A long-standing rivalry, filled to the brim with warfare and mutual dislike – that is the picture provided in most investigations of Atheno-Boiotian relations. These often, however, employ a shorter chronological framework, rather than a diachronic overview of the Archaic and Classical periods (550–323 BCE), as will be given here. Moving through this time frame, the fluctuations in outlook between the two will be examined, illustrating that the notion of long-standing enmity with brief moments of friendship portray a faulty impression of this relationship. The wider perspective allows for a more complex picture to emerge. It also brings to the fore the issues of historiography, or how the silence or cursory treatment of events in our sources should not automatically be taken as evidence of periods of hostility, such as after the Persian Wars. This analysis of these periods betrays the intentions of our (literary) sources and, in turn, the assumptions of later scholars in following them. Instead, the neighbourly relationship was mostly one of peaceful co-existence, only occasionally disturbed by the threat of a common foe or through direct warfare.

This chapter reconnects the architectural terracottas from different roofs of the cult building on the acropolis at Satricum with related foundations and in the process discovers a hitherto-unknown temple. While it was known that the cult building at the site went through multiple phases of extension, refurbishment, and reconstruction, the application of 3D modelling techniques in which all elements of the buildings are connected has succeeded in reconciling problematic data by identifying a new structure named ‘Sacellum II’. When the results are compared to contemporary temples in Rome, the relative precociousness of different cities’ architecture can be re-evaluated, leading to the suggestion that Caere, along with eastern Greece and Sicily, may have been influential in the development of religious architecture in central Italy. The project shows the value of studying terracottas and foundations together, something that is not done as a matter of course.

The third chapter is concerned with a foundational moment in the history of the archive. The poetic ‘road’ to Hyperborea, there, rather than cult or sanctuaries, serves as the focus for looking at the earliest records of the Hyperborean nexus in archaic epic. A first section looks at trajectories from Hyperborea. The second section analyses Pindar's construction of a journey to Hyperborea in Pythian 10 and Bacchylides' instrumentalisation of Hyperborea in Ode 3. Both readings aim to shed some light on how the two poets composed their worlds with material that was already in place. The rest of the chapter proceeds to examine the nature of this earlier material. The third section looks at the scene of the Iliad (13.1–9) where Zeus turns his gaze towards the men of the distant North, and it sets out the evidence for other relevant early epic texts. The fourth section looks more closely at the fragments of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women where the circular travels of the winged Boreads bring them all the way to ‘the well-horsed Hyperboreans’. The fifth section revisits in some detail the fragments of Aristeas of Proconnesus' epic narrative of a journey to the distant North, the Arimaspeia.