288 Alexander Thein
however, the contingency of the ethnogenesis of the Peloponnesian Messenians on the
Spartan earthquake and Athenian and Theban patronage is downplayed (above all by
Alcock 2002: 164–5, 173–4).
The origins of the Messenian ethnic identity attested on Mount Ithome remain obscure.
Figueira argues that the ethnic identity of the pre-Spartan Messenians could not have sur-
vived, since there was “no regime of song, no rich ritual calendar, and no maturational
and agonistic organization of time to set against the dominant ideology.” Yet, his argu-
ment in favor of Messenian ethnogenesis in the fifth century relies on an appeal to folk
memories, traditions, and customs in helot society (1999: 226–7, 235). Hodkinson dis-
cusses evidence for helot overseers working for Spartiate landowners, and he makes the
case that they also provided leadership to the settled communities of helots identified in
recent archaeological surveys in western Messenia. He avoids the term “ethnicity,” but he
does conclude that helot villages had a communal identity based on a well-defined sense
of a shared past and an attachment to place (2003: 268–75; cf. Alcock 2002: 153–5).
Luraghi has argued that the shared slave experience of the helots had the potential to
develop into an ethnic identity (2002b: 239). However, he stresses elsewhere that there
were no elites in helot society who could develop an ideology of resistance to Spartan rule,
or even organize a mass uprising (2001: 296–7, 2002a: 67–8, 2008: 202–4; cf. Talbert
1989: 30). Therefore, in his analysis of Messenian ethnogenesis in the fifth century, he
focuses on theperioeciand the archaeological evidence from sanctuaries in areas of prob-
able perioecic settlement, and he concludes that they had a group identity, traditions,
and the capacity to develop ethnic narratives (2001: 298, 2002a: 57–9, 2008: 204–5).
He identifies theperioecias the carriers of fifth-century Messenian ethnicity and argues
that it was a separatist regional identity, the product of differentiation or fission in the
years before the Ithome revolt. Some emphasis is given to the claims of putative descent
from the “old Messenians” of the pre-Spartan past (2002a: 65–7), but more weight
is placed on the conceptualization of “Messene” as a unified region with well-defined
natural borders and a myth–history stretching back to the Heraclid division of the Pelo-
ponnese: separatists in the Spartan territories west of the Taygetus could call themselves
“Messenians” because they lived in a region that had come to be called “Messene”
(2008: 207: 334–5).
The model of differentiation is attractive, for it posits that ethnic consciousness can
emerge when minority groups focus on the subtle differences that separate them from
the dominant majority. This helps explain how a Messenian ethnic identity could emerge
in a region which lacked the indicia that functioned as “icons of ethnic difference” in
a Greek context, notably dialect, alphabet, and cults (Luraghi 2002a: 66, 2008: 246).
However, Luraghi’s application of this model privileges theperioecito the exclusion of
the helots and finds textual support only in Thucydides’ testimony that theperioeciof
Thuria and Aethaea joined the Ithome revolt (1.101.2). The model of aggregation is
more versatile, and it can be applied in a conventional reading of the revolt as a helot
uprising (the capacity of the helots to organize successful rebellions against Spartan rule
has recently been re-emphasized by Urbainczyk 2008: 24–7, 73–4, 91–9). Thucydides
states that most rebels were helots who claimed Messenian descent, and adds: “hence
all of them were called Messenians” (1.101.2). The rebel helots who could not claim
Messenian descent became Messenian by a process of aggregation. Thucydides is perhaps
referring to rebel helots who lived in the region of Messenia (as defined in the myth of the