North Aegean Stories

The Island of Lesvos in Antiquity

Aneurin Ellis-Evans contributed this article to the Aegean Stories Vault

1. Introduction

The history of Lesbos in antiquity presents a series of apparent paradoxes. The island’s history is shaped by conditions particular to the island itself (political, geographical, historical), but also by tectonic shifts in the world of imperial powers around it. Lesbos has a shared insular history, but this history is made up of multiple city histories which at times seem so different from one another as to render the collective term ‘Lesbian’ counterproductive. There are expressions of shared Lesbian identity, a preference for collaborating with other cities on the island, and a common culture based on dialect, song, history, and myth. These points of commonality, however, were often also points of fierce competition between the cities of Lesbos, each of which wanted to ‘own’ Lesbian identity, and the rivalry between the cities was not just friendly, but often turned into betrayal, violent conflict, and brutal domination. While to outsiders the island’s cities appeared to share in a distinctive Lesbian culture and identity, the islanders themselves perceived sharp differences between one another and more often thought of themselves in terms of individual civic identities than as sharing in a collective Lesbian identity.

John Ma has argued that our sense of historical paradox emerges from realising that an interpretative paradigm we have inferred inductively from one body of evidence is contradicted by other bodies of evidence, and therefore that a paradigm we had taken for objective reality is in fact the constructed worldview of a particular set of documents.[1] Viewed from this perspective, the history of Lesbos in antiquity is caught between a series of paradigms: insularity and connectivity, rivalry and solidarity, civic particularism and regional commonality, local history and global history, and emic and etic perspectives on what it meant to be from Lesbos. In navigating each of these apparent paradoxes, the challenge is not to identify which paradigm is ‘right’, but rather to understand how both can be true. The narrative which follows is structured around two pairs of paradigms in particular. First, the role of external powers in shaping the history of Lesbos vs the role of the island’s cities in doing the same; second, the insular identities the cities of Lesbos formed when interacting with one another vs the identities they formed when interacting with the wider world. However, before exploring these central paradoxes of Lesbian history, it is important to first establish the possibilities and limitations of the evidence available from antiquity.

The modern towns of Mytilini, Molyvos, and Skala Eresou, sitting atop their ancient counterparts of Mytilini, Methymna, and Eresos.
Skala Eresou image by Panos Mtln, CC BY-SA 4.0

2. The Evidence

Several factors specific to Lesbos shape the evidence available to us and consequently constrain the kinds of question we can ask. First, the sites of three of the four main cities from antiquity (Mytilene, Methymna, and Eresos) lie partly or entirely beneath modern settlements (Mytilene, Molyvos, and Skala Eressou respectively). Serious excavation of the one important ancient city which is not currently located under a modern settlement, Antissa, only began in earnest in 2019.[2] There is, of course, much other archaeology to be done on Lesbos, and rescue excavations in these three towns periodically provide shafts of brilliant illumination, as for example with the discovery of the mosaics depicting scenes from New Comedy in the late 3^rd century CE ‘House of Menander’.[3] However, it is nevertheless a major limitation that we do not have direct archaeological access to any of the three main settlements which ruled the island from 167 BCE through to the Byzantine period.

Second, the harvest of inscriptions from the island is comparatively meagre. This is of particular importance because inscriptions are the life blood of Ancient Greek history, telling us about a wide range of topics which would never otherwise crop up in the surviving literary sources. Around 930 inscriptions have been published from Lesbos.[4] However, around 800 are from Mytilene and its territory, whereas just 89 are from Eresos, 36 from Methymna, and 1 from Antissa. The relatively large number from Mytilene is itself misleading, since 64 of these texts are in reality fragments of a single large monument from the early 1^st century CE in honour of Potamon son of Lesbonax.[5]

Whereas on other islands extramural sanctuaries are often major sources of inscriptions (e.g. the Heraion on Samos, the Asklepieion on Kos), the sanctuary of the Lesbian koinon at Messon has so far produced no inscriptions at all. If we compare the other large islands off the coast of Asia Minor, Chios has an epigraphic corpus of around 750 inscriptions, there are around 1,300 published inscriptions from Samos, and Kos has in excess of 3,000 inscriptions. When a complete corpus for Rhodes was last published in 1895, it already had around 1,500 inscriptions.[6] The disparity with Lesbos is all the more striking given that Lesbos is a larger island with more poleis than all of these examples: all these islands had a single polis for all or most of antiquity, whereas Lesbos had as many as six poleis at one point and three for most of antiquity.

A number of different factors probably account for the disparity in the number of inscriptions found on Lesbos compared to neighbouring islands. First, the archaeological inaccessibility of the civic centres of the island’s main cities means we cannot access the parts of these cities most likely to yield inscribed decrees. Second, the island’s fairly continuous history of prosperity and strategic importance has meant that there has been extensive re-use of ancient materials in the many post-antique castles, monasteries, churches, and other buildings to be found across the island. Third, the maritime accessibility of both the main settlements and the most important extramural sanctuaries (above all the sanctuaries of Messon and Artemis Thermia) means that stone will have been quarried out of these sites for building projects elsewhere or simply used as ballast by merchants who had offloaded their cargos at Lesbian ports. In all these ways, the post-antique history of the island has ended up significantly shaping what we can know about the island’s history in antiquity.

One body of ancient evidence which is largely immune to these problems of survival is coinage. While as little of the coinage which originally existed in antiquity survives as with any other body of evidence from antiquity, the fact that it was mass produced on a scale ranging from tens of thousands to millions of coins means that a handful of examples usually survive even from very brief issues. As a result, we have a fairly complete picture of the minting history of the cities of Lesbos, and the challenge with this body of evidence is instead the patchy state of scholarship on this voluminous but scattered body of material. In particular, whereas we have an excellent understanding of the island’s minting history in the 1^st to 3^rd century CE thanks to the Roman Provincial Coinage project, we do not have a correspondingly good understanding of the island’s coinage from the 6^th to 1^st century BCE.[7]

A final vital piece of evidence is the physical reality of the island itself. No generation in human history is more acutely aware of how climate and landscape can change than the present one. However, our historically exceptional experience of rapid and ubiquitous environmental change can lead us to underestimate how much continuity there can be between past and present landscapes. The landscape of Lesbos today will not be exactly the same as it was in antiquity (it will not even have been exactly the same at different points in antiquity), but nor will it be completely different. The ‘harder’ geographical facts of the island – above all, its topography and geology – will be much the same now as they were then. These geographical facts do not determine how human populations interact with the island’s landscape, but they do create a range of possibilities from which these populations can choose. For this reason, both the landscape of Lesbos which we can visit today and what we can learn about how humans have interacted with Lesbos in all periods of the island’s history represent important context for how we think about Lesbos in antiquity. This is not geographic determinism, but rather geographic possibilism. As Peter Thonemann has put it in his study of the Maeander valley in antiquity and the medieval period:

Men and women make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please. They make it not under circumstances that they have chosen themselves, but under conditions inherited from the past and imposed on them by the material world. The most fundamental of these conditions is the physical environment in which people live. Geology, botany and climate offer possibilities, and impose limits; how people respond to those possibilities depends on a wide range of social factors, including the personalities and choices of individuals. Uncovering this dialectical relationship between men and women and their environment over time is the proper task of historical geography.[8]

3. External Powers

The dominant role of Constantinople in the history of Lesbos was a constant from the city’s emergence as the capital of the eastern Roman Empire in the 4^th century CE through to the independence of Lesbos from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Even as the spatial configurations of external states around Lesbos constantly shifted, the role of Constantinople as a dominant pole of attraction for the island remained unchanged. By contrast, over a similar span of time from the mid-2^nd millennium BCE through to the 4^th century CE, the history of Lesbos is not consistently orientated towards a single dominant centre. Rather, the island’s narrative history can instead be helpfully broken down into three phases which reflect the shifting spatial configurations of the powerful external states around it.

3.i. Near Eastern Periphery (Mid-2^nd Millennium to c.330 BCE)

Between the second millennium and Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Persian Empire in 334, the Greek world existed on the periphery of powerful and wealthy Near Eastern states. Some controlled the Anatolian mainland and were therefore in direct contact with Lesbos (Hittites, Lydians, Persians), others were more distant but were nevertheless an influence on the island through their wealth and power (Assyria, Egypt). Particularly in the first half of the first millennium, ambitious Greeks sought fame and fortune trading with and fighting and working for these immensely rich states.[9] Islands just off the coast of Asia Minor such as Lesbos were thus located right on the edge (and sometimes within) the territory of the states controlling Anatolia, and were also plugged into networks of trade which ultimately extended to Egypt and Babylonia. As a result, these Near Eastern states played an outsized role in many aspects of the lives of these islands.

In Hittite documents, ‘Lazpa’ (Lesbos) is the only offshore island which is named and thus seems to have been viewed as the most important. Between the 15^th and 13^th centuries, Lazpa was traded back and forth between a succession of Hittite and Ahhiyawan (‘Achaean’ and thus Mycenaean Greek) kings. We also hear of cultic personnel travelling from the Hittite king to Lazpa to offer purple-dyed dedications to a deity on the island, possibly as a symbolic statement about where the edges of the kingdom’s territory lay.[10] This historical interstitial role of Lesbos between Greece and Anatolia is also encoded in the fictionalized recollection of the Late Bronze Age we encounter in Homer’s Iliad. When Achilles talks about the scope of Priam’s Trojan kingdom, he describes it as being bordered by the Hellespont to the north, the Phrygian uplands to the east, and Lesbos to the south.[11] Lesbos here operates both as the boundary of Priam’s kingdom and also as part of his sphere. Indeed, earlier in the poem we learn that Achilles and the Achaeans had sacked the island and carried off slaves, and that the most beautiful of the Lesbian women amongst these slaves had become bargaining chips in attempts to settle the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon.[12]

When we once again gain access to written evidence for the history of the island through the poetry of Alcaeus and Sappho c.600, it is now the Lydian kingdom based at Sardis which was involving itself in the affairs of Lesbos. In the internal stasis which resulted in Pittacus becoming tyrant of Mytilene and Alcaeus fleeing into exile, Alcaeus tells us that the Lydians sided with his faction and offered them the extraordinary sum of two thousand staters to recapture Mytilene and expel Pittacus.[13] No less significant for judging the impact of Lydia on Lesbos at this time is the role it plays in Sappho’s poetic imaginary. When she wants to express the depth of her longing for Anactoria, she compares it to the desire others have for the military power the Lydians wield.[14] When she wants to convey the love she has for her daughter Kleis, she says she would not exchange her for all of Lydia.[15] The people Sappho has in mind who dream of wielding the power of a Lydian king were presumably aristocratic Lesbian men such as Alcaeus.

The connections between Lesbos and Near Eastern states further afield such as Babylon and Egypt are revealed by what Alcaeus and Sappho have to say about their siblings who travelled to these kingdoms. Alcaeus writes that his brother, Antimenidas, travelled to “the ends of the earth” to fight as a mercenary in the army of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. When Nebuchadnezzar invaded Palestine and captured Ascalon in 604 BCE, Antimenidas defeated a giant said to be 8 foot and 4 inches tall and returned from the east with a sword inlaid with gold and ivory, presumably a ceremonial gift from the king for his exceptional service.[16] Sappho talks about the rather less impressive feats of her deadbeat elder brother Charaxos who had travelled to the Greek trading post of Naukratis in the Egyptian Delta to make a living importing Lesbian wine. While there he fell in love with a Thracian slave variously called Doricha or Rhodopis in the sources whom another Mytilenaean, Iadmon, had brought to Naukratis as part of his own trading activities in Egypt. Charaxos impoverished himself pursuing Doricha, and it is implied that, as a result, he turned to piracy on the high seas before eventually sloping back to Mytilene where his sister harangued him in her poetry for his many bad life choices.[17]

Cyrus the Great conquered the Lydian kingdom in the mid-540s, and from this point down to the conquest of Alexander the Great just over two centuries later it was the Persian Empire which represented the major Near Eastern state to the east of Lesbos. Particularly following Persia’s failed invasion of mainland Greece in 480/79, a series of imperial states arose to the west of Lesbos and contended with Persia for control of places like Lesbos along the coast of western Asia Minor. This region thus became a shatter zone between the single great but administratively distant empire in the east (Persia) and the multiple smaller but much closer aspiring imperial states in the west (Athens, Sparta, and ultimately Macedon). While the protagonists were different, the dynamic was highly reminiscent of that which had prevailed a millennium earlier between the Hittites and Ahhiyawans.

3.ii: Interstate Anarchy (c.330-c.30 BCE)

Alexander invaded the Persian Empire in 334 and by 326 had campaigned beyond its eastern border and into India. Following his sudden and unexpected death in 323, the unified empire he had just seized from the Persian Great King quickly split apart into competing states.[18] This marks the end of the pattern we have observed going back to at least the 15^th century whereby Lesbos repeatedly found itself drawn into the orbit of a Near Eastern superpower representing a dominant political and economic force to the east. While other important states often existed to the west, and at times exercised an important influence on Lesbos (Ahhiyawa in the Late Bronze Age; Athens, Sparta, and Macedon in the Classical period), these were never a true match for the wealth and power of the states to the east of Lesbos. By contrast, in the aftermath of Alexander’s death, this dynamic changed completely. Lesbos was now surrounded by a rotating cast of peer states who competed with one another for control over the eastern Mediterranean. As a result, the island became involved in multiple complex entanglements with these external powers.

The relationship, or rather lack thereof, between Lesbos and the Seleucid Empire underscores this changed dynamic. The core of the Seleucid Empire was located in Syria and Babylonia, and it had inherited most of the Persian Empire’s former territory. From 281 down to 189 the Seleucids were the state which most frequently controlled the coast of Asia Minor opposite Lesbos, and they ran western Asia Minor from their satrapal capital of Sardis which had previously served the same role under the Persians and before that had been the capital of the Lydian kingdom. Superficially, therefore, the Seleucid Empire looks like the state which was most likely to step into the established role of a Near Eastern superpower drawing Lesbos into its orbit. However, the Seleucids never attempted to control Lesbos directly, and indeed there is not even very much evidence for the cities of Lesbos engaging diplomatically with the Seleucid kings. To the best of our current knowledge, the relationship with the Seleucids was not one that particularly mattered to the Lesbians.

For the cities of Lesbos, the more important relationship was instead with the Attalids. This dynasty was based at Pergamon in the Kaikos valley on the mainland opposite Lesbos. After judiciously switching sides in 281 when Seleucus I conquered western Asia Minor, the dynasty carved out a role for itself controlling its modest but strategically important corner of Asia Minor in loose alliance with the Seleucids.[19] Mytilene in particular developed a strong relationship with the Attalids because its mainland territory on the coast of Asia Minor happened to be located along the main northern approach to Pergamon: both the Mytileaneans and the Attalids were therefore aligned in wanting to protect this territory. From c.230 onwards, Mytilene and, to a lesser extent, Methymna both provided financial support to the Attalids during wartime.[20] This was, therefore, once again a very different relationship to that which had previously prevailed between Lesbos and the powers to its east: the cities of Lesbos interacted with the Attalids not as imperial subjects, but as relative equals.

Pergamon as a peer polity for the cities of Lesvos. Shared interests lead to collaboration

Finally, the Ptolemies in Egypt created a maritime empire in the Aegean during the 3^rd century which eventually expanded to include Lesbos at some point after 246. However, this never included Mytilene, and, at least in the case of Methymna, appears to have only begun in the late 220s or early 210s before coming to an end soon after in the late 200s when the Ptolemaic maritime empire collapsed throughout the Aegean.[21] While Ptolemaic control was impactful on Lesbos while it lasted, for example resulting in Ptolemaic garrisons, festivals in honour of the Ptolemies, and private worship of Ptolemaic royals, it was also short-lived and only of importance to certain parts of the island.[22] Thus, the Seleucids, Attalids, and Ptolemies all played different roles in the history of Lesbos in the 3^rd century without any one of these states becoming the dominant or exclusive focus that the Hittites, Lydians, and Persians had previously been.

This appears to change when Rome enters the eastern Mediterranean world at the end of the 3^rd century. Rome first entered into a series of conflicts with the Antigonid king Philip V of Macedon from 214 to 197 and then, much more importantly for Lesbos, became involved in a war with the Seleucid king Antiochus III from 192 to 189 which culminated in the Seleucids being permanently ejected from western Asia Minor. The emergence of a new political and economic superpower, now based to the west of Lesbos rather than to the east as in previous centuries, might appear to mark the moment at which this multi-polar world came to an end. In reality, however, that was not the case. Over the next century, Rome only formalized its control over the eastern Mediterranean in gradual and piecemeal fashion, and by the time this process had reached maturity in the mid-1^st century BCE the republic had begun to tear itself apart with civil wars. The world around Lesbos therefore remained multi-polar and highly dangerous for decades to come, with the island’s cities often becoming collateral damage in the high politics of Rome’s imperial expansion.

In 168, the Macedonian admiral Antenor turned up at Antissa and resupplied his ships in the port before heading to Greece to harry Roman forces. It is unlikely that Antissa, one of the island’s least powerful cities, was in any position to say no to Antenor and his fleet when they arrived. Nevertheless, the following year in 167 the Romans decided to punish the Antissans by destroying the city and transferring its population and territory to its neighbour and long-time rival Methymna.[23] The site of Antissa would not be occupied again until the 14^th or 15^th century CE.[24] A few years later in 155, Methymna in turn was caught up in the conflict between the Bithynian king Prusias II and the Attalid king Eumenes II. As Prusias’ fleet sailed along the coast of Attalid-controlled western Asia Minor, it ravaged the territories of various cities including that of Methymna.[25]

Two decades later in 133 the last Attalid king, Attalus III, died without an heir, and as a result his kingdom was bequeathed to the Roman state. A certain Aristonikos claimed to be Attalus’ rightful heir, declared himself Eumenes III, and started a war with the Greek cities to retain control of Attalid territory. The Romans were caught unawares by these developments, and as a result were unable to arrive in force to defeat Aristonikos until two years later in spring 131.[26] In the interim, the Greek cities of western Asia Minor largely had to fend for themselves in a chaotic and dangerous situation. A decree from Methymna, passed in 129 at the end of the conflict but referring to events from throughout the war, gives us insight into the extreme pressures this created for one city on Lesbos.[27] The city found itself short of grain due to the war and short of money due to the cost of grain imports and the cost of contributing to the Roman war effort. A political crisis ensued over whether it was better to solve the grain shortage and not pay the Romans, or to pay the Romans and suffer a grain shortage. With matters at an impasse, the neoi (the young men enrolled in the city’s gymnasium) took the exceptional step of intervening to propose a way out of the political impasse between their elders.[28]

A generation later in 88, a similar internal debate likely led Mytilene to make the fateful decision to turn their back on Rome and support the Pontic king Mithridates VI. After being defeated in battle by Mithridates in eastern Bithynia, the Roman legate Manius Aquillius fled to Mytilene thinking it to be a firmly pro-Roman safe haven. Instead, the Mytilenaeans threw in their lot with Mithridates and delivered Manius to Mithridates at Pergamon, where the Pontic king executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.[29] Knowing that they could expect no mercy from the Romans, the Mytilenaeans were staunchly loyal to Mithridates in the war which ensued. The siege of Mytilene began in 84 and did not end until 80, five years after Sulla had ended the initial conflict with Mithridates.[30] The consequences for Mytilene were dire: the city lost its free status, became subject to Roman taxation, and its territory was claimed by the Roman state and designated ager publicus.

The era of late Republican dynasts which followed created both new opportunities and new dangers for Mytilene. One of its citizens, Theophanes, became a close confidant of Pompey the Great, and as a result in 62 was able to secure the city’s freedom and territory which had been lost when the Romans finally captured Mytilene in 80. In thanks, the Mytilenaeans offered him extraordinary divine honours, worshipping him as Zeus the Liberator, and as late as the reign of Tiberius continued to depict him on their coins as ‘Theophanes the God’.[31] However, with Pompey’s defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus in August of 48, Theophanes and his direct line to Pompey became a political liability, and as a result new Mytilenaeans such as Krinagoras son of Kallippos and Potamon son of Lesbonax came forward to forge new relationships first with Julius Caesar and then with his self-proclaimed successor Octavian, the later Emperor Augustus.[32]

3.iii: Pax Romana (c.30 BCE to 3^rd century CE)

The period in which the cities of Lesbos operated within a multipolar world came to an abrupt end with Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium on the western coast of Greece in 31 BCE. Over the preceding millennium and a half, Lesbos had almost always found itself located within a shatter zone on the territorial periphery of one or more imperial powers. By contrast, with the establishment of the principate, Lesbos now found itself located deep within one of the safest and most peaceful parts of the Roman Empire. The nearest regions which saw regular warfare with external powers were the frontier with Dacia over 500 km to the north and the frontier with Parthia over 1,000 km to the east. With the end of the last Roman civil war in 31 BCE, the inhabitants of Lesbos were not seriously troubled by warfare again until rise of Arab piracy in the 7^th century CE.

With peace and prosperity also came a profound change in the political life of the island. For centuries, the elites of Lesbos had navigated a multipolar world which, while not without its dangers, also offered many political opportunities. In a world where rival imperial powers existed, the loyalty and co-operation of the cities of Lesbos was a valuable commodity, and consequently the political elites of Lesbos had much to offer these imperial powers when negotiating with them and could play these rival states off one another. With the triumph of Augustus this came to an end: now there was just Rome and its Emperor. The shift from a multipolar to a unipolar world did not, however, bring an end to the history of Lesbos being shaped by how the island fitted into the shifting spatial dynamics of the world around it. Whereas previously these shifting dynamics had been created by the rivalries between imperial powers, now they instead resulted from the provincial structures of the Roman Empire and the various ways in which the Roman state canalized movement through the eastern Mediterranean to serve its broader imperial goals.

From the late 2^nd century BCE down to the end of the 3^rd century CE, Lesbos belonged to the province of Asia.[33] The Roman authorities selected a number of cities within the province of Asia to host the annual assize-courts which the provincial governor would tour on an annual basis. Over time, these cities hosting assize-courts also came to designate a district associated with the court known as a conventus in Latin or dioikesis in Greek (from which we subsequently get the term diocese). Before Diocletian’s creation of the provincia insularum c.293-297 CE, there was no dedicated province for the Aegean islands. The choices which the Roman state made regarding how to divide these islands up amongst the surrounding mainland provinces therefore give us interesting insights into how these islands were integrated into the provincial structure of the Roman Empire in ways which were often at odds with their true regional character.

For example, the north Aegean islands of Lemnos and Imbros were attached to Thrace even though they were geographically closer to Asia. Likewise, the Cycladic islands were formed into their own conventus district and attached to Asia even though many, such as Keos, were a stone’s throw from the province of Achaea. The major islands off the coast of Asia Minor were each attached to a mainland conventus centre, although not necessarily the one closest to them: while Samos and Kos were assigned to the centres closest to them (Miletus and Halicarnassus respectively), Chios was assigned to Pergamon rather than Smyrna and Rhodes to inland Alabanda rather than coastal Halicarnassus. Exceptionally, however, the cities of Lesbos were assigned to two different conventus districts: Mytilene to Pergamon and Methymna and Eresos to Adramytteion. As a result, the two halves of the island were administratively integrated into different conventus districts. Whether this was imposed on the islanders by the Roman authorities or advocated for by the islanders themselves, the result was to split the island in two for administrative purposes and to enshrine in the organisation of the province of Asia the idea that Lesbos was not a unity.[34]

Finally, the island’s location on maritime routes of long-standing importance meant that it was a natural place for important Romans to pass through on their way to places further east. As a result, this habitually created opportunities for the cities of Lesbos to petition important Romans to secure benefactions for themselves. For example, in 18 CE Germanicus, a successful general and popular member of the Imperial household, was on the way to Syria with his heavily pregnant wife Agrippina the Elder when they stopped at Mytilene and she gave birth to Julia Livilla.[35] The Mytilenaeans, seeing an opportunity to connect themselves to this happy moment for the Imperial household, set up dedicatory inscriptions and issued coins which assimilated Agrippina to Thea Aeolis Karpophoros (‘The Harvest-Bearing Aeolian Goddess’). This evokes a poem of Alcaeus in which he refers to the Hera worshipped at the shared Lesbian sanctuary of Messon as the Aeolian Goddess and says the Lesbians gave her the epithet ‘the source from which all springs’.[36] Thus, this assimilation of Agrippina with Thea Aeolis Karpophoros works at multiple levels: it alludes to Agrippina’s prodigious fertility as a mother (Julia Livilla was her sixth child), it emphasizes the Aeolian ethnicity of Mytilene, it evokes the poetry of one of Mytilene’s most famous sons, and it compares the (hoped for) care which Agrippina will have for the city through her benefactions with the nurturing role which the ancient cult of Hera as Thea Aiolis has played in the city’s history.[37]

4. Internal Dynamic

In parallel and in dialogue with this story of the relationship between the cities of Lesbos and external powers is the island’s evolving internal dynamic during antiquity. Perhaps because islands are easy to delineate conceptually – they end where the sea begins – it is tempting to think of them as natural unities whose inhabitants will feel solidarity for one another simply by virtue of living together on an island. In reality, though, islands, and especially large islands such as Lesbos, are no more natural unities than any territory on the mainland is, and the fact of living together on an island is as likely to inspire competition as collaboration. As a result, understanding how the cities of Lesbos simultaneously viewed one another as rivals and compatriots is the key to understanding the island’s politics.

The brutal realities of Lesbian politics are laid bare by the political consolidation which took place on the island between the 7^th and the 2^nd centuries BCE. Lesbos initially had six cities: Mytilene, Methymna, Eresos, Antissa, Pyrrha, and Arisba. Herodotus tells us that at some point in the 6^th century, Methymna enslaved their homaimoi at Arisba.[38] The literal meaning of the term homaimos is ‘common blood’ and is thus also used to refer to siblings. Herodotus is surely using the term advisedly here: the Methymnaeans did not just enslave any old city, they enslaved their very own flesh and blood. At some unknown point in the 3^rd century and in uncertain circumstances, Pyrrha on the Gulf of Kalloni was incorporated into the territory of Mytilene.[39] Several decades later in 167, Methymna was the beneficiary of Antissa’s misfortune when the Romans punished Antissa by transferring its territory and population to Methymna.[40] Finally, it is worth recalling that in 428 Mytilene tried and failed to consolidate control over the whole island. Methymna was vehemently opposed to this, and as a result betrayed the plan to the Athenians before the Mytilenaeans were ready to revolt from the Athenian Empire. We do not know how Antissa, Eresos, and Pyrrha felt about Mytilene’s plans, and it is unclear whether they would have had much say given how much more powerful Mytilene was than them; Thucydides, at any rate, says that Mytilene’s attempt to unite the island was done by force.[41] Clearly, the cities of Lesbos did not ‘naturally’ feel solidarity towards one another just because of their shared insular geography: when they saw an opportunity to improve their lot at the expense of their neighbours, they took it.

An important consequence of this process of political consolidation is that the cities of Lesbos ended up possessing unusually large territories for Greek cities. The Copenhagen Polis Centre, which surveyed all poleis in the Archaic and Classical periods, estimated territory sizes for 635 of the 1,014 poleis in their inventory. From this they concluded that around 60% of poleis had a territory of up to 100 km² and 80% of poleis had a territory of up to 200 km².[42] Arisba and Pyrrha probably had smaller territories closer to the polis average of 25-200 km². However, the territories of Antissa and Eresos were likely around 250 km², the territory of Methymna probably increased from 200 to 300 km² with the incorporation of Arisba and then to 550 km² with Antissa, and the territory of Mytilene will have gone from 650 to 750 km² with the incorporation of Pyrrha. Since we do not have a precise understanding of the territorial borders on Lesbos, these figures are necessarily rough guesstimates. Nevertheless, they provide a sense of scale, and underscore two quite different points. First, even smaller cities on Lesbos such as Antissa and Eresos tended to have bigger territories than the average Greek polis. Second, the difference in territorial size between the smaller and larger cities on Lesbos was nevertheless stark.

Importantly, this ranking of the size of the island’s city territories also happens to be the ranking of the quality of the island’s city territories: Mytilene’s territory was both the largest and the best, just as Eresos’ territory was both the smallest and the worst. In all periods of the island’s history, the eastern half of the island has been more agriculturally productive and had greater resources than the western half, and within the eastern half the south-eastern part of the island is the best. Thus, Mytilene’s unusually large territory in the south-east part of the island included a disproportionate amount of the island’s most attractive territory. In addition to fertile agricultural land, this territory was also rich in valuable resources, for example timber from the forests on Mt. Olympos and marble from the quarries at Moria. The territory also controlled the entire Gulf of Iera and half the Gulf of Kalloni, and Mytilene’s double harbour was one of the best ports on the island.

As if the advantages of Mytilene’s territory on Lesbos were not enough, it also controlled territory on the mainland in its extensive peraia (‘land opposite’). From the 7^th century down to 427 BCE this consisted of a patchwork of discontiguous territories located along the coast of Asia Minor which stretched from the area just south of Çanakkale at the mouth of the Hellespont to the region around Ayvalık opposite Mytilene itself.[43] This probably amounted to at least another 500 km²of territory. The Athenian Empire stripped Mytilene of its peraia after the end of the Mytilenaean revolt in 427, but by the 4^th century BCE it had reacquired a mainland territory, this time to the south of its original peraia in the area between Ayvalık and Dikili.[44] This territory was known to Aristotle’s friend and student Theophrastos of Eresos as “the shore of the Mytilenaeans”, it was probably 200-250 km² in size, and it appears to have remained in Mytilene’s control deep into the Imperial period.[45]

These structural advantages not only made Mytilene wealthier and more powerful than the other cities of Lesbos, but also resulted in the city having a qualitatively different experience of being a city on Lesbos. This is most obviously the case with the peraia: Mytilene controlled significant territory on the mainland, whereas the other cities of Lesbos did not. Consequently, control of this territory could play a role in the city’s identity formation that has no equivalent in the histories of the other cities. A particularly striking illustration of this is provided by the practice on Lesbos in the Archaic period of setting up defensive structures and cult sites on the edges of one’s territory which were built with decorative Lesbian polygonal masonry. All the cities of Lesbos engaged in this practice except, seemingly, Mytilene.[46] However, at the fort of Achilleion located in the Troad a short distance from the mouth of the Hellespont, we find the same style of decorative Lesbian polygonal masonry being used here during the fort’s period of Mytilenaean control in the 6^th century.[47] This is precisely the territory where Alcaeus tells us there was constant fighting in the early 6^th century between the Mytilenaeans and the Athenians at nearby Sigeion, thus underscoring the symbolic importance of this land to the Mytilenaean elite.[48] Thus, Mytilene was not failing to participate in a Lesbos-wide cultural practice, it was simply doing so in the territory which mattered to Mytilene, which was not on Lesbos but in the peraia.

While we have access to nothing even approximating a ‘balance sheet’ of Mytilene’s resources, its history of minting can provide a useful proxy for the scale of its resources. For example, from the late 6^th century down to the third quarter of the 4^th century Mytilene produced an electrum coinage (a gold-silver alloy) in conjunction with the Ionian city of Phocaea on the coast opposite.[49] The agreement between the two cities, preserved in an inscription from the end of the 5^th c., involved the cities minting these coins in alternate years.[50] The most plausible explanation so far offered for this long-running and highly unusual arrangement is that the two cities were producing a commodity coinage which they then sold on to others for use in high-value commerce.[51] Since Mytilene did not control gold and silver mines, the metal for this coinage will have been purchased on the open market: it would thus have been inconceivable for any other Lesbian city to marshal the resources necessary to set up such a revenue-generating scheme. For the Hellenistic period, the scale of Mytilene’s production of Alexander-type tetradrachms across the 3^rd and 2^nd centuries compared to that of Methymna provides another example of the entirely different scale of the city’s resources relative to its neighbours.[52]

Mytilene’s exceptional wealth and power also gave it a qualitatively different experience of interacting with the world beyond Lesbos. When it was a member of the Athenian Empire in the 5^th century, it was one of only three cities along with Samos and Chios to retain the status of being a ship-contributing rather than tribute-paying ally.[53] When, like the Samians before them in 440/39, the Mytilenaeans in 428/7 decided that they needed to free themselves of Athenian domination, it seemed plausible to them that they could unite all Lesbos under their rule and then weather the inevitable retribution from Athens. Mytilene similarly charted its own course in the Hellenistic period: it belonged to the exclusive club of cities such as Byzantium, Rhodes, and Chios which remained independent of the Hellenistic kingdoms for much of this period, and it was never subject to an external power until the end of the Roman siege of Mytilene in 80 BCE.[54]

Given how much wealthier and more powerful Mytilene was than the rest of Lesbos and that, at least for a moment in 428/7, it had clearly wanted to dominate the whole island, it is notable that Lesbos nevertheless remained a multi-polis island throughout antiquity. While many factors no doubt contributed to this outcome, the size and geography of the island are particularly important considerations. In terms of size, Lesbos is the eighth largest island in the Mediterranean at 1,630 km² and sits on the threshold between much larger islands such as Cyprus (third largest, 9,251 km²) and Crete (fifth largest, 8,312 km²) which are far too big to be controlled by a single community and islands like Rhodes (ninth largest, 1,398 km²) and Chios (tenth largest, 842 km²) which can in fact be consolidated under the rule of a single state. As regards geography, the island’s long coastline makes circumnavigation slow, while its mountainous interior and large internal gulfs make overland journeys within the island slower still. These factors conspire to decentralize both political power and economic production on the island, as we can see very clearly in the island’s more modern history. There is no obvious place to build a synoikized capital like on Rhodes, and the resources of the island are usually most efficiently exploited at source rather than by centralizing production and distribution. As a result, alongside the well-documented and often cutthroat competition between the cities in antiquity, there was also a habitual impulse towards collaboration.

This paradoxical dynamic of competition and collaboration is especially apparent in the history of the sanctuary of Messon and the associated koinon of the Lesbians.[55] We learn from the poetry of Alcaeus that already c.600 there was a sanctuary at the head of the Gulf of Kalloni where all the Lesbians gathered to worship together but also to compete with one another in events such as the beauty contests of the Kallisteia.[56] This common sanctuary also operated as a ‘third space’ on the island where exiles such as Alcaeus could cool their feet while waiting for an opportunity to return to their community.[57] Several centuries later c.340-320 a new temple was built in the sanctuary, a project which presupposes effective collaboration between the cities.[58] At a time of considerable geopolitical danger c.200, the cities of Lesbos refounded the koinon with a remit which went beyond just the running of the festival at Messon. The terms of the agreement they reached are focused both on defusing tensions between the cities and on collaboration on mutual defence.[59] Whatever sense of insular solidarity informed the refounded koinon clearly had its limits, since in 167 Methymna happily benefited from the destruction of another member city, Antissa. When the koinon emerges again in our evidence in the Imperial period, it is not at all clear that it was still run collectively by multiple cities, and instead appears to be dominated by Mytilene.[60] In the history of the Lesbian koinon, as in the history of Lesbos itself, both collaboration and competition were always possibilities, and which won out at a particular moment is best explained by historical context rather than geographically determinist arguments about islands being ‘naturally’ united.

5. Insular Identities

Any study of the insular identity of Lesbos quickly collapses into a series of paradoxical disjunctures between different perspectives on what that identity, or identities, might be. The Lesbians understood themselves to be migrants from Greece, but their origins were as much in Anatolia as in Greece, and their culture was shot through with Anatolian influences which over time they became blind to. In their own story of their origins, the Lesbians were part of the Aeolian migration, and yet they are curiously selective in when they choose to highlight this aspect of their identity, and often prefer to think of themselves as Lesbians rather than Aeolians. Even when it comes to aspects of Lesbian culture which we might think of as unproblematically ‘Lesbian’, within the island these things are as much a source of dissension as of solidarity, and the perception of them within the island is often at odds with their external perception.

Lesbian narratives about their population’s origins imagined that they were migrants from central Greece and did not acknowledge any Anatolian influence or origin. In reality, however, the island’s population and culture appears to have been a mixture of both. The name Lesbos already existed in the from Lazpa in the mid-2^nd millennium BCE, and the name Mytilene has been plausibly etymologized as the ‘the place that Muwatalliš holds’, thus referring to a Hittite king, most likely Muwatalliš II in the early 13^th century.[61] The survival of these names suggests a certain amount of continuity in the population across the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age transition, just as at Apaša/Ephesus and Millawanda/Miletus. The suspicion that there was extensive interchange between Greek and Anatolian populations on Lesbos and a high degree of continuity from the Late Bronze Age is confirmed by the archaeological evidence from this period.[62] Linguistically, the Lesbian dialect of Aeolic appears to contain a number of elements which may originate in Luwian and imply close interaction between Lesbian and Anatolian populations in the Early Iron Age. However, with the collapse of the Lydian kingdom in the mid-6^th century, conscious awareness of the many Anatolian elements in Lesbian culture seems to have faded. Sappho and Alcaeus may thus have belonged to one of the last generations of Lesbians who had some awareness that Lesbian culture had been shaped by interaction with speakers of Anatolian languages.[63]

While the Lesbians understood themselves to have been part of the Aeolian migration, they were strikingly selective in embracing their Aeolian identity.[64] While they acknowledged their mythological kinship with Aeolian cities when it was politically advantageous to do so, they notably did not participate either in the Aeolian cult at Grynium on the coast opposite Mytilene or in the Aeolian koinon based at Assos opposite Methymna in the third quarter of the 4^th century BCE, instead preferring to focus on the Lesbian koinon. The one significant exception to this is the sudden uptick in Mytilene’s interest in its Aeolian identity in the first half of the 1^st century CE.[65] This newfound interest manifested itself in a variety of ways, ranging from the prominent Mytilenaean Potamon son of Lesbonax claiming to be descended from Penthilos ‘king of the Aeolians’, to Mytilenaean aristocrats making dedications assimilating Agrippina the Elder and Younger to Thea Aeolis Karpophoros, to mythological claims that Mytilene was in fact the metropolis of the Aeolians. This discrete historical phenomenon, which lasted just two or three generations, appears to have originated in a bitter territorial dispute over Mytilene’s peraia in Aeolis in the 1^st century BCE. Once these specific circumstances had passed, Mytilenaean interest in portraying themselves as Aeolians correspondingly diminished.

The paradoxes of Lesbian insular identity are neatly captured in how the collective ethnic Lesbios was used. In our evidence, the term is much more frequently employed by those external to Lesbos to talk about the islanders than by the islanders themselves. This divergence stems from the fact that outsiders were frequently either insensitive or indifferent to the differences between the cities of Lesbos, and so simply referred to all of the island’s inhabitants interchangeably as ‘Lesbian’ even when they were talking about one city in particular.[66] By contrast, when Lesbians themselves used the term ‘Lesbian’, this often occurred in the context of a single city appropriating this collective identity for themselves rather than expressing a shared identity. For example, in the 5^th century BCE Mytilene produced parallel electrum and billon coinages which sometimes featured the legend LE or LES for ‘Lesbian’.[67] Thus, although some of these coins presented themselves as having been produced by Lesbos as a whole, in reality they were produced by Mytilene alone, and Mytilene’s willingness to put this collective ethnic on their coinage implies a sense of ownership over this collective identity which is in line with the city’s attempt to dominate the whole island that came soon afterwards in 428. Something similar may have happened with the Lesbian koinon in the Imperial period, which when it reappears in our evidence in the 1^st and 2^nd century CE is associated with Mytilene alone despite its name.

Competition over the island’s cultural inheritance brought the cities of Lesbos together and produced a common experience of insular identity. For example, Lesbos as a whole was internationally famous for its poets and singers.[68] As a result, within Lesbos this became a domain for intra-island competition, with each city seeking to outdo its rivals in the prestige of its poets and singers. In the Hellenistic period, Antissa put Terpander on its coins while its neighbour Methymna depicted Arion, the inventor of dithyramb, riding a dolphin and signing his heart out. A particularly interesting case is Sappho: the testimonia from antiquity are split on whether she came from Eresos or Mytilene, and as a result in the Imperial period both cities laid claim to her on their coinage.[69] Similarly, after Methymna incorporated Antissa in 167 BCE, it also began to claim Terpander as its own poet rather than Antissa’s.[70] In the Hellenistic period, Skamon of Mytilene wrote a work On Inventions which, among other things, discussed who had first invented various dances and musical instruments. This work is sadly lost, but we can easily imagine how it could have been used to advance claims about which city was truly responsible for the musical heritage of Lesbos.[71] Much as with the use of collective ethnics, we see here an important difference between external and internal perspectives. To those beyond Lesbos, the contributions of each city all belonged to a single and largely undifferentiated Lesbian song culture. By contrast, to the cities of Lesbos themselves these contributions were specifically those of individual cities.

Stark divergences between internal and external perceptions of Lesbian identity are also apparent in the Kallisteia, the so-called ‘beauty contest’ held at Messon. We learn from Theophrastos of Eresos that the women at the Kallisteia were not judged just on physical attractiveness, but also on other qualities associated with being a good wife such as sophrosyne (moderation) and oikonomia (ability to manage a household).[72] The whole contest appears to have emphasized the modesty and chastity of the women: Alcaeus describes them wearing voluminous and trailing robes which would have entirely covered them, plants thought to have anaphrodisiac properties were prominently associated with the sanctuary of Messon, and the contest was held in honour of Hera who herself embodied these values.[73] This contest thus expressed a collective sense on Lesbos that the high morals of their women was a particularly important part of Lesbian culture and something the island’s cities both shared in and could compete over. By contrast, beyond Lesbos the island’s women were instead most famous for their sexual licentiousness, as we learn, for example, from a litany of jokes on the subject in Athenian comedies of the 5^th century.[74] These diametrically opposed views may well have fed off one another: the more the Lesbians emphasized the renowned chastity of their women, the more those beyond Lesbos would instead claim the opposite, and the more this external perception grew, the more important it became for the Lesbians to double down on the importance of this aspect of their culture. Thus, insular identity on Lesbos was shaped not just by how it was contested between the cities of Lesbos, but also by Lesbian awareness of external perceptions of the island.

6. Wider Horizons

The particular location of Lesbos in the Mediterranean world has meant that it has habitually been both a place people come to from far away and a place with far-flung connections. The travails of Sappho’s feckless older brother Charaxos in Egypt or the detail that, on the eve of the revolt in 428 BCE, Mytilene was awaiting archers and grain from the Black Sea, remind us that the island lay along the great north-south axis of movement which snaked between these two points and animated the economy of western Asia Minor.[75] Along this great corridor of commerce, Lesbos was of particular importance because of its proximity to the mouth of the Hellespont and its many good harbours. The island’s nodal significance in the Aegean is starkly apparent from an episode in 333 BCE. When the Persian commander Memnon of Rhodes wanted to cut the supply lines between Macedon and Alexander the Great’s army (then in south-east Asia Minor), his strategy was to blockade the port of Mytilene at the eastern end of the island and then capture the landing place at Sigrion at the western end of Lesbos. With this one action he now had a stranglehold on commercial routes south to Chios, west to Euboea and Athens, and north to Thrace and Macedon.[76] Grain shortages soon followed in Athens, since ships coming from the Black Sea were unwilling to venture past Tenedos.[77]

While the location of Lesbos in the Mediterranean world shaped the island as a whole, the impact of these wider horizons differed from one city to the next. As we would expect, the degree to which Mytilene was integrated into these Mediterranean-wide networks was both remarkable and, on Lesbos, also exceptional. In this respect, the misfortunes of Charaxos represent a distinctively Mytilenaean experience, since Herodotus tells us that Mytilene was the only Aeolian city to be involved in the founding of the Hellenion sanctuary at the Greek trading community of Naukratis in the Egyptian delta.[78] A particularly striking illustration of how Mytilene’s place in Mediterranean-wide networks could reshape life in the city is the phenomenon of it serving as a place of voluntary exile for elite Romans in the 1^st century BCE and CE. The pattern was set by Publius Rutilius Rufus, who left Rome in the late 90s and settled in Mytilene after being condemned for extortion.[79] In subsequent decades he was followed by figures such as Gaius Memmius in 51 (prosecuted for electoral bribery in 52) and Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 47 (on the losing side of the Battle of Pharsalos in 49).[80] Writing in the 40s, Cicero considered Mytilene, along with Rhodes, as the quintessential places for leisured exile.[81] This reputation was so strong that when the Emperor Augustus’ right-hand man Agrippa spent time in Mytilene while administering the eastern half of the Roman Empire in the late 20s BCE, it was incorrectly assumed that this represented some kind of temporary exile from court politics. Indeed, when the philosopher Seneca was pleading with the Emperor Nero to be allowed to retire into exile in 62 CE, he cited the precedent of Agrippa’s time in Mytilene, perhaps hoping to be granted a similar fate.[82]

Mytilene was an attractive place of exile for these men not just because of its renowned refinement, but also because of how well connected it was.[83] Its role as a nodal point in the Mediterranean meant that a constant stream of elite Romans passed through the city on their way to public and private business elsewhere in the eastern half of the empire.[84] Equally, the ready availability of ships sailing to all parts of the empire every day will have greatly facilitated the speed with which letters were sent and received. ‘Exile’ in Mytilene therefore did not mean becoming disconnected from Roman politics, and as a result the city became a hub for elite Romans. One consequence of this was that the elites of Mytilene will have had many more opportunities to interact personally with important Romans than their compatriots elsewhere on Lesbos did. In this respect, the visit of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder in 18 CE during which Agrippina gave birth to Julia Livilla is both typical of the role Mytilene habitually played in elite Roman itineraries (the couple were on their way to Germanicus’ province of Syria) and of the benefits which could accrue to Mytilene from this (Agrippina made a generous benefaction to the city’s gymnasium). When other cities of Lesbos also tried to cultivate a relationship with the couple on this occasion, as for example Eresos did with Germanicus, they were at a distinct disadvantage.[85]

In the case of the other cities of Lesbos, evidence for the wider horizons of these cities is often encoded in mythologized narratives. The story of Arion and the dolphin is a particularly rich example. Arion was a famous singer and lyre player from Methymna who was reputed to be the first person to compose dithyramb. Through his musical skill he secured a position at the court of the Corinthian tyrant Periander, thus dating him to the late 7^th/early 6^th century BCE. From there he decided to tour Italy and Sicily and became wealthy through his musical performances. On his return trip from Taras to Corinth he decided to sail with Corinthian sailors who, however, decided to throw him overboard on the voyage and steal his money. When the plot was revealed to Arion, he asked to sing once more and performed on the ship before jumping into the sea. Unbeknownst to the sailors, Arion was saved by a dolphin and rode on its back all the way to Taenarum, a promontory at the southern tip of the Peloponnese. From there he made his way back to Corinth and was able to get his revenge on the sailors when they returned. Herodotus tells us that this story was known to both the Corinthians and the Lesbians, and that at Taenarum a bronze statue depicting Arion on the dolphin commemorated this event.[86]

The story reflects the international reputation of Lesbian song culture, but also a claim to being the first at inventing something within that song culture which feels distinctively Methymnaean. The career of Arion illustrates how Lesbians might parlay musical talent into travel, wealth, and status just as readily as, around the same time, Alcaeus’ brother Antimenidas did with his mercenary service for Nebuchadnezzar or as Charaxos failed to do with his commercial ventures in Egypt. In Arion’s case, this career created a network of connections as far afield as the Greek colonies of the western Mediterranean. While the tale of Arion being saved by a dolphin is obviously fantastical, the story as a whole emerges out of a very real world of Mediterranean-wide connections and the possibilities for prestige and enrichment which came with that. The international fame of the story – known to both Corinthians and Lesbians, celebrated by a monument at Taenarum, and now immortalized by Herodotus – turned the tale of Arion and the dolphin into the story the Methymnaeans were most keen to promote about themselves. As a result, the image of Arion belting out a tune on the back of a dolphin appears on Methymna’s coinage throughout antiquity.

Conclusions

The apparent paradoxes of Lesbian history are in reality a series of juxtaposed perspectives on the island’s history which can be both true and false depending on one’s viewpoint. Lesbos had a distinctive insular history in antiquity, but the island is also not historically intelligible in isolation from the world around it. Its particular location in the ancient world ensured that the history of Lesbos was always implicated in and shaped by broader geopolitical forces. However, how exactly this worked differed considerably from one city to the next. Mytilene in particular clearly had a qualitatively different experience of life on Lesbos because of its exceptional wealth, territory, and mainland possessions. However, it is probably the case that with richer evidence we would realise that all the cities of Lesbos had quite distinctive experiences of being a city on the island. To some extent, geography guaranteed this outcome, offering different possibilities and imposing different limitations on each city depending on the particular configuration of its territory and networks of connectivity. Insofar as we can identify a shared insular culture, it was driven by an unstable but productive combination of solidarity and rivalry. It was competition over different elements of Lesbian culture – cult, myth, dialect, and song to name just a few – which fostered a sense of commonality between the island’s inhabitants. Competition brought Lesbians together and reinforced for the island’s population what it was that they had in common and what it was that distinguished them from outsiders. In this respect, Lesbos was both the cultural unity it appeared to be to those beyond Lesbos while also being, from a local’s perspective, a series of distinctive civic traditions refracted through the prism of Lesbian identity.

[1] Compare J. Ma, ‘Paradigms and paradoxes in the Hellenistic world’ Studi Ellenistici 20 (2008) 371-85, esp. 380: “Paradox emerges firstly, from the juxtaposition with other documents, and their conflicting paradigms and expectations; and secondly, from the rereading of documents, and the questioning of paradigms, that such juxtapositions enable”.

[2] For the previous much more limited archaeological investigations at Antissa see W. Lamb, ‘Antissa’ Annual of the British School at Athens 31 (1930-1931) 166-78 and Annual of the British School at Athens 32 (1931-1932) 41-67.

[3] S. Charitonidis, L. Kahil, and R. Ginouves, Les mosaïques de la Maison du Menandre à Mytilène (Bern 1970).

[4] The rough estimates which follow are based on what has been published in Inscriptiones Graecae XII (2), Inscriptiones Graecae XII Supplementum, S. Charitonidis, Αι επιγραφαί της Λέσβου: συμπλήρωμα (Athens 1968), and Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.

[5] G. Rowe, Princes and Political Cultures: The New Tiberian Senatorial Decrees (Ann Arbor 2002) 139-42.

[6] These are rough figures only intended to give a sense of relative scale and are taken from Inscriptiones Graecae XII (1), (4.1-3), and (6) for Rhodes, Kos, and Samos respectively and personal comment from Charles Crowther on the unpublished Chios volume.

[7] A provisional typology of the island’s coinage down to the 1^st century BCE is available at https://greekcoinage.org/arch/. A full typology of the island’s provincial coinage is available at https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/search.

[8] P. Thonemann, The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge 2011) xiii.

[9] N. Purcell, ‘Mobility and the polis’ in O. Murray and S. R. F. Price (eds.), The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander (Oxford 1990) 29-58.

[10] T. Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites, new ed. (Oxford 2005) 357-71; I. Singer, ‘Purple-dyers in Lazpa’ in B. J. Collins, M. R. Bachvarova, and I. Rutherford (eds.), Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and Their Neighbours: Proceedings of an International Conference on Cross-Cultural Interaction, September 17-19, 2004, Emory University, Atlanta, GA (Oxford 2008) 21-43; A. Teffeteller, ‘Singers of Lazpa: reconstructing identities on Bronze Age Lesbos’ in A. Mouton, I. Rutherford, and I. Yakubovich (eds.), Luwian Identities: Culture, Language and Religion between Anatolia and the Aegean (Leiden 2013) 567-89.

[11] Homer, Iliad 24.543-6.

[12] Homer, Iliad 9.128-32, 270-2, 663-5.

[13] Alcaeus fr. 69.

[14] Sappho fr. 16.

[15] Sappho fr. 132.

[16] Alcaeus frr. 48 and 350 with D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry (Oxford 1955) 240. For Greeks in the mercenary service of Near Eastern kings in the Archaic period see N. Luraghi, ‘Traders, pirates, warriors: the proto-history of Greek mercenary soldiers in the eastern Mediterranean’ Phoenix 60 (2006) 21-47.

[17] Sappho Test. 1, frr. 3, 5, 7, 16, 202, 213A; A. Bierl and A. Lardinois (eds.), The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs.1-4 (Leiden 2016).

[18] Fall of the Persian Empire and continuity under Alexander: P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN 2002) 817-71. The succession crisis following Alexander’s death: B. Bosworth, The Legacy of Alexander: Politics, Warfare, and Propaganda under the Successors (Oxford 2005).

[19] B. Chrubasik, ‘The Attalids and the Seleukid kings, 281-175 BC’ in P. Thonemann (ed.), Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations, and the State (Oxford 2013) 83-119.

[20] A. Ellis-Evans, ‘The Alexanders of Lesbos’ American Journal of Numismatics 37 (2025) 1-102, at 19-20.

[21] Ellis-Evans, ‘Alexanders of Lesbos’ 15-21.

[22] R. S. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions outside Egypt (Leiden 1976) 159-64.

[23] H. J. Mason, ‘The end of Antissa’ American Journal of Philology 116.3 (1995) 399-410.

[24] J. Koder, Tabula Imperii Byzantini 10: Aigaion Pelagos (Die Nördliche Ägäis) (Vienna 1998) 294.

[25] Ellis-Evans, ‘Alexanders of Lesbos’ 22-3.

[26] C. P. Jones, ‘Events surrounding the bequest of Pergamon to Rome and the revolt of Aristonicos: new inscriptions from Metropolis’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 17 (2004) 469-85, esp. 483-5.

[27] Inscriptiones Graecae XII Supplementum, no. 116.

[28] P. Gauthier, ‘Compte rendu: G. Labarre, Les cites de Lesbos aux époques hellénistiques et impériale (Lyon 1996)’ Topoi 7.1 (1997) 349-61, at 359-60; A. Ellis-Evans, ‘The late Hellenistic tetradrachms of Parion and Lampsakos’ American Journal of Numismatics 32 (2020) 93-125, at 111-12.

[29] The sources are collected and discussed in T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, 3 vols. (New York 1951-1960) vol. 2: 43 s.v. M’. Aquillius (cos. 101).

[30] Plutarch, Lucullus 4.2-3; Livy, Periochae 89.14; Suetonius, Divus Iulius 2.

[31] L. Robert, ‘Théophane de Mytilène à Constantinople’ Comptes rendus de l’académie des inscriptions 113.1 (1969) 42-64; P. Gauthier, Les cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs (IV^e-I^er s. av. J.-C.). Contribution à l’histoire des institutions (Paris 1985) 53-66; A. Ellis-Evans, The Kingdom of Priam: Lesbos and the Troad between Anatolia and the Aegean (Oxford 2019) 256-8.

[32] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 258-9.

[33] There is debate as to whether the cities of Lesbos joined the province c.129-126 BCE immediately after its creation or only after the end of the First Mithridatic War c.85-80 BCE. This is probably an irresolvable question on current evidence: Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 278-9, n. 109.

[34] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 277-84.

[35] Tacitus, Annals 2.54.

[36] Alcaeus fr. 129.6-7 with Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 268-9.

[37] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 267-76.

[38] Herodotus 1.151.2.

[39] The best account of what little we know is S. Amigues, ‘Pyrrha de Lesbos dans les textes et dans les faits’ Journal des Savants (2013) 71-109, at 72-95. See also Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 280, n. 115, 282.

[40] Livy 45.31.13-14 with Mason, ‘End of Antissa’.

[41] Thucydides 3.2.3.

[42] M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford 2004) 70-3, esp. 71-2.

[43] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 159-88.

[44] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 251-60.

[45] Theophrastos fr. 400 Fortenbaugh.

[46] N. Spencer, ‘Exchange and stasis in archaic Mytilene’ in R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (eds.), Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Political Organisation and Community in Ancient Greece (Oxford 2000) 68-81.

[47] M. Korfmann, ‘Beşik-Tepe. Vorbericht über die Ergebnisse der Grabungen von 1985 und 1986’ Archäologische Anzeiger (1988) 391-8, A. Ellis-Evans, ‘The history and coinage of Achaiion in the Troad’ Revue des Études Anciennes 119.1 (2017) 25-47, at 33-9.

[48] Alcaeus fr. 428.

[49] F. Bodenstedt, Die Elektronmünzen von Phokaia und Mytilene (Tübingen 1981).

[50] R. Osborne and P. J. Rhodes, Greek Historical Inscriptions 478-404 BC (Oxford 2017) 572-7, no. 195.

[51] E. Mackil and P. G. van Alfen ‘Cooperative coinage’ in P. G. van Alfen (ed.), Agoranomia: Studies in Money and Exchange Presented to John H. Kroll (New York 2006) 201-46, at 210-19.

[52] Ellis-Evans, ‘Alexanders of Lesbos’, 9-12, 24.

[53] P. Low, ‘The Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian War’ in S. Gartland and R. Osborne (eds.), Reassessing the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge 2025) 63-92, at 64-7.

[54] Ellis-Evans, ‘Alexanders of Lesbos’, 25-7.

[55] L. Robert, ‘Recherches épigraphiques’ Revue des Études Anciennes 62.3-4 (1960) 276-361, at 285-315 (‘V. Inscriptions de Lesbos’), Amigues, ‘Pyrrha de Lesbos’, Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 227-30.

[56] Amigues, ‘Pyrrha de Lesbos’, 95-108.

[57] Alcaeus fr. 130 L-P.

[58] I. Kourtzellis, ‘The Messon temple on the island of Lesbos: a pseudo-dipteral Ionic temple of Hera, Zeus, and Dionysos’ in W. Aylward, J. des Courtils, and B. D. Wescoat (eds.), Architectural Networks in the North Aegean: Thasos, Samothrace, and the Formation of Hellenistic Design (Madison, WI 2025) 40-61. Epigraphic evidence: A. J. Heisserer, ‘Observations on IG XII 2, 10 and 11’ ZPE 74 (1988) 111-32, at 111-19.

[59] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 202-22.

[60] Epigraphic evidence for the koinon in the Imperial period only comes from Mytilene and the pattern of countermarks on the coins purporting to be minted by the koinon strongly suggest that these coins only circulated in Mytilene’s territory.

[61] A. Dale, ‘Greek ethnics in -ηνος and the name of Mytilene’ in N. Stampolidis, Ç. Maner, and K. Kopanias (eds), Nostoi: Indigenous Culture, Migration, and Integration in the Aegean Islands and Western Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (Istanbul 2015) 421-44, at 434-9.

[62] N. Spencer, ‘Early Lesbos between east and west’ Annual of the British School at Athens 90 (1995) 269-306.

[63] C. Watkins, ‘The golden bowl: thoughts on the new Sappho and its Asianic background’ Classical Antiquity 26 (2007) 305-25, A. Dale, ‘Alcaeus on the career of Myrsilos: Greeks, Lydians and Luwians at the East Aegean-West Anatolian interface’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 15-24, A. Dale, ‘Alcaeus, Pittakos ‘son of “Hyrras”’, and the Lesbian aristocracy, or ‘How to do things with words’’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 143 (2023) 49-68.

[64] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 260-5.

[65] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 265-76.

[66] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 223-4.

[67] Ellis-Evans, Kingdom of Priam, 224-7.

[68] See for example Isocrates’ letter to the rulers of Mytilene (Letters 8.4) in the 4^th century BCE appealing for them to recall from exile the Mytilenaean musician Agenor: “It is disgraceful that while your city is universally acknowledged to be most devoted to music and the most notable artists in that field have been born among you, yet he who is the foremost authority of living men in that branch of culture is an exile from such a city”.

[69] Origin: Sappho Test. 1, 3, 5, 11 (Mytilene), 2 (Eresos). On coins of Mytilene: Roman Provincial Coinage IV.2 1789 (labelled), 1785, 2649, 3145, 1787, X ID61435 (likely Sappho), IV.2 3621, 11322, 1786 (uncertain Sappho). On coins of Eresos: Roman Provincial Coinage I 2336A, IV.2 2482, 2622. Sappho Test. 11 = Pollux 9.84 explicitly mentions that, “The Mytilenaeans engraved Sappho on their coinage”.

[70] Antissa: Aristotle fr. 545 Rose. Methymna: Diodorus Siculus 8.28.1; Strabo 13.2.4.

[71] Skamon of Mytilene, Brill’s New Jacoby 476.

[72] Theophrastos fr. 546 Fortenbaugh.

[73] Amigues, ‘Pyrrha de Lesbos’, 104-8.

[74] Amigues, ‘Pyrrha de Lesbos’, 105-6.

[75] Archers and grain: Thucydides 3.2.2.

[76] Arrian, Anabasis 2.1.2 with A. Ellis-Evans, ‘The Tyrants Dossier from Eresos’ Chiron 42 (2012) 183-212, at 191-2, n. 40.

[77] G. Cawkwell, ‘A note on Ps-Demosthenes 17.20’ Phoenix 15 (1961) 74-8.

[78] Herodotus 2.178.

[79] Cicero, Pro Rabirio 27; Dio Cassius 28.97.4.

[80] G. Memmius: Cicero, Letters to Atticus 5.11.6. M. Claudius Marcellus: Cicero, Brutus 250, Letters to Atticus 14.1.2, Ad Familiares 4.7.4, 7.3.5; Seneca, Dialogues 12.9.4-6; Valerius Maximus 9.11.4.

[81] Cicero, Ad Familiares 4.7.4, 7.3.5.

[82] Suetonius, Divus Augustus 66.3, Tiberius 10.1; Tacitus, Annals 14.53.3 (Seneca and Nero).

[83] Reputation for refinement in the Imperial period: Horace, Odes 1.7.1; Vitruvius 1.6.1; Martial 10.68.1; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 31.105.

[84] For example, Cicero (Letters to Atticus 14.1.2) tells us that Brutus visited M. Claudius Marcellus at Mytilene while on his way to visit Caesar at Nicaea in Bithynia.

[85] Inscriptiones Graecae XII (2) 540 with Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 52.774.

[86] Herodotus 1.23-24.

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