The trade route which can be traced from the near east to Etruria through Al Mina and Pithecusae was in the first instance the product of a search for metals and luxury goods on the part of the aristocracy of Euboea: at its centre lay a society whose life style was influenced as much by the wanderings of Odysseus as by the warrior virtues of the Iliad. Of the two chief cities on Euboea, Chalcis probably lies under the modern town and has not been excavated; but Swiss and Greek excavations at Eretria show that it emerged suddenly as a prosperous community some time after 825. The period 750–700 was one of major temple building, and in the next century there were considerable public works in fortification and to control the river course. The absence of earlier remains is perhaps explained by a site half way between Chalcis and Eretria on the edge of the Lelantine Plain at Lefkandi: here British excavations have revealed a large settlement, with remarkable continuity and increasing prosperity throughout the Dark Age, until a sharp decline after 825; the site was finally abandoned around 700. It has reasonably been suggested that this was the original Eretrian settlement, which moved to the later Eretria in the late ninth century. The importance of the community at Lefkandi is shown by the continutuity and size of the settlement throughout the Dark Ages, and by the comparatively large amount of gold ornaments and eastern imports found in the tombs; the working of metal is attested by a ninth century bronze foundry.
A pale reflection of the last age of this society survives in the literary sources, with memories of a great war fought between Chalcis and Eretria for possession of the Lelantine Plain. In a brief sentence Thucydides contrasts it with other early border wars: ‘it was particularly in the old war between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians that the rest of the Greek world also divided in alliance with one side or the other’ (Thucydides 1.15). Scattered references to early friendships between cities can be used to establish a tentative list of those on each side:
| Chalcis | Eretria | ||
| Samos | Miletus | (Herodotus 5.99) | |
| Erythrae | Chios | (Herodotus 1.18) | |
| Thessalians | (Plutarch, Moralia 760) | ||
| Corinth | Megara | ||
| Sparta | Messenia? |
Other cities may be added with less certainty, but these names are already impressive enough to justify Thucydides’ claim that the conflict split Greece into two rival camps, and that in this respect it differed from earlier border wars; he does not however suggest that the war was comparable in its organization to the Trojan or Persian Wars, with which it is implicitly contrasted. The evidence suggests not so much joint expeditions or grand alliances, as a series of limited border wars with their epicentre in the Lelantine Plain: Thessalians helped Chalcis on the battlefield, but in most cases the conflict was more indirect; it is noticeable that pairs of neighbours, traditionally hostile to each other, tend to be found in opposite camps. The earlier co-operation between Chalcis and Eretria ended abruptly; political troubles between the settlers may be behind the move from Pithecusae to Cyme; Corinthians drove out Eretrian settlers from Corcyra in 733, Chalcidians in Sicily expelled their fellow Megarian settlers from Leontinl; Corinth and Samos helped Sparta against the Messenians. The various episodes seem to belong to the last thirty years of the eighth century. The consequences of this series of conflicts was a set of alignments which remained remarkably stable in the subsequent century, and had great influence on the political and economic geography of Greek expansion. The Eretrians and their friends were frozen out of the west by Chalcis and Corinth, to the ultimate advantage of Corinthian trade; the oracle at Delphi became closely linked with western colonization and the friends of Corinth. On the other side the position of Eretria and Miletus with their allies (especially Megara) was stronger in the area of the Black Sea and its approaches.
But these long term consequences need bear little relation to the origins of the conflict, which seem to have been in the struggle for territory between two neighbouring aristocratic communities. Two factors transformed this border war into a larger conflict. The first was that the two states involved were the centre of a nexus of trade carried on by or on behalf of the aristocracy; this trade will have resulted in a series of guest-friendships between individual aristocrats like those described in the Homeric poems; in the new world of the polis the increasing institutionalization of the position of these aristocrats meant that as magistrates they could speak for their respective communities, and so involve them in international political relations for the first time. The transition from aristocratic household to city-state had been made in the field of international relations, though vestiges of an older style of diplomacy always remained. In classical Greece a state would appoint as its representative abroad a native of the foreign state, who would belong to a prominent family in his city, as hereditary proxenos or guest-friend: the old concept of aristocratic guest-friendship lies behind this system.
The Lelantine War marked the end of an era in another way. It was the last war fought in the old style between the leading proponents of that style; an early oracle ran:
Best of all land is Pelasgian Argos,
the horses of Thessaly, the women of Sparta,
and the men who drink the water of holy Arethusa (in Chalcis)
(Palatine Anthology 14.73)
Strabo, who mentions this poem, claims also that Eretria controlied Andros, Teos, Ceos and other islands; and he records an inscription from the shrine of Artemis Amarynthios near Eretria which mentioned a procession of 3000 infantry, 600 horsemen and 60 chariots (Strabo 10.448) – a large force for such a city, and an impressive display of horsepower. The aristocracy of Chalcis was called the ‘horse-rearers’ (hippobotai), and ancient descriptions of the fighting emphasize the importance of ‘cavalry’ (that is probably aristocratic mounted infantry); it was in fact a gentleman’s war, for another inscription in the shrine of Artemis recorded an agreement ‘not to use long distance missiles’, that is the stones and arrows of the lower classes. The style of fighting was perhaps remembered in the next generation, for despite the future tenses Archilochos seems to look back in saying:
No bows will be stretched in numbers, nor slings in multitudes, when Ares joins the struggle in the plain; but it will be the dour work of swords, for this is the style of battle that they are masters of, the spear-famed lords of Euboea.
(Archilochos Fragment 3)
It was a truly epic war. One by one the champions fell; Kleomachos the Thessalian was commemorated with a pillar in the gathering place of Chalcis; the funeral of Amphidamas champion of Chalcis was celebrated with heroic contests modelled on those in epic, at which Hesiod won his prize (Works and Days 654–7). And on the other side excavations at Eretria have revealed by the West Gate looking towards the road to the Lelantine Plain a shrine with many seventh century offerings and sacrifices over a group of six warrior cremations from the period 720–680; the central and earliest one was of a noble buried with four iron swords, five spearheads of iron and one of bronze (a Mycenean heirloom, perhaps serving as his skēptron), and a handsome Phoenician scarab in a gold setting – a basileus of Eretria who (like Glaucus