Autochthony in Ancient Greece 247Greek Autochthony Outside Athens
in the Classical Period
Athenian autochthony is known above all in the fifth and fourth centuries. The literary
genres that provide the evidence for that period are not available in the same quantity
for later years. Some later evidence does survive (see the text that follows), but mod-
ern interest in Greek autochthony has concentrated on Athens in the classical period.
That has sometimes led to the assumption that what can be said about classical Athenian
autochthony is also true for other autochthonous Greek communities, though scholars
have protested against such a view; Blok (2009a: 252), for instance, points out that, while
democracy and autochthony were linked in Athens, that link is not found in Thebes. Yet,
a detailed study of all the known cases of autochthony outside Athens is lacking.
Other Greek communities of the classical period also claimed to be autochthonous,
and such claims were accepted by other Greeks. Arkadian autochthony is probably the
best-known case outside Athens. The claim to autochthony was evidently shared by the
numerous communities who made up the Arkadians; Herodotus (8.73) clearly believed
that all Arkadians were autochthonous. There is no evidence of an Arkadian confeder-
acy or any other form of political union in Arkadia in the fifth century (Nielsen 2002:
120–157), and so in that period at least Arkadian autochthony, unlike Athenian, did
not promote the shared ideology of a single political body. Also, there is no reason to
believe that the numerous separate Arkadian communities had similar constitutions: the
limited available evidence is mentioned in the coverage of the various cities in Nielsen
(2004). Consequently, autochthony in Arkadia will not have served to promote demo-
cratic equality, or any other constitutional standard. Alongside the evidence for Arkadian
autochthony is other evidence that the Arkadians saw themselves as a very ancient peo-
ple, “older than the moon” (proselenoi) and “acorn-eating,”—that is, eating wild food
rather than the cereals of civilized society (Roy 2011). These claims to antiquity were
a selected self-image that marked off the Arkadians from other Greeks, just as Athenian
autochthony marked off the Athenians, but with different emphases (on Arkadian iden-
tity, see Nielsen 1999, 2002: 52–88). The claim to be very ancient did not prevent the
Arkadians from developing politically and socially in much the same ways as other Greeks
(Roy 2011).
Unsurprisingly, Arkadian autochthony is attested in the 360s, when the Arkadians
formed a confederacy and, briefly, played a leading role in Greek inter-state politics.
According to Xenophon (Hell. 7.1.23), the leading Arkadian politician Lykomedes
roused the enthusiasm and ambition of the Arkadians, telling them that the Peloponnese
was a fatherland for them alone, for they were its only autochthonous inhabitants. This
sentiment was clearly important to them, since they displayed it prominently on the
Arkadian monument erected at Delphi to commemorate the devastation of Lakonia in
370/69 (Hansen 1989: 231–3, no. 824). The inscription on the monument makes
no mention of the allies with whom the Arkadians invaded Lakonia, and appears as a
purely Arkadian memorial of an Arkadian achievement. The opening couplet says: “Lord
Pythian Apollo, the autochthonous people from holy Arkadia dedicated these statues