The Rise of Greek Civilization

A. The Rise of Archaic Greece, 1000-500BCE

1. Geography and Resources--while Greece benefited from a Mediterranean climate, the rocky, mountainous land could not support  a very large population in the ancient world, and resulted in the Greeks establishing colonies around the Mediterranean.

a. Summers are hot and dry in the regions, because a prevailing weather front prevents Atlantic storms  from entering the Mediterranean;  in the winter, the front dissolves and ocean storms roll in, making the weather cool and wet.

b. Southern Greece is a dry and rocky land, with small plains areas separated by low mountains. To the east  of the Greek peninsula, the Aegean Sea is home to hundreds of small islands, populated from early times. People could sail from Greece to Anatolia almost without losing sight of land.

c. Greek farmers were almost entirely reliant upon rainfall for growing crops. Farmers planted grain (mostly barley, since it is hardier than wheat) on the plains, and olives and grapes on the sides of mountains.

d. The Greek mainland has a deeply pitted coastline with many natural harbors. This fact, coupled with the lack of navigable rives in the country and the need to import most trade goods, drew many  Greeks to the sea.

2. The Greek "Dark Age"--like the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, Mycenaean Greece experience a crisis around 1200 B.C.E.--scholars are not exactly sure why, although it may have something to do with climate change affecting agriculture, the spread of a catastrophic disease, invasion--or a combination of these factors.

a. Mycenaean Culture--largely and adaptation to the Greek terrain of the imported institutions  of Middle Eastern palace-states

b. Causes for decline--perhaps tied to the after-effects of the Trojan War? A long, costly battle, and may have resulted with Greeks returning home with the bubonic plague.

c. Ionia--the Greek city-states were established along the west coast of Anatolia before and after the Trojan War

d. Isolation--during this Dark Age era, the Greeks were largely isolated from the rest of the world. Importation of needed trade materials steeply declined, which further impoverished the people.

e. Phoenician traders--the Greeks were reconnected to the world through trade with the Phoenicians, who also brought their alphabet, which the Greeks modified (designating some symbols for vowel sounds, which the Phoenicians had not utilized). The Greeks quickly moved on from commercial uses for this innovation to create literature, writing down oral traditions they had long told each other.

3. The Nature of the Polis--polis is another name  for city-state, and designated not only a particular city, but also included the hinterland that surrounded the city.

a. Physical features--the polis utilized the physical features of the landscape it was  built on. A hilltop "acropolis," often surrounded by a wall, offered refuge in an emergency, and acted  as the seat of government. Each polis also had an agora, a square where citizens met to ratify the decisions of their leaders, assemble before marching off to war--or just to get goods at the market.

b. Hoplite warfare--each polis  was jealous of its independence, and suspicious of its neighbors. By the early seventh century BCE,  the Greeks has developed a new form of warfare, called hoplite, which utiliized heavily armored infantrymen fighting in close formation. Hoplites were farmers called to service  for short periods of time; this development helped to shape the development of the polis, because the morale of the hoplites was boosted by giving them rights as citizens, so they had some voice in the government of the polis.

4. Political development--while kings ruled in the Mycenaean Age, during the Archaic period a new kind of political system began to develop in the Greek polis.

a. Tyrants--power in the Greek city-state devolved from kings to the aristocracy.  Disgruntled aristocrats, acting  as  tyrants, had to appeal to persons in the lower orders of society to obtain, or regain, political power. This itself quickly devolved  in to democracy

5.  Sparta--Sparta had a rather unique development as a polis, since it had no overseas colonies. Instead, Sparta conquered and enslaved the people of nearby Messenia, enslaving their fellow Greeks, whom they now referred to as helots. Constantly in fear of an uprising of these helots, Spartan society became completely militarized. Boys were taken from the families at age seven and place in barracks, where they were severely disciplined, and taught the arts of war.

a. Spartan family life--Spartan women had a great deal of independence, because Spartan males were often absent from the home--either off to war, or eating meals in the barracks with other soldiers and soldier trainees. Women were responsible for running the household--maintaining discipline for the slave workforce as well as the family members present who weren't males over the age of 7.

b. Spartan espirit de corps--older Spartan men took younger men under their wing, including having sex with them. While we would identify these men as homosexual or bisexual today, this concept would have been foreign to Spartans of the time--this was simply a means of building camraderie and espirit de corps.

c. Battle of Thermopylae--made famous for modern audiences by graphic novelist Frank Miller and in the movie 300, the Spartans were a part of the group of Greeks who held off a much larger contingent of Persians during the second invasion (the Persians were eventually defeated because of Athenian naval power).

d. Fall of Sparta--the militarization of their society eventually caused the fall of Sparta, because they could not replace the population the lost in war.

B. Phoenicia and the Mediterranean, 1200-500BCE--Phoenicia is the name given to them by the Greeks; they called themselves the Canaanites.

1. Phoenician City-States--the problems around 1200BCE caused several Canaanite cities to be destroyed, and the Canaanite cities that remained were on the coast. By 1100BCE,  the Canaanite territory had shrunk to a narrow strip in present-day Lebanon, between the mountains and the coast. From this vantage point, the Phoenicians began to engage in trade, which spurred the development of  the port city of Tyre, which was located on an offshore island.

2. Expansion into the Mediterranean--after 900BCE, Tyre turned its attention westward, and established a colony on the island of Cyprus. Being hemmed in by an aggressive Assyrian opponent, merchants and officials in Tyre looked westward to expand and establish colonies like Gades (Cadiz) at the Straits of Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, and Carthage.

3. Rise of Carthage--the most important of these Phoenician colonies was located in northern Africa, near the present-day city of Tunis.

a. By 500BCE, Carthage had a population of roughly 400,000 people, making it by far the largest city in the ancient world.

b. Political organization was dominated by merchants, rather than by birth. This aided Carthage in avoiding the political conflict that created difficulties in Greek city-state and in Rome. Carthage concentrated on maintaining sea lanes, and ensuring that they received the lion's share of the "carrying trade."

4. War and Religion

a. Carthage did not attempt to rule a huge land area; in fact, it only directly controlled an area sufficient to provide food for its population, and allowed the other Phoenician outposts a great deal of  autonomy. Army service was not required of the population.

b. The two major gods--storm god Baal Hammon   and female fertility god Tanit, were powerful and capricious entities that had to be appeased--sometimes by the sacrifice of the children of their followers