Daunted by the task of listing all the Greek and Trojan forces participating in the Trojan War in Iliad 2, Homer momentarily loses his divine connection with the Muses, which he harmonised from the very first line of Book 1 and which he needs in order to sing: menin aeide, thea…
In this second invocation, he beseeches the divine Muses to help him “see” the many ranks “as they were”, as though he were “present” (2.484–487):
Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus —
for you are goddesses, are present, and know all things,
but we have heard only the rumour, and know nothing —
who the chief men and lords of the Danaans were
Now, with the Muses’ divine sight, he lists all the Greek forces that participate, their generals, and their defining characteristics. As Graziosi (2016): 49 has shown, the geographical arrangement and spatial order of the nations in the Catalogue reflect Homer’s divine sight very literally: as in the Image above, Homer lists the nations in a geographic-based sequence from a birds-eye perspective. In other words, as though flying above Mt Olympus or the ISS, he spirals around Greece from Attica south to Crete and back up north. Not only is it designed to ensure full coverage of all the forces, but it is also a convenient way to list them as a conceptual grouping recognisable to the audience. It is valuable evidence of Homer’s and his audience’s geographical knowledge and imagination about the Greek world.
Yet, even with this synoptic divine lens, the Catalogue has a glaring gap.
Where are the Cyclades?
Justifiably, this geographical unit does not play a major role in the fighting at Troy— its inclusion would have defeated the purpose of the Catalogue, contradicting the epic tradition. Yet is this historically justifiable? Elsewhere in this epic tradition, Homer seems to have a notably close association with the Cyclades, at least as his Life portrays him: perhaps most significantly, the island of Ios claims to have been his burial place.
This may all be speculation. Yet there is another factor that makes it more suspicious. The thing that struck me the most when looking at the map is the fact that Homer catalogues the places in a spiral. A spiral by definition circles around and gravitates towards a central point. Homer does stretch as far west to Ithaka and east to Thermodon, north to Thrace and south to Crete. But he is silent on the epicentre of the spiral. Why? Is it a discrepancy on the part of Homer and the Muses, or a deliberate omission? Should we be even questioning its omission as a problem? It may be a coincidence, simply part of the epic tradition — but who formed this epic tradition in the first place? In every scenario, it is an intriguing question that bears the potential for new ideas — and more importantly, a chance to explore how to do so.
Whatever the case, the absence of the Cyclades could have profound implications that challenge the “Greekness” of the Cyclades. In his Archaeology, Thucydides claims that the first time the “Hellenes” or Greeks came together as a communal group for “common action” is through their participation in the Trojan War (1.3.1). Before that, even the name “Hellenes” did not exist. If the Cycladic islanders did not fight at Troy, as seen in its absence in the Catalogue of Ships, can they even be considered Greek?
This is a question I want to tackle by discussing the very much alive archaeology in the Cyclades during Homer’s age. We will revisit this question in the final part on Homer on the island of Tinos.
Later Classical Greeks might have interpreted a lack of Greekness as a disadvantage. But this is earlier. Is it the right approach? At the same time, the lack of Homer gives later Cycladic islanders a rare opportunity — to craft their own identities anew. Yet this also gives us valuable insights into local and daily life of these people who stayed behind during the Homeric age that may have otherwise been obscured by an obsession with the heroes at Troy — from simple goat farmers migratng their goats from one island to the next to local yet powerful aristocrats working in the nodal system of the Cyclades. In Homer’s silence, we have a potentiality to hear a new, and local, voice.
Back in the 7th century (or whenever he was composing), Homer might not have been able to get a full picture of what happened, both because might not have been able to travel or have access to this buried, destroyed past. He is likewise constrained by his tradition. The introductory passage of the Catalogue cited above stresses the limitations of the mortal mind in remembering the past. By stressing his inability to “see” past events, Homer highlights the suffocating extent his mortality limits his art. He is not immortal: he can only “hear” the “kleos” of fighters in his much-later present (Iliad 2.486). This “kleos” might be skewed or incorrect.
On the one hand, kleos can signify the “glory” that one achieves through accomplishing outstanding deeds on the battlefield. Yet etymologically, as Homer states in this passage, kleos is related to “something that is heard”, from the root *kleu — thus stressing Homer’s incomplete access to the original sight. Something that is heard has the potentiality of falsehood and inaccuracy — brought out by the verbs that stem from this noun like κλεω, which is related to κλεος after ψευδω (“I lie”; Beekes 2010, 713). This aspect of lying, distortion or uncertainty is what lies at the root of Homer’s claim that as mortals we can only hear the “kleos”, often translated as “rumour” (ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν). Therefore, Homer back then was constrained both by his tradition and by his knowledge.
Homer came, he conquered. But he did not see everything (and not just because he was blind).
Today, with the access to archaeology and the ability to travel to places first-hand, we can see much more. By doing so, we can explore the role of the Cyclades during Homer’s age and put the Cyclades back on the map. Doing so sheds unique perspectives on the Cyclades and indeed Homer’s Archaic world that are often overlooked.
To this extent, for two months over this summer, I organised a trip following these landmarks. By travelling there directly and “seeing the cities of many men and learning their ways”, I wanted to search for any deeper connections from the archaeology, landscape and experience that could be made to give a voice to the fascinating Cyclades in Homer’s silence. What I found was a whole array of different ideas that all shared one idea: they presented an often different account, whether historical or not, to the Homeric one, and thereby enriched it. What I found, therefore, is a way of finding new information and making new arguments, in a way that can hopefully help keep moving the Classics forward with new perspectives. In this light, my overarching argument is that sometimes it’s the journey and your travel mates — the methodology and thought process — that’s important.
Below, therefore, are just a few reflections. First, I discuss briefly what I learnt on each of the four segments of my odyssey in relation to the Catalogue of Ships, and Homer’s world in a broader sense. The main part of the article expands on this by delving into three case studies that put the spotlight on the Cyclades during Homer’s world. First, I explore generally the depiction and indeed negotiation of islands and the Cyclades between imaginary literary accounts and real historical narratives. Zooming in, I then explore the quite niche but extremely fascinating topic of eating in the Cyclades and the food consumption patterns on Melos, because they draw interesting differences with and similarities to the Homeric world. Finally, zooming back out in conclusion and re-visualising the Homeric world through the lens of today, I explore the exhibition on Homer and Tinos in the Archaeological Museum of Tinos in the Cyclades.
This is quite an odyssey. For once, I do not have a specific united argument. I stepped back on this trip and tried to enjoy it, without targetting a single argument at the exclusion (and selection) of other ideas. I wanted to see everything as it was. This was invaluable. Precisely by doing that, I was able to notice and experience overarching patterns and characterisations of the Cyclades. In this light, I have written these three segments that at first seem to have little relation to each other. But thinking in these broader terms draws out interesting ideas about methodology, especially what we can ask and how. This more synoptic and phenomenological approach has been one of the most valuable things I’ve done in my life. This trip has left its mark — as has the company.
Finally, a quick note about the tone of this article. I fear that the fact of talking about having the opportunity to visit and indulge in these sites first hand might sound a bit pretentious and classist. It may at times sound like I am assuming that all of us today can travel at our leisure and find the answer ourselves. To counter this privileged assumption and make this opportunity accessible to more people, what I am trying to do here is focus not so much on the actual archaeological sites and rave about them, but valorise the process of thinking and the methodology, challenging how we can go about finding new ways to answer these questions. There will nevertheless be some excited segments (perhaps as fast we had to run to get catch the KTEL buses sometimes), but I hope not to incite detrimental intentions — it’s about the beauty of thinking and finding new ideas that Classics enables so well.
In this spirit, I begin with Polybius’ quotation — stressing not so much the need to visit sites but to think about how to tackle such questions by focusing on primary sources:
You may then investigate any question while reclining on your couch, and compare the mistakes of former historians without any fatigue to yourself. But personal investigation demands great exertion and expense; though it is exceedingly advantageous, and in fact is the very corner-stone of history.
Polybius, Histories 12.27 (translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh).
Part 1: Methodology — collecting the wood of Ida, surveying the sea, growing up with Alexander, and building of the Salaminia trireme
Some might find problems with my statement “I wanted to see everything as it was”. If you come in with a set plan of “tracing the footsteps of the Catalogue of Ships”, how can you really say with a straight face that you were not influenced by a very narrowly-defined agenda?
To be perfectly honest, it was quite a coincidence.
The very fact that I was following the footsteps of the Catalogue of Ships only occurred to me when I was on basking in the afternoon sun on my Airbnb’s terrace in Heraklion, Crete. I was reading Gilhuly and Worman’s Space, Place, and Landscape in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture both for pleasure and my dissertation. (I still hadn’t finished it from the BSA, to be honest). I was reading Carol Dougherty’s argument that the Pythian priestess’ oracle to the Athenians in Herodotus 7.141 systematically reflected Athens’ shift from a land to sea power by turning to her fleet, whilst also emphasising the importance of the Themistoklean walls. On the one hand, the city is described as “wheel-shaped”, with walls circling around the centre of something. On the other hand, the fact the city is both defined by its walls and fleet creates a composite image, a matrix of potentially opposing ideas. The circle of Athens’ walls encompassing and uniting its diverse images. Gilhuly was discussing how this circularity affected the imagination of Athens, how to think about itself. What if we expanded and thought of ‘Greece’ as this — a spiral uniting diversity? Where does this happen, apart from the odd Periplous? I’d read Graziosi’s 2016 Homer book for my Traditions of Epic exam and found her observation on the geographical nature of the Catalogue intriguing. Therefore, this unison of a composite by a spiral made me think of the cosmos in Achilles’ shield, and thinking wider, Homer’s Catalogue of Ships. It was only when I pulled up her page 49 via Shibboleth that I realised that I was following almost exactly the same sequence as Homer described. I quickly went back downstairs to the (very clean) hostel and got my pen out, and scribbled away. I wrote
“Tracing the footsteps of the Catalogue of Ships, connected — ”
Then I realised I would be late for a dinner I had organised with some other participants on the Crete Summer School, so quickly hurried out to the Venetian Loggia.
It was all quite a coincidence. I had initially planned a summer school in Crete and then an excavation in the north. The extremities of Greece. Things started to click together. This has been a project the whole summer in the making (along with my dissertation about the Chalcidice, as we’ll see below). But this circularity and diversity are important characterisations to keep in mind for the Cyclades, as we shall discuss below.
These were, of course, some overly initial optimistic thoughts. Only later did I realise that a lot of my trip did not actually (was never conceived to) follow Homer’s catalogue. Only the Cretan-Rhodian section, labelled 4 in Graziosi’s image, and the trip around Athens and Aigina, labelled 1, correspond accurately in their entirety. This is reflective of the fact that I planned my trip as discrete, self-contained segments that only eventually became united by a few conveniently cheap Olympic Airways flights.
So is “tracing” really the right word to title this article?
Realistically, with our great distance from the past and overwhelming lack of precise evidence implied in ‘tracing’, can we ever really ‘trace’ precisely what happened in ancient Greece?
In one sense, yes. I was ‘tracing’ footsteps in a very literal sense. My trip followed the way and order Homer chooses to take. With it came a specific focus. Why not try to experience it, see what practical issues arise from physically travelling a (conceptual) passage that Homer carved in the eye of his mind? I wanted to see what Homeric echoes I could observe at each of the places and see whether Homer placed them as such in any particular order beyond the geographic, and how he mediated the transitions between these places and whether there were some smoothening cultural links.
When in “hundred-citied” Crete (30 June — 10 July), I explored the “Lost World of Ancient Crete” in a Summer School organised by Dr Kostas Vlassopoulos and Dr Melian Tamiolaki at Rethymno. Many of the ideas we discussed arguably have their roots in Homer’s description of Crete in Iliad 2.645–652. Over the course of the week and a half, I noted that many rituals and practices in Crete, especially in the funerary sphere, bear similarities with Homeric rituals in both directions. On the one hand, this extended both to tombs at Knossos and Eleutherna that replicated specifically Cretan weapons in Homer and Homeric sacrifice rituals respectively. On the other hand, many rituals in Homer, especially in Iliad 23, seem to have a Cretan origin to them. I have written about the Eleutherna Orthi Petra case of “human sacrifice” in another article for Ostraka, arguing that the similarities in the human sacrifice there and Achilles’ sacrifice of the Trojan youths in Iliad 23 reflect not so much the literary characterisation of Achilles’ wrath, as many often argue, as much as reflecting and asserting older apparently Cretan rituals that foreground the process of heroisation and enact an apotropaic function. In some ways, Cretans in Homer seem to be specialised for certain functions away from the battlefield.
When in Rhodes (11 July — 16 July), I had the same aim, but studied it from a different viewpoint: the future looking back on the past. I noted instead how later cultures picked up on Homer’s mention of them and expanded a few lines into a whole historical narrative. This brings out potentially new aspects of Homer (whether he intended it or not) that might otherwise not be noted. Rather than Crete’s contemporary historical approach, this approach looks back on Homer and tries to decipher him for contemporary uses: social memory. At Lindos, in 99BCE, priests turned a few lines about Rhodes and the many ambiguities in Homer’s narrative into a rare opportunity to construct more than a thousand years of mythical and historical figures dedicating extraordinary gifts at the sanctuary of Athena Lindia. Ever wondered where Paris’ helmet ends up after Menelaos yanks it off his head in Iliad 3 (one of the workings of Aphrodite)? He dedicates it at Lindos. The Lindian Chronicle certainly distorts history to some degree, yet it is not blatantly divergent from or incorrect according to the broader mythical tradition. It is therein that the richness lies. In another article for Ostraka, I argue that part of the effect of defining a collective culture in the Lindian Chronicle lay in the clever manipulation of the space and landscape of the stunning Acropolis of Lindos, where the sanctuary is located. This spatial approach and its productivity for social memory was not unused by Homer — think of the spatial landmark of the fig tree at Iliad 22.145f as Achilles and Hector run past it, which compels the narrator to flashback to the Trojan women washing clothes there.
Similar aims were divulged by different methods. Up in Thessaloniki and Macedon (17 July–21 July), with my friend Ben from Durham, I moved even further into Classical reception, studying the Macedonians’ reception of Homer and the Trojan cycle as depicted on vases in the museums of Pella and Vergina. We even discussed Alexander’s relationship with the Iliad. In this light, I have written another Ostraka article about different ascents up Mt Olympus, ancient and modern, and what this can tell us about the fascinating dialogue between the literary and physical side of Mt Olympus. Ultimately, I argue that the physical side of Olympus, the archaeology and interactions by the communities on the ground is just as interesting as the literary reception — if not more so. This was one of my favourite pieces to write, and quite a journey (11,000 words!) — hopefully one that I’ll get to do this coming summer!
Arguably, however, Homer does not mention this region in his Catalogue of Ships. But nothing to lose — I returned back to the contemporary world of Homer in the excavations at Olynthos in the Chalcidice with the BSA (21 July — 11 August), where I came into contact with an Archaic feature for a short while. This focus on archaeology lent new ideas — indeed one that we shall see in Chapter 2. The link to Homer was also relevant to my dissertation on Thucydides and the social memory of the cities in the Chalcidice in relation to the Athenians and Brasidas, whose conquest of the Chalcidice between 4.70–5.15 Thucydides constructs as the aristeia of a Homeric hero.
All this culminated in the trip circling around the Cyclades with my amazing friends Hugo, Jenny and Holly from last year’s BSA (11–26 August 2019). This is the piece from that trip.
There is one uniting theme between these, perhaps ironic: absences and displacements. Throughout, these limitations were abundantly clear; I often wondered what we can do about it today. Should we reconstruct or accept the irrevocable destructions of time? We have some unmendable gaps in our understanding that can’t be easily solved, even with further evidence. These we can do little about. But what about omissions that we can discuss — omissions that are deliberate or crafted by an author (if we can ever pinpoint authorial intention)?
This is when I realised the richness of the semantic meanings of tracing. “Tracing” involves a second agent, a transmitter — but there is no implication or restriction dictating the tools or techniques they use for this transmission. These are not necessarily always inaccurate or invaluable. It’s a two-way process. In one sense, I was “tracing” the direction of arguments of past scholars on the Catalogue of Ships. How do they compare with each other and the actual evidence on the ground? Following Homer’s mind, I was (re)tracing his geography — albeit inaccurately. Finally, I also wanted to make the perspective and result of this “tracing” my own, new. That’s where the absences fit in.
Looking at Graziosi’s map pinpoints this gap. Where on earth are the Cyclades in all this? I wanted to know about this absence, quite the opposite technique of my original approach. But beyond simply asking why Homer’s omits the Cyclades, deliberately or not, I wanted to go further, “tracing” his path. Now, I ask whether his omission of the Cyclades in justified with contemporary evidence.
In this light, I want to stretch “beyond” Homer, giving a voice back to these silenced islands that he does not mention, but were certainly active during his time. There is clear evidence of Mycenaean warriors from tombs and poets from Cycladic figurines showing lyre-players and woodwind-players dating to the Archaic period. What were these men, women and gods doing when the mainland Greeks were fighting at Troy? By putting things into perspective, the existence of such contemporary communities illuminates that as much as our evidence is limited and skewed, and as much as we willingly fantasise (or are blinded by) it, the Trojan War did not happen in isolation. It occurred in the context of a complex network of societal norms — some of which we can luckily discern today through the archaeology.
As always and especially with Homer, as much as Homer’s Catalogue of Ships has been the instigator of groans in its legnth or subject matter, interesting and valuable lessons can be glossed from the text through new, valid approaches. And this lesson here is an especially interesting one —given its contemporaneity to Homer, the fewer studies in it in general, and the Cyclades’ sudden abundance in Odysseus’ travels in the apologia and in the Homeric Hymns. By studying the absences and silences, we can unveil and put into perspective some of the subtly unnoticed presences while revealing the existence of a whole range of ideas and ‘poetics’ that has been overlooked.
Quite opposite to being a lost cause, then, this ground-up perspective provides a unique opportunity to explore the Homeric world from the other side of the story, from the often unheard perspective of those who stayed home and did not fight (at Troy). By studying the absences and silences, we can get closer to some of these unnoticed presences and lost voices.
Let’s start this transition of moving beyond Homer by discussing the imaginary world of Homer in relation to the historical reality of goat-islands for pasturage.
Part 2: Goat-Islands in the Goat-Sea — Cycladic islands between literary imagination and historical reality
Christy Constantakopoulou’s 2007 book The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World is a fundamental source for exploring islands in the Aegean (and I was lucky enough to be gifted it by a prescient friend!). She argues that the islands in the Greek world, especially around the Aegean, were defined by the theme of connectivity in many different spheres, whether it be disputes or cooperations both micro and macro levels. What makes it so interesting is that this theme of connectivity permeates not just the historical reality of the Greek world from the Archaic to Hellenistic era, but also the literary depictions of Greek states and conceptions about islands. Many of the sources that Dr Constantakopoulou explores date to the Archaic to Hellenistic period. How does this focus on the Cyclades and islands square with the Homeric world?
Again, everything seems to fit together. Dr Constantakopoulou will be coming to Durham in March to give a research seminar!
The idea of a simple, goat-island may seem to be a romantic, almost colonial importation from an outside perspective that reflects more on them than the actual country. Why can’t we reconstruct the political history of these islands instead of these romanticised images? The reason is that often, it is hard to prove the existence of political networks between the Aegean islands during the age of Homer. Going back to Graziosi’s argument of the geographical nature of the Catalogue of Ships, we see a similar idea in the reflection of certain islands in the Aegean. When describing the group of islands of Nisyros, Carpathos, and Casos in the south-eastern Aegean, Homer groups them together with Cos (Il. 2.676–80). Some scholars have argued that this reflects at this early stage the political control over these islands by Cos, for which we have secure evidence during the Classical and Hellenistic age. This, however, neglects the nature and purpose of the Catalogue of Ships. Although it is a grouping of islands, Homer nowhere claims or explicitly indicates that it is necessarily and explicitly conceived from a political grouping. Instead, as Constantakopoulou argues (2007, 186), it more securely reflects the geographical arrangement and conception of Homer’s list. This is aptly corroborated by the spiralling, bird-eye’s-view nature of the Catalogue as Graziosi noted. Thus, while the objective listing of each contingent limits our ability to make arguments based on politics and there is little evidence of direct political observations, the form and nature suggest the Catalogue is a product of a geographical conception. The focus lies on geography, potentially derived from everyday habits, rather than broader-reaching politics.
On the other extreme, furthest removed from political history, Homer’s islands are often anchored in utopic discourses. They are the locus of the fantastical — the epitome of the imaginary. The Phaeacians’ island, Scheria, is renowned for its agricultural abundance and self-sufficiency: the crops bear fruit year-round (ἐπετήσιος) and are nourished by the gentle winds (ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἰεὶ / Ζεφυρίη πνείουσα τὰ μὲν φύει, ἄλλα δὲ πέσσει, our beloved Od. 7.117–9). Many scholars, perhaps most notably Segal, have argued that Homer crafts this island with a superhuman, quasi-immortal nature to create a conceptual stepping stone for Odysseus from the immortal, fantastical world of his travels (described in Od. 9–12) to the mortal world of Ithaka. This fits into Constantakopoulou’s focus on the broad variety of associations of islands, derived from and emphasising their connectivity.
Homeric islands, therefore, seem to be a negotiation between historical reality and fantastical imagination. This puts the spotlight on ordinary everyday life. What lies behind such poetic imaginations? Again, we have intriguing and rather amusing examples from Homer. The explicit reflections that we do get about islands in Homer, moreover, centre around the particular phenomenon, quite in contrast to fantastical creatures— goat-islands.
Recounting his polytropic wanders after Troy to the Phaeacians, Odysseus mentions a very particular island opposite the Cyclops’ island and goes out of his way to describe it (Od. 9.116–24). He defines the island as being completely uninhabited except by goats, where they can graze:
νῆσος ἔπειτα λάχεια παρὲκ λιμένος τετάνυσται,
γαίης Κυκλώπων οὔτε σχεδὸν οὔτ᾽ ἀποτηλοῦ,
ὑλήεσσ᾽: ἐν δ᾽ αἶγες ἀπειρέσιαι γεγάασιν
ἄγριαι: οὐ μὲν γὰρ πάτος ἀνθρώπων ἀπερύκει,
120οὐδέ μιν εἰσοιχνεῦσι κυνηγέται, οἵ τε καθ᾽ ὕλην
ἄλγεα πάσχουσιν κορυφὰς ὀρέων ἐφέποντες.
οὔτ᾽ ἄρα ποίμνῃσιν καταΐσχεται οὔτ᾽ ἀρότοισιν,
ἀλλ᾽ ἥ γ᾽ ἄσπαρτος καὶ ἀνήροτος ἤματα πάντα
ἀνδρῶν χηρεύει, βόσκει δέ τε μηκάδας αἶγας.
“Now there is a level isle that stretches aslant outside the harbor, neither close to the shore of the land of the Cyclopes, nor yet far off, a wooded isle. Therein live wild goats innumerable, for the tread of men scares them not away, [120] nor are hunters wont to come thither, men who endure toils in the woodland as they course over the peaks of the mountains. Neither with flocks is it held, nor with ploughed lands, but unsown and untilled all the days it knows naught of men, but feeds the bleating goats.” (Translation by A.T. Murray, Loeb).
Scholars like de Jong (2001, 234) have argued that, in the context of Odysseus narrating his journey and justifying his character to the Phaeacians, shows his resourcefulness and knowledge of how to exploit the land (presumably welcomed by the Phaeacians, who are also well-seasoned sailors). Yet beyond Odysseus and Homer, it also reflects on the actual inhabitants of similar contemporary islands in the Aegean. Odysseus’ focus on the island’s ideal proximity (“neither close to the shore…nor yet far off”), isolation, and lack of hunters reflects a concern of the transportation of goats to that island and their survival there. The fact that Odysseus breaks from his narrative of the Cyclops’ way of living to this not strictly relevant digression and talks at length about it, reflects that the use of off-shore islands for the activity of goat pasturage might have been a well-known feature to Homer’s audiences.
How does this square with actual historical accounts? We would have to look beyond the Homeric text to get firm historical accounts that reflect a practice of pasturage that might date to a much. We do get references specifically to the Cyclades — but most are fantastical and represent more of an uncertain world. At Odyssey 6.162–9, trying to find suitable words to address a young princess in his naked, sea-beaten present, Odysseus attempts to win over Nausicaa’s favour by comparing her beauty to the young palm tree shoot on Delos. Likewise, the Homeric Hymn of Delian Apollo focuses on Leto’s birth to Artemis and Apollo on Delos (to which two palm trees were also associated in helping Leto delivery). However, these are relatively rare. Analysing the history of goat-islands, moreover, is particularly useful to our purposes because it nicely exemplifies the connection between literature and history. Most importantly, when discussing these historical examples of goat islands, we must bear in mind the very practical realities. Fun fact — apart from lack of predators and farmers, off-shore islands are also excellent for goat pasturage because goats can drink sea-water for extended periods of time without negative effects and can eat almost any shrubs on them (Eupolis, Goats F13 KA)!
What historic cases of “goat-islands” do we have that reflect on Homer’s age or Odysseus’ description? An interesting case which marries both the literary and historical aspects is the case of disputes of goat-islands. In 338BCE, Melos was tied into a bitter dispute with its neighbouring island Cimolos over the off-shore islands Polyaegos, Libeia, and Hetereia. What we get here, therefore, attests wonderfully well to the significant political impact such everyday practices could have.
First off, as we can see from the first name, we can already get an indication why the conflict arose. Many islands, already in antiquity, were named after the presence of goats: Polyaegos literally means “Of many goats” (poly + aix, aigos). The geographical spread and ubiquity of such conventional names, even including the island of Aigina (the large and politically major rival of Athens), reflects the importance of the historic practice of goat pasturage on island spaces. Even today, many islands have the goat-toponym aig- or aix-. Perhaps the clearest case of the association of goats and pasturage with islands in the Cyclades is in the very name of the sea that surrounds it: Pliny notes the presence of the goat-root in the Aegean sea and records that the Aegean sea was so named from “a rock suddenly springing out of the middle of the sea, between Tenos and Chios, named Aex from its resemblance to a she-goat” (Natural History 4.51). Even within its etymology, the islands of the Aegean and Cyclades have a strong association with pasturage for goats, beyond the political and fantastical spheres.
What happened? The inscription (IG XII.3 1259 = Syll.³ 261 = p.402 in Rhodes and Osborne 2003), probably set up in Cimolos but found in Smyrna, records an arbitration by Argos regarding a dispute over the three islands between Melos and its neighbouring island Cimolos. The verdict was that the Cimolians should gain the island (“they were victorious”). As the name of the biggest island, Polyaigos, suggests, it was likely a dispute over pasturing goats. This may also be corroborated by the exclusion of other suitable functions. The islands may be too small and rocky to sustain agriculture primarily; they would also not have added much to the territorial empire of either island. Georgoudi has argued that the primary function was goat pasturage (1974, 182). Furthermore, although it is difficult to prove with the current state of evidence, there may also have been other factors involving a bi-product of pasturage: the ferrying of the goats to these islands. These islands could have served as useful anchorage places, harbours, or lookouts — many similar off-shore islands in the Aegean do exhibition little rock-face harbours for embarkation and anchorage for longer voyages. But here, the fact that external arbitration, both of an individual city (Argos) and appeal to a council (synedrion, likely the League of Corinth), was needed highlights the seriousness of this land for each island community and attempt to come to a long-term solution. This was a legitimate case of interstate insular interactions that had political and historical significance.
One might respond that this is a one-off case or an extreme exception to the general rules. Yet there are other examples of such disputes elsewhere in the Cyclades, some which turn even more violent — exemplified by the dispute between Naxos and Heracleia, a small island to Naxos’ south-east. This inscription (IG XII.7 509) sets judicial procedures for the illegal importation of goats onto Heracleia and commit crimes there. A unusual but instructive arbitrator highlights the local importance of this goat-herding. It is decreed by the “koinon of the islanders”. This may seem at first to be the famous League of Islanders — but the mention of a “Metroon”, which the none of the places in the League had, suggests it is a local league of the people of Heracleia and certain foreigners. Lines 4–5 forbid the importation and pasturage of goats on the island of Heracleia (αἶγας εἰσάγ[ειν ἢ]/τρέφειν ἐν τῆι νήσωι). What is interesting here are the intended consequences and language. The fact that the protasis mentions the condition if someone is killed (κτείνει, 7) implies it had happened. Likewise, they were likely killed by another person who broke the law using force (τις βιασόμενος, 4). The entire community is involved: the law states that the entire league will be involved in the punishment (τὸ κοινὸν τῶν /νησιωτῶν ἅπαν, 8–9) and it concerns the very “salvation” of the island (φυλακὴγ καὶ σωτηρίαν, 16). The language is accusatory and impassioned. Constantakopoulou has moreover suggested that the identity of these rouge shepherds might be from the island of Naxos or tri-polis Amorgos — stressing the interconnected nature of islands and the extent people will go to acquire such islands and goat grazing (both islands are further than Heracleia than Melos or Cimolos are from their three disputed islands).
What all this points towards, therefore, is multiple communities, one in its entirety, coming together in a political sphere to come to a collective resolution over some very violent actions. This all stems from the everyday activity of goat pasturage. These more violent instances attest to the major effects on interstate politics and culture such small scale, everyday activities like goat-pasturage had on islands. As Constantakopoulou has rightly argued in an article and her book, goat-islands are an understudied phenomenon that underpin many expressions of insular identity and connectivity.
But even with this broad, seemingly metonymic presence of goat-islands in the Aegean, we must beware of anachronism and retrospection when mapping this practice back onto Homer’s Cyclades: these historical examples are from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Yet apart from the examples of the old etymology, Homer’s more mythic description of such islands centre around such ordinary conceptions. Returning to Homer, such disputes over and on off-shore islands also appear in the mythology of Odyssey, and perhaps the case of Melos and Cimolos is the historical basis that led to such myths. In Odyssey 12, the hubristic slaughter of the cattle of Helios by Odysseus’ men on the uninhabited island of Thrinakria greatly angers Helios, to the extent that he makes Zeus promise to kill them all later. This case contains both disputes over the ownership of cattle and the use of offshore islands for them. Although we may never be able to read such interpretations onto Homer’s world securely, this does attest that the same environmental context could and did support such practices.
We could bring in the association of islands with disputes beyond the simple everyday issue of goat pasturage. Elsewhere, we have the idea of the “dangerous” island, as Constantakopoulou calls it. This signifies a useful off-shore location for a naval power to base attacks on the mainland. This matches in with much later evidence, perhaps most famously Cythera off the Spartan coast — think of when Chilon in Herodotus says that Sparta would be better off if Cythera sunk to the bottom of the sea due to its optimal environmental for piratical raids or when Demaratus advises Xerxes that the best way to destroy Sparta would be to attack it by Cythera (Hdt. 7.235). This literary imagination becomes a historical reality in Thucydides, where Nicias the Athenian attacks the Spartan coast in 424 and which is one of the contributing causes with Sphacteria that made Sparta send peace treaties to Athens (Thu. 4.53–54). However, we should not use it to silence the fundamental reverberations of the common shepherd’s experience of pasturage for both his own life and the community’s — they co-exist.
What we should notice, therefore, is that these representations of islands derive from direct interaction and connectivity between them. It is this local level which we should be revalorising and not silencing. It is this local level which Homer assumes in his narrative and which nicely captures the amalgamation between literary image and historical reality.
So why is all of this important? Why should we prioritise these small scale interactions and networks when arguably it’s the bigger picture of major trade routes and interactions with Athens’ sea empire that left the greatest imprint on the Aegean?
Because the inhabitants like the shepherd may have been more concerned about his daily goat transport between islands and the politics here. It is crucial to keep the practical side of history in perspective without glorifying the big questions. How would the “average” islander have experienced it? Asking whom this affects and how an ancient audience, or major sector of it, would have experienced such interactions reveals a lot. Classical evidence too often focuses on the elite minority — it’s time to challenge this, to open up to and valorise other sectors of society and their evidence. We need to take seriously these more everyday ideas as serious concerns of insular communities when reconstructing history, instead of relegating them at the expense of major events, trends, or personalities. As seen above, the results are rich, innovative, and productive. In the minds and daily reality of such islanders, perhaps it’s these much smaller scale interactions that meant survival or, as our goatherder from Melos might understand by proximity, home.
Melos is a good case study in the wide variety of interactions between islands. It also leads onto our second case study: that of food consumption and its relation to the practices as described in the Homeric epics.
So let’s get started on our little porthmeutike from the small off-shore island of Polyaegos to the ruling island.
Part 3: The Last Supper on Melos — dining, Homer, and eating customs as a way of questioning the ubiquity of Homeric practices
First stop (or as they say on Athens’ metro, επομενη σταση) — Melos.
I didn’t actually visit Melos (the ferries are ridiculously expensive and the times for a day trip are not feasible).
This part was inspired far up in the north of mainland Greece, at Olynthos. Dr David Smith on the Olynthos Project 2019 gave a talk discussing his work on the archaeological reports of the British School’s excavations at Phylakopi, the famous prehistoric site on Melos, in 1896–99. I draw from his comments and the archaeological reports he was studying from, whilst hoping to connect it to the bigger picture of using archaeological evidence to move beyond Homer and revalorise the history of the Homeric Aegean islands. Here, I focus on the eating practices of a culture both earlier than (starting from 2800BCE) and contemporary to (ending at the post-palatial period in 1050BCE) the Trojan War. It is therefore useful evidence to compare with certain aspects of food consumption and dining that Homer describes.
Today, the extensive site is famous for its frescos and obsidian mines. The original reports were written by L. R. Campbell Edgard, Tom Atkinson, Duncan Mackenzie, and David Hogarth. What was famous about the excavations themselves was the vast quantity of archaeological material that they found — to the extent that the archaeologists started to throw a lot of material they were not interested in over the cliff into the sea!
Apart from getting the unpublished material from the excavations out, Dr Smith was focusing on the cooking ware found and studying it from an anthropological approach, asking what human activities could be deciphered from the remains. While Dr Smith mainly used comparisons in archaeology, my aim here is to draw on this and make comparisons with the practices he suggests with Homer.
One of the earliest examples of ceramic types found was the so-called “cheesepot”. Archaeologists have explained the distinctive perforations around the rim as serving to separate the curd from the whey.
At first, this immediately recalls Homer. Polyphemos is famous for milking his flocks and carefully making cheese from it. Although this fragment would never fit into Polyphemos’ hands, it might still attest to the common practice.
The title “cheesepot” is nevertheless a misnomer. First off, there is no scientific evidence for this. Secondly, and more conclusively, starch samples of the organic residue taken on the inner surface of revealed traces of fish. Dr Smith was asking how this reflects the settlers’ identities and cultures. He argued that since this ceramic type dates from very early and dies out relatively quickly, it might have been used during the initial stages of settlement, when the settlers still kept the traditional culinary traditions of their hometown. This may therefore reflect not just a stage and dating for the remains, but also the anthropological processes and relationship between settling in a site and cross-cultural mixing and adaption, as expressed in the dining record.
Homer’s relevance here is still not a lost cause — quite the opposite. The evidence of fish, whether stored or eaten, is key. Homer’s heroes never eat fish — they only ever eat meat, meat, and more meat, and sometimes some sort of grain and bread. One must bear in mind, of course, that these are heroes — they are not usual mortals in Homer’s audience. Nevertheless, this emphasis against fish is interesting. This is perhaps best exemplified in Odyssey 12 at Thrinacria. Odysseus’ companions, stranded on the island and forbidden to eat the only edible (and undoubtedly scrumptious-looking) food there, the cattle of Helios, their mentality against fish is so strong that they prefer to starve than eat fish (12.329–332). Although they do fish with “twisted hooks” (γναμπτοῖς ἀγκίστροισιν, 332), they do so by compulsion (ἀνάγκῃ) and Eurylochos implies that they would still starve and face an ignoble death (λιμῷ δ᾽ οἴκτιστον θανέειν, 341–2). Part of the reason behind the Homeric world’s refusal of fish lies in a broader negative motif of the sea as the worst place to die: the ignominy of dying stems from the lack of any commemoration or glory — no-one is even able to assert whether you’re dead or not. The archetypical phrase for expressing the idea that death by sea is the worst kind of death for an epic hero due to the lack of glory and uncertainty for family members is uttered by Telemachus for Odysseus: while death in Troy meant the Achaeans would have built a great tomb for him and given him and his son “great glory” and ascertained his death to his family members, Odysseus’ death by sea leaves “no fame”, only stagnant uncertainty (Od. 1.240–3). The converse is also expressed: Tiresias says that Odysseus will experience a “gentle” death because it is “away from the sea” (Od. 11.134–5).
What we have here, therefore, is a rare case of ordinary people consuming their fish, and this is significant because it allows everyone to do so. Therefore, the presence at Phylakopi of this absence of eating fish in Homer puts into perspective how much we rely on Homer and how much more there was beyond Homer, as much as he reflects multiple layers of society. This makes us challenge the Homeric account and open up to new networks.
Indeed, back at the historical site of Phylakopi, the most common ways of cooking were stewing and boiling. This again stands against the typical Homeric technique of skewering meat on a stick. Here, water and pots are used instead of the famous “spits” and roasts of Homer. A consecutive question arises — what were they boiling and stewing? The lack of kitchens and cooking contexts problematises any answers, but other contemporary sites often produced a type of seafood soup. Again, fish is present as a primary component in their diet.
But we can do more — we can analyse the spatial arrangements where these cooking functions took place and perhaps get hints of certain aspects of the societal system. People cooked in a kitchen — but was this “kitchen” in a fixed and temporary space or was it moveable and could be set up anywhere? What role does the interior or exterior of the house play? Such questions bring in evidence relating to portable or fixed hearths. Although on the mainland and particularly in Athens the fixed hearths were common, the end of the Early Bronze Age saw the emergence of some other moveable hearths, especially on the island of Daskhalio, in the archipelago to the south-east of Naxos (nearby Heracleia, which we saw earlier).
At this ritual site in Daskhalio, archaeological evidence has unearthed very similar pots as found in Phylakopi. One distinctive example is the tripod cooking bowl (see above). The horizontal suspension handles suggest a cooking function, alongside the three legs. We can again make a negative and more strong positive link to Homer. On the one hand, Homer’s people rarely use tripods to cook food in — they are mainly done on skewers. On the other hand, similar pots to these have been found all the way from Minoan Crete, attesting to the trade links between the Cyclades and Crete, and even potentially to a degree of strong cross-cultural influence of Minoanisation. Homer, as I have argued in another article for Ostraka, seems to have a special connection with the rituals of the island of Crete, focusing especially on funerary rites and cult hero memorialisation. Likewise, Crete’s inhabitants often seem to interact with Homeric ritual, as in the discovery of the specifically Cretan boar-tusk helmet in a post-Homeric tomb at Knossos. This presence of shared Minoan-styled cooking ware may be another bi-product of the cultural interaction between Homer’s world and the unique island of Crete. Here, perhaps, Cretans were “revisiting” Homer.
This evidence allows us to raise questions about human activities and production. Who made these pots? Were they local Melian potters who spent time on Crete, had learnt the craft and returned; were they local ideas in the first place, were Cretan craftsmen themselves present at Phylakopi? Given the unusually large fortification walls of Phylakopi, characteristic of Minoan craftsmen, the latter has been sometimes suggested. Here, we could potentially bring in Homer we discussed above to suggest an argument. More than simply importing new pots and pans, the Minoan settlers may have also introduced a whole new way of cooking that centred on boiling and stewing, departing perhaps from the more typical skewing that we have in Homer’s world.
What this corroborate is that during the early site when groups were coalescing together, they were swapping ideas of recipes and how to make food — thus capturing the inter-cultural relations and developments between participants at the site.
Finally, complementing the big cultural trend of “Minoanisation”, Dr Smith argues that we also have evidence of Mycenaean influence on the ceramics at Phylakopi. This is predominantly in the Mycenaean “grill” that was found. Thus, both methods of cooking were present on-site, they co-existed. For the grill, there is also debate as to whether there was some sort of shielder or not to stop the ash being blown onto the food. This could point to whether the food was prepared and eaten inside or outside the house (where the natural elements like the wind would have played a factor), mapping onto questions of public and private dining, temporality and seasonality. Potentially, mainland imports were used for eating outside, while there may have been cheaper local ware for inside; thus creating a better public outlook to a visitor.
In conclusion, comparing the practices of cooking and dining on Bronze Age Melos are a useful to compare with similar practices in the Homeric world. Often, fundamental differences emerge: the presence of fish and vegetables in their diet strongly contrasts with the almost all-meat diet of the heroes, while the presence of different modes of cooking, facilitated by different equipment, highlights the presence of different cultures beyond what Homer describes. These differences with Homer are especially interesting in light of the fact that Homer leaves out the Cyclades and central Aegean islands in his Epics, as seen in the Catalogue of Ships. Perhaps, we can fill in the gap with this humble exercise. If not, it already shows us how much more there was than Homer, and the fact that sometimes we need to search beyond Homer to reconstruct and appreciate fully the culture. Hence, we are turning to the Cyclades themselves in their emic presentations and giving them a fair and self-presentational voice.
This focus on how ancient peoples and perhaps audiences of Homer interacted with and beyond Homer has often been seen as a useful way to go forward with the study of Homer. At Durham, Professor Graziosi introduced the Departmental projects “Living Poets: A New Approach to Ancient Poetry”, which focuses precisely on reevaluating ancient literature through their listeners and readers. This turn towards how an ancient audience would have perceived it and their reception tells us about its readers and other audiences, and their lived and personal experiences — as we have seen (indirectly) here. Although these Melians or Minoans may not have read Homer, they would likely have been in contact with his cultures; this approach of focusing on them and comparing it with the broader Homeric world likewise helps us bring out their own cultures. This approach will underpin our next and final section on Homer and archaeology, as seen through the world of today.
Let’s take our final ferry further up north to the Cycladic island of Tinos.
Part 4: Homer today on Tinos: Archaeology and Homer in the Cyclades — “From Homer’s World: Tenos and the Cyclades in the Mycenaean Age”.
What does the archaeology tell us directly about the Cyclades during the Mycenaean Ages and later when the Trojan Wars were happening? In other words, spreading out from the focus on food in Melos in the above chapter, what were men and women doing in the broader Cyclades while all those around them were fighting at Troy?
This final section and exhibition is a useful opportunity to zoom out further and bring in one final perspective: the modern world’s perception of archaeology and Homer’s Cyclades.
The focus of this piece has largely rested on absences. Once again, I did not actually go to this exhibition — but did see many signs and read about it along the way.
The exhibition “From Homer’s World — Tinos and the Cyclades in the Mycenean Era” is currently held at the Foundation’s Museum of Marble Crafts in Pyrgos, Tinos. Striving to display the influence and contributions of the Cyclades on the Mycenaean world, the exhibition has a synoptic, overall “panorama” of over 150 pieces of “ceramic art, metallurgy, miniature art, jewellery, and figurines and statuettes” from the Cyclades. Relevant to our purposes, one of the aims is to trace the influence that this cultural heritage of the Cycladic Myceneaen world had on the two epics of Homer.
As we have done before, the exhibition prioritises the social events and affairs of the inhabitants of the Cycladic islanders, including everyday work and leisure, religious worship, funerary customs, warfare. From this, we can gain a much broader and richer picture of what was happening in the Cyclades beyond Homer’s silence.
What is particularly interesting for us is their statement that they are aiming to decipher elements in the Cycladic historical and archaeological tradition that influenced Homer’s World. This might seem to be paradoxical — how can a culture that did not directly participate in Homer’s account have influenced Homer? Indeed, in his Archaeology, Thucydides claims that the first time the “Hellenes” or Greeks came together as a communal group for “common action” is through their participation in the Trojan War (1.3.1). Before that, even the name “Hellenes” did not exist. If the Cyclades did not fight at Troy, as seen in its absence in the Catalogue of Ships, can they be considered Greek?
Yes. Thucydides immediately after notes that Homer never calls the Greeks as a whole “Hellenes”; they are a diverse group of people variously named Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans (1.3.3). Instead, Thucydides argues the Greeks’ own acceptance of this name came gradually and much later. This diversity might allow for refractions and influences in the archaeology between the “Cycladic” and “Homeric” cultural spheres. Instead, this is a culmination, or perhaps the opposite end of the spectrum, of what we have done so far. We have argued this far that Homer is specifically silent on the Cyclades, one of the reasons for which was that he might not have had access to them. Yet Cycladic culture still existed; we should not take a silence as a historical absence. Here, however, we might have an even stronger view: although Homer never mentions the Cyclades, he might have been influenced by their very unique culture.
This is perhaps nicely seen in the Cycladic figurines found around the Cyclades that depict a singer holding a lyre. One of such has been I encountered in the Naxos Archaeological Museum. The bardic mode of singing on a lyre is likely corroborated by this. But the question is always to what extent did they recite epic poetry as “Homer” did. Should we even be thinking about Homer — could it be a more “Cycladic” poetry?
Likewise, in this exhibition, showcases a very recent Mycenaean tomb that has been found for the first time: the “vaulted tomb of Aghia Thekla” in northern Tinos. As the exhibition describes, “it is one of only three vaulted tombs in the Cyclades and is, for the time being, the only confirmed Mycenaean site on the island”. It is a rare Mycenaean find on a Cycladic site. It’s tantalising: like the lyre-figurine above, we keep on getting hints as to the influences of the Cyclades on Homer — but there is often not enough evidence to tell.
Thus, we have accessed and studied a whole spectrum surrounding Cycladic history and archaeology in relation to Homer. We have likewise encountered a whole spectrum of different interpretations as to the directionality and extent of influence. All of this attests not just to the rich outlook of interdisciplinary studies today, but also the vitality of keeping a broader, synoptic view at times and appreciating broader cross-cultural links and the importance of more “invisible” elements like the environment, nature of islands, and spirit of the place, alongside the historical reality and tangible evidence.
A final small point of comparison (and an exhibition that I actually did visit!). This exhibition, perhaps, should be read alongside another project of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades: the Colonisation exhibition at the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum “From the South to the North: Colonies of the Cyclades in the northern Aegean”. Here, in Homer’s silence, we have interesting archaeological evidence of what the Cycladic “heroes” were doing from a very early age. The exhibition focused on the colonisation by Paros and Andros (with its three poleis Hypsili, Zagora and Palaiopolis) of Thasos, and of the Chalcidice and Strymon river respectively from the 8th to the 5th centuries BCE.
Perhaps like “frogs around a pond”, as Plato’s Socrates once called the inhabitants of the Mediterranean (Phaedo 109b), we can get a glimpse of how the ancient inhabitants of the Cyclades were dealing with the everyday world and perhaps creating their own odysseys. This might be nicely reflected in the fact that the lyric poet Archilochus was writing his poetry at the time about Paros’ colonisation of Thasos. Although he does not directly claim to respond to Homer and his works per se, he is likely responding to his tradition: when self-describing himself, Archilochus claims that he is the “attendant” (θεράπων) of Lord Enylaios, the archaic god of war. At the same time, however, he knows the “lovely gift” (ἐρατὸν δῶρον) of the Muses. He is both a warrior and yet often critical of the realities of war in his poetry — that’s what makes his poetry so distinctive (Athenaeus, Deiphnosophistai 14.627c). Perhaps this might be influenced by his Parian (potentially “Cycladic”) history beyond the Homeric world. We can certainly see a rich and unique manifestation of this Cycladic culture in the religious votive offerings, inscriptions and Cycladic dialects on display ranging from Despotiko to Stageira, Thracian Neapolis to Chalkis.
Like the Tinos exhibition above, what we have here is a growing interest in the archaeology and history of the Cyclades when their fame has been taken away by Homer. What were they doing and where did they go? Did they also follow heroic models, perhaps inspired by Homer, or were they doing something completely different? Did Homer ignore them simply because they were never involved in the epic cycles (or he didn’t know what was happening there), or is he silencing them for a more deliberate reason, perhaps based on their different patterns and outlook? These are all questions that we can start to think about when looking beyond Homer and appreciating the amazing everyday culture and history of the Cyclades.
What I have hoped to do throughout this piece, following Christy Constantakopoulou’s model, is to appreciate the Cyclades and the Aegean islands during Homer’s age and their presentation between historical reality and as imagined constructions and semiotic symbols. I have done this by turning beyond Homer and placing value especially on the archaeology and the absences in Homer — a focus on the ordinary. I hope this will shed new light not just on what actually happened in Homer’s Cyclades, but also ways to think about such questions in a broader way. We sailed out from the mainland by transitioning from the fantastical and purely historical to the everyday habits in Homeric literature and beyond. From here, we have discussed perhaps the most human of such activities: eating and food consumption. Having zoomed in on this archaeology, we then ended by broadening out and focusing on archaeology as conceptualised by museums today at the exhibition on Tinos. Throughout, the focus has been not on the two endpoints, but on the journey itself — how we can approach this question of absences. Hopefully, this little porthemeutike has melted the mists over the Cyclades that obscured Homer’s birds-eye view. It has been a whole summer in the making, accumulated over many different experiences.
The focus has been on absences — maybe if I had actually visited the places we would have got further! But perhaps this perspective of talking about places I hadn’t visited, but had learnt about from other comparative sites, helped me craft it and this overarching synoptic view. Whatever the case, there are many more places to visit next year!
More importantly, in this light, I’ve tried to stress the importance of thinking about methodology and interacting with the primary sources. Sometimes, to get a full view of what is happening, it is useful to take an wider, overarching viewpoint without a specific, knit-grit argument — but instead to appreciate the spirit of the place and its broader implications. We need to step back and understand the entirety before delving into the specifics. For the first time on this trip, I experienced the full impact of it — and hence wrote this. For me, this was only achieved through one source that I will never forget.
Most importantly for me, this is a tribute to the incredible company I had ferrying around the Cyclades, who enabled this broader approach and new perspectives. They made the trip so much more meaningful and insightful by discussing Thucydides, preparing the assigned islands with their own impressive expertise, and stressing with me over ferry tickets. And this is only the beginning— all these places I’ve written about I still have to visit, and there will undoubtedly be more. I look forward to more trips with them. They gave much more than my organisational work ever could.
Conclusion: Hdt. 9.123
The Peloponnesians then who were with Leutychides decided to sail away to Hellas, but the Athenians, with Xanthippus their general, that they would remain there and attack the Chersonesus . . .
A campaign finished. Tiredness sets in.
You see, the summer drowse seems to toil on. Hallucinations heard torpidity.
The last few days in Athens were sad, but they were reflective. In a way, I felt nothing. I was with friends. We had discovered more about Greece and each other than any textbook ever could.
Maybe we had to leave the city to understand what it was like.
Our last day in Greece my friend and I took a bus to ancient Nemea. It was nice.
I walked up the Lykabettos hill a few hours before my flight at sunrise. BSA close behind, the Piraeus and the Saronic gulf in front — Boreas and Eilytheia still blowing.
I started walking down to the Piraeus. It’s cool. You walk past the Acropolis, Athenian Agora, Themistokles’ Walls, to Kerameikos. There were three roads. They say the Demosion Sema hasn’t been found.
A little katabasis.
It’s been quite a summer.
No matter what happens with social memory, it’s one that no one can certainly ever really forget.
Delos and its Aegean Interactions seem to beckon next.
Special thanks to my travel companions mooning around the Cyclades: Hugo, Holly, and Jenny. This wouldn’t have happened without you — it meant everything to travel and learn together. This is for you.
The University of Virginia has published an online map location with all the potential names of the Catalogue of Ships.
Finally, many thanks to Prof. Graziosi, whom I have always dreamed of learning with, but sadly could not.
