This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.
"The Greeks Overseas": Colonization
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En provenance du cours de Wesleyan University
The Ancient Greeks
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The Archaic Age (ca. 800-500 BCE)
Module 2 brings us into the turbulent, creative Archaic Age, during which the Greeks acquired a cultural identity distinct from that of their neighbors in the Eastern Mediterranean. They developed their characteristic form of community, the polis, or “city-state.” With a rebound in population, moreover, they founded numerous colonies abroad. In addition, the Greeks recovered literacy, which enabled them to write down law codes for the poleis. The newly established communities had a new form of military organization, the hoplite army, manned by citizen-soldiers. The lyric poets of that era wrote verses that address such great social changes, and also offer vivid accounts of individuals’ emotions and opinions. The module ends with another poet, Hesiod, somewhat later and less famous than Homer, but also very significant. His subjects range from the origins of the cosmos and the gods, to personal ethics, to practical advice about farming.
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Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
Classical Studies
We were talking about the development of the polis last time, and as I said we
can't really trace how it came into being. But what we know is that by the middle of
the 8th century, by the end of the 8th century say 750 to 700, the polis an
institution was really pretty well established.
One of the explanations that's been given for it's coming to be is the rise of a new
kind of agriculture, intensive now. Small plots worked by citizen farmers with
the help of slaves. That yielded a different, a range of
different crops. We actually get a hint of this in the
Odyssey at the very end, when Odysseus goes to visit his father, Laertes.
And the kind of farm that Laertes is working there, which has vineyards, of
course. Olives, of course, but also legumes and
some grains. These sorts of possessions worked by
farmers would have been precious to them. They would have wanted to defend them.
It's not the sort of thing that you just work for a season or two and then move on.
Joining together for defense might have been one of the things that gave rise to
the polis. That I think we'll never know for sure.
But what we do know is that the Greeks started to move.
And one of the reasons that they may have, one of the very probable reasons is land
shortage. Greece as we have said before, doesn't
have that much arable land, and as the population increased as it did In the
beginning of the archaic age, there might have been some struggle to find enough
room for everybody to have one of these farms.
One of the things that we can also see in the stories about the colonization is that
there is almost always some kind of crisis at home.
We'll come back to that. Before we talk about that though, we have
a few terms once again that we should get in mind.
You're familiar with the word metropolis, it means quite literally, mother city.
And you can see polis in there, our old friend.
The word for a colony is apoikia. And this has been described as sort of a
home away from home. You can that word oikos, there, the word
for home or household. And the founder of a colony is the
oikistes. The one figure who is generally ascribed,
or described as having set this whole community up.
We've already seen this a couple of times. We saw it in a, the case of Theseus, for
example. The Greeks liked to trace all of the
institutions of a community to one great founder.
And the colonial narrative fits right into that.
Before we move on out of Greece, we have to start in Greece, in Central Greece.
You're familiar with this already, this is Mount Parnassus.
This is home to the great shrine of Apollo.
The myth has it that Apollo came looking for a place to set up his temple, his
shrine And he killed the great snake that lived in this area, called the python.
Its name lives on in the title of the Apollo's priestess, the prophet called the
Pythia. Set up in the mountains under Parnassus,
Delphi was early on a very important shrine.
And what's important to note is that this is a Panhellenic shrine.
Each polis had it's own shrines, we'll talk about that too, but Delphi belonged
to all the Greeks. It wasn't under the control of a single
community. What was it there for?
Two main functions. One, purification.
Murder carried with it a pollution and a murderer had to go to Delphi or to some
other important, maybe one or two other important shrines.
To get an official purification before he could be readmitted into a community.
And the other great, great element of the Delphic activity was prophecy.
You would go to Delphi and ask, under very tightly controlled circumstances, the
priestess a question. She would deliver some sort of response,
which could then be interpreted for you by priests.
But this was a site of pilgrimage for Greeks from all over.
In fact, there is, on the sacred way leading up to the temple of Apollo, which
we just saw, a set of small shrines called Treasuries.
This is the Treasury of the Athenians. So if, as an Athenian, you made the
arduous trip overland to Delphi, you would leave a little offering at your hometown
shrine there. But, Delphi, then, was not just a
religious center. But it was very important as a kind of
information center. People coming from all over the Greek
world. Talking about what things were like in
their home communities. And Delphi, consultation at Delphi,
becomes one of the most important elements in the colonial narrative.
Before you set out to send out a community.
You go to Delphi to get approval. You saw this and we'll come back to this
story of the foundation of Cyrene in Northern Africa.
They're two great waves of Greek colonization.
The first began in the mid 8th century and was largely to the west to southern Italy
and Sicily. The second began somewhat later and was up
to the northeast of the shores of the Black Sea.
I want to emphasize that this is not something like what we talked about, the
Ionian expansion, just sort of a ripple effect of people.
These were organized shifts of population. One community sending out a group in order
to establish a new community. At Delphi, we get some essence of the
colonial enterprise in this great offering, the wonderful charioteer, which
was actually dedicated by a tyrant of a Sicilian Greek city, called Gayla.
You can see that Delphi was a magnet so to speak for Greeks from all over.
As I said, the colonization movement began first to the west.
In fact, the earliest colony is way over here.
Off the central Italian coast near the Bay of Naples.
It was founded by settlers from Ubea. They had to make a long, dangerous,
arduous journey up here. Give you a sense of where this is.
Here's Italy. Here is the Gulf of Naples and this is a
site called Pithecusae on the island of Ischia.
Why would they travel so far? One word answer, iron.
This place was rich with iron ore. We talked about the shift from bronze to
iron but how iron was now the metal of choice and the Greeks were willing to
travel an enormous distance in order to get it.
And they set up this independent community there on Pithecusae and engaged apparently
in some fairly vigorous trading with the native inhabitants on the Mainland.
It was also at Pithecusae that they was found an extra ordinary battered little
art effect. This is called Nester's cup.
Doesn't look like much, does it? But what this has on it is some of the
earliest extant Greek writing. And it says, I am Nestor's cup.
Whoever drinks from me will have pleasure. Because another thing that happened at
this time in the archaic age. We talked about the huge changes that went
on. Another thing that happened was that the
Greeks rediscovered literacy. It had disappeared during the Dark Ages
and now is recovered. Now no longer in that linear B, that sort
of clumsy 87 character syllabay. But in the form of the alphabet, the 24
character alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians, that is the basis of all
modern Western alphabets. We'll come back to this as well.
So, what happens next? Colonies are established all over the
Greek world. The criteria for the site of a colony is
that it be defensible. That it have good arable land.
It's good at it if it has some natural resources like iron and accessibility to
trade. You might remember when we talked about
the Odyssey and Odysseus scoping out Cyclops's island, would this be a good
place to set up a community? Some early hints there of colonial
activity. There were some special cases.
There were some trading posts called emporia like Naucratis on the delta of the
Nile. Which was set up by coloners from Myletus.
And which was until the foundation of Alexandria some three centuries later.
It was the most important Greek city in Egypt, and was one of the most important
Greek cities in the Mediterranean. But we're going to talk a little bit about
Cyrene because Herodatus tells us the story and he allows to read through the
story back to the colonial narrative. One of the things that is characteristic
of almost, well of the colonial narratives is that in the mother city there is some
kind of crisis. There is some sort of struggle, some kind
of trouble. For Cyrene, the mother city is Thera, a
little island in the Cyclades, and they have a drought.
They get a prophesy from Delphi, go to Cyrene.
Set up a colony. Well, they sort of tried to dodge.
They send one guy to an offshore island, and the drought continues.
They go to Delphi again, and Delphi says. You're very clever, but you're not as
clever as you think. Set up a colony.
So finally, they do set up a colony. And he succeeds, the drought ends, and one
Battos is credited as a founder, and then gets a cult in his honor at the new
community. Because the thing that we have to
remember, and this is perhaps the most important single element, is that unlike
Colonialism in the West. These colonies were not dependent on their
mother city. A colony was meant from the beginning to
be an independent autonomous entity. It might retain some ties of sentiment.
Or religion, with the mother city. There may be trade relations, certainly.
But it was nothing like the New World colonies, say, that were established by
the European powers. Colonies could also have a sort of
generational effect, a generative effect. So, for example, the big city of Corinthe
sent out a colony to Cosira, modern day Corfu.
And then the Corsirians sent out a colony further up the west coast to a place
called Epidamnus. But what we're seeing here, is the spread
of Palaise throughout the Mediterranean. This had been understood as the sort of
Hellenization of the Mediterranean. Now I think people have a much more
nuanced understanding of it, a much greater sense of the reciprocity between
the Greek settlers. And the native populations with whom they
came in contact. But it is certainly the case as in this
temple of Apollo now not at Delphi but in Cyrene, Greek influence was making itself
felt far and wide. Next time we'll see Another aspect of the
archaic age, another aspect of poly self definition and that is law.
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