| |
Sicyon was an ancient Greek city state
situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the
territory of the present-day regional unit of Corinthia. An ancient monarchy at
the times of the Trojan War, the city was ruled by a number of tyrants during
the Archaic and Classical period and became a democracy in the 3rd century.
Sicyon was celebrated for its contributions to ancient Greek art, producing
many famous painters and sculptors. In Hellenistic times it was also the home
of Aratus of Sicyon, the leader of the Achaean League.
History:
Sicyon was built on a low triangular plateau about 3 kilometres (two miles)
from the Corinthian Gulf. Between the city and its port lay a fertile plain
with olive groves and orchards.[1] In Mycenean times Sicyon had been ruled by a
line of twenty-six mythical kings and then seven priests of Apollo. The
king-list given by Pausanias[2] comprises twenty-four kings, beginning with the
autochthonous Aegialeus. The penultimate king of the list, Agamemnon, compels
the submission of Sicyon to Mycenae; after him comes the Dorian usurper
Phalces. Pausanias shares his source with Castor of Rhodes, who used the
king-list in compiling tables of history; the common source was convincingly
identified by Felix Jacoby[3] as a lost Sicyonica by the late 4th-century poet
Menaechmus of Sicyon. After the Dorian invasion the city remained subject to
Argos, whence its Dorian conquerors had come. The community was now divided
into the ordinary three Dorian tribes and an equally privileged tribe of
Ionians, besides which a class of serfs lived on and worked the land.
For some centuries the suzerainty remained, but after 676 Sicyon regained its
independence under a line of tyrants called the Orthagorides after the name of
the first ruler Orthagoras. The most important however was the founder's
grandson Cleisthenes, the grandfather of the Athenian legislator Cleisthenes,
who ruled from 600 to 560. Besides reforming the city's constitution to the
advantage of the Ionians and replacing Dorian cults with the worship of
Dionysus, Cleisthenes gained a reputation as the chief instigator and general
of the First Sacred
War in 590 in the interests of the Delphians. His successor Aeschines was
expelled by the Spartans in 556 and Sicyon became an ally of the Lacedaemonians
for more than a century. During this time, the Sicyonians developed the various
industries for which they were known in antiquity. As the abode of the
sculptors Dipoenus and Scyllis it gained pre-eminence in woodcarving and bronze
work such as is still to be seen in the archaic metal facings found at Olympia.
Its pottery, which resembled Corinthian ware, was exported with the latter as
far as Etruria. In Sicyon also the art of painting was supposed to have been
invented. After the fall of the tyrants their institutions survived until the
end of the 6th century BC, when Dorian supremacy was re-established, perhaps by
the agency of Sparta under the ephor Chilon, and the city was enrolled in the
Peloponnesian League. Henceforth, its policy was usually determined either by
Sparta or Corinth.
During the Persian Wars, the Sicyonians participated with fifteen triremes in
the Battle of Salamis and with 3,000 hoplites in the Battle of Plataea. On the
Delphic Serpent Column celebrating the victory Sicyon was named in fifth place
after Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Tegea. In September 479 a Sicyonian
contingent fought bravely in the Battle of Mycale, where they lost more men
than any other city. Later in the 5th century BC, Sicyon, like Corinth,
suffered from the commercial rivalry of Athens in the western seas, and was
repeatedly harassed by squadrons of Athenian ships. The Sicyonians fought two
battles against the Athenians, first against their admiral Tolmides in 455 BC
and then in a land battle against Pericles with 1000 hoplites in 453 BC. In the
Peloponnesian War Sicyon followed the lead of Sparta and Corinth. When these
two powers quarrelled during the peace of Nicias, it remained loyal to the
Spartans.[1] At the reprise of the war, during the Athenian expedition in
Sicily, the Sicyonians contributed 200 pressed hoplites under their commander
Sargeus to the force that relieved Syracuse. At the beginning of the 4th
century, in the Corinthian war, Sicyon sided again with Sparta and became its
base of operations against the allied troops round Corinth.
In 369 BC Sicyon was captured and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful
attack on the Peloponnesian League. From 368 to 366 Sicyon was ruled by Euphron
who first favoured democracy, but then made himself tyrant. Euphron was killed
in Thebes by a group af Sicyonian aristocrats, but his compatriots buried him
in his home town and continued to honour him like the second founder of the
city. During the 4th century, the city reached its zenith as a centre of art:
its school of painting gained fame under Eupompus and attracted the great
masters Pamphilus and Apelles as students, while Lysippus and his pupils raised
the Sicyonian sculpture to a level hardly surpassed anywhere else in Greece.
The tyrant Aristratus, a friend of the Macedonian royal family, had himself
portrayed by the painter Melanthius aside the goddess of victory Nike on a
chariot. In this period Sicyon was the undisputed center of Greek painting with
its school attracting famous artists from all over Greece, including the
celebrated Apelles and Pausias. In 323 BC Euphron the Younger, a grandson of
the tyrant Euphron, reintroduced a democracy, but was soon conquered by the
Macedonians during the Lamian War. When the Macedonian commander Alexander was
murdered in Sicyon in 314 BC, his wife Cratesipolis took control of the city
and ruled it for six years, until she was induced by king Ptolemy I to hand it
over to the Egyptians. Between 308 and 303 BC Sicyon was ruled by two Ptolemaic
commanders, first Cleonides and then Philip. In 303 BC Sicyon was conquered by
Demetrius Poliorcetes who razed the ancient city in the plain and built a new
wall on the ruins of the old Acropolis on the high triangular plateau which
resulted sufficient for the reduced populace. The new agora was adorned by a
"Painted Stoa" attributed to the king's mistress Lamia, a flute
player. For a short time the town was now called "Demetrias", but
eventually the old name prevailed. Demetrius left a garrison in the castle to
control the city, and the commander Cleon established another tyrannical
regime. After some twenty years he was killed by two rivals, Euthydemus and
Timocleidas, who became the new joint tyrants of Sicyon. Their rule ended,
probably around the start of the Chremonidean War in 267 BC, when they were
expelled by the people who elected their leader Cleinias to govern the city on
a democratic ground. Two magistrates of these years were the hieromnemoi
Sosicles and Euthydamos, known from an inscription at Delphi. The democratic
government's most important achievement was the construction of the gymnasium
which is attributed to Cleinias. During the same time Xenokrates of Sicyon
published his history of art which contributed to spread the fame of Sicyion as
an undisputed capital of ancient art. Even this time democracy did not last
more than a few years, and in 264 BC Cleinias was slain by his cognate
Abantidas, who established his tyranny for twelve years. In 252 BC Abantidas
was murdered by two rhetoricians, Aristotle the Dialectician and Deinias of
Argos, and his father Paseas took over, only to be murdered after a short rule
by another rival named Nicocles. In 251 Aratus of Sicyon, the 20-year-old son
of Cleinias, conquered the city with a night assault and expelled the last
tyrant. Aratus re-established democracy, called back the exiles and brought his
city into the Achaean League. This move ended the internal strife and Aratus
remained the leading figure of Achaean politics until his death in 213 BC,
during a period of great achievements. The prosperity and peaceful condition of
Sicyon was only interrupted by an Aetolian raid in 241 BC and an unsuccessful
siege at the hands of king Cleomenes III of Sparta in early 224 BC. As a member
of the Achaean federation Sicyon remained a stable democracy until the
dissolution of the League by the Romans in 146 BC. In this period Sicyon was
damaged by two disastrous earthquakes in 153 BC and 141 BC. The destruction of
Corinth (146 BC) brought Sicyon an acquisition of territory and the presidency
over the Isthmian games; yet in Cicero's time it had fallen deep into debt.
Under the Roman empire it was quite obscured by the restored cities of Corinth
and Patrae; in Pausanias' age (150 AD) it was almost desolate. In Byzantine
times it became a bishop's seat, and to judge by its later name Hellas it
served as a refuge for the Greeks from the Slavonic immigrants of the 8th
century.
|
|
