Greek core 1 - Aristocracy and Democracy

Hdt “declines to judge between conflicting accounts” - “intellectual honesty” and “persuasive rhetoric”, “now fashionable and proper method to generate credibility for the author”

Dewald and Marincola (Hdt)

Hdt’s chronology seems more “episodic, rather than continuous or biographical”. Powerful families could impose their stories “on the wider public”

Oswyn Murray (Hdt)

Hdt “transcribed speech”

Jennifer Robert (Hdt)

Hdt used time not as a “measurable quantity but as an associative and emotional quantity”, divided into the “heroic age and post heroic”. The wealth of families were a variable for whether their history became public memory

Moses Finley (Hdt)

Visual source for Croesus pyre story

Myson Amphora, 525-475 BC

Primary source (other than Hdt) for Croesus pyre story

Bacchylides Ode 3

Symposium was derived from the eastern “nomad tradition of reclining” to eat which was formalised in urban courts, introduced to Greece in the 7th century, after democracy is introduced dancing is done by symposiasts not professionals

John Boardman (Symposiums)

Symposium - “the krater was central to the symposium”, myth was not the “principal topic” but “wine was the province of Dionysus” so “Dionysian imagery blossomed”

James Whitley (Symposiums)

Symposium - Homer gives us a sense of how in the Bonze age “central authority sponsored large feasts”, “exclusive province of the elite until the end of the Archaic period”, the symposium allowed men to “get to know each other’s views”

Kathleen M. Lynch (Symposium)

Symposium was the “focus of aristocratic culture in the archaic period”, “an insistence on equality among the participants”

Oswyn Murray (Symposium)

Symposium - “the krater has a place of honour in such a komos”

Francois Lissarrague (Symposium)

Symposium made Greeks reconsider what was ‘exotic’ imagery and instead see the symposium “as part of a common heritage belonging to cultures throughout the Mediterranean”

K. Topper (Symposium)

Non vase visual source for symposiums

Tomb of the Diver, near the Greek colony of Paestum, c. 480 BC, painted walls

reclining couch in a symposium

kline

a table in a symposium

trapeza

Persian hat

kidaris

symposium leader who chose the water-wine ratio and the topic of conversation

symposiarch

act of the receiver of a myrtle branch finishing off the song

capping

competition at the symposium where everyone had to know the lyrics to a song

skolia

cup bearer at a symposium

pais

Sparta - the reforms of Lycurgus meant that “the drunken symposia was replaced by sober syssitia”, “Spartan society was structured to produce a stereotype - of itself”

A. Powell (Sparta)

Sparta - the outdated all-iron Spartan currency found discouraged foreign trade, Spartan material evidence is a question of “expenditure and investment” since non-Spartiates made it

S. Hodkinson (Sparta)

Ancient source on Sparta that focuses on the frugality and hardships of Spartan society

Xenophon, Constitution of the Spartans

Ancient source focused on Spartan laws against extravagance and excess

Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus

Ancient source that claims the Spartan system was aimed at military valour only

Aristotle, Politics, 2.1269-70

Archaeological sources for Sparta

bronze figurines and black figure vases

3 ways to reconcile literary and archaeological sources for Sparta

literary sources are wrong, non-Spartiates made the art, and archaeological evidence is geared towards the consumer

fundamental, orally transmitted, constitutional laws of Sparta, believed to be established by Lycurgus

rhetra

Ionian revolt - Persian conquests disrupted Ionian trade and economy, tyranny was slowly becoming an “unacceptable form of government” in the Greek mind

Oswyn Murray (Ionian Revolt)

Ionian revolt - declines in Ionian trade “may be as much a result of the Revolt as its cause”, Ionia and Miletus was prosperous before the revolt

Alan Greaves (Ionian Revolt)

Ionian revolt - Darius went far to meet the grievances of the Ionians after the Revolt, the Persians were fair rulers that let their subjects live how they wanted

Georges (Ionian Revolt)

Ionian revolt was presented as both a war “for freedom and one of conquest”, it was Persian brutality that caused the revolt

Munson (Ionian Revolt)

Olympia - the ideology of Panhellenism was spread through the cycle of games which comprehensively included all city states in the Greek world

Pedley (Olympia)

Olympia was Panhellenic because the monuments came from all the different poleis and celebrated non-Olympic victories

Valavanis (Olympia)

Olympia was mainly a sanctuary for the Eleians as shown by the procession from Elis to Olympia

Scott (Olympia)

Death - “nothing guaranteed kleos like death in battle” so it needed to be monumentalised

Arrington (death)

death - the change from all aristocratic fighters to non-elite Athenians warriors was paralleled in how the war dead were honoured, war dead got the honour of annual competitions before only given to heroes and deities

Pritchard (death)

highest propertied class in archaic Athens whose land produced 500 medimnoi (730 bushels) of grain a year

pentakosiomedimnoi

second propertied class in archaic Athens who were wealthy enough to own horses

hippeis

owners of oxen in the archaic period

zeugitai

laborers in the archaic period

thetes

controlled the coastal areas in the Pisistratus rivalry

Megakles of the Alcmaeonidae

held the city and much of the plain in the Pisistratus rivalry

Lykourgos (possibly of the Eteoboutadai)

held the inland parts of the Attica in the Pisistratus rivalry

Pisistratus of the Pisistratids

date Pisistratus took power

566 BC

date of the expulsion of Hippias

510 BC

Athens - the Pisistratids added to the cultural life of Athens with their buildings and bringing in poets

John M. Camp (Athens)

Athens - Pisistratus “acted more like a citizen than a tyrant”

Jeffrey M. Hurwit (Athens)

Athens - “no trace of a consistent building policy with the purpose of competing with the tyrants of other poleis”

Johannes Boersma (Athens)

Democracy - “the trittyes were constructed in a deliberate attempt to create units which would be sufficiently distinct from existing local units”, “pyramid of power” with “the people and not one person” at its head

D. M. Lewis (Democracy)

Democracy - “the council of 500 may have assumed functions and duties from an earlier Solonian council”, ostracization was “symbolic - signifying the potential authority that the demos had over errant aristocrats - and its relative clemency”

Jonothan M. Hall (Democracy)

Material source for demes (including metics and oaths of officials)

Scambonidae inscription

material evidence for sortition (lottery for boule)

kleroterion

Hdt evidence for Democracy

Hdt. book 5

Ancient source (Democracy) - first ostracism after marathon, “portioned land among the demes”, “offering to hand over the government to the multitude”

Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 20-22

material evidence for Persian tribute

Persepolis Apadana

material evidence x2 for Persian and Lydian culture

Lydian treasury (with Ahuramazda winged sun-disk), Karaburun tomb II

material evidence for Persian success against revolts

Bisitun inscription of Darius I (trilingual)

Hdt. evidence for Ionian revolt and Aristagoras section

Hdt. book 5

New buildings in Miletus before the Ionian revolt x4

marble temple of Athena, temple to Artemis Chitone, building phases at the sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis at Brachidae-Didyma"

Material evidence of women at Olympia

stone base of a statue with inscription dedicated by Kyniska for winning a chariot race, c.390-380 BC

material evidence for women and symposium and kottabos

Phintias hydra, Vulci, 550-500 BC, (Oxford Ashmolean?)

material evidence for Pythia

King Aegeus and Themis by the Codrus Painter, c. 430 BC

material evidence for aristocratic grave monument

marble grave stele of Aristion, signed by Aristokles, c. 520 BC

material evidence for communal graves x2

OR 109, communal graves in Kerameikos

Hdt. evidence for Salamis (wooden walls)

Hdt. book 8 (book 7)

literary evidence for Pisistratus

Hdt. 5, Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 13-19 (“advanced loans of money”), Thucydides

Thucydides- “these tyrants held virtue and wisdom in great account”

Thucydides 6 on Pisistratus

Aristotle - “merciful”, “worked for peace”, “Golden Age of Cronos”

Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians on Pisistratus

material evidence of celebrating victories in Olympia x2

Persian helmet dedicated by Athens taken by the Medes, Miltiades’ helmet (Corinthian helmet taken by Athens) dedicated after Marathon

material evidence for the symposium x2

Corinthian column-crater from Cerveteri by Eurytus c. 600 BC, Dionysus and Heracles kylix by the Clinic painter 470 BC British Museum

material evidence for what was observed at a symposium

any vase - e.g. Exekias’ Vatican Amphora, later 6th century

material evidence for the symposium - non-vase x2

Tomb of the diver near Paestum c. 480 BC, Andron in: Himera House, Olynthos house vii 4, house of the mosaics in Eretria

literary evidence for the symposium x2

Plato’s Symposium (focus on love, kottabos, elite men, speeches), Xenophon’s Symposium (serious discussion and entertainment)

Hdt. source for Pisistratids

Hdt. book 1 and 5

Hdt. source for Croesus of Lydia

Hdt. book 1 (focus on military expansion)

Hdt. source for Periander of Corinth

Hdt. book 1 and 5 (murdered wife, castrated youths, exiled son, wheat metaphor)

Hdt. source for Polycrates

Hdt. book 3 (killed bother, exiles other, paid Persians copper coins covered in gold, lured to death in Persia by wealth)

literary evidence for Periander of Corinth (wise)

Plutarch, Symposium of the seven sages

literary evidence for Periander of Corinth (colonies)

Aristotle, politics

literary evidence for Sparta x5

Tyrtaeus fragments, Xenophon’s Constitution of the Spartans, Aristotle’s Politics, Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, Hdt. bk 5

material evidence for Sparta x4

votive deposits from Artemis Orthia, Laconian sherds at Naukratis, cup by the Rider Painter 550/530 BC in the British Museum, Vix krater 530-520 BC