Introduction to Greek and Roman History

Lecture 2

Archaic Greece:Colonization and the birth of the polis

The dawn of a new world: Alcinous’ counsellors

Homer, Odyssey VIII.1-14

Alcinous and Ulysses both rose, and Alcinous led the way to the Phaecian place of assembly, which was near the ships. When they got there they sat down side by side on a seat of polished stone, while Minerva took the form of one of Alcinous' servants, and went round the town in order to help Ulysses to get home. She went up to the citizens, man by man, and said, "Aldermen and town councillors of the Phaeacians, come to the assembly all of you and listen to the stranger who has just come off a long voyage to the house of King Alcinous; he looks like an immortal god." With these words she made them all want to come, and they flocked to the assembly till seats and standing room were alike crowded.

The dawn of a new world: Achilles’ shield

The town at peace, Homer, Iliad XVIII.497-508

Meanwhile the people were gathered in assembly, for there was a quarrel, and two men were wrangling about the blood-price for a man who had died, the one claiming to the people [dêmos] that he had the right to pay off the damages in full, and the other refusing to accept anything. Each was seeking a limit, in the presence of an arbitrator, and the people took sides, each man backing the side that he had taken; but the heralds kept them back, and the elders sat on their seats of stone in a solemn circle, holding the staves which the heralds had put into their hands. Then they rose and each in his turn gave judgment, and there were two measures of gold laid down, to be given to him whose judgment should be deemed the fairest.

4

The Greek world: grain suppliers

Pontus and Chersonese

Egypt

Sicily

5

Athens and the olive tree

Dipylon Vase, Footed Krater, Earthenware from Athens, Greece, 800-700 B`C

The archaic aristocracies of Attica

The archaic aristocracies of Attica

The archaic aristocracies of Attica

The cult of heroic excellence

Being healthy is the best thing for a mortal man;Second comes beautyThird an honest health;Fourth, being young amongst your friends.

The sites of Menidhi/Acharnae and Thoricus

The Mycenaean tombs of Thorikos

The Mycenaean tombs of Thorikos

The Mycenaean tombs of Thorikos

Hesiod and the crisis of the old order• From Aeolis, flourished at the end of the VIII

century.• Author of Works and Days, a didactic poem on the

yearly routine of a farmer.

Hes. 240-244Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and devises presumptuous deeds, and the son of Cronos lays great trouble upon the people, famine and plague together, so that the men perish away, and their women do not bear children, and their houses become few

Hes. 260-264The people pay for the mad folly of their princes who, evilly minded, pervert judgement and give sentence crookedly. Keep watch against this, you princes, and make straight your judgements, you who devour bribes; put crooked judgements altogether from your thoughts.

14

The polisA unity, politically sovereign and independent, formed by a

urban centre (asty) and the rural areas surroundig it (chora), settled in scattered villages (chomai)

Kora (rural territory) and chomai (villages)

Asty

15

Polis as a community: the Synoikism

•Literally means ‘set up home together’.

•Politically indicates the union of a number of neighbouring rural settlements into a polis.

•The process implied the recognition of one of these centres as the capital of the new state, or the founding of a new metropolis.•Typically, migration from the rural areas of the polis into the urban centre accompanied synoikism.

Greek colonizers

18

Mediterranean trade routes

Magna Graecia

Pythecussa, earliest Greek settlement in the West (ca. 770 B.C.)

Strabo V.4.9

Pithecussa was once settled by Eretrians and also Chalcidians, who, although they had prospered there on account of the fruitfulness of the soil and on account of the gold mines, forsook the island as the result of a quarrel.

Νέστορος [εἰμὶ] εὔποτ[ον] ποτήριο[ν]·ὃς δ’ ἂν τοῦδε π[ίησι] ποτηρί[ου] αὐτίκα κῆνονἵμερ[ος αἱρ]ήσει καλλιστ[εφάν]ου Ἀφροδίτης.

Nestor’s cup I am, good to drink from. Whoever drinks this cup empty, straightaway the desire of beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize.

Pythecussae,Nestor’s cupVIII cent. B.C.

The invention of Greek alphabet, Herodotus 5.58Now the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, and to whom the Gephyraei belonged, introduced into Greece upon their arrival a great variety of arts, among the rest that of writing, whereof the Greeks till then had, as I think, been ignorant. And originally they shaped their letters exactly like all the other Phoenicians, but afterwards, in course of time, they changed by degrees their language, and together with it the form likewise of their characters. Now the Greeks who dwelt about those parts at that time were chiefly the Ionians. The Phoenician letters were accordingly adopted by them, but with some variation in the shape of a few, and so they arrived at the present use, still calling the letters Phoenician, as justice required, after the name of those who were the first to introduce them into Greece.

Pythecussae, Nestor’s cup

Naxos, first Greek settlement in Sicily (ca. 735 B.C.)Thuc. VI.3.1Of the Hellenes, the first to arrive were Chalcidians from Euboea with Thucles, their founder. They founded Naxos and built the altar to Apollo Archegetes, which now stands outside the town, and upon which the deputies for the games sacrifice before sailing from Sicily.

The Corinthian colony of Syracuse (ca. 734 B.C.)Thuc. VI.3.2Syracuse was founded the year afterwards by Archias, one of the Heraclids from Corinth, who began by driving out the Sicels from the island upon which the inner city now stands, though it is no longer surrounded by water: in process of time the outer town also was taken within the walls and became populous.

A votive plaque from Locris

Strabo, VI.1.7Then comes the city Locri Epizephyrii, a colony of the Locri who live on the Crisaean Gulf, which was led out by Evanthes only a little while after the founding of Croton and Syracuse. Ephorus is wrong in calling it a colony of the Locri Opuntii. However, they lived only three or four years at Zephyrium, and then moved the city to its present site, with the cooperation of Syracusans for at the same time the latter, among whom . . . And at Zephyrium there is a spring, called Locria, where the Locri first pitched camp. The distance from Rhegium to Locri is six hundred stadia. The city is situated on the brow of a hill called Epopis.

Wealthy Corinth

Wealthy Corinth: a new decorative taste

Protocorinthian aryballos, ca. 650–620 BC.

Wealthy Corinth: a new decorative taste

Proto-Corinthian olpe with registers of lions, bulls, ibex and sphinxes, c. 640-30 BC, Louvre.

Wealthy Corinth: a new decorative taste

Protocorinthian skyphos, c.625 BC, Louvre

Tyrants in Corinth (657-585):Who was a tyrant?

Aristotle, Politics V,5In those days, when cities were not large, the people dwelt in the fields, busy at their work; and their chiefs, if they possessed any military talent, seized the opportunity, and winning the confidence of the masses by professing their hatred of the wealthy, they succeeded in obtaining the tyranny.

Cypselus the outsider

Herodotus, V.92.2Aetion, no gives you honour, though you richly deserve it. Labda is pregnant and will bear a boulder which will come crashing down on the exclusive rulers, and will set Corinth to rights.

Arist. Politics V.1310b 29-31The Ionian tyrants and Phalaris arose from offices of honor, and Panaetius at Leontini and Cypselus at Corinth and Pisistratus at Athens and Dionysius at Syracuse and others in the same manner from the position of demagogue.

The Acrocorinth

Corinth, the Temple of Apollo