All entries for Monday 01 February 2016

February 01, 2016

A silver stater of Evagoras in the British Museum

The political turmoil in the Greek world at the end of the Peloponnesian War provides the context for cultural changes of which this silver stater, produced for Evagoras I, ruler of the Cypriot city of Salamis from 411 to 374 BCE, is material evidence. Evagoras negotiated a tricky career with challenges both at home and in negotiating and maintaining relationships with Greek cities and the Persian empire. One of the remarkable things about Evagoras is the range of evidence about him and his career, from mentions in Athenian rhetorical, historiographic and philosophical texts, to inscriptions from both Athens and Salamis itself, to the gold and silver coins with which he established an identity for his city.

Evagoras’ coinage provides evidence for an intriguing cultural mixture and period of change. His coinage, of which this silver stater is a representative example, features the Greek hero Heracles on the obverse and a goat and a grain of corn on the reverse. The rather wild, bearded Heracles wears his lion skin as a head-dress, its legs knotted around his chin (perhaps a way to get the iconic garment into the format of a coin portrait?); the text, in Cypriot syllables, gives his name E-u-wa-go-ro. The iconography with its reference to Greek hero myth reinforces the Salaminian rulers’ claim to a Greek cultural heritage, also expressed through their legendary descent from Teucer. The text of the reverse asserts Evagoras’ authority of king (ba-si-le-wo-se), mixing Cypriot syllables with the occasional Greek letter, showing that the transition to a more emphatically Hellenic identity was in progress but incomplete.

As the fourth century progressed, subsequent rulers would adopt Greek letters for their coinage (Hill, McGregor); Evagoras, in whose name the earliest civic inscription using both Greek and Cypriot writing was issued, used both forms of writing. This coin catches an early stage in a transition to Greek script that would be completed by his successors.

For the Athenian educator and moralist Isocrates, Evagoras was a paradigm of the virtuous ruler. Praising his achievements in a florid encomium, Isocrates presents a story of a courageous and determined individual who surpasses the achievements of his mythical ancestors in retaking his city, as he did in 411 BCE, the start of what Hill describes as ‘a period of Hellenic revival’ (Hill 1904: c-ci). Evagoras campaigned with Conon, for which he was honoured by Athens, but in attacking other Cypriot cities attracted the unfavourable attention of Artaxerxes, great king of Persia, and by the 370s had to submit himself and his city to Persian control.

Isocrates passes over the rather squalid circumstances of the end of Evagoras’ career, his assassination by a eunuch in 374 BCE after a court intrigue (although his Nicocles 31 may refer to it: see also Aristotle Politics V.10.1311b4-6, Diodorus Siculus 15.47.8), and indeed spins his earlier role as provider of bolt-holes for fugitive Athenian politicians such as Andocides (Lysias 6.28) and Conon (DS 13.106.6) into praise for Salamis’ ability to attract a high class of immigrants (Evagoras 51-2). And there are further divergences between the literary and material record – Marguerite Yon (Yon 1993: 144-5) reports that extensive excavations at Salamis have not uncovered Evagoras’ buildings, praised by Isocrates (Evagoras 47), although archaeologists have found epigraphic records, including a fragmentary inscription with text written in both Greek letters and Cypriot syllabic symbols.

Isocrates was not a historian or even a biographer; his depiction of Evagoras is a work of patterning and invention, containing some of his most interesting thought on the nature of monarchy. It, along with its companion piece Nicocles, is an early example of an Athenian taking interest in a form of rule that would become more important as the fourth century BCE progressed and other monarchs from the fringes of the Greek world, with their own mythical ancestor stories, would claim the attention of the Athenians rather more aggressively. Spatially and politically, Evagoras’ Salamis lay between Greek and Persian areas of influence. The city, which Evagoras ruled as tyrant (Isocrates Evagoras 32) or king (Evagoras 39, IG II² 20.6, 16), depending on your analysis of monarchy, was, as Evagoras’ life shows, caught between the political and cultural influence of the Greek and Persian worlds, but it also had its own distinctive culture.

Isocrates was not the first Athenian to praise Evagoras, nor the last to find him interesting. The Athenians voted him first citizenship (IG I³ 113, c.411 BCE) and then further honours and a statue for the help he had provided to Conon (IG II² 20, 394/3 BCE; Rhodes and Osborne 11). Athens needed all the friends it could find, during both the later phases of the Peloponnesian War and the period in which the restored democracy sought to re-establish Athenian interests in the Aegean and Mediterranean. But its grant of such honours to the ruler of a different kind of polity perhaps shows Athenian realpolitik in action.

This month's piece was written by Carol Atack. Carol is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Greek Cultural History in the Department of Classics and Ancient History; her primary research interest is in ancient Greek political thought, and particularly the monarchical thought of Xenophon and Isocrates.

References

Iacovou, M. (2013) ‘The Cypriot Syllabary as a royal signature: the political context of the syllabic script in the Iron Age’, in P.M. Steele (ed.) Syllabic Writing on Cyprus and its Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 133-152.

Hägg, T. (2012) The Art of Biography in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 30-41.

Hill, G.F. (1904) Catalogue of the Greek coins of Cyprus (London: British Museum).

Lewis, D.M. and Stroud, R.S. (1979), 'Athens Honors King Euagoras of Salamis', Hesperia, 48 (2), 180-93.

McGregor, K.A. (1999), 'The Coinage Of Salamis, Cyprus, From The Sixth To The Fourth Centuries B. C.', (Unpublished PhD thesis, University College, London).

Rhodes, P.J. and Osborne, R. (2003) Greek Historical Inscriptions: 404-323 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Roesch, P. (1973) ‘Une inscription digraphe du Ve S. av. J.C.’, in Institut Fernand-Courby, Anthologie salaminienne: Salamine de Chypre, Vol. 4, Paris: E. de Boccard), pp. 81-84.

Yon, M. (1993), 'La ville de Salamine: Fouilles françaises 1964-74', in M. Yon (ed.), KINYRAS: L'Archéologie française à Cyprus : table-ronde tenue à Lyon, 5-6 novembre 1991 (Lyon: Maison de l'Orient), pp. 139-58.