Wandering Greeks (14 page)

Pausanias tells us that the Arcadians agreed to abandon their former homes and settle in Megalopolis “out of zeal and because of their fear of the Spartans” (8.27.3). From its inception, however, the synoecism ran into difficulties, no doubt because many of its inhabitants had been conscripted. We hear of three groups of peoples who “changed their minds and, being no longer willing to abandon their former cities, were forcibly brought to Megalopolis,” while a fourth group—namely, the inhabitants of Trapezous—left the Peloponnese for good in preference to being resettled (8.27.5). Then six years later a number of those who had been transplanted to Megalopolis, finding that they were unable to adjust to life in the new city, abandoned the new settlement and returned to their former homes. The rebellion, if that is the right word, was put
down by the Thebans, who, in Diodorus's words, “by sacking some of the cities and terrifying others, compelled their peoples to change their residence to Megalopolis.”Diodorus concludes his account of Megalopolis not without a pinch of irony: “So the
sunoikismos
of the cities, having reached such a pitch of disorder, was moderately successful in the end” (15.94.3).

The Synoecism of Halicarnassus

At some point in the decade from 377 to 367 the Persian satrap of Caria named Mausolus began moving his capital from inland (Carian) Mylasa to coastal (Greek) Halicarnassus. He did so by relocating the inhabitants of six (less plausibly five) towns that were close to Halicarnassus (Callisthenes,
FGrH
124 F 25 = Str.
Geog
. 13.1.59 C611; Pln.
NH
5.107). As a result of this move, Halicarnassus became a predominantly Carian or, more specifically, Lelegian city. The Carian immigrants, dubbed,
perhaps prejudicially,
neopolitai
(new citizens) by the existing citizens, eventually became at least partly hellenized, since they were required to participate in the Greek governmental system. Epigraphical evidence indicates that the ethnically mixed citizen body made decisions—no doubt of a somewhat routine nature—in the name of the
dêmos
and the
boulê
(council). This seems to have been in accordance with Mausolus's own predilection, since he not only promoted the institutions of the Greek
polis
but also borrowed the language of Greek democracy (cf. Hornblower 1982, 105).

Predilection apart, there was also a compelling strategic reason why Mausolus moved his capital to Halicarnassus—namely, to gain access to the sea. In 378 Athens had founded its second naval confederacy. Mausolus wanted to build up a navy to counter the threat from an increasingly belligerent Athens. A further motive lay in the fact that a populous center would enable him to strengthen his control over the region and, in so doing, weaken the power of the Carian League. He made this control palpable by undertaking an extremely ambitious building program in his capital. Its most enduring architectural legacy turned out to be the project undertaken by his sister-wife, Artemisia—namely, the famous Mausoleum, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which occupied pride of place and may have determined the overall layout. The city also acquired extensive new walls and an imposing mudbrick palace faced with marble.

The synoecism of Halicarnassus represents a largely successful experiment in relocation, not least because there are few signs of destruction at the Lelegian towns whose populations were transferred. To judge from the Athenian tribute lists of the fifth century, moreover, some of these towns had been quite substantial in size. Indeed it has been suggested that the population of Halicarnassus now increased four or five times (Bean 1980, 81). Even so, archaeological evidence indicates that life went on amid the rubble of the towns whose populations were supposedly evacuated (Hornblower 1994, 225). By the hellenistic period the Carian element living in Halicarnassus seems to have become thoroughly assimilated, holding out the tantalizing possibility of interethnic integration.

5
THE DEPORTEE

Political
Stasis
as a Cause of Deportation

Deportation in the archaic and classical Greek world commonly took the form of the forced removal either of a large group by their political opponents or of the entirety of the population by a foreign enemy or tyrant—a phenomenon not unlike that of ethnic cleansing today (see
appendix C
). A frequent cause was factional squabbling between supporters of democracy and those of an oligarchic persuasion. Antagonism between the oligarchic “few” and the democratic “many” was never far beneath the political surface. This state of affairs, once it became acute, was described as
stasis
, a polysemous term that covered a multitude of political exigencies, including partisanship, sedition, and, at the extreme end of the spectrum, revolution and civil war. Typically when factionalism became rife, oligarchs sought to deprive democrats of their basic rights, including citizenship, and to establish a “moderate aristocracy,” while democrats sought to deprive oligarchs of their privileges, including land-ownership, and to establish
isonomia
(equality under the law). In the Peloponnesian War, as Thucydides states, oligarchs brought in the Spartans to strengthen their power base within the city, whereas the democrats brought in the Athenians (3.82.1).
Stasis
also occurred when different ethnic groups within the same city divided into factions.

If relations between the two factions broke down completely, those in the ascendant would deport their opponents, a practice attested by the middle of the sixth century. Though deportation may strike us as a radical solution to a political impasse, in the absence of a party political
system that provided for the orderly transfer of power through the device of an election, it was often the only option available. It was certainly better than the executions that took place under Greece's early tyrants (for example, Hdt. 5.92 epsilon 2). It was better than the massacre of their oligarchic opponents by the Corcyrean democrats, which the latter used to settle private scores, so that “practically nothing was left of the oligarchs” (Thuc. 3.81, 4.48). And it was better, too, than the slaughter of 1,000 to 1,200 oligarchs by democrats during a particularly vicious bout of
stasis
in Argos (D.S. 15.58; Gehrke 1985, 251). The city most subject to
stasis
was Syracuse, whereas Sparta was exemplary in not being subject to its attendant ills for centuries.

Mass deportation, albeit cruel and inhuman, functioned as a valuable safety valve in that it relieved political pressure. Indeed it is hardly an exaggeration to state that the survival of the
polis
at times of crisis depended upon the expulsion of one of the two warring parties, since if conditions deteriorated further, it would become ungovernable and civil slaughter would result. But usual though the recourse to deportation was as a temporary expedient when
stasis
threatened to erupt in bloodshed, it was hardly a long-term solution. Indeed in many cases it merely prolonged the agony, since if the deportees gained the support of a neighboring community they would agitate to be reinstated and then almost certainly exact vengeance on their ousters. Diodorus Siculus (11.76.4), for instance, writes of the year 461, “The peoples who had been expelled from Himera, Gela, and Camarina … returned to their homelands and drove out those who had illegally seized the dwellings of others.” It follows from this that attachment to one's social group often signified more than attachment to one's
polis
(Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 125).

Since the Greeks did not have a word for “deportation” and since, too,
phugê
, its nearest equivalent, can mean either “flight” or “exile,” we rarely know whether a group of people who abandoned their
polis
at a moment of crisis did so voluntarily or under compulsion. Whichever was the case, however, we need hardly doubt that their departure constituted in effect a deportation. We rarely hear how many were driven into exile. Those of a moderate persuasion would presumably have chosen
to remain, even though they might have been subject to prejudice under the newly constituted governmental system.

Though deportation may be viewed as a relatively mild expedient compared with the indiscriminate slaughter of one's political opponents, it was hardly humane. Not for nothing the author of the
Seventh Epistle
that is attributed to Plato repudiated it as a way of resolving a constitutional crisis. Instead he recommended patience, prayer, and keeping a low profile (331d):

The man of good sense … should not resort to violence to his fatherland to bring about a change in the constitution, whenever it is impossible to make it the best of its kind, by sentencing men either to exile or to death. Rather he should remain inactive and pray for what is good both for himself and for his city.

Another type of deportation involved the transfer of an entire population either by a state that had recently conquered the region or by a tyrant who was seeking to expand his power. The purpose was to increase the military and political authority of those who were instrumental in effecting it. It was Sicily in the first half of the fifth century and again in the fourth century that experienced mass population transfer most often, due primarily to the policies of its so-called tyrants. As Rhodes and Osborne (2003, 377) have pointed out, however, the word “tyrant” in the fourth century may sometimes have been used in a pejorative sense to describe a factional leader to whom the user of the term was politically hostile.

One of the most famous instances of deportation by a foreign power in antiquity involved the removal of the Jews to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar following the destruction of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, though we have no way of knowing how many Jews were involved in the transfer. No comparable example is recorded in the Greek case, though Ptolemy I Soter, after his conquest of Palestine in ca. 320, is said to have deported many thousands of Jews and settled them in Egypt. Where deportation is mentioned in our sources, we rarely receive any indication of the numbers involved.

Surviving as a Deportee

Deportation is a severe test of endurance, both physical and psychological, aggravated by the fact that in many cases the deportees are forced to leave all their possessions behind them. When the Athenians took Potidaea in 429 after a three-year siege and expelled the entire population, they “permitted the men to leave with only one cloak, the women with two, and a fixed sum of money for the journey” (Thuc. 2.70.3). Likewise when Philip II of Macedon took Methone in Messenia a century later, he permitted the inhabitants of that city to depart with “only a single cloak” (D.S. 16.34.4–5). Deportees would rarely have been allowed to take their baggage animals and carts with them, so it is unclear how they would have been able to transport the elderly, the infirm, the sick, and the pregnant women. Many of those who were incapable of walking must have been left behind, to face either starvation or slaughter. In cases where the primary objective was to increase the population of a neighboring city, however, deportees are likely to have received better treatment. Even then, however, their plight would have been unenviable, for they had to abandon not only their homes, but also their household shrines and family tombs.

Deportees often faced jeers and insults as they were hustled through the city gates into a frighteningly exposed world. Lacking weapons and armor, they were extremely vulnerable to predators. All too frequently they had to look on helplessly as the weakest fell by the wayside, from either exhaustion, exposure to the elements, or hostile attack. So if the trek was long and arduous, as would commonly have been the case, the column would have been constantly diminishing in length, as more and more stragglers fell by the wayside. Some deportees may in effect have undertaken a death march, with most if not all dying along the way—the fate of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915. However, we never actually hear of this barbaric practice being enforced in the ancient world. Equal risks attended those who sought to escape by sea.