The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

by Ober, Josiah

  36. Innovation and growth: Baumol 1993. Energy capture and growth: Morris 2010. Technology in the Greek world: Greene 2000; Schneider 2007; Oleson 2008. Oil lamps, terra cotta lamps, and wine: Ian Morris, personal communication.

  37. High stakes of interstate conflict: Ober 2008: 80–84. Prevalence and costs of ancient Greek civil wars: Gehrke 1985. Thucydides on Corcyra’s civil war: Ober 2000; Thucydides on rational cooperation and competitive advantage: Ober 2010b.

  38. Institutions and coordination: Weingast 1997; Greek awareness: Ober 2009, 2012.

  39. Greek embrace of novelty: D’Angour 2011, arguing against, especially, van Groningen 1953.

  40. Ober 2010b, and ch. 8 in this book.

  41. Interstate learning among democracies: Teegarden 2014a. Among oligarchies: Simonton 2012. Institutional borrowing by non-Greek authoritarian states, especially in the fourth century, and role of mobile experts: Pyzyk forthcoming, and this book, ch. 10.

  42. Athens’ imperial coinage policy: Figueira 1998, and this book, ch. 8.

  43. Modern impediments: Laitin 2007.

  44. Innovative adaptations of the institution of coined money is a good case in point; for some particularly interesting innovations in this domain, see Mackil and van Alfen 2006.

  45. Stasavage 2014. We lack time-series data for the populations of independent or dependent cities of antiquity, but, per chapter 4, we have proxies for measuring Greek economic growth over time, including intensive per capita proxies as well as extensive demographic proxies. It is certainly the case that some individual Greek cities did not continuously increase their populations from 800 to 300 BCE. But the overall population of the ecology of independent Greek cities certainly did grow across that period, and there is good reason to believe that per capita income did as well. We consider the economic trajectory of some dependent Greek cities in chapters 9 and 11.

  CHAPTER 6 Citizens and Specialization before 500 BCE

  1. For a general history of the ancient Greek world, see Morris and Powell 2009. Dillon and Garland 2010 is a useful collection of documents in translation; Erskine 2009 and Kinzl 2010 offer introductory essays on many relevant topics. The historical era covered in this chapter is treated in depth by Snodgrass 1971, 1980a; Murray 1993a; Hall 2006; Osborne 2009c; Rose 2012. See also note 17, this chapter.

  2. Invention of new forms of citizenship and civic identity: Manville 1990.

  3. Greece in the Bronze Age: CAH vols. 2.1, 2.2; Bennet 2007; Shelmerdine 2008; Burns 2010; Cline 2010, 2014: chs. 2, 3; Demand 2011.

  4. Thuesen 2000 traces the the cycles of development (from small towns, to independent states, to city-state-empires, to domination by external empires) of the Bronze and Early Iron Age city-states of western Syria—including the major cities of Ugarit, Elam, and Hama.

  5. Lupack 2011 surveys the economic role of the palace, relative to sanctuaries and local towns, calling for an adjustment of the view, represented by Killen 2008, of the Mycenaean palace as the unique center of political authority and economic redistribution. But the adjustment to the standard model still leaves the Mycenaean state as economic entity very different from the classical Greek polis. Natural state: North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, and see ch. 1.

  6. Bronze Age collapse and Greek migrations: Morris 2006 (disputing “gradualist” accounts of the EIA); Wallace 2010; Middleton 2010. Cline 2014: chs. 4, 5 offers a detailed account of the collapse and a balanced discussion of the multiple factors contributing to it.

  7. Early Iron Age history and social structure: CAH vol. 3.1; Snodgrass 1971; Whitley 1991; Morris 2007. Continuity not collapse: Raaflaub and van Wees 2009: ch. 3 (by C. Morgan), but contrast ibid. ch. 4 (by I. Morris).

  8. Control of cult by EIA chiefs: Mazarakis Ainian 1997.

  9. Political leadership and war in EIA Greece: Donlan 1985; van Wees 1992.

  10. Lefkandi hero: importance and rarity: Morris 2000, ch. 6

  11. By way of contrast, Tilly 1975: 25 notes that Europe in 1500 had a very long tradition of royal power, stretching back to the Roman Empire, that almost all Europeans in this era were already subject to one crown or another, and that European state makers were usually kings or their agents.

  12. Snodgrass 1980b.

  13. I assume that the shock was violent enough to knock Greek communities back to the norms of rough egalitarianism that presumptively pertained in human communities until the development of large-scale agriculture and that persisted until recently in some foraging and pastoral societies: Boehm 2012b.

  14. The coordination mechanism was developed as a theory of democratic collective action by Weingast 1997 and was applied to classical Athenian law by Ober 2012. Early Greek law: Gagarin 2005, 2008. The assumption of considerable variation in early polis social organization, ranging from elite domination (van Wees 2004, 2013a) to protocitizenship (Hanson 1995, 2013), accommodates sharply contrasting scholarly views on the nature of the early polis.

  15. Superior mobilization and morale are identified as causes of the statistical advantage modern democracies have held over autocracies: Reiter and Stam 2002. See, further, Ober 2010b. The relationship between military and social development in Greece is often described in terms of either relatively quick archaic-era “hoplite revolution” or a longer (EIA to early classical) process of “hoplite gradualism”; see Kagan and Viggiano 2013 for the debate. I agree with the gradualists in considering mass infantry fighting as already important in the EIA, while accepting the revolutionaries’ claim that hoplite equipment and tactics crystallized into a more disciplined and standardized form some time in the seventh to sixth centuries BCE.

  16. Greek state formation at the end of the EIA: Runciman 1982; van der Vliet 2011; Karachalios 2013.

  17. Starr 1977. History of archaic Greece and cultural accomplishment: CAH vol. 3.3. Snodgrass 1980a; Murray 1993a; Osborne 2009c; Fisher, van Wees, and Boedeker 1998; Mitchell and Rhodes 1997; Raaflaub and van Wees 2009. Ancient evidence for archaic Greek history is collected in Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983; Stanton 1990. Climate change, ch. 5.

  18. Scheidel 2003: 120–126, writing before the Inventory data were available (and thus assuming a lower “core Greece” late classical population of ca. 2 million), offers a useful model of population change in the Greek world from the Bronze Age through the late classical era. The War of the Lelantine Plain, mentioned by both Herodotus and Thucydides, among other ancient sources: Inventory 652; detailed study: Parker 1997; Hall 2006: 1–7. While the emergence of Greek states in this period conforms to Charles Tilly’s (1975: 42) famous maxim that “War made the state, and the state made war,” the question remains why the Greek state-formation process did not result in the consolidation of Hellas into a handful of large states, on the model of Europe 1500–1900.

  19. Greek colonization and its motivations: Graham 1964; Malkin 1987; Dougherty 1993; Osborne 1998 (emphasizing entrepreneurial initiative). Scheidel 2003: 131–135 analyzes the demographics of overseas colonization, concluding that emigration could have had only a moderate effect on the whole of core Greek population growth but could have had substantially stronger effects locally in regions (e.g., Euboea).

  20. Sicily’s relative advantage in respect to agriculture (especially grain): De Angelis 2000, estimating that classical era Sicily had the capacity to produce twice the food its own population required. Metapontum and agricultural production: Carter 2006. Genetic impact: King et al. 2011, with discussion above, ch. 1 n. 13.

  21. Egyptian and west Asian effects on early Greek culture: Burkert 1992, 2004; West 1997. New crops and agricultural techniques: Sallares 1991. De Angelis 2006 contests earlier accounts of Sicilian–mainland exchange based on a colonialist model of Sicilian inferiority but reiterates the importance of agricultural exports to the Sicilian economy.

  22. Seventh century BCE developments in Greek religion: Osborne 2009c: 190–201, concluding (p. 201) that stone temples and large statues, “will have been beyond the means of individuals to produ
ce on their own and so were increasingly the preserve of a community.” Greek religion and priests: Zaidman and Schmitt-Pantel 1992; Hägg 1996; Parker 1996; Price 1999.

  23. For differing interpretations of the motivation and chronology of hoplite warfare and armor, see, for example, Hanson 1991; van Wees 2004; Schwartz 2009. Kagan and Viggiano 2013 is a helpful recent survey; see note 15.

  24. Hesiod, Works and Days, in Edwards 2004. Of course, Tellus’ wealth may have placed him in (say) the upper quintile of Athenian society; the question of exactly how deep mobilization would need to go in order to ensure state security was certainly answered differently at different times and places in the Greek world; the point is that Greek military development generally favored greater inclusivity.

  25. Early Greek tyrants: Kinzl 1979; McGlew 1993; Raaflaub and van Wees 2009 ch. 6 Early Greek mercenaries: Parke 1933; Trundle 2004; Luraghi 2006; their employment by Greek tyrants: van Wees 2013b: 69–73. Hale 2013 emphasizes the entrepreneurial character of early Greek mercenaries and argues that mercenaries fighting abroad for pay, rather than citizen-warriors fighting for their poleis, were responsible for key innovations in Greek warfare.

  26. Sparta and Laconia, politics, economics, and general history: Cartledge 1979, 1987, 2001; Hodkinson and Powell 1999; Hodkinson 1983, 2000. As we will see, economic specialization was limited at Sparta, and thus there was less room for demographic growth from the seventh to fourth centuries BCE than there was in some other parts of the Greek world.

  27. Helots: Ducat 1990; Hodkinson 2000: ch. 4, 2008. Cartledge 2001 ch. 10; Luraghi and Alcock 2003. Bare subsistence: Cartledge 1987: 174. Hodkinson (2000: 135) argues for some “better off helots,” but also notes that Spartan masters were fined by the state if any of their helots were not stunted in growth (presumably as a result of systematic malnutrition): Hodkinson 2000: 114 with reference cited. On the role of systematic violence in lowering labor costs in agricultural regimes, and in the formation of long-lasting social attitudes (with special reference to the southern United States post-1865), see Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen 2014, with literature cited.

  28. Spartan army: Lazenby 1985. Spartan “mirage”: Tigerstedt 1965; Cartledge 2001 ch. 12.

  29. It is fairly certain that after the Spartan victory in the Messenian wars, the land of Messenia was made public, somehow divided among the Spartans (Hodkinson 2000: 104), and that the population of Messenia was enslaved as helots. Hodkinson 2000 argues at length that after (as before) the Messenian conquest, Spartan land was privately owned by individual Spartans, rather than collectively by the state and that women could inherit land. Helots were managed by individual Spartans, although they were collectively controlled by the Spartan state, and they could not be exported from Spartan territory. Many residents of Laconia were helots; whether they were native Laconians, conquered early on by the Spartans, or imported Messenians, is debated.

  30. I am assuming that the combined population of Laconia and Messenia was distributed somewhat as follows: Spartans and their families: 35,000–40,000; perioikoi and Spartan slaves: 50,000–60,000; helots: 150,000–160,000. Obviously these are very rough estimates, but the basic point of relatively low helot-labor rents per Spartan is robust to quite substantial adjustment of the figures, which are in any event quite close to those that other scholars have reached by other means. Hodkinson 2000: 385–386, estimates 162,000–187,000 helots; Cartledge 1987: 174 estimates 175,000–200,000. Rents were further reduced by problems of supervision: Fleck and Hanssen 2006 (many kleroi [lands distributed by the state to individual Spartans] were distant from Sparta, and Spartans were unlikely to be deeply involved in day-to-day management) and by the fact that helots had negative incentives to innovate or produce extra surplus through extraordinary efforts: Helots thought to stand out in any way made themselves targets for state terror killing. The proportion of helots to Spartans would have increased as the numbers of Spartan citizens declined; see further ch. 9.

  31. A reference in a poem by the archaic Spartan poet Tyrtaeus (F 6 West) implies that fully half of a helot family’s agricultural production was paid in rent to the Spartans; Hodkinson 2000: 126–127 argues that helots were sharecroppers and that they were Indeed made to give over at least half their produce.

  32. Spartan austerity: Holladay 1977. Spartan egalitarianism might be understood as a perverted (based on violence-enforced social inequality between citizens and helots) variant of John Rawls’ (1999 [1971]) well-known egalitarian “difference principle,” which holds that inequality should be tolerated only insofar as it benefits the least advantaged citizen.

  33. Sparta’s social panopticon: Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus; Hodkinson 2000: ch. 7. The term panopticon is taken from Jeremy Bentham’s late eighteenth century design for a prison in which the prisoners believe themselves to be under constant scrutiny.

  34. Spartan education: Ducat 2006.

  35. On ways in which the state discouraged economic activity and limited circulation of coinage within Spartan territory, see Hodkinson 2000: 154–179.

  36. Disappearance of ambitious helots: Thucydides 4.80.3.

  37. Spartan demography: Cartledge 1979 ch. 14, and ch. 9 in this book.

  38. Natural state and proportionality principle: ch. 1.

  39. Sixth century Spartan imperialism and the formation of the Peloponnesian League: Cawkwell 1993.

  40. Athenian cult centers: Parker 1996. Contrast with Argos: de Polignac 1995.

  41. Eleusis (i362), which was a polis briefly, in 403–401 BCE, is the exception. Salamis (i363) and Athenai Diades (i364), despite their inclusion in the Inventory, did not have polis status in the classical era.

  42. Pre-Solonian Athens, and the evidence of burials: Morris 1987. Treasurers of Athena: Bubelis 2014.

  43. Solon and his patriotic poetry: Anhalt 1993. van Wees 2013b: 53–61 surveys the history of Athenian conflicts with neighbors and seeks to show that early Athens was somewhat more militarily formidable than is often assumed, but the evidence he musters primarily relates to the sixth century BCE.

  44. Self-enslavement and sale abroad of Athenians: Lewis 2004. Athens was not yet minting coins; wages for labor could have been either in kind or in monetary silver (cut fragments of bullion, found in some early Greek coin hoards). Kroll 2008 (and in earlier work) has argued that monetary silver was widely used in the archaic Greek world, including early sixth century Attica. Davis 2012 argues, against Kroll, for the dominance of in-kind exchange until the mid-sixth century BCE.

  45. Kylon and Drakon: Ober 1989: 55–60.

  46. Solon’s reforms and his aims: Linforth 1919; Blok and Lardinois 2006; Lewis 2006; Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace 2007 ch. 3.

  47. Solon between elite and mass: Loraux 1984; Ober 1989: 60–65.

  48. Solon and the invention of Athenian citizenship: Manville 1990.

  49. Solon and the horoi: Ober 2006a.

  50. Hubris law: Ober 2005b ch. 5. Cf. the use of intimidation, violence, and legal chicanery to create slavelike peonage (“neoslavery”) in parts of the U.S. south after 1865: Blackmon 2009.

  51. Assembly as law court (Heliaia): Hansen 1999: 30. On the profound significance of imposing legal equality on magistrates, see Gowder 2013.

  52. The denomination of “measures” (200/300/500) defining the three upper classes is very tightly grouped: Foxhall 1997. The distribution makes sense, however, if we assume that Solon was seeking to carve out a middling class with an identity that was distinct from that of the wealthiest members of the elite.

  53. Kelcy Sagstetter, in unpublished work in progress, has emphasized the lack of property equalization in Solon’s laws and its potential consequences.

  54. Solon’s political and economic reforms: Blok and Lardinois 2006, chs. 9, 13–16. Exactly how quickly the reforms might have had substantial economic effects remains unclear. Cf. note 44, on the debate over the use of monetarized silver in exchanges in Attica before the Peisistratid era of the later sixth century BCE.

 
; 55. Solon’s poetry: Blok and Lardinois 2006: chs. 1–6.

  56. Peisistratid era: Lavelle 1993, 2005; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 2000. Panathenaic prizes: Shear 2003. Athenian pottery industry: this book, ch. 7 n. 3. Oil and wine production: Amouretti and Brun 1993.

  57. Fleck and Hanssen 2013. Fleck and Hanssen’s formal model and empirical demonstration, using a version of the Inventory data, is different in method from earlier attempts, based on the literary record, to link tyranny with specific political and economic changes.

  58. Chios and other experiments with strong citizen regimes: Robinson 1997. Intraelite rivalry: Forsdyke 2005; Duplouy 2006.

  CHAPTER 7 From Tyranny to Democracy, 550–465 BCE

  1. The ancient literary and documentary evidence for the events of this chaper is collected in Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983; Stanton 1990. Athens’ twin: this book, ch. 8.

  2. “Natural state”: this book, ch. 1. The Greek word tyrannos: tyrant was borrowed by the Greeks from an Anatolian language; early usage lacks the moral opprobrium of later fifth century literary usage, e.g., by Herodotus.

  3. Athenian pottery industry: Arafat and Morgan 1989; Cook 1997: 259–262, concluding (p. 262) that the total of workmen in the painted pottery industry was “in the order only of hundreds”; Osborne 2001.

  4. On the Peisistratid tyranny at Athens, see Lavelle 1993, 2005; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 2000. Athenians in the northern Aegean and the drive to control strategic resources: Davies 2013; Kallet 2013: 52–54. Trireme building: van Wees 2013b.

  5. Persian Empire: Briant 2002; Kuhrt 2007; Ma in progress a, drawing on documents in Ma, Tuplin, and Allen 2013, on the violence and rent-seeking of the Persian ruling elite. Carthage and the Greeks: Krings 1998.

  6. The tyrant killers: Taylor 1991.

  7. The end of the Peisistratid tyranny is related by Herodotus 5.62–65 and by Pseudo-Aristotle Ath. Pol. 18.2–19.4.

  8. Athenian revolution: Ober 1996 ch. 4, 2007, drawing on Herodotus and Pseudo-Aristotle, Ath. Pol. The Council that resisted Isagoras was either the Areopagus, a Solonian Council of 400, or a newly instituted Council of 500, on which, see this chapter, section “Democratic Federalism.” Teegarden 2014b reviews the literature on the Solonian law on stasis, concluding that it is not genuinely Solonian.