Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS AND RELATIONS 195
In the period that we have considered the western Greeks successfully
mastered their colonial environment. They were
not yet
seriously
threatened by outside powers, nor by the native population, and only
towards
the end by
their fellow Greeks. Their achievements went
beyond material success. Greeks from the west won many victories
at
Olympia, and towards the end
of
our period great schools of western
philosophy were growing up as a result of the arrival of refugees from
East Greece. Altogether they ranked among the leading cities
of
the
Greek world. The richest, if not the greatest, of these cities was Sybaris,
where the citizens pitied anyone who had
to go
abroad and 'prided
themselves
on
growing
old on the
bridges
of
their rivers'.
149
The
destruction
of
such
a
city may truly be called the end
of
an epoch.
149
Timaeus, FGrH 566 F
;O.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 39a
THE EASTERN GREEKS
J.
M.
COOK
The period dealt with here extends from about 700
B.C.
to
the time of
Polycrates' rule in the
5 30s
and 520s. In the wider historical perspective
it saw the rise of the Mermnad dynasty in Lydia, the aggression of Gyges
and
his
successors against
the
cities
of
the
Ionian coast
and
their
subjection
by
Croesus, and finally
the
conquest
of
Croesus' realm
by
Cyrus and the establishment of Persian rule over the eastern Greeks of
the Asiatic mainland.
It
does not reach
so far
as the organization and
extension
of
Persian rule
by
Darius.
As
regards
our
sources
of
information, archaeology gives occasional glimpses
of
habitations and
sanctuaries and casts light on trade movements; and the works
of
art
that have been discovered testify
to
a
taste and sense
of
form that
is
peculiarly East Greek. Inscriptions have little
to
offer; contemporary
ones that are relevant from
a
historical point
of
view can
be
counted
on
the
fingers
of
one hand. Among the literary sources Herodotus
is
pre-eminent. But his aim was
to
present the sequences
of
events that
preceded and led up to the conquests of the kingdoms of Asia and Egypt
by Cyrus and his successors and to the Persian Wars; and as far as Asia
Minor is concerned the rulers of Lydia and the Medes were more central
to his theme than the history
of
the East Greek cities, of which he tells
us many things but offers no continuous narrative. Later writers provide
scraps
of
information which
can not be
entirely neglected. But their
reliability
is
more questionable; and even
if
we gave credence
to
them
all,
the
difficulty
of
fitting them into their proper positions
is
often
insuperable.
I. THE LITERARY EVIDENCE
A great change occurred on the landward horizon of
the
eastern Greeks
about
the
beginning
of
the seventh century.
The
incursions
of
the
Cimmerians had been felt at the eastern end
of
Anatolia as early as 714
B.C.,
and
a
decade
or
two
later
the
Phrygian realm
of
Midas
was
overthrown when they captured its capital at Gordium (see CAHm.2
2
,
chs.
33d, 34a).
To
the West
of
this,
in
Lydia, the throne
at
Sardis was
usurped
by
Gyges, who founded
a
dynasty (the Mermnads) that was
196
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE LITERARY EVIDENCE 197
to be the dominant power in peninsular Asia Minor until the Persian
conquest.
1
Scholars now seem almost agreed
in
rejecting Herodotus'
dates for Gyges' reign (716-678
B.C.)
and bringing his accession down
to about 680,
at a
time when the collapse of Midas' kingdom had left
a power vacuum in Anatolia; his negotiations with Assyria (as early as
663) and subsequent alliance with Egypt show that he took determined
action
to
fill the vacuum and build up
a
powerful kingdom; and the
Greeks of the eastern Aegean thus found themselves confronted by
a
major power much closer
at
hand than the Phrygian had been and
commanding a number of different routes to the coast so that the Greek
cities could not plan
a
common defence.
Gyges was an aggressive neighbour.
It
is true that he is said to have
made offerings of silver and gold at Delphi and permitted the Milesians
to plant
a
colony
at
Abydus on the Dardanelles (above, p. 121); so
it
may be that he was conciliatory towards the Greeks
at
times when he
had other warlike commitments
on
hand (as those against the Cim-
merians). But
in
Herodotus (1. 14) we read that
he
attacked Smyrna
and Miletus and captured the town of Colophon. Another Cimmerian
onslaught proved fatal
to
Gyges
-
indeed the Greek cities too were
rocked by these and perhaps other intermittent incursions; and Gyges'
successors Ardys and Sadyattes in the second half of the seventh century
seem to have confined their Greek campaigns to southern Ionia, where
they captured Priene and raided Milesian territory. Alyattes inherited
Sadyattes' war against Miletus, which after five years he terminated with
a lasting treaty (according
to
Herodotus, 1. 21, he was tricked by the
tyrant Thrasybulus into believing that food supplies were plentiful
in
the city); and he destroyed Smyrna, which he seems to have captured
(probably about 600
B.C.
by means of a siege mound that enabled him
to surmount the massive city wall).
2
But when
he
advanced against
Clazomenae he
is
said
to
have suffered
a
serious reverse, presumably
at the hands of the Colophonian cavalry; and after that he seems to have
allowed the Greek cities to live in peace until his son Croesus resumed
the offensive against them. Before this, the Lydian attacks were not
aimed at gaining permanent possession of
the
Ionian sea-board, though
they effectively blocked any further Greek penetration
of
the interior.
But Croesus was
a
conqueror
at
heart, and Herodotus (1. 28) tells
us
that he reduced
to
subjection practically all the peoples of Asia as
far
as the River Halys, including of course the Carians, Dorians, Ionians,
and Aeolians
of the
coast lands. Sardis became increasingly
the
metropolis
of
the Greek East, with Croesus acting
not
only
as a
conqueror
but as
patron
of
the Greeks
of
Asia and
(in
moralizing
1
For the history
of
the Lydian kings see Hdt. i.
6ff.
2
D 24, 23-7; D 73,
88-91,
128-34.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
198
-
THE EASTERN GREEKS
are SB
m
Land over 1,000 metres
SCALE
0
I
150
200
JL
Map 12. East Greece.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE LITERARY EVIDENCE 199
anecdotes retailed by Herodotus,
i.
27—33;
vi. 125) graciously giving
interviews
to
Greek statesmen such
as
Bias
or
Pittacus, Solon, and
Alcmaeon. There was evidently intermarriage between Lydians and
eastern Greeks
in
the higher social stratum. The material culture
of
Sardis
in the
sixth-century levels shows much that
is
Greek
in
character
-
the more so because, unlike Phrygia, Lydia had not had
a
distinctive civilization of its own; and much of its art has a very Greek
appearance. As against this, the Ionians received new ideas and modes
in religion (e.g. the cults of Cybele and Bacchus), music, and perhaps
the organization and exploitation of wealth; in the sixth century Sappho
and the Colophonian thinker Xenophanes looked to Sardis as the source
of luxuries
—
the one nostalgically and the other with disapproval.
Croesus came to the throne some time about 560
B.C.
and had reigned
only fourteen years when he and his kingdom fell to Cyrus the Persian,
who asserted his claim
to
the whole
of
Croesus' realm
by
right
of
conquest. The peoples
of
Ionia, Caria, and Lycia resisted. But after
fighting which was especially stubborn in the south the cities were taken
by Cyrus' Median general Harpagus; and though
a
large part
of
the
population of Phocaea sailed away to join their kinsmen in the western
Mediterranean and a body from Teos went to settle at Abdera in Thrace,
the Greeks of
Asia
had fallen under Persian rule by about 540
B.C.
(Hdt.
1.
164—9).
O
n tne
mainland Miletus alone preserved the treaty rights that
its inaccessible situation had conferred on it. But the offshore islands
were not threatened
at
this time (the attribution of destruction of this
date on Samos to the Persians being quite conjectural); and since Cyrus
had no fleet the only constraint on the islanders before Darius' time was
their possession of agricultural land on the mainland opposite. This may
have prompted them
to a
nominal submission (Herodotus seems
to
contradict himself in the matter
of
their independence). But
it
seems
clear that with Miletus, Samos, Chios, Lesbos, and Rhodes effectively
free the eastern Greeks still enjoyed
a
fair degree
of
initiative. Sardis
of course had become the Persian administrative centre in the west, and
may perhaps not have continued
to
offer the same opportunities
for
commercial and cultural enrichment as
it
had done under Croesus.
The ancient sources agree in postulating the existence of kingship in
the Ionian cities at the time of the migrations. But it seems to have been
mostly short-lived, and the odd mentions of it surviving, as
in
Chios
and Aeolic Cyme, hardly bring us down beyond the end of the Dark
Age.
The most significant reminder is the family name Basilidae which
survived in places like Ephesus and Erythrae and carried much prestige
and some power as late as the seventh century; in Lesbos the founder's
family (the Penthilidae) seems likewise
to
have wielded power
in
the
seventh century.
In
Samos political power seems
to
have been
in
the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
200
39
tf
-
THE
EASTERN GREEKS
hands of landowners (the
Geomoroi)
at the end of the seventh century
after the murder of a tyrant; a coup was effected on the return of an
expedition to Perinthus (the new Samian colony in the Propontis); but
it is not clear whether this was a struggle between classes or between
factions among the landowners, nor whether the landowners were at
this time so few as to constitute an oligarchy. For Miletus we have
stories indicating civil strife and atrocities, and the names given to the
political groups by later writers are suggestive on the one hand of
wealth, and on the other of artisanry or manual labour (and possibly
a suppressed native population), while the Parian arbitration that
followed in due course is said to have conferred the government on the
owners of well-kept land-holdings (thus setting up
a
moderate oligarchy
which will hardly have corresponded to the main aggregation of
wealth). We do not know when these troubles occurred; and if class
warfare is implied we do not know its alignments: whether for instance
a wealthy mercantile class was already in being and at variance with the
landowners, or whether a large body of urban poor was coming into
existence. And here again the troubles seem to have followed a tyranny
(that of Thoas and Damasenor).
3
There are two things that emerge from the literary (and in a lesser
degree epigraphical) evidence. One is that 'tyrants' were common in
East Greece from the later seventh century on, and that (as Aristotle
implies) they arose because of the great power vested for long periods
in the principal magistrate of a city. They need not be regarded as a
stage in a normal development from the rule of the few to some form
of democracy; in a time of rapid social and economic change the demand
for a strong executive could have been irresistible. The second point
concerns the tribes. The four old Ionic tribes, whatever their names may
have signified at the outset
{Geleontes
= radiant ones?, Aigikoreis =
herdsmen
~?,Argadeis
= handworkers or farmers
?,HopleUs
= warriorsor
the younger?), seem to have no connotation of status, and so far as our
limited knowledge carries they seem to be attested in early times in
southern and central Ionia at least (Miletus, Samos, Ephesus, Teos, but
not (it would seem) Phocaea, in whose colony of Lampsacus other
names were current); to these were added two additional names which
presumably represent accretions to the citizen bodies (Boreis and
Oinopes).
For Samos the evidence is derived from Perinthus which was
settled about 600
B.C.
;
but on the island itself the tribe names found
in later sources are quite different, and at Ephesus the old Ionian tribes
were down-graded to subdivisions of a single tribe
Ephesioi
and new
ones were created (partly at least with territorial names). At Ephesus
the reorganization occurred long before the time of Ephorus in the
fourth century, in Samos evidently after 600 B.C. On the assumption
3
The troubles at Samos and Miletus:
D
49, if.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE LITERARY EVIDENCE 2OI
that
at
Ephesus they date
to
the period
of
independence before the
Lydian and Persian conquest, scholars have recently attributed
the
changes to the tyrants in the first half of the sixth century; and in that
case we may see in them a great extension of citizenship to incorporate
Greek metics and immigrants, not to mention non-Greek natives,
in
the body politic on a partly territorial basis.
4
It is at this time also that
a reform
in
Chios, attested
by
the well-known 'constitution' stele,
established a new council containing fifty members from each tribe, thus
greatly increasing the power of the
demos.
5
At Miletus there seems
to
have been no corresponding reorganization of the old tribes (the old
names continued), and political strife seems to have been endemic there
through
the
sixth century. But
at
Ephesus
at
least,
and
perhaps
elsewhere in Ionia, the reforms may well have resulted in a broadening
of the basis of citizenship and spreading of political power at
a
time
when the great expansion
of
trade and manufacture had altered the
whole structure
of
an originally land-based society. The developing
social groups may have looked to tyrants as catalysts; and the changes
did not eliminate the need for tyrants because we hear the names of more
than half a dozen such who managed Ephesus
in
succession through
the greater part of the sixth century. The earlier ones
at
least had
to
excise opposition,
to
judge by stories that have come down through
later writers; and Herodotus (v. 92) lends some support to this when
he relates the Milesian tyrant Thrasybulus' advice
to
Periander
—
to
chop down any ear
of
corn that stood clear above its fellows; later
tyrants
of
Ephesus are said
to
have banished their citizen Hipponax
whose satirical verses give us our best indication of the polyglot society
that had come into being there after the middle of the sixth century.
The interest aroused among later Greek writers
by
the poems
of
Alcaeus permits some insight into the troubles that beset Mytilene in
the first half of
the
sixth century. After the overthrow of the Penthilidae
violence and intrigue were prevalent. A tyrant named Melanchrus did
not last long against a combination of leading families. But his successor
Myrsilus had the support
of
moderates like Pittacus, though not
of
Alcaeus and
his
friends who plotted unsuccessfully
to
unseat him.
Myrsilus died, and Alcaeus was exultant
—
but not for long, for Pittacus,
who had won fame by killing the Athenian leader Phrynon in the war
for the possession
of
Sigeum
at
the entry
to the
Hellespont, was
entrusted with supreme power by the people of Mytilene and Alcaeus
was once again in exile plotting a return. Pittacus ruled with restraint,
revising the laws rather than the constitution, and treating his opponents
with clemency when he had them in his power. He resigned his office
after ten years, leaving Mytilene on an even keel at last.
6
4
D 84; D 82.
5
D j6; D 74
' D75-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2O2
THE EASTERN GREEKS
31.
Reconstruction of the city of Smyrna at the end of
the
seventh century B.C., by R. V. Nicholls.
See also pp.
446ff,
figs. 54, 56. (After D 24, 15.)
II.
THE MATERIAL EVIDENCE
The eighth century no doubt saw
a
great increase in population
in
the
Greek world generally, and on the Ionian migration sites, where space
in the city area was restricted, housing must have begun
to
constitute
a problem. Smyrna was remodelled
in the
seventh century (fig.
31),
apparently with parallel streets
on a
north—south axis flanked
by
regularly built spacious houses inside
the
massive curtain
of the
wall-circuit
on the
peninsula,
and
also with
a
part
of
the population
living outside it.
7
This incidentally is of interest as showing some form
of public authority which could override property rights. Smyrna is not
likely
to
have been the only instance
of
such remodelling.
At
Miletus,
'
D2
4
-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MATERIAL EVIDENCE 203
where the peninsula was much more capacious, the Archaic settlement
is now known to have extended far to the north and south of the Athena
temple before the destruction of 494 B.C.; and here again there seem
to have been parallel streets with well-built houses in the sixth century
at least, though on the hill of Kalabaktepe half a mile to the south the
settlement, which goes back to the eighth century, was altogether more
irregular.
8
At Ephesus the claim that there was a habitational grid fitting
with the Archaic Artemisium seems as yet to be only a conjecture; and
on other city sites, such as Iasus on the coast of Caria,
it
is easier to
establish the existence of Archaic settlement than to determine its layout.
The evidence for city layouts is in fact slight, except at Smyrna; but
we are probably justified in supposing that the seventh century saw a
major advance
in
urbanization
in
Ionia.
A
couple
of
minor sites
command attention. At Emporio
in
the south
of
Chios the houses
brought to light were simple in form and scattered to
fit
the contours
of the hillside; this of course was not a city, and its date is early (it was
abandoned by the end of the seventh century).
9
More surprising is the
settlement at Vroulia in the south of the island of Rhodes.
10
Here the
seaward edge of the promontory was fenced offby
a
defensive wall about
300 metres long against which
for
the greater part
of
its length
rectangular houses were built, with a shorter row inside and
a
tower-like
building overlooking
a
sanctuary and open area on the crest. Occupation
seems to have started before the middle of the seventh century and lasted
a hundred years or so. Presumably this was an outpost and at least
semi-military.
If there is little that we can say with assurance about the development
of housing
in
Archaic East Greece, still less can
be
said about
developments in domestic life. Bath tubs seem to have come into use
in seventh-century Ionian houses; with the growth of trade fine pottery
and
a
range of wines were imported; and where solidly constructed
two-storeyed houses were built life was no doubt more commodious.
In the later Archaic period the manufacture of terracotta sarcophagi (of
which the painted ones known as 'Clazomenian' are spectacular) attests
a desire to make handsome provision for the accommodation of the
dead.
11
Apart from the long narrow temple at the Samian Heraeum, we know
almost nothing of shrines in East Greece before the seventh century,
and even at a quite advanced date in that century prestige buildings such
as the 60 m-long stoa at the Heraeum (fig. 32) were of quite simple
unadorned construction.
12
The first temples with stone columns in
a
' D6I.
»
D
22;
CAHiu.i
2
755,
fig.
76.
10
D 60;
CAH
in.i
2
, 784,
fig. 87. "
D52;D33.
12
D 9J, 50,
47ff;
D 52, 21 3, 27, 280.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
204
THE EASTERN GREEKS
32.
Reconstruction of the South Stoa at the Heraeum, Samos. Late seventh century B.C. (After
G. Gruben,
Athenische Mitteilungen
72 (1957) pi. 7; cf. H 32, 280.)
tentative architectural order seem to make their appearance in the Ionian
cities only towards the end of the century, and we might think of the
Ionians as having been self-indulgent enough to provide for their own
comfort before that of their gods; but the balance was redressed by the
building of the gigantic temples in the middle ranges of the sixth
century.
The Ionic order was slower in taking shape than the Doric of
mainland Greece, and it was only in these huge stone temples of Ionia
that it formed recognizable conventions. It seems to have been the
original Samian dipteron, laid down perhaps shortly before 560 B.C.,
that set the pace; and this great building not only excited the rivalry
of the Ephesians but set the pattern for architectural forms on Chios
also.
13
It was 105 m in length and half that in width; with a double
colonnade on the exterior,
a
deep columned porch, and inner colonnades,
it formed a veritable forest of columns. It was destroyed by fire and
replaced later in the sixth century by an even larger temple intended
to outdo the one that was being built at Ephesus, but this second Samian
dipteron was never completed.
14
One of the problems confronted was
that of marshy ground by the river Imbrasus, whose course had to be
diverted; this seems to have been the work of the Samian engineer
Theodorus, who was also called in as consultant at Ephesus. The
Artemisium at Ephesus was designed to be slightly larger than the first
Samian dipteron, with a lavish use of marble carving and sculpture,
regular Ionic volute capitals, and columns that bore the dedication of
Croesus, the king of Lydia. Another great temple, that at the oracular
sanctuary of the Milesians at Didyma,
15
nearly approached the two giant
D42;
D 37.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008