We've spoken about the enormous changes that occurred after the collapse of
Mycenaean civilization, the three centuries that constituted the Dark Ages.
For these next few sessions, we're going to be talking about another three century
period called the Archaic Age. Lasting roughly from 800 to 500 BCE.
For a very long time, this had been sort of eclipsed by the glory of the classical
period in the 5th century with it's temples and it's plays, etc.
But now, the Archaic Age has come to be recognized as one of the most important
formative periods in Greek history. It's also just so complicated, so
interesting, there's so much going on. The Greek world saw enormous changes in
economy, military practice, agriculture, social values, law, it goes on and on and
on. We'll try to summarize the most parts of
it. This is the time that we can see the
formation of a uniquely Greek cultural identity.
And we'll have to figure out what are the components that made that up, but we can
start with a start date, not 800 but actually 776 BCE.
This was the date of the first Olympic games.
This was one of the few genuine dating methods that went across all of the Greek
world. You could do account, say in the third
year of the 15th Olympiad. You do a little bit of math and you can
figure it out no matter what your local calendars were.
But, this brings me back to what I was just talking about a second ago, which is
the fact that this is the time that Greek identity separated itself out, became
distinct from the other Eastern Mediterranean communities.
So, what were some of the elements? We've already talked about one, which is
Homer. Homer is a cultural possession as a
defining cultural entity for the Greeks. Another was The Polis.
This is the sort of community that the Greeks adopted.
In Homer, Odysseus we're told at the beginning of the Odyssey, saw the towns
and learned the minds of many different men.
The different kinds of community in the Odyssey.
But, one of the things that Homeric society has in common that is both in the
Iliad and the Odyssey is a sort of three part division of king, council and
assembly. The king is the leader in battle, can be
the high priest and chief judge. The Council, often made up of elders,
serves as ad, advisers to the King, and the assembly is generally made up of the
army. This is sort of the base for the
development of the polis. I've put up here our old familiar map
showing you a number of the polis , which is the plural.
Both on the mainland, on the islands, on the coast of Asia Minor.
We'll talk much more about these as we go on.
You've read, I hope, a little bit of Aristotle's politics.
Aristotle lived and wrote in the 4th Century BCE, in a time when the polis was
already as an institution in decline. But the way he writes about it is it's
where we can start. We can start with his analysis.
And to do that, we'll look at a few terms.