Early Greece

by Oswyn Murray

  Already in the Iliad, at least one passage describes the stabbing spear used in close formation (13.339ff), and the Euboeans are famous for their stabbing spears (2.542ff); these passages are therefore thought to be late. Recent studies of battle scenes in the Iliad have tended to emphasise the combination of two styles of fighting, that of the heroic warriors locked in independent duels, and that of the mass fighting in close formation; Homer may perhaps already reflect the beginnings of an age of transition. The poetic evidence for the Lelantine War (above p. 79) is confused: it seems to have been fought in the old way, but it is possible that changes were beginning. This is perhaps why Archilochos the professional sees the warriors of Chalkis as a model, for the spear that he leaned on and the shield he threw away are likely to have been of the new type. The Ionian cities had begun exporting hoplites to Egypt by the mid seventh century (below p. 231), but Mimnermos of Colophon, writing towards the end of the century, recalls hearing of the fighting with the Lydians about 675 in the old style; and as late as 650 Kallinos of Ephesus exhorted his city’s young men in lines which mention only throwing spears, and dwell on single combat: ‘they see him like a tower before their eyes, and he does the work of many, being alone’ (Frag. 1.20–1). But Kallinos’ language and thought are so Homeric that this impression may be misleading. The first unambiguous evidence is from the greatest of the war poets, Tyrtaios of Sparta, composing during the second half of the century: his poems describe the formation fighting of hoplites, the clash of ‘hollow shield on shield’ (a new epithet describing the new shape), the corporate discipline and the gruesome wounds.

  The way in which the language of epic was turned to new purposes can be shown by one example. Two identical passages in the Iliad describe the close formation of the Greeks: ‘those judged champions awaited the Trojans and godly Hector, locking spear fast to spear, buckler to close-packed buckler: shield crowded on shield, helmet on helmet, man on man. The horse-hair crests on their shining helmet-ridges touched as they nodded, so close they stood to one another’ (13.129–33 = 16.215–7). The description was famous among hoplite warriors, and seems to have been reinterpreted to refer to opposing sides: that at least is how Archilochos parodies it in a glorious mixture of sexual and military language – ‘to fall into action on the paunch, to hurl belly on belly and thighs on thighs’ (Frag. 119). Tyrtaios accepted this interpretation, and expanded Homer:

  Let him place foot against foot and lean shield against shield,

  crest against crest and helmet against helmet,

  let him bring chest close to chest and fight with his man,

  taking the hilt of his sword or his long spear.

  (Fragment 11.31–4 = 8D)

  Whether or not the original Homeric lines reflect a hoplite formation, they have been made to do so by transference from the moment of waiting to the actual battle; and in the change from description to exhortation, Tyrtaios has added the resonance of epic to his appeal for courage in close formation fighting.

  It is with Tyrtaios that the new ethic of the age of hoplites first emerges clearly. The warriors he addresses are a group:

  For you know the destructive work of Ares, god of sorrow,

  you have experienced all the fury of painful war.

  You were with those who fled and with the pursuers,

  young men, you have had your fill of both.

  Those who dare, standing by one another,

  to join in the hand to hand fighting in the front line

  lose fewer men and protect the people behind:

  when they flinch, the courage (aretē) of all is perished.

  (Fragment 11.7–14)

  In Homer the word aretē refers to excellence of any kind: Tyrtaios explicitly redefines it as the steadfast courage needed in hoplite battles, in a poem which probably survives complete. He begins by rejecting the other traditional aristocratic claims to excellence: strength and speed in athletics, physical beauty, wealth, noble birth, powers of speech are nothing without a fighting spirit:

  This is excellence (aretē), this is the finest possession of men,

  the noblest prize that a young man can win.

  This is a common good for the city and all the people,

  when a man stands firm and remains unmoved in the front rank

  and forgets all thought of disgraceful flight,

  steeling his spirit and heart to endure,

  and with words encourages the man standing beside him.

  This is the man who is good in war.

  (Fragment 12.13–20 = 9D)

  The honours such a man wins if he dies or lives are not so different from those given to Homeric heroes, but they are couched in language which involves the whole community and not just his peers. The new conception of courage and its relation to the life of the community comes out clearly in the third line of the passage, ‘this is a common good for the city and all the people’. The line itself is built up from memories of two lines of the Iliad: in the first a wasps’ nest creates ‘a common evil for many’ (16.262), and in the second Paris’ abduction of Helen is described as ‘a great woe for your father and for the city and all the people’ (3.50). The juxtaposition of these two phrases and the alteration of one significant word, ‘common good’ for ‘common evil’, not only creates a positive ideal from the negatives of Homer: it reveals a new world in which the city dominates and justifies the ethics of its warriors.

  It is not at first sight surprising if the Iliad is little concerned with patriotism: it views events primarily from the Greek side, and the Greeks are far from home, fighting for their honour and the booty that victory will win. Patriotism is only in place on the Trojan side: Hector was a great hero who fought for his fatherland (24.500), and urged others to do the same (12.243). But all the same his death was pitiful rather than glorious, at the most (in his own words) ‘not unseemly’:

  Whoever of you is wounded or struck and meets death and his fate, let him die: it is not unseemly for him to die fighting for his fatherland; but his wife and children after him are safe and his house and his land unharmed, if only the Achaeans return to their dear fatherland in their ships.

  (Iliad 15.494–9)

  The call to patriotism is curiously negative; the emphasis is on the material benefits that death in action may bring to a man’s family and his estate. Similarly it is primarily the wife and the immediate family who grieve when a hero is killed (Odyssey 8.523); even in the long description of the mourning for Hector in Iliad 22, the people remain in the background.

  Later war poetry is markedly different. Kallinos brings together a whole series of scattered Homeric phrases to present a new ideal:

  Let him make a last throw as he dies;

  for it is honourable and glorious for a man to fight

  for his land and children and dear wife

  against the enemy. Death will come whenever

  the fates decree …

  But small and great alike mourn if a warrior suffers;

  longing for a man of mighty heart is on all the people

  if he dies; and living he is honoured like the heroes.

  (Fragment 1.5–19)

  The glory of fighting for family, the notion that death will come when it will and that brave men are honoured for their actions in life and death, are all found in Homer. But it is the combination of these different ideas in a short passage which implies, without stating it openly, that death in the service of the community is in itself glorious.

  It is Tyrtaios who first made this attitude explicit in what a later war poet, Wilfrid Owen, called ‘the old lie’: ‘To die is glorious, when a brave man falls among the front ranks fighting for his fatherland’(Frag. 10.1–2 = 7D). In Tyrtaios the community takes equal place with land and family: when a man dies, he brings glory ‘to the city and the people and his father’ (Frag. 12.24 = 9D).

  Young and old alike weep for him,

  and the whole city is filled with sad longing,

  and a tomb
and children and his family survive him.

  Never has fame forgotten a brave man or his name,

  But though he is under the earth he becomes immortal,

  whoever excelling, and standing firm,

  and fighting for his land and children, is killed by mighty Ares.

  (Fragment 12.27–34)

  By the age of Tyrtaios a new ethical principle had become established, the duty of the individual to the state. Of course the new morality was formulated in terms of the old, and coexisted with it: little might seem to have changed. But it was the beginnings of that move from the competitive ethic of Homer to the co-operative ethic of later Greece, and it is the tension between these two systems which ultimately explains the Greek achievements in moral philosophy. Initially the change was limited to the military sphere: patriotism replaced the search for individual honour; courage was redefined in terms of steadfastness or endurance (or in Aristotle’s later formulation, as ‘a mean with regard to feelings of confidence and fear’). And perhaps most significantly, class consciousness and a set of class values emerged for the warriors: on the battlefield birth and wealth no longer mattered, compared with courage, in which all must be equal – should not these two principles of the battlefield, co-operation and equality, also determine the political life of the community?

  IX

  Tyranny

  THE FIFTH century scholar Hippias of Elis noted that Homer did not know the word tyrannos, which had come late into Greek in the age of Archilochos:

  I do not care for Gyges and all his wealth.

  There is no envy in me, nor am I jealous of

  the works of the gods: I do not desire a great tyranny.

  It is far from my eyes.

  (Archilochos Fragment 19 = 20D; Hippias FGH 6 Fragment 6)

  Hippias was right: the word tyrannos (from which the modern ‘tyrant’ derives) is certainly non-Indo-European and perhaps Phoenician in origin, for its closest cognate seems to be seran, used in Hebrew of the rulers of the Philistines on the Levantine coast.

  Although there was considerable uncertainty among the Greeks as to when aristocracies succeeded monarchies, monarchy does not seem to have been a widespread institution after the collapse of the Mycenean world. But from the mid seventh century a series of usurpers began to seize autocratic power in the more advanced cities, establishing dynasties which usually lasted for some two generations before they were overthrown and replaced by hoplite-dominated governments. This early period of tyranny seems to have begun in mainland Greece at Corinth, where Kypselos and his son Periandros ruled from about 655 to 585. About 640 Theagenes gained control of Megara, and some ten years later supported an unsuccessful coup by his son-in-law Kylon at Athens. Athens itself was ruled for a short time about 560 by Peisistratos, and again by him and his sons from 546 to 510 (below ch. 15). Another of the main cities of the northern Peloponnese, Sicyon, was under Orthagoras and his successor Kleisthenes for about a century, from the mid seventh century to the 550s; and there were numerous lesser tyrannies. In the islands the succession of tyrants at Mytilene around 600, in the lifetime of Alkaios and Sappho, are known especially from Alkaios’ poems; and on the coast of Asia Minor, Thrasyboulos at the end of the seventh century brought Miletus to the height of her prosperity. Contemporary with the Peisistratids at Athens was Polykrates of Samos, who managed to keep the island independent of the Persians until about 520. It is in fact likely that tyrants were common along the Ionian coast, for tyranny became the standard government imposed by the Persians after their conquest of the area in 546. Thus for a century or more after about 650, tyranny was one of the prevalent forms of government in the Greek cities; of the main states, only Sparta and Aegina seem to have escaped it. During this period it was also the tyrants who dominated the political and artistic life of the Greek world, and who captured the popular imagination in tradition. The experience of tyranny created a fascination and a hatred which permanently influenced Greek political attitudes against monarchy, until the establishment of the huge territorial kingdoms of the Hellenistic world.

  In later political theory, tyranny is defined as absolute rule exercised contrary to customary law, or at the whim of the ruler; and it is contrasted with kingship, which is absolute rule in accordance with customary law, or for the benefit of the subjects. It is regarded by all theorists as the worst possible form of government, worse even than mob-rule, with which indeed it is held to have some connection. The most historically based of these analyses is that of Aristotle in the Politics:

  The tyrant is set up from among the people and the mob against the notables, so that the people may suffer no wrong from them. This is clear from the facts of history: for the great majority of tyrants have risen from being popular leaders in some sense, having won confidence by their slandering of the notables. Some tyrannies were set up in this way when cities had already become great, others earlier as a result of kings going beyond custom and aiming at more despotic rule, others from men elected to major offices (for in old times the people would appoint magistrates and sacred officers for long periods), and others from oligarchies choosing some one supreme official for the chief posts. For in all these ways it was possible for such men to achieve their aim, if only they wanted, because they already possessed either royal office or a particular magistracy; thus Pheidon in Argos and others became tyrants when they already had royal power, while the Ionian tyrants and Phalaris rose from magistracies; and Panaitios at Leontini, Kypselos at Corinth, Peisistratos at Athens and Dionysios at Syracuse, as well as other examples, rose by being popular leaders.

  (Aristotle, Politics 5.1310b)

  The viewpoint of Aristotle is fairly limited, for he is concerned not so much with the basis of the tyrant’s power as with the means by which he actually seized it. Nevertheless three points are clear. Firstly the tyrant took power unconstitutionally and ruled outside the law; secondly he was usually a popular leader, protecting the people from the former ruling class; thirdly he was often himself a member of that ruling class.

  These facts explain the varying fortunes of the tyrant. The earliest popular leaders must have come from the aristocracy; their crime in the eyes of their class was to break with the conventions of political life and turn to the people for support. Initially therefore tyranny was a popular form of government set up against the aristocracy; for perhaps a generation the interests of the people and its aristocratic ruler would coincide. But as the people gained confidence, the tyrant would find himself undermined by the fact that he stood outside the constitutional framework of council and assembly possessed by all or most Greek cities; and he would see his support eroded as peole and aristocracy moved together once again. The result in the second generation was an increasingly arbitrary and often brutal regime, until the tyranny was overthrown by internal revolution or external attack. Thereafter it was remembered with hatred.

  It is reasonable to look for general explanations behind such a widespread phenomenon. Thucydides seems to hint at an economic cause: ‘as Greece became more powerful and its economy developed more, tyrannies were established in many cities, their revenues increasing …’ (1.13). The economic development of Greece in the seventh century certainly affected the position of the aristocracy deeply. It was in any case not so much great differences in landed wealth as birth and military functions which distinguished them from the rest of the community; and in some respects those whose wealth was based on land were at a disadvantage in the more highly developed world of the city-state and the colony, where craftsmanship and trade could become important sources of profit. At the beginning of the sixth century Solon of Athens describes the ways in which wealth could be acquired:

  Each man hastens on his way. One wanders over the fishy sea

  seeking to bring home gain in his ships

  battered by brutal winds

  placing no value on his life.

  Another, cutting the tree-clad earth, slaves

  all year long, tending the
crooked plough.

  Another, skilled in the works of Athenē and Hephaistos the artificer,

  gains his living with his hands,

  and another taught the gift by the Olympian Muses,

  knowing the measure of the sweet skill.

  Lord Apollo the far darting has made of another a seer,

  and he knows the evil coming from afar for a man

  when the gods give him foreknowledge; yet no bird sign

  nor sacrifice can ward off what is utterly fated.

  Others having the skills of Paion and his healing drugs

  are doctors, whose craft is still uncertain …

  No end to wealth is revealed to man,

  for those of us who have most possessions

  hasten to double them. Who could satisfy all?

  (Solon Fragment 13.43–71 = 23D)

  Solon of course emphasizes the importance of the intelligentsia to which he himself belongs (poets, seers, doctors); but his description reveals a complex and developed urban economy, in which agriculture, trade and technology are equally acceptable modes of acquiring wealth, and in which the profit motive is both explicit and morally neutral. Solon himself in his reforms rejected the criterion of birth for that of wealth in the distribution of political honours (below ch. 11).

  One of the recurrent themes of early Greek poetry is the conflict between birth and wealth, though most poets took an aristocratic view opposed to that of Solon. For example his contemporary Alkaios of Mytilene clearly disapproved of the new importance of wealth: ‘they say that Aristodamos uttered no bad phrase for a Spartan, “money’s the man”; no poor man is noble or honoured’ (Frag. 360). The strongest criticisms of the replacement of birth by wealth are found in the poetry attributed to Theognis of Megara in the mid sixth century (p. 220). The final devaluation of birth in relation to wealth is shown in the definition attributed to the poet Simonides, that good birth is merely inherited wealth (Aristotle, On good birth Frag. 2).