In his account of the events leading up to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides tells us that in 435 b.c. the Epidamnians decided to transfer their allegiance from Corcyra to Corinth in accordance with the Delphic oracle, whereupon the Corinthians agreed to support Epidamnus against their own colony Corcyra.Footnote ¹ One of the reasons given is that the Corinthians hated the Corcyraeans for their contempt for their mother city, as ‘in their common festivals they would not allow them the customary privileges of founders, at their sacrifice they did not give priority to Corinthians [as other colonies did]’ (οὔτε γὰρ ἐν πανηγύρεσι ταῖς κοιναῖς διδόντες γέρα τὰ νομιζόμενα οὔτε Κορινθίῳ ἀνδρὶ προκαταρχόμενοι τῶν ἱερῶν ὥσπερ αἱ ἄλλαι ἀποικίαι).Footnote ² Precisely what the dispute was and what the word προκατάρχεσθαι means have not been convincingly explained by commentators.

Few twentieth-century scholars have commented on what the κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις were. The scholiast explained the πανηγύρεις as ‘the Olympian, Nemean and such contests’ (ἐν πανηγύρεσι: ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις, Νεμέοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἀγῶσιν).Footnote ³ This was rejected most categorically by Bloomfield: ‘the Scholiast explains it of the Olympic and Nemean games. Those, however, cannot here be meant, but the public festivals of each city’ (his italics).Footnote ⁴ Similarly, some scholars suggested that they were festivals common to Corinth and Corcyra.Footnote ⁵ Of the scholars who take κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις to be festivals shared by the mother city and colonies, most consider it more likely that they were held in the metropolis and attended by representatives of the colonies, rather than in the colonies and attended by the Corinthians. Krüger suggested that while they could refer to festivals in Corcyra, more probably the Corcyraeans failed to send theoriai to festivals in Corinth.Footnote ⁶ Graham envisages both possibilities, but is also in favour of festivals in Corinth: ‘the description πανηγύρεσι ταῖς κοιναῖς certainly seems more suitable for festivals of the metropolis in which the colonies took part’.Footnote ⁷ In support of this interpretation, he provides many parallels of colonies sending offerings to their mother city.Footnote ⁸ For example, the regular offerings required of Brea at the Great Panathenaea and the City Dionysia; phialai from Miletus' colonies in the Hellenistic period; dedications supposedly sent to Athena Lindia by Lindian colonies (as recorded in the so-called Lindian Chronicle); a sixth-century dedication possibly sent by Perinthian colonists to Samos; and Astypalaea's offerings to Epidaurus in the fourth century.Footnote ⁹ Gomme, Andrewes and Dover, like Graham, compare γέρα τὰ νομιζόμενα to the offerings required of Athens' colony Brea in the fifth century, whereas Hornblower draws our attention to Paros' voluntary offerings to the Great Panathenaea and the City Dionysia in the fourth century.Footnote ¹⁰ Neither of these two more recent commentaries comments on κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις, but underlying these comparisons seems to be the assumption that the ‘common festivals’ were held in the mother city, to which colonies were expected to send offerings.

However, comparisons with Athenian colonial relations risk being misleading as fifth-century Athens constituted a special case that cannot be taken as typical of other metropolis–colonies relations. The Great Panathenaea and the City Dionysia enjoyed a quasi-Panhellenic status at the height of Athenian imperialism. Religious participation on such occasions was a signifier of a city's colonial status, and the offerings were expressions of the reciprocal but hierarchical relations between Athens and her subject colonies.Footnote ¹¹ Although cultic sharing is a known feature in some metropolis–colony relations,Footnote ¹² we do not know how many other mother cities could, as Athens did, require their colonies to attend and bring offerings to festivals in the metropolis. There is no reason to assume that fifth-century Corinth, lacking an empire, had the ability to coerce colonies to participate in, and contribute offerings to, festivals in Corinth.Footnote ¹³ Nor do we have any evidence that Corinth's (other) colonies ‘customarily’ partook in, or sent theoroi to, the metropolis' festivals. Athens aside, all other instances (as cited by Graham) where colonies sent offerings to the mother city took place on occasions unknown to us, and cannot be demonstrated to have coincided with festivals in the metropolis.

The meaning of κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις is relevant to us as it concerns the context within which the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra arose. My interpretation of the religious dispute is based on the understanding that κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις also apply to the second part of the sentence οὔτε Κορινθίῳ ἀνδρὶ προκαταρχόμενοι τῶν ἱερῶν. It seems to me that the scholiast's view, rejected long ago by some commentators and subsequently accorded little attention in recent scholarship, should be given more consideration. Instead of festivals held in the metropolis or the colonies, the κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις are more likely to be Panhellenic festivals common to all the Greeks in which different cities would participate. The only other occurrence of the word πανήγυρις in Thucydides, at the beginning of 5.50.4, refers to the Olympic festival of 420 b.c., from which the Spartans were excluded.Footnote ¹⁴ In the lack of evidence for other festivals celebrated jointly by Corinth and Corcyra (or any other Corinthian colonies), a Panhellenic festival is arguably the most likely occasion on which the Corcyraeans would come into conflict with a Corinthian at a sacrifice. A Panhellenic setting would also explain why the deprivation of a privilege would be most humiliating for Corinth. As we shall see later, the meaning of κοιναὶ πανηγύρεις impinges on the nature of the ritual which Thucydides terms προκατάρχεσθαι.

Sokolowski suggested that the prefix πρό in the words προθυσία, προμαντεία and προκατάρχεσθαι expresses temporal priority: the right to sacrifice or consult the oracle ahead of others was sought not ‘because of honour or precedence, but for practical reasons so that a person travelling to a sanctuary might be able to take his turn in the ceremony and go back home without unnecessary delay’. In his view, προκατάρχεσθαι ‘denotes the privilege of (temporal) priority in the cult, a privilege which could be extended to the inhabitants of a friendly state’.Footnote ¹⁵ This idea that priority was sought not for honour but to save time is untenable; Corinth was evidently outraged by dishonour rather than any delay caused to the making of a sacrifice.

Some scholars think that sacrificial portions are concerned. LSJ explain the word προκατάρχεσθαι as meaning to ‘serve one with the first or the best portion of the victim at sacrifices (one of the privileges of the citizens of the mother-city in their colonies)’.Footnote ¹⁶ Graham thus translates the Thucydidean passage: ‘for they neither gave the customary offerings at the common festivals, nor did they give the first portions of the sacrifice to a Corinthian, as the other colonies did’.Footnote ¹⁷ Salmon translates similarly: ‘they did not give the usual offerings at the common festivals, nor did they reserve the first portions at sacrifices for a Corinthian as did the other colonies’.Footnote ¹⁸ A different but related interpretation is that the Corcyraeans failed to give the first portion of sacrificial meat to a Corinthian, not for his consumption, but to allow him the privilege of burning it in the fire to the gods.Footnote ¹⁹ Nevertheless, a major difficulty with these views is that the root κατάρχεσθαι, meaning ‘to begin a sacrifice’ or ‘to begin sacrificing (a particular victim, in the genitive)’, always applies to procedures in the pre-killing stage of an animal sacrifice.Footnote ²⁰ Various preliminary rites could be meant, be it cutting some of the victim's hair,Footnote ²¹ sprinkling lustral water (χέρνιψ), or sprinkling barley grains (οὐλοχύται or οὐλαί) on the victim's head.Footnote ²² What is important is that the word κατάρχεσθαι applies only to rituals before the slaughtering of the animal and never refers to the sacrificial flesh.Footnote ²³ The preliminary rites were usually performed by the officiating priest or priestess in public sacrifices.Footnote ²⁴ Therefore προκατάρχεσθαι is extremely unlikely to refer to a choice portion of the victim – whether to be consumed by a Corinthian or to be offered to the gods through him – unless this unique Thucydidean usage does not adhere to the normal applications of the word. The only first portions resulting from the opening rites denoted by κατάρχεσθαι are locks of hair. Based on the scholiast, who explained προκατάρχεσθαι as ‘διδόντες τὰς καταρχάς’,Footnote ²⁵ Croiset suggested that ‘les καταρχαί sont les prémices des sacrifices qu'on distribuait aux personnages de marque pour leur faire honneur’,Footnote ²⁶ adducing as parallel Homer's Iliad 3.273, where the hair from the sacrificial animal is distributed to the Trojan and the Achaean chieftains in an oath sacrifice.Footnote ²⁷ Yet the first lock of hair is unlikely to be meant here, as in normal sacrifices this was burnt in the fire for the gods rather than given to the participants.Footnote ²⁸

A third view interprets the prefix πρό as meaning ‘on behalf of’. Long ago Dittenberger suggested that in all Corinthian colonies there were temples where foreigners could not sacrifice without a local performing the preliminary rites on their behalf. While in other Corinthian colonies a native was obliged to do this, in Corcyra there was a general refusal to do so.Footnote ²⁹ Stengel objected to Dittenberger on the grounds that this is impossible with a construction in the dative, suggesting instead that πρό should be understood temporally: a Corcyrean had to κατάρχεσθαι before the Corinthian, who then also had to κατάρχεσθαι on his own account. He explained that in the Greek cities only citizens could perform sacrificial rites to the gods, and even when non-citizens were given permission, it was still a citizen who had to perform at least the preliminary rites, before another could do so.Footnote ³⁰ Although Dittenberger and Stengel differed in interpreting the force of πρό and the actual procedures involved, both understood προκατάρχεσθαι as ritual assistance required by a Corinthian when sacrificing in Corcyra, which the Corcyreans refused to provide. This idea was followed by scholars such as Classen, Marchant and apparently Hornblower.Footnote ³¹

The assumption (seen in Dittenberger, Stengel, Classen, Marchant and apparently Hornblower) that the dispute took place when the Corinthians were sacrificing in Corcyra has led some scholars to seek comparisons with cases where assistance was required, or specially declared unnecessary, for non-citizens sacrificing in a polis. Thus Graham writes: ‘Thucydides is certainly referring to sacrifices in the colony in the second part of the sentence … The practice would then be comparable with the privileges enjoyed by Milesians in Olbia’.Footnote ³² Graham is referring to the treaty between Miletus and her colony Olbia in c. 330 b.c., which gives the Milesians at Olbia the right to sacrifice on the same altars and partake in the same public cults on the same conditions as the Olbians.Footnote ³³ This regulation exempts the Milesians from any procedure or assistance possibly required of other non-citizens sacrificing at Olbia. There are a few pieces of evidence, also cited by Dittenberger, that non-citizens sacrificing in other poleis required the mediation of a citizen acting on their behalf.Footnote ³⁴ However, such comparisons are irrelevant if it is correct to think that the conflict in Thucydidies 1.25.4 arose at a sacrifice in a Panhellenic festival, during which any mediation (if necessary) should be provided by citizens of the Panhellenic sanctuary rather than by the Corcyraeans. Moreover, whether or not the background is the Panhellenic games, the expression Κορινθίῳ ἀνδρὶ goes against this idea of ritual assistance: one would expect simply Κορινθίοις if a necessary service provided to all Corinthians was meant.

Instead of the refusal to perform a necessary service, it is more probable that the denial of an honour was involved. It is more likely that the word προκατάρχεσθαι has the same meaning as κατάρχεσθαι ‘to begin the sacrificial procedures’, with the prefix πρό emphasizing the priority or precedence accorded to the Corinthians over the Corcyraeans at a sacrifice. The phrase Κορινθίῳ ἀνδρὶ, on the other hand, is a dative of instrument rather than a dative of advantage;Footnote ³⁵ and the singular is generic rather than a reference to a particular Corinthian. We may envisage a situation where, while sacrificing together in a Panhellenic festival, the Corcyraeans did not honour their mother city by inviting a Corinthian man – any Corinthian who might be present – to perform the opening sacrificial rites. Given that the act of κατάρχεσθαι was usually performed by the officiating priest or priestess at a public sacrifice, and that the preliminary rites were charged with greater religious significance than the subsequent slaughtering of the animal,Footnote ³⁶ it would be a great honour to be invited to perform the initial rites. It was Corcyra's failure to carry out the act of (προ)κατάρχεσθαι by means of a Corinthian (who would have a place of honour), rather than the refusal to perform any necessary sacrificial rites on behalf of the Corinthians, or the denial of the first sacrificial portion to them, which is at the heart of the dispute.