by a coalition: the Peloponnesian League from the south, the Boeotians and Euboean Chalcis from the north and the north east. The attack was cancelled when the Peloponnesians learned about Athens entering the Persian Empire (Hdt. 5.73.2ff., following a different version). By doing so, Athens thwarted a new Spartan attempt to establish a pro-Spartan government,64 and indeed became unassailable. But she also undertook the first step on the way straight into the Persian Wars.
Athens Versus Aegina (505/504–481)
For the moment, Sparta’s allies paid the price: after the Peloponnesians had retreated without a strike, Athens defeated the Boeotians and the Chalcideans. From the Boeotians she took much ransom money, and from Chalcis additionally the Lelantine Plain. A subsequent Boeotian campaign for vengeance failed, but supporting Thebes the Aeginetans attacked the coast of Attica, taking a large booty and causing great damage (Hdt. 5.79ff.; 6.87ff.).65 A long conflict ensued that was settled only on the eve of Xerxes’ invasion (481: Hdt. 7.145.1). Hinting at this war, Themistocles convinced his fellow citizens to build a strong fleet of modern triremes (Hdt. 7.144.1). It would become essential for resisting Xerxes in 480/479 and, during the following decades, for Athens’ ascent to hegemony.
Notes
1 1 All pertinent texts (with introduction, discussion, and—if possible—translation) in Ventris and Chadwick 1956 and Palmer 1963 (see the registers). Abbreviations indicate provenance (here PY: Pylos; KN: Knossos), series (e.g An: personnel, men), and number in inventory. Generally, see Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 183–194. A general overview: the papers ed. by Laffineur 1999, Sections 8 (Les sources écrites et l’ administration), 9 (Les armes et l’armement), and 10 (La guerre).
2 2 Nikoloudis 2008. For the Spartan arch-hagétai see the section on “Sparta’s Wars: Immigration and Conquest of Laconia (c. 950/930)”.
3 3 Historical setting: Palaima 1995, cf. Halstead 2007.
4 4 PY An 657, 519, 654, 656, 661.
5 5 Lang 1990.
6 6 Cf. Thuc. 4.11ff.
7 7 From the Indo-Europ. root (s)equ- (cf. lat. sequi): to follow (scil. the king). A detailed study has been submitted by Deger-Jalkotzy 1978, cf. Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 121; Killen 2007. At Knossos these officials are also involved in raising tributes (KN As 821).
8 8 Evident from a document that lists missing rowers (PY An 724, 11f.). We may conclude that some e-qe-ta whose responsibility it was to organize personnel had been negligent and were reprimanded by hinting at the privileges they had received, cf. Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 188, s.v. e-ko-si-qe, and generally 232ff.
9 9 Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 291ff.; cf. the Homeric epithet Chalcochiton: “garment covered with bronze” (e.g. Il. 1.371, 2.47). For a photo of a suit of armor see Dickinson 1994, 204, pl. 5.21.
10 10 Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 375.
11 11 PY Sh 733–740, see Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 376 with nos. 292–295. At Knossos, corslets are combined with pairs of horses and chariots (KN Sc 222 and 226 = Ventris and Chadwick nos. 297–298; no helmets are mentioned there separately): “Such body armour may have been restricted almost entirely to charioteers, for whom the absence of a shield made it a necessity; which would help to explain its absence from chieftains’ graves.” (ib. 376). Charioteers needed their left hand to hold on to the chariot. Moreover, if there would have been a shield of a prestigious type, elements of it would have survived: at least the boss and the rim will have been made of bronze.
12 12 KN Ra 1450: the number is incomplete (50 [+x, i.e. between 51 and 59]).
13 13 On the Egyptian chariot contingents see generally Drews 1993, 104–134 and 209–225. In two great thirteenth-century battles large pharaonic chariot units were involved: in 1274, the defeat of Ramesses II against the Hittites at Kadesh (on the Orontes): ib. 130–134; in c. 1200, the victory of Ramesses III over the “Sea Peoples” (in this case Philistines) in the Delta, illustrated at Medinet Habu, ib. 157ff. (frescoes: ib. pl. 6 and 7 on pp. 159–160). The fictional report in the Old Testament (Ex. 14.7: 600 + x Egyptian chariots pursue the Israelites) can be taken as a further general hint at the Egyptian strength of chariots at that time. On the Hittites generally Kuhrt 1995, 225–282, on Mitanni ib. 289–300.
14 14 Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 361–375, with a (modern) sketch (362). At Pylos, chariots are indicated indirectly by separately stored wheels: Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 373ff. The practise to take them off the chariots when on stands is testified in Il. 5.722.
15 15 E.g. KN Sd 403; in turn, also one-horse chariots are listed, e.g. KN Sd 409 + 481, see Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 365ff., with these and further texts.
16 16 Maybe the passage is inspired by an epic older than the Iliad (a Nestoris); possibly also a famous episode from Nestor’s youth was taken from it (Il. 11.668ff.). What is preserved of such epics is collected in the Loeb edn. of Greek Epic Fragments (by M.L. West 2003).
17 17 Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 365 calculate a total of 400 + x chariots at Knossos: “it was evidently immeasurably smaller than the bodies of chariotry deployed by the Egyptians and Hittites on the more open battlefields of Syria”.
18 18 Hope Simpson 1981, 15ff. (with several plates: 2b, 6a–b, 8a–9c), esp. 17: “there can be little doubt that the main purpose of the roads was military … as a means of rapid deployment of mobile forces, presumably including chariots.” Cf. id. 2002. For a sketch of the suggested Mycenaean road system see Dickinson 1994, 163, fig. 5.34.
19 19 But some principal routes were kept intact, such as that from the Bay of Pylos via the valleys of Alpheus and Eurotas to Lacedaemon/Pellana, cf. Od. 3.481ff. (the Pherae near this route is not identical with Pherae (Pharae)/Kalamata, but with Aliphera, south of Heraea: Barr. Atlas, map 58, B2).
20 20 Jn series: Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 352ff.; Smith 1992/1993.
21 21 jo do-so-si ko-re-te-re … po-ro-ko-re-te-re-qe … ka-ko na-wi-jo pa-ta-jo-i-qe e-ke-si-qe ai-ka-sa-ma, in alphabetic Greek: ώς δώ{σω}σι χωρηταì … προχωρηταí τε … χαλκòν νάϝιον παλτοíς τε έ´γχεσι τ’ αìχμάς. Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 357 translate na-wi-jo “for ships” (naus: ship, never spelt with vau/digamma), but this makes no sense here; actually to be connected with na(w)os: temple.
22 22 Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 361 refer to a tablet from Knossos (KN R 482) “on which the ARROW ideogram is followed by the high numbers 6010 and 2630 (which would require about 13 kg of bronze)”.
23 23 Up to the Homeric basilées it was a long way, but it starts just here, cf. Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 121f., 253.
24 24 E.g. PY Jn 658. For a table see Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 355–356.
25 25 Killen 2006.
26 26 Desborough 1975.
27 27 Generally Kirk 1975, 820–828 and van Wees 1997.
28 28 Research on oral poetry was initiated as a discipline in the 1930s by Milman Parry (died 1935), during field studies in Bosnia. His papers applying his results on the Homeric epics were collected in Parry 1987; cf. Visser 2006.
29 29 Powell 1991.
30 30 Generally, Donlan 1999.
31 31 Drews 1993, 161: “The Homeric description of chariots as battle taxis may be a reminiscence of this twelfth-century development. Possibly in (LH) IIIC Greece the horses and vehicles that survived from the pre-Catastrophe chariot forces became nothing more than prestige vehicles for the professional warriors…”.
32 32 E.g. Il. 4.365, 419 with 5.109ff. (Diomedes, Sthenelus); 5.221ff. (Aeneas, Pandarus).
33 33