During the centuries around 1000 BC the Greeks lived in small, tribal societies. It was during this period that the foudations were being laid for that characteristic Greek social entity, the Polis (city-state), which provided such a fruitful environment for the later artistic and intellectual achievements of their civilization.
Dark Ages c. 1200-800 BC
From around 1200 BC, the palaces and towns of the Mycenaean civilization disappeared, along with the literate scribes and merchants who inhabited them. Large-scale migrations took place, as people crossed from mainland Greece to set up a host of small Greek-speaking settlements on the islands of the Aegean and the west coast of Asia Minor. The Greek mainland itself seems to have experienced not only a dramatic economic and material decline, but also a startling loss of population.
Greece is a country of small fertile plains divided from one another by steep hills and high mountains. The populations of those plains fronting the sea had boat-borne access to the wider world; otherwise travellers had to traverse difficult upland paths to reach neighbouring communities.
With the old centres of civilization gone, the people of Greece and the Aegean lived in simple farming villages scattered across these plains. In the place of princes in their dazzling palaces were tough tribal leaders ruling one of these small plain, or a portion of one of the more extensive plains such as Attica, or Boiotia, or Thessaly. The loyalties of the people were restricted to their small territories, where their fierce local patriotism found a focus in the wooden temple. This was located at the (perhaps metaphorical) centre of their valley, often on a mountain spur, frequently on the defensible site of the old palace.
The Early City-State c. 800-600 BC
These were unsettled times, with the possibility of a raid from the neighbouring plain never far away. The people therefore built their huts clustered around the temple for defence, walking out daily to farm their lands. Only those whose land was too far from the centre would live “in the country” permanently. These folk came to share less and less in the life of the community, and were looked down on by those living in the centre.
The population nucleus and the surrounding territory which it controlled were called a “Polis”. Today we use the term “city-state”, which is a useful one so long as we realize that they were often tiny. Even later, in “Classical” times, a city-state of 5,000 inhabitants was by no means uncommon, and one of 20,000 was large.
In these early days these city-states were defended by a force of horsemen, who could ride swiftly to any endangered point to repel a raid. These horsemen were under the control of the community’s chief, or “king”, and, since they had to find their own horse and armour, expensive items in those days, they were amongst the richer members of society, with their own estate and slaves. They formed a class of “knights”, or gentry. Richer still were the nobles who advised the king in his council. These were heads of the various clans into which the city-state’s population was originally divided.
Well over one hundred of these city-states were scattered over the mainland of Greece, the islands of the Aegean and the west coast of Asia Minor.
Next:
The History of Ancient Greece, Part 3: Expansion and Change
Article © TimeMaps 2007.
Last updated: 13th August 2007
