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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
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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.
The Greek world: grain suppliers Pontus and Chersonese Egypt Sicily
The archaic aristocracies of Attica Dipylon Vase, Footed Krater, Earthenware from Athens, Greece, 800-700 B`C
The archaic aristocracies of Attica The cult of heroic excellence Being healthy is the best thing for a mortal man; Second comes beauty Third an honest health; Fourth, being young amongst your friends.
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. 240-244 Often 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. 260-264 The 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.
The polis A 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
Literally means ‘set up home together’. Polis as a community: the Synoikism • 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.
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.
Pythecussae, Nestor’s cup VIII cent. B.C. 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.
Coin from Cyrene • Silver coin from late 6th/early 5th c BC • R: Now Extinct Siliphium plant exported as medicine • OB: Zeus Ammon, North African diety
Temple of Zeus ca. 5th C BC (restored by Romans, modern archaeologists). The city of Cyrene Foundation story in Herodotus IV. 153-166
The Corinthian colony of Syracuse (ca. 734 B.C.) Thuc. VI.3.2 Syracuse 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.
Coin from Syracuse • Silver tetradrachm • Time of Gelon ca. 485-479BC • OB. Quadriga w. Nike R: Artemis Arethusa
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,5 In 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.92.2 Aetion, 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 29-31 The 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.
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