Gymnasium and Polis

2021 ◽  
pp. 497-508
Author(s):  
Nigel Kennell
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
User Groups ◽  
Greek World

The article sketches the development of the gymnasium from its origins in the archaic period to the later Hellenistic period when, in addition to its military function, the gymnasium was a multi-use complex numbering among a city’s largest buildings. Epigraphical and archaeological evidence provide insights into the gymnasium’s infrastructure, user groups, and contests which were peculiar to it. Its administrator, the gymnasiarch, was a prominent official, whose position provided opportunities for displays of competitive generosity. The gymnasium also received benefactions from the local elite, kings, and dynasts, who thereby burnished their reputations as supporters of Hellenic culture. Gymnasia were also equipped with instructors in athletic and military subjects, with lectures or courses in the liberal arts mostly provided by travelling teachers. The homogeneity of its programme throughout the Greek world made the gymnasium an effective vehicle for transmitting Hellenic culture to non-Greeks, although Jewish society was ambivalent about its benefits.

THE TYPOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF SPARTAN BURIALS FROM THE PROTOGEOMETRIC TO THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD: RETHINKING SPARTAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND THE OSTENSIBLE CESSATION OF ADULT INTRAMURAL BURIALS IN THE GREEK WORLD

2018 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 307-363
Author(s):  
Paul Christesen
Keyword(s):  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Building Activity ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Made In

This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.

Alcaeus and Antimenidas: Reassessing the Evidence for Greek Mercenaries in the Neo-Babylonian Army

Klio ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Fantalkin ◽  
Ephraim Lytle
Keyword(s):  
Archaic Period ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern

SummaryThe alleged testimony of Alcaeus about the mercenary service of his brother Antimenidas in the Neo-Babylonian army has long served as the inspiration for a range of theories concerning the possible employment of Greek mercenaries in Near Eastern armies and their assumed role in the transfer of eastern influences to Greece during the Archaic period. A careful reassessment of Alcaeus’ fragments and Strabo’s testimony as well as the historical and archaeological evidence at hand suggests that there is little reason to believe that Antimenidas served Nebuchadnezzar II as a mercenary, and the evidence is certainly insufficient to conclude that Greek mercenaries were routinely employed in the Neo-Babylonian army.

Ancient Greek Terracotta Sculpture

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Greek Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Monumental Sculpture ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Terracotta Figurines ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Material Form

The phrase “terracotta sculpture” refers to all figurative representations in fired clay produced in Greece and in the Greek world during the first millennium bce, (from the Geometric period to the end of the Hellenistic period), whatever their size (figurine, statuette, or statue), whatever their manufacturing technique (modeling, molding, mixed), whatever their material form (in-the-round, relief, etc.), whatever their representation (anthropomorphic, zoomorphic [real or imaginary], diverse objects), and whatever the limits of their representation: full figure (figurines, statuettes, groups), truncated or abbreviated representations, including protomai, masks, busts, half figures, and anatomical representations, among others. All these objects, with the possible exception of large statues, were the products of artisans who were referred to in ancient texts as “coroplasts,” or modelers of images in clay. Because of this, the term “coroplasty,” or “coroplathy,” has been used to refer to this craft, but also increasingly to all of its products, large and small, while research on this material falls under the rubric of coroplastic studies. Greek terracottas were known to antiquarians from the mid-17th century onward from archaeological explorations in both sanctuary and funerary sites, especially in southern Italy and Sicily. Yet serious scholarly interest in these important representatives of Greek sculpture developed only in the last quarter of the 19th century, when terracotta figurines of the Hellenistic period were unearthed from the cemeteries of Tanagra in Boeotia in the 1870s and Myrina in Asia Minor in the 1880s. These immediately entered the antiquities markets, where their cosmopolitan, secular imagery had a great appeal for collectors and fueled scholarly interest and debate. At the same time, sanctuary deposits containing terracottas also began to be explored, but scholarly attention privileged funerary terracottas because of their better state of preservation. For most of the 20th century, the study of figurative terracottas basically was an art-historical exercise based in iconography and style that remained in the shadow of monumental sculpture. It is only in the last four decades or so that coroplastic studies has developed into an autonomous field of research, with approaches specific to the discipline that consider modalities of production, as well as the religious, social, political, and economic roles that terracottas played in ancient Greek life by means of broad sociological and anthropological approaches. Consequently, this bibliography mainly comprises publications of the last forty years, although old titles that are still essential for research are also included.

3. Material clues

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Original Audience ◽  
Greek World

‘Material clues’ considers the archaeological evidence for when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed, including Heinrich Schliemann’s quest to find Troy on the basis of clues in the texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey refer to material circumstances not found before the later eighth or early seventh century BCE. They describe a distant, mythical past, but are set in a real and recognisable landscape. No interpretation leads to a single original audience, historical context, or specific political agenda, but earliest quotations from, and references to, Homer in other poets’ work prove that by the late sixth century BCE, the poems were well known throughout the Greek world.

Lycurgus (2), legendary Spartan

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Nafissi
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Greek World

Lycurgus was the legendary founder of Sparta’s political order and of many of its social institutions. His legend initially developed as part of the transformation that gave Sparta its distinctive features during the Archaic period. The role that Spartan tradition attributed to Lycurgus ended up subsuming and eventually cancelling any memory of this process, and his role in the establishment of the city’s laws and customs, along with Apollo’s blessing, rendered them more legitimate and binding. As it was Lycurgus’s laws that granted Sparta her distinctive greatness, the lawgiver continued to be an influential source of civic identity throughout antiquity, and in Sparta, his legend continued to be revived through a process known as invention of tradition. Throughout the Greek world, Lycurgus and his legislation were the object of deep historical, political and ethical-philosophical interest, usually admired or idealised, but occasionally viewed more critically.

officials, Greek, accountability of

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Fröhlich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Civic Institutions ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

From the end of the Archaic era to the end of the Hellenistic period, all officials of Greek cities were required to render their accounts (euthynai) through procedures, which varied according to political regimes and times. Most of the time a board of controlling officials examined the accounts. This examination would take place at the end of the officials’ terms of office, but sometimes a partial examination took place during the terms. The controlling magistrates could initiate prosecutions against officials. In democracies, ordinary citizens could also sue magistrates in court. The procedure for holding officials accountable is called euthynai (correction) in the ancient sources. Many literary texts and epigraphic sources show the importance of the practice, particularly during the Classical and the Hellenistic periods. It was one of the most important features of civic institutions. From the End of the Archaic Period onwards, the Greek cities took a series of measures to prevent abuses of power by officials: accountability was only one of these measures. In fact, in Greek political thought, tyrannical power is characterised as aneuthynos (e.g., Herodotus 3.80.3), which broadly means “not subject to legal proceedings” or “uncontrolled.” Officials had to render their accounts (mostly logon apodidonai or tas euthynas didonai in Greek), at the end of their time in office as well as while in office. In most poleis, a separate body of magistrates was tasked with examining these accounts. At these moments, a set of procedures (which varied from city to city) enabled ordinary citizens to bring charges against officials before the courts.

Early Euboean Pottery and History

1957 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Boardman
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The North ◽  
Syrian Coast ◽  
Greek World

This paper is divided into three sections. In the first a group of pottery fragments from Chalcis serves as an introduction to a study of early Euboean pottery, and of its appearance and imitation in other parts of the Greek world. In the second some archaic and black-figured vases are published as addenda to my article on ‘Pottery from Eretria’ in BSA xlvii. 1–48, plates 1–14. This I refer to here simply as Eretria. Finally some historical considerations are prompted by the archaeological evidence reviewed. Briefly they involve the following theses: that Strabo's ‘Old Eretria’ may lie at or near Amarynthos at the distance from Eretria that Strabo indicated; that Euboeans played a major part in the foundation of Al Mina (Posideion) on the North Syrian coast in the early eighth century B.C.; that they may be largely responsible for the adoption of the Semitic alphabetic characters for the Greek language; and that Eretria was the ultimate victor in the ‘Lelantine War’.Mme Semni Karouzou has with customary generosity granted me permission to publish several vases in the National Museum, Athens. Other pieces in the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum are illustrated by permission of the authorities of those museums. Mrs. A. D. Ure has been particularly helpful in the study of the black-figured vases and is herself preparing a study of a series closely related to the Euboean vases which are discussed here.

scholarly journals Wandering wives or foreign fillies? The women of archaic Greek colonisation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Harriet Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Area ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Magna Graecia ◽  
Different Types ◽  
New City ◽  
Geographical Scope

<p>Greek colonisation in the archaic period encompassed an enormous geographical area. But for all its prevalence, the textual evidence is limited in both quantity and quality and the archaeological evidence goes only some way towards helping decipher social change and ethnicity. These issues become even more apparent when considering the position of women in the new city foundations. Did Greek colonists take their own wives with them to their new homes? Were Greek women sent out at a later date once the colony had become established? Did Greek colonists intermarry with indigenous women on arrival? Or did something else happen, including a mix of these options? The weight of scholarly opinion currently falls in favour of intermarriage, though frequently little evidence is proffered to support this view. This thesis focuses on this hypothesis and examines the evidence (or lack thereof) to support this conclusion.  Chapter One examines the problems associated with archaic Greek colonisation generally, particularly those issues connected with the ‘language of colonisation’. The study of Greek colonisation has been complicated by imprecise and ambiguous terminology, which frequently draws comparison with more modern (although altogether different) instances of the phenomenon. A major repercussion of this is the tendency to overlook both women and any indigenous peoples. The opening chapter also examines the various reasons behind the foundation of colonies, as well as the different types of settlements, so that an assessment can be made as to whether Greek women might have been more likely to accompany colonising expeditions in some instances over others. Chapter Two looks at the concept of intermarriage more closely and assesses Greek attitudes towards foreign women. It also evaluates the evidence typically called upon by scholars to argue for and against intermarriage in Greek colonisation. Chapter Three assesses the evidence for the presence of women in ten different colonies. Presented roughly in chronological order, these colonies were selected for their geographical scope, covering different regions from the Western Mediterranean, Magna Graecia, North Africa, and the Black Sea. This discussion explores both the literary and archaeological evidence (where possible) for each of these colonies and assesses the potential for intermarriage. This thesis demonstrates that broad conclusions about intermarriage as a widespread practice are unsustainable and concludes that colonisation in the archaic period cannot be considered a uniform phenomenon.</p>

The Greek Crown Games

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-97
Author(s):  
Manuela Mari ◽  
Paola Stirpe
Keyword(s):  
Archaic Period ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Regional Function ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Artistic Works ◽  
Organizational Features ◽  
Greek World ◽  
The Prestige

The crowns of the four major Panhellenic crown games reveal the religious and symbolic meaning of the plants of whose leaves they were made. Special attention will also be paid to the historical, political, and socio-economic reasons why these four festivals became the most prestigious and popular in the Greek world from the archaic period onwards. Texts and inscriptions reveal many organizational features of the games. The wider regional function of the festivals is evidenced even in organization. The games were also important occasions for trading, for communicating news of international relevance, for announcing military and political initiatives and building up alliances, or for advertising literary and artistic works. Victor lists, ‘archival documents’, monuments and dedications at the sites preserved public memories and created cultural unities. The prestige of crown games was shared by many local games designated as ‘isolympic’, ‘isopythian’, and so on during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

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