Mainland Greece went through a slow process of political evolution. This was partially due to the mountainous nature of the land, which made overland travel and communication difficult, and partially because of the destruction of the Early Helladic II civilization by the makers of Minyan Ware, giving Greece a somewhat later start than the palatial civilizations farther south. The independent nature of most early Greek settlements is summarized nicely by C. G. Thomas:
Permanent agrarian villages existing from 6000 b. c. continued as the foundation for the Bronze Age culture. The number of small villages grew steadily from Early Hel-
Ladic to Late Helladic and, over time, some nucleation drew neighboring settlements together into cooperative activities. Until late in the Bronze Age, however, independent villages constituted community for the largest share of the population. Only in Late Helladic did centralization within larger regions begin; citadel centers emerged and enlarged their control over increasing numbers of villages, but even then towns and villages retained a pronounced identity. (Thomas 1995, 350)
As remarked in chapter 4, the Middle Helladic period was a "downtime" in Greece, especially in contrast to the contemporaneous brilliance of the island societies. Although we have no writing and little architecture to work with from this period, the political structure of the Middle Helladic in Greece is generally understood as a series of chiefdoms. A chiefdom was a loose political structure in which a chief held power through charisma and personal force. This chief served as political leader, high priest, and economic sovereign simultaneously, with all his/her assistants being loyal to the person of the chief directly. There were no departments, no official bureaucracy, no elected positions. The large Middle Helladic structures on the acropoleis (pl. of acropolis) of Tiryns and Mycenae were probably the homes of such chiefs (Wright 1995, 69; Laffineur 1995, 85).
It was only in the Mycenaean period, beginning in Middle Helladic III and continuing through the end of the Bronze Age, that kingdoms came into being on the mainland. Although this was most evident with the prestigious shaft graves at Mycenae, such kingdoms evolved at several sites throughout Greece, where local chiefs consolidated their power and established systems beyond the purely personal (Wright 1995, 64). Much of this consolidation probably came about through contacts with the Minoans and, later, the Near Eastern civilizations. These contacts provided the Greek chiefs with prestige items ranging from Minoan gold trinkets to imported Egyptian ivories and Levantine ostrich eggs. Such items already appeared in quantity in the shaft graves (Palaima 1995, 126). Possession of such objects created a visual distinction between the political elite (the "haves") and the rest of the population (the "have-nots") that made the elite seem distinct, superior, and thus worthy of political power.
The development of these various kingdoms throughout Greece probably continued rather peacefully, with the rise and spread of the tholos tombs serving as evidence for the growing power of several royal families (see chapter 4). This began to change in Late Helladic II, when expanding kingdoms started bumping into each other. From this point, the tholos tombs come to be associated with only the most powerful palaces, particularly in the south, and warrior tombs indicated a new (or renewed) interest in belligerence in the society (see chapter 6). Possibly to reaffirm their power, both to their own populations and to their neighbors, the Mycenaean monarchs began building palaces at Py-los, Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, Orchomenus, Athens, and the Menelaion at Sparta. By Late Helladic III, fortifications appeared at Mycenae, Midea, Tiryns, Argos, Geraki, Teikhos ("Wall") Dymaion, Kris, Thebes, and Athens. In addition to serving as strongholds in the face of potential danger, such monumental architecture was directed toward public display. Large ramparts directed
The eyes toward the royal residences, which were intimately connected with the cult centers that helped to legitimize the king's authority (see below), to the open courts for public gatherings, and to the royal megara (pl. of megaron; see chapter 9) used for public feasts and drinking. Such displays assured the population of the economic and religious power of the king, as well as his potential for sharing his wealth and prestige (Wright 1995, 73-74).
Conveniently, from this point forward we have textual evidence from the Mycenaean palaces in the form of the Linear B tablets (see chapter 3). Although none of these documents spell out the political structure of the Mycenaean kingdoms in the style of the U. S. Constitution, the various functions and properties listed do give a helpful glimpse into their systems.
Two separate systems, a central and a local, operated in the Mycenaean kingdoms. At the top of the central hierarchy was the wanax (wa-na-ke), what we might call the king. In later Greek, this word is preserved as anax and was applied to King Agamemnon of Mycenae (anax andron = king of men) and to gods such as Zeus and Hermes. The fact that this individual owned at least three times as much land as any other person in the Linear B tablets, and that various industries, such as the purple dye industry, were described with the adjective wa-na-si-jo ("belonging to the king"), shows that this was a wealthy and important member of the Mycenaean hierarchy. To quote T. Palaima:
No other title appears in quite so many diverse and important contexts. The wanax is the only person who undergoes or presides over an initiation (Un 2). The wanax is the only person who appoints (or buries?) another official. . . (Ta series). With the exception of the lawagetas, the wanax alone possesses a temenos [sanctuary], and his is three times bigger than the military leader's. The wanax alone at Knossos has a purple-dye workshop or workers or purple dye itself under his control. (Palaima 1995, 133)
What exactly the king's responsibilities were, though, remains in question. The fact that his role was at least partially religious comes across in tablet Un 2 from Pylos, which refers to the "initiation" or induction of the wanax, thus perhaps indicating that he was some manner of priest-king (Davis and Bennet 1999, 116). By contrast, there is minimal evidence for the king's role in military affairs, especially in contrast to the lawagetas (see below). Such evidence from the Linear B, combined with archaeological evidence such as the palaces and megara mentioned above, give us a picture of a wanax whose primary duty is to serve as intermediary between the people and the gods, while more mundanely organizing the local economies—a combination priest-king/CEO of sorts.
The presence of a queen is a more difficult matter. The adjective wa-na-se-wi-jo/ja appears at Pylos describing oil, and this appears to be the Linear B word for queenly or queen's. However, there is no independent attestation of a feminine form of wanax in the singular (a dual form, referring to two, does appear, but it probably refers to a pair of goddesses). The Linear B tablets recovered to date offer no evidence for a queen. By contrast, the iconography is replete with images of powerful women, especially those seated on thrones. However, these may have been an import from Minoan iconography, with far less mean-
Ing for the Mycenaeans. The fact that the well-attested wanax never appears in the art strongly hints that there was quite a divide between political realities and royal iconography.
The wanax was assisted in his bureaucratic functions by the e-qe-ta—the he-quetai or followers. These fellows took care of the king's business throughout the kingdom, in return for which they received land and slaves (Pylos tablets Ed 317 and 847) (Chadwick 1988, 72). The wanax, aided by the hequetai, served as the centralized political body of Mycenaean Greece and Crete.
Different functionaries existed at the more local levels, people who were probably at least partially under the control or influence of the wanax. One of the most important local functionaries was the qa-si-re-u, or basileus, a word that would eventually come to mean "king" in Greek (from which we get such words as basilica, basilisk, and the herb basil). Unlike the wanax, several basileis (pl. of basileus) existed simultaneously, much like the later Homeric epics in which several basileis ruled, all loosely under the authority of Anax Agamemnon. As is typical with Linear B studies, we are not completely certain of the responsibilities of the basileis. Some tablets list them as associated with bronze workers and what appear to be worker collectives or workshops. In some respects, then, they functioned as foremen. But their roles went beyond just the economic, and the general understanding is that the basileus was the head of the local aristocracy, the local chieftain whose authority was minimized with the rise of the wanax (Palaima 1995, 124-125). After the fall of the Aegean Bronze Age palatial centers, the wanax fell from power and the basileis remained as the pinnacles of the now more localized societies, with the word thus coming to mean "king" in the Iron Age.
The various Mycenaean kingdoms were subdivided into administrative units. Pylos, for example, comprised sixteen such administrative units, each controlled by a ko-re-te and a po-ro-ko-re-te (tablet Jn 829) (Chadwick 1988, 73; Palaima 1995, 124). A ko-re-te was a sort of mayor, and the po-ro-ko-re-te was an assistant mayor or vice mayor. These individuals were bureaucrats in the purest sense, insofar as they kept close records of all happenings within their districts, for which they were presumably responsible before the wanax. Also important in the local hierarchies were the te-re-ta, or telestai, whom the tablets record as being large-scale landowners. At least forty-five of them owned territory in the region of Knossos (tablet Am 826), and they had some relationship with the local citizenry, called the damos (tablet Un 718) (Thomas 1995, 351-352).
This damos was the lowest level of "political" category mentioned in the Linear B tablets (as opposed to the lowest level of society, which were slaves; see chapter 6). This word continues in later Greek as the demos, or the "people," as in "We the People" and the word democracy. This was the local population, presumably landowning, probably residing in the spread-out villages of Greece and Crete. One functionary—the da-mo-ko-ro—may have been the local organizer or spokesperson for each of these individual villages.
The final person to consider in the Mycenaean hierarchy was the ra-wa-ke-ta, or lawagetas. The word seems to mean "leader of the laos," where the laos is a military contingent, what we might call a host, or local aristocracy. Like the
Wanax, there was only one lawagetas; he owned, or was responsible for, craftsmen and boat-rowers, and like the wanax he owned a temenos or reserved parcel of land, although his was only one-third that of the wanax (see sidebar, "How to Read Linear B," in chapter 3) (Palaima 1995, 129). Based on his landholdings and the etymology of the name, this lawagetas is understood as the Mycenaean military commander-in-chief, whose responsibilities extended from the centralized palace bureaucracy to the localized administrative units and villages. He was probably the second most important person in the Mycenaean hierarchy after the wanax.
World History
