Archais Hellas

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

Salvete
This essay is about the Archaic era in Greek history and gives an summary/ general view on what happened in this era. It doesn't go in depth like my essays on Athens and Sparta. Also Draco, the info you gave here on sexual morals are added and perhaps you can add it to my Athens essay under the right section. Thanks.
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Archaic Hellas

Introduction:

Archaic Period (800 - 510 BC)
The period in which the beginnings of Greek monumental stone sculpture and other developments in the naturalistic representation of the human figure are found. During the Archaic Age the Greeks developed the most widespread and influential of their new political forms, the city-state, or polis. Rise of the aristocracies. Greek colonization of Southern Italy and Sicily begins. The Archaic period can be divided in 4 different stages:
- Archaic Period
- Early Archaic Period
- The Archaic colonization
- The emergence of the Polis
History:
Economy, Technology, Society, and Culture

The tribal or clan units of the dark ages slowly grew into larger political units; beginning around 800 BC, trade began to dramatically accelerate between the peoples of Greece. Marketplaces grew up in Greek villages and communities began to gather together into defensive units, building fortifications to use in common. On this foundation, the Greek-speaking people on the Greek peninsula, the mainland, and the coast of Asia Minor, developed political units that were centrally based on a single city. These city-states were independent states that controlled a limited amount of territory surrounding the state. The largest of these city-states, for instance, was Sparta, which controlled more than 3000 square miles of surrounding territory.
The period in which the city-states evolved is called the Archaic Period; while the separate states had close interaction with one another during this time and certainly learned political organization from one another, in many ways, however, each city-state developed fairly unique and independent cultures and political organizations (notice that the word "political" is derived from the word polis ).
Politically, all the Greek city-states began as monarchies. In their earliest stages, they were ruled by a basileus , or hereditary king. The Greeks living in those city-states, however, soon tired of the kings, many of which were overthrown in the eighth century BC. A variety of political alternatives were put in place of the basileus : the most common was an oligarchy, or "rule by a few." The oligarchs were almost always drawn from the wealthiest citizens of the state ("rule by the wealthy" is called a timocracy), but a variety of oligarchic forms were invented in the eighth century. The oligarchs most often ruled absolutely; they had many of the powers granted to a king. Even though these powers were diffused among a group (which could be surprisingly large), the power of the oligarchy could be remarkably totalitarian. Most of the early oligarchic governments and a few of the kings were overthrown by "tyrants" (in Greek, tyrranos); while Greek history is generally unkind to the tyrants, we can through the haze of later Greek propaganda come to some dispassionate conclusions about the nature of the tyrranies. The Greeks believed that the tyrants were illegitimate usurpers of political power; they seem, however, to have had in many cases popular support. The Greek tyrants were often swept into power by dissatisfaction or crisis; they were more often then not extremely popular leaders when they assumed the tyranny. Once in power, they ruled as a king would rule, and many attempted to make (and some succeeded) the tyranny hereditary—in essence, a form of monarchy. Many of them seem to have directed their attentions to the crisis that swept them into office, but most of them set about shoring up their shaky hold on power. For the tyrants ruled only by a thread; they maintained power only by their hold on military force and often fear. The tyrannies were by nature highly unstable, and they fell apart rapidly. Even so, tyranny was a widespread political institution throughout the Greek-speaking world: tyrannies were experimented with not only in Greece, but Asia Minor and even as far away as the Greek cities in Sicily. The Greek diet was simple: bread, cheese, vegetables, olive oil, wine, and occasionally fish or pork. Beef was seldom eaten, and sheep and goats were kept mainly for hides, wool, and milk. Most farms were small, and slave labor was apparently rarely used in agriculture in the Archaic period. By 800 the classical polis was beginning to emerge, the city-state with its own central palace, territory, government, and loyal citizens (along with many noncitizen inhabitants). Many cities, including Athens, were dependent on the importation of grain, particularly from the Black Sea region. The main centers for manufacture were Athens, famous for its painted vases; Corinth; Sicyon; Argos and Chalcis, noted for metal-work; and Miletus and Samos, which made furniture and textiles. Mining was extensive: marble came from Mt. Pentelicus and Paros; silver, from Mt. Laurium and Mt. Pangaeus; gold, from Mt. Pangaeus and Thasos; iron, from Laconia; and copper, from Cyprus. Rough terrain and poor roads made overland travel difficult, so most commerce was by sea. The introduction of coined money from Lydia in the 7th century facilitated trade and capital investment but also increased debt. The two prominent standards of currency were the Euboean and the Aeginetan. By the sixth century, the experiments began to settle around two alternatives. The tyrannies never died out, but oligarchy became the settled norm of the Greek city-states. Several of these oligarchies, however, were replaced by a second alternative that originates sometime in the sixth century: democracy. The word means, "rule by the demos (people)," but the Greek democracies looked nothing like modern democracies. First, they really mean rule by the people; the Greek democracies were not representative governments, they were governments run by the free, male citizens of the city-state. Second, all the people were not involved in the government: slaves, foreigners, and women were all disbarred from the democracy. So, in reality, the democratic city-states more closely resembled oligarchies for a minority—a very large minority, to be sure— ruled the state.
This was a period of frenetic colonization. The Greeks, pressured by growing populations around the city-states, actively went looking for unpopulated or thinly populated areas to colonize in Greece, the Aegean Sea, and elsewhere. The Greek city-state began to appear on the Italian and Sicilian shores, and set up trading posts in the Middle East and Egypt. Greek culture was spreading across the Mediterranean, and Greek commerce was rapidly making the city-states wealthy and powerful. There was no military, political, or cultural center of the Greek world in the Archaic period. Different city-states developed separate cultures; these developments, however, spread across the Greek world. The city-state culture, then, was in many ways a national culture because of the dynamic interactions between the city-states. The greatest flowering of culture occurred on the city-states of Asia Minor, and especially Miletus. Greek philosophy begins in these city-states and soon spreads around the Greek world. Corinth and later Argos became great centers of literature. But perhaps the greatest of the city-states were Athens and Sparta. Sparta in particular dominated the political scene all during the seventh century BC, and would remain a powerful force all throughout its history until the Macdonians conquer Greece in the fourth century BC. By c. 750 B.C.E. the Greeks had borrowed the Phoenician alphabet, adapted certain letters to represent vowels, and added others for sounds found only in Greek. Marble temples appeared, and the three architectural orders—Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic—developed. Sculpture began representing the human body in the nude. Marble statues were generally painted in lifelike colors. Early Greek painting is known mainly from decorated pottery: red-figured vases replaced black-figured c. 500 B.C.E. In the early Archaic period, aristocratic oligarchies generally replaced Dark Age monarchies, except in Sparta and Macedonia. Later, ambitious individuals overthrew the constituted governments of many cities and established themselves as tyrants. Beginning c. 760 B.C.E., Greek cities started founding colonies, which eventually occupied much of the coastline of both the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Colonists, led by a founder, or oikistes, generally adopted the religious cults and constitution of the “mother city” (metropolis) but were politically independent. In the 7th century, hoplite warfare developed. Hoplites were citizen soldiers who provided their own equipment: a round bronze shield (hoplon), a bronze helmet with cheek and nose guards, and a nine-foot spear. They fought in a phalanx, shoulder-to-shoulder in line, facing the enemy with a wall of shields and spears and marching in step to the music of flutes. Athletics was an important element of Greek culture. There were major international festivals, which involved athletic contest, such as the Pythian Games at Delphi and the Olympian Games, starting (traditionally) in 776, and held every four years.
The Boeotian poet Hesiod (c. 700) wrote the Theogony, on the genealogy of the gods, and the Works and Days, giving advice on proper living. Other early poets included the Ionian Archilochus (c. 700), the Aeolians Alcaeus and Sappho (c. 600), and the Dorians Stesichorus (630–555) and Arion (c. 600). Lyric poetry was exemplified by Alcman (c. 654–611), Anacreon (born c. 570), Simonides (c. 556–468), Pindar (518–442), and Bacchylides (c. 480). Tragic drama grew out of cultic songs, originally performed by a chorus at religious festivals. The poet Thespis first introduced a speaking actor into a tragedy in 534 B.C.E. Greek philosophy began with Thales (c. 600), who was said, probably falsely, to have predicted a solar eclipse in 585 B.C.E. Anaximenes (c. 600) and Anaximander (c. 610–540) and other early philosophers started to seek knowledge for its own sake and to develop rational explanations for natural phenomena. The so-called logographoi wrote local histories, the best example being Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 500).
The normal age for marriage in Greece was 30 for men and 15–16 for women. Most marriages were arranged. Women took little part in public life and, in some cases, had no more legal rights than slaves. Most citizen women spent their lives secluded in women's quarters. Homosexuality between men was approved, but homosexuality between women was condemned. Some men preferred men instead of women. Most Greeks had a disregard for the abilities of a woman, which also included sexual abilities. Incest as homosexuality between women were probably a taboo. Spartan women were the exception and received the same physical training as men. At least one-woman poet wrote in the Archaic period: Sappho of Lesbos.
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Valete