The Classical World Read online

  Seen from old Greece and the Aegean, the West was simply a convenient refuge for a 'new start' when all else failed. Losers in old Greece's headlong political upheavals went west to found or take over a community. Greek refugees from the Persian conquest of Ionia took their gift for philosophy to south Italy and founded a settlement, Elea (about forty miles south of Paestum), which became famous for its subtle approach to questions of truth and knowledge. In the Bay of Naples, c. 521 bc, aristocratic refugees from Samos founded a place called 'Just Government' in explicit contrast to their tyranny at home (it later became the important port of Puteoli). Followers of the philos­opher Pythagoras had preceded them, c. 530 bc, in south Italy, especi­ally at Croton. Nonetheless, not every migrant was as just as the admirable Cadmus, who came to Sicily having renounced his tyranny on the island of Cos 'out of justice'.9 In c. 514 one of the two Spartan kings, Dorieus, was ousted by his brother and arrived in the West with a small band of adventurers. First, they tried to help in an inter-city battle in south Italy; then they invaded the Carthaginian end of Sicily in the belief that they were 'reclaiming the heritage of the hero Heracles'. Dorieus died and a few of his followers withdrew to the south coast where they founded a consolation prize, another 'Heraclea', on the site, however, of an existing Greek city-state.

  As these Greek exiles arrived and the existing Greeks in the West remained confident, neighbouring non-Greeks were not left in peace. In c. 570 the Greek settlers at Cyrene in Libya won a spectacular victory over Libyans and Egyptians and cleared the way for a further wave of Greek settlement in north Africa. However, in c. 560 the non-Greeks then won something of their own back and thereafter, the Greeks in the West did not carry all before them. From c. 560 to c. 510 attempts at further western Greek settlements failed, on Cor­sica, in western Sicily and close to Phoenician settlement in northern Libya. In the West, there were few entirely empty spaces for people to fill up. Carthage, too, had grown in confidence in the centuries since her foundation from the Levant: in the late sixth century Carthage's surviving treaty with Rome shows Carthage trying to limit Romans' access to her coastlines. The western Greeks, therefore, remained only one 'ethnicity' in a wider crowd. Like others, they travelled up the west coast of Italy, but the sanctuaries outside the coastal settlements there were already being frequented by quite other visitors and traders: Phoenicians and Etruscans were prominent, and these peoples were already concerned with their own inter-relations.

  For the sixth century bc was a particular age of splendour for the ruling families in Etruscan settlements. As at Tarquinia, they liked to drink from painted Greek pottery, to patronize Greek sculptors and painters and even to imitate the Greek style of hoplites and, probably, cavalrymen. But they were not passive debtors to the Greeks so much as self-aware choosers and adaptors of what they were offered. They were also aggressive. In the Bay of Naples, in the 470s, the Greek 'tyrants' of Syracuse had to intervene to protect the local Greek cities from a major barbarian invasion, headed by Etruscans. Soon after­wards Sicilian Greeks helped in the founding of a local 'New City' (called Neapolis, modern Naples). Its regular layout of streets is still visible, even in the jungle of the modern city. 'New City' was not so very far south of another famous site, Rome: how far, if at all, was the future 'eternal city' integrated into this western Greek melting pot around her?

  The early history of Rome remains a vivid arena of dispute, scepti­cism and scholarly ingenuity. The Latin sources have obviously been elaborated, or invented, many centuries later and so modern scholars rely heavily on local archaeology. On questions of political change and ethnic variety, its evidence is often ambiguous or irrelevant. What we need to stress here is that from the eighth century bc, the age of Homer onwards, Rome was not an odd community, isolated from surrounding fashions. Archaeological finds do show that Levantine 'Phoenicians' and Greeks (probably Euboeans) had visited the site up the river Tiber. For the Romans were not sufficiently supplied to remain quietly inland: it has been brilliantly observed that Rome had no nearby source of that animal and human necessity, salt. Salt-fields, the only ones in west Italy, lay at the river Tiber's mouth on the north bank. In due course a 'salt road' (the Via Salaria) ran down from Rome and Ostia was founded at the river-mouth, traditionally in the mid-seventh century bc, no doubt with an eye on the salt-assets.10 Up at Rome, meanwhile, the local huts were being replaced by houses; there was a public space, or 'Forum', which was paved; by c. 620 bc archaeologists detect an 'urban transformation', in which the cultural influence of Etruscans was extremely important, accompanied by migrants from Etruscan towns. Then (as strong tradition said) it was followed by the rule of a sequence of Etruscan kings, the Tarquins (traditionally, 616-509 bc).

  Western Greek visitors to the Roman community in this period would have found a society which was not wholly unfamiliar. Until the late sixth century bc it was being ruled by kings, although their line was not hereditary. Clans (or gentes) and 'tribes' organized society, with thirty local units (curiae) which a Greek might assume to be like his city's brotherhoods, or phratries. During the sixth and early fifth centuries the social organization also changed in ways which are broadly familiar from Greek communities. The number of Rome's tribes was increased and the army was reorganized. At the end of the sixth century kingship was overthrown (like tyrannies in the Greek world) and annual magistrates assumed the leadership of the resulting state. Within decades there was to be popular agitation over indebted­ness and access to land; concessions had to be made to what Greeks would call the demos, or 'people'. In the 450s there was even the publication of a body of laws (Rome's famous Twelve Tables), just as laws were sometimes published in early Greek city-states. The Roman laws included a ban on intermarriage between the noble patricians and non-patricians (many Greek aristocrats would have applauded). They addressed the problems of debt and adoption, marriage and inheritance which were important in Greek communities too. Accord­ing to these laws, badly deformed children should be rapidly killed (Spartans would have agreed), but what was unique (as Greeks later observed) was the exceptional power granted to the male head of a Roman household over all its members, including children. So long as a Roman father lived, his sons had no right to own anything: they could simply be killed by their father, the paterfamilias. This extreme power for the father was evaded in practice, but it remained an important element in later Roman respect for tradition.

  In the stories which were told later about this period, Rome's connections with the wider world were drawn even closer. The last three kings of Rome were said to have begun (in 616 bc) with a migrant, Tarquinius, from the Etruscan city of Tarquinia: his father had been an aristocrat from Greek Corinth. This Greek, Demaratus, had been ejected by the first tyranny at Corinth (c. 657) and obliged to seek a new life in Italy. The second of Rome's Etruscan kings was the celebrated Servius Tullius (in tradition, 578-535 bc) who became remembered for a lowly origin (the son of a slave), and a special relationship with the gods; he was probably an Etruscan warrior, called Mastarna in Etruscan. It was he who introduced a fundamental reform of the tribes and connected 'centuries' of the Roman people to their public assembly. Servius' reforms had a definite similarity to those of the early Greek reformers who had changed the structure of 'tribes' in their city-states during the sixth century bc. Even the first publication of Roman law was connected to the Greeks. Ambassadors are said in later tradition to have been sent out from Rome in the late 450s to study the laws of Greek cities, specifically those of Athens, the 'laws of Solon'." Certainly, the Twelve Tables' word for 'punishment' (poena) was derived from Greek (poine); the reason was not, surely, contact with Athens, but Roman contact with some of the newer Greek communities in south Italy. It was, however, a particular Roman precision to specify that a debtor who defaulted when owing debts to several people should be divided into pieces and distributed to each of his creditors.

  By c. 500 bc the Roman community numbered probably about 35,000 male citizens, and its territorial
control already extended southwards as far as Terracina, on the coast about forty miles from Rome. Although its male citizenry was probably bigger than contem­porary Attica's, culturally it was still a humble place onto which a strong rejection of 'luxury' was only later projected by legends. But values of 'freedom' and 'justice' were prominent. The reforms of Servius were admired by later Romans as a source of 'freedom': at the time the most urgently desired freedom was surely freedom from the monarchical rule of a king. Freedom from kings continued to be the political value of all noble Romans, long after the ending of monarchy. Roman nobles, not the people, deposed the last tyrannical 'king' in 510/9 bc, at a time when aristocrats in most Greek cities had already deposed their tyrants.

  What followed, however, was a decidedly popular demand for justice. In 494 bc, probably during a military levy, some of the common people (the plebs) are said to have decamped to a hill outside Rome and 'seceded' from their superiors at a moment when their help was needed as soldiers. One of their concerns was protection against the abuse and physical oppression of the powerful, the sort of abuse which, a hundred years earlier, had been curbed by Solon in Attica.

  Defence of these interests was therefore assigned to a new type of magistrate, to be known as 'tribunes of the plebs'. On hearing of an individual's 'cry for help' these sacrosanct officials could now physi­cally interpose themselves between the aggrieved citizen and his oppressor. In later tradition, the burdens of debts and dues were also said to have been resented at this time, and demands for a distribution of land followed. In broad terms, these demands, too, would have been familiar to Greek observers. In the 450s the collection and publi­cation of the laws met a further demand for justice, which arose as much from Rome's ruling class as from their social inferiors. At Athens, in the 620s, the publication of the first Athenian written laws can be traced to similar social pressure.

  In early Rome, then, we can detect some of the dynamic which had precipitated changes in parts of early Greece too. Of course, the Romans spoke their own 'barbarian' Latin, worshipped their own gods and went their own way without Greek guides. If Romans really did ever visit Athens to inspect their law-code, the Athenians certainly left no record. Rome was of no interest to them. What interests us, however, is the Athens which these Romans were supposed to have visited.

  PART TWO

  The Classical Greek World

  Among the Greeks, individuals determined to stand out from all others were characteristic, and the concept of personal power became paramount; depending on circumstances, they ranged from the most devoted servants of the polis to those who committed the greatest crimes against it. This polis itself, with its mistrust and its narrow ideas of equality on the one hand, and its high expectation of integrity ('arete’) from indi­viduals on the other, drove gifted men to follow this course, which might lead them to reckless greed and possibly to mega­lomania. Even Sparta, which tried to contain potentially many-sided individuals within the strict bounds of their usefulness to the State, only succeeded in producing a breed of ruthless hypocrites; as early as the sixth century there is the terrible Cleomenes, then in the fifth, Pausanias, and finally Lysander. It is debatable whether this development was beneficial for the poleis, and whether in any case it was avoidable; but as a result the Greek world makes the impression of an immense wealth of genius both for good and evil.

  Jacob Burckhardt, Greek Civilization (1898, translated by Sheila Stern, 1988)

  'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.' No doubt, but like all truisms, this one offers little practical guidance. Vigilance against whom? One answer is to rest one's defence on public apathy, on the politician as hero. I have tried to argue that this is a way of preserving liberty by castrating it, that there is more hope in a return to the classical concept of governance as a continued effort in mass education. There will still be mistakes, tragedies, trials for impiety, hut there may also he a return from widespread alienation to a genuine sense of community. The conviction of Socrates is not the whole story of freedom in Athens.

  M. I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern (1973), 102-3

  11

  Conquest and Empire

  I shall not revolt against the people of the Athenians either by guile or by trick of any kind, either by word or deed. Nor shall I follow anyone in revolt and if anyone does revolt, I shall denounce him to the Athenians. I shall pay to the Athenians the tribute which I persuade them (to assess) and as an ally I shall be the best and truest possible. I shall help the people of the Athenians and defend them if anyone does injury to the people of the Athenians, and 1 shall obey the people of the Athenians.' This oath shall be taken by adult Chalcidians, all without exception. Whoever does not take this oath is to lose his citizen-rights and his property shall be confiscated.

  Athenian treaty with Chalcis, 446/5 bc

  For Megacles, son of Hippocrates and his horse as well. . . Inscribed potsherd, cast against noble Megacles at Athens (Cerameicus, Ostrakon 3015, first published in 1994)

  Megacles, son of Hippocrates.

  With a drawing of a fox on the run. Another such potsherd. The fox (alopex) is the voter's own allusion to Megacles' deme (Alopeke) and his 'bushy-tailed' duplicity, foxiness being associated with treachery and pro-Persian sympathies. So, Megacles must run far away . . . (Cerameicus, Ostrakon 3815)

  The Greek victories over barbarian Persians and Carthaginians were certainly related to the three major themes of this book. Both the Carthaginians and the Persians displayed far more riches and 'luxury' than the Greeks in the city-states. They set out to destroy Greek political freedom and if victorious they would have substituted their own justice. But luxury was not the main reason why their armies failed. Freedom, rather, was the crucial value in the Greek victories, and its absence as a motivating force was a crucial reason for the failure of the Persians' army and the Carthaginians' mercenary force. The Greeks' military innovations were important, too, the metal-armoured hoplites, especially the Spartans', and the newly built Athenian ships. But they, too, were connected with underlying values. In the 650s bc the introduction of hoplites had become connected with a demand for justice which the tyrants and lawgivers then addressed. The supreme source of hoplites was the Spartans' system and initially it, too, addressed the stresses caused by luxury and the need to stay 'free' from tyranny.

  A different theme, to be repeated in the later rise of Macedon, was the luckily timed discovery of a source of precious metal: the silver in Attica. In Sicily, there was no local source of silver, but the Sicilians did not win by building a new fleet. The Athenians did, and the silver was crucial: new supplies of precious metal, newly mined or taken through conquest, are important in the power-relations of ancient states. They made states rich, far more so than a rise in their manufac­turing or any export-led growth. But mining-strikes had to be exploited, and here the Athenians' supply of slaves was crucial: they enabled the metal to be mined quickly. The ships, once built, then had to be rowed with commitment and here, too, the Athenians' distinctive class-structure was important. All their citizens, the lower classes included, were willing to combine and fight for their recently acquired democratic freedom. The Spartans, lacking democracy, could never have mobilized such numbers of committed citizens. By contrast, several of the Greek communities which were under aristocracies or broader oligarchies treacherously took the Persian side. There were exceptions, not least the Corinthians, but one reason why Greeks 'Medized' was that the noble Persians seemed more congenial than the risk of a hostile democracy emerging at home.

  Class, then, played a relevant part in the Greek victories, along with a material windfall (the silver) and no end of good luck (the weather at sea). There were also, of course, the Greeks' values and the resulting ambitions of their citizens. For the Greek victories over barbarian invaders were followed up quite differently in the West and East. In the West, the defeated Carthaginians were left alone with their own sphere of 'domination' (epikrateia) in western Sicily. There wa
s no attempt by the Sicilian Greeks to take revenge in north Africa on Carthage herself. In the East, the Greeks went on the offensive. The Hellenic Alliance had sworn oaths of alliance in the dark days of the Persian advance and it was now enlarged and launched into a 'Hellenic War', the sequel to the 'Persian War'.

  The declared aim was to punish the Persians for their acts of sacri­lege in Greece (the burning of temples, especially at Athens) and to liberate fellow Greeks in the East who were still under Persian rule. At first, nobody could have assumed that the Persians would not soon return for revenge of their own. It required another Greek victory in 469 bc at the mouth of the river Eurymedon on the south coast of Asia (now the Gulf of Antalya) to deter a big Oriental fleet which was intended to regain the sea for the Persian king. Liberation of the eastern Greeks was also patchy. Some of the Greek city-states in Asia were still in the Persian king's gift as late as the mid-46os. Liberation did, however, make a difference when it happened: many of the eastern Greeks were freed from tyrants and satrapal rule in return for a modest yearly payment to the Greek allies' Treasury. There were also persistent attempts to free Cyprus, where Greek rulers were sympathetic to them, but Phoenicians were still embedded in the 'New Town' of Kition on the south-east coast of the island. These attempts began heroically in 478, but during a later one in 459 bc the allied Greek forces were diverted by a request for help from a rebel ruler in nearby Egypt. If Egypt could be detached from the Persian Empire, it would be a spectacular gain, not least for the mainland Greeks' grain-supply and economy. In fact, the large Greek expedition to Egypt failed dismally after a five-year campaign. In 450 one final attempt to free Cyprus failed too and the island was then ceded to the Persian king in return for an agreement that Persian ships would not enter the Aegean and that the Greek cities in Asia would no longer be tribute-paying and under Persian rule. This 'peace' was fragile, but it was a significant gain nonetheless. The east Greek city-states now paid tribute yearly to the Athenians instead of to the Persian king, but they were free, at least in theory, from Persian political interventions.