Early Greece

The physical shape of the noble’s house provides the key to the relationship between production of wealth and its use to establish the social status of the basileus. Stripped of its heroic embellishments (so much easier to build in words than with the primitive technology of early Greece), it consists essentially of a courtyard, stables, perhaps a porch where guests might sleep, private chambers for storing wealth and weapons and for women’s quarters, and the great hall or megaron – a long room with seats round the walls and a central hearth. The master of the house may have his own private chamber, as Odysseus did, or he may sleep in the hall.

Archaeological evidence relates primarily to town settlements, and so to ordinary housing; but even these single room dwellings provide analogies to the wall seats and central hearths of the aristocracy, as if either the larger had grown from the smaller or peasants were imitating the nobility. The comparative absence of larger and more complex houses has worried archaeologists, and led many to try to relate the Homeric house across the Dark Age to the Mycenean palace. But such worries may be unfounded, for it seems that many of the nobles did not live in the towns; so that the fact that their houses have not been found is not surprising, for the countryside of Anatolia and even mainland Greece has been little explored. Essentially the oikos-economy is estate-centred and suggests a period when aristocrats lived separately from the community. The transition to city life was part of the same development whose effects have been seen in the social position of women and in agriculture. In these respects Asia Minor may well have been more conservative than mainland Greece, until the disturbances from the seventh century onwards, with the Cimmerian invasion and the attacks of Lydia, drove the Ionian Greeks into their coastal cities. Even then it seems that in some areas fortified farmsteads preserved a little of the old style of life.

Not all basilēes lived in the country: Alcinous’ house for instance is within the city walls (Odyssey 6 and 7). And two archaeological finds give reality and proportion to the poetic descriptions. At Zagora on Andros a housing complex of the late eighth century seems to belong together as a unit: it is prominently placed in the middle of the settlement near an open space and the site of a later temple. The main room in the complex is square and about 8 metres across, with a central hearth and benches along three walls. The eighth century settlement at Emporio on Chios is even more interesting. A primitive defence wall, which can hardly have been more than 2 metres high, ran round the hilltop, enclosing about 6 acres; the only two buildings within it were a later seventh century temple and, built into the wall and contemporary with it, a megaron hall 18 metres long, with three central columns and a porch supported by two more columns. Below the walls lay a village of perhaps 500 inhabitants; the larger houses were of the same megaron type with central columns and hearth, others had stone benches against the walls. Here perhaps is the roughly fortified residence of a loca1 basiletis, a refuge for his herds and for those living outside it, who must have regarded the owner of the main megaron as their leader. It was in such dim and smoke-fìlled halls as those of Zagora and Emporio that the poems of Homer were originally sung.

Early Greek society was not feudal: there was no class owing obligations to an arìstocracy in return for land, and no general serf population separate from the slaves, who were always recruited from outside the community. The various scattered forms of obligated servitude found later in Dorian communities like Sparta and Argos, or colonial cities like Syracuse, or in the static population of Athens, are not individual survivals of a general phenomenon, but special developments conditioned by the history of each area. Generally early Greece was a land of free peasantry, in which the distinction between aristocracy and people (dēmos) was a question of birth and life style, unencumbered by complex social structures.

In the absence of permanent ties of allegiance, despite the hereditary nature of the aristocracy, the establishment of personal status (timē) created a competitive society: status was important because activities such as warfare, raiding and piracy required the ability to attract supporters from outside the genos. It is for this reason that feasting and the entertainment of male companions (hetairoi) was an essential activity for the man of influence; it was this function of achieving rank by feasts of merit which the great hall served, and towards which the surplus production of the oikos was largely directed. For hetairoi seem to have been attracted by such displays of personal generosity, by the reputation of the leader and by ties of guest-friendship (xenia), more often than through marriage or blood connection.

Those who feasted in the great hall were men of the same class as their host. So Alcinous entertains the basilēes of Phaeacia, and Agamemnon the leaders of his contingents before Troy; even the suitors in Odysseus’ house are a band of aristocratic hetairoi merely outstaying their welcome. The feasting is reciprocai; the ghost of Odysseus’ mother in the underworld gives him news of Telemachus, who still ‘feasts at equal feasts’, ‘for all invite him’ (Odyssey 11.185f); Telemachus himself tells the suitors ‘leave my halls and prepare other feasts, eating your own belongings, going in turn from house to house’ (Odyssey 2.139f). Architecture and the activity of feasting are interwoven in Odysseus’ recognition of his own house: ‘Eumaeus, this must surely be the fine house of Odysseus: it would be easy to recognize and pick out even among many. There are buildings on buildings, and the court is well finished with a wall and cornice, and the double gates are well protected: no man could force it. And I see many men are feasting within, for the smell of fat is there and the lyre sounds, which the gods have made as companion to the feast’ (Odyssey 17.264ff). The emphasis laid on descriptions of feasting in the Homeric poems is no mere literary convention: it corresponds to a central feature in the life-style of the aristocracy, and the poetry of epic was already represented as the main form of entertainment at the feast. For Hesiod on the other hand the feast has a very different signifìcance: everyone brings their own contributions to a communal meal (Works and Days 72ff).

Two other characteristics of Homeric society helped to create the network of obligations which sustained the power of the nobility – the institution of guest-friendship and the role of the gift within it. Beyond his immediate geographical neighbourhood, the basileus could expect to be welcomed on his travels by men of the same class as himself: with them he would establish, or fìnd already established by his ancestors, that relationship between guest and host (both called xenos, the word for a stranger) which was especially sacrosanct, under the protection of Zeus Xenios: this was one of the epithets of Zeus related to his general role as guardian of those outside the community – guests, suppliants and beggars.

The stranger travelled empty-handed, but he was given not only board and lodging: everywhere he called he received also gifts (xeneia); indeed it is clear that this was the main purpose and profìt of peaceful travel. Menelaus and Helen travelled in order to amass great wealth and carne home from Egypt bringing rich gifts from their hosts (Odyssey 4.78ff); Menelaus suggests to Telemachus that they should make a journey together through Greece, ‘nor will anyone just send us away, but he will give us one thing to take, some well-made bronze tripod or cauldron or pair of mules or a gold cup’ (Odyssey 15.82ff). Such gifts were due under all circumstances as a matter of honour, even for a one night stand: ‘there they stayed the night, and he gave them xeneia’ (Odyssey 3.490). Odysseus had typically turned the custom to his own profìt and was even prepared to ask for his due: he would have been back home long ago if he had not been keen to ‘collect wealth through travelling over many lands, for Odysseus knows about gain above all other men’ ; ‘he is bringing much good treasure, acquired by asking among people’ – ‘enough to keep a man and his heirs to the tenth generation’ (Odyssey 19.268ff).

Though Homer must exaggerate their worth, he shows that these gifts were always of luxury items, and particularly of metalwork, drawn from the treasures of the household – copper, gold, Silver, fine fabrics and wines, cauldrons, mixing bowls, tripods, decorated armour and swords. They may have been given before: Menelaus presents Telemachus with a mixing bowl which he had received from the king of Sidon (Odyssey 15.113ff). If the thing got out of hand, one could perhaps recoup one’s outlay by a levy among the people, as Alcinous suggests (Odyssey 13.14f). As with marriage gifts there is not usually a direct exchange involved: in the first instance it is an expression of competitive generosity. The immediate return is the pleasure of news and stories; but there is the creation of a link for the future: ‘choose a good present and the return will be worthy’ (Odyssey 1.318ff); ‘you gave those gifts in vain though you gave thousands: for if you had come to the land of Ithaca while he was alive he would have sent you away with good return for your presents and a worthy xeneia, as is right when someone begins it’ (Odyssey 24.284). An old guest-friend of Priam ransoms one of his sons (Iliad 21.42). There is the great scene when Glaucus and Diomedes meet in battle and establish their lineage: ‘then you are a guest-friend of mine of old through my father’, for their fathers had met long ago and gifts had been exchanged. The two heroes agree not to fìght, and cement their ancestral friendship by an exchange of armour in which Zeus took away Glaucus’ wits, for he accepted bronze for gold (Iliad 6.119ff: this is the only passage where direct gift exchange is mentioned). A breach of the rules of guest-friendship was indeed the main cause of the Trojan war: for Paris stole Helen from Menelaus on such a visit, and Troy is therefore doomed.

Though they may resemble primitive commercial transactions in the element of immediate or ultimate return expected, such gift relations are really a quite different mode even of regulating exchange in the societies and areas where they operate, as Marcel Mauss has shown. In the Homeric world their purpose is not primarily related to profìt or even ultimate benefit, but (like bridegifts and the feasting of peers) to the acquisition of honour, and the creation of a network of obligations.

The relationships thus established both enhanced the standing of the basileus within the community, and created a band of hetairoi who might be called on to enable him to engage in the traditional activities of cattle raiding and piracy. The first of these must have caused considerable trouble, since the private action of a group could easily lead to public reaction from aggrieved neighbours. The dangers of the situation are well brought out in the story told by Nestor of his reprisal raid against the men of Elis, which seems initially to have been a private family venture. But the spoils were publicly distributed to any of the Pylian nobility who had a claim against the men of Elis, with the fortunate result that, when the entire Elean forces attacked, there was enough support in Pylos for a full scale battle to ensue (Iliad 11.67off). It is not surprising that these land raids seem normally to have been somewhat minor and clandestine affairs, and are mainly referred to as phenomena of the past.

Sea-raiding was different. As Thucydides says,

In early times the Greeks and the barbarians of the mainland coasts and islands, as they began to voyage abroad on ships more, turned to raiding, led by men of power for the sake of their own profit and the support of the poor; they would attack and plunder the towns which were unwalled or composed of isolated settlements; they triade most of their living from this, having no sense of shame in the profession, but rather glorying in it.

(Thucydides 1.5)

He goes on to note that in Homer the questions traditionally asked of new arrivals are ‘Strangers, who are you? From whence do you sail the watery wastes? Is it for trade, or do you wander at random like raiders over the sea, who voyage risking their lives and bringing harm to foreigners?’ (Odyssey 3.71ff and elsewhere). Raiding was carried on in long boats with up to fìfty oars (pentekonters), single banked, and a primitive sail for running before the wind. They were rowed by the fìghting men, who would beach the ship by a settlement and rely on surprise for success. It seems to have been carried on primarily against foreigners, not Greeks: the aims were cattle, women slaves and other booty; the chief danger was in delay, allowing the natives to call in help and counterattack. The activity was normally regarded as honourable; only Eumaeus the swineherd, as a representative of a lower class and a different morality, has his doubts: ‘the blessed gods do not love evil deeds, but honour justice and uprightness in men: when fierce and hostile men go against a foreign land and Zeus gives them booty, and they have filled their ships and departed for home, even in the hearts of these men falls mighty fear of divine vengeance’ (Odyssey 14.83ff). Odysseus is more realistic, cursing his belly ‘which gives much evil to men, for whose sake benched ships are rigged out to bring harm to enemies over the waste sea’ (Odyssey 17.286ff). Booty was shared among the participants according to their standing: the ‘share of booty’ (geras) of a man is also his ‘share of honour’.

Though primarily and perhaps originally related to the interests of the aristocracy, the way in which these warrior bands might benefit the community is clear. Odysseus spins a long story about his imaginary life in Crete, which shows this. After the account of his upbringing mentioned above (p. 38), he describes how, in spite of his dubious birth and poverty, he had married a wife from a landed family because of his prowess. Nine times he led a fleet against foreigners, and became rich and respected; so that when the expedition set off to Troy, public opinion forced him to be one of the leaders. The expedition it seems was a public venture. When he returned he went back to sea-raiding on his own account: he found it easy enough to fill nine ships. The companions feasted for six days and then set off for Egypt. There the expedition carne to grief as a result of delay, and the troubles of its imaginary leader began (Odyssey 14.199ff).

There are other indications that the poet envisaged the expedition to Troy as a public one: a public fine is mentioned for those who refused to go (Iliad 13.669ff), and the feasting was at public not private expense: ‘dear leaders and captains of the Argives, who drink at public cost with the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and each command your bands’ (Iliad 17.248ff; compare 4.3428ff). Institutionalized warfare was an area where the community had an interest in the maintenance of its aristocracy and their fìghting bands; the warrior might even be given a special grant of land by the people, a temenos (the word survives from Myceanean Greek, though its meaning may have changed): ‘Glaucus, why are we two especially honoured, with seats of honour and meat and full cups, in Lycia, and everyone looks on us as gods, and we possess a great temenos by the banks of the Xanthus, fair orchards and wheat-bearing fìelds? Now we must stand with the first of the Lycians and face fiery battle, so that the Lycians in their thick breastplates may say “Our nobles that rule in Lycia are great men, they eat fat sheep and drink the best honey-sweet wine. But they are powerful men, for they fìght with the first of the Lycians”’ (Iliad 12.310ff).

Homeric descriptions of fìghting are confused; but, combining them with the archaeological evidence from grave goods, it seems that warfare in the late Dark Age was heavily dependent on the individual champion and his companions, who constituted almost a warrior class. Only they had the resources to acquire the metal for their equipment: the rest of the community seems to have been lightly armed with primitive weapons, and to have done little more than watch the duels of the nobility. They were armed with bronze cuirass, greaves and helmet, and shields in a variety of shapes, held from a central grip and made from leather or bronze plates. The primary offensive weapons were iron swords and two or more spears, which could be thrown and used for thrusting. If it is right to interpret the anachronistic chariots as horses, it would seem that the warriors rode to battle with a mounted squire, but fought on foot: the development of a true cavalry is later.

Oral epic created a heroic past for a particular group in society and glorified its values; since the Homeric poems established themselves as the bible of the Greeks, the ethic they portray had a permanent influence on Greek morality. It is essentially a competitive ethic, expressed in the words of Glaucus, ‘always to be best and pre-eminent over others, and not to shame the seed of my fathers’ (Iliad 6.208f). The moral vocabulary concerns principally success or skill: a good man is good at something, at fighting or counsel; the word aretē is closer to ‘excellence’ than ‘virtue’. It is a public attribute measured by the amount of honour (timē) given by others to a man; and timē itself had a physical expression in the geras or share of booty due to him. It was also an individualistic ethic: a man’s timē was his own concern, even the gods cared little for any timē but their own; the chief exception to this self-regarding ethic was the duty to help a friend.

It has been described as a shame culture rather than a guilt culture: the sanctions protecting morality were not internal to a man but external, in the sense of shame (aidōs) that a man must feel at losing status before his peers: so public penalties were in terms of loss of property, for property was one aspect of honour. The gods have little to do with this morality, except in the sense that they largely conform to it. Only Zeus in a general way has some concern with the triumph of right, or at least the preservation of certain basic rules like those of guest-friendship. It is typical of such a culture that internal states of conflict are little recognized, and that admissions of fault or failure are hard to make, for they involve public loss of face: Homeric heroes do not deny responsibility for their actions, but they often also claim that an external divine force was responsible, and see no incompatibility. In fact the whole language of psychic phenomena is reified and externalized: mental states are identical with their physical symptoms, and head, lungs, belly and knees are thought of as the seats of the emotions.

This aristocratic style of life had its roots in a distant past of nomadic warrior bands, and never wholly disappeared in Greece. Its continuity can be illustrated from the history of the Greek word phratra, which is cognate with the almost universal Indo-European kinship term for brother (German Bruder, Celtic brathir, Latin frater, French frère). In Greek the word is not used of blood relationship; it rather designates a ‘brotherhood’, a social group. It is used twice in Homer: ‘divide your men by tribes (phylai), by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may help phratry and tribes tribes’ (Iliad 2.362f see also 9.63). The tribes were originally military divisions, the phratries presumably also – the old word perhaps for the bands of hetairoi. They seem to have been widespread as a political division smaller than the tribe. The power of the aristocratic genos in many cities down to the Persian Wars was dependent on the continuity of these political and social groupings around the genos; the names of the Bacchiadai and Kypselidai of Corinth or the Philaidai, Alkmeonidai and Peisistratidai of Athens, with their characteristic suffixes, claim descent from an often quite recent ancestor as a genos: but these aristocratic families clearly had far wider traditional support. In Athens for instance at least until Kleisthenes the phratries were a major political force; and each phratry seems to have been dominated by one or two noble families (see below p. 276). And long after they lost their political role the phratries continued as cult groups and social clubs.

Other less tangible attitudes survived. The moral code was one; the importance of drinking clubs another. The philosophic or literary symposium of Plato and others was one descendant, as were the rowdy hetaireiai or aristocratic clubs; these could be organized to influence court cases and elections and even used to overthrow the government of Athens through Street murders in 411 BC. And the prevalence of cases of drunken assault (hybris) by young aristocrats in the legal literature of the fourth century shows that the suitors were never really taught to behave.

A third continuity is the place of the gift or benefit in social relationships. The Christian notion of charity, giving without expectation of return (except in heaven) comes through Judaism from the ancient near east, a world of such gross inequalities that giving served merely to emphasize the gap between classes and the merits of the powerful in the eyes of God. In the more equal societies of Greece and Rome giving is for a return, and establishes a social relationship between giver and recipient in which one is temporarily or permanently under an obligation to the other.

IV

The End of the Dark Age: the Community

BEYOND THE aristocratic world of the oikos lay the community as a whole, which in Homer is presupposed or glimpsed occasionally on the outskirts of the main action, but in Hesiod takes the central position. The chief social division is that between aristocracy and the people (dēmos), who are primarily the free peasantry, though there is no sign that the landless thēs was excluded from any rights. In contrast the craftsman or dēmiourgos (‘public worker’) held an ambiguous position. He was often an outsider, travelling from community to community; Eumaeus claims such men are welcome as xenoi, and lists them: the seer, the healer of pains, the worker in wood, the inspired singer (Odyssey 17.382ff). The class also surely includes metal workers; heralds, who seem to have been public officiate, were dēmiourgoi of a rather different sort. The presence of outsiders among the craftsmen is one reason for their ambiguous status; another is the fact that they possessed skills which were highly valued by the aristocracy, without being aristocratic: an artist was in some sense both divinely inspired and less than mortal. This ambivalence is reflected in myth: the gods both give and take away. Blindness is a common motif: insight replaces outsight when Apollo blinds his prophets. Demodocus was ‘the favourite bard whom the Muse loved especially, and gave him both good and evil; she took away his eyes but gave him sweet song’ (Odyssey 8.62ff). Rightly or wrongly Demodocus was seen as Homer.

The mythic prototypes of human skills are themselves physically marred. The blacksmith is important enough to have a god, but in social terms he is lame like his god, Hephaistos: ‘From the anvil he rose limping, a huge bulk, and his thin legs moved under him … with a sponge he wiped his face and hands, and his sturdy neck and hairy chest’ (Iliad 18.41 off). To the other gods he is a figure of fun: ‘unquenchable laughter fìlled the blessed gods when they saw Hephaistos bustling through the house’ (Iliad 1.599f); even his marriage to Aphrodite is a marriage of opposites, which leads to the delightful folk-tale of Aphrodite and Ares, love and war, caught in adultery by his golden net (Odyssey 8.266ff). In contrast the goddess who presides over the women’s work of weaving, Athene, was normal; for that activity was fully integrated into the home, not a skilled craft. In Hesiod, Prometheus, the embodiment of forethought, stole fire from heaven for man, and so created technology; in retaliation Zeus created woman (Theogony 535ff; Works and Days 42ff). Such attitudes to the craftsman and his skills in myth reflect the early ambivalence of his social status; in the case of manual skills this attitude persisted: Greece was a society which never carne to terms with technology.