The Persistence of Ethnē

Denver Graninger (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Recent scholarship has well documented the propensity of Greek poleis in the Hellenistic and Roman world to insert themselves into broader regional and panhellenic mythologies—to innovate or embroider established tradition when necessary—in an attempt both to define their position within a rapidly changing political landscape and to advertise their connectedness to one another (e.g., Jones 1999). The relationship of Greek ethnē to these developments has been much less prominent, however. This paper examines the persistence of ethnos identity in Hellenistic and Roman Greece through a close reading of the experiences of Ainis.    

The Ainianes, a small ethnos in the Spercheios valley of central Greece and early member of the Delphian amphictyony, were, through much of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic history, under the sway of their more powerful neighbors, whether they be Thessalian, Spartan (from nearby Herakleia Trachinia) or Aitolian. Following the Macedonian defeat at Pydna, the Ainianes (re)formed a koinon before being subsumed into the Thessalian League and most likely integrated into the Roman province of Achaia in 27BCE. Throughout this extended period of subjection and submission, Ainian identity remained vibrant.

While the epigraphy of the region is not especially extensive, there are three literary passages which illuminate the various ways in which Ainian identity was articulated during the Hellenistic and Roman era: (1) [Aristotle], peri thaumasiōn akousmatōn, 843b15-844a5, recounts the discovery of an archaic metrical inscription outside Ainian Hypata. This text claimed to record the foundation of a sanctuary of Aphrodite in the region by Herakles himself after herding the cattle of Geryon. While one doubts Herakles’ role in establishing the cult, this strategy of integrating Ainis into a broader panhellenic thought-world is typical, as the evidence of the Lindian Chronicle makes clear (Higbie 2003); (2) Plutarch, Mor. 297b1-c6 (= Quaest. Graec. 26), describes a procession made by the Ainian maidens to the territory of Kassiope in Epirus. This display apparently traced in reverse a segment of the legendary wanderings of the ethnos from western Greece into the Spercheios valley; (3) Heliodorus’ Aithiopika 2.34-3.10 (esp. 2.34-35), the most difficult text of the three, offers a very full description of a Thessalian procession to Delphi which is headed by Ainianes. While the passage has attracted much warranted suspicion, particularly regarding the historicity of the procession it claims to describe (e.g., Rougemont 1992), it is clear that the position of the Ainianes within this Thessalian theoria and, in particular, Heliodorus’ description of Ainian claims on Achilles as an ancestral, perhaps national, hero coupled with Thessalian renunciation of competing claims, reflect a contemporary political reality of Roman Thessaly; under the empire, the political and symbolic center of Thessaly shifted south from Larisa to Hypata in Ainis.

The assembled texts offer a glimpse of Ainian tools of self-actualization in Hellenistic and Roman Greece—recreation of the legendary past, self-projection into a broader panhellenic mythology and exclusive claims on heroic (Homeric) ancestry. While Ainis was never a major player on the grand stage of Hellenic history, the persistence of the Ainianes qua Ainianes suggests that ethnos identity was not purely a matter of political expedience but had deeper, cultural purpose.