Exemplarity and the practice of charisma in Athenian stories of leadership
p. 119-154
Texte intégral
1This paper examines the construction of charisma in literary accounts of non-Athenian political figures by the fourth-century BCE authors Isocrates and Xenophon writing in an Athenian context. It argues firstly that these accounts (of Evagoras, Agesilaus and Cyrus) create images of charismatic leadership as exempla for readers to learn from and imitate, as well as demonstrating charismatic practice in the actions described. Exemplarity itself may be a practice of charisma, and responses to these figures by later rulers and in later texts, suggest that the practice of charisma may in some respects be a retrospective phenomenon transmitted through texts and their reception. Secondly, it suggests that these leaders embody different aspects of Weber’s model; in particular, Agesilaus’ conformity to Spartan religious tradition represents what Weber identified as the “routinisation” of charisma.
2Many historical, rhetorical and political texts from fourth-century BCE Greece contain exemplary narratives of successful leadership of armies, cities and larger empires. In these accounts, claims are made that good rulers and leaders can transmit virtue to their subjects and followers by presenting them with a paradeigma, an example to imitate. The desire to imitate is provoked by the qualities of the ruler, qualities which we might identify with aspects of Weberian charisma. But authors contemporary with this period speak more of imitation and exemplarity than of charisma, a term for which there is no precise Greek equivalent (although it is derived from the Greek charis).1 This raises the question of whether the identification of charisma is a retrospective phenomenon, taking place in those accounts of leadership composed in classical Greece by contemporaries of their subjects, in reflections on the leaders identified by those texts in later classical writings (such as the lives of Plutarch), or by modern readers equipped with the analytical framework set out by Weber.2 The identification of charismatic leadership could take place at any of these stages, and be constructed retrospectively by historians and others writing accounts of the past with a view to inspiring readers in the present. Certainly accounts of earlier leaders provided fuel for the identification of successful domination achieved by later leaders, such as the powerful military leaders of the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire, who could use earlier examples as case studies to imitate.
3This paper uses ancient accounts of monarchical Herrschaft as the basis of an examination of the practice of charisma and of identifying charismatic leadership, or leadership which conforms to practices that fit Weber’s model of charisma, in antiquity. It argues that a relationship can be found between the exemplarity, which is the focus of ancient literary accounts of kingship and specific aspects of Weberian charisma, specifically the process of routinisation of charismatic rule.3 It takes two early examples of the posthumous encomium of an exemplary ruler, Isocrates’ Evagoras, and Xenophon’s Agesilaus, in which royal leaders are presented as exemplars for their subjects during their lifetime and for their successors thereafter. These texts have long been treated as comparable by scholars, and also as being in dialogue with each other; both were innovative at the time, when neither the prose encomium nor biography were the established genres that they became later in antiquity.4 It is quite possible that Xenophon’s Agesilaus was written in response to Isocrates’ Evagoras, the latter shortly after Evagoras’ death in 374 BCE and the former after Agesilaus’ death in 360 BCE.5
4Reading these texts reveals problem of the construction of charisma at two levels. First, it considers the difficulties of the transmission of virtue from ruler to ruled through processes of exemplarity and mimesis, the effect of the inequality between ruler and ruled isolated in the concept of charisma, and the problems of scale and distance introduced when Xenophon applies his models of kingship to the empire of Cyrus the Great, as featured in the Cyropaedia, a highly idealised and fictionalised exemplary narrative. Historical Persian kingship, and Greek efforts to explain it, provide a useful comparator to the depictions of ideal rulers in the two encomia; Cyrus, in Xenophon’s account, also offers a model of the transformation of rule and of attempts to routinise the power of a king who has come to power by conquest.6 This raises a further question of whether, for these authors, charismatic practice is better exemplified by non-Athenian monarchs, than by the generals and politicians subject to Athenian democratic processes of oversight at the time in which they were writing.7
5Second, it explores charisma as a process of the routinisation of power; it suggests that the memorialisation of predecessors played an important part in constructing or supporting the charismatic rule of succeeding generations, a process that would take its full form in the development of imperial cult in the Roman Empire. This paper explores how charisma was thought to be generated by ancient analysts, the practices that generated that charisma, and the role of literary and artistic representations of monarchs in its transmission and reception. It explores the differences between exemplarity and charisma, suggesting the impossibility of learning lessons from charismatic leaders whose personal qualities cannot be imitated by their followers.8
6Finally, it considers some of the difficulties involved in using Weber’s concept of charisma for the analysis of ancient rulership, extending Moses Finley’s critique of its application to fifth-century Athens, in order to reconsider the kind of rule demonstrated by the powerful rulers depicted by Xenophon and Isocrates, at the head of a long tradition of prose exemplary leadership narratives. Ancient monarchs needed to generate some form of response, which can be identified as charismatic, to be truly effective, and that one way to do that was to communicate their claim to traditional authority, particularly the cosmic aspects of it, through their performance of ritual. Exploring charismatic monarchic leadership in the ancient world runs the risk that it might simply collapse into an exploration of traditional kingship; as Finley notes, even democratic rule in the ancient world was neither rational nor bureaucratic in Weber’s terms, so he is left with his third type of rule as the only option available in his model, an “extremely thin and casual” justification which requires Weber to treat Athenian demagogues as though they wielded power directly.9 V. Azoulay takes up a similar critique, noting that Weber assigns demagogues to the category of charismatic leadership because they gain authority through appeal to the emotions.10
7One problem is that any account of kingship in ancient societies might be seen to incorporate elements of the primitivism associated with charismatic leadership. If the identification of charisma in leaders of modern societies suggests the “anachronistic survival” of primitive and irrational elements, leadership in any society already identified as primitive may be deemed to resemble Weber’s charismatic leadership.11 But in our two cases, the city of Salamis on Cyprus, perceived as culturally liminal by the Athenians, and Sparta, regarded as still under the sway of a fossilised constitution, may have seemed primitive to our Athenian authors. It is notable that many of the examples of outstanding leadership valorised in Greek sources are from Greek societies seen as antique or primitive (such as Sparta) or from non-Greek societies, assumed by Greeks to be more primitive.
Charisma and its communication
8Weber’s model of charisma was developed across various works, including his major treatise Economy and Society, published posthumously, and the essay Politics as a Vocation.12 It aims to elucidate ways in which monarchs and other powerful leaders communicate their power and authority, and influence the behaviour of their subordinates. For charisma to be in operation, the power of the leader must be recognised.13 The societies Weber surveys include those of classical antiquity, but applying the concept to the study of that early period, rather than using the classical past to set up models more applicable to modern societies, is difficult.14
9The way in which Weber’s conceptualisation of charisma tends to be used in present-day scholarship contributes further difficulties; William Friedland notes that charisma operates at disciplinary boundaries and has therefore tended to be used in parts rather than coherently. He points out that charismatic and traditional rule have been the province of anthropologists, while the character attributes associated with charisma have been taken up by management psychologists. Friedland concludes that the psychological aspects of the concept are useful for social study, but that they must be treated carefully; he cites the sociologist Talcott Parsons’ claim that charisma “is not a metaphysical entity but a strictly observable quality of men and things in relation to human acts and attitudes”.15 In seeking Weber’s charisma in ancient texts, these disciplinary divisions are absent; these texts predate the firm establishment of fixed genres of historical writing, although it is clear in responses to them and in use of their models in writers of later antiquity that they were used to educate and inspire potential leaders.
10Weber’s model of authority postulates three distinct grounds for the authority and legitimacy of rulers, of which charisma is the third, the others being tradition and legal possession of power:
Then there is the authority of the exceptional, personal “gift of grace” or charisma, the entirely personal devotion to, and personal trust in, revelations, heroism, or other qualities of leadership in an individual. This is “charismatic rule”, as exercised by the prophet or, in the field of politics, by the chosen warlord or the plebiscitarian ruler, the great demagogue and leader of a political party.16
11When the Weber of “Politik als Beruf” thinks of ancient charismatic leadership, he thinks of the demagogue of the democratic polis, or at least of the kind of figure represented as such in Athenian literature, such as the presentation of Cleon in Thucydides and Aristophanes.17 As Moses Finley showed, this is not particularly helpful for the analysis of democratic Athens.18
12Weber’s longer enquiry in Economy and Society takes a closer look at charismatic kingship by drawing on examples from ancient and more recent history, including the military leadership of Spartan forces.19 Finley concedes that charisma may be useful for studying tyranny, because Weber’s model can be applied to all forms of domination.20 But Finley’s response, considering the question only in terms of classical Athenian democracy, fails to consider the ancient Greek discourse of kingship which acknowledges both the continuing presence of monarchy as a form of rule encountered by Greeks and its role in the political imaginary of the Greek polis through foundation myths and civic cult.21
13One paradox of ancient kingship is that the status afforded by the role should be sufficient to generate legitimacy through one of Weber’s other grounds, particularly tradition, and occasionally law.22 But the way individual rulers’ claims to their status are reinforced through the performative aspects of royalty, the processions and rituals that demonstrate the king’s role as mediator between the human world and cosmic powers, begins to point to charisma as much as tradition. It is precisely this negotiation between the charismatic authority of the individual and the institutions that are necessary to capture and continue that authority which interest Weber. For Weber, all three forms of authority tend to occur together, and there is no developmental framework that associates charisma with the primitive, although charismatic authority tends to “recede with the development of permanent institutional structures”.23
14More recent scholars, particularly sociologists, have emphasised the significance of change and innovation as the work of the charismatic leader, as Carl Friedland wrote:
Charisma is crucial to Weber’s system of analysis as the basis for explanation of social change. Weber’s other types of authority are stable systems within which it is conceivable that change will take place only at the micro level. The problem for Weber was to account for large-scale social change and the concept of charisma provided what Bendix calls “a sociology of innovation”.24
15Monarchical figures might be thought to be protectors of tradition rather than imitators, and there are some ways in which cosmic kingship can be seen as inherently conservative in preserving the established order.25 But in practice authors of antiquity seek out monarchical figures that can be represented as inspiring particular devotion, and shown to use their status to transform their society. The classic literary examples of such charismatic leadership in antiquity are Xenophon’s Cyrus, and possibly Thucydides’ Alcibiades, with historical examples also including Alexander the Great; but this process also encompasses the heroes of epic.
16The self-fashioning of ancient monarchs after literary exemplars in earlier classical antiquity is a phenomenon that contributes to the practice of charisma for rulers in later antiquity; an example here is Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus, the “poison king” who created an identity that drew on the Greek model of Alexander and the Hellenised Persian model of Cyrus to forge a powerful political identity that enabled him to hold both local rivals and the Romans at bay for several decades, and to have a substantial impact on the politics of the late Roman Republic.26 Leaders in the Roman world could draw on such models to inspire their practice of leadership, and the same stories were often retold in new biographies and in collections of exemplary deeds and sayings.
17One cannot simply ascribe the power of ancient kings to their legal possession of the role, or to traditional authority. While there were hereditary kingships, such as the kingships held by the two royal houses of Sparta, accession to the kingship was not automatic for any specific individual and was often, as in the example of Agesilaus, contested. Historians of the ancient world judge different kings to have achieved more or less in the performance of their role. The apparent lack of heritability of some qualities and strengths is explored in texts as diverse as Herodotus’ Histories, where a great king is often succeeded by a mediocre one in a cyclical process, such as Cyrus by Cambyses and Darius by Xerxes. In Plato’s dialogues, such as the Laches, different levels of achievement between sons and fathers in the context of democratic Athens spark discussions of how excellence is inculcated or aroused in the young, and whether it is teachable at all. The Republic imagines a process of decline from generation to generation, involving degradation of both political rule and the character of rulers.
18The process of communicating the qualities of the ruler is problematised in ancient practice. For all but a few subjects, direct experience of the charismatic individual ruler was unlikely, even through such public performative rituals as Cyrus’ parade, so their qualities are communicated indirectly, through various forms of memorialisation, through the actions of subordinates, and through the power of rituals which are seen to affect more than those participating in them directly. The visibility of monarchs is conditioned by royal protocols, such as those outlined by Herodotus in his account of Deioces the Mede, a template for court culture.27 These serve to generate charisma, by instantiating wonder and materialising authority, but they restrict the possibility of its generation through direct contact. Weak leaders might benefit from the invisibility afforded by royal protocol, enabling them to preserve their authority through the continuing impact of ritual; and the confinement of the monarch in a palace maintained the balance of power between monarch and elite in some traditional regimes.28 For a strong ruler capable of generating charisma, the restrictions of the court may hold back the generation of charisma much beyond the gates of the palace. What they certainly do is to focus attention on how the monarch presents himself (or occasionally, herself) to the people, as Xenophon’s Cyrus does in royal parades.29
19Equally, current rulers offer a different form of exemplarity than do mythical ones. One of the main tasks undertaken by both Isocrates and Xenophon is to praise historical individuals in a way that had previously been reserved for mythical heroes. The attribution of charisma to such individuals is one way to make them more comparable to heroes. Thus the practice of charisma may be as much a literary fiction as one of the practices of royal life.
Isocrates’ models of mimesis and praise
20Isocrates’ prose encomium of Evagoras, tyrant/king of the city of Salamis on Cyprus and an ally much honoured by the Athenians, offers an example of the literary construction of charisma, the text seeking to deliver the claims to good rule and influence that it attributes to its subject. The text is self-consciously novel in its topic and presentation. It represents a shift in the conceptualisation of leadership and its portrayal, away from the depiction of Athenian leaders such as Pericles in historical texts. It also positions monarchy on the border between the Greek and Persian worlds, sketching a regime which accommodates elements of both the polis and the palace system, and in which the charisma of the leader plays an important role.
21Isocrates sketches a model of leadership in which a paradeigma influences the behaviour of those to whom it is presented. This process takes place both intradiegetically and extradiegetically; the work consists of a speech whose subject of the speech is presented to the internal audience as a paradeigma, while Isocrates’ own readership are also influenced by his presentation of the subject. But Isocrates’ multi-layered construction implies a certain distance from the exemplary subject, which in turn raises the question of how that subject’s charismatic qualities can be conveyed. Some interpreters have taken Isocrates’ double purpose to be two separate endeavours, but the creation of a paradeigma implies an audience which can be exhorted to imitate it.30
22Isocrates’ own self-presentation does not imply that he himself has any charismatic personal qualities, indeed he is often at pains to suggest the contrary, with his acknowledgement of his weak voice and declining capabilities as he proceeds into extreme old age.31 What he does claim is that his facility with language might generate a kind of power of its own, that logos has some dynamic capacity.32 Whether this counts as an impersonal form of charisma is open to question; it seems to suggest an alternative to personal charisma.
23In the opening section of the Evagoras, Isocrates sets out a
methodology for praising historical individuals, using prose rather than verse, and what the benefits of constructing such an account might be. This marks this work out as an unusual endeavour,
compared with both poetic praise of individuals, such as Pindar’s victory odes, and the collective praise of groups in prose rhetoric, such as the Athenian funeral speech.33 Praising a ruler in this way is a way to construct their charisma, as part of a process of memorialisation. While one should not overlook the rhetorical purposes of such introductions, seen in many of Isocrates’ works and functioning as a kind of captatio benevolentiae, they can also provide a context for his work. In this case, Isocrates sets out how he plans to engage in a new form of literary production in order to praise Evagoras, through an address to his son and successor Nicocles, although other readers can also benefit from learning Evagoras’ story, even if they are not themselves monarchs or leaders.
24The opening of the Evagoras compares Isocrates’ writing with the performance of funerary rites and other memorialising acts by Nicocles, Evagoras’ heir,34 a theme that is resumed towards the end of the speech.35 While Nicocles is demonstrating important qualities through his action, including stewardship and oversight (epimeleia, § 9) and greatness of character (megaloprepeia, § 9, 2), Isocrates suggests that Evagoras would be more grateful for the verbal memorialisation that the text will produce:
εὑρήσομεν γὰρ τοὺς φιλοτίμους καὶ μεγαλοψύχους τῶν ἀνδρῶν οὐ μόνον ἀντὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἐπαινεῖσθαι βουλομένους, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντὶ τοῦ ζῆν ἀποθνῄσκειν εὐκλεῶς αἱρουμένους, καὶ μᾶλλον περὶ τῆς δόξης ἢ τοῦ βίου σπουδάζοντας, καὶ πάντα ποιοῦντας, ὅπως ἀθάνατον τὴν περὶ αὑτῶν μνήμην καταλείψουσιν.
For we shall find that men of ambition and greatness of soul not only are desirous of praise for such things, but prefer a glorious death to life, zealously seeking glory rather than existence, and doing all that lies in their power to leave behind a memory of themselves that shall never die.36
25This might seem to be a simple restatement of heroic values familiar from the world of the Iliad, where Achilles is faced with the direct choice between continuing life and heroised posthumous fame. This comparison between Evagoras and the heroes of the Trojan war begins here (§ 9, 6) but is taken up again later, contrasting Evagoras’ achievements with those of his mythical ancestors (§ 9, 65). If the highest forms of praise are available only to heroes, ‘men of whose existence they are uncertain’ (§ 9, 6), there are no incentives for men in the present to strive for virtue. In creating this verbal memorial, Isocrates incites others to perform to the same standard and earn similar memorialisation.
26Isocrates goes on to stress that this acquisition of fame cannot be achieved through expenditure, but through deeds of different kinds. The aim is to create a text that would make his virtue “remembered forever”, (ἀείμνηστον, § 9, 4). Given that Isocrates has drawn a parallel between cultural activity and deeds of strength, he perhaps positions himself as a creator of virtue just as much as the object of his creative activity was. Poets can make use of a much wider range of linguistic and creative possibilities than prose authors, enabling them to “bewitch” (ψυχαγωγοῦσι, § 10) their audience. So Isocrates’ effort to praise Evagoras aims to replace those qualities and to generate the charm of poetry while retaining the benefits of an accurate prose account. While Isocrates’ writing lacks much detail, his use of narrative exempla resembles the practices of the historiographers of his own time, even if it falls short of more modern standards of historical writing.37
27Isocrates employs the language used to describe the responses of crowds to events and performances. In this way his prose account helps itself to the dynamic capacity of poetry to change emotions, and perhaps demonstrates some charismatic qualities of its own. Thus there is an undercurrent of change and instability that runs throughout the Evagoras, that represents its subject’s status as an agent of change. This reading contradicts that of E. Alexiou, who emphasises the stability that is also to be found in the text. Stability is the goal of Evagoras’ endeavour, but it is not characteristic of his efforts.
28Isocrates’ descriptions of Evagoras encourage the audience of his work to react in the same way that they might to a dramatic presentation, a form in which reversal of circumstances plays a central conceptual role. He describes the response of other kings to seeing the young Evagoras:
τοσοῦτον γὰρ καὶ ταῖς τοῦ σώματος καὶ ταῖς τῆς ψυχῆς ἀρεταῖς διήνεγκεν, ὥσθ᾽ ὁπότε μὲν αὐτὸν ὁρῷεν οἱ τότε βασιλεύοντες, ἐκπλήττεσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἡγουμένους οὐχ οἷόν τ᾽ εἶναι τὸν τοιοῦτον τὴν φύσιν ἐν ἰδιώτου μέρει διαγαγεῖν, ὁπότε δ᾽ εἰς τοὺς τρόπους ἀποβλέψειαν, οὕτω σφόδρα πιστεύειν, ὥστ᾽ εἰ καί τις ἄλλος τολμῴη περὶ αὐτοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνειν, νομίζειν Εὐαγόραν αὑτοῖς ἔσεσθαι βοηθόν.
So surpassing was his excellence of both body and mind, that when the kings of that time looked upon him they were shocked and feared for their throne, thinking that a man of such nature could not possibly pass his life in the status of a private citizen, but whenever they observed his character, they felt such confidence in him that they believed that even if anyone else should dare to injure them, Evagoras would be their champion.38
29The responses of the other kings, their shock (ἐκπλήττεσθαι) and fear (φοβεῖσθαι) recall the emotions experienced by audiences at the theatre, especially the ekpleˉxis that was a desired outcome of tragic and poetic performance.39 Plato’s Ion identifies it as an emotion generated by hearing poetry40. But more closely connected to Isocrates is Gorgias’ use in his Helen.41 Gorgias offers the sight of an opposing army as an example of a sight that shapes the emotions; he goes on to describe the role of sight in shaping the emotions.42 Isocrates goes on to describe Evagoras’ bold action in attacking the tyrant’s court as generating “confusion… and fear”:
καὶ τοὺς μὲν θορύβους τοὺς ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις καιροῖς γιγνομένους καὶ τοὺς φόβους τοὺς τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τὰς παρακελεύσεις τὰς ἐκείνου τί δεῖ λέγοντα διατρίβειν;
The confusion attendant upon such occasions, the fears of his followers, the exhortations of their leader – why need I take the time to describe?43
30Again, the monarch is seen to inspire “disorderly uproar” (θορύβους) rather than order, which suggests a form of leadership in tension with the fundamentally conservative drives of cosmic kingship, but does fit with the idea of change inherent in Weber’s model of charismatic leadership.44 The praeteritio suggests the ambiguity that the charismatic leader’s capacity to generate disorder represents. From the beginning, Isocrates has identified the importance of individuals who are agents of change:
καὶ τὰς ἐπιδόσεις ἴσμεν γιγνομένας καὶ τῶν τεχνῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων οὐ διὰ τοὺς ἐμμένοντας τοῖς καθεστῶσιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τοὺς ἐπανορθοῦντας καὶ τολμῶντας ἀεί τι κινεῖν τῶν μὴ καλῶς ἐχόντων.
Since we are aware that progress is made, not only in the arts, but in all other activities, not through the agency of those that are satisfied with things as they are, but through those who rectify, and have the courage constantly to change, anything which is not as it should be.45
31The ability to create the kinds of sights that influence the minds of those seeing them is one aspect of this, which can be related both to the discourse of wonder and to ideas of charisma. In this introduction, Isocrates sets out the criteria for identification of someone as such an agent, which the narrative section of the speech will demonstrate that Evagoras has met. This concern in the Evagoras has been linked to the rhetoric of the funeral speech, particularly the Thucydidean funeral speech (2.35-46), and to the Athenians’ self-representation as innovators.46 But a Weberian reading might suggest that Isocrates is acknowledging the disruptive practices of the charismatic leader, rather than those of the collective.
Commemorating Evagoras
32Evagoras, and Salamis, the city of Cyprus which he ruled between 411 BCE and his death in 374 BCE, sat between the worlds of the Greeks and the Persians. Isocrates’ eulogy for the king positions him closer to the Greek world, in recognition of his close connection with Athens and support for its politicians. This echoes some aspects of the material evidence for Evagoras’ rule in Salamis, in which he oversaw a community that was Hellenising to the extent of adopting the Greek alphabet to supersede the older Cypriot syllabic writing; during Evagoras’ reign inscriptions in Salamis started to use both scripts.47 But other aspects, which contributed to the generation of charisma, suggest links to the practices of Persian monarchy, at least as refracted through Greek observers. From both perspectives, Evagoras supported and participated in the creation of material objects in both Salamis and Athens, which affected responses to him and could be seen as a practice of charisma.
33Surviving material evidence thus provides some form of check to Isocrates’ claims against the historical realities of Evagoras’ life, and also suggests that a conscious self-presentation played a part in the way that he communicated his power. There is epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological evidence to examine alongside the Athenian texts. As the material objects themselves played a part in Evagoras’ construction and performance of his kingly identity, they can helpfully be examined alongside Isocrates’ text. Indeed, Isocrates himself closes his work by comparing it to a statue, and concluding that words are better than statues for transmitting the value of individuals, because they can travel better and better enable mimesis:48
ἐγὼ δ᾽, ὦ Νικόκλεις, ἡγοῦμαι καλὰ μὲν εἶναι μνημεῖα καὶ τὰς τῶν σωμάτων εἰκόνας, πολὺ μέντοι πλείονος ἀξίας τὰς τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῆς διανοίας, ἃς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἄν τις μόνον τοῖς τεχνικῶς ἔχουσι θεωρήσειεν.
For my part, Nicocles, I think that while images of the body are fine memorials, yet likenesses of deeds and of the character are of far greater value, and these are to be observed only in discourses composed according to the rules of art.49
34Isocrates here asserts that work like his own can communicate the qualities of a king better than other forms of memorialisation.50 This is significant for the maintenance of authority after the reign of a monarch whose authority was based on personal charisma; such textual memorials can play a part in the process of routinisation which maintains the impact of that original charisma and legitimates successor rulers such as Nicocles, the addressee of Isocrates’ work.
35There is historical evidence for such memorialisation. Evagoras was honoured by Athens, through a grant of citizenship probably made after 411 BCE.51 He received further honours after the naval battle of Cnidus in 394 BCE, in which he and the Athenian general Conon led a Persian fleet against the Spartans; a statue was erected in the Athenian agora.52 Although Isocrates’ narrative is vague on historical detail, this non-literary evidence would have been available to Isocrates’ own Athenian readers, who could have inspected the statue for themselves.
36The material remains of Evagoras’ rule offer further evidence for the generation of a response equivalent to the operation of charisma, both in Cyprus and beyond it. Evagoras oversaw a material culture which made his changes to Salamis’ political culture evident. His coins demonstrate his desire to approach the Greek world through the use of Hellenising elements, in their iconography and design, as well as elements that bring out the Cypriot context. One silver stater, for example, features the Greek hero Heracles, and text that mixes Greek and Cypriot scripts.53
37The remains of buildings show Evagoras to have embarked on significant projects once established in power, in which he appears to have emulated Athens by developing the Salaminian navy.54 His construction of a naval base at Salamis on Athenian lines may have contributed to perception of him as a reforming monarch. Diodorus Siculus refers to an ambitious programme for building a fleet of triremes and training their crews, and reports on the success of the enterprise, using the language of fear and astonishment that Isocrates used:
ὁ δ᾽ Εὐαγόρας ὁρῶν ἑαυτὸν πολὺ λειπόμενον τῇ ναυτικῇ δυνάμει, ἑξήκοντα μὲν ναῦς ἄλλας προσεπλήρωσε, πεντήκοντα δὲ παρὰ Ἀκόριδος ἐξ Αἰγύπτου μετεπέμψατο, ὥστε τὰς πάσας ἔχειν τριήρεις διακοσίας. ταύτας δὲ κοσμήσας πρὸς ναυμαχίαν καταπληκτικῶς, καὶ συνεχεῖς διαπείρας καὶ γυμνασίας ποιούμενος, ἡτοιμάζετο πρὸς ναυμαχίαν. διὸ καὶ τοῦ βασιλικοῦ στόλου παραπλέοντος εἰς Κίτιον, ἀπροσδοκήτως ἐπιπλεύσας ταῖς ναυσὶ πολλὰ τῶν Περσῶν ἐπλεονέκτει.
Evagoras, seeing that he was much inferior in naval strength, fitted out sixty additional ships and sent for fifty from Acoris in Egypt, so that he had in all two hundred triremes. These he fitted out for battle in a way to cause terror and by continued trials and drill got ready for a sea engagement. Consequently, when the King’s fleet sailed past toward Citium, he fell upon the ships unexpectedly and had a great advantage over the Persians.55
38The language of this brief battle narrative emphasises Evagoras’ actions in organising and ordering his forces (κοσμήσας, ‘fitted out’), and the effect they had, expressed in the adverbs καταπληκτικῶς (“causing terror”) and ἀπροσδοκήτως (“unexpectedly”). However, it is difficult to establish whether these terms originate in Diodorus’ source material, earlier histories of the Greek world roughly contemporary with Isocrates’ own account, or whether they result from his reshaping his source material into the kind of account more familiar to readers of his own time.56 The expression of the emotional impact of Evagoras’ actions of leadership is perhaps more redolent of the style of Hellenistic and later historiography, although in this section of his work Diodorus is drawing heavily on Ephorus.
39Isocrates represents Greek gentlemen as desiring to live in Evagoras’ court.57 While this puts a positive spin on historical reality – Evagoras’ court was a convenient base for Athenian generals such as Conon, reluctant to return home after their defeat at Aegospotami in 405 BCE – it suggests something of the status of the king, and also perhaps emphasises that Isocrates is addressing an Athenian audience with these tales of virtuous conduct. If gentlemen of good judgement chose to move to the polis of Salamis, its political arrangements must be desirable.
40Isocrates extends this implicit claim to suggest that Evagoras’ personal qualities inspired the Athenians to stay in Salamis, in addition to their admiration for its political arrangements. The encomium does not hold back on praising its subject’s character virtues, such as this:
πολλὰ μὲν τῶν χρωμένων ἡττώμενος, ἅπαντα δὲ τῶν ἐχθρῶν περιγιγνόμενος· σεμνὸς ὢν οὐ ταῖς τοῦ προσώπου συναγωγαῖς ἀλλὰ ταῖς τοῦ βίου κατασκευαῖς· οὐδὲ πρὸς ἓν ἀτάκτως οὐδ᾽ ἀνωμάλως διακείμενος, ἀλλ᾽ ὁμοίως τὰς ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις ὁμολογίας ὥσπερ τὰς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις διαφυλάττων· (45) μέγα φρονῶν οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῖς διὰ τύχην ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖς δι᾽ αὑτὸν γιγνομένοις· τοὺς μὲν φίλους ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις ὑφ᾽ αὑτῷ ποιούμενος, τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους τῇ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ καταδουλούμενος· φοβερὸς ὢν οὐ τῷ πολλοῖς χαλεπαίνειν, ἀλλὰ τῷ πολὺ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων φύσιν ὑπερβάλλειν·
He yielded often to his intimates, but in everything dominated his enemies: he inspired respect, not by the frownings of his brow, but by the principles of his life – in nothing was he disposed to carelessness or caprice, but abided by his agreements in deed as well as word; he was proud, not of successes that were due to Fortune, but of those that came about through his own efforts: his friends he made subject to himself by his benefactions, the rest he enslaved by his magnanimity: he inspired fear, not by venting his wrath upon many, but because in nature he far surpassed all others.58
41Here Evagoras’ character is subtly aligned with divine power (“the frownings of his brow” perhaps alluding to Zeus) and heroic qualities. His capacity to generate order is emphasised along with the actions that made his qualities apparent. These actions assert his place at the top of a hierarchy; his euergetism subjects others to him, including his friends, while “others are enslaved by his magnanimity” (τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους τῇ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ καταδουλούμενος). The fear which Diodorus Siculus noted here arises from the difference between Evagoras and other people, “the excessive amount by which his character surpassed theirs” (τῷ πολὺ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων φύσιν ὑπερβάλλειν). This clear qualitative distinction between ruler and ruled is discussed in Aristotle’s Politics, where the benefits for a community of generating the wisdom of the multitude are contrasted with the benefits of willing subjugation to a man of outstanding character.59
42But the lack of precise detail which differentiates Isocrates’ account from a truly historical one continues. The relationship of Isocrates to historiography has been much debated, but if the purpose of this document is to generate authority, its imprecision contributes to the creation of a mythical aura, rather than diminishes it. Charismatic authority does not rely upon precision.
43Finally, Isocrates presents Evagoras as an agent of change, who transformed the quality of the place and people he ruled (§ 49-51), so that they became much more welcoming to Greeks and aligned with their values:
νῦν δὲ τοσοῦτον μεταπεπτώκασιν ὥσθ᾽ ἁμιλλᾶσθαι μὲν οἵτινες αὐτῶν δόξουσι φιλέλληνες εἶναι μάλιστα, παιδοποιεῖσθαι δὲ τοὺς πλείστους αὐτῶν γυναῖκας λαμβάνοντας παρ᾽ ἡμῶν, χαίρειν δὲ καὶ τοῖς κτήμασι καὶ τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς παρὰ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς, πλείους δὲ καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν μουσικὴν καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν ἄλλην παίδευσιν ἐν τούτοις τοῖς τόποις διατρίβειν ἢ παρ᾽ οἷς πρότερον εἰωθότες ἦσαν. καὶ τούτων ἁπάντων οὐδεὶς ὅστις οὐκ ἂν Εὐαγόραν αἴτιον εἶναι προσομολογήσειεν.
At present, however, they have undergone so great a change that they strive with one another to see who shall be regarded as most friendly to the Greeks, and the majority of them take their wives from us and from them beget children, and they have greater pleasure in owning Greek possessions and observing Greek institutions than in their own, and more of those who occupy themselves with the liberal arts and with education in general now dwell in these regions than in the communities in which they formerly used to live. And for all these changes, no one could deny that Evagoras is responsible.60
44Evagoras’ role as an agent of change marks him out as a candidate for being treated as a charismatic ruler, and Isocrates’ idealising portrait tends in this direction. However, E. Alexiou, whose detailed work on this speech has revealed much of its political subtlety, suggests that Isocrates’ idealised portrait is based on an “individual personality”.61 He points to section 46 as making a theoretical point “without giving any historical details”: here Evagoras is presented as an idealised monarch who presides over the stability of a mixed constitution, using his superior qualities (τυραννικός in some manuscripts, μεγαλόφρων in others).62 This idealising tendency has been widely noted in commentary on the Evagoras.63
45Other literary sources, however, suggest both that there were elements of Evagoras’ life that were less successful, and omitted by Isocrates, and that other Greek writers perceived him through an orientalising lens that Isocrates has sought to minimise. Aristotle reports that he was murdered by a eunuch in a palace intrigue,64 a cause of death that is redolent of the orientalist image of the Persian court prevalent in Greek historiography.65 Whatever the truth of Evagoras’ demise, the circulation of stories linking him to orientalised contexts suggests that from an Athenian perspective he was seen as someone at the margins of the Greek world, even though he earned the highest honours from them.
46Evagoras therefore also offers the possibility of comparing the creation of monumental authority within and outside the Greek world – particularly the self-presentation of Persian kings through their palaces, memorials and public inscriptions such as Darius’ account of his rule, inscribed in three languages at Bisitun.66
Establishing a cosmic connection
47Isocrates’ first move in establishing Evagoras’ claim to honour is to establish his ancestry. In Weber’s model, this might seem to establish legitimate or traditional authority, but that it not how Isocrates uses it. In practice, establishing a connection through ancestors to the gods serves to embellish the individual and enhance their ability to generate charisma.
48The first use of heroic ancestry is to establish status. Isocrates embarks upon a ranking of heroic ancestry which will place Evagoras in a prime position. This is a process carried out in the present, by the internal audience of the work, and so can be seen as part of a process of charisma generation. The sons of Zeus rank highest among demigods, and among them the Aeacidae stand out.67 Isocrates provides evidence to support this claim, showing that Aeacus was specially honoured “by reason of his kinship [with Zeus] and his piety”. Suppliants thought him a good candidate to take up their own concerns with the gods. Even in the afterlife, he plays a role in judging the dead.
τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ Αἰακὸς ὁ Διὸς μὲν ἔκγονος, τοῦ δὲ γένους τοῦ Τευκριδῶν πρόγονος, τοσοῦτον διήνεγκεν ὥστε γενομένων αὐχμῶν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων διαφθαρέντων, ἐπειδὴ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς συμφορᾶς ὑπερέβαλλεν, ἦλθον οἱ προεστῶτες τῶν πόλεων ἱκετεύοντες αὐτόν, νομίζοντες διὰ τῆς συγγενείας καὶ τῆς εὐσεβείας τῆς ἐκείνου τάχιστ᾽ ἂν εὑρέσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν τῶν παρόντων κακῶν ἀπαλλαγήν.
In the first place Aeacus, son of Zeus and ancestor of the family of the Teucridae, was so distinguished that when a drought visited the Greeks and many persons had perished, and when the magnitude of the calamity had passed all bounds, the leaders of the cities came as suppliants to him; for they thought that, by reason of his kinship with Zeus and his piety, they would most quickly obtain from the gods relief from the woes that afflicted them.68
49Although Isocrates has established a space within which traditional authority can be ascribed to Evagoras, he leaves it empty. When he comes to recount the life of his subject, he engages in an elaborate praeteritio (“I prefer to omit”, αἱροῦμαι παραλιπεῖν) to allude to Evagoras’ status as a cosmic king accompanied by the appropriate portents:
οὕτω δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων καθεστώτων καὶ τῶν ἐκγόνων τῶν ἐκείνου τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐχόντων Εὐαγόρας γίγνεται· περὶ οὗ τὰς μὲν φήμας καὶ τὰς μαντείας καὶ τὰς ὄψεις τὰς ἐν τοῖς ὕπνοις γενομένας, ἐξ ὧν μειζόνως ἂν φανείη γεγονὼς ἢ κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον, αἱροῦμαι παραλιπεῖν, οὐκ ἀπιστῶν τοῖς λεγομένοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα πᾶσι ποιήσω φανερὸν ὅτι τοσούτου δέω πλασάμενος εἰπεῖν τι περὶ τῶν ἐκείνῳ πεπραγμένων, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἀφίημι τὰ τοιαῦτα περὶ ὧν ὀλίγοι τινὲς ἐπίστανται καὶ μὴ πάντες οἱ πολῖται συνίσασιν. ἄρξομαι δ᾽ ἐκ τῶν ὁμολογουμένων λέγειν περὶ αὐτοῦ.
Such was the state of affairs in Salamis, and the descendants of the usurper were in possession of the throne when Evagoras was born. I prefer to omit the portents, the oracles, the visions appearing in dreams, from which the impression might be gained that he was of superhuman birth, not because I disbelieve the reports, but that I may make it clear to all that I am so far from resorting to invention in speaking of his deeds that even of those matters which are in fact true I dismiss such as are known only to the few and of which not all the citizens are cognizant. And I shall begin my account of him with the generally acknowledged facts.69
50Isocrates makes the significant point that not all of these indications of status were widely known. This gap between what the citizens know about Evagoras and what is in fact true about him opens a question about the role of cosmic signs in establishing his authority; only the facts that the citizens know can be held to contribute to that, although it is equally possible that an aura of religious appropriateness accompanied him and was communicated even without his subjects having specific knowledge of the portents and oracles of which Isocrates claims knowledge.
51Although Evagoras could claim traditional and legal authority for rule in Salamis, Isocrates explains this was not in fact available to him, because his family had been usurped and the city was now under the control of Persia via a local ruler.70 Evagoras’ skill in reclaiming power in Salamis and continuing to defend it, re-establishing his family as a dynasty, is the central point of the historical section of the work.
Agesilaus, discipline and charisma
52Spartan kingship often serves as a paradigm for ancient leadership, especially in later sources; the death of King Leonidas at Thermopylae71 was a favourite exemplary narrative of leadership and duty. Even though Spartan society was far from typical within the Greek world, its social and political arrangements were of continuing fascination to historians and political theorists.72 Sparta serves as a model in Weber’s account of “Discipline and Charisma”, the third part of his chapter in which he explores the role of charisma in military leadership.73 But both Weber’s analysis and Xenophon’s text suggest that different forms of charisma operated for Spartan kings depending on their location and the activities in which they were engaged. Again, charisma is a practice developed through the transformation of historical character into moral exemplum, a process which perhaps gives one solution to the “paradox” of charismatic leadership’s dependence on individuals, while the process of routinisation provides another.
53The Spartan king on military campaign abroad activates a powerful and personal disciplinary charisma, while the king at home can activate only an etiolated and routinised charisma as he carries out his priestly duties, a point made by Isocrates who treats the Spartan regime as oligarchic at home and monarchical abroad.74 Weber alludes to this text, noting that “the Spartan king’s prerogatives approached the zero point only in peacetime; in the interest of discipline, the king was omnipotent in the field”.75 This exaggerates the weakness of the king within Spartan society; kings were usually members of the Gerousia, the powerful council of elders, and their religious responsibilities conferred status.76
54The long career of Agesilaus, king of Sparta between about 400 and 360 BCE, encompasses both aspects of the Spartan rule, and any analysis of his instantiation of practices of charisma should pay attention both to this and to the changing contexts within which he acted as general, priest and king. His campaigns in the East, recorded in Xenophon’s Hellenica, exposed him to contact with the practices of Persian rule as generators of charisma; in this respect he resembles Evagoras, ruler of a city positioned between the worlds. Agesilaus also has a substantial afterlife in ancient literature as an exemplar for valued characteristics such as self-restraint, not just in the biographies of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, but in anecdotes retold in Roman speeches and collections of exemplary deeds.77
55Xenophon’s eulogy for Agesilaus emphasises the personal qualities of the Spartan king rather than the details of his political career.78 They also emphasise his open and public performance of kingship, a style which would enable any charismatic qualities to be communicated directly to his subjects. Agesilaus is a legal king, although one whose succession had been far from assured.79 P. Cartledge, in his essay “Spartan kingship: doubly odd?”, has argued that all Spartan kings qualified as “charismatic” leaders, although he is using the term in a broader and less technical sense, following C. Geertz’s rather than Weber’s usage.80 This section of the paper explores Xenophon’s representation of the actions of Agesilaus in terms of charisma in a more thoroughly Weberian sense. It argues that Agesilaus’ behaviour cannot be counted as the generation of charisma, although he did behave atypically for a Spartan king. Rather, the qualities and actions that Xenophon is eager to evoke reflect Weber’s second aspect of charisma, its routinisation.81 These two aspects can be mapped on to Agesilaus’ behaviour and actions inside and outside Sparta. Outside Sparta, he was a military leader who needed to inspire his troops as he led them on a long-distance mission; in turn, this brought him and them into contact with the very different cultural practices and social structures of Persian society, and local Greek accommodations with that society. Inside Sparta, consolidating power and maintaining the polity implies a greater emphasis on Weberian routinisation.
56The fact that Agesilaus was selected to be king suggests that he displayed recognisably kingly qualities to the appropriate audience of Spartan citizens. Again, this is suggestive of charisma; Weber emphasises the role of acclamation in the selection of leaders, such as the later Roman emperors chosen by the Praetorian guard and merely confirmed in office by the Senate’s procedures.82 In a competitive situation, he was able to persuade the Spartans that he was the appropriate man to take up the kingship:
ὥς γε μὴν καὶ πρὶν ἄρξαι ἄξιος τῆς βασιλείας ἐδόκει εἶναι Ἀγησίλαος τάδε τὰ σημεῖα. ἐπεὶ γὰρ Ἆγις βασιλεὺς ὢν ἐτελεύτησεν, ἐρισάντων περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς Λεωτυχίδα μὲν ὡς Ἄγιδος ὄντος υἱοῦ, Ἀγησιλάου δὲ ὡς Ἀρχιδάμου, κρίνασα ἡ πόλις ἀνεπικλητότερον εἶναι Ἀγησίλαον καὶ τῷ γένει καὶ τῇ ἀρετῇ τοῦτον ἐστήσατο βασιλέα. καίτοι τὸ ἐν τῇ κρατίστῃ πόλει ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων κριθέντα τοῦ καλλίστου γέρως ἀξιωθῆναι ποίων ἔτι τεκμηρίων προσδεῖται τῆς γε πρὶν ἄρξαι αὐτὸν ἀρετῆς;
However, even before his reign began, Agesilaus was deemed worthy to be king through the following signs. For on the death of King Agis there was a struggle for the throne between Leotychidas, as the son of Agis, and Agesilaus, as the son of Archidamus. The community decided in favour of Agesilaus, judging him to be the more eligible in point of birth and character alike. Surely the fact that he had been pronounced worthy of the highest privilege by the best men in the mightiest state is proof sufficient of his virtue, at least before he began to reign?83
57The longer account of Agesilaus’ accession to the kingship in the Hellenica provides more details which suggest that Agesilaus was able to persuade the Spartans to interpret oracles about the succession in his favour,84 and to interpret the portent of an earthquake against his rival Leotychides.85 That the Spartans were influenced by oracles and portents, and Agesilaus’ ability to read them, does suggest charismatic aspects to Spartan kingship, and a specific role for the king as the connection between polis and cosmos.
58Agesilaus’ behaviour as king was unusual for a Spartan, and his ability to act outside the usual framework and to pursue unusual projects might be seen as evidence of charismatic leadership qualities. Xenophon describes his campaigns outside Sparta and his impact on non-Spartans as the visible evidence of his character.
καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ εἴρηται ὅσα τῶν ἐκείνου ἔργων μετὰ πλείστων μαρτύρων ἐπράχθη. τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα οὐ τεκμηρίων προσδεῖται, ἀλλ᾽ ἀναμνῆσαι μόνον ἀρκεῖ καὶ εὐθὺς πιστεύεται. νῦν δὲ τὴν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτοῦ ἀρετὴν πειράσομαι δηλοῦν, δι᾽ ἣν ταῦτα ἔπραττε καὶ πάντων τῶν καλῶν ἤρα καὶ πάντα τὰ αἰσχρὰ ἐξεδίωκεν.
Such, then, is the record of my hero’s deeds, so far as they were done before a crowd of witnesses. Actions like these need no proofs; the mere mention of them is enough and they command belief immediately. But now I will attempt to show the virtue that was in his soul, the virtue through which he wrought those deeds and loved all that is honourable and put away all that is base.86
59Spartan kingship is a strange institution but one which conforms to many aspects of sacred kingship, as identified by anthropologists. Aristotle defines Spartan kingship as the weakest and most limited form of kingship, as a kind of “permanent generalship” with religious responsibilities.87 He goes on to oppose it to a kind of total kingship (pambasileia) that seems to require some form of charismatic authority to operate.88 But possession of authority through tradition and law does not seem to have been sufficient to be a fully effective monarch, even in Sparta with its reverence for law and tradition. Agesilaus does seem to have had some impact on those who observed him; Xenophon describes his courage in battle:
ἔνθα γε μὴν ἠθέλησαν αὐτῷ οἱ πολέμιοι μάχην συνάψαι, οὐ φόβῳ τρεψάμενος νίκης ἔτυχεν, ἀλλὰ μάχῃ ἀντιτύπῳ κρατήσας τρόπαιον ἐστήσατο, ἀθάνατα μὲν τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἀρετῆς μνημεῖα καταλιπών, σαφῆ δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς σημεῖα ἀπενεγκάμενος τοῦ θυμῷ μάχεσθαι· ὥστ᾽ οὐκ ἀκούοντας ἀλλ᾽ ὁρῶντας ἐξῆν αὐτοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν δοκιμάζειν.
When the enemy were willing to join battle with him, he did not gain victory after putting them to flight in panic, but set up a trophy after overcoming them as they fought stubbornly, leaving behind him imperishable memorials of his own valour, and bearing in his own body visible tokens of the spiritedness of his fighting, so that not by hearsay but by the evidence of their own eyes men could judge what manner of man he was.89
60In this passage, Xenophon generates an opposition between the material memorials of deeds and the physical record on Agesilaus’ body, that itself becomes the object of spectacle. P. Pontier notes that in this passage “Xenophon stages spectators of the virtue of the king”, but goes beyond Isocrates’ account of Evagoras.90 One can compare instead Diodorus’ later account of the Cypriot monarch and his deployment of his fleet.
61Herodotus underscores the religious aspects of Spartan kingship.91 The two royal houses held priesthoods of Zeus, denoting their authority but also connecting Sparta to the cosmos. Religious authority was fundamental to Spartan kingship, but some kings went beyond the minimum in their attention to cult and particularly to the interpretation of portents and oracles. Xenophon too pays particular attention to the religious role of Spartan kings,92 and it leads his discussion of Agesilaus’ specific virtues.93 Weber regards charismatic authority as a phenomenon which is often encountered in a religious context, for example in the establishment of new cults or congregations by charismatic preachers.94 In the case of Agesilaus, attention to religious obligation is part of the way in which he reinforces his status95 and demonstrates his adherence to tradition. When setting out on his campaign, he even aims to repeat the sacrifices made by Agamemnon at Aulis, asserting a similarity between his planned “Panhellenic” campaign in Asia and the Trojan War.96 The response of the Boeotians, who prevented him from replicating Agamemnon’s offerings, suggests an awareness of the power of kingship and its symbolism.
62A further context for Agesilaus’ religious activity is suggested by M. Flower, examining the phenomenon of grants of divine cult to individuals.97 Flower notes a story, told by Plutarch,98 that Agesilaus declined to receive the divine honours voted to him by the Thasians, and argues that this city was simply following the example of Samos, which had set up such a cult of the Spartan general Lysander.99 Xenophon omits the story (Flower suggests Xenophontic distaste for what he might have considered impiety), but it may inform his insistence on his subject’s religious propriety, as well as exemplifying the process of idealisation that Agesilaus undergoes in Xenophon’s writing.
63Xenophon’s depiction of Agesilaus’ behaviour as king suggests a sophisticated model of kingship underlying the apparently anecdotal account he provides.100 Agesilaus’ visibility plays an important part in demonstrating his virtue. He displays self-mastery in erotic matters, and when away from Sparta never hides himself in private houses, so the question of scandal does not arise. The important subtext here is Spartan pederasty; as Paul Cartledge notes, Xenophon “does not disguise his subject’s strong homoerotic proclivities but seeks rather to make a virtue of them by stressing Agesilaos’ exceptional enkrateia”; Agesilaus deserves praise for his continuing self-restraint (enkrateia) in sexual matters, and his public visibility ensures that no scandal can arise:101
Ἀγησίλαον δέ τι πράξαντα μὲν τοιοῦτον οὔτε ἰδὼν πώποτε οὐδεὶς ἀνήγγειλεν οὔτε εἰκάζων πιστὰ ἂν ἔδοξε λέγειν. καὶ γὰρ εἰς οἰκίαν μὲν οὐδεμίαν ἰδίᾳ ἐν ἀποδημίᾳ κατήγετο, ἀεὶ δὲ ἦν ἢ ἐν ἱερῷ, ἔνθα δὴ ἀδύνατον τὰ τοιαῦτα πράττειν, ἢ ἐν φανερῷ, μάρτυρας τοὺς πάντων ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς σωφροσύνης ποιούμενος.
No one ever reported that he had seen Agesilaus do any such thing, and that no scandal based on conjecture would have gained credence; for it was not his habit, when abroad, to lodge apart in a private house, but he was always either in a shrine, where conduct of this sort is, of course, impossible, or else in a public place where all men’s eyes became witnesses of his self-control.102
64Another aspect of Agesilaus’ performance of kingship at home in Sparta was the modesty of his home, which resembled an ancient rustic building rather than a palace:
εἰ δέ τις ταῦτα ἀπιστεῖ, ἰδέτω μὲν οἵα οἰκία ἤρκει αὐτῷ, θεασάσθω δὲ τὰς θύρας αὐτοῦ· εἰκάσειε γὰρ ἄν τις ἔτι ταύτας ἐκείνας εἶναι ἅσπερ Ἀριστόδημος ὁ Ἡρακλέους ὅτε κατῆλθε λαβὼν ἐπεστήσατο· πειράσθω δὲ θεάσασθαι τὴν ἔνδον κατασκευήν, ἐννοησάτω δὲ ὡς ἐθοίναζεν ἐν ταῖς θυσίαις, ἀκουσάτω δὲ ὡς ἐπὶ πολιτικοῦ καννάθρου κατῄει εἰς Ἀμύκλας ἡ θυγάτηρ αὐτοῦ.
If anyone doubts this, let him mark what sort of a house contented him, and in particular, let him look at the doors: one might imagine that they were the very doors that Aristodemus, the descendant of Heracles set up with his own hands in the days of his home-coming. Let him try to picture the scene within; note how he entertained on days of sacrifice, hear how his daughter used to go down to Amyclae in a communal carriage.103
65This description forces the reader to see Agesilaus in connection with his ancestors, notably Aristodemus, the great-grandson of Hyllus; the king becomes a representative of the primitive and heroic past living in the present.104 Xenophon’s description is expressed in the language of charisma, of vision and belief, as the string of third-person imperatives (ἰδέτω, πειράσθω δὲ θεάσασθαι, ἐννοησάτω, ἀκουσάτω) in this passage makes clear; they involve the mind and the senses of the reader, and prevent the disbelief postulated in the conditional which starts the sentence. The reader’s senses have been primed to appreciate this description by the preceding contrast of performative styles of kingship with the luxury and excess associated with Persian kingship.105 Agesilaus, sending his daughter to the festival in the communal cart, demonstrates his commitment to the shared public life so central to the Spartans. But the transformation is achieved by Xenophon’s description; we do not hear of the impact of these events and habits on the subjects who experienced Agesilaus’ rule.
66The theme of this anecdote is revisited at greater length in the Hellenica, where the contrast between the styles of Lysander, Agesilaus and the Persian satrap Pharnabazus becomes part of Xenophon’s exploration of the performativity of kingship.106 Xenophon’s point in both works is that the restrained performance of Agesilaus generates charisma as effectively as the luxury of Persian royalty, or the dynamism of Lysander. Lysander appears to be generating charisma, while Agesilaus is continuing in an established process of routinised charisma. But Agesilaus’ interaction with Lysander persuades the latter to tone down his behaviour and not to attract and display a retinue as if he were a monarch or viceroy.107 Here Xenophon treats Agesilaus as an exemplar and influence on a significant leading figure in Sparta, and suggests that his method of self-presentation was effective. He does so by setting up two contrasting exemplars, the contrast of which is heightened by reading them through Weber’s model.
67Agesilaus’ decision to return to Sparta in 395/4 BCE, and not to seek further success in Asia also suggests an awareness of the limits of his power.108
καὶ οὕτως δὴ αἵ τε σπονδαὶ γίγνονται καὶ ὁ Ἀγησίλαος οἴκαδε ἀπεχώρει, ἑλόμενος ἀντὶ τοῦ μέγιστος εἶναι ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ οἴκοι τὰ νόμιμα μὲν ἄρχειν, τὰ νόμιμα δὲ ἄρχεσθαι.
And so a truce was made, and Agesilaus left for home, choosing, instead of supreme power in Asia, to rule and to be ruled at home according to customary practices.109
68This acceptance of limited power under a set of customary practices and laws precisely exemplifies Weber’s interest in the routinisation of charisma and its use to instil military discipline, rather than the religious status that Cartledge suggests. However, Xenophon’s historical account also suggests that Agesilaus’ hand was forced by domestic concern over the shifting alliances of the Greek cities and a new threat to Sparta110 and that his decision to return owed little to his own preferences.111
69In his final chapter, cataloguing examples of Agesilaus’ virtuous behaviour and the thought on which it was based, Xenophon reiterates that Agesilaus did not seek memorialisation through statues, but through the remembrance of his behaviour:
καὶ τοῦ μὲν σώματος εἰκόνα στήσασθαι ἀπέσχετο, πολλῶν αὐτῷ τοῦτο δωρεῖσθαι θελόντων, τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς οὐδέποτε ἐπαύετο μνημεῖα διαπονούμενος, ἡγούμενος τὸ μὲν ἀνδριαντοποιῶν, τὸ δὲ αὑτοῦ ἔργον εἶναι, καὶ τὸ μὲν πλουσίων, τὸ δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν.
He would not allow a statue of his body to be set up, though many wanted to give him one, but on memorials of his soul he laboured unceasingly, thinking the one to be the sculptor’s work, the other his own, the one appropriate to the rich, the other to the good.112
70It is possible that the views attributed to Agesilaus here are those of Xenophon himself, reflecting Isocrates’ praise of Evagoras.113 But they suggest that the fashioning of self as an exemplar was central to Xenophon’s conception of the role of the king, and so he represents Agesilaus as consciously following it. However, the question of the audience for Agesilaus’ exemplary behaviour is complex, just as that for Isocrates’ Evagoras. Does Xenophon document acts performed by Agesilaus aimed at improving the Spartan elite, or his potential successors? What is an Athenian citizen reading the text to learn from it? Xenophon appears to claim that a wider audience might benefit from understanding Agesilaus’ behaviour and by treating him as an exemplar to copy:
εἰ δὲ καλὸν εὕρημα ἀνθρώποις στάθμη καὶ κανὼν πρὸς τὸ ὀρθὰ ἐργάζεσθαι, καλὸν ἄν μοι δοκεῖ εἶναι ἡ Ἀγησιλάου ἀρετὴ παράδειγμα γενέσθαι τοῖς ἀνδραγαθίαν ἀσκεῖν βουλομένοις. τίς γὰρ ἂν ἢ θεοσεβῆ μιμούμενος ἀνόσιος γένοιτο ἢ δίκαιον ἄδικος ἢ σώφρονα ὑβριστὴς ἢ ἐγκρατῆ ἀκρατής; καὶ γὰρ δὴ οὐχ οὕτως ἐπὶ τῷ ἄλλων βασιλεύειν ὡς ἐπὶ τῷ ἑαυτοῦ ἄρχειν ἐμεγαλύνετο, οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ τῷ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τῷ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἡγεῖσθαι τοῖς πολίταις.
If plumb-line and measuring rod are a noble discovery of man as aids to the production of good work, I think that the virtue of Agesilaus may well stand as a noble example for those to follow who wish to make manly moral goodness (andragathia) a habit. For who that imitates a pious, a just, a sober, a self-controlled man, can come to be unrighteous, unjust, violent, wanton? In point of fact, Agesilaus prided himself less on reigning over others than on ruling himself, less on leading the people against their enemies than on guiding them to all virtue.114
71In making Agesilaus a more general paradeigma of excellence, Xenophon runs the risk of downplaying the monarchical and charismatic aspects of his behaviour that make imitation difficult for those not sharing his situation. This section appears to acknowledge the paradox here; if the monarch is to be a paradigm of virtue for others to imitate, his actions must be imitable and not charismatic. While some aspects of Agesilaus’ behaviour can be treated as routinised charisma, particularly his performance of the religious role of the king, the risk of over-emphasising his ordinariness is that his authority as a king is undermined. On the other hand, presenting a model of charismatic kingship where that charisma takes the form of willing submission to precedent and custom, in personal matters and in the performance of kingship, clearly held a great appeal to later writers.
Cyrus and the communication of charisma
72Xenophon further explores the problem of communicating charisma in the structures of autocracy in which contact between ruler and ruled is limited in his Cyropaedia. In his examination of Cyrus’ transition from young military leader in the Persian army, one among a group of equals, to despotic sole rule of an empire, he describes the performative strategy and the spectacular institutions that Cyrus engages to encourage his subjects to identify his charisma.115 The research question Xenophon poses in the opening chapter is the identity of the personal qualities which caused Cyrus to generate such a positive response from those he ruled, and to generate willing subjection from peoples across a huge empire.116 Xenophon hammers home Cyrus’ special qualities quite relentlessly in his account of the ruler’s effect on those he commands and encounters in his victory over them, making him an exemplar of charisma according to Weber’s definition. In the early stages of Cyrus’ life, his attractiveness to others is marked, for example by the response of Artabazus, a Median noble who claims to be a kinsman of Cyrus in order to kiss him:
εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ παιδικοῦ λόγου ἐπιμνησθῆναι, λέγεται, ὅτε Κῦρος ἀπῄει καὶ ἀπηλλάττοντο ἀπ᾽ ἀλλήλων, τοὺς συγγενεῖς φιλοῦντας τῷ στόματι ἀποπέμπεσθαι αὐτὸν νόμῳ Περσικῷ· καὶ γὰρ νῦν ἔτι τοῦτο ποιοῦσι Πέρσαι· ἄνδρα δέ τινα τῶν Μήδων μάλα καλὸν κἀγαθὸν ὄντα ἐκπεπλῆχθαι πολύν τινα χρόνον ἐπὶ τῷ κάλλει τοῦ Κύρου, ἡνίκα δὲ ἑώρα τοὺς συγγενεῖς φιλοῦντας αὐτόν, ὑπολειφθῆναι·
Now, if we may relate a love story, we are told that when Cyrus was going away and they were taking leave of one another, his relatives bade him good-bye, after the Persian custom, with a kiss upon his lips. And even now the Persians do the same. Now a certain Median gentleman, very noble, had for some considerable time been struck with Cyrus’ beauty, and when he saw the boy’s kinsmen kissing him, he hung back.117
73Cyrus generates the same ekplxis that Evagoras’ triremes did. Xenophon signals not just the youthful prince’s attractiveness but his growing charisma, in a Weberian sense. Artabazus’ affection for the young Cyrus will play a critical part in the event which catapults the young general into a position of power relative to other military leaders in the alliance defending his grandfather’s kingdom;118 his individual devotion to Cyrus leads to the Medes’ collective transfer of loyalty to him. His uncle Cyaxares is the official leader of the Median forces, but Cyrus’ greater willingness to seize opportunity and to follow up and consolidate successes leads to the Medians beginning to treat him rather than the more senior royal as the leader, a transition which Cyaxares disputes in a debate.119
74One can read the later sections of the Cyropaedia in which Cyrus sets up his new empire in terms of the routinisation of charisma, the development of a set of institutions within which charisma could be communicated to a wider range of subjects than those able to experience Cyrus’ forceful personality directly. Cyrus sets up institutions through which his personal power can be replicated and carried to the further corners of his empire, through his network of subordinates who must act in the same way that he does, creating their own networks of power and patronage.120 The continuance of this system, in which the king’s power was distributed among a network of local rulers, is seen in the behaviour of the Persian satraps and officials encountered by Agesilaus.
75Xenophon’s account of Cyrus creates a problem in that it is highly fictionalised and patterned. Herodotus and other non-Persian literary sources for Cyrus’ activities tell a different story, as do documentary sources.121 So the story of Cyrus becomes a test case for determining whether charisma is a practice of ancient leaders, or a practice ascribed to ancient leaders in literary sources. As with Evagoras, there is evidence of a royal strategy of communicating power through iconography and the material environment; Cyrus’ tomb represents a symbol of power, and royal inscriptions assert his claims to significance.122 V. Azoulay has suggested that dehistoricisation is a deliberate strategy by Xenophon, evident in his account of Sparta in the Lakedaimonion Politeia.123 He cites Momigliano’s account of the ordering of the work – that its final chapter as transmitted demonstrates that it is a pro-monarchical work whose purpose is to underscore the importance of Agesilaus.124
76Xenophon’s account of Cyrus shows a considerable understanding of the qualities that Weber would link to charismatic leadership, recognised in a historical figure and enhanced through the retelling and reshaping of his story. If the Lakedaimonion Politeia can be taken as a plea for the transformation of Sparta, and the life of Agesilaus as making some claim about the achievement of that transformation, Xenophon can be seen to position Agesilaus as a charismatic king in the transformative sense rather than as one who conforms to the routinisation of charismatic achievements in the steady performance and maintenance of monarchical traditions. Xenophon’s claims about Agesilaus’ links to the practices of the early Spartan king Aristodemus, in this light, link him to the transformation of power rather than the maintenance and routinisation of that power, as his historical position as a hereditary monarch of limited power, as well as his decision not to pursue the possibility of further overseas campaigns, might suggest.
Charisma ancient and modern
77As with any political concept, using a version framed in contemporary terms to analyse an ancient form runs the risk of anachronism and circularity. One of the uses of Weber’s model of charisma was to explain the persistence of irrational elements within modern politics: the enthusiasms and passions that some politicians could incite that were hard to account for in rational analysis.125 Two contexts in which Weber’s concept has been used, the rise of charismatic authoritarian leaders in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, and the cult of celebrity engendered by modern communications technology, relies on quite specific historical circumstances. Ancient charismatic rulers are often likened to totalitarian rulers, and also tend to use the communications technologies and media available to them highly effectively, but the comparison may be trivial.
78The concept of charisma has been particularly useful to anthropologists in describing developing societies they perceive as clinging to traditions that have ended in more advanced societies. The examples of kingship discussed in this paper also represent societies considered backward, by the Athenians at least.126 While their backwardness might make such societies particularly susceptible to charismatic rule, interpreting the concept of charisma as a marker for the capacity to generate change or to stabilise a situation in which change has taken place enables a better view of processes of change. While previous readings have suggested that Isocrates treats Evagoras as an agent of stability, the charismatic elements in the leadership style Isocrates attributes to him, along with the material evidence of his rule, show that he was an agent of change.
79Agesilaus represents a different situation. While some aspects of his rule, and particularly his behaviour and the responses to him when he fought against the Persians, are suggestive of Weber’s charisma, the responses to him in Sparta are less so. Here the idea of the routinisation of charisma is helpful in understanding how the practices of Spartan kingship maintain the charismatic authority of the king over the long term. Charismatic kings may hold out the prospect of future stability; they may, as Evagoras did, offer a return to a cosmic ordering of affairs interrupted by political instability and the accession of tyrannical usurpers.
80Xenophon’s Cyrus offers a clear instance of charisma as a tool of political change. His account clearly departs from history, but provides a good example of Greek theorists using non-Greek phenomena, as well as sources and evidence, to generate models and to theorise the political world. While Finley found it difficult to apply Weber’s model to his very restricted view of Athenian democracy, scholars taking a wider view of both ancient political activity and in the leadership demonstrated by figures involved, and in the Greek interest in non-Greek social organisation, can use Weber’s model to better understand processes of change and of consolidation in ancient monarchical rule.
Notes de bas de page
1 Charis can denote both an act of goodwill or favour, or the ethical quality of the agent performing such an act; the noun charisma is a later derivation. Its importance as a concept in fourth-century Greek political and ethical thought is explored in Azoulay 2004a, now also in English translation (2018).
2 For an overview of Weber’s conceptualisation of charisma, see Derman 2012; Dow 1969; Adair-Toteff 2005. The fullest account of charisma in Weber’s writing is found in the posthumously published Weber 2013, p. 1111-1157 (Ch. XIV, vol. 2), with a shorter discussion in Weber 1994.
3 Weber 2013, p. 1121-1123.
4 Noël 2014; Pontier 2018. On this pair of texts as innovations in biographical writing, see Hägg 2012, p. 35-51.
5 Pontier 2018, p. 101; Alexiou 2010, p. 37-39, with Cartledge 1987, p. 55. This relative dating is compatible with a “unitarian” view of the composition of Xenophon’s works. Poulakos 1987 suggests a slightly later date (365 BCE) for the Evagoras, still compatible with it preceding the Agesilaus.
6 Although Cyrus started with inherited power, the vast expansion of his empire was remarkable and seen as such by successive generations: see Briant 2002, p. 31-50, and Kuhrt 2007a on responses to Cyrus compared with documentary evidence such as the Nabonidus chronicle.
7 It is possible to read Xenophon’s Hellenica as a critique of the Athenian treatment of its military leaders, subject to punitive scrutiny by the assembly (on which see Hansen 1975). The same question arises with the exemplary use of the great figures of the late Roman Republic and the Empire.
8 On exemplarity and mimesis in ancient literature, see Collins Edwards 2010; Gray 1987; Harvey 1995, and for a more critical view of the deployment of exemplarity, see Goldhill 2017.
9 Finley 1985, p. 93-94. Sahlins – Graeber 2017 reasserts the importance of traditional and cosmic kingship; for earlier explorations see Hocart 1927, Frankfort 1948 and more recently Oakley 2006. On the use of cosmic rulership in ancient philosophy, see Adamson 2015.
10 Weber 2013, p. 1126-1127; Finley 1985, p. 93-99, followed by Azoulay 2004a, p. 26, especially note 81.
11 See Rood – Atack – Phillips 2020, chapter 5, for a discussion of the problem of identifying and assessing “Anachronistic Survivals”, and Lovejoy – Boas 1997 for a survey of primitivism in antiquity itself.
12 Weber 2013, which gathers together material from various previous translated editions; charisma is treated in section XIV.
13 Finley 1985, p. 94.
14 As E. Shils noted, part of the difficulty in deploying Weber’s concept of charisma is that the typology of forms is not fully developed (Shils 1965). Shils’ reading connects the concept back to a more conventional use of the term, to mean “the state or quality of being produced by receipt of the gifts of grace” (p. 200), and to treat charismatic authority as being underlaid by a sense of the religious or sacred.
15 Parsons 1937, p. 668, cited by Friedland 1964, p. 18.
16 “Politik als Beruf” (“Politics as a Vocation”) in Weber 1994, p. 311-312.
17 Azoulay 2004a, p. 433-435 goes beyond Finley’s critique, in shifting the discussion of charisma from democracy to non-democratic forms of domination, and suggesting that Weber’s concept is more useful here.
18 Finley 1985, p. 93-94.
19 Weber 2013, p. 1148-1156.
20 Finley 1985, p. 95.
21 Atack 2020, Introduction.
22 Weber’s conceptualisation of legal and bureaucratic authority implies modern social organisation and does not sit well within, for example, the fourth-century Greek emergent conceptualisation of rule by written law seen in Plato’s Laws, Xenophon’s Memorabilia 4 and Aristotle’s Politics; see Annas 2017, Nightingale 1999.
23 Weber 2013, p. 1133.
24 Friedland 1964, p. 19, citing Bendix 1966; cf. Friedrich 1961; Shils 1965. It is worth noting that the concept of charisma becomes interesting to political theorists at moments of crisis and of change, as it was after its first publication alongside the rise of totalitarian leadership; the Cold War sparked a series of articles examining charismatic leadership.
25 See Atack 2019.
26 App., Hist., 12; see McGing 1986, and Mayor 2009 for a narrative which captures the continuing charisma of this mythologised king.
27 Hdt., 1, 99-100; Walter 2004; Atack 2020, chapter 1.
28 Sahlins – Graeber 2017, p. 377-464.
29 Xen., Cyr., 8, 2-3; Azoulay 2004b; Atack 2018.
30 Cf. Poulakos 1987, p. 325.
31 Isocr., Panath., 8-9; To Philip, 81-82; Evag., 73. See Too 1995.
32 Isocr., Nicocles, 1-9; Haskins 2004
33 See Alexiou 2009 for a detailed reading of the proem and its relation to the rhetoric of the Athenian funeral speech.
34 Isocr., Evag., 9, 1-3.
35 Isocr., Evag., 9, 73-75.
36 Isocr., Evag., 3. Translations of Isocrates’ passages are adapted from Norlin – Van Hook 1928-1945.
37 See Marincola 2014 for a reappraisal of Isocrates’ relationship to the didactic historiography of his time.
38 Isocr., Evag., 23-24.
39 For Aristotle’s use of ekpleˉxis and his sources, see Belfiore 1992, p. 218-222.
40 Plat., Ion, 535 b 2; for Aristotle, ekpleˉxis is an emotion generated by recognition, sometimes of shameful events (Poetics, 1454 a; 1455 a).
41 82 B11, 16 DK. On Isocrates’ response to Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, see Blank 2013; Zajonz 2002.
42 Segal 1962, p. 107-109, drawing parallels with Thucydides’ descriptions of battle scenes.
43 Isocr., Evag., 31.
44 Alexiou 2010, p. 111 notes a parallel with Isocr., Paneg., 97, another passage in which Isocrates uses praeteritio while describing the tumult of battle.
45 Isocr., Evag., 7.
46 See Alexiou 2010, p. 78-79.
47 Lewis – Stroud 1979; Lienhard 1975.
48 Isocr., Evag., 73-74 and 75. Gorgias also identifies statues of men as provoking strong emotional responses (“a pleasurable sickness”, νόσον ἡδεῖαν in Helen, 18). See below for Xenophon’s views on statues, voiced through the Spartan king Agesilaus.
49 Isocr., Evag., 73.
50 Alexiou 2010, p. 175-176.
51 Isocr., Evag., 54, and also commemorated in Athenian inscription IG I3 113.
52 Isocr., Evag., 55-56 and IG II2 20. See Rhodes – Osborne 2003, p. 50-55.
53 https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/numismatics/entry/a_silver_stater/. See further McGregor 1999. Steele 2019, p. 223-225 suggests that the limited use of Greek letters on Evagoras’ coins (and those of his successors) was to position himself to his subjects as an international figure.
54 Davies 2016.
55 DS, 15, 3, 4.
56 Stylianou 1998, p. 49-50.
57 Isocr., Evag., 51.
58 Isocr., Evag., 44-45.
59 Arist., Pol., 3, 17, 1288a15-19 as a response to 3, 11, 1281a40-1281b7. For an analysis of Aristotle’s argument, see Newell 1987; Vander Waerdt 1985 and more recently Atack 2015 and Riesbeck 2016, p. 259-269.
60 Isocr., Evag., 50.
61 Alexiou 2016, p. 53. Alexiou suggests that Isocrates hints at a regime equivalent to that of Theseus in Athens, based on section 51 which asserts the subjection of Evagoras’ rule to the law.
62 Alexiou 2016, p. 50-51.
63 Lienhard 1975.
64 Arist., Pol., 5, 10, 1311b4-6.
65 Lintott 2018, p. 142. See also DS, 15, 47, 8.
66 For a translation and commentary on the Bisitun inscription (DB), see Kuhrt 2007b, p. 141-158; Darius’ funeral monument at Naqsh-i Rustam includes a reflection on royal power (DNb; text and commentary in Kuhrt 2007b, p. 503-505; see also Sancisi-Weerdenberg 1993).
67 Isocr., Evag., 13.
68 Isocr., Evag., 14.
69 Isocr., Evag., 21.
70 Isocr., Evag., 9, 19-20.
71 Hdt., 7, 219-228.
72 Azoulay 2004a, p. 436-443 identifies Weberian charisma as a means of interpreting Xenophon’s stories of leadership.
73 Weber 2013, p. 1148-1156.
74 Isocr., Nicocles, 24.
75 Weber 2013, p. 1154.
76 Cartledge 1987, p. 116-132 examines the political roles Agesilaus is likely to have performed, and the structures within which he might have operated, in detail.
77 Maximus of Tyre 19.5 de; Cartledge 1987, p. 417-420.
78 On the different portrayal of Agesilaus in Xenophon’s Hellenica and his Agesilaus, and the deliberate reshaping of historical events in the latter, see Pontier 2010.
79 Xen., Hell., 3, 3, 1-3 and Ages., 1, 5.
80 Cartledge 2001, p. 62-64, citing Geertz 1983, p. 121-125. Geertz’s essay argues for the need to understand charismatic kingship, as an anthropomorphic representation of power, for the understanding of political life.
81 Weber 2013, p. 1135-1139 and 1141-1143.
82 Weber 2013, p. 1129.
83 Xen., Ages., 1.5. Translations from the Agesilaus are adapted from Marchant 1968.
84 Xen., Hell., 3, 3, 3.
85 See Hdt., 6, 57 on the importance of the Delphic oracle. Themistocles is an Athenian democratic leader whom Herodotus portrayed as gaining status through the interpretation of the ‘wooden walls’ oracle.
86 Xen., Ages., 3.1.
87 Arist., Pol., 3, 14, 1285 a 3-10.
88 Arist., Pol., 3, 15, 1285 b 33-1286 a 2.
89 Xen., Ages., 6, 2.
90 Pontier 2018, p. 106.
91 Hdt., 6.56-57. Cartledge 2001, p. 55-67.
92 Xen., Lac. Pol., 13; 15.
93 Xen., Ages., 3, 2-5.
94 Weber 2013, Ch. XV.
95 Xen., Ages., 3, 2; 11, 2.
96 Xen., Hell., 3, 4.3-4.
97 Flower 1988.
98 Plut., Apophth. Lacon., 25.
99 Cartledge 1987, p. 94-96.
100 Atack 2020, chapter 5.
101 Cartledge 2001, p. 94; see also Azoulay 2004a, p. 400; Cartledge 1987, p. 418-419. Agesilaus’ sexual restraint is featured in many of the exemplary anecdotes about him.
102 Xen., Ages., 5, 6-7.
103 Xen., Ages., 8, 7.
104 In our discussion, V. Azoulay made the significant observation that this links Agesilaus to the Spartan throne before it was split into the dual kingship held by descendants of Aristodemus’ twin sons (Hdt., 6, 52). So Xenophon’s depiction grants Agesilaus’ rule a superiority to that of his fellow king.
105 Xen., Ages., 9, 1-5.
106 Xen., Hell., 4, 1, 29-31. The conflict between Agesilaus and Lysander is sharpened if one accepts Plutarch’s report that the former had once been the eromenos of the latter (Plut., Ages., 2, 1 and Lys., 22, 6, Cartledge 2001, p. 103). On comparative styles of performing kingship, see Atack 2018, along with Azoulay 2004a, p. 243-244.
107 Xen., Hell., 3, 4, 7-9.
108 Pontier 2016, p. 296; the positions of author and subject were reversed here, as Xenophon’s return to Greece with Agesilaus meant that he was fighting against his own city and its allies, and constituted treason (Cartledge 1987, p. 59-60).
109 Xen., Ages., 2, 16.
110 Xen., Hell., 4, 2, 1-2.
111 Azoulay 2004a, p. 244-245.
112 Xen., Ages., 11, 7.
113 Isocr., Evag., 9, 73.
114 Xen., Ages., 10, 2.
115 For historical accounts of Cyrus’ life, contrasting Xenophon and Herodotus’ portrayal with Achaemenid documentary sources, see Briant 2002, p. 31-50 and Zarghamee 2014.
116 Xen., Cyr., 1, 1, 1-6.
117 Xen., Cyr., 1, 4, 27-8. Translations from the Cyropaedia are adapted from Miller 1914.
118 Xen., Cyr., 4, 1, 22-24.
119 Xen., Cyr., 5, 5, 5-48. This episode may reflect the historical Cyrus’ consolidation of regional power.
120 Xen., Cyr., 7, 5, 36-8, 3, 24.
121 Gathered in Kuhrt 2007b; the text of the Nabonidus Chronicle is at p. 50-53, the Cyrus Cylinder at p. 70-74.
122 On Persian royal iconography, see Root 1979 and Kuhrt 2007a; on ideas of kingship in Achaemenid texts see Sancisi-Weerdenberg 1993.
123 Azoulay 2004a, p. 436-445.
124 Momigliano 1936.
125 Derman 2012.
126 Bloch 1991 on the “simultaneity of the non-simultaneous”; see also Rood – Atack – Phillips 2020, chapter 5.
Auteur
University of Cambridge – Newnham College – cwa24@cam.ac.uk
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