Notes for the video "Athens before the Persian Wars"

 

I'm following the Athenian folk history from Herodotus that considered Hipparkhos the real tyrant until his death in 514, but Thucydides and other historians claim Hippias was the true ruler all along even before 514.

Kineas of Kondaia, king of Thessaly: Hdt. 5.63 has "Koniaios" as an ethnic name, which most translations change to Gonnoi, but this is not convincing: Gonnoi was in Perrhabia not even in Thessaly proper, and Herodotus mentions it twice in Book 7, so he knows the correct name and location. Other translations make up an unknown city called Konion. But in the video I identify it with Kondaia (Kondaios) instead, a real city in ancient Thessaly. I show Kineas as king of all of Thessaly, following a literal interpretation of Herodotus, but it's possible that he was just one of the many Thessalian princes with the title of "king" appointed to lead the campaign. The Aleuadai of Larisa appear as kings of all Thessaly later in Herodotus (480 BC, at 7.6, 9.58) but their earliest appearance is 498 BC (Pind. Pyth. 10.1) so it's possible that 13 years before that the leading king of Thessaly was from another family.

Attic tribes: Hdt 5.66 derives their names from the sons of Ion, but Plut. Sol. 23.4 and Strabo 8.7.1 derive them from ancient caste-like groups. I display both. 

Herodotus places Kleisthenes's reforms before the failed coup of Isagoras, while Aristotle's Constitution of Athens places it after. I assume the main reforms were proposed before it, but implemented only after so I show it in that order.

Kleomenes and the exiled Athenian faction taking over Eleusis after escaping the besieged acropolis of Athens is from Sch. ad Ar. Lys. 273. Herodotus 5.72 jumps straight to taking the Athenian exiles prisoner, so I assume that Eleusis was recaptured by the democratic faction before Kleomenes returned from Sparta with an army.

5.74: Hysiai is called an "Attic deme" by Herodotus, but it was an ethnically Boiotian town and it wasn't integrated into the Attic deme system as it doesn't appear on the known lists of demes. I interpret Hdt's claim in a broad sense to mean "a town controlled by Athens".

6.75 has Kleomenes destroying the sacred meadow of Eleusis. Paus. 3.4.2 calls this place the (Hiera) Orgas, which other sources place on the border of Megara. Both Hdt. and Paus. are ambiguous about when exactly this happened, since Kleomenes attacks Eleusis in both 508, when escaping from the acropolis of Athens, and in 506 when Sparta is allied with Boiotia, and in both cases he is invading in support of Isagoras. I placed this event in 506, as it makes more sense as a preparation for the military invasion there.

5.77: I placed the battle against the Boiotians at the narrow part of the Euripos strait near Chalkis. That the Boiotians came to stop the Athenians from crossing over and that the Athenians crossed the same day as the battle both imply that the Athenians must have marched deep into Bioitia to get to Chalkis.

The Boiotian invasion reaching Phyle and Eleusis is from SEG 56.521

Chronology:

• The conflict over Plataiai is dated by Thuc. 3.68 to 519 BC.
• The fall of Sybaris is dated to 510 BC by Diod. 11.90.3.

• Hdt 5.55 has Hippias overthrown in the fourth year after the death of Hipparchos
• Thuc 6.59 places Hippias 20 years before Marathon, and in the 4th year after Hipparchos's death
• Arist. Ath. Pol. 19 has Hippias driven out in the 4th year after Hipparchos, in 511/0, and Kleistshenes's reforms in the 4th year after that
• Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.6 and 5.1.1 places Isagoras in 508/7 
• Plato's Hipparchos 229b has Hippias ruling for 3 years after Hipparchos
• The Parian Marble dates the explusion of Hippias to 511/0 BC.
• The Tabula Capitolina dates the assassination of Hipparkhos to 513 BC, but its dates are full of errors 

- summerized, it's 514/3 Hipparchos, 511/0 Hippias, 508/7 for Isagoras as leader and also for Kleisthenes's reforms 

• Hipparchos's death at the Panathenaea festival is early in the Attic calendar year so it's rounded to 514.
• Hippias's overthrow is rounded to 510 to make the "20 years before Marathon" (490 BC) fit
• The 508/7 calendar year I split as 508 going to Isagoras and 507 for Kleisthenes, which must be true for at least the start and end of that calendar year.

The rest of the related events have no clues provided as to when they happened (as far as I can tell, in any ancient sources). The dates I assigned to these are just based on the idea that each new military campaign starts in the new campaign season after the previous one:

• c. 511 for Ankhimolos
• c. 506 for the war of the Sparta-Boiotia-Khalkis coalition
• c. 505 for the Aigina conflict
• c. 504 for the aborted restoration of Hippias

Border changes:

Hdt. 6.108 only mentions Plataiai and Hysiai as the towns gained by Athens from Boiotia in 519, but I also show Erythrai and the neighboring small towns switching sides, as later sources put these inside the territory of Plataiai (e.g. Strabo 9.2.24, Hell.Oxy. 16.3)

It's not known when Oropia was captured by Athens. It traditionally belonged to Boiotia (Paus 1.34.1) but it shows up on the Athenian side in 431 BC (Thuc. 2.32), and Hdt 6.101 implies that it was Athenian already in 490 BC (it would be strange if the Athenians fleeing Eretria landed at a port of their arch-enemy). The fighting in 519 pushed the border north to the Asopos river, but this only applies to the area west of the Parnes mountains. The war in 506 is a crushing defeat for Thebes, so this is the best candidate for the takeover, and the Athenian army must have marched through Oropia to get to Chalkis, so I show it switching sides in 506.

Eleutherai: modern historians usually date its takeover to 506 and sometimes to 519, for reasons that i can't understand. It's another ethnically Boiotian town controlled by Athens, with a similar story to Plataiai's takover (Paus. 1.38.8), but Pausanias clearly states that the border moved to Mount Kithairon after its capture, yet in 519 BC of Hdt.6.108 the border moves to the Asopos instead. And its takeover obviously predates the 506 war too, since Hysiai and Plataiai north of it are already Athenian in 519. So this event must pre-date 519 BC, and I show it as already Athenian when the video starts. 

Peloponnesian League: 

- I show the entire alliance in existence already by 519 BC. That Plataiai in 519 thinks it could join the Spartan alliance (6.108) only makes sense if it already bordered on the territory of the Spartans, so Megara must have joined by then. And if Megara was a member, then so were Korinthos and Phleious, and probably Sikyon too (without it the land bridge connecting Korinthos with Phleious and Arkadia would be absurdly thin). In 510 and the rest of that decade the Spartan army marches to Athens multiple times, which again only makes sense if the Phleious-Korinthos-Megara road (+Sikyon) was under their control by then, but Herodotus only explicitly names Korinthos as a member in 506 (5.92), and the earliest evidence for Sikyon is that they provide ships for the invasion of Argos in the 490s (6.92).

- For eastern Argolis (Epidauros, Troizen, Hermion) the earliest evidence is that they show up allied to Sparta against Xerxes in 480, but they are explicitly named as members only much later in Thucidydes. So displaying them as members in 519 is mostly speculation. But it would make sense for Epidauros to join as early as possible to defend itself against Argos, which probably means right after Korinthos joined since after that the Spartan army can march to Epidauros to defend it. And also the fact that Tiryns and Mykenai become Spartan allies after the Battle of Sepeia in the 490s works better on the map if Epidauros is already a member by then.

- Sparta is called the dominant sea power in 517-515 BC (thalassocracies of Eusebius) which would hardly be possible without ships provided by its allies like Corinth.

- Thyrea is caputred by Sparta when the Persians defeat Kroisos in 547 BC (1.82), and the takeover of Arkadia is dated to before this (1.67-8), where Herodotus also writes that most of the Peloponnesos was already subdued by Sparta, which has to mean at least Arkadia and Elis.

- Basically nothing is known about the expansion of the Spartan alliance between 546 and 519. When it shows up at the start of Herodotus's narrative of the history of mainland Greece in 519, it's probably fully formed already.