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The Nothoi of Kynosarges*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

S. C. Humphreys
Affiliation:
University College London

Extract

Our main pieces of evidence about the bastards who exercised in the gymnasium of Kynosarges not far outside the walls of Athens are the following:

(1) Plutarch, Themistocles 1: Themistocles' mother was a Thracian (or Carian) and he therefore exercised at the gymnasium of Kynosarges where the nothoi were enrolled (syntelein), the gymnasium being sacred to Heracles because he, too, being the son of a divine father but a mortal mother, was a nothos among the gods. Themistocles persuaded aristocratic friends to exercise with him at Kynosarges and thus abolished social discrimination between pure-born Athenians and nothoi.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1974

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References

1

2 See Wade-Gery, , Essays in Greek history, 1958, 178–9Google Scholar (BSA 1940). Attempts have been made to emend the text (Mommsen, A., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, 1898, 162Google Scholar n. 4) but it seems quite unexceptionable as a reference to provisions in the lost earlier part of the decree.

3 Ferguson, W. S.'s assertion (The Athenian Secretaries, 1898, 28Google Scholar) that headings with the secretary's name are found only in decrees dealing with foreign affairs and those proposed by special commissions is not borne out by the evidence now available; in particular the use of headings on decrees concerning religious matters is well documented.

4 IG I2 129 contains in 1.3 a form of συλλέγω or one of its compounds, but though one might think of a military muster or of the probable responsibility of the syllogeis tou dēmou for the assembly-registers, the field of choice is wide and the fragmentary remains of the next three lines appear religious in content. The syllogeis in any case had religious as well as secular functions (Rhodes, , The Athenian Boule 129–30Google Scholar).

5 Aristophanes, , Birds 1660Google Scholar ff. has been taken to indicate that in the absence of legitimate offspring nothoi received a share of the estate; but Dem. XLIII. 51 (cf. Isaios VI.47) does not mention this qualification. See Harrison, , The Law of Athens, I. The Family and Property, pp. 62Google Scholar ff. The reference to Eukleides does not imply that the law was changed in 403/2, but that nothoi who had acquired citizenship or inherited before that year were to retain their rights. I suspect that Aristophanes has taken phrases from two laws, one on nothoi and one on intestate inheritance, and linked them with the added phrase παίδων ὄντων γνησίων to make them sound like a single law which tells the poor nothos, ‘if there are legitimate offspring you have no rights—and if not, you still have no rights’.

6 See also below on Antisthenes.

7 In which some additional competitions in marksmanship for non-hoplites were included. Target practice was indeed the only type of military training which could be introduced into the gymnasium without calling into question the nudity which was the hallmark of the institution, and probably did increase in importance in the Hellenistic period when the connection between gymnasia and military training grew closer; even catapult machines were sometimes introduced. Cf. also Plato, Laws 804Google Scholar c–d.

8 See Davies, , JHS 1967, pp. 35–6Google Scholar, 40. In IG I2 84 (Sokolowski, , Lois sacrées 13Google Scholar) we should probably read λēχσίαρ] χοι, as Wilamowitz suggested, in 1.20; γνμνασίαρχοι seems to be impossible in 1.35 and is far from certain in 1.37; in any case the reference is to the torch-races at the Prometheia. The gymnasiarchy as an ephebic liturgy did include responsibility for gymnasia but belongs to the Hellenistic period. Γυμνασιάρχης in the law cited in Aeschines 1.2 seems merely to mean ‘whoever is in charge of the gymnasium’, and the law in any case probably is not genuine; §10 may refer to the creation of a magistracy for the supervision of schools and palaistrai (or did the law merely specify which existing magistracy was to be responsible for suits arising from it?), but schools and palaistrai are not gymnasia and the law seems to have been passed after 404/3 (Lysias XXI.4). Γυμνασίαρχος in charge of the Lykeion in Ps.-Plato Eryxias 397c, 399a, but this is hardly reliable evidence.

9 See Anderson, J. K., Ancient Greek Horsemanship, 1961, 103Google Scholar.

10 Karouzos, Ch., Archaiologikon Deltion 8, 1923, 83102Google Scholar (SEG III. 115–17); Travlos, J., Arch. Analekta Ath. 3, 1970, 614Google Scholar.

11 Mommsen, , Feste 162Google Scholar ff.; Wilamowitz, , Aristoteles und Athen II. 43Google Scholar.

12 Admission to the phratry took place two years earlier than admission to the deme (Labarbe, J., Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg. 39, 1953, 358–94Google Scholar); there might therefore have been a small number of nothoi under the new ruling who already belonged to phratries but were not yet citizens. It is just possible that the law of Krateros (FGH 342) F.4, ending with the provision that the nautodikai are to try anyone born of two non-Athenian parents who enters a phratry, had in an earlier section regulated or clarified the position of these nothoi. But I cannot pursue the question of Krateros' law here. Andrewes' suggestion, JHS 1961, 1–15, that Philochoros F.35 belongs to the same law seems to me to be ruled out by the use of the archaic word ὁμογάλακτϵς.

13 The fact that Plutarch Pericles 37 speaks only of entry to the phratry and not to the deme suggests that the request was made before Pericles II's seventeenth birthday (Carter, J. M., BICS 1967, 51–7Google Scholar) and in all probability in time for the Apatouria of his sixteenth year; he may well have been born as late as c. 444.

14 Lysias, in his speech Against Theozotides (P. Hibeh I. 14Google Scholar) attacked Th. for proposing to exclude nothoi and adopted sons from the number of the war orphans supported by the State; but the partial copy of the decree which has now been found in the Agora (Agora I. 7169, Stroud Hesperia 1971, 280–301) shows that Th. was not trying to economise at the expense of the orphan, but proposing to extend the same privileges to those whose fathers had died fighting against the oligarchs in 404/3. He had evidently worded his proposal in such a way that Lysias could attack him for excluding nothoi and adopted sons, but this does not prove that the earlier law on war orphans had specified their right to support. One would expect adopted sons to have been included and nothoi excluded, but since questions of status were not fought out until the time of entry to phratry and deme it may not have been difficult for orphan nothoi to claim support.

15 Diog. Laert. VI. 1–13. Antisthenes' mother was Thracian and is said in one passage to have been a slave; if so she must have been freed before his birth. One would like to put his father in the mining family of Kytheros (Davies, , APF 38–9)Google Scholar, but the connexion cannot be proved.