Greece and the cultural Impact of the Assyrian Empire

In 'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria' I discussed Pauline Albenda's work on pavement slab designs, which seem to have been derived from originals in carpet form. The designs may have originated in Egypt, and perhaps these may have been adopted as the result of cultural interaction beween Egypt and Assyria. 

This particular pattern of ornamentation was present in a Greek context of a similar period, somewhere between the later 8th century B.C.E., and the end of the 7th century B.C.E. Plate 295 of Richter's A Handbook of Greek Art *1 reproduces a photograph of the rear of a breastplate, found in the river Alpheios at Olympia [now in the national Museum, Athens], which is dated to the middle of the 7th century B.C.E.. The text on p 211 suggests that it is engraved with ‘animals and monsters and with a group perhaps to be interpreted as Zeus greeting Apollo’.

This is quite likely, but there is so much more of interest to the design. The Greek figures walk on a palmate border of a ‘fleur-de-lys’ type repeating pattern, and between Zeus and Apollo there is a form of open blossom. These figures occupy the bottom half of the backplate: above them are designs which are of largely Mesopotamian origin. Behind each shoulder of the backplate there are two crescent motifs, each facing outwards; between them are opposing sphinxes rampant; and below these, what appear to be opposing lions rampant. Inside the left crescent (from the back) there is a lion figure, apparently trotting, and looking back over its shoulder. The open area of the crescent is divided into two major spaces by a line, and below the line there is an image of a bull, looking forwards, with its head held low. Within the crescent on the right there is the same division of space, and above the line there is a similar lion to the first, and it too faces back, away from the centre of the design. Beneath the line, there is another similar bull figure, likewise with its head held low, and opposing the first bull. The final space within the crescents shows a palmate design, of alternating buds and blossoms. There are also traces of the palmate design behind the hind legs of the lions, running along the line of the armour’s armholes.

This does not seem to me to be a symbolically empty appropriation of foreign design elements. Any of the elements could have been used by the creator of this armour, but the elements used and the arrangement of those elements speak of a degree of understanding of the symbolism of these images, since both the foreign iconography and the native Greek images are arranged according to the same logic which we have seen in the context of Assyria. The rampant sphinxes are directly above the meeting of Zeus and Apollo, as the open blossom is directly below. The two figures behind Apollo are arranged very much as in Mesopotamian iconography: a handmaiden reaches forward and touches the shoulder of Apollo, and holds the wrist of the figure behind, in the manner which establishes proximity and contact with the divine in Mesopotamia. The line of figures on the left, headed by Zeus, are connected by their overlapping shields and robes.

Richter tells us that: ‘Several shields found in the Idaean cave in Crete are conspicuous examples of early Orientalizing art (c. 700 B.C. ?); they are decorated in embossed relief with monsters and animals in so marked an Eastern style that they are thought by many to be importations;…’ ,*2

This rear breastplate comes from what is known as the ‘orientalising period’ in Greece, generally agreed to be about 720 to 550 B.C.E.. This was ‘a period of change all over the Mediterranean world. Colonies were being founded east and west; intercommunications were improved; and contact with the ancient Oriental civilisations – Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Phoenicia – was established. The resultant Oriental influence is shown by the adoption of Eastern floral motifs, such as the lotus and palmette, and of Oriental monsters and beasts, such as sphinxes, panthers, and lions’. *3

 According to the evidence at present available, substantive stone sculpture, that is, statues and reliefs approximately life-size and over, were not produced in Greece before about the middle of the seventh century B.C.E. Before that time even cult images were apparently more or less small in size and mostly of wood. It evidently was contact with the East that initiated the making of large stone sculptures in Greece.  *4 

In 681 B.C.E. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, was murdered while praying in a temple *5 Sennacherib marks a potential high-water mark for Aegean/Assyrian contact. Cory’s Ancient Fragments records a statement by a Greek writer (Abydenus) that Sennacherib (or more likely his generals) once captured Athens. *6  The capture of Athens is not attested by any other source.

Sennacherib was succeeded by Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s youngest son, after a short violent dynastic crisis. The first act of the new king was to rebuild Babylon in atonement for the 'sin of Sennacherib' in destroying it. There was an abortive attempt in 680 B.C.E. by Merodach-Baladan’s son to capture Ur, and in 677 B.C.E. the King of Sidon, Abdi-Milkuti, revolted, was caught and beheaded. Sidon was ‘torn up and cast into the midst of the sea’, its inhabitants deported to Assyria, and its territority given to its rival, Tyre. Esarhaddon then had to deal with problems along the eastern and northern borders, principally the Scythians (Assyr Ishkuzai), who had crossed the Caucasus and joined the Cimmerians who were already in Asia Minor, Armenia and Iran.

The Medes, located north of Elam, became a problem around 680 B.C.E. – Esarhaddon tried to prevent them becoming a serious difficulty for Assyria, partly through dividing them against each other. He put a friendly prince on the throne of Elam in 675 B.C.E. (Urtaki). Ultimately Esarhaddon’s goal was the invasion of Egypt – already in 679 B.C.E. he had captured the city of Arzani ‘on the border of the brook of Egypt’. He was met by the resistance of the Pharaoh Taharqa in the spring of 671 B.C.E.… ‘

I laid siege to Memphis, his royal residence, and conquered it in half a day by means of mines, breaches and assault ladders. His queen, the women of his palace, Ushanahuru, his ‘heir apparent’, his other children, his possessions, horses, large and small cattle beyond counting I carried away as booty to Assyria…. Everywhere in Egypt, I appointed new (local) kings, governors, officers, harbour overseers, officials and administrative personnel. I installed regular sacrificial dues for Ashur and the (other) great gods, my lords, for all times… 

In May 672 B.C.E. Esarhaddon proclaimed his son Ashurbanipal as his legitimate heir (Esarhaddon died in Harran in 669 B.C.E.). He fought Taharqa as his father had done. Egypt remained under Assyrian control until about 655 B.C.E., when Psametik expelled the Assyrians with the help of Ionian and Carian mercenaries.*7

Traditionally much of the orientalising influence is ascribed to Egypt, partly because some of the Greeks said the Egyptians had influenced the development of their country (though it is denied by scholars for later periods), but mainly because the evidence is unequivocal: the sculptures, ivories and other items are plainly the product of Egyptian influence. However, while agreeing with the importance of Egyptian aesthetic influence on the development of Greek civilisation at this time, I would like to argue for an equally important influence on Greek civilisation over a much longer period, stretching from the late 2nd millennium,  to the sixth century B.C.E. By this I mean the influence of Mesopotamian culture in general, and the influence of the culture of Assyria in particular.

In the Laws, Plato argues that a hostile relationship similar to that which the Greeks experienced with the Persians,  had existed in the past with Assyria: ‘…the inhabitants of the region about Ilium, when they provoked by their insolence the Trojan War, relied upon the power of the Assyrians and the Empire of Ninus, which still existed and had a great prestige; the people of those days fearing the united Assyrian Empire just as we now fear the Great King. And the second capture of Troy was a serious offence against them, because Troy was a portion of the Assyrian Empire.’*8 

We are also told by Plato that the constitutions of Greek states were framed in order to meet this danger. If this statement by Plato is correct, the implications are huge, and it is perhaps surprising that there has been so little discussion of it by scholars. The Laws is however a philosophical and literary work, and not automatically a source you would consult for accurate historical information. 

If Plato's suggestion is in fact correct, what it means is that political developments in Greece from the Trojan War onwards,  were shaped, to a degree hard to determine at this distance, by the nature and the political ambitions of the Assyrian Empire. Plato's view is that the influence was negative,  in the sense that the  Greek constitutions were created to counter the power and influence of the Assyrian Empire by means other than direct military action against it. 

If the Greek anti-Assyrian confederation (we need to give it a name) deliberately shaped their political arrangements to counter the influence of Assyria, such a strategy implies that the Greeks had, or very quickly developed, a strategic understanding of the power of Assyria sometime in the twelfth century B.C.E., at a time proximate to the Trojan War. But having that knowledge of Assyrian culture and intentions, could have had unexpected consequences. Some aspects of the Assyrian empire, for example, might have been adopted by the Greeks, rather than being rejected. Perhaps including the idea of a form of  empire itself - a quasi-imperial structure which could be opposed to the Assyrian threat. But an imperial structure with important differences. 

Interestingly, the three persons of the dialogue are an un-named Athenian stranger, Cleinias, a Cretan, and Megillus, a Lacedaemonian – representing the three cultural groups explicitly named by Protagoras as practising philosophy in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. *9. These three cultural groups were perhaps the core of a Greek confederation against the 'empire of Ninus'.

The translation of this passage in the Laws, published by Thomas Taylor, is slightly different, suggesting that the time spoken of was later than the Empire of Ninus, and contemporary with the Heraclidae: ‘…those that dwelt about Ilion, who, trusting to the power of the Assyrians descended from Ninus, dared to excite war against Troy. For the form of that government, which was still preserved, was by no means despicable. And as we at present fear a mighty king, in like manner all at that time feared that collected coordination of people. For the destruction of Troy a second time raised a great accusation against them; because the Trojan power was a portion of the Assyrian government’ *10

There was some fairly accurate information available about the Assyrian Empire to the Greek speaking world, though some sources available to us severely garble some of the details. These accounts were collected by Isaac Preston Cory in the early years of the Nineteenth century, when there were no contemporary documents available, and only the Bible and Classical literature contained relevant information. This collection is not much consulted now, though still occasionally reprinted, since we have access to a large number of original documents, inscriptions, and other artifacts. *11

Diodorus Siculus reports the years of the empires existence reasonably accurately: ‘…the empire of the Assyrians, after having continued from Ninus thirty descents, and more than 1400 years, was finally dissolved by the Medes. *12 . Whereas Herodotus says, quite inaccurately, that: 'The Medes were the first who began the revolt from the Assyrians after they had maintained the dominion over Upper Asia for a period of 520 years'.*13 Herodotus mentions more than once in his Histories that he would write a history of Assyria. We can be fairly sure therefore that it would not (or did not, if it was actually written) cover Assyrian history more than 520 years before its fall between 612 and 609 B.C.E. – that is, not much earlier than 1120 B.C.E..

On Sennacherib, through a quotation which survives in Eusebius, Alexander Polyhistor, whose accounts are of variable quality, says:

After the reign of the brother of Senecherib, Acises reigned over the Babylonians, and when he had governed for the space of thirty days, he was slain by Marodach Baladanus, who held the empire by force during six months: and he was slain and succeeded by a person named Elibus. But in the third year of his reign Senecherib king of the Assyrians levied an army against the Babylonians; and in a battle, in which they were engaged, routed, and took him prisoner with his adherents, and commanded them to be carried into the land of the Assyrians. Having taken upon himself the government of the Babylonians, he appointed his son Asordanius (Ashur-nadin-shumi) their king, and he himself retired again into Assyria. *14

This pretty much squares with what we know from recovered contemporary sources. Merodach-Baladan (Marduk-apal-iddina)  was an old adversary of Sargon II and former king of Babylon. He returned from refuge in Elam in the first year of Sargon’s reign, and ‘assisted by Elamite officers and troops raised the entire Aramean population of southern Iraq against the Assyrians, entered the capital-city and proclaimed himself King of Babylon’ *15 The armies of Assyria marched against him, and he was defeated at Kish. However Merodach-Baladan escaped and hid ‘in the midst of the swamps and marshes’. Roux continues: Sennacherib plundered his palace, captured innumerable prisoners, deported 208,000 persons to Assyria and gave Babylon a king of his choice, Bêl-ibni, ‘the son of a master-builder’ who had grown up in Nineveh ‘like a young puppy’.

‘Elibus’ may be a Greek rendering of Bêl-ibni (‘Belibnus’). Between the chaotic years 703 and 700 B.C.E. there were three kings of Babylon. If they are the same, he is, as Polyhistor’s account says, successor to Merodach-Baladan, but he did not slay him (he survived to fight another day). Bêl-ibni seems to have been trouble – Roux suggests that he was ‘more than suspect of collusion with the rebels’ and was himself taken away and replaced by Sennacherib’s son, (Asordanius).

So in many of the details in this account, Polyhistor is clearly relating broadly accurate data from sources available to him. And some of the information is more detailed (though we cannot be sure that it is more accurate) than we have even now from contemporary documents painstakingly dug from the earth.

Which makes the following part of the quotation, of particular interest to us, so interesting: he says that, during the reign of Sennacherib, the Greeks, directly or indirectly, mounted an expedition against the Assyrian Empire.

When he received a report that the Greeks had made a hostile descent upon Cilicia, he marched against them and fought with them a pitched battle, in which, though he suffered great loss in his own army, he overthrew them, and upon the spot he erected the statue of himself as a monument of his victory; and ordered his prowess to be inscribed upon it in the Chaldæan characters, to hand down the remembrance of it to posterity. He built also the city of Tarsus after the likeness of Babylon, which he called Tharsis. And after enumerating the various exploits of Sinnecherim (Sennacherib), he adds that he reigned 18 years, and was cut off by a conspiracy which had been formed against his life by his son Ardumusanus. *16

So the Greeks mounted an expedition against the Assyrian empire around 700 B.C.E., and engaged Sennacherib in battle in Cilicia.* 17 Locating the statue of himself which he erected as a monument to his victory over the Greeks would be a remarkable discovery, if it still survives.

Burn says of the colonisation of the Eastern Mediterranean by the Greeks: ‘As early as the foundation of Cumae, Ionians were beginning to trade and settle in the Levant. There were new settlements in the plain of Tarsus and one, called Poseideion, at Al Mina north of Ras Shamra. Geometric pottery reached Hamath (Hamah), which was sacked by the Assyrians in 720; but the Assyrians also severely checked Greek aggression. King Sargon, in a famous boast, says that he ‘dragged the Ionians like fish from the sea’, in operations near Tarsus, and ‘gave peace to Cilicia and Tyre’. *18  Greek trade with the Levant remained important, and influenced Greek culture….’ *19  Tarsus was clearly the key point on the coast of Cilicia during the late 8th and early 7th century B.C.E, and the engagement with Sennacherib was probably close by. His enhancement of Tarsus into an Anatolian Babylon suggests the conscious creation of a semi-autonomous centre of power in a place regularly threatened by various groups. [Tarsus was the chief city of Cilicia, standing near the centre of the Cilicia Campestris, on the river Cydnus, about twelve miles above its mouth. *20

But there is more extraordinary information to come. Another fragment relating to Sennacherib surviving in the pages of Eusebius is by the historian Abydenus, a disciple of Aristotle according to I. P. Cory’s introduction. He says that Abydenus wrote an Assyrian History, and was also a copyist from Berossus, a Babylonian by birth and a priest of Bel, with access to the literature of his own country. Berossus flourished during the reign of Alexander the Great, and resided at Athens for some years. He does not seem to think much of Sennacherib in terms of kingly qualities. But he tells us that the Cilician military engagement involved a sea battle. This may not surprise us: it is more likely than that the Greeks marched across Anatolia. However what follows is not to my knowledge mentioned any where else, and therefore is surprising. Abydenus suggests that the defeat of the Greeks was so severe that Sennacherib was in a position to build a temple at Athens.

At the same time the twenty-fifth who was Senecherib can hardly be recognized among the kings. It was he who subjected the city of Babylon to his power, and defeated and sunk a Grecian fleet upon the coast of Cilicia. He built also a temple at Athens and erected brazen statues, upon which he engraved his own exploits. And he built the city of Tarsus after the plan and likeness of Babylon, that the river Cydnus should flow through Tarsus, in the same manner as the Euphrates intersected Babylon.

A Sargonid temple in Athens, and the erection of bronze statues, with a portion of his annals inscribed upon them, is an extraordinary thought [the annals of Sennacherib’s campaigns found in Assyria on prisms do not contain an account of a campaign which extended to Attica, but they are not complete]. I am not aware of any archaeological discoveries in Athens which would support the contention that Sennacherib or his armies were ever on Athenian soil, but the statement comes from someone who was a student at Aristotle’s Lyceum, and is so extraordinary that it is hard to imagine it being made unless there was some basis to it. One could argue that the parallelling of the Assyrian experience with the Persian experience (in Plato’s Laws) is employed here too – the Persians had come to Athens, and had forced the Athenians to abandon their city. However the Persians had looted Athens, destroying much of the city – there is no parallel with this for Sennacherib's visit. The Persian attack would probably have accounted for the destruction of a surviving Assyrian Temple, if such existed, along with much else of interest in pre-Periclean Athens.

After the defeat of the Assyrians at the hands of the Babylonians and the Medes (somewhere between 612 and 609 (the exact details are unclear), Babylon became the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The following years concerning Babylon are also unclear in the record, and the details are sometimes contradictory, but these details are not of importance to this argument.

Astyages reigned over the Medes from 585 –550 B.C.E., followed by Cyrus (Axerdis). Cyrus eventually became the first Great King of the Persian Empire (formerly he had been known as the King of Anshan). We are told by Abydenus that Axerdis was the first that levied mercenary soldiers, and that one of whom was Pythagoras, a follower of the wisdom of the Chaldæans:

Can this be the famous Pythagoras who stands close to the beginnings of Greek philosophy? The remark is made by a member of Aristotle’s Lyceum, and is made without any fear that a mis-identification might be made. The dates are about right – Pythagoras flourished about 540-510 B.C.E., which would place him at the right time to be such a mercenary soldier, sometime after 560 B.C.E. (Cyrus became king of Babylon in 538 B.C.E.). He would not be the first soldier in the world whose horizons were broadened by travel in the service of a king. * 21

 Chaldaea is often used in a vague geographic way, but Xenophon refers to Chaldaeans in the mountains North of Mesopotamia. Effectively this is the land which is known to the Greeks as ‘Syria’, encompassing Cappadocia and Cilicia, as well as the northern Levant and Mesopotamia [the term also refers to lands in the south of Mesopotamia, (for reasons which are not clear within the contemporary model of the distribution of power and influence in the Levant of the 1st Millennium B.C.E.). Merodach-Baladan thus is counted as a Chaldaean]. It is interesting that here no mention is made of Pythagoras as a follower of the wisdom of the Egyptians, which might be taken to suggest an understanding that Levantine and Mesopotamian sources were of significance for his doctrines as much as those later assumed to be important in late antiquity, i.e., Egypt.

In the account of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, a letter is quoted (from Pythagoras to Anaximenes) which contains some lines which show Pythagoras to be aware of Median power and its dangers, though he is clearly in Italy at the time of writing: 

….if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase. For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one’s mother country. For I too am not altogether in my discourses but am found no less in the wars which the Italians wage with one another. *22

Clearly Pythagoras was no stranger to political disputes, and indeed seems to have perished in the course of one. It is not inconceivable that he was once a soldier, and his interest in the Medes may be the result of mercenary service in the Median army in the early sixth century, as the remark by Abydenus claims. *23

‘…[Axerdis] also reduced under his dominion Egypt and the country of Cælo-Syria, whence came Sardanapallus.’ *24

Pythagoras would have found himself in both Egypt and in Caelo-Syria (i.e., ‘upper Cilicia’ - Cilicia and Cappadocia) if he was in the service of Cyrus for any length of time, and in a position to explore the philosophy and theology of these cultures. ‘Sardanapalus’ is ‘Ashurbanipal’, who appears in the Old Testament as ‘Asnapper’. If he came from Caelo-Syria, this would very likely make him a Chaldaean. In fact Alexander Polyhistor explicitly describes Sardanapalus as ‘the Chaldaean.’*25

If Ashurbanipal is Chaldaean, and his lineage is clear, then either or both his father and mother count as Chaldaean also. Going back in time, the first clear break in the continuity of the lineage is Sargon II (Sharru-kin, or ‘true king’). His name invites suspicion, and his ancestry is not known. He arrived on the throne in the same year that Merodach-Baladan mounted the throne of Babylon (721 B.C.E.). This suggests a degree of instability across the whole of Mesopotamia, suitable for the purposes of usurpers. In which case Assyria had been run by Chaldaean kings for nearly two hundred years by the time Pythagoras encountered Chaldaean ideas.

If Assyria was as powerful and as long-lasting an entity as it was, and a major factor in the development of Greek constitutional arrangements, why do we have no history of the Assyrian Empire written by a Greek writer? Herodotus said he would write one - we get some information about Assyria from his Histories, but the main focus of his book is the later conflict between Greece and Persia. Abydenus apparently wrote one, but it is no longer extant. Another history of Assyria was written by John of Mauretania, but that has gone too. So they did once exist. Plato's information perhaps comes from the history written by Herodotus.

All that survives from Greek writers however is quotations and fragments here and there, often embedded in the pages of Eusebius. It is possible that these histories did not survive because they revealed more about the reactive nature of the Greek relationship with the Assyrian empire than was comfortable. Particularly as the years passed, and they were confronted with a new threat from the East. The development of the Greek constitutions, and the development of the institution of the polis, may have owed a very great deal to the challenge presented by Assyria. And if Sennacherib did inflict a severe defeat on the Ionians near Cilicia in the seventh century, and conquered Athens, it is likely to have been an experience they were only too happy to forget. 

Notes and references.

1. Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk  Plate 295
2  Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk p210-11,
3  Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk. p297 - 

4.  NB:  Richter states incorrectly that:‘Egypt had conquered Assyria in 672 B.C., and from then on the East was opened to Greece’. [p56].

5 See also: the ‘Babylonian Chronicle’ (ABC, pp 81); ARAB, II, sect.795. See: E.G Kraeling, ‘The death of Sennacherib’, JAOS, LIII (1933), pp. 335-46; S. Parpola, ‘The murder of Sennacherib’ in B. Alster (ed.), Death in Mesopotamia, Copenhagen, 1980, pp. 171-82). [Roux in his Iraq, p323, says ‘Sennacherib….. met with the end he deserved: he was stabbed to death by one of his sons or, according to another version, crushed by the winged bulls that protected the sanctuary.’ (n 15 Ch 20 ‘The House of Sargon’;  see also II Kings xxx. 36-7.)
6  Cory, I.P., Ancient Fragments, 1832.
7 Roux, G., Iraq p323-332  Penguin Books, new edition, 1992.
 8 Plato, Laws, translated with an introduction by T.J. Saunders. Penguin Library. 1970.
9 Plato, Protagoras and Meno. translated by W.K.C. Guthrie, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1956 (various printings).
10 Works of Thomas Taylor, Plato's Laws. Prometheus Trust, 1996 [first ed., 1804]
11 Cory, I.P.,  Ancient Fragments, 1832.
12 Diodorus Siculus, lib. II. p. 81.
13 Herodotus, The Histories Lib. I. c. 95
14 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in  Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832.
15 Roux, G. Iraq, Ch 20 ‘House of Sargon’, p321. new edition 1992.
16 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. 42. [Armenian Chronicle of Eusebius].
17  Burn mentions that ‘Greeks and Assyrians clash in Levant’ in his 2nd Chronological Table ‘The Growth of Greek Civilization c 780-480 B.C E'. (Burn, A. R,  A History of Greece, p88-9, 1965, rev. ed. 1979).
18 . Cilicia was Quê to the Assyrians - Roux, G. Iraq, ‘The Assyrian Empire’, p31.
19 Burn, A. R., A History of Greece, p88-9, 1965, rev. ed. 1979.
20 Smith, William, A Smaller Classical Dictionary of biography, mythology, and geography. Abridged from the larger dictionary. Lond., 1852
21 Abydenus,  quoted in Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832. So much to discuss here! It is unlikely that Astyages was the first to levy mercenaries, but Greek hoplite soldiers were certainly serving in armies around the near East. They can be identified in a number of wall reliefs, including some in the British Museum's Assyrian galleries. They are quite distinctive in the reliefs illustrating the siege of Lachish.
22. Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Bk VIII 49-50 In this passage it is clear that it is the city (the polis) and how it functions and is organised, that was understood to be a bulwark against Median and Assyrian influence. If the city was neglected, then good order would perish.
 23 see Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk 2 for his account of Pythagoras
24 Abydenus, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. 53.
25 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. p 44.

Retailers carrying 'Understanding Ancient Thought' (2017)

Below is a selection of screenshots from retailer sites. These are Itunes, Rakuten Kobo, Rakuten (Japan), Livraria Cultura (Brazil), and Barnes & Noble for North America. The book will be available on August 21. Some sites are offering it for pre-order, though not all sites do this. The book will appear on other sites, such as Blio, from the 21st. The book will also be available (on the 21st) directly from Smashwords, my principal distributor. 

A chapter listing complete with chapter summaries is available at: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/nineteen-meditations.html. The page also contains direct links to retailers, and information about ereaders and ebook management software. 

Eighteen Meditations

Understanding Ancient Thought (published at midnight, Eastern Standard Time, August 20, 2017. Available for pre-order from August 8th). 

Eighteen meditations on our understanding of ancient history, on the importance of philosophical ideas in antiquity, and also on our understanding of the human mind, then and now.

The ancient world is often very mysterious to us, since its inhabitants thought within quite different models of reality. After the passage of two or three millennia, it is hard for us to make sense of the assemblage of information which has survived the enormous passage of time. Sometimes the nature of the evidence is problematic, and sometimes our approach to that evidence is the problem: we carry intellectual baggage which often makes it very difficult to know and understand what we are looking at.

In essence, this collection of essays attempts, as far as possible, to understand the ancient world within its original context, and to highlight where modern thought and the modern mind introduce obstacles to what can be understood.

The chapter list:

Divination in Antiquity was written in the latter stages of The Sacred History of Being. It was uploaded as a post to my website, and I promoted the essay by adding in brackets ‘and the sense it made’. Most people have no idea why divinatory procedures would ever have made sense in antiquity, but there is a sense to it, once the conceptual model in operation is grasped. This essay explores that conceptual model. 

Knowledge and Esoteric Doctrine concerns scholarly disinterest in the role of esoteric ideas and doctrine in ancient models of reality. Partly this disinterest is because the esoteric is, by definition,  kept secret and unknown, and partly because it is assumed that esoteric doctrine would have had no connection with abstract and universal ideas known to us, and therefore must remain unintelligible to us, even if we could disinter the details. The first of these appeals to the evidential invisibility of what is esoteric, and the second, to its irrational nature. Plato’s esoteric doctrine however is in plain view. We need to look for evidence, rather than presuming that it is not to be had.

Being, Knowledge and Belief in Israel is an expanded version of a chapter which appeared in The Sacred History of Being (The Idea of Being in Israel) which looked at the body of Mesopotamian ideas about the gods and the divine through the extensive commentary on these ideas present in the books of the Old Testament, and in documents from Assyria. The chapter also explored how Old Testament ideas about images were understood by the Christian writer Tertullian, in the early second century of the common era. Now supplemented by a discussion of the problematic relationship between monotheism and polytheism in the ancient Near East.

The Concept of the Plenum in Babylon argues that the description of Marduk in the Babylonian New Year Festival liturgy (The Enuma Elish) and the fact that the described creation was two-fold (it began before Marduk appeared, and was subsequently destroyed), indicates that their creation was understood to emerge from a plenum, in which all things potentially exist. This is an abstract conception which is not supposed to be present in Mesopotamia in the early 1^st millennium B.C.E.

Pleroma, Cosmos, and Physical Existence explores the kind of discussion that would necessarily underpin the idea of a plenum or pleroma as the root of physical creation.  The discussions closely parallel some of those found in Plato, including the question of whether reality retains its nature after the production of a physical reality.

The Divine and the Limit explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things.  The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

Logical Modality in Classical Athens finds that though we have recognised only one logical modality for more than two millennia, there were in fact two. One of them was appropriate to earthbound existence; the other supplied a rational basis for contact with the divine.

Sameness and Difference in Plato is a further discussion of the idea of the Plenum.  Philosophical writing about the divine in the west departed from the consideration of reality as something intricately bound up with a plenum during the Middle Ages, and as a result, philosophical argument about the divine, all the way up to the present day, deals poorly with certain issues, and no longer resembles the kind of argument about the divine found in ancient literature.

Shar Kishati, and the Cult of Eternity is a discussion of the hypothetical core of the ancient understanding of Reality as something which might be separated from everything else (in a Husserlian sense), though it does not mean that such a hypothetical core was separable from the rest of the religious and theological implex of ideas which constituted Greek and Mesopotamian religion. The point of the exercise was to explore what was actually essential to that implex of ideas, and to get a better understanding of why it was important to the functioning of the ritual universe, in both Greece and Mesopotamia.

The Harmony of the Soul explores the idea of Justice discussed in Plato’s Republic, which argues that the pursuit of special excellences by individuals, in terms of skills, and moral and intellectual virtue, without reference to the activities of other individuals, was understood to result in a harmonious arrangement of society.  They are joined together as a consequence of the fact that each of the virtues is complete and perfected. A parallel notion of the virtue of special excellences in ancient Assyria is discussed in the chapter ‘Standing in the Place of Ea’.

Synoikismos and the Origins of the Polis discusses what we know of the idea of the polis, which appears to have been modelled according to a conception of the divine. Thucydides tells us that, from the time of the first kings down to Theseus (the legendary founder of Athens, whose name is probably related to the verb tithemi, "to set in place") the people of Attica always lived in (their own) poleis; unless there was some common danger they would not come together in council with the king, but each individual polis would govern itself. Theseus did away with the multiplicity of poleis and their separate councils and governments.

Teotihuacan and the river of Mercury explores the symbolic function of this highly reflective metal, recently found inside a tomb in Mexico and known, on the basis of historical records, to be present also inside the Qin tomb in China, and finds parallels with such ideas (mirroring the heavens to provide connection between transcendent reality and the earthly world) in both Greece and in Mesopotamia.

Beyond the Religious Impulse Sometimes the important bit of evidence which will enable us to make sense of something is present, but not recognised, because the scholar is asking the wrong questions, and possibly asking questions within the wrong analytical paradigm. In fact there is a very large quantity of material available to scholars which can tell us much about the intellectual life of the ancient world, but because of the contemporary intellectual and cultural landscape, with its relatively inflexible interpretative structures, developed over many years, it simply cannot be seen for what it is. Worse, if the evidence is present but indicates counter-intuitive conclusions, it is unlikely ever to become part of the discussion. Better to grasp at straws.

Frazer and the Association of Ideas Like other scholars, then and now, Frazer did not recognise the other logical modality in classical Athens, though he read the relevant texts. Instead, he devised an explanatory mechanism of his own. This was based on the phenomenon of the association of ideas, argued by John Locke in the seventeenth century as a description of how we think. Applying this to human behaviour across history and cultures, he concluded that much human activity could be understood in terms of intellectual error. The phenomenon of the association of ideas is real enough. But it isn’t the basis of religious life in antiquity.

Aristotle’s Four Causes We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

Cultural Parallels and False Narratives discusses our understanding of what religion is, the etymology of the word (including Cicero’s definition), and compares the Hindu concept of religion with those of Greece and Rome. The evidence makes more sense if we talk instead in terms of divine cult.

Plato’s Point of View  - Plato’s main concern was what was truly real, which remained necessarily unchanging and itself, and therefore could not be present, at least as itself, in the world of the here and now. This is not however, how Plato is understood or represented by modern philosophers. There are two main schools of thought: the first is that his position is consistent throughout his work, but his work is shaped by an unknown agrapha (unwritten esoteric doctrine). The second is that his work represents a discursive exploration of philosophical questions, which comes to no firm conclusion.

Standing in the Place of Ea explores the role of the King in ancient Assyria, as the vizier of the god Assur. He was trained in the Adapa discipline, which is related to the myth of Adapa. He was required to be skilled in crafts, spear-throwing, scholarship, mathematics, divination, etc., and to excel other men, as chosen for the role by Assur. Thus he would emulate the knowledge and power of Ea, the divine sage whose home was the Abzu, the abyss at the root of creation.

Buying a copy of Understanding Ancient Thought

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Thomas Yaeger, May 4, 2017, May 29 2017, June 17-18, July 30,  August 8th, and August 12,  2017.

Justice and the Harmony of the Soul

Justice is spoken of in Plato's Republic as one of the four

 cardinal virtues; the others being wisdom, courage and 

self discipline (prudence; temperance or moderation in 

older translations) [428e]. Justice however, proves to be

 more difficult to define than the other virtues for the 

participants in the discussion, and they find that its definition 

cannot be approached directly. Therefore they decide to define 

the other virtues first, in the hope that what is left over 

will prove to be justice. 

After the other virtues have been defined, the participants

find that justice remains elusive. Socrates suggests a 

change of approach, and gains the agreement of 

Adeimantus and Glaucon that justice may be characteristic 

of both individuals and communities, and since

 communities are larger than individuals, justice may be 

easier to discern in the context of the polis "We may 

therefore find justice on a larger scale in the

larger entity, and so easier to recognize. I accordingly

 propose that we start our inquiry with the community, 

and then proceed to the individual and see if we can find 

in the conformation of the smaller entity anything similar 

to what we have found in the larger" [Rep. 368e-369a].

Socrates discusses the origin of the state (the polis) and

 argues that it arises out of need, because individuals are not

 self-sufficient. The basic needs are food, shelter and

clothing, and the creation of the polis supplies these needs.

 Such basic needs, he argues, are best met by the individuals

who make up the polis pursuing their own natural 

aptitudes, which are different for each and fit them for 

different jobs[369b-370b]. Hence Socrates argues that 

"we do better toexercise one skill" rather than attempting 

to practice several. Further, the workman must be able to 

function at the right moment for action and thus 

"a professional at the call of his job will not wait till he has 

leisure to spare for it" [370c]. The division of labour within 

the structure of the polis means that both the quality of the 

work done and the quantity produced are greater if 

individuals specialize in this way "on a single job for which 

he is naturally fitted, and neglects all others", whether he 

be a craftsman or a businessman.

Where then is justice in the state? Adeimantus suggests that

it is to be found somewhere in the mutual relationship of the

various elements which make up the state [372a]. The state is

not wise, for example, because of the knowledge of its

 carpenters concerning woodworking and the excellences of that

 craft [428a], no matter how vital the craft may be to life:

this kind of knowledge is too specific in its nature. Socrates

 asks whether there is 

"any form of knowledge to be found among

any of the citizens in the state... which is exercised not on

behalf on any particular interest but on behalf of the city as a whole, 

in such a way to benefit the state both in its

internal and external relations?" [428c] 

The answer is that there is, and it is possessed by the guardians, 

the class of citizens whose special purpose it is to defend the polis

(other men cannot do this and pursue their own natural

 abilities). These men, as citizens, are wise and capable of

being just in the abstract, rather than in the particular.

That is, it is possible for individual souls to be just, as

well as a community. The implication seems to be that they

 have some important feature in common which makes them just;

but what justice is, remains elusive, until Socrates remarks

that:

"our quarry is lurking right under our feet all the time

and we haven't seen it... like people searching for

 something they have in their hands all the time" [432d].

He suggests that it is in fact the requirement laid down at

the beginning of the discussion, that "one man was to do one

job, the job he was naturally most suited for" [433a]; and

that it is the quality left over, after discipline, courage

and wisdom have been identified, which "makes it possible for

them to come into being in our state and preserves them by its

continued presence when they have done so" [433b]. 

He argues that the duty of the ruler is to administer justice, 

and that to do this they will "follow the principle that men 

should not take other people's belongings or be deprived of 

their own... their reason... being that it is ”just" [433e]. 

Injustice is therefore defined as the opposite of the pursuit 

of special excellences, so that someone attempting to move 

from one of the three principal classes in the polis to another, 

say from the class of artisans to the military class, by means of

wealth or physical strength, is attempting to enter a sphere

for which he is unfit; the same is true if the individual

 attempts to pursue several or all functions simultaneously.

 Socrates claims that "this sort of mutual interchange and

interference spells destruction to our state" [434a-b]; and

 describes such a state of affairs as "the worst of evils".

This then, is the soul writ large, and justice, having been

 defined in the state as the mutual relations of its various

elements, each pursuing its own special exellence and

 occupying its particular place within the social structure,

 must, if the individual is to be just, involve a similar

structure and set of relationships within the soul. 

Thus Socrates argues that there are three principal aspects of the

soul: the Reason, the Spirit, and the Appetite, corresponding

respectively to the three principal classes in the state,

 which are: the Guardians, the military class, and the class of

artisans and businessmen. Thus the whole structure of the state 

is tied in closely with the ‘Myth of the Cave’ and the ‘Simile

 of the Sun’, as well as the matter of the ‘Divided Line’, 

discussed later in the Republic. 

The first and third of these correspondences are fairly easy to 

understand, but the middle of the three is a different and difficult 

matter, and Plato himself is unclear about it, though he warns us 

that his method is not to be regarded as precise  Each of these

 aspects of the soul must follow its own interests, like the

various classes within the state. Justice is concerned,

"not with external actions, but with a man's inward self,

 his true concern and interest. The just man will not

allow the three elements... to trespass on each other's

 functions or interfere with each other, but, by keeping

all three in tune, like the notes of a scale... will in

the truest sense set his house to rights, attain self-mastery 

and order, and live on good terms with himself" [443c-e].

The just individual has become one instead of many and "will

be ready for action of any kind (recalling the workman

 pursuing his special excellence)... and will call the

knowledge which controls such action wisdom."  Injustice is

action which destroys this disposition and capacity, and 

opinions, as opposed to knowledge and wisdom, which 

control such action, are defined as ignorance [443e]:

"Injustice is a kind of civil war between these… three elements... when

the elements of the mind are confused and displaced... [this] 

constitutes injustice, indiscipline, cowardice,

ignorance, and, in short, wickedness of all kinds" [444b-c].

The relations of the parts of the soul, whether harmonious or

inharmonious, is further compared with the physical health of 

the body: health being defined as being produced by  

establishing a natural relation of control and subordination

among the constituents of the body, whereas disease is 

produced through the establishment of anun-natural 

relation [444d].

The question remains to be asked: if all these elements 

are to be bound together in harmony, how is this achieved

 by letting each constituent of the soul or state pursue its 

own special xcellence, its function?

 It seems to us a very laissez faire

arrangement, and clearly the polis is some kind of entity

beyond the mere assemblage of its parts. It would not do, for

example, for the entire body of the citizenry to consist of

 carpenters, no matter how great their skills, no matter how

 excellent their designs. Likewise, a polis full of Guardians

would have difficulty in supplying the needs of the citizenry

in respect of food, clothing and shelter. Clearly Plato

 assumes that a proper order, a proportionate order of the

classes of the citizens, is natural. I.e., that it is in the

nature of reality for separate things to be joined together in

 a proportionate way. It would seem that the way this

harmonious arrangement arises is by each of the elements of

 the whole pursuing its own special excellence, but it is not

 altogether obvious why this should work out properly.

The reason for the difficulty here is that we look at things

 upside down with respect to the Greek perception of reality.

 Assuming (as we tend to do) that reality is an aggregation of

elements which add up to make substance and action, we cannot

 easily understand how it is that order has a natural place 

in the resulting arrangements. But the Greeks thought (with the

exception of materialists like Democritus) teleologically, so

 that the universe (in toto) was thought of as complete and

 perfect in itself. 

What we encounter in our experience is this complete and 

perfect totality unwound and disassembled to

 various degrees, so that things are not present in the proper

 proportions and order. However, if things are brought to their

proper ends, to their own perfection and completion, then, on

the basis of the analogy with the cosmos at large, all the parts

 of that individual entity, that particular whole, must

be present in a proper and harmonious order (which echoes the

 character of the argument about the nature of the soul on the

basis of the larger entity of the polis). 

Thus it is that the pursuit of special excellences by individuals, 

in terms of skills, and moral and intellectual virtue,

without reference to the activities of other individuals, was 

understood to  result in such a harmonious arrangement. 

They are joined together as a consequence of the fact that each 

of the virtues is complete and perfected,  and thus each 

participates in the completion and perfection of, the individual, 

the polis, and ultimately the cosmos itself.*1 

*1 See Timaeus 31c-32c.

References:

Plato: The Republic (penguin edn. transl. and introduction by

 Desmond Lee)

Plato: The Timaeus (penguin edn. transl. and introduction by

 Desmond Lee)

Onians, R.B:  The Origins of European Thought

Synoikismos and the Origins of the Polis

The definition of the polis, as understood by the Greeks themselves, and as transmitted to us, is far from clear; its origins and archaic development seem to be beyond recovery. We can say a few things with certainty: that it is the central institution of Greek society, and that there could be no politics without the polis. According to Aristotle, it is an entity which is not too large or too small, and other ancient sources have been taken to imply the necessity of the agora. In addition it must be an autonomous entity with surrounding territory (chora). However, it is misleading to think of the polis as a city-state along the lines of the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, for instance, because some possessed a population of no more than 600 citizens.

One of the oldest references to the polis appears in the Iliad [Bk xviii], in Homer's description of the shield of Achilles wrought by Hephaestus. On this shield was represented the world, the earth, the heaven, the sea, the sun, the moon, the constellations, and:

         

In it likewise he wrought two fair cities of articulate speaking men. In the one... there were marriages and feasts; and they were conducting the brides from their chambers through the city with brilliant torches... and the people were crowded together in an assembly, and there a contest had arisen; for two men contended for the ransom money of a slain man: the one affirmed that he had paid all, appealing to the people; but the other denied, declaring that he had received nothing: and both wished to find an end (of the dispute) before a judge. The people were applauding both, the supporters of either party... the elders sat upon polished stones, in a sacred circle, and (the pleaders) held in their hands the staves of the clear-voiced heralds; with these... they arose, and alternately pleaded their cause.

This passage contains details which appear in classical definitions of the polis: the physical city, the joining together of people, an assembly, the orderly resolution of disputes, appeal to the people and arbitration by a judge. The elders sitting in a sacred circle probably prefigure the council(s) of the polis. The second city appears to be the reverse of the former in its essence: a place of discord and distrust, of war and ambush. Not at all desirable, but a place to be included in a representation of the world.

A description of a polis appears in the Odyssey [bk. vi. 262ff]. It mentions a high wall and gates on each side of the city, stations for ships, a market-place around a temple of Poseidon, "fitted with large stones dug out of the earth". This passage indicates the existence of large conurbations at a relatively early period, but it would be unreasonable to infer from this description of a particular polis that each of the features described are essential features of the polis (i.e., a polis situated far inland cannot have stations for large ships).

Further evidence that the polis was a defined concept in Homeric times is indicated in Bk. vi, 4-10, where the foundation of a colony is described. Men were settled "in Scheria far away from enterprising men... (the Phoenicians); and ... ("godlike Nausithous") drew a wall around the city, and built houses, and made temples for the gods, and divided the plains". This foundation of an "apoikia" is echoed in its details in a passage found in Plato's Laws [745b-e] which describes the just foundation and layout of a polis, "as far as possible in the centre of its chora"; and the division of the whole into twelve parts, after an area has been designated for the principal gods to be called the "acropolis. A wall is to be built around it; "then it is possible to lay out the twelve parts, both in the polis itself and in the chora as a whole", And after the creation of the tribes and their allocation to the twelve gods, and the distribution of the land, the foundation is said to be complete.

Negative evidence for the nature of the polis in Homeric times appears in the account of the Cyclops given by Odysseus [Od. Ix., 106ff] who says that

they have no laws, who, trusting in the immortal gods, neither plant a plant with their hands, nor plough: but all these things unsown, untilled, spring up, wheat and barley, and vines, which bear wine from large clusters...

The real horror of the Cyclops' situation is that "there are neither assemblies for consulting, nor rights". In short the Cyclops live without the principal features of the polis, inhabiting " the summits of lofty moutains in hollow caves", unlike the citizens who live in the plains, "and everyone gives judgement to his children and wives", as opposed to the Greek practice. Finally, we are told that the Cyclops have no care for one another.

In the Works and Days Hesiod too sees the polis as a place where justice should reign and where fair arbitration ought to be obtainable:

When judgements are fair - alike for strangers as for the local folk - and the judges undiverted from what is right, then a polis blooms and the people in it prosper. For such a place Zeus, all seeing, does not ordain the misery of war (recalling the inverted polis on the shield of Achilles), so the young men grow up in the land in peace. Men of justice know nothing of famine or ruin, as they feast upon the produce of their fields: the earth offers them a life of plenty... As for the women, they bring forth sons to match their fathers.

Thus says Hesiod, "their blessings are perpetual: the fertile land yields up its crops - and they never set foot on a ship". By this Hesiod seems to be referring to one of the most probable causes of colonization: shortage of land, or its infertility. But, in common with most Greeks he sees a relation between fact and value, so that bad times for a polis are likely to be the actions of bad citizens:

often a whole polis has suffered because of the evil of one man who is a sinful and wicked schemer: the son of Kronos sends down from heaven a great and universal calamity, famine and plague at the same time, so that the people waste away; no children are born to the women, and oikoi die out; such is the decision of Olympian Zeus*^[1].

Thus, though calamity might seem like sufficient practical reason for the foundation of an "apoikia", this pattern of belief suggests strongly that colonists might be expelled for fear of contagion if they were perceived to be tainted with the evil which had befallen the polis (it seems that colonists were chosen to go by the polis, and it was not up to to the choice of the individual), whether or not the continued presence of the colonists would have prejudiced the survival of the polis in strictly causal terms. In practice this would have been an excellent way of settling old scores and redistributing land, principally in favour of the rich*^[2].

Turning to the archaeological evidence, there exists an inscription from the Cretan city of Dreros, which gives some insight into the structure of a polis in the archaic period*^[3]. It tells of a decision made by the polis about the office of "Kosmos" (apparently a chief magistrate), limiting its tenure and laying down specific conditions for the holder of the office (Aristotle claims a parallel significance for Spartan Ephors and the Cretan Kosmi, to which I shall return later). The seventh century Draconian Law on Homicide is the oldest extant Greek law code, and has been used in the past to suggest a drift towards written and therefore public law, at least in some parts of Greece*^[4]. However, according to Crawford and Whitehead [op. cit., p65], modern scholars regard the Constitution of Drako as the result of fifth century pamphleteering. Another stele, the Law from Chios, contains "the earliest secure reference to a Boule... of the people", and, it is argued, its power to levy fines and judge appeals (c600-550 B.C.) "attests the growth of the popular element within the state at a relatively early period"*^[5].

Later sources, naturally, are retrospective. Thucydides gives some information on the "synoikismos" of Attica (settling together). In Bk. ii. 15 he says that, from the time of the first kings "down to Theseus (the legendary founder of Athens, whose name is probably related to the verb tithemi, "to set in place") the people of Attica

always lived in (their own) poleis, each one with its own administrative buildings and officials; unless there was some common danger they would not come together in council with the king, but each individual polis would govern itself in accordance with its own decisions.

 In this case it is clear that the foundation of the Athenian polis did not involve the inauguration of basic institutions: each polis had its administrative buildings and officials, and took its own decisions. When Theseus came to the throne (as the Athenians wished to believe) he

organised the chora on a proper basis, chiefly by doing away with the multiplicity of poleis and their separate councils and governments; on his scheme there was only one polis... and one seat of decision making and administration.

So the synoikismos of Theseus had nothing to do with the foundation of the polis as an idea, but was instead a particular exemplification of the idea. What was his motive? This was total synoikismos:

everyone was free, just as before, to look after his own affairs, but there was now only one place - Athens - which Theseus allowed them to treat as a polis.

The synoikismos of Theseus was the completion of a unity: the population was not moved, but the political unit was now Attica instead of a multitude of "poleis".

There is a tendency among scholars to conflate synoikismos (interpreted here as the process leading to the creation of the polis) and the development of urbanism. The two are emphatically not the same and to assume that they are does not much illuminate the emergence of the polis. Aristotle's view of the development of the polis [Politics 1, 1252-3] is, on one level an example of this kind of error: his account is warped by a combination of two factors: his view of the world in teleological terms, leading him to postulate an evolution of the polis; and his systematic programme (which surfaces in all of his work) of leading the Greeks to virtue through common sense, which determines the character of that evolution. He sees the polis as the natural outcome of a teleological process which he outlines as follows: first the oikos which is the

natural unit established to meet all man's daily needs... then, when a number of oikia are first united for the satisfaction of something more than day-to-day needs, the result is the village... finally the ultimate partnership, made up of numbers of villages and having already attained the height... of self sufficiency - this is the polis.

I.e., it has become complete. "It has come into being in order, simply that life can go on; but it now exists so as to make that life a good life". Each of its constituent parts (the villages) are seen as leading up to the polis and, "for a process to reach its consummation is only natural".

Aristotle argues that the oikos is built out of two unions: that of male and female and of master and slave, and the latter are joined together out of mutual interest. He explains the relationship between master and slave by saying that intelligence and foresight naturally belong to the ruling element, and the partner with the capacity for physical labour will naturally be subject. Thus kings are explained as the outcome of master and slave within the oikos. The relationships between male and female and master and slave, he argues, are different, except in the case of the barbaroi: "among the barbaroi... female and slave...  fill the same position. The reason for this is that the barbaroi possess no naturally ruling element". Hence the Greeks have as much right to rule the barbaroi as their own slaves.

This preposterous argument serves a crucial function, for his argument about the development of the polis makes it virtually indistinguishable from the development of the city, making the development of the polis universal, given the same conditions. Thus the polis ceases to be a uniquely Greek phenomenon. To restore its uniqueness Aristotle has to assert the racial superiority of the Greeks over the barbaroi: only the Greeks can develop the polis, since only they are truly human. Further, Aristotle is forced to deny the obvious, in that his argument implies that no urban developments of the kind described had occurred elsewhere. Not only is this nonsense, but the absurdity is underlined by the fact that in the same book he describes the Carthaginian political system, showing it to parallel closely many aspects of the polis*^[6].

Roebuck, in his article "Some aspects of urbanization in Corinth"*^[7] also presents a case for synoikismos: i.e., he attempts to understand the development of the polis there in terms of an evolution (though naturally not a teleological one). Thus he interprets the archaeological remains as marking the development of the synoikismos towards the polis, as if the concept of the polis necessarily bears a fixed relation to its concrete remains. He discusses the relative merits of whether or not the material development of Corinth was the result of agriculture or commerce, and sees the presence of temples and other structures as stages in the upgrading towards the status of polis, confusing the remains with the institutions, which did not necessarily have a parallel evolution. For instance, if the synoikismos of the expanded Athenian polis reflects an actual occurence, and it came into being of a piece as the result of the imposition of an idea, then there was no evolution as such. No people were moved (unless we credit Plutarch's account) and the material remains would hardly reflect the change. Unless it turns up inscriptions and documents, archaeology can tell us little about this kind of change.

If the polis is neither the same thing as a city, nor its material infrastructure, we should decide what it is that the polis could be:

1. A passage from Thucydides makes it quite clear that the polis is not the same as the city, but that it is wherever the citizens are [vii. 77. 4.]. Why the citizens constitute a polis remains to be determined.

2. Is the polis a tribal entity? It certainly involved the tribes but did not depend on particular tribal arrangements, for the polis continued to exist after Cleisthenes' reforms and the breaking up of the old tribes.

3. Is it a place of law under which the citizens live? Yes. However this is not unique to the Greeks: the Carthaginians lived under law, and the Assyrians also (the kings' word was law). Is it written law? No, for the Spartans were accredited as Greeks and the Lycurgan rhetra were specifically unwritten. Yet they lived as citizens of a polis. Certainly according to Hesiod the polis was a place where justice ought to be had (though he was cynical about the likelihood of getting it).

4. Is the polis necessarily democratic? Not in the late archaic and classical sense, though the presence of democratic arrangements did not destroy the polis considered as a physical entity. The polis existed as a concept before the existence of democracy, being mentioned by both Homer and Hesiod. It also existed under oligarchic control.

5. Is the polis an ordered, hierarchical community? Yes, but this does not distinguish it from other cities in antiquity.

6. Is the polis a concept associated with the making of decisions? It is a characteristic of the polis that decisions are made, whatever the character of its rulership. A tyrant decides for his pleasure, an oligarch decides for "the best", and the demos, according to one's inclination, either falls prey to whatever seizes its imagination at the time, or else functions as the voice of the gods; a king, like the oligarchs, decides for the best on account of his supposed proximity to the divine.

7. Does the polis enshrine freedom? Yes, for it is only with freedom that decisions can be made, and therefore, according to Aristotle, virtue acquired [cf. the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly concerning the distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts]. The polis makes men free, and therefore where men are free there is a polis. The corollary of this is that where men can acquire virtue and have honour, they are free. Each of the Greek states has in common - apart from linguistic affinities - a common interest in honour and virtue. They differ from each other in the manner in which honour and virtue are achieved (i.e., the Spartans emphasised narrow military virtues).

8. Is the polis a place where there is specialization of official functions? To some extent, although most of the Greeks prided themselves on the amateur nature of their offices, almost as a guarantee of the purity of their institutions. At any rate, arguments for specialization of functions again blurs the distinction between the development of the polis and the rise of urbanism.

9. Does the polis promote attachment to something beyond the individual - i.e., the polis before the individual and his purely personal obligations? Yes, but pressure in this direction also comes from tribal association and obligation to a king, as well as being a sporadic feature of the development of urbanism.

10. Is assembly a necessary feature of the polis? Judging by the horror at the Cyclops lack of assembly, yes.

It might be argued that what we see in the institution of the polis is a secularization of decision making, the decisions no longer being made in consultation with the divine (through oracle and sacrifice), but now made by the community via the institutions (various councils; the ekklesia). In this respect it might be significant that (as far as I am aware) there were no oracular seats in Attica. However, the secularization argument is probably mistaken: oracles continued to be consulted. Perhaps it would be better to see the citizens functioning as a kind of "college of cardinals" (vox populi, vox dei), so that the style of man's relation to the divine has changed, rather than the connection being attenuated or abandoned altogether. If so, we might expect the carrying over of institutions and titles from an earlier system, i.e., "Kosmos"*^[8], "Basileus"*^[9], "Archon", etc. As Aristotle noted, Kosmos was a title of Cretan officials, and he equated this office with that of the Spartan Ephorate. The Kosmos may originally have had a sacred function: the word signifies order, arrangement, regularity, institution, discipline, and also the world, the universe, and mankind. The text of the inscription from Dreros has been interpreted in secular terms, but the reference to the Kosmos being "useless as long as he lives" might well refer either to a ritual uselessness, or to his being "marked off" from the rest of humanity as a man with a foot in both worlds, the sacred and the profane*^[10]. The Spartan Ephors (elected by the assembly of Equals) had responsibilities which included the giving of permission to foreign ambassadors to cross the border into Spartan territory; permission to address the Spartan assembly; they were also responsible for summoning the assembly. They were the essential intermediaries between the Spartans and the outside world, functioning in much the same way as a priest or prophet: as a gate to the other (the etymology of ephor is probably epi horos: i.e., "on the frontier"). Xenophon [Lak. Pol. 13, 1-5] indicates some of the religious associations of the boundaries of the chora.

The polis appears to revolve around two central ideas: that of assembly, and that of judgement (in a wide sense, including "separation" and "balance"). From Plutarch's life of Theseus we can gather that the assemblage was to be as large as possible, whether or not the synoikismos actually took place in this way:

daring yet farther to enlarge the city, he invited all strangers to equal privileges in it: and the words "come hither, all ye people", are said to be the beginning of any proclamation which Theseus ordered.

Plutarch also tells us that:

the nobility (selected by Theseus) were to have the care of religion, to supply the city with magistrates, to explain the laws and to interpret whatever related to the worship of the gods. As to the rest, he balanced the citizens against each other as nearly as possible; the nobles excelling in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the artificers in number...

(which recalls Plato's remarks about the distribution of equal plots of land: the actual size of the plot depended on its fertility. A good plot would be very small). This view of the polis makes it a moral universe, containing all good things in strict proportion, with all the people of Attica in communion with the king.

A fragment from the beginning of Aristotle's Athenian Constitution [no. 5] also points to the significance of total assemblage for the idea of the polis. He says that the Athenians

were grouped in four tribal divisions in imitation of the seasons of the year, and each of the tribes was divided into three parts, in order that there might be twelve parts in all, like the months of the year, and they were called thirds and brotherhoods; and the arrangement of clans was in groups of thirty to the brotherhood, as the days to the month, and the clan consisted of thirty men.

One can argue that the significance of the assembly of the citizens is that it makes council and judgement possible among the largest number of participants. But there may be a deeper reason behind the desire for the total synoikismos. The reason may be theological, involving the idea of completion. As Aristotle said of the polis, it is an end, and once it is reached it begins to serve an entirely different function, allowing the passage of the citizens from the world of subsistence to the world of the good life, the life of virtue. The polis can do this only because it is complete and has reached the limit of what it is: its completion marks it off from the rest of the world (with which it is contrasted on the shield of Achilles), so that it stands in relation to the world as does a priest or priest-king - of the world, but set apart.

The importance of the polis therefore, given the validity of this argument, was its completeness, so that it stood like a gate between the world of subsistence and a world of possibilities beyond; a place of transaction (hence commerce and the agora), both between man and man, and man and the divine. It served as the intermediary, as the point of exchange (hence the presence of strangers). Its completeness did not depend on particular buildings, institutions, and social arrangements, beyond the assembly and the principle of counsel, and so it was possible for the polis to be wherever the citizens (the free) happened to be.

The real polis, of course, was never like this: the average citizen's liberty and leisure to acquire virtue was never quite what Aristotle had in mind. The history of the polis, and its emergence into history, might be characterized as the struggle to be what it ought to have been, but never was.

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    [1] Crawford and Whitehead, Archaic and Classical Greece, 10.

    [2]  I.e., the aristocracy: decisions were always confirmed by an oracle of Apollo, and the aristocracy had charge of religious matters, and corruption is likely to have been a great temptation. However, to look at this kind of power as corruption is to retroject modern cynicism about political elites: the teleological view of the world equates fact and value, and therefore it follows as the corollary of social position that the judgements of the aristocracy are of a better calibre than the judgements of anyone else.

    [3] c650-600 B.C.  Fornara: Archaic Times to the end of the Peloponnesian War, 11.

    [4]  Fornara: op. cit., 15.

    [5] Fornara: op. cit., 19.

    [6]  Politics ii, 11, 1-16.

    [7]  Hesperia 41, 96-127.

    [8] Fornara, op. cit., 11.

    [9] Crawford and Whitehead, op. cit., 38, 63.

  [10] kosmos is probably cognate with the Arabic kesem, to distribute, divide; or Hebrew kesem, to dress the hair. The Greek word connotes order, arrangement, regularity; battle array; institution; discipline; ornament, attire; praise; world, universe, mankind.