Greece: Polis, Democracy and Empire

There is considerable controversy over the upholding of Greek history as iconic and as the source for Western ascendance, the Rise of the West, and the source of a democratic Western Europe.  The Rise of the West thesis allows for a simplistic comparison to a despotic Orient or Near East.  This was a view propounded by Georg Hegel in the 19th century, and remained a dominant paradigm in Western historiography until the rise of a revisionist World History approach.  We'll explore this older and paradigm and propose a newer method for history that moves beyond a clash of civilizations thesis. In this course we develop a comparative approach that allows us to see Greek history as interrelated to a broader set of choices and developments found around the Mediterranean region and in the Near East.  One of the claims for Greek ascendance was their develop of the polis or city-state.  The older Rise of the West historiography claimed the origins of all Western Civilization as derivative of the uniqueness of Greek philosophy and political development, in other words the polis itself.

Greek political development centered on the polis or city-state.  The polis privileged urban residents who maintained and developed wealth and power through combinations of land ownership of farms, or through merchant and artisanal specialization. An original challenge to the ascendance of the Greek polis as the basis of Western Civilization comes form Kostas Vlassopoulus, Unthinking the Greek Polis:  Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007). Vlassopoulus shows how the relation of the polis to the citizenry of the town and country was not exclusive to Greek political development but was related to and integrated with forms of the polis in Southwest Asia (Near East) and other parts of the Mediterranean.  A more mainstream treatment of the polis as Greek centered is found in Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis:  an Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State (2006).

Merchants who invested in sea trading took greater risks and in early Greek history many of these were immigrants from other Greek speaking areas around the Mediterranean. The wealth and power of these various city states fluctuated.  Athens with its port and sea-based trading emphasized the development of its fleets and support of merchants.  Sparta on the other hand depended more on agricultural wealth and dominance of the Southern peninsula.  The Greeks also relied on slave labor for the most difficult manual labor in mining, and in domestic services.  The accrual of wealth afforded the Athenians the ability to experiment with forms of direct democracy for eligible male citizens who were free.

On how institutions of democracy arose and were integrated with other symbolism and religious ideology, see the excellent work by Robin Osborne, Athens and Athenian Democracy (2010). Why despite the formal innovations found in Athenian democracy did it also exclude slaves and women?

Periodization of Greek History and Hellenic Mediterranean Society

Neolithic and Bronze Age

7000-3000 BC. The rise of permanent farming arose in the Neolithic (Stone Age) period.  Prior to this period the earliest habitation following the Ice Age is found in and around the Franchthi cave complex in the lower Peloponnesus of Southern Greece. For this period and for the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3000-1600 BC) we rely upon archaeological evidence.  In the latter periods we find extensive metal working and evidence of trade and development of contacts with Crete and other Aegean Sea based civilizations, as well as Mesopotamian societies. Linguistically, the Greek language developed on the peninsula and a social hierarchy arose around hereditary kingship and nobility with defensive walls and temples.  During the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC) Minoan Cretan civilization was prosperous during this period and the palace and temple complexes at Knossos of circa 1400 BC is comparable to a later temple and palace fortified complex found at Pylos, circa 1200 BC in Mycenaea on the Peloponnesus peninsula.  The discussion in Charles Gates, Ancient Cities (Ch. 7) on Knossos, Mycenae and Pylos provide evidence of material and social specialization.  The development of writing at Knossos with its adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet into its distinctive Linear B writing system for tablets used for commercial and administrative functions directly influences the development of the Greek syllabic system and alphabet.  By the end of the Middle Bronze Age, we find the Mycenaeans aggressively expanding and conducting raids into Crete and other parts of the Aegean.  This expansion may be read and interpreted through archaeological and epigraphic and written evidence in the epic literary rivalry between Mycenae, Troy and the Hittite Empire in Anatolia of around 1200 BC.

"Dark Age" Greece:  1100-700 BC

This period has received the designation of Dark Ages, to represent a so-called decline in Greek civilizations or city state development following the fall of the Mycenaean kindoms in 1100 BC.   These presumptions were reinforced by late 19th century archaeology into the remains of Mycenae and Troy by the private self-funded archaeological treasure hunting of Heinrich Schliemann.  In fact, there is considerable evidence that this period underwent significant development in technologies in metal working, and in decorative pottery and art.  This blossoming of artisanal and decorative specialization suggests a broader development throughout society than was found in the preceding periods of the Bronze Age.  The recent and ongoing archaeological work at Lefkandi on the island of Euboea has revealed a great deal of the material development of Greek societies in this period.  Toward the end of this period we find the rise of epic poetry.  In the late 8th century Homer composed his epic historical prose, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Culture and Polity in Archaic Greece. 

Interest in Archaic Greece has been renewed and undergone extensive revision from new works in history and archaeology that shed much light into the dynamics of this period of Ancient Mediterranean history.  Among these are Peter Rose’s Class in Ancient Greece, and Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200-479 BCE[1].  In the arts, a number of older and formative studies remain of interest[2].
Some scholars have adopted an ethnographic essentialism in ascribing to Archaic Greece as well as later Greek culture, certain attributes that distinguish them as different from other neighbouring Mediterranean societies[3]. Dougherty’s essentialist Hegelian and ethnographic approach prejudices Greek culture over what she and other scholars adopt as the unique origins of Greek culture in framing a Western Civilization.  A broader comparative approach by Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis (2007) offers valuable insight into the study of the Eastern Mediterranean on both sides of the Aegean Sea reveal there are greater similarities than differences[4].

Archaic Greece:  700-480 BC

The Archaic period witnesses the expansion of overseas Greek colonization into the Western and Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the Black Sea area.  This expansion brings Greek settlers into direct contact with prior cultures and settlements on the Italian and Spanish peninsulas as well as the coastal regions of Southern France.  In the Aegean East, Greek settlements consolidate and expand from their Ionian base mother cities or metropoles into new colonization of the Black Sea area.  There, the Greeks adopted a system of forcing local peoples as subjects in enslaved conditions as agricultural producers for their colonial towns.  The Greeks at the beginning of this period also encounter and trade with the Scythians, a semi-nomadic Central Eurasian Steppes people who dominate trade and artisanal production to the East.  Eventually this Greek colonization comes into a struggle with the Neo-Assyrian and Persian Empires. A major new study of this period that evaluates the class-based power struggles over land and culture is Peter Rose, Class in Archaic Greece (Cambridge U. Press, 2012).  Rose's study may be contrasted with a more cautious but insightful cultural history by Robin Osborne in Archaic and Classical Greek Art (1998) and Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC (2009).  

According to Rose, in the Archaic period we find key conflicts inscribed in cultural production. Up until about 850 BCE Greek villages were protected by big men who raided rival villages.  They were succeded by the rise of rich oligarchs and their supporters who achieved a wider territorial influence and following, by providing greater collectivity in exchange for territorial consolidation and defensive forts and the establishment of cults to provide unity.  In literature this becomes the period of the “alienation” of epic heroes.  Thus Odysseus kills the arrogant oligarchic suitors, while Achilles as a self-made military man is a challenge to the Iliad’s aristocrats, while the commoner remains disenfranchised. This leads to the period of Hesiod's literature, and his Works and Days, that defends the interests of farmers.


Classical Greece:  480-332 BC

The rivalry between Persians and Greeks for influence and power in the Aegean Mediterranean resulted in a series of wars between 492 BC and 479 BC.  These included the defeat and absorption of Greek colonies on the Ionian peninsula followed by the invasions and ultimately defeat of Persian armies and navies at Marathon (490 BC) and at Thermopylae (481 BC) and Salamis in the same year.  Herodotus's accounts of these battles serves as a major primary source for this period. Thereafter the larger and wealthier Greek city-states engage in an aggressive system of expansion that required elaborate alliances and counter measures against each other that led to the disastrous Peloponessian War 431-404 BC.  Thucydides' long text on the war is our major source and provides key insights into the disastrous series of choices and the predicaments of the smaller city states and regions, like Corcyra in the West of Greece, that attempted a democratic revolution in the midst of this civil war and was ultimately defeated.  Various other city-states and regions found themselves, including Argos and Corinth, and the Island of Melos,  found themselves caught between Sparta and Athens.  The Athenians with their superior navies were motivated by the goal of colonization and and empire based on sea trading and the rich agricultural lands of Sicily.  Ultimately, the two most powerful states, Sparta and Athens remained as the two major rivals until finally Athenian power was broken at the end of the war.
The 5th century BC is also noteworthy for its cultural and political development.  Democratic institutions continued to develop in Athens and some other Greek city-states.  A unique and rare system of direct but limited democracy was implemented that allowed free males with property to partake in civic affairs.  Members of a council were rotated based on a lottery and all eligible voting males could debate and vote on all measures in open assemblies of up to several thousand.  Political democracy is matched by exceptional developments in theatre and the arts.  The work of Robin Osborne, Athens and Athenian Democracy (2010) provides excellent insight and commentary on examples of theatre and the architectural complex at the Parthenon as reflections of democracy.

Hellenistic Greece 332-30 BC

The Hellenistic period is demarcated by the ascendance of the military career and empire acquisition of Alexander the Great, who conquers most of the pre-existing Persian Empire in making his own.  His early death from malaria leads to a division of the empire into separate administrative regions that builds upon the use of Greek trading and influence in the Eastern Mediterranean for the Culture and Polity in Archaic Greece.
Interest in Archaic Greece has been renewed and undergone extensive revision from new works in history and archaeology that shed much light into the dynamics of this period of Ancient Mediterranean history.  Among these are Peter Rose’s Class in Ancient Greece, and Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200-479 BCE .  In the arts, a number of older and formative studies remain of interest .
Some scholars have adopted an ethnographic essentialism in ascribing to Archaic Greece as well as later Greek culture, certain attributes that distinguish them as different from other neighbouring Mediterranean societies . Dougherty’s essentialist Hegelian and ethnographic approach prejudices Greek culture over what she and other scholars adopt as the unique origins of Greek culture in framing a Western Civilization.  A broader comparative approach by Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis (2007) offers valuable insight into the study of the Eastern Mediterranean on both sides of the Aegean Sea reveal there are greater similarities than differences .

On Greek Cities, see Charles Gates, Ancient Cities, especially his discussion of Knossos, Mycenae, and Pylos in Ch. 7;  Athens in Chs. 14 and 16.  On the Greek cities of the Hellenistic period see his discussion of Alexandria and Pergamon, Ch. 18.  On Greek cities in pre-Roman Southern Italy and in Sicily, Ch. 19.

Sources:  
Dougherty, Carol, and Leslie Kurke. Cultural poetics in Archaic Greece : cult, performance, politics.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Homann-Wedeking, Ernst. The art of archaic Greece. Art of the world European cultures: the historical, sociological, and religious backgrounds.  New York,: Crown Publishers, 1968.
Osborne, Robin. Greece in the making, 1200-479 BC. Routledge history of the ancient world. 2nd ed.  London ; New York: Routledge, 2009.
Rose, Peter W. Class in archaic Greece.  Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Vlassopoulos, Kostas. Unthinking the Greek polis : ancient Greek history beyond Eurocentrism.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.



[1] Peter W. Rose, Class in archaic Greece (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Robin Osborne, Greece in the making, 1200-479 BC, 2nd ed., Routledge history of the ancient world (London ; New York: Routledge, 2009).
[2] Ernst Homann-Wedeking, The art of archaic Greece, Art of the world European cultures: the historical, sociological, and religious backgrounds (New York,: Crown Publishers, 1968).
[3] Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke, Cultural poetics in Archaic Greece : cult, performance, politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[4] Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek polis : ancient Greek history beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  1. Greek Literature:  Perseus Project http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
  2. Greek History http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/asbook07.asp