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MARIA FRAGOULAKI

Cardiff University

Autochthony is a word of Greek provenance (from αὐτός “same” + χθών “land, soil”) designating indigenousness and the idea that a community had always inhabited the same land. Autochthony is one of the most powerful narratives of national pride and racial supremacy, and, like all MYTHS of identity, is adjustable to different contexts and mindsets. Autochthonic myths often represent key ancestors as having a special attachment to the soil, which is transferred to the whole community; these myths often involved gods, HEROES, or natural elements (such as river gods). Οne of the most pronounced autochthony myths in Herodotus’ Histories, and beyond, is that of ATHENS. But, although Herodotus uses the word “autochthon” for a number of Greek and non‐Greek communities, he never does so as a collective designation for the Athenians (nor does THUCYDIDES, who uses the word only once, for the Sicans of SICILY [6.2.2]). Nevertheless, there is one instance in Herodotus where the word is used of an individual of Attica, namely TITACUS of APHIDNA, as part of the mythological justification of the privileged treatment of DECELEA (Attic DEME) by the Spartans in the PELOPONNESIAN WAR (9.73).

In Herodotus’ Histories Athenian autochthony is set against the patriotic background of the PERSIAN WARS. In the Greek embassy to the Syracusan king GELON, the idea of the Athenians as “a most ancient ethnos (ethnic group), the only ones who never migrated’ (7.161.3) is put in the mouth of the Athenian representatives as part of their argument for leadership. The same idea is expressed indirectly in one of Herodotus’ references to the PELASGIANS, the ancestors of the people of Attica, as a group who never migrated (1.56.2). SNAKES, as creatures attached to the earth, were autochthonic symbols. The story of the guardian snake which lived in the temple of the goddess ATHENA on the Athenian ACROPOLIS, but abandoned the temple before the Persian attack on the city, symbolizes the Athenians’ strong attachment to the soil of Attica (8.41.2–3; cf. Thuc. 2.14). It was at times identified with the mythical Erichthonius (Paus. 1.24.7), interchangeable with ERECHTHEUS, who also had a sanctuary on the Acropolis, as Herodotus says, and was “born of the land” (8.55, gēgenes, a near synonym of autochthon: Blok 2009, 257–58, on the distinction between the terms; Parker 1986, 193–96). Snaky CECROPS, half‐man half‐snake, a legendary king of Athens, was another mythical representation of Athenian claims to autochthony. Two of the ten Athenian tribes were named after Cecrops and Erechtheus (8.44.2; Shapiro 1998). But not all Athenian kings were autochthons: those descended from CODRUS and MELANTHUS (who set out to colonize Ionia, 9.97) were outsiders (ἐπήλυδες) originating from PYLOS (5.65.3). From the late sixth and throughout the fifth century BCE, autochthonic claims, in co‐ordination with the ideology of Ionianism (the idea that Athens was the mother‐city of all IONIANS), became increasingly relevant to Athens’ hegemonic ambitions at the inter‐state level, and to the ideology of DEMOCRACY inside the city, since all citizens could be viewed as equal through their common birth from the same earth (Rosivach 1987; Loraux 1993; Zacharia 2003; Isaac 2004, 114–24; Pelling 2009; Hornblower 2011, 132–35; Fragoulaki 2013, 210–28).

There is an overarching contrast between Spartan‐Dorian foreignness and Athenian‐Ionian indigenousness in Herodotus, and the aforementioned passage on Pelasgian immobility is part of this wider agenda. The mention of the ARCADIANS and the CYNURIANS as the only indigenous ethnea of the PELOPONNESE has the same effect: the other five, Herodotus says, came to the land from outside, among them the DORIANS (ἐπήλυδες, 8.73; notice the original Ionian identity of the Cynurians cheek by jowl with their autochthony). Yet in later tradition, even the Spartans themselves feature as autochthons (SPARTA, daughter of Eurotas, son of Lelex, son of the soil: Apollod. Bibl. 3.10.3).

Though autochthony meant close attachment to the soil, this did not also mean exclusion and introversion; on the contrary, it is often found in co‐existence with mobility or even nomadism. The autochthonous Athenians were also naval and mobile, and their readiness to abandon their city on the verge of the Battle of SALAMIS and treat their 200 manned ships as their homeland (8.61) is one of the best illustrations of the point. The nomadic way of life of the BUDINI (4.109.1), one of the neighboring tribes of the SCYTHIANS, who had claims to autochthony, is a non‐Greek example. There is an autochthonic aspect in the serpentine figure in one of the stories about the origins of the Scythians, NOMADS par excellence, but it is challenged by Herodotus (4.8–11, with Corcella in ALC, 579–80).

A claim to autochthony also meant a claim to purity from ethnic admixtures, which was often demonstrated by means of the community’s cultural symbols and mythologies (Smith 1986), such as language, customs, cult, ethnic names, and myths of origins. In a demonstration of his critical enquiry, Herodotus uses all of these cultural indexes when he grapples with the question of the autochthony of the Carians (southwestern Anatolia) and the Caunians, one of the cities of CARIA. As a Carian authority (a native of HALICARNASSUS), he is in a position to test the different versions; each time he opts for a different version than that of the community’s self‐perception. The Carians think of themselves as landlubbers and autochthonous, but Herodotus thinks, together with the Cretans, that they were originally Ionian and Dorian islanders (1.171.5–6). On the other hand, the people of CAUNUS are according to his view autochthons, who however think of themselves as originally from CRETE (1.172.1).

SEE ALSO: Api; Athenian Empire; Colonization; Ethnicity; Genealogies; Migration; Panhellenism