The Alcmeonid Family and Athens

The ambiguous position held by the family (oikos ) or, perhaps, clan (genos ) of the Alcmeonids^[7] in the political history of archaic Athens can be explained partially by the fact that its ambition, one of the salient characteristics of the house, was more extravagant than apparently was warranted by its position in Athenian society. The Alcmeonids claimed descent from the royal house of the Neleids of

Pylos; several of their name are said to have served as life-archons before the archonship became annual in 682/1; their family also traced itself to an Alcmeon who lived in the time of Theseus. But these traditions are weakly affirmed and insubstantial.^[8] The more solid evidence suggests that they are in fact subsequent to the preeminent position obtained by the family in the sixth century. Thus, unlike other great aristocratic families, the Alcmeonids reveal no connection with any of the local cults of Attica. They boast no descent from the mythical ancestor who typically established such cults and transmitted their control to the appropriately descended families. As J. K. Davies has aptly stated, the political techniques applied by the Alcmeonids during the sixth century "are the hallmark of a family bent on maintaining and extending its power, prestige and political influence, but precluded from exercising effective power in its own homeland through cults and phratries in the way which was open to the old established units of Athenian politics."^[9]

On the other hand, there is no disputing the Alcmeonids' enormous power in the sixth century, and it is possible that, though they were barred from control of the machinery of the archaic state by their exclusion from the inner circle of the nobility, they drew comparable prestige from another source. The early and intimate relations of the Alcmeonids with the august shrine of Delphi may be inferred from the constant association of the two throughout the course of the sixth century. The inference is speculative, but something of this nature seems required to explain the great power of this house in (what is for us) the dawn of Athenian history.

It certainly cannot be said of Megacles I, the first Alcmeonid known to us, that in his quest for power he was either discriminating in his choice of means or successful in their adoption, for it was he who brought the agos on his family, sometime between 632 and 624.^[10] He became embroiled in the Cylonian affair, the earliest event of Athenian history known to us even rudimentarily. Indeed, we would not know

even the little we do about this abortive attempt at tyranny were it not for the fact that the Cylonian affair became an inseparable part of the aetiology of the curse of the Alcmeonids. It was the agos that interested the general public for whose benefit Herodotus (5.71) and Thucydides (1.126.3–12) established the literary record. For all their agreement in outline, however, their accounts are curiously discrepant. Both historians agree that Cylon had gained an Olympic victory (which we can date to 640), and that he aspired to become tyrant of Athens. Both historians also agree, unequivocally, that the sacrilegious murder that ensued placed a curse on the clan. Neither writer, however, names Megacles. (We know his name from Plut. Sol. 12.1; it must have appeared in the Atthidographic literature.) On the other hand, Herodotus implies (simply from the conjunction of sentences in 5.71) that Cylon sought the tyranny because he was exalted by the Olympic victory. Thucydides, whose treatment is more extended, introduces the further information that Cylon was the son-in-law of the tyrant of Megara (1.126.3), had consulted the oracle at Delphi, and had been told by Apollo to seize the acropolis "during the greatest festival of Zeus" (126.4). From this point their narratives differ radically. Herodotus writes that Cylon,

backing himself with a group of men of his own age who had sworn to act together, tried to seize the acropolis. Unable to secure its possession, he sat as a suppliant next to the statue of the goddess. The prytanies of the naukraries, who in fact were in charge of Athens at that time, raised up these men on the assurance that they would not be subjected to the death penalty. The Alcmeonids bear the blame of murdering them.

Thucydides dates the plot to coincide with an Olympic festival and gives a more circumstantial picture of the siege of the acropolis. But he also adds that Cylon and his brother managed to escape (126.10). He asserts that the suppliants had been led from the altar (of Athena Polias) after the Athenians saw them dying (of starvation) in the temple "on condition that they suffer no harm." He concludes with the remark that "some" of the conspirators were slain "at the altars of the Dread Goddesses [the Erinyes] as they descended from the acropolis" (126.10f.). Thucydides also replaces the prytanies of the naukraries with the archons: "at that time the nine archons managed most of the political affairs" (126.8).

Though some scholars have discerned "apologetic" purposes behind Herodotus's account, especially with regard to the prytanies, it is difficult to see how the nomenclature used by either historian affects the

nature of the deed or the responsibility of the Alcmeonids, for no attempt is made by either writer to exculpate them, however much they may differ in their conception of the machinery of the archaic state.^[11] A less tortuous explanation for this difference between the two historians is that Thucydides has taken pains to correct misinformation that was current at the time and that he also may or may not have read in the history of Herodotus.^[12] Thucydides was vain about his knowledge of Athenian antiquities, and we need not doubt that he willingly seized the opportunity to illustrate how uninformed the Athenians were about their own history (cf. 1.20). Whether his own account is free from blemish is another matter, for he has left unclear how the allegedly collective action of the archons interlocks with the apparently gratuitous sacrilege of one of them.^[13] However this may be, the curse itself is incontestable; henceforth the Alcmeonids would be branded by it.

The immediately subsequent fortunes of the Alcmeonid house are very obscure. We do not know, for instance, to what extent, if any, this disastrous episode and the vendetta prompted by it influenced the publication of Dracon's homicide laws.^[14] At some point in time, however, not long after the commission of the sacrilege, the Alcmeonids were subjected to a trial that rendered the formal verdict that the clan was accursed (Arist. Ath. Pol. 1 ). The Alcmeonids were sent into "eternal banishment," and the bones of their forefathers were disinterred and

cast away. Epimenides of Crete, a magic worker, then ritually purified the city (Ath. Pol. 1); according to Diogenes Laertius 1.110, the Delphic oracle designated Epimenides for the task.

It is reasonable to infer that these events took place in the direct aftermath of the explosion that produced them, since the miasma threatening the community obviously required swift action. The difficulty is the association of Epimenides with Solon that we find in Plutarch (Sol. 12.4–6) and Diogenes Laertius 1.110, for it suggests that the expulsion and the purification occurred in the context of Solon's reforms—a generation after the event—a time that seems problematically late. But the synchronism is intrinsically suspect. Combinations of the Wise Men of Antiquity are often arbitrary.^[15] Moreover, this particular conjunction shows signs of manipulation, for in order to associate the two figures, Solon and Epimenides, Epimenides needed to be granted a truly Methuselan longevity.^[16] It is therefore methodologically proper to accept the tradition of Epimenides' activity in Athens because of the Cylonian affair, rejecting at the same time the affiliation with Solon, and thus to place the purification closer in time to the sacrilege than the epochal year 594.

The nature of the next series of events is harder to enucleate. The Alcmeonid clan, sent into "eternal exile" reemerges as a powerful force in Attica in the middle of the sixth century as if the banishment had never occurred (indeed, Herodotus, our source for this material, seems oblivious to it). About thirty years after Solon's reforms, Megacles II, the son of Alcmeon, is installed in Attica, enjoying a position of dominance in the region of the seacoast (paralia ).^[17] What is more, he has already succeeded in an illustrious marriage (c. 575) by becoming the husband of Agariste, the daughter of the powerful and splendid tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes the Orthagorid (Hdt. 6.126–30). This marriage, furthermore, if we can trust Herodotus, was secured in the face

of competition for the hand of Agariste by the sons of the greatest magnates of Hellas. But the fortunes of Megacles provide us merely with a lower terminus, for we can trace the apparent rehabilitation of the family to an earlier date than the time of this marriage. Almost twenty years before it, around the date of Solon's reforms, Megacles' father, Alcmeon, must have already been admitted back to Athens. For he served as leader of the Athenian contingent in the Sacred War fought by Delphi against Crisa (c. 591).

The information about Alcmeon's part in the Sacred War (Plut. Sol. 11.2) seems authentic, for it reached Plutarch not by way of Alcmeonid family tradition (which might well be suspect) but from records kept by the Delphians themselves. The datum is also supported by a number of interlocking considerations in which Delphi figures centrally—namely, the marriage alliance of Megacles with Cleisthenes of Sicyon, who had also participated in the Sacred War;^[18] an allegation in Herodotus 6.125.2 (see below) that Alcmeon was able to exploit his interest with Delphi to benefit Croesus; and signs of a close relation between the Alcmeonids and Delphi when this family first helped to rebuild the temple at Delphi (destroyed by fire in 548) and later enlisted Delphic support to bring an end to the Peisistratid tyranny in 511/10.^[19] It appears certain, therefore, that the Alcmeonids had been permitted to return to Athens sometime before Alcmeon's participation in the Sacred War. If we bear in mind the tradition that the Sacred War was proposed on the motion of Solon (Plut. Sol. 11), the inference is warranted that the Alcmeonids had been allowed to return to Athens in a period of amnesty or civil reconciliation entailed by Solon's reforms. Alcmeon could not otherwise have represented Athens in the war, and much less could his son, as a landless fugitive, have competed successfully for the hand of a tyrant's daughter. On the other hand, we cannot assume that the Alcmeonids also received "absolution" from the curse, for that is incompatible, as we shall see, with the repetition of the charge in subsequent times. The fact of their return guarantees only that their civic disabilities were revoked; neither the city nor the pythochrestoi could remove the agos from Alcmeon.^[20]

Allusion has been made to Herodotus's report of Alcmeon's service to Croesus as an intermediary between Croesus and Delphi. The episode, which is an aetiological story about how the Alcmeonids acquired their wealth, deserves attention, and may best be presented in Herodotus's own words (6.125).

Now the Alcmeonidae were, even in days of yore, a family of note at Athens, but from the time of Alcmaeon, and again of Megacles, they rose to special eminence. [Alcmeon,] . . . when Croesus the Lydian sent men from Sardis to consult the Delphic oracle, gave aid gladly to his messengers, and assisted them to accomplish their task. Croesus, informed of Alcmaeon's kindnesses . . . sent for him to Sardis, and, when he arrived, made him a present of as much gold as he should be able to carry at one time about his person. Finding that this was the gift assigned him, Alcmaeon . . . prepared himself to receive it in the following way. He clothed himself in a loose tunic, which he made to bag greatly at the waist, and placing upon his feet the widest buskins that he could anywhere find, followed his guides into the treasure-house. Here he fell to upon a heap of gold-dust, and in the first place packed as much as he could inside his buskins, between them and his legs; after which he filled the breast of his tunic quite full of gold, and then sprinkling some among his hair, and taking some likewise in his mouth, he came forth from the treasure-house, scarcely able to drag his legs along, like anything rather than a man. . . . On seeing him, Croesus burst into a laugh, and not only let him have all that he had taken, but gave him presents besides of fully equal worth. Thus this house became one of great wealth, and Alcmaeon was able to keep horses for the chariot-race, and won the prize at Olympia. (trans. Rawlinson)

The anecdote is interesting from several perspectives. It illustrates, in the first place, the detachment oral tradition allows from the historical reality forming its basis. Few would doubt the existence of a residual core of historical truth in this story; yet chronology does not permit a meeting between Croesus, who ruled in the mid sixth century, and the father of Megacles II—at least in the time-frame presupposed by Herodotus.^[21] Probably, if there literally was a meeting, Alcmeon met Alyattes, Croesus's father, for it is easily comprehensible that the more famous monarch replaced the less spectacular ruler for the benefit of the story. Croesus had acquired the reputation of host par excellence to Hellenes on the grand tour; if Solon could meet Croesus, his contemporary Alcmeon could do so too.

The same impulse explains how a visit from Alcmeon to the Lydian court transformed itself into explanation of the springs of Alcmeonid wealth. Certainly the story is fictional in the form in which it appears; it reminds us of a comparable fiction told about Callias Lakkoploutos (Plut. Arist. 5), who allegedly filched his wealth from treasure buried on the field of Marathon. The anecdote not improbably originated in circles hostile to the Alcmeonids, for what is alleged of Alcmeon is the polar opposite of Solonian sophrosyne and hardly the act of a civilized guest-friend.^[22] But the invention of the tale in this peculiar form has its positive side as well: it hints that the great wealth of the Alcmeonids was not readily accounted for in the usual terms—that is, the possession of great tracts in Attica like those of the other Eupatrids. The story has deeper meaning; the gold of Lydia apparently serves as a symbol of the influence of the Alcmeonids at Delphi, which allegedly facilitated the gift. Herodotus's testimony (6.125) to the help provided by Alcmeon to Lydian embassies at Delphi is the most compelling part of the story because it must ultimately be based on the prestige Alcmeon won at Delphi from his participation in the Sacred War—if, in fact, his selection as leader of the Athenian force does not presuppose a still earlier link between the family and Delphi. For it is surely odd that a representative of a family recently driven from Athens for impiety was selected by the Athenians as their military leader in such a cause, and the explanation must be that Alcmeon was chosen because he was requested by the local officials at Delphi.

The marriage of Alcmeon's son, Megacles, with Agariste, the daughter of Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, c. 575 (Hdt. 6.126–30) is another instance of the central importance of Delphi to the fortunes of the Alcmeonids. For Cleisthenes of Sicyon was also closely linked with Delphi. He played a significant part in the Sacred War^[23] and, perhaps not coincidentally, was the first chariot victor to be crowned by the reconstituted Amphictiony (Paus. 10.9.7). He also seems to have extended the influence of Delphian Apollo into Sicyon. And so Megacles, the son of the man who became the benefactor of Lydian royalty because of his interest with Delphi, became the son-in-law of Apollo's champion at Sicyon! The "wedding of Agariste," brilliantly described by Herodotus, made the name of the Alcmeonids "resound through Hel-

las" (6.131.1), and must have operated like a catapult for the fortunes of the family, raising it to the social level of the Philaid clan, which boasted a comparable association with the tyrants of Corinth.^[24]

How the Alcmeonids proceeded so brilliantly when they simultaneously stood under the curse of Athena Polias is difficult to understand. The stain seems to have mattered neither to Delphi nor to Cleisthenes, who understood that it would inevitably be transmitted to his grandchildren. Indeed, the charge of pollution was leveled against his grandson, Cleisthenes the Athenian reformer, with the result that he was driven out of Athens in the midst of his revolutionary efforts (Hdt. 5.70–72). The charge must be taken seriously. Since the political manipulation of a religious belief, far from invalidating the force of that belief, is a confirmation of its potency, the explanation is inadequate that the curse really did not matter, was a mere "impiety,"^[25] so that the attack against the younger Cleisthenes was simply "political propaganda," empty of religious content. The curse did matter; in addition to this manifestation of its importance, and its reemergence as a weapon against Pericles, it also affected (as we shall see) the conduct of Peisistratus towards his Alcmeonid wife. The situation is puzzling: how did the Alcmeonids, and the Athenians, reconcile normal citizenship, residence in Attica and the tenure of magistracies (Alcmeon's strategia ), with the agos?

The problem is limited to Alcmeonid residence in Attica, for beyond its limits the family could function normally. Just as an exile with unclean hands could be purified so as to live in a new community without contaminating it (Hdt. 1.35.1–2), so the Alcmeonids, after the Cylonian affair, must have been liberated from the effects of the agos when beyond the frontiers of Attica. Delphic Apollo was under no compulsion to recognize an offense committed against Athena Polias. Similarly, no bar existed to prevent the grandson of Cleisthenes the Orthagorid, if he became the tyrant's heir, from ruling in Sicyon,^[26] where he would be unaffected by the Athenian local curse. But as the expulsion of the younger Cleisthenes from Athens suffices to show, the curse continued to be regarded as a source of pollution in Athens itself. Yet how can this be reconciled with Alcmeon's return to Athens or, minimally, with his deputization as an Athenian general in the first decade of the

sixth century? One would suppose that the curse either was eliminated as a danger to the state or that it was not. If it had been, the charge against Cleisthenes in 508/7 would have been derided and ignored. Yet that is not what happened. Apparently, therefore, Alcmeon's return was accomplished in such a way as to mask the problem but not to exorcise it. A political agreement was reached or a consensus established that somehow obviated the issue. It may be relevant that we know of only two occasions in which a demand was placed on the Athenians to expel the "accursed" and that on both occasions the demand was made by Sparta, an alien community. For all of the bitter strife involving the Alcmeonids in the political struggles of Athens, the demand was never made by a citizen,^[27] while when made by the Lacedaemonians it was never denied. Yet since it was Isagoras, Cleisthenes' opponent, as Herodotus informs us (5.70.2), who put Cleomenes up to it, the inference seems inescapable that the Athenians were formally bound by common agreement against any direct utilization of the curse as a political weapon, even though its existence was recognized. But how all of this was managed is a mystery about which Athenian tradition is obtuse and uninformative.

Alcmeon's visit to Lydia and his son's celebrated marriage float timelessly in the historical record. After the Cylonian affair the Alcmeonids make their reappearance in the local Athenian tradition when Peisistratus first succeeded in becoming tyrant of Athens in 561/60. The hiatus in our knowledge of the family's activities in their own homeland between the time of Alcmeon's participation in the Sacred War and Megacles' involvement in the dynastic struggles culminating in Peisistratus's rise to power is explained by the simplifying tendencies of oral tradition. The local inhabitants of Attica or, rather, of Athens, well remembered certain kinds of traditions if they fell into either of two categories. They were apt to remember epochal transitions in which the minimum of salient facts necessary for the comprehension of events solidified, as it were, around the events themselves. They also cherished the recollection of the colorful and singular experiences enjoyed by one or another of their great families. The popular mind enjoyed provocative or aetiological stories about the nobility and, in fact, since the stories were about "their" nobles, the citizenry took civic pride in telling them over and over again. For us, Herodotus's history gains an added dimension of interest because of his tendency to isolate these cate-

gories. When he made his inquiries into one natural subject or another (epochal developments, family history), he presented these recollections as he heard them, without synthesizing in the way of a modern historian.

The Alcmeonids are a case in point. When in 6.125ff. Herodotus's subject was the Alcmeonids as a family (apropos of the shield incident at Marathon), his inquiries into the antecedents of the family are presented in a historical vacuum without reference to data known to him from other contexts, all of which could have been consolidated into one coherent discussion. But that was not the method he chose to employ, preferring instead to set out one independent tradition after another. Thus, when he sought information about the family history of the Alcmeonids, he was told the anecdotes about Alcmeon's wealth and how Megacles won Agariste by default.^[28] Popular memory preserved the story about Alcmeon and remembered something as well about the connection with Delphi; it misrecollected the appropriate monarch of Lydia and knew nothing of the command held by Alcmeon in the Sacred War. In this context it forgot about the curious relationship of Megacles and Peisistratus, though it did, of course, recall that Cleisthenes the reformer was the grandson of the tyrant of Sicyon. But an independent source, in which popular memory focused on epochal change, supplied Herodotus with the information about Megacles. Thus, in 1.59ff. Herodotus provides this supplementary material in connection with the story of Peisistratus's rise to power and his ultimate retention of the tyranny after two reverses. Megacles' involvement in these episodes, both as he appears in 1.59.3 and in 60.2, 61.1, is an

integral part of that epochal development and was recollected as such in the popular memory. That is why the Alcmeonids seem to emerge on the Attic seacoast c. 561 as if they had dropped from the moon. From the time of Alcmeon's command against Crisa or, rather, his visit to Lydia, nothing had been accomplished by the family that was either sufficiently interesting in itself or connected with independently critical developments to secure its place in the oral tradition.

Herodotus 1.59.3 presents Megacles to us as a dynast in control of the region of the seacoast of Attica (paralia ) who was engaged in a struggle with another figurehead, Lycurgus son of Aristolaidas, the leader of the "men of the plain" (pediakoi ). The civil discord engendered by this battle between local dynasts provided Peisistratus with the opportunity to engineer his own elevation to the tyranny. He was a member of the old aristocracy and had acquired a brilliant reputation as a military leader. He announced the intention of acting as the champion of hitherto unrepresented Athenians ("men beyond the hills," hyperakrioi or diakrioi ) and fomented a conspiracy in Athens that enabled him to seize the acropolis and assume the position of tyrant. After ruling the city for a short time, he was driven out by the combined forces of the men of the seacoast and plain. The local dynasts, this time, proved too strong for him.^[29]

Herodotus's account of the sequence of these events, though brief, is self-consistent and credible. The city of Athens adopted tyranny in a moment of civil crisis created by the incessant strife of the great landlords in control of the surrounding territory, and it backed a man of aristocratic family and great prominence, possessing resources of his own, who could be trusted to neutralize the turbulent dynasts of the country in order to provide tranquillity and the rule of law in the city. Comparable events occurred somewhat earlier elsewhere in Greece and the parallel of the Italian city-states of the Quattrocento springs to mind mutatis mutandis. However, because Aristotle, building on Herodotus, injected an anachronistic interpretation of these events and, in addition, misconceived their more precise sequence, much modern ingenuity has been expended to puzzle out the mutual relations between the three "parties" or "localities" and the ideological affinities of various segments within each of them. In our opinion notions of political coloration are out of place in the period and irrelevant to the nature of the

crisis. Aristotle's belief that the Alcmeonids of the seacoast were "moderate," Peisistratus "radical," and Lycurgus an "oligarch" is a clear use of judgment a posteriori. Peisistratus, as we suppose, was champion of the interests of the city while his opponents were driven by family self-interest; the real question was whether the countryside would rule the town or the town the country. Fortunately for Athens, the interests of civilization prevailed when the city chose the way of tyranny. For in those times, no less than in those of Solon, a tyrant was needed to enforce the laws of the city and counterbalance the predatory aristocracy, and Peisistratus, for a time, achieved this end. That is the historical importance of Herodotus's declaration that Peisistratus ruled (the first time) "neither disrupting the existing magistracies nor making changes in the established laws" (1.59.6). It should not surprise us that Herodotus couched negatively the positive contribution of Peisistratus, for tyranny was detestable to him and, though he affirmed this laudatory memory of Peisistratus's behaviour, he inverted its emphasis. But the affirmative verdict puts it all in a nutshell.

Megacles was a creature of his time—namely, an ambitious aristocrat intent on increasing the power of his family, as he made evident by the next step he took. For after Peisistratus's first expulsion from Athens, Megacles made the infamous bargain to return him to the tyranny on condition that Peisistratus marry his daughter.

No sooner, however, was [Peisistratus] departed than the factions which had driven him out quarreled anew, and at last Megacles, wearied with the struggle, sent a herald to Pisistratus, with an offer to reestablish him on the throne if he would marry his daughter. Pisistratus consented, and on these terms an agreement was concluded between the two. . . . [61.1] Pisistratus, having thus recovered the sovereignty, married, according to the agreement, the daughter of Megacles. As, however, he had already a family of grown-up sons, and the Alcmaeonidae were supposed to be under a curse, he determined that there should be no issue of the marriage, and he consequently had intercourse with her in an abnormal fashion. . . . Megacles, indignant at receiving an affront from such a quarter, in his anger instantly made up his differences with the opposite faction, on which Pisistratus . . . took himself out of the country. (Hdt. 1.60.1–61.2; trans. Rawlinson)

The sudden turnabout by Megacles is surprising. If we dismiss, as we should, the ubiquitous notion that the son-in-law of Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, was temperamentally or ideologically averse to tyranny, his behavior requires special explanation. After Peisistratus had been driven out of Athens, Megacles was in sufficient strength to pre-

vent his return. Now it is generally understood that the aristocratic code was built on the acceptance of peer-equality and a corresponding unwillingness to tolerate the promotion of a rival to a higher station.^[30] Yet Megacles' collaboration with Peisistratus instantly relegated him to a position of distinct inferiority. The marriage could not even provide a claim on the tyranny by way of an heir, since Peisistratus had grown children already in the house, and few, in any case, are the men of real ambition and power who are prepared to trade their personal supremacy for a remote and contingent hope.^[31]

What, then, was the quid pro quo of the marriage alliance? The problem, thus framed, finds its tentative resolution in the explanation for the dissolution of the union between Megacles' daughter and Peisistratus—fear of the transmission of the curse. The agos was apparently the central consideration making the alliance a valuable prize for the Alcmeonid. Megacles himself had managed to secure a brilliant marriage with a woman wholly unconnected with the Athenian aristocracy But her prestige and influence remained back in Sicyon. If the Alcmeonids were to flourish in the city-state of Athens, and not merely in their ancestral sphere of influence, the leaders of the family needed to weave a net of alliances with the other great families. But the taint of the curse introduced a complicating factor, for the transmission of the agos to all progeny arising from intermarriage with the clan was ineluctable.^[32] It was a high price to pay and the quid pro quo would need to be substantial. Hence, we believe, the marriage arrangement between Peisistratus and Megacles, for by it Peisistratus was enabled to regain the tyrant's throne and the Alcmeonids secured a vital connection with the ruling house. Yet it is notable that Peisistratus accepted even this bar-

gain with the mental reservations that resulted in a second frustration of his hopes, leading to his ejection from Athens for a second time.

Peisistratus returned to Athens to stay in 546, after the "battle" of Pallene, really a misnomer since the opposition to his return was so halfhearted as to provoke sarcasm from Herodotus (1.63.1). For our purposes the most interesting aspect of the tradition about his return is the agreement of the ancient sources, after Herodotus 1.64.3, that the Alcmeonids now chose self-exile in preference to servitude to Peisistratus and remained out of the country until they returned to liberate it.^[33] By the lucky chance of the discovery of a fragment of an Athenian archon list we possess incontrovertible knowledge of the falsity of this tradition, for a Cleisthenes—certainly the son of Megacles and the democratic reformer of 508/7—is shown by the fragment to have been eponymous archon of Athens in 525/4.^[34]

The discovery of Cleisthenes' presence in Peisistratid Athens confronts us with a problem of source-criticism, for we have the option of reconciling this new datum as best we can with the Herodotean tradition claiming self-exile for the Alcmeonids in 546 by assuming their return sometime thereafter before 525; alternatively, we may decide that Herodotus was radically misinformed about the exile, which really took place at a later time—in 514, after the murder of Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, when we know that the tyranny turned harsh and there occurred a general emigration of the aristocrats, which undoubtedly included the Alcmeonids. Normally, our preference would be to follow Herodotus, for it is arbitrary to "correct" a tradition to suit ourselves when our source is well-informed and reconcilement is theoretically possible. In this instance, however, not only does the information from the archon list prove that Herodotus misunderstood the situation but there is ample evidence that the story about the "exile," which easily lent itself to exaggeration, figured centrally in Alcmeonid apologetics.

To understand the genesis of this tendentious tradition, we must

move downwards in time to 490 B.C. and consider the story about the notorious shield signal displayed to the Persians at the battle of Marathon, an act of betrayal of the Athenian demos imputed to the Alcmeonids.^[35] Herodotus describes this matter in 6.121–24:

I find it amazing and I do not accept the story that the Alcmeonids ever displayed a shield to Persians by prearrangement because they wished the Athenians to be in the power of both the barbarians and Hippias [the Peisistratid]. These are the men who appear to be tyrant-haters as much or more than was Callias the son of Phainippus. . . .

. . . So I find it amazing and I do not accept the slander that the very men displayed the shield who fled the tyrants for the entire period and by whose contrivance the Peisistratids lost the tyranny. Thus, indeed, these men were the ones who secured the freedom of Athens far more than did Harmodius and Aristogeiton, as I judge. For by killing Hipparchus, they made the rest of the Peisistratids more savage and not in the slightest way stopped them from ruling. On the other hand the Alcmeonids indubitably stopped the tyranny, if as is the case these are truly the ones who persuaded the Pythia to begin every injunction to the Lacedaemonians with the order to free the Athenians, as has been earlier revealed by me.

But, you might allege, perhaps they betrayed the fatherland because they had some grievance with the demos. Yet there were no other men among the Athenians who were more distinguished than they or others who were more honored. Therefore reason does not dictate that the shield was displayed by the efforts of these men for reasons of the kind alleged. The shield was shown and this cannot be disputed. In fact it happened. However, I can say no more than I have about who was the shield-displayer.

In this fashion Herodotus guarantees that opinion contemporary with the battle charged the Alcmeonids with the responsibility for the traitorous signal by the glitter of light upon a shield. The fact is corroborated for us by the use of the ostracism against the clan after 490, by

a curious allusion to the troubles of the family in a poem by Pindar,^[36] and by the apparent disappearance of its members from the political arena in the next decade. Now Herodotus, in expressing his disbelief in the truth of the accusation, points to the unwavering opposition of the Alcmeonids to the tyranny "for the whole period" of tyrannic rule, and he also alludes to their role in the liberation of Athens. The logical connection is that the Alcmeonids could hardly have Medized, betrayed Athens to Datis, when the intention of the barbarians was to restore the superannuated Hippias to his tyranny and the Alcmeonids were tyrant-haters "who fled the tyrants for the entire period."

A common view^[37] holds that Herodotus's report is, in effect, an "echo" of the Alcmeonid defense delivered in 490, and that although this defense requires a certain degree of adjustment in the light of the historical record, its burden is substantially accurate. No one will defend himself with assertions patently falsifying events within the living memory of his accusers. But does it not follow with equal force that if it is alleged (by Herodotus) that a defense was made that we know to have been false, the possibility becomes real, if not necessary, that the defense he records could not have been delivered in 490? And is not that possibility enhanced when we take into account the fact that sixty years had elapsed between the alleged defense of 490 and its publication after 431? We have no warrant to attribute to Herodotus, long after the event, the uncontaminated recollection of an apologia delivered in 490 and (on that hypothesis) presumptively true. Nor can the apologia, as formulated by Herodotus, be regarded as a plausible defense if delivered in 490 when its central core is historically false and would have been recognized as such at the time it was allegedly delivered.

In 490 it is inconceivable that the Alcmeonids could have attempted to prove that they could not have displayed the shield signal by urging their anti-tyrannist sentiments in the manner presented by Herodotus. The Athenians remembered that Megacles had been the son-in-law of Peisistratus, and they knew as well that Cleisthenes had held the archonship in 525 when Hipparchus was tyrant of the city. They also remembered that after founding the democracy, Cleisthenes or his

agents sent an embassy to Sardis "in the hope of making a treaty with the Persian king" (Hdt. 5.73).^[38] Now these data—and the charge of Medis ade in 490, which seems to presuppose them—are all we possess of the historical record; in their light, Herodotus's defense would have been as preposterous at the time of Marathon as it seemed credible if developed thirty or forty years later, when the exact limits of the "exile" became susceptible to exaggeration.^[39]

It is doubtful whether the actual apology of the Alcmeonids in 490 can be extracted from Herodotus's simplified and erroneous account of it. But one negative conclusion seems safe: they did not claim exile "throughout the entire period." Probably they dwelt on features of their past history redounding to their benefit, such as their endurance of voluntary exile after 514 and their indisputable (though vicarious) contribution to the liberation of Athens in 511/10.^[40] After 490, the duration of the exile could grow more and more indefinite until it became

categorical. Thus in the fourth century Isocrates (16.26) could claim that the Alcmeonids had endured a forty-year exile.

Such a transformation of the tradition presumes, reasonably enough, that the display of the shield ceased to be a controversial issue after Xerxes' defeat. No evidence suggests that the vituperation continued into Herodotus's time. His ignorance of the material evidence and the prejudice originally prompting the charge implies the absence of current controversy. He has a simplified version of only one side of a historical debate; that which had been the Alcmeonid defense against charges positively framed had evolved into a truism celebrating the greater glory of the family. In the popular mind, it would appear, two salient "facts" were assimilated: recollection of the treasonable behavior apparently committed by the Alcmeonids and the belief that, guilty or not, the family had avoided contact with the tyranny by enduring exile from the time of Pallene. That the latent contradiction inherent in the acceptance of both assumptions is by no means self-evident can be seen from its easy acceptance by modern scholars who seek to harmonize the discord.^[41]

To the extent that Herodotus's "defense" is a simplification and distortion of the true history, it becomes justifiable to correct it inferentially. One may therefore suppose that the Alcmeonids remained in Athens after the battle of Pallene and that Cleisthenes' archonship signals their prior accommodation with tyranny. The archonship was not, in other words, the result of a "union of hearts," as it has been called,^[42] marking Cleisthenes' return from exile and sudden reconciliation with the tyrants who (on this view) sought the support of the emigrés after Peisistratus's death in 527. There is no reason to doubt, apart from the inaccurate apologia, that the Alcmeonids earlier came to terms with Peisistratus himself, while the archonship of 525 simply proves that Cleisthenes was a "safe man" in the time of transition (cf. Thuc. 6.54.6). We may infer, therefore, that there was one exile only, not two, and that it began in 514, when the murder of Hipparchus ended the truce between tyrant and aristocracy, resulting in the exile of many of the clans, those Eupatrids whose deeds at Leipsydrion were remembered in song.^[43] Herodotus's error, and the modern doublet of a single exile prompted by it, should be dropped from the historical record.

Perhaps the most peculiar fact about Cleisthenes, the collaborator and the revolutionary, is his lack of importance in fifth-century tradition. Herodotus, who, of all authorities, should have told us much about him, is not only brief in his characterization but cynical and negative as well. Cleisthenes' revolution is described as the culmination of a personal struggle with Isagoras, and even the great tribal reform is provided with a contemptuous explanation (5.69). That such denigration is not accidental is assured by Herodotus 6.123, the passage already discussed concernin the Alcmeonid defense. When the Alcmeonids defended themselves against an attempted subversion of the democracy by pointing (as we infer) to their exile after 514 and their role in the liberation, they apparently omitted, incredibly, all reference to the very act that should incontestably have proved their devotion to the demos: it was Cleisthenes the Alcmeonid who had established the democracy. If ever an argument from silence has cogency, it is here. Cleisthenes' actions could not be urged in defense because in all probability his behavior was a precondition of the charge. The explanation for the silence enshrouding Cleisthenes' name is that he was believed to have betrayed the government. That, indeed, is the burden of Herodotus 5.73—the symbolic surrender by Athens to the king of Persia—conduct that modern scholars, like Herodotus (by his silence) unjustifiably extenuate.^[44] Thus a cloud descended on the reputation of the family a decade and more before the episode at Marathon, the probable explanation of our deep ignorance of Megacles' other children—Aristonymus, Euryptolemus, and Hippocrates—whose names we know only because of their more notorious or celebrated progeny. Callixenus, for example, the son of Aristonymus, is represented among the extant ostraka with more frequency than anyone but Themistocles himself.^[45] Hippocrates son of Megacles we know because his son, Megacles, was ostracized four years after Marathon, in 487/6 (Ath. Pol. 22.5). Agariste, his daughter, is of course best known of all, because she became the wife of Xanthippus and the mother of Pericles.

It is a very dubious record indeed, and one that only deteriorated because or in spite of the great efforts made by the Alcmeonids around the time of Marathon.

The almost complete absence from the political scene after 480 of the descendants of the family is very remarkable. In spite of intermittent political activity . . . and of the clear survival of the family wealth into the late fifth century, the family seems never to have recovered politically from the disastrous effects of its pro-Persian policies after 507 (Hdt. v.73), from the loss of public confidence in its integrity after Marathon (Hdt. vi.121f.), and the subsequent onslaught by ostracism launched in the 480s. . . . By 470, if not before, the family was politically bankrupt.^[46]

We are now in a position to form a notion of the context in which Pericles advanced from youth to manhood.^[47] Strictly speaking, to be sure, Pericles was Alcmeonid only on his mother's side, and could point with pride and assurance to the achievements of his father, Xanthippus son of Ariphron, the victor of Mycale, who had been honored by the Athenians with statue set up by them on the acropolis (Paus. 1.25.1).^[48] But our definitions of "family" can hardly supersede the impressions and understandings of the contemporary Athenian public. It is plain enough that the special interest devoted to this great family derived from Pericles' association with it, as Herodotus announced in a well-known passage (6.131);^[49] and we have already observed the importance ascribed to Pericles' Alcmeonid heritage in the vituperation immediately preceding the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.^[50] The

(conjectural) effect on Pericles of his peculiar ancestry can await brief discussion at the conclusion of this chapter; for the moment we may note a suggestive passage in Plutarch where he makes the point that Pericles did not engage in a political career in the normal course of events because he worried how the demos would receive him.

For he looked very much like the tyrant Peisistratus. Very old men were amazed at the similarity of his voice, which was sweet, and his readiness of tongue and rapidity in conversation. Since he was rich and of splendid birth and possessed friends of great power, he avoided politics in the fear of being ostracized. (Per. 7.1–2)

Plutarch's assertion seems credible because it appears to be the reflection of sound retrospective analysis of Pericles' career coupled with actual knowledge of the age of his entrance into politics. If accurate, it hints at the stigma attaching to Pericles because of the actions and the fortunes of his mother's family.