The stages of Greek historical development and ancient Greek culture

The stages of Greek historical development and ancient Greek culture

Subtopics: The periodization of ancient Greek history
The ancient Greek „miracle” The „great stages” of the historical development of ancient Greece (The Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Age ) The „great stages” of ancient Greek culture and humanism The emergence of the individual in Archaic Age The birth of artistic humanism in Classical Age The flourishing educational humanism in Hellenistic Age

The periodization of the ancient Greek history
Prehistoric times – Minoan and Mycenaean civilization (18-12/11. c. BC.) Dark Age (11-8. c. BC.) Archaic Age (8-6. c. BC.) – The rebirth of the civilization. The Great Colonization. The birth and the social revolution of the polis. Classical Age (5-4. c. BC.) – The Greek-Persian wars. The summit/height of the flourishing Greek culture. The crisis of the polis. Hellenistic Age (3-1. c. BC.) – The conquests of Alexander the Great. The Greek cultural influence in the Near East. Hellenistic territorial states.

The ancient Greek „miracle” 1
Many civilizations have basic characteristics. Although reason (rationalism, rationality) was employed for practical and intellectual purposes in some of these cultures, it still lacked independence from religion, and it lacked the high status to challenge the most traditional ideas. In the world history standard form of government has been monarchy. Outside the West, republics have been unknown. In general, rulers have been considered to be divine or appointed spokesmen for divinity. Religious and political institutions and beliefs have been deeply interconnected as a mutually supportive unified structure.

Government has not been subject to secular reasoned analysis. It has rested on religious authority, tradition, and power. The concept of individual freedom has had no importance in most cultures of human history. The first and the sharpest break with this common human experience came in ancient Greece. The Greek city states - called poleis - were republics. The differences in wealth among their citizens were relatively small. There were no kings with the wealth to hire mercenary soldiers. So the citizens had to do their own fighting and to decide when to fight.

As independent defenders of the common safety and the common interest, they demanded a role in the most important political decisions. In this way, for the first time, political life really was invented. This is the reason why the word “political” derives from the Greek word polis. Before that no word was needed because there was no such thing. A relatively large number of the people took part in political life, and participation in political life was highly valued by the Greeks.

Such states, of course, did not need a bureaucracy because there were no enormous royal or state holdings that needed management and not much economic surplus to support a bureaucratic class. There was no separate class of priests and there was very little concern with life after death which was universally important in other civilizations. In this dynamic, secular, and remarkably free context, there arose for the first time a speculative natural philosophy based on observation and reason. It was the root of modern natural science and philosophy, free to investigate or to ignore divinity.

Where other peoples have seen continuity and traditon the Greeks and the successors of their way of thinking, have tended to notice discontinuities and innovations. The Greeks focused on a reliance on reason. Reason permits a continuing rational inquiry into the nature of reality. Unlike mystical insights, scientific theories cannot be adapted by meditation alone but require accurate observation of the world and reasoning that other human beings can criticize, analyze, modify, and correct. The adoption of this way of thinking was the beginning of the liberation of reason.

From the time they formed their republics until they were conquered by alien empires, the Greeks rejected monarchy of any kind. They supposed that a human being functioning in his full capacity must live as a free man in an autonomous polis ruled by laws that were the product of the political community and not dependent arbitrarily from some men or gods. Greek political ideas about laws and justice have simply not flourished outside the Western tradition.

The Greeks developed a unique sense of mankind’s high place in the natural order. On the one hand, they had a very high picture about the place of man in the world, but they combined it with a painful understanding of the limitations of the greatness and the possibilities of man. This combination of the greatness and limitation (being mortality); that together compose the tragic vision of the human condition that characterized classical Greek civilization. To cope with it, they urged human beings to restrain their ambitions.

To demonstrate it an important sentence was inscribed at Apollo’s temple at Delphi. These words had been written above the entrance of the Temple: “Know yourself,” and another statement, “Nothing in Excess.” Those together really mean this: know your own limitations as a fallible mortal, and then exercise moderation because you are not divine, you are mortal.

The Greeks relied on a good political regime to enable human beings to fulfill the capacities, to train them in virtue, and to restrain them from the evil. Aristotle, the greatest Greek philosopher said that the justice needed to control the dark side of human nature can be found only in a well ordered society of free people who govern themselves. The only social order that Aristotle highly appreciated was the polis of the Greeks.

The rebirth of the civilization in the Archaic Age 1
Homer lived at the beginning of the Archaic Age. The Archaic Age was the succeeding epoch after the Dark Age from 800 to 500 BC. It was an essential period of the ancient Greek history when civilization itself was reborn after the long decline of the Dark Age. What does it mean? Firstly the urban pattern of the Greek civilization slowly crystallized again. The birth of the polis was the most important issue of the Archaic Age with some definite characteristics. The polis – as a self-governing autonomous community – significantly differed from Minoan and Mycenaean urban patterns.

Moreover, it was the time for the reappearance of written records. At the 8th century BC., at some time before the appearance of these historical records, local kingships were overthrown by tribal aristocracies, and cities were founded or developed under the domination of these tribal nobilities. The landowner tribal aristocracy possessed the majority of lands. The emergence of the aristocratic rule in the Archaic Greece coincided with some aspects of economic development: (1.) The reappearance of long-distance trade mainly with Syria and the East, (2.) the beginnings of the coinage (invented in Lydia – Asia Minor – in the 7th century), and (3.) the creation of the alphabetic script (derived from Phoenicia).

In the long run these economic changes rather weakened the power of the landowner aristocracy, and promoted the birth of democracy, but in short term aristocracy strengthened. Moreover, it was the period of the spread of iron manufactured products after the Bronze Age. It seems probable that Greek pottery and iron products had comparative advantage and higher quality than any other products in the Mediterranean basin, because they were able to dominate the whole Mediterranean trade by the end of the Archaic Age. Urbanization and commercial mastery of the Greeks proceeded steadily, spilling out overseas into the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The Greeks settled down everywhere in the Mediterranean region – it was the age of the Great Colonization. By the end of the colonization period in the mid 6th century BC., there were about 1500 Greek cities in the Greek homelands and abroad – none of them more than 25 miles far from the coastline. (maritime charcter!) Furthermore, the Archaic Age was the epoch of the beginning of monumental architecture and sculpture, and the birth of philosophy and lyric poems which was evidence of the appearance of the individual.

Literacy, monumental architecture and urbanism – they are the key aspects of every civilization, and they demonstrated the rebirth of the civilization in Greece after the Dark Age. Although the first part of the Archaic Age was an epoch when oriental effects became stronger for some time, it was the period when the ancient Greek civilization established its own ideals which was new, autonomous and independent from the oriental civilizations. The most important events of the Archaic Age were 1.) the Great Colonization process and 2.) the birth of the polis with its definite characteristic features in the Archaic Age, and 3.) the evolving social revolution in some city-states in connection with the economic development of the polis which resulted in the birth of democracy.

The historical development of ancient Greece 1 The Great Colonization
The Dark Age was an ambivalent period, on the one hand it was a period of decline, on the other hand during the years B.C. the Greeks not only recovered from the breakdown of the Mycenaean world – the spread of the iron! -, but also grew in wealth and numbers. This new prosperity brought with it new problems already at the beginning of the Archaic Age. Greece is a small and not especially fertile country. Their increase in population meant that many men and their families had very little land or none at all. Land hunger and the resulting social and political tensions drove many Greeks to seek new homes outside of Greece.

Other factors – the desire for a new start, a love of excitement and adventure, and natural curiosity about what lay beyond their own lands – played their part as well. This interest was represented in the Odyssey where the protagonist had a lot of adventures in the Western Mediterranean region. Homer’s poem clearly pointed to the fact that the interest of the Greeks after the Dark Age turned toward the sea again, especially to the western Mediterranean basin. Furthermore, the favourable conditions of the Mediterranean resulted in the fact that the Greeks were always seafaring people. To them the sea was a highway, not a barrier.

Through their commercial ventures they had long been familiar with the rich areas of the western Mediterranean. (maritime character) Moreover, the geography of the Mediterranean basin supported the colonization. The land and climate of the Mediterranean region are remarkably uniform. The Greeks settled down in regions – Sicily, Southern Italy, and northern coastline of the Black Sea – where agricultural production – especially wheat – was promoted by exceptionally favourable climatic conditions and rich soil.

These new areas, peripheries had comparative advantage in the field of traditional extensive agriculture – wheat, barley – while the significance of oil and wine production and some industries and commercial activities – especially pottery – began to develop in Greek homeland. (Peripheries – core regions) The great colonization had a special feedback towards the Greek homeland, and caused a new division of labour in Mediterranean dimension. These economic changes led to the rearrangement of social stratification in homeland city-states in favour of the middle-classes who worked as oil and vine producers, small-holders, artisans and merchants, and these changes weakened the traditional tribal landowner aristocracy which was interested in extensive traditional agriculture.

From about 750 to 550 BC., Greeks from the mainland and from Asia Minor spread to the coasts of the northern Aegean, the Ionian Sea (at Italy), and the Black Sea, and into North Africa, Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, Spain. Greek settlers founded Marseilles (Massilia), and Naples. Colonization on this scale had a profound impact on the course of world civilization. It meant that the prevailing/dominating culture of the Mediterranean basin would be Greek, the heritage which was inherited by Rome later

The historical development of ancient Greece 6 The birth and the social revolution of the polis
The first city-states appeared in the 8. c. BC. In the Archaic Age the city was generally surrounded by a wall. The city contained a point, usually higher, called the acropolis, and a public square or marketplace (agora). On the acropolis which in the early period was a place for refuge, stood the temples, altars, public monuments, and dedications to the gods of the polis. The agora was originally the place where the warrior assembly met, but it gradually became a political and economic center of the polis. In the agora there were shops, public buildings and courts.The agora was a marketplace as well where citizens were able to change their products.

Comparing with Mesopotamian societies the market had fundamental importance in the ancient Greek society, while the market was only a late phenomenon with restricted significance in Mesopotamia. The state, or the great landowners in oriental countries maintained their basic role in redistribution of the products with the help of strong administrative hierarchy. In comparison with this situation, agora was a completely new order of economy in Greece, because it promoted the change of goods among producers who were able to be contacted personally and directly. The agora can be interpreted as the first historical form of the market. Emerging markets had important role in the course of the history of Western civilization.

The polis contributed radical political innovations to the history of European civilization. The idea of polis-community which can govern itself had been evolved by the end of the Archaic Age, as a consequence of social revolutions between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. It was the essence of the social revolution that traditional tribal landowner aristocracy which had been able to keep under its control the city-state at the beginning of the Archaic Age, gradually gave up the power, and the strengthening and broadening peasant, artisan, craftsman and merchant middle-classes were able to grab the governance of the city-state by the end of the Archaic Age.

This rearrangement of political-social relations was due partly to the consequences of the great colonization because it led to increasing circulation of industrial and commercial products - it resulted in strenghtening middle classes - and partly to the new style of warfare. The new heavy infantry (hoplites), which seemed to be stronger and more effective in wars, than traditional aristocratic cavalry, was recruited from broadening middle classes. It also led to increasing importance of the emerging middle classes and it contributed to weakening old aristocratic families. Although there were many patterns of this social development, the paradigmatic way was represented by Athens.

Fundamental innovation In contrast with despotic rule of eastern societies the Greeks developed the idea of community which is autonomous, independent and can govern itself. At the end of the Archaic Age the isonomy became a key issue of the social revolution process – appeared many times in written sources –, which is referred to the phenomenon of gradually broadening political participation, and to the fact that rights and duties were the same for every citizen in the city-states.

The concept of isonomy gradually led to the idea of democracy which had not only its radical novelty and innovations, but it had its definite limits in ancient Greece comparing with modern democracies. As Benjamin Constant, the 19th century liberal thinker called the attention to the fact, that the ancient democracy made possible the right of decision for everybody in the assembly but didn’t guaranty the defence of privacy or private life against the tyranny of majority. It was a fundamental difference between ancient and modern democracies. The Athenian democracy was a precondition of modern democracies to some extent, but it had some deficiencies as well.

The historical development of ancient Greece 12 The crisis of the polis
According to the opinion of German historians (19th c.), the 5th century BC. can be seen as a „golden age” and summit of ancient Greek history after the Persian wars – it is called the Classical Age – when the Greeks were able to defend themselves against the Persians. This was not only a war, but contributed to the strenghtening self-identity of the Greeks and their democratic political values. There were historians and writers in the 19th c. – for example Humboldt, Winckelmann, Goethe and Schiller – who considered this „golden age” as a perfect age of human world history and world civilization. This flourishing age had been ended by the end of the 5th century BC., and from the beginning of the 4th century BC. modern historiography speaks about the crisis of the city states.

Mainly the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta – they were the strongest powers of the Greeks - led to the crisis introducing political and economic decline and deep social changes at the turn of the 5-4th centuries BC. The golden age of the Athenian democracy was based on strong middle classes. Aristotle the great philosopher realized in the 4th century BC. that a democracy can work only with middle classes. Aristotle was convinced - firstly in Europe - that a democracy should be based on strong middle classes, and the lack of middle classes can lead to a weakening democracy.

So the reason of the crisis can be derived from the consequences of the Peloponnesian war when Athenian middle classes largely lost their lands and businesses. The final result was the strong polarization of society. Rich families became richer and poor families poorer. The richest families were able to manipulate the general assembly. This declining democracy in the 4th century BC. was an important experience for modern liberal political philosophers who suggested that citizens can elect or can be elected only in that case they have real financial independence and autonomy and nobody can manipulate them.

The crisis became more and more widespread in the Greek peninsula, and it covered the whole Greek homeland in the 4th century BC. In the middle of the 4th century BC., the influential Athenian orator and teacher, Isocrates promoted the idea of panhellenism. Isocrates declared that the Greeks have a common culture, and it depends not on the citizenship of the city-states but on the common education which is the same for every Greek man. (In the Archaic and Classical Age the category of identity was still based on polis- citizenship.) Isocrates’s idea was a radically new concept which already prepared the spirit of Hellenism which was a worldwide cosmopolitan culture.

According to Isocrates’s opinion the Greeks should solve their debates by initiating a common war against Persia. The Greeks did not forget that the Persians had destroyed their temples when Persian king, Xerxes had attacked Greece in the 5th century BC. It is an interesting fact for us that the war against the Persian Empire which was led by Alexander the Great can be seen as a religious war from ideological perspective. Alexander the Great occupied the Persian Empire to the boundary of India. This is the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. The Greeks had great impact on the Near East at that time. Instead of city states and their culture territorial states were born from the Hellas to the Middle East, and a new worldvide culture emerged.

The „great stages” of ancient Greek culture and humanism
Changing concepts of humanism in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Ages Reshaping cultural patterns can be characterised with changing concepts of humanism. Now we are dealing with three developing forms and patterns of emerging humanism: firstly the emerging individual in the Archaic Age in the field of literature, secondly the artistic humanism in the Classical Age in the field of fine arts, thirdly the birth of the concept of human dignity in the field of education in the Hellenistic Age. As a starting point, it’s indispensable to mention the epic poems of Homer which represented the community-oriented heroic set of values at the beginning of the Greek history.

The age of Homer 1 Homer, the great Greek poet probably lived in the 8th century BC. He witnessed at the borderline of three worlds. He was the last representative of the Dark Age – describing the social relations of the „dark centuries” -, and he told heroic stories of the Mycenaean world, and was the first figure of the Archaic Age bringing a new dynamism leading to characteristic features of the Greek development. The Greeks, unlike the Hebrews, had no sacred book on their past. The Greek tribes weren’t interested in their historical origins differing from the Romans. Instead they had the Iliad and the Odyssey to describe a heroic time. The Greeks rather were interested in the birth of Gods and the beginnings of the world, as Homer and Hesiod did it.

The age of Homer 2 The Greeks regarded the Iliad and the Odyssey as authentic history recorded by one poet, Homer. These masterpieces gave the Greeks an ideal past with a collection of heroes, and came to be used as standard texts for the education of generations of Greek men. The values Homer taught were essentially the aristocratic values of courage and honour. A hero struggle for excellence which the Greeks called arete. In the warrior aristocratic world of Homer arete is won in a military struggle or contest. Through his willingness to fight, the hero protects his family and friends – it’a community-oriented set of values -, preserves his own honour and that of his family and earns his reputation. Homer gave the Greeks a model of heroism, honour and nobility.

The emergence of the individual in Archaic Age 1
There was a man who can in many ways stand as the symbol of the vital period of colonization which opened the life of the Greeks to adventures. He was Archilochus who lived in the 7th century BC. Archilochus was born on the island of Paros, as the bastard son of an aristocrat. He knew that because of his illegitimacy he would never inherit his father’s land, and he could rely only on himself. He was also a poet of genius, the first of the lyric poets who left a strong mark on his age. Unlike the epic poets, who portrayed/depicted the deeds/actions of heroes, Archilochus sang of himself. He knew the sea, the dangers of sailing.

Archilochus the colonist and the adventurer is not so important as Archilochus, the lyric poet. His individualism set a new tone in Greek literature. Moreover his poems can be interpreted as the first documents of the individualism in the history of European civilization which is basically a humanistic and individual culture - especially comparing with other civilizations. It is astonishing to realize that a fundamental value of European civilization was set by Archilochus’poems.

In the Archaic Age for the first time in European civilization men and women began to write of their own experiences. Their poetry reflected their belief that they had something precious to say about themselves. Because of their poetic revolution the Archaic Age is called the Lyric Age as well in literal meaning by some historians. The revolution of individualism strongly promoted the birth of artistic humanism in the field of fine arts.

The birth of artistic humanism in Classical Age 1
The beginnings of artistic humanism – especially in the fields of sculptures – has been implemented in the Golden Age of Pericles in the 5th century BC. After the Persian wars Pericles wanted to rebuild the Acropolis because it was destroyed by Persian troops in BC. The great Athenian leader not only gave a lot of opportunities for average Athenians to get well-paid work during rebuilding process but the new buildings demonstrated the glory and grandeur of Athens which defeated the Persians.

For us the new buildings and temples of Acropolis, especially the enormous temple, Parthenon which was dedicated to Pallas Athena, the goddess, who defended Athens, demonstrates the Classical Greek humanism. The 5th century BC. architecture, arts, and sculpture, reliefs are perfect manifestation of this emerging artistic humanism. The Athenian acropolis is the summary of Greek art and its spirit.

Although the buildings were dedicated to the gods and most of the sculptures portrayed gods, these works express the Greek fascination with the human, individual and rational. Greek gods were anthropomorphic, and Greek artists portrayed them as human beings. While respecting the gods, Greek artists were celebrating the human beings, and their idealized bodies. In the Parthenon sculptures it is impossible to distinguish the men and women from the gods and goddesses. The Acropolis also demonstrates the humanistic and rational side of the Greek art.

There is no violent emotion in this art, but instead a quiet intensity. There is nothing excessive, because “nothing too much” was the opinion/concept of artist and philosopher alike in the Classical Age. Greek artists portrayed action in a balanced, restrained and sometimes quiet fashion, depicting the noblest aspects of human beings: their dignity and beauty with real proportions of human body.

Summarizing the problem: emerging individualism led to artistic humanism, especially in the field of fine arts, not in the field of literature. In the field of literature Classical Greek tragedies in the „golden age” rather represented the changeable and terrible fate of human beings. Artistic humanism was an implicit humanism on sculptures and reliefs but it didn’t have explicit concept of humanity or human dignity. We have no written texts about it. Emerging concept of artistic humanism has been developed towards the age of Hellenism with increasing importance of education.

The flourishing educational humanism in Hellenistic Age 1
The Greeks were able to preserve their identity only with the help of their education in the Hellenistic Age. The worldwide culture – not the traditional religion which was different in every city-state – became a crucial point of Hellenistic mind. Greeks who settled down in the Near East strongly felt that they are surrounded with dominating oriental cultures. An average Greek citizen hadn’t been able to identify or to define himself any more with his political rights – the political rights disappeared in territorial monarchies. But he felt that he has to defend himself against dominating oriental cultures.

The Greeks highly estimated their education they were able to get in schools in Hellenistic Age. With the help of schooling education they wanted to preserve their Greek culture in the Hellenistic Age The Hellenistic man wasn’t only devoted to the Greek cultural values in general but mainly to schooling education. Either in Greek homeland or in Near Eastern Hellenistic cities the spread of schools is one of the leading cultural phenomenon of Hellenism after the modest Classical beginnings of schooling system. Hellenistic culture was a schooling-culture, and a visitor arriving at a town could see the visible signs of this fact: the school buildings.

Gymnasium, which originally had been a place for physical training in the Archaic Age – „gymnos” means naked because Greeks were naked when they trained their physical practice. But later gymnasium – just in the Hellenistic period – was enlarged and surrounded by school buildings for intellectual training – this is the reason why the gymnasium means grammar school now. The key word of this epoch/period is paideia. (Instead of arete - Homer) This period is the spread of the concept of the so-called paidea which had some Classical antecedents.

Paideia, a Greek word means education, or learning. It is a system of education and training in classical Greek and Hellenistic (Greco-Roman) cultures that included such subjects as gymnastics, grammar, rhetoric, music, mathematics, geography, natural history, and philosophy. The term paidea was combined in the age of Hellenism with the word enkyklios (“complete system,” or “circle”) to identify a large compendium of general education. The modern phrase “encyclopaedia” means, as togetherness of fields of culture.

In the age of Hellenism it was an exceptional innovation of Greek culture that paidea and getting paidea or enkükliosz paideia for an average Greek became a crucial point of human personal development, and it was indispensable and essential for becoming a well-educated person who has true human dignity. So paidea can be identified with the school education which was a fundamental precondition for human dignity. It is a remarkable side of the Greek-Roman humanism. We could say that humanism emerged in the field of fine arts in the Classical period, but we must say that this implicit humanism had been implemented in the field of Hellenistic education.

School education was a real opportunity to get true human dignity in the course of studies for an average Greek person. Education was considered commonly as the only opportunity to accomplish the imperfect human being which could gain the true human dignity only with studies. Hellenistic humanism became an explicit humanism because the concept of education as an opportunity for human dignity was worked out and written down by writers and philosophers.

The word „humanism” has double meaning in European culture: on the one hand it means the anthropocentric perspective of the world and mankind (Jacob Burckhardt), on the other hand it is an educational program with well-defined cultural content (Paul Oscar Kristeller). It is not surprising that the term paidea was translated as „humanity” to Latin language by the great Roman orator and statesman, Cicero, and this word was inherited by renaissance humanists and modern European national cultures.

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