Review: Miletus (I)

Reviewed Work(s): Miletos: The Ornament of Ionia. A history of the City to 400 B.C.E. by
V. B. Gorman
Review by: Alan M. Greaves
Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Apr., 2003), pp. 137-139
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3662685
Accessed: 03-05-2023 19:17 +00:00

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Classical Association, Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Review

This content downloaded from 188.3.97.97 on Wed, 03 May 2023 19:17:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 137

such cases), any earlier testimonies, and official details such as province (nomos) and
district (eparchia). Very recent changes of status (such as from koinotita to dimos) are
also noted. P. acknowledges that elements of the work are provisional: 552 settlements
still await the gathering of oral testimony or other checks, while 157 earlier names
remain unlocated. The usefulness of the volume is enhanced by full concordances of
old versus new names and lists of names by nom6s and eparchia. It is now a simple
matter to establish that Messenian Avia (which preserves Polybios's Abia) is the place
earlier travellers called Pali6chora, or that modern Aipeia (a Homeric place whose real
location was debated in ancient times) is the village formerly known as Pharmi. This
new inventory of current and recent settlement names will be invaluable to historians
and archaeologists undertaking research on the Peloponnese.

University of Leicester GRAHAM S H IPLEY

MILETUS (i)
V. B. GORMAN: Miletos. The Ornament of lonia. A History of the
City to 400 B.C.E. Pp. viii + 304, maps. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2001. Cased. ISBN: 0-472-11199-X.
After we have waited 86 years for an English language history of one of the most
important poleis of classical Greece, two come at once-just like buses! But this is
no bad thing for a city that has been so long overlooked by the English-speaking
academic community. The two books in question (this one and one by the author of
this review) are also sufficiently different in their scope and methodology to allow the
reader to appreciate both and thereby broaden published scholarship on the subject
as a whole.
This book is very much a historical work drawing together the scant historical
sources on Miletos and providing translations and discussions of the most important
inscriptions from the city. These epigraphic sections are one of the book's outstanding
features, and will ensure its wide usage for teaching and research. Having arisen out of
a Ph.D. dissertation supervised by A. J. Graham, it is no surprise to see that some
important observations on Miletos as a colonizer in the archaic period are also
included. The author has a very clear written style and includes in the footnotes many
relevant observations that serve to further the points being made in the main body
of the text. The publication is of a very high standard, with few noticeable errors.
Unfortunately, despite the close attention to detail in the extracts of Greek inscriptions
and historical passages, the Turkish place names cited are not spelt using Turkish script
and the general lack of reference to Turkish archaeology throughout the book is
disappointing. An Anatolian perspective on the history of the city and its distinctive
regional character would have been welcome.
Chapter 1 (pp. 13-46) discusses the origins of the city and its foundation myths.
These latter are a particularly thorny subject, but Gorman discusses them clearly. Here
she does not restrict herself to Greek historical sources and goes on to discuss the r6le
that Miletos (Millawanda) holds in Hittite historical records. However, this chapter
also covers the archaeology of the early city and here her touch is less sure. Examples
of this would include her acceptance of unstratified finds as firm evidence (p. 24) and
consideration of pottery (pp. 40-1). There are also occasional jarring statements such
as the 'clear cultural superiority' of the Minoans over the native cultures of South-
West Anatolia (p. 19) that again reflect a general lack of engagement with Anatolia in

? The Classical Association, 2003

This content downloaded from 188.3.97.97 on Wed, 03 May 2023 19:17:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
138 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

general and its archaeology in particular. She also argues that there was no Carian
population at Miletos (pp. 41-3), and we are left with the impression of Miletos as
being a Greek city with no local identity that just happened to be in Asia Minor.
Chapter 2 (pp. 47-85) deals with archaic Miletos' trade and colonization. G.
provides a very brief description of the Milesian khora at the start of this chapter as a
prelude to discussing its trade (pp. 47-59). The discussion of trade focuses mostly on
Naukratis and emphasizes the importance of trade as the basis of Miletos' legendary
wealth over that of agricultural production, a view with which the author of this
review would disagree. This emphasis on trade is also seen as underpinning archaic
Miletos' foreign relations and the basis for its extensive colonization (pp. 59-71).
Seemingly out of place in a chapter on trade and colonization, there is also a section on
those most famous sons of Miletos, the pre-Socratic philosophers. This is an extremely
clear and succinct discussion of the subject, which will be of interest to many readers
and will certainly widen interest in the book.
The archaic city is covered in Chapter 3 (pp. 87-128), in which G. discusses its early
archaic political institutions (pp. 88-101), its tyrannies, and its oligarchies (pp. 101-21)
by bringing together many complex epigraphic sources into a coherent discussion. This
is very useful, providing as it does an insight into political institutions of a Greek city
other than Athens, and is one of the book's strengths. The chapter does not just
concern itself with the internal organization of Miletos but also considers the role that
external powers such as Lydia played in the development of political institutions in
lonia (pp. 121-8). Again there is a heavy (perhaps too heavy) emphasis on the r6le of
trade, as evidenced by the widening distribution of Milesian pottery, as a factor behind
colonization.
One of the highlights of this chapter and the book as a whole is the discussion of
the Ionian Revolt (Chapter 4, pp. 129-63). The outbreak of the Revolt is attributed by
G. to the personal aspirations of Aristagoras, who was attempting to hold on to power
in Miletos following the failure of the Naxos campaign. This discussion entails lengthy
and detailed consideration of the historical sources, and the author puts across her
insights well. This chapter also covers the refoundation of the city following the failure
of the Revolt and puts forward the idea that the city was refounded using population
from its many colonies. At the end of the chapter is a section devoted to Hippodamos
of Miletos, the famous city-planner and one of Miletos' best known but elusive
historical personalities. Hippodamos was the subject of a previous article by G. and so
she is here able to provide a very clear and insightful discussion of the subject,
convincingly proving by close analysis of texts and dates that Hippodamos was not
responsible for planning his own home town.
Chapter 5 (pp. 165-213) returns to the archaic period to deal with the archaeology
of the city and its cults. This chapter has sections on the city wall, cults, the molpoi
decree, Didyma the city and Kalabaktepe the necropolis, and sites in the khora. Here it
is clear that the author has put a lot of detailed research into producing this summary
of the archaeology of a large and complex archaeological site, with a long history of
archaeological research (it has been over a century since the first German excavations
at the site). This a very difficult subject, given the complex nature of the archaeology
and publications concerned. Inevitably some of the information and interpretations
presented here will be superseded by the results of the on-going excavations at the site,
but this is the nature of archaeology and the inclusion of archaeological material in
something which could otherwise be a purely historical study is refreshing. The oracle
and sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma, Miletos' major extramural sanctuary, is covered
in detail (pp. 186-96), and it is good to see it being considered alongside Miletos and

This content downloaded from 188.3.97.97 on Wed, 03 May 2023 19:17:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 139

vice versa as, given the distance between them (16 km), it has often been the case that
they are treated as two different sites researched in isolation from one another,
something which G. avoids.
The sixth and final chapter of the book (pp. 215-42) covers the history of Miletos in
the fifth century, with sections on the Milesian revolts from Athenian control and the
Peloponnesian League. In this short chapter, G. again brings together the few disparate
historical and epigraphic sources that exist to reconstruct a political history of the city
in this crucial period. This will hopefully serve to see Miletos' role in the Peloponnesian
War and the fifth century in general recognized more widely than it currently is.
An appendix detailing the known colonies of Miletos is included at the back of the
book (pp. 243-58), with a very useful table of foundation dates (pp. 257-8). This
represents a considerable amount of work by the author and will be a useful starting
point for many readers and casual users of the book who are researching Greek
colonization. Seven maps are also provided at the back of the book (pp. 280-6). Maps
Six and Seven, showing the location of Miletos' many colonies, are especially useful
when used in conjunction with the gazetteer of colonies. However, the other maps
do leave something to be desired. On Map One, for example, Euboia is shown as a
peninsula and not an island, and on Map Four the Biiyiik Menderes River is mis-
named as the 'Modem Maiandros River'. However, the general quality of the text
more than compensates for such minor errors in the illustrations, which are not an
integral part of the work being presented. The bibliography is extremely full and, used
in conjunction with the text, will be of great benefit to researchers wishing to find a
way into the mass of publications, across many disciplines and languages, which deal
with Miletos. An index of classical sources referred to in the text and a general index,
both very detailed and accurate, complete the work.
Overall, this is an extremely useful and timely publication that demonstrates a very
high level of scholarship yet at the same time remains readable throughout. It will be
a useful addition to many libraries and a starting point for research into an often
unapproachable-seeming subject. Its strengths are the translation of and useful
commentary on several important inscriptions, and its discussion of the Ionian Revolt,
colonization, and Milesian political history. It is to be hoped that its publication will
stimulate a long-overdue reappraisal of Miletos' very significant r6le in the history of
the early Greek world, and open up the scholarship and debate on this subject to a
wider audience. In particular, it is to be hoped that the cities of Asia Minor will now be
considered alongside those of the Greek mainland in any future consideration of the
ancient Greek world.

University of Liverpool ALAN M. GREAVES

MILETUS (ii)
A. M. GREAVES: Miletos. A History. Pp. xi + 177, maps, ills. London
and New York: Routledge, 2002. Cased, ?45. ISBN: 0-415-23846-3.
The twentieth century saw no book-length treatment of Miletos in English. The
twenty-first already has two, but this book and Vanessa Gorman's Miletos. the
Ornament of Ionia (Ann Arbor, 2001) are largely complementary: Gorman's book is
a close examination of the textual evidence for archaic and classical Miletos,
Greaves's book, despite its subtitle, is 'almost exclusively archaeological' (p. 148). At
last students have a chance of answering the question beloved of traditional Greats

? The Classical Association, 2003

This content downloaded from 188.3.97.97 on Wed, 03 May 2023 19:17:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms