Citizenship and Commensality in Archaic Crete

One of the key questions in understanding citizenship is understanding how cohorts of citizens were formed. There is much to suggest that in Crete this role was performed by the andreion or ‘men’s club’. This chapter re-examines this peculiar Cretan institution in the light of Josine Blok’s suggestion that we can view archaic political communities as ‘covenants between gods and men’. It provides an overview of the archaeological, epigraphic, and (much later) textual evidence for this institution and examines whether each political community had one andreion or several andreia. It concludes by arguing for the key role played by institutionalized commensality in the creation of the citizen body in Crete.