The Bacchiadae ( Bakkhiadai), a tightly knit Dorians, were the ruling family of ancient Corinth in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, a period of Corinthian cultural power.
History
Corinth had been a backwater in eighth-century Greece.
[Édouard Will, Korinthiaka: recherches sur l'histoire et la civilisation de Corinth des origines aux guerres médiques (Paris: Boccard) 1955.] In 747 BCE (a traditional date) an aristocratic revolution ousted the Bacchiad kings of Corinth, when the royal clan of Bacchiadae, numbering perhaps a couple of hundred adult males and claiming descent from the Dorian
Greek hero Heracles through the seven sons and three daughters of a
king
Bacchis, took power from the last king,
Telestes.
[Telestes was murdered by Arieus and Perantas, who were themselves Bacchiads. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I p. 450). To what extent this early "history" is genealogical myth is debated.] Practising strict
endogamy,
[Herodotus 5.92.1.] which kept clan outlines within a distinct extended
oikos, they dispensed with kingship and ruled as a group, governing the city by electing annually a
prytanis who held the kingly position
[Perhaps the designation "king" was retained, for reasons of cult, as a king was normally an essential intercessor with the gods. (Stewart Irvin Oost, "Cypselus the Bacchiad" Classical Philology 67.1 (January 1972, pp. 10-30) p. 10f.) See: rex sacrorum.] for his brief term,
[Diodorus Siculus, 7.9.6; Pausanias 2.4.4.] no doubt a council (though none is specifically documented in the scant literary materials) and a
to head the army.
In 657 BCE, the Bacchiadae were expelled in turn by the tyrant Cypselus,[His mother had been of the Bacchiadae, but being lame, married outside the clan.] who had been polemarch. The exiled Bacchiadae fled to Corcyra (a colony of Corinth) and to Magna Graecia, traditionally to found Syracuse in Sicily, and to Etruria, where Demaratus installed himself at Tarquinia, founding a dynasty of Etruscan kings. The royal line of the Lynkestis of Macedon was also of Bacchiad descent.[Strabo, Geography, 7.7: "The Lyncestae were under Arrhabaeus, who was of the race of the Bacchiadae."] The of Corcyra, Syracuse, and Megara Hyblaea[From the lost Megarian Constitution of Aristotle Plutarch derived his Greek Questions 17, 18 and 59 W.R. Halliday, Plutarch's Greek Questions, 1928, p. 92.] contain considerable detail about the Bacchiadae and the expeditions of the Bacchiad Archias of Corinth, legendary founder of Syracuse in 734–33 BCE, and Philolaos, lover of Diocles of Corinth, victor at Olympia in 728 BCE and a nomothete (lawgiver) of Thebes.
Some of the Bacchiadae also fled to Sparta, for which they possibly fought against the Messenians during the Second Messenian War.[Wickert, Der peloponnesische Bund, p. 15 (note 35).]
List of the Bacchiad kings of Corinth
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Aletes 1073 - 1035 BCE
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Ixion 1035 - 997 BCE
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Agelas I 997 - 960 BCE
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Prymnis 960 - 925 BCE
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Bacchis 925 - 890 BCE
-
Agelas II 890 - 860 BCE
-
Eudemus 860 - 835 BCE
-
Aristomedes 835 - 800 BCE
-
Agemon 800 - 784 BCE
-
Alexander 784 - 759 BCE
-
Telestes 759 - 747 BCE
See also
Bibliography
-
Édouard Will, Korinthiaka: recherches sur l'histoire et la civilisation de Corinth des origines aux guerres médiques, Paris, Boccard, 1955.
-
Konrad Wickert, Der peloponnesische Bund von seiner Entstehung bis zum Ende des Archidamischen Krieges, Erlangen, 1961.
