Kylonian Conspiracy

Kylonian ConspiracyAuthor(s): Mabel LangSource: Classical Philology, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 243-249Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/268533 .

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KYLONIAN CONSPIRACY

MABEL LANG

T HE absence of all "Herodotean"' elements in Herodotus' story of the Kylonian conspiracy2 suggests with

considerable cogency that Herodotus did not know the version which appears in Thucydides' account.3 Not only would this version have been certain to attract Herodotus' favorable notice (because it included favorite motifs) but also (if indeed it is pro-Alkmaionid in bias)4 it would almost certainly have come to his atten- tion along with the other Alkmaionid material for which he has found room.5 It therefore seems possible that the version which Herodotus reports includes prac- tically all that was known in Athens ca. 440 B.C. concerning the conspiracy of Kylon and its aftermath.

If that is so, Thucydides has con- veniently provided for us an example of that process which he so deplored: facts winning over into myth. And this myth- making must have taken place in Thucyd- ides' own lifetime and provided the material for his account of the conspiracy, which seems to me to be a conflation of at least two variant accretions to the facts, with some evidence of earlier cross- fertilization between the variants.

For the sake of verisimilitude and fuller detail the scanty facts handed down in oral tradition must have been enriched and embroidered. It was natural, for example, to assign Kylon's coup to a time of festival, since the "capture by festival" motif was a well-worn pattern in both history (fact) and story.6 One version may well have gone on to identify the festival as the Diasia, which was held outside the city and so provided the best

opportunity for an easy take-over of the Acropolis. This version would have been "unmoralized" in that it did not "see the facts" in terms of the eventual failure of the undertaking. At the same time a second version which wished to see IKylon himself sowing the seeds of his failure took up the capture-by-festival motif but dis- regarded its rationale (that one takes the opportunity presented by the people's at- tention being elsewhere) in order to make the choice of festival an expression of Kylon's arrogance and ripeness for dis- aster. That is, when the "forces of moral- ization" can find no other reason for a man's downfall in the "facts" they often take advantage of hindsight to supply an ambiguous prediction or prophecy which the destined victim can interpret or react to wrongly so as to show his egocentrism and disharmony with reality and so as to bring his doom on himself.7 So here Kylon must have made a choice which laid him open to destruction; the obvious prophecy, then, was one which predicted that he would take the Acropolis on the greatest festival of Zeus, so that he would choose the Zeus festival which was all important from his own point of view (the Olympian) and thereby pass up not only the greatest from the point of view of Athens but also the one which would have insured success because the Athenian people would all have been outside the city and left him a clear road to the conquest of the Acropo- IiS.8

Both festival and oracle here represent the stuff that makes up to mythodes. If then there is some likelihood that the version in Thucydides is something more

[CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY, LXII, October, 19671 243



244 MABEL LANG

than straightforward fact in these two respects, we must ask whether other items might also be embroidery or elaboration by the tradition and whether for any reason (e.g., to point a moral, to increase verisimilitude, to propagate a prejudice for or against some office, person, or family) interested persons might have added details or changed the emphasis. For example, only in Thucydides' version do we have the relationship with Thea- genes of Megara. We may speculate whether this detail came to Thucydides in some one of the following ways: that is, was it added to the tradition (1) in answer to the question how any man could have collected a sufficient force within the state to oppose the state as a whole (verisimilitude); (2) in accord with the widespread belief that one attained power through one's wife (folklore motif: hand of the princess and half the kingdom); (3) to make Kylon a traitor who brought in foreigners (justification of his destroyers)? Any of these is possible, but since it is also possible that the association is a fact which Herodotus knew but felt no need to include, we should not expect to make use of this detail to support any theory of historical transmission and accretion. The same may be said of the less specific detail recorded by Thucydides and omitted by Herodotus that Kylon was well born and powerful; it might have been fact that Herodotus felt hardly needed saying or it might have been a sly dig at his opponents.

The next detail which Thucydides was the first to record is the general mobiliza- tion of the Athenians and their siege of Kylon and his forces on the Acropolis. Herodotus' narrative moves directly from Kylon's inability to prevail (epikratesai) to his sitting as a suppliant at the statue of the goddess, leaving a question as to the force which had defeated him. The

suppliant posture does not enter Thucyd- ides' story until after "the main force of the Athenians, wearied by the siege, went away leaving the watch to the nine archons and full powers to arrange mat- ters as they might think best." Thucyd- ides then continues, "At that time the nine archons were largely in charge of the state. Those who were besieged with Ky- lon began to be badly off for lack of both food and water. So Kylon and his brother escaped, but the others, when they were hard pressed and some even were dying from starvation, sat at the altar on the Acropolis as suppliants." It may be that Herodotus' narrative im- plied all this and that no elaboration took place to flesh out the bare bones, but it seems less likely that Herodotus used Kylon as a shorthand expression for Kylon's forces if he knew that Kylon himself was not with them. At least it seems worth while exploring the possible mo- tives that might have led to this considerable addition and variation in Thucyd- ides' account. Certainly the chief point which Thucydides seems to be making is the complete legality of the action taken against Kylon's forces, that is, it was the whole people who began the siege and they who turned over the conduct of the affair to their duly appointed magistrates with full powers. But despite the ap- parent fulness of his account there are obscurities: the watch of those on the Acropolis could not have been kept by the nine archons alone, but there is no indica- tion of what forces they had at their disposal; that there was some loophole in the watch appears from the escape of Kylon and his brother, but it is not at all clear why others as well did not use it.

Starting from Herodotus' bare facts, we see that it was logical to expect that Ky- lon would not have been sitting at the statue unless he was on the Acropolis and



KYLONIAN CONSPIRACY 245

that he would not have been there as a suppliant unless he was defeated; so the notion of a besieging force was implicit in the story. Since the idea of that force being pan-Athenian was not so implicit, it is fair to ask if there is any reason why this detai found its place in the expanded version. The most immediate and obvious answer is the point of legality mentioned above: any action taken against Kylon had the broadest possible base in the authority of the whole people. And since the narrative goes on to make explicit the conferring of this authority on the nine archons, it looks very much as if the intent of this addition was the defense and justification of the archons, even though it is not clear whether it was the office or the holders that are the object. But it does seem possible that the obscurity about the forces left to implement the orders of the archons might be part of this intent to attach the responsibility securely to one group and to show how firmly based was its authority, thus ignoring men who might have been the actual agents in carrying out any action. The obscurity about the way in which Kylon and his brother escaped is another matter, and at least two intents may be conjectured for the inclusion of this detail: (1) the escape of the ringleaders meant that subsequent action was taken against the comparatively innocent and was therefore less defensible; (2) the "watch" was selec- tive for some reason-bribery? family? friendship? To decide for or against either or both of these we must wait till we have penetrated further into the story of the subsequent action, both as sketched by Herodotus and elaborated in the versions of Thucydides and Plutarch.

Herodotus: "the presidents of the naucraries, who then ruled Athens, raised up these [the suppliants], making them liable except for death, but the responsi-

bility [blame?] for their murder belongs to the Alkmaionidai." (Note that the vexed question of the naucraries need not con- cern us here, since its importance is more constitutional than as part of this story; what is perfectly clear is that the presidents of the naucraries did not kill the suppliants; the implication is that the murder was unofficial and unauthorized.)

Thucydides: "Those of the Athenians who were entrusted with the watch, having raised them [the suppliants] up when they saw they were dying in the shrine, on the condition that they would do nothing harmful, led them away and killed them; and they murdered some who were sitting at the altars of the Semnai Theai on the way. And from this act they were called Accursed of the Goddess, and their descendants after them. And the Athenians drove these Accursed into exile, and Kleomenes the Spartan later, along with a faction of the Athenians, drove them out, both exiling the living and taking up the bones of the dead they threw them out. Later, however, they re- turned." (Note that the reason for raising up the suppliants was presumably added for verisimilitude, as a logical extension of Herodotus' account; there is perhaps some question as to the subject of poiesu- sin, whether the suppliants promised good behavior or the raisers-up promised not to harm them, but the parallel with Herodotus' version makes the latter more likely. The additional detail of some suppliants, having been raised up from Athena's altar and being led down the Panathenaic Way, rushing to the shelter of the Semnai Theai [presumably when they saw some of their number being murdered] and beigg killed in sanctuary might be either for the sake of verisimilitude [anyone who tried to picture what might have happened when the massacre started would be likely to come up with



246 A1IABEL LANG

something like this] or a variant intended to make the killing even more heinous. The fact that those responsible were called Accursed of the Goddess rather than of the Goddesses does not really help here since Athena takes precedence anyway by priority of insult. The exile of the Ac- cursed by Kleomenes along with a faction of the Athenians is the only indica- tion within the digression that the Alk- maionidai were the guilty ones [although of course the whole digression is brought in to explain the Spartan demand in 431 B.C. that the Athenians drive out the Accursed, with a view to harming Pericles or his influence].)

What is clear from the narrative of Thucydides concerning the responsibility for the murder? Certainly the insistence on the archons' having full powers makes it seem that the murder was thought of as an official act in this version, but the subject of the verbs "to kill" is ambiguous enough to cast some doubt on this con- clusion; is the phrase "those who were entrusted with the watch" just a periphrasis for the archons or is it meant obscurely to point to some part of the force they had at their disposal? The fact that the phrase repeats the original authorization suggests that it is indeed simply a periphrasis, and that the murder was an act carried out by the archons with complete authorization by the people. What would be the motive for making the act an official one? It might be to relieve those popularly supposed to be guilty of the personal onus and to shift it to the people as a whole; it might be to spread the responsibility, which belonged to one archon who was acting either officially or unofficially, out among all the archons and hence to the people. This latter possibility points up the one real difficulty in- herent in seeing the murder as an official act, that is, that only the Alkmaionidai

were cursed, and if the act had been truly official all nine archons would have shared the curse.

Given the one certainty that is both reported by Herodotus and used by the Spartans in 431 B.C., that the Alkmaioni- dai had the blame for the murder, it is clear that attempts might reasonably have been made by the Alkmaionidai and in the Alkmaionid interest to promulgate a version of the events which might lessen the blame, mitigate the offense, and spread the responsibility. Since it was presumably common knowledge that Megakles was archon at what might have been known to be the relevant time, such a version would naturally use the archons as the official agency, despite the Herod- otean evidence about the presidents of the naucraries. Once the murder was attributed to the archons and given, as it were, official sanction, it should have, to the Alkmaionid mind, been less useful to their opponents for anti-Alkmaionid prop- aganda.

If Thucydides used an Alkmaionid version of the Kylonian conspiracy why does his account leave what they would have called the official nature of the murder so obscure? Why did he not simply say that the Spartan demand was unrealistic in view of the official and widespread guilt? I think the answer must be that although he was perfectly willing to accept the Alkmaionid version (which had by virtue of its verisimilitudinous details more of a ring of actual fact than the sketchy outline of Herodotus-and even Herodotus' account does not affirm Alk- maionid guilt), the fact of their reputation remained and it was on the basis of that reputation in the popular mind that the Spartan demand was a perfectly valid one.

Before we go on to ask if we have any evidence at all about the event itself as




opposed to the tradition about it, we should look briefly at additions to the story in the version of Plutarch (Solon 12): "Megakles the archon persuaded the fellow-conspirators of Kylon who sat as suppliants of the goddess to come down for trial. These, having attached a yellow thread to the altar and keeping hold of this, when they were going past the Semnai Theai and the thread broke of itself, Megakles and his fellow-archons rushed to arrest, on the ground that the goddess herself abjured their suppliancy. And some of them they stoned outside the shrine; others were killed when they had fled to the altars; only those supplicating the wives [of the archons] were let off. From this, being called Accursed, they were hated; and those surviving of the Kylonians became strong again and con- tinued political strife against the descendants of Megakles." (Note that here for the first time Megakles is named as the Alk- maionid involved; this detail was implicit in Thucydides' version, but it is not possible to say whether the making of it explicit was a matter of time and much retelling of the story or whether Thucyd- ides omitted the personal definition as not being relevant to his purpose. But the story of the yellow thread is almost certainly a further development of the same version which carries the process of exculpating the Alkmaionidai one important step beyond the stage in Thucyd- ides' account where the responsibility was shared and the act was seen to be official; now the responsibility is not merely official, it is assumed by Athena herself. The fact that the additions in Plutarch's account give point to the part played by the altars of the Semnai Theai might be interpreted in at least two ways: first, as a more developed version it could weld together variants [previously un- dizestedl in the tradition: second, on the

off-chance that this version was not later but earlier than Thucydides, we should not be surprised if the historian who eschewed mythical details like the Oath of Tyndareus excised the yellow thread and so severed the connection between the suppliants on the Acropolis and those at the Semnai Theai.)9

One item of Thucydides' version we must take up again in the light of the complete story and in preparation for some conjecture concerning what actual- ly happened during and after the Kyloni- an conspiracy: the escape of Kylon and his brother before the massacre, as reported by Thucydides alone of our sources. Since it seems most likely that that version was largely Alkmaionid- inspired to remove by implication as much as possible of the blame for the murder, we might expect that the item about Kylon and his brother was included for the sake of its implications also. It was suggested above that these were either (1) to make the action subsequent- ly taken against the comparatively innocent who did not escape more heinous, or (2) to show that the two most guilty were allowed for some reason to escape. Obviously, the first cannot belong to an Alkmaionid-inspired version, and the second, suggesting as it does some kind of corruptibility on the part of the "watch," does not at first glance seem to be a likely part of any Alkmaionid account. But if we assume that the implications are as little explicit in this item as they are in the whole tendency of the narrative to suggest that the action was official, it may well be that Alkmaionid permission for the escape of Kylon and his brother was a subtle way of countering a popular belief that the murder for which the Alk- maionidai were popularly held responsible was motivated by family feuding or personal rivalry between the two families.



248 MABEL LANG

If this is a possibility it would give us a very useful glimpse at one facet at least of the conspiracy and its aftermath: the reason for the ruthless disposal of the conspirators. That is, the thing most likely to give rise to popular belief in the deadly rivalry between Alkmaionidai and the family of Kylon would have been the otherwise unmotivated slaughter of the latter and their supporters by the former.

One other clue to the actual facts of the case may be seen in the substitution of the archons (in the Thucydidean and later versions) for the presidents of the naucraries in Herodotus' report. On the prin- ciple that if there is no reason for the presidents of the naucraries to have played this role and there is a reason to give it to the archons (because Megakles was known to have been archon at a relevant time and so could be assumed to have acted officially), the presidents are the more likely actual agents, especially since the account designating them as in control is prior to the others.

On the basis of these two possibilities what kind of picture can we build of the events? That Kylon attempted some kind of coup is as certain as anything can be, but we really do not know if he did it with help from Megara or at a time or festival or any details at all. That the coup failed and ended with the conspirators sitting as

suppliants is also fairly certain. And if our sources can be used to reveal what they may be trying to obscure, as suggested above, we may also be fairly confident that it was the presidents of the naucraries who raised up the suppliants and that some of the Alkmaionidai instigated the massacre, taking the opportunity of the Kylonians' public fiasco and guilt to carry on a private quarrel. This was the action which gave them the blame and the name of Accursed; this was the action which resulted in two periods of exile for the Alkmaionidai, the Spartan demand for a third, and the fifth-century attempt by the Alkmaionidai not so much to deny it but to give an official and impartial air to the whole episode.10

Concerning the date of the Kylonian conspiracy there has already been much discussion." What seems most interesting is the fact that to us it is almost obvious that Drakon's homicide laws should have resulted from this massacre and the re- sultant trial, but not one of our ancient sources connects the two at all. And since the dates indicated by our sources depend largely on the Olympic victory of Kylon, which may well have had only a mythol- ogizing relation to the facts, closer definition than the latter part of the seventh century B.C. seems impossible to achieve.

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

NOTES

1. I.e., oracle, "capture by festival," Kylon's responsibility for his own end. F. Jacoby asserts (Atthis [Oxford, 1949], p. 368, n. 83) that "it is not very credible that Herodotus should not have known the oracle" to show that Herodotus is giving only an abbreviated account of the conspiracy. But the assertion is equally true with the added condition: "if indeed it was part of the story in his time."

2. Hdt. 5. 71. Recent and useful bibliography on this much-vexed question includes A. W. Gomme, Commentary on Thucydides, I (Oxford, 1945), 425-30; L. Moulinier, REA, XLVIII (1946), 182-202; Jacoby, op. cit., pp. 186-88, 366-70; G. Forrest, BCH, LXXX (1956), 39-42; F. R. Wuist, Historia, VI (1957), 176- 77; M. H. Jameson, BCH, LXXXIX (1965), 167-72.

3. Thuc. 1. 126.

4. Jacoby, op. cit., pp. 187 and 368, n. 84. 5. E.g., 1. 59-61, 64; 5. 62, 66-73; 6. 121-31. 6. Cf. Hdt. 1. 106, 150, 191, 211; 2. 100. 7. The Delphic replies to Croe3us (Hdt. 1. 53-56)

are prime examples. 8. On this point compare Forrest, op. cit., p. 39:

"That, at least, was the Delphic explanation, and, as Professor Parke very justly remarks (p. 138), the fact that an explanation was necessary is convincing evidence that Delphi had something to do with the attempt in the first place." Where there is no more convincing evidence than this for the oracle, we may at least imagine that it was invented to fill a need for a prophecy which could, by being wilfully misinter- preted, make Kylon responsible for his own failure.

9. It is in this kind of treatment of what Thucyd-




ides regarded as "mythologized" material that his striving after literal and factual accuracy most be- trays him. For it is obvious that mythological history has a kind of psychological truth which not only cannot be converted into factual truth by judicious sur- gery but also cannot keep its own verity or verisimilitude under the knife. So, by cutting out the Oath of Tyndareus (1. 9) Thucydides lost touch with the per- sonalized semifeudal background which gave rise to such a story and fell into the Modernist Fallacy trap when he attempted to give a reasonable and contem- porarily credible substitute motive. This should be a lesson to all of us in our own interpretation of our ancient sources.

10. Lest it be objected that no more fanciful an explanation could be devised, it seems fair to sketch here a reconstruction that does add a considerable

dose of imagination to the evidence at hand: if we suppose that the original conspiracy was the combined effort of Kylon and some member or members of the Alkmaionid family but the carrying out of the plan did not require Alkmaionid participation, then the failure would have left only Kylon, his brother, and various supporters in the suppliant state for fear of retribution. It might then have been natural for the Alkmaionidai both to arrange the escape of Kylon and his brother (as fellow-nobles and fellow-conspirators) and to instigate the massacre of the supporters in order to prevent their almost certain disclosure of Alkmaionid guilt if they came to trial.

11. Of. J. H. Wright, "The Date of Cylon," HSCP, III (1892), 1-74; L. Moulinier, "La nature et la date du crime des Alcm6onides," REA, XLVIII (1946), 182-202.



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Kylonian Conspiracy

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