WAR IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

THE DISCOURSE OF WAR
The city of Aphrodisias owed its free status to its devotion to Octavian
during the last civil wars of the Republic. The importance of this devotion
is clearly expressed in a subscript sent by Octavian not to Aphrodisias, but
to Samos, rejecting the Samian request to be awarded freedom:
you yourselves can see that I have given the privilege of freedom to no people
except the Aphrodisieis, who took my side in the war and were captured by
storm because of their devotion to us. For it is not right to give the favor of
the greatest privilege of all at random and without cause. I am well-disposed
to you and should like to do a favor to my wife who is active in your behalf,
but not to the point of breaking my custom. . . . I am not willing to give the
most highly prized privileges to anyone without good cause.
(trans. Reynolds 1982: no. 13; cf. IG XII 6.1, 160)
As in the case of decrees for individuals, here again we recognize a spirit
of competition: Aphrodisias is compared to Samos, and if we possess this
document it is not thanks to the Samians, who probably never inscribed this
letter, but to the Aphrodisians, who included this text among the documents
which were inscribed around 250 years later on the wall of the north
parodos of their theater.
9.3. Naming Wars
The names given to wars is an indirect but valuable source for the way
people thought about the wars they had experienced – though I am referring
here only to contemporary reflections. Very often, a war which was still
going on or had just ended was simply referred to as “the war” (en toi
polemoi, kata ton polemon). Nevertheless, the frequency of wars, and their
varying magnitude – such as the dimensions of the threat, the level of
casualties, or the fame of the opponent – made distinctions necessary. For
example, the “Lamian War” (Lamiakos polemos, 323–322 BC) owes its name
to the decisive battles around Lamia; the “Social War” (Symmachikos polemos,
i.e., the war of the allies, 220–217 BC) was started by the Hellenic Alliance
under Philip V; the “(Second) Cretan War” (Kretikos polemos) was named
after the aggressor, i.e., the Cretan League (Koinon ton Kretaieon).
One of the best examples is provided by the Galatian invasion, first in
Greece (279/8 BC) and then in Asia Minor (278/7 BC), which contemporary
Greeks saw as the greatest danger their nation had faced since the
Persian Wars of the fifth century. Following the frequent practice of using
ethnic names to name wars, this war was designated after the ethnic name
of the barbarian aggressor as the “Galatian War” (Galatikos polemos). Other
wars named after barbarian tribes are the “Olatian War” (Olatikos polemos),
which refers to the war of Greek cities in the Black Sea region against the
Thracian tribe of the Olatai (third century), and the “Pisidian War”, which
was fought between Attalos II and the Pisidians (ca. 143 BC). One has the
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