Of dogs and men: Archilochos, archaeology and the greek settlement of Thasos

Abstract

This article involves a case-study of one of the most generally accepted literary accounts of a Greek settlement abroad – the Greek colonisation of Thasos. Here, according to the generally accepted account, we have an eye-witness, Archilochos, son of the oikist , who actually settled on Thasos not during the first Greek settlement but during a subsequent wave of settlers. He didn't like it much – he calls it ‘thrice-wretched’ (228W), the settlers were the dregs of Greece (102W), the island looked like the back of an ass (21W), it wasn't pretty like Sybaris in Italy (22W), and the Thracians were described as ‘dogs’ (93aW). Fighting between Greeks and Thracians is portrayed (5W). The archaeological evidence for the first period of Greek settlement on Thasos is scarce, but what there is has been marshalled in support of this literary model. Archaeology's main role has been to be used in chronological disputes. The orthodoxy dates the Parian colonisation to 680 BC, arguing that the Delphic oracle concerning the foundation of Thasos has Archilochos' father as oikist. The subject-matter of several of the poems has allowed Archilochos' poetry to be dated to 650 BC, and therefore the colonisation of Thasos to a generation before. Pouilloux (1964), indeed, has used the archaeological evidence from a house in the lowest levels of Thasos town to argue for this early date for the Parian settlement, seeing the ‘Thracian’ (and distinctly un-Cycladic) character of many of the finds as indicative of a certain amount of interaction between Parians and Thracians in the first generation of the colony.