Roots in the Cellar: the Dark Ages of Greece

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Roots in the Cellar: the Dark Ages of Greece Roots in the Cellar: The Dark Ages of Greece Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit Three DA * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • By the year 1000 B.C., the complete isolation of Greece was ending, thanks in large part to the venturing of the Phoenicians, who brought a great deal of near eastern culture back to Greece. • As a result, Greek society was becoming more complex. Pottery became more sophisticated reflecting an upswing in the material culture and prosperity of the Greek mainland, and provided Greek traders with a valuable commodity to exchange for luxury goods from abroad. • Increased trade led to wealth and greater social stratification as a small group of aristocrats began to emerge, who justified their preeminence as a reflection of their own superior qualities as the “best men.” • Their wealth derived from a shifting combination of trade, plunder and piracy. But in dark age Greece, wealth alone was not sufficient to establish one’s aristocratic standing. A great man had also to be a singer of songs, a doer of deeds, a winner of battles, and above all favored by the gods. In short he had to be a hero. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • As contact between the Greeks and Phoenicians intensified, the Greeks began to adopt a lot of Phoenician technology and adapting it to their needs. This included such things as the; • Phoenician alphabet (the Greeks improved upon this by converting unneeded consonantal symbols to vowels. Homer’s rolling melodies could now be read and recorded as well as heard.) • Artistic and literary traditions such as the epic poem • Designs for merchant trading vessels • As commercial activity increased, significant numbers of Greeks began to move among the homeland, the islands, and Anatolia, foreshadowing a great colonial expansion in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. • Greek population almost quadrupled during the 9th and early 8th centuries, and this rapid population growth placed heavy demands on the resources of Greece, a mountainous country with little agricultural land. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • As smaller villages grew into towns, inhabitants of these rival communities came into more frequent contact with one another. Some degree of economic, political, and social cooperation amongst the inhabitants of these towns soon became necessary. However, the heroic values of dark age Greece did not make this easy. • Each local community treasured its traditional autonomy and independence, celebrated its own religious cults, and honored its own aristocratic wise men. • The Greek solution to this problem was the polis, a unique blend of institutional and informal structures of organization. Although polis is the root word for our word politics, many Greeks thought of the polis as less a state than as a social collectivity. • Poleis (the plural of polis) differed widely in size and organization. Structurally, however, most poleis were organized around a political and social center known as the asty, where markets and important meetings were held and where the basic business of the polis was conducted in open air. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Surrounding the urbanized asty was the khora, or the “land.” The khora of a larger polis might support several other towns besides the asty, as well as numerous villages, for example all of the residents of the entire territory of Attica were considered to be citizens of Athens. • The majority of Athenians then were farmers, who might come to the asty to participate in the affairs of their polis, but did not themselves reside in the urban center. • Synoikismos (“the bringing together of dwellings”), or synoecism, was how Greeks described the process of early polis formation. It could come about through conquest, or absorption of smaller areas by larger ones, and/or through the slow process of neighboring communities working together to accommodate one another. • What spurred synoikismos is a matter of debate, but some poleis took shape around defensible hilltop forts, such as the Acropolis in Athens, while others may have borrowed the Phoenician tradition of centering urban areas around temple complexes. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • Greek civilization, like Greek religion, was a decentralized affair. • For most of ancient Greek history the largest political unit was the city-state, which they called a polis (plural poleis). • From this word we derive many English words: politics, for the running of a polis; police, a man who serves the polis; and even polite, meaning you have the manners of a civilized person. • But the Greeks did not invent the polis. • You may recall that both Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations started out as competing city-states. • What makes the Greeks unique was that they stuck with the polis long after their neighbors had created kingdoms and empires. • This raises an important question: why? * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • Why didn't the Greek polis behave like the other city-states of the period, unite all of Greece into a single kingdom and expand to form a Greek empire? • The answer lies not in political ideals, but geography. • Let us compare the geography of Greece to that of Mesopotamia and Egypt. • Mesopotamia is open on all sides, it is broad and it is flat. • It is unified by the Tigris and Euphrates. • It is fully accessible from all sides. • It is easily unified and easily invaded. • By contrast, Egypt in closed in by deserts. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • It is narrow, it is flat, it is unified by the Nile and it is fully accessible from within but not from without. • This made Egypt easily unified but hard to invade. • Now let's look at Greece. • Greece is closed in by mountains and the sea. • Greek civilization is scattered over this mountainous terrain. • This terrain is inaccessible from within and from without; this made Greece effectively impossible to unify and impossible to invade. • The effect of geography on Greek politics can be seen rather clearly. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • When Hammurabi decided to expand his city-state of Babylon into a Kingdom (and then to an Empire), he encountered no real geographical barriers. • In fact, geography helped Hammurabi. • The network of rivers between the Tigris and Euphrates and the uninterrupted plains of the region allowed Hammurabi to move his troops in any direction. • Yet the same lack of barriers that made Mesopotamia so easy to unite also made it vulnerable to invasion. • Hammurabi's Babylonian empire was very short lived. • The Pharaohs of Egypt did not have to worry so much about invasion, as Egypt is protected by deserts on three sides. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • Yet within its borders, Egypt was very easy to unify and maintain, since the entire civilization clustered along a single river. • Thus, the city-states of Egypt were consolidated into a single kingdom with relative ease. • The kingdom was protected from the outside by deserts, but the same deserts made it difficult to expand the kingdom of Egypt into an empire. • Where the Sumerians built their empires on an open plain, the Greeks were restricted by mountains on all sides. • Where the Egyptians united their kingdom along a single river, the Greeks were scattered in mountain valleys and islands. • This isolation made unifying the Greeks into a single kingdom all but impossible. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • It took too long to move soldiers across the mountainous terrain of Greece, and the seasonal storms along the Mediterranean made naval empires difficult to maintain. • Even the Mycenaean kings, who dominated the eastern Mediterranean for a couple centuries, never reached the level of power exercised by a Babylonian emperor, let alone the absolute authority of an Egyptian pharaoh. • We can see this clearly in The Iliad. • Agamemnon might be king of Mycenae, but Achilles is King of the Myrmidons and Odysseus the King of Ithaka. • Agamemnon is, at best, first among equals - and barely qualifies for that title, being neither as mighty as Achilles, nor as clever as Odysseus. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece • Agamemnon may have led the invasion of Troy, but it was Achilles and Odysseus who won it. • Compare the depiction of Agamemnon in The Iliad to accounts of pharaohs and emperors who could freely claim 'I conquered so-and-so' as if they had done so single handedly. • Comparing the Greek City-States • Thus we can see how the mountainous geography of Greece prevented the consolidation of a unified Greek kingdom and maintained the independence of the Greek polis. • Each polis was fiercely independent, with its own customs, its own myths and its own festivals. • With such variety, it is difficult to make generalizations about them. * The Dark Age of Greece (1150-800 B.C.) • Greek City States and Government • Comparing the Greek City-States • Yet there are some things that the Greek poleis shared in common. • For one, they all spoke Greek. • This may seem a given, but many a Mesopotamian empire had subjects speaking half a dozen different languages.
Recommended publications
  • Urban Planning in the Greek Colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia
    Urban Planning in the Greek Colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia (8th – 6th centuries BCE) An honors thesis for the Department of Classics Olivia E. Hayden Tufts University, 2013 Abstract: Although ancient Greeks were traversing the western Mediterranean as early as the Mycenaean Period, the end of the “Dark Age” saw a surge of Greek colonial activity throughout the Mediterranean. Contemporary cities of the Greek homeland were in the process of growing from small, irregularly planned settlements into organized urban spaces. By contrast, the colonies founded overseas in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE lacked any pre-existing structures or spatial organization, allowing the inhabitants to closely approximate their conceptual ideals. For this reason the Greek colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia, known for their extensive use of gridded urban planning, exemplified the overarching trajectory of urban planning in this period. Over the course of the 8th to 6th centuries BCE the Greek cities in Sicily and Magna Graecia developed many common features, including the zoning of domestic, religious, and political space and the implementation of a gridded street plan in the domestic sector. Each city, however, had its own peculiarities and experimental design elements. I will argue that the interplay between standardization and idiosyncrasy in each city developed as a result of vying for recognition within this tight-knit network of affluent Sicilian and South Italian cities. This competition both stimulated the widespread adoption of popular ideas and encouraged the continuous initiation of new trends. ii Table of Contents: Abstract. …………………….………………………………………………………………….... ii Table of Contents …………………………………….………………………………….…….... iii 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..……….. 1 2.
    [Show full text]
  • The Athenian Prytaneion Discovered? 35
    HESPERIA 75 (2006) THE ATHENIAN Pages 33-81 PRYTANEION DISCOVERED? ABSTRACT The author proposes that the Athenian Prytaneion, one of the city's most important civic buildings, was located in the peristyle complex beneath Agia Aikaterini Square, near the ancient Street of the Tripods and theMonument of Lysikrates in the modern Plaka. This thesis, which is consistent with Pausa s nias topographical account of ancient Athens, is supported by archaeological and epigraphical evidence. The identification of the Prytaneion at the eastern foot of the Acropolis helps to reconstruct the map of Archaic and Classical Athens and illuminates the testimony of Herodotos and Thucydides. most The Prytaneion is the oldest and important of the civic buildings in to us ancient Athens that have remained lost until the present.1 For the or Athenians the Prytaneion, town hall, the office of the city's chief official, as a symbolized the foundation of Athens city-state, its construction form ing an integral part of Theseus's legendary synoecism of Attica (Thuc. 2.15.2; Plut. Thes. 24.3). Like other prytaneia throughout the Greek world, the Athenian Prytaneion represented what has been termed the very "life common of the polis," housing the hearth of the city, the "inextinguishable and immovable flame" of the goddess Hestia.2 As the ceremonial center was of Athens, the Prytaneion the site of both public entertainment for 1.1 am to the to a excellent for greatly indebted express my heartfelt thanks number suggestions improving this 1st Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classi of scholars who have given generously article.
    [Show full text]
  • Mercenaries, Poleis, and Empires in the Fourth Century Bce
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts ALL THE KING’S GREEKS: MERCENARIES, POLEIS, AND EMPIRES IN THE FOURTH CENTURY BCE A Dissertation in History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies by Jeffrey Rop © 2013 Jeffrey Rop Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2013 ii The dissertation of Jeffrey Rop was reviewed and approved* by the following: Mark Munn Professor of Ancient Greek History and Greek Archaeology, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Gary N. Knoppers Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Religious Studies, and Jewish Studies Garrett G. Fagan Professor of Ancient History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Kenneth Hirth Professor of Anthropology Carol Reardon George Winfree Professor of American History David Atwill Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Graduate Program Director for the Department of History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines Greek mercenary service in the Near East from 401- 330 BCE. Traditionally, the employment of Greek soldiers by the Persian Achaemenid Empire and the Kingdom of Egypt during this period has been understood to indicate the military weakness of these polities and the superiority of Greek hoplites over their Near Eastern counterparts. I demonstrate that the purported superiority of Greek heavy infantry has been exaggerated by Greco-Roman authors. Furthermore, close examination of Greek mercenary service reveals that the recruitment of Greek soldiers was not the purpose of Achaemenid foreign policy in Greece and the Aegean, but was instead an indication of the political subordination of prominent Greek citizens and poleis, conducted through the social institution of xenia, to Persian satraps and kings.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 from City-State to Region-State
    The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C. Greg Anderson http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=17798 The University of Michigan Press 1 FROM CITY-STATE TO REGION-STATE What exactly do we mean when we say that Attica in the classical period was politically “incorporated” or “uniµed”? If, for the purposes of analysis, we unpack the idea of the polis, we can distinguish three essential levels or sources of political unity in the Attic peninsula. First and most fundamental, the reach of Athenian state institutions ex- tended to the territorial limits of Attica, and this apparatus was recognized as the ultimate locus of political authority for the entire region. Second, all free, native-born, adult males in Attica were eligible to become citizens of Athens, entitling them—even obliging them—to participate in the civil, military, and religious life of the polis. From / on, enrollment took place locally in one of town and village units, or demes, scattered throughout the peninsula and was administered by one’s fellow demesmen. Third, despite the unusually large size of the polis, citizens appear to have been bound to one another by a pow- erful and at times distinctly chauvinistic form of collective consciousness or identity. Each citizen was encouraged to imagine himself a member of a sin- gle, extended, undifferentiated community of “Athenians,” sharing with his fellows a common history, culture, and destiny that set them apart from all other such communities. For most modern authorities, these distinctions will seem artiµcial and per- haps anachronistic, since it is widely felt that, unlike the nation-states of our own times, the Greek polis in general and the Athenian instance in particular 13 The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C.
    [Show full text]
  • A HISTORY of the PELASGIAN THEORY. FEW Peoples Of
    A HISTORY OF THE PELASGIAN THEORY. FEW peoples of the ancient world have given rise to so much controversy as the Pelasgians; and of few, after some centuries of discussion, is so little clearly established. Like the Phoenicians, the Celts, and of recent years the Teutons, they have been a peg upon which to hang all sorts of speculation ; and whenever an inconvenient circumstance has deranged the symmetry of a theory, it has been safe to ' call it Pelasgian and pass on.' One main reason for this ill-repute, into which the Pelasgian name has fallen, has been the very uncritical fashion in which the ancient statements about the Pelasgians have commonly been mishandled. It has been the custom to treat passages from Homer, from Herodotus, from Ephorus, and from Pausanias, as if they were so many interchangeable bricks to build up the speculative edifice; as if it needed no proof that genealogies found sum- marized in Pausanias or Apollodorus ' were taken by them from poems of the same class with the Theogony, or from ancient treatises, or from prevalent opinions ;' as if, further, ' if we find them mentioning the Pelasgian nation, they do at all events belong to an age when that name and people had nothing of the mystery which they bore to the eyes of the later Greeks, for instance of Strabo;' and as though (in the same passage) a statement of Stephanus of Byzantium about Pelasgians in Italy ' were evidence to the same effect, perfectly unexceptionable and as strictly historical as the case will admit of 1 No one doubts, of course, either that popular tradition may transmit, or that late writers may transcribe, statements which come from very early, and even from contemporary sources.
    [Show full text]
  • ANCIENT TERRACOTTAS from SOUTH ITALY and SICILY in the J
    ANCIENT TERRACOTTAS FROM SOUTH ITALY AND SICILY in the j. paul getty museum The free, online edition of this catalogue, available at http://www.getty.edu/publications/terracottas, includes zoomable high-resolution photography and a select number of 360° rotations; the ability to filter the catalogue by location, typology, and date; and an interactive map drawn from the Ancient World Mapping Center and linked to the Getty’s Thesaurus of Geographic Names and Pleiades. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI downloads of the book; CSV and JSON downloads of the object data from the catalogue and the accompanying Guide to the Collection; and JPG and PPT downloads of the main catalogue images. © 2016 J. Paul Getty Trust This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042. First edition, 2016 Last updated, December 19, 2017 https://www.github.com/gettypubs/terracottas Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Getty Publications 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500 Los Angeles, California 90049-1682 www.getty.edu/publications Ruth Evans Lane, Benedicte Gilman, and Marina Belozerskaya, Project Editors Robin H. Ray and Mary Christian, Copy Editors Antony Shugaar, Translator Elizabeth Chapin Kahn, Production Stephanie Grimes, Digital Researcher Eric Gardner, Designer & Developer Greg Albers, Project Manager Distributed in the United States and Canada by the University of Chicago Press Distributed outside the United States and Canada by Yale University Press, London Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: J.
    [Show full text]
  • Philip II of Macedon: a Consideration of Books VII IX of Justin's Epitome of Pompeius Trogus
    Durham E-Theses Philip II of Macedon: a consideration of books VII IX of Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus Wade, J. S. How to cite: Wade, J. S. (1977) Philip II of Macedon: a consideration of books VII IX of Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10215/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. PHILIP II OF MACEDON: A CONSIDERATION OF BOOKS VII - IX OF JUSTIN* S EPITOME OF POMPEIUS TROGUS THESIS SUBMITTED IN APPLICATION FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS - by - J. S. WADE, B. A. DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM OCTOBER 1977 ABSTRACT The aim of this dissertation is two-fold: firstly to examine the career and character of Philip II of Macedon as portrayed in Books VII - IX of Justin's epitome of the Historiae Phillppicae .of Pompeius Trqgus, and to consider to what extent Justin-Trogus (a composite name for the author of the views in the text of Justin) furnishes accurate historical fact, and to what extent he paints a one-sided interpretation of the events, and secondly to identify as far as possible Justin's principles of selection and compression as evidenced in Books VII - IX.
    [Show full text]
  • Archaic Greece (Ca. 700–480 BC) After the Renaissance of the Eighth
    Archaic Greece (ca. 700–480 BC) After the renaissance of the eighth century, Greece began its classical period, the earliest phase of which is known as the Archaic period. The Archaic period saw the development of Greek civilization and culture, the development of Greek arts and philosophy, and the centrality of the basic ancient Greek political unit: the city-state. The Development of the Polis By the middle of the eighth century, Greece was experiencing major population growth that brought with it significant social changes. As villages grew in size, they gradually turned into city-states, know as poleis (the plural of polis). The polis would be the basic political unit in Greece throughout the classical period. The poleis came into being through a process known as synoecism, derived from the Greek word for “together in the same house (oikos).” The process saw villages band together to form larger city-states. While this sometimes took place as a result of military conquest by one village over others, it was usually the product of mutual agreement, and often the village identities continued to have some role in the governance of the city-states. Some of the most important such city-states were Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. The city-states tended to develop from the hilltop sites that had sprung up in the Dark Ages (though Sparta and Athens had been important Mycenaean locations). The summit of the hilltop, known as the acropolis, would be the location of important public buildings such as temples and government structures. The marketplace, or agora, was another important place in a Greek city-state.
    [Show full text]
  • Synoikism, Urbanization, and Empire in the Early Hellenistic Period Ryan
    Synoikism, Urbanization, and Empire in the Early Hellenistic Period by Ryan Anthony Boehm A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Emily Mackil, Chair Professor Erich Gruen Professor Mark Griffith Spring 2011 Copyright © Ryan Anthony Boehm, 2011 ABSTRACT SYNOIKISM, URBANIZATION, AND EMPIRE IN THE EARLY HELLENISTIC PERIOD by Ryan Anthony Boehm Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology University of California, Berkeley Professor Emily Mackil, Chair This dissertation, entitled “Synoikism, Urbanization, and Empire in the Early Hellenistic Period,” seeks to present a new approach to understanding the dynamic interaction between imperial powers and cities following the Macedonian conquest of Greece and Asia Minor. Rather than constructing a political narrative of the period, I focus on the role of reshaping urban centers and regional landscapes in the creation of empire in Greece and western Asia Minor. This period was marked by the rapid creation of new cities, major settlement and demographic shifts, and the reorganization, consolidation, or destruction of existing settlements and the urbanization of previously under- exploited regions. I analyze the complexities of this phenomenon across four frameworks: shifting settlement patterns, the regional and royal economy, civic religion, and the articulation of a new order in architectural and urban space. The introduction poses the central problem of the interrelationship between urbanization and imperial control and sets out the methodology of my dissertation. After briefly reviewing and critiquing previous approaches to this topic, which have focused mainly on creating catalogues, I point to the gains that can be made by shifting the focus to social and economic structures and asking more specific interpretive questions.
    [Show full text]
  • Interstate Alliances of the Fourth-Century BCE Greek World: a Socio-Cultural Perspective
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 Interstate Alliances of the Fourth-Century BCE Greek World: A Socio-Cultural Perspective Nicholas D. Cross The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1479 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INTERSTATE ALLIANCES IN THE FOURTH-CENTURY BCE GREEK WORLD: A SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE by Nicholas D. Cross A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 © 2016 Nicholas D. Cross All Rights Reserved ii Interstate Alliances in the Fourth-Century BCE Greek World: A Socio-Cultural Perspective by Nicholas D. Cross This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________ __________________________________________ Date Jennifer Roberts Chair of Examining Committee ______________ __________________________________________ Date Helena Rosenblatt Executive Officer Supervisory Committee Joel Allen Liv Yarrow THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Interstate Alliances of the Fourth-Century BCE Greek World: A Socio-Cultural Perspective by Nicholas D. Cross Adviser: Professor Jennifer Roberts This dissertation offers a reassessment of interstate alliances (συµµαχία) in the fourth-century BCE Greek world from a socio-cultural perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • Hands at Work in Magna Graecia: the Amykos Painter and His Workshop
    Hands at Work in Magna Graecia : the Amykos Painter and His Workshop Martine Denoyelle To cite this version: Martine Denoyelle. Hands at Work in Magna Graecia : the Amykos Painter and His Workshop. Hands at Work in Magna Graecia : the Amykos Painter and His Workshop, Nov 2009, Cincinnati, United States. halshs-00557582 HAL Id: halshs-00557582 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00557582 Submitted on 19 Jan 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Hands at work in Magna Graecia : the Amykos Painter and his Workshop I have been hesitating quite a long time about the way to introduce to you the purpose and the method of this study on the Amykos painter. I am very aware myself , indeed, of the complexity of the universe of South Italian vase-painters, and therefore, of the difficulty to map it clearly. Before beginning to work on the early South Italian workshops, I had spent a lot of years on Attic pottery, especially red- figure, and I must say that it appears to me as being an essential training to integrate the solid beazleyan methodology for the study of the style, and secondly, to be able to adapt it – through the work of A.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the Greek and Italiote Worlds: a Local Tarentine Perspective
    Beyond the Greek and Italiote Worlds: A Local Tarentine Perspective Alexandru Martalogu Department of History and Classical Studies McGill University, Montreal November 2017 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of the Master’s of Arts (History and Classical Studies – Ancient History) © Alexandru Martalogu 2017 Martalogu 2 Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………. 3 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………... 6 Chapter One: Taras’ Modest Beginnings………………………………………………… 18 Chapter Two: The “World-Wide” Cultural and Economic Greek Network……………... 24 Chapter Three: The Italiote World: Between Warfare and Cooperation……………….... 36 Chapter Four: Breaking the Chains: Tarentine Emancipation and Local Identity……….. 51 Conclusion: Beyond Taras and its Golden Age………………………………………….. 74 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….84 APPENDIX A…………………………………………………………………………......94 APPENDIX B……………………………………………………………………………..98 Martalogu 3 Abstract From its foundation in 706 B.C., Taras took advantage of its favourable geographic location and of its region’s long history of trade and network connections. Placed within previous discussions on the importance of the seas and other interactions in network and identity formation, this thesis seeks to contextualize and reveal the evolution of a distinctly local Tarentine identity. Whereas in previous works the importance of the “local” and its influence have been studied for the purpose of broader topics, the “local” city of Taras and its citizens are the primary focus of this research in an attempt to step away from the negative connotations associated with the city-state by the surviving ancient sources. The analysis of Taras’ early history reveals that the polis was founded in a region with a long history of pre-existing network connections, as well as a tendency to depend more heavily upon long distance connections with the Greek world.
    [Show full text]