XIX. End as of 9/20
To Notes as of 9/20/95
A. The sailing ships were basically large open hulls, decks optional, the masts held in place with ropes and the sails controlled from the deck (unlike the later sailing ships)
B. Cargo was carried in large jars called amphorae/<1A)MFORH=S>1 designed to fit into the hull and to be easily carried ashore
C. Paddles or sweeps were carried in case you needed to move without the wind.
D. Speaking of paddles, the galley probably has the longer pedigree, starting with the big dugout canoe you'll find all over the world (see Museum).
E. First you start using paddles and then for serious leverage you put each oar between tholepins on the gunnel and row that way--we have both systems depicted on the Thera frescoes
F. On either class of ship it's nice to have a deck protecting the cargo, and you, from sun and weather.
G. On the galleys, somebody brilliant, B3 says a Phoenician, had the idea of putting in benches on the deck and rowing from there.
1. I do think the Greeks used biremes, but if it had fifty oars they called it a pentekonter no matter how they were stacked.
2. The trireme you're going to hear so much about is more or less that one better.
H. You could always use sailing ships for war or galleys for valuable cargo:
1. Bronze age way ship joke
2. Raider/traders
3. The most successful archaic traders of them all were the Phocaeans in their penteconters.
XXI. Ancient Warfare at Sea also never quite lost touch with its roots...
A. It started out with long spears and that was always a factor.
B. Throwing and shooting things was another option
C. Jumping onto the other guy's ship also worked, if you could beat him there
D. From a sailing ship, you could drop something heavy through his hull
E. With a rowing ship, you could stick your prow into his side and sink him.
F. More technical stuff, later
XXII. Lawgivers, Tyrants, War: The problems of Community.
A. Between Homer, Hesiod, Archaeology and anthropology, we can do a pretty good job of reconstructing Greek society from the dark ages until they invent political science.
1. In Homer, and the Mycenean Age, it seems clear that you have a strong central king with control over other officials
a) Agamemnon's army
b) The big palaces and roads to smaller communities
2. In the wars of the invasion and the colonization or survivals that follow, you're still going to have a leader
a) But now he's leader not because he owns the palace and its staff, but because he helps the group survive.
b) Everybody will have to cooperate, and so the leader's control is not absolute
(1) People routinely argue with Agamemmnon's decisions
(2) Hesiod himself calls his local official "the gift-devouring basileus(king) and feels that his brother Perseus bribed him
(3) In Macedonian society (which the Greeks always said was stone-age), the king only became king if the army (every male) agreed
3. As the situation becomes less critical, the role of the king became less crucial, and other social groups began to assert themselves
a) Most particularly, family, which many Americans have a hard time understanding in the old world sense.
(1) You can't pick your relatives, but you can't move in with strangers in a crisis, either.
(2) A family is a basic unit of cooperation, and as such usually acquires more property and influence than any one individual.
(3) Whether it has a poltically-defined roll or not, family is ALWAYS going to play a big role in Ancient History (and in many other varieties of human events)
b) Now, the Greek word <1GENNA=IOC>1 comes from the word <1GENEA/>1, from which we get our word "geneology" and we translate <1GENNA=IOC>1 as "noble."
(1) Well-born is another translation, and from all that you should be getting the idea that what Bury & Meiggs and other refer to as "the nobles" are just members of the most powerful families. Little British children had no problem understanding that.
(2) Who in time became powerful enough to dispense with the king and run affairs as they saw fit, usually with the cooperation of various families allied against other families or combinations thereof.
(3) There's even a fundamental military reason for this--the sons of powerful families can buy the best weapons and the horses that at first the kings needed and that later they could use to assert their authority widely.
(4) You're always going to have an association, starting with the Greeks, of horses with noble families--keep your ears open for names beginning with "Hippo--"
(5) The Chalcidian word for their nobles was <1I[PPOBO/TAI>1, horse-feeders, and you will encounter this sort of thing again...
c) Now, when you've got this formally describes as the rule of the nobles, the best people (as they saw it) in society, we use the Greek term aristocracy to describe it, meaning, "the best rule."
(1) I cannot do a better job of showing you how an aristocracy works at its lowest level than by suggesting that anyone who hasn't seen it go watch the opening sequence of The Godfather.
(2) Here, however, unlike the Corleone family, the aristocratic families derived their power and influence from their control (whinny!) of large areas of land, and, incidentally, the people who worked upon them.
d) When family pretensions matter less than exerting control, much the same system was called, again by the Greeks, oligarchy, rule by the few. Oligarchy is ALWAYS going to be an option in the Greek political scene.
B. Meanwhile, conditions continued to change
1. Technology allowed individuals and even families to acquire wealth without necessarily acquiring land.
a) Somebody sure as hell was selling all those pots at a profit
b) Somebody else was smelting all that metal and quarrying all that marble...
c) And somebody was selling the wealthy families the luxuries they could buy with the surplus from their lands as farming techniques improved.
d) In other words, the middlemen/middle class/or bourgeoise!
2. It should also be noted that some aristocratic families also became involved in commerce.
C. And necessarily, so changed the social contract.
1. Even Hesiod gives us the rumbling over the horizon when he complains that the basileis won't give him justice with Perseus.
2. Don't let anybody writing long poems tell you that he isn't ambitious!
3. When enough people with enough money (itself an innovation of the Asian powers and damn useful) thought that they weren't being treated well by ruling aristocracy, they demanded the same thing the nobles allied with th e middle class got from King John: recognition that others had "inalienable rights."
4. One of the reasons they got it was that military developments were likewise changing the application of force in ancient Greece.
a) Cavalry could not really do very much against a disciplined force of armored infanty, and if the "fat people" couldn't afford to keep and feed a horse, they could afford (and pass down) a full set of armor.
b) Naval warfare was beginning to perk up as commerce with the colonies and overseas food markets increased. To row a galley, all one needed was a pair of hands.
5. A fundamental tenet: With monopoly of force comes a monopoly of power, the more wide-spread the ability to exert force, the more wide-spread political influence.
XXIII. Looking back, the Greeks could and did see the process as to how the other social classes overcame the aristocrats' head start.
A. A brief note: For most states this process is appallingly documented, for Athens it is fairly well documented, so you'll get more than the theory when we start Athenian history proper.
B. You need now to understand the process and the fact that it was widespread.
1. The original means of keeping the aristocracy away from the throats of the people had been making the King the judge of all appeals and hopefully a disinterested one.
2. Turning to a single individual to solve the problem of the aristocrats governing solely in their own interests was a natural response.
C. In most cases the first such individual in question was called a <1NOMOQE/THC>1/nomothetes, lawgiver, although you might do better to use the term "Law establisher" to understand it.interpreting sacred and secular law< p> 1. His job was to prevent the Aristocrats from interpreting sacred and secular law as they saw fit by creating a written law code to which all people would have access.
a) In most states, this reform occurred so long ago that the fellow involved is legendary.
b) You've got this or that famous brain claimed as the nomothetes of this or that city, writing codes of civil, criminal, and religious law.
(1) Just some names: Zaleucus of Locri in Italy, lived around 660.
(2) Draco in Athens in the 620's
(3) Charondas of Catana (6th)
2. But we don't have someone's written legal code until long after this period, and what laws we do tend to find out about have been either re-worked by later governments or reconstructed.
3. The final problem was, also, that having a written law code was no guarantee that those in power were going to pay any attention to it. And so the problem remained.
D. You may recall that the status quo of the Godfather ended when the various families started turning upon each other.
1. All it would take was for one scion of one family to offer to grant the lower classes additional power at the expense of the other families if they will support him against them
2. Provided that the lower classes were able to take advantage. A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants, 1963) has done most of the pioneering work here.
E. Enter...The tyrant
1. ALL that title means in Greek is that the individual running the tyranny got the power through unconstitutional/unprecedented means.
2. The other aristocrats, the people who've been feeding the poets at their large tables, didn't like them.
3. See Herod. 3.82, the Persians debating forms of government, for the lower classes backing one man to secure them their share of power.
4. Mind you, the lower classes usually ended up getting tired of and rid of them once the Aristocracy had been weakened, BUT
5. You will find tyrants throughout Greek history and you will almost always find large numbers of people supporting them. Every powerful Greek city except Sparta (at this period) seems to have had a tyrant or "boss" (!) at some time or other in its history.
F. The first such tyrant of whom we have a historical record is that of Arthagoras of Sicyon (near Corinth) around 650 and his descendants, among whom the famous Cleisthenes. For a great story and idea of how people loo ked at tyrants, see Herod. 6.126-130, the "wooing of Agariste."
G. Corinth went soon thereafter under the tyranny of the Cypselid dynasty, which started with Cypselus, and lasted until 585.
H. Polycrates ruled the prosperous island of Samos roughly (both ways) from 537 to 522.
1. He hit upon two ways to keep the people he ruled happy and obedient: A powerful navy that could also take trade goods instead of paying for them (Th. 1.13.6) and...
2. Large-scale public works, such as a huge and still amazing 900 water tunnel for the main city bored right through a mountain (H. 3.40-43, 60, and elsewhere.
3. One problem tyrants had is that they were only rulers "for life." The Persians got Polycrates, and killing the bastard was always one means of inducing political reform.
4. Statues of "tyrannicides" were set up in Athens as a warning.
5. Thu. 1.17 felt that tyrants didn't accomplish much because they were too busy staying in power, but left out people like Polycrates, Militiades, and the Syracusans who were very expansionist, and the active foreign pol icy of Athens' own Peisistratids. Go fig.
6. Just as supporting a tyrant often looked like a good solution when the government seemed in a "funk."
XXIV. End as of 9/25/95
A. Our historical picture of a tyrant is largely colored by the Athenian thinkers, who had had quite enough of them by Plato's time.
1. Plato came to believe that only Philosophers should be tyrants (The Republic), although actually trying THAT experiment soured him.
2. Both Herodotus and Thucydides considered (as we tend to) tyrannies as just a stage of political development.
a) See the envoy's speech in Herod. 5.92 when he's telling the Spartans that establishing tyrannies is like trying to reverse evolution.
b) And Th. 1.13.1 gives you much the same as he describes the end of the monarchies.
c) By Plato's time, particularly in the person of Dionysius I (405-367), they had watched what they called "ochlocracy," "Mob rule," divide a democracy, destroy concord, and result in the establishment of new tyrannies.
d) Considering that Dionysius had imprisoned Plato, bullied him, and finally had him sold as a slave, the bad press is somewhat understandable.
XXV. We can now shift to matters less theoretical, since the record itself allows it: The Rise of Sparta
A. One thing that struck you right off about the Spartans: Not only had they kept their King, but they had two of them, one from the Agid family, the other from the Eurypontid family.
1. Possibly the slightly greater prestige of the Agids came from their being the original ruling clan that allied with the Eurypontids later. See Her. 6.52-9 and Th. 5.63.2
a) Exercised traditional ritual obligations
b) Kept supreme command of the army
c) Lost all judicial authority but the determination of adoptions, who marries the heiress, the public roads: quasi-religious
2. The original advisory council of old men (the gerusia) seems to have been the means by which the Aristocracy got their share of the government--all the indications are there.
a) The kings were two of the 40 total members
b) Members held their office for life
c) Elected by the acclamation of the people assembled (rhetra--all males over thirty) but ONLY from the noble families
d) Had the (ask Newt Gingrich) great power to determine what the assembly itself got to vote upon
e) Also functioned as a high court of Sparta
3. The Rhetra got to decide
a) A disputed succession of the kings
b) War or peace (Th. 1.87.1-3)
c) Alliances
d) And elected the 5 ephors
4. Speaking of whom:
a) Probably the original ministers of the king
b) Swore to obey the king as the king swore to respect the people's rights
c) Anyone could be one--which probably explains why the Nobles and the people could agree upon the office
d) Could prosecute the king at any time, and were always ready to do so
e) Charged with maintaining the laws of Sparta
B. The Spartans knew perfectly well what made them different: their own nomothetes, Lycurgus, whom they claimed made his reforms in 885..
1. You can see Herod. 1.65 and 6.52-58 for his accounts of Lycurgus and the Spartan kingship as the Spartans told it to him and
2. Thu. 1.20 complaining how misinformed the Athenians are, and correcting what we find in Herodotus.
3. Plutarch, much later than these two, did a biography of Lycurgus (well worth reading), and even back then admitted that nothing was undisputed about early Sparta.
4. We have only a few fragments of the great Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, sort of a mixture of Tom Paine and John Philip Sousa, who put a lot of Spartan national beliefs into his chants, dating from around 640-20.
5. What you're going to get from me is the result of my usual policy of sticking as close to the ancient sources as archaeology and modern knowledge allow.
C. The Greeks called the Spartans "the men from Lacedaemon," which never really quit being a small area of farming land around the Eurotas river.
1. The area had a relatively low population once the old Mycenean city of Menelaius and Helen "of Troy" had gone down around 1200.
2. It's as good a theory as any that the reasons the Dorians were so attracted to the area was its large supply of iron, which Lycurgus called "the source of our strength" and which in the form of shishkabob spits (obleoi )functioned as what currency their was.
3. The pre-Dorians ended up as serfs, called helots, from the word <1AI(RE/W>1, "capture."
a) The helot, his family, and all he owned, changed hands with the land, although he couldn't be sold off of it.
b) His master, the Spartiate, had a minimum quota that had to be met, and got more of any surplus until he received the upper limit of half the crop.
c) The helot could be expected to accompany his master to the wars, and could be killed under almost any provocation, see Th. 4.80.3-5.
(1) In historical times, the council of Ephors every year voted a declaration of war against them so that they could be killed without incurring divine wrath. See Th. 4.80.3 for one horrible example.
(2) Part of a young Spartan's military training was his service in the krypteia, living in the countryside, spying on the helots, stealing from them, and killing any whom he considered rebellious.
4. Other Dorians, living in areas subject to the four-village polis "Sparta," were called perioikoi, "dwellers round," and had local autonomy.
D. The Spartans, at least, liked this system enough to expand it, at sword's point, rather than react to a growing population by colonizing in the 8th Century.
E. They chose, under king Theopompous, to expand into the territory of Messenia which was more fertile and had lots of potential new helots.
1. Unfortunately, the Messenians could not quite see what the advantages of the Spartan system were for THEM and fought tooth, nail, knee, and golf club, sometime around 730-10 in the First Messenian War.
a) When pressed, the Messenians had the steep and rocky slopes of Mt. Ithome to run to, which always made a very strong instant fortress and
b) The Messenians, even after defeat, kept a very strong sense of ethnic identity.
c) When Sparta's power finally broke, Messene as a city would arise in 370-69.
2. Just as the Spartans, in fact, thought they had the Messenians broken to harness it really got nasty in the 2nd Messenian War which broke out around 650.
a) In Aristomenes they had one of those charismatic leaders who quite literally fought (hence the saying?) to the "Last Ditch."(B3's "Battle of the Great Foss)
b) They never did catch him--he escaped to Rhodes and his legend (Leuctra, 371), survived as did the threat of another helot revolt--just for one example, the earthquake of 464.
c) The Spartans only won by
(1) Rousing their spirits with Tyrtaeus and
(2) Adopting the phalanx, again (don't confuse this with the improved version the Macedonians are going to use) which had made Argos such a power in the Peloponnese (had defeated them at Hysiae in 668)
(3) In fact, they used Tyrtaeus to keep in step
F. Sparta would never be the same after the shock of the 2nd Messenian War
1. Previously you've got poetry besides Tyrtaeus (who didn't come out of nowhere, after all) and some art, and some easy living, after all, they had someone else to do the work.
2. The Spartans always claimed that their reforms went back further, but everybody else's lawgivers date to the late 6th, so their great social experiment came at ano opportune time.
a) Nobody likes to admit that they were so nearly beaten in warfare that they had to completely alter their form of government.
b) Even their legends admit that Lycurgus had to force his changes at spear point.
c) Also worth noting, "partheniai" aside, that Sparta's one episode of emigration comes at the time when they would have needed to make these changes
d) ALSO worth noting that practices much the same as these were going on in the isolated and insular "vintage" Dorian states of Crete, see H. 1.65, as people knew
3. You end up with a society so radically structured and militarily successful that Western Culture has never quite lost a hankering for social experimentation.
G. The Literally gory details: Board cradle to early grave
1. Society with one goal--keep down the helots, which was sort of a vicious circle. They needed the helots so they could be warriors, they needed to be warriors because they feared the helots.
XXVI. End as of 9/27/95