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 MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
455
61.
A merchantman and
a
bireme, from an Athenian black-figure cup. About 520 B.C. (London,
British Museum
B
436;
cf.
H 21, pi.
5;
C. T. Torr, Ancient Ships (1894) pi.
4.)
62.
A
hoplite, with Corinthian helmet, linen/leather corselet, greaves, hoplite shield and spear,
from an Athenian black-figure vase by the Amasis Painter. About 540
B.C.
(Kings Point, Schimmel
Collection; after
H
68, pi. 71 below; H 10, 67.)
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
456 45^- THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
devised by the mid-seventh century although many elements of it were
in
use far
earlier.
The
phalanx depended
for its
efficiency
on its
discipline,
and the
hoplites depended
for
their safety more
on
their
armour than their agility
or
even, often, their spearsmanship.
35
The
Corinthian helmet best covered face and neck
but
was also
hot
and
soundproof, which could prove
a
disadvantage, and there were other
varieties developed
in
Greece
-
the miscalled Chalcidian,
the
more
primitive Illyrian with open face, the Cretan which may be one
of
the
earliest types and which was short in the neck and fairly open
at
front,
and the East Greek with its strange peak. The Attic was lighter and
less protective
but
had
a
neck-guard and often hinged cheek-pieces.
Metallurgically even
the
earliest Corinthian one-piece helmets attest
considerable technical skill. Most had short horsehair crests. Corselets
were sheet metal, two-piece and calling them 'bell-corselets' describes
well enough their shape which seems to have been inspired by central
European armour.
36
After
the
mid-sixth century
the
linen corselet
begins
to
appear, with shoulder pieces tied across the chest and flaps
(pteryges)
below the waist but it does not entirely replace the bell-corselet,
which is itself adapted to carry flaps, until the fifth century, when other
varieties too appear.
Greaves are clipped on to shins and there were other clip-on pieces
for the upper arm, thighs and ankles though these must seldom have
been worn and are very seldom shown on vases. The circular shield was
clamped to the left forearm by a central armgrip
{porpax)
and a handgrip
by
the rim
(antilabe);
it was
usually made
of
wood with bronze
attachments and perhaps also covered with hide. The main offensive
weapon was the thrusting spear, at its best equipped also with a pointed
butt
(sauroter)
which could be used for the
coup de grace
on
a
fallen foe.
The long sword
of
Geometric type was slowly replaced by the shorter
stabbing sword, and the slashing kopis
or
machaira
is
seen by the end
of the Archaic period, but the sword was a decidedly secondary weapon
for a hoplite and its prominence in art may be prompted by the heroic
occasions on which it is shown in use. In the seventh century the hoplite
may
be
shown carrying
a
second spear also, probably
for
throwing.
From
all
this
it can be
seen that
the
equipping
of a
hoplite was
a
complicated
and
expensive matter and there can
be
little doubt that
many
a
phalanx must have advanced with several underequipped
members. The provision of
the
necessary metal by the state (in Classical
Athens
the
city provided
the
basic shield
and
spear
for
veterans'
orphans:
Ath.
Pol. 42.4) or acquisition of it by the '.ndividual presented
a special economic problem, met and recognized
in
various ways, and
perhaps hardly less significant than the social implications
of
reliance
35
A
59-
36
H
73.
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 457
in the field
on a
well-equipped
or
disciplined citizen army instead
of
aristocrat champions with rabble support.
Slingers, bowmen, cavalry and light-armed spearsmen were of course
used, but irregularly, and
it
seems from the vases that a hoplite might
ride to assembly point with
a
squire. Whether a chariot could be used
in
a
similar manner is not known and
it
has become unfashionable
to
believe that chariots were ever used
for
serious matters
in
Archaic
Greece,
but
only
for
racing and processions.
37
The introduction
of
Thracian riding dress and equipment (the light pelta shield)
and of
Scythian bowman's
rig (the
patterned track-suit, pointed
cap and
bow-case
gorytos)
to Athens in the second half of the sixth century can
plausibly be explained by Pisistratus' north Greek interests, but they
make no lasting contribution
to
the military scene.
38
Almost all this we learn from pictures. At Olympia there is
a
good
series
of
arms dedications and the Cretan armour has been discussed
on pp. 226-7, but we are sadly short of material evidence for corselets
and swords and, of course, bows. Fortunately some artists took pains
with such details. The heroic duels which are the commonest subjects
on vases left little occasion
for
studies of the phalanx
itself,
although
Corinth provides one
or
two examples
on
vases
of
the mid-seventh
century. (See Plates Vol.
for
these and other documents on warfare.)
We turn to the poets
39
for a more personal view of fighting as a hoplite,
from Archilochus' abandonment
of his
hoplite shield, always
an
encumbrance when being pursued, to Tyrtaeus' clarion call
to
engage
the enemy standing ' foot to foot, shield to shield, crest to crest, helmet
to helmet, chest
to
chest, grasping your sword
or
long spear'
and
remarking
the
wisdom
for
safety's sake
of
advancing shoulder
to
shoulder.
We seem
to
know much more of the religious life of the Greeks
in
the Archaic period through their literature but
in
fact much
of
our
evidence even for newly inagurated festivals like the Great Panathenaea
is late, and we do well to insist on the contemporary physical evidence
for cult, and to remember what physical demands their gods made upon
them. In most towns the only building larger than a one- or occasionally
two-storied house would have been the temple and these were already
reaching a formidable size in the seventh century, especially in the East
Greek world, while the sixth century has Ionian tyrants planning and
building some
of
the largest temples ever
to
be seen
in
Greece.
The
command of
cheap
labour implied by these structures is of considerable
social importance, as has been remarked in the preceding section of this
chapter,
and
there must have been times when construction work
" H 40.
38
H
13;
H
7).
39
H
6
9
, Ch.
8.
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458 45#. THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
occupied
the
attention
if not the
hands
of
tlie majority
of a
city
population. Such ostentatious piety was not confined to home, however,
and national sanctuaries such
as
Delphi and Olympia attracted dedi-
cations
of
Treasuries, small temple-like buildings given
by
cities
as
thankofferings. These appear first in the first half of the sixth century,
Delphi enjoying homeland dedications, Olympia ones especially from
the western Greeks who must have been influenced
by
the publicity
value of the sanctuary. These small buildings are architecturally lavish,
and often more finely decorated with sculpture than the larger
oikoi
for
the gods, yet they seem to have served no practical purpose except as
repositories
for
offerings, not always
of
the dedicating state.
40
Popular minor dedications of the Geometric period had been clay or
bronze figures of animals, a type of offering found more often now
in
smaller sanctuaries. The aristocratic offerings of tripods at Olympia and
Delphi continue through the period of the tyrants, but the dedications
are often now more explicit
in
their form
-
spoil from
a
victory
—
or
in the inscriptions which now normally accompany major works and
which record victories over fellow Greeks, or a tithe from a lucky deal,
or simply thanks
for
services rendered.
In a
rather different category
are the marble youths and maidens,
kouroi
and korai, which represent
more permanent service to the deity than flesh and blood.
41
These are
works for the local rather than national sanctuaries, and we have seen
them to be as vital an expression of the new monumental arts of Greece
as the»new stone temples with their architectural orders had been.
A rather different opportunity
for
personal ostentation
in a
public
setting was offered by burial monuments.
42
The great funerals depicted
on the Geometric grave vases, with massed mourners and processions,
seem to have given place to more modest ceremonial but the tendency
to extravagance needed constantly to be curbed by legislation, in Athens
from
the
time
of
Solon
on. The
actual disposal
of the
dead,
by
inhumation
or
burning, remained comparatively modest,
as did the
accompanying offerings,
and
there
are few
exceptions, even
in the
richest sixth-century burials
of
Athens, where jewellery
or
elaborate
furniture is also interred. It was a different matter above ground. Over
the rich Geometric graves of Athens there had been large painted vases
and the practice did not entirely die out, but generally the markers for
early Greek graves were no more than rough stone slabs. During the
seventh century some of these may carry relief figures representing the
dead,
but the
evidence
for
this
is not
totally convincing, and when
Athens' cemeteries start sporting well-cut stelai around 600 they
are
austerely decorated. By then, however, the
kouros
was being used as
a
10
H
38;
E I
16;
E
234,
97-IO4.
" H
62;
H
64.
42
H
JI, chs. 5,9, 12.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 459
grave marker
in the
islands
and in the
sixth century this practice
becomes general, with korai less commonly serving graves of women,
while the stelai
of
Athens and some other parts
of
Greece carry relief
figures representing the dead
in an
idealized youthfulness, only later
differentiated by attributes
of
an athlete,
or
warrior,
or
an older man
with his stick and dog.
43
The Athens stelai, and
a
few elsewhere, were
also topped
by
sphinxes
and
may carry painted
or
relief subsidiary
panels. They are expensive sculptural masterpieces, and the pride
in
them felt by the living
is
attested by several epitaphs which name the
sponsor of the monument, as well as the dead and his near kin. Artists
barely lag behind
in
seizing the opportunity
for
proud advertisement
on the commemorative monuments, be they dedicatory or funereal, and
the inscribed bases are our prime source for names in
a
period still poorly
served by the records
of
later writers on art.
44
The hard ware for the good life may have been mainly inspired by
foreign arts, as we have seen, but behaviour was not. Here again vase
scenes come to our aid.
45
The sixth century saw the beginnings of formal
dramatic presentations developing from the choruses and dithyrambs
of earlier years. This is no place for considering the early history of the
Greek theatre
—
not even its physical setting
for
which
at
the best we
may assume earth slopes and wooden stands
—
but humbler levels
of
entertainment are as well
or
better attested even than the simpler cult
practices, and there are points at which the informal secular touch the
more formal religious. In Corinth, then Athens, and to
a
lesser degree
other cities in the first half of the sixth century, the vases present popular
entertainers whom we call komasts, usually dressed in a close-fitting and
possibly padded tunic, but sometimes naked and sometimes dancing
with women, dressed
or
naked,
in
what was clearly
a
jolly bottom-
slapping display
(fig.
63).
In the mid
century their behaviour
and
appearance come closer to those of satyrs, Dionysus' familiars, who in
their usual form are also inventions
of
the early sixth century.
The
occasion may
be a
simple, rowdy enactment
of
the Dionysiac rout
accompanying drunken Hephaestus back
to
Olympus,
but we are
witnessing a popular form of the play-acting of divine occasions which
will soorj establish
in a
more formal manner the satyr plays and
the
dramatic performances which attend Dionysiac festivals. Here perhaps
we are after all considering the beginnings
of
the Greek theatre more
directly than
in
traditions about Arion and others.
It
is
only really with
the
late Archaic period that
the
finds
and
representations combine to offer a very full account of many aspects of
private life. The townscape in which a people lives can both determine
"
F
3OA; H 19, Ch.
8. •" F 16.
4>
A 68,
part
1; E 226.
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460 45^- THE
MATERIAL CULTURE
OF
ARCHAIC GREECE
65.
Komast dancer from
a
Corinthian black-figure
plate,
from
Corinth.
About 580-570
B.C.
(Copenhagen,
National Museum
1631;
Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Copenhagen
11 pi. 90. 4b;
E
226, n. 38.)
and reveal much of its way of life and the Athens of Pisistratus was
beginning to take a form which was to be the pattern of all Classical
cities.
Other places may have been similarly developed - Corinth, the
colonial cities
—
but we hear and see far less about them, and the
intended layout of Smyrna which had been thwarted by Alyattes at the
start of the sixth century shows what an Ionian city may have looked
like even fifty years earlier. In Athens the acropolis had become devoted
to the service of the gods, though temporarily occupied by a tyrant and
his family, and carried one major Doric temple, as lavishly decorated
with architectural sculpture as any in mainland Greece, as well as
smaller, equally decorative cult buildings. There was a small columned
propylon
but the walls were still probably just the Mycenaean, reinforced.
Dedications of statuary by private citizens begin to cluster along the
paths on the rock.
46
In the lower town an area in the agora had been
cleared of houses and reserved for the Assembly, theatrical displays and
public business, and was taking shape as an administrative area flanked
by public buildings on the west - a probable Council House for the
Solonian 400, the pre-prytaneum town house, a temple of Apollo
Patrous.
47
Beyond lay the potters' quarter, on the way to the Dipylon
Gate and the line of Athens' probable walls. New fountain houses
adorned and served the city and its citizens, businessmen whose affairs
led to the furthermost corners of the Mediterranean, artists who were
46
F 26.
"
F
}J
.
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THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 461
already setting standards
for
Greece
to
follow, poets and politicians
who
were
to
shape
the
culture
of the
Classical world.
Much
of
this,
in
Athens
and
elsewhere,
is
directly attributable
to the
patronage
of an
aristocratic family
or a
tyrant, sustained
by
cheap
or
slave labour.
On the
other hand, where
the
labour
was
cheap
but the
inspiration lacking
it
hardly required constitutional restraint
to
ensure
an austere life style, although even Sparta seems,
in
material detail,
not
so very pallid
a
version
of
other Archaic Greek towns.
48
But in the
Athens of less than 200 years before only whispers
of
such cosmopolitan
activity disturbed the quiet tenor of the county-town of Attica,
and
even
mid-sixth-century Athens was by no means
a
dominant power, politically
or militarily,
in
Archaic Greece. Progress
had
been sudden, exciting,
and held promise
of the
ability
to
face greater challenges,
to
compass
new achievements.
49
48
E l6i; E
I76A.
49
Several topics in this section are further discussed, and illustrated, in the Plates Volume.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART
This chart has been compiled by the editors with the help
of
the authors and
of Dr N.
J.
Richardson (Literature).
A full alphabetical list of Greek colonies with their foundation dates appears
at the end
of
chapter
37.
463
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
750
700
6;o
600
THK HAST
ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
744-27 Tiglath-Pileser III
726-722 Shalmaneser
722 Samaria destroyed by the Assyrians
720 Hamath destroyed by Assyrians
721-705 Sargon 11
715 Revolt in Cilicia quelled
712 Yamani
at
Ashdod
709 Record of Cypriot tribute to Sargon
II
704-681 Sennacherib
c. 700 break in occupation
at
Al Mina
ANATOLIA
696 Revolt in 696/; Destruction of Gordium
Cilicia quelled; by Cimmerians; death of
Tarsus destroyed Midas
680-669 Esarhaddon c, 680-640 Gyges
673/2 Esarhaddon's prism
668-626 Ashurbanipal
664 fall of Egyptian Thebes
to
Ashurbanipal
648 fall of Babylon
to
Ashurbanipal
BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
612 fall of Nineveh
to
Babylon
c. 610-560 Alyattes
605-562 Nebuchadrezzar
6oj Nebuchadrezzar defeats Necho II
at
Carchemish
EGYPT
747-716 Py (Piankhy)
c.
720-71;
Bocchoris
c. 715-702 Shabako
c. 702—690 Shebitku
690-664 Taharqa
664—656 Tantamani (Upper
Egypt)
DYNASTY XXVI
664—610 Psammetichus
I
Greeks established
at
Naucratis
610—594 Necho
II
GREECE
MAINLAND EXCEPT ATHENS
c. 740-720 1st Messenian War
736 last Messenian victor at Olympia
720 Orsippus (Megarian) victor at Olympia
716 first Spartan victor at Olympia
[Lelantine War]
ATHENS AND EAST GREECE
682/1 first annual archon, Athens
676 Eleans still in charge of Ol. Games
669/8 Argos defeats Sparta
at
Hysiae
668 Pheidon in charge of Ol. Games
c. 664 first naval battle; Corinth v. Coreyra
657 Cypselus seizes power at Corinth
c.
65 5
Orthagoras seizes power at Sicyon
c. 650 first Temenid king of Macedones
648 Myron of Sicyon wins chariot race at
Olympia
c. 650-620 2nd Messenian War
c. 636-632 Cylon
c. 625 Periander succeeds at Corinth
621/20 Dracon
Athenian war with Mytilene
c. 600 Cleisthenes succeeds
at
Sicyon
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