Greek History and Historiography

Aegina, island in Saronic Gulf, inhabited from late neolithic times and in contact with Minoan Crete and Mycenae. Early in the first millennium bce it was resettled by Greeks from Epidaurus (Hdt. 8. 46, 5. 43); protogeometric pottery indicates links with Attica and the Argolid. Aegina belonged to the Calaurian *amphictiony (Strabo 8. 6. 14; see calauria). It was not a great colonizing power, though Aeginetans participated at *Naucratis (Hdt. 2. 178), and are said to have colonized Kydonia (mod. Chania) on Crete, and Italian Umbria (Strabo 8. 6. 16; see atria; spina). Certainly Aeginetan connections with central Italy are attested c.500 bce by a dedication at Gravisca (Etruria) by the wealthy Sostratus of Aegina (Jeffery, LSAG ² p. 439 + Hdt. 4. 152). The scale of Aegina's trade is indicated by its population of perhaps 40,000 (Figueira; reduced to 20,000 by Hansen) on territory which could support only 4,000 from its own agricultural resources. Aegina struck coins early.

‘Goat’s rivers’ in the *Hellespont, probably an open beach somewhere opposite *Lampacus, scene of the final and decisive sea-battle of the *Peloponnesian war, a victory over the Athenians by the Spartans under *Lysander (405). *Alcibiades, in exile in Thrace, had warned the Athenian generals (who included *Conon (1)) of the dangers of their exposed position, and may even have offered military help in the form of Thracians; but he was rebuffed. The accounts of how the battle started cannot be reconciled, but it is clear that, after several days of inactivity, the Athenians were caught with most of their ships unmanned.

Who lived most of his adult life in *Alexandria (1), eventually leaving, perhaps in flight to Athens after 145. He was not, as previously believed, regent to *Ptolemy (1) IX but was in the service of *Heraclides (3) Lembus. His major works, for which there are fragmentary remains, include: Asian Affairs (Τὰ κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν), probably a universal history that extended to the *Diadochi; European Affairs (Τὰ κατὰ τὴν Εὐρώπην), perhaps to his own time; and On the Red Sea (Περὶ τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης) in five books (some preserved by Diodorus, bk. 3, and Photius). These large-scale histories, interlaced with *anthropology and *geography, provided a model for *Posidonius (2). He attacked the Asianic prose style, and *Photius calls him a worthy disciple of *Thucydides (2) in expression. He may have voiced hostility toward the Ptolemies, from whom he may have fled.

Sparta (‘the sown land’?) lies c. 56 km. (35 miles) south of *Tegea, and 48 km. (30 mi.) north of Gytheum, at the heart of the fertile alluvial valley of the Eurotas. See laconia. Very few prehistoric remains are known from the site of historical Sparta, but there was a substantial neolithic community not far south, and a major late bronze age settlement about 3 km. north-east (the *'Menelaion' site at Therapne). The circumstances of the settlement of Sparta town are enveloped in the fog of myth and legend: the ‘Return of the Heraclids’, as the ancients put it, and the ‘Dorian Invasion’, in modern parlance (see dorians; heraclidae). Archaeology as currently understood suggests a cultural break with the bronze age and a humble new beginning somewhere in the darkness of the 10th cent.; the initial relationship between Sparta and *Amyclae, which by 700 had been incorporated on equal terms with the other four villages comprising Sparta town, is no less obscure.