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The literary evidence for the Athenian empire is all too limited: Thucydides, surveying the growth of Athenian power in 1.89–118 to explain the origins of the Peloponnesian War, and returning frequently to the theme of Athenian power in the remainder of his history, but not seeing fit to tell us many things which he could have told us and which we should like to be told; contemporary reactions to the empire from Ps.-Xenophon and Aristophanes, and retrospective reactions from Plato and the Attic orators; the accounts of later prose writers, especially the history of Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. B.C.) and the relevant Lives of Plutarch (c. A.D. 100). It is a well-known and well-studied body of evidence, and in 1972 R. Meiggs was able to remark that ‘fifty years ago it was reasonable to think that nothing significantly new could be written about the Athenian Empire.’
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993
Footnotes
1.
Modern books cited in the notes to this chapter will be cited subsequently by author’s name only, except where some other form of reference is indicated at their first mention. In references to literary texts, chapters of Pausanias and of Plutarch’s Lives are subdivided into sections as in the latest Teubner editions (some editions, including the Loeb, use a different subdivision). For inscriptions I normally give one reference, where possible to IG (n. 14, below): equivalent references to A.T.L., ii (n. 4), to M&L (n. 17) and to the translations of Fornara (n. 20) may be obtained from the Comparative Table on pp. 46-7.
I should like to thank Dr. N. S. R. Hornblower for reading a draft of this booklet, and the University of Durham for a grant from its Research Fund.
References
2. Meiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972; corr. repr. 1973/5), p. vii Google Scholar.
3. Άρχαιολογική Έφημερίς (1924), 41-9.
4. Cited as A.T.L.: vol. 1 Cambridge, Mass., 1939; vols, ii/iii/iv Princeton, 1949/50/53. West was killed in a road accident in 1936, and Wade-Gery died in 1972, but Meritt and McGregor are still alive and still contributing to the subject.
5. Cf. below, pp. 15, 23.
6. I note one particularly adventurous piece of work: Clearchus’ coinage decree is dated in the early 440s by some scholars, in the 420s by others (M&L 45: cf. pp. 15-16 with 20 nn. 20-1): in PAPS 119 (1975), 267-74, Meritt restores a phrase, which leads him to restore a clause containing the decision to build the Hephaesteum, and since archaeologists date the beginning of the Hephaesteum с 449 he regards it as proved that the date of the decree is 449/8.
7. Cf. pp. 15-17. The complaint of M. I. Finley, that scholars were neglecting the important questions about the empire to argue over this question (TLS, 7 April 1966, 289), was misguided.
8. Cited as H.C.T.: vols, i-v Oxford, 1945 (corr. repr. 1950)/56/56/70/81.
9. Historia 3 (1954-5), 1-41.
10. See p. 35 n. 1 (each of Kagan’s books will be cited by its title).
11. de Ste Croix, G. E. M., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972)Google Scholar.
12. Cf. n. 2, above. He began writing on the empire with a review in CR 51 (1937), 24-5.
13. Cf. pp. 31-2 with 35 nn. 5-7: the new fragment was identified too late to be included in any of the collections of texts listed below in the remaining notes to this chapter.
14. Cited as IG i3.: Berlin, 1981.
15. Vol. v of the original edition (cited as C.A.H., v1) was published in Cambridge, 1927 (corr. repr. 1935).
16. Tod, M. N., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, (vol. i,) to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1933 Google Scholar; 24946 with appendix of addenda and corrigenda); vol. ii, from 404 to 323 B.C. (1948).
17. Cited as M&L: Meiggs, R. & Lewis, D. M., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1969; corr. repr. 1971/5)Google Scholar.
18. Oxford, 1951. This book is still of great value, and it is sad that the number of students capable of using it is no longer such as to justify its being kept in print.
19. The Athenian Empire (LACTOR 1, 1968); 2nd ed., with notes by J. K. Davies (1970); 3rd ed., revised by N. S. R. Hornblower and M. C. Greenstock (1984). The series also includes The Old Oligarch (i.e. Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol.: LACTOR 2, 1968).
20. Fornara, C. W., Translated Documents of Greece and Rome, 1. Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Baltimore, 1977 Google Scholar; Cambridge [U.K.], 21983).