Theopompos of Myndos - Take Two

The Remaining Blocks of Lysanders' Monument at Delphi
Jona Lendering CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
http://www.livius.org/pictures/greece/delphi/009-monument-of-lysander/monument-of-lysander/

Back in April last year I added a new page Myndians in History  which included Pausanias’ reference to a monument at Delphi in honour of Theopompos of Myndos, who sailed with Lysander at the battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC.

To paraphrase a North Staffordshire expression I was like a dog with two appendages having found mention of a Myndian trireme captain which predated Mausolus’ synoecism of the Lelegian towns in the 4^th century BC.

However it now appears that I may have been a little premature, after a little more reading there are two other suggestions:

Xenophon states that Theopompos was a Milesian buccaneer who was dispatched to Sparta with the news of Lysander’s  victory,

The second and most recent hypothesis is that Theopompos was a Melian (Theopompus, son of Lapompus of Melos).  I came a across a few footnotes which cited  A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC edited by Russell Meiggs and David M Lewis who reviewed the inscriptions on the thirteen surviving blocks of limestone which still bear the prints of the feet of the bronze statues erected by Lysander.

Myndians in History

A new page has been added that lists some of the people of Myndos whose names have been recorded in history,

Myndians in History

There are no great surprises as all the references were found online, but the reason we started the blog was to try and bring together all of these snippets.

There are a few which I hadn’t come across before, Theopompos who sailed with Lysander in the 5th century BC, an unnamed Myndian also from the 5th century whose covert activities are described on a piece of papyrus found at Oxyrhyncia, two Myndians mentioned on fragments of marble stelae held in the British Museum and the involvement of a bishop of Myndos in the one of the early rifts in church doctrine.

Theopompos of Myndos

While running a series of web searches in preparation for a new page for the blog I came across a reference to Theopompos of Myndos who fought with Lysander at Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC.

Several of the books and websites associated with the area mention Alexander of Myndos, Apollonius of Myndos, Botryas of Myndos, and Eusebius of Myndos but this is the first time I had come across Theopompos.

A statue of Theopompos is listed as being a part of Lysander’s monument at Delphi dedicated to the victory of the Spartans over the Athenians in the last battle of the Peloponnesian war (Stuart Jones, H, Pg 136)1

The dedication is mentioned by Pausanias, a Greek traveller and geographer from the 2nd century AD. (Pausanias 10.9.7)

What I find interesting is that Theopompos is the second recorded seafaring Myndian who predates Mausolus’ synoecism of the Lelegian towns and the rebuilding of Myndos at what is now Gümüşlük. With the absence of any obvious evidence of a harbour associated with the original Lelegian hill top settlement of Myndos on Bozdağ, Prof Mustafa Şahin (Uludağ University), who has excavated finds predating the synoecism at Gümüşlük, has proposed that the harbour and surrounding area may have been inhabited prior to the construction of Mausolus’ Myndos.

1 Stuart Jones, H. 1895. Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture. London: Macmillan and Co