Page 40 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

greece, ancient 859

things, including, ere long, the nature of human society
and of morals. No other ancient civilization centered so
much on merely human affairs or unleashed human
imagination and reasoning from sacred traditions so
recklessly. That is why in later times urban populations
among whom local versions of sacred doctrine had worn
thin from too many encounters with persons of different
religious background so often found Greek high culture
powerfully attractive.
Painting on an ancient Greek vase.

From Individual to
Collective Heroism
a lyre kept memories of the Mycenaean past at least Greek civilization further enhanced its attractiveness
dimly alive, especially among descendants of pre-Dorian when Homeric heroism was transformed from an indi-
Greek-speakers, known as Ionians. Soon after 700 BCE vidual, personal pursuit into collective heroism in
Homer gave lasting form to this oral tradition by com- defense of small city-states, into which Greece eventually
posing a pair of epic poems. One, the Iliad, described a divided. Greek city-states had their own complex devel-
critical episode during a sea raid that Agamemnon, King opment from older migratory and tribal forms of society.
of Mycenae, perhaps (even probably), led against the city Ionian Greeks, fleeing from Dorian invaders across the
of Troy; its twin, the Odyssey, recounted the perilous re- Aegean to found new settlements on the coast of mod-
turn of Odysseus from Troy to his home in Ithaca.Homer’s ern Turkey, led the way. Kinship ties crumbled among
poems were soon written down in a new alphabetic script haphazard groups of refugees, who consequently had to
imported (with adjustments) from Phoenicia, and they improvise new ways of keeping peace and order among
became fundamental to subsequent Greek assumptions themselves. Elected magistrates, holding office for a lim-
and ideas about how men ought to behave. Homer’s ited time (usually one year) and administering laws
heroes seek and attain glory by risking death in war, agreed upon by an assembly of male citizens, proved
knowing ahead of time that sooner or later they will be maximally effective. When such self-governing commu-
defeated and die. Moreover, according to Homer, the nities began to thrive and, after about 750 BCE, started to
gods play games with men, favoring some, defeating oth- found similar new cities in Sicily, southern Italy, and
ers whimsically; yet the very fact that the gods were around the shores of the northern Aegean and Black Sea,
immortal meant that they could not be truly heroic by an enlarged Greek world began to emerge, held together
risking life and limb. Instead, according to Homer, they by shipping and trade, a more or less common language
were often merely spiteful and were ultimately subject to and the distinctive public institutions of the polis, to use
Fate—the nature of things—mysteriously spun out in the Greek term for a locally sovereign city-state.
detail by enigmatic, silent supernatural beings. Oddly, In Greece proper, the polis supplanted older kinship
therefore, by risking everything, heroic humans surpassed arrangements much more slowly. In the wake of the
the gods, at least morally, while sharing with them a Dorian invasions, as people settled down to farm the
common subordination to Fate. same fields year after year, local hereditary kings, assisted
This unusual twist diminished the power of priests by councils of noble landowners, began to emerge.They
and conventional religion among the ancient Greeks and much resembled contemporary local rulers of western
opened a path to all sorts of speculation seeking to anat- Asia. Population growth soon provoked a painful pro-
omize Fate and penetrate more deeply into the nature of cess of differentiation between noble landowners and