The Islands As Stepping-Stones
For outsiders the real importance of the islands lay in their role as stations on routes elsewhere. The most important route ran west to east, from Athens, the Saronic Gulf, and Euboia to Asia Minor. The Delphic theorodokoi lists name in order, under the rubric
[9] Very probably evidence of the stopover on Keos is preserved in Chr. Dunant and J. Thomopoulos, BCH 78 (1954): 338–44, no. 14 (= SEG 14.544), cf. BE (1955): 180. Cf. also Berthold, 128–29. On the new Nesiotic League, see Etienne, 101–124.
[10] E.g., Paros, 16 talents 1,200 dr; Naxos, 6 talents 4,000 dr; Andros, 6 talents; Keos, 4 talents. Conveniently summarized in Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972), 558–59.
[11] For classical gold and silver mines of Siphnos, see BCH 113 (1989): 670; for Keian mines, L. Mendoni, Arkhaiognosia 4 (1985–86): 181. Keian miltos: John F. Cherry et al. in Landscape Archaeology, 299–303.
Khalkis, Eretria (both on Euboia), Athens, Karystos (on Euboia), Andros, and, after a mutilated passage, Koresia, Ioulis (both on Keos), and Kos. The Parian decree accepting asylia for Magnesia lists at the end sixteen Kykladic states, all surely visited by the same Magnesian embassy. A Rhodian ambassador traveling to Akhaia in the second century stopped off on Tenos; Tenos itself maintained frequent relations with the cities of Asia. A letter of [Aiskhines] reports an unintended stopover on Keos owing to a storm during a trip to Rhodos. The Rhodian entourage escorting Laodike, daughter of Seleukos IV, to Makedon for her marriage to Perseus naturally sojourned on Delos. Cicero stopped on Keos, Gyaros, Syros, and Delos on his way from Athens to take up his gubernatorial duties in Ephesos. Herodas Antipas visited Kos and Delos (OGIS 416; ID 1586 = Choix, 176 = OGIS 417). Strabo reports that Delos "is well situated for people sailing from Italy and Greece into Asia." Coin finds illustrate the axis Rhodos-Histiaia-Makedon.[12]
In contrast, there is less evidence for an important north-south route, although it is of course not entirely absent; three Roman envoys traveling from Khalkis to Egypt paused on Delos in 168 B.C. (Livy 44.29.1, see 45.10.2). But for Egypt, Krete was surely the crucial island, as Ptolemaic control of Itanos illustrates. Krete was an important stopover on one of the main routes from Egypt to Rhodos and Asia Minor (the others led directly to Rhodos or to Kypros), anchored by Itanos on the eastern end of the island. North of Tenos and Mykonos lies mostly open sea; ships coming out of the Black Sea sailed either south along the coast of Asia Minor or west past Samothrake, Thasos, and the Khalkidike, depending on where they were bound. Amphora finds support this view; amphorae from Black Sea and northern Greek states are rare on Delos and Tenos, whereas Rhodian, and later Knidian, finds are common.[13] The link between the north-
[12] André Plassart, BCH 45 (1921): 5–6, I.27–40 (on the date, see now M. Hatzopoulos, BCH 115 [1991]: 345–47); and see generally, J. M. Cook, BSA 83 (1988): 7–19, with further references. IvMag, 50.77–85. Louis Robert, Op. min. sel., I.328, Georges Rougement in Les Cyclades, 131–34; IG XII 5.829, Etienne, 185–87; [Aiskhines] Ep. 1.1; IG XI 4.1074, 1112–13 = Choix, 70–71, cf. ID 443Ab 29, 44, Bb71–74, with Choix, pp. 95–96, Polyb. 25.4.8–10; Livy 42.12.3–4; App. Mak. 11.2, Berthold, 174–78; Cic. Att. 105.1; Strabo 10.5.4 (486C). Coins: Etienne, 182–83; Louis Robert, Etudes de numismatique grecque (Paris, 1951), 179–216. Cf. also Plut. Per. 17.2–3, Holleaux, II.164–65, J.B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (London, 1951), 3.
[13] M. Zimmermann, ZPE 92 (1992): 207–8 (Krete); contra M.-F. Baslez, L'Etranger dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1984), 230, Kypros is not a suitable jumping-off point for expeditions into the Aegean. Etienne, 217–19; J.-Y. Empereur, in GD , 97–98.
west, particularly Makedon, and the Aegean was, of course, Histiaia at the northern end of Euboia.[14]
The role of the Kyklades as stepping-stones from Athens to Asia conditioned the interest of outsiders in them. As a general rule, outside hegemones who sought control of the Kyklades did so as a prelude to conquests elsewhere, either on mainland Greece or in Asia. Antigonos Monophthalmos planned to reassemble Alexander's empire; since he operated from a base in Asia, the natural first step in his plans to unseat Kassandros from Makedon was to send troops to secure the islands. It was his expedition of 314 B.C. that freed Delos from Athenian domination—Athens, it should be remembered, was then under Kassandros's control—and established the Nesiotic League. His son Demetrios used the Kyklades as a base for launching attacks on Athens in 307 B.C. And Antigonid troops under Demetrios's command frequently passed through the islands on their way to or from Athens or Asia: 250 ships with siege engines in 307 (Plut. Dem. 8.4, Diod. 20.45.1); perhaps similar numbers the next year (Plut. Dem. 15.1, Diod. 20.46.6); before Ipsos in 301, 1,500 cavalry, 8,000 Makedonians, 15,000 mercenaries, 25,000 allied troops from the Greek cities, 8,000 lightly armed troops, and an unspecified number of "pirates" (Diod. 20.110.4, 111.3); after Antigonos's defeat, 5,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. On the way, Demetrios stopped over in the Kyklades, where he resided in the temple of Apollo on Delos and received ambassadors from Athens, who announced the city's new policy of nonalignment. After his final defeat in Athens in 287 B.C. , he again fled to Asia with his fleet and 11,000 soldiers (Plut. Dem. 46.4).[15]
The powers that took advantage of interludes in Antigonid control had similar interests. When Polemaios rebelled against his uncle Antigonos in 311 B.C. and went over to Kassandros (Diod. 20.19.2), the inconvenience of his headquarters in the Hellespontos became immediately apparent, and he moved to Khalkis on Euboia, where he had operated in 312 B.C. in Antigonos's interest (Diod. 19.77.3, 20.27.3). His activities clearly illustrate the
[14] J. A. O. Larsen, Phoenix 19 (1965): 117–19; Robert, Etudes de numismatique grecque, 179–216. Some doubts about Robert's identification of the taurophoric coins: C. Boehringer, Zur Chronologie mittelhellenisticher Münzserien, 220–160 v. Chr. (Berlin, 1972), 32–37, followed by M. J. Price in Kraay-Mørkholm Essays: Numismatic Studies in Memory of C. M. Kraay and O. Mørkholm (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1989), 237–38.
[15] On the freedom of Delos, cf. J. Tréheux, Rev. Arch. 31/32 (1948): 1008–32. On Demetrios's last expedition, see Gabriele Marasco, Res publica litterarum 8 (1985): 148–63.
connection between the islands and central Greece. Likewise, the prelude to Ptolemaios's expedition of 308 B.C. against the Peloponnesos was the establishment of forces on Melos, Aigina, Eretria, and Andros; the king himself stopped on Delos on his way to Greece. Tenos may have issued coinage to commemorate this expedition.[16]
Perhaps the nicest illustration of the role of the islands comes from the periods of Ptolemaic control. Throughout the 280s, 270s, and 260s the Ptolemies pursued a vigorous policy on the mainland, which entailed a heightened presence in the Aegean. On Delos they seem to have established a cache of grain, undoubtedly for military use. They located garrisons at Itanos on Krete and on Thera, which guarded the routes from Egypt to Greece.[17] At the beginning of the Khremonidean War,[18] the Ptolemaic admiral Patroklos sailed from Itanos in Krete to Keos, where he established a base at Koresia (renamed Arsinoë) facing the Attic coast. At Thera either the passage of an important official or the establishment of a new naval station prompted locals to put their grievances to Patroklos, who dispatched a board of dikasts from Ioulis. The war ended with a battle at Kos, which implies the movement of the Antigonid fleet through the islands to challenge the Ptolemies off the coast of one of their most important possessions in Asia.[19] Again in the late 250s and early 240s, the Ptolemies reappeared in the central Aegean, and once again it was interests in Greece that conditioned their appearance. In 253/2 B.C. , Alexandros, son of Antigonos Gonatas's loyal general Krateros, revolted. His rebellion denied Antigonos Korinthos and the chief cities of Euboia, which proclaimed Alexandros king and petitioned for the removal of garrisons Gonatas had installed. Alexan-
[16] Polemaios: Buraselis, 45–46. Ptolemaios's expedition: Holleaux, 1.32, 34–35, ll. 21, 24, 26, Diod. 20.37, cf. also Homolle, Archives, 39–40, Buraselis, 66; stopover on Delos, IG XI 2.161B20–27 with Bruneau, 516; Etienne, 227.
[17] Delos: IG XI 2.159A54–55 with chapter 4, pp. 116–17. Itanos on Krete: IC III Itanos 3, with Hermann Bengtson, Die Strategie in der hellenistichen Zeit (Munich, 1964–67), III.184–88; Heinen, 143–44; Bagnall, 120–21. Thera: IG XII 3.320 = OGIS 44, with Heinen, 148–50, Bagnall, 123–34.
[18] Janice J. Gabbert, CJ 82 (1986/87): 230–35, dates the war to 265/4–263/2 B.C. , but this view considers only activities at Athens and ignores other evidence for the war.
[19] Robert, Hellenica 11–12 (1960): 146–60, Bagnall, 141–45, Heinen, 149–50, Cherry and Davis, BSA 86 (1991): 9–28. See Reger, AJAH 10 (1985 [1993]): 155–77, arguing for the traditional date against Buraselis's proposal of 255/4 B.C. On the Ptolemies at Kos, see Susan Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos (Göttingen 1978), 90–131.
dros's attack on Athens failed only because of the resistance of Antigonid troops there. Ptolemaios II supported the revolt.[20] In addition, Aratos of Sikyon abandoned his long-standing friendship with Gonatas to bring his hometown into the Akhaian League. In 250 B.C. , he traveled secretly to Egypt to beg successfully for financial support. The activities of Glaukon son of Eteokles on behalf of Ptolemaios II in central Greece may also belong in this context.[21]
The collapse of Egyptian interests in Greece entailed the collapse of their interests in the Aegean. This happened twice, from 260 B.C. after their defeat in the Khremonidean War, and again after 245 B.C. , with their loss of the battle of Andros. But the latter defeat was compensated by signal success in Asia and Thrake; for the balance of the period, those regions attracted Ptolemaic attention, and the islands were left on their own.
As an example of the use of the Kyklades as stepping-stones in the other direction—from Greece to Asia—we can consider the behavior of Philip V of Makedon in the last years of the third century. Philip hoped to revitalize his house's traditional claim to Karia, and in preparation for operations there, he worked hard to gain control of the Kyklades. Appian (Mak. 4) alleges that he struck a secret treaty with Antiokhos III to divvy up Ptolemaic possessions, in which Philip claimed the Kyklades. Whether the treaty is historical or not,[22] Philip certainly stirred up trouble first by supporting the Kretans in their war against Rhodos and then by secretly sending Dikaiarkhos to raid the islands. In 201 B.C. , he garrisoned Andros, Kythnos, and Paros (Livy 31.15, cf. Polyb. 16.26) and seized Ptolemaic bases on Samos and Khios. On Paros he cleverly (and ironically) advertised his opposition to pirates—policing the sea was a traditional duty of the
[20] Trog. Prol. 26. IG XII 9.212.4 (king), 10–12 (garrisons); IG II 774 and 1225 (attack on Athens); Plut. Aratos 17.2, 18.1–2. B. D. Meritt, Hesperia 30 (1960): 214, no. 9.3, associates this decree with the war with Alexandros: rejected by Heinen, 138 n. 188; accepted as "am wahrscheinlichsten" by Christian Habicht, Studien zur Geschichte Athens in hellenistischer Zeit (Göttingen, 1982), 24 n. 56. On Alexandros's career, see Olivier Picard, Chalcis et la confédération eubéenne (Paris, 1979), 272–74; Will I , 316–24. Contra: Ralf Urban, Wachstum und Krise des achäischen Bundes (Wiesbaden, 1979), 31–32.
[21] Plut. Aratos 12. Cf. Hammond-Walbank, 301–2, Will I , 321, and, still, F. W. Walbank, Aratos of Sicyon (Cambridge, 1933), 36–40. Roland Etienne and Marcel Piérart, BCH 99 (1975): 51–75. There is a long and growing bibliography on this decree; see Kostas Buraselis, AE (1982) [1984]: 136–60; Roland Etienne in La Béotie antique (Paris, 1985), 259–63; G. A. Lehmann, ZPE 73 (1988): 144–47.
[22] Will II , 114–18; more recently, Etienne, 100, R. E. Allen, The Attalid Kingdom (Oxford, 1983), 73 n. 151, cf. 60 n. 108. Patrick Baker, Cos et Calymna (Québec, 1991), 7 n. 21.
Aegean hegemon —in an inscription recounting his capture of the Aitolian capital of Thermon (IG XII 5.125). His next move was to invade first Pergamon and then Karia, but without much success.[23]
There is no need to review the other instances of the Kyklades as strategic stepping-stones. It is clear that from Antigonos Monophthalmos to Philip V, the real appeal of the Kyklades lay in their location between Asia and Greece, as an easy and reliable route for armies and a necessary possession for any power that hoped to assert itself on both sides of the Aegean. In this context, however, the interests of the Rhodians are less clear. They obtained the Kyklades as a result of the Second Makedonian War, when it was crucial for Rome and her allies both to deny Philip easy passage between Makedon and the East and to assure communications between Rome's mainland allies and Pergamon and Rhodos. The Rhodians' original interest in the islands thus resulted from familiar strategic considerations. But over the following third of a century, when they controlled the islands, they did not use them as stepping-stones to the west. The Rhodians, of course, had vitally important interests in Asia in their Peraia, but the islanders were irrelevant to that. It may be that commercial interests played some role; we shall return to this question in chapter 7.[24]
Individual islands also had their own strategic roles. It was crucial for anyone who hoped to take or control Athens to hold the islands that ring the Saronic Gulf. In 308, Ptolemaios I seized Andros and expelled an Antigonid garrison there (Diod. 20.37). The following year, Demetrios may have launched his expedition against Athens from the island of Tenos. Andros was again the staging ground for Ptolemaios's troops' attack on Athens in 287. Patroklos, Ptolemaios II's commander in the Khremonidean War, based his fleet at Keos and seized a small island off Sounion as a subsidiary base.[25] Antigonos Gonatas learned the lesson well; he prob-
[23] Polyb. 16.1–12 (esp. 2.1, 2.9), 14.5–15, 24; 18.2.2–4, 44.4; Diod. 28.5; App. Mak. 4.1; Graham Shipley, A History of Samos (Oxford, 1987), 191–94. Polyb. 16.24.4–9; cf. Berthold, 117 n. 32, for Philip's operations in Pergamon and his abortive attempt to get aid from Zeuxis. On Philip's Asian expedition, see still Holleaux, IV.211–335.
[24] It is worth noting that routes of travel were not entirely predetermined by geography: the changing interests of hegemonic powers and social and economic factors played a role too; see the views of Zimmermann, ZPE 92 (1992): 216, on the changes in routes between Lykia and Egypt in response to the demands of the Roman imperial army.
[25] G. Reger, CQ 42 (1992): 366–68. Shear, ll. 20–21. Robert, Hellenica 11–12 (1960): 146–60, Bagnall, 141–45, Heinen, 149–50, Cherry and Davis, BSA 86 (1991): 9–28; Paus. 1.1.1. For a possible Ptolemaic base at Hydria (IG II 1024.10–11), see Christian Habicht, Classical Antiquity 11 (1992): 88–90.
ably held Andros, as well as Kimolos, Geraistos on Euboia, and possibly Kythnos.[26]
Thera played a similar role for the Ptolemies. It served as an outpost guarding the routes to Krete and from there to Egypt. This strategic role, separate from that of the rest of the Kyklades, explains why the Ptolemies did not abandon Thera when they retreated from the rest of the islands. Minoa on Amorgos played an analogous role for Antigonos Doson. Doson and his predecessor Demetrios struck alliances with a number of Kretan cities that permitted them to call up soldiers for combined operations; some of these Kretan troops showed up at Sellasia. The Makedonians needed to keep open their access to Krete, which, however, the powerful Ptolemaic garrison at Thera threatened. Minoa, with its fine protected harbor facing south, offered a perfect counterweight to the Egyptian forces. This helps to account for Doson's interest in the city.[27]