The role of the 'strategoi' in Athens in the 4th century B.C.
Abstract
The role of the Athenian generals in the Fourth Century B.C. has
remained one viewed in simplistic dismissal as mercenaries and lawless
condottieri. Such ideas, based upon the political rhetoric of the Athenian
ecclesia, led historians to remove the generals to the periphery of Athenian
history in the Fourth Century. Though misguided, there has been neither a
basic reinterpretation nor an in-depth re-examination of this idea.
This thesis examines the role of the Athenian strategoi from several
different angles but with one central argument, that the specialist Athenian
generals demonstrated throughout the C4th. a remarkably strong sense of
loyalty and patriotism towards their polis. Through such an argument the
generals may be brought back from the cloudy edges of legality and action
they have been seen as occupying, and given a central role in the affairs of
Athens in the Fourth Century.
This role will be reinforced on the military front by an examination
of the Athenian command network and the evolution of warfare. I hope to
show that the developments in the art of war that were occurring in this
period merely exacerbated the sociopolitical tensions that were present in
Athens and offered the generals further opportunity for the development of
their office. By concentrating upon the relatively few specialist strategoi
that emerged in the Fourth Century I hope to demonstrate that this
development of the strategia was one of gradual evolution, continuing
from Conon at the dawn of the century till the emergence of Leosthenes as
virtually a popular dictator by the time of the Lamian War.
Loyalty to "state" did not bring direct political power to the
specialist strategoi. Through the influence of public support, reliant upon a
continued distancing from the squabblings of the rhetors, the strategoi
might not have dominated Athenian political life but by 323 they were
certainly in a position to threaten the complete sovereignty of the ecclesia
itself.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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