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EXEMPLARITY AND POLITICS OF MEMORY: THE RECOVERY OF THE PIRAEUS BY OLYMPIODOROS OF ATHENS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2021

Antonio Iacoviello
Antonio Iacoviello*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
antonio.iacoviello@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

The article discusses Pausanias’ obscure statement (1.26.3) that the early Hellenistic Athenian general Olympiodoros ‘recovered the Piraeus and Mounychia’. By understanding the feat as an episode within the wider context of the Athenian stasis of 295 between the ‘tyrant’ Lachares and Olympiodoros’ democratic resistance, the article shows that the narrative of the enterprise (most likely based on an honorific decree) aimed to i) establish a parallel between Olympiodoros and the illustrious democratic recovery by Thrasyboulos, ii) rehabilitate Olympiodoros as a democratic hero after his involvement in the oligarchic years of the second regime of Demetrios Poliorketes in Athens, and iii) serve as a call to action to recover the Piraeus, which was under Macedonian control when the honours were bestowed.

Keywords

Early Hellenistic AthensPausaniasOlympiodoros of AthensPiraeusAthenian democracypolitics of memory
Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , December 2021 , pp. 617 - 623
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Pausanias 1.26.3 has long represented a crux for historians of early Hellenistic Athens. In the passage, which appears in an excursus on the history of Athens following the Lamian War, the Athenian general OlympiodorosFootnote 1 is said to have had a key role in ‘recovering Mounychia and the Piraeus’ (Πειραιᾶ καὶ Μουνυχίαν ἀνασωσάμενος), a deed whose circumstances are obscure. The statement has remarkable significance, given that the whole history of early Hellenistic Athens is distinguished by continued attempts to take back the harbour from Macedonian control.Footnote 2 Scholarly debate on the issue has so far focussed mostly on two aspects: Pausanias’ source, on the one hand, and the chronology of the enterprise, on the other. This article examines the ideological dimension of the feat. I argue that Pausanias’ account of Olympiodoros’ recovery engages with a strategy of politics of memory, which aimed i) to set Olympiodoros on a par with Thrasyboulos, one of the most renowned heroes of Athenian democracy, and ii) to serve as a call to action for the recapture of the Piraeus from Macedonian control in the 280s.

Scholars agree that the list of Olympiodoros’ deeds is drawn from an honorific decree bestowed upon the Athenian general—or from a historiographic work which most likely paraphrased that same document.Footnote 3 The passage is embedded within a list of Olympiodoros’ military exploits, which closely parallels the style of the motivation clause of honorary decrees. More specifically, a decree granting μέγισται τιμαίFootnote 4 was enacted in the 280s, since it mentions the key contribution of Olympiodoros to expelling the Macedonian garrison from the Mouseion hill in 287.Footnote 5

The chronology for the recovery of the Piraeus is more difficult to establish.Footnote 6 The honours for the archon Euthios (enacted in 282/1)Footnote 7 have occasionally been considered as a terminus post quem: besides the standard honours, the decree states that further honours will be awarded ‘whenever the Piraeus and the city will be reunited’ (lines 30–1 ὅταν ὁ Πειραιεὺς καὶ τὸ ἄστυ ἐν τῶι αὐτῶι γένηται). The feat makes far more sense, however, in the context of the events of 295: the expulsion of the ‘tyrant’ Lachares and the second arrival of Demetrios Poliorketes in Athens.Footnote 8 In this case, Pausanias’ statement cannot be read as describing a recovery of the Piraeus from a Macedonian garrison: the harbour had in fact served as a democratic stronghold soon after Lachares seized power.Footnote 9 Rather, Pausanias (and arguably the decree for Olympiodoros) would be hinting at a reunification of the city and the Piraeus—the first under the tyrant's control, the second as a bastion of the democratic resistance. Olympiodoros’ recovery of the harbour, therefore, does not reflect the expulsion of a Macedonian garrison but, rather, an exploit within the context of civil unrest. Scholarly discussion on these events, however, has thus far overlooked that such a framework—that is, the Piraeus as a democratic fortress vs the city as a shelter of the tyrant—recalls a key phase of Athenian history, which is recurrent in Athenian discourse and democratic self-representation: the civil strife between the democratic resistance in the Piraeus and the Thirty Tyrants.

PIRAEUS, DEMOCRACY AND EXEMPLARITY

Little is known about the ‘democracy of all the Athenians’Footnote 10 in the period between the ousting of the Macedonian garrison from the Mouseion hill (287) and the end of the Chremonidean War (261). The rather abundant epigraphic remains, however, shed light on the functioning of the democratic machinery and of the decision-making processes.Footnote 11 It turns out, for instance, that civic decrees of the Council were not proposed by a narrow circle of notables (as in the periods of more overt Macedonian influence, such as 307–301),Footnote 12 but the number of decree proposers widened. This detail contributes to the general picture of an emphatic return to a more participative institutional framework. Such a restoration of the democratic machinery, however, was accompanied by a massive effort to legitimize the new regime by ideological means. Appealing to the past was a landmark of Athenian democracy throughout its history, and early Hellenistic democracy particularly strove to assert its continuity with the past, both recent and remote. The posthumous honours for Demosthenes of 281/0 are a case in point.Footnote 13 Their significance lies in their enaction decades after the orator's death. It is as though the democratic leaders (in this case, specifically, his nephew Demochares) decided to exhume the figure of Demosthenes to provide the democracy with a new hero (or remind it of its old hero) who, unlike other traditional figures of the past, epitomized an anti-Macedonian agenda. But this drive to appeal to tradition manifested itself through a vast array of topoi and paradigms. A notorious example of the use of historical references is in Chremonides’ decree (IG II/III3 912), the treaty among Athens, Sparta and Ptolemy II which ratified the alliance against Antigonos Gonatas in the Chremonidean War. That decree displays first an explicit allusion to the alliance between Athens and Sparta during the Persian Wars, and compares the two conflicts by assimilating Gonatas to the Persian king, an everlasting symbol of despotism.Footnote 14

An analogous, perhaps more nuanced, reference to the Athenian democratic past can be observed in the honours paid to Olympiodoros, specifically to do with the alleged recovery of the Piraeus. In Olympiodoros’ decree the recovery of the harbour (or, rather, its reunification with the city) entailed a meaningful restoration from tyranny to democracy. Athenian memory connected that exploit to the ousting of Lachares and the restoration of the city's autonomy and democracy. The same pattern occurs in the most memorable Athenian instance of reunification of the city with its harbour: Thrasyboulos’ enterprise at the time of the Thirty Tyrants.Footnote 15 After the troops of Phyle, led by Thrasyboulos, managed to gain control of the Piraeus, the harbour became a symbol of the democratic resistance against the tyrants in the city. Mounychia—where a Macedonian garrison was to be installed less than a century later—was the setting of one of the most memorable victories of the Athenian democrats against their domestic enemies. Olympiodoros’ enterprise, as recounted by the decree (that is, as a recovery of the Piraeus followed by a restoration of democracy), must have resembled, to the Athenians’ minds, the antecedent of Thrasyboulos and the end of the Thirty Tyrants’ regime. After all, those vicissitudes represent one of the most common historical paradigms appealed to by the Athenian democracy in the decades following the restoration of 403. For instance, Thrasyboulos as a democratic hero is a well-known topos in the Attic orators’ speeches, the audience of which overlapped with that of civic decrees.Footnote 16 An eye-opening passage from Demosthenes’ Against Leptines shows the language used to refer to those moments when the Piraeus and the city were reunited in 403. Demosthenes embeds within his speech a historical example to describe the nature of the Athenian ethos. After the civil strife, the recovered democracy paid off a debt to the Spartans, although that sum of money had been lent to the Thirty:

λέγονται χρήμαθ’ οἱ τριάκοντα δανείσασθαι παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐν Πειραιεῖ. ἐπειδὴ δ’ ἡ πόλις εἰς ἓν ἦλθεν καὶ τὰ πράγματ’ ἐκεῖνα κατέστη, πρέσβεις πέμψαντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὰ χρήματα ταῦτ’ ἀπῄτουν.

The story goes that the Thirty borrowed money from the Spartans to fight against the men of the Piraeus. After the city was reunited and that conflict was over, the Spartans sent ambassadors and asked for this money back (transl. Harris).Footnote 17

The expression which stands for the merging of Piraeus and ἄστυ (ἐπειδὴ δ’ ἡ πόλις εἰς ἓν ἦλθεν) is strikingly similar to those employed in the 280s, as given in the aforementioned honours for Euthios (ὅταν ὁ Πειραιεὺς καὶ τὸ ἄστυ ἐν τῶι αὐτῶι γένηται).Footnote 18 It follows that the democracy recovered in 287 might have juxtaposed, on a rhetorical and memorial level, Olympiodoros’ recovery of the Piraeus (and therefore a restoration of democracy in general) with the prestigious example of the time of Thrasyboulos.Footnote 19 Olympiodoros thus becomes one of the new heroes of the ‘democracy of all the Athenians’, aligned to outstanding personalities of the past: his statue on the Acropolis seemingly wore a helmet, like the one of Pericles standing nearby.Footnote 20 Olympiodoros’ troops in the Piraeus embody the dēmos in exile following the civil strife between Charias and Lachares and the tyrant's victory, as did Thrasyboulos’ resistance nearly a century earlier.Footnote 21 The honours for Olympiodoros, moreover, may not be the only case of this point in time of the reuse of the 403 Piraeus/ἄστυ reunification topos. Another early Hellenistic appropriation of the paradigm of the democratic resistance in Phyle can be spotted in the second decree for Euphron of Sikyon.Footnote 22 When the decree relates the ostensible democratic restoration of 318 at the hands of Polyperchon, it exploits the image of the return of the dēmos, which recalls the restoration of democracy following the return of the men of Phyle in 403.Footnote 23

The connection to an illustrious antecedent, however, also had another goal. Olympiodoros held a leading position during the years of Demetrios Poliorketes’ regime following his recovery of the Piraeus (295–287): he was archon twice in the years 294/3 and 293/2, an extraordinary occurrence. In all probability, he was appointed to that magistracy, rather than elected.Footnote 24 Such a pro-Macedonian leaning is perplexing, considering the pivotal role Olympiodoros had in the democratic revolt of 287, which put an end to that regime.Footnote 25 Olympiodoros’ switch of allegiance, and his involvement in a non-democratic regime, certainly undermined his position and authority in the recovered democracy. The honours bestowed upon the Athenian general in the 280s, and the creation of the Piraeus-recovery tale, were instrumental in purifying his career from the most embarrassing moments of cooperation with the Macedonian invader. After all, Olympiodoros was one of the most suitable candidates for the role of long-standing democratic hero, and not only for his services preceding 295 (listed by Pausanias). His familial background had indeed deep-rooted democratic credentials: his father Diotimos stood out as a distinguished anti-Macedonian leader already in Demosthenes’ time.Footnote 26

The juxtaposition of Olympiodoros with notable antecedents of Athenian democracy, however, was not just significant for the general's own reputation and political position. The appeal to the past elevated the recovered democracy itself. Olympiodoros’ anointing as a democratic hero reaffirmed a continuity between the phases before and after 287. And, with specific regard to the alleged recovery of the Piraeus, those honours had peculiar significance for the context when they were enacted. During a period when the Piraeus and Mounychia were in Macedonian hands, and when Athens apparently sought to recover them, the honours paid to Olympiodoros once again linked the integrity of Athenian democracy to the full possession of its harbour.

HONOURING THE PAST AS A TOOL FOR THE PRESENT

Historical narratives in early Hellenistic honorific decrees greatly reveal how that past was appropriated and exploited in the period when those honours were passed. This is apparent for honours bestowed after the death of the honorand: not only the honours for Demosthenes but also the μέγισται τιμαί for Lykourgos in 307/6.Footnote 27 Other examples of this sort include the honours for Philippides of Kephale (IG II/III3 877), which praise the military and economic aid provided by Lysimachos through the medium of his adviser Philippides, and were meant as a way of renewing political and economic ties with the king of Thrace. The decree for Kallias of Sphettos (IG II/III3 911), which commends the military contribution of Ptolemy I to the revolt of 287, reinforced Athenian allegiance to Alexandria on the eve of the Chremonidean War, in which Ptolemy Philadelphos was bound to be a crucial ally.Footnote 28

As already stated, the piece of information regarding Olympiodoros’ recovery of the Piraeus can be dated to the 280s, in the form of inscribed honours. However, there has been little discussion on the significance of such a statement in that specific context. During that timeframe, the political discourse of the ‘democracy of all the Athenians’ was focussed on the necessity of recovering the Piraeus. This is reflected in a series of contemporary honorific decrees enacted in that same timespan, which prompt, if not urge, a recovery of the Piraeus shortly thereafter. These include the naturalization decree for Audoleon, king of the Paionians, enacted in 285/4 (‘and, besides, he states that in the future he will be of service by joining the effort for the recovery of the Piraeus and the freedom of the city’, IG II/III3 871.30–4); the μέγισται τιμαί for Philippides of Kephale, enacted in 283/2 (‘[he acted] so that the People may remain free and recover the Piraeus and the forts as quickly as possible’, IG II/III3 877.34–6); and the decree for Euthios.Footnote 29 Whether the attempt to recover the Piraeus prompted by these documents ever took place is unknown; if it did, it failed.Footnote 30 Regardless, contemporary Athenian decrees reflect a considerable propagandistic investment in that feat by the recovered democracy. The honours for Olympiodoros and the invention of an actual recovery of the Piraeus in 295 are to be understood within such a framework. That decree not only aimed at putting Olympiodoros on a level with celebrated heroes of democratic history, such as Thrasyboulos; it also urged the Athenians to undertake the very same enterprise that one of the new heroes of the restored democracy allegedly undertook in 295. Those honours, then, emphasized once again the nearly ontological link between control over the harbour and fulfilment of democracy.Footnote 31 The reaffirmation of that connection was not motivated by practical reasons alone. After all, even when the Macedonian garrison was stationed in Mounychia, free movement of people (either Piraeians to the ἄστυ or the other way round) was in all likelihood allowed.Footnote 32 Certainly, though, the presence of the garrison affected the movement of commodities, the price of which must have risen.Footnote 33 More generally, the loss of the harbour entailed wide changes in the way in which Athens conceived of the relationship between city and countryside. And that loss ultimately hindered the smooth functioning of the whole public machinery, as it used to work before 322.Footnote 34 Olympiodoros’ decree and the way in which it exploits the Athenian remote past to shape the recent past show how the public discourse of the Athenian democracy of the early third century rewrote its recent history to reaffirm its integrity and its identity.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Mirko Canevaro, Andrew Erskine, David Lewis and CQ's reader for their insightful comments. All ancient dates are b.c.e.

References

1 Gabbert, J.J., ‘The career of Olympiodorus of Athens (ca. 340–270 b.c.)’, AncW 27 (1996), 59–66Google Scholar; Paschidis, P., Between City and King. Prosopographical Studies on the Intermediaries between the Cities of the Greek Mainland and the Aegean and the Royal Courts in the Hellenistic Period (322–190 b.c.) (Athens, 2008), 133–9Google Scholar.

2 See Oliver, G.J., War, Food and Politics in Early Hellenistic Athens (Oxford, 2007), 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘the history of the Athenian polis in the third century can be read as a struggle to recover control of the Piraeus’.

3 Thus first Habicht, C., Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1985), 90–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see, more recently, Ma, J., Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 2013), 277–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luraghi, N., ‘Documentary evidence and political ideology in early Hellenistic Athens’, in Börm, H. and Luraghi, N. (edd.), The Polis in the Hellenistic World (Stuttgart, 2018), 209–27, at 211, 214–15Google Scholar. The existence of honours for Olympiodoros is postulated also by Wheatley, P. and Dunn, C., Demetrius the Besieger (Oxford, 2020), 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar (who, none the less, date the decree to the mid 290s). It cannot be ruled out that Pausanias’ account on Olympiodoros is based on a literary source, whose identity is irretrievable. Proposals include Philochoros or Demochares; see Bearzot, C., Storia e storiografia ellenistica in Pausania il Periegeta (Venice, 1992), 91–2Google Scholar. Should Pausanias’ ultimate source be a historiographic source of this sort, it would any way reflect a contemporary and pro-democratic (albeit non-documentary) representation of Olympiodoros’ deeds.

4 On these decrees, see Gauthier, P., Les cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs (Paris, 1985), 79–89Google Scholar; Kralli, I., ‘Athens and her leading citizens in the early Hellenistic period (338–261 b.c.): the evidence of the decrees awarding the highest honours’, Archaiognosia 10 (1999–2000), 133–61Google Scholar. On the alleged honorific statue of Olympiodoros, see R. von den Hoff, ‘Tradition and innovation: portraits and dedications on the early Hellenistic Acropolis’, in O. Palagia and S.V. Tracy (edd.), The Macedonians in Athens 322–229 b.c. (Oxford, 2003), 173–85, at 176–8; Ma (n. 3), 274–6.

5 Paus. 1.26.1–2. On the same event, see IG II/III3 911, a decree granting μέγισται τιμαί to Kallias of Sphettos; Shear, T.L., Kallias of Sphettos and the Revolt of Athens in 286 b.c. (Princeton, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The event is usually associated with the archonship of Nikias ὕστερος, i.e. the second part of either Nikias I (296/5) or Nikias II (282/1). The creation of a new year might be explained as a result of the re-inclusion of the Piraeus deme within the ἄστυ in institutional terms. See Gauthier, P., ‘La réunification d'Athènes en 281 et les deux archontes Nicias’, REG 92 (1979), 348–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Habicht, C., Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte Athens im 3f. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Munich, 1979), 102–7Google Scholar; Bultrighini, U., ‘Pausania 1.26.3 e la liberazione del Piraeo’, RFIC 112 (1984), 54–62Google Scholar; Osborne, M.J., ‘The archonship of Nikias hysteros and the secretary cycles in the third century b.c.’, ZPE 58 (1985), 275–95Google Scholar; Reger, G., ‘Athens and Tenos in the early Hellenistic Age’, CQ 42 (1992), 365–83, at 371–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, M.C., ‘When the Peiraieus and the city are reunited’, ZPE 123 (1998), 207–12Google Scholar; Dreyer, B., Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des spätklassischen Athen (322 – ca. 230 v. Chr.) (Stuttgart, 1999), 257–65Google Scholar; P.J. Thonemann, ‘The tragic king: Demetrius Poliorcetes and the city of Athens’, in O. Hekster and R. Fowler (edd.), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome (Stuttgart, 2005), 63–86, at 66–74.

7 IG II/III3 881 (= ISE 1.14 = Agora 16.181).

8 First proposed by G. De Sanctis, ‘Lacare’, RFIC 6 (1928), 53–77; see, more recently, Oliver (n. 2), 54–64. On Lachares, see Paschidis (n. 1), 125–9; H. Börm, ‘Ein Bollwerk für Tyrannen? Lachares, Charias und die Athener Akropolis im frühen Hellenismus’, in U. Gotter and E. Sioumpara (edd.), Identität aus Stein: Die Athener Akropolis und ihre Stadt (Konstanz, 2021), 7–16.

9 See the anonymous chronicle P.Oxy. 2082 (= FGrHist 257a), fr. 3 lines 13–16.

10 As that regime labelled itself – IG II/III3 911.82–3.

11 Habicht, C., Athènes hellénistique: histoire de la cité d'Alexandre le Grand à Marc Antoine (Paris, 2006 2), 154–9Google Scholar; Osborne, M.J., Athens in the Third Century b.c. (Athens, 2012), 43–50Google Scholar.

12 Tracy, S.V., ‘Athenian politicians and inscriptions of the years 307 to 302’, Hesperia 69 (2000), 227–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 [Plut.] Mor. 850F–851C.

14 On the use of the past in Chremonides’ decree, see N. Luraghi, ‘Stairway to heaven. The politics of memory in early Hellenistic Athens’, in M. Canevaro and B. Gray (edd.), The Hellenistic Reception of Classical Athenian Democracy and Political Thought (Oxford, 2018), 21–43; for the legacy of the Persian Wars in general, see Jung, M., Marathon und Plataiai. Zwei Perserschlachten als “lieux de mémoire” im antiken Griechenland (Göttingen, 2006)Google Scholar.

15 For the events and their relevant sources, see Buck, R.J., Thrasybulus and the Athenian Democracy: The Life of an Athenian Statesman (Stuttgart, 1998), 71–88Google Scholar; Wolpert, A., Remembering Defeat. Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (Baltimore, 2002)Google Scholar.

16 Nouhaud, M., L'utilisation de l'histoire par les orateurs attiques (Paris, 1982), 311–12Google Scholar. On historical memory in the Attic orators, see M. Canevaro, ‘Memory, the orators, and the public in fourth century b.c. Athens’, in P. Ceccarelli and L. Castagnoli (edd.), Greek Memories. Theories and Practice (Cambridge, 2019), 136–57; G. Westwood, The Rhetoric of the Past in Demosthenes and Aeschines: Oratory, History, and Politics in Classical Athens (Oxford, 2020).

17 Dem. 20.11; see Kremmydas, C., Commentary on Demosthenes Against Leptines (Oxford, 2012), 202–5Google Scholar; Canevaro, M., Demostene. Contro Leptine: Introduzione, traduzione e commento storico (Berlin and Boston, 2016), 206–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who shows that εἰς ἓν ἦλθεν must refer to the reunification of the ἄστυ and the Piraeus (rather than Eleusis); Westwood (n. 16), 95.

18 Cf. also IG II/III2 1201.8–9.

19 For the use of fifth-century historical paradigms in the political discourse of early Hellenistic Athens, see J.L. Shear, ‘The politics of the past: remembering revolution at Athens’, in J. Marincola, L. Llewellyn-Jones and C. Maciver (edd.), Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras (Edinburgh, 2012), 276–300.

20 Von den Hoff (n. 4), 177.

21 Wolpert (n. 15), 79.

22 IG II/III2 448; S. Wallace, ‘History and hindsight. The importance of Euphron of Sikyon for the Athenian democracy in 318/7’, in H. Hauben and A. Meeus (edd.), The Age of the Successors and the Creation of the Hellenistic Kingdoms (323–276 b.c.) (Leuven, 2014), 599–629, with bibliography.

23 IG II/III2 448.62–4 νῦν δὲ ἐπειδὴ ὅ τε δῆμος [κατελ]|ήλυθε καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀ[πείλη]|φε ‘but now since the People has [come back] and has [recovered] its laws and democracy …’. On the legacy of the ‘return of the dēmos’ image, see Shear, J.L., Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar.

24 Rhodes, P.J. and Lewis, D.M., The Decrees of the Greek States (Oxford, 1997), 46Google Scholar.

25 Olympiodoros, then, belonged to that group for which historians, inclined to analyse Athenian political history through the lens of party politics, have coined the label of nationalists. For a rebuttal of this approach, see Luraghi, N., ‘Stratokles of Diomeia and party politics in early Hellenistic Athens’, C&M 65 (2014), 191–226Google Scholar. A similar degree of political transformism can be also observed in the career of Phaidros of Sphettos; Shear, J.L., ‘An inconvenient past in Hellenistic Athens: the case of Phaidros of Sphettos’, Histos Supplement 11 (2020), 269–301Google Scholar.

26 See IG II/III2 1629.622–9 and IG II/III3 339.8–9 with J.K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 b.c. (Oxford, 1971), 163–5.

27 IG II/III2 457 + 3207 ≈ [Plut.] Mor. 851F–852E; E. Culasso Gastaldi, ‘Eroi della città: Eufrone di Sicione e Licurgo di Atene’, in A. Barzanò et al. (edd.), Modelli eroici dall'antichità alla cultura europea (Rome, 2003), 65–98, at 68–81. Those honours not only bolstered the prestige of Lykourgos’ family, most notably his son Habron; they also provided the city with a model of Athenian ethos, in the context of the latest democratic recovery following the ousting of Demetrios of Phaleron.

28 N. Luraghi, ‘Kallias of Sphettos between two worlds’, in M. Dana and I. Savalli-Lestrade (edd.), La cité interconnectée dans le monde gréco-romain (Bordeaux, 2019), 273–85. On Kallias’ decree in general, see Shear (n. 5).

29 See n. 7 above.

30 The otherwise obscure passage of Polyainos (5.17.1) is thought to be referring to this feat. It describes a failed assault on the Piraeus which resulted in the slaughter of 420 Athenian soldiers who managed to get in the harbour stronghold, but then were betrayed. Oliver (n. 2), 58–60 places the event in 286. However, as Osborne, M.J., ‘Kallias, Phaedros and the revolt of Athens in 287 b.c.’, ZPE 35 (1979), 181–94, at 194Google Scholar rightly notes, the assault makes far more sense in 281 or thereafter. If that is correct, Polyainos alludes to the (attempt of) recovery which the decree for Euthios and other decrees of that period foretell.

31 For Piraeus and democracy in the fifth century, see J. Roy, ‘The threat from the Piraeus’, in P. Cartledge, P. Millet and S. von Reden (edd.), Kosmos. Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1998), 191–202.

32 Taylor (n. 6), 210; contra, Garland, R., The Piraeus: From the Fifth to the First Century b.c. (London, 2001 2), 45–8Google Scholar.

33 Oliver (n. 2), 54.

34 Tracy, S.V., Athens and Macedon. Attic Letter Cutters of 300 to 229 b.c. (Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 2003), 12Google Scholar: ‘The presence of a Macedonian garrison in Piraeus … could have been very repressive of the exercise of real democracy, even if its outward forms remained in place.’