Election (αἵρϵσις) as the mechanism for appointment to the stratēgia (the Athenian generalship) rather than the democratic lottery (κλήρωσις, λήξις, ὁ τῷ κυάμῳ λαχών, vel sim.) used to fill almost every other political office, virtually ensured that only the most notable Athenians in terms of wealth and family connections attained the office.Footnote ¹ Consequently, the stratēgia fostered opportunities for elite leadership and bolstered claims of elite privilege and distinction within Athenian political thought and culture. In this paper, I explore the ways in which democracy reconciled itself to the tensions that arose between egalitarianism and elitism and between public and private interests, by virtue of military command being entrusted to a narrow elite in fifth-century Athens. Building on seminal works on the stratēgia, I offer an analysis of the institution centred on the dynamics of mass and elite political negotiation in the democracy. Military command as the prerogative of elite citizens can be regarded as an exceptional, rational carve-out, an undemocratic institution in the otherwise impartial, politically radical, and egalitarian Athenian democracy. Nevertheless, the stratēgia is an institution that also manifests, reflects, and upholds the kratos (power) of the Athenian dēmos (people) in important ways. This has partially been established by scholars focusing on the public strictures and oversight of Athenian generals.Footnote ²

In the current study, I look to expand on that work and to demonstrate that ambitious citizens seeking the prestige of military leadership were obliged to curry favour with the dēmos. We are not very well informed by the main literary sources for the democracy about the process of the selection of generals, but I argue here that there is enough evidence scattered through the fifth- and early fourth-century sources to show that, in standing as candidates for election to the generalship, members of the Athenian elite not only put themselves under the systematic scrutiny of the dēmos but also might be expected to avail the people of their personal connections and fortunes. In this way, I argue, the stratēgia should be viewed as a democratic institution similar in character to others that centred on Athens’ elite citizens (for example, leitourgia and proxenia).

As is well known, by 487/6 at the latest, the Athenians diminished the office of polemarchos or war-archon and turned over military authority to a board of ten annually-elected stratēgoi, theoretically at least one for each tribe ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 22.2–3).Footnote ³ The changes in the city’s military leadership some time in the late sixth or early fifth century were probably triggered by a few key overlapping concerns. The fact that Solon and Peisistratos had served as military leaders (hegemones if not polemarchoi) – as had, perhaps, several tyrants in other prominent Greek cities (Pheidon of Argos, Kypselos of Corinth) – revealed the dangers posed to politeia by the investment of too much military authority in charismatic individuals.Footnote ⁴ Perhaps as importantly, the increase in scale and scope of Athenian military operations under the new democratic regime (Hdt. 5.74–81) placed new demands on leadership for which the stratēgia was better equipped than the sole commander-in-chief.Footnote ⁵

It is plain to observe that the creation of a board of ten generals rotating daily command follows a certain Cleisthenic – which is to say democratic – logic (for similar rotation, see, for example, [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 43).Footnote ⁶ However, election (hairesis) of citizens to the stratēgia represents a less fully democratic process than the lottery system or klērōsis used to staff other civic offices that follow this pattern (Hdt. 3.80.6; Arist. Pol. 1294b7–9). Furthermore, although generals were in principle elected from the whole people, elections were apparently de facto from the socio-economic elite. The surly commentator on the fifth-century democracy, the so-called Old Oligarch, explains the rationale:

The dēmos defers in respect of high military offices to the city’s dynatōtatoi. Despite the imprecision of this term, scholars have largely followed Ps.-Xenophon in his assessment.Footnote ⁷ The testimony of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution is at least consonant with Ps.-Xenophon with regard to the fact of selection of military leaders by χϵιροτονία (voting by hands) over κλήρωσις (lottery), although the later Ath. Pol. offers no explicit ideological justification (44.4, 61.1).Footnote ⁸

Reading these two sources together, students of the democracy frequently suggest that the retention of the undemocratic process of election to the stratēgia bespeaks the rationality of a dēmos willing to compromise democratic principle in the practical interest of preserving the security of the city. Such a reading, which presumes on the part of the dēmos an ideological deference to elite citizens, is expressed in one way or another in all of the major scholarly work on the Athenian generalship and has become part of the standard account of the early democracy.Footnote ⁹ And indeed, in the blunt assessment of the pre-eminent authority on the Athenian democracy, the election of prominent Athenians as stratēgoi represents ‘an undemocratic trait in Athenian democracy’.Footnote ¹⁰

In one sense, this is obviously true. Most average Athenians would never be seriously considered for the generalship. However, because political deference of the commons to an elite is anathematized by the democracy over the fifth century, the nature of the Athenian elite’s hold on the stratēgia calls for examination. The lengths to which the dēmos went to control its generals surely reflect the people’s fear of the consolidation of military power and its attendant political influence in the hands of elite individuals – even if this distrust was somewhat assuaged by the collegial nature of the stratēgia. Furthermore, the public scrutiny of stratēgoi in the form of frequent ϵἰσαγγϵλίαι (impeachments) and routine ϵὐθῦναι (formal end-of-term audits) would have served as powerful reminders to those generals that they served ‘at the dēmos’ pleasure.’Footnote ¹¹ From the 370s, at least, the dēmos considered the performance of its generals and voted each prytany whether to maintain them in office or to depose them ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 61.2) and, statistically, about one out of every four generals to serve during the period 432–355 was likely to face eisangelia.Footnote ¹² It is impossible to say how often such charges led to conviction, but each was at least potentially ruinous or even deadly.Footnote ¹³ Demosthenes’ claim that generals, charged with misconduct as matter of course, were likelier to die as a result of condemnation in the courts than in battle is rhetorically exaggerated (4.47); nevertheless, the inference that such charges were common enough is inescapable (Ar. Knights 166, 288; Plut. Aristides 26.3; Nicias 6.2).Footnote ¹⁴ Trials of Athenian generals for incompetence, treason, bribery, theft, and embezzlement appear to have been commonplace if perhaps not routine in Athens.Footnote ¹⁵ In addition to official legal challenges, moreover, the public discourse of comedy and forensic oratory, each performed before mass public audiences, contain numerous censures through allegations of malfeasance by active and former generals (for example, Ar. Acharnians 597; Knights 288; Clouds 575–94).Footnote ¹⁶ The public oversight of the democracy’s military leaders was robust and systematic.

Furthermore, the powers of the generals as military commanders were in theory limited to the executive power to carry out military and foreign policy decisions made by the dēmos.Footnote ¹⁷ In the democracy, the dēmos decided whether to embark upon a campaign and what resources in manpower, ships, and money would be allocated. Commanders, always expected to produce victories, were often constrained by manpower and fiscal shortages (for example, Thuc. 5.2.1). In most cases, generals exercised autonomous decision-making only at the tactical and operational levels of military command.Footnote ¹⁸ In extraordinary circumstances, the dēmos might appoint one or more of its generals as αὐτοκράτορϵς (plenipotentiary commanders), granting them broad powers to decide for themselves the number of troops and (though less certain) financial arrangements for a particular campaign (for example, Thuc. 6.8.2, 26.1; Diod. 13.2.1; Xen. Hell. 1.4.20; Diod. 13.69.3).

The harsh strictures imposed upon generals for misconduct and the dēmos’ domination of the decision-making authority concerning military resources and foreign policy were enough to give scholars such as Moses Finley pause to consider why any elite citizen in Athens would bother to seek the office in the stratēgia at all. This is an admittedly sceptical reading that largely disavows the patriotism and philotimia (pursuit of honour) of the elite, but Finley was right to question the sentimentality of a system that, as he saw it, offered the elite merely ‘glory or power-as-such’.Footnote ¹⁹ Nevertheless, there is not the slightest hint in our sources that Athens had any shortage of men eager to serve as stratēgos. Indeed, the generalship was a prized office through which material and economic advantages as well as public honours accrued to successful generals. Laurel crowns, maintenance in the Prytaneion (σίτησις), and front-row seats at the theatre (προϵδρίαι) were coveted public distinctions sought by generals (Ar. Knights 573–6); at the same time, the conduct of many Athenian generals notoriously justified public anxiety about venality and self-interest among military commanders. Generals habitually looked after their own interests, helping friends and harming enemies in Athens and abroad and lining their own pockets, even as they discharged their critically important public office. Athenian historiography and public discourse are full of allusions to cases of embezzlement, private deals, and the use of public resources for private ends by generals.Footnote ²⁰ Notwithstanding Thrasyboulos, who was lynched before facing his trial (Xen. Hell. 4.8.30; Lys. 29.2; Dem. 19.180), there is virtually no iconic general of the democracy who escaped such charges. All of the most celebrated figures of the democracy such as Miltiades (Hdt. 6.136; Plut. Cim. 4.3), Themistocles (Diod. 11.27.3), Kimon (Plut. Per. 10; Cim. 14.2–4), and Pericles (Thuc. 2.65.3; Diod. 12.45.4; Plut. Per. 35.4; Pl. Grg. 516a) were chastised by the dēmos for their venality and sticky fingers.

The point is this: generals were quite probably assumed to have accepted bribes and presents in the field, to have embezzled public funds, or to have made personally advantageous settlements. The Athenians clearly expected and even tolerated a degree of venality and self-interest from their generals, whereas the omnipresent risk of being impeached or otherwise prosecuted by rivals would serve to curb the most egregious private grifting. An illustrative example is the career of Eurymedon, who along with his colleagues Pythodoros and Sophokles, was convicted on a charge of bribery (γραφή δώρων) in 424/3 (Thuc. 4.65.3). These generals allegedly had not pressed on with their campaign in Sicily because they were bought off by the locals. Nevertheless, the conviction cannot have resulted in much in the way of permanent consequences for Eurymedon: he was elected stratēgos a decade later and sent to the same military theatre (7.16.2).

The dēmos, then, to some extent was complicit in the self-aggrandizing and sometimes even formally illegal activities of the prominent individuals it elected to oversee communal defence. This has troubled some commentators – thus, Mogens Hansen:

Consideration of the socio-political dynamics at work in the election of candidates to the stratēgia provides a way out of the dilemma. The paragraphs below will demonstrate how, through the institution of the generalship, the dēmos availed itself not merely of the military expertise of elite Athenians, but also, and perhaps as importantly, their personal fortunes, and personal contacts while countenancing, even encouraging, the cultivation of these; at the same time, competition for office within the elite stratum itself provided an outlet for elite ambition while creating a mechanism of internal regulation via the adversarial legal system.

It must be admitted that virtually no testimony exists from classical sources about the qualifications of stratēgoi, apart from a (perhaps comically) vague sense that a suitable candidate for the office be δϵινός and σοφός; that is, ‘skillful and wise’ (Ar. Assemblywomen 247). By analogy with other major offices, any Athenian over the age of thirty was theoretically eligible; and there is no mention of a property qualification for the generalship by any source.Footnote ²² We know dishearteningly few of the names let alone reliable biographical details for the many hundreds of stratēgoi in the period of the classical democracy. Yet it is significant that only Lamachos son of Xenophanes, one of Aristophanes’ famous whipping posts, is described by any source as a πένης or ‘poor man’ (Plut. Nic. 15.1) – the exceptional rags to riches story that proves the rule, provided there is any soundness to the biographical tradition.Footnote ²³

A wealth of military experience and/or a reputation as a fine soldier was presumably an asset to one’s candidacy. Sophanes, the famous Athenian hero of the battle of Plataea, won election as general in 465 (Hdt. 9.75). However, military experience and proven skill do not seem to have been necessarily decisive factors in the selection of Athenian commanders. A famous example is the albeit exceptional appointment of Kleon to lead (in whatever capacity, but probably formally as stratēgos) at Pylos in 425/4 (Thuc. 4.27–8; cf. Ar. Knights 55). Less well known is the disappointment of a certain Nikomachides who, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, complains loudly to an unsympathetic Socrates that he has been passed over in the elections despite his exemplary record of military service. Indeed, Antisthenes, the general chosen in his stead, ‘has never campaigned as a hoplite nor distinguished himself among the cavalry’ (3.4.1). Xenophon is probably inventing rather than recalling an historical conversation. Nevertheless, it is striking that what appears to move ekklēsiazontes (attendees of the Assembly) to elect Antisthenes over the veteran soldier Nikomachides is the former’s knowledge of ‘acquiring money’ (χρήματα συλλέγϵιν), which Socrates notes is appropriate if it means Antisthenes will be of service (ἱκανός) in provisioning his troops well (3.4.2; cf. 3.1.6). The qualities that might recommend candidates to the voting assembly hinted at in the foregoing anecdotes do not seem to be markedly different from the basic requirements for holding other civic offices in Athens, to qualify for which Athenian citizens had to be of a minimum age, must not have abused their parents, must not have been public debtors, and must have performed military service when required ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 55.3–4). There is no evidence for institutions like officer training in the democracy, though some men did profess to teach the art of command (Xen. Mem. 3.1.1). The ephebeia (training of youths), which took the form familiar to Aristotle only in the mid-fourth century, was certainly not West Point, though there may be some parallels between the appointment of generals and that of the tribal σωφρονισταί (moral trainers) and the marshal of the ephebes (κοσμητής) by cheirotonia ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 42.2).Footnote ²⁴ In the fifth century, then, what made a man dynatōtatos with respect to the generalship?

There are enough traces, scattered among the literary and epigraphic evidence for the fifth and early-fourth centuries, to substantiate an observation made by Hamel that voters in the Ekklēsia (Assembly) might look to exploit the ‘regional expertise’ of the men they elected as stratēgoi. Hamel documents several instances where regional ‘experience’ seemed to factor into the Athenians’ decision to appoint specific commanders; however, she does not develop the idea, calling these, ‘isolated instances’ and remaining agnostic about the degree to which personal connections and other social networks regularly influenced strategic appointments.Footnote ²⁵

Mitchell collects much more systematically the evidence for personal connections (xenia and philia) between Athenian generals and the locals in their appointed regions of command from 435–323 bc, reaching the conclusion that only very rarely were ekklēsiazontes influenced by the personal connections of the generals they elected.Footnote ²⁶ Mitchell cites figures of ‘only’ forty-three out of 379 known stratēgoi having personal ties to their regional commands. There is, of course, much we cannot know, given the state of the evidence, but this level of occurrence in itself seems enough to strongly hint that the Athenian public was well aware of the potential advantages to be had in electing men with personal networks as generals and that appointments to command naturally followed the logic of those networks. Indeed, a somewhat stronger case can be made for the presence of these dynamics in Athenian command decisions if we narrow the analytical focus to the fifth-century democracy, in which the nature of the stratēgia was somewhat different than it was in the fourth century.Footnote ²⁷

* * *

It is well documented that, by the mid-fifth century, the Athenians gave repeat commands to individuals in regions that had been traditionally associated with their kinsmen. For example, the younger Miltiades and his son Kimon, Hagnon and his son Theramenes, Nikostratos son of Dieitrephes and his son, or at least his kinsman, the younger Dieitrephes, and the historian Thucydides serve as famous Thrakophoitai (Thrace-enthusiasts) who commanded Athenian troops in the Thraceward region.Footnote ²⁸

The Philaid family enjoyed political prominence, ties of xenia, and economic fortune in the Thracian Chersonese thanks to the efforts of the elder Miltiades, rival to Peisistratos around 550 bc (Hdt. 6.35–6). After leading an expedition of Athenian apoikists to the region and establishing fortifications from Kardia to Paktye, the elder Miltiades and his family become so well ensconced in the Chersonese that sources speak of their tyranny or their ‘kingly’ and perpetual authority (dignitate regia … perpertuum imperium: Nep. Milt. 2.3; Hdt. 6.104.2). The younger Miltiades, son of Kimon, was sent as a replacement leader by the Peisistratids after the death of his brother, Stesagoras, who was killed in a conflict against a rival Thracian tribe, consolidating his control of the region through marriage to Hegesipyle, the daughter of Oloros (Hdt. 6.39). It was not just his success at the Battle of Marathon then that made Miltiades the obvious choice to lead the Athenian fleet in 489 ‘against whatever country he would lead them’, but ostensibly against islands that supported the Persians (Hdt. 6.132.1). In the event, the expedition foundered against its (presumably) first target in Paros, but Miltiades’ cageyness about the nature of the expedition has invited speculation by a number of scholars that the real goal of the campaign was to reassert control over the northern Aegean.Footnote ²⁹

Miltiades’ son Kimon successfully campaigned in Thrace in 476, ousting Persian garrisons in the region of the Strymon River opposite Thasos, establishing an Athenian presence in and reasserting Philaid influence over the resource-rich territory (Hdt. 1.107; Thuc. 1.98.1; Plut. Cim. 7–8.2; Nep. Cimon 2.2). In 466, after his success at Eurymedon, Kimon was again sent by the Athenians to Thrace, this time to the Chersonese, which he subdued and turned over to the Athenians to resettle (Plut. Cim. 14.1). Kimon then led the Athenians in putting down the revolt of Thasos in 465 (Plut. Cim. 14.2) and was probably one of the generals alongside Sophanes and Leagros in the campaign in the Strymon River valley (Hdt. 9.75; Thuc. 1.100).Footnote ³⁰ Plutarch notes that prior to the Thasians’ revolt, Kimon was active in the region ‘with only a very few triremes’ and that he managed to subdue the Chersonese, defeating a much larger combined force of Persians and Thracians from the interior with only four ships (Plut. Cim. 14.1). Presumably, Kimon’s victory owed much to support from local allies.Footnote ³¹

A generation later, we find Hagnon son of Nikias no less than three times in Thucydides’ history as an Athenian commander in the Thraceward region, the third time in reference to him as the man selected to lead the expedition to found Amphipolis in 437.Footnote ³² It is unclear whether Hagnon’s Thracian connections predated his appointment to lead the expedition to Ennea Hodoi. His only known activity prior to 437 was as a general in the Samian War (Thuc. 1.116–17). But he was certainly among the most notable Athenians of his generation: a fragment of Kratinos refers to him as ἀρχαιόπλουτος or ‘from old money’ (fr. 171 K-A); he was among the officials who brokered the Peace of Nicias (Thuc. 5.19.2) and is one of the pair of known probouloi or ‘advisory councilmen’ (Lys. 12.65).Footnote ³³ His being selected general of the campaign to expel the fearsome Edonians, who had inflicted a devastating defeat on the Athenians previously, marks him as an important figure (Hdt. 9.75; Thuc. 4.102; Diod. 12.68). As Hornblower comments, Hagnon was ‘something of a northern expert’ and in 430/29 he was entrusted with the critical campaign to take Potidaea (Thuc. 2.58.1).Footnote ³⁴ Hagnon’s last command in Thrace, as reported by Thucydides, is especially noteworthy in respect of his connections in the region. He was part of the Odrysian Thracian king Sitalkes’ campaign against Perdikkas of Macedon in 429/8, acting, according to Thucydides, as ‘hegemon’ (2.95.3) and leading no Athenian troops which, although promised to Sitalkes, were never actually sent (2.101).Footnote ³⁵ Hegemon is a standard and generic term for military officers outside of Athens in Thucydides’ text (for example, 1.128, 2.11.3, 1.128, 3.98.1),Footnote ³⁶ but the use of the term for an individual Athenian in Thucydides occurs only one other time in the history, to describe the remarkable campaign undertaken by the general Demosthenes in Amphilochia (3.105, 3.107, discussed in detail below). In both instances the designation is for an experienced Athenian commander as a leader of a foreign force in his region of expertise.

Hagnon’s son, Theramenes, held commands repeatedly in the Thraceward region between 411 and 407, at times working closely with other known Thracophiles in Alcibiades and Thrasyboulos (Xen. 1.1.8–12; Diod. 13.64.3, 13.66.1).Footnote ³⁷ Hagnon’s slightly younger contemporary, Nikostratos, son of Dieitrephes, furnishes yet another example of a prominent stratēgos, who was something of a Thracian specialist and who, like Hagnon, appears to have passed this legacy on to his own son. Nikostratos was elected to the stratēgia several times between 427/6 and his last attested command at the battle of Mantinea in 418.Footnote ³⁸ In 423, Nikostratos was in joint command of a force that campaigned against Mende and Skione; joining his Athenian soldiers were 1,000 Thracian mercenaries (Thuc. 4.129.2).Footnote ³⁹ The Thracian connections of the younger Dieitrephes, presumably Nikostratos’ son, are better attested.Footnote ⁴⁰ Dieitrephes appears to have served as a cavalry officer (phylarchos) and a commander (hipparchos) some time prior to 414 (Ar. Birds 797–9). In 413, he was chosen by the Athenians to lead back to Thrace the contingent of 1,300 allied Thracians who had arrived too late to join the expedition to Sicily under Demosthenes. These Thracians from the Dian tribe were responsible for the most infamous atrocities of the Peloponnesian War at Mykalessos (Thuc. 7.27–30). The role of Dieitrephes in the massacre at Mykalessos is not made clear by Thucydides, but he does state that the commander was instructed by the Athenians to ‘get [the Thracians] to harm the enemy if possible’ (7.29.1). Whatever Dieitrephes’ part in the indiscriminate slaughter at Mykalessos, the Athenians evidently had few reservations about appointing him to command in Thrace and to look after their interests there for a number of years afterwards. In 411, as stratēgos commanding in Ionia, he was ‘chosen to govern affairs in the region of Thrace’ (Thuc. 8.64.2). An inscription from 409/8 (IG I³ 110) names Dieitrephes as the proposer of a decree granting honours to a Skiathian, which strongly suggests his involvement in Thracian affairs at this late date – perhaps as proxenos if no longer as a stratēgos.

Of course, the famous example of an Athenian general selected for command in the northern Aegean on the basis of personal networks and experience of the region is the historian Thucydides himself. Thucydides was appointed general along with his colleague Eukles with responsibility for the Thraceward region in 424/3 in large measure because of his considerable influence there (4.104–6). He enjoyed κτῆσις (legal ownership) over the gold mines on the mainland and had δύναμις (influence) among the leaders of the inhabitants there (4.105.1). In describing his attempt to secure Amphipolis and Eion from Brasidas, the historian provides his own patronymic for the first and only time in the history: Thucydides son of Olorus, an Athenian with an unusual and distinctly Thracian name. Thucydides’ father shared the name of the Thracian king to whose daughter, Hegesipyle, the elder Miltiades was married (Hdt. 6.39.2). Plutarch adds the details that the rights to work the gold mines in the Strymon Valley had been granted to Thucydides (or his father) by Kimon, the son of Miltiades and Hegesipyle, and that Thucydides, after the failure to protect Amphipolis, went into exile and lived the rest of his days in Skaptesyle on the Thracian coast (Cim. 4.1–2).

The evidence for this kind of regional expertise of Athenian commanders and their various personal and familial connections with local leaders in their region of command is by no means limited to Thrace. There is evidence for individuals or kinsmen holding repeat commands in the same region for each district of the Aegean empire and for Western Greece. To the Hellespontine region and the Black Sea, the Athenians sent Lamachos, son of Xenophanes, multiple times. Lamachos first commanded with Pericles against Sinope in 436/5.Footnote ⁴¹ Just over a decade later he was sent out by the Athenians with ten ἀργυρολόγοι νῆϵς (money-collecting ships) to the Hellespont. On what appears to be largely personal initiative, he left his two colleagues, Demodokos and Aristeides, and sailed with ten ships along the Euxine coast as far as Herakleia. Disaster then struck the fleet when a sudden rainstorm and flood caused him to lose his ships, but Lamachos was able to lead his forces safely more than 200 km overland to Chalkedon (Thuc. 4.75.1–2). One wonders if a different Athenian general, less experienced in the region, would have been either so bold in his operations beyond the Bosphorus or so successful in this miniature anabasis. Twenty years later, Lamachos’ son, Tydeus, probably the same man who served as an officer for Lamachos in Sicily (Lys. 20.26), appears among the Athenian commanders at Aigospotamoi (Xen. Hell. 2.1.16).Footnote ⁴²

To the southern coast of Asia Minor the Athenians sent Melesandros with a fleet of just six ships in 430/29 to campaign in Karia and Lykia and to collect revenue (Thuc. 2.69). Keen conjectures that, given their number, the Athenians under Melesandros’ command were meant to be a core around which an allied army could be assembled.Footnote ⁴³ Melesandros was killed and much of his force destroyed in a battle in Lykia. A decade and a half later, the records of the Treasurers of Athena record payments to another Melesandros dispatched to Lykia, surely a kinsman if not a son (IG I³ 371, 3).Footnote ⁴⁴

Nicias son of Nikeratos was active as a commander in Thrace multiple times between 423/2 and 417/6 (Thuc. 4.129.2; 5.83.4; IG I³ 370), and earlier in the 420s had been repeatedly chosen for operations around the Peloponnese and in the Cyclades (Thuc. 3.91.3–6, 4.27.5, 119.2). In the summer of 424, Nicias was chosen, along with Nikostratos and Autokles, to lead an Athenian attack on Kythera, an island that enjoyed an especially close relationship with Sparta as Thucydides describes and as evidenced by the presence of a Spartiate officer called the κυθηροδίκης (4.53.2). It need not imply any existing relationship between Nicias and the Kytherans, but Thucydides certainly places special emphasis on Nicias’ diplomacy in ending hostilities quickly and efficiently on the island, citing that ‘there had been some correspondence between Nicias and some of the Kytherians previously as well’ (4.54.2–3). Did Nicias become the foremost Athenian negotiator in the peace with Sparta that has born his name since antiquity simply because he was a skilled and eager diplomat or was he also able to leverage personal connections within Sparta, as he seems to have done in Kythera?Footnote ⁴⁵ Five years later, Nicias was probably the best option for the Athenians to share command of the expedition to Sicily with Alcibiades and Lamachos for a host of reasons, not least of all his cautious manner, but it will surely have been discussed by some ekklēsiazontes that Nicias had served as proxenos to various Syracusans who had lived in Athens (Diod. 13.27.3).Footnote ⁴⁶

In Western and Greater Greece more broadly, Phormio and his son Asopios, Demosthenes, and Eurymedon are all attested as active and frequent commanders wherein they exploit personal ties of guest-friendship (ξϵνία) to the advantage of the Athenians.Footnote ⁴⁷ Phormio had been commanding Athenian forces operating in Akarnania and around Naupaktos from 430/29–429/8 (Thuc. 2.68.7, 69, 80, 88). According to Thucydides, during the summer of 428, ‘the Athenians dispatched thirty ships with Asopios son of Phormio as general, since the Akarnanians had urged that they send them a son of Phormio, or some other relative, as a commander’ (3.7.1).Footnote ⁴⁸ The Athenians evidently approved of the tight relationship between Phormio and their western allies and saw some advantage in indulging this request.Footnote ⁴⁹ The next fact reported by Thucydides probably explains the quid pro quo. Asopios and his fleet ravaged some areas around the Peloponnese, but having reached Naupaktos, the general ‘sent most of the ships home … but keeping twelve with him he levied the Akarnanians in full force (Ἀκαρνᾶνας ἀναστήσας πανδημϵί) and campaigned against Oiniadai’. Athens’ interests here are advanced without the full commitment of Athenian troops.Footnote ⁵⁰

This type of example can be multiplied. Demosthenes the son of Alkisthenes, in the summer of 426, was in command of thirty ships off the western coast of the Peloponnese (Thuc. 3.91.1). His mission was to aid the Akarnanians in attacking Leukas. He seems, however, largely on his own initiative, to have led his western allies in a campaign inland against the Aitolians. Thucydides tells us that Demosthenes was persuaded to do so (3.95.1):

We are reminded of the more familiar case of Kleon, who a year later promised the Assembly that he would take the beleaguered Spartans at Pylos ‘with no troops from the city’ but using troops from Lemnos, Imbros and Ainos (4.28.4).Footnote ⁵¹ It is probably not a coincidence that part of the army Kleon later led against Amphipolis included the ‘strongest contingent of Lemnian and Imbrian troops’ (5.8.2).Footnote ⁵²

Demosthenes, Asopios, and Kleon in the 420s secure Athenian commands that promise opportunities to provide strategic goods for Athens, without much Athenian help. One only need recall Aristophanes’ Knights to appreciate Dēmos’ attraction to such goods at no cost promised by rhētores (public speakers) and prospective stratēgoi or prostatai (leaders).Footnote ⁵³ In 426, Demosthenes is said to have employed only 300 of his regular Athenian troops in his Aetolian campaign, preferring instead to use Messenians and other Akarnanian troops who offered their service to him personally ‘out of gratitude’. These troops, Thucydides tells us:

In addition to supplementing manpower, the foreign personal connections of Athenian generals might facilitate the payment, lodging, and feeding of troops on campaign, could attract mercenary support, and could produce valuable reconnaissance and intelligence. As such, a general’s personal bonds of xenia were just as valuable to the elite generals as they were to the common citizen-soldiers, who comprised the very armies they commanded and the very assemblies that elected them.

The relationship between Demosthenes and his Akarnanian allies seems to have been extremely close; Thucydides records that in 426/5, on the basis of his experience commanding in the region the previous year, the Akarnanians ‘sent for’ Demosthenes and requested he become their hegemon in their campaign to Amphilochian Argos (3.105.3), choosing him to command the whole allied army together with their own generals (3.107.1). Demosthenes at this time was not an elected Athenian general, but nevertheless was working in concert with a fleet of twenty Athenian ships blockading Argos while he commanded a unit of Messenian hoplites, sixty Athenian archers, and the Akarnanian troops (107.2).

Not long after this, as Thucydides recounts it, Demosthenes persuaded the Athenians to allow him, still unelected (ὄντι ἰδιώτῃ: 4.2.4), to use some Athenian ships bound for Sicily for his own strategic purposes on the Peloponnese whereupon he fortified Pylos, shortly thereafter being formally elected general. Following the victory at Pylos, Demosthenes was elected general again for 424/3 and was part of the planned, two-pronged attack on Boeotia, attempting to lead his end of the invasion from Western Greece (Thuc. 4.76.1), after having raised allied forces in Akarnania (4.77, 89.1).

Treasurers of Athena record two payments in separate prytaneis of 418/17 made for the leaders (plausibly restored as τοῖς τριϵράρχοις [‘to the trierarchs’]) at (Amphilocian) Argos with Demosthenes (IG I³ 370, 5, 15).Footnote ⁵⁴ Of the nineteen payments made for military purposes recorded on the stelē, only those pertaining to Demosthenes are listed with the formula ‘τοῖς μϵτὰ’ (‘to those alongside’) with ‘Demosthenes’ in the genitive. All other payments are made ‘to the general(s)’ or ‘to the soldiers’, listed alongside their region of operation. Was Demosthenes again acting in an unelected capacity as Thucydides maintains he had for the summer of 425? The first payment intended for Demosthenes’ forces was redirected by an Assembly Decree, cited by the Treasurers, to generals commanding in Thrace, which may support the notion that Demosthenes was acting again as an idiotēs (private citizen) and was therefore deprioritized; though he did receive funds in the following month.

Finally, selected by the Athenians to lead the second armada to Sicily in the spring of 413, Demosthenes is again described by Thucydides as leveraging personal connections of philia to raise irregular troops (7.33). Demosthenes and Eurymedon, a fellow-expert in western Greece, first make a stop in Iapygia and take on board some 150 Messapian javelin-throwers.Footnote ⁵⁵ These troops are provided by Artas, a local chief with whom the Athenian commanders renew ‘a certain old friendship’ (τινα παλαιὰν φιλίαν: 7.33.4). We note the difference in the phrasing Thucydides uses when he describes a state-level alliance. In their next stop, Demosthenes and Eurymedon persuade the Metapontians to provide them with 300 javelin-throwers, this time relying not on bonds of personal loyalty and friendship but making the appeal κατὰ τὸ ξυμμαχικόν (‘according to the alliance’). Thucydides also mentions Akarnanian troops in Demosthenes’ armada, who were there ‘chiefly out of philia for Demosthenes’ (7.57.10).Footnote ⁵⁶

Other examples exist of personal connections being used to augment the forces of Athenian commanders in the field in the manner of Demosthenes and Eurymedon. Thucydides himself, of course, claims that Brasidas feared his arrival at Amphipolis because he had learned that Thucydides was influential among the leading men there and might bring against him a force not just of Athenians but of various Thracian allies from the mainland and surrounding islands (4.105.1–2). It is all but certain that Thucydides was chosen as general in 424 because of his connections in the north, as he himself implies.

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Clearly there is enough data here to establish a strong trend if not a pattern emerging from the 420s of elite Athenians being chosen for specific, regional commands based on their existing ties to those regions. Nor was it always direct connections to the theatre of operation that seem paramount in the decisions of the Athenians to appoint certain generals to particular commands. Knowledge of the connections of elite citizens to foreigners seems broadly to have been a relevant consideration in strategic appointments. As noted above, Kleon’s connection with Lemnians and Imbrians seems to have been an important factor in his ability to persuade the Athenians to assign him command to Pylos and Amphipolis.Footnote ⁵⁷ The appointment of Lakedaimonios son of Kimon, one of three generals sent by the Athenians in 433 to Corcyra, met a distinctive need in foreign diplomacy but had nothing necessarily to do with connections in western Greece itself (Thuc. 1.45.1–3; IG I³ 364). Plutarch suggests that Lakedaimonios was specifically chosen by Pericles for the mission and allotted the meagre force of only ten triremes in the hopes that the mission would end in failure and disgrace for his political rival (Plut. Per. 29.1–4).Footnote ⁵⁸ There is, however, no reason to believe that Pericles was responsible for the selection of the generals on this or any other occasion – as we have seen, this was the prerogative of the dēmos.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Athenian fleet under Lakedaimonios was explicitly instructed not to engage its Corinthian adversaries unless they first attacked Athens’ ally (Thuc. 1.45.3). It has been frequently observed that Lakedaimonios was probably chosen by the Athenians for the expedition because of his family’s ties to Sparta in the hopes that the strands of xenia might do something to forestall the complete unravelling of the Thirty Years’ Peace into openly-declared war.Footnote ⁶⁰ Were the Athenians not selecting men for the stratēgia with an eye to their personal networks beyond Athens, it would be uncanny how often just the right individual with just the right connections is fortuitously elected stratēgos and assigned to just the right theatre when the circumstances most suited those connections.

The Athenian who perhaps most exemplifies the exploitation of personal connections, both in pursuit of military command and in office as stratēgos, is the slippery Alcibiades. In the run up to the Sicilian Expedition, Thucydides has him boasting to the Assembly of his service to the dēmos born out of his influence among the Peloponnesians (6.16.6–17.1). Not only had Alcibiades previously orchestrated the anti-Spartan alliance from 419/18 (Thuc. 5.43.3, 5.52.2, 6.16.6; Isoc. 16.15), but we learn that in the Athenian armada of 415 there were 500 Argive and 250 Mantinean hoplites, who were serving ‘because of Alcibiades’ (6.29.3, 6.61.3–6; Plut. Alc. 19.4).Footnote ⁶¹ The Peloponnesian contingents that Alcibiades supplied to the Athenian forces in Sicily were a substantial contribution to the armada. The 750 hoplites were as much as half the size of the hoplite contingent from Athens itself (Thuc. 6.43). Naturally, Alcibiades’ Peloponnesian influence held sway with the voting masses in Athens. An inscription from 415 suggests that the Athenians considered sending only one general to Sicily – surely Alcibiades (IG I³ 93).Footnote ⁶² And when the scandals of the Herms and the Mysteries broke, Thucydides says that the enemies of Alcibiades feared that the dēmos would go soft on him, showing him deference because of his influence with these foreign soldiers (6.29.3). When Alcibiades was arraigned in Sicily, the Salaminians were instructed to do things quietly so as not cause a disturbance among the army – especially the Argives and Mantineans (6.61.5). There is no way to corroborate the claim made by his son of the same name that Alcibiades looked for refuge from the Athenians first in Argos before ending up in Sparta, but it is not at all implausible (Isoc. 16.9).

In 407 Alcibiades, re-enfranchised, elected general, and made ἁπάντων ἡγϵμὼν αὐτοκράτωρ (plenipotentiary commander of all forces), was sent to the Hellespont. It is worth considering whether Alcibiades was chosen for this crucial command simply because he was so clearly the ablest tactician in Athens. There were other factors that made Alcibiades an attractive candidate. Alcibiades is known to have been tutored by the Thracian Zopyros and he enjoyed ties with contemporary Athenians with connections to Thrace such as Theramenes and Thrasyboulos (Pl. I Alc. 122b; Plut. Alc. 1.2; Nep. Thrasyboulos §1).Footnote ⁶³ Plutarch states that at the battle for Selymbria, Alcibiades enjoyed the enthusiastic support of a good many Thracian troops because of their gratitude and good will towards him (Alc. 30.5). Alcibiades’ involvement in Thrace provoked the jab from Lysias that he would have preferred citizenship in Thrace to living in Athens (14.38). In the event, Alcibiades was relieved of his command after his failure at the battle of Notion and he retired in 406 to Paktye, one of his three private fortresses in Thraceward region, about 30 kilometres from Aigospotamoi.Footnote ⁶⁴

From his fortress, we are told, Alcibiades observed the Athenian and Spartan fleets until he approached the Athenian generals with some advice about Sestos and a proposal. Diodorus, relying here on Ephorus, reports that in seeking a share of the command, Alcibiades promised the Athenians the use of Thracian soldiers from the armies of the local kings, Medokos and Seuthes, citing his personal friendship with these potentates (13.105.3; Plut. Alc. 37.2–3). Alcibiades, of course, was rebuffed and the rest is history, so to speak.

The politically polarizing Alcibiades from 420–415 and from 410–405 is the example par excellence of the ambivalence that surrounded the figure of the elite citizen as he contended for the honours of stratēgos. In the adversarial arena of democratic politics in which speech and persuasion won the day, orators and litigants cast their opponents as venal aristocrats whose foreign contacts undermined their loyalty to the democracy. The very same personal attributes and connections, which could plausibly be broadcast in support of a candidate for office, in the context of a formal review or trial, could also be turned against generals by their political opponents. Often the denunciations against generals must have been made by fellow rhētores, perhaps with future designs on the stratēgia themselves. The ‘gifts’ exchanged between Athenian generals and foreign potentates, which facilitated personal ties of philia and xenia, were easily construed in the rhetorically-charged assembly or the courts as ‘bribes’. Collection of revenue by generals in the field could be spun, in the mouth of a rhetor, into a charge of embezzlement or extortion of allies.Footnote ⁶⁵

This is to suggest that the ambiguities we find around the office of stratēgos are ones that the Athenians themselves were fully aware of and that the democratic process fully exploited. The very activities of elite stratēgoi that were expected and even demanded by the dēmos in one context were judged to be of dubious motivations or to be outrightly traitorous in others, depending entirely on the argument of the moment and the judgement of the dēmos. Laches defends himself in his (fictional) trial as a benefactor (Wasps 914–16), but is accused of not sharing what he stole (μϵτέδωκϵν οὐδὲ τῷ κοινῷ: 918) and is denounced as the μονοφαγίστατος or ‘the Supreme Solo-Swallower’, who devours the goods of the army in private (923). In a similar vein, Alcibiades’ Argive connections are a political asset early in the summer of 415 (Thuc. 6.16.6), but a few months later they become a liability after a failed oligarchic revolution in Argos involving some of his xenoi (6.61.3). Alcibiades’ Thracian connections, in one light, make him the perfect man for the job of securing the Hellespont. In political invective, however, Alcibiades’ Thracian fortresses become the intended refuge of an Athenian traitor (for example, Lys. 14.38; Isoc. 16.38; cf. 16.42; Plut. Alc. 36.2).

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Not all the evidence surveyed here for the personal connections of Athenian generals in the regions to which they were appointed by the dēmos, of course, is equally compelling. Admittedly the case for several of the discrete examples cited is tenuous; however, all told, there is some evidence for at least eighteen different commanders with apparent private ties to their strategic theatres. On the one hand, this may not seem a very robust sample. The democracy elected ten men each year for over a century and a half. On the other hand, given the paucity of our evidence, the fact that some ten to fifteen per cent of known Athenian generals have demonstrable personal links to their area of operations seems more than sufficient to confirm the hypothesis that men could be elected to the stratēgia on the basis of their private or family networks.Footnote ⁶⁶ It may be hazardous to attribute the concentration of such instances in the late fifth century – especially in the Peloponnesian War period – to anything other than the more or less chance survival of our source material.Footnote ⁶⁷ It would not be surprising, however, if the Athenians, finding themselves fighting a complex war in multiple theatres in the 420s onwards and confronting severe manpower and financial pressures, increasingly resorted to electing men deemed to be παρασκϵυαστικός and ποριστικός, or ‘skilled in provisioning’ and ‘capable of supplying’ (Xen. Mem. 3.1.6), and who intimated to the ekklēsiazontes their potential to supplement Athenian military resources with those provided by their international connections (as seen explicitly with Kimon, Hagnon, Asopios, Demosthenes, and Kleon).

Such a reading fits neatly with the correlated uptick in legal actions taken against generals in the same period. Of the fifty-four cases brought against generals under the democracy, Hamel observes that Kimon’s is the only attested legal challenge during the Pentakontaetia ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 27.1; Plut. Per. 10.5, Cim. 14.5), a period for which the percentage of known stratēgoi is relatively high. By contrast, twenty-two of the remaining fifty-three prosecutions fall between the years 431/0 and 405/4.Footnote ⁶⁸ Of course, these patterns may also be attributable to the greater visibility of cases afforded by the richer evidence of the latter fifth century, and it would be dangerous to draw any definitive conclusions based on this data. Nevertheless, the striking increase in attested legal actions against generals coincides with an equally striking increase of attested strategic appointments with known personal connections in their areas of command. I am inclined to interpret the two phenomena as interrelated.

The same Athenian general, who could be said in the context of one assembly to be the apt candidate for a particular command precisely because his personal interests, status and connections could be put to civic ends, might in another ecclesiastic, bouleutic, or forensic context find himself scrutinized by his peers for those very same personal interests and status-defining traits, along demotic terms before the dēmos.Footnote ⁶⁹ Rather than an undemocratic compromise whereby the dēmos simply deferred to the traditional leadership prerogatives of the elite, competitive election and robust agonistic prosecution of generals by their elite peers meant that Athens had in the stratēgia an institution that thoroughly affirmed the kratos of the dēmos. Through election the dēmos adjudicated the competition of its leading citizens vying to serve as its commanders and in so doing might avail itself not merely of the military expertise of the elite, but just as importantly, their personal fortunes, regional expertise, and personal contacts. At the same time, competition within the elite stratum itself provided an outlet for elite ambition while creating a mechanism of internal regulation, as rivalrous peers launched public trials against current or former stratēgoi, thus protecting the city from the worst excesses of generals who sought to enrich themselves or increase their personal power bases abroad without sanction from or at the expense of the dēmos. Viewed in this light, the selection of generals by cheirotonia looks markedly democratic.