A Companion to Ancient Greek Government

Hans Beck, Hans Beck

• Editore: Wiley-Blackwell
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118303177
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: Greek Ancient History

This comprehensive volume details the variety of constitutions and types of governing bodies in the ancient Greek world.

• A collection of original scholarship on ancient Greek governing structures and institutions
• Explores the multiple manifestations of state action throughout the Greek world
• Discusses the evolution of government from the Archaic Age to the Hellenistic period, ancient typologies of government, its various branches, principles and procedures and realms of governance
• Creates a unique synthesis on the spatial and memorial connotations of government by combining the latest institutional research with more recent trends in cultural scholarship

Part I

Greek Government in History

Chapter 1

The Rise of State Action in the Archaic Age

Jonathan M. Hall

In spite of criticisms that the study of early Greece has been disproportionately focused on the polis, or city-state (S.P. Morris 1997: 64; Vlassopoulos 2009: 12–13), it nevertheless remains the case that this institution provides virtually all of our knowledge about the nature and workings of governance in Greece in the period down to the Persian War of 480–479 bce. This is largely a consequence of the evidence at our disposal. While archaeological evidence sheds considerable light on social, cultural, and economic developments, it is less well equipped to answer questions concerning political practices. This leaves us with literary evidence, which—at least for the Archaic period—is almost obsessively focused on the polis. Indeed, in Archaic Greek poetry, there is a very discernible element of prejudice against those who do not live in polis communities (e.g., Sappho fr. 57 Lobel-Page; Alkaios fr. 130B Lobel-Page; Theognis 53–60).

Ever since Victor Ehrenberg's seminal article on the rise of the polis (Ehrenberg 1937), it has been customary to date the origins of political communities back to the eighth century bce. Certainly, this is a time when there are indications of settlement nucleation, when the first overseas communities were established in South Italy and Sicily, and when a number of sanctuaries witness a marked increase in—if not the earliest attestation of—votive dedications. It is also the eighth century that sees the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet and the re-emergence of artistic skills and technologies that had been lost when the Mycenaean palaces had collapsed around 1200 bce, prompting some to describe the period as a “renaissance” (Hägg 1983). There are, however, some grounds for suspecting that the significance of the eighth century may have been slightly overestimated. In authors of the Classical period, the term polis simultaneously designates: (i) an urban center, in which administrative and judicial functions are housed; (ii) the territory controlled by that urban center; and (iii) the political community that resides in both the urban center and its hinterland. To the extent that the first definition characterizes the polis in its urban aspect while the second and third cast it in terms of a territorial state and a political state respectively, the standard translation of “city-state” is not as erroneous as has sometimes been suggested (Hansen 2006c: 62–65). It is, however, clear that the urban and civic aspects of the polis did not develop concurrently and that the process was more gradual than talk of a “renaissance” might suggest.

True urbanization in the monumental sense is barely attested before the sixth century on the Greek mainland (I. Morris 1991: 40). Nevertheless, if by “urban center” we mean foci of settlement, more densely settled than the surrounding countryside and serving as centers for administration and economic exchange, then we can trace the urban aspect of the polis back to the Dark Age of the eleventh, tenth and ninth centuries. Since the earliest poleis emerged in areas that had been under the control of the Mycenaean palaces (Snodgrass 1980: 44), it is a reasonable inference that their roots should be seen in the shattered fragments of the centralized bureaucracies of the Late Bronze Age. Some settlements, such as Knossos on Crete or Haliartos in Boiotia, seem to have expanded gradually from a single nucleus, inhabited throughout much of the Early Iron Age; others—including Athens, Argos, and Korinth—appear to have been the result of a physical fusion of pre-existing villages, probably in the course of the eighth century (Hall 2007: 74–75). Sparta, by contrast, was still settled “in villages” (kata k

mas) in Thucydides' day (1.10.2).

The exclusively urban connotation of the term polis is reflected in our earliest sources. In the Odyssey (8.555), the Phaiakian king Alkinoos asks Odysseus to name his gaia (“land” or “region”), his d

mos (probably “territory” to judge from the term's usage in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets), and his polis, thus zooming in with increasing specificity on his guest's origins. Similarly, when Tyrtaios (fr. 10W) imagines a warrior who surrenders as having to “abandon his polis and rich fields,” the term is clearly meant in a physical rather than sociopolitical sense. It is not by accident that when self-conscious political communities did emerge, they identified themselves as residents of the urban center, whether or not they actually lived there: so, Argeioi (Argives) is an adjectival form derived from the toponym Argos; Korinthioi (Korinthians) from Korinthos; Mil

sioi (Milesians) from Mil

tos; and so on. Contrary to what is sometimes stated, attachment to place seems to have been a primary component of civic self-identification.

In assessing the state-like aspect of the polis, some working definition of the state is in order, not least because it has been argued that the Greek polis was essentially a stateless society (Berent 1996). While it is true that Thomas Hobbes' definition of the state as an “abstract public power above both ruler and ruled” is a conception that is rarely expressed in ancient writings, the idea is not entirely absent: Thucydides (8.72.1) seems to come close when he describes a deputation, sent to Samos after the oligarchic coup of 411 bce with the aim of reassuring the Athenian navy that “the oligarchy had not been established to the detriment of the polis and its citizens” (Hansen 2006c: 57). Furthermore, while recourse to self-help for crimes such as adultery, nocturnal burglary or treason meant that the Greek polis did not exercise an absolute monopoly of legitimate violence (i.e., Max Weber's definition of the state), there are, at least by the Classical period, attestations of public prisons and the formal administration of capital punishment. As Mogens Hansen (2002) points out, the concept of the “stateless society” was not originally formulated in contradistinction to definitions of the Early Modern state, but in contrast to what Myer Fortes and Edward Evans-Pritchard (1940) termed “primitive states,” as represented by the Zulu or the Bayankole of Africa. What distinguished, for them, the primitive state from the stateless society was a centralized authority with administrative and judicial institutions, along with cleavages of wealth, privilege, and status, which corresponded to the distribution of power and authority. Fortunately, these are criteria that can be traced in our evidence.

It would, of course, be methodologically reckless to assume automatically that there was no diversity of practices between different regions of Greece or that what we read in the poetry of Homer or Hesiod was necessarily an accurate reflection of how all Greek states were governed (Whitley 1991). On the basis of material cultural assemblages, Ian Morris (1998a) has identified four cultural areas—central Greece; northern Greece; western Greece; and Crete—which persisted from the eleventh century through to the sixth. While warning that these regions are neither wholly homogeneous nor always clearly bounded, Morris nevertheless draws attention to differences between them in terms of pottery decoration, metal use, and architecture and it is equally possible that the regions were also differentiated in terms of institutional practices, even if these are less visible in the material record. At the same time, however, it is important not to exaggerate the isolation or introspection of Greek communities, especially from the ninth century onwards: goods, information, ideas, and practices were freely exchanged between neighboring regions (Snodgrass 1986). Furthermore, the “Panhellenic” tenor of Homeric poetry in particular suggests that the society portrayed in the epics was broadly recognizable, even if it was not an exact reflection of any one single political community (Raaflaub 1998b).

In Hesiod's Works and Days (36–41), a poem normally assigned to the beginning of the seventh century, the poet complains about the “bribe-devouring basileis,” who have adjudicated against him in a land dispute with his brother. Derived from the word pa-si-re-u (or qa-si-re-u), attested in the Linear B tablets, the basileus was a fairly low-ranking official in the Mycenaean palatial administration. By the Classical period, the term could be used in two senses. On the one hand, it was the regular Greek word for a monarch, used especially in association with rulers of non-Greek peoples. On the other, it designated a magistrate who was elected or appointed, normally on an annual basis: so, for example, the arch

n basileus at Athens was the second-highest ranking official of the board of nine archons, charged with administering “all the traditional sacrifices” ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.1); a basileus is named in association with a d

markhos (“leader of the people”) in a decree from Chios, dated to around 575–550 bce (M&L 8/Fornara 19); and Melantas, basileus of Argos, presided over a diplomatic treaty between Argos and the Cretan communities of Knossos and Tylissos in the mid-fifth century (M&L 42/Fornara 89). In Hesiod, however, the appearance of the term in the plural suggests something rather different. Similarly, in the Theogony (80–84), Hesiod describes how the Muses honor “basileis fostered by Zeus”—again, the term is employed in the plural.

Some clues as to the nature of the Hesiodic basileis are provided by the Homeric epics, now increasingly thought to have been composed in the early seventh century (van Wees 1994; M.L.West 1995; Crielaard 1995). As in Hesiod, governance appears to be in the hands of a plurality of basileis: in the Odyssey (1.394–395), Antinoos tells Penelope that there are “many other basileis of the Achaians in sea-girt Ithaka, both young and old,” while Alkinoos notes that he is one of 13 basileis who hold sway over the Phaiakians (8.390–391). Furthermore, the term seems to express relative, rather than absolute, authority: in the Iliad (9.69), Nestor describes Agamemnon as “the most basileus” (basileutatos) of the Achaians, while Agamemnon describes himself as “more of a basileus” (basileuteros) than Achilles (Il. 9.160). Nor is it entirely guaranteed that the authority of a basileus can be inherited: Odysseus is recognized as a basileus of Ithaka even though his father, Laertes, is still alive and there is no certainty that his son, Telemachos, will succeed him if news of his demise proves to be well founded. The impression one gains is that the basileis of Homer and Hesiod are more akin to what anthropologists term “big-men” or “chieftains” than sovereign rulers (for a recent discussion of these terms: Yoffee 2005). Their authority is “achieved” rather than “ascribed,” earned on the basis of charisma and the ability to persuade, and manifested through the demonstration of military prowess and conspicuous generosity. There are no clear indications for the sort of stratified society that the model of the “primitive state” presupposes, just a world of small communities where there are leaders and followers.

That picture seems to be corroborated by the archaeological record. Dark Age settlements are typically small and display little in the way of status differentiation, save for the construction of a single, larger dwelling. The best-known example is the tenth-century Toumba building at Lefkandi on Euboia—if it is a dwelling and not a post-mortem place of worship as its original excavators believed (Popham et al. 1993)—but other examples have been identified at Thermon in Aitolia, Nichoria in Messenia, and Koukounaries on Paros (Whitley 1991; Thomas and Conant 1999: 32–59; Morris 2000: 225–228). Even by the eighth century, the situation is not vastly different. The 16 wealthy burials, found by the West Gate in Eretria on Euboia and dated to c.720–680 bce (Bérard 1970), are but a fraction of the estimated population of between 1,000 and 2,000 (I. Morris 1991; Vink 1997) and are more reasonably attributed to a family than to a ruling class. Similarly, at Argos there is no evidence for aristocratic cemeteries. The much discussed “Warrior Grave” (T45), dated to the late eighth century and containing, among other grave goods, a bronze cuirass and helmet, is—contrary to what is sometimes stated—without parallel. A second bronze helmet, probably manufactured by the same workshop, is found in another grave but this is located more than a kilometer away from T45, while a third grave, containing another helmet and two spearheads, is found near the second grave but appears to be about a generation earlier. Other burials with weapons are mostly isolated occurrences and account for a tiny proportion of all the eighth-century graves excavated at Argos (Hall 2007: 128).

Two developments, both dated to the seventh century, may allow us to track the emergence of the state in ancient Greece. The first is a shift towards authority based on ascribed status, where emphasis is given to the office itself rather than the person who holds it. One indication for this shift from achieved to ascribed status may be found in the appearance of annually rotating, named magistracies in place of the more generic term basileus, or in the reemployment of this latter term in a more specific and constitutionally defined sense. In a law dating to the second half of the seventh century, displayed in the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios at Dreros on Crete (M&L 2/Fornara 11), we hear of a magistrate named the kosmos, who could hold office only once in any ten-year period—presumably suggesting that the magistracy was limited to a one-year term. A magistracy of the same name is known at Cretan Gortyn in the sixth century, along with another official known as the gn

m

n (IC 4.14). At Athens, in the late-fifth-century republication of Drakon's homicide law of 621/620 bce (M&L 86/Fornara 15B), guilt is to be judged by a fixed number of basileis—probably four, representing each of the “Ionian” tribes, or subdivisions of the Athenian citizen body—while the verdict is to be given by 51 officials named the ephetai. Other magistracies that are attested in laws and decrees of the Archaic period in various Greek poleis are archontes, prytaneis, d

marchoi, agretai, platiwoinarchoi, hiaromnam

nes, and damiourgoi (Hall 2007: 135).

A second, related development of this period is the emergence of a true aristocratic class, which held a monopoly on these new ascribed offices. This can be traced in Archaic Greek poetry by the appearance of elitist terminology, which distinguishes between an aristocratic group ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Abbreviated Source Editions and Lexica
• Maps
• Introduction: A Prolegomenon to Ancient Greek Government
• Part I: Greek Government in History
• Part II: Ancient Templates and Typologies
• Part III: To Rule and Be Ruled: Greek Governing Bodies
• Part IV: Process and Procedure
• Part V: Responsibilities and Realms of Action
• Part VI: Space and Memory
• Part VII: Government Beyond the City-State
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index