The Scythian Police Force of Athens in the 6th-4th centuries BCE

The Scythian archers, called taxotai, were a hypothesized police force of 6th-, 5th- and early 4th-century BCE Athens that is recorded in some Greek artworks and literature. The force is said to have consisted of 300 armed Scythians (a nomadic people living in the Eurasian Steppe) who were public slaves in Athens. They acted for a group of eleven elected Athenian magistrates who were responsible for arrests and executions and for some aspects of public order in the city including the Assembly and the Council. Their number is said to have swelled to 1,200 at some point, so they may have also been involved in wartime conflicts as well.

Scholars agree that a Scythian police force of some sort existed in Athens in the 5th century BCE and possibly as early as the 6th century BCE, although no one knows when it was first established or how long it lasted. Swiss archaeologist Balbina Bäbler points to 4th century BCE grave steles including the stele of Getes as well as buried Scythian arrowheads as evidence of their continued existence at that time but admits it is impossible to know whether these Scythians represent a continuation of the police force known earlier or whether Scythian families simply still lived in Athens.

Scholars are also unsure why Athenians would employ "barbarians" for such purposes, although they think it's possible that foreign slaves far from home would compose a more faithful police force than locals would. Scholars have found the Scythians' use of bows and arrows in a crowded city like Athens puzzling, too.  I suppose its is no less plausible than the use of pistols in large modern cities today, though.

As portrayed on Attic vase paintings, Scythian archers were distinguished by high pointed headdresses and wide trousers although they may have had no relationship to the Scythian police force. Scythians speaking broken Greek were comedic characters in Aristophanes' play Thesmophoriazusae, too, but again their connection to the police force is not clear. 

 Departure of the warrior in front of the home's women and his white-haired father. He is accompagnied by a Scythian archer. Side A from an Attic black-figure amphora from Vulci, 530-520 BCE now in the collections of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich, Germany.  Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Bibi Saint-Pol.

Hoplite putting his armor on, surrounded by two Scythian warriors, Side A of an Attic red-figure belly-amphora, From Vulci now in the collections of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich, Germany.  Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Bibi Saint-Pol.

Attic Black-Figure Psykter painted in the manner of the Lysippides painter, Attic, 530 BCE, now in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum.  Image courtesy of Bruce White Photography. Two chariots seen in a frontal view decorate this Athenian black-figure psykter or wine cooler. Each chariot carries a driver and a warrior whose heads are just visible over the edge of the chariot car. On one side Skythian archers, identified by their distinctive tall caps, hold the outside trace horses, and on the other side, fully armed warriors flank the chariot. The Greeks used psykters to chill the wine at a symposium or drinking party. Wine diluted with water was poured into the psykter, whose wide bulbous body was then floated inside a larger vessel filled with snow or cold water. Scholars believe that this is the earliest complete psykter to have survived from antiquity.

Archer drawing an arrow from his quiver as he turns to shoot at the enemy by Epiktetos, 520-500 BCE. Interior from an Attic red-figured plate. From Vulci now in the collections of the British Museum.  Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

 

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Waterfowl in Greco-Roman art

Ducks, geese, and swans were often depicted on serving ware in both Greek and Roman households. Although fish was a more common protein source than ducks and geese, even the humiliores occasionally enjoyed poultry.  Following his triumph, Caesar sponsored a public feast for 260,000 of the poorer people of Rome, offering them ducks and geese as well as seafood and game.  

But waterfowl as art was used to appeal to Greek and Roman intellect as well as to their stomachs.  In addition to their inclusion in myth such as  the legendary transformation of Zeus into a swan to seduce Leda, these species appeared multiple times in popular works of Aesop and Aristophanes as they were deemed "characterful" enough to lend themselves to literary purposes.  In his play "The Birds", Aristophanes points out that a goose could act as an agent of Eros when used as a competitive gift exchanged in the homosexual courtship between an erastês and his young erômenos.

Some scholars, like Pliny the Elder, also thought these birds possessed "intellectus sapientiae," an understanding of wisdom. In his Natural History, Pliny relates the story of a goose that attached itself as the constant companion of the philosopher Lacydes, never separating from him either in public or at the baths, and either by night or day.

It is not surprising, then, that they were among the 69 species identified as subjects of paintings, mosaics, and sculptures found in the remains of Roman structures in Pompeii and other cities that survived the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Image: Silver Wine Strainer from Greece, 2nd half of the 4th century BCE, now in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and on display at the Getty Villa in Gallery 111.  Image courtesy of the museum.

Note: The form and decoration of this silver strainer were popular in the 300s BCE, especially in Macedonia in northern Greece. The flanged rim and projecting handles allowed the strainer to rest on the rim of a container. The perforations in the strainer's bowl form an elegant whirligig surrounded by concentric circles. The Getty describes the ends of the handles as terminating in ducks' heads but I think geese or swan heads are more likely due to the long necks that curve sinuously out from the wide base, which is engraved with palmettes.

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Aristophanes: Comedian or Social Agitator?

 Aristophanes, known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy was a comic playwright of ancient Athens and a poet of what has been called Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.  Born in 446 BC, his works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. Aristophanes lampooned the most important personalities and institutions of his day, as can be seen, for example, in his buffoonish portrayal of Socrates in The Clouds, and in his racy anti-war farce Lysistrata.  His plays consistently espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts (notably Euripides, whose influence on his own work however he once grudgingly acknowledged), in politics (especially the populist Cleon), and in philosophy/religion (where Socrates was the most obvious target). Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him has led to contradictions.

 Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries. Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates.  

Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights.

Image: Terracotta amphoriskos (flask) in the form of a bird-man, late 5th century B.C.E., Greek Attic, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This extraordinary vase of a bird-man, of high technical quality, is unique among the examples of Attic black-glazed pottery known today. It almost certainly relates to Aristophanes' well-known comedy The Birds (first produced in 415/414 B.C.E.) and may represent the costume that would have been worn by members of the chorus in the fifth century B.C.E.

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Eros, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest with his glittering wings, depicted on a bronze lamp holder, 1st century BCE, at the Dallas Museum of Art

 Eros, the Greek god of love, is shown as a beautiful youth with both male and female characteristics. The figure was originally part of a lamp holder and would have had an oil lamp on the tendril he holds in an outstretched hand. The sculpture shares in the expressive, dynamic qualities of later Greek Hellenistic art; it appears to be flying on the beautifully detailed wings. The lamp from which the figure came was probably made in the eastern Mediterranean for a wealthy house or villa in Italy. The bronze has been associated with a trove of Greek luxury goods recovered from an ancient shipwreck near the town of Mahdia on the coast of Tunisia. - Anne Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art.

A cult of Eros existed in pre-classical Greece, but it was much less important than that of Aphrodite. However, in late antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him (also shared by Herakles, Hermes and Aphrodite). The Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries portrayed Eros as the child of Night (Nyx).  Influenced by Orphism, 5th century BCE playwright Aristophanes described his birth:

  "At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light."

Images: Eros, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest with his glittering wings, depicted on a bronze lamp holder, 1st century BCE, that I photographed at the Dallas Museum of Art.

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