CHAPTER 5
Marek Węcowski
What, in this chapter, is meant by aristocratic culture goes far beyond the traditional scholarly focus on aristocratic ideals, aristocratic artistic patronage, and aristocratic lifestyle in all its main manifestations. Instead, it is related to a more general notion of archaic and early classical Greek culture I will try to substantiate.1 In a nutshell, I will argue that due to its universal appeal, aristocratic culture of the archaic period was a main integrative force of early Greek civilization—in both its social and its geographical dimension. Accordingly, Greek aristocracy was above all a cultural phenomenon. Meanwhile, we must start with definitions, since the very title of this essay is no longer self-explanatory.
Defining Aristocracy
In recent scholarship, both the idea of the aristocratic symposium and the notion of Greek aristocracy have been challenged.2 In their fine introduction to the collective volume on “Aristocracy” in Antiquity. Redefining Greek and Roman Elites, Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees suggest that “‘aristocracy’ is only rarely a helpful concept for the analysis of political struggles and historical developments or of ideological divisions and contested discourses in literary and material cultures in the ancient world” (Fisher and van Wees 2015: 1). In their own words, Fisher’s and van Wees’ suggestion was conceived in reaction to two fundamental errors of earlier scholarship, both resulting from excessive scholarly reliance on the claims of ancient aristocratic ideology. “In modern scholarship, these claims are often translated into a belief that a hereditary ‘aristocratic’ class is identifiable at most times and places in the ancient world […] and that deep ideological divisions existed between ‘aristocratic values’ and the norms and ideals of lower or ‘middling’ classes” (p. 1). When put in very general terms, these remarks are hardly controversial.3 Van Wees and Fisher persuasively argue that “the political and economic preconditions for the creation of hereditary aristocracies of the medieval and early modern European type (strong royal authority, stable transmission of wealth) did not exist in most parts of the ancient world, and we have much less evidence than we used to imagine for the importance of hereditary status and privilege in general and for the existence of closed hereditary elites in particular.” If anything, “[a]rguably the Bacchiadai in Corinth and the patricians [in Rome] at their most ‘closed’ are the only elites that deserve this label […]” (both quotes at p. 7).
Consequently, H. van Wees and N. Fisher praise an approach that seems more and more common in current scholarship. This approach is well represented by Alain Duplouy, who banished “aristocracy” and “aristocrats” from his ground-breaking book (Duplouy 2006). Instead, he tried to conceive a “behavioral definition” of aristocracy studying diverse mechanisms of “social recognition” of those aspiring to, or enjoying, elite status. His work focuses rather on the activities and strategies adopted in order to achieve their aim by individuals who were in constant need of negotiating or confirming their “prestige.” In their introduction, van Wees and Fisher have recourse to the notion of “leisure class” (adapted from the classical sociological theory of Veblen 1899) to denote those who not only objectively belonged to propertied social groups, but also adopted a particularly ostentatious lifestyle.
The conclusions reached by H. van Wees and N. Fisher look entirely logical in the light of modern definitions of aristocracy that universally emphasize—with some minor variations—the hereditary nature and a high degree of exclusivity of such groups alongside their high material status (cf. van Wees and Fisher 2015: 1–2). The problem, however, lies less in our inability to find such “closed hereditary elites” in the archaic period than in the fact that these very definitions miss the point when applied to the historical realities of the archaic Greek world. To prove this, it is enough to point out that such definitions excellently fit the entire citizenry of a given political community in this period.
Before the rise of the first Greek democratic regimes and the concomitant enlargement of the citizen-body in Athens and elsewhere to include those, who did not own landed property (i.e., thētes, or poor free men working as hired laborers), the strictly hereditary group enjoying absolute exclusivity was no less than citizens at large. One must have been born into a family of citizen descent to be a citizen and only citizens had access to political rights, however we define them in each particular case. What is more, the civic status was obviously based on (relatively) substantial wealth, since the right to the ownership of land was limited to citizens only. I submit we should, and I am confident the archaic Greeks themselves most certainly did, view all the citizens of the archaic period as self-conscious elites of their own communities—hereditary, closed and privileged at the expense of all other inhabitants of their land. But can all citizens, following our contemporary definitions of “aristocracy,” be called aristocrats? Obviously not! And this is why, I would argue, we should look for other definitions rather than agree on the non-existence of the aristocracy in the archaic Greek world.
The definitions that provided the starting point for van Wees’ and Fisher’s analyses (Shorter Oxford Dictionary online; Oxford English Dictionary, definition 5) share a common weakness in that they systematically blend the notion of “aristocracy” with that of “nobility,” using both terms interchangeably. This is of course understandable given the British political tradition, but in many European countries the (so-called “titled”) aristocracy will historically stand out as a more or less exiguous “super-elite” of a broader social order of “nobility.” It so happens that the notions of heredity (of noble birth) and exclusivity (of political status), which feature in the aforementioned definitions are historically much better suited to the social group of nobility, whereas the additional emphasis on (hereditary) titles and offices and on exceptional wealth is more appropriate for aristocracy.
In our present case, the citizen-bodies of all Greek communities of the archaic period can logically be subsumed under the category of nobility. What remains is the question of tools or definitions one should employ in our quest for an archaic Greek aristocracy. In that, whatever path of enquiry we adopt, the necessary starting point must be the axiom that in archaic Greece, to quote van Wees and Fisher once more, “the political and economic preconditions for the creation of hereditary aristocracies […] (strong royal authority, stable transmission of wealth) did not exist.” In fact, if we look for archaic Greek aristocracies, hereditary titles and offices, or large property, bestowed upon individuals or families or larger social groups by a superior political or religious authority will not be there. Rather, we should focus on the relationship and on conceivable differences and interplay between the “nobles” and the “aristocrats,” i.e., between the citizens at large and their elites.
Following the pioneering study by Benedetto Bravo, I would suggest a working hypothesis based on a historical analogy that I consider particularly appropriate in this context (esp. Węcowski 2014: 21–26).4 In several European countries of the late mediaeval and early modern periods, aristocracies were less dependent on the good graces of the monarch than in others. But a truly exceptional case is that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the late 15th and late 18th centuries ad, where royal privileges were conspicuously limited by the political rights of the so-called “noble nation” consisting of all nobles of the land and amounting to 10 up to 15 percent of the population (cf. Frost 2007). Importantly, hereditary aristocratic titles were banned because of the dominating ideology of the basic equality of the entire body of “noble brethren,” as they called themselves. Their elite, who called themselves “magnates,” was never legally defined. The estates of many of such aristocrats exceeded by far those of the wealthiest aristocrats in Western Europe (in particular in what is now Ukraine, where they were duly called “petty kings” and mercilessly exploited the local population of this fabulously fertile land), whereas many nobles in central Poland were often poorer than their non-noble neighbors. Despite that, the ideology of the equality of nobles as a group was much more than a fiction, since the political rights were limited to this group, featuring the most spectacular right to elect the king. On such occasions, every member of this group, i.e., every member of the citizen-body of the “noble nation,” had the same say, with one vote for each of the nobles notwithstanding their economic or political status.
Despite the inherent risk of anachronism in such historical analogies, this is a very close approximation to what we encounter in the archaic Greek city, where the basic political right to participate in the Popular Assembly and to vote on the most vital communal issues did not depend on the economic status of a citizen, provided one was regarded as such. In both historical cases it was clear to all who did and who did not belong to those powerful few who were “more equal” than the others and who, based primarily on their elevated economic status, dominated the political life of their community.
But the most important lesson to be drawn from this historical analogy is that for a member of a well-defined and legally delimitated “nobility” of a given community, in our case, for a Polish or Lithuanian noble proud of his elite status and of his ideological equality with all other members of the group including the most powerful and the wealthiest, it was possible to advance into the ranks of the “aristocracy,” or the “magnates,” when one was propelled by spectacular individual success (political, but especially military) backed by a steady economic advance. If able to pursue the lavishly “aristocratic” lifestyle, one becomes universally perceived as an aristocrat. Naturally, the nouveau-riche aura may accompany a family for a time, but this is another phenomenon that we also find in archaic Greece.
Aristocracy as a Social Group
Bearing this in mind, let us take a brief look at the data at our disposal for the archaic Greek world.
Insiders always know who is and who is not one of them, based on various and often very vague criteria, often without recourse to definite standards. Ideally, as in Homer, members of elite circles would interact with one another on an equal footing long before they are formally introduced, on the basis of their good looks. In archaic Greek sympotic poetry, the elite insiders would characterize themselves as elite-members and deplore the infringements on their status by the arrivistes. However, it is not entirely clear for an outside observer what might be the criteria of legitimate membership in such inner circles beside being well born, a criterion which in the elegiac poet Theognis may itself be ambivalent (cf. Węcowski 2014: 56–65).5 Even more so would be the criterion of wealth, often lamented in the Theognidea (e.g., 149–150; 155–158; 165–166; 173–180) as not duly accompanying the aristoi (“the best ones”) but bestowed by the gods on commoners (kakoi, “the vile ones”). The only absolute standard, then, may be the ambition to fulfill a set of social ideals sometimes subsumed under the notion of aretē (“excellence” or “virtue”). But even aretē, as often emphasized by the moralizing Theognis, can only be earned or proven in the eyes of their peers (cf. 147–148; 150; 335–336; 465–466). Moreover, in the eyes of a Persian outsider in Herodotus (8.26.3), it is all Greeks that compete, or witness others competing, for aretē (instead of material gain) in the athletic contests at Olympia. Logically, then, all the citizens of the Greek cities could naturally aspire to the aristocratic ideal. When they prove themselves victorious, the divine grace itself may seal their advent to the ranks of aristocracy.
From the perspective of Herodotus’ Histories, our main narrative source for the historical period under scrutiny, things look even more confusing. Herodotus never explicitly touches upon the status of “aristocrats,” or Greek elites. He usually takes their being aristocrats for granted and only deals with this issue when confronted with abnormal circumstances. Thus, when a former collaborator of the tyrant Polycrates (3.142.5), Maiandrios, magnanimously decides to restore political freedom to his fellow citizens on Samos, he must face accusations of being unworthy of leadership as being born “lowly” (kakōs). In Athens, Miltiades the Elder is described in some detail as “belonging to a four-horse family,” i.e., to a horse-breeding family who was successful in racing competitions, as well as ultimately stemming from an important hero Aiakos. But this is only mentioned because it helps Herodotus explain that Miltiades was powerful (ἐδυνάστευε) in Athens despite the fact that the city was ruled by the tyrant Pisistratus at the time (6.35.1–2). In other words, occasional glimpses do not allow us to decide with any precision who was and who was not an aristocrat in the eyes of Herodotus and more importantly of his public.
The closest we come to this is the episode of the wedding of Agariste, daughter of Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon (6.126–130). Here, the mixed bunch of her suitors is supposed to compete in andragathiē, the “manly virtue,” which may be understood here as particular competences testifying to their aretē. While the tyrant will test them all year long in athletics and in table manners at their nocturnal symposia (see below), they arrive already equipped with some renown. Perhaps too young to have already earned their own celebrity, they can still boast about their fathers’ or their elder brothers’ lavish lifestyle, family riches, good looks, wisdom, athletic victories, exceptional physical strength, family connections to powerful tyrants, and even personal familiarity with gods (6.127).
To sum up, Herodotus’ audience must have instinctively been able to recognize the outstanding aristocrats as such, and the only criterion seems to have been some sort of celebrity, with good birth as an ideological sine qua non. Most often, however, we will only learn of an individual that he was notable (δόκιμος, δοκιμώτατος, or λόγιμος), powerful (e.g., he ἐδυνάστευε in his city), or had a great power (κράτος) in his local community.6
When it comes to describing social groups in Herodotus, we are on much safer ground. True, he does deal with a few exceptional cases of seemingly closed oligarchic groups, such as the Corinthian Bacchiadai, the Eretrian Hippobotai (lit. “feeders of horses,” as in 5.77.2–3; 6.100.1), or the γαμόροι (lit. “the landowners,” as in 7.155.2) of Syracuse. But besides the aberrant case of the Corinthian oligarchs, explicitly characterized as such in the story of their merciless exclusivism (5.92.b 1–e 2), the other group names seem only to add local flavor to a general phenomenon we can consistently observe in Herodotus. Namely, those in a more elevated social position are always described as “the wealthy ones,” or literally “the fat ones” (παχέες, as in 5.30; 5.77.2–3; 6.91.1; 7.156.2–3).
Thus far, both the individual and the group characterization of the elites in Herodotus seem at first to confirm Alain Duplouy’s idea that it is impossible to find an operative definition of the Greek “aristocracy” as a social group. However, one more aspect of Herodotus’ narrative should attract our attention here. Namely, the “wealthy ones,” the παχέες, are sharply contrasted with the dēmos. At several occasions, we hear of political fights between the two groups, resulting at some point in the expulsion of the παχέες from Naxos (5.30). On Aegina, however, the παχέες, led by a certain Nikodromos, had the upper hand over the dēmos and even massacred 700 of them (6.91.1–2). Even more importantly, when the tyrant Gelon’s mass deportations in Sicily reached Megara Hyblea, he brought the παχέες of this city to Syracuse and bestowed citizenship on them, while selling the dēmos of Megara into slavery. He did the same with the Euboeans of Sicily (7.156.2–3).
This last case is revealing because it shows that the contrast between the dēmos and “the wealthy ones,” while often subjective, can nevertheless be used as a legal or socio-political criterion of some precision. In other words, at any given time both fellow citizens and outsiders were perfectly capable of defining the “aristocrats” of any given community. Such groups, without being legally determined or constitutionally defined, and probably fluid in their social composition given the strength of the wealth criterion and so the potential influx of the nouveaux-riches stigmatized by Theognis, were nonetheless distinguishable. Let us try to compile and to analyze the set of criteria that made this possible.
How to Be an Aristocrat?
How could one assert one’s own aristocratic status and recognize it in another? As already mentioned, in the ideal world of the Homeric poems, physical appearance (alongside garments, in all probability7) will be enough to recognize an aristocrat. There is no need even to ask for a name until the guest himself decides to reveal it to his noble host. In real life, however, all is in the name. In the archaic period, elements of usually meaningful Greek personal names will suggest at least aristocratic ambitions of one’s parents.8 The compounds containing such words (and notions) as “horse” (hippos, as in Hipparchus) or other athletic paraphernalia such as the race track (-dromos, as in Callidromos), or “victory” (nike-, as in Nikodromos), “fame” (kleos or the like, as in Pericles), or “strength/power” (kratos, as in Polycrates), but also references to the public sphere (agora, more rarely asty or polis, as in Aristagoras) and/or to the idea of resisting the enemy and so protecting one’s community (mene-, alexi-, as in Alexander), or leading (proto-) or persuading (peis-, peith-) fellow-citizens (laoi, dēmos, stratos, as in Peisistratos) will instantly be perceived as belonging to the stock of “aristocratic” names, alongside those straightforwardly indicating one’s supremacy (arist-, as in Aristides or anax-, as in Anaxarchos or Astyanax). More rarely, but very importantly, the idea of being “elected” (-kritos, as in Demokritos) by the people will come to the fore. All such names, besides referring to the aristocratic lifestyle (cf. athletics, but also fame in general) allude to an elevated position within the community in politics but also in warfare.9
Ideally, again in Homer, a commoner will also be easily distinguishable from an aristocrat for want of athletic posture (Od. 8.159–164). In real-life terms, athletic competence or past experience will need to be asserted verbally, but athletic references themselves are crucial as they parade one’s membership in the “leisure class,” i.e., a group with an easy access to spare time needed for specialized bodily training.
Besides these elements, aristocratic means of social recognition will be a complex mix of material and non-material “markers” revolving around one’s economic status, pedigree, family and social connections, as well as rituals and social practices one participates in. More or less ostentatious luxury (a relative thing, as the object “luxurious enough” in a poorer community will be ridiculously negligible in a wealthier environment), including foreign, exotic, and especially oriental items will be crucially important here. The most spectacular among such objects will have their own genealogy recounted by their current owners who sometimes refer to their previous high-born possessors (as in Homer, Od. 4.615–619; cf. Crielaard 2003). At times, it will be one’s war booty, additionally pointing to military prowess of the person in question or of his forefathers, but probably more often the story will refer to the gift-exchange procedures as they will themselves be indicative of prestigious relations of guest-friendship (xenia, philia) reaching far beyond one’s immediate circle or even to other Greek, and at times non-Greek, communities. Such ties, whether short- or long-distance, may be consolidated by political marriages, operative even within a tiny village, but sometimes extending as far as eminent or even royal barbarian families.10 All those distinguished ties will be subject to narratives, sometimes evoking longer genealogical traditions, naturally encroaching on the realm of myth if needed and whenever possible.
Marriages will naturally be concluded in a duly spectacular manner, leading to more or less conspicuous consumption and feasting, as in the aforementioned case of Agariste in Sicyon. On the other end of one’s aristocratic adult life, more or less spectacular funerals will be fundamental, with appropriate (in number, value and in symbolic terms) grave-goods, lavish feasting and the burial itself.11 Duly monumental or otherwise spectacular sēmata, or grave-markers, visible to all passers-by, will naturally crown the funeral, at times additionally having recourse to funerary inscriptions.
Although the actual ritual and material forms of all these social practices did vary from one community to another (e.g., inhumation vs. cremation for burials and the locally-specific nature of grave-goods), their common supra-local denominator is clear, since many of them only made sense when operating between different communities. In principle, the bigger the distances people, stories, and objects travel, in space and in time, the more prestigious their exchange and their possession will be. The same can be said of rituals (potentially) involved in consolidating one’s aristocratic status. Specific votive practices in local sanctuaries or other forms of conspicuous presence in them (such as group or individual statues, kouroi or korai, as well as commemorative or votive inscriptions on public display) may be different in each particular case, but they all will have to somehow interact with corresponding practices executed in supra-local, or even pan-Hellenic sanctuaries, where aristocratic families from all over the Greek world competed on an equal footing.
Although theoretically all these activities may sporadically by executed by non-aristocrats (see below), what a priori is aristocratic about them is not so much the scale of expenditure required (as already mentioned, all is relative here) but the programmed or pre-meditated activity amounting to a systematic recourse to gift-exchange, luxurious ostentation, and marriages by a given family.
As a result of all this, countless interconnected networks were born, covering the “small Greek world,” as Irad Malkin calls it (Malkin 2011), in its entirety. Private or aristocratic ties lend an additional “systemic” dimension to this network dynamics. This clearly results not only from a handful of traditions to this effect preserved in our ancient sources, but even more so thanks to much more numerous stories of high political importance regarding political, historical, ethical, and religious ties between entire communities.12 It seems likely that the bonds of friendship (philia, xenia) or even (mythical) kinship between the communities across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were modeled on private, or better individual relations between those who thought of themselves as aristocrats and intensely interacted with one another on a supra-local scale. (Not inappropriately, such “international” ties between political communities were often thought of in terms of syngeneia, or kinship.)
In a more general vein, a good amount of the inter-communal relations in archaic and classical Greece was based on individual, or better interpersonal, ties, such as the institution of proxeny, or honorary consulate of a citizen looking after the interests of another city and its citizens in his own polis (cf. recently Mack 2015). But I aim here to focus not on such institutional or more private ties between individuals and/or political communities, but rather on local and supra-local mechanisms of elite recognition, on establishing one’s elevated status to be acknowledged as such by one’s community and others across the Hellenic world. For the very essence of Greek aristocracy will be, I submit, a certain level of group solidarity, or perhaps better of self-recognizability. And here the cultural aspect of this phenomenon ultimately comes to the fore.
The Symposium
At this juncture, two remarkably Greek social practices stand out, both marked by a highest degree of competition among equals, and both requiring a set of otherwise highly symbolic skills, sometimes impractical in real-life’s terms, namely athletics (see Nicholson (Chapter 4) in this volume) and the symposium (see Węcowski 2014).
Symposia were held at night.13 They were culture-oriented and highly ceremonial elite gatherings over wine (only light snacks were served in the process) with more or less sophisticated pastimes involving both dexterity games and intellectual, mostly poetical entertainment. Almost all sympotic pastimes had competitive character and were organized as a series of tournaments that were supposed to determine the winner of each particular contest. Usually, individual performances accompanied the movement of the common cup of wine, consecutively refilled, and changing hands from one diner to another from left to right (epidexia, endexia). Whenever the circulating cup reached a participant of the banquet, he was supposed to perform. This order assured both a rigorous equality of the performers and naturally stimulated competition. At the very beginning of the symposium, the diners appointed one particularly experienced colleague, called “the leader” of the drinking occasion (symposiarchos, archōn), or simply “the king” (basileus), to supervise the gathering, decide on the volume of wine to be consumed and its strength (as wine was always diluted with water), organize the pastimes, and to suggest suitable subjects for competitive performances.14
The participants of the symposium can be categorized into several groups. First come the full-members of a given sympotic circle, the self-proclaimed “friends” (philoi) or “companions” (hetairoi), adult men of aristocratic status providing for the (relatively) luxurious banquet. They could either organize symposia in their houses taking turns or contribute together to a shared banquet in a rented room in a sanctuary or in a public space. Specialized public buildings for elite drinking are alluded to in Homer and archaeologically discernible as early as the Late Geometric period in the late 8th century. In classical times, they would usually gather in a specialized room, called andrōn (“men’s room”), a square chamber with an off-center entrance to accommodate along its walls seven or more couches, each for one or two reclining revellers (before the end of the seventh century BC, one sat at symposia). The cozy space assuring intimacy among the “friends” was particularly important for sympotic entertainment. The diners would most probably be summoned there by the host or organizer of a given party.
Next, their young sons or other male relatives to be inculcated with aristocratic values and practical skills would be in a subordinate seated position with no right to drink wine or speak unasked. Besides the hetairoi, who belonged together and regularly attended the same social circles, there were the so-called “shadows” (skiai), occasionally invited by one of the full-members and probably tested by the company before being admitted on a more regular basis.
The group of attendants was a mixed bunch, starting with those in-between the aristocratic participants and their non-aristocratic servants and slaves. The group of the so-called “uninvited ones” (aklētoi) encompassed both free-born, regular parasites of lowly origin, on the one hand, and impoverished aristocrats on their way down the social scale, on the other. Recently deprived of their economic solvency, they could no longer participate on an equal footing as they were unable to invite their former “friends” back to their houses for symposia. But they still possessed the requisite “cultural capital” (see below) and the cherished sympotic competences to be admitted as attractive wine-companions, albeit no longer peers. Just as the regular parasites, in return for the invitation to eat and to drink, they would perform amusing tricks, participate to some extent in sympotic games and performances, but most importantly, when doing so they would be exposed to diverse self-humiliating activities in their function of buffoons.15
The unfree or low-born servants included young male and female attendants (paides), mostly slaves, presumably often selected for their physical beauty. Besides distributing sweetmeats, preparing, mixing, and serving wines, their important function was to fuel the eroticism of the gathering and the erotic discourse among the diners. Both visual arts and literary sources regularly concentrate on the courtesans, the “female-companions” (hetairai), as they were called to emphasize their ambiguous status. They participated in some of the sympotic pastimes, both cultural and dexterity ones (see below), but were subordinate and exploited nonetheless. They would be open to more or less brutal courtship by the diners and perform erotically-laden activities, including dancing, but it would be wrong to envision full-blown sexual orgies during well-ordered symposia. The courtesans were perhaps a socially variegated group, including compromised free women, metics, and slaves.16
They had to possess some cultural education and sympotic skills. Sometimes it is difficult to draw the line between the courtesans and female musicians brought to the symposium, the “flute-players” (pl. auletrides).
In fr. 146 PCG, the comic playwright Epicharmus says that “† A sacrifice (θυσία) leads to a feast, | and a feast leads to drinking (πόσις). | […] But drinking leads to wandering the streets drunk (kōmos), and a kōmos leads to swinish behavior (ὑανία), | and acting swinishly leads to a lawsuit, , | and being found guilty leads to shackles, stocks, and a fine” (tr. S. D. Olson, adapted). This time frame is actually one of the most important characteristics of the symposium, which lies between the daytime sacrifice and feast and the returning of the revellers at dawn. Both its integration within a larger ritual sequence (sacrifice–feast–symposium–kōmos) and, by implication, the moment of the day when the “drinking” starts are peculiar indeed. In purely functional terms, they distinguish the time when one eats from that devoted to drinking and furthermore confine the symposium itself to the night.
Both these characteristics are meaningful in social and ideological terms as they set the participants of such gatherings apart from their immediate social environment. The divide between the necessary sustenance and the expendable drinking goes hand in hand with the nocturnal activities that logically prevent their participants from fully engaging in early-morning and daytime labors that await the other members of their community. In other words, the very setting of the symposium emphasizes the diners’ membership in the “leisure class” of the community. The logic of all the pastimes of the symposium points in the same direction.
At one extreme of the scale of indispensable sympotic skills one finds the dexterity game called kottabos, whose essence was to knock a wobbly metal disc off a tall pole set in the middle of the dining room.17 The trick had to be executed using the last drops of wine left in one’s cup just emptied and the elegant, catapult-like hand-gesture of the diner was as important as the accuracy itself. At the other extreme, the symposium featured sophisticated intellectual games such as thematic exchanges of elegiac verse (improvised on the spot or memorized from well-known authors) or short performances in prose, including more or less ingeniously commenting on classical utterances of the poetic “sages” (Homer, Hesiod, and others), contests of riddles etc. Literacy would play an important role here since shorter or longer inscriptions, at times poetical and often provocative, were frequently inscribed on the cups circulating among the diners. Reading and interpreting them aloud, sometimes in combination with their accompanying images in painted pottery, would add to the amusing atmosphere of the gathering. Thus, the symposium required not only literary or poetical, but also iconographic competences from the diners (cf. Lissarrague 1987).
It is important to note that the crucial role of musical and poetic performances at symposia, both when executed and “capped” from one another by the diners themselves and when expertly applauded by them while being performed by professional singers or musicians, may be revealing for our understanding of both the aristocratic culture and of the lyric poetry of this period. On the one hand, one should emphasize that full participation in sympotic circles required a rather high level of (at least purely amateurish) proficiency in formally complex poetical genres. On the other hand, the overwhelmingly competitive character of such dilettante performances at symposia strongly suggests that this very proficiency was an important means of testing aspiring aristocrats and that utter incompetence here must have been compromising for one’s prestigious ambitions. Therefore, it is fully understandable that archaic Greek poets, both dilettante and professional, composing both for symposia and for wider public performances, naturally belonged to this social group and that lyric poetry was a natural medium of aristocratic culture, but also of moral, religious, and even socio-political thought reaching out to broader audience both in one’s local community and on a pan-Hellenic scale.
What deserves our special attention in the context of sympotic performances are provocative exchanges of gibes (skōmmata), which were supposed to fall short of an affront and thus to test the sense of humor and the mental balance of the diners. With the progress of drinking, physical, intellectual, and ethical equilibrium was more and more difficult to keep. Therefore, from one perspective, all the pastimes involved can be viewed as an incessant moral challenge and an all-night long test of one’s good manners.18 Not inappropriately, in extant sympotic poetry and even in the relevant iconography of Greek vase painting, the symposium is regularly depicted as vacillating between the moral ideal of moderation (often rendered as sophrosynē) and the danger of hubris, or insolence.19
What may be called sympotic ethos combined complex symbolic skills, both physical and intellectual, with an ethical ideal focused on friendly equality and mutual trust. Mastering this ethos gave access to the elite circles regularly enjoying their symposia. As a result, external credentials of potential fellow-aristocrats must have involved cultural skills or competences to be deployed at symposia. These can be identified with the “cultural capital” indispensable to join the ranks of aristocracy and to retain this social position, both at home and when travelling abroad.
Aristocratic Culture and Social Mobility
In its social aspect, the archaic and early classical symposium can be defined as a hub or focal point of the mechanisms of natural selection for the Greek aristocracy in that “ambitious non-aristocrats striving for social advancement, beyond requisite economic success allowing them to be admitted to the ranks of their local elite, had to learn, alongside their male offspring, some elements of the aristocratic culture and in particular some sympotic poetry. Once ready to join in the social élite of their community in economic terms, they would need at least some rudimentary cultural competences to be admitted” (Węcowski 2014: 76–77). In other words, investing in a family’s “cultural capital,” in the banquetal skills and sympotic poetry in the event, was a necessary prerequisite of future social advancement, so in principle all the ambitious kakoi of the highly competitive Greek communities should gravitate to a more conspicuous intimacy with aristocratic culture.
In practical terms, non-aristocratic members of Greek civic communities would have regular contact with the aristocratic symposia. At numerous festive occasions involving animal sacrifice and communal feasting, elites would customarily withdraw at some point to more specialized facilities such as hestiatoria (banqueting halls) or even impermanent huts or improvised tents—in order to ostentatiously dine and then to drink in more secluded groups all night long.20 Meanwhile, their fellow-citizens would dine and drink within the confines of the same sanctuary in the open. There were many other occasions for the kakoi to get access to the “cultural content” of the aristocratic symposia. Their familiarity with the publicly performed poetry goes without saying.21 But those interested would have had easy access at least to the widely circulating memorable utterances of sympotic poetry that must have quickly become popular.22 Those truly determined to acquire the aforementioned “cultural capital” could conceivably adopt several strategies open to them. Imitation or emulation of aristocratic symposia by non-aristocrats was always possible. But it is important to bear in mind that those groups which were capable of doing so successfully would functionally join the ranks of aristocracy as nouveaux-riches provided that they were able to deploy rudimentary elements of the said “cultural capital” and to copy those characteristics of the symposia that bestowed on their participants the status of the “leisure class.” In other words, to regularly enjoy all-night drinking but also culture-oriented parties they would need to achieve the material condition of an aristocrat anyway. A very special case of group ambitions resulting in an imitation of aristocratic symposia was identified by Kathleen Lynch in her study of the material from the Athenian Agora. Observing the sudden rise in quantity of the sympotic pottery (combined with the concomitant decline in its quality) in the final decades before the Persian Wars, Lynch concluded that aristocratic symposia must have been “democratized” in the wake of the reforms of Kleisthenes (Lynch 2011). Elaborating on this ingenious theory, I would rather interpret this phenomenon as a sign of the “aristocratization” of the new political elite who would adopt (some elements of) the aristocratic lifestyle to assert themselves as a leading group of the new regime, thus functionally becoming self-proclaimed aristocrats (Węcowski 2018). But in the socio-political realities of the archaic Greek cities, individual social advancement of successful kakoi and their families must have been by far more common. Inculcating oneself and one’s progeny in a set of specifically aristocratic cultural skills, essentially, those related to athletics and to the symposium, would be the most wide-spread strategy of social promotion among the citizens of the archaic period.
Greek Aristocracy as a Cultural Phenomenon
At the beginning of this essay, I have quoted N. Fisher and H. van Wees, who rightly emphasize two important factors to be taken into account when thinking of archaic and classical Greek elites, namely the absence of a strong external authority and the lack of mechanisms of stable transmission of wealth. To put it differently, potential sources of one’s sudden economic success and potential mechanisms of a long-term accumulation of wealth were scarce in archaic and early classical Greece. When combined with the fact that only citizens at large constituted a legally defined social order, it becomes understandable that (1) the economic threshold for joining the ranks of (aristocratic) elite must have usually been relatively low, that (2) the composition of such elite groups must have been relatively unstable, and that (3) specialized “cultural capital” must have played an unusually important role in promoting and securing one’s social advance.
To conclude this essay, let me briefly consider two important implications of my previous argument. Firstly, the predominantly cultural mechanisms of social recognition of Greek aristocrats naturally tended to create a wide network of strong personal ties between individuals across the Greek Mediterranean and the Black Sea region. The aristocratic cultural idiom became the lingua franca of the “small Greek world.” Secondly, the same aristocratic culture became a common gauge of social advancement and prestige for entire Greek civic communities.
One can test the former idea by taking a look at the list of the (fragmentarily) preserved poets of the archaic period, whose work was either directly produced to be performed at symposia or could potentially be quoted or discussed at symposia. What immediately strikes us here is the pan-Hellenic provenance of these poets, or better, their wide geographic distribution on the map of the archaic and early classical Greek world. Notwithstanding their place of origin, their compositions seem to have been sung in almost every corner of the (Greek) Mediterranean. At first, this may partly be due to the well-known phenomenon of migrating poets, such as Anacreon or Xenophanes. But migrating poems must have been a much more important phenomenon. Briefly put, sympotic (or potentially sympotic) poetry, testifying to one’s competences in this crucial branch of aristocratic lifestyle, must have been a common currency for all those who thought of themselves as aristocrats—both abroad, but more particularly at home, where following cultural novelties (recent poems of renowned poets) and parading them among one’s social peers was an instrument of aristocratic competition and prestige.
As far as the second implication of this essay is concerned, I would argue that some of the fundamental and historically most influential aspects of the aristocratic culture were due to the fact that its various manifestations, notwithstanding the original circumstances of their production or of their performance, had been created in order to be “consumed” by the representatives of social elites and by the “commoners” in their respective social circles. In other words, the aristocratic culture of the archaic and early classical period was attractive and influential far beyond the its own milieu.23 This was not simply due to the natural appeal of “higher” cultural models, but most importantly anchored in the mechanisms of social advancement in the Greek communities of the time.
Ultimately, then, by aristocratic culture I mean the overall “cultural capital” indispensable to seal one’s elite status or to promote one’s social advancement to achieve this status. Accordingly, both the remarkable social mobility within archaic Greek communities and the extraordinary geographical spread and geographical mobility of the archaic Greek culture were due to the predominantly aristocratic character of this culture. One of the most important riddles of early Greek history, i.e., the essential cultural uniformity of archaic and early classical Greek civilization achieved and maintained despite the fundamental (geographic and political) fragmentation of the Hellenic world, can perhaps be accounted for from this perspective. The unity in question was primarily due to the aristocratic culture that provided a common denominator for the universally valid modes of social recognition—both for individual aristocrats striving to secure their position among their peers and for the commoners at large, striving to find their way into the ranks of their local elites. As a result, cultural novelties travelled extremely fast into every corner of the Greek world since those ready to “praise that song the most which comes the newest to their ears,” as Homer puts it (Od. 1.351–352), were to be found both among the aristocrats and among the commoners across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea region.
*
As a coda to this paper, one may rightfully ask oneself if two crucial characteristics of the Greek, and especially Athenian culture of the classical era, namely its constant drive for novelty and its integrative force combining the appeal of a popular and an elite culture— characteristics at least partly responsible for the universal allure of this culture ever since—were not rooted in the aristocratic culture of the archaic period as analyzed in this essay. But this is another story.
FURTHER READING
The starting point for modern studies on Greek aristocracy of the archaic period was by Murray (1993a) [originally published 1978], especially chapter XII, which deals with the aristocratic lifestyle. For a selection of studies, see Donlan 1999. Murray 2009 represents a magisterial study of sympotic culture. For recent analyses of aristocratic culture and the symposium, see Węcowski (2014) and van Wees and Fisher (2015).
Notes
1 My essay owes a lot to a constant source of inspiration that has been for me the work of, and incessant discussions with, Benedetto Bravo. In particular, see Bravo 1989, 1996 as well as his essay on classical Greek culture, Bravo 2009 (in Polish). I am also thankful to Mirko Canevaro, Tomasz Gromelski, and Irad Malkin for our conversations on the issues discussed here, to B. Bravo, Adam Ziółkowski, and to my colleagues from the research project of Poland’s National Science Center that subsidized this study (NCN grant no. 2016/21/B/HS3/03096): Xenia Charalambidou, Katarzyna Kostecka, Cameron Pearson, and Roman Żuchowicz, for having read and commented on this chapter.
2 See esp. Duplouy 2006, 2018; Yatromanolakis 2009b; Fisher and van Wees 2015.
3 This criticism is directed against the influential work by Ian Morris (see, e.g., Morris 1996, 1997; cf. Kurke 1999). For previous criticism, see in particular Hammer 2004 and Kistler 2004.
4 For critical assessments of this idea in my previous work (Węcowski 2014), see Fisher & van Wees 2015: 42 n. 5 and 44 n. 37; Duplouy 2018: 41.
5 E.g., in Theognis, 39–52, it is clear that to deserve their name, the agathoi (“the good ones”) must be morally good and that this very quality seems rare among the leaders of Greek communities.
6 See, e.g., 3.143.1; 6.39; 6.73; 6.101.3; 8.46.3; 9.16.1; 9.17.2; 9.78.1.
7 Cf. Ulf 2014.
8 Below, I will also use meaningful Homeric names. The paradigmatic value of this poetry makes it possible for us to skip the famous debate on the “historicity” of the “Homeric world” (see, e.g., Węcowski 2011).
9 In general, cf. the collective volume edited by Hornblower and Matthews 2000.
10 Cf. the famous case of the Athenian Miltiades marrying a daughter of the Thracian king Oloros in Herodotus, 6.39.2.
11 Cf. in general, Kurtz and Boadman 1971.
12 A good case in point is the convergence of both these factors in the traditions regarding Greek colonial enterprises in the West, e.g., as described by Thucydides in 6.4.3, where we are told that Gela was founded “jointly” by Antiphemus of Rhodes and Entimos of Crete—no doubt two eminent members of their respective communities.
13 For all the historical changes this institution must have undergone throughout the centuries of its long history, I would argue that its essential characteristics were already there in the eighth century BCe (see in general Węcowski 2014). For a series of important mutations marking its decline and its fall in the fourth century BC, see now Węcowski 2018.
14 This is implied, e.g., in the Adesp. eleg. fr. 27 W2. Cf. Plut. Quaest. conv. 620 A–622 A.
15 Cf. Fehr 1990. An early allusion to humiliations awaiting a déclassé aristocrat may be Archilochus, fr. 124b W2.
16 In general, cf. Glazebrook and Henry 2011.
17 For sources and earlier scholarship, cf. Jacquet-Rimassa 1995.
18 As in the case of the year-long testing of the suitors of Agariste in Sikyon (see above).
19 See, e.g., the idealizing elegy by Xenophanes, fr. 1 W2 and Adesp. eleg. fr. 27 W2.
20 See Węcowski 2014: 171–174 and 183–187, for archaic sanctuaries, such as Eretria, Isthmia, or the Samian Heraion, where such social dynamics of public feasting can be postulated in some cases already for the Late Geometric period.
21 See the essays of Lucia Athanassaki and Adrian Kelly as well as the essays in Section 1 of this volume.
22 The very fact that Solon used his poetry to promote and later to defend his reforms bespeaks his ambition to target his non-aristocratic fellow-citizens at least indirectly. Additionally, the folkloristic element of the utterances of the Seven Sages, often set in a sympotic context and in elegiac verse, seems to suggest a rather wide social circulation of such traditions. I take it as one more argument for the social “permeability” of the ideological divide between the agathoi and the kakoi I advocate in this chapter.
23 In a way, this study deals with a set of social and cultural phenomena that foreshadowed the situation remarkably analyzed, for classical Athens, by Mirko Canevaro, in that already in the archaic period and long before the first Greek democracies saw the light of the day, the “official culture” (my “aristocratic culture,” in the event) was largely “geared toward the vast majority of the people” (Canevaro 2017: 40), although in a very different manner.