More than a century after the discovery of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, the original number of districts in the Boeotian koinon, founded in 447/6 BCE, remains contested. While the Oxyrhynchus historian attests eleven districts in 395 — consistent with Thucydides’ attestation of eleven boeotarchs in 424 — part of the scholarship argues for an original nine-district structure, assuming that Plataea was excluded until Thebes seized its territory and added two districts to the koinon in Plataea’s name, directly under Theban control. This article endorses a recent claim that Plataea lacked the demographic basis to constitute two districts and could not have belonged to the koinon from the outset. However, it rejects the further claim that the koinon originally comprised seven districts in emulation of an alleged archaic division. Rather, it argues that the reduction to seven boeotarchs upon the koinon’s refoundation in 378 BCE — later retained in Hellenistic and Roman times — was a fourth-century Theban innovation evoking, as Denis Knoepfler suggested, the seven gates of Thebes in the Seven against Thebes epic tradition. The koinon of 447/6 is instead taken to have comprised nine districts and to have been structured on a Spartan model, reflecting Sparta’s hegemony over Boeotia after Coronea.
Né undici né sette. Il numero dei distretti del koinon beotico dopo Coronea
Marcello Lupi
In corso di stampa
Abstract
More than a century after the discovery of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, the original number of districts in the Boeotian koinon, founded in 447/6 BCE, remains contested. While the Oxyrhynchus historian attests eleven districts in 395 — consistent with Thucydides’ attestation of eleven boeotarchs in 424 — part of the scholarship argues for an original nine-district structure, assuming that Plataea was excluded until Thebes seized its territory and added two districts to the koinon in Plataea’s name, directly under Theban control. This article endorses a recent claim that Plataea lacked the demographic basis to constitute two districts and could not have belonged to the koinon from the outset. However, it rejects the further claim that the koinon originally comprised seven districts in emulation of an alleged archaic division. Rather, it argues that the reduction to seven boeotarchs upon the koinon’s refoundation in 378 BCE — later retained in Hellenistic and Roman times — was a fourth-century Theban innovation evoking, as Denis Knoepfler suggested, the seven gates of Thebes in the Seven against Thebes epic tradition. The koinon of 447/6 is instead taken to have comprised nine districts and to have been structured on a Spartan model, reflecting Sparta’s hegemony over Boeotia after Coronea.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
