Scroll I. Attica
subject heading(s): Peiraieus; dēmos ‘deme’; epineion ‘seaport’;
Themistocles; spelling of Greek names; arkhōn ‘archon’; Phaleron;
Athenian thalassocracy; neōs oikoi ‘ship-sheds’; Menestheus: Athenian
signatures in Homeric poetry; Theseus; Minos; Minoan thalassocracy;
Androgeos ‘man born of Earth’; speaking name; limēn ‘harbor’; tomb of
Themistokles at Peiraieus
spelling of Greek names… I
offer a general comment on the spelling of Greek names, with primary
reference to the name
of Themistocles here at 1.1.2…
The name of this famous Athenian statesman could have been spelled here
and elsewhere in the hellenized way,
as Themistokles. The same can
be said about the name of another famous Athenian
statesman, Pericles, who is
first mentioned by Pausanias at 1.25.1: here as well, the name could
have been spelled in the hellenized way,
as Perikles. In general,
however, I spell any Greek name in a latinized way wherever the said
name has become a “household word” in English, as in the case of
Themistocles and Pericles. When I
say latinized I mean spellings
where Latin lettering is substituted for the corresponding hellenized
lettering:
so, c for k, ch for kh, ae for ai, oe for oi, u for ou, -us for
–os, and so on.
Besides Themistocles and Pericles,
I will spell in a latinized (and anglicized) way such other “household
words” as represented by the following Greek names: Academy (not
Akademeia), Achilles (not Akhilleus), Acropolis (not Akropolis), Aeneas
(not Aineias), Ajax (not Aias), Alcibiades (not Alkibiades), Alexander
(not Alexandros), Anacreon (not Anakreon), Andromache (not Andromakhe),
Apollo (not Apollon), Arcadia (not Arkadia), Attica (not Attike),
Cambyses (not Kambuses), Cassandra (not Kassandra), Chersonesus (not
Kherronesos), Chios (not Khios), Chrysippus (not Khrusippos),
Cleisthenes (not Kleisthenes), Corcyra (not Kerkura), Corinth (not
Korinthos), Cyclades (not Kuklades), Cyrene (not Kurene), Cythera (not
Kuthera), Delphi (not Delphoi), Dionysus (not Dionusos), Euboea (not
Euboia), Herodotus (not Herodotos), Hesiod (not Hesiodos), Hippolytus
(not Hippolutos), Homer (not Homeros), Isocrates (not Isokrates),
Lacedaemonia (not Lakedaimonia), Lyceum (not Lukeion: see my comments on
Pausanias 1.19.3), Lycurgus (name of the Athenian statesman, as also of
the early Spartan ‘lawgiver’; not Lukourgos), Maeander (not Maiandros),
Menander (not Menandros), Musaeus (not Mousaios), Oedipus (not
Oidipous), Palladium (not Palladion), Peloponnesus (not Peloponnesos),
Phaedra (not Phaidra), Philip (not Philippos), Pindar (not Pindaros),
Philoctetes (not Philoktetes), Plato (not Platon), Pluto (not Plouton),
Polygnotus (not Polugnotos), Polyxena (not Poluxene), Ptolemy (not
Ptolemaios), Socrates (not Sokrates), Sophocles (not Sophokles),
Syracuse (not Surakoussai), Tarentum (not Taras), Thermopylae (not
Thermopulai), Thucydides (not
Thoukudides). All these examples come
from Pausanias 1.1 through 1.30. Some “household names” of the
past, however, are less likely to qualify as such today, and I include
in this smaller list such names as Antipatros (not Antipater),
Kassandros (not Cassander), Aratos (not Aratus), Eurydikē (not
Eurydice), Oitē (not Oeta), Rōxanē (not Roxana), Khairōneia (not
Chaeronea), Aigeus (not Aegeus), Daidalos (not Daedalus), Ikaros (not
Icarus), Hipparkhos (not Hipparchus). I have included in this shorter
list even the names of the father of Theseus, Aigeus (not Aegeus), after
whom the Aegean Sea is named, and of the Ptolemaic queen Eurydikē,
despite the association of the mythical figure Eurydice with Orpheus, as
in Pausanias 9.30.6. In many cases, it is relatively easy to recognize
the latinized versions underneath the more hellenized spellings. A
shining example is the father-and-son pair Daidalos and Ikaros, for
Daedalus and Icarus. Another such example is Kleopatra, for Cleopatra.
In many cases, my reasons for preferring the hellenized spelling over
the latinized version have to do with word-associations that become
evident in contexts highlighted by Pausanias. In the case of Daidalos,
for example, the meaning of his name is relevant to the name of a
festival, the Daidala, as described by Pausanias 9.3.2–6. [[GN
2017.10.05.]]
archon [arkhōn]… As we see
later in our readings, Pausanias 4.5.10, this word ‘archon’
[arkhōn], meaning literally ‘leader’, was the Athenian title of an
official who was appointed yearly by lot. The traditional Athenian way
of dating any given year when any event happened was by remembering the
name of the archon [arkhōn] who was in charge during that year.
thalassocracy… In the history
of Athens, the era of the Athenian Empire was most noted for the city’s
maritime power, the Greek word for which was thalassokratiā or
‘thalassocracy’. For background on this word, see 1§§5–6 in
Nagy 2017.04.11, “Diachronic Homer and a Cretan
Odyssey.” [[GN
2014.04.13]]
ship-sheds [neōs
oikoi]… In the glory days of the Athenian Empire, a most
celebrated visual marker of the magnificence as well as the power of its
thalassocracy was the architectural complex of colossal buildings known
as neōs oikoi ‘ship-sheds’ at the dockyards of seaport of Peiraieus. I
have invited Mills McArthur to write a comment here about these
buildings. [[GN 2014.04.13]]
The neōs-oikoi ‘ship-sheds’–literally ‘ship houses’–of Peiraieus
sheltered the warships so critical to the military success of the city
of Athens. Ships would be drawn up out of the water on ramps into their
‘houses’. But these utilitarian dockyard structures ultimately
transcended their function, gaining great symbolic importance for the
Athenians—so much so that Demosthenes (fourth century BCE), enumerating
some of the prominent symbols of Athens’ glory, grouped the ship-sheds
of the dockyards of Peiraieus together with the Parthenon itself
(Speech 22 section 76)! The
atmosphere of the docks on the verge of an expedition is vividly
captured in Greek literature, ranging from the hustle and bustle
(Aristophanes Acharnians 544–554)
to a mixture of hope and foreboding on occasions when the ships were
launched in the glory days of the Athenian Empire (Thucydides 6.30–32).
Even after the empire went into decline, the glory of the dockyards of
the Peiraieus was still very much in evidence, as we see from the
testimony of Demosthenes. See also Pausanias 1.29.16, where he speaks
about the rebuilding of the neōs oikoi ‘ship-sheds’ of the Peiraieus
in the era of the statesman Lycurgus of Athens, who dominated the
cultural and political life of Athens in the late fourth century BCE.
The Roman general Sulla sacked the Peiraieus in 86 BCE, and so Pausanias
in the second century CE would have seen just a trace of the structures
that formerly highlighted the naval power of Athens. [[MM
2014.04.15.]]
Magnesia-at-Maeander… The city
of Magnesia, contiguous with the river Maeander, is situated on the
mainland of Greek Asia Minor. In the time of Themistocles, Magnesia was
part of the Persian Empire. After Themistocles was banished from his
native city of Athens, he eventually defected to the king of the
Persians, Artaxerxes I, who appointed him as ruler of Magnesia. See
Pausanias 1.26.4, also the comments of Habicht 1998:5. On the symbolism
implicit in the name of Magnesia, see HC 3§§77–94. [[GN
2017.10.15.]]
tomb of Themistocles at
Peiraieus… This detail in Pausanias 1.1.2 is of special interest
to me. I find it intriguing that Pausanias, visiting Athens in the
second century CE, is foregrounding here a detail about Themistocles
that could easily be ignored by professional Classicists who study only
the testimony of the Classical period of the fifth and the fourth
centuries BCE. It is as if he were saying to such professionals: here is
something that I bet you did not know—or had ignored… Themistocles was
rehabilitated by the Athenians, despite his having defected to the
Persian Empire after his political successes in Athens had gone sour.
And the visible sign of his rehabilitation is his tomb. The tomb of
Themistocles, as a visible reminder, reconnects the memories about
Themistocles with the present. Here the medium of Pausanias, which is a
visual journey that reconnects with the history of the past, shows its
power to reshape or even restore history as he sees it. I see a
comparable gesture of rehabilitation in my comment on a later passage,
Pausanias 1.23.9. [[GN 2014.04.13.]]
Parthenon… The political as
well as the cultural significance of the Parthenon here is made evident
by the context. We see here in Pausanias 1.1.2 his first mention of the
Parthenon. The author has not wasted much time in making mention of this
all-important monument. [[GN 2017.10.15.]]
