Aiolian ethnicity: myth, culture, and performance
Keywords: Aiolian mode (harmonia)
Aeolic dialect group
Aiolidai/Aeolidae
ethnic performance
Aioleis/Aeoles
Aeolian Greek ethnicity

This thesis is the first extended study of one of the major ethnic groups in Greek antiquity, the Aiolians. In the Archaic and Classical periods, Aiolian identity is associated with the regions of Boiotia, Lesbos, Aiolis and the other north-western parts of Asia Minor and the nearby islands. Thessaly is sometimes also considered Aiolian. The equivalence of the Aiolians with other intra-Hellenic ethnic groups in ancient sources has prompted a wide-spread assumption that the Aiolians constructed, thought about and expressed their identity in the same way as the better-understood Dorian and Ionian groups. This thesis tests that assumption, following recent studies which have re-examined the evidence for specific aspects of the Aiolians’ cultural and political cohesion. This thesis seeks to provide a holistic reconsideration of the weak political cooperation between Aiolians in the wider context of Greek ethnicity and Aiolian culture. The thesis thus also makes a methodological contribution by exploring ways to reincorporate material and cultural evidence into the wider study of ethnicity in the ancient world.
The thesis comprises studies of individual aspects of Aiolian ethnic identity. A preliminary chapter reviews the recent historiography of ethnicity in the modern and ancient worlds, with a particular focus on the characteristics employed to study it. Advancing on the well-established discursive model which focuses on ‘intentional’ histories, I suggest that the model of ‘performativity’ which has been useful in gender studies can help scholars to incorporate cultural indicia into the study of Greek ethnicity by investigating how cultural forms may have been imbued with ethnic relevance.
After establishing the scope of the ethnonym ‘Aiolians’ (Αἰολεῖς) and thus this thesis’ range (chapter 2), the second part of the thesis explores ancient constructions and modern analysis of the early history of Boiotia, Lesbos, Aiolis and Thessaly. Chapter 3 considers the literary evidence for Aiolian migrations into these territories. Considering the highly variable tradition, I reconsider the migratory traditions as artefacts of Thessalian–Boiotian and Boiotian–Aiolian kinship. The Aiolians, unusually, did not focus on their heroic leaders or their own ancestry per se; the traditions instead codified the historical relationship of the Aiolians with their territory. Chapter 4 turns to a separate examination of the archaeological evidence for the historical migration, which is not decisive. Chapter 5 considers the myths of common descent which have become fundamental to modern scholarship on Greek ethnicity, but in the case of the Aiolians show little ethnic significance.
I then turn in the final part to three fields of action which belonged to the Aiolians’ present rather than distant history. I argue throughout that objective modern analysis of cultural features has unjustly dismissed the social discourse surrounding dialect and other cultural practices. Chapter 6 is on musical culture, for which Greeks used ethnic terminology to categorize and label certain aspects. I discuss the poetic discourse surrounding the development of an Aiolian ‘mode’, one of several signs of the importance of musical culture for Aiolian identity. Chapter 7 discusses the existence of an Aiolian dialect group, considering both the rejection of linguistic criteria for ethnicity and the ongoing controversy over the scientific reality of the Aiolic dialectal group. Finally, chapter 8 addresses the evidence for a sense of solidarity between Aiolians, as evinced not by intentional histories or cultural labels, but by shared communal action. Case studies from the Persian Wars, Peloponnesian War, and Hellenistic religion are considered to demonstrate the intermittence of community action based on ethnic identity. A conclusion summarizes the main arguments and considers the historical obstacles to a fuller expression of Aiolian identity.