This volume is a revised version of K.'s doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. The work opens with an important remark on the current state of study of the Athenian chora: due to the abundant literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence related to the city of Athens, scholarship on the ancient polis has been characterised by a marked Atheno-centrism, or better, asty-centrism. As a result, the demes located out of the city centre have attracted much less scholarly attention and very few of them have been subject to intensive study. K. aims at – and fully succeeds in – contributing to fill the picture of rural Attica by focusing on Acharnai, the largest Athenian deme. To this end, she offers a comprehensive study that combines the archaeological, literary, epigraphic, topographic and prosopographic evidence, and draws ‘a more or less complete picture of the people, history, and identity of Acharnai’ (p. 191).
The book comprises an introduction and conclusion, five chapters, three appendices, nine figures – one of which is a map of Acharnai showing the archaeological finds in the area – and one colour plate, which is a reproduction of the map of the Cleisthenic demes from J.S. Traill, The Political Organization of Attica: a Study of the Demes, Trittyes, and Phylai, and their Representation in the Athenian Council (1975). One wonders why K. did not reprint the more recent and thus up-to-date version of Traill's famous map, which appears in Demos and Trittys: Epigraphical and Topographical Studies in the Organization of Attica (1986).
Appendix 1 is a catalogue of the archaeological finds in the area of ancient Acharnai. Appendix 2 provides the texts and translations of six inscriptions related to various aspects of the public life of the deme. Each entry, except no. 5 (IG II2 1207), is accompanied by a rather brief list of the relevant literature. Appendix 3 is particularly valuable as it provides a complete prosopography of all the known Acharnians until 86 b.c.e.
Chapter 1 investigates the exact location and settlement structure of the deme. K. points out that although Acharnai was the largest deme of Attica, and although Thucydides provides precious information on the area of the deme in his account of the first invasion of Attica by the Spartan king Archidamus at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (2.19.1–22.1), the precise site of Acharnai and the pattern of settlement in the area have been intensely debated. A few discoveries recently made in the area of the modern town of Menidi allowed K. to reassess fruitfully earlier theories based on the scattered evidence previously available. In agreement with the result of the latest archaeological survey in other areas of the Athenian countryside, K. identifies a dispersed settlement pattern in ancient Acharnai. According to this pattern, the deme was made up of at least three separate centres of population, one of which was probably recognised as its ‘political centre’, as may be inferred from the concentration of remains of civic or public character in the area. A number of isolated farmsteads may have completed the picture of settlement.
Chapter 2 looks at various questions associated with the population and demography of the deme. These are preceded by a discussion of the different scholarly approaches to the demography of the Athenian polis as a whole – a necessary introduction when we consider that in decades of debate on the total population of Athens and Attica, scholars have arrived at almost opposite conclusions. By reassessing these demographic models as well as Thucydides' passage on the size of the Acharnian hoplite contingent at the start of the Peloponnesian War (2.20.4), K. estimates that the population of Acharnai in the Classical period was probably slightly larger than 9,000 individuals, including women, metics and slaves. She then examines the mobility of the Acharnians. As is known, the study of the movement of people in Attica is made possible by all Athenian citizens bearing their inherited demotikon, i.e. a name component indicating origin from a specific deme. Previous investigations of residence and mobility in Attica have focused mainly on the evidence from funerary inscriptions. K. contributes towards the progress of these studies by incorporating other types of epigraphic evidence, which provide indications of patterns of residence and mobility of both citizens and metics for Acharnai. Her study reveals that the Acharnians were deeply involved in migration to other areas of Athenian territory and, at the same time, Acharnai itself attracted and received people from other demes as well as from other regions of Greece.
Chapter 3 examines the political and economic structures of Acharnai. K. first reminds us of the ‘dual’ nature of Attic demes: on the one hand, they functioned as poleis in miniature and, as such, as semi-autonomous units which had their own territory, assembly and officials; on the other hand, being the smallest and yet fundamental units of the Athenian state, the demes played a crucial role in all aspects of the polis itself, and were in turn affected by decisions of the Athenian polis about political and economic matters. Accordingly, she first discusses the workings of the local government in Acharnai: the deme assemblies (agorai) and their probable location, i.e. the theatre and/or nearby temenos of Athena Hippia; and the deme officials, who, given Acharnai's unusually large population and size, seem to have had peculiar role and duties, compared with the other demes. She then moves to the overlap with politics on the polis level, dealing in particular with the deme representation in the Athenian Council. K. rejects Traill's idea that Acharnai was an officially split deme and proposes an equally arguable system, whereby ‘if it was the case that more or less equal trittyes were desired when the representatives of the tribe were prytaneis, it seems probable that this was accomplished by the partition of the residents associated most closely with one settlement site in Acharnai, and temporary reassignment of that group to another trittys’ (p. 111).
Chapter 4 explores questions of identity and stereotypes associated with Acharnai. Two main portrayals of the Acharnians emerge from the sources: in the Classical period, they are depicted as particularly belligerent and aggressive people, whilst post-classical sources abandon completely this image and focus on the landscape and the celebration of Dionysiac festivities. K. provides an insightful analysis of these different depictions, and proposes a series of possible reasons for them, related to the nature and authorship of the sources, and to historical and political circumstances.
In Chapter 5 the literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence are thoroughly examined in order to shed light on the religious life of Acharnai, both in terms of local cultic practices and of Acharnian participation in other Attic cults. The starting point is the account of Pausanias who, as usual, only mentions what he considers as the most noteworthy cults and sanctuaries of the deme. Given the lack of space for a more detailed review of this last chapter, I shall limit myself to the following comment. Since there is no evidence that the cult of Ares in Acharnai was still functioning in the second century c.e., nor that the deme was still made up of several loci of population at that time, I see no reason to assume with K. that ‘Pausanias missed the cult of Ares because he – literally – missed seeing it’, perhaps because he did not pass through the deme centre where the sanctuary was located (p. 168). More probably, Pausanias fails to mention the cult of Ares because at his time it was actually unworthy of mention, as either it had ceased to be practised or it was no longer flourishing as in former times.
Even though some of K.'s arguments are not completely convincing, especially in her discussion of the religious sphere of the deme, and despite my disagreement on the general idea of the ‘uniqueness’ of Acharnai on the political, economic and cultic level compared with the other demes, this does not diminish the value of this study as a very important contribution. K.'s much awaited book is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of studies of Attic demes and should be read by everyone interested in rural Attica as well as in Athenian political, social, economic and religious history in general.
