Death to Tyrants! (13 page)

Soon after forming the alliance with Kallias, the Athenians invaded both Oreos and Eretria, expelled their pro-Macedonian regimes—regimes that Demosthenes repeatedly referred to as “tyrannies”—and reinstalled the
dēmos
. The tyrants in Oreos were overthrown (and killed) in early summer 341. In that operation, the Athenian general Kephisophon led forces from Athens, Chalkis, and Megara. The tyrants in Eretria were toppled (and killed), after a siege, a few weeks later in an operation led by the Athenian
general Phokion.
⁵
It is possible that the Athenians, in order to execute that siege, mounted catapults on their ships. If they did, the siege of Eretria marks a milestone in ancient Greek warfare.
⁶

After successfully completing military operations in Eretria, the Athenians and the Eretrians forged a bilateral alliance. The inscription (
IG
II
²
230) that likely carries the text of that alliance is very fragmentary.
⁷
But it is almost certain that the Eretrians pledged to assist the Athenians if they were attacked or if their democracy were overthrown. And it is quite reasonable to conclude that the Athenians reciprocated: the Athenians likely pledged, that is, to assist the Eretrians should they be attacked or should their democracy be overthrown. First of all, such reciprocal agreements appear to have been common practice in Athenian alliances in the mid-fourth century: such was the case, for example, with the Athenian alliance with the Thessalian
koinon
(
RO
44) and their alliance with Arkadia, Achaea, Elis, and Phleious (
RO
41).
⁸
Second, there is an exceptionally fragmentary inscription, found in Eretria, which contains the text of an oath to be sworn by Athenians wherein they pledge to militarily assist the Eretrians should the Eretrian democracy be overthrown. Knoepfler has demonstrated (1995: 362–64) that that inscription might date to 341. And he has suggested that it might be the Eretrian copy of the alliance made with the Athenians in 341. The Athenian-Eretrian alliance was thus not simply between two states, but between the sociopolitical factions (i.e.,
dēmos
) that controlled those two states.
⁹

One obvious aim of the Athenian-Eretrian alliance was to deter Eretrian anti-democrats from staging a coup. Henceforth, those anti-democrats had to ask themselves whether or not they could defeat in battle their domestic opponents (i.e., the pro-democrats)
and
a force sent by the Athenians. If the answer was no—that is, if they concluded that they would be defeated in such a confrontation—they almost certainly would choose to cooperate with the new regime. Thus the Eretrian democrats would maintain control of their polis and the Athenians would maintain influence in a strategically important region.

Although by no means insignificant, the alliance between the Athenians and the Eretrians likely would not have been sufficient to deter Eretrian anti-democrats from staging a coup. On the one hand, anti-democrats might have doubted the Athenians' commitment to defend the Eretrian democracy. It would have been reasonable to conclude, for example, that the Athenians, then following Demosthenes's policy to “protect and assist all” Greek cities from the Macedonian threat (8.46; cf. 9.70–75), would be too occupied elsewhere to intervene in Eretrian affairs.
¹⁰
And some anti-democrats might have suspected that the Athenians would even support an Eretrian tyrant, if he appeared to be pro-Athenian: just a few years earlier (348), after all, the Athenians invaded Eretria in order to support the pro-Athenian Ploutarchos.
¹¹
Philip, on the other hand, had already ordered three separate invasions of Eretria: his commitment to a nondemocratic regime in that city was credible. In short, the Athenians potentially had a credibility gap while Philip did not. Anti-democrats thus might very well have concluded that it would be worth the risk to stage a coup.

The Eretrian democrats thus needed to deter their anti-democratic opponents without recourse to an outside power. They needed to have a credible
threat of their own. And it was to achieve that objective that the Eretrians promulgated their tyrant-killing law.

Until quite recently scholars knew very little about the Eretrian tyrant-killing law. In 1854, Baumeister discovered a small fragment of an ancient stele in Aliveri, approximately twenty kilometers east of Eretria. He carefully drew what he could see on the stone and published that drawing in 1857.
¹²
By 1892, the stone fragment that he discovered had been lost. In 1905, however, Adolf Wilhelm published an article demonstrating that the stone that Baumeister discovered recorded the opening lines of an anti-tyranny law. Also in that article, Wilhelm published (with very limited restoration) his own text and suggested (based on historical and orthographic grounds) that the Eretrians promulgated the law immediately after the fall of the “tyrant” Kleitarchos.
¹³
Finally, in 1915, E. Ziebarth republished Wilhelm's text as
IG
XII, 9, 190. After that, scholars did not seriously engage with the law in any significant way for more than eighty years.
¹⁴

Thanks to two lengthy articles written by Denis Knoepfler and published in
Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique
, scholars now have a much longer text of the Eretrian anti-tyranny law.
¹⁵
Knoepfler's original project was to publish the editio princeps of an inscription, found near ancient Eretria in 1958, that contained anti-tyranny language. In the course of his study, however, Knoepfler (following a suspicion first articulated by V. Petrakos and then by many others) concluded that the newly discovered stone and the fragment discovered by Baumeister in 1854 were, in fact, part of the same stele.
¹⁶
Knoepfler then re-edited the old, lost fragment (with significant restorations) and published it along with the editio princeps of the new, much larger fragment. As a result, scholars now have much of the original law: only (perhaps) four or five lines are missing completely.

Here is Knoepfler's text of the Eretrian tyrant-killing law and an original English translation. “Old Fragment” refers to the stone fragment discovered by Baumeister in 1854. “New Fragment” refers to the stone fragment discovered
in 1958. The vast majority of the Greek text of the old fragment and about one-third of the text of the new fragment have been restored by Knoepfler. The underlining in the following translation attempts to demonstrate what parts of the translation do
not
come from restored sections (i.e., the underlined parts are actually on the stone).
¹⁷

ΣΤΟΙΧ
. 51

(Old Fragment)

[θε]ο[ί].

(New Fragment)