Year: 1974
Type: article
Abstract: T HE YEAR 462 B.C. may have marked the most acute crisis in whatBengtson calls "the decisive turning point in the internal and external histories" of Sparta and Athens. 1 We lack the authoritative historical source to state from antiquity the case for 462 that Herodotus states for 480 or Thucydides for 431.But ancient historical tradition does suggest the unique concatenation of three calamities in 462.First in the tradition, at Sparta the earthquake of 464 and the subsequent helot rebellion shook the state to its very foundations, so that proud Sparta had to come as suppliant to Athens.Second, at Athens the <revolution' of Ephialtes overthrew Areopagite oligarchy and established Periclean democracy, hardly less calamitous an event in surviving accounts.Third, between Sparta and Athens opened the decisive rift, the <dismissal' of Cimon from Ithome by <fearful' Spartans, followed by his ostracism, the reversal of alliances, and the first of the Peloponnesian wars.The severity of these calamities was not doubted in antiquity.But our sources on the first two are uncritical enough and removed enough in time to encourage a measure of skepticism among moderns.Diodorns, Plutarch and Pausanias are open to question, as is Aristotle.But on the third calamity, Thucydides has always seemed critical enough and close enough to command assent.It is my purpose to encourage a measure of skepticism concerning Thucydides' account of the <dismissal' of Cimon, the one event of this most crucial year that our best and earliest source emphasized.The one calamity that Thucydides seems to have ignored in his text, Ephialtes' <revolution', seems to have preceded Cimon's <dismissal', suggesting the hypothesis that this departure may have been far more the political decision of a Cimon anxious to return to Athens than the military decision of a 1 H. Bengston, Griechische Geschichte' (Munich 1969) 190.
Author: John R. Cole
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1487220972