It is sometimes supposed that the Homeric basileis constitute an aristocracy. Certainly, the values that Homeric heroes hold dear - honor, status, athletic and martial prowess - were those that we find extolled later by elitist poets. From a political anthropological view, however, an aristocracy is defined not by the symbols through which it communicates its distinctiveness but by the position it holds and the influence it exerts within structures of power. As a ruling “class,” rather than an ensemble of powerful individuals, the emergence of an aristocracy presupposes basic divisions of wealth and labor as well as a formalization of ascribed offices with prescribed competences - something, in other words, along the lines of Fortes’ and Evans-Pritchard’s “primitive state.” The emergence of an aristocracy can be considered symptomatic of the rise of a state.
Collectively, whether engaging in conviviality at feasts, competing with one another at funeral games, or fighting alongside each other in combat, the Homeric basileis may well resemble an aristocracy. But “Achaea” in the epics is not a unified state and, within their home communities, the basileis are simply not numerous enough to constitute a true aristocratic class. On a conservative estimate, elites would have accounted for around 10 percent of the population of the polis in the Late Archaic and Early Classical periods. It is hard to imagine that Scheria, ruled over by thirteen basileis (Od. 8.390-91), had an adult male population of little more than a hundred. Even taking into account married partners and kin, the size of the ruling body on the island can hardly qualify as an aristocracy.
This picture is hardly contradicted by the archaeological evidence. A sober estimate for the population of eighth-century Eretria is likely to be in the range of 1,000-2,000 (Figure 4.1), in which case the sixteen wealthy burials at the West Gate, which span more than a generation (pp. 1-2), are more reasonably those of a powerful family than of a ruling class. A late eighth-century cist grave (Tomb 45), 3 meters in length and found near the Classical Odeion in the southern sector of Argos, is probably a good candidate for the tomb of a basileus. The male occupant was accompanied by costly grave goods, including bronze and gold rings, two iron axes, twelve obeloi or iron spits (perhaps a form of proto-currency: see p. 278), two fire-dogs, and - most significantly - a bronze cuirass and helmet. It should be stressed, though, that of the some one hundred eighth-century graves excavated at Argos, Tomb 45 is without parallel. A bronze helmet, apparently manufactured by the same workshop, was found in a second grave in the Stavropoulos plot, but this is located more than a kilometer to the northeast. In all likelihood, it represents the burial of a basileus of another small community. A third burial, in which the deceased was accompanied by a bronze helmet, two spearheads, and six iron obeloi, has been found near to the second in the Theodoropoulos plot but is probably, to judge from associated pottery, a generation older. Two other burials contain obeloi - one is roughly contemporary with, and near to, Tomb 45; the other is located in an entirely different part of the city, where five further graves, spanning a period of approximately one century, contain spearheads, swords, or daggers. These are mostly isolated occurrences - there is no evidence at Argos for aristocratic cemeteries - and reinforce the impression that eighth-century Greece was inhabited by leaders and followers rather than by aristocrats and commoners. It is surely no accident that in Hesiod’s Theogony, basileis are juxtaposed directly with the laoi (e. g. 88, 429-30), with no mention of an intervening aristocratic class.
Nevertheless, the attestation of the plural form basileis in the Odyssey, Theogony, and Works and Days does seem to represent an evolutionary stage beyond a simple chiefdom. The most reasonable interpretation is that this is a consequence of the newly enlarged communities that the archaeological record attests for the eighth century (p. 79). The aggregation of formerly independent social groups would inevitably have raised the question as to how political authority should be exercised in the larger community. Two alternatives were possible: one basileus might yield - whether voluntarily or under compulsion - to the authority of another or both might agree to a “contract” whereby power was shared. The latter would seem to be the situation envisaged on Scheria, where Alcinous describes himself as one of thirteen basileis. The former is reflected in the legend, preserved by Conon (fr. 44), which told how the Neleid Phitres ceded the rule of Miletus to his cousin, Leodamas, after unsuccessfully challenging him to a contest in which both agreed to wage war against an enemy of the city.
It is possible that both alternatives were pursued at Sparta. One of the peculiarities of the Spartan political system was not only that it was ruled by hereditary monarchs down to as late as the third century - a feature shared with the kingdoms of Cyprus - but that there were two kings that ruled concurrently (later authors were to compare the Spartan “dyarchy” with the twin consulate at Rome). The two Spartan royal houses were known as the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai and, already by the time of Tyrtaeus (fr. 11), both traced their descent back to the hero Heracles. By the early fifth century, according to Herodotus (7.204; 8.131), both the Agiad king Leonidas and the Eurypontid king Leotychidas II reckoned themselves in the twentieth generation after Heracles. The first king of whose historical existence we can be fairly sure is the Eurypontid Theopompus, credited by Tyrtaeus (fr. 5) with the conquest of Mes-senia, probably towards the end of the eighth century or in the early decades of the succeeding century (pp. 184-5). Plutarch (Lyc. 6) seems to imply that Tyrtaeus had also named the Agiad king Polydoros as Theopompus’ royal colleague. It is possible that it was Polydoros’ great-grandfather, Arkhelaos, and Theopompus’ grandfather, Kharilaos, who were the first kings to extend Spartan hegemony over Laconia, but since Pausanias (3.2.5), our principal source for these early events, also attributes the establishment of the Spartan kingship to Prokles and Eurysthenes in the fifth generation after Heracles, caution is warranted. Certainly some of the names of the early kings - especially in the Eurypontid branch - are suspicious. The name of Prytanis, supposedly the third Eurypontid king, derives from a common title for a magistrate while the name of his successor, Eunomos, is cognate with the Greek word eunomia (“good order”), which was to be a catch-phrase or slogan among sixth-century reformers.
What is interesting for our current purposes is how the Spartan dyarchy may have arisen. As we have seen (p. 78), Sparta was formed from the original union of four villages - Pitana, Mesoa, Kynosoura, and Limnai. By Pausanias’ day, the Eurypontid burial ground was located at Mesoa (3.12.8), while that of the Agiads was at Pitana (3.14.2). It is a reasonable inference that there had existed long-standing and traditional links between the two royal houses and these villages and that the dyarchy arose when the basileis of Pitana and Mesoa agreed to share authority over the newly unified community rather than yield to one another. If Limnai and Kynosoura also had their own basileis, we might assume that it was this latter option that they exercised. It may not be accidental that Tyrtaeus (frs. 4, 5) should use the word basileis to describe the Spartan kings - especially since in official documents (see p. 207), they seem to have been called the arkhagetai, or “supreme leaders.”
Eventually, with the extension of authority to a number of basileis and, presumably, the recruitment of family-members and retainers to the more specialized offices that larger and more complex societies demanded, an aristocracy emerged. A telling indication for this development is the appearance of elitist terminology denoting a fairly broad-based group of “insiders” and an even wider group of the excluded. The most common terms that appear in Archaic poetry are kaloi (“beautiful” or “fair”), agathoi (“good”), and esthloi (“good” or “brave”), together with their opposites, kakoi (“ugly” or “bad”) and deiloi (“cowardly” or “wretched”). The poetry attributed to Theognis is rife with this vocabulary. Promoting himself as a mouthpiece for the agathoi (28), the poet urges his addressee, Kyrnos, not to keep company with the kakoi but to eat, drink, and sit with the agathoi since it is from the esthloi that one will learn noble things (31-5). The common people (demos), on the other hand, should be trampled upon, jabbed with sharp goads, and made to bear painful yokes around their necks (847-50). The motivation for this uncharitable vitriol seems to be the poet’s conviction that class distinctions have been eroded. Birth (genos)
Has been compromised by intermarriage between esthloi and kakoi (183-92). As a result, those who formerly knew nothing about justice or laws but wore tattered goatskins and lived outside the polis have now become agathoi while those who were once esthloi are now deiloi (53).
It has recently been argued that the lines that are drawn in the Theognidea are reflective not of true socioeconomic divisions but of violent competition among different elite factions. Yet this is to ignore the fact that the terminology employed in the poetry attributed to Theognis is thoroughly conventional in Archaic poetry in general and appears in specific contexts that do seem to suggest class divisions. When Solon observes that many kakoi are wealthy while many agathoi are poor (fr. 15), one could conceivably argue that he is charting the volatile fortunes of elite factions. But when he writes that he was not minded to share the rich land of Attica equally between esthloi and kakoi (fr. 34), it is clear that he is thinking of social and economic differences and a similar conclusion would seem to arise from his claim that he wrote laws for kakos and agathos alike (fr. 36). Solon’s principal role was to serve as a mediator - he describes himself as a “boundary marker in no-man’s land” (fr. 37) - yet the two constituencies between which he mediated were not elite factions but the common people (demos) and its leaders (hegemones). Similar terminology is present in the poetry of Alcaeus, where notions of birth would appear to be intrinsic to inclusion among the ranks of the nobles. Though his testimony is undoubtedly prejudiced (see below), Alcaeus claims that Pittacus, the “base-born” (kakopatridas) tyrant of Mytilene (fr. 348), rose to prominence only by marrying into the noble family of the Penthilidai (fr. 70).
Such class-based terminology is far less evident in our earliest literary sources. In the Iliad, Diomedes’ affirmation that he is not a kakos by birth (14.216) would seem to betray notions of belonging to a class based on birth, but the terms esthlos and kakos in the epic generally revolve around evaluations of bravery and cowardice. Thus, Achilles notes that those who fight get the same respect as those who sit at home and that therefore the kakos and the esthlos are esteemed with equal honor (9.319). Admittedly, the quality of bravery was to be of paramount importance to elite identity but it is not immediately apparent that bravery is synonymous with noble birth. Indeed, the advice that Nestor gives to Agamemnon, to “separate the men by phyla and by phratrai, so that phratra may help phratra and phyla may help phyla” (2.362-63), suggests otherwise: by grouping his men in this way, Agamemnon will discover which of the leaders (hegemones) and which of the masses (laoi) is either kakos or esthlos (2.365-66). The exercise loses its point if a strict correlation is imagined between, on the one hand, the hegemones and esthloi and, on the other, the laoi and kakoi.
The terms esthloi and kakoi do begin to display some incipient socioeconomic connotations in the Odyssey. When Menelaus recognizes Telemachus and Pei-sistratos as descendants of “god-reared, sceptre-bearing basileis,” he adds that they are clearly not born of kakoi (6.63-64). Other references are more ambiguous, but Alcinous’ observation that “everybody has a name, be he kakos or esthlos’" (8.553) or Penelope’s complaint that the suitors “honor nobody, kakos or esthlos” (23.66), could certainly support a socioeconomic interpretation. Similarly vague are the occurrences in Works and Days. Hesiod’s injunction to avoid consorting with kakoi or quarreling with esthloi (716) or his warning that pride is an evil for both the deilos and the esthlos (214-15) could - but do not necessarily have to - be interpreted in a socioeconomic sense. Although the Homeric and Hesiodic poems cannot provide us with the sort of chronological “fix” we might want, they do not contradict the impression that significant class-based cleavages within society were weakly developed in the eighth century and only become more prominent from the seventh century onwards. That impression finds further support when we turn to the evidence for early laws.
World History
