This book, a revised version of F.'s 2009 Texas doctoral thesis, is the first detailed study of the origins and early history of the Athenian ephebeia since O.W. Reinmuth's 1971 monograph. Its appearance is welcome for multiple reasons. First, the (predominantly epigraphic) evidence for this institution has developed significantly over the past half-century and is long overdue a comprehensive reassessment. Second, research into the ephebeia in the Hellenistic and Roman periods has flourished, but its Athenian origins have received much less attention. Third, and perhaps most importantly, a fundamental question has remained unresolved: when exactly did the Athenian ephebeia – in the form of a regularised, mandatory period of military training and service – come into existence?
The first two substantive chapters tackle this last problem head-on. F.'s argument is that the ephebeia was a creation of the late 330s bce, most probably of 335/4. This is not a new proposal, as F. points out: it was first suggested by Wilamowitz in the 1890s. But F. restates, expands and updates the case clearly and cogently. The absence of epigraphic evidence for the ephebeia before 335/4, he argues, should indeed be taken as evidence of absence of the institution from Athenian life. Alleged references to the ephebeia in earlier literary sources (particularly Aeschines) have been misinterpreted, especially when readers have been too quick to interpret references to epheboi as an age-class (a category that, F. suggests, did exist before Chaeroneia) as evidence for the existence of a formalised ephebeia. Conversely, the failure of other pre-Chaeroneia sources (particularly Xenophon's Poroi) to mention this system of formal military training should be taken more seriously than it sometimes has been.
Why was the ephebeia created in 335/4? Those who have favoured a 330s date for the ephebeia's invention have often pointed to a connection with Athens’ defeat at Chaeroneia in 338 and a (belated) realisation that the city needed a better-trained, more easily mobilised hoplite force. However, as F. reasonably points out, if an immediate shortage of trained hoplites was the problem that the Athenians were trying to address, the ephebeia does not seem the most efficient solution (partly because its curriculum, in so far as it can be reconstructed, was hardly hoplite-centric; partly because limiting the training to eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds would have been a very slow way to build up an expert force). F.'s alternative explanation, though self-confessedly speculative, is both ingenious and appealing. The destruction of Thebes in 335/4, he suggests, led to greater instability on Athens’ northern borders, including increased raiding of Attica; this in turn required a greater military presence in the Attic countryside (the ephebic garrisons, on F.'s model, are bases for rural patrols, rather than part of an Oberian-style system of preclusive defence). Crucially, the Athenians recognised (and recognised very quickly: perhaps the most fragile plank of the argument?) that this requirement was one that would persist, since the terms of the League of Corinth made open confrontation with the Boeotian cities impossible – and it was this, above all, which provided the impetus to create the ephebeia as an established system.
In the second part of the book F. sets out his understanding of the operation of the ephebeia and its wider purpose. An important strand of the argument relates to the question of participation: who was liable to ephebic service, how many of those liable to serve actually did so, and what motivated them to enlist (or to avoid enlisting)? F.'s view is that the obligation to undertake the ephebeia applied to all eighteen-year-old male Athenians, not just those in the hoplite class. This raises a problem, though: how to account for the gap between the likely numbers of such Athenians (c. 1,000 each year) and the numbers who seem to have enrolled as ephebes (c. 500 per year initially)? F.'s solution is based on a largely pessimistic view of Athenian civic ideology, which follows M.R. Christ (and others) in assuming that citizens would exploit opportunities to evade service as far as they could (by faking illness, for example, or deliberately embroiling themselves in legal proceedings). Those who have already been persuaded by Christ's arguments will, I suspect, also be willing to add F.'s recalcitrant teenagers to their list of Bad Athenians. Those who cling to a more optimistic picture of Athenian citizen engagement might prefer to consider other explanations for the apparently lower levels of participation. We might, perhaps, ask whether the Athenians needed, or indeed could afford, full participation. Could it be that 500 men were enough for the roles that the ephebes were expected to perform – or the military role at least?
One of F.'s objections to that hypothesis, though, would be that the ephebeia did not fulfil a solely military function. Its creation might have been primarily motivated by a particular military need, but it should also (F. argues) be situated in the wider framework of cultural and political changes associated with ‘Lycurgan’ Athens. Indeed, F. suggests that Lycurgus ‘actively co-operated’ (p. 55) with Epicrates (the proposer of the ‘law about the ephebes’) in establishing the ephebeia and that Lycurgus’ influence might have extended beyond financial support, to include shaping the wider moral and religious components of the ephebes’ two-year programme. The direct evidence for this is far from strong (F. describes the argument as ‘tentative’, p. 57), but it is clearly the case – as F. shows effectively in the penultimate chapter – that the overall ethos of the ephebeia closely maps on to what we can reconstruct of Lycurgan ideals of citizenship. He is therefore surely right to argue that the ephebeia is best understood not as a ‘rite of passage’ – a process of marginalisation and transition – but rather as an institution designed to recreate and foreshadow, in miniature, the experience of citizenship that awaited the ephebes on graduation.
The institution, in its initial form, was short-lived. In his final chapter F. suggests that the gap in the evidence for the ephebeia after the Lamian War probably does mean that it was, briefly, abolished (though, he thinks, by the Athenian oligarchic regime, not by the Macedonians). The flourishing Athenian (and other) ephebeiai of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, F. argues, are based on the even more short-lived re-invention of the institution (as a one-year programme) in the final years of the fourth century.
The book is rounded out with an extremely helpful appendix, which brings together 31 inscriptions (including three unpublished documents) relating to the ephebeia in the 330s and 320s, offering texts and translations of all the published inscriptions and giving useful summaries of the unpublished material.
Overall, this book represents a valuable contribution not just to the history of the Athenian ephebeia, but also to our ever-richer picture of the texture of Athenian civic life in the last third of the fourth century. Inevitably, given the elusive and incomplete nature of the evidence, there are points where F.'s arguments will not persuade all (I would be surprised if this represented the very last word on the date of the ephebeia's invention, in particular). There are points, too, where an incautious reader might be lulled into thinking that we know more than we really do about the detailed operation of the institution: F. is always upfront about the extent to which his arguments rely on speculation or inference, but there is still an occasional tendency to slip rather quickly from subjunctive to indicative. But the outcome of this is a very readable, coherent study, which will deservedly become a central point of reference for those studying the ‘Lycurgan’ ephebeia.
