Archaic Greece

The Age of New Reckonings

Brian M. Lavelle

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119369943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'antica Grecia

An introductory guide to the Archaic period in ancient Greece—the people, their society, and their culture. Excerpts from literary and other texts give voice to the interests, concerns, and emotions of the Archaic Greeks themselves.

This book provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the society and culture of the Archaic period in the Greek world from c. 750 to c. 480 BCE. It focuses on the persistent and often-conflicting themes, topics, and controversies of the Archaic Age (e.g., elite and non-elite, religion and science, tradition and humanism). It seeks to lead the reader to a broader and deeper understanding of the period by placing themes and topics in a mutually supportive contextual network that will underscore their significance.

Archaic Greece: The Age of New Reckonings begins with a chapter on how sources for the period are evaluated and deployed, and goes on to offer a concise yet thorough historical overview of the Archaic period. Subsequent chapters cover polis and politics; war and violence; religion; science; philosophy; art; literature; festivals and games; social forces, values, and behaviors; and gender and sex.

The book:

• Offers a novel approach to a very significant period that foregrounds literary evidence and the words voiced by Archaic Greeks, combining scholarship with readability;
• Conceptualizes Archaic Greek culture and society by focusing substantially on topics that supplement the history of the period;
• Combines diverse elements of society and culture, including religion, art, literature, games and festivals, gender, sexuality, and politics in order to develop a unique picture of Greece during the Archaic period;
• Includes a summarizing essay that draws chapters together, emphasizing the implications of their topics and themes.

Archaic Greece: The Age of New Reckonings should appeal to college-level instructors as a book to assign to students enrolled in courses involving Archaic Greece and to others interested in this intriguing and pivotal period in ancient Greece.

1
Sources for the Archaic Period

1.1 Introduction

The Archaic period (c. 750–480 BCE) is such an important one in the study of ancient Greece, it is unfortunate that there are no contemporary accounts available to tell us accurately and in detail what we would like to know about it. “History,” “archaeology,” and “anthropology,” as we know them today, were quite beyond the conceptual grasp of Archaic Greeks. These were certainly interested in the past, who their ancestors were and what they did; they were engaged in their present and were quite conscious of the future. But they did not comprehend the need for carefully observing, evaluating, and then recording past events, details of their present conditions, or distinctive features of their culture for posterity as historians, social scientists, and others do today. As a consequence, we have relatively little solid information about the Archaic period.

The nature of the evidence available, which derives primarily from material remains and ancient literary sources, only adds to the difficulty of knowing about it. While such remains sometimes offer invaluable information, depending upon their condition, they can also be almost valueless. Literary sources that pertain to Archaic Greece are diverse in nature and content, often very problematic in themselves, and frequently date much later than the period. These sources range from the layered epics of Homer and the nuanced or allusive verses of Archaic lyric poets to the fifth‐century BCE complexities of Herodotos’ Histories and the sometimes baffling bricolage of Plutarch. Archaic historians must make sense of these sources, arranging disparate, difficult information into a coherency. What follows is a brief survey of the types of sources available for the Archaic period, what they provide, some of the problems attending them, and how they may be interpreted.

1.2 Archaeology and the Material Remains

Material remains provide the most credible evidence for a study of the Archaic period. These are usually discovered above ground, unearthed by excavation, or drawn up from the sea. If such remains are recoverable, in reasonable condition and in datable contexts, they can provide very useful, first‐hand information. They might tell us, for example, where and how Archaic Greeks actually lived, including sometimes precisely what they ate and drank; possibly whom or what and how they worshipped; and perhaps even intimate details of their personal lives among other things. Archaeology, the study which incorporates the recovery, description, cataloguing, and explication of material remains, has yielded indispensable information about Archaic Greece.

1.2.1 Pottery

The most abundant material remains for the Archaic period are pieces of pottery, ranging from whole objects to broken bits called shards. These may be found in many different contexts, for example, strewn over habitation sites, in concentrated dumps of broken pots, or mostly or even completely intact in such places as burials. Pottery can provide evidence about levels of technology and proficiency in craftsmanship as well as of artistic expression attained by potters and pottery‐painters in their time. Vase paintings also tell us about what painters and their patrons were interested in, how they thought about those interests, and how they portrayed their conceptions. Archaic Greek painters frequently depict humans in vase paintings – sometimes in mythical scenes, sometimes in mundane ones. The distribution of Archaic Greek pottery from Spain to Syria and from southern Russia to North Africa attests to its attractiveness and desirability as a trade commodity. Black‐Figure and Red‐Figure pottery, produced primarily in Athens in the sixth century BCE, was so prized by the Etruscans, the ancient people who dwelt in modern‐day Tuscany north of Rome, that they placed Attic painted pottery in tombs with their dead, presumably for the deceased to enjoy in the afterlife.

Perhaps the best example of Greek pottery as material evidence for the early Archaic period is the “Cup of Nestor” (Figure 1.1). It tells us about Greek colonials in their settlement in Italy around the mid‐eighth century BCE (Box 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The “Cup of Nestor.” Late Geometric kotyle, c. 750–740 BCE.

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Box 1.1 The “Cup of Nestor”

Nestor’s I am, the easy‐to‐drink‐from wine‐cup:

whoever drinks from this cup will straightway

be taken over by a longing for beautifully crowned Aphrodite.¹

The kotyle (“small, two‐handled cup”) was discovered at Pithekoussai on Ischia, an island lying just off the north coast of the Bay of Naples. Dated c. 750–740 BCE, the cup was found in the grave of a young boy, possibly the child of Greek parents dwelling there. The crudely made cup is by no means outstanding among other Greek pottery of its period, but its context and inscription, which suggest that it had special meaning to the child or his kin, are of considerable significance.

The inscription scratched into its surface in Greek letters announces that it is to be linked to a primary character in Homer’s Iliad, the old warrior‐mentor Nestor who counsels the younger Achaian kings at Troy. Nestor himself possessed a far more impressive drinking vessel (Iliad 11.632–637) than this crude little earthen cup. The inscription playfully departs from the epic lines it seems to reference by declaring that whoever drinks from it will become sexually aroused immediately.

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How do historians and archaeologists go about interpreting such a modest but intriguing piece of pottery? First, before moving and inspecting it more closely, they consider its context, both general and specific. Where in the burial is the object in relation to the boy’s body? What could that spatial relationship mean? What else was in the grave? How is it to be dated? What might all of the things in the grave taken together and then separately tell us about the boy, his kin, and the burial? In such cases, archaeologists carefully measure and photograph the grave and its contents.

Then they thoroughly examine the individual piece. What is the cup’s size, shape, material, color, decoration? How did it function exactly? Was it produced locally or imported? Are there any comparable pieces from elsewhere? The “Cup of Nestor” resembles pottery made on the island of Rhodes for the same period and, if produced on Rhodes, was obviously shipped to Ischia.

Ischia is not a large island and was not settled by Greeks for its fertility. Rather, valuable mineral deposits on the adjacent mainland controlled by the indigenous Italians there seem to have attracted the settlers. Obviously some of the Greeks at Pithekoussai, perhaps including the boy’s family, were traders, established on Ischia exchanging goods for the metal ore of the mainland. A Rhodian cup implies that the Ischians traded with other Greeks as well as with the indigenous Italians around the Bay of Naples. Or perhaps the boy’s kin were smiths who worked the Italian ore. Mounds of metal waste on Ischia suggest the presence of metal workers there. There were many such Greek colonies throughout the Mediterranean in the eighth century BCE functioning as transit trade locales. Pithekoussai tells us more about the nature of these.

The “Cup’s” light‐hearted inscription, which may have been scratched in on the island, implies that the Greeks inhabiting the island could read and perhaps write. They seem to have appreciated humor. The “Cup’s” reference to Nestor bespeaks their familiarity with Homer’s Iliad or, at least, the myth which gave rise to the Homeric passage about Nestor’s drinking vessel. The “Cup” has in fact been used by some scholars to date the Iliad. While the inscription represents an attempt by an individual or group to establish a link to the old Trojan War hero, it seems to parody the Homeric passage irreverently drawing attention to drinking, sex, and music, the essential in...