Early Greece

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Those who feasted in the great hall were men of the same class as their host. So Alcinous entertains the basilēes of Phaeacia, and Agamemnon the leaders of his contingents before Troy; even the suitors in Odysseus’ house are a band of aristocratic hetairoi merely outstaying their welcome. The feasting is reciprocai; the ghost of Odysseus’ mother in the underworld gives him news of Telemachus, who still ‘feasts at equal feasts’, ‘for all invite him’ (Odyssey 11.185f); Telemachus himself tells the suitors ‘leave my halls and prepare other feasts, eating your own belongings, going in turn from house to house’ (Odyssey 2.139f). Architecture and the activity of feasting are interwoven in Odysseus’ recognition of his own house: ‘Eumaeus, this must surely be the fine house of Odysseus: it would be easy to recognize and pick out even among many. There are buildings on buildings, and the court is well finished with a wall and cornice, and the double gates are well protected: no man could force it. And I see many men are feasting within, for the smell of fat is there and the lyre sounds, which the gods have made as companion to the feast’ (Odyssey 17.264ff). The emphasis laid on descriptions of feasting in the Homeric poems is no mere literary convention: it corresponds to a central feature in the life-style of the aristocracy, and the poetry of epic was already represented as the main form of entertainment at the feast. For Hesiod on the other hand the feast has a very different signifìcance: everyone brings their own contributions to a communal meal (Works and Days 72ff).

Two other characteristics of Homeric society helped to create the network of obligations which sustained the power of the nobility – the institution of guest-friendship and the role of the gift within it. Beyond his immediate geographical neighbourhood, the basileus could expect to be welcomed on his travels by men of the same class as himself: with them he would establish, or fìnd already established by his ancestors, that relationship between guest and host (both called xenos, the word for a stranger) which was especially sacrosanct, under the protection of Zeus Xenios: this was one of the epithets of Zeus related to his general role as guardian of those outside the community – guests, suppliants and beggars.

The stranger travelled empty-handed, but he was given not only board and lodging: everywhere he called he received also gifts (xeneia); indeed it is clear that this was the main purpose and profìt of peaceful travel. Menelaus and Helen travelled in order to amass great wealth and carne home from Egypt bringing rich gifts from their hosts (Odyssey 4.78ff); Menelaus suggests to Telemachus that they should make a journey together through Greece, ‘nor will anyone just send us away, but he will give us one thing to take, some well-made bronze tripod or cauldron or pair of mules or a gold cup’ (Odyssey 15.82ff). Such gifts were due under all circumstances as a matter of honour, even for a one night stand: ‘there they stayed the night, and he gave them xeneia’ (Odyssey 3.490). Odysseus had typically turned the custom to his own profìt and was even prepared to ask for his due: he would have been back home long ago if he had not been keen to ‘collect wealth through travelling over many lands, for Odysseus knows about gain above all other men’ ; ‘he is bringing much good treasure, acquired by asking among people’ – ‘enough to keep a man and his heirs to the tenth generation’ (Odyssey 19.268ff).

Though Homer must exaggerate their worth, he shows that these gifts were always of luxury items, and particularly of metalwork, drawn from the treasures of the household – copper, gold, Silver, fine fabrics and wines, cauldrons, mixing bowls, tripods, decorated armour and swords. They may have been given before: Menelaus presents Telemachus with a mixing bowl which he had received from the king of Sidon (Odyssey 15.113ff). If the thing got out of hand, one could perhaps recoup one’s outlay by a levy among the people, as Alcinous suggests (Odyssey 13.14f). As with marriage gifts there is not usually a direct exchange involved: in the first instance it is an expression of competitive generosity. The immediate return is the pleasure of news and stories; but there is the creation of a link for the future: ‘choose a good present and the return will be worthy’ (Odyssey 1.318ff); ‘you gave those gifts in vain though you gave thousands: for if you had come to the land of Ithaca while he was alive he would have sent you away with good return for your presents and a worthy xeneia, as is right when someone begins it’ (Odyssey 24.284). An old guest-friend of Priam ransoms one of his sons (Iliad 21.42). There is the great scene when Glaucus and Diomedes meet in battle and establish their lineage: ‘then you are a guest-friend of mine of old through my father’, for their fathers had met long ago and gifts had been exchanged. The two heroes agree not to fìght, and cement their ancestral friendship by an exchange of armour in which Zeus took away Glaucus’ wits, for he accepted bronze for gold (Iliad 6.119ff: this is the only passage where direct gift exchange is mentioned). A breach of the rules of guest-friendship was indeed the main cause of the Trojan war: for Paris stole Helen from Menelaus on such a visit, and Troy is therefore doomed.

Though they may resemble primitive commercial transactions in the element of immediate or ultimate return expected, such gift relations are really a quite different mode even of regulating exchange in the societies and areas where they operate, as Marcel Mauss has shown. In the Homeric world their purpose is not primarily related to profìt or even ultimate benefit, but (like bridegifts and the feasting of peers) to the acquisition of honour, and the creation of a network of obligations.

The relationships thus established both enhanced the standing of the basileus within the community, and created a band of hetairoi who might be called on to enable him to engage in the traditional activities of cattle raiding and piracy. The first of these must have caused considerable trouble, since the private action of a group could easily lead to public reaction from aggrieved neighbours. The dangers of the situation are well brought out in the story told by Nestor of his reprisal raid against the men of Elis, which seems initially to have been a private family venture. But the spoils were publicly distributed to any of the Pylian nobility who had a claim against the men of Elis, with the fortunate result that, when the entire Elean forces attacked, there was enough support in Pylos for a full scale battle to ensue (Iliad 11.67off). It is not surprising that these land raids seem normally to have been somewhat minor and clandestine affairs, and are mainly referred to as phenomena of the past.

Sea-raiding was different. As Thucydides says,

In early times the Greeks and the barbarians of the mainland coasts and islands, as they began to voyage abroad on ships more, turned to raiding, led by men of power for the sake of their own profit and the support of the poor; they would attack and plunder the towns which were unwalled or composed of isolated settlements; they triade most of their living from this, having no sense of shame in the profession, but rather glorying in it.

(Thucydides 1.5)

He goes on to note that in Homer the questions traditionally asked of new arrivals are ‘Strangers, who are you? From whence do you sail the watery wastes? Is it for trade, or do you wander at random like raiders over the sea, who voyage risking their lives and bringing harm to foreigners?’ (Odyssey 3.71ff and elsewhere). Raiding was carried on in long boats with up to fìfty oars (pentekonters), single banked, and a primitive sail for running before the wind. They were rowed by the fìghting men, who would beach the ship by a settlement and rely on surprise for success. It seems to have been carried on primarily against foreigners, not Greeks: the aims were cattle, women slaves and other booty; the chief danger was in delay, allowing the natives to call in help and counterattack. The activity was normally regarded as honourable; only Eumaeus the swineherd, as a representative of a lower class and a different morality, has his doubts: ‘the blessed gods do not love evil deeds, but honour justice and uprightness in men: when fierce and hostile men go against a foreign land and Zeus gives them booty, and they have filled their ships and departed for home, even in the hearts of these men falls mighty fear of divine vengeance’ (Odyssey 14.83ff). Odysseus is more realistic, cursing his belly ‘which gives much evil to men, for whose sake benched ships are rigged out to bring harm to enemies over the waste sea’ (Odyssey 17.286ff). Booty was shared among the participants according to their standing: the ‘share of booty’ (geras) of a man is also his ‘share of honour’.

Though primarily and perhaps originally related to the interests of the aristocracy, the way in which these warrior bands might benefit the community is clear. Odysseus spins a long story about his imaginary life in Crete, which shows this. After the account of his upbringing mentioned above (p. 38), he describes how, in spite of his dubious birth and poverty, he had married a wife from a landed family because of his prowess. Nine times he led a fleet against foreigners, and became rich and respected; so that when the expedition set off to Troy, public opinion forced him to be one of the leaders. The expedition it seems was a public venture. When he returned he went back to sea-raiding on his own account: he found it easy enough to fill nine ships. The companions feasted for six days and then set off for Egypt. There the expedition carne to grief as a result of delay, and the troubles of its imaginary leader began (Odyssey 14.199ff).

There are other indications that the poet envisaged the expedition to Troy as a public one: a public fine is mentioned for those who refused to go (Iliad 13.669ff), and the feasting was at public not private expense: ‘dear leaders and captains of the Argives, who drink at public cost with the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and each command your bands’ (Iliad 17.248ff; compare 4.3428ff). Institutionalized warfare was an area where the community had an interest in the maintenance of its aristocracy and their fìghting bands; the warrior might even be given a special grant of land by the people, a temenos (the word survives from Myceanean Greek, though its meaning may have changed): ‘Glaucus, why are we two especially honoured, with seats of honour and meat and full cups, in Lycia, and everyone looks on us as gods, and we possess a great temenos by the banks of the Xanthus, fair orchards and wheat-bearing fìelds? Now we must stand with the first of the Lycians and face fiery battle, so that the Lycians in their thick breastplates may say “Our nobles that rule in Lycia are great men, they eat fat sheep and drink the best honey-sweet wine. But they are powerful men, for they fìght with the first of the Lycians”’ (Iliad 12.310ff).

Homeric descriptions of fìghting are confused; but, combining them with the archaeological evidence from grave goods, it seems that warfare in the late Dark Age was heavily dependent on the individual champion and his companions, who constituted almost a warrior class. Only they had the resources to acquire the metal for their equipment: the rest of the community seems to have been lightly armed with primitive weapons, and to have done little more than watch the duels of the nobility. They were armed with bronze cuirass, greaves and helmet, and shields in a variety of shapes, held from a central grip and made from leather or bronze plates. The primary offensive weapons were iron swords and two or more spears, which could be thrown and used for thrusting. If it is right to interpret the anachronistic chariots as horses, it would seem that the warriors rode to battle with a mounted squire, but fought on foot: the development of a true cavalry is later.

Oral epic created a heroic past for a particular group in society and glorified its values; since the Homeric poems established themselves as the bible of the Greeks, the ethic they portray had a permanent influence on Greek morality. It is essentially a competitive ethic, expressed in the words of Glaucus, ‘always to be best and pre-eminent over others, and not to shame the seed of my fathers’ (Iliad 6.208f). The moral vocabulary concerns principally success or skill: a good man is good at something, at fighting or counsel; the word aretē is closer to ‘excellence’ than ‘virtue’. It is a public attribute measured by the amount of honour (timē) given by others to a man; and timē itself had a physical expression in the geras or share of booty due to him. It was also an individualistic ethic: a man’s timē was his own concern, even the gods cared little for any timē but their own; the chief exception to this self-regarding ethic was the duty to help a friend.

It has been described as a shame culture rather than a guilt culture: the sanctions protecting morality were not internal to a man but external, in the sense of shame (aidōs) that a man must feel at losing status before his peers: so public penalties were in terms of loss of property, for property was one aspect of honour. The gods have little to do with this morality, except in the sense that they largely conform to it. Only Zeus in a general way has some concern with the triumph of right, or at least the preservation of certain basic rules like those of guest-friendship. It is typical of such a culture that internal states of conflict are little recognized, and that admissions of fault or failure are hard to make, for they involve public loss of face: Homeric heroes do not deny responsibility for their actions, but they often also claim that an external divine force was responsible, and see no incompatibility. In fact the whole language of psychic phenomena is reified and externalized: mental states are identical with their physical symptoms, and head, lungs, belly and knees are thought of as the seats of the emotions.

This aristocratic style of life had its roots in a distant past of nomadic warrior bands, and never wholly disappeared in Greece. Its continuity can be illustrated from the history of the Greek word phratra, which is cognate with the almost universal Indo-European kinship term for brother (German Bruder, Celtic brathir, Latin frater, French frère). In Greek the word is not used of blood relationship; it rather designates a ‘brotherhood’, a social group. It is used twice in Homer: ‘divide your men by tribes (phylai), by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may help phratry and tribes tribes’ (Iliad 2.362f see also 9.63). The tribes were originally military divisions, the phratries presumably also – the old word perhaps for the bands of hetairoi. They seem to have been widespread as a political division smaller than the tribe. The power of the aristocratic genos in many cities down to the Persian Wars was dependent on the continuity of these political and social groupings around the genos; the names of the Bacchiadai and Kypselidai of Corinth or the Philaidai, Alkmeonidai and Peisistratidai of Athens, with their characteristic suffixes, claim descent from an often quite recent ancestor as a genos: but these aristocratic families clearly had far wider traditional support. In Athens for instance at least until Kleisthenes the phratries were a major political force; and each phratry seems to have been dominated by one or two noble families (see below p. 276). And long after they lost their political role the phratries continued as cult groups and social clubs.

Other less tangible attitudes survived. The moral code was one; the importance of drinking clubs another. The philosophic or literary symposium of Plato and others was one descendant, as were the rowdy hetaireiai or aristocratic clubs; these could be organized to influence court cases and elections and even used to overthrow the government of Athens through Street murders in 411 BC. And the prevalence of cases of drunken assault (hybris) by young aristocrats in the legal literature of the fourth century shows that the suitors were never really taught to behave.

A third continuity is the place of the gift or benefit in social relationships. The Christian notion of charity, giving without expectation of return (except in heaven) comes through Judaism from the ancient near east, a world of such gross inequalities that giving served merely to emphasize the gap between classes and the merits of the powerful in the eyes of God. In the more equal societies of Greece and Rome giving is for a return, and establishes a social relationship between giver and recipient in which one is temporarily or permanently under an obligation to the other.

IV (#ulink_54f2d89f-f507-5b00-998a-4a4cdece1fb0)

The End of the Dark Age: the Community (#ulink_54f2d89f-f507-5b00-998a-4a4cdece1fb0)

BEYOND THE aristocratic world of the oikos lay the community as a whole, which in Homer is presupposed or glimpsed occasionally on the outskirts of the main action, but in Hesiod takes the central position. The chief social division is that between aristocracy and the people (dēmos), who are primarily the free peasantry, though there is no sign that the landless thēs was excluded from any rights. In contrast the craftsman or dēmiourgos (‘public worker’) held an ambiguous position. He was often an outsider, travelling from community to community; Eumaeus claims such men are welcome as xenoi, and lists them: the seer, the healer of pains, the worker in wood, the inspired singer (Odyssey 17.382ff). The class also surely includes metal workers; heralds, who seem to have been public officiate, were dēmiourgoi of a rather different sort. The presence of outsiders among the craftsmen is one reason for their ambiguous status; another is the fact that they possessed skills which were highly valued by the aristocracy, without being aristocratic: an artist was in some sense both divinely inspired and less than mortal. This ambivalence is reflected in myth: the gods both give and take away. Blindness is a common motif: insight replaces outsight when Apollo blinds his prophets. Demodocus was ‘the favourite bard whom the Muse loved especially, and gave him both good and evil; she took away his eyes but gave him sweet song’ (Odyssey 8.62ff). Rightly or wrongly Demodocus was seen as Homer.

The mythic prototypes of human skills are themselves physically marred. The blacksmith is important enough to have a god, but in social terms he is lame like his god, Hephaistos: ‘From the anvil he rose limping, a huge bulk, and his thin legs moved under him … with a sponge he wiped his face and hands, and his sturdy neck and hairy chest’ (Iliad 18.41 off). To the other gods he is a figure of fun: ‘unquenchable laughter fìlled the blessed gods when they saw Hephaistos bustling through the house’ (Iliad 1.599f); even his marriage to Aphrodite is a marriage of opposites, which leads to the delightful folk-tale of Aphrodite and Ares, love and war, caught in adultery by his golden net (Odyssey 8.266ff). In contrast the goddess who presides over the women’s work of weaving, Athene, was normal; for that activity was fully integrated into the home, not a skilled craft. In Hesiod, Prometheus, the embodiment of forethought, stole fire from heaven for man, and so created technology; in retaliation Zeus created woman (Theogony 535ff; Works and Days 42ff). Such attitudes to the craftsman and his skills in myth reflect the early ambivalence of his social status; in the case of manual skills this attitude persisted: Greece was a society which never carne to terms with technology.

The basic forms of Greek political organization remained the same throughout the history of the city-state, and are already present in Homer; it was the powers apportioned to the different elements and the criteria for membership which varied in different periods. In early Greece an assembly of all adult male members of the community (the agora or gathering) was subordinate to the boulē (council) of the elders, which seems to consist of the heads of the noble families, the basilēes. The existence of an executive or magistracy, whether elective or hereditary, is obscured by the memories of Mycenean kingship in Homer; but slightly later evidence shows many varied forms, principally that of the annual magistrate or board of magistrates, whose powers were effectively limited by the existence of the elders in council, and the fact that the magistrates themselves were young men who only entered the council through holding such offices.

Debate within the council or before the people was the basis of decision-making, though there was no formal voting procedure. The traditional pair of activities of the basileus is warfare and debate, which are of equal importance. Odysseus is ‘the best in good counsel and mighty in war’ (Iliad 2.273); Achilles claims, ‘I am the best of all the bronze-clad Achaeans in war, even though others are better in assembly’ (Iliad 18.105f); of Hector and his hetairos it is said, ‘one was far better at words, the other with the sword’ (Iliad 18.252). These proverbial distinctions show the enormous importance of the spoken word and persuasion in public debate from the beginning.

There are several detailed descriptions of political decision-making in Homer; the longest and most revealing is that in book 2 of the Iliad. As a result of a dream, Agamemnon orders ‘the loud voiced heralds to summon the long haired Achaeans to the Gathering … but first he called a council of the great hearted elders’. The council is seated except for the speaker; he reveals a plan to test the troops by proposing withdrawal from Troy; the other elders must oppose this in assembly. Nestor speaks in favour, and the councillors proceed to the assembly, which is controlled by nine heralds. After the people are seated, Agamemnon takes his skēptron or staff of office and addresses them standing. His proposal is so popular that it starts a rush for the ships, and the meeting looks like breaking up in chaos. But Odysseus takes the skēptron as a badge of authority and intercepts the flight, using persuasion on the nobles and ordering the troops. When the assembly has returned and settled down, there is one recalcitrant man of the people, Thersites, lovingly described as the archetypal agitator, ‘the ugliest man who came to Troy, bandy legged and lame in one foot, his two shoulders rounded over a hollow chest; his head above was misshapen and sprouted a scanty stubble’. He proceeds to abuse Agamemnon, until Odysseus threatens him, and hits him with the skēptron; whereupon the people mutter their approval of the best thing that Odysseus has ever done. Athene disguised as a herald secures silence, and Odysseus and Nestor in turn persuade the army to stay and fight; Agamemnon ostensibly gives way, and dismisses the Achaeans to prepare for battle.

From this and other accounts the essentials of procedure are clear. Business was normally first discussed in the council of elders and then presented to the Gathering of the people: on both occasions there was debate, and disagreement was possible. But only elders were expected to speak: the assembly’s role was as much to hear the decision of the council as to ratify it. On the other hand the assembly had to be held for major decisions; and the importance and power of public opinion was recognized. It is the dēmos who gives geras to the nobles (Odyssey 7.150); in Odysseus’ Cretan story it was the dēmos who forced him to sail to Troy (Odyssey 14.239); and even though Telemachus hoped in vain to appeal to the people of Ithaca against his fellow aristocrats the suitors, he did at least force them to justify their position in open assembly (Odyssey 2). There was a regular place of assembly even in the Achaean camp before Troy, ‘where the meeting and law (themis) was, and the altars of the gods were set up’ (Iliad 11.807f); the rituals and procedures essential for the orderly conduct of mass meetings were well established, and show remarkable similarities with the highly complex rituals surrounding the only later assemblies whose workings are known in detail, those of democratic Athens. Continuity and development are both present in the growth of the machinery of government from the primitive warrior assemblies of Homer to the classical city-state.

Outside the political and military spheres, the most important function of the basilēes was the regulation of disputes between individuals, in ways which are especially important, because they were the basis of the subsequent development of Greek law and legal procedure. Beyond a group of primitive tabus and customs, there was no conception of crime or system of justice in the modern sense, with laws written or unwritten of divine or human origin, and punishments inflicted by the community. The essential characteristic of Greek law is that it was originally a human system of public arbitration to settle the compensation due for injury.

In Homer the vocabulary is concrete, and refers to individual cases and specific rules: the actual decisions (dikai) are ‘straight’ or ‘crooked’ according to the extent to which they conform to the customs (themistes), the unwritten rules and precedents which justify decisions. The singular dikē is used in its later abstract sense of justice only twice in Homer, the singular themis only in the rather doubtful case quoted above (Iliad 11.807). The relation of these specifìc decisions and customs to the general order of the universe is expressed by the claim that the official staff (skēptron) and the themistes are a gift from Zeus: ‘the men who give dikai carry the skēptron in their hands, those who guard the themistes for Zeus’ (Iliad 1.238f); Zeus has given the basileus the skēptron and the themistes that he may take counsel for the people (Iliad 2.205f; 9.98f.), and ‘he is angry with men who in assembly judge with crooked themistes and drive out justice, not caring for the eye of the gods’ (Iliad 16.386ff: this is the only case in the Iliad of dikē in an abstract sense; the other example is Odyssey 14.84).

Two forms of procedure are known. The first is a primitive oath-taking test: Menelaus formally takes the skēptron in a dispute and demands that Antilochus swear a public oath by Poseidon that he did not cheat him in the chariot race; Antilochus refuses the challenge and offers compensation (Iliad 23.565ff). More complex is the procedure described as a scene on the shield of Achilles:

But the people were gathered in assembly. There a dispute had arisen and two men were quarrelling over the price of a dead man. One claimed to pay the full amount, addressing the people, the other refused to accept anything. Both were eager to accept a solution from an expert; the people were cheering both, supporting each side, and the heralds were restraining the people. But the elders sat on polished stones in a sacred circle, and held the sceptres in their hands. Then they rose before them, and in turn gave judgement. And in the middle lay two talents of gold to give to him who among them spoke judgement most straightly.

(Iliad 18.497ff)

This describes a formal arbitration. The proceedings are public, with all the ceremonies appropriate to a full assembly. The elders act as individual mediators not as judges; no decision can be enforced: rather the solution must be acceptable to both sides, and the elder whose opinion is accepted receives the mediation fee offered by one or both parties in the arbitration. The only sanction available to produce a solution is the pressure of public opinion, which at present is equally divided.

There are also a number of unusual features. Murder or homicide must always impose a strain on systems of arbitration, since the alternative to settlement is the commencement of a blood feud detrimental to the community. Public opinion will therefore be in favour of a settlement, but the blood price demanded may be too high for the murderer to pay, or the relatives may refuse compensation altogether; in either case the murderer must go into exile. The main reason given in Homer for being an exile is that one has killed a man, an action that carries no moral blame, and can indeed serve as an introduction to the best circles. Ajax, in trying to persuade Achilles to accept the compensation offered by Agamemnon, argues, ‘a man has accepted recompense from the murderer of his brother or his son; and the murderer may remain at home among the people, having paid a great price; while the heart and noble anger of the other is appeased by the recompense he has received’ (Iliad 9.632ff); the implication is that a man may also refuse compensation or stand out for more than the other possesses. The case on the shield of Achilles has a further twist: the amount of blood price is not in dispute, but the aggrieved relative wishes to refuse it and so force the murderer into exile; the case has actually been brought by the murderer in order to put public pressure on the other to accept a blood price. The issue is therefore a complex one, for it is almost exactly on the borderline in the development of a system of arbitration towards a code of law involving public sanctions.

The basileus has a duty to mediate in disputes, but they are also a source of profìt: the mediator whose verdict is accepted receives the mediation fee; so Agamemnon tempts Achilles by offering him seven citadels inhabited by wealthy men ‘who will honour him like a god with gifts and perform fat themistes under his skēptron’ (Iliad 9.156ff); in other words he is likely to gain considerable profìt from mediation fees.

It was this system which galled Hesiod: as he warned his brother, the only people likely to derive profìt from their dispute were the ‘gift-eating basilēes’. Hesiod was clearly not referring to bribery: these gifts are the right of a mediator, and it is not suggested that they will make any direct difference to the verdict; on the other hand there was considerable doubt in Hesiod’s mind whether the verdict, the dikē, would be straight. In Boeotia the system seems to have developed far enough to have legal force.

So Hesiod took the decisive step in political thought of warning the rulers that there is such a thing as Justice.

She is the virgin Dikē born of Zeus, glorious and honoured by the gods who dwell on mount Olympus; and whenever anyone harms her by casting crooked blame, straightway sitting by her father Zeus, son of Kronos, she tells him of the minds of unjust men, until the people pays for the arrogance of its nobles who, plotting evil, bend judgements astray and speak crookedly. Take thought of this, you gift-eating nobles, straighten your words, utterly forget crooked judgements.

(Works and Days 256ff)

For Hesiod dikē (justice) has replaced timē (honour) as the central virtue for the community and its leaders: he speaks as a prophet warning the nobles that their misdeeds will destroy society: the whole city suffers from the vengeance of Zeus on them; he causes plague and famine, barrenness in women, and poverty; he destroys their army and their walls and their ships at sea (Works and Days 24off).

Hesiod’s concern with social justice led him to create a political vocabulary. His thought is not normally expressed in truly abstract concepts; instead he speaks through the manipulation of myth: the eastern myth of the ages of man is retold to reveal the flight of justice from earth in the fifth and worst age, the age of iron (p. 91); the traditional form of the animal fable is given a new political dimension in the story of the hawk and the nightingale, which Hesiod himself probably invented. And the structure of political argument, the relationships between concepts, are expressed through a mode of thought which is specifically Greek, and which has had a deep effect on the cultural tradition of the western world – personification. Ideas derived from concrete institutions become abstract by acquiring the status of a divinity; the connections between these abstractions are expressed in terms of family relationships. The random examples in Homer (mostly concerned with physical states like Fear and Death and Sleep) have become in Hesiod a complex and meaningful system. Individual dikai (judgements) are parts of the goddess Dikē, who is hurt when they are perverted; she is the daughter of Zeus. Zeus indeed becomes the protector of human society:

He married second rich Themis (Custom), who bore the Hōrai (Norms), Eunomiē (Social Order), Dikē (Justice) and blessed Eirēnē (Peace).

(Theogony 901ff)

Or in modern terms, the relationship between divine order and human order produces the norms which establish good rule, justice and peace. A whole social ethic is expressed in terms of myth and personification, an ethic in Which justice and social order have replaced the self-regarding virtues of the Homeric nobility.

The characteristic form of political organization of the Greeks was that of the polis or city-state, the small independent community, self-governing and usually confined to one city and its immediate countryside; Aristotle described man as ‘by nature an animal of the polis’ (Politics 1.1253a); the central theme of Greek history is the development of the city-state to become the dominant form of government in the Greek-speaking world for roughly a thousand years, enabling city dwellers to control directly all or much of their own government, and to feel a local loyalty to an extent which no modern society has achieved. It is a natural question to ask, when and how did the polis arise? Some features of the Homeric poems point to an earlier state; but as far as social and political organization are concerned, despite the importance of the genos and the oikos, Homer and Hesiod show that the polis already existed in all essential aspects by the end of the Dark Age. Homer takes the same view of human nature as Aristotle: the Cyclopes are utterly uncivilized, not only because they ignore the rules of guest-friendship; ‘they possess neither counsel-taking assemblies nor themistes, but dwell on the tops of high hills in hollow caves, and each one utters judgements for his children and wives, and they take no heed of one another’ (Odyssey 9.112ff). But though Homer recognized the existence of the polis, it was Hesiod who gave it the language of self-awareness. He stands at the beginning of Greek thought about politics, as about science and theology.

The origins of the polis are one of the great themes of early Greek history, whose various aspects form the main subject of this book. The problem is best explored from two points of view. The first concerns the origins and development of Greek political institutions, the continuing process of change and reform towards a form of political rationality which seems unique in world history. A society with little or no previous history emerged from the Dark Age without social or religious constraints, and was able to create a sense of community based on justice and reason, perhaps because its institutions were primitive and its forms of leadership as yet insecure. The chieftains or big-men of the Homeric world developed into an aristocracy only slowly and in competition with more egalitarian forms of communal life, which ultimately proved superior because they were based on the citizen army. In this sense the polis is a conceptual entity, a specifìc type of political and social organisation.

But the development of the polis is also a process of urbanisation, which can be traced in the physical remains. The physical characteristics of the polis in the late Dark Age are described by Nausicaa:

Around our city is a high fortified wall; there is a fair harbour on either side of the city, and the entrance is narrow. Curved ships are drawn up on either side of the road, for every man has a slipway to himself; and there is their assembly place by the fine temple of Poseidon, laid with heavy paving sunk in the earth.

(Odyssey 6.262ff)

The walled city is common in Homer: similes and descriptions show cities being besieged and cities on fire; even the camp of the Achaean heroes before Troy is fitted out with the essential characteristics of a city: city wall, meeting place and religious altars.

Smyrna was according to one tradition the city of Homer himself; it was destroyed about 600 BC by the Lydians, and excavations in a suburb of the modern city of Izmir have revealed one of the most impressive urban sites of the archaic age. The walled city on what was once a natural promontory with two harbours fits Nausicaa’s description well. The earliest evidence of Greek settlement there is around 1000 BC; it used to be thought that the first walls were constructed in the mid ninth century; and although archaeologists now doubt that date, they cannot be later than the early eighth century. Some time later the walls were remodelled, and by then the area within them was densely built, with four or fìve hundred houses of mud brick on stone foundations; the population is estimated at around two thousand, with perhaps half as many again living outside the walls. After destruction caused probably by earthquake around 700 Bc, the walls were rebuilt on a massive scale and the city was laid out on a regular plan; the archaeologist who excavated the site has described this redistribution of land and central planning as ‘the first certain and unambiguous apparition of the organized Hellenic polis’ (J. M. Cook); but it is clear in fact that community life and some form of community organization goes back to around 800 and the first walls.

The same picture of increasing prosperity and the increasing complexity of social and political life emerges from other sites: walled cities must have been common by the eighth century. The earliest evidence of civic institutions apart from walls must be temple building, for the Gathering Place (agora), being empty, is hard to find without total excavation, and virtually impossible to date. The earliest temples come from the mid eighth century and by 700 they are appearing in most city centres; a clay model from the shrine of Hera at Argos shows their form – a megaron-type hall with porch virtually identical with the housing of the nobility, which is the prototype of the archaic and classic Greek temple.

The growing importance of city life and city institutions is related to other changes already mentioned, the shift from animal husbandry to arable farming and the declining importance of the oikos as a social phenomenon; behind them all may He a major new factor: population growth. Absolute figures are unobtainable; and attempts to argue from the analysis of graves in the well-explored region of Attica have proved controversial. What is clear is that, whereas the number of datable graves per generation in Attica remained relatively Constant in the period 1000–800, between 800 and 700 they multiplied by a factor of six; if these statistics were taken to reflect the population reasonably accurately, they would reveal an increase in birthrate equal to that reached only occasionally and under optimum conditions in the history of man, of around 4% per annum. But the idea that within the period 800–750 the population of Attica may have quadrupled, and almost doubled again in the next fifty years, has met with strong resistance. It has been suggested that the number of graves reflects, not an increasing population but an increasing deathrate, due perhaps to water shortage, climatic change and plague: this theory seems implausible, since the period is in general one of increased prosperity throughout the Greek world. Alternatively it has been suggested that the figures for graves discovered are distorted by changes in burial customs and perhaps by the absence of whole social classes from the archaeological record; this has the advantage of being a hypothesis for which there can be no evidence. No theory has yet won wide acceptance; and it is unlikely that any explanation can do more than influence slightly the basic fact that the eighth century was a period of unprecedented population growth in Attica, and indeed throughout Greece: a half empty landscape was repeopled. Initially this must have led to a dramatic increase in prosperity and in urbanization, until the problems of overpopulation began to show themselves.

The religion of the Greeks must always have lacked unity; for it was both polytheistic and localized: Indo-European elements from the Mycenean Greek and later invasions fused with native pre-Greek Cycladic elements and borrowings from Minoan and Anatolian cult, to create a complex of myths, rituals and beliefs about the gods without any clear unifying principles. What unity Greek religion possessed, carne late, as Herodotus claims:

The origins of each of the gods, whether all of them had always existed, and their forms, were unknown to us until the day before yesterday, if I may say so. For I believe Hesiod and Homer to be about four hundred years before my time and no older. These are the men who created the theogony of the Greeks and gave the gods their names, distributed their honours and spheres of operation, and described their forms; the poets who are claimed to be older than these men are in my opinion later.

(Herodotus 2.53)

The date Herodotus gives is perhaps a hundred years too early; but his count may well be based on generations of 40 instead of 30 years. More interesting is the claim that Greek religion began with Hesiod and Homer: even when actual ritual practices were at variance with this picture, it is clear that the epic tradition on the one hand, and the individual genius of Hesiod on the other, did influence permanently the development of Greek religion.

For instance the dominance of myth over ritual is in marked contrast to other polytheistic religions, as is the comparative absence of more bizarre mythic elements. The consistent tendency to anthropomorphism and the organization of the world of the gods in terms of political and social relationships are characteristics which, if not epic in origin, derive their continuing impetus from epic. Such uniformity as Greek religion possesses derives to a large extent from the picture of the Olympian and subsidiary gods in Hesiod and Homer. On the other hand there is a whole area of the Greek religious experience, ignored by them and therefore by later literary sources, which was the focus for emotions strong enough to survive the silence of the epic poets: fertility cults, orgiastic rites, propitiation of the dead and hero cult. These aspects never found their systematic theologian, but remained powerful because they were rooted in a particular locality.

Most of the central practices of Greek religion are as old as the later Dark Age. In Homer temples are mentioned, and on one occasion the cult statue housed there; altars for animal sacrifìces are common. Professional priests existed at certain shrines, but they stood outside the normal organization of society; it is a characteristic of early Greece that the nobility performed most civic religious rituals by virtue of themselves holding priesthoods (often hereditary), without the intervention of a professional priestly caste. The sacrifice was the occasion for a feast, at which (for reasons which obviously worried Hesiod: Theogony 535ff) the gods received the entrails and the worshippers the edible portions.

Oracular shrines, from which by various means the enquirer might obtain advice about his future actions and their consequences, were already widely known: Homer mentions the shrine of Zeus at distant Dodona in Epirus and that of Apollo at Delphi. The interpretation of dreams was practised and the lot was also considered to reveal the will of the gods. The seer (mantis) was a valued member of the community: he knows ‘present and future and past’ (Iliad 1.70); though any unnatural or sudden natural phenomenon like lightning or thunder was material for his art, his primary means of discovering the right time for action was through watching the flight of birds according to fixed principles:

You tell me to obey the long winged birds; but I do not care whether they fly on the right to the dawn and the sun, or on the left to shadowy darkness. I put my trust in the counsel of mighty Zeus, who rules all things mortal and immortal: one bird is best, to fight for the fatherland.

(Iliad 12.237ff)

The evidence of heroic epic is fragmentary and potentially misleading; but it can be related to the subsequent development of Greek society. It can also be supported from comparative material: all the institutions of the Homeric world outside those of the polis find many parallels in other societies. But the usefulness of comparative material is not only in the way that it reveals the presuppositions behind isolated phenomena and suggests interpretations of them. It is also the interrelations between the institutions which can best be understood through comparing societies with similar structures. For instance, the Waigal valley area of Nuristan (eastern Afghanistan) possesses a ‘society in which leaders have influence rather than authority and where an uncomplicated technology is used to meet the demands of a highly competitive ethos’. In this pastoral community, rank is sought and achieved through competitive feasts of merit, bridewealth and dowry are exchanged, disputes are settled by mediation through the elders. The objects of status are made by a separate and inferior class of craftsmen, and are even tripods, bowls and cups. The original warrior aims of killing Muslims in raids have had to be suspended; but the society exhibits the structural interrelation of many of the central aspects of early Greek society, and an ethic which is remarkably similar.

Similarly the process of state formation has been studied in a number of traditional societies in Africa and Polynesia. The Homeric society fits well this picture of the development of more complex political structures from a low basis of material culture through the emergence of the ‘big-man’, whose power rests initially on his ability to persuade the community to follow him as leader, but who succeeds in institutionalising his status in warfare, the judgment of disputes, and through ritual hospitality. Such personalised leadership, being fluid and without stable support structures, can often lead forward into more complex forms of social organisation.

The slow evolution of the Dark Age resulted in a world which might seem static and fixed in its aristocratic ideas. But the differences between nobility and people were not great in economic terms; the distinction rested on birth and consequent style of life. As the organs of the polis gained more signifìcance, the tension between the noble’s world of honour and the people’s world of justice became increasingly apparent; and the structural dissonance already present reacted with new factors to produce a century of change as swift and as fundamental as any in history.

V (#ulink_ea139570-6472-552f-b6b0-a8b9d7c8dfa8)

Euboean Society and Trade (#ulink_ea139570-6472-552f-b6b0-a8b9d7c8dfa8)

AS CONSERVATIVE philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw, one of the most powerful elements leading to change in early Greece was a natural one – the sea, offering a constant invitation to contact and to trade with other peoples. The Greek world created by the migrations of the Dark Age was already not so much a land as a sea unit, centred on the Aegean; local trade on a small scale existed from the eleventh century onwards, and a certain number of eastern artefacts or skills found their way into the area, by stages from Cyprus to Crete or Rhodes and on, or as a result of sea-raiding.

Short-haul trading was never an activity of high social status; in a land famed for its seamanship, Odysseus is insulted by a Phaeacian nobleman: ‘you seem like one who travels with a well-benched ship, a master of sailors that are merchantmen, a man mindful of his cargo, watching his route and the gains he has snatched: you look no athlete’ (Odyssey 8.159ff). Hesiod’s instructions on seafaring (Works and Days 617–94) are mainly concerned with when and why not to go to sea: his gloomy view of trade is based on his father’s experience, and reflects the small profits and comparatively high risks involved in such Aegean trading.

But this was not the only form of trade. Most attempts to assess the role of trade in the earliest period misunderstand it because they fail to distinguish between local and long distance trade; they assume a model of trade which is in fact only appropriate in the more developed economic conditions of the late archaic and classical periods, when bulk trade in commodities had developed. Because this was increasingly carried on by professional merchants, and because the quantity of trade earlier (and hence its strictly economic effect) must have been slight, there is a tendency to underestimate the importance of trade in early Greece both as a political factor and as a catalyst of social and cultural change.

It was the aristocracy who must have given the initial impetus to wider exploration beyond the Aegean, by creating a demand for two commodities. The first was metals, and especially crude iron from which to manufacture their increasingly complex weapons and armour; the goddess Athene, visiting Ithaca in disguise, claims to be an aristocrat, ruler of the oar-loving Taphians, on a voyage carrying shining iron to Temesa in exchange for copper (Odyssey 1.180ff). The second requirement of an increasingly prosperous aristocracy was for the finished luxury goods which their competitive life style demanded and which were often beyond the skills of Greek craftsmen. It was in these two spheres that the high risks of long distance trade were offset by high profits; and one area which could clearly supply both needs was the near east.

The earliest Greek contacts were with the Canaanites of the Levantine coast, a people known to the Greeks as Phaenicians, probably because of their monopoly of the only colour-fast dye in antiquity, the purple (phoinix) extract from the murex shellfish. The coastal cities of Phoenicia controlled the great pine and cedar forests of the Lebanon, the chief source of timber for Egypt, as for King Solomon; they had long owed their prosperity to this and to their position as middlemen between Mesopotamia and Egypt. The collapse of Hittite and Egyptian power in the early Dark Age left them independent; and even after Assyrian expansion began in the ninth century, their position was little affected: the navies of Sidon, Tyre and Byblos controlled the south and eastern Mediterranean seaways for themselves or as Persian vassals until the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Phoenician culture was urban: the cities were usually independent of each other, and built on heavily fortified coastal islands or headlands. Their art shows the typical characteristics of a trading civilization: eclecticism in forms and motifs from Mesopotamia and especially Egypt, mass production, and a concentration of craftsmanship on small easily transported objects in precious materials such as metal and ivory ; the textiles for which they were famous have not survived. Their prosperity is denounced by the Old Testament prophets; Ezekiel for instance in the sixth century describes the trade of Tyre in detail:

Tarshish (in Spain) was a source of your commerce, from its abundant resources offering silver and iron, tin and lead, as your staple wares. Javan (Ionia, the Greeks), Tubal (in Cappadocia) and Meshech (Phrygia) dealt with you, offering slaves and vessels of bronze as your imports … Rhodians dealt with you, great islands were a source of your commerce, paying what was due to you in ivory and ebony… Dealers from Sheba (Aden) and Raamah (S. Arabia) dealt with you, offering the choicest spices, every kind of precious stone and gold, as your staple wares. Harran, Kanneh and Eden (in Mesopotamia), dealers from Asshur (Assyria) and all Media, dealt with you; they were your dealers in gorgeous stuffs, violet cloths and brocades, in stores of coloured fabric rolled up and tied with cords; your dealings with them were in these.

(Ezekiel 27.12–24)

The Greeks themselves believed that there had been earlier Phoenician settlements both in mainland Greece and the islands, and at the sites of many of their western colonies; the most famous of these stories is that of Kadmos (p. 93). But there is no archaeological evidence for such settlements, and the picture given in the Odyssey seems more plausible. Here the Phoenicians are traders, welcomed if mistrusted by the Greeks; such casual trade can be supported by eastern finds on Greek sites, and can be dated between the tenth and eighth centuries. More permanent contact began in the ninth century when the Phoenicians moved into eastern Cyprus, and founded Kition.

Many aspects of the culture and development of the Phoenician and Greek cities in this period are so similar that it is not always easy to see which was the innovator; for both were city-state cultures in a stage of rapid expansion, with a similar pattern of settlement in walled coastal sites, and perhaps even similar forms of government. Initially at least contact was friendly. Phoenician culture was technically more advanced, and literate: Phoenician craftsmen may have worked in Greek cities, on Rhodes, Crete and at Athens; and in the north Syrian trading posts Phoenicians and Greeks lived together from the early eighth century. The cultural consequences of this period of collaboration are discussed in the next chapter. The Phoenicians may have been the pioneers in opening up the western Mediterranean to trade, and perhaps in the foundation of colonies there: the traditional foundation date of their greatest colony, Carthage (814/3), is some two or three generations before any Greek venture; though the earliest archaeological evidence is late eighth century. At least it seems that the Phoenicians were responsible for the main technical innovations in naval architecture from the pentekonter to the trireme, and for showing the Greeks the importance and potential both of trade and seapower. But the ultimate result of such interchange was increasing conflict in Cyprus and rivalry for control of the west, which meant the gradual establishment of exclusive spheres of interest in the eastern Mediterranean, and in north Africa, Sicily and Spain, from the seventh century onwards.

The second phase of Greek contact with the east carne with the establishment of permanent Greek trading posts. It has long been obvious that the great changes in Greek art and culture which took place in the late eighth century were connected with the near east, and that this ‘orientalizing’ movement was only partly due to Phoenician trading or foreign craftsmen; but it used to be thought that the influences carne first to Ionia, whether through trade or overland across Asia Minor. More refined analysis of local pottery styles has shown that Ionian orientalizing is late and derivative; the earliest appearance of the style was in mainland Greece, at Corinth about 725. With recent excavations the routes of diffusion have become clear.

The excavations of Sir Leonard Woolley from 1936 to 1949 area classic example of the use of archaeology to solve a particular historical problem. He argued that the line of communication between Greece and the east in both the Mycenean and the archaic period must have passed between the Hittite and Egyptian spheres of influence, and therefore up the valley of the Orontes on the borders of Turkey and Syria; in a series of planned excavations he established the detailed history of this trade.

The Orontes valley was well known to the Myceneans; but there is no sign of Greek presence during the Dark Age, until the establishment shortly before 800 of what rapidly became a major trading post, at Al Mina on the mouth of the river. Unfortunately the town centre and residential quarters were not discovered, so that little can be said of the organization of the settlement: these areas had either been swept away when the river changed course, or had been built separately on higher ground. The excavations revealed the commercial quarter of a large port, with a succession of levels containing warehouses, offices and shops: the later warehouses were substantial single storey buildings of mud brick on stone foundations; they were arranged in blocks of fairly uniform size with a rectangular Street plan, and in some cases there was evidence of specialized trade – particular types of pottery container, a silversmith’s shop, and ivory tusks. There is little doubt that this was the main port for Greek trade with the east from about 800 until at least 600; and it remained important for a further 300 years.

The pottery shows that the site was occupied from the start by Phoenicians, Cypriots and Greeks. The early Greek pottery can be divided into two periods: the first lasts from 800 to 700, when there is a definite though short break in the occupation of the site. Sargon of Assyria conquered the area around 720; and under his successor Sennacherib, Cilicia and Syria revolted: the break in occupation probably coincides with the crushing of the revolt and the sack of Tarsus in 696. The shapes and decoration of the Greek pottery in this early period are distinctive; more recent excavations have shown that they derive from Euboea.

The place where these Euboeans (led perhaps by Greeks from Cyprus) established their settlement shows the typical signs of a trading post: it is on the fringes of an area of advanced civilization, where political control was weak, and where they could gain access to the luxury goods of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and (through the Phoenicians) Egypt. The metals of south-east Anatolia were also exploited, for in the same period Greek geometric pottery similar to that at Al Mina is found at Tarsus; but whereas in Tarsus the Greeks seem to have lived in a native town, Al Mina was an established emporion or trading post, whose mixed community must have been reflected in its political and religious organization. The Greeks received iron, worked metal objects, fabrics, ivories and other semi-precious ornaments; it is far less easy to determine what they offered in exchange. Silver is relatively common in the Aegean area; and the later interest of Euboean towns in backward regions such as the west and the Chalcidice in north Greece, suggests that they may have engaged in slave-raiding to finance their eastern trade; Ezekiel at least mentions slaves as a typical Greek commodity.

The same pattern has been revealed in the west. The earliest western colony of the Greeks was also for some time the most distant – on the bay of Naples. The original settlement was a joint venture from the two main towns in Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria, on the island of Pithecusae (Ischia); the site is a steep-sided peninsula previously uninhabited, with two good harbours but little cultivable land nearby. Later, whether from political troubles or because the desire for security lessened, most of the settlers moved to the mainland where they founded Cumae. Excavations from 1952 at the original island settlement show that the Greeks arrived around 775; by 750 their numbers were substantial. The earliest pottery is mainly Euboean and Corinthian; one of the chief occupations of the community was iron smelting: a group of buildings used for metal-working and a number of clay mouthpieces for bellows have been found, together with iron slag which appears from analysis to come from Elba. Although no military or aristocratic tombs have yet been found, the early graves of the settlers show a high degree of sophistication; in particular they contain a large number of eastern objects – from the eighth century alone over a hundred Egyptian scarabs, and almost as many seals from north Syria and Cilicia, together with near eastern pottery; these objects must have come as a result of trade through Al Mina.

The history of Greek settlement on the bay of Naples is parallel to the history of Al Mina, though with important differences. The settlement may or may not have been an official colony of Chalcis and Eretria, rather than a trading post; the presence of Corinthian pottery is explained by the fact that Corinth was an essential staging point on the journey to the west, for Greeks tended to avoid the voyage round the Peloponnese by taking ship from Corinth. Once again the settlement was founded on the edge of the sphere of influence of a major power; for there is an obvious connection between its position and the Etruscans to the north, who were able to control the sources of metal in their area and also the tin and amber routes from Britain and the north. But whereas Phoenicia and Mesopotamia were more advanced than the Greeks, Etruscan culture was only just entering its urban phase.

The Etruscans are absent from Homer; they appear first in Hesiod (Theogony 1016), and in one of the archaic Homeric hymns to Dionysos (7), which describes how the god was carried off when ‘there carne swiftly over the wine-dark sea Tyrsenian (Etruscan) pirates on a well-decked ship’. The urbanization of Etruscan settlements from the eighth century onwards may be a natural development; but in most respects contact with Greeks transformed Etruscan culture. The Phoenicians do not seem to have penetrated as far north as this before the early seventh century; so it must have been on the basis of Greek seafaring that an area of hill towns so devoid of natural harbours took to the sea, and won its reputation for piracy. The beginnings of Etruscan culture are marked by an ‘orientalizing phase’; the first signs of eastern imports begin around 750, and the phase is at its height from 700 to 600. The exact significance of this phenomenon is linked to the controversial question of the origins of the Etruscans, since it has been used to support the ancient theory that they were immigrants from Lydia. But the objects themselves are not Lydian: they are no different from those found in contemporary Greek sites. It seems likely therefore that this trade was not in the hands of Etruscans or Phoenicians (at least initially), but rather of Greeks; even before 750 Euboean pottery is found at Veii and elsewhere in south Etruria, and a distinctive form of dress pin is known from both Etruria and Pithecusae. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the orientalizing phase is followed from 600 by a period in which Etruscan culture is dominated by Greek imports and Greek artistic techniques; and the adaptation of Greek writing and Greek infantry tactics (below pp. 95, 124) are further signs of the importance of Greek influence on Etruria. As with the Phoenicians, the later evidence of piracy, rivalry and open warfare between Greeks and Etruscans is a product of close contact which initially was friendly. So began the process of the Hellenization of Italy, which was to culminate in the culture of Rome, whose early culture was deeply influenced by contact with the Greeks.

The trade route which can be traced from the near east to Etruria through Al Mina and Pithecusae was in the first instance the product of a search for metals and luxury goods on the part of the aristocracy of Euboea: at its centre lay a society whose life style was influenced as much by the wanderings of Odysseus as by the warrior virtues of the Iliad. Of the two chief cities on Euboea, Chalcis probably lies under the modern town and has not been excavated; but Swiss and Greek excavations at Eretria show that it emerged suddenly as a prosperous community some time after 825. The period 750–700 was one of major temple building, and in the next century there were considerable public works in fortification and to control the river course. The absence of earlier remains is perhaps explained by a site half way between Chalcis and Eretria on the edge of the Lelantine Plain at Lefkandi: here British excavations have revealed a large settlement, with remarkable continuity and increasing prosperity throughout the Dark Age, until a sharp decline after 825; the site was finally abandoned around 700. It has reasonably been suggested that this was the original Eretrian settlement, which moved to the later Eretria in the late ninth century. The importance of the community at Lefkandi is shown by the continutuity and size of the settlement throughout the Dark Ages, and by the comparatively large amount of gold ornaments and eastern imports found in the tombs; the working of metal is attested by a ninth century bronze foundry.

A pale reflection of the last age of this society survives in the literary sources, with memories of a great war fought between Chalcis and Eretria for possession of the Lelantine Plain. In a brief sentence Thucydides contrasts it with other early border wars: ‘it was particularly in the old war between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians that the rest of the Greek world also divided in alliance with one side or the other’ (Thucydides 1.15). Scattered references to early friendships between cities can be used to establish a tentative list of those on each side:

Other cities may be added with less certainty, but these names are already impressive enough to justify Thucydides’ claim that the conflict split Greece into two rival camps, and that in this respect it differed from earlier border wars; he does not however suggest that the war was comparable in its organization to the Trojan or Persian Wars, with which it is implicitly contrasted. The evidence suggests not so much joint expeditions or grand alliances, as a series of limited border wars with their epicentre in the Lelantine Plain: Thessalians helped Chalcis on the battlefield, but in most cases the conflict was more indirect; it is noticeable that pairs of neighbours, traditionally hostile to each other, tend to be found in opposite camps. The earlier co-operation between Chalcis and Eretria ended abruptly; political troubles between the settlers may be behind the move from Pithecusae to Cyme; Corinthians drove out Eretrian settlers from Corcyra in 733, Chalcidians in Sicily expelled their fellow Megarian settlers from Leontinl; Corinth and Samos helped Sparta against the Messenians. The various episodes seem to belong to the last thirty years of the eighth century. The consequences of this series of conflicts was a set of alignments which remained remarkably stable in the subsequent century, and had great influence on the political and economic geography of Greek expansion. The Eretrians and their friends were frozen out of the west by Chalcis and Corinth, to the ultimate advantage of Corinthian trade; the oracle at Delphi became closely linked with western colonization and the friends of Corinth. On the other side the position of Eretria and Miletus with their allies (especially Megara) was stronger in the area of the Black Sea and its approaches.

But these long term consequences need bear little relation to the origins of the conflict, which seem to have been in the struggle for territory between two neighbouring aristocratic communities. Two factors transformed this border war into a larger conflict. The first was that the two states involved were the centre of a nexus of trade carried on by or on behalf of the aristocracy; this trade will have resulted in a series of guest-friendships between individual aristocrats like those described in the Homeric poems; in the new world of the polis the increasing institutionalization of the position of these aristocrats meant that as magistrates they could speak for their respective communities, and so involve them in international political relations for the first time. The transition from aristocratic household to city-state had been made in the field of international relations, though vestiges of an older style of diplomacy always remained. In classical Greece a state would appoint as its representative abroad a native of the foreign state, who would belong to a prominent family in his city, as hereditary proxenos or guest-friend: the old concept of aristocratic guest-friendship lies behind this system.

The Lelantine War marked the end of an era in another way. It was the last war fought in the old style between the leading proponents of that style; an early oracle ran:

Best of all land is Pelasgian Argos,

the horses of Thessaly, the women of Sparta,

and the men who drink the water of holy Arethusa (in Chalcis)

(Palatine Anthology 14.73)

Strabo, who mentions this poem, claims also that Eretria controlied Andros, Teos, Ceos and other islands; and he records an inscription from the shrine of Artemis Amarynthios near Eretria which mentioned a procession of 3000 infantry, 600 horsemen and 60 chariots (Strabo 10.448) – a large force for such a city, and an impressive display of horsepower. The aristocracy of Chalcis was called the ‘horse-rearers’ (hippobotai), and ancient descriptions of the fighting emphasize the importance of ‘cavalry’ (that is probably aristocratic mounted infantry); it was in fact a gentleman’s war, for another inscription in the shrine of Artemis recorded an agreement ‘not to use long distance missiles’, that is the stones and arrows of the lower classes. The style of fighting was perhaps remembered in the next generation, for despite the future tenses Archilochos seems to look back in saying:

No bows will be stretched in numbers, nor slings in multitudes, when Ares joins the struggle in the plain; but it will be the dour work of swords, for this is the style of battle that they are masters of, the spear-famed lords of Euboea.

(Archilochos Fragment 3)

It was a truly epic war. One by one the champions fell; Kleomachos the Thessalian was commemorated with a pillar in the gathering place of Chalcis; the funeral of Amphidamas champion of Chalcis was celebrated with heroic contests modelled on those in epic, at which Hesiod won his prize (Works and Days 654–7). And on the other side excavations at Eretria have revealed by the West Gate looking towards the road to the Lelantine Plain a shrine with many seventh century offerings and sacrifices over a group of six warrior cremations from the period 720–680; the central and earliest one was of a noble buried with four iron swords, five spearheads of iron and one of bronze (a Mycenean heirloom, perhaps serving as his skēptron), and a handsome Phoenician scarab in a gold setting – a basileus of Eretria who (like Glaucus and Sarpedon in the Iliad) was with his companions especially honoured during his life and looked on as a god after his death.

How long the war lasted is uncertain, as is its outcome. The Chalcidians won one battle with Thessalian help, but the archaeological evidence from Eretria suggests that it suffered no major setback. Lefkandi was finally abandoned; but that is not surprising, for it stands half way between Chalcis and Eretria on the edge of the disputed Lelantine Plain, which geographically belongs to Chalcis. At Al Mina Euboean interest virtually disappears; after the break around 700, the pottery from the period 700–600 is largely Corinthian (perhaps carried by Aeginetans, who produced no pottery of their own) and east Greek, from such centres as Rhodes, Samos, Chios and (probably) Miletus. It seems that as usual neither protagonist in the war benefited: exhausted by the conflict, they were never again politically important. The rewards of their exploits overseas and the leadership in Greece passed to others; the old oracle was continued to fit a new generation:

….But better still than these are they who dwell between Tiryns and Arcadia rich in sheep, the linen-corseleted Argives, goads of war.