Paros Enlists Archilochus Against the Athenian Menace

Scott L. Puckett (Tulane University)

Following the battle of Marathon, Athens aimed to extend its hegemony throughout the Aegean. After an aborted Athenian siege of Paros, the Parians countered rising Athenian influence with a new narrative about the life of the Archaic poet, Archilochus, of all people.

The Parians produced Delphic oracles that marked out both Archilochus' family and Lycambes, Archilochus’ infamous target, as the founders of Thasos, Paros’ colony. Paros wanted control over Thasos’ gold mines. With these oracles, the Parians also used a long-standing, local cult of Archilochus to develop an alliance with Delphi. This new association provided the Parians a bulwark against Athenian aggression. At this precise time, Polygnotus, the Thasian painter (475-447 BC), also connected the family of Archilochus to the foundation of Thasos. This painting presented Tellis and Kleoboia, Archilochus' grandparents, as founders of Thasos. Here, too, we can see Thasians using Archilochus to cement their relationship with Paros over against Athens.

The spurious Delphic oracles and the painting of Polygnotus are the earliest, extant evidence we have for the cult of Archilochus, a cult later to be enshrined in the Archilocheion on Paros. In Archilochus’ day, Paros and Delphi were not politically aligned. It was the Persian wars and the subsequent Athenian aggression, I claim, that brought these two cities together; that they used Archilochus as their bridge illustrates, once again, cult as an instrument of inter-poleis diplomacy.