The Peloponnese is traditionally seen as made up of a number of regions - Achaea, Sicyon, Corinth, the Argolid, Laconia, Messenia, Elis (or Eleia), and Arcadia in the centre - and many Peloponnesians adopted an identity associated with their region (Nielsen 2002a: 45-88). While the origins of such regionalization were no doubt earlier, still in the archaic period the regions were not sharply defined, but there was a transition towards the more stable classical network of identities (although even then significant shifts of identity were still possible).3
By the eighth century both Corinth and Sicyon had unified their territories as single political entities, and they then remained remarkably stable as territorial states, whatever internal changes they underwent (Legon in Inventory 462); but most regions were a patchwork of numerous separate communities. In several cases, however, it was uncertain how many communities were covered by a particular regional identity (e. g. in Eleia, where regional identity developed and spread as the influence of Elis grew: Roy 1999), and border areas in particular were often not clearly defined. Even among such uncertainties Achaea is a particularly difficult problem since the concept of Achaean identity probably developed before the archaic period, but the region is not a natural geographical unity and how political communities evolved within Achaea in the archaic period is still obscure.4
In several parts of the Peloponnese, particularly in border areas, communities had a choice of identity (Roy 2000a). How such communities exercised their choice must have been affected by the tendency of more powerful communities to extend their influence. Elis, for instance, was originally a community of the Peneios valley in northern Eleia, but by the sixth century it controlled Olympia and quite possibly also territory south of the Alpheios: as Elis expanded its control, some territory, such as Pisatis around Olympia, was incorporated directly into the Elean state, while other communities were made perioikic, and by 500 at least Elis had created a network of subordinate perioikic allies (Roy in Inventory 489-91). Communities south of the Alpheios not yet controlled by Elis in 500 would have to decide how to align themselves in view of the obvious likelihood (which became reality in the fifth century: e. g. Hdt. 4.148.4) that Elis would seek to extend its control over them too.
Argos destroyed Asine in the eighth century and conquered Nauplia in the seventh, thus achieving domination of the entire valley in which it lay, and it continued to expand its influence over its neighbors: another aspect of Argive ambition was the long-lasting struggle with Sparta for control of Thyreatis. While there was a tendency in antiquity to distinguish the territory of Argos itself from “the cities of the Acte” (the peninsula adjacent to the Saronic Gulf), the term “cities of the Acte” was a loose one, and Argive strength does not seem to have provoked the coalescence of an anti-Argive identity, though it was presumably among the factors which led these cities to join the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League.5
In northern Arcadia Kleitor campaigned in the later sixth century against “many poleis,” presumably neighbors, and commemorated its success in a dedication at Olympia (see below): Kleitor may have established some hegemonial organization in the area (Nielsen 1996: 86-7). In the same area the Azanian identity, which had united several northern Arcadian communities and possibly extended into Achaea, collapsed for unknown reasons and simply disappeared except as a memory: evidently the formerly Azanian communities preferred to rely on their own local identities within the wider Arcadian regional grouping.6 The power of Mantinea and Tegea in eastern Arcadia probably also faced their smaller Arcadian neighbors with choices of alignment, though Mantinean and Tegean expansion into adjacent areas is not actually attested until the fifth century (Nielsen in Inventory 517-20, 530-3).
As the power and influence of Sparta grew in the archaic period beyond the limits of Laconia and Messenia that development too reshaped the identities of communities on Sparta’s borders. In some cases smaller and weaker communities had no real choice: Elis, Argos, Sparta, and probably also Kleitor achieved some of their expansion by force of arms, but in other cases a less powerful community probably exercised a genuine choice: Heraea, situated in the boundary area between Arcadia and Elis, for instance, may have preferred to assert an Arcadian identity rather than allow itself to be linked to Elis.7 There are also problems with the way shifts of identity are presented in later sources: for instance, control of border areas between Laconia and southern Arcadian communities was still being disputed in the hellenistic period, and accounts circulating in the hellenistic and Roman periods of the areas’ earlier history were obviously slanted to support later territorial claims (Shipley 2000: 369-76). While early Spartan expansion on this border is presented as military conquest, Spartan strength may have offered an attractive security to small communities that found themselves between, say, Sparta and Tegea.
Inter-state relations were not all, however, colored by tension and anxiety, nor were they all shaped by adherence to a region. The development, probably in the seventh to sixth centuries, of a network of wagon-roads in the Peloponnese (see below) shows both a willingness on the part of states to cooperate in creating and maintaining such roads, and a readiness to facilitate traffic extending beyond the region.
Sanctuaries in the archaic Peloponnese also blended local and wider interests. Many sanctuaries were of course of purely local significance, but others had a regional role. The sanctuary of Poseidon at Samikon, for example, was evidently ancient, and important in the region south of the Alpheios that later became Triphylia (Ruggeri 2004: 96-102). Whatever its precise relationship to Argos and other nearby communities, the Argive Heraion was clearly another such sanctuary of major regional importance (Hall 1995; Pierart 2003: 61). But the attraction of a sanctuary could draw worshippers across regional boundaries, and the prime Peloponnesian example of such a shrine is of course Olympia, used from the eighth century not only by inhabitants of Eleia but also by worshippers, and dedicants, from elsewhere in the Peloponnese, notably Arcadia, Argos, Messenia and Lakonia - and by Greeks from outside the Peloponnese, on whom see below (Morgan 1990: 57-105).
Such evidence shows that the archaic history of the Peloponnese must be seen not only as marked by increasing regional definition and differentiation, but also as a time of considerable interaction and cooperation between communities and regions. It is nonetheless true that the period saw the evolution of increasingly structured, though still elastic,8 regional identities, leading to the well-known regional pattern of the classical Peloponnese recorded, for instance, in the periplous of Pseudo-Skylax (40-4).
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