Peoples in West and Central Europe

The triad of king, council, and assembly of the people was characteristic of Greece in the Dark Age and of the Italic peoples until about 500 BC. Very little is known about the social and political organization of peoples elsewhere in Europe in this early period. It is certain, though, that nowhere in Europe in this period were there territorial states with a distinct political center and governed at the local level by functionaries and servants acting in the name of, or appointed by, a monarch, such as the states of Asia and Egypt. In western and central Europe, not only were the material foundations for such developed states—such as urban centers and a script—lacking, but also several peoples and tribes were still on the move, expanding at the expense of others, or migrating to new areas of settlement, sometimes over great distances. As a consequence, men who possessed arms and were able to fight were considered free, whereas others, in practice often the peasant populations of conquered territories, were seen as more or less un-free, serfs, or subjects of the men with arms. The assemblies of these warriors, even in the guise of people’s or tribal assemblies, did not produce a primitive democracy, since the traditional supremacy of the leaders and aristocrats was well entrenched. That supremacy manifested itself sometimes in strong bonds of dependency of groups of warriors on an aristocratic chief, relationships that bore some resemblance with the Roman clientela, but went much further in that they demanded unconditional loyalty—even unto death—of the warriors to their leader. Perhaps, similar organizations of warrior bands had existed also in Dark Age Greece and in Archaic Italy, but with the development of polis and the city-state there, they had disappeared. Among Celts and Germanic peoples, as well as among a few others in Europe, on the other hand, these organizations remained in existence for a longer time. On the one hand, they stimulated migration movements and military expansion, whereas on the other hand they hindered the emergence of stronger political structures and more durable states.