CHAPTER 6
Jonathan M. Hall
The Lyric Author
For as long as the study of the Greek past rested on almost exclusively literary authorities, the world evoked by the early lyric poets constituted the first fully historical chapter in accounts of Greek antiquity. True, following Schliemann’s excavations of Hisarlik, Mycenae, and Tiryns in the 1870s and 1880s and prior to Milman Parry’s work on oral epic poetry in the 1920s, many scholars accepted the Homeric epics as a reasonably faithful representation of the Late Bronze Age world (for discussion, see Morris 2000: 77–78). But not everybody was convinced that there was any lineal connection between the Mycenaeans and the Greeks of the archaic age and, in any case, the seemingly radical disjuncture between the detached and anonymous authorial voice of the epics and the more subjective individuality of archaic Greek poets rendered the latter the more vivid testimony for historians to mine. As Karl Julius Beloch (1912: 314) put it, Archilochus “is the first Greek who stands before us in his full individuality as a person of flesh and bone.” Furthermore, it was commonly believed that this more “autobiographical” stance might inform us better as to local or regional differences in the politics of the archaic Greek poleis. So, Werner Jaeger, while conceding that the poets “spoke in their own persons, and expressed their own opinions and emotions, while the life of their community was relegated to the background of their thought,” nevertheless argued that “when they mentioned politics—as often—their theme was not a standard with a claim to universal acceptance (as in Hesiod, Callinus, Tyrtaeus, and Solon) but a frank partisanship, as in Alcaeus, or the individual’s pride in his rights, as in Archilochus” (1945: 116).
Today, the picture looks rather different. First, “what we know of the exigencies of performance radically challenges the reading of the lyric “I” as the spontaneous and unmediated expression of a biographical individual” (Kurke 2007a: 143). Since archaic poetry was typically composed for performance—be it at a festival or in the context of the symposium—the recitalist could very well be adopting a persona, distinct from the voice of the author (Lefkowitz 2012: 31). Pertinent here is the oft-cited fragment 19W of Archilochus (“I care nothing for the possessions of Gyges, rich in gold”), which, according to Aristotle (Rh. 1418b28), was uttered by a character named Charon the carpenter.
Second, it is clear that not all the verses ascribed to a named individual can be the work of a single poet. The cautionary example here is the body of work attributed to Theognis of Megara. According to the Byzantine encyclopedia known as the Suda (s.v. “Theognis”), Theognis flourished at the time of the 59th Olympiad of 544–541, but the reference in verses 39–40 to “a man who will correct our wicked violence” has often been taken as anticipating the tyrannical rule of Theagenes, whose daughter’s marriage to the failed Athenian tyrant Cylon (Thuc. 1.126.3) would date him about a century earlier. Later, verses 773–6 call upon Apollo to “ward off the violent army of the Medes from this city,” which seems to refer to the Persian invasion of the Megarid in 480–479 BC.1 Worse still, ancient authors disagreed as to which Megara was Theognis’ home city: Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. “Megara”) and Harpocration (s.v. “Theognis”) identified his homeland as Nisaean Megara, north of the Corinthian isthmus, and this is generally accepted by scholars today, but Plato (Laws 630a) and the Suda (s.v. “Theognis”) derive him from Megara Hyblaea on Sicily (Figueira 1985: 123–124). It is partly for these reasons that “autobiographical” readings of archaic poetry have come under sustained critique in recent decades (Dover 1964: 209; West 1974: 27; Seidensticker 1978). Gregory Nagy (1985: 33), for example, has argued that “the figure of Theognis represents a cumulative synthesis of Megarian poetic traditions.” Indeed, Nagy has made similar claims for both Hesiod and Archilochus. In the case of the latter, he suggests that the verses ascribed to the poet were continuously recreated in the context of rhapsodic performances centered on the “Archilocheion”—a hero shrine established on the island of Paros, perhaps as early as the late sixth century.2 Presumably, the “cumulative tradition” hypothesis could also be extended to many other Archaic poets. As Nagy admits:
The major advantage to this theory is that the poetry of a given poet like Archilochus or Theognis may then be appreciated as a skillful and effective—maybe even beautiful—dramatization of the polis through the ages. The major disadvantage on the other hand is that the notion of a historical figure called, say, Archilochus or Theognis, may have to be abandoned.
(1990a: 436)
Third, even the notion that archaic poetry preserves local traditions may stand in need of some revision. Nagy (1985: 34), for example, has argued that, through continuous performance, much of it “evolved into a form suitable for pan-Hellenic audiences.” This is revealed not only by shared topoi that are as common to the verses ascribed to Theognis and Solon as they are to Hesiod but also by the dialect in which they are composed. Thus, although the poems attributed to Sappho and Alcaeus are close to the Aeolic dialect spoken on their native island of Lesbos, the verses of the presumably Dorian poets Theognis and Tyrtaeus are in a stylized form of the Ionic dialect (see de Kreij (Chapter 10) in this volume).3
In light of these sobering reassessments, Ian Morris (2000: 159) has argued that, while the works attributed to archaic poets can be viewed as discourses that convey coherent ideologies, we can only approach the body of texts from ca. 700 to ca. 520 BC synchronically and should refrain from reconstructing specific events from the poems. That verdict would deliver a crushing blow to our understanding of the archaic period because the historical value of lyric poetry resides in its approximate contemporaneity to the world it describes—a stark contrast to the dubious evidence for the period that is presented by authors writing much later, such as Plutarch, Pausanias, or even the Aristotelian school (Hall 2014: 18–19). Fortunately, the outlook may not be quite so bleak.
For one thing, Nagy’s model of recomposition in performance does not necessarily rule out an original poet or an original moment of composition (Forsdyke 2005: 33). In contrast to the Theognidea, datable references in the poetry of Archilochus are confined to a relatively short span of time in the middle decades of the seventh century: (i) in fr. 102, Archilochus describes the Parian settlement of Thasos, for which archaeology suggests a date shortly before the middle of the seventh century; (ii) fr. 19, as we have already seen, refers to the Lydian king Gyges, whose reign is approximately dated by Assyrian documents to the period 665–643 BC; (iii) a reference to a solar eclipse in fr. 122 should be that of either June 27 661 or April 6 648 BC; and (iv) the name of one of the poet’s addressees, Glaucus son of Leptinus, appears on a memorial, set up in the Agora of Thasos and dated by letter-forms to the last quarter of the seventh century, thus providing a terminus ante quem.4 For another, the assertive, individual “I” in Greek lyric betrays what Leslie Kurke (2007a: 145) describes as an “intense ideological contestation”—that is, a form of resistance to rapidly changing circumstances in which the force of specific referents would be bluntened were they merely generic. One of the distinguishing features of the archaic Greek poets is that they “use their own experience to express a truth of general validity” (Carey 1986: 67). It may be possible then, as Sara Forsdyke argues, to read such poetry both historically and generically (2005: 40).
Alcaeus is a case in point. Modern reconstructions of the history of archaic Mytilene (e.g., Jeffery 1976: 238–240; Parker 2007: 31–32) are largely generated from the fragments of Alcaeus’ poetry as well as from later authors, who may have had little else to hand than that same poetry. So, we hear that Mytilene was originally ruled by an aristocratic group of families known as the Penthilidae (fr. 75 Campbell), who were overthrown by a certain Megacles and his associates after they had gone around striking people with clubs (Arist. Pol. 1311b). Another fragment (fr. 331) mentions the tyrant Melanchrus, whom Alcaeus’ brothers are supposed to have assisted Pittacus in deposing (Diogenes Laertius 1.74). A scholiast to fr. 114 tells us that Alcaeus and his associates fled to nearby Pyrrha after a failed plot against another tyrant, Myrsilus, whose death is celebrated in fr. 332. On this occasion, Pittacus had apparently taken Myrsilus’ side (fr. 70), later being established as tyrant of Mytilene (fr. 348), although Aristotle (Pol. 1285a) implies and Diogenes Laertius (1.75) explicitly states that Pittacus assumed power (archē) for a limited term of 10 years before standing down. Alcaeus’ hostility against Pittacus is unreserved: he calls the tyrant, among other things, “splay-footed,” “a braggart,” and “a pot-belly” (fr. 429). And yet Diodorus of Sicily (9.11.1) describes him as a “good lawgiver,” who “liberated his homeland from three of the greatest evils—tyranny, civil strife (stasis), and war” (cf. Strabo 13.2.3) and later tradition numbered him among the Seven Sages. There could be no clearer example of “ideological contestation.”
Even if we were reluctant to assume without question that the narrating voice of these poems is that of the author, meaning that “Alcaeus” may not actually have been so personally involved in political intrigues on Lesbos, it strains credibility to imagine that characters such as Melanchrus, Myrsilus, and Pittacus—whether they are genuine names or pseudonyms—had no real-life referents in the context of an original performance. At the same time, however, this poetry can be read generically as well as historically because topoi such as factionalism among elites or autocratic rule “were meaningful to a large number of poleis over a long period of time” (Forsdyke 2005: 34). Simply put, we do not need to adopt an autobiographical approach to archaic Greek poetry to recognize the historical value that it contains. Nor should we disregard the fact that we have evidentiary materials that both supplement and complement the poetic testimony: first, laws inscribed on stone, which begin to appear toward the end of the seventh century, so coterminous with the lyric poets; second, the archaeological remains of structures for which a public or political function has been supposed; and third, the “bookends” constituted by the world described in the slightly earlier Homeric and Hesiodic poems and the much better documented circumstances of the succeeding classical period, between which we can make at least educated guesses about political developments in the archaic period.
The Rise of Institutions
This is not the place to discuss in detail whether the society depicted in the Homeric epics is in any sense historical or, if it is, whether it can be located precisely in time and space or viewed instead as a mélange of societies that belong to different periods and localities (for a more extended discussion, see Hall 2002: 230–236). Although Homeric characters traverse a landscape that is undeniably that of Late Bronze Age Greece, persuasive arguments have been made that the social structures, customs, and values portrayed in the epics must have been at least partly meaningful to audiences of the eighth and early-seventh centuries.5 With Hesiod’s Works and Days, however, we are on firmer ground. One does not need to read autobiographically the Hesiodic persona of the peasant-poet, squabbling with his brother over an inheritance, to recognize that the moral and didactic nature of the poem would be severely compromised if the situations described were unimaginable to an audience (Hall 2014: 25–26).
One of the more significant developments of the seventh century is the appearance of named magistracies, which signals a shift from societies where status and authority were “achieved,” through charisma, the ability to persuade, and the demonstration of military prowess and conspicuous generosity, to a situation where status is “ascribed” by the office one holds (Hall 2014: 142). In the poems of Hesiod, for example, leadership in the community is exercised by a plurality of basileis (e.g., Theog. 80–90, 429–438; WD 37–39). The word basileus had, in the Mycenaean period, denoted a medium-ranking official in the palatial administration although by the classical period it came to be used either of monarchs, especially foreign ones, or of an elected or appointed official, such as the archōn basileus at Athens ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.1). In Hesiod, however, its employment seems less well defined—especially when considered in the light of the term’s meaning in the Homeric epics. When Nestor describes Agamemnon as the “most basileus” (basileutatos) of the Achaeans (Il. 9.69) or when Agamemnon argues that he is “more of a basileus” than Achilles (9.160), it is clear that basileus connotes a relative, rather than absolute, status. In essence, the Homeric basileus is more akin to what some anthropologists have termed a “big man” or a “chieftain” than to a sovereign ruler (Sahlins 1963; though see Yoffee 2005: 22–41). Because such positions are “achieved” through personal virtues, they risk instability across generations: there is certainly some aspiration toward hereditary succession (e.g., Il. 2.100–108; Od. 4.62–64) but there is no certainty that Odysseus’ son Telemachus will inherent his father’s position, while Odysseus himself wields authority even though his father Laertes is still alive (Qviller 1981; Donlan 1985; 1997; Tandy 1997: 84–111).
What is interesting is that, unlike in the Iliad, the Odyssey preempts the situation described by Hesiod, whereby communities were ruled by a plurality or college of basileis: Antinous tells Penelope that there are “many other basileis of the Achaeans in sea-girt Ithaca, both young and old” (1.394–5) while Alcinous notes that he is one of 13 basileis who hold sway over the Phaeacians (8.390–1). This is largely, no doubt, a consequence of a rise in population that can be traced back to the second half of the eighth century even if the scale of this increase is disputed (Snodgrass 1980: 15–48; Morris 1987: 156–167; Scheidel 2003). The archaeology of ancient cities such as Athens, Eretria, Corinth, and Argos suggests that the physical epiphenomenon of demographic increase was an expansion of formerly discrete, village-like clusters of habitation to create a single, continuous settlement area (Hall 2016: 282, 285). Community leaders had essentially two options: either to subdue, or yield to, a fellow basileus or to subscribe to a power-sharing arrangement. The latter is almost certainly what accounts for a transition from a hierarchically structured elite, where preeminence was always contested and precarious, to a collective ruling class regulated by legal procedures (Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 85)—a transition that is documented initially in the epigraphic record by the emergence of named magistracies.
So, for example, a law that was set up in the second half of the seventh century in the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios at Dreros on Crete prescribes a series of regulations concerned with a magistracy named the kosmos (ML 2/Fornara 11). A sacred law from the citadel of Tiryns, dated to ca. 600 BCE, lists officials named as platiwoinarchoi, hiaromnamōn, and epignōmōn (SEG 30.380) while a kosmos, a kosmos ksenios (a magistrate charged with regulating non-residents?) and a gnōmōn are documented at Cretan Gortyn for the sixth century (IC 4.14). By the second quarter of the sixth century, Argos was administered by officials known as damiourgoi (IG IV 614; SEG 11 314). A law from Chios (ML 8/Fornara 19), dated to ca. 575–550 and now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, refers to a dēmarchos (leader of the people) but also testifies to the fact that the formerly generic term basileus had been repurposed as the title of a formal office; the same may be true at Athens, if the late fifth-century republication of Dracon’s law code (ML 86/Fornara 15B) employs genuine titles that go back to the late-seventh century. It is, then, intriguing that named offices do not as a rule feature in the fragments of the archaic poets. Aristotle (Pol. 1285a) characterizes Pittacus as an aisymnētēs, or “elected tyrant,” and this is a magistracy that is later attested in some cities (e.g., IG VII 15 from Megara), though we cannot gauge the credibility of Aristotle’s source here. Sappho’s reference (fr. 161 Campbell) to the “basileis of poleis is unlikely to refer to titled officials but neither can we be sure that it is employed in the Homeric sense, as opposed to denoting non-Greek or mythical rulers. Perhaps the avoidance of specialized titles was an attempt to evoke a milieu that seemed more panhellenic and less local.
Just as important as the mere attestation of the title kosmos in the Dreros inscription is the fact that a term-limit is imposed: we learn that individuals were prohibited from holding the office more than once in any 10-year period. At Gortyn, there was a 3-year prohibition on iteration of the office of kosmos, 5 years in the case of the kosmos ksenios, and 10 years for the gnōmōn. The intention would seem to have been, negatively, to prevent certain individuals or families from becoming too powerful and, more positively, to ensure that there was an equitable distribution of executive offices among the group of those eligible to rule.6 This principle of the rotation of office, “ruling and being ruled in turn,” would be a fundamental characteristic of the Greek polis, regardless of the type of constitution it adopted, and it accounts for why so many early Greek laws are focused on matters of procedure. As for the qualifications for office, there is nothing to contradict the view that eligibility was determined by birth and/or wealth. The Aristotelian author of the Constitution of the Athenians (7.3) claims that the early sixth-century poet and statesman Solon reorganized, rather than instituted, property qualifications for the holding of office, but the most important office of archōn was not opened up to more than a narrow elite until as late as 457 BC ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 26.2).
It is, then, the second half of the seventh century that witnesses the “institutionalization and formalization” of the early Greek state (Gehrke 2009: 405). Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in what may be the earliest constitutional document to survive from archaic Greece—namely, the Great Rhetra of Sparta, preserved only in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus (6). In Plutarch’s account, the Great Rhetra sets out provisions for (i) the foundation of sanctuaries to Zeus and Athena; (ii) a reorganization of the civic body into “tribes” (phylai) and either villages or tribal subdivisions (obai); (iii) the establishment of a council of 28 elders (gerousia) together with the 2 archagetai—i.e., the two “kings,” who at Sparta, unusually, were hereditary; (iv) the regular holding of assembly meetings (apellai) at which proposals will be introduced or set aside; and (v) the ultimate power of the people (damos [i.e., dēmos, or “people”]), although a “crooked” decision by the people could be vetoed by the kings and the elders.7 That the provisions of the Rhetra may actually date back to the seventh century is suggested strongly by what appears to be a reference to them in some verses by Tyrtaeus (fr. 4W quoted by Diod. Sic. 7.12.5–6 [in italics]):
Having listened to Phoebus (Apollo), they brought home from Pytho (Delphi) the prophecies and truthful words of the god: the god-honored basileis, who care for the lovely polis of Sparta, and the aged elders are to be in charge of deliberation; then the men of the dēmos, responding to (or with?) straight proposals (or utterances?), are to speak noble words and do just deeds and not give [crooked] council to the polis. Victory and power are to accompany the mass of the dēmos. For thus did Phoebus reveal about these things to the polis.8
That the kings and the—presumably aristocratic—council of elders had the ultimate say is far less surprising than the assertion that kratos (power) rests with the damos. But in light of the veto clause, this is probably best understood as meaning that the popular assembly was simply expected to validate proposals submitted by elite officials—a legacy of an earlier period when leaders of much smaller communities sought to immunize their precarious status by seeking consensus for their decisions and actions. If it is true that decision-making in the early Greek city was characterized by both elite office-holding and popular participation,9 then perhaps arguments as to whether there was originally a property qualification for attending the assembly are misplaced.
Certainly, the law regulating the office of kosmos at Dreros (ML 2/Fornara 11) was endorsed by the community as a whole (“this has been decided by the polis”) and was sworn to by the kosmos, the damioi (perhaps the name of a magistracy, if not the members of the dēmos itself), and “the twenty”—probably a council akin to the gerousia at Sparta. Similar institutions are attested elsewhere. Alcaeus (fr. 130B Campbell) bemoans his life as an exile, distanced from the deliberative mechanisms of his home community
I, wretch that I am, live a rustic life, desiring to hear the assembly (agora) being summoned, Agesilaidas, and the council (bolla); but I have been driven from the property which my father and my grandfather held into old age, amidst these mutually-destructive citizens, and I live as an exile in the borderlands.
The law from Chios (ML 8/Fornara 19) refers to a popular council (bolēn dēmosiēn), which is presumably distinct from an older, aristocratic council and a popular council may also have existed at Athens in this period, in addition to the aristocratic council of the Areopagos: Solon, at any rate, is credited with establishing a new council of 400 ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 8.4).10
The Rise of an Aristocracy
There is some reflection in the archaeological record of this transition from achieved to ascribed authority and from a ranked, pre-state to a stratified statal society.11 The archaeology of eighth-century Argos reveals no evidence for aristocratic cemeteries, but there is a handful of “warrior graves” belonging to different generations and different settlement nuclei, which is suggestive of basileis presiding over small-scale communities (Hall 2014: 134–135). In Eretria, the 16 wealthy burials belonging to the cemetery by the West Gate, dated ca. 720–680 BC, are more likely to belong to a single family than a ruling class (Bérard 1970; Ducrey 2006), while the apsidal structure (the so-called “Daphnephorion”) excavated within the sanctuary of Apollo Daphnephoros is better appointed but certainly not much more luxurious than its neighbors (Verdan 2013), suggesting the residence of a primus inter pares. Like the earlier monumental building in the Toumba plot at Lefkandi, the Eretria house seems to have been in use for only a short period of time, which might reflect the intergenerational instability of such authoritative regimes (Whitley 1991). Further buildings have been tentatively identified with basileis at Thermon in Aetolia, Nichoria in Messenia, and Koukounaries on Paros.12 Open spaces may have served as venues for meetings of the community as early as the eighth century at sites such as Koukounaries, Dreros, Zagora on Andros, and Emborio on Chios (Hölscher 1999)—although they could also have served ritual or festal functions—but it is not until the second half of the seventh century that the agora of Megara Hyblaea, although left free of development from the earliest years of the settlement, becomes monumentalized (Tréziny 2016). It is also the seventh century that witnesses the earliest buildings with a recognizably public function. At Argos, for example, inscribed and uninscribed lead plaques and weights were found in association with a complex excavated beneath the classical stoa in the Agora (Pariente, Piérart, and Thalmann 1998: 212–213) while a similarly public function has been attributed to a four-room structure with a hearth and clay seals at Koukounaries (Schilardi 1996: 52); a theater-like wooden structure dating to c. 600 BC and found at Metapontum in South Italy has been possibly identified as the seat of the city’s assembly (Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994: 65–67).
It is only with the transition to a stratified society that we can talk about the emergence of a true aristocracy. Granted, the values that Homeric heroes articulate—honor, status, prestige goods, and athletic and martial prowess—are precisely those that define the aristocratic ethos in the archaic period (Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 189) but, numerically speaking, Homeric basileis are simply not numerous enough to constitute an aristocratic “class.” There are leaders (basileis) and followers (laoi). From the seventh century, however, a nascent aristocratic consciousness is identifiable in an unashamedly elitist terminology that distinguishes between an aristocratic group of insiders, termed variously kaloi (“beautiful” or “fair”), agathoi (“good”), or esthloi (“good” or “brave”) and a much larger group of outsiders or inferiors, designated as kakoi (“ugly” or “bad”) and deiloi (“cowardly” or “wretched”).13 The divisions are especially pronounced in the Theognidea. “It is because I am well disposed to you, Kyrnos,” the poetic voice proclaims, “that I will offer you advice that I myself, as a child, learned from agathoi”(1.27–8). The poet continues: “Do not associate with men who are kakoi, but always hold close to the agathoi; drink and eat with them, sit with them and ingratiate yourself with those whose power is great; for you will learn esthla from those who are esthloi” (1.31–5). In a similar vein, the sixth-century elegiac poet Phocylides of Miletus (fr. 6 W) warns his addressee “to avoid being the debtor of a kakos, lest he cause you grief by demanding repayment at an inopportune time.”
Hans van Wees has argued that the dualistic terminology in the Theognidea should not be seen in terms of class consciousness. Drawing on studies of the Sicilian Mafia, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra in the United States, van Wees concludes that Theognis presents “a highly favorable self-image of one section of the elite contrasted with a deeply hostile image of their political rivals,” where terms such as agathos and kakos refer to social standing rather than class affiliation (2000: 60–61). This is largely because he finds no evidence for an aristocratic ideology or for an endangered hereditary aristocracy in the poems of Theognis (2000: 65; cf. Rose 2009: 476). But this is to downplay the importance Theognis attaches to genos (“birth” or “lineage”)—a word that is freighted with indelible hereditary connotations. As he tells Cyrnus, “do not wonder that the genos of the citizens is becoming diluted, because what is esthla is being intermingled with what is kaka” (1.191–192). The analogy that he offers here involves the breeding of thoroughbred horses (ἵππους εὐγενέας: 1.183–4). Furthermore, this sort of elitist terminology is by no means limited to Theognis. For van Wees, the evaluative terms agathoi and kakoi are defined by the faction to which the poetic voice belongs, but that interpretation does not work with Solon’s comment (fr. 34 W) that “it did not please me …that esthloi and kakoi should have an equal share of our country’s rich land.” Here, Solon clearly distinguishes between two groups but proclaims allegiance to neither (cf. fr. 37, where he describes himself as a “boundary marker in no-man’s land”). Alcaeus’ complaint (fr. 130 B Campbell) that he has been dispossessed of his ancestral property or Callinus’ reference (fr. 1 W) to a genos of immortal ancestors, or Tyrtaeus’ exhortation (fr. 10 W) not to disgrace one’s genos do actually imply some sort of hereditary self-validation within elite consciousness.
Conflict and Tyranny
Van Wees is, however, correct in two respects. First, the ruling elites were not a hermetically sealed group and aristocratic status was always precarious (cf. Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 188). Alcaeus’ claim (frr. 75, 348 Campbell) that Pittacus was κακοπατρίδαν (“of mean ancestry”) might be a disingenuous slur rather than a social fact, but when he establishes a symmetry between people of humble origins who became agathoi and esthloi who have become deiloi, there is an implication of volatile social mobility. Second, much of the violence that characterizes the Theognidea and other works of archaic Greek poetry is due primarily to deeply rooted conflict within the elite (Forsdyke 2005: 59).
This is not the ideological conflict that Kurke (1992; 1999: 23–37) and Morris (1996; 2000: 155–191) have posited among the elite class between two very different mentalities: on the one hand, an elitist ideology, represented by the Homeric epics, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon, which sought to elide distinctions between Greeks and non-Greeks, males and females, and mortals and divinities in order to highlight a basic division between elites and non-elites; and on the other, a “middling” ideology, articulated by Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Phocylides, and Xenophanes, which excluded women, slaves, and outsiders in order to construct a community of equal male citizens.14 Rather, this was a ruthless, violent, and very real scramble for power and property in order to secure or maintain wealth and status, with catastrophic consequences for the larger community, elite and non-elite alike. At Mytilene, for example, Sappho’s references to Near Eastern luxury items (e.g., frr. 39, 92, 98 Campbell) or Alcaeus’ comment on mercenary payments from Lydia (fr. 69 Campbell), together with Herodotus’ testimony (2.178.2) that the city was involved in establishing the Hellenion at Naucratis and the archaeological evidence of ceramic exports, all suggest that Mytilenean elites were engaging in an increasingly competitive quest for investment outside the island that ultimately ended up threatening the internal social order (Spencer 2000; Forsdyke 2005: 37–47).
Solon (fr. 4.6–13 W) gives a vivid description of the destructive consequences of intra-elite competition in early sixth-century Attica:
But the citizens themselves, through their foolishness and being persuaded by material greed, want to destroy a great polis, and the mind of the leaders of the dēmos is unjust, and they are ready to suffer much pain for their great violence. They do not understand how to curb excess nor to organize peacefully the celebrations of the feast that is at hand, but they grow wealthy, yielding to unjust deeds; sparing neither sacred nor public property, they steal rapaciously, this one from here, that one from there.
A plausible reconstruction of the background to this unrest is that elite landholders were bringing previously common but marginal land into cultivation through intensified agricultural practices and that they were recruiting smallholders or landless laborers to farm the newly acquired land for a pittance—the so-called hektemoroi ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 2.2; Plut. Vit. Sol. 13).15 Plutarch adds that the poor were also in the habit of offering their own liberty as security against debts owed on loans from the wealthy, which may lie behind Solon’s own comment (fr. 4.23–25 W) that “many of the poor go to a foreign country, sold and bound in unseemly fetters.” Matters came to a head and Solon was appointed as an arbitrator. He canceled debts and prohibited enslavement for debt default ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 6; Plut. Vit. Sol. 15) though, as we have already seen, he was not minded to give the esthloi and the kakoi equal shares in the land (fr. 34.8–9 W) and felt that he had given “the dēmos as much privilege as was sufficient” (fr. 5.1 W).16
It is within the context of elite contestation of power that the phenomenon of tyranny is best viewed. Indeed, Solon makes a point (frr. 32, 33, 34 W) of claiming that he could have seized tyranny and Elizabeth Irwin (2005: 205–61) has detailed how Solon exploited contemporary political discourse to construct an autocratic position that, in many ways, was ambiguously close to tyranny.17 Our understanding of archaic tyranny has been impeded by a pervasive—though not universal—negative source tradition, coined in reaction to autocratic rule, as well as by Aristotle’s attempts to draw distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate rulers (McGlew 1993; Anderson 2005). But Aristotle also offers some insight into how tyrannies may have emerged, when he notes (Pol. 1310b) that some arose “from those elected to the highest magistracies,” offering as examples the tyrants of the Ionian cities—including, presumably, Thrasybulus of Miletus—and Phalaris of Acragas. This is also, as we have seen, supposed to be the case with Pittacus, appointed to a 10-year-term as aisymnētēs (Arist. Pol. 1285a), and with Orthagoras of Sicyon and Cypselus of Corinth, both of whom apparently held the office of polemarchos (105 FGrH 2; Nicolaus of Damascus 90 FGrH 57.5). Indeed, it is clear that tyrants typically belonged to the ruling elite (de Libero 1996): Cypselus’ mother belonged to the aristocratic clan of the Bacchiadae (Hdt. 5.92); Pittacus married into the ruling family of the Penthilidae (Alcaeus fr. 70 Campbell); Theagenes married his daughter to the Athenian aristocrat Cylon (Thuc. 1.126.3); and Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, married his daughter to the Athenian Alcmaeonid Megacles (Hdt. 6.130). The case of the Athenian archon Damasias, who remained in office for two years and two months (582–580 BC) before being forcibly removed from power ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 13.2), suggests that tyrannies often arose when aristocrats decided not to “play by the rules,” violating the principle of rotation by refusing to cede to their peers the offices to which they had been appointed.
The degree to which tyrannical regimes depended upon popular support is still debated (see Wallace 2009: 417 against Stein-Hölkeskamp 2009: 113). Certainly, the old view that tyrants were swept to power by hoplite armies of middling citizens shortly before the middle of the seventh century (e.g., Andrewes 1956) finds support in no source. Even later, when hoplite tactics were fully established, Polycrates of Samos established his rule with a force of no more than 15 hoplites (Hdt. 3.120.3); Theron seized power at Selinus with 300 slaves (Polyaenus, Strat. 1.28.2); and Pisistratus’ first attempt at tyranny over Athens was achieved with a band of 50 club-bearers (Hdt. 1.59.5–6; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 14.1; Plut. Vit. Sol. 30)—his third and successful attempt was brought about by foreign mercenaries (Hdt. 1.61.4). On the other hand, there are hints in our sources that tyrants, once established, may have appealed to the dēmos for support against potential elite rivals. According to Aristotle (Pol. 1315b), the Orthagorid dynasty of Sicyon “promoted the interests of the dēmos in most respects,” while Pisistratus is said to have administered Athens “more like a citizen than like a tyrant,” making loans to those in need ([Arist. Ath. Pol. 16.2). And it is Aristotle again who says that, in order to secure the trust of the dēmos and their pledge of hostility against the wealthy, Theagenes slaughtered the flocks of the rich as they grazed beside the river (Pol. 1305a);18 a similar motif is attributed to Telys of Sybaris, who is supposed to have persuaded his subjects to expel the 500 richest citizens and confiscate their property (Diod. Sic. 12.9.2). The historicity of such episodes is not secure but, when Cleisthenes of Athens, the grandson of the Sicyonian tyrant, “brought the dēmos into his faction” (Hdt. 5.66.2) in order to gain a political advantage over his elite rival, Isagoras, he can hardly have been the first person to have entertained the prospect of deploying popular support within intra-elite conflict.
In terminating the principle of rotation of office, the tyrants were, in a certain sense, turning the clock back and there are, in fact, various aspects in which the tyrants resemble the big men or chieftains of an earlier age. Charismatic authority for what was essentially an “achieved” office was secured by means of martial and athletic prowess: Orthagoras, Cypselus, and Pisistratus are all said to have distinguished themselves in the military sphere (105 FGrH 2; Nicolaus of Damascus 90 FGrH 57.5; Hdt. 1.59.4), while Cleisthenes of Sicyon was commemorated for victories in the four-horse chariot race at Olympia and Delphi (Hdt. 6.126.2; Paus. 10.7.6). Loyalty was bought through public munificence: Cypselus made costly dedications at Delphi and Olympia (Plut. Mor. 400d; Paus. 5.17.5); the Pisistratids began construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus (Arist. Pol. 1313b); and Polycrates probably initiated the second dipteral temple to Hera on Samos (Kienast 2002). Like Homeric basileis, tyrants contracted marriage alliances and guest friendships with peers beyond their own states: in addition to the intermarriages mentioned already mentioned, Cypselus’ successor, Periander, married the daughter of Procles, the tyrant of Epidaurus (Hdt. 3.50), while Thrasybulus of Miletos and the Lydian king Alyattes were guest-friends (Hdt. 1.22.4), as were Polycrates and the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis (3.39.2). But, also like Homeric basileis, the position of the tyrant was intergenerationally unstable: while the tyranny of the Orthagorids may have lasted around a century at Sicyon, the Cypselid tyranny at Corinth was suppressed in the third generation, when Periander’s nephew, Psammetichus, was removed after just three years (Arist. Pol. 1315b); at Athens, the younger of Pisistratus’ sons, Hipparchus, was assassinated after fourteen years while his brother, Hippias, survived only a further four years before being expelled by the Spartans (Hdt. 5.55–65; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 19). By the end of the sixth century, tyranny had become virtually extinct in mainland Greece and the Aegean islands, but it continued in Sicily, witnessing a new, more imperialist manifestation with the establishment of Deinomenid power over first Gela, and then Syracuse and much of eastern Sicily (Thuc. 1.18.1; see Luraghi 1994).
The Advent of Democracy?
The Athenians of the classical period liked to think that the Pisistratid tyranny had been replaced by democracy: Herodotus (6.131.1) has little to say about the younger Cleisthenes, other than that he had “instituted the tribes and the democracy.” But this was largely self-delusion (Hall 2010: 15–18). The immediate aftermath of Hippias’ expulsion was a return to elite infighting. Indeed, the word dēmokratia is heavily freighted with meaning because it implies that supreme authority or power (kratos) resides with the dēmos—a word that, in Archaic poetry, regularly denotes the population of a city exclusive of the elites. In other words, a political revolution occurred in which the masses wrested power away from the formerly governing elites and this can only really have happened with Ephialtes’ attacks on the aristocratic council of the Areopagus in 462/1 BC ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 25.2; see Raaflaub 2007; Giangiulio 2015: 21–24). It can hardly be coincidental that the word is first paraphrased (δήμου κρατοῦσα χείρ) in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Maidens (604), thought to have been performed in the later 460s, or that this is also the approximate date attributed to a gravestone for a certain individual named Democrates (Hansen 1991: 70). But, if Athens crafted what is often termed a “radical” brand of democracy, it may not have been the first experiment in what we might call popular rule. Argos probably adopted a form of democracy very similar to Athens at about the same time, but there are some indications that elite rule had already yielded to more popular governance three decades earlier (Gehrke 1985: 361–363; Piérart 1997: 333). Herodotus (5.30.1) recounts how the wealthy—literally “fat” (pacheis)—of the island of Naxos had been expelled by the dēmos and had found refuge in Miletus in the years immediately prior to the Ionian Revolt of 499 BC. And Plutarch (Mor. 304e) refers to the establishment of an “undisciplined democracy” (ἀκολάστου δημοκρατίας) at Megara as early as the first decades of the sixth century, though the testimony has been doubted (e.g., Forsdyke 2005: 53–55).19
Kurke (1991) has argued that athletic victors, who were almost invariably from elite backgrounds in the Archaic period, stood at the intersection of three concentric circles, constituted by the oikos (household), polis, and the wider transregional community of aristocrats, and that one of the functions of Pindar’s epinician odes was to reintegrate the victor into his home community and to mitigate the potential tensions that might arise between him, his family, and his fellow citizens. Peter Rose (1992: 159, 177–178) has gone further and argued that Pindar’s celebration of aristocratic values was a response to the Cleisthenic democracy of Athens. Yet, as Rosalind Thomas (2007) has pointed out, there are few odes that are commissioned for Athenian victors while the epinician tradition can be traced back to at least Simonides ca. 520 BC and perhaps even Ibycus before him (and may have developed alongside an even earlier tradition of setting up honorific statues)—i.e., well before Cleisthenes’ reforms which in any case, as we have seen, do not seem to have ushered in true democracy at Athens. There can, however, be little doubt that, by the end of Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ careers in the middle of the fifth century, the Greek world was a very different place. The tyrannies on Sicily had collapsed, democratic regimes had been installed in many cities throughout the Greek Mediterranean, and the more elitist expressions, values, and concerns of lyric poetry began to yield to the sort of civic self-reflection that is so characteristic of Athenian drama.
FURTHER READING
For overviews of the archaic period, see Osborne 2009 and Hall 2014. For discussions of archaic authorship, see Nagy 1985; Kurke 2007a; and Lefkowitz 2012. Donlan 1985 and 1997 discusses early archaic Greek society, while Gehrke 2009 treats the development of institutions in the seventh century BC. Mazarakis-Ainian 2006 surveys the archaeological aspects of early authority. For Solon’s political thought, see Irwin 2005. Anderson 2005 presents an important reassessment of archaic tyranny. For early experiments in popular government, see Robinson 1997.
Notes
1 See, however, Lane Fox 2000: 39, who suggests that Theagenes is not the tyrant imagined in lines 39–52 and that Theognis can therefore be dated to the first half of the sixth century.
2 Kontoleon (1964: 44) identified two marble slabs, dating to ca. 510 BC, as part of the monument, whose original location is unknown. The first depicts a bull being attacked by a lion and the second a banqueting scene. An associated Ionic capital bears an inscription dated to the fourth century: “Archilochus of Paros, son of Telesicles, lies here; this monument was dedicated by Dokimos, son of Neokreon.” See also Schilardi 1996: 58.
3 Although Plato (Laws 629a–b), Lycurgus (Leoc. 106), and Philochorus (328 FGrH 215) all say that Tyrtaeus was Athenian by origin, it is generally accepted that he was a Spartan poet. See Lefkowitz 2012: 40.
4 Kontoleon 1964; Graham 1978; Jeffery 1990: 300–301, 307 no. 61; Parker 1997: 62–67, 76–79; Osborne 2009: 220–224.
5 Morris 1986; van Wees 1992; Raaflaub 1998.
6 Forsdyke 2005: 42; Gehrke 2009: 405; Hall 2014: 142–144; Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 143.
7 Plutarch, probably following the now lost Aristotelian Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, says that the veto clause was added later, “after the multitude twisted and violated proposals by subtraction and addition.” But this is probably an inference generated by a chronological difficulty: while Tyrtaeus seems to have linked the Rhetra to the joint rule of Polydorus and Theopompus in the early seventh century, Aristotle dated Lycurgus, who is supposed to have been the architect of the document, to the first Olympic Games of 776 BC. Ancient authors, however, offered a variety of dates for Lycurgus and there are good reasons to believe that the legend concerning his famed legislation and connection with Sparta postdates Tyrtaeus, in which case there is no obstacle to seeing the veto as an integral part of the original constitutional provisions: see Thommen 1996: 33–36.
8 Van Wees 1999 has argued that the oracle to which Tyrtaeus refers is unconnected with the Great Rhetra as presented in Plutarch. Nevertheless, even if there is a clear difference in emphasis between the two accounts, the central features (kings; elders; damos) and certain linguistic expressions are common to both: see Hall 2014: 207–211.
9 Wallace 2009: 417 may be right to point out that “[e]arly regimes should not be called “aristocracies” without configuring the power of popular assemblies…free speech, resistance to elite abuse, and pervasive mentalities of personal independence among the Greek populace;” such popular representation might explain the circumstances in which Solon was chosen as a mediator between the wealthy and the poor at Athens ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 5.2. Nevertheless, Solon himself admits (fr. 5) that he did not increase the privileges of the dēmos.
10 Although Ath. Pol. 4.3 says that there was a council of 401, distinct from the Areopagus, under the legislation of Dracon in the archonship of Aristaichmos (621/0 BC).
11 See, however, Berent 1996, who argues that the polis was a “stateless society”—a position that is challenged in Hansen 2002.
12 Thomas and Conant 1999: 32–59; Morris 2000: 225–228; Mazarakis Ainian 2006.
13 On aristocratic culture, see Węcowski (Chapter 5) in this volume.
14 For critiques, see Hammer 2004; Kistler 2004; Irwin 2005: 58–62; Hall 2014: 200–203; van Wees and Fisher 2015: 25–27; Giangiulio 2015: 21–31.
15 This interpretation, detailed further in Hall 2014: 214–20, is influenced by Gallant 1982 and Rihll 1991. For alternative interpretations, see Murray 1993a: 189–94; Manville 1990: 124–56; Harris 1997; Foxhall 1997.
16 Forsdyke 2005: 53–55 compares the Solonian seisachtheia (“shaking-off of burdens”) to the palintokia, or return of interest paid on debts, that Plutarch (Mor. 295c–d) attests for sixth-century Megara.
17 The apologetic tone of Plutarch’s sources in Vit. Sol. 14–15 that Solon refused invitations to set himself up as tyrant surely implies a counternarrative.
18 Since Megara was famous for the export of woolen garments, these flocks, if the story is true, would have been an important source of elite wealth and power: Forsdyke 2005: 53. Figueira 1985: 144–145 notes that there is no river of any account in the Megarid and conjectures that the Aristotelian notice is loosely based on a sacrificial slaughter of victims for a festival named the Potamia.
19 Robinson 1997 collects the evidence for early experiments in popular government, though some caution needs to be exercised with regard to the interpretation of the sources: see Hansen 1999.