these entities is treated as subordinate to the compilation of Hellenic
data. Evidence of ‘barbarian’poleismust, apparently, be dismissed.
‘Herodotos seems to assume that every Persian captain belonged to a
polisand could be identified by his city ethnic’(= Hdt. 8.90.4); and again,
‘the political structure of the Persian Empire is represented as a plurality
ofethne, each consisting of a number ofpoleis’[= 7.96.2].^47 They reject
Herodotus’way of describing Persian society on the grounds that‘the
Greeks were notorious for reading their own names, terms, and concepts
into foreign cultures.’Despite their reluctance to consider what social
and political structures did underlie Herodotus’evaluation, the editors
acknowledge a genuine difficulty in understanding what they call‘mixed’
poleis, and for this purpose use examples from the north Aegean coast:
‘thefivepoleisin Athos (Thuc. 4.109.4) and some of thepoleisin the
Thermaic Gulf, viz. Therme (Hecat. Fr. 146), Pella and Ichnai (Hdt.
7.123.3).’
Herodotus’terminology is taken more seriously in these cases. Therme
is a particularly interesting case, because it was a major coastalemporion,
and is variously referred to by different authors. Hecataeus’reference is
interpreted as apolis‘in the urban sense’, and his specific terminology
(polis hellēnōn Thrēikōn) as a gloss for Greeks living in Thrace. Hatzo-
poulos prefers to interpret the distinction betweenpolis hellēnisandpolis
tout court(applied by the author known as‘Pseudo-Skylax’in his
periplousof the north Aegean coastline) as a political one, to nuance
those communities that were politically dependent on the Macedonian
crown from those that enjoyed autonomy.^48 Neither of these interpret-
ations is wholly satisfactory. Both the cultural and the political explan-
ations have some force, but either this term was not applied with any
consistency, or some other nuance is required. The author who lies
behind the sobriquet‘Pseudo-Skylax’was writing in the early fourth
centurybc, at a time of Macedonian political expansion, so the way in
which he distinguishes some sites as specifically‘Greek’may have more
to do with contemporary political tensions, in other words with compet-
ing bids for power in the region, rather than being a dispassionate
geographical exposition.^49
There was a time when Mogens Hansen took a different view of the
inter-cultural nature ofpolislife and institutions:‘The orthodoxy takes it
for granted thatpoliswas a characteristic of Greek society and that in this
(^47) Inventory, 36.
(^48) Inventory, 818–19, no. 552 and 150–1 for the editors’interpretation ofpolis hellēnis;
Hecat. F146 = St. Byz. 679.5–6; Ps.-Skyl. 66; Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 473.
(^49) Shipley 2011, 140–7.
64 Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces