An outline, era by era

Greek Dark Ages, then Archaic Greece; Homer; city-states (Athens, Sparta)

Iron Age · ~1200 – ~500 BCE

The Greek Dark Ages (roughly 1100 to 800 BCE) followed the collapse of the Mycenaean palace centres around 1200 BCE. Population fell, large buildings and writing in the Linear B script disappeared, and communities shrank and grew more local. Recovery came slowly. By about 800 BCE trade with the Near East had revived, a new alphabet adapted from the Phoenician script was in use, and the Greek world had begun to rebuild.

The Archaic period (about 800 to 480 BCE) saw the rise of the polis, or city-state, a small independent community of citizens centred on a town and its farmland. Athens and Sparta became the best known, but they developed very differently. This was also the age of the epics attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and of early lawgivers, tyrants, lyric poets and the first experiments in citizen government. These changes shaped the later Classical world and much of Western political thought.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The collapse of the Mycenaean palaces

    Event

    What happened

    Around 1200 BCE the palace centres of Mycenaean Greece, among them Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns, are destroyed or abandoned over a period of decades. The palace administrations end, and with them the Linear B script, which was used to keep their records. The clay tablets from Pylos, preserved because they were baked in the fire that destroyed the palace, show it preparing for some danger shortly before its fall. Settlements across Greece shrink in number and size over the following generations.

    The rest is history

    The causes are debated. Scholars have proposed invaders, internal conflict, earthquakes, climate stress and the wider upheaval of the eastern Mediterranean at this time, and many now favour a combination of causes over a single one. What followed is not in doubt. Greece lost its palace kings, its monumental building and its writing, and the population fell. Communities became smaller and more local, which is why the centuries after about 1100 BCE are called the Greek Dark Ages. Out of this scattered world the later poleis grew, and the Greeks regained writing only around the eighth century BCE, with an alphabet adapted from the Phoenician script.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryLinear B tablets from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. Mycenaean Greek administrative records, c. 1200 BCE.Baked hard in the destruction fire, they show the palace's last administration.
    2. BookCline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.Survey of the debated causes of the Bronze Age collapse.
    3. BookDesborough, V. R. d'A. The Greek Dark Ages. London: Ernest Benn, 1972.

  2. Homer, the blind poet

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Homer is a blind bard who wanders the Greek world singing of the anger of Achilles and the long journey home of Odysseus. Seven cities claim to be his birthplace, and he alone composes both great epics.

    The rest is history

    The ancient Lives of Homer, written centuries later, say he was blind and from Chios or Smyrna, but they are mostly invention. Nothing reliable is known about the poet's life. The Iliad and Odyssey were probably composed around 750 to 650 BCE, and the Homeric Question asks whether one poet or several made them. Milman Parry and Albert Lord showed in the twentieth century that the poems use formulas typical of oral composition, as in the living tradition of Yugoslav singers. The epics were later written down in the new alphabet, and they were recited at Athens at the Panathenaic festival.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHomer. Iliad and Odyssey. Greek epic poems, composed c. 750-650 BCE.The poems themselves say nothing reliable about their author.
    2. BookParry, Milman. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Edited by Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
    3. BookWest, M. L. The Making of the Iliad: Disquisition and Analytical Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  3. Lycurgus and the laws of Sparta

    Origin story

    The legend

    The lawgiver Lycurgus travels abroad, then returns to give Sparta its laws, which he gets approval for from the oracle at Delphi. He divides the land equally, bans gold and silver coin, and sets up the common meals and the harsh training of boys. He then makes the Spartans swear to keep his laws until he returns, and leaves and never comes back.

    The rest is history

    The story is told most fully by Plutarch, writing around 100 CE, many centuries after the events. Even ancient writers disagreed about when Lycurgus lived, and he may not have been a real person. Herodotus already says the Spartans credited him with their order. Early Spartan poets such as Tyrtaeus, in the seventh century BCE, show a state shaped by war with Messenian neighbours, whom Sparta conquered and made into a subject population called helots. The Spartan system of training and citizen soldiers probably developed gradually, with the fullest form taking shape in the sixth century BCE.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryPlutarch. Life of Lycurgus. Greek biography, c. 100 CE. In Parallel Lives.The fullest ancient account of Lycurgus.
    2. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories 1.65-66. Greek history, c. 430 BCE.Early mention of Lycurgus and the Delphic oracle.
    3. BookCartledge, Paul. Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 BC. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.

  4. Solon and the cancelling of debts

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Athens is torn by debt, and poor farmers are being sold into slavery. The wise Solon is asked to settle the quarrel. He cancels debts, frees those enslaved, and writes laws that give each class of citizen a share in government. Then he leaves the city for ten years so that no one can make him undo them.

    The rest is history

    Solon was a real Athenian statesman and poet, archon around 594 BCE, though the date is debated. Fragments of his own poems survive and defend his reforms, including his boast that he freed the land by removing the debt markers. Later writers such as Aristotle and Plutarch added detail, and some of it is doubtful. He divided citizens into four classes by wealth and opened some offices to a wider range of men. His reforms did not end conflict, and tyranny under Peisistratos came about thirty years later.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAristotle. Constitution of the Athenians 5-12. Greek treatise, c. 330-322 BCE.Account of Solon's reforms, quoting his poems.
    2. PrimaryPlutarch. Life of Solon. Greek biography, c. 100 CE. In Parallel Lives.
    3. BookLewis, John. Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens. London: Duckworth, 2006.

  5. Cleisthenes and the birth of democracy

    Popular belief

    The legend

    After the Athenians drive out the tyrant Hippias, the reformer Cleisthenes gives power to the people. In one stroke Athens becomes the world's first democracy, with every man a free and equal voice.

    The rest is history

    Herodotus says that Cleisthenes in 508 BCE reorganised Athenian citizens into ten new tribes drawn from local communities called demes, and set up a council of 500. This broke the power of old aristocratic families and is usually seen as the start of Athenian democracy, though the word demokratia is not found until later. The change was not so sudden. Solon's reforms and the Spartan intervention against Hippias came first, and further changes followed, especially in the 460s BCE. Citizens were free adult men only, and women, slaves and foreigners were excluded.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories 5.66-78. Greek history, c. 430 BCE.Account of Cleisthenes' rise and reforms.
    2. PrimaryAristotle. Constitution of the Athenians 20-22. Greek treatise, c. 330-322 BCE.
    3. BookOber, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

  6. Hesiod and the Ages of Man

    Myth

    The legend

    Hesiod tells how the gods first made a golden race of men who lived without toil, then silver, bronze, and a race of heroes, and at last the iron race of his own day. In this age men labour and suffer by day and night. He tells it to his brother Perses, who has cheated him of his inheritance.

    The rest is history

    Hesiod's Works and Days was composed around 700 BCE in Boeotia, and it gives us a rare view of the life of a farmer in Archaic Greece. The poem includes the myth of the five ages, with the heroes inserted between bronze and iron, perhaps to fit the memory of the epic heroes. The quarrel with Perses may reflect a real dispute, though this is uncertain. The poem calls for justice and hard work, and shows the world of small farmers and local lords who judged cases. The Theogony, also attributed to Hesiod, describes the birth of the gods.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHesiod. Works and Days, lines 106-201. Greek poem, c. 700 BCE.
    2. BookWest, M. L. Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.Edition with commentary.
    3. BookSnodgrass, Anthony. Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment. London: Dent, 1980.

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