This monograph represents an augmented, revised version of Z.’s dissertation. It exemplifies a recent phenomenon of graduate training wherein theses are jointly supervised at a European university and an Anglophone institution (here Bologna and King's College London). If one grants that an English-language work has been produced in a non-native speaking academic environment – even with the input of the scholars and readers generously thanked in the foreword – it is unsurprising that there are a number of stylistic, syntactical and semantic lapses that an editor in New York or London might have addressed. Yet the author's meaning does not appear irrevocably jeopardised anywhere (despite the over-use of ‘due to’ to mark loosely causal relationships). I, for one, would dearly love to write Italian one-third as well as Z. writes English.
Relevant scholarship has generally been sought out diligently, with recent work introduced quite helpfully for those readers trying to remain current. Z. has been quite productive himself and has tried to alert readers to his additional and ancillary scholarship. I shall not criticise his utilisation of earlier scholarship in detail, but I did find it difficult to divine his underlying vision of the Attic hegemony, and the framework within which Cimonian policy was working seemed hard to envisage. That is so even after a stretch of text devoted to Attic hegemonism in Z.’s conclusion (pp. 229–42). Those brought up on the Athenian Tribute Lists/Oxford ‘Greats’ paradigm on Attic hegemony, even its critics like myself, may well find much that is idiosyncratic here.
The work starts out with a solid if brief treatment of the source material and earlier scholarship. The next chapter covers Cimon's family background and early life, while broaching several topics repeatedly raised about Cimon, like philolaconism. I would have preferred more on the relationship of Philaids and Cimonids. The treatment of Cimon's sister Elpinice is also a bit tepid. The first chapter (3) of Part 1 treats events in the northern Aegean in the 470s bc, where separate chapters involve Eion and Scyrus. Here the exposition is generally sensible. However, although Z. copes well with hypotheses on the expression through mythology of rivalry between Cimon and Themistocles, compression has made his exposition somewhat opaque. A short chapter on Carystus is questionably relevant, because Cimon cannot be reliably connected. This section of Part 1 closes by exploring Pausanias’ second domination of Byzantium. I find myself sympathetic, but the chronology and Pausanias’ Medism seem incidental to Cimon's career. Once Z. eschews reconstructing Attic policy-making in the 470s around a rivalry for protasia by Cimon and Themistocles, whether rightly or not, he surrenders the mechanism by which earlier scholars integrated Pausanias’ actions with Cimon's career.
The next section is devoted to the Asian campaign, its first chapter (8) covering the siege of Naxos (dated by the flight of Themistocles). Z. rightly attributes causation to Naxian pro-Persian attitudes, although I wonder whether Naxos had not mis-timed its revolt in misjudging how early the Persian armada, later pre-empted at Eurymedon, might arrive. A nice comment on the nature of Naxos’ ‘enslavement’ could have been improved by more attention to the phrase παρὰ τὸ καθεστηκός (Thuc. 1.98.4). A short treatment of Cimon's campaigning in Caria and Lycia (Chapter 9) leads into Eurymedon (Chapter 10). The ancient sources are presented competently, to which a brief examination of the Peace of Callias is appended. Even were I not a convinced sceptic of the historicity of the Peace, exploration of its geographical conditions disappoints. Eurymedon is substantially underplayed here, although it did mark the terminus of Persian ability to menace Aegean Greece. Yet a nice chapter (11) follows on possible poetic celebrations, their literary associations, and the theme of land and naval supremacy.
The third section covers the Thracian campaign. After a short chapter on Cimonian operations in the Chersonese, attention turns to the Thasian rebellion, treated as Attic aggression for material resources (an over-wrought construal). An investigation of the rout of the Athenian-sponsored colonists at Drabescus disconnects Cimon from involvement, while ΣAesch. 2.31.67 on the series of Attic disasters in the Strymon valley is downplayed considerably. A likely casualty list from early in the campaign is next examined (IG I3 1144), and finally the prosecution and acquittal of Cimon over this command. I find the stress throughout on Athenian economic/financial difficulty as motivation to be fanciful. Next is the crucial Peloponnesian campaign. Thucydides’ account both of Spartan promises to Thasos and of the grounds for Attic dismissal from Mt. Ithome, and the congruence of that account with Aristophanes, Lys. 1137–44 are treated with undue scepticism. The discussion of Plutarch and Diodorus is a bit sounder (but see below). The Ephialtic reforms, comprising a coda to this section, are minimised in their relation to Cimon; their tradition a subsequent reconstruction. Section 5 examines the last campaign of Cimon (after a bridging discussion of Attic conflicts in Greece and with Persia). Slim treatments of Cimon's truce negotiations with the Spartans and his last Cypriot campaign close out the diachronic exposition.
A shorter Part 2 offers the historical interpretation to which I have already adverted. One approach of a work such as this is to examine systematically every context to which earlier scholars connected a figure like Cimon, passing judgement on the credibility of the linkages and gauging their broader impact, usefully including ‘contemporary intellectuals’, ‘public architecture and civic commitment’ and ‘notes on the figure of Kimon in the tradition’. A map of Cimon's campaigns with a diachronic table and a very brief conclusion round out the work. Synchronic analysis works well for Z. in clearing the clutter of overly speculative hypotheses, as in his treatment of cultural figures possibly belonging to Cimon's circle of affinity (pp. 259–80) or the fanciful reconstructions of Cimonian building programmes that archaeologists have embraced (pp. 281–300). A drawback is that this methodology has a ‘flattening’ effect in which many sensible judgements, not terribly objectionable in isolation, in aggregate portray a subject much less important than evaluated by previous scholarship. The sceptical tendency throughout towards Plutarch's biography naturally enhances the reduction of Cimon; I speculate whether a commentary on the Cimon would better have suited Z.’s purposes.
I am truly diffident that the evidence, so fragmentary in Classical sources and dominated by Plutarch, would not have been better suited to isolating a few narrower interpretative tacks, such as Cimon as coloniser, as combatant against the Persians or as traditional elite politician, and then subordinating the welter of data to their analysis. The concept of a dual hegemony that might be ‘lamed’ through the incapacitation of either Athens or Sparta could have provided such a hook to organise the evidence on Cimon, which is the very direction it appeared that the title of this work was tending. Not only was that expectation overturned, but the treatment of ‘lame hegemony’ was disappointing. Seeing Cimon as just another Athenian politician, while it has some corrective virtues, does undervalue the significance of his interchange with Ephialtes over a positive response to the Spartan request for aid after the Great Earthquake and ensuing Helot uprising. Unsurprisingly, the Spartan dismissal of the Athenians from the siege of Mt. Ithome – which others including myself consider one of the crucial turning points of Classical Greek history – is minimised quite cavalierly. A closer examination of the more aggressive policy towards Sparta, espoused by Themistocles in counterpoint to Cimon, ought to have reoriented Z.’s investigation. A failure to consider other potential manifestations of dual hegemonic attitudes, like those connected with the Thirty Years Peace (446) or the Athenian-Spartan alliance of 421, renders our source material on Cimon's views unnecessarily isolated. That disappointment lingers despite the real contribution of Z. in analysing an under-served period of Athenian history.
