DIAGNÓSTICO

As C. M. Bowra noted long ago, the strong “Spartan coloring” of Pythian 11 makes little sense in 474bce, shortly after the end of the Persian Wars and (if we can trust Plutarch Them. 20) Sparta’s effort to oust Thebes from the Delphic Amphiktiony for medizing.¹⁸⁵ On the other hand, a date of 454 would place the composition and performance of Pindar’s ode within the period sometimes re-ferred to by modern scholars as the “First Peloponnesian War” (461–446), when (apparently) Athens was aiming to establish a land empire in mainland Greece through domination of Boiotia and Phokis. Most of what we know about this period comes from Thoukydides’ terse, minimalist summary in the Pentekontae-tia (Thouk. 1.107–13), supplemented on occasion by (sometimes confused) later accounts. As I noted above, in 462/1, Athens forged an alliance with Argos—

an alliance referred to and aetiologized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia of 458. In 457, according to Thoukydides (1.107), an army of Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies marched into central Greece to defend the region of Doris against Phokian aggression. Thoukydides typically offers no explanation for this Spartan military intervention, and it has always been something of a mystery why Sparta should take such interest in this insignificant region of central Greece. Simon Hornblower has recently proposed that Sparta’s interest in defending her eponymous mother region of Doris was in fact motivated by an urgent need to preserve her access to seats on the Delphic Amphiktiony, which, Hornblower reasons, she only enjoyed through this northern outpost from which the Dorians claimed to have made their way to the Peloponnese in the legendary time of the “Dorian invasion.”¹⁸⁶While speculative, Hornblower’s analysis at least helps account for an otherwise inexpli-cable major military action on Sparta’s part, while it also suggests that influence at Delphi was a powerful motivating factor for the Spartans throughout this period.

In any case, as Thoukydides continues his narrative, the Athenians proceeded to garrison and thereby cut off the Spartan army’s routes back to the Peloponnese, both land and sea, so that this large Peloponnesian contingent was trapped in Boiotia (Thouk. 1.107.3–4). At this point (457/6), a large force of Athenians and their allies (including 1,000 Argives) marched into Boiotia and engaged the Spartan army in battle at Tanagra. According to Thoukydides (1.107–108), the Spartan army had the edge in this close battle, so that the Spartan-led force was now able to withdraw to the Peloponnese unopposed.

Again according to Thoukydides (1.108), on the sixty-second day after Tana-gra (457/6?), an Athenian force under the command of Myronides marched into Boiotia and defeated the Boiotian forces at Oinophyta, whereupon the Athenians

“became masters of the territory of Boiotia and Phokis” (τ6ς. . .χAρας κρ$τησαν

185. Bowra 1936: 135–36.

186. Hornblower 1991: 168–69, 1992: 181–82, 2007; cf. Lewis 1992: 114n.62, citing earlier scholars.

τ6ς Βοιωτ"ας καH Φωκ"δος)—whatever exactly this means.¹⁸⁷ Scholars have struggled to reconcile two other brief, (possibly) contradictory reports that seem to apply to the Athenian management of Boiotia after Oinophyta: (1) Aristotle Politics 5.3, 1302b27–30: “and in democracies, when the well-off are contemptu-ous of the disorder and anarchy, as in Thebes, when things were badly run after the battle of Oinophyta, the democracy collapsed,” and (2) [Xenophon] Ath.Pol. 3.11:

“but however many times [the Athenians] attempted to choose the best people, it didn’t work out for them, but within a short time the demos among the Boiotians was enslaved. . . .” Aristotle’s statement is often taken to mean that immediately after the battle of Oinophyta, the Athenians installed a pro-Athenian democracy in Thebes, which quickly collapsed because of incompetence and disorganization, while the Old Oligarch’s brief reference suggests Athenian support for oligarchies throughout Boiotia. David Lewis wisely urges caution in the face of these con-tradictory statements: “There is little point in trying speculative combinations;

Athens will have backed whatever groups seemed likely to support her, perhaps without regard to their ostensible political colour, and may have changed policy from time to time.”¹⁸⁸

Even if the details of internal governance are obscure, the main point is that Athens was able to dominate Boiotia for eleven years after the battle of Oinophyta. Indeed, in the 1980s and 90s, David Lewis proposed new readings for fragmentary Athenian tribute lists that would make the Boiotian towns of Orchomenos and Akraiphia tribute-paying subject cities of Athens in the late 450sbce.¹⁸⁹Simon Hornblower effectively draws out the implications of Lewis’

suggested supplements: “These startling suggestions would mean that Athens was prepared to regard the inland Boiotian communities as tribute-paying subject allies and Boiotia as part of the empire—a notable piece of assertiveness.”¹⁹⁰

Another intriguing ancient testimony for this complex and obscure period may be relevant. Diodorus Siculus in his account, probably following Ephoros, reports that the Thebans approached the Spartans after the battle of Tanagra and proposed a deal: in return for Spartan assistance in establishing her hegemony in Boiotia, Thebes would undertake the conduct of the war against Athens on her own, so that the Spartans would not in future need to lead a land army beyond the Peloponnese. The Spartans agreed to this proposal and provided various kinds of assistance to the Thebans in their struggle for hegemony in Boiotia (D.S. 11.81.2).

Many modern historians have questioned the reliability of Diodorus’ narrative,

187. Most modern scholars do not accept the report of D.S. (11.83.1) that the Athenians took all of Boiotia except Thebes; see Gomme 1972: 317, Buck 1979: 147–48, Lewis 1992: 116. For a defense of D.S.’s account and an attempt to reconcile it with Thoukydides’, see Demand 1982:

32–35.

188. Lewis 1992: 116, partially quoted by Hornblower 1991: 172. For different efforts to reconcile the statements of Aristotle and the Old Oligarch, see Gomme 1972: 317–18, Buck 1979: 148–50, Mackil 2013.

189. Lewis 1981: 77n.43, 1992: 116n.72.

190. Hornblower 1991: 172; see also Mackil 2013.

because his account of this whole period seems confused (with two battles at Tanagra and two battles at Oinophyta); his chronology substantially different from Thoukydides’; and his assumption of a fully formed Boiotian League in this period possibly anachronistic.¹⁹¹ So we cannot be sure that this Spartan-Theban negotiation actually ever took place around the time of the battle of Tanagra. Still, it is an intriguing possibility given Pindar’s extraordinary rhetorical emphasis on mythic and cultic connections between Thebes and Sparta in Pythian 11.

Also perhaps relevant, given the efforts we have noted in the Oresteia and Pythian 11 to forge competing networks with Delphi, is Thoukydides’ extremely terse account of the so-called “Second Sacred War” in 449/8, in the course of which Athens and Sparta tussled over the control of Delphi: “After this the Spartans marched out on a sacred war, and becoming masters of the temple at Delphi, placed it in the hands of the Delphians. Immediately after their retreat, the Athenians marched out, became masters of the temple, and placed it in the hands of the Phokians” (Thouk. 1.112.5, trans. R. Crawley).¹⁹²As I noted above, if we accept Hornblower’s argument about Spartan motivation in coming to the aid of Doris in 457, we have a consistent pattern of Spartan interest in Delphi throughout this period. At the same time, Athens clearly wanted to wield influence at Delphi through her allies/subjects, the Phokians.

In the meantime, by 447/6, resistance to Athenian domination was devel-oping in northwestern Boiotia. Thoukydides tells us that “Boiotian exiles” took control of “Orchomenos, Chaironeia, and some other places in Boiotia,” and that in response the Athenians dispatched an army of 1,000 Athenians and allied contingents under the command of Tolmides (Thouk. 1.113). This force captured and enslaved Chaironeia, but, as it was returning to Attica, was intercepted and attacked at Koroneia by “the Boiotian exiles from Orchomenos, Lokrians with them, Euboian exiles, and others who were of the same way of thinking.” This force of Boiotian exiles and others defeated the Athenians, killing some and taking others captive. In order to redeem these captives, the Athenians made a truce with the Boiotians whereby the Athenians evacuated all of Boiotia, the Boiotian exiles returned, and all the cities became autonomous again (probably 446).

Although Thoukydides’ narrative here is typically concise, it is clear that the defeat at Koroneia had a momentous impact on Athens and the subsequent shape of her empire. The successful Boiotian resistance immediately sparked coordinated revolts in Euboia and Megara, together with a Spartan land invasion that got as far as Eleusis and the Thriasian Plain (Thouk. 1.114). By swift action, the Athenians managed to suppress the revolts in Euboia and Megara, but they were now in a precarious position, so that at this point they negotiated a thirty-years’ truce with the Lakedaimonians, giving up Megara’s two ports Nisaea and Pegai, as well as Troizen and Achaia. That is to say, the Athenians (at a strategic disadvantage)

191. For skepticism about D.S.’s account, see Buck 1979: 145–47; for defense of D.S.’s version, Demand 1982: 32–35.

192. For the dating, see Gomme 1972: 337, 409.

withdrew from the Peloponnese and the Megarid entirely, and essentially also gave up their aspiration to a land empire in central Greece.¹⁹³ For the Boiotians as well, Koroneia was a crucial turning point. After eleven years of Athenian domination, all Boiotia was liberated and its cities autonomous again. Indeed, according to Emily Mackil, it may well have been the remarkable success at Koroneia thatfirst crystallized a formal Boiotian “League,” the koinon whose in-stitutional structures we know from the fourth-century Oxyrhynchus Historian.¹⁹⁴ But, as Mackil also points out, it is worth emphasizing that the Boiotian resistance that culminated in the battle of Koroneia apparently did not originate from Thebes, but from northwestern Boiotia, where the exiles were able to occupy Orchomenos and Chaironeia.¹⁹⁵

For my purposes, this is a significant point. If, as I have argued on internal and intertextual literary grounds, Pindar’s Pythian 11 is to be dated to 454bce, the general context of the “First Peloponnesian War,” together with Athens and Sparta’s various tussles over Delphi, offers a plausible background for Pindar’s careful elaboration of cult networks linking Thebes, Sparta, and Delphi. But more specifically, in 454, with Thebes and all Boiotia under Athenian domination of some kind, Theban aristocrats might well be looking to Sparta to assist her against her overbearing southern neighbor—especially if Thebes was not the main force behind Boiotia’s eventual self-liberation.¹⁹⁶

University of California, Berkeley [email protected]

193. For 446 as a significant turning point for the shape of Athenian empire (and the Spartan relation to it), see Lewis 1992: 133–38, esp. the summary statement on p. 137: “It seems that the Spartans felt that they had done well to confine Athens to her proper sphere. . . . Athens had renounced meddling on the mainland, and the freeing of the Megarid and Boeotia had made Attica much more vulnerable to invasion if there was future misbehaviour. To maintain pressure of a type which would threaten the naval empire would be beyond Sparta’s powers and aspirations. . . . In effect, the dualism of Cimon’s aspirations, Sparta to dominate by land, Athens by sea, was being accepted on both sides.”

194. Mackil 2013; cf. Lewis 1992: 133.

195. Mackil 2013. Other scholars have tended to assume that Thebes must have led this movement based on two literary testimonies: (1) Thouk. 3.62.5: the Thebans’ speech of self-defense before the Spartans for their aggression vs. Plataia. Here the Thebans say, “when the Athenians attacked the rest of Hellas and endeavored to subjugate our country, of the greater part of which faction had already made them masters, did we notfight and conquer at Koronea and liberate Boiotia...?” (trans. R.

Crawley). But this is clearly tendentious, and even on its own terms extremely slippery rhetorically;

after all, who is “we”? Thebans or Boiotians—or some fantasy retrojection of the Boiotian koinon with Thebes already at its head? (2) Plut. Ages. 19.2, tells us that the commander of this rebel force was one “Sparton.” This is assumed to be a Theban name by Buck 1979: 150, Lewis 1992:

133. But even if there was some Theban involvement, clearly the rest of Boiotia was important here—especially the northwest.

196. This argument was already articulated by Bowra 1936: 136 (although he does not mention D.S.’s story of Theban-Spartan negotiation around the time of the battle of Tanagra, nor the geographic specificities of Boiotian resistance to Athens in 447/6); cf. also Hubbard 2010, suggesting that the victor Thrasydaios’ father was a key player in Theban politics, who wanted to signal via the “Spartan coloring” of our ode his alignment with Sparta in this troubled period.

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