Gates Charles. Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome

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202 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

traveler, is said to have headed north along the Atlantic coasts of Iberia and France to Brittany

and perhaps beyond, to south England and Cornwall.

In the central and western Mediterranean, Carthage eventually came into conflict with the other

powers of the region, the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans. In 509 BC, Carthage signed its

first treaty with Rome, defining spheres of interest in the central and west Mediterranean. Shortly

thereafter, in 480 BC, Carthage intervened in a squabble between Greek city-states of Sicily, an

opportunity to expand its influence on the island. But the plan went awry. The forces of Syracuse

and Acragas defeated the Carthaginians soundly at the Battle of Himera, a victory that the west-

ern Greeks would equate in significance with the Athenian victory against the Persians at the

Battle of Salamis (see below, Chapter 19). Indeed, later Greek tradition would assert that the bat-

tles happened on the same day. After this defeat, Carthage retreated from its Sicilian ambitions,

focusing instead on its African territory. The fifth and fourth centuries BC were prosperous.

Meanwhile, as Rome expanded, conflict between Carthage and Rome became inevitable. In

279 BC they signed their fourth and last treaty. The Punic Wars followed, three rounds of conflict

with, at the end, in 146 BC, the Roman invasion of North Africa and the capture and destruction

of Carthage itself. The site was demolished and cursed, the survivors sold into slavery.

Interestingly, the Romans, under Augustus, would refound Carthage in 29 BC, in fulfillment

of an ambition of Julius Caesar, a symbol of peace and reconciliation at the end of the bitter

civil wars that wracked the Roman Republic in its final decades. Named Colonia Iulia Concordia

Carthago, the city would serve as the administrative capital of the Roman province of Africa

Proconsularis (see Figure 23.1), a major city until destroyed during the Arab invasions in the

late seventh century AD and replaced by Tunis. The topography was carefully prepared, the city

regularly laid out , with the Byrsa Hill the center of this new city just as it had been the center of

the old. With this massive urban renewal, even less of the Punic city would remain.

PART TWO

GREEK CITIES

CHAPTER 12

Early Greek city-states of the

Iron Age (eleventh to seventh

centuries BC)

Although the Mycenaeans of the Late Bronze Age were Greek speakers, the cultural label “Greek”

is habitually applied first in the Iron Age. In the next seven chapters, we shall examine the cities

of the Greeks in the first millennium BC, the heyday of ancient Greek civilization before it was

absorbed into the expanding Roman state. The nature of the Greek urban experience will be our

focus, with attention paid to city plans and architecture; pottery, sculpture, and other objects that

characterized the ancient Greek world; and the social, economical, and ideological contexts. This

first chapter will explore the early development of cities, their cemeteries, and religious centers

(sanctuaries), and such fruits of foreign contacts as the alphabet and coinage.

Although unified in their culture, the Greeks lived divided into a multitude of city-states and

ethnoi until the later fourth century BC. No one city, no great warrior king rose out of the village-

based society of the eleventh to ninth centuries to dominate the others. This political organiza-

tion recalls that of Sumer, but contrasts with the kingdoms of the Near East in the second and

first millennia BC and of Egypt. The city-state, or polis as the Greeks called it, became a charac-

teristic unit of government during the eighth century BC in the eastern half of southern and cen-

tral Greece and throughout the Aegean basin: areas, perhaps coincidentally, where Mycenaean

culture had flourished. In contrast, the ethnos, often translated as “tribal state” or “nation,”

typically a loose association of villages spread over a large area, was found in the western and

northern areas of the Greek peninsula. The great achievements of Greek culture are associated

with the city-states, so we shall focus on them.

Cultural periods of ancient Greece

Sub-Mycenaean and Sub-Minoan: eleventh century

Protogeometric: ca. 1000–900

Geometric: ca. 900–700 BC

Orientalizing (Early Archaic): ca. 725–600 BC

Archaic: ca. 600–479 BC (to the end of the Persian Wars)

Classical: ca. 479–323

BC (to the death of Alexander

the Great)

Hellenistic: ca. 323–31

BC (to the Battle of Actium)

206 GREEK CITIES

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The collapse of the Bronze Age cultures of Greece in the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries

BC initiated a period of some 400 years often called the Greek Dark Ages. But the term “dark”

conveys a primitivism, a cultural regression that prejudice a view of these centuries. “Iron Age

Greece” is a more neutral term, and more useful too, in that it brings developments in Greece in

line with the Near East and indeed the rest of Europe, areas where this term has long been used.

Although the Iron Age could be ended in the later eighth century BC with the development of the

Greek alphabet, we shall extend it an additional century, to the end of the seventh century BC. By

this time certain major features of Greek culture were well in place: the city-state had emerged

as a characteristic unit of government; the migrations of Greek speakers throughout the Aegean,

Mediterranean, and Black Seas had defined the territory of ancient Greece; contacts with the

venerable cultures of the Near East and Egypt were resumed; and, as mentioned, literacy had

returned.

Migrations

In the absence of contemporary documents, we rely on the writings of later Greeks and on

modern archaeologists for information about the earlier Iron Age. The first key events are two

roughly contemporary waves of migrations within the Aegean basin. The first is the so-called

Dorian Invasion, recorded by later Greek historians. Greece would be divided into regions

speaking different dialects of the Greek language: Dorian, Ionic, Aeolic, and others. The Dorian

dialect predominated in southern Greece: the Peloponnesus, the islands of the south Aegean,

including Crete, and the south coast of Aegean Anatolia. The other main dialect, the Ionian, was

spoken in Athens, on the islands of the central Aegean, and in Ionia, the central zone of Aegean

Anatolia. Later Greeks believed that the Dorian dialect speakers had migrated southwards into

Greece at the end of the Bronze Age, fighting en route to their new lands. Several writers tied

the Dorian Invasion to the fall of Troy, another firm fact for the ancient Greeks; Thucydides,

for example, dated the Dorian Invasion to ca. 1120 BC (as measured in our calendrical system),

eighty years after the Achaean capture of Troy. Archaeology has provided little confirmation of

this story, although excavators have searched for it with eagle eyes. But migrations are difficult

to trace in the material record. Nomads do not always oblige us by scattering distinctive objects

along their trail. On the other hand, the dialects could well have developed spontaneously in the

different regions without notable inmixture of new people. In sum, the reality behind the Dorian

Invasion remains elusive.

In contrast, the second of the early migrations can be observed in the archaeological record.

During the eleventh century BC, Greeks from mainland Greece migrated eastwards across the

Aegean to the shores of Anatolia. This coastal zone and the islands immediately offshore, known

collectively as East Greece, were divided into three regions marked by different dialects: Aeolis,

Ionia, and Doris, from north to south. The heartland of ancient Greece thus embraced all shores

of the Aegean Sea. Today the region is divided between the modern countries of Greece and

Turkey (Figure 12.1).

At a later time, especially from the mid-eighth to the later sixth centuries BC, various Greek

cities sent colonizing missions by sea to more distant shores. Motives for these journeys varied.

Commercial interests, such as the search for minerals and other raw materials, would be impor-

tant. Other factors provoking this flood of emigration from the Greek homeland included the

rapid expansion of the population in the eighth century

BC and the competition for land to grow

Figure 12.1 Greece and the Aegean basin

208 GREEK CITIES

food, and the availability of an outlet for dissidents in the competition for political power among

the aristocrats struggling to gain control of the governments of city-states. Usually the daughter

cities would maintain strong sentimental ties to their founders, although in time they became

autonomous in government and economy. Two destinations in particular attracted the Greeks,

South Italy and Sicily in the west, and the Black Sea and its approaches in the north. Scattered

colonies were founded elsewhere, in Libya, Egypt, the Levant, and on the south coast of Anato-

lia. The earliest settlers headed west, founding colonies first in the Bay of Naples: at Pithekoussai

on the small island of Ischia, ca. 760 BC, then at Cumae on the adjacent mainland, and Naxos

on Sicily (see Figure 19.1). The Italian peninsula from Naples south and the eastern two-thirds

of the island of Sicily, together known as Magna Graecia (Latin term), or West Greece, would

eventually become an integral part of the Greek world, containing several important cities. These

colonies survived because the local peoples, based in the interior, did not challenge the coastal

Greeks. Other parts of Italy were less hospitable, however, and the Greeks avoided them. The

lands north of Naples belonged to the powerful Etruscans, and western Sicily had already been

staked out by the Phoenicians, as had much of North Africa and Mediterranean Spain.

THE RISE OF THE POLIS

The reasons for the origins of the city-state are controversial. It is sometimes said that the moun-

tainous landscape of the Greek peninsula gave rise to the city-state. Although favorable for such

developments, this sort of geography need not be determinative: city-states dominated in flat

Sumer, and kingdoms have often held sway over mountainous regions, indeed in Greece itself.

Particular historical circumstances must also contribute. Villages may have coalesced into larger

units as communications and economies improved. Towns may have developed their identities

in conjunction with local cults, to promote and protect the favored gods and heroes. In this too,

the parallel with Sumer is strong.

Some early towns developed as fortified centers in isolated places, if menaced by pirates or

untrustworthy foreigners. Such is the case of Karphi, a village of Minoan refugees established

high in the hills of Crete but occupied for a short time only, from ca. 1050 to 950 BC. Coastal sites

too needed to be picked with care. Smyrna, founded during the migrations to Ionia, was built on

a promontory jutting into a bay. Indeed, the early Greeks favored such peninsulas, because they

could be easily defended. A good example of a long-lived settlement on such a land form is Kinet

Höyük on the north-east Mediterranean coast near modern Dörtyol (Turkey), probably the city

of Issos in the Classical period. The Iron Age town, shown here in an imaginative reconstruction

(Figure 12.2), was built directly on top of at least 2,000 years of continuous occupation.

Also valued were hilltops near the sea: again, defensible situations. Some important sites of the

early Iron Age profit from this latter sort of location. Lefkandi, on the island of Euboea, occu-

pied a prominent mound right by the sea, and Zagora, an eighth century BC town on Andros, was

built on a bluff rising high above the Aegean, an advantage in security that outweighed meager

water supplies and ferocious winds. As dangers of marauders receded, those towns that were

well situated to profit from trade or agriculture survived and prospered, whereas those built

strictly for protection, such as Karphi and Zagora, were abandoned.

The polis consisted of an urban center and a varying amount of rural territory. Some were

quite small, while others were huge. Syracuse, in Sicily, one of the largest, possessed 4,740km

land, port city and hinterland, with a population of perhaps 250,000 in its heyday in the fifth and

fourth centuries BC. Control of the government varied. In general, the early city-states were ruled

EARLY GREEK CITY-STATES OF THE IRON AGE 209

by kings, according to later Greek tradition; we might think of them as chiefs, in anthropological

terms. Gradually the power base widened. Kings gave way to aristocracies, a group of wealthy

citizens, and, in some cities, aristocracies eventually yielded to the citizenry at large. Occasion-

ally a tyrant, a man who seized power illegally, would intrude. Whatever good he might do, and

the term “tyrant” originally had no quality of bad or good attached to it, his descendants usually

lacked the father’s gifts, roused animosities, and were overthrown.

Citizens lived in both city and countryside. Political rights, including the famed democracy of

ancient Greece, were restricted to male citizens. Women were expected to manage the house-

hold and raise children. In addition to the citizens and their families, Greek cities contained large

numbers of non-voting free persons (such as foreign emigrants), sometimes indentured servants

and farmers (the Spartan helots), and slaves.

THE EARLY GREEK TOWN: ZAGORA

Zagora, an eighth century BC town on the west coast of the island of Andros, exemplifies modest

Greek settlements of the Iron Age. Zagora was small, occupying an area of 6.7ha (Figure 12.3).

Its location on a bluff 150m above the Aegean demonstrates a concern for effective defense.

Steep cliffs below protected the settlement on three sides; the land access was fortified by a stone

wall ca. 140m long and 2m thick, penetrated by one gate. Water was not immediately available,

but had to be carried from springs in the region, with rainwater perhaps collected as spill off the

roofs. The town contained clusters of houses sharing walls, representing a population of pos-

sibly 1,000. Houses were single-story with flat roofs of thin pieces of schist covered with clay,

laid on wooden roof beams supported by wooden columns. In plan they were rectangular, with

a large central room and often a court and secondary rooms for storage and shelter for animals.

The local schist, a stone that separates into layers, was used as the prime building material, just

as it has been into modern times on this island. Also used was gray marble, the main stone of

the bluff itself. Elsewhere in the Greek world, as in early Smyrna, sun-dried mud bricks were

Figure 12.2 Kinet Höyük in the Iron Age (reconstruction)

210 GREEK CITIES

commonly used, normally placed on stone foundations to prevent moisture from causing the

walls to crumble at their base. Floors were of beaten earth, and clay would have served as a sealer

for walls and roofs.

The Australian excavators of Zagora identifed a small temple in the center of the town.

Although the cult site is probably earlier, the shrine was built in the mid-sixth century BC, well

after the town had been abandoned. The importance of the area as a sacred place was evidently

kept alive by the descendents of the villagers.

The temple at Zagora stood by itself. Although only

its lowest walls survive, the construction was clearly

of high quality. The temple consisted of a porch and

a main room (cella), with, it is thought, a flat roof. Its

simple floor plan is typical of the shrines of Iron Age

Greece. The original appearance of these normally

poorly preserved shrines is reflected in two eighth

to early seventh century BC clay models, one from

Perachora and another from the Argive Heraion, the

sanctuary to the goddess Hera in the region of Argos

(Figure 12.4). The model from Perachora has an apsi-

dal (curved at one end) ground plan and a parabolic

roof profile thought to represent thatch, whereas the

later model, from the Argive Heraion, has a rectan-

gular room and a pointed, or gabled, roof. Both are

decorated on the exterior with geometric designs.

Figure 12.3 Town plan, Zagora

Figure 12.4 Temple model, clay, from the

Argive Heraion. National Archaeological

Museum, Athens

EARLY GREEK CITY-STATES OF THE IRON AGE 211

CEMETERIES AT LEFKANDI AND ATHENS

Only isolated graves have been found at Zagora. The likely location for the cemetery lies beneath

cultivated terraces, difficult to access for archaeologists. For important cemeteries we must look

elsewhere, notably to Lefkandi (on Euboea) and to Athens.

Lefkandi: the Heroon

A remarkable discovery made in the Toumba cemetery at Lefkandi in the early 1980s is the

elaborate burial from the mid-tenth century BC of a man, a woman, and four horses in two com-

partments in a shaft cut into the floor of a large building (Figure 12.5). The man (age 30–45) and

the woman (age 25–30) were buried in a compartment lined with mud bricks and faced with clay

plaster. The man was cremated, his ashes placed in an already old bronze krater (broad-mouthed

bowl) of late thirteenth to early eleventh century BC Cypriot type with a rim decorated with ani-

mals and their hunters. Folded and packed inside was a shroud, one sheet of linen folded over

and sewn up the side, surprisingly well preserved for this period; placed beside the crater were an

iron sword, a spearhead, and a whetstone. The woman was not cremated; her skeleton, with feet

crossed and hands crossed at the stomach, was covered with gold jewelry. The skeletons of four

horses were discovered in the adjacent compartment.

The building itself was exceptionally imposing, measuring ca. 9m × 50m, with unusual archi-

tectural features. Oriented on an east–west axis, it was divided into several sections, an east

porch for the entry, an east room, a large central room beneath which the burials were made, a

west corridor with a north and a south room off it, and an apsidal room on the west. Three paral-

lel rows of posts held the roof, in the center and along the interior faces of the north and south

walls. An additional series of at least twenty-eight posts set 2m outside the building on the north

and south sides indicate that the roof continued beyond, forming a sort of veranda, a forerun-

ner of the covered colonnade of later Greek temples. As if the burials and impressive building

alone did not indicate the special status of the deceased, the excavators found that the building

had been partially dismantled and then filled and covered with a tumulus of earth, pebbles, and

Figure 12.5 Plan, “Heroon,” Lefkandi