NATHAN T. ARRINGTON
Classical Antiquity. Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 179–212. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).
Copyright © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please
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DOI:10.1525/CA.2011.30.2.179.
Inscribing Defeat:
The Commemorative Dynamics
of the Athenian Casualty Lists
Beginning ca. 500 bc, the Athenians annually buried their war dead in a public cemetery and
marked their graves with casualty lists. This article explores the formal and expressive content of
the lists, focusing in particular on their relationship to defeat. The lists created a monumental,
visual rhetoric of collective resilience and strength that capitalized on Athenian notions of
manhood and exploited conceptions of shame. For most of the fifth century, the cas ualty lists
were undecorated, austere monuments testifying to the endurance of the community. When
decoration began anew, the public reliefs, in contrast to private funerary reliefs, represented,
through imagery and setting, struggle rather than victory. The selective remembrance and,
paradoxically, frequent forgetting both enacted and enabled by the lists helped the Athenians
elide internal political strife and facilitated their repeated return to the fields of war.
Near the end of the mid-f ourth-cent ury Social War, Isokrates urged t he
Athenians to seek peace with her erstwhile allies and to embrace the principles of
Hellenic autonomy stipulated by the early fourth-century King’s Peace.
1
In his
text, Isokrates questions the profits of war and criticizes the aggression of the
fifth-century Athenian empire (arch
¯
e):
So far did [fifth-centu ry Athenians] surpass all men in foll y that whereas
defeats humble the rest of mankind and make them more sensible, they
did not teach those men a lesson. And yet they fell into more and greater
[defeats] during the period of their hegemony than occurred in the whole
This article is based in part on the third chapter of my dissertation, Arrington 2010a: 51–83. Earlier
versions were presented at Berkeley and Princeton, and I thank these audiences for their comments.
Michael Koortbojian, Julia Shear, and the journal’s two anonymous reviewers provided valuable
feedback on the article manuscript. A ll mistakes r emain my own.
1. See esp. Isok. 8.16.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
180
history of the city. . . . In the end they did not notice that they had filled the
public graves with their citizens.
2
In this passage, Isokrat es presents his read er or listener wi th two paradoxes. The
firstisthatthefifth-century Athenians, who envisaged themselves in art and t ext as
paradigms of s
¯
ophrosyn
¯
e (moderation), whose city Perikles described in a funeral
oration as the “school of Greece,” did not learn from defeat.
3
The second is that
the public graves, intended to preserve mn
¯
em
¯
e ( memory), were subject instead to a
collective l
¯
eth
¯
e.
4
Isokrates’ use of the word taphos rather than mn
¯
ema to describe
the tombs removes even the graves’ etymological relationship with memory.
5
The
orator also implies that there is a causal , or at the least a temp oral, relations hip
between the two paradoxes: the Athenians were so aggressive in their imperial
policy, so blind in their pursuit of power, that they failed to notice the human
cost of their undertaking. It is evident, though, that despite Isokrates’ qualifier “in
the end,” this act of forgetfulness could not have been performed only in the final
years of the fifth century. Rather, fighting, death, and l
¯
eth
¯
e went hand-in-hand.
Isokrates even leaves open the possibility of reconfiguring the causal relationship
between t he two paradoxes: the Atheni ans did not learn from their defeats because
they forgot thei r dead.
6
This rhetoric of forgetfulness should come as a surprise because, as Isokrates
well knew, in the fifth century the Athenians had a system for commemorating
military casualties. In each year of int erstate conflict the ashes of the war dead
were brought home, put on public display for three days, brought to the public
cemetery where a funeral o ration was delivered, buried in communal graves
marked by casualty lists, and given the tribute of funeral competitions.
7
These
practices were not common to all of Greece, since many ot her poleis buried their
2. Isok. 8.85–86, 88: τοσοτον δ δινεγκαν νοα πντων νθρπων στε τος μν λλους
α συμφορα συστ!λλουσι κα ποιοσιν "μφρονεστ!ρους, "κε#νοι δ$ ο%δ$ &π' το(των "παιδε(θησαν.
κατοι πλεοσιν κα μεζοσιν περι!πεσον "π τ+ς ρχ+ς τα(της τ.ν "ν /παντι τ.0 χρ1νω0 τ+2
π1λει γεγενημ!νων.... τελευτ.ντες δ$ 3λαθον σφ4ς α%τος τος μν τφους τος δημοσους
τ.ν πολιτ.ν "μπλσαντες.
3. Thuc. 2.41. 1.
4. Low 2010: 353–57 discusses this passage and the neglect of the public graves at Athens,
mostly drawing on the absence of references to the graves in literary texts. A treatment of forgetful-
ness already underlies the discussion of the war dead in Arrington 2010a. On collective memory,
most famously discussed by Maurice Halbwachs, see Coser 1992 and Cubitt 2007: 154–71.
5. Contrast, e.g., Dem. 18.208, where the public graves are mn
¯
emata. Since the dead lie
(κεμενοι) in these graves , it is clear that both a mn
¯
ema and a taphos could be filled. See also Pl.
Men. 242c, where the war dead are put (τιμηθ!ντες)inamn
¯
ema.
6. One might object that not noticing (3λαθον) is not the equivalent of forgetting, but that
objection does not account for the habitual act of forgetting required by the passage. By claiming
that the Athenians did no t notice that year after year they had filled their cemetery, Isokrates implies
that in any given year the Athenian s forgot the numbers and costs of the past years. Indeed, he does
not say that they did not notice that they were filling the cemetery (with a present pa rticiple), but that
they did not notice that they had already done so (w ith an aorist participle).
7. The most important treatments of various aspects of this nomos are Jacoby 1944, Stupperich
1977, Loraux 1981, Clairmont 1983.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
181
dead on the battlefield.
8
In other words, the Athenians seem to have gone to
particular lengths to remember their dead. Is Isokrates, then, simply wrong?
The funeral orations delivered over the war dead suggest this may be the
case, for they repeat edly speak of the immortal glory—and hence memo ry—
of the deceased. Lysias says that their mn
¯
emai are ageless (ag
¯
eratoi).
9
He
praises the ancestors o f the dead for holding th at “a glor ious death leav es a
deathless account of brave men.”
10
Similarly, Perikles (via Thucydides) refers
to the undying (ag
¯
eron) praise the dead receiv e.
11
But the orators speaking
over the graves simultaneously throw the efficacy of memor y into question. All
funerary orations begin with a caveat on the limits of speech (logos) to recount the
memory of deeds (erga).
12
On the one hand, such comments serve to highlight
the magnitude of the erga, but they also reflect a real inability to fully render
an account in one speech of several events and many i ndividuals. And for the
most part the funeral orations do not attempt to render such accounts, instead
focalizing exploits from the (oftentimes distant) past.
13
Lysias fu rther makes th e
point that even eyewitnesses distort battlefield memories. When describing the
battle of Salamis, he claims: “Indeed because of t heir present fear they thought
that t hey saw many t hings they did not see, and that they heard many things they
did not hear.”
14
Coupled with these repeated warnings on the insuffici ency of
commemorative discourse and the frailty of personal recollection are injunctions
that survivors actually should forget the dead. Perikles urges the parents of the
dead to have children in order to forget their loved ones.
15
Lysias similarly pities
those who are too old to forget the dead, implying that forgetting the fallen was
the desired norm.
16
Isokrates’ statement, then, does not seem that far from the truth. Perikles
further undermines the view that the Athenian military ceremony successfully
preserved the memory of the dead when he questions the capacity of the public
graves an d their stelai adequately to record memory. In exp laining why the
memory of the war dead is undying, he shifts the locus of memory work from
the graves to individual minds and from written to unwritten testimony:
For the whole earth is the grave of famous men, and not only does the
inscription on stelai at home mark (s
¯
emainei) [them], but the unwritten
8. Com pare, for instance, the case of Sparta, where some war dead received graves in the city,
but most others were buried on or near the battle field: Low 2006.
9. Lys. 2.79.
10. Lys. 2.23: νομζοντες τ'ν ε%κλε4 θνατον θνατον περ τ.ν γαθ.ν καταλεπειν λ1γον.
11. Thuc. 2.43. 2.
12. Thuc. 2.35. 1–2, Lys. 2.1–2, Pl. Men. 237a, Dem. 60.1, Hyp. 6.2 (fragmentary).
13. For the “Tatenkatalog,” see Kierdorf 1966: 89–95.
14. Lys. 2.39: 5 που δι6 τ'ν παρ1ντα φ1βον πολλ6 μν 80θησαν 9δε#ν :ν ο%κ ε;δον, πολλ6
δ$ κοσαι :ν ο%κ <κουσαν.
15. Thuc. 2.43. 3.
16. Lys. 2.72.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
182
memory of their attitude rather than their deed dwells in each person’s
mind in foreign lands.
17
At first it may seem that the (imaginative) dynamics adumbrated in this passage
would increase th e memory of the dead. But when read more closely, the bravura
of the rhetoric exposes t he speaker’s awareness of the mnemonic limits of the
Athenian commemorative system. Since this passage is used to explain the reasons
the memory of the dead is immortal, the implication of the shift from monuments
to hearts is that the graves were not suffici ent in and of themselv es to preserve
that memory but necessitated a further unwritten memory. The importance of
the st elai recedes when they are juxtaposed with th e whole eart h and wi th every
mind in foreign lands. The commemorative capability of the stelai is thrown into
further doubt in the manner by which the verb s
¯
emain
¯
o is deployed in the passage.
The verb governs no direct object, leaving the reader or listener to wonder what
exactly these stones mark.
What, indeed, are the casualty lists, the constitutive elements of the Athenian
public burials, commemorating, and how are they commemorating it? This
immediately presents another question: what and how are t hey forgetting or
neglecting? Whether or not one accepts Isokrates’ v iews, the fact remains that
no monument or group of monuments ever can provide a comprehensive history
of past events. To the extent that the monuments emplot a particular narrative,
gaps inevitably will be present. As Marc Auge´ eloquently put it, “Memories are
crafted by oblivion as the outlines of the shore are created by the sea.”
18
But
the forgetting, the omitting, and the eliding involved in public commemoration
should not be envisaged as something as routine, predictable, and benign as a
wave lappin g a beach. As Isokrat es suggests, forgetfulness could be a strategy
with profound consequences. More importantly, commemoration does not entail a
simple give and take between forgetting or remembering, an either/or scenario.
Defeat an d loss could be reconfigured, transformed, and framed to be remembered
in a particular manner.
This article seeks to uncover the commemorative dynamics of the Athenian
casualty lists. More specifically, it investigates the collective Athenian response
to d efeat and death in the fifth century, the period to which most of the surviving
lists belong, by exploring the narrative the stelai emplotted at Athens. An analysis
of the content, form, and setting (socio-cultural, topographic, and political)
17. Thuc. 2.43.3: νδρ.ν γ6ρ "πιφαν.ν π4σα γ+ τφος, κα ο% στηλ.ν μ1νον "ν τ+2 ο9κεα
σημανει "πιγραφ, λλ6 κα "ν τ+2 μ= προσηκο(ση2 γραφος μνμη παρ$ >κστω0 τ+ς γνμης
μ4λλον ? το 3ργου "νδιαιτ4ται. For the translation of γνμη as “attitude,” see Rusten 1989: 148.
18. Auge´ 2004: 20. Cf. Ricoeur 2004: 85: “Memory can be ideologized through the resources of
the variations offered by the work of narrative configuration. . . It is, more precisely, the selective
function of the narrative that opens to manipulation the opportunity and the means of a clever strategy,
consisting from the outset in a strategy o f forgetting as much as in a strategy of rem embering.”
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
183
of the casualty lists shows how they commemorated collective courage and
sacrifice, alternately marking and eliding d efeat to create a v isual rhetoric of
collective resilience and continuous struggle (ag
¯
on). The expressive capaci ty
of the casualty lists reveals how the public commemoration of the war dead
was an active rather than a passive process. The ceremony, with its burial
and oration and games, was an active response to a situation that challenged
the integrity and confidence of the community and an active effort to creat e,
in monumental form, an aggressive, unifying narrative about Athens and the
Athenians.
THE FORMAT OF THE ATHENIAN CASUALTY LISTS
The casualty lists were erected in the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, the public cemetery,
every year in which there were war dead (Figure 1).
19
The format of the lists varies
in details, but typically they begin with a heading, “These men died,”
20
sometimes
specifying “in the war,”
21
“of the Athenians” in the genitive,
22
or “Athenians” in
the nominative,
23
once adding “in the same year,”
24
and often incl uding in the
heading references to the location of the battles.
25
Geographical rubrics also can
appear as subheading s,
26
or the location of the battle may be enunciated in the
epigram on the base.
27
On one occasion a cat ch-all “These men died in the other
battles,” without geographical specifications, concludes a list.
28
There might be
an epigram on t he top of the stele,
29
on the bottom of the stele,
30
or (perhaps more
commonly) on the base into which the stele was set.
31
The names of the dead
were written without patronymics and organized according to th e t en Attic tribes
established by Kleisthenes. On eleven stones one or more names are preceded
19. On the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, see Arrington 2010a: 17–50; Arrington 2010b. On the Athenian
casualty lists, see esp. Bradeen 1969; Stupperich 1977: 4–22; Clairmont 1983: 46–54; Pritchett
1985: 139–40; Lewis 2000–2003; Low 2010; Low forthcoming.
20. IG I
3
1147, 1148, 1162, 1166, 1183, 1191, 1193 bis; IG II
2
5221 and 5222 (for cavalry). I do
not include SEG 48.83 in this description of content because the full publication of the stele has
not yet appeared.
21. IG I
3
1147, 1166, 1191.
22. IG I
3
1162, 1183, 1193 bis; IG II
2
5221.
23. IG I
3
1191.
24. IG I
3
1147.
25. IG I
3
1147, 1162, 1183; IG II
2
5221, 5222 (for cavalry).
26. IG I
3
1144, 1180, 1184; IG II
2
5222 (for cavalry).
27. IG I
3
503/4, 1179.
28. IG I
3
1162, ll. 41–42. Cf. SEG 52.60, l. 33.
29. IG I
3
1148; SEG 48.83, 49.370.
30. IG I
3
1162.
31. IG I
3
503/4, 1163d-f, 1179; so, too, on the public bases (not for casualties) 1154b and 1178.
IG I
3
1142, 1143, 1167, 1170, 1173, 1181 have epigrams and may be bases for casualty lists. IG
I
3
1148 bears an epigram but is too mutilated to identify as a base rather than a s tele.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
184
by an iden tifying l abel, such as “trierarch.”
32
Occasionally non-A thenians and
servants or slaves were included on the lists.
33
The lists were carved out of marble, usually identified as Pentelic. They
sometimes preserve flat undersides that were set upon a base or i nto long slots
cut into a base.
34
Vertical do wels could be used to secure them in place: IG I
3
1186 and SEG 52.60 preserve dowel holes on their undersides,
35
and on the l ong
base IG I
3
1163d-f there are four cuttings for vertical dowels (Figure 2 ).
36
A
stele with inscription and figural relief found east of the Larissa train station, near
Palaiologou Konstantinou street and herein referred to as the Palaiologou stele
and relief (SEG 48.83), is dated to the 420s bc and is the first list with a tenon. The
only other is IG I
3
1191, dated to the late fifth century.
The earliest example of crown ing decoration for a list (ap art from a mo lding)
is preserved only in the report of a lost drawing. A. Boeckh in CIG describes
having seen a drawing in U. Koehler’s papers made by L. F. S. Fauvel of a
frieze associ ated with the l ist for the dead from Poteidaia (IG I
3
1179, 432
bc).
37
According to Boeckh, the drawing depicted three warriors fighting on a
slab above the base for the casualty list of Poteidaia dead. Fauvel’s transcription
of the epigram has been found, but not the drawing, and it is quite possible that
the relief never belonged with the monument. The earliest surviving example of
crowning decoration is the Palaiologou relief (SEG 48.83), dating to the 420s and
described in detail below. The cuttings on the top of the lists also speak against
32. σ@τ[ρα]τεγAν (IG I
3
1147, l. 5), στρατεγ1ς (idem, l. 62), τοχσ1ται (idem, l. 67), μντις
(idem, l. 129); στρατεγ1ς (IG I
3
1162, l. 4); τρι!ραρχος (IG I
3
1166, l. 2); τοχσ1ται (IG I
3
1184, l.
79); [———τρι]!ραρχος (IG I
3
1186, l. 75), [——περι]π1λαρχος (idem, l. 77), ταχσαρχος (idem,
l. 79), τ1χσαρχος (idem, l. 80), τρι!ραρχος (idem, l. 108); τρι! (sic, IG I
3
1190, ll. 3, 42), φυσικ1ς
(idem, l. 152), φ(λαρχ (idem, l. 179); [τ ....αρ]χBος (IG I
3
1191, ll. 33, 200), [τ....]αρχος (idem,
l. 35), [τρι!ρ]αρχος (idem, ll. 37, 39, 41), [τρι!ρα]ρχος (idem, l. 43), τρι!ρ[αρχοι] (idem, l. 56),
hοπλ[#ται] (idem, l. 60), ρχAν
τA ναυτικA (idem, ll. 105–106, 108–109), ταχσαρχος (idem, ll.
111, 113), τρι!ραρχος (idem, ll. 115, 117, 119, 121), [τ....αρ]χος (idem, l. 198), [τρι!ραρ]χBος
(idem, l. 202); [τρι!ραρχ]ος (idem, l. 204); τρι!ραρχ (IG I
3
1192, l. 8), τρι!C[ρ]αρχ (idem, l. 34),
Dιππο[τοχσ1τες] (idem, l. 158); στρατηγ1ς (IG II
2
5221, col. VI (l. 2), [σ]τρατηγ1[ς] (idem col.
XI 1. 2); φ(λαρχος (IG II
2
5222); hippotoxot
¯
es (SEG 48.83, unpublished).
33. Foreigners (not including instances of non-Athenian nam es, e.g. IG I
3
1158, ll. 3, 5, 7):
[Μαδ](τιοι (IG I
3
1144, l. 34), [Βυζ]ντιο[ι] (idem, l. 118); ’Ελευθερ4θεν (IG I
3
1162, l. 96);
[τοχσ1ται βρβ]αροι (IG I
3
1172, l. 35); [χ]σ!Cνοι (IG I
3
1180, l. 5), [β]Hρβαροι [τ]οχσ1ται (idem,
ll. 26–27); 3νγBρIαH[φοι] (reading very disputed, IG I
3
1184, l. 76), χσ!νοι (idem, l. 89); χσ!νοι (IG
I
3
1190, l. 65), τJο[χσ]1ται [β]ρβJαροι (idem, ll. 136–37); τοχ[σ1ται] βρβα[ροι](IG I
3
1192, ll.
148–49). Servants or slaves: [θ]ερπονKτJες (IG I
3
1144, l. 139); Paus. 1.29.7. On the question of
the inclusion of rowers on the lists, see Strauss 2000.
34. Flat undersides: IG I
3
1147, 1150, 1156, 1184, 1186, 1190; SEG 52.60; bases with slot
cuttings: IG I
3
503/4, 1178; base without slot cuttings: IG I
3
1163d-f.
35. The dowel holes on the underside of IG I
3
1186 are not noted in IG I
3
but described in
Mastrokostas 1955; see esp. Mastrokostas 1955: 182–83, figs. 1–2.
36. On vertical fastening systems, see Orlandos 1959–1960: 189–202.
37. CIG I, p. 906 (supplement to no. 170); Ho¨lscher 1973: 104–105, 263n.540; Stupperich 1977:
16–17; Clairmont 1983: 174–75. Stupperich 1978: 92–93 speculates that it might be associated with
the relief in Oxford, on which see further 197–98, below.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
185
crowning decoration on the lists for most of the fifth century. The only dowel
holes for vertical attachments on the lists are on the late fifth-century list IG I
3
1186 and the Palaiologou stele itself, where it probably secured an anthemion
above the figural relief.
38
Thus the practice of adorning the casualty lists with
sculpture cannot be shown to have existed before the last third of the fifth century,
around the same time as private funerary sculpture also began anew. For most
of this century, the lists were austere: either completely undecorated or crowned
only by a simple molding.
39
The absence of figural decoration carries importan t
implications for the semantics of the lists, including their relationship to private
art, that will be addressed in greater detail later in this article.
The tribal organization of the names indi cates that the practice of erecting
casualty lists must postdate Kleisthenes’ reforms of 508/7 bc.
40
A casualty list
in Attic script with a tribal heading found on Lemnos dates to the early fifth
century and probably commemorates the Athenians who died under Miltiades
in 498.
41
Fragments of the tribal casualty lists once decorating the soros for the
Marathonomachoi were found at the villa of Herodes Atticus at Eva Loukou.
42
At
Athens itself, in the area of the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, there was a base for the casualty
lists for the Marathonomachoi,
43
and Pausanias mentions graves from a conflict
with Aigi na that he specifies occurred before the Persian invasion.
44
Also from the
public cemetery is a possible tumulus for the war dead dating to the first quarter of
the fifth century.
45
We can conclude that the format of the lists was in place ca. 500
and t hat the habit of erecting casualty lists at Athens began ca. 500, although in
this early stage of the nomos not all the war dead were buried at Athens.
According to Pausani as’ descrip tion of the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, the lists were
set up t hroughout the fourth century. He even describes a grave for Athenians
who aided the Romans against the Carthaginians.
46
Few examples later than
38. IG I
3
1161 has a roundish hole in the center of the upper surface not noted in the IG I
3
publication, and it is probably modern. For vertical attachments to stelai, see IG I
3
35, 40; SEG
28.46; Lawton 1992; Hildebrandt 2006: 106–107, 355–56, 369–70, nos. 292 (IG II
2
6007), 328
(IG II
2
6609).
39. Several scholars have instead thought that friezes were a regular f eature of the casualty lists:
Brueckner 1910: 193 (but cf. his comments on the sober appearance of the graves on 211); Clairmont
1972: 54–55; Loraux 1981: 51; Pritchett 1985: 157; Rawlings 2007: 199. See also Stupperich 1994,
for a view of lavish artistic display in the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema. Some might cite as an example of public ar t
earlier than the last third of the fifth century a relief for Melanopos and Makartatos, w hich Pausanias
describes in the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, but it is probably a private relief. It is discussed below.
40. See Arrington 2010b: 503–506 for a fuller discussion of the start date of public burial in
the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema and the related practice of erecting casualty lists.
41. IG 12 Supp. 337.
42. SEG 49.370, 51. 425, 53.354, 55.413; Steinhauer 2004–2009; Steinhauer 2009: 122; Spy-
ropoulos 2009.
43. IG I
3
503/4; Matthaiou 2003: 197–200; Arrington 2010b: 505–506.
44. Paus. 1.29.7; it may have been in 491/0 or 487/6.
45. Stoupa 1997: 52.
46. Paus. 1.29.14. On the date of the event, probably ca. 200 bc, see Pritchett 1985: 148–
49n.164. Bradeen 1964: 58 doubts the veracity of the event.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
186
the fifth century, though, survive. D. W. Bradeen proposes that one inscription,
with a tribal heading and the r ubric for a general, belonged to the casualty list
for Chaironeia.
47
S. Dow has also suggested some candidates for fourth-century
lists.
48
Yet the latest securely dated casualty list is for the dead from battles in
Corinth and Boiotia in 394/ 3.
49
There are two possible explanations for the dearth of fourth-century lists,
which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The firstisthatperhapssometimein
the fourth century the names began to be inscribed on the lists in a differen t manner
than before, which has made them more difficult to identify. For instance, the
demotic may have been included at this point,
50
which would explain Pausanias’
testimony that the casualty lists included the deme, which is at odds with our
fifth-century remains.
51
However the change in recording manifested itself, it
would have coincided with a change in conscription. In the fifth century, a general
or generals drew up katalogoi of eligible hoplites by tribe, based on lists provided
by demarchs, and with the help of each tribe’s t axiarch. Sometime between
386 and 366, the hoplites were conscripted instead by age classes from one
master list.
52
It is likely that the same lists were used both for organizing the
muster roll and for creating the casualty lists. Thus the chan ge in the epi graphical
record may reflect the change in the conscription process. The second explanation
for the absence of fourth-century lists may be the location of Athenian rescue
excavations, which have fallen mostly along the lines of the ancient roads. Less
work has been done in the space between th e roads.
53
Not only did the public
cemetery certainly extend into t his area, but this region may have been less
plundered.
54
The graves immediately alongside the road were a more convenient
source of raw material than those off the beaten track. If many fourth-century
state graves lay between the road that ran from the Dipylon Gate and the road
that went from a gate at modern Leokoriou and Dipylou streets, then there may
be some hope that future excavations will uncover more of the fourth-century
casualty lists.
47. Bradeen 1964: 55–58; SEG 21.825; Bradeen 1974: 33–34, no. 25. Bradeen 1974: 33, no. 24
also puts a base for casualty lists in th e fourth century.
48. Dow 1983: IG II
2
2364 (=I
3
1039), 2365 (=I
3
1045), 2368, 2376 (according to Dow, ca. 400);
2426 (=I
3
516, according to Dow, fourth century); 2399 (according to D ow, mid-fourth century);
2392 (=2404, according to Dow, after the m id-fourth century). Lewis 2000–2003: 15–17 discus ses
how I
3
516, 1039, and 1045 belong in the fifth century, and II
2
2392 in the first half of the second
century.
49. IG II
2
5221 and, for cavalry of the same year, IG II
2
5222.
50. Lewis 2000–2003: 17.
51. Paus. 1.29.4: στ+λαι τ6 Lν1ματα κα τ'ν δ+μον >κστου λ!γουσαι.
52. This reconstruction of the conscription process follows Christ 2001.
53. S ee the maps plotting the rescue excavation locations in Arr ington 2010a: 224–25.
54. Lewis 2000–2003: 17 suggests along slightly different lines that a section of th e cemetery
reserved for the fourth-century grav es was covered in antiquity. Th us the lists from that section were
not reused for construction material.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
187
A ‘‘RHETORIC OF MANHOOD’’
55
The stones name and th ereby commemorate the dead. Yet they stress certain
aspects of their identity over others: the dead are Athenians,theyaremen,andthey
died fighting. Lacking demotics and patronymics, the names become a collective
unified under the heading, “These of the Athenians. . . .” The organization of
the lists by Kleisthenic tribes points to the democratic ordering of Attica and
suggests that the Athenians are categorized and conceived on the stones primarily
as democratic citizens.
56
The democratic ideology at work on the lists rarely
praises one type of Athenian over another, nor does it privilege a citizen over a
non-citizen who died for the city. A hoplite is listed above an archer; foreigners
are included, as are slaves.
57
The concept of “Athenian” at work here is broad.
The lists on the stones create a collective made possible by democratic ideals,
but it is a collective whose common denominator is not Athenian citizenship per
se but service with the Athenian army. Accordingly, as opposed to other city
lists that identify their dead with patronymics or even with a reference to their
victories in panhellenic competitions,
58
thereby using extra-polis competition to
denote vir tue, the few rubrics accompanying t he Athenian names refer to military
rank. The tie that binds is military service for the city.
It is a rhetoric of manhood, then, that we find on the Athenian casualty
lists. For not only do the lists present the casualties as a collective of men
who served in the military, but as men who proved their manliness by facing
danger and dying while fighting. The epigrams on the lists make this point. The
epigram heading the casualty list from the Marathon soros found in reuse at the
villa of Herodes Atticus at Eva Loukou claims that ph
¯
emis will tell “how they
died fighting with the Medes . . . the f ew against many.”
59
An epigram for the
dead perhaps from 447 begins, “These men by the Hellespont lost their brilliant
youth fighting.”
60
Similarly, an epigram for cavalry concludes by stating that
55. I take the phrase “rhetoric of manhood” from the title of Roism an 2005.
56. Loraux 1981 stresses the anonymity and collectivity of the dead on the lists. However, her
analysis primarily centers on the articulation of a uniform and ideal democratic ideology via the
funeral orations. See esp. Loraux 1981: 22–24.
57. Loraux 1981 discusses the democratic aspect of the lists, while Low 2010 argues that an
emphasis on the connection between democracy and the lists can oversimplify their purpose and
reception; similarly Low forthcoming.
58. Patronymics were included on a stele in the Samian agora for the dead from the battle at
Lade (Hdt. 6.14.3) and on the stele er ected at Sparta listing the casualties from Thermopylai (Paus.
3.14.1). They also occur on surviving lists from Megara, Mantineia, Thebes, and Corinth. A Thasian
decree stipulates that the war dead are to be listed with patronymics. The Thespian lists identify
panhellenic victors. See Pritchett 1985: 140–41 and Low 2003 for non-Athenian lists, and for the
Thasian decree see most recently Fournier and Hamon 2007.
59. [μ]αρνμενοι Μ!δοισι ...[π]αυρ1τεροι πολλAν δεχσμενοι π1λεμον (ll. 4–5). The complete
text is in Steinhauer 2004–2009: 680.
60. IG I
3
1162, ll. 45–46: hοδε παρ$ hελλ!σποντον π1λεσαν γλα'ν h!βεν βαρνμενοι.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
188
they lost their youth “fighting against hordes of Greeks.”
61
In each case the
present participle marnamenoi is coupled with a verb for dying in the aorist
to describ e how the men died: with cour age. The value p laced on fighting
until the very end of one’s life recalls the rhetoric of manhood evoked in epic
poetry, such as Kalli nos’ admonitio n, “Let each one, with his last b reath, hurl
his spear.”
62
A similar rhetoric of manhood permeates the funeral orations, which were
delivered in the presence of the casualty lists.
63
Repeatedly the speeches use the
phrase
νδρες δ$ γαθο γεν1μενοι to indicate that the men were courageous in
death.
64
Death was not a prerequisite for being agathos,
65
but in facing danger one
gave proof of one’s bravery and valor, one’s aret
¯
e. References to danger perv ade
the speeches. Lysias, for instance, deploys
κινδυν- 39 times. By heightening th e
risks the men of the recent and distant past faced, he underscores their courage. For
instance, when praising the men who fought at Plataia, he says they made Greece
free and “in all the dangers gave proof of their valor.”
66
This manly ch aracter
in face of danger, rather than the outcome of the battles, is what the orators stress.
It is the ethos of the fallen that the orators want the listener to remember.
67
To
put it differently: t he ethos that was r evealed in deeds, not the deeds themselves,
rendered the fallen memor able. Lysias near the end of hi s speech gen eralizes
that the war dead “leave behind an immortal memory because of their aret
¯
e.”
68
Similarly, Hyperides say s that they “have become memorable becau se of t heir
andragathia (bravery).”
69
Such an emphasis on characteristics of manl iness like
andragathia, tolm
¯
e (daring), and aret
¯
e may explain why Plato, in his spoof on
a funeral oration, describes fathers of the dead with virile hyperbole as “manly
fathers of men.”
70
If one purpose of the discourse on courage was to elicit admiration in the
mourners for the dead, another (closely related) purpose was t o exploit their sense
of shame.
71
Shame was what the dead had escaped.
72
As Perikles says, the dead fled
61. IG I
3
1181, l. 4; Anth. Pal. 7.254: πλεστοις hελλνον ντα μαρνμενοι.
62. K allin. fr. 1 (West), 5: κα τις ποθνσκων Mστατ$ κοντιστω.
63. On the importance of the orations being spoken in the presence of the lists, see below.
64. E.g., Lys. 2.25 and Pl. Men. 237a.
65. Contra Loraux 1981: 98–100. Lysias, for example, describes the enthusiasm of both old and
young for conflict during the First Peloponnesian War (Lys. 2.50–51). In both cases, he is describing
the attitude of living persons. The elder generation has courage (aret
¯
e) bred from experience; they
have proved themselves brave on many occasions (πολλαχο γαθο γεγενημ!νοι). They did not die
in the process of becoming agathoi.
66. Lys. 2.47: "ν /πασι δ το#ς κινδ(νοις δ1ντες 3λεγχον τ+ς >αυτ.ν ρετ+ς.
67. Loraux 1981; Roisman 2005: 70.
68. Lys. 2.81: θνατον μνμην δι6 τ=ν ρετ=ν α&τ.ν κατ!λιπον.
69. Hyp. 6.29: μνημονευτος δι6 νδραγαθαν γεγον!ναι.
70. Pl. Men. 247e: πατ!ρας Nντας νδρας νδρ.ν.
71. On shame, see Roisman 2005: 64–83, esp. 67–71, where he discuss es shame and military
defeat in the funeral orations.
72. Roisman 2005: 70.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
189
dishonor.
73
Demosthenes, entrusted with the difficult task of praising the fallen
from the Athenian defeat at Chaironeia, is at pains to show how their conduct
rather than the outcome of the battle ensures their reputation: the fallen chose
a beautiful death (thanatos kalos) rather than a shameful life (bios aischros).
74
Shame was not just something to be escaped, then, but a force that motivated them.
The men at Chaironeia chose death “because they reasonably f eared the shame of
future reproach.”
75
When they perceived they were losing, they had to die fighting
the enemy so that they would not suffer shame.
76
And before the moment when
one’s honor compelled one to face death, shame could galvanize one to wage
war in the first place. In the Persian Wars, Lysias explains, the Athenians went to
battle because they were ashamed (aischynomenoi) that barbarians were on their
land.
77
This motivating or, at the least, didactic power of shame was articulated
to the living via the casualty lists.
78
Survivors who had not proved they could face
death would have been ashamed at t he sacrifice inventoried on the stones. Those
Athenians, for example, who ran away at the Battle of Mantineia in 418,
79
must
have been particularly abashed when they stood before that year’s stelai. In 330,
when Lykourgos charged Leokrates with treason for having fled Athens shortly
after her loss at Chaironeia, he expressed amazement that Leo krates did not feel
shame at the elegies on the casualty lists.
80
The rhetoric of the stones, though, was
not reserved for such cowards. Athenian men who had fought valiantly and those
who had not fought because of young age or because of where they were stationed
would have feared future shame: perhaps they might not hold the line and face
death when the moment came, but throw their shield and run. In Plato’s oration,
the dead themselves warn the living that nothing is worse than being honored
because of one’s ancestors’ glory.
81
COMMEMORATING EVENTS, COMMEMORATING DEFEATS
Not only did the names on the lists lack patronymics and demotics, but
on many lists the same name was repeated. For instance, on IG I
3
1147, for
the tribe Erechtheis, the name Glaukon appears three times. We know from
lekythoi images that women visited graves, but the widow looking to find the
73. Thuc. 2.42.4: τ' μν α9σχρ'ν το λ1γου 3φυγον. The scholiast glosses this phrase with
τ' Lνειδζεσθαι Oς δειλο.
74. Dem 60.26.
75. Dem. 60.26: ε9κ1τως τ+2 τ.ν μετ6 τατ$ Lνειδ.ν α9σχ(νη2.
76. Dem. 60.31: τ1τε τος "χθρος μυν1μενοι τεθνναι δε#ν P0οντο, στε μηδν νQιον
α&τ.ν παθε#ν.
77. Lys. 2.23.
78. Low 2010: 351–52 briefly discu sses how the lists could shame A thenians into military
service.
79. Thuc. 5.72. 4.
80. Lykourg. Leok . 142.
81. Pl. Men. 247b.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
190
name of her spouse on a public list would not have been able t o i dentify which
name belonged to him. While this anonymity of the individual dead was used to
subscribe him into a collective identity of military men, it also means that the
stelai commemorated simultaneously indi viduals and the events in which they
fell. In other words, as the personal identity of the dead faded, the specificity
of the event marked by the stone sharpened. The connection to the event on
the casualty lists was emphasized through the inclusion of geographical rubrics.
Unlike the listing of the names of the dead, the regions of conflict were clearly
identified in the heading proper, in subheadings, or i n an epigram. This is one of
the instances where the distinction between modern (i.e., post-World War I) war
memorials and the ancient lists is most distinct. While any war memorial must
commemorate both people and events, most modern war memorials throw their
commemorative effort into marking th e names of t he dead. Specific information
such as a date of birth or a date of deat h often is supplied, and a site index
routinely is available to help visitors locate loved ones. The Athenian casualty
lists, on the other hand, with t heir enumeration of anonymous dead coupled
with their specification of locale, mar k both indiv idual and event, and it is even
possible that they commemorated the event more than the individual. Unlike
modern memorials, the Athenian stones were erected shortly after the battles in
which the men had died: every winter following a season of military conflict. Thus
memories of the events were still fresh for mourners who gathered at the lists.
In this tempo ral cont ext, it is inconceivable that th e ancient monuments could
completely shift their commemorative duty from event to individuals.
Yet this relationship between monument and event presented a problem for
the Athenians, since many of the events commemorated by the lists were not
cause for celebrations.
82
Nearly every year, the stones marked defeats, some
of t hem minor setbacks, ot hers major disasters. The connection between defeat
and casualt y lists, in fact, ran deep, because in Greek hoplite warfare, casualties
indexed defeat. The winning side regularly had fewer casualties than the losing
side;
83
the more Athenian dead on the list, the more likely it was that they had lost
the engagement. A large monument in the cemetery suggested the absence of a
triumph. Moreover, the request to recover one’s dead constituted the (required)
official admission that one had lost the battlefield. The Athenian mind, then,
readily would have associated the dead with defeat. This thinking would have
been encouraged by the prevalent conception, colored by epic, of battle as a set
of confrontations between individual warriors.
84
Evidence for t his mindset can
be found in Athenian art contemporary with the lists, for it has often been noted
that, despite the fact that the Athenians fought in phalanx formation, this cohesive
unit is absent from Classical Athenian art. Instead, the Athenians dep icted war
82. Low 2010: 350, 356–57 also notes the relationship of the lists to defeat.
83. Krentz 1985.
84. For the impact of epic on ancient warfare, see Lendon 2005.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
191
along epic lines, distilling group battles into individual combats in which one
figure won victory and glory from the other.
85
The close relationship between
athletics and war only deepened the cognitive fragmentation of phalanx warfare
into one-on-one encounters. This mindset carries significant ramifications for the
Greek view of the lists, for it implies that the individual dead have lost their
individual fights.
The casualty lists, then, because of the anonymity of the dead, the connection
to events, the nature of hoplite warfare, and the Greek conception of combat in
epic terms, could be seen as monuments of defeat. Indeed, to appreciate the impact
of military setbacks on the lists, one only need turn to Pausanias’ description of
the public cemetery. As he wandered through the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, he recorded
polyandria (graves with multiple war dead buried together) and casualty lists from
the following list of serious setbacks.
Drabeskos (464): as many as 10,000 Athenian and allied settlers were
slaughtered unexpectedly.
86
Tanagra (458/7): the Athenians lost to the Lakedaimonians and their
allies, with heavy casualties on both sides. In the course of the battle,
the Thessalian cavalry switched to the Spartan side.
87
Koroneia (447/6): the Boiotians and their allies defeated the Atheni-
ans. Following the loss, the Athenians evacuated Boiotia, whose cities
regained their independence.
88
Delion (424/3): after the Boiotians failed to betray cities to them, the
Athenians were defeated near the sanctuary of Apollo at Deli on, then
again at the sanctu ary itself. Some Athenian dead were gathered onl y
after 17 days. Almost 1000 Athenian hoplites fell including the general,
compared wit h 500 Boi otians.
89
Amphipolis (422): about 600 Athenians, including Kleon, fell and only
seven Lakedai monians.
90
Mantineia (418): 700 Argives and their allies, 200 Mantineans, and
200 Aiginetans and Athenians, including both generals, perished in a
loss where apparently no Spartan allies and perhaps 300 Spartans fell.
Following the defeat, the Argives concluded an alliance with Sparta, now
dominant in the Peloponnesos.
91
85. For the epic concept that victory and glory belong to one side or th e other, see, e.g., Hom. Il.
12.328, 13.303, 22.130.
86. Hdt. 9.75; Thuc. 1.100.3, 4.102. 2; Diod. 11.70.5; Paus. 1.29.4.
87. Thuc. 1.107; Diod. 11.80; Plut. Kim. 17. 3–6, Per. 10.1–2; Paus. 1.29.6.
88. Thuc. 1.113. 2–4; Diod. 12.6; Plut. Per. 18.2–3; Paus. 1.29.14.
89. Thuc. 4.89–101.2; Pl. Lach. 181b, Symp. 220e-221b; Diod. 12.69–70; Cic. Div. 1.54.123;
Str. 9.2.7; Plut. Alk.7.4,Mor. 581e; Paus. 1.29.13.
90. Thuc. 5.7–11, Diod. 12. 74, Paus. 1.29.13, Polyain. 1.38.3
91. Thuc. 5.65–74, 5.76; Diod. 12.78–79; Paus . 1.29.13.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
192
Sicily (413): t he Athenians lost a significant portion of their fighting
force in the night battle at Epipolai, in battle in the harbor at Syracuse, in
the subsequent retreat, and when imprisoned. Numbers are difficult to
come by, but the force sent i n 415 consisted of 100 Athenian ships, 1500
Athenian hoplites, and 700 Athenian thetes as marines. We later hear
of 250 Athenian cavalry. Reinforcements consisted of Eurymedon’s 10
Athenian ships and Demosthenes’ 60 Athenian ships and 1200 hoplites.
Thucydides bluntly sums up the disaster, “Few of many returned home.”
92
Corinth and Koroneia (394/3): the Athenians and their allies succumbed
to the Spartans at Corinth and fled the scene at Koron eia.
93
Olynthos (349): the city, despite Athenian support, fell to Philip II.
94
Chaironeia (338): Boiotians and Athenians (together with other allies)
lost the field to Philip II and his son, Alexander. According to Diodoros,
more than 1000 Athenians were killed and over 2000 were taken prisoner.
Pausanias states that “the disaster in Chaironeia was the beginning of
trouble for all Greeks.”
95
Pausanias also describes polyandria of men who were not attended by good
fortune (
ο%κ "πηκολο(θησε τ(χη χρηστ): those wh o attacked Lachares when
he was tyrant (before 295), and those who plotted to seize Piraeus from the
Macedonians but were betrayed before their attempt (probably between either
322 and 307 or 295 and 287/6).
96
Some notable Athenian disasters not mentioned
by Pausanias were the expedition to Egypt (454), when 200 Athenian and allied
ships were lost and most of the 50 ships of a relieving force,
97
and the battle at
Aigospotamoi (405), when only 9 ships out of 180 escaped, which precipitated
the Athenian surrender that concluded the Peloponnesian War.
98
By commemorating their war dead in a public space, the Athenians risked
celebrating their living, victorious opponents. This conceit—the triumph of living
victor over dead foe—can be traced back as far as the Iliad, when, to take only
one example, Hektor boasts that th e grave of t he Achaean h e kills will ensure
92. Thuc. 7.87.6: Lλγοι π' πολλ.ν "π$ οRκου πεν1στησαν. On the b attles and the polyan-
drion, Thuc. 7.21–25, 36–87; Diod. 13.9–33; P lut. Nik. 21–30; Paus. 1.29.11. The text of Pausanias,
which states that the same monument listed the dead from Euboia, Chios, Asia, and Sicily, has
generated some controversy. See the discus sion in Pritchett 1998: 44–53. For numbers of Athenians
involved, see Thuc. 6.43, 7.16.2, 7.20.
93. IG II
2
5221–22; Xen. Hell. 4.2.13–23, 4.3.15–23, Ages. 2.9–15; Plut. Ages. 18; Diod.
14.83.1–2, 84.1–2; Paus. 1.29.11, 3.9.13; Dem. 20.52–53; Frontin. Str. 2.6.6; Polyain. 2.1.3, 2.1.19.
94. FGrHist 328 FF 49–51; Paus. 1.29. 7. Lewis 2000–2003: 15 suggests the conflict referred to
was instead a fifth-century b attle at Spartolos.
95. Dem. 18–20; Diod. 16.86; Str. 9.2.37; Plut. Alex . 9.2, 12.3, Cam. 19.5, Mor. 259d-e; Paus.
1.25.3 (τ' γ6ρ τ(χημα τ' "ν Χαιρωνεα /πασι το#ς TΕλλησιν 5ρQε κακο), 1.29.13, 7.6.5, 9.10.1,
9.40.10; Polyain. 4.2.2, Just. Epit. 9.3.9–10. On the commemoration of this battle, see Ma 2008.
96. Paus. 1.29.10.
97. Thuc. 1.104. 2, 1.109–10; Diod. 11.77.
98. Xen. Hell. 2.1.20–29.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
193
the memory of his (Hekto r’s)glory.
99
The grave—and grave marker—of one dead
soldier signals the victory of another. This is also how Lysias describes the tomb
of the Lakedaimonians, near the Dipylon Gate at Athens, working on the Athenian
landscape. He uses the tomb to extol the virtues of the Athenians who perished
fighting the Lakedaimonians in the Piraeus:
But nevertheless not having feared the throng of their opponents, but
having faced the danger with their own bodies, [the Athenians] raised
a trophy over their enemies, and they offer as wi tness of their aret
¯
e the
graves of the Lakedaimonians, near this tomb.
100
Yet if the polyandrion of the Lakedaimonians can testify to the virtue of their
Athenian opponents, acting as pendant to a trophy, then many of the Athenian
polyandria in turn could appear to testify to the skills of their enemies. The
d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema could be seen, through hostile eyes, as a showcase of Athenian
defeat an d a commemoration of foreign success. Isokrates t ells us that, in fact, this
did occur. When describing the fifth-centur y Athenian empire, he writes, “It was a
common occurrence to dig graves every year, which many of our neighbors and
other Greeks visited repeatedly, not to join us in mourning the dead, but to rejoice
at our disasters.”
101
The Athen ians, too, felt the sting of defeat. Po ignant traces
of mourning appear in the epigrams for the war dead, as when they lament the
young who “lost their glorious youth” or “withered away.”
102
Likealover,the
city “longs for ” her men.
103
Casualties could lead to policy changes. Following
defeats at Delion and Amphipolis, the Athenians were no longer so confident in
their streng th, and desi red peace.
104
The topography of military commemoration at Athens may have encouraged
such views, for victories were celebrated away from t he extra-urban cemetery,
within the city itself. Consider, for instance, the year 425 bc, when the Athenians
achieved a remarkable victory over the Spartans at Sphakteria. This event would
not hav e been t he center o f the commemo rative practices in t he d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema,
for Thucydides reports that the Athenian casualties were few in number.
105
The
city center, not the ext ra-urban cemetery, was the place to celebrat e this vi ctory.
99. Hom. Il. 7.89–91.
100. Lys. 2.63: λλ$ Uμως ο% τ' πλ+θος τ.ν "ναντων φοβηθ!ντες, λλ$ "ν το#ς σμασι το#ς
>αυτ.ν κινδυνε(σαντες, τρ1παιον μν τ.ν πολεμων 3στησαν, μρτυρας δ τ+ς α&τ.ν ρετ+ς
"γγς Nντας τοδε το μνματος τος Λακεδαιμονων τφους παρ!χονται. Cf. Lys. 2.2: “ev-
erywhere and among all men those lamenting their own misfortunes sing the praises of these men”
(πανταχ+2 δ κα παρ6 π4σιν νθρποις ο τ6 α&τ.ν πενθοντες κακ6 τ6ς το(των ρετ6ς &μνοσι).
101. Isok. 8.87: πλν Wν 5ν τοτο τ.ν "γκυκλων, ταφ6ς ποιε#ν καθ$ Xκαστον τ'ν "νιαυτ1ν,
ε9ς Yς πολλο κα τ.ν στυγειτ1νων κα τ.ν λλων ZΕλλνων "φοτων, ο% συμπενθσοντες τος
τεθνε.τας λλ6 συνησθησ1μενοι τα#ς \μετ!ραις συμφορα#ς.
102. IG I
3
1162, l. 45: π1λεσαν γλα'ν h!βεν; IG I
3
1179, l. 5: φθK[μενοι].
103. IG I
3
1179, l. 10: νδρας μμ π1λις h!δε ποθε#....
104. Thuc. 5.14. 1.
105. Thuc. 4.38. 5.
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194
As Aischines says, “The memorials for all our good deeds are set up in the
Agora.”
106
The cap tured Lakedaimonian shields were placed on the Sto a Poikile
and on the bastion of the Temple of Athena Nike.
107
Other dedications, private and
public, r elated to this success may w ell have been made in t he sanctuaries on the
Akropolis. The casualty list for this year, on the other hand, would have been
filled with the dead from a fai led engagement at Eion in Thrace, led by the general
Simonides, where many Athenian soldiers were lost.
108
Visitors to the cemetery
who gazed on these lists would have been r eminded of the defeats o f the years, not
the victories.
In what ways, then, did the lists respond to this ontological difficulty, to
the danger of being seen as signs of Athenian weakness? This questions leads
to an analysis of the how of commemoration: the form of the monuments and
their accompanying imagery; in short, their expressi ve content. And why did th e
Athenians adopt a commemorative system that opened up the possibility that the
lists could be viewed as markers of defeat? Did this connection to defeat serve
any purpose?
FROM DEFEAT, STRENGTH
By commemorating defeat, the casualty lists allowed the Athenians to display
their collective resilience. The repeated rite of commemoration—held every year
in which men died in battle—testified to the ability of the polis to survive and
continue despite setbacks. In formal terms, this sentiment was expressed through
the monumentality of the lists. Despite the fragmentary nature of most of the
lists, it is possible to recover the monumental size of some of them. The shortest
complete list is 1.54 m. high, while the tallest is 2.10 m. with a frieze or 1.68
m. without frieze.
109
Preservedwidthsvaryfromaminimumof0.45m. toa
maximum of 1. 034 m.
110
They are usually about 16–17 cm. thick.
111
The lists
were erected on bases, further increasing their overall size. The base IG I
3
503/4
was 21.5 cm. high, and IG I
3
1163d-f was 20.5 cm. high. If they were placed
on two other steps of similar dimensions, as seems quite likely, then the height
of the whole assemblage (base and list) frequently would have been around 2
m., or well ov er life- size. These impressive heights were matched by impressive
lengths. The base for the Marathon casualty lists at Athens, IG I
3
503/4, was ov er
106. Aisch. 3.187: ^πντων γ6ρ \μ#ν τ.ν καλ.ν 3ργων τ6 &πομνματα "ν τ+2 γορ4 νκειται.
107. Paus. 1.15.4; Lippman, Scahill, and Schultz 2006.
108. Thuc. 4.7.
109. SEG 52.60, SEG 48.83, and IG I
3
1162.
110. IG I
3
1162, 1186.
111. The maximum thickness is 25 cm ., on IG I
3
1168, while the list for the Argive dead from the
battle at Tanagra (IG I
3
1149) is an anomaly with a thickness of 29 cm., perhaps even more (IG
I
3
1149, fragment m: “a sinistra et, ut videtur, a tergo integrum”). On this list, see now Papazarkadas
and Sourlas forthcoming.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
195
5 m. long. The size of this monument is particularly noteworthy since we know
that, because few died in conflicts that year, such length was unnecessary. Another
base, IG I
3
1163d-f, was a little over 6 m. long. Finally, a poros wall perhaps for
casualty lists, found in rescue excavations at 35 Salaminos Street, once may have
been 10.10 m. long.
112
These lists and groups of lists are not humble stones, but
defiant marks on the landscape that use defeat to signify strength and resilience by
commemorating the event in monumental terms. As A. C. Danto once succinctly
commented, “We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build
memorials so that we shall never forget.”
113
Monument suggests triumph, victory,
success; memorial implies loss. According to this semantic distinction, the lists
are more monument than memorial, more triumphant than nostalgic.
The austere casualty lists—carved of hard, glistening marble—stood out in
their sepulchral context. They rose not only above mourners, but above the
majority of the contemporary grave markers, for whet her because of legisl ation
or a change in taste, funerary art in the early fifth century became marked ly
restrained.
114
Grand statues in the r ound disappeared and the number and size
of tumuli dwindled. Private grave markers were often simple slabs of limestone
or slate.
115
In the period of the Peloponnesian War, private commemorations
restarted, and around the same time multiple casualty lists from the same year
physically were joined to one another and began to be decorated with friezes.
116
The new contiguous style of display created a single imposing structure of stone in
place of several smaller ones, thus increasing the sense of monumentality. Friezes
would have added to the stones’ height. Perhaps these changes in form and scale
were designed t o outdo the newly elaborate private monuments.
The stones qua inventories objectified and quantified t he dead, thereby enu-
merating the resources that the community had lost—but this also showcased the
rich resources that had been available for spending.
117
Moreover, such an inven-
112. Stoupa 1997: 53.
113. Danto 1985: 152.
114. On the legislation, s ee Cic. Leg. 2.26.64–65; Clairmont 1970: 11–12; Stupperich 1977:
71–86; Clairmont 1983: 249–50n.13; Humphreys 1993: 88–89; Morris 1992–1993: 35–38, 1994:
76, 89n.43; Stears 2000: 42–54; Hildebrandt 2006: 77–84.
115. Kurtz and Boardman 1971: 121–27. Some private stelai were as tall as the state stelai (see
idem, 124), but these must have been exceptions to the rule.
116. Anathyrosis, indicating contiguous stelai, is visible on IG I
3
1150, 1163, 1175, 1177, 1180,
1186, 1189–92; vertical lines or channels are visible on IG I
3
1147, 1147 bis, 1157, 1163, 1175,
1177, 1180, 1189, SEG 52.60.
117. I thank Athena Kirk for drawing my attention to the importance of comparing the lists as
records of resources with the Athenian practice of inscribing public inventories. Brooke Holmes
also has pointed out to me the frequent pairing of σματα (bodies) and χρματα (goods, money) in
Thucydides (e.g., 6.12.1). On the symbolic aspects of epigraphy, see Thomas 1989: 45–68; Thomas
1992: 84–88; Steiner 1994, 64–71; Sickinger 1999: 65; Bodel 2001: 19–30; and Davies 2003:
335–37. The latter discusses the casualty lists. Low 2010: 344 also draws attention to the casualty
lists qua lists, which she argues frequently had honorific functions. On the importance of the location
of inscriptions, see, e.g., Bresson 2005: 163–66 (on sanctuaries) and Shear 2007 (on the Agora).
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
196
tory suggested to the viewer that more resources were available. This rhetoric
of power was heightened through the inclusion of geographical rubrics, which
expressed the extent of Athenian arch
¯
e. Consider, for instance, IG I
3
1147, a
nearly complete list for the tribe of Erechtheis, lacking only the base and molding
(Figure 1). The sides are smooth, so we must envision nine more free-standing
stelai, on e for each t ribe. Each stele, li ke IG I
3
1147, would have born a tribal
heading followed by the brief assertion, “These died in the war.” There follows
a list of the locations of action: Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, Halieis, Aigina, and
Megara. Repeated on each stele, this h eading conveyed a sense of Athenian might.
The casualty lists were in some ways pendants to the Athenian Tribute Lists. The
latter recorded the (tithes from the) financial t ribute from foreign areas to Athens,
while the former recorded Athenian expenditures in foreign areas. Both were
products of empire.
The relationship between the lists and military calamities also could be
exploited to shame Athenians. While the sacrifice of the dead, as discussed
above, could shame individuals who had survived the conflict and could mak e
others, such as those too young to serve, aware of the potential for future
shame, a past military defeat could shame the community into action. This
is how Lysias describes the effect of the disaster at Aigospotamoi upon the
collective of democrats from Piraeus who faced the Lakedaimonians. These
Athenians were “no less ashamed by their disasters than enraged at their
enemy.”
118
Following defeats the military men—Athenians and metics—were
compelled to d isplay th eir valor and thereby pro ve that their earlier def eat was
not due to character but to fortu ne or (less frequently subject to b lame) poor
leadership.
119
By risking sacrifice—being willing to occupy a space on a list—
they erased the coll ective shame of past def eat. As we saw with the way the
lists commemor ated individual death, the way they marked col lective defeat
also created an ag gressive rhet oric that capitalized on the Athenian sense of
shame.
But defeat on the lists also could be el ided. This process is par ticularly
evident on the fri ezes that accompany the lists, which show neither the defeat nor
the victory of either side. Unfortunately the public reliefs are few in number. Only
three figured friezes have been identified securely,
120
accompanying: ( 1) the list of
118. Lys. 2.62: ο%χ _ττον τα#ς συμφορα#ς α9σχυν1μενοι ? το#ς "χθρο#ς Lργιζ1μενοι.
119. On the excuses made for defeat, see Roisman 2005: 68–70; Le´vy 1976; Wolpert 2002:
120–22. Lys. 2.74 also mentions that defeats could be consolations for the parents of the dead who
fell in earlier conflicts. The city, they must have reasoned, would not have lost had their sons been
alive to help.
120. I do not include in this discussion the anthemion relief on IG II
2
5222, for it is not figural.
There are two other candidates for public reliefs: one in New York (N ew York , Metropolitan Museum
of Ar t 29.47; Clairmont 1983: 214–15; Ho¨lscher 1973: 107–108, 263n.556; Stupperich 1977: 19;
Ridgway 1983: 201–202; Ridgway 1997: 199–200, 224–25nn.24–25; Scha¨fer 1997: 162, no. 2;
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
197
cavalry casualties found in rescue excavations near the Larissa train station, here
called the Palaiologou relief;
121
(2) a fragmentary inscription in Oxford (Figure
3);
122
and (3) a list with the dead from engagements at Corinth and Boiotia, in the
Corinthian War (Fi gure 4).
123
The latter is secur ely dated to 394/3 and preserves
the names of six Athenian tribes along with fragments of some names. The stone
is broken at the left, where the other four tribes would have been. There is no
doubt that this is a casualty list. Underneath the Oxford relief are the remains
of the nu and alpha probably of
ΑΘΕΝΑΙΟΝ, from a heading, ’Αθηναων οeδε
π!θανον "ν
....
124
Stupperich dates this relief stylistically to the second half
of the fifth century.
125
The Palaiologou stele i s more unconventional since it lists
cavalry and one mounted archer and was found near the Larissa train station, away
from the core of the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema. This proximity to Hippios Kolonos is not
particularly surprising, though, when one considers the historic importance of this
place for cavalry.
126
Moreover, the organization of the list by tribes and the use of
epigrams and geographical rubrics echoes standard casualty lists and suggests that
the frieze also echoes the typology and iconography of public friezes, whether the
Palaiologou stele was erected at public expense or not. The stele has two lists
of dead. The top one, often interpreted as the later one, is in the Ionic alphabet and
lists the dead f rom an engagement which is assumed to have taken place at Megara
since th e accompanying epi gram mentions the walls of Alkat hoo¨s. Four of the
names on this top list were inscribed after the others. The bottom list is headed by
an epigram that mentions the dead from battles at Tanagra and Spartolos. Tanagra
could refer to engagements there in 426 or 424/3 (the Battle at Delion), Spartolos
Goette 2009: 190–91) and one recently found in secondary use at Aigina (Goette 2009: 202–204,
with fig. 5) . Neither has an accompanying inscription that can secure its identity. On the New York
relief, two non-Athenians—with long hair and piloi, one with an animal skin—are being killed or
fleeing. There is a third body on the ground, naked apart from a chlamys; might he be an Athenian?
In any event, the attempt through garb and landscape to represent a specific engagement suggests that
this may be a votive relief (cf. a votive relief for Pythodoros, Eleusis Museum 51; Ho¨lscher 1973:
99–100; Langenfaß-Vuduroglu 1974: 34, no. 57; Ridgway 1983: 201; Bugh 1988: 91–93; Goette
2009: 198–99; Lawton 2009: 70). The Aigina piece is a thin fragmentary relief of a foot soldier
in trousers moving toward the right and a horse to his left moving toward the left. The fragmentary
nature of the piece, lack of inscription, and unusual clothing make it impossible to identify whether
or not the relief once belonged with a casualty list.
121. Athens, Third Ephoreia M 4551; SEG 48.83; Parlama 1992–1998: 536; Touchais 1998: 726;
Parlama and Stampolidis 2000: 396–99, no. 452; Arrington 2010b: 521. Unfortunately permission to
reproduce the photograph that appears in Parlama and Stampolidis 2000 was not granted.
122. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Michaelis no. 85; Stupperich 1978; Clairmont 1983: 202–203;
Stupperich 1994: 94; Scha¨fer 1997: 162, no. 3; and Goette 2009: 189–90.
123. Athens, National Museum 2744; IG II
2
5221; Brueckner 1910: 219–34; Wenz 1913: 58–61;
Stupperich 1977: 17–18; Clairmont 1983: 209–12; Stupperich 1994: 94; Ho¨lscher 1973: 105–107,
263n.543; Langenfaß-Vuduroglu 1974: 11, no. 13; Scha¨fer 1997: 162–63, no. 4; Scha¨fer 2002: 268,
no. GR 8; Hurwit 2007: 36–37; Goette 2009: 191–92; Arrington 2010b: 521.
124. Stupperich 1978: 91.
125. Stupperich 1978: 90.
126. On the connection of this area with the elite, see A rrington 2010b: 529–32.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
198
to a battle in 429, or one or the other could be events that Thucydides does not
mention.
127
Megara was invaded twice a year between 431 and 424.
128
These public reliefs shun the language of victory and present undecided
contest. On the public Palaiologou relief, two Athenian horsemen, moving toward
the left, combat two foot soldiers. Though one non-Athenian has fallen, all is not
lost. From the left boldly strides his comrade, whose presence is highlighted by
his long, wide chlamys, which would have been brightly painted. With his front
foot braced on a rock, rear leg strai ght and strong, chlamys streaming behind
him, he lunges toward the Athenian horseman. Nothing about this non-Athenian
suggests weakness. Without the accompany ing inscription and without t he pilos
attribute, we may have surmised that the standing footman was the Athenian,
his nudity emphasizing his athletic prowess and assimilating him to an Athenian
ideal of manliness.
129
The cape anchors him to the ground and contributes to
his appearance of solidity, as his hand meets the horse’s hoof and checks its
advance. His weapon, and that of his comrade, were added in metal, whil e the
Athenian’s spear was only painted. Metal confronts pigment; odds favor the non-
Athenian. Moreover, the terrain is visibly rocky, which the non-Athenian uses to
his advantage to brace himself, but which rendered the footing difficu lt for the
Athenian horses.
The relief in Oxford is more fragmentary, but traces o f the u ndecided con test
are still visible (Fig. 3). An Athenian foot soldier lunges from the right toward
a naked soldier on the ground, but is countered by the shield of an opponent who
must have stood over the naked soldier, defending him.
130
More rich in narrative content, though still fragmentary, is the public relief
from the Corinthian war (Fig. 4). Two Athenians—one on horseback, one on
foot—surround a fallen opponent. The opponent is naked except for a round
shield. He is not a coward tossing his shield to hasten his retreat, but clings to
it tenaciously. The horse clubs the fallen soldier in the chin, while the Athenian at
the left savagely for ces h is knee into the enemy’s back. Several decades l ater
than the Palaiologou relief, this scene comes closer to expressing victory and is
notably vi olent. But commentators often miss one import ant detail: the Ath enian
horseman lowers his spear. The point does not drive into the enemy, but descends,
impotent, to the other side of the horse. The Athenian foot soldier at the left does
not dispatch the opponent, but takes him prisoner.
131
None of these public reliefs illustrates the defeat of the Athenians. This
absence, perhaps, is to be expected. But none portrays a clear Athenian victory.
Both poles of victory and defeat are elided in order instead t o thematize struggle
127. See the discussion in Badian apud Moreno 2007: 100–101n.114; Matthaiou 2009: 203–204;
Matthaiou 2010: 14–16; Papazarkadas 2009: 69–70.
128. Thuc. 2.31. 3, 4.66.1.
129. On athletic and military nudity, see Hallett 2005: 17.
130. Stupperich 1978: 89.
131. Ho¨lscher 1973: 105.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
199
and undecided contest. The most appropriate label to apply to these scenes is
ag
¯
on, which is Thucydides’ word of choice for describing war and appears in
the epigram for the war dead IG I
3
1163d-f: “Wretched ones, when you saw
through such a contest (ag
¯
on) of unexpected battle/ you lost your lives in war
by divine agency.”
132
Just as Lysias emp hasized the word danger (kindynos)in
his funeral oration, the public reliefs vividl y portray the risks of war. They explain
and normalize the death of the Athenians—their individual defeats—for even the
most skilled may lose their lives in such confrontations, and in fact the bravest are
likeliest to die. Moreover, by depicting the dangers of war, the reliefs illustrate to
the onlooker the need for continued sacrifice. The ongoing nature of the struggle
on the reliefs matches the verbal aspect of the participle “fighting” (marnamenoi)
used on the epigrams to describe how the casualties died. The absence of an
outcome further underscores that the action takes pl ace in the present tense: risks
are real, enemies are present, sacrifice is (still) necessary. Perhaps it is not a
coincidence that figural decoration on the lists seems to have begun during the
Archidamian War, when battles increasingly were fought close to home. There
was a need for sacrifice not just from the hoplite, but from all the inhabitants of
Attica who had to stand by and watch as their lands were ravaged.
Although the epigrams on the stelai extol the virtue of the dead, like the
reliefs they avoid overt references to triumph or conquest.
133
On the Marat hon
casualty list from Eva Loukou, for i nstance—when we know the Athenians won
a resounding victory—the success of th e venture is only alluded to through the
words, “they crowned the Athenians.” Their victory is not so much eulogized as
transferred to the surviving polis. In the remainder of the epigram, the process
of defeating the enemy is not described; rather, the danger and t he risk of the
venture are presented: they were t he few facing the many.
134
The iconography of private reliefs reveals just how calculated and uni que the
visual discourse of the public reliefs was. Indeed, although scholars frequently
point to the similarity between public and private reliefs,
135
the differences bet ween
them are striking. While the public reliefs are short friezes that crown long lists
of text, the private reliefs often present large images with only some text. Even
more telling are the different modes of portraying conflict. The private grave
relief for the rider Dexileos, erected in 394/3, unlike the casualty list reliefs,
illustrates complete conquest (Figure 5).
136
The Athenian dead is portrayed in the
guise of a living, victorious, knight, at the moment when he destroys a helpless
132. τλ!μονες hο#ον γAνα μχες τελ!σαντες !λπ[το] φσυχ6ς δαιμονος Lλ!σατ$ "μ πολ!μοι.
(ll. 34–35).
133. The one possible exception is IG I
3
1179, l. 5: νκεν. The end of the preceding line is lost so
the significance of the word her e remains unclear.
134. [π]αυρ1τεροι πολλAν δεχσμενοι π1λεμον (l. 5).
135. E.g. Stupperich 1977: 20; Goette 2009: 196; Neer 2010: 183–97; Osborne 2010: 263.
136. Athens, Kerameikos P 1130; Wenz 1913: 78–81; Ho¨lscher 1973: 102, 262n.527; Langenfaß-
Vuduroglu 1974: 11–12, no. 14; Clairmont 1983: 68, 213; Clairmont 1993: 2.209; Ridgway 1997:
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
200
opponent. Although the relief does not represent an exact historical moment, it
does correspond to a precise time in battle: the rout, when the cavalry chases
down the fleei ng fo e, disp atching t hem wit h spears.
137
In this relief, in contrast to
the schema on the Palaiologou relief, the Athenian horse’s hooves unnaturally
encompass the foe: right rear leg, at a sharp angle, over the foe’s slightly bent
right; right front leg concealing the foe’s elbow and compressing his head, visually
pulling it in—note the opponent’s straining neck muscles—and preventing any
defensive use of the sword (once added i n bronze). The front right hoof together
with the opponent’s shield create a constraining frame, making the opponent
appear trapped. The posture of the foe heightens this sense of constraint: his
left arm is cramped, an impression highlighted by the tightly bunched garment
on his left forearm. His left leg is foreshortened and the knee emerges from
the composition: this man has no control. Lines on the abdomen indicate that
he folds down to his left, forced to offer his right flank to Dexileos’ spear. His
hand slips out of the shield grip (note in particular the lifted left pinky), strength
ebbs out of his right leg which appears pressed down by Dexileos’ right foot,
and Dexileos’ scabbard runs behind, seemingly through, his opponent’s body, a
visual play emphasized by t he placement of the parallel lines defining the fallen’s
pectoral muscles and upper abdominal fol d. Some scholars have argued that here
we witness a beautiful death,
138
but this instead is the portrayal of a violent,
pathetic death devoid of heroism. Nudity does not represent an athletic ideal in
this instance but the vulnerability of the foe.
139
Blood, once brightly painted, runs
from a spear wound in his side, spilling over the cloak bunched on his arm. The
foe exists in this monument to index Athenian superiority. The positioning of the
relief would have incr eased the sense of D exileos’ power. Set on a h igh terrace,
Dexileos loomed over the viewer, and the opponent would have appeared to be
falling out of the scene. The deep carving highlighted Dexileos against the relief
background and the horse cast long shadows over the more shallowly sculpted foe.
The private relief, in short, eschewed the public rhetoric of undecided struggle
and embraced a visual disco urse that celebrated the achievements of the known
and named individual.
Such hyperbole in representing victory is also visible on the Academy base
(ca. 400, Figure 6), so called because it was said to be found near the Academy,
at one end of the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema.
140
Yet the size of the cutting for the stele that
once rose above the base corresponds with a private rather than a public stele.
On this base, it was not sufficient to portray victory once, but thrice. The Athe-
3–7; Scha¨fer 2002: 268–69, GR 9; Geominy 2004: 260–61, 268, 275, 291, 523; Kreikenbom 2004:
229, 252, 256; Hurwit 2007.
137. On the rout, see Spence 1993: 157–62.
138. E.g., Stewart 2008b: 238.
139. Hurwit 2007.
140. Athens NM 3708; H o¨lscher 1973: 262n.530; Clairmont 1993: 2.213; Scha¨fer 1997: 166, no.
19; Kaltsas 2003: 171, no. 337; Hurwit 2007: 52; and Goette 2009: 193, 195.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
201
nian rider appears on three si des (the fourth is blank), each ti me distinguished
by a chl amys and petasos, each time riding over a different enemy. The op-
ponent adopts varying helpless poses: collapsed with head bent in defeat and
knees raised in a common pose for the dead; shield dropped and falling out of
the frame; and crumpled under his shield. He never even raises an offensiv e
weapon.
Some scholars have thought t hat the Albani relief (ca. 430, Figure 7)was
a public monument, but there is no aspect of the fragmentary piece that points
in that direction.
141
The size and representational schema fall instead into the
category of private art sketched out in this article. The horseman on the Al-
bani relief is in such control of the situation that he does not even require his
horse: with one arm he prepares to dispatch his opponent, with the other, un-
naturally straight and taut, he keeps his rearing steed in check. The compo-
sition of the scene creates a sharply descending curve running from the peak
of the horse’s head, over the Athenian’s head, downward to t he defeated’s
head. The diagonal created by the Athenian’s arms crossing this sharply de-
scending curve places the Athenian at the center of the composition. This
position was emphasized through the pinwheel pattern of his chlamys, cen-
tered around his navel.
142
Solid and firm, mouth closed (in contrast to the
mouth of the horse and the foe), the rider originally anchored his left leg
on a rock.
143
In contrast to the frontal, bold strength of the Athenian, the
supine vanquished curls in upon himself, drawing up his leg and folding a
soft belly. His righ t arm buckles beneath him. He weakly raises his chlamys
(note the drooping angle of his wrist) in a futile attempt to ward off the
death blow.
More examples of such private monuments could be adduced: a fragmentary
relief in the Third Ephoreia, where a rider, as on the Dexileos relief, tramples his
foe;
144
a fragmentary relief in Berlin with an inscription that boasts how many
141. Villa Albani 985; Friis-Johansen 1951: 49; Clairmont 1970: 43, 101; Clairmont 1972:
56; Ho¨lscher 1973: 109–10, 264n.567; Langenfaß-Vuduroglu 1974: 10–11, no. 10; Stupperich
1977: 18–19; Clairmont 1983: 68, 273–74n.45; Kaempf-Dimitriadou 1986: 31; Harrison 1988:
99–100; Bol 1989: 246–51; Clairmont 1993: 2.131; Ridgway 1997: 21n.9; Scha¨fer 1997: 162, no.
1; Kreikenbom 2004: 196–98, 229, 252, 256, 512–13; Hurwit 2007: 44; and Goette 2009: 196.
The assumption is of ten that a grave relief of this date, before private reliefs reappear in sub stantial
numbers, and of this size, must be public. The reasoning is not altogether sound. The Melanopos
and Makartatos relief (see 205–206, below) suggests that a private relief could be erected under
extraordinary circumstances in 457. Moreover, the fact that only one soldier is depicted on the
Albani relief points toward a private monument for one individual rather than toward the public
monuments, which always include several Athenians. The concept of a memorial where a figural
representation of one person could abstractly represent a multitude (the “everyman hero”) is a more
recent development in public funerary art.
142. Ridgway 1981: 145 writes of the “somewhat confused system of folds over the stomach
of the rider, which seem to conform neither to motion no r to modeling princip les.”
143. That there was once a rock is evident from the angles of the two fig ures’ left legs.
144. Athens, Third Ephoreia M 2347; Kaempf-Dimitriadou 1986; Clairmont 1993: 2.490; Scha¨fer
1997: 163, no. 5; Scha¨fer 2002: 271, GR 13.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
202
enemies the deceased has killed and how many trophies he erected;
145
or the grave
relief for Aristonautes, whose presence is so imposing that he does not need a
sculpted opponent to display his strength.
146
In all such private military reliefs,
the deceased were represented in t he guise of complete victor y. The Athenians
could have used such imagery on the public reliefs, but the surviving examples
reveal a rhetoric that was more grounded in the present than the aorist tense, in
the ongoing rather than the completed, in struggle rather than victory and death.
147
FRAMING AG
¯
ON
The final “how” of the stones’ commemorative duty is their collective impact
in t heir unique context and setting. The lists perform their commemorative work in
two interrelated and overlapping frames, one socio-cultural, the other topographic.
The former is the ceremony of the public burial, particularly the funeral oration;
the latter is the p ublic cemetery. The frames of the oration and the cemetery work
both to present a particular view of the stelai and to fix a particular memory of the
dead.
148
They limit the types and range of interpretations of the stelai available to
the onlooker. At the same time, they shape the dynamics of future remembrance.
In these framing processes, both oration and cemetery respond t o the problem
of defeat i n different ways.
The casualty lists were erected at the end of the year of military campaigning,
in the winter. On many of the lists there is evidence that multiple hands were
at work, and it is clear from crowding and additions in different hands that th e
exact quantity of names was not known before carving began. Names were added
as generals reported the results of battles late in the season or as the wounded
died.
149
The lists were carved in haste, and the only reason for this speed is that
there must have been a d esire to erect the lists before the buri al ceremony. Th is
implies that the first time the lists were viewed was during this communal event,
when the mourners processed with the ashes of the dead from the city to the
145. Berlin, Antikensammlung 742; IG II
2
7716; Ho¨lscher 1973: 102, 262n.529; Langenfaß-
Vuduroglu 1974: 100, no. 12; Clairmont 1983: 68, 213; Clairmont 1993: 2.130; Scha¨fer 1997: 165,
no. 17; Hurwit 2007: 44; Goette 2009: 193–94.
146. Athens, National Museum 738; Salis 1926; Ridgway 1992; Clairmont 1993: 1.460.
147. The view expressed here differs from that in Thomas 1989: 229–32, w hich discusses how
defeat in the orations is cast in terms of victory. While Roisman 2005: 67–71 analyzes the relationship
in the oration s b etween shame and defeat, he similarly concludes that the Athenians stressed success
and victory: “The genre permits them to proclaim that the A thenians can never lose and never be
dishonored. . . ” (71). Loraux 1981 conceives of the funeral orations as portraying a victorious city in
the future perfect tense (e.g., 3, with 348n.11 on the future perfect).
148. My use of the term “frame” is similar to the concept of “frames of reference,” for which see
Goffman 1974, Lakoff 2004, and Arrington 2010a: 3–4. Some scholars have analyzed how “framing
strategies” related to memory shift over time: Irwin-Zarecka 1994 and Koshar 2000.
149. Under what circumstances the wounded who subsequently died were counted as casualties
is an interesting question about which we can only speculate. Perhaps the erection of the lists was the
cut-off poin t for such dead bein g treated as casualties proper.
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
203
extra-urban cemetery and heard a funer al or ation as they gazed on th e ston es. The
significance of this timing is that mourners’ impression of the stones was shaped
by the socio-cultural framing device of the oration, which praised the sacrifice
and courage of the dead. The orators compelled mourners to look at the lists in
a particular way, carefully alluding to defeat to capitalize on the Athenian sense of
shame.
The frame of the cemetery, in contrast, facilitated forgetting defeat. Like the
friezes on the lists and the wording of the epi grams, the cemetery underemphasized
defeat—and victory— to instead create a rhetoric cent ered on ag
¯
on. Monument
next to monument, grave by grave, the distinctions between success and loss
blurred; the landscape testified to long-term, ongoing sacrifice, courage, and
resilience. A list’s spectators gazed not on t he commemoration of a singl e year’s
events, but on a topography commemorating a history of conflict and collective
survival. In the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, the dead became actors in a larger and longer
narrative than their single battle.
Gathered together in the public cemetery, the lists were defiant markers on the
landscape, creating a permanent and monumental testimony t hat despite defeat,
the polis continued. Indeed, the frame of the cemetery commemorated the dead
in civic terms, since the cemetery was not an exclusive and fixed place for the
war dead alone, but a space with important civic and religious connotations.
Such prominent citizens as Kleisthenes, buried near the Dipylon Gate, and the
Tyrannicides, b uried near the Academy, lay by th e tombs of the war dead; a
cenotaph for t he Marathanomachoi was located at the core of the cemetery;
sanctuaries for Artemis Ariste and Kalliste, associated with childbirth and thus the
longevity of t he polis, and Dionysos Eleuthereus, the site of a collective gathering
before the City Dionysia, lay near the graves; the Academy Road, a wide, open,
public space ran through the cemetery; and, finally, the polyandria contrasted
topographically with the elite burial ground near the so-called Old Academy
Road and Hippios Kolonos to the east.
150
Commemoration, then, occurr ed i n a
place with important civic and democratic connotations, which highlighted the
community and the ideals for which the Athenians and her allies had fallen, and
shifted the mourners’ gaze from the dead to the city.
THE POLITICAL DYNAMICS OF COMMEMORATION
Yet whose city was it? What type of place did the competing political
contingents at Athens try to make out of this space? The monolithic adjective
“public” in “public cemetery” risks glossing over the disputes involved in defining
and negotiating the ideological parameters of the very concept of public. The place
was (continuously and repeatedly) created and invested with significance, not a
given on the landscape. It is possible to trace some of the political contestation
150. Arrington 2010b.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
204
underlying the commemorative discourse, and to discern some of the noise of
ideological dispute.
I hav e arg ued elsewhere that the nascent democracy inten tionally located
the d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema in a region with strong civic and religious connotations but
with little prior history of burials in order to create a new democratic place that
contrasted topographically and ethically with the elite region to the northeast
around Hippios Kolonos. The nascent democracy created meaning through differ-
ence, articulating a topographic semantics of space.
151
But as a site of memory,
the cemetery was open to continuous political contestation over the dynamics of
commemoration.
152
It has often been noted that naval images are absent from the
d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema, and indeed from nearl y all Classi cal Atheni an art, despite the
contributions that the navy made to the city’s military force.
153
The city did not
portray the war dead as rowers, usuall y associated with the masses, and instead
sometimes turned to elite visual rhetoric. Similarly, the funeral oration, as Nicole
Loraux has shown, was a democratic discour se t hat evoked an ideal city and cele-
brated death for that ideal.
154
Delivered by a leading man of the city, the speech
crafted civic ideology in part by appropriating aristocratic language and values.
Likewise, in the Marathon epigram, the dead “crowned the city,” appropriating
the epinikian language once used by Homeric heroes who benefited a king, and
then by elites to make claims to the polis.
155
The relief of 394/3, for all the war dead, includes images of cavalry on the
Athenian side, while the list specifically fo r the cavalry from that year is only
crowned with an anthemion.
156
Thus appropriation of elite rhetoric—the horses,
long associated with the elite—by the masses would seem to be taking place,
while that rhetoric was excluded from the elite. Private funerary reliefs in turn
could support or critique the politics of the public imagery. Indeed, Josiah Ober
has explored how some funeral monuments dialogue with the iconography of the
statue group of the Tyrannicides, heroes of the democracy, erected in the Agora
in 477/6. On the Albani relief, the direction of the horseman’s movement (from
right to left rather than the usual left to right) and cocked arm position evoke
the pose of the tyrant slayer Harmodios, figuring the elite as a defender of the
democracy. In contrast, on the Dexileos monument, t he horseman triumphs over a
fallen warrior, whose arm position and chlamys might echo the Tyrannicides and
151. Arrington 2010b.
152. Winter 2010: 62–65.
153. On the issue of the absence of naval imagery from Classical art, see Strauss 2000: 266–67;
Butera 2010: 34–53; Pritchard 1998; Pritchard 1999; Miller 2010: 327–44.
154. Loraux 1981.
155. Elite use of epinikian language: Kurke 1993. I thank the journal’s anonymous reviewer
for drawing my attention to the dynamic playing out in this epigram.
156. It is possible that once there was a figural relief under the anthemion and cavalry list IG
II
2
5222. Contra, Lawton 1992: 242 (“The missing lower stone is usually envisioned as a relief,
but there are no parallels for frame, text, and relief arranged in this way”).
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
205
open an “amphibolic reading” wherein Dexileos (re)asserts t he power of the elite
over the masses.
157
The political dynamics of commemoration as enacted through images and
spaces can be demonstrated t hrough the etiology of the earliest example of a
figured relief, which i s preserved o nly in Pausani as. The periegete, when walking
through t he cemetery, describes a relief for Melanopos and Makartatos, who died
when confronting the Lakedaimonians and Boiotians at the border of Eleonia and
Tanagra, which is usually identified as the battle that occurred in 457.
158
This
must be an example of a private monument to two individuals in the area of the
d
¯
emosion s
¯
ema. A study of the archaeology of the area demonstrates that private
burials did occur in this space,
159
and it is difficult to imagine circumstances
in whi ch the polis would have honored only two dead with a relief, especially
when no public monuments at this time appear to have had figural decoration.
Melanopos and Makartatos were probably companions of Kimon, who, accor ding
to Plutarch, was not allowed to join the fight in 457 because t he Athenians feared
his Spartan sympathies.
160
He sent his comrades in his place and instructed them
to fight v aliantly to prove the peopl e wrong. They placed Kimon’s armor among
themselves as they fought, which implies that they were fighting as foot soldiers,
while the Thessalians provided the cavalry force. In the battle, “one hundred fell,
and t hey left the Athenians great longing for them and a change of heart toward
those they had unjustly accused.”
161
In this spir it of remorse, the city accorded
a particular honor to two of the dead from the elite classes, allowing some family
members to erect a relief. The relief for Melanopos and Makartatos with elite
hippic imagery in the public cemetery, then, seems to have been for the elite,
with the permission of the d
¯
emos, to demonstrate the service of the elite to the
state. It is si gnificant that a grave of Thessali an cavalry, from 431, was placed
near thei r r elief.
162
In the conflict of 457 , the Thessali an cavalry had betray ed the
Athenians. In 431, their Athenian monument was thematically j uxtaposed with
other cavalry (Melanopos and Makartatos) whose loyalty had been questioned,
but who likewise had redeemed themselves through their military actions.
157. Ober 2005: 237–47. Osborne 2010 sees the Dexileos monument as the first private funerary
monument gloriously commemorating individual contributions to military efforts. Tyrannicides
group by Kritios and Nesiotes: Paus. 1.8.5, Ridgway 1970: 79–83; more recently Stewart 2008a:
608–10; Neer 2010: 78–85.
158. Paus. 1.29.6. Some scholars have wanted to associate IG I
3
1288 with this monument (see
Scha¨fer 2002: 303, V 14), but the lettering is Ionic and probably dates to the late fifth century, the
order of the names is reversed, and in any event the name Makartatos is completely restored. For
these reservations and more, see Bugh 1988: 43–44.
159. Arrington 2010a: 40–41.
160. Plut. Kim. 17.4–5.
161. Plut. Kim. 17.5: >κατ'ν Nντες 3πεσον, πολν α&τ.ν π1θον κα μεταμ!λειαν "φ$ οeς
f2τιθησαν δκως πολιπ1ντες το#ς gΑθηναοις. See also Thuc. 1.107.4–6, Diod. 11. 80, Plut. Kim.
17.4, Plut. Per. 10.1–2.
162. Paus. 1.29.6.
classical antiquity Volume 30 /No. 2/October 2011
206
In the public cemetery, the frequent elision of imagery associated with the
masses and select deployment of elite iconography may enact what Richard Neer
has termed diallag
¯
e, a socio-political reconciliation, negotiation, or exchange.
Working mostly with fifth-cen tury vases, he traces so me of the means by which
polyvalent, ambiguous, and new (constellations of) imagery enabled mass and
elite to work through their place within the democracy.
163
Yet the d
¯
emosion
s
¯
ema was a different place than the aristocratically-charged symposium. The
cemetery was imbued from its birth with civic ideology, anchored topographically
by graves of the Tyrannicides and the cenotaph for the Marathon dead. The
story of Melanopos and Makartatos reveals how, in the public cemetery, elite
commemoration could occur in such a way that stasis (political strife) dissolved
under the unifying trope of service for the polis. An effort to elide political
contestation is also evident in the orations, which focalize a list of historic
exploits, with minimal discussion of the events i n which the eulogized had fallen.
This distancing reduced the possibility for political confrontation over decisions,
actions, and actor s of the recent past. Similarly, during commemorative even ts in
New York City on September 11, 2011, politicians did not read original speeches
(with the exception of a short con cluding speech by Presi dent George W. Bush),
but selections from the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, and
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freed oms” speech. As mayor Michael Bloo mberg
said, “One of the things that I’ve tried very hard to do in the ceremonies for 9/11 is
to keep politics out of it.”
164
It is, of course, impossible to separate politics from events of national
commemoration, but where the funeral orations focalized the past to minimize
dissent, the lists could forge a new visual rhetoric that helped dissolve stasis.
As we have seen, for most of the fif th century the lists embraced au sterity. The
casualty lists bore no formal relationship to the aristocratic kouroi that marked
aristocratic graves of the past. Note, too, the austerity used in commemorating
Kimon’s victory at the River Strymon in the city itself: no figural reliefs, only
herms, distinguished by their masculinity. It is a rhetoric of manhood rather than
of political contestation that was sought.
165
Once figural decoration began anew,
public art again made a contrast with the rhetoric of private images. The ag
¯
on
conceived on the lists and through the frame of the public cemetery served to
unite and focus the Athenians on a common, external threat.
166
In Aischylos’
163. Neer 2002: 135–82.
164. Vivian 2010: 66. Vivian 2010: 64–67, though, draws a distinction between the classical
orations and the ceremony on September 11, 2011.
165. Aischin. 3, 183–85; Plut. Kim.7.
166. Note, too, how s uccessful the Athenians were at transfor ming the civil war waged in the late
fifth century into a foreign war, and in forgetting this stasis by implementing collective amnesia
(Loraux 2001; Wolpert 2002). The public cemetery played its part. The tomb of the Lakedaimonians
who had supported the Athenian oligarchs was placed in the region of the cemetery, rendering the
foreign assistance to the oligarchs visually emphatic (Wolpert 2002: 89).
arrington: Inscribing Defeat
207
Eumenides, Athena pleads with the Furies not to curse the city and not to incite
strife among the Athenians. But she adds, “Let there be foreign war, and plenty
of it. . ..”
167
Modern studies corroborate the goddess’ formula for internal peace:
conflict can socialize groups, binding and uniting them in a common cause.
168
In some ways, the publ ic cemetery, filled with the graves of the war dead, was
the most peaceful, conflict-free place in the city.
The commemoration of the war dead at Athens did not entail merely in-
scribing names, nor did it involve choices simply between either forgetting or
remembering. The challenges posed by the lists to the Athenians become espe-
cially apparent once one realizes that they occupied a uniq ue place (especially
compared to modern memorials) between individual and event, and that they
were closely related to defeat. They could be seen as symbo ls of weakness, and
could commemorate events that tore at the fabric of the Ath enian community. The
active, complex, and sometimes contradictory dynamics of the lists are evident in
the ways that they respond to this problem, as they mark, elide, and enmesh defeat
into a virile rhetoric of strength and resi stance that encouraged viewers t o accept
sacrifice. This rhetoric of commemoration, evolving around a notion of ongo-
ing ag
¯
on and exploiting Athenian concepts of shame, was resolutely aggressive.
Moreover, it depended upon collective forgetting. The commemorative discourse
on the fallen—aided by the frames of the oration and the cemetery—shifted focus
from the individual dead not only to the dead of the whole campaign but to the
dead of time past. Character was l auded rather than persons; semantic memory
rather than episodic memory was promoted.
169
The frame of the cemetery itself
facilitated collective forgetting. The dead did not lie along a well-traveled road,
like the Sacred Way to Eleusis or a road to a major urban center, but along a road
to a local sacred area, the Academy. One may have expected them to be buried
along the road from the Piraeus, so that visitors who arrived in the harbor would
see the graves as they entered town, b ut instead they were placed in an area less
subject t o visitors and less subject to gaze. Forgetting plays an important role in
mourning processes, and war monuments can help individuals and communities
heal.
170
But compared to modern memorials erected in sovereign nation states,
ancient casualty lists had more work to do. The relatively small poleis stood in
a perilous position, often threatened by neighbors, foreign hordes, and internal
dissension. The Athenian lists, which Isokrates tells us other Greeks visited in
167. Aisch. Eum. 864: θυρα#ος 3στω π1λεμος, ο% μ1λις παρν (trans. A. H. Sommerstein). I
am indebted to Loraux’s analysis (2001: 31–32) of this passage.
168. E.g. Coser 1956: esp. 87–110; Colley 2009: 24–25.
169. Episodic m emories relate to past personal events, while semantic memories correspond to
acquired knowledge: see Bower 2000: 22–23 and Tulving 2002. The distinction between these two
memories was drawn by E. Tulving in the 1970s. Semantic memories are remembered longer than
episodic memories (Bower 2000: 23).
170. Winter 1995: e. g., 113–16.
classical antiquity Vo lume 30 /No. 2/ October 2011
208
order to rejoice, were charged with remembering and forgetting the dead and
defeat in terms that shaped, strengthened, and preserved the l iving.
The commemorative dynamics outlined here were not without consequences.
The cemetery par took of a process of commemorat ing the war dead at At hens that
invited the living to remember manhood, collective strength, and the ever-present
risk of defeat, and to forget the human costs of war and social divisions. With
their casual ty lists, their public cemetery, and their annual bu rial ceremony, the
Athenians laid the cognitive groundwork for an ideology that facilitated their
return, year after year, to the fields of battle. Ancient observers and modern
scholars alike have often wondered at the apparent tenacity of the Athenians.
Nearly a decade af ter the disaster at Sicily, when most of her military force was
lost, the city fought on. Certainly there are political and economic reasons for this
stance, but embedded among these explanations are cultural factors, mentalities
that were shaped in part by the casualty lists. If the Athenians could time and
again risk death, one reason must be t hat in the ag
¯
on emplotted through the
commemorative dynamics at Athens, death and defeat were inevitable.
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figures 2–3 Arrington
Fig. 2: Base for casualty lists, with the weathering
lines of the stelai still visible, second half fifth
century. IG I
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1163d–f. Athens, Epigraphical
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Photo: N. T. Arrington.
Fig. 3: Relief crowning
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