The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

by Ober, Josiah

  In this chapter, we establish some basic facts about the social ecology of the Greek city-state world—its extent, topography, and climate; its demography; and the ways in which the states of Hellas resembled and differed from one another. Our survey of the city-state world poses a basic question: How do certain human societies manage to cooperate at scale and over time without resort to centralized systems of authority? As we will see in chapter 3, Plato’s student Aristotle answered that question for us by pursuing Plato’s analogy of Greeks to social insects.

  POPULATION AND DISTRIBUTION

  If the conclusions reached in chapter 4 are on the right track, the total Greek population in about 1000 BCE, during the Early Iron Age nadir, was about 330,000 people. At the height of the classical efflorescence in the later fourth century BCE, the population of “core Greece” (mainland south of Macedonia, Cycladic and Ionian islands) had risen to about 3 million. The total population of polis-dwelling Greek-speakers in the extended Greek world was in the neighborhood of 8.25 million people (figure 2.1). That was something like 10–15% of the population of the Roman Empire in the high imperial first and second centuries CE. Hellas in the fourth century BCE accounted for perhaps 3–4% of the world’s total population—roughly comparable to the percentage of the world’s population currently made up by residents of the United States.1

  FIGURE 2.1 Estimated populations, core Greece and the Greek world, 1000–300 BCE.

  NOTES: The data points at the far left (1000 BCE) and far right (300 BCE) of the chart are based on evidence discussed in chapters 2, 4, and 6. Points in between (900–400 BCE) are interpolated. Core Greece = the territory controlled by the Greek state in 1881–1912 (mainland from Thessaly south, Ionian islands, Cycladic islands). Core Greece figures after 800 BCE are reduced at least marginally by migration to other parts of the Greek (and non-Greek) world. Greek world figures include Hellenized populations, per discussion in chapter 4.

  Morris 2004 models Greek population growth from 900 to 300 BCE across a region larger than “core Greece” but smaller than “Greek world” and assumes less dense population for some regions. These assumptions result in a population growth curve that lies between the two curves illustrated here.

  The land area occupied by the Greek city-state culture (excluding unclaimed territory and wasteland between poleis and non-Greek populations interspersed among the poleis, as in Sicily, Anatolia, and around the Black Sea) was about 190,000 km2—about one and a half times the total territory claimed today by the Greek state today. The overall population density of the ancient Greek world was, based on these calculations, about 44 persons per km2—very close to that of two of the most highly developed European states of the sixteenth and seventeenth century: Holland (in 1561) at 45.3/km2 and England and Wales (in 1688) at 44/km2.2 Ancient Greek population density resembles that of modern South Africa, Lithuania, or Panama—or (coincidentally) the contemporary world (47/km2—land area only); it falls about midway between the population density of the United States (35/km2) and Mexico (60/km2).

  The surface area of the interconnected Mediterranean and Black Seas is roughly 15 times the land area occupied by ancient Greeks: about 3 million km2 (approximately a third of the land area of the United States or Europe). The combined length of the coastline of the two seas is about 50,000 km—approximately equivalent to the coastline of Indonesia and 2.5 times that of the United States. On and near the shores of these two very considerable bodies of water, and on the many habitable islands of the Mediterranean, there were, in Plato’s and Aristotle’s time, something in the order of 1,100 Greek poleis.

  The Greeks were unevenly distributed along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas (map 2). The great majority of the Greek states—more than nine in ten poleis, and at least seven-eighths of the total Greek population—were concentrated in just one corner of Plato’s pond: the northern and eastern quadrant of the Mediterranean basin: Sicily, southern Italy and the Adriatic islands, mainland Greece, the Aegean islands, western Anatolia. A handful of poleis were located on Mediterranean coasts west of Sicily (Emporion (i2) near modern Barcelona in northeastern Spain, Massalia (i3 = modern Marseilles) in southern France. A few were located south of Crete, notably African Kyrene (i1028) and Egyptian Naukratis (i1023). Most of the rest of the poleis that lay outside the intensely Greek eastern Mediterranean (a total of 92 known communities) were to be found along the shores of the Black Sea, including the Sea of Marmara (Propontis) (see map 1).3

  Plato’s analogy of polis-dwelling Greeks to ants or frogs around a pond points immediately to one of the most striking features of the Greek city-state ecology: Greek poleis were very seldom to be found far from the seashore. The majority of the poleis were located within 25 km in a straight line from the coast, and most of the rest within 50 km from the coast.4 Of course, the overland routes of Greece were rarely straight, and travel to the coast was sometimes arduous due to the rugged terrain. Not every Greek state had easy access to the sea. Nevertheless, the pattern of polis location near the coasts is very striking, and Plato’s pond analogy is quite apt in this sense, as (we shall see) in others.

  The Greek world was (and is) famously mountainous: About 80% of the land area of the modern Greek state is covered by mountains; Sicily, south Italy, and the regions of western Asia in which the Greeks settled in antiquity are similarly mountainous. In a few regions of the Greek world, a substantial number of poleis lay far above sea level—high-elevation poleis were especially prevalent in Arcadia, where 28 of 39 poleis with measured elevation lay above 500 m and only 3 below 200 m. Sicily, Thessaly, Caria, and Crete also sported relatively high concentrations of poleis at higher elevations. Throughout most of the Greek world, however, most poleis were located at relatively low elevations: Well over half of the 902 poleis with a measured elevation (507: 56%) were located at elevations under 100 m above sea level, and fewer than a quarter (205: 23%) were located over 300 m. The distribution of poleis by region and by elevation is illustrated in figure 2.2.

  Although there are notable examples of large and prominent high-elevation poleis (e.g., Kyrene at 616 m, Mantinea [i281] at 629 m, and Megalopolis [i282] at 406 m), higher elevation is negatively correlated, weakly overall but more strongly in some regions (notably Sicily), to both polis size and prominence.5 The general preference of ancient Greeks for locating their states at lower elevations within their ruggedly mountainous homelands can be explained in part by the attraction to coastal regions for purposes of trade, and in part because much of the best arable land of Greece was relatively close to sea level. Both the fact that there was considerable intra-as well as interregional variation in polis elevation and the fact that most poleis were not situated in inaccessible mountaintop locations are relevant to the development of the Greek economy. Both of these features of polis distribution also had a very significant bearing on the Greek way of war.

  The distribution of poleis is noteworthy in respect to climate. With the exception of about 50 poleis around the Black Sea proper (north and east of the Sea of Marmara), the Greek city-states were located almost entirely within a particular and rare (in global terms) climatic zone characterized by a temperate, hot and dry summer, “Mediterranean” climate.6 Moreover, if we look more closely at modern climate maps, we will see that (again the Black Sea poleis excepted) almost all Greek poleis were located in only one band of the Mediterranean climate zone: Greeks lived almost uniquely in places in which winter lows now average between–1°C to 4°C (30–40°F) and 7–15°C (45–60°F). They almost never lived in the relatively “frigid” parts of the Mediterranean near-coastal zones, where winter lows now average below–1°C (30°F). In terms of rainfall, Greeks strictly avoided desert regions, that is, areas with average rainfall in the range of 15–25 cm per year or less.

  FIGURE 2.2 Elevations of 902 poleis, by region.

  NOTES: Based on polis locations specified in http://polis.stanford.edu/. Some locations, and thus some elevations, are only approximate. H
igh outliers deleted = Sollion (i137): 1,577 m, Chedrolioi (i566): 2,044 m, Smila (i611): 2,044 m, and Kerasous (i719): 1,922 m.

  More surprisingly, perhaps, Greeks seldom settled in regions that, today, see any substantial rainfall in the summer months. Although a fair part of the Mediterranean climate zone receives between 2.3 and 5.0 cm of rain per month in the summer (e.g., most of the west coast of Italy from Naples north, and the south coast of France), almost all Mediterranean Greek poleis—and thus the great majority of all poleis, were located in regions that currently receive less than 2.3 cm of rain in each of two consecutive summer months. This region was, in antiquity, unsuited to irrigation—there are few major rivers in Greece. Those that there are did not lend themselves, as did the Nile and Tigris/Euphrates systems, to large-scale irrigation in antiquity. Without irrigation, and with very low summer rainfall, most plants are dormant in the midsummer months. Most crops were therefore planted during the wet months and harvested before the driest part of the summer.7

  By the classical era, the Greeks had occupied virtually all of the territory in Eurasia (all of it is near the Mediterranean) that falls in the specific moderate temperature and “dry but not too dry” rainfall bands described above—except, that is, for those regions that were claimed and successfully defended by another highly developed city-state culture. The Phoenicians and their kinsmen, the Carthaginians, occupied the relevant parts of the coastal Levant, the Mediterranean coast of Africa from the Tunis peninsula west, the big islands of Sardinia and Corsica, the smaller western Mediterranean islands, parts of western Sicily, and the Hispanic Mediterranean coast south of Barcelona/Emporion (see map 2).

  Evidently the Greeks—not unlike particular species of ants—tended to occupy a very particular ecological niche. Their niche was characterized both by its proximity to seacoasts and by a specific climate of above-frigid winter temperatures and very (but not excessively) dry summers. By the classical period, Greeks had occupied all the territory in that niche that was available to them. In thinking about the potential significance of the geographic distribution of Greek poleis, we need to answer several related questions: First, since virtually all of the relevant (temperate and dry but not too dry) climate zone is to be found near the Mediterranean coasts, was the striking coastal, “around the pond,” distribution of poleis simply an epiphenomenon of a climate preference? Next, why were the Greeks so attached to (or so limited by) a particular coastal/climate niche? And finally, did the narrow ecological niche in which Greeks mostly lived serve to promote or to inhibit the rise of the Greek world?8

  We have, in a sense, already answered the first question: the Black Sea and outlier Greek settlements show that climate is not strictly determinative. Evidently a good location on a coast could sometimes, if not often, trump a less-than-ideal climate. The second question, why the Greeks lived where they did, is harder and may benefit from Plato’s ant analogy. Suppose that an ant nest is established by accident (say the queen was blown a long way from her home nest) in a new region with abundant resources that the particular ant species is well adapted to exploiting. Suppose further that this new region lacks rival nests (or other species) to exploit the same resources, and that it is relatively free of anteaters. We may expect the nest to flourish and to spawn other nests. The descendants of the original nest will eventually occupy the entirety of the region with the desirable features of resources, absence of rivals, and low predation. The basic settlement history of the Greek world fits that scenario tolerably well. Starting out from their homeland in mainland Greece, in the course of the later Bronze Age, through the Early Iron Age, and especially in the archaic and classical periods, Greek speakers occupied all places available to them with the right natural features that lacked effective competition from rival cultures and offered security from predatory cultures.9

  The “right natural features” were, in the first instance, the climatic conditions that made it possible to grow grain (especially wheat and barley), which was the staple of the Greek diet, grapes for wine, and olives whose oil was used for lighting and cleaning as well as for food. These three basic crops make up the so-called “Mediterranean triad” (see below): the basis of the Greek diet. Of the three crops, the olive is by far the most demanding in terms of where it can be cultivated. Nutritious grains can be grown under a wide variety of climatic conditions. Grapes (of the sort suited to wine production) are pickier, requiring average annual temperatures in the range of 10–20°C. Olives grow only under the conditions specific to the generic “Mediterranean” climate, as described above.

  We have yet to specify why Greeks were so culturally wedded to the grain/olive/grape triad—obviously humans (unlike a given species of ant) can live on a wide variety of diets. But accepting for the moment that Greeks were attached to the triad, we have an explanation for their territorial distribution. As the Black Sea settlements show, under the right conditions, i.e., favorable conditions for lucrative trade with other cultures, olive cultivation could be foregone. But through the classical era, Greeks almost never established communities outside the zone of ready cultivation of grain and grapes.

  In regions with the right resources, and lacking militarily effective competitors, the Greeks were able to push aside, assimilate, or exterminate local populations—the history of Greek colonization (as with other colonial histories) conjoined accommodation, assimilation, and organized violence (ch. 6). Effective competition for regions with the right resources came, as we have seen, in the form of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, who tended to occupy exactly the temperate “dry but not too dry” subset of the Mediterranean zone particularly favored by the Greeks. Given that grain, olives, and grapes can be grown throughout the Mediterranean climate zone, it seems possible that Greeks might have settled more of the somewhat wetter parts of the Mediterranean zone had those areas not been occupied by other competitor cultures: for example, by Latins and Etruscans on the central and northern parts of the western coast of Italy. Possibly, in the absence of competitors, Greeks would have extended their range into very low rainfall regions in which agriculture was made possible through large-scale irrigation and drainage systems—places like Egypt and Mesopotamia. But these areas were settled by highly organized cultures and for the most part were unavailable (until Alexander the Great’s conquests) for Greek settlement. Naucratis (i1023), a trading port in the Egyptian Nile Delta, was a notable exception.

  Dangerous human predators came in the form of expansionist imperial states (notably, in the classical period, Persia and Carthage) and in the form of the nomadic steppe cultures of central and western Eurasia—the people the Greeks called Scythians and Cimmerians. Predations by peoples from the steppes was an endemic problem for even the largest and best-organized premodern imperial states—including Rome and China. While the Greek communities in western Anatolia and especially around the Black Sea were exposed to steppe-nomad predation, the European Greeks, those located west and south of the Bosphorus, were effectively insulated from the steppes by the nature of the terrain. Most of the territory occupied by Greeks lay outside the dry and frigid grassland zone in which the horse-centered culture of the steppe nomads flourished. In much of the Greek world, lack of grazing land meant that cavalry could not readily operate at the grand scale required by the steppe cultures.10

  The third question posed above—did the restriction to a narrow climatic/coastal zone limit or promote Greek growth?—will be considered in more detail in later chapters. I suggest that, far from inhibiting Greek growth, the conditions typical of the particular zone in which Greeks lived provided a firm foundation for the development of the institutions and cultural features that drove the classical efflorescence. Among other things, subtle variations within the distinctive Greek climate zone created opportunities for subregions to specialize in one or another or the “triad” crops: Low-rainfall regions, like Athens’ territory of Attica, where relatively low-value barley grew better than high-value wheat, could, for example, export
olive oil and import wheat. The very dry summers created a natural break in the agricultural year, a window that was available for long-distance travel—and for war. Moreover, as we have seen, the poleis of the northeastern Mediterranean quadrant, where resources were right and competitors absent, were tightly packed together. Arable land was at a premium within that quadrant, and rival poleis were typically within a short march or a shorter sea voyage of one another. These conditions created ample opportunity for conflict but also rewarded intensification, specialization, and cooperation—primary drivers of the classical efflorescence.

  SIMILARITY

  The Greeks states around the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas manifested notable regional differences, some of which we consider below (for the 45 regions of the Greek world, see map 1 and appendix I). But the many poleis of Hellas shared some important cultural similarities, including language; religion and death rituals; ways of war-making and peace-making; styles of architecture and city planning; and modes of dress, games, and food ways.