STUDI ELLENISTICI

XX

a cu r a d i
b i agi o vi rgi l i o

estratto

PISA · ROMA
FA B R I Z I O S E R R A · E D I T O R E
MMVIII
 SOMMARIO

Emilio Gabba, Il mondo culturale del Mediterraneo antico e l’idea

del classico 9
Christian Habicht, Judicial Control of the Legislature in Greek
States 17
Bruno Helly, Encore le blé thessalien. Trois décrets de Larisa (ig
ix 2, 506) accordant aux Athéniens licence d’exportation et réduc-
tion des droits de douane sur leurs achats de blé 25
Federicomaria Muccioli, Stratocle di Diomeia e la redazione
trezenia del ‘decreto di Temistocle’ 109
Pierre Briant, Michael Rostovtzeff et le passage du monde aché-
ménide au monde hellénistique 137
Pierre Briant, Retour sur Alexandre et les katarraktes du Tigre:
l’histoire d’un dossier (suite et fin) 155
Manuela Mari, The Ruler Cult in Macedonia 219
Pierre-Louis Gatier, Héraclée-sur-mer et la géographie histori-
que de la côte syrienne 269
Raymond Descat, Isabelle Pernin, Notes sur la chronologie
et l’histoire des baux de Mylasa 285
Biagio Virgilio, Polibio, il mondo ellenistico e Roma 315
Lucio Troiani, Note storiografiche sopra i e ii Maccabei 347
John Ma, Paradigms and Paradoxes in the Hellenistic World 371
Roberto Mazzucchi, Mileto e la sympoliteia con Miunte 387
Andrea Primo, Seleuco e Mitridate Ktistes in un episodio del gio-
vane Demetrio Poliorcete 409
Gianluca Casa, Giuro di no. Note a psi com. vi 11 427
Francis X. Ryan, Breadth and Depth in the Account of the Dedi-
cations to Athana Lindia 455
Roberto Sciandra, Il «Re dei Re» e il «Satrapo dei Satrapi»: note
sulla successione tra Mitridate II e Gotarze I a Babilonia (ca. 94-80
a.e.v.) 471
Domitilla Campanile, Vita da provinciali: Asia e Bitinia in età
romana 489
8 sommario
Patrick Robiano, Caspérius Élien, ou Claude Élien? Ou comment
Philostrate écrit l’histoire 503
Omar Coloru, Reminiscenze dei re greco-battriani nella letteratu-
ra medievale europea e nella science-fiction americana 519
 PARA D I G M S A N D PARAD OX E S
I N T H E H E LLE N I S TIC WORLD
John Ma

i. From paradigms to paradoxes, p. 371 ~ ii. Seeing paradox, p. 373 ~

iii. Defining and dealing with paradox, p. 379 ~ iv. Public and private, p. 380
~ v. Writing paradox into ancient history, p. 384.

i. From paradigms to paradoxes

T he Hellenistic period has traditionally been approached through

four paradigms, which can be grouped in two opposing couples.
First, a paradigm of mixed culture and fusion between cultures, which
paved the way for Christianity. This was first articulated by Droysen,
enjoyed dominance into the twentieth century, and, in its basic form,
still survives in odd pockets of unawareness. The reaction has been the
elaboration of a dominant ‘colonial’ paradigm, which interprets the
Hellenistic world as one of radically separate cultures, the Greek cul-
ture of the ethno-elite, the non-Greek culture of various indigenous
and dominated groups. These cultures co-exist in parallel, but also in
tension and more or less open conflict: this is the «Alien Wisdom»
model, seeing «two solitudes» in the cultural landscape of the Hel-
lenistic period.1 The second opposing couple concerns the Greek city.
Was it weak, servile, dominated by internal elites and external mas-
ters, unable to face up to the swirling challenges of the post-Alexan-
der world? – in a word, was the polis in decline? This paradigm goes
back at least to Fustel de Coulanges, and has lived on happily ever
since, emerging regularly in two contexts: attempts by specialists of
the Classical period to prolong insights into the Hellenistic period, or
articles, monographs and textbooks on Hellenistic art, archaeology or

1 A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: the Limits of Hellenization, Cambridge, 1975; A.

Samuel, The Shifting Sands of History: Interpretations of Ptolemaic Egypt, Lanham and
London, 1989. On these issues, more recently, and for later periods, see F. Millar, The
Roman Near East 31 BC-AD 337, Cambridge Mass., 1993; Theodoret of Cyrrhus: a Syrian in
Greek Dress?, in H. Amirav, B. ter Haar Romeny, From Rome to Constantinople. Stud-
ies in Honour of Averil Cameron, Leuven and Paris, 2007, pp. 105-125.
372 john ma
philosophy, as the so-called «historical context» for interpretation.2 In
reaction, another paradigm sees the Hellenistic polis as very much a
city-state in the full sense of the term, whose history is defined by
strong continuities in institutions, in political culture, in the very di-
versity of the local stories of each polis, and whose forms evolve ac-
cording to a variety of pressures and rhythms. This model animates
the whole work of Louis Robert, and much recent historical and epi-
graphical work on the Hellenistic world.3 These four paradigms can
be classified in two opposing pairs (fusion / apartheid, decline / vitali-
ty), but also as complementary couples: cultural fusion and polis de-
cline explain each other and cohere as a historical view of the period;
cultural apartheid supposes a world where Greek values and cultural
structures, such as the polis, are full of vitality.

Recently, however, the «two solitudes» paradigm has become less and
less tenable. Hellenistic Egypt was the crucial case for the elaboration
of this model, but the visual and archaeological material, the more
you look at it, proves less and less amenable. The 1998 exhibition in
Paris, La Gloire d’Alexandrie, and the accompanying catalogue,4 can
serve as an emblem for the difficulty of reducing the archaeological
material of Hellenistic Egypt to illustrations of the colonial paradigm.
What the exhibition did was to lay out series after series of paradoxi-
cal objects, that stubbornly refuse to conform to the dogmas of the
colonial paradigm, within which they should not be possible: for in-
stance, sympotic vases with Greek motifs but in Egyptian faience; hy-
brid ruler portraits combining Greek and pharaonic motifs. Yet we
should not simply let the pendulum swing back to the old paradigm
of fusion, which is also problematic – its blanket description is un-
helpful, and leaves out motivation, context, function: specifically, it

2 A recent example: the «end of the polis» is taken for granted in a high-powered
study of towers, agriculture and slavery: S. P. Morris, J. K. Papadopoulos, Greek Tow-
ers and Slaves: An Archaeology of Exploration, «aja», 109 (2005), pp. 155-226. M. Hansen re-
mains half-hearted about the post-classical polis in his Polis: an Introduction to the Ancient
Greek City-state, Oxford, 2006.
3 E.g. L. Robert, Théophane de Mytilène à Constantinople, «crai», 1969, pp. 42-64,
reprinted in oms 5 (1989), pp. 561-583; A. Bresson, P. Descat (eds), Les cités d’Asie Mineure
occidentale au ii e siècle a.C., Bordeaux, 2001; P. Fröhlich, Les cités grecques et le contrôle
des magistrats, Paris, 2004; P. Fröhlich, Chr. Müller (eds), Citoyenneté et participation à la
basse époque hellénistique, Paris, 2005. I discussed the two paradigms in J. Ma, Antiochos
III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor, rev. ed., Oxford, 2002 (postface).
4 La gloire d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1998.
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 373
cannot deal with the paradoxical way in which artifacts of ‘fusion’ can
express, in various forms, the unitary power of the Greek «dominant
ethno-class». The visual ‘paradogms’ of the Paris exhibition should
not shift the balance from one paradigm to the other, but invite us to
transform our viewpoint so as to try to hold both paradigms in our
field of vision. Instead of looking past strangeness to elaborate para-
digms (or models), I suggest we find a way of embracing it – in other
words, of seeing paradox and locating our historical interpretation in
its midst: in this approach, paradigms serve not to dismiss strangeness,
but to see it.
ii. Seeing paradox
The traditional mode of writing about paradox has been the accumu-
lation of examples – itself a Hellenistic genre; a first step will be illus-
trating the concept with some cases. At the most general, the central
characteristics of the period can be viewed as paradoxes. Alexander’s
project of conquest is paradoxical, since it must both be understood
as radical change, and as legitimate continuity. His process of con-
quest must demystify empire while reaffirming it, as Alexander can be
seen to do at Sardeis or at Priene: the strangeness of the venture has
perhaps been lost in the recent, sustained, effort at framing Alexander
exclusively in terms of Achaimenid continuity.5
The world of the Diadochs can be analysed as paradoxical.6 After
Alexander’s death, the Diadochoi have both to pursue violent agendas
of local power grabbing, and maintain order and continuity – the pe-
riod looks different when seen on the one hand in the hair-raising nar-
rative of Diodoros, or in the documentary material, where legitima-
cy and order seem to hold firm. In Karian inscriptions of the time of
the satrap-dynast Asandros, the latter is duly mentioned as a satrap of
king Philip III; on granite waterclocks from Egypt, the legitimate
rulers, Philip III, then Alexander IV are mentioned and represented.
The «Satrap stele» is riven between loyalism (the document is duly dat-
ed by the legitimate ruler Alexander IV, and Alexandria is called the
city of that ruler, rather than assigned to its true founder, Alexander

5 P. Briant, Alexandre à Sardes, in J. Carlsen (ed.), Alexander the Great: Myth and re-
ality, Rome, 2003, pp. 1-15; J. Ma, Dans les pas d’Antiochos III: l’Asie Mineure entre pouvoir
et discours, in Fr. Prost (ed.), L’Orient méditerranéen de la mort d’Alexandre aux campagnes
de Pompée: cités et royaumes à l’époque hellénistique, Rennes, 2003 («Pallas», 62), pp. 243-259.
6 On the period, most recently, P. Briant, F. Joannès (eds), La transition entre l’empire
achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques, Paris, 2006.
374 john ma
the Great), and the quasi-regal portrayal of the satrap Ptolemy. In
Babylonia, astronomical diaries are dated by Alexander IV, in the years
309 and 308.7 Manifestations of ‘loyalism’ are, paradoxically, found in
the realms of locally entrenched dynasts – Asandros; Seleukos, after
his return to Babylonia and his successful defense against Demetrios;
Ptolemy, who swiftly and inexpugnably embedded himself in his
Egyptian satrapy. Furthermore, the very ‘frictionless’ war of the Di-
adochoi on a strategic scale both marks the end of the old Achaimenid
order, and was made possible by the durable structures set up by the
Achaimenid empire to enable extraction, concentration and con-
sumption of strategic resources: for instance, Iranian military
colonists fought with the post-Alexander satrap Arrhidaios, as they
would have served the Achaimenid state (Diod. 18.51). The only speci-
ficity of Eumenes was his punctiliousness in drawing on such re-
sources (Plut., Eum. 8).
The power of the post-Diadochoi Hellenistic kings was defined by
the paradox of conquest and precariousness: violence founded royal
power in forms which claimed legitimacy, but were always open to
overthrow by a mightier power – hence the unstability of this politi-
cal world, analysed by Michel Austin.8 Spear-won land and legitimate
transmission, to quote the contemporary terminology, co-exist but
are contradictory, and cannot be resolved by writing them both into
some form of ‘international Greek law’ – the paradox of violence and
legitimacy only disappeared with the Hellenistic kingdoms them-
selves. Likewise, the central medium for the expression of royal pow-
er, the ‘performative utterance’, is also disturbingly open to weakness
– a phenomenon C. Préaux termed «la faiblesse du droit», the odd
powerlessness of the central authority: the very appearance of ab-
solute authority, expressed in centrally issued diktats, means that local
practice must be integrated by post-eventum pronouncements in which
initiative is often local.9
7 M. Chauveau, in La gloire d’Alexandrie, p. 63; M. Chauveau and C. Thiers, L’É-
gypte en transition: des Perses aux Macédoniens, in P. Briant, F. Joannès (eds), La transition
entre l’empire achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques, pp. 375-404; on Alexandria, J.
Baines, Possible implications of the Egyptian name for Alexandria, «jra», 16 (2003), pp. 61-
63; A. Sachs and H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, vol.
1, Vienna, 1998, pp. 228-231 (-309), 232-239 (-310), with G. Del Monte, Testi dalla Babilo-
nia ellenistica, Pisa, 1997, pp. 13-18, 183-194 (thanks to Biagio Virgilio for this reference).
8 M. M. Austin, Hellenistic kings, war and the economy, «cq», 36 (1986), pp. 450-466.
9 C. Préaux, Un problème de la politique des Lagides: la faiblesse des édits, in Atti del iv
Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Milano, 1936, pp. 183-193; J. Ma, Seleukids and
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 375
The other great component of the Hellenistic world, the network
of cities, is also riddled with paradox. A striking quote by O. Rayet on
the cities of Western Asia expresses this feeling of surprise:10 «Ces
perpetuels changements de maître, ces guerres incessantes, à
brusques revirements et à complications inexplicables, auraient dû,
ce semble, réduire Magnésie à la plus misérable condition. Chose
étrange, il n’en est rien, et l’intervalle de 133 ans qui s’étend entre la
mort d’Alexandre et la fin de la domination des Séleucides est au con-
traire pour elle, comme pour la plupart des villes d’Asie Mineure, une
période de prospérité matérielle et d’activité litéraire et artistique.»
This judgment is similar to that of Rostovtzeff, who combined a fas-
cination for the great royal states with close attention and sympathy
of the cities.
The forms taken by the vitality of local polis life in the Hellenistic
world are diverse, and often baffle expectation. Kolophon, the old
Ionian city, rebuilt its urban site at the end of the fourth century, in a
move explicity described in a decree as motivated by the nostalgic de-
sire to recover ancient glories; yet this passéiste project was translated
on the ground by a hyper-modern Geländemauer hi-tech fortification,
of the same type as built by another ancient but resurgent Ionian
polis, Erythrai.11 Teos can be considered from two viewpoints: in la
grande histoire, the city appears as a passive victim of royal power-play,
conquered by kings, ransomed by pirates as a decree published in
1994 shows, squeezed by taxes, dependent on the generosity of Se-
leukid and Attalid kings; from the local viewpoint, Teos appears as an
active expansionist actor, spreading its control across the bay and in-
land, slowly absorbing its smaller neighbours, as if the impetus given
by a failed royal synoikism by Antigonos Monophthalmos had rein-
forced local micro-imperialist ambitions.12 How do these two stories,
both factual and both about the same historical actor, the polis of the
Teioi, coexist?

Speech-Acts: Performative Utterances, Legitimacy and Negotiation in the World of the Mac-
cabees, «Scripta Classica Israelica», 19 (2000), pp. 71-112.
10 O. Rayet, Milet et le Golfe latmique. Fouilles et explorations archéologiques, vol. 1,
Paris, 1877, p. 172.
11 A. W. McNicoll, Hellenistic fortifications from the Aegean to the Euphrates (rev. N.
P. Milner), Oxford, 1997.
12 On Teos, and generally on the multi-dimensional history of the Hellenistic cities,
J. Ma, Fighting Poleis of the Hellenistic World, in H. van Wees (ed.), War and Violence in
Ancient Greece, London, 2000, pp. 337-376.
376 john ma

Paradox also emerges in the realm of late Hellenistic civic practice.

The second century BC sees the emergence of a class of «great eu-
ergetai» whose wealth is greater, and whose economic predominance
in their communities is more noticeable, than in the third century;
but this late-Hellenistic phenomenon is attested through a plethora
of honorific monuments and texts, which are structured by a com-
munitarian, even classically Aristotelian, set of concepts, about em-
bedding individual excellence within civic morals and ceremonies,
such as public burial, which can be interpreted as a communitarian
ideal par excellence: after death, the very meaning of a man’s life, that
which made it worth living and remembering, is entirely subsumed
by his activity as good citizen. Likewise, the gymnasion starts open-
ing its doors to non-citizens; at the same time, these non-citizens are
precisely seeking civic forms of interaction and association, for in-
stance at Mylasa.13
If we take paradox and not paradigms as our starting point, Hel-
lenistic Egypt becomes a land of paradoxes. This starts at the top, with
the multiple identities of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The images of the
rulers often mix registers: Greek style portraits, combining the vo-
cabularies of naturalism and idealization, wearing Egyptian dress;
Egyptian-style portraits, with Greek motifs, such as the cornucopia or
the thunderbolt.14 How are we to look at these portraits? How to con-
vert the impression of ‘seeing double’ into historical analysis? The
Sarapieion of Alexandria, built by the kings, combines Greek archi-
tecture, Egyptian-style underground passages (like those of the tem-
ple of Apis at Saqqara), Egyptian-style foundation deposits, written in
both Greek and Egyptian, and, in the case of the temple of Har-
pokrates built by Ptolemy iv, highly refined, cryptographic hiero-
glyphs. Is this an Egyptian temple? A Greek temple, with some Egypt-
ian elements added on?15
Interactions between this ruling power and its subjects also offers
many paradoxical moments. The long documents (the most famous
is that inscribed on the «Rosetta stone») produced by the «synods» of

13 W. Blümel, «ea», 37 (2004), pp. 16-17, nº 22.

14 S.-A. Ashton, Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt: the Interaction between Greek
and Egyptian Traditions, Oxford, 2001; S. A. Stephens, Seeing Double: intercultural Poetics
in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Berkeley, 2003.
15 On the Sarapieion, and generally Alexandria, J. McKenzie, Glimpsing Alexandria
from archaeological evidence, «jra», 16 (2003), pp. 24-61.
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 377
Egyptian priests, the highly self-aware priestly elite, seem alien and
exotic to the specialist of Greek inscriptions, yet oddly familiar – the
reason is that their basic form is in fact inspired by the Greek hon-
orific decree, long lists of services performed by the king, and hon-
orific response by the priests: Egyptologists find these documents as
strange as Classicists.16 To describe these documents as ‘mixed’ or
‘hybrid’ does not do justice to their strangeness and their contradic-
tions, which lie in the combination of traditionalist author (the
priestly synods) and ruling power, seemingly accommodating but
whose presence distorts local pratice. The paradoxical impact of the
situation can work both ways: the gradual ‘Egyptianization’ of Ptole-
maic kingship happens precisely at the moment when the ruling
power’s grip on the native population is shaken by overt rebellion
and the flight of peasants to the temples, i.e. when Egyptian dis-
course can no longer play the role of an efficient ideological medi-
um for interaction.17
At a less exalted level than the priestly synods or the rituals and im-
ages of late Ptolemaic kingship, choices made by individuals are re-
sistant to easy conceptualization within paradigms. The tomb of
Petosiris, an Egyptian priest who lived under the last years of the
Achaimenids, then Alexander, then the early years of the Ptolemies,
may serve as an illustration. It is covered with sacred texts of tradi-
tional type and expression, ritual or autobiographical, but in fact de-
scribing various astonishing innovations (such as temple building and
inaugurating by a private individual rather than the pharaoh – ges-
tures which Petosiris had to undertake to keep traditional forms go-
ing in times of change); the images on the tomb combine Egyptian
themes and Hellenizing style and costume. The tomb itself became
an object of veneration – by Greek pilgrims who came to visit this ‘hi-
eron’ and left proskynemata, salutations, in Greek but written Egypt-
ian-style with the reed brush; among these texts, two are particularly
elaborate – one an iambic epigram praising Petosiris, wise among the
wise, a second a psephological epigram, playfully adding the value of
various letters, and capping the epigram about Egyptian wisdom with
arbitrary play on signs – possible only in Greek. How do we interpret

16 W. Clarysse, Ptolémées et temples, in D. Valbelle, J. Leclant (eds), Le Décret de

Memphis, Paris, 1999, pp. 41-66.
17 E.g. J. Bingen, Le décret sacerdotal de Karnak (142 a. C), «Chron. Eg.», 77 (2002) pp.
295-302.
378 john ma
the various layers of cultural behaviour which we can read on the
Petosiris tomb?18
Many more such examples could be analysed: for instance, the fa-
mous limestone sign of a Cretan dream interpreter, representing the
Apis bull, and Egyptian-style caryatids (or perhaps better, caryatids
showing Egyptians).19 The main point is to recognize that such para-
doxes are based on the problems of identity in the Hellenistic world,
an eminently paradoxical subject, and one which can be illustrated
thematically as well as locally. Thematically, paradox appears in the
study of ethnic identity and the problems of continuity and assimila-
tion, which happened on the cultural level but were expressed in
terms of blood relationship (for instance, Diotimos of Sidon, judge
or shofet of his city, participated in the Nemeia at Argos, a cultural
phenomenon, on the grounds of the mythical kinsip between
Phoenicians and Thebes, an imagined blood-tie).20 Locally, paradox
can be seen in test cases such as Egypt, Phoenicia, Karia (where liter-
ature on Karian identity was produced in Greek about the same time
Karian disappeared as a language),21 Lykia (where «Lykian» features,
such as local demotics, were invented out of Homer, for instance
«Sarpedonios» – the «Levi-Strauss» paradox that local identity at the
moment it is perceived is also mediated),22 or Hasmonaean Judaea,
where cultural and military resistance to a Hellenistic kingdom, that
of the Seleukids, led to the emergence of an imperialist, expansionist
power, equipped with siege weaponry – a Hellenistic kingdom such
as that which the pious Jews rebelled against, in a ‘post-colonial’ para-
dox: as E. Will, wrote, «Phénomène banal en somme: une culture
dominée et menacée en son essence se dresse contre la culture domi-

18 B. Menu, Le tombeau de Pétosiris. Nouvel examen, «bifao», 94 (1994), pp. 311-327; Le

tombeau de Pétosiris 2. Maât, Thot et le Droit, «bifao», 95 (1995), pp. 281-295; Le tombeau de
Pétosiris 3. Culpabilité et responsabilité, «bifao», 96 (1996), pp. 343-357; Le tombeau de Pé-
tosiris 4. Le souverain de l’Égypte, «bifao», 98 (1998), pp. 247-262. Earlier, G. Lefebvre, Le
tombeau de Pétosiris, Il Cairo, 1923-1924.
19 La Gloire d’Alexandrie, p. 195 no. 141 (A. Charron).
20 E. Bikerman, Sur une inscription grecque de Sidon, in Mélanges Syriens offerts à M.
Rene Dussaud, Paris, 1939, vol, 1, pp. 91-99; L. Moretti, Iscrizioni Agonistiche Greche,
Roma, 1953, nº 41.
21 J. and L. Robert , Fouilles d’Amyzon, i, Paris, 1983, on Karian identity, local and
regional.
22 L. Robert, oms 7, pp. 413, 424-426 (from his «Journal des Savants», 1978 article on
«les conquêtes d’Arbinas»); p. 686; J. Bousquet, Ph. Gauthier, Inscriptions du Létôon
de Xanthos, «reg», 107 (1994), pp. 319-361 (at 326 on the Lykian demotics).
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 379
nante, mais, en le faisant, et surtout après son triomphe, elle acquiert
les caractères de ce dont elle a triomphé. Mutatis mutandis, le monde
d’aujourd’hui ne manque pas de ‘monarchies hasmonéennes’…»23
But is the phenomenon so banal?

iii. Defining and dealing with paradox

It is important to face the problems involved in writing Hellenistic his-
tory as paradox: fuzzy thinking, arbitrary choice of cases. The danger
is falling into moralizing epigrams («how tragic that victims of abuse
turn into abusers»), rhetorical effects structured by correlative tropes
(men / de, cum / tum) or, even worse, impressionistic judgements such
as «all was paradoxical in these troubled times, where everything was
jumbled, how startlingly modern».24
How do I define paradox? Rather than attempt a rather scholastic
typology of paradoxes, I would point out as the central characteristic
the co-existence of the conflictual or the contradictory, within a sin-
gle unity – a period, a place (such as Hellenistic Athens), an artifact, a
monument, an image, a text, a gesture, a person, a cultural phenom-
enon (such as ruler cult), a moment or event. In itself, this definition
raises more problems. Firstly, what constitutes an ‘unity’? What de-
termines its nature as single object for study, what justifies its choice?
Secondly, what justifies the perception and description of contradic-
tion? What allows me to write ‘how strange’? The answer is of course
the paradigms or models applied – yet what justifies their choice? Is
paradox somehow inherent to the object studied, or is it imposed by
the interpreter’s choices? Furthermore, what consequences does the
existence of paradox have on the paradigms? If paradox depends on
paradigms for its existence, does it self-destruct by challenging the va-
lidity of paradigms? Does it open the way to new paradigms to replace
the old ones, whose value is purely heuristic? Does it affirm the valid-
ity of contradictory sets of paradigms?
The most important problem is that of the choice of paradigms,
and of the ways in which paradoxes are made to emerge. But I would
argue that paradigms (such as fusion, or ‘apartheid’) have been elabo-
rated by induction from ancient documents, as the world implied by

23 E. Will, Historica Graeco-Hellenistica, Paris, 1998, 757 (part of an extraordinary

lecture on Guerre, acculturation et contre-acculturation dans le monde hellénistique).
24 P. Green , Alexander to Actium: the Hellenistic Age, Berkeley, 1990, is founded on
such unhelpful tropes.
380 john ma
the documents, the normal horizon of expectations and meaning that
they construct; in that sense, they are similar to the «ideal readers»
sometimes posed by literary critics at the horizon of ancient texts. Par-
adox emerges firstly, from the juxtaposition with other documents,
and their conflicting paradigms and expectations; and secondly, from
the rereading of documents, and the questioning of paradigms, that
such juxtapositions enable.
Is the exercise arbitrary? Extreme care in details is necessary, to
avoid unnecessarily multiplying paradoxes. On the other hand, de-
tailled historical knowledge should not be deployed to defuse para-
dox, in the certainties of erudite incuriosity («It’s simply that…») – for
instance, the late Hellenistic emergence of super-rich and powerful
polis élites coincides with the emergence of strong ethical and com-
munitarian language in the very documents that document these
elites – the phenomenon should not be explained away as ‘just’ com-
pensation or erased by fine chronology or ignored in the name of
common sense. The problems, and strategies to avoid them, and the
pitfalls of these strategies, are linked to the epistemology of history-
writing; which is another way of saying that to put things in a paradox
is a way of constructing Veynian intrigue, by finding a viewpoint
where the ironies of history appear as interesting as the jokes which
anthropologists and cultural historians fasten on.25

iv. Public and private

At this point, we need to return to examples, and precisely to detailled
test-cases to work out the issues of paradigm and paradox. I propose
two such test-cases: the case of the «noble house» of the fourth cen-
tury BC, and the contrast between public culture and private culture
in Priene.
To start with the noble house – in the late Classical period, there
emerges a new form of housing, recently studied by E. Walter-Kary-
di in a stimulating synthetic essay:26 large aristocratic houses, with im-

25 P. Veyne, Comment on écrit l’histoire: essai d’épistémologie, Paris, 1971. Cultural

history: e.g. R. Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
History, London, 1984; D. Cohen, Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens, re-
published in R. Osborne (ed.), Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society, Cambridge,
2006, p. 62 n. 2, on the importance of the concept of contradiction for a strain of an-
thropological theory, and also of sociology (early Giddens).
26 E. Walter-Karydi , The Greek House: the Rise of the Noble House in Late Classical
Times, Athens, 1998 (Eng. trans).
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 381
pressive dimensions and proportions, luxurious decorations, and a
noble style of ornament, often borrowing from the idioms of public
architecture; examples can be found all over the Greek world; a well-
excavated case is the West Gate quarter at Eretria.
How should we explain the phenomenon? Walter-Karydi finds an
easy explanation in a particular historical paradigm, the «decline of
the polis»: the fifth century already underwent the crisis of the polis,
and hence the fourth century saw the reign of individualism, retired
philosophical lives, and so on. But this explanation is historically not
tenable: the fourth century is, on the contrary, an age of polis vitality,
where politics, political institutions, polis culture, are all live realities,
being debated and constantly shaped; where democracy is particular-
ly alive, especially in Athens. Eretria, the site of well known great
houses, underwent tyranny but also passed laws against oligarchy and
tyranny (Seg 51.1105).
The situation does not allow for facile historical explanation, but
points out a paradox, the coexistence of great elite houses and polis
culture, in fourth century Greece. The coherence of the paradox is
justified, by the coexistence of the phenomena in the same social and
political space, the late Classical city; the two paradigms, decline and
vitality, are relevant, because the one is implied by the great houses,
the other is defined from the historical narrative and epigraphical
sources. The impact of paradox is to force the archaeologist not to cre-
ate pat ‘background’ narratives to explain the material, but also to
force the historian to take into account the archaeological presence of
elite houses. The consequence is the multiplicity of possible stories
about the late Classical city, and specifically the way in which these sto-
ries might not just co-exist, but be dialectically linked in ways that
structured society and action: the high visibility of the elites and the
affirmation of politics and political culture might have been insepara-
ble, and drawn energy from the existence of each other as competing,
yet complementary historical drives in the same social spaces.

My second phenomenon is the coastal Ionian city of Priene. Its ar-

chaeology and epigraphy is well known, and does not need repeating
here.27 I would simply like to point out a paradox: the contrast be-

27 Th. Wiegand, H. Schrader, Priene, Ergebnisse des Ausgrabungen und Untersu-

chungen in den Jahren 1895-1898, Berlin, 1904; M. Schede, Die Ruinen von Priene: kurze
Beschreibung, Berlin, 1964 (2nd ed. by G. Kleiner, W. Kleiss); J. Raeder, Priene, Funde
382 john ma
tween public and private cultures. On the one hand, Priene allows us
to see communitarian public culture, expressed in public spaces and
monuments, and, especially, in public texts such as the very long
decrees passed for great benefactors in the second and first centuries
BC: civic language, though evolving, remains centred on such values
as devotion to the city, reciprocal exchange of benefaction for hon-
ours, embedding of moral judgement in communal norms.
On the other hand, the archaeology of Priene shows a profusion of
private spaces strongly marked by high-grade «minor arts»: Wand-
schmuck imitating monumental forms and architecture, ornate furni-
ture with bronze decoration,28 bronze lamps with theatrical masks
or African faces, and terra-cottas, representing erotic or grotesque
themes, or «Genre scenes» such as the famous rustic parody of the
Spinario.29 The private culture of Priene was refined, allusive, luxuri-
ous. A specialist of Hellenistic coroplasty interprets these traits as a
symptom of individuals lost in a world where the norms of the Clas-
sical polis have decayed, in an unthinking restatement of the «decline»
paradigm;30 this interpretation cannot hold, especially in Priene,
where the working of civic institutions and ideology are richly attest-
ed. Yet conversely, simply to restate the «vitality» paradigm is not
enough: we still have to account for Prienian private culture somehow.
The paradox is constituted by that most classical of unities – unity of
place and time, the co-existence of the two cultures within the same
city walls and in the same chronological context of the late Hellenis-
tic period; the paradigms that are brought to bear, and whose con-
frontation creates paradox, are again implied and constituted by the
very phenomena being studied.

aus einer griechischen Stadt im Berliner Antikenmuseum, Berlin, 1984; F. Rumscheid, Priene:
a Guide to the “Pompeii of Asia Minor”, Istanbul, 1998 (Eng. trans.); F. Rumscheid , Die fi-
gürlichen Terrakotten von Priene: Fundkontexte, Ikonographie und Funktion in Wohnhäusern
und Heiligtümern im Licht antiker Parallelbefunde, Wiesbaden, 2006, especially on the di-
versity of contexts of the small finds.
28 On luxury furniture, D. Andrianou, Chairs, beds and tables: evidence for furnished
interiors in Hellenistic Greece, «Hesperia», 75 (2006), pp. 219-266.
29 Rumscheid, Terrakotten, for a survey of previous interpretations of the materi-
al, and a specific examination of the domestic context of terracottas (confirming and
sharpening earlier views that if some terracottas belong to domestic cult, others are
probably sympotic in atmosphere, and perhaps in use).
30 J.-P. Uhlenbrock, The Coroplast’s Art: Greek Terracottas of the Hellenistic World,
New Rochelle, n.y., 1990.
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 383
Private art at Priene shows the same refinement, mannerism and
irony which one expects to find in Alexandrian art. One effect is to
challenge any easy dichotomy between civic culture and royal truphe:
this analysis could be pursued in the case of Erythrai or Knidos, where
civic decrees and private Wandschmuck co-exist,31 or Myrina, where
tombs contain both dikastic tickets, a sign of citizen activity in the
democratic institution of the jury-courts, and famously mannerist ter-
ra-cottas.32 The private luxury of the citizens of the Hellenistic cities
is an important historical phenomenon: it must have played a great
role in driving local economies, and, culturally, was one of the ele-
ments later imitated in Roman private art, as shown by P. Veyne in his
essay on the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii.33
Yet the culture of Hellenistic luxury was embedded in precise con-
texts, such as the Prienian one, where paradox has to be confronted.
We might try to avoid the obvious explanatory approaches – «Prien-
ian civic culture was so exhausting that the citizens felt the need to
withdraw within luxurious private worlds», or conversely, «the luxuri-
ous private worlds are what really mattered, civic culture was a sham».
We should rather try to focus on the difficulty posed by the coexis-
tence of public and private worlds – and the possibility that the two
spheres not only coexisted, but competed with each other and im-
pacted on each other.34 This possibility would illuminate related phe-
nomena at Priene: the presence of both public statues and large pri-
vate family groups in the public space of the agora, and the gradual
‘privatization’ of the relation between the community and the great
benefactors (whose houses and private life become quasi-public, and
whose benefactions sometimes end up displaying status hierarchies
rather than civic equality).35 Paradox in this case does not disarm the
two paradigms which allow us to perceive it, but affirms the validity

31 O. Bingöl, Malerei und Mosaik der Antike in der Türkei, Mainz, 1997.
32 E. Pottier, S. Reinach, La nécropole de Myrina, Paris, 1888.
33 P. Veyne, La fresque dite des Mystères à Pompéi, in P. Veyne, F. Lissarrague, F.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Les mystères du gynécée, Paris, 1998, pp. 13-153.
34 Xen., Poroi, 4.8-9, with Ph. Gauthier, Un commentaire historique des Poroi de
Xénophon, Paris, 1976, ad loc. on the links between private luxury and public prosperity.
35 On the hierarchized banquets of late Hellenistic Priene, and their contrast with
high Hellenistic political culture, P. Hamon, A propos de l’institution du Conseil dans les
cités grecques de l’époque hellénistique, «reg», 114 (2001), pp. xvi-xxi; Le Conseil et la partici-
pation des citoyens: les mutations de la basse époque hellénistique, in P. Fröhlich, Chr. Müller
(eds), Citoyenneté et participation, pp. 121-144.
384 john ma
of both: «decline» (or at least strong change) and «vitality» are in fact
both useful to approach the social history of Priene, in its complexi-
ties and contradictions, and to realize that these contradictions were
part of its vitality. This is not the same as saying that paradox reintro-
duces a paradigm of decline …

v. Writing paradox into ancient history

The approach which I gesture at above is not quite histoire problème; it is
not deconstructionism, be it strict (as used to be practised in the critical
interpretation of ancient literature) or bastardized (as is sometimes
practised by historians of ancient material culture and images); it is not
strictly structuralism – though it does owe much to that great histori-
an, P. Vidal-Naquet, his sense that «personne n’est un», his refusal to
simplify situations in any form of «obviousness», his delight in such
phenomena as Arrian’s position between two worlds, Josephus the
«traitor», or the modern existence of a gospel based on Oedipus at
Colonus.36 The approach sketched out here is further predicated on
leaving out explanations, and preferring contradictory situations to co-
herent ones: the goal is mise en paradoxe as a particular form of mise en
intrigue. This way of writing ancient history is particularly suited for the
Hellenistic period, with its three great paradoxes, or set of paradoxes:
the paradoxes of rupture and continuity; the paradoxes of identity, be-
tween Greek and non-Greek; the paradoxes of the relation between
supra-local empire and local powers, and the impact on the Greek city.
But these paradoxes are old, and can be traced into the Classical or
even the archaic period: the historian of the Hellenistic period recog-
nizes many features of Herodotus’ world (local and supra-local impe-
rialisms and their cultural, social, economic and ideological impact;
sungeneia, amongt Greeks but also between Greeks and non-Greeks;
trade relations on the margins; enthusiastic travelling; cultural inter-
actions). The search for paradox might hence prove helpful for other
periods of ancient history. In the Archaic period, the central paradox
is perhaps the workings of aristocratic identity and political commu-
nity at the same time, and not sequentially (as in the tidy schemes
found in our textbooks, and indeed in Aristotle): aristocracy and
demos need each other to «emerge».37 In the Classical period, paradox

36 P. Vidal-Naquet, Mémoires, vol. 2, Paris, 1998.

37 O. Murray, Early Greece, London, 1993.
 paradigms and paradoxes in the ellenistic world 385
helps understand such important historical phenomena as the
Achaimenid imperial formation (structured around the paradoxes of
centralizing unity and acceptance of locally defined roles), or Classi-
cal Athenian democracy, which is defined by the need to negotiate dy-
namically the paradox of political equality and multiple social and
economic inequalities. The latter paradox lies at the heart of the
ground-breaking, illuminating book by J. Ober on the dialectics be-
tween the operation of egalitarian ideology and inequalities in the
fields of social reality.38 Equally useful to understand democratic ten-
sions, voluntary activity as politicians and prosecutors is shadowed by
the paradoxes of the demagogue and the sykophant; likewise, the dif-
ficulties of Aristophanic comedy or Attic tragedy might be fruitfully
explored as paradox.
What paradox invites us to do is to get rid of «must have», and hence
to renounce the need for coherence, without giving up on historical
meaning. In so doing, students of the Hellenistic period might end up
doing themselves and their subject some good – by unjamming
dichotomies between opposing paradigms; by getting rid of certain
reflexes, naming that of art-historians and archaeologists to look for
the most ‘coherent’ historical background, and that of epigraphists to
ignore the divergent art-historical evidence as not relevant, whereas its
divergence is precisely what makes it interesting; by rejoicing in con-
tradiction rather than shunning it.39

38 J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, Princeton, 1989; also I. Morris,
Everyman’s grave, in A. Boegehold and Adele Scafuro, Athenian Identity and Civic Ide-
ology, Baltimore, 1994, pp. 67-101.
39 Versions of this paper were presented in the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm) in
Paris (to rather hostile reaction, perhaps, but not, I think, exclusively, because of tone
and presentation) and in Heidelberg; my thanks to Francis Prost and to Angelos Chan-
iotis for the respective invitations; also to Paraskevi Martzavou, Pierre Fröhlich, Chris-
tian Wittschel, Tonio Hölscher, Alain Bresson, Fergus Millar for advice and reactions. I
am grateful to B. Virgilio for the opportunity of publishing it in a form very close to its
original appearance – a think-piece, an invitation.
 comp osto, in car atter e da n t e m on oty pe,
imp r ess o e r ilegato in i ta l i a da l la
accademia editor iale ® , p i s a · rom a
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