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The forethought of Themistocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

A. J. Holladay
A. J. Holladay
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford
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Extract

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.

In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 107 , November 1987 , pp. 182 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1987

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References

1 Professor Forrest has kindly read this article and discussed it helpfully with me. He assures me that he accepts most of my case: where he differs I have noted this in the text.

2 How & Wells, A commentary on Herodotus ii (Oxford 1928) 181 on i 140.1Google Scholar.

3 Hignett, C., Xerxes' invasion of Greece (Oxford 1963) 441–3Google Scholar.

4 Hands, A. R., JHS lxxxv (1965) 60Google Scholar thinks even Salamis was included.

5 Lang, Mabel, Herodotean narrative and discourse, Martin Classical Lectures xxviii (Cambridge Massachusetts 1984)Google Scholar, makes some attempt to set out the problem but for more successful instances see Page, D. L., Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford 1955) 154–7Google Scholar.

6 Frost, Frank J., Plutarch's Themistocles (Princeton 1980), esp. 100 nGoogle Scholar.

7 Hdt. iv 159.

8 Hdt. iv 161.

9 Thuc. ii 22.1.

10 Hdt. vii 141.

11 Thuc. i 138.3 τῶν μελλόντων … ἀριστὸς είκαστής. Thucydides also says that he was a brilliant improviser. Plut. Them. 4.10 apparently tried to reconcile Herodotus' belief in Themistocles' serendipity with Thucydides' emphasis on his foresight by suggesting that Persia was the real reason but that he thought it was too remote a threat to impress the assembly, so to them he stressed the more imminent one of Aegina. The difficulty in this is that only an engulfing danger would prompt a fleet so large and one which would require all available manpower.

12 Thuc. i 93.3–4 says that Themistocles had been the first to urge on Athens the need to grasp sea-power and had begun to develop the Piraeus in his ‘year-by-year’ office. This is usually taken to refer to his archonship (ascribed to 493), though Thucydides' expression is awkward. The occurrence of Themistocles' name on ostraka of not later than 486 (ML 45) shows that he must have been active in politics by c. 487 and disposes of the argument based on Herodotus' description of him in 483 as ‘recently coming forward’, unless the hypothesis of Lewis, D. M. in ZPE xiv (1974) 1–4Google Scholar is accepted.

13 Hdt. vi 89.

14 Thuc. i 14.3. ‘Themistocles persuaded the Athenians who were fighting the Aeginetans— and at the same time the barbarians were expected.’

15 He seems to have been in Aegina just before Salamis. If he had returned to Athens some months earlier he must have gone as an envoy, and in such circumstances an acceptable person would have to be chosen.

16 Cawkwell, G. L., CQ xxxiv (1984) 340Google Scholar. Morrison, J. S., JHS civ (1984) 55–6Google Scholar.

17 If Haas, J., Historia xxxiv (1985) 28–46Google Scholar, is right in claiming that Athens and Aegina only had pentekonters until 483/2 the task of training men to man the triremes would be vastly increased since the crews of pentekonters were much smaller in number and the techniques would be different. But it may be doubted if the Aeginetans could have produced a sizeable fleet of triremes out of the hat, as there is no evidence of a windfall such as Athens' silver. Moreover it seems unlikely that Aegina could have allowed herself to fall so far technologically behind her main foe and rival, Corinth, which did have triremes. Haas speaks as if her local war with Athens was Aegina's only naval problem.

18 Greek oared ships 900 to 322 BC (Cambridge 1968) 154Google Scholar.

19 Morrison & Williams (n. 18) 134–5.

20 Trees and timber in the ancient Mediterranean (Oxford 1982) 125Google Scholar.

21 So also Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks (London 1962) 361Google Scholar.

22 The suggestion of Mattingly, H. B. (Classical contributions: studies in honour of Malcolm Francis McGregor, ed. Shrimpton, G. S. and McCargar, D. J. [Locust Valley 1981] 79Google Scholar) that this document would gain glory for Athens by showing her great prescience ignores the revelation of duplicity in pretending to be committed to the defence of Central Greece whilst showing by her actions her own disbelief in the policy. Herodotus offers Athens the best of both worlds by attributing the decision to 481 after the debate on the oracle (though not to 483/2) but leaving the impression that its implementation only came about when the fleet returned from Artemisium. He surely earned his 10 talents.