states that the Athenians fought a long, difficult, and unsuccessful war with the Megarians over Salamis. Pausanias could be shown the beaks of warships taken from the Athenians in combat over Salamis (Pausanias 1.40.5). The Athenians reached the point of prohibiting the mention of Salamis on pain of death (Plutarch Solon 8–10). At this point, Solon intervened. Feigning madness, he went as a herald to the Agora and delivered his elegy exhorting the Athenians to recapture the island. [9] Plutarch gives two accounts of the {280|281} capture of Salamis. In the first, the Megarians are lured from Salamis by a false deserter who urged them to kidnap a group of Athenian women celebrating a festival of Demeter at Cape Kolias. It is interesting to note in this Megarian sacrilege Demeter’s first appearance in the conflict between Athens and Megara. The alacrity with which the Megarians on Salamis rose to the lure of piracy may suggest that Megarian piratical raids were no small threat to Athens. The Megarians manned a ploion ‘vessel’, but they were met by youths disguised as women and were slain. The Athenians then occupied Salamis, left bereft of defenders (cf. Polyaenus 1.20.1–2; Aelian Varia Historia 7.19). Plutarch suggests that this is the most popular account. Yet its content is hard to square with its context. An attempt to kidnap Athenian women for ransom could be taken to suggest that Athens and Megara were already at war. Yet Solon is supposed to have roused the Athenians at a time when they had abandoned Salamis. Moreover, it is difficult to understand why there were not more Megarians (than a shipload) established on Salamis as settlers, as the Megarian version asserted. Equally troubling is the presence of Peisistratos at Solon’s side in the campaign. Peisistratos, born c. 605–600, can hardly have been a leading officer before 575 (Davies 1971.445). There is, moreover, independent testimony on the Peisistratid campaign against Megara in which he captured Nisaea (Herodotus 1.59.4).

Although the sources for Plutarch’s chronology in the Life of Solon are most obscure, he evidently believed that the Solonian capture of Salamis (which to Plutarch made the statesman famous) was early in Solon’s career. It was before the First Sacred War, and by inference before the purification of Athens by Epimenides and the Solonic reforms. The difficulty caused by the report of Peisistratos’ participation in the affair with Solon could be partially obviated by following the early fifth-century date for Epimenides (Plato Laws 642D) and by redating the constitutional reforms of Solon to c. 580 (Hignett 1952.316–321). Such a process of dating would allow for the participation of a rather young Peisistratos. Yet, the priority of the Salamis campaign to the Sacred War can be taken to mean (if Plutarch’s order is correct) that Peisistratos cannot have been Solon’s collaborator. The First Sacred War involved fighting in the 590s and 580s (Krisa fell in 591/90: Hypothesis b, d to Pindar P.; Marmor Parium 37 [Jacoby]). This led to a reorganization of the Pythian festival in 586 while further changes were made in 582 (Pausanias 10.7.4–7; Marmor Parium 38). Solon withdrew from Athens for ten years after his legislation. On his return he adopted a passive stance, stirring himself (if Plutarch, basing himself on the Atthis, is correct) only to {281|282} resist Peisistratos at the last moment (Plutarch Solon 30). This suggests an early campaign for Salamis. The same confusion between Solon and Peisistratos as adversaries of Megara over Salamis is seen in the differences among the Megareis concerning which of these two Athenians made interpolations in Homer in order to strengthen the affiliation of Ajax to Attica (Dieuchidas FGH 485 F 6; Hereas FGH 486 F 1). Clearly, it was calculations like those just presented that led Aristotle to affirm that Peisistratos had not collaborated in the capture of Salamis (Constitution of the Athenians 17.2). Solon could then be brought in because many Athenians became reluctant to credit the tyrant dynasty with so great a service to the state.

That Solon and not Peisistratos is the interloper in Plutarch’s first account may be demonstrated by the version of the same story given most completely by Aeneas Tacticus (4.8–11; cf. Frontinus Strategematica 2.9.9; Justin 2.8.1–6). This tradition specifically assigns the incident to Peisistratos during his generalship. The Megarians set out to kidnap a group of Athenian women celebrating the Thesmophoria at Eleusis. They were ambushed and killed by Peisistratos, who had learned of their plot. Bringing soldiers in the Megarian ships, Peisistratos sailed into a harbor near the city. When prominent Megarians approached the ships, they were taken prisoner or slain. To a certain extent, this version differs from Plutarch by both simplification and elaboration. While in the story reported by Plutarch the Athenian women were celebrating the sacrifice to Demeter at Cape Kolias, in this variant, the less specific and more pan-Hellenic term thesmophoria is used. No Athenian celebration of the Thesmophoria is known for Eleusis—the main celebration was in the suburbs of Athens. The account of Aeneas exaggerates insofar as the Megarians have now come in many ships, although Polyaenus and Aelian report several and two ships, respectively. Further simplification is seen in the absence of an explanation of how Peisistratos learned about the Megarian plot. Yet, at the same time, where Plutarch merely reports the capture of Salamis after the ambuscade, the tradition attributing the incident to Peisistratos gives an account of the subsequent attack.

The motif of men disguised as women has been replaced in Aeneas and the others by the less striking sequence having Athenians manning Megarian ships and thus being disguised as Megarians, while their women were disguised as prisoners. That such similar trickery plays a role at two different stages in the same episode is unlikely, and the theme may be a borrowed one. The original story may have avoided the improbable detail wherein Peisistratos risks the lives of prominent Athenian women. Rather, the same young men who had played the part of the celebrants in Plutarch may have continued {282|283} their masquerade on the Megarian ships. The location of the discomfiture of the Megarians is not fully specified, that is, according to Aeneas, it is merely a place at some distance from the city, and, according to Justin, the port. Legon may well be right that this is meant to represent the capture of Nisaea (1981.137). Yet the fact that the Megarian officials are described as having advanced from the city to meet the ships suggests an anchorage rather than a port town like Nisaea. Curiously, it is Plutarch’s second version of Solon’s capture of Salamis which is parallel here. In it, the city that is mentioned ought to be a settlement on Salamis, so that possibly the phrase ta Megara in Aeneas is meant to mean only Megarian territory and could stand for a settlement on Salamis. If such wording was in Plutarch’s source, the fact that Aeneas’ account has its denouement occurring at Megara would be explicable. The shifting of the sacrifice of the Athenian women from Cape Kolias to Eleusis is probably to be considered an outgrowth of such confusion. An ambush at Eleusis would bring Peisistratos near Megara and so would make more sense than Cape Kolias if Nisaea was to be the eventual destination. In Aeneas, Peisistratos makes his attack on the Megarian leaders before nightfall on the day of his ambush of their ships. I suspect that these changes were not made by Aeneas, who only simplified the story. He cites it in an excursus to illustrate his category of sussēma ‘pre­arranged signals’.

The version reported by Aeneas (early fourth century?) maintained the role of Peisistratos as leader but changed the setting to Eleusis (perhaps to adapt the story to narrate a capture of Nisaea) and changed the part that disguise played. These alterations may have been in part based on a conflation of this anecdote with the other story of the capture of Salamis related by Plutarch. The early predominance of this version may explain why Daimakhos (early fourth century) of Plataia stated that fighting against Megara was not Solon’s accomplishment (Plutarch Comparatio Solonis et Publicolae [4] [FGH 65 F 71). The evolution of the story may have occurred along these lines: an original story describing the Peisistratid capture of Nisaea or Salamis was altered to allow the participation of Solon by Plutarch’s source, perhaps an Atthidographer or a biographer dependent upon an Atthis. Even if it concerned Nisaea originally, Salamis now became the story’s subject. Aelian, who attributes the capture to Solon, describes the conclusion of the incident in the same manner as Aeneas but sets the slaughter of the Megarians on Salamis. In later Atthidography, when Solon tended to usurp the accomplishments of other statesmen—compare the fate of Kleisthenes as the founder of the democracy—the story was assigned to him. {283|284}

There were losses and perhaps recaptures of Salamis in the period after Solon (whether accounts of these events have survived or not). Plutarch reports the loss of Nisaea and Salamis in the post-Kylonian turmoil (Solon 12.5). Since, however, only one capture of Nisaea is known, the Peisistratid one, Plutarch has probably confused the pre­ and post-Solonian periods of stasis. Nisaea and Salamis were both lost at some time before Peisistratos firmly established himself.

Plutarch’s second version is a better choice for the Solonian capture (Solon 9: Legon 1981.127). Solon takes with him 500 young men who will be kurioi tou politeumatos ‘authoritative in the body­politic’. This grant of political status ought to mean that Salamis was not simply to be incorporated into Attica but was to have a separate identity. The kurioi were to be full citizens of a new political entity on Salamis, probably envisaged as an apoikiā ‘colony’. Note that the later Athenian dispensation for the island does not coincide with Solon’s provisions, which were perhaps superseded by a later Megarian capture (see Note J below). Solon invoked the aid of the heroes Periphemos and Kyrkreos. The pattern the capture takes is framed as an aetiology for sacrifices to these heroes which were undertaken thereafter (Solon 9.1). Yet both these heroes are remarkable for their absence from later literature. Periphemos appears nowhere else. Kyrkreos was the son-in-law of Skiron (Plutarch Theseus 10.2–3). His affiliation with Salamis and Megara is thus secure, and this fact was admitted by the Megareis (Theseus 10.3 = FGH 487 F 1). Thus the struggle between Atthidographers and Megareis both to appropriate heroes (e.g., Nisos) and to impose upon them a particular moral evaluation (e.g., Skiron) is at work here.

In Plutarch’s second account, the effort to capture Salamis is sanctioned by a Delphic response that says that the heroes were buried looking toward the setting sun. This detail coincides with the arguments used by the Athenians before the Spartan arbitrators (Plutarch Solon 10.4) and suggests that the oracle dates no later than the late sixth century, when Salamis seems to have been awarded to Athens by Sparta (see Note S below). The attribution of these Delphic responses to Solon is perhaps also no later than that date. The hērōon of Kyrkreos was built only after the Battle of Salamis (Pausanias 1.36.1), at the urging of a Delphic response (cf. Aeschylus Persians 570; Sophocles fr. 579 Radt). One is impressed once more with the stillborn quality of Solon’s provisions for Salamis as reported by Plutarch.

Solon captured a Megarian ship sent out to scout for an attacking Athenian force. He filled it with the bravest of his men, who approached the polis on the island. The rest of his force made a general attack, whereupon the crew of the captured ship seized the city. In {284|285} this story, disguise and treachery play the same role as they do in the Aeneas (Peisistratid) variant of the other story of the capture of Salamis. Here this motif had an aetiological point, in that it explained a mimetic invasion of Cape Skiradion, the western promontory of Salamis, by a single ship. This ritual was celebrated near a temple of Enyalios, supposedly founded by Solon. An Attic red-figure cup may bear a representation of this cult act (Petersen 1917). It is the work of the potter Hieron, and Beazley attributes the decoration to the Telephos Painter, a follower of Makron (1942.542; cf. Beazley 1963.816–817). The Telephos Painter was active in the 460s (Boardman 1975.195–196), so that the pot would bring nothing to my investigation of this story save confirmation of the existence of this tradition of the Solonian capture before 450 (something attested by the cult of Kyrkreos after Salamis). The fact that only one warship was involved and that this was a triakonter rather than a pentekonter or trireme) points toward an early date and an improvised sortie. The capture of the island is also an impromptu measure appropriate to a situation where Solon convinced the Athenians by his elegy to take action. He immediately gathered volunteers and attacked the island. The Megarians on the island were a settlement, and they were unprepared for the surprise attack. Both of these features suggest that Megara was complacent in its control of the island.

To conclude, the first capture of Salamis reported by Plutarch should belong to Peisistratos. Plutarch’s second story represents the Solonian capture, the first Athenian occupation of the island. Yet all we can do is to attempt to recover the original traditions, which nevertheless cannot be vouched for as historical. The first story permits no judgment of its factuality. It might represent either sound tradition contained in an Atthidographer or plausible conjecture by later Athenians. The second account, however, preserves several odd details about the Solonian provisions for Salamis. Its use of oracles calls to mind the Athenian justification for their ownership of Salamis in the late sixth century. [10] At the same time, the use of the disguise motif and of aetiology to explain the mimetic invasion may be apocryphal.

*J (before 600) The Athenian versions of the loss of Salamis do not accommodate the Megarian account, which had the island betrayed by a group of Megarian exiles called the Dorykleians (Pausanias 1.40.5 {285|286} = FGH 487 F 12). They made their way to the Megarian settlers on Salamis and then betrayed the island to the Athenians. Pausanias’ notice is very terse. Though no details are in common, the context of the account in Plutarch which we believe to be Solonian is nearer to it. The Megarian story has a notion of betrayal, to be compared with surprise in the Athenian story. The Solonian and Megarian captures have as their background the occupation of Salamis by settlers. Dorukleioi means ‘famous for the spear’ (cf. dourikleitos [e.g., Iliad V 55, 578]; douriklutos [e.g., Iliad II 645, XVI 26; Archilochus fr. 31). Dorukleioi is an odd name for a genos, a phratry, or a political subgroup. The Dorykleians may have been a warrior brotherhood expelled from Megara. There has been almost unanimous credibility accorded to the Athenian versions of the loss of Salamis (Piccirilli 1975.131–133). Yet it is less important to affirm either the Athenian or the Megarian traditions about Salamis than to observe some features about the context of the story. There is no reason to doubt that the Dorukleioi existed or that they had been exiled from Megara. The Megarians were trying to add plausibility to their face-saving story about the Athenian conquest of Salamis. This goal would scarcely have been served by the invention of an improbable-seeming group of exiles.

If warrior bands ( = hetaireiai?) had conducted Megarian military operations, it might partially explain the emphasis on philoi in Theognis. Elsewhere, at Sparta and Ephesus, Tyrtaeus (fr. 10–12) and Callinus (fr. 1) sang the virtues of the hoplites, steadfast in maintaining the phalanx. At Megara, the Theognidea are more concerned with careful gauging of the temperament of philoi (vv. 93–100, 213–216, 309–312 [n.b. v. 309: sussitoisin], 963–970, 1071–1074, 1163–1164h; see also Levine Ch. 7, Donlan Ch. 9). In the fighting of aristocratic bands, trust between comrades and the ability to predict the reactions of the one fighting nearby are more important than immersion of the individual personality in group fighting. If the Dorykleians acquiesced in Solon’s capture of Salamis, certain conclusions can be drawn. They were exiled either by Theagenes or less probably by the regime said by Plutarch to have been characterized by sōphrosunē ‘moderation’, and not by the democracy—unless the democracy is to be put early, c. 600 (see Note F above, Notes K, Q below). In any case, the theme of exile so evident in the Theognidea does not have to be grounded in the historical plight of a single group of exiles, namely those following the Palintokia. The fate of the Dorykleians suggests that banishments occurred more than once in the intense political infighting of archaic Megara. Therefore the exile­passages of the Theognidea were perhaps to some extent conventional (e.g., 209–210, 332a–334, 1209–1216). {286|287}

*K (c. 600) Plutarch in the Greek Questions (57) provides an explanation for the name of a building at Samos, the “Hall of Fetters” (Plutarch Moralia 303E–304C). When the Samians founded their colony at Perinthos, they came into conflict with the Megarians in the Propontis presumably because the Megarians found Perinthos threatening to their colonies there. A fleet dispatched by the ruling aristocracy of Samos, the Geōmoroi, defeated the Megarians at Perinthos. However, the commanders of the fleet decided to overthrow the regime at Samos and enlisted the help of the Megarians in doing so. The Megarians were introduced to the council house on Samos with fetters rigged for escape. Once in the presence of the members of the government, the Megarians threw aside their rigged bonds and assassinated them. The new Samian government offered the 600 Megarian prisoners citizenship. I shall assume that Okin is correct and that the source for this story is Samian local historical tradition, possibly Duris of Samos (see Okin Ch.1 §4–8). The political background of this confrontation is not hard to envisage. Samos had been an ally of Corinth, so that it is possible that the hostility between the Samians and the Megarians had a previous history (Thucydides 1.13.3). When Periander changed the pattern of alliances in the Aegean by establishing friendship with Thrasyboulos, tyrant of Miletos, it was likely that all other powers had to make adjustments (Herodotus 1.20; 5.92ζ2–η71; Diogenes Laertius 1.95; Aristotle Politics 1311a20–22). Therefore, a bout of hostilities between Megara and Samos followed by rapprochement between the two states is not surprising. The change in Corinthian alliance patterns from friendship with Samos to alliance with Miletos was not later than 605–604. [11] Consequently, at the end of Periander’s life (in one version of the story), the Samians intercepted a group of Corcyraean noble youths sent by Periander to Alyattes of Lydia for castration (Herodotus 3.48.2–4).

Perinthos was founded in 602, according to the traditional chronology (Strabo 7 fr. 56; Jerome Chronica 98b [Helm]). It is perhaps the Samian propensity for piracy (e.g., Herodotus 3.39.3, 3.47.1–3; Meiggs-Lewis no. 16) which directly prompted Megarian concern for {287|288} the lines of communication to their colonies, the nearest of which was Selymbria. If the date of the alliance between Periander and Thrasyboulos was before 605, one would be reluctant to opt for a date for this maritime conflict between Samas and Megara much after the foundation of Perinthos.

The fact that the Samians offered the Megarian assassins citizenship is intriguing. The attraction in using the Megarians had presumably been that, since they were outsiders, even enemies, the blood guilt intrinsic to the murder of the Geōmoroi would not pollute the Samian community. Yet the Samians, by the offer of citizenship, were in a sense assimilating the guilt that they may have sought to avoid. Perhaps the Megarians could not return home, either because their actions on Samas would be interpreted negatively by the Megarian government or because their behavior did not wipe the slate clean of the defeat at Perinthos (cf. Burn 1967.219). The Megarian democracy is the least likely of the Megarian governments to have been in power at this point. Such a democracy might well have honored the assassins of the arch-aristocratic Geōmoroi (cf. Legon 1981.122). [12]

*L (600–585) It is possible that a military confrontation, the knowledge of which we owe to the Theognidea, may belong to the same interstate context to which the conflict with the Samians over Perinthos and the fighting with the Milesians may be attributed (see Note F above; Note O below).

The poet bewails his weakness and mourns the sack of Kerinthos in Euboia. He goes on to complain of the ravaging of the Lelantine Plain and closes by hurling imprecations at the Kypselids. The historical context for the passage is a flare-up of hostility between Khalkis and Eretria over the Lelantine Plain. Although the best context for the major conflict between Khalkis and Eretria which we call the Lelantine War is the late eighth century, the fighting mentioned in this passage need not be dated so early (cf. Herodotus 5.99.1). [14] The dispute over the plain may not have had a final settlement, at least so long as Khalkis and Eretria remained capable of contesting its ownership through a resumption of hostilities. The Megarians have been thought of as allies of the Eretrians because of the previous friendship between Khalkis and Corinth attested by the Corinthian expulsion of Eretrian colonists from Corcyra (Plutarch Greek Questions 11 [Moralia 293A–B]) and the possible collaboration of these two states in colonization (see Note C above). Nevertheless, from its location, Kerinthos appears to lie in the Khalkidian sphere of influence in Euboia. Whether the Lelantine Plain, the destruction of which the poet laments, was in the hands of Khalkis or Eretria cannot with certainty be determined. Boardman believes, based on the quantity and quality of Khalkidian and Eretrian pottery, that Eretria held the upper hand over Khalkis in the seventh century and the first half of the sixth century (Boardman 1957.27–29). But pottery finds or even indications of wealth and poverty are hardly indicative of military success. Alignments become clearer, however, when we consider late sixth-century alliances. Khalkis was an ally of Thebes and the Boiotian League (Herodotus 5.74.2), with whom the Khalkidians (perhaps c. 506) had minted common monetary issues. Eretria, however, had good relations with Athens, demonstrated by its support for Peisistratos (Constitution of the Athenians 15.2), common aid to the lonians (Herodotus 5.99.1), Athenian help to Eretria in 490 (Herodotus 6.100), and marriage links with the Alcmaeonids (Aristophanes Clouds 46–48; cf. Acharnians 614; scholia Aristophanes Clouds 46a, 48b, 800).

This pattern of interstate relations makes it probable that a sixth­century Megara would find its sympathies lying with Khalkis rather than Eretria. So if Kerinthos was aligned with Khalkis, the poet’s solicitude for that city is understandable. A date after 600 for these hostilities is reasonable, when the similarity to the sequence of events involving the Megarian relationship to Miletos is noted. If the military {289|290} alignment of Eretria-Miletos-Megara against Khalkis-Samos-Corinth reflects eighth- and early seventh-century international politics, then it is possible that Periander’s shift in Corinthian alliance from Samas to Miletos can be paralleled by a shift from Khalkis to Eretria. Such a change would put Corinth on the same side as Athens, for whom Periander arbitrated the possession of Sigeion to the detriment of Mytilene (Herodotus 5.95.2; cf. Apollodorus FGH 244 F 27), and with whose leading family, the Philaiads, the Kypselids intermarried (Herodotus 6.35.1; 6.128.2). Jeffery notes that Periander planted the colony of Poteidaia on the peninsula of Pallene in the Khalkidike in c. 600 (Nicolaus of Damascus FGH 90 F 59; Jeffery 1976.66, 70). This may have been an infringement upon the territory of the Khalkidians of the north, who had sent help against Eretria on behalf of their mother-city, Khalkis, c. 700 (Plutarch Dialogue on Love 17 [Moralia 761A] = Aristotle fr. 98). It may be remarked that the same alignment can be seen in central Greece on the evidence of the suitors of Agariste, the daughter of Kleisthenes of Sikyon (Herodotus 6.127). Among them were two Athenians, Megakles and Hippokleides, of whom the latter was initially favored because of his marriage connections with the Kypselids of Corinth; Lysanias of Eretria; Leokedes, an Argive of the Heraklid royal house (probably in exile from his homeland; cf. Meiggs-Lewis no. 9); and Diakoridas, of the Scopad family from Krannon in Thessaly. Kleomakhos, one of the Ekhekratids of Pharsalos, rivals of the Scopads, had helped Khalkis in fighting against Eretria (Plutarch Dialogue on Love 17 [Moralia 760E–761A]). One may note that Sikyon was apparently friendly with Athens at this time (both states had fought on the side of Delphi in the First Sacred War: Hypothesis to Pindar N. 9; Pausanias 2.9.6, 10.37.6; Polyaenus 3.5). Moreover, the Argive government, which fought against Kleisthenes of Sikyon, had probably helped Megara against Corinth (see Note N below).

Not only is the destruction at Kerinthos and on the Lelantine Plain bewailed, but, in typical Theognidean language, the flight of the agathoi and the political supremacy of the kakoi are lamented. An attested sequence of events in archaic Khalkis might have made such language apposite. A tyrant, Phoxos—his name is probably a nickname, note Thersites phoxos … kephalēn ‘pointed … in the head’ (Iliad II 219)—took power with the gnōrimoi only to give way shortly to the dēmos (Aristotle Politics 1304a29–31). Another tyrant, Antileon, was succeeded by an oligarchy (Politics 1316a31–32).

But it is important to note that this section of the Theognidea begins with a plaint of weakness. It is presumably Megarian weakness that is at issue, and it may be that Corinthian military activity hindered the Megarians from coming to the aid of their Euboian allies. It {290|291} is therefore possible that the section should find its place as a reference to the war between Megara and Corinth in which eventually the Megarians were to achieve some victories, with the help of Argos. Periander in the latter part of his reign (c. 600–588/85) is an obvious candidate for the Kypselid responsible. Yet, for the Kypselids, it is also possible that the short-lived successor of Periander, Psammetikhos (and his relatives), might be suggested. Psammetikhos lost power in Corinth in 581. However, the formula of execration of the Kypselids is traditional (cf. Suda s.v. “Kupselid ō n anathema en Olumpi ā i”: ex ō l ē s ei ē Kupselid ō n gene ā). The Kypselids were held accursed through the marriage with Melissa, daughter of Prokles, the tyrant of Epidauros. Prokles had married a daughter of Aristokrates, king of the Arkadians, who had betrayed the Messenians and been cursed for it (Pausanias 4.22.7; Callisthenes FGH 124 F 23).

*M (570–565) If there had been a Peisistratid capture of Salamis, there must have been a preceding loss after the Solonian capture. One might guess that war between the two states broke out once more, perhaps when the Athenians were distracted by the internal strife of the 580s or 570s. Peisistratos’ capture of Salamis would belong before his first tyranny (no earlier than 561) and is to be connected with his seizure of Nisaea. The capture of Nisaea, which is mentioned by Herodotus (1.59.4), gained more renown for Peisistratos, as it presumably was a much more serious setback for Megara. Conceivably, the recapture of Salamis might be included in the “other great deeds” attributed to Peisistratos by Herodotus. Yet Salamis could also have been lost during one of the periods of Peisistratos’ absences from power after his initial assumption of the tyranny. Peisistratos as tyrant might then have recaptured Salamis. Hence the recapture of Salamis would not be dated by the Peisistratid capture of Nisaea (570–565). His good neighbor policy, predicated perhaps on a disinclination to bring together the Athenian army en masse, ought to be one consideration in preferring a date c. 570–565 for both the recapture of Salamis and the capture of Nisaea. Contemporaneous attacks on both places would explain how a capture of Nisaea came to be confused with a capture of Salamis (if, in fact, it was: see Note I above). This dating would allow Peisistratos to have achieved his exploits against Megara while allowing a few years’ time to accommodate his activities at the head of the Hill Party before his accession to power. The Peisistratid capture of Nisaea should perhaps be considered a particularly successful raid. It is unlikely that the Athenians could have kept Nisaea, probably unwalled at this time (see Note I above). It could not have been held without fortifications, nor could reinforcements from {291|292} Athens have reached Nisaea to save it from recapture because the Athenians did not possess a standing fleet with a capacity for swift mobilization (cf. Herodotus 6.89).

*N (575–550, 545–510) Megarian conflicts with Corinth in the sixth century are prey to conjecture. Given the material about the early subjection of Megara to Corinth and about the career of Orsippos, and the evidence for Corinthian aggression against Megara in the fifth century, it is not surprising that Corinth and Megara fought in the sixth century. The Megarian treasury at Olympia was built out of spoils taken from the Corinthians (Pausanias 6.19.12–14). Pausanias says that the treasury was built some years after the battle with the Corinthians, but either a numeral (50 or 500?) or the adjective ‘many’ qualifying ‘years’ has fallen from his text (Hitzig 1901.506, 636). A two-stage process is at work here, as the treasury contained earlier offerings. Pausanias believes that the spoils from which the treasury was built were taken in the reign of Phorbas, a life-archon at Athens. He is said by Pausanias to have reigned both before the annual archonship at Athens and before the Eleans kept records of the Olympiads, namely in the tenth century (e.g., 952–924: Jerome Chronica 74a–76a [Helm]). That any war between these two cities was so early is extremely unlikely, nor is one likely to have been remembered.

It is odd that the name of Phorbas, an Athenian, is used to date a Megarian/Corinthian war. An archon date suggests a written source, perhaps one that is Atthidographical or derived from the Atthis, but why such a source would have even treated this war is hard to visualize. Megarian local historians did not use archon dates, as far as we can tell from the scanty extant material. The Megareis hardly would have wished to date anything by an archon date, given their antipathy toward Athens. An alternative explanation would be that Pausanias identified a Phorbas associated with the Megarian treasury as the Athenian life-archon rather than as a Megarian of the same name unknown to him. Perhaps the name was inscribed on the treasury or something connected with it. Note the use of hē goumai ‘I believe’ for his introduction of the dating by Phorbas. The next question to be raised is whether Pausanias introduced the idea that the conflict took place before the Eleans kept records for any reason other than to illustrate that the war and Phorbas were both early. In other words, did he know somehow that the Eleans could not date the war between the Megarians and the Corinthians, or the spoils in the Megarian treasury, or even the beginning of the building of the treasury itself?

If this last supposition is correct, it is possible that the reason why the records of the Eleans were in default was that the war took place {292|293} at a time when the Pisatans had usurped management of Olympia. Damophon, son of the Pisatan tyrant Pantaleon, usurped the conduct of the Olympian Games in 588, according to Pausanias (6.22.2–4). His brother, Pyrrhos, carried on the struggle after Damophon’s death. Other testimonia (e.g., Strabo 8.3.30 C355) on Olympia record a more complex pattern of conflict over the sanctuary than the three anolympiads (748, 644, 588) of Pausanias. It is possible that the war between Corinth and Megara took place in the period after 588, when the Eleans were not securely in control of Olympia. Depending on how long one makes Pisatan control of the sanctuary last, one may date other things concerning the Megarian treasury (e.g., dedications or spoils) in such a context.

According to Pausanias, the Argives helped the Megarians in this war. Argive hostility to Corinth makes sense. Corinth under Periander had intervened in the Argolic Akte against Prokles of Epidauros (Herodotus 3.52.7). In some stories, the Argive tyrant Pheidon fell during a civil war at Corinth (Nicolaus of Damascus FGH 90 F 35; cf. Plutarch Love Stories 2 [Moralia 772D–773B]; scholia Apollonius Rhodius 4.1212); whether in support of the Bacchiads or against them is uncertain. Yet Argos cannot have helped Megara in the second half of the sixth century. In c. 546, Argos had been defeated by the Spartans in the Battle of Champions and had been stripped of Kynouria, the Thyreatis, and perhaps Kythera (Herodotus 1.82). Argos then fell into internal confusion. The Argive tyrant Perilaos may have come to power at this time (Pausanias 2.23.7; cf. 2.20.7; Herodotus 1.82.8). Also, the Argives may have been inhibited from further action by a fifty-year truce with Sparta. They could not have helped Megara against Corinth without arousing Spartan suspicion, especially inasmuch as Corinth’s alliance with Sparta antedates 525 (Herodotus 3.46–50).

Rather, Argive participation belongs to the string of earlier Argive moves meant to redress the power balance in the northeast Peloponnesus (Figueira 1983.27–28). After the Argive decline associated with the successors of Pheidon (Plutarch How to Profit from One’s Enemies 6 [Moralia 89E]; Pausanias 2.19.2), the Argives rebounded with the destruction of Nauplia (Pausanias 4.24.4, 4.27.8, 4.35.2), the expulsion of the Spartan garrison at Halieis, activity in the area of Epidauros, and support of Algina against Athens (Herodotus 5.86.4; see also Jameson 1969). These events can be dated between 615 and 590. It is possible that the Argive help to Megara (albeit probably some years later) belongs in this same succession. The fighting might belong to the same complex of warfare as the Euboian hostilities lamented by Theognis (see Note L above). {293|294}

The pedimental sculptures of the Megarian treasury date that structure to the last quarter of the sixth century, perhaps even to the last decade, and a date in the first decade of the fifth century would not be impossible (Bol 1974). Pausanias states that earlier dedications were kept in the Megarian treasury (Pausanias 6.19.14). He assigns these to the Spartan sculptor Dontas, a pupil of the Sikyonians Skyllis and Dipoinis. Elsewhere, however, Pausanias calls this artist Medon rather than Dontas (5.17.2). The name Medon is attested elsewhere, while Dontas is not. It remains for us to consider why Pausanais wanted to date the dedications created by Medon/Dontas earlier than the treasury. Although he may well have believed that Daidalos was a very early figure, so that his pupils Skyllis and Dipoinis (and thereby Medon) were also early, it is far-fetched to think that he felt compelled for this reason to date the dedications to the tenth century. Perhaps Pausanias envisaged this sequence: (1) war during the life-archonship of Phorbas; (2) dedications by Medon/Dontas; (3) Megarian treasury: thus, the early dedications are merely older than the treasury, not earlier than a war he believed to be very early (cf. Meyer 1954.332, 633).

Skyllis and Dipoinis had a floruit of c. 580 (Pliny Natural History 36.4.9–10). Their pupil should have had his floruit in the thirty years after theirs and may have worked for the Megarians around the middle of the sixth century. The artist Medon/Dontas, the participation of the Argives , and perhaps the occurrence of this war during a period of confusion at Olympia all seem to point toward a conflict in the second quarter of the the sixth century. Whether we should hypothesize two wars in this period, one nearer to 580 (when Eleans were in trouble at Olympia) and the other after mid-century, in order to lessen the hiatus between the war and the late sixth-century treasury built from its spoils, is worth considering. As Megara was not a rich polis, it is possible that the more usual pattern of slow building prevailed for this structure. Thus, a second war with Corinth could be as much as a generation before a treasury finished c. 510. The completion of the treasury might then have been urged by the Megarian alliance with Sparta, which, for the moment, vouchsafed Megara protection against Corinth and Athens (see Note R below).

*O (575–550) It would not be surprising if Miletos, friendly to Corinth after 600, came into conflict with Megara, Corinth’s inveterate enemy. A polyandrion at Miletos bore an inscribed epigram (Peek GV 1 no. 33) that recorded that the dead within had fallen in a victory over Megara (L. Robert, BE [1967] = REG 80 no. 528, pp. 536–538; cf. Peek 1966). The epigram is Hellenistic (c. 200). Its author may have {294|295} composed another Milesian epigram, the one dedicated to Lichas (Hiller von Gaertringen 1926 no. 107). It is unlikely that this conflict preceded the friendship of Periander and Thrasyboulos. A conflict between Megara and Miletos is also unlikely to have happened without any other trace after 500, when Greek foreign affairs become better attested. What can be learned from the content of the epigram suggests an archaic date for the conflict. The Milesian dead are said to have upheld the example of their forefathers, who, with their warships, had explored the Black Sea, founding colonies there, and had established the city of Naukratis in Egypt. These boasts may indicate that the geographical context for the conflict was somewhere in the areas of colonization at the fringes of the Greek world. While such themes were undoubtedly traditional in Milesian commemorative poetry, it is possible that the author was in part inspired by a previous epigram contemporary with the polyandrion. When the polyandrion was refurbished, a new epigram was commissioned to replace the original one that was used as a source.

Nonetheless, the foundation of Heraclea may give us an approximate indication of date. Heraclea was a homologue of Sinope, in that each city was situated to control a natural trade route across the Black Sea (Boardman 1980.254–255). Sinope dominated the shortest crossing to the Crimea, while Heraclea was placed at one of the south coast’s few other good harbors. Just as the Milesian colonies of the northern and western shores of the Black Sea were emplaced after the foundation of Sinope, the Megarian colony of Mesambria (perhaps with the collaboration of Byzantion and Kalkhedon) and the Heraclean colonies of Panelos, Kallatis, and Khersonnesos were founded on the northern and western shores after the foundation of Heraclea. While Sinope seems to have been founded in the late seventh century (Cook 1946.77), and the other Milesian colonies may have been founded in the first half of the sixth century, the Megarians had settled the eastern end of the Propontis, leaving the Black Sea to the Milesians. As might be expected, the poet of the epigram saw the Megarians as the aggressors in the fighting. Although the context lends itself to patriotic exaggeration, it is worth noting that the epigram suggests that the fighting was on a considerable scale. The Megarians had not colonized in the Black Sea before Heraclea (c. 560: see Note E above). It is thus possible that the foundation of that city was meant as deliberately competitive to Miletos and took place in a period of hostility between the two states. Such a period could have been inaugurated by the rapprochement between Periander and Thrasyboulos and also by Megarian aid to the Samian generals against their government (see Note K above). Thus, {295|296} any time after 600 could accommodate fighting between Megara and Miletos. If the boast of having founded Naukratis, established shortly before 600 (Austin 1970.22–24; von Bissing 1951), belonged to an earlier epigram on the polyandrion, the episode must be after 600. The second quarter of the sixth century is a possible broad time frame, since fighting between these two states at that time would coincide with the foundation of Heraclea.

*P (550–510) Plutarch Greek Questions 59 (Mora li a 304E–F) is our only source on the clan of the ‘wagon-rollers’. They earned their name from an attack on a Peloponnesian the ō ri ā ‘sacred embassy’, encamped in wagons with their families, on its way to Delphi. That a g enos can ever have been officially called hamaxoku l istai ‘wagon­rollers’ is doubtful, if genos is to be understood in the sense that it had in Athens, that is, ‘clan’. Nor is it clear how the th rasutatoi ‘boldest’ of the Megarians responsible for the crime became a family group. Moreover, while it is possible that a sacred embassy might be accompanied by their families, I can think of no parallel. The anecdote is aetiological and could be designed to explain the name ‘wagon-rollers’, or some name sounding enough like this term to corroborate the anecdote. Thus, in this interpretation, no great trust ought to be placed in the details of the story.

Yet, if genos can mean ‘class’ or ‘caste’ here (see Figueira 1984b), another line of analysis is available. It is known from Aristotle that the oligarchic government that succeeded Megara’s democracy restricted officebolding to those who had returned from exile with the oligarchs and had fought the dēmos (Politics 1300a17–19), and not on the basis of the usual criteria of birth or wealth. Those barred from political power could have been a genos of ‘wagon-rollers’ tainted by sacrilege, if by this is meant the descendants of those resisting the oligarchic coup, possessing a status exactly the opposite of the descendants of the exiles. They would be like the enageis ‘cursed’ descendants of the destroyers of the Kylonians at Athens (Herodotus 5.70.2–72.1; Thucydides 1.126.2–127.1; Constitution of the Athenians 1; Suda s.v. “Kulōneion agos,” “Periklēs” [1179); Diogenes Laertius 1.110; Plutarch Solon 12.2–9). These Athenians were subject to repeated attacks on their civil rights and political position because of the conduct of their ancestors.

The account of the ‘wagon-rollers’ as it is found in Plutarch would have been preserved for its continuing relevance to partisan politics. The anecdote shares the antidemocratic bias of other passages from its source, the Constitution of the Megarians. It may be dated by the mention of the incident’s occurring during the Megarian democracy {296|297} (see Note Q below). That retaliation was undertaken by the Amphictyony against the guilty suggests a date after the First Sacred War. The term theō ri ā is customarily used for an official embassy. The designation ‘Peloponnesian’ describing it should mean that it was dispatched by Sparta and its allies, as no other collectivity bore the title ‘Peloponnesian’.

One may doubt that the Megarian government was unable to punish the malefactors because of the democracy’s prevailing anarchy. The democracy moved against its aristocratic enemies, banishing them (Aristotle Politics 1304b34–39). Here it probably chose not to intervene. The presence in a Peloponnesian embassy of Corinthians, archenemies of Megara, might be reason enough for such a decision, even if the Megarians did not happen to be fighting the Corinthians at the moment. Megara may have considered itself at permanent war with Corinth (cf. Aristotle Politics 1280b13–15). The Amphictyones did not usually act against individuals, holding their city responsible for them (Halliday 1928.220). The Amphictyones did not have the military force to intervene in the Megarid (especially if the Megarians were friendly with Boiotia, which shielded them from the Amphictyonic states to the north: see Note E above). Force applied by the Amphictyony in the Isthmus could only have come from Sparta. Therefore, the story may be interpreted as Peloponnesian retaliation sanctioned by Delphi.

Undoubtedly, some military action was involved. Some of the ‘wagon-rollers’ were put to death. Others were exiled, which argues that the Megarian government was brought to acquiesce in their punishment. Several contexts are possible. The punishment of the ‘wagon­rollers’ could be associated with a war between Megara and Corinth, the latter supported by Sparta. The Megarians were defeated, with the chastisement of the ‘wagon-rollers’ as part of the settlement. Yet Megara seems to have held its own in sixth-century fighting with Corinth (see Note N above). The Peloponnesians may, however, have intervened against the Megarian democracy, as the investigation of the term genos above has suggested. They helped to establish an oligarchy that affirmed or completed the punishment of the ‘wagon-rollers’. A further extrapolation might indicate that the best setting for these events would be the moment at which Megara allied itself with Sparta (see Note R below). The massacre of the theōriā was a pretext for Spartan help to the exiled Megarian oligarchs. Delphi played a similar role in sanctioning Spartan military activity in the intervention against the Peisistratids (Herodotus 5.63.1; Constitution of the Athenians 19.4).

*Q (544/1) The Megarian democracy was in power when Heraclea was founded c. 560 (Aristotle Politics 1304b31–32; cf. 1305b34–37; See {297|298} also Note E above). Megarian comedy originated during the Megarian democracy (Aristotle Poetics 1448a30–32). The Marmor Parium dates the beginnings of comedy between 580 and 560 (FGH 239 A 39). The democracy may therefore have been in existence as early as 580. Given the weak biographical tradition about Theognis (see Ch.5 §§15–18), it is likely that the date of 544/1 for his f l oruit is an ancient conjecture (Suda s.v. “Theognis”; Jerome Chronica 103b [Helm]; Eusebius Chronica p.189 [Karst]). The conjecture was based on some date otherwise known from Megarian history. It is likely that Theognis was inserted at a critical juncture in what little was known in the classical period of Megarian political history. Some constitutional change, the collapse of Megara’s democracy or the Palintokia (perhaps seen as the cause of the collapse}, may be suggested. Perhaps the Palintokia is the preferable choice as the event to be dated to 544/ 1. The later that the Megarian democracy stayed in power, the more likely it is that its downfall included the intervention of the Peloponnesians against the ‘wagon-rollers’ (see Note P above). A date of 544/1 for the Palintokia puts the measure about a generation after the earliest date for the first minting of silver coinage in mainland Greece by the Aiginetans, c. 580 (see Ch.5 §50; Figueira 1981. 88–97). Moreover, dates as late as 550 have been suggested for its advent. Although it existed earier, silver coinage became prevalent only after 530; fractional coinage, not until even later. Estimates about the speed at which silver coinage can have made a psychological impact on the Megarian dē mos are beyond our capacity to reach. Yet a date in the 540s appears early rather than late from this perspective. A Megarian awareness of electrum coinage may not in itself have been sufficient to trigger the attitudes toward debt seen in the Palintokia. The fall of the democracy was effected by returning exiles (Aristotle Politics 1304b35–39; cf. also 1300a15–20). There are passages in the Theognidea that mention exile and return from exile (e.g., vv. 332a–332b, 333–334, 1214; see also Note J above). Although conventional in nature, they may have prompted ancient chronographers to place in 544/1 what would have been a critical moment in the supposed biography of the poet, his exile after the Palintokia. How late in the sixth century Megarian democracy lasted is unknown, but clearly it was no brief interlude in the institutional history of that city (cf. Legon 1981.134). I see no prima facie reasons why it cannot have lasted into the last quarter of the century.

*R (c. 510) In their intervention against the Peisistratids and later against the Kleisthenic government, Spartan armies moved through the Megarid (Herodotus 5.64–65; Cf. 5.72.1, 74.2). Therefore, either {298|299} Megara was already an ally of Sparta by 510 or Sparta violated Megarian sovereignty repeatedly without leaving a trace of these acts in our sources. Whether a terminus ante quem for this alliance can be dated earlier depends on the interpretation of events surrounding the inauguration of the Athenian alliance with Plataia. Thucydides dates the first alliance between Athens and Plataia to 519 (Thucydides 3.68.5; Herodotus 6.108.1–6). The details of the joining together of these two states are related by Herodotus. The Plataians originally approached Kleomenes, who was in the neighborhood. To have been near Plataia, a Spartan army most probably would have passed through the Megarid. It is possible that Kleomenes was in the area because he had brought Megara into the Spartan alliance (Legon 1981.141–145; cf. Piccirilli 1973.725–730). Kleomenes directed the Plataian request to Athens. When the alliance was made, war broke out between Thebes, with designs on Plataia, and Athens. The Athenians were victorious. The Corinthians were also on the scene, and they arbitrated between the two parties.

The presence of the Corinthians is curious. Kleomenes scarcely would have brought them along to convince the Megarians to become allies of Sparta. However, the details of the story have led scholars since Grote to emend the date to 509. [15] At this time Kleomenes and the Corinthians could be near Plataia because they were intervening in Attica. With the redating of the Plataian alliance with Athens to 509, a Megarian alliance with Sparta c. 519 is no longer necessary as a rationale for the Spartan presence in central Greece in 519. 509 becomes the terminus ante que m for the Megarian alliance with Sparta, but a terminus post quem is lacking. Nevertheless, there is no reason to put the Megarian alliance with Sparta before the Spartan expulsion of the Peisistratids. The fact that the first Spartan attempt against the Peisistratids under Ankhimolios reached Attica by sea (perhaps on Corinthian ships) may suggest that Megara was not yet an ally of Sparta. The Megarid was closed to the Spartans in the company of their allies from Corinth, the archenemies of Megara. Nonetheless, Kleomenes could have forcibly brought Megara into the Peloponnesian League by expelling the democrats and helping to {299|300} install an oligarchic government of exiles with Corinthian aid (see Note Q above). Megara (under its oligarchy?) allied itself with Sparta only after the first expedition. Kleomenes was therefore able to march through the Megarid and to free Athens.

The Megarian oligarchy may have joined Sparta on the understanding that Salamis would be arbitrated but might still have been too dependent on Sparta to press its case. The newly liberated Athenians would scarcely be in a position to resist any Spartan decision. Whether moved by Realpolitik or the strength of the Athenian case, the Spartans decided against the Megarians (see Note S below). If Corinthian behavior in the 460s (when the Corinthians took advantage of Spartan distraction to make war on Megara [Thucydides 1.103.4; Diodorus Siculus 11.79.2; Plutarch Cimon 17.2–3]) is any indication of their general policy toward Megara, Corinth may not have recognized that Megara was an independent polis. Corinthian acquiescence in a Megarian alliance with Sparta is most reasonable in c.510, when Corinth may have been anxious to liberate Athens from Hippias. Hippias’ rapprochement with Persia threatened the establishment of Athens as a Medizing state in the immediate vicinity of Corinth. [16] Corinth, however, might have bridled had Sparta strengthened Megara through arbitration at the expense of Athens.

*S (c. 510) Plutarch concludes his narrative on the Salamis dispute with a description of the arguments that Solon purportedly used to sway Spartan arbitrators to concede the Athenian right to own Salamis (Solon 10; Aelian Varia Historia 7.19). The arguments were from the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, supporting the contention that Philaios and Eurysakes, sons of Ajax, had emigrated to Athens (Iliad II 557–558), and from the orientation in their graves of those buried on Salamis (cf. Hereas FGH 486 F 4). Delphic responses also supported the Athenian claims by asserting that Salamis was Ionian. Plutarch reports, in addition, the counterarguments of the Megarians. Strabo reports another of the arguments deployed: the priestess of Athena Polias used only foreign cheese, including cheese from Salamis (9.1.10–11 C394–395). The Athenians countered by observing that the identificalion of cheese as foreign extended to other offshore islands undeniably Athenian. Later elaboration by Megareis and Atthidographers may have garbled the traditions they received. However, while the argument from mythological affinity to political sovereignty may be archaic, the reasoning from local customs (burial rites {300|301} and the dietary taboos of the priestess) is crude anthropology. The idea is that different states have different nomoi ‘conventions’, which remain static. Perhaps such arguments belong better in the late sixth century, but such a judgment can only be subjective.

Solon insisted upon the Ionian character of Athens, calling Attica the eldest land of Ionia (fr. 4a.2). For Salamis, the Delphic responses make a similar claim, so that such arguments on behalf of Athenian ownership of Salamis could go back to Solon. The intervention of Delphi on the side of the Athenians will fit any time after Solon’s participation in the Sacred War, for which Athens may have been conceded the Ionian vote in the Amphictyony. One’s impression from the account of Plutarch is that the Spartan arbitration definitively settled the status of Salamis, ensuring the prominence of the story (along with the names of the Spartan arbitrators) in popular memory. Yet there was fighting with Megara, probably over Salamis, under the command of Peisistratos. The use by the Alcmaeonids of oracles in their struggle against the Peisistratids shows the continued influence of Athens at Delphi (Herodotus 5.62.2–63.2). The Peisistratids, however, made use of Onomakritos, in his own right a skilled manipulator of religious pedigrees for political decisions (Herodotus 7.6.3). Perhaps Alcmaeonid influence at Delphi prevented Peisistratos from similar use of that oracle. The arbitration, therefore, is unlikely to have been of the Peisistratid period.

Sparta was unlikely to have been chosen at a time when it was allied with Megara, unless some corresponding tie existed with Athens also. This point is especially telling when one notes that the Spartan arbitrators were said to have been moved by arguments that Salamis was Ionian and thus Athenian. Thereby they were siding with Ionians against their fellow Dorians of Megara. So a dating of the Spartan arbitration to an early period (that of Solon, for instance), when neither Megara nor Athens was particularly close to Sparta, is not to be preferred to a later date when both cities had some equal, countervailing affinity. There is, however, a good reason for believing that the Spartan arbitration came toward the end of the sixth century (Beloch 1912–1927.1.2.312–314). Of the five arbitrators (Kritolaidas, Amompharetos, Hypsekhidas, Anaxilas, and Kleomenes), Kleomenes may be the famous king of that name, and Amompharetos is perhaps the senior officer whom Pausanias found so recalcitrant at Plataia in 479 (Herodotus 9.53–57, 71.2, 85.1 [where the identification as an ir ē n ‘youth’ is suspect: How and Wells 1912.2.325]; Plutarch Aristeides 17.3). The Delphic oracles would then be inspired by the Alcmaeonids. While the Spartans had ties of xeni ā with the Peisistratids (Herodotus 5.90.1), these did not deter them from {301|302} expelling the tyrants from Athens. After the expulsion (510), Athens for a short period maintained good relations with Sparta, until political hegemony was lost decisively by Isagoras, Kleomenes’ friend (510–508/7). Kleomenes would have been aware of the potential instability in an increased role for the Athenian dē mos, if he had already intervened against the Megarian democrats. By awarding Salamis to Athens, he may have sought to strengthen Isagoras in the face of the populist agitation of Kleisthenes. At this time Delphi would have held no favor for the Megarians if the story reported by Plutarch (Greek Questions 59) that the Megarian ‘wagon-rollers’ bad waylaid visitors on their way to Delphi is true (Legon 1981.133; see also Note P above).

A late sixth-century inscription, post-Peisistratid, must also be taken into account (Meiggs-Lewis no. 14). [17] It makes provisions for Athenian settlers on Salamis in their mobilization for war and stipulates restrictions on the leasing of their property. It is probable that Salamis was the first Athenian cleruchy (scholia Pindar N. 2.19; cf. IG II² 30b.6). It is to be dated before the cleruchy at Khalkis, established in 506 (Herodotus 5.77.2). Nonetheless, understanding of it is hampered by uncertainty over whether the inscription reports a reorganization or an organization of the community. Yet it is striking that affairs needed to be settled at so late a date. The inhabitants of Salamis belonged to all ten tribes, as the island was not divided into demes. Since Salamis directly adjoins Attica, this may suggest that the organization of Salamis was after the Kleisthenic reforms. Yet it also may have been because the Athenians needed to keep the ownership of Salamis separate on account of religious scruples, on the grounds that the island descended to them through Philaios and Eurysakes. Consequently, the Spartans could have awarded Salamis to the Athenians after the liberation of Athens from the Peisistratids, but before Kleisthenes’ reform of the tribes. Afterwards, when Sparta had become hostile to Athens, the Athenians may have anticipated further Megarian aggression toward Salamis and may have sought to regularize certain features of the island’s governance and defense with this in view (Meiggs-Lewis no. 14.3, 9).

The incorporation of former inhabitants of Salamis into Attica is also involved in this question. When the Megarians seized the island originally, the inhabitants fled to Attica. Solon, c. 600, led a force of volunteers that recaptured the island (see Note I above). The 500 youths who participated perhaps became citizens of this new {301|302} Athenian Salamis, an entity akin to a colony (a politeuma in Plutarch), but Salamis was then lost, to be recovered once more by Peisistratos. The third-centiry decree that discusses the phratry of the Salaminioi divides them into two groups (LSCG Suppl. no. 19). [18] One is concentrated in the Sounion area and the other spread among seven of the nine other tribes, although concentrated in the vicinity of the hērōon of Eurysakes in Melite, a suburb of the city.

That the Salaminioi were originally inhabitants of Salamis is shown by their practice of the cult of Athena Skiros (LSCG Suppl. no. 19.10, 41–45, 93; IG II² 1232; cf. Philochorus FGH 328 F 14, 15), with its connections the the Megarid (Praxion FGH 484 F 1; Dieuchidas 6b Piccirilli). It is noteworthy that the majority of the phratry of the Salaminioi had been in Athens during the sixth century, since they seem to have lived in Attica long enough before the Kleisthenic reforms for about half of them to have scattered from an original place of settlement in Sounion area. They had never been definitively reestablished on the island after Solon. The Athenian state made contributions to the cult activity of the Salaminioi in accordance with enactments contained on the kurbeis . The kurbeis contained the laws of Solon, so that state participation in subsidy of the religious activity of the Salaminioi may go back to Solon’s time (LSCG Suppl. no. 19.86). Their dominance in the cults of Pandrosos and Aglauros (LSCG Suppl. no. 19.11–12, 45) and in the festival of the Oskhophoira (LSCG Suppl. no. 19.20–24, 48–50) suggests an early establishment in Attica.

It is noteworthy that Plutarch records a loss if Nisaea and Salamis but connects it with stasis in Athens in the time of Solon (Solon 12.5). Since Peisistratos captured Nisaea, these events could have happened during the stasis attendant upon Peisistratos’ exiles and returns to power. Whether the island was allowed to revert to Megara under Peisistratos, an unlikely event, was left vacant in these years, or was treated as an appanage of the Peisistratid family, is uncertain. In the last case, they could have given their followers estates there. Any of these possibilities would explain why an arbitration was sought by either Megara or Athens at the end of the sixth century. Also explicable would be the Athenian need to reorganize Salamis toward the end of the century. Discontinuity seems to have marked Athenian control of Salamis in the sixth century, as indicated by the fact that the later cleruchs do not appear to have been merely the descendants of the original inhabitants of the island, the Salaminioi.