Messenia, Ethnic Identity, and Contingency 293subtle equation of the Naupactus Messenians with the helot deserters. The terminology
reflects the language of the Spartan–Athenian diplomacy (Figueira 1999: 217, cf. Thuc.
5.18.7, where Pylos is called by its Spartan name “Coryphasium” in the summary of the
Peace of Nicias).
Cephallenia and its four cities had nominally joined the Athenian alliance after a naval
force landed on the island in 431, but the city of Crane remained restive and repelled
a second Athenian landing in the winter of 431/30 (Thuc. 2.30.2–3, 2.33.3). In 426,
however, there were Cephallenians fighting for Athens, side by side with the Messenians
of Naupactus, in the campaigns against Leucas and Aetolia (Thuc. 3.94.1, 3.95.2). The
Pylos evacuees were perhaps sent to Crane because factors unknown to us precluded
their settlement in Naupactus (Figueira 1999: 217). Alternatively, it may be that the
establishment of a garrison at Crane was primarily a strategic decision, to reinforce the
Athenian policy of using alliances with the Ionian islands to encircle the Peloponnese
(cf. Thuc. 2.7.3). In 419, Argos demanded the return of “the Messenians and helots”
to the Peloponnese in recompense for the Athenian failure to intercept a Spartan naval
transport that sent troops to prevent the Argive capture of Epidaurus. Athens therefore
“brought to Pylos the helots from Crane to plunder the country” (Thuc. 5.56.2–3).
Thucydides does not use the term “helot” to refer to the Messenians of Naupactus, so
his testimony must mean that the post-419 garrison of Pylos was formed exclusively by
the deserters who had been brought from Pylos to Cephallenia in 421. As Stylianou
(1998: 443) correctly notes, only the “helots” returned to Pylos (Thuc. 5.56.3), not
“the Messenians” (contraRaaflaub 2003: 186), nor “the Messenians and helots” (contra
Figueira 1999: 238 n. 24, citing only the Argive request at Thuc. 5.56.2). The continued
presence of the Athenians at Pylos is implied by Thucydides (5.115.2).
The helot–Messenian opposition found in Thucydides’ narrative of the capture of Pylos
and its aftermath lets us draw a clear distinction between the Messenians of Naupactus and
the deserters who fled to Pylos from 425 to 421. However, the majority of the fugitive
helots must have come from the local area, and Thucydides accepted that Pylos was “in
the land that was once Messenia” (4.41.2, cf. 4.3.3), so it is problematic that he calls them
helots rather than Messenians. The consensus is that he varies his terminology according
to context, using the ethnic label for Messenians in Athenian service and the class label to
highlight the social status of the helots of the Messenian Peloponnese vis-à-vis the Spartan
state (Figueira 1999: 216; followed by Luraghi 2002c: 591; cf. Ducat 1990: 14). An
alternative theory holds that Thucydides uses the class label for Messenian helots in the
Peloponnese and the ethnic label for Messenians of the diaspora (Hall 2003: 148–50).
Neither explanation quite works. There is the fact that Thucydides avoids both class and
ethnic labels in his references to “those on Ithome” in the revolt of the 460s. There is also
the problem of the helots who deserted to Pylos after 425: they are called “helots” not
only after their evacuation to the diaspora of Cephallenia in 421 but even on their return
to Pylos as an Athenian garrison in 419. It is not until later in his narrative that Thucydides
gives them the ethnic label. In his list of Athenian allies at the siege of Syracuse in 413,
he includes “the Messenians, as they are now called, who live in Naupactus and in Pylos,
which was then an Athenian possession” (Thuc. 7.57.8).
In my view, Thucydides’ narrative should be read as an account of the gradual recogni-
tion, above all by the Athenians, of the ethnicity of the helots (andperioeci) of Messenia.
It was Demosthenes who first perceived the strategic logic of establishing a garrison of