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
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THE EAST GREEK ACME 215
have been claimed there, and recent archaeological discoveries show
that the Carians at home were more receptive orGreek culture in early
times than has hitherto been supposed. But at the same time, if we may
judge by the finds, the far west did not attract so wide a range of East
Greek traders
as
Naucratis and the Pontic colonies did; with
the
Carthaginian competition conditions must have been less favourable for
general trade, and the Phocaeans seem to have been unusually tough
and uncompromising people.
It is striking that these East Greek ventures
in
Egypt, the Pontic
region, and the far west all seem to have flowered at about the same
time,
in the years towards the close of the seventh century (at Tell Sukas,
the port serving Hama in Syria, the volume of East Greek imports
is
also stepped up at this time, but at Al Mina the reverse seems to be
the case, so this may be a reflexion of the vicissitudes of Near Eastern
history).
38
This sudden burst of enterprise is not likely to have been
prompted to any large degree by the menace from Lydia but seems in
the main to have sprung from
a
realization in Eastern Greece of the
possibilities of mercantile expansion. The sixth century was bound
to
be very different from the seventh.
IV. THE EAST GREEK ACME
The decisive stage
in
the overseas expansion seems
to
have
set ir.
towards the end of the seventh century. Before that time there is hardly
likely to have been the sort of trading community in the cities which
could fund overseas ventures, and coinage had barely come into use to
facilitate payment for services or commercial transactions. Presumably
the expansion of trade must have depended initially on men of standing
"wtio were also men of vision. But the inevitable result must have been
the growth of a professional trading class in those East Greek cities
wtyich took part in the enterprises. The import of metals in quantity
will have promoted the growth of industry; the seafaring population
will have increased greatly in numbers, and the need for export goods
rniust have involved many people in manufacture at what by this time
was a high level of technical skills and in specialized agriculture. This
is the background of economic pressure on the social system against
which the political turmoil and changes referred to above have to be
envisaged. Sardis was becoming an important centre for the eastern
Greeks (not to mention a source of funds for political exiles who wished,
like the poet Alcaeus, to regain power at home). It was also the source
of electrum and increasingly of gold; and we may think of it almost
as
a
focal point in an East Greek 'common market'.
After planting a settlement, perhaps in the early seventh century, at
38
Above, pp.
IO-II,
23; A
7,
51-4.
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2l6
39a. THE EASTERN GREEKS
34.
Chian wine amphora
from
Smyrna. About 600
B.C.
(After
D
24, 16,
fig.
4.)
Maronea on the Thracian coast the people of Chios played no overt part
in the main Ionian colonizing movement. But discoveries at Naucratis
and in the Black Sea colonies show Chios as having a substantial share
in the trade that resulted from it. Her fine pottery and standard wine
jars (fig. 34) are easily recognizable, and the profusion of the latter are
an index to her trade.
39
From Thrace she could obtain silver (for
purchase of grain in Egypt) and slaves, as also timber and further
supplies of wine. She was a major slave-owning state (more so,
according to Thucydides,
VIII. 40, than any other Greek state save
Sparta); and she came to have a very large population, for at the
beginning of the fifth century she manned a hundred ships (the largest
single contingent) in the Ionian fleet at Lade. But her production of
grain (even allowing for the small plain she had acquired at Atarneus
on the mainland opposite and retained by a bargain with the Persians)
must have been quite inadequate for her home needs; and here we seem
to have a case of deliberate organization of economic resources.
Self-sufficiency was abandoned. Intensive production of wine, combined
with the acquiring of silver, enabled the Chians to exploit the markets
that were opened up by the eastern Greeks and import what was
required to support their growing population. In the Aegean generally,
but perhaps most of all in Ionia, this may be thought of as a time of
increasing specialization in production and the use of resources. Not
only Chios but Mytilene (and in due course the south Dorian cities) were
39
D 30.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE EAST GREEK ACME 217
producing wine in quantity. Teos and Miletus became famous
for
their
wool,
and the
tyrant Polycrates imported select livestock including
Milesian sheep
to
improve the Samian strains. Chians dealt not only
in
slaves but
in
supplying eunuchs
to
Ephesus and the Persians. We learn
of numerous specializations
in
East Greece, though
not
necessarily
all
of so early
a
date: sponges from Rhodes, honey from Caria and figs from
Caunus, silks and raisins from Cos, resin from Colophon, textiles and
mastic gum from Chios, saffron from Aegae, and the fisheries
of
Myus
and furniture manufacture
of
Miletus.
40
Herodotus
(i.
142-3) insists that
the
twelve cities that formed
the
Ionian dodecapolis not only claimed for themselves the name of Ionians
but established
a
common sanctuary of their own
at
Panionium
(CAH
n.2
3
,
782 and 8o2f); and he twice refers
to
councils held there
in
times
of crisis (after
the
fall
of
Croesus, when Bias
of
Priene urged
a
mass
emigration
to
Sardinia,
and in the
throes
of
the Ionian Revolt).
The
impression is thus created that the twelve cities had formed themselves
into
a
league. But
he
also speaks
in
similar terms
of
the Dorian cities
of the south-east Aegean,
and
there
we
hear nothing
of
any federal
activity
in the
political sphere.
The
recent excavations
at
Panionium
have yielded
no
trace
of
buildings
of
Archaic date
(cf. CAH
III.I
2
,
749f.),
and it
seems unlikely that there
was any
provision there
for
regular meetings;
and
from Herodotus himself
(1.
170)
we
learn that
when Thales urged the cities of Ionia to form a federal union, the centre
that
he
indicated
was not
Panionium
but
Teos.
The
notion
of a
Panionian league now begins
to
appear less rapidly apprehensible than
the artistic and commercial
koine
of
the wider East Greek bloc. This
of course does
not
mean that
all the
cities were
in
amity with
one
another.
It
was normal
for
Miletus
to
be
at
enmity with Samos, whose
situation upwind enabled her to interfere with her rival's shipping; and
Chios, on the other side
of
Samos,
tended
to
be friendly
to
Miletus and
on bad terms with Erythrae on the mainland opposite. But a change of
government might
at
any time reverse
the
trends;
and it is
doubtful
whether there were any permanent commercial and political alignments
between the cities
of
Ionia and those
of
Old Greece.
Attempts
to
give figures
for
the population
of
East Greek cities can
be based
on the
capacity
of
a very few explored sites,
on the
number
of triremes they could man
in the
full muster
of
the Ionians
at
Lade,
and at Ephesus on the assumed number
of'
thousands'
(chiliastyes)
which
formed subdivisions of the reorganized tribes. On the first method fairly
low populations would seem
to
result
for the
small peninsular cities
(which would hardly have had any subordinate villages), and one might
think that few cities would have had
a
population running to five figures.
40
B
106;
c
29, 136.
c
10
for
early Ionian trade generally.
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2l8 39<7. THE EASTERN GREEKS
The second gives some higher figures for the maritime states (not only
80,000, 56,000, and 48,000 for the islands of
Chios,
Lesbos, and Samos,
but 64,000 for Miletus), while the third (if the basis is correct) would
yield nearly 40,000 for Ephesus.
41
What we can believe is that from the
late seventh century on the eastern Greeks were progressing rapidly in
power and prosperity. Herodotus, who greatly admired the splendour
of Polycrates' Samos and use of sea power, speaks of the Ionians (using
the name in the broad sense) as having in earlier times been much the
weakest of the ethnic divisions of the Greek people; and Thucydides
implies that the Ionians had only recently advanced to greatness when
Cyrus the Persian subjected Ionia, and elsewhere remarks that their
command of the sea was a new thing in Cyrus' time (1. 13).
To Herodotus and Thucydides the high point came with the tyranny
of Polycrates. For Samos itself archaeological evidence combines with
the literary to give an impression of increasing grandeur. At the site
of a prehistoric settlement by the river Imbrasus a goddess whom the
Greeks identified with Hera was worshipped with a ritual bath and an
altar by her sacred tree. In the eighth century a temple no less than 30 m
long was built; in the second half of the seventh century it was rebuilt
more monumentally and other substantial buildings were being put up,
so that the sanctuary outside the city became a show-place. The
dedications included pottery not only from the East Greek cities but
from Corinth, Sparta, and Etruria, numerous terracotta and limestone
statuettes from Cyprus, Egyptian and Near Eastern objects in ivory,
stone, faience, and shell, and bronzes from Phrygia, Syria, Egypt,
Assyria, and Iran and the northern nomads. The desire for grandeur,
already seen in massive dedications in the sanctuary, was fulfilled when
the great temple over 100 metres long (the first dipteron) was built in
the second quarter of the sixth century. At the same time, occupying
the key position as the eastern pivot of the least hazardous crossing of
the Aegean, Samos seems to have become dominant at sea.
Polycrates had a fleet of
a
hundred penteconters (fifty-oared galleys),
but evidently turned to the construction of the more modern and
powerful triremes; in order to keep his ships secure he constructed a
mole a couple of furlongs long in twenty fathoms of water, and the first
ship-sheds to be mentioned in the Greek world were his. For military
needs he maintained a force of a thousand archers. He dominated the
islands, not refraining from indiscriminate piracy, and established a
festival on Delos. Of his piracy Herodotus (in. 39) reports his dictum
that he gained greater goodwill by returning to his friends what he had
robbed them of than by not robbing them in the first place. He fought
the Milesians and captured an expedition sent to their aid by the
41
D 81, 1O-I2; G 29, 21-3; D 84, 229.
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THE EAST GREEK ACME 219
Mytilenaeans; he then used the prisoners
to
excavate a ditch outside
the
circuit wall
of
Samos.
He
also repelled
a
contingent that
the
Spartans
sent to succour his political opponents (i.
46f,
54ff). Herodotus says that
everything
he
turned
his
hand
to
prospered.
The
city
of
Samos was
a
worthy capital, with
a
well-sited, strong circuit wall enclosing
an
area
about three quarters
of
a mile square
and
with
an
aqueduct tunnelled
for
a
distance
of
1,000 metres under
the
mountain crest
to
bring water
into
the
city. Herodotus speaks
of
the engineering feats
as the
greatest
works
in
existence among the Greeks.
On
grounds
of
date we can
not,
as
he
would seem
to do,
assign
the
building
of
the original dipteron
to Polycrates (though he may have been concerned with
its
even larger
successor),
and
doubts have been cast
on the
attribution
to him of
the
other works and the building
up of
Samian sea power.
It
could
be
that,
although
he had
to
seize power
by a
coup, Polycrates
had had
a
predecessor
in the
tyranny whose policies
he
was able
to
continue
and
implement.
42
But as he
appears
in
Herodotus
(and to
a
lesser extent
Thucydides) Polycrates was
a
uniquely active and forceful personality;
and Herodotus
is
believed
to
have resided
in
Samos
in his
youth,
so
he should have
had
good sources
of
information.
43
In the generation that ended with Polycrates' death
(5 22/21
B.C.)
the
stable world that
the
Greeks were familiar with
in
nearer Asia
was
shattered
by the
rising power
of
Cyrus
the
Persian.
The
kingdom
of
the Medes, pacific under the ageing Astyages, had fallen into his hands;
Croesus' kingdom
of
Lydia was overthrown; Babylon fell
in
539 B.C.,
and the position
of
Egypt began
to
look precarious. Herodotus
(1.
122)
speaks
of
Polycrates
as
conceiving
the
hope
of
ruling Ionia
and the
islands; and in an epoch when a ruler needed to think ahead of the march
of events he
no
doubt calculated that
by the
exertion
of
overwhelming
sea power
he
could build
up an
empire that might avail
to
sway
the
balance
of
power
in
the Aegean and beyond. His alliances, with Egypt,
and then with Persia, show
the
scope
of his
ambition, which finally
betrayed
him
into
the
hands
of
a
similarly ambitious Persian governor
on
the
Ionian mainland. Polycrates appears also
as a
patron
of
the arts
and sciences, with Anacreon
of
Teos and Ibycus
of
Rhegium
to
provide
musical entertainment
at his
court
and a
skilled doctor (Democedes
of
Croton)
and
engineer (Eupalinus
of
Megara)
in his
employ. Life
had
certainly become more gracious and
to
some extent more luxurious;
but
the vigorous activity
of
Samians
and
Phocaeans
and the
emergence
of
capable
men of
affairs such
as
appear
in
Herodotus' anecdotes should
restrain
us
from charging
the
eastern Greeks with undue effeminacy
at
this stage.
42
If
that were the case we might assume that the predecessor was his father Aeaces.
43
D
100;
D 9; D
72;
D
91.
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22O 39^-
THE
EASTERN GREEKS
The spirit of Odysseus lived on in Ionia; and their expansion gave
the eastern Greeks an acquaintance with the cities and ways of thought
of many peoples. In the north-east they came to know the customs and
way of life of Scythians and other tribes and learned of the peoples of
the east European forests and central Asian steppes; they had reached
the Atlantic coasts and Nubia, and Babylon must have been known to
some who, like Alcaeus' brother, enlisted in the service of Nebuchad-
rezzar (above, p. 22). In Egypt above all they had become conscious
of monumental creations on a colossal scale and of a very old and
sophisticated civilization which harked back to ancient models and
precedents. The stability and traditionalism of Egypt and the Near East
at this time were not only impressive to the observer and intimations
of the smallness and newness of the Greeks' world at home, but they
will have facilitated the acquisition of oriental lore by Greek residents
and travellers. That the Greeks were not content to be mere recipients
of knowledge is a commonplace. But we may believe that men like
Thales would not have developed their powers of observation and
reasoning to the full if they had not been stimulated by the wisdom of
an older world.
44
It was in the period of the East Greek expansion that
the Aegean world became fully intercommunicating. Thinkers became
public figures, even celebrities; though he does not appear to have
written anything, posterity was well informed about Thales' thought
and attainments. He was evidently versatile
—
otherwise he would
hardly have been ranked high among the ' Seven Sages' along with men
of affairs like Bias of Priene and Pittacus. But he and his disciple
Anaximander set the pattern of Ionian rationalism with their endeavours
to explain the world they inhabited in the light of observation and
reasoned theories rather than inherited assumptions. While the Samians
seem to have excelled in practical applications of scientific and tech-
nological advance, the Milesians above all took the lead in the investi-
gation of nature in all her aspects; and study extended to beaches and
clay deposits, winds, phenomena such as evaporation and condensation,
magnetism, and phosphorescence, and the range of technical processes
in everyday life.
Eastern Greece was the home of epic poetry, and the tradition
continued long, especially in Colophon and Smyrna. In Mimnermus'
elegiacs a new, more personal feeling appears in a framework of the old
skills and diction. In Lesbos the habit of singing to the lyre was strong.
Terpander and Arion were famed for their musical settings; and Alcaeus
and Sappho introduced a lyrical genre, using the vernacular tongue and
expressing their individual temperaments, the latter intimate and
passionate, the former graphic and addicted to political intrigue and
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THE EAST GREEK ACME
3
j.
Hecataeus' map of the world. (After
Grosser bistorischer Weltatlas
I
(ed. H. Bengston, et al., 1972) 12c.)
conviviality. The eastern Greeks, then, were far from lacking distinction
in poetry in the age of their expansion. But perhaps the most significant
contribution of the Ionian enlightenment was the realization of the need
to transmit the knowledge that they assembled. Though the Milesian
thinkers had a special interest in what we may call speculative physics,
the range of learned enquiry
(historie)
came to embrace mythology and
genealogy, history, and systematic geography; and maps of the known
world were constructed, first by Anaximander, and then towards the
end of the century by Hecataeus (fig. 35). The natural vehicle for such
information was prose, and prose is not memorable unless it is written
down. It is not absolutely clear when prose writing made its first
appearance in Archaic Greece. But it has been well remarked that the
appearance of cursive forms in the script of Ionic inscriptions in the
first half of
the
sixth century presupposes the existence of
a
'book hand'
there;
45
and when we learn that in the middle years of the century
Anaximander committed his thoughts to writing and the architects both
of the Samian dipteron and of the Ephesian Artemisium wrote books
on the subject we are entitled to speak for the first time of the emergence
of a literate culture.
45
A
36, )7,
327.
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CHAPTER 39b
CRETE
JOHN BOARDMAN
The burgeoning prosperity of Crete in the Geometric period continues
through the seventh century. The record is clear from the archaeological
evidence of its many sites and this is a record which must be respected,
for there is no other. The reticence of ancient authors about this period
in Cretan history stands
in
marked contrast with their readiness
to
discuss Crete's laws and society: the latter is due to Crete's distinctive
practices and their alleged similarities to those of Sparta, the former to
the island's comparative unimportance economically and militarily
in
the Classical period. Crete's society and laws will be discussed in the
following section: here we deal with her archaeology and the history
of her material culture.
Crete of
the
hundred
—
or ninety
—
cities (//. n. 649;
Od.
xix. 174) was
not the only part of Greece to enjoy a wholly distinctive orientalizing
culture, nourished by continued contact with Cyprus, Egypt and the
Near East. But
in
Crete the culture
is
idiosyncratic and
it is
mainly
inbred.
It is
expressed
in
a great diversity of products
—
painted and
relief vases, jewellery, sculpture, bronzework and especially armour
—
and from city to city there seems to have been no less diversity in ways
of life, and death.
In the later Geometric period (the second half of the eighth century
and
a
little later) and the rest of the seventh century close on one hundred
sites are known
in
the island.
1
The Late Geometric
is
the period
of
maximum activity,
it
seems, though the fact that nearly two fifths
of
the sites seem not
to
survive far into the seventh century could well
be illusory since the later material is not always easily identified or
it
has yet to be found. Equally, the fact that more than one in five of the
Archaic sites seems
a
new foundation may mean little: many of them
had been occupied in the Bronze Age and their Geometric cemeteries
may yet
be
located. The more important sites whose archaeological
record spans our period are Cnossus, Prinias, Arkades, Gortyn, Drerus,
Kavousi and Praesus. The new sites of the seventh century,
or
those
which seem to have taken on a new lease of life, are Axus, Lyttus, Lato,
1
H
ij, 415-17;
D
I48, 316-44;
A 54.
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CRETE
223
Kato Syme. The cave sanctuaries on Ida and Dicte (Psychro) are still
visited and it is notable that several of the seventh-century sites have
been detected from their sanctuaries rather than their cemeteries. The
practice of constructing more substantial sanctuary buildings and of
depositing a greater variety of votive objects has drawn attention to
these sites more readily than to houses, walls, or tombs.
For most of the sites mentioned or known the archaeological
evidence peters out by the end of the seventh century or in the early
sixth. The change is dramatic and not readily explicable, but this was
the turning point in Crete's fortunes and it determines the need to
discuss here first the island's orientalizing heyday, and separately its
decline.
Crete's prosperity lay only partly in her material wealth, in land,
metals and men. In common with other areas of Archaic Greece her
good fortune was to no small degree determined by her associations
with the rest of the Greek world, and especially with lands outside
Greece, to the east and with Egypt. The crossing to North Africa was
an easy one, and from the east the route via the coastline of southern
Anatolia, past Rhodes and the Dodecanese, led as readily to Crete as
through the Cyclades islands and to central Greece. It is hard to sa)
how much of the trade with Crete was conducted in Cretan ships, or
indeed how much could at this date be dignified by the title 'trade'.
The Cretan who knows nothing of the sea was an old paradox (Alcman
fr. 164 Page), though no longer so paradoxical by the time of Ephorus
(Strabo 481). The Cretan sailors of the Hymn to Pythian Apollo (lines
392—9) sailed to sandy Pylus for business and profit (knl npf)£iv
KOX
Xpriftara),
and the arch-wanderer Odysseus readily pretends to Crete as
his home when he arrives on Ithaca (Od. xix. i73ff). Crete was nearly
as populous as Homer describes it in the poet's day as it must have been
in Odysseus', and the 'Cretan' Odysseus waxes eloquent about the fine
living, love of the sea and fighting, piracy and raids on Egypt
(Od.
xix.
199fT). Far later, under Rome, it was to be a haven for pirates, and the
disguised Demeter of the Homeric Hymn (line 122) claims that pirates
brought her from Crete.
2
If the Eusebian thalassocracy list is in any way
historical we might have expected a place for Crete.
Within the Greek world there is little enough to demonstrate close
involvement between Crete and other states. The island stood culturally
and geographically closest to the Dorian islands of Melos, Thera and
Rhodes, and this shows in pottery styles. Cretans led by Entimus joined
Rhodians in the foundation of Gela in Sicily in 688
B.C.
(Thuc. vi. 4.3)
and the pottery of Cretan
style
at Gela seems to hail from the south-central
2
A
21. The Eusebian date for the 'Carians', who cause trouble in justificatory accounts of the
list, would in fact suit orientalizing Crete. But see
A
37,
252-3.
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t
•3611
Phalasarna
III
m
Land over 1.000 metres
SCALE
10 20 30 40 50km [S\
IS
Itanu!
.P^laikastro
Zakro
Lebena
HI
II
n
Map 13. Crete.
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