Archaic Greece, Persia, and the Greek Wars

This is Unit Three of Western Civilization One, part one of two: Archaic Greece and the rise of Persia, from the Dark Age to Darius. Unit two ended on four stages of political evolution and the peoples who did not fit. Carry one idea through this part. The Greeks inherited civilization from the Near East and then did something with it no Near Eastern people had done: they made the citizen. In the polis a free man voted, held office, and stood in a phalanx beside aristocrats, and every Greek political form in this lecture, tyranny, oligarchy, Sparta's mixed constitution, Athens's democracy, is a different answer to what that armed citizen was owed. Persia, rising at the same time, answered the opposite way, with a king of kings chosen by the gods, and the two answers meet in part two. By the end you will be able to say why Greece comes third and what Homer's arete meant. To define the polis and name what made many cities one people. To explain how the hoplite produced the tyrant, and describe Sparta. To trace Athens from debt-slavery to Cleisthenes. And to tell how Cyrus and Darius built Persia and what the Cyrus Cylinder claims.

Three entries on Greece after the Near East: why the exam's order is not the historical order, the Dark Age and the alphabet, and the ethic of Homer's heroes.

Third in the story, not first.

WC1 0201 Why Greece Comes Third, Not First

The exam weights Greece at fifteen to seventeen percent, the same as Rome, but the anchor insists the Greeks inherited civilization from the Near East. Their real firsts are four: experiments in democracy, rational philosophy, tragedy and comedy, and history as a method. Cities, writing and law all came earlier, in unit two's Near East. The exam's order is not a claim that Greece came first.

Three centuries lost, then a borrowed alphabet.

WC1 0202 The Dark Age and the Return of Writing, 1100 to 800 BCE

After the Mycenaean collapse about eleven hundred, Greece lost trade, writing and cities, and the anchor cites an estimate of ninety percent population loss. Recovery came through Ionia and Phoenician trade, and about eight hundred the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, a fresh borrowing, since Linear B had vanished. The earliest Greek literature dates by about seven fifty, and Latin's alphabet descends from this one.

Excellence performed in public, with no second prize.

WC1 0203 Homer, Arete, and the Culture of Contest

Homer's poems were written down after centuries of oral recitation. Their ethic was arete, excellence as a moral quality, fulfilling one's potential in arms and in words, the two Homeric arts of domination. Excellence was performed before others: no second prizes, and the losers mocked. Arete is not virtue in the Christian sense. It is winning well.

Four entries on the polis and the culture that joined many cities: citizenship and the agora, women's shrinking latitude, the Olympics, and colonies that never left the coast.

The city that gave politics its name.

WC1 0204 The Polis: Citizenship, Agora, Civic Virtue

The polis was a city with its countryside, and politics takes its name from it. Citizenship, equality before the law, voting and patriotism all trace to it, and identity attached to the community rather than a royal line. Aristocrats ruled through councils of archons, but commoners assembled in the agora, a precedent. The anchor's judgment that Greek civic virtue was almost unparalleled is its own, attributed.

A trend that runs the wrong way.

WC1 0205 Greek Women: Archaic Latitude, Classical Restriction

Greek society was explicitly patriarchal, its myths hostile to assertive women, with Penelope as the model wife. Yet Archaic women inherited, managed households and mixed socially, and wives were held to monogamy while husbands' liaisons with slaves and equals were accepted. Restrictions tightened into the Classical Age, in Athens most of all. Expect the trend to run backward: later Athens was worse for women.

One people, no ruler.

WC1 0206 One Culture, Many Cities: The Olympics and Panhellenism

The poleis warred constantly yet recognized each other as Greek: one language in dialects, one pantheon, shared poets and symposia. The Olympics at Olympia ran every four years under truce from seven seventy-six B.C.E. to three ninety-three C.E., and seven seventy-six is the conventional end of the Dark Age. Greece was united by culture and never by a ruler, and the exam expects that distinction.

Colonies from Spain to the Black Sea, always on the shore.

WC1 0207 Colonization: Never Far From the Sea

Population recovery sent colonists from Spain to the Black Sea, North Africa and Sicily, always by the coast and never inland. Colonies grew olives and grapes and traded with Celts, Egyptians, Lydians and Babylonians, and they carried Greek letters to Gaul, where Caesar found Gauls writing in them seven centuries later. Each colony was an independent polis, not a possession. Greece had no empire.

Four entries on the men who fought and the states they made: the phalanx, the tyrant in the Greek sense, Sparta's constitution, and the helots it sat on.

A self-funded army moved by civic virtue.

WC1 0208 The Phalanx and the Hoplite

The phalanx was a dense block of spearmen, each shield covering the man to the left. The hoplite was a free citizen who bought his own arms and drilled. Battles ended when one side broke, and the dead were collected under truce. Hoplites were not always aristocrats, and their value on the battlefield became political leverage, the hinge of everything that follows.

A tyrant defined by how he took power.

WC1 0209 Tyranny in the Greek Sense, and Oligarchy After 500

By the seventh century hoplites demanded a voice, and cities appointed tyrants: rulers without legal right, usually aristocrats answering to hoplites, chosen to avert civil war. The Age of Tyrants ran about six fifty to five hundred, with land grants and public works, and oligarchy followed, office for the wealthy under written law. A Greek tyrant is defined by how he held power, not by cruelty.

Two kings, a council, and boys who left home at seven.

WC1 0210 Sparta's Constitution and Training

Sparta had two kings, a small council, and an assembly of men over thirty that could only approve or reject. Boys left home at seven for training, and at twenty a man became an Equal with a land grant; men lived in barracks until thirty. Spartan women trained, owned land and spoke publicly. The anchor quotes Frost's phrase for the system, an experiment in elitist communism, attributed.

The slave society beneath the Equals.

WC1 0211 Helots, the Krypteia, and Spartan Caution

Sparta was a slave society: about ninety percent were helots, serfs of the conquered, killable at will under an annual declaration of war, and the Krypteia sent young Spartans to kill helots by night. The anchor puts Spartan soldiers at never more than eight thousand. Where the anchor's fourth chapter dates the war with Athens to the fourth century, it is wrong: four thirty-one to four oh four.

Three entries on Athens: a crisis of debt, Solon's state that obeyed written law, and Cleisthenes' democracy of every male citizen.

Wealth that outran the constitution.

WC1 0212 Athens Before Solon: Wealth, Debt, Debt-Slavery

Athens, democracy's birthplace, kept many slaves and grew rich by trade. By about six hundred B.C.E. aristocrats owned the land, indebted farmers were sold into debt-slavery, and hoplites resented the aristocratic monopoly on office. The anchor's six hundred thousand people in Attica is a high figure, attributed. The crisis was distribution, not poverty: wealth had outrun the constitution.

A state that obeyed a law, not a man.

WC1 0213 Solon's Reforms and the Impersonal State

Solon, archon about five ninety-four, cancelled debts, abolished debt-slavery, bought back enslaved Athenians and posted the laws in public, while top offices stayed with the richest. His deepest innovation was a state obeying written law rather than a person. The witnesses call him lawgiver; the anchor, a tyrant appointed to reform. He reformed without breaking the old families, and a century of tyrants followed.

Every male citizen, and the ninety percent left out.

WC1 0214 Cleisthenes, 508 BCE: Democracy and Its Ten Percent

In five oh eight Cleisthenes gave the vote and office to all male citizens, chose lawmakers by lot, and mixed the population into new tribes so Athenians would think as Athenians. The anchor calls it the first real democracy. Women, foreigners and slaves were excluded, so about ten percent held rights. Ten percent was enormous by ancient standards; judge it against Persia, which comes next.

Three entries on the empire that rose while Athens argued: Cyrus's conquests, the Cylinder's claims to kingship, and Darius's empire from the Nile to the Indus.

Lydia and Babylon in seven years.

WC1 0215 Medes and Persians: Cyrus Takes Lydia and Babylon

The Medes, horse warriors of the Iranian plateau, helped destroy Assyria in six twelve. In five fifty Cyrus the Second of Persia conquered the Medes and absorbed their army, took Lydia in five forty-six, and entered Babylon in five thirty-nine almost unopposed, because its king had slighted Marduk's priests and Cyrus honored Marduk. The Ionian Greek cities were beaten but kept their language and religion.

A king's claim, in clay.

WC1 0216 The Cyrus Cylinder: Two Claims to Kingship

The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay record of Babylon's capture, grounds Persian kingship on two principles: descent from great kings, and the favor of the gods. Cyrus presents himself as Marduk's chosen, the Mesopotamian ensi under a new name, and later kings put Ahura Mazda in Marduk's place. It is a king's claim, propaganda in the neutral sense, and part two reads it as a primary source.

Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus: one state for the first time.

WC1 0217 Cambyses, Darius, and an Empire Too Large to Rule

Cyrus died fighting the Scythians in five thirty. Cambyses took Egypt and became pharaoh. Darius, king from five twenty-two to four eighty-six, added the northern Indus, and one state held the Nile, Mesopotamia and the Indus for the first time. The Behistun inscription is his account of crushing revolts. The anchor gives his accession as both five twenty-two and five twenty-one; the witness settles it at five twenty-two.

Look at what you can now do. You can say why Greece comes third, inheriting cities, writing and law from the Near East, what the Dark Age cost and where the alphabet came from, and that arete meant winning well. You can define the polis, a city with its countryside where identity attached to the community, and name the shared language, gods, Olympics and coastal colonies that made many cities one people without a ruler. You can explain that the hoplite's value in the phalanx became leverage, that cities answered with tyrants and then oligarchies, and that Sparta answered with two kings, a council, an assembly, and ninety percent helots. You can trace Athens from debt-slavery through Solon's written law to Cleisthenes in five oh eight, and its ten percent. And you can tell how Cyrus took Lydia and Babylon, what the Cylinder claims, and how Darius stretched one state from the Nile to the Indus. Part two opens on how that empire ruled, and on the wars in which the armed citizen met the king of kings.