Kai polemou kai eirenes: military magistrates at war and at peace in Hellenistic Boiotia

McAuley, Alex ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2481-4431 2020. Kai polemou kai eirenes: military magistrates at war and at peace in Hellenistic Boiotia. Ancient History Bulletin Supplements 1 , pp. 86-108.

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (3MB) | Preview

Abstract

Our current understanding of the Boiotian military in the Hellenistic Period is characterised by something of a paradox: on the one hand, a wide array of ancient sources attest to the size and complexity of the Boiotian League’s military machine, but on the other hand, this military apparatus is largely assumed to have been either inactive or ineffective during the third century in particular. This paper re-examines prevailing suppositions of Boiotian civic decline (and thus military enfeeblement) in the third century by considering the practical role of local military magistrates in Hellenistic Boiotia. Beginning with an overview of the idiosyncratic office of polemarchos in Boiotia, I examine the practical duties of these magistrates in the civic communities of the region, both in the domestic sphere when at peace, and in the military sphere when the army is in the field. In order to determine precisely who these magistrates were, I turn to a detailed case study of the military catalogues of Hyettos dating from the late 230s to 175, and observe several patterns in the sequence of office-holders. By identifying both recurrent individual office-holders and tracking the careers of their descendants over time, I argue for the continuing prominence and activity of these local military magistracies in Hyettos and, by extension, elsewhere in Boiotia.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D051 Ancient History
ISSN:	0835-3638
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	20 October 2020
Date of Acceptance:	1 May 2020
Last Modified:	13 Jun 2024 01:08
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135755

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item