Political exiles and their use of diplomacy in Classical Greece

This paper focuses on diplomacy by political exiles during the Classical Age. Although their agency has attracted some interest from modern scholars, recourse to diplomatic channels has been largely neglected. Yet political exiles often relied upon diplomacy to gain support and chances of reintegration at home. After an introduction where I include this topic in the broader issue of political exiles’ agency (§ I), I present three different ways in which political exiles made recourse to diplomacy (§ II) and I focus on two case studies—Epidamnos and Phlious—that explain how their discourse worked (§ III).