Herodotus IX, 33-35. The granting of Spartan citizenship to Tisamenus of Elea (ca. 480 BC)

This is the first attestation of the term politeia and, rather unexpectedly, it concerns Sparta, one of the most strict cities, at least in the classical age, in the delimitation of its own body of citizens. Herodotus himself points out that this is the only case, to his knowledge, of citizenship being granted in Sparta, and this trend is also partly confirmed by other sources (see. e.g. Dem. 23, 212). Indeed, we have no other examples of the granting of citizenship until the reforms of King Cleomenes III (235-222 BC), recounted by Plutarch (Cleom. 11). Aristotle (Pol. II, 9, 1270a 35-37), on the other hand, reports a tradition according to which the ‘early Spartan kings’ granted citizenship more easily in order to prevent the number of citizens from decreasing too much. An inscription found in Olympia, dating back to around 475-450 BC (Minon I. dial. éléennes 16) mentions an Eleatic epoikia in Sparta, modifying the image of a community hostile to contacts with the outside.

The protagonist of this event, narrated in the ninth book of Herodotus’ Histories, is the mantis of the entire Hellenic army deployed at Plataea: Tisamenus of Elea. He became a Lacedaemonian citizen, in a story centered on a misinterpretation of a Delphic response and on the Spartans’ warlike ambitions. The soothsayer of Elea rejects a first Spartan proposal that does not include politeia but participation as a leader in war, together with the two kings, in exchange for a misthos. The offer is interesting, Tisamenus senses the Lacedaemonian involvement and decides to raise it, demanding a full concession of the right of citizenship. After an initial indignant refusal, which confirms the extraordinary nature of such a request, it was the terror of the impending Persian invasion that made the Spartans change their minds, forcing them to grant the privilege not only to Tisamenus but also to his brother Hagias. Because of this last detail, the historian compares the episode to that of Melampus, a mythical Greek seer who cured the women of Argos of madness, in exchange for a large portion of the kingdom for himself and his brother Bias (see also Hes. fr. 37 M-W where it is specified that the two brothers received a kleros as a reward). From this comparison between the granting of the basileia and of the politeia, the political content of the episode stands out clearly. This story, from a chronological point of view, probably dates back to the period between the battle of Thermopylae, in which the army’s soothsayer was Megistias from Acarnania and the battle of Plataea in which Tisamenus took over this role. The expression ‘τῶν πάντων μεταδιδόντες’, used in conjunction with the term politeia, recalls another passage from the Histories concerning Sparta and the temporary reception of foreigners in its territory. In Hdt. 4.145 we read about the Mynians, a Boeotian population that descended from the Argonauts, that the Spartans took them in, gave them some land, and divided them up into tribes (‘δεξάμενοι δὲ τοὺς Μινύας γῆς τε μετέδοσαν καὶ ἐς φυλὰς διεδάσαντο’).

The history of Tisamenus seems to confirm two elements that are traditionally attributed to the Spartans: 1) the narrowness of the civic body, which in later times was to become a serious problem due to the well-known oliganthropy and oligandry; 2) the closure towards foreigners, evidenced by the uniqueness of this measure. The granting of politeia to a citizen of another polis is a rare event in the Histories. A sign of this tendency is given by the hapax λεωσφέτερος, “their fellow-citizen”, a very rare term probably to be understood as a compound of leos (“people”) and sfeteros (“their”). This one concerning Tisamenus is, moreover, the only attestation of the term politeia in the work, and there are few other episodes in which this privilege is mentioned, usually using the periphrasis consisting of the verb poieo and the noun polites: the Smyrnans admitted into eleven Aeolian poleis (I, 150); the Gephyraei in Athens (V, 57); the inhabitants of Camarina in Syracuse; and finally the granting of the Thespian citizenship to Sienno, by Themistocles (VIII, 75).

[33, 1] Ἕλλησι μὲν Τισαμενὸς Ἀντιόχου ἦν ὁ θυόμενος: οὗτος γὰρ δὴ εἵπετο τῷ στρατεύματι τούτῳ μάντις· τὸν ἐόντα Ἠλεῖον καὶ γένεος τοῦ Ἰαμιδέων Κλυτιάδην Λακεδαιμόνιοι ἐποιήσαντο λεωσφέτερον. [2] Τισαμενῷ γὰρ μαντευομένῳ ἐν Δελφοῖσι περὶ γόνου ἀνεῖλε ἡ Πυθίη ἀγῶνας τοὺς μεγίστους ἀναιρήσεσθαι πέντε. ὃ μὲν δὴ ἁμαρτὼν τοῦ χρηστηρίου προσεῖχε γυμνασίοισι ὡς ἀναιρησόμενος γυμνικοὺς ἀγῶνας, ἀσκέων δὲ πεντάεθλον παρὰ ἓν πάλαισμα ἔδραμε νικᾶν Ὀλυμπιάδα, Ἱερωνύμῳ τῷ Ἀνδρίῳ ἐλθὼν ἐς ἔριν. [3] Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ μαθόντες οὐκ ἐς γυμνικοὺς ἀλλ᾽ ἐς ἀρηίους ἀγῶνας φέρον τὸ Τισαμενοῦ μαντήιον, μισθῷ ἐπειρῶντο πείσαντες Τισαμενὸν ποιέεσθαι ἅμα Ἡρακλειδέων τοῖσι βασιλεῦσι ἡγεμόνα τῶν πολέμων. [4] ὁ δὲ ὁρέων περὶ πολλοῦ ποιευμένους Σπαρτιήτας φίλον αὐτὸν προσθέσθαι, μαθὼν τοῦτο ἀνετίμα, σημαίνων σφι ὡς ἤν μιν πολιήτην σφέτερον ποιήσωνται τῶν πάντων μεταδιδόντες, ποιήσει ταῦτα, ἐπ᾽ ἄλλῳ μισθῷ δ᾽ οὔ. [5] Σπαρτιῆται δὲ πρῶτα μὲν ἀκούσαντες δεινὰ ἐποιεῦντο καὶ μετίεσαν τῆς χρησμοσύνης τὸ παράπαν, τέλος δὲ δείματος μεγάλου ἐπικρεμαμένου τοῦ Περσικοῦ τούτου στρατεύματος καταίνεον μετιόντες. ὁ δὲ γνοὺς τετραμμένους σφέας οὐδ᾽ οὕτω ἔτι ἔφη ἀρκέεσθαι τούτοισι μούνοισι, ἀλλὰ δεῖν ἔτι τὸν ἀδελφεὸν ἑωυτοῦ Ἡγίην γίνεσθαι Σπαρτιήτην ἐπὶ τοῖσι αὐτοῖσι λόγοισι τοῖσι καὶ αὐτὸς γίνεται.

[35, 1] ὣς δὲ καὶ Σπαρτιῆται, ἐδέοντο γὰρ δεινῶς τοῦ Τισαμενοῦ, πάντως συνεχώρεόν οἱ. συγχωρησάντων δὲ καὶ ταῦτα τῶν Σπαρτιητέων, οὕτω δὴ πέντε σφι μαντευόμενος ἀγῶνας τοὺς μεγίστους Τισαμενὸς ὁ Ἠλεῖος, γενόμενος Σπαρτιήτης, συγκαταιρέει. μοῦνοι δὲ δὴ πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἐγένοντο οὗτοι Σπαρτιήτῃσι πολιῆται […]

[33, 1] The day after they had all taken up their positions, people by people and regiment by regiment, both sides offered up sacrifices. [2] Tisamenus the son of Antiochus, who had joined the Greek army as a diviner, was the one who performed the sacrifices for the Greeks; although he came from Elis, from the family of the Iamidae, the Lacedaemonians had enrolled him as a full citizen. This came about because once, when Tisamenus was consulting the oracle in Delphi about whether he would have any children, in the course of her reply the Pythia said that he would win five crucial contests. He misunderstood the meaning of the oracle and applied himself to athletics, on the assumption that those were the kind of contests he would win. He specialized in the pentathlon and only missed out on winning at the Olympic Game by losing a single wrestling-match against his rival, Hieronymus of Andros. [3] The Lacedaemonians, however, realized that the oracle he had received was referring not to athletic contests but to warfare, and they offered him financial inducements to become a war-leader of theirs along with their Heraclid kings. [4] When Tisamenus realized how much the Spartiates wanted his goodwill, he raised the stakes: he told them that the cost of his compliance was for them to make him a fellow citizen of theirs and give him full rights, and that this was not negotiable. [5] At first the Spartiates were angry at his demand and completely stopped asking him, but eventually, with their terror at this Persian invasion hanging over their heads, they went to fetch him and agreed to his conditions. Seeing that they had changed their minds, he declared himself no longer satisfied with these conditions alone, and insisted on his brother Hagias becoming a Spartiate too, on the same terms as his own citizenship.

[34, 1] In making this demand he was imitating Melampus, if one may compare the demand for kingship with the demand for citizenship. When the women of Argos went mad, the Argives went to Pylos to try to hire Melampus to come and cure their wives of their sickness, but Melampus asked for a half share in the kingship as his payment […]

[35, 1] The Spartiates were in the same situation. They needed Tisamenus so badly that they agreed to all his terms. And once the Spartiates conceded, Tisamenus of Elis, now a Spartiate, used his skill as a diviner to help them win five crucial contests. He and his brother were the only people in the world ever to be enrolled by the Spartiates as fellow citizens […] (tr. by R. Waterfield, Oxford 1998).

• J. Bordes, Politeia dans la pensée politique grecque jusqu’à Aristote, Paris 1982, 39-42.
• P. Cartledge, The Spartan Cotribution to Greek Citizenship Theory, in A. Duploy, R. Brock (eds.), Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece, Oxford 2018, 179-188.
• J. Taita, Indovini stranieri al servizio dello stato spartano. Un’«epoikia» elea a Sparta in una nuova iscrizione da Olimpia, Dike 4, 2001, 39-85.
• P. Vannicelli, Da Platea a Tanagra: Tisameno, Sparta e il Peloponneso durante la Pentecontaetia, in M. Giangiulio (a cura di), Erodoto e “il modello erodoteo”. Formazione e trasmissione delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia, Trento 2005, 257-276.