272 Emily Mackil
variety) in which ethnic identity was used as an argument in favor of political cooperation,
and then turn to evidence for the limited efficacy of the argument and its relevance. I
shall conclude with a few indications of alternative arguments in favor of the creation of
akoinonor participation in one, and explain why I think analyses of ethnicity do so little
to advance our understanding of the Greekkoinon.
Ethnicity as Argument
Thekoinonwas an innovation of theethn ̄eof mainland Greece. Communities that inter-
acted intensely with one another, frequently but not always in a cooperative fashion, and
conceived of themselves as being united by a shared ancestry and the occupation of a sin-
gle, shared territory developed formal institutions that governed their interactions and
ensured their cooperation. The result was a state that they called by a variety of names,
frequently simply the plural ethnic name of the group, for example, “the Boeotians” or
“the Phocians,” but in technical and especially official contexts they often used the term
“koinonof the Boeotians,”etcetera,mutatismutandis.Tokoinonis a substantive adjective
meaning, simply, “the common thing.” It is a word sometimes used to denote a pub-
lic treasury (Thucydides 6.6.3) and sometimes “the people” in the general sense (e.g.,
Isocrates 10.36). When conjoined with the plural ethnic, however, it usually describes a
specific form of state, one progenitor of modern federalism. It is, in other words, a state
common to a group of people, and the definition and articulation of that group played
an important role in persuading communities to participate. This work was done above
all by means of religious myths and rituals; as a result, sanctuaries were important places
for advancing the ethnic argument, and it was partly for this reason that they frequently
served as political meeting places (Parker 1998).
The central Greek region of Boeotia is a place where this process can be detected in rel-
atively good detail. In the late sixth century, the Thebans were apparently at the vanguard
of an effort to coordinate the actions of thepoleisof Boeotia. It is difficult to determine
whether at this stage they appealed to a common identity as they tried to persuade their
neighbors to join their effort. I do not say “to join the Boeotiankoinon” because there
is no evidence to support the view that therewasakoinon, of the sort that is so familiar
from the late fifth century, in Boeotia in this period (Hansen 1995; Mackil 2013). When
the Plataeans were being “pressed” by the Thebans in 519 and the situation erupted
into armed conflict, Corinthian arbitrators, accepted by both sides, prohibited the The-
bans from trying to coerce “those of the Boeotians who were not willing to contribute to
the Boeotians” (Herodotus 6.108.5). From Herodotos’ skeletal report, can we conclude
that the Thebans were using an ethnic argument to persuade the Plataeans to participate?
The name they gave to the entity they were trying to create—whether it was a state or a
military alliance is not clear—was evidently “the Boeotians.”
A few years later, in 506, the Thebans and their allies launched a coordinated attack on
the Athenians in support of the exiled Cleomenes. The Athenians commemorated their
victorious counter-attack with the dedication of a bronze quadriga to Athena, accom-
panied by an inscription that boasts the “taming [of] theethn ̄eaof the Boeotians and
Chalcidians” by the sons of the Athenians (Meiggs and Lewis 1988: no. 15; Herodotus
5.77). Clearly, outsiders could think of “the Boeotians” as anethnos, but the Chalcidians,