Early Greece. Oswyn Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ about 800 until at least 600; and it remained important for a further 300 years.

      The pottery shows that the site was occupied from the start by Phoenicians, Cypriots and Greeks. The early Greek pottery can be divided into two periods: the first lasts from 800 to 700, when there is a definite though short break in the occupation of the site. Sargon of Assyria conquered the area around 720; and under his successor Sennacherib, Cilicia and Syria revolted: the break in occupation probably coincides with the crushing of the revolt and the sack of Tarsus in 696. The shapes and decoration of the Greek pottery in this early period are distinctive; more recent excavations have shown that they derive from Euboea.

      The place where these Euboeans (led perhaps by Greeks from Cyprus) established their settlement shows the typical signs of a trading post: it is on the fringes of an area of advanced civilization, where political control was weak, and where they could gain access to the luxury goods of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and (through the Phoenicians) Egypt. The metals of south-east Anatolia were also exploited, for in the same period Greek geometric pottery similar to that at Al Mina is found at Tarsus; but whereas in Tarsus the Greeks seem to have lived in a native town, Al Mina was an established emporion or trading post, whose mixed community must have been reflected in its political and religious organization. The Greeks received iron, worked metal objects, fabrics, ivories and other semi-precious ornaments; it is far less easy to determine what they offered in exchange. Silver is relatively common in the Aegean area; and the later interest of Euboean towns in backward regions such as the west and the Chalcidice in north Greece, suggests that they may have engaged in slave-raiding to finance their eastern trade; Ezekiel at least mentions slaves as a typical Greek commodity.

      The same pattern has been revealed in the west. The earliest western colony of the Greeks was also for some time the most distant – on the bay of Naples. The original settlement was a joint venture from the two main towns in Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria, on the island of Pithecusae (Ischia); the site is a steep-sided peninsula previously uninhabited, with two good harbours but little cultivable land nearby. Later, whether from political troubles or because the desire for security lessened, most of the settlers moved to the mainland where they founded Cumae. Excavations from 1952 at the original island settlement show that the Greeks arrived around 775; by 750 their numbers were substantial. The earliest pottery is mainly Euboean and Corinthian; one of the chief occupations of the community was iron smelting: a group of buildings used for metal-working and a number of clay mouthpieces for bellows have been found, together with iron slag which appears from analysis to come from Elba. Although no military or aristocratic tombs have yet been found, the early graves of the settlers show a high degree of sophistication; in particular they contain a large number of eastern objects – from the eighth century alone over a hundred Egyptian scarabs, and almost as many seals from north Syria and Cilicia, together with near eastern pottery; these objects must have come as a result of trade through Al Mina.

      The history of Greek settlement on the bay of Naples is parallel to the history of Al Mina, though with important differences. The settlement may or may not have been an official colony of Chalcis and Eretria, rather than a trading post; the presence of Corinthian pottery is explained by the fact that Corinth was an essential staging point on the journey to the west, for Greeks tended to avoid the voyage round the Peloponnese by taking ship from Corinth. Once again the settlement was founded on the edge of the sphere of influence of a major power; for there is an obvious connection between its position and the Etruscans to the north, who were able to control the sources of metal in their area and also the tin and amber routes from Britain and the north. But whereas Phoenicia and Mesopotamia were more advanced than the Greeks, Etruscan culture was only just entering its urban phase.

      The Etruscans are absent from Homer; they appear first in Hesiod (Theogony 1016), and in one of the archaic Homeric hymns to Dionysos (7), which describes how the god was carried off when ‘there carne swiftly over the wine-dark sea Tyrsenian (Etruscan) pirates on a well-decked ship’. The urbanization of Etruscan settlements from the eighth century onwards may be a natural development; but in most respects contact with Greeks transformed Etruscan culture. The Phoenicians do not seem to have penetrated as far north as this before the early seventh century; so it must have been on the basis of Greek seafaring that an area of hill towns so devoid of natural harbours took to the sea, and won its reputation for piracy. The beginnings of Etruscan culture are marked by an ‘orientalizing phase’; the first signs of eastern imports begin around 750, and the phase is at its height from 700 to 600. The exact significance of this phenomenon is linked to the controversial question of the origins of the Etruscans, since it has been used to support the ancient theory that they were immigrants from Lydia. But the objects themselves are not Lydian: they are no different from those found in contemporary Greek sites. It seems likely therefore that this trade was not in the hands of Etruscans or Phoenicians (at least initially), but rather of Greeks; even before 750 Euboean pottery is found at Veii and elsewhere in south Etruria, and a distinctive form of dress pin is known from both Etruria and Pithecusae. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the orientalizing phase is followed from 600 by a period in which Etruscan culture is dominated by Greek imports and Greek artistic techniques; and the adaptation of Greek writing and Greek infantry tactics (below pp. 95, 124) are further signs of the importance of Greek influence on Etruria. As with the Phoenicians, the later evidence of piracy, rivalry and open warfare between Greeks and Etruscans is a product of close contact which initially was friendly. So began the process of the Hellenization of Italy, which was to culminate in the culture of Rome, whose early culture was deeply influenced by contact with the Greeks.

      The trade route which can be traced from the near east to Etruria through Al Mina and Pithecusae was in the first instance the product of a search for metals and luxury goods on the part of the aristocracy of Euboea: at its centre lay a society whose life style was influenced as much by the wanderings of Odysseus as by the warrior virtues of the Iliad. Of the two chief cities on Euboea, Chalcis probably lies under the modern town and has not been excavated; but Swiss and Greek excavations at Eretria show that it emerged suddenly as a prosperous community some time after 825. The period 750–700 was one of major temple building, and in the next century there were considerable public works in fortification and to control the river course. The absence of earlier remains is perhaps explained by a site half way between Chalcis and Eretria on the edge of the Lelantine Plain at Lefkandi: here British excavations have revealed a large settlement, with remarkable continuity and increasing prosperity throughout the Dark Age, until a sharp decline after 825; the site was finally abandoned around 700. It has reasonably been suggested that this was the original Eretrian settlement, which moved to the later Eretria in the late ninth century. The importance of the community at Lefkandi is shown by the continutuity and size of the settlement throughout the Dark Ages, and by the comparatively large amount of gold ornaments and eastern imports found in the tombs; the working of metal is attested by a ninth century bronze foundry.

      A pale reflection of the last age of this society survives in the literary sources, with memories of a great war fought between Chalcis and Eretria for possession of the Lelantine Plain. In a brief sentence Thucydides contrasts it with other early border wars: ‘it was particularly in the old war between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians that the rest of the Greek world also divided in alliance with one side or the other’ (Thucydides 1.15). Scattered references to early friendships between cities can be used to establish a tentative list of those on each side:

СКАЧАТЬ

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	Chalcis	Eretria
	Samos	Miletus	(Herodotus 5.99)
	Erythrae	Chios	(Herodotus 1.18)
	Thessalians		(Plutarch, Moralia 760)