Readings: Dunstan, chapter 4; Crawford, p. 27-65.
Crawford, # 7
· Two categories of Greek communities: ethnos and polis.
· Ethnos is descended from a common ancestry, is subject to no other and
· has no single urban center.
· Primitive form of political organization.
· Tendency in the historical period for the ethne to turn themselves into poleis.
· By the eighth century it was well established.
· Characteristic form of Greek community in the historical period.
· "Citadel": permanent central urban area grown up around an easily defended raised area.
· Hundreds of poleis, small and large.
· Plato: 5000 was the perfect population.
· Normal size: 5,000 - 10,000 people.
· All the surrounding countryside subordinated to the polis (city state).
· Dense urban center, with surrounding (fields, pastures and perhaps a harbor).
· Two central sites.
· The religious center: the Acropolis.
· Elevated place.
· Dominant temple dedicated either to Zeus, or the patron deity of the city.
· All residents of the city expected to maintain the relationship with this god.
· The other important site: the agora.
· A gathering place, a town square.
· Assembly spot for the army of the polis, site for community festivals, competitions or political assemblies.
· Where the community socialized and interacted.
· One was loyal to the polis, one's identify was wrapped up in that polis.
· Before being a Greek, a man was citizen of a polis.
· Every polis had a distinctive character.
· This explain the division of Greece, built on natural geographic divisions and
· tight knit local communities.
· Both a strength and a flaw.
· Two distinct groups: the community (all residents) and the citizens.
· Citizens had a higher status, and more responsibilities.
· Male, free, native.
· Native: someone born in that polis, and born to a family that had lived in the polis at least two or three generations.
· Polis made up of the small group of citizens, and the larger community of resident:
o women,
o slaves,
o visitors or recent transplants,
o and young free men.
· The Greeks looked inward to the polis for their identity and protection.
· Their closest neighbors were foreigners.
· Cultural and intellectual openness, but exclusive attitude socially and politically.
· Regional unity impossible in Greece (internal wars).
· Social obligation to be a part of the public life.
· In Athens, policy of ostracism (exile of disruptive individuals).
· Religious duties:
o Participation in the civic religious functions,
o Upkeep of the key temples on the Acropolis,
o Paying for the sacrifices,
o Providing for the priests/priestesses.
o Attending the religious events.
· Reserved for the citizens.
· No professional armies: reliance on citizen armies.
· Lack of training but more soldiers with high commitment.
· Will lead Greek cities to important political changes.
· No form of political organization common to all poleis.
· Around 800 BC, aristocracies prevailed, but without uniformity.
· Greek history characterized by the experimentation in the government of the poleis and by their interactions.
· Not very long before 750 the Greeks developed the alphabet.
· System in which each symbol represents a single sound.
· Greek mythological tradition: a borrowing from the Phoenicians.
Crawford #4 (story of Cadmus, related by Herodotus)
· The Greek alphabet arose after the illiterate Greek Dark Ages, between the downfall of Mycenae (c. 1200 BC) and the rise of Archaic Greece (Homer, around 850 BC, Ancient Olympic Games in 776 BC).
· Phoenician alphabet adopted during the 9th century BC?
· Adaptation around 800?
· Earliest known fragmentary Greek inscriptions: early 8th century.
I am Nestor’s cup, good to drink from.
Whoever drinks from this cup, straightaway
desire for beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize him.
· The greatest cultural achievement of Archaic times.
· The knowledge of writing had vanished with the end of the Mycenaean world.
· Linear B, too complex, never gained wide currency.
· Use of the later Greek alphabet multiplied (comparatively easy, much greater spread of literacy, no need for professional scribes, much easier composition and dissemination of literary works).
· Common culture: major element of Greek identity (major role of writing).
· Innovation: use of letters to represent vowel sounds.
· The North-Semitic alphabet contained twenty-two symbols to indicate the consonants and the semi-vowels.
· Greek additions of characters: not everywhere identical.
· The process achieved by the start of the 7th century BC.
· Homogenization, though the most developed model (of Ionia) achieved in Athens in 403-2 BC.
· Poverty of the land: cultivatable land are rare and under the control of the aristocracy.
· Overpopulation at the end of Dark Ages.
· One result: huge period of migration from about 750- 550.
· Causes: the demographic pressures, famine and the paucity of natural resources in Greece. Also domestic strife in the mother city and foreign pressure.
· Goals: to seek more agricultural land, to develop trade and open opportunities for migration.
Crawford # 14: need for metal
· Sending of colonists to found an independent new settlement overseas.
· Sometimes from different cities, but only one would provide the leadership.
· The oracle at Delphi would be consulted.
Crawford # 16 (Delphi)
· Selected site carefully surveyed; new cities laid out on a geometrical pattern.
· The original colonists received roughly equal shares of land.
· Sometimes, ties with the metropolis; sometimes rivalry.
· Most colonies were on the coast.
Crawford # 17: founding of a colony
Crawford # 18 : founder worship.
Crawford #19 : exemple of relations with natives.
About colonization in the West : Crawford # 15.
· Intense competition between individual Greek states about access to resources.
· Colonization:
· contributed to the urbanization of the Mediterranean,
· Generally raised standards of living,
· And facilitated the spread of Greek culture and ideas.
· Many of the Ionian poleis founded during the Dark Ages.
· Up to 80 colonies attributed to the city of Miletus (in Ionia).
· Political conflicts and the growing pressure of the Persian and Lydian empire played an important role in the decision of Ionian poleis to seek new colonies.
· Pithecusae on the Bay of Naples first settled ca. 740.
· The first colony in Sicily founded in 735, Syracuse next in 734.
· Many other Sicilian colonies established in late 700s.
· In late 700s, large-scale Greek settlement in Southern Italy ("Greater Greece" or Magna Graecia).
· Cyrene (Libya) settled ca. 630, Masilia (Marseilles) ca. 600.
· In 600s, settlement of Northern Aegean, Propontis and Black Sea, including Byzantium.
· Great influence on many populations far distant from mainland Greece.
Read Crawford, # 21-35.
· Despite colonies, discontent continued and lead to the rise of tyrants.
· Tyranny: not a pejorative term at first.
· In the poleis, two groups resented the ruling aristocracy: wealthy members excluded from power and the impoverished.
· Frequently, one man (often an aristocrat) was able to galvanize this discontent.
· Tyrant: originally, a single ruler without traditional legitimacy (popular backing and personal charisma).
· His successors, without personal merit, tended to be repressive.
· 6th century: the major period of tyrannies.
· Colonizing states: aristocratic (exclusive clans monopolized citizenship and political control).
· At Corinth, citizenship confined to a single clan, the Bacchiadae.
· At Athens: Eupatridae, “People of Good Descent”.
· Corinth: first state in which the old aristocratic order began to break up.
· Corinth's geographic position was highly favorable for trade (north south, est-west).
· The Bacchiadae profited hugely from the harbor dues: other Corinthian families grew envious.
· A partial Bacchiad, Cypselus, took the power (around 650?).
· Cypselus was polemarch (archon in charge of the military) and expelled the king and his other enemies (in new colonies).
· He increased trade: popular ruler without bodyguard.
· General detestation for the Bacchiadae helped him, (oracle mentioned by Herodotus).
· Cypselus succeeded by his son Periander in 627 BC.
· Periander: the model of a paranoid tyrant.
Crawford # 27 and 28: tyranny of Periander.
· Story of the advice he got from Thrasybulus of Miletus: cut off the tops of the tallest stalks of wheat.
· Succeeded by a nephew, who is deposed and a mild oligarchy is instituted, based on the possession of certain level of wealth (timocracy).
· Timocracy frequent: competes with more complete democracy.
· They supported the citizens' community more substantially than reformer Solon did.
· Measures in order to unify the state, to reduce the power of local aristocracy and to concentrate the state's power on one person, the tyrant.
· they encouraged individuals to identify with the state as citizens.
· Construction of public buildings, establishment of the Panathenaea: creation of common consciousness.
· They gave an impulse to the city's trade.
· Similar policy Samos (Tunnel by Eupalinus paid by tyrant Polycrates) and Megara (aqueduct built by tyrant Theagenes).
· In general, tyranny contributed to the development of a state consciousness.
· General increase of trade.
· The tyrants overthrown old political monopolies and temporarily provided political stability.
· Power based on mercantile and lower classes.
· Hense, their sponsoring of popular festivals, culture and great building projects.
· But tyranny was transitory: unconstitutional office, armed bodyguard.
· Worst for the successors.
· But during these short episodes, people gained confidence (Timocracy and democracy).
Crawford # 32: tunnel by Eupalinus.
Crawford # 29: exemples of promoting artists.
Crawford # 32: exemple of public works.
· Why did oligarchichy become so common in Greece?
· Important development in the form of warfare in the course of the 7th century.
· Block system of infantry soldiers equipped with heavy armor (hoopla).
· Hoplitic phalanx.
· Gradual evolution?
· Hoplites supplied their own "panoply" (helmet, cuirass, greaves, spear, sword and shield).
· As a result, hoplites had to be at least middle-class (only the minimally wealthy could afford it).
· They demanded political rights.
· Transition from an aristocracy by birth to a timocracy.
· Crucial importance of the army of the city’ survival.
Crawford # 22: the polis and its army.
· Warfare, as a symbolic expression of the Greek city's identity.
· The hoplites represented the Classical polis.
· The phalanx reflected the core value of the polis: depended on unity, trust and everyone doing their part.
· It explains:
o why the designation of citizen was so exclusive
o why this social class gained some political power in an extended aristocracy (timocracy) or in democracy.