The Aiakidai, the Herald-less War, and Salamis

Thomas Figueira

It is tempting to justify this contribution in honor of Greg Nagy by invoking his interest in the Aiakidai, to whose appearance in several important literary contexts he has adverted in various works [1] and to whose Urvater, Aiakos, he has in some considerable part devoted a recent study. [2] That would perhaps overplay my topic, since in so magnificent a corpus of contributions, Greg’s attention has so often teased meaning from so many classical texts that any attribution to him of particular interest becomes unfairly reductive. Nonetheless, this piece, which revisits several scholarly problems that I have explored in earlier publications, is intended in whole-hearted admiration of my old friend and generous mentor.

The Aiakidai are the line of heroes derived from Aiakos, the son of the nymph Aigina and Zeus and the founding hero, and first and only, king of Aigina. The Aiakidai feature in two important political episodes within late archaic history: first, in the gestation of the calamitous late archaic war between the Aiginetans and Athens (508–480 [3] ), and, second, at the battle of Salamis of 480, an engagement that certainly qualifies as epochal from any vantage point.

Let me start by addressing the first appearance of the Aiakidai as military allies. [4] In 510, the Spartans under King Kleomenes I had liberated Athens from the Peisistratid tyranny (Herodotus 5.62.4–65.2). That intervention was not only consonant with their general anti-tyrannical foreign policy, but was also specifically motivated by the danger that Hippias, the son of Peisistratos, whose authority had been compromised by the attempted coup of Harmodios and Aristogeiton (c. 514), might seek Persian support to buttress his damaged regime. A Medizing beachhead in central Greece, so near the Isthmus, the entrance to the Peloponnesus, and the outer northeast rim of the Spartan alliance, was a distinctly unattractive prospect. Kleomenes would later show his ruthlessness when confronting similar challenges from those Medizing, against Argos at Sepeia in c. 494 (Herodotus 6.76.1–81) and at Aigina itself in c. 490 (6.49.2–50.3, 61.1, 73.1–2).

After Hippias and his family were expelled in 510, the Athenians presumably joined the Peloponnesian League, as had other poleis that were liberated through Spartan intervention. [5] Athens, however, did not settle into its role as Spartan ally comfortably. Attica was large, populous, and relatively far from Laconia, and, even more significantly, had experienced a greater degree of economic differentiation with its olive oil exports, craft industries, and nascent silver mining sector. The complexity of institutional development among the Athenians, coupled with the relatively advanced level of their formation of cultural identity, separated them from the majority of the Spartan allies, where, excepting Corinth, subsistence agrarian societies predominated. [6] Thus, when Kleisthenes bested Isagoras in an internal partisan struggle, this repudiation of Kleomenes’ and Sparta’s favored local politician marked the start of a series of efforts by the king to bring the Athenians to heel (Herodotus 5.66.1–2, 69.1–70.1). In the midst of Kleomenes’ actions against Athens, the Athenians made overtures to the Persian satrap in Sardis, although an act of submission to him was later repudiated (Herodotus 5.73.2–3). This flirtation can only have served to whet Kleomenes’ apprehensions against an Athenian leadership that was not conforming to Spartan expectations.

Kleomenes was initially successful in cowing the Athenian opposition through exile of the Alkmeonids and their allies (Herodotus 5.70.2, 72.1–74.1; cf. Constitution of the Athenians 20.1–3). Yet, his maneuver ultimately miscarried, both because its mechanism, the invoking of the Kylonian blood guilt, encompassed too wide a net of accusation, and because Isagoras’ plans for stabilizing “Peloponnesian” Athens deviated from the main axis of political beliefs, threatening the status of too many and provoking the Council of the Areiopagos into resistance (cf. Constitution of the Athenians 20.2–3). This upheaval was too vigorous for Kleomenes’ small contingent of troops (perhaps merely a contingent of the Hippeis, who numbered 300 in all). After his ignominious ejection from the Acropolis, his next attempt at removing Kleisthenes encompassed another mobilization of Peloponnesian forces (Herodotus 5.74.1).

This intervention led to the first of the crucial deployments of the Aiakidai, inasmuch as the expedition was a more elaborate effort than Kleomenes’ previous gambit and entailed an invasion of Attica from Megara through Eleusis by the main levy of the Peloponnesian League (5.74.2–77.1). Kleomenes’ prior planning also included the Thebans and Khalkidians raiding northern Attica (5.74.2). These raids were perhaps intended to draw the Athenians northward while the Peloponnesian main force moved from the Eleusinian plain to the plain around Athens itself. The Thebans were receptive, owing to earlier and ongoing Athenian championing of the desires of the Plataians to stand aloof from the nascent Boiotian alliance (cf. Herodotus 6.108.1–6; Thucydides 3.68.5). [7] The Khalkidians may have already aligned themselves with Theban aspirations for hegemony over Boiotia, while also nursing grudges about the longstanding alignment of Athens with their main local enemies, the Eretrians. [8] Kleomenes, however, was unable to carry through on his invasion of Attica, thwarted by his allies, led by the Corinthians, and by Demaratos, his fellow king, who effectively vetoed the campaign by withdrawing (5.75.1–3).

Corinthian foreign policy runs through this sequence of events like a crimson thread, although it has seldom been closely examined. Earlier Periander, the great tyrant of archaic Corinth (reigned c. 628–588), had favored Athens over Mytilene in the arbitration of the rights to Sigeion in the Troad and had enjoyed cordial relations with Attic elite families, who in turn may have provided him with military assistance. [9] Periander had also intervened in Euboian politics to the detriment of Khalkidian interests (Theognis 891–894). [10] Throughout the late seventh and sixth centuries, the Corinthians and Athenians shared antipathies against the Megarians and Aiginetans. [11] More recently, the Corinthians had brokered an armistice between the Thebans and Athenians over Plataia that had solidified a situation on the ground favorable to Athens (Herodotus 6.108.5–6). The Corinthians appear to have had no problems with an Athens standing outside the Peloponnesian League—not incidentally leaving an Athens more closely aligned with Corinth than Sparta—and they would eventually also scotch Kleomenes’ third attempt to master Athens a few years later.

Unfortunately for the Thebans and Khalkidians, their forces were already deeply committed when the Peloponnesian invaders reached the Eleusinian plain (5.74.2, 76.1). This demarche meant that, after Kleomenes’ withdrawal, they were dangerously exposed to Attic retaliation. Accordingly, they appear to have quickly left off raiding the nearest towns of the exposed northern frontier of Attica. When the Athenian army caught up with the Thebans and Khalkidians, both their armies were well north of the boundary at the Asopis river. The Athenians had marched on the Euripos, intending to strike at Khalkis and perhaps expecting the Thebans to be provoked into a battle on unfavorable ground rather than surrender the territory of their allies to devastation. The Theban effort to block the Athenian army became a terrible defeat, with many dead and 700 prisoners (Herodotus 5.77.1–2). On the same day, there followed a crossing into Euboia and a defeat of Khalkis so decisive that it allowed the Athenians to establish 4,000 settlers on the territory confiscated from the Hippobotai ‘Horse Rearers’, the Khalkidian elite (5.77.2). [12] These victories were so memorable that the tithe of the spoils underwrote the dedication of a bronze chariot at the entrance to the Acropolis, upon which an epigram of two elegiac couplets was inscribed (5.77.4). Herodotus used this victory for a notable reflection on the military ramifications of isêgoria and eleutheria (5.78; cf. 5.91.2).

However, the Thebans were now intent upon meting out tisis ‘retribution’ to the Athenians (Herodotus 5.79.1). So they inquired of the Pythia, who advised that they would not levy such tisis themselves, but they should refer the matter to the poluphêmon ‘many voiced’ (perhaps, but see below), and ask of their ankhista ‘nearest’. [13] Since the neighbors of Thebes, the allied Boiotian cities Tanagra, Koronaia, and Thespiai, were already assisting as allies, the Thebans were perplexed (5.79.2). This oracle’s reception played out in the Theban assembly (ostensibly, the poluphêmon), at which someone interpreted the pronouncement as advice to enlist the Aiginetans as avengers because they were “those nearest” on account of the sisterhood as daughters of Asopos of the eponymous nymphs Thebe and Aigina. [14] This relationship, as we shall see, is part of the standard genealogy of the Aiakidai. [15] The affinity between the two nymphs seems to provide the context contemporaneously for Pindar, who adverted to them as didumai thugatres (Isthmian 8.17–20) and in Nemean 4.22–24 described the Theban welcome for his Aiginetan honorand as for the sake of the nymph Aigina (or, at least, so the scholiasts believed). [16]

The oracular response cannot readily be discredited as containing supernatural elements such as clairvoyance, but that absence does not entirely remove the possibility that it is post eventum, since the subsequent Aiginetan raiders were probably sufficiently damaging to qualify them as timôrêtêres ‘avengers’ of the Thebans. Nonetheless, if the oracle, reported by Herodotus, is historical, it is most unlikely that its composer(s) at Delphi ever meant to signal the Thebans to approach the Aiginetans. First we must recognize that the word πολύφημος more often means ‘famous’ [17] or ‘voluble’ [18] when it is not being used to describe Polyphemos the Cyclops, for whom the connotation ‘many-voiced’ is hardly appropriate. In that case, the Pythia might have been enigmatically directing the Thebans to approach a local hero, a ‘renowned one’, or, better perhaps, another oracle, ‘fluent one’ (like Trophonios). In that case, Delphi was perhaps hinting at an invocation of local heroes as the ankhista. Yet, if πολύφημον truly meant the Theban assembly, both the oracle and its recipients were recalling that πολύφημος is employed adjectivally in the phrase μέσσην ἀγορὴν πολύφημον for the Ithacan assembly in Odyssey 2.150 and possibly in lost analogues. [19] However, if there is a mundane connotation for the ankhista, it is most likely that this was the very interpretation that the Thebans found inadequate, namely that ankhista equals Boiotian kinsmen and neighbors. In any case, the enigma of the oracle probably hinted at a local context for the resolution of the Theban approach, whether Boiotian oracle(s), hero(es), or poleis.

Regardless of what anyone else intended the Thebans to do, they did in fact exploit the relationship in myth of Thebe and Aigina to appeal to the Aiginetans for help against Athens (Herodotus 5.80.2). That act in and of itself speaks to a certain mythological valence with which Aiakos, the son of Aigina, was freighted (that will be explored below). The Aiginetans responded by dispatching the Aiakidai as epikouriê ‘military assistance’. [20] The language here is probably that of something real, however charged with supermundane potency, being passed back and forth. [21] This reaction is certainly in spirit with the Theban interpretation of the oracle, for it responds to the mythological connection between the two communities by tendering aid through a ritual act that is based in myth. It also may well embody the valence of the oracle itself. As we shall see both from comparative gestures—although close parallels may fail us—and from the results of the similar summons at Salamis, one goal of sending the Aiakidai was to evoke an epiphaneia of the heroes. The intervention of the Aiakidai here is particularly appropriate, since they were the most distinguished branch of the wider lineage of Asopidai. The Thebans had refused to accept the boundary demarcation made by the Corinthians. Their unsuccessful recourse to combat had allowed the Athenians to establish a border along the Asopis itself between Plataia and Hysiai and Theban territory. Thus, there was a good chance that the Asopid Aiakidai would assist the Thebans in a struggle over the south bank of the Asopis that might well be fought somewhere in the Asopis watershed. Cultural resonances proper to this physical feature were alive to contemporaries: the Theban lyric poet Corinna would soon treat Aigina among the daughters of Asopis (fr. 654.ii.12, iii.12–21).

In the event, the result of the arrival of the Aiakidai at Thebes was not happy. Although the Thebans made trial of the Athenians with the Aiakidai in alliance, they suffered another defeat at Athenian hands, whereupon they returned the Aiakidai and asked for men. [22]

Note at the outset that andres and Aiakidai here must then be exclusive categories of tangible things. The Thebans do not ask for more men to supplement the Aiakidai. The dispatch of the Aiakidai was also a singular gesture in our historical record. [23] Greek communities regularly invoked heroes alongside deities to come to their aid in battle. [24] Actual manifestations of heroes on battlefields [25] usually occur when the one invoked chooses to respond, [26] and such interventions most often occur in those spaces which the heroes in some sense numinously inhabit. [27] The standard conjecture is that sending the Aiakidai meant dispatching their cult images. [28] Another concrete alternative would be to believe that their bones were conveyed, rather like the Spartans had taken pains to acquire the bones of Orestes [29] or how Kimon had fetched the remains of Theseus from Skyros for the Athenians. [30] However, given the migratory destiny of the Aiakidai, it is most unlikely that the Aiginetans could have claimed credibly to have acquired all or most of their remains (especially for Patroklos, Achilles, and Neoptolemos!). Moreover, we shall see momentarily that the Aiakidai were also summoned from the island of Salamis in 480 so that, to maintain the parallelism of the summons from Aigina, one would be forced to the improbable surmise that the bones of Telamon and Aias were thought to have resided there as well. Flavius Philostratus in his Heroicus (53.15) describes the object of the summons in 480 as the oikos ‘house’ of the Aiakidai, which is hardly an appropriate reference for funerary remains. Although controlling the remains of heroes belongs to the same “toolkit” of ritual and political strategies, the Greeks did not otherwise mobilize the bones of heroes in military operations.

Sending cult images on such a mission is unparalleled, a fact that also emphasizes that this particular ritual behavior was not indeed an empty gesture, one meant to put off the Thebans without commitment. Cult images did not leave their sanctuaries, [31] except for their own rituals, which was itself a rare event. [32] Departure of a cult image was associated with defection of the associated deity, [33] or with its appropriation by outsiders. [34] The tradition on Athenian-Aiginetan enmity provides a striking case in the failed attempt by the Athenians to secure the statues of the fertility deities Damia and Auxesia (Herodotus 5.82.1–5.86.4). [35]

The nearest conjectural parallel for the dispatch of the Aiakidai also derives from Herodotus, and it concerns the aftermath of Demaratos’ veto of the selfsame Peloponnesian invasion of Attica that caused the Theban and Khalkidian defeats at Athenian hands (5.75.2). The Spartans passed a law mandating that only one king, not both, accompany each expeditionary force. This change entailed that παραλυομένου δὲ τούτων τοῦ ἑτέρου καταλείπεσθαι καὶ τῶν Τυνδαριδέων τὸν ἕτερον· πρὸ τοῦ γὰρ δὴ καὶ οὗτοι ἀμφότεροι ἐπίκλητοί σφι ἐόντες εἴποντο ‘since one of these [the kings] having been excused, one of the Tyndaridai was also left behind, for previously both of them being summoned [as allies or fighters] by them had accompanied’. This lies open to the interpretation that a cult image of Kastor or Polydeukes accompanied a Spartan king on campaign. [36] This is not quite the same phenomenon as the statues of the Aiakidai being sent as allies, since there is nothing about military assistance or battlefield presence, or implying their serving as allies to friends alongside Spartan troops. Moreover, the tradition of manifestations by the Dioskouroi, although not referenced by Herodotus, must still be recalled. One might suppose, alternatively, that one of the Dioskouroi had to be present to order for a king to conduct ritual activity in his role as priest (e.g., Xenophon Constitution of the Lacedaimonians 13.2–5), and that the martial function of the accompanying deity was an outgrowth of such ritual. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the ancient cult image of the Dioskouroi at Sparta was susceptible to this usage because it was a dokana ‘beam’ that was indivisible, as Plutarch notes explicitly (Moralia 478A–B). [37] Thus the indissoluble dokana, the main cult image of the Dioskouroi, cannot have left Lakônikê, but other images may still have accompanied first both kings and then one king. [38] The use of the term ἐπίκλητοί in Herodotus, however, might be taken to signify here the conventional manner in which gods and heroes are summoned by invocation to manifest themselves in military contexts. [39] It also seems to be the case that the Spartan agreement to dispatch the Dioskouroi to aid the Italian Lokrians in the campaign eventuating in the battle of Sagra (late sixth century) took the form of assembling for their benefit the appurtenances (like a klinê) for the escort of elite envoys, but without a hint that any sacred images whatsoever were actually conveyed. [40] To sum up, scholarly opinion is split whether the dokana of the Dioskouroi or other images joined Spartan kings on campaign. Possibly this practice was a general analogy for conveyance of the Aiakidai, but it lacks close correlation and probative value for settling our question on their nature and deployment.

During the late seventh century, the early Aiginetan sculptor Smilis seems to have reworked very old cult objects, including the sanis ‘plank’ that constituted the first image of Hera of Samos that was ostensibly brought from Argos at the founding of Greek Samos. [41] It is conceivable that Bronze Age material, preserved as heirlooms, [42] or acquired through xenia or commerce was included in such reconfigurations. The example of Aristomenes, the hero of Messenian resistance to the Spartan subjugation of his people, is helpful in understanding this mode of evoking the battlefield intervention of a hero. Before the battle of Leuktra, Epaminondas received oracular advice from the shrine of Trophonios at Lebedaia to take the shield of Aristomenes into battle against the Spartans (Pausanias 4.32.5–6). [43] This shield was especially significant because its loss and recovery were associated with the aid of the Dioskouroi to the Spartans and the tradition of their long anger against the Messenians. [44] The shield was used to adorn a tropaion in the Theban battle line. According to Pausanias, the Messenians asserted that Aristomenes made a manifestation at Leuktra that was responsible for the Boiotian victory (4.32.4 from Kallisthenes of Olynthos?).

The concept of the tropaion helps to illustrate how some heroes could be represented on the battlefield with an eye toward evoking their presence as assistance toward victory. The tropaion was an andromorphic assemblage that customarily contained the arms of enemies and so, presumably, added an apotropaic or defensive potentiality to its commemorative function. [45] The case of Aristomenes at Leuktra, however, indicates that the tropaion need neither constitute a retrospective emplacement nor be composed from recent spoils. The tropaion may in fact have originated from assemblages of objects placed on oak trees that were not only sacred to Zeus, but also ritually represented Zeus. [46] In that case, we can understand how a tropaion that embodied a diogenês hero, Aiakos, and his line might be ritually appropriate. Such devices, not only along with, but also reinforcing the act of invocation itself, served to harness the power of the hero who was in origin and in mythological and social structural terms a mounomakhos ‘single combatant’ on behalf of the mass, hoplitic confrontations of collective, polis warfare. [47]

An anecdote told by Plutarch in his biographies of Kimon and Perikles, which is likely drawn from an Attidographer, also illustrates this phenomenon (Cimon 17.4–8; Pericles 10.1–3). Although in exile after ostracism, Kimon attempted to fight with his tribal regiment against the Spartans and their allies at Tanagra. After he was rebuffed by the Boulê, his hetairoi placed his panoplia in formation with them, thus treating it as though it were a tropaion. Hence they presented the great Attic leader as though an absent hero whose panoply could invoke his thumos against the enemy. [48] Kimon’s hetairoi then fought to the death in a gesture very like a Roman devotio.

Our very inability to specify precisely what it meant to summon or send the Aiakidai may be considered a correlative of the singular character of their belligerent deployment. On the basis of the foregoing discussion, although the Aiakidai might have been representational in some sense, they were probably not merely late archaic statues. I would propose that the oikos of the Aiakidai (to use Philostratus’ phrasing) were perhaps an array of cult objects, perhaps of Bronze Age origin, possibly including some iconic material.

After the Athenians defeated the Thebans, despite assistance by the Aiakidai to the latter, the Aiginetans now openly and demonstrably sided with the Boiotians, starting the polemos akêruktos ‘herald-less war’. [49] It is notable how Herodotus now uses the term Boiotians after using Thebaioi exclusively (five times) in describing the earlier interaction between Thebes and Aigina. From an affinity in mythological terms between Thebans and Aiginetans, cooperation has shifted to a more pragmatic link between Aigina and a Boiotian confederation. [50] The Aiginetans pillaged the Attic naval base at Phaleron and the demes of the Paralia, doing a great deal of harm (5.81.3, 5.89.2). Note how the Aiginetans struck at the Athenians without ever providing the Thebans with the men for whom they had asked. For Herodotus, they acted in elation over their great eudaimonia (a token of ancient animosity over Aiginetan wealth) and mindful of their ekhthrê palaiê ‘ancient hatred’ that prevailed with the Athenians. [51] Herodotus goes into great detail to account for this hatred (5.82.1–5.89.1), but the Aiginetan decision to begin hostilities was an extraordinary action and would have disastrous results for them, because it initiated a struggle with a larger, much more populous neighbor who could not be defeated decisively, and yet an adversary who could potentially (and eventually did) overwhelm Aigina. [52]

Then the Athenians naturally considered what actions to take against the Aiginetans. Herodotus’ account is a mere taste of what amounted to the twenty-five years of conflict that would follow in the ‘herald-less war’. According to him, the Athenians were about to go on campaign (strateuesthai) against Aigina. At this point an oracle arrived from Delphi. [53] It is inconceivable that the Pythia spontaneously sent an oracle; therefore, someone, if not the Athenians officially, must have consulted Delphi. The advice was to endure against the adikion ‘crime’ of the Aiginetans for thirty years and in the thirty-first year dedicate a temenos to Aiakos. In that eventuality, matters would turn out in accordance with their wishes. However, if they launched an immediate expedition, although they would eventually prevail, they would “suffer many things and inflict them as well.” This response takes the conventional form of a recommendation that a specific ritual action be taken, [54] and one suspects that the actual queries eliciting such responses were more specific than our sources usually now reveal. Against the obscurity in Herodotus’ account over the identity of the poser of the query may be juxtaposed the apparent specificity of the condition incorporated in the response.

In reaction, the Athenians straightway founded the temenos for Aiakos that, Herodotus notes, [55] stood in the Agora in his own day. [56] The Athenians would not forbear for thirty years in the face of an injunction to tolerate what they were experiencing as anarsia ‘improper acts’. The inception of an actual campaign against Aigina was rather impeded by a renewed attempt by the Spartans to bring Athens to heel, this time in conjunction with the Peisistratids (Herodotus 5.90.1–5.91.3). The Peloponnesian allies, energetically led by the Corinthians, preempted this campaign when the forces of the Spartans and their allies had gathered at the Isthmus (5.92α–5.93.2). Herodotus never returns to the progress of the polemos akêruktos until the eve of Marathon, when we find the Athenian-Aiginetan feud still affecting international politics (6.49.1–6.50.3). [57] Eventually, it would require reconciliation in 481 to permit these two powerful naval poleis to collaborate against Xerxes (7.145.1).

The foundation of the Aiakeion was the establishment of a herôon in which the vital force of Aiakos could be said to dwell, as lexicographical glosses seem to signify. [58] Hence, it represented another mode of invocation of the hero. It is important here to note the dissimilarity of the Attic and Aiginetan summons of the Aiakidai in 480. At that juncture a trireme was actually sent for the Aiginetan Aiakidai, while nothing suggests that anything other than a symbolic summons evoked Telamon and Aias from Salamis. Consequently, whatever we imagine the Aiginetan Aiakidai to have been, they were more tangible than any counterpart that the Athenians could mobilize. Therefore, the Athenian riposte now took the familiar form of the appropriation, or, better perhaps, expropriation, of a hero’s cult. [59] Clearly, this action balanced the Aiginetan effort to loan the Aiakidai to benefit the hostile designs of Thebes. Nevertheless, one might object that this concern over Aiakos seems disproportionate, inasmuch as the Athenians had indeed prevailed in battle over the Thebans, despite the presence of the Aiakidai. It is sensible to ask then whether the Aiakidai had accompanied the Aiginetans themselves in their more successful attacks on Phaleron and the Paralia. Thus, the act of expropriation by consecrating the Aiakeion truly balanced the invocation implicit in ongoing Aiginetan operations against the Athenians.

The foundation of the Aiakeion at Athens follows the precedent of the foundation of the Eurysakeion, [60] the shrine of the hero Eurysakes, son of Aias, by whose relocation to Athens an Athenian claim to Salamis had been embodied. [61] This claim was one of the contentions found persuasive against the Megarians by the Spartan arbitrators who awarded Salamis to Athens, probably c. 510. [62] Indeed, depending on how we gauge the guilt of Telamon and Peleus for the murder of their half-brother Phokos, one might argue that the same naturalization of Eurysakes as an Athenian might also have conveyed a claim to Aigina itself. [63] The Eurysakeion was a herôon providing a ritual locus for the Salaminioi, an Attic genos who “represented” the rightful owners of Salamis in Athenian eyes. The Salaminioi had symbolized an Attic claim to the island when it was in Megarian hands. Some refugees and their descendants probably constituted a significant part of the genos, having perhaps been settled in the region of Cape Sounion. [64] Unfortunately, we have no information about the nature and membership of any cult organization attached to the Aiakeion. Significantly, when Aiginetan refugees were settled in Attica in the 480s, their integration into the polis assumed a different paradigm. [65]

The contextualization of the events just narrated has awakened vigorous scholarly commentary both for its interpretation of Attic foreign relations and for suspicions that Herodotus has misdated or misaligned events. Several features of Herodotus’ account, and specifically the oracle, have been singled out as problematical. Nonetheless, a careful reading of Herodotus does not warrant the conclusion that he specified that the state of war prevailing in 480 between the two states had begun in the 480s—that would contradict a war beginning c. 506. [66] Nor does the outset of Aiginetan raids on coastal Attica fail to justify the phrase polemos akêruktos as meaning ‘undeclared war’, [67] because the phrase almost certainly means ‘truceless’ or ‘relentless’ or ‘unconditional’ war here. [68]

As for the Delphic response, it has been considered as post eventum. [69] Its thirty years were reached through an after-the-fact calculation from the thirty years between 488 and 458. However, there is no justification for selecting 488 as the date for the onset of a period of Attic forbearance from hostilities against Aigina. A state of war existed in 480, and undocumented hostilities probably continued in the 480s that justified the Naval Law of Themistokles (Herodotus 7.144.1–2). [70] Devout Athenians could not claim even accidental obedience, though tardy, and exhort war against Aigina in the 450s. [71] Moreover, Helmbold suggested that the specification of time in the original response was a generation (with the thirty years being added in the 450s to encourage Athenian action). [72] Yet, thirty years could serve equally as a conventionalization of the length of a generation. [73] Such advice has particular point in light of the common Greek practice of proclaiming truces between combatants of thirty or fifty years’ length. Delphi was then obliquely advising that the Athenians seek a truce with Aigina. [74] Finally, Andrewes drew attention to the existence of two different periods in the oracle, the period of forbearance and that of suffering. The thirty years of the former should not be equated with ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ τοῦ χρόνου of the latter. Rather, Andrewes interprets the phrase τέλος μέντοι, which in the response punctuates the years of suffering, to imply that this time of chastisement for disobeying would be longer than the thirty years of neglected forbearance. [75] Therefore, the oracle is not post eventum, and may rightly belong to the confrontation of 506.

Therefore, the two-sided nature of the oracle deserves emphasis. Its tone is pro-Athenian in its implicit condemnation of Aiginetan actions, but it urges an immediate policy (no retaliation) superficially more advantageous to Aigina. Moreover, its explicit reference to two policies, one disparaged, the other recommended, suggests a polemical purpose. Similar in one way are the responses elicited by Themistokles in 481–480 (Herodotus 7.140.1–7.143.3), within which appear Attic strategic choices, although presented enigmatically. Our response, in contrast, shows no hint of clairvoyance of the future, while avoiding oracular obscurity. The Themistoklean oracles were probably shaped by tendentious questions submitted to the Pythia (e.g. mentioning withdrawal from Attica, wooden walls, and Salamis). [76] Yet the attitude of Delphi differed in the two contexts: in 480, the Delphic establishment seems resigned to Xerxes’ success, while in c. 506 Delphi had every reason to be supportive of Athenian aspirations. In particular, the Alkmeonids, who had spent parts of their exile under the Peisistratids at Delphi, had great influence there on account of their generous performance of the contract to rebuild Apollo’s temple (e.g., Herodotus 5.62.3–5.63.1; Constitution of the Athenians 19.4; Philochorus FGH 328 F 115). This influence made itself felt in the oracle’s campaign of propaganda to encourage the Spartans to intervene against Hippias (Herodotus 5.63.1). Rather than envisage a Delphic response coming unbidden, [77] it may be that the Alkmeonid Kleisthenes, or someone acting on his behalf or on that of his faction, consulted Delphi. [78] The inquirer of the Pythia, regardless of identity, introduced the issue of the Aiakeion in his query. The Pythia responded affirmatively, but added an anomalous stipulation in recommending delaying action for thirty years. That provision was unprecedented, and remained unique (to the best of my knowledge).

What motivated this advice? There were good reasons for an astute politician to advise against immediate retaliation against Aigina. Further Spartan moves were reasonably expected, aimed at turning Kleisthenes and his supporters out of power. That was the actual contingency that did in the event stop Athens from acting. A person with knowledge of Aiginetan naval assets might well have recognized that achieving a quick decisive victory lay beyond Attic strength. Thebes was a more direct threat, for the Boiotian hoplite army could threaten Athenian borders and even their core agricultural territory, while the Peloponnesians were hostile. Notwithstanding the prudence of this approach, it may not have been politic to urge a hands-off policy toward the Aiginetans, let alone a negotiated or de facto truce; and anyone with the ability to influence a Delphic response would already have assessed such public feeling. After the shock of Aiginetan aggression, seemingly unjustified and without previous alliance with Thebes, while public feeling was running high, what better device was there than to get Delphi to urge an unpalatable policy? The Pythia gave the Athenians a faceable pretext for offering the Aiginetans a truce under whatever terms acceptable to the ekklêsia. The delay of an Athenian offensive could not be misconstrued as pusillanimity or mitigation of Aiginetan guilt; it was the will of Apollo. If the Aiginetans declined détente, the Athenians still had ritual grounds for refraining from a risky massive assault. Better to counter Aigina with “pin-prick” retributive raids. Notice how Delphi here has acted in a manner similar to its advice to the Thebans in my interpretation: trying to postpone confrontation and thereby attempting to limit its scope.

The Athenians refused to take this advice, and were making preparations to strike against Aigina when the prospect of Kleomenes’ last expedition interrupted them. Nevertheless, the oracle, albeit specific, was immune to contradiction. Given the dangers from abroad (Spartan intervention, quarrels with neighboring states, and the threat of a Peisistratid restoration), sorrows, the ordinary vicissitudes of foreign affairs, could be safely predicted. Herodotus has reported what he was told in mid-fifth-century Athens, because few, if anyone at all, would still know of the etiology of this oracle, and anyone knowledgeable was unlikely to reveal the inner workings of this extraordinary consultation of Apollo.

Archaeology does provide assistance to our investigation of the establishment of the Aiakeion. An early identification for the temenos by Homer Thompson was an eschara on the north side of the Agora, adjoining the peribolos of the Twelve Gods. [79] It was of late sixth-century construction. However, Pritchett restored a reference in the Attic Stelai, the record of the Poletai of 414–413 on the confiscations from the profaners of the Mysteries and mutilators of the Herms (IG I3 426.7), to provide a location on the southwest corner of the Agora adjoining the deme of Kollytos. [80] That the supplement Aianteion is also possible is a confusing factor. [81] An important accession to our evidence was provided by a clause of the Attic grain tax law of 374/3, proposed by Agyrrhios, and administering the cleruchic islands (Rhodes/Osborne GHI #26.14–16): … καί κατανήσει τὸν σῖτον εἰς τὸ Αἰᾴ[κ]|ειον· στέγον δὲ καὶ τεθυρωμένον παρέι[ξ]|ει τὸ Αἰάκειον ἡ πόλις καὶ … ‘and [the tax farmer] will heap up the grain in the Aiakeion; the polis will provide the Aiakeion waterproof and fitted with a door’. That the Aiakeion was to be used for the storage of a considerable amount of grain would exclude the eschara [82] ; that would be a bad functional match as well. This would make the site in the southwest Agora more attractive as a location. Stroud specifies there a rectangular peribolos, which has often been previously identified as the Heliaia [83] ; it appears at 821 m2 to be suitable for its purpose in the grain law. [84] Lines 41–42 of the law are also suggestive, as they order the eventual sale of the stored grain in the Agora (ἐν τῆι ἀγ[ορ]|αι). Stroud notes the similarity of this facility with the Aiakeion described by Pausanias on Aigina itself (Pausanias 2.29.6–8). The peribolos in the Agora was conveniently placed to receive grain shipments by wagon (in preference to pack animal) up the road from the Peiraieus. This site was likely used as a law court in the fifth century. [85] That is a striking concrete conjunction of political function with mythology in the strong association of Aiakos with dealing justice (first and foremost as a judge of the dead). Yet a use of the same facility for grain storage and distribution in the fourth century would also make sense, since a smaller population of Attica and the termination of most hegemonic jurisdiction may have reduced the total volume of litigation and freed the Aiakeion for other employment.

Oikonomides has adduced a fragment from a second century A.D. papyrus of lexical material (POxy #2087) that relates to the Aiakeion and permits us to advance our investigation. [86]

He restores these lines as follows:

One immediately notes not only the kinship of this gloss with those preserved in other lexica like Hesychius and the Lexica Segueriana, but also that the papyrus offers a more complete exemplar (n. 00 above). The approach to the text by Oikonomides is idiosyncratic. The translations of the terms ἀφαιρετά and ἀναγράφοντα are highly implausible. [87] Stroud has raised objections to several syntactical points too. [88] Highly improbable is Oikonomides’ historical reconstruction, which sees the late archaic building (Building F)—usually envisaged as a sixth–century governmental complex—underlying the Tholos as the home and burial plot of the aristocratic family of a historical Eurysakes, a lineage which had already died out in the late sixth century. [89] Herodotus appears to describe a late archaic foundation still standing during his time at Athens (whether the peribolos adjoining Kollytos or not); hence not the famous Tholos itself. Our previous discussion establishes the foundation of the Aiakeion as a mechanism for the appropriation of that hero both to assist his invocation in battle and an ensuing epiphany on the battlefield and to vitiate the military use of the Aiakidai by the Aiginetans. Oikonomides’ scenario implies the desuetude of old familial rites connected with Aiakos that were to be revived by the foundation of an Aiakeion by the polis, a sequence lacking congruence with the Herodotean evidence.

Stroud has made an independent review of the papyrus, [90] and offered the following for the existing text: [91]

The phrase ἡ πρυτανεου[σ]α φυλή is supported by its appearance in another lexical attestation, Pollux Onomasticon 8.155. Stroud’s restoration of δει[πν]<ε>ῖ then seems almost inevitable. It is not to fault this scrupulous examination to note that the state of the papyrus makes these conclusions most tenuous in the final clause: the presence of the iota in Αἰακίω is uncertain; the diacritical mark that yields δίκ(αι) rather than δίκ(ην) is not firmly established; and the presence of the final iota of ἀ(να)γράφονται is unclear. Nonetheless, Stround’s restoration [ἐπὶ δ(ὲ)] or [ἐν δ(ὲ)] τῷ Αἰακίω δίκ(αι) ἀ(νἀ)γράφονται ‘and in the Aiakeion lawsuits are posted (or recorded)’ is attractive. [92] A reference to the Aiakeion here rather than Aiakos himself would be expected on the basis of the lemma alone.

The role of the Aiakeion as a point for the dissemination of legal information—whatever the precise mode of that process and the form of information that may have been taken—fits with the trace of legal activity on the site of the peribolos and the traditions about Aiakos himself. Stroud observed that the remains of fine white plaster with graffiti (noted by Thompson) that were discarded in Hellenistic fill just north of the peribolos might be traces of the posting of dikai referenced in POxy 2087, [93] although I might perhaps have anticipated a memorialization of such posting that was inherently more transient. Furthermore, he has adduced another text, Aristophanes Knights 977–980: καίτοι πρεσβυτέρων τινῶν οἵων ἀργαλεωτάτων ἐν τῷ δείγματι τῶν δικῶν ἤκουσ᾽ ἀντιλεγόντων, | ὡς … ‘however, at the display of the dikai I heard arguing some older gentlemen, such as are most troublesome, that …’. [94] The scholiasts recognize that Athenian litigiousness provides a backdrop to this allusion, but they also, as Stroud concedes, refer to the famous merchants’ Deigma for displaying wares in the Peiraieus (ΣAristophanes Knights 979a–c). The context for this passage is a reflection on the possible downfall of Kleon, [95] with the aforementioned old men declaring that his decline would mean the removal of two useful utensils, a pestle and a stirring ladle. [96] I should not press the point unduly, but the old men might be envisioned as approaching haggling at a display of goods as though it were a law court so that “deigma of the dikai” is merely ironic. [97]

Stroud believes that the κ(αὶ) in the lemma Αἰά[κ]ιον κ(αὶ) ἡ Θόλος is copulative ‘Aiakeion and the Tholos’, and not epexegetic ‘Aiakeion, that is Tholos’, citing the differentiation of Aiakeion and Tholos in the subsequent lexicography. [98] He sees a pattern where the first explanatory clause is tied to the Aiakeion, the second to the Tholos, and the third to the Aiakeion. Now there is no doubt that subsequent lexiciography has simplified the explanation of the two structures. Yet, concerning antiquarian obscurities of the political and religious history of classical Athens, the manner in which such simplification was undertaken by lexiciographers is not necessarily indicative of underlying realities, especially as POxy #2087 is the earliest and most complete variant of the gloss. Regardless how we choose to specify the force of καὶ, this early notice links the Aiakeion and the Tholos. It is a more transparent syntactical sequence to see ο[ὗ] φασι [τ]ὸν Αἰακὸν οἰκῆσ[α]ι ‘where they say Aiakos lives’ as referring to both Aiakeion and Tholos, and then taking the two subsequent clauses as subtended, each referring to a separate structure: Θό[λο]ς δ(ὲ) ὅπου δει[πν]<ε>ῖ ἡ πρυτανεου[σ]α φυλή ‘Tholos then where the tribe holding the prytany dined’ and ἐν δὲ τῷ Αἰακίω δίκαι ἀναγράφονται ‘and in the Aiakeion lawsuits are posted [or recorded]’.

Nor is the linkage of these facilities completely unprecedented, since the buildings are implicitly connected in a gloss in the Suda, one which we can only now better appreciate because of the discovery of the Grain Law. Under the lemma Θόλος (θ 402 Adler) is found οἶκος περιφερής, ἐν ᾧ οἱ πρυτάνεις εἱστιῶντο. πρυτανεῖον δέ τι ἰδίως ὠνόμασται, ἐπεὶ πυρῶν ἦν ταμιεῖον “round building in which the prytaneis dine. It is called prytaneion somewhat idiomatically, because it was the tameion ‘official store of wheat’”. This refers to activities resembling the process of exacting grain, storing it in the Aiakeion, and selling it in the Agora that we see in the Grain Law of Agyrrhios. At some subsequent juncture the Tholos became involved in the provision of sitêsis ‘subsistence’ for the polis, just as had the Aiakeion.

Any interpretation that brings in Building F, underlying the Tholos, in the way suggested by Oikonomides is unlikely, for it was neither a private residence nor the Aiakeion. [99] And the testimony of Herodotus and the Grain Law of 374/3 establishes that the Tholos was not the Aiakeion or even a part of its precinct in the mid-fifth century. It is most doubtful that the meals of the prytaneis invoked Aiakos in preference to Athena Polias and the deities of other prominent Attic cults. [100] These provisos, however, do not exclude the stipulation seemingly offered by POxy #2087 that Aiakos inhabited the Tholos in just the same sense that he inhabited the Aiakeion. The Tholos is a very well attested structure, but one whose origins surprisingly constitute a complete lacuna in our evidence. [101] Its construction on the basis of pottery remains began c. 465. [102] Thus, it is unlikely that the prytanic system, which is probably post-Ephialtic, existed when the Tholos was planned. [103] Furthermore, by its dimensions the structure was not designed to accommodate all the bouleutai of a tribe serving in prytany nor was it appropriate for their dining together. Its proper complement for such purposes was a smaller board such as the archons or the stratêgoi. Hence, when the Thirty adopted it as a headquarters, they were reverting to an earlier style of governing in an appropriate venue (Plato Apology 32C–D). Therefore, the connection of the Tholos with the prytaneis was a matter of retasking. The Tholos might have been originally intended as a new shrine of Aiakos. The Aiakeion that was founded in the late sixth century had perhaps been damaged in the Persian occupation of the city. [104] Accordingly, a more architecturally ambitious structure might have appeared sensible as a form of ritual reparation for the damage that befell the peribolos.

At the very time of its construction, Athens had begun to revive its claims to Aigina. In addition to the implicit claim to the island afforded by the Aiakeion, the Athenians held that their harboring of refugees of the Aiginetan damos (from the early 480s) gave them legitimate hegemony over the island. [105] The Naval Law of Themistokles and subsequent naval building and training had given Athens preponderance over the Aiginetans at sea. What protected the island from Attic retaliation during 480–465 was the reconciliation of 481, binding while Athens remained allied to Sparta in the Hellenic League. With the dismissal of the Athenians from Mt. Ithome c. 464, the Athenians renounced their alliance with the Spartans (Thucydides 1.102.2–4). Although propitious conditions for an attack on Aigina would not exist until 459–458 (after the defeat of the Peloponnesians at Kekryphaleia), by 464/3 the issue of Athenian rights to hegemony over Aigina may already have been broached (Diodorus Siculus 11.70.2–3). [106] The construction of a striking new building for cult activities dedicated to Aiakos might have been a means for those urging a strong line against Aigina to promote their cause. There is an absence of any evidence for observances of the cult of Aiakos in the Tholos, but that is unsurprising since there is no surviving data at all on his cult in Attica, excepting that the existence of the temenos manifests that such rituals must have existed. The other major facility of the southwest Agora is a hypothetical strategeion, [107] and it may be that the Tholos was also envisaged as a place for the stratêgoi to meet, take their meals, and be instantly ready for public business. That their new building would be dedicated to a hero prominent for battlefield invocations was surely suitable.

The second appearance of the Aiakidai in a military context was at the battle of Salamis. The heroes make a surprisingly late appearance on the Greek side. The Greek fleet had retreated into the Saronic Gulf after their station at Artemision in Euboia had become intenable owing to the turning of the position of Leonidas of Sparta at Thermopylai. Strategic discussions among the Greek commanders were spirited, and Themistokles had to impress the Spartan navarch and allied commander, Eurybiades, to fight at Salamis (Herodotus 8.56–8.63). When his decision to fight a battle there coincided with an earthquake at daybreak, the Greeks decided to make prayers to the gods and call the Aiakidai as allies. [108] Clearly the allied leaders were trying to balance the ominous impression caused by the dawn earthquake. The Aiginetans themselves, whose island would be exposed if the Greeks retreated, had every reason to encourage a battle at Salamis by providing religious assistance (cf. Herodotus 8.74.2). [109]

Here, notably, the identity of the Aiakidai is specified, probably because their two-fold nature needed to be stressed. It is likely that the joint summons was a result of intense conversations in the council of commanders. Neither Athenians nor Aiginetans could be offended at this juncture, since the former provided the largest contingent and the latter, who would eventually offer the second largest squadron and win the aristeia in the battle, were on the verge of reinforcing their thirty ships. [110] Accordingly, Athenian sentiments were considered in that Aias and Telamon were summoned from Salamis, and they were not merely subsumed among the other Aiakidai associated with Aigina. As I have noted above, Telamon and Aias were presumably invoked as heroes inhabiting the very place where the Greek forces were based, i.e. a standard entreaty of a local hero to make a manifestation or to assist on the battlefield. This summons does imply another significant point: the Athenians were asserting the character of Telamon and Aias as Aiakidai. It is important to understand that by the founding of the Aiakeion c. 506 the Athenians were disputing priority of affinity with Aiakos, not “ownership” over the Aiakidai. Their long-standing cults of Aias and Eurysakes (and perhaps Philaios) had established primacy over these heroes, but their status as Aiakidai was controversial.

As for the Aiginetans, a ship went to Aigina for Aiakos and the other Aiakidai. Thus, the Aiakidai were escorted from Aigina as allies in a manner approximating a theôris. The Athenian statesman and general Aristeides may have had an official, or, at least, symbolic, role in this escort. [111] As the battle itself was joined at the next dawn—precisely balancing the ominous motivating earthquake—the trireme bearing the Aiakidai supposedly returned (although this timing and the delay in returning have raised doubts among scholars). [112] As it stands, since the Persians had already blocked the straits, the very presence of this vessel might have been considered providential. [113] The Aiginetans maintained that this trireme actually started the battle. [114] Thus, in attacking the enemy forces, the Aiginetan seamen employed the presence of the Aiakidai in the same manner as we have seen others staging physical tokens of heroic potency on the battlefield. Unsurprisingly, this concatenation was not accepted by the Athenians, who asserted that their fellow citizen Ameinias of Pallene was the first to engage the enemy (Herodotus 8.84.1). [115]

Herodotus is silent on any outcome to the summons of the Aiakidai, and the predominance among his informants of Athenians may have influenced this result. Rather, he reports a tradition that the Eleusinian procession was supernaturally conducted at this juncture, a sign portending the destruction of Xerxes’ fleet at Salamis. [116] This was a particularly potent manifestation of divine intervention, as it encompassed not only the Eleusinian deities and heroes, but also the blessed dead mystai, who comprised the 30,000 apparitions of the procession. Herodotus also reports a female apparition, presumably Athena, advising the Greeks to cease backing water at the beginning of the fighting (8.84.2). Outside of Herodotus, we learn that a snake appeared among the Athenians ships at Salamis, which Apollo subsequently declared was the hero Kykhreus. [117]

Plutarch’s account of the manifestation of the Eleusinian deities described by Herorotus is immediately followed by a variant in which some Greeks asserted that the invocation of the Aiakidai had been successful (Plutarch Themistocles 15.2): [118]

Although we hear nothing directly of the matter from Herodotus, the Athenians themselves appear to have believed that their invocation of the Aiakidai from Salamis led to an intervention or epiphany. They dedicated a trireme to Aias, presumably in the Aianteion of Salamis (Herodotus 8.121.1). As for the Aiginetans, their dedication at Delphi aroused the displeasure of Apollo, as communicated by an oracle, who sought something expressly for their aristeia (Herodotus 8.122). The Aiginetans then dedicated three gold stars on a bronze mast. They have been traditionally interpreted to connote the Dioskouroi and Apollo Delphinios. [119] Despite the absence of invocation or manifestation of these deities, this might represent the coronal discharge (St. Elmo’s Fire) associated with the Dioskouroi, although the third star appears much less decipherable. I would offer the main trio of the Aiakidai: Aiakos—Peleus—Achilles, especially appropriate inasmuch as Telamon and Aias were explicitly conceded to the Athenians.

All these traditions helped to justify the remarkable statement by Themistokles (Herodotus 8.109.2): [120]

Our analysis brings us to recognize that the deployments of the Aiakidai belong to the genus of invocations of heroes that aimed to motivate their epiphanies on the battlefield. This was the case whether the Aiakidai were to act in aid of the Thebans against Athens, the Greeks against Xerxes’ armada, or, perhaps, on behalf of the Aiginetans themselves against the Athenians during their raids. The use of the Aiakidai seems to fall within a small subset of instances where invocation takes the form of the physical presence of both representative and instrumental material amid military operations themselves. The use of the Aiakidai by the Aiginetans had sufficient impact that the Athenians were moved to counter with their own cult of Aiakos and an assertion of the Aiakid identity of Aias and his descendants. This context, however, for the mobilization of the Aiakidai also demonstrates their singular valence as allies, and the mythological justifications for that potency remain to be explored.

Our first order of business is to outline the main paradigm governing the mythology of Aiakos and his lineage and its relevance to the historical provision of the Aiakidai by the Aiginetans. [121] The simplified standard genealogy derives Aiakos from Zeus and Aigina, and offers as sons Phokos (son of Psamathe), Peleus, and Telamon (sons of Endeis). Achilles is the son of Peleus and Thetis, and Aias and Teukros the sons (by different mothers) of Telamon. The kings of Phokis derive from Phokos, and the line of Patroklos was sometimes incorporated in various ways. As might be expected, local traditions, hero cults, and mythologizing produced many variations of this stemma.

For illustrative purposes consider the late compilation of pseudo-Apollodorus (“Apollodorus”), being mindful naturally that he claims authoritative status by appropriation of the name of the great Hellenistic savant, Apollodorus (c. 180–119). Noting derivation is important for late mythography. Here the debt to the Hesiodic tradition is clear, as well as use of Acusilaus and Pherecydes, two early fifth-century mythographers, cited directly (FGH 2 F 21; FGH 3 F 60). “Apollodorus” offers, therefore, a traditional consensus (3.12.6–13.8 = 3.156–60). Diodorus Siculus presents a similar, less detailed, treatment, with parallel ordering and without factual conflict (4.72.1–7). [122]

The account of “Apollodorus” about Aigina and her son Aiakos is attached to a notice on the river Asopos (noting his two sons and thirty daughters). Including the Aiakidai within the broader rubric of Asopidai is paralleled in Hesiod and Hellanicus, and thereby constitutes a feature of earlier mythography. From recounting the story of Aigina and her posterity, “Apollodorus” goes on to describe their exploits, starting with the emigration of Telamon to Salamis, his achievement of kingship, and his children, Aias and Teukros (3.12.6–7 = 3.161–162). Peleus fled to Phthia, but accidentally killed his host and purifier Eurytion, necessitating another flight to Akastos at Iolkos (3.13.1–2 = 3.163–164). There he was prey to the intrigues of Akastos’ amorous wife, and then, after her accusations, to a murderous plot by Akastos himself (3.13.3 = 3.165–167). With Kheiron’s help, Peleus eventually extricated himself. Next “Apollodorus” treats his marriage with Thetis, including Zeus’ reasons for allowing the union, Peleus’ capture of Thetis, their nuptials, and wedding gifts (3.13.4–5 = 3.168–170). The birth and upbringing of Achilles are next portrayed (3.13.6 = 3.171–172). A brief notice on Peleus’ sack of Iolkos interrupts (3.13.7 = 3.173) before Achilles’ life is treated (3.13.8 = 3.174–176). The account concludes with a short list of Achilles’ followers.

Although other testimonia on the Aiakidai offer further details, the leitmotifs of Aiakid mythography appear in “Apollodorus.” First, Aiakos was a progenitor of heroes, seldom appearing in isolation from the Aiakidai, who are emphatically Zeus-born heroes. As preeminently a forefather of basileis, Aiakos was claimed by historical elite families, like the ruling house of the Molossians or the Athenians genos of the Philaidai. [123] Second, Aiakos was a founding hero. Zeus transformed ants into human beings at his request, creating the Myrmidons and establishing the autochthony of the Aiginetans. [124] He was also a culture hero to whom social and cultural traits of Aiginetan culture could be attributed. Third, Aiakos was an intercessor. [125] When Greece was endangered through drought by Zeus’ displeasure, Aiakos interceded and the famine was broken. Thus the theme of the piety of Aiakos has exemplary importance. Fourth, Aiakos judged in the underworld. [126] “Apollodorus” presents a version of his duties there in which he was the doorkeeper of Hades. Another prominent formulation is that he served as one of the judges of the dead alongside Rhadamanthys and Minos.

Naturally, it is chiefly the first category, in which the Aiakos engenders a heroic lineage, that constitutes our chief interest. The role of the Aiakidai as military allies against Athens and at Salamis must be seen as a corollary to their character as warrior heroes. The prominence of Achilles, identified as Αἰακίδης, in the Iliad, and the treatment of the Aiakidai in the Hesiodic Catalogue, established their exemplification of military prowess. Accordingly, they were classified with the Herakleidai or the Pelopidai. [127] Various Aiakidai could be noted as exemplifying this warlike valor. [128] The evidence of Pindar will important for our purposes here, not only intrinsically, but also by virtue of his status as a Theban. Pindaric epinicia offer a wealth of general and specific references. [129] Nemean 3.32–63 provides a conspectus of martial accomplishments. Nemean 5.7–8, Nemean 7.9–10, Isthmian 5.26–29, and Isthmian 6.19–23 are other general allusions, while Nemean 6.50–55 focuses on Achilles’ defeat of Memnon. Nemean 7.34–36 and Paean 6.95–105, Nemean 8.28–32, and Isthmian 8.47–66 laud respectively Neoptolemos’, Aias’, and Achilles’ courage at Troy. Bacchylides also offers a reflection on the glories of the Aiakidai at Troy (13.97–168). A phrase in Pindar, supported by a scholion provides an apt, succinct formulation (Isthmian 8.24–26): τοῦ μὲν ἀντίθεοι | ἀρίστευον υἱέες υἱέων τ᾽ ἀρηΐφιλοι παῖδες ἀνορέᾳ χάλκεον στονόεντ᾽ ἀμφέπειν ὅμαδον, | σώφρονές τ᾽ ἐγένοντο πινυτοί τε θυμόν ‘his [Aiakos’] god-like sons and the children of his sons, beloved by Ares, won the aristeia [award for valor] for handling with manliness the brazen, groan-making din, and were temperate and wise in heart’. [130] In the vexed question of the identity of the scenes depicted on the pedimental sculptures of the temple of Aphaia, one solution has been to envisage the combatants as the Aiakidai. [131] Such a resolution would match the emphases in Pindar directly with the attitudes of his Aiginetan patrons.

Therefore, the fame of the Aiakidai could be thought of as resting first and foremost on their accomplishments at Troy (ΣPindar Nemean 3.112; cf. Nemean 4.52e). The prominence of Neoptolemos in the Parva Ilias (frs.8, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30; cf. Proclus Chrestomathy 217–218) and the Iliupersis (cf. Proclus Chrestomathy 257–8; 269–70) became correlated with the idea that the city could not be taken without an Aiakid. Pindar alludes to Aiakos’ collaboration with Apollo and Poseidon in fortifying Ilion (Olympian 8.31–46), which includes a prophecy of the fall of the city. [132] The rationale for the contingency of Aiakid participation is elaborated in the scholia (ΣPindar Olympian 8.41a–b; cf. 53a, d–e, 55b, 59, 60a–b, based on Didymos). Troy could be only taken at the spot where mortal Aiakos worked, either as a necessary condition or because it freed the gods from responsibility (ΣPindar Olympian 8.44b–d). Such a premise is also illustrated in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, as Neoptolemos must be present for the fall of Troy (1433–1435). It is conceivable that the emphasis on Neoptolemos not simply as the son of Achilles but specifically as an Aiakid goes back (at least) to the Iliou Persis of Stesichorus, which contains a reference to him as [τ]έκος Αἰακίδαν (SLG fr. 116). There are many, albeit late, explicit formulations of this causal link. [133] In this myth, the concept of the Aiakidai as allies serves as the controlling principle. Moreover, the mythological exemplum of a monumental military endeavor, the siege of Troy, requires Aiakid participation. Its recounting certainly undergirds historical deployments of the Aiakidai.

The Aiakid role in the archetypal struggle between Greeks and Asians at Troy influenced perceptions of Euagoras and Nikokles, kings of early fourth-century Salamis on Cyprus and opponents of the Persians, because they supposedly descended from Teukros, the son of Telamon by his Trojan wife Hesione. [134] Isocrates exploited this connection encomiastically (3.42; 9.13). Alexander of Macedonia is described by Plutarch as having a skill with weapons by virtue of his Aiakid descent, as well as from the Herakleidai (Moralia 334D). The topos was so well established that Leonidas could praises Pyrrhos for his victory over Antigonos’ Gauls by this quatrain, of which the last line became virtually proverbial: αἰχμηταὶ καὶ νῦν καὶ πάρος Αἰακίδαι (inscribed on the spoils dedicated to Athena Itonia of Thessaly). [135] The rationale of military skills against non-Greeks is never made explicit in our surviving accounts of the summons of the Aiakidai to Salamis, but it may well have conditioned the naturalness of purpose with which the Greeks summoned the Aiakidai.

A salient feature of Aiakid mythology is that the heroes win glory away from Aigina. Pausanias observes that the Aiakos is the only king remembered by the Aiginetans, a fact justified by observing that his sons left Aigina (Pausanias 2.29.2, 5; cf. ΣPindar Olympian 8.39b): Telamon went to Salamis and Peleus to Thessaly after being exiled for the murder of their brother Phokos. [136] Yet so pervasive was this motif of displacement that it was used to account for any epichoric myth that localized any of the Aiakidai outside Aigina. For example, Himerius and Eustathius report traditions that Aiakos himself led an emigration of Myrmidons to Thessaly. [137] The valence of Aiakidai as allies and their displacement in mythology finds its counterpart in the sphere of cult in the motility of the Aiakidai, their ability to travel to assist the allies of the Aiginetans, whether the Thebans or the united Greeks.

The valor of the Aiakidai made them the archetypal allies on all the great military expeditions of Greek myth. Troy certainly qualifies. An early allusion that mentions Telamon beside Herakles at Troy (fr. 11 W/PEG) derives from the Herakleia of the epic poet Peisandros, nominally seventh-century, but whose corpus was infiltrated with newer material (T 1 PEG). [138] Among other collaborative ventures, Pindar in Nemean 3.36–39 mentions Telamon fighting with Herakles at Troy and against the Amazons, and Achilles’ service at Troy. He also describes the service of Telamon alongside Herakles in Nemean 4.22–30, and in the same ode even Peleus’ capture of Iolkos could be envisaged as allied service because he surrendered his prize (Nemean 4.54–58). In Isthmian 5.34–45, Pindar treats the two sacks of Ilion by the Aiakidai. Isthmian 6.26–35 recounts Telamon’s feats with Herakles at Ilion, against the Meropes, and the giant Alcyoneus. Fragment 172 describes Peleus assisting Herakles at Ilion and then assisting Jason. Pherecydes has Peleus sack Iolkos with Jason and the Dioskouroi (FGH 3 F 62). [139]

Some examples are late, but drew on the thematics of lost epic and other archaic or early classical material. In his Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodius exploited the image of the Aiakidai as allies on great military adventures, such as the voyage of Jason and Herakles’ sack of Troy. For instance, note 1.1301, 1.1330, and 3.515 among the passages that use the epithet Αἰακίδης. It is symbolic of this theme that the Argonautica closed at Aigina in an athletic contest later celebrated in cult by the Aiginetans, here called Myrmidons (4.1766–1781). In his Dionysiaca, Nonnus has Aiakos as a companion of Dionysos in his conquest of the East in what amounts to an anthology of the collaborative, martial dramatizations. [140] Like Achilles in Homer, his pictorial shield is described (13.201–221 from the catalogue of the host of Dionysos), and he has an aristeia in books 22–23. In his first action Aiakos, surrounded by Indian enemies, but protected by Athena, proceeds to slaughter so many (22.253–275) that the Earth herself protests (276–284). [141] After able assistance to other heroes, Aiakos butchers Indians in the stream of the Hydaspes (354–83), paralleling explicitly Achilles in the Skamandros (Iliad 21). A Naiad of the river is so offended that she protests this impropriety from the son of Aigina, herself daughter of a river (390–401). Aiakos, however, continues his killing (23.1–17; cf. 24.188–190). To succor Dionysos at the Hydaspes crossing, Zeus swoops as an eagle to carry Aiakos into battle (24.77–82, 119–122). Later in the Dionysiaca, Aiakos appears in several more episodes: fighting against the Cyclopes (28.3–6); as an exemplum of Athena to Dionysos (30.278–279); as a sole continuing combatant rather like Aias in the Iliad (32.281–284); as judge of the chariot race in funeral games (37.238–241); as a winner in the wrestling bout (37.553–613); and as a competitor in spear-throwing (37.758–778). The last appearance of Aiakos occurs during naval battle with the Indians, when he prays to Zeus (39.138–170).

Homeric epic not only provides striking testimony on Aiakid identity, but it also offers witness to the limited expansion or even containment of Aiakid mythology in Ionian hexametric poetry. Eventually strong panhellenic influences would affect this limitation, but its early existence has undeniable cultural and political ramifications.

In Homer, Aiakos is chiefly manifest through the epithet Αἰακίδης for Achilles (23 times in the Iliad and twice in the Odyssey) and Peleus (thrice in the Iliad). Here the genitive form Αἰακίδαο predominates (21 appearances), usually constituting the fifth and sixth feet (18). The most common phrase is … ποδώκεος Αἰακίδαο, appearing 10 times. [142] It may be that Aiakidês gained a formulaic foothold in Homeric poetry in this line position, where the only metrical equivalent among surrogate names for Achilles is Πηλεΐωνος, which appears seven times in all of Homer. That Αἰακίδαο to denote Achilles also appears in the second and third feet after a spondee in the first foot, which has a form of ἵππος, may be significant for the appearance of Αἰακίδης after a spondee in the first foot for Peleus. [143] Peleus does not have a rich repertoire of epithets in Homer; next to ἱππότα, Αἰακίδης is used most often in conjunction with his name. Strikingly, a reference to Peleus provides the most singular deployment of Aiakos in all of Homer, Iliad 21.189.

We may consider Αἰακίδης in comparison to the usage of the name Ἀχιλλεύς itself and to other surrogate names for the hero in the Iliad. The more often an individual name or epithet occurs, the more evenly it will be distributed throughout the Iliad. For instance, Achilles is not very prominent in Book 14, but it is likely that, where mentioned, it will be under his proper name (the most common referent) rather than by a surrogate. The unevenness, however, of the usage of surrogate names suggests that something more than mere degree of use is operative in their pattern of attestation. A phenomenon like the absence of Αἰακίδης, Πηλεΐδης, and Πηλεΐων from Book 24, for instance, indicates different modes and rates of assimilation of various oral traditions in various parts of the Iliad. Concomitantly, the relative prominence of Αἰακίδης in Books 16 and 17 (six times in each or 42% of all instances) is significant. Here the emphasis is on Achilles as the lord of Myrmidons, whose lieutenant and alter ego, Patroklos, goes out to fight in his place. [144]

The single direct reference to Aiakos himself is coupled with an invocation of Peleus (Iliad 21.189): Πηλεὺς Αἰακίδης· ὃ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Αἰακὸς ἐκ Διὸς ἦεν. It is significant that Aiakos himself appears right after the much more common Αἰακίδης, as a sort of poetical gloss or elaboration for the epithet. It is likewise noteworthy that Peleus also appears: we have already noted that he is relatively poor in epithets in the Iliad. In this context, Achilles is vaunting over his dead adversary, Asteropaios, on the superiority of his descent from Zeus. Thus this passage is a particularly appropriate point at which to add specifics to the conventional epithet διογενής (cf. Iliad 9.106, 21.17). The poet was challenged by his need to introduce Peleus with epithet and perhaps to amplify the filiation from Zeus, which in isolation could be expressed by διογενής. Therefore it is justified to think that this poet was operating on the margins of both his formulaic and his mythological conventions.

Most features of the conventional mythological genealogy of the Aiakidai are absent in Homer. The filiation of Aiakos to Zeus and Peleus to Aiakos is the only detail verifiable from Homer. Nothing suggests that Peleus and Achilles had anything to do with Aigina, either the nymph and daughter of Asopos or the island. The Myrmidons are exclusively Thessalian as far as can be determined from the Iliad. Neither Aias nor his father Telamon is ever treated as an Aiakid, and there is no hint that Aias and Achilles are cousins. No tie of kinship seems to exist between Achilles and Patroklos. Some of these discrepancies were recognized virtually from the ancient inception of Homeric studies. Eustathius cites Porphyry on the point that Homer does not attach Αἰακίδης to Aias nor does he treat Achilles and Aias as cousins (Iliad 1.439.29–32). [145] The scholiast to Iliad 21.186–187 was troubled by Achilles’ vaunting his descent from Zeus as superior to that of a river god, when he was in fact a descendant of Aigina, daughter of the river Asopos. There are a number of natural ways to account for epic’s failure to exploit these aspects of the myths on Aiakos. One might speculate that the Aiginetan connections of the Aiakids developed after “Homer” but before “Hesiod” or, at least, before the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Alternatively, we could posit the existence of a number of Aiakoi. Homer’s Aiakos would be a Thessalian, and, if it is thought necessary, a Thessalian Aigina could even be hypothesized to stand as his mother. Yet all of this would be sheer speculation, and the pattern of usage of Αἰακίδης suggests another approach entirely.

The Homeric Achilles (like any other character in the Iliad) can only constitute what his formulaic apparatus allows him to. The name Αἰακίδης, which implies Achilles is a descendant of Aiakos, is quite restricted metrically and substantially in the Iliad. Can it be that there was only one Aiakos, but that formulaic embodiment of his myths has made only limited, marginal inroads into the oral traditions leading to the Iliad? Accordingly, except for once, the Aiakos traditions did not transcend the bare epithet Αἰακίδης. The filiation Zeus—Aiakos—Peleus—Achilles and all it implies is valid just where it appears, but to suggest that it is to be assumed as unspoken background throughout the Iliad implies a desire for consistency and a mode of composition foreign to oral hexametric poetry. [146] Homer’s Achilles did not possess a biography or back-story in the minds of composers/performers of Homeric poetry, independent of the formulaic language used to generate the incidents about which the poets sang, that is, an independent portrait to which poets self-consciously tried to remain consistent. The Iliad suggests the existence of one aspect of the tradition on Aiakos that has been seen in “Apollodorus” and which was later predominant, namely filiation from Zeus through Achilles. [147] But it equally demonstrates that epic did not embody that tradition wholeheartedly. [148] Achilles and an Aiginetan Aiakos were not yet universally linked in general Hellenic culture or the full ramifications of that linkage yet worked out or accorded universal acceptance.

Had we lacked other indications of the importance of the standard Aiakid paradigm in Hesiod, surviving material on the utilization of Αἰακίδης would not be all that useful. There is only one appearance of Aiakidês in Hesiod as an epithet for Peleus (fr. 211.3 [Merkelbach–West]). The Hesiodic corpus, however, reveals tokens of the standard account of the Aiakidai to the degree that it is arguable that Hesiod provided its initial redaction. In the Theogony, the Nereid Psamathe is described as bearing Phokos to Aiakos (1003–1005). [149] The lineage of the Phokian kings through the sons of Phokos was treated in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women fr. 58. [150] The wider context in the Theogony concerns unions between gods and the narrower frame the intimate relations of goddesses and mortal men. Although Peleus is not described as the son of Aiakos, the placement of his union with Thetis right after that of Aiakos with Psamathe implies that the Theogony already knew that filiation (1006–1007). The Catalogue provided an elaboration of the same genealogy. Although Asopos is not mentioned in surviving fragments, [151] it is reasonable to follow West in believing that the Aiakidai were under the overarching heading of Asopidai. [152] The name Asopos is of unknown etymology and was carried by more than one Greek river, so that it prompted consolidation of local myths. Alongside other Asopoi, [153] the good possibility of an Aiginetan Asopos reveals one of the levers for Aiginetan mythological aggrandizement (Pin. Nemean 3.3–5 with ΣNemean 3.1c; cf. Ἀμφιφορίτης, α 95 Adler). [154]

In the Catalogue the Aiakidai are treated as one of the great heroic lineages (fr. 203 Merkelbach-West), [155] in which the order of reference (Aiakidai, Amythaonidai, Atreidai) might indicate a sequence of narration. Hesiod likely headed this treatment with fragment 205 (ΣPindar Nemean 3.21, cf. Olympian 8.26e; ΣTzetzes on Lycophron Alexandra 176), setting a precedent for the narrative pattern, already seen in “Apollodorus,” one that starts from the engendering of Aiakos and moves to his sons, whose exploits are noted, and then to later heroic successors. [156] The content of verse 2 seems to guarantee that lost verse(s) preceding described something about the childhood of Aiakos. Verse 7, which is not quoted by Tzetzes, may stand as a pleonastic amplification of verse 6 or could be a variant. The Myrmidons here were created on Aigina, as it is obvious that the island of verse 4, not specified, should be identified from the name of the nymph which surely preceded this citation. The date of the passage cannot antedate the emergence of the Aiginetans as a leading maritime people, and this development is unlikely to have preceded 650–625 at its very earliest. It may well be, then, that the crystallization of the Catalogue occurred in the sixth century. [157] Thus the earliest surviving account of the creation of the Myrmidons has Aigina for its setting.

Fragment 206 may be set alongside fr. 203, since it helps to show how Aiakos already shared narrative attention with the Aiakidai as a preeminent heroic lineage: πολέμωι κεχαρηότας ἠύτε δαιτί (Polybius Histories 5.2.6; cf. Maximus Tyrius 29.2 [Holbein]). Despite concision of this citation, the Aiakidai have already become exemplars for archaic aristocrats, for how else would one understand the characteristic combination of warfare and eating communally? Maximus Tyrius himself raises another essential point which regards the absence of influence of this theme on Homeric epic: Ὁμήρου δὲ οὐκ ἀκούεις ἐγκωμιάζοντος τοὺς Αἰακίδας, ὅτι ἦσαν ἄνδρες …. πολέμῳ κεχαρηότες, ἠΰτε δαιτί … ‘you do not hear Homer lauding the Aiakidai, because they were men delighting in war and in the feast …’. Our natural answer to his bafflement would be that “Homer” did not as yet have the global conception of the Aiakidai that prevailed thereafter. Fragments 207–211 come from the section of the Catalogue focusing on Peleus. [158] Fragment 212a addresses another aspect of the traditional account (= Eustathius Iliad 1.122.44–47): Menoitios, the father of Patroklos, was a brother of Peleus, so that Patroklos and Achilles were cousins. [159] Fr. 212b with its references to Μοῖρα (verse 1) and Σκαιῆισι πύληισι (verse 5) refers to the death of Patroklos. Because the succeeding verses return to Peleus’ exploits at Iolkos and Phthia, this fragment may originate in a digression identifying Menoitios, who was presumably fighting at Peleus’ side in Thessaly. Thus the Catalogue brought its digression into, at least, the next generation. However, Menoitios and Patroklos seem secondary characters, and the line of Peleus dominates the treatment of the Aiakidai. Accordingly, the account of Achilles was lengthy, with room even for his early exploits in the Troad (fr. 214). Moreover, fr. 213 indicates that Hesiod called Peleus’ daughter Polydora, as does “Apollodorus” (cf. Zenodotus FGH 19 F 5, who called her Kleodora). That analogy suggests, once more, that the standard mythology of “Apollodorus” evolved from a Hesiodic origin.

Regarding the branches of the Aiakids in Hesiod, only the line of Telamon remains to be considered. In general, the basic stemma derivable from Hesiod is similar to that of “Apollodorus” so that it might be concluded that Aias was treated as an Aiakid in a part of the poem lacking later citations. [160] There is, however, a strong counter-argument. In fr. 204, which recounts the suitors of Helen, Aias does appear (44–51). [161] Here he is treated as a pillager in the Saronic Gulf (whence his gifts to Helen), with Aigina, the Aiakid homeland, among the areas of victimization. Athens is not listed among the seven states which were preyed upon by Aias. Therefore, despite the receptivity of Hesiod to Saronic Gulf traditions, it seems probable that the Catalogue aligned Aias with Attic myths, emphasizing his mother’s relationship with Theseus, [162] and as such isolated from genealogical connection with the Aiakidai. This conclusion may not necessarily affect the Aiakid status of Telamon (cf. fr. 250). It is unknown whether the treatment of Aias was merely reticent or another filiation was directly offered. [163] This variation about Aias not only has ramifications for the dating of the Catalogue of Women—as it may reflect the period of the sixth-century struggles over the ownership of Salamis—but for the evolution of political partisanship (expressed through mythological claims) on the part of the Athenians and Aiginetans. The line of the Aiakidai was united with Megarian heroes through several marriages. [164] The Megarians, who were anxious to keep Salamis from the Athenians, had every reason to encourage the incorporation of Telamon and Aias into the Aiakid genealogy.

Although archaic Aiginetans probably visualized Aias as an Aiakid (and Telamon for that matter), as working back from the evidence from Pindar and Bacchylides about the views of their fifth-century Aiginetan patrons suggests, [165] the Hesiodic Catalogue may not have accepted that formulation. There is also an indication that unalloyed Aiginetan tradition eventually made Patroklos a descendant of Aigina through the female line, which would be another contention not assimilated into Hesiod or the common paradigm. The Aiginetan local historian Pythainetos produced a lineage wherein Aigina and Zeus produce not only Aiakos, but a daughter Damokrateia (FGH 299 F 5 = ΣPindar Olympian 9.104a). Aktor married Damokrateia, producing Menoitios who married Sthenele, the mother of Patroklos (cf. ΣPindar Olympian 9.106a–b). As consistent with Aiginetan myth, the direction of heroic movement is away from Aigina to Thessaly, whither Damokrateia travels. In this view Menoitios and Patroklos were Aiginetan and Zeus-born through the female line, and presumably Myrmidons through the male, but not Aiakidai in the strictest sense. There may be a rationale in cult for this distinction, as Patroklos may not have received honors on Aigina as an Aiakid. Obviously, the name Damokrateia—was she simply Krateia originally? [166] —is classical, and there may be a now irrecoverable polemic here in which an elite, equated with the Aiakidai, acts harmoniously with a Myrmidonian damos, Menoitios beside Peleus and Patroklos beside Achilles.

The treatment of the Aiakidai in the Catalogue of Women has considerable significance in two regards. First it establishes that a very expansive vision of the lineage was canonical in Boiotia, the very region that produced our first attested mobilization of the Aiakidai for military purposes. [167] Second, it sheds strong light on the interplay between epichoric myth and panhellenic mythology. Surely, a significant cultural barrier separated Ionian hexametric poetry, where the Aiakidai are marginal, from Hesiodic hexametric poetry, for the latter certifies a series of extraordinary claims on behalf of the Aiginetans: 1) that the most prominent child of the Boiotian river Asopos was in fact the nymph Aigina; 2) that Peleus and Achilles, whose affiliations are exclusively Thessalian and who are associated with Mt. Pelion (and its presiding figure, Kheiron), are really Aiginetan in extraction; and 3) that other heroic lineages such as that of Patroklos and Phokos actually belong to the Aiakidai. The Aiakid derivation of Telamon or Aias would be still another such appropriation, were we to grant its place in the Catalogue. Extraordinary as well would be that the activities of the Aiakidai involve the island of Aigina very little, save for the circumstances under which Peleus and Telamon certainly, and sometimes Menoitios, Aktor, the Myrmidons, Aiakos, or Aigina, herself have left it.

The social reality lying behind the predominance of the Aiginetan component in Aiakid mythology is probably the greater accessibility of Aigina to itinerant poets because of its maritime connections and the superior resources of the Aiginetans, especially from 600, with which to subsidize poetic performances. Therefore, we confront in Boiotian hexametric poetry the sixth-century analogue to the Aiginetan impact upon the classical epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides. That Hesiodic poetry, and especially the Catalogue of Women, became the vehicle for Aiginetan aggrandizement is not surprising. This influence subsumed mythopoesis situated in the very regions that the Aiginetic numismatic and metrologicial standards dominated (Megara, central Greece with Boiotia, and Thessaly). [168] And this impact on the basic conditions of exchange was shaped by the market penetration of Aiginetan merchants in supplying retail goods, spanning from peddling Aiginaia, minor consumer products, through providing slaves and luxury goods to central Greek and Thessalian elites. [169] This activity not only affected the upper-class as consumers, but also accompanied the initial monetization of Boiotia and Thessaly, marking a significant socio-economic threshold for local aristocrats who amassed Aiginetan and Aiginetic-standard coins as monetary reserves. Since these commercial linkages were enacted within the framework of xenia-relations between elite families, it is probable that such ties entangled the Aiginetans with their trade partners in intercommunal violence. The progress of the Aiginetan paradigm on the Aiakidai is striking for its contemporaneity with the rise of the concept of the Hellenes, since the idea of Hellas reveals a triumph of Thessalian myth, [170] while the paradigm arrogates Thessalian and Phokian heroes. Yet this melding may indeed exhibit a pattern of transactional compromise. [171]

Hence, when the Thebans interpreted the Delphic response to point toward Aigina, they naturally asked for military aid, and when the Aiginetans responded, they thought first of the Aiakidai. Both parties to this interchange worked within a seamless web of socio-cultural analysis, modulating between commerce, poetry, war-making, and myth-ritual.

Attica and Euboia were the furthest west of the Ionian dialect speakers, and belonged to a different metrological and monetary sphere. The Euboian cities of Khalkis and Eretria had been pioneers of the polis form, earlier colonizers, and were centers of a different type of trade from that of the Aiginetans. [172] As the contest between Homer and Hesiod dramatizes, Euboia was the contact surface between the two universes of hexametric poetry. Further east in Ionia, Miletos led among colonizing states, and Samos and Phokaia were the dominant commercial cities. Down to the Persian conquest of Ionia, only in the Cyclades and in Egypt at Naukratis did the Aiginetans effectively compete with the Ionians. Corinth, which approximated the social order of the Euboians, constituted still another numismatic/metrological zone. The dichotomy between the commercial visits of the Aiginetans as emporoi and the violent visitations of the Aiginetans as lêistai paralleled the middle archaic cleavage between the status of the Aiginetan Aiakidai in the spheres of east Greek and Hesiodic epic poetry.

The Athenians differed substantially over the Aiakidai, both with the standard portrayal and, significantly, among themselves. We may start with Aeschylus, who never uses Αἰακίδης or mentions Aiakos, despite 45 appearances of the name Achilles and 3 of Peleus, which include the extensive fragments of the Myrmidons tetralogy. In the Ajax, Sophocles exemplifies a much more accepting approach toward the common paradigm on the Aiakidai in his acceptance of its claims on Telamon and Aias. Sophocles powerfully presents Aias as an Aiakid in his Ajax. Zeus is Aias’ προγόνων προπάτωρ in verse 387. The chorus of Salaminian sailors, overwhelmed by the prospect of Aias’ death, invokes their home of Salamis in the first strophe of their ensuing song (596–606). Later they will envisage the effect of the hero’s death on his mother (621–634) and finally his father (641–645; see also Eustathius Iliad 1.439.29–32): Ὦ τλᾶμον πάτερ, οἵαν σε μένει πυθέσθαι παιδὸς δύσφορον ἄταν, ἃν οὔπω τις ἔθρεψεν αἰὼν Αἰακιδᾶν ἄτερθε τοῦδε … (after Jebb, Pearson, Kamerbeek, Stanford, and Lloyd–Jones). This reading, as well as the variants offered by other editors, [173] all preserve the sense of the monstrosity of Aias’ fate compared with the destiny of the other Aiakidai, just as emphasis fell earlier in the ode on Aias as a Salaminian. In the play, the Attic hero Eurysakes, son of Aias, is a silent character (cf. 340, 575), but there is no second son Philaios. [174] The Ajax is to be dated after the subjugation of Aigina in c. 458, but before the Peloponnesian War, when the Aiginetans were expelled by the Athenians for complicity in fomenting the conflict (e.g. Thucydides 2.27.1). Thus, at its staging, Aiginetan rivalry with Athens was no longer a political concern to some leading Athenians, and some prominent Aiginetans had accepted the patronage of Athenian leaders like Thoukydides Melesiou. [175]

Euripides, however, refers to Aiakos, the Aiakidai, and the Aiakid extraction of Achilles in three or four surviving plays (depending on our attribution of the Rhesus). [176] In the Andromache, he follows the prevailing political line at Athens, wherein one accepted the Aiakid genealogy of the Molossian kings of Epirus with whom friendly relations during the Peloponnesian War were sought. However, Euripides does not admit Aias as an Aiakid in any surviving context, although the name Aias appears 11 times. Nor does Telamon as an Aiakid appear in Euripides where it might be expected. Agamemnon’s description of the paternity of Achilles in the Iphigenia in Aulis (697–715) conforms to the standard paradigm, but no passing reference is made to Peleus’ brother Telamon, although it would have suited the speaker’s intention to magnify the Aiakid line. Yet, in the Iphigenia, Euripides does describe Achilles as a descendant of Aiakos (699, 700, 855), and Peleus is an Αἰακίδης in the chorus’s evocation of his marriage with Thetis (1045). Yet there is also a strong association of the line of Peleus with Mt. Pelion (705, 1040, 1048). An indication of the controversial character for Euripides of the line of the Aiakidai at Athens may be found in a fragment of the Hypsipyle: {Hypsipyle} ········ Θ]ρᾳκίαν {or [……..Θ]ρῃκίαν} | [·····]σ̣[·]μενης ὀρού|σας̣ ἐπ᾽ οἶδμα γαληνεί|ας πρυμνήσι᾽ ἀνάψαι, |τὸν ἁ τοῦ ποταμοῖο παρ|θένος Αἴγιν᾽ ἐτέκνωσε Πη|λέα … (fr. 752g TGF = POxy 852, col v, fr. 1.iii). [177] Hypsipyle appears to be describing the arrival of the Argonauts on Lemnos. Two alternatives are possible in understanding this allusion. In one, Aiakos has disappeared from the family tree entirely, leaving a Peleus who could be considered (by the Athenians?) a Thessalian pure and simple (?). Or, possibly, Aiakos remains as the father of Peleus, only he has become the husband instead of the son of Aigina. There is outside evidence for Aiakos as spouse of Aigina. [178] While one cannot specify which multiform Euripides used, this passing allusion in the Hypsipyle illustrates Athenian freedom from the common paradigm on the Aiakidai and from Aiginetan mythopoiesis.

The plasticity of the life history of Aiakos in Athenian hands extends to the origin of the Myrmidons, being a major tenet of the standard paradigm, as illustrated by an account preserved only in Servius’ commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid (4.402). The story parallels the myth of Arachne; only Myrmex ‘ant’ is a girl of Minerva/Athena’s entourage to whom the goddess entrusts the introduction to the Athenians of the plow (invented by Athena in rivalry with Ceres/Demeter’s gift of grain). Hence the story is set within the complex of myths crediting the Athenians as the first recipients or originators of agricultural techniques. For reasons of self-aggrandizement, Myrmex removed the handle from the plow and is punished by Athena by transformation into an ant. Now in animal form, she continued to harm grain production. Jupiter/Zeus was moved to pity and considered how to bestow honor on the ant. His solution was to create the Myrmidons. Not only are the Myrmidons not Aiginetan, but Thessalian, or ultimately Attic. Aiakos, whose need for men prompted Jove’s intervention, is also a Thessalian ruler (nam cum Aeacum filium suum ex Aegina susceptum Thessalis inponeret regem…). Other than the fact of birth from the nymph Aigina, the Aiakidai are here divorced from the island Aigina. The myth is probably an old one, because Melite, daughter of a Myrmex, was the eponym of the Attic deme of that name. Harpocration’s gloss attesting to this fact (s.v. Μελίτη, M20 K; Photius s.v. μ 256.14–17) adduces a range of sources in support. One is Hesiod fr. 225 from the Catalogue, which reminds us of its persistent Atticism regarding Saronic Gulf myths. [179] A second, Philochorus (FGH 328 F 27 from his third book on archaic Attica), suggests our account from Servius reached him through a Hellenistic intermediary from Atthidography. The third is Musaeus (B 9 DK), which probably derives from a mid-fifth-century Athenian compilation.

An important mid-fifth century allusion to Aiakos is provided by Herodotus in a reference to the ancestry of Miltiades, the oecist of the Chersonese and uncle of the homonymous victor of Marathon: ἐν δὲ τῇσι Ἀθήνῃσι τηνικαῦτα εἶχε μὲν τὸ πᾶν κράτος Πεισίστρατος, ἀτὰρ ἐδυνάστευέ γε καὶ Μιλτιάδης ὁ Κυψέλου, ἐὼν οἰκίης τεθριπποτρόφου, τὰ μὲν ἀνέκαθεν ἀπ᾽ Αἰακοῦ τε καὶ Αἰγίνης γεγονώς, τὰ δὲ νεώτερα Ἀθηναῖος, Φιλαίου τοῦ Αἴαντος παιδὸς γενομένου πρώτου τῆς οἰκίης ταύτης Ἀθηναίου (6.35.1). This accepts the standard filiation running from Aigina through Aiakos (and implicitly through Telamon) to Aias and his son Philaios. One notes immediately that it was Eurysakes in whom the Athenians ritually based their claim to ownership of Salamis, while both men are cited as conveying ownership in Plutarch Solon 10.2 (based on Atthidography). Philaios was either the brother (Solon 10.2; implicitly: Stephanus Byzantius s.v. Φιλαΐδαι [Ethnica 665]) or the son of Eurysakes (Pausanias 1.35.2).

Marcellinus’ biography of Thucydides is helpful because it provides details on the genealogy of Miltiades (2–4, where I abbreviate): [180] [Thucydides] ᾠκείωτο γὰρ ἐκ παλαιοῦ τῷ γένει πρὸς Μιλτιάδην τὸν στρατηγόν, τῷ δὲ Μιλτιάδῃ πρὸς Αἰακὸν τὸν Διός. οὕτως αὐχεῖ τὸ γένος ὁ συγγραφεὺς ἄνωθεν. καὶ τούτοις Δίδυμος μαρτυρεῖ, Φερεκύδην ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τῶν ἱστοριῶν φάσκων οὕτως λέγειν· “Φιλαῖος δὲ ὁ Αἴαντος οἰκεῖ ἐν Ἀθήναις. ἐκ τούτου δὲ γίγνεται Δάικλος … , τοῦ δὲ Μιλτιάδης, ὃς ᾤκισε Χερρόνησον. μαρτυρεῖ τούτοις καὶ Ἑλλάνικος ἐν τῇ ἐπιγραφομένῃ Ἀσωπίδι”. Note the clear connection with Aiakos, the son of Zeus. The Hellenistic savant Didymus was the likely intermediary for both fifth-century mythographers cited here. The work of Hellanicus referenced here is tellingly the Asopis, so that he was clearly presenting a prose rendition of standard Aiakid paradigm that grouped the Aiakidai under the Asopidai (FGH 4 F 22). [181] Hellanicus, who published at the end of the fifth century, appears as the last authority who might have established the standard Aiakid paradigm that included full incorporation of Telamon and Aias (if our conclusion is correct that Hesiod did not). [182] Acusilaus of Argos, however, is a plausible earlier alternative as a prose authority. [183] “Apollodorus” cited him on the Aiakidai (3.12.6 = 3.156 = FGH 2 F 21), once again on Asopos, with a variant parentage for the river. Although his Genealogiai may have pretended to a greater antiquity than warranted (T 7), he was active meaningfully earlier than Hellanicus, almost certainly before 450. Acusilaus appropriated, amplified, and emended Hesiod (T 5–6). As a citizen of Argos, a traditional friend of the Aiginetans, Aiginocentric mythology may have found him receptive. In poetry, the epic Alkmaionis treated the death of Phokos at the hands of Telamon and Peleus (fr. 1 K/PEG). Naturally, we cannot be certain that this signifies that Peleus and Telamon were brothers, but the author of this work might well be an early sixth-century proponent of the whole Aiakid genealogy.

Marcellinus cites Pherecydes from the first book of his histories, i.e. presumably his mythographic work (FGH 3 F 2). Elsewhere Pherecydes, who must qualify as an important spokesman for Attic views in the first half of the fifth century, describes Telamon as merely the friend of Peleus (FGH 3 F 60). [184] Didymus has combined here Pherecydes’ non-Aiginetan stemma for the Philaidai with the traditional acceptance of Aias’ descent from Aiakos that was probably found in Hellanicus. Pherecydes may also have altered the paternity of Aias in order to make Theseus his father and thereby render Kimon a descendant of the greatest Attic hero. [185]

The genealogy of Pherecydes subtly alters the traditional Attic disconnect between Aias and Aigina. The Aiginetan connection to Aias is not problematical in Pherecydes, because it is not familially based. This concession might be thought to represent thinking in the period of protasia over Attic politics of Kimon, son of Miltiades of Marathon, in the 470s and 460s. [186] The balance of power between Athens and Aigina had changed so that a link between Peleus and Telamon did not call into question Athenian ownership over Salamis, as hegemonic Athens was secure in its classical borders. In fact it was Athenian control over Aigina that had become the issue of instant importance. If Aiakid Eurysakes, as we have seen, could transmit mytho-ritual ownership of Salamis, he could equally grant the rights to Aigina itself. Pherecydes’ formulation on Aias and Telamon bound the Saronic Gulf heroes into a nonthreatening unity, and confuted claims based in the mythology of Aias to Attic ownership of Aigina.

The history of Athenian views on the Aiakidai is complex. Early archaic Athenians were apparently prepared to claim that the lineage of Aias was not Aiginetan but Salaminian, hence Attic. In contrast, the prominent aristocratic family of the Philaidai boasted of their descent from Aiakos through Aias. However, the names that were memorialized in their stemma (as preserved or emended) reveal no influence of Aiakid descent. This genealogy is archaic but its precise date of origin within the late seventh or sixth centuries is elusive. [187] Of the same date as well was the Attic genos of the Salaminioi and the cult place of the Eurysakeion, which conveyed to Athens a ritually-grounded right to Salamis. The Eurysakeion is likely to have been founded in one of the troughs in Athenian influence over Salamis, whether before the Solonian capture, during the troubled years following Solon’s reforms, or amid stasis after a Peisistratid recovery of Salamis in the 560s. Yet it is uncertain whether the Eurysakeion either at its inception or consistently afterward also embodied a claim to Aigina as well. However, when the Aiginetans began the polemos akêruktos, the Athenians founded the Aiakeion c. 506, appropriating that hero. In 480, with Athenian support, Telamon and Aias could be evoked out of Salamis as Aiakidai to support support the Greek cause. Aeschylean reticence about the Aiakidai in surviving material falls in the 470s or 460s. In the same period, Telamon was again a non-Aiakid, a friend of Peleus in Pherecydes’ genealogy of the Philaidai. But, if my conjecture above is valid, the tholos was under construction as a renewed Aiakeion c. 465. A little later, however, Sophocles offered his audience Aias as avowedly one of the Aiakidai, and Herodotus provides an Aiakid stemma of the Philaidai.

We lack the evidence, especially precise chronological data, to provide a fine-grained portrait of the political contexts for understanding the Aiakidai. Some correlations are suggestive. The shadowy period of “Solonian” hostility between Athens and Aigina (610–590) [188] parallels resistance in hexametric poetry (modest in Hesiod, stronger in Homer) to Aiginetan aggrandizement on behalf of the Aiakidai. The Peisistratid détente between the poleis in the middle and later sixth century saw the steady advance of the standard paradigm on the Aiakidai under the patronage of the wealthy Aiginetan elite. [189] This progress is reflected at Athens in the Philaid genealogy and, eventually, outside Attica, in the Alkmaionis, Asios, Corinna, and Acusilaus. Circa 506 and afterward during the “Herald-less War” there was active deployment of the Aiakidai by the Aiginetans against the Athenians and the appropriation of Aiakos by the Athenians with their Aiakeion. Thus the standard paradigm prevailed, but possession and thereby mobilization of its mythology through ritual took violently opposing tracks. Athens and Aigina entered détente again in 481 under the Hellenic League, and both sides mobilized their respective Aiakidai against Xerxes at Salamis, probably with a degree of mutuality. The apparent disinterest of Aeschylus in the identification of heroes as Αἰακίδης reflects the defusing of cultural manifestation of intercommunal hostility. Meanwhile, abroad, Pindar extolled the glories of the Aiakidai as mythological counterparts to his elite Aiginetan honorands. Nonetheless, Pherecydes may also draw on a Kimonian attempt at defusing tensions with his non-Aiakid Aias. The reduction of Aigina to an Attic tributary is the next threshold. Sophocles presents a proudly Aiginetan Aias with equanimity, while Pindar fuses the sisterhood of Aigina and Thebe, the comradeship of Theban Herakles and Aiakid Telamon, and the mentoring of Aiginetan aristocratic youth by the Attic aristocrat Melesias, father of the Thoukydides, the political heir of Kimon (note Nemean 4.20–30, 47–48, 93–96). An Aigina that was influenced by returning emigrees and Athenian friends gave way to a reconstruction of Aigina as an Athenian apoikia. After the crucial watershed of 431, the Aiakidai fade from contemporary polemics and ritual into literary texts. While Euripides accords Achilles the honor of recognition as Aiakidês, he is more concerned with the Aiakid credentials of the Molossian kings. The emphasis on Aiakos was shifting to his role in the underworld, first as the door warden of Hades in Peirithoos, be it of Euripides or Kritias, and later in Aristophanes’ Frogs and the works of Plato.

The pre-polis entity and emerging city-state had its intercommunity relations dominated by the struggle for the resources to sustain low-density, although increasing, populations, such as arable land, pasturage, water supplies, and prime locations for economic exploitation and defence. Friction over access to resources was affected by micro-differentiation between groups and the evolution of collective identity that were manifested in linguistic variation, differences in folkways, patterns in ritual activity, and clustering through burial practices and sites of refuge. Local elites were militarily dominant; their members sought both status in combat and material benefit through violent acquisition and through concession of wealth through status recognition. Communities were bound or estranged through reciprocity between elite families in the form of xenia ‘guest/gift–friendship’.

Early polis interrelations exhibited a more complex texture while preserving characteristics of the Dark Age/Geometric order. There was more articulation in sociopolitical concepts, structure, and processes that can be seen in the administration of justice, the hierarchization of units within the polis, and definition of civic status(es). External and internal borders became demarcated and sacralized. The adoption of the hoplite phalanx required more intensive mobilization of resources (human and economic) and motivated wider access to adjudication and decision-making. Large-scale application of violence and significant transfer of assets and production necessarily became the prerogative of the polis. The articulation of the polis led to its ability to replicate itself, the phenomenon we call colonization, which marshaled Greek technological, economic, and organizational advantages in order to achieve access to new pools of resources. Greeks and natives themselves not only constituted some of these resources, but also served as active collaborators in the proliferation of poleis. Colonization occurred within the interplay of aristocratic competition for power and status. Inter-polis affairs exhibit the curtailment of latitude for the application of force by elites—internally through law codes and externally through the requirement that the state must authorize taking sulê ‘reprisals’ and through the emergence of proxenia and presbeia. Cult amphictyonies (with asyla) united peer poleis (e.g. the Kalaurian Amphictyony), and regional cults structured hierarchies of poleis (as in the Argolid). Colonization and increasing trade knit communities while institutionalizing earlier aristocratic ties.

The Lelantine War, starting in the late eighth century, typifies the early and middle archaic top-level international order: through commercial and colonial ties a local conflict over territory fought by the colonizing entrepots, Khalkis and Eretria, promoted the attraction and attachment of other regional conflicts and stimulated inter-regional interventions and armed incursions. Below this level regional consolidation continued, with the competitive advantages more and more shifting to poleis that retained or imported manpower rather than those exporting it in colonies. Because late archaic trade exhibited a longer reach through better processing of information about sources and markets and greater specialization of economic function, it generated higher profits in a monetizing economy. Yet this commerce was necessarily more belligerent. Thus the manner in which poleis organized naval power became crucial in power politics. Admittedly, the consolidation of the polis polity incorporated, mitigated, and channelized recourse to force among elite families. Paradoxically, evolution of the polis freed from constraints some aristocrats to become turannoi, who were empowered through their advocacy for new stakeholders and their personal mediation of intracommunal stresses and stasis. Tyrants subjected inter-polis friendships and enmities to a realpolitical calculus and harnessed the polis to projects of hegemony that transcended traditional formulae (be they grounded in popular sentiment, cult, elite reciprocity/rivalry, or cooperation in colonizing or trading).

The dispatch of the Aiakidai by the Aiginetans bespeaks the persistence of archaic mechanisms for inter-polis relations. The conflict within which the whole episode is nested was shaped by the affiliations of the Lelantine War in the later configuration given them by Periander, the tyrant of Corinth. That saw Thebes, its Boiotian neighbors, and Euboian Khalkis aligned against Athens (with Eretria in the background), with Corinth, strengthened by its alliance with the Spartans, as nominally a mediator, but only favorably to the Athenians. However, the main actors are the large poleis, Thebes and Athens—Thebes not a colonizer, but retaining population and Athens a minor founder, but a retainer/importer of people—possessing strong hoplite armies and the will to wield them to expand regionally. Thebes was forging the Boiotian League and Athens expanding north past its natural boundaries. The struggle involved a boundary region with mythological and sacred resonances, the Asopos watershed. Alongside practical techniques, the parties undertook ritual acts thought conducive to prevailing, since the Aiakidai were conveyed to prompt epiphaneiai and the Athenians strove to appropriate the hero Aiakos. Myths appear as a way for the communities involved to process their mutual antipathies, with multiforms quite possibly differentiating efforts at self-identification. Mustering of the population for war, therefore, encompassed a mythological “argument.” Significant initiatives seem to be marked by consultations of Delphi. The Aiginetans appear to strike with their raids against the economic interests of the Athenians, a strategy which appears to be a modernizing policy feature to which Athens had as yet no obvious response. Yet, the Athenian informants of Herodotus and the historian himself saw their aggression as transgressive, as the name “herald-less war” connotes.

Nevertheless, various aspects of our incident foreshadow the coming evolution of Greek diplomacy and foreign affairs. The use of the Delphic oracle as a device for generating mass support for policy options appears here disingenuous, or even manipulative. The Delphic response to Thebes was suitably non-committal, pointing the Thebans to local help, and thus not likely to alter the military balance or give offense to Attic friends like the Alkmeonids. The clever Theban, however, who raised the mythological tie between the nymphs Thebe and Aegina, and thereby redirected a rather unhelpful oracle, seemed to offer a mytho-historical rationalization of policy choices. Yet it may well be that he was moved by power political rationalization. While not the obvious object of the Pythia’s advice, Aigina happened to be the only available ally that could open a second front and whose naval power might counterbalance the resurgent Athenian hoplite army. If so, a shift in politico-psychological modality through manipulation of mythological ideation delivered momentous consequences. By the same token, our analysis of the oracle addressing the foundation of the Aiakeion seems to reveal a similar degree of calculation, if its true purpose was to postpone a trial of strength with the Aiginetans. Because the advocates of delay could not carry their line of policy through public argument, they resorted to misdirection and the transposition of ritual gesture in place of resolute action. These countervailing ploys resemble the mode of decision-making illustrated in Thucydides, where oracle-mongering is still pervasive but opportunistic calculations predominate.

Athens in this period was torn between the agenda abroad of the Peisistratid tyrants, encompassing a legacy that moved the Athenians from a strictly local framework toward policy choices pan-Aegean in scope. Eventually, this heritage provided the foundation for the aspirations of hegemonic Athens. The schism in policy between Athens the local power and Athens the Aegean power goes far toward explaining the ebb and flow of the conflicts with neighbors like Thebes and Aigina after 510. The Aiginetans were initially cautious, and seem never to have fully coordinated their offensive actions with the Thebans. Are we to see here an instinct toward brigandage, an atavism drawing on their tradition of lêisteia? Or were they unable to decode the impact of Athenian internal politics on the fortunes of their neighbors? This first burst of Attic polupragmosunê may have later seemed to Herodotus and his contemporaries as a triumph of isonomia. Yet, the expression “an Attic neighbor” became proverbial for an intractably difficult neighbor (Zenobius 2.28, CPG 1.40; cf. “Plutarch” 1,59, CPG 1.330), a sentiment that might have started to seem relevant to the Aiginetans in c. 506.

Nevertheless, our incident is also striking for what is absent. No participant in the events concerning the Aiakidai and Aiakos in the late sixth century ever refers to ethnicity. This is true about the great ethnic divisor of the fifth century, namely the distinction between Ionians and Dorians. Such thinking did exist contemporaneously. When Kleomenes wanted to occupy the Acropolis after his expulsion of Kleisthenes and his faction, the priestess rose from her throne to bar him from entering the adyton of the temple of Athena, advising him that it was not permitted for Dorians to enter (Herodotus 5.72.3). This was a courageous act that was indicative of the turning toward resistance of the Athenian elite. Yet one wonders whether this ban could literally have been true. Had no Dorian had ever stood before the agalma of Athena in prayer? Kleomenes’ riposte was undoubtedly clever: he was not a Dorian but an Achaean, a Heraclid one assumes. For our historical context, all parties adopted the Kleomenean approach: that they were all Achaean where it counted, that is, on the level of mythological reasoning. No one hesitates over enlisting the Aiakidai, presumably Achaeans, whether Dorian Aiginetans, Aeolian Thebans, or Ionian Athenians. Furthermore, on the level of more specific level of regional ethnic identities and dialectal categories, affinities, allegiances, and appropriations cross cut the significant cultural boundaries and differentia. Consequently, ethnic solidarity, a principle much cited in Herodotus otherwise and in Thucydides, and much minimized by Thucydides himself as a sincere motivating factor, is never invoked by any of our historical agents. Dorian Aigina becomes a mainstay of Pindaric thinking and advocacy (Olympian 8.30; Nemean 3.3; Isthmian 9.3; Paean 6.123; cf. Pythian 8.20; Isthmian 8.64). It plays no role in the confrontation of 506.

The other absent feature is an appeal to populist legitimacy. At the next flare-up of intense Athenian-Aiginetan fighting, the Athenians will try and fail to support an uprising of the dêmos by the dissident Aiginetan noble Nikodromos (Herodotus 6.88–6.91.2). After the Athenian failure to provide timely assistance, this coup would be suppressed with great cruelty. The ensuing blood guilt would in Herodotus’ mind not be expiated before the expulsion of the Aiginetans in 431 (6.91.2), Subsequent Athenian claims to sovereignty over Aigina rested on Attic harboring and assimilation of these “democratic” refugees. [190] Accordingly, a theory of populist legitimacy would replace the ritual appropriation inherent in the foundation of the Aiakeion. The Nikodromos coup and the flight to Attica of the representatives of the Aiginetan dêmos occurred in the early 480s. If the tholos was a new Aiakeion, it was planned in the early or middle 460s. We can therefore see the period 488–468 as the watershed between the old and new mindsets over which ritual legitimacy was in the process of yielding to democratic legitimacy at Athens. Like other resistors of Attic hegemonism, the Aiginetans cited local traditions and elite arête in response. Against this background the Aiakidai retreated from active political ideology at Athens and in panhellenic culture.