Today we are going to turn away from the Near East for the first time and begin to look at Europe. The first civiliza-tion of Europe that we are to study is that of Greece; but before turning to history, we must look briefly at the geog-raphy of the Greek lands.

In ancient times, the center of the Greek world was not the modern country of Greece at all, but the body of water called the Aegean Sea. The Greeks settled along the coasts of this sea, including the eastern fringe which is now a part of Turkey. In general, the most important Greek areas were those close to the sea. There was also considerable settlement in the islands of the Aegean.

The Aegean area where the Greeks lived was very different from the Near Eastern regions which we have discussed so far. There are no large rivers in the Greek world, so that Greek development was not dominated by rivers as in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Fortunately, rainfall in Greece was heavier than in the East so that desert conditions did not appear. The country is generally broken up by mountains which form many small valleys but few large plains. Because of the mountains it was difficult for Greeks to travel from one place to another by land. This is why from very earliest times, the Greeks relied on the sea as a means of getting from place to place. They were sailors and traders.

This Aegean region was inhabited by civilized peoples from about 1950 B.C. on-ward. The civilization in this early period differed in many respects from the civiliza-tion of later Greece, and I want to consider it as a separate phase of Aegean history. Bronze Age civilization in Greece is called by historians the Mycenaean Civilization, or sometimes, the Helladic. It lasted from about 1600 to 1200 B. C. The name Myce-naean was given to the period by archaeologists who read their Homer and believed that the first Greek site that they discovered was the city of Mycenae in the Iliad.

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Mycenaean Civilization Mycenae was a citadel palace that included exten-sive fortifications, granaries, guardrooms, shrines and a few private dwellings situ-ated around the palace complex. It is among the best examples of Bronze Age Aegean architecture.

WESTERN CIV. IC

Greece: From Oikos to

Polis

Page 4

The Greek Art of War

and The Polis

Page 9

Sparta

Page 13

Until relatively recently, modern scholars had very little information as to what this Mycenaean Civilization was like. The Greeks of later times had many myths and legends about great heroes who lived in Greece in the Bronze Age, but most of these stories were long regarded as fictitious. Then, in 1876, a German archeologist named Heinrich Schliemann decided to go to Greece to look for traces of the Bronze-Age inhabitants. He conducted archeological work at a place called Mycenae in southern Greece. As a re-sult, he found the first important remains of the Bronze Age peoples. For this reason, the civilization is called Mycenaean. Since Schliemann’s time, there have been many finds at other sites.

Most of the discoveries have consisted merely of buildings and artifacts, but in 1938, an American expedition found a series of 600 clay tablets which were preserved in a build-ing that had burned down at Pylos. The tab-lets are written in a kind of syllabic picture writing, which archeologists called Linear B script. In 1953, an Englishman named Mi-chael Ventris succeeded in deciphering this script, thus making it possible to read the tab-lets and to identify the language in which they were written. The discovery was important because it showed that the language was not only a member of the Indo-European family, but an ancestor of later classical Greek. So the Mycenaeans were evidently one group of ancestors of later Greeks who migrated into the Aegean world before the other Greeks arrived.

On the basis of this evidence, it is now possible to draw some tentative conclusions about the organization of the Mycenaean Civilization. There were many different cen-ters of Mycenaean settlement, and they are all very similar. Each is dominated by a large fort set on a high hill. Inside the fort is a pal-ace, residences for a few officials, and large storerooms for grain, wine and other prod-ucts. The fort itself was reserved for the ruler and his aides. Most of the population lived in small crude villages scattered in the farmlands surrounding the fort.

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Bronze Age Aegean Civilization

Three distinct Bronze Age Civilizations grew up in the Aegean area. The Minoan culture (in an earlier lecture) grew up on the island of Crete. The Cycladic culture grew up on the Aegean islands in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and the Mycenaean culture (see map above). Mycenaean culture was a Late Bronze Age Culture that employed chariot warfare and fell during the Catastrophe of 1200 to be replace with a new Iron Age Culture in Greece after about 1100 B.C..

Right: A Mycenaean amphora, ca. 1350 B.C.

Mycenaean SocietyThis suggests that there was a clearly dominant class of rulers who were set apart from everyone else. The graves seem

to bear this out. A few Mycenaean families were buried in elaborate tombs dug out of the ground and lined with blocks of stone. They were often buried with gold and other precious items. But most people were buried simply in the ground with a few pots.

The 600 clay tablets are all economic records, lists of goods deposited in the forts. But they do give us some idea of what the government was like. There was no central government in Greece extending over the whole civilization. Each fort was the residence of an independent ruler called a wanax. The word wanax, which means lord, is significant in itself. The later classical Greeks used this world only in referring to gods. We also know from the tablets that the wanax was con-nected in some way with various fertility gods of the Mycenaeans. From this evidence, modern scholars have concluded that the wanax was either considered to be a god or appointed by gods.

The very fact that the tablets are economic records suggests that the wanax controlled economic life in the region he ruled. The wanax at Pylos, where the records were found, collected tribute from a large area in southwestern Greece – an area greater than any ruled by a single state in classical Greek times. He apparently had a number of lesser administrative and military officials to help him maintain his government.

Now all of this ought to sound familiar to you because it is similar to what we saw earlier in the ancient Near Eastern civilizations. The Mycenaeans had a divine or semi-divine ruler, they had a highly centralized government and economy, and a small ruling class. Why it is so similar to the Near East is not hard to figure out, because the Mycenaeans had a lot of contact with the East. They were good sailors, and it was easy for them to trade with the more advanced peoples of the Near East. We know from pottery and other objects that they did trade with the Hittites, the Canaanites, and especially with Egypt. They seem to have gotten their ideas of what government should be like from the Near East. They were far enough away so that there was some differences in organization, art, and religion. But basically they were not too different from the Near Easterners.

Collapse of Mycenaean CivilizationThe Mycenaean culture flourished until about 1200 B.C. At this time, new settlements and burial patterns became

established all over the Aegean – especially in Greece. Somewhat later, Bronze Age tools began to be replaced with iron technology. The Mycenaean culture that had dominated Greece vanished altogether. In fact, archaeological evidence indi-cates that around 1200 B.C. civilizations all over the eastern Med. were either destroyed or aversely effected by something, and scholars have come to call that something the catastrophe of the 1200s B.C. Various scholars have come up with a number of interpretations to try to explain the catastrophe. So, we should review the main interpretations briefly.

Whatever the cause, the collapse was complete. All of the traits which we associate with the civilization disappeared. Linear B writing disappeared, and it was not found again. Writing does not start again until about 750 B. C., and it is a completely different kind of writing introduced from Phoenicia. The forts were abandoned, and no large buildings or elaborate tombs are found again for about 400 years. Metal did not disappear completely, but bronze tended to be re-placed by a very inferior, at first, kind of iron. Written records vanished along with Bronze Age technology. The period of Greek history from the collapse of the Bronze Age to about 800 B.C. is often called the Greek Dark Age because so little written evidence of the period exists. We will look at this period in a bit, but first, let’s take a look at the geography of the Aegean and Greece because the geography of the area will have a great deal of influence on Greek civilization.

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Location and Climate: The Greek world consists of the Mediterranean basin. The center of the Greek world in ancient times is the Aegean Sea. Although culturally diverse the Mediterranean can be considered a geographical unit. The most distinctive feature of it is its seasonal variation in rainfall. Summer rainfall is limited and the weather in the northern Mediterranean is warm. In the winter, the winds shift and bring more rainfall. The average summer rainfall is 6-10". In the winter it is 20". The winter is the growing season in

the Greek world.

Topography: The topography of the Greek world is marked by broken lands. It was created by a land uplift where rising and falling continues today. Active volcanoes still exist in the lower Balkans and earthquakes are still common. Because of this ragged terrain, only

about 20 percent of the area of mainland Greece is agriculturally useful. Mountains are not high – Olympus is only about 10,000 feet. The soil is high in limestone content which makes agriculture difficult. The hilltops are covered with scrubs which are useful for graz-ing sheep and goats and for burning to make charcoal.

Mineral Resources are somewhat more dependable than the agricultural resources. Several sites near rivers yield a high quality clay for pottery, a very important resource in the ancient world. There are also some metal ores near Athens, especially silver, and iron is found near Sparta.

Geography and World View: Because of the broken mountainous topography of Greece, travel on the mainland is very difficult. This

factor is important if we wish to understand the ancient Greeks. It accounts for the isolated settlement patterns that began in Greek prehistory and continue even today. It also accounts for the fact that the Greeks became a seafaring people. It was easier to travel long distances by sea in order to trade, raid, or colonize their excess population, than to cross the mountains of their homeland.

Finally, this terrain contributed greatly to the way that the Greeks saw themselves in relation to their culture. A Greek tended to see himself as a Hellene, that is a member of the community of Greek speakers, only when all of Greece was threatened. Usually a Greek identified himself with his city first. For instance, an Athenian citizen felt that his first loyalty was to Athens, not to Greece. As

we shall see, Greece was not one country or nation, but a bunch of independent city-states. Greece was populated from the Stone Age, but it is not very important to study these peoples here. We have already looked at Greece in the context of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. So, now we’ll pick up our study just after the collapse of the Bronze Age at the beginning of the Iron Age during the period that some historians call the Greek Dark Age (1150-800 B.C.) and archaeologists and art historians call the Protogeometric pe-

riod (1050-900 B.C.). As you can see, the two periods describe two slightly different, but overlapping spans of time.

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Greece: From Oikos to Polis

The Greek Dark Age

The end of the Mycenaean period marked the end of any high civilization on the Greek mainland for about 350 years. This period is referred to as the Greek dark ages. Greece became isolated from the rest of the eastern Medi-terranean.

In the Mycenaean period there had been a dominant, and very clearly defined, ruling class. During the Dark Age these older class distinctions largely disappeared, pri-marily because there simply wasn’t enough material wealth for an elite class to exist. City states on the Myce-naean model gave way to small family groups tied to spe-cific, relatively small tracts of land. The basic unit of gov-ernment and society was the oikos, which might best be translated as “household.” each household had its own religious observances, laws and loyalties. Members of the oikos included the central extended family, landless warri-ors who threw in with the family, retainers who were tech-nically free, and farmed and tended livestock, and finally a very few slaves who had been taken in battle.

Government of the oikos was relatively simple. The family acted to protect its members from outsiders, and male family members combined both to defend their own family, lands and livestock, and, from time to time, to raid neighbors and steal livestock and women. Decisions af-fecting the whole oikos were made by a council of elders, probably under the guidance and influence of the family head.

Greece in the dark ages might best be described as a frontier society. Folks to protected what was theirs and occasionally took what they could from other oikoi. Inter-familial activities were most often those of the blood feud. Because there were virtually no differences of wealth within the family, there existed a strong assumption the all males old enough to fight were equal.

Religion in the dark ages was rather complicated. These early Greeks were animists and ancestor worshipers. Greek households were filled with spirits that protected the family, its storehouses, its livestock, and encouraged fertility. Members of the oikos also venerated the dead. At death the body and soul of the deceased was thought to be filled with dangerous and powerful manna, and a great deal of care had to be taken to insure that the manna would be used for the good of the family. To avoid pollution and to protect the living, family members had to take several steps [you should think of this when you read about death in the Homeric epics]. The body had to be properly disposed of by cremation or a decent bur-ial. Offerings had to be made to feed the dead and insure that the spirit of the deceased was pacified. Family members were supposed to make offerings to the dead at certain times thereafter. So, in effect, it fell to the living to continually care for their ancestors. This tied the family even closer to their traditional lands. The Greeks placed a great deal of emphasis on "home" as a specific geographical place. If a family was pushed out of their ancestral lands then the family graves would go untended, and bad things might come of it.

This was a warrior society. The best families were still those who were the most able to defend their own lands, while stealing land, cattle and women from other villages.

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Greek family dwelling during the Dark Age

This Dark Age house indicates the relative poverty of the

period. Note that whole extended family lived inside these

walls. Also note that there is only one way in and out of the

house; a sign that the times were insecure — the entry hall

could serve as a point of defense if the household was at-

tacked. These are not sumptuous digs.

A Word on Wife StealingThe idea that Dark Age Greeks stole women should be mentioned in

more detail. Wife stealing is not an unusual practice in primitive societies, especially societies in which neighboring families or tribes feud with each other on a regular basis. Here is the problem in a nutshell.

a. Every family needs women in order to continue to propagate.b. Incest is universally accepted as a bad thing, so females should come from an-

other family to expand the gene pool some.c. But the available supply has to come from another family, and “neighbor” and

“enemy” are pretty much synonymous, thus neither marriage arrangements or courtship will work. If Billy shows up to take Kate to a movie, Kate’s family will kill Billy rather than ask him embarrassing questions about his health or future job prospects and make tacky comments about his clothing and haircut.

d. So, the only way out of the dilemma is to raid the neighbors and steal brides in addition to livestock, weapons and anything else that isn’t nailed down.

This system has another effect that will become important a little later in Greek history. Since wives have come from neighboring oikoi, over time neighbors become cousins, and when they fight a little less, they will begin to see that they are all part of a much larger extended family.

Genoi and Hero CultsSometimes, as a result of this realization of relatedness, several families

would form into a larger tribal unit called an genos. These genoi were ruled by a chief (who led in warfare) and a council of elder warriors called the boule. This was a very primitive form of government. Yet we can see the roots of classical greek political systems in it. In fact some greek city states never advanced much beyond this system.

One factor that further united the various families (oikoi) was the growth and promotion of the idea that genoi were united by a common important ancestor known as a hero. Generally a hero was a semi-divine ancestor who was long dead. The cult of the hero formed the center of the community. The hero cult united all of the families into a familial and spiritual whole. Each family had an alter to the hero in their homes or on their lands, and a larger alter or building was devoted to the cult to be used by the entire genos

on special feast days and other occasions.

Over time, small villages began to develop around the cult centers. these villages became the centers of local government, of markets and for craftsmen to produce and market their wares. In the mid-800s B.C., Greek agricultural production began to increase and populations began to rise. As prosperity began to return to greece, some villages began to grow into larger towns and trade all over the Eastern Medi-terranean grew, encouraging further town growth and better organized government and economic activity in the Greek world. Probably the first Greek community to benefit from the prosperity and trade was Athens. This Bronze Age Mycenaean community had been less adversely affected than other areas by the fall of Bronze Age civilization, so it was most likely the first area to revive. Artifacts found at Athens indicate that the economy had weathered the Dark Age and prospered throughout the period.

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Archaic Hero CultsAlthough hero cults would become different in the Classical period of Greece, the earliest Archaic hero cults centered on some ethnic ancestor and united several families into a larger unit, the genos. Common early heroes included Herakles (photo above), Oedipus, Theseus, Achilles, or other great warriors that would be associated with the Trojan War. Some heroes were probably female (see photo right). Cult centers to these heroes began to grow up all over Greece in the early 800s B.C., uniting fami-lies into larger communities and becoming the basis for later Greek religious observances.

Gold jewelry from an Athenian tomb of a wealthy woman. Ca. 900 B.C.

Emergence of The PolisEventually more formal political institutions emerged in

some cities of Greece. By the late 800's B.C. limited trade was restored between Greece and the near east. From this contact, and from the information about the Mycenaean age left to them in their epics, some Greek cities began to develop more complex structures of government.

The growth of prosperity contributed to growth of gov-ernment. A food surplus in the late dark ages caused a rise in population, which in turn led to a need for greater or-ganization. Family and tribal government was not enough. Towns arose in Greece, and these communities required some way to settle disputes peacefully, and to represent themselves in extra-community activities.

Eventually the communities began to absorb all of the functions of the oikos, becoming a sort of super-family. This is important because it means that there was a strong as-sumption in these early Greek communities that everyone who bore arms in the defense of the community was equal.

This is the basis of the Greek polis. “Polis” could be de-fined as city, or city-state, or community. In fact, the polis was a sort of community headquarters. Most members of the community lived outside of the polis on small farms. They came to the polis only when it was necessary for the community to meet as a whole. A polis would never become very large though, because it rarely crossed natural barriers such as the sea or mountains.

The polis was usually dominated by a large, well-fortified hill. This area was a refuge in times when the city had to be defended. Probably for this reason a temple to the patron god or goddess of the city was built here. This area was called the "high" - acro - "town" - polis -- the acropolis.

The other major feature was a large flat area, or field. Originally this area was used for town meetings and for mustering soldiers. But as the towns began to prosper it became a market place where farmers and traders could sell their wares. This area was the agora.

Government of the polis — as the polis developed po-litical power shifted from the family and tribal chieftains to a single hereditary king who had both political and relig-ious duties - the basileus. But the king of a polis was never as strong as an eastern monarch or a pharaoh. There were a couple of reasons for this:

There was no precedent for a strong central ruler in Greek tradition. Families and villages had had a war leader, but day-to-day decisions had been made by the council of elders.

Even though the basileus was king he was still a member

of the polis. And therefore, despite his duties and political position, he was no more important than any other citizen.

Leadership skills were still linked to battle skills. So, a stronger or more able warrior might come along and chal-lenge and replace the basileus. This would make it difficult to enforce continuity in leadership.

The solution was for the community to elect an annual magistrate to represent them in political and religious mat-ters and to provide a check on the king. The position carried no pay and required a lot of time. So, only a wealthy indi-vidual, who could afford to leave his farm to his family and slaves could serve. Gradually the magistrate came to replace the basileus altogether.

When the king was replaced by a magistrate, the coun-cil, became a deliberative organ of government. The boule met and determined policy for the community. In this way the boule became very influential.

At about this time the citizens, that is, all of the males who bore arms in defense of the community, began to meet in order to vote on issues that were important to the entire population of the polis. They had no power to make propos-als. This power was held by the boule. The assembly could only vote yes or no on the proposals handed down to them by the boule.

As you can probably guess, the boule gradually became the most important group in the polis. It came to contain the most important citizens, the “best” men of the community — the aristoi. These men were the members of the commu-nity who were the largest landholders. These men gradually came to rule the archaic polis. Aristocratic rule became a feature of greek politics in the period.

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Amphora

featuring the

funeral of an

Athenian

Aristocrat. Ca.

800 B.C.

Aristocratic RuleAs I said earlier, between 750 and 600 B.C., there was a strong presupposition of equality in Greek communities. So,

what were the origins of these aristocratic families? In the late dark ages prowess in war was considered the most excellent quality that men could have (arete). Some men gained great prestige through military accomplishments. These men were called aristoi. Since the best soldiers tended to obtain more loot, their families became richer than the other families. They got the largest share of any new lands. Since the aristoi had the largest land holdings, they had surplus wealth to lend to the other farmers. If the farmers who borrowed from the aristoi were unable to repay the loans, the lender might either take the borrower's land, or the borrower might be forced into slavery until the debt was paid. Thus the aristoi became even wealthier. These same wealthy families came to have great political power. Their wealth gave them leisure time which was necessary in order to hold the political positions of the polis, as magistrates and council members, they controlled the poli-cies of the polis.

The aristocrats became a distinct and elite class within the polis. The aristocrats had more leisure time and more wealth. Which they used to take greater advantage of the fruits of trade with the outside world. They associated with each other. They engaged in intellectual activities such as listening to poets, and discussions about epics, philosophy and war-fare, and improving their military skills.

The aristoi developed a “class consciousness.” that is, they began to see themselves as a group set apart from, and supe-rior to, other citizens, not because of their wealth, but because of some special quality which they alone had. They devel-oped family trees which emphasized that their family had been founded by some mythical hero or god. They told stories that emphasized their importance and power, and they controlled their communities.

But, as we will see, their control over many greek communities was fairly short lived. The strong presumption of equal-ity, and changes in the economic and social structures within the polis, made it impossible for any one class within the community to exercise complete control.

Tyrants and ReformThe high-handed manner in which the aristoi

treated the people caused a great deal of discontent among the lower classes. Some members of the aris-tocratic class began to support reform. But since the aristoi had a stranglehold on the government of the polis, it was difficult to use the traditional means of legislation to pass reform laws.

So the individuals promised reform used violent means to gain their aims. They took control of the polis. In this way the rule by an aristocracy was re-placed by rule by a tyrant. Tyrants usually were them-selves aristoi, who used the broad power base of popu-lar support to defeat their fellow aristoi and gain per-sonal power. Although tyrants gained control of the polis in order to pass reforms, they sometimes became brutal and absolute as time went on. This would usu-ally cause the people, usually led by the to rebel against the tyranny. The new form of government would vary. In most cases the new government would be, to some extent, democratic.

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Aristocratic Social LifeAristoi loved to party. They would drink, shmooze with their buddies, and listen to bards sing songs about their hero an-cestors. The party became a host’s means of showing off his wealth.

I read in the papers a couple of years ago that there was a booming trade in the U.S. in funerary objects from the 1800s. You know, the little marble or cement statues of angels, tearful kids, and so forth that were used to decorate graves. If you go to New Orleans and visit an old cemetery down there you see them all over the place. People would actually steal them and ship them up north to sell in ritzy antique stores in New York or Boston. You’d go to place some flowers at Great Aunt Winona’s grave, and notice that the concrete angel was gone...

Well, it occurred to me the other day as I was reading the Iliad that one of the things that the members of the Archaic oikoi were doing to make ends meet, was grave robbing. How did I arrive at this weird conclusion? Actually, by looking at the descriptions of warfare in the Iliad. Let me illustrate:

First, let’s look at chariots. The Greeks of Homer’s day didn’t have them. But, apparently they knew that the Mycenaeans did. They appear in every battle scene in the Iliad. What the Homeric Greeks didn’t know was how they are used in battle. Homer describes chariots as battlefield taxis that take heros here and there on the field, then stop, and the hero gets off the chariot to fight duels with other heros on foot. This makes chariots, that were such awesome Bronze-Age missile weapon platforms about as useful as a bicycle in a swimming pool.

So... Archaic Greeks knew about chariots. How? Simple. Chariots were among the grave goods in the tombs of Mycenaean warriors. Homer knew that heroes had them, but he didn’t have a clue how they used them. He needed chariots in his epics, because everybody knows, heroes have chariots; hell, they’re buried with ‘em.

Homer lived in an age when Greek aristoi bred and rode horses. When Greek aristocrats went into battle with their retainers, they rode horses to the battle field, but they dismounted to fight. So, Homer reasoned that Mycenaean heroes did the same thing, but with chariots.

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THE GREEK ART OF WAR AND

THE POLIS

Dark Age pot showing chariot. Greeks of Homer’s time

knew about chariots, but not how to use them.

Second, Homer knew about the weapons and armor that Mycenaean warriors wore, and warriors of his age didn’t. Homer gives Ajax and a couple of other heroes big “figure eight” shields that were made out of ox hide and covered a fighter from head to toe. He gave some warriors helmets made of leather with boars tusks sewn onto the leather. His heroes use mostly bronze weapons, and consider iron a luxury, but don’t actually use iron for their main ar-mor and weapons. Homeric warriors used iron weapons. Admittedly lousy iron weapons, but iron nevertheless. So, how did Homer know about all of these Mycenaean arti-facts lost to Greece some 300 years earlier? Simple. Greeks of his day were grave robbers. I have to admit that I have only circumstantial evidence for this theory, but it seems to fit the facts. The truth is that Homer really didn’t know HOW Mycenaean warriors fought. But he knew how men of his own age fought, so he described that and added the elements of the earlier civilization to make an epic. So what was warfare like in the late Archaic?

Rage Militaire Remember that a while ago I said that the aristoi (the

excellent ones) had come to consider themselves an elite class within the late Archaic polis. Well, one of the things that they thought made them excellent was their military skills. They had the spare time to drill and train in arms. They also had the disposable income to buy really good weapons and armor. They viewed themselves as “lean mean killing machines,” and they had the ability and the equipment to prove it. They also saw themselves as a class

apart from the common people, so, we can assume that when they went to war they had some kind of code that required them to engage in lots of individual warfare, and primarily only with other aristoi on the other side. We know from other cultures that when one class believes that they are superior in war to another, they adopt such codes. A couple of other examples of this kind of military culture would be the knightly culture of the European Middla Ages and the samurai culture of Japan. Part of this code also re-quires that individuals display what has been called “rage militaire,” that is, aristocratic warriors were impelled to fight, driven to risk life and limb, no matter what the odds. The warrior relishes opportunities to engage in battle, especially individual combat with other warriors. It is on the battle-field in individual combat with other warriors of his own class that the warrior proves himself, wins fame, prestige, honor. Remember that there were also lots of other, non-aristocratic, men on those battlefields, they are, for Homer a fairly faceless bunch who usually show up as a sum (i.e. “a thousand Myrmadons”), but to Homer and his aristocratic listeners they don’t count. It’s the melee between aristoi, the great heroes like Achilles, Ajax, Hector, Diomedes, that are important. The thousands of other nameless footsloggers on the battlefield are just so much window dressing.

The Art of War ChangesSo much for warfare in the Homeric Age. By the end of

the 700's B.C., economic and social dynamics began to change, and over the next century the Greek art of war changed with it. As I said a week or so ago, during this

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For Homeric Age Greeks its not the big armies that are important, but the one-on-one duels where aristocratic warriors strive for excellence in individual combat.

period poleis began to prosper, and more and more citizens were able to afford to buy the equipment that they needed to fight. Since there was already a strong assumption among Greeks that those who defended the polis should have some say in the way it was run, citizen armies grew bigger, and the aristoi became a far smaller part of the total size of the army. Gradually the aristocratic warrior became less significant, and the Greek art of war changed.

It is possible that the person responsible for the change was a tyrant and general from the city of Argos named Pheidon. Tradition suggests that Pheidon developed a new style of warfare in the mid-600's B.C. We are told that he enlarged the army of Argos, and that in 667, Pheidon used his new army to defeat the Spartans. It is possible that this tyrant invented and introduced the phalanx at that time both to defeat Argos’s enemies and to reduce the importance of the aristoi in Argos. I have to admit that this is mostly speculation, but it fits most of the circumstantial evidence that we have. So, how did this new form of warfare work?

First, the new art of war depended on lots of men who dressed alike called hoplites. Each hoplite had a helmet, a breastplate, a round shield, greaves, a short thrusting sword, and a thrusting spear.

Second, the hoplites were required to act alike. The phalanx was a densely packed infantry formation that was eight men deep and as long as you could make it. Hoplites trained to advance and retreat across the battlefield in unison. Defensively, the phalanx was a row of interlocked shields. Offensively, hoplites used thrusting spears to stab their enemies. If a man in the front row was killed, he was

simply replaced by the man behind him.

This new system was very successful, especially against the older melee method of warfare. In fact, it was so successful that by the end of the 7th century B.C. just about every Greek polis employed the phalanx.

For some cities, anything that endangered their phalanx endangered the polis. Sparta, for instance, as we will see, responded to a slave revolt at about this time by simply organizing its citizens into what might be called a perpetual phalanx.

The phalanx required the participation of a large citizen body. The bigger, the better. Or perhaps, more aptly, the wider, the better. The weakest parts of the phalanx were the flanks. If one side could hit the right or left flank it could roll up the whole phalanx. So if your phalanx was wider than your enemy’s you had a distinct tactical advantage.

Men had to purchase their own weapons and armor, this meant that the ability to defend your polis was based on personal wealth. But during this period Greek states had become prosperous, so there were more men who had the wealth to arm themselves and to take part in the defense of the city.

The phalanx required discipline and training. What was required in the new art of war, was not the rage militaire of the Homeric tradition. In fact, that individual code of warfare that required aristocratic heroes to run around the battlefield looking for a hero of equal fame and reputation to fight was a liability under the new system. Hoplites had to stick together. They had to move in unison to the beat of the drum or the melody of the flute, so that their wall of

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The Phalanx

The new warfare of the phalanx depended on each man acting dependently with his fellow soldiers. Uniformity, discipline and steadfastness replaced the old rage militaire. Uniformity became the rule and independent action was discouraged.

shields would not break as they advanced and retreated, wheeled and turned, on the battlefield. Acts of personal bravery were discouraged because each man’s shield protected not only him, but the right side of the man next

to him. An act of personal bravery could break the line and lead to disaster.

The Values of the PhalanxThe values of the phalanx — equality, discipline, towing the line — carried over into the political life of the polis as

well. Since the phalanx demanded equal participation of every citizen, then it made sense that every hoplite should also have a say in government. Remember the rule of the Archaic community. If you risk your life for your community, then you should have some say in its policies. It also stood to reason that the polis should make certain that every citizen would be content to participate in the phalanx, and that meant every citizen should be fairly treated.

The phalanx, in other words, demanded that every citizen receive justice, because a citizen with a grudge might not do his part in the phalanx — and this would endanger the whole polis. And this became an important issue in Greek plays, philosophy and literature.

But here was a problem. Remember that the values that Homer stressed in the epics were those older values of the warrior code – especially the pursuit of individual martial excellence (arete). These old values clashed with the new values of equality, steadfastness and personal discipline in the face of violence. If a Greek made certain that he was no different from his fellows, that he stayed in sync with everyone else on the battlefield. If he had the same rights as everyone else in the political sphere, then how could he achieve excellence. Where was arete?

Basically, Greeks decided that each individual should pursue excellence in honor of his polis. A rich man should not use his money to build a mansion for himself and his family. He should spend it to help build a temple to the city’s patron god, of pay for a civic celebration, or contribute toward some public building. An intelligent man should not write stories or poems to be recited at aristocratic gatherings. He should write them for the literary festivals so that all of the citizens could enjoy them, and so that they would add to the prestige of the polis. A great sculptor should not spend all of his time making busts and statues for wealthy individuals. He should contribute his work to the city by decorating its temples and public buildings. A man who had the athletic prowess to be a great warrior couldn’t use it in war anymore, but he could represent his polis at various athletic events, and train the youth of the city.

But the pursuit of excellence required competition. The only way to measure excellence was by comparison. In order to be great one had to be GREATER than someone else, so where was the competition? Athletes competed for prizes, so did playwrights, actors and producers. Artists and architects competed for city commissions.

So, Classical Greek civilization emerged as the glorification of the polis. It became ill-mannered, improper, and just plain ungreek to differ in conspicuous ways from one’s fellow citizens. As a result, the monuments of Greek civilization are not palaces of kings but temples to the gods, amphitheaters in which all of the citizens might meet, and works of art that glorified, not so much individuals, but one’s home city. Aristotle wrote that, “We must not regard the citizen as belonging to himself; we must rather regard every citizen as belonging to the state.”

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Perhaps nowhere in classical Greece were the military virtues of the phalanx and its relationship to citizenship in the polis more apparent than in the polis of the Lacedaemonians which we call Sparta.

Since Sparta will figure into our study of Greece in such an important way – as the great competitor with Athens, I though that I would use the time left today to talk a little about the Spartan polis today.

The Spartans inhabited an area called Laconia, in the southern part of mainland Greece on what is called the Peloponnesus (see map). Laconia is ringed by hills, but most of the land area is dominated by one of the few rivers of any size in Greece, the Eu-rotas River.

As it flows down from the north, the Eurotas has created a broad flat flood plain which is relatively open. This means that Sparta had more good, us-able farmland than almost any other polis in Greece proper. When you add this to the fact that there are no really good harbors in Laconia, you will see why the basis of Spartan economy was farming until very late in her history. This also helps to explain why the headquarters of the polis was not on the sea, but right in the middle of the valley far from the coast.

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SPARTA

Sparta

The homeland of the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) is Laconia. Located at the souther tip of Greece, Laconia is the valley of Eurotas River. This is the most fertile area of Greece. Because the Spartans had ample agricultural land, they never resorted to trade to support themselves.

This headquarters was a village, or rather, a collection of villages known as Sparta. There were a few temples and other large buildings, but Sparta never became a real city in the physical sense of a large settlement. Nevertheless, it was the center of a city-state, and that city-state was not called Sparta or Laconia. It was named after those who made up the polis – the Lacedaemonians. The Lacedaemonians and other peoples of Laconia were all Dorians. They spoke the Doric dialect. So there were probably Greeks who came to Laconia in the early Iron Age.

In the 700s and the 600s, when farming was still the main way of making a living in Greece, the Lacedaemoni-ans were quite advanced in most respects. But when com-merce became more important, they fell behind and re-tained a form of organization which seemed very primitive in later times.

Lycourgos and the Organization of the Spartans

Now that we have a notion of the conditions under which the Lacedaemonians lived, lets look at their organization. We don’t know what the polis was like in the 700s, but by 600, it reached a point where it did not need to change thereafter. That is the organization that I wish to discuss.

The constitution of the Lacedaemonians is attributed to a Spartan leader named Lycourgos who ruled in the early 700s B.C. The executive branch is the most unusual part because the Spartans continued to have a basileus. In fact, they had two of them. In most places, remember, the basileus disappeared. Maybe the fact that there were two kings helped to preserve the institution in Sparta. This post was hereditary in two families. That is, one basileus came from one family and the other came from the other family. Normally, they ruled for life. As in the Dark Ages, their job was to lead the army in war and to perform certain religious ceremonies. They had no other official responsibilities.

Other officials handled the other executive duties. There were five of these men, and they were called ephors. The world ephor means overseer, and one of their jobs was to accompany the king and see to it that he did not abuse his authority. They could recommend that a basileus be deposed and replaced by one of his relatives. The ephors were elected each year from the whole body of citizens, and they could not succeed themselves in office.

The Spartan council was called the gerousia. Gerousia means old men. To serve on this council, a man had to be at least sixty-years-old. There were twenty-eight members of the gerousia, and they served for life. When a member died, the remaining members nominated several candidates to replace him, and his successor was chosen by a voice vote of the assembly. It was the gerousia that decided if the basileus should be replaced, and it also decided what the assembly would discuss and vote on.

The assembly, which did all the electing and other decision-making, was made up of all adult male citizens. They all had the same political privileges, with the exception of the kings. They could hold any elective office. Moreover, they were economically the same. The lands of the polis were all held in common. Spartans had no private property and no monetary wealth – Lycourgos had banned money. Well, that isn’t exactly true. He didn’t ban money, he just ordained that the Spartans would henceforth use iron coins instead of gold, or silver or copper. Iron coins have no real international trade value and they are very heavy, so Spartan money would be useless anywhere but Sparta. Each citizen family was given a plot from which to maintain itself. So the members of the assembly are sometimes called “equals.”

Now this might seem to be an equitable system, but the problem with it was that not every inhabitant of Laconia was a citizen of the polis. Out of an estimated population of 450,000 persons in 450 B.C., only 30,000 were members of the citizen families.

About 125,000 persons were what Spartans called perioikoi – those who live around. These were probably inhabitants of outlying farms and villages that were taken over by the Spartans when they expanded in Laconia. These persons were free, and they were even allowed to hold land and other private property. They held office in their own towns. They paid taxes and served in the army, but they did not have any political rights of citizens.

The remaining 300,000 inhabitants were called helots, and they belonged to a group apart. The helots were slaves belonging to the state, and they had no rights at all. They were assigned to the common land owned by the polis, and they did all the work on Spartan farmland. How they got to be slaves we don’t know. Perhaps they were Myceneans who were conquered by the Dorians when they invaded. Because the helots were exploited by the Lacedaemonians, there was always a chance that they might revolt and destroy the polis. The only way the Spartans could control them was with a strong army. Thus, all life in the city was oriented toward the military.

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Growing Up SpartanAs soon as a child was born in Sparta, the mother

would wash it with wine, in order to make sure that it was strong. If the child was weak. Later it was brought by his father to the elders, who carefully inspected the newborn infant. If they found that the child was deformed or weakly, they threw it off of a cliff. Until the age of seven the child was reared by his mother. At the age of seven, every Spar-tan boy left home and went into a military training program called the agogé. They lived, trained and slept in their the barracks of their brotherhood. At school, they were taught survival skills and other skills necessary to be a great soldier. School courses were very hard and often painful. Although students were taught to read and write, those skills were not very important to the ancient Spartans.

Only warfare mattered. The boys were not fed well, and were told that it was fine to steal food as long as they did not get caught stealing. If they were caught, they were beaten. They boys marched without shoes to make them strong. It was a brutal training period.

Legend has it that a young Spartan boy once stole a live fox, planning to kill it and eat it. He noticed some Spartan soldiers approaching, and hid the fox beneath his shirt. When confronted, to avoid the punishment he would re-ceive if caught stealing, he allowed the fox to chew into his stomach rather than confess he had stolen a fox, and did not allow his face or body to express his pain.

They walked barefoot, slept on hard beds, and worked at gymnastics and other physical activities such as running, jumping, javelin and discus throwing, swimming, and hunt-ing. They were subjected to strict discipline and harsh physical punishment; indeed, they were taught to take pride in the amount of pain they could endure.

The typical Spartan may or may not have been able to read. But reading, writing, literature, and the arts were con-sidered unsuitable for the soldier-citizen and were therefore not part of his education. Music and dancing were a part of

that education, but only because they served military ends.

Unlike the other Greek city-states, Sparta provided training for girls that went beyond the domestic arts. The girls were not forced to leave home, but otherwise their training was similar to that of the boys. They too learned to run, jump, throw the javelin and discus, and wrestle.

Somewhere between the age of 18-20, Spartan males had to pass a difficult test of fitness, military ability, and leadership skills. Those who survived it continued with their military education and were enrolled in the local militia. If they passed the tests, they might also be elected into a par-ticular mess. The mess was a local dining facility, military unit and club. This is where Spartans would eat the main meal of the day for the rest of their lives. If they were not elected to a mess, they were not worthy to be Spartans and would usually leave the country or commit suicide out of humiliation.

After eleven years of training, the young man entered the army itself at 18, and he served on active duty until he became 30. After age 30, the man would marry, have a fam-ily, and participate in government. If he did not find a wife, a suitable Spartan woman would be found for him by the state. The state would then provide the family with land and helots to work that land. But even then, he was still a soldier. Every man over 30 was still required to eat the main meal each day with the other men in his military mess, rather than with his family. In time of war, of course, all men served as long as they were physically able to do so. This military organization gave the Spartans the power it needed to keep the helots under control.

Sparta in the Greek ContextThe internal organization of the Spartan polis gave it

great strength and helped to determine the role it would play in the Greek world as a whole. The Spartan military system gave this polis an enormous advantage militarily over the other city-states of Greece. In most Greek city-states before 400 B.C., the armies were essentially militia forces made up of the citizens of the community. The fight-ing men were not professional soldiers. They were farmers, craftsmen, and merchants.

In Greece, crops are planted in early fall and harvested in the spring. Wars were fought in the summertime when there was not a lot of work to do on the farms. Thus, the armies would fight in the summer and then go back home to farm or to make a living in some other way. This was necessary because they did not receive any pay for fighting. In most cities, the soldiers were strictly amateurs who were not well trained for war.

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Not every inhabitant of Laconia was a citizen of the polis. Out of

an estimated population of 450,000 persons in 450 B.C., only

30,000 were members of the citizen families.

LACEDAEMONIANS 30,000

Perioikoi 125,000

Helots 300,000

But in the polis of the Lacedaemonians, the situation was quite different. The Spartans did not have to work on farms, because the helots did all of the work for them. They were soldiers all the time and throughout their entire lives. They were trained for military life from childhood onward. They were much better drilled, much better disciplined, and much more willing to fight than the soldiers of other city-states. This gave them such an advantage that for 300 years no other polis was able to defeat them seriously in battle.

You might imagine that the Lacedaemonians were so much more powerful than the other city-states that they would simply conquer all of Greece and bring it under their power. But this was not possible. Very early the Spartans realized that they would destroy themselves if they tried to conquer the other Greeks. They could send armies to beat any other polis, but to hold on to anyone they conquered, they would have to leave soldiers in the conquered cities for long periods of time. They could not do that because they had to keep the army at home to guard the helots.

Thus, they developed a semi-isolationist policy in for-eign affairs. To protect their immediate frontiers, they en-tered into a mutual defense alliance called the Peloponne-sian League with the neighboring states in 550 B.C. It in-cluded most of the states in the large peninsula known as the Peloponnesus. Outside the Peloponnesus, they tried to maintain a balance of power with a limited commitment of troops. If any Greek states felt threatened or coerced by its neighbor, it could appeal to Sparta for assistance. The Spar-tans often responded to complaints with threats and war if necessary. This policy earned the Spartans the reputation as protector of weaker states in the face of aggression. It also helped to protect the polis system, allowing it to develop without the military pressures present in Mesopotamia.

Was Sparta a Democracy?Now it is time to look back over and review the Spartan

system, considering some of its implications of it for Greek civilization as a whole. If I were able to ask you what form of government Sparta had, you might be unable to answer. Strange as it may seem to us, a Greek would say that the Lacedaemonian government was a democracy. Democracy means rule of the demos, the citizens. In Sparta, it was the citizens who ruled with no distinction among them. Looked at from the point of view of the helot, it was not a democ-racy, but in Greece, only the citizens mattered. The helots were not citizens.

There is an even more curious point that needs to be considered: that is the condition of the citizens themselves. In the Greek world, the mark of a citizen was that he was a free man. You might wonder whether you consider the

Spartans free. To us freedom means that a person is largely left alone to do what he pleases provided he does not inter-fere with anyone else. The Spartans were not free in that sense. They belonged to the polis. After the age of seven, the state replaced the family as the main force in a child’s life. The only reason older Spartans were allowed to marry later is that that was the only way to keep producing new sol-diers.

To a Greek, a man was free if he was a citizen of a free polis. He was free to help direct and advance the affairs of the community. But a man could never be free from the demand of the polis itself. In return for being permitted to participate in the political life of the polis, a citizen was ex-pected to put the interests of the community before his own personal interests. Thus, the privilege of citizenship also brought heavy obligations.

The polis of the Lacedaemonians when much further in insisting on those obligations than other cities, bu the same idea about citizenship applied everywhere. You might be interested to know that most other Greeks, even Greek intel-lectuals, regarded the Spartan system as being just about perfect. The Spartans had come closer to creating what a polis should be than any other community in Greece. It is well to keep this in mind if you begin to think of the Greek city-state as having free societies in our sense, just because they didn’t have absolute governments. In Greece, all worthwhile activities were designed to serve the polis. Any activity which did not serve the community was by defini-tion worthless and improper. Because the polis was small and self-contained, anyone who violated this principle was likely to be found out.

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