illustrate the transformation of historical recollection into epic poetry by an example, we once more turn to the chariots. In the Iliad, the majority of the heroes can afford such vehicles, not for fighting in units, but to be transported to the battle ground and to have a quick escape if necessary;31 they jump off and fight heroically in individual duels (aristeiai),32 whereas drivers wait at a safe distance—and at times take guard of valuable booty.33 In Homeric battle, chariots are tantamount to taxis, as in peacetime.34
History to Myth: Early Greek Wars
Historiography as a genre started only in the later fifth century, with Herodotus and Thucydides.35 What they could still learn about early wars had undergone more or less a process of transformation into myth or, in turn, pseudo-historical myths had been invented to explain how actual structures had come about and why certain claims were justified.
Thucydides (1.12ff.) gives a catalog of early Greek wars. Starting from the Trojan War, he distinguishes between migrations involving many groups and conflicts between two neighbors (1.15.2). An exception is the Lelantine War, when further Greek states and groups of allies36 supported the two opponents (1.15.3); so we have before us more than a neighborhood conflict.37
The Lelantine War38 (Probably c. 710/700)
Authorities from different periods allude to the war as an actual event. Hesiod (floruit in the later eighth century) won a prize in the funeral games for the Chalcidean noble Amphidamas (Erg. 650ff.).39 If this man had been killed in action just before, as suggested by the games, the pertinent war took place c. 710/700. This accounts for the still Homeric practice of funeral games reminiscent of those for Patroclus (Il. 23), in the version we read from around 750.
Archilochus (c. 680–645) describes a war “on the plain,” being fought by “those spear-famed squires of Euboea” (fr. 3 Gerber).40 The character of the fighting is reminiscent of the aristeiai between noble single combatants in the Iliad,41 clearly before the introduction of the phalanx. In accordance with this, Strabo learned much later about Eretria and Chalcis: When quarrels arose between them “for the Lelantine Plain” they came to terms “under which they were to conduct the ‘strife’ (agon).” They engraved these terms on a stele “that banned long distance missiles … by archers, slingers and javelin-throwers” (10.1.12).42 The still entirely aristocratic agreement must belong to a very early time, albeit a stele with clauses of a treaty cannot have existed then; the detail was evidently invented later.
Also Theognis (second half of the sixth century) adopts a contemporary perspective on an Euboean war (v. 891–94 Gerber),43 the later sixth century being additionally confirmed by the fact that the mythological king Pheidon of Argos (mostly dated by the Greek tradition to this century) plays a role.44 Finally, the Lelantine Plain was conquered by the Athenians in 506 (Hdt. 5.74–77).
The 200 years from Hesiod to the Athenian conquest are far too much for one single war, even if it had some length. What we find in the Greek tradition must indeed be understood as a series of separate conflicts. The term in its proper sense applies to only one of them, probably that mentioned by Hesiod.45 It has been proposed to attach it to the series as a whole,46 but the tradition that “the whole Greek world[ 47] divided joining the party of one of the two” (Thuc. 1.15.3) runs counter to this view: it is impossible that such a deep division could have escaped the attention of our sources for the archaic period.
Excursus: Naval Battles
Thucydides introduces such conflicts as a further category; few in all, the earliest was that between Corinth and Corcyra/Corfù (1.13.4, around 681 or 664).48 He regards more recent naval battles as insignificant (1.14.3) and skips entirely over those between Greeks and non-Greeks, such as the defeat of the Phocaeans against the allied fleets of Etruscans and Carthaginians off Alalia (on Cyrnus/Corsica, c. 540: Hdt. 1.166f.),49 and Hieron’s victory against the Etruscans near Campanian Cyme (474: Diod. Sic. 11.51).50
Sparta’s Wars: Immigration and Conquest of Laconia (c. 950/930)
The most important of the migrations, from the north west into the Peloponnese, was labeled by the Greek tradition as the “Return of the Herakleidai,” actually often referred to as the “Doric Migration,” a term no less misleading. The historical process took much time, in several stages. It was fought by groups belonging to the same ethnos but independent of each other. One of them, consisting of several subunits, arrived at the site of the future Sparta not much later than 950.51 Still in the middle of the fifth century the Spartans knew that their ancestors had immigrated from the (intermediate stage of the) Doris region just north of the Thermopylae (Thuc. 1.107.2: Lakedaimonion metropolis, three small towns, among them Erineus). Since 1971, we have had at our disposal a papyrus fragment containing parts of an elegy by the Spartan poet-general Tyrtaeus. Active in the later seventh century, he combines the mythological tradition52 with historical facts: “For he himself, the son of Cronus and spouse of fair-crowned Hera, Zeus, has given this city (Sparta) to the descendants of Heracles. Leaving windy Erineus with them, we arrived in Pelops’ wide island.”53 During the period of migration from Erineus to Sparta the mythological Herakleidai had not been commanders, but two archagetai (“dukes”),54 interpreted as “kings” by later Greeks. Under them, two subgroups had arrived in Laconia and established the originally four neighboring villages of Sparta on virgin ground. Starting from the new settlement, they conquered the Laconian Plain down to the sea. The indigenous population was subdued by force to a state of bondage (the heilotai) or political dependence (the perioikoi), with one substantial exception.
The inhabitants of the small town of Amyclae, situated some 5 km south of Sparta, were integrated as a fifth village.55 This is even more strange since the Amyclaeans were non-Dorian, and their sanctuary (Amyklaion) belonged to Hyakinthos, a god with a pre-Greek name;56 he was later equated with Apollo, as the originally Dorian Ortheia with Artemis, brother and sister. The Amyclaeans had evidently successfully resisted the Spartan expansion and received a privileged position so that their military potential was under control.
Expansion Realized and Thwarted: Messenia, Argos, and Arcadia (c. 700/690–550)
Sparta’s two Messenian Wars (c. 700/690–680/670 and 640/630–600),57 fought in a developed phalanx tactic as reported by Tyrtaeus (fr. 11 Gerber),58 resulted in a state of heiloteia of the central Messenian Stenyklaros-Pamisos plain (Tyrt. fr. 5f. Gerber); the historical events are completely superseded by myths.59 The same applies for Sparta’s wars against Argos for the control of the intermediate region of the Thyreatis. The final engagement perhaps belongs to the middle of the sixth century. Herodotus (1.82) adopts a strongly reworked tradition: Spartans and Argives had allegedly limited their phalanx to 300 hoplites each—as many served in the guards of the Spartan kings, e.g. at the Thermopylae; but the chivalrous arrangement failed and an ordinary battle ensued, with a Spartan victory.60
Against Arcadian Tegea, Sparta’s attack failed in the middle of the sixth century. The polis transferred her activities to the diplomatic field, by constituting a system of unequal bilateral alliances (“Peloponnesian League”) to secure her military supremacy.61 Also the tradition on Tegea in Herodotus (1.66ff.),62 written down after a longer process of oral tradition,63 has undergone transformation into myth.
Abortive Campaign
