How Did Ancient Greece Begin
A time before Aristotle.
When Greeks first set sail and colonized three continents.
A time of military and political revolution, and a time of tyrants.
This is Archaic Greece.
From the ashes of the Bronze Age, a new civilization would be born.
Some call it the most influential civilization to ever exist.
The clouds have finally lifted over the Aegean.
The sun painstakingly reaching through to give light to the shadows below.
Here we find a group of men, athletic and quite naked.
They are lined up in a row in a structure called the stadion.
This word would later become stadium in English.
In stadiums, we often deal with sporting events.
So what could these men be up to?
Perhaps archery or fighting.
An even more basic human physical activity than these is running.
This competition is a race.
The trumpet sounds and they are off.
Named after the building it was held in, the stadion was an ancient running race, originally
192 meters, but generally 180 meters, performed here, in Greece.
The location gives us even more clues as to its significance.
Beginning in 776 BCE, in Olympia, on the Peloponnese, this race would become the basis for the Olympic
Games, which on ensues.
We even know who won this first stadion event.
It was a cook named Charybdis.
Over time, more events would be added, like Pankration and wrestling.
Even more significant than the legacy of these games, is the shared culture it gave the different
tribes around the Aegean after the Bronze Age collapse.
Any freeborn Greek man could enter.
To the west, would be the Dorians, the same tribes who displaced the ancient Mycenaeans,
who might have been related to the Achaeans, who now resided in the center, along with
the Aeolians, who lived in Thessaly.
Mycenaeans who traveled east to Anatolia, over time mixed with near east culture to
become what we call, Ionians.
These people all spoke different dialects, but these Greeks would all call themselves
Hellenes, after their mythical ancestor Helen.
Greek was a name given to them later by the Romans.
They would count their years from the first Olympiad, in cycles of four, with different
Panhellenic games added to the rotation.
The Pythian games were eventually added, also having a rotation of four years, but took
place at Delphi, honoring Apollo.
We aren't certain of the year, but sometime before 700 BCE, the Greek culture was cemented
into writing.
Most attribute this to Homer, who composed the Iliad and Odyssey, the story of the Trojan
War and the long voyage home, events said to have taken place centuries earlier.
Though Homer composed these stories, he did have help.
It's more likely he did not write them himself, as he might have been blind or illiterate.
Those that transcribed these epics, used script derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which
we discussed in episode 6, of our last chapter.
Homer also used inspiration from other gods, borrowing aspects from Egypt and the Near
East.
The gods of Greece were mostly anthropomorphic, not like those of the Middle East.
In the Iliad, the gods also possessed more human personalities as well.
Homer gave structure to these gods and their behaviors.
They would be seen as jealous, vengeful, and partisan, taking sides in human affairs.
These became the basis for not only Greek mythology, but Western literature.
Though originating before the Bronze Age collapse, the word Barbaroi, meaning barbarian, was
also written down for the first time in Homer's epics.
The word has a negative connotation in modern times, but for the Greeks, it simply meant
one who did not speak Greek, or a discernible dialect.
So, to the Greeks, the Egyptians, Iranian peoples, and the Phoenicians, were all barbarian,
regardless of their cultural achievements.
This further strengthened the notion that the world was split between Greek and non-Greek.
So it was around these principles that the Greeks coalesced.
Though they all came from different cities, with different landscapes, they worshipped
the same gods, spoke the same language, but still competed against one another during
the Panhellenic Games.
They were unified enough to share a civilization, but separate enough that rivalries would form.
Every region was composed of multiple independent city-states.
Sparta developed in the Peloponnese, and Athens in Attica.
City-states were relatively small, containing around 20,000 to 30,000 people, but Athens
could have held up to 300,000 at its height.
Greece had fertile pastures, but not enough to sustain these numerous rival city-states,
that boomed in population during the 700s BCE.
The element of iron was also scarce in Greece.
So, for more resources, and more land, Greece underwent a period of colonization abroad.
This took them not only around the Aegean, but the entire Mediterranean and Black Sea.
The city-state of Corinth founded the colony of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily, in this
century.
In the 600s BCE, the city-state of Megara sailed east, and founded Byzantium, which would eventually
become one of the most important Greek colonies, as Byzantium, and later Constantinople.
Colonies were formed on the Italian peninsula itself, one of the first being Neopolis, or
New City.
This would eventually become Naples to the Romans.
They would end up calling this Greek section of Lower Italy, Magna Graecia.
City-states in the east, also participated.
In Ionia, Phokia travelled westwards, and created a colony at Marseille in France.
Though these colonies were new beginnings for the Greeks, those who set sail became
citizens of their new cities, and had to revoke citizenry from their home.
All they had was their identity as Greek.
They built Greek temples, farmed Greek crops, and sent their own representatives to the
Panhellenic Games.
By the 500s BCE, the Greek world spanned the whole Mediterranean, from Spain, all the way
to the Black Sea.
Up to 40% of the population of the Hellenic world was living outside of Greece.
They failed to take much of northern Africa though, because of the presence of another
power with a lot of influence.
We'll get to Carthage in a later chapter of this series, so please be sure to subscribe.
Though this map looks like an empire expanding, like those we've seen of Neo-Assyria, or
Egypt, these colonies were independent from one another.
There was no Greek empire, as there was no king, emperor, or central administration,
just a shared culture.
As is to be expected, their shared culture changed over time.
Those in the east adopted Near East culture, those in Italy, mixed with the Italics, and
many would mix with the Phoenician culture, as they had colonized many regions as well.
In Anatolia, the Lydians became the foremost power after the Bronze Age.
Now in the Iron Age, the fabulously wealthy Lydian king, Croesus, absorbed the Greek settlements
on the coast, in the mid-500s BCE, exacting tribute.
Croesus was the first to mint gold standardized coins to be used as currency, a practice later
adopted by the Greeks.
They would also be influenced by the great Egyptian monuments, but eventually, it wasn't
just Greeks adopting culture.
They had shared theirs, as well.
With more access to more resources, Greeks all over the Mediterranean were able to have
lucrative trading routes.
This made certain men quite rich, and able to spark a military revolution.
Battles in the Greek Dark Ages, had mostly been a leader on horseback, engaging with
an opposing leader, with soldiers simply brawling on foot.
With new wealth, these rich men, often artisans, could equip themselves better.
Forging better armor, they would also take up long spears, up to 14 feet long, as weapons.
It was called a dori, or doru.
If this broke, they could use a short sword called a xiphos.
As defense, they would make shields composed of thick wood, bronze, and leather.
These were called hoplons.
Taking the name of this shield, these soldiers came to be known as hoplites.
Hoplites would fight in a group with other hoplites, known as the phalanx.
Acting as a unit, every hoplite stood shoulder to shoulder, and was required to use his shield,
to protect the hoplite to his left.
Those in front also raised their spears over the shield wall, to engage the enemy.
Those at the back would push forward.
Their tight formation and long spears made the phalanx perfect for fighting on flat fields,
which was often the case, as farmland was often the prize.
The hoplite would remain the staple in the Greek army for centuries.
While each city-state did have a ruler, backed by wealthy oligarchs, the rising middle class,
grew tired of this system of government.
They would begin to discuss collective concerns in public, a practice which became known as
politics.
This was named after the polis, a word that could mean the physical city-state itself,
or the collective citizenry.
With over 150 different city-states by the 500s BCE, the citizens of the polis, after
meeting to discuss matters at the agora, an open area of assembly, had shifted the notion
of one ruler, to the rule of many.
This is what occurred in Athens.
Evidence is sparse, but it seems to confirm that Athens had dynastic kings early on, but
they were called archons, meaning, chief justice, or chief magistrate.
They would rule along with the head of the military, and the head of the priests.
By around 683 BCE, Athens was ruled over by a council of nine archons, elected by the
landowning class, to one-year terms.
The Areopagos, were former archons, who governed an advisory body.
The assembly of citizens in the city-state was called the ecclesia, but they seemed to
not have had much power.
The aristocratic landowners still possessed the might.
Those who became indebted to them could become slaves.
One of the first reliably dated events in Athenian history, occurred in 632 BCE.
Strong men, or noblemen had usurped power in other city-states.
Known as tyrants, they often rose to power through unconventional means.
Cylon, a charismatic noble of Athens, and former winner of the Olympic Games, attempted
a coup in Athens, to become a tyrant himself.
Cylon and his supporters failed, but took refuge in the temple of Athena, on the Acropolis.
Surrounded by the nine archons, Cylon managed to escape, but his co-conspirators surrendered,
after being told their lives would be spared.
This was a lie.
They were all subsequently killed.
Though justice had been served, this brought great shame on the archons.
About a decade later, the first recorded lawgiver, Draco, replaced the oral laws with
written law, upheld by the courts.
These laws were quite unbalanced and harsh, the death penalty being called for even minor
offences.
The name has lived on, as we still call severe measures, draconian.
Weary of archons and of harsh laws, Athens looked to another man to guide them.
The man was a newly elected archon, named Solon.
He was given autocratic powers for a time, which enabled him to act as he pleased.
He repealed Draco's laws, and took on the task of creating a new law code.
The code, written in the 590s BCE, tackled inequality in a way that had never been done.
Enslavement of debtors was abolished, mortgage debt on lands was ended, and land was redistributed.
The ecclesia was given oversight to the election of the archons as well.
Solon then relinquished his powers, and left the city.
Solon's reforms would become the foundation of Athenian democracy.
But Athens was not yet ready.
The people were soon divided into different factions.
Those who backed Solon's reforms were known as the Men of the Coast.
The old aristocratic families, wanting to return to the days of oligarchy, were known
as the Men of the Plain.
The rest were called the Men of the Hills.
These were the poorest men.
Though they lacked legitimacy, their leader was full of hope.
His name was Pisistratus.
A populist at heart, he listened to the people directly, and became wildly popular.
He would wander around, surrounded by a bodyguard of men wielding clubs.
In 560 BCE, he and his guards took control of the Acropolis, and named himself leader.
This didn't last, but after a power struggle, Pisistratus firmly took control of Athens
in 546 BCE, becoming a tyrant.
The label of tyrant didn't have to have a negative connotation, and that is evidenced
here.
Pisistratus was a most benevolent leader.
He undertook building campaigns, like the construction of the first Parthenon.
He also reduced taxes for the poor, leading to a golden age of peace for Athens.
Pisistratus was later succeeded by his son, Hippias.
As is usual, Hippias was not a leader like his father.
After his brother was killed in 514 BCE, by Harmonius and Aristagaton, two lovers, Hippias
turned tyrant into tyranny.
He imposed harsh taxes, and executed many citizens, including of course, the assassins.
This reign of terror would have torn Athens apart, but the city was saved, by a most unlikely
source.
At Delphi, rested the temple of Apollo.
The high priestess within, was said to possess powers of precognition.
She was known as Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi.
Kings would visit her to receive wisdom, and knowledge of future events.
Around 510 BCE, Cleomenes, king of Sparta, visited this famous Oracle.
She told the king that he must invade Athens, in order to save it.
Cleomenes obliged.
In truth, both parties had their own reasons for wanting to aid Athens.
Athenian oligarchs had recently paid for a new marble temple at Delphi, and Sparta needed
Athens intact, in order to help resist a new power growing to the east.
The Spartans, under Cleomenes, succeeded in the invasion, and trapped the tyrant Hippias
on the Acropolis.
The Spartans then forced Hippias out of Athens, where he then travelled east, meeting up with
the Persians.
There was now a power vacuum in Athens.
Cleomenes attempted to fill it by placing a pro-Spartan oligarchy to rule, headed by
Isagoras.
After driving out numerous clans, the masses became discontent with this dictatorship.
On the brink, the people of Athens banded together, and confronted Isagoras at the Acropolis,
in what we call the Athenian Revolution.
On the third day, Cleomenes and Isagoras surrendered.
They were allowed to flee with their lives, but many of their supporters were killed.
A story wildly similar to Cylon's from a century earlier.
The new ruler would be the people, and they chose Cleisthenes, a member of an exiled aristocratic
clan, as the first archon of this new Athens.
With the backing of the middle and lower classes, Cleisthenes further reformed the constitution,
and is regarded as the father of Athenian democracy.
He called the reforms democratia, from the words demos for people, and kratos for power.
The lawmaker split Athens up into districts, called demis, in an attempt to break aristocratic
alliances and redistribute power.
This also gave the ecclesia more agency than it had previously had.
Voting was introduced, ushering in democracy.
The practice of ostracism also started here.
This system would exile a citizen, mostly those perceived as a threat to the city's harmony.
Votes would be cast on pottery, called ostracon, and if anyone received 6,000 votes, they would
be exiled.
The first victims of this, would be those allies of Hippias who remained in Athens.
After vanquishing its tyrants, Athenian democracy beamed brightly on this ancient city.
This city where only 30% of people were eligible to vote.
The city that was home to the most slaves.
In the Peloponnese, at the settlement of Sparta, there was slavery of a different kind.
Described as either slaves, or merely a type of serf, the helots would work the fields.
Sparta had always taken a different path from Athens.
Their valley was wide enough to expand upon, and the banks of the Eurotas river, in Laconia,
were fertile, with favourable climate year round.
This river was too shallow for warships, so Sparta focused more on their land army, quite
unlike the naval power of Athens.
During Greek colonization, while the rest of Greece expanded overseas with colonies,
Sparta expanded by land.
Neighbouring the Spartans, were the Mycenaeans, residing in Mycenaea.
After a couple of Mycenaean wars, the last ending in 650 BCE, the Mycenaeans were made
helots, and forced to do all the manual labour for the Spartans.
According to Herodotus, there could have been seven helots to every Spartan, so threats
of an uprising or revolt were always present.
To keep them in check, the Spartans would declare war on the helots each autumn, and
kill enough, lest their numbers get too great.
The perioikoi, the second class, were non-citizens, often artisans, that produced commercial goods,
crafts, and weapons for the Spartans.
They generally lived in the outskirts, and left the Spartan citizens, the third and highest
class, able to focus on other pursuits.
While other Greek city-states had to deal with tyrants, the Spartans developed their
own system of kingship.
It was a diarchy.
This meant that instead of one king, like a monarchy, there was two.
Each king was part of an aristocratic Spartan family, said to have descended from the great
demigod Heracles himself.
Neither was more important than the other, and this was meant as a deterrent, to uncheck
power in the hands of one.
This wasn't all.
There were further checks to the king's power.
If a war was declared, the king himself was to be the first to charge into a battle, and
the last out, in case of a retreat.
This was to help prevent unnecessary conflicts.
The kings also acted as chief priests of Sparta, so were required to see the Oracle of Delphi.
Her words were especially sacred to the Spartans.
Lawmaking was the job of a council called the Gerousia.
They were overseen by a council of five elders, known as the Ephors, or those who oversee.
Only the Spartan kings were more important than the Ephors.
They were elected annually, by an assembly of citizens.
This assembly was known as the Appellae, but they had limited power, as any decisions could
be overruled by the Gerousia.
Their original lawgiver, the semi-legendary Lycurgus, was said to have created the Spartan
constitution with the guidance of Pythia the Oracle.
The laws were based on equality, military fitness, and austerity.
Newborn babies were inspected by the Ephors, and if deemed unacceptable, would be placed
in the mountains, to die of exposure.
Children, after all, did not belong to their parents, but to the state.
Those boys who remained alive were placed into the Agogae system by age seven.
We aren't exactly certain if it was implemented during the Archaic period, or later in the
Classical Age.
The Agogae system was meant to teach the Spartan boys and men loyalty to the state, through
military training, pain tolerance, hunting and foraging, and singing.
They would be divided into smaller groups called Agaele, or later Bule, meaning herd,
and spent the days and nights together.
Girls had their own education system, which focused more on poetry, song, and dance.
Though gender-normative, Sparta is the only Greek city-state with evidence of a female
education system.
Though married to men, they lived separately, as males lived in dormitories, and ate in
mess halls with other males.
Though so close, it was clear Athens and Sparta had different aspirations, and different
views on society and culture.
They would be fated to clash, a story we'll get to, later in this chapter.
The Archaic Age truly built the foundations of the ancient Greece we are all familiar
with.
Though not rife with the knowledge, art, and science, of the Classical Age, the Archaic
period set the stage for what was to come.
Greek colonies had spread all over the Mediterranean and beyond.
Perhaps they would have been able to push more westwards, but the Carthaginians' presence
hampered any further expansion.
It was only a matter of time until the First Sicilian War broke out in 480 BCE.
The Carthaginians attempted to place the deposed tyrant of Himera, Terilus, on the throne.
They were defeated by Gelo, king of Syracuse, and Theron, the tyrant of Agrigentum, at the
Battle of Himera.
Carthaginian general Hamilcar was either killed, or committed suicide.
Carthage herself completely changed governments, and utterly humiliated, could not intervene
in Sicily for 70 years.
Hard to believe, but that was not the most impressive Greek victory of the early 400s
BCE.
For that, we need to travel back east, and to a power, whose empire would stretch across
5.5 million square kilometers, from the Balkans in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east.
Next episode, we meet the nemesis of the Greek city-states.
Next episode.
Prepare for Persia.
