The Greeks History, Culture, and Society Ian Morris Barry B. Powell Second Edition ISBN 10: 1-292-02238-8 ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02238-3 Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex CM20 2JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world Visit us on the World Wide Web at: www.pearsoned.co.uk © Pearson Education Limited 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The use of any trademark in this text does not vest in the author or publisher any trademark ownership rights in such trademarks, nor does the use of such trademarks imply any affi liation with or endorsement of this book by such owners. ISBN 10: 1-292-02238-8 ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02238-3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States of America 11122223134792580368015739755531579 P E A R S O N C U S T O M L I B R AR Y Table of Contents A Small, Far-Off Land Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 1 Country and People Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 13 The Greeks at Home Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 31 The Greeks Before History, 12,000-1200 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 45 The Dark Age, 1200-800 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 77 Homer Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 99 Religion and Myth Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 125 Ancient Greece, 800-480 B.C.: Economy, Society, Politics Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 157 The Archaic Cultural Revolution, 700-480 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 183 A Tale of Two Archaic Cities: Sparta and Athens, 700-480 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 209 Persia and the Greeks, 550-490 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 237 The Great War, 480-479 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 265 Democracy and Empire; Athens and Syracuse, 479-431 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 285 Art and Thought in the Fifth Century B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 305 I 333344445555555248924680266667991917331715791 Fifth-Century Drama Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 329 The Peloponnesian War and Its Aftermath, 431-399 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 349 The Greeks between Persia and Carthage, 399-360 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 381 Greek Culture in the Fourth Century B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 399 The Warlords of Macedon I: Philip II and Alexander the King Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 421 The Warlords of Macedon II: Alexander the God Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 447 The Greek Kingdoms in the Hellenistic Century, 323-220 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 463 The Greek Poleis in the Hellenistic Century, 323-220 B.C Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 483 Hellenistic Culture, 323-30 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 501 The Coming of Rome, 220-30 B.C. Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 527 Conclusion Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 561 Map: Greece, The Aegean Sea, and Western Asia Minor Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 565 Map: The Ancient Mediterranean Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 567 Pronunciation Guide Ian Morris/Barry B. Powell 569 Index 571 II A Small, Far-Off Land Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great! LORDBYRON Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18), canto 2, stanza 73 Byron was just twenty-five when he wrote Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.He was handsome and dashing, a wealthy lord in the most powerful nation on earth, and already one of England’s most famous poets. The world was at his feet. Yet within a decade, he turned his back on it all. He sailed to Greece to join its uprising against the mighty Turkish OTTOMANEMPIRE(Map 1). Lord Byron died in 1824, hundreds of miles from home and family, in a terrible siege at a place called MISSOLONGHI in central Greece (Map 3). Why did Byron feel so strongly about Greece that he gave his life for its freedom? Why did thousands of others flock to join him? Why, in our own time, do millions travel to see the ruins that dot Greece’s landscape? And why do people spend so much time studying Greek history, culture, and society? Inthis book, we try to answer these questions. HISTORICAL SKETCH In the half-millennium 700 to 200 B.C.,1 the Greeks engaged in a remarkable experiment. They built societies that were communities of equal citizens who systematically applied their reason to explaining the world. In the process, they created masterpieces of literature 1In place of the traditional B.C.(“before Christ”) and A.D.(Latin “anno domini,”in the year of the lord), one sometimes finds B.C.E.(“before the common era”) and C.E.(“common era”). Because the systems are conventional (Jesus was probably born in 7 B.C.), we have preferred the traditional usage. From Chapter 1 of The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society, Second Edition. Ian Morris, Barry B.Powell. Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. A Small, Far-Off Land C ITALY Black Sea aspi a n Se a GREECE Mediterranean Sea SYRIA LIBYA EGYPT OTTOMAN EMPIRE ARABIA R e d S e a ell w o P B. y r r a B MAP 1 The Ottoman Empire. Between A.D.1300 and 1919, the Ottoman Turkish Empire controlled the eastern and southern territories of the old Roman Empire. Though hated by some, the Ottomans were gifted administrators under whose sway Islamic culture produced some of its finest achievements. and art. Democracy, philosophy, history writing, and drama began in ancient Greece, and the Greeks developed science, mathematics, and representational art in previously unimagined directions. Two hundred years ago, Byron died for an idea, a vision of the ancient Greek spirit. His vision was idealized; he and his contemporaries saw in Greek art and literature timeless truths that laid bare the meaning of life. In 1820, on the eve of the Greek uprising against the Turks, his fellow poet John Keats (1795–1821) thought he had grasped the world’s ultimate truths by simply gazing at painted Greek vases (Figure 1). O Attic° shape! Fair attitude! With brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!° When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820), stanza 5 °Attic:From Attica, the countryside around Athens. °Cold Pastoral: a scene set in a countryside that shall never change (hence cold, not living) 2 A Small, Far-Off Land FIGURE 1 No single Greek vase lay behind Keats’s poem; he drew inspiration from seeing hundreds ofpots in English museums before his death in Rome at the age of justtwenty-six. This pot is the kindhe had in mind, an Athenian red-figured (because the figures arered colored) amphora (“two-handled” vase), ca. 450 B.C. Scala, Art Resource, NY The poet saw deeply, but thanks to 200 years of scholarship, we now see more deeply still. For Byron and Keats, ancient Greece was a simple and pure world of love and truth. Today we know much more about the Greeks. Theirs was an astonishing culture, but no utopia. The achievements of some Greeks rested on the backbreaking labor of others, often slaves from overseas. Their democracies excluded women. They fought endless wars and committed terrible acts of violence. Yet far from making us turn from the Greeks in revulsion, these discoveries make them more fascinating still. The Greeks lived in a harsh and real world, where they struggled with the same basic problems about freedom, equality, and justice that we face. Their difficulties show us that there are no simple answers. Let us take the story back five thousand years, to a time when great Bronze Agecivi- lizations (see Chronological Chart preceding this chapter for this and other historical terms) had arisen in Mesopotamia(“the land between the rivers,” what is now Iraq) and Egypt. The Mesopotamian kings claimed that they had special relationships with the gods and that unless they interceded, the gods would not smile on humans. The kings of Egypt went further, claiming that they themselves were gods. By 2000 B.C., somewhat similar 3 A Small, Far-Off Land s ocieties formed in Greece. Their palaces flourished until 1200 B.C., but then were burned along with cities all over the east Mediterranean. We still do not know why this destruction occurred, but its consequences were momentous. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, the old order of godlike kings revived, but in Greece that way of doing things was over (if it had ever existed). From about 1200 until 800 B.C., writing disappeared from Greece; the country’s population shrank and was isolated from the wider world. The present book focuses on the Greek societies that emerged from this Dark Agein the eighth century B.C., creating a new Greek world that had little in common with the Bronze Age. This new world had several radical features. First, most Greeks now organized themselves in small city-states called poleis(this is the plural form; the singular is polis), not in kingdoms. Second, as population grew in the eighth century, some Greeks sailed off and established new communities around the shores of the MEDITERRANEAN (see Map 2). Third, Greeks came to see their city-states as communities of equal, free males, the basis for and origin of the concept of citizenship. Fourth, they refused to believe that the gods gave any individual or narrow elite a divine right to rule. These developments presented the Greeks with problems and opportunities absent in other ancient societies. If the gods had not put sacred kings on earth to tell mortals what to do, just what was the relationship between mortals and the divine? Most Greeks thought that the gods were powerful and wise, that the world was full of spirits and ghosts, and that a few oracles and priests could give access to the supernatural. This access was open to challenge, however, and oracles and priests could not use it to dominate others. How, then, could mortals really know what was true? ATLANTIC OCEAN UKRAINE GAUL S C Y THIANS Tanais Olbia C E L T S IL L of PHSiellrPHacIeruAmsBleeIEsrNoRSscIaogApuinuNtmumSBT AaArLrlaoEcnoARa eMhRoIdCe eEISmLOdpAColbrNNOiiiaaiDcReaSS teIaCeAC r a S AErAaTrllRaReUlNsSCASDiNaSeI ICaNNIpIRoITaLAolxMiYmsoAEAsAeldGLeriaNatYSiAcRi rh TiGSesTheTgCRauriaraurAroigmaitEusAorEnC**piuYpoImiAClRdClGMoa oIomnrRAreciinatEynhurtEohasnCeAESAT biC AegHd h geetSRahOreuelaeAacmdanineCdsBTsiEsEcoyAuepmzsbhaiySnMedastCiuiorulydsIsemziOtsiuGcTNsBueoIsPirAuHdSlmiRiuMnHmaYoSeIpAGriNedacSIOceAIleRAka C ISLCIACATemIPAaTPi rsarAssauuADpssOReCzCMIuOsALE CNHIISA Cirta Zama a MELSIyTrAacuse Sparta RHODESCYPPhRasUelSis CIA Aleppo ell A F R I C A nean S e a CRCEyTrEene Gortyn Paphos PHOENI SamDaarmiaascus w 500 MILES Taucheira PALESTINE Jerusalem B. Po 500 KILOMETERS LBIaBrcaYA NEaGucrYatisPTTanis Gaza Dead Sea y Greek colonies rr Memphis a B MAP 2 Greek colonies. 4 A Small, Far-Off Land These conditions created a fundamental conflict that we call the Greek problem, a set of conditions with which Greek thinkers struggled. Without God or gods to rule and to reveal the truth, many Greeks concluded that human reason was the only guide to truth. If no king had special access to truth, then all males must be roughly equally well qualified to discuss it, and the only source of good decisions must be the whole male community. (All Greek states made firm divisions between males and females: When Greeks used expressions like “everyone,” “the community,” or “the people,” they normally meant all freeborn adult males.) By 500 B.C., the theory of equal qualification led to the world’s first democracies (democracy comes from the Greek word dêmokratia [de¯¯-mo-kra-te¯¯-a], meaning “power of the people”), in which all male citizens debated and voted on the major issues. Other Greeks drew different conclusions from the Greek problem. Some thought that elites should rule; the richest men, with the most respected family connections, could betrained in the skillful exercise of reason on behalf of the whole community. The conflict between mass and elite—democracy and experts—was a driving force in Greek history and one that remains familiar today. What is the place of intellectuals in a democracy? How should wealth be distributed? What do equality and freedom mean? But while these philosophical debates raged, the Greeks still had to live in the real world. Like us, they had a growing population and conflicting demands on their resources. Leading men in every poliscompeted for power and wealth, and the rich as a group were often at loggerheads with the poor. Neighboring poleisfought for land and other resources, sometimes polarizing into great power blocs. The Greeks as a whole fought with powers such as Persia, a mighty empire in western Asia, and Carthage, a powerful trading city in what is now Tunisia. Different poleis found different solutions to the problem of working out a civil society independent of rule by gods and their agents, but always did so against the material realities of the southern Balkan Peninsula. Sparta developed a militaristic society, suppressing debate in the interests of security. Athens turned toward democracy and pluralism, glorying in open expression. Syracuse in Sicily alternated between Athenian-style creativity and rule by brutal tyrants. These diverse responses to the Greek problem produced two results. First, there was constant intercity warfare, as different poleis promoted their own interests and their own visions of the good society. In the fifth century B.C., it looked as if Athens might defeat all comers, unite Greece, create a nation-state, and become its capital city. But after Sparta defeated Athens in 404 B.C., the wars only intensified, becoming increasingly expensive and destructive. The second consequence of living with the Greek problem was more positive. Thinkers needed to explain not only how the universe worked independent of divine whim, but also why there was such variety in it. As early as the sixth century B.C., Greek intellectuals in Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey; see map on the inside front cover) developed rational models of the mechanics of the cosmos, accepting that the gods created the universe but assuming that the physical world continued to work because natural forces acted on each other. Their questions initiated Greek science and philosophy. In the fourth century B.C., they led to the epoch-making work of Plato and Aristotle, and in the third century B.C., to the mathematical discoveries of the Sicilian engineer Archimedes (ar-ki-me¯¯d-e¯¯z). Other thinkers extended logical, rational analysis, asking why Greek poleis were so different from each other and why Greece as a whole was so different from the Persian Empire and from other foreign peoples. This questioning gave us the writings of 5