Wastias: the lion of Thebes

Abstract

This article offers the first comprehensive presentation of a monumental funerary lion found approximately 60 years ago in Thebes. Remarkably, the stone lion’s breast is inscribed with the name of the deceased, Ϝαστίας. On numismatic, epigraphic and historical grounds, I identify this Wastias as the homonymous magistrate appearing on staters of the Boiotian koinon in ca. 400 BC, but also as Astias, one of the leading Laconizing Theban politicians on the eve of the Corinthian War (Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 20.1–2). Wastias’ death can be very plausibly placed in 395 BC, the year of the battle of Haliartos. The proposed association is supported by a stylistic analysis of the monument, which thus becomes one of the best-dated sculpted lions of the Classical period. My contextual analysis of the monument reaffirms the notoriously oligarchic orientation of Theban politics. It also prompts a re-examination of other funerary lions, most notably its regional successor in the lion of Chaironeia. It concludes with a reflection on the nature of individual versus collective commemorative practices.

In memory of Andrew Stewart

I. Introduction

The visitor to the quaint Museum of Chaironeia in northwest Boiotia is met by a formidable beast: a marble lion erected on a lofty stone base. The monument, restored in the early 20th century, originally stood a couple of kilometres away from its present location. It marked the mass grave of 254 heroic soldiers. Brothers in arms, the select members of the famous Sacred Band fell on that harrowing day in August 338 BC when the Macedonian army showed once and for all their martial superiority. ¹ The towering lion has by now become emblematic. It exemplifies military courage and communal self-sacrifice, ² virtues habitually associated with the backbone of the Greek polis, the hoplite phalanx.

This image has become canonical. In this article, I intend to introduce another lion that has come out of the Boiotian earth. Its modern story is rarely told and all but forgotten. It is a story of entrepreneurial greed, untimely death and scholarly negligence. Meanwhile, its ancient story, when recounted, draws out the hidden dynamics of a society whose monumentalizing culture oscillated between the collective and the individual. The lion in question has been known for some time now, but has unjustifiably generated very little interest.

The inscribed lion was discovered in 1961 or 1962 (see below) during the construction of a drainage channel in Kanapitsa (Καναπίτσα), about 2km north of modern Thebes, in one of the main cemeteries of the Classical city. ³ The discovery of the monument was briefly reported in the Greek daily Kathimerini on 8 January 1965. It was on the basis of that report that A. Geoffrey Woodhead produced a Latin lemma for SEG. ⁴ This first journalistic communiqué was promptly followed by a brief scholarly feature in the short-lived American numismatics journal Voice of the Turtle. ⁵ Paradoxically, this little gem, the only substantial eyewitness account of the discovery of the lion in English, left almost no legacy. ⁶ At any rate, the editio princeps came out shortly thereafter in the Archaiologikon Deltion. ⁷ The treatment was succinct, in the customary style of the Greek Archaeological Service’s main journalistic venue, yet erudite, in the typical manner of Stephanos Koumanoudes the younger. Nevertheless, the two small photographs published by Koumanoudes did not do justice to the size and monumentality of the sculpted animal. That, the all too familiar disregard for modern Greek publications and the relative obscurity of the Voice of the Turtle have meant that not only epigraphists but even experts in the field of sculptural studies have largely remained oblivious to the lion of Thebes. ⁸

II. Description

Today, the lion of Kanapitsa stands on a low modern pedestal in the courtyard of the new Archaeological Museum of Thebes, under the shade of the medieval Tower of Saint Omer (fig. 1). The lion is badly damaged. It has lost its head, its groin, almost the entirety of its forelegs and most of its hindlegs, but its body and the majority of its haunches survive. It has a preserved height of 2.02m and a maximum preserved length of 2.65m. The length, however, between the two notional vertical axes that define the preserved front and rear extremities of the lion is ca. 1.80m.

Fig. 1. The lion of Thebes: frontal view (photograph by Dimitrios Sourlas).

The lion is of the seated type. As preserved, it is made of a single piece of cosmic latte limestone (‘Thespian stone’). ⁹ However, as the first editor aptly noted, the missing head would have been made from a separate piece of stone. It would have been placed on the lion’s neck, roughly a flat oval surface with anathyrosis, 0.081m maximum length and 0.068m maximum width. At the centre of the neck surface, which has been worked with a point, a square dowel hole was used for the insertion of the head, measuring 0.13m on each side and approximately 0.06m in depth, preserving residues of red rust at the bottom. Behind it, towards the nape of the neck, one can see a shallow (ca. 0.01m) pouring channel for lead; it has a length of 0.23m and a width of 0.03m. It is worth noting that in the technical fashioning of the animal’s upper part for the insertion of the head, the Theban lion bears a striking resemblance to that from neighbouring Thespiai which crowned the public funerary monument for the Battle of Delion in 424. ¹⁰

It need hardly be stated that the loss of the head is most unfortunate. One can hardly speculate about the rendering of the eyes, ears, muzzle, mouth, etc. Obviously, most of the mane has disappeared along with the head, but its lower edges, elegantly rendered in low relief, ¹¹ are preserved around the surviving part of the neck. They take the form of flamelike locks that are turned to the left at the front and to the right at the back, ¹² when seen from the sides, giving the impression of a ruff that is so typical of pre-Hellenistic lions. ¹³ At the front, the mane is wedged into the chest, taking the form of wavy reversed chevrons, echoes of which can be observed on the chest of the lion of Chaironeia and on that of the typologically similar Getty lion. ¹⁴ It subsequently expands, roughly at the place where the inscription is carved, before splitting into two branches until it smoothly fades away. Its two halves are markedly asymmetrical, with the proper right being fuller, wider and more finished than the left. Although most of the mane on the chest was probably made with a simple chisel, certain concave surfaces show traces of a coarse rasp, a tool often used for texturing hair. At the back, the mane is surprisingly short. ¹⁵ It only runs for a length of 0.15m, hardly going beyond the point where the neck is separated from the main torso, in the shape of the reversed chevron that can be observed at the front.

The lion’s body is cylindrical and sturdy, its back notably unwrinkled since the mane, as noted above, does not continue there (fig. 2). In fact, the body has been smoothed with a rasp, a process that has left faint, almost microscopic traces all over the surface. It is not inconceivable that the sculptor deliberately left these fine rasp marks in order to subtly suggest the lion’s fur; the visual effect would have been reinforced by the use of colour. ¹⁶ Otherwise, anatomical details are rendered unobtrusively, with six ribs indicated on both sides by means of smooth ridges (figs 3 and 4). Individual muscles are indicated by sizeable, somewhat schematic bulges that tend to be more conspicuous around the joints of the torso to the limbs (fig. 3). This feature arguably reflects the stress put on the body from the now missing forelegs. The muscles rise slightly higher on the proper right, matching the asymmetry of the mane on the chest. This almost imperceptible asymmetry might suggest that the lion’s head was turned slightly to the right, in the manner of the famous lion of Chaironeia. ¹⁷ The haunches are also sturdy and muscular; the left is better preserved. Overall, the sculptor has created a lion that appears imposing, almost stately by virtue of its steadfastness.

Fig. 2. The lion of Thebes: rear view (photograph by Dimitrios Sourlas).

Fig. 3. The lion of Thebes: left view (photograph by Dimitrios Sourlas).

Fig. 4. The lion of Thebes: three-quarter view from the front right (photograph by author).

The first editor tantalizingly claimed that the lion’s tail was missing; this is not true. Its inception can still be seen at the back of the lion (fig. 2), where it has the form of a vertical band, about 0.135m wide, that disappears under the lion’s buttocks before reappearing over the left haunch, in the typical manner of Classical lions. ¹⁸ Its tip has the form of a tuft approximately 0.38m long consisting of clusters of wavy tresses (fig. 3).

At its lower part the lion ends in a partly preserved circular plinth, approximately 0.38m tall, which would have been inserted into a pedestal. The surviving chord has a length of 1.20m. Since it is slightly shorter than a semicircle, the original perimeter of the plinth would have been approximately 2.50–2.60m. In his editio princeps Koumanoudes reported that the lion was originally found near a large base made of poros stone, adding that the base was subsequently destroyed. ¹⁹ This is regrettable, but the erstwhile base should be taken into account. Standing on a pedestal, the lion would have inspired even greater awe than it does today.

Although some morphological details might even point to the fifth century BC, most of the rather admittedly limited comparanda cited above leave little if any doubt that the lion dates to the fourth century. Yet Mertens-Horn’s aphorism that fourth-century BC lions cannot be dated precisely remains as valid today as it was 35 years ago. ²⁰ In the rendering of its torso, the Theban lion looks quite minimalistic: the absence of veins points to the first quarter of the fourth century BC. ²¹ As far as its posture is concerned, the Theban lion seems closer to that of Peiraieus (now in Venice) and the almost identical lion of Moschato than, say, the upright lions of Chaironeia and Amphipolis. ²² Unfortunately, neither of the two Attic lions is firmly dated. ²³ I will resume examination of this aspect below in section V. As a closing statement to the morphological part of my analysis, I can but repeat the striking assessment of the Theban lion’s artistic quality by one of the finest ancient art historians of the 20th century: ‘The colossal seated lion found near the Thebes railway station … although now headless and bereft of its base, is as splendid a beast as one will encounter in any lion-loving civilization’. ²⁴

III. The date of the lion: status quaestionis

In the editio princeps, Koumanoudes put forward a date between 379 and 338 BC on palaeographical and historical grounds, adding that 335 BC, the year of the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great, was the indisputable terminus ante quem. Moreover, he tentatively identified the deceased with Ϝαστίας ‘the boeotarch’, whose name appears on several coins thought at the time to date to ca. 379–338 BC (see below). ²⁵ More than a decade later, Koumanoudes repeated the same identification in his comprehensive Theban prosopography. ²⁶

Otherwise, one should take heed of a very early and totally overlooked brief mention of the lion in an old article published by Cornelius Vermeule in 1968. A checklist of funerary animals compiled by Vermeule with Penelope von Kersburg contains a brief entry that seems relevant: ‘Giant, headless “Polyandrion” lion, Thebes’. ²⁷ This is no doubt the lion under consideration. What is more striking is the date proposed by the compilers of the catalogue: 400–390 BC. I do not know on what authority Vermeule and von Kersburg advocated for this date, which is patently not that favoured by the first editor. Nor do I know whether either Vermeule or von Kersburg (or both) was able to carry out autopsy of the lion, although it seems that one of them must have had first-hand knowledge of the sculpture, and I therefore suspect that their chronological suggestion was based on morphological criteria. Regardless, their date is not wide of the mark; in fact it is spot on, as I will demonstrate presently.

IV. The inscription: epigraphic and historical aspects

On the lion’s chest, on each side of the mane as formed under the neck, stretches the following inscription (fig. 5):

Fig. 5. The lion of Thebes: the inscription (photograph by author).

Fασ ^vac. τίας

A 0.25m gap (vacat) effectively separates the two letter sequences, which consist of three and four elements respectively. The letter height ranges between ca. 0.065 and 0.075m. The alpha has a straight horizontal line. The sigma has four bars, the top and bottom of which slant outwards. ²⁸ The tau and iota are conventional and allow little chronological precision. Together, though, the letters indicate that this is a fourth-century BC inscription, earlier rather than later in the century. More significant is the digamma. One should be careful not to assume automatically that its appearance allows identification of the script as Boiotian. In fact, the digamma was often, albeit not always, marked on Boiotian inscriptions long after the old epichoric script had been replaced by the Ionic alphabet. ²⁹ Ultimately, it has to be conceded that we lack good diagnostic letters to decide whether the name Fαστίας was carved in the Boiotian or the Ionic script.

We can reap greater rewards from onomastic and prosopographic analysis. The name (F)αστίας is relatively rare. ³⁰ In the form Ἀστίας, it is known from two Boiotian cities, Chaironeia and Thebes. The Chaironeian Astias lived in the Hellenistic period and will not preoccupy us here. The Theban Astias is known from the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia as one of the leaders of the oligarchic, or rather Laconizing, party that was entangled in the fierce power struggles that rattled early fourth-century BC Thebes. Here, it should be pointed out that the name appears in two different forms in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, Ἀσίας and Ἀστίας. ³¹ In his Theban prosopography, Koumanoudes recorded the two opposing scholarly views on the correct form of the name. ³² Eventually Koumanoudes accepted, no doubt rightly, that Ἀστίας is the correct form.

Yet this is not the end of the story. In the proper Boiotian version, Fαστίας, the name is slightly more common throughout Boiotia, with nine entries in the authoritative Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (3B). In Thebes itself, one interesting attestation occurs in a catalogue generis incerti, which is traditionally, and probably correctly, dated to the mid-fourth century BC. ³³ Besides a single Hellenistic attestation, obviously irrelevant to our discussion, there remain the Theban Fαστίας of the lion from Thebes and the Fαστίας of the coins, who in LGPN 3B is placed under Boiotia, rather than Thebes, presumably because of his being identified as a federal magistrate. Now, as already mentioned, Koumanoudes believed that the magistrate on the coins and the man commemorated on the lion were one and the same person. ³⁴ The identification seems correct. A question worth asking, however, is whether this Wastias could be also identified with the prominent politician of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia. The rarity of the name, I believe, gives good reasons to assume that this is indeed the case. ³⁵

We need to shift attention temporarily to the field of numismatics and the well-known series of Theban, probably federal, staters that bear abbreviated forms of magistrates’ names. ³⁶ It was Hepworth who rekindled interest in these staters roughly 35 years ago by undertaking a die link study that substantially clarified their relative chronology. More pertinent to our discussion, it was Hepworth who first proposed to identify one of the coin magistrates, Wastias, as the homonymous Theban leader of the Laconizing faction. ³⁷ A further breakthrough has recently been made with the contention of Albert Schachter, the doyen of Boiotian studies, that the inception of the magistrate coins should be pushed back to the end of the fifth century BC. ³⁸ Schachter’s revision has several implications, one of which is that the coins struck, or authorized, by Wastias, who features in issue no. 7 of group A, appear to date to the late fifth or the early fourth century BC. But if Wastias were also to be identified, as per Koumanoudes, with the man whose name appears on the lion of Kanapitsa, then we would end up with a most welcome tripartite identification: Wastias, one of the leading pro-Spartan politicians of late fifth-/early fourth-century Thebes, was assigned the task of supervising the striking of Theban/Boiotian staters at some time before 382 BC, and most probably in the years around 400 BC. At a later point, when Wastias died, he was commemorated with the gigantic lion of Kanapitsa. In sum, the question has now been reduced to establishing, if possible, the date of Wastias’ death.

A good argument from silence can be made that Wastias was already dead by 382 BC. This was the year when a clique of Theban extremists led by Leontiades set up a pro-Laconian junta in Thebes. ³⁹ Sundry sources explicitly name Leontiades as the leader of the oligarchic faction and further mention the active role of several other individuals; Wastias is conspicuously absent. ⁴⁰ Given his earlier prominence and association with Leontiades in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, it is highly unlikely that had he been still alive he would have somehow remained totally invisible between 382 and 379 BC, when the pro-democratic Thebans led by Pelopidas put a bloody end to the unconstitutional oligarchical interlude.

Koumanoudes argued that the lion of Kanapitsa evinced death on the battlefield and further suggested that the sculpture was part of a polyandrion. ⁴¹ Both hypotheses are reasonable but, although conceptually congruent, are not necessarily coexistent and should be considered separately. Iconographically, the lion is indeed a symbol of military prowess; the connection is so obvious, even diachronically and cross-culturally, that it hardly needs any theoretical support. There would seem to be no doubt that Koumanoudes was right to suggest that Wastias had died on the battlefield.

At first glance, and given Wastias’ pro-Spartan sympathies, it might seem tempting to look for an occasion on which Theban military forces fought alongside Spartans, or at least under the aegis of Sparta. It has been argued, for instance, that the pro-Laconian party temporarily returned to power around 385 BC, when Thebes dispatched troops to reinforce the Spartan besiegers of Mantineia. ⁴² As related by Plutarch, our main source for this military episode, ⁴³ the Thebans did suffer some casualties. So, could Wastias have been one of those heroic Thebans who lost their lives fighting alongside their Spartan friends?

Some caution is needed. Plutarch recounts the skirmish at Mantineia in his Life of Pelopidas as an early manifestation of the close friendship that connected Pelopidas and Epaminondas. Both of these Theban celebrities were known for their democratic leanings, whatever ‘democratic’ meant in the Theban ideological spectrum. Certainly, neither could ever be described as a Laconizer. The salient point is that, regardless of their political affiliations, Theban noblemen were very much typical Greek aristocrats who would have fought at whatever battles their fatherland’s interest required. Just as there was nothing strange in Pelopidas and Epaminondas fighting in a battle meant to boost Sparta’s interests, there should be no obstacle to the idea that Wastias died fighting in a battle against Sparta, if this is what Theban political expediency dictated. Now, the latest securely datable appearance of Wastias is in 395, on the eve of the Corinthian War. ⁴⁴ Given the observations made above, he could have died at any time between 395 and 382. And, although Wastias’ political faction was on the decline from at least 395, this does not mean that he and his peers were removed from Thebes and therefore unable to participate in its military operations. ⁴⁵

In fact, the very first year of the Corinthian War offers the most historically plausible context for Wastias’ death. Primarily remembered as the occasion of Lysander’s demise, the Battle of Haliartos was the first open clash between Sparta and Thebes in a very long time. ⁴⁶ A Spartan defeat, the Battle of Haliartos also took a heavy toll on the Theban forces. In Plutarch’s account, 300 Thebans met a heroic death pursuing the retreating Spartan troops uphill. ⁴⁷ Plutarch goes on to add an interesting detail, which seems too specific to be fabricated: those 300 valiant Thebans pressed hard, careless of the danger, precisely because they wished to absolve themselves of accusations of pro-Laconian sympathies. ⁴⁸ It is certainly striking that the crucial phrase, ἦσαν ἐν αἰτίᾳ τοῦ λακωνίζϵιν, echoes mutatis mutandis the exact phrase used to denote the pro-Athenian followers of Ismenias in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (οἱ μὲν πϵρὶ τὸν Ἰσμηνίαν αἰτίαν μὲν ϵἶχον ἀττικίζϵιν). ⁴⁹ It is likely that both expressions resonate with current political parlance in Thebes at the time. In any case, I doubt that the 300 pro-Laconian Theban patriots would have attacked in this way of their own volition. Most likely, they constituted a large part of the support base of the faction of Wastias and his fellow Laconizers. All in all, it is tempting to assume that the Battle of Haliartos was the occasion for the death, and subsequent disappearance from our sources, of one of the greatest pro-Laconian leaders that Thebes had ever boasted, namely, Wastias.

V. Further analysis: the lionization of Wastias

Lions, sphinxes and other apotropaic figures had already been employed in the early Archaic period not simply as grave markers but also as tomb guardians. ⁵⁰ Although this obvious and rather banal function of funerary lions is applicable to the lion of Thebes, the inscription calls for further analysis.

Rather predictably, lions became early on the object of anthropomorphic analysis, a familiar strand of Greek thought. From fables to philosophical treatises, lions often stand, speak and behave like human beings. This is nowhere better epitomized than in the Aristotelian Physiognomonica: ‘The lion seems of all creatures to be the most perfect example of the masculine qualities … In spirit he is generous and independent, noble and proud, and mild, just and affectionate towards his pride’. ⁵¹ Turning to more mainstream literary products, in an oft-cited epigram attributed to Antipater of Sidon, a lion decorating the monument of a certain Teleutias, clearly a fallen warrior, grandly replies to the enquiring passer-by: ‘Not in vain stand I here, but I emblem the prowess of the man, for he was indeed a lion to his enemies’. ⁵² This unambiguous statement has been widely used by scholars to endow funerary lions with a meaning that transcends their basic function of vigilance. We will see below a parallel symbolic interpretation.

Not only was lion imagery a ubiquitous proxy for humans in antiquity, it almost appears to be a universal transhistorical phenomenon. ⁵³ One instantly thinks of the famous English king Richard the Lionheart, or hic leo noster, ‘this lion of ours’, as he was hailed in impeccable medieval Latin by his contemporaries. ⁵⁴ In the case of the Theban lion, the austere, diligently executed carving on the beast’s chest establishes identity: ‘Wastias is a lion’, or ‘This lion is Wastias’, states the caption. The predication is unique as concerns Greek lions sculpted in the round. Relatively close is the long-known and much-admired iconographic and verbal pun on the fourth-century BC Attic grave relief for Leon of Sinope. ⁵⁵

One could argue that the unequivocal statement made by the inscription attests to some very acute sense of class identity. Wastias himself bore a name that arguably oozed urban(e) civility and superiority in implicit contrast to rustic uncouthness. ⁵⁶ One of his peers in the Laconizing triumvirate was the wonderfully named Koiratadas, ‘Mr Rulerson’. ⁵⁷ Besides, wasn’t the strongman of the same triumvirate Leontiades, the ‘Lion’s son’? A scenario whereby Leontiades and Wastias were not simply collaborators but also relatives would then add an extra hermeneutic angle to our investigation of a lion as the preferred means of commemorating Wastias. Alas, tempting as it is, the idea is not borne out by the extant evidence.

As historians, we had better take a different path. Leontiades, as it happens, belonged to an old Theban family of noble lineage: his ancestors were leading figures of Theban history in the early and mid-fifth century BC, ⁵⁸ and his descendants continued to stake claims to fame well after the Classical period, and indeed after Thebes itself had vanished. An early member of the family, Leontiades son of Eurymachos, had fought along with 400 fellow Thebans at the Battle of Thermopylai under the leadership of Leonidas; only to surrender, Medizing cowards that they were. ⁵⁹ Onomastics has led to the tempting suggestion that the two aristocratic families, the clan of the Theban Leontiades and the royal family of the Agiad Leonidas, enjoyed some special relationship, perhaps through xenia. ⁶⁰ In that respect, it is worth noting that Leonidas’ sacrifice was commemorated with the erection of a lion at Thermopylai, an obviously multivalent allusion to his royal pedigree, bravery and name. ⁶¹ In fact, it was precisely the lost lion of Thermopylai to which Koumanoudes referred as an obvious predecessor of the Theban lion. ⁶² So, even if we dismissed the theory that Wastias was a relative of his political ally Leontiades, we should keep in mind the possibility that his lion was inspired by the archetypal Spartan lion of Leonidas, hinting at the deceased’s pro-Sparta alignment. Alternatively, Wastias’ lion might have inventively appropriated a Laconian sculptural type by turning it into an emblem of Theban superiority vis-à-vis Sparta, ⁶³ especially if Wastias died at the Battle of Haliartos pursuing the retreating Spartan troops.

In somewhat similar fashion, John Ma recently compared the lion of Thermopylai to the lion of Chaironeia in his superb analysis of the latter. For Ma, Leonidas’ late Archaic/early Classical lion offers an idiosyncratic perspective on modern interpretations of the lion of Chaironeia by ‘writing it into a Panhellenic narrative of remembered good deaths, in an act of selective memory’. ⁶⁴ The other lion adduced by Ma was the aforementioned lion from the polyandrion of Thespiai. ⁶⁵ According to Ma, the Thespian parallel complicates further the interpretation of its Chaironeian counterpart by offering a local perspective permeated by the uneasy, and often openly hostile, relationship between Thebes and Thespiai. But I should like to argue that instead of only harking back to the fifth century BC, students of the late Classical/early Hellenistic lion of Chaironeia could hardly do better than examine a fourth-century lion, and a Theban one at that.

Indeed, the lions of Thespiai, Thebes and Chaironeia have a close morphological connection: they all belong to the so-called seated type. Significantly, this was not the most common lion type used in Greek funerary art. On the contrary, for the most part Greek lions were depicted in the reclining or the attacking positions. It has been observed that most of the seated lions come from outside Attica, primarily from central and northern Greece, as well as from the islands and Ionia. ⁶⁶ Be that as it may, the seated type further includes such celebrities as the lion at Venice, originally from Peiraieus, and that of Amphipolis, which recently returned to the limelight, following the discovery at Kastas in Amphipolis of the gigantic tomb with which the lion has been tentatively associated. To the same type belong a lion from Marathon now in the Getty Museum, ⁶⁷ the lion of the Canellopoulos Museum, ⁶⁸ the lion of Moschato (a twin of the Venice lion), an early Hellenistic lion from Larisa ⁶⁹ and, in a slightly different medium, the lion in relief on the stele of Leon of Sinope mentioned above. ⁷⁰ The latter is a good reminder that one should not automatically associate lions of the seated type with polyandria. ⁷¹ Koumanoudes, for instance, had claimed that the lion of Thebes commemorated a man who had died in war and who had received a burial at the public expense in a polyandrion. Whereas the first part of his postulation is sound, the second is not necessarily true. The analysis above shows that it is more economical to hypothesize that the lion of Thebes marked the private monument of Wastias as an emblem of the man’s gallantry; ‘a perfect example of masculine qualities’, to recall the pseudo-Aristotelian physiognomist, the lion emphasized Wastias’ individual achievements rather than collective effort.

Reflection on the wider historical context is imperative here. By and large, Classical Thebes was socially and politically conservative. The historian of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia makes it explicit that the two main political factions of Thebes in 395, the Laconizers and the pro-Athenians, consisted of members of the local aristocracy, the βέλτιστοι and γνωριμώτατοι. ⁷² However, things changed dramatically once Pelopidas and his supporters managed to overturn the pro-Spartan oligarchical regime of Leontiades in 379. Apparently, the sojourn of the Theban exiles in Athens had a long-term political impact, and even though Peter Rhodes has recently argued that the post-379 Theban constitution was effectively a moderate oligarchy, ⁷³ the fact of the matter is that the Thebans themselves consistently employed the language of democracy to designate their institutions. ⁷⁴

One of the collective institutions actively promoted by the Thebans was the celebrated Sacred Band (ἱϵρὸς λόχος). The brainchild of the Theban hipparch Gorgidas, the Sacred Band was a first-rate military corps that did much towards establishing the so-called Theban Hegemony in the second quarter of the fourth century BC under the command of Pelopidas. ⁷⁵ And although the Battle of Mantineia in 362 put an end to Theban aspirations of Panhellenic supremacy, Thebes remained a major force in Hellenic affairs until the catastrophic Battle of Chaironeia in 338 and the heroic demise of the Sacred Band therein. Either in the aftermath of the battle in 338 or after 315, when Thebes was refounded at the personal instigation of Cassander, ⁷⁶ the battlefield became a major lieu de memoire and was marked with the splendid gigantic lion of Chaironeia. In the absence of a commemorative epigram, the seated lion sufficed to symbolize the θυμός, the spirit of the Theban heroes. ⁷⁷

We can now see that the lion of Chaironeia did not come out of nowhere. Rather than representing a novelty, the Chaironeian monument had a local predecessor, the lion that stood on the tomb of Wastias. In its moment of defeat, Thebes attempted in vain to emphasize collective identity. It did so by appropriating the commemorative practices of its great men, which it invested with an anonymity that emphasized group agency. In 338, ⁷⁸ the anonymity of the lion of Chaironeia stressed collective sacrifice. Half a century earlier, the lion of Kanapitsa had performed a totally different role. The plain inscription of Fαστίας celebrated individual deeds, proudly proclaiming, ‘I am an emblem of the prowess of the man, for he was indeed a lion to his enemies’, to use Antipater’s words quoted above. The funerary monument of Wastias encapsulated the historical agency of the so-called ‘great man’. ⁷⁹ But, I believe, it did so with artistic subtlety inspired by sophistication that harkened back to the Homeric origins of Greek culture. For if the lion of Chaironeia denoted the valiant spirit (θυμός) of the members of the Sacred Band, as per Pausanias, then surely the lion of Thebes exemplified the θυμός of Wastias. ⁸⁰ From Homer onwards, the θυμός, the soul, or rather the emotional component of the soul, was located in one’s breast. ⁸¹ No wonder then that it was there, on the puffed up, shaggy chest of the lapidary beast, ἐν … στήθϵσσιν λασίοισι, ⁸² that the unknown sculptor carefully placed the austere inscription Fαστίας, an identifier of Wastias but also a visual symbol of the dead man’s θυμός. For the man was indeed θυμολέων (‘lion-hearted’). ⁸³

VI. Conclusion

In this article, I have tried to save from oblivion a major Boiotian monument, the funerary lion for the Theban statesman Wastias. It is my contention that the death of Wastias can be firmly established in the period before the pro-Spartan oligarchical coup at Thebes of 382 BC, if not in 395 BC, the year of the Battle of Haliartos. If so, archaeologists gain a well-dated monument that can serve as a point of reference for dating other sculptures of the same type. Similarly, I have sought to offer a corrective to the traditional narrative of Theban, and more widely Boiotian, commemorative practices by drawing attention to a striking instance of individual glorification. Throughout the Classical period, in particular during the ‘short fourth century’, Thebes oscillated incessantly between the public and the private. This tension, I contend, plays out even in memorialization culture. ⁸⁴ The seated funerary lion can no longer be seen as a sculptural type used solely in polyandria. The artistic and cultural road from the lion of Leonidas at Thermopylai to the lion of Chaironeia in memory of the heroes of the Sacred Band passes through the lion-crowned Thespian polyandrion for the Battle of Delion and, we now know, the splendid Theban lion that marked the moment when Wastias, a prominent member of the local elite, was forever lionized.