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How could one assert one’s own aristocratic status and recognize it in another? As already mentioned, in the ideal world of the Homeric poems, physical appearance (alongside garments, in all probability⁷) will be enough to recognize an aristocrat. There is no need even to ask for a name until the guest himself decides to reveal it to his noble host. In real life, however, all is in the name. In the archaic period, elements of usually meaningful Greek personal names will suggest at least aristocratic ambitions of one’s parents.⁸ The compounds containing such words (and notions) as “horse” (hippos, as in Hipparchus) or other athletic paraphernalia such as the race track (-dromos, as in Callidromos), or “victory” (nike-, as in Nikodromos), “fame” (kleos or the like, as in Pericles), or “strength/power” (kratos, as in Polycrates), but also references to the public sphere (agora, more rarely asty or polis, as in Aristagoras) and/or to the idea of resisting the enemy and so protecting one’s community (mene-, alexi-, as in Alexander), or leading (proto-) or persuading (peis-, peith-) fellow-citizens (laoi, dēmos, stratos, as in Peisistratos) will instantly be perceived as belonging to the stock of “aristocratic” names, alongside those straightforwardly indicating one’s supremacy (arist-, as in Aristides or anax-, as in Anaxarchos or Astyanax). More rarely, but very importantly, the idea of being “elected” (-kritos, as in Demokritos) by the people will come to the fore. All such names, besides referring to the aristocratic lifestyle (cf. athletics, but also fame in general) allude to an elevated position within the community in politics but also in warfare.⁹

Ideally, again in Homer, a commoner will also be easily distinguishable from an aristocrat for want of athletic posture (Od. 8.159–164). In real-life terms, athletic competence or past experience will need to be asserted verbally, but athletic references themselves are crucial as they parade one’s membership in the “leisure class,” i.e., a group with an easy access to spare time needed for specialized bodily training.

Besides these elements, aristocratic means of social recognition will be a complex mix of material and non-material “markers” revolving around one’s economic status, pedigree, family and social connections, as well as rituals and social practices one participates in. More or less ostentatious luxury (a relative thing, as the object “luxurious enough” in a poorer community will be ridiculously negligible in a wealthier environment), including foreign, exotic, and especially oriental items will be crucially important here. The most spectacular among such objects will have their own genealogy recounted by their current owners who sometimes refer to their previous high-born possessors (as in Homer, Od. 4.615–619; cf. Crielaard 2003). At times, it will be one’s war booty, additionally pointing to military prowess of the person in question or of his forefathers, but probably more often the story will refer to the gift-exchange procedures as they will themselves be indicative of prestigious relations of guest-friendship (xenia, philia) reaching far beyond one’s immediate circle or even to other Greek, and at times non-Greek, communities. Such ties, whether short- or long-distance, may be consolidated by political marriages, operative even within a tiny village, but sometimes extending as far as eminent or even royal barbarian families.¹⁰ All those distinguished ties will be subject to narratives, sometimes evoking longer genealogical traditions, naturally encroaching on the realm of myth if needed and whenever possible.

Marriages will naturally be concluded in a duly spectacular manner, leading to more or less conspicuous consumption and feasting, as in the aforementioned case of Agariste in Sicyon. On the other end of one’s aristocratic adult life, more or less spectacular funerals will be fundamental, with appropriate (in number, value and in symbolic terms) grave-goods, lavish feasting and the burial itself.¹¹ Duly monumental or otherwise spectacular sēmata, or grave-markers, visible to all passers-by, will naturally crown the funeral, at times additionally having recourse to funerary inscriptions.

Although the actual ritual and material forms of all these social practices did vary from one community to another (e.g., inhumation vs. cremation for burials and the locally-specific nature of grave-goods), their common supra-local denominator is clear, since many of them only made sense when operating between different communities. In principle, the bigger the distances people, stories, and objects travel, in space and in time, the more prestigious their exchange and their possession will be. The same can be said of rituals (potentially) involved in consolidating one’s aristocratic status. Specific votive practices in local sanctuaries or other forms of conspicuous presence in them (such as group or individual statues, kouroi or korai, as well as commemorative or votive inscriptions on public display) may be different in each particular case, but they all will have to somehow interact with corresponding practices executed in supra-local, or even pan-Hellenic sanctuaries, where aristocratic families from all over the Greek world competed on an equal footing.

Although theoretically all these activities may sporadically by executed by non-aristocrats (see below), what a priori is aristocratic about them is not so much the scale of expenditure required (as already mentioned, all is relative here) but the programmed or pre-meditated activity amounting to a systematic recourse to gift-exchange, luxurious ostentation, and marriages by a given family.

As a result of all this, countless interconnected networks were born, covering the “small Greek world,” as Irad Malkin calls it (Malkin 2011), in its entirety. Private or aristocratic ties lend an additional “systemic” dimension to this network dynamics. This clearly results not only from a handful of traditions to this effect preserved in our ancient sources, but even more so thanks to much more numerous stories of high political importance regarding political, historical, ethical, and religious ties between entire communities.¹² It seems likely that the bonds of friendship (philia, xenia) or even (mythical) kinship between the communities across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were modeled on private, or better individual relations between those who thought of themselves as aristocrats and intensely interacted with one another on a supra-local scale. (Not inappropriately, such “international” ties between political communities were often thought of in terms of syngeneia, or kinship.)

In a more general vein, a good amount of the inter-communal relations in archaic and classical Greece was based on individual, or better interpersonal, ties, such as the institution of proxeny, or honorary consulate of a citizen looking after the interests of another city and its citizens in his own polis (cf. recently Mack 2015). But I aim here to focus not on such institutional or more private ties between individuals and/or political communities, but rather on local and supra-local mechanisms of elite recognition, on establishing one’s elevated status to be acknowledged as such by one’s community and others across the Hellenic world. For the very essence of Greek aristocracy will be, I submit, a certain level of group solidarity, or perhaps better of self-recognizability. And here the cultural aspect of this phenomenon ultimately comes to the fore.