396 Book Reviews

Alain Duplouy and Roger Brock, eds., (2018) Defining Citizenship in Archaic
Greece. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. xiii + 370 pp. $105.00.
ISBN: 9780198817192 (hbk).

The present volume, the result of conferences held at Leeds and Paris, will be
indispensable for researchers studying the diverse definitions and modes of
citizenship in Archaic Greece. Alain Duplouy and Roger Brock have delivered
a well-produced book that both displays exemplary internal coherence and
brings together many of the foremost scholars working on Archaic citizenship,
with some arguments appearing in English for the first time.
A. Duplouy (‘Pathways to Archaic Citizenship’) opens with a thorough and
illuminating discussion of the status quaestionis. He begins by critically exam-
ining Aristotle’s famous definition of citizenship in Politics book 3: the citizen
in the absolute sense is one who has a share in the administration of justice
(krisis) and office-holding (archê). He then surveys different approaches to
Archaic citizenship: legal-institutional, wealth-based, terminological, and
archaeological. Duplouy stresses the importance of a diversity of viewpoints
in approaching Archaic citizenship but also of an understanding of citizenship
as itself diverse.
J. Davies (‘State Formation in Early Iron Age Greece: The Operative Forces’)
provides a sociological model for conceptualizing the development of Iron
Age communities. He begins by looking at Homer’s Scherie and Hesiod’s
Ascra, detecting (especially in the former) the outlines of a polis-like commu-
nity with basic political institutions present (ruler, elders, assembly). He then
proposes six ‘working parts’ in state development: exceptional individuals,
population, the natural environment, ideas of the supernatural, the availabil-
ity of resources, and the force of ‘memory, imagination, and a sense of identity’
(p. 60). The goal is to see how specific constellations of these forces might affect
the balance of power between the three political institutions just named.
J. Blok (‘Retracing Steps: Finding Ways into Archaic Greek Citizenship’)
reprises themes from her recent monograph.1 She also criticizes Aristotle’s dis-
cussion of the citizen, noting that his definition departs from the Athenian one
of ‘someone born of a citizen man and citizen woman’. She, by contrast, begins
from two methodological premises, namely that the study of civic terminology
is vital, and that ‘participation’ in the polis was not necessarily about access
to political office but in its most fundamental sense consisted in ‘shar[ing] in
the things of the gods and in all human affairs that are pleasing to the gods’
(p. 85), something which both men and women could do. One does not have

1  J. Blok, Citizenship in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/20512996-12340225

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 Book Reviews 397

to agree fully with Blok’s account of Classical Athenian citizenship to see how
her approach might be productive for exploring the evidence of the Archaic
period, and indeed she highlights several pieces of epigraphic evidence that
reveal the importance of descent and cult in Archaic law.
In ‘Citizens and Soldiers in Archaic Athens’, H. van Wees returns to a favorite
topic of his, the Solonian census classes, to make several novel suggestions.
First, it may have been the case that the upper three Solonian census classes
were required on pain of punishment to possess arms. Second, general levies of
troops were likely compulsory for both heavy- and light-armed troops already
in the Archaic period. And third, while the upper census classes could be con-
scripted, members of the thete class might nonetheless volunteer as hoplites
if they possessed arms.
P. Ismard’s chapter (‘Associations and Citizenship in Attica from Solon to
Cleisthenes’) recapitulates, this time in English translation, arguments from
his 2010 book.2 He uses as a case study the Gephyraioi, the community to which
the Athenian tyrannicides supposedly belonged (Hdt. 5.57), to argue that
sixth-century Athens was a ‘very weakly integrated … city within which there
were multiple communitarian affiliations’ (P. 151). Some groups had access to
political institutions, while others may have possessed a kind of ‘incomplete
citizenship’ in which their persons and possessions were protected under law,
but they did not participate politically.
Sparta-watchers must take into account the revisionist interpretation
of the Spartan tribes put forth by M. Lupi (‘Citizenship and Civic Subdivisions:
The Case of Sparta’). While most scholars take the ôbai of the Great Rhetra to
refer to Sparta’s constituent villages, Lupi argues that they are instead identical
with the 27 phratries mentioned by Demetrius of Scepsis. Lupi concludes by
suggesting that one function of the civic divisions laid out by the Rhetra was to
‘mix together’ the existing communities of Sparta in a manner not unlike that
of Cleisthenes’ reforms in Athens.
P. Cartledge (‘The Spartan Contribution to Greek Citizenship Theory’)
explores the exceptionally strict series of ‘citizenship-tests’ imposed on
Spartan males: the scrutiny of infants, the educational system, the election to
a syssition, the property qualification required for mess contributions, and the
need to avoid the charge of ‘trembling’. He notes the exclusionary quality of
the Spartan homoioi as evidenced by the fact that Helots who became neo-
damodeis, ‘new demos-type people’, were nevertheless not full politai.

2  P. Ismard, La cité des réseaux. Athènes et ses associations, VIe-Ier siècle av. J.-C. (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne).

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N. Fisher then provides a thorough overview of ‘Athletics and Citizenship’.

Here the issue is not so much what ‘citizenship’ meant as how the citizen
related to athletics and to what sorts of desirable foreigners citizenship was
offered. Fisher surveys sources from Sparta, Crete, Athens, the mainland, and
Magna Graecia; the resulting evidence for individual athletes changing citizen-
ship is usefully laid out in Table 8.1. Many of the cases stem from Sicily and its
tyrants, who were eager to attract outstanding performers like athletes to their
cities.
In ‘Citizenship and Commensality in Archaic Crete: Searching for the
Andreion’, J. Whitley incorporates the latest theories and archaeological find-
ings to give an overview of the study of the Cretan dining mess, the andreion.
He first discusses the literary evidence for andreia, the existence of which is
proved by several Archaic inscriptions. Even more stimulating is his summary
of archaeological discoveries, including a small structure at Ai Lia that could
have housed no more than twenty diners, and several ‘hearth temples’, which
may have been multipurpose structures that served as both temples and din-
ing halls. We also benefit from a discussion of the recent excavations at Azoria,
including the so-called ‘monumental civic building’, about twenty meters long
and ten meters wide, and the much smaller ‘communal dining building’. He
concludes that there was likely more than one andreion per city, which, if they
housed about twenty people apiece, would resemble, we may note, the syssitia
of Sparta.
Duplouy returns in chapter 10 to explicate his conception of ‘Citizenship as
Performance’, drawing on the arguments of his 2006 book.3 He views citizen-
ship not so much as a legal status but as a lived, embodied practice, achieved
through being recognized by one’s peers in various venues of performance
(athletics, burials, conspicuous display, etc.). He begins with a fragment of
Aristotle (611.39 Rose) on the constitution of Archaic Cyme, in which a cer-
tain Pheidon gave a share of citizenship to more individuals by establishing
a law making it necessary for each person to rear a horse, while Prometheus
handed over the constitution to a group of one thousand. Duplouy suggests
that in this situation to be a citizen was to be a man recognized as having the
capacity to rear a horse, but also that a thousand men likely met this require-
ment. That strikes me as an extremely high number of men capable of taking
on such a costly responsibility in a mid-sized Archaic polis. I also think we
should be alert to the possibility that Aristotle is here deploying the develop-
mental schema outlined in the Politics, in which kings give way to equestrian

3  A. Duplouy, Le prestiges des élites. Recherches sur les modes de reconnaissance sociale en Grèce
entre les Xe et Ve siècles avant J.-C. (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2006).

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oligarchs who in turn give way to a broader hoplite group (4.13.1297b15 and ff.).
In that case, Pheidon and Prometheus would represent two separate steps in
one of Aristotle’s ‘natural’ progressions (on the historicity of which we ought
to remain skeptical). I am likewise hesitant to accept Duplouy’s later asser-
tion that ‘both the elite and the “common people” shared the same agonistic
mentality, for it was an essential feature in the recognition of the former by the
latter’ (p. 272). This is to deny too strongly the possibility of class tensions and
civic strife in the Archaic period. Furthermore, a crucial term missing from the
discussion, it seems to me, is ‘dêmos’. We know from numerous Archaic laws on
stone and from Archaic poetry that ‘the people’ played a non-negligible role in
the politics of the time. On Duplouy’s model, are we to understand the demos
as coterminous with, e.g., the horse-breeding elite of Cyme? Are they instead
a separate group, the mass of the non-elite, but not, on this reading, citizens?
In ‘Oligarchies of “Fixed Number” or Citizen Bodies in the Making?’,
M. Giangiulio answers the question posed by his title in favor of the latter.
He examines cases of numbered groups such as the ‘Thousand’ of Colophon,
Cyme, Croton, and Locri and the ‘Six Hundred’ of Massalia. He argues that
these were not oligarchic councils but instead the entire citizen body of these
poleis. This may well be the case (although the evidence is often late and unre-
liable), but again, what was the status of the excluded free-born native men
and women? Were they the demos but not the politai? We are told that such a
group existed outside of the Thousand of Croton, for example. If this group was
more numerous than the numbered bodies, it is difficult to see what keeps up
from labeling these regimes de facto oligarchies, or at least ‘elite-dominated’
polities. In an excellent ‘Conclusion’, R. Brock raises this and other questions
while commenting on the chapters. He ends by suggesting further compara-
tive analysis of Archaic Greek communities and, for example, early Rome and
Sicily.
The book is filled with brilliant insights and promising methodological
pathways that should inform future scholarship. As an edited volume, it could
never have been an exhaustive account of all of the evidence for Archaic cit-
izenship. Still, it was surprising to see so little use made of Archaic sources
usually consulted in this area: Archilochus, Alcaeus, and the Theognidea
feature very seldomly, and Solon comes up primarily with regard to his law
on associations and the census classes. This may have something to do with
the largely revisionist view of citizenship contained herein. In keeping
with Duplouy’s exhortation in the opening chapter, a red thread throughout
is an understanding of Archaic citizenship as more diverse, fluid, and open
than has typically been the case, with a de-emphasis on office-holding and a
heightened focus on cult, display, and other forms of participation. This stance

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is in turn informed by a varying sense of opposition to Aristotle’s definition of

the citizen. Here in conclusion I will say briefly that while we cannot assume
that the philosopher was right about citizenship in the Archaic and Classical
periods, we cannot assume that he was wrong, either: only the evidence
can decide the issue. While office-holding does not exhaust the meaning of
‘belonging to the polis’, the evidence of Archaic law makes it undeniably clear
that it was a concern of elite men to hold office. After all – to my way of think-
ing, anyway – most states require an individual or group of people empowered
(whether through communal appointment or usurpation) to resolve disputes
and to wield the means of force (what we might call krisis and archê). Some
Archaic citizens exercised these powers, while others did not, and in any case
the contributions here make clear that there were other ways of participat-
ing in the polis that included non-elite men and women. But it is fascinating
that by the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods there was a rough con-
sensus among the Greek cities that the people who would exercise these state
functions were the politai, and that these (pace Blok and in line with Aristotle)
were, primarily, the free-born adult native men of a democracy: the ruling ele-
ment (politeuma) was the dêmos. Future research might investigate how the
variegated quality of citizenship in the Archaic period gave way to this hege-
monic conception.

Matthew Simonton
Arizona State University
Matt.Simonton@asu.edu

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