A ‘PIRAEUS-RECOVERY’ TALE. (AGAIN) ON PAUS. 1.26.3

This article casts new light on Pausanias’ bewildering statement that the Athenian general and politician Olympiodoros « recovered the Piraeus and Mounychia », an exploit for which no historical context is supplied. After discussing the evidence for reckoning Pau-sanias’ statement as the paraphrases of an honorific decree bestowed upon the general and addressing the chronology of the feat (positing that the enterprise is to be framed within the unrest of 295), the article offers a new reading of the alleged liberation of the Piraeus. A close survey of the Periegetes’ account, as well as of other relevant sources (e.g. Polyainos and P.Oxy. 2082), reveals how the narrative of Olympiodoros’ recovery of the harbour deme is, in fact, a historiographical mystification, having the Piraeus been under Athenian control for the whole period of Lachares’ ruling. Lastly, the article uncovers the ideological rationale behind such a mystifying narrative.