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Rhodes represents a case of a “back-ripple effect” of Mediterranean networks, when overseas experiences and colonizing activities condensed the distinct poleis of the island into “Rhodian” ones long before the official synoikismos (unification and foundation of the new city of Rhodos). It indicates the role of (island) regionalism in shaping collective identity. This finds its expression in Rhodian myths (Tlepolemos) that stress overseas, common action; in the short-lived commercial port of Vroulia; and especially in overseas trade and colonization in Sicily and across the Mediterranean in the early sixth century. The more comprehensive nature of Rhodian identity overseas (Olympia, colonization in Sicily at Gela and Akragas) reflected on the home island. Finally, at Egyptian Naukratis, “Rhodes,” acting as a single polis (not so at home, where Lindos Kameiros and Ialysos kept their identity), shared in the most articulate expression of Hellenic identity (again, “overseas”) at the common Greek temple of the Hellenion.

This chapter focuses on Agathokles’ involvement in eastern and central Sicily, which was the core of his domain throughout his reign. It argues that Agathokles rose to power largely from conflicts particular to the domestic situation in Syracuse after Timoleon and that the driver of Agathokles’ establishment of a large kingdom in Sicily was not primarily the example of the Diadochoi in the East. Rather it was the interlocked nature of civic conflict in Sicily and the model for dealing with this provided by earlier Sicilian history.

The conclusion focuses on the consistency of Pindar’s construction of a monarchical persona for Hieron, focusing on the use of the “superlative vaunt,” and comparing the Hieron odes to songs for other monarchical patrons, the Emmenids of Akragas and Arkesilas of Cyrene. The Emmenid odes do not stress the family’s ruling position. The odes for Arkesilas highlight the family tradition of divinely-destined royalty but do not, like the Hieron odes, make athletic victories an authorizing sign of the right to power. Because Syracuse was not a hereditary monarchy Pindar’s odes for Hieron do not emphasize inherited excellence, a marked theme in other odes. The project of theorizing Syracusan monarchy is reflected in the varied vocabulary that Pindar uses to describe Hieron, while the formal vocabulary of praise poetry takes on new life in this political context.

Chapter 4 argues that Pindar activates the River Akragas as a civic symbol in three of his five odes for victors from Akragas. Along with Syracuse, Akragas was one of the two most powerful Sicilian cities in the fifth century, and the influential Emmenid rulers celebrated their athletic successes by commissioning four odes by Pindar. A fifth ode for Akragas is unique as the only example of an ode in celebration of a victory in a musical competition that survives from classical Greece. A preliminary survey of local references in these odes suggests that the River Akragas became a recurring symbol that echoed the crab on Akragantine coinage of the period. Already in the earliest of the Akragantine odes, Pythian 12, the poet represents Akragas as a morphing figure that shifts from city to nymph to river, emphasizing the equivalency drawn between the three and the importance of the river as a symbol of civic identity. Later, in Olympians 2 and 3 (in celebration of Theron’s chariot victory of 476), Pindar draws a spatial analogy between the Akragantines and the inhabitants of the Isle of the Blessed and the mythical Hyperboreans, respectively, that depends on their link to the river. Through close reading and analysis of Olympian 2, this chapter suggests that the River Akragas becomes a locus of Akragantine civic identity in this poetry.