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During his 1921 excavations at the large Doric temple at Pherai and its associated sanctuary complex, where cult of the goddess Ennodia seems to have been paramount, A. S. Arvanitopoulos discovered a series of proxeny decrees inscribed on bronze plaques. [1] The decrees were published by Y. Béquignon in 1964 and appear to range in date from the late fifth to the middle of the fourth century BCE.[2] One relatively well-preserved example reads:[3]

‘To Praxiteles [--------] and Baukideus[4] the Pheraioi gave proxenia and asylia and ateleia, both to them and to their possessions and to the family of these men, also in as much land as the Pheraioi rule.’

In a brief note published in 1967, G. Klaffenbach offered the inspired supplement in line 5, basing it in part on a perceived parallel with a fifth-century Athenian proxeny decree, IG I² 174 (IG I² 93), where the honorand, the Achaian Lykon, was awarded proxeny and permitted to sail and import goods wherever the Athenians were in power (ll. 14–16): ἐξναι αὐτῶι πλν καὶ χ|ρήματα ἐσάγεν ὅσης Ἀθηνα|ῖοι κρατσι. [5] Klaffenbach’s restoration was subsequently accepted by Béquignon and is printed in the now definitive edition of the text at SEG 23, 418.[6] The present note proceeds on the assumption that this restoration is correct, if not precisely so in terms of language, certainly in sense.

The potential implications of Klaffenbach’s restoration for understanding the history of fourth-century Pherai have not, to my knowledge been considered, and it is the purpose of this note to make a beginning of such a study. Proxeny and related honors were awarded to Praxiteles and Baukideus not simply within the confines of the polis of Pherai, but beyond the physical limits of the city — ‘in as much land as the Pheraioi rule’. The presence of such phrases in a fifth-century Athenian context has traditionally been interpreted as evidence for the existence of the Delian League qua onerous Athenian Empire.[7] A necessary implication of the use of this phrase in a fourth-century Pheraian context is that the Pheraians, like the Athenians before them, exercised some form of political hegemony over territories which lay beyond the formal borders of their polis. The residents of those territories were thus compelled to recognize honors associated with the award of proxeny for Praxiteles, Baukideus, and their possessions. To what extra-Pheraian territory could this inscription refer? The neighboring perioikic region of Magnesia seems to have been politically dependent on Pherai at various periods in the Archaic and Classical period, although it is not always clear how this relationship was realized in practice.[8] But the first half of the fourth century was an exceptionally eventful period for Pherai, when the polis leadership pursued a vigorous policy of expansion, by force and by diplomacy, with varying degrees of success. Territory in inland Thessaly seems to have been the primary focus, and there is evidence that the most successful of these rulers, Jason, cast himself as a regional, Thessalian leader with regional, Thessalian consent. [9] Although neither Pherai’s possibly traditional exercise of hegemony over Magnesia nor its recent superiority over some tracts of Thessaly is explicitly described in the preserved sources as ἀρχή, this proxeny decree opens up such an interpretive possibility.

Another interpretive approach is suggested by P. Low’s recent and nuanced attention to the rhetorical impact of such clauses in the Athenian examples: ‘in these decrees, the Athenians are offering benefits which go beyond those that any other Greek state could claim, with any seriousness, to offer; benefits which give the Athenians an unrecoverable advantage in the sequence of reciprocal exchanges; and which will leave the honorand perpetually in the subordinate, powerless position in that exchange’.[10] By shifting emphasis away from the putative coercive potential enjoyed by Athens during their leadership of the Delian League in the fifth century, Low reveals auxiliary Athenian dominance in the burgeoning honorific ‘arms race’ of the eastern Mediterranean world. In the case of the parallel language in our fourth-century Pheraian decree, it is worth noting that no other instance is preserved in the remaining (and admittedly fragmentary) members of the series. Such an occurrence may be purely an accident of preservation. If broadly representative, however, this absence may suggest either that the Pheraian ἀρχή was in existence for a relatively brief time or, if of longer duration, that the extended geographic scope of Pheraian
honors represented a kind of highest tier in the calculus of proxeny awards, a level to which few potential honorands rose and which few peer poleis could match.[11]

[1] For discussion of the evidence for Ennodia cult at this sanctuary, see P. Chrysostomou, Η θεσσαλική θεά Εν(ν)οδία ή φεραία θεά, Athens 1998, 25–47.

[2] Ed. pr. Y. Béquignon, Études thessaliennes, XI, BCH 88 (1964) 400–413, nos. 1–13 (SEG 23, 415–432). For another possible member of the series, see W. Peek, Griechische Inschriften, MDAI 59 (1934) 56, no. 14. For earlier scholarship on this series, see C. Gavazzi, Richerche sulla prossenia nella Tesaglia, Epigraphica 13 (1951) 57–86, and Ch. Marek, Die Proxenie, Frankfurt am Main 1984, 281–282.

[3] Although Béquignon and SEG regard the date of this inscription as fourth-century, the Pheraian proxeny decree partially published in Ch. Habicht, Städtische Polemarchen in Thessalien, Hermes 127 (1999) 255 (SEG 49, 627) and dated to the second half of the fourth century suggests that the habit of inscribing proxeny decrees in Pherai had shifted by this time: a new medium and monumental form was employed (stone stelai) and a dating formula was introduced (polemarchs — the Béquignon series lacks such formulae with one exception [SEG 23, 425], where the decree is dated by a local college of tagoi). This observation may just suggest that the latest members of the Béquignon series are no later than the second half of the fourth century. For further discussion of the chronology of the series, see D. Graninger, Apollo, Ennodia, and fourth-century Thessaly , Kernos 22 (2009) 123, n. 50.

[4] Praxiteles’ ethnic would have occurred in the lacuna, and this would have been shared by Baukideus. While Praxiteles is a relatively common name in central and southern Greece and the Aegean (cf. LGPN 1–3, s.v. Πραξιτέλης), Baukideus is quite rare, occurring only here, in a late fourth-century dedication by an Athenian from the deme Kerameia (IG II² 4615; cf. LGPN 2 s.v. Βαυκιδεύς), and in a late fourth- or early third-century honorary decree for a citizen from Halikarnassos (E. L. Hicks, On an Inscription at Cambridge: Boeckh, C.I.G. 106, JHS 2 [1881] 98–101). And so it is unfortunately not possible to speculate on the home polis of Praxiteles and Baukideus. The honorands with preserved ethnics in the Béquignon series hail from a relatively small geographical range of Thessalian and central Greek cities: Opous, Proerna (?), Thebes (Phthiotic/Achaian or Boiotian), Skotussa, Krannon (?).

[5] G. Klaffenbach, Miscellanea epigraphica, Klio 48 (1967) 53. Béquignon, Études (s. n. 2) 404, had previously essayed ὅσσ[α καὶ τοῖς προξένοις] | Φεραῖοι ἄρχοντι, commenting on l. 6 that ‘la restitution de la fin de la ligne peut sembler longue par rapport à celle des lignes qui précèdent: nous n’en voyons pas d’autre, alors qu’il s’agit d’une formule fréquente sur les décrets de proxénie en Thessalie’; and on l. 7 that ‘cette ligne est une crux’. The Roberts were unconvinced (BullÉp 1965, no. 214): ‘nous ne comprenons pas la restitution beaucoup trop longue ... nous ignorons à quoi B. fait allusion’.

[6] Cf. BCH 88 (1967) 917 (corrigenda): ‘Page 404, fin ligne 6 du texte n^o 4, G. Klaffenbach (par lettre) propose : ὅσσ[ας] ou ὅσσ[ας γᾶς]’.

[7] R. Meiggs, A Note on Athenian Imperialism, CR 63 (1949) 9–10, following the observation of E. Weston, New Datings for Some Attic Honorary Decrees, AJP 61 (1940) 346, writes of the ‘sinister undercurrent’ in such phrases — ‘a sure mark of the Athenian empire’ — and notes that they do not appear in fourth-century Athenian proxeny decrees (p. 9–10). The last point is debatable, insofar as some fourth-century re-inscriptions of fifth-century Athenian decrees retain such language although these later reinscriptions cannot provide evidence for the language of fouth-century proxeny (see P. Low, Looking for the Language of Athenian Imperialism, JHS 125 [2005] 97–98).

[8] Cf. N. G. L. Hammond, G. T. Griffith, A History of Macedonia 2, Oxford 1979, 540–542.

[9] Cf. H. D. Westlake, Thessaly in the Fourth Century B.C., London 1935, passim, and, with specific emphasis on the period of Jason, S. Sprawski, Jason of Pherae: A Study on History of Thessaly in Years 431–370 BC, Kraków 1999.

[10] Low, Imperialism (s. n. 7) 99.

[11] For parallel language in a roughly contemporary decree, cf. J. Crampa (ed.), Labraunda, Swedish Excavations and Researches, III, 2. Greek Inscriptions, Part II, Stockholm 1972, no. 40, a not entirely unproblematic award of proxeny and related honors by Mausolus to ‘the Knossians’; these awards were to be valid ‘in as much territory as Mausolus rule[d]’ (l. 7: ὁπόσης Μαύσσωλλος ἄρχει). See also S. Hornblower, Mausolus, Oxford 1982, 75, 153–154, 168, and P. J. Rhodes, R. Osborne (ed.), Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC, Oxford 2003, 264–265. But the political backdrops of the Pheraian decree and that of Mausolus are not closely parallel.