Reasoning/Spirited: Greek History Review #4

I am still in the process of writing up the remaining lectures given at the Artists and Actors symposium, but life, it seems, keeps getting in the way. I hope that I shall manage to get Barbara Kowalzig's talk up by the end of tonight. In the intervening period, I have decided to revise my original plan of only rereading the secondary sources from my Greek History syllabus, but also rereading the primary sources assigned to each day. This will make the process take longer, but ultimately I think it will provide a clearer and fuller sense of the kind of information that scholars use to glean their insights and interpret Greek history.

In terms of more general textbook sources, I finished reading Oswyn Murray's Early Greece, and I have recently begun (and am about 100 pages into) Pomeroy et al's Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Sadly, this larger and more comprehensive volume lacks the charm and energy of Murray's work, but it still sheds some light on the history providing a more comprehensive background, upon which I can stitch together the secondary and primary sources from my syllabus.

The first sections are on the way to read Greek sources and how to interpret the information. Specifically focusing on the way in which the Greeks interpreted their own past and the Dark Age. So far I've read The Landmark Herodotus (1.56, 2.53) and The Landmark Thucydides (1.1-8, 12) and I am working reading The Odyssey of Homer(Books 1-4) and Oresteia (lines 1-907). and fjls

 

After this, this, there is a lot more Homer to read. I am going to try to read the entirety of the Odyssey, because I have not read the whole thing since 9th grade and I probably need a refresher.

I am also going to try to supplement the history syllabus by increasing my knowledge of Greek art. I'm planning on using The Art and Culture of Early Greece and Archaic and Classical Greek Art, but I would be happy for suggestions if anyone has particular favorites.

 

Reasoning: A Grand Narrative Approach to Greek History #1

I just finished re-reading Jean-Pierre Vernant's The Origins of Greek Thought, which entertained me during my recent jury duty.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, the book did not have quite the same impact as the first time I read it. I believe that this is because my most recent book before this was Early Greece, which is a much more current and detailed account of Greek History than The Origins of Greek Thought. Unfortunately, not only am I out of the loop on the current understandings of archaeology and I have no idea how to tell what is out of date and what is not. Is there some kind of community somewhere?

Apparently I have some modernist tendencies that college (and two wonderful literary theory classes) did not strangle out of me, because I still like the grand narrative approach to history. However, I think that Vernant's narrative leaves out a lot of details (from what I've gleaned from Murray) about the development of Greek politics.

One of the problems that I notice with Vernant's narrative is that he constructs a development from Mycenean kingship (which Vernant refers to as devine-kingship) to isonomia (an alternate term for democracy that is less aggressive than and predates democracy). His narrative seems to go straight from Mycenean kingship to aristocracy of the basileus (in the Homeric use of the term as a lord, opposed to wanax, the high king) class. However, Vernant seems to place too little emphasis on the age of tyrants in the city states. For example, Peisistratos's reforms in Athens (such as, among many others, the changes to the Panathenia and the invention of the Greater Dionysia (Murray 270-272)) which created some of the civic institutions that would later become a forum for dialogue and democracy. Also, some of Sparta's power, as well as the hoplite-class-lead constitutions coming about through Sparta's removal of tyrants from power (Murray 263). To be fair, Vernant does provide a chapter on the sages (Chapter Five, The Crisis of the City: The Earliest Sages) some of whom were tyrants, but it places its emphasis too early and does not account adequately for the later tyrants, like the Peisistratidai.

Furthermore, Vernant blurs the distinction between the concept of equality in the citizens as homoioi (equals) in the hoplite state and the citizen equals in isonomia that appears so radically important in Murray's assessment of the development of Athens into a democracy (Murray 265-284). Murray explains that after Kleomenes dethroned the Peisistratidai, Kleisthenes' reforms were so radically different from the eunomia (good order) that the Spartans intended to impose, Kleomenes and a small band of Spartans attacked Athens for a second time, and were repulsed by the Athenians (Murray 265).

It feels a little strange, to me, criticizing Vernant's book. Ever since, my freshman year in college when I read Feminine Figures of Death (which is available on jstor for anyone whose school/library/etc has access), I have adored Vernant and his writing. However, The Origins of Greek Thought was written in 1962, so I do have almost 50 years of scholarship and archaeology on him.

Reasoning: Greek History Review #3

I have never been a history person. My dad is a big medieval history buff and my mother loves the history of fashion and costume. It just did not appeal to me in terms of names and dates and events. I always liked mythologies and genealogies-- important people and trends that demonstrate the development of ideas and progress over time. When studying for the AP exam I knew general trends and time periods that allowed me to interpret any piece of information on the exam. That was the way in which I managed through every history class. Dates were expendable pieces of information that I crammed at the last moment.

Going to college, when I finally settled in as a Classics major, there seemed to be two camps: the history people and the literature people. I easily slid into the literature camp, without a second thought. My complete aporia at the set-up of my Greek history class simply made the division appear more clearly to me. Although the class focused on concepts rather than dates, the immense amount of fragmentary reading of the primary sources never properly stuck together in a coherent mass in my mind. It could have simply been that it was only one of a list of things to do each night, but it might have simply been that I needed a little more of a guiding hand. My closest classics friend, for whom I do not yet have a elegy-related pseudonym (now Propertius), similarly disliked history and the history class, so I felt justified in my difficulties.

I now realize that although my dear friend protested against history, he always knew the approximate dates of the fragments of poetry he so diligently studied, knew anecdotes from every era, and could provide the historical context for any piece of literature which we discussed. This understanding of history was equal to that of most of the historians that I know-- his information just stems from different reading and research. Upon coming to this revelation, I realized that I at least needed to acquire the historical understanding of this anecdotal kind in order to position myself as a proper classicist.

Over the past few days I have continued my quest to read through Murray's Early Greece. Yesterday, I proctored an exam which provided me with about 3 hours of straight reading time so I dragged myself within 100 pages of the end. Once again, the influence of the Phoenicians captivated my interest.

Even learning from my previous reading, recounted in my previous blogpost, that the Phoenicians of the Greeks were one and the same with the Cannanites of the bible, I still could not get through my thick skull that the writing of the Phoenicians must have used the Hebrew alphabet (or as it actually turns out a more archaic precursor to that alphabet) from which the Greeks derived their own alphabet (Murray 94).

I found this chart to be particularly cool [1]:

The chart is a little bit misleading. Both the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets do not have vowel sounds. These are called abjed alphabets [2]. Murray explains that "the forms of most of the Greek vowels are derived from Phoenician consonantal or semi-consonantal letters for which Greek had no use" (Murray 94) the development of an alphabet with vowels actually represented in the script itself was "revolutionary in its consequences" (Murray 94) [3]. Writing became widespread in Greece between 750-650 BCE (Murray 96) and "the earliest poets whose work was recorded in writing may well have been Hesiod and Archilochos if not Homer" (Murray 96). Another fascinating piece of information that I gleaned from Murray is that even if Homer used the aid of writing to compose his work, it was "the ancient claim that it was Peisistratos who established a fixed test of the poet; for competitions in recitation require rules about what should be recited" (Murray 271).

I finished Murray's Early Greece yesterday. It was the most interesting historical piece I have read since first semester last year when I wrote the historical chapter of my thesis. I just began reading both  The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C. and Origins of Greek Thought in the last 24 hours. Both captivate my interest for different reasons. Vernant's book is an earlier version of the development of the polis and the Greek rational thought from the Minoans and the invading Indo-Europeans who began the Mycenean palace culture. Hurwit's book details the cultural development from the dark age up until the end of the first Persian War, specifically focusing on the art. Since my thesis utilized data concerning the changing of grave monuments and pottery in Ancient Greece, this book appeals to me as well. The only reason I started Vernant's book is because it is easier to fit in my purse (and I went with my mother to the doctor's office).

Endnotes

1. Image is from About.com
2. Phoenician Alphabet at Wikipedia
3. Today I started reading Origins of Greek Thought, which explains that Linear B, which was the script used in the Mycenean palace culture, was a syllabic rather than and abjed or a vocalic alphabet (I am not sure if vocalic alphabet is the right name) (Vernant 23). Linear B was developed from Linear A, which was the Minoan script, and Linear B was used by a specialized class of Cretan scribes (Vernant 24).

Reasoning: Greek History Review #2

, I finished the next the chapters of Early Greece, which consider the aristocracy and the community in the Dark Age and "Euboan Society and Trade." These chapters are not on the afore-mentioned Greek History Syllabus. However, I decided that I would finish the book as well as reading through the entirety of A Brief History of Ancient Greece alongside the secondary sources from the syllabus. The idea is to provide a broad base for further study. This I am sure would offend the sensibilities of my Greek History professor, given that A Brief History of Ancient Greece is written in part by one of her greatest rivals. Amusingly, I have to thank this same professor's rant against this rival which demonstrated the proper way to criticize a historical argument and served as a model for me to scrutinize the arguments of others (specifically some of the arguments in "Male Lament in Greek Tragedy") and my own arguments in my thesis.


Although most of what I'm reading is not new to me, there are a couple of things that came as a surprise to me. The first was that there was a period of pottery between the Geometric Period and the Black figure period. This was the Proto-Corninthian period of pottery, which flourished during the Orientalizing period 725-600 BCE [1]. Most of the pottery was miniature [1].

This owl is only 5cm long. It is my favorite Proto-Corinthian piece of which I have found a picture [2]. These pieces tend to employ the black, white, and terra cotta color scheme. The pieces have the influence of the eastern trading partners (Murray 32-33).

The pieces seem to me, from my mostly untrained eye, to be a mix of geometric period influences (although this vase shows the orientalist influence of the flowing curves in the painting and the pictures of animals (Murray 84-85), the animals are arranged in seemingly geometric patterns)

and the Athenian black figure that replaced it (this reminds me of the composition of the Athenian black figure, but the colors are quite obviously from the proto-Corinthian period).

Another, although slightly less vital, piece of information that I missed in my classical education was the origins of the Phoenicians. Murray says:

"the earliest Greek contacts were with the Canaanites of the Levantine coast, a people known to the Greeks as the Phoenicians, probably because of their monopoly of the only colour-fast dye in antiquity, the purple (phoinix) extract from the murex shellfish" (70).

I had no idea how the Phoenicians were named by the Greeks, and I thought that was pretty cool. I also thought they were island people, and had no ideas that they controlled the forests of Lebanon which provided timber to Egypt (Murray 70).

Endnotes:

As a Note: Project Gutenberg is now posting texts in their original language. They may have done this before, and I just did not notice. It's a fabulous resource. Although I would traditionally turn to the Perseus Project for Greek texts. However, I might put these on my kindle in order to translate without the crutch of a built in dictionary.

1. This comes from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2. All of the pictures come from Wikimedia.