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The Mutiny of Conon's Cypriot Mercenaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

I. A. F. Bruce
Affiliation:
Worthing, Sussex

Extract

Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 15 provides a detailed account of a mutiny of Cypriot soldiers serving under Conon in 395 B.C., our only other record of the event being a brief statement by Justin. The question which prompts this paper arises from some lacunae in 15, 4 and concerns the activity of the mutineers, where they went, or proposed to go, and for what purpose.

All Conon's troops had been deprived of their pay for many months, no unusual experience for those in the service of Persian kings, and accordingly Conon had sailed from Rhodes to Caunus and from Caunus had gone to visit Pharnabazus and Tithraustes to discuss the financial situation. Some of the Cypriot soldiers had been among those who accompanied Conon to Caunus and while awaiting his return were persuaded by some unspecified persons that pay was only to be provided for the rowers and marines and not for themselves.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 13 note 1 VI, 2, II: ‘Sed Cononem seditio militum invadit, quos praefecti regis fraudare stipendio soliti erant: eo instantius debita poscentibus quo graviorem sub magno duce militiam praesumebant.’

page 13 note 2 Hell. Oxy. 14, 2Google Scholar. Perhaps 15 months, cf. Isoc., Paneg. 141Google Scholar: (sc. ).

page 13 note 3 His headquarters since the revolt of Rhodes from Sparta. Cf. Diod. XIV, 79, 6.

page 13 note 4 Hell. Oxy. 14, 1Google Scholar.

page 13 note 5 Hell. Oxy. 15, 3Google Scholar.

page 13 note 6 In Oxyrhynchus Papyri, v, 185Google Scholar, and Oxford text.

page 14 note 1 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, V, 237Google Scholar.

page 14 note 2 F. Gr. Hist. II A, 31Google Scholar.

page 14 note 3 F. Gr. Hist. 11c, 18Google Scholar.

page 14 note 4 Loc. cit.

page 14 note 5 Teubner edition, 1927.

page 14 note 6 Op. cit. p. 236.

page 14 note 7 Meyer, , Theopomps Hellenika, p. 188Google Scholar, reads but assumes a corruption in the text. Jacoby's tentative suggestion (F. Gr. Hist. 11 A, 31Google Scholarapparatus criticus) does not remove the problem of identification. Crönert's (ap. Kalinka) leaves the same problem and does not accord well with the vestiges in the papyrus. Gigante (Le Elleniche di Ossirinco, p. 40) reads ? later in 15, 4 but not in the present passage, thus incurring all the objections to Kalinka's reading while giving less sense to the section as a whole, for the second conjecture (in Kalinka's text) was obviously dependent upon the first.

page 15 note 1 might fill the lacuna better, but no example of a following dative of place is quoted by Liddell and Scott, although there is a dative of person in Thuc. II, 83, 3.

page 15 note 2 Reading .

page 15 note 3 Cf. 15, 2–3.

page 15 note 4 Cf. Barbieri, , Conone, p. 133Google Scholar.

page 16 note 1 Cf. Barbieri, loc. cit.: ‘Malgrado lo stato lacunoso di P 15, 4 sembra che il tentativo non riuscisse, sicchè i Ciprioti ritornarono nel loro accampamento davanti a Cauno.’

page 16 note 2 15, 5–6