WAR IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

BETWEEN CIVIC DUTIES AND OLIGARCHIC ASPIRATIONS
2
BETWEEN CIVIC DUTIES AND
OLIGARCHIC ASPIRATIONS:
DEVOTED CITIZENS, BRAVE
GENERALS, AND GENEROUS
BENEFACTORS
2.1. Fighting Against a Neighbor: A Privilege of the Polis
In the Hellenistic period, no less than in the Classical period, war was more
than the means by which a city protected its territory – it was an essential
privilege of the free and autonomous city (Will 1975). Since we lack an
ancient definition of what constitutes the autonomy of a city, we have to
infer the importance of the right to make war from indirect sources. The right
to fight wars is more clearly formulated in civic oaths. The oath of the Athenian
ephebes (Tod, GHI no. 204; cf. Lycurgus, contra Leocraten 77) begins with
a reference to their military duties and to their duty to increase the civic
territory: “I will not dishonour the sacred weapons and I will not abandon
the comrade on the flank, whomever I may be placed next to; and I will
fight to defend the sacred and holy things; I will not deliver the fatherland
diminished, but larger and stronger.” The same invitation to expansion –
certainly through war – is to be found in the oath of the inhabitants of the
island of Kalymna when it joined the island of Kos in joined citizenship
(sympolity; Staatsverträge 545, lines 26–7): “I will not allow Kos to become
smaller, but on the contrary I will increase it to the best of my capacity.”
The belief that the ability to successfully avert attackers and to attack others
is a fundamental right of an autonomous civic community also explains why
any limitation of this ability, such as the destruction of fortification walls, or
the occupation of citadels and forts by foreign garrisons, was regarded as an
“amputation” of freedom. In an epigram, the city wall is called “the crown
of free children” (Ma 2000c: 365, n. 31), and the envoys of Kytenion in
Doris, who requested financial support for the reconstruction of their city
walls in the late third century BC, made it clear that their city would be
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