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Sicyon

January 20, 2023

For the modern municipality, see Sikyona.

Sicyon (/ˈsɪʃiˌɒn, ˈsɪs-/; Greek: Σικυών; gen.: Σικυῶνος) or Sikyon 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 BC. 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.

Ruins of Sicyon

History

 
Location of Sicyon
 
The ancient theatre of Sikyon today
 
Excavation site of a Doric temple in Sikyon

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 (κορυνηφόροι, korynēphóroi or κατωνακοφόροι, katōnakophóroi) lived on and worked the land.[1]

For some centuries the suzerainty of Argos remained, but after 676 BC 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 BC.[4] 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 (590 BC) in the interests of the Delphians.[1]

His successor Aeschines was expelled by the Spartans in 556 BC 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.[1]

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 BC 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.[1] 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.[1]

In 369 BC Sicyon was captured and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful attack on the Peloponnesian League.[1] From 368 to 366 BC Sicyon was ruled by Euphron who first favoured democracy, but then made himself tyrant. Euphron was killed in Thebes by a group of Sicyonian aristocrats, but his compatriots buried him in his home town and continued to honour him like the second founder of the city.

 
O: walking chimera; ΣΙ below R:flying dove; pellet above
silver hemidrachm struck in Sicyon 360–330 BC

ref.: BMC 124, Sear sg2774, SNG Cop. 64/65

During the 4th century BC, 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.[1] 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 invasions of the 8th century.[1]

In the 4th century BC the people of Sicyon were the subject of a popular comedy by Menander titled Sikyonioi.

William Shakespeare, in his 1606 play Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Scene 2), notes that Marc Antony's wife, Fulvia died in Sicyon. Historically, she died there in 40 BC while in rebellion against Octavius Caesar.

Friedrich Hölderlin's novel Hyperion from 1797 starts at the "paradisiac plain of Sicyon".

Monuments

  • Temple of Apollo or Artemis
  • Theatre of Sikyon
  • Palaestra - Gymnasium
  • Stadium of Sikyon
  • Bouleuterion of Sikyon

A village named until 1920 Vasiliko (described by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as "insignificant") now occupies the site.

Mythological Rulers

Rulers according to Eusebius's chronicle and other greek sources are:

Notable people

Ancient

Modern

Mythology: Identification with Mecone

Sicyon has been traditionally identified with the mythical Mecone or Mekone,[8][9] site of the trick at Mecone carried out by Prometheus. Mecone is also described by Callimachus as "the seat of the gods", and as the place where the gods Zeus Poseidon and Hades cast lots for what part of the world they ruled.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j   One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Caspari, Maximilian (1911). "Sicyon". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 37.
  2. ^ Pausanias 2.5.6-6.7.
  3. ^ Felix Jacoby on Castor in Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 250 F 2, noted with approval by Robertson 1999:65 and note 36.
  4. ^ Herodotus 6.121
  5. ^ As displayed on the Wallchart of World History, Sicyon was founded in 2081 BC by Aegialus
  6. ^ A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Baccheidas
  7. ^ A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Daetondas
  8. ^ page 116, M.L. West, The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol. 122 (2002), pp. 109-133 (25 pages) Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
  9. ^ Themis, Jane Ellen Harrison, page 373 https://archive.org/details/themisstudyofsoc00harr/page/372 retrieved 4/02/2019
  10. ^ Quoted st page 115, M.L. West, The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol. 122 (2002), pp. 109-133

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sicyon.
  • , Ellen Papakyriakou/Anagnostou. Contains a great deal of information on ancient and present-day Sicyon.
  • "The Greco-Roman Theatre at Sicyon", The Ancient Theatre Archive. Theatre specifications and tour of the ancient theatre.

Coordinates: 37°59′03″N 22°42′40″E / 37.984104°N 22.711145°E / 37.984104; 22.711145

January 20, 2023
sicyon, modern, municipality, sikyona, greek, Σικυών, Σικυῶνος, sikyon, ancient, greek, city, state, situated, northern, peloponnesus, between, corinth, achaea, territory, present, regional, unit, corinthia, ancient, monarchy, times, trojan, city, ruled, numbe. For the modern municipality see Sikyona Sicyon ˈ s ɪ ʃ i ˌ ɒ n ˈ s ɪ s Greek Sikywn gen Sikyῶnos or Sikyon 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 BC 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 Ruins of Sicyon Contents 1 History 2 Monuments 3 Mythological Rulers 4 Notable people 5 Mythology Identification with Mecone 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksHistory Edit Location of Sicyon The ancient theatre of Sikyon today Excavation site of a Doric temple in Sikyon 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 korynhforoi korynephoroi or katwnakoforoi katōnakophoroi lived on and worked the land 1 For some centuries the suzerainty of Argos remained but after 676 BC 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 BC 4 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 590 BC in the interests of the Delphians 1 His successor Aeschines was expelled by the Spartans in 556 BC 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 1 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 BC 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 1 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 1 In 369 BC Sicyon was captured and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful attack on the Peloponnesian League 1 From 368 to 366 BC Sicyon was ruled by Euphron who first favoured democracy but then made himself tyrant Euphron was killed in Thebes by a group of Sicyonian aristocrats but his compatriots buried him in his home town and continued to honour him like the second founder of the city O walking chimera SI below R flying dove pellet abovesilver hemidrachm struck in Sicyon 360 330 BC ref BMC 124 Sear sg2774 SNG Cop 64 65During the 4th century BC 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 1 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 invasions of the 8th century 1 In the 4th century BC the people of Sicyon were the subject of a popular comedy by Menander titled Sikyonioi William Shakespeare in his 1606 play Antony and Cleopatra Act I Scene 2 notes that Marc Antony s wife Fulvia died in Sicyon Historically she died there in 40 BC while in rebellion against Octavius Caesar Friedrich Holderlin s novel Hyperion from 1797 starts at the paradisiac plain of Sicyon Monuments EditTemple of Apollo or Artemis Theatre of Sikyon Palaestra Gymnasium Stadium of Sikyon Bouleuterion of SikyonA village named until 1920 Vasiliko described by the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica as insignificant now occupies the site Mythological Rulers EditRulers according to Eusebius s chronicle and other greek sources are 1st Aegialeus 2nd Europs 3rd Telchis 4th Apis of Sicyon 5th Thelxion of Sicyon 6th Aegyrus 7th Thurimachus 8th Leucippus 9th Messapus or Peratus 10th Plemnaeus 11th Orthopolis 12th Marathonius or Coronus 13th Marathus 14th 15th Coronus or Echyreus 16th Corax 17th Epopeus of Sicyon 18th Lamedon 19th Sicyon 20th Polybus of Sicyon 21st AdrastusBefore Agammemnon PolypheidesNotable people EditAncient Aegialeus 21st century BC legendary founder 5 Tellis 8th century BC runner Olympic victor 708 BC Butades 7th century BC sculptor Canachus 6th century BC sculptor Aristocles 5th century BC sculptor Praxilla 5th century BC poetess Ariphron 5th century BC poet Alypus 5th to 4th century BC sculptor Alexis 5th or 4th century BC sculptor Eupompus 4th century BC painter Pamphilus 4th century BC painter Melanthius 4th century BC painter Pausias 4th century BC painter Eutychides 4th century BC sculptor Lysippos 4th century BC sculptor Lysistratus 4th century BC sculptor Sostrates 4th century BC pankratiast thrice Olympic champion Xenokrates 3rd century BC sculptor and art historian Machon 3rd century BC playwright Timanthes 3rd century BC painter Nealkes 3rd century BC painter Anaxandra 3rd century BC female painter Pythocles 3rd century BC runner Olympic victor 236 BC Aratus of Sicyon 271 213 BC strategos of the Achaean League Baccheidas a dancer and teacher of music 6 Daetondas of Sicyon sculptor 7 Modern Sotirios Krokidas jurist and PMMythology Identification with Mecone EditSicyon has been traditionally identified with the mythical Mecone or Mekone 8 9 site of the trick at Mecone carried out by Prometheus Mecone is also described by Callimachus as the seat of the gods and as the place where the gods Zeus Poseidon and Hades cast lots for what part of the world they ruled 10 See also EditList of ancient Greek citiesReferences Edit a b c d e f g h i j One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Caspari Maximilian 1911 Sicyon In Chisholm Hugh ed Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 25 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 37 Pausanias 2 5 6 6 7 Felix Jacoby on Castor in Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 250 F 2 noted with approval by Robertson 1999 65 and note 36 Herodotus 6 121 As displayed on the Wallchart of World History Sicyon was founded in 2081 BC by Aegialus A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology Baccheidas A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology Daetondas page 116 M L West The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol 122 2002 pp 109 133 25 pages Published by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Themis Jane Ellen Harrison page 373 https archive org details themisstudyofsoc00harr page 372 retrieved 4 02 2019 Quoted st page 115 M L West The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol 122 2002 pp 109 133External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sicyon Sicyon The most ancient Greek city state via archive org Ellen Papakyriakou Anagnostou Contains a great deal of information on ancient and present day Sicyon The Greco Roman Theatre at Sicyon The Ancient Theatre Archive Theatre specifications and tour of the ancient theatre Coordinates 37 59 03 N 22 42 40 E 37 984104 N 22 711145 E 37 984104 22 711145 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sicyon amp oldid 1116488292, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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