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191-728: Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from c.  800 BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period . In the archaic period, Greeks settled across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea : by the end of the period, they were part of a trade network that spanned the entire Mediterranean. The archaic period began with

382-527: A genos , "family"; the Italics, a gens . Corresponding to Greek phratry , a group of families, was the Italic curia . Corresponding to Greek phyle , a tribe of multiple phratries, was the tribus . The comparison of IE cultures is a solid technique, but it is not enough to develop a solid model of "the ancient city", which must take historical disparities into consideration. From the analogy Coulanges weaves

573-473: A sovereign state . As a strict rule, the definition fails on its exceptions. A polis may not be urban at all, as was pointed out by Thucydides regarding the "polis of the Lacedaemonians", that it was "composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas". Moreover, around the five villages of Lacedaemon, which had been placed in formerly Achaean land, were the villages of the former Achaeans, called

764-463: A "just city" are wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. With all of these principles, classes and virtues, it was believed that a "just city" (polis) would exist. Breaking away from Plato and the academy, a professor there, Aristotle, founded his own school, the Lyceum, a university. One of its strongest curricula was political science, which Aristotle invented. He dispatched students over the world of

955-869: A Paleolithic site took place in 1942 at Seidi Cave in Boeotia by the German archaeologist Rudolf Stampfuss. More systematic research, however, was conducted during the 1960s in Epirus , Macedonia , Thessaly and the Peloponnese by English, American and German research groups. The Mesolithic in Greece occurred between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic . Mesolithic sites in Greece were limited, and

1146-484: A city nor an acropolis, but all the historiographers referred to it as a polis. The rule of the city-state persisted until late in the 20th century, when the accumulation of mass data and sponsored databases made possible searches and comparisons of multiple sources not previously possible, a few of which are mentioned in this article. Hansen reports that the Copenhagen Centre found it necessary to "dissociate

1337-591: A climatic shift that took place between 850 and 750, which made the region cooler and wetter. This led to the expansion of population into uncultivated areas of Greece and was probably also a driver for colonisation abroad. Ancient sources give us little information on mortality rates in archaic Greece, but it is likely that not many more than half of the population survived to the age of 18: perinatal and infant mortality are likely to have been very high. The population of archaic Greece would have consequently been very young – somewhere between two-fifths and two-thirds of

1528-590: A community politically or to enlarge the buildings in which it resides. Finally in the Classical Period and later, the -z-/-s- extension began to be used, as evidenced in Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch: sunoik-izein, "combine or join into one city", with its nouns sunoik-isis and sunoik-ismos, "founding a city", from which the English scholarly term synoecism derives. All poleis looked back to

1719-532: A consequence of in-fighting between rival oligarchs, rather than between the oligarchs and the people. Recently historians have begun to question the existence of a seventh century "age of tyrants". In the archaic period, the Greek word tyrannos , according to Victor Parker, did not have the negative connotations it had gained by the time Aristotle wrote his Constitution of the Athenians . When Archilochus used

1910-489: A different polis. These are three. A polis has a particular location, population, and constitution ( politeia ). For example, if a polis moves en masse, receives a different form of government, or an influx of new population, it is not the same polis. Aristotle expresses two main definitions of polis, neither of which is possible as stated. In the second (see below for the first) a polis is "a collection of citizens...." (Book III I 2). If they already are citizens, then there

2101-514: A federation with binding membership, etc. The Perioeci were included in this category. When the models are set aside as primary sources (which they never were) it is clear that historiography must be founded on what the authors and inscriptions say. Moreover, there is a time window for the active polis. The fact that polis was used in the Middle Ages to translate civitas does not make these civitates into poleis. The Copenhagen Study uses quite

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2292-521: A few evidential indications of a probable polis, in addition to the manuscripts and inscriptions, some of which are victory in the Panhellenic Games, participation in the games, having an official agent, or proxenos, in another polis, presence of civic subdivisions, presence of citizens and a Constitution (Laws). Modern theorists of the polis are theorizing under a major disadvantage: their topic has not been current for thousands of years. It

2483-530: A fleet) across the Hellespont , re-subjugating Thrace and adding Macedonia as a fully-subjugated client kingdom. However, before he could reach Greece proper, his fleet was destroyed in a storm near Mount Athos . In 490 BC, Darius sent another fleet directly across the Aegean Sea (rather than following the land route as Mardonius had done) to subdue Athens. After destroying the city of Eretria ,

2674-453: A massive increase in the Greek population and of significant changes that rendered the Greek world at the end of the 8th century entirely unrecognizable from its beginning. According to Anthony Snodgrass , the archaic period was bounded by two revolutions in the Greek world. It began with a "structural revolution" that "drew the political map of the Greek world" and established the poleis , the distinctively Greek city-states, and it ended with

2865-428: A maximum of 2,943. A study of inscriptions found 1,450 that use polis prior to 300 BC, 425 Athenian and 1,025 from the rest of the range of poleis. There was no difference in meaning between literary and inscriptional usages. Polis became loaded with many incidental meanings. The major meanings are 'state' and 'community'. The theoretical study of the polis extends as far back as the beginning of Greek literature, when

3056-399: A network of micro-states. Many of the settlements still exist; e.g., Marseille , Syracuse , Alexandria , but they are no longer Greek or micro-states, belonging to other countries. The ancient Greek world was split between homeland regions and colonies. A colony was generally sent out by a single polis to relieve the population or some social crisis or seek out more advantageous country. It

3247-673: A potential ally of the Seleucid Empire , the greatest power in the East. Philip's allies in Greece deserted him, and in 197 BC he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Cynoscephalae by the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flaminius . Luckily for the Greeks, Flaminius was a moderate man and an admirer of Greek culture. Philip had to surrender his fleet and become a Roman ally, but he

3438-613: A precedent of jumping over the wall in mockery of it. There were no families, no phratries, no tribes, except among the already settled Latins, Greeks, and Etruscans. The warriors acquired a social structure by kidnapping the nearby Italic Sabines (" the Rape of the Sabine Women ") and settling the matter by agreeing on a synoecism with the Sabines also, who were Latins. Alba Longa was ignored, later subdued. The first four tribes were not

3629-518: A priori assumptions as though they were substantiated facts and were not the pure speculations they actually are. One of the most influential of these translative models was the French La Cite antique , translated again into English "the ancient city", by Coulanges. Only to read the title gives credibility to the idea that there is a model type inclusive of all ancient cities, and that the author need only present it without proving it. This type

3820-507: A series of others in the mid-seventh century BC, such as Orthagoras in Sicyon and Theagenes in Megara. Various explanations have been provided for the rise of tyranny in the seventh century BC. The most popular of these explanations dates back to Aristotle , who argued that tyrants were set up by the people in response to the nobility becoming less tolerable. As there is no evidence from

4011-512: A sign of exceptional wealth. A team of oxen could increase agricultural output significantly but were expensive to maintain. As they had in the Dark Ages, the wealthiest members of Greek society could own large herds of cattle. This pattern had probably developed before the beginning of the period and remained relatively consistent throughout it. The idea that it was preceded by a period of pastoralism and that agriculture only became dominant in

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4202-434: A single image or set of images. Some of these were the symbol or image of an important deity in the city or visual puns on the city's name, but in many cases their meaning is obscure and may not have been chosen for any special reason. The reasons for the rapid and widespread adoption of coinage by the Greeks are not entirely clear and several possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive, have been suggested. One possibility

4393-500: A single site, and the single city belongs to its citizens in common." Aristotle's description fits the landscape archaeology of the poleis in the Copenhagen Study well. The study defines settlement patterns of first-, second-, and third-order. The third, dispersed , is individual oikiai distributed more or less evenly throughout the countryside. The other two orders are nucleated, or clustered. 2nd-order settlements are

4584-487: A single urban centre – took place in much of Greece in the eighth century BC. Both Athens and Argos , for instance, began to coalesce into single settlements around the end of that century. In some settlements, this physical unification was marked by the construction of defensive city walls, as was the case in Smyrna by the middle of the eighth century BC, and Corinth by the middle of the seventh century BC. It seems that

4775-477: A sitting position, and some of the nobility underwent mummification . Around 1100–1050 BC, the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. Numerous cities were sacked, and the region entered what historians see as a " dark age ". During this period, Greece experienced a decline in population and literacy . The Greeks themselves have traditionally blamed this decline on an invasion by another wave of Greek people,

4966-446: A synoecism under any name as their source of politeia . Not all settlements were poleis; for example, an emporion, or "market reserved for foreign trade", might be part of a polis or out on its own. In any particular synoecism recorded by either ancient or modern epigraphists a major problem has been to fit the model credibly to the instance. For example, Thucydides refers to Spartan lack of urbanity as "not synoecised", where synoecism

5157-422: A tale of imaginary history. Families, he asserts, originally lived dispersed and alone (a presumption of Aristotle as well). When the population grew to a certain point, families joined into phratries. Further growth caused phratries to join into tribes, and then tribes into a city. In the city the ancient tribes remained sacrosanct. The city was actually a confederacy of ancient tribes. Coulange's tale, based on

5348-577: Is a significant Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age material culture from the Cyclades , best known for its schematic flat female idols carved out of the islands' pure white marble. The Middle Bronze Age Minoan civilization in Crete lasted from c.  3000  – c.  1400 BC . Little specific information is known about the Minoans, including their written system, which was recorded with

5539-429: Is actually a lessening of unity and would destroy the state. The individual is actually most united and effective; the polis the least. To take away the property and therefore the powers of the individual diminishes the state to nothing, as it is composed of citizens, and those citizens have been rendered null and void by the removal of their effectiveness. As an example Aristotle gives a plot of land, which owned by one man

5730-535: Is based on the ancient practice of translating polis in Greek literature to civitas (early form of city) in Latin literature and vice versa. Coulanges' confidence that the Greek and Italic cities were the same model was based on the then newly discovered Indo-European language : "Go back as far as we may in the history of the Indo-European race, of which the Greeks and Italians are branches,...." The Greeks had

5921-435: Is called Linear B , which was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris . The Mycenaeans buried their nobles in beehive tombs ( tholoi ), large circular burial chambers with a high-vaulted roof and straight entry passage lined with stone. They often buried daggers or some other form of military equipment with the deceased. Nobility was also often buried with gold masks, tiaras, armor, and jeweled weapons. Mycenaeans were buried in

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6112-414: Is carefully tended, but owned by the whole community belongs to no one and is untended. The ideal state therefore is impossible, a mere logical construct accounting for some of the factors, but failing of others, which Aristotle's examples suffice to demonstrate. For example, in some hypothetical place of no polis, a buyer would apply to an individual builder for a house. In an ideal polis, he would apply to

6303-449: Is concerned with the two underlying principles of any society: mutual needs and differences in aptitude. Starting from these two principles, Socrates deals with the economic structure of an ideal polis. According to Plato there are five main economic classes of any polis: producers, merchants, sailors/shipowners, retail traders and wage earners. Along with the two principles and five economic classes, there are four virtues. The four virtues of

6494-630: Is generally understudied in Greece because research has traditionally focused on the later parts of prehistory (Neolithic, Bronze Age) and the Classical times. Nevertheless, significant advances have been achieved over recent years, and the archaeological record has been enriched with new material, collected mostly in the framework of regional surveys but also through systematic or rescue excavations . New caves and rock shelters , as well as recently discovered and important open-air sites are now being excavated. Notably, an apparent elephant butchering site in

6685-574: Is highly critical. The Theory of the State is not so much political by today's definition. The politics are covered by the New Plan. The topic of the Old Plan is rather society , and is generally presented today in sociology and cultural anthropology . At the end of Book III, however, Aristotle encounters certain problems of definition that he cannot reconcile through theorization and has to abandon

6876-434: Is no need for anyone to collect to create a polis, as it already exists. If they are not citizens then they cannot be defined as a polis and cannot act as such. Aristotle's only consistent meaning is that at the moment of collecting together a population creates a polis of which they are now citizens. This moment of creation, however long it might be, is a logical necessity; otherwise, the citizenship recedes indefinitely into

7067-409: Is not left to the moderns to redefine polis as though it were a living institution. All that remains to ask is how the ancients defined it. It is not to be redefined now; for example, a polis is not a list of architectural features based on ruins. Any community might have those. Moderns can only ask, what did the ancient Greeks think a polis is. Whatever they thought must per force be so, as they invented

7258-445: Is not whether poleis can be found to fit a particular model (some usually can), but whether the model covers all the poleis, which, apparently, no model ever has, even the ancient ones. The re-defining process continues. The Copenhagen study rejects either model and proposes instead the microstate. Some few scholars have become totally cynical, rejecting the idea that any solution has been or can be found. This argument places polis in

7449-402: Is that coinage was adopted specifically to enable communities to make payments to their citizens, mercenaries and artisans in a transparent, fair and efficient way. Similarly, when wealthy members of the community were required to contribute wealth to the community for festivals and the equipment of navies, coinage made the process more efficient and transparent. A third possibility, that coinage

7640-406: Is the creation of common living quarters (see above). Here apparently it means only the building of a central urban area. The reader of Plutarch knows that another synoecism existed, one instituted by Lycurgus, founder of the military state. The single overall synoecism is apparently double, one for the facilities, missing in this story, and one for the constitution. He uses the same word to describe

7831-402: Is the increased ease of commerce which coinage allowed. Coins were of standardised weights, which meant that their value could be determined without weighing them. Furthermore, it was not necessary for users of coinage to spend time determining whether the silver was pure silver; the fact that the coin had been issued by the community was a promise that it was worth a set value. Another possibility

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8022-509: Is the one that leads to the common good. The philosopher king is the best ruler because, as a philosopher, he is acquainted with the Form of the Good . In Plato's analogy of the ship of state , the philosopher king steers the polis, as if it were a ship, in the best direction. Books II–IV of The Republic are concerned with Plato addressing the makeup of an ideal polis. In The Republic , Socrates

8213-440: Is to know what information to select for a model and what to neglect as probably irrelevant. Classical studies of the last few hundred years have been relatively stable in their views of the polis, relying basically on just a few models: the concept of a city-state, and Fustel de Coulange's model of the ancient city. However, no model ever seems to resolve all the paradoxes or provide for every newly considered instance. The question

8404-562: The Aetolian League as a means of defending it and restoring democracy in their states, as they saw Macedon as a tyrannical kingdom. The Achaean League , while nominally subject to the Ptolemies , was in effect independent, and controlled most of southern Greece. Sparta also remained independent, but generally refused to join any league. In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Macedon in what became

8595-521: The Archaic period , which began c.  800 BC and lasted until the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC. It was during this period that the Greek alphabet and early Greek literature developed, as well as the poleis ("city-states") of Ancient Greece. With the end of the Dark Ages, Greeks spread to the shores of the Black Sea , Southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia ") and Asia Minor . The Classical period began during

8786-553: The Balkans and Eastern Europe proper as well. In 499 BC, the Greek cities of Ionia , led by Miletus , revolted against the Persian Empire and were supported by some mainland cities, including Athens and Eretria . After the uprising had been quelled, Darius I launched the first Persian invasion of Greece to exact revenge on the mainland Greeks. In 492 BC, Persian general Mardonius led an army (supported by

8977-686: The Battle of Arginusae in 406 BC but was prevented by bad weather from rescuing many of its sailors, leading the city to execute or exile eight of its top naval commanders. Lysander followed with a crushing blow at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC which almost destroyed the Athenian fleet. Athens surrendered one year later, ending the Peloponnesian War and beginning a brief of period of Spartan hegemony in Greece. The war left devastation in its wake. Discontent with Spartan hegemony from both Athenian and former Spartan allies led to

9168-609: The Battle of Pylos , a significant fraction of the Spartan fighting force which it could not afford to lose. Meanwhile, Athens suffered humiliating defeats at Delium in 424 BC and Amphipolis in 422. The Peace of Nicias in 421 concluded the first stage of the war, with Sparta recovering its hoplites and Athens recovering the city of Amphipolis . Those who signed the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC swore to uphold it for fifty years, but peace lasted only seven years. The second stage of

9359-542: The Black Sea . This was not simply for trade, but also to found settlements. These Greek colonies were not, as Roman colonies were, dependent on their mother-city, but were independent city-states in their own right. Greeks settled outside of Greece in two distinct ways. The first was in permanent settlements founded by Greeks, which formed as independent poleis. The second form was in what historians refer to as emporia ; trading posts which were occupied by both Greeks and non-Greeks and which were primarily concerned with

9550-630: The Chremonidean War , named after the Athenian leader Chremonides . The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and democratic institutions. This marked the end of Athens as a political actor, although it remained the largest, wealthiest, and most cultivated city in Greece. In 225 BC, Macedon defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, under its rule as well. Sparta remained hostile to

9741-586: The Colossus of the Naxians from around 600 BC, are known to represent Apollo , while the Phrasikleia Kore was meant to represent a young woman whose tomb it originally marked. Over the course of the sixth century, kouroi from Attica become more lifelike and naturalistic. However, this trend does not appear elsewhere in the Greek world. The genre began to become less common over the last part of

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9932-609: The Corinthian War of 395–387 BC. Backed by the Achaemenid Persian Empire , Athens, Thebes , Corinth, and Argos significantly weakened Spartan military power, though unsuccessful in ending Spartan dominance. The war concluded with the Treaty of Antalcidas in 387 BC, in which Sparta was forced to cede Ionia and Cyprus to the Persian Empire . The Corinthian War and its aftermath further sowed

10123-528: The Cycladic Islands in the 540s BC, Southern Italy and Sicily before 525 BC, and Thrace before 514 BC. Most of these coinages were very small and were mostly only used within the community that issued them, but the "turtles" of Aegina (from 530 or 520 BC) and the "owls" of Athens (from 515 BC) were issued in great quantity and exported throughout the Greek world. The images on coins initially changed rapidly, but increasingly each community settled on

10314-536: The Dorians , although there is scant archaeological evidence for this view. Ancient Greece refers to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Greek Dark Ages ( c.  1050  – c.  750 BC ) to the end of antiquity ( c.  AD 600 ). In common usage, it can refer to all Greek history before—or including—the Roman Empire , but historians tend use the term more precisely. Some include

10505-648: The Greco-Persian wars in the 5th century BC and was marked by increased autonomy from the Persian Empire , as well as the flourishing of Ancient Greek democracy , art , theater , literature , and philosophy . The traditional date for the end of the Classical Greek period is the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and the period that follows is termed the Hellenistic , ending with the rise of

10696-553: The Hittite and the Egyptian . The cause is still somewhat mysterious, but has often been attributed to the invasion of hypothesized Sea Peoples wielding iron weapons. A hypothesized Dorian invasion may have also contributed, as asserted by ancient Greek legend but unsubstantiated by the archaeological record. Legend asserts that Dorians migrated down into Greece equipped with superior iron weapons, colonizing and easily dispersing

10887-632: The League of Corinth in 338–337 BC. In 336 BC, power was transferred to Philip's son, Alexander the Great , who spent the next ten years conquering the Persian Empire and much of Western Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, Alexander had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India . He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders. After Alexander's death in 323 BC,

11078-591: The Macedonian Empire disintegrated under widespread civil wars , beginning the Hellenistic Age of Greek history. The Hellenistic period of Greek history begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends with the conquest of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which remained essentially unchanged until

11269-586: The Megarian decree . There was disagreement among the Greeks as to which party violated the treaty between the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues, as Athens was technically defending a new ally. The Corinthians turned to Sparta for aid. Fearing the growing might of Athens and witnessing Athens' willingness to use it against the Megarians (the embargo would have ruined them), Sparta declared the treaty violated, and

11460-595: The Minoan palaces except Knossos were devastated by fire, which allowed the Mycenaean Greeks , influenced by the Minoans' culture, to expand into Crete. Remains of the Minoan civilization which preceded the Mycenaean civilization on Crete were first discovered in the modern era by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, when he purchased and began excavating the site at Knossos . Pre-Mycenean Helladic period Following

11651-695: The Near East entered the Greek peninsula from Anatolia by island-hopping through the Aegean Sea . The earliest known Neolithic sites with developed agricultural economies in Europe, dated 8500–9000 BP, were found in Greece. The first Greek-speaking tribes , speaking the predecessor of the Mycenaean language , arrived in the Greek mainland sometime in the Neolithic period or the Early Bronze Age ( c. 3200 BC). The Cycladic culture

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11842-540: The Perioeci ("dwellers round"). They had been left as supposedly free poleis by the invaders, but they were subject to and served the interests of the Dorian poleis. They were not city-states, failing the criterion of sovereignty. Lacedaemon by the city-state rule thus falls short of being a polis. The earlier Achaean acropolis stood at the edge of the valley and was decrepit and totally unused. Lacedaemon had neither

12033-607: The Persian Empire ), it took the form of an alliance going to war. It also gave ample opportunity for wars within Greece between different poleis . Two major wars shaped the Classical Greek world. The first was the Persian Wars (499–449 BC), recounted in the Greek historian Herodotus 's Histories . By the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persian Empire ruled over all Greek city-states in Ionia (the western coast of modern-day Turkey ) and had made territorial gains in

12224-587: The Phoenicians , eventually spreading north into Italy and the Gauls . In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet , modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. From about the 9th century BC, written records begin to appear. Greece

12415-416: The Roman Empire at the end of the first millennium BC. Not everyone treats the Classical Greek and Hellenic periods as distinct—some writers treat the Ancient Greek civilization as a continuum running until the proliferation of Christianity in the 3rd century. Ancient Greece is considered by many historians to be the foundational culture of Western civilization . Greek culture was a powerful influence in

12606-412: The Western Macedonia region of Northern Greece may be the oldest known hominin settlement outside of Africa dating back to at least 2.5 million years BP, but this claim is controversial. The earliest undisputed traces of human habitation in present-day Greece, however, were discovered in Arcadia , Peloponnesus and date back 700,000 years. The Apidima Cave in Mani , southern Greece, contains

12797-408: The archonship had replaced it as the most important executive office in the state, though the archonship could only be held by members of the Eupatridae , the families which made up Athens' aristocracy. The earliest laws of Athens were established by Draco , in 621/0; his law on homicide was the only one to have survived to the Classical period. Draco's law code aimed to replace private revenge as

12988-480: The assembly , and the enslavement of the Messenian population as Helots . Around the same time, the ephors gained the power to restrict the actions of the kings of Sparta. Thus by the late seventh century, Sparta's constitution had recognisably taken on its classical form. From around 560 BC, Sparta began to build a series of alliances with other Greek states, which became the Peloponnesian League : by 550, cities such as Elis , Corinth, and Megara were part of

13179-414: The helots , a subjugated population of Sparta, revolt. This strategy required that Athens endure regular sieges , and in 430 BC it was visited with an awful plague that killed about a quarter of its people , including Pericles. With Pericles gone, less conservative elements gained power in the city and Athens went on the offensive. In 425 BC, it captured 300–400 Spartan hoplites (soldiers) at

13370-411: The hoplite became the core of Greek armies. In Athens , the earliest institutions of democracy were implemented under Solon , and the reforms of Cleisthenes at the end of the archaic period brought in Athenian democracy as it was during the Classical period. In Sparta , many of the institutions credited to the reforms of Lycurgus were introduced during the archaic period, the region of Messenia

13561-461: The kouros and kore , near life-size frontal statues of a young man or woman, which were developed around the middle of the seventh century BC in the Cyclades . Probably the earliest kore produced was the Dedication of Nikandre , which was dedicated to Artemis at her temple on Delos between 660 and 650 BC, while kouroi began to be created shortly after this. Kouroi and korai were used to represent both humans and divinities. Some kouroi, such as

13752-484: The Acarnanian people and poleis. A colony from there would then be considered Acarnanian, no matter how far away from Acarnania it was. Colonization was thus the main method of spreading Greek poleis and culture. Ancient Greeks did not reserve the term polis solely for Greek-speaking settlements. For example, Aristotle's study of the polis names also Carthage , comparing its constitution to that of Sparta. Carthage

13943-639: The Achaean cities away from their nominal loyalty to Philip, and formed alliances with Rhodes and Pergamum, now the strongest power in Asia Minor . The First Macedonian War broke out in 212 BC and ended inconclusively in 205 BC, but Macedon was now marked as an enemy of Rome. In 202 BC, Rome defeated Carthage and was free to turn her attention eastwards. In 198 BC, the Second Macedonian War broke out because Rome saw Macedon as

14134-626: The Achaeans, and in 227 BC it invaded Achaea and seized control of the League. The remaining Achaeans preferred distant Macedon to nearby Sparta and allied with the former. In 222 BC, the Macedonian army defeated the Spartans and annexed their city—the first time Sparta had ever been occupied by a different state. Philip V of Macedon was the last Greek ruler with both the talent and

14325-622: The Aegean for a few thousand years prior to the Dorian invasions , forming an "aggregate, the pre-Doric city". This type of city is not to be regarded as "the Hellenic type of the polis". The Greeks set adrift by the Dorian invasions countered by joining ( synoecism ) to form the Hellenic poleis. The polis can thus be dated to this defensive resettlement period (the Dark Age). Quite a few poleis fit

14516-633: The Assembly and the law courts, while the richest class – the pentacosiomedimni – were the only people eligible to become treasurer, and possibly archon. He set up the Council of the Four Hundred , responsible for discussing motions which were to come before the Assembly . Finally, Solon substantially reduced the powers of the archon by giving citizens the right of appeal; their case was judged by

14707-519: The Assembly. A second wave of constitutional reform in Athens was instituted by Cleisthenes towards the end of the sixth century. Cleisthenes apparently redivided the Athenian population, which had previously been grouped into four tribes, into ten new tribes . A new Council of 500 was instituted, with members from each deme represented. Demes were also given the power to determine their own members (which, in turn, provided them with influence over

14898-478: The Athenian and Spartan constitutions seem to have developed into their classical forms. The archaic period saw significant urbanisation and the development of the concept of the polis as it was used in Classical Greece. By Solon 's time, if not before, the word polis had acquired its classical meaning, and though the emergence of the polis as a political community was still in progress at this point,

15089-434: The Classical period the city of Athens was both culturally and politically dominant, it was not until the late sixth century BC that it became a leading power in Greece. The attempted coup by Cylon of Athens ( who became tyrant of Athens ) may be the earliest event in Athenian history which is clearly attested by ancient sources, dating to around 636 BCE. At this time, it seems that Athens' monarchy had already ended and

15280-652: The Diadochi . Ptolemy was left with Egypt , and Seleucus with the Levant , Mesopotamia , and points east. Control of Greece, Thrace , and Anatolia was contested, but by 298 BC the Antigonid dynasty had supplanted the Antipatrid . Macedonian control of the city-states was intermittent, with a number of revolts. Athens, Rhodes , Pergamum , and other Greek states retained substantial independence and joined

15471-419: The Greek conception ... but this was rather owing to their less vivid mental powers than to the absence of the phenomenon." Polis is thus often translated as ' city-state '. The model, however, fares no better than any other. City-states no doubt existed, but so also did many poleis that were not city-states. The minimum semantic load of this hyphenated neologism is that the referent must be a city and must be

15662-415: The Hellenic poleis and was continuous with the pre-Doric city phase, then pre-Doric Athens must have been a Hellenic polis even then. The model fails in its chief instance. A second approach to the modelling of the polis is not to use the word polis at all, but to translate it into the language of the historiographer. The model is thus inherent in the translation, which has the disadvantage of incorporating

15853-555: The Middle and Upper. This is partly due to the intense tectonic activity in the Greek area and the rise and fall of the Aegean Sea which destroyed every trace of habitation from some geographical regions. Paleolithic finds from Greece were first reported in 1867, but the first organized research on the sites was conducted many years later, between 1927 and 1931, by the Austrian archaeologist Adalbert Markovits. The first excavation of

16044-553: The Near East. At the beginning of the seventh century BC, vase painters in Corinth began to develop the black-figure style . At the same time, potters began to use incisions in the clay of vases in order to draw outlines and interior detailing. This adoption of incision, probably taken from eastern metalwork, allowed potters to show fine details of their decorations. History of Greece The history of Greece encompasses

16235-454: The Newer were united with a political synoecism. The first sentence of Politics asserts that a polis is a community ( koinonia ). This is Aristotle's first definition of polis (for the second, see above). The community is compared to a game of chess. The man without community is like an isolated piece (I.9). Other animals form communities, but those of men are more advantageous because men have

16426-526: The Orient, in art as well as in religion and mythology. Archaeologically, Archaic Greece is marked by Geometric pottery . The basic unit of politics in Ancient Greece was the polis ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : πόλις ), sometimes translated as " city-state ". The term lends itself to the modern English word "politics", which literally means "the things of the polis ". At least in theory, each polis

16617-434: The Peloponnesian War . By contrast, no such evidence survives from the archaic period. Surviving contemporary written accounts of life in the period are in the form of poetry. Other written sources from the archaic period include epigraphical evidence, including parts of law codes, inscriptions on votive offerings and epigrams inscribed on tombs. However, none of that evidence is in the quantity for which it survives from

16808-778: The Peloponnesian War began in 415 BC when Athens embarked on the Sicilian Expedition in Magna Graecia to support its ally Segesta in Sicily against an attack by Syracuse (a Spartan ally also in Sicily) and conquer the island. Initially, Sparta was reluctant to help Syracuse, but Alcibiades , the Athenian general who had argued for the Sicilian Expedition, defected to the Spartan cause after being accused of grossly impious acts. Alcibiades convinced

16999-637: The Peloponnesian War began in earnest. The first stage of the war (known as the Archidamian War for the Spartan king Archidamus II ) lasted until 421 BC with the signing of the Peace of Nicias . It began with the Athenian general Pericles recommending that his city fight a defensive war, avoiding battle against the superior land forces led by Sparta, and importing everything needful by maintaining its powerful navy. Athens would simply outlast Sparta, whose citizens feared leave their city for long lest

17190-721: The Persians, the treasury was moved from Delos to Athens, further strengthening the latter's control over the League. The Delian League was eventually referred to pejoratively as the Athenian Empire. In 458 BC, while the Persian Wars were still ongoing, war broke out between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League , comprising Sparta and its allies. After some inconclusive fighting,

17381-714: The Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe. Ancient Greek civilization has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, art, and architecture of the modern world, particularly during the Renaissance in Western Europe and again during various neo-classical revivals in 18th- and 19th-century Europe and the Americas. The Greek Dark Ages ( c.  1100  – c.  800  BC) refers to

17572-468: The Spartans that they could not allow Athens to subjugate Syracuse. The campaign ended in disaster for the Athenians. After the Athenian defeat in Sicily, Athens' Ionian possessions rebelled with the support of Sparta, as advised by Alcibiades. In 411 BC, an oligarchical revolt in Athens held out the chance for peace, but the Athenian navy, which remained committed to the democracy, refused to accept

17763-513: The Trojan War and had placed a polis (Livy's urbs) on one of the hills named Pallantium , later becoming Palatine . He had actually raised the Trojan boys and supported them now. When the band of marauders became populous enough Romulus got them to agree to a synoecism of settlements in the hills to form a new city, Rome, to be walled in immediately. Remus had to be sacrificed because he had set

17954-541: The advent of Christianity , it did mark the end of Greek political independence. During the Hellenistic period, the importance of "Greece proper" (that is, the territory of modern Greece) within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply. The great centres of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch , capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria , respectively. (See Hellenistic civilization for

18145-637: The alliance. This series of alliances had the dual purpose of preventing the cities of the League from supporting the Helot population of Messenia, and of helping Sparta in its conflict with Argos , which in the archaic period was along with Sparta one of the major powers in the Peloponnese. In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, Greeks began to spread across the Mediterranean , the Sea of Marmara and

18336-529: The already weakened Mycenaeans. The period that follows these events is collectively known as the Greek Dark Ages. Kings ruled throughout this period until eventually they were replaced with an aristocracy , then still later, in some areas, an aristocracy within an aristocracy—an elite of the elite. Warfare shifted from a focus on the cavalry to a great emphasis on infantry. Due to its cheapness of production and local availability, iron replaced bronze as

18527-421: The archaic period saw the development of the polis (or city-state) as the predominant unit of political organisation. Many cities throughout Greece came under the rule of autocratic leaders, called " tyrants ". It also saw the development of law and systems of communal decision-making, with the earliest evidence for law codes and constitutional structures dating to the period. By the end of the archaic period, both

18718-471: The archaic period. This was inspired in part by ancient Egyptian stone sculpture : the proportions of the New York Kouros exactly correspond to Egyptian rules about the proportion of human figures. In Greece, these sculptures best survive as religious dedications and grave markers, but the same techniques would have also been used to make cult images. The best-known types of archaic sculpture are

18909-416: The archaic period. Farms appear to have been small, cohesive units, concentrated near settlements. They were highly diversified, growing a wide variety of crops simultaneously, in order to make consistent use of human resources throughout the year and to ensure that the failure of any one crop was not too much of a disaster. Crop rotation was practiced, with fields left fallow every other year. Though wheat

19100-659: The area of the modern Republic of Greece . A collaborative study carried by the Copenhagen Polis Centre from 1993 to 2003 classified about 1,500 settlements of the Archaic and Classical ancient-Greek-speaking population as poleis. These ranged from the Caucasus to southern Spain, and from southern Russia to northern Egypt, spread over the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. They have been termed

19291-420: The argument there is "For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together .... and if they cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they hold together." In short Aristotle had stated two systems of property, one in which the polis holds everything, distributing it equally, and one in which some property is held in common but the rest is privately owned. As the former only leads to

19482-423: The average house size remained constant around 45–50 m, but the number of very large and very small houses increased, indicating increasing economic inequality. From the end of the seventh century, this trend reversed, with houses clustering closely around a growing average, and by the end of the archaic period the average house size had risen to about 125 m. Not all arable land in Greece was yet under cultivation in

19673-721: The base of the future Mycenean civilization were developed. Early Bronze Age settlements saw further development during Helladic III, exemplified by the Tiryns culture ( c.  2200  – c.  2000 BC ), and the Middle Helladic period before the Mycenean period discussed below. Mycenaean civilization originated and evolved from the society and culture of the Early and Middle Helladic periods in mainland Greece. It emerged c.  1600 BC , when Helladic culture

19864-587: The beginning of the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the Olympic Games in 776 BC and the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC forming notional starting and ending dates. The archaic period was long considered to have been less important and historically interesting than the classical period and was studied primarily as a precursor to it. More recently, archaic Greece has come to be studied for its own achievements. With this reassessment of

20055-443: The beginning of the archaic period, coinage had not yet been invented. The Greeks measured the value of objects or fines using certain valuable objects, such as oxen, tripods, and metal spits, as units of account . As in the Near East, precious metal bullion was used as a medium of exchange , principally gold at first, but mainly silver by the beginning of the sixth century. The weight of this bullion (often known as hacksilber )

20246-529: The change and continued fighting in Athens' name. The navy recalled Alcibiades, who had been forced to abandon the Spartan cause after reputedly seducing the wife of Agis II , a Spartan king, and made him its head. The oligarchy in Athens collapsed and Alcibiades reconquered what had been lost for Athens. In 407 BC, Alcibiades was replaced following a minor naval defeat at the Battle of Notium . The Spartan general Lysander , having fortified his city's naval power, began winning victory after victory. Athens won

20437-400: The citizens and simultaneously a collection of some of the citizens. Similarly property shared by all cannot be shared by men who do not own it. These fictions led to endless conflict between and within poleis as the participants fought for citizenship they did not have and shares they did not own. A village (kome) is a community of several families (I.2). Aristotle suggests that they came from

20628-646: The classical period. What is lacking in written evidence is made up for in the rich archaeological evidence from the archaic Greek world. Indeed, although much knowledge of Classical Greek art comes from later Roman copies, all surviving archaic Greek art is original. Other sources for the archaic period are the traditions recorded by later Greek writers such as Herodotus . However, those traditions are not part of any form of history that would be recognised today. Those transmitted by Herodotus were recorded whether or not he believed them to be accurate. Indeed, Herodotus did not even record any dates before 480 BC. Politically,

20819-449: The concept of polis from the concepts of independence and autonomia". They were able to define a class of "dependent poleis" to consist of 15 types, all of which the ancient sources call poleis, but were not entirely sovereign, such as cities that had been independent, but were later synoecized into a larger polis, new colonies of other poleis, forts, ports, or trading posts some distance removed from their mother poleis, poleis that had joined

21010-415: The course of the archaic period is not supported by the archaeological or literary evidence. No technological innovations in agriculture appear to have occurred, except possibly the increased use of iron tools and more intensive use of manure . The main source for the practice of agriculture in the period is Hesiod 's Works and Days , which gives the impression of very small subsistence holdings in which

21201-409: The earliest red-figure vases . The early part of the archaic period saw distinctive orientalizing influences, both in pottery and in sculpture. At the beginning of the archaic period, Greek sculpture mostly consisted of small bronze works, particularly of horses. Bronze human figures were also produced, and both horse and human figures are primarily found in religious sanctuaries. Towards the end of

21392-424: The earliest pre-humans ( Ouranopithecus macedoniensis , 9.6–8.7 million years ago), and of quite possibly the oldest direct ancestor of all humans ( Graecopithecus , 7.2 million years ago) were found in Greece. In addition, 5.7 million year old footprints were found on the Greek island of Crete , which may suggest hominin evolution outside of Africa , contrary to current hypotheses. The Paleolithic period

21583-426: The early part of the ninth century BC, but did not become common on mainland Greek pottery until the middle of the eighth century BC. The eighth century saw the development of the orientalizing style , which signalled a shift away from the earlier geometric style and the accumulation of influences derived from Phoenicia and Syria . This orientalizing influence seems to have come from goods imported to Greece from

21774-408: The east as early as the first half of the eighth century, and the earliest pottery from the Greek islands found at Al Mina in modern Syria is from Euboea. By the sixth century, Greece was part of a trade network spanning the entire Mediterranean. Sixth century Laconian pottery has been found as far afield as Marseilles and Carthage to the west, Crete to the south and Sardis to the East. At

21965-531: The eighth century BC. By the classical period, Spartan tradition attributed this constitution to Lycurgus of Sparta , who according to Thucydides lived a little over four centuries before the end of the Peloponnesian War , around the end of the ninth century. The First Messenian War , probably taking place from approximately 740 to 720 BC, saw the strengthening of the powers of the Gerousia against

22156-415: The eighth century as the growth of the population increased the number of workers available, and intensified in the seventh century with the development of legally enforced debts and the status of the labourers increasingly becoming a source of social strife. By the late eighth century BC, the archaic Greek world had become involved in an active trade network around the Aegean. It was this trade network that

22347-472: The eighth century, horse figurines became much less common, disappearing "almost completely" by 700 BC. In the seventh century, Greek sculpture saw a strong Eastern influence, with mythical creatures such as griffins and sirens becoming much more popular. Also in the seventh century BC, Greek sculpture began to directly represent gods, a practice which had disappeared after the end of the Mycenaean period. Life-size human sculpture in hard stone began in Greece in

22538-564: The end of the Neolithic , the last Stone Age period, the Early and Middle Helladic periods were established on the Greek mainland. The slow transition from the Final Neolithic period took place with the Eutresis culture ( c.  3200  – c.  2650 BC ). Over hundreds of years, agricultural communities transitioned from stone tools to metal ones. Following such materialistic developments, more powerful micro-states and

22729-411: The evolution of the polis as a socio-political structure, rather than a simply geographical one, can be attributed to this urbanisation, as well as a significant population increase in the eighth century. These two factors created a need for a new form of political organisation, as the political systems in place at the beginning of the archaic period quickly became unworkable. Though in the early part of

22920-486: The exact meaning of horoi is unknown; their removal seems to have been part of the problem of hektemoroi – another word whose meaning is obscure. Solon was also credited with abolishing slavery for debtors, and establishing limits on who could be granted Athenian citizenship. Solon instituted radical constitutional reform, replacing noble birth as a qualification for office with income. The poorest – called thetes – could hold no offices, although they could attend

23111-400: The first and only response of an individual to an offence committed against them. The law code of Draco, however, failed to prevent the tensions between the rich and poor which were the impetus to Solon's reforms. In 594/3 BC, Solon was appointed " archon and mediator". Exactly what his reforms consisted of is uncertain. He claimed to have taken up the horoi to set the land free, but

23302-466: The fleet landed and faced the Athenian army at Marathon , which ended in a decisive Athenian victory. Darius's successor, Xerxes I , launched the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC. Despite Greek defeat at Thermopylae , after which the Persians briefly overran northern and central Greece, the Greek city-states once again managed to comprehensively defeat the invaders with naval victory at Salamis and victory on land at Plataea . To prosecute

23493-404: The fragmentary history of priesthoods, does not much resemble the history of cities such as it survives. For example, there was no familial and tribal development of Rome. Livy (Book I), the grandest of the historians of early Rome, portrays a city formed under competitive duress by a collaboration of warriors, some of whom were from among the neighboring Etruscans , led by Romulus and Remus ,

23684-518: The history of Greek culture outside Greece in this period.) Athens and her allies revolted against Macedon upon hearing that Alexander the Great had died in 323 BC, but were defeated within a year in the Lamian War . Meanwhile, a struggle for power broke out among Alexander's generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire and the establishment of a number of new kingdoms in the Wars of

23875-467: The history of the territory of the modern nation-state of Greece as well as that of the Greek people and the areas they inhabited and ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied throughout the ages and as a result, the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes. Generally, the history of Greece is divided into the following periods: At its cultural and geographical peak, Greek civilization spread from Egypt all

24066-433: The holding relationship implies. In Book II Aristotle begins to face the problem. The "polis men", politai , translated as 'citizens', must logically hold everything there is to hold, nothing, or some things but not others (II.I.2). In this sociological context politai can only be all the householders sharing in the polis, free or slave, male or female, child or adult. The sum total of all the specific holdings mentioned in

24257-422: The ideal state incapable of sustaining itself. Aristotle says, "A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state." He means that such a collection is not self-sufficient (II.1.4). He alleges the opposite: "components which are to make up a unity must differ in kind .... Hence reciprocal equality is the preservative of states, as has been said before in (Nichomachean) Ethics (1132b, 1133a)." In summary

24448-454: The individual. Families are bound by three relationships: husband to wife, owner to slave, and father to children. Thus slaves and women are members of the polis. The proper function of a family is the acquisition and management of wealth . The oikia is the primary land-holder. The koinonia, then, applied to property, including people. As such it is just as impossible as the collection of citizens mentioned previously, which cannot be both all

24639-432: The intellectual revolution of the Classical period. The archaic period saw developments in Greek politics, economics, international relations, warfare and culture. It laid the groundwork for the Classical period, both politically and culturally. It was in the archaic period that the Greek alphabet developed, the earliest surviving Greek literature was composed, monumental sculpture and red-figure pottery began in Greece and

24830-467: The komai, while the 1st order is the poleis. Approaching the polis from the outside of an aerial photograph one would pass successivle orders 3, 2, and 1. By the end of Book I of Politics Aristotle (or one of the other unknown authors) finishes defining the polis according to one scheme and spends the next two books trying to tie up loose ends. It is generally agreed that the work is an accumulation of surviving treatises written at different times, and that

25021-479: The language of the historiographer. For example, Eric Voegelin wrote a work in English entitled "The World of the Polis". In works such as this the author intends to define polis himself; i.e., to present a model of society from one or more of a list of ancient Greek cities (poleis) culled from ancient Greek literature and inscriptions. For example, Voegelin describes a model in which "town settlements" existed in

25212-440: The legal incorporation of the settlements around Athens into the city by King Theseus , although no special building was required. The central polis already existed. In this story also there is a duality of synoecism with an absent change of physical facilities. Apparently a synoecism can be of different types, the selection of which depends on the requirements of the sunoikisteres. Lippman applies two concepts previously current,

25403-488: The main logical break is the end of Book III. Books I, II, and III, dubbed "Theory of the State" by Rackham in the Loeb Edition , each represents an incomplete trial of the "Old Plan". Books !V, V, and VI, "Practical Politics", are the "New Plan". Books VII and VIII, "Ideal Politics", contains Aristotle's replacement of Plato's ideology, openly called "communist" by modern translators and theoreticians, of which Aristotle

25594-866: The majority are located near the coast. Franchthi Cave , the Kalamakia Cave in Mani ( Peloponnese ), the Asprochaliko Cave in Epirus (where the first excavation took place in 1960) and the Theopetra Cave are among the most important Mesolithic sites in Greece and Southeast Europe , and were inhabited almost continuously throughout the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic Period. The Neolithic Revolution reached Europe beginning in 7000–6500 BC when agriculturalists from

25785-457: The manufacture and sale of goods. Examples of this latter type of settlement are found at Al Mina in the east and Pithekoussai in the west. The earliest Greek colonies were on Sicily . Many of these were founded by people from Chalcis , but other Greek states, such as Corinth and Megara were also responsible for early colonies in the area. By the end of the eighth century BC, Greek settlements in southern Italy were also well established. In

25976-453: The many one-castle principates that abounded at the time. The name was applied to the polis by Herder in 1765. Fowler anglicised it: "It is, then, a city-state that we have to deal with in Greek and Roman history; a state in which the whole life and energy of the people, political, intellectual, religious, is focused at one point, and that point a city." He applied the word polis to it, explaining that, "The Latin race, indeed, never realised

26167-424: The membership of the citizen body more generally) and to somewhat determine their own judicial arrangements. These reforms gave the citizen body a sense of responsibility for what happened in the community for the first time. Between the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes, the Athenian constitution had become identifiably democratic . Sparta's constitution took on the form it would have in the Classical period during

26358-411: The metal of choice in the manufacturing of tools and weapons. Slowly, however, equality grew among the different sects of people, leading to the dethronement of the various kings and the rise of the family. At the end of this period of stagnation, the Greek civilization was engulfed in a renaissance that spread throughout the Greek world as far as the Black Sea and Spain . Writing was relearned from

26549-454: The mid-fifth century BC. Archaic Greece from the mid-seventh century BC has sometimes been called an "Age of Tyrants". The word τύραννος ( tyrannos , whence the English 'tyrant') first appeared in Greek literature in a poem of Archilochus , to describe the Lydian ruler Gyges . The earliest Greek tyrant was Cypselus , who seized power in Corinth in a coup in 655 BC. He was followed by

26740-400: The model, no doubt, which was widely promulgated in the 20th century. Classical Athens , however, is a paradox in this model, to which Voegelin has no answer. He says, "in the most important instance, that of Athens, the continuity between the Aegean settlement and the later polis seems to have been unbroken." It seems a matter of simple logic that if Athens was a Hellenic polis in the time of

26931-544: The modern. For example, today's πόλη is located within a χώρα ( khôra ), "country", which is a πατρίδα (patrida) or "native land" for its citizens. In ancient Greece, the polis was the native land; there was no other. It had a constitution and demanded the supreme loyalty of its citizens. χώρα was only the countryside, not a country. Ancient Greece was not a sovereign country, but was a territory occupied by Hellenes , people who claimed as their native language some dialect of Ancient Greek. Poleis did not only exist within

27122-557: The northeastern Argolid , in the Peloponnesos of southern Greece. Athens , Pylos , Thebes , and Tiryns also have important Mycenaean sites. Mycenaean civilization was dominated by a warrior aristocracy . Around 1400 BC, the Mycenaeans extended their control to Crete , the center of the Minoan civilization , and adopted a form of the Minoan script Linear A to write an early form of Greek . The Mycenaean-era script

27313-475: The oldest known remains of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa , dated to 210,000 years ago. Currently known anthropological and archaeological finds allow the division of the Paleolithic in the Greek area into Lower (700,000–100,000 BP), Middle (100,000–35,000 BP) and Upper Palaeolithic (35,000–11,000 BP). There are, to date, few sites of the Lower Paleolithic, whereas there are more of

27504-412: The opportunity to unite Greece and preserve its independence against the ever-increasing power of Rome. Under his auspices, the Peace of Naupactus (217 BC) brought conflict between Macedon and the Greek leagues to an end, and at this time he controlled all of Greece except Athens, Rhodes, and Pergamum. In 215 BC, however, Philip formed an alliance with Rome's enemy Carthage . Rome promptly lured

27695-440: The owner performed most of the labour personally; close reading reveals that much of the produce is to be sold for profit, much of the work to be performed by slaves ( douloi or dmoes ), and much of the owner's time to be spent away from the farm. Slaves' labour was supplemented by labourers who worked for a wage, as sharecroppers (called hektemoroi at Athens), or to pay off debts; this practice seems to have increased in

27886-418: The period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the rise of the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in the Greek alphabet in the 8th century BC. The collapse of the Mycenaean civilization coincided with the fall of several other large empires in the near east, most notably

28077-520: The periods of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, while others argue that these civilizations were so different from later Greek cultures that they should be classed separately. Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to begin with the date of the first Olympic Games in 776 BC, but most historians now extend the term back to about 1000 BC, toward the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages. The Greek Dark Ages are succeeded by

28268-422: The polis as an urban centre was a product of the eighth century. However, the polis did not become the dominant form of socio-political organisation throughout Greece in the archaic period, and in the north and west of the country it did not become dominant until some way into the Classical period. The urbanisation process in archaic Greece known as " synoecism " – the amalgamation of several small settlements into

28459-407: The polis to study the society and government of individual poleis, and bring the information back to document, placing the document in a political science section of the library. Only two documents have survived, Politics and Athenian Constitution . These are a part of any political science curriculum today. Both major ancient Greek philosophers were concerned with elucidating an existing aspect of

28650-472: The political synoecism and the physical synoecism, to events at the polis of Pleuron (Aetolia) described by Strabo . Pleuron, in danger of being sacked by the Macedonians, was officially moved up the slope of a nearby mountain, walled in, and named Newer Pleuron. This act was a physical synoecism. After the Macedonian threat vanished the former location was reinhabited and called Old Pleuron. The old and

28841-411: The population might have been under 18. By contrast, probably less than one in four people were over 40, and only one in 20 over the age of 60. Evidence from human remains shows that the average age at death increased over the archaic period, but there is no clear trend for other measures of health. The size of houses gives some evidence for prosperity within society; in the eighth and seventh centuries,

29032-448: The power of speech as well as a sense of right and wrong, and can communicate judgements of good or bad to the community (I.10). A second metaphor compares a community to a human body: no part can function without the whole functioning (I.11). Men belong to communities because they have an instinct to do so (I.12). The polis is a hierarchy of community. At the most subordinate level is the family ( oikia ), which has priority of loyalty over

29223-504: The relinquishing of property to form the polis is advantageous, and the maximum advantage is maximum possession of common property by a polis. The principle of advantage is unity. The more united, the more advantageous (compare the action of a lever, which concentrates advantage). The ideal commun-ity would be commun-ism, the possession of all property by the community. Personal property, such as wives and children, are included (II.1). Aristotle argues that this eminent domain of all property

29414-410: The result of any previous social evolution. They were the first municipal division of the city manufactured for the purpose. They were no sort of confederacy. Rome initially was ruled by Etruscan kings. Coulanges work was followed by the innovation of the English city-state by W. Warde Fowler in 1893. The Germans had already invented the word in their own language: Stadtstaat, "city-state", referring to

29605-427: The same category of Plato's indefinable abstracts, such as freedom and justice. However, there is a practical freedom and a practical justice, although not theoretically definable, and the ancient authors must mean something consistent when they use the word polis . The problem is to find it. In modern historiography of the ancient world πόλις is often transliterated to polis without any attempt to translate it into

29796-478: The same or similar. It is a figure of speech, the most general instance being sunoik-eioun, "to be associated with", its noun being sunoik-eiosis, the act of association. A second verb, sunoik-ein, "to live together," can mean individuals, as in marriage, or conjointly, as in a community. The community meaning appears in Herodotus. A closely related meaning, "to colonize jointly with", is found there also, and in

29987-420: The same period. The Greek population doubled during the eighth century, resulting in more and larger settlements than previously. The largest settlements, such as Athens and Knossos, might have had populations of 1,500 in 1000 BC; by 700 they might have held as many as 5,000 people. This was part of a wider phenomenon of population growth across the Mediterranean region at this time, which may have been caused by

30178-547: The seeds of discontent in Spartan Greece, inducing the Thebans to attack once more. Their general, Epaminondas , crushed Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, inaugurating a period of Theban dominance in Greece. In 346 BC, unable to prevail in its ten-year war with Phocis , Thebes called upon Philip II of Macedon for aid. Macedon quickly unified the Greek city-states under Macedonian hegemony into

30369-513: The seventh century, Greek colonists expanded the areas that they settled. In the west, colonies were founded as far afield as Marseilles . In the east, the north Aegean, the Sea of Marmara, and the Black Sea all saw colonies founded. The dominant coloniser in these parts was Miletus . At the same time, early colonies such as Syracuse and Megara Hyblaea began to themselves establish colonies. In

30560-406: The significance of the archaic period, some scholars have objected to the term archaic because of its connotations in English of being primitive and outdated. No term which has been suggested to replace it has gained widespread currency, however, and the term is still in use. Much evidence about the Classical period of ancient Greece comes from written histories, such as Thucydides 's History of

30751-502: The sixth century as the elites who commissioned kouroi declined in influence, and by around 480 kouroi were no longer made. The period saw a shift in the decoration of Greek pottery from abstract to figurative styles. During the Greek Dark Ages , following the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation , Greek pottery decoration had been based around increasingly elaborate geometrical patterns. Human figures first appeared on Greek pots in Crete in

30942-464: The sixth century due to the trade with Asia and Egypt. Of the mainland cities, those on the coast were the biggest recipients of trade from the east, especially Corinth. In the early part of the archaic period, Athens does not seem to have been particularly actively involved in this eastern trade, and very few examples of eastern imports have been found in Athens from the eighth or early seventh centuries. By contrast, nearby Euboea had trade-links with

31133-480: The society in which they lived, the polis. Plato was more interested in the ideal; Aristotle, the real. Both had a certain view of what the polis was; that is, a conceptual model. All models must be tested, by definition. Aristotle, of course, could send direct observers. The only way to know a polis now is through study of the ancient literature (philology), and to some extent archaeology. There are thousands of pages of writing and certainly thousands of sites. The problem

31324-399: The sociology in favor of the New Plan, conclusions resulting from research on real constitutions. The difficulties with the Old Plan begin with the meaning of koinonizein, "to hold in common". Typically the authors of the Old Plan use the verb in such expressions as "those holding in common", "A holding in common", "the partnership", and the like, without specifying who is holding what or what

31515-420: The splitting (apoikia, "colonization") of families; that is, one village contains one or more extended families , or clans . A polis is a community of villages, but there must be enough of them to achieve or nearly achieve self-sufficiency. At this point of his theorization, Aristotle turns the "common" noun stem (koino-) into a verb, koinonizein, "to share" or "to own in common". He says: "A single city occupies

31706-408: The state, which would send other members of the united polis to do the work. They would also be sent for any other task: plumbing, farming, herding, etc., as any task could be performed by any member. This view is contrary, as Aristotle points out, to the principle of division of labor . The output of one professional building crew far exceeds the efforts any number of amateur ideal statists, rendering

31897-488: The term. There were no doubt many ancient experts on the polis, but time has done its work. The one surviving expert, Aristotle, is thus an indispensable resource. A polis is identified as such by its standing as polis among the community of poleis. Poleis have ambassadors, can join or host the Hellenic Games, etc. According to Aristotle, their most essential characteristics are those that, if changed, would result in

32088-434: The time that the nobility were becoming increasingly arrogant during the period, modern explanations of seventh century tyranny have tried to find other reasons for unrest among the people. For example, Robert Drews argues that tyrannies were set up by individuals who controlled private armies and that early tyrants did not need the support of the people at all, whilst N.G.L. Hammond suggests that tyrannies were established as

32279-428: The treatise amount to the anthropological sense of property : land, animals, houses, wives, children, anything to which the right of access or disposition is reserved to the owner. This also happens to be Plato's concept of property, not an accident, as Aristotle was a renegade Platonist. The polis, then, is communal property. The theory of its tenancy is where Aristotle and Plato differ sharply. Plato had argued that

32470-521: The true descendants of the Trojans who with the aborigines had earlier formed the Latin people. They were not welcome among the Latins of Alba Longa, and so they had turned to raiding from their base in their seven hills. The myth supposes they had been nourished by a she-wolf and lived a wild life camping in the country. They were, however, supported by an ally. Evander had led a colony from Arcadia before

32661-466: The two sides signed a peace treaty in 447 BC. That peace was stipulated to last thirty years: instead, it held only until 431 BC, with the onset of the Peloponnesian War . The main sources concerning the Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC) are Thucydides 's History of the Peloponnesian War and Xenophon 's Hellenica . Both historians were also Athenian generals who lived through

32852-482: The undeciphered Linear A script and Cretan hieroglyphs . Even the name Minoans is a modern appellation, derived from Minos , the legendary king of Crete. They were primarily a mercantile people engaged in extensive overseas trade throughout the Mediterranean region. Minoan civilization was affected by a number of natural cataclysms, such as the volcanic eruption at Thera ( c.  1628-1627 BC ) and earthquakes ( c.  1600 BC ). In 1425 BC, all

33043-408: The unknown past. All current citizenships must have had their first moments, typically when the law-maker had gotten his laws ratified, or the colony had broken with the metropolis. The ancient writers referred to these initial moments under any of several words produced with the same prefix, sunoik- (Latinized synoec-), "same house", meaning objects that are from now on to be grouped together as being

33234-479: The war and then to defend Greece from further Persian attack, Athens founded the Delian League in 477 BC. Initially, each city in the League would contribute ships and soldiers to a common army, but in time Athens allowed (and then compelled) the smaller cities to contribute funds so that it could supply their quota of ships. Secession from the League could be punished. Following military reversals against

33425-598: The war. The war began in 431 BC over a dispute between the cities of Corcyra and Epidamnus . Corinth , an ally of Sparta in the Peloponnesian League , intervened on the Epidamnian side. Fearful lest Corinth capture the Corcyran navy (second only to the Athenian in size), Athens intervened. They prevented Corinth from landing on Corcyra at the Battle of Sybota , laid siege to Potidaea , and forbade all commerce with Corinth's closely situated ally, Megara , with

33616-595: The way to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan . Since then, Greek minorities have continued to inhabit former Greek territories (e.g. Turkey , Albania , Italy , Libya , Levant , Armenia , Georgia ), and Greek emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe (e.g., North America, Australia, Northern Europe, South Africa ). At present, most Greeks live in the modern states of Greece (independent since 1821) and Cyprus . Fossils of one of

33807-431: The west, Sicily and southern Italy were some of the largest recipients of Greek colonisers. So many Greek settlements were founded in southern Italy that it was known in antiquity as Magna Graecia – "Great Greece". In the last quarter of the eighth century, new Greek settlements were founded in Sicily and southern Italy at an average rate of one every other year, and Greek colonists continued to found cities in Italy until

33998-401: The whole gamut of historical writers, Xenophon, Plato, Strabo, Plutarch; i.e., more or less continuously through all periods from Archaic to Roman. Associated nouns are sunoik-ia, sunoik-esion, sunoik-idion, sunoik-eses, sunoik-isis, a multiplication to be expected over centuries of a single language. These can all mean community in general, but they have two main secondary meanings, to institute

34189-539: The word tyrant, it was synonymous with anax (an archaic Greek word meaning 'king'). Parker dates the first use of the word tyrannos in a negative context to the first half of the sixth century, at least fifty years after Cypselus took power in Corinth. It was not until the time of Thucydides that tyrannos and basileus ('king') were consistently distinguished. Similarly, Greg Anderson has argued that archaic Greek tyrants were not considered illegitimate rulers, and cannot be distinguished from any other rulers of

34380-408: The works of Homer and Hesiod in places attempt to portray an ideal state. The study took a great leap forward when Plato and the academy in general undertook to define what is meant by the good, or ideal, polis. Plato analyzes the polis in the Republic , the Greek title of which, Πολιτεία ( politeia ), itself derives from the word polis . The best form of government of the polis for Plato

34571-449: Was a Phoenician -speaking city. Many nominally Greek colonies also included municipalities of non-Greek speakers, such as Syracuse. The word polis is used in the first known work of Greek literature, the Iliad , a maximum of 350 times. The few hundred ancient Greek classical works on line at the Perseus Digital Library use the word thousands of times. The most frequent use is Dionysius of Halicarnassus , an ancient historian, with

34762-419: Was adopted as an expression of a community's independence and identity, seems to be anachronistic. In the visual arts, the archaic period is characterised by a shift towards representational and naturalistic styles. It was the period in which monumental sculpture was introduced to Greece, and in which Greek pottery styles went through great changes , from the repeating patterns of the late geometric period to

34953-410: Was brought under Spartan control, helotage was introduced and the Peloponnesian League was founded and made Sparta a dominant power in Greece. The word archaic derives from the Greek word archaios , meaning 'old', and refers to the period in ancient Greek history before the classical period. The archaic period is generally considered to have lasted from the beginning of the 8th century BC until

35144-411: Was called a metropolis or "mother city". The Greeks were careful to identify the homeland region and the metropolis of a colony. Typically a metropolis could count on the socio-economic and military support of its colonies, but not always. The homeland regions were located on the Greek mainland. Each gave an ethnic or "racial" name to its population and poleis. Acarnania , for example was the location of

35335-426: Was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern largely dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley, and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges. The Archaic period can be understood as the Orientalizing period , when Greece was at the fringe, but not under the sway, of the budding Neo-Assyrian Empire . Greece adopted significant amounts of cultural elements from

35526-525: Was measured using standard units, named for their value in terms of metal spits ( obeloi ) and handfuls ( drachmai ) of metal spits; these terms would later be used as names for Greek coin denominations. Coinage was invented in Lydia around 650 BC. It was quickly adopted by Greek communities in western Asia Minor, although the older system of bullion remained in use as well. The island of Aegina began to issue its distinctive "turtle" coins before 550 BC, and from there coinage spread to Athens, Corinth and

35717-472: Was otherwise spared. At the Isthmian Games in 196 BC, Flaminius declared all the Greek cities free, although Roman garrisons were placed at Corinth and Chalcis . But the freedom promised by Rome was an illusion. All the cities except Rhodes were enrolled in a new League which Rome ultimately controlled, and aristocratic constitutions were favored and actively promoted. Polis The ancient word polis had socio-political connotations not possessed by

35908-424: Was politically independent. However, some poleis were subordinate to others (e.g., a colony traditionally deferred to its mother city, and some had governments wholly dependent upon others (e.g., the Thirty Tyrants in Athens was imposed by Sparta following the Peloponnesian War ), but the titularly supreme power in each polis was located within that city. This meant that when Greece went to war (e.g., against

36099-600: Was preferred, in some parts of Greece barley was the staple grain; where wheat was grown it was durum rather than bread wheat. Alongside these, farmers cultivated pulses, vines, olives, fruit, and vegetables. Olives and grapes, which could be turned into oil and wine respectively, served as cash crops ; farmers who cultivated land near population centres could also sell soft fruits and leafy vegetables at market. Livestock were of secondary importance. Sheep and goats, in particular, were kept for meat, milk, wool, and fertiliser, but they were difficult to sustain and large herds were

36290-433: Was the source of the orientalizing influence on Greek art in the early part of the archaic period. Meanwhile, to the west, trade between Corinth and Magna Graecia in Southern Italy and Sicily was booming. The eastern trade mainly involved the Greek islands, with Aegina , for instance, acting as an intermediary between the east and the Greek mainland. East Greek states would go on to become extremely prosperous through

36481-405: Was transformed under influences from Minoan Crete , and it lasted until the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces c.  1100 BC . Mycenaean Greece is the Late Helladic Bronze Age civilization of Ancient Greece , and it formed the historical setting of the epics of Homer and most of Greek mythology and religion . The Mycenaean period takes its name from the archaeological site Mycenae in

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