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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CRETAN LAWS
AND
SOCIETY
245
adoption assumed fresh significance. As the clansmen's rights became
more formal,
so the
special responsibilities
of an
heir
to an
estate
increased. Until free testamentary disposition became established,
the
head
of
an
oikos
must have wished
to
ensure
a
responsible succession
from within the
oikos.
So the system of adoption, through the
betaireiai
apparatus, became
a
state responsibility.
In
the Code, adoption might
be made without restriction; and
a
formal ceremony was held
in the
market-place before
the
assembled citizens,
the
adopter presenting
a
sacrificial victim and
a
quantity
of
wine
to
his
hetaireia.
2i
The provisions
of
the Gortyn Code which concern an heiress are of
considerable interest and importance for the social and legal historian.
25
The members
of the
tribe
of the
heiress still maintained rights
of
marriage to the heiress when, in certain circumstances, she did not marry
the next of
kin.
A rule of tribal endogamy was still thus preserved, with
the
epiballontes
belonging
to
one exogamous clan group who normally
intermarried with another exogamous group, called their
kadestai.
The
terms
epiballontes
and
kadestai
signify the bonds of obligation formed by
kinship on the one hand, by marriage on the other. This archaic system,
observed by anthropologists in various parts of the world in more recent
times,
depended upon
the
continuous intermarriage
of
exogamous
cross-cousins, relatives being classified according
as"
they belonged to one
group
or
the other.
The Code defines
an
heiress
as a
daughter without
a
father and
a
brother
of
the same father. She could inherit her father's property but
had to marry the next of kin. The immediate next of kin was the paternal
uncle.
If
there were several
of
them, the oldest had prior claim. When
there were several heiresses and paternal uncles, they were obliged
to
marry in order of
age.
In the absence of paternal uncles, the heiress then
had
to
marry her paternal cousin; and,
if
there were several, the oldest
had prior claim. Should there be several heiresses and paternal cousins,
they were obliged to marry in order of age of the brothers.
In
this way
the material interests
of
a patriarchal household were being protected
by state legislation,
now
encouraging marriage between
kin of the
household
as
compared with cross-cousin marriage between clan
groups. However, these newer trends were still contradicted by other
stipulations deriving from older surviving matrilineal customs. Women
still
had
significant rights
to the
tenure
of
property
and
land.
For
example, when the heiress and
a
male claimant were too young to marry,
the heiress could have the house and half the income from the property,
the other half going
to
the claimant. When there was no claimant,
an
heiress
of
marriageable age could hold the property and marry
as
she
24
X.
33-XI.
23; D
164, JO-I.
25
VII. 15-IX. 24; XII. 6-I9; D 164, 18-27.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
246 3SK- CRETAN LAWS AND SOCIETY
wished within the tribe; and if no tribesman presented
himself,
she was
free to accept an offer from anyone else.
Marriage was allowed between a free woman and a serf (vn.
1—10).
The children were free or unfree according to whether the serf lived
with the free woman or vice versa. It follows that
a
woman who married
twice might have free and unfree children. We can assume that
marriages between free men and serf women were not recognized. Both
husband and wife were allowed to divorce if either wished; and there
were consequent rules in these cases, as also when wife or husband died,
about the disposal of property
(11.
45—
in. 16). A father had power over
children and division of property among them. A mother had power
over her own property. When a father died, the houses in the town and
anything in the houses (if not occupied by a serf belonging to the
country estate), along with the sheep and larger animals not belonging
to a
serf,
went to the sons. The remaining property was fairly divided,
sons receiving two parts, daughter one part each. When a mother
died, her property was similarly divided. Houses occupied by serfs
belonged, as did the serfs, to the estate and were regarded as income-
producing property in which daughters shared. Sons had clear preference
over daughters in division of inheritance; but there is some evidence
to indicate that women had received more generous treatment before
the publication of the Code.
26
The terminology of the Code includes titles of certain age-grades of
free citizens. A boy or girl before puberty was described as
anoros
or
anebos,
after- puberty as
ebion,
ebionsa
and
orima.
An adult citizen after the
age probably of about twenty was called a
dromeus
(runner), implying
his right (denied to serfs) to gymnastic exercises. Conversely, an
apodromos
was a minor, not yet old enough to claim the right.
27
The
youth were organized in
agelai
(herds). When they graduated from the
agelai
they were obliged to marry at the same time, apparently at a public
ceremony for those of
the
same age-grade also belonging to groups with
ties of intermarriage with other groups.
28
These customs persisted long
after the publication of the Code, despite more recent developments
favouring the autonomous family and property interests indicated in the
Code
—
especially by the exception to the general rule of collective
marriage made in the case of a minor allowed to marry the heiress so
as to safeguard household interests. This care to ensure succession in
the male line explains the right of a minor to marry an heiress as an
exception to older rules; and also why she could marry at the early age
of twelve (vn. 35-40; xn. 17-21).
26
IV. 23~V. 9; D 164, 2O-I.
27
vn. 30, 3;ff, 37, 54;
VI
"- 39. 4
6
; *'• '9J
c
f- I"
1
- Cret. n v. 25A 7 (Axus).
28
Strabo 482-4; cf. Ath. iv. 143; Nic. Dam. fr. 115; Heradid. Pont. 3.4; D 161, 7-17.
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CRETAN LAWS AND SOCIETY 247
The term
apageloi
was probably confined
to
adolescents just before
their entry into
agelai,
which were similar to the bands of citizen novices
in other states; but Cretan youths did not enter
agelai
until the end
of
their seventeenth year.
29
Aristotle
{Pol.
1264a) explains that the Cretans gave
to
their servile
population the same rights as they had themselves, except that they were
forbidden gymnastic exercises and the possession
of
arms. This helps
us to understand why an earlier system of patriarchal slavery which we
may define as 'serfdom' (in the sense that
a
servile peasantry was tied
to the soil and paid tribute
to
overlords) endured
for
centuries after
commercial chattel slavery (with slaves bought
and
sold like other
commodities) had become a dominant form of servitude in other states.
This does not mean that a transition from collective tenure of ancestral
estates to narrower circles of proprietorship did not cause modifications
in the serf system from time
to
time and perhaps from place
to
place;
and
it was no
doubt affected
in
various ways
by the
simultaneous
development of chattel slavery. Consequently the ancient evidence from
terminology relevant
to
servile populations
is
varied, complex and
by
no means easy
of
analysis. The problem
is
exemplified
in
the Gortyn
Code which has two servile terms which can be translated as 'serf and
'slave' respectively:
the
woikeus
(implying
a
person attached
to the
oikos);
and the
dolos
(i.e. slave). The difficulty
is
that these two words
are
not
used strictly
to
define
two
different conditions
of
servility.
However, various contexts make clear that there were two different
servile statuses. Dolos
is
sometimes used with
the
same meaning
as
woikeus,
sometimes with
the
meaning
of
chattel slave.
The
clearest
example
of
the latter usage occurs
in a
regulation about buying slaves
in the market-place. Again, as we have seen, a penalty is laid down
for
rape against a domestic slave, so that one rule applies to
a
serf,
another
to a slave. The Code also demonstrates that
a
free citizen could pledge
his person
as
security
for
payment
of
debt/he
was
then called
a
katakeimenos.
A
nenikamenos
was
a
free man condemned
for
debt and
handed over in bondage to a creditor. Although these persons lost their
freedom
as
citizens they were
not
reduced
to the
category
of
chattel
slaves.
The
woikeus
had access
to
the law-courts, though
he
was probably
represented
by
his master and perhaps his rights
at
law were less than
the rights of a free man. Serfs had other rights which distinguished their
status from that of chattel slaves. They had the right of tenure of houses
in which they lived and their contents. They could also possess cattle
as a right. In order to pay fines assessed for various offences in the Code
they must have possessed money. A serf family had
a
recognized social
29
Hesych. s.v. anaytXos; Sch. Eur. Ale. 989; D 162, 175-9, 285-6.
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248 35K- CRETAN LAWS AND SOCIETY
and legal status since a serf could marry and divorce; and a serf wife
could possess her own moveable property, including livestock, which
reverted to her in case of divorce. When she married, she changed
masters; and when divorced she returned to her former master or his
relatives.
Between the minority class of free citizens and the servile there were
a number of other social groups whose exact status is difficult to define.
The
apetairoi
were such a class of people who must have included, as
the name implies, all those excluded from
hetaireiai
or closed corpora-
tions of
male
citizens, and therefore from the privileges of membership,
including rights of citizenship. Within this category were perhaps
members of communities subjected to a city-state but allowed a kind
of autonomy. In an early fifth-century
B.C.
inscription from Gortyn a
certain Dionysius was granted privileges including exemption from
taxation, the right to sue in the same courts as citizens and a house and
land in Aulon, which might have been subjected to Gortyn, with its
own local government and taxes. The
apetairoi
were certainly inferior
insofar as they were not full citizens, but they must have had a relatively
free economic status, at least to the extent that they were neither bonded
nor enslaved.
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CHAPTER
3SW
EUBOEA AND THE ISLANDS
W.
G. G.
FORREST
I. EUBOEA, 7OO—5OO B.C.
If the
end of
the Lelantine
War (CAH
m.i
2
, 760-3) shed
the
light
of peace
on a
troubled Euboea,
it
brought none
of
any kind
to its
history. We
are
left with
a
Chalcis still stubbornly unyielding
of
any
archaeological truth, an abandoned Lefkandi, a prospering New Eretria
and the other cities, so far as we know, much as they were before. But
none
of
them,
not
even Eretria, figures more than occasionally
and
usually accidentally
in
anything that
can be
called
the
mainstream
of
Greek history, nor can much
be
said
of
their domestic affairs.
The aristocracies under which the war had been fought, and won
or
lost, were
not
unaffected
by the
challenges that faced aristocracies
elsewhere and before
600
a tyrant, Tynnondas (an interestingly Boeotian
name) imposed himself on
the
'Euboeans' (Plut. Sol. 14)
and
others,
Antileon and Phoxus,
on
Chalcis (Arist. Pol. 1304a, 1316a), but Tynn-
ondas is remembered only
for
his name, Antileon and Phoxus for their
departures not their presence (one was succeeded by an oligarchy,
the
other by
a
democracy). But what Aristotle, our source
for
both, meant
by' oligarchy' or 'democracy' is unclear. The only firm fact is that when
the Athenians won a famous victory over the Chalcidians about
506
and,
in effect, took over Chalcis, they settled 4,000
of
their citizens
on the
lands
of the
Hippobotae,
the
'Horse-breeders',
a
name that
has a
sufficiently traditional aristocratic flavour
to
suggest that whatever
tyrannies, oligarchies or democracies had gone before did little to shake
Chalcidians from their inherited ways (Hdt.
v.
74—7).
Eretrian politics should have been, perhaps were, more interesting.
The physical shock
of
the move from Lefkandi,
if
such
it
was, and
be
it
or
be
it
not in some way connected with defeat in the Lelantine War,
together with
the
long-term results
of
colonial expansion
and
conse-
quent commercial success should have done something to the fabric of
Eretrian society, but there again we have only the name
of
one tyrant,
Diagoras,
who 'put
down
the
oligarchy
of the
Hippeis
[the
'Horsemen']',
and the
statement that these Hippeis were still
in the
249
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250
-
EUBOEA AND THE ISLANDS
T3
J
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EUBOEA, 7OO—5OO B.C. 251
political saddle around 550 (Arist. Pol. 1306a; Ath. Pol. 15.2). Either
Diagoras comes after 550 or he, like Antileon and Phoxus, had no
lasting success. A very fragmentary shipping-law of about 525 (as well
as giving us the title of the chief magistrate, the
archos)
testifies to a
continuing interest in the sea as does Eretria's contribution of five ships
to help the Ionians in their revolt in 499, a contribution which may have
earned her a temporary, though not very plausible claim to 'thalasso-
cracy' between 500 and 490.
1
The distribution of her pottery overseas
may also owe as much to seamanship as to the talents of her potters.
2
But the really hard fact is the building programme in the new city
that begins around 700. A wall was constructed including a striking,
indeed for its date unparalleled, defensive complex, the so-called West
Gate (fig. 42), cutting the main road south from Chalcis, and behind
it rose public buildings, sacred and profane, including a temple of
Dionysus and a fine sixth-century temple to Apollo Daphnephorus,
rich in sculpture (see below), while in other parts of the city remains of
private houses and material from graves show continuing and growing
wealth, broken only in the end by the Persian sack of 490.
3
But from
whose pockets the money had come for all this, how it was extracted
from them and how, precisely, it had got into them, we can only guess.
Foreign relationships are more substantial at first sight, but no more
coherent. Chalcis continued to colonize in the north, adventures which
ended with a joint foundation with Andros at Sane and thence produced
a dispute about further expansion to Acanthus, about 655. The dispute
was settled in favour of Andros when, of the arbitrators, Samos and
Erythrae voted for her, and Paros for Chalcis, which shows no more
than that associations of the Lelantine War period did not last more than
fifty years (Plut.
Quaest.
Graec.
50). At about the same time there was
further trouble in Euboea
itself,
in what was now Chalcis' private
property, the Lelantine plain, or at least in a plain in which the 'famed
warrior lords of Euboea' could practise their special skills against each
other. Whether or not the warrior lords actually came to blows on this
occasion is unknown - the poet Archilochus (below, p.
25
5-6) writes of
it in the future tense (fr. 3 West)
—
but, rather later, in the first part of
the sixth century, another poet, Theognis (891—4), names the plain and
uses the present. ' The wine-rich plain of Lelanton is being shorn bare.'
But who was shearing it and why? 'Cerinthus [a small city on the
north-east coast of Euboea] is lost.. .good men are in exile, bad run
the city. So may Zeus blast the whole clan of the Cypselidae.' The words
are clear but the sense is not. We have firm geography
—
Cerinthus and,
via the plain, Chalcis; we have the class struggle
—
'good' and 'bad';
1
IC XII. 9, 1273 -4; Hdt. v. 99; cf. A 21.
2
D 18.
3
D 6, )7-7i; D 14; D 63.
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252
EUBOEA AND THE ISLANDS
—
OUTLINE
OF
CLASSICAL
GATE
/ \^EARLY GRAVE
/
\
ENCLOSURE
CULT
ROOMS
42.
Eretria, the West Gate area in the sixth century B.C. (After
D
6,
figs. 8,
12.)
an international connexion
-
the Cypselids
of
Corinth. But even
if
we
accept an attractive suggestion that the Cypselids might have established
themselves
at
Cerinthus when
on
their way north
to
found Potidaea,
about 600 (and a beautiful emendation in a text of Plutarch, 'Cerinthus'
for ' Corinthus', which would then have these same Cypselids expelled
by
the
Spartans
in
55 6
or
thereabouts), the roles
of
Chalcis and class
remain dark, as dark as the reasons which later still led the Chalcidians
to join with
the
Thebans
in
luckless interference with Athens about
506.
4
This last fact serves to remind us how important Euboea always was
4
The suggestion about Cerinthus and the Corinthians
is
Wade-Gery's; E 162, 75-6.
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THE ISLANDS 253
as a link between Central Greece, including Attica, and the outside
world, Thrace, Chalcidice, the Black Sea; how closely, therefore, the
island was involved in the affairs of Central Greece, and Eretria
especially in the affairs, economic and therefore political, of Tanagra,
Oropus and north-east Attica. Pausanias (ix. 22.2) mentions an early
war between Tanagra and Eretria. The tangled story of the origins of
the Athenian tyrant-slayers, the Gephyraei, involves Tanagra and Eretria
as well as Aphidna where they finally settled.
5
Later instances abound.
Thus,
when an Eretrian suitor appears at the court of Cleisthenes of
Sicyon about 570 (below, p. 347), it was surely an Athenian link with
Cleisthenes, not a direct Cleisthenic interest in Eretria that brought him
there. A little later one Athenian connexion takes shape. Deeming it
prudent to flee from Athens in 556, Pisistratus found asylum in Thrace,
where Eretrian interests were strong, returned to Eretria and thence,
ten years later, mounted the expedition which won back his tyranny
(below, pp. 3981). Such things could not happen without Eretria's
official blessing and so, we may say, around the middle of the century
Eretrian politics reflected Eretrian economic ties with eastern Attica,
whence, of
course,
Pisistratus came. Indeed it is not impossible that the
representations of Athena and Theseus in the sculptures of the Apollo
temple later in the century owed something to this link with Attica, as
may the copious finds of fine Attic black-figure vases in Eretria.
6
But not too much can be gleaned for the long term. An Athenian
nobleman, Chaerion, who died at Eretria about 525, may himself have
been in flight from Pisistratus (though the assumption that he was is
too readily made).
7
More solidly, in 499, when Eretria chose to fight the
Persians in Ionia, she was also choosing to fight the Pisistratids, who
had gone over to the Persians. Economic interests survive personalities,
and the presence of men like the anti-Persian Callimachus in Aphidna
or the family connexions of anti-Persian Miltiades in the Brauron area
may have seemed more seductive that the absence of old friends with
the Persians. But this is thin ice.
Euboea was like a 'scabbard lying along the flank of Central Greece'.
In the dark it is hard to appreciate the existence of a scabbard unless
it rattles. Euboea did not rattle very often after 700.
II. THE
ISLANDS
Such glimpses of a political pattern in the Aegean as we can catch or
think we can catch in the late eighth century vanish with the coming
of the seventh. The apparent abandonment of the fortified settlement
5
Fj, no. 12267. *
H
'9. '5<>; H 66, 163-4.
7
F 5, no. 600.4.
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2 54 39^- EUBOEA AND THE ISLANDS
at Zagora on Andros, once an Eretrian dependency, at about the same
time as the desertion of Lefkandi, invites thought, but one example of
collaboration between Andrians and Chalcidians in the north would
scarcely allow that thought to take the shape of Eretrian collapse and
of a new Chalcidian presence in the northern Cyclades {CAH rn.i
2
,
768—9).
In any case the collaboration was short-lived.
We are left with the basic differences of geography and race described
in an earlier chapter and with the simple facts of island life. The islands
were isolated communities. The Aegean lay between them, and the
Aegean can be a powerful isolating factor even today. But the small
ships of Archaic Greece had to face not only Poseidon but pirates.
Thucydides
(1.
4) is romancing when he implies that the seas were
cleared in early days. The Greeks who sailed to Egypt about 660 were
pirates who found respectability; Polycrates of
Samos
was a pirate with
a state behind him; even the early campaigns of the Delian League in
the 470s were against pirates as well as Persians, and some have even
likened the Leaguers themselves to pirates. The best comment is a list
of those whom the little coastal city of Teos decided (about 470) to
include among its annual official curses: mass poisoners, dissidents,
revolutionaries, traitors -and pirates (M-L no. 30). The simple truth
is that the Aegean has been free of pirates only in those few periods
when there was some strong naval authority to keep it free - in the days
of Minos, perhaps; thereafter, in antiquity, only under Athens, under
Rhodes and under Rome (after Pompey).
Nevertheless the sea was also a unifying factor. Greeks sailed as
readily as they walked and, where interest led them, carried news and
ideas as well as goods. It is possible to imagine a completely isolated
island (not many ships will have called voluntarily on the Dolopian
pirates of Scyros
—
though according to Plutarch (Cim. 8) some were
foolish enough to do so), as it is possible to imagine a totally
uninhabited island, but by and large, and certainly along the main
sea-routes, these communities will have been as much aware of each
other and of the outside world as many cities of Thessaly and much
more than many cities of Arcadia. The question is how to hit a balance
between these two factors; in view of the lack of evidence an
unanswerable question. But, as this or that island drifts temporarily into
view, we must beware of thinking that it alone was enjoying the
experience, whatever it may have been. Only Paros produced an
Archilochus, but there was a Simonides of
Ceos,
a
different but no lesser
poet; only Thera's drought
is
recorded, but even meteorologists cannot
confine a drought to some 80 square kilometres; only Naxos is said to
have dominated other islands, but could Tenos ever ignore Andros?
Only Delos is unique
—
there was no anti-Pope.
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