Sources of Knowledge of Ancient Greece January 11

Sources of Knowledge of Ancient Greece January 11 th, 2012

What are the basic materials that historians use to reconstruct the world of ancient Greece?

The Nuts and Bolts of Historical (Re)construction n Written sources. n Art and archaeology. n Epigraphy. n Numismatics. n Papyri. n Comparative history and anthropology.

Early Writing and Written Sources n Evidence for existence of writing from at least ca. 1450 BCE (i. e. Linear B). n Greek characters inscribed on clay tablets. n Associated with Mycenaean palace centers. n Probably produced by a “scribe” class. n Mostly lists of produce and inventories. n Religious inscriptions. n First deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952. n Knowledge of writing lost ca. 1100 BCE; not re-acquired until ca. 800 BCE.

Writing Rediscovered n Writing recovered ca. 800 BCE from the Phoenicians (Lefkandi). n Phoenician script adapted to Greek language; Greeks added vowels. n The poetry of Homer (ca. 750 -700 BCE), Iliad and Odyssey; dates for Homeric poems highly contested. n The poetry of Hesiod (ca. 700 BCE), Theogony, Works and Days.

Archaic Writing (ca. 750 -480 BCE) n No extant writers aside from Homer and Hesiod. n Fragmentary (i. e. quotations from later writers). n Poetry - Tyrtaeus (ca. 650 BCE); Archilochus (ca. 650 BCE); Mimnermus (ca. 650 BCE); Sappho (ca. 600 BCE); Alcaeus (ca. 600 BCE); Solon (ca. 600 BCE); Theognis (ca. 550 BCE). n Natural Philosophy – Thales (624 -546 BCE); Anaximander (610 -546 BCE); Anaximines (585 -525 BCE); Heraclitus (ca. 500 BCE); Xenophanes (570 -480 BCE). n Historiography – Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 500 BCE)

The Archaic Epic and Lyric Poets n “Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear on me to the day of death. If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies…true, but the life that’s left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. ” (Homer, Iliad 9. 499 -505. R. Fagles, 1990) n “(ll. 405 -413) First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plough -- a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen as well -- and make everything ready at home, so that you may not have to ask of another, and he refuses you, and so, because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to nothing. Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who putts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin. ” (Hesiod, Works & Days, H. G. Evelyn -White, 1914 - http: //www. sacred-texts. com/cla/hesiod/works. htm) n “What life is there apart from Golden Aphrodite? What joy can there be? May I die when I no longer care for secret love and tender gifts and bed, the alluring blosoms of youth for men and women too. And when miserable old age comes on that makes a man both ugly and useless, then troublesome worries forever wear and tear at his wits, nor can he enjoy the sight of the sun’s rays. Boys find him hateful, women contemptible. So sorrowful a thing has the god made old age. ” (Mimnermus, Fr. 1 West. Trans. Fowler, 1992)

How can we use material such as Archaic epic or lyric poetry as sources of historical evidence?

Archaic Poetry and History n Few if any references to real historical events. n Myth and mythic references a common theme. n Reflect prevailing social values and customs.

The Writing of History n No separation between myth and history (i. e. Homeric epic accepted as history). n Historiography proper begins in the late 5 th century BCE. n Extant (or substantially extant) Histories: Herodotus (480 -425 BCE), Histories; Thucydides (460 -395 BCE), Peloponnesian Wars; Xenophon (428 -354 BCE), Hellenica; Polybius (200 -118 BCE), Histories; Diodorus Siculus, Library (fl. Ca. 60 BCE). n Numerous fragmentary historians (i. e. works that have survived as quotations in later writers – cf. F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker – 1923 -1959). n Biographers, i. e. Plutarch (50 -120 CE), Parallel Lives. n Geographers, i. e. Strabo (ca. 63 BCE – 27 CE), Geography

What do historians need to know before using ancient histories as historical evidence?

A Critical Approach n Working methods and assumptions. n Evidence (i. e. eye-witnesses; oral informants; other historians; myth, legend, and folklore; inscriptions and monuments). n Perspective and bias (Exclusively written by elite males for elite males; War and politics; Political bias; Ethnic bias; Class bias). n Authorial Objective (i. e. Panegyric, Apologetics, Analysis). n Genre (i. e. Biography not history).

Authorial Objective in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius n “This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other. ” (Herodotus, Histories, 1. 1. 0. Trans. A. D. Godley, 1920) n “And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. I will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever. ” (Thuc. 1. 22, R. Warner 1954) n “Had previous chroniclers neglected to speak in praise of History in general, it might perhaps have been necessary for me to recommend everyone to choose for study and welcome such treatises as the present, since men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past. But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. Evidently therefore no one, and least of all myself, would think it his duty at this day to repeat what has been so well and so often said. For the very element of unexpectedness in the events I have chosen as my theme will be sufficient to challenge and incite everyone, young and old alike, to peruse my systematic history. For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government — a thing unique in history? Or who again is there so passionately devoted to other spectacles or studies as to regard anything as of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge? ” (Polybius, Histories 1. 1. Trans. W. R. Patton, 1922)

Other Written Sources n Oratory (i. e. surviving political and law-court speeches). n Philosophical writing. n Drama (i. e. Tragedy and Comedy). n Epigraphy (i. e. inscriptions of laws, decrees, treaties etc. ).

Oratory n Lysias (459 -380 BCE), Andocides (440 -390 BCE), Isocrates (436 -338 BCE), Isaeus (420 -340 BCE), Demosthenes (384 -322 BCE). n Beware rhetorical considerations; some oratorical material the work of professional logographers. n Beware of objectives (i. e. trying to win a lawsuit; trying to propose/oppose legislation etc. ). n Highly Athenocentric.

Lysias 1: The Murder of Eratosthenes n Euphiletus on trial for the murder of Eratosthenes. n Eratosthenes had an affair with Euphiletus’ wife. n Euphiletus claiming legal right to kill an adulterer. n Euphelitus attempts to idealize his marital life in order depict Eratosthenes as a predatory “homewrecker. ”

Lysias Reflects on Women and Marriage n “When I, Athenians, decided to marry, and brought a wife into my house, for some time was disposed neither to vex her nor to leave her too free to do just as she pleased; I kept watch on her as far as possible, with such observation of her as was reasonable. But when a child was born to me, thenceforward I began to trust her, and placed all my affairs in her hands, presuming that we were now in perfect intimacy. It is true that in the early days, Athenians, she was the most excellent of wives; she was a clever, frugal housekeeper, and kept everything in the nicest order. ” (Lysias 1. Lim & Bailkey, 2005). n “Now in the first place I must tell you, sirs (for I am obliged to give you these particulars), my dwelling is on two floors, the upper being equal in space to the lower, with the women’s quarters above and the men’s below. ” (Lysias 1. Lim & Bailkey, 2005) n “You hear, gentlemen, how the law directs that, if anyone indecently assaults a free man or a child, he shall be liable to double damages, while if he so debauches a woman, in any of the cases where it is permitted to kill him, he is subject to the same rule. Thus the lawgiver, gentlemen, considered that those who commit rape deserve a less penalty than those who use persuasion. For these latter he prescribed death, whereas for rapists he doubled the damages, considering that those who achieved their ends by force are hated by the persons forced, while those who used persuasion corrupted thereby their victims’ souls, thus making the wives of others more closely attached to themselves than to their husbands, and got the whole house into their hands, and caused uncertainty as to whose the children really were, the husbands’ or the adulterers’. In view of all this the author of the law made death their penalty. ” (Lysias 1. Trans. W. R. M. Lamb. 1930. Nagles & Burstein, 2006. pp. 126 -7)

How can we use the writings of Philosophers as historical evidence?

Philosophical Writing as Historical Evidence n Aristotle (384 -322 BCE), Plato (429 -347 BCE). n Evidence of intellectual life. n Philosophers, starting in the sixth century BCE began to write about a wide variety of subjects (Pre-Socratics only survive in fragments). n n Natural science and medicine. Religion and theology. Politics, law, and ethics. Art and literature. n Must beware of certain social, political, religious, and intellectual assumptions.

Aristotle on Slavery n “This is why our poets have said, ‘meet it is that barbarous peoples should be ruled by Greeks. ’ – the assumption being that the barbarian and the slave are by nature one and the same thing. ” (Aristotle, Politics, 1. 2. 4. E. Barker, 1958)

Drama as Historical Evidence n Worship of Dionysus. n Tragedy emerges first (Tragoidia; Dithyramb). n Central element in the Great Dionysia since ca. 535 BCE; Playwrights enter 3 tragedies and a Satyr Play. n Comedies added later. n Juries voted first, second, and third place for each category (tragedy, satyr play, comedy). n Old Comedy very political; ridiculed real people etc. n What can comedy or tragedy tell us about the society that produced them?

Aeschylus, Eumenides (458 BCE): Athena and the Trial of Orestes n “Too large a matter, some may think, for mortal men to judge. But by all rights not even I should decide a case of murder – murder whets the passions. Above all, the rites have tamed your wildness. A suppliant, cleansed, you bring my house no harm. If you are innocent, I’d adopt you for my city. But they have their destiny too, hard to dismiss, and if they fail to win their day in court – how it will spread, the venom of their pride, plague everlasting blights our land, our future…So it stands, a crisis either way. Embrace the one? Expel the other? It defeats me. But since the matter comes to rest on us, I will appoint the judges of manslaughter, swear them in, and found a tribunal here for all time to come. My contestants, summon your trusted witnesses and proofs, your defenders under oath to help your cause. And I will pick the finest men of Athens, return and decide the issue fairly, truly – bound to our oaths, our spirits bent on justice. ”

Epigraphy n Inscriptions. n Graves. n Laws. n Decrees and political decisions. n Treaties. n Trophies. n Dedications.

Phyle, Wife of Thessalos: Inscription, Priene (1 st Century BCE) n “Phyle, daughter of Apollonios and wife of Thessalos, the son of Polydeukes, after having been the first woman to hold the office of crown bearer, paid for with her own money a cistern for water and the water pipes in the city. ” (Inschriften von Priene 208. Nagle & Burstein, 296)

The Dedication of Heliodorus Late 2 nd Century BCE n This Garuda pillar of the god of gods, Vasudeva, was caused to be made by Heliodorus, the devotee, the son of Dion, from Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the court of the Great King Antialkidas to Bhagabadra, the son of Kasi, the Savior, who was then in the fourteenth year of his prosperous reign. (“Dedication to the Hindu god Vishnu by Heliodorus, son of Dion. Besnegar, India. ” The Hellenistic Age from the battle of Ipsos to the death of Kleopatra VII. Ed. Stanley, M. Burstein. Cambridge, 1985. Inscr. 53. , Trans. K. Bohlle & J. Puhvel )

Ostraka http: //ccwf. cc. utexas. edu/~kallet/greece/Pic%20 Ostraka. jpg

How can historians use ancient art as historical evidence?

Art and Archaeology n Art and archaeology invaluable. n Pottery used to establish chronology and patterns of trade. n Art (i. e. painting and sculpture etc. ) tells us many things that written histories can’t: 1. Standards of beauty. 2. Scenes of daily life. 3. Social, Religious, Cultural concerns. 4. Record of cross-cultural influences.

Art as a Source of Historical Evidence www. edu. pe. ca/. . . /art/egyptian_art. htm www. metmuseum. org/toah/ho/04/eusb/hob_32. 11. 1. htm http: //faculty. evansville. edu/rl 29/art 105/img/greek_kore. jpg

Pottery and Its Uses: The Eurymedon Vase (ca. 460 BCE) http: //www. mkg-hamburg. de/mkg. php/en/sammlungen/antike/~P 7

How do you think coins (numismatic evidence) can be used by historians?

The Uses of Coins in Historical Reconstruction n Quantity and distribution of currency provide evidence for volume and patterns of trade. n Level of material prosperity can be gauged from coin quantity and fabric. n Images and inscriptions on coins convey political and cultural information.

Cultural Interaction: Silver Drachma of Menander (Greek/Kharosthi) http: //www. mlahanas. de/Greeks/History/Indo. Greek. Kingdom. html

Questions?