Ch. 7. An Inconvenient Past in Hellenistic Athens: The Case of Phaidros of Sphettos

Abstract

This essay focuses on Athens after the Chremonidean War and asks how at that time the Athenians remembered the revolution from Demetrios Poliorketes in 286 BCE. As the honours for Phaidros of Sphettos show, the past could not simply be ignored. Since Phaidros’ earlier actions were not consistent with the dominant narrative of the revolution, the past had to be reconfigured to make it suitable for the city’s current circumstances, as I argue. Despite the initial success marked by the passing of the honours, this rewriting was inherently unstable. How the monument might be interpreted in the middle of the third century was very different from how it would be understood in 200 BCE. Published in C. Constantakopoulou and M. Fragoulaki, ed., Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece (HISTOS Supplement 11), p. 269-301.