THE ORIGINS

of
GREEK CIVILIZATION
1100-650 B.C.

by
CHESTER G. STARR
Professor of History
University of Illinois

JONATHAN CAPE
THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON
 FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN 1962
0 1961 BY CHESTER G. ST ARR

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

LOWS AND IIRYDONE (PRINTERS) LTD., LONDON N.W.IO
BOUND BY A. W. GAIN AND CO. LTD., LONDON
 v

CONTENTS

PART 1 . THE EARLY AEGEAN

Chapter 1: The Early Ages of Greece 3

The Geographical Position of Greece 7 . . . The
First Men and Cultures in Greece 1{1"' .. The
Early Bronze Age 21 . . . The Middle Bronze Age
30 . . . The Place of Minoan Civilizatid n 36 . . .
The Early Aegean 39

Chapter' '2: The Rise and Fall of the MycenaeaI1 World 42

Kings and Traders in the Mycenaean A$e 43 . . .
Mycenaean Civilization 53 ... Decline and Col-
lapse of the Mycenaean World 58 ... the Fall of
Mycenae and Greek Chronology 64 .. ' The Sig-
nificance of the Dorians 69

PART II . THE DARK ACE9

Chapter 3: After the Mycenaean Collapse 77

The Background of Chaos 79 ... New Ways in
the Eleventh Century 83 ... The Origins of Pro-
togeometl'ic Pottery 89 . . . The Date (Jnd Home
of the New Style 94 ... The Implicati(}n8 of Pro-
togeometric Pottery 99

Chapter 4: Two Centuries of Consolidation ' ',107

Territorial Consolidation of Greek Culture 108 .. " ,
Aegean Localism 115 . . . The Greek Dialects 119 -
... Political Patterns 123 • . . The Socid l Structure
of Early Greece 129 . . . The Rise of Geometric
Pottery 138 . . . The Aegean in 800 B.C. J.45
Vl Contents
Chapter 5: The Early Eighth Century 147
Dipylon Pottery 148 . . . Epic and Myth 156 .
Oriental Literary Influences 165 . . . Early Greek
Religion 171 . . . The Men of the Early Eighth Cen-
tury 183

PART III . THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

Chapter 6: The Orient and Greece 18g

The Significance of the Orient 192 . The Unifi-
cation of the Orient 195 . . . The Re-establishment
of Contacts 203 . . . Routes of Contact 209 . . .
Greeks or Phoenicians? 212

Chapter 7: The InteIIectual Upheaval: I 221

'The Tempo of Change 222 . . . Orientalizing Pot-
tery: Proto corinthian 230 . . . Orientalizing Pot-
tery: Protoattic and Other 238 . . . Early Architec-
ture 245 . . . The Emergence of Sculpture 252

Chapter 8: The Intellectual Upheaval: II 261

The Odyssey and Hesiod 263 . . . Archilochus of
Paras 272 . . . Religious Signs of Stress 277 . . .
The Exorcism of Fear 283 . . . The Hellenic Out-
look 292

Chapter 9: Society ana the Individual 300

The Place of the Aristocrats 302 • . . Other Social
Changes 311 . . . Civic and Ethical Gods 318

Chapter 10: The Rise of the City-State 324

The Decline of Personal Leadership 325 . . . The
Causes of the Decline 33 0 . . . The Emergence of
the City-State 335 ... Greek Political History 345

Chapter 11: Economic Quickening and Colonization 349

The Economic Spirit 351 . . . The Agricultural
Contents Vll

World 35-5 ... The Rise of Industry and Com-

merce 359 ... Colonization 365 ... Effects of
Greek Expansion 373
Chapter 12: Epilpgue 379

Index follows page 385

Vlll

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

1 . The Earliest Ages of Greece 12

(a) Early Helladic sauceboat from Lerna; (b) Neolithic
statuette from Lerna; (c) Middle Helladic matt-painted
pithos from Eutresis; (d) Early Helladic painted jar from
Lerna

2 . Minoan Crete 13
(a-b) Kamares vases from Phaestus; (c) The Harvesters'
Vase from Hagia Triada

3· War Lords of Mycenae 44

(a) The Lion Gate of My?enae; (b) The Warriors' Vase
. from Mycenae
... ' ,_

4 . Mycenaean Civilization 45
(a) Chariot vase from Enkomi; (b) Ivory carving from My-
cenae; (c) Cup in III.B style from Markopoulo; (d) Vase in
III.C style from Mycenae

5 . The Revolution of the Eleventh Century 76

(a) Sub-Mycenaean vase (K. 436); (b) Ripe Protogeometric
amphora (K. 1073)

6 . Emergence of the Protogeometric Style 77

(a) Sub-Mycenaean vase (K. 421); (b) Amphora from Ar-
gos; (c) Early Proto geometric amphora (K. 522); (d) Early
Protogeometric amphora (K. 556)

7 . Later Stages of the Proto geometric Style 108

(a) Ripe Proto geometric amphora (K. 560); (b) Late Pro-
togeometric amphora (K. 576)

8 . Development of the Attic Geometric Style 109

(a) Early Geometric amphora (K. 254); (b) Strong Geo-
metric amphora (K. 2146)
9 . Enrichment of the Attic Geometric Style 140
(a) Strong Geometric skyphos; (b) Pyxis (K. 257)
 . ix
Ill~strations

10 . The Dipylon Style 141

(a) Fragments from Athens and Louvre AS31; (b) Warriors
in Copenhagen
11 . Height of the Geometric Spirit 172
Dipylon amphora (Athens NM zoo)
12 . Non-Attic Geometric Styles 173
(a) Corinthian amphora from Corinth; (b) Cycladic am-
phora from Delos; (c) Rhodian oenochoe from Delos; (d) Ar-
give vase from Mycenae
13 . Rise of Proto corinthian Pottery 204
(a) Linear Geometric crater from Corinth; (b) Linear Geo-
metric kotyle from Aegina; (c) Early Protocorinthian cup
from Aegina; (d) The Rider Kotyle from Aegina
14 . Triumph of the Proto corinthian Style 20 5
(a) Fragments from Aegina; (b) Aryballos in Boston
15 . Other Orientalh,ing Styles (I) 'l{!l3
(a) Argive fragment from Argos; (b) Boeotian vase in Ath-
ens
16 . Other Orientalizing Styles (II) 237
(a) Parian amphora in Stockholm; (b) Cretan vase from
Arkades .
17 . Decay of the Attic Geometric Spirit '268
(a) Late Geometric vase (K. 1356); (b) Late Geometric
amphora in Oxford
18 . Emergence of the Protoattic Style 269
(a) Amphora in the Louvre; (b) Early Protoattic vase from
the Kerameikos
19 . Late Geometric Figurines 300
(a) Ivory goddess from the Dipylon; (b) Clay figurine from
Samos (No. 873)
20 . Emergence of Archaic Sculpture 301
(a) Warrior from the Acropolis; (b) Statuette of Mantiklos
21 . Triumph of the New Sculpture 332
(a) Protodedalic head from Sparta; (b) Nikandre from
Delos
22 . Fear and Tension 333
(a) Late Geometric kantharos in Copenhagen; (b) Gorgon
mask from Tiryns
x Illustrations

23 . Depiction of Myth and Epic 364

(a) Clay shield from Tiryns; (b) Protoattic amphora from
Eleusis
24 . Release from Terror 365
(a) Bronze tripod leg from Olympia; (b) Bronze griffon
head from Olympia

MAPS

1. The Eastern Mediterranean page 6 .

2. The Aegean Basin page 8
 Xl

PREFACE

THE SUBJECT of this volume is the formative centuries of

Greek civilization. What the term "Greek'; will me~n in the' fol-
lowing pages I had best make clear from the beginning. In the
geographical sense ancient Greece included the Aegean basin
as a whole, although its focus lay in the mainland districts south
of Thessaly. Culturally I shall apply the words "Greek" and
"Greece" solely to that coherent structure of thought and art
which flowered in the great achievements of classical Hellenism.
This is not an idle precision. Men nowadays are inclined to
find Greeks far back in the early history of the Aegean world.
Quite often the inhabitants of the Mycenaean age, in the sec6nd
millennium B.C., are described as Greeks inasmuch as they spoke
a Greek tongue. This tendency underlines the undoubted fact
that very deep connections linked the successive epochs of
Aegean development; yet it also muffles the tremendous cultural
gulf which separates Mycenaean and Greek civilization. The
latter outlook, the root of Western culture, was essentially a n~w
creation in the centuries just after 1100 B.C.
Virtually all the period considered in this work is prehistory
,in the sense that datable written documents are not available to
guide one's study; but physical evidence is at hand to suggest
the tempo and causes of early Greek progress. Thirty years ago
this was not true. Historians then could use little beyond the
feeble hints of myth and epic, and commonly summed up the
long period' from 1100 to 650 as an undifferentiated Homeric
age. The archaeological evidence for early Greece, fortunately,
has grown at a great pace in the past generation. Much is still
dark. MJ-lch which today seems certain will be overturned by
fresh excavations tomorrow. The historical student will inevita-
bly make mistakes in assessing the material 'we already have,
which is not always completely published and which presents a
host of complex problems. But it is time to estimate the meaning
X11 Preface

of this evidence; and a historian, applying soberly the canons of

his craft, may hope to make out a pattern of the principal stages
in early Greek history.
In an earlier study on the end 'of classical civilization, Civili-
zation and the Caesars: The Intellectual Revolution in the Ro-
man Empire, I had occasion to advance some' arguments on the
major forces which moved,history. In the present investigation
there has appeared no reason to change my views, but the evo-
lution of early Greece does lead One to reflect more particularly ,
upon the tempo of historical change. As will be suggested at
various points in the text, I have been driven' to feel that the
common historical view on this matter is faulty. It is time we
gave over interpreting human development as a slow evolution
of Darwinian type; great changes often occur in veritable jumps,
two of which will appear before us in the following story.
The documentation for my argument rests both upon the
footnotes and upon the illustrations. The former are designed
primarily to suggest the evidence, much of which is new and not
yet fully digested into common acquaintance; but I have also
indicated the specialized studies, where they exist, on matters
which I have perforce treated generally in an effort to clarify
the main line of progress. Commonly my references are to the
latest works, from which may be derived the earlier literature;
in the case of Homer, for instance, a complete bibliography
would require a very large volume in itself. The quotation of
literary fragments is based for the lyric poets on the edition of
Ernest Diehl, Anthologia lyrica graeca (3d ed.; Leipzig, 1949-
52); for Archilochus on Franc;ois Lasserre and Andre Bonnard,
Archiloque: Fragments (Paris, 1958); for Sappho and A1caeus
on E. Lobel and D. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (Ox-
ford, 1955); fOT'the pre-Socratic philosophers on H. Diels, Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed.; Berlin, 1951-52).
Translations are generally from the Loeb Classical Library un-
less they are my own.
The illustrations furnish representative or important exam-
ples of the main body of physical evidence. For permission to
reproduce photographs and in most cases for original prints I
am much indebted to the sources noted on the plates.
Preface XUl

It remains for me to "thank those who have aided my re-

searches in a difficult field. More than in any previous work they
have been numerous, and I am deeply grateful to the unselfish
kindness of museum custodians, librarians, and scholars in many
localities. In particular my thanks must go to C. W. Blegen,
Mr. and Mrs. J. L. Caskey, J. M. Cook, Paul Courbin, Emil
Kunze, S. S. Weinberg, N. M. Verdelis, and Dietrich von Both-
mer, the last two of whom opened closed collections respec-
tively at the Argos Museum and at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. I am also obligated to the University of Illinois, both for
funds to photograph vases and for a sabbatical leave; and to the
renewed assistance of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation, which made it possible for me to extend the course
of my second stay in the ever fascinating land of Greece over
the year ~958-59.

CHESTER G. STARR

Champaign, Illinois

ABBREVIATIONS

AA Archiiologischer Anzeiger
AEGEAN AND NEAR EAST The Aegean and the Near East: Studies
Presented to Hetty Goldman (New York, 1956)
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
AJP American Journal of Philology
AM Mitteilungen des deutschen archiiologischen Instituts, Athe-
nische Abteilung
ANATST 'Anatolian Studies
ANNUJ{RIO Annuario della scuola archeologica di Atefle

ARCH. EPH. 'Apxato"\o'YtK~ 'E</>1JIUP['

BCH Bulletin de correspondance hellenique
XIV Abbreviations

BELLETEN Turk Tarih Kurumu: Belleten

BSA Annual of the British School at Athens
CP Classical Philology
CVA Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum
ERGON To EPYOV rij" •ApXawAoytKij,,' 'ETatp£ta"
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ILN Illustrated London News
JDI lahrbuch des deutschen archiiologische1!- Instituts
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
KERAMEIKOS Kerameikos: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen (Ber-
lin): I (1939), IV (1943), V. 1 (1954), VI. 1 (1959)
MATZ, GGK Friedrich Matz, Geschichte der griechischen Kunst,
I (Frankfurt, 1950)
NEUE BEITRAGE Neue Beitriige zur klassischen Altertumswissen-
schaft (Festschrift B. Schweitzer) (Stuttgart, 1954)
Nn.SSON, GGR M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Reli-
gion, I (zd ed.: Munich, 1955)
Opus. ARCH. Opuscula archaeologica
PW Pauly, Wissowa, et aI., Real-Encyklopiidie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft
PRAKTIKA IIpaKTtKa T7j~ lv 'A8~vat<; 'ApXatOAoytKT]<; 'ETatp£ta.
RA Revue arcMologique
REA Revue des etudes anciennes
REG Revue des etudes grecques
RM Rheinisches Museum
VENTRIS AND CHADWICK, DOCUMENTS Michael Ventris and John
Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred
Selected Tablets from Knossus, Pylos and Mycenae with Com-
mentary and Vocabulary (Cambridge, 1956 )
 TO

KARL R. BOPP

THOMAS A. BRADY

WALTER MILLER

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

1931-35
 PART I

THE EARLY AEGEAN

 [3

CHAPTER 1

THE EARLY. AGES

OF GREECE

THE MOUNTAINS OF GREECE have long loomed sharp, beauti-

iul, and barren over narrow valleys. For millennia the blue
Aegean has sparkled in vivid sunlight or has roared into sudden,
fierce storms against the cliffs and sandy bea~hes of its many
islands. Since ~he earliest phase of human history, the Paleolithic,
men have lived in this area, adapting themselves to the vagaries
of its climate while exploiting its resources, and have slowly
molded the landscape to their own desires. The pattern of civi-
lization, however, which we call "Greek" and which has directly
influenced all subsequent Western history, was evolved only in
the centuries between 1100 and 650 B.C.
This was not the first true civilization in the Aegean world,
for an earlier phase' of development had produced the heights
of Minoan and then Mycenaean culture. But catastrophe "befell
Minoan Cnossus about 1400 B.C., and .the lords who thereafter
ruled Greece met their fate in turn during the early and middle
decades of the twelfth century B.C. The great citadel of Mycenae,
then the center of the Aegean world, went up in flames despite
its grim rock walls which later, awed generations were to call
the work of the Cyclopes. Far off on the west side of the Pelopon-
nesus other invaders gutted the noble palace of Pylos; behind
their fury lay fragments of gold leaf and spilled clay tablets on
the floor of the royal record room.
More than sudden death and physical destruction took
4 PART I . The Early Aegean

place in the twelfth century. If royal scribes survived the initial

sack, they found thenceforth no call for their ability to set down -
accounting marks, for the whole structure of Mycenaean king-
ship had ended. Greece was not to need or to know writing again
for centuries. The cunning workers in gold and ivory, in fresco
and stone, lost their markets and trained no apprentices to carry
on the advanced arts developed up to their time; only the most
basic skills, those demanded for survival, continued to be em-
ployed. The peasants in the villages round about the Myc'enaean
fortresses may have watched almost with joy as smoke spiraled
up from the gleaming palaces of their, fallen masters, but they
suffered too. Social, economic, and political organization swiftly
sank, and with it fell the level of population.
The catastrophe which lies behind Greek civilization was
not an accidental interruption to Aegean development but rathe.r
cleared the way for the emergence of the true Hellenic outlook.
To understand this important fact more fully we must go back to
look at the glittering Mycenaean civilization. This, in turn, can
only be understood if it is placed against the background of
Minoan Crete and of the Greek mainland during the Neolithic
and Bronze ages.
A brief consideration of these preliminary matters has two
other advantages as well. Since the Aegean landscape underwent
no magical change between the second and the first millennia,
the earlier development of the area will help to throw light on the
manner in which geographical factors influenced Greek history.
We shall, moreover, find very considerable evidence of a basic
continuity in patterns of culture and society from early times;
though much of the superstructure vanished in the Mycenaean
debacle, the men who came thereafter did not totally discard
their inheritance. In this Part, Chapter i will carry the story
across the Neolithic, Early Bronze, and Middle Bronze eras, with
a side glance at the amazing phenomenon of Minoan Crete;
Chapter 2 will consider the rise and fall of the Mycenaean world.
ClIAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 5

THE GEOGRApHICAL POSITION OF GREECE 1

A MODERN TRAVELER from the great territorial states of

western Europe and the Americas feels himself in a different
world when he enters the Aegean. The basic cast of civilization
here is today European, yet wares in stores are distinguished as
"European" or "Greek"; despite decades of philological purifica-
tion, Greek speech and town names have still their traces of
eastern (Turkish) and northern (Albanian) influence; life takes
place on a simple plane, materially speaking, and seems ~lmost
fatalistic. Some of the characteristics of modern Hellas are the
product of its recent history. Some, however, are the fruit of
geographical and clirnatic factors which today affect social and
economic institutions, even intellectual attitudes, very much as
they did four thousand years ago.
In Greece there are no great plains, nodding with crops to a
dim horizon, nor mighty rivers which roll throughout the seasons
down to the sea. The land, indeed, is only one part of the geo-
graphical framework, for the historic backdrop of Greek civiliza-
tion is a sea, the Aegean, together with its main islands and its
shores in Asia and in Europe (see Map NO.1). The western
border of the Aegean, or Greece proper, is a region of limestone
mountains which have sunk at their southern end in recent
geologic times. Where they meet the main bulk of the Balkans,
the mountains still stand tall and are bordered by the major
plains of M;wedonia and Thessaly. In the south islands abound
as the remnants of sunken mountain ranges; and.the sea sends
long fingers up between the mountain ridges.
Nowhere in southern or central Greece are men more than
forty miles, a day or so on foot, from the sea; nowhere on the
Aegean, again, will a ship be entirely out of sight of land on a
clear day, until it breaks out to the south beyond Crete and
1 See generally Max Cary, The Geo- griechischen Landschaften, I-II. 1
graphic Background of Greek and Ro- (Frankfurt, 1950-56); J. Holland
man History (Oxford, 1949), chap. Rose, The Mediterranean in the An-
1-3; J. L. Myres, Who Were the cient World (Cambridge, 1933). Cli-
Greeks? (Berkeley, 1930), 1-25; Al- mate: Philippson, Das Klima Griech-
fred Philippson and Ernst Kirsten, Die enlands (Bonn, 1948).
d
~

V)

::t
tt
~
=.
~
"- '"~
a...
~
..., ~

~ ...
~'"'"
~,. ~
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~ i7, ~
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r c
 CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 7
Rhodes into the eastern Mediterranean. These conditions tended
to encourage seafaring, though we must not fall into the error,
common since the days of Thucydides, of interpreting Aegean
history purely as a function of naval activity. The mountains do
not often produce good ship timber, and at times stand so close
to the water's edge as to cut off in~and residents from the coast.
The Aegean waters are too clear, too devoid of plant life, to
, support large schools of useful fish; nor was overseas trade vital
in an age of economic simplicity and local·self-sufficiency. Many
Greeks may have lived and died without ever catching more
than a distant, dimly curious glimpse of salt water; very few
made their living out of the sea. The influences which were
waterborne were important, but they are not all the story.
Though only something over a fifth of the Greek landscape
is cultivable, farming has been the main occupation of the Greek
population since Neolithic days. The agricultural lands, in
southern Greece at least, are small plains, divided from each
other by the hills. The latter were forested with brush and small
trees throughout much of ancient history but were the prey of
charcoal burners and voracious goats; and even by the fourth
century B.C. Plato (Critias ll1C) described Attica virtually
as it is today, a decayed carcass with the bare bones sticking out
through the skin. The mountains have long had their herders,
who tend to take over the plains in periods of social and political
collapse. Crystalline layers in the hills along the western shores of
the Aegean also provide veins of silver, copper, and other metals;
the rock here is frequently marble; and good clay beds furnish
the raw material of pottery almost but not quite everywhere.
Along the eastern fringe of the Aegean the coastal plains of Asia
Minor are more extensive, and are traversed by rivers such as the
Hermus and Maeander which break down from the central
plateau of Anatolia through rocky ridges.
. Greek rural life was never as sure of results or as rich in
returns as that of the river valleys in the ancient Orient. The
population of Mesopotamia and Egypt became large and heavily
packed, while the small resources of Greece supported a rela-
tively thin inhabitation, clustered, in groups around the small
agricultural plains wherever never failing springs were available.
 q

Nte4iterrantan Sea

'The A. E G LAN BAS J N

•• (ltolj, rumsis) - SITES PROMINENT 8EFORE (100 S.C•
• • (Athens,7eos) - SITES OCCUPIED 1100 - 650 8. C.

Mapz
o
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 9
Farming techniques in Greece, too, had to follow a somewhat
different pattern from their Oriental prototype. There irrigation
and drainage required the co-operation of great masses of peas-
ants under common direction; in Greece ,individual farmers tilled
their own plots, for the sharply seasonal rainfall offered few
possibilities of harnessing permanent water supplies.
Farming in Greece, nonetheless, was not usually a desperate
venture in eras of relative order, once men had learned to tailor
their agricultural methods to the seasons. Raising crops by hand
was a hard task, yields were low, but the effort was not an un-
ending chore. While "Greece has always had poverty as her
companion" (Herodotus VII. 102), the needs of life, including
clothes and heat, were far less than in continental Europe. Even
today, when life in Greece is much Simpler economically than in
England or the United States, an outsider feels twinges of envy
when he sees how richly its residents manage to savor the non-
material aspects of human existence.
The area within which Greek history throbbed is small,
about three hundred miles on a side. The Significant quality of
Greek civilization as a basically uniform pattern which was
invigorated by rich local diversity is paralleled in the geographic
structure of this area. Of the three main divisions imposed by the
sea-i.e., the coast of Asia Minor, the islands, and the Greek
mainland-the latter has normally been the most important
economic and cultural center; in its turn it falls into several
distinct regions. A north-south ridge separates the east and west
coasts of Greece, while another ridge from Olympus south to
Euboea cuts off Thessaly from the coast; other ridges run roughly
east and west to mark the northern and southern limits of Thes-
saly and Boeotia (see Map No.2). An even sharper division is
that of the Saronic Gulf and the Gulf of Corinth, which separate
the, Peloponnesus from central Greece. Throughout ancient
Aegean development the major cultural and political units ac-
corded with the geographical framework, though only in general
terms. It must also be remarked, first, that these districts were not
sharply sundered from each other; and, secondly, that they
shared in the main a common pattern of hills, small plainS, and
corresponding agricultural and industrial potentialities.
10 PART I . The Early Aegean

Climatically as well all of Greece experiences the well-

known "Mediterranean" pattern of weather. In the fall, as the
Sahara cools, rain-bearing winds can drive in through the Medi-
terranean from the west and drop their precious contents now in
sudden cloudbursts, now for a day or two, down to April. Average
temperatures drop markedly in the winter, but the warming
influence of the enfolding seas makes outdoor life possible
throughout most of the season, at least in the coastal districts. In
late May and early June comes the harvest season; thereafter
Greece dries up in the cloudless days of a desert-like summer.
The heat usually is moderated by the seas, but anyone who has
wilted in Athens will comprehend the picture of summer lassi-
tude in Hesiod's Works and Days (lines 582-g6) :
When the artichoke flowers, and the chirping grass-
hopper sits in a tree and pours down his shrill song con-
tinually from under his wings in the season of wearisome
heat, then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest; women
are most wanton, but men are feeblest, because Sirius
parches head and knees and the skin is dry through heat.
But at that time let me have a shady rock and wine of Biblis.
Within the common climatic pattern, however, there is an
extraordinary range of variations for so small a land. The western
shore of Greece, which first receives the rain-bearing winds, has
up to three times as much rain as the eastern coast and enjoys a
mild ~inter. The inland valleys become bitterly cold in winter:
the mountains cap th~mselves with long-lasting snow, and the
shepherds pull close their coats. Even Athens knows freezing
weather and snow. The opposite range of summer is also more
marked along the eastern coast, where the north winds sc_ourge
the hot, dusty plain of Attica; farther north, Macedonia ::md
Thrace have almost a continental climate. Yet virtually ev~ry­
where the air throughout most of the year is sharp and crisp.

No significant alterations in Greek climate or topography

have been detected over recent millennia. One important aspect
of Greek geography, however, was subject to change, and to that
aspect-the position of Greece relative to other principal cen-
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 11

ters of population and culture-I shall have constantly to recur

in later chapters.
Greece proper is a promontory of Europe thrust out into the
eastern Mediterranean. By the islands which prolong the prom-
ontory into the Aegean it is closely linked with the sea and with
the opposite shore of Asia Minor to form a distinct enclave. In
the modern world the area still lies on the border line between
Europe and Asia-a factor apparent in the stores and streets of
Athens-but the rise of the Atlantic community has markedly
reduced the importance and benefits of this position. In ancient
times, however, the Aegean was unique in its accessibility to two
entirely different reservoirs of peoples and cultures.
On the north lay the great land mass of Europe, the home
of barparic tribes which were bound only tenuously to anyone
tract .of land. Whether self-moving or impelled by the invasions
of others, these tribes shifted back and forth in Europe through
both the prehistoric and early historic periods; and at times their
movements spilled over into the peninsulas which jutted south-
,ward into the Mediterranean. On the east lay the seats of the
first civilizations in Eurasia, the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia
and Egypt with the connecting avenue of Palestine and Syria
(the Fertile Crescent). Here migrations of peoples were checked,
at least in part, by the emergence of firmly organized states; but
movement of trade and ideas was thereby facilitated.
The Aegean enclave, it must be emphasized from the outset,
was not completely open to influences from either the north or
the east. By that very fact it tended to serve as a terminal point·
to both currents. With respect to the north, peoples moving down '
out of the great'plains of Hungary and Russia had first to male
their way through the Balkans, particularly along the relatively
open center of modern Yugoslavia (the Morava and Vardar
rivers). Then they had to cross a very decided climatic and
topographic frontier, for as men twisted and turned through the
broken, at times mountainous reaches of Epirus and Macedonia
they passed from the temperate, continental regions of Europe,
marked by deciduous forests, into the parched lands. of the
southern evergreen scrub. Only very powerful movements were
12 PART I . The Early Aegean

to sweep all the way through Greece and still have enough
momentum to launch out on the sea.
Men coming from the ancient Orient also traversed perilous
distances if they were to reach the Aegean. By sea, the more
open route, they made their way from Syria along the dangerous
south coast of Asia Minor and entered the Aegean by Rhodes or
Crete; by land, travelers plodded interminably along the even
more hazardous and physically difficult tracks across the high
plateau of Asia Minor. A casual glance at a map has often sug-
gested to students of east-west relations that Asia Minor may be
called a bridge between the Aegean and the Fertile Crescent.
This concept is almost diametrically opposed to the reality, for
down to the very end of the era considered in this volume the
peninsula of Asia Minor was commonly a buffer between East
and West. 2 Influences tended to work along its coasts or to
penetrate its interior either from the southeast or from the west-
ern seaboard; they rarely can be shown to have passed directly
across it. Whether trade and ideas made their way from the east
by land or by sea, they tended to exhaust their strength within
the Aegean and advanced farther north and west only with
difficulty. From this fact arose the otherwise puzzling result that
the very regions least favored climatically in the Greek promon-
tory-the southeastern districts of the Peloponnesus, Attica, and
Boeotia-were culturally dominant.
Both the basic fact that the Aegean can be reached alike
from north and east and the qualification that the access was not
easy are deeply Significant elements when we place them against
the lines of force emanating from prehistoric Europe and the
ancient Orient. From as early a pOint in Greek history as our
view can reach, the interplay of eastern and northern factors
furnished much of the external stimulus for Aegean development.
2 Carl W. Blegen, "The Royal Bridge," also with respect to Eurasian incur-
The Aegean and the Near East (New sions across the Caucasus into Asia
York, 1956), 3z-35, is basically sound. Minor; only rarely did such onslaughts
On the geographical and early his- as those of the Cimmerians carry di-
torical division of eastern and west- rectly across to the Aegean coast. At
ern Asia Minor, see also Albrecht this point I am not concerned with lo-
Goetze, Kleinasien (zd ed.; Munich, cal movement of ideas westward from
1957),8, 178. The point of view ad- the Asiatic shores of the Aegean.
vanced in the text seems to me valid
(11) Early II ('{/ndil' SIIIICe" O(/t fmlll L em n. ;11
lcrd 1"('CI'dilll! r/" ., tI'llCtiOIi ollhe /lOll '(' of III( '
Ti/es, Photograph cOlIl't esy Alllerican School of
C/II,~sic(/1 SllIdie's, Alhe' lls.
(I,) :-;('(>lillll(' slalll('lIe fWIII LeTIIII. Photo-
If,Tllph "y A/isoll F"IIII:.. l'OIlI'I(,8Y AIIIl'l'icll/l
sc/u.o/ of CllI.~~iC(1l Silld ie.~, A lh ell.\ .

te) (d)
(c) Middle Ifr '/Iar/ic ",al'-paill'l'ri l,il/IrIS Imlll
EIIIl'csi.\', 1"'l'hal''' lIIade ill .k gilw. /)l'(Iu: illl! 11'1
Picl cif' JOllg: frolll /Icily ( ;O /rllllllll. E""I\";\-
liull' at ElltT(',is in BOl'olin (Clllll /nidgl' , ,\1 11'1 ..
1939). III. X{H.
(ril Early 11r' l/mlie {willll'd iar 11'0111 Lemll. ill
t.Tei after deslm cli(lll "f Ih" 1/01lS(' (If II" ,
Ti[l's. Orll1dllg "yl' ir'l ric fOil!!.. ('ollrlt'S!I .\11 1<'1'- PLATE 1 . The Ear/iesl .:\(/('~ of Grcece
/c-all School "f Cla.sind Slue/in, .. \/11<'11.1.
 (a) (b)

(0)
( a-1I) ~a/lllJr£'s mSC.f from PIW('stIlS, SiIOICillg (c) Ti,e HI/rt·('.,tl'fS' '"{lSI' ill stc'ofitc from ]Ja-
tire "(/I/-OC(" }JlIffCrII of decoration and t()rsion gia Tril/(/a (l l ('raklirlll .H t/ . ('UIII). l'hofogrol'h
(Heraklion ~/1I.selllll). PllOt"graph" courtesy cot/rll'Sy Bi/tlarcilit; Foto Mar/mrg.
rDAP, ..\tllcn~.

PLATE:2 . Minoall Crete

CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 13

THE FIRST MEN AND CULTURES IN GREECE 3

HUMAN HISTORY is not simply a mechanical response to

geographical factors, important though these may be in deter-
mining ultimate limits or in predisposing men in certain direc-
tions. In the Aegean basin the activities of its inhabitants have
varied widely over many aeons in reflection of external influences
and internal innovations. Paleolithic remains have been found in
Greece; but the first patterns of human settlement which can be
described are those of Neolithic farmers, probably from the fifth
millennium B.C. onward.
Neolithic sites have emerged all over Greece in recent years,
for the archaeologists have turned their attention more con-
sciously to this era. To keep abreast of the constantly widening
picture of the excavations a student must rely not only upon the
slow tempo of professional reports but also upon newspaper
accounts and oral summaries. Very early layers, in which pottery
was not yet used, have just been found in Thessaly near Larisa
and at Sesklo; similar pre-pottery levels of settled farmers are
known from such Near Eastern sites as Khirokitia in Cyprus and

3 General surveys: Carl W. Blegen, (Baltimore, 1933); Vladimir MilojCic,

"Preclassical Greece-A Survey," AA 1954, 1-28; AA 1955, 157-231;
BSA, XLVI (1951), 16-24; V. Gor- BCH, LXXXI ( 1957), 593-96.
don Childe, The Dawn of European Examples in central and southern
Civilization (6th ed.; New York, Greece: Leslie W. Kosmopoulos, The
1958), and Prehistoric Migrations in Prehistoric Inhabitation of Corinth, I
Europe (Oslo, 1950); Friedrich Matz, (Munich, 1948); Emil Kunze, Orcho-
Randbuch der Archiiologie, II (Mu- menos, II (Munich, 1931); Doro Levi,
nich, 1950), 177 ff.; Fritz Schacher- "Abitazioni preistoriche sulle pendici
meyr, Die iiltesten Kulturen Griechen- meridionali dell' Acropoli," Annuario,
lands (Stuttgart, 1955), 37-150, and XIII-XIV (1930-31), 411-98; Ha-
s.v. Pdihistorische Kulturen Griechen- zel D. Hansen, "The Prehistoric Pot-
lands in PW, 1359-1400; A. J. B. tery on the North Slope of the Acrop-
Wace, "The Prehistoric Exploration of olis, 1937," Hesperia, VI (1937),
the Greek Mainland," BCR, LXX 539-70; D. R. Theocharis, "Nea Ma-
( 1946), 628-38, and "The History of kri," AM, LXXI (1956), 1-29; J. L.
Greece in the Third and Second Mil- Caskey's forthcoming publication of
lenniums B.C.," Historia, II (1953), Lerna, the excavation of which is
74-94· briefly reported in R esperia, XXIII
Thessaly: Chr. Tsountas, 'AI ( 1954) and following.
7rPOICf'TOp'Ka! CiKP07ro)l.flCf t;,II-L'T)V{OV Kal Cyclades: Hubert Gallet de San-
~<CfK)l.oV
(Athens, 1908); Hazel D. terre, Delos primitive et archaique
Hansen, Early Civilization in Thessaly (Paris, 1958), 20-23.
2
 PART I . The Early Aegean

Jericho. Then came the more developed strata which we have

been accustomed to associate with the word "Neolithic."
One such site whiCh has long been known and so has
commonly been used for illustrative purposes is Thessalian
Sesklo; for though Thessaly was somewhat isolated and atypical
in all eras, early farmers here inhabited the same spots con-
tinuously enough to build up little hillocks with some stratifica-
tion of deposits. In the Sesklo level which Tsountas excavated
fifty years ago men lived in houses of clay or stone foundations
and rectangular shape; oval huts of more perishable materials
occur elsewhere. Among the household wares were pots, often
painted or incised in zigzag patterns. Female figurines of clay
and stone, which are a hallmark of Neolithic' strata, are some-
times of lumpy, abstract proportions, sometimes rather natural~
istic and indicative of a keen eye (see Plate Ib). Seals, obsidiaI1
from the island of Melos, and other evidences of relatively
advanced life occur. The basic economic mode was agriculture,
which rested on a variety of crops and was supplemented by
some herding and fishing. In Thessaly a remarkably heavy popu-
lation was supported by these means, and the Neolithic settle-
ments at Corinth and Cnossus were extensive. Shipping was also
known; some sites on the sea, such as Nea Makri in Attica, seem
to have been chosen with an eye in part to their commercial (or
fishing) advantages.
Today it is evident that the Neolithic villages of Thessaly
were not the only such settlements in Greece, nor were they even
necessarily the first farming communities in the Aegean. Scat-
tered evidence from cen~ral Greece betrays much the same pat-
terns with local variations, though the mounds left by the early
hamlets have not yet received much attention. The Peloponnesus
was also settl~d, and at Lema the Neolithic inhabitants left
valuable stratified deposits. The Cretan Neolithic level is rich at
Cnossus; only in the Aegean islands and on the coast of .t\sia
Minor is direct evidence for settlement at this time still extremely
sparse. The importance of the Cyclades, however, at the begin-
ning of the next phase suggests strongly that human inhabitation
oLthe islands went back well into the Neolithic period.
The ultimate source of this way of life lay not in the Aegean
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 15
but in the ancient Orient. Recent investigations have virtually
fixed on the grassy upland hills of the Near and Middle East as
the scene where agriculture emerged and whence it radiated to
much of Europe and Asia! Here several kinds of wheat and
barley grew wild, as well as the ancestors of domesticated goats
and sheep. The step to deliberate food-raising seems to have been
taken before 6000 B.C.; Jericho was a walled settlement in the
seventh millennium. These early farmers molded female figu-
rines, presumably as fertility emblems in connection with agri-
cultural rites and beliefs, and soon developed pottery. Copper,
too, quickly came into use, first hammered out cold from chance-
found natural lumps and then reduced from ore and cast.
It is universally agreed that agriculture with its companion
achievements spread west to the Aegean-this indebtedness to
the East is the major point about the Neolithic which we must
keep in mind as a pointer for the forces affecting later Greek
development. There is still great controversy over many of the
details of the passage. One early agricultural settlement has
recently been found in southwestern Asia Minor, at Hacilar,
which has affinities both with Sesklo and with prehistoric Mersin
in Cilicia; but, despite some as yet uncertain connections of
Hacilar with other south-central Turkish sites, we do not have
any firm testimony for the spread of agricultural techriiques by
land from the Orient to the Aegean. All that can be said is that
throughout all sites so far known in Asia Minor and in Greece the
Neolithic advance owed much to direct or indirect impetus from
Halafian and other early cultures of Mesopotamia. Mersin and
Hacilar, which lay much closer to this nucleus, experienced a
wider range of change than did Sesklo. 5

4 Useful general studies are Robert J. yon, Digging Up Jericho (London,

Braidwood, "Reflections on the Origin 1957), 51-76.
of the Village-Farming Community," 5 John Garsta.ng, Prehistoric Mersin
Aegean and Near East, 22-31, and (Oxford, 1953), 143-44, by Schacher-
''The Earliest Village Communities of meyr; Hetty Goldman, Excavations at
Southwestern Asia," Journal of World Gozlii Kute, Tarsus, II (Princeton,
History, I (1953), 278-310; V. Gor- 1956); Jame~ Mellaart, "Excavations
don Childe, New Light on the Most at Hacilar," AnatSt, VIII (1958), 127-
Ancient East (4th ed.; New York, 56, who is also much influenced by
1952), and What Happened in His- Schachermeyr. The parallels of Mersin,
tory (London, 1942); Kathleen Ken- Sesklo, and Ralaf are conveniently fl.
 PART I . The Early Aegean
On the whole I am inclined to suspect, in the present state
of our evidence, that the new techniques came primarily by sea
and that they were passed on as ideas rather than as baggage in a
large-scale migration of peoples. Such a conclusion, it should be
noted, stands in opposition to the views of many archaeologists,
who postulate early movements of Oriental farmers; in support
of their assumption stands the axiom that cultural transfers in
prehistoric eras generally entailed ethnic shifts.
Before considering further the implications of this axiom for
Aegean history, it is imperative that I indicate my views as to the
historical use of archaeological evidence and assumptions; for
these views underlie both the interpretations and the methods of
approach which will appear in subsequent pages. Virtually all
the centuries of Greek development which will be considered in
this volume are prehistoric in the sense that they lack datable
written documents, apart from the tantalizing hints of the
Mycenaean tablets. In such a period the historian must turn first
to the archaeological evidence, which may be mute but is at least
relatively sure as to temporal and geographical location. Only
after building a solid framework on this material can he hope to
employ-and then secondarily-the hints to be derived from
literature, chronological and genealogical traditions, and mythol-
ogy, most of which were long preserved only in oral forms. The
dangers of proceeding primarily from this latter type of evidence,
which is, alas, the common method, will be illuminated at several
points in our story.
The historian thus is deeply indebted to the archaeologist.
He must also trust his confrere in the depths of his alien field, as
in the detailed application of the ever more ~killed techniques of
excavation and in the factual interpretation of the discoveries,
though even here the historian must keep a wary eye for hidden
prejudices,. faulty methods of digging, and other dangers. The
more the historical student knows of archaeological practices
and the more detailed his study can be of the actual evidence at
lustrated in Schachermeyr, Die iilte- LV (1951), ~21-33. Early Cyprus,
steil Kulturen, 60-61. which lay in independent isolation at
Parallels in figurines are studied this time (as often later), is illumi-
by Saul S. Weinberg, "Neolithic Figu- nated by Porphyrios Dikaios, Khiroki-
rines and Aegean Interrelations," AJA, tia (London, 1953).
CIIAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 17
first hand, the better. Beyond this pOint, the man trained in
historical discipline must always be alert to the limitations and
the logical problems of the archaeological outlook. He must, in
sum, be both grateful and cautious.
To take an example or two, excavators can discover only
physical objects, but not all human activity leaves behind it such
testimony. Archaeologists tend often-with hOIlorable exceptions
-to take a materialistic view of the cultures which they uncover
and to overstress the economic and social side of life. This
tendency affects particularly their views of religion; it also helps
to explain why.a historian always has difficulty in adjusting the
history of a society which rests on written records to its pre-
history, which depends solely on archaeological materials. Ar-
chaeologists are, again, naturally hopeful scholars, dedicated to
the propDsi'tiDn t\lat e'Verytbing bas signincance; b'CA we 71".('0'1>\ TtO\
forget, in our sober search for truth, that men in all ages have
engaged in whimsey.
And, finally, to return to the issue immediately at hand,
cultural change in a primitive society is too often considered to
be a mechanical product of outside influences introduced solely
via movement of peoples. Complex concepts, stlch as the practice
.of agriculture, are not easily discovered afresh and were, for the
most part, fairly clearly transmitted from one place of origin. Yet
their mode of diffusion need not have been large-scale migration.
The historian will call to mind numerous occasions in more recent
epochs when considerable innovations have resulted simply from
commercial or intellectual intercourse, with at most the passage
of a few experts-e.g., the spread of Renaissallce art over north-
ern Europe or the transmittal of the Industrial Revolution from
England to the continent of Europe and to North America. Less
extensive changes can often occur simply through imitation; one
must never forget that motifs in pottery and other materials,
often heralded as evidence of outside forces, may be independ-
ently invented in seve~al areas. 6
G J. D. S. Pendlebury, Studies Pre- tween Neolithic Thessaly and modem
sented to D. M. Robinson, I (St. Louis, Mexico, though the vase shapes and
1951), 185: "Likenesses are great pit- painted patterns are hard to distin-
falls, and he would be a rash man guish." Henri Frankfort, Studies in
who would trace any connection be- Early Pottery of the Near East, II
 PART I . The Early Aegean

The important matter in any era is its general cultural out-

look. Changes in this pattern may be of local origin; at times in
Greek history we can show indebtedness to other societies. In the
latter cases, the vehicle of the innovations needs to be sought, but
the progress of early Aegean history has been much overcompli-
cated by the unnecessary assumption of hypothetical invasions,
which then become the primary focus of attention. As we shall
see in later pages, evidences of migration will occur where no
immediate cultural revolution is visible; and, on the other hand,
massive changes will take pla~e in Greek culture which are not
connected with any major movements-e.g., the Orientalizing
wave of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Particularly where
advanced cultures flourish close to relatively backward areas, the
possibility exists of simple imitation and adaptation of ideas by
an already existing population in the less developed regions. This
condition obviously existed throughout most of the history of the
early Aegean, ,which lay in happy proximity to the Oriental
center of early civilization.
The skeletal remains of the earliest population of Greece are
too scanty to support any firm conclusion, but suggest that the
land then had already a variety of human types. These types
were largely but not entirely of Mediterranean nature, and may
have entered Greece from the southeast, the south, and the
north. When each variety came, we do not know; they may have
been on hand in the late Paleolithic period and could have
increased rapidly in numbers once settled agricultural life was
adopted. Thenceforth, certainly, the inhabitants 'of Greece were
essentially descended from the mixture of stocks visible in Neo-
lithic times. Alpine and other types were added later-at times
in small numbers, at other points in more massive- quantities-
but over the centuries merged into the already existing popula-
tion.' .

(London, 1927), 2, thus illustrates similar results; see Georg Hanfmann,

three Pueblo vessels which are very Altetruskische Plastik I· (Wiirzburg,
similar in pattems to early Aegean and 1936 ),91.
European wares. Within the baSically 7 Greece: J. Lawrence Angel, "Neo-
parallel framework of ancient Medi- lithic Ancestors of the Greeks," AlA,
terranean society, moreover, the same XLIX (1945), 252-60, and "Skeletal
principles may independently produce Material from Attica," Hesperia, XIV
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 19
Development within the Neolithic age is hazily visible,
though this picture is less easily drawn now that we must cope
with a broad panorama of finds and can begin to sense the exist-
ence of local variations. 8 The period, too, apparently covers a
far longer span of time than has generally been assumed. Since
the Neolithic settlement at Mersin began by 6000 B.C. and Haci-
lar in southwestern Asia Minor, which has parallels to Sesklo,
was under way in the sixth millennium, the Sesklo level in Thes-
saly may have to be put back to the early fifth millennium. Re-
cent discoveries in Thessaly would tend to confirm this by their
proof that a variety of cultures existed both before and after this
level. Some scholars have divided the Neolithic period as a
whole in the favorite trinitarian classification of archaeology and
essay to demonstrate Early, Middle, and Late phases, based
largely on pottery patterns; even more minute subdivisions and
cross-currents are sometimes argued.
These changes need not concern us, but the widespread
argument mtlst be noted which attributes various somewhat un-
usual influences to an invasion of northerners. Among these
cultures, marked often by the use of spirals and meanders, are
those of Rachmani, of the first known settlements in the Aegean
islands, and especially of Dimini and its parallels, which reach
down into southern Greece. The common source of such cultures,
it is argued, is the Bandkeramik pattern of spirals and meanders
prevalent all across the great European plain in this era.9

(1945), .279-363, with articles there Siidosteuropas (Berlin, 1949); Saul S.

cited. Asia Minor: Angel, Troy: The Weinberg, Relative Chronologies in
Human Remains (Princeton, 1951); Old World Archeology (Chicago,
Goetze, Kletnasien, 8-12; Muzaffer 1954), 86-88; Fritz Schachermeyr,
$enyiirek in Seton Lloyd, Early Ana- "Die AbfoIge der neoIithischen KuI-
tolia (London, 1956), 205-09, who turen in Griechenland," Geras A.
summarizes his articles in Belleten. Keramopoulou (Athens, 1953), 89-
See also C. S. Coon, The Races of 104; MeHart, AnatSt, VnI (1958),
Europe (new ed.; New York, 1948); 156; carbon-14 date of 6000 B.C. for
J. L. Myres, Geographical History in Mersin, ibid. 33.
Greek Lands (Oxford, 1953), 19-.21; 9 Beyond the works listed in n. 3
and below, Chap. 2, n. -9 (p. 72-). (p. 13), see also the following: Ch.
Are later changes in body types en- DeIvoye, "Remarques sur la seconde
tirely the result of added elements civilisation neolithique du continent
from outside? grec et des iles avoisinantes," BCH,
8 Vladimir Milojcic, Die Chronologie LXXllI (1949), 29-124; Frankfort,
der jungeren Steinzeit Mittel-und Studies in Early Pottery of the Near
20 PART I . The Early Aegean

The problem of northern contacts is not simply a minor

archaeological matter, but one which plunges to the heart of the
vital forces at work all across Greek history. Those who try to
introduce northerners into the Aegean world at every possible
opportunity do so, consciously or unconsciously, in an effort to
link its progress to Indo-European sources. The ramifications of
this Nordic myth will concern us later; here it may be observed
that the Neolithic period is perhaps the poorest in which to as-
sume movements from the north. The restlessly surging tribes of
Europe quite possibly were already throwing off splinter groups
southward; and odd pots which smack of alien origins turn up
sporadically in almost any excavation of a prehistoric Aegean
site. Yet the evidence that whole cultures of this world, Dimini
or any other, before the Middle Helladic era were indebted to
northern sources is far from conclusive. Contact between the Bal-
kans and the Aegean existed at this time, but the weight of argu-
ment is perhaps heavier that ideas moved mainly northward
from the Aegean throughout the Neolithic centuries. 1 Both the
difficulties of terrain and the very different ecological conditions
in the Balkans, however, always required very extensive changes

East, II, 14 If.; Kimon Grundmann, Central Balkans: Connections and

"Aus neolithischen Siedlungen bei La- Parallels with the Aegea, the Central
risa," AM, LVII (1932), 102-23, Danube Area and Anatolia," AJA,
"Donaulandischer Import im steinzeit- LXI (1957), 137"":49; Wace, Historia,
lichen Thessalien," AM, LIX (1934), n (1953),78-80; Weinberg, Relative
123-36, and "Magula Hadzimissio- Chronologies, 97. On the coupling of
tiki," AM, LXII (1937),56-69; Erik J. spiral and meander with central Eu-
Holmberg, "Some Notes about the rope, note their appearance in early
Ethnical Relations of Prehistoric Sicily and Italy: L. Bernabe, Brea,-.Sic-
Greece," Opus. arch., VI ( 1950), 129- ily before the Greeks (London, 1957),
38; Fritz Schachermeyr, "Dimini und 53,55·
die Bandkeramik," Priihistorische For- The old argument that the' -rec"
schungen (Anthr0Eologische Gesell- tangular house with foreporch at Di-
schaft in Wien, IV ,[1954]), Gallet de mini, a prototype of the later megaron,
Santerre, Delos primitive, 23 n. 5, on reflects northern influence is even more
possible Cycladic influence. doubtful; the type appears even ear-'
1 V. Gordon Childe, Prehistoric Migra- lier in Thessaly (MilojCic, AA 1955,
tions, 48-51, The Danube in Pre- 167) and in the Near East (Schacher-
history (Oxford, 1929), and "The Re- meyr, Die iiltesten Kulturen, 112-,14).
lations between Greece and Prehistoric On the megaron, see also A. W. Law-
Europe," Acta congressus Madvigiani, rence, Greek Architecture (Har-
I (Copenhagen, 1958),293-315; Mio- mondsworth, 1957),67-68.
drag Grbic, "Preclassical Pottery in the
 CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 21

in those ideas and customs which did pass back and forth be-
tween Danubian and Aegean cultures.
The springs of Neolithic development, in sum, can be seen,
but not its detailed progress. First, surely, we must put an initial
impetus from the Orient, which probably came chiefly by sea;
this force made its way beyond the Aegean even more slowly and
incompletely. Both facts may warn us against any tendency to
treat the Neolithic age in Greece as a straight copy of Oriental
prototypes. As the pots of Greek farmers differed markedly from
those of Syrian villagers, so too undoubtedly did the ideas in their
heads; only in the largest sense was the eastern Mediterranean of
Neolithic times one cultural province. Once agricultural life was
under way in the Aegean, moreover, there is no compelling ar-
chaeological evidence against concluding that it developed es-
sentially on its own for centuries.

THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 2

FOLLOWING THE NEOLITHIC comes the Bronze age, an era

.. which has different names in the separate parts of the Aegean
world. In Greece the very long span from the early third millen-
nium to 1100 B.C. is currently divided into Early Helladic, down

2 General Surveys: Schachenneyr, Die Settlement near Corinth ( Concord,

iiltes~en Kulturen, 153-264, and 8.V. New Hampshire, 1921), Zygouries: A
Prahistorische Kulturen in PW, 1400- Prehistoric Settlement in the Valley of
47; the other works listed in n. 3 Cleonae (Cambridge, Mass., 1928),
(p. 13), with a bibliography down to and Prosymna: The Helladic Settle-
1947 in Saul S. Weinberg, AlA, LI ment Preceding the Argive Heraeum,
( 1947), 166-67. Examples in Greece: 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1937); and
Hetty Goldman, Excavations at Eu- secondly upon the classification of pot-
tresis in Boeotia (Cambridge, Mass., tery of the Bronze age by A. J. B.
1931 ); W. A. Heurtley. Prehistoric Wace and Blegen, "The Pre-Myce-
Macedonia (Cambridge, 1939); Emil naean Pottery of the Mainland," BSA,
Kunze, Orchomenos, III (Munich, XXII (1916-18), 175-89.
1934); Kurt Milller, Tiryns, IV (Mu- Cycladic divisions are based pri-
nich, 1938); the excavations at Lerna. marily on the British excavations of
The Helladic divisions rest ini- Phylakopi, 1896-1899: T. D. Atkinson
tially on Blegen's careful excavation in and others, Excavations at Phylakopi
1915-16 of Korakou: A Prehistoric in Mews (Society for the Promotion
zz PART I . The Early Aegean

to about 1950; Middle Helladic, from about 1950 to 1580; and

Late Helladic, from about 1580 to 1100. The development of the
Aegean islands, excluding Crete, is marked by a roughly parallel
Early, Middle, and Late Cycladic. On the coast of Asia Minor,
unfortunately, excavation has thus far been too limited to permit
any such divisions; the most suitable relative yardstick of the
region is that furnished by the levels of Troy, Troy I-V being
Early Bronze, Troy VI Middle Bronze, and Troy VI-VII Late
Bronze.
The physical evidence for the period is far greater than for
the Neolithic age, and periodic cross-checks can be obtained for
some sites through wares imported from other Greek centers,
from Minoan Crete, and even from Oriental lands. In the last
centuries of the Bronze age, moreover, we can break for a mo-
ment the limits implicit in purely archaeological evidence and '
gain a wider view of men's thoughts and institutions through
written documents (and perhaps oral tradition). The great de-
velopments of the third and second millennia are three: first, a
new, powerful impetus from the east; then an undoubted inva-
sion from the north; and finally that amalgam of influences which
we call the Mycenaean age. .
The shift from Neolithic to Early Bronze is not a tidy step
in Greece itself. Such settlements as Asine appear only in the
Early Helladic period; at Athens the pottery typical of this era
does not lie with Neolithic ware, yet at some sites about Corinth
there is a mixture of old and new; Qrchomenos and other pOints
break from the Neolithic rather sharply and late. 3 In most dis-
tricts Early Helladic pottery differs quite evidently from Neo-
lithic styles, and in its high burnish, monochrome treatment, and

of Hellenic Studie~" Supp. Paper IV, primitive, 24-27; C. Zervos, L'Art des
1904); R. M. Dawkms andJ. P. Droop, Cyclades (Paris, 1957).
"Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos, Troy and Western Asia MinOJ::
1911," BSA, XVII (1910-11), 1-22. C. W. Blegen et aI., Troy, I (Prince-
Other evidence to 1947 is listed in ton, 1950); Goetze, Kleinasien, 19-36;
Saul S. Weinberg, AJA, LI (1947), Winifred Lamb, Excavations at
176-77. See also K. Scholes, "The Thermi in Lesbos (Cambridge, 1936);
Cyclades in the Later Bronze Age: A see ILN, August 3, 1957, 197-99. on
Synopsis," BSA, LI ( 1956), 9-40, who the recent Italian finds at Poliochni.
gives a useful conspectus of the later 3 Weinberg. AlA, LI (1947), 171-72.
stages; Gallet de Santerre, Delos
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 23
clean shapes seems to simulate metal wares (see Plate la). These
patterns have clear connections across the Aegean islands to
northwestern Asia Minor, where a generally common culture has
been found at Chios, Thermi (on Lesbos), Poliochni (on Lem-
nos), Troy I, and elsewhere. Somewhat developed' Early Hel-
ladic vases have turned up in the middle of the Troy I settlement,
which has, however, ties to inland Asia Minor also. Influences of
this northwestern Asia Minor culture, in tum, have appeared at
Mersin in Cilicia in a layer dated about 2900-2800 B.C.'
On the basis of these interconnections we should be able to
assign an approximate date B.C. to the beginning of the Early
Bronze age. Troy I, which is the basic key, is, however, not en-
tirely fixed. Its American. excavators extend its duration over
about 3000 to 2600, while others essay to lower the foundation to
2700.5 Fortunately for our purposes this disagreement is not a
serious stumbling block; the Early Helladic era was a long one on
either basis, and its consecutive stages of development are be-
coming somewhat clearer, thanks to excavations at Lema and
elsewhere. On the whole, if Early Minoan culture begins in
Crete only about 2700, it would seem dangerous to assign really
Bronze-age patterns elsewhere in the Aegean to a much earlier
date.
More critical is the problem of the events which produced
the change to Early Bronze cultures all over this area. This issue
must be placed in a wide framework, for the coming of the Bronze
age is not just a matter of changing outlooks among the ever more
proficient potters or of an increasing frequency of the wares of
the metalsmith. Both of these developments can be traced back
into the last stages of the Neolithic era; 6 the really significant
4 Garstang, Prehistoric Mersin, 183- claim that Early Helladic wares ap-
84, 188; Goldman, Tarsus, II, 61, 347; pear in Mid-Troy I. F. Matz, "Zur
M. V. Seton-Williams, "Cilician Sur- agaischen Chronologie der friihen
vey," AnatSt, IV (1954),121-74 .. Bronzezeit," Historia, I (1950), 173-
5 Troy, I, 40-41; Goetze, Kleinasien, 94, reduces Troy I to 2600 and Early
35-36. For 2700; Milojci6, Chronolo- Helladic to 2500 on.
gie, 25-27; Schache~meyr S;V. Pra- 6 Childe, BSA, XXXVII (1936-37),
historische Kulturen, 1357-58; James 26-35; Frankfort, Studies in Early
Mellaart, "Anatolian Chronology in Pottery of the Near East, II, 29 H.;
the Early and Middle Bronze Age," Schachermeyr, Die iiltesten Kulturen,
AnatSt, VII (1957), 55-88, who es- 126 H.
says (pp. 79-84) to refute Blegen'S
24 PART I . The Early Aegean

marks of the Bronze age are much more sweeping and general-
ized. They emerged in the last analysis neither in Asia Minor nor
in Greece but in the primary seat of early civilization, the ancient
Orient.
By the fourth millennium the upland farmers in this area
were moving down into the fertile river valleys of Mesopotamia
and Egypt.7 Equipped with the necessary technical facilities of
improved tools and animal power, these men had also evolved the
requisite social organization; for settlement of the plains had to
be virtually a conscious act by a fairly large number of human
beings who were prepared to dam and dike and to dig canals on
a large scale. Once this step had been taken, subsequent devel-
opment was swift. On their surplus of food the villages of the
valleys grew rapidly in size and population; before 3500 they had
in Mesopotamia the appearance of towns, with markets for the
interchange of goods. Then, in the last centuries of the fourth
millennium, civilization suddenly crystallized in the Orient. Spe-
cialization of economic activity, writing, kingship and military
expansion, monumental architecture and art, the working of
bronze-all could be found by 3000 in the firmly organized states
of Mesopotamia, clustered about the imposing temples of the
gods, and in the consolidated kingdom of Egypt.
From these nuclei new forces spread outward. Elsewhere, to
be sure, the basic requirement of rich land was not always pres-
ent, and so only parts of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian
achievements appear throughout most of the Orient during the
third millennium B.C. The Aegean, still farther off, picked up the
new waves in even less degree, but the impetus was enough to set
off Early Bronze cultures-Early Minoan in Crete, the north~ _
western Asia Minor complex about Troy, Early Cycladic in the
islands, and Early Helladic in Greece. That this impetus came
principally by sea is clearer than for the Neolithic wave. The
latest studies of early Asia Minor are beginning to disentangle
several cultural areas for the third millennium, but on present
7 See generally Robert J. Braidwood, Civilization in the Near East (Bloom-
The Near East and the Foundations ington, Indiana, 1951); Ann L. Per-
for Civilization (Eugene, Oregon, kins, The Comparative Archeolog'} of
1952); Childe, The Most Ancient Early Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1949).
East; Henri Frankfort, The Birth of
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 25
evidence there was no direct, easy flow of ideas and wares across
the heart of the peninsula. 8
Within the Aegean itself archaeologists seem almost uncon-
sciously to accord priority for the new ways to the area about
Troy, for they generally agree in deriving Early Helladic pottery
patterns from an extensive migration westward across the Aegean
and perhaps also around its northern end by land.9 The bases of
this argument are, first, the apparent imitation in Early Helladic
pottery of metal prototypes which seem to have originated in
western Asia Minor; then the perceptible influence of Cycladic
culture on mainland settlements; and finally the progress of Early
Helladic from south to north in Greece. Thessaly, in particular,
was late in taking up the new ways. A recent theory suggests
that this Aegean migration was in turn a reflex to major invasions
of peoples speaking Indo-European languages, who would have
pushed from the southeast Balkans into Asia Minor.l
Here, certainly, we must be cautious, less we fall into the
common tendency of treating early peoples and cultures like bil-
liard balls, bouncing one against another to set a whole table in
motion. Movements in western Asia Minor about the middle of
the third millennium, while possible, are not absolutely fixed, and

8 Kurt Bittel, Grundzuge der Vor- und ostlichen Mittelmeeres im 3. und 2.

Fruhgeschichte Kleinasiens (2d ed.; lahrtausend v. ehr. (Leipzig, 1924).
Tiibingen, 1950), 16-24; Seton 9 E.g., Childe, Prehistoric Migrations,
Lloyd, Early Anatolia, 62-63; James 53-55, 58-62. Heurtley's argument
Mellaart, "Preliminary Report on a that the forces moved primarily by
Survey of Preclassical Remains in land from Asia Minor via Macedonia
Southern Turkey," AnatSt, IV (1954), must meet the serious objections
175-240; C. A. Burney, "Northern raised by Weinberg, AlA, LI (1947),
Anatolia before Classical Times," 169.
AnatSt, VI (1956), 179-203, and 1 Mellaart, AnatSt, VII (1957), 55-
"Eastern Anatolia in the Chalcolithic 88, and "The End of the Early Bronze
and Early Bronze Age," AnatSt, VIII Age in Anatolia and the Aegean,"
( 1958), 157-209. The survey of sur- AJA, LXII (1958), 9-33. The in-
face sherds by James Mellaart, "Some vaders would belong to the Gumel-
Prehistoric Sites in North-Western nitza cultures about 2500 B.C. This ar-
Anatolia," Istanbuler Mitteilungen, VI gument rests on the assumption that
( 1955), 53-88, suggests again that Indo-European Luwians had come to
early Troy had inland connections; at Beycesultan in lower western Asia
this point it seems as probable that Minor by 2300 B.C.: Seton Lloyd and
forces moved inwards as that they James Mellaart, "An Early Bronze
came down toward the coast. Age Shrine. at Beycesultan," AnatSt,
Seafaring in this era: A. Koster, VII (1957),27-36.
Schiffahrt und Handelsverkehr des
26 PART I . The Early Aegean
their connections with the appearance of Indo-Europeans on the
fringe of the then civilized world remain problematicaP In any
case these background events, which are rather late to explain
the appearance of the Early Bronze age in Greece, are not our
main concern; nor need the historian even accept the argument
that extensive movement took place from east to west across the
Aegean in the early third millennium. The only aspect of the
physical evidence in Greece which really points in this direction
is the frequent change in sites .of settlement at the beginning of
the Early Bronze era, and this, as will be noted shortly, may have
another explanation.
Is it likely, indeed, that the great Oriental developments
found their first major Aegean reaction solely in its most north-
eastern recess, about Troy? This area may have led in metal tech-
niques and in taking over the potter's wheel; but until sounder '
evidence is at hand we shall be safer to assume that all parts of
the Aegean basin entered on basically independent, parallel, and
limited imitations of Oriental progress, the Cyclades perhaps
being in the lead chronologically. Within the common flow these
districts had each its own peculiarities, and cross-influences ac-
cordingly now become more perceptible. Such influences need
not have been accompanied by anything more than a most re-
stricted movement of smiths and other new specialists to and fro.
And, in passing, it may be commented that there is no direct
physical testimony thus far for major incursions from the north
during Early Helladic times. s
To consider now the characteristics of the Early Helladic
period itself, one obvious mark is the change in pottery styles
which has already been noted. Metals appear in much greater-
quantities than in late Neolithic sites and are ,employed for more
2 Goetze, Kleinasien, 9-10, postulates indogennanische Schicht," Glotta,
considerable physical change in the XIV ( 1925), 300-19; Siegfried Fuchs,
population of Asia Minor, as do many Die griechischen Fundgruppen der
in connection with the arrival of the friihen Bronzezeit und ihre auswiirti-'
Hittites. Brachycranes at Alaca Hii- gen Beziehungen (Berlin, 1937). But
yiik: ~enyiirek, Early Anatolia, 207- the efforts to show northern influences
08. As Angel, Khirokitia, 422, warns, at this time are generally rejected
however, we do not know that short- even by adherents of the Nordic
heads came in the Bronze age. school.
3 Contra, Paul Kretschmer, "Die prot-
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 27
purposes; excavations at this level have uncovered gold, silver,
and electrum ornaments as well as vases, weapons, and other
objects in bronze. Many of the latter items, however, are still
really copper, for tin was not easily obtainable. In general the
metals, difficult to work as they were, were far from ousting stone
and wood.
More significant in the development from the Neolithic age
to the Early Helladic era is the frequent change in the sites of
settlements. Some of the new locations simply reflected a great
increase in the population of the Aegean world as tools and tech-
niques improved; by the end of the era most of the major centers
of later Greece had been occupied. The new foundations, such as
the rabbit warren of Thermi, where the several-roomed huts hud-
dled close~packed on narrow lanes, were often of relatively large
dimensions, though we must remember that they were still agri-
cultural villages. The term "city," I may note, will be used in this
volume onJy for complex social and economic agglomerations
resting on conscious intellectual outlooks and on specialization of
functions; such nuclei could be supported by the richer lands of
the Orient but were not to appear in the backward Aegean for a
long time to come. Troy, for instance, is often mislabeled as a
city, whereas it was no more than a fortress; Troy II occupied less
than two acres.
Nevertheless, both industry and trade advanced noticeably
in the Aegean during the Early Bronze age, and this increase,
together with a tighter social and political organization, helps ~
part to explain the movement in sites of habitation. The skill of
the smiths is visible in much of the metal work, especially the
jewelry of the treasure of Priam from Troy II; for both in concept
and in execution this hoard far surpasses the roughly contem-
porary treasure of Alaca Hiiyiik in central Asia Minor. The pot-
tery, too, was well made, though still by hand; only at Troy II did
potters use the rotating wheel, already discovered in the Orient.
Such shapes as the sauce boat (Plate la) are typical. Painted
ware .also appears; on Plate Id I illustrate a vase from the last
Early Helladic stages at Lerna, which has a variant of a motif
(cross-hatched triangles) that appears now .sporadically, now
commonly, on down into archaic Greek pottery.
28 PART I . The Early Aegean

The growth of trade by sea is likewise unmistakable. Even in

Neolithic times the wide dispersal of Melian obsidian and the
location of seacoast sites attest the existence of shipborne trade.
Now new ports emerged, such as Asine; Early Cycladic wares and
other items have turned up in isolated examples as far west as
southern France and the Balearics and southward in Egypt;
boats themselves were sketched on Cycladic vases. 4 The argu-
ment that cultural forces came from the Orient largely by sea
gains support from this naval evidence, even though the details
of the conduct of trade entirely escape us at this early date.
The emergence of a tighter political organization is strongly
suggested by the very significant evidence of the ground plans of
several Early Bronze sites. Troy II, for instance, was essentially
a fortress deSigned to protect a chieftain's palace, a structure of
several rectangular buildings akin to the form which the Greeks "
later called the megaron and grouped about a courtyard. The
wealth of its ruler is suggested by the treasure buried within the
settlement; another hoard has recently been found at Poliochni.
At Lerna the large two-story House of the Tiles, erected of yel-
low stuccoeti mudbrick on stone foundations with terra-cotta
tiles for its Hat roof, must have been the abode of a powerful
ruler, whose seal was stamped on the palace stores. 5 Through
mastery over the agricultural population and in minor degree
through the riches drawn perhaps from trade and warfare, local
lords were growing powerful in Aegean lands.
For many aspects of life, unfortunately, only tantalizingly
inconclusive evidence is available. The existence of deliberate
burial customs from the Neolithic era on, together with the use
of female figurines and other evidence, indicates conscious reli-
4 Seaports: Otto Frodin and Axel W. Early Pottery of the Near East, II, '
Persson, Asine: Results of the Swedish 110-19; Schachermevr, Die iiltesten
Excavations, 1922-1930 (Stockholm, Kulturen, 174-75; Gallet de Santerre,
1938), 432-33 (obsidian from Melos, Delos primitive, 48-49.
vases from Crete, Cretan seals on 5 Caskey, Hesperia, XXIII (1954),
wooden and woven containers, Cretan 23-2 7; XXIV (1955), 37-41; XXV
stone vessels, Early Cycladic sherds, (1956), 162-65; Lawrence, Greek
etc.); George E. Mylonas, Aghios Kos- Architecture, 14-18. Asia Minor paral-
mas (Princeton, 1959); Theocharis, lel: Machteld J. Mellink, "The Royal
AM, LXXI (1956),1-2. Tombs at Alaca Huyuk and the Ae-
Cycladic trade: Bernabe) Brea, gean World," Aegean and Near East,
Sicily, 102-03; Frankfort, Studies in 39-58 .
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 29
gious views. These are generally associated with a concept of a
Great Mother, or fructifying nature; but, as I shall suggest later,
theorizing of this type and its ramifications into matriarchal ar-
guments had best be treated with cool reserve. So, too, the sur-
vival of place names such as Corinth and Assos which embodied
such elements as s( s) and rul/t( h) and the very large percentage
of words not of Indo-European root in the later Greek vocabulary
do not necessarily mean as much as scholars have often asserted.
Whether the place-name elements actually are not Indo-Euro-
pean is now very unsure, and the hypothesis that a primitive
Aegean language embodying these materials spread from the
southwestern corner of Asia Minor in Early Helladic times is
worse than doubtful. The seacoast of Lycia and Caria was virtu-
ally unsettled down to the first millennium B.C.; the basic postu-
late of a great migration westward across the Aegean we have
already criticized; and any early, lost tongue of the Aegean
world may well have been its basic speech in Neolithic times as
well. This language, indeed, might generally have been spoken
along the eastern and central European shores of the Mediter-
ranean if place names are actually a sound indication of language
distributions. 6

Though the Neolithic and Early Bronze ages differ in many

respects, the ethnic composition of Aegean peoples, as far as we
can speculate, remained essentially the same in this long stretch
of centuries. Throughout the era the primary influences ema-
nated from the Orient. At times these influences came as sharp
waves, but probably they were more often a constant pressure;
our evidence is too scanty to show Aegean development century
by century, let alone decade by decade. Internal interconnec-
tions among the various districts of the Aegean world itself grew
steadily throughout these periods, and are quite demonstrable
just before the disruption which ended the Early Bronze age. 1
6 Schachenneyr, Die iiltesten Kultu- and nd/t( h) as possibly Indo-Euro-
fen, 239-263, and s.v. Prahistorische pean, see Mellaart, AlA, LXII
Kulturen, 1494-1548, surveys the lit- (1958), 21-28; Goetze, Kleinasien,
erature and the evidence; on the risks 61; Franz Dirlmeier, Gnomon, XXVI
of using place names, d. Georges Du- ( 1954), 157.
mezil, Naissance de Rome (Paris, 1 Note the bowls with red cross in the
1944), 141-42. On the elements ss interior and red band about the inside
 PART I . The Early Aegean
By the end of the third millennium B.C. men in the Aegean
had created an agricultural society of village-dwellers, who used
tools both of metal, of stone, and of other materials and were
directed to a considerable extent by local lords. This structure
was still simple in comparison to the great cities of Mesopotamia
and the massive monarchy of Egypt; yet it was firmly rooted and
resilient. And if it were simple, Aegeap society was nonetheless
more advanced than that in any other part of continental Europe.

THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 8

NOT ALL of the factors which were to enter into the back-
ground of Greek civilization proper had yet been introduced by
2000 B.C. Off in Crete, the Minoan culture was just beginning to
rise; but before this refined civilization cast its glow northward,
mainland Greece itself experienced a great shock. Down to this
date there is no firm archaeological proof that any major waves of
northern invaders had entered Greece, though men of European
origin may well have infiltrated in ways too devious to affect
markedly our records. The beginning of the Middle Helladic era
(c. 1950 B.C.), however, was almost surely marked by a great
assault of peoples from the north. .

of the lip, which appear in Greece, indo-europeennes (8th ed.;· Paris,

Troy IV-V, Anatolia, and Tarsus: 1937); Richard Pittioni, Die urge-
Weinberg, Relative Chronologies, 89- schichtlichen Grundlagen der euro-
90; Mellaart, AnatSt, VII (1957), piiische Kultur (Vienna, 1959); E. D.
74-75· Phillips, "New Light on the Ancient
8 The background of Europe and History of the Eurasian Steppe," AlA,
the Indo-Europeans: V. Gordon LXI (1957), 26g-80. _
Childe, Prehistoric Migrations, 179 if., The Aegean proper: C. W. Ble-
and The Aryans (New York, 1926); gen, J. L. Caskey, and M. Rawson,
Albrecht Goetze, Hethiter, Churriter Troy, III: The Sixth Settlement
und Assyrer: Hauptlinien der tJorder- (Princeton, 1953); Fritz Schacher-
aslatischen Kulturentwicklung 1m II. meyr s.v. Priihistorische Kulturen,
/ahrtausend v. Chr. geb. (Oslo, 1447-75, 1489-94; Gallet de San-
1936); Hugh Hencken, Indo-Euro- terre, Delos primitive, 31-34; and the
pean Languages and Archeology other works listed in n. 3 (p. 13).
(American Anthropologist, Memoir Thessalian tardiness: Milojcic, AA
No. 84, 1955); A. Meillet, Introduc- 1955,205-06, 21g-Z0.
a
tion I'etude comparative des langues
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 31
To understand this significant development we must
broaden our gaze to include not only the Near East but also the
central reaches of Eurasia. From Neolithic times onward the
great plains of eastern Europe and Siberia had been the home of
unstable peoples, who became increasingly expert in nomadic
ways of life. Only after 1000 B.C. did they progress to the stage of
riding on horseback; in the second millennium the patriarchal
clans moved on foot, herding cattle and transporting their
women and valuables in carpet-hung wagons or on small steppe
horses. Whatever their mode of migration, the peoples of the
north poured down repeatedly across the more civilized lands of
the farming societies which stretched from the Mediterranean to
China-the last such invasion took place only five centuries ago
under Tamerlane.
These migrations cannot easily be compressed into the strait-
jacket of conventional historical causation, which is derived from
the pattern of stable, politically integrated agricultural and com-
mercial societies. Sometimes the more advanced cultures virtu-
ally invited this attack through being both rich and weak. At
rare points a master strategist and statesman, such as Jinghiz
Khan, arose to marshal and hurl his tribesmen southward. Me-
chanical factors-overpopulation, shortage of rainfall, and so on
-are often advanced in modern accounts but are rarely suscep-
tible of proof. The tendency to move was always inherent in the
society of the plains; on occasion either internal or external
factQrs facilitated this propensity and converted it into a full-
scale migration. 9
The second millennium B.C. experienced two great spillings-
out of the northern savages, one at its beginning and one close to
its end. In both cases the migrants spoke, at least in part, varieties
of Indo-European languages. Their sweep is commonly traced by
the appearance of these tongues, though, as investigation has
proceeded, it has become ever more difficult to be sure when
Indo-European speakers entered various areas. More datable
evidence of the actual invasions is afforded by mute marks of
9See Ower) Lattimore, Inner Asian 1951); Myres, Geographical History,
Frontiers of China (2d ed.; New York, 12 7-30, 177-78.
 PART I . The Early Aegeqn

extensive physical destruction and by ten-Hied references in those

areas which were already using some form of writing.
The earlier wave, which concerns us at the moment, scat-
tered its participants all the way from India across the Middle
East to western Europe. In Mesopotamia the Kassites of Babylo-
nia and the Mitanni of the upper Euphrates appeared before the
middle of the second millennium; in Asia Minor the Hittites were
masters of the central Halys region by at least the early second
millennium, if not before. They came perhaps across the Cau-
casus passes, and soon learned to write their native tongues in
cuneiform script,!
The evidence that one part of this wave entered Greece is
both archaeological and linguistic. The physical record shows
that Early Bronze sOciety underwent a very serious disturbance.
A decided break in settlement or destruction by fire is clear at
Asea, Malthi, Tiryns, Korakou, Zygouries, Aghios Kosmas, Orcho-
menos, and Eutresis. In other excavation reports similar testi-
mony appears: Corinth was deserted for a time; Asine was badly
damaged; Troy VI (c. 1900) obviously had new lords; the mid-
dle and northern islands of the Aegean seem almost, but 1).ot
quite, deserted. Thereafter an evidently new phase of Aegean
culture begins, which is labeled Middle Helladic (c. 1950-1580).
New styles of pottery, matt-painted or burnished monochrome
ware (gray, then red, yellow, and black), became dominant; 2
equally sharp changes are visible in architecture, burial rites,
and the general physical patterns of life.
None of this material pOints clearly to tile stages and routes
of invasion or to the source of the invaders. Some sites in Asia
Minor suffered destruction before the end of the Early Bron_ze
10. S. Gurney, The Hittites (London, East, II, 14-15, 137-44, strove to de-
1952); Goetze, Kleinasien, 82-183, rive this pottery from Neolithic-Early
treats the cultural aspects well. Helladic roots; Scoles, BSA, LI
2 Arne Furumark, The Mycenaean Pot- (1956), 23, suggests a Cycladic origin
tery: Analysis and Classification for the matt-painted ware; Mellaart,
(Stockholm, 1941), 214-35, gives the AlA, LXII (1958), 15-18, tries toes-
fullest analysis; see also the clarifying tablish the precedence of Minyan
retparks of Childe, Acta congressus ware in western Anatolia (but cf. Bit-
Madvigiani, I, 300-01; and Wace, tel, Gnomon, XXVIII [19561. 250-
Historia, II (1953), 83. Frankfort, 52). .
Studies in Early Pottery of the Near
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 33
era. The House of the Tiles at Lerna, in Greece itself, fell, and
quite a new type of pottery appears here after the evidence of
destruction (see Plate Id). The introduction of new peoples ac-
cordingly may have taken place over a considerable period; small
bands may have led the way in preliminary raids. But a more
massive, sudden sweep seems suggested, for the end of the Early
Bronze world is roughly contemporaneous across much of the
Middle and Near East as well as in Greece.s
The high road for this attack, one might assume, lay through
the Balkans and northern Greece, yet the facts do not clearly
point in this direction. Macedonia largely lingered in Neolithic
styles; the transition to Middle Helladic at some sites in Thessaly
seems to have been peaceful. Strong connections, on the other
hand, exist in pottery and others matters between western Asia
Minor and the Greek mainland, though styles of burial differ
between the two!
None of the phenomena, again, can be directly and unequiv-
ocally connected with the fashions of temperate Europe north of
the Balkans. The burnished monochrome pottery, which is called
Minyan after a legendary people of central Greece, turns up both
in Greece and in Asia Minor and at Lerna may have begun in
Early Helladic times. The matt-painted ware, which comes later,
seems to have been of purely local origin (see Plate IC). Neither
type points directly to the Balkans and beyond; nor are the stone
battle axes as strong a link between the Aegean and central Eu-
ropeas has often been stated. Weapons of similar shape appear
in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium B.C. and have been
found both in Asia Minor and in Greece during the Early Bronze
era. All that we can safely infer is that their greater prominence
at the time of the invasions, together with the appearance of the
3 C. F. A. Schaeffer, Stratigraphie accordingly suggests that the Hittites
comparee et chronologie de l'Asie oc- pushed other Indo-Europeans out of
cidentale (III' et II' milienaires) , I western Asia Minor and across the Ae-
(Oxford, .1948), 539-41, is a useful gean. This explains some Anatolian
conspectus, though unfortunate in its evidence, but does not account for
choice of explanation; Winifred such Aegean facts as the later pres-
Lamb, Iraq, XI (1949), 199, sums up ence of Greek-speaking peoples as a
the evidence in Asia Minor. reservoir in the western Balkans.
4 Mellaart, AlA, LXII (1958), 9-33,
 34 PART I . The Early Aegean

horse, perhaps refers back to the cultures of the European plain.G

At the very point at which the first almost certain migration from
the north into the Aegean basin took place, the physical material,
taken alone, neither proves an entry from outside nor shows its
direction of progress.
The main clue lies elsewhere. The Aegean world knew and
used writing before its next great upheaval; tbat writing, on the
tablets of Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere, can now essentially be
read; and the language of the tablets is Indo-European-Greek,
in fact. The detailed problems which ensue, such as the dialect of
the tablets, will be considered in Chapter 2; for the present point,
one of two conclusions follows. Either Greek had been the tongue
of Aegean peoples before the Middle Helladic period-and
against this conclusion one must place, first, the evidence, al-
ready noted, that an earlier language had been spoken in the,
. area; and, secondly, the fairly reliable consensus that the speak-
ers of Indo-European languages intruded elsewhere in the Mid-
dle East in the second millennium. Or, as virtually all scholars
in my judgment rightly agree, the great disruption at the begin-
ning of the Middle Helladic era reflects the coming of an Indo-
European people to the Aegean.
The true significance o£ this addition must be soberly as-
sessed. To the devotees of the Nordic myth, the entry of the men
who spoke Greek gave the vital impetus which, when reinforced
by a second wave of invasion at the end of the Mycenaean age,
led to the creation of Greek civilization. This argument I shall
examine at the close of Chapter 2, but it may be well to state
here two basic anthropological and physiological facts. A man
who spoke an Indo-European language did not necessarily share
with all his comrades one particular structure of body or color of
hair and eyes; and his blood stream did not carry any specific
outlook on life or aesthetic point of view.
A simple consideration of the physical evidence, on the other
hand, may lead one to underestimate the importance of the up-
heaval. To some extent the rapine with which the Middle Hel-
GCaskey, Hesperia, XXIV (1955), Asea in Arcadia (Lund, 1944), 11 If.;
36-37; Childe, Acta congressus Mad- Mellink, Aegean and Near East, 42;
vigiani, I, 300, 303-04; Erik J. Holm- N. Valmin, The Swedish Messenia Ex-
berg, The Swedish Excavations at pedition (Lund, 1938), 346-48.
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 35
ladic era opened meant a material setback, which is obvious in
the subsequent cultural patterns. The invaders were far more
barbaric than their subjects and perhaps pushed much of the
land back into nomadic ways. It is not surprising that they con-
tributed little of tangible nature which can be marked in the ar-
chaeological record; and one may doubt that they brought much
of a positive nature in religion, political organization, and other
impalpable aspects. Yet they did add something of great weight
-namely, an impetus to change. As outsiders, they had a cul-
tural background greatly different from that of the world to
which they had come; as masters, they could question and trans-
form old beliefs and standards.
Much of the old structure did endure: economically, in the
survival of agriculture in at least some areas; technically, in the
ways of the artisans; socially, in the village forms; even politi-
cally, in the maintenance of settlement generally on the same
sites. Throughout Greek history many of its greatest centers, such
as Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, kept pre-Greek names; the sites
in which culture was to be focused in Mycenaean times can be
shown archaeologically and linguistically to have existed before
the Greek-speaking peoples came. The invaders, too, took over
into their vocabulary many words from the earlier language,
especially terms for seafaring, spices, and other relatively ad-
vanced aspects of culture. Yet the new tongue, with its implicit
characteristics of logic and outlook on life, eventually supplanted
the old speech in most of the Aegean. Here, as in the rise of the
new styles of pottery, we can scent the great disturbance of old
ways of life and intellectual attitudes; only the break at the end
of the Mycenaean age was to approach its magnitude.
In view of the shock with which the Middle Helladic era
commenced, it is not surprising that the period was outwardly
undistinguished. Time was required to restore order and to knit
together the fabric of society; but by the end of the period the
earlier growth in population and extension of settlement had
resumed. The use of bronze became more common. By the mid-
dle of the period pottery was generally turned on a wheel, and
displays a number of local variations. While Hellas was a more
distin~t province in these centuries and its settlements at points
 PART I . The Early Aegean

retreated inland, trade by sea continued. By 1600 the mainland

of Greece had reached an adjustment between the old and new
elements, and its lords were ready to reach out and draw on the
glory of Middle Minoan culture which had been flowering in
Crete, untouched by the invasions.

THE PLACE OF MINOAN CIVILIZATION 6

FIFTY YEARS AGO scholars were so dazzled by the beauty and

freshness of Minoan civilization, which the ruthless drive of Sir
Arthur Evans's excavation was restoring to view, that they tended
to describe the palace of Cnossus as the culmination of Aegean
prehistory. Even now, as one wanders down the corridors of.
Cnossus, Phaestus, and other Cretan palaces which lead to lovely
staircases and the living quarters of their erstwhile lords, one
must muse on the gay, polished life passed by the kings and
ladies of Crete while Greece was still in barbarism. In the general
frame of Aegean development, however, the culture of Crete
shrinks to a more modest place. Minoan civilization was highly
significant both as an intermediary between the Orient and the
Aegean and as a spur to the development of the mainland; but it
was essentially an offshoot from the main line of Greek progress.
Basically, Crete illustrates what could happen to the Neo-
lithic-Early Bronze level of the Aegean when this stratum was

6 Minoan civilization: Helmut Th. Bos- XXXVI [1951], 341-45, and succeed-
sert, Altkreta (3d ed.; Berlin, 1937); ing volumes).
Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Mi- The arts of Crete: Furumark,
nos, 4 vols. (London, 1921-36); Mycenoean Pottery, llZ~213; H: A.
Friedrich Matz, Kreta, Mykene, Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest an£f
Troia: die minoische und homerische Movement: An Essay on Space and
Welt (2d ed.; Stuttgart, 1956); Time in the Representational Art of
J. D. S. Pendlebury, The Archaeology the Ancient Near East (Chicago,
of Crete (London, 1939); Luigi Per- 1951), 185-216; Lawrence, Greek
nier, Il palazzo minoico di Festo, z Architecture, 18-51; Friedrich Matz,
vols. (Rome, 1935-51). More recent Die friihkretischen Siegel: eine Un-
excavations at Phaestus have thrown tersuchung iiber das Werden des
into some doubt the conventional di- minoischen Stiles (Berlin, 1928);
visions of the Minoan period (e.g., G. A. S. Snijder, Kretische Kunst
Doro Levi, Bollettino dell' Arte, (Berlin, 1936); C. Zervos, L'Art de la
Crete (Paris, 1956).
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 37
influenced from the outside not by northern invaders but by
direct contact with the blossoming High Bronze cultures of the
Orient. Down through the Early Minoan era (c. 2700-2000) the
local cultures in Crete varied greatly and were not, on the whole,
markedly different from or superior to the parallel levels in the
rest of the Aegean. Movements of ideas into Crete from this side,
especially but not exclusively of Cycladic origin, are obvious. By
the last centuries of the third millennium, however, Cretan civi-
lization began to coalesce, and in the following Middle Minoan I

era (c. 2000-1580) it skyrocketed into one of the most extraordi-

nary achievements of mankind.
Here, and only here in Aegean history down to the first mil-
lennium, true cities appeared beside the palaces of the kings.
While the rulers were important, they did not tower over the rest
of society as their confreres did in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The
citizens of Crete dwelt within several-storied houses and enjoyed
a rich urban culture of remarkable grace and polish. More than
any other pottery of which I know, the thin, graceful vases of this
era must be seen if one is to appreciate their delicate colors and
sophisticated patterns, which took the whole vase as a unit (see
Plate 2a-b). Besides this Kamares ware there are lithe, nervous
figurines in ivory and stone; superb frescoes on the palace walls;
and a host of other artistic and practical products.
Minoan civilization is not simply Oriental in its spirit,
though it owed much in matters of technique to the Orient. Nor
was it at all like the Middle Helladic world; Crete and Greece
were moving on quite different paths in the early second millen-
nium. The culture of Crete, polished though it was, was also most
certainly not the root from which the later civilization of historic
Greece directly drew. Sensitive students of Greek art always feel
themselves somewhat puzzled when they tum to Minoan prod-
ucts. The very shapes of the vases lack that solidity which is a
hallmark of the Greek world; and their decoration, while elegant,
has well been described as intuitive, impressionistic in its rendi-
tion of nature rather than analytical and logical in the Greek
sense. The human being was rarely the center of attention. Even
the figurines of acrobats and the like do not seem to have an
inner substance but are rather a "dazzling expression of fugitive
 PART I . The Early Aegean

movement." The art historian looks to Cretan products in vain for

"the innate love of balanced order, the feeling of structural sym-
metry which are the most essential qualities of Greek art." 7
Nonetheless the products of this spirit could be widely at-
tractive. Economically, Cretan life continued to be based prima-
rily upon agriculture and the local interchange of wares, which
was now fostered by the construction of good roads; but Cretan
products moved farther afield. By the last stage of the Middle
Minoan period Cretan merchants were active on the Syrian coast
and were exporting their wares to Egypt.8 And before the end of
Middle Helladic times the Indo-European lords of the Greek
hamlets had become aware of the glamorous, exciting culture
which lay to the south.
Cretan traders may have visited Greece, but it is much more
likely that first the islanders and then the mainlanders were
drawn by the riches of the Minoan world, which they gained
either by bartering whatever wares they might be able to sell or
by swift piratical raids. s Behind their watery barrier the cities
and palaces of Crete lay virtually defenseless, a tempting prey for
the warlike, semi-barbarous lords of Greece; the common as-
sumption of a Minoan thalassocracy is quite inconsistent with the
simple naval and political organization of the era. Shortly after
the beginning of Late Minoan times, at least one band of main-
landers swept down on Cnossus, took the palace, and ruled it
thenceforth. The evidence for this change is abundant. Mainland

7 Georg Karo, Greek Personality in ( 1956), 37-39; C<,cladic wares to

Archaic Sculpture (Oberlin, 1948), 5. some degree precede the Minoan at
8 Helene J. Kantor, The Aegean and Mycenae (Second Circle).
the Orient in the Second Millennium I have explored the myth of Mi-
B. C. (Bloomington, Indiana, 1947), noan sea power, which is at once a
31-32; J. D. S. Pendlebury, Aegypti- product of Athenian naval interest in
aca: A Catalogue of Egyptian Ob- the fifth century B.C. and a reflection
jects in the Aegean Area (Cambridge, of the spirit of nineteenth-century
1930), and his brief essay, "Egypt and British naval strength in "The Myth
the Aegean," in Studies to D. M. Rob- of the Minoan Thalassocracy," His-
inson, I, 184--97; Schaeffer, Strati- toria, III (1955 ), 283-91. Carl W.
graphie comparee, I, 32, 65-67, 105, Blegen, "A Chronological Problem,"
117-18, 548-49; Jean Vercoutter, Minoica (Festschrift Sundwall) (Ber-
Essai .rur les relations entre Egyptiens lin, 1958), 61-66, must, however, be
et prehellenes (Paris, 1954). considered carefully with reference to
8 On the prominence of Cycladic in- the date when Linear B appeared at
termediaries, see Scoles, BSA, LI Cnossus.
'CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece 39
themes were introduced into the pottery of Crete; pottery and
fresco thenceforth paid far gre~ter'attention to the human figure;
war and arms were now depicted, and men were buried with
their arms; and the Linear A script, probably used for the tongue
of the earlier local lords, was supplanted by Linear B, which we
now know to have been Greek. The ensuing Palace style of art,
which centered at the palace of Cnossus, was still capable of re-
markable vivacity and superb rendition of action, as in a famous
steatite vase which depicts drunken harvesters stumbling home
amid loud song (see Plate 2C).
POSSibly the new lords of Cnossus gained a brief control over'
the rest of the island, where the other palaces were destroyed one
after another in the last half of the fifteenth century. In turn,
however, their power fell on a windy day shortly after 1400. A
new invasion from the mainland probably took place and sent the
.palace of Cnossus up in Hames. Thenceforth the center of Aegean
culture and political strength shifted to Mycenaean sites on the
mainland of Greece. Minoan civilization went on, now in a back-
water, down to about llOO, and its continuing effects were to
mark off Cretan culture even in historic times; but never again
did Crete stand in the lead of the Aegean world.

THE EARLY AEGEAN

ANALYZE as we will the factors preceding a specific histor-

ical situation, we can never quite explain what actually took
place at any moment of time by recounting a list of its inherited
ingredients. The eventual emergence of Greek civilization and
then its great effiorescence are not to be explained as a simple,
mechanical interplay of earlier forces.
The foregoing consideration of the geographical framework
of the Aegean and of its earliest history has not been intended as
a search for a set of elements which might be tidily assembled as
the "causes" of later developments. Neither Neolithic and Early
Bronze-age society, nor the wave of northern invaders, nor again
the polished civilization of Minoan Crete was a discrete building-
 PART I . The Early Aegean

block which persisted unchanged thereafter as a foundation stone

for historic Greece. The historian must always remember that he
deals not with abstract entities which may be combined in ac-
cordance with physical laws but with inherited outlooks held by
essentially free-thinking human beings. Nonetheless the reac-
tions of the early peoples of the Aegean to their geographical
position may help to throw light upon the stimuli experienced by
this area in the period which will be our main concern. In any
epoch, moreover, there are elements of continuity from the past
beside new elements of change.
It is from this pOint of view that I have looked at a very hazy,
remote age, avoiding as far as is proper those detailed problems
which must concern primarily specialists in early Greece. The
conclusions which may be gained can now be summed up. The
geographical position of the Aegean, thus, invited entry of out-
side influences particularly from the east and from the north. The
first, and greatest, forces toward advancing the culture of the
area came from the east in Neolithic and Early Helladic times
and were reinforced, as will appear shortly, in the Mycenaean
age. Other elements intruded from the north at the beginning of
the Middle Helladic period and perhaps at other times in less
perceptible form. Sometimes people entered the Aegean; more
often, ideas and concepts migrated along the routes of prehis-
toric trade. These routes did not run across Asia Minor, which
commonly moved independently of the Aegean but along paral-
lei lines.
Periodically the Aegean world had time to digest extern,!l
influences into its own unfolding pattern of agricultural village '
life under chieftains. While the progress of this area across the _
long centuries of the Neolithic and Bronze ages cannot be under-
stood unless we place it within the context at least of the Near
East and of southern Europe, Greece was not at any point simply
a province of foreign-born cultures. Its basic political, economic,
and religiOUS patterns were very similar to those of the Near East,
though less advanced. Intellectually, too, the outlook of early
Aegean men probably had many pOints in common with that in
the more developed Orient. Yet the archaeological evidence
alone is enough to attest that ways in the Aegean differed signifi-
CHAPTER 1 . The Early Ages of Greece
cantly from those of its neighbors from very early times onward.
The pottery shows this fact. It must also suggest, if one com-
pares Plates 1,2, and 4, how uncivilized the inhabitants of Greece
proper remained until they came into direct contact with Minoan
Crete. Down through Middle Helladic times the shapes and the
decoration of the pots lack that systematic, conscious elegance
which we associate with the presence of true civilization, though
their underlying spirit suggests elements of enduring importance.
The Mycenaean world, which rose on top of the rather provincial
Middle Helladic period, was to adapt the civilized Minoan out-
look to this native spirit; it also brought the closest approach of
Aegean and Oriental patterns before historic Greek times. Even
in this epoch, as we shall now see, Mycenaean lords and crafts-
men did not simply ape the East.
 CHAPTER 2

THE RISE AND FALL

OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD

THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN experienced an unparalleled

prosperity and political development in the middle centuries of
the second millennium, down to 1200 B.C. Kings surrounded
themselves with the majesty of great palaces. Their' governments
were based on relatively well-organized bureaucracies of scribes
and treasurers. In richly endowed, sumptuously adorned temples
such as the mammoth halls of Amon at Karnak, priests invoked
the blessings of benign gods for the earthly potentates. Bronze
and gold shimmered-and no one thought of the sharp edge of
iron which was to end this notable Late Bronze age.
The Minoan world of Crete was only one of the bright stars.
Egypt likewise had escaped the worst of the invasions which had
swept across the Near and Middle East early in the millennium,
and by the sixteenth century had entered the period of expansion
which we call the New Kingdom. Culturally and economically it'
dominated much of the coast of Palestine and Syria; from time to
time its pharaohs also exercised political sw:ay over this area.-
Commercial and cultural interconnections radiated from the
Syrian coast westward to the Aegean, eastward to Babylonia and
to the thriving upper reaches of Mesopotamia-the lands of the
Mitanni and Assyrians-and northward to the Hittite Empire,
centered about Hattusas. "While these ties were not as intense
as those which underlay the Assyrian and Persian empires in the
first millennium, the civilized superstructures of the Orient were
far more aware of each other in the Late Bronze age than earlier. '
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 43
To reach the Aegean the new winds had to blow across
many miles of open sea; and so the Greek world was linked the
most loosely, though yet directly, to the cosmopolitan center of
the Near and. Middle East. Within the Aegean basin leadership
lay on Crete down to 1400, then passed to the mainland, and re-
mained there until the fall of the Mycenaean kingdoms shortly
after 1200. Modem excavation has uncovered abundant testi-
mony that the Late Bronze era (c. 1580-1100) was the most ad-
vanced which Greece had yet experienced. The lords. of Pylos,
Orchomenos, Mycenae-Tiryns, and other fortresses lived in
many-columned palaces and surrounded themselves with riches
of ivory, gold, and bronze, worked by skillful artisans. The heart-
land of this culture was the area about Mycenae, whence it
spread out over southern and central Greece (see Map No.2).
The Mycenaean age is an absorbing one. In recent years,
,nonetheless, it has received so much attention that its true place
in Aegean prehistory has often been distorted. To deal with all
the complexities of the age would carry us far afield from our
main topic; what is necessary here is to keep an eye out for those
aspects in which the Mycenaean world differed markedly from
the subsequent centuries, when Greek civilization proper
emerged. Yet we must also not forget that the Late Bronze world
paved the way for later developments. The areas in which Myce-
naean culture throve correspond very closely to the regions in
which historic Greek civilization had its major seats; historical as
well as geographical continuity will be found as we proceed. The
decline and fall of the Mycenaean world, in particular, deserve
careful consideration to determine their causes, their date, and
the significance of a new influx of barbarians.

KINGS AND TRADERS IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE 1

THE MYCENAEAN CENTERS were not true cities, although they

are often so called. At Mycenae, which has experienced decades
of excavation from the first astounding discoveries of Schliemann
1Archaeological evidence in general: LVII (1953), and following; Georg
C. w. Blegen's reports on Pylos, AJA, Karo, Die Schachtgriiber von Mykenai
44 PART I . The Early Aegean
down to the recent careful work of Wace, Papademetriou, and
others, the citadel itself was clearly a fortress. Below the strong-
hold appeared, as time went on, a few houses, perhaps of re-
tainers and artisans; but this cluster cannot justly be called a
city. The bulk of the population seems to have lived in villages on
the hills around about. 2 Though settlement was perhaps more
compact at Tiryns and at fortified villages such as Malthi, there
was a great difference between these sites and the true urban
agglomerations of the Middle East. Greece remained far be-
hind the Oriental level throughout the Late Bronze era.
Yet the wealth of its lords cannot be explained as the product
simply of peasant dues. Under the guidance of palace admin-
istrators, artisans of Cretan or native origin busily turned out
masses of pottery, bronze weapons, and other items in standard

(Munich, 1930-33); George E. Mylo- The basic publications of the texts are,
nas, Ancient Mycenae: The Capital The Pylos Tablets: Texts of the In-
City of Agamemnon (Princeton, scriptions Found 1939-54, ed. Em-
1957); A. J. B. Wace, Mycenae: An mett L. Bennett, Jr. (Princeton,
Archaeological History and Guide 1955); The OliGe Oil Tablets of Pylos,
(Princeton, 1949); and the excava- Suppl. Minos, II (1958), ed. Bennett;
tion reports and general studies listed The Knossos Tablets, transliterated by
in Chap. 1, nn. 3 (p. 13),2 (p. 21). Bennett, Chadwick, and Ventris
See also the bibliographical discussion (London, 1956); "The Mycenae Tab-
in Pierre Demargne, La Crete deda- lets," ed. Bennett, Proceedings of
lique: etudes sur les origines d'une the American Philosophical Society,
renaissance (Paris, 1947), 35-45. XCVII (1953),422-70; The Mycenae
Mycenaean pottery: Arne Furu- Tablets II, edited by Bennett, with
mark, The Mycenaean Pottery: Anal- translations and commentary by
ysis and Classification (Stockholm, Chadwick (Transactions of the Amer-
1941), and The Chronology of Myce- ican Philosophical Society, XLVIII. 1
naean Pottery (Stockholm, 1941); [1958]).
qualifications on his vicws and spe- 2 Wace, Mycenae, 33, and Mylonas,
cialized studies will appear below. Mycenae, 39, agree with Tsountas's
Linear B tablets: Michael Ven- conjecture. The temlS coined by \Vace
tris and John Chadwick, "Evidence for the houses outside the citadel, such
for Greek Dialects in the Mycenaean as the House of the Oil Merchant, may
Archives," fHS, LXXIII (1953), 84- lend them too private an air; see his
103, and Documents in Mycenaean comments, "The Discovery of In-
Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tab- scribed Clay Tablets at Mycenae,"
lets from Knossus, Pylos and Mycenae Antiquity, XXVII (1953), 84-86, and
with Commentary and Vocabulary in The Mycenae Tablets II, 4. Six
(Cambridge, 1956). Although many hands, however, seem visible in the
of the details are far from clear, the tablets discovered there ( Bennett;
criticism by A. J. Beattie, "Mr. Ven- The Mycenae Tablets II, 90-95), a
tris' Deciphenncnt of the Minoan Lin- fact which suggests that royal scribes
ear B Script," ]lIS, LXXVI (1956), were at work.
1-17, lmd elsewhere will not stand.
(a) The' Lion Cate of Myrenae
lcitll confronter[ {ionl'sses protecting
tilt' flO lace • •ymIJ()!i;:rr! by the col~
wnn. Photogmpll courtesy Alison
Fralltz.

(Ill Ti,e Warriors' Vase from My-

cenae ('ational Mllseum L/20,
Athens). Photograph courtesy Bild-
archie Foto J\Iarburg.

PLATE 3 . War Lords ot MI cenae

(II) Chllriol I"IIS(, /m", Erlk"",i , (:"1''''''''
"""willg IIe'rllIIl'" tI lord ,cil" "ix .vlc!("(II'l/ .
/'hol(lgmp" /roll' ,\ I. I' . .\'i".<lIII . The :\lilloan-
\I\T" lllwan H('li ~ion (2d rd.; LII II rl, 19.50),
3 ~. fi,!!'· l.

(0)

(el
(h) lwr'l rlllTin:!, from .U ycellae ( \ 'lIliOIl(//
"IIIS"11111 ,,897, AlhellS). Photogl'll}>h fmlll
ChrislioJl Z('r[1I1I, L'Ar! "II Crlu' (2£1 ell.;
Paris, 11').36). Ii!! . .J2.
«-) CII/' ill IlI.B .\7,,[(' frolll .' llIrk"}>",,[,, ill
Allica {.\'aliolllli .\1l1s,""11 a'.IIl, Alh"lI.d .
Plwl(lgral"l frolll AJA , XUI (19.'381 , "I.
-'XlII . 2.
( tI ) "OW' ill I1I.C ",'/os,'" .\1'1'" fro,,' ,\1'1" ('-
1I1It' (XuIII,/ill ,1/II"e'III' ). /'lw/tlgl'<Il'" f,..,111
. 1. f. H. \I ' fI(,( '. \1\' ('t'II:l(' (P rill cdtl ll , Ji).JlJ),
,,1. L\:X\'. ((. .

TE -1 ' JlYC(' IWl!(/ll Cir.i1i;::;alioll

CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean-World 45

patterns; beyond archaeological material we have now the refer-

ences to smiths in the Pylos tablets, which seem to indicate that
in a relatively small area there were 193 active (and 81 inactive)
smiths. These men drew bronze in small lots from the palace and
returned to it finished weapons. 3 The physical evidence also
shows that men of this world were very active on the seas. At
suitable jnnctures they no doubt raided and looted, but at other
points they must have engaged in trade and even settlement.
From these sources, too, riches poured into the hands of the
kings.

While the traders will be considered presently, the first and

major aspect which rises to view in Mycenaean organization is
its kings. This fact is one of the fundamental differences between
the Late Bronze age and the historic Greek world, which was
grouped first in tribes under local warleaders and then in city-
states. Mycenaean culture itself was very directly connected
with the consolidation of powerful kingdoms in Greece, and ad-
vanced across the landscape hand in hand with the rise of the
great palaces! r..'luch of its pottery may justly be termed a Court
style, for the peasants only slowly and incompletely yielded
their Middle Helladic ways; the treasures of gold, ivory, and
other materials were found in the graves of monarchs.
Politically and socially the chieftains who led the invaders
at the beginning of the l\1iddle Helladic era found themselves
in a world where local lords were already prominent. When they
themselves launched out on the sea and came to Crete, they met
an even more advanced centralization; the last step was to make
the acquaintance of Oriental monarchy in its homelands. The re-
sult was an apparently deliberate effort by the lords of Greece to
imitate this model in their homeland. Even though we know
nothing directly of the size of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the con-
sidera~le distances which separate the major palaces thus far
identified may suggest that each lord ruled a wide countryside;
and certainly the kings could focus large amounts of human
S Ventris and Chadwick, Documents, focused on the needs of the great war-
123 If., 352-56. lords, furnishes a useful parallel:
4 In this respect the rise of La T t'me T. C. E. Powell, The Celts (London,
art among the Celts, a princely art 1958 ),98.
3
 ,PART 1 . The Early Aegean

energy, both of captive slaves and of local peasants, on building

their palaces and great false-domed or tho los tombs, cut into the
hillsides and elaborately faced with stone. s
To fill out our knowledge of the Mycenaean kings and of
their world generally, modern scholars have te'nded to turn to
the Homeric epics; particularly in recent years the weight of
opinion, it is safe to say, has equated Homeric and Mycenaean
eras to a remarkable degree. This tendelJ.cy I find overbold in
its assumptions, shaky in its logic, and historically misleading to
a dangerous extent. Nowhere dare we rely upon the Iliad and the
Odyssey as independent evidence for conditions in the second
millennium. Between the thirteenth century and the eighth cen-
tury, in which the epics assumed their pr~sent shape, lay virtual
aeons of unrest and even chaos; and, as I shall try to show later,
1he has.i.e sp.i..dt .nf 1he HnUlf'.dc ['.oems .accDriJs c))ie1Jy with the ..
closing stages of the Dark ages.
Beyond this pOint, which will be justHied at its proper place,
there are other serious grounds for rejecting Homeric and mytho-
logical evidence for the Late Bronze age. The root of both epic
and myth may go back to this era-names later used for Trojan
heroes and for mythical figures appear in the Mycenaean tablets'
as the names of men-but the historian has no valid tool by which
to separate folk memory from later elaboriltion. In these circum-
stances, though it may be fascinating to ransack the riches of
myth and epic to enliven an otherwise n1lmeless account based
on broken pots and crumbling stoI?-es, the procedure is utterly
unsound historically. For later eras we have at times a legend,
and also happen to know the historical situation from which it
rose-e.g., the Nibelungenlied (which CO]]cerns the Burgundil!n
court of the fifth century after Christ); and here we can detet-

5 Note the analyses of Pylos and Cnos- Economic: History, I (Leiden, 1958),
sus in Ventris and Chadwick, Docu- 457-61; Goetze's survey of Hittite
ments, 141-45. Tiryns and Mycenae kingship in Kleinasien, 86-95; Henri
were probably alternate dwelling Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods
places of a single ruler; contra, Denys (Chicago, 1948), on ideological pat-
L. Page, History and the Homeric terns. The practical workings of, the
Iliad (Berkeley, 1959), 129-32. The palace eCl)nomies, as shown in the. rec-
catalogues in the Iliad: Chap. 4, n. 2 ords of 1\1ari, Ugarit, and elsewhere,
(p. 127). Oriental monarchy: bibliog- still deseI've a full discussion.
raphy in Fritz Heichelheim, Ancient
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 47
mine that, while a major event may long be remembered, its de-
tails and even its true shape are distorted in poetic transmission.
The common inclination to assume that Homer and myth
may be taken as reHecting Mycenaean conditions unless the
contrary be proved has much against it. Those scholars who have
tried to re-create a detailed historical reality out of this tradi-
tional material have wound up with the most gossamer construc-
tions and stand in hopeless disagreement among themselves.
Very rarely can Homeric descriptions even of concrete objects
be linked to Mycenaean prototypes. 6 Nor, to return to the matter
at hand, do the epic references to wide-ruling Agamemnon and
other Zeus-born lords fit our knowledge of kingship in the Late
Bronze age as well as might appear at first sight. Spiritually the
cattle-reeving barons of the Homeric poems are at home in the
Dark ages, not the wide world of Mycenaean days; the epic
tradition cannot safely be said to show more than a vague mem-
ory of Mycenaean political geography.
Today we can more easily forgo quarrying in the Homeric
epics on this subject inasmuch as contemporary and consistent
evidence is available in the tablets of the palace bureaucracies.
Occasional indications that men in Greece knew how to write in
the second millennium were long discounted by modem scholars,
who pictured the lords of Mycenae as virtually barbarian lords;
but this depreciation may no longer endure. Just before and after
World War II great bodies of clay tablets in Linear B were dis-
6 One of the most commonly cited par- For Mycenaean kingship, Marinatos,
allels has been discarded by S. N. ";lIOrENEI2: BA2:(AHE~," Studies
Marinatos, "Der 'Nestorbecher' aus .. to D. M. Robinson, I, 126-34, seeks to
dem IV. Schachtgrab von Mykenae," use the Homeric evidence.
Neue Beitriige zur klassischen Alter- The most judiciOUS effort to con-
tumswissenschaft ( Festschrift B. nect Homeric and Mycenaean evi-
Schweitzer) (Stuttgart, 1954), 11-18, dence remains that of M. P. Nilsson,
and Arne Furumark, "Nestor's Cu~ Homer and Mycenae (London, 1933).
and the Mycenaean Dove Goblet,' Among the most recent studies,
Eranos, XLIV (1946), 41-53. Other T. B. L. Webster, From Mycenae to
observations are made by A. Heubeck, Homer (London, 1958), is shal.y in
Gnomon, XXIX ( 1957), 38-44; logic and semantics and rash in his-
D. H. F. Gray, "Metal-Working in torical judgment; Page, History and
Homer," JHS, LXXIV (1954), 1-15, the Homeric Iliad, is more reserved on
and in J. L. Myres, Homer and His several important points. On Homer,
Critics (London, 1958),247-48,268, see below, Chap. 5; on the efforts to
288; H. L. Lorimer, Homer and the find representations of myth in Myce-
Monuments (London, 1950), passim. naean art, see Chap. 5, n. 5 (p. 163).
 PART I . The Early Aegean
covered at Pylos; dogged work by many scholars, which was
capped by the genius of Michael Ventris, has essentially fur-
nished the key to read the syllabic script of this material. Even
though detailed interpretation of the tablets is often hazardous,_
the language which was written was clearly a form of Greek. As
philologists had long surmised, the dialect of the late second
millennium (or, at least, its written form) was akin to later
Arcadian and Cypriote, but it seems also to have been an an-
cestor of the East Greek dialects as a whole. Apparently the
tongue was the same wherever Linear B was set down-at
Cnossus, Pylos, Mycenae; in Attica and Boeotia-and the script
shows very little change over the centuries of, its emp~oyment.
While we would do far better simply to call this dialect
Mycenaean, the term Achaean has been firmly implanted in
historical vocabulary, thanks to the Homeric epics; one may"
doubt, however, if all the Greek-speaking peoples of the Late
Bronze age applied this name to themselves. 7
The decipherment of Linear B has revealed the Mycenaean
world as seen by the palace administrators. The ken of the royal
scribes and accountants is narrower than we might like, but their
terse fiscal records nonetheless yield great fruit. The general'-'
picture is one familiar from Oriental states, where the royal
bureaucracy had long pursued centralizing tactics. Artisans and
peasants were largely embraced in a palace economy under royal
control, though they also had some independent organization
within village structures. The gods, who were in the main the
divinities of later Greece, seem to have possessed domains of
their own with priests and slaves. The class structure rose through
serfs or slaves, through the lords and councillors ~f the villages
(basileis, gerontia, and the like), to the retainers and agents of
the great king, the wanax. No less than thirty scribes or secretary-

7 On the Cnossus tablets there is a hint in Hittite and Egyptian records (see
that the Achaeans were a specific peo- below). Parenthetically, the common
ple (Ventris and Chadwick, Docu- concept that two invasions took place
ments, 209 n. 78); Cedric Whitman, early in the second millennium,' first
Homer and the Heroic Tradition the Ionian, then the Achaean or,' Aeo-
(Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 30-33, lian, has virtually no archeological
suggests an Eastern origin for the support; see below, Chap. 4, n. 3
name, which might fit its appearance (p.120).
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 49
administrators, it is judged, were active at Cnossus and also at
pylos. Land-holding seems in part to have rested on service to
the king, also in part upon village organization; but far more
has recently been argued on this point than can be proven. s
In such respects as language and religion the evidence of
the Mycenaean tablets proves that much which recurs in the
centuries after 1200 was already in existence; the archaeological
evidence, too, clearly demonstrates a continuity from the Myce-
naean age to the Greek world in many fields. Those aspects of
the social and political superstructure, however, which were
connected with the ever increasing power of the kings, vigorous
in war and in trade, were to be unique to this era.9

Abroad, the most significant aspect of the Mycenaean age

was the great expansive power of its society, which is quite un-
like the conditions prevailing in the subsequent Dark ages. The
Greek-speaking peoples of the second millennium were less civi-
lized than those of eastern lands, but once the unrest of the
Middle Helladic movements was past they seized their oppor-
tunities boldly. In the vigor and speed of the Mycenaean over-
seas drive the great wave of historic Greek colonization had a
notable precursor, and the effects of this earlier outpouring were
of considerable weight in setting the background for later cen-
turies. When the Greeks once again turned abroad, they sought
virtually the same areas as their predecessors and found the way
paved by the remnants of the earlier wave, which at times had
deposited lasting settlements.
In the west the Mycenaean explorers themselves followed
the trail of Early Cycladic days and probably for the same rea-
sons-in search of the metals which were increasingly consumed

S Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., "The Land- Hittite world is well put by Goetze,
holders of Pylos," AJA, LX (1956), Kleinasien, 172.
103-33; W. Edward Brown, "Land 9 In a skeletal analysis, J. Lawrence
Tenure in Mycenaean Pylos," Historia, . Angel, "Kings and Commoners,"
V (1956), 385-400; L. R. Palmer, AJA, LXI (1957),181, concludes that
Achaeans and Indo-Europeans (Ox- the kings of Mycenae were taller and
ford, 1955), to whose views I return heavier than their subjects (as is quite
in Chap. 4. Scribes: Ventris and likely), and led an active life to judge
Chadwick, Documents, 10g-1O (from from their bone injuries and the aver-
Bennett); their high position in the age age of death (36).
5o PART I • The Early Aegean

by the forges of Late Bronze-age smiths.' Mycenaean pottery of

the fifteenth through the thirteenth centuries and other objects
have turned up in western Greece along the sea lane and on to
Sicily and a few spots in southern Italy; Tarenturn, it has been
argued, was probably a real settlement inasmuch as Mycenaean-
type pottery was made locally even after connections were
broken about 12oe. In the Lipari islands, where Minoan traders
had led the way, very extensive Mycenaean deposits have been
found, beginning with the sixteenth century. Farther west, in
Spain and France, such objects are lacking, though Aegean in-
fluences radiated indirectly as far as England. In a house at
Mycenae, in return, a stone mold has been found which was
used to cast winged axes of a type common in northern Italy
and on the upper Danube. The presence of Baltic amber in the
tombs of the Mycenaean era also suggests that trade moved be-
tween the Aegean and central Europe, here again perhaps in
search of metals. The copper mines of the latter region now were
much more intensively exploited, and its cultures received stimuli
which had great effects on down into the first millennium.
The main drift of Mycenaean days was through the Aegean
and eastward toward the principal centers of civilization. In
Greece proper, Mycenaean patterns of political organization ad-
vanced through Boeotia as far as Thessaly, where a palace has
recently been found at Iolkos; pottery and metal products of the
age stretch along the north shore of the Aegean from Macedonia
across to Troy VI—VII.2 The latter point was perhaps attacked
Mycenaeans in the west and in Eu- European Languages and Archeology,
rope: Bernabo Brea, Sicily, 102-08, 18-20; F. H. Stubbings, "A Winged-
114-15, V. Gordon Childe, "The Fi- Ax Mould," BSA, XLIX ( 1954), 2y7-
nal Bronze Age in the Near East and 98. Albin Lesky, Thalatia: Der Weg
in Temperate Europe," Proceedings der Criechen zum Meer (Vienna,
of the Prehistoric Society, 13. S. XIV 1947), is of value chiefly for the his-
(1948), 177-95; T. J. Dunbabin, toric era.
"Minos and Daidalos in Sicily," Pa- 2 Thessaly: MilojCie, AA 1955, 231;
pers of the British School at Rome, Ergon 1956, 43-5o. Cyclades: Collet
XVI (1948), 1-18, whose use of myth de Santerre, Delos primitive, 62-112.
must be checked by the skeptical ob- Troy; Blegen, Caskey, and Rawson,
servations of Lord William Taylour, Troy, III, The Index; the Mycenaean
Mycenaean Pottery in Italy and Ad- pottery of Troy VI ( down to
facent Areas (Cambridge, 1958), transitional) is well analyzed by Sara
188-89; C. F. C. IIawkes, The Pre- A. Immerwahr, AJA, LX (1956),
historic Foundations of Europe (Lon- 455-56•
don, 1940 ), 351-52; Hencken, Indo- Miletus: Carl Weickert, "Gra-
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 51
by some of the lords of Greece, more for its own riches than be-
cause it dominated the Hellespont or the plains of northwestern
Asia Minor; for some kernel of truth probably lies behind the
famous Trojan cycle of epics. Thus far there is scattered evidence
for Mycenaean trade or settlement at Delos and along the west-
em coast of Asia Minor; especially at Miletus Greek pottery ap-
pears above Minoan sherds and continues on across the follow-
ing centuries. Far off in the center of Asia Minor the Hittite
rulers had from the late fourteenth century contacts with the
Ahhiyawa (Achaeans) which were at first on friendly terms and
then became increasingly uncomfortable; but the Hittite refer-
ences are far too indefinite to permit precise localization of the
Ahhiyawa either on the coast or offshore.
On the sea route eastward men from the Greek mainland
were active before Cnossus fell. While contacts with Egypt were
perhaps strongest in and before the Amarna age (mid-fourteenth
century) and may have passed in part via Crete, Mycenaean
connections with Syria were surely direct and became ever more
intense down into the thirteenth century.3 Mycenaean wares
turn up along the Syrian coast and even in the hinterland in
quantities far beyond those of Minoan origin. Beside its pottery
bungen in Milet 1938," Bericht iiber from Forrer on; cf. Fritz Schacher-
den VI. interlUltionalen Kongress fiir meyr, "Zur Frage der Lokalisierung
Archiiologie (Berlin, 1940), 325-32, von Achiawa," Minoica ( Berlin,
and his surveys of the 1955 campaign 1958),365-80; Page, History and the
in Istanbuler Mitteilungen, VII Homeric Iliad, 1-40.
(1957), 102-32, and of the 1957 cam- B See the works listed in Chap. 1, n. 8
paign in AlUltSt, VIII (1958), 30-31; (p. 38); also Furumark, Opus. arch.,
G. M. A. Hanfmann, HSCP, LXI VI (1950), 203-49, who urges that
( 1953), 4; Frank H. Stubbings, My- Mycenaean activity eastward does not
cenaean Pottery from the Levant begin until c. 1450; Lorimer, Homer
(Cambridge, 1951), 21-24. Seton ana the Monuments, 55-64; Stub-
Lloyd, Early Anatolia, 152-53, sug- bings, Mycenaean Pottery from the
gests Mycenaean settlement may have Levant, 53-87; A. J. B. Wace and
been widespread along the coast; but C. W. Blegen, "Pottery as Evidence
the analysis of James Mellaart, AnatSt, for Trade and Colonisation in the Ae-
V (1955), 80-83, suggests the con- gean Bronze Age," Klio, XXXII
trary. Sites such as Colophon (Goetze, (1939), 131-47· Oriental finds in
Kleinasien, 182) have been labeled Greece: Pendlebury, Aegyptiaca,
Mycenaean on far too little evidence. 43 If.; Demargne, La Crete dedalique,
See also F. Cassola, La Ionia nel . 80-85. Such temlS as XPv(f6!i, ''''q,a.s,
mondo Miceneo (Naples, 1957). XITWV, {3u{3"os, which came from the
Hittites: Gurney, The Hittites, Levant, appeared already in Linear
46-56, gives a good survey of the ar- B: Ventris and Chadwick, Documents,
guments concerning the Ahhiyawa 135-36.
52 PART I . The Early Aegean

the Aegean world probably traded oil and wine, metals such as
tin and lead gained from Greece and the west, slaves, and the
like for ivory, gold, textiles (including linen and purple-dyed
wool), ornaments of faIence and niello, papyrus, perfumes and
ointments, condiments, and other finished products. If this east-
ern trade is related to the evidence of Mycenaean activity in the
west, the conclusion is perhaps justified that Aegean adventurers
had seized the role of prime intermediaries between the Orient
and Europe.
The tremendous increase of Mycenaean pottery along the
Syrian route, the linguistic evidence of later days, and the haz-
ardous testimony of tradition all suggest that Mycenaean colo-
nies stretched out eastward from Greece. 4 In the Aegean islands
pottery of mainland type was being produced locally by the
thirteenth century. On the northwest edge of Rhodes, in the'
accessible plain of Trianda, Mycenaean settlers appear first be-
side men of Minoan background about 1450 ancJ. then supplant
the Cretans toward 1400. Cnossus itself fell for the last time about
this same date, and the variety of mainland influences in Crete,
which include the introduction of the Greek language, betokens.
beyond doubt settlement from the Greek mainland. Coloniza-
4 Aegean islands: Scholes, BSA, LI 1951); J. F. Daniels, as in AJA, XLI
(1956),30-35,39-40, who notes that (1937), 56ff., XLII (1938), 261ff.,
the change in house plans at Phyla- XLVI (1942), 291 ff.; Hanfmann,
kopi and Naxos as well as the Myce- AJA, LV (1951), 428; C. F. A.
naean ivories at Delos (BCH, LXXI- Schaeffer, as in Enkomi-Alasia: nou-
LXXII [1947-48], 148-254), suggest velles missions en Chypre, 1946-1950
settlement. Rhodes: Arne Furumark, (Paris, 1952); Stubbings, Mycenaean
"The Settlement at. Ialysos and Ae- Pottery from the Levant, 25-44. For
gean History c. 1550-1400 B.C.," a later date, see especially E. Gjer-
Opus. arch., VI (1950), 150-271; stad, Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus
Stubbings, Mycenaean Pottery from (Uppsala, 1926), 327-28, and "The
the Levant, 5-20. Cilicia: Garstang, Colonization of Cyprus in Greek Leg-
Prehistoric Mersin, 253-56; Goldman, end" and "The Initial Date of the
Tarsus, II, 63, 205"-09; and sporadic Cypriote Iron Age," Opus. arch., III
sherds up onto the plateau, as noted (1944), 73-123; Arne Furumark,
by Mellaart, AnatSt, V (1955), 82; "The Mycenaean III C Pottery and
Seton-Williams, ibid. IV (1954), Its Relation to Cypriote Fabrics," ibid.
134-35; Nimet Ozguc, Belleten, XIX 194-265, who notes that III.B was
(1955),303. surely made locally on the 'island but
Cyprus: Settlement before 1200 puts the Achaean influx in III.C. The
is argued by Etienne Coche de la ware he found at Sinda he takes as
Ferte, Essai de classification de la marking the new settlers, AlA, LII
cerainique mycenienne d'Enkomi (1948),531; cf. Matz, Gnomon, XXII
(Campagnes 1946 et 1947) (Paris, ( 1950), 122.
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the ¥ycenaean World 53
tion in Cilicia and in Cyprus has also been asserted, but is more
debatable. The appearance of an archaic Greek dialect on
Cyprus which was very akin to Arcadian and to "Mycenaean"
may reHect settlement in the disturbed days after the Mycenaean
age had fallen; yet on the other hand the fact that Mycenaean
wares appear in abundance earlier on Cyprus and were locally
made might as easily support the assumption that Greek-speak-
ing peoples thrust this far east before 1200.
In trade, in settlement, and in raids, the kings and traders
of the Mycenaean age wandered far afield over both the eastern
and the western stretches of the Mediterranean. At the time
this overseas activity helped to support the luxury of the Myce-
naean superstructure and inHuenced the character of its civiliza-
tion; in the long run the expansion of the mainland peoples is
not totally unconnected with the later Greek outburst in historic
times. Between the two waves the chaos of the early Dark ages
was to be only a partial setback. Not all of the areas absorbed
in the Mycenaean era were to be lost, and contact by sea with
Syria was probably never entirely broken.

MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION

By THE thirteenth century a very similar tissue of Mycenaean

culture extended from a nucleus in southern and central Greece
eastward through Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus. On the basis of its
pottery this civilization is now commonly divided into the follow-
ingphases:
I C. 1550 B.C.
II C. 1500
IILA C. 1425
III.B C. 1300
III.e (including sub-Mycenaean) C. 1230-1050

This division is sound as a scheme of relative sequences,

subject to the usual archaeological problems "involved in placing
any small individual deposit and in defining the transitional
54 PART I . The Early Aegean

phases (especially from IILB to IILC).5 No excavation has yet

discovered stratified levels of Mycenaean pottery which extend
across the entire era, but the great masses of ware available from
a host of more limited sites are sufficient to indicate the main
lines of development. Very valuable results ensue. For the first
time in Aegean history we can follow artistic changes century by
century and can even at times hope to spot individual artists;
the uniformity of the pottery, wherever made, permits an inter-
linking of the local districts throughout the Aegean basin; and
many other aspects of this culture, which exhibit the same gen-
eral forces as the vases, can be ordered in historical perspective.
The absolute dates B.C. which I have included in the table
are quite a different matter. They rest upon discoveries of Myce-
naean vases in datable contexts in Egypt and Syria-i.e., upon
Egyptian chronology. This latter scheme is generally secure, and <

the links to Aegean materials are enough to suggest the rate of

progress in the Mycenaean world itself; yet the ties are far from
adequate to pin down pottery styles preCisely. Every absolute
date assigned to Mycenaean pottery is still subject to serious de-
bate within a range of a half-century or SO.6 Especially in the
5 Furumark's classifications have not appearance of I1I.B at Byblos in the
been universally accepted in detail; Ahiram tomb in the period of Ram-
see, e.g., A. J. B. Wace, "Late Hel- ses II.
ladic III Pottery and Its Division," 6 To give only a few examples, Wace
Arch. eph. 1953-54, 137-40. Radio- begins llLB at 1340 and III.C at
carbon dates will be forthcoming from 1210: BSA, XLVIII (1953), 15 n. 22;
Pylos, but the margin of error in this Aegean and Near East, 133-34; he
method will probably be too great to cites the appearance of III.B wares
aid us materially in narrowing down with a sword bearing the cartouche of
chronological boundaries. My dates Merneptah at Ras Shamra (C. F.' A..
above follow Furumark, Chronology Schaeffer, "A Bronze Sword from
of Mycenaean Pottery, nO-IS, ex- Ugarit with Cartouche of Mineptah,"
cept for the end of the sub-Mycenaean Antiquity, XXIX [1955], 226--29). Sir
style. Leonard Woolley, Alalakh: An Ac-
Key points are: (1) the appearance count of the Excavations at Tell
of lILA at Tell el Amama, inhabited Atchana in the Ratay, 1937-1949
only fifteen years and abandoned (Oxford, 1955), 369-76, extends
c. 1350 at the latest; at Beth Shan not I1I.B until the attack by the Sea Peo-
later than 1400; at Qatna before 1375; r.les-i.e., after 1200. Jean Bchard,
at Gaza together with a ring of Tu- 'Le mur pelasgique de I'Acropole et
tankhamon; (2) the appearance of la date de la descente Dorienne,"
lII.A-B at Gurob, which most schol- Studies to D. M. Robinson, I, 135-59,
ars place at about 1300, though Wace, raises the beginning of III.C on the
BSA, LII (1957),222-23, raised this basis of the Tarsus evidence.
date for the Mycenaean ware; (3) the
CHAPTER 2 • The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 55

stage III.C, when trade between the Orient and the Aegean
rapidly declined, correlations virtually disappear—a serious diffi-
culty, as we shall see shortly, in the very important problem of
fixing the end of the Mycenaean age. The absolute chronology of
the Late Bronze era in the Aegean, accordingly, must be under-
stood as a tentative structure which later finds may render more
secure.

In many respects Mycenaean culture was a close adaptation

of Minoan civilization; in others, its men copied from the Orient
far more baldly than had the artists of Crete. Both of these
qualities, together with its relative richness, sharply distinguish
the Late Bronze age from the poverty-stricken, localized cen-
turies which were to follow. The differences, moreover, between
Mycenaean and historic Greek patterns are patent wherever
one turns in the artistic evidence. Pottery shapes in the Myce-
naean world had a higher center of gravity (see Plate 4a, c) ;
many forms of vases were totally unlike those of later times;
decorative elements, drawn largely from marine and botanical
life, were of an alien character, especially in Mycenaean I and
II, and reflected in their application to the vase quite another
sense of logic and order. The same dissimilarities mark the rare
products of Mycenaean sculptors, of the painters of frescoes in
the royal palaces, and of smiths in gold and bronze.
This gulf in cultural outlook is admirably illuminated if one
travels from classic Athens, standing bold and free in the Attic
plain, down to Mycenae, huddled in a safe corner of the rich
Argolid (see Plate 3a). The tholos tomb called the Treasury
of Atreus is the first great architectural monument on the main-
land of Europe; but, impressive though its finely fitted stone work
may be, the massive dome and noble entryway were created in
honor of a king, not the patron god of a city-state. Even more
suggestive is the stern, defiant fortress encasing the lovely palace
of the Mycenaean kings. The world which expressed itself here
was rough and barbarous, though its masters concentrated the
energies of their subjects upon their own luxury. Power and
strength were available to heap up the amazing structures of
Mycenae; their like was not to recur in Greece for centuries. Yet
 PART I . The Early Aegean

when the Aegean world again reached an advanced level, it

directed its renewed social and economic vigor to other ends
and harnessed its creations within a more intellectually disci-
plined pattern. Mycenaean civilization is not a system from
which historic Greek culture emerged on a straight line.
The importance of this observation must be underlined. The
culture of the Late Bronze age, nonetheless, is not to be dismissed
forthwith from the Greek background, for the Mycenaean world
was not a simple province of Cretan and Oriental inspiration. 7
Much of the structure of Middle Helladic life and thought quite
clearly continued throughout the Mycenaean era. Grave styles of
earlier days persisted; pottery forms and decoration drew from
the Middle Bronze inheritance; beneath the superstructure of
the palaces the villagers undoubtedly lived largely as of old-
even the sites of their settlements remained the same as in the <

previous era. Intriguing hints of a hidden line of native develop-

ment also lie behind the superficial stream of Minoan and Orien-
tal copies. When scholars today occasionally term the grave
steles over the shaft graves at Mycenae and the famous Lion Gate
the first masterpieces of Greek civilization, they ignore far too
much the gulf which I have just emphasized; and yet a first,
inchoate struggle to express that outlook which later rose to
greatness in historic Greek centuries can be sensed in these
works. The emphasis upon the megaTon, a symmetrical, internally
focused unit quite unlike the sprawling palace complexes of
Minoan origin, is likewise significant. When we come to the ap-
pearance of the first truly Creek pottery, the Protogeometric, we
shall have occasion to return to the formal, abstract, even geo-
metric tendency which was rapidly advancing in the last stages .
of Mycenaean pottery.

1 Contra, Axel W. Persson, New "The Acropolis Treasure from My-

Tombs at Dendra near Midea (Lund, cenae," BSA, XXXIX (1938-39), ·65-
1942), 176-96, extends very far the 87; A. J. B. Wace, "Middle and Late
indebtedness of Mycenaean culture Helladic Pottery," Epitymbion Chr.
to Egypt; see also Webster, From My- Tsuntas (Athens, 1941), 345-50. In
cenae to Homer, 27-36. Furumark, sculpture: Karo, Greek Personality, 3,
Opus. arch., VI (1950), 221-23, 9; Matz, Kreta, Mykene, Troia, 140-
253-54, is more judicious. Middle 42; Dirlmeier, RM, XCVIII (1955),
Helladic survivals in pottery: Blegen, 36. In architecture: Lawrence, Greek
Prosymna, passim; Helen Thomas, Architecture, 65-82.
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 57

In sculpture, architecture, and pottery, as also in its social,

political, and religious attitudes, the Mycenaean age is an ab-
sorbing medley of forces. Human history is never a mechanical,
cyclical treadmill, but the Mycenaean experience is nevertheless
an intriguing forerunner of the synthesis between local and
Oriental influences which marked the great century of revolution
750-650 B.C. The similarity is enough to suggest some of the
enduring forces which affected Aegean development across the
ages; the differences are also obvious. If the later synthesis was to
be freer and produced more significant results, its greater fruit
must be attributed first to the broader base of Greek culture
which was hammered out in the Dark ages; Mycenaean civiliza-
tion was too dependent upon a limited circle about its monarchs.
Another factor was the solid digestion of the earlier stimuli which
occurred in the slow-moving centuries after the fall of the
Mycenaean world.
In the most general terms, the mainland of Greece was
hampered by an insoluble problem during its Late Bronze phase.
It could not resist the attractions of the Minoan tradition, the
dominance of which was very marked at the beginning of the
Mycenaean period. Yet it was also driven to draw on its Middle
Helladic inheritance. Bold experiment was, for the most part,
barred by the alluring temptations of the more advanced Cretan
motifs and techniques; innovation could only be feeble, half-
conscious. The potters, in particular, were generally more in-
terested in technique and in mass production than in originality.
One modem student terms their work "more orderly than im-
aginative," and the terms "commercialization" and "copying"
almost inevitably turn up in any discussion of this ware. Local
variations, which are slowly becoming discernible as the pottery
is better studied, were still quite limited until its very last stages. 8
Historically, the solution to the basic problem of integrating alien

8 The quotation is from F. H. Stub- 168-76. Furumark, Opus. arch., VI

bings, "The Mycenaean Pottery of At- ( 1950), 186-91, has much the same
tica," BSA, XLII (1947), 1-75, at p. view of Mycenaean forces as that
69; on local variations, see also Wace which I reached independently, but
and Blegen, Klio, XXXII (1939), overstresses. the degree to which Late
131-47, and Stubbings, "Some Myce- Bronze craftsmen were able to resolve
naean Artists," BSA, XLVI (1951), their problems.
58 PART I . The Early Aegean
and native inspirations was to be collapse and a new beginning
on a far simpler level. Men at that time inherited much from the
Mycenaean age but could move more freely.

DECLINE AND COLLAPSE OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD

By THE MIDDLE of Mycenaean III.B, in the mid-thirteenth

century, the Aegean world was on a pinnacle of unprecedented
prosperity. The palace at Pylos, which was begun at the opening
of the period, was rebuilt; extensive remodeling took place at
Mycenae. Interconnections both to the west and to the east, to
judge from the pottery, were ever closer; the III.B style of vases is <

by far the most common of all Mycenaean wares. The volume of

this pottery found in Syria shows that trade to the Orient was
extensive, but in return the Aegean was drawing much from the
East, both in physical objects and in intellectual and political
concepts. The Mycenaean lands seemed on the way toward fall-
ing in place as satellites of the Oriental cultures, which were
themselves drawing closer together in the bloom of the Late
Bronze age.
This whole world was actually on the verge of collapse. The
first step, internal decline, is especially obvious in Egypt, where
the central political system was already weakening, overseas
economic activity and local agricultural stability were waning,
and artists were lOSing their sense of style and originality. In
other parts of the Middle East much the same pattern can be
demonstrated.
Then came the whirlwind as a fresh ,irruption of Indo-
European peoples raced across an already weakened world. 9
9 Egypt: John A. Wilson, The Bur- of Classical Studies, University of
den of Egypt (Chicago, 1951), London, NO.3 (1956), 19-20. Hit-
234 if.; W. F. Edgerton and J. A. Wil- tites: Ekrem Akurgal, Phrygische
son, H,istorical Records of Ramses III Kunst (Ankara, 1955), 112-13, 116-
(Chicago, 1936), 35 if.; W. F. Al- 17; Mellaart, Belleten, XIX (1955),
bright, AJ A, LIV (1950), 170, lowers 126-29; E. Laroche, Revue d'Assyri-
the dates to about 1175-1172; see also ologie, XLVII (1953),70-78; Goetze,
C. L. Huxley, Bulletin of the Institute Kleinasien, 184-85.
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 59
Egypt, the farthest removed, barely beat off first an invasion by
sea about 1230 and then a far greater wave which came about
1190-1185 by land, moving through Syria. Thereafter it lay in
torpor, subject to internal conflicts and to Libyan and Ethiopian
penetrations. On the coasts of Syria, Palestine, and Cyprus many
great trading ports were sacked or deserted about 1200; inland
towns on the mainland fell to the Semitic-speaking Habiru and
Arameans, who pressed in from the desert. Assyria rode out the
storm and remained an organized state, but its imperial ambi-
tions, recently hatched, were quenched for centuries. The Hittite
kingdom in Asia Minor vanished about 1180 or a little later.
Virtually everywhere in the Fertile Crescent the civilized super-
structure tottered, and society sank into the era of abject poverty
and localism which archaeologists call the Early Iron age.
Both stages, decline and invasion, also afHicted the Aegean
world. The preliminary phase of internal deterioration is most
obvious in the artistic evidence, alike in Crete and on the main-
land. 1 Very rapidly after the fall of Cnossus about 1400 Cretan
pottery decoration became formalized and the earlier unity of
Minoan styles dissolved. Within two centuries vase forms on the
island had become stiff, the clay often was poorly prepared, and
artists feebly imitated a limited repertory of inherited motifs.
Earlier, the Cretan figurines had been lithe and vital-motion
incarnate, as it were-but by 1200 they were commonly abstract,
inorganic masses which breathe an air of decadence. Mainland
artists, who were striving to move outside the Minoan patterns,
found· themselves in great .distress. More and more their mass
production was a mechanical copying of old motifs, which were
no longer understood (see Plates 4d, 5a); the shapes of the
vases became rigid; and both technical skill and artistic firmness
underwent an absolute deterioration. While some of the late
Mycenaean products are still fine products and the Warrior Vase,
ICretan pottery: Furumark, Myce- Typenbildung von der Neolithischen
naean Pottery, 175-76; Doro Levi, bis in die griechisch-archaische Zeit
Annuario, X-XII (1927-29), 625 If.; (rund 3000 bis 600 v. ClIr.) (Augs-
Pendlebury, Archaeology of Crete, burg, 1929), 41-42, 54. Mainland:
225-31, 271. Cretan figurines: Levi, Furumark, Mycenaean Pottery, pas-
Annuario, X-XII (1927-29), 612 If.; sim; Mogens B. Mackeprang, "Late
Valentin Muller, Friihe Plastik in Mycenaean Vases," AJA, XLII
Griechenland und Vorderasien: ihre ( 1938), 537-59·
60 PART I . The Early Aegean

in particular, shows a vigorous realism (Plate 3b), very many

are poorly made and sloppily decorated.
In the long run these mainland changes might have resulted
in a new style, for what art historians term "artistic decline"
is often no less than the herald of fresh ideas. But the artists of
the Mycenaean kings were not to have an opportunity to pursue
their path indefinitely; political and economic disruption was
already appearing, though hazily to our ken, by 1200. The fact
that local pottery styles increasingly went their separate ways
from the beginning of IILC onward in Cyprus, Rhodes, and
elsewhere suggests an incipient breakdown in intercommunica-
tions; Crete, too, displays less contact now with the mainland. 2
The so-called Close' Style, which emerged in the Argolid, was
taken up by only a few other mainland sites, though it does
show on Rhodes and Cyprus.
Through the countryside of Greece all was not well by this
time. To prove the fact, some scholars make much use of the
traditional tales of early internal feuds, such as the conHict of
Atreus and Thyestes at Mycenae or the wars between Mycenae
and Thebes. Far more reliable are the archaeological hints of
serious trouble before the great wave of invasion. 3 Thebes, thus,
was destroyed apparently during Mycenaean lILA, in the middle
of the fourteenth century. The kings of Mycenae itself extended
the fortified area in the late thirteenth century to safeguard
access to a well, and constructed basement storerooms in the
so-called Granary; the houses outside the wall were sacked and
burned while III.B pottery was still in use, perhaps about 1250

2 Pendlebury, Archaeology of Crete, 73; Wace, BSA, LI (1956), 120.

229; Furumark, Opus. arch., III Athens: Oscar Broneer, "What Hap- .
( 1944), 200-02, 206-09, 263. pened at Athens," AJA, LII (1948),
8Legends: Mylonas, Mycenae, 72- 111-14, and "A Mycenaean Fountain
73; Whitman, Homer and the Heroic on the Athenian Acropolis," Hesperia,
Tradition, 35-38; d. P. J. Reimer, VIII (1939),317-429 (esp. 423-25)"
Zeven tegen Thebe: Praehelleense \Vace sees vigor rather than decline in
elementen in de IIelleense traditie this fortification, Historia, II (1953),
(Diss. Amsterdam, 1953). Thebes: 88 ff.; my view of the era differs radi-
Arch. f!ph. 1909, 57-122; Venneule, cally from his. Miletus, too, was forti-
AJA, LXI (1957), 198; but Blegen, fied in the fourteenth century, appar-
AJA, LXIV (1960), 159, suggests the entlv for the first time: Weickert,
transition from lII.B to 1l1.C. Myce- AndtSt, VIII (1958),31.
nae: Mylonas, Mycenae, 37-38, 72-
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 61

but surely before the fall of the mighty fortress itself. Nearby, the
walls of Tiryns were much enlarged.
Other settlements such as Zygouries, Aegina, and Prosymna
were abandoned by or before the end of III.B; sites showing the
next stage of Mycenaean pottery are far fewer and are widely
separated. Off to the north, Aghios Kosmas in Attica was fortified.
At Athens itself a stairway east of the later Erechtheum was
blocked, and the main walls were reinforced; the lords of this
place expended great energy in opening up a new well more than
a hundred feet below the summit, which could safely be reached
from the Acropolis itself. Soon the houses on the slopes below the
Acropolis wall were hastily evacuated, at tlH~ end of the III.B
style. Whether unrest at home or threats from abroad caused
these precautions and preliminary disasters, we do not know,
'though the peasants may well have £ouno heavy tIle YORe ch tInm
ambitious masters. Clearly the kings of the Mycenaean world
felt uneasy before their system toppled.
In the Aegean basin, as elsewhere, the end of the Late
Bronze age was not a matter of simple dissolution. The last
tablets on the Hoor of the Pylos record room reHect a major
effort to strengthen the coastal defenses under the local lords;
appar~ntly a force of rowers, 443 men at the very least, was
assembled to move northward to Pleuron on the Aetolian coast. 4
At Pylos the rest is silence-tumbled tablets and marks of fire,
after which the palace lay forever deserted. Elsewhere, too, the
evidence is· somber. From Iolkos in Thessaly to Malthi in Mes-
senia, at Krisa and Kirrha near Delphi, at Aghios Kosmas in
Attica, in the thickly settled countryside about Corinth, in the
very heart of the Mycenaean world at Tiryns, Argos, and Myce-
nae itself-almost everywhere the Mycenaean settlements went
up in smoke or were deserted, to lie rooHess and decaying in
wind and rain.
Once the palaces went, writing disappeared. That fact meas-
ures the degree of collapse in the Aegean. In Oriental lands
civilization was long-seated, and most areaS there rode out,
though barely, the storm; the use of writing continued to have
4 Ventris and Chadwick, Documents, Venneule, AlA, LXI (1957),201.
124-25, 138, 183-94, 191-g5; but cf.
62 PART I . The Early Aegean

political and economic advantages and advanced in most areas to

true alphabetic scripts. In the Aegean, as in Asia Minor, the
political and economic frame of civilization was so shallow-
rooted that it fell catastrophically. By 1100, or soon thereafter,
Greek lands had reverted to a simpler form of life than they had
known for centuries.
It is not likely that this terrific collapse was purely the
result of internal factors, especially in view of what was happen-
ing elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The Aegean, too,
must have experienced an invasion of new Indo-European peo-
ples, and there is no valid reason to deny the basic truth of the
later Greek tradition that the kernel of these invaders was the
Dorians. 5 Folk memory, whether of epic or mythical form, is, as I
have already commented and shall discuss again, a dangerous
tool for the historian in its details; but so great an event as the<
present one is of a different order. The great invasion which
ended the·Age of Heroes lay immediately in the background of a
continuous evolution which proceeded thereafter without fur-
ther breaks into historic Greek times.
If we do accept the equation of invaders and Dorians, this
assumption in itself does not require belief in all the legends
which later Greek speculation attached to the return of the
Heraclids and the Dorian sweep.6 I do not propose to criticize
in detail the reconstructions of the invasion and the manner in
5 K. J. Beloch, Grieehisehe Gesehiehte, to internal discontent.
I. 2 (2d ed.; Strassburg, 1913),76 ff., 6 N. G. L. Hammond, "Prehistoric
and Gaetano de Sanctis, StoTia dei Epirus and the Dorian Invasion,"
Greei dalle origini alia fine del seeolo BSA, XXXII (1931-32), 131-79;
V, I (Florence, 1939), 152-54, are Franz Miltner, "Die dorische Wande-
prominent among those who deny any rung," Klio, XXVII (1934), 54-68,
validity to the Dorian invasion. Others whose argument that they drove for
argue that the Dorians of le<1end in- Crete and then fanned out eastward
filtrated after unnamed invaders had as well as back to the Argolid is very
delivered the main blows: Milojcic, tempting (see Eduard Meyer, Ce-
AA 1948-49, 12-36; Fritz Schacher- sehiehte des Altertums, III [2d ed.;
meyr, Poseidon und die Entstehung Stuttgart, 1937], 248; Demargne, La
des grieehisehen Giitterglaubens Crete dedalique, 93-94); Gerhard. Vi-
(Bern, 1950), 8; cf. Demargne, La talis, Die Enttcieklung der Sage von
CT~te dedalique, 95. An entirely novel der Riiekkehr deT Herakliden (Diss.
approach is lhat of M. Andronikos, Greifswald, 1930); a brief survey
"'H 'OWPLKi} £luf3oXi}' Kal Ta apxawXo- with bibliography in Hermann Bengt-
'YLKa evp.qp.aTa," Hellenika, XIII (1954), son, Grieehisehe Gesehiehte (Mu-
221-40, who attributes the fall solely nich, 1950),46-51.
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 63

which modern studies utilize it to push other peoples about the

Aegean. The myths, the tales of city foundations, and other
materials are simply not adequate foundations for such lofty
structures. That the Dorians spoke Greek seems a reasonable
hypothesis, though the Dorian dialect of later times, as will be
shown in Chapter 4, was largely evolved after the invaders had
settled down in southern Greece, from the Peloponnesus through
Crete to Asia Minor.
Presumably, as a new Greek-speaking people, the Dorians
had lived earlier on the fringe of the Mycenaean world, and the
most likely area for this home is that given them by tradition, the
modern Epirus. Scrupulous investigations by archaeologists have
not yet been able to prove this probability, but occasional hints
in the shapes of the fibulae or metal safety-pins, metalware, and
pottery motifs may suggest ties with the northern Balkans, parT
ticularly with Yugoslav sites. These signs, however, are more
convincing along the northern fringes of the Greek world than
in the old Mycenaean lands. 1 One of the three Dorian tribal
names, Hylleis, may have an Illyrian root; another tribal name,
Pamphyloi, suggests that they either were initially a mixed
people or picked up others as they pushed through Greece.
T<;> sum up, the Mycenaean world first underwent decline in
the thirteenth century. Then, in the next hundred years, the
internal deterioration was catastrophically complemented by in-
vasions from the north, which wiped out the political and eco-
nomic systems built around the kings and their palaces. A mod-
ern observer who today walks about the glittering showcases of
the Mycenaean room in the National Museum, Athens, or stands

1 Childe, Proceedings of the Prehis- tery evidence. European bronzes ap-

toric Society, n. s. XIV (1948), 177- pear in tombs xxii and xxix of Deiras
95 (but cf. his restatement in Acta cemetery at Argos, along with Ill.C
congressus M advigiani, I, 296-97), pottery (BCH, LXXX [1956], 361-
and C. F. C. Hawkes, "from Bronze 65); the spectacle fibulae, too, are
Age to Iron Age: Middle Europe, generally agreed to be a northern im-
Italy, and the North and West," ibid. port (Lorimer, Homer and the Monu-
196-218; Vladimir Milojci6, "Die ments, 363; Furumark, Chronology of
dorische Wanderung im Lichte der Mycenaean Pottery, 91-93).
vorgeschichtlichen Funde," AA 1948- Hylleis: Kretschmer, Glotta, XV
49, 12-36; Theodore C. Skeat, The ( 1927), 194, after Ulrich von Wila-
Dorians in Archaeology ( London, mowitz-Moellendorf, H ellenistische
n. d.), which much misreads the pot- Dichtung, II (Berlin, 1924), 177.
 PART I . The Early Aegean

at the Lion Gate of Mycenae must have somber thoughts when

he considers the fate of Greece in the twelfth century B.C. Not
for half a millennium to come were men of these lands again to
be organized so firmly in political units, to practice such varied
and skillful arts, or to have the intangible and physical strengths
which must underlie an advanced civilization-and by that
point the Greek heart was to beat in a different rhythm.

THE FALL OF MYCENAE AND GREEK CHRONOLOGY

Two ASPECTS of this collapse deserve special note, though

each must lead us somewhat far afield into certain major prob-
lems of early Greek history. The first, which is connected with
the principles of Greek chronology, is the date of the final fall of
the Mycenaean world. .
With respect to absolute dates in early Greek history, we
either may rely on lines of archaeological reasoning, as supported
by contacts with Oriental chronology, or can appeal to the
learned calculations of historic Greek chronographers. The for-
mer approach, which rests upon the truly contemporary mate-
rials, is more in keeping with sound historical principles insofar as
it yields usable results. The storerooms of Pylos are loaded with
amazing quantities of III.B pottery, which here and there was
just shifting toward III.C; 8 many other sites came to an abrupt
close about the same time or during the first phase of III.C;
Mycenae itself lasted long enough to display considerable de-
velopment of III.C. If the absolute dates suggested above for
these styles are valid, then Pylos was sacked about 1200, but the
citadel of Mycenae endured to about 1150.a Like Rome during
8 Blegen'S comments, AJA, LX naean Pottery, 115 n. 2, and Opus.
( 1956), 95-101, and LXI (1957), arch., III (1944), 263; c. 1200 by
129-35, on the presence of possibly Berard, Studies to D. M. Robinson, I,
lIte ware, he has been kind enough 142-44; c. 1100 by A. J. B. 'Wace,
to inform me, must not be pressed too "The Last Days of Mycenae," Aegean
far; Furumark placed it all in I1I.B. and Near Ea..<t, 126-35. Dates such as
See now Blegen's statement in AJA, 1050-1000, given by A. R. Burn,. Mi-
LXIV ( 1960), 159. noans, Philistines, and Greeks (Lon-
a The fall of Mycenae is put c. 1150 don, 1930), 49-51, and H. T. Wade-
by Furumark, Chronology of Myce- Cery, Cambridge Ancient History, II
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 65

the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire, Mycenae ap-

parently fell toward the end rather than at the beginning of the
Dorian assault. .
The first threats from the north may well have come late in
the thirteenth century, shortly after Macedonia seems to have
been overwhe1med; 1 and the Aegean was probab1y rising in
storm by 1200. The time when the fortified nuclei of the area
collapsed, however, should apparently be put at 1200-1150. This
conclusion accords reasonably well with the historical and ar-
chaeological evidence of the Middle East, which experienced its
greatest unrest at and just after 1200. The Aegean and the
Orient, it will be remembered, were in relatively close contact;
and some of the peoples who beset the East, such as the Akhai-
washa, Peleset, and others, seem to have come out of the Aegean.
Even off in Sicily and Italy, interestingly enough, many villages
had fortified themselves in vain and collapsed toward the end of
the thirteenth century.
While these dates will be accepted here, their hypothetical
character should not be overlooked. Cross-checks between Ae-
gean and Oriental archaeological levels are the ultimate basis of
this chronology, for datable Oriental records which refer un-
mistakably to Aegean events are virtually absent down to 500
B.C. Even the general references to the Greeks in the inscriptions
and literature of Assyria, Persia, Egypt, and Judaea are scanty
and commonly of little chronological value. And, unfortunately,
extensive synchronizations between the physical evidence of the
Aegean and of the Orient exist only in eras when large-scale
commerce throve-i.e., only at the height of the Mycenaean age
and again from 700 B.C. onward. For the long stretches of time
which intervened, our bases for absolute dates are inferences

(Cambridge, 1924), 525, now seem 1 Milojcic, AA 1948-49, 14-15;

out of the proper range. Massimo Pal- W. A. Heurtley, "Early Iron Age Pot-
Iottino, "J\IvK>1vas Kali£i),ov," Arch- tery from Macedonia," Antiquaries
eologia classica, III (1951), 186-91, Journal, VII (1927), 44-59. Since the
suggests that the physical destruction ceramics connected with the Mace-
of Mycenae took place early in the donian conquest did not come down
fifth century B.C. at the time of the into Greece, it would be possible to
Argive conquest. It is a great pity that argue that these invaders set in mo-
solid stratification is really lacking at tion the Dorians.
Mycenae.
66 PART I . The Early Aegean
from archaeological stratification, which is not easily come by in
the poverty of Aegean sites, and estimates of the length of
pottery styles. The evidence now at hand is sufficient to prevent
making gross mistakes of a century or more, but accurate dating
of events or of specific vases to a definite decade or even a
quarter of a specific century cannot be achieved by this method
-though, let me warn, a casual observer of much archaeological
literature might be misled into thinking such dating was simple.
Scholars who cherish precision have accordingly tried to
save the specific dates aSSigned to early events by Greek chroI\o-
logical traditions. Here, however, trey run into even worse dif-
ficulties very swiftly. The canonical date for the fall of Troy, for
instance, is 1184/3 in the scheme of Eratosthenes and others,
though variant dates range from 1334 to 1135; 2 but anyone who
holds to the Homeric picture of a jOint attack by all Greece on
Troy cannot then accept the general direction of the archaeo-
logical evidence which suggests that the mainland was already
under attack by 1200. One commOn solution to this impasse is to
depress the date of the Dorian invasion down well toward the
end of the twelfth century so as to save the Eratosthenian date;
others seek rather to adhere to the archaeological picture and
pick one of the earlier, variant dates for the Trojan war. s
2 Eratosthenes: Clement of Alexandria, LXVI (1946),68; Furumark, Opus.
Stromateis I. 21. 139 (as Eusebius, arch., VI (1950), 182-83; and among
Velleius Paterculus I. 8, Dionysius of the many treatments of the develop-
Halicamassus II. 1-2, Diodorus L 5). ment of myth, Ludwig Radermacher,
Other ancient views may be found in Mythos und Sage bei den Griechen
John Forsdyke, Greece before Homer: (Leipzig, 1938), Erster Teil.-
Ancient Chronology and Mythology The fall of Troy VI has been put
(London, 1956),62-63; F.Jacoby, Die about 1300, that of Troy VILA about
Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1250 (or before the fall of Pylas), by
( Berlin, 1923- ) , under the several Blegen, X Congresso internazionale di
authors. scienze' storiche, VII (Rome, 1955),
8 Jean Berard, Recherches sur la chro- 128-29. Incidentally, if a Greek at-
nologie de l'epoque mycenienne, in tack on Troy did take place, it was not
Memoires presentes pars divers sa- necessarily like a modern interallied
vants d l'Academie des Inscriptions et armada, and might have been
Belles-Lettres, XV. 1 (Paris, 1950); launched by some parts of' Greece
: and Oscar Broneer; "Athens in the even while others were already under
Late Bronze Age," Antiquity, XXX Dorian assault. The emperor Majorian
( 1956), 9-18, are examples of the ef- fitted out an expedition against the
fort to save archaeological appear- Vandals in A.D. 461 at a point when
ances and the Homeric tradition to- much of his European realm was in
gether. But d. R. M. Cook, ]HS, Gemlan hands. The fall of Troy VILA
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 67

The proper answer, however, is neither alternative. Sober

historical judgment must discard the ancient chronological
schemes in toto; they are nothing more than elaborate harmoni-
zations of the myths and legends which were known in later
times and have no independent value whatever for historical
purposes. Not until the fifth century B.C. did the historic Greek
world come to date even contemporary events on ~ coherent
scheme. Both Herodotus and Thucydides are careful on chrono-
logical matters, but do not concern themselves greatly over the
yardstick of time. Their contemporary Hellanicus and other
Greek antiquarians began to systematize earlier developments,
and by Hellenistic times Eratosthenes, Apollodorus, and others
had constructed a detailed picture which ran well back into the
second millennium B.C. The yardsticks which were employed
were to some extent a table of Olympiads beginning in 776 B.C.,
but more often the chronographers used genealogical lists, as of
the kings of Sparta or Athens or of the priestesses of Hera at
Argos. Generations were assumed to cover 40, 33%, and other.
spans of years. 4
While the calculations were sometimes ingenious, they often
were simply guesses; Duris of Samos assumed that Troy fell in
1334 in order to place the event a .thousand years before Alexan-
der crossed into Asia. The often striking differences in dates

may be due either to such an attack or Korinthiaka (Paris, 1955), 351-52. on

to invaders from central Europe; al- the battle of Hysiae; and Beloch.
though IIl.C pottery appears in a brief Griechische Geschichte, 1. 2, 148-54,
settlement (VII.B1) thereafter, this on the lists of Olympic victors.
cannot disprove a conquest from the Generations; Eratosthenes seems
northwest. to have proceeded on a basis of 40
4 We do not know that the Olympian years per generation (from Heca-
games actually began in 776, that they taeus, according to Eduard Meyer.
were given every four years in the Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, I
eighth and seventh centuries (Th. [Halle, 1892], 170). To assume that
Lenschau, Philologus, n. f. XLV folk-memory was accurate in terms of
[1936/37], 396-411, for instance, generations and that Eratosthenian
telescopes 776-584 B.C. down to a dates simply should be lowered by
brief period, 632-584/3, by arguing calculating generations at 30-35 years
for yearly games in early days), or each is somewhat naive; but see A. B.
that events placed in any Olympiad Bum, "Dates in Early Greek History,"
were correctly located. Probably JRS, LV (1935), 130-46, and "Early
Greek scholars affixed events, which Greek . Chronology." IRS, LXIX
they knew independently. to the 4- (1949).70-73·
year Olympic scheme; see Ed. Will.
68 PART I . The Early Aegean
assigned to early events are not incidental flaws in a generally
solid tradition but reveal the fundamental weaknesses of the
underlying principles. The Greeks believed their legends were
historically true, and eventually, as they arranged their own
times in sequences, they constructed elegant schemes for the
past as well. We, however, need not follow them far. Since writing
was used from at least the late eighth century B.C. onward, we
can trust that major events and persons of the seventh and sixth
centuries are approximately in the right sequence, though such
figures as Pheidon of Argos float in a void; but so apparently
reliable an absolute date as Solon's archonship of 594-perhaps
the first solid point in Greek history-has been seriously ques-
tioned. 5
Before the eighth century, on the other hand, no traditional
date deserves credence in itself, and belief even in traditional •
events is largely a matter of faith. At the most, the historian can
only hope that the main line of folk memory and genealogical
tradition preserve the most outstanding developments in the
right sequence; men in historic times thus knew that the Dorian
invasion must be put well back before their own background
and assigned to it dates which would so locate it. For the actual
development of Greek civilization, fortunately, the archaeo-
logical evidence suggests the main stages, and the importance of
this step in Western civilization is such that we may follow it
with interest even though our story must lack the precision of
absolute dating and the mass of attendant circumstances which
are available in more historic epochs.
5 T. J. Cadoux, "The Athenian Ar- tween Greek and Oriental written
chons from Kreon to Hypsichides," chronology is the figure of Gyges of
JRS, LXVIII (1948), 70-123, exam- Lydia, who was active according to
ines the problem of Solon (pp. 93- Assyrian recOrds until about 652; as
99). The date assigned by modern Herodotus reckoned back, he placed
students to the Cypselid domination this king about 716-679. See Her-
of Corinth still wavers over a genera- mann Strasburger, "Herodots Zeit-
tion; Will, Korinthiaka, has recently rechnung," R istoria, V (1956), 129-
argued forcefully for the era 620- 61; Hans Kaletsch, "Zur lydischen
550, as against the conventional dat\! Chronologie," Ristoria, vn (1958),
of 6SS-C. 580. The first useful tie be- 1-47·
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 69

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DORIANS 6

THE OTHER absorbing problem connected with the end of

the Mycenaean world which must be considered here is the
significance of the northern invaders. This issue links very di-
rectly to the substance of the next chapter, which will consider
the Aegean world in the early Dark ages and the first appearance
of a truly Greek outlook. More relevant at the present point, a
consideration of the problem enables us to look back over the
whole span of early Aegean evolution down to the fall of
Mycenaean society and to assess its bearing on the rise of historic
Greek civilization.
There is no need here to review in detail the factual aspects
of Aegean progress through the Neolithic and Bronze ages, other
than to reiterate that the stages thus far considered are not
Greek in the sense in which that term is employed in this volume.
They are the ancestors of that culture, but one must look closely
to detect the family lineaments under the sharply defined physi-
ognomy of archaic and classic Greek centuries.
If we pass from the specific to the general, the history of the
early Aegean may perhaps assume different proportions. A very
great part of modern scholarship thus tends to explain the Greek
genius as the ultimate but essentially predictable flowering {)f a
recognizable force which was introduced into the Aegean basin
in the'period before 1100. While this process of explanation is
widely shared, its adherents differ fiercely among themselves in
identifying the force in question. Three main contenders have
been paraded: the original Mediterranean stock, Oriental civili-
zation, and the northern Indo-European invaders.

6 Judicious statements of the archaeo- same line in the official Kerameikos

logical evidence may be found in the reports; Friedrich Matz, Geschichte
studies listed in n. 7 (p. 63). A few der griechischen Kunst, I (Frankfurt,
examples of the more sweeping inter- 1950), 38, 202, 344-45; Friedrich
pretations are Hans Krahe, Die Indo- Wirth, "Der nordische Charakter
germanisierung Griechenlands und des Griechentums," Mannus, XXX
Italiens (Heidelberg, 1949); Wilhelm ( 1938), 222-46. Even that independ-
Kraiker, "Nordische Einwanderungen ent critic, Beloch, accepted the basic
in Griechenland," Die Antike, XV premises of the Nordic theory in
(1939), 195-230, who followed the Griechische Geschichte, I. 1, 92-95.
70 PART I . The Early Aegean
Of these three, the Oriental myth is the oldest and is once
more strongly in the field today. Since it is often reinforced by
arguments based on the Orientalizing wave in Greek times, we
may postpone its consideration until the time when the Aegean
and the Orient renewed their contacts (in Chapter 6). The
other two, however, must be exorcised now lest they warp our
view of the fundamental drives in Greek history.
The effort to prove that the basic qualities of Greek civiliza-
tion bubbled up from the Urbevolkerung, the primeval Mediter-
ranean stock, is often a reaction against the Nordic argument. It
is to be found especially, but not exclusively, among scholars of
Mediterranean origin; but it arises out of the same racialistic
background as its more formidable contender.7 I need not, ac-
cordingly, deal with its theoretical principles by themselves. On
its purported factual proofs, drawn from such matters as round -
or oval architectural ground plans, the worship of a Great
Mother, and so on, little comment is needed; their ascription to a
basic Mediterranean outlook, static across the ages, commonly
will not stand critical investigation. Worse yet, the political,
religious, and spiritual attitudes of the earliest Mediterranean
levels, as I have noted in Chapter 1, are not easily ascertained.
The Indo-European school has had a long and triumphant
career. Its origins, as a conscious theory, lie in the early nine-
teenth century, very soon after linguistic students had discovered
the wide spread of this group of languages and in the era when
German scholars were liberating themselves from French cultural
domination. The first major work which stressed the Nordic
origin of Greek culture was K. O. Muller's study Die Dorier,
published in 1824, which was actually in part a healthy reaction
against the common interpretation of Greek culture at that time
as a simple offshoot from Oriental sources. Since then the view
7 Adolf Furtwangler put this view suc- Grundlagen der antiken KunSt
cinctly in 1900, "Das eigentlich kiinst- (Frankfurt, 1944). On the significance
lerisch Schopferische ging wahr- of ground f.lans, the remarks of C. ,A.
scheinlich von dem vorgriechischen Boethius, 'Mycenaean Megara and
Element der Urbevolkerung aus" Nordic Houses," BSA, XXIV (1919-
(quoted by Franz Dirlmeier, Gnomon, 21), 161-84, still point in the right di-
XXVI [19541, lSI, with other exam- rection; see also Chap. I, n. 1 (p. 20).
pies); see also Guido von Kaschnitz- Fertility cults: see below, Chap. 5,
Weinberg, Die mittelmeernchen n.6 (p. 177).
CHAPTER 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 7 1
that Greek (and also Roman) civilization was the product of
indogermanisches Volkstum has permeated not only nationalistic
German scholarship but also an amazing range of other work all
across the continent of Europe; its insidious influence can often
be detected in studies the authors of which would be among the
first to reject the basic theses of the school.
These theses have necessarily undergone amplification and
change, though only on details, as our archaeological knowledge
has progressed. Nowdays it is no longer possible to deny that the
first impetus to Aegean development came from the Orient, but
once the Nordic specialists have grudgingly admitted this in-
fluence into the Greek Neolithic era they do their utmost to
redeem the situation. The basic pattern of life which resulted
from the arrival of agriculture is termed a "closed peasant cul-
ture" which in itseH.cDuld never have progressed. 8 To enliven
this backward world, invaders from the north magically appear
to contribute their dynamic, inventive spirit-first the Dimini
people, then (though not commonly) a wave in Early Helladic
days, and the Achaeans at the beginning of the Middle Helladic
era. But these waves were drawn aside by the siren temptations
of the "Mediterranean" culture of Crete. "The last, most funda-
mental, and decisive turning point" (in Kraiker's words), accord-
ingly, was the Dorian invasion, which so strengthened the Nordic
spirit of Greece that it became capable of the heights of the
Hellenic achievement. To give the real flavor of this line of
argument, early Aegean development must be described virtu-
ally in melodramatic terms of the struggle ()f good and evil.
My utter inability to accept any part of the Nordic theory
will already be apparent. On the factual level, adherents of the
school have had to yield every pOSition which they have taken
up, one after another. Neither the Dimini wave nor changes in
Early Helladic times can be clearly attached to the north; and
8Kraiker, Die Antike, XV (1939), Theander, '''o>.o>.vy>i und 'la," Era-
196; cf. Kunze, Orchomenos, Ill, 91. nos, XV (lIPS), 99-160, and XX
The efforts to explain later variations ( 1921-22), l-SO, which takes these
in Greek religious outlooks on racial Greek religious calls as survivals. The
terms will be considered below in pre-Greek population thus is assumed
Chapters 5 and 8; an example of to have been more inclined to emo-
this approach is the study by C. tional outbreaks.
 PART I . The Early Aegean
the Middle Helladic invasion in itself brought nothing positive
which can be seen in the archaeological evidence. If any era may
be called rural and backward in early Greece, tlus epoch prob-
able best deserves the term I As for the Dorians, scholars a
generation ago were inclined to attribute to this wave an im-
pressive range of physical gifts, such as iron, slashing swords, a
new style of clothing pinned at the shoulders by fibulae, the
house plan of rectangular shape known as the megaron, and
burial by cremation; but increasing evidence and a greater
precision in its chronological interpretation have shown con-
clusively that none of the major innovations at the end of the
second millennium, which will be taken up in the next chapter,
are to be connected with the Dorians.
These were a barbarian folk invading a far more civilized
land. They gave a final push to what seems to have been already
a tottering political and economic structure; they looted, kmed
some of the natives, and married native women; and at least on
simple levels the new masters took over the previous patterns of
culture. Proponents of the Nordic theory have been especially
embarrassed by the fact that the greatest type of Proto geometric
pottery, the first true mark of a Greek outlook as we shall see
shortly, emerged in Attica-for this was not linguistically a
Dorian land, though roundheads of Alpine type sifted into the
area and were buried in its cemeteries in appreciable numbers.9
The strength of such a line of thought does not lie in factual
evidence, which is mere window-dressing for more basic modern
prejudices; the theoretical dictates of this outlook, however, have
resulted in more misreading of the archaeological record of early'
Greece than any other single factor. With respect to the basic
drives behind the Nordic theory, we may as well be brief, for the
true believer in any cult will not yield his belief to logical argu-
ment. On the racialistic side, it may be noted that the terms
"Dorian," "Ionian," etc., are simply linguistic in character, and
9 Angel, Hesperia, XIV (1945), 322- Greek graveyards of the late second
23, 328; Emil Breitinger, Kerameikos: millennium; see also Robert P.
Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen, I (Ber- Charles, "Etude anthropologique des
lin, 1939), 223-55. This actually is necropoles d'Argos," BCH, LXXXII
our best evidence so far on the in- ( 1958 ), 268-313.
crease of dolichocrane skulls in the
CHAPTER 2 . The.Rise and Fall of the Mycenaean World 73
that the Dorian-speaking peoples of later Greece possessed no
specific political or cultural attitudes merely by virtue of their
dialect. 1 Nor does it follow that if a potter speaks in an Indo-
European tongue, his fingers will be mystically impelled to give
his pots a marvelous sense of structure. This proposition, I
should perhaps observe, is actually very often asserted.
Not all of the wide acceptance either of the Nordic or of the
Mediterranean theory, to be sure, is due to modern race tenets.
In explaining any great development historical students tend to
search for a pre-existent cause; the proposition that the Dorians
are this force has often been innocently accepted because it
seems a simple, aU-illuminating explanation of the otherwise
mystifying rise of the great Greek civilization of later days.
History is not quite so chemical a process. To repeat an observa-
tion made at the close of the previous chapter, each people and
each culture which contributed to the early evolution of the
Aegean lands gave something which was of lasting value, but
those contributions were not static, fixed entities to which clearly
distinguishable parts of the later population clung. Far more they
were living influences which entered subtly into ever changing
patterns. By 1100 basic social and intellectual foundations had
emerged from the interplay and interfusion of the many earlier
forces which we have thus far examined; the rise of the Hellenic
outlook itself is to be explained only when and as we consider its
actual appearance.
The Dorians themselves are nonetheless of very great impor-
tance in Aegean history. The Nordic theorists are right-but for
the wrong reasons-when they assert that the invasion at the
end of the Mycenaean age was a vital condition for the emer-
gence of Greek civilization. In many ways the invasion was a
catastrophe, for it brought wide-scale destruction and broke
down a relatively advanced political superstructure. Mycenaean
pottery, which tells the tale well, progressed into a sub-Myce-
naean phase which can only be termed degenerate. Yet in the

1 The principles of modem racial Doriens et Ioniens: essai sur la valeur

study, which can be found in any re- du critere ethnique applique a l'etude
spectable handbook, are applied to de l'histoire et de la civilisation grec-
the issue at hand by £douard Will, ques (Paris, 1956).
74 PART I . The Early Aegean
fact that the Dorians did end the Mycenaean age lies their
significance.
Greek civilization could never have arisen if that disruption
had not occurred and had not shaken the old conventions. In the
dull, repetitive cases of Mycenaean pottery which can be seen in
modem museums, in the palace tablets which now show the
centralizing drive of royal masters, we can sense that the Myce-
naean world was far too attached to outside models ever to
develop an independent outlook of its own. These links were
broken by the barbarian invasions of Greece and of the Middle
East at the end of the Late Bronze age; the declining palace
economies of the Mycenaean lords were shattered; and so men
were set free to create new political and intellectual views, once
the worst of the chaos was over.
In that work the Aegean was to be essentially sundered from L

the Middle East for three centuries. This break was its decisive,
critical opportunity. Potters and craftsmen moved on from the
underlying tendencies in late Mycenaean art, yet already by the.
eleventh century they were expressing a new outlook on life.
Although the Greek genius was not a gift from the wild forests of
Indo-European Europe, we cannot do without the Dorians in
essaying to explain the world in which the first clear marks of
Greek civilization appeared.
THE DARK AGES
(II) SII)J-:\1y"'tlIIC(/Il t'"81' (K.
-n(i), slulll"itl!! III(' c/ctr'ritll"lllillli or
.IJy(,,·)jacllli "IIIII'I'S allll lIIotif.'
(K,'rrllllciko., If IIs,'11II1 ).

(h 1 Hip!' Pmto/.!l"IlI1ll'lrir (I111J1/rOI"ll

(K. W7:]), fully t/r'l·,'ltllwt/ ill IIIl"
IIC'(t Myle (!\.ertlillciko.\ ,\111\<'11111).
I'IIfItogml'h, courlesy Dl'lIlw'/r<,s
·\rd.iio[ol!;sclw., In\titlll ill •\thl'lIs.

PLA'lE 5 . The Rl'l'oll1fioll 0/ fIll' E/crcllth CCII/II]'!!

 (0\

(el {dl
(II) SlIb-JI!lCI'IlOelill t:ase (1.:. -/21) lei/It de 01 Ilrl' bl'{!,illl1il1{!, Ilf tlte nelt' sty'" (/(('((IIII('i-
{!elll'l'Illl' fiom/ 1II0lif OIl slll)lIhler (Kcwmcik".\ kos JIIISt'lIlIIl.
.HII~UIJJl). (c1 l. Er/rly Proto{!,colllctric amphora (I\. .
(!J) Amphora fTllIII .\rgos, OIl I/'e rerge of (I 5.56 I lI:i," IIIMe tine/ofll'd .,hlll'£' aucl .\£'/la-
PmlllgctHII(·tric ~haf1" (.4.rgo • .\lII.\CIIIlI). P/ICl- ratl'd circl£' lIlolif' ll\.(,((IlIldk"" .\[11"'11111 I,
t(lgrap" cOllrtesy £(,(I/e ffllllfaiW d'Atllh,I'.¥. Phol(1glllplls a. c. lIIu/ d cOllrt('\!/ DllIlKlws
«(') Early Prutll{!,£'IIlIldrk alllflhora {I\.. 522 I \rchiio/Ilgisc/Ics Illstilu! ill AI/'I:I1.I.

PLATE 6 . Emergence of the Protogeometric Style

 [77
CHAPTER 3

AFTER

THE MYCENAEAN COLLAPSE

As THE LAST EMBERS flickered out at the destroyed Myce-

naean palaces, darkness settled over Greece. Men continued to
live in most parts of the Aegean, to beget families, and to die; but
their dull routine of daily life and final burial deposited only the
scantiest of physical remains. Not until the eighth century B.C.
does this obscurity slowly begin to lift. The material evidence
then grows more extensive and more varied, as sculpture and
architecture emerge alongside the ever present pottery; myth is
occasionally usable; and writing of a new type spreads over the
Aegean basin. Once more the Aegean and the Orient resume
contact on an extensive scale.
By 750 there can be no doubt that the type of civilization
which we call Greek had appeared. It had already produced one
of its greatest fruits, the Iliad, and was ready to enter upon a
great stage of revolution and crystallization, leading to the
archaic world of kouroi and korai statues, stone temples of Doric
order, Solon and Sappho, and the consolidated city-state. So dim
is the background to these magnificent achievements that many
scholars have assumed the Hellenic outlook arose only after
800 B.C. This point of view distorts the actual course of events
badly, as does the more recent argument which assigns the
decisive steps to the Mycenaean age.
Thirty years ago it was possible, perhaps inevitable, that
the ill-lit centuries between the fall of Mycenae and the emer-
4
 PART II . The Dark Ages

gence of historic times should be summed up briefly as an un-

differentiated, apparently static, and relatively unimportant era.
Since then decisive archaeological discoveries have provided
adequate signposts to the tempo, stages, and direction of change
in the years from llSO to 750. In this age, it is now clear, the
inhabitants of the Aegean settled on the patterns of thought
which continued directly into historic times as the main marks of-
Greek civilization. More specifically, the fundamental aspects
emerged abruptly in the period immediately after the fall of the
Mycenaean world. They then developed, very slowly but none-
theless surely, across the following centuries down to the great
outburst of the late eighth century.
This long period of four hundred years falls into three stages.
Each, fortunately, has a clearly distinguishable pottery style.
First comes the evolution of the most basic qualities of Greek •
civilization, a step which is aesthetically expressed in the rise of
Protogeometric pottery. This development took place independ-
ently in Attica, the Argolid, and other areas in the decades down
to about 1000. The second phase is the consolidation of the new
outlook across the tenth and ninth centuries, the era when the
Protogeometric formulas yielded to the first stages of the Geo-
metric style. At this time the linguistic and cultural unification of
the Aegean basin was completed. In the third period, which runs
directly on into the great age of revolution, the Greek world was
secure enough to begin its intellectual and geographical ex-
pansion. The greatest marks of this phase, the early eighth cen-
tury, are the Iliad of Homer and the famous Ripe Geometric or
Dipylon pottery of Athens.
Each of these three major eras deserves independent con-
sideration. In the present chapter, which will consider the first;
our attention must be focused upon the theses that unmistakable
tokens of Greek civilization can be detected in the eleventh cen~
tury B.C. and that these aspects emerged from native roots.
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 79

THE BACKGROUND OF CHAOS

DURING the invasions and unrest which ended the glowing

Mycenaean age, Greek lands experienced a terrific shock. Every-
where men continued to make the most essential household tools
and wares in the ways of their forefathers, but in a dreary, lifeless
spirit which archaeologists term sub-Mycenaean. Commonly the
only physical evidence is that provided by the scanty furnishings
of simple graves-pottery of limited types and restrained decora-
tion; occasional fibulae, pins, arms, and a few other metal objects,
usually of bronze but now occasionally of iron. Gold and silver
almost vanish; the little clay figurines which appear frequently
in late Mycenaean graves are no longer to be found. Over the
whole of the Greek mainland only a few remains of poorly
constructed houses have thus far been turned up to demonstrate
how abysmally building skills had sunk from the days when the
architects of Mycenaean kings had the daring and resources to
construct great palaces and tholos tombs. 1
Quite probably the population of the Aegean basin dropped
terrifically. This was the result not of the actual rapine and de-
struction or occasional emigration but of the collapse of order
and settled life; human existence is even more deeply dependent
upon a solid social and political framework than upon economic
and technological skills. If we feel that major sites, at least in
part, were still occupied, this is only an inference from their later
history; our evidence is still too scanty to permit us to determine
where inhabitation did continue. Archaeologists have not, thus
far, succeeded in discovering a site at which men left a con-
tinuous stratified deposit all the way from the height of the
Mycenaean age on down into the Dark ages. Even at Argos,
Cnossus, and Athens, where settlements must have existed, new
cemeteries were begun in the sub-Mycenaean phase. 2
1 N. Valmin, Opuscula atheniensia, I known as the Oikos of the Naxians.
( 1953), 31-40, on Malthi; Milojci6, 2 Decline: V. R. d'A. Desborough,
AA 1955, 196, on the Gremnos mound Protogeometric Pottery (Oxford,
in Thessaly; Gallet de Santerre, Delos 1952), 296-97, who may exaggerate
primitive, 215, who accepts Vallois' its degree, especially for the islands;
argument for the very early date of but the depopulation which often
the building under the later structure takes place here in times of crisis is
80 PART II . The Dark Ages
Many areas may well have sunk back into nomadic life,
which always revives in Greek lands when civilization declines.
The scantiness of remains from villages of the plains in the early
Dark ages is perhaps not accidental; and the lowest point, when'
measured for Greece as a whole in physical terms, quite possibly
came at and just after 1000, when the last sub-Mycenaean rem-
nants flickered out in a number of areas. Settled sites become
steadily more noticeable again after about goo. The development
may reflect the slow restoration of order and growth of popula-
tion as peoples which had previously wandered, each within its
own tribal area, became fixed in location and turned to agri-
cultural life.
The point at which the last waves of northern invasions died
away cannot be precisely set. Throughout the eastern Mediter-
ranean the major migrations had come to an end by 1000 B.C., '
though scattered movements and slow infiltrations continued
thereafter. Within the Aegean, some archaeologists have essayed
to demonstrate a new invasion just after 1000, and others feel
that northerners sifted in for some time to come. 3 The possibility
of movements in a fluid world cannot be gainsaid, but after the
illuminated for modem times by Has- siod's Breadwinners," Transactions of
luck, BSA, XVII (1910-11), 151-81. the American Philological Association,
See, however, Gallet de Santerre, De- LXXXIX (1958), 44-65, who argues
los primitive. The change in burial that grain-raising only slowly replaced
sites took a remarkable form at For- livestock. Renewed settlement might
tetsa, near Cnossus; Late Minoan be argued for Corinth with T. J. Dun-
tombs seem to have continued in use babin, "The Early History of Corinth,"
but were swept virtually clear of ear- jHS, LXVIII (1948), 59-69, though
lier remains (J. K. Brock, Fortetsa: we know too little of its early history
Early Greek Tombs near Knossos to speak with confidence. A surer ex-
[Cambridge, 1957], 216). ample of oscillation between nomad-
Nomadism: Daniel Faucher, ism and settled population is that of
"Les Conditions naturelles de la vie Jericho (Kenyon, Digging Up jericho,
agricole en Grece continentale," Me- 186-87,192 ).
langes de la societe toulousaine 3 Milojcic, AA 1948-49,. 19-22, and
d' etudes classiques, I (1946), 5-22, "Einige 'miUeleuropiiische' Fremd"
who notes that Chateaubriand saw Hnge auf Kreta," jahrbuch des ro-
Albanian flocks on the ruins of Athens misch-germanischen Zentralmuseums
and Corinth. Cf. Johannes Hasebroek, in i\lainz, II (1955), 153-69; Lenk
Griechische Wirtschafts- und Gesell- s. 11. Thrake in PW, 415-16, who sums
schaftsgeschichte bis zur Perserzeit up ancient speculation; Desborough,
(Tiibingen, 1931), 1-6; H. Bolke- BSA, XLIX (1954), 266, but see be-
stein, Economic Life in Greece's low, n. 4 (p. 89), on the nature of
Golden Age (Lexden, 1958), 13; hand-made vases.
Thalia P. Howe, 'Linear B and He-
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse

initial, decisive blows the further introduction of new tribes,

whether Greek, Illyrian, or Thracian in speech, had little cultural
effect except insofar as it may have served to delay the restoration
of local order and the resumption of enduring settlement.
The degree of thecollapse which befell the Aegean world in
the late second millennium must not be underestimated. Nor, on
the other hand, had this area become entirely a tabula rasa, a
cipher incapable of internal development. Some places were
surely occupied continuously; the older patterns of life generally
persisted on at least their simplest level; new steps, which essen-
tially mark the birth of Greek civilization, were taken in the very
era of turmoil. To see these aspects, we must turn primarily to
the mountain villages of Crete and to the cemeteries of Attica.
The Cretan mountain villages arose at the end of Late
Minoan times; they were not inhabited before the collapse, and
were deserted again as soon as the plains had once more become
safe. 4 These mountain eyries were mean settlements. Karphi, the
best explored, lay thirteen hundred feet above the fertile plain of
Lasithi in eastern Crete and must have been almost unendurable
in winter. Its population, perhaps as much as thirty-five hundred
souls, supported life by farming in the plain below, by herding,
and perhaps by brigandage against neighbors.
The houses of Karphi were simple structures of native stone
and clay or mud. Often they were one room, which at times
assumed a megaran form, a rectangular shape with hearth in the
center and foreporch. Others, however, were of a rambling
Minoan pattern; one abode of more extensive nature seems to
have been the mansion of the chieftain. The streets within the
settlement were roughly paved, and the inhabitants improved
their spring by walls to catch the water and lead it down into a
tank in which animals could be watered; about this tank figures
of oxen, sheep, and a man were discovered. An open space was
perhaps a public square, on which a tavern may have faced.
4 "Excavations in the Plain of Lasithi cavations in Eastern Crete: Vrokastro
III: Karphi: A City of Refuge of the (Philadelphia, 1914); Pendlebury,
Early Iron Age in Crete," BSA, Archaeology of Crete, 303-13; Nico-
XXXVIII (1937-38), 57-145; Henri las Platon, '''AvauKa¢al .... p'ox1js
van Effenterre, Necropoles de Mira- ~7]Tflas," Praktika 1952, 630-48.
bello (Paris, 1948); E. H. Hall, Ex-
 82 PART II . The Dark Ages

Though the village was unwalled and displays no clear architec-

tural planning, its equal has yet to be found on the contemporary
. mainland. The tholos tombs which were discovered below the
houses were assigned by the excavators to the local nobles; the
graves of the peasants apparently were too simple to leave lasting
traces.
Culturally, the hallmark of Karphi, as of Vrokastro, alous,
Dreros, and other early Cretan settlements, was conservativism.
The inhabitants of these villages had little interest in breaking
away from their inherited tradition, but yet had sufficient re-
sources to maintain its basic aspects. Karphi possessed a temple
or, rather, religious enclosure in which worship was conducted in
Minoan style. 5 The figures found in this enclosure, like those
discovered at Gazi near Cnossus, are of a female deity with
upraised hands (probably in pose of epiphany) and complicated
crown. However rudimentary their modeling and crude their
deSign, no sculpture of similar size is known from the Greek
mainland throughout the Dark Age. The religious emphasis, too,
on the female principle went back into Minoan times and con-
tinued on down into later centuries.
The pottery of these sites is almost entirely derived from
Minoan and Mycenaean prototypes. While the vases were im-
poverished in motifs and were poorly decorated, human and
animal figures never quite disappeared from Cretan pottery, as
they virtually did on the mainland; and in comparison with the
ruthless simplification of mainland pottery styles the work of
Cretan potters remained varied as well as conservative.
Even thus far, nonetheless, the changes which were taking
place on the ma~nland found distant reflection. The Cretan
villagers used iron sporadically; fibulae of Protogeometric types

5 An altar in shrine form was found ( 1937), pI. xxxi; Spyridon Marinatos,
at Karphi, AJA, XLIII (1939), 130 "'AI M,pw'Kal eEal TOU rel_\,," Arch.
fig. 8; Stylianos Alexiou, "IIPWTO'YEW- eph. 1937, 278-91; Matz, Kreta, My-
P.ETP'KOS pataKos .,.,js ~vXXo'Y?js ra/LaX- kene, Troia, pI. 59; Miiller, Friihe
elK,!," Kretika Chronika, IV (1950), Plastik, pI. xii, nn. 228-230. While the
441,-62, published a round shrine Karphi examples are ruder than Late
model with female deity within and Minoan work, the presence of feet
two other figures (Dioscuri?) and a and the different structural sense in
dog on the thatched roof. Figures the torso are significant changes.
of female deities: BSA, XXXVIII
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse

appear in their graves, and the style of burial tended to shift

from inhumation in clay coffins to cremation in large storage
vessels known as pithoi. Some aspects of the pottery can perhaps
be hesitantly called Protogeometric. One clay box (pyxis) which
was found at Karphi well reRects the varied strands of Cretan
culture in the era: its horns of consecration and double axes
attest IVlinoan inheritance; its general shape is of Mycenaean
character, as is also its decoration of birds; but its lid has a
Proto geometric air. Only at such an open site as Cnossus near
the sea, however, is there any positive evidence that men of Crete
directly knew what was happening elsewhere in the Aegean
before the ninth century.
Crete, in sum, is not the best area from which to illuminate
the major developments of the early Dark ages. The island of
Minos remained perhaps richer and more settled than the Greek
mainland, but its population clung more fully to their inheritance
from the second millennium. When they turned abroad again,
they looked eastward toward Cyprus and the Orient as well as
northwatd; we shall see later that Cretan progress did not follow
quite the same line as that in other important Aegean districts.
The main course of Greek civilization was determined by forces
emanating from the even more barbarous but also more venture-
some mainland.

NEW WAYS IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

WHEN WE MOVE to Greece proper, we must resign ourselves

to relying primarily upon the evidence which can be drawn from
its simple cemeteries; but men's provision for the dead throws
considerable light upon their views about life. Material is now
coming in from several parts of the mainland; future excavations
will surely enlarge and deepen our knowledge. Attica, which
remains the best lit, was quite clearly not the only center of
evolution, but it seems generally to have stood in the van.
Archaeological evidence for the Mycenaean period attests
that Attica was then a thriving district with several local centers
 PART II . The Dark Ages

besides the Acropolis, which had a royal palace. 6 We cannot be

as sure as was ancient tradition that Athens escaped the wave of
invasions, nor was it necessarily a refuge into which desperate
fugitives poured on their way to colonize Asia Minor-the myths
of this movement will be considered in Chapter 4. What we do
know is that here best we can follow continuous development
across the dim period after the fall of the Mycenaean world.
However destructive the whirlwind which swept across the rest
of Greece, and even perhaps Attica itself, men dwelt uninter-
ruptedly in the favored land of Athena; their culture evolved
from earlier roots but underwent epochal changes in the eleventh
century.
The principal proof of continuity and the main key to Attic
development is the cemetery of a simple village which was
placed in the open land by the Eridanus brook, northwest of the '
Acropolis on the Eleusis road. The cemetery in this area, later
known as the Kerameikos or Potters' Quarter, was begun in sub-
Mycenaean times and was used on down into the classic period.
To the present point it is the only site in all Greece which fur- ,
nishes an uninterrupted record across this era. The importance of
the cemetery, accordingly, cannot be overestimated; and fortu-
nately its excavation was conducted with the utmost care by the
German Archaeological Society, in part in 1913-16 (after some
probings from 1863 on) 'but more completely in 1927-40.7 With
the aid of the unbroken chain of pottery development ,which can
be established here, the relative place of various other early
burials in Athens-in the Agora, on the sides of the Acropolis, at
Eleusis, on Salamis, and so' on--can be determined, and one can
assess their significance in the whole line of progress.
The Kerameikos graves proper begin with simple sub-Myce-
6 Illustrative material may be found ports now being published as Kera,
from H. G. Lolling et al., Vas Kup- meikos: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen
pelgrab bei Menidi (Athens, 1880), (Berlin), I (1939), IV (1943), V. 1
on to the tombs discovered in the (1954), VI. 1 (1959); newexcava-
Agora excavations, Hesperia, IX tion is in course. Georg Karo, An At-
(1940), 274-91; AJA, LI (1947), tic Cemetery (Philadelphia, 1943),
270~71; LVII (1953), 24; LVIII gives a brief but delightful sketch,
(1954), 231-32. Cf. C. W. Blegen, which pays due respect to the finan-
"Athens and the Early Age of Greece," cial aid and encouragement of Gustav
HSCP, Suppl. I (1940),1-9. oberlaender.
7 Preliminary reports in AA; final re-
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 85
naean interments in rectangular pits. Almost half of these earliest
graves have no burial gifts at all to supply the corpse with its
needs; the remainder have a vase or two for food, a container for
wine (oenochoe) or oil (lekythos), and a bowl (skyphos) or cup
(kantharos), with at times a clay box on a stand or an oint-
ment jar (pyxis). The men occasionally have their weapons; the
women, pins, rings, spirals, and the like; the children, milk jugs
and miniature vases. The metal is almost exclusively bronze,
though one spiral of gold appears. The pottery displays the tired
shapes and weak decoration inherited from the Mycenaean
world. Simple black bands cover much of the sudace of the vase;
motifs include concentric half-circles roughly drawn by hand,
wavy lines, and once a very conventionalized octopus.
About 1100 three of these sub-Mycenaean burials, which
were laid in round pits, were cremations; an amphora contains
the ashes of the corpse. s On the island of Salamis a contemporary
graveyard which yielded more than a hundred simple tombs had
two cremation burials. Soon thereafter cremation became the
almost universal custom all over Attica and remained predomi-
nant until about 800 B.C., when interment again was resumed on
an extensive scale.
The appearance of cremation is easier to note than to ex-
plain. 9 Tpis method of burial had been practiced sporadically
S Kerameikos, I, graves 56, 67, 75; and an example has been found in
Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery, Cyprus in the second half of the
2-4· twelfth century, George H. McFad-
9 H. L. Lorimer surveys the material den, "A Late Cypriote Tomb from
in' "Pulvis et umbra," IHS, LIII Kourion, Kaloriziki No. 40," AJA,
(1933), 161-80, and Homer and the LVIII (1954),131-42.
Monuments, 103-10. See also Des- Product of refugees: Kraiker, Die
borough, Protogeometrie Pottery, 306- Antike, XV (1939), 223; Lorimer,
07; Levi, Annuario, X-XII (1927-29), Homer and the Monuments, 105--06,
543-46; M. P. Nilsson, Gesehiehte der whose view that the custom was car-
grieehisehen Religion, I (Munich, ried from Attica to Ionia probably re-
1955), 174-77; Joseph Wiesner, Grab verses the true current; J. de Vries,
und Ienseits: UnterStlehungen im iigiii- Altgermanisehe Religionsgesehiehte,
sehen Raum zur Bronzezeit und fru- II (Berlin 1937), 26-27, finds that
hen Eisenzeit (Berlin, 1938), 101--03, cremation accompanied the era of Ger-
108, 113, 119-26. Cremation in purely manic migrations. Views of afterlife:
Mycenaean contexts: IHS, LXXIV Karo, Attie Cemetery, 8; Erwin Rohde,
Suppl. (1954); 147; LXXVI Suppl. Psyche (8th ed.; London, 1925), 19-
(1956), 7, 16; Ergon 1957, 89 ff. It 22; but cf. Dumezil, Naissance de
occurs with Mycenaean ware at Tell Rome, 134-37. Liberation of graves:
Atchana, Wooll~y, Alalakh, 204 ff.; Mylonas, AJA, LII (1948),69-70.
86 PART II . The Dark Ages
over the ancient world for centuries, but it had never been a
custom in the Aegean proper save at Troy VI and on the coasts
of Asia Minor, together with inland Hittite districts. In the last
centuries of the second millennium and in the early first millen-
nium it spread widely into central Europe (the Urnenfelder); in
Greece we find it as a convention only at a few points, primarily
Attica, Boeotia, some of the islands, and also Crete (and here
perhaps before the Athenian villages had shifted over) .
In their sober effort to explain everything, modem scholars
have proffered many desperate solutions to this riddle. The old
view that the Dorians brought the custom has been universally
dropped, for this ascription fits neither our sure chronological
framework of the relative sequence of events nor the absence of
the practice in many D~rian areas. More common nowadays is
the argument that refugees, who had to carry their dead in the <

more transportable and hygienic form of ashes, introduced cre-

mation into Attica. Against this interpretation, in tum, stand
weighty objections. Why should the one area, Attica, where we
can be sure of continuous settlement take up the new fashion.
most completely? The direction from which cremation appar-
ently came, moreover, was the east. Nor does our knowledge of
later Greek religiOUS views furnish any illumination as to why
Athenians burned their dead and nearby Corinthians and Ar-
gives continued to inhume. The most reasonable explanation is .
that which suggests cremation set loose the spirit of the dead
quickly so that it could go to Had~s; the grave area thus was
liberated for new use.
Changes in the style of burial throughout history are not
necessarily significaf}t in themselves, but the appearance of cre-
mation at the Kerameikos is truly important and indicative ·1ri-
one respect. It demonstrates that parts of mainland Greece were
free in the eleventh century to adopt a new pattern-i.e., that
the dominance of older customs had been broken. Of incidental
importance at this point is the area primarily affected; thE!
virtually new custom of cremation penetrated from Asia Minor
into· Greece at Attica and secondarily Boeotia, regions closely
connected with the Greek expansion eastward across the Aegean
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse
in the eleventh and following centuries. To this subject I shall
return in the next chapter.
Another change which is evident in the Kerameikos ceme-
tery as well as elsewhere in Greece was the use of iron. 1 Rings and
other adornments of iron had appeared in Mycenaean times and
also in sub-Mycenaean graves; but one of the first transitional
tombs at the Kerameikos had an iron sword, and weapons of iron
became ever more common in cremation burials. 2 In this.develop-
ment, too, the center of diffusion was Asia Minor, the smiths of
which had learned the difficult, slow art of working iron into
useful steel tools and weapons in the last centuries of the Hittite
period. Thence the knowledge spread southward into Syria and
other Oriental lands and brought an end to the Bronze age in the
technical sense; wandering ironsmiths carried the new skills into
Europe, where various finds of their workshops and supplies
have illuminated their trade. Later Greek traditions of the
Telchines, Dactyloi, and so on suggest the reverence felt for
ironsmiths; it is interesting that these myths indicate Greece·
learned how to work iron either from Phrygia or from Crete,
though we cannot be certain these were the actual routes.
Thenceforth Aegean society could base much of its tech-
nology upon a strong metal far more Widely found than tin or
even copper; but Greece entered its true Iron age only in the era
of revolution after 750. Down to that point copper and stone
still remained the most common materials for tools, partly be-
cause the Aegean was still too poor to support a large iron trade,
partly because Greece itself was relatively weak in native ores of

1 Iron in general: R. J. Forbes, Metal- 2 On the new shape of sword which

lurgy in Antiquity (Leiden, 1950), appears at Mouliana in Crete, e.g.,
87-91, 456-58; Stefan Przeworski, and in Egypt under Seti II (c. 1214-
Die Metallindustrie Anatoliens in der 1210), see Childe, Proceedings of the
Zeit von 1500-700 v. C hr. (Leyden, Prehistoric SOCiety, n. s. XIV (1948),
1939: Internationales Archiv fiir Eth- 183-84; Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace
nographie, XXXVI); In Greece: Des- of Minos, IV (London, 1935), 847-
borough, Protogeometfic Pottery, 308- 53; Furumark, Chronology of Myce-
12; Levi, Annuario, ~-XII (1927- naean Pottery, 93-96; Levi, Annuario,
29), 544 (at Mouliana with crema- X-XII (1927-29), 464 and fig. 589;
tion); Lorimer, Homer and the Mon- Sir William F. Petrie, Tools and
uments, 111-21; BSA, LIII-IV (1958- Weapons (London, 1928), pI. 32-33.
59),234.
 , -r
88 PART II . The Dark Ages
iron. While deposits occurred in Samothrace, Euboea, Sparta,
and Boeotia, the Aegean had to import much of its iron in semi-
finished condition from Etruria, the Black Sea, and other regions
in historic times. Gold and silver were also scanty; throughout
the Dark ages no grave of the Aegean basin is even remotely as
rich as some of the royal burials of the third and second mil-
lennia. Society no longer concentrated its wealth in the hands of
a very few, and that wealth itself was very limited.
Aesthetically, the most interesting among the scanty metal
objects in the Kerameikos graves are the straight pins and the
fibulae, which had held together the folds of cloth at the shoul-
ders of the dead person or had decorated his attire. 3 Fibulae
had been so employed since late Mycenaean days and were
popular over Greece, Italy, and central Europe in the early first
millennium B.C. Their shapes underwent significant changes. The •
late Mycenaean examples developed a simple arch or "stilt" so as
to hold more cloth in their grasp; thereafter the arch became
much thicker in the middle and often had two strengthening
bulbs on either side of the central swell. The product was a
combination of clearly defined, articulated parts, an aesthetic
principle which slowly manifested itself also in the bulbs and
disk heads of the amazingly long straight pins. These outwardly
insignificant objects are straws in the wind to suggest both the
receptiveness to change in the eleventh century and the direction
in which that change was moving. In the history of Greek fibulae,
the most pronounced break which ever occurred was that at the
end of the Mycenaean era, after which evolution followed a
steady path on to classic times.
3Fibulae: Chr. Blinkenoerg, Fibules with Europe and Asia (Oxford, 1956),.
grecques et orientales (Copenhagen, 1-5. Although Taylour, Mycenaean
1926); Desborough" Protogeometric Pottery in Italy, 78-79, and others
Pottery, 308-09; Matz, GGK, I, 90- suggest that heavier clothing was
92. Pins: Desborough, Protogeometric needed, a climatic shift at the end of
Pottery, 30g-10; Paul Jacobsthal, the second millennium is not proven.
Greek Pins and Their Connexions
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 89

THE ORIGINS OF PROTOGEOMETRIC POTTERY

THE MOST abundant evidence of the Kerameikos graves is

the pottery. Two quite different kinds appear, one turned on the
wheel and decorated, the other hand-made and left in a native
clay color. The latter, which was known in the Mycenaean era,
was rather common through the Dark ages and on down into
historic Greek centuries. This is a puzzling ware, which deserves
full investigation by pottery experts. The shapes of hand-made
vases were few, chiefly bowls and pitchers which were not of
large size; at least at some places in later Greek times it was
shop-produced. When we find examples in temple offerings or
side by side with the most luxurious pottery, as in the eighth-
century Isis grave of Attica, we must suspect that they had some
sacred or magical attributes. Hand-made vases were not simply
kitchen ware, and the occasional suggestion that this type was
the pottery of an intrusive element has virtually no merit. 4
The decorated pottery links firmly onto the sub-Mycenaean
wares of the past and leads directly toward the later Geometric
style, but it is so distinctive that it fully warrants a special name,
Protogeometric. 5 On Plate 5 I have set side by side photographs
of the vase K. 436, which is a sub-Mycenaean product of the
4 Desborough, BSA, XLIX (1954), more sub-Mycenaean than Protogeo-
266; Frodin and Persson, Asine, 435- metric. See V. R. d'A. Desborough's
36; Milojci6, AA 1948-49, 33-34, preliminary essay, "What Is Protogeo-
who notes its Early Helladic and Mid- metric?" BSA, XLIII (1948), 260-72,
dle Helladic affinities. In graves this and his monograph, Protogeometric
pottery is said at times to be restricted Pottery, which is an excellent study
to female burials (Kubler, Keramei- apart from its overemphasis on Attic
kos, V. 1, 127; Charitonides, AJA, LXI origins and tendency to date non-
[1957], 170-71); but see Kubler, Attic ware late; in IHS, LXXVII
Kerameikos, VI. 1, 85. It is not safe (1957),215, he is no longer confident
to conclude with. Frankfort, Studies in that Protogeometric ware appears in
Early Pottery of the Near East, II, Greece only in a period corresponding
142 n. 1, that hand-made pottery was to that of Late Attic Protogeometric
women's work. Examples have turned vases. Not until the past two decades
up at the temples of {\phaia, Pera- has our understanding of this style be-
chora, etc., as well as in tombs on the come solid. Skeat, Dorians in Archae-
mainland and on the islands. ology, drew the style from Thessaly
5 This name seems to have been and Macedonia; T. Burton-Brown,
coined by Sam Wide, "Graberfunde The Coming of Iron to Greece (Win-
aus Salamis," AM, XXXV (1910), cle, Cheshire, [1954]), 211-26, still
17-36, though the Salamis vases are tries to connect it with Cyprus.
 ';' :.:
go PART II . The Dark Ages

Kerameikos graves, and of the developed Protogeometric am-

phora K. 1073. When one inspects the actual vases in the Kera-
meikos Museum and goes on to compare the whole mass of
sub-Mycenaean ware with the marvelous cases of Proto geometric
work which follow thereafter, the impression to be derived is
unmistakable. One style descends from the other, but the change
is a virtual revolution. On the sides here illustrated of K. 436 and
K. 1073, the motifs are the same-bands and concentric semi-
circles-but the relative firmness and precision of the Proto-
geometric decoration are striking. Impressive, too, is the skill
with which the potter of K. 1073 applied his paint to mark off the
parts of the vase: the narrow but solid foot; the swelling, buff-
colored sides; the handles and shoulder; and finally the black
neck. The parts of this Proto geometric vase are clearly distin-
guished, yet they are superbly proportioned to each other to
create a unity which is utterly absent in the dumpy sub-Myce-
naean pot. .
Any aesthetic discussion of K. 1073 must employ such terms
as proportion, balance, and sober solidity; one senses here a
dynamic tension of opposing yet elegantly co-ordinated parts.
These qualities, I need hardly point out, are characteristic of
historic Greek civilization, but as combined in that culture their
first appearance in Aegean art is on Proto geometric pottery.

Before we can consider the implications of this pottery, its

origins in Attica and elsewhere on the Greek mainland must be
placed against the Mycenaean background. That the Protogeo-
metric style evolved out of tendencies in the Late Bronze age-
but by a jump-is a highly important point in the rise of Gr_eek
civilization, and only through the pottery can we hope to sense
the causes of the changes in the eleventh century.
In the Late Bronze age the potters of Greece had initially
yielded their hearts almost entirely to Minoan styles, but even
before the beginning of Mycenaean IILA (c. 1425 B.C.) a native
a.rtistic spirit began to struggle up through the borrowed finery.
Across the range of IILA-C (c. 1425-1050, including the sub-
Mycenaean stage) very significant and quite obvious changes
took place in the shapes of vases, in their decorative motifs, and
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 91
in the application of these motifs. If one follows any specific vase
form through these centuries, its evolution is continuous but
extensive. The clash between borrowed and native instincts often
resulted in a really ugly product in Mycenaean III.A, but by the
next stage vases tended "toward simple, well-defined, and regu-
lar outlilles, toward shapes approximating to simple geometrical
bodies." 6 Ovoid outlines became more popular, and the dif-
ferentiation of structural parts was more perceptible (see Plates
4a and d, sa). In many vase forms, as the high-stemmed goblet
(Plate 4c), late Mycenaean potters worked themselves into a
dead end, marked by extreme stiffness; such shapes were to die
out in either the sub-Mycenaean or Protogeometric styles.
The decoration of III.A-C vases began with recognizable,
naturalistic motifs such as octopi, cuttlefish, murex shells, and
papyrus heads. Sometimes these motifs continued to be mechani-
cally copied; more often they were increasingly dissolved into
formalized patterns of straight and curved lines. If we did not
have the links in the chain, it would often be impOSSible to discern
in the later, geometric shapes any natural origin. At times, in-
deed, late Mycenaean potters jumped back to Middle Helladic
motifs of abstract character, which had been virtually absent in
the Minoan wave of Mycenaean I-II.
Beyond these detailed changes in pottery motifs, the general
principles of composition underwent intriguing alterations. At
the beginning of Mycenaean III, potters usually treated the
whole surface of a vase as a unit and decorated it accordingly
with a Bowing pattern. More and more, however, they came to
divide the surface into horizontal zones, a principle which had
been known in Middle Helladic times but which now reappeared
primarily in reflection of a desire to emphasize the parts of the
vase and their dynamic interrelations (compare Plates ld, za,
4d).1 These zones, in turn, were sometimes subdivided into

6 Furumark, Mycenaean Pottery, 108. principle of horizontal division reap-

See in general ibid. 497-582; Macke- peared to satisfy a real need. For the
prang, AlA, XLII (1938), 537-59, difference from unit decoration, see
covers the late Mycenaean ware more ibid. 112-16, based on Matz, Die
briefly, but clearly. friihkretischen Siegel. Metopes: Matz,
1 Furumark, Mycenaean Pottery, 539- Kreta, Mykene, Troia, 141-43; Wace,
540, argues correctly, I think, that the BSA, XLIX (1954), 247.
92 PART II . The Dark Ages

separate units in a system which is called from its architectural

parallel the metope-triglyph technique, so as to secure a slower,
more sharply emphaSized rhythm (see Plate 7b and 8b for
later, Geometric examples). More often each zone had a con-
tinuous "carefully drawn, detailed, close net-pattern." 8 The best
examples of this type of Mycenaean III.C, which Wace termed
the Close Style (see Plate 4d), are quite well done, but not all
potters were willing to take the necessary pains. Beside the Close
Style appears also a Granary Style, which at times has little more
than wavy lines as adornment.
On the surface, as we saw in Chapter 2, the later stages of
Mycenaean pottery are marked by a dull mass production and
the dominance of standard types of vases decorated with a
limited variety of uniform motifs. The hidden forces which were
at work struggled against a strong inheritance of Minoan influ-
ences, but had not gained a clear victory when the Mycenaean
political and economic system collapsed. Immediately, the results
of this catastrophe were an abysmal decline of the potters' work.
Sub-Mycenaean vases were commonly small in size and were
made of poorly prepared clay. Their shapes tended toward
heavy, globular, lifeless forms and were at times irregular. The
painted decoration now was crudely applied in a sloppy fashion
( compare Plate 4d with sa and 6a) and was composed of weary,
debased motifs inherited from the old stock; these often stand
in simple rows.
Then, suddenly, the potters of Attica and elsewhere broke
decisively with their jejune tradition and struck out on the fresh
path of Proto geometric pottery: Thanks to the careful excavation
and reasonably sure relative dating of the Kerameikos burials,
we can watch the potters following this path, which is illustrated -
on Plates 6a, c, and d, and Sh. The transition into the new style
is not a tidy, step-by-step affair of simple evolution. Various

8 Mackeprang, AJA, XLII (1938), Plastik, 55-58), a somewhat similar

544. The Granary Style: Wace, BSA, style of painting in which wavy lines
XXV (1921-23), 38 ff.; Furumark, emphasize the various parts of the
Opus. arch., III (1944), 203-06. On structure appears alongside a decora-
the terra-cotta figurines which sud- tive system of rings about the figure,
denly became popular in Mycenaean which came probably from Crete.
graves after 1400 B.C. (Muller, Friihe
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 93
pieces show each an aspect of change, but the whole pattern
comes together with evident suddenness. The vases elongate,
grow more oval, become better proportioned, and impress one as
more stable. The foot changes until it becomes the simple ring of
Proto geometric vases; the position of the handles is shifted to the
belly or the neck; new shapes emerge and the old tend to disap-
pear. Decorative principles also develop. Horizontal bands em-
phasize the shape and parts of the vase, which has otherwise
only limited decoration. Concentric circles or semicircles, for-
merly drawn by hand, are now carefully applied by a multiple
brush; 9 the lines are ruler-drawn. The last direct imitation of the
naturalistic Mycenaean motifs vanishes.
In every basic respect the Protogeometric potters turned
for their decoration and shapes to ancestral elements. These were
mainly of late Mycenaean origin, but at points elements of Mid-
dle an.d Early Helladic Havor appear. The latter are mostly in the
realm of motifs, yet Protogeometric amphoras resemble at times
some taut, dynamic products of Early Helladic Orchomenos.1
There is no trace of any significant indebtedness to the Balkans
or to the Orient; the Protogeometric style was a purely Aegean
development.
Though its roots were old, Protogeometric pottery was some-
thing distinctly novel as a coherent system. The new product
was marked by a more serious attitude; vases improved rapidly
in teclmique from the slovenly sub-Mycenaean level. To attain

9 This important motif has been as- dilection for abstract geometrical de-
signed by many to a northern source, signs" (Furumark, Mycenaean Pot-
but N. M. Verdelis,'O 7I"PWTo'YfwllfTP'~os tery, 234). Though we do not know
'PuOIlOS T~S 9€(T(TaAias (Athens, 1958), how earlier motifs were preserved for
58-60, is surely correct in deriving it later use, the very common archaeolog-
from Mycenaean origins. ical assumption that potters imitated
1 Kunze, Orchomenos, III, pI. 1; other wares, especially textiles
Schachermeyr, Die iiltesten Kttlturen, (Kraiker, Die Antike, XV [1939], 228-
199, fig. 64, outlines comparable vases. 29; Matz, GGK, I, so) or metal ware
The stress on Middle Helladic influ- (Pfuhl, AM, XXVIII [1903], 134-36),
ence is sometimes designed to demon- rather underrates the potters and ex-
strate that an Indogermanic spirit plains obsclIrum per obscurius; we do
welled up in Proto geometric vases not have the textiles. Note too the
(e.g., Matz, GGK, I, 48-51); but warning by Dorothy Kent Hill, "The
quite objective students have noted in Technique of Greek Metal Vases and
Middle Helladic pottery the "rigidly Its Bearing on Vase Fonns in Metal
tectonic syntax and a pronounced pre- and Pottery," AlA, LI (1947),248-56.
94 PART II· The Dark Ages
the new style, potters found it necessary to simplify drastically
the frame of shapes and decorations within which they worked
-only some fourteen shapes of vases were popular in early Attic
Protogeometric graves. 2 Almost always artists left the greater
part of the vase undecorated. The scanty paint which was ap-
plied was intended primarily to accentuate the flow and balance
of the shape of the vase and was laid in simple, abstract motifs
-zigzags, dogs' teeth, cross-hatched triangles, bands, circles,
and semicircles, all these rhythmically balanced and opposed to
each other within the frame of the parts of the vase, especially
the handle zone. Occasionally on Protogeometric vases there are
freehand wavy lines. These were an inheritance from the Granary
Style, and stand out as an alien intrusion into the new world.
The ruthless, stark simplification and the rigidity of Proto-
geometric pottery at times resulted in stiff, dull work This was'
not a rich, serenely confident age, and one critic of its work,
Furumark, is partially right in contrasting "the lifeless, anxiously
restrained curves of Protogeometric and Geometric vases" with
the more flowing shapes of Mycenaean and Minoan masterpieces
(compare Plates z and 6).3 Yet any visitor to the Kerameikos
Museum must marvel at the remarkably varied results which
could be achieved from a very limited repertoire of shapes and
patterns of decoration; nor is the basic impression to be derived
from their careful draftma,nship a sense of sterile fear. The potters
reduced their concepts to fundamentals. Thereby they gaiped
what they needed, a base for new vigor and for an ever surer
grasp of the prQblems of synthesizing the individual parts into
clear, harmonious beauty. .

THE DATE AND HOME OF THE NEW STYLE

To PLACE the early centuries of Greek civilization on a

proper footing, it would be extremely useful if we could assign
a date and a home to the Proto geometric style. Both can be
2Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery, 3 Furumark, Opus. arch., III (1944),
120. But did the living so limit their 221.
variety of vases?
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 95
found, but not as precisely as is suggested in some recent dis-
cussions.
With respect to the date, one must remember that the term
"Proto geometric" refers to a style, not an era, and that such
pottery was made at various times in different parts of the
Aegean; the critical question is its first appearance. Here, un-
fortunately, we are reduced to very dubious calculations forward
and backward from pOints which are themselves not soundly
fixed. After the fall of Mycenae the space of a generation or two
must be allowed for the sub-Mycenaean. stage. If the fall be
placed at llSO, then the sub-Mycenaean pottery comes down to
the beginning or into the first quarter of the eleventh century;
but the basic date, as already noted, is of a very tentative char-
acter.
Chronological argument backward across the stages of Attic
Geometric and Protogeometric pottery must proceed all the way
from the Late Geometric pottery of the eighth century B.C. On
this basis, one can scarcely do better than assign the beginning
of the new outlook in potters' workshops to an indefinite point
before 1000. Two Protogeometric pieces of developed style
which are certainly not of Attic origin have been found in
Cyprus, with local ware which is perhaps of about goo B.C.; but
neither this evidence nor the broader arguments which have been
drawn from the transition of sub-Mycenaean to Cypro-Geometric
ware furnish solid pillars.' Until recently scholars have clutched
• Proto geometric ware in Cyprus: lxxxviii). The date of this stratum ini-
V. R. d'A. Desborough, "A Group of tially was put at about 926. B. Mais-
Vases from Amathus," IRS, LXXVII Jer, Bulletin of the American Schools
(1957),212-19. Cypriote basis: Arne of Oriental Research, 124 (1951),
Furumark, "The Mycenaean III C 21 ff., lowers it; Gus W. van Beek,
Pottery and Its Relation to Cypriote ibid. 28, and "The Date of Tell Abu
Fabrics," Opus. arch., III (1944), Hawam, Stratum III," 138 (1955),
194-265; but note that van Beek (and 34-38, raises it. Whether the cups
Albright) try to elevate Gjerstad's were of Thessalian origin, as Heurt-
basic dates very appreciably. ley asserted, has also been much de-
Cups with pendant semicircles: bated. The matter is put in a proper
The first examples, from Tell Abu light by P. J. Riis, Rama: fouilles et
Hawam (Stratum III), were published recherches 1931-38, Il.3: les cime-
by R. W. Hamilton, Quarterly of the tieres Ii crematiQn ( Copenhagen,
Department of Antiquities in Palestine, 1948), 113-14; John Boardman, BSA,
IV (1935), 23-24, nn. 95-96 (pl. LII (1957), 8; Desborough, IRS,
xii-xiii), and their importance asserted LXXVII (1957),216-219.
by W. A. Heurtley, ibid. 181 (pI.
96 PART II . The Dark Ages
desperately at the tiny sherds of Aegean cups, decorated with
pendant semicircles, which were found at Tell Abu Hawam,
Hama, and elsewhere in the Orient. This style of cup, however,
seems fairly clearly to have been a late, specialized offshoot of the
Protogeometric style, probably manufactured widely over the
Aegean islands. Its major export eastward came as late as the
eighth century, when Oriental contact was being resumed, and
its earliest representatives do not carry us back very far.
The definite dates, thus, which have been given for the ap~
pearance of Protogeometric pottery at Athens-l075, according
to the excavators of the Kerameikos; 1025, according to the most
recent careful survey of the whole style'-have no strong sup~
port. 5 At the best we can only conclude that somewhere in the
eleventh century, probably neither at its beginning nor at its end,
the potters of the Greek mainland stmck out on the new lines."
Having begun, they pressed on, surely and with great rapidity,
in not more than a generation or two to set their basic patterns-
the Kerameikos evidence adequately attests this important point.
Protogeometric material is most abundant in Attica, and
this ware exhibits a marked artistic and technical superiority to
any similar vases thus far found in the rest of Greece. These facts
have led many students to conclude that Attic craftsmen initi~
ated the Protogeometric style. 6 Attica, after all, was traditionally
spared the worst of the Dorian invasions; its inhabitants knew
the Mycenaean tradition but were freer to experiment in new
ways than were the men of Crete. Quite clearly, too, Attic aspects
of the Protogeometric style influenced other regions of Greece
in the tenth century just as the great Attic Geometric style was
later to have a wide range of imitation.
Never, however, is it safe to write tl).e history of Greece
purely in terms of Athens, either culturally or politically. The
5 1075 B.C.: Kraiker and Kiibler, Ke- ous insecurity of these dates may be
rameikos, I, 162 if.; Kiibler, Keramei- suggested by the amazing fact that
kos, V. 1, 70; Matz, GGK, I, 53. 1025 Furumark, Opus. arch., III (1944),
B.C.: Desborough, Protogeometric Pot- 261, must depress the Dipylon ware
tery, 294; Furumark, Opus. arch., III down to 700 B.C.; to prove the hy-
(1944), 194-265, though in Chronol- pothetical he asserts the clearly impos-
ogy of Mycenaean Pottery, 115, 128, sible (see below, Chap. 7).
he had restricted the sub-Mycenaean 6 Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery,
style to 1125-1100 B.C. The danger- 125-26, ·291.
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 97
evidence of some Tiryns graves, published forty years ago, sug-
gested strongly that potters in the Argolid had moved independ-
ently from sub-Mycenaean to Protogeometric and then Geomet-
ric styles. The French excavations now under way at Argos itself
confirm and enlarge this fact abundantly. Each stage appears
here; Protogeometric graves lie beside the sub-Mycenaean; and
burials of the later period are widespread over Argos. 7 On one
example of the new finds (Plate 6b) the circles are still inter-
locked in Mycenaean style, the decoration is freehand, and the
odd motifs are very degenerate sub-Mycenaean in Havor. Yet the
shape of the amphora quite obviously accords with the Attic
evolution shown in the other pieces on this plate.
Most of the Argive material has yet to be published, and in
any case it is not my intention in this volume to engage in de-
tailed analyses of pottery parallels. Two comments may still be
made. First, the shapes of the Argos vases and their motifs show
marked similarities to pots found at Mycenae, Tiryns, Asine, and
elsewhere in the Argolid. Secondly, while Argive Proto geometric
style is very closely akin to that of Attica, it has yet its own Havor.
Although the Argive material cannot be precisely dated, there is
no obvious reason to consider it later than the Attic sequence.
Proto geometric vases are turning up ever more widely
throughout the Greek mainland and the islands. Nowhere, un-
fortunately, do we yet have another consecutive cemetery like
that of the Kerameikos, and the chronological and stylistic inter-
relations of these scattered finds are not easily established. Sober
students of the non-Attic evidence, however, have felt justified
in arguing local origins from the new style as far north as Thes-
saly, westward to. Ithaca, and eastward in the Cyclades. s Even
7Walter Miiller and Franz Oehnann, 8 Verdelis's study on Thessaly (above
Tiryns, I (Athens, 1912), 127-64; n. 9; p. 93); W. A. HeurtIey, BSA,
Frodin and Persson, Asine, 434-36; XXXIII (1932-33), 63-65; Emil
Desborough, BSA, LI (1956), 129-30. Kunze, "Eine protogeometrische Am-
The Argos excavations are reporte<;l in phora aus Melos," lahreshefte des
BCH, LXXVII (1953), on, and will osterreichischen archiiologischen In-
be published by Paul Courbin. I must stitutes, XXXIX (1952),53-57; N. M.
express my gratitude to him and to Kondoleon's report on the excavations
Ephor N. M. Verdelis for making in Naxos, Praktika 1951, 214-23; Cal-
available the material in the Argos let de Santerre, Delos primitive, 210-
museum, as yet unopened, and for 18; Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery in
discussing the finds with me. Italy, 166-68.
98 PART II . The Dark Ages

in southern Italy, intriguingly enough, the inheritors of the My-

cenaean style moved on into a new fashion which has a some-
what Protogeometric flavor. In Crete, too, the same forces were
spottily at work but faced so strong an inheritance from the past
that one wonders whether to emphasize in Cretan pottery the
Minoan survivals or the Protogeometric flavor. 9
The vases used by Cretan mountain villages fall into stiff,
provincial patterns; Attic potters, on the other hand, restlessly
sought to create a new style and then to deepen its expression.
This difference underlines the really significant conclusion which
emerges from a search for the home of ProtogeoPletric pottery.
The main source of development certainly lay on the Greek main-
land, and more specifically in its southeastern districts. The focus
of Aegean culture was now firmly anchored in the area which
was to be its home thenceforth throughout the Dark ages and the
subsequent era of revolution. Attica was not the only center
within this district. Athenian potters were, most surely, of great
importance, and their products often please the modern eye more
than do others; yet we cannot single out these workshops alone as
the creative ,source.1 That the Greek mainland moved together
essentially as a unit is shown by the very remarkable similarity of
its Protogeometric products, which reflect a common Mycenaean
background; but regional variation, while still limited in com-
parison to that of following centuries, is also distinguishable
within the general uniformity.

9 The peculiar flavor of Cretan pottery 230, insists, in taking up the sub-
is discussed by Brock, Fortetsa, 142- Minoan ware, that "there are no-tend-
44; M. Hartley, "Early Greek Vases encies towards the creation of a geo-
from Crete," BSA, XXXI (1930-31), metrical style in the true sense of the
56-114; Doro Levi, Early Hellenic word." I am indebted to Stylianos
Pottery of Crete (Princeton, 1945), Alexiou of the Iraklion Museum for
2-4, and Annuario, X-XII ( 1927-29), making available closed material.
551-76;' Humfry Payne, "Early Greek 1 If this is true, then the principal the-
Vases from Knossos," BSA, XXIX oretical substmcture collapses on
(1927-28), 224-298, a gifted study. which Whitman, Homer and the He-
Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery, roic Tradition, 54-55, has based an
233-71, takes up its Protogeometric argument for the survival_of the epic
aspects; Sylvia Benton, JHS, LXXVI tradition solely through Attica; so, too,
( 1956), 124, dissents on Vrokastro Webster, From Mycenae to Homer,
ware and calls this Proto geometric too. 160.
Furumark, Opus. arch., III (1944),
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 99

THE IMPLICATIONS OF PROTOGEOMETRIC POTTERY

IN THE preceding pages I have gone at some length into the

sources, character, date, and home of Protogeometric pottery; for
this is one of the most important shifts, historically considered,
in Greek art. Its implication, briefly put, is that the pattern of
civilization which we call Greek emerged in basic outline during
the eleventh century B.C. Although the roots of the Hellenic out-
look lay in the past and were of native origin, a veritable "jump"
occurred in the turmoil following the end of the Mycenaean age.
To conclude so much from a few sparsely decorated vases
may seem overbold, but justification can be offered for basing
such major historical generalizations upon the rise of a new pot-
tery style. In any age of ancient Greece the products of the pot-
ters' fingers were the fruit of minds which shared its common
impulses. This mutual sympathy is evident in the Mycenaean
period, for the grave steles and other sculptural remains as well
as the architectural principles incarnated in the palaces reflected
the general line of evolution which was sketched above for its
pottery. After the Dark ages, when sculpture and architecture
were resumed, the same forces operated in these fields as in that
of Orientalizing pottery; literature, as we shall see, falls into place
beside the arts in expressing a common spirit.2 On this point I
2 A good illustration of the sympa- (Cambridge, 1923), 70, is sweeping
thetic interdependence of art and lit- but not far from the mark: "As every
erature is T. B. L. Webster, Greek Art fragment is an original work of art,
and Literature, 530-400 B.C. (Oxford, the evidence of pottery justifies
1939) ; see the perceptive, careful broader and surer generalizations than
. statement by }.leyer Schapiro, "Style," almost any other human document;
Anthropology Today, ed. A. L. Kroe- every potsherd in any waste heap be-
ber (Chicago, 1953), 287-312. On ing the response of somebody's hand
artistic sensitivity, see my Civilization and brain to somebody's need, at the
and the Caesars (Ithaca, 1954), same time individual and communal,
287 if.; and the remark by Sir Ken- industrial and aesthetic." See also
neth Clark, Landscape into Art (Peli- Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of
can, 1956), 44, on seventeenth-cen- the Near East, I, 1-17; Martin Rob-
tury Dutch landscape: "As so often ertson, "The Place of Vase-Painting in
happens, art anticipated intuitively Greek Art," BSA, XLVI (1951),
wha~, science was beginning to formu- 151-59; William Willetts, Chinese
late. Art, II (Penguin, 1958), 393-415,
On pottery itseH, the assertion by 421-28.
Myres, Cambridge Ancient History, I
100 PART II . The Dark Ages
may observe that in studying the intellectual development of
the Roman Empire, which has fairly abundant quantities of both
artistic and literary products, one can conclude that artists then
sensed and expressed more swiftly the new forces of that age
than did philosophers and poets. In the era just after the My-
cenaean collapse, to return to our present concern, the pottery
stands virtually by itself; but is it not, even so, significant testi-
mony to the general intellectual evolution of the period? If we
give our heart's blood to the ghosts of the past, a great scholar
once observed, they come alive; 3 for the eleventh century B.C.
the pots in the graves contain the only ghosts we can invoke.
The historian who accepts the principle of a Zeitgeist must
hasten to utter certain warnings against its application without
proper qualification. No age has an absolute uniform culture
which will be expressed exactly alike in all areas and in all its'
physical products. The techniques of any period, moreover, do
not progress at the same rate; some may even be obdurate to new
currents. And the craftsmen who use these techniques commonly
employ them in a rote way. Especially in primitive societies men
do not often conSciously break fresh ground, and in earning their
daily bread in a trade they have little time or incentive to brood
deeply upon the world about them.
Worst of all, though we may stand at the shoulders of the
Kerameikos potters and inspect their wares, the craftsmen are·
shadows who cannot talk to us. Pots are not magical lamps from
the Arabian Nights, nor do they themselves speak. While prod-.
ucts of clay were used£or many purposes, they were after all only
phYSical objects which could not express clearly the ideals, as-
pirations, and fears of their makers. The surface of a vase, more-.
over, is a small area, and an ever curving plane to boot: a difHcult
frame, to which the artist must adapt and simplify his artistie
canons. 4 In the period of Proto geometric pottery the narrow
gamut of motifs did not even include human representation;
when later the range of expression widened, one must take into
3 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-MoelIen- Kunstgewerbe," Klio, XXXII (1939),
dorff, Greek Historical Writing (Ox- 339-57 (esp. 347-48). On the man-
ford, 1908), 25. ner in which funerary purposes could
4 Fritz Schachermeyr, "Der Begriff affect the decoration of vases, see
des Arteigenen im friihzeitlichen Kubler, Kerameikos, VI. 1, 152-53.
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse 101

account the fact that many vases were deliberately intended for
use in graves or in religious dedications.
The historian, in consequence, will use this pottery with due
circumspection. He may-indeed, must-go beyond the limited
range of most modern studies of the material, for specialists
restrict themselves to descriptive or morphological classification
with the aim of setting the chronology of evolution and the inter-
relationships between different fabrics. This is a highly useful
and necessary foundation which reduces the masses of scattered
finds to orderly terms; but it is not all the story. On the other
hand, the careful student will not be able to follow in their details
the overly subtle, at times virtually mystical interpretations of
early Greek pottery which have occasionally been advanced.
Ancient potters cannot be psychoanalyzed. When they came to
depict figured scenes, we may hope to grasp at least partially
their intentions; but the meanings which lay behind their earlier,
abstract motifs-if, indeed, these always had symbolic sense-
cannot today be rescued. As a warning which will apply more
directly to later pages, I may also note that some modern efforts
to create great webs of artistic interconnections all across the
ancient Orient and the Aegean on the basis of scattered, individ-
ual parallels in motifs, taken out of context, are highly dangerous.
Equally disturbing is the frequent tendency to explain the sud-
den reappearanc~ of earlier motifs as the fruit of a primeval
racial current in the Greek world.
When once these qualifications have been set down, the
basic fact remains that the historian can approach the develop-
ment of early Greek civilization only through its pottery. If he
may now hope to establish the phases and tempo of progress in
this era, the greatest light to that end comes from the discoveries
and analyses of Protogeometric and Geometric pottery within
the past fifty years. Much remains to be done, particularly in
defining the varieties and the interrelations of Protogeometric
and Geometric wares but also in publishing adequately some of
the most useful series. As this is done, our views of early Greek
history will undergo further great change, yet it seems unlikely
that the present framework of pottery development will require
fundamental alterations. On this foundation, which is relatively
102 PART II . The Dark Ages

sure in terms of sequences though not yet anchored to absolute

chronological dates, rests the whole structure of the present
study.
From the vases, then, the student of the origins of Greek
civilization must draw his principal conclusions. Between the
Mycenaean and historic Greek worlds there is, on the one hand,
clear evidence of continuity. Proto geometriC pottery had demon-
strable roots in Mycenaean and earlier ages. So, too, the epic
tradition, which eventually produced the Homeric masterpieces,
seems to have developed over long centuries; some of the basic
social, religious, and economic conditions of Greek life were like-
wise inherited from much earlier days.
Yet on the other hand it is equally obvious that great differ-
ences in outlook sunder the lords of Mycenae and the citizens of
Greek city-states. In political, religious, and economic aspects'
Greek civilization differed markedly from the palace economies
which had stamped the Mycenaean age. The two eras cannot
simply be termed alternate facets of the same basic spirit. 5
If we seek to determine the great point of change, our physi-
cal evidence points unmistakably to the eleventh century B.C. In
grave customs, in the furnishings which the living placed with
their dead, in the very sites of the cemeteries themselves at Argos
and at Athens, the Greek mainland saw an epoch of major alter-
ations at this time. Where literary evidence is lacking, one must.
be chary of drawing overspecific conclUSion's; but in general
terms the artistic development just studied assumes important.
proportions. When the potters of Athens, Argos, and elsewhere
changed from the sub-Mycenaean to the Proto geometric style,
the alteration was gradual in the sense that we can follow its
stages and can often see its roots, but it was both rapid temporally
and so great in magnitude as to be a veritable revolution.
5 Alfred Heuss, "Die archaische Zeit Heroic Tradition, 20, finds "the first
Griechenlands als geschichtliche Epo- genuinely Greek civilization" in the
che," Antike tmd Abendland, II Late Bronze age; all such statements
(1946), 26-62, puts the matter cor- must deal with the physical facts
rectly, though in somewhat mystical which are put briefly and clearly by
terms; for Stier's views, see Chap. 4, Spyridon Marinatos, "Mykenentum
n. 7 (p. 142). To give only one ex- und Griechentum," Acta congtessus
ample of the view which I strongly Madvigiani, I (Copenhagen, 1958),
disagree, Whitman, Homer and the 317-22 .
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse
It is not improper to emphasize the visible characteristics of
the very best Protogeometric vases such as K. lO73-a synthesis
of clearly defined parts, which has a dynamic quality; a deliber-
ate simplification of form and decoration into a structure capable
of infinite variation; an emphasis upon rational principles of
harmony and proportion (as Western civilization has understood
these principles ever since); a sense of order in which the imagi-
nation is harnessed by the powers of the mind-and to note that
everyone of these, qualities was thenceforth a mark of Greek
civilization. From Proto geometric pottery the course of artistic
development flowed continuously, without abrupt interruption,
through the centuries of Geometric, Orientalizing, and ripe ar-
chaic ware down to the heights of the Attic black-figure and red-
figure masterpieces. So, too, developed the Hellenic outlook, as
we come to see its expression in one field after another during
this period.
Only the most basic aspects of the later patterns, true, are
visible in the stark, simple products of Proto geometric workshops;
much was still to be elaborated. For the next three centuries de-
velopment was steady, but slow. Then came th~ great outburst
of the late eighth century, when the truly consolidated structure
of Hellenic culture crystallized swiftly.

If the eleventh century is the turning pOint, the inevitable

question is: why at this time? The era was one of poverty, scanty
population, almost chaos in the wake of the Dorian invasion and
the collapse of the magnificent Mycenaean superstructure of
. organized 'life. In this very epoch, nonetheless, men formed an
outlook which their descendants amplified and enriched into one
of the greatest achievements of the human mind.
On the basic problems of history men's solutions must vary
widely. Some students are satisfied with answers which rest upon
purely mechanical factors of geography and climate. Others
parade racial theories, though no such explanation today can
attribute the forces of change simply and directly to the Dorian
invaders. Some of the innovations, such as cremation and the use
of iron, point eastward across the Aegean; but it would be even
more haz~rdous to postulate a large-scale migration west from
104 PART II . The Dark Ages

Asia Minor to Greece in the late second millennium than at the

beginning of Early Helladic times. 6
The most illuminating shift, that from sub-Mycenaean to
Protogeometric pottery, was a consecutive development. This
fact is enough to force us to look inside Greece itself if we are to
furnish any convincing explanation for the origin of Greek civili-
zation. The answer which I would give is so based. Its main lines
are implicit in the earlier discussion of the Bronze ages and more
specifically in the analysis of the change from sub-Mycenaean to
Protogeometric pottery; but for sake of clarity I may state my
views more formally here.
The dimensions and the unique nature of the changes in the
eleventh century will perhaps be clearer if the student widens
his ken for a moment. It will, for instance, be useful to hark back
to the collapse of the Aegean world at the end of the Early Hel-"
ladic age. This event, like its parallel at the close of the second
millennium, was followed by poverty-stricken centuries in which
a new pottery style was dominant; but few would consider the
Minyan pottery of Middle Helladic times as artistically ad-
vanced as Protogeometric work. Why, then, was the latter a more
fertile seedbed from which historic Greek art could directly
develop?
Or, again, it will be useful to look out from Greece of the
Dark ages to central and southern Europe at the same point of
time. Both areas were obviously disturbed by movements of peo-
ples at the close of the second millennium, but both thereafter.
entered on paths of steady development. Why, however, was the
course of central Europe,. through the Urnfield cultures to the
Hallstatt stage, so much slower than the amazing soar of the
Aegean world?
If we are to answer these problems, we shall come close to
pinpointing the basic forces of Greek civilization itself. Any
answer must keep steadily in mind the felicitous position of the
Aegean area, on the fringes of Europe and Asia. Throughout the
millennia of earlier history Greece had commonly stoon in the
forefront of Europe proper, though it lingered behind the Orient.
6 Burton-Brown, The Coming of Iron gument upon this postulate.
to Greece, nonetheless bases his ar-
CHAPTER 3 . After the Mycenaean Collapse
But if one is to account for the very different OlJ.tcomes of Minyan
and Proto geometric pottery, one must look carefully at the re-
markable Mycenaean age, which at once advanced Aegean cul-
ture to a far higher stage and also experienced such a flood of
foreign influences that it could not drive beyond imitation to
originality.
The men who lived in the eleventh centlJ.ry received a rich
inheritance of many strands from the Mycellaean world; their
artistic outlook, as was once observed, "is unthinkable without
the schooling which the decorative sense of the Greek learned
during this era." 7 The earlier Middle Helladic style, which was
itself geometric in many respects, gained a se))se of organization
and symmetry from the Minoan wave whi<:h swept over the
mainland in Mycenaean days; so, too, the priIhitive political and
economic stlUcture of life in earlier Greece developed greatly in
the days of the palaces. But, alas, while the potters stlUggled to
reach a new synthesis of these many strands, they strove in vain.
Then came the collapse of the Mycenaean world, a tremen-
dous dislUption almost without equal in any Mediterranean so-
ciety of the era. Those who survived were htlrled back close to
barbarism; but they were also set free from the old trammels to
fuse their inheritance into a new, more solid pattern of life. In
very tlUth, men were forced to this step if they were to survive
the era of chaos. The simplicity of Greek p()litical, social, and
economic life, when we begin to see it in th~ next centuries, is
matched by the stark and bare character of Protogeometric pot-
tery, which reduced shape and decoration to the most basic es-
sentials. To the men who endured this lUde age it would have
been scant consolation to know that in imposir!g upon themselves
a new rigidity they were liberating themselves from the confines
of an old pattern; I have already quoted FUflJmark's perception
of the anxious restraint visible in this work.
The vases of the age show, nonetheless, that the decisive
step to a new environment had been taken. The crucial question
now was whether latent potentialities could be realized, and this
7 Muller and OcImann, Tiryns, I, 162. tistic change from the sub-Mycenaean
This remains one of the most percep- style.
tive pages thus far written on the ar-
106 PART II • The Dark Ages

in turn depended on two factors: Would the Aegean world be

spared new catastrophe? And would its new synthesis be too soon
exposed to alien cultural forces stemming from the Orient? For•
tunately for Western civilization the Greeks were to be free to
work out their destinies essentially unaffected by external influ-
ences until they themselves were ready to look once more abroad.
 [1°7
CHAPTER 4

TWO CENTURIES OF

CONSOLIDATION

THOUGH THE CHANGES of the eleventh century were funda-

mental, the next generations were not prepared to rush swiftly
along the new path. To our view the period 1000-800 is devoid of
spectacular developments, a poor age illuminated mainly by the
scanty deposits of vases which mourners placed in graves. Attic
potters worked within the Proto geometric framework down to
about goo, developing it steadily; then they passed into the Early
and Strong Geometric styles. Some bronze and other metal work
occurs in Attica and elsewhere, particularly at the shrine of Zeus
in Olympia. Hints of archItecture and sculpture appear before
the end of the period. The one settlement of any significance
which shows the houses of the living is that of Old Smyrna on the
coast of Asia Minor; we can only hope that future excavation will
turn up a parallel site in Greece proper.
Limited though it is, this evidence proves that the tendency
to treat the two darkest centuries of early Greek history as an
undiHerentiated, static era can no longer be justified. From the
pottery alone, the observer can see that Greek artistic attitudes
were constantly moving along a consistent path of evolution. The
main lines of pottery style had been established in the eleventh
century, but a comparison of Early Protogeometric and Strong
Geometric ware (Plates 6c and 8b) will suggest how great an
alteration had resulted by 800 from the steady increments of
change, each of which in itself may have been small. Similar
108 PAR1~ II . The Dark Ages
progress can be made out, though less securely, for many other
phases of human life by the survivals into historic times of earlier
linguistic patterns, of primitive social, political, and religious
customs, and of myth and tradition. Such material can be used
only with caution and even then will yield a distressingly gen-
eralized picture; yet its testimony on funda.mental aspects agrees
with that of the physical remains in showing that the world of
800 was markedly different from that which can be seen in the
latest Mycenaean stages.
Another major characteristic of the age was a significant
reduction in the direct influence of MinoaJ1 and Mycenaean pat-
terns; or, to put the matter more properly, these inherited influ-
ences were absorbed and integrated inte> a simplified Aegean
outlook. This development is clearly visible in the pottery, rea-
sonably certain. in. reli~ious an.d llolitic.al institutions and atti-
tudes, and rather probable in the field of language. Equally
intriguing is the creation of a fructifying tension within a com-
mon unity. Many of the basic aspects of the Hellenic outlook
became a system shared alike by Greece proper, by the islands,
and by the coast of Asia Minor. But, whereas the Mycenaean
world had been monolithic, local differentiations now emerged
clearly; they were to serve thenceforth as a source of wide varia-
tion and experiment, which could be drawn upon by the whole
of the Aegean basin much as modern European civilization has
been fertilized by its many regional m~nifestations since the
Middle ages.
Six facets of cultural growth-territorial coalescence, Ae-
gean isolation, Greek linguistic distributions, political organiza-
tion, social structure, and the artistic spirit reflected in the pot-
tery-will concern us at this point. The fields of religion, epic,
and mythology will fall to the following chapter.

TERRITORIAL CONSOLIDATION Of GREEK CULTURE

DURING the Dark ages the Aegean turned into a Greek lake,
focused within itself. This had not been true earlier. At the
beginning of the second millennium B.C. men of the Aegean had
(u) /{il'l' PmtogC(1l1letric allll'liora (K.
56u) lrith llic earliest lIllimal figllre of tile
era (Ker(lllleikos MIIS(,III1I).

(b) Late Pr(Jto{!,l'ometric ampllOra (K.

S;6) !()rl's/Illdoll: ing tile Geoll/{tric style
III it~ dark glll;:.e alit! deCII/"IItioll (Kerallll"i-
kos illI1Serll1l). Photographs courte.\y
Dt'1lhcl,es Arcllii%gisches [lls/itlit iu
Atllt'lls.

PLATE 7 . Later Stages of the Protogeometric Style

 (a) Early Geulllet,.ic fillip/WI'(!( K. 25-1) d('c-
oraled lcit" 11I £'lI lId.., palterns ( Keralll('ikn.'
111 IISl' U III ).

( I)) Sirong Geollletric fllllphorll (K. 2l.J 6 )

,filii "l'ictllre" 8,,(11'('·;' 011 t il(' IWlldle ;;;011 (,
(Kel'{lllle ikos .\/IIS£'llIll). P/wto{!,raplls C{J III'I (N,y
Dr'ulsc/Ies A,.cI,iiologi,c"cs lmlitlll ill AtlwllS.

PUTE 8 . Der;e/o}JlJlcnl of tllc Attic Geom etric Style

CHAPTER 4 . Two Centul'ies af Cansalidation 109

been attached to many local, diverse cultures, which had often

looked outward, such as the Helladic of the Greek mainland;
the Cycladic of the islands; the Minoan of Crete, which had
strong ties to the Orient; the Trojan and other Middle Bronze
cultures of the Asia ~1inor coast, which were linked in various
respects to the Anatolian plateau. Thereafter Mycenaean civili-
zation had spread over the Aegean widely, but rather thinly
(see Map NO.1). Even in Greece proper it appeared as a culture
of palaces, which did not entirely replace ~Iiddle Helladic ways
among the peasantry; Crete experienced an uneasy, incomplete
amalgamation of Minoan and Mycenaean; and on the coast of
Asia Minor Mycenaean influence seems, on the basis of our
limited knowledge, to have been only partial. At Troy VI-VII
this force remained an alien, though important factor; thus far a
Mycenaean foothold appears certain on the east shore of the Ae-
gean solely at Miletus. And everywhere Mycenaean culture it-
self reflected strong Oriental borrowings.
Now, however, the western and eastern coasts of the Aegean,
together with the islands between, became a cultural unit which
could serve as a solid base for later Greek expansion. The unifica-
tion is manifest in the spread first of Protogeometric and then of
Geometric pottery styles throughout the area, both styles de-
riving their main impetus from the evolution in the potters' work-
shops of the mainland; by 800 the Aegean-apart from its north-
ern shores-also shared those ·qualities which the Athenians were
later to single out as Hellenic in the Persian wars: "our common
language, the altars and sacrifices of which we all partake, the
common character which we bear." The end product is clear; its
importance is suggested in the quotation from Herodotus (VIII.
144); the causes of the phenomenon are not quite so obvious. We
face here the rise of a Greek character, but at the moment I shall
consider only its initial territorial spread.
The Greeks of historic times were dimly aware that not
all parts of the Aegean had earlier been unified culturally, and
·tradition explained the consolidation as a product of migration
eastward from Greece, which began immediately after the Trojan
war. In their details the legends of these movements are worse
than suspect. As I have already suggested in Chapter 2, the
5
110 PART II . The Dark Ages

historian cannot safely employ legend, myth, and epic to explore

the Mycenaean age; the same grounds for caution still apply
when we come to the period immediately on either side of
1000 B.C., three centuries before writing began to be extensively
used in Greece. In the form in which we have the tales of migra-
tion, moreover, they clearly reflect a great deal of rationalization,
by which myths had been neatly interlocked into chains where A
moves B, B impels C, and so on. Pride of family and homeland
also played a part in the final casting of the legends: Athenian
antiquaries funneled the migrations through Attica, and great
families of later Asia Minor spun ancestral connections with the
heroes of the Trojan period. 1 The many modern efforts to rescue
this material by manipulations, in which each student selects the
detailed pieces he thinks appropriate and dismisses the rest, are
unsound in method and historically valueless in their conclu~
sions.
The general weight of Greek tradition, nonetheless, should
not be discarded, however justifiable may be our suspicion of the
details. Once the invasions at the end of the Mycenaean age were
over, Greek evolution proceeded on a consecutiye line down into
the age of writing; and the closer one comes to this stage the
more probable is the relatively secure memory of major develop-
ments. Genealogical traditions, for instance, carry a number of
families back well before 700; some chains, such as that of Hec-
ataeus' ancestors, extend close to 1000, though the earliest links
in these lines are often of mythical quality. In the lines which the
poet Mimnermus of Colophon composed in the seventh century
(fragment 12 Diehl) :
When from the lofty city of Neleian Pylos we came on ship- _
board to the pleasant land of Asia, and in overwhelming
might destroying grievous pride sat down at lovely Colo-
phon ...
1 M. P. Nilsson~ Cults, Myths, Oracles La Ionia nel mondo miceneo, .20-33,
and Politics in Ancient Greece (Lund, 74-109, and Chap . .2, n., 3 (p .. (6).
1951), 60-63, firmly assigns the re- Genealogies: Herodotus II. 143
molding to the late sixth century on- (Hecataeus); H. T. Wade-Gery, The
ward; contra, Webster, From Mycenae Poet of the Iliad (Cambridge" 195.2),
to Homer, 140-54. See also Munro, fig. I (Heropythos of Chios); Beloch,
JHS, LIV (1934), 116-.21; Cassola, Griechische Geschichte, I . .2, 17-18.
cHAPTER 4 • Two Centuries of Consolidation 111

a clear reference to migration, worthy of our respect, can be

found.
The tendency of tradition, based probably on genealogical
reckoning, was to set the major movement from Greece in the
twelfth and eleventh centuries. This too is reasonable, though the
historian must place more weight on the fact that both the Ae-
gean and the Near East were then in a fluid state. At any later
date extensive colonization of Asia Minor is virtually inexplicable.
In the Dark ages the mainland was primarily engaged in re-
building its social and cultural structure after a great collapse
and had neither any serious surplus of population nor a strong
enough organization to launch out overseas.
That migrations of considerable scope had taken place is
strongly suggested also by the religious patterns of the later
Greek world, by the distribution of dialects, and by the similarity
of tribal organization over wide areas on the mainland, in the
islands, and on the coast of Asia Minor. The close resemblance of
the Attic and Ionic dialects, the existence of the same four tribes
in both areas (alon gside others in Ionia), and the common fes-
tival of the Apaturia in honor of the ancestors are points which
cannot be explained away as the product of later cultural con-
vergences; on the other hand, they do not justify Solon's sweep-
ing claim that Attica was the fountainhead of Ionia. Similar
resemblances among the DOric-speaking areas of Greece proper
and Asia Minor are likewise not easily accounted for unless ele-
ments originally centered in Greece proper had expanded over-
seas.

While early migration thus probably occurred, on a scale

which we have no means of measuring, this factor was but an
ultimate basis for the consolidation of Aegean culture. Modem
scholars have created many problems in essaying to reconcile the
evidence of legend with that of the physical remains; the root of
their difficulty lies in the unfortunate tendency to explain cul-
tural shifts solely in terms of movements of population. What
actually t,?ok place in the Dark ages was far more a process of
cultural adaptation, an expansion of the Greek civilization of the
112 PART II . The Dark Ages
mainland. 2 Even before 800 the new Hellenic outlook was begin-
ning to exhibit those remarkable powers of attracting other peo-
ples which were to be so marked throughout its history.
If we analyze the archaeological evidence now available, it
appears that the islands declined abruptly and greatly at the end
of the Mycenaean age but were not, in the main, entirely de-
serted. By the tenth century Protogeometric pottery appears here
and there in the central Aegean, partly of native origin, partly in
imitation of the great Attic Protogeometric style. 8 Farther east-
ward pottery of mainland Greek types was continuously present
at Samos from at least goo B.C. onward (see Map No.2). On the
coast of Asia Minor itself, the recent excavations at Old Smyrna

2 If we keep this fact in mind, the ef- Delos, ScyYos.

fort to reduce the major Greek migra- Samos: Richard Eilmann, "Friihe
tion down toward 800 B.C., when griechische Keramik im samischen
Greek civilization becomes clear along Heraion," AM, LVIII (1933),47-145;
the coast of Asia Minor, is unneces- Werner Technau, "Griechische Kera-
sary. Cassola, La Ionia nel mondo mik im samischen Heraion," AM, LIV
miceneo, 1D-U, gives a bibliography (1929),6-64. Old Smyrna: reports in
of this view. See especially R. M. ]HS, LXVII (1947), 41; LXXII
Cook, "Ionia and Greece in the Eighth (195 2 ), 104; LXXIII (1953), 124;
and Seventh Centuries B.C.," IHS, and now J. M. Cook, BSA, LlII-IV
LXVI (1946), 67-g8; G. M. A. Hanf- (~958-59), ID-U; Ekrem Akurgal,
mann, "Horsemen from Sardes," AlA, "Bayrakli kazisi Onrapor," Ankara Vnl-
XLIX (1945), 570-81; "Archaeology' versitesi Vil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakiil-
in Homeric Asia Minor," AlA, LII tesi Vergisi, VIII (1950), 1-97, con-
(1948), 135-55; "Ionia, Leader or cerns chiefly later levels. Miletus:
FolloweI?" HSCP, LXI (1~S3), 1-37; Chap. 2, n. 2 (p. 50); while Mellaalt,
J. H. Jongkees, "The Date of the Belleten, XIX (1955), 129, is un-
Ionian Migration," Studia VoligraD doubtedly right that the collapse of
(Amsterdam, 1948),71-77; Carl Roe- order in Anatolia aided early Greek
buck, Ionian Trade and Colonization settlement, the evidence of Miletus
(New York, 1959), chaps. 1-2.. suggests they could settle there in
3 Islands: J. M. Cook, IHS, LXXI Late Bronze days.
( 1951), 250, and LXXII (1952), 106; Other sites in eastern Aegean:
Hazel D. Hansen, Studies to V. M. Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery,
Robinson, II, 54-63; N. M. Kontoleon, 2 15-18, 222-23; Hanfmann, HSC,P,
"rE"'ILETptKOS dlL<P0PEUS i" NdEou,"Arch. LXI (1953),12-14; Cook, BSA, LlII-
eph. 1945-47, 1-21, and Praktika IV (1958-59), 11. At Rhodes a dis-
1951, 214-23; Scholes, BSA, LI turbance in settlement patterns
( 1956), 35, who comes down to al- early in the eleventh century seems
most sub-Mycenaean pots at Amorgos, clear (Des borough, Protogeometric
Melos, and Naxos; Desborough, Pro- Pottery, 232-33); Furumark, ppus.
togeometric Pottery, 153-66, 177-78, arch., III (1944),218-20,264-65, at-
212-15, who finds pottery of the era tributes this to an Achaean influx. Cre-
on: Ceos, Paros, Naxos, Amorgos, Me- tan development: Chap. 3, n. 9 (p.
los, Siphnos, Andros, Tenos (see also 98).
BCH, LXXX [1956], 332), Rheneia,
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 113
give us a site where Proto geometric vases were used alongside
native pots; the probings at Miletus, now renewed, reveal an
uninterrupted succession from !vlinoan and Mycenaean days on
into the era of Protogeometric pottery, which had evolved its
own local pattern by the second half of the ninth century. Proto-
geometric ware has also been found at Lesbos, Chios (possibly),
Cos, Rhodes, and Assarlik in Caria, usually in limited quantities
beside native styles. All of this, and particularly the tentative
manner in which Protogeometric vases enter local contexts,
seems most easily explained as the fruit of growing cultural
connections throughout the Aegean!
By the ninth century the Greek mainland had progressed to
the Geometric stage; abroad, this style was increasingly adopted
in the late ninth and eighth centuries. At times the forms and
decoration were clearly of native origin, for the Geometric style
was far more subject to local variation than had been the Proto-
geometric type. Infused in these patterns, however, were motifs
drawn from mainland styles, particularly from the outstanding
Geometric expression of Attica, which in turn reflected Cycladic
and other influences after 800. In Crete, for example, the sur-
vivals of Minoan-Mycenaean outlook which make it difficult for
us to label any local pieces as truly Protogeometric yielded with
great abruptness to a Geometric ware not directly derived from
the earlier pottery but adapted from foreign models.
Much more extensive archaeological and artistic study will
be required, particularly along the coast of Asia Minor, before the
ceramic evolution of the Dark ages becomes clear, but it does
seem certain at the present time, first, that pottery of Greek type
appeared on the islands leading to Asia Minor and along the
coast itself relatively early and, secondly, that by 800 Greek
culture was dominant virtually throughout the Aegean, at least
4 The process is well described for Smyrna had already passed com-
Old Smyrna by J. :M. Cook, IHS, pletely in the hands of the Ionians be-
LXXII (1952), 104: "In the early fore the end of the ninth century."
stages the Protogeometric pottery See also his remarks in BSA, LIII-IV
looks like imported ware alongside the (1958-59), 13; the ethnic interpreta-
local monochrome pottery, but in the tion of cultural changes illustrates the
ninth century the painted ware be- conventional paint of view with which
comes dominant; if the pottery can be I disagree.
used as a guide, it would seem that
 PART II . The Dark Ages
in respect to pottery. That the same condition prevailed also
linguistically will be shown shortly.
An explanation of this cultural fusion as the product of the
expansion of ideas, rather than of peoples, is in accordance both
with the earlier history of the Aegean, which we have already
examined, and with the well-known course of cultural flow in
historic times. Its vehicle was trade by sea, at least as far as the
islands and Asia Minor were concerned. The inhabitants of the
mainland and the islands had made use of the sea since at least
the fourth millennium, if not before, and had been extremely
active by sea in the Mycenaean age; this skill did not disappear
entirely in the simplification of life which followed the Myce-
naean collapse. The Protogeometric pottery of the mainland
shows no real objects apart from a horse, and Early and Strong
Geometric potters were almost as reluctant to move outside the
realm of abstract motifs; yet a ship does appear on an Attic
skyphos of about 875-850 (see Plate ga) and on a Cretan crater
of the tenth century.5 While trade was not a major part of the
economic life of the Dark ages, to judge from the scarcity of
foreign objects in graves, the occasional appearance of alien
vases shows that it cannot be dismissed as absolutely nonexist-
ent. If the rather sudden interest abroad in Attic Proto geometric
styles by goo is a valid clue, seafaring may have begun to revive
appreciably at that time; the increasing interconnections which
appear in pottery during the next century suggest that it con-
tinued to grow.
As the civilization of mainland Greece expanded over the
Aegean, it frequently met peoples who already spoke Greek dia-
lects, small kernels scattered here and there in the Mycenaean
age or immediately after its close in Crete, the islands, and the

5 Kraiker, Neue Beitriige, 41; Brock, the ninth century Peloponnesian, Cy-
Fortetsa, n. 45 (cf. terra-cotta boat, clad ie, Boeotian, Attic, Corinthian. Cf.
n.542). Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery,
The broadening out of pottery 299-300. Against the later feeling that
movements in the Dark ages is graphi- seafaring was absent in the Golden
cally illustrated in Wilhelm Kraiker, Age (e.g., Hesiod, Works and Days
Aigina: die Vasen des 10. bis 7. Jahr- 236), place Aeschylus, Prometheus
hunderts tl. Chr. (Berlin, 1951): At- Bound 467 f., who lists seafaring as a
tic, perhaps also Argive, in the tenth contribution of Prometheus to man.
century; Corinthian from 900 on; in
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 115
coast of Asia Minor. At other points alien elements were drawn
in and were Hellenized by a process of imitation and absorption
often repeated thereafter. The linguistic evidence, which shows
the survival of non-Greek dialects spottily about the Aegean even
in historic times, reflects the slow tempo of this cultural unifica-
tion; so, too, does the maintenance of native social customs at
some sites until late in the archaic period or even into the classic
period. This factor, which Greek antiquarians were to explain as
the product of intermarriage between Greek settlers and native
women, may often have been a simple testimony to incomplete
cultural absorption. It is not without significance in the present
connection that in the Iliad the distinction between Hellenic
and non-Hellenic was far from sharp and certainly was not con-
temptuous; 6 in the time of Homer, opines Thucydides (I. 3),
"tbe HeJJenes were not ),et known b), one name, and so marked
off as something separate from the outside world."
The existence of a countercurrent, from east to west, has
already been shown with respect to the appearance of cremation
and iron on the Greek mainland; and the tendency of Attica,
with its close cultural neighbor Boeotia, to take over most com-
pletely the custom of burning the dead is of weight in suggesting
the main axis of cultural flow. Nonetheless, Asia Minor did not
lead the Aegean culturally during the Dark ages. The essential
developments in Greek pottery, sculpture, and architecture must
be located in Greece proper, not Ionia; even economically the
coastal settlements in the latter area lay on the fringe of the main
sea routes until the seventh century at least.

AEGEAN LOCALISM

WITillN THE AEGEAN, cultural patterns drew ever closer to-

gether on the simple level which prevailed in the Dark ages. Out-
side this enclave the wide net of foreign connections so notice-
able in the Mycenaean age virtually disappeared. These two
6Santo Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Oc- caica (Florence, 1947), 85-86, 9<>-92.
cidente: ricerche di storia greca ar-
116 PART II . The Dark Ages

characteristics of the early Greek period ani interconnected. If

the outlook which had appeared on the mainland by about 1000
gained a strong hold throughout the Aegean, its success must be
attributed at least in part to the lack of external competition and
external diversion during a period of two centuries and more.
To the west, Greek contact with Italy was almost entirely
broken; only one or two Protogeometric sherds have been found
in southern Italy.7 The islands on the west coast of Greece mani-
fested Proto geometric styles at points, and on Ithaca Corinthian
Geometric ware was imported and imitated by the middle of the
ninth century. For this latter development I should prefer to
look to a process of cultural diffusion rather than to a hypothet-
ical Corinthian colonization. To the north, the developing Hel-
lenic patterns had an influence as far as Thessaly; Macedonia
remained outside the orbit. On the east coast of the Aegean the'
forces of Greek civilization became firmly entrenched-and the
interior was pacified-only toward 800 B.C. Thereafter Phrygia
and Lydia began to swing slowly toward the Aegean.
Most important of all, connections between the Orient and
the Aegean were almost, though not quite completely, broken. On
neither side, to be sure, had seafaring disappeared during the
chaos following the Late Bronze age. The Egyptian envoy Wen
Amun traveled from Egypt to Syria about 1060 in search of wood
and found in the Syrian ports a number of merchant vessels
which were apparently organized in shipping guilds; 8 the story
of Solomon's commercial ventures with Hiram, king of Tyre, in
1 Italy: Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery AA 1955, 182-231; Desborough, Pro-
in Italy, 159-68; only his Scoglio del togeometric Pottery, 130-37. The
Tonno nn. 165-66 seem Greek Proto- Marmariani ware published by W. A.
geometric. 'Vestem islands: W. A. Heurtley and T. C. Skeat, "The Tho-
Heurtley and H. L. Lorimer, "Excava- los Tombs of Marrnariane," BSA,
tions in Ithaca I," BSA, XXXIII XXXI (1930-31 ) , 1-55, is mostly'
( 1932-33), 22-65; Sylvia Benton, eighth-century (cf. Verdelis and Ben-
"Excavations in Ithaca III: The Cave ton, IHS, LXX [1950], 18-20). Mace-
at Polis, II," BSA, XXXIX (1938-39), donia: Desborough, Protogeometiic
1-51; Sylvia Benton, "Further Exca- Pottery, 179-80; recent finds, IHS,
vations at Aetos," BSA, XLVIn LXXIV (1954), 159; LXXV Suppl.
(195;3),255-361; Desbor\mgh, Proto- (1955),15.
geometric Pottery, 272, 279-80; Will, Phrygia and Lydia: see below,
Korinthiaka, 38-41, is justly doubtful pp.210-11.
of Corinthian settlement. 8 W. F. Albright, "The Eastern Medi-
Thessaly: N. M. Verdelis's study terranean about 1060 B.C.," Studies to
(Chap. 3, n. 9 [po 93]); Milojcic, D. M. Robinson, I, 222-31.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 117
the next century is famous. Yet contacts were reduced to an es-
sentially insignificant level, partly because the markets offered
by the Mycenaean palaces had disappeared, partly because
men's energies and ambitions were rudely limited by the low
plane of economic and social life.
It may be doubted if men in the Aegean could do without
the ointments and spices produced in the o.rient, but neither
these items nor such return exports as slaves from the Aegean
would make much mark in our physical record. A metal bowl of
north Syrian origin was buried in a Kerameikos grave of about
850-825; the Pnyx has yielded a bronze tripod perhaps of about
the same time; some Eastern motifs were being picked up by
Geometric potters before 800, with Crete perhaps in the lead;
and the ivories of Sparta, the earliest of which manifest Oriental
indebtedness both in their material and in their techniques, may
go back just before 800. 9 In the other direction, Protogeometric
sherds of Aegean origin have turned up in Cyprus, perhaps about
goo, and at Tell Abu Hawam and other Levantine sites from the
ninth century on. Thus far, these isolated pieces are all that has
been found to attest connections. More may well appear in the
future in ninth-century or even tenth-century strata, but the
negative impression which we must gain from the great bulk of
the excavations, as well as from the purely local spirit of Greek
Geometric styles, is very strong testimony that significant re-
sumption of contacts via the eastern sea route took place in the
Aegean only toward the beginning of the eighth century.
This cultural isolation of the Aegean may appear surprising
when one reflects that men who spoke Greek dialects lived all
along the eastern searoad during the Dark ages. The settlement
of Greek-speaking peoples in Cari~ and Pamphylia probably
occurred in the unrest at the end of the Bronze age, and may
have been a product of their search for secluded, relatively safe

9 Brock, Fortetsa, 22, on the Pnyx East: Chap. 3, n. 4 (p. 95); Chris-
tripod (d. Benton, ]HS, LXX [1950], toph Clairmont, "Greek Pottery from
17); Kiibler, Kerameikos, IV, 17, 30- the Near East," Berytus, XI (1954-
31, and V. 1, 159 n. 121 (bibliogra- 55), 85-139; Hanfmann, Aegean and
phy ) , with "Eine Bronzeschale im Near East, 166-67, 174-75; Mazza-
Kerameikos," Studies to D. M. Robin- rino, Fra Oriente e Occidente, 256 ff.
son, II, 25-29. Greek ware in the
118 PART II . The Dark Ages

sites. 1 In Cilicia the appearance of late Mycenaean pottery at

some sites has been taken to betoken earlier settlement; kings
with Greek names, who traced their ancestry to Mopsus, a figure
known in Greek myth, ruled over the Danauna or Danaians in
this district late in the eighth century. The date at which Greek-
speaking peoples took up their home in Cyprus is much debated;
but, whether this wave came in late Mycenaean times or in the
eleventh century, it was strong enough to endure throughout the
Dark ages. None of these areas, however, participated in the
initial evolution of Greek civilization; the only evidence of earlier
Aegean connection which appears here is the survival of Greek
dialects and, at points, of Mycenaean pottery motifs and shapes.
This fact throws perhaps our clearest light on the cultural
consolidation of the Aegean itself. The substructure for the fusion
was furnished by the migrations at the close of the Bronze age,
but only the districts which lay thereafter in direct contact with
the Greek mainland participated in the evolution of the Dark
ages. The new spirit which had begun to unfold in the south-
eastern districts of Greece proper had a full opportunity, un-
challenged by outside models, to exert an attractive force on the
rest of the Aegean for two full centuries; and the vehicle for that
attraction was quite as much cultural proximity as similarity of
racial background. Those Greek-speaking peoples who had
driven beyond the effective range of mainland developments fol-
lowed a different cultural path until Aegean civilization was
ready to spread more widely after 800 and so to reclaim them.
Within the Aegean itself the diffusion of mainland pottery pat-
terns in the Dark ages and their interaction with local points of

1 Caria-Pamphylia: Mellaart, AnatSt, the stories of Amphilochos (Beloch;

IV (1954), 176-78; A. Heubeck, Griechische Geschichte, I. 2, 107-09).
Beitriige zur Namenforschung, VII Schachermeyr, Poseidon, 175-78, and
(1956), 8-13, on Pamphylian Greek. others connect the myth of Bellero"
Cilicia: views on the Karatepe inscrip- phon with early Greek settlement in
tion, probably of the early seventh Lycia and Caria.
century, may be found in Cassola, La Cyprus: see Chap. .2, n. 4
Ionia nel mondo mice nco, 110-18; (p. 52); on Mycenaean surVivals into
Machteld J. MeIIink, Bibliotheca Ori- Cypriote Decorated (Debased Le-
entalis, VII (1950), 141-50. Mopsos, vanto-HeIIadic) and Proto White
from Aeolian Cyme, was said to have Painted ware, cf. Furumark, Opus.
founded Side and Colophon and to arch., III (1944), .231-58, and Gjer-
have been buried in Cilicia; note also stad, ibid. 75-77.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 119
view had produced a rich variety in Greek Geometric pottery by
800 B.C.; the tendency to interpret common themes in local forms
had an opportunity in the tenth and ninth centuries to become
well set as an enduring force for later Greek history.

THE GREEK DIALECTS

GENERALIZATION from the evidence of the pottery to the

course of early Greek civilization as a whole is strongly supported
by the parallel linguistic developments in the Aegean. By 800 the
Greek language had become the basic speech of the peoples
living in Greece, on the islands, and along the western coast of
Asia Minor. In this development and also in the existence of
distinct dialects within the common tongue we have independ-
ent light of great value on the evolution of the Dark ages.
. Most surely men in the Aegean had not been entirely Indo- .
European in the second millennium. The style of writing termed
Linear A, which had been employed in Minoan Crete, cannot
yet be read, but it does not seem to have been used for a Greek
tongue. The place names of the Aegean world are largely drawn
from an earlier speech which was probably not Indo-European.
This stratum of Bronze-age tongues occasionally survived far
enough into historic times to be employed in inscriptions, as on a
famous but puzzling stone from Lemnos and on epigraphical
material from eastern Crete, the home of the Eteocretans. 2
Whether the mysterious Pelasgians, Leleges, Carians, and other
peoples whom Greek historians and antiquarians described as
pre-Greek elements actually ever existed as such, or even neces-
2 Eteocretan inscriptions: J. Fried- Friihgeschichte und Sprachwissen-
rich, Kleinasiatische Sprachdenkmiiler schaft (Vienna, 1948), 91-109, with
(Berlin, 1932), 147-48; Demargne, bibliography there cited.
La Crete dedalique, 102-07; but the Pelasgians: Eduard Meyer, "Die
effort of Ernst Langlotz, "Eine eteo- Pelasger," Forschungen zur alten Ge-
kretische Sphinx," Corolla Curtius schichte, I, 1-124; B.eloch, Griechi-
(Stuttgart, 1937), 60-62, to tie artis- sche Geschichte, I. 2, 45-60, as Greek;
tic monuments to this linguistic sphere J. A. R. Munro, "Pelasgians and Ioni-
is dangerous. Lemnos Stele: Margit ans," IRS, LIV (1934), 109-.28, as
Falkner, "Epigraphisches und archao- the root of the Ionians.
logisches zur Stele von Lemnos,"
120 PART II . The Dark Ages

sarily spoke non-Greek tongues, cannot now be firmly estab-

lished; but the general tone of these references shows that Greek
writers were aware of a process of linguistic consolidation in the
Aegean. For there can be no doubt that the survivals of non-
Greek languages were in the historic period no more than the
fossils of distant ages. Men in the historic Aegean spoke Greek.
The background to this situation was in part the earlier
external invasions and internal migrations of peoples who had
learned Greek at their mothers' knees. One wave of Indo-Euro-
pean speech had probably entered the Aegean at the beginning
of the Middle Helladic era; from this element came the lords of
the Mycenaean palaces. s Their tongue, as reflected in the tablets
of Linear B, has recently been well termed "south Greek," and
seems to have been the same in Pylos, Mycenae, Boeotia, and
Cnossus. At the close of the Mycenaean age a second wave of
invasion introduced, apparently, what may be called a "north
Greek" dialect.
Both the earlier and the later waves scattered bands of set-
tlement across the Aegean in the Late Bronze age and in the un-
rest which marked its end. Neither in Greece nor abroad can we
properly visualize these conquerors as wiping out the earlier
peoples. Throughout history, except in parts of the modem Eu-
ropean outpourings, invasions have been the work of relatively
small groups who enter, conquer, and settle down on top of and
beside a much larger native population. Already in the Myce-
naean age, to judge from the non-Greek words appearing in the
palace tablets, a process of linguistic unification was at work; by
historic times over half the stock of words employed in Greek
may have been of other than Indo-European origin.<l
The increasing dominance of the Greek tongue as the basic
structure of Aegean speech thenceforth was not due solely to
3 There is no archaeological or epi- 92-97; C. D. Buck, "The Language
graphic evidence for the view that Situation in and about Greece in the
two peoples, one speaking the ances- Second Millennium B.C.," CP, XXI
tor of Ionian, the other of Aeolian or (1926),1-26; and many others.
Achaean, came early in the second 4Hans Krahe, "Die Vorgeschichte des
millennium, as suggested by Paul Griechentums nach dem Zeugnis der
Kretschmer, "Zur Geschichte der grie- Sprache," Die Antike, XV (1939),
chischen Dialekte," Glotta, I (1909), 175-94·
9-59; Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae,
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 121

racial reasons. Greek, thus, was widely scattered over the Aegean
and so could serve as a medium of communication, particularly
among the dominant political and economic elements; for the in-
vaders did become masters of this world. Another factor was the
relatively low plane of culture which had existed previously,
except in Minoan Crete; and here, interestingly enough, the
strongest survival of non-Greek speech seems to have occurred,
among the Eteocretans. And finally, we must keep in mind the
inherent attractiveness of Greek as a supple, logical tool of ex-
pression-the qualities of which were strikingly similar to those
expressed in the logic of the also attractive Geometric pottery-
~ogether with the probability that Aegean mythology and epic
tradition were encased within this framework.
If the inhabitants of the Aegean basin had come by inherit-
ance and still more by absorption to speak a common tongue by
historic times, they did so only in several distinct dialects, which
differed more in pronunciation than in vocabulary. The Dark
ages had a strongly local flavor, which worked toward divergence
in speech as well as in pottery.
When Greece emerged into historic times, the west coast of
Asia Minor was inhabited from north to south by men who spoke
resp~ctively Aeolic, Ionic, and Dorian dialects. These relatively
well-defined varieties of Greek ran roughly westward across the
islands of the Aegean to Greece proper: Dorian through Rhodes
and Crete to the Peloponnesus, Ionic through the Cyclades to
Attica, Aeolic through Lesbos to Thessaly and Boeotia. In
Greece itself, however, the pattern was not so tidy. The hills in
the center of the Peloponnesus were occupied by the Arcadians,
whose tongue was most similar to that of Cyprus; Attic differed
in certain respects very sharply from Ionic and in others ap-
proached Dorian; central Greece is divided by modern linguistic
scholars among Boeotians, Thessalians, and Northwest Greeks.
The origin of these dialects cannot be fixed with precision,
in the lack of sure epigraphic or literary evidence before the
seventh century. Basically their geographical distribution has
some connection with early movements about the Aegean, but
only in the most general sense. Remarkably detailed but extraor-
dinarily diverse pictures of these movements have been drawn
122 PART II . The Dark Ages
on the basis of dialectal evidence; the draftsmen of such recon-
structions have quite ignored the archaeological evidence as a
rule and, worse yet, have commonly disregarded the fact that
spoken languages change with relative rapidity. To treat the
historic dialects as virtually fixed entities over long, analpha-
betic centuries is extremely unsafe.
Greek linguistic divergence seems rather to have experi-
enced major steps after the end of the Mycenaean age. One re-
cent suggestion, which is at least plausible, derives from Myce-
naean or "south Greek" the Arcado-Cypriote dialect and also
Attic and Ionic. 5 From "north Greek" would come in the first
degree the Aeolic dialect, which in its Thessalian form may rep-
resent this earlier tongue most fully; and then also Dorian and
sundry other dialects of later Greece. The distinctions, indeed,
between Attic and Ionic may still have been crystallizing in the
eighth century.
The linguistic transformation of the Aege~n from the Myce-
naean era into the Dark ages shows once more the chain of
progress which we can see in the pottery. Historic Greek dialects,
like Protogeometric and Geometric pottery, were ultimately de-
scended from roots in the second millennium; but the change
which had taken place was a very considerable one. The presence
of many dialects underlines the localism of the era; yet regional
and general ties also existed. The process of splintering did
not reduce the Aegean to a welter of mutually incomprehensible
tongues. By 800 the Aegean. shared the same basic speech, and
at that time the Greek tongue in its highest form, the epic poetry
5w. Porzig, "Sprachgeographische ject; Vittore Pisani, for instance, takes
Untersuchungen zu den altgriechi- Ionian-Mycenaean as originating in- -
schen Dialekten," Indogermanische Asia Minor and overlaid by Aeolic
Forschungen, LXI (1954), 147-69; and Dorian in "Die Entzilferung der
Ernst Risch, "Die Gliederung der grie- agaeischen Linear B Schrift und die
chischen Dialekte in neuer Sicht," griechischen Dialekte," RM, XCVIII
Museum Helveticum, XII (1955),61- ( 1955), 1-18. Cf. Cassola, La Ionia
76, and his surveys in Etudes myce- nel mondo miceneo, 154-212.
niennes (Paris, 1956). 167-72, 249- Dialectal evidence: Carl D., Buck,
63; John. Chadwick, "The Greek Dia- The G1"eek Dialects (Chicago, 1955);
lects and Greek Pre-History," Greece Michel Lejeune, Traite de phonetique
and Rome, 2. ser. III (1956), 38-50, grecque (Paris, 1947); Antoine Meil-
and in Documents, 68-75. The new let, Aper9u d'une histoire de la langue
light from the Mycenaean tablets is grecque (6th, ed.; Paris, 1948).
leading to many studies on the sub-
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 123

of Homer, beautifully illuminates the most basic intellectual

characteristics of Greek civilization. To this point I shall return
in the next chapter, in considering the hexameter. In view of
the racial theories which still plague our understanding of
Greek history it might be well also to note once more that such
terms as "Dorian" and "Ionic" are purely linguistic; their speak-
ers did not necessarily have any fundamental, blood-carried dif-
ferences in cultural outlook.

POLITICAL PATTERNS

FROM THE SPREAD of Protogeometric and Geometric styles

over the Aegean as well as from its linguistic domination by one
language, albeit divided into dialects, the historian can deduce
the rise of a fundamental cultural unity. This process may be
called a horizontal extension of Greek civilization. Another sig-
nificant step was the consolidation in depth which resulted as
the political, social, and cultural patterns in each area became
more firmly established and integrated. This aspect of the Dark
ages must concern us during the balance of the present chapter.
For the era 1000--800 the so-called "history" decked with
specific names and dates, which was constructed in classic and
Hell€)nistic times, had best be dismissed out of hand. It is a
mere web of guesses to camouflage the obscurity of the age.
Even the marvelous chapters at the beginning of Thucydides'
history, which sketch the early evolution of Greece, have hypno-
tized too many modern scholars; Thucydides was usually a care-
ful critic of events in his own time, but in turning to the past he
could do no more than rationalize mythical lore. The legends
which assert that the Dorians expanded from the Argolid north-
east to Epidaurus, northward into the Corinthia and Megarid,
or southwest to Sparta (see Map No.2) may well have some
validity, yet we cannot prove them purely on the basis of scat-
tered archaeological hints. 6 Nor could such historical themes as
6Corinthia and Megarid: Dunbabin, chora and Corinthian Encroachment,"
JHS, LXVIII (1948),63-64; N. G. L. BSA, XLIX (1954), 93-102. Sparta:
Hammond, "The Heraeum at Pera- Skeat, Dorians in Archaeology, 31-35.
124 PART II . The Dark Ages
purposeful interstate relations and internal class struggles have
any real place in the simple society of those early centuries; true
wars, as distinguished from c.anle-raiding and other border
skirmishing, could occur only in an age of well-organized states.
In political terms, all that we can hope to establish is the
character of the general framework by which men of the Dark
ages assured basic order to their life. If evolution occurred, it
probably should be sought in a consolidation of local units of
government after the chaotic movements at the end of the Myce-
naean age and in an increasingly firm sense of political struc-
ture and spirit; but this suggestion is purely an inference from
the evolution of Geometric order. Our only useful evidence
comes from the very end of the age, in the epic poems. The
Homeric world, however, lies so decisively before the upheaval
which produced the city-state (polis) that one is probably
justified in taking its picture of tribally organized peoples and
«hereditary monarchy with established rights and limitations"
(Thucydides I. 13) as applicable in the earlier, slowly moving
centuries.
The abstract terms of political life which appear in the
Iliad are those familiar in historic times, but the system ex-
pressed in such terms as polis, demos, boule, agora, was still only
a rudimentary hint of later organization. 7 In the Iliad, polis and
asty are never sharply distinguished from each other in the
historic sense of "state" and "town"; both were inhabited, defen-
sible localities. Their inhabitants seem to have considered them-
selves superior to the agroiKoi or isolated inhabitants of field and
pasture; but, lest we judge too much from this feeling as to the

7 Hermann Strasburger, Gymnasium, III. 50, VI. 158, IX. 634; Odyssey
LX (1953), 99, sums up the picture XXI. 17, XIII. 233. Boule: Fanta, Der
briefly; full epic references may be Staat, 70-86. Agora: Fanta, Der Staat,
found in Adolf Fanta. Der Staat in 87-96; M. I. Finley, The World of
der Was tlnd Odyssee ( Innsbruck, Odysseus (2d ed.; London, 1956),.
1882); see also Fritz Gschnitzer, 84-90.
"Stammes- und Ortsgemeinden im Basileus: De Sanctis, Staria dei
alten Griechenland," 'Wiener Stu- Greci, I, 237-38, 275; Fanta, Der
dien, I!.XVIII (1955), 120-44. Polis: Staat, 46-69; Finley, World of Odys-
Wilhelm Hoffmann, "Die Polis bei seus, 105-07, and Historia, VI (1956),
Homer," Festschrift Bruno Snell (Mu- 139; M. P. Nilsson, "Das homerische
nich, 1956), 153-65, overemphasizes Kbnigtum," Opus. sel., II (Lund,
its place. Demos: Iliad XXIV. 481, 195 2 ),87 1-97.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 125

presence of city life, it must be remembered that the Greeks,

even when they were purely farmers, tended to dwell together in
groups. The term polis does at timE)s have a vague connotation of
"state," as in giving the name to an area. Chieftains and other
heroes are occasionally identified as coming from a particular
polis; a stranger may be asked what his polis is. But far more
often the question is put: "What is your demos?"
The basic unit was not a firmly organized state in a territo-
rial sense, nor was it simply a people; the demos was a people in-
habiting a specific area. This demos was organized in subdivi-
sions, tribes and phratries above all, for military purposes,
for the preservation of law and order, and probably for most
other purposes of communal life; even the gods are grouped in
phylai or tribes in epic tradition. While the invading elements of
a demos may have floated freely for a while at the end of the
second millennium, they sooner or later settled down and amal-
gamated with the earlier population; and the area occupied by
anyone demos, which resulted from the fusion, came to be a
generally definable tract which had commonly as kernel a polis.
This seems usually to have been an inhabited site-i.e., a village;
it also often served as the refuge and religious center of the
people.
The political bonds, however, of the men who assembled
here were not primarily territorial; they were far more those of
tribal unity and of obedience to a particular basileus. The tribal
ties: expressed in common cult and social customs, were of
great, continuing importance, but were probably of an uncon-
scious nature. Conscious political ties, to judge from the epic,
must have been mainly on a personal basis; the basileus, as their
focus, was an important element in the framework of society. To
understand his nature we would do well to avoid the commonly
employed equivalent, "king," for this ineVitably suggests to a
modern reader a position of great power and wide estate.
Greece had known such masters in the Mycenaean age,
when each great palace fortress had served as center for a far-
ruling wanax, supported by a bureaucracy of scribe-treasurers.
Though every technical term in the Mycenaean tablets is still
open to debate, it appears that a military retinue may have held
1.26 PART II . The Dark Ages

its land for military service to the king. Below him there was a
chain of local government, in which we can probably fit the of-
fi.ci~ls called pa2-si-re-u in the tablets and perhaps village spokes-
men and councillors.8 At the end of the Late Bronze era, how-
ever, this imitation of Oriental monarchy had fallen with a crash.
The centralized political administration implied in the palace
archives dissolved; the term wanax itself disappeared from the
Greek vocabulary save as a term for gods and as an epithet in the
Homeric poems. The basileus was a successor not of the wanax
but of the local lords and the warleaders of the invaders who
amalgamated with or superseded these pa 2-si-re-u.
In absolute terms this political change represented a great
deterioration, which probably took place very swiftly. The mod-
ern argument that the basileis gradually lost their strength across
the Dark ages, by granting out their domains to warriors, not
only is sheer speculation but also is quite misleading; 9 what-
ever royal powers and domains the kings had held were dissi-
pated, in the main, on the breakdown of political order at the
end of the Mycenaean period. Nonetheless this development
was one of the most important underlying steps in the rise of
Greek civilization. Had it not occurred, Greek SOciety could
scarcely have become integrated as a basically unified stmc-
ture, nor would the city-state of later days, the fmit of that
structure, have emerged.
To understand both the political framework of the Dark
ages themselves and the subsequent evolution out of this sys-
tem, one must always keep in mind the limited strength of the
basileus, who dominated only a small area. That the peoples of
Greece may have felt cultural, religious, and linguistic ties ov~r
8Ventris and Chadwick, Documents, men unter besonderer Beruchsichti-
121-22 and passim. Little of this, gung der attischen Kulte (Uppsal~,
however, has yet received complete 1955); C. M. Bowra, !liS, LIV
assent. Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, ( 1934), 54-55, 59-60, on Cyprus. 'In
"Eqeta," Minoica (Berlin, 1958),319- later times the Milesians remembered
26, strongly attacks the military inter- their first king as having been named
pretation of that term; Page, History Anax (Paus. I. 35. 6, VII. -2. 5);. this
and, the Homeric Iliad, 186, casts surely had been his title.
doubt on the significance of parsi- 9 Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I,
re-u. 211-12; Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae,
Anax: Bengt Hemberg, AN A:::, 243; and many others.
ANAl:l:A und ANAKEl: als Gotterna-
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 127

fairly wide districts is suggested above all by the religious leagues

known in later times, which met for worship at especially sacred
points. 1 Beyond the clues afforded by these and other traditional
groupings, the main evidence for the political topography of
the Dark ages should be the famous catalogue of the Greek
army against Troy, in the Second Book of the Iliad; but this
picture, though marvelously detailed, is not the guide we
might wish. The epic geographic references are probably con-
taminated both by poetic fancy and by archaizing tendencies,
though I much mistrust the recent ingenious manipulations of
this material to prove its Mycenaean origin and topographic
trustworthiness. 2 Worse yet, the artistic requirements of the epic
limited the number of figures who could take part; both in the
catalogue and in the list of leaders in Iliad IV. 250 ff. the major
cultural and linguistic districts are assigned to only one or a few
basi leis.
In the practical terms of actual government, however, the
area which looked to each individual warleader and so served
as root for a later city-state had come to be very small before the
end of the Dark ages. The resources of a basileus in so poor an
era probably barely covered even the simple need of cult and
rudimentary state. In some localities, indeed, the existence of
several basileis side by side, which we find later in the Odys-
sey, at Elis, and elsewhere, may have been the case earlier.s
Even in Homeric days the leaders were still intimately connected
with the daily duties of farming and herding, as indeed they
must be if they were to maintain any state for themselves and
1 E. g., Panionian league of Poseidon: IX (1956), 34-58; G. R. Huxley,
Wade-Gery, Poet of the Iliad, 4-5, "Mycenaean D{~cline and the Homeric
63-66; Carl Roebuck, "The Early Io- Catalogue of Ships," Bulletin of the
nian League," CP, L (1955), 26-40, Institute of Classical Studies, III
and Ionian Trade and Colonization, (1956),19-30; Page, History and the
25-31; Gallet de Santerre, Delos prim- Homeric Iliad, 120-37. But cf. Wade-
itive, 206-07. Calaurian amphictiony: Gery, Poet of the Iliad, 49-57, and
Will, Korinthiaka, 545 n. 1; J. P. Gray, Homer and His Critics, 273-74
Harland, "The Calaurian Amphic- (whose remarks do not accord with
tyony," AJA, XXIX (1925), 160-71. Myres's own views of its early origin,
2 Mycenaean origins: V. Burr, "1'1 fWP p. 199). Epic magnification of king-
Karciho,),of" Klio, Beih. XLIX (1944); ship: Chap. 5, n. 6 (p. 164).
Jula Kersdhensteiner, "Pylostafeln und 3L. H. Jeffery, BSA, LI (1956), 165:
homerischer Schiffskatalog," Miinche- Gustave Glotz, The Greek City and
ner Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Its Institutions (London, 1929), 63.
128 PART II . The Dark Ages
for their retainers (therapontes). Apart from gifts by foreigners
-to whom in tum countergifts had to be presented-the un-
certain rewards of raiding, and not very well defined gifts by
their subjects, the Homeric basileis had to live by agriculture,
carried out both on their lands and on a temenos assigned
them by the tribal community; their reserves consisted mainly of
ancestral treasures, food, and stores of metals.·
That the chieftains continued to live in the old Mycenaean
palaces is often asserted, but there is no proof that any of these
were occupied across the Dark ages. Architectural and artistic
skills had certainly sunk too low for the construction of any new
palaces or great tombs; the "mansion" at Karphi, which was ap-
parently the home of the village chieftain, may well have been
occupied by a man who called himself basileus.
The basileis did not stand far above their fellow tribesmen
either in economic or in political interests, nor apparently
did their plane of life and social customs differ radically from
those of the upper classes who fought beside them; among the
tombs of the early Dark ages at Athens there is no spectacular
divergence in the extent of burial gifts. Most significant of all, the
basileis did not absorb all the political powers of the community,
as the wanax had come close to doing in the Mycenaean age.
Even in that era the tablets seem to suggest that the villages had
local officials; when we again begin to see the Greek country-
side, in the Homeric epics, it is quite clear that the chieftains
were not omnipotent, anc;l did not 'fadminister" through agents.
In the lawsuit depicted on the shield of Achilles, judgment
lay in the hands of village wise men. s Priests and seers con-
veyed the will of the gods, who co~ld speak to any man if they
so desired. Assemblies of the folk and of the greater men occurred
sporadically for political, religious, and other functions. These,
too, did not proceed on regular rules and had no specific func-
tions. The agora of the people voiced its opinion, if at all, only
by shouts and mob action; the nobles, when convened in meal
and, council (boule), at times spoke their minds freely, yet their
4 Iliad IX. 149-55; A. M. Andreades, ~Iliad XVIII. 497-508; on this much
A HistoTlJ of Greek Public Finance, I vexed scene, see E. Wolf, Griechisches
(Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 3-29; Fin- Rechtsdellken, I (Frankfurt, 1950),
ley, World of Odysseus, 104-06. 88 ff.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 129

great days of power were still to come. Nonetheless agora and

boule did have to take place as a medium by which chieftains
and followers could sense each other's opinion; and the upper
classes had an independent place.
In some recent studies it is suggested that the basileus re-
flects Indo-European principles of political organization. s The
line of argument which reads back from the days of Germanic
kingship often goes much too far in postulating clear political
theories among the primitive peoples of north-central Eurasia,
but we may grant that the invaders of Greece brought with them
some views on the relations of chieftain and followers (though
we do not really know what these were). More important forces,
surely, arose from the facts of political life in the Dark ages.
The simple economic and social plane of the era, which intensi-
fied the divisive forces of Greek geography, helped to turn the
land away from a temporary imitation of Oriental monarchy on
the grand scale and to tie men into small, practically self-
sufficient political units.
Much of the governance of daily life was automatically exe-
cuted in the operations of the social blocks into which thepeoples
were grouped; the areas of conscious choice for either basileus or
subjects were very limited. In the eyes of his contemporaries the
reputation of a basileus depended on his own prowess; only
forceful men, who had "might," could hope to be chieftains in
tHe neighborhood raids for cattle and female slaves. But their
powers were always limited by the unwritten code of t1iemis,
"what is done." This fluid yet rigidly circumscribed situation
changed little until the upsurge of Greek activity in the eighth
century.

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF EARLY GREECE

A MODERN CITIZEN of a firmly organized national state,

reared in a metropolitan social and economic system, will have
6 Specific applications of these ideas 15-18; Jaan Puhvel, "Helladic King-
to Greek kingship may be found in ship and the Gods," Minoica (Berlin,
Andrew AlfOldi, AJA, LXIII (1959), 195 8 ),327-33.
 PART II . The Dark Ages
as much difficulty in comprehending the social as the political
structure of early Greece. If we are to understand even the most
basic characteristics of its social life, we must place ourselves in
a very alien environment.
Economically its base was a primitive form of agriculture, in
which virtually everyone of working age had to labor to drag
food from the soil; but beside the villagers one must allow some
room, first, for nomadic herders, who were possibly more com-
mon then than in the eighth and following centuries, and, sec-
ondly, for at least a few artisans and adventurers by land and
sea. Socially the men and women who inhabited the Aegean
lands across the Dark ages were a primitive folk. From the find-
ings of comparative anthropology on more recent, more easily
studied societies we can gain some insight into the probable
qualities of such a traditional, group-centered people, though
always the historian must proceed soberly and with care in
assessing the meaning of the fossilized customs which survived
down into historic Greece. It is better to speak only in general
terms on matters of classes, social groups, and social attitudes
than to create a misleadingly detailed picture on the basis of
.current anthropological and psychological theories. 7
Despite the strong efforts which have been made in recent
times to prove that Indo-European peoples had an underlying
caste organization of warriors, priests, and peasants, Greek his-
tory nowhere reveals any discernible signs of a true caste out-
look. s Socially and economically distinct classes, however, did
exist from early times. Personal ownership of the land, in the
sense in which we know fee simple, seems to have been lacking,
and there are a few hints that communal exploitation of a peo~
pIe's territory had been known, particularly, perhaps, in connec.-
tion with semi-nomadic ways; 9 but in vfrtually all areas the
7 H. J. Rose, Primitive Culture in Palmer, Achaeans and Indo-Euro-
Greece (London, 1925), 4-5, 36, peans (Oxford, 1955), who tries. to
gives a judicious warning; cf. Leon find the three groups in the Myce-
Robin, "Quelques survivances dans la naean tablets; Nilsson, Cults and Pol-
pensee philosophique des Grees d'une itics, 143-49, who essays to prove
mentalite primitive," REG, XLIX economic divisions in the Ionian tribes.
( 1936 ),255-92. 9 The most recent surveys of this
S Georges Dumezil, Jupiter, Mars, Qui- thorny question are M. I. Finley,
rinus (Paris, 1941), 252-57; L. R. "Homer and Mycenae; Property and
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation
arable land, whether held by clans or other social groups, was
not evenly divided among the possessors. To this condition of
inequality the effects of the invasions at the end of the Myce-
naean age must have contributed; tendencies to class division
were already present at least from Early Helladic times.
On the one side, to judge from the evidence of the Homeric
epics and later materials, were peasants, poor day laborers, and
slaves. The slaves, who were chiefly women, worked in the
households as maids, processors of wool, concubines, 'and the
like. Shepherds and other masculine slaves appear in Homer,
but large-scale agricultural slavery was never to be common in
Greece. 1 Some slaves were house-born; others were captives of
wars or raids. "Zeus takes away half his worth from a man,"
says Eumaeus, "when the day of slavery comes upon him"; but
while slaves could know blows, they were also at times respected
and even owned their own slaves. In the worst position of all, ap-
parently, were the landless laborers, the thetes, for while slaves
at least had firm attachment to some household, the thetes were
adrift in a world where economic and social security was based
on group ties. When Odysseus in the underworld praised
Achilles' position as king of the dead, his erstwhile comrade-in-
arms rejOined that it would be far better to serve as thetes some
peasant of small acres on earth.
In later days the landholding peasants themselves were' at
times to be serfs, as in Crete, Thessaly, and elsewhere. The

Tenure," Historia, VI (1957), 133- Tenure," Studies to D. M. Robinson,

59; ed. Will, "Aux origines du regime II, 840-50, seeks to reinforce his argu-
foncier grec: Homere, Hesiode et ment in Studies in Ancient Greek So-
l'arriere-plan mycenien," REA, LIX ciety: The Prehistoric Aegean (rev.
( 1957), 5-50. Finley seems more cor- ed.; London, 1954), 297 If.; but see
rect in rejecting any extensive conti- Chap. 11, n. 2 (p. 358).
nuity in patterns of landholding. The 1 Slaves: my study, "An Overdose of
case for early communal ownership Slavery," Journal of Economic His-
gains its best support from Iliad XII. tory, XVIII (1958), 17-32; Bolke-
421, cf. XVIII. 541-59; one must also stein, Economic Life, 74-76; Denys
take into account the state contribu- Page, The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford,
tion to the meals of the warriors, as on 1955), 105, on the limited terms in
Crete (Aristotle, Politics II. 7. 3. Homer. Their treatment: Odyssey
1272a; Athenaeus IV. 143a-b; R. F. XVII. 320-23; cf. IV. 244-45, XI.
Willetts, Aristocratic Society in An- 190-91, and XIV. 59-61 against XV.
cient Crete [London, 1955], 252). 403 If., XV. 376-79, XIV. 449-52.
George Thomson, "On Greek Land- Thetes: Odyssey XI. 489-91.
132 PART II . The Dark Ages
legal refinement which drove them down to this position may
well have been the product of aristocratic consolidation in his-
toric times and will be considered as such in Chapter 9; even
then the peasants were generally free and enjoyed a relatively
secure, if huml?le, place in society. We can, I think, postulate
no less for the Dark ages.
To what extent the peasants represented the older popula-
tion, and the upper classes the invading elements, one can only
guess. Our knowledge of conquest aristocracies at other times in
history suggests that due allowance must be made for possibili-
ties of some initial amalgamation between old and new upper
levels as well as for the likelihood of intermarriage; certainly a
general social integration took place in the centuries of the Dark
ages. At least by the end of the era the upper and lower classes
of Greece formed a consolidated society with a common pattern
of civilization and speech, subject only to the inevitable cultural
variations which result when some men possess wealth and
wider contacts-and the very minor nature of these variations is
suggested by the general uniformity of the tombs.
This integration was, from the social point of view, one of
the greatest bequests of the period to later Greek history.
Nowhere in historic times is there any valid evidence that the
upper classes of one area differed in culture from those of an-
other because of racial background, nor within anyone people
did the upper and lower classes have basically different cultural
inheritances. Modern assertions that the masters preserved a
Nordic outlook and so were more capable of culture are pure
nonsense, bred of modern racial prejudice, not of the ancient
evidence.
In the primitive Aegean world of the-early first millennium
B.C. the upper classes, moreover, were far simpler than the
nobility of medieval western Europe, who jnherited much from
the developed pattern of the Roman Empire. On this important
pOint we must be clear. The leading elements in Homer did
stand sharply apart from the poorer peasants or landless thetes;
their social position as the warriors of the community tended to
give them a special standard of life, dominated by the need
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 133
to show bravery; and they expressed their distinctive position in
some physical possessions. The ownership of horses, animals of
limited economic utility in the day-to-day labors of Greek farm-
ing, seems to have been one of the most prized of these attri-
butes. The early tripods of Olympia and elsewhere were prob-
ably dedicated by horse-owners who had won chariot races;
when real objects began to appear more commonly on vases in
the Strong Geometric style, these were often horses, either
drawn or simply modeled plastic decorations (individually or
in teams) on the lids of pyxides.2 None of these qualities, how-
ever, connotes the presence of a truly aristocratic spirit, a great
force in later Greek history but one which we can trace back
only to the end of the eighth century. By that date, however,
the earlier essential uniformity of all free men in the demos was
beginning to Jell into concepts of the rights and duties of the
free citizen.

Throughout the Dark ages men lived not by and for them-
selves but within a strong web of groups. Topographically, the
countryside of Greece almost forces its population into clusters;
socially, this turbulent era was not one for men to dwell apart
or to maintain life on an individual level. The main social units
which survived into historic times were those of family, clan,
warrior band, and tribe.
Basic, out only in a practical sense, was the family
(oikos), vital for the purposes of procreation and child-raising
but too small for independent action. The clan (genos) was at
least theoretically a group of related families; while it was prob-
ably an early unit, its era of greatest importance perhaps came
2 K. 560 (Plate 5a); K. 290 about Evolution of the Tripod-Lebes," BSA,
825-800 B.C., Kerameikos, V. 1, 127- XXXV (1934-35), 74-130; Emil
28, 13S-36, 179 n. 176; K. 257 about Kunze, Olympia-Bericht, IV (1944),
800 (Plate 8b). Cf. Sylvia Benton, 110; Karl Schwendemann, "Der Drei-
"The Dating of Horses on Stands and fuss," fdI, XXXVI (1921), 98-18S;
Spectacle Fibulae in Greece," fHS, Franz Willemsen, Dreifusskessel von
LXX ( 19S0), 16-22; Sidney D. Mark- Olympia: Alte und Neue Funde (Ber-
man, The Horse in Greek Art (Balti- lin, 19S7), SO-51, 167-68, 148-S4
more, 1943), whose dates are badly ( horses on caldrons).
in error. Emergence of aristocracy: Chap.
Tripods: Sylvia Benton, "The 9·
134 PART II . The Dark Ages
when aristocrats began to playa larger part in Greek political
and social life. 3 '

The main groupings of a people, at least in Homer, were

the warrior bands and tribes, The former was an institution
which often appears in modern primitive societies; its Greek form
was the hetairia, which was commonly the same as the phratry.4
Male citizens of Sparta and still more of Crete still ate to-
gether in historic times at the "men's house" (andron) in com-
mon meals, at which the young boys participated as attendants.
These youths were trained in bands and then were formally
initiated into manhood and adult responsibilities as husbands
and warriors, Survivals of such patterns can be found at Athens
and elsewhere; the importance of this early principle of military
organization is visible in Nestor's advice to Agamemnon to
separate the warriors by tribes and phratries "that phratry may
bear aid to phratry and tribe to tribe." 5 Only within the
phratry structure could a man be certain of mutual defense and
protection; an outcast, who was unable to get along with his
fellows or his father or had murdered a member of his own
social group, had to seek out some alien basileus as protector.
Over all stood the tribe (phyle) as the basic building

3 Family and clan: D. p, Costello, Homer in Chap,s,

"Notes on the Athenian rENH," ]HS, 4 M, Guarducci, "L'istituzione della
LVIII (1938), 171-79; W. Erdmann, fratria nella Grecia antica e nelle co-
Die Ehe 1m alten Griechenland (Mun- lonie greche d'Italia,:' Memorie della
chener Beitriige zur Papyrusforschung Accademia nazionale del Lincei,' 6.
und antiken Rechtsgeschichte XX, ser. VI. 1 (1937), VIII. 2 (1938);
1934), 112-32; Gustave Glotz, La H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et coureles
Solidarite de la famille dans Ie droit (Lille, 1939), with the critique by
criminel en GTl3Ce ( Paris, 1 go4 ) ; Louis Gernet, "Structures sociales et
C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian rites d'adolescence dans la Grece an-
Constitution to the End of the Fifth tique," REG, LVII (1944), 242-48,-
Century B,C, (Oxford, 1952), 61-67, and the skepticism of Nilsson, Gno-
who shows the problems connected mon, XXV (1953), 8; Nilsson, Cults
with the clans in Athenian history and and Politics, 150-70; Ch. Picard, "Pre-
notes they had no place in Attic law; pelaos et les couretes ephesiens," RA,
Thomson, Prehistoric Aegean, 332-34, 6. ser. XXXVII (1951), 151-60, on
who tries to prove that clans had an an example overlooked by Jeanmaire;
occupational character, Willetts, Ancient Crete, 18-23, on the
Qn the group character of early basis primarily of Strabo X. 4. 16-21,
Greek society, cf, Glotz, Greek City, C·4 80- 84·
36-37; Iliad II, 362 ff,; Finley, World 5 Iliad II. 362-63; cf. II. 668; Odyssey
of Odysseus, 56-63. Its results in ethics XV. 273.
will be considered in connection with/
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centur~es of Consolidation 135
block of the various Greek peoples. 6 In areas where men spoke
Dorian the population was commonly grouped in three tribes,
the Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyloi; in Attica there were four,
the Geleontes, Hopletes, Argadeis, and Aigikoreis, which re-
appear in Ionic-speaking areas with others, especially the Boreis
and Oinopes. This organization, which served purposes of
military organization and probably local government-at Athens
each phyle had a phylobasileus-evidently went far back into
the period of migration; but we cannot discern its origin or
fully account for the local variations in the numbers and names
of the tribes. If the tribes were institutions of the invaders, the
natives must somehow have been absorbed; in historic times no
one seems to have stood outside these units. During the early
centuries with which we are here concerned, all the events of
daily life took place within this tissue .which was at once social,
economic, religiOUS, and political.

The social code of the Dark ages cannot be established save

by a very limited interpolation backward from historic condi-
tions. Such matters as the relations of the sexes, the mutual atti-
tudes of parents and children, and behavior among one's peers
are among the most vital forces in human existence; but even in
historic times these areas were taken so much for granted that
they appear only sketchily in our sources. For individual ca-
price in basic social patterns there certainly was little room.
Marriage bonds continued in later centuries to have a strong air
of property transactions, and were appropriately a~ranged by
parents within the confines of clan and class requirements; chil-
dren were bound firmly in family and clan units; and even as
adults individuals had to move within traditional requirements
in sexual and other relations. 7
6 H. E. Seebohm, The Structure of cf. Eduard Meyer, "Dber die Anfiinge
Greek Tribal Society (London, 1895); des Staats und sein Verhiiltnis zu den
Emil Szanto, "Die griechischen Phy- Geschlechtsverbiinden und zum Volks-
len," Ausgeu;iihlte Abhandlungen thurn," SB Berlin Akademie 1907,
(Tiibingen, 1906),216-88; we do not 508-38.
know if the Aeolian area was tribally 7 Erdmann, Die Ehe im alten Grie-
organized. In terming the phylai chenland, 204-12, 342-63, sums up
building-blocks, I do not infer they ex- our later knowledge. The traditional,
isted before the state chronologically; superstitious side of Greek social life
 PART II . The Dark Ages
To what extent the rules which governed this life were
drawn from earlier eras we cannot hope to determine. Proto-
geometric pottery evolved out of Mycenaean and sub-Myce-
naean roots; the later dialects owed their origin to second-millen-
nium speech; so, too, probably many ways of life carried on,
particularly inasmuch as the economic mode of life remained
much ~he same. This logical argument, however, must not be
carried too far; the really great changes which took place in
the eleventh century forbid us simply to assume uninterrupted
continuity in basic social outlook. If Bachofen's theory were cor-
rect that the pre-Greek inhabitants of the Aegean preferred
mother-right and the Indo-European invaders introduced a
patriarchal structure, we should have to postulate a general re-
organization of social standards in the Dark ages. s This argu-
ment rests, as far as factual evidence is concerned, upon the
prevalence of female figurines in early Aegean contexts as against
their absence in the Iron age, and upon the presumed impor-
tance of mother goddesses. Essentially, however, the adherents
of the mother-right theory have compounded dubious anthro-
pological principles, which distinguish agricultural, female-
based villagers from herding, male-based nomads, together with
those racial prejudices which contrast virile Nordic peoples and
the placid, backward, Mediterranean Urvolk. As applied to
early Greece the theory of mother-right seems more than
doubtful.
The only certain fact is that men and women throughout
the Dark ages continued to contract unions from which sprang
successive generations, and that they imparted to their children
a basic set of social principles and beliefs on which life could_
is marked in the concern over inter- Contra: Erdmann, Die Ehe im alten
course, pregnancy, childbirth, men- Griechenland, 117-24; Lewis R. Far-
struation, etc., in Buck, Greek Dia- nell, "Sociological Hypotheses con-
lects, no. 115 [SEG ix. 1, no. 72 cerning the Position of Women in An-,
(from Cyrene)]; cf. Rose, Primitive cient Religion," Archiv fiir Religions-
Culture, 109-33. wissemchaft, VII (1904), 70-94;
S J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (Ba- Nilsson, GGR, I, 457-61; H. J. Rose,
sel, 1861; reprinted in Gesammelte "Prehistoric Greece and Mother-
Werke, ii-iii, 1948). Pro: Thomson, Right," Folk-Lore, XXXVII (1926),
Prehistoric Aegean, 149; Willetts, An- 213-44; J. H. Thiel, "De Feminarum
cient Crete, 87-88; and many others apud Dores Condicione," Mnemosyne,
who are often of Marxist outlook. n. s. LVII (1929),193-205.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 137
continue. This morality was strongly group-oriented rather than
resting consciously upon individual choice and responsibility;
when first one begins to see its outlines in the Homeric epic, its
terms of praise and expressions of virtue are overwhelmingly in
communal terms.
Probably the greatest contribution of the Dark ages to
Greek social conventions was their stabilization and consolida-
tion after the unrest at the end of the Mycenaean age. To
infer that such an era knew security may seem to go too far,
particularly in view of the rigidly restrained patterns of Proto-
geometric and Geometric pottery. Superstition and primitive
fears of the unknown were undoubtedly rife; famine and disease
can never have been far absent; and most men could expect to
be dead by the time they were thirty-odd, if indeed they sur-
vived the terrible gantlet of early chiIdhood. 9 Yet mankind exists
always under the shadow of death; the critical issue at any time
is whether the social and intellectual framework gives humanity
the strength to endure its dangers. The majestic development of
Greek pottery across the Dark ages is enough to prove that
society did regain its solidity after the upheavals at the end
of the Mycenaean epoch, and the relentlessly swiftening tempo
of Greek expansion from the early eighth century onward can
be understood only against a background of earlier social re-
organization.
The danger here was that early Greek society would over-
emphaSize static principles in an effort to maintain itself in a
difficult era. The task of sheer physical survival was critical;
the primitive level of life made alteration and experiment dan-
gerous. That change, however, could slowly take place is indi-
cated by the territorial and linguistic unification of Aegean cul-
ture and by the development of Geometric' pottery. When we
come to the'world of the epic itself, we shall find that communal
loyalty and the conventions of the group had not entirely stifled
the instincts of individual human beings to express themselves,
9J. L. Angel, "The Length of Life in Even about A.D. 1900 only one in
Ancient Greece," Journal of Gerontol- three Greek infants lived to its first
ogy, II (1947), 18-24, who argues on birthday (Myres, Geographical His-
very limited evidence that life expect- tory, 20).
ancy rose down into classic times.
 PART II . The Dark Ages
albeit within the limits imposed by these factors. The course
of historic Greek civilization was long marked by a happy blend
of individual experiment and social conservatism.

THE RISE OF GEOMETRIC POTIERY 1

THE POLITICAL and social institutions of the Dark ages can

be described only in the most general tenp.s, and even tentative
conclusions must be based on the evidence of epic and later sur-
vivals, which is of greatest value for the end of the era. To go
further in a search for precision on these topics must lead the
student either into speculation based on anthropological analo-
gies and the like or into hazardous combinations of legendary
materials; historically it is unsound to tread either path.
By only one means can we follow cultural threads across
the entire period-viz., the physical material. Within the range
of metal objects, which are a minor but useful source, bronze
continued to be most common; it turns up in fibulae, straight
pins, the earliest tripods of Olympia, and other forms which can
best be dated and appreciated against the ceramic background.
Iron was used primarily for weap2.ns, which were less common
in the graves of this era than in the age of invasions. The most
sure and continuous testimony, however, is the pottery, and for
even this type of mate~ial we have only one site, the
Kerameikos cemetery, where a continuous chain can be arranged
across both the tenth and ninth centuries. With its aid the oc-
casional partial stratification which appears elsewhere can he _
properly interpreted, as well as the many isolated finds; for
pottery styles moved generally in sympathy throughout the
Aegean.
1 No single survey of all manifesta- 58-68, 160-62; B. Schweitzer, "Unter-
tions of this subject has yet been pub- suchungen zur Chronologie und Ge.:.
lished. The Attic chain is the best schichte der geometrischen Stile in
treated; as by Peter Kahane, "Die Griechenland II," AM, XLIII (1918),
Entwicklungsphasen der attisch-geo- 1-152, and his thoughtful review-arti-
metrischen Keramik," A/A, XLIV cle, Gnomon, X (1934), 337-53. The
( 1940), 464-82; Kubler, Kerameikos, later stages of Geometric will be con-
V. 1,3 n. 17 (bibliography), 44-48, sidered in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 139
The existence and bearing of this fact upon the territorial
consolidation of the early Greek world have already been
noted. So too the increased stability and economic advance by
Boo B.C. can be sensed in the growth of the volume of surviving
pottery and in its more extensive decoration. Most important of
all at the present point is the illumination which the vases throw
on the internal consolidation and cultural progress of the Dark
ages.
The framework of pottery classification is now reasonably
well established for the period. The Proto geometric style, which
was dominant across the first half, has been divided in its Attic
manifestation into Early (K. 522, 526; Plate 6c and d), Ripe
(K. 1073, Plate 5b; K. 560, Plate 7a), and Late (K. 576,
Plate 7b). Of these three stages the Late Protogeometric seems
to have endured longest; Desborough, who assigns the b~­
ginning of Protogeometric pottery at Athens to 1025, places
the Early phase 1025-9Bo, Ripe Protogeometric 9Bo-960, and
Late Protogeometric 960-900.2 While these dates can scarcely be
lowered, in view of the great mass of Geometric pot"tery which
follows in several stages, they can and perhaps should be raised
by a quarter of a century or so, as I suggested in Chapter 3.
Where the other Protogeometric styles of Greece fit in is not yet
clear; but some styles certainly evolved independently of the
Attic experiments.
In its Simple, restrained forms and decoration the Proto-
geo~etric pottery of Athens reflects the stark simplicity of con-
temporary life; but no observer can call it "primitive" in the sense
in which Early and Middle Helladic vases were primitive. The
achievements of the Mycenaean age were not entirely lost, and
ceramic memories of that era are still fairly discernible in Early
Protogeometric work. Neither at Athens nor elsewhere in the
Aegean, moreover, were the potters blindly following paths of
rote memory. At least by the Late phase Attic experiments be-
came known abroad, and a great body of changes appeared at
home.
This intellectual activity is well illustrated in the differences
between K. 560 (Ripe) and K. 576 (Late) on Plate 7. The two
2 Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery, 294.
 PART II . The Dark Ages

amphoras are generally alike in their basic shape, which reflects

-though at remote distance-Mycenaean proportions; but the
makers were evidently seeking different effects in their decora-
tion. The wavy lines of the earlier vase, which aHowed room
for a freehand horse (the only motif from nature thus far found
in Protogeometric pottery at Athens), aTe a survival hom ~lyce­
naean days; below and above this zone are bands of different
thickness, and on the shoulders appear concentric semicircles.
The vase K. 576, on the other hand, is entirely covered by a
painted ground except in the handle zone, which is given over
to a carefully composed, fine pattern based on a central triglyph
and two metopes, each occupied by concentric circles. 3 The im-
pression which its potter created is clearly more unified.
Other Late Proto geometric vases exhibit motives which had
been almost suppressed in immediately preceding decades, as
well as motives which were virtually pre-Mycenaean. Thus, the
meander pattern (the source of our Greek key), which had been
little used in the Aegean since Middle Helladic times but was
popular in central Europe, began to gain that great vogue which
marked Geometric workshops; rectangles consisting of alternate
brown and white squares (the chessfields) occurred; and the
very shapes of the vases elongated subtly and stiffened. In
much of their product Late Proto geometric potters seem to a
modern student to have worked themselves into dead ends
while exploring the opportunities of the style.
The basic drive within these changes was toward a new out-
look, unified in shapes and decoration, which is called Geo-
metric; and the Geometric pottery of Greece was to have a
l'emarkably fruitful, long history down almost to 700 B.C. In its
Attic phase Geometric pottery was marked by a great reduction
in the use of concentric circles and several oth~r favored motifs
of Proto geometric days; in their place came the meander, Greek
key, triangles, dots, and so on (see K. 254, 2146 on Plate 8).
The placing of the decoration likewise changed. While most of
SMetopes: Chap. 3, n. 7 (p. 91); bibliography), and V. 1, 46; MilojCic,
Kahane, AlA, XLIV (1940), 473, re- AA 1948-49, 34 (but cf. Kraiker,
buts the concept of Oriental origin. Gnonwn, XXIV [1952], 455). Stiff-
Meander: Kraiker, Kerameikos, I, 176; ness: Kiibler, Kerameikos, I, 20g-10;
Kiibler, Kerameikos, IV, 18-19 (with IV, 8-g; V. 1, 186.
(II) tmllg Geometric ~ I;YI"' (ls ,rith nn(' of
the carliest picturcs ill Greek potlery . Photo-
graph frollL AJA , XU\ ' (19 -10 ), pl. ,\:,\:1 . 6.

( I, ) Pyxis (K. 2 ,)1) of aboll t Son B. C'. ( 1(1'1'(1-

ltIeik(J~ ;\Jlm ' ",").Plwto!f,rtll,I, COl/rl c.,y
DL'ut$chcs Archiiologi ('he Institllt ill AtheJls.

PLATE 9 ' Enrichl1lcllt of the Attic Geometric 51 !Ill'

 (a) Fragml'Ilts from AthclIS and LOll vre (b) W(lrriors 1rill! crest ed helmet , shieh/,
AS31 ( Ium' Bm.n els, .\ llIs(;e dll Cilll/lIC1nte- Irw s/)('tlrs mrd dllg!!.£'r, IItIC/ i'rn/I11/'/Y Wl'IIVCS
IlIIire) of II S('(I hlltt/e 11 Ill/ rL·lIrriclf.l·. P/lOto - ( Xlliiorw/ MIIS('1II11 720. C"PC·II/wg(' II ). PlItl-
graph cOllrlc~y De llt~dtes Archiiu/ogi/)che. logmpir l'Ullrtesy .\ ' lItiolllli MIIS(, IIIII , COIJell-
1'lStillll ill ,-\lh £' 1I8. hagen.

.nE 10 . The Dipylon Style

CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation

the vase was at first simply painted with a uniform tone, the
widest part was emphasized by a zone of motifs. Here at times
the decoration ran around the vase, but at other times it was
broken up by vertical accents between which a virtp.al picture
space was left! Generally this space was occupied by an abstract
motif, as the concentric circles of K. 2146. Geometric artists
viewed life in a generalized sense; and we may even infer that
specific events which demanded commemoration did not yet
take place in their world. On one Attic skyphos (Plate ga),
nonetheless, a real object, a ship, is depicted; from this humble
start were to come in the eighth century the magnificent pictures
of the Dipylon vases. In their shapes, too, the vases underwent
significant alterations. While some Protogeometric forms con-
tinued to be popular, others vanished or were transmuted
into new types, which commonly were more elongated and
articulated, as in the example K. 254 (Plate 8a).
Within Geometric pottery itself, which Covers two centuries
of Greek history, further extensive developments occurred which
are summed up in its modem divisions into Early (a little before
go0-850 ), Strong (850-800), Ripe (800-750 or a little earlier),
and Late (750-700).5 These dates rest in their upper reaches on
the framework of Protogeometric dating and in the lower phases
depend on the Greek colonization of Sicily and Italy; they are
only approximate guides, which are more useful in handling
great masses of pottery than in placing individual vases or small
grave groups found by themselves. The detailed stylistic criteria
which lie behind these divisions seem generally valid, but I shall
not here embark upon this complicated field. From the historical
point of view the important problems are, first, the significance
of the emergence of a new pottery style and, secondly, its
illumination of the intellectual outlook of the ninth century.
If one compares typical Attic products of the developed
Protogeometric and Geometric styles, the change which has
taken place assumes very considerable proportions. Yet we can
4 Matz, GGK, I, 56; Carl Weickert, XLIV (1940), 478-81, which have
"Geburt des Bildes," Neue Beitriige, been widely accepted (so Dunbabin,
27-35; R. S. Young, Hesperia, XVIII IHS, LXVIII [1948], 68); Kubler,
(1949),287. Kerameikos, V. 1, 70, 182-83, puts
5 These are the dates of Kahane, AlA, Early Geometric at 950 onward.

6
 PART II . The Dark Ages

follow the stages of transition clearly enough to be sure this was

a locally inspired development. The old argument that the
Dorians introduced Geometric pottery had to be given up once
pottery specialists disentangled its general chronological phases,
and in more recent years it has become clear that even the
meander motif, which was long assigned to central European
sources, was known in the second-millennium Aegean. Nor can
any significant contact be proven between the pottery of the
Aegean and of Asia Minor and Syria. 6 Though the latter areas
developed pottery styles with a limited number of abstract
motifs which were combined in much the same spirit as in Greek
ware, this "geometric" outlook was an independent product,
rising out of parallel political and social simplification and
based upon a similar inheritance from the second millennium.
If we are to explain the change from Proto geometric to Geo-
metric styles in Greece, we must search within Aegean evolu-
tion itself.
Basicafly , what had occurred was a consolidation of the
main lines of the Hellenic outlook, as that spirit had been ex-
pressed in pottery from the eleventh century onward. The rise
of the Geometric style, that is to say, does not mark the first ap-
pearance of that outlook; if one compares the change from sub-
Mycenaean to Protogeometric pottery with that which is now
under consideration, the earlier shift is much more crucial, par-
ticularly in its mainland phases. 7 In the Kerameikos Museum one
can perhaps best sense that the first change, to Protogeometric,

6 Danubian source: Emil SolIe, Po- clung to old ways. At Delphi, for'in-
catky heZlenske civilisace (Prague, stance, L. Lerat, "Tombes submyce-
1949), which I know only from Fasti niennes et geometriques a Delphes,"
Archaeologici, 1949, no. 674. Oriental BCH, LXI (1937), 44-52, could not
origin: Anna Roes, De Oorsprong der sharply distinguish sub-Mycenaean
geometrische Kunst' (Haarlem, 1931), from Proto geometric; the clear break
and Greek Geometric Art: Its Symbol- was to Geometric. H. E. Stier, "Pro-
ism and Its Origin (Haarlem, 1933), bleme der friih9,riechischen Geschich-
who seeks to establish Elamitic origins. te und Kultur,' Historia, I (1950),
The contemporary "geometric" art of 195-230, accordingly divides Greek
Anatolia and the Near East is consid- history into the eras 1200/1150-
ered below in Chap. 6. c. 900, c. 900-750/650, c. 750/650
7 Against this generalization, contrary -classic. The basic break, however,
examples may naturally be found, as seems to me to be that put in the text;
in Crete (Chap. 3, n. 9 [po 98]) see also Chap. 3, n. 5 (p. 102).
and in other areas where men dully
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 143
was a real jump, while the second, to Geometric, was more evo-
lutionary; but this significant point can be made clear by com-
paring the sub-Mycenaean vase K. 436 (Plate 5), the Ripe
Protogeometric K. 560 (Plate 7a), and the Strong Geometric
K. 2146 (Plate 8b). The first stands quite apart from the two
later amphoras. Though these are themselves quite different in
artistic spirit, they share a common tautness and sharpness of
thought, a dynamic spirit which is harnessed within a balanced
composition, and an essential harmony-the fundamental hall-
marks of Greek art.
Geometric ware, nonetheless, manifests the outlook far more
clearly. While Protogeometric potters still breathed an inherit-
ance directly from the Mycenaean world, this influence had
been eliminated or integrated by 800 B.C. through a long process
of recombination and reinterpretation. Protogeometric pot-
tery, again, displayed synthesizing qualities, which we might
call Greek, in a somewhat mufHed manner; but Geometric pot-
ters held a firm mastery over clearly understood principles of
logical analysis. In their Early Geometric phase they concen-
trated upon the vase as a unit and severely limited their decora-
tion, but a Strong Geometric vase such as K. 2146 exhibits an
over-all unity composed of many different elements, each in it-
self simple but assembled, one beside and below the other, to
form a coherent whole. Protogeometric vases were constructed
on an additive principle, while Geometric potters both co-ordi-
nate<;l and subordinated their motifs.s
The reasons which now led potters to draw meanders,
chessboards, lozenges, and the like we cannot hope to under-
stand; but, to speak in general terms, the spirit which animated
the artists of the ninth century was not a naIve pleasure in
manipulating straight lines and, more rarely, circles. On the one
hand, as was already observed, we may feel that their environ-
ment was not yet a sharply conceived pattern of specific events,
and so genuine pictures did not appear; yet, on the other, as
these men emphasized the structure of their vases by applying
decoration, they were expressing a view, no doubt uncon-
sciously, of the form and structure of the world about them. The
S Matz, GGK, I, 55.
144 PART II . The Dark Ages
commonly accepted term "Geometric" is thus somewhat mis-
leading in its suggestions of purely mathematical calculation;
these vases, as a German critic has justly said, were "bildlos aber
nicht inhaltlos." 9 Whenever artists, indeed, turned to actual
representations or molded three-dimensional figures, which
were rare down to 800 B.C., they tended to reflect reality (see
Plate 6a, gb); a schematic, abstract treatment of men and
animals, by intent, rose only in the late eighth century.
To speak of this underlying view of the world is to em-
bark upon matters of subjective judgment. At the least, however,
one may conclude that Geometric potters sensed a logical order;
their principles of composition stand very close to those which
appear in the Homeric epics and the hexameter line. Their
world, again, was a still simple, traditional age which was only
slowly beginning to appreciate the complexity of life. And per-
haps an observer of the vases will not go too far in deducing that
the outlook of their makers and userS was basically stable and
secure. The storms of the past had died away, and the great up-
heaval which was to mark the following century had not yet
begun to disturb men's minds.
Throughout the work of the later ninth century a calm,
severe serenity displays itself. In the vases this spirit may per-
haps at times bore or repel one in its internal self-satisfaction,
but the best of the Geometric pins have rightly been considered
among the most beautiful ever made in the Greek world. The
ninth century was in its artistic work "the spiritually freest and
most self-sufficient between past and future," 1 and the loving
skill spent by its artists upon their prodw:;:ts is a testimonial to
their sense that what they were doing was important and was
appreciated.
\IWilhelm Kraiker, "Ornament und (1918 ),78-79,138.
Bild in der friihgriechischen Malerei," 1 Kiibler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 182. Pins:
Neue Beitriige, 36-47 (at p. 40); and Jacobsthal, Greek Pins, 5; cf. the tri-
Gnomon, XXIV ( 1952), 451. Attempts pod leg, Olympia B 1250, which Wil-
to fathom this spiritual change have lemsen, Dreifusskessel, 169, places in
been made by Kiibler, Kerameikos, V. the Strong Geometric style.
I, 43-44; Schweitzer, AM, XLIll
CHAPTER 4 . Two Centuries of Consolidation 145

THE AEGEAN IN 800 B.C.

GEOMETRIC POTTERY has not yet received the thorough, de-

tailed study which it deserves, partly because the task is a
mammoth one and partly because some of its local manifesta-
tions, as at Argos, are only now coming to light. From even a
cursory inspection of its many aspects, however, the historian
can deduce several fundamental conclusions about the progress
of the Aegean world down to 800 B.C.
The general intellectual outlook which had appeared in the
eleventh century was now consolidated to a significant degree.
Much which was in embryo in 1000 had become reasonably well
developed by 800. In this process the Minoan-Mycenaean in-
heritance had been transmuted or finally rejected; the Aegean
world which had existed before 1000 differed from that which
rises more clearly in our vision after 800. Those modern scholars
who urge that we must keep in mind the fundamental con-
tinuity of Aegean development from earliest times-granted oc-
casional irruptions of peoples and ideas from outside-are cor-
rect; but all too many observers have been misled by this fact into
minimizing the degree of change which took place in the early
first millennium.
The focus of novelty in this world now lay in the south-
eastern districts of the Greek mainland, and by 800 virtually
the entire Aegean, always excepting its northern shores, had
accepted th~ Geometric style of pottery. While Protogeometric
vases usually turn up, especially outside Greece proper, together
with as many or more examples of local stamp, these "non-
Greek" patterns had mostly vanished by the later ninth century.
In their place came local variations within the common style-
tentative, as it were, in Protogeometric products but truly dis-
tinct and sharply defined as the Geometric spirit developed.
Attica, though important, was not the only teacher of this age.
One can take a vase of about 800 B.C. and, without any knowl-
edge of its place of origin, venture to assign it to a specific area;
imitation and borrowing of motifs now become ascertainable.
The potters of the Aegean islands thus stood apart from those
 PART II . The Dark Ages
of the mainland, and in Greece itself Argive, Corinthian, Attic,
Boeotian, and other Geometric sequences have each their own
hallmarks. These local variations were to become ever sharper in
the next century and a half.
The same conclusions can be drawn from the other physical
evidence of the Dark ages, from linguistic distribution, and from
the survivals of early social, political, and religiOUS patterns into
later ages. By 800 B.C. the Aegean was an area of common tongue
and of common culture. On these pillars rested that solid basis
for life and thought which was soon to be manifested in the
remarkably unlimited ken. of the Iliad. Everywhere within the
common pattern, however, one finds local diversity; Greek his-
tory and culture were enduringly fertilized, and plagued, by
the interplay of these conjoined yet opposed factors.
Further we cannot go, for the Dark ages deserve their name.
Many aspects of civilization were not yet sufficiently crystal-
lized to find expression, nor could the simple economic and so-
cial foundations of this world support a lofty structure. The epic
poems, the consolidation of the Greek pantheon, the rise of firm
political units, the self-awareness which could permit painted
and sculptured representations of men-all these had to await
the progress of following decades. What we have seen in this
chapter, we have seen only dimly, and yet the results, however
general, are worth the search. These are the centuries in which
the inhabitants of the Aegean world settled firmly into their
minds and into their institutions th~ foundations of the Hellenic
outlook, independent of outside forces.
To interpret, indeed,. the era from 1000 to 800 as a period
mainly of consolidation may be a necessary but unfortunate
defect born of our lack of detailed information; if we could
see more deeply, we probably would find many side issues and
wrong turnings which came to an end within the period. The
historian can only point out those lines which were major
enough to find reflection in our limited evidence, and must hope
that future excavations will enrich our understanding. Through-
out: the Dark ages, it is clear, the Greek world had been develop-
ing, slowly but consistently. The pace could now be acceler-
ated, for the inhabitants of the Aegean stood on firm ground.
 [147

CHAPTER 5

THE EARLY EIGHTH CENTURY

THE LANDSCAPE of Greek history broadens widely, and

rather abruptly, in the eighth century B.C., the age of Homer's
"rosy-fingered Dawn." The first slanting rays of the new day
cannot yet dispel all the dark shadows which lie across the Ae-
gean world; but our evidence grows considerably in variety
and shows more unmistakably some of the lines of change. For
this period, as for earlier centuries, pottery remains the. most se-
cure source; the ceramic material of the age is more abundant,
more diversified, and more indicative of the hopes and fears of
its makers, who begin to show scenes of human life and death.
Figurines and simple chapels presage the emergence of sculp-
ture and architecture in Greece; objects in gold, ivory, and
bronze grow more numerous. Since writing was practiced in
the Aegean before the end of the century, we may hope that the
deta!ls of tradition will now be occasionally useful. Though it is
not easy to apply the evidence of the Iliad to any specific era,
this marvelous product of the epic tradition had certainly taken
·definitive shape by 750.
The Dipylon Geometric pottery of Athens and the Iliad are
amazing manifestations of the inherent potentialities of Greek
civilization; but both were among the last products of a phase
which was ending. Greek civilization was swirling toward its
great revolution, in which the developed qualities of the Hel-
lenic outlook were suddenly t~ break forth. The revolution was
well under way before 700 B.C., and premonitory signs go back
virtually across the century. The era, however, is Janus-faced.
While many tokens point forward, the main achie;vements stand
 PART II . The Dark Ages

as a culmination of the simple patterns of the Dark ages. The

dominant pottery of the century was Geometric; political or-
ganization revolved about the basileis; trade was just beginning
to expand; the gods who protected the Greek countryside were
only now putting on their sharply anthropomorphic dress.
The modern student, who knows what was to come next, is
likely to place first the factors of change which are visible in the
eighth century. Not all men of the period would have accepted
this emphasis. Many potters clung to the past the more de-
terminedly as they were confronted with radically new ideas;
the poet of the Iliad deliberately archaized. Although it is not
possible to sunder old and new in this era, I shall consider in
the present chapter primarily the first decades of the eighth cen-
tury and shall interpret them as an apogee of the first stage of
Greek civilization.
On this principle of division I must postpone the evolution
of sculpture, architecture, society, and politics; for the develop-
ments in these areas make sense only if they are connected to
the age of revolution itself. The growing contacts between Ae-
gean and Orient are also a phase which should be linked pri-
marily to the remarkable broadening of Hellenic culture after
750. We shall not be able entirely to pass over these connections
to the East as we consider Ripe Geometric pottery, the epic and
the myth, and the religious evolution of early Greece; the im-
portant point, however, is that these magnificent achievements,
unlike those of later decades, were only incidentally influenced
by Oriental models. The antecedents of Dipylon vases and of
the Iliad lie in the Aegean past. .

DIPYLON POTTERY

THE POTTERY of the first half of the eighth century is com-

monly called Ripe Geometric. The severe yet harmoniou·s vases
of th:e previous fifty years, the Strong Geometric style of the late
ninth century, display as firm a mastery of the principles under-
lying Geometric pottery; but artists now were ready to refine and
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 149
elaborate their inheritance. The vases which resulted had dif-
ferent shapes, far more complex decoration, and a larger sense
of style.
Beyond the aesthetic and technical aspects of this expan-
sion we must consider the change in pottery style on broader'
lines. In earlier centuries men had had enough to do in rebuild-
ing a fundamental sense of order after chaos. They had had to
work on very simple foundations and had not dared to give
rein to impulses. The potters, in particular, had virtually
eschewed freehand drawing, elaborate motifs, and the curving
lines of nature, while yet expressing a belief that there was
order in the universe. In their vases were embodied the basic
aesthetic and logical characteristics of Greek civilization, at first
hesitantly in Protogeometric work, and then more confidently
in the initial stages of the Geometric style. By 800 social and
cultural security had been achieved, at least on a simple plane;
it was time to take bigger steps, to venture on experiments.
Ripe Geometric potters continued to employ the old syntax
of ornaments and shapes and made use of the well-defined
though limited range of motifs which they had inherited. In
these respects the vases of the early eighth century represent
a culmination of earlier lines of progress. To the ancestral lore,
however, new materials were added. Painters left less and less of
a vase in a plain dark color; instead they divided the surface
into many bands or covered it by aU-over patterns into which
freepand drawing began to creep. Wavy lines, feather-like pat-
terns, rosettes of indefinitely floral nature, birds either singly
. or in stylized rows, animals in solemn frieze bands (see Plates
11-12 )-alI these turned up in the more developed fabrics as
preliminary signs that the potters were broadening their gaze. 1

1Motifs: Kahane, A/A, XLIV (1940), gart, 1931), 153-65, who pOints out
470-77; Kiibler, Kerameikos, V. 1, that rows of grazing animals as such
passim; Schweitzer, AM, XLIII appear entirely Greek in origin. The
(1918),81-93. Oriental animal rows: earliest row on a Greek vase, accord-
Dieter Ohly, Griechische Goldbleche ing to Ohly, is Munich 1250. Other
des 8. /ahrhunderts v. ehr. (Berlin, external influences: Kiibler, Keramei-
1953), 133-35; Frederik Poulsen, Der kos, V. 1, 167-70, 174 n. 160, 177 n.
Orient und die friihgriechische Kunst 171. Plants: Kunze, Kretische Bronze-
(Leipzig-Berlin, 1912), 16-17; Emil reliefs, 133, 144-45.
Kunze, Kretische Bronzereliefs (Stutt-
 PART II . The Dark Ages
The rows of animals and birds, in particular, suggest awareness
of Oriental animal friezes, transmitted perhaps via Syrian silver
bowls and textiles, but the specific forms of these rows on
local vases and metal products are nonetheless Greek. Though
the spread of this type of decoration in the Aegean has not yet
been precisely detelmined, it seems to appear first in the Cy- .
clades, which were among the leading exporters of pottery
throughout the century.2
As the material at the command of the potters grew and the
volume of their production increased, the local variations within
a common style became more evident. Plate 12 illustrates four
examples, which are Ripe or Late Geometric work of common
spirit but of different schools. These local manifestations I shall
not consider at length lest our understanding of the main forces
be confused. By all odds the greatest type was the Attic, and
here we can penetrate most deeply into the new currents.
The potters of Athens had earlier stood in the van of Proto-
geometric and Geometric development. Shortly after 800 their
eminence became greater than at any time before the evolution
of the black-figured style in the sixth century. The ancestral
strength of Attic workshops gave the eighth-century craftsmen
a sure foundation; but to explain their force and daring one
must also keep in mind the evidences of prosperity and foreign
contacts visible in Attic tombs of the period. The artists them-
selves were evidently in touch with all that was happening
throughout the Aegean; in this relatively cosmopolitan center
they felt confident enough both of their abilities and of social
support to launch out on a truly great step, the drawing of human
and animal figures not merely as decorative elements but as real
pictures.3 -

2N. M. Kontoleon, Arch. eph. 1945- cepts his principles. In any event Cy-
47, 1-21, presents powerful reasons cladic pottery was much indebted to
for broadening the range of Cycladic Attic impulses, which extended across
exports in the eighth century, as the Aegean to Miletus (Istanbuler
against Rodney S. Young, Late Geo- Mitteilungen, yII [1957], 122-23).
metric Graves and a Seventh Century 3 Pictures: \Valter Hahland, "Zu den
Well in the Agora (Hesperia, Suppl. Anfangen der attisehen Malerei," Co-
II: Athens, 1939),222, on Attic Geo- rolla Curtius (Stuttgart, 1937), 121-
metric exports. He may have over- 31; Kraiker, Neue Beitriige, 36-47,
emphasized the Cycladic sources, and Gnomon, XXIV (1952), 451-53;
though Brock, Fortetsa, 189-91, ac- Kiibler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 135-36,
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century
This development was a relatively sudden one. Virtual pic-
ture spaces had been created on Strong Geometric vases, but
commonly potters had been inclined only to put abstract motifs
within their windows. Now, on the smaller Attic vases, appear
simple scenes, such as two horses facing a tripod of victory, a
man holding the reins of two horses, lions devouring domestic
animals, and the like. Such pictures are as starkly bare, as con-
centrated in their action, and as generalized in meaning as the
similes of the Iliad. 4 To adorn the noble grave mounds by the
Dipylon gate of later Athens, potters also fashioned great
amphoras and craters, which stand five to six feet high. These
works not only manifest the technical skill and bravado of their
makers but also, in their rich combination of ornament and
more extensive pictures, are the first easily recognizable testi-
mony to the aesthetic genius of Greek civilization.
The earliest of the famous Dipylon vases, the amphora of
Athens (CC 200), is also the greatest; in its harmonious majesty
it quietly dominates all other eighth-century vases. This
must be placed well before 750. Contemporary with it are several
of the fragments in the Louvre and elsewhere; shortly thereafter
come the Hirschfeld crater (CC 214) of Athens and the crater
of the Metropolitan Museum.
In shape and in over-all composition of the decoration, the

175-80 (bibliography, 175 n. 163), Kunze, "Bruchstiicke attischer Grab-

who overemphasizes metalwork ori- kratere," Neue Beitriige, 48-58;
gins; Matz, GGK, I, 58-67; Schweitzer, Gerda Nottbohm, "Der Meister der
AM, XLIII ( 1918), 127-52, who over- grossen Dipylon-Amphora in Athen,"
stresses Eastern origins; Weickert, IdI, LVIII (1943), 1-31, who goes so
Neue Beitriige, 27-35. The earliest far as to acclaim the potter of CC 200
Attic Geometric pictures are the ship as the first great comprehensible per-
(Plate 9a), a land and sea battle sonality in European art, more in-
(Kraiker, Neue Beitriige, pI. 2); a fluential ilian any oilier except Giot-
horse between two warriors ( Kera- to; Frederik Poulsen, Die Dipylongrii-
meikos, V. 1, pI. III and 141), a ber und die Dipylonvasen (Leipzig,
chariot race (Atllens. NM 806; AlA, 1905). The Louvre fragments are now
XLIV [1940], pI. 25). well reproduced by Franc;ois Villard,
Dip,ylon vases: Franc;ois Cha- eVA France XVIII (= Louvre XI,
moux, • L'ecole de la grande amphore 1954); see his essay, "Une amphore
du Dipylon: etude sur la ceramique geometrique au musee du Louvre,"
geometrique it l'epoque de l"Iliade,''' Monuments Piot, XLIX ( 1957),17-40.
RA, 6. ser. XXIII (1945), 55-97; 4 Roland Hampe, Die Gleichnisse Ho-

Kiibler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 172-73, mers und die Bildkunst seiner Zeit

who tries to lower ilieir date; Emil (Tiibingen, 1952), esp. 23-z6.
 PART II . The Dark Ages

Dipylon amphora (see Plate 11) stands directly in the main

stream of Greek artistic principles of Geometric days; from such
Protogeometric masterpieces as K. 1073 (Plate 5b) a clear, un-
broken line leads directly to this work. Yet how much more de-
veloped and more supple was its artist's imagination! The im-
pression which one first derives from the amphora is one of sim-
ple, dignified formality; on closer study the surface becomes a
mass of many interrelated bands, which are separated by the
three lines customary at this time. Though the patterns are sim-
ple and are repeated, the subtle variations in width of the bands
and the balancing of motifs produce a varied rhythm. The potter
has avoided monotony as successfully as did Homer in manipu-
lating the flow of his simple hexameters.
The new spirit which distinguishes Dipylon work appears
in the rows of deer and goats on. the neck and especially in the
picture to which these draw one's eyes. Inserted in a field on
the shoulder is a scene of death. The corpse lies on its funeral
couch (prothesis) with coverlet displayed above; wife and
child stand at the head, friends and relatives raise their
hands in grief while musicians accompany their wails, and the
warriors are at the far left, poised to take away the bier
( ekphora ). The artistic quality of the event is well suggested by
a great modern student of Attic art:
Viewed as a rendering of life it is a solemn scene re-
duced to its barest terms, terms telling from their very bare-
ness. Here is an artist who has not attempted more than he
could exactly perform; an art not childish, but planned and
austere. 5
Within the next generation the interest of Attic painters in
figured scenes grew tremendously. On the New York crater the
prothesis scene has expanded greatly in breadth and claims al-
most all the viewer's attention; below it a procession of chariots
5 J. D. Beazley, The Development of esis," BSA, L (1955), 51-66; Eugen
Attic Black-figure (Berkeley, 1951), Reiner, Die rituellen Totenklage der
3; cf. ~ampe, Die Gleichnisse Ho- Griechen (Stuttgart, 1938); Willy
mers, 24-26; Kahane, AlA, XLIV Zschietzschmann, "Die Darstellungen
( 1940), 476. Funeral ceremonies: der Prothesis in der griechischen
John Boardman, "Painted Funerary Kunst," AM, LIII (1928),17-47.
Plaques and Some Remarks on Proth-
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 153

and warriors, armed with great shields and spears, marches in

solemn memory of the funeral cortege and the accompanying
games. On other vases, known only through fragments, scenes
of battle by land and sea hark back to events of life.
In this work the potters were still so reluctant to distin-
guish their pictures sharply from the decorative elements that
they filled the vacant spaces within their scenes with simple
ornaments. s The drawing, too, is schematic to modern eyes.
Chariots, horses, even human bodies are visualized not as a
whole but as a combination of parts. The torso is a triangle
descending to a narrow waist, below which are pronounced,
triangular hips; the legs and arms are elongated; the painters
provided for the heads a very scanty equipment of rudimen-
tary noses, eyes, and other features (see Plate 10). Yet, however
primitive the detailing drawing may be in comparison to Orien-
tal work, there is no evidence of any Oriental prototypes or in-
fluences; the Dipylon pictures are a vehicle of native meditation.
The unifying factor in these scenes-for they are unified- .
is the underlying sense of action. On Dipylon vases, as in the
Iliad, man is because he acts, and the deed is shown, not the
human being as such. 7 Within the framework of Geometric
decoration, born purely of the mind, occur now scenes born
ultimately of nature, the first conscious artistic reflections of life
in Greek civilization. The battle scenes are as violent in their
action as are Homeric duels, and dying men are seized in the
very moment of their death; note, for instance, the figure in
the lower right corner of the fragment Louvre A 531 (Plate lOa).
The scenes of prothesis, though outwardly static, convey with
dramatic impact the emotions of the living at the point when the
funeral procession of the dead must begin toward the eternal
grave. If one reflects upon the few simple pictures of ninth-
6Kahane, AJA, XLIV (1940), 472. Kraiker, Neue Beitriige, 42-44; :emile
Kraiker, Neue Beitriige, 41, however, Cahen, "Sur la representation de la
properly notes that the figures are not figure humaine dans la ceramique di-
woven into the ornament as in Celtic pylienne et dans l'art egeen," REG,
and other styles but stand beside the XXXVIII (1925), 1-15; Bruno Snell,
ornament. The Discovery of the Mind: The
1 Chamoux, RA, XXIII (1945),80-82, Greek Origins of European Thought
87..,.g4, who gives detailed parallels of (Oxford, 1953),6-20; Webster, From
Homeric and Dipylon battle scenes; Mycenae to Homer, 202-07.
 154 PART II . The Dark Ages

century Attic vases, such as the skyphos with ship (Plate ga),
the skill and clarity with which potters now grouped simple
elements into complicated scenes is as impressive in its sud-
den appearance as is the contemporary consolidation of the
Iliad.
The extent to which these scenes are efforts at literal repre-
sentations of actual events has been much debated. One must,
I think, conclude that on the Dipylon vases, as in the Iliad,
events are "indefinite as to time and space, and general in
their narrative content." 8 Nor did the painters look at their
world in specifically mythical terms. The epic and mythical
traditions, which had already long been in existence, were
seized and used to give a heroic cast to the pictures, but rep-
resentations of definite mythological scenes are not certain in
any art medium until about the close of the eighth century. The
present development, however, gave to artists the ability to
depict specific events when they came to desire to do so. That
desire was to be one of the great gifts of the age of revolution to
Greek civilization; the Dipylon pictures could scarcely be other
than typical portrayals of life and death.
To consider these vases primarily from the artists' point of
view is not quite enough to explain the bold, virtually deliberate
experiment in figured scenes. The potters themselves must have
been technically ready for this step; and this readiness may be
proved from the developments in Strong Geometric ware. Yet we
must also look outside the realm of artistic impulses. The society
of the age evidently was prepared to condone, even to foster
novelty. If potters were to move so swiftly beyond old traditions,
they needed great spiritual support; the artists who spent so
long on the minute decoration of individual masterpieces re-
quired considerable material aid. The upper classes of the early
eighth century were only now moving toward a truly aristocratic
outlook-a great development for the future, which will be
treated in Chapter g-but both the Dipylon vases and the
Iliad ,make manifest .their pride in valor by land and sea
8 George M. A. Hanfmann, "Narra- From Mycenae to Homer, 168-77. On
tion in Greek Art," AJA, LXI (1957), representations of myth in art, see
71-78 (bibliography, p. 72 n. 5); Chap. 8, n. 1 (p. 261).
.. ___ Kraiker,.. Neue Beitriige, 45; Webster,

• • ...11
CHAPTER 5 • The Early Eighth Century 155

and that family dignity which must be duly expressed upon a

noble's death.' The contemporary tombs of the well-to-do are
often richly equipped with vases, objects of bronze, and even at
times with gold, ivory, and faience; the pomp of funeral is well
described in the burial of Patroclus and is illustrated with care
by these very vases.
That delight in horses, too, which had already marked
Strong Geometric pottery became far more evident in the early
eighth century over much of Greece, as in the clay figures of
horses atop Attic pyxides, the increasing abundance of horses
on Argive pottery, and the bronze figurines of horses set on
tripod-caldrons at Olympia. The intensely competitive, or
agonal, spirit which was later to be a pronounced aspect of the
Greek aristocratic outlook is already visible in these representa-
tions, in the dedications of actual tripods of bronze at Olympia
and elsewhere, and in the epic poetry. While the chronological
tradition which sets the first Olympic games at 776 has no value
in itself, it has placed the event in the right period.'
Having gone so far through outside encouragement and in-
ternal artistic spirit, the Attic potters had shot their bolt; or
rather, perhaps, their aristocratic patrons became less inclined
to commission great funeral vases in the closing decades of
the eighth century. But it is also true that the artists of Athens
had developed their form of Geometric style to a point beyond
which it was difficult to go but which was equally difficult to
abandon. By yielding to an urge for representation they had in-
troduced a force which was to produce mighty results when
linked to conscious efforts to depict the specific events of myth.
e Kraiker, Neue Beitrage, 44, 47; end West (Briinn, 1935), 63-96.
Young, Late Geometric Graves, 56-57, Games: Julius Jiithner, "Herkunft and
229-30, whose remarks extend too Grundlagen der grieehischen Na-
widely to Geometric work as a whole. tionalspiele," Die Antike, XV ( 1939),
The important problem of the emer- 231-64; above, Chap. 2, n. 4 ( p• 67).
gence of the Greek aristocratic out- Benton, BSA, XXXV ( 1934-35), 114-
look is considered below in Chap. 9. i5, connects the decline in use of
1 Horse and tripod: BSA, XXXV tripods with Phlegon's statement,
(1934-35), pl. 25. 2, Empedocles Frag,menta historicorum Craecortim,
collection. Four-horse chariots were ed. C. Muller, III (Paris, 1849), 602-
new at this time: Iliad XI. 69g If., 04, that crowns were first given at
VIII. 185; Odyssey XIII. 81; Athens Olympia in 748 but Willemsen's
NM 81o; Agora P 4990 ( three-horse). arrangement, Dreifusskessel, will not
Agonal spirit: Victor Ehrenberg, Ost altogether support this argument.
 PART II . The Dark Ages
Immediately, however, this new element clashed severely
with the abstract, decorative tradition of the pure Geometric
style. At the mid-century mark Attic pottery began to display
signs of stress. It had taken up the new, liberalizing forces of
Oriental and local origin perhaps more freely than had any other
Aegean fabric; but now there appeared increasing rigidity, stiff-
ness, even archaism in decoration. Vase forms, often tending
to elongation, became harsh; the human figures stretched out
likewise and lost their sense of import,2 That this was a general
aesthetic problem in Athens by 750 is attested by the same loss
of volume and life, the same tendency to reproduce stiff formu-
las, in the gold bands made by Attic smiths at this time.
Artists outside Athens had not developed their Geometric
inheritance so far, and in this very backwardness were perhaps
more easily able to modify their styles. By 750 potters in the Cy-
clades, on Crete, and especially at Corinth were also experi-
menting with freer forms of decoration, still largely Geometric
in spirit but also at times including figured scenes. 3 Soon, in the
later decades of the century, came from these roots the great
revolution of Orientalizing pottery, which was to overpass the
bonds of the Geometric inheritance. Though Attica lingered
behind in this development, the artists who had created the
Dipylon vases had shown what heights the old tradition could
reach ere it came to an end.

EPIC AND MYTH

ANOTHER great source for the early eighth century is the
circle of epic, which was now being cast in its lasting mold; with
2 Kubler, Kerameikos, V. I, 135-36, Samian: prothesis scene (Technau,
163-67, 178; Matz, GGK, I, 48; Ohly, AM, LIV [1929], pI. II). Argive:
Griechische Goldbleche, 96-118, who horses (BCH, LXXVII [1953], fig.
dates some of the gold work too early. 50). Cretan: prothesis scene (Brock,
3 Corinthian scenes: Delphi inv. Fortetsa, 36 n. 339); siren from Prai-
6401-2., a large crater with human 50S (Levi, AJA, XLIX [1945], 280-
beings in chariots (P. Amandry, BCR, 93; cf. Annuario, X-XII [1927-29],
LXII [1938], 317-20); the famous 597-60 4).
ship vase from Thebes is rather late.
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 157
this I shall place for my purposes its country cousin, myth.
When the historian approaches the Iliad, the first great monu-
ment of Greek literature, he may at first sigh in relief. Aegean
civilization was growing vocal; thenceforth an increasing body
of literature will liberate us from entire reliance on the mute
testimony of physical objects. Very soon, however, the historical
student must realize that the epic is surrounded by a range of
violent controversies almost without equal. The epic war which
eddied to and fro on the plains of Scamander lasted only ten
years; the modern battles of Homeric scholarship were not new
in the days of F. A. Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795)
and rage on, far from decision. Whatever any expert says today
about epic or myth has been said before, and has been scornfully
rejected by scholars who think otherwise.4
My concern with these materials is primarily to see if we can
place them within a specific environment and so use them as
historical sources. In the Homeric field the historian must pay
proper attention to the findings of epic specialists, but his own
discussion cannot hope to review their many answers in detail.
Each man will read the epic for himself and, having framed his
views, needs to suggest principally the main grounds for his
solutions. The main articles of my own belief are that the
Homeric epic and myth cannot safely be used to restore a specific
picture of events for any epoch, Mycenaean or otherwise; that
they, nevertheless, do throw general light on the main charac-
teristics of the Greek outlook, and for this end are among our
.most precious sources; that the evidence of the epic, in particu-
lar, bears best on the early eighth century. Like Ripe Geometric
pottery, the Iliad represents a culmination of native evolution
through the Dark ages.
Many grounds will force the historian to be careful in his
assessment of epic and myth. This material is, in the first place,
'4 Introductions to earlier Homeric mer," in Maurice Platnauer, Fifty
scholarship may be found in Paul Years of Classical Scholarship (Oxford,
Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik 1954); Dorothea Gray, in Myres, Ho-
(3d ed.; Leipzig, 1923); A. Delatte mer and His Critics, 252-93; Albin
and A. Severyns, L'Antiquite clas- Lesky, Die Homerforschung in der
sique, II (1933), 379-412; Nilsson, Gegemcart (Vienna, 1952); Wolfgang
Homer and Mycenae, 1-51. On recent Schadewaldt, Von Homers Welt und
developments, see E. R. Dodds, "Ho- Werk (2d ed.; Stuttgart, 1951).
 PART II . The Dark Ages

not precisely datable. Neither solid external tradition nor clear

internal references suggest a date for the Iliad; its author,
Homer, is as impersonal as the creator of a Dipylon vase. For
the vases, at least, we can usually determine a place of manu-
facture, and ceramic materials can be arranged in chronological
sequence. The Iliad stands alone, save for its mighty sibling,
the Odyssey; scholars have placed it by persuasive arguments
anywhere from the twelfth to the sixth century B.C. Both
bounds are generally, and properly, judged to be much too ex-
treme; but, historically speaking, we can feel reasonably sure
only that the Iliad had assumed its enduring form before 700 B.C.
While some small bits were added thereafter, the poem was
written down soon enough to prevent serious distortions; the epic
tradition, moreover, ceased to be really productive by the mid-
dle of the seventh (!.entury .5
The situation with respect to myth is even worse. One may
rightly feel, I think, that the main core of Greek mythology
had also been well set by the eighth century.6 References to some
of its tales in the Iliad take them as well known, and Late
Geometric vases and metal work began to draw from the myth-
ological repertoire by the end of the century. Yet no canoni-
cal form of expression existed to safeguard the myth from later
adaptation. Myth-making was a simpler, more widely spread art
than the complex epic technique, which was entrusted largely to
specialized bards; and so the creation of myths continued far
5
.
Recent arguments, which do not recently Reinhold Merkelbach, "Die
seem sound, have been made that the pisistratische Redaktion der homeri-
epic was written from the outset; see schen Gedichte," RM, XCV (1952),
Sir Maurice Bowra, Homer and His 23-47; and the survey by Whitman,
Forerunners (Edinburgh, 1955); Al- Homer and the Heroic Tradition, "65:-
bin Lesky, "Mlindlichkeit und 83·
Schriftlichkeit im homerischen Epos," 8See generally Radermacher, Mythos
Festschrift fur Dietrich Kralik (Hom, und Sage bei den Griechen; CaI;1
1954), 1-9; Wade-Gery, The Poet of Robert, Die griechische Heldensage,
the Iliad; Webster, From Mycenae to 3 vols. (Berlin, 1920-26); more
Homer, 272-73. Miss Lorimer's state- briefly, Nilsson, GGR, I, 17-35. Hans
ment, Homer and the Monuments, Herter, "Theseus der Athener," RM,
526, seems sensible. LXXXVIII (1939), 244-86, 289-326,
'The effort, on the other hand, to gives a well-documented study of
delay written exemplars to the era of changes in the myth of Theseus; see
Pisistratus is equally extreme; see most also Chap. 4, n. 1 (p. 110).
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 159
longer. Virtually all extensive bodies of Greek myth undenvent
rationalization and systematization throughout the seventh and
sixth centuries; and much which is to be found in modern man-
uals of mythology goes back in its details only to classic, Hel-
lenistic, or even Roman times.
Mythology was, after all, a way of reflecting life. In spin-
ning their tales the Greeks amused themselves, and this aspect
must not be forgotten when we set about wresting deep mean-
ings from mythological stories. Myths served, too, as a release for
the tensions and problems of human fallibility, as an explanation
of natural (and unnatural) phenomena, as a commemoration
of great events, as a crystallization of religious views. Greek
mythology was always in process of creation until more abstract
types of thought became dominant-or pushed myth-making
down below the surface of our ken. While we can detect some
parts of the later adaptations, we can rarely be sure how much
of the store already present in 700 was at that time relatively
new, a reflection of the broadening of view and intensification of
intellectual activity in the eighth century, and how much
comes from earlier days.
Epic and myth, thus, are not easily dated. Nor, in the sec-
ond place, were they designed to be history, even though later
Greeks took them as factually truthful. Efforts to draw historical
events out of such myths as those of Bellerophon, Heracles,
Theseus, or the Seven against Thebes, to name only a few which
have been so analyzed, are hopeless practically and unsound
l~gically, as I have noted in preceding chapters. The tellers of
myth were not endowed with the critical qualities of a modern
scholar; they were not interested in history; and in any case
there was no history, in the modern sense, in the Dark ages. If
we treat the deeds of Theseus as deliberately symbolic versions
of specific historical conflicts between Athens and Megara and
so on, we are taking fairyland as real. Any interpretation of the
Iliad must also keep in mind the artistic requirements of the
plot and the literary conventions of epic technique, for these
factors seriously affected the treatment of social relationships
and political institutions, let alone the course of the Trojan war
160 PART II . The Dark Ages
itself. The historian cannot expect to disentangle specific events
from epic passages; nor may he safely press too great meaning
out of single phrases.
Epic and myth alike, nevertheless, were framed by human
beings, and the product reflects contemporary views on the
basic relationships among men and their attitudes toward the
physical world and divine forces. The underlying outlook in this
material has an interesting uniformity. On the details men's
beliefs did change, and the older explanations are occasionally
embodied like fossils in the myths; on major pOints no evidence
appears for sharp breaks in early Greek thinking. From a mod-
ern point of view the mythical and epic interpretation of the
world and of man often seems primitive; but any comparison of
the myth and epics of Mesopotamia with those of Greece will
show how remarkable was the civilization, basically rational;
human, and confident, which had developed in the Aegean
world by the eighth century.
Since the Dark ages were an epoch of slow alteration, we
may postulate that the evidence of epic and myth is generally
applicable to the whole period. As we have already seen, Ripe
Geometric pottery was the highest expression of a spirit which
was common to earlier phases as well. Yet in important respects,
I believe, the epic bears most specifically on the early eighth
century. Implicit in this opinion is my judgment that the,
Iliad assumed the form in which we have it just before the mid-
mark of this century. The tale of the wrath of Achilles was com- .
posed as a unit by one great poet, who poured into his lines
their dramatic drive and impace This author most probably
lived on the coast of Asia Minor and must be placed almost two
generations before the poet of the Odyssey, which will accord,-
ingly appear only incidentally in this chapter. The marked dif-
ferences in tone and outlook of the two epics, which support this
distinction, will be considered in Chapter B.
In general, Homer was no freer to invent absolutely afresh
th~n were the Geometric potters of Athens, and the story he cast

7 Therein lay his chief originality, as meric Originality," AlP, LXXI (,1950),
is noted by Frederick M. Combellack, 337-64; and Whitman, Homer and
"Contemporary Unitarians and Ho- the Heroic Tradition.
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth C entul'Y

in its final shape was undoubtedly long in creation. s But for

neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey can we hope to dissect
levels of development of the story and of characterizations
solely on the basis of internal evidence, even if logically we may
assume that such development did underlie their present form.
Those Haws of composition and the inconsistencies which mod-
em students use toward the end of determining layers of accre-
tion are highly subjective discoveries, if not at times the fruit
of modern over-subtlety. Comparative studies of the Greek
and other, more modem epic techniques throw some light
on the probable mode of evolution of the Homeric oral style;
but I think that one may gain as much illumination on the epic
use of stock phrases and on its verse forms from examining the
stiff principles of composition in Geometric vases. That a man
could take inherited motifs and group them suddenly in a mas-
terpiece has already been shown in the great Attic amphora
CCzoo.
Detailed arguments to support the date which I have just
given can be drawn from archaeological parallels, topographic
references, and the level of epic social and political develop-
ment, though on the latter point we must be careful not to
argue in a circle (inasmuch as our principal evidence here
comes from the epic itself).9 The most conclusive grounds,

8 Limits to epic freedom: Hermann 1942). Contra, J. A. Scott, The Unity

Frankel, Dichtung und Philosophie of Homer (Berkeley, 1921).
des fruhen Griechentums (New York, 9 Eighth-century date: Gomme, Greek
1951), 64-75; A. W. Gomme, The Attitude, 41-42; Lesky, Anzeiger fiir
ereek Attitude to Poetry and History die Altertumswissenschaft, V (1952),
(Berkeley, 1954), 1-48; Page, History 7; Lorimer, Homer and the Monu-
and the Homeric Iliad, 223, 230, who ments, 464-67; Wade-Gery, Poet of
suggests that between four fifths and the Iliad. References to arguments for
nine tenths of the Iliad is made up of other dates may be found therein, and
"ready-made phrases, remembered in the works listed in n. 4 (p. 157).
from the past, not created for the Artistic parallels: Chamoux, RA,
present." I\ilsson, Homer and Myce- XXIII (1945), 87-97; Karo, Greek
nae, 272 ff., suggests somewhat greater Personality, 35-36; Matz, GGK, I,
liberty. The efforts to analyze the 98-101; J. L. Myres, "Homeric Art,"
Iliad into layers have been resumed BSA, XLV (195°),229-60; Webster,
since \VorId War II, as in Peter von From Mycenae to Homer, 206-07,
der Miihll, Kritisches Hypomnema zur 259-67, and "Bomer and Attic Geo-
Was (Basel, 1952), which follows metric Vases," 8SA, L (1955),38-50;
many earlier dissections-e.g., Paul Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tra-
Mazon, Introduction d l'Iliade (Paris, dition, 87-101, 249-84-
 PART II . The Dark Ages
however, are the close relations in style and outlook between
Ripe Geometric pottery and the Iliad. As literature, the latter
is far more explicit than is the pottery of the era, which must
appear at first sight primitive and backward to the reader of
Homer; and yet the principles of composition of this "ordered
structure of manifold verse" accord best with the techniques of
Ripe Geometric potters, both in the manipulation of the hexame-
ter, in the construction of scenes, and in the basic structure of the
whole poem. 1 So, too, as has often been pointed out, the Ravor of
the similes of the Iliad and at many points their very subjects,
such as the frequent illumination of the wildness of nature by
the lion theme, have their best parallel in Ripe Geometric art.
Underneath both art and literature lies the same spirit: an
ability to create mighty works, a drive to do so, and an ultimate
confidence in life. 2 This spirit, one may feel, is a reRection of the •
early eighth century, when the old framework of Greek civiliza-
tion was being enlivened but still stood firm as a secure support
for creative activity; when the leading classes of Greece were
willing, even eager, to support artists and poets in their mighty
summations of ancestral inheritances.
If one thus sets the date of the Iliad, and by extension
reckons that myth then had begun to come into focus, this con-
clusion warrants our employment of the evidence only to illumi-
nate the general outlook of the period in question. The poet of
the Iliad could not escape reRecting the temper of his milieu, yet
any single part of his materials may have been of much earlier
origin. In establishing the tempo of change across the Dark ages,
the historian must advance from the physical evidence, far more
surely to be dated, and can use the hints of epic and myth_
solely insofar as they fit into the solid framework already at
hand. To proceed primarily from Homer, or to label the early
Greek centuries the "Homeric Age," is to narrow our vision
far too much.
1Democritus, fragment 21. Homeric Monuments, 455-61.
hexameter: Hermann Frankel, Wege 2 The frequent assertion that Homer
und Formen friihgriechischen Den- takes the present world as decadent
kens (Munich, 1955), 100-56, and must be treated with reserve; d. Max
more briefly, Dichtung und Philoso- Treu, Von Homer zur Lyrik {Munich,
phie, 39-43; Lorimer, Homer and the 1955).30 , '
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century

The Iliad, moreover, was created in a relatively timeless

era, in which past, present, and future were not rigidly sep-
arated. a Cultural distinctions between Greek and non-Greek
were still in process of creation, as I noted in considering the terri-
torial consolidation of the Aegean in Chapter 4; internally,
political divisions were still amorphous. Homer does not reflect
sharply the attitudes of any specific area or of any local variant
of Greek culture. If his product can be compared best to
Attic pottery, this does not mean he was an Athenian or that
his epic tradition stemmed primarily from Attica. While the
potters of Athens were the greatest of their age in exploring the
common artistic inheritance of the Geometric Aegean, another
area might nurture the greatest poet. 4 Homer, again, knew well
that change had occurred, but in his aim of creating a gen-
eraJized story cast his work in an archak vein,
Any assertion that the epic and myth reflect first the spirit
of the early eighth century and then, more generally, the pattern
of life in the Dark ages must cope with the very frequent efforts
to assign this material either to Mycenaean origins or to Oriental
roots. On the former point, we simply do not know to what ex-
tent Greek myth was derived from Mycenaean sources. Enthu-
siastic efforts have been made to disco,,:er representations of
Europa on the bull and of other mythical fig1ues on Mycenaean
seals, jewels, and vases, but more sober analysts have had little
trouble in disproving any equations which have been offered.s
a F. M. Comford, From Religion to dition, builds much of his picture of
Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Homer on the contrary view.
. Western Speculation (London, 1912), 5 Mycenaean myth: Nilsson, Minoan-
140: "The first notion of causality is, Mycenaean Religion, 34-40, and The
thus, not temporal but static, simul- Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythol-
taneous, and spatial." The generalized ogy (Berkeley, 1932); Persson, New
character of the Dipylon vases stems Tombs at Dendra; Webster, From
from the same sense. See also Frankel, Mycenae to Homer, 43-63, 114-27.
Wege und Formen, 1-22; Treu, Von Skepticism: LUisa Banti, "Myth in Pre-
Homer zur Lyrik, 123, 224; Thad- classical Art:' AJA, LVIII (1954),
daeus Zielinski, "Die Behandlung 307-10; Dora Levi, "La Dea micenea
gleichzeitiger Ereignisse im antiken a cavallo," StlJdies to D. M. Robinson,
Epos," Philologus, Suppl. VIII ( 1901), I, 108-25, 01) the so-called Europa;
407-49. The sense of time, however, Emily Townsend Vermeule, "Mythol-
is not entirely absent: Iliad V. 303-04; ogy in Mycenaean Art," Classical lour-
VII. 87-91. na1, LlV (1954),97-108. Mycenaean
4 Rohde, Psyche, 94-95, saw this; but chariot craters (see Plate 4a) :
Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tra- Sara A. Imrnerwahr and V. Kara-
 PART II . The Dark Ages
Though men in the Mycenaean era may well have had myths,
they cannot now be identified.
In recent years, as interest in Mycenaean development has
risen greatly,' Homeric scholars have asserted an extensive
Mycenaean survival in the epic tradition. While one may sympa~
thize with their efforts to gallop down a fresh path, the results
are not very convincing. With respect to physical objects men~
tioned in the epic poems, a few can be shown to have been
Mycenaean, though these are far fewer than is often suggested
-and the possibility of transmission of heirlooms must not be
forgotten. 6 The more one learns from the Mycenaean tablets of
the political, social, and economic organization of that earlier
era the less comparable becomes the evidence of the Homeric
epics on these subjects. The Homeric basileus, for instance, was
not a Mycenaean wanax. If Agamemnon were leader of the
allied force against Troy, his position in the epic derived not so
much from a possible wide domination by the ruler of Mycenae
before 1200 B.C. as from the requirements of the plot that the
Greek army have a commander. In general the position of the
epic basileus wavers between feebleness and a considerable
authority. The former characteristic reflects that evolution of the
Dark age which we examined in Chapter 4, as a result of which
the chieftain was, apart from his necessary control "in battle it~
self, a primus inter pares; the hints of greater power and self~
assertion by "Zeus~nurtured" monarchs may well be not a vague
memory of days when kings were great in Greece but a con~
temporary reflection of a temporary growth in royal power dur~
ing the eighth century itself. .
All in all, I should be much disinclined to postulate f~r the

georghis, AJA, LX (1956), 137-49; n. s. VI (1953), 241-56, based on

C. F. A. Schaeffer, "Sur un cratere E. Bethe, "Troia, Mykene, Agamem-
mycenien de Ras Shamra," BSA, non und sein Grosskiinigtum," RM,
XXXVII (1936-37), 212-35; S. S. LXXX (1931), 218-36. The Olym-
Weinberg, Hesperia, XVIII (1949), pian state of the gods does not reflect
156-57; Vassos Karageorghis, "Myth any early political domination by My-
and Epic in Mycenaean Vase Paint~ cenae. For the conventional picture of
ing," AJA, LXII (1958),383-87. Agamemnon, cf. Nilsson, Homer and
6 Physical objects: Chap. 2, n. 6 Mycenae, 238-39. The political de-
(p. 47). Kingship: Gunther Jachmann, velopments of the eighth century are
"Das homerische Kiinigtum," Maia, considered below, in Chap. 10.
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century

Iliad any marked inheritance from as far back as the Mycenaean

era either in substance of plot (save for the basic memory of an
attack launched across the Aegean to Troy) or in epic spirit.
What did survive perhaps from Mycenaean days was far more
the aspect of techniques-i.e., the creation of the epic dialect, of
the hexameter, or of stock formulas. Even here the age of in-
vasions and the Dark ages probably caused changes the dimen-
sions of which we cannot measure.

ORIENTAL LITERARY INFLUENCES

ANOTHER possible source for Greek epic and myth, which

Jlas gained a vogue in recent work, is the Orient. Our growing
knowledge of Hittite, Hurrian, and Canaanite tales in the past
few decades has led some students to construct an imposing
picture of a common eastern Mediterranean stratum of poetic
composition and mythical lore which produced eventually on the
one side Homer and on the other the Old Testamene This
view strikes me as even more unlikely than the arguments of
Mycenaean origins. Worse yet, its basic assumption must lead
one into serious misunderstandings which can only obscure the
tempo and sources of early Greek culture and the close rela-
tions between the achievements of the eighth century and of the
Dark ages. .
The possibility of literary or intellectual contacts between
East and West from the late ninth century on does exist, for
resumption of trade between the two areas had then begun.
We must, indeed, go even further: in some few cases it can now

7 Various aspects of this line of thought erature (Ventnor, N. J., 1955), and
may be found in Charles Autran, Ho- The World of the Old Testament
mere et les origines sacerdotales de (Garden City, New York, 1958), 101-
l'epopee grecque, 3 vols. (Paris, 1938- 12; T. B. L. Webster, "Homer and
44), and L'Epopee indoue (Paris, Eastern Poetry," Minos, IV (1956),
1946); Franz' Dirlmeier, "Homeri- 104-16, and more fully in From My-
sches Epos und Orient," RM, XCVIII cenae to Homer, 64-90; on its applica-
(1955), 18-37; Cyrus H. Gordon, tion to the Odyssey, see Chap. 8, n. 7
Homer and Bible: The Origin and (P· 265).
Character of East Mediterranean Lit-
166 PART II . The Dark Ages
be demonstrated that Greek myth, like Hebrew literature, did
draw directly from the Oriental stock. The tale of the castration
of Uranus by Kronos comes from a Hittite-Hurrian story in
which Kumarbi treated Anu in similarly unpleasant fashion. The
Song of Ullikummi, again, was the prototype of the battle be-
tween Typhon and Zeus, which the Hellenistic scholar Apollo-
dorus still localized on Mount Casius, the scene of a much
earlier Phoenician version. s In other instances Oriental mon-
sters came into the Greek ken and were explained by the crea-
tion of myths.
Wherever the route of transmittal from the East can be
tentatively identified, it runs via northern Syria-Phoenicia, not
Asia Minor; the time of borrowing is thus far a difficult prob-
lem. The Aegean had had extensive contacts with the East in
Mycenaean times, but at this time we do not know what kind of
myth was prevalent in the Greek world. The facts, first, that
many of the details in the myths just mentioned are common to
East and West and, secondly, that these myths are not of a truly
folk character are very difficult to explain if they were remem-
bered orally for centuries on the Greek side but survived in writ-
ing in the Orient. Most, if not all, of this influence, one must feel,
was a product of the renewed connections from the late ninth
century onward. Some tales were taken over well before 700,
but others thereafter; Greek mythology was not a static, closed
body.
These occasional evidences of borrowing, in any case, do
not justify a sweeping inference that all Greek mythology was
drawn from the Orient. Even before the connection of the
S H. G. Giiterbock, Kumarbi: My then siod," JRS, LXV (1945), 100-01;
vom churritischen Kronos aus den Alfred Heubeck, "Mythologische Vor-
hethitischen Fragment!3n zusammen- stellungen des alten Orients im ar-
gestellt, iibersetzt und erkliirt ( Zii- chaischen Griechentum," Gymnasium,
rich, 1946); "The Song of Ullikummi," LXII (1955), 508-25; Albin Lesky,
Journal of Cuneiform Studies, V "Zum hethitischen und griechischen
( 1951), 135-69, and VI ( 1952), 8-42; Mythos," Eranos, LII (1954), 8-17,
"The Hittite Version of the Hurrian and "Hethitische Texte und griechi-
Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners scher Mythos," Anzeiger der Oester-
of Hesiod," AJA, LII (1948), 123-34. reichischen Akademie, LXXXVII
See also R. D. Barnett, "The Epic of ( 1950), 137-59. Oriental monsters:
Kumarbi and the Theogony of He- see Chap. 8.
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century

Kronos and Kumarbi stories was known, students had been

struck by the un-Hellenic savagery of this particular myth,
which, we can now see, was somehow introduced virtually in-
tact from a quite different system. In other examples the Orien-
tal tales were largely stripped of the grotesque and magical and
were cast in more human terms by the Greeks.
As far as the epic is concerned, it is possible that some
parallel turns of phrase in Homer and Oriental literature were
adapted by the Greek epic tradition, either in the Mycenaean
age or in the last stages of the Dark ages; yet many of the
parallels which have been so triumphantly paraded are no more
than the incidental products of similar social and economic
backgrounds or of roughly comparable levels of thought in the
two areas. To be blunt about this matter, it is fantastic to jump
from tne JeveJ of triviaJ simiJarjtjes to assert tnat tne Greek epic
was based either in technique or in content upon an Oriental
background. The general spirit of the Homeric poems is one
of our earliest, clearest demonstrations of the rise of the Greek
view of life, an independent creation of a Virtually self-con-
tained Aegean enclave.
This important paint is evident if one compares the epic of
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, with the epic of Achilles. The two are
superficially similar in outlook, for they were born of man's mus-
ing on his nature; fundamentally, they are products of entirely
different civilizations. The story of Gilgamesh was Sumerian in
root but was more fully formulated about 2000 B.C. into a truly
mighty reflection upon the nature of man, who strives but in
the end must die:
Who, my friend [says Gilgamesh] is superior to death?
Only the gods live forever under the sun.
As for mankind, numbered are their days;
Whatever they achieve is but the windl s
9Trans. E. A. Speiser, Ancient Near believe that the mourning for Patroclos
Eastern Texts Relating to the Old is not inHuenc€:d by the mourning for
Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard Enkidu," or argues (From Mycenae to
(Princeton, 1950), 79. I cannot follow Homer, 82, 120) that the figure of
Webster, Minas, IV (1956), 114, Achilles was r~cast to bring him·into
when he observes: "It is difficult to agreement with that of Gilgamesh.
168 PART II . The Dark Ages

The epic is, as well, a paean to friendship, exemplified by the

hero Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, and an explanation of the
meaning of civilization. Gilgamesh, though harsh, protects his
city against the violent forces of nature, which are symbolized
in the monsters he kills. Like the Iliad, the Babylonian epic
moves on two planes, the divine and the human, and of the two
levels the divine is the one which decides what is to happen.
But in many respects the tale of Homer is vastly different
from that of the Babylonian poets. The earlier story is balder and
has less artistic unity; it is more naIve, far earthier; monsters are
prominent in its plot; its appeal is rather to emotion and to pas-
sion than to reason, as is that of the Iliad in the end. Above all,
the epic of Gilgamesh throws light on humanity, but not on
individual human beings; and its tone is a far blacker one. The
heroes of the Iliad know as well as does Gilgamesh that the gods
made the world and that men must die, but while alive they
throb with delight in the world about them. In reflection of
the growing pride and individualism of the upper classes who
were slowly becoming self-conscious in the eighth century,
Homer fashioned a dream of emancipated heroes, competing
for honor in the eyes of men, which was thenceforth to be a
polar companion to the equally strong Greek feeling for co-
operation of the group. From Gilgamesh and Enkidu there stems
no fructifying development of man's understanding of his
own nature; from the men of the Iliad comes a steadily onrush-
ing exploration of the qualities of mankind, the fruits of which
we shall consider in the age of revolution.
Only a great poet could have infused the Iliad with its ma-
jestic interpretation of life which leads inevitably to death and
yet is the stage of man's glory. Achilles knows heforehand that
if he goes to Troy he will die there, but his honor drives him to
go, once his mother's effort to hide him fails. He knows full
well that the gods determine all, but he is free to act as he wills.
When the goddess Athena descends to calm him, she must_ be-
gin carefully: "I came to check your passions, if you will listen";
and Achilles reluctantly but freely decides: "1 must observe
your bidding, goddess, angry though I am indeed. It is better so.
What the gods command you, do, then the gods will listen to
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 169
you." 1 Here the ultimate dominance of reason, though forced
to strive with elemental passion, stands sharply defined. In
the Iliad as a whole the basic differences between Greek (and
Western) civilization and the Babylonian view of life cannot be
mistaken.
The greatest debt of Greece to the East in literary matters
was its borrowing of the alphabet. This, like much else which
the Aegean was to take from the Orient, was a technical device,
but its literary importance was great. The fixing and amplifica-
tion of the major myths was much assisted by the appearance
of a Greek script, and by the seventh century efforts to systema-
tize aspects of the material were well under way in the Hesiodic
Theogony and Eoiae. So, too, the preservation of the epics in a
relatively unaltered state must be due to the fact that they
could be written down very soon after their consolidation.
While the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet is clear
both from the shape of its earliest letters and from the names
given to them in Greek, the date, place, and reasons for the
borrowing lie too far back to be entirely visible. The oldest re-
mains of Greek writing are words incised or painted on Late
Geometric vases and plaques from Attica (Mount Hymettos,
the Agora, Dipylon, and Eleusis), Aegina, Ithaca, and Ischia,
none of which can be dated before the two final decades of the
eighth century.2 Shortly thereafter appeared the first inscrip-
1 Iliad. I. 206 ff.; cf. the analysis of from Corinth," AJA, XXXVII (1933),
Achilles in Whitman, Homer and the 605-10, is on Late Geometric vases
Heroic Traditjon, 182-220. and could accordingly be put after
2 Attica: Inscriptiones Graecae,2 I, 700, especially since the letters are
919 (Dipylon prize jug); C. W. Ble- well formed; see M. Lejeune, REA,
gen, "Inscriptions on Geometric Pot- XLVII (1945), 106-10. Wade-Gery,
tery from Hymettos," AlA, XXXVIII Poet of the Iliad, 66-67, gives a list
(1934), 10-28; Young, Late Geomet- of inscriptions on bronze and stone.
ric Graves, 225-29, and "Excavation For names on gravestones, which do
on Mount Hymettos, 1939," AlA, not seem to go back of the sixth cen-
XLIV (1940), 1-g. Aegina: Board- tury, cf. Wiesner, Grab und lenseits,
man, BSA, XLIX (1954), 184-86. 98; Pfuhl, AM, XXVIII (1903), 86-
Ithaca: Robertson, BSA, XLIII 87, on Thera grave 111; Kubler, Ke-
(1948),81-82. Ischia: G. Buchner rameikos, VI. 1, 102 n. 49. See gener-
and C. F. Russo, Rendiconti della ally H. L. Lorimer, "Homer al1d the
Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 8. Art of Writing: A Sketch 01' Opinion
ser. X (1955), pI. !II. The Corinthian between 1713 and 1939," AlA, LII
material published by Agnes N. Still- (1948),11-23·
well, "Eighth Century B.C. Inscriptions
170 PART II . The Dark Ages

tions on bronze (the Mantiklos statuette, Plate 20b) and on

stone (probably the Perachora bases), but extensive use of writ-
ing to label mythical characters on pottery, to identify artists
and dedicants, or to set in public view state acts came only
slowly in the seventh century.
Unless one wishes to argue that writing in the Aegean prior
to these testimonials was exclusively on papyrus and other
perishable materials, the conclusion appears inevitable that the
Greek alphabet was developed no earlier than some pOint in
the eighth century. Such a date accords with our other evidence
of firm Oriental contacts only at and after 800 B.C. On the other
hand, the early appearance of Phrygian and Etruscan alpha-
bets, derived from the Greek, makes it impossible to lower the
Aegean development proper into the last decades of the cen-
tury.s
From the internal history of the Greek alphabet, which un-
derwent both expansion and contraction in its letters, and from
the varying forms of the letters in different regions, modern
opinion has inclined to agree that the most archaic Greek alpha-
bet is that of Melos, Thera, and Crete; here or at Rhodes-areas
which lay on the main route eastward-the origin of the alpha-
bet is placed.' It is, however, surprising that no really early
3 The earliest Etruscan alphabets ing: From Pictograph to Alphabet
must be placed just after 700 at the (rev. ed.; Oxford, 1954), 171 If., mid-
latest (Giulio Buonamici, Epigrafia ninth century; W. F. Albright, Aegean
Etrusca [Florence, 1932], 101-15); and Near East, 162, late ninth to mid-
the Phrygian alphabet has been eighth centuries; Rhys Carpenter,
found on material before 700 (Rod- Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the
ney S. Young, lLN, May 17, 1958, Homeric Epics (Berkeley, 1946 )',
828). See also for the alphabets of 10 ff., and elsewhere, about 700. Cf.
Asia Minor, Akurgal, Phrygische David Diringer, The Alphabet (2d
Kunst, 106-07; Mazzarino, Fra Oriente ed.; London, 1954),451 If.
e Occidente, 261-68. 4 This is the "green" alphabet of Kirch-
Efforts to fix the date of the hoff. Cyprus: Lorimer, Homer an4 the
Greek alphabet by comparing Greek Monuments, 128-29. Al Mina or Tar-
and Semitic letter forms must face sus: T. J. Dunbabin, The Greeks and
the lack of established canons either their Eastern Neighbours (London,
in Phoenician or in early Greek scripts; 1957), 61. Rhodes: Carpenter, AlA,
such attempts have resulted in very XXXVII (1933), 27-29; L. B. Hol-
divergent dates: B. L. Ullmann, "How land, AlA, XLV (1941),356; Margit
Old Is the Greek Alphabet," AlA, Falkner, "Zur Friihgeschichte des
XXXVIII (1934),359-81, eleventh or griechischen Alphabetes," Friihge-
twelfth century (as Wilamowitz and 8chichte und Sprachwissenschaft (Vi-
others); G. R. Driver, Semitic W rit- enna, 1948), 110-33. Rhodes or
 CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 17 1

writing has thus far turned up in these regions, in contrast to

Attica. The common combination of over-all Greek cultural uni-
formity and local variation is evident once more in Greek
writing, for a cluster of local alphabets became well set during
the eighth and seventh centuries in the Aegean world, from
which they were transmitted to the colonies, to the Etruscans,
and to Asia Minor.
The most important problem in connection with the alpha-
bet is that which is least often considered: the reasons for its ap-
pearance. Students of the subject almost universally have as-
sumed that the Greeks began to write because of commercial
motives, although Greek traders, like simple merchants through-
out history, got along very well without writing even in his-
toric times. 5 The fact, again, that the Greeks felt compelled
to write their vowels as well as their consonants rarely receives
its proper emphasis. The inventors of the Greek alphabet re-
modeled drastically the symbols which they borrowed in
order to create a supple tool for human expression. Though the
alphabet was probably not created primarily to set down litera-
ture in permanent form, its wide use depended on its general
utility, intellectual as well as economic, and on the rise of a rela-
tively large aristocratic class. The very appearance of the Greek
alphabet may be taken as a token of the increasing consciousness
of Greek civilization in the eighth century; the rapid spread of
. writing is another testimonial to the quickening life of the era.
Neit?er characteristic was Oriental in origin.

EARLY GREEK RELIGION

ONCE WRITING comes to be used to set down the thoughts of

man, the historian has another lens with which to peer into the
past. The testimony of physical remains and of written words

Crete: Demargne, La Crete deda- poullou, 342-54.

lique, 148-49. Thera: Mazzarino, Fra 5Johannes Hasebroek, Trade and Poli-
Oriente e Occidente, 261-67. Crete: tics in Ancient Greece ( London,
Margherita Guarducd, "La Culla 1933), 10-11, 89; cf. Wade-Gery,
dell'alfabeto greco," Geras A. Keramo- Poet of the Iliad, 13-14.
172 PART II . The Dark Ages
does not always accord perfectly, partIy because one source is
essentially objective and the other is more liable to subjective
distortion by the writers, partly because actual objects cannot
well express all the non-material sides of man's life. In any epoch,
nonetheless, the same framework of basic concepts will dominate
all its sources; from the point when the Iliad became essentially
set, soon to be written down, we begin to be able to interrelate
one type of evidence with the other.
It becomes possible, accordingly, to see some major aspects
of early Greek religion. At all times humanity's views of its gods
are an important subject for the historian. Religion reflects the
innermost thoughts of men on their own nature, and its beliefs
are the basic bond which holds together a society and enables
its members to endure the travails of life. Yet discernment of
these thoughts is a delicate task, for they are not always directly
expressed; they will, moreover, vary widely from class to class,
from area to area, and even among individuals who stand side
by side. To discuss Greek religion purely on the basis of the
very scanty physical testimony of the Dark ages is not only
dangerous but also limited in rewards. Men must often feel, and
feel deeply, religious beliefs which they do not know how to
represent in physical form, or care to express thus. I have, there-
fore, postponed consideration of this significant side of early
Greek civilization until we can draw on epic evidence. 6
Both the physical and the written testimony shows, first,
that historic Greek religion took its source from Mycenaean
days, if not before. This information also suggests that at the
end of the Mycenaean era and in the Dark ages changes oc-
curred in religion which were as great as those already noted
in aesthetic views and political organization. While the altera-
tions within the Dark ages proper cannot be spelled out in
detail, it is possible to detect that by the eighth century reli-
gious evolution had proceeded a great distance; by this date
development begins to be more visible and more speedy. The
6 In considering Greek religion, too, I, 1-2. This work, together with his
one must remember that it was not Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, gives
"revealed" at anyone time in a sacred basic references to the sources and to
book and was not the preserve of a the great volume of modern literature.
dedicated priesthood: Nilsson, GGR,
Dipion am)Jhnra (cit"
mourning scelle and
deer illserted into Geo-
m etric motifs (National
Museum 200, Athens).
PllOtograph courtesy
Friedrich Hetvicker.

PLATE 11 . Height of the Geometric Spirit

 (a)

(II) Corinthio)] (/lIIphol'lI frolll CorilltT/ (Cor-

illth Museu/II). Photo{!,rtlph courtelY YDAP,
Athells.
(I) Cycillciic I/IllpllOl'a frolll tire Artelllisilllll
Oil Delos, ill the last ~1a{!.('s vf Geollletric
style (Delos .UtISCl/III). Photo!!,rtllJiI fmlll
Delo, XV (Pmis, 193~), pl. X\'l1l.
(c) RllOciiall o(',wc/we frolll Delos (Delos
.\ll/scl/m). PhOtllgflll'l1 frOIl1 Dl'lo, XV, 1'1.
XLVI.
(el) Argir:;e case frolll MycclIIll' (.vl/ llplill
MuseuIII 53-0337). Photogral'h frolll BSA,
XLIX (195-1). /)/. XLV.

PLATE 12 . .Von-Attic Geometric Styles

CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 173
major areas of discernible change are in the actual conduct of
worship, the relations of the gods to the kings, burial beliefs,
and the very nature of the gods.
Throughout the Dark ages and into the eighth century the
major religious remains are scanty deposits of votive pottery
and other objects and the residues of burnt sacrifices which
were offered to the gods at open altars in sacred areas. Often
these altars stood on sites which had apparently been of religious
significance in the Mycenaean age; Delphi, Delos, Eleusis, and
other great shrines of historic times have Mycenaean levels. 1
There is, however, no physical testimony to prove that exactly
the same kind of cult persisted at these pOints. The earliest
Cretan temples, which go back to the ninth century or beyond,
reproduced in part Minoan architectural ideas, but these prin-
ciples were not to have any great influence on the canonical
patterns of Greek temples. When the first simple shrines ap-
peared on the Greek mainland, generally not before the early
eighth century, they borrowed their style of single room and
foreporch from the megaTon. The development of this structure
will be considered in Chapter 7, for the great steps in archi-
tecture must be assigned to the age of revolution; so, too, the
evolution of the major international centers of Hellenic religion
can be shown fairly clearly to have begun only after 750.
In Minoan and Mycenaean times the royal palaces had
private, domestic chapels, where the kings worshipped god-
desses, presumably on behalf of their subjects-though we do
not actually know to what extent common folk could approach
the divine protectors independently. In many respects the
wanax seems to have had the qualities of a priest-king. This
situation did not continue to obtain in the Dark ages; as the
1 Delphi: Desborough, Protogeometric Amyklaion," AM, LII (1927), 1-23.
Pottery, 199-201; Nilsson, GGR, I, Delos: H. Gallet de Santerre, "Delos,
33(1-40. Eleusis: Nilsson, GGR, I, la Crete et Ie continent mycenien au
475; George E. Mylonas, The Hymn 2" milh~naire," RA, XXIX-XXX
to Demeter and Her Sanctuary at (1948), 387-400, and with J. Tni-
Eleltsis (St. Louis, 1942), and '" H heux, "Rapport sur Ie depot egeen et
7rpOfhfl'(jt~ rfj'l tXfVCTtJ1taKij'l XarpEias," geometrique de l'Artemision' a Delos,"
Geras A. Kcramopoullou, 42-53. Epi- BCH, LXXI-LXXII (1947-48),148-
daurus: J. M. Cook, /HS, LXXI 254, and Delos primitive, 8(1-100
(1951),240-41, and LXXII (1952), (note his references to continuity at
98. AmycIae: Ernst Buschor, "Vom other sites, 96-99).

7
174 PART II . The Dark Ages
wanax disappeared and local basileis took his place, they were
either unable or unwilling to exercise complete control over
religiOUS machinery. The occasional argument that the old
palace shrines continued to be centers of cult and so became
the focuses for civic worship is very ill-founded. Such a con-
tinuity cannot be proven, and if temples were eventually erected
atop some Mycenaean palaces the commanding position of
these points, as well perhaps as the availability of already
worked stone, was primarily responsible. 8 As warleaders, the
basile is offered up sacrifices in Homer and in myth; in their
pride of lineage they considered themselves Zeus-sprung and
Zeus-nurtured; but beside the chieftains stood priests and seers
who came from upper-class clans. In the Dark ages Greek
religion became basically a common tribal matter, conducted
throughout all levels by group organizations.
Even clearer testimony to the changes and consolidation of
Greek religious attitudes in the early first millennium B.C. is
afforded by the graves, for here new customs, such as cremation,
merged with other customs which ran back to Early and Middle
Helladic times. 9 Generally corpses were now buried with a
relatively simple provision of food, drink, and intimate pos-
sessions-arms occasionally for the men; pins, fibulae, and
spinning whorls for the women-in pits which were at times,
but not always, deliberately oriented in an east-west direction.
At Athens and several other sites adults were usually cremated
down through 700, while small children were buried in large
pithoi; elsewhere inhumation remained standard throughout
8 J. A. Bundgaard, "A propos de la Attika (Diss. Heidelberg, 1907); Kii-
date de la peristasis du megaron B a bIer, Kerameikos, IV, 2-4 and passim;
Thermos," BCH, LXX (1946), 51- Axel W. Persson, "Earliest Traces of
57; Leicester B. Holland, "The Hall the Belief in' a Life after Death in Our
of the Athenian Kings," AJA, XLIII Civilization:' Eranos, XLIV (1946)',
(1939), 289-98, argues that the pry- 1-13; Pfuhl, AM, XXVIII (1903),
taneion, not a temple, succeeded the 281-82; Wiesner, Crab und ]enseits;
megaron on the Acropolis. At Tiryns, comparative material in T. ozgUc,
Blegen, Korakou, 130-34, denies that Die Bestattungsgebraeuche 1m vorge-
a temple replaced the megaron (vs. schichtlichen Anatolien - (Ankara,
Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, 1948). Direction of graves: Kiibler,
475-78); Wace, in his introduction to Kerameikos, IV, 3-4, and VI. 1, 85,
Ventris and Chadwick, Documents, 103-04; Persson, Asine, 423; Pfuhl,
xxxi, agrees with Blegen. AM. XXVIII (1903),264, who found
9 H. Groppengiesser, Die Craber von graves grouped by clans or the like.
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 175
the era. In the eighth century the graves of Attica attest an
increase in the elaborateness of burials. A wide assortment of
vases (often specially made for the graves) appears in the
richer tombs; ivory figurines, Egyptian faience, and other
unusual objects were occasionally placed beside the corpse; and
over the graves of dead nobles was built a mound topped by a
great Dipylon vase. The social distinction thus evident jn death
must have been marked in life.
A cult of the dead also becomes evident. For the Mycenaean
age such a cult is very dubious, but in the first millennium
Greek burials manifest not only a funeral feast at the time of
interment but also continued attention to the grave. l A feeding
tube thus was provided, by which drink could be poured down
to the grave proper-often the bottoms of the great Dipylon
vases were knocked out so that libations and food could go
down through them into the earth. Men in the second millen-
nium had treated the bones of earlier burials in very cavalier
fashion once the flesh had dissolved; now, when Greeks acci-
dentally broke into old tombs, they tended to be respectful of
the remains and began by the eighth century to create cults of
heroes at these sites. 2 From Homer we should scarcely be able to
guess the prominence of these beliefs about the dead, for the
epic celebrates heroes only while living and views the dead as
no longer of importance; once the corpses were properly buried.
Besides the rise of the cult of heroes and the more common
construction of temples-and connected with these phenomena
-the increasing personification of the divine forces governing
1Pro: C. W. Blegen and A. J. B. Wace, Tpn;H<I>{l~: Griechischer Ahnenkult
"Middle Helladic Tombs," Symbolae im klassicher und mykenischer Zeit,"
Osloenses, IX (1930), 28-37; Nilsson, Eranos, LII (1954), 172-90; and r-.ly-
Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, 587- lonas, "Homeric and Mycenaean Bur-
615; Persson, Asine, 342; Wiesner, ial Customs," AlA, LII (1948), 56-
Grab und Ienseits, 179-80, 183-93. 81.
But see George E. Mylonas. "The Cult 2 Respect for dead: Eleusis, Bell,
of the Dead in Helladic Times," LXXX (1956), 245; Asine, Frodin
Studies to D. M. Robinson, I, 64-105; and Persson, Asine, 179. On hero cults,
and note the lack of Protogeometric see Chap. 9, n. 8 (p. 319). Homer:
remains in C. W. Blegen, "Post-My- Rohde, Psyche, 12-19. The common
cenaean Deposits in Chamber-Tombs," explanation that Homer here reflected
Arch. eph. 1937, 377-90. On the upper-class attitudes is uot entirely
historic cult of the dead, see recently convincing.
Bengt Hemberg, "TPIIIAT{lP und
 PART II . The Dark Ages
the Greek world is a mark of religious change in the eighth
century. This was an important step in creating the unique
outlook of historic Greek religion, but it is not easily to be
treated. vVe must look back across the entire course of Aegean
development and must assess very carefully the somewhat di-
vergent evidence of physical and literary remains if we ·are to
understand the still ambivalent situation in 750.
Already in the second millennium, to judge from the
evidence of carved gems, figurines, and other materials, men
had visualized their divine protectors-at least in part-in
anthropomorphic terms. From the Mycenaean tablets it would
appear that at that time such gods and goddesses as Hera,
Athena, and Dionysus stood over the Greek countryside,3
though we cannot be sure whether their powers and character
were conceived as in later ages. On the whole, however, the
evidence of the myths, epic, and arts concurs in suggesting that
the clear definition of the Greek gods of historic times was a
magnificent achievement not easily attained and that it was far
from complete by the early eighth century.
If the mainland Greeks had physical religiOUS symbols in
the Dark ages, they must have been the aniconic stones, trees,
and the like which have a significant place in some myths and
religiOUS customs. In the eighth century figurines and plaques
begin to appear in the rapidly swelling masses of sacred de-
posits, scantily at first but ever more abundantly as one goes
down into the next century. Animals are more common than
human figures, which are usually female! The goddess thus
S Ventris and Chadwick, Documents, Schweiz (Erlenbach-Ziirich, 1943),
125-27· 28-31; Karl Hoenn, Artemis: Gestalt_-
4 On the religiOUS aspects of the hu- wandel einer Gottin (Ziirich, 1946);
man figurines, see Demargne, La Nilsson, GGR, I, 295-96, 308-11,
Crete dedalique, 265-68, 272-78, who traces her back to a Minoan-
286-303, and BCH, LIV (1930),195- Mycenaean goddess of nature; she
204; Emil Kunze, "Zeusbilder in may as well have come, as an ar-
Olympia," Antike und Abendland, II tistic type, from the Orient. Polos:
(1946),95-113; Levi, Early Hellenic Valentin Miiller, Der Palos (Diss.
Pottery, 29; Walter A. Miiller, Nackt- Berlin, 1915),24 ff. The artistic qual-
heit ~nd Entbliissung in der altorien- ity of this work will be considered in
talischen und iilteren griechischen Chapter 7, but note that their hu-
Kunst (Leipzig, 1906), which is some- man nature is sometimes almost lost,
what superficial. Potnia theron: Hans- as in the Boeotian bell figurines (Fred-
jorg Bloesch, Antike Kunst in der erick R. Grace, Archaic Sculpture in
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 177
depicted is often unclothed, but not always; frequently she
bears a cylindrical crown (polos). Her hands are extended
upward-an attitude probably not of human adoration but of
divine power 5 _or hold her breasts, or later are often stifHy by
her side. Occasionally she is flanked by wild beasts on either
hand; these guard her or are held by their necks. In this pose of
the potnia theron (Mistress of Wild Beasts) she is commonly
winged, especially in the eighth century. Twin goddesses also
appear, and more rarely male and female deities side by side.
Male deities alone are rather unusual, but apart from a Master
of Animals there are interesting examples presumably of gods
fighting wild beasts or bearing a thunderbolt. Artistically this
material is important as the true beginning of Greek sculpture,
as aspect which will be assessed in Chapter 7. The first ex-
amples seem to be of purely Aegean origin, but the sudden,
swift evolution of eighth-century plastic art owed much to
Oriental models, alike in techniques, in motifs, and even in
material (in the case of ivory). The creation of divine types in
Greek art was heavily indebted to alien influences and only
gradually swung into its own majestic path.
While the technical indebtedness is obvious, the conclusion
does not necessarily follow that the goddess or goddesses who
could now be depicted were also Oriental in origin, in powers,
or in character. From Homer we can learn but little pertinent to
these matters; the primary evidence is phYSical, and must be
interpreted in the light of comparative anthropology. Female
figurines, that is to say, had been made from Neolithic times in
the Aegean, as in the Near East generally. Sometimes men
worked in naturalistic styles, and at other times emphasized
the female organs in schematic treatments. 6 Such figurines turn

Boeotia [Cambridge, Mass., 1939]). n. 1; approved by Kunze, Antike und

Anieonie sacred objects: Lorimer, Abendland, II (1946), 99.
Homer and the Monuments, 437, who 6 Early figurines: Muller, Friihe Pla-
argues in "tJ.t7ral\Tof," BSA, XXXVII stik, 30-37; Wiesner, Grab und Jen-
(1936-37),172-86, for a possible ex- seits, 131-33, 138, 150-51; Leonhard
ample of the shift from impersonal to Franz, Die Muttergottin im vorderen
personalized representation. . Orient und in Europe (Der alte Ori-
5 Arnold von Salis, "Neue Darstel- ent, XXXV 3, 1937). Cult of Earth
lungen grieehischen Sagen. 1. Kreta," Mother: Jean Przyluski, La grande
SB Heidelberg, XXVI (1935-36),43 deesse (Paris, 1950); Gallet de San-
 PART II . The Dark ~ges
up in Neolithic Sesklo, Lema (see Plate la), and elsewhere; in
the Early Cycladic cultures; on Minoan Crete; and-after a
break in Middle Helladic times-in Mycenaean graves from
about 1300 to the end of the Mycenaean age. Then a break again
occurs in Greece proper, but cult figures of female deities have
been found at Karphi and elsewhere in Crete; these had, how-
ever, no direct influence on the development of Greek plastic
art.
Modern scholars generally interpret these female figurines
as reflecting the worship of a Great Mother hy an agricultural
population. Primitive men, it is argued, represented symbolically
the force of Mother Earth, which brings to humanity the fruits
by which it may live, in the figure of child-bearing woman, on
whom the endurance of the race depends. Such fertility cults
are known in historic times in the Near East in the instances of
Cybele, Astarte, and the like, and also in Greece, in the worship
of Demeter and other goddesses. Twin female deities can be
explained in this framework as representing the maternal and
virginal aspects of woman, a concept which led into the later
cults of Demeter-Persephone at Eleusis, Demeter-Despoina in
Arcadia, and so on. Male and female deities side by side, at
ti~es in a pose where the male touches the breasts of his
consort, may be taken as representing a sacred union, the
hieros gamos, celebrated in historic cults of Samos and Cnossus
and in the annual ritual marriage of Dionysus and the wife of
the basileus at Athens. 1 The potnia ,theron, finally, suggests the
general sway of this divine figure over the wild forces of nature.
In general this line of explanation must be correct. Early
farmers had few reserves and little likelihood of gaining foo~

terre, Delos primitive, 128--34; Wies- 1 This motive goes back to Early Hel-
ner, Grab und lenseits, 172-73 (bibli- ladic times (Wiesner, Grab und len-
ography, p. 172 n. 2); Nilsson, GGR, seits, 176 ); interesting examples of
I, 457-63. As the latter points out archaic style are to be found in Cata-
(pp. 593-94), one notable aspect of logue raisonee des figurines et reliefs
fertility ideas in later Greece, the en terre-cuite grecs, etrusques et ro-
phallic symbol, seems unknown until mains, I, ed. Simone Mollard-Besques
the Dark ages; he also (pp. 287- (Paris, 1954), B 168 (p. 30); and
88) prefers to interpret the figurines AM, LXVIII (1953), Beil. 13, from
as servants, concubines, or adorants Samos (one of the very few wooden
(d. Mylonas, Mycenae, 78--83). objects from early Greece).
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century 179
from other areas if their own fields failed; the success of the
annual crops was one of the most basic concerns in life. In all
eras until very recently, when agricultural chemistry and botany
have made great strides, mankind has surrounded its farming
activity with a great mass of magic and religious rites. So, too,
did the ancient Greeks; a strong fertility cult, revolving largely
about a female deity, was a major strand of early Greek religion.
Classical philologists have often been shocked by the primitive
manner in which the Greeks frequently satisfied this deep
religious need; but the evidence of myth and religious customs
shows abundantly that what we would call obscenity and ritual
murder, together with other irrational beliefs, long survived
down into historic times.
Recent reactions against an overidealization of Greek reli-
gion have, however, often gone much too far. That the inhab-
itants of the Aegean in the third, second, or even early first
millennium conceived a Mother Goddess as sharply as we find
her portrayed in historic cults cannot be proven on the basis of
the figures. Nor need everyone of these have been conceived
and made in deeply solemn purpose; fancy and artistic impulse
must Cnever be ruled out of court. And, finally, fertility cults
clustered about female figures were far from being the sum total
of early Greek religious views.
Even in the physical testimony there stand beside the
goddesses a large number of representations of animals. At
times these are domestic beasts, which may be partly connected
with fertility concepts or with sacrifice; but in part they seem to
have symbolic value as representing men or forces of nature. An
example of the former is the bird which is placed by the corpse
of a dead man on Dipylon vases, to show apparently the spirit
of the deceased. s The latter aspect is illustrated in the figure of
the horse, which reflects aristocratic pride and also the sense of
S Compare the bird perched on the in sacrifice is clear at the Samian
terra-cotta funeral cart of Vari: AJA, HeraeulTI (Ohly, AM, LXV [19401,
LXI (1957), 281; cf. Ohly, Grieelli- 81,91,99). The horse can even spcak
selle Goldbleehe, 135. Kiibler, Kera- in early Greek literature (Iliad XIX.
meikos, V. 1, 177, suggests religious 404 if.) The signs of stress visible in
significance for the bull, horse, snake the frequency of monsters and beasts
(on which see also Nilsson, GGR, I, of prey are considered in Chap. 8.
198-99); the use of animal figurines
180 PART II . The Dark Ages
divine speed and power in this mighty animal, and especially in
the beasts of prey and monsters which appear frequently on
vases, gold bands, bronze armor, fibulae, tripods, and the like
by the later eighth century. These fierce figures are not simply
artistic motifs, but rather are superb testimony to the awe which
men felt toward the uncontrollable, indefinite forces of nature
encompassing their frail endeavors. We are here at a point
where we must remember that the distinction between human,
animal, and divine worlds was not sharp throughout most
ancient society: while men might come to venture to make their
gods in human form, they could also feel that human beings in
turn reacted to and even incorporated generalized forces of
nature.
Besides the physical evidence there is, moreover, the re-
ligious material of the epic and the myths. If Homer passed
over fertility cults virtually in silence, he did so partly because
his subject was war, not the daily life of a farming community in
peacetime. Partly, too, it may be argued that he molded his tale
to fit the tastes of the nascent aristocracy of the eighth century
-though one must not go too far in postulating that the upper
classes had a fundamentally different religious outlook from that
of the peasants. But, above all, the divine machinery of the epic
throws our most valuable light upon the tendency of the Greeks
to see their entire world as directed by divine forces incarnated
in human shape.
The drive to personify the gods had proceeded so far by the
time the Iliad was formed that we must take it as a continuous
evolution across the Dark ages. Alternatively, the process might
be considered an inheritance from the Mycenaean world, but
this I much doubt; in the epic and myth there still lingers a
strong unpersonalized sense of divine forces, as in the tales of
centaurs and the like. The term daimon is used particularly in
the Odyssey to indicate a general religious power which sur-
rounded the gods who had crystallized. 9 Nonetheless, the divine
9 J!. Chantraine in La notion du divin 357-82, who points out that dearly
depuis Homere jusqu'd Platon (Bern, conceived gods appear in Homer's
1954); Ove Jorgensen, "Das Auftreten narrative and myth but that unde-
der Gotter in den Biichem I-P. der fined divine forces are dominant in
Odyssee," Hermes, XXXIX (1904), the speeches; Wolfgang Kullmann,
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century
world of the epic was essentially a panorama of gods in human
form, who lived in pagan revel on Mount Olympus but came
down to earth to consort with human beings.
Quarrelsome, adulterous, and skillful in trickery, these gods
were strikingly differentiated and had become general forces for
all the Aegean; the processes by which local deities were being
eliminated or equated with the great gods is reHected particu-
larly in mythology. Though the advanced religious thinker
Xenophanes was later to criticize Homeric religion as crudely
polytheistic, the epic shows that the Greeks had by the eighth
century directed the higher aspects of their religiOUS beliefs
toward the plane of the rational, the beautiful, and the human.
Their gods had gained a superhuman nobility and represent,
like Ripe Geometric masterpieces, a meaningful, orderly world
within which men felt they might work, even though the essen-
tial decisions lay on the divine plane.
The religiOUS achievement is more strikingly manifest in
epic than in art, for it is not yet possible in the eighth century
to identify the goddesses of the figurines securely with classical
figures. 1 So too the aesthetic principles of the early Hellenic
outlook are more easily visible in the Iliad than on a Dipylon
vase; but the epic religious evidence will thus warn us against
taking the still fumbling efforts of the first sculptors as neces-
sarily indicating that all divine figures were generalized.
Throughout the Dark ages the men of the Aegean must have
been evolving their views about their gods, and had drawn from
many sources, which the modern students of comparative re-
ligion have essayed to disentangle. 2 The great god Apollo, who
Das Wirken der Gotter in der Ilias 2 See generally Nilsson, GGR, I.
(Berlin, 1956), which is rather un- Apollo: Nilsso~, GGR, I, 52g-64; also
satisfactory; Nilsson, GGR, I, 217 ff., Machteld J. Mellink, Hyakinthos
Fernand Robert, Homere (Paris, (Utrecht, 1943), who emphasizes a
1950). Cretan aspect, and Chap. 8, nn.
1 Observe the difficulty in identifying 9, 1 (p. 288). Other aspects of Greek
the figurines on the earliest Sumerian religion which may be derived from
seals (Henri Frankfort, The Art and Asia Minor are itemized by Barnett,
Architecture of the Ancient Orient Aegean and Near East, 218-26.
[Pelican, 1954], 12, 37-38); Dumezil, Athena: Nilsson, GGR, I, 433-
Naissance de Rome, 12-22, offers a 44· Levi, AJA, XLIX (1945),297-98,
useful warning against efforts to is right in emphasizing Athena's pri-
equate such figures with gods known mary role as goddess of energy, skill,
in classic literature. and craftsmanship; her place as pro-
182 PART II . The Dark Ages
in later days was best to exemplify the highest plane of Greek
rational religion, seems to have entered the Aegean from Asia
Minor, and the myths which depict his triumph over other
deities at Delphi, Sparta, and elsewhere may reflect dimly his
increasing popularity during the Dark ages. Athena, the majestic
patron of the arts, is generally agreed to have descended from
the palace deity of the Mycenaean age-the palace, it will be
remembered, was an economic center in that era. From the
Minoan world came apparently the tales of the birth and death
of Zeus and perhaps some aspects of later Greek mysticism;
temples, cult statues (largely of goddesses), and religious
paraphernalia in Crete show an uninterrupted continuity of
very old ideas.3 Zeus himself, however, as the Father of the Gods
was an Indo-European god of the sky, the only one whose name
proves that he accompanied the northern invaders. Other mem-
bers of the Greek pantheon, again, probably came from the
Orient. .
Yet, as in Greek history generally, the basic issue is not
the source of the elements in Hellenic religion. What must be
explained is their reworking and amalgamation from the Dark
ages onward. Here particularly the tendency of many religious
students to distinguish between an emotional, chthonian, mys-
tical attitude of a pre-Indo-European stratum and a rational,
ethical outlook of the Indo-Europeans themselves puts the
development in entirely the wrong light. Tensions in later Greek
religion, as we shall see, are to be ,explained only on social,
economic, and psychological grounds, and its earlier develop-
ments cannot properly be attributed to anyone area or to any
one class.· By the early eighth century a long, unseen process of
tectress in war was a product of the on its Minoan l;lackground, cf. Groene-
development of the city-state. The wegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Move-
problems involved in searching for the ment, 214-16, and Nilsson, lIlinoan-
origins of such gods are well illus- Mycenaean Religion, 447-56, 576-
trated by the fact that Poseidon to 82.
Schachermeyr (Poseidon) is an an- • Contra, Schachermeyr s.v. Prahis"
cient Aegean deity; to Lesky (Tha- torische Kulturen Griechenlands in
latta, 9;2-98). an Indo-European im- PW, 1481-86, and Poseidon, 109-13,
port. 122-29; Nilsson, GGR, I, 324, 610-
3 Brock, Fortetsa, nn. 546-50, 1047. 11; see Chap. 2, n. 8 (p. 71), and
1414, 1440. 1568, give a good con- Chap. 8, n. 9 (p. 288).
spectus of the peculiar Cretan flavor;
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century
analysis had reached the level which we can detect in the
physical and literary evidence of this era. The sculptors had
come to the point where they felt able, and compelled, to
represent some divine forces in human form; in doing so they
were soon to gain inspiration from the more polished arts of the
Orient. Beside them, however, stood the poet who fashioned
the Iliad and placed within it a divine picture which was in its
tum to stimulate further artistic and literary advances based on
these native roots. To what extent Homer deliberately shaped
the picture of the divine world which overlooked the struggling
Greeks and Trojans we cannot securely determine; but I should
be inclined to suspect that rather rapid advance occurred in
this matter, as in Dipylon pottery and in the formulation of the
epic itself. Always in considering Greek religion, however, one
must remember that below its developed level lay more primi-
tive strata of magic, superstition, and generalized views of
divine power, which were to endure throughout classic civiliza-
tion.

THE MEN OF THE EARLY EIGHTH CENTURY

As MEN CAME to visualize the gods more sharply in forms

like themselves, so they became more aware of their own nature.
Probing, conscious reflection upon the essential marks of man-
kind and upon its place in the world, which was to be one of the
most magnificent marks of Greek culture, was principally a
conquest of the age of revolution; but its first stages had taken
place by the early eighth century. There are, in testimony, the
Dipylon vases; there are also the marvelous portraits by Homer,
whose "acquaintance with the passions of mankind" 5 vas to
make his work an enduring manual of human life in later
centuries. Wily Odysseus, garrulous but sage Nestor, bluff
Agamemnon, wrathful Achilles-from such skillfully character-
ized types and theirinterplay arises the human plot of the Iliad.
The psychological advances of the past half-century have
5 Dio Chrysostom, Orations LXI. 1.
 PART II . The Dark Ages
led us to see more clearly that the Homeric portrait of mankind
was still limited in major respects. In part this limitation was the
result of the stylization of an epic, oral technique, which forced
poets as well as Dipylon potters to work within a framework of
accepted motifs and simple composition. Only thus could order
be brought into the chaos of life. Homer, again, made no effort to
be a Dante and to embrace all the knowledge and thought of his
era. Quite obviously, whole phases of human activity could not
enter into the epic story of war; aspects of life which were to be
expressed in the seventh-century work of Hesiod, Archilochus,
and black-figure potters may already have existed, as yet un-
voiced, in the age of Homer.
A more basic limitation, which characterized eighth-cen-
tury thought as a whole, was the epic inability to visualize men
physically as an integrated whole, moved internally. Detailed
analysis of Homer's vocabulary and turns of expression has
demonstrated that to the poet the human frame was a collection
of parts, as it is represented on the Dipylon pictures. In the
Iliad, to repeat an earlier observation, man exists only to act; in
the Odyssey an inner force and a deliberately thoughtful con-
sideration of one's course of action are about to make their
appearance.6 Between the two epics lies the beginning phas~ of
the revolution in Greek civilization which defined its course for
all subsequent centuries; the Iliad is our greatest landmark of
the development in the Dark ages which prefaced that revolu-
tion.
Yet, though the heroes of the Iliad still drew their strength
and their folly from divine impulse, they were characters en-
dowed with freedom of will. Though encompassed by a wild
nature and themselves committed to the task of killing, they
were baSically rational, reflective, and purposeful. Though
generalized and subject to the iron dictates of communal stand-
ards, they displayed individual passions just as did the men who
listened to the tale of their exploits. They exhibited, in fine,
6Joachim Bohme, Die Seele und das and the works cited by Lesky, Gno-.
Ich im homerischen Epos (Leipzig, mon, XXVII (1955),483, against the
1929); Frankel, Dichtung und Philos- views of Homeric psychology here ac-
ophie, 111-13, 120-32; Treu, Von cepted.
Homer zur Lyrik, 10-17, and passim;
CHAPTER 5 . The Early Eighth Century
the major characteristics which we call Greek. If any proof is
needed that Greek civilization had emerged before the upheaval
which produced archaic society, it may most obviously be
found here; but let me suggest that adequate corroboration of
this view can be found also in such small details as the logical
qualities of the hexameter line or the meander pattern on a
Geometric vase.
The men of the early eighth century were not consciously
proud of their achievements-such egotism came in the next
period. When they turned back to look at the past, they saw
first a grim era, the age of iron in Hesiod's famous description.
Beyond that lay a great period, the age of heroes, when men,
said Homer, could hurl stones which two men of his age could
not lift. The Dark ages had not been tranquil, superficially
secure centuries of rapid progress; and yet, as we have seen in
the preceding three chapters, they had witnessed basic develop-
ments.
Particularly by studying the stages of Protogeometric and .
Geometric pottery, but also by using other hints, the historian
today can establish the tempo of change. First had come the
emergence of new patterns in the eleventh century. Then fol-
lowed two centuries of slow consolidation as the population of
Greece again settled down into villages and replenished its
numbers; this progress produced a basic cultural unification of
the Aegean basin and also a host of local variations of the
common structure.
Finally, in the early eighth century the pace quickened
appreciably. The increasing richness of the graves of nobles, the
appearance of figurines and shrines in far greater numbers, the
sudden emergence of the Dipylon figured scenes, the Greek
adoption of the alphabet, the cult of heroes-all these are
unmistakable, essentially datable testimony that Greek culture
was moving toward a new phase. On the solid basis of these
indicators we may hope to date the Iliad, the fixing of myth,
and the crystallization of the OlympiC pantheon to approxi-
mately the same era.
One great problem of historical study, the determination of
stages of amplification and alteration, can thus be answered for
186 PART II . The Dark Ages
early Greek civilization. The other issue, the cause of these
changes, is not simple. "All change," wrote Thoreau, "is a
miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place
every instant." The historian of early Greece may yet hope to
determine, in the broadest terms, the motive forces of its de-
velopment. These forces I would find first in a happy blend of
tensions which at once produced a stable system and yet left
seeds for dynamic movement: the combination of a common
Aegean culture and strong local variations; the presence both of
group unity and of individual self-assertion; the fusion of the
Minoan-Mycenaean inheritance with patterns deriving from
earlier Greek ways and those of the invaders. But Greek civiliza-
tion was not simply a meeting of opposites. One must keep in
mind as well the shock of collapse, which had forced men to
think afresh at the end of the second millennium, and the sub-
sequent temporary isolation of the Aegean basin from new
outside forces.
Is even this enough? When the historian looks back across
his story thus far, he may still feel amazement; the dimensions
and outward sureness of development in this period are an un-
usual miracle of human ability. The heroes of Homer feel ·that
their achievements are extremely difficult, ,and repeatedly call
upon divine aid if they are to act; the poet himself implores the
aid of the Muses to tell his story. And so it was in reality. Every
step taken by the Greeks of the Dark ages which even in the
slightest degree changed ancestral patterns must have been
extraordinarily difficult; yet the steps were taken, slowly, often
unconsciously, but along an essentially consistent path in the
long run.
Inheriting a mass of earlier elements, the generations which
lived in the Aegean from 1100 to 750 fused them into a coherent
outlook and social structure which, by the time of the Iliad,
must be labeled Greek. As we look onward, it is with the knowl-
edge that this world was ready to expand both culturally_ and
politically, without losing its own identity.
 PART III

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

 CHAPTER 6

THE ORIENT AND GREECE

FOR CENTURIES Greek civilization had crawled laboriously.

Then suddenly, in the late eighth and early seventh centuries,
the Aegean world blazed out in revolutionary change. The
remarkable progress of this era is sharply apparent in our
physical evidence; one fine example is afforded by the contrast
in two shrines of Hera at Perachora opposite Corinth.
The earlier of the two, which was dedicated to Hera Akraia
(of the Height), lasted down to about 750. The men who
worshipped here brought the gifts of a still simple world: a
limited amount of local pottery, with a few Argive pieces; simple
pins and fibulae; gold disks and rings of primitive character;
. three scarabs of faience; four glass beads or pendants; one amber
pendant; three terra-cotta figurines. Nearby a new shrine of
Hera Limenia (of the Harbor) was constructed about 750. The
change itself is significant; the finds, moreover, from the new
site are far more abundant and varied. There is pottery not only
of Corinth but also of Argos, Athens, the Cyclades, and Boeotia;
developed pins and fibulae of many types in bronze, ivory, and
amber; dozens of glass and amber beads; over a hundred ivory
objects; bronze and clay figurines; scarabs of faience in numbers.
As its brilliant excavator observed, these shrines reveal in their
juxtaposition both the limited horizon of the era of Geometric
pottery and then "how suddenly the geometric world was
opened, by the expansion of trade, to new influences; how in the
second half of the eighth century the first great expansion in the
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
west coincides with the new wealth, both of materials and of
ideas, which Corinth at this time derived from the East." 1
The age of revolution, 750-650, was the most dramatic
development in all Greek history. Change was many-sided and
was intricately connected in all fields; gnd the connections both
with basic earlier patterns of the Aegean world and with outside
cultures deserve careful study. Upheaval, too,. means different
things from different points of view. Men of the age, I suspect,
felt the difficulties of change more than its blessings; there are
very evident tokens of mental and physical stress as well as of
conservative efforts to cling to old ways. These we must keep in
mind if we are to appreciate fully the marvelous achievements
of the period.
Swiftly, with simple but sharp strokes, the Greeks erected a
coherent, interlocked system politically, economically, and cul-
turally, which endured throughout the rest of their independent
life. In field after field the modern student can trace back to the
early seventh century, but no further, the developed lineaments
of the Hellenic outlook; beyond lie only primitive, almost in-
choate foundations. The century from 750 to 650 thus witnessed
a great expansion of trade, the wide outrush of Greek coloniza-
tion, and the consolidation of the city-state under aristocratic
domination. Beside this vehicle of Greek localism, however, the
concept of Hellenic civilization became a conscious}y felt, gener-
ally unifying force in the Aegean. In the field of art, pottery shed
its rigid geometric dress; Protocorinthian, Protoattic, and other
potters created the forms and elaborated the motifs of succeed-
ing centuries. The great mold of Greek architectural thought,
the stone temple, made its appearance. Sculptors gained the
confidence to work on a large scale in stone and metal; from the-
first simple modeling of human forms in figurines they advanced
swiftly to such noble types as the kouros, the idealized nude
athletic male. While the epic tradition continued long enough to
produce the Odyssey and Hesiod's work, new forms of literature
app~ared, and the Greek view of human personality gained new
depth in the lyric.
1 Humfry Payne, Perachora: The Sanc- I (Oxford, 1940),33-34.
tuaries of Hera Akraia and Limenia,
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 19 1

Fortunately for the historian, the body of available litera-

ture and physical remains now increases greatly in quantity and
in variety. General histories of Greece have commonly floun-
dered, in a cursory chapter or two, through the "Homeric age,"
but begin their real treatment with the later seventh century. In
doing so, their authors have relied primarily upon the ancient
literature; today the historian must also consider an ever in-
creasing number of monographs which are reducing to order
specialized areas of the physical evidence, such as Protocorin-
thian and Proto attic pottery, Attic gold bands, Cretan bronzes,
the early passage of vases and artistic motifs between Greece
and the Orient, and so on. Much remains to be done, as in the
fields of Greek ivories and East Greek pottery; and the strong
likelihood of major new discoveries renders tentative any de-
tailed conclusions. The main lines of evolution, however, seem
clear, and upon these we must concentrate at the cost of passing
over many intriguing side paths. Yet no student of Hellenic
culture can entirely ignore its wide range of local variations,
which now became increasingly well defined and enduringly
significant.
Thenceforth, too, we can no longer treat the Aegean en-
tirely by itself. The great wave of invasions from the north had
ended; whatever lasting imprint the barbarians had placed on
Greek culture in its initial stage was now an indivisible part of
that outlook, a continuing inheritance from the Dark ages. By the
eighth century, on the other hand, direct contact with the
Orient was resumed and increased steadily until the days of
Alexander's conquest. Greece became again linked to the eastern
Mediterranean, first culturally, then politically, to a far greater
degree than had been true in the Mycenaean age. This new
element in Aegean history deserves careful inspection before we
turn to the age of revolution itself. In particular we must assess
the mode, date, and significance of the ties between East and
West in the era leading up to the great changes in Greece.
192 PART III . The Age of Revolution

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ORIENT

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Orient in Greek civilization is a

subject on which the views of scholars have swung between
opposite poles. Down to· the eighteenth century students still
largely accepted the early Christian (and Jewish) efforts to
prove that Mosaic civilization had preceded that of Greece and
Rome. Though the arguments for. Hebrew priority steadily lost
ground, the inherited presupposition of heavy Greek indebted-
ness to the East gained support for a time from the translation of
the Phoenician language (1750-8) and from a growing acquaint-
ance with the antiquities of Mesopotamia and Egypt,2
In the nineteenth century this pOint of view came under
heavy attack. Philologists created the concept of a common "
body of Indo-European languages and, by extension, of an
early Indo-European culture; German scholars especially seized
upon the new evidence as the basis for a shibboleth that Nordic
blood was the primary force in Greek civilization. Beside this
product of nineteenth-century nationalism stood the liberal
strain of thought, confident in the powers of human reason,
which dreamed a mighty picture of the rational, human-cen~
tered culture of Periclean Athens. In many majestic panoramas
of the classic glory of Greece which were, written toward the end
of the century one will search in vain for any suggestion that
Oriental influence had a serious role in the origins of Western
culture.
More recently the pendulum has swung back. While some
scholars continue to flog the Nordic myth zealously, the excesses_
of their assertions have now become obvious. Humanists still
fashion a timeless heaven of wit and reason out of classic Greece;
but the realities of historical fact can no longer be entirely
ignored in an age which now has a deeper sense of the irrational
factor in human activities. Although one may sharply s_eparate
2The opening chapter of Mazzarino, Culture (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1942),
Fra Oriente e Occidente, furnishes a 37-40. For more recent argumeqt by
good survey of early opinions on the Barnett, Gordon, Roes, Webster, et aI.,
place of the Orient; see also W. F. see above, Chap. 5, nn. 7-8 (pp.
Albright, Studies in the History of 1 65-66).
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 193
the rational glow of Greece from the "superstition-ridden"
Orient, the accumulating weight of evidence stands against the
possibility that Greek civilization sprang full-blown from the
head of Zeus. In 1912 Poulsen's Der Orient und die friihgrie-
chische Kunst put the demonstration of the artistic interrelations
of East and West in the eighth and seventh centuries on a new
level; and a host of detailed studies, which will be considered
later, have further illustrated the Greek artistic borrowings from
the rich Oriental culture of the time. For many decades the art
and sculpture of Greece during the age of revolution have been
termed "Orientalizing."
As our knowledge of the links between East and West,
especially through the arts and letters of Syria and Phoenicia,
has increased, there has even come a revival of the old thesis that
Greek civilization was essentially an extension of the Orient;
that the eastern Mediterranean as a whole formed a cultural
unit out of which Hebrew thought and the Greek achievement
rose as twin mountain peaks. Adherents of this point of view
link Homer directly to the Oriental epic tradition, stress the
indebtedness of Greek mythology to the body of Near Eastern
myth, and make Greek religion and thought generally a direct
continuation of an Oriental inheritance. In the fields of the arts,
students of this persuasion incline to find so many Oriental
prototypes for Greek artistic motifs and forms of the age of
revolution that Greek art might well be called "Oriental" rather
than "Orientalizing." 3
> Only a small minority holds views so radical. There is a
twofold error at the root of this argument: first, civilization is
rather simply conceived as an indivisible continuum; and,
secondly, external borrowings are not distinguished from inter-
nal spirit, which alone gives meaning to historical inheritances.
The arguments of the Orientalists are rushing and far-Hung in
scope, but on analysis will often be found to be based upon
single artistic or literary motifs wrenched out of a wide context
3 E.g., R. D. Barnett, "Ancient Orien- prototypes that caused the change
tal Influences on Archaic Greece," from the early to the later, coarser
Aegean and Near East, 212-38, ob- Wild Goat style in Greece, and per-
serves (p. 233): "It was the fall of haps also the change from Protocorin-
Susa and the change in the Oriental thian to Corinthian."
194 PART III . The Age of Revolution

and treated in a mechanical form. Worse yet, the efforts to

link closely Greece and the Orient must draw upon materials
of very differing value, which range over many centuries.
Sober scholars have generally rejected the more extreme
claims of this type, as applied to specific bodies of evidence, but
the realization that links did bind the Orient and Greece by the
eighth century has all too often led men to unwarranted general
assumptions. The connections between Greece and the East
were indeed important all across the sweep of Aegean history.
Throughout the earlier millennia which we have already ex-
amined, Greece was a mediator between Europe and Asia, and
Aegean civilization had developed as a local response to the
Oriental spur. In the age of revolution the Greeks once more
knew the world of the Orient. The tempo of Aegean progress
and even its forms in part were much affected by that knowl- ~
edge.
Yet these are not the points which one must keep primarily
in mind. First of all, Greek civilization had already appeared by
this date and was, in its origins, an Aegean product. In the cen-
turies of the first, great, and decisive steps toward this formula-
tion the Greek world had, largely by its own choice, little contact
eastward.
Then again, the great revolution of the eighth century did
not start from the Orient. If Greece was now to resume close
contact with the Orient, this connection rose largely because
men of the eighth-century Aegean were ready to widen their
ken and to build more loftily; partly, too, because the Orient
itself had developed during its own Dark ages a more cosmo-
politan, attractive culture than it had known ,in the Bronze age.
From this Eastern culture, finally, the Greeks in 'and' after
the eighth century borrowed extenSively in motifs, in forms, and~
above all, in inspiration that certain things could be done. Wjth-
out this aid, the Greeks entirely on their own mighto not have
achieved so much; for what made Hellenic civilization truly
outstanding was the once-for-all juxtaposition of fresll Greek
energy and the inherited lore of the Orient. But always in human
history the question is not so much whence inspiration comes as
this: what do men do with external stimuli in their own minds?
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 195
The proof of this point of view will be the burden of
subsequent chapters. Here we must draw Greece and the Orient
together. That the early eighth-century Aegean was in a stage of
increasing ferment has already been shown; it is time now to
sketch the political and cultural development of the Near East
down to the same pOint. The significant renewal of contacts
between the two areas, which then ensued, also offers several
serious problems as to its mode and date.

THE UNIFICATION OF THE ORIENT

THE FIRST CENTERS of civilization in the Near East had been

the river valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Here firmly or-
ganized states, grouped about kings and temples, had appeared
before the end of the fourth millennium B.C. in a process which
seems to have been one of swift crystallization. Within a space of
only two or three centuries both Egyptian and Mesopotamian
cultures had set the main outlines on which they developed for
thousands of years. The achievements of this period must stag-
ger the modern observer, yet the men who lived in the river
valleys paid a heavy price for their victories. Only by erecting
the symbols of god-king, as in Egypt, or of a divine state of
omnipotent gods, as in Babylonia, were men able to group
themselves in the closely knit collective units on earth which
could attain so much. The epics and myths of Mesopotamia
reveal the hidden anxiety that humanity had been overbold in
creating civilization, and the patterns of life, once created,
settled into firm conventions which discouraged free experi-
mentation.·
From Mesopotamia, in particular, vital impulses radiated
out, eastyvard as far as India and apparently even to China,

4Origins of civilization: Chap. 1, n. 7 104-06; Frankfort, Birth of Civiliza-

(p. 24); also Wilson, The Burden of tion in the Near East, 51-52; Georges
Egypt, 145 if., 308. Anxiety: the Atra- Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon
hasis epic, in which the gods punish and Assyria (London, 1954),301-02,
by flood the clamors of busy man- who attributes part of this feeling to
kind, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, the oppressive climate.
196 PART III . The Age of Revolution

westward along the course of the upper Euphrates to Syria-

Palestine in the third millennium. By the end of this period
Assyrian merchants were trading into southeastern Asia Minor,
and soon thereafter the Hittites of central Anatolia began to
fashion civilized states. The development of the Aegean, and
especially of Crete, also owed much to Oriental example, though
the flavor of civilization there always remained distinct. In the
second millennium, once the initial wave of invasions and inove-
ments had subsided, the Near East rose to a peak of culture. The
international politics of Egypt, Syrian princedoms, Assyria, and
the Hittites assumed almost a modern flavor; international trade
drew in even the bold inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece; and
artistic influences radiated widely. Yet the gleam of this super-
structure cannot obscure the fact that culture remained essen-
tially local throughout the Near East; there was in the Bronze
age no one Oriental civilization.
Internal decay paved the way for a great series of in-
vasions at the end of the second millennium. The invaders from
the north, as we have seen, destroyed the fragile structure of
civilization in the Aegean and Asia Minor and shook much of
the rest of the Near East; Semitic-speaking peoples such as the
Arameans and Habiru pressed into Palestine, Syria, and Meso-
potamia from the Arabian desert. The product everywhere was
a marked reduction in the level of culture. The empires van-
ished; many cities were abandoned; in some areas peasants had
to struggle bitterly to maintain settled life even on a village
plane. The early first millennium was a dismal, poverty-stricken
age. .
Throughout the Near East, however, civilization was not
quite as catastrophically overturned as in the Aegean. Egypt
and Assyria survived as kingdoms, albeit weakened. The Ara-
means, Hebrews, and others who came into Syria and Palestine
took over the structure they found and erected small princi-
palities, the most famous of which were the Phoenician city-'
kingdoms and the territorial kingdom of David and Solomon.
Neither the literary nor the artistic inheritance of the past was
entirely lost. Much of the Orient has an artistic gap in major
products, which in our present knowledge seems to have ex-
CHAPTER 6 . The, Orient and Greece 197
tended over two centuries and more (c. 1150-950),5 and even in
Egypt, which was less markedly affected than any other area,
monuments of tl1is dull era were on a minor scale. Yet the
Hebrews picked up a wealth of ancient myth from their neigh-
bors; Phoenician craftsmen built and adorned palace and temple
for Solomon; Ahab erected a house of ivory, In smaller objects
the working of ivory, bronze, and stone continued; and an
ancestral treasury of motifs, some purely decorative, others of
human, animal, and monster forms, endured, Along the Syrian
coast, an area which must particularly interest the student of
Greek evolution, artistic styles of the first centuries after 1000
B,C. were an amalgam of old influences from Egypt, Mesopo-
tamia, and the Minoan-Mycenaean world, encased in a stiff,
even "geometric" form. Though no one can mistake these prod-
ucts for Greek, much the same simplification and resort to
rigidity occurred in Syria as in the Aegean (and also in Asia
Minor).
While old political, economic, and cultural patterns thus
survived, their earlier dominance was seriously shaken; the
resurgence which followed the collapse was not simply a revival
of earlier ways, Among the many aspects of this resurgence,
which has not yet received its full attention, those of greatest
interest here are, first, the increasing unification of the Orient
and, secondly, the fact that revival in the Orient preceded the
Aegean age of revolution by a century or more.
In the eastern Mediterranean trade by sea had never
quite disappeared. It now fell largely into Phoenician hands
and began to expand rapidly by at least the ninth century. The
first clear evidence is the establishment of Phoenician trading
posts in Cyprus, which should probably be dated to the period
just before 800 B.C,; Phoenician exploration and trade in the
western Mediterranean probably came largely after this date,

5 Frankfort, Art and Architecture of as possible, Geometric flavor: Muller,

the Ancient Orient, 164~66, stretches Fruhe Plastik, 103-36; Adolf Furt-
out the gap virtually to 1200-850; wangler, Antike Gemmen, III (Leip-
W, F, Albright, "Northeast Mediter- zig-Berlin, 1900), 65; Edith Porada,
ranean Dark Ages and the Early Iron "A Lyre Player from Tarsus and His
Age Art of Syria," Aegean and Near Relations," Aegean and Near East,
East, 144-64, essays to close it as far 185-211,
198 PART III . The Age of Revolution
though the problem is a thorny one. 6 On land the Arameans of
North Syria held commercial primacy. By the ninth century
their princes were wealthy enough t<? decorate cities such as
Tell Halaf with imposing monuments which could not be
equaled, at least for size, anywhere in contemporary Greece. 1
A concomitant of this economic advance was the Assyrian
effort to gain political dominance over the Near East and so to
translate an increasingly unified economic world into empire.
The chain of Assyrian conquests commenced in the ninth
century but achieved fruition only in the days of Tiglath-
Pileser III (744-727), when Assyrian rule extended from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Under his successors, es-
pecially Sargon II (721-705), the Assyrians even gained the
submission of the seven kings of la, the Greeks, i.e., of Cyprus. 8
They also conquered Cilicia, where other Greek-speaking people
were domiciled.
To call the Assyrian domination of the Near East "Empire,"
as is commonly done, overregularizes a situation which was
never firmly consolidated. The Assyrian warlords were not able
to exercise enduring control over the mountains to their north,
where the state of Urartu had risen in the modern Armenia by
the eighth century, and Assyrian rul~ even in the lower lands of
6 Einar Cjerstad, Swedish Cyprus Ex- 286-87, 290-91 (Esarhaddon); Be-
pedition, IV. 2, The Cypro-Geometric, rossus, FHG, II, 504, fragment 12 on
Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical Cilicia. The problem of the origin and
Periods (Stockholm, 1948), 436-40, precise meaning of the terms laman,
offers the most solid analysis of the Iatnam, and Iavan (Genesis 10:2,4)
Cypriote evidence; for the western is much vexed; see the material in
Mediterranean, see below, Chap. 11. Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occidente;
1 Ekrem Akurgal, Spiithethitische 89, 113-26; \V. Brandenstein, "Bemer-
Bildkunst (Ankara, 1949); illustra- kungen zur Volkertafel in der Gene-
tions in Tell Halaf; III, ed. Dietrich sis," Festschrift Debrunner (Bern,-
Opitz and Anton Moortgat (Berlin, 1954), 57-83; Dunbabin, Greeks and
1955). See also Carchemish, D. C. Their Eastern Neighbours, 30-31;
Hogarth and C. L. Woolley, Carche- C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, "Zur Er-
mish, I-III (London, 1914-52), which wahnung der Ionier in altorientali-
remained "Hittite" to a greater extent schen Quellen," Klio, XXVII (1934),
down to its fall to Assyria in 718 74-83, 286-94. However derived
(Coetze, Hethiter, Churriter und As- (and the origin of the Greek word
syrer, 165); Frankfort, Art and Archi- for Ionians, 'I aFoPfS, is unclear) the
tecture of the Ancient Orient, 182- term in Assyrian records surely means
83, notes this but limits the Hittite no more than the Greek-speaking 'in-
character (d. p. 165). habitants of Cyprus (and at times of
8 Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 284, CUicia).
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 199
Mesopotamia and Syria was imperiled by repeated revolt. The
brutality and militarism which stamp Assyrian records are per-
haps a testimony to this insecure position. In the end, Nineveh
fell in 612, and the Hebrew prophets far off in Palestine rejoiced
greatly.
The Assyrians nonetheless went far toward breaking the
political localism of the Near East and toward accustoming its
traders and local magnates to accept over-all political unity; of
this development the milder Persians were to reap the profit.
Another product of the political and economic revival, as well
perhaps as of the quieting down of northern Eurasia, was the
increasing ability of the Near Eastern military and political
system to bar outside invaders. After the Cimmerian onslaught,
which swept as far as Egypt early in the seventh century, the
Orient was not again seriously affected by attacks of northern
invaders until long after the time of Christ.
For Greek history the political unification of the Orient was
eventually to have tremendous influence, but the slow tempo of
its initial stage was an incalculable blessing. Tucked off in an
obscure corner behind the seas and the forbidding mass of
Asia Minor, the Greeks of the eighth and seventh centuries
were able to develop their own political institutions almost
without foreign influence. The end product, the polis or city-
state, was to be vitally different from the political pattern of the
Orient. From Sumerian days Eastern kingship had been divinely
appointed, ''lowered from Heaven" in the conventional phrase,
and kings had gained their glory largely by war. Of the earliest
known conqueror, Sargon J, later chroniclers reported that "he
marched against the country of Kazalla and turned Kazalla
into ruin-hills and heaps of rubble. He even destroyed there
every possible perching place for a bird." 9 The Assyrian mon-
archs boasted unendingly, both in word and in the grimly
fascinating reliefs of their palaces, which display mounds of
human heads and the fierce storming of cities; and by this date
the gods who supported earthly rule had shrunk far into the
background.
9 Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 266; the semblies need not be considered here.
rise of kingship over communal as-
200 PART III . The Age of Revolution

Leading their nobles and peasants in looting expeditions

was not the only task of the kings, who piously supported
justice and also directed vast palace economies of traders and
artisans; but as a whole the institution of Oriental imperialistic
monarchy, boasting its wealth from "the incoming taxes of all
inhabited regions," 1 was far removed from the tiny city-states
of archaic Greece, both in size and in spirit. Beside the kings in
their palaces stood the great temples, the scenes of highly
developed cult attended by a vast array of specialized priests
who manipulated a complex, inherited lore. In Greece, on the
other hand, simple mud-brick chapels and ash altars still
served as the focus for communal worship of the basic forces
guarding human existence.
So, too, the intellectual framework of the Assyrian world,
which drew heavily from all earlier tradition, differed greatly
from that of the contemporary Aegean. Much more advanced on
the factual level, Oriental knowledge was encased in bonds
which were to prevent it from developing as amazingly as did
the Greek world thenceforth. Mesopotamian thought did not
have that analytical and synthesizing quality already visible in
Greek Geometric pottery and in the Iliad. The basic; process was
one of analogical reasoning, and the end product Was often
simple classification; the same difficulty in co-ordination appears
in the poetic tendency to heap up parallel expressions one after
another. In the Orient, nonetheless, the practical sciences had
been the subject of experiment, however unconscious, for mil-
lennia of enduring civilization. Knowledge of the stars and of
mathematics had already made great strides; the body of Meso-
potamian myth contained a great deal of speculation about the
nature of man's life. 2 The Greeks were to draw upon this
material to a marked extent but so. transmuted their borrowings
that we are not always aware of the source; as far as myth is

1 Ibid. 311 (Nabonidus). Contenau, phy (Penguin, 1949); Otto J. Neuge-

Everyday Life, 113-41, sketches the bauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiq-
nature of Eastern monarchy; its de- uity (zd ed.; Providence, R. 1.,1957);
veloped Havor appears sharply in the Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and
Assyrian royal inscriptions. A. R. Hall, ed., A History of Tech-
2 See generally Contenau, 158-59; nology, I (Oxford, 1954).
Henri Frankfort et aI., Before Philoso-
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece' 201

concerned, men of the Western world have gained much more

direct knowledge of Babylonian tale-telling from its adaptation
by the Hebrews. In many ways, inCidentally, this small people
in the hills of Palestine fitted as poorly into the main Oriental
tradition as did the Greeks. But Israel lay directly adjacent to
the centers of the Orient. Its political catastrophes, while pro-
moting the search of the Hebrew prophets for the deeper mean-
ing of religion, may suggest how much the more distant Greeks
were spared.
The artistic development of the Assyrian period reflects the
political and economic unity of the time. In the great palaces of
Sargon and Ashurbanipal architecture made great strides to-
ward solemn monumental complexes; the reliefs which paneled
the walls of the palaces reached an unprecedented height in
the depiction of action, of realistic agony of dying animals,
even of the suggestion of space. 3 But these were far-off master-
pieces which the first Greek traders probably never saw, or, if
they did, could have no hope of emulating. The smaller arts-
textiles, ivory and gold, bronze statuettes and bowls-were far
more important as vehicles by which the Aegean world could
learn of Oriental techniques, motifs, and concepts, first as they
were practiced along the littoral of Syria and Phoenicia and
then, in the seventh century, in their Assyrian forms.
As an outside observer considers the minor arts, he feels
strongly inclined to deduce that the craftsmen of the Orient
were developing in the ninth and eighth centuries a fairly
uniform, generalized style well suited for far-flung sale. Ivory
plaques depicting a comely courtesan at her window, pierced
rellefs of opposed animals or grazing cattle, faience scarabs,
car\:,ed tridacna shells, bronze dishes intricately worked with
rows of animals or scenes of siege and war, great caldrons
3 Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and gon (G. Loud, The Palace of Sargon,
Movement, 169-81; Frankfort, Art II [Chicago, 1938], pI. 59) or Greek
and Architecture of the Ancient Ori- vases (one sub-Mycenaean, one Pro-
ent, 84-101; Contenau, Everyday togeometric, one Rhodian) to Nineveh
Life, 101-13; Goetze, Rethiter, ChuT- (R. W. Hutchinson, IRS, LII [193z],
riter und Assyrer, 18z-84, who em- 130). Assyrian relief had a limited in-
phasizes the root in Hurrian art. We fluence even in northern Syria, accord-
cannot determine how Greek fibulae ing to Frankfort, Art and Architecture
made their way to the palace of Sar- of the Ancient Orient, 179.
202 PART III . The Age of Revolution
whereon were riveted winged figures (Assurattaschen) to hold
the handles, delicate gold earrings-all these and a thousand
other items were sold over the Near East and soon made their
way far afield in the Mediterranean. 4 The craftsmanship is
generally tidy, the composition neat, the drawing realistic
within its conventions; the aim is clearly decoration rather than
deep artistic probing of the universe. The consumer, whether
priest, king, or foreign trader, obviously dominated the artist.
Yet one must be cautious in thus reducing the arts of the
Near East to a common formula, for wide variations can be
sensed in these products. While the work of Phoenician shops
reflected an Egyptian inheritance and' often was soft and sickly
sweet, that of North Syria drew little from this source. Far
firmer and more vigorous, it turned instead to so-called "Hit-
tite" prototypes. The distinctive flavor of Urartian bronze work,
again, is only recently coming into focus as distinct from
Assyrian styles. s Greek art which drew on this material varied in
minor details according to its source; lions on seventh-century
Corinthian vases thus were designed in two perceptibly different
styles, the "Hittite" first and then the Assyrian. 6 Within a
4 This art awaits its major study; see (1956), 205-13; Massimo Pallottino,
pro tempore, Helmut Th. Bossert, Alt- "Gli Scavi di Karmir-Blur in Armenia
syrien (Tiibingen, 1951); Frankfort, e il problema delle conessioni tra
Art and Architecture of the Ancient rUrartu, Ia Grecia e I'Etruria," Arche-
Orient, 164-201; Miiller, Friihe Pla- alogia classica, VII (1955), 109-23;
stik, 103-36; Poulsen, Der Orient. K. R. Maxwell-Hyslop, "Urartian
Ivories: R. D. Barnett, "The Nimrud Bronzes in Etruscan Tombs," Iraq,
Ivories and the Art of the Phoeni- XVIII (1956), 150-67 (Urartian
cians," Iraq, II (1935), 179-210; bronzes at. Olympia, p. 167); R. D.
"Phoenician and Syrian Ivory Carv- Barnett, Iraq~ XII .( 1950), 37-39;
ing," Palestine Exploration Quarterly, Bittel, Grundziige der Vor- und Friih-
1939, 4-19; "Early Greek and Orien- geschiclite Kleinasiens, 78-81; Goetze,
tal Ivories," ]HS, LXVIII (1948), Kleinasien, 187-200; Frankfort, Art
1-25; A Catalogue of the Nimrud and Architecture of the Ancient Ori-
I varies ( London, 1957) ; also De- ent, 186, 189, 244 n. 55, 258 n. 105,
margne, La Crete dedalique, 203-14; who denies any original character to
C. Decamps de Mertzenfeld, Inven- Urartian bronze work but admits the
taire com mente des ivoires pheniciens possibility that its smiths influenced
et apparentes decouverts dans le the West (though not by land).
Proche-Orient (Paris, 1954). 6 Hanfmann, HSCP, LXI (1953), 18,
5 Pierre :Amandry, "Chaudrons a pro- 34-35; Humfry Payne, Necrocorinthia
tomes de taureau en Orient et en (Oxford, 1931), 19, 53, 67-69, 146,-
Grece," Aegean and Near East, 239- 147; Dunbabin, Greeks and Their
61; George M. A. Hanfmann, "Four Eastern Neighbours, 41-42, 47-49;
Urartian Bulls' Heads," AnatSt, VI Akurgal, Spiithethitische Bildkunst,
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 203

general uniformity of outlook the artistic styles of the Near

East yet differed notably in Assyrian times. Unfortunately for
the Creek student who wishes to disentangle the skeins of
Oriental influence in the eighth- and seventh-century Aegean,
these variations have not yet received definitive treatment.
The main points nonetheless are clear. Taken en masse, the
arts of the Near East were by the eighth century as far in
advance of the work of Aegean craftsmen as were the armies
and political concentration of the Assyrian realm. These prod-
ucts were, moreover, of a cosmopolitan, graceful flavor which
could well be attractive to the less advanced inhabitants of the
farther Mediterranean shores. Human and animal representa-
tion was a commonplace; lines were supply curved; ornament
was rich and harmonious. Equally important from our point of
view, this was a style of superficial grace. Neither in Egypt nor
in Syria was true artistic vigor, the expression of the human
spirit, pulsating when the Greeks came to the shores of the
Orient. 7 If this spirit appears in Greece during the great age of
revolution, it was not a foreign gift.

THE RE·ESTABLISHMENT OF CONTACTS

THE ORIENTALIZING movement which bulks so large in

Greek history did not affect solely the Aegean basin; if we
broaden our gaze, we can see that it was a very general force.
The Orient now was able to offer attractive wares and ideas;
and. any distTict elsewhere in the Mediterranean which was
ready politically, economically, and intellectually reached out
for the new materials. Most instructive to the student of Greek
history is the course of change in the Etruscan domains of
Italy, where political and cultural developments speeded up

76-79. Amandry. Syria. XXIV (1944- could be no worse teacher fot' a young
45), 151, also defines a Syrian type of and eager culture." Poulsen, DeT Ori-
lion (of the second millennium). ent, 73-74. suggests that it was fortu-
7 Wilson, Burden of Egypt, 308-17, nate the Greeks met the adaptive arts
discusses the dull, lifeless spirit of of Syria and Phoenicia rather than the
Egypt in the first millennium; "there greater art which lay behind them.
204 PART III . The Age of Revolution

amazingly in the late eighth century. In the sculpture and other

arts of Etruria the stimulus of Eastern contacts is evident from
about 750-725.8 The sources for the Orientalizing wave were the
same for the Aegean and for Etruria; even such detailed reper-
cussions as the stylistic shift from "Hittite" to Assyrian render-
ings which was just noted on Corinthian vases appears in
Etruscan work. Yet each area tapped the riches of Syrian-
Phoenician art independently, at least at the outset.
The major results, too, varied significantly between Greece
and Italy. Both districts had geometric backgrounds and tended
to geometricize their borrowings at the outset; but in Etruria
the native reaction was less lively, less continuous, less inde-
pendent. Only in Greece, of all non-Oriental lands, did local
artists succeed in absorbing the alien influences and then pro-
ceed to new heights of original stamp. It was Greece, not
Etruria, which evolved a more supple alphabet out of the
Phoenician model and passed its discovery on to other Mediter-
ranean lands. The Greek success was due in part to its native
Geometric synthesis, which had already reached a high level; in
part to its inheritances from the earlier rapprochement between
Mycenaean and Oriental lands in the Late Bronze age; and also
in part to the probability that contact between the Aegean and
the Syrian coast had never been broken, even at the lowest ebb
of civilization. The physical evidence for tenuous links, while
scanty, does exist, as we saw in Chapter 4-
Yet only as that artistic development occurred in the East
which has just been sketched, and only as the Aegean itself
began to burgeon were the necessary conditions at hand for
significant borrowing. A priori, Oriental imports could be ex-
pected to appear in the most developed areas 'of Greece, and
local arts could begin to reflect the stimulus of Oriental ideas,
by the late ninth century at best. Truly significant influence,
8The most useful studies on the pres- gang der orientalisierenden Kunst
ent aspect are P. J. Riis, Tyrrhenika: (Wi.irzburg, 1936). The effect was
An Archaeological Study of the Etrus- still limited in the eighth century;
can Sculpture in the Archaic and E. H. Dohan, Italic Tomh-Groups in
Classical Periods (Copenhagen, the University Museum (Philadelphia,
1941); Georg Hanfmann, Altetrus- 1942), 108, places the main influx of
kische Pillstik I: Die menschliclze Ge- Oriental and Greek products at 680-
stalt in deT RundplWitik his zum Aus- 650 •
((I) UII" "r (:""/1".''';'' ,'1'111,,1' f"/,,"1 iff \'''1'111
Cl'IIWlcry, ("",.;",11 (Cpritl l" ,\/ IIM ' (IIII ), 1'/',,-
("p'(/I'i, !ruli/ .-\.1 .-\, XXX/\ ' (II):]"). 0413,
no. ,.
(") UticaI' C(,(lfIwlri,' kllly'" from .\"!.!i/lll.
in all illl!lort(/f(1 1(,1(, .IIIO}I( ' (:\i~ina , IHI . 15-1 I.

(oJ (b)

(e)
(c) Early Prnlocoritll/ritlll rflJl fmlll ,\ ('gillo,
u;/ric/r cOlllhilies I'II'IS tlml fr(,c!lIIl1d clell/ellt.;
lI: il/, dccodC'lIt III(,(lfIders atld otlter C('ol"ctlic (ell
lJIotifs (Ai~ina, 110. l.'iO).
(d) The Rider Koly/e, (If Early Pmlo('or;li-
Ihiqll ,Ityle. frolll ,\ egilill (Aigin:l. Ii!). If)I),
PliOI(lgr(lJlh .~ I), C, (llld d c(/(rtc.IY D(,lIlsc/('s
. \f"(·/rii%gi.lc/res lli,llillll i/l lin/ill.

1'1 .''''1': 1:3 ' Hi.I'I' of rrolo("o/'i l/ l hi(//I POI/I'/'y

 (a) Fraglllcnts of large vase u;ilh fotlr roles
of lInima/~ fmlll ;\egilla (Aigina, no. 27.3).
Photogra/Jh courtcsy Deutsctws Archiiologi-
ScTlI.!S institut ill Berlill.
(iJ) Aryhllllos cOlllhinill{!. fiol'Cll, IIIIJlhical,
(/lid IInillllll e/I'IJJellts in the p"'fcctcc/ Prolo-
corillthian style (Museum of Fine Arts, 80s-
tOil). Photograph ('(wrlesy ,\I ((scum of Fine
\1'1.1', BcJ.~I()n.

Tl : IJ . Triwl/ p71 of tll(' Pro{o('orillilliall Sf yle

CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 20 5

however, would not come until the eighth century. Similar

reaction in the less advanced regions would be a matter for the
seventh century and even later. This is the actual pattern of
what did occur.
Against this background the otherwise puzzling brief ap-
pearance of a curvilinear pottery style at Cnossus (Protogeo-
metric B) in the era 850-820 is a significant phenomenon, if it
has been correctly dated. 9 When the most advanced potters of
Crete, at this time probably still the richest part of the Aegean,
began to turn from the debased sub-Minoan styles which had
lingered in the island, they apparently were willing to make
some experiments with materials of Oriental origin. But the
brief duration of the style, a Hash of light in a wintry Geometric
sky, is equally interesting-even the Greek land closest to the
Orient was not yet prepared to broaden its horizons so far. Very
soon Geometric impulses from the mainland gained the upper
hand at Fortetsa and remained dominant in its pottery well
down into the eighth century.
Potters were often among the most conservative craftsmen,
and enduring contact between Crete and the East showed
itself in other fields very soon after the eighth century began. 1
Worshippers at the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Ida dedicated
there a mass of ivories in which Eastern styles were clearly
reHected-indeed, some of the work may have been Phoenician.
Even more impressive are the famous Idaean bronze shields,
thin sheets of bronze shaped like shields or percussion instru-
ments and decorated elaborately with repousse reliefs. The
9 Brock, Fortetsa, 143: running spiral, Fragments of similar, apparently Cre-
are, cable. One could wish that the tan work have been found at Miletus
stratigraphic evidence to assign this and Delphi (BCH, LXVIII-LXIX
ware firmly to the ninth century were [1944-45], pI. 3. 1); d. Demargne,
much more certain. La Crete dedalique, 217-43; Levi,
1 Ivory: Emil Kunze, "Orientalische Early Hellenic Pottery, 8, who points
Schnitzereien aus Kreta," AM, LX-LXI out the Greek aspects of this work.
( 1935-36), 218-33; both Nimrud and Kunze's dates are supported by Henc-
Loftus types appear, according to Bar- ken, AJA, LIV (1950), 297-302; but
nett, IHS, LXVIII (1948),3-4. Gold: are lowered by Sylvia Benton, "The
R. W. Hutchinson and J. Boardman, Date of the Cretan Shields," BSA,
BSA, XLIX (1954), 215-30, on the XXXIX (1938-39), 52-64, and XL
Khaniale Tekke tombs. Bronze: ( 1939-40), 52-54; Pendlebury, Ar-
Kunze, Kretische Bronzereliefs, who chaeology of Crete, 336.
discusses well the Oriental parallels.

8
206 PART III . The Age of Revolution
earliest of these works smack dearly of Phoenician influences,
and the indebtedness to several Eastern artistic styles in subjects
and in the plumpish outlines of the human figures remained
profound throughout the course of their manufacture, which
was dated by Kunze from 800 at the latest on down into the
seventh century. Other students have not agreed in placing
their inception so early, but even if one lowers the first shields
toward 750 this body of material remains one of the earliest and
most direct testimonials to continuous Greek interest in things
Oriental. Crete, however, did not stand alone, nor was it an
intermediate point through which all Oriental influence flowed
into Greece; enduring, if yet limited, contact with the East had
generally been established by the more developed areas of the
Aegean by the mid-eighth century.
The evidence for this resumption of links lies partly in the
areas of the alphabet, borrowed myth, and other phenomena
which were considered in the previous chapter; more surely
datable is the appearance of Oriental obje.cts and motifs on the
mainland of Greece. Accurate studies in this fascinating field
have been weIl carried out in recent decades. Some of their
results, which rest upon careful analysis of large masses of
material, can be summarized here; others will be noted in
subsequent chapters, when we shall also have to consider the
degree to which Greek economic, political, and intellectual
progress was indebted to Oriental stimulus.
To the north of Attica there is almost no firm evidence of
Oriental contacts in the eighth century proper. Boeotia, Phocis
(including Delphi), Thessaly, and other northern districts lay
off the main path. On the western side of the Peloponnesus,
again, Olympia and other sites were at this time virtually as bare -
of Oriental materials as was northern Greece. 2 The main testi-
mony derives from Sparta, the Argolid, Corinthia, and Attica.
The southeastern districts, in sum, were the initial beachhead,
from which alien influences penetrated the rest of the mainland
only ~fter 700. _
Attic vases began to show Oriental influence t~ a limited
degree rather early in the eighth century, perhaps earlier than
2 Kunze, Kretische Bronzereliefs, 252-53.
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 207

any other mainland fabric. s Objects and materials of Oriental

origin are, in absolute terms, few in Attica down to 700, but
relatively are more numerous than anywhere else in Greece; in
evaluating this fact, however, one must always keep in mind the
more careful archaeological exploration of Attic soil. An ivory
tusk was imported, and was worked locally into five nude female
figurines, which were buried in a Dipylon grave of the mid-
eighth century (see Plate 19a). The material and the form are
Eastern, and in the modeling of these exquisite ladies great
Syrian influence has been argued by some scholars; indebted-
ness at least is certain, though the whole spirit is Greek. In a
grave of Eleusis, called the Isis grave, a noble woman was
buried in the second half of the eighth century with a rich
equipment of vases, some of which must have been family
heirlooms from much earlier times. Besides native treasures the
grave contained a chain of pearls of Egyptian porcelain, her
earrings with three amber pieces in gold, a chain of small ivory
beads and long Egyptian porcelain beads, an ivory brooch, and
scarabs as well as the Egyptian idol from which the burial gains
its name. A probably Phoenician amulet of blue glass, which
should perhaps be placed before 750, was found in another
grave in the Agora. By the eighth century gold became more
plentiful in Attica and was worked into thin plates for jewel
chests and diadems. These plates were stamped with deSigns in
rectangular blocks, which could be repeated or rearranged ad
libidinem; their minor elements are purely Geometric, but the
major figures are imaginary monsters of Oriental type, lions
slaying other animals or human beings, and so on-we shall
have occasion later to consider the macabre spirit of death
which was manifested here.
Elsewhere in southern Greece the principal evidence of
S Oriental pottery motifs: Chap. 5, 1936), 3-4. Note that obsidian also
n. 1 (p. 149). Dipylon ivories: Chap. appeared, and beside the developed
7, n. 5 (p. 255). Isis grave: A. N. Geometric vases two hand-made pots.
Skias, Arch. eph. 1898, 106-10; on the Agora amulet: R. S. Young, "An
much disputed date, see T. J. Dun- Early Amulet Found in Athens," Hes-
babin, The Western Greeks (Oxford, peria, Supp. VIII (1949), 427-33.
1948), 462; Kerameikos, V. 1, 70 n. Gold plates: Ohly, Griechische Gold-
101; Roland Hampe, Frilhe Griechi- bleche.
ache- Sagenbilder in Bootien (Athens,
208 PART III . The Age of Revolution
Oriental contact consists of new pottery motifs, especially at
Corinth, of ivory, and of faIence. Ivory has been found at
Corinth (Perachora), at Sparta (Artemis Orthia), at Argos
( Heraeum), and elsewhere. Most of the pieces come after 700,
but some plaques, brooches, and other items may be placed
earlier. While the style is commonly Greek, the subjects are
often Oriental-type monsters.4 The scarabs and other faIence
objects of Egyptian spirit which appear spottily at Perachora
and elsewhere in the Aegean are a great problem, both in date
and in origin. Some may be Phoenician, others Rhodian; 5 true
Egyptian ware turns up in Greece well after 700, when the
Greeks opened trade directly with the Nile delta.
In addition to ivory, faIence, and gold, the southeastern
districts of the Greek mainland were probably importing textiles,
papyrus, incense, and spices by the eighth century; presumably
finished products in bronze, iron, silver, and gold also came,
though virtually no certainly Oriental metal products. of this
century have yet been found west or north of Crete. 6 Students of
Orientalizing styles in Greece and Etruria alike face a serious
crux in the fact that demonstrably Oriental objects are far too
uncommon to explain fully the evidences of Eastern imitation
by local potters, sculptors, and smiths; no' surely Oriental
4 The Spartan ivories, which Barnett, Bissing, Zeit und Herkunft der in Cer-
]HS, LXVIII (1948), 14-15, calls veteri gefundenen Gefiisse aus iigyp-
"the most important though the dull- tischer Faience (Munich, 1941), on
est in Greece," he assigns to the Rhodian origins. Tridacna shells:
eighth-sixth centuries. Dawkins, Arte- Blinkenberg, Lindiaka II-IV (Copen-
mis Orthia, 203-04, placed them from hagen, 1926), 5-31; Poulsen, Der
the first half of the eighth century on; Orient, 59-74. See also generally
Albright, Aegean and Near East, 162, Pierre Amandry, "Objets orie.l!taux en
would date them back into the late Grece et en Italie aux VIII· et VII·
ninth century at least. siecies avant J.-C." Syria, XXXV-
The source of ivory, according to ( 1958), 73-109.
Barnett, ibid. 1-2, was Syria (to the 6 Luristan (or similar) bronzes: Crete,
eighth century), but the Sudan, etc., mid-ninth or mid-eighth century,
must not be overlooked. Since ivory Brock, Fortetsa, no. 1570, p. 199; Sa-
passed through Oriental middlemen, mos, 750-650, Buschor., Forschungen
its true origin was unknown down to und Fortschritte, VIn (1932), 161;
the days of Aristotle. Corinth, perhaps seventh-century,
5 Scar:ibs: Pendlebury, Perachora, I, Perachora, I, 138-39. The Phoenician
76-77: who notes the problem of their bowl of Delphi (Fouilles de Delphes,
appearance in the deposits of Hera V, pI. 18-20) and similar pieces are
Akraia before 750; Lorimer, Homer of the seventh century and later.
and the Monuments, 88; Freiherr von
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 20g

ivories, for instance, have yet been found in eighth-century

Greek levels. The bearing of this situation will reappear when
we consider the mode of contact between East and West.

ROUTES OF CONTACT

By THE seventh century the Aegean was in contact with

the Orient by several avenues. 7 One route was a great loop via
the west, for the Greeks of the western colonies were early in
touch with both Phoenicians and Etruscans. Another sea lane
ran southward to Egypt from the late seventh century onward.
A third extended up the Aegean into the Black Sea to the new
colonies of Trapezus, Sinope, and others, and thence on to the
northeastern corner of Asia Minor, where bronzes, iron, and
textiles from Urartu and farther inland made their difficult way
by caravan down to the shore. The fourth, and major, artery ran
from Syria to the southeastern comer of the Aegean and thence
primarily to the states bordering the Saronic Gulf, with spurs to
Ionia on the one side and to Crete on the other (see Map NO.1).
This age-old route along the south coast of Asia Minor must
have been virtually the only link during the first contacts be-
tween the Aegean and the East. Trade by land across Asia
Minor, in particular, was certainly of no great importance in the
early centuries of the first millennium B.C. Geographically, the
mountains, deserts, and the very extent of the terrain hampered
any extensivt: use of the land route by human or animal
porters; political conditions in the peninsula were long as primi-
tive as those which existed in Greece after the invasions of the
late second millennium. In Asia Minor the earlier civilized
structure of the Hittite realm was ended by barbarian tribes,

7 Western route: \VilI, Korinthiaka, dente, 285, postulates (erroneously, I

74-75. E.;;yptian: Poulsen, Der Orient, think) that by land came military
92, 100, 170. Black Sea: Barnett, Ae- skills, religiOUS ideas, mystical forces,
gean and Near East, 228-32, who money, astronomy; by sea, luxuries,
places Trapezus much too early. Asia the alphabet, artistic influences, com-
Minor: Barnett, IHS, LXVIII (-1948), merce.
24. Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occi-
210 PART III . The Age of Revolution
which apparently poured across the Hellespont. The chief of
these tribes, to judge from later records, was the Phrygian,
which is only now beginning to manifest itself in excavations at
Cordium, Boghazkoy, and elsewhere; its most recent student,
Ekrem Akurgal, even suggests that the Phrygian people re-
mained nomadic down virtually to 800 B.C. This is perhaps too
desperate a conclusion in view of the still limited archaeological
exploration of Anatolia, but the sites so far uncovered are
marked by a very low plane of life.
Only after 800 did ordered states appear in Asia Minor.s
Far to the east, Urartu became consolidated under Assyrian
pressure; just inland from the west coast, kings in Phrygia and
Lydia grew powerful enough to establish capitals with palaces
and tombs. Of early Lydia one cannot yet speak, but the
excavations at Cordium have shown that by the end of the
eighth century Phrygia was gaining contact with the outside
world. A native alphabet, derived, from the Creek, was in use,
and the well-known type of Cycladic bowl with pendant semi-
circles had found its way to Larisa shortly after 750; 9 a vase of
Cypriote manufacture or influence and faIence work probably

S Urartu: Goetze, Hethither, Churriter Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern

und Assyrer, 172-76. Lydia: Dunba- Neighbours, 65-66. Roebuck, Ionian
bin, Greeks and Their Eastern Neigh- Trade and Colonization, 42-60, con-
bours, 69-70; G. M. A. Hanfmann, siders relations with the interior.
"Prehistoric Sardis," Studies to D. M. 9 Johannes Boehlau and Karl Schefold,
Robinson, I, 160-83. Phrygia: Akur- Larisa am Hermos III: Die Klein-
gal, Phrygische Kunst, whose effort to funde (Berlin, 1942), 170. Cypriote
link Phrygian and Greek is not con- work: Young, AJA, LXI (1957),
vincing; G. and A. Korte, Gordian: 328; the earliest Greek vase at Gor-
Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung im Jahre dion thus far found is an East Greek
1900 (Jahrbuch des deutschen archii- bird-bowl of about the mid-seventh
ologischen Instituts, Erganzungsheft_ century, University of Pennsylvania
V, 1904, 1-27); Seton Lloyd, Early Museum Bulletin, XVII. 4 (1953),33. -
Anatolia, 191-203; Dunbabin, Greeks Samos finds: Akurgal, Phrygische
and Their Eastern NeIghbours, 63-68; Kunst, 33 (Buschor, though, called
Bittel, Kleinasien, 75-76, 81-86; Rod- them "sicher samisch"); I agree with
ney S. Young's reports on his continu- Miss Mellink, AJA, LXI (1957), 393,
ing Gordium excavations in AJA, LXI that Akurgal reverses the current in
( 1957), and following. Frankfort, Art calling these a Greek export to Phry-
and Architecture in the Ancient Ori- gia. Midas: Aristotle, fragment 611,
ent, 186, denies the existence of a spe- 37 (Rose); Pollux IX. 83; Herodotus
cifically Phrygian art; on Phrygian I. 14. 2; Ancient Near Eastern Te;rts,
pottery, which has an interesting ge- 284-85; Eusebius dated Midas 738-
ometric character in some types, see 6g6/s·
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 211

came to Gordium from the coast. In the other direction a few

Phrygian pots were discovered at Samos in strata before 700,
and King Midas both married a Greek wife from Cyme and
dedicated offerings at Delphi. To the east as well Phrygia now
had relations, which were rather closer: huge caldrons of Urar-
tian origin were placed in the tomb of a Phrygian king, and the
Sargon Annals of Assyria refer under 712 and 709 to Mita
( Midas) of Phrygia.
Virtually all of this evidence, however, is from very near
the end of the eighth century. Then came the terrific wave of
Cimmerian invaders. These peoples, the first horse-mounted
nomads who touched civilized lands, broke across the Caucasus
and wreaked wide havoc in the Near East early in the seventh
century.l While Assyria eventually repelled the threat, Phrygia
fell, in either 6g6/5 (Eusebius) or 676 (Julius Africanus); even
along the coast of Asia Minor the Greeks shivered and had to
beat off bands of the barbarians. In the place of Phrygia, which
seems to have remained a land of small states, the more southerly
inland kingdom of Lydia rose in the later seventh century and
pushed its rule both eastward and especially west down to the
Greek coast. The picture which Herodotus suggests of active
Lydian commerce refers to this later period.
For the era with which we are here concerned, then, there
is thus far no evidence of any important trade route across Asia
Minor. The products of Urartu may at this time have made their
way west mainly via North Syria, which the kings of Urartu
controlled for a time early in the eighth century; and the
"Hittite" influence which occurs in Orientalizing Greece almost
surely came by this road from its home- in the upper Euphrates-
North Syrian district. 2

1 L. A. Jel'nizkij, "Kimmerijzy i Kim- Minor to tum westward and so opened

merijsskaya Kul'tura," Vestnik Drev- it to Greek influence.
ne; Istorii, 1949. 3, 14-26, summarized 2 Akurgal, Spiithethitische Bildkunst,
in Historia, I (1950), 344; :Mazzarino, 145, and Phrygische Kunst, 108-10;
Fra Oriente e Occidente, 135-39; Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern
Herodotus I. 6. 3, Jeremiah 6: 22-23; Neighbours, 62; Smith, Antiquaries
Ezekiel 38-39. Dunbabin, Greeks and Journal, XXII (1942), 92-94, 102-
Their Eastern Neighbours, 68-69, sug- 04; on Urartu, Amandry, Syria, XXIV
gests that the Cimmerian settlement in ( 1944-45), 164-65, remains uncer-
Cappadocia forced the rest of Asia tain.
212 PART III . The Age of Revolution

GREEKS OR PHOENICIANS?

WHILE MODERN VIEWS on the date and route of the re-

newed contacts between East and West have not always been
in agreement, the most vocal controversy has long swirled about
the identity of the traders themselves. Were they Greeks or
Phoenician-Syrians? And insofar as they may have been Greek,
just which Greeks? On both pOints the answers which one
returns are significant for a just appreciation of the vigor of
Aegean society and of the relative significance of its various
areas in the eighth century.
As between Greeks and Phoenicians, the initiative in re-
suming Eastern contacts lay, I think, firmly in Greek hands. That
this is the correct view is now often accepted, though many still
cling to the earlier opinion which accorded to the Orient the
place of honor. The various Greek localities entitled Phoinikous
or the like have been considered evidence for Phoenician trading
factories; at Corinth the cult of Melikertes is equated with that
of Phoenician Melkarth; and the appearance there of temple
prostitutes of Aphrodite seems to smack of Oriental background.
The worship of the Kabiri at Samothrace and elsewhere also has
been assigned to an Eastern origin, especially when connected
with Herodotus' tale of Phoenician settlement at Thasos. 3 The
most influential testimony which has promoted general accept-
ance of Oriental primacy is that of myth and epic. Such Greek
tales as the story of Cadmus. credit Eastern adventurers with set-
tlements and innovations at many places; in Homer there are
several references to Phoenician merchants.
3 Herodotus II. 44, VI. 47. 1, IV. 147 Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments,
(Thera), I. 105. 3 (Cythera), II. 49. 67-76; Bengt Hemberg, Die Kabiren
3 and V. 57-58 (Thebes). Pro-Phoe- (Uppsala, 1950); Will, Korinthiaka,
nician arguments may be found in V. 67-72, 169, 229-31; and in general
Berard, Les Phliniciens et l'Odyssee, 2 Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I. 2,
vols. (Paris, 1902-03); E. Maas, Grie- 65-76. Albright, ~ho certainly does
chen und Semiten auf den Isthmus not underestimate Phoenician activity;
von Korinth (Berlin, 1903). See more concludes (Studies in the History of
recently Demargne, La Crete deda- Culture, 44) that the Phoenicians d(d
lique, 119-28; Dunbabin, ]HS not colonize the Aegean, but set up
LXVIII (1948), 66, and Greeks and temporary "factories."
Their Eastern Neighbours, 52, 54-55;
CHAPTER () • The Orient and Greece 21 3

Virtmllly none of this material will bear any weight on the

issue at hand. The term "Phoinix," for instance, is a Greek word
for "date (lalm," and a~~ears only in the sQtlthernmost reaches
of Greece where this tree can grow. Melikertes is surely of Greek
origin; though both the goddess Aphrodite and phases of her
worship may reflect the East, she is not necessarily a late arrival;
the Great Gods of Samothrace are equally Greek. In consider-
ing the myths generally, one must remember that to a very great
extent they were consolidated or even formed after 700, in an era
when the Greeks were acquainted with the Orient and realized
its cultural precedence over the Aegean. The Homeric evidence,
of which sO much has been made, must be assessed with particu-
lar care. In the Iliad there is only one reference (XXIII. 741-745)
to Phoenician trade, and Phoenicia seems a far-off land (VI.
289 ff. ). The more extensive passages in the Odyssey (XIII.
272 If., XIV. 288 If., XV. 415 If.) snow us "Phoenicians as traaing
westward along the coast of Crete and the south and west shores
of Greece, but they do not depict Phoenicians in the Aegean
proper. And, finally, the physical evidence for interchanges
points both in Greece and in the East primarily to Syria, not to
Phoenicia.4
The wide-scale appearance of Phoenician traders in the
Aegean is thus a fiction, but in its place some students are now
erecting a hypothesis that Oriental craftsmen-ivory workers,
bronze smiths, and so on-migrated westward in the eighth
century to teach the backward Greeks new skills. s The view has
attractive elements; above all, it would serve to explain the pres-
ence of Oliental borrowings on a scale which cannot be satis-
factorily accounted for by direct Oriental imports in Greece. Yet
I cannot feel that in the end this view puts the mode of Ori-

4 Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern
Neighbours, 35, who points out also Neighbours, 41, 49; Cyrus H. Gordon,
that the first imports into Greece were "Ugaritic Guilds and Homeric llHMlO-
Syrian, not phoenician; Smith, Anti- EPrOI ," Aegean and Near East, 136-
quaries Iourflal, XXII (1942), 94-96; 43. Kunze, Kretische Bronzereliefs,
Clairmont, 13erytus, XI (1954-55), 263-64, underlines the hypothetical
85-139; on the recent finds of Greek nature of this migration; Frankfort,
pottery of before 700 at Tell Sukas, Art and Architecture of the Ancient
see Archaeology, XII (1959), 283. Orient, 259 n· 123, is very skeptical.
• Barnett, IllS, LXVIII (1948), 6;
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
ental contacts in the proper light. The Aegean was sadly lacking
in kings and great lords who could attract such craftsmen.
Would they have been inclined to leave the surer markets of
their far richer world, where Assyrian might was beginning to
bring order and to provide royal markets? Is there, again, any
reason to deny the equally logical assumption that Greek crafts-
men would have found profit in picking up the stilI simple skills
of the East? Greek artisans, as we know, did make their way
later as far afield as Etruria. 6 While Eastern traders or skilled
workers may well have entered the eighth-century Aegean on
occasion, there are weighty grounds, both logical and factual,
for discounting the significance of this element.
We tend, after all, to misread most early commerce in terms
of the modern expansion of Europe overseas. Throughout history
the less civilized areas have quite commonly tended to take the
initiative in seeking the riches of the developed areas, either by
trade or by invasion (as one meditates on the relative cultural
levels of western Europe in the Renaissance and of contempo-
rary India and China, it is possible to argue that such a pattern
was true even in early modern times). We have seen that the
Mycenaean Greeks sought out Syria and Egypt, rather than the
reverse; the same pattern was true in later, classic times down to
the days of Alexander; there are no logical grounds for postulat-
ing an inverse flow during the eighth century alone.
Moreover, anyone who wishes to draw a portrait of venture-
some Phoenician merchants and artisans must, on the basis of
our evidence, accord the same audacity to the contemporary
Greeks. The distribution of Protogeometric and Early Geometric
pottery within the Aegean shows that internal trade had already
revived by 800. During the next century the social and political
framework of the Aegean was obviously infused with a remark-
able vigor, for the Greeks spilled out in all directions, to the
uncivilized West as well as toward the cultured East. Attic, Co-
rinthian, and other vases of the age depict ships, and the Attic
scenes of coastal raiding suggest that not all of the Greek sea-
faring was of peaceful nature. 1 On the manner in which this
6 See below, Chap. 11, n. 9 (p. 370). Vases," BSA, XLIV (1949), 93-i53,
1 G. S. Kirk, "Ships on Geometric who argues that the appearance of
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 21 5

"trade" was conducted in the eighth century I shall essay to be

more specific in Chapter 11; here the most important matter is
the degree to which objects and ideas moved between East and
West, and in whose ships.
The most useful factual evidence on the direction of flow
between East and West has recently been uncovered on the
North Syrian coast in the excavations at Al Mina, by the mouth
of the Orontes River. At this seacoast end of a main route to
Mesopotamia a trading colony, surely of Greek origin, which has
left a mass of Greek pottery, was established at least by the
middle of the eighth century, and perhaps a little earlier-the
lowest levels of the site have been swept away by the Orontes. 8
No similar deposit of Oriental ware has yet been found in
Greece, and in my opinion the likelihood of such a discovery is
not great.

The Greek traders at Al Mina, to judge from their pottery,

came chiefly from the Cyclades, secondarily from Rhodes and
the "East Greek" area. This distribution suggests the identity of
some of the major trading areas to the East; we have only re-
cently come to appreciate the wide-scale activity of the Cyclades
in particular, both eastward and to the western Mediterranean. 9

ships on eighth-century ware may re- semicircles do not appear in western

flect the greater skill of the potter in colonies. R. M. Cook, JRS, LXVI
depicting complicated objects; R. J. ( 1946 ), 78-83, tends to pull down
Williams, "Ships in Greek Vase-paint- the date of Al Mina.
ing," Greece and Rome, XVIII On the usual identification of this
(1949),126-37,143-44. site with the Poseideion of Herodotus
8 Leonard Woolley, "Excavations at (not of Strabo), d. Smith, 96-98;
Al Mina, Sueidia I: The Archaeologi- Will, Korinthiaka, 343 n. 3, 53 n. 6.
cal Report," JRS, LVIII (1938), Even if it were so called, Dunbabin's
1-30, 133-70; Martin Robertson, "The suggestion, Creeks and Their Eastern
Early Greek Vases," JRS, LX (1940), Neighbours, 28, that it was named
1-21, and l:XVI (1946), 125; Sidner, from the Pallionian shrine of Poseidon
Smith, "The Greek Trade at Al Mina, ' .Helikonios ()r other Ionian influence
Antiquaries Journal, XXII (1942), seems doubtful.
87-112. Hanfmann, Aegean and Near 9 See above, Chap. 5, n. 2 (p. 150).
EaSt, 175, puts the earliest material Note, however, that such a transit
back to 800 on the basis of unpub- pOint as Th(!ra remained conservative
lished sherds; Dunbabin, Greeks and in its own pottery: Buschor, AM, LIV
Their Eastern Neighbours, 25-30, sup- (1929), 162; Charles Dugas, La Cera-
ports this conclusion when he observes mique des Cyclades (Paris, 1925),
that the Cycladic cups with pendant 175; Will, Korinthiaka, 62--63.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

While the islanders may often have served as intermediar-

ies on the long, dangerous haul from the mainland of Greece to
Syria, it would be a serious mistake to assume that Eastern in-
fluence poured into Greece through this single funnel. The dar-
ing of Greek seafarers as a whole must not be underestimated;
by the eighth century traders from many parts of the Aegean-
Ionians, islanders, Cretans, and men of the mainland as well-
were surely beginning to tread the eastern path. One Corinthian
vase, thus, has turned up at Al Mina before 700, and the varied
evidence of Oriental materials and ideas in Athens, Corinth,
and elsewhere in Greece proper seems scarcely explicable as
the fruit of indirect contact.
This is an important point. Since the mainland states of
southern Greece were the principal leaders along the main line
of Hellenic development, it is a Significant matter whether they
drew directly from the East or, as too often argued, through such
an intermediary as the islands, Ionia, Crete, or Cyprus. As far as
the old claim of Ionia is concerned, we may now be brief. Un-
doubtedly a spur of the main trade route curved north along the
west coast of Asia Minor. Wares which must thus far be de-
scribed rather vaguely as East Greek appear at Tarsus as well as
Al Mina; 1 Samos was importing Cypriote figurines in numbers
by thp eighth century and knew Oriental ivory traditions; and
other evidence that the cities of Asia Minor were in contact with
~:1e East by sea-but not this early by land-will probably ap-
pear as archaeological investigation proceeds. Yet nothing so far
suggests that Ionia gained Eastern contact before the mainland
of Greece; East Greek pottery, too, is very rare in Crete, iIi
Aegina, and on the coasts of Greece proper even in the seventh
century.2 As we shall see later, trade must have moved across
1 East Greek exports: G. M. A. Hanf- summed up by M. V. Seton-Williams,
mann, "On Some Eastern Greek AnatSt, IV (1954), 136-37. Samos:
Wares Found at Tarsus," Aegean and Ohly, AM, LXV (1940), LXVI
Near East, 165-84, speculates on ( 1941); Nimrud-type ivory, Barnett,
Rhodes and Samos as sources. He here ]HS, LXVIII (1948),3.
revises his argument (AJA, LII 2 Kraiker, Aigina, 33-34; Brock, For-
[1948], 142) that Greek trade in Cili- tetsa, 190; Roebuck, Ionian Trade and
cia began only with the seventh cen- Colonization, 83-86. Note on the other
tury. Scattered evidence of Greek Ge- hand the abundance of Corinthian
ometric sherds in surface finds at Cili- ware at Old Smyrna, J. K. Anderson,
cian sites (including Mopsuhestia) is BSA, LIII-IV (1958-59), 138-51.
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece 21 7

the Aegean, but the dominant current therein seems rather to

have set from west to east.
The place as tutor of Greece that Ionia was once granted is
now often assigned to Crete. 3 This island was trle ancestral
home of Minoan culture, which had earlier played a similar role;
it seems to have remained richer and more settled even in the
Dark ages; and alike in religious practices and in that develop-
ment of the arts which the later Greeks associated with the figure
of Daedalus, Crete held a large role in Greek tradition.
And yet the early interest of Cretan smiths and potters in
Oriental styles really proves no more than that the native tradi-
tions of the island made them receptive to patterns which were
ultimately based to some extent upon that Minoan-Mycenaean
background as transmitted eastward in the second millennium.
Nor did Cretan Orientalizing developments have a powerful
influence on the Greek mainland. If one looks attentively at the
emergence of Orientalizing pottery in Greece, Cretan mediation
cannot be shown to have any major role; even in Corinthian
work its effect has been overstressed.·
The place of Crete, in sum, in stimulating mainland Greece
is not entirely to be dismissed, but on the other hand it must not
be magnified. If Crete was perhaps the first truly Greek land-
for Cyprus does not count in this respect-to open its mind to
Eastern whispers, it lay nonetheless to one side of the really vital
line of communication. Its artistic styles were not the seedbed

3 Demargne, La Crete dedalique, pas- "Kp~'T'I1 Kal K6plv8o~ 7} 'Apxa1o).o,,(ia Kal

sim; Levi, EiIrly Hellenic Pottery, 7-8, dKPI(3.i~ hrUl'T-ijp.al,"
Kretika Chro-
with references to Loewy et aI., and nika, IV (1950), 12g-g2; Payne, Nec-
"Gli scavi del 1954 sull'acropoli di rocorinthia, 4-6, 53, and Protoko-
Gortina," Annuario, XVII-XVIII rinthische Vasenmalerei ( Berlin,
( 1955-56), 207-88; Kunze, Kretische 1933), 11. Contra: Brock, Fortetsa,
Bronzereliefs, 261, puts the matter 191, 218-19, 160; Dunbabin, IHS,
best in observing that, however sig- LXVIII (1948), 66: R. M. Cook, IHS,
nificant Crete might have been, this LXVI (1946), 93: Kubler, Keramei-
does not eliminate direct contact be- kos, V. 1, 153-54: Matz, GGK, I, 255-
tween the Orient and other Greek 61; Weinberg, Corinth, VII. 1,22-23:
areas. Will, Korinthiaka, 59-67: Iorg Schafer,
• Cretan influence on Corinth: De- Studien zu den griechischen Reliefpi-
margne, La Crete dedali'que, 341-46; thoi des B.-6. Iahrhunderts v. Chr. aus
K. Friis Johansen, Les Vases sicyo- Kreta, Rhodos, Tenos und Boiotien
niens (Paris, 1923), 62-66: Levi, (Diss. Tubingen, 1955-56), 42-43,
Early Hellenic Pottery, 16-18, and 108-09.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

from which the great development of Greece 750-650 was to

spring, and even the interesting achievements reached at the
most lively center in Crete, Cnossus, had come to a sad end
by 650.
A fourth candidate for the role of intermediary between the
East and the Greek mainland has occasionally been advanced:
the island "of Cyprus. The light which has been thrown on
Cypriote development in recent decades by the excavations of
the Swedish Cypriote Expedition and others has better defined
its native development, and has shown that the island lay in a
backwater until the seventh century. On the eastern side the
Phoenicians were active by 800; on the north and west coasts a
somewhat different pottery tradition of black-an-red ware had
ties with Cilicia. These coasts also had contact with the Aegean,
and in the eighth century their wares began to appear in some
quantity in Crete and on the Greek mainland. 5 So, too, some
bronze work of the Aegean perhaps stems from Cyprus, while on
the other hand Attic and Cycladic Late Geometric vases have
been found on the island. This evidence shows no more than that
a spur of the main trade route linked Cyprus with the west. No
direct evidence attests that the Greeks made their acquaintance
with Oriental products in the harbors of Cyprus-the history of
the alphabet, for instance, reveals that the Cypriote syllabary
played no part in the creation of the Greek alphabet from a
Phoenician prototype.

If we are to visualize properly the renewed links betweeJ?:

East and West, we must virtually eliminate Asia Minor proper
from consideration and fix our attention upon the sea route from
the Aegean to North Syrian ports. Along this path tiny ships had

6 Brock, Fortetsa, 19D-91, 217-18; Asine, 325 fig. 221, nn. 7-8; and an
Roebuck, Ionian Trade and Coloniza- unpublished contemporary vase of Ar-
tion, 65-67; Dunbabin, Gnomon, gos. Cypriote bronze work: Brock,
XXIV (1952), 193-94, and Greeks Fortetsa, 22. Dunbabin, Greeks and
and Their Eastern Neighbours, 49-51; Their Eastern Neigh/Jours; 72-73, lists
Gjerstad, Swedish Cyprus Expedition, twelve early Attic vases in Cyprus be.-
IV. 2, 262-69; Lorimer, Homer and side two Corinthian and five or six
the Monuments, 78. Cypriote models Cycladic; cf. Young, Late Geometric
may have influenced such Greek vases Graves, 222, on Curion. But see above,
as K. 1327 (Kerameikos, V. 1,4,170); Chap. 5, n. 2'( p. 150).
CHAPTER 6 . The Orient and Greece Z19

occasionally ventured throughout the Dark ages, but from the

very last days of the ninth century-and still more in the eighth
-sailors from the Aegean dared the dangetous trips in growing
numbers. The increasing stability and riches of the Aegean
states and a native energy which was already springing the
confines of the Geometric pottery made these areas now ready to
receive what they found in the East. To a degree wnich cannot
be specified, but must have been minor, traders and artists from
the East may have made their way westward, seeking their for-
tunes. Yet the weight of the drive lay in the Aegean, and cannot
be localized in anyone district.
Once resumed in a continuous fashion, contacts with the
Orient were to multiply rapidly as the Aegean passed into the
seventh and then the sixth century. Greek mercenaries served
Egypt and Babylon, traders settled down at Egyptian Naucratis
by the end of the seventh century, and such men of inquiring
bent as Hecataeus followed. Herodotus affords clear evidence
that by the sixth century political connections were growing; the
upshot was the wave of Persian attack and at long last the con-
quest of Alexander. Throughout subsequent chapters the Orient
must frequently appear in our story, for from the eighth century
Greece no longer lay remote and virtually insulated from the
eastern Mediterranean.
In the first steps, which have alone been considered in this
chapter, much remains dark. "The time is not yet come," ob-
serves R. D. Barnett on the connection of East and West, "when
we can sufficiently explain more than half those early influences.
There are still too many unknown factors. The threads of dif-
ferent origin cross and recross one another and cannot be un-
ravelled." 6 Apart from the alphabet and some evidence of myth,
the only signposts are those of physical objects which passed to
and fro, and not even all of these-textiles, for instance-have
survived. The effects upon Greek social, r~ligious, and political
developments from these initial contacts are ticklish problems on
which little more than hypothesis will be possible.
The basic issue, however, is this: did Oriental influence
have an overpowering weight in setting th~ course of Greek civ-
6 lHS, LXVIII (1948),7.
220 PART III . The Age of Revolution

ilization? My answer, which has already been given and will be

substantiated later, is a firm negative, on the basis of the evi-
dence so far in hand and of the main course of Greek history.
Set off behind the buffers of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete, the
Aegean had still by 700 only limited contact with the Orient.
The material which has been adduced in the preceding pages
is in truth very scattered and limited; beside it must be placed an
infinitely greater amount of evidence for purely local progress.
In the revolution which was under way in the more ad-
vanced areas of Greece by 700 and to which we must now tum.
the vigor came from strong native roots. Only in its surface
modes of expression did indebtedness to the Orient appear;
those artistic motifs and principles of composition which can be
traced to Oriental roots underwent a significant sea change as
they passed over the tossing waters of the eastern Mediter-
ranean. Parenthetically, it may also be observed that as the
Greek artists began to liberate themselves from earlier conven-
tions there was one other source from which they could draw
inspiration: the heirlooms and survivals of the freer Minoan-
Mycenaean styles. These, too, occasionally served as points of
departure. 7 In its basic form, nonetheless, the age of revolution
was a new step in human history.

7 This remains a very debated point in Kunst?" AM, L (1925),51-70; Poul-

art as in religion and other fields. sen, Der Orient, 76-77.
Kunze, Kretisc71e Bronzereliefs, 131, Yet the logical and historical pos-
almost eliminates any survivals, as do sibility of minor survivals cannot be
many others; apparent Minoan-Myce- ruled out of court; see Schafer, Re-
naean motifs would have come back liefpithoi, 57-58, 66; Levi, Annuario,
from the Orient. See also Demargne, X-XII (1927-29), and AJA, XLIX
La Crete dedalique; Valentin MUller, (1945),292; and below, Chap. 7, n. 8
"Minoisches Nachleben oder orienta- (P·244). .
\
lischer EinHuss in der friihkretischen
 [221

CHAPTER 7

THE INTELLECTUAL UPHEAVAL: I

DURING THE AGE of revolution the Greek outlook on life was

definitively consolidated. The origins of this outlook lay much
earlier, and its magnificent potentialities had already been
partly demonstrated. Just before the intellectual upheaval com-
menced, a mighty surge of human life and passion had welled
forth in the Iliad; the potters of the great Dipylon vases had
created stiff but pOignant pageants of war and death. These twin
products were the summation of what had gone before and the
herald of the onrush which was immediately to follow.
The century of most evident change covered the decades
750-650. In this era potter, smith, and poet developed amazingly
their skill and clarity. The media of architecture and large-scale
sculpture, new to Greek civilization proper, made their appear-
ance. No longer must we be content to handle a Geometric vase
and, to sense instinctively in it the qualities of logic and symme-
try which mark Hellenic civilization; for by the end of the age of
revolution many of the basic values of this outlook had attained
clear expression in physical and intellectual form. Taken in sum,
the achievements of the epoch represent an- enlarged dimension
for Greek civilization and, by extension, for Western culture.
The intellectual development was attended by, and rested
on, great political, social, and economic changes; yet these facets
in turn depended on the new views in men's minds. If first things
are to be put first, any study of the age must begin with the
major forces driving Greek civilization as a whole. This chapter
will consider the evidence of the arts; the next, the evidence of
literature. Then we shall be ready to analyze the parallel social,
zzz PART III . The Age of Revolution

political, and economic progress. In this fascinating epoch, un-

fortunately, the observer cannot treat every aspect in detail; but
we must at least be careful to note the signs of stress and con-
servatism as well as the marks of triumphant advance.

THE TEMPO OF CHANGE

IF THE SPECIAL QUALITY of the age of revolution is to be

appreciated fully, its amazing rapidity must be recognized. This
recognition, in turn, is possible only if one discards or seriously
modifies the conventional concepts of historical change as a
purely evolutionary process.
It is not my purpose here to treat the problem of historical
tempo at length in philosophical terms. The step from historian
to philosopher is deceptively easy, and often is fatal to the prac-
ticing historian. The saving grace of the historical diScipline is
its base upon specific fact in specific time. Yet, in marshaling the
facts, one inevitably employs broad concepts which are nonethe-
less philosophical for being applied, usually, in an unconscious
manner; and we need to be clear as to the nature and bearing of
these concepts.
Current views of historical change have not been easily
attained. While a rudimentary sense of the passing of time is a
common trait of most peoples, anthropologists have shown that
primitive societies often have no true concept of chronological
development. In historic Greece Thucydides penned a marvel-
ous picture of gradual but true change in the opening chapters
of his history, but only rarely was ancient historiography able to'
come up to this intellectual level. Far more common in both
Greek and Roman thought were tales of sudden creation and
then essentially unchanging endurance of religiOUS and political
institutions, on which time washed to and fro in insignificant
froth:. The advent of Christianity, which emphasized human
progress toward a divine destination, marked only a partial
break in this pattern; true belief in substantial development as a
historical principle has been a slow development in Western
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 223

civilization. The rise of the division of historical time as "an-

cient," "medieval," and "modern" from the Renaissance on
marks one stage; further progress came in the nineteenth cen-
tury as Western civilization entered upon a rapid period of ex-
ternal alteration. The consequence was the interest in history
which has been obvious in recent generations and the general
fascination of archaeology as an intensive search for man's re-
mote past.
The historical canon of evolution has commonly been
couched in terms which are markedly similar to the concept of
change accepted by the biological and physical sciences since
the days of Darwin and Lyell-not, to be sure, through direct
borrOWing by the historian from the scientist but rather as an
expression of a common intellectual outlook. History, that is, has
been written as a slow process of continuous development. Be-
side and implicit in this view is the doctrine which the biologists
call the preformation of characteristics: "The characters of all
organisms were present from the start of evolution and the prog-
ress of evolution is wholly due to their becoming expressed in the
bodies of organisms." Or, as V. Gordon Childe put the doctrine
succinctly in historical terms, "In the first innovations the germs
of all subsequent improvement were latent." 1
This conceptual scheme has been of immense value to the
historian. It has enhanced his standing in society, for he may
claim the right to explain the present as a product of the past; it
has also given him a simple scheme for ordering investigations of
historical fact. That it also imposes blinkers upon one's view has
not been so apparent. Students of human development, more-
over, have failed to appreciate the warning implicit in the re-
cent drift of scientific thought on the problem of change. In their
detailed investigations of the physical and biological worlds,
scientists have not been able fully to substantiate the general
doctrines of continuous development, useful though these theo-
ries have been in many respects for practical research. The dis-
coveries of the quantum theory in physics and of mutations in
1 William Bateson, Presidential Ad- Evoilltion (New York, 1957), lZ2-23;
dress to the British Association in Aus- Childe, Daten of European Civiliza-
tralia, 1914, as summarized by George tion, xv.
Stuart Carter, A Hundred Years of
224 PART III . The Age of Revolution
biology have shown the possibility of sudden changes not im-
plicit in the pre-existing structure.
It is high time, too, that historians gave over compressing
their materials into a Procrustean bed of slow evolution. Stu-
dents of revolutionary eras have stumbled over difficulties which
they do not always fully comprehend; the apparent suddenness
and magnitude of these flood tides do not seem entirely ex-
plicable by an analysis of pre-existing stresses and forces. More
recently investigators of early human history have found them-
selves confronted by what appear to be discontinuities, the ap-
pearance of new characteristics, and rapid spurts in develop-
ment. The truth is that man's rise has been a shifting process of
slow evolution and of sudden alteration. In epochs of the latter
type new patterns of life are rapidly set on foundations which,
no doubt, were slowly constructed in previous centuries; yet the
resulting structure is stamped with a solidity and breadth which
could not be predicted from these foundations. Such a period,
for instance, was the late fourth millennium B.C., when civiliza-
tion emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt. 2
The development of Greek civilization can only be under-
stood if its tempo is conceived as one of varying rapidity. The
eleventh century B.C. was an era when men swiftly established
the basic patterns of Hellenic culture, but our evidence is much
too limited to permit entire determination of the speed and di-
mensions of so fundamental a step. Movement in the next cen-
turies was treacle-slow; m?dern students, in keeping with their
evolutionary bias, have probably exaggerated the inevitability of
continuous development in the Dark ages. Then, with amazing
speed, a violent period of upheaval broke out shortly after 750 ..
This revolution is too notable to have been entirely over-
looked by students of early Greece, but its true nature has not
often been appreciated. Archaeological or philological special-
ists, in pursuing their particular interests, have seen only limited
aspects, and have failed to comprehend the tremendous ~idth of
inter:linked change which then occurred in virtually every field
2 Frankfort frequently stressed this as- Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth
pect, as in The Birth of Civilization in (Penguin, 1956), 23-25.
the Near East; see also Sir Mortimer
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheava~: I 225

of life. Scholars of more general interests have, on the other

hand, often begun with the age of revolution proper and have
not measured either its connections to earlier stages or the pre-
cise dimensions of its alterations.
Above all, the fact that the main wave of change took place
in only a few decades is rarely comprehended. Establishment of
this pOint requires more precise chronological calculations than
have been necessary in the earlier centuries which we have al-
ready traversed. While the relative chronology of progress is
reasonably certain, the historian who tries to convert archaeo-
logical sequences into absolute dates B.C. quickly feels that he
has fallen into a bottomless morass; any chronological system
now advanced will have to remain provisional and approximate,
barring some unbelievably lucky finds of datable Oriental items
in Greek lands. Still, the morass is not absolutely bottomless. A
student who proceeds with care can win through to sufficient
clarity on the basic objective-viz., the determination of the
bounds on either side of the age of revolution.
The chronological schemes of later Greek historians and
antiquaries reach back with some certainty as far as about 600
and furnish less secure materials running on to the middle of the
eighth century. If one investigates these indications in detail,
they display a noticeable concentration of activity in the last
decades of the eighth century and the first half of the next cen-
tury: a great outburst of colonization; much more extensive
political activity at home in the form of wars and internal reor-
ganization of political structures; the international popularity of
certain religiOUS and athletic festivals and the introduction of
new religiOUS rites; and even the appearance of named artists
and artistic inventions. This material, of course, is open to doubt.
Popular memory of events long past is notably untrustworthy;
writing, again, came into common use only about the end of the
eighth century; and there are serious chronological inconsist-
encies. Safe employment of the body of tradition is possible
solely if we can link it to physical evidence, which remains our
surest guide on relative chronology down to the sixth century.
Within the physical evidence, the most useful material is
that afforded by the pottery, which was ever changing in motifs
226 PART III . The Age of Revolution

and shapes. The decorative patterns in themselves are not al-

ways safe criteria for dating vases, inasmuch as motifs could be
copied from earlier work (as in some Late Geometric vases of
Athens); but pottery specialists seem agreed that changes in
types of vases and the development of shapes within each type
are reliable guides to pottery evolution. On these bases, succes-
sions of styles and substyles in Attic and Corinthian pottery
have been flrmly established across early Greek history, and soon
should be possible for Argive work. Down to Late Geometric or
even Orientalizing ware, however, similar chains are not yet
fully certain for the islands or along the eastern coast of the Ae-
gean. In the major traditions it is also possible to go some dis-
tance in distinguishing schools or masters, especially in Attic and
Corinthian work from about 700 B.C., for pottery of artistic
quality was made at only a few workshops in any early Greek •
state.
While this material is extremely useful for establishing
relative development, the historian must always remember that
any absolute dates assigned to early Greek pottery are, at best,
skillful guesses. Stylistic evolution did not necessarily proceed
evenly over the entire Aegean basin or even at the same pace in
all shops in anyone area. Backward-looking potters, who clung
to sub-Geometric styles, existed side by side with progressive'
craftsmen well down into the seventh century. Heirlooms, too,
are always turning up in any extensive set of graves along with
much later material. To make proper use of the pottery evidence,
one must be careful never to build too much on a single vase,
and must also attempt to peg the sequences to absolute dates
drawn from other sources.
Efforts to this end have already been advanced in Chap--
ters 2 and 3 for the beginning phases of Greek history. For the
period now in question, the two main avenues are Oriental con-
nections and the establishment of the Greek colonies in the West.
On the Oriental side, unfortunately, no method yet exists to link
Greek physical remains continuously with the absolute chronol-
ogy Of these lands until after 700, when political contacts began.
The later stages of the Greek trading post at Al Mina can be tied
down suffiCiently for us to be sure that the earlier Greek material
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 227

at this site is of the eighth century, though how far back it goes
in the century cannot be entirely established. The Assyrian con-
quest of Cilicia is physically marked in the strata of Tarsus,
which Sennacherib took in 696, and the Cimmerian devastation
of Asia Minor, well dated to the early seventh century from
Assyrian records, enables us to place the Phrygian tombs re-
cently uncovered at Gordium before 700. Scattered finds of
Greek vases in Syrian and Palestinian sites, which have already
been noted, give further suggestions of absolute dates; but on the
whole the material thus far at hand is too limited and fragmen-
tary for safe conclusions on a wide scale. The surest ties between
Eastern chronology and Greek pottery remain the Greek settle-
ment at Naucratis c. 610 and the Lydian destruction of Old
Smyrna a little after 600.
The main path toward establishment of absolute chronol-
ogy for Greece lies in the second alternative, a roundabout
detour through the Greek colonies of Sicily and Italy. For some
of these colonies Thucydides gives specific dates in his brief
sketch of early Sicilian history; for the others generally con-
sistent colonization dates are preserved in the Greek chronolog-
ical tradition. Cumae, on this material, is placed about 750;
Syracuse, 733; Megara Hyblaea, 728; Gela, 688; Selinus, 628;
and so on.3 At most of these points modem archaeological
exploration has turned up pottery of Corinthian origin-the
first Orientalizing experiments (kotylai and aryballoi) in the
earliest tombs of Cumae, somewhat more developed Protocor-
inthian vases in the first burials at Syracuse, and succeSSively
thereafter more advanced stages of Protocorinthian styles down
to the foundation of Selinus, where these styles scarcely appear
and Corinthian work proper begins to hold the field. On this cor-
relation of specific colonization dates and vase styles depends
the chronology of Corinthian vases; on this in tum rest most of
3Thucydides VI. 3-4; other authors 54; A. R. Burn, "Dates in Early Greek
give quite variant dates (Eusebius, History," JHS, LV (1935), 130-46,
e.g., assigned Cumae as far back as and LXIX (1949),70-73, who lowers
1051). Dunbabin, Western Greeks, Thucydides' dates by artificial jug-
435-71, especially 460-70, discusses gling. The fall of Old Smyrna is now
the literary evidence in detail. See also discussed by J. M. Cook, BSA, LIII-
R. M. Cook, JHS, LXVI (1946),74- IV (1958-59),24-27.
77; Robertson, BSA, XLIII (1948),
zz8 PART III . The Age of Revolution

the absolute dates assigned to Greek artistic development in the

late eighth and seventh centuries. A subsidiary support for the
scheme exists in early Etruscan tombs; at the Bocchoris tomb
of Tarquinia, for instance, a Phoenician faIence vase with the
name of Bocchoris, pharaoh of the Egyptian Delta about 718-
712, was laid beside Italian imitations of Proto corinthian ware
which should not be more than a generation younger, say 690.4
This scheme is ingenious, useful-and slightly shaky.
Though the progress of Protocorinthian and then Corinthian
pottery agrees reasonably well with the succession of Thucydi-
des' dates, it cannot be entirely reconciled; modem opinion is
thus forced to prefer Diodorus' date of 650 for Selinus. Nor is
this the only breach. Even more problematical are the begin-
nings of the chain, the dates for the foundations of Cumae and
Syracuse. Most scholars put the Greek colonization of Cumae
about 750, but others have strong grounds for feeling that this
extends Protocorinthian (and also Protoattic) pottery over
much too long a period; accordingly they lower the date of
Cumae to about 730-725. If this step is taken, then Syracuse must
be depressed below 733, for the first Corinthian pottery at the
Sicilian site is later than that of Cumae. 5
4 Dohan, Italic Tomb-Groups, 106-08, des dates de fondation de Megara Hy-
lowers the buri:).l to 670; A. W. blaea, de Syracuse et de Selinunte,"
Byvanck, Mnemosyne, 3. ser. XIII Bulletin de fInstitut historique beige
( 1947), 245, dates the deposit to 7 15- de Rome, XXIX (1955), 199-214
690; other dates are noted in Kera- (criticized by van Campernolle, ibid.
meikos, V. 1, 142, n. no. Cf. Riis, 215-40); and their excavation reports
Tyrrhenika, 152-59. in ,Melanges d'archeologie et d'hi-
5 Selinus: Rene V:lll Campernolle, "La stoire 1951-55.
date de Ia fondation de Selinunte The foundation of Cumae is
(circa 650 avant notre ere) ," Bulletin placed about 750 by Dunbabin, West-
de l'Institut historique beige de Rome, ern Greeks, 5-:6; Kraiker, Neue Bei-
XXVII (1952), 317-56; Georges Val- triige, 43; Schweitzer, AM, XLIII-
let and Fran90is Villard, "La date (1918),43. About the 730'S by Kub-
de fondation de Selinunte: les don- ler, Altattische Malerei (Tubingen,
nees archeologiques," BCH, LXXXII 1950), 5; Kerameikos, V. 1, 141, with
( 1958 ), 16-26, which reports their full bibliography in n. 109; VI. 1, 112,
discovery of late Proto corinthian and About 725 by Kahane, AJA, XLIV
also Transitional ware. ( 1940), 47g-81. To go back as far as
Megara: Vallet and Villard, "Les 800 (Johansen) and 775-750 (Blake-
dates, de fondation de Megara H y- way and Matz) seems unjustifiable;
blaea 'et de Syracuse," BCH, LXXVI on the earlier settlement of Ischia, see
(1952), 289-346, who place Megara below, Chap. 11. Pottery of Cumae:
earlier; see also their article, "A propos Monumenti antichi, XXII (1913),93,
. CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 229

Such manipulations shake the basic underpinning of all

absolute chronology for the age of revolution, for if Thucydides'
dates are not completely reliable, neither is the placing of pot-
tery styles which is based thereon. In the end we must remember
that, however careful Thucydides was on events of his own day,
he had to rely, in dealing with the early West, upon traditions-
to put the matter baldly, his dates are not absolutely sure.
The whole pattern of calculation from the western colonies,
on the other hand, does not become utterly useless merely be-
cause it must be adjudged provisional. The succession of Proto-
corinthian styles, now reasonably firm, cannot be arbitrarily
stretched out or shrunk by half a century in either direction, and
finds of this ware in the West do accord in general with the
historical tradition. With all due reserve, then, I shall place the
beginning of Proto corinthian ware at about 720, and the begin-
ning of true Protoattic-after experiments which went back two
decades-at about 710. From this point on, absolute dates might
be assigned somewhat as follows:
CORINTH 6 ATHENS
720-690 Early Protocorinthian 710-680 Early Protoattic
690-650 Middle Proto corinthian 680-630 Middle Protoattic
650-640 Late Protocorinthian 630-610 Late Protoattic
640-620 Transitional (with which Black-
620-590 Early Corinthian figure overlaps)
590-575 Middle Corinthian
575 on Late Corinthian
111; on grave 103bis, XIII (1903), corinthian 740/35-640/35 and gives
273-75; cf. Byvanck, Mnemosyne, full references. Villard, "La Chrono-
XIII ( 1947), 246-47; Blakeway, BSA, logie de la ceramique protocorin-
XXXIII (1932-33),200 ff.; Hencken, thienne," Melanges d'archeologie et
AJA, LXII (1958),270. d'histoire, LX (1948), 7-34, reduces
6 Except at the beginning, where I the series throughout by ten to twenty
agree with Kr:liker, Aigina, 16, the years, as does A. W. Byvanck, "The
Corinthian dates are generally those Chronology of Greek and Italian Art
of English students; see Dunbabin, in the 8th and 7th Centuries," Mne-
]HS, LXVIII (1948),68, after Payne, mosyne, 3. ser. XIII (1947),241-53,
Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei, 20, and Jack L. Benson, Die Geschi-
and Necrocorinthia, 21-27, which is chte der korinthischen Vasen (Basel,
much lowered from Johansen, Les 1953). The effort of Ake Akestrom,
Vases sicyoniens, 179-85. Kiibler, Der geometrische Stil in [talien
Kerameikos, VI. 1, 105-20, sets Proto- (Lund, 1943), to lower the scale by
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

Many of these divisions are subject to movement up or down by

a decade or so in the varying schemes of modem analysts, but
the general tempo of artistic development seems reasonably se-
cure. With the pottery goes the evolution of sculpture, which
had reached its Protodedalic stage by at least 680; 7 and the
emergence of stone temples is also best defined by accompany-
ing pottery deposits.
The vital point to be attained is the conclusion that our
chronological tradition pointing to a great outburst just before
and after 700 accords essentially with the archaeological evi-
dence and also, though less securely, with the Oriental materials.
To encompass all aspects of the age of revolution we must con-
sider the whole century from 750 to 650. Yet in many points the
crucial era was far briefer; from the beginning of Early Proto-
corinthian to the end of Early Protoattic is only four decades
(c. 720-680). The men of one generation, it is not too much to
say, dared to release Greek civilization from its earlier bonds.
Not only did they break, very abruPjly, with old trammels; Ae-
gean life rose swiftly in these years to a new plane of cultural,
political, and economic organization which enduringly stimu-
lated men, first in its archaic and then in its classical stages.

ORIENTALIZING POTTERY: PROTOCORINTHIAN

THE SHARPEST visual impact of the age of revolution will

come to the modem student when he looks at its pottery. This
can be studied in a number of chains, Corinthian, Argive, insu-
lar, Cretan, Attic, and others.s Whatever series one picks, the
half a century has met virtually no found in every history of Greek vases-
acceptance. --e.g., Andreas Rumpf, Malerei und
The Attic dates are those of Dun- Zeichung, in R andbuch der Archiio-
babin, IRS, LXVIII (1948), 68; for logie, VI (Munich, 1953), 23-30-,
variations, see below, n. 4 (p. 243). but a comprehensive study of Orien-
1 R. J. H. Jenkins, Dedalica: A Study talizing pottery as a whole remains a
of Dorian Plastic Art in the Seventh desideratum. On some details see
Century B.C. (Cambridge, 1936),61, Wolfgang Schiering, "Zur Oinament-
64-6S! gives 680 as the latest possible bildung in der griechischen Vasenma-
date and suggests that even 700 lerei des siebenten Jahrhunderts,"
might be possible. Neue Beitriige, 59-70.
S Discussions of this phase may be
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I
change which it reveals for the late eighth and early seventh
centuries is phenomenal. In the outwardly dull wooden cases of
modern museums, the serried ranks of Greek vases tell a marvel-
ous tale.
First come the serene, beautifully ordered products of the
Geometric stage. Here shape and decoration are integrated, in
the better specimens, to form a taut, vibrant, yet disciplined
unity; the motifs, almost entirely rectilinear, are severely limited;
much of the vase is evenly covered with a dark coat. Then sud-
denly a riot of curvilinear decoration, floral, animal, even human,
bursts into vision and swirls over the entire surface of the vases;
on some pieces all sense of Greek logic and restraint seems to
have dissolved into the wildest of experiments. The pots them-
selves change shape: many of the new types are smaller, more
carefully studied, even dainty in effect; others are poorly pro-
portioned and ephemeral essays in breaking away from old
restraints. And finally the very technique of drawing is elabor-
ated as outline gives way in many workshops to solid black-
figure painting, picked out and enriched by the use of supple-
mentary color (white and purple especially) and of incision to
render more specific detail than Geometric potters had ever
deemed necessary.
In these developments li~ hidden very significant changes
in men's views of themselves and the world about, but these
changes will best be considered after we have examined pre-
cisely the nature, date, and major workshops of the new "Orien-
tali~ing" ware. The term, unfortunately, is irretrievably incor-
porated into modern use, for though it has some validity in
suggesting the indebtedness of Greek potters to Oriental motifs
~e connotations of the word "Orientalizing" are otherwise
seriously misleading. Not only did Oriental pottery fail to re-
semble in any significant respect Greek ware; but also, and above
all, the Greek world was at this very time becoming more sharply
distinguished from the Orient. In the age of revolution a dis-
tinctive artistic outlook was evolving which led the Greeks
straight on to classic expressions. But conventional classifications
must often be employed, with due care to their limitations.
Among the many types of Orientalizing pottery the one to
23 2 PART III . The Age of Revolution
be considered first is the most popular and also the most easily
analyzed fabric, the Protocorinthian.9 The Geometric products
of Corinth were well summed up by Payne as "a colourless,
unambitious, but exceptionally competent series." The Early
Geometric vases are much like those of Attica in shape and
decoration, though far more limited in motifs and artistic skill.
By the eighth century, however, the two series were moving on
quite different lines. Corinthian potters, as far as we now know,
did not essay the marvelous experiments which led to the great
Dipylon vases, and their gamut of motifs widened only slowly
(see Plate 12a). On the other hand, and perhaps as a result of
their greater caution, the stiffening, rigidity, and overelabora-
tion which seriously affected Attic pottery by 750 are virtually
absent from Corinthian work. Vase shapes here became rounder
and more supple, rather than harder; new forms such as the cup
with Haring sides called the kotyle (Plate 13b) and the round
incense or perfume container called aryballos emerged; and the
steadily changing patterns of Corinthian decoration demon-
strate that at least by the mid-century mark the potters found
their inherited framework no longer adequate. 1
This is the basic point of importance in Late Geometric
Corinthian work. Craftsmen of Corinth evidently felt new
breezes and were groping within their simple inheritance to ex-
press a spirit not contained in ancestral patterns. The first results .
are suggested by the upper two vases on Plate 13. The crater on
the upper left is an old form, as are many of its motifs, particu-
9 This term was invented by Furtwan- ertson, "Some Protocorinthian Vase-
gler. Johansen, Les Vases sicyoniens, Painters," BSA, XL VIII (1953), 172-
tried to pin the product to Sic- 81; Kiibler, Kerameikos, VI. 1, 105-
yon, but Payne firmly located it at 57. My quotation of Payne is from,
Corinth in Protokorinthische Vasen- Necrocorinthia, 1.
malerei and Necrocorinthia, with ad- 1 Changes in the mid-eighth century
denda by R. J. Hopper, BSA, XLIV are well studied in the Ithacan ma-
( 1949), 162-257. Excavation at Cor- terial by S. Benton, BSA, XLVIII
inth confirmed the ascription; see ( 1953), 260-64, who suggests the
Weinberg, Corinth, VII. 1. The Pot- kotyle emerged about 775-750; Wein-
ter's Quarter and the North Cemetery berg, Corinth, VII. 1, 52, g!ves the
still await publication, but the mate- date 750-700. See also Weinberg,
rial visible in the Corinth Museum "What Is Protocorinthian Geometric
well illustrates the change. See also Ware?" AlA, XLV (1941), 30-44;
Benson, Geschichte der korinthischen Kraiker, Aigina, 13.
Vasen; T. J. Dunbabin and M. Rob-
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 233
larly the main design set in a window on the shoulder-three
horizontal zigzag lines connected above and below to the frame.
Just below this design, however, is a band of short vertical free-
hand wavy lines, often found in Corinthian vases of the mid-
eighth century, which may be construed as a timid effort to
launch out on freer paths. Even more typical, and significant, is
the manner in which the bulk of the vase below the shoulder
zone has been treated. Previously this would have been a solid
dark; now it is broken up into many thin lines, except at the
base. This treatment, which gives the name of Linear Geometric
to a large part of Late Geometric Corinthian work, is not a
purely mechanical device, for the lines (as Payne observed)
impart a sense of dynamic movement to the surface.
The kotyle on the upper right of Plate 13, which is very
much like the earliest kotylaj found at Cumae, represents further
steps on the same path. 2 The horizontal lines about the vase are
marked off rriore sharply; on the handle zone the meander of
ancestral type is breaking down, and a motif new to Corinthian
work, the butterfly (already known at Athens), 3 gains the
emphasis. The shape of this vase is a new, Corinthian invention
which obviously much pleased the Greek world, for examples of
generally similar nature tum up not only in Cumae and Aegina
but also at Delphi, Athens, and a number of other places.
Not all of the new motifs in Corinthian work at this time are
purely geometrical, abstract devices. Beside the chevrons, ver-
tical wavy lines, hourglasses, and butterflies appear rudimentary
stars, leaflike patterns, birds at first singly and then in conven-
tionalized rows, and even some scenes of human life. Especially
remarkable is a rather late crater from Thebes, now in Toronto,
which depicts a ship with hieratically stiff oarsmen seated in a
long row. 4 This, like most of the larger Corinthian vases of the
eighth and seventh centuries, was found elsewhere than at Cor-
inth, for the best work was exported-a common fate of artistic
products always. Corinthian trade was now growing to the west,
where it began to oust Cydadic products; eastward through the
2 Cf. Corinth; VII. 1, n. 123; Cumae, rei, 9-lO; cf. the Corinthian figured
grave lo3bis. vase, ]dI, XLVI (1931), cols. 241-42,
3 Weinberg, Corinth, VII. 1,89. fig. 18.
• Payne, Protokorinthische Vasenmale-
234 PART III . The Age of Revolution
Aegean late eighth-century vases of Corinth turn up as far
afield as Al Mina. 5 In return increasing quantities of foreign
products, both Greek and Oriental, made their way to Corinth,
as the deposits of the new temple of Hera Limenia at Perachora
amply testify.
Insofar as we can explain the amazing development which
next occurred, the basic factors were nOw present. Corinthian
craftsmen were seeking new modes of expression; they were
encouraged to boldness by their growing success in international
trade; and a wealth of new ideas was pouring in to stimulate
their minds. The product was the appearance of the Protoco-
rinthian style in a matter of three decades ( 720-690 ).
To call this marvelous creation a "product" utterly disguises
what had occurred. Protocorinthian pottery is not an evolution
but a revolution, a spectacular testimony to the speed and sure-
ness with which Greek civilization moved in these decades to a
new, unpredictable plane. There are no neat transitional steps of
evolutionary type between Linear Geometric and Protocorin-
thian; at best, remnants of the old framework linger on in the
new style, to tell whence it came. The two lower vases on
Plate 13, for instance, have still geometric bands with butterHy
or meander; but these elements have shrunk far into the back-
ground, soon to disappear in favor of palmettes and other Horal
patterns. Beside the old elements on the cup appear bold, free-
hand 8's, and the solid dark base has given way to rays. On the
other, the Rider Kotyle from Aegina, the rays have become even
more dynamic, and the body of the vase is occupied by a majes-
tic procession of horses and riders. 80 impressive is this frieze
that at first sight the viewer may not note the painter's failure to
depict the right leg of the riders, except in one case, and his sti1l -
rudimentary drawing of the men, who are akin to the rowers on
the Theban ship crater. His main interest clearly has been to
communicate a fresh sense of the power and life contained in the ..
horses. Here one finds not only the use of black-figure technique..
which was to be ever more skillfully developed, but also the first
empl~yment of incision in Corinthian work to mark out in
5Corinthian export began with Late VII. 1, 320); see below, pp. 369-71.
Geometric ware (Weinberg, Corinth
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 235
specific, concrete clarity the internal modeling of the figures. In
other vases white was already being used to this end, and purple
was soon added to the potters' repertoire. 6
On Protocorinthian vases, as in other Greek styles, clearly
recognizable scenes of myth and epic events began shortly after
700 B.C. to replace the generalized, undefinable pictures of
eighth-century art. Nowhere can we better sense than in these
scenes the driving force of a new outlook on life; its effect in
forcing the painter to ever more precise, clear, and detailed
work is obvious. As between the demands of society ~s consumer
and the active interest of the potter as artist to strike out on new
paths we cannot determine the initiative, but certainly the pot-
ters made heavy weather at first of their experiments. The men
and gods in Early Protocorinthian work are often awkward, ill-
balanced and poorly proportioned, and not well composed.7
Most craftsmen did not dare so much, but stuck to the easier
materials of stylized floral-type patterns and animals, both real
beasts and imaginary creatures such as sphinxes (see Plate 14b)
of Oriental inspiration.
Despite these evidences that experiment was not always
successful, the new Protocorinthian style displays from the first
pieces a basically firm concept of what its makers wished to
achieve. Virtually all at once they threw up a disciplined, co-
ordinated system of shapes and decorations. Supple, compli-
cated, yet sensitive, their work strikes the observer as consciously
designed, a product of deliberate thought toward a fairly clearly
conceived end. While the potter of the Late Geometric crater of
Plate 13a still moved largely by instinct, the brain and hand of
the man who made the Rider Kotyle were directly and purpose-
fully linked.
By about 680 tbe most advanced potters of Corinth had
sloughed off the external marks of the Geometric style. The

6Rays: Weinberg, AJA, XLV (1941), 2, who gives Dunbabin's date 750-
37, who finds them first on the shoul- 725 for the introduction of white; in
ders of round aryballoi, then on the Attica Kubler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 174,
base. Incision and technique: Kraiker, dates it to the 740'5. Cf. Young, Late
Aigina, 16-17; Payne, Necrocorinthia, Geometric Graves, 197-g8.
7; Robertson, BSA, XLIII (1948), 7 Payne, Protokorinthische Vasenmale-
56-57. Color: Brock, Fortetsa, 188 n. rei, 12.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
ovoid aryballos of Plate 14b, with its spiral decoration on the
rim, palmettes, confronted sphinxes, hares and dogs, and rays,
is a fine example of early Middle Proto corinthian work. Co-
rinthian aryballoi and other small vases decorated in a miniature
style were tremendously popular over all the Greek world as
containers for the incense and perfumes which Corinthian shops
made from Oriental materials. A grander vuse, from Aegina, is
shown on Plate 14a; Payne well described it as "perhaps the
finest existing example of Protocorinthian animal drawing," in
its exhibition of "an astounding power of persuading natural
shapes into calligraphic formulae." 8
In the words "calligraphic formulae" is perhaps the hidden
mark of the firm Greek inheritance from Geometric days which
may explain-as far as anything can explain-why the Co-
rinthian potters had moved so swiftly and surely. This pottery
of Corinth, called Orientalizing, is nonetheless unmistakably
Greek. To a student who knows primarily classic Greece, the
vases on Plate 14 must appear more Greek than much of the
Geometric product (e.g., Plate 8); yet the Protocorinthian style
was born ultimately out of the main Greek tradition.
Students who cling to evolutionary concepts have naturally
tried to find a basis for the explosion at Corinth in the pottery
of Crete or Cyprus, and have asserted that Protocorinthian de-
signs must be indebted to Oriental prototypes in textiles and
metal work. Such arguments are not worth the effort expended
on them. There can be no doubt that the potters of Corinth,
searching as they were for new modes by the middle of the
eighth century, were set free partly by observing the experi-
ments of Cycladic and other artists with birds and freehand
lines, partly by contact with Oriental motifs in non-ceramic
media; but far more weight must be placed on the generally
liberating spirit of the age of revolution. Once these craftsmen
had dared to break away from the old patterns, they swiftly
created a new scheme. As Payne observed, "the early Protoco-
rinthian potters are, indeed, more purely Hellenic than those of
8 Ibid. 12, 17-19. The famous Chigi black-figure tradition and also be-
vase (ibid. 14-16) I pass over here cause it falls after 650.
both because it is not in the main
( a) Argice fm~mer1t from Ar,gos,
t1''I'icting th t' Minding of Poly-
phC'llltls (ct. Plate 23b) (ATgO.~
.\[II.\·CIII1I ). PllOtograph courte8Y
Ecole froll raise d' Athcll es.

(") Boeotiall uase af a stiff. pm-

Gincial fla vor ( atiollal MuseulII
15300, Aillens). Photograpll co",'-
tesy Deutsclll'S Archiiologiscl1cs
lllstitut in Athells.

PLATE 1.5 . Othel" Oricllia/i;::.ing Styles ( I)

 (II) Pllriml llIIIpllOTO madl' ill
the ('rn of Afchilochlls (Ntl/iolla l
MI18CfIIIJ 1 , Stockholm). Photp-
grnph ('Oil 1"(£'511 .Vtltiolllli :1111-
'£,11111, Stockhohll.

(b) Cretall ('(I.'" from ArkOlks,

I'('f/wp~ rqJ(C's( ' lItil'l! TI1C'.I('I(.'
(/lui Ariadl1e' (lIcf(lklirlll MII-
selllll). Photograph fralll Dom
fATi , I!:arh' IIdlenic Putten of
Cfl·tc' (pj'iJlcctOI" 1V-IS),' pl .
.\"1.

1'1 .\1~: 16 . Ollll''' Ol'iL'lIillli::.illt!, St!Jll's (II)

CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 237
any contemporary school." Any direct, provable transfers of
motifs from the Orient to Corinth commonly occurred after the
seventh century was well under way-i.e., after the new artistic
outlook was sufficiently set to permit its artists to feel secure in
taking over such materiaP
In their innovations the Protocorinthian potters followed a
typical Greek procedure, which we shall find throughout the
age of revolution. They chose a few types of shapes and decora-
tions; and having thus limited their freedom of range, they con-
centrated their energies upon perfecting these types. The over-
whelming bulk of the tremendous Corinthian vase output was in
the form of small pots, such as aryballoi and kotylai, in extremely
similar patterns of Boral and animal decoration. Eventually, to
be sure, this restricted range was to exhaust Corinthian inven-
tiveness by Middle Corinthian times; the potters of Attica, who
had followed a more bizarre path, were to gain the upper
hand.
In concentrating upon the main line of Proto corinthian
ware, I must note in conclusion, we run a serious risk of over-
simplification. The products which Corinth sold on the inter-
national market were of the new model and reBected changes in
fashion rather quickly. Thus they helped to speed the rapid
adoption of the Orientalizing style all over the Greek world. At
home not all men were ready to abandon their ancestral in-
heritance. One of the most interesting revelations of the Potters'
Quarter at Corinth has been the volume of sub-Geometric ware
which it contained; pots with straight Geometric designs or
Linear Geometric patterns continued to be made beside the
more developed vases all through the first half of the seventh
century. Then the use of rays and other newer elements came
into even the conservative workshops, but on down to 600 a
strong tint of reluctance to yield ancient ways is perceptible. 1
Repeatedly in the age of revolution there are similar marks that
not all elements and all areas were willing to move swiftly for-
ward.
9Payne, Necrocorinthia, 10, 53, 67, cording to Kunze and Benton.
71;so also at Crete (Brock, Fortetsa, 1Weinberg, Corinth, VII. 1, 7Z-73;
144) and on the Idaean shields ac- AlA, XLV (1941),39-40.

9
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

ORIENTALIZING POTTERY: PROTOATTIC AND OTHER

INTO THE MAKING of Protocorinthian ware inspiration had

poured from several late eighth-century sources-the Cyclades,
Attica, probably the Argolid, Crete, and the Orient proper.
From Corinth, in return, the influence of the new style spread
far and wide in th~early seventh century, mainly through the
export of the best, most developed Protocorinthian products and
their local imitation, partly perhaps through the migration of
craftsmen. Some of the inscriptions on Protocorinthian vases are
in foreign alphabets and may betoken the residence of alien
potters at Corinth; more certain evidence for the mobility of
artists is the fact that Greek potters worked in the new styles
in Etruscan clays.!
Throughout the new western colonies and in the fringe dis-
tricts under native rule potters were able to do little more than
imitate Greek models. No outstanding local types of pottery,
except that which is known as Etruscan bucchero, arose in the
West during the seventh and sixth centuries. 3 In Greece, on the
other hand, some regions which previously had not produced
Geometric pottery of any merit were now able to consolidate
virtually independent fashions. Chief among these was Sparta,
still devoted in the seventh century to the common path of aristo-
cratic luxury; under the influence of Corinth and also of Argos,
2 The four inscribed Protocorinthian 36). Robert Eisler, "Eine semitische
vases show three alphabets (Robert- Ipschrift auf einer 'protokorinthischen'
son, BSA, XLIII [1948), 123); the Vase von Megara Hyblaea," Kilo, XX
Chigi vase, thus, has an Aeginetan (1925-26),354-62, argued· for a pos-
flavor (Rumpf, Malerei und Zeich- Sibly Aramaic inscription in Corin-
nung, 33). Cf. Michel Lejeune, thian alphabet; Lejeune (102) con"
"Vases 'Protocorinthiens' Inscrits," siders it meaningless. The effort to
REA, XLVII (1945), 101-10; Matz, explain such alphabets in terms Of
CGK, I, 247, who notes that the Co- alien purchasers, T. B. L. Webster,
rinthian alphabet appears mainly in Greek Art and Literature, 700-530
Transitional and Corinthian styles. But B.C. (Dunedin, 1959),20, is not con-
the problem of alphabets on Greek vincing.
vases is a perplexing one. The Protoat- 3 F. Villard and G. Vallet, "Geome-
tic Menelaus stand of Aegina is not in- trique grec, geometrique siceliote, ge-
scribed in Attic (IRS, LXIX [1949], ometrique sicule," Melanges d'arche-
26); the Euphorbos plate of East alogie et d'histoire, LXVIII (1956),
Greek style has an Argive-type alpha- 7-27, have useful remarks on one lo-
bet (Rumpf, Malerel und Zeichnung, cal western adaptation.
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 239
the Laconian style emerged. In the Laconian III and IV stages
(sixth century) this was exported to North Africa (Cyrene)
and to East Greece (Samos especially).4
While Spartan Orientalizing ware seems almost entirely de-
rivative in its original impulse, many other areas could build
upon stronger Geometric roots and gained new inspiration only
partly through Corinthian influence. The seventh century was
the golden age of distinctive pottery styles in the Aegean;
that process of local differentiation which had been ever more
marked throughout Proto geometric and Geometric styles now
reached its peak in pottery as well as in political history. By the
early sixth century these individualized outlooks were to fade
slowly away before the unanswerable competition of Attic black-
figured ware.
This, however, is a later story. In the seventh century the
Orientalizing pottery of Greece bears a common stamp both in
its new repertoire of shapes, in its wider use of solid figures
picked out by incision and color, and in its range of motifs,
which vary from simple floral patterns to elaborate composi-
tions of aristocratic warriors (and gods) in battles, chariot races,
and scenes of myth and epiC. Within this relatively uniform
reaction to unifying forces, cross-currents of influence become
sharply perceptible, and each local style has its own Havor.
The pottery of the Argolid, known from earlier finds at
Tiryns and the Argive Heraeum and recently from Argos itself,
was more powerful than has been recognized; in "horse-raising
Argos" great, majestic horses had been depicted since Late
Geometric days, and Homeric scenes, especially the blinding of
Polyphemus by Odysseus, occur from the early seventh century
(see Plate lsa).5 Beside these relatively skillful Argive com-

4 J. P. Droop, Artemis Orthia, 52-116; I, 135-64; Anne Roes, "Fragments de

E. A. Lane, "Lakonian Vase Paint- poterie geometrique trouves sur les ci-
ing," BSA, XXXIV (1933-34)' 9g- tadelles d'Argos," BCH, LXXVII
189; Paola Pelagatti, "La ceramica la- (1953), 90-104; J. M. Cook, BSA,
conica del Museo di Taranto," Annua- XLVIII (1953), 34-50, who gives a
rio, n.s. XVII-XVIII (1955-56), 7-44. list (p. 38 n. 10) of Late Geometric
Protocorinthian ware at Sparta is noted of the Argolid; Paul Courbin, "Un
by Droop, 113-14, and Lane, 10<r01, fragment de cratere protoargien,"
where Argive influence is also found. BCH, LXXIX (1955), 1-49, who il-
5 Argos: Miiller and Oelmann, Tiryns, lustrates also the Aristonothos vase.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

positions the pottery of Boeotia (see Plate 15b) seems stiff and
conservatively Geometric in pattern, and almost never occurs
outside its h0meland. 6 Cycladic workshops, on the other hand,
while unable to meet Corinthian competition in the West, moved
into a galaxy of Orientalizing patterns. 7 To a modem eye the
large vases of Parian origin (see Plate 16a) are perhaps the
most fascinating in their clean build, firm decorative sense, and
marvelously depicted animals; but the grandly conceived
scenes of myth on some Naxian work are equally unique. Farther
east, the wares called East Greek now become more identifiable
as to origin, particularly the Rhodian Wild Goat styles; these
latter appeared suddenly about 650 and seem like tapestry in
their richly decorated rows of animals. s To the south the potters
of Crete produced from about 735 on down to the middle of the
seventh century vases more loosely drawn in yet another Orien- <

talizing pattern (see Plate 16b).9 Cretan pottery showed

Corinthian influence in the seventh century, but tended to

This is commonly taken as Etruscan: (Berlin, 1950), 137-39.

see Rumpf, Malerei und Zeichnung, S East Greeks: Andreas Rumpf, "Zu
pI. 6. den klazomenischen Denkmalern,"
6 Boeotia: Boardman, BSA, XLVII JdI, XLVIII (1933), 55-83; Karl
(1952), 17-18,47, who discusses the Schefold, "Knidische Vasen und Ver-
pottery from Eretria. wandtes," JdI, LVII (1942), 124-42;
7 Cyclades: Charles Dugas, Delos M. Robertson, JHS, LX (1940), 8fI.;
XVII: Les Vases Orientalisants de R. M. Cook, JHS, LXVI (1946), 93-
style non Melien (Paris, 1935); Ernst 94; W. Lamb, "Excavations at Kato
Buschor, "Kykladisches," AM, LIV Phana in Chios," BSA, XXXV (1934-
(1929), 142-63; H. G. G. Payne, 35), 138-64, on the ties of Chiot Ge-
"Cycladic Vase-Painting of the, Sev- ometric and "Naucratite": Technau,
enth Century," JHS, XLVI, (1926), AM, LIV (1929),20-40, on Samos;
203-12; J. K. Brock, BSA, XLIV Wolfgang Schiering, Werkstatten ori-
(1949), 74-80, on the dates of the entalisierender Keramik aUf Rhodos
ware. The relief pithoi of Tenos show (Berlin, 1957).
the same development very interest- 9 Crete: Brock, Fortetsa, 213-18, whii
ingly; d. Athens N:M 2475, Munich puts Early Orientalizing at 735-680,
7697, and others listed in Schafer, Late Orientalizing at 680-630 on the
Reliefpithoi, 67-73. Paros: Buschor, basis of Protocorinthian parallels and
AM, LIV (1929), 142-52. Naxos: three Egyptian scarabs (nos. 1076-
Christos Karusos, "Eine naxische Am- 1078), one of which is surely XXVI
phora des friiheren siebenten Jahr- Dynasty. See also above, Chap. 3,
hunderts," JdI, LII (1937), 166-97; n. 9 (p. 98); and on the relations
Buschor, AM, LIV (1929), 152-58; of Crete and Corinth, Chap. 6; n.
·Ernst Homann-Wedeking, Die An- 4 (P· Z1 7). t

fange der griechischen Grossplastik

CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I
eschew figure composition; large polychrome amphoras are
among its most outstanding products.
A detailed discussion of these styles would carry us much
too far afield, and we need note only their manifold variety
within a common spirit; but the developments in Attica cannot be
dismissed so briefly. Here, best of all, is illuminated the struggle
to move onto a new artistic plane and the quality of stress which
marked the early seventh century. The Attic experiments, too,
though immediately without any major effect on the rest of
Gr,eece, were eventually to be more decisive in shaping the
course of Greek pottery than even the Corinthian styles.
Throughout most of the eighth century Attic pottery had
been the most progressive in Greece. Freehand drawing had ap-
peared in Athens by 750, but the rows of birds and other motifs
which resulted were for a time integrated into the prevailing
Geometric spirit. Shortly after the mid-century point signals of
distress began to fly in Attic products. On the one side, the grow-
ing uncertainty of the potters led them to cling more desperately
to the old patterns, and many vases are stiff both in shape and in
overelaborate Geometric decoration. On the other hand, the
more experimental artists found themselves dissolving the old
crisp sureness of Dipylon scenes. 1
A fine example of this very point in time is afforded by a vase
from the site in the Kerameikos cemetery labeled by its excava-
tors the first Opferrinne. The painter of K. 1356 (Plate 17a)
evidently was essaying to depict noble action and life in more
realistic terms than had his Dipylon grandfather. The parts of
the bodies are better integrated, and even the parts of the vase
itself flow more into one another than previously; but the loose-
ness of drawing, in figures and in general patterns as well, sug-
gests the difficulty of the experiment. An Oxford amphora
(Plate 17b) has proceeded a step further. The chariot frieze
1Athens: Kubler, Kerameikos, V. 1 Workshops around 700," BSA, XLII
passim (esp. 135-36, 83-84, 171-81), (1947), 139-55, and "Proto attic Pot-
and Altattische Malerei; Young, Late tery," BSA, XXXV (1934-35), 165-
Geometric Graves, and "Graves from 219; Ohly, Griechische Goldbleche,
the Phaleron Cemetery," AJA, XLVI 110-16, who draws parallels to the
(1942),23-57; J. M. Cook, "Athenian gold binds.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
harks back to the earlier eighth century, but the runners on the
neck exhibit a real flow of energy in their freer stride and
more supple bodies. 2 Finally, the maker of a third vase, in the
Louvre (Plate 18a), probably the painter of the famous
Analatos hydria, has achieved the transition to Proto attic, both
in the bands of naturalistic decoration and in the chariot frieze,
the horses of which are internally defined by incision.
These three successive chariot scenes are extremely sugges-
tive, particularly if we place them beside contemporary Corin-
thian work in the crucial decades about 700. The inheritance of
the Dipylon figured scenes led the Attic potters to attempt far
more than did their Corinthian confreres, but their vaulting am-
bition was for the moment much less successful. If one com-
pares even the last of the three with the roughly contemporary
Rider Kotyle of Corinth (Plate 13a) or with a Corinthian •
aryballos (Plate 14b), the difference is marked. The Attic
vase is overly elaborate, even fussy in its pierced handles and
applied wavy lines; the shape is stiffer and more Geometric; a
horror vacui leads to too abundant filling ornament; and the
Geometric inheritance, though still present in .the meander of
the Rider Kotyle, has evidently been much more successfully
overpassed at Corinth than at Athens. Such a comparison of the
two schools does not seriously introduce modern aesthetic
prejudice, for the seventh century itself made much the same
judgment: Corinthian ware captured the market, and Protoattic
vases were scarcely exported at all, save to nearby Aegina. 3 As
far as we can determine on the basis of admittedly hazardo.us
stylistic criteria, no more than three major w~rkshops were active
in Late Geometric-Early Protoattic days m Attica, while the
. greater demand for Corinthian vases supported perhaps as many
as eleven at Corinth.
The absolute dating of the development to the Protoatti~
2 Cook, BSA, XLII (1947), 150, de- Note that even in Attica Corinthian
rives the Mesogeia painter, of the first ware appears in quantity, especially
Protoattic days, from this workshop of from the Middle Protocorinthian on;
the last Late Geometric years. Anala- its p0'pularity at Old Smyrna is appar-
tos shop: Cook, BSA, XXXV (1934- ent in BSA, LUI-IV (1958-59), 138-
35), 166-69, 172-76. 51. Number of workshops: Cook, BSA,
3 Cook, BSA, XXXV (1934-35), 204; XLII (1947), 143; Benson, Geschi-
Young, Late Geometric Graves, 222. chte der korinthischen Vasen, 13-16.
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 243
style is much debated at present! The publishers of the Kera-
meikos material place Opferrinne 1 in the early 730's and so
ascribe the commencement of significant Orientalizing tenden-
cies to 735-725; the Analatos hydria, on this basis, must be
placed in the 720'S. Others, however, have dated this vase to
710, to 700, and even to 690. On the whole the Orientalizing
wave seems to have got under way about as soon at Athens as at
Corinth, but was slower to reach a true basis for a new style,
partly because Attic potters were much more ambitious, partly
because their great inheritance stood in their path. As a result,
Early Proto attic vases have been found in the same context with
more developed Protocorinthian kotylai. 5 I incline accordingly
to set the early phase of Protoattic proper at 710-680.
In many ways the first Proto attic pottery may be termed
poor. s The vases often were not well made, their forms were
bizarre experiments which did not endure, perfunctory Geo-
metric ornament stood beside some of the most flamboyant work
ever produced in historic Greek times. Modern surveys some-
times stress too much the lack of discipline in Proto attic decora-
tion, for its creators were still, after all, Greek and were more
heavily burdened by their inheritance than were most Orien-
talizing craftsmen. Yet it must be said that Attic potters oc-
casionally displayed singular indifference to the limitations
and requirements of vase forms, as when they sprawled huge
animals over virtually the whole surface.
,Modern students, however, are rightly at one in paying
careful attention to the Attic experiments. In these vases the
4 Earlier dating: Kiibler, Kerameikos, Late Geometric occurs beside two Pro-
V. 1, 141-56, and Altattische Malerei, tocorinthian kotylai; see Kahane, AlA,
6-8; J. M. Cook, ]HS, LXXVI (1956), XLIV (1940), 479-80 (Cook, BSA,
124-25, accepts this date for the Op- XLII [1947], 143). The Phaleron
ferrinne, while Kraiker, Neue Beitrage, graves display minor Protoattic work
43, suggests 725· Later dating: J. M. with a strong sub-Geometric flavor be-
Cook, BSA, XXXV (1934-35), 202- side considerable Proto corinthian im-
05, puts Early Proto attic 710-680; ports; see S. Pelekidis, Deltion, II
R. M. Cook, lHS, LXVI (1946), 93, (1916), 13ff.; Young, AlA, XLVI
about 700; Young, Late Geometric (1942), 23-57; See also Cook, BSA,
Graves, 2-3, 221-22, 229, and AlA, XXXV (1934-35), 201-02; Keramei-
XLVI (1942), 55-57, lowers it into kos, V. 1, grave 67 (K. 661).
the early seventh century (as does 6 Young, Late Geometric Graves, 195-
Buschor). 201, 212-16 (especially in sub-Geo-
5 The Lion Painter of the last Attic metric ware) .
244 PART III . The Age of Revolution

human beings and animals were growing plumper as draftsmen

stated an observation of life more directly than Geometric con-
ventions had permitted. 7 Motion had entered the artists' ken,
and they were attempting to express action not by external at-
tributes but within their figures. The individual elements, again,
now interacted on each other, for the painters' skill in composi-
tion grew. In sum, through their technical experiments in color,
incision, and black-figure with reserved spaces, Attic potters
were manifesting as keen an interest in the world and man as
one can find in any seventh-century style, more so indeed than
most of the competent but increasingly conventional shops of
Corinth. By the middle of the seventh century the great rage for
experiment was waning in Attica, and its artists were beginning
to settle down to a consolidation of their gains. The Kerameikos
vase of Middle Proto attic style depicted in Plate I8b shows still
the ambition of its maker in the huge figure of the sphinx but also
reflects the surer sense of shape and decoration which led toward
the creation of the famous Attic black-figure style before the end
of the century.
The story of Protoattic development demonstrates even
more clearly than does the Corinthian series how difficult were
the problems of change in the early seventh century. The most
advanced workshops tried much, but had great trouble in equat-
ing ambition and result. Beside their product a very strong strain
of sub-Geometric pottery went on, as at Corinth, down to the
middle of the seventh century.s Particularly puzzling and in-
triguing is the apparent revival of some Mycenaean motifs,
which can be paralleled at Delos; in reaching forward, potters
seem also to have reached back to earlier artistic levels. From
these scattered suggestions of Mycenaean motifs one can per- -

7 Young, ibid. 218-20; Matz, GGK, I, Technau, AM, LIV (1929), 25 pI.
313-15, 343-44; Beazley, Develop- III; Athens, Young, Late Geometric
ment of Attic Black-figure, 4-5; Kub- Graves, 126 fig. 88 (B. 58); Hesperia,
ler, Altattische Malerei, 8, 15. II (1933), 575-76; B. Graef and
S Young, Late Geometric Graves, 2. E. Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen in deT
Mycen~ean motifs: Young, 177; De- Akropolis zu Athen, I (Berlin, 1909),
los xv, 51 (Ae 71). Note. too the ap- 37 no. 365; Corinth, Necrocorinthia,
pearance of the octopus on seventh- nos. 540, 629; Myconos museum, un-
century ware: Crete, BSA, XLIX published example.
(1954),222-23, fig. 6 no. 52; Samos,
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 245
haps read a general lesson that the strands of Greek civilization
were many, and that the pattern of Aegean culture at anyone
time was not as uniform a plane as it is sometimes depicted. To
suggest this, nonetheless, does not warrant the interpretation
still occasionally advanced that the Orientalizing develop-
ments of the seventh century were a contest between pri-
meval Mediterranean and new Nordic attitudes.o

EARLY ARCHITECTURE

IN CONSIDERING the major aesthetic changes of the age of

revolution, the modern student must commence with the area
which has just been surveyed, that of the pottery. Only here can
we hope to understand against a continuous background the
true nature and meaning of the great alterations which took
place and to date the innovations with some precision; only in
the ceramic field can we compare continuous chains of materials
for a number of Aegean districts. By and large the Orientalizing
potters were independent craftsmen. At times they drew inspira-
tion from non-ceramic sources-textiles, bronze, and other
objects of Oriental and local origin-for their treatment of
decorative elements and of human and animal forms; but the
degree of this dependence is, I think, often greatly exaggerated.
Insofar as the fingers and minds of the potters responded to
influences from outside their shop doors, the major debt was to
the poets and to the tellers of myth and fable.
Whether the makers of vases reacted consciously to the de-
velopments in the sister arts is difficult to determine. In respect
to the decoration of vases, the more complicated scenes may at
times have reflected larger paintings on flat surfaces, though
the existence of such work remains a: hotly debated argument
in an almost complete vacuum of evidence. For the seventh cen-
tury there survive only small painted plaques or pinakes of
terra cotta, made for votive or funeral purposes; but a vase of
the period from Ithaca (Aetos No. 600) does show a temple with
9 As Kubler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 180-81; Matz, GGK, I, 135, 202, 344-45.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
figures painted on its walls. 1 The forms of the vases, again, may
have been influenced by contemporary architectural and sculp-
tural concepts of space, for in these arts notable progress oc-
curred during the age of revolution.
In the field of architecture, historic Greek society did not
devote its surplus energy to the erection of great fortress-palaces
which would manifest the power of kings. The increasingly tight
political ties which were now emerging were of quite different
type from those of the Mycenaean age; the functions of the city-
state did not yet demand major public secular buildings. The
one bond of mankind which required visible architectural
commemoration was the worship of a common divine force,
under whose protection the population of the incipient city-state
grouped itself in aristocratic guidance. As this link grew in
potency and as the Greek world became richer, the temple form
was correspondingly elaborated from extremely simple roots.
It is unfortunate that we do not have the evidence to examine
in detail the resurgence of an architectural spirit in Greece, for
the shape in which men cast their buildings always reflects basic
attitudes about their views of the world and their own place.
The very fact that monumental architecture completely vanished
from the Aegean at the end of the Mycenaean stage throws into
high relief the collapse of highly organized societies; the Dark
ages were not a period in which men dared-or had the
strength-to build enduring monuments. What little has been
uncovered can be dated only on t,he basis of accompanying
pottery or stratigraphiC position; the remains in themselves
display no monumental sense and no effort at conscious organi-
zation of space. Not until this objective became apparent in
sharply defined ground plans and in the formulation of preclSe-
building members such as the column can the history of Greek

llthaca vase: Robertson, BSA, XLIII Rumpf, Malerei und Zeichnung, 29,
(1940), 101-02. Plaques: Boardman, 37; Kraiker, Aigina, 18, who accepts
BSA, L (1955), 51-66. Large paint- panels but not wall-painting. Cook, .
ings: Benson, Geschichte der korin- Geras A. Keramopoullou, 117, does
thischlm Vasen, 88, 92-93; Payne, Pro- not consider it likely a separate style
tokorinthische Vasenmalerei, 14; Rob- was used in larger works.
ertson, BSA, XLVI (1951), 154-55;
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 247
architecture truly begin; but this brings us down virtually to the
middle of the seventh century.
From the earlier remains we may elicit some scant light on
the building techniques and spatial concepts from which the
temple sprang. While the skill which had led to the marvelous
stonework of the last phases at Mycenae (Plate za) disappeared
in the collapse of the Late Bronze age, men of the first millennium
inherited their basic techniques of constru(!tion. Not all of the
earlier buildings were destroyed; human society survived,
though barely, in the rude villages huddling on the hillsides of
Greece. Rouses and other structures were erected on a rough
stone foundation laid in a shallow trench; floors were commonly
pounded dirt. The upper courses were of stone or of mudbrick
with timber posts and other members, which probably were
plastered; windows were few and high; raofs, either pitched or
flat, were brush, covered with mud and a w~tertight coat. Build-
ings found at Siphnos, apparently of the eighth century, were
well constructed, but the occasional examples elsewhere in
Greece do not suggest great care and conscious premeditation
of architectural effects in this "carpenter's work." 2
~he ground plans of houses in the Dark ages reflect, no
doubt instinctively, certain aesthetic principles. In the founda-
tions there are two main patterns, one rectangular (or nearly so)
and one with curved lines, either entirely oval or with rounded
2 The phrase is Matz's, GGK, I, 350. between HOmeric references and ar-
The. nature of the evidence may be chaeological indications are further
seen in BSA, XXXVIII (1937-38), discussed by Gray in Homer and His
66-68 (Karphi); BSA, XLIV (1949), Critics, 163~70.
8-10 (Siphnos); Hutchinson, BSA, Earlier survivals: Lawrence,
XLIX (1954), 220 (Cretan model Greek Architecture, 291-93, who sug-
at Khaniale Tekke); Gallet de San- gests that the Middle Helladic inherit-
terre, Delos primitive, 215-20 (De- ance was greater than that from My-
los). Ground plan: H. Bagenal in Per- cenaean building; Roland Martin, Re-
achora, I, 42-51; Lorimer, Homer and cherches SUr l'agora grecque (Paris,
the Monuments, 438-39; Hesperia, II 1951), 105~27, who seeks to find Mi-
( 1933), 542-51 (Agora); ILN, Feb- noan-Mycenaean survivals. See also
ruary 28, 1953, 328-29 (Smyrna); William Bell Dinsmoor, The Architec-
AnatSt, VIlI (1958), 31 (Miletus). ture of Ancient Greece: An Account of
Megaron: Chap. 5, n. 8 (p. 174), Its Historic Development (3d ed.;
above; Lorimer, Homer and the Mon- London, 19~0), which accepts the Ar-
uments, 411-12; ILN, December 31, yanmyth.
1955, 1144-45 (Chios); the relations
 PART III . The Age of Revolution.
apse at the back. This latter shape had been common in Middle
Helladic days, but not in the Mycenaean world; its reappearance
has been argued to reflect the entry of new elements during the
age of invasion. Of this I am far from convinced; basically the
two main plans reflect major differences in building the super-
structure-of rough stone in the rectangular shape, of mudbrick
in the rounded-and even at times in roofing techniques.
The rectangular pattern, called the megaron, also had an-
cient roots; in Chapter 1 we noted its appearance in early Troy.
To define more fully the nature of the megaron, this type con-
sisted of a squarish room with a hearth in the center which was
flanked by posts to hold up the roof; a vent layover the hearth.
In a front of the room a porch was supported by two posts or
columns. Well-known in the Mycenaean palaces, this form con- •
tinued across the Dark ages as virtually the only remnant of
architectural order. In the pitifully simple root, however, lay
apparently the highest sense of disciplined space available to
Aegean men; for the earliest architects were to seize upon this
plan and evolve from it the new temple pattern.
In Crete, religious sanctuaries seem to have existed all
across the Dark ages. The rude settlement at Karphi, which was
described in Chapter 4, had a walled, open-air shrine (1100--
goo). The first roofed temples thus far found in the island
scarcely date from before the eighth century, but they fall into
a common pattern. The temple at Dreros, which is perhaps of
the early seventh century, is 10.g by 7.2 meters over-all. Its
major elements are a pronaos and a cella, the Hat roof of which
was supported by the walls of brick and by two columns in
the center, on either side of the sacred hearth. At the rear were
a bank, on the right, for offerings, and an altar on which stood
statues of the gods, two female, one male, made of bronze plates
by the technique known in Greek sculpture as sphyrelaton. 3
Roughly the same type occurs at Prinias and Gortyn; the builders
of Crete seem to have clung conservatively to ancient patterns.
The earliest evidence from the mainland of Greece and the
3 Sp. Marinatos, "Le temple geome- XVII-XVIII (1955-56), 237, 239-46,
trique de Dreros," BCH, LX (1936), on Gortyn; the new shrine of Hera
214-85, who dates this building rather Limenia c. 750 at Perachora is similar,
too early c. 750; Levi, Annuario, Perachora, I, 110-13.
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 249
Aegean islands suggests greater poverty but more willingness to
experiment. Here the sanctuaries apparently had at first only an
altar for sacrifice; but at some undefinable point before 800
simple chapels began to appear behind the altars. At Perachora
and at the Argive Heraeum small clay models of the eighth cen-
tury were discovered which might possibly have been houses
but seem more probably to have been temples. 4 These models
show a simple building with a foreporch supported by two
columns and a peaked roof over the main room; the best-pre-
served example from Perachora has a rounded apse, that of
the Argive Heraeum is rectangular. The first shrine of Artemis
Orthia, probably of about 800, was perhaps 9 meters by 4.5; the
foundations of the temple of Hera Akraia at Perachora are 8 by
5 meters, with rounded apse. 5 Greek architects did not easily
come to sharp, clearly defined structural shapes.
At Samos a relatively large temple of more developed
character was erected early in the eighth century, but this
Heraeum still lacked the clarity and conscious formulation of
space of the next century.6 Initially it was a narrow, rectangular
building on a foundation 33.5 meters by 6.75; a/row of thirteen
columns ran down the center of the cella and masked the base
of the cult statue, hidden behind the last column. As the eighth
century wore on, the Samians evidently grew dissatisfied with
this architectural expression. First they added, probably late in
the century, a colonnade of wooden columns, seven on the front,

'Perachora, I, 34-41; Kurt Muller, 6 Ernst Buschor, "Heraion von Samos:

"Gebaudemodelle spatgeometrischer Friihe Bauten," AM, LV (1930), 1-
Zeit," AM, XLVIII (1923), 52-68; 99, esp. 13- 15; AM, LVIII (1933),
Sidney D. Markman, "Building Mod- 150-52; Hanfmann, HSCP, LXI
els and the Architecture of the Geo- (1953),29, lowers the date from 800
metric Period," Studies to D. M. Rob- to later in the eighth century (but cf.
inson, I, 259-71. Lawrence, Greek Architecture, 91-
The date of the model of a Cre- 92). On the building below the Oikos
tan temple published by Alexiou in of the Naxians at Delos, see F.
Kretika Chronika, IV (1950),441-62, Courby, BCH, XLV (1921),233, and
is lowered by Brock, Fortetsa, 143, to Rene Vallois, L'Architecture helle-
830-20. Other such huts are known nique et hellenistique d Delos ;usqu'd
from Crete ( Alexiou, p. 450) and l'etJiction des Deliens (166 av.I.-C.),
from Greece (Young, Late Geometric I (Paris, 1944), 18, 115. Matz, Gno-
Graves, 186). mon, IX ( 1933), 467, calls these long,
5 Perachora, I, 28-31; Artemis Orthia, narrow buildings "riesige Bauernhau-
u
10-12. ser.
250 PART III . The Age of Revolution
six on the back, and seventeen on each side; at this time a shell
of ashlar masonry was placed about the altar before the temple.
,This regularization and embellishment was only a stopgap.
Early in the seventh century the Samians seem to have pulled
down the temple-there is, at least, no evidence of fire in the
excavation reports-and erected a temple of about the same
size but with quite different spirit. Two rows of columns now ran
down the interior so that the cult statue at the back was visible
as the focus of the internal space; around the cella stood a
colonnade which was arithmetically uniform, six on front and
back and eighteen on each side, with a second row of six columns
on the front to add majesty and a sense of depth. The walls of the
new structure were of good stonework at the base, then of sun-
dried brick and timber.
At this point Greek architects had suddenly stepped over
the great divide of their architectural history. On the one side
lay simple, essentially unconscious creations in space; on the
other, the deliberate manipulation of physical materials to create
a three-dimensional structure, solid and firm yet organically
alive in its play of light and shadow, of horizontal and vertical
lines. The Heraeum at Samos is only one of the new examples,
for at Delos and at many other sites large-scale building broke
out suddenly about the same time.
The next step, the translation of the colonnaded temple
plan into stone throughout, was perhaps technically connected
with the development of tile roofs, which required heavier
support but permitted a gentler pitch and so a somewhat wider
structure. Roof tiles had been known earlier in the Aegean, but,
like so many other refinements, had died out in the Dark ages;. _
traditionally their manufacture and use was an invention of
Corinth. 7 Yet in architectural history emphasis must never be
placed solely on building techniques. The transition to stone
arose as well from the greater wealth of some Greek states-
7 Payne, Necrocorinthia, 248-52; Lori- checks, apparently to suggesf tiles;
mer, Homer and the Monuments, Robertson, BSA, XLIII (1948), 101-
440-41; E. D. Van Buren, Greek Fic- 02, would date this scarcely after 700.
tile Revetments in the Archaic Period The first actual example is the temple
(London, 1926). The roof of the tem- of Apollo at Thermum, of the mid-
ple on the Aetos vase is painted in seventh century.
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I
while others were forced to continue to build in wood-from
the greater interest of Greek society in hOUSing its gods as mag-
nificently as possible, and from the greater daring of men in
cutting and shaping raw stone blocks out of formless nature
to express their human aspirations.s By the middle of the
seventh century the rectangular temple of stone with external
and internal colonnades, pediment, terra-cotta revetments
and roof was becoming set as the basic religious structure of the
Greeks.
In architecture, as in Orientalizing po~tery, men had
achieved revolution by concentration and by elimination of such
variants as oval plans. One root of the n~w architecture, the
megaTon plan, came from the Mycenaean inheritance. Oriental
i:qfluence had played a part as well, especially in the formation
of the Dorian and Ionian orders, though the precise steps in this
development are still hotly debated.s The very audacity which
led the Greeks to build monumentally owed much, I suspect, to
their increasing knowledge of Oriental cities, and the necessary·
wealth was only attained with the quickening of economic ties
to the East. Yet the product is unmistakably Greek and repre-
sents a new triumph in architectural sensitivity; from the
most primitive of building techniques and Simplest of floor plans
Greek architects had created true beauty.
Balance and restraint, the harnessing of dynamic action,
logical analysis and then synthesiS of clearly defined parts-all
these are marks of the Greek temple, Greek statue, and Greek
vase. The temple, as has often been observed, was essentially a
jewel box, set on a platform to encase a statue; the Greek archi-
tect, unlike the Gothic, took a part of space and cut it off
sharply from the infinite, chaotic world roundabout his struc-
ture. Internal space was not his principal concern, but in
reducing a small part of the world to perfect order he went far
S Matz, GGK, I, 351-52, whose sugges- Bowen, "Some Observations on the
tive remarks are marred only by his Origin of Triglyphs," BSA, XLV
compulsion to see a revival of a Medi- ( 1950), 113-25; R. M. Cook's note,
terranean megalithiC spirit. BSA, XLVI (1951), 50-52; see also
S Among the many recent essays on Dinsmoor, Architecture, 50-64; C.
this problem are A. von Gerkan, "Die Weickert, Typen der archaischen AT-
Herkunft des dorischen Gebalks," Jdr, chitektur in Griechenland und Klei-
LXIII-IV (1948-49), 1-13; M. L. nasien (Augsburg, 1929).
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

beyond the sprawling beehives of Minoan palaces or the vast

but empty colonnades of Egypt. In looking at such a finished
example as the Parthenon a sensitive observer can perhaps best
feel one of the greatest gifts of Greek thought to subsequent
civilization, the concept that man can reduce the physical world
to orderly terms comprehensible in rational, human modes of
expression .. Much remained to be done in sharpening this con-
cept after the age of revolution was over, but the basic step of
creating the stone temple had been achieved. The very fact that
we cannot tell precisely how the Greeks had evolved their
great architectural type is another mark of the suddenness
with which development proceeded in the early seventh cen-
tury.
Beyond the temple it is scarcely possible to discuss Greek
architecture in the age of revolution. Houses remained simple
structures for the basic needs of life; villages show virtually no
trace of planning, save in the provision of an open space for a
market and a simple foundation. These rude agglomerations
were not yet walled, but the close-packed blocks of houses with
common exterior walls, located usually on commanding ground,
were fairly defensible. As interstate warfare grew in the seventh
and sixth centuries and as states grew richer, the need for walls
was to emerge. Thus far even the colonies could do little more
than create a fortress refuge, although Smyrna in Asia Minor
seems to have flung a mud-brick wall about its fairly small
nucleus even so early as the ninth century.1

THE EMERGENCE Of SCULPTURE

.ANOTHER great artistic triumph of the age of revolution
was the wide-scale resumption of sculptural activity. The audac-
ity which led men to the first major steps here is a mark of the
intellectual strength of the eighth century; the speed with which
1 R. V. Nicholls, BSA, LIII-IV (1958- ( 1949), 9, reports a village wall at
59), 35-137, who essays (p. 115) to Siphnos; see below, Chap. 10, n. 8
find other early parallels; most are not (P·34 0 ).
convincing. J. K. Brock, BSA, XLIV
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 253
three-dimensional modeling in clay, wood, bronze, and stone
developed attests the extraordinary openness of men to experi-
ment in the decades just on either side of 700. The firmly set
style which we call Dedalic was under way by at least 680, and
the first virtually life-size statue in stone, the Nikandre figure
from Delos, is generally dated before the mid-century mark. 2
As one looks back from Nikandre into the eighth century, it
is amazing that so much had been accomplished in so short a
time. The Geometric style was not one calculated to encourage
three-dimensional reproduction of the real world of man and
beast; before 800 the plastic sense of the Greeks had expressed
itself mainly in the beautifully integrated but abstract shapes of
Proto geometric and Geometric vases. A very thin tradition of
sculpture, it is true, had survived throughout the Dark ages.
Cult statuettes of human and animal form were made at
this time in. Crete, largely in imitation of Minoan and Myce-
naean prototypes; and a few bronze and hand-molded clay ani-
mals have been found at sites in Greece. At times the animals
were simplified virtually past identification, but the plumpish
horses of the tenth- and ninth-century graves at the Keramei-
kos are rather engaging, naive reHections of reality unfettered
by any sense of canons (see Plate gb ) ,8
2 Basic studies of the early figurines kins, Perachora I, 191-255; Dieter
are MUlIer, Friihe Plastik, 60-89, Ohly, "Friihe Tonfiguren aus dem
which is unfortunately too typological Heraion von Samos," AM, LXV
and does not bring out clearly the de- ( 1940), 57-102; AM, LXVI (1941),
velopIilent in the period here under 1-46. Very little on the early period
consideration; Emil Kunze, "Zu den will be found in the Louvre Catalogue
AnHingen der griechischen Plastik," raisonnlie des figurines et reliefs en
AM, LV (1930),141-62, which is crit- terre-cuite grecs, etmsques et romains,
icized on some dates by Hampe, Friihe I (Paris, 1954), and R. A. Higgins,
Griechische Sagenbilder, 32-38; Peter Catalogue of the Terracottas in the
Knoblauch, Studien zur archaisch- Department of Greek and Roman An-
griechischen Tonbilderei in Kreta, tiquities, British Museum, I (London,
Rhodos, Athen und Biiotien (Diss. 1954).
Halle, 1937), esp. pp. 17-38; Ho- 3 An example of Cretan work is BSA,
mann-Wedeking, Die Anfiinge der XXXVIII (1937), pl. XXXI (Karphi);
griechisclJen Grossplastik, 11-41, with on the mainland, see Kerameikos, V.
\V. Kraiker's long review article, Gno- 1, pI. 142, which may be compared to
mon, XXIV ( 1952),449-60. Works on the rigid work on pI. 143 (and CV A
sculpture in stone will be noted below Deutschland IX, pI. 128, Munich
insofar as they concern the early pe- 6597, 7810) of the mid-eighth cen-
riod. tury.
Catalogues of terra cottas: Jen-
254 PART III . The Age of Revolution
In the eighth century came new factors which at once en-
couraged the Greeks to essay sculpture on a broader scale and
suggested the patterns to be followed. Among these factors were
acquaintance with Oriental art, the increasing crystallization of
Greek views of the gods, and the breakdown of Geometric pot-
tery; most important of all was the increasing interest of man in
his own nature. To follow in detail the working of these stimuli
in the sculpture of the eighth century proper is virtually im-
possible on the basis of the material now at hand. It is extremely
difficult to date the rude, small terra-cotta figurines, handmade
until after 700, often artless in intent, and conventional in type
over long periods; , consecutive series of these figurines which
reach back into even the eighth century are very limited
(Samos, Perachora, and a few other sites). Bronze statuettes are
likewise few until well after 700. Worse yet, we cannot arrange
the figurines along a clearly established line of progress. This
fact is in itself suggestive. The late eighth century was a period
of wide experimentation; from its manifold creations a firm style
emerged only in the decades immediately following 700.
Despite these uncertainties we can establish a few impor-
tant points for evaluating plastic progress. It is clear, in the first
place, that the instinct to model was already present in the
Aegean world before the onset of Oriental influence. Again,
the basic drive which led to the resumption of sculpture was the
crystallization of religiOUS and intellectual views, which was
Greek in origin.
The dress, however, in which these views were expressed
owed as much or more to the Orient than any other art of ,the
era. The five ladies found in a Dipylon grave of shortly after
750 are made of ivory, an Eastern material; and both their
naked pose, the polos on their heads, and the stiff arrangement;
of their arms at the side are of Oriental origin (Plate 19a).
Many of the details of the relatively advanced modeling smack
of Eastern refinement as well, though the general spirit of the
'Not'e the conservativism in the series hand. terra-cotta work was often more
recently published by John H. Young open than monumental sculpture to
and Suzanne H. Young. Tenocotta free experiment; cf. Kunze. AM, LV
Figuri!1es from Kourion in Cyprus ( 1930), 142, and Knoblauch, Studien,
(Philadelphia, 1955). On the other 9- 10•
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 255
figurines is Greek. 5 Clay and bronze statuettes of the eighth
century ( Plate 19b) frequently share wide, deep-set eyes,
prominent nose and chin, and upward tilt of the face, all of
which are almost surely Syrian in origin. 6 Even more certainly
Oriental is the "Etagenperuke" or layered hair, which be-
came very common especially after 700 (Plate 21a). And, as
we noted in Chapter 5, the increasing tendency of the Greeks
to express their sharper concepts of the gods in plastic form
owed much to Oriental prototypes.
The richly elaborated artistic tradition of the East, nonethe-
less, was not taken over entire by the Aegean. The dominant
principles of the Geometric style are clearly pronounced in work
of the late eighth century, which was often characterized by a
slimming and almost mathematical manipulation of natural
forces. This artistic outlook was limited in clay figures by the
nature of the material, but could find fuller vent in bronze
statuettes of men and horses, which have been found in numbers
at Olympia and turn up spottily elsewhere. The rod-like warriors
and charioteers who perched on the edges of the great
bronze caldrons are first cousins of the solemn abstractions on
Dipylon and other Late Geometric vases.?
5 Kunze, AM, LV (1930), 148-55, ture," AlA, XLVI (1942), 341-59.
dated this grave to about 800; Kiib- Note that Egyptian influence on Creek
ler, Kerameikos, V. 1, 92-93, placed it sculpture appears only in the late
at c. 745 at the earliest (but on p. 179 seventh century (Karo, Greek Person-
ascribed the ivories to the later years ality, 103; Dunbabin, AlA, LVI
of the period 775-750). See also Karo, [1952],221-22).
Greek Pf!rsonality, 28-31; Barnett, 7 Kunze, Olympia-Bericht, IV, 105-18;
IHS, LXVIII (1948), 4, and Dunba-' Stanley Casson, "Bronze Work of the
bin, Greeks and Their Eastern Neigh- Ceometric Period and Its Relation to
bours, 39, who are firm on the differ- Later Art," IHS, XLII (1922), 207-
ence in spirit from Oriental work, 19. A nai've naturalism may still be
against Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, found at this time in such work as the
19, 131. round dancers of Athens (NM 6236;
6 Syrian influence: Dunbabin, Greeks C. Zervos, L'Art en CTllce [2d ed.;
and Their Eastern Neighbours, 36- Paris, 1936], fig. 68) and Olympia
37; Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, 22; (Berlin 01. 8702; Neugebauer, Bron-
Higgins, BMC Terracottas, nos. 575- zen, I, pI. 5); but more typical is the
581 (late eighth-century reliefs from centaur battle in New York (Met.
Crete). Layered hair: Poulsen, Der Mus. 17. 190. 2072). See Benton,
Orient, 179; Jenkins, Dedalica, 19-20; BSA, XXXV (1934-35), 116; Ernst
Miiller, Friihe Plastik, 87-88, 167-76, Buschor, Die Plastik der Griechen
on other details; F. R. Crace, "Obser- (Munich, 1958), 10-14; Hampe, Die
vations on Seventh-Century Sculp. Gleichnisse Homers, 36-37; Homann-
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

As the treatment of the human figure by vase painters

changed, so too did that of the sculptors. One landmark along
the way is the warrior statuette dedicated on the Acropolis, ap-
parently a free-standing figurine of about 720 (Plate 20a); for
here perhaps best of all in the surviving works we can sense the
release from old bonds which came at the end of the eighth
century.8 Whereas the Dipylon ladies stand stiffly-if indeed
they can be said to "stand"-this warrior has broken loose in
violent action, with lance in hand. His modeling is loose. The
outlines of the body are not sharply defined, but the parts of
the figure are beginning to How together as in the first Proto attic
drawings (see Plate 17b). An inner life and tension pulsate
especially in the face, the eyes of which stare wide-open out on
the world, "a new, open gaze which is still filled with childish
amazement." This nude male warrior) too) foreshadows the ~
famous kouros type of stone statuary.9
Between the Acropolis warrior of the late eighth century
and the Mantiklos bronze (Plate 20b), found in Boeotia and
commonly dated to the first quarter of the seventh century, we
cross as great a divide as that which marks conteIl;lporary pottery
and architecture. The Mantiklos figurine was sharply conceived
and firmly modeled; its master no longer stood in an era when
all restraint had been cast aside. The outline is clear, the internal
contours are deliberately shaped and more carefully reHect the
anatomy of the human body, the head looks at the world with
secure, diSciplined countenance.1 Still, there are a Geometric
stiffness and lack of proportion which are perhaps in part of pxo-
Wedeking, Anfiinge, 17-18; Knob- 49-5 0 ; Homann-Wedeking, Anfange,
lauch, Studien, 1!r20; Kunze, AM, 36-37,51.
LV (1930), 143. The Menelaion woman (BSA~,
8 Kunze, AM, LV (1930), 144; Ohly, XV [1908:-09], pI. 10) shows the same
Griechische Goldbleche, 148; Samian advance, but Homann-Wedeking, An~
parallels, Ohly, AM, LXVI (1941), liinge, 31, is right in feeling that ti1e
23. The quotation below is from Knob- provinCial stiffness of this figure may
lauch, Studien, 19, who compares mislead us as to its date; cf. Kunze,
terra cottas, 21-22. AM, LV (1930), 160, and Wace,
9 An even earlier forerunner is the BSA, XV, 146, who gives the accom-
terra cotta T. 57 of Samos, Ohly, panying pottery. Other parallels to
AM, LXVI (1941), 8. See generally this stage are given in Ohly, AM,
G. M. A. Richter, KOUTOi (New York, LXVI (1941), 25-26, who unfortu-
1942). nately places T. 393 too early (cf.
1 Grace, Archaic Sculpture in Boeotia, Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, 28).
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 257
vincial origin but suggest as well that stubborn survival of earlier
"vays of thought we have already noted in the pottery. Other
bronzes of the period from Olympia and elsewhere attest how
difficult was the step forward in sculpture. 2
In its frontal gaze, triangular face, and modeling of facial
features the head of the Mantiklos bronze is not far removed
from the style called Dedalic, which emerged in the northeast
Peloponnesus by at least 680 and swept over much of Greece; an
example of the first stage of this sculptural outlook is given in
Plate 21a from the shrine of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. As the
leading student of this style, Jenkins, has observed, "the very
earliest Dedalic heads are of course primitive in appearance,
yet they have in them already much more of the later Dedalic
than of the Subgeometric they immediately succeed. The transi-
tion was evidently rapid and the break complete, involving not
merely a progress in technique but a complete intellectual
change of standpoint as well." 3 In his last clause Jenkins goes
too far, for the appearance of the taut, geometrically composed
faces of Dedalic style, however abrupt, was not a complete
denial of earlier artistic attitudes. Yet the Dedalic style in its
new treatment of mass reflects a far more conscious conception
of human existence in the physical world.
Now, finally, the way was open to "monumental" sculp-
ture, and the step from statuettes of Dedalic type to marble
statues was swiftly taken. The Nikandre figure of Delos
(Plate :nb), which must be put before 650, is simply unthink-
able in the eighth century.4
2 Bronzes showing a Geometric survi- Kontoleon, "Koupo. <K e~p(1~," Arch.
val are given by Kunze, Olympia- eph. 1939-41, 1-33, places the Deda-
Bericht, IV, 119-25. lie origins in a better framework and
3 Jenkins, Dedalica, 12. His discussion also discusses the creation of the sixth-
of the style is very useful; see also century "Ionian" style. Levi, Annua-
his "Laconian Terracottas of the De- rio, XVII-XVIII (1955-56). 277-88,
dalic Style," BSA, XXXIII (1932-33), still essays to demonstrate a Cretan
66-79, and "Archaic Argive Terra- origin for the Dedalic style on the ba-
cotta Figurines to 525 B.C.," BSA, sis of the new Gortyn finds.
XXXII (1931-32),23-40. 4 Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, 12 4-
But his effort to ascribe the style 26, eliminates the idea that the sam;-
to Dorians will not fit the evidence. tuary at Samos had a statue before the
It appears early as far as Samos in first temple, though W. Kraiker, Gno-
T. 387, 723, etc. (Ohly. AM, LXVI mon, XXIV (1952), 453, still accepts
[1941], 28-30) and at Thera; N. M. it. Cf. Franz Willemsen, Fruhe grie-
258 PART III . The Age of Revolution

Fierce debate still swirls over the precise area where large-
scale work on stone first occurred, for students still insist,
most unnecessarily, upon trying to localize the major develop-
ments of early Greek culture far too minutely. The Dedalic back-
ground was shared by the more developed regions of the Aegean
as a whole; the very obvious existence of many local styles of
large-scale sculpture by the end of th~ seventh century suggests
that plastic development from the earlier figurines proceeded
on as many independent lines as did Orientalizing pottery. We
simply do not have for sculpture the evidence which exists in
the field of vase painting and there permits us to pin down the
details of progress. As far as the employment of marble is con-
cerned, the islands of the Aegean, where good marble was
easily quarried, may have led the way,5 but marble, though
highly important as a material for the expression of sculptural
views in the seventh century, was not the only available medium.
Other kinds of stone could be used, statues of hammered
bronze plates have been found at Dreros in Crete, and the
primitive wooden figures which are recorded in ancient sources
probably dated in the main from the seventh century. I seriously
doubt that large-size carving in wood preceded much, if at all,
large statues in other media. s

In the progress of Greek sculpture we can see once again

the powerful forces which drove the arts in the age of revolution.
By 650 the sculptors of Greece had :t:eached firm ground, from
which their pupils progressed steadily; and yet it is impossible
to outline in clear, evolutionary stages the rapid advance of
their own teachers. A veritable revolution had taken place in th_e
few brief decades between the Acropolis warrior and the first '
Protodedalic figurines. Though the Oriental contribution was
marked in this era and continued to be powerful, the main
line of Aegean sculptural progress had driven it further away
chische Kultbilder (Diss. Miinchen Demargne, La Crete dedalique, 307-
1939);: Matz, Gnomon, IX (1933), 18.
467; Knoblauch, Studien, 22-23. Con- G Our earliest wood statuette is that
tra, Kunze, AM, LV (1930), 141-42. from Samos published by Ohly, AM,
5 So Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, 94- LXVIII (1953), Beil. 13, c. 625-
95; on the progress of the debate, see 600 B.C.
CHAPTER 7 . The Intellectual Upheaval: I 259
from the Orient: the rod-like statuettes of Syria and the Aegean
in the eighth century had far more in common than did such a
head as that of Plate 21a and contemporary seventh-century
Oriental work.
In their achievement Greek sculptors had proceeded
much as had their confreres in architecture and pottery by
limiting the number of types within which they worked and
by refining these forms in ever more exquisite detail. From the
beginnings of large-scale stone sculpture only three main types,
the standing nude male (kouros), the standing clothed female
( kore ), and the seated female figure were to busy the workers
in stone; 7 and in the minor decorative arts a similar concentra-
tion can be found in the marvelous development of such ani-
mals as the griffin (Plate 24b) and sphinx, lion and horse.
The life which now pulsated in the products of the sculp-
tors' shops reflected, perhaps more sharply than anywhere else
in the arts, a new outlook on the world. Greek sculpture, in
truth, came into existence because men needed it as a mode of
expression. One quality, however, we must be careful not to
ascribe to the new artistic outlook: the Greeks were not simply
imitating nature. The vase paintings and the sculpture of the
seventh century attest far more careful observation of man and
animal, just as the contemporary architecture manifests a more
conscious appreciation of space. Men were obViously brooding
on their own nature; but what resulted was not "realistic" art.
On tp~ contrary, the creation of artistic canons had the effect of
eliminating naIve, open observation of the world. "By a sudden
and radical change," Jenkins observes, "all naturalism in plastic
art is left behind and its place is taken by a rigid mathematical
conception of the head which bears no direct relation to nature
whatever. . . . The Dedalic head is an Idea: the intellectual
has succeeded to the unintellectual, the formula to the naturalis-

7 Cf. Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, (Jacobsthal, Greek Pins, ZO-Z4), the

lZ9-30; Matz, GGK, I, 183. Animals: fibulae (Blinkenberg, Fibules grec-
see below, Chap. 8, nn. 8-9 (pp. z80- ques et orientales; Hampe, Frohe
81), l-Z (z8z); and on horses, above, Griechische Sagenbilder), and jewelry
Chap. 5, n. 1 (p. 155); Chap. 4, n. Z (Giovanni Becatti, Oreficerie antiche
(p. 133). Other work, which cannot daUe minoiche aUe barbariche [Rome,
be considered here, includes the pins 1955] ).
260 PART III . The Age of Revolution
tic." 8 Thus, too, the Doric column and temple had succeeded
to the rude chapel as an intellectual appreciation of space; lions,
griffins, the figures of men themselves, all were ordered and re-
fined as men drove to impose their sense of structure upon the
chaos of nature. 9
8Dedalica, 14; cf. Knoblauch, Stu- return to the broader significance of
dien, 32; Gerhart Rodenwaldt, Die this point below, pp. 294 ff.
Kunst der Antike (Berlin, 192 7), 33; 9 Jenkins, Dedalica, 41, well notes
C. T. Seltman, Approach to Greek Art how similar the ordering of the Deda-
(London, 1948), 30-32; E. Loewy, lie male figure is to that of the Doric
Die Naturwiedergabe in der iilteren column; see the relief figure in P era-
griechischen Kunst (Rome, 1900). I chora, I, pI. 103, n. 187.
 [261

CHAPTER 8

THE INTELLECTUAL UPHEAVAL: II

ALONGSIDE THE BURGEONING ARTS of the era from 750 to 650

ran a swelling volume of literature. Unconsciously poet and
artist shared the same spirit so well that their works reciprocally
illuminate each other. Whereas Ripe Geometric pottery could
only hint at much which the Iliad makes plain, Orientalizing
draftsmen became ever more competent to express in visual form
complicated ideas and new points of view. And consciously too
there are now clear interconnections between literature and art,
for potters and smiths began just before 700 to illustrate scenes
from myth and epic. The earlier pictures of leave-taking, battles,
and other events in Ripe Geometric art were typical and gen-
eralized. Then, quite suddenly, the exploits of Heracles and
Trojan heroes became sharp and unmistakable on vases, bronze
tripods, fibuwe, and other artistic products. 1
1Among the many recent treatments tain twin figures as the Siamese-twin
see the lists of epic scenes in Hampe, Molione (Louvre A 519 [eVA France
Fri.ihe Griechische Sagenbilder, 80- XVIII pI. 5]; Agora P 4885 [Hesperia,
81, and Die Gleichnisse Homers; Kirk, Supp. II, p. 70, fig. 44]; New York 14.
BSA, XLIV (1949),148-50; Webster, 130.14; Athens NM 11765); but note
BSA, L ( 1955), 38-50, From Mycenae the just reserve by J. M. Cook, BSA,
to Homer, 168-74, and Greek Art and XXXV (1934-35),206.
Literature, 700-530 B.C., 18-19; Dun- The earliest certain examples of
babin, Greeks and Their Eastem myth in art are, I think: (1) the
Neighbours, 77-87. Most of these lists Tiryns shield with Achilles and Penthe-
are too inclusive. The eighth-century silea, or Heracles (d. Brommer, He-
scenes of leave-taking between ship rakles, 35, 71-72), which I illustrate
captain and his wife (e.g., BM 1899, on Plate 23a-but Dietrich von
2-19. 1 from Thebes; Hampe, Fri.ihe Bothmer, Amazons in Greek Art (Ox-
Griechische SagenlJilder, pI. 22) are ford, 1957), 2, lowers its date ap-
not necessarily the abduction of Helen preciably; (2) the Boeotian fibulae of
by Paris. Hampe (after Blinkenberg, Heracles and the Lemaean monster
Fibules grecques, 163-69) and Krai- (Hampe, 41-42). Against Hampe's
ker, Neue Beitriige, 46, identify cer- dates, however, d. Cook, BSA, XXXV
262 PART III . The Age of Revolution

As between the two fields, we are on safer ground chrono-

logically when we take up the relatively sure sequences of pot-
tery and figurines; but most students will be able to appreciate
the new ideas of the age more easily in their literary form. Here
are reflected the broadening interests and wealth of the cul-
tured classes in the aristocratic city-states, which furnished a
new and ever more consciously appreciative audience to the
poets. These men, the more sensitive members of the community,
revealed in their verse a twofold drive. On the one side they
were spokesmen for common feelings; on the other, they were
imperiously impelled by their own personal reactions to the great
stresses and changes of the age of revolution. In expressing their
views they aided the less articulate and less reflective to estab-
lish new patterns of thought. The success of the lyric poets in
reaching an advanced plane of social and personal values was a
token of the basic confidence of Greek civilization; their polished
meters and forms of verse were a mold for later poetry.
The historian who turns to literature cannot entirely avoid
the necessity of aesthetic judgment, but this is not his primary
aim. Many excellent studies have treated early Greek literature
for and in itseH.2 My purpose accordingly must be, first, to de-
termine what sequence and date for the several authors have the
best historical justification; and, secondly, to explore the light
thrown by literature on the forces at work in the age of revolu-
tion. More specifically, the last epic bards and the first lyric
poets reflect admirably the views of the age on two basic points,
the nature of mankind and its relations to the gods.
(1934-35),207, and Kirk, BSA, XLIV New York 17. 190. 2072 (Buschor,
( 1949), 147· Plastik der Griechen, 12). Cf. De-
Centaurs and centauromachies, margne, La Crete dedalique, 281-84.
which occur in the eighth century, do 2 The recent discussions in Hermann
not necessarily reflect specific myths, Frankel, Dichtung und Philosophie
though they do show an unreal world. des fru]Jen Griechentums: Eine Ge-
Vase examples: CVA Copenhagen II, schic]Jte der griechischen Literatur
pI. 73; Clara Rhodos, IV (1931), 310 von Homer bis Pindar (New York,
fig. 344 (sketch in Annuario, VI-VII 1951); Bruno Snell, The Discovery ot
[1926], 337 fig. 222; cf. D. Feytmans, the Mind: The Greek Origins of Euro-
BCH, ~LXXIV [1950], 161, 177); pean Thought (Oxford, 1953); Ml).x
CV A Deutschland II, pI. 5; Beazley, Treu, Von Homer zur Lyrik (Munich,
Development of Attic Black-figure, 1955), will indicate the earlier litera-
pl. 2.. Figurines: Athens NM 12.. 504 ture.
(AM, LV [1930], pI. xxxviii. 2) or
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II

THE ODYSSEY AND HESIOD

MUCH THAT was composed in the century 750-650. has long

since been lost. Archaic literature was still too primitive in form
and expression, too much the product of ill-resolved tensions, to
command fully the attention of later ages. While this work was
written down in the new Greek alphabet, it was composed not
to be read but to be heard-either sung or accompanied by
the improved lyre and other musical instruments.s The trowels
of the excavators can bring back, in part, the equally neglected
works of early sculptors and potters, but they cannot rescue the
corpus of such poets as Eumelus of Corinth, Callinus of Ephesus,
and Terpander of Miletus, of, whom later anthologies and
glossaries preserved at best a fragment or two. 4 The minor poems
in the epic cycles were often illustrated on seventh-century
vases, their argument was preserved in later summaries and
references, but their text has not survived. Modem efforts to
restore this lost literature and to evaluate its merits are like the
reconstructions of vanished artistic masterpieces from literary
descriptions-often ingenious, sometimes suggestive, but never
reliable bases for detailed historical argument; and the music
which accompanied the literature is hopelessly gone.
The major material which has survived more or less intact
consists of the Odyssey, the works assigned to Hesiod, and the
extensive fragments of Archilochus. The chronological order in
3 Music was always one of the most Phrygia (cf. the evidence in Edmonds,
important arts; and Damon of Athens Lyra Graeca I, 4-10). For the dance,
was surely right in observing (frag- which was also important, cf. Kunze,
ment 10): "Musical modes are no- Kretische Bronzereliefs, 212-15, who
where altered without [changes in] gives the physical evidence in addi-
the most important laws of the State." tion to August Brinkmann, "Altgrie-
While the main course of musical de- chische Mlidchenreigen," Bonner Jahr-
velopment in early Greece is irre- bucher, CXXX (1925), 118-46.
trievably lost, very important steps 4 Fragments in Ernest Diehl, AntllO-
clearly took place in the age of revolu- logia lyrica graeca, fasc. 1-3 (3d ed.;
tion. The gamut of musical instru- Leipzig, 1949-52). The Homeric
ments was considerably amplified Hymns, which I shall not consider ex-
about 700 (cf. Max 'Wegner, Das cept in passing, range on down into the
Musikleben der Griechen [Berlin, sixth century; cf. the edition by T. W.
1949], 138-40); the Greeks them- Allen, W. R. Halliday, and E. E. Sikes
selves felt th.at their significant music (Oxford, 1936).
began at that time with Olympus of
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

which these three have just been listed is the usual one, and I
believe it to be the correct arrangement, historically speaking.
When we draw conclusions on this basis, however, we must be
judicious. Modem studies of Greek literature sometimes go
much too far in postulating that in details of technique and in
manipulating motifs each author knew of his predecessors and
built deliberately upon their treatments. The early poets heark-
ened to the voices of the Aegean; they also worked within' very
local frameworks. A later author might, moreover, reach back
and express ideas which were virtually obsolete.
Yet the basic changes in Greek culture must be reHected in
its literature, and this fact is not difficult to establish. While
the Odyssey was formed at the point where Late Geometric art
was almost ready to yield to the Orientalizing ware, the poems
of Hesiod are just beyond this great divide. Archilochus comes
later yet and expresses the same spirit as the artists of the mid-
seventh century who created Middle Proto corinthian and Mid-
dle Proto attic vases. By this pOint Greek civilization had emerged
onto a new plane.

To judge from the illustration of epic scenes on vases, the

Odyssey had become widely appreciated through the Greek
world by the early seventh century. Two Late Geometric vases
which show scenes of shipwreck are too general in import to
prove that their artists knew our present poem; and in any case
men must long have heard the tale of the seafaring Odysseus in
its primitive forms. 5 But the'marvelous Middle Protoattic vase
from Eleusis, which depicts the blinding of Polyphemus (Plate
23b), and two companion portrayals of the event on Argive and
other work begin a continuous chain of specific, graphic scenes -
which rest upon equally specific literary descriptions. 6 By this
5Munich 8696 (Hampe, Die Gleich- della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei,
nisse Homers, 27-30; R. Lullies, AA 8. ser. X [1955], 215 if.) and Athens
1954, cols. 261-64; Kraiker, Neue (NM 192) does not necessarily mean
Beitriige, 45) and the vase from Ischia that the epics had crystallized. -
(Romisc]:ie Mitteilungen, LX-LXI 6lLN November 13, 1954,841; Cour-
[1953-54], pI. 14-16). So, too, the bin, BCH, LXXIX (1955), 1-49
appearance of the hexameter on vases (Argos and Aristonothos vases); es-
about 700 at Ithaca (BSA, XLIII cape of Odysseus on the Ram Jug
[1948], 82) and Ischia (Rendiconti (Kraiker, Aigina, no. 566). See
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
point the developed version of the Odyssey must have received
general acceptance, and the tone of the Odyssey, as we shall see
shortly, suggests that it had already been fashioned for a few
generations.
The Odyssey was thus later than the Iliad and not com-
posed by the same poet, though it arose by a similar process out
of ancestral materials treated in the same fashion of oral poetry.
If we set the Iliad before 750, then the Odyssey will fall about
740-720. Much ingenuity has been exercised by Homeric
scholars to prove (or occasionally to disprove) its junior relation-
ship on technical grounds such as differences in vocabulary, in
the handling of the hexameter, in the use or absence of similes,
and in epic teclmique generally. Old words a.nd verb forms, to
give an example, which are common in the Iliad are absent
from the OdyssBY, which in tum has more ahytract nouns. Such
quasi-mathematical proofs can never quite hit their mark. Both
epics have later, interpolated passages, and the Odyssey contains
its share of old strata-though no student of Homer can con-
vince his peers just which lines in either epic fall into these
categories. Much of the poetic contrast, moreover, is not of
chronological origin. The two poems tell diverse kinds of tales;
they may have been composed in widely separated areas,
though not necessarily so; and the younger poet may even not
have known the specific formulation of the old tale of Achilles in
the Iliad. 7

Hampe, Frilhe Griechische Sagenbil- comes to the dates I prefer. Among the
der, 74-76. The argument by Willy recent studies ()f the Odyssey cf. Rein-
Zschietzschmann, "Homer und die at- hold Merkelbach, Untersuchungen
tische Bildkunst um 560," JdI, XLVI zur Odyssee (Munich, 1951); Fried-
( 1931), 45-60, that Attic illustration rich Focke, Die Odyssee (Stuttgart,
of· Homer began only with the Pan- 1943 ). On a far fringe are the efforts
athenaea of 566 will not stand in the to derive it fr()m an ancient Mediter-
light of more recent evidence. ranean stock: t. A. Stella, Il poema di
7 Date: Denys Page, The Homeric Ulisse (Florence, 1955); G. Patroni,
Odyssey (Oxford, 1955), 148-49, opts Commenti mediterranei all'Odissea di
apparently for about 800; Rhys Car- Omero (Milan, 1950), and "Studi di
penter, Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in mitologia mediterranea ed omerico,"
the Homeric Epics (Berkeley, 1946), Memorie dell'Instituto lombardo, 3.
for 625; Lorimer, Homer and the ser. XXV-XXVI ( 1951).
Monuments, 493-509, for the last third Vocabulary: Page, Odyssey, 149-
of the eighth century; Webster, 56; cf. Webster, From Mycenae to
From Mycenae to Homer, 282-83, Homer, 275-83, W. Diehl, Die wort-
266 \ PART III . The Age of Revolution
The basic chronological relationship nonetheless is clear.
1£ we take the plot of the Odyssey as it now runs with the shifts
back and forth between Odysseus and his son Telemachus, the
pattern is more discursive, less concentrated, less stylized than is
that of the Iliad; yet the structure is more involved and richer in
attendant variety. In artistic terms, the Odyssey reminds one of
the growing complexity and breakdown of inherited patterns
visible in Late Geometric pottery. In its hints, again, of political
change, in its picture of that wider geographical and economic
horizon which marked the first steps in Greek colonization, and
in its archaeological parallels the Odyssey also reflects the condi-
tions of Greek society when the age of revolution was just com-
mencing.s
Even more Significant testimony on the direction of Hel-
lenic development lies in the psychological and religious tem-
per of the Odyssey. From their first lines, as Frankel has well
observed, the Iliad and Odyssey diverge in spirit.o Achilles, a
man of anger who sacrifices others to his rage, stands over against
the thoughtful Odysseus, who tries to save his companions and
himself. The physical world about man now begins to appear
in real hues-one consequence is the virtual absence of similes
from the younger poem. And the figure of man himself is chang-
ing. As in incipient Protoattic pottery the human form in the
Odyssey seems at times to have been conceived as a whole,
not as a collection of parts, and an internal force animates the
lichen Beziehungen zwischen Ilias und Ilias (Erlangen, 1954).
Odyssee ( Greifswalder Beitriige, 8 Artistic parallel: Whitman, Homer
,XXII [1938]); Manu Leumann, and the Heroic Tradition, 287-90, who
Homerische WiMer (Basel, 1950), comes down too far (pp. 290-95) in
studies specific examples. Note, how- comparing the Odyssey to Early Pro-
ever, the brief essay of J. A. Scott, toattic and so placing it about 700. -
"Two Linguistic Tests of the Relative Archaeological' references: Nilsson,
Antiquity of the Iliad and the Odys- Homer and Mycenae, 135-37, 208.
sey," CP, VI (1911), 156-62, who °Frankel, Dichtung und Philosoph Ie,
concludes that the two poems stand 121; his discussion, pp. 120-32, is use-
in' this respect on the same level as ful. Note also the developed analYSis
against Hesiod. of the beauty of Calypso's cave, Odys-,
Relation of the two poets: Page, sey V. 60-75; no passage in tlie Iliad
Odyssey, 158-59; but the deliberate contains such a vivid, many-sided pic-
effort of the poet to tell the fall of Troy ture. Human figure: Treu, Von Homer
and the fate of the heroes thereafter zur Lyrlk, 13-14, 49, 68, who notes
must be kept in mind. Cf. Alfred Heu- examples (though this study must be
beck, Der Odyssee-Dichter und die analyzed carefully).
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
physical frame. Though sell-consciousness as such does not
yet exist, qualities of determination and calculation are the hall-
mark of the much-enduring Odysseus, who thoughtfully lies
and poses, rather than blazing forth in childish wrath. In the
Iliad, to look only briefly at the religious machinery, fearful
events occur at the will of the gods; in the Odyssey the folly of
the suitor~ themselves or of the shipmates of Odysseus brings
upon their heads their merited punishments. No doubt the
gods still rule the world of Odysseus, but they operate not
so often propria persona as indirectly through men who take
their course more into their own hands.
In comparing the divine apparatus of the two epics or in
ranking Achilles beside Odysseus, the temptation is great to
overpress the divergences, for in the Odyssey much which was
to characterize men's views of themselves and of the gods during
the next century lies almost visible. But only almost visible. The
Odyssey was the last great flowering of the epic tradition. Some
of the other poems of the Trojan cycle, pulled together from
the old stock of tales by Arctinus, Stasimon, and other lesser
men, may come from the seventh century, though not from its
later decades. 1 The Odyssey, however, will not stand such a date.
The individual outpouring of feelings in the lyric poets, the per-
sonal appearance of the author which is already obvious in
Hesiod-these are still absent, along with much else of the
psychological, religious, and political temper of the new Greek
outlook of the seventh century. The Odyssey is close to the
Iliad, but a gull separates it from the next works of Greek litera-
ture. Not without some semblance of justice have most men
ascribed the two epics to a single author.
In the Iliad and Odyssey the inheritance of the earlier cen-
turies of Aegean development was summed up and passed on to
1 Literary remains in T. W. Allen, bander (Berlin, 1950), 139-73, none
Homer, V (Oxford, 1912). The lists are from the Odyssey. Cf. the lists of
given in n. 1 (p. 261) above show that Laconian illustration, Lane, BSA,
the Little Iliad and Cypria were, if XXXIV (1933-34),162-68, which has
anything, more popular sources for only the Blinding of Polyphemus from
vase painters than the greater epics. the greater epics. Arctinus is said by
This remained true later as well; in the Suda (s.v.) to have been bom
Kunze's list. of Trojan scenes of the C.740 (8th Olympiad).
sixth century in Archaische Schild-
:268 PART III . The Age of Revolution
later ages far more obviously and openly than in the arts, where
the Geometric outlook was overridden and outwardly was dis-
missed. 1£ the epic poems continued to be popular and their
influence was so feared by such diverse thinkers as Xenophanes
and Plato, the fact illuminates a cardinal theme of this volume,
the continuity of that basic pattern of civilization which had
been set in the Dark ages. Yet the equally apparent fact that
the epic tradition ceased to produce major fruit during the
age of revolution shows well that it was no longer adequate to
encase men's new thoughts about the complexities of life-in
fine, that revolution was taking place in the Greek world at this
time.

If the Odyssey falls before the full onset of the upheaval,

the scope and date of which we have already identified in the
arts, Hesiod, the author of the didactic poem Works and Days,
comes after this great event. He is only barely thus to be placed,
for his verse form, vocabulary, and general poetic approach owe
much to the epic tradition. His cry for justice against the bribe-
swallowing basileis likewise seems an early outburst in the politi-
cal unrest which produced the organized city-state. The whirl-
wind which burst upon Greece at this time was so swift and
tempestuous that the pupil of the Heliconian Muses may be
dated very close to the author of the Odyssey; on the chronology
here employed, Hesiod perhaps fits best into the decade or two
just on either side of 700. The lines which assert that he once
crossed to Chalcis and won a tripod for song at the funeral
games of King Archidamus-slain, according to tradition, in the
Lelantine war about 70s-are thus actually valid, though they
have often been rejected as spurious since the days of Plutarch. 2

2Works and Days 654; Plutarch, Mo- Wade-Gery, "Hesiod," Phoenix, III
ralia 153F; other ancient speculation (1949),81-93; T. A. Sinclair, Hesiod,
may be found in Erwin Rohde, Kleine Works and Days (London, 1932).
Schriften, I (Ti.ibingen, 1901),39-52. Whether Hesiod knew the Homeric
Hesiod: Friedrich Solmsen, Hesiod epics is much debatcd: Leumann,
and Aeschylus (Ithaca, 1949); Jula Homerische Worter, 330; Page, Odys-
Kerschensteiner, "Zu Aufbau und sey, 36. Margarete Riemschneider,
Gedankenfi.ihrung von Hesiods Erga," Homer: Enttuicklung und Stil (Leip-
Hermes, LXXIX (1944),149-91, with zig, 1950), and others have placed
full references to earlier work; H. T. Homer after Hesiod.
(a) l~a l e Gcoll1C'tric case (K. 1.3.,6) lrllich
re~ects the looselling of Geonletric forms
(Kerameikos Mlisellm) . PllOtogl'(lp" cour-
tesy. Deutsches Archiiologisches Ill stitut ill
Atll ells.
(/J) Late Geometric ampllOra lI;ifll ad-
cal1ceel depictioll of rWlllers arIel deer 011
Ileck and COllscrvatit·C' treatmellt of chariots
11elou; (Ashmoleall .' IUSC'1I1ll 1935· 19. Ox-
!Md). Photograph courtesy Ashmolean Mil '
seum .

I'LATE 17 . Dec(/ y of th e Attic Ceo/lletric Spirit

 (1I) Trall ,\ ititJIllil lIIlIl"ltJra I/ ,\ ill!.! II" "/,,,"-
dauc(' of OriClltlllizill1! lIIotifs hilt still dry ill
slylr' (Lollrre), Photograph c!llIrlc.sy ,\/usc;c
till L()IIl'TC'.

("I EII"'y Pmtouttic rcm' lcitll hu{!.l' sphillx

(Kualllcikos ,\ I resc 'tlIII ), Plwtogrflp/l cOllrtcsy
D(!lIt.ychc,~ Archiiologi,'l'l!c" IlJ.ltitlit ill ,-1/IH 'II,\.

TF 18 . I:IH"rg<'llce of tfl(, Profooftic St!!'e

CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 269
The Works and Days is extraordinarily fascinating. It is
pungent and blunt; true poetic genius shimmers in its swiftly
shifting kaleidoscope; above all, this is the first written illumina-
tion of the stresses and changes of the late eighth, and earl~l
seventh centuries. Many of its lines will concern us when we
come to the political and economic aspects of this era; even in
treating the general intellectual development of the time I find it
difficult to omit any of Hesiod's terse, graphic pictures. For the
first time in Greek history a specific individual speaks for him-
self, and the ethical tone of his outcry rings in one's heart
like the contemporary, biting indictments of injustice which
welled up in the early prophets of Israel.
As Perses had defrauded his brother of his inheritance, so
acted many men, dishonoring their parents, violating their oaths,
plotting in envy. "Strength will be right and reverence will cease
to be" (lines 192-3). Thrice Hesiod essayed to demonstrate or
to explain this wickedness, once by the myth of Pandora,
once by the fable of the hawk and the nightingale, and once by
a rational picture of the five ages of mankind, For the present
day, as Hesiod viewed his era of turmoil, was the fifth period,
an iron age after the golden, silver, bronze, and heroic stages of
the past; "and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day,
and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore
trouble upon them . . . there will be no help against evil." 3
Yet in his myth of Pandora Hesiod had already shown that
Hope remained as a blessing among the plagues given to men
by the gods. To Hesiod, as to Homer, mighty Zeus still raised
and lowered men as he willed-"there is no way to escape the
will of Zeus" (line 105). The reiteration of the powers of the
deathless gods is an incessant theme from the opening to the
closing lines of the Works and Days, and betokens a more con-
scious effort to explain the apparently unjust ways of the world.
A phenomenal change was now in progress. Only rarely in the
epics did the Olympian deities step past their roles of allotting
fates to men and aiding their favorite heroes by gifts of strength
3 176--78, 201. This scheme is gener- heroic age; cf. T, G. Rosenmeyer,
ally taken as Oriental in its four metal- "Hesiod and Historiography," Hermes,
lic stages, with a Greek addition of the LXXXV (1957), 257-85.

10
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
or good counsel; Hesiod boldly proclaimed a mighty vision of
all-seeing Zeus, who "fails not to mark what sort of justice is this
that the city keeps within it" (line 269). By him sat, as a deified
force, his daughter Justice; to man he had given right (dike) and
earthly rewards if justice be observed. These lines are our first
evidence that the Greeks were coming to conceive their gods as
ethical forces, as principles which could restrain that complete
overturn of all standards threatened by the innovations which
then swept over Aegean society.
The upheaval as such, it is interesting to note, Hesiod did
not oppose. Wealth gained by labor brought fame and renown,
and honest rivalry in hurrying after wealth he approved early in
his poem: "this Strife is wholesome for men" (line 24). Briefly
he suggested the dynamic tone of the era in the mutual vying of
potters, craftsmen, minstrels, even beggars; and at greater L

length he described the life of the farmer in tones which were

far from peSSimistic. Though his home village of Ascra was "bad
in winter, sultry in summer, and good at no time" (line 640),
yet the peasants in the rich Boeotian plains below evidently
could hope to prosper and to heap up Demeter's fruits in their
barns by hard work. Only let them beware, burst out Hesiod, .of
a flaunting woman, for "the man who trusts womankind trusts
deceivers" (line 375). His practical, realistic outlook, which
stressed a firm-fisted cautious morality, stood far removed from
the heroic idealizations of the earlier epics. But here, too,
Hesiod reflected his age, as we shall see when we examine the
economic spirit of the age of revolution; and in such a succinct
line as "observe due measure: and proportion is best in all
things" (line 694) a famous axiom of later Greek ethics rings
loud and true. .
A considerable volume of other poetry, ranging from a de-
scription of Heracles' feats to astronomical lore, clusters about
the name of Hesiod. Some parts of the collection are surely much
later, but one work in particular, the rather inflated and self-·
cons,cious Theogony, is now commonly assigned to the-author
of the Works and Days. There is little to support this ascription.
The very fact that it names Hesiod in the opening lines and
refers to his instruction by the Muses of Mount Helicon makes
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
one pause, for the author of the Works and Days does not therein
call himself Hesiod. 4 Whoever the author of the Theogony may
be, the poem seems to be a product of the early or mid-seventh
century, as is also its companion, the Eoiae; and both throw
light on Greek mental processes at this time.
The objective of the two works was the conscious ordering
of the mass of myth on the origin of the world, then of the gods,
and finally of the mortal beings who traced their ancestry to
divine seduction or adultery. The primeval substance was Chaos,
whence came the ordered parts of nature; the process of de-
velopment was that of physical generation, which often pro-
duced opposed forces, destined in their turn to interact physi-
cally. Dynamic action thus found a place in an essentially static
scheme. As a fundamental concept of the world the account in
the Theogony is sometimes picturesque, but basically it appears
primitive. Most certainly the view was not a novel fruit of the
early seventh century. Hints in Homer, such as the description
of earth-circling Oceanus, father of the gods, show that the
main scheme had been inherited. 5
This cosmogony itself was strikingly like that of Meso-
potamia and Egypt; but, whether indebtedness existed or not,
the important point is that only now did the Greeks feel ready to
systematize the framework of creation. Their developed view on
the topic, moreover, diverged as markedly from that of the
Orient as did the contemporary Hellenic arts. The Theogony is
an obviously Greek product in its sharply conceived scenes of
anthropomorphic gods; in its poetic imagination, which man-
ages to struggle through the mass of names; and in its mental
outlook, quite different in tone from the Marduk tale of creation.
While a truly critical, rational approach could not be ex-
pected so early in a work of pious intent, the Theogony lies in
4 Theogony 22 If. The identity is ac- cf. Theogony 776, 787 If.; Lesky,
cepted by Wade-Gery; Frankel, Dich- Thalatta, 58-87; P. Walcot, "The Text
tung und Philosophie, 136; Diller, of Hesiod's Theogony and the Hittite
Antike und Abendland, II (1946), Epic of Kumarbi," CQ, L (1956),
141; Kurt Latte, ibid. 16,3. T. W. 198-206. On the later effects of the
Allen, Homer: The Origins and the scheme see especially Hans Diller,
Transmission (Oxford, 1924), 78-85, "Hesiod und die Anfiinge der grie-
is opposed. chischen PhilQsophie," Antike und
5 Iliad XIV. 201, XIV. 246, XXI. 195; Abendland, II (1946), 140-51.
272 PART III . The Age of Revolution

the background of Greek speculation in the next century. Even-

tually the sharp critic Heraclitus was to dismiss the poem as
''knowledge without intelligence" (fragment 40, Diels); but the
first true philosophers of Western civilization proceeded on
much the same lines as the author of the Theogony. They, too,
placed great weight on the play of opposites, conceived physi-
cal substances in divine terms, and personified into real entities
such abstract forces as Love and Strife. In terms of the age of
revolution itself the Theogony suggests a growing search to find
order, causation, and unity. The world which lay about the
author was no longer simply undifferentiated Chaos; or, as one
might put the situation more historically, the traditional, un-
conscious outlook of the Dark ages was now being overpassed by
conscious analysis.

ARCHILOCHUS OF PAROS

THE THIRD great figure in Greek literature of the period,

Archilochus, is completely beyond the age of revolution proper;
for we can fix his acme rather certainly as just before 650.6 In his
poetry Archilochus spurns the wealth of Lydian Gyges, who
died in 652, according to Assyrian records; he mourns the dis-
aster of Magnesia, which was destroyed about the same year;
and a third chronological reference, to an eclipse visible at Paros
or Thasos, presumably may be connected with the eclipse. of

6 F. Jacoby, "The Date of Archilo- 32-95; Werner Peek, "Neues von

ehos," CQ, XXXV (1941), 97-109, Archiloehos," Philologus, XCIX
against Alan Blakeway's effort, Greek ( 1955), 4-50; Kondoleon, "Zu den
Poetry and Life (Oxford, 1936),34- neuen Archilochosinsehriften," Philo~
55, to put him back to 740/30-660. logus, C (1956),29-39; WemetPeek,
See also Fran<;:ois Lasserre and Andre "Die Archilochos-Gedichte von O~y­
Bonnard, Archiloque: Fragments rhynchos," Philologus, XCIX (1955),
(Paris, 1958), xxiii-xxix; Lasserre's 193-219, and C (1956), 1-28; the
rather bold reconstruction, Les Epo- same, "Neue Bruchstiieke" friihgrie-
des d' Archiloque (Paris, 1950); Carlo chischer Dichtung," Wiss. Zeitschrift
GaIIavotti, "Archiloco," La Parola del Halle Univ., V. 2 (1956), 189:-207.
Passato, IV (1949), 13D-53. The Glaucus monument of Thasos:
New materials have appeared in BCH, LXXIX (1955),348-51.
N. M. Kondoleon, Arch. eph. 1952,
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 273
648. The youth of Archilochus probably overlapped the old age
of Hesiod.
That so great a change in poetic techniques and intellectual
point of view could occur in two generations would be un-
believable, were it not for the testimony of the parallel revo-
lution in the arts. Hesiod, if we may credit the Theogony
(lines 27-8), learned from the Muses how to utter true things,
as against the fictions of the epic, and the spur to his Works and
Days lay in personal mischance. But his poetic manner was
that of the earlier epic tradition, his mental approach remained
largely mythical, and the bulk of his long poem was an imper-
sonal summation of farmers' wisdom which he couched in didac-
tic terms. Archilochus, on the other hand, looms up before our
startled eyes as a magnificent individual.
All that happened-loves and hates, military mishaps, polit-
ical strife-he filtered through his poetic genius and hurled
forth directly, realistically, hotly, in brief outcries. What mat-
tered was not the specific event, for Archilochus did not narrate
in the epic sense but rather gave his own feelings born of the
event. And as these might vary, so, too, must his verse. Drawing
upon simple, popular verse forms (and perhaps on the experi-
ments of his contemporaries), Archilochus established for later
poets a great stock of manifold lyric meters.1 The epic hexame-
ter was too useful a tool entirely to die, but thenceforth it was
only one of many modes of poetic expression.
Alike in his break with old poetic convention and in his
fiery vehemence this poet reminds one of the vigorous, almost
undiSciplined experiments of Proto attic potters. Born to a
Parian noble by a slave woman, Archilochus was an aristocrat
by Greek rules of descent, albeit poor, and his poetry shows
him in the role of leader of men; but his values were not those
of the Homeric heroes. He knew the epic poems, and deliber-
ately rejected both their poetic style and their view of man. s
1 Lasserre, Archiloque, Ixii-Ixix. Note 189-91.
the fragments of the Margites in 8Archilochus, fragment 68, imitates
Papyri Oxyrhynchi 2309, which Archi- Odyssey XVIII. 136, though this is an
lochus knew (Lasserre, Les Epodes argued point (Snell, Discovery of the
d'Archiloque, 62-63); Peek, Wiss. Mind, 47 n. 2). Most accounts of
Zeitschrift Halle Univ., V. 2 (1956), Archilochus' background fail to take
274 PART III . The Age of Revolution

The Iliad celebrated glory even at the price of death; Archilo-

chus (fragment 217, Lasserre-Bonnard) bluntly asserted that a
man dead was a man forgotten. In famous lines he admitted
that he ran before the Thracian tribesmen and threw away his
shield-uno matter, I can get a better one." 9 The legendary
heroes of the past, to judge from our fragments of Archilochus,
had completely vanished from his active thought, which con-
centrated upon his feelings in the bustle of actual life. So, too,
the mythical dress was gone, and even the new genre of animal
fables which he shared with Hesiod and Aesop was simply a
piquant device through which he could make concrete his
passions.
Here finally, in Greek civilization, is an individual human
being, living from day to day, returning hate for hate and love
for love (fragments 120 and 35). It is small wonder that later
Greeks romanticized Archilochus, and in doing so perhaps
selected for survival those quotations and fragments which best
expressed his relative modernity.
Enough of the poet's work, however, is extant to show that
he was a man who fitted the seventh century, not Hellenistic
Alexandria or a modern European metropolis. The individual-
ism which he exhibited had its roots in the magnificent heroes
of the Iliad and the Odyssey-that is to say, in the nascent
aristocracy of the eighth century; and Archilochus represents the
next step in the development of the aristocratic outlook. Its
conscious awareness of human freedom and its liberation from
the more superficial bonds of convention are evident in his work.
So, too, is the continuity of a basic social unity. The savage abuse
and satire of his fellow men must not mislead us; Archilochus
was bound more tightly to the fabric of society than a modern
individualist could endure.1 Archilochus' heart, like those of th~

into account the notable pottery then 1 Bonnard, Archiloque, xxxi-ii, xliv,
being produced on Paros; see Plate xlix; Frankel, Dichtung und Philo-
16a and O. Rubensohn s.u. Paros in sophie, 206-07; Snell, Discovery of the
PW, col. 1804-09. Mind, 44-46, 61. But see also Webster,
9 Fragment 13; cf. Richard Harden, Greek Art and Literature, 700-530
"Zwei Zeilen von Archilochos," H er- B.C., 28-33.
mes, LXXX (1952),381-84.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 275
Lesbian poets Alcaeus and Sappho at the end of the century,
beat with simple passions, and his mind saw the events in his
life as basically typical, generally applicable to his contem-
poraries. His lyric verse was meant to communicate the poet's
reflection to others, to instruct, and to illuminate scarcely less
than were the new elegies written by such men as Callinus.
In Archilochus' view of the place of man in the universe the
temper of the seventh century again looms up. Fundamentally
Archilochus was confident, as was Hesiod; but he felt no less
than did Hesiod and the epic poets that man was a frail
creature in an unpredictable world where the gods ruled
all. "Such," he advised Glaucus (fragments 115-16), "becomes
the mind of mortal man as Zeus may bring him for the day";
so, he deduced, let us take each day as it may come. If ill be-
fall, then Archilochus exhorted his heart (fragment 118), con-
fronted by pains without remedies, to bear up and resist its
enemies. "Conqueror, do not overexult; vanquished, do not
groan prostrate in your house. Savour your successe~, mourn
your reverses, but not too much. Learn the rhythm which gov-
erns the life of men." 2
Here lies the idea of law, which we shall see again in
many political and religious views of the age; here, too, lies the
root of the great Greek concept of later days, sophrosyne or
balance and due awareness of man's limitatiqns and of the
consequent need for moderation. By the end of Archilochus'
century these views, which had long been unconscious bases of
Greek thought, were to gain conscious expression in the verse
of Solon and in the Delphic cult of Apollo.

At the death of Archilochus, not long after 650, Greek poetry

had a varied system of elegiac and lyric meters through
which authors might express their ideas to their fellow men.
These poets were almost entirely aristocrats, and the flavor of
their thoughts no doubt reflected to some degree the greater
emancipation, the greater security, and the mounting luxury of
2 Note, too, fragment 296, his observ- Kore; the power of Zeus et al. in frag-
ance of the festival of Demeter and ments 86, 82, 123, 110.37. 171.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
the Greek upper classes. Yet, as I must insist in greater detail
later, Aegean sOciety was still fundamentally a unity in which all
classes shared a similar outlook and moved in the same direc~
tion. The sensitive poets were in the van of a common parade,
and it would be a serious mistake to distinguish a "peasant"
Hesiod from an "aristocrat" Archilochus. 3
The views of the poets were now far more individualistic,
realistic, and centered on the present day than had been per~
mitted by the epic tradition; in the casting off of old bonds lies
a mark of the age of revolution. Driven by the dynamic, pulsat~
ing forces of a rapidly expanding society, men looked out on
the world afresh, saw things never seen before, and communi~
cated their vision in more supple forms than Aegean SOciety
had ever known. But let us make no mistake in our amazement
at their vision. Much there was which they did not see--in the
poets, for example, the physical hues and shapes of nature made
only a halting appearance 4 -much they visualized in ways
which were not to continue even to classic days, and much they
merely saw in fuller detail than had their forefathers. What
had taken place was a process of clarification within an an~
cestral frame.
Nor was the product of revolution complete anarchy, though
at times Archilochus' passion seemed destined to lead him
thither. New motifs and new modes of communication no
sooner made their appearance than they were consolidated
into poli~hed and refined molds of thought. Lyric and elegy
stand beside the kouros and kore of sculpture, the developed
temple form, and Middle Corinthian pottery as types which at
once confined and promoted expression. Only thus could a col~
lapse of literary order have been avoided; and while the poetIc'
achievement of the age of revolution was amazing, we must
remember that it was a hardly bought triumph of which we
see only the successes, not the failures. Even in Hesiod and
Archilochus, who did survive, the tensions of the age were ap~
3 Nor'can the literature of. Greece be 4 Treu, Von Homer ZUT Lyrik, 82-~22,
explained on a dialectal basis; cf. on Odyssey; 213-15, on Archilochus;
Treu, Von Homer zur Lyrik, viii. 79-80, 193, etc., on color sense.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 277
parent. Fears as well as hopes pervaded both literature and art
in the early seventh century.

RELIGIOUS SIGNS OF STRESS

To UNDERSTAND these fears and hopes we must go beyond

verses and vases to the hearts of their makers, and in making
the effort we come to the most fundamental psychological
aspects of the age of revolution. The search must be con-
ducted in the field of religion. Always in early societies religion
embraces a very wide gamut of human life; frequently it is the
best illuminated subject, thanks to the conservative inclinations
of men in sacred matters. Here I shall concentrate on the marks
of Greek religious experience which suggest how the stresses
of the era affected authors and artists as individuals; the com-
munal aspects of religious change and ethical evolution will
fall to the next chapter.
By the eighth century men had quite surely begun to elabo-
rate the primitive structure of Greek religion which we examined
in Chapter 4. They were building temples at which rites be-
came more elaborate. Cults of heroes emerged at sacred points.
The Iliad suggests strongly that Hellenic views of the gods had,
at least on one level, advanced far toward the later anthro-
pomorphic patterns.
The gods of Mount Olympus, as depicted by Homer, were
sharply defined forces in human form, with human passions,
but were largely liberated from the dictates of communal or in-
dividual morality. These forces dominated man utterly; in par-
ticular they gave to the heroes both superhuman strength and
insane folly. Yet the gods, on the one side, had essentially to
move in orderly paths; and, on the other, men felt a childish
independence to do as they would. Beside and below the
Olympian gods stood a world of generalized religious forces
which appear to us in the concept of the daimon, tales of
centaurs and the like; and the first figurines. The earliest plastic
representations, from the mid-eighth century on, were of female
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

divine forces (the potnia theron et al.); down virtually to 700

none of the clay and bronze figurines can c~rtainly be identified
with any specific goddess, god, or hero. .
These changes not only suggest that Greek sOciety was be-
ginning to move well before 700 but also indicate the major direc-
tions in which religion reflected that movement. Although fur-
ther developments in the age of revolution did not lead men
to reject the basic beliefs of their fathers, the dimensions of
evolution were as great in the field of religion as in any other
area. The human beings who poured out their energies in a great
blaze of action from the ·end of the eighth century still felt gods
and spirits to be close at hand. Fundamentally men were con-
fident of divine support. Not always did their plans mature,
but prosperity and success attended human efforts sufficiently
often in this age of expansion to attest the favor of the gods.
On the communal level the product was the ever more mag-
nificent housing of the gods; individuals, too, embellished
the sacred precincts with statues, huge bronze caldrons, and a
host of other tokens of gratitude and reverence. The decisive ad-
vance in crystallizing divine forces into human shape, which
spread from literature to the arts, admirably reflects man's con-
fidence in his own achievements and capabilities.
This confidence at times went far. A heaven-storming au-
dacity, a sense of unfettered experiment, and an almost anar-
chic outlook are visible alike in the more extreme Protoattic
pottery, in the vehemence of Archilochus, and in the oppression
of the weaker by the stronger which produced the passionate
outcry of Hesiod's Works and Days. In their pride men might
sometimes dare to forget the gods and to feel-though perhaps
only spasmodically and in limited respects-that their future_
lay in their own hands. In the Iliad and in myth the gods came
down on earth frequently. In the Odyssey celestial visitations
were rarer, though divine control remained potent. In the Works
and Days only the servants of Zeus, "thrice ten thousand spirits,
watchers of mortal men," roamed over the world, clothed in
mist: And in Archilochus the gods had drawn far away in a
physical sense; as an acute critic observes, "d'une fa~on ge-
nerale, leur pression sur Ie monde de l'homme est moins forte.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 279
Ce n'est pas en chaque evenement qui l'atteint, en chaque geste
qu'il tente, que l'homme rencontre les dieux." ~
While this is a just summation of one major strand in
seventh-century thought, it must not lead us too far. Nor was
confidence the only characteristic of man's relations with the
gods. Fear is never far from pride, and men were growing not
only bolder, not only richer, but also more consciously analyti-
cal. This meditation resulted among the poets in the pOignant
realization, as expressed in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (lines
192-3), that "they live witless and helpless and cannot find
healing for death or defence against old age." Joy in accom-
plishment was accompanied by a sense of guilt, by a suspicion
that the gods might turn jealous. The conservative reluctance
to yield old ways, revealed in the stubborn survival of sub-
Geometric pottery, was reflected in religion also, in expressions
of anxiety states.
Whether these fears were entirely new cannot be deter-
mined, for our evidence on the subject virtually begins with the.
age of revolution. That they were altogether novel may be
doubted; on the other hand their tyranny seems to have swelled
abruptly at this pOint. Neither in the earlier epic nor in litera-
ture and art afterward does a sense of anxiety manifest itself as
sharply. The epic Cypria and the Hesiodic Catalogue explain
the origin of the Trojan and Theban wars as being efforts by
Zeus to meet the complaints of Earth against man's overabun-
dance or overboldness. In myth a common subject is the punish-
ment of man for undue audacity. Some tales of this type may
well be ancestral, but the presence of the theme in the early
seventh century is attested by the Theagony's recitation of the
myth of Prometheus. Magic, too, may have gained new weight
in the age of stress. The Warks and Days has a notably super-
stitious, magic level, which leads to bans on the use of un-
charmed pots or women's bathwater; 6 magic plays a greater
role in the Odyssey than in the Iliad.
~ Bannard, Archiloque, Hi-iii. Hesiod: 6Works and Days 748-49, 753-54; the
B. Snell, "Die Welt der Cotter bei same climate of opinion produced
Hesiod," La notion du divin depuis the bell figures of Boeotia (Crace,
Homere iusqu'd Platon (Bern, 1954), Archaic Sculpture in Boeotia, 10-15).
97-124. See also Chap. 4, n. 7 (p. 130); and
280 PART III . The Age of Revolution
In the lyric poets man remained as much a puppet of the
gods as in the epic; when human consciousness grew more acute,
his helplessness (cilL'1xa.via.) was more keenly felt. Various he-
roes, said Alcman, had been conquered by Fate (Aisa); and
he drew the moral: "Mortal men may not go soaring to the gods,"
but must live day to day.7 Yet in essaying to make this theme
clear, we must not oversimplify the complex strands of the era.
The independence of the individual human being and, with it,
individual responsibility were making a first conscious, though
timid, entry into the pattern of Greek civilization. Poets and
audience still considered the gift of poetry god-inspired; but
within at least some realms of human experience the new au-
thors felt themselves self-moved.
The most intriguing evidence of human fears is that of the
monsters and wild beasts who appear so swiftly and so abun-
dantly in Late Geometric and Orientalizing art. In their so~rce
the figures came largely, though not entirely, from Oriental art;
but indebtedness in form does not necessarily connote indebted-
ness in substance. Only a few monsters were chosen from the
huge Orie~tal stock, and those so drawn were "promptly im-
bued with Hellenic 'spiritual forces, transformed into genuine
Greek daimonic personalities." S Divine forces representing the
in 1; •• (',a~ E. R. Dodds, The Greeks viduum in der friihgriechischen
end the IrraHonaL (Be~kdey, lr;}51 ) , Lyrik," Phi[ol.ogus, LXXXIV (l<;}:lli}),
~~.ough most of his analysis bears more 137-52, thinks this is a fourth-century
directly on the sixth and later centu- verse. The opposite view (Archilochus,
ries. His view, too, of the breakdown fragment 331) that "all things are
of father-control seems doubtful. As made for mortals by human toil and
he notes (p. 29), the Iliad shows little care" is rejected by Bonnard-Lasserre.
fear of the gods. On man's independence, see also
7 Aleman, fragment 1; Frankel, Dich- Snell, Discovery of the Mind, 69-70.
tung und Philosophie, 183-86, 222-23, S Karo, Greek Personality, 34. These -
and "Man's 'Ephemeros' Nature ac- motifs have been studied in detail, but
cording to Pindar and Others," Trans- a general interpretation is much to be
actions of the American Philological desired. Nilsson, GGR, I, 216-55,
Association, LXXVII (.1946), 13 1-45; gives one of the best sketches of this
d. Otfrid Becker, "Das Bild des level of Greek religiOUS thought; see
Weges und Verwandte Vorstellungen also Hans Herter, "Bose Dtimonen
im friihgriechischen DeJlken," Hermes, im friihgriechischen Volksglauben,:'
Einzelschr. IV (1937), 23-34, on Pa- Rheinisches Jahrbuch fiir Volkskunde,
ras. Archilochus, fragment 261, which I ( 1950 ), 112-43.
asserts that Tyche and Moira give a The Gorgon, for example, is not
man all things, is of doubtful authen- necessarily a Greek effort to explain
ticity; R. Pfeiffer, "Gottheit und Indi- by myth an Oriental artistic motif, as
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
wild powers of savage nature, but not conceived sharply in
anthropomorphic guise, were a fundamental part of Greek re-
ligious beliefs. As Nilsson notes, they outlasted the great gods
and passed on into modem Greek folklore; at the other boundary
of Greek civilization their origins must go far back into primitive
days. What is significant is that men of the late eighth and early
seventh centuries felt so pressing a need to represent the un-
tamed quality of the world. Since the human form seemed ill-
fitting, artists turned to the rich treasure of wild beasts and
imaginary figures of the Orient, took what they needed, and
remolded the borrowings with a native aesthetic sense.
The force which thus drove men can only be explained if we
keep in mind the psychological tensions which accompanied the
tremendous upheaval of the era. The griffins, sphinxes, and
sirens, for instance, do not illustrate myths; that is, they do
not have true histories nor do they do anything. They simply
are, and by their presence manifest a sense of demonic powers
encompassing mankind. 9 The smiths who evolved the marvelous
griffin type which adorned votive caldrons by the hundreds in
the seventh century poured into this fierce-beaked creature such
argued by Clark Hopkins, "Assyrian LVIII (1954), 20g-.21; Sf. Marinatos,
Elements in the Perseus-Gorgon rOp,),6pES Kltl rop,),6pw" Arch. eph.
Story," AlA, XXXVIII (1934), 341- 1927-.28, 7-37; Payne, Necrocorinthia,
58; and Edouard Will, "La decolla- 79-89, who stresses their Greek char-
tion de Meduse," RA, XXVII (1947), acter; Karo, Greek Personality, 32-35.
60-76. See Matz, GGK, I, 142; Nils- 9 Sirens: Emil Kunze, "Sirenen," AM,
son, GGR, I, 243-44, 226. More gen- LVII (194.2), 124-41 (esp. 131);
erally note the observation of Schafer, Matz, GGK, I, 141, 317; Ohly, Grie-
Reliefpithoi, 78, that while battles of chische Goldbleche, 80-81. Kunze and
animals go back to the fourth millen- Nilsson, GGR, I, .228-29, reject the
nium B.C., not one Greek example has idea that the siren is the soul of the
an exact analogy in Oriental art; on dead.
this point cf. Kunze, Kretische Bronze- Sphinx: N. M. Verdelis, "L'Ap-
reliefs, 165, 199. Dunbabin, Greeks parition du sphinx dans rart grec aux
and Their Eastern Neighbours, 55-56, VIII· et VII· siecies avant J.-C.,"
points in quite the wrong direction in BCH, LXXV (1951), 1-37; Kunze,
suggesting that this wave represents a Kretische Broniereliefs, 178-84; Miil-
perversion of Greece by the Orient. ler, AM, L (1925), 54; Schafer, Re-
Gorgons: H. Besig, Gorgo und liefpithoi, 31-33; A. Dessenne, Le
Gorgoneion in der archaischen grie- Sphinx: etude iconographique. I. Des
chischen Kunst (Diss. Berlin, 1937); Origines cl la fin du second millenaire
Konstantinos Gerogiannes, "rop')''' 7j (Paris, 1957).
Miaollult;" Arch. eph. 1927-28, 128- Chimera: Anna Roes, "The Rep-
76; Thalia P. Howe, "The Origin and resentation of the Chimera," JHS,
Function of the Gorgon-Head," AJA, LIV (1934), .21-25.
282 PART III . The Age of Revolution

a spirit (Plate 24b). Even while perverting into a knob the top-
knot of hair which the griffin form had had in the Orient, they
added to the wicked, almost incomprehensible power of their
creation. 1 The unpredictability and the savagery of the physical
world which still enfolded the Greeks in the age of revolution
rise before us nowhere better than in these creatu.res of night-
mare. Mankind always secretly fears "things that go bump in
the night," as the Scotch prayer puts it, but the artistic expres-
sion of this uneasiness reached a peak, at least for the Greeks, in
the seventh century.
A companion fear of death appears in the plenitude of wild
beasts which parallel the monsters. On the surfaces of Late
Geometric and Orientalizing vases lions pounce upon unsuspect-
ing, grazing cattle or tum their snarling heads out on the spec-
tator in grim rows; in sculpture they stand alone as bronze
statuettes and as larger-scale work in stone. The meaning of
these ferocious creatures is suggested by the similes of the Iliad,
which often evoke the lion as an image of the greatness, power, .
and fearfulness of the hero who fights and slays his foes; 2 for
always in these lion similes with their "toothy jaws, glaring eyes,
and bristling mane" lurks the Darkness of Death, "mournful
and fearful, pale, shrivelled, shrunk with hunger, swollen-
kneed," as he appears on the shield of Heracles. 3 The successive
1 Jacobsthal, Greek Pins, 41. Griffins: 135-37). In early Chinese art, inci-
Henri Frankfort, "Notes on the Cretan dentally, the t'ao t'ieh apparently ate
Griffin," BSA, XXXVII (1936-37), man (W. Willetts, Chinese Art, I
lO6-22, and Art and Architecture in [Penguin, 1958], 162).
the Ancient Orient, 154, 177; VIf Jant:. 3 Whitman, Homer and the Heroic
zen, Griechische Greifenkessel (Ber- Tradition, 89; Shield 264 ff. In the-
lin, 1955); Karo, Greek Personality, description of the center of Heracles'
63-65; Payne, Perachora, I, 127-30. shield, given over to Fear, "worked in
2 Lions: Dunbabin, Greeks and Their adamant, unspea1;able, staring back-
Eastern Neighbours, 46-48; Ja- ward with eyes that glowed with Bre,"
cobsthal, Greek Pins, 76-'78; Kunze, horror has risen into a conscious feel-
Kretische Bronzereliefs, 169-70, 184- ing, unlike the shield of Achilles in the
88; Ohly, Griechische Goldbleche, 76- Iliad. So, too, on the Bellerophon
77, 150-51 (Homeric parallels); G. P. kotyle, the Gorgo and Chimera are the
Shipp, Studies in the Language of focus (Kraiker. Aigina, p. 18).
Homer (Cambridge, 1953), 79, who Man-eating lions: Ohly, Grie-
argues that the similes are linguisti- chische Goldbleche, E 3; Copenhagen
cally of Homer's own era. A battle of NM 727 (CV A Copenhagen II pI. 73
men and lions appears already in My- (74) 5, with bibliography); see also
cenaean art on the stele of Grave Hahland, Corolla Curtius, 130-31,
Gamma, Circle B (Mylonas, Mycenae, who links the scenes of this vase to-
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
stages of Attic artistic symbolism make the theme equally clear.
First, on gold bands and vases, lions attack animals; then men
fall before the wild beasts-remarkably graphic is the brutal
composition of two lions at once devouring a man (Plate 22a);
then come straight representations of warriors in duels and
funeral games.
Throughout Greek art from the middle of the eighth cen-
tury down well into the seventh century death intrudes fre-
quently, and man responds to the ultimate proof of his weakness
not with dignified resignation but with fierce, macabre horror.
A similar mood recurs at one later point in Western history, in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries after Christ; and, as any
reader of Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages will know, this
too was a period in which magic, religious tension, and fears
bubbled up in men's minds alongside daring advance.

THE EXORCISM OF FEAR

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the monsters and death-dealing beasts

in Orientalizing art is not exhausted when one notes that they
reflected the terrific stress of the age. Such figures represented
men's fears, but they also expressed superbly the power and·
Vitality of a revolutionary era. A fine example of this aspect is
the leg of a tripod found at Olympia (Plate 24a), where a
scene of two lions fighting each other symbolizes starkly the
fierce contention of the two heroes (Apollo and Heracles?)
vying in the panel above for a tripod of victory. Men of the
era, to repeat an earlier observation, were basically confident.
They were also, as we have seen, fearful; but in the end, as
Greek civilization reached a new plane of consolidation, hopes

gether as showing death and funeral Even more macabre is the Tenos
games. The composition appears in sherd, Athens NM 2495, showing a
Etruria ( Hanfmann, Altetruskisehe warrior with four gaping wounds,
Plastik, 26-28); cf. Akurgal, Phrygi- whose private part~ are being de-
sehe Kumt, 51-52; Kunze, Kretisehe voured by a bird of prey: Kunze,
Bronzere1iefs, 205-07; Jacobsthal, Kretisehe Bronzereliefs, 250-51, pI.
JIIS, LXXI (1951), 87. 54b; Schafer, Reliefpithoi, 85.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

overcame fears. The vIctory, however, was not easily bought,

and even in the end men could not entirely overcome their
knowledge of human frailty.
Among the avenues for exorcising fear, one was its con-
scious expression. Another was the reinterpretation of the old
gods as concerned with earthly justice, and a third resulted from
the creation of virtually new cults. In the first of these outlets lies
a major reason for the abundant depiction of the monsters in
art and for their crystallization in myth. 4 The clay masks of
demon heads found at Tiryns, from about 700 on (Plate
22b), and the masks of Artemis Orthia are perhaps testimony
to plays .or rituals of a propitiatory as well as fertility purpose;
temples commonly bore a Gorgon or Medusa, like the mag-
nificent averter of evil on the temple of Artemis at Corcyra;
the evolution of sirens, lions, and other figures into canonical
types represents the domestication of the unknown. As one ad-
vances through the seventh century, the untamed fearful quality
of the wild figures slowly fades away until by 600 they had be-
come diSciplined, endurable forces. The lions of the ripe archaic
period were not tame pets, yet they were no longer simply
hideous and frightening. While storms and other evidences of
nature's ferocity continued to appear in the lyric poets, the
wild, almost uncivilized quality of the similes in the Iliad van-
ished. Animals were thinly disguised reflections of mankind in
the fables.
Civilization, in sum, became more certain; and its distinc-
tion, incidentally, from barbarism grew more obvious. Both,
myth and art elaborated markedly the divine and human figures,
such as Heracles and Theseus, who had in the past made dis-

4 As Hermann Frankel, Gnomon, king, Anfange, 85. Kubler, Keramei-

XXVIII (1956), 572, notes, some of kos, VI. 1, 151-57, also discusses the
the gloomiest scenes were on drinking sense of death in the seventh-century
vessels. Are they a mark of the senti- vases.
ment memento mori? The theme of Medusa: Gerhard Rodenwaldt,
exorcism has occasionally been noted Altdorische Bildwerke in Korfu (Ber-
but nev~r fully explored; cf. Karo, lin, 1938), pI. 12; R. Hampe, "Kor-.
Greek Personality, 72-73; Beazley, De- _ fugiebel und fruhe Perseusbilder,"
velopment of Attic Black-figure, 16; AM, LX-LXI (1935-36),269-99.
Matz, GGK, I, 317; Homann-Wede-
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 28 5
coveries or had eliminated forces of evil. 5 The very theme of
the conHict of order and chaos, of civilization and the wild, was
cast in the form of centaur battles, the contest of Zeus and
Typhon, the battle of the giants (from the sixth century), and so
on. Intellectually and aesthetically men thus gained a deeper
sense of the meaning of civilization and became more confident
of its endurance. How great a mark of the Greek genius was
this achievement can easily be appreciated if one compares to it
the Etruscan decline into demon-ridden fright.
Another mode by which men could harness unrest was by
consolidating moral standards under divine protection. In
earthly terms the problems of justice and ethics were still largely
communal matters; though men's answers to this range of prob-
lems became more internalized and personal, Greeks did not
proceed as far on the path as did Hebrews. The ethical reforms
of the seventh century, accordingly, will be taken up mainly in
the next chapters alongside social and political changes. Yet
justice is an individual problem as well, and its preservation in
any political system must rest on firm assurance to each man that
the ultimate powers of the world are forces which favor right-
eousness.
The gods could not yet be loved, but already in Homer, and
still more in Hesiod, the poets were elaborating and stressing
their role as guardians of justice. Some divine figures, alas, con-
tinued to serve fallible mankind as mentors· of lechery and
thievery, but Zeus now blessed the virtuous with earthly pros-
perity and punished the wicked with plague, drought, and war.
The gods, too, were ever more sharply conceived as embodi-
ments of the sense of order in the world. The potnia theron,
Mistress of Wild Beasts, who was widely depicted in the late
5 Cf. S. Papaspyridi Karousou, "Un probleme des centaures (Paris, 1929;
'IIPflTO~ ETPETH2:' dans quelques Annales du musee Guimet, XLI). See
monuments archalques," Annuario, also above, n. 1 (po 262) Giants:
0

nos. VIlI-X (1946-48),37-46. Franc;:ois Vian, La guerre des Geants:

Centaurs: Nilsson, GGR, I, 229- Ie mythe avant l'epoque hellenistique
32, with references; Schachermeyr, (Paris, 1952), and Repertoire (Paris,
Poseidon, 86-87, who cautiously con- 1951) Typhon: Kunze, Archaische
0

siders them possibly Indo-Germanic, a Schildbiinder, 82-88.

line argued by Georges Dumezil, Le
286 PART III . The Age of Revolution
eighth and seventh centuries, stood as a symbolic representation
of the domination of chaos by divine order. Beside and out of
such figures the divinities already visible in literature were
crystallizing in art by the middle of the seventh century. Not
every divine representation can yet be identified by this date,
nor was th~ worship of the Greek deities an intellectual feast
stripped of all superstition; 6 still, these gods were marching on
their path to classic dignity.
Artistic and literary conceptions of the gods had necessarily
to follow the lines already marked out in the Homeric epics.
This scheme suited some of the deepest needs of Aegean
society, but not all of the new psychological and social prob-
lems of the age of revolution could thus be met. In consequence
the Greek religious machinery was amplified, and new outlets
were installed; i.e., virtually new gods of novel stamp arose. The
increase in religiOUS temperature, as one is tempted to call
this process, was not simply a reaction to alien viruses. Here
and there some influence from the Orient or from the barbarians
of the Eurasian steppes may perhaps be detected; on the whole
the new cults as well as the old became ever more specifically
Hellenic in the classical sense. 7
Throughout the seventh and sixth centuries the elaboration
of Greek religion continued as an active process, in reflection of
the ceaseless evolution of Hellenic SOciety, which piled stress on
stress. Most of our evidence for Orphism, Cretan mystics, seers,
mysteries, and the ceremonies for purifying inherited pollution
6 All excavation reports on temple de- the Perachora terra-cotta plaque 1.83
posits of this era contain extremely (c. 675-650 B.C.), where a bearded
puzzling objects, which we cannot Aphrodite (?) emerges from the
fully understand. Artemis Orthia, for genitals of Uranus, Perachora I, 231-
example, is rich in grills, wreaths, and 32, and see also P. J. Riis, "The Syrian'
other objects made in lead; Pera- Astarte Plaques and Their Western
chora, in phiales (perhaps for divina- Connections," Berytus, IX (1949),
tion); Excavations at Ephesus, in 6g-g0. The influence of northern sha-
sacred bees, hawks, and so on. Yet the mans, found by Dodds, Greeks and
pose of epiphany was disappearing the Irrational, 140-47, after K. Meuli,
(Matz, GGK, 1,483-84); gods thence- "Scythica," Hermes, LXX (1935),
forth showed their powers internally 121-76, can scarcely have appeared
as w~ll as by external attributes. A before the sixth century-if then.
good example of the process is traced Rohde, Psyche, 314-34, gives a full
in Hoenn, Artemis. picture of ancient evidence on seers
7 The clearest field of possible Oriental et aI.
influence is the cult of Aphrodite; d.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
comes from later than 6so-some of it much later. For the period
noW under consideration, three cults can be shown to have
served especially in the role of purging fears or reassuring the
individual. These were the worship of Dionysus, of Apollo, and
of Heracles. All three have been so often examined in modern
studies and remained so powerful on down through clas/iic times
that their roles need only be sketched. None was an absolutely
new god, but all were suited, in diverse yet complementary
ways, to funnel off basic drives and compulSions of mankind in
the early seventh century, when great changes were upsetting
its ancestral ways of life.
Most obviously suited to this end was Dionysus, already
"the joy of mortals" in Homer.8 He was a god not merely of
relaxing wine but of vegetation as a whole, and his worship
was conducted at least partly in frenzied revels by women.
The wing of modern scholarship which idealizes the Greeks
is always shocked by the tales of the demonic dances on the
mountains, in which participants devoured raw flesh to unify
themselves with a savior; and it would appear from the grim
myths of the fate of Pentheus and others that the more sober
masculine leaders of early Greek society sometimes resisted
Dionysiac mastery over womankind. Their resistance was in
vain. Within the dull routine of domestic work the second sex
had fewer means of combating the stress of changing social and
economic conditions, and so was swept up in this escape from
their trials, which perhaps gained new dimensions in the
seventh century. Both sexes, however, could unite in daytime
festivities of Dionysus, some of which led to the development of
drama.
A powerful school of modern thought, embracing Nietzsche,

8 Iliad XIV. 325; cf. VI. 132 if. The ready given a level-headed account of
most recent of many studies is H. Jean- his antiquity, apart from overstressing
maire, Dionysos: histoire du culte de his appeal to the poor (note his an-
Bacchus (Paris, 1951), who brings him tiquity on the island of Lesbos [Page,
from Asia Minor. It now appears that Sappho and Alcaeus, 168-69]).
he may be referred to on Mycenaean On the release of stress, cf. Ernst
tablets (Webster, Bulletin of the In- Langlotz, "Dionysos," Die Antike,
stitute of Classical Studies, University VIII (1932), 170-82; and Dodds,
of London, V [1958],44); de Sanctis, Greeks and the Irrational, 76-77.
Storia dei Greci, I, 296-301, had al-
288 PART III . The Age of Revolution
Spengler, and others, has created a neat opposition between
Dionysiac and Apolline spirits as reHecting respectively the
ecstatic and rational aspects of Greek civilization; some investi-
gators have gone so far as to find racial grounds for this hypo-
thetical opposition. 9 Greek religious thought cannot be so easily
schematized. In early days Apollo and Dionysus were not
sharply differentiated, and the two drew apart only slowly in
their appeal to divergent parts of the manifold human personal-
ity. While Apollo. was already in the Iliad one of the most
powerful of the Olympian deities, his great evolution into law-
giver, patron of music and poetry, oracular counselor, and healer
of guilty consciences was a long process. By the end of the
seventh century he had essentially assumed a role as the embodi-
ment of Greek rationalism, and was thus celebrated in the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo and by Alcaeus.1 By then, too, Apollo
was master of the Delphic oracle, and this site was becoming a
center of more advanced Greek morality. This appears to have
been a recent development: Delphi advanced beyond the func-

9 This theme appears even in sensible Historia, VII (1958), 237-50. The ef-
accounts, as W. K. C. Guthrie, The fort to link Crete and Apollo-e.g.,
Greeks and Their Gods (London, M. Guarducci, "Crete e Delfi," Studi
1950), 32, 42, 302-04, or Dodds, e materiali di storia delle religioni,
Greeks and the Irrational, 76. Matz, XIX-XX (1943-46), 85-114-does
GGK, I, 159, notes correctly that the not convince me.
MantikIos Apollo (see Plate 20b) Expansion of Apollo: Y. Bequi-
"ist eine jahe Daimonie, noch nicht gnon, "De quelques usurpations
das apollinische Wesen, wie wir es zu d'Apollon en Grece centrale d'apres
verstehen pHegen." Athena played as des recherches recentes," RA, XXIX-
great a role as adviser to men from XXX (1948 ),61-75; J. Papadimitribu,
Homer onward; cf. Levi, AJA, XLIX "Le sanctuaire d'ApolIon Maleatas Ii
(1945),297. Epidaure {fouilles de 1948 )," BCH,
1 Page, Sappho and Alcaetls, 244-50. LXXIII (1949),361-83; W. Vollgraff,
Delphi: Jean Defradas, Les Themes Le Sanctuaire d'Apollo Pytheen .0,
de la propagande delphique (Paris, Argos (Faris, 1957); W. S. Barrett,
1954), who puts Apollo at Delphi only "Bacchylides, Asine, and Apollo Py~
in the sixth century; Pierre Amandry, thaieus," Hermes, LXXXII (1954),
La Mantique apollinienne a Delphes 421-44; Gallet de Santerre, DelOs
(Paris, 1950), and "Recherches a Del- primitive, 135-40.
phes (1938-1953)," Acta congressu Apollo in art: Pierre Aman<~.ry,
Madvigiani, I (Copenhagen, 1958), "Statuette d'ivoire d'un domf,teur de
325-40, who more properly prefers the lion decouverte a Delphes,' S,yria,
second half of the eighth century; XXIV (1944-45), 149-74; Barnett,
Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational, 70- IHS, LXVIII (1948), 16--17; on the
75; M. P. Nilsson, "Das delphische lion motif, see also Brock, Fortetsa,
Orakel in der neuesten Literatur," 198.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 28g

tion of serving as local Phocian shrine only with the great wave
of western colonization, and Apollo's wresting of its oracle from
Ge, Mother Earth, was barely mythicized. At Epidaurus, at the
Boeotian Ptoion, and elsewhere Apollo either supplanted earlier
deities or was equated with them in the course of the cen-
tury.
Dionysus scarcely appears in art down to 600. Apollo turns
up somewhat more frequently in statues, statuettes, and other
forms. Most popular of the three on vases was Heracles. The
first absolutely sure scenes of myth are almost entirely of
Heracles' deeds (Plates 23a and 24a); most of his labors-
though not aU__:_appear frequently from the early seventh cen-
tury onward. 2 His defense of mankind against the forces of the
wild is sometimes cast in an Oriental dress, for Mesopotamian
and Syrian art had a rich, ancient repertoire of such events, con-
nected with the heroic efforts of similar figures in the Fertile
Crescent (Gilgamesh and others). Yet here, most surely, the
Greek borrowing of artistic motifs had little to do with the basic
mythical substance. 3 The outline of Heracles' life was long
2 See the lists given in n. 1 above (1934), 40--53 (but cf. Hetty Gold-
(p. 261), and Frank Brommer, Hera- man, "Sandon and Herakles," Hespe-
kles: Die zwolf Taten des Heiden in ria, Supp. VIII [1949], 164-74); cf.
antiker Kunst und Literatur (Mun- R. Dussaud, "~lelqart," Syria, XXV
ster/Kaln, 1953); Pierre Amandry, (1946-48),205-30; Dunbabin, Greeks
"Herakles et l'hydre de Lerne," Bulle- and Their Eastern Neighbours, 52-53.
tin de la Faculte des Lettres de Stras- \Vebster, From Mycenae to Homer,
bourg, XX (1951-52), 293-322; 125, has tried to find Heracles in the
Kunze, Archaische Schildbiinder, 93- Mycenaean age, too, but we need
126; P. Zanconi Montuoro, "II tipo di much firmer evidence on this point
Eracle nell'arte arcaica," Rendiconti than yet appears.
della Accademia nazionale dei Lin- J. L. Myres, "Hesiod's 'Shield of
cei, 8. ser. II (1947), 207-221. The Herakles': Its Structure and \Vork-
man fighting the lion on K. 407,2160, manship," IHS, LXI (1941), 17-38,
cannot be certainly identified with places this in the late seventh century,
Heracles (on the similar scene from as against R. M. Cook's date of 580-
Chios, cf. BSA, XXXV [1934-35]' 570. Archilochus, fragment 298, is the
pI. 35. 33). The slaying of Nessos is, hymn to Heracles kallinike (though
however, clear on the Attic stand this is not universally agreed to be
from the Argive Heraeum; the dis- Archilochean) .
patch of the hydra appears on Boeo- Heracles and Theseus: Nilsson,
tian fibulae (Hampe, pI. 2, 8); the Cults and Politics, 53-56, who notes
Stymphalian birds are given on Co- that Theseus was portrayed as much
penhagen 3153. more civilized than Heracles from the
3 Contra, G. Rachel Levy, "The Orien- late sixth century onward.
tal Origin of Herakles," IHS, LIV
.29 0 PART III . The Age of Revolution

known; in the Theogony and elsewhere his place was a major

one, quite independent of art.
Heracles, the superman, is the age of revolution incarnate.
No other figure, divine or human, so well typifies and so well il-
lustrates its unique characteristics. Theban-born, appropriated
by the Dorians, he stood high in popularity above local heroes
everywhere; even at Athens he far outranked Theseus in the
seventh century. Not only does he thus suggest the interplay of
localism and panhellenic unity in this era, but far more than
Apollo or Dionysus he expresses its aristocratic spirit. Favored
by the gods, he is a man, a human being who strides forth to
mighty achievements; in his deeds he is unhampered by the
weaknesses or doubts of mortal men. In these respects he is a
noble parallel to Achilles, the embodiment of the early eighth
century; but in other qualities Heracles marks a great advance~
His famous feats were conducted for the benefit of mankind; in
spirit he was far more conscious and calculating than Achilles
had been. Withal the passionate violence of Heracles' nature
must never be forgotten. The marvelous period which he typifies
was one of stress and almost anarchic exuberance; the quality,
of its hero par excellence became fixed for all time on a still
primitive level-Heracles, it may be remembered, raped fifty
maidens in a night. In classic Athens men were to turn, at least
for official purposes, to the figure of Theseus, which could be
cast as a civilized servant of the developed state.
The frightful end of Heracles is one which Homer does not
seem to know, but which underlines the necessity men felt of
accepting the law of Zeus. 4 While Herac1es' bitter agony in
the shirt of Deianira is of a piece with the fearful imagination of
the early seventh century, so, too, is the comforting conclusion
that he was translated to Olympus and there "lives amongst
the undying gods, untroubled and unaging all his days." If the
glory of this mortal man, which was in the seventh century
4Heracles: Theogony 954-55, 530-31; cxxx) and in the sixth-century shield
Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods, 240. bands (Kunze, Archaische Schildbiin-
The suicide of Ajax was a popular der, 154-57), though this scene may
scene in seventh-century art (e.g., reflect also the sense of honor in the
Corinthian vases, Necrocorinthia, 137; era, which must be bought even at
Spartan ivory, Artemis Orthia, pI. . the price of suicide.
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II
"yet greater than it was before over the plenteous earth," rose
far beyond the ordinary repute of local heroes, the motive must
have been the extraordinary comfort and encouragement he
gave to the men, likewise mortal, who worshipped him amid
their own efforts and fears.
The deepening concepts of the psyche or soul which mani-
fest themselves in the cult of Heracles and of the heroes as
a whole reflect significantly the direction of Greek psychological
development. Happiness in the hereafter was still reserved for
the few, not the many, and that handful which rose to heroic
status was mainly the group claimed as ancestors by the great
clans. 5 The tendency to individual self-assertion nonetheless
was unmistakable, even though it was still hemmed by many
group ties.

Through artistic imagination which made the unknown

. tangible and so endurable, through ethical reconstruction,
through new cults and heroes, men went far in the late eighth
and early seventh centuries toward restoring their sense of
basic security. The new view of the religious world as an orderly
structure lay on a higher, more complex plane than had that of
the Dark ages, and it was to fructify philosophy, art, and litera-
ture greatly. Yet mankind could not quite exorcise its fears;
only temporarily can we forget our mortal frame. The feelings of
human helplessness, frailty, and "guilt" went on into the sixth
century and continued to exercise the thinkers, poets, and
artists of that era. Enough religious development, nonetheless,
had been achieved to buttress the basic confidence of the Greeks
and thus to support them in their day-to-day endurance of hu-
man trials.
Most impressive of all was the ability of the Greeks to pass
through the great upheaval of the age of revolution and to estab-
lish a new religious and psychological basis for life without
yielding their dynamic spirit. Fear had been exorcised, not can-
onized in patterns of grim myth, restrictive taboos, and rigid
" Rohde, Psyche, 117-20, is suggestive; Greek Art and Literature, 700-530
most of our knowledge on this matter B.C., 38-41.
is sixth-century or later. See 'Vebster,
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
social structure. That had been the fate of the early stages of
Mesopotamian civilization, but the Aegean world remained free
to develop further the new framework of ethics and religion,
just as its art and literature continued to progress within clearly
conceived forms. Here, once more, Greek civilization had come
to a truly Hellenic outlook, as we commonly understand that
term. Solon and Jeremiah lived at the same time, about 600, but
their ethical and religious views, though equally firmly held,
differed tremendously. .

THE HELLENIC OUTLOOK

WHENEVER the historian comes to treat the religious views

of a society, he must sense how manifold are the forces and
qualities which express themselves in mankind at any point of
time. If one is to marshal the relevant evidence systematically,
it is almost inevitable that one dissect and analyze an era
aspect by aspect; yet the spectrum of human activity is an in-
extricably interjoined flux. In religious institutions and beliefs
the character of contemporary (and past) social, political, and
economic attitudes are writ large, but in this region, too, in-
tellectual and sub-intellectual forces work a powerful influence
independently of class or profession.
Thus far I have examined, each by itself, the progress of art
and of literature and have brought this evidence to bear upon a
Significant but limited aspect of the religious evolution in the.
century from 750 to 650. My objective has been to measure the
intellectual upheaval as a whole and to fix the dimensions of the _
end toward which men had unwittingly been tending. Before
we tum to further fields, it will be well to recapitulate what we
have found. .
During the age of revolution the Aegean world progressed
clearly into the Hellenic outlook of historic times. This system
was now in what is termed its archaic phase, from which it de-
veloped inevitably into the classic stage of the fifth century B.C.
But archaic Greek civilization is not simply an incomplete prel-
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 293
ude to the later magnificent glory. The artists and poets of the
seventh century expressed a coherent, interlocking pattern. The
fruits of this culture-Archilochus, Middle Protocorinthian and
Protoattic pottery, the Nikandre of Delos-were already visible
by 650, and for the next century archaic civilization was to
produce a host of ever more polished and refined achievements,
which were quite distinct in flavor from those of the subsequent
classical period.
Nor, on the other hand, was the archaic frame a straight-
forward elaboration of what had gone before. No one, looking
solely at the intellectual patterns of the Aegean in the early
eighth century, could have predicted the developed outlook of
the later seventh century. The difference was so great quantita-
tively as to be virtually a matter of qualitative change. True,
the foundations of the later age were those which had been
laboriously fashioned in the Dark ages; but the superstructure
~as the product of a great, sudden revolution. Wherever we
search for "links" of gradual evolution, we search in vain. Pot-
ters jumped from Geometric to Orient ali zing pottery; sculptors,
from the rude figurines of the eighth century to sharply defined
statuettes and then to large-scale sculpture; architects, from sim-
ple chapels to temples. In the field of literature, where only
solitary masterpieces have survived, each author's advance to-
ward self-comprehension and conscious analysis of the place of
man in the world looms up even more sharply.
The resumption of continuous contact with the Orient was
more a mark than a cause of this upheaval. The Greeks turned
eastward only when their own society was ready to receive out-
side influences; and, as I have stressed repeatedly, we must ex-
plain this readiness if we are to probe to the bottom of the main
forces in Greek advance. Yet an effect of a previous development
often becomes itself a cause of subsequent change. Many Greek
artists and thinkers drew stimuli from the Orient to break more
abruptly with the external domination of old molds and thus to
speed the tempo of a revolution which would otherwise have
proceeded more slowly. For their new ideas they could draw on
an abundance of Oriental motifs and techniques.
The historian, even so, must never mistake the incidental for
294 PART III . The Age of Revolution

the substantial. Intellectually, the age of revolution witnessed

the crystallization of Greek civilization, not the adaptation of
Oriental culture to a Greek dress. By the middle of the seventh
century the styles of Greek pottery, sculpture, and architecture
were further removed in spirit from Oriental arts than had ever
before been true. The Theogony and the Works and Days
show some awareness of Oriental ideas, but their main pattern
is not Eastern; the verse of Archilochus does not reveal that this
poet owed anything of significance to the East. Modem biologi-
cal theory, interestingly enough, suggests that when two distinct
families of animals or plants of common parentage come into
contact the product is sometimes yet sharper difference. The
present case perhaps illustrates the validity of this principle in
human cultures. 6

Not only was the general product of the intellectual up-

heaval Hellenic, but also the methods by which its participants
had achieved their gains were of true Greek stamp. The processes
which marked early archaic civilization included the limitation
of variation by the common agreement upon new forms and the
interlocking of the individual creative thinker with society.
Nonetheless the Hellenic outlook came also to be marked by an
ever more dynamic spirit and conscious exploration of man's
place.
Repeatedly we have observed the admirable economy and
concentration of the artists and authors of the age of revolution.
In virtually every field they made their mighty leaps by focusing
their experiments within a narrow range of types. For these men _
the bewildering variety of nature was a handicap to be over-
come, not a fact worthy of reproduction. Archaic artists may be-
termed more realistic inasmuch as they observed more con-
sciously, but their basic aim was not to express their observa-
tion. This was incidental to their creation of ideal types. While.
these patterns were not in every case fully perfected by 650,
they had emerged; the story of subsequent development is
6 Carter, One Hundred Years of Evo- Minoan world, the product (Myce-
lution, 152-54. When Middle Helladic naean culture) shows rather more' fu-
Greece came into contact with the sion.
 CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheat>al: II 295
largely a matter of their polishing. Greek civilization thus re-
ceived an enduring stamp of concentration on the ideal, the
abstract, the non-personal (though not impersonal). Not until
the Hellenistic and, still more, the Roman eras was this outlook
to be seriously attacked, but even then it held firm as a basic
characteristic of Greco-Roman civilization to the pOint when
that framework eventually collapsed in the Late Roman Empire.
The men of the seventh century who thus limited their ap-
proach seem to have done so voluntarily. If they restricted their
range, they aimed at greater achievement than might otherwise
have occurred. One may go even further to suggest that the
stem restriction was an absolutely necessary counter to the
forces of stress and change; only by harnessing the energies of
the age could society avoid collapse into chaos. Men now were
conscious of what they were doing. They were surer of them-
selves after long centuries marked by physical want and socially
. primitive structures. Still, they dared not abandon all rules in
their leap out of tradition. And so artists and authors imposed
upon their zeal new, even more firmly determined patterns,
and yielded a rude individuality to communal diScipline.
Underlying this problem was the crucial question of the
relation of the individual to the group. Scholars who worked or
were born in the nineteenth century (the height perhaps of
resplendent individualism in modem times) have stressed
heavily the creative freedom of the individual in ancient Greece;
and it is true that our modem concepts of the nature of mankind
have here one of their major roots. In the very point of time we
have been examining, some of the most basic aspects of Western
civilization were formulated. Hesiod and Archilochus speak to
us as individuals, driven by their own passions and problems, as
no earlier men had ever spoken. In art the signatures of vase
painters and sculptors now commence, in testimony to the
pride of the artists and also to the willingness of society to permit
this individual assertion. 7 Before 600 individual responsibility
rather than collective punishment had begun to be accepted in
criminal law. Yet individualism, like realism, was an incidental
7 Homann-Wedeking, Anfiinge, 143- ( 1945), 103-06 on the Kallikleas sig-
44, 52-53; M. Lejeune, REA, XLVII nature.
296 PART III . The Age of Revolution

by-product of the early seventh century rather than its deliberate

aim. Neither artist nor poet spoke entirely for himself; as we
examine their products, we feel a generalized, idealistic quality
and miss a sense of rounded, internal self-sufficiency.8 The
thinker of this age was first a representative of society and only
secondarily an individual; it will be time shortly to consider the
consolidation of the city-state as a social and political fusion of
individuals into collective unity.
The Hellenic outlook, that is, did not rest upon modern
concepts of the individual. The social and political groupings of
Hellas were successful enough so that this world never came
fully even to the level of individual responsibility which the
Hebrew prophets evolved in the fire of earthly catastrophe.
Nonetheless Greece reached a happy, though always precarious
balance in the seventh century which tended to endure through
the tension of opposite forces; and in this balance or, to put the
reality better, in this bond of rule and freedom was harnessed
their dynamic spirit.9
For, having made their revolution, the Greeks did not curb
too drastically their ability to move and to change within the
new framework. In the bold, swirling lines of Orientalizing
vases or in the emphasis upon action in the new depiction of the
myths/ artists largely broke the Geometric restraints upon the
dynamic drive of Greek civilization; and pulsating inner life
penetrated the new types. Always in revolutionary eras there is
the serious problem of preventing ~hange from decaying into
anarchy-and this problem the Greeks admirably met. But there
is also the equally serious danger that the very restrictions which
safeguard order will re-create a static situation-and this dan-
ger, too, archaic civilization overpassed. In part its success was
due to the expansion of Greek society through colonization,
which opened the Aegean to foreign stimuli and set, as we
shall see, economic development on a continuing path; in part~
8 This is, I think, what de Sanctis, express it clearly; cf. also_ Muller,
Storia dei Greci, I, 84, saw when he Friihe Plastik, 222.
discussed its lack of "intimita." 1 Kunze, Archaische Schildbiinder, 72-
o Matz, GGK, 1,113-15, seems to have 77·
somewhat the same view, but fails to
 CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 297
too, the balance between stability and movement was the prod-
uct of mutual checks of tensions and opposing forces.
Geographically this balance is evident in the tensions be-
tween panhellenic and local attachments. The artistic and
literary developments of the age of revolution took place on a
panhellenic stage. Especially from the beginning of the seventh
century the southern districts of the Greek mainland, the Ae-
gean islands, and the coast of Asia Minor seem to have moved
together culturally almost in instinctive sympathy. Modem stu-
dents tend as a result to assume that once a new motif or
technique appeared in any comer of the Greek world it auto-
matically passed in a few years to the rest of the Aegean. This
assumption is a dangerous Simplification, particularly when used
in dating schemes for pottery; but the interaction of the Greek
world is nonetheless testimony to the freedom with which its
leading elements adopted new ideas-and also to the wide net-
. work of communication then in existence. The archaic Greeks
knew themselves to be Hellenes, distinct from the rest of the
world,2 and were beginning to celebrate their panhellenic unity
in games and religious festivals to the great, common gods.
This international unity can too easily be exaggerated. Be-
side the outward flow lay a force which pulled men inward. The
seventh century was the era in which the city-states of Greece
crystallized, and these states demanded, for their own egotisti-
cal perfection, all the resources of their citizens. Artistically,
Gre~k localism finds its best reflection in the marvelously varied
styles of Orientalizing pottery in the seventh century. In litera-
ture, the vigor of lyric and elegiac poetry from Archilochus on-
ward drew much from the poets' emotional involvement in the
welfare of their individual states. Politically, the bitter divisions
of Greece are too well known to need exposition.

Fully to discuss the major characteristics of Greek civiliza-

tion-for this is in the end what results from an analysiS of the
2 Archilochus, fragment 97; Hesiod, of the Hellenes, father of Dorus,
Works and Days 528, and fragment Xuthus (the father of Ion), and
26 (ed. Rzach); in fragment 7 from Aiolos.
the Eoiae Hellen appears as eponym
2g8 PART III . The Age of Revolution

intellectual upheaval 7So-6So-is impossible; brevity, on the

other hand, must lead to distortion. Yet one final aspect of
the method by which the Greeks advanced so rapidly cannot be
passed over. By the seventh century the Hellenic outlook had
assumed an air of conscious exploration and intentional analysis.
Man was cutting himself deliberately loose from the accidental
flow of life, and opened his eyes to gaze upon himself.3 Wherever
a comparison is made between products of the eighth and the
seventh centuries, the same result obtains in this respect. The
clearest example is the treatment of epic and myth on the vases;
while the artists of the eighth century created the techniques by
which specific scenes might be illustrated, their pictures re-
mained generalized duels, lion hunts, and so on. Only in the
seventh century did vase paintings turn into the clearly identifi-
able mythical pictures of Orientalizing ware.
Behind the ability to depict specific scenes and to see hu-
man beings as conscious creatures lay a conjoined development
of abstract thought. This achievement was not an absolutely
fresh discovery of the seventh century. In Homer the Greek
language already showed the beginnings of ability at abstrac-
tion, conscious reflection, and other characteristics of the later
Greek mind. 4 Despite these early beginnings, the quantitative
difference between 7SO and 6so is so great as to be qualitative.
By the later date men knew what they were dOing. They recog-
nized the obstacles and felt how little independence men had
before the great forces of the world; but with wisdom they
could fathom "the rhythm which governs the life of man" and
so could act. Thought, true, was not yet as supple as it was to be-
come thereafter; men still sought the ideal in factual and con-
crete images. Their basic presuppositions strike us, as they did -

S From Dedalic art on, statues have tion, 13. Concrete images: Frankel,
eyes; W. Deonna, "Les Yeux absents Dichtung und Philosophie, index,
ou cIos des statues de la Grece primi- 653-59. Opposites: Frankel, "Eine
tive," REG, XLVIII (1935),219-44. Stileigenheit der friihgriechischen Li-
4. Abstraction: Frankel, Dichtung und teratur," Wege und Formen, 40-96.
Philosorhie, 52, 57-58; Myres, BSA, Time sense: Frankel, "Die Zeitauffas-
XLV 1950), 258; Webster, From sung in der friihgriechischen Litera-
Mycenae to Homer, 256-57; Snell, tur," Wege und Formen, 1-22; Treu,
Discovery of the Mind, 227-37; Whit- Von Homer zur Lyrik, 123, 224.
man, Homer and the Heroic Tradi-
CHAPTER 8 . The Intellectual Upheaval: II 299
also the later Greeks, as frequently naIve. The marshaling of com-
plex masses gave rise not to crystalline unities but to such wan-
dering mazes as Hesiod' s Works and Days or to simple manipula-
tions of diametrical opposites. The virtually timeless plane of
Homer had now yielded to a sense of rapid, almost meaning-
less change from day to day; a connected sense of the flow of
time came only later. Much remained to be done, and when it
was achieved the archaic era was over.
Nonetheless the intellectual upheaval 750-650 was one of
the most fascinating and most crucial steps in the progress of
Western civilization. "In Greece, and only in Greece, did
theoretic thought emerge without outside influence; . . . it was
only with the help of the unique achievement of the Greeks that
the other 'societies were able to progress beyond their own pace
of conceptual development." 5 The Hellenic outlook now ex-
isted in conscious, coherent form, and marked off the Greeks who
shared it from all other peoples. The speed, sureness, and mag-
nificence of this achievement are amazing, but the bearers of
Greek civilization are not solely important for their own accom-
plishment. No sooner had the new structure arisen than it be-
gan to display an amazingly attractive force for other peoples.
Whereas the Greek culture of the Dark ages had influenced only
the shores of the Aegean, archaic art and literature were to be
admired and imitated widely over the Mediterranean. To this
end the political and economic expansion of the Aegean world,
the subject of the next two chapters, contributed greatly.

5 Snell, Discovery of the Mind, Z27 ( speaking specifically of science).

 CHAPTER 9

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

THE HISTORY of mankind's intellectual development offers

no more fascinating topic than the ever shifting attitudes of men
toward their own nature. The degree to which they feel them-
selves to be individuals, the consciousness with which they en-
gage in self-analysis, the willingness or reluctance with which
they bear communal burdens-all these are of major impor-
tance; and in each Greece witnessed marked evolution during
the age of revolution.
The growing self-consciousness of the era has already been
observed in the mirrors of the arts, of literature, and of re-
ligious developments. Individualism, however, is a dangerous
word to employ without qualifications at this juncture. From
the seventh century on-even from the Homeric world onward
-the Hellenic outlook was stamped by a complex, fructifying
tension between human egotism and communal ties.
To understand what occurred in social relationships it is im-
portant to remember that the Aegean underwent no fundamen-
tal alteration during the century 750-650 in class structure,
economic patterns, or ruling elements. There were no external
invasions nor any major internal upheavals. In particular, new
elements of commercial or industrial stamp remained minor in
size and weight well down into the seventh century. Modern
theories about the rise of the nation-state in European history
tend to assign crucial significance to the emergence of non-
agricultural middle classes; whatever may be the merits of
this conceptual scheme as an explanation of recent political and
intellectual evolution, it will not fit the ancient evidence on the
(0) lrory {!.(ldd('s.~ freml Dil'y/ti ll ~ran·. Ori-
clltol ill somc cletai/ ~ hut lIkill 10 Dipy/r)1J pot-
tery figllre., (Xotimw/ Mu sc!lII! 776, AthclIs).

(/1) ClllY fi!!urili C fmm SlIl/lOS ( 110. fi7.3)

u:ith uJJtul'Il ec/ IWlId C(lIllI//(111 ill Ilu' era. Pllo-
to{!,l'ap IS cOllltesy DClltschcs r\rcltii(ll()gisc/u.'s
lll~titflt ill AtlU! IIS.

PLATE 19 . LatC' Ceol1lctric Figurines

 (II) Warrior frolll the Acropolis slllnLing a (b) Statllctte dedicated by .U an/iklo.v to
fJl!Ff,illll itlf!, of illller IIllity (cf. tleck of Pilite Apollo. (I prot;incial Boeotiall u:ork hilt (I.: it II

17/1) (Xa/iolllli .\[U$elllll 6613. Atllen.) . defined Ollffin(' (~ 11m'lIl1I of Fille Ar/s 0.3.997.
Photograph courtesy Deutsches Archiiolo- Bostol1). PI/(>fogTIIl'h courtesy M'ISClltn of
gischl's lnstilut ill Athens. Fine Arts, BOJ(oll .

PLATE 20 . ElIlergence of Archaic SClilpfl.re

CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual 3 01
early polis. The economic advances of the era will be discussed
in Chapter 11; but on the whole it is safe to say that the city-
state was the fruit of tensions within an agricultural world. 1
The rise of the polis may have been much facilitated by the con-
tinuing simplicity of economic patterns and by the still almost
primitive social structure of the age of revolution.
Within this basic limit, nonetheless, the era did see very
significant social alterations. Some of the displacements bore
especially on the two main classes, the landlords and the
peasants, both separately and also in their relations to one an-
other. Other modifications affected all men, regardless of their
social stratum; among these were shifts in the relative position
of the sexes and alterations in the strength of various social units.
The fruits of the evolution were many. Men came to visual-
ize far more consciously the problems inherent in the relations
between individuals and society. The divine forces governing
mankind were increasingly conceived as ethical forces. In this
process the Greeks advanced less far than did the Hebrews,
but modern morality stems from the ethics of Plato and
Aristotle as well as from the fiery words of Israel's prophets.
The ethical and religious concepts which thenceforth governed
Greek life were partly tailored to suit the individual but also to
a marked degree were group-oriented.
For beside conscious individualism came also more con-
scious ties, both on the level of specific classes and also in the
structure of the community. Whereas the earlier, ancestral dis-
tinctions between upper and lower levels had existed only
on a simple, almost unconscious basis, the upper class now
progressed into an aristocratic outlook which has influenced
noble patterns ever since. The political system which held to-
gether Aegean society underwent marked alteration in the direc-
tion of the city-state. Looking back across the course of later
Greek history, we can see that social change in the period 750-
650, with its attendant results, was so great as to be a veritable
revolution.
1 See Johannes Hasebroek, Trade and picture of Old Smyrna as largely ag-
Politics in Ancient Greece (London, ricultural, BSA, LlII-IV (1958-59),
1933),31-32; and J. M. Cook's recent 16-17·

II
 PART III . The Age of R~volution

THE PLACE OF THE ARISTOCRATS

IN THIS SOCIAL REVOLUTION the upper classes must first

claim one's attention. These were the most powerful, the most
vocal, and the most aggreSSive part of Greek sOciety; these
reacted most obviously and fully to every innovation sweeping
over the Aegean. On the upper level, if anywhere, an individual
had room to assert his own independence. Yet we shall find, as
we proceed, that the noble element did not lose its unity through
atomistic, self-seeking drives. Nor did the upper classes stand
alone in the Greek world. They were not absolutely dominant;
the growitlg power of the aristocracy as a class and the self-
awareness of aristocrats as individuals constituted only one root ,
of the new ethical and political concepts.
By the seventh century the upper classes of Greece were at
last clearly evolving the marks of an aristocracy-i.e., a group
which manifested social distinctions in an obligatory way of life
consciously conceived as more refined, more cultured, and more
leisurely than that of the masses. 2 Our greater awareness of dis-
tinctions between upper and lower classes may in part simply
reflect the greater volume of evi<;lence, but this cannot be all the
explanation. The physical remains of the tombs attest a growing
separation of rich and poor; the hints of the Iliad, when coupled
with the continuing evolution of the seventh century, suggest
fairly clearly that social alterations were actually occurring.
If an aristocratic outlook thus began to jell, we must look
to several factors. The basic economic, religious, and politicai
eminence of the upper classes was ,an inheritance from earlier.
centuries; what was now being added was, ,first, an incieas~ in
wealth and, secondly, a more conscious analysis of man's natur~
and place. The nobles surely gained a large part of the growing

2 Hermann Strasburger, "Der soziolo- mer, 156, 163, 185, argue~ that the
gisch~Aspekt der homerischen Epen," tracing of genealogies in Homer was
Gymnasium, LX ( 1953), 97-114; a recent step, as was also the forma-
G. M. Calhoun, "Classes and Masses !!on of fam!!ies ~alling themselves
in Homer," CP, XXIX (1934), 192- sons of . . . (daJ).
208. Webster, From Mycenae to Ho-

'.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual 30 3
economic resources of Greece. They were also the element
which mainly consumed the new luxuries brought from the East
and which supported local craftsmen in the rapid development
of Aegean arts. In one way or another, the upper classes of
Greece became increasingly aware of Oriental patterns; but one
may doubt whether their knowledge of an alien world, where
civilization was grouped about kings and aristocracies, gave any
significant model to their own self-assertion.
The creation of a consciously aristocratic pattern was, in
the social field, a close parallel to the evolution of new molds for
artistic and poetic thought. It came suddenly, after fore-
shadowings in the Iliad and Odyssey; by the time of Archilochus,
and still more by the end of the seventh century, when Sappho,
Alcaeus, and Solon flourished, it was quite apparent. What fol-
\owed tneTeaheT was Tennement of tne fOTm, fc'I 'at:'Itl:'S tbe sixtb .
and fifth centuries aristocratic ideals experienced further evolu-
tion and polish.
Since our literary evidence becomes relatively abundant
only in the later, more advanced stages, it is not altogether
easy to trace the intensification of the aristocratic outlook se-
mantically. The famous phrase for aristocrats was to be kalo-
kagathoi, as distinguished from the kakoi or base; but in the
seventh century we cannot be sure that its constituent parts,
kaloi (beautiful = polished) and agathoi (good = pre-eminent),
had entirely come to have reference to class position rather than
to individual merit. 3 This process does seem to have been un-
der way; and early poetry has an abundance of other phrases-
gennaioi (noble-born), eupatridai (of good bther), diotrephes
(Zeus-nurtured), "daughter of many kings," £lnd so on-which
reflected aristocratic pride in lineage. This spirit found other
vents as well. The Catalogue of Women, Eoiae, and other
Hesiodic lists described mortal-divine unions from which great
3 On the concept of beauty in Homer, Archilochus. Neither Treu (p. 175)
cf. Treu, Von Homer :wr Lyrik, 36- nor Julius Gerlach, 'A."p 'a-ya()6s
40; the term kalokagathos appears (Diss. Munich, 1932), consider aga-
only in a comparative form, in Iliad thos a class term in the seventh cen-
XXIV. 52. Br:avery and beauty, more- tury. Sappho, fragment 155, or Archi-
over, do not necessarily go hand in lochus, fragment 9, give examples of
hand either in the lliad (V. 801, 787; the phrases in the text.
the picture of Paris generally) or in
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

families boasted their origin; the very extensive reworking of

the myths which was under way was in part dictated by the
desire to interlock the major clans of Asia Minor and Greece.
Many of these, such as the Basilidai of Ephesus, the Neleids of
Miletus, as well as the Medontids of Athens, were of royal back-
ground; and in general kingly, noble, and priestly families
merged into one unified upper class in the seventh century.'
As this social outlook became more developed, the prob-
lem of transmitting it to the next generation grew pressing.
Nobles were deliberately educated to proper standards of
life by many modes. Much must have been done within the
family; youths also attended wiser adults, such as the "school"
of Sappho, and hearkened to the more impersonal words of
the poets from Homer onward. Males, in particular, were
trained in gymnasia and attended communal meals of warrior'
bands (where these still existed). Homosexuality, ignored by
Homer, became widely accepted both in its more elemental
aspects and as a bond between noble model and noble
aspirant.
Consciously guided into the proper paths in childhood,
nobles were as adults subject to constant scrutiny by their peers.
Upper and lower classes were distinguished primarily as groups,
not as individuals; and the nascent aristocrats must exemplify
the virtues of their class. The character of a hero arose from,
and was embodied in, his actions; his ensuing glory and re-
pute derived from the judgment of his fellow men, which was
expressed in such adjectives as agathos or such nouns as time,
kleos. In modern terms, Greek society was franted as a shame
culture, rather than a guilt culture. Individual sell-perception
and self-expression inevitably arose out of such factors, as
we shall see shortly; but this aspect was not pre-eminent in
seventh-century society. Greek life was intensely communal.
The concepts of upper-class conduct as a distinct pattern, once
• Louis Gernet, "Les nobles dans la Training: H. I. Marrou, History
Grece antique," Annales d'histoire of Education in Antiquity (New York,
economique et sociale, X (1938), 36- 1956), 5-13, 43-44; on the system of
43; I am not sure the argument for communal Cretan meals, see Willetts,
distipct priestly families in earlier Ancient Crete, 13-17.
times is altogether sound.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

consciously appreciated, evolved steadily into that system which

eventually abstract thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle codified
and teachers such as Isocrates imparted even to foreigners.
The background of upper-class life continued to be agri-
cultural and in part rural. Some aristocratic estates of early
Attica can be identified through later topographic nomenclature
and by archaeological remains; the countryside of Teos ap-
parently was held in the main by some forty families, each with
its pyrgos or fortified refuge. 5 Both as a pastime and for more
practical reasons, aristocrats delighted in the hunt, and raised
horses with no less pride than had their ancestors in the eighth
century and earlier. The terms hippeis, hippobotai, etc., became
in several places virtually titles for the governing classes, and
aristocrats compounded their personal names with Hippo-.
Chariots now were used for racing, not for battle, but horseback
riding came into wider practice after the Cimmerians and other
nomads had shown the way. In the Lesbian poets, as in
Homer, the phenomena of nature were an immediate part of
man's environment.
To say this does not mean that the Greeks of the seventh
century, whether noble or peasant, lived like savages in full con-
tact with the physical world. The dwellers in Aegean lands, as
was pointed out in Chapter 4, were forced to group themselves
in clusters both for purposes of defense and for geographical
reasons. The nobles did not isolate themselves completely in
rural strongholds, like many of the feudal lords of medieval
Europe, but preferred as their abode the central asty of each
tribal area. This site, for reasons of clarity, I shall translate by the

aD. W. S. Hunt, "Feudal Survivals also the earlier picture in Chap. 4,

in Ionia," IHS, LXVII (1947),48-76; n. z (p. 133); Chap. 5, n. 1 (p. 155).
Webster, From Mycenae to Homer, Horseback riding was already known
151, notes Mycenaean parallels. On in Odyssey V. 371, Iliad XV. 679, and
the gamoroi of Syracuse, see Dunba- on Geometric vases (e.g., Athens NM
bin, Western Greeks, 55-57. 810, 13038; cf. Whitman, Homer and
Horse riding: Nikolaos Yalouris, the Heroic Tradition, 354). The fact
Athena als Herrin der Plerde (Diss. that Artemis was especially a hunt-
Basel, 1949; Museum Helveticum, ress in Ionia may lead to diametri-
VII [1950], 19-101); Edouard Dele- cally the opposite conclusion from the
becqne, Le Chet;al dans l'Iliade view of Nilsson, GGR, I, 469, that it
(Paris, 1951); T. Talbot Rice, The reBects a survival of delight in the
Scythians (London, 1957), 69-70; see hunt among an mhan aristocracy.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
economically colorless word "town," rather than by the com-
mon but dangerous equivalent of "city."
The epics commonly locate the upper classes in the towns
and distinguish clearly between rural and asty dwellers; in the
next century Solon, in speaking of the astoi, seems to be thinking
primarily of the aristocrats, and Sappho scorns the "countrified"
girl.6 As the greater gods lived together on the peak of Olympus,
so the aristocrats dwelt in the hubs of earthly life, where they
were kindled by, and in turn promoted, the latest ideas. Here
they might enjoy the most recent luxuries produced by wander-
ing and local artisans; for to make our picture complete we must
remember that beside the nobles dwelt both peasants and a
slowly increasing number of traders and craftsmen.
Architecturally the towns were primitive. Socially they were
simple, and the men who inhabited them could step quickly'
into the world of fields and pastures, of wild animals and ele-
mental forces of nature which lay all about. But the intellectual
stimulus of the towns was not thereby limited. While the highly
sociable character of Greeks was a vital factor throughout
their history, this trait never played a greater role than in the
early seventh century. The close personal association of the up-
per classes at this time was a tremendous force in promoting
the lightning swiftness of contemporary change. The aristocratic
pattern, true, was rising as a basic mold for social life, but the
leaders of the Greek world enjoyed nonetheless a remarkable
openness of mind.
The opportunities of the aristocrats, that is to say, were
great as old patterns and customs yielded, and they seized the
moment avidly, even ruthlessly. In intellectual outlook they
seem scarcely to have boggled at any novelty; their basiCally
rational, inquisitive spirit produced within a century the first
speculative philosophers of Western civilization. Even more
6 Town-dwellers: Iliad II. 806, XV. ( 1953), 99, and "Der Einzelne und
558; Odyssey II. 77, II. 154, VI. die Gemeinschaft im Denken cler
20620 iI., VII. 131, XlII. 1920, XVII. 2006. Griechen," Historische - Zeitschrift,
Peasants in town: Iliad IX. 154; Odys- CLXXVII (1954), 227-48, from this
sey XVII. 182, XIV. 3720, XXIV. 2010. point of view overemphasizes the ru-
Solon: Meyer, Forschungen zur alten ral tone in early Greek SOciety; d.
Geschichte I, 307; Sappho, fragment Bolkestein, Economic Life, 18-202.
57. Strasburger, Gymnasium, LX
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

obviously characteristic of the seventh-century nobility, and of

great importance both for good and for evil, was its almost child-
ish joy in the new physical delights of life. "Haughty, adorned
with well-dressed hair, steeped in the scent of skilfully-prepared
unguents," as Xenophanes (fragment 3) later scornfully in-
dicted the purple-clad lords of Colophon, the aristocrats of
Greece everywhere sought ivories, bronzes, the latest wares of
Corinth; one great surprise to modern scholars at the excavation
of Artemis Orthia was the revelation that early Spartan nobles
had foIIowed this common path. Luxury (abrosyne) is a leit-
motif of the poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries.7 The
concept, to be sure, is always a relative matter: an Assyrian
monarch would have scorned a noble Greek house as a hovel.
Would Greek painted pottery have developed so far if its pur-
chasers have been able to afford shelves laden with gold and
silver vessels?
In other vital respects the leading classes of Greece were
as free of narrow restrictions. The geographic framework of
the epic world had been the Greek Aegean as a whole; even the
distinction between Greek and non-Greek was not yet sharp in
the Iliad. 8 Aristocrats had wide contacts through guest-friend-
ship and intermarriage. Unfortunate men who murdered their
kinfold or otherwise failed to fit into the social structure of their
homeland moved as far afield as the minstrels. Once outside
their native fold, refugees were desperately insecure unless
they gained the protection of an alien basileus, but this tie seems
easily granted to nobles in the Iliad. From the wide range of
pottery and bronze motifs one may suspect that similar protec-
tion was also accorded to outside artists. "For these men," says
Eumaeus, "are bidden all over the boundless earth."

7 Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occidente, strangers: Odyssey VII. 32-33, XIII.

215 If., gives a good analysis. 201-02 (= VlIl. 575-76), XIV. 124-
8 This distinction was, however, begin- 25; these must be placed beside the
ning to appear, as Gomme, Greek At- emphasis that strangers should be well
titude, 43-45, notes. treated in VI. 207-08, I. 119-20, VIII.
Movement abroad: Iliad XV. 546. These exiles are the root of the
430-32, XVI. 571-74, XXIII. 85-90, seventh-century mercenaries (Fanta,
XXIV. 480-82, etc. Exiles as outcasts: Der Staat, 65-66). Eumaeus: Odys-
Iliad XXIV. 531 H., XVI. 59; Odyssey sey XVII. 382-86.
XV. 224, 254, XIII. 259. Distrust of
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
Within the age of revolution the international ties were in-
tensified as movement became more common and safer and as
the ken of Hellas was enlarged. The young girls who chirped
about Sappho i~ Lesbos made marriages as far afield as Lydia;9
wherever we know pedigrees of noble stocks, alien elements
commonly can be found. Casual raiding by land and sea prob-
ably declined, for the Greek world was becoming more orderly;
but aristocrats could serve as mercenaries abroad in the East,
found colonies, or perhaps engage in long-distance trade.
Archilochus as well as other nobles (and peasants too) felt free
to migrate and to travel. By the seventh century the famous
shrines and games of later Hellas, centered on such points as
Delphi, Olympia, and Delos, had emerged as focal points for
the international flow of aristocrats and artists, which at once
bound together the more conscious levels of Greece in a sense of
common unity and differentiation from the outside world and
also fostered the transmission of new ideas and objects.
Politically the upper classes of the earlier, ep~c stage had
not been tied down by abstract bonds of state and community.
Hector and others fought for their fatherland, and the Achae-
ans yearned for home; but when such concepts are concretely
described, they resolve themselves into family, estates, and
native hearths. 1 Within the seventh century political attitudes
began to change. Deep involvement in local struggles makes its
first appearance in Archilochus' vehement attacks on his foes; in
Sappho and Alcaeus, and even more in Solon and Tyrtaeus,
there rise before our eyes aristocratic politics of feuding factions
and the ambitions of individual leaders, as well as true patriotic
love for one's country. The aristocrats, who had much to gain
from political mastery, did not disdain to exploit their oppor-
tunities. Even on this level, nonetheless, we must not visualize,
too sweeping a change. The international ties of family connec-
tions, travel, and culture exerted significant influences; the
local unit of the polis had only just emerged and did not swallow
up ~en's energies in toto. .
9 Heuss, Antike und Abendland, II Odyssey 1. 58-59, V. 220, IX. 34. etc.
(1946), 49-50. Cf. Hoffman. Festschrift B. Snell.
1 Iliad II. 178. II. 454. III. 244. XII. 158-60.
243, XV. 496-98. d. IX. 593-94;
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

The very forces, finally, which promoted the conscious real-

ization of aristocratic position also impelled individual members
of this class to their own self-assertion. The aristocratic pattern
was not one of personal abnegation. Both the growing prosperity
and the incessant flux of archaic Greek life promoted human
pride. The contention of the epic h~roes for glory thus passed
on into fierce political rivalry among noble factions; and insofar
as this vent was narrowed by the consolidation of the city-state
the yearning for repute in the eyes of one's fellows was expressed
in competition at impromptu and organized games. 2 The agonal
or competitive spirit became a major aspect of Greek aristocratic
nature in the eighth and seventh centnries. Socially there was
the same tendency to break all bars which can be observed in
Proto attic pottery and other fields; but the inherited structure
of Greek civilization was able to throw up new forms and molds
which checked social license, while yet permitting individual
human beings a wide field for action. The relations between the
aristocracy as a class and its members as self-seeking individuals
are not simple; the tension which resulted not only caused stress
but also promoted the enduringly dynamic quality of Greek
civilization.
It is time to impose qualifications upon this general pic-
ture of the aristocratic class. Historians are much too easily
carried away by the pretensions of the voluble governing circles
to be the font of all desirable change, the arbiters of intellect;
for- the great movements in human history are not thus class-
bound. Wherever one turns, the same forces drive rich and poor,
literate and illiterate, toward the same goals. Those who ap-
pear to be the leaders in any era are chiefly marked out by
greater sensitivity of spirit or outward stature in a common
procession.3
2 Will, Doriens et Ioniens, 30-31. so likely to receive direct expression.
Strasburger's interesting argument, 3 I have considered this problem in
Historische Zeitschrift, CLXXVII another period of history in Civiliza-
(1954), 227-48, that men were com- tion and the Caesars, 262-65, 312-13.
ing to feel themselves primarily as in- An example of class interpretation of
dividuals and were not conscious of Greek history is that of Margaret O.
unity in a Gemeinschaft must be fit- Wason, Class Struggles in Ancient
ted into this framework; the local ties Greece (London, 1947).
were, after all, ancestral and were not
3 10 PART III . The Age of Revolution
To label Greek culture in the age of revolution-or there-
after-solely as "aristocratic" is to forgo any possibility of un-
derstanding its evolution. It is natural that we tend to call the
human-centered, physically active, essentially rational outlook
of the Greek world aristocratic, inasmuch as we know that this
spirit has been an important force in subsequent nobJe pat-
terns of life. In the later centuries of Greek civilization the Hel-
lenic outlook was consciously sharpened and refined as a mark
especially of the upper classes; from them it was taken over by
the senatorial leaders of Rome; and modern aristocracies have
largely been trained within the classical tradition.
In the period we are now considering, when this system
first became a conscious possession of Hellas, it was a creation of
archaic society as a whole. Only superficially, as in the choice
of subjects by vase painters and poets, did the culture of the age.
of revolution reflect aristocratic interests. 4 The oppositions which
have often been drawn between the peasant Hesiod and the
aristocratic Archilochus, or on the divine level between Apollo
and Dionysus, are made much too sharp. In both pairs new ideas
of the age of revolution are evident; if the individual figures at
times appear to be incompatible, this is mainly a testimony to the
manifold variety of humanity at any time. Only in :very small
degree can such differences be used to distinguish class atti-
tudes.
The power of the Greek upper classes and the individualism
of its members, after all, were bounded by two major checks.
One was the internal product of their own character; the other
was imposed upon the l~ading elements from outside. In the
first place the aristocracy was only recently set apart in ways of
life from the rest of the population. Located in a system which
was evolving rapidly in every respect, it had a superb oppor-
tunity to seize political and economic advantage, often in un-

4 Kiibler, Altattische Malerei, 29-30, 55, and "Observations on Seventh-

gives examples; I have suggested Century Greek Sculptu!e," AtA.
aboye, pp. 154-55, a possible connec- XLVIII (1944), 132-34, essays to
tion' between noble patronage and find connections between artistic shifts
Dipylon products. C. A. Robinson, Jr., and political changes, particularly in
"The Development of Archaic Greek the rise of the tyrants.
Sculpture," AJA, XLII (1938), 451-

"
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

just fashion, and thus to capitalize on its inherited position of

prominence; yet in social forms, as in the development of
Orientalizing pottery, the Hellenic inheritance of the past pre-
vented men from rejecting their sense of communal structure
and responsibility. Landlords and peasants had earlier been
bound together in a tight web of tribe, phratry, and other
social, religious, and political units, the power of which was not
broken all at once. The more thoughtful members of the upper
classes felt as keenly as those who were oppressed the serious
threat that unchecked individual license might result in com-
munal disunity. When such men as Solon rose in opposition to
this trend, they could summon within the hearts of their peers
powerful forces-the more powerful because the world of the
seventh century was still a simple land where rich and poor lived
side by side in small clusters.
That justice which depends purely on the self-restraint of
the rulers is a fragile blessing. Beside the aristocracy stood, in
the second place, an outside check in the form of the rest of .
sOciety. Individually the masses were powerless and often suf-
fered from aristocratic pressure. Taken together, they had both
inherited resources in tribal unity and the spirit of personal lead-
ership and also new strengths resulting from contemporary
economic and military changes. While the Greek world could
not prevent-and did not try to halt-the consolidation of the
aristocracy as its outwardly dominant element, it could-and
did-impose a lasting curb upon the degree of that domination.
Any assessment of the social changes which underlay the rise of
the city-state must take into account not only landlords but also
peasants; and some social developments of importance were
independent of class.

OTHER SOCIAL CHANGES

THE NON-ARISTOCRATIC part of the population consisted of

independent peasants who owned their own fields; landless men
who made a living as day laborers on the farms or plied the
312 PART III . The Age of Revolution
trades of artisan, merchant, and shipper; and household
slaves. The last element, which was beginning to expand into
the field of industry, may be ignored in its social role; slaves
were still very restricted in numbers and had no perceptible in-
Huence on political changes. The landless thetes, too, were of
scant importance except insofar as their numbers swelled during
the age of revolution and emphasized the need for colonization.
The commercial and industrial segments of this group did
not yet have any independent political role of weight. 5
While the historian can only guess at the proportions of
peasant small holders and landless workers in the late eighth
and early seventh centuries, the small farmers were fairly clearly
a major part of the population in most areas. 6 What happened to
the peasants during the age of revolution must be a thread of
importance in Greek social and political development; but un-
fortunately changes on this level can be measured only in their
most basic outlines. The voices of history speak usually in cul-
tured tones. In probing archaic Greece it is a stroke of luck that
we have even so partial a reHection of the problems of the ordi-
nary men as Hesiod's Works and Days; for the most part con-
clusions in this field must rest on the dangerous course 'of argu-
ing back from visible developments to their probable cause.
One underlying factor, thus,- must have been a great in-
crease in population, which began by the early eighth century
or even before. The archaeological record shows ever wider
settlement, ever more numerous cemeteries; when we come to
examine the outbreak of colonization at the very beginning of the
age of revolution, we shall not be able to avoid the impression
that there must have been a surplus of manpower. The causes,
however, of the great demographic shifts in history are always
difficult to explain. 1 In eighth-century Greece and later there
5 See above, Chap; 4, n. 1 (p. 131); "The Causes of Rise and Fall in the
and below, Chap. 11. Population of the Ancient World,"
e The predominance of small proper- Geographical History in Greek. Lands;
ties, noted in Bolkestein, Economic 172-208. J. L. Angel, Journal of Ger-
Life, 25;-27, 29-30, was not necessarily ontology, II (1947), 20, argues an
a later development. increase of two to three years in life
1 The comments of M. I. Finley, JRS, span between the eras 1150-650 and
XLVIII (1958),157-58, are more use- 650- 15 0 B.C., but he has come to
ful than the essay by J. L. Myres, doubt his conclusion (Khirokitia, 417).
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

may have been an increase in life span due to more settled and
secure life, though our skeletal material is rather scant for firm
statistics; but there was also, surely, an actual increase in the
birth rate. To account for this mysterious factor, which is not
even arithmetically demonstrable, one can say no more than
that, by and large, agricultural production, especially of grain,
rose and that peasants could prosper in the century 750-650.
Another force which affected the peasants' lot was their
partial liberation from the unwritten, static rules of life which
had at once limited and protected their position in the past.
Peasant landholders, whether descended from the primeval
stocks or from the invaders, had become firmly entrenched in
the social organization of tribal Greece during the Dark ages.
To their richer neighbors and to the Zeus-born kings they
yielded the mastery of political and religious machinery, and
they seem from hints in the epics to have been required to pro-
vide not very well defined "gifts" to their leaders; but no con-
sciously organized system of manorial dues had been inherited
. to curse their lot.
When Greek life began to evolve more freely, the peasants
were thus legally able to change their occupation or to move to
urban centers and new colonies; Hesiod's father migrated from
Cyme to Boeotia. This freedom was not an entire blessing, for as
the farmers lost the protective shield of ancestral fixity, they
were exposed directly to serious stresses which threatened their
economic independence. The rise in population itself brought
critIcal problems in the division of small farms, which Hesiod
tried to counter in his advice thflt a man have only one son. 8
Worse by far must have been the hitrsh pressure from the aristo-
crats, increasingly unified and distinguished from the lower
orders, increasingly bent on enjoying the material fruits of the
new prosperity of Greece. The increase in total production
which was occurring must not be conceived in the phenomenal
terms of modem industrial development. Generally in history
the few can have more goods only if the many have less; or at
8Works and Days 376-78. The com- easily give great wealth to a greater
mon tendency to stress this passage, number. More hands mean more work
however, must take into account his and more increase."
subsequent remark: "Yet Zeus can
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

least, in periods when production has actually risen to a con-

siderable degree, the rewards will commonly be divided in
very unequal measure.
By ill-seen means, such as exploitation of the requirements
of gifts, by loans in time of famine; by distortion of justice, by
brutal exercise of superior power, the governing classes assailed
their weaker neighbors and at times forced the peasantry down
virtually or entirely into serfdom. In Crete, in Sparta, in Thessaly
the farming population was in historic times legally bound to
the soil and owed payments to the upper classes. While this
tendency may have been an inheritance from the age of invasion
or a concomitant of later colonization, it was in its final state a
product of the growing distinction of the aristocratic elements
and their willingness to use their power.s In Athens, as we
know from the unrest in the days of Solon, the peasantry
came cl~se to falling into the same pit.
Hesiod directed his bitter attack on the bribe-swallowing
basileis against this line of development. The important aspect
of the Works and Days is too rarely noticed: it is not the specific
injustice which occasioned the poem but the fact that Hesiod
was able to cry out. To judge from the epic reference to "insolent
folk in the demos," forces already stood in opposition to noble
aggrandizement in the eighth century; 1 Hesiod continued the
strain; and eventually the peasantry in most districts was able
to save itself from utter dependence economically and politically.
That the escape was narrow the events at Athens make clear;
but it did occur. The retention of essential independence by the
peasantry was one of the most crucial factors in Greek
political history.
This victory, which is not what we might expect, was the
product of many forces. Colonization provided a safety valve;
town markets were appearing where non-agricultural elements

9 Serfdom does not appear in Homer; and other East European peasants,
see Hasebroek, Griechische Wirt- into serfdom, which occurred only iIi
schafts-: und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, modern times. Athenaeus VI. 263-272
22; Paul Guiraud, La Propriete fon- is our main evidence on Greek serf-
ciere en Gnke iusqu'a la conquete dom.
romaine (Paris, 1893), 407-18. Com- 1 Odyssey VI. 274-75; note the "base
pare the reduction of Polish, Russian, churls" (kakoi) of IV. 62-64.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual
bought rural produce and some farmers could employ com-
mercial and industrial talents; not all of the expanding produc-
tion necessarily went to the upper classes. The military changes
of the era played a part, for the peasantry furnished a vital sec-
tion of the heavily armored infantry which, as will appear in the
next chapter, now safeguarded the independence of each state.
Socially, the communal unity of earlier, tribal days lingered on
to give the peasants a standard by which to recognize oppres-
sion and avenues by which they might express their views. On
the other side, the more perceptive aristocrats felt in this bond a
limit to their freedom.
In explaining the survival of independent lower classes we
must also keep always in mind the very simple framework even
of seventh-century Greece. The land was fortunate in its geo-
graphical and spiritual separation from the more developed
civilization of the Orient. In Palestine a similar aristocratic
consolidation was occurring at this very period, and the first
prophets were raising their voices against oppression. Unfortu-
.nately for the poorer Jews, outside military pressure and foreign
models tipped the scales in Israel in favor of the upper classes.
The Greek world, on the other hand, could more easily cling to
older patterns. The peasants, in the last analysis, stood off
the aristocrats; and, as we shall see later, the creation of the city-
state reflects a basic compromise between the leaders and the
led.

Not all the social forces in seventh-century Greece were

products of class evolution or class struggle. A shifting attitude
toward women-or, better, a hardening of masculine claims to
superiority-is reflected in ugly diatribes by "peasant" Hesiod
and by later aristocrats alike. 2 Greek women, to be sure, never
2Works and Days 373-75, Theogony itself solely with men. On the actual
591 ff.; Semonides of Amorgos, frag- place of women, see H. D. F. Kitto,
ment 7; Phocylides, fragment 2. The The Greeks (rev. ed., Penguin, 1957),
expression of similar attitudes began 219-36. Dress: Lorimer, Homer and
in Odyssey XI. 441 ff., XV. 20-23 (vs. the Monuments, 358-59. Jewelry:
VII. 67 ff.), which is in many ways a Matz, GGK, I, 472-73, and the many
story of the relations between men studies on Greek jewels. Harlots: Ar-
and women, while the Iliad concerns chilochus, fragments 91, 241-42.
 PART III . The Age.of Revolution

lived secluded in harems, and the poetry of Sappho at the end

of the seventh century abundantly testifies that women then
had minds of their own, which were at times deemed worthy of
education. Yet widespread female emancipation was not a prize
which men were willing to yield; the product was a sharpened
distinction between the sexes. Often, at least in the upper classes,
men considered the second sex worthy only of adornment, both
in increasing complexity of dress and in wealth of jewelry; har-
lots appear in Greek literature from Archilochus. The masculine
tone of public society is evident in the new custom of exercis-
ing and competing in the nude,3 in the development of specific
areas as gymnasia, and in the acceptance of masculine homo-
sexuality.
In itself the male arrogance of the age is politically signifi-
cant only insofar as it reflects the more conscious assembly of
men for recreation and public business, though a speculative
anthropologist might enjoy proving that the city-state emerged
to keep womankind under control. The declining power of the
old social units over individuals was more certainly of great social
and political consequence. Phratry, clan, tribe, even family could
not hope to endure unchanged in a changing world. Some units
were doomed to purely conventional roles, and all were to yield
a large part of their powers. The heir was often the individual
human being, who increasingly widened his bounds intellec-
tually and geographically.
While the direction of this current in the long stream of
Greek history is clear, to measure its speed of flow at any point
is extremely difficult. 4 The recent argument by Dodds that the
basic social problem of the archaic age was the rejection of the _
omnipotent father image by rebellious sons, who then felt guilt,
smacks far too much of modem psychiatric shibboleths. What
we would term "individualism" was still extremely limited in
the seventh century. Collective responsibility of a clan in cases
of murder was only beginning to weaken by the end of the
3 Hesiod, Loeb ed., p. 164 (scholiast 45-49; Glotz, Solidarite de la famille,
on Homer, Iliad XXIII. 683); cf. 225 If.; Willetts, Ancient Crete, 59-66,
MiilIer, Nacktheit und EntblOssung, 252-53, on the growing independerice
9 2 -94. of the family (against the clan) in
4 Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational, Crete.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual-

century; 5 the family and clan base of politics remained a serious

problem to statesmen seeking public unity throughout the next
century; and the powers which these units lost went to the state
as a whole, as well as to the individual. Tensions between older
and younger generations, between the individual and the group,
must always exist in society. In the age of revolution the signifi-
cant point is that they became sharper, changed in focus, and
were more consciously felt as men came to observe their world
more carefully.

The social stresses of the age were serious, but their dimen-
sions must be kept in proper focus. The upheaval affected minor
aspects, not the major structure, of the Aegean world. The an-
cient patterns of tight blood groups persisted, but had to yield
some ground before the broadening flow of Greek life. Before
and after the great upheaval two main classes existed in this
world, for neither slaves nor middle class yet played any signifi-
cant role by 650. Within a fundamentally solid, simple, unified
society these classes were becoming more consciously separated,
but neither could exist without the other. While the governing
groups gained most from the economic expansion of the Greek
world, the peasants did not entirely lose their position.
Growth in itself does not eliminate discontent, but rather
intensifies social and political problems. "Secular improvement,"
as an eminent student of modern economics has observed, "that
is taken for granted and coupled with individual insecurity that
is acutely resented is of course the best recipe for breeding social
unrest." 6 Yet violent political revolution could be avoided in
the Aegean of the seventh century. The price reqUired was, first,
a reinforcement and clarification of the basic spirit of communal
unity and, secondly, adjustment of outward forms of political
organization.
5 Rose, Primitive Culture: 191-205. Socialism, and Democracy (3d ed.;
6 Joseph A. Schum peter, Capitalism, London, 1950), 145.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

CIVIC AND ETHICAL GODS

AT ALL TIMES men's views of Heaven move in basic har-

mony with their concepts of this world. Nowhere can we hope
to gain better testimony on the social changes just noted, or on
the political evolution which will next concern us, than in the
main lines of religious development 750-650. Those changes
which illustrate particularly the growing self-consciousness and
fears of the individual have been discussed in the previous
chapter, but they are not the most important aspects of the
great remodeling of Hellenic religion. In the seventh century
the Greeks still came to the worship of their gods primarily in
groups. The major religious shifts reflect the growing common
unity and a clearer sense of the need for divine endorsement
of communal justice; 7 the increasing attention to individual
ethical positions was subsidiary, though significant.
By 650 each of the more developed Greek states was well
equipped with a variety of public cults, conducted at specific
places in accordance with a regular calendar and in a well-
defined ritual (though we known little of this last at any stage
in Greek ~.eligious history). In its external organization the
religion of'state demonstrates the rising pOSition of the aristo-
crats. The greatest gods were those of the Olympian pantheon,
which had cryst~llized during the preceding century and was \
worshipped primarily on the aristocratic level. Aristocratic con-
trol, too, of the priesthoods is often demonstrable; and some _of
the public cults had earlier been private ceremonies of noble
clans. The religiOUS machinery, interwoven as it was with politi-_
cal and social structures, had the usual, incidental benefit of as-
Sisting to keep ddwn the ignorant masses.
No one considering Greek religion in the seventh century
can place first either its individual appeal or its class char-
acter; the state cults were, above all, an effort to unite the entire
population of the nascent city-states. They emerged out of
earlier tribal worship and expanded their sway as far as the
7See in general Guthrie, The Greeks A History of Greek Religion (Oxford,
and Their Gods, and M. P. Nilsson, 1925), 224-62.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

boundaries of each local political unit. Some of the gods were

drawn from the great panhellenic pantheon, or were local
deities absorbed into the major gods; the characteristics of the
earlier figure frequently carried over into the new synthesis.
Artemis Orthia of Sparta is not quite the same as the Artemis of
Attic Brauron. Each state also had a host of unique divini-
ties, some of which rose at this time from purely neighborhood
reverence to state-wide cult-one example of this process of gen-
eralization is the fertility worship of Eleusis in the Attic state.
Beside the gods stood heroes, who admirably illuminate the
new emphasis on public unity.s A few heroes, such as Heracles,
remained the general property of all Greeks, but by far the
majority were symbols of pride to individual states. Theseus, for
instance, who had earlier been revered over a wide area, was
then appropriated by Athens, at the cost of a very considerable
reworking of myth. Chthonian deities sometimes rose to the
level' of heroes; other cults, as of Agamemnon at Mycenae and
of Menelaus at Sparta, appeared in deference to the popularity
of the epics; many heroes were spontaneously generated out of
the excitement at discovering old tombs. The source of the
cult was immaterial; the Significant fact was the sudden out-
burst of this kind of religious creativity, which clearly mani-
fested a well-nigh conscious effort to unite the state. While the
gods defended the polis against misfortune, a hero was pe-
culiarly qualified, both as erstwhile human warrior and as a
purely. local patron, to rally the citizens in their phalanx and
lead them to victory in war. The miracle by which the Greeks
turned back the Persians was due, said later men, to the gods
and to the heroes.
Almost anywhere one turns in Greek religion the interweav-
8 Hero cults: Rohde, Psyche, 98-100, Mycenae," Geras A. Keramopoullou,
115-55; L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero 112-18; Delos, V, 67-74, and Gallet
Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Ox- de Santerre, Delos primitive, 93-96,
ford, 1921); Paul Foucart, "Le culte on the tomb of the Hyperborean maid-
des heros chez les Grecs," Memoires ens; Benton, BSA, XXXV (1934-35),
de l'Academie des Inscriptions et 45-73, on the cave of Odysseus at
Belles-Lettres, XLII (1918); .Nilsson, Ithaca; see also Das Kuppelgrab bei
GGR, I, 184-91, 378-83, 715-19. Menidi. Theseus: Nilsson, Cults and
Sites: J. M. Cook, "The Agamemno- Politics, 49-65. Persian defeat: Herod-
neion," BSA, XLVIII (1953),30-68, otus VIII. 109.
and "The Cult of Agamemnon at
320 PART III . The Age of Revolution
ing of politics and faith is visible, for the ancient world did not
admit the principle of separation of church and state. As the
polis became a more conscious political guardian of man's se-
curity, so, too, the religious ceremonies of its calendar, which
safeguarded that polis, were refined and interlocked. In at least
one case we can actually see the insertion of the polis into local
agricultural rites. An ancient Cretan hymn to Zeus initially bade
his servants, the Curetes, to leap for wine, flocks, fields, and
hives, but by historic times a significant addition had heen in-
serted: "Leap also for our cities, and our sea-faring ships,
and leap for the young citizens, and leap for fair law-abiding-
ness." 9 Most impressive of all the marks of political and social
unity was the swelling number of temples and sacred precincts
in the Greek states from the mid-seventh century onward. These
were not class monuments, but general focuses for state patriot-
ism, the product of communal work and sacrifice, and the object
of communal pride.l The most lasting physical testimony to the
economic and cultural growth of Greece is not in noble, private
houses as evidences of individual luxury but in public, religious
dedications.
Another set of human requirements led to a reinterpretation
of the nature of the gods themselves. The basic problem was the
introduction of dynamic change into society, which put heavy
stress on inherited standards of justice. The powerful could
more easily exploit the poor and had obvious incentives to do
so. A growing population, moreover, pressed one man against
another ever more closely and in ever more complex ways.
Murder, for instance, not merely affected small, geographically
separated blood groups with an urge for revenge, but now
imbued a whole interlocked population with a sense of pollu-
tion. The re-evaluation of the claims of men on each other and
the provision of means for safeguarding justice were, of course,
earthly matters, and as such will be examined when we come to
the polis itself. Yet the success of human ordinances iIi preserv-
9 Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods, 46- 1Note the emphasis in Hymn to De-
47; R. C. Bosanquet, "The Palaikastro meter 296 on the joint labor in the
Hymn of the Kouretes," BSA, XV construction of the Eleusinian shrine.
( 190 8-09), 339-55 .
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual
3 21
ing the unity of the community depended squarely upon a
firm divine foundation.
As men wrestled with this problem, they could develop new
gods or elaborate old divinities as specific defenders of right
conduct. The increasing role of Apollo as patron of Greek ethics
has perhaps been exaggerated for the seventh century, but can-
not be entirely dismissed; beside him appeared Themis (Right),
Dike (Justice), the Erinyes (Avengers), and other heavenly
hosts. These grew in popular credit especially in the next cen-
tury as public control was increasingly exercised over blood
feuds. Another mode was the evolution of mystic rites of
expiation; after the failure of Cylon to seize control of Athens,
the city expelled the noble clan of the Alcmeonids which was
directly responsible for his murder and secured a noted Cretan
puriner, Epimenides, to cleanse it of its guile
Specific religiOUS machinery of this type as well as the
ethical magnification of individualized divine forces could be
useful only if the general principle were established that the gods
preferred justice and punished the wicked. The way thereto
was paved in the epic. "Verily," said the shepherd Eumaeus in
the Odyssey, "the blessed gods love not reckless deeds, but they
honour justice and the righteous deeds of men." In similar vein
the Iliad put even more bluntly the wrath of Zeus "at men who
by violence give crooked judgments in the agora and drive
·out justice, not regarding the vengeance of the gods." For venge-
ance, .though slow at times, was sure, and men paid a heavy
price in the end, both themselves, their women, and their
children.3
Though the theme was clear enough in epic days, there was
then still "no systematic morality which the gods sustain." 4 This
2 Kathleen Freeman, Companion to good ruler, Odyssey XIX. 10g-14. I
the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Ox- see no justification for the common as-
ford, 1953), 27-29, gives the evi- sumption that such passages must be
dence; on the need for purification, later interpolations.
cf. Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational, 4 A happy phrase of Whitman, Homer

35-36 ,44. and the Heroic Tradition, 243. For

3 Odyssey XIV. 83-84; Iliad XVI. typical examples of concern with jus-
384 ff. and IV. 158 ff. Cf. Odyssey tice down to 6so, see Hesiod, Works
VIII. 575-76, XIII. 214; Iliad IX. and Days 248-51, 220 ff., 261 ff.; The-
497 ff., XIX. 258 ff. The reverse of the agony 88-90; Archilochus, fragments
die is prosperity in the land of the 37, 171.
322 PART III . The Age of Revolution
came amid the social and political stresses of the following age
of revolution. From Hesiod at the beginning of the seventh cen-
tury through Archilochus to Solon at its end the problem of
justice mounted to be a dominant concern of the gods. As men
followed the paths of justice or injustice, so were they rewarded
by Zeus in visible, physical terms: in peace, prosperity, health;
or in plague, famine, and toppling walls. The theme is so com-
mon, so simply put, that it needs no quotation; but its very reiter-
ation, almost fiercely vehement, suggests that poets felt the grav-
ity of the situation.

The one aspect of early Greek ethics which does require

emphasis is its conjunction of individual and communal sanc-
tions, of which the latter bulked much the larger. Individual
responsibility and individual punishment were only beginning
to receive recognition at this time. In the epic man was gen-
erally not responsible for his acts, save in a remarkable speech
by Phoenix, which contains virtually unique concepts of prayer,
transgression, and the freedom of man's choice at the price of
divine punishment or reward. 5 During the folloWing century the
basic structure of individual Hellenic ethics was first con-
sciously refined out of its primeval matrix on lines which Greek
philosophical speculation was to test and burnish for centuries
to come. Historic Greek morality stressed on the one side
man's awareness of his limitations-"savor your successes,
mourn your reverses, but not too much," said Archilochus-and
on the other his ability to act~ if only he observed "the rhythm
which governs the life of man." In its famous formulations, which
were fostered by the Delphic oracle, Know Thyself and Nothing
Too Much, this pattern sank into the blood of Greece in the
seventh century.
Beside this individual aspect stood the new emphasis on
communal justice which was embodied in the city-state form
5 Iliad IX. 497 ff.; Page, History and 6 (p. 343); Gerlach, 'A.1,p 'o.'Yo.(J6s,
the Homeric Iliad, 300-03. Most treat- 50-58; Frederic Will, "Solon's Con--
ments of Greek ethics stress later de- sciousness of Himself," Transactions
velopments and more individualized of the American Philological Associa-
aspects. For the situation in the sev- tion, LXXXIX (1958),301-11.
enth century, see below, Chap. 10, n.
CHAPTER 9 . Society and the Individual

of political organization. If the individualistic attitude of un-

tempered, willful passion was never entirely to die in Greek life,
it certainly was not the main source of ethical strength from the
seventh century onward. The human being was driven to moral-
ity by communal pressure rather than by private fears in his
own heart before the awful eye of the divine; and his rewards
were conceived far more in physical than in spiritual terms. s
A strong sense of communal unity, in sum, continued into
the age of revolution and was refined in the new religious and
ethical structure of historic Greece. The hallmark of the Greek
intellectual temper which has already been noted was a happy
blend of individual freedom with group loyalty, forces which
were balanced against each other in a basically solid yet
dynamic system. While the aristocrats sought, and largely ob-
tained, a position of pre-eminence, they were not unchecked.
Not for the Greek was the pattern of the overweening, lawless
Cyclopes .of the Odyssey, who did not plant or plow, who did
not meet in assemblies or council, "but each gave law to his
children and wives, and they do not reck of another." 7
6 Snell, Discocery of the Mind, 156- 7 Odyssey IX. 106-215. This is one of
62; efforts toward individualization in the most important rassages in the
this field came from Solon on. epic on actual politica beliefs.
 CHAPTER 10

THE RISE OF THE CITY-STATE

THE POLmCAL MASTERPIECE of the age of revolution was

the creation of the Greek polis or city-state. In Mesopotamia
city-states had an ancient history, though by 750 they were
mostly swallowed up in empire. Along the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean small, city-centered units had long been known
and were at this time still ruled by Syrian and Phoenician
kings. The Aegean world rose from tribal to city-state level orily
in the century 750-650, largely in response to its own needs,
and in doing so eliminated its monarchs.
The polis was more than a political solution of political
problems. It emerged out of earlier tribal society as an alterna-
tive to the principle of personal leadership, but the success of
the Greeks in creating so marvelous an institution can be under-
stood only when we appreciate the intellectual upheaval of the
era. If men were to enter upon politiCal revolution, the way was
paved and the course of development was directed by the
parallel shifts in artistic and literary attitudes, by the changes
in class relationships and other social. tensions, and by the wide _
range of religiOUS evolution.
The details of political alterations and history are often
obscure. Treaties, laws, and other political documents did not
appear until virtually 600 B.C.; no contemporary historian
chronicled the steps by which the Greeks passed from- tribal
organization under basileis to republican, conSciously organized
city-states. As commonly described in modern accounts, the
polis is seen in the democratic practice of Athens from Pericles
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State
to Demosthenes and in the theory of Plato and Aristotle-Le.,
after three centuries of development; and students are often
blinded by generalizations resting on democratic prejudices or
Marxist dogma. In its beginning stages of the late eighth and
early seventh centuries the polis was a simple structure; but we
can see the main forces in its emergence if we keep our view
wide. The important innovation was not in physical structures
nor in machinery of government but in civic spirit.
The enduring effects of the new political world can hardly
be overestimated. Once established, the polis protected, ac-
celerated, and withal confined the genius of Greek thinkers and
artists like a hothouse; Aristotle eventually was to define man as
"an animal of the polis." 1 The spiritual qualities of the institu-
tion will strike a resident of the modern Western world as more
akin to his own views than were the ancestral bases of Oriental
kingship. In the world of the polis there was a local exclusive-
ness, an effort to translate political independence into economic
autarchy, an unreasoning and sensitive pride of the citizens of
each state; and internal rivalry could become so intense that
factions would traffic with foreign foes for domestic advantage.
Yet the city-state also embodied-and made conscious for the
first time-truly noble concepts of communal justice. The free
citizen had political value in himself as a holder of rights and
responsibilities.

THE DECLINE OF PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

How MAGNIFICENT an achievement was the rise of the

polis is rarely appreciated; for it was not the inevitable solution
to the stresses of the age of revolution. When men searched for
a more developed political structure, they could have taken
either of two paths. The intensification of collective action and
the creation of machinery for its expression was one possibility;
this was generally preferred. But there was another exit, that of
1Aristotle, Politics I. 1. 9. 1253a; (Boston, 1913), chap. 1.
W. S. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
personal leadership. "To obey the will of one man," said the
later philosopher Heraclitus, "is also Law." 2
In the ancient Orient the god-supported or divine king was
almost always the dominant political focus. Even the Hebrews
had not been able to avoid this mode of unification, albeit they
came to it in the days of Saul and David with justified misgivings
and never fully yielded themselves to its requirements. The
institution of powerful kingship lay in the Greek background,
for the wanakes of the Mycenaean age had tried to model their
bureaucratic economies on the Oriental prototype. So de-
veloped a system did not survive the chaos of the Dorian inva-
sion, but the basic principle of personal leadership continued in
the form of the basileus or chief over the tribal warriors. Dur-
ing the Dark ages collective leadership seems to have been prac-
ticed in some areas; but generally, if the epics do not mislead us,
each people looked to one single basileus and sought his heir
within his clan.
During the age of revolution the basileis essentially dis-
appeared as political nuclei. In all Greek history this is one of the
most mystifying vanishing-acts, and its puzzling aspects do
not decrease when one turns to modern treatments of Greek
political evolution. These accounts commonly present the ba-
sileis in ruddy health in the Homeric world; then, in a page or
two, the kings abruptly decline-Alcinous, it is pointed out,
was only primus inter pares in the Phaeacian fairyland-and
next they are dead and buried, whisked away impatiently so
that the collective unity of the city-state may take up the entire
political stage.3 The realities of the evolution are much more.
complex and illuminating.
To understand what was taking place, we must begin not-
with the aristocracy, postulated as self-confident, consolidated,
and dominant, but with the basileus himself. In the earlier years
of the eighth century, when Greek society began to accelerate
its development, the range of the basileus' power may even have
2 Fragment 33 (context unknown, and passage often fail to note that in XI.
and hot necessarily political). 353 (cf. VI. 197) Alcil)ous asserts that
3 One example, Glotz, Greek City, 38- the sending of Odysseus rests "most
46,57-62, will suffice. Alcinous: Odys- of all with me; for mine is the control
sey VIII. 390-91. Those who cite this in the land."
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State
tended to increase, just as the incipient national states of early
modern Europe turned toward their kings as a prime vehicle for
improving political unity. Hints in the Iliad suffice at least to
warn us against throwing entirely out of court the possibility
that the Greeks experimented along this line. On the divine
plane, which must reflect human realities, Father Zeus as-
sumed in the crystallizing pantheon a role of master against
whom the other gods could speak only to a limited degree. On
earth the Zeus-born 'basileis vaunted their pre-eminence in terms
which need not be taken as pure reminiscence of Mycenaean
days, and Odysseus once in the Iliad (II. 204) delivers an
interesting argument on the necessity for having only one
chieftain.
Most significant of all was the role of the basileus on the
battlefield, the arena where we see him most clearly in the Iliad.
Superficially, epic battle scenes were cast in terms of individual
duels for artistic purposes, just as the conflicts were set between
heroes in the medieval chansons de geste. Homer and medieval
bards alike emphasized the ideal of personal bravery as the
motivating force to battle and would have us believe that their
heroes were independent of outside contro1.4 Poets, however,
are not field commanders. Military systems in reality must al-
ways be built to compensate for and to counter the human in-
stincts of fear and self-preservation. Neither cowardice nor the
danger implicit in individual disregard of commands was an un-
kno:wn phenomenon in the epic world. In Homer, as in the
chansons de geste, we can see below the artistic requirements
to detect that even heroes went into battle in serried ranks and
that the chieftains exerted strong diScipline to reinforce that
scorn of skulkers and violation of orders which was demanded
by the military code of the warriors. In an era when abstract
ties did not yet exist and conscious self-motivation was rudi-

4 J. P. Verbruggen, Die Krifeskumt in 343, XI. 593-94, XIII. 125 ff., XVI.
West-Europe in de Middeleuwen, 214 ff., XVII. 354 ff., XX. 362. These
IX' tot Begin XIV' Eeuw (Brussels, are not interpolations. Punishment:
1954), affords significant parallels in Iliad II. 357-59, 391-93. That coward-
this matter. Serried ranks: Iliad Ill. ice was well known is shown in IV.
77,IV. 281-82, IV. 297-305,IV.427- 299-300, XIII. 278-83.
31, V. 93, VII. 61-62, VII. 141, XI.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

mentary, personal loyalty and obedience to the chieftain were

imperative. We must begin the political evolution of the eighth
century with the concept that "it is no common honor which be-
longs to a sceptred king, to whom Zeus gives dignity." ~
Thereafter, as domestic problems became more complex, the
place of personal leadership enjoyed further sources of support.
The cult of heroes enshrined the principle in religiOUS terms,
and the later tyrants of historic times, who celebrated the be-
neficent deeds of Heracles or Theseus in art and cult, could draw
on the strengths of this pattern of power no less for their own
benefit than for purposes of emphasizing patriotic unity. Even
more obvious is the need for leaders in the great wave of coloni-
zation. The transplantation of small bands of Greeks from the
homeland to new abodes was so staggeringly difficult that
colollists seem always to have placed themselves under the
leadership of forceful men. The earliest colonies apparently
were directed by actual basile is, but, whatever the title of a
founding father, he was virtually worshipped through the later
history of a colony as its oikistes.6
To place the principle of personal leadership in later
times in a proper focus, we must keep these early manifestations
always in mind as illustrations of its ancient lineage. Here and
there the basileis kept at least part of their powers-in Sparta,
Argos, Thessaly, and elsewhere. Generally they vanished as
effective forces, but even city-states could turn back to individ:-
ual rule and elevate "tyrants." The term tyrannos itself is of un-
certain origin, and designates a ruler who gained power not,
like a basileus, by inheritance but through his own resources: 1

5 Iliad I. 278-79. chelheim, Ancient Economic History;

6 The doubts of Dunbabin, Western I, 526. A. Cony, Revue hittite et asi-
Greeks, 93-94, concerning the basileus anique, VII (1945-46), 12, advanced
Pollis of Syracuse do not seem well a Semitic origin for the word; though
grounded. If Archias were oikistes, he Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern
may also have been basileus. The of- Neighbours, 58, approves it, further
ficial decree on the founding of Brea proof seems desirable. Does Archilo-.
made its leader "autocrat," Marcus N. chus, incidentally, call Cyges a tyrant
Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, I (fragment 15) or merely reject tyr-
(2d ed:; Oxford, 1946), 44 II. 8-g. anny for his carpenter spokesman?
1 Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occidente, He apparently uses the term for a
191, 199-202, 222 ff., is full; further Creek in fragment 35.
bibliography may be found in Hei-
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State

The basic spirit, nevertheless, of the tyrants of Corinth and other

states, who fall mostly after 650 B.C., was not an importation,
nor was it as much a violation of Greek political theory as fourth-
century political scientists suggested. As one examines the prac-
tical workings of aristocratic factionalism, it may even be proper
to conclude that this rivalry always tended in the direction of
producing one-man rule, either when the leader of one faction
gained the mastery for which he strove or when the non-aristo-
cratic elements (and many nobles, too) grew weary of the fray
and yielded themselves to a leader lest chaos ensue.s
Yet Greek political practice rarely came to this conclusion,
and the basileis themselves did fade away during the age of
revolution. The myth of the abdication of king Codrus at
Athens, though dated much earlier in tradition, might suggest a
rather sudden end; not all rulers may have voluntarily placed
their heads on the chopping block. Yet the general lack of myths
along this line cannot be accidentaP By and large the basileis
quietly disappeared as effective leaders of the community. Like
much else in the age of revolution, the change was probably a
swift process, but it took place before true history began. The
end result, which alone we can see, was, first, the replacement
of the hereditary, lifetime leader by a major public official
(pry tanis, archon, etc.), who was elected for one year, often
at the outset from one clan. Secondly, specific powers once held
in a single pair of hands were parceled out, as to a warleader
(pol,emarchos) and a chief priest (basileus). Thirdly, the power
of the council (boule) was greatly enlarged. 1
The new system did not by any means weaken executive
authority, for many powers which previously had been Widely
distributed among tribal and clan officials were now being
SHasebroek, Griechische Wirlschafts- 1 Corinth: Will, Korinthiaka, 295-3 0 6.
und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 172, and Crete: Willetts, Ancient Crete, 254-
Hel.lss, Antike und A1Jendland, II 55 and passim. Athens: Hignett, Athe-
(1946), 45-48, emphasize the effect nian Constitution, 38-46. I cannot feel
of noble rivalry in throwing up ty- that the tradition of the Atthidogra-
rants. phers, according to which the kings of
9 The argl.lment that Ionia led the way Athens declined from life tenl.lre to
(Cassola, La Ionia nel mondo mice- ten-year terms and then to election
neo, 33-34; Beloch, Griechische Ge- for one year, represents more than a
schichte, I, 211-18) is not solid; cf. schematic reconstruction of the un-
R. M. Cook, IHS, LXVI (1946),87. known.
330 PART III . The Age of Revolution
grasped by the state and concentrated in the hands of a few
officers. But in the change the principle of individual, essentially
irresponsible leadership was definitely rejected. The founders
of colonies, however powerful at the ~oment and however
much revered later, established states which were poleis. Ty-
rants were, in the last analYSis, considered irregular and could
not found enduring dynasties. The decision against one-man
rule is the more spectacular when one recalls that even among
some Greeks-those of Cyprus espeCially-the place of the kings
was enlarged in steadily greater magnificence during the
seventh century.2 But off in the Aegean the main body of the
Hellenes took decisive steps during the century 750-650 toward
creating the ideal of the free citizen who exercised his powers
within the polis.

THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINE

THE REASONS for the disappearance of the basileis are, in

reverse, essentially the causes of the rise of the city-state, but
the process may be clearer if we consider it first as a change from
the older ways. Fundamentally, the problem from the point of
view of the basileis was the weakness of their inherited posi-
tion. Zeus, though master on Olympus, was subject to the
dimly felt laws of fate,3 and earthly basile is were checked by
the dead weight of age-old 'tradition and tribal custom. In early
modem Europe, when social and economic changes began to
offer to the monarchs the possibility of real power, they could
appeal for a theoretical justification to the developed, autocratic
political system of the Roman Empire, knowledge of which was
preserved across centuries of localism by the Catholic Church,
by Roman law, and by the survival of writing. In early Greece,

2 Gjerstad, Swedish Cyprus Expedi- 1930); W. C. Greene, Moira, Fate,

tion, IV. 2, 449-58. Good, and Evil in Greek Thought
S E. Leitzke, Moira und Gottheit im (Cambridge, Mass., 1944).
alten homerischen Epos (Gottingen,
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 33 1
Oriental-type monarchy had been shallow-rooted and survived
the Mycenaean collapse only by means of the epic tradition, a
dim recollection of no practical effect.
As developments accelerated, the basileis could not harness
the main forces which might have aided them in assuming the
central direction of society; neither could they withstand the
positive thr~ats to their survival. Politically the Aegean was still
in the seventh century so isolated, and the pressures of its peo-
ples on one another were still so spasmodic, that the Greeks
could afford the luxury of dispensing with strong personal
leadership if they found a satisfactory alternative method of
organizing SOciety.
The inherited weaknesses of the tribal chieftains who suc-
ceeded the Mycenaean kings have already been noted in
Chapter 4. In the abysmal collapse of the Aegean world which
marked the early Dark ages, the centralized Mycenaean palace
economies and royal administrations disappeared, and the
basileis were potent only as leaders of the warriors. In religion
and in justice they had some not inconsiderable functions,
but beside them stood agents of the community as a whole to act
as priests or judges; clans, tribes, and other social units had
each their functions, safeguarded by custom; financially the
royal storehouse was nourished chiefly from the basileus' own
lands. This latter weakness may have been a main Achilles'
heel for the rulers of the eighth century, as the expenses of state
and cult rose and luxury spread its temptations. In a similar
situation in early modem Europe the far more powerful kings of
the new national states, who could impose taxes of some types,
had difficulty enough in keeping their exchequers semi-solvent.
When the Greek communities turned to erecting temples or
needed to improve guarantees of justice, the basileis were too
feeble to step in as forceful masters and executors of the common
will; temples in particular developed their own independent
treasuries.
In the basic role as leaders in war, the basileis were crippled
by the decline in casual border warfare and by the tendency of
the community to choose special leaders for the far more serious
332 PART III . The Age of Revolution

struggles over bits of farmland" These changes were connected

with a major military reorganization which took place in the late
eighth century, the elaboration of the phalanx. While bodies
of serried infantry had existed in epic days, now they were more
consciously and firmly organized, and each warrior or hoplite
was equipped with helmet, corselet, greaves, small round shield,
thrusting spear, and stabbing sword. The armor itself was
mainly of bronze, the weapons of iron; both owed much to
Assyrian innovations.
The appearance of these items in the Aegean world can be
dated fairly surely to the closing years of the eighth century. A
helmet and breastplate of hop lite armor were buried in the
grave of an Argive warrior in the decades just before 700; Late
Geometric vases begin to show the hop lite shield with its blazon
occasionally, alongside heroic equipment; and on such Proto-
corinthian pieces as the Chigi vase the phalanx marches firmly
into action. 5
Although the technical advances permit us to date the
military reorganization, its basic prerequisite was psychologi-
cal. Those commoners who, interlaced with nobles, manned the
infantry blocks felt able to withstand the attacks of individual
heroic warriors either on foot or in chariots. This ability, in
turn, required that men have a sense of their own individual

4 Arms and armor appear less fre- even greaves were known in Myce-
quently both in the Kerameikos graves naean times, Ventris and Chadwick,
of the eighth century (Kiibler, Kera- Documents, 292-300, 375-81; A/A,
meikos, V. 1, 198-200) and in those LVIII (1954),235. M. P. Nilsson,
of Fortetsa (Brock, Fortetsa, 200-01); "Die Hoplitentaktik und das Staats-
cf. the limited evidence of Tiryns, I, wesen," Opus. sel., II (Lund, 1952),
135. But does this imply a reduction 897-907, is rather slight; Hasebroek,
in warfare, as Tritsch, Klio, XXII Griechische Wirtschafts- und Gesell-
( 1928), 61, suggests? Grave customs schaftsgeschichte, 158-59, 164, notes
were changing; military equipment that other than technical factors were
was more complex; and the scenes of at work. F. E. Adcock, The Greek and
warfare on the Dipylon vases are not Macedonian Art of War (Berkeley,
fantasy or myth. See Kiibler, Keramei- 1957),3-6, is much too brief.
kos, VI. 1, 84 n. 13. S Paul Courbin, "Une tombe geome-
Phalanx: H. L. Lorimer, "The trique d'Argos," BCH, LXXXI (1957),
Hoplite Phalanx," BSA, XLII (1947), 322-86; Benaki 559, before 725 B.C.
76-138, on the artistic evidence for (Webster, From Mycenae to Homer,
equipment; \Vebster, From Mycenae 214); Payne, Protokorinthische Vasen-
to Homer, 212-20. One must remem- male rei, pI. 27-29 (Chigi vase).
ber that round shield, corselet, and
(a 1 Cia!! head from sl,rilw of Artemis Orthill,
Spartll, in Protodcdalic style. Photograp"
frolll BSA, XXXlIl (1032-3) , pl. VII ..5.
(Ii) ,'[arNe stat uI! dedicated /J!! Nikalillre at
De/os, tile carliest large-scale !Cork in stolle
(Natiollal .IIuscu"', Athells). Photogmph
courtesy Friedrich /lcu;icker.

PLATE 21 . Triumph of the '{I..'e u; SC~

 «/) Late Geollletric k<lllfllll/'(Js {rvllI Athem.
lL'ith tu;o liolls c(ltillg a 1111111 1111(1 {I/llcrlll ce/e-
hl'(ltirllls (Natiollal MllsclIlI! 727, Copl'lIlla-
g(,ll). Photograp" collrtc"!i .\'tltirl/uJi illlIW'IIIII,
C"I}(,ldw{!t'II.

(II) CO}'gOl1 IIlf1sk frolll Tiryll.\ (.\'lIl1plill :1[11-

~(,I/llIl. Plllllogrllp/l ('Ollrle.11! D(,lIt~c"('~
Arclliiolagiscll!!s instltllt ill AtiwlIs.

'l \11-:2:2 /' (,Cl/' llllel TCII.\ iOI!

CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 333
importance and yet be bound together strongly enough so that
they could rely one on another in the phalanx mass.
The logical implications of this development lead us far into
the heart of political change during the century 750-650. In
modern times a similar spiritual revolution coincided with great
technological developments, first in the long bow and then in
gunpowder, to permit the rise of a solid infantry after centuries
of noble mastery on horseback; but here the results benefited
rather than crippled the kings of the period. They alone could
afford the relatively complicated arms factories, could provide
the accompanying cannon, and could pay mercenary foot-
soldiers such as the Swiss or German landsknechts for long-pro-
tracted campaigns. In early Greece wars were usually brief and
were fought close to home, and the new eqUipment was simpler
than the old. Each man of the phalanx reqUired, not two-horse
chariots, but a basic set of arms and armOr which any smith
could make and which even small landowners could pay for.
While Greek armies continued to need leaders,6 the main
role of commanders in succeeding centuries was to act as an
agent of the community in carrying out sacrifices to the gods
and heroes who would bring victory, to lead the forces of the
city-state to the battlefield, and to maintain there a discipline
which rested mainly on a collective will. Such leaders could be
changed frequently. Their main qualities must be, not so
much tactical or strategic skills-which had little place in the
straightforward battles on level ground-but rather popular
respect and trust. Kingship, in sum, was not needed so long as
foreign threats remained minor. By the time external pressure
grew critical, in the form of the onrolling Persian Empire, the
city-states had become solid enough to withstand the attack.
The appearance of the phalanx is not a purely aristocratic
phenomenon.? Nobles had been quite at home in the old system,

6 Consider the emphasis on the leader ford, 1954), 12, will not quite do.
in Tyrtaeus, fragments 1, 5. Any student of early Greek warfare
1 The comparison of the hoplite class should consider carefully the changes
to that of knights in thirteenth-cen- in early modem times; d. C. W. C.
tury England, made by A. Andrewes, Oman, A History of the Art of War:
Probouleusis: Sparta's Contribution to The Middle Ages (London, 18g8);
the Technique of Government (Ox- F. L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy,

12
334 PART III . The Age of Revolution
for they could afford chariots and horses and delighted, as we
have seen, in the depiction of both. The aristocrats, again, in
any state were too few to furnish the manpower needed for a
phalanx and, insofar as they shared a truly aristocratic outlook,
were not likely to have favored the evolution of a military struc-
ture in which the individual had to sink himself in the mass. The
new tactical formations of the age of revolution were manned
mainly by the independent peasants, and in that necessity lies
one basic reason for the preservation of their independence. s
Or, to put the matter more correctly, greater and lesser land-
owners stood together in the files of the phalanx, as they stood
together against the domination of personal leadership in the
political sphere.
For the disappearance of the basileis does owe much to the
quality of the upper classes of the Greek states. The aristocrats ~
of that era, we may assume, resembled the nobles of early mod-
ern Europe and opposed as a group any tendencies for
strong individuals to seize mastery. While the feudal lords usu-
ally failed in efforts to curb the monarchs of England and France,
the nobles of early archaic Greece succeeded in dragging down
the basileis to their level. The reason for their success lies
chiefly in the fact that the Greek upper classes were not sharply
separated from the commoners. They took the lead in creating
and in staffing the new executive machinery and in so doing
could count on the support of the rest of soCiety; but in recom~
pense the aristocrats had to yield to their fellow citizens real
guarantees of just treatment. Wherever those guarantees
failed, tyrants and other individual leaders reappeared.

1484-1529 (Cambridge, 1921); Theo- plained. Thessaly relied largely on

dore Ropp, War in the Modern World cavalry; Crete was populated so
(Durham, N.C., 1959),3-9. thickly that' a phalanx could be dra~n
S From the military point of view the simply from the warrior bands; and
fact that certain areas depressed the Sparta conquered enough outside ter-
peasants into serfdom can be ex- ritories to support its phalanx.
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 335

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CITY·STATE

To THE GREEK WORLD in the late eighth and early seventh
centuries the benefits of personal leadership seemed less than
those which could be derived from a consolidation of communal
unity~ Where the title of basileus survived, it was mainly to
designate a public religious official; certain ancient rites, men
felt, the gods would accept only from a mortal so entitled.9
The alternative solution was the polis.
Our main interest in the new political form must be
directed to its physical and spiritual marks, which greatly af-
fected the subsequent course of Greek civilization; but first of
all the place and date of origin of the polis need clarification.
Quite commonly, but rather oddly, modern opinion has sought
the home of the city-state in Ionia. 1 It is, thus, argued that this
pistrict first developed true cities in the economic sense of com-
mercial and industrial centers, was closer to the more advanced
Orient, and was under greater pressure from the neighboring
kings first of Phrygia, then of Lydia.
These factors are either untrue or irrelevant. The crystal-
lization of the city-state had nothing directly to do with the
progress of commerce, and in any case Ionia cannot be shown
to have produced new economic centers more swiftly than did
the area about the Isthmus of Corinth. While the Greeks,
again, were not the first to invent the concept of the city-state,
we cannot say that they simply took over an Oriental political
form; as in all other fields) so politically the Aegean world was
far more distinct from the East in 650 than in 750. And, finally,
the outside pressures which did bear on Ionia, one might judge,
would have inclined the Greeks of that region to cling to per-
sonalleadership.
There is no valid reason to doubt that the geographical
9 Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Reli- 1957), 8, 16. Contra, Hanfmann,
gion, 485-86. HSCP, LXI (1953), 15-19; R. M.
1 Pro (for example), de Sanctis, Sto- Cook, IHS, LXVI (1946), 87-88;
ria dei Greci, I, 176-77, .274-75 (with Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occidente,
other arguments); Victor Ehrenberg, .234, .237·
Der Staat der Griechen, I (Leipzig,
•

•
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

cradle of the city-state was the area which led in intellectual ad-
vances-the southeastern districts of Greece proper. The earliest
wars in which we can witness city-states at rivalry occurred here;
the parent states of the first colonies, which were themselves
organized as poleis, lay in this region. Thence the new style
of organization spread outward in the seventh and sixth cen-
turies, but not all of the men who spoke Greek and shared the
main attributes of Greek culture were so grouped even at the
beginning of the classic era; some still lived in tribal ethnoi.
Another common problem is the effort to find gradual, lOgi-
cal stages through which the tribal state evolved into the polis.
Such stages simply do not exist in our evidence, and for a very
good reason. Political as well as intellectual progress was not a
matter of slow advance at this time. The polis sprang from the
old tribal state.. but its appearance was almost surely as sudden'
a step as was the swift refinement of inherited resources in every
field of Greek civilization.
Down through Hesiod the polis is lacking. In th,e epic, as:
semblies and councils meet as tokens of Communal unity, but
beside them are the Zeus-born kings; the ties of personal
loyalty in the epics are quite incompatible with 'the spirit of the
city-state. The Odyssey perhaps pOints more to the future than
does the Iliad. In the younger epic an interesting distinction ap-
pears between "public" and "private," and the hero of its tale
was a man who learned the mind "both of those who are cruel
and wild and unjust and of those who love strangers and fear
the gods in their thoughts." 2 Though civic justice is not far re-
moved from this concept, not even in the next author, Hesiod,
had the great step been taken toward conscious public incarna-,
tion of the principle. Despite Hesiod's driving insistence that
justice was a communal problem, the anxious poet was not sure
that the community would base itself on this spirit; the brib.e-
2 Public vs. private: Odyssey IV. 314, Hesiod: Frankel, Dichtung und
cf. HI. 82, II. 32, II. 44, XX. 264- Philosophie, '180-81; Victor Ehren-
65. Variety of states: Odyssey VIII. berg, Aspectll of the Ancient W orid
575-76. Note also the choice of a war- (Oxford, 1946), 71; and many others.
leader by the people of Crete to serve On the meaning of the Hesiodic ba-
beside the king (Odyssey XIII. 265); sileis, cf. Calhoun, CP, XXIX (1934),
the argument from Phaeacia is much 3 1 2.
weaker (see above, n. 3 [po 326]).
CHAPTER 10 . Tne Rise of the City-State 337
swallowing basileis still dominated society. In interpreting
this famous term, incidentally, we have no justification for think-
ing that the Hesiodic basileis were simple aristocrats; nobles
might be agathoi, but they never called themselves basileis.
Then suddenly, and in Hesiod's own age, the basic qualities
of the city-state emerged.3 The most direct signpost to dating
this event is the military reorganization of the late eighth cen-
tury, for the spiritual strengths implicit in the hop lite phalanx
must be connected with the reinforcement of civic unity in the
polis. The wave of colonization, which began about the same
time, also took place in terms of city-states; the Greek outpouring
otherwise could scarcely have been so successful. Most sugges-
tive of all is the indirect clue afforded by the sudden increase of
tempo in artistic and intellectual change at this time. The city-
state is the political reflection of the new Hellenic outlook. 1£
Hesiod failed to show this shift clearly, we must remember how
narrowly he stood, as a poet and as a thinker, within the age of
revolution; and unfortunately there is no further literary evi-
denee until the next generation. In the verse of Archilochus the
patriotic attachment of the citizen of the polis manifests itself.
By then, too, the first remodeling of political machinery to
accommodate the new spirit was under way.
From that point onward the polis passed through consecu-
tive stages of evolution down to the fully developed structure
of democratic Athens; political theory progressed from Solon's
very specific examination of problems to the abstract analysis of
Platonic and Aristotelian treatises; and political history became
ever more continuous. In its first stages the Greek city-state
differed from the political systems of the fifth and fourth cen-
turies very much as Orientalizing pottery differed from the
Attic red-figure masterpieces, or as the first stone statue dedi-
cated by Nikandre preceded the serene classic triumphs of the
Olympia pediments. The variation, that is to say, is basically
one of degree, not of type. If we turn backward, however, rather
3 This is about a century later than Berve, "Flirstliche Herren zur Zeit der
the date advanced by Victor Ehren- Perserkriege," Die Antike, XII (1936),
berg, "When Did the Polis Rise?" 1-28, and Griechische Geschichte, I
IHS, LVII (1937),147-59; but much (Freiburgi. B., 1931), 176.
earlier than that argued by Helmut
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
than forward, and compare the polis to its source in the tribal
state, the change must appear as one of virtual revolution. To
establish this significant point, we may look briefly at the quali-
ties of the city-state. 4
Physically the polis was a definite geographical unit, in
which public activities were concentrated at one point, the asty
or polis proper. Herein the city-state seems to have differed from
the earlier tribal states principally in its citizens' conscious aware-
ness of clear boundaries and, as a companion factor, in the
crystallization of the new units on a tiny scale.
During the Dark ages fairly large districts, such as Attica-
Boeotia and Corinthia-Argolid (see Map No.2), had shared
cultural patterns, had worshipped together in amphictionies or
religiOUS leagues, and probably had had some vague sense of ~
political kinship.5 Beside these ties new international sanctuaries
arose during the age of revolution, and the priests especially of
Delphi perhaps sought to promote international harmony. The
fact that the Greeks revered such common gods as Zeus and
Athena and met in common games and sacrifices has neverthe-
less often been overemphasized. Culturally such bonds were
important; politically they meant no more than has the accept-
ance of Christianity by modern Europe. As the city-state rose,
external ties weakened markedly.
The smallness of the archaic and classical poleis, which al-
ways impresses modern citizens of vast territorial states, was to
some extent a reflection of the geographical fragmentation of
Greece; but this determi!listic explanation is only a minor part
of the phenomenon. 6 The poleis flourished most thickly along the
4 In what follows, I have drawn on perhaps Corinth (Andrewes, Gree.k
my essay "The Early Greek City- Tyrants, 49). Boeotia-Attica: Young,
State," La Parola del Passato, XII Late Geometric Graves, 104-05, 129-
(1957),97-108. Ehrenberg, Der Staat 30, 159-61,218.
der Griechen, I, gives a recent, anno- 6 Geographical influence is be~ter
tated bibliography; like the manuals sought in the mildness of the Mediter-
on Greek political institutions, he is ranean climate, which permitted. out-
concerned with the classic form. door life through the year, Cf. Myres,
5 Corinthia-Argolid:. Payne, Pcrachora, Geographicaillistory in Greek Lands;
I, 21-22, who may go too far in his Ernst Kirsten, Die I!,riechische Polis als
suggestions of political unity; Phei- historisch-geographisches Problem des
don's state certainly lost much of its Mittelmeerraumes (Bonn, 1956).
control over Sicyon, Epidaurus, and
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 339
seaboard, not in rugged inland districts, and their boundaries
only partially marched with natural topographical divisions.
The state of Athens had enough attractive power to draw into
it such geographically distinct areas as Eleusis, Oropos, Eleu-
therae, and Salamis, which might elsewhere have remained
independent. The broad, open plain of Boeotia, on the other
hand, was divided into several states, which paid their respects
to a geographical and earlier tribal unity by remaining grouped
in a super-state league. If the polis usually measured its land in
the tens or hundreds of square miles and its citizens at most in
the thousands, the principal reason is the fact that it emerged
in a predominantly agricultural era. Once established, the
city-state quickly developed internal, spirituill qualities which
tended to limit the possibilities of territorial growth.
The other physkal mark of this political atom was its
nucleus, the polis proper or asty. When we distinguish a tribal
people from a city-state, however, the modern implications of
the term "city" must not mislead us. Each area had commonly.
had a political, military, and religious rallying point, at or below
which men dwelt in an asty. On the emergence of the city-state
the focal point gained a more conscious Significance. Political
functions, such as the administration of justice, slowly were
transferred from local social units to central courts. Clearer evi-
dence exists for a tendency to concentrate the major religious
rites of the state. Local cults, for example, were moved to Athens
prop~r from the outlying areas added in the eighth and seventh
.centuries; quite generally communal resources were concen-
trated upon' the central temples of the state gods. 7 In the more
favored regions the towns served increasingly as economic cen-
ters which attracted potters, smiths, and traders. But no specific
economic change necessarily occurred in an asty, either at the
time when a city-state arose or as a precondition for its appear-

7 Nilsson, Cults and Politics, 27-41; cf. 94; VII. 129-30; VIII. 5-8 (on the
Hignett, Athenian Constitution, 34- Phaeacian town). Cf. the simile of
38. Note, however, that temples do ap- Iliad XV. 680-82; and note the growth
pear elsewhere than in the state cen- of eighth-century Argos as argued
ters. by S. Charitonidis, BCH, LXXVIII
Towns as economic and social cen- (1954),422-23.
ters: Odyssey VI. 3-10, 259-69, 291-
340 PART III . The Age of Revolution

ance. The economic background of the era, it can never be over-

emphasized, was agricultural, not commercial and industrial.
The archaeological evidence shows clearly that in the age of
revolution the central points were nothing more than large rgri-
cultural villages below a fortress-refuge. At Athens severa vil-
lages lay about the Acropolis; their inhabitants buried the dead
in cemeteries in intervening open country, which eventually was
swallowed by the classic city. The late, casual growth of urban
centers is reflected in the lack of orderly street-planning, which
remained apparent in the old cities far down into historic times.
Unlike Oriental cities, the Greek hamlets were not arranged
tidily about palace or temple; the acropolis was only partially a
focus; and the agora or political center was but slowly distin-
guished and embellished. Nor were these towns encased and
given form by walls. Athens did not have a city wall until the
days of Pisistratus, if then. Few places needed or could afford
such extensive outpouring of energies, as distinct from small
hilltop refuges, until the late sixth or fifth centuries. Then inter-
state warfare grew more intensive, urban economies both
required better protection and could finance it, and city and
country tended to become distinct. 8
The Hellenic city-state could exist without leaving any
marked phYSical remains at its nucleus; Thucydides' comment
(1. 10) on the inconspicuous nature of Sparta, "a straggling vil-
lage like the ancient towns of Hellas," puts the matter well. The
rise of the polis was not intimately bound with processes of
urbanization, and the modern tendency to compare the Greek
polis with medieval cities, clustered tightly about castle and
cathedral, is misleading in every major respect. 9 To say this is not
8Roland Martin, L'Urbanisme dans la Athenian Agora so far, a brief guide
Crece antique (Paris, 1956), 189-92; is that of Homer A. Thompson, "The
Robert L. Scranton, Creek Walls Athenian Agora," Acta congressu
(Cambridge, Mass., 1941); 1. T. Hill, Maddgiani, I (Copenhagen, 1958),
The Ancient City of Athens (London, 341-52. See also R. E. Wycherley,
1953), 5; see above, Chap. 7, n. 1 How the Creeks Built Cities (Lon-
(P·25 2 ). don, 1949).
~gora: W. A. McDonald, The 9 So notably Carl Schuchhardt, "Hof,
Political Meeting Places orthe Creeks Burg und Stadt bei Germanen und
(Baltimore, 1943); Martin, Recher- Griechen," Neue lahrbiicher, XXI
ches sur l' Agora grecque; among the ( 1908), 305-21. Not even the medie-
many publications concerning the val part of the parallel is entirely
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 34 1
to deny that eventually the most advanced towns did become
true cities; but such a later step influenced the evolution of the
polis, not its origin. Even agriculturally based towns can throb to
new ideas and can bind their residents in that "purposeful social
complexity" which is the real intellectual mark of urban life. 1

It is within this simple geographical and physical framework

that the polis emerged, and the revolution which lies in the event
is politically a summation of many intercrossing strands of in~
tellectual; social, religiOUS, and economic development. We must
look to find the true marks of the polis in spiritual, not physical,
attributes. "Not houses finely roofed," said Alcaeus, "or the
stones of walls well-builded, nay nor canals and dockyards,
make the city, but men able/to use their opportunity." 2
One of the underlying forces was the consolidation of the
aristocracy. Superficially, at least, the city-state was a potent
vehicle for aristocratic self-expression. The upper classes led
the way in clipping the powers of the basileis; thereafter they
furnished the officials of state, both political and religious, down
into the fifth century and beyond. The political standards of
virtue ran in parallel course to the increaSingly clearly defined
patterns of aristocratic morality; artistic preferences in public
monuments and statuary were virtually those which the aristo-
crats privately encouraged. All this, however, does not quite
prove a favorite modern thesis that the polis had a preliminary
phas,e of purely aristocratic expression; or, if one wishes to take
. the stand of a cynic, that the new political unit was designed
as a tool for the hands of oppressors. 3
Any just assessment of the true spiritual qualities of the
city-state must look far beyond noble circles to the general tem-
per of archaic civilization. No less than the new states of
Renaissance Italy, the Greek polis was a work of art. It trans-
lated into political terms the factors which we have examined in
sound; for medieval cities were as a 1 Mumford, Culture of Cities, 4-6.
rule at least as agricultural as com- 2 Fragment Z 103. Thucydides VII.
mercial, and long-distance trade 77. 7 puts the point even more
largely rose after and from the towns. briefly: "men are the polis."
Cf. Lewis Mumford, Culture of Cities 3 Ehrenberg, Der Staat der Griechen,
(New York, 1938), 17-22. I, 16, 35, as an example.
342 PART III . The Age of Revolution

art and literature: the increasingly conscious analysis of prob-

lems, the sudden liberation from tradition, and also the contain-
ment of anarchy within new, simple· forms and types which
basically were reinterpretations of ancestral forces.
Essentially the city-state was a clarification and consolida-
tion of the fundamental principles of tribal society. In part it
replaced the basile is; in part it did express the aristocratic spirit;
through the new machinery which evolved thereafter, it sup-
planted the narrower claims of clan and phratry; but mainly
the polis was a reaction of the citizen body as a whole to the
serious problems of th'e age! That reaction manifested itself
initially in the feeling of the inhabitants of the more advanced-
and more disturbed-areas of mainland Greece that they must
work together consciously to prevent change from descending
into chaos; and so the polis may have crystallized very rapidly ,
and quite spontaneously in many localities as an effort to impose
political order on a rapidly evolving SOciety. Once the process
was under way, other areas quickly followed the path in order
to tap the new strengths available in the tighter communal
bonds of the polis; so, too, the national state spread ~ver
Europe in modern times.
Only if we comprehend that the polis reflected the needs of
SOciety as a whole as against those of specific classes do the so-
cial and ethical qualities of the institutibn stand in their
proper light. One example is the effort to guarantee justic.e.
Neither in the Homeric nor in thtj Hesiodic world had the
basileis always fostered justice as much as their Zeus-given posi-
tion demanded. 5 Nor did the upper classes themselves neces-
sarily behave much better; Solon affords us a grimly detailed
portrait of the oppression of the poor in Attica. Yet a constant-
thread in the history of city-state theory is the concept that it
must secure the basic rights of the free citizens. Very early the
polis began to improve public judicial and deliberative rna.,
chinery; written codes of justice were appearing by the middle
of thF seventh century; abuse of privilege was also checked by
40 Thomson, Studies, II, 205-06, has e Occidente, 239-40.
stressed this clearly; on the demos 5 Odyssey IV. 691-92; Hesiod, Works
as a whole d. Mazzarino, Fra Oriente and Days 38-39.
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 343
the ever latent threat to turn back to personal leadership if
mistreatment went too far. The rallying cry for this spirit was
dike (justice), whose sister was eunomia~not democracy or
social equality, but the mairltenance of traditional right. 6 The
claims of eunomia could be raised equally :lgainst basileis and
tyrants, against aristocratic excess (as in Solon's elegies), or even
later against the pretensions of the lower cl:lsses if they sought
to overthrow the inherited rights of the nobles. The very uni-
versality of appeal in the term underlines the breadth of its
meaning as a harkening back to earlier order.
The maintenance of dike and eunomia rested in part upon
the preservation of fundamental independence by the small
landowners. If one makes the mistake of taking the polis purely
as an aristocratic phenomenon, then one mu§t conclude that the
~oorer ~easants succeeded in their strug,g,le with all the cards
stacked against them. In reality the city-state was created as an
ideal structure independent of class and so may have assisted,
rather than hobbled, the lower classes. To suggest that this is
the proper interpretation we have some hipts of early legisla-
tion which protected farm ownership.7
Another, quite different foundation of eunomia was the
rapid development of divine and human morality. The beliefs
that the gods favored justice, that natural law governed the
universe, that social morality was as vital as was heroic valor in
battle-all these were virtues not of the aristocracy but of the
Gr~eks as a whole,s and the citizens expected their state to

6 Theogony 901-02, makes Eunomia, 7 Aristotle, politics II. 3. 7. 1Z6Sb, II.

Nike, and Eirene sisters. The main 9. 7. lZ74b. Will, Korinthiaka, 510-
discussion of Eunomia proper is Solon, 1Z, takes the Cypselid law limiting-
fragment 3; d. Ehrenberg, Aspects of slaves as a protection of freeholders;
the Ancient World, 70-93; Werner this is somewhat doubtful, inasmuch
Jaeger, "Solons Eunomie," SB Berlin as slaves were rarely farmers.
Akademie 1926, 6g-85; Gregory S This point is well emphasized by
Vlestos, "Solonian Justice," CP, XLI Hoffman, Festschrift B. Snell, 164;
( 1946), 65-83. This is not the same Snell himself, Discovery of the Mind,
as isonomia, on which d. Mazzarino, 69, couples the feeling of the poets
Fra Oriente e Occidente, 221-23; that they speak to their fellow men
J. A. O. Larsen, "Cleisthenes and the with the rise of the polis. While the
Development of the Theory of De- idealistic basis of the polis is often
mocracy at Athens," Essays in Politi- magnified in modern rhapsodies, the
cal Theory Presented to George H. lyrical tone of such works must not
Sabine (Ithaca, 1948). lead one to teject totally the existence
344 PART III . The Age of Revolution
foster and spread this common base of life. Far more than did
the Hebrew prophets, Greek thinkers connected morality with
the state. Ideals, it is true, do not always govern the market
places, and recurring jnternal strife was to be the product of the
dynamic tempo of Greek civilization. Yet Phocylides (fragment
4, Diehl) put his finger on the main reason why the city-state
can be called the source of political values in Western civiliza-
tion: "The law-abiding town, though small and set on a lofty
rock, outranks senseless Nineveh."
An even clearer testimonial to the fact that the polis was
not designed solely for aristocratic benefit was its restriction
upon individual freedom of action. This characteristic was not
an accidental; but a fundamental quality of the city-state
throughout Greek history. When eventually, in the fourth cen-
tury, individuals began to assert their autonomy, the polis
was no longer viable. 9 Nor was the limitation of the individual
specifically an aristocratic virtue, even though the upper classes
tended then, as always, to confine conduct within certain noble
norms. Aristocratic poets themselves, such as Archilochus, are
the men who best reveal this limitation to us, for they chafed
under the resulting restriction of their self-expression; later poets
refer frequently to the prying talk of "pitiless fellow townsmen"
grouped closely together in the small social units of the era. 1
Among the legal restrictions, moreover, which checked individ-
ual license were limitations on ostentatious' display of luxury.2
And, finally, the consolidation of the city-state as a con-
scious political unit was marked in the rise of patriotism, not
as a matter of class loyalty' but as a force embracing all free
of the ideal. CE. Alfred Zimmern, The (1928-29), 105-24, 432-63, assembles
Greek Commonwealth (4th ed.; Ox- their material carefully. On Solon's re-
ford, 1924); Victor Ehrenberg, Die strictions cf. Kathleen Freeman, The
Rechtsidee im fruhen Griechenland Work and Life of Solon (Cardiff,
(Leipzig, 1921). 1926), 134-35; on the Cypselids,
9 Cf. Starr, Civilization and the Cae- Will, Korinthiaka, 512-14; and in gen-
sars, 8 ff. eral, Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occi-J
1 Archilochus, fragment 10; Mimner- dente, 192--93, 217-28. According til
mus, f~agment 7; Phocylides, frag- Athenaeus XII. 525C, Callinus and
ment 5; Solon, fragments 10, 11, 13, Archilochus blamed the fall of Mag-
on public opinion. nesia on the Maeander on excessive
2 Max Miihl, "Die Gesetze des Zaleu- luxury; Strabo XIV. I. 40, C. 647 does
kos und Charondas," Klio, XXII not give quite the same picture.
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 345
men independent of their position and wealth. Local attach-
ment was never quite as overpowering a passion in ancient
Greece as modern scholars, influenced by recent nationalistic
fervor, have sometimes pictured it. 3 Aristocratic circles, in par-
ticular, still had wide contacts and could secure paints d'appui
when expelled from home; citizenship seems still to have been
obtained by foreigners with relative ease; and Greek civilization
was one great, undivided web. Within this qualification political
particularism did begin to rise in the seventh century and cast
long shadows over other fields as well. When the city-states
came to magnify their unique qualities, they felt it necessary to
find these distinctions in earlier history-i.e., in the myths of the
past, which were reworked to glorify individual states or to justify
territorial claims.·

GREEK POLITICAL HISTORY

As THE CITY-STATE coalesced, political history in its modern

meaning could commence in Greece. Internally the mainte-
nance and guidance of the new spirit required the provision of
more precise machinery than tribal society had felt necessary.
The details of progress in this matter must concern primarily the
constitutional historian and are far from clear. Political docu-

3 Victor Martin, La Vie internationale and religion; his treatment is fuller in

dans la Grece des cites (VI"-IV" s. Cults, Myths, Oracles and Politics in
avo I.-C.) (Paris, 1940), is a valuable Ancient Greece, which mostly con-
study from this light. cerns the sixth century and later.
Exile: Alcaeus, fragment G2 While Homer, fortunately, was suffi-
(Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, 199), ciently set so that his text escaped
Elemer Balogh, Political Refugees in much alteration, the later Homeric
Ancient Greece from the Period of the Hymns, especially those to Demeter
If'yrants to Alexander the Great (Jo- and Apollo, reflect local attachments.
hannesburg, 1943), is not useful on Eumelus of Corinth is termed by Dun-
the early era. Citizenship: Hommel babin, IHS, LXVIII (1948), 66-68,
S. V. Metoikoi in PW 1424 H.; Tlm- "the first consciously to falsify myth
cydides I. 2. 6; Paul Cauer and Ed- and legend in the interest of the
uard Schwyzer, Dialectorum Graeco- state," though one may doubt if he is
rum Exempla (Leipzig, 1923), n. 415. as early as usually stated (d. Will,
• Nilsson, GGR, I, 708-21, takes up Korinthiaka, 124-29).
briefly the interrelations of politics
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

ments appear only when the machinery itself evolves; one must
not, to repeat an earlier observation, visualize the seventh-cen-
tury polis in terms of Periclean Athens.
First, apparently, the number of public officials tended to
increase while the strength of tribal and clan leaders shrank;
the powers of the state became more concentrated, but each offi-
cial's part of those powers was more carefully specified and his
enjoyment thereof was temporally limited, often to a single year.
Improvement in the operations of the assembly of citizens and
council of aristocrats must have followed swiftly. As far as we
can now determine, Sparta may have been the first state, about
650, to introduce a probouleutic council-Le., a body which con-
sidered and prepared public business for the assembly.5 Athens
took over this institution in the days of Solon, but much remained
to be done here and elsewhere to curb the power of the clans "
and to improve public central machinery which could deal
directly with individual citizens.
In states which were measured in terms of a few square
miles, the machinery itself was not vital. s What mattered was the
spirit in which the government was operated and for whose
particular benefit decisions were made-the stuff, in sum, of that
internal political history which we begin" to see with some con-
tinuity in Athens and Sparta during the sixth century. Even then
not all the factors of political debate were purely of city-state
character. As Geometric motives long influenced Orientalizing
pottery and epic inheritances colorec;l the early lyric, so ,in poli-
tics the principle of personal leadership on the one hand and the
small, conservative blocks of tribe, phratry, and clan on the"
other continued to be significant elements.
Externally, too, formal history began when state policies-
and aims grew clearer. A connected account of Greek interna-
tional relations is impossible in the seventh century, and not

5 Andrewes, Probouleusis, though of the assembly to 1,000, 600, or the

questioned by Ehrenberg, Der Staat like have represented a limitation in
der Griechen, I, 108. The reforms at early times, or simply reflect the ac-
Athens: Rignett, Athenian Constitu- tual manpower? Old Smyrna had at
tion, 47-85. the most 1,000 households, J. M.
6 Reuss, Antike und Abendland, II Cook, BSA, LIII-IV (1958-59),
(1946), 39-43. Would the restriction 19-22.
CHAPTER 10 . The Rise of the City-State 347
alone because written records were still scant. Archaic Greece
long remained a congeries of tribal and city units (much like
the dynastic and national states of early modem Europe); the
many tiny poZeis which were emerging did not yet rub fiercely
on one another.' War had long been "common to all," as the
Iliad (XVIII. 309) put it, in the sense of tribal clashes, but the
earliest contests of actual states known from Greek tradition ap-
pear in the age of revolution. A clash between Corinth and
Megara may be dated by the Megarian leader Orsippus, a victor
in the Olympic games of 720 B.C. Not long thereafter the famous
Lelantine war threw first the phalanxes and cavalry of Chalcis
and Eretria against each other for the possession of a small, lush
plain, and then drew into its loose frame the political and eco-
nomic rivalries of almost all the more developed states of the
Aegean. 8 The course of this war, however, is far from clear;
modem hypotheses fit it far too much into terms of trade wars.
Nor can we follow in detail the expansion of the frontiers
either of Sparta or of Athens. 9 These, which were to be the great.
powers of mainland Greece in the future, were still evolving in-
ternally and externally. The major state at this time was still ap-
parently Argos, which has so dim a history that modern schol-
ars still vary half a century in dating its great leader Pheidon. 1
In their ever growing external frictions and internal stresses
the Greek city-states were eventually to grind themselves into
collapse. They had crystallized on so small a scale but with such
7 Kitto, The Greeks, 162, justly notes conquest so late? Cf. Guthrie, Greeks
this; the later situation is described and Their Gods, 285 n. 1; Nilsson,
by Martin, La Vie internationale, 92 - Cults and Politics, 38; Ch. Picard,
93, 95. The same situation existed in "Les Luttes primitives d'Athenes et
early modern Europe. d'Eleusis," Revue Historique, CLXVI
8 Full references on the Megara-Cor- (193 1 ), 1-76, which relies far too
inth clash are given in N. G. L. Ham- much on myths.
mond, BSA, XLIX (1954), 97; on the 1 Of the large literature seeking to
Lelantine war, see Chap. 11, n. 3 penetrate the impenetrable, cf. W. L.
(p. 376). On the MeHan war in Ionia, Brown, "Pheidon's Alleged Aeginetan
cf. Roebuck, CP, L (1955), 32-33, Coinage," Numismatic Chronicle, 6.
with references. ser. X (1950), 177-204, and in Sch-
9 The Attic conquest of Eleusis, for in- weizer Miinzbliitter, IV (1953) 49-
stance, is far from clear. If the Hymn 51; Will, Korinthiaka, 344-57. Herod-
to Demeter was composed before this otus VI. 127, in my judgment, is deci-
conquest, as is often asserted, how sive in placing Pheidon late in the
then can it be of the sixth century, seventh century.
as is also often stated? Or was the
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

intensity that they were later not able to change as Greek

civilization continued to evolve. Their political solutions, too, of
the problems of limiting individualism and of binding men to-
gether in a just community did not endure-but will ours?
The polis was certainly a marvelous, virtually miraculous
creation in men's minds. Its tiny scale and its rejection of per-
sonal leadership were possible only because Greece was still a
simple land blessedly free from external pressure; its spiritual
qualities, as well as its amazing potentialities as a base for sub-
sequent cultural and political expansion, reflect directly the in-
tellectual quality of the age. The underlying, delicate balance
between aristocratic self-assertion and communal patriotism,
between might and freedom, was not ea~ily maintained even in
the areas which first raised themselves to the pinnacle of political
unity marked in the polis. Greek political history is largely a <

study in the extension and perfection of this form of organization,

the mold of which had been set in the early seventh century as
swiftly and surely as architects had thrown up the temple type.
From this communal unity the individual human being gained
a firm support for intellectual activity. He paid also a price-
the restriction of his own individuality and the failure of Greek
culture to develop all sides of personality.
 CHAPTER 11

ECONOMIC QUICKENING

AND COLONIZATION

THE LAST AMONG the major aspects of the age of revolution

which will be considered in this volume is its economic develop-
ment. Changes here were neither inconsiderable nor unimpor-
tant. Without the quickening of conscious economic interest
which then took place, without the quantitative and qualitative
improvement of production, the emergence of the polis would
be inconceivable. Artists, authors, and aristocrats alike were sup-
ported by the expanding economic system of the Aegean and
were invigorated by the fresh currents of physical luxuries and
concepts which poured in from the outside world. The mighty
movement of colonization in return opened wide areas of the
Me,diterranean to Greek culture, which was ever more attractive
to alien peoples.
The sIgnificance of economic innovations, on the other hand,
must not be overly magnified. The rise of the city-state may
properly 'be understood only if one places it against a back-
ground still predominantly agricultural; commerce and industry
were very limited in extent and minimal in influence by 650.
Despite real technological progress, early Greece moved for-
ward from a very primitive level and advanced only slowly.
The dimensions of technical development and the formation of
new capital were far less than those of early modern Europe.
One notable result was the failure of the ancient Aegean to
produce an independent, self-conscious middle class, though
350 PART III . The Age of Revolution

the economic and social importance of the early modern

bourgeoisie has, in truth, been much exaggerated for more re-
cent eras. But let us strike to the heart of the matter: the up-
heaval which produced archaic civilization was the product of
many conjoined factors, each facilitating the changes in parallel
fields. Of these forces the economic developments were only one
element.
This having been said, it is possible to assess with greater
sureness the economic alterations which did take place and to
measure their significance both for Greek society and for the
economic temper of Western civilization. First among the signs
of advance must be placed the change in economic attitudes.
Landlords and peasants contended more fiercely over the hard-
won fruits of the stony soil; an interest in economic gain came to
mark all classes even though the economic sphere was not-
sharply marked off from other aspects of life. Economic mobility
grew, for the progress of commerce, industry, and agriculture
took place not within the Oriental framework of palace and tem-
ple but in a new pattern of small-scale, relatively free enter-
prise.
Important in this respect was the great geographical ex-
pansion of Greece. On the one side trade and travel to the
Orient flourished and tied Greece ever more firmly to the course
of history in the Fertile Crescent. On the other, Greek coloniza-
tion, together with Phoenician and Etruscan trade, bound west-
ern and eastern Mediterranean ~ogether indissolubly. These
external ties and the internal dynamic quality of Greek economic
life helped to prevent Gr.eek civilization from sinking back into
a semi-static, rigidly fixed structure.
The new economic patterns were not entirely perfected by
650 B.C. Coinage, which at once resulted from and also facilitated
the great increase in economic mobility, appeared only in the
last half of the seventh century. Full guarantees that the small
peasants would remain economically independent were achieved
at Athens, our best example, even later. True urban centers and
noh-agricultural classes were equally tardy in appearance. These
advanced aspects do not concern us at the moment; the impor-
tant problem is to sort out the initial marks of change as the
CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 351

old, self-sufficient, tribal economy moved toward a more mobile,

more conscious, and more complex economic outlook.

THE ECONOMIC SPIRIT

BEHIND THE specific evidence of development in agricul-

ture, commerce, and industry lies, as impelling force, a revolu-
tion in economic attitudes. During the Dark ages, when men
struggled to survive and to hold together the tissue of society,
the idea of economic gain or profit had small scope. Its major
manifestation then was a casual, almost involuntary reaction
directed outward against neighboring peoples in the form of
tribal raids for cattle, women, and other movables. As the Aegean
world grew richer in the eighth century and as its men became
more mobile, the conscious effort to gain economic advantage
entered Greek life. Thenceforth the economic spirit, as it may
be called, was an enduring force of considerable importance in
Hellenic history.
The emergence of this outlook seems a truly remarkable
step when one reflects how long traditional patterns had had
an opportunity to fix themselves. Yet the transition was per-
haps easier than was the parallel rise of the capitalistic spirit in
early modern Europe. Greek tribal society had been too simple to
evolv.e the fetters of manorial and guild organization; its religious
system did not inculcate the other-worldly, moral virtues of
Christianity; and the upper class, while long distinguished as a
group of landlords, was not bound by the requirements of a
developed aristocratic code.
In many respects modern economic students too often mis-
read the nature of early Greece. We must be wary of assuming,
on more recent parallels, that the incipient aristocrats of the
eighth and seventh centuries were totally disinterested in eco-
nomic gain. The rounded picture of an upper class which dis-
dained physical labor and economic rivalry was evolved only
later in the treatises of Plato and Aristotle and in the pious wishes
of other authors; even then it did not entirely reflect reality.
352 PART III . The Age of Revolution

Even more perverse is the concept, born of exaggerated views

on ancient slavery, that Greek citizen bodies as a whole were
rentier in spirit-this in a barren landscape which cannot sup-
port a great mass of non-workers I 1
If we turn to the Homeric epics, we must find that the
heroes delighted in idleness-when they could enjoy this
blessing-but they also worked. Their great distinction from
hired laborers lay in the fact that they could employ their time
as they wished. Often the leaders of society were supervisors,
leaning on their staffs to watch the tilling of their farms; yet
Odysseus knew how to follow a plow, and Paris both tended
sheep and helped in the building of his palace. In the simple
social and economic world of the epic there appears no real
prejudice against physical labor in itself, and the cunning of
craftsmen gained the poet's praise. Prestige came from valor on
the battlefield; it also was measured in terms of household goods
and herds. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, told Penelope that
her husband would long since have been home, "only it
seemed to his mind more profitable to gather wealth by roaming
over the wide earth; so truly does Odysseus beyond all mortal
men known many gainful ways." 2
The step from the Odyssey to Hesiod is no less decisive in
economic matters than in other respects already considered,
for in the Works and Days we can first detect the conscious ap-
pearance of true economic competitiveness. Early in his poem
Hesiod graphically portrays the contest of potter with potter
and endorses rivalry so long as it is conducted fairly; the basic
1 Hasebroek, Trade and Politics, vii Grece archalque," Journal de ]1sy-
and passim; Bolkestein, Economic cllOlogie, XLI (1948), 2~45,. and
Life, 62-65 (note his qualifications, "Hierarchie du travail et autarcie 'in-
70-73, 153); Ehrenberg, Der Staat dividuelle dans la Grece archalque,"
der Griechen, I, 73 (with reserves); Revue d'histoire de la ]1hilosophie, et
and most Marxist historians. But cf. d'histoire genera Ie de la civilis!ltion,
Heichelheim, Ancient Economic His- XI (1943), 124-46. Craftsmen: Iliad
tory, I, 279; Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e V. 60 ff., XV. 410-12; Odyssey XV.
Occidente, 213-14. 31~20. Possessions: Iliad V. 612-14,
2 Odyssey XIX. 282-86. Labor in epic: 708-10, XIV. 121-24; Oayssey XIV.
Iliad VI. 314; Odyssey XXIII. 178 ff., 100-04 and passim. Covetousness:
V. 243, XV. 320. A view contrary to Iliad V. 481; Odyssey XIII. 215-16.
that of the text will be found in Fin- Finley, World of Odysseus, 134-37,
ley, World of Odysseus, 76-79; Andre overstresses the honorific aspect.
Aymard, "L'Idee de travail dans la
 CHAPTER 11 . Economic QUickening and Colonization 353

aim of life which he holds out to his rural auditors is hard

labor. The purpose of this work is not drawn from an idealiza-
tion of labor as such, nor is it simply to avoid starvation; the
objective is gain. "Work is no disgrace, it is idleness which is a
disgrace-through work men grow rich in Hocks and in sub-
stance-both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle."
Again and again Hesiod returns to the necessity of labor to get
ahead; in the command to "work with work upon work" he
virtually stutters with urgency.s
In this emphasis Hesiod was not exhibiting an avarice
limited to the peasant class, for the aristocratic poets in the lyric
strain who followed him knew well the conscious pursuit of
wealth. Poverty remained a curse, a "grievous and restless ill,"
which was more keenly felt as the possibilities of wealth and
luxury grew. A lengthy fragment of Solon's elegies catalogues
the ways of making money-overseas trade, agriculture, in-
dustry and art, medicine and foretelling the future-and
Solon concludes that those who are richest "have twice the
eagerness that others have." 4 The very fact that noble poets
emphasize so noticeably the theme that wealth in itself is not
enough must lead one to suspect that many of their peers
failed to live by the Delphic maxim, Nothing Too Much.
Within the inherited framework of an agricultural society
divided between landlords and small peasants, the introduction
of economic competition must have led at times simply to the
exploitation of the poor by the rich. In itself this result was not
entirely without social and intellectual profit; the formation of
new capital in eras of expansion frequently requires toughness.
Those who claimed the surplus of society utilized their gains
partly for the construction of temples and the embellishment of
- festivals, and even the part they devoted to their own pleasure
aided the rise of arts and letters. Not all of the advantage, how-
ever, came solely to the old upper classes. The more advanced
areas were by now developing commercially, industrially, and
3 Works and Days 303-04, 308, 311, fragment Z 37, who quotes the Spar-
382. tan Aristidemos: "Money makes the
4Solon, fragment 11. See also AI- man; no pauper can be noble or held
caeus, fragment Z 41; Theognis in honor:
384 ff.; Bacchylides I. 171; Alcaeus,
354 PART III . The Age of Revolution
agriculturally; and the dynamic possibilities which resulted
were also seized by basically free artisans, traders, and peasants.
While the details escape us, the rise of these lower classes is obvi-
ous by the end of the sixth century.
Everywhere, moreover, there were bars to overly ruthless
competition. Much of an average Greek's life was still passed
within the dictates of an economy directed 'primarily toward
subsistence and governed by old customs of tribal society.
Where the protection of these latter was weakening in the more
progressive districts, men turned to the city-state, which in-
corporated in conscious form the principle of communal
fair-dealing or eunomia. The aristocratic code itself, as it
evolved, came to emphasize the concept that gentlemen must
seek other things in life in addition to wealth. Excessive, exclu-
sive zeal for economic advantage and the unjust use of force to-
this end were condemned by aristocratic ethics. By the sixth
century the view that "wealth without honor" was base had
become canonical, but its roots were far older. In the Odyssey
overconcern for gain had been the subject of taunt when Odys-
seus was accused of being "one who, faring to and fro with his
benched ship, is a captain of sailors who are merchantmen,
one who is mindful of his freight, and has charge of a home-
borne cargo, and the gains of his greed." 5
The appearance of the economic spirit during the age of
revolution, in sum, was both unmistakable and also restrained.
The economic sphere was not sharply marked off from other
aspects of human organization and governed by its own laws.
Whether aristocrat or peasant, moreover, an ancient Greek
had generally the good sense to try to enjoy life as it passed by.
To comprehend his outlook, one must not approach it from the
point of view of modern, advanced capitalistic endeavor; a
healthful corrective is to come to know the delightfully back-
ward ways of modern Hellenes, who refuse to ruin today in a
mad scramble to gain the wealth with which to endow tomor-
ro~. The inhabitants of ancient Greece understood quite well
5 Odyssey VIII. 159-64; Sappho, frag- the economic sphere in early times,
ment 148; Phocylides, fragment 9, cf. the critique in Trade and Market
puts the order, first a living, then vir- in the Early Empires, ed. Karl Polanyi
tue. On the limited independence of et al. (Glencoe, Ill., 1957).
CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 355
how back-breaking was the hard physical toil of their simple
world, and were happy to avoid it if they could-but few were
fortunate enough to be able to do so. Economic possibilities
were so limited in this age and classes so static that the chances
of improving one's social standing by economic advance were
always slight. Yet all these factors only limited the exercise of
the economic spirit by men who were basically free to change,
and it may properly be said that conscious interest in gain
became a part of the Greek outlook during the seventh century.

THE AGRICULTURAL WORLD

AGRICULTURE was always the basic mode of life in the an-

cient Aegean; it simply will not do to label commerce "a master
factor in Greek expansion." 6 Today Greece is still essentially
rural, though its agricultural sectors are no longer geared to self-
sufficiency. Ancient farmers produced even less per acre, so far
as we can calculate; they could not have supported more than
a very small percentage of non-agricultural population. Not until
the fifth century B.C. did such states as Athens have a sufficiently
favorable balance of trade, based on industry and for a time on
imperialistic profit, to nourish a large urban population by
means of grain bought abroad.
rhe nature of the central settlements in the early poleis we
have already examined. While men virtually everywhere lived
together in tight clumps for the sake of mutual protection and to

6 Dunbabin, Greeks and Their Eastern H. Michell, The Economics of Ancient

Neighbours, 19; Glotz, Greek City, Greece (2d ed.; Cambridge, 1957),
101-02; and many others. The distor- chap. 2; Heichelheim, Ancient Eco-
tions which must ensue may be sug- nomic History, I, 268 ff., and works
gested by Young's comment, Late Ge- listed therein; Cook's picture of Old
ometric Graves, 230, that the shift to Smyrna, BSA, LIII-IV (1958-59),
Proto attic pottery reRected "the 16-17.
change from a feudal and agricultural Greek agriculture: Hasebroek,
society to an industrial and, commer- Griechische Wirtschafts- tmd Gesell-
cial society." But see Hasebroek, schaftsgeschichte, 10-12, 75-77, 217-
Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece, 21; Faucher, Melanges de la societe
44-71, though he overstresses limits on toulousaine d' etudes classiques, I
trade; Bolkestein, Economic Life; (1946 ),5-22.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

secure unfailing water supplies through the dusty summer,

these towns were based on agriculture. Solon reflected the
realities of the late seventh century when he calculated the re-
quirements for the different classes of Athens in terms of agri-
cultural produce. Attic industrial and commercial elements, as
everywhere else, were still very minor fragments of the body
politic; one mark of Solon's extraordinary prescience was his
deliberate effort to foster their growth. 7
Any changes in agriculture, then, whether in matters of
technique or in laI?-dholding tenures, must be subjects of pri-
mary importance in Greek history. Even before the age of
revolution got fully under way, the countryside was awakening
from a long winter's sleep, and a variety of important develop-
ments, of which we can see only the bare outlines, affected
Virtually every aspect of farming in the more advanced areas. .
A quantitative increase in production resulted from the
growth in population; as Hesiod observed, "More hands mean
more work and more increase." 8 That settled village life spread
ever more widely over Greece seems clear from the archaeologi-
cal evidence. Wherever possible, men exploited previously un-
cultivated land, such as that which Hesiod's father took up in
Boeotia, but in this process we cannot measure the extent to
which l-and that previously had supported flocks was now
turned over to crops-or could be so converted. A diminution in
the place of shepherding may be inferred both from the dietary
references of later literature to cereal consumption as against
the abundant references to meat in the epic and also from the
fact that flocks played a lesser role in historic literature than in
the epic; yet on dIe latter point one must remember that coined
money was now substituted as a medium of wealth. .
? The fact that tyrants extended aid XVIII. 541 if.; Hesiod, Works and
to commercial and industrial elements Days 232-37.
does not mean that their rule relied 8 Works and Days 380. Howe, Trans-
primarily on this element (vs. P. N. actions of the American Philological
Ure, The Greek Renaissance (Lon- Association, LXXXIX (1958), 44-65,
don, 1921)); Nilsson, GGR, I, 666, argues that a considerable shift to
notes the dominance of agriculture in grain-raising occurred in the eighth
religion. The Shield of Heracles century; her reading of the epic' and
(286 ff.) describes only farming and Hesiodic evidence is not completely
hunting, though it contains a city of compelling.
men; cf. the shield of Achilles, Iliad

'I
CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 357
Qualitative improvement must also have occurred. More
people can be fed from the same amount of land if it is suitable
for cereal crops as well as for grazing animals; quite probably
there was also more attention to terraCing, drainage, and irriga-
tion. The olive groves and vineyards of Greece, the importance of
which we can establish only in the wider evidence of the sixth
century, surely went back at least to the seventh century; Greek
pots were not often exported empty, and the colonies fur-
nished a market for oil and wine. Noticeable, too, in excavated
sites is the great increase in the use of iron. The true Iron age
begins not in the late second millennium, when this metal was
first worked all across the Near East, but in and after the
eighth century. Even in the seventh century iron spits still served
as a medium of exchange; Hesiod's peasants did not yet have
iron plowshares. Improvements in technology and the opening of
wider sources of supply-the details of which are quite unclear
-made iron ever more common and usefuP
The surpluses of agricultural foodstuffs which resulted from
improved quantitative and qualitative factors were not neces-
sarily large, and could quite easily have been gobbled up by the
producers. ' That they did not thus vanish was due partly to the
growth of political and religiOUS machinery, which required taxes
and sacrifices; partly to the exactions of nobles; and partly to the
tempting wares dangled in front of the farmers by the non-
agricultural elements. By force and by desire some peasants
were lured into production with an eye to market as well as to
their own consumption. What I have just defined as the eco-
nomic spirit made its appearance at least as Significantly and as
early in the minds of farmers as of traders.
The development toward economic mobility, which is
clearly reflected in the Works and Days, opened a Pandora's
box for the peasantry of Greece. By donkey and by small boat
they might transport their tiny surpluses to the larger centers of
population and hope to profit from their extra exertions. Hard
9For examples, see Perachora, I, 73- 193-97·
75; Artemis Orthia, 196, 391. The 1M. I. Finley, IRS, XLVIII (1958),
Greek sources of iron were Laconia, 161-62; H. W. Pearson, "The Econ-
Euboea, the Cyclades; see Heichel- omy Has No Surplus," Trade and
heim, Ancient Economic History, I, Markets in the Early Empires, 320-41.
358 PART III . The Age of Revolution
work and luck brought real rewards, which enabled the more
supple to break out of the old framework of restricted initiative.
The rise of the city-state, as we have seen, reflected the ability
of the smaller farmers to maintain their position, and this factor
rested partly on the presence of open markets in which peasants
could operate independently of noble pressures.
Still, those who sought a profit also took the risk of their
search. The peasants grew more dependent on non-agricultural
elements for iron tools and for other manufactured products.
Insofar as old communal patterns of clan and tribe and old
economic conventions waned, the way lay open for the richer
and more powerful to oppress the poorer, especially since
loans at interest became ever more common and necessary in an
increasingly fluid world. The concepts of mortgage, transfer of
ownership, and so on at this time were not those of modern law,
but of two things we may be certain. Not all men held equal
quantities of land, and peasants could lose effective control of
their own plots (or more accurately, perhaps, their own inde-
pendence) through unpaid loans and "crooked judgments." 2
In a few areas the small farmers were reduced to serfdom.
Agricultural slavery proper remained quite limited; the soil of
Greece could rarely support the capital investment required for
slaves.
The glaCial calm of traditional, clan-controlled agriculture
must have broken up very qUickly throughout the more deyel-
oped districts of the Greek couf.\tryside. Some men profited
thereby, but others became excess. baggage. A part of the sur-
plus population which seems evident in the era of colonization
may have been simply the product of faulty distribution of
land, as in the splitting of small landholdings among many
sons; 3 other men were displaced perhaps by the rise of olive
2Aheady in Odyssey XI. 489-91 there collectivism of the Greeks on Lipari
occurs "a kleros-less man whose source was essentially a curiosity; d. Dunba-
of living was not large"; cf. XIV. bin, Western Greeks, 331-32, and
199 If., and Chap. 4, n. 9 (p. 130). Robert J. Buck, "Communalism ori the
On! land title, see John V. A. Fine, Lipari Islands (Diad. 5. 9· 4) ,',. CP,
HOToi: Studies in Mortgage, Real Se- LIV (1959),35-39, against Thomson.
curity and Land Tenure in Ancient 3 G. Glatz, Histoire grecque, I (Paris,
Athens (Hesperia, Supp. IX, 1951); 1925), 154, and others stress this
Will, REA, LIX (1957), 12-24. The point.
CHAPTER 11 . Economic QUickening and Colonization 359
groves and vineyards; but many areas apparently had an ab-
solute excess of population-measured in economic potentiali-
ties of the period-throughout the age of revolution.
The agricultural changes which were transforming Greece
were perhaps economically desirable. Socially and politically
they were dangerous. The political effects we have already seen
in the rise of the polis, but purely political panaceas were not
entirely effective either in curbing the avarice of the rich or in
assuaging the problems of the poor. Commerce and industry
Siphoned off some elements of the surplus population, but this
safety. valve was not able in the seventh century-or ever
later, for that matter-fully to release the pressures of the agri-
cultural countryside.

THE RISE OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE

THE EXPANSION of industry and commerce in the era 750-
650 must be placed within the whole context of contemporary
economic life. In this light, advance in the two sectors now to
be considered may appear to have been limited. Greece lacked
many important raw materials, its markets could not compare
in breadth or richness to those of the more developed Oriental
monarchies, and previous levels of economic activity in the
Aegean had been extremely low. The archaic graves of Attic
citizens in the Kerameikos are poverty-stricken interments be-
side the rich, timbered chambers of contemporary Phrygian
kings or the tombs of Saite Egypt.
If we measure the degree of change from earlier Greek
standards, nonetheless, Aegean material progress in the age
was truly revolutionary. In industry and commerce the new eco-
nomic spirit could find play most easily; thence the attractive
forces of mobility and adventure could penetrate into more
conservative sectors. The rise of commerce and industry affected
the cultural outburst of the Aegean at the time and laid a base
for continuing economic and political changes in subsequent
centuries.
 --
PART III . The Age of Revolution
In industry there can be no doubt that production in-
creased appreciably, for its results are evident in our archaeo-
logical record. Changes in techniques are also physically per-
ceptible. Many of the innovations were imported from the
Orient as contact with the East became more widespread and
as the Greek world grew more able to afford the products of
smiths and artists. The transfer of techniques, such as the use
of molds for figurines, had essentially been completed by the
late seventh century, though Greek technology continued to de-
velop at a slower rate thereafter.
The vehicle of the transfer is often argued to have been the
movement of Eastern artisans· to the Aegean, an assumption
for which there is no proo£.4 In historic times the physical equip-
ment of Greek life seems to have been made entirely by Greek
artisans, apart from direct imports. Much was always produced
within the home itself; the rest came from either traveling or
local craftsmen. The existence of mobile workers is well shown
in the presence of foreign alphabets on the pottery of Corinth
and other sites, the transfer of molds for figurines from one
center to another, and the many traditions about migrant
sculptors and architects. 5 Skilled industrial specialists were not
necessarily bound irrevocably to individual masters; wherever
they ventured, they could hope for protection and commissions.
On tl1is basic fluidity depended in part the cultural unity of
Aegean arts during the age of revolution.
Besides itinerant tinkers flourished more sedentary artI-
sans, who probably were far more numerous. Local craftsmen,
working in metal, clay, leather, and wood, appear in Homer;
by the seventh century true industrial quarters were beginning
to emerge in the villages which clustered below Acrocorinth,
the Acropolis, and other more advanced sites. 6 These industrial
establishments were small and simply organized/ and their
4 See above, Chap. 6, n. 5 (p. 213). Kentaro Murakawa, "Demiurgos;"
5 Alphabets: see above, Chap. 7, n. Historia, VI (1957), 385-415.
2 (p. 238). Mold transfer: Ohly, AM, 6 The best illuminated is the Potters'
LXV (1940), 68 n. 2; Jenkins, Pera- Quarter at Corinth; see Agnes N. Still-
chOTa, I, 231-32, 242; Karl Lehmann- well, Corinth, XV. 1 (Princeton, N.J.,
Hartleben, "Note on the Potnia Tau- 1948 ),10- 14.
ron," AJA, XLIII (1939), 669-71 7 Their smallness was only relative;
(bronze mold). CE. Od. XVII. 382-86; half of the named black-ligure and
CHAPTER 11 . Ec~nomic QUickening and Colonization 36 1
proprietors will scarcely have ranked higher in the social scale
than their descendants did in later Athens.
The sedentary industrial elements must have been depend-
ent to a large degree upon the nobles who governed the city-
states. Insofar as they produced luxury items, their consumers
were the aristocrats. The religious sanctuaries, which were cen-
ters for the making of figurines and statues and were adorned
by increasingly rich homes of the gods, were directed by
priests from the upper classes.B Often the nascent industries
which produced for market may have developed out of the
household economies of the well-to-do, whose slaves might
turn out surpluses. Yet not all the increasing product of Greek
shops went to the wealthy part of the population, and the men
who toiled in industry were in root far freer than their counter-
parts in the Orient.
Artisan and trader must often have been combined in the
same person, but the ever wider dispersal of Greek wares argues
for the existence of independent commercial channels. Inter-
change of pottery and other objects had never entirely disap-
peared in the Aegean during the Dark ages. At least by the
early eighth century this local movement began to take on
more impressive dimensions and soon reached out eastward to
Syria and west to Italy and beyond. Besides the vases and their
now vanished contents there is epic evidence. The Iliad men-
tions wine, slaves, raw metals, and finished products as mov-
ing into the Achaean camp before Troy or farther afield; 9 trade
references of the Odyssey are even wider. Thereafter indica-
tions of seafaring stud the lyric poets.
The flow of finished wares and raw materials in and out
of the Aegean is visible; not so easily determined is the mode
of trade itself. Quite evidently this early age did not know
such advanced techniques as central markets and warehouses,
rigid distinctions between wholesalers and retailers, or the like;
but some modern economic historians would go so far as to

red-figure vases came from six facto- tuary at Acragas is a good example;
ries (Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, cf. Dunbabin, Western Greeks, 265.
I, 1,272). 9 E.g., Iliad VII. 467 If., IX. 71-72.
8 The terra-cotta factory by the sanc-
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
deny that interchange of goods took place within any true
"trading" patterns. Such views are extreme, as I shall show in
a moment; yet the figure of the enterprising, essentially eco-
nomic entrepreneur must not be expected too early. In the
epics trade was a spasmodic matter not far removed from
piracy, an adventurous gamble carried on by the upper classes
in a style of mutual exchange of gifts. l Even in the seventh
century the boundary between trade and piracy seems to have
been fluid, and the lyric poets treated any form of seafaring
as an act of desperation. Nobles such as Solon of Athens or
Charaxas, the brother of Sappho, sailed abroad either to mar-
ket their home-grown produce or to see the world; peasants,
if we may trust Hesiod, scurried briefly to sea during the sum-
mer to dispose of their own products. Down to 650 it is not
easy to find truly professional traders. The first who may per-
haps be called so is Colaeus of Samos, who was blown to Span-
ish Tartessus while on a westward trip and reaped a fortune
in opening this new market. 2
While all this is true, we are not thereby justified in con-
cluding that genuine trading instincts were lacking. Heroes, no
less than specialized merchants, may exhibit economic interests
beside other motives. Elizabethan seadogs such as Drake
traded, looted, and explored with equal enthusiasm; those ma-
jor expeditions which were intended to defend England against
Spain were managed as joint-stock operations, participants in
which had a canny expectation of ~ividends.3 In the sixteenth-
century Atlantic only men of daring and independent status
would risk their lives-or could muster the capital and follow-
ers to do so. There is no reason to expect less of seventh-century
Aegean society. Greek pots did not simply fly by magiC about
1See generally Finley, World of Aegean, II, ig2-93.
Odysseus, 68-73, 107-08, though he 2 Herodotus IV. 152. Demaratu5
underestimates the purposeful con- traded with Etruria and settled there
nection of gifts and trade. Seventh (Pliny, h. n. XXXV. 16, 152; Livy I.
century: Hymn to Apollo 453-55; 34, IV. 3; Strabo V. 2.2, C. 21g, VIIt
Hymn to Demeter 126-27; Heichel- 6.20, C. 378; et al.). See oH. Knor-
heilll, Ancient Economic, History, I, ringa, Emporos (Diss. Utrecht, Ig26).
224-26, 245-47; Hasebroek, Trade S Julian S. Corbett, Drake and the
and Politics, 13-14, who minimizes the Tudor Navy (London, IgI2):, II,
place of nobles in long-distance trade; 68-6g.
Thomson, Studies in the Ancient
CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 363
the Mediterranean, and the men who took them were, I think
closely interwoven with the already existent upper classes. I~
particular, we cannot safely treat the disdain for seafaring, as
expressed by Hesiod and others, as an aristocratic disdain for
the sea. The Aegean and other waters were dangerous; the
Greeks admitted the fact, as have many other seafarers, and
then gambled, if gamble they must!
The date at which wandering merchants as such (em-
parai) and also settled traders (kapelai) crystallized out of
this fluid pattern cannot be fixed, but one may properly guess
that it falls within or close to the age of revolution. By this
point men of industrial or peasant background were probably
learning how to seize the opportunities of trade, if usually
only on a more local and humdrum basis; the great innovation
in Greek commerce, as Heichelheim has observed, was to be
the appearance of settled merchants, who were basically in-
dependent of upper classes or kings. 5
To make commercial operations more supple and to en-
hance the growing mohility of capital some form of standard
means for exchange and for representation of capital became
vita1. During the age of revolution the standards remained cat-
tle and ingots of metal, the latter measured partly in Oriental
weights. In excavations, gold "dumps" or pellets and iron rods
("spits") also turn up. True coins appeared only after 650. The
first, which were made of electrum on the coast of Asia Minor,
were for large-scale trade and perhaps for payment of mer-
cenaries; then states in Greece proper began to issue smaller
silver units. The fact that only Aegina, Athens, and perhaps
Corinth thus coined before 600 may suggest how slowly trade
developed as an independent sector of economic life; but in
evaluating this mighty step it must be remembered that COinage
has also serious political and social prerequisites and over-
tones. s
4 Lesky, Thalatta, 26-32, 251 If.; cf. the Early Empires, 64-67.
J. R Thiel, Studies on the History of 6 Pre-coinage: De Sanctis, Storia dei
Roman Sea-Power in Republican Creci, I, 453-59; Ventris and Chad-
Times (Amsterdam, 1946), 1-11. wick, Documents, 57-58; Hutchinson
5 Ancient Economic History, I, 251- and Boardman, BSA, XLIX (1954),
53; cf. Polanyi, Trade and Market in 219, on dumps; on spits, Woodward,
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
The existence of commercial and industrial links helped to
unify Aegean culture. Their intensification accelerated the
speed of general development. But they did not determine its
characteristics: the place of commerce and industry in Greece
down to 650 must not be overemphasized. While Protocorin-
thian vases sold far more widely than had any eighth-century
ware, the potters of Corinth hit their stride in international
trade only during the Corinthian period proper, well after 650.
Attic ware was scarcely exported until the last decades of the
seventh century and did not gain wide markets until after
600. 7 Stone temples, large-scale sculpture, and other marks of
an increasing surplus of wealth in Greece appear scantily
throughout the last half of the seventh century. Public works
for the benefit of shipping began, so far as We know, with a
quay at Delos which is dated rather insecurely to the eighth
century and may have been intended chiefly for the festivals. s
Moles and other harbor works turn up at Eretria and elsewhere
in the next hundred years; but for really major engineering ac-
complishments we must come down virtually to the era of
Polycrates of Samos, in the last half of the sixth century.
Artemis Orthia, 391-93, and Payne 102-04. The values implicit in the
and Wade-Cery, Perachora, I, 187- idea of money and its effects are noted
89, 258-60. Bernhard Laum, Heiliges by E. Will, "De la aspect ethique des
Geld (Tiibingen, 1924), argues their origines grecques de la monnaie," Re-
connection with cult and sacrifice and vue historique, CCXII (1954), 20g-
draws wide deductions on the reli- 31; Heichelheim, Ancient Economic
gious aspects of currency. History, I, 213-20, 251-53, 478-81;
Coinage: The first known Aegean R. M. Cook, "Speculations on the Ori-
coins, published by B. V. Head, Ex- gins of Coinage," Historia, VII (1958),
cavations at Ephesus, 74-93, have of- 257-62.
ten been dated much too early, as by 7Payne, Necrocorinthia, 24-25, 48, 59,
Charles Seltman, Greek Coins (2d 184; B. L. Bailey, "The Export of At-
ed.; London, 1955); EUore Cabrici, tic Black-Figure Ware," IHS, LX
Tecnica e cronologia delle monete ( 1940 ), 60-70, though an incomplete
greche dal VII al V sec. a.C. (Rome, survey, shows the general picture.
1951). See R. M. Cook, IHS, LXVI S Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, Die anti·
(1946), 90-91; E. S. G. Robinson, ken Hafenanlagen des Mittelmeeres,
"The Coins from the Ephesian Arte- Klio, Beih. XIV (1923), 50-52; but
mision Reconsidered," IHS, LXXI Callet de Santerre, Delos primitive,
(1951), 156-67 (and Paul Jacobsthal, 220, is not sure the quay mey be
ibid. 85-95); W. L. Brown, "Phei- placcd so early. Roads were designed
don's Alleged Aeginetan Coinage," mainly for pilgrim traffic, as BeIoeh,
Numismatic Chronicle, 6. ser. X Griechische Geschichte, I, 1, 277,
(1950),177-204; on Corinth, Benson, pointed out.
Geschichte der korinthischen Vasen,
(a) Clay sllield from Tiryns slllJlcing Aclli/- till' decapitation of :lIce/usa by Perseus all tlte
les' defeat of Pentll esilea or Heracles aud body; tu:o sisler Gorgons are held back by
Hippolyte (Nullplia Mil CUlI/ ). P'lOtoorul"l Athelia (Elellsis Mu selllll ). PllOtograph eour-
court('~y S. S. Wcil/berg. tc.y Dellisc/ws Arcltiiologisches Instilut ill
(b) Protoatlic alllphora leith tlte blinding of .'\thens.
Pulyphemus all the /lcek (c f. Plate ~5a) and

PLATE ~3 . DC/lie/ioll of .\Iy,I! lIml F.pic

 (0) Bron::.e tripod It'" u:ilh Apoll(l (Il1d I1era-
des Gyil1lf, for flu? Delphic tripod abon' ow/
a baltle of UOIIS he/mc (O /YI1l pia i\I useu m B
1,30 l.

(II) Bron:::e griff011 /I ('ad, origilllll/y 011 II

ca/droll (Olylllpia .\Juselllll). P/lOtogfll/'''s
('(Jllrfe~y Dl'ut~cl1l'8 .\rciJ{io{Clgisdl(·" lmtitut
ill Athells.

PLATE 2-1 ' Release frOlIl Terrol'

CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 365
From such .simple trade and industry, conducted on so
small a scale, new socio-economic groups of non-agricultural
character could not yet emerge as self-conscious, potent po-
litical forces. The main centers of population in the poleis re-
mained throughout the seventh century, as we have seen, pri-
marily rural towns, and there is no evidence that commercial
or industrial elements played any part in the consolidation of
the city-state. Insofar as urban groups were to exercise a force
in Greek history-and that influence must r1ever be overem-
phasized-their role could scarcely begin to be significant until
600 or later.
Another class in Greek economic life of which far too much
is commonly made is that of the slaves. While we have no
really valid evidence on slavery in the seventh century, it
~~~m~ \l~lik~l'Y that thi~ {a~tQ! wa~ Q{ a~'Y 'f:,r.eJl_t i..m~r.t_atl.f.!.~.
The sale of captives had already been a theme in the epics; 9
and by the seventh century war and overseas trade were prob-
ably producing a constant, though surely limited supply of
human fodder. Greek agriculture never rested on slavery;
bondsmen appeared in this sector chiefly as herders. Even in
classic industry and commerce slaves played a subordinate
role in the factories and shops of the most developed centers
such as Corinth, Chios, and Athens.

COLONIZATION

CCA RAVENING BELLY," said Odysseus, "rna)' no man hide, an

accursed plague that brings many evils upon J1len. Because of it
are the benched ships also made ready, that bear evil to foemen
9 Iliad VII. 475 (later), XXI. 40 ff., Miletus, in Hipponax, fragment 43
XXI. 79-80, 102, XXIV. 751-53; Od- (c. 550 B.C.); for Chios, in Theopom-
yssey I. 430 fr., XIV. 202-03, XIV. pus (Athenaeus VI. 265b), who
449-52. Evidence for industrial slav- claims that it first made large use of
ery may be found, for Corinth, in Pe- slaves. See geJ')erally W. L. Wester-
riander's limits on slavery (Ephorus, mann, The Slave Systems of Antiq-
Die Fragmente der griechischen Histo- uity (Philadelphia, 1955); and my es-
riker, 70 F 179; Nicolaus of Damascus, say cited above, Chap. 4, n. 1 (p.
ibid. 2 A 357; Heracleides, Fragmenta 131).
historicorum Graecorum, II, 213); for

13
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
over the unresting sea." 1 Raiding, looting, even trading, how-
ever, were too spasmodic and too limited in effects to satisfy the
continuing pressures which were built up in Aegean society.
From the very beginning of the age of revolution on down into
the sixth century the Greek world spun out many strands of
colonies. If one measures this outburst in relation to the size of
the homeland, it is certainly no less impressive than was the
irruption of modern Europe; the effects of the colonizing move-
ment were tremendous for the rest of the Mediterranean, for
Greece itself, and for later civilization.
In dealing with the topic of colonization the modern his-
torian can speak with sureness on some matters, such as the
names and locations of the new cities, their dates of foundation
(despite irking variations in the ancient tradition), and the
main founding cities, Corinth, Chalcis, Eretria, Miletus, and
others. Everything else is remarkably dark. What is the real
meaning of the term "parent city"? How did malcontents as-
semble at a harbor, get on shipboard, and then actually estab-
lish their new settlement? The complex tissue of causes and
stimuli which lies behind the network of new Greek states along
the coastal reaches of the Mediterranean and Black seas must be
ferreted out from limited hints.
The wave of expansion outside the Aegean proceeded prin-
cipally at the outset from the Greek mainland and from the
island of Euboea. In this respect and in others it links onto the
earlier integration of the Aegean proper which was discussed in
Chapter 4, but the new wave differed appreciably in char-
acter and in speed. The spread of Greek culture during the Dark.
ages had been a slow process, which had rested upon cultural
absorption of ideas from the mainland as well as on actual move-
ments of peoples. Now, on the other hand, a rather abrupt out-
pouring took place, on the testimony of a detailed, basically
reliable tradition which is corroborated by physical changes in
cultural patterns at colonized sites.
. The main vehicle of the expansion of Greek culture over
the Mediterranean was large-scale migration. Greek settlers
created agricultural communities like the parent city-states of
1 Odyssey XVII. 286-89; cf. XVII. 473-74. XV. 343-45.
CHAPTER 11 . Economic QUickening and Colonization 367
the Aegean, not in a casual trickle but in a consciously organized,
massive movement. From these nuclei other peoples swiftly be-
gan to derive new ideas; Hellas was an ideal which men might
admire and imitate, not a chromosome. Yet while the coastal
population of the Mediterranean had a generally similar inheri-
tance, only rarely could it fully absorb the ever more refined
and unique Greek culture of the age of revolution. The Gauls,
the Etruscans, and the Romans in the west and the Lydians and
Phrygians in the east afford examples of partial absorption; but
the sole area which swung fully, if slowly, into Greek patterns
purely by cultural processes was Cyprus. 2 And this was already
partly Greek by long inheritance.
Seeping or conquering, the Greeks found openings almost
all the way around the Mediterranean. On the seaboard of Syria
and Egypt more advanced political structures already existed;
here, accordingly, the Greeks came either as traders or as mer-
cenaries and lived in trading posts or camps (Tell Defenneh, Al
Mina). During the seventh and sixth centuries Egypt especially
relied on the vigor of hired Greek mercenaries, but others
roamed as far as Babylon. s Other Greeks, as we shall see, en-
tered Etruria and probably the Phoenician colonies as traders
and artisans. The major objective of migrants, however, was al-
ways to found settlements of agricultural type, and for this pur-
pose they needed coastal lands which were held by backward
peoples.
Two regions proved most attractive: the coast of the north-
2 Gjerstad, Swedish Cyprus Expedi- Times to the Battle of Ipsus (Oxford,
tion, IV. 2; M. Borda, "Kyprios Cha- 1933), 3-6; Ma2:zarino, Fra Oriente e
rakter. Aspetti della scultura arcaica Occidente, 139-42, 288-90; Alcaeus,
cypriota," Rendiconti della Pontifica fragment B 16.10-11; Ancient Near
Accademia di Archeologia, XXII Eastern Texts, 308; Brunner, Ristoria,
(1946-47), 87-154. The same phe- III ( 1954), 118, on Egypt. Naucratis:
nomenon may have occurred on the R. M. Cook, IRS, LXVI (1946), 72-
north coast of the Aegean; cf. the ap- 73, and "Amasis and the Greeks in
parent Greek reinterpretation of na- Egypt," IRS, LVII (1937), 227-37;
tive rites on Samothrace (}. M. Cook, F. W. van Bissing, "Naucratis," Bul-
IRS, LXXI [1951], 246-47). On the letin de la Societe royale d' archeologie
interrelations of natives and Greeks in d' Alexandrie, XXXIX (1951), 33-82;
southern Italy cf. Dunbabin, Western Hasebroek, Trade and Politics, 60-66,
Greeks, 40-47, 183-88. who overemphasizes the place of mer-
3 Mercenaries: H. \V. Parke, Greek cenaries here.
Mercenary Soldiers from the Earliest
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
ern Aegean and the Black Sea, and the tip of Italy and Sicily.
The first of these I shall not discuss, for the stream of coloniza-
tion which flowed north was minor in strength, generally late,
and limited in efI(~ct. Even in Chalcidice the Greek settlements
came no earlier than the start of the westward movement; those
elsewhere on the north coast of the Aegean were founded there-
after, and the colonies on the Propontis went back only to about
700 ; such major Black Sea colonies as Sinope got under way in
the seventh century! Down to 650 the main vent for Greek
migration was southern Italy and Sicily, which deserve fuller
study.

Greek settleIllent in the West had a complex background.

Intermittently the Aegean and the west-central Mediterranean
shores had been in contact since daring Early Cycladic traders
blazed the way, if indeed they were the first. By the Myce-
naean period trade into this area, still spurred from the Aegean,
attained quite noticeable dimensions, but toward 1200 direct
connections seem to have been broken. While a little Greek Proto-
geometric ware may have trickled into southern Italy, local pot-
ters developed a Geometric-type ware on their own. s Not until
the eighth century is there firm evidence that Italian craftsmen
knew what was happening in Greece; actual Greek vases ap-
pea\: \~ qua~t\t~ ~~l~ i.t'. the O!i.et'.tali.:z.i.t'.'E, l'ha<:,e.
By this time other peoples of the eastern Mediterranean
4Chalcidice: R. M. cook, IHS, LXVI . (Leningrad, 1947; Prague, 1951),
(1946),71-73,77-78,82. Cyzicus: seems to stress commercial motives for
Akurgal's excavations, Fasti archaeolo- that area. Will, Korinthiaka, 127-28,
gici, IX (1954), no. 118. Sinope: surveys the most recent interpretations
E. Akurgal and L. Budde, Vorliiufi- of the Argonauts.
ger Bericht «ber die Ausgrahungen in 5 Protogeometric: Taylour, Myce-
Sinope (Ankara, 1956). Rhys Carpen- naean- Pottery, 159-68. Local Geo"
ter, "The Greek Penetration of the metric: Akestrom, Der geometrische
Black Sea," AlA, LII (1948), 1-10, Stll in Italien, who dates the style too
must be checked by Benjamin W. La- late; F: Villard and G. Vallet, "Ge-
baree, "How the Greeks Sailed into omEltrique grec, geomEltrique siceliote,
the Black Sea," AlA, LXI (1957), geometrique sicule: etude sur les pre-
29-33; and A. J. Graham, "The Date miers contacts entre Grecs et indi-
of the Greek Penetration of the Black genes sur la cote orientale de Ia
Sea," Bulletin of the Institute of Clas- Sicile," Melanges d'arcMologie et
sical Studies, University of London, d'histoire, LXVIII (1956),7-27; Ben-
V (1958), 25-42. A. A. lessen, The ton, BSA, XLVIII (1953), 264-65.
Greek Colonization of South Russia
CHAPTER 11 . E~onomic Quickening and Colonization 369
were also active in the West. Phoenician traditions, as filtered
through Greek and Roman sources, would put traders of Sidon
and Tyre at Utica in North Africa about 1100, at Gades in Spain
soon thereafter, and at Carthage (Qart-hadast, New Town)
in 814. These dates have been accorded rather blind respect
by modern scholars, though they are in themselves no more valid
than is the variant Greek tradition which placed the founda-
tion of Cumae as early as 1150. Not only is there no sure
archaeological evidence for Phoenician activity in the western
Mediterranean until the eighth century, but even in neighboring
Cyprus firm Phoenician footholds seem to have come only about
800. If we are to date Greek colonies largely on the basis of their
graves and other deposits, the same principle must be applied
to the Phoenicians; on this reasoning it must be concluded that
significant Phoenician and Greek activity in the West began at
the same time. The earliest datable pottery at Carthage,
amaZingly enough, is a deposit of Punic and of sub-Geometric
Corinthian and Cycladic ware at the Tanit shrine, which can-
not be put much back of 750.6 From the physical evidence one
might be justified in deciding that the Greeks were the first to
reach Sicily and possibly even Spain. 1
Whether and when the Etruscan lords came from the east-
tern Mediterranean to the lovely rolling lands north of Rome are
problems which need not be examined here. The important
e Pierre Cintas, La ceramique punique Glosses on the Homeric Problem,"
(Paris, 1950); P. Demargne, RA, 6. AJA, LIV (1950), 16z-76, and Studies
ser. XXXVIII (1951), 44-5z; Jean in the History of Culture, 37-45, ar-
Vercoutter, Les Objets egyptiens et gues for a tenth-century beginning.
egyptisants du mobilier funeraire car- See generally the bibliography in Hei-
thaginois (Paris, 1945); Edmond Fre- chelheim, Ancient Economic History,
zouls, "Une nouvelle hypothese sur I, 48z-85; and on Cyprus, Gjerstad,
la fondation de Carthage," BCH, Swedish Cyprus Expedition, IV. z,
LXXIX (1955), 153-76; Rhys Car- 43 6-41.
penter, "Phoenicians in the West," 1 Sicily: Dunbabin, Western Greeks,
AlA, LXII (1958), 35-53; Emil O. zo-zz (after Beloch). Spain: Carpen-
Forrer, "Karthago wurde erst 673-663 ter, AIA, LXII (1958), 49-51; Anto-
v. Chr. gegriindet," Festschrift Franz nio Garcia y Bellido, Hispania Graeca
Dornseiff (Leipzig, 1953), 85-93· (Barcelona, 1948); Pedro Bosch-
Cintas found nothing at Utica be- Gimpera, "La Formazione dei popoli
fore the eighth century, but his exca- della Spagna," La Parola del Passato,
vation was checked by ground water IV (1949), 97-129, and elsewhere
(Carpenter, AlA, LXII [1958], 4Z). gives an earlier date for the Phoe-
W. F. Albright, "Some Oriental nicians (the tenth-ninth centuries).
370 PART III . The Age of Revolution

point is that Etruria, more than any other part of Italy, was ready _
to receive Oriental influences by about 750-725, and thus was
opened to Greek artistic achievements which were colored by
the same Eastern dye. Even before 700 the Etruscans had
taken over and mangled the Greek alphabet for their own mys:
terious language; Greek pottery became ever more popular; very
soon after the Greeks had launched into full-size stone sculpture
Etruscan artists began to follow the same molds, first alongside
the Oriental mode and then in lieu of it. Etruscan bronze work
and bucchero vases, in return, appeared in Greece occasionally
thenceforth.s Once the Greek sun had emerged over the eastern
horizon, it never thereafter set so far as Italian culture was con-
cerned.
Into Etruria Greek influence came not through colonies but
through the medium of traders and artisans, drawn by the
native ores of the area and by the riches of its lords. 9 Had we
better evidence, I suspect that we might find that the Greeks
played similar roles in the early stages of the western Phoenician
colonies. The attractive forces of the expanding Hellenic civiliza-
tion, however, ~ould never have had so potent an effect on the
West if there had not also been extensive settlement.
The immediate precursor to the wave of colonization was
apparently a thin but bold sortie by men of Odyssean stamp
who were adventurers, even pirates, but also knew more honest
"gainful ways." Their origins, if we may rely on the pottery found
in the West, were chiefly in the Cyclades. Beside island wares
Rhodian and Cretan vases turn up early but in lesser degree,
and Corinthian ware either appears or influences native types
along the Greek coastal islands of the western route. 1 Ithacan
8 Emil Kunze, "Etruskische Bronzen 1 Will, Korinthiaka, 38-45; Paolo En-
in Griechenland," Studies to D. M. rico Arias, "Geometrico insulare:;
Robinson, I, 736-46; Georg Karo, BCH, LX (1936), 144-51; Demargne,
"Etruskisches in Griechenland," Arch. La Crete dedalique, 321-25. Though
eph. 1937, 316-20; Robertson, BSA, Alan Blakeway, "Prolegomena to the
XLIII (1948),103. • Study of Greek Commerce with Italy,
9 Riis, Tyrrhenika, 194, 200; Blake- Sicily, and France in the Eighth and
way" IRS, XXV (1935), 147-49, on Seventh Centuries B.C.," BSA, XXXIII
Demaratus; Margherita Guarducci, ( 1932-33), 170-208, and "Demara-
"Iscrizioni greche su vasi locali di tus," IRS, XXV (1935), 12g-49, dated
Caere," Archeologica classica, IV Greek pottery too early, the priority
(1952 ),241-44. of trade over settlement cannot be en-
 CHAPTER 11 . Economic QUickening and Colonization 371

pottery reflected Corinthian styles well back into the ninth cen-
tury. Cycladic motifs can also be found on Ithacan vases ot
the late ninth century, but most of the insular influence here,
along with q;etan and East Greek pots, must be placed late
• in the eighth century. At Corcyra, which in later days was often
but not necessarily the next stop westward, Greek vases do not
appear earlier than in Italy itself. In Italy and Sicily proper we
cannot on the basis of present evidence detect the presence of
Greeks until the mid-mark of the eighth century. Even the scat-
tered traders who brought west the first vases seem to have
sought temporary points d'appui along the coast; the journey
out and back was long, and the processes of trade or mutual ex-
change of presents probably formal and time-consuming.
Both tradition and archaeological evidence suggest pre-colonial
settlements of Greeks at such western sites as Ischia off Cumae. 2
This st~ge lasted only a brief, if necessary moment. Politi-
cal, economic, and social conditions in the Greek homeland were
at a rare conjunction of propitious development, and large
quantities of men were ready to enter the dangerous search for
new homes. The reports brought back from western shores en-

tirely discarded. Contra: Cook, IHS, (Rome, 1951), 22-24; G. Buchner,

LXVI (1946), 80-81; Villard, Gno- Rendiconti della Accademia nazio-
mon, XXV (1953), 11, and Melanges nale dei Lincei, 8. ser. X (1955),215-
d'archeologie et d'histoire, LXVlII 34 ( Ischia) ; Dunbabin, Western
(1956),9-10,19-20. Hugo Hencken, Greeks, 6. Jean Berard, La colonisa-
"Herzsprung Shields and Greek tion grecque de l'Italie meridionale et
Grade;" AlA, LIV (1950), 295-3 09, de la Sicule dans l'antiquite (2d ed.;
finds evidence in shield designs of the Paris, 1957), is often fantastic (sum-
renewal of Aegean trade westward by mary in REG, LIV [1941], 198-217).
the early eighth century; see also his On the legends, see E. Wiken, Die
essay "Syracuse, Etruria and the Kunde der Hellenen von dem Lande
North," AlA, LXII (1958), 259-72. und den Vo/kern der Apenninenhalb-
Cf. generally Dunbabin, Western insel his 300 v. Chr. (Diss. Lund,
Greeks. 1937); E. D. Phillips, "Odysseus in
Ithaca: Robertson, BSA, XLIII Italy," IHS, LXXIII (1953), 53-67,
( 1948), 121-24; see above, Chap. 4, who agrees with Blakeway and Dun-
n.7 (p. 116). babin that detailed passages of the
Corcyra: Excavations of B. Kallipo- Odyssey reflecting trade in slaves
litis in 1955, IHS, Supp!. LXXVI with Sicily (XXIV. 307, 211, XX..
( 1956), 20; on the role of Corcyra, 383) may be of the eighth century.
Dunbabin, Western Greeks, 194-95; Stesichorus of Himera elaborated the
Benton, BSA, XLVIII (1953),340. tale of Heracles in his Geryoneis early
2 P. Zancani Montuoro and U. Zanotti- in the sixth century (Dunbabin, West-
Bianco, Heraion alla Foce del Sele, I ern Greeks, 330).
372 PART III . l'he Age of Revolution

couraged them to gamble in this direction; by about 730-725

the first organized group of settlers, from Chalcis and Eretria
combined, had pushed out westward to Cumae, as far ap-
parently along the Etruscan trade route as geography and other
factors permitted. Ano!:her group of farmers from an inland
Corinthian village soon colonized Syracuse in Sicily. Thereafter
new settlements followed rapidly under the auspices of Corinth,
Chalcis, and other advanced centers of mainland and insular
Greece.
The causes of the outpouring and the reasons for its success
alike are linked with the new forces at play in the age of revolu-
tion. In the fact that colonization was predominantly agricul-
tural in purpose we can see that the Greek world was still essen-
tially a rural one. Yet major stimuli were stirring men to break
away. Some districts solved the rural problem internally (Boe-
otia, Attica); some conquered their neighbors (Sparta); a few,
such as Aegina, were already turning to commerce on a large
scale. All these took no part in the wave of colonization; but
many restless districts were ready to disgorge malcontents who
were landless or were starving on tiny acres. Only desperation,
one must always remember, drove men to the labors and terrors
of overseas settlement. Fortunately, ample plains lay open along
western shores, better watered than those of Greece but sharing
essentially the same climate; in site selection agricultural advan-
tages were generally preferred over commercial possibilities. 3
Leadership was equally important. This was furnished by
members of the upper classes who had been ejected in the fac-
tional strife of the homeland states or were uneasy under the
pressure for conformity in the new polis. patterns; many, no
doubt, were simply adventurous. Neither leaders nor followers"
however, could have won footholds in the West so swiftly and
so widely if they had still acted within the old tribal frame-

3 Aubrey Gwynn, "The Character of onization, 87-137. The agricultural

Greek Colonization," fHS, XXXVIII aspect can be overemphasized; in the
(191~), 88-123; other bibliography in very first colony (Cumae) the choice
Heichelheim, Ancient Economic His- of site seems to reflect an eye to com-
tory, I, 494-97; R. M. Cook, fHS, mercial opportunities at least as much
LXVI (1946), 84-86, a balanced sur- as to agricultural exploitation of its
vey; Roebuck, Ionian Trade and Col- sandy environs.
 CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 373
work of life. A prerequisite for Greek colonization, taken by
and large, was the emergence of the tight bonds of communal
-loyalty and willingness to co-operate which marked the city-
state.
The outward token of this unity, which guaranteed success,
was the new phalanx form of military organization; for, like
the small bands of Europeans who boldly penetrated Old and
New Worlds in the early modern period, the Greek colonists had
a superior military technique. Led, by an oikistes, the settlers
~ere able to fight and win, and then to maintain their domi-
nance over far larger masses of native tribesmen. In doing so,
the Greeks of each colony had to rely mainfy on their own re-
sources. Most of the new settlements were independent city-
states unto themselves,· and colonies rarely received (or wel-
corned) extensive reinforcements once they had divided up
their lands.
, Behind and implicit in all these factors is the general spirit
of the age of revolution. Its dynamic force impelled the colonists
in the first place. Its conscious analysis of problems led men to
conceive the possibilities of plunging overseas. Its sense of order
and structure gave them the forms in which they could succeed.

EFFECTS OF GREEK EXPANSION

SO GREAT a movement as that which occurred in the age

of colonization must feed the forces by which it was nourished.
Inasmuch as the reciprocal effects of colonization on the home-
land fell largely after 650, they cannot be considered at length
here; but we must note at least their tendency to intensify earlier
economic and social tendencies. The results of colonization,
moreover, underwrote the dynamic quality of Greek civilization.
Economic interest and personal mobility had been pre-
conditions of the colonizing spirit; both in turn were enhanced
by the movement of large numbers of Greeks overseas. Such
4 Note the qualifications of Gwynn, babin, Western Greeks, 56.
JHS, XXXVIII (1918), 115-17; Dun-
374 PART III . The Age of Revolution

specialized products of home agriculture as olive oil and wine

gained ever wider markets. Incense, fine and cheap vases,
metal wares, textile pi'oducts, and other processed items went to
the colonies, which sent back largely raw materials; Greek
trade began to assume an air of mass interchange for the first
time in Mediterranean history.s The great swell of Aegean in-
dustry and commerce came after the colonies were abundant
and well established, and was at least partly connected with this
source of demand. The colonies, too, though initially agricul-
tural, inevitably served as focuses of trade with the natives
roundabout. In this function the Greeks seem, to judge from our
knowledge of southern Russia, to have remained passive; 6
native traders came to acquire the new wares and passed these
tempting items far inland. With the wares went, at least in more
advanced areas, ideas as well. Rome had become a city-state
and was taking over Greek cults by about 6Qo; inland Segesta
in northern Sicily had turned itself into a virtually Greek city
by 500; and the native Sikel cultures in eastern Sicily were yield-
ing by this date. 7
Politically, the wave of colonization produced double-edged
eHects at home and in the new Hellas. On the one hand the
recognition of Hellenic unity was greatly fostered. Though each
colony, as a rule, went out from one home state, with its
blesSings (expressed in a permiSSion to take its sacred flame
and gods), with leaders drawn from its aristocracy, and per-
haps with its material support, some bands of settlers were drawn
from several areas. More important, the coastal strips of settle-
ment were a crazy-quilt intermixtur~ of Chalcidian, Corinthian,
and other origin, and their harbors seem to have been op~n
equally to any traders. By the late seventh centm y Corinthian
pottery was dominant everywhere in the West, but in the sixth
century Corinth had to yield to Attic competition, which per..:
haps made its way largely via Ionian trade channels. 8 While
5 This has often been treated; the de- 1950/4, ll-z5 (summarized in Hmo-
tails :may be found in Dunbabin, ria, II [1953J, lZ0).
Western Greeks, zl1-58. See Cook, 7 Brea, Sicily, 15g-60; Dunbabin,
]HS, LXVI (1946),86. Western Greeks, 95-UZ, 171-93.
6 A. I. Tjumenev, "Chersonesskie et- 8 Blakeway, BSA, XXXIII (193Z-33),
judy V," Vestnik Drevnej [stroH, z04-07; Dunbabin, Western Greeks,
 CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 375
colonists felt some reverence toward a parent state as they
looked homeward, they were far more attracted to the interna-
tional festivals which were emerging in the period. The promi-
nence of" the Olympic games owed much to the fact that Olym-
pia could easily be reached from the western settlements. So,
too, the easy access to Delphi from the Corinthian Gulf fostered
the glory of Apollo's oracle among the western states, which
lined its Sacred Way with their treasuries. Both of these shrines
attracted even non-Greek dedications by Etruscans and Ro-
mans. 9
Although a sense of international unity, particularly on cul-
tural and religious matters, was intensified by the process of
colonization, the other tendency pf political activity in the
seventh century was also fortified. Political localism grew, and
the rivalry of the city-states became more conscious. Abroad,
the colonies were independent of each other and grew rich
, swiftly. Mutual suspicion and envy had abundant opportunity
to become so irreversibly fixed in the new states that they fell
to interstate warfare as fiercely as did the homeland in the
sixth and fifth centuries. Against the relatively powerless natives,
even against the more developed Phoenicians and Etruscans,
they could maintain themselves though divided; but in the end
the internecine struggles of the western Greeks paved the way
for their conquest by the simpler, more solid power of Rome.
At home, too, the seventh and sixth centuries witnessed
eve,r sharper antagonisms, and international relations sloped
downward toward that status of continual tension reflected in
Plato's observation (Laws 6z6a): "Every city is in a natural
state of war with every other, not indeed proclaimed by heralds,
but everlasting." In this dismal development the role of over-
seas spheres of influence and trading interests was quite sec-

226-27; Riis, Tyrrhenika, 201, based I, 742; Dunbabin, Western Greeks,

on inscriptions on Attic vases. Yet a 39-40. The role of Delphi in direct-
possible Etruscan trader turns up at ing early colonization is debatable,
Athens, AA 1940, 338 If., and Dun- Defradas, Les Themes de la propa-
babin, Western Greeks, 242-43, pos- gande delphique, cuts it down even
tulates Corinthian shipment of Attic more than does W. C. Forrest, "Col-
ware westward. onisation and the Rise of Delphi,"
9 Kunze, Studies to D. M. Robinson, Ifistvria, VI ( 1957), 160-75.
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
ondary. As the poleis crystallized out of tribal sOciety, their
edges, metaphorically speaking, became sharper, and sparks
resulted more easily when such states clashed. The increase in
population, moreover, made each arable acre ever more vital;
the bloody, long-protracted Lelantine war between Chalcis and
Eretria was fought over a tiny plain. The interest of Thucydides
and other later writers in sea-based empires I)1ust not lead us
into the mistake of interpreting early Greek history in terms of
thalassocracies .1
Nonetheless, the new factors implicit in commerce and
colonization were not utterly unimportant, nor was the policy
of the city-states determined solely on agricultural bases. If
Corinthian trade dominated the West eventually, political as well
as commercial and artistic factors may have played their pare
Herodotus and Thucydides both indicate that many states far
afield from Euboea were drawn into the Lelantine war. While the
distant powers, such as Samos and Miletus, or Corinth and
Megara, had local reasons for antagonism, their rivalries would
scarcely have meshed in the Lelantine war had commercial ties
and hostilities not exerted significant influence in the later
seventh-century Aegean. s As commercial connections between
colonies and homeland intensified, every event, internal or ex-
ternal, thenceforth reverberated throughout the Mediterra-
nean; every pressure or intrusion. from outside affected in some
degree the whole of the Greek world. "Greece lies scattered
in many regions," rightly observed a later Hellene. 4
Even more powerful than the economic, political, and so-
cial pressures which resulted from colonization were its effects
on the course of Greek civilization. Geographically the Helleni¢
outlook expanded from its initial cr[ldle-a tiny area embracing
no more than the southeastern districts of Greece proper and the
adjacent islands-to an astoundingly broad stage which reached

1 See my "Myth of the Minoan Tha- Leagues' in Early Greek History and
lassocracy," H istoria, III (1954-55) , the Lelantine War," IHS, XLIX
282-91. (1929),14-37; Blakeway, Greek Poe-
2 Dunbabin, 'Vestern Greeks, 16-17, try and Life, 34-55; Forrest, Historia,
227. Others disagree strongly. VI ( 1957), 161-64·
S Herodotus V. 99, Thucydides I. 15; 4 Dio Chrysostom, Orations XXXVI. 5.
A. R. Bum, "The So-called 'Trade-
 CHAPTER 11 . Economic Quickening and Colonization 377

from the Tyrrhenian to the Black Sea. The earlier kernel, the
Greek mainland, remained dominant; but the historian of ar-
chaic Greek culture must keep his eye on developments in east-
ern and western outliers. The Ionian settlements, already under
way, grew rich and powerful; in Sicily and Italy Greek civiliza-
tion struck firm roots. From the sixth century onward both
fringe districts added intriguingly different variations to ar-
chaic culture in philosophy, art, literature, religion, and even
political concepts. 5
From the wave of colonization, finally, Greek civilization
derived one of its most important stimuli to continuing evolu-
tion. Not only physical bodies but also historical societies tend
to remain at rest, or to follow constant courses; the explana-
tion of variable velocity in human development is one of the
most serious problems in historical mechanics. For centuries
Greek life had moved slowly, and the forces of tradition had full
, opportunity to harden their control over men's ways. Then men
broke out of inherited patterns in the late eighth and the seventh
centuries; and, while establishing a basically solid new founda-
tion for their culture, continued to advance with remarkable
rapidity. The process was neither easy nor automatically suc-
cessful; a factor of major importance lay in the shocks and the
breaks from old ways implicit in the movement of relatively
large numbers of Greeks about the Mediterranean. Thereafter
Greece lay open to spurs from every direction, and in return
could transmit its achievements to many foreign regions.
The archaic pattern of life was not to last forever, for or-
ganized forces of change had been built into its structure. In
part these forces derived from ancestral stimuli, which had been
set free by the age of revolution, but in part they were new
products of the economic forces we have considered in this
chapter. Greek colonization emphasized the dynamic elements
in Aegean society; the major Greek states, moreover, gained
resources for an ever richer cultural life in the interchange of
finished products and raw materials with the colonies. The eco-
5 Mazzarino, Fra Oriente e Occidente, der bildenden Kunst Grossgriechen-
18-20, adumbrates an interesting con- lands," Antike und Abendland, II
cept of poles. See on the West espe- (1946),114-39.
cially Ernst Langlotz, "Wesensziige
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
nomic spirit flourished in this clime. Commercial and i!ldustrial
classes were not in themselves significant forces during the
great changes of the age of revolution proper, but eventually
the growth of these elements made them powerful enough to
demand political, religious, and cultural recognition. At that
point the marvelous synthesis we know in classic, democratic
Athens was ready to dawn.
 [379
CHAPTER 12

EPILOGUE

THE GREAT WAVE of overseas expansion is a fitting terminus

for a study on the origins of Greek civilization. Hellenic culture
was by now a seaworthy bark, able to sail anywhere; in most of
the ports to which it came it was highly welcome.
This was not the first movement which had set inhabitants
of the Aegean into restless endeavor. From Neolithic days, if not
before, the area had seen migrations, though most of these had
pushed into, rather than out of, the Aegean basin and had per-
haps been more productive in terms of ideas than of ethnic shifts;
the most notable precursor of the historic colonization was rather
the widely ranging excursions of Mycenaean folk. But the expan-
sion of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. had been an
abortive experiment, cut short by the upheavals at the end of
the Bronze age. The outliers which had been scattered abroad
largely lost contact with the Aegean, which in turn sank into
isolation.
If the swarming which now occurred was greater and more
enduringly influential, its causes must be sought abroad and at
home. The areas of western Europe to which the Greeks came in
the eighth century had advanced remarkably during the Late
Bronze and Early Iron ages. They were ready to accept outside
influences more continuously as well as on a higher plane. The
Greek impetus in this direction was reinforced by other ave-
nues of Eastern influence such as the ·Phoenicians and perhaps
also the Etruscans.
Native Greek development during the dim centuries from
1100 to 750 also played a major part in ensuring that the historic
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

wave produced greater effects than had the Mycenaean expan-

sion. That earlier process moved from a land which had itself
but recently attempted to graft the Minoan achievements onto
its poverty-stricken inheritance from the Middle Helladic period;
the Mycenaean economic and political structure rested, super-
ficially at least, upon an effort to ape Oriental monarchy. His-
toric colonization, on the other hand, was the outpouring of a
unified Aegean world, which had built by unconscious evolu-
tion a strong cultural and social system and which was itself
ready to absorb new stimuli from east and west. In the estab-
lishment of the new colonies are summed up the economic de-
velopment, social stability, and political progress of the age in
which Greek colonization emerged; through this vehicle the cul-
ture of Hellas, steadily advancing in quality, could be spread
outward. If Greece was now, as earlier, a mediator between the
Orient and Europe, it had refined its inheritance into a noble
structure of virtually newstamp.
From this period forward Greek history entered upon ever
more complex ways. Italy, Greece proper, Asia Minor, and the
Orient all interacted politically. Internally, economic and social
development continued; the resulting tensions and forces af-
fected many aspects of life. The cultural evolution of the Aegean
had been well and truly launched on an ever more conscious
road, aspects of which we have examined in the rise of Orien-
talizing pottery, stone sculpture, the' temple, and the lyric; in
these areas refinement and complexity proceeded apace into the
manifold achievements of the late archaic and classic eras. Our
information, as a result, becomes ever more abundant, though
never so full as historians of these.later ages might desire.
The subsequent development has often been discussed, and
its main outlines at least are reasonably secure. Here I need not
carry the story of Greek civilization further; even to sketch the
fascinating history of the sixth century would be both pre-
sumptuous and of little utility. Let us turn back to see ex~
actly what had occurred, first and primarily in the· age of
revolution and then more briefly in the era when Greek civilIza-
tion was founded.
The preceding chapters have examined analytically the

,
i
CHAPTER 12 . Epilogue
many aspects of the miracle which I have termed the age of revo-
lution; but at the end of the account a sensitive student may
well feel that the explosion is tinged with the incredible. During
the century from 750 to 650-0r, to hazard greater precision,
principally in the brief decades from 720 to 68o-the Greek
world was galvanized into an interlocked revolution which af-
fected every aspect of its structure. Nowhere, true, were the new
patterns fully fashioned by 680; but by that date their basic
outline was clearly visible.
The revolution was of many parts, but all expressed a com-
mon intellectual change. Accordingly the same major forces ap-
pear whether we turn to the arts, to letters, to religion, or to
political, social, and economic institutions. This fact is fortunate,
for often the evidence for a single aspect is weak. The period
lies on the first fringe of historic times; but the hints which
emerge in any field bear striking resemblances to those in adja-
cent areas .
The underlying event was a crystallization of the still in-
choate promise of Greek culture in the Dark ages. This event
took place on simple lines. Archaic Greece was still not far re-
moved from barbarism, a.nd in any case its geographical endow-
ment was not one of material riches; but would the miracle have
occurred amid opulence? In literature, in the arts, even in
politics, the Greeks refined very limited forms which their genius
selected as vehicles for almost limitless achievements. Selection
and refinement were now virtually conscious processes.
The men who achieved so much were clear and logical in
thought, but they were not passionless monsters. Only by im-
posing upon themselves the tyranny of form and type and by
restricting individual license for the communal good were the
Greeks able to master the threats of anarchy. The victory was
barely won. Whether we turn to the physical testimony of Proto-
attic pottery or open our ears to the outcries against aristocratic
exploitation, we can see that men came close to shattering all the
bounds of earlier customs. Had they done so, the capabilities of
Aegean civilization would have been blasted.
The achievement of the age of revolution, measured in the
deepest historical terms, was twofold. On the one side the Greeks
 PART III . The Age of Revolution

evolved a sense of individual, conscious meditation; and there

emerged a concept of the political importance of the individual,
which was safeguarded by the justice of the political system.
Yet also men agreed to subordinate individual passions and aims
within a commonly accepted structure of life and thought.
Greece was deeply fortunate in that its greatest revolution took
place, first, in a period when its internal system was still simple;
and, secondly, at a time when the Aegean was not yet under
severe external pressures.
Wherever we turn in the age, we must sense its decisive im-
portance in spurring the Greeks to enduring creativity; yet
more, the achievements of the era were a firm foundation for
many basic qualities of Western civilization. One example may
suffice, which has been admirably sketched in Sir Kenneth
Clark's The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form; the Greek artistio
concept of the nude human figure which was created in the
seventh century B.C. has dominated European artistic thought
down to the present generation. When even a sober historian
generalizes about the age of revolution, his pen unconsciously
moves into a range of forceful terms not always approved in
Clio's trade-"genius," "miracle," and "achievement" have in-
evitably crept into the preceding paragraphs.
For th~ir use I do not apologize-the significance of the age
of revolution in human history requires no less-and yet such
words can be dangerous. Too often they have been used to mask
an unwillingness, or inability, to penetrate to the hidden springs
which drove the Greek world. These springs, nonetheless, can
be found; or, at the lea~t, the search conducted in this volume
has been devoted to that end.
In explaining the age of revolution one must pay due atten-
tion to Orientfll stimuli. By the eighth cenlury the East, no less
than the western Mediterranean or Hellas itself, had progressed
far beyond the level of the Late Bronze age; development th.ere
had been Jar greater, partly because civilization was more
deeply rooted and had bent rather than broken in the upheavals
o~ the late second millennium. The lure of Oriental culture, al-
ways tempting to less civilized areas, had been much enhanced
by the cosmopolitan, graceful form it had assumed in the ninth
CHAPTER 12 . Epilogue

and eighth centuries. That Eastern influences actually had a

continuing effect on the Greek world from 800 onward is abun-
dantly testified in the history of the alphabet, the appearance of
Oriental-type monsters and mythical creatures, and many other
artistic changes during the eighth and seventh centuries.
These forces, however, are not primary. Change was already
under way in the Aegean before Eastern contacts were resumed
on a significant scale. This basic point can be shown both from
the Dipylon pottery and from the Iliad; Oriental stimuli can at
best be used to account for the degree of speed with which de-
velopment took place and for some of the avenues in which
native enthusiasm spilled out. The Aegean down to this point
had been an enclave, which turned outward to the Orient and
gained inspiration thence because it so desired. Never again
was the situation to be true in Greek civilization. After the
resumption of ties with the Orient and the sowing of colonies
over the western !vIediterranean and Black seas the Aegean
homeland was inextricably bound up with the rest of the ancient
world and endured now Persian, now Roman onslaughts. The
favorable stars which shone down on Greece at the end of the
eighth century were a unique constellation. And the Greeks were
amazingly able to use their light.
The sources of Greek progress lay within Hellas itself. By
tlle latter decades of the eighth century these forces had gath-
ered enough momentum to break forth in a volcanic, awe-inspir-
ing rush; but before this event lay centuries of slow evolution,
which have here been called the Dark ages. These years, like
many dim eras, must exercise one's imagination-what mighty
energies must have lain, coiled in outward sloth, in the men
of the early Greek world! Later centuries, indeed, made of this
age a period of mythical fantasy, and so it still often appears in
historical works. But myths and folklore are poor tools to employ
in the search for the true quality of the Dark ages; we are now,
at last, fortunate in having surer guides in the outwardly dull
pages of archaeological reports. Vases themselves can feed that
imagination which must be part of the historian's equipment,
provided always that we make use of the ceramic evidence with
judicious understanding. '
 PART III . The Age of Revolution
In the second section of this volume an attempt has been
made to elicit the meaning of the physical material which has
survived from the era 1l0Q-750 and, secondarily, to fit within this
framework whatever evidence of value may be drawn from the
survivals of religious, social, and political customs and from
the Homeric Iliad. The historian must consider everything else
first and only then may venture to form tentative deductions
from the timeless world of the epic.
The picture which results for the Dark ages is one of very
slow change after the terrific upheaval at the end of the Late
Bronze era. In the evolution of Proto geometric and then Geo-
metric pottery we have the surest guide to the tempo of develop-
ment and can detect the drawing together of the Aegean basin
into a common frame of culture, albeit marked by local differen-
tiations which became ever more clear. Linguistic and tradi-
tional evidence, however, tends to corroborate the general pic-
ture presented by the pottery.
In studying the Dark ages I have drawn attention not only
to the main lines of evolution but also to the highly interesting
problems involved in the tempo of development and its sources.
Periodization is always a difficult problem in history, for the
men of any age do not suddenly and casually decide that they
will live in different fashion from their fathers. Yet there are true
watersheds.
The greatest of these was the deeply Significant change
which can be dated approximately to the eleventh century. Then
Proto geometric pottery appeared, rather suddenly and rather
broadly over several mainland districts of Greece. More was in-
volved in the change of potters' outlooks than might appear at
first sight: this is the point at which Greek civilization emerged.
The men who took the crucial steps did so largely out of the
sheer necessity of establishing a new order of life, if their society
was to continue to exist as a viable form. They drew almost en-
tirely on the past in doing so; there are no signs of external' in-
~uence at this point of time.· But let us be perfectly dear:
neither the Mycenaean world nor the earlier stages, which
were sketched in the first two chapters, are in themselves
Greek, in the sense in which we apply that term to historic
CHAPTER 12 . Epilogue

Aegean culture. When we probe back from classic and ar.

chaic aspects of that culture, we find uninterrupted continuity
as far as the beginnings of Protogeometric style, but no further;
the turning point was the eleventh century. What then occurred
was a veritable "jump," unpredictable in one sense, yet explica-
ble in rational terms once it had occurred.
The historian who studies the progress of early Greece
may justly feel that it is a story which makes sense and that it
can now be surveyed in its main lines. Much remains to be dis-
covered; and the efforts which may be made today on the basis
of evidence now at hand will prove faulty ere long. Sti1l, the
student may hope to put his fingers on some of the basic forces
which directed the story, or in the search to stimulate others to
think more deeply. The emergence of Greek civilization is a sub-
ject which will endlessly fascinate its modern heirs who live
within the stream of Western culture; an outlook which could
already by the eighth century produce the Iliad or so marvelous
a vase as the Dipylo~ amphora illustrated in Plate 11 was one of
amazing potentialities. Anyone who is aware of the difficulties
involved in its rise may justly marvel the more at its results.
 INDEX

abstraction, 298-9, 337 Argive Heraeum, 208, 239, 249

Achaeans,48,51,71 Argolid and Argos: pre-Greek, 55,
Achilles, 167-8,266-7,290 60-1; Greek, 79, 206, 208, 328, 338,
Acropolis, 61, 84, 256, 340, 360 347; see also pottery, Argos
Aegean Sea, 5, 7-8, 11, 363 aristocracy, 300-11, 318, 329, 332-4,
Aegina, 61, 169, 216, 233, 242, 363, 341-5, 372; as patrons, 154-5, 171,
372 180, 275-6, 303, 310, 341, 361;
Aeolic dialect, 120-2 examples of, 273-4, 290-1; eco-
Agamemnon, 47, 164; cult of, 319 nomic domination, 313-15, 351-4,
Aghios Kosmas, 32, 61 362-3
agora: assembly, 124, 128, 321, 346; arms and armor, 27, 33, 39, 45; 87,
market-place, 340 138,174; hoplite, 332-3
agriculture: techniques in Greece, art, see painting, pottery, sculpture
8-10, 14,356-7; importance, 8, 128, Artemis Orthia, 208, 249, 257, 284,
130,178-9,301,3 05,339,352 ,355, 3 0 7,3 19
367, 372; Eastern origins, 15; see artisans and artists: Mycenaean, 6,
also land tenure, peasants 44,48; Greek, 100, 130,295,360-1;
Al Mina, 215-16, 226-7 movement, 26, 213-14, 238, 307,
Alaca Hiiyiik, 27 308, 361, 370; see also industry
Alcaeus, 275, 303, 308; cited, 288, 341 Asia Minor, 32, 40, 62, 182; western
- alphabet, 169-71, 204, 210, 218, 238 coast, 8, 14, 22-3, 25, 29, 33, Sl,
!!mber, 50, 189, 207 86, 109-15, 121, 297, 304, 363; as
Anatolia,' 8, 112n, 196, 210 buffer, 12, 24-5, 209-11; see also
animals: rows on pottery, 149-50, 152, Anatolia, Cilicia, Ionia, Lydia,
233; figurines, 176, 179-80,253; see Phrygia
also horse, lion, monsters
Asine, 23, 28, 32, 97
Aphrodite, 212-13, 286n
assembly, see agora
Apollo, 181-2, 310; as ethical force,
275,288-g,321 Assyrian empire, 42, 59, 198-203, 211
Arameans, 59, 196, 198 asty,124,305-6,338-40
Arcadia, 48, 121, 178 Athena, 168, 176, 182,338
archaeology, 13, 64; limits of, 16-18, Athens and Attica, 8, 10; importance,
53, 101 12, 96, 98, 110, 150, 206-7, 363,
archaic age, 292-9, 341-2, 377-8 36S, 374; in Bronze ages, 27, 35,
archaism, 148, 156, 163, 241, 264 48,61,72; classic, 55,290,324,337,
Archilochus, 272-6, 278, 303, 308, 355, 361; Greek, 79, 83-8, 121,
310, 344; cited, 316, 322, 337 154-6, 169, 171, 174-S, 178, 216,
architecture: primitive, '28, 32, 70; 305, 319, 372; political aspects,
Minoan, 36-7; Mycenaean, 55-7; 134-S, 159, 314, 321, 3 29, 338-40,
Dark ages, 79, 128, 173, 198, 246- 342, 346-7, 350, 356; see also pot-
50, 340; seventh-century, 250-2 tery, Attica
ii Index
Balkans, 7, 11, ZO, z5, 33, 63, 93 colonization: Mycenaean, 49-53, 117-
basileus, 48, 1z4-9, 135, 164, 174; 18; of Asia Minor, 109-15; of Med-
in Hesiod, z68, 337; decline, 3 04, iterranean, 227-9, 328, 330, 337,
3Z4-35 366-80; see also migrations
Black Sea, 88, zog, 368 Colophon, 110,307
Boeotia, g, 48, 50, 86, 88, 1ZI, z70, commerce: limits of, 8, 339-40, 355-6,
313, 338, 339, 356, 372; importance 364-5; Neolithic and Bronze ages,
of, 1Z, z06 14, 28, 36, 38, 49-53; in Dark ages,
boule, 124, 128, 32g, 346 114, 171, 197-8; eighth-century,
Bronze ages: Early, 21-30, 71; Middle, 1Bg, 20g, 211-19; seventh-century,
30-6,71-2, 104; Late, 43 359,361 -4,374,376
bronze objects, 107, 117, 138, ZOl, copper,8,15,27,50,87
20 5,307,33 2 Corcyra, 284, 371
burial customs, 28, 32, 33, 39, 45, 56, Corinth: pre-Greek, 14, 22, 32, 61;
82-5, 128, 151-2, 155, 16gn, 174-5; name of, 29, 35; Greek, 80n, 86,
see also cremation 123, 250, 329, 338, 347; trade and
colonization, 116, 189-90, 233-4,
242 , 3 63-6, 370-2, 374, 37 6 ; East-
Callinus, 263, 275 ern contacts, 206, 212-13, 216; see
Caria,2g, 113, 117 also pottery, Corinth
Carthage, 369 Cos, 113
centaurs, 262n, 285 craftsmen, see artisans
ceramic, see pottery cremation, 72, 83, 174
Chalcis, 268, 347, 366, 372, 376 Crete: Minoan, 23, 36-9, 43, 45, 51,
change, see Greek history, tempo 52, 59, 60, 109; Greek, 63, 81-3,
chariots, 152-3, 155n, 239, 241-2, 30 5, 86, 119, 121, 134, 314, 320, 370-1;
332 -4 as Eastern intermediary, 87, 113,
C}rios,23,113,365 170, 205-6, 209, 213, 217-18; re-
chronology, 19, 23, 53-5, 95- 6, 139, ligion of, 173, 182, 248, 253, 286;
141,227-30,243; bases of, 16,64-8, see also pottery, Crete
225-6, 369; see also Greek }ristory, Cumae, 227-8, 233, 371-2
tempo Cyclades, 14, 28, 37, 121, 215-16,
Cilicia, 15, 23, 53, 118, 198, 216n, , .233, 370-1; see also pottery, Cyc-
218,227 lades
Cimmerians, 12ft, 199, 211, 227, 305 Cycladic ages, 22, 25, 26
city, 37, 43-4, 340-1; definition of, 27; Cyprus, 13. 59, 60, 95, 117, 121, 197,
see also wty 198, 210;. different quality of, 16n,
city-state, see polis .218, 330; Greek settlement in, 53,
civilization: qualities of, 24; see also 118,36 7
Greek civilization, Orient
clan, 133-4, 291, 316-17, 329, 346
classes, see peasants, slaves, thetes, daimon, 180
upper classes Dedalic style, see sculpture
climate, 10-11 Delos, 51, 173, 244, .250, 3 08 , 36 4
Close Style, 60, 92 Delphi, 61, 206, 211, 233, 308; cult
Cnossus: Minoan, 14, 36, 38-9, 48-9, of Apollo at, 173, 182, z88-g, 338,
52; Greek, 79, 83, 178; see also 375
pottery, Crete Demeter, 178,270
coinage, 363 demas, 124-5, 133
Index iii
dialects, see Greek language fertility cults, 15, 17g-80, 284, 31g,
dike, see justice 320
Dimini, Ig, 71 fibulae, 63, 72, 79, 82, 88, 138, 18g,
Dionysus, 176, 178, 287-9. 310 261
Dipylon pottery, 150-6, 175 figurines: pre-Greek, 14, 15, 28, 37,
Dorians, 62-3, 66, 70-4. 86, 121-3, 59, 79, 81-2, g2n, 136, 177-8;
142,2g0 eighth-century, 176-9, 189,. 207,
Dreros, 82, 248 253-7,3 60
fishing, 8, 14
fortification: pre-Greek, 28, 44, 55,
economic spirit, 270, 350-5,' 357, 373 60-1; Greek.252,305,340
education, 304
Egypt, 8, 24, 28, 37, 38, 42, 51, 54,
58-9, 116, Ig5-6; in first millen- genealogical traditions, 16, 67, 68, 1l0,
nium, Ig7, Igg, 202, 203, 207-9, 302-4
21g, 359, 367 genos, see clan
Eleusis, 84, 16g, 173, 178, 207, 31g, geography, 5-12.; effect on Greek his-
339,347n tory, 13, 39-40, 104-5, 133, 338-9
Ephesus, 304 Geometric, see pottery, sculpture
epic, 46, 51, 98n, 12 7, 156-65, 175, Gilgamesh, epic of, 167-9, 289
180-1, 331, 352; Oriental parallel, gods: crystallization, 175-6, 180-3,
165-9; representation in art, 235, 254, 271, 277-8, 286, 318-1g; rep-
239, 261, 264, 267n; see also Homer resentations, 176-9, 248; see also
Epidaurus, 123, 28g religion
Epirus, ll, 63
gold, 27, 43, 45, 52, 79, 85, 88, 155,
Eratosthenes, 66-7
156, 18g, 201, 202, 207, 307, 363
Eretria, 347, 36 4, 3 66, 372, 376
Gordium, 210, 227
Eteocretans, Ilg, 121
ethics, 137,270,.275,301,304,321-3, Gorgon, 280-1n, 284
343-4,354 Great Mother, 2g, 70,178-9
Etruria, 88, 170, 203-4, 208, 228, 238, Greek civilization: differences from
285,367,369-70,375,379 Mycenaean, 5-6, 45, 49, 55-7, 69,
Euboea, 88, 366 102; differences from Minoan, 37-8;
Eumelus, 263, 345n differences from Oriental, 160,
167-9, 171, 200, 231, 258-9, 271,
eunomia, 343, 354
294, 315, 335, 350, 361; character-
Europe, g; prehistoric, 11, 19-20,
istics, 38, go, 103. 109, 183-5.
30-1, 33, 50; in first millennium,
251-2, 2g4-9. 325, 381-2; inde-
86-8, I0 4,379 pendence, 40-1, 93, 116-18, 148.
Eutresis,32 Ig4, Igg, 220; stages, 77-8, 103,
evolution, see Greek history, tempo 142-3. 147-8. 185, Ig0, 292-3,
3 80-5
Greek history: sources of. 16, 33-4.
fables, 274 101-2, 138, 147, Igl,383-4 (physi-
faIence, 52, 155, 175, 189, 201, 2 07, cal), 34 (linguistic), 46-7 (tradi-
208,210,228 tion), 108 (survivals). 130 (an-
family, 133,316 thropology), 157-60, 171-2, 384
fear in Greek thought, 279-92 (literary); explanations of, 18, 20,
Fertile Crescent,. 11, 12, 59 34-5, 39-40, 69-74. 103-5. 186.
iv Index
Greek history (continued) Ida, Mount ( Crete), 205
192-4, 377, 382-5; tempo of, 102, idealism, 259-60, 294-6
224-5, 230, 234, 268, 384; see also Iliad, 151, 153, 154, 157-65, 184,
chronology, geography, internation- 265-8 , 282, 327; cited, 124, 21 3,
alism, localism 277-9,288,303,307,321,336,361
Greek language, 34-5, 48, 53, 114, incense, 208,236,374
119-22; logical quality of, 35, 121, individualism: rise of, 273-6, 278, 291,
298 295, 3 0 0, 3 0 9, 316-17; limits on,
Greeks, see population 274-5, 27g-80, 296, 301, 310-11,
griffin,259,281-2 322-3,344,34 8
Gyges, 68n, 272 Indo-Europeans, 25-6, 29, 3 1-2, 34,
58, 62, 120; modem overemphasis
on, 20, 70-3, 93n, 129, 130, 132,
Hacilar, IS, 19 136,182,192,245
Hebrews, 192, 196-7, 326; difference industry, 27, 359-61, 374; limits of,
from Greeks, 201, 285, 296, 301 , 339-40 , 349, 356, 364-5; see o.lso
3 15,344 artisans
Hecataeus, 110,219 internationalism, 115, 190, 290, 297,
Helladic. see bronze 30 7-8, 338 , 345, 3 60 , 364. 374-5;
Hellenization, Ill-IS, 145-6, 367, see also localism
370 ,374 Iolkos, 50,61
Hellespont, 51 Ionia, 112-15, 121-2, 198n, 209,
Heracles, 159, 261, 284, 28~1, 3 19, 216- 17,335,377
328 iron, 72, 79, 82, 87-8, 138, 332, '357,
herding, see nomads 363
Hermus River, 8 Italy, 50, 65, 88, 98, 116, 227-8,
Herodotus, 67, 68n, 211, 219; cited, 368-72 ,377
9,109,212 Ithaca, 97, 116, 169, 245, 370-1
heroes, 110, 168, 185,274,282,290-1, ivory, 37, 43, 45, 52, 117, 197; eighth-
304, 327, 352; cult of, 175, 3 19, century, 175, 177, 189, 191, 201,
328 205, 20 7-9,216,254,307
Hesiod, 268, 273, 275, 3 10, 3 13, 327,
336-7, 363; Eoiae, 169, 271, 303;
Theogony, 169, 270-2, 279, 290; Jericho, 14, 15
Works and Days, 269-70, 278,299, justice, 128-9, 268-70, 285-6, 320-2,
310-11,314,35 2-3,357 342-4; see also law
hexameter, 152, 162, 185, 264n, 273
Hittites, 32, 42, 51, 59, 86, 87, 196
Homer, 160, 163, ~80, 183-6, 299, Karphi, 81-3,128,248
327; as historical source, 46-7, 157- Kerameikos, 84-90, 92, 96-7,117,138,
60; see also Iliad, Odyssey 241,253,359
Homeric Hymns, 263n, 345n kingship: Oriental, 24, 42, 195, 19S:-
hoplite, 332-3 200, 326; Minoan, 37; Mycenaean,
horses, 31, 34, 140, lSI, 17g-8o, 234, 45-9, 55, 61, 125-6, 173; Greek, ~ee
239, 253, 259; aristocratic pride in, basileus
133,155,305 Korakou,32
houses, 14, 37, 79, 81, 107, 247-8, kore, 259
25 2 ,32 0 kouros, 190,256,259
Inde_. v

land tef\ure, 4 8-9, 130-1, 343, 357-9 merchants, see commerce

language, non-Greek, 29, 115, 119-20; Mersin, 15, 19, 23
see also Greek language, Indo-Eu- Mesopotamia, 8, 24, 3 2 , 33, 37, 4 2,
ropeans 160, 167-9, 195-202, 292, 324
law, 275, 342-3; see also ethics, metals, 27-8, 49-50, 52, 85, 87-8, 208,
justice 374; as sources of pottery, 23, 93 n,
leagues, 127,338 201, 236, 245; see also bronze, cop-
Lelantine war, 268, 347, 376 per, gold, iron, silver
Lemnos, 23, 119 Metopes on pottery, 91-2, 140
length of life, 137,312-13 Midas, 211
Lerna, 14,23,27,28,33 migrations, 11-12, 19-20, 30-4, 58,
Lesbos, 23, 113, 121,308 65; effects of, 16-18, 34-5, Ill,
Linear A and B, 34, 39, 47-9, 61, 114- 15, 196 ; within Aegean, 25-6,
119 80-1, 103-4; see also colonization
lions, 151, 162, 202, 259, 282-4 Miletus, 51, 60n, 113, 304, 366, 376
literature, 261-4, 275-7, 297; see also military, see phalanx, wars
Archilochus, epic, Hesiod, lyric, et Minoan civilization, 36-9; survivals
al. of,82-3, 108, 173, 182
localism,g, 26, 108, 121, 146, 171.,1.91., Minyan pottery, 33,104
297; in art, 57, 98, 119, 145, 239, monsters in art, 180, 197, 207, 208,
258; in politics, 127, 129, 319, 325, 280-2,284
33 8,345,375-6 mother-right, 136
lower classes, see peasants, slaves, music, 263
thetes Mycenae,42-3,48,55,58,6O-1,64-5,
luxury, 42-3, 79, 189-90 , 3 0 7, 344; 319
limits of, 359, 381 Mycenaean civilization, 39, 41, 43-58,
Lycia,29 109; survivals of, 43, 49, 81, 83, 93,
Lydia, 116,210-11,227,308,335,367 105,108,140,163-5,173,220,244;
lyric poetry, 262, 273-6, 280, 284, 353 collapse of, 56-64, 73-4, 79-80, 105,
126, 186
mythology, 16, 46, 157-63, 16g, 181,
Macedonia, 7, 10, 11, 33, 50, 65, 116 ,213, 279, 319; representations in
Maeander River, 8 art, 154, 158, 163, 235, 261, 289,
magic, 179, 183,279 298; connections with East, 165-7
Malthi, 32, 44, 61
man: Geometric view of, 153, 167-9,
180, 183-5, 254, ,256, 266-7; sev- Naucratis, 219, 227, 367"
enth-century view of, ,244, ,259-60,
Nea Makri, 14
214-6,280,290- 1,298
Neolithic age, 13-21
Mantiklos figurine, 170,256-7
marble, 8, 258 Nikandre (statue), 253, 257
Meander, 19, 140, 142, 185, 233, 234 nomads, 8, 31, 35, 80, 130, 210, 356
Mediterranean myth, 69-11, 251n, Nordic myth, see Indo-Europeans
265n
11editerranean Sea, 10, 11, 372
Megara, 123, 159,347,376 Odyssey, 158, 160, 184, 264-8; cited,
megaron,20n,28,56,72,81,173,248 180, ,213, Z78, 279, 3 03, 321, 336,
Melos, 14, 28, 170 352 ,354,361
mercenaries, 219, 307n, 308, 3 6 7 oikos, see family
vi Index
Olympia, 107, 133, 155, 206, 255, 257, poetry, see epic. lyric
283,308 Poliochni, 23, 28
Olympic games, 67, 375 polis, 124-5, 301, 308-9, 318-20,
Olympus, Mount, 9, 181, 277, 290, 3.24-5, 330, 335-4 8, 373, 376
306 ,330 political organization, see basileus,
Orchomenos, 23, 32, 43, 93 kingship, polis
Orient, 8-g, ll, IS; connections with polos, 177, .254
pre-Greek Aegean, 12, 15-16, 21, population, 18, 2g, 72; rise and fall of.
24, 28. 37. 51-3. 58; early civiliza- .27. 35, 7g-80. 18 5, 312-13, 356
tion in, 24, 42, 195-6, 224; influence potnia theron, 176-8,285
on Greek civilization, 70, 165-71, pottery, 8, 17, 73, 93n, 189; historical
177,182.192-4. 236-7,251,254-5, value of. 41, 99-103, 143-4, 225-6
280. 289, 293-4, 360, 382-3; con- STAGES: Neolithic, 14; Early Hel-
nections with Greek Aegean, 96, ladic, 23-7; Middle HeIIadic, 32-3,
"116-17. 191, 204-20; civilization in 35, 9 1• 93n, 140; Minoan. 37, 39.
first millennium, 142, 196-203 59; Mycenaean,45,50, 53-61,90-4;
Orientalizing pottery. see pottery sub-Mycenaean, 79, 85, 89-g2, 95;
Protogeometric, 72, 78, 89-105, 109.
112-14, 116, 139-40, 142-3, 205,
painting, 245-6; see also pottery 368; Geometric, 113-14, 138-46,
palaces, 28. 36-7, 39. 43, 45, 48, 56, 148-56, 160-2. 205, 232-3, 241,
84,IG5,128,18z,201 368; sub-Geometric, 237, 244; Ori-
Paleolithic age, 13, 18 entalizing, 217, 227-45. 368; Attic
Palestine, ll, 42, 59, 201 black-figure, 184, 239
Pamphylia,117 LOCAL TYPES IN GREEK ERA: Ar-
panhellenism, see internationalism gos. 97, 145, 226, 239; Attica, 89-
papyrus,52,91,170,208 90, 9 2-6. 98. 139-43, 150-6, 206,
Paros, 240, 273 229. 24 1-4.364.374; Boeotia, 240;
peasants, 9, 48. 131-2, 311-15, 334, Corinth. 156." 202, 217, 227-9,
343,353-4.357-8,362 23 2-40 , 24 2, 364, 370-1, 374;
Pelasgians, 119 Crete, 82-3, 98, 113, 156, 205.
Peloponnesus. 9, 12, 14, 63, 121. 206, 218. 240-1, 370-1; Cyclades, 96-7,
257 112-13, ISO. 156,236,240,370-1;
Perachora, 170. 189. 208, 249, 254 Cyprus, 95, 218; East Greek, 191,
perfmne, 52, 236 216, 226, 240, 371; Sparta, 238-9
Persian empire, 42, 199. 333 Prosymna. 61
Phaestus, 36 Protoattic and Protocorinthian pottery.
phalanx. 332-4. 337, 373 see pottery
Pheidon. 68. 347
Protodedalic style, see sculpture
philosophy. 272. 306
Phoenicia, 192-3. 196-7,202. 205-8. Protogeometric pottery. see pottery
324; trade with Greece, 166, 212- Psyche,2g1
IS; in West, 369, 375, 379 Pylos. 5. 43, 45. 48-9. 58, 61, 68
phratry, 125, 134, 3 16
Phrygil!. 87, 116, 170, 210-11, 335,
359,367 Rachmani,19
phyle, see tribe racialism. see Indo-Europeans, Medi-
pins, 79, 88, 144 terranean myth
piracy, 38, 45, 308, 362 regionalism. see localism
Index vii
religion: pre-Greek, 28-9, 48; in Dark Syracuse, 227-B, 372
ages, 82-3, 86, 128, 168, 172-83, Syria, 11, 42, 58-9, 196; trade with
200, 212, 267, 277-S; changes in Greece, 12, 38, 51, 117, 166, 209,
seventh century, 269-70, 278-92, 211, 213, 218-19; in first millen-
3 18-23, 338-9 nium, 87, 116, 324; art of, 142,
Rhodes, 12, 52, 60,113,121,170,208, 197,201-3,207,255,259
215,240,37 0

Tarentum, 50
Salamis, 84-5, 339 Tarsus, :n6, 227
Samos, 112, 178, 211, 216, 239, Tell Abu Hawam, 96,117
249-5°,254,362,364,376 temple, 173-5, 189,246,248-52,284,
Samothrace, 88, 212 3 20 ,33 1,339
Sappho, 275, 303, 304, 308; cited, Terpander, 263
306,3 1 6 textiles, 52, 208, 219, 374; as sources
Saronic Gulf, g, 20g of pottery, 93», 201, 236, 245
scarabs, see faience Thebes, 35, 60
scribes, 6, 48-g Thera, 170
sculpture: pre-Greek, 55-7; in Dark Thermi, 23, 27
ages, 144, 253; eighth-century, Theseus, 159, 284, 290, 319, 328
254-5; transitional, 256-7; Dedalic, Thessaly, 7, 9; pre-Greek, 13-15, 19,
230, 248, 257-80; see also figurines 25,33,50,61; Greek, 97, 116, 121,
seafaring, 7-8, 28, 114, 116, 214, 21~j, 206,314,328
354,362-3 Thetes, 131-2,311-12
Selinus, 227-8 tholes tombs, 46, 55, 82
serfs, 131,314 Thrace,lo
Sesklo, 13-15, 19 Thucydides, 8, 67, 123, 376; cited,
shepherding, see nomads 115, 124,222,227-9,340 ,376
ships on vases, 28, 114, 214, 233 time, Greek sense of, 163, 222, 299
Sicily, 50, 65, 227-8, 368-g, 371-2, Trryns, 32,44, 61, 97,239,284
374,377 towns, see asty
silver, 8, 27, 79, 88, ISO, 307, 363 trade, see commerce
slave~y, 46, 48, 52, 117, 129, 361, tradition, 16, 62, 109-11, 123, 225
37W; limits of, 131, 312, 358, 365 tribes, 125, 134-5, 316, 329; Dorian,
smiths, see artisans 63,135; Ionian, Ill, 135
Smyrna, 107, 112,227,252 tripods, 133, lSI, 155, 261, 283
society, 30; in Dark ages, 115, 130-8; Trojan war, 51, 66, 165
seventh-century, 274-8, 300-17, Troy,22-8,32,50- 1,86
3 20-3,34 2 tyrants, 310n, 328-30, 335, 343, 356n
Solon, 68, 275, 292, 303, 308, 311, Tyrtaeus, 308
322, 337, 346, 356, 362; cited, 111,
3 06 ,3 14,34 2 ,353
Sparta, 88, 117, 123, 182, 206, 208, upper classes, 82, 128-9, 132-3, 174;
238-9, 30 7, 3 19, 340; political and see also aristocracy
social structure of, 134, 314, 328, Urartu, 198,202,209-11 ,
346-7,372
sphinx, 235, 236, 244, 259, 281
spices, 35, 117,208 villages, 14, 27, 44, 56, 80-2, 125,247,
5tatues, see sculpture .252,356
viii Index
walls, see fortification Xenophanes, 181,268,307
wanax, see kingship, Mycenaean
war, 124, 132, 153, 319, 327, 331-4,
347,375-6 Zeus, 182, 205, 275, 279, 290, 320,
weapons, see arms 328, 330, 338; as ethical force,
women, 135-6,178,270,287,315-16 269-70 , 278, 285, 321-2, 327
writing, see alphabet, Linear A and B Zygouries, 32, 61
THE ()RIMS OF
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