Agariste of Sicyon and the contest for Greece

Abstract

This paper re-examines Herodotus’ account of the marriage contest held by Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, for the hand of his daughter Agariste. It focuses less on the episode’s historicity or its literary antecedents than on the story’s position in the Histories more widely, and the background knowledge of leading Athenian families that might be taken for granted by Herodotus in his readers/audience. The paper suggests a cynical perspective on the historian’s part towards both the development of Athenian democracy and aristocratic sporting competition, and argues for the importance of patterns of prefigurement across the Histories as a whole.