Kélainai – Apamée Kibôtos : Développement urbain dans le contexte anatolien

Prof. Dr. Christopher TUPLIN

University of Liverpool, Classics & Ancient History, SACE and GDR 2538

c.j.tuplin@liv.ac.uk

Celaenae and beyond: Xenophon on Achaemenid palaces and courts

In this paper I shall first make some observations about the contents of Anabasis 1.2.7-9.

Topics to be discussed include: Celaenae’s role as the real starting point for the march upcountry, issues of local topography, the Marsyas myth, Xerxes and his palace, the discovery of paradeisoi, and the relationship between Xenophon’s account of Celaenae and (i) other accounts of Celaenae, (ii) Xenophon’s account of other Anatolian palace-sites. I shall then broaden the scope somewhat to take in Xenophon’s treatment of Achaemenid palace environments elsewhere in his writings.

Most of the paper’s substance will be shamelessly derived from three sources: an unpublished – I increasingly feel never-likely-to-be-published – draft commentary on Anabasis, a paper that saw the light of day some years ago on in the proceedings of a conference on Herodotus, and another paper forthcoming in a volume devoted to the Achaemenid court. This diet of self-plagiarism will be hard on those in the audience who have already had to put up with one or even two of these sources. It may indeed also – if for partly different reasons -- be hard on those, more numerous, who are not in that position. But there are few passages in surviving classical Greek authors that speak of Celaenae and, as the author of the one of the more notable exceptions (and someone who spent a month of his life there), Xenophon certainly deserves his moment in the sun at a conference devoted to the city and its environs. It is only sad to have to note that, when the army left Celaenae, it turned north-west for Peltae and so never saw the tumulus at Tatarlı.

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