by Oswyn Murray
Such a means of diffusion explains perhaps why literacy in Greece was never confined to a particular class or group. The evidence for official scribes, whose position was sometimes hereditary (for instance in the inscription establishing a hereditary poinikastas and remembrancer in a city of Crete about 500), is scattered and anyway refers to city officials: there is no sign of a group of professional scribes earning a living from their skill. The varied subject matter of early inscriptions (laws, lists, private and public gravestones, artists’ signatures, owners’ names on pots) suggests widespread use of writing. By the late sixth century an institution like ostracism in Athens (below p. 283) similarly presupposes large numbers of citizens able to write at least the name of a political opponent. To judge from the number of very early poetic inscriptions, both formal and casual, writing seems to have been used freely in poetic composition. Perhaps most significant are the numerous educational and semi-literate examples of writing: these include partial or complete alphabets written out for practice on broken pots, apparent exercises, and inscriptions whose letter forms are quite unorthodox, whose spelling conforms to no possible pronunciation, or whose grammar is wildly eccentric: a shrine on Mt Hymettus in Attica has revealed a number of such casual inscriptions from the seventh century, all quite trivial in content, and many so illiterate as to be difficult to understand. A more striking example is the set of messages scratched in 591 by seven passing Greek mercenaries on the left leg of the colossal statue of Rameses II at Abu Simbel on the upper Nile (below p. 233); even if these men had to supply their own armour, they will not have been particularly rich or well educated. The point of such casual evidence is that in primitive societies it is only under circumstances of restricted literacy that a concept of correct letter forms, correct spelling or correct grammar emerges: the more varied the contents of inscriptions, the more erratic their writing or spelling, the more sure we can be that literacy is widespread – a fact that should be remembered by those who complain today about modern standards. By the fifth century it is clear that the average male Athenian citizen could read and write; this presupposes formal and widespread instruction, the earliest evidence of which comes from around 500: for instance Herodotus records a disaster in the town of Chios in 496, when the roof fell in on a school ‘where children were learning their letters, so that out of 120 boys only one survived’ (6.27).
It is therefore wrong to speak of craft or restricted literacy in the seventh and sixth centuries, even if we are unable to quantify the degree of literacy or assess its distribution between particular social classes. Archaic Greece was a literate society in the modern sense, indeed the first literate society of which we have reasonably detailed knowledge. But there is an important qualification: literacy is itself a vague term, covering abilities ranging from a knowledge of the alphabet sufficient to be able to read and write one’s name and simple messages, to fluency in at least reading and understanding long literary texts or complex arguments. At this higher level Greece in many respects long remained an oral culture: the most complex public documents which might be written were laws or decrees, which by their nature required permanent fixing and display; literary texts had restricted circulation and were read only by a minority, and writing was seldom a normal or preferred mode of communication if speech was possible. The cultural historian will regard Greece as an oral or a literate culture according to the area he is investigating.
Even with this limitation it is hard to overestimate the consequences of literacy for early Greece. A famous article published by the anthropologists Goody and Watt in 1963 gives the clearest statement of this problem, both in general and in relation to Greece. The study was heavily influenced by the general approach of the ‘Toronto School’, the best representative of which is Harold Innis and the most notorious Marshall McLuhan: in the work of this group, communication is seen as a fundamental force in society, and changes in the mode of communication are taken as the central catalyst, altering both social and individual relations; ‘the medium is the message’ – new forms of communication, widespread literacy, the dissemination of the book through printing, or television, so alter our perceptions that they replace social, economic or religious factors as the primary theoretical explanation of change in society. Goody and Watt argued that the coming of literacy to Greece is the only known pure revolution in literacy, in that it is the only occasion when the skill was transmitted alone, without either attendant written texts or enforced changes in social forms. The case of Greece thus becomes central; for it can be set up as a model against which to test the consequences of the introduction of literacy in other cultures.
In Greece, Goody and Watt claim that literacy was responsible for most of the changes in the archaic age, for the movement towards democracy, the development of logic and rational thought, scepticism, the growth of individualism and personal alienation, and the replacement of primitive mythopoeic ways of approaching the past by a critical historiography. The fundamental factor in this process was the way that literacy fixed permanently and made available to a wider audience previously fluid descriptions: the evasions and reinterpretations of the oral tradition ceased, and the resulting gap between written statement and actual experience led to the formation of a critical approach to life based on a notion of the essential rationality of all aspects of reality, public and private. Literacy indeed becomes the cause of what the German sociologist Max Weber saw as the distinguishing mark of western civilization, the ‘formal rationality’ of its institutions.
There seems little doubt that the advent of literacy in Greece did cause, or at least facilitate, a number of radical changes. In literature there is perhaps the emergence of written poetry from Hesiod onwards, and the fixing and slow atrophy of the oral tradition, the development (or at least the recording) of new metres and the personal lyric. There is the continuing tradition of Ionian natural philosophy, starting in primitive mythopoeic and near eastern thought, but with each generation proceeding from the assimilation and criticism of its predecessors. And historiography does show something of the same progression, from critical mythology to history by way of conscious criticism of previous writers. The codification of laws in writing (p. 182) was recognized by the Greeks as the first step towards the breakdown of the traditional aristocracies and the development of the complex constitutions of the fifth century, democratic and oligarchic. In all these fields it may be argued that literacy was a contributory or enabling factor; in many of them it was even perhaps a necessary cause, in that without literacy these developments could not have happened. But whether it was so important as to constitute a sufficient cause or even a major factor in these changes, is another question. The development of so many aspects of a complex and highly fragmented society over three centuries is not likely to have been so largely conditioned by one phenomenon, which can be seen clearly at work only from time to time. Nevertheless its influence is pervasive, and the relative importance of the consequences of literacy is therefore a question which is central to the understanding of early Greece.
As Goody himself has emphasised in later books, what is ultimately important is the uses to which the new skill of literacy is put. Its influence was first felt in particular spheres, such as poetry, lawmaking, commemoration of the dead or marks of ownership. Throughout the archaic and early classical periods whole areas of public and private life remained outside its influence: decisions were for instance made by public debate, and without the assistance of writing: not until the mid fifth century was the final decision regularly recorded in writing. This is not so much a sign of the existence of a literacy restricted to a small group, as of the co-existence of oral and literate cultures in a period of functionally restricted literacy. Greece did not perhaps become a fully literate society in the modern sense until the early fourth century.
It is possible to set Greek literacy in context, by considering the further claim of Goody and Watt, that the case of Greece can be seen as a model of the consequences
of literacy in all cultures.
In fact, studies of literacy in other traditional societies suggest that, far from being a model or typical case, Greece is unusual. In general in traditional societies, literacy seems not to be an independent function, but to act in close relation to existing social forms, and in practice especially to religion and government. Literacy often codifies, fixes and develops the teaching of particular religions; in the political sphere it aids the machinery of government, by reinforcing centralized control and helping the development of bureaucracy. In other words, literacy works to strengthen tendencies already present in a society, rather than altering it fundamentally. It is for this reason that the coming of literacy to Greece was unique in the ancient world; for, unlike the other eastern scripts, the Greek script was developed in a secular atmosphere, and used from the start primarily for secular activities. The absence of an established priestly caste and the already open nature of Greek government are fundamental to understanding the consequences of literacy in Greece: literacy strengthened tendencies already present in Greek society, but it does not explain them entirely.
Naturalism in art, system in religion, the alphabet and literacy – the Greeks themselves were scarcely aware of how much they owed to the east: like the Dark Age, the orientalizing period virtually disappeared from sight, to be rediscovered by modern research. Yet it is this brief century of creative adaptation that began many of the most distinctive aspects of Greek culture, and so of western civilization.
VII
Colonization
TWO GREAT periods of Greek expansion provided the material basis for the diffusion of Greek culture. The first transformed the Mediterranean by bringing urban life to most of its coastline: in the century and a half between 734 and 580 the number of new cities established there is at least comparable to the number already existing in the Aegean area before the colonizing movement began. Expansion on this scale was not matched until the second age of colonization, when the conquests of Alexander the Great brought Greek city life to the Persian empire, from Egypt to Mesopotamia, India and Afghanistan. But the earlier period is more remarkable in contrast to this unified conquest, in that it was organized independently by many different cities and was the result of varied factors.
The colonizing movement in this period should not indeed be separated from the general phenomenon of urbanization seen in the development of the polis: as many cities were founded or refounded in Greece itself as were established overseas. Perhaps the most typical early ‘colonial city’ is in fact Eretria (above, chapter 5), with its spacious and well planned layout; at Athens the old city survived, but the entrance to the Acropolis was reoriented westwards towards a suburban area which gradually came to include all the major public activities of the polis, the hill of the aristocratic council of the Areopagos, the Pnyx or meeting place and the agora or public square. One of the most curious phenomena of the early archaic period is the decline in the quantity of archaeological evidence at precisely the point when Greece seems to emerge into prosperity and urban development. To some extent this lack of evidence reflects the disappearance of aristocratic or warrior-style burials; but more generally it can be explained by changes in settlement patterns: small settlements like those around Naoussa Bay on Paros, Zagora on Andros or Emporio on Chios were abandoned without any sign of decline or destruction. As the evidence accumulates, it seems increasingly likely that the comparative absence of seventh century material itself reflects the process of urbanization: the scattered settlements of an earlier period came together to form a polis on a particularly favoured site, and in most cases the continuity of habitation down to the present day has either destroyed or buried the earliest period under the modern city.
It has always been clear that the earliest certain sign of the existence of the polis as a self-conscious entity was its ability to create a new polis by the process of colonization. But it seems increasingly probable that the chief difference between the emergent polis and the newly founded colonies is simply the geographical location of each. Both types of settlement reflect the same process, and differ little from each other; chronologically both occur at much the same time, and it is not possible to assert that either one is earlier than the other.
The geographical determinants of the early Greek expansion overseas are relatively easy to understand. The first area opened to settlement was Sicily, and the earliest foundations there were by Euboeans from Chalcis and Corinthians: the cautious movement southward from the first Chalcidian colony at Naxos on the straits of Messina (734) to the far better site of Corinthian Syracuse a year later, shows the pull of the trade route to Ischia, which had existed for at least a generation by now, and was both lifeline and source of information. More colonies from these and other cities followed in Sicily and south Italy along the same route; Peloponnesian states were particularly involved, with Megarian colonies, a group of Achaean cities in the Ionian gulf, and Sparta’s only foundation at Tarentum (Taranto).
A little later the islands and promontories of the north Aegean along the coasts of Macedon and Thrace were settled; again Euboean towns took such a prominent part in the movement that the main peninsula was named the Chalcidice from the number of Chalcidian towns there. The entrance to the Black Sea was colonized in the early seventh century, particularly from Megara; but it is still uncertain when the Black Sea itself began to be settled: the literary evidence for foundation dates is ambiguous, and there has not been enough archaeological exploration to answer the question. References in early poetry and legend suggest that the Greeks had entered the area already in the eighth century; but it seems unlikely that there was any permanent settlement before the second half of the seventh century and the foundation of the colonies at the entrance to the Black Sea, such as Chalcedon and Byzantium (about 680 and 660 respectively). If evidence for earlier settlement does emerge, it will have to be explained on the same principle as in the west, by postulating a metal route along the southern coast to the sources in Anatolia. This area was largely colonized by Miletus, who is claimed to have founded seventy-five or ninety cities there, mainly along the Turkish coast to Trapezus (Trebizond) and beyond, north from the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Danube, and in the Crimea area of southern Russia.
Elsewhere Cyrene in north Africa was founded from the island of Thera about 630. And from about 600 the Phocaeans of Asia Minor established a group of colonies based on Massalia (Marseilles), from Nicaea (Nice) and Antipolis (Antibes) to Emporion (Ampurias) in northern Spain.
Around 580 the colonizing movement effectively ceased. Geographically the best sites had been occupied. The main remaining area, the Adriatic, has a barren and inhospitable coastline, and the prevailing north wind made it climatically unattractive: Corcyra founded a few subsidiary colonies at its base, but it was not until north Etruscan hostility forced the Greeks to find a new way to the northern European trade-routes through the Po valley, that the city of Spina was founded near Ferrara north of Ravenna around 520: in this low-lying site with its Venetian-type canals some 3000 graves have been excavated, revealing more imported Athenian vases of the highest quality than at any other single site. Elsewhere the chief factors inhibiting expansion were political. Greek competition with Greeks had been present from the start, when Corinthians on their way to Syracuse expelled Eretrians from Corcyra and settled it for themselves: the island was directly on the western route, whose importance Corinth clearly realized already. Some at least of these colonizing rivalries can be related to the alliances being invoked in the Lelantine War at the same period; it is clear that the polarities visible in this war produced a zoning tendency in the distribution of colonies, with Chalcis and Corinth for instance dominating the west and north, while Megara and Miletus controlled the Propontis and the Black Sea. Later colonists were sometimes invited in by particular cities to damage the interests of their neighbours, or found themselves squeezed out by the hostility of the existing settlements.
Beyond these Greek
squabbles there were wider pressures. The Greek success in colonizing either provoked or was contemporary with Phoenician colonial expansion: the Phoenicians came to dominate the route along the African coast to Carthage and Spain; they also excluded the Greeks from western Sicily opposite Carthage, Sardinia and the Balearic islands. The same preservation of its interests by an Etruria becoming urbanized made Corsica disputed territory. A number of late sixth century attempts at colonization ran into difficulties because of such hostility.
Apart from their general distribution, various factors influenced the choice of particular sites. The ideal was the same as it had always been – a headland such as Homer’s Phaeacia or Old Smyrna, easily defensible with good harbours and fertile land nearby: Syracuse with its island citadel Ortygia, later joined by a causeway to the mainland, its double harbours and fertile plain is the perfect early site. The relative weight given to defence, harbour facilities and land must have varied with the circumstances of each foundation: we cannot argue directly to the purpose of the settlement from the nature of its site, if indeed many colonies had precise purposes. Still the three categories of defence, trade and land, taken in a broad sense, will help to clarify the various issues.
The earliest sites in an area tended to place a high priority on defence and communication, as at Sicilian Naxos. In the north Aegean the Chalcidice and Thasos are well protected from the mainland tribes. Chalcedon on the Bosphorus was founded according to the Persian Megabazus by blind men, or they would not have neglected the far finer site across the strait at Byzantium, settled seventeen years later (Herodotus 4.144); but Byzantium was open to Thracian raids, Chalcedon was safer and possessed good lands. Sometimes, when the temper of the local inhabitants was better known, the main colony would be shifted, as when the Ischians moved to Cumae, or the Cyreneans from an island to the mainland of Africa.
