Ethnos and Koinon 273who belonged to a singlepolis, are also described as anethnos, so it is impossible to draw
any firm conclusions from this intriguing text. However, Herodotus’ continued narra-
tive of the episode in 506 suggests that the Boeotians were a group of Boeotianpoleis,
including Thebes, Tanagra, Coronea, and Thespiae, that regularly and willingly fought
together (Herodotus 5.79). The Boeotians in this political sense did not include all those
poleisthat could at the time have been described as ethnically Boeotian if, as most do,
we allow the HomericCatalogue of Shipsto be our guide to the ethnic dynamics of early
Archaic Greece (seeIliad2.494–510 for the Boeotian contingent and its constituent
communities; see McInerney 1999: 120–7 and Morgan 2003: 104–5 for valuable cau-
tionary remarks). We might think of the name of the alliance as being more normative
than descriptive. And, in so doing, we can see the deployment of an ethnic argument in
favor of participation as a real possibility.
The ethnic argument for participation in some kind of a larger political entity was built
on a pre-existing set of practices that may have given the Boeotians some sense of belong-
ing. In the sixth century, many Boeotians made dedications at the sanctuary of Apollo
Ptoios near Acraephia. The most prestigious took the form ofkouroi, which adhered to a
distinctive regional sculptural style, suggesting a consciously Boeotian way of represent-
ing the male body (Ducat 1971: 103–210; Stewart 1990: 112). At the very end of the
sixth century, precisely the period in which the Thebans were putting so much energy
behind the formation of a Boeotian entity with military and political purposes, two ded-
ications were made at this important regional sanctuary in the name of the Boiotoi: a
bronze statuette (Ducat 1971: no. 257) and an inscribed bronze vessel (Ducat 1971: no.
269a). However, they are strikingly unobtrusive in a sanctuary littered with monumental
statues. The precise identity of these Boiotoi is unknown, but it is the act of dedicating in
the name of the group that matters. These collective, shared practices appear to become
more numerous and complex in tandem with efforts to increase the political coordination
of the region.
By the mid-fifth century, we begin to have evidence for regional participation in what
were previously local cults, such as that of Athena Itonia, who was described by Alcaeus
(fragment 325) in the early sixth century as the “war-sustaining goddess [who] rul[es]
over Coronea.” The Boeotians achieved a major victory over the Athenians at Coronea in
446, a battle that was fought quite literally on the goddess’ doorstep and that expelled the
Athenians from the region, allowing the Boeotians to form akoinonfor the first time, a
regional state with formalized institutions and a delineation of powers for memberpoleis
and thekoinon. Shortly thereafter, Pindar composed a hymn (fragment 94b Maehler)
for a Theban ritual that documents the participation of Theban elite families in rituals
at Coronea and at the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus. In other words, what was
evidently a local Coronean cult was now a regional cult in which Thebans—and certainly
others—also participated. It is also in this period that we first have evidence for a mythic
association of Athena Itonia with the Boeotian conquest of their territory (Thucydides
1.12.3; ArmenidasFGrHist378 F1; Pausanias 9.1.1). We can, then, see the ethnic argu-
ment for participation in thekoinonbeing made quite vigorously in ritual contexts in this
period (Kowalzig 2007: 352–91).
It also appears in the Theban attack on Plataea at the beginning of the Peloponneseian
War. From Thucydides’ account, it is clear that the Thebans made their appeal to Plataea
on the grounds oftapatria, the ancestral customs of all the Boeotians (Thucydides 2.2.4,