Greek Polis Lecturer: Wu Shiyu

Ancient Greece Minoan civilization( B.C.) Mycenacan civilization( B.C.) The Dark Age ( B.C.) Greek Archaic Age( B.C.) ( Greek Renaissance ) Greek Golden Age( B.C.) (Classical) Homeric Age Creation of Myths

Greek Archaic Age  From about 750 to 500 B.C.  An age of experimentation and intellectual ferment, laid the foundations for much of Western thought and culture.  Increase of prosperity and the expansion of its population.  Came together (Delphi and Olympia).  In political theory, and the rise of democracy, philosophy, theatre, poetry, as well as the revitalization of the written language.  The Greek Renaissance.

Two Important Features  The Emergence of Polis (city-states);  The beginning of colonization.

1. Greek Polis  How it emerges (a vacuum of power);  Increased contact with the East and the South;

1. Greek Polis (Features)  Small size (an urban center, the surrounding countryside with its various small settlements). Small size  An open area (AGORA) and a place for the cult (urban center)

Aristotle: “The right size is a place where all of the citizens (male adult citizens) could come to a central place and hear a speaker and that number comes out to be 5,000 male adults.” Plato: 5,040

 Aristotle ( B.C.) in his book politics : “It is necessary for the citizens to be of such a number that they knew each other's personal qualities and thus can elect their officials and judge their fellows in a court of law sensibly".

1. Greek Polis (Different from a Modern City)  Two important aspects:  Self-governing;  The possession and control of a territory.

1. Greek Polis (Different from a Modern City)  The polis is something more than a place, some kind of a thing that is spiritual.  Phocaea  Themistocles (Athens)

1. Greek Polis (Significance)  Aristotle in his Politics : “As man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when he is divided away from the law and justice." “… human justice can be found only in the polis, because man is by nature an animal of the polis, and a man who is without a polis by nature is above or below the category of man.”

1. Greek Polis (Significance)  The establishment of the polis was regarded as the single greatest political innovation of the ancient Greeks. This form of social and political organization based on the concept of citizenship guaranteed a shared identity, rights, and responsibilities to a city-state’s free men and women.

1.1 How Polis Functioned  In the beginning, basileus (noblemen) ruled.  An aristocratic republic (no king).  Kings were despots, dictators, and rapists.  Go by the path leading to justice. Zeus orders severe punishments for them. Often, even a whole polis is paid punishment for one bad man.  The only place where justice exists or can exist is in a polis.

1.1 Citizen  The word citizen drives from polis. (He’s somebody who lives in a polis.)  There never was a citizen in the world before the polis. (subjects, to a god, or to the king)  Citizenship guaranteed important rights, such as to vote and speak in the assembly, hold office, serve as judges, fight in the army.  Citizenship ensured the general legal equality.

1. Greek Polis: Citizen  In Greece you have a lot of war and you have a lot of freedom, and all of that is tied up with the development of this very special thing called the polis.

1. Greek Polis: Slavery  The polis will see the invention of freedom, and oddly enough, it is accompanied by the growth of slavery at the same time. Both slavery and freedom come along at the same time in the Greek world.

1. Greek Polis: Slavery  Two important sources of slaves: to capture in the war and to import from abroad.  The Greeks lumped all foreigners who did not speak Greek as “barbarians”  Aristotle categorized slaves: a “sort of living possession” (without property, without legal or political rights ).

 (Old aristocracy-----tyranny)------oligarchy (rule of the few)----democracy (rule of the people)

2. Wide Spread of Colonization  As early as in the mid-eighth century B.C., Greeks had begun their widespread emigration from their Aegean homelands.  Around 500 B.C., colonies in today southern France, Spain, Sicily and southern Italy, and along North Africa and the coast of the Black Sea.  A process of urban foundation and continued for more than two centuries.  The Mediterranean and Black Sea world.

2.1 Why they colonize?  Driven by two needs:  commercial interests (for imported goods, especially scarce metals )  and population explosion in the late Dark Age.

2.2The Process of Colonization  choosing a site  obtaining divine approval for it,  planning out the new settlement,  and choosing its “oikist” (founders)

2.2 The Process of Colonization  If anyone is unwilling to sail when the polis decides to send him, he might be subject to the death penalty and his property shall be confiscated. Whoever shelters or hides such a person, whether he is a father helping a son, or a brother aiding his brother, is to suffer the same penalty as the man who refuses to sail.

2.2 Two Important Phases  Underwent two important phases, each lasting a little over a hundred years:  The first, starting from the mid-eighth century, was the westward process, directed to Italy and the western Mediterranean; the second began about a century later and was concentrated on the north Aegean and the Black Sea.

 The Hellespont (where the Persian king Xerxes crossed in the Persian Wars) and the Black Sea, with their good fishing grounds, fertile land, abundant minerals, and trading opportunities that attracted the Greeks the most.  Miletus alone, according to the ancient sources, established ninety colonies.  The Black Sea was almost entirely lined with Greek poleis.  Many colonies became wealthy and powerful, among them Byzantium, which a thousand years later, with its new name, Constantinople, would become the capital of the Roman Empire.

Northern coast of the Black Sea

 The transplanted city-states proudly proclaimed their Greekness, building temples, patronizing Panhellenic institutions such as the Delphic oracle and the Olympic games, and eagerly staying abreast of cultural developments in the Aegean.

2.3 Mother-city and Colony  Self-sufficient polis. Full-fledged polis  A colony maintained significant ties of cult and kinship with their “mother city” (metropolis in Greek).  Colonists’ relations with the local people were complex.

2.4 Significance of Colonization  Colonization prepared the Greeks for the participation in international trade and it also increased their contact with different peoples like Anatolia, Egypt, and the Near East.  Knowledge of writing was the most dramatic contribution of the ancient Near East to Greece as the Greek world emerged from its Dark Age.  Participation in the international commerce affected the fortunes of Greek city-states.

Homework  Exercise on the textbook

Questions to Consider  With hundreds of separate poleis, how did the Greek world define themselves not only as members of a particular polis but as Greeks, as Hellen? (Maintain the common bond)