For any Greek polis, we can draw a number of concentric circles that demarcate the social fabric within which an inhabitant of that community lives his or her life. If we move from the outside to the inside, we first encounter the polis itself; then the large groupings of a military, political, and religious nature; then the family (in the sense of clan or kinfolk); and at the innermost core the oikos, the individual household. Not every inhabitant was embedded in society in this way: a slave working in the silver mines had no oikos, a slave or a metic often had no family, the non-citizen was excluded from many groups, and so on. On the other hand, everyone could be a member of a religious community and of clubs and associations of many different kinds.
Typical for the polis is its community ideal. We encounter this in Sparta, with its homoioi in their sussitia in a rather extreme form, but it is to be found everywhere. The politai felt themselves to be a community, and that community was the essence of their lives: the polis consists of its politai. In many cases, we can take this quite literally: most poleis were face-to-face societies in which all citizens knew one another. With 3000 Spartans, this is easier to achieve than among 30,000 Athenians, but villages and neighborhoods managed to give Athenians a strong sense of community as well.
To be a community implies some kind of self-image, and a self-image implies an image of the “other.” The identity of a group is shaped by setting it up in contrast to another group. We have already spoken of the rivalry between poleis. Poleis were quite different from each other: they had their own dialects, local cults, myths and legends, and peculiar habits. The Athenians were shocked, and fascinated, by the relative freedom enjoyed by Spartan women. That did not fit into the Athenian view of the world. One should not consider Sparta a women’s paradise, though. Even if Sparta was definitely “different,” it was not that different: non-Spartans will have exaggerated Sparta’s peculiarities. Making the others seem as strange as possible is important for establishing one’s own identity. The ways of one’s own group are seen as absolute: we act normally, others do not. We
Antiquity: Greeks andRomans in Context, First Edition. Frederick G. Naerebout and HenkW. Singor. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Can easily see this in the arrogance of the Athenians, who considered themselves the most Greek among Greeks, and their judgment of Sparta as “backward.” Those who admired Sparta—and the Spartans themselves—did not speak of backwardness, but of purity, of a society that remained unspoiled—as opposed to degenerate Athens. All Greeks, all true Greeks, felt superior to half-barbarous Macedonia.
Despite their mutual rivalry, the Greeks also felt that they had a lot in common. On a higher level, the “other” was not so much the neighboring polis, but the non-Greeks out there. Since the 6th century, in Greek eyes the main division between human beings was the one between Greeks on the one hand and barbarians on the other. A barbaros was a human being who could not speak Greek and whose uncouth language went like “barbarbarbar.” They lacked true civilization. The distinction was one of culture and not of race: one could learn Greek and adopt Greek ways, and thus become civilized and stop being barbarian. In the course of history, many became Greek in this way, and their barbarian origin was not usually held against them. The negative image of the real barbarian, untouched by Greek culture, was supported by the fact that many slaves in the classical period were non-Greeks, from Thrace, from along the Danube, the south of Russia, and Asia Minor. Enslaving fellow Greeks, although rejected by public opinion, was still practiced and in the 5th and 4th centuries became if anything more frequent. However, slavery was associated with the barbarian.
It was under the influence of outside pressure, especially the Persian Wars, that Greeks formulated a Panhellenic idea and developed an ever clearer idea of a Greek identity that was sharply differentiated from a barbarian one. On the other hand, the cultural blossoming of the Greek world in the classical period could not have taken place when Greece would not have been open to outside influences. Greek thinkers tend to celebrate the small size and the localized character of the polis, but it is undeniable that contacts between poleis and contacts between the Greek world and the “barbarian lands” beyond were of the utmost importance. If one compares the great art and the deep thought of Athens with the stagnation in Sparta, it becomes clear that an open society offers opportunities that are lacking in a closed and xenophobic one.
Athenian citizens were distributed across fratriai and fulai. In the classical period, the fratria had religious responsibilities to fulfill, but more importantly, it also decided on who was to be registered as a citizen. The registration of new citizens by their fathers, once they came of age, was left to the fratriai. It is to be expected, though the sources do not tell us, that every Athenian citizen was a member of some fratria. Membership of a fratria was passed on from father to son. The members, certainly not all relatives, varied in number from tens to hundreds. The four fulai (not the Cleisthenic fulai, but the older ones) were reduced to a purely religious function in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and were not important in the life of an Athenian. The new, Cleisthenic fulai were, on the other hand, very important for at least military and political life, as we have seen.
In Sparta and some other Dorian poleis, we encounter sussitia or andreia: literally “eating societies” and “male houses,” that is, fraternities. These social organizations had a somewhat primitive character: they were supposed to have originated in the male bonding of Indo-European peoples: groups of men who live together and fight together. In Sparta, every grown-up male citizen was incorporated into a sussition, quite literally, as he had
To put in an appearance at his sussition every day and eat there. Until he reached the age of 30, he was also supposed to spend the night there. Comparable to these sussitia are the so-called hetaireiai (from hetairos, “companion”). These hetaireiai were aristocratic get-togethers that organized ritualized drinking parties, so-called sumposia, for their select membership. Hetaireiai, however, were private societies, while sussitia were organs of the Spartan state.
Private societies were very common, especially religious ones that came together to celebrate a certain cult. In the life of non-citizens, also slaves, such societies were very important: non-citizens were cut off from quite a large part of the religious life of the polis, but here they found an outlet for their religious beliefs. In addition to cult societies, people also formed clubs on the basis of their job or place of origin, though religion always played a large part (as it did in everything). Such clubs organized mutual support, in the way of some kind of insurance, especially concerning burial costs, but some might also have had a guild-like economic function. There is more information about such guilds for a later date: in the Hellenistic period, fraternities or sodalities of all kinds flourished.
In the lives of the Greek citizens, their oikos was most important. We cannot translate oikos as “family,” which will make us think of a nuclear family, that is, a married couple and their children. Most Athenians did indeed live in nuclear families. There might be household slaves living with the family, but not usually an extended family stretching across three or four generations inhabiting the same house. But there is no Greek word for nuclear family; oikos conveys a much broader meaning. The word refers to a piece of land with all the immovable and movable property on it, and all living creatures, human and animal, who had their home there. As non-citizens were not allowed to own land in Athens, they obviously could not form a true oikos. The people who were part of the oikos were mortal, but the oikos could be passed on to the next generation. It was something that one had to care for and then hand over undiminished or, if possible, enlarged, to one’s heirs. To have a male heir was crucial. Ideally, at the end of one’s life, one would have a single grown-up son: in Athens, there was no primogeniture (the right of the firstborn to inherit), so if there was more than one son, the inheritance had to be divided. Either one had to try to become rich enough so that the property could be split up without impoverishing any of the heirs, or one should not have more than one son. But limiting the number of children was a dangerous business: with the death rates as they were, one could easily end up with no heir at all. The only solution left if that were to happen was to adopt a son.
Daughters could not inherit, but they did get a dowry, which was in fact a pre-mortem inheritance. Daughters could pass on property to their sons. If one died childless and had not have the foresight (or the time) to adopt a son, or had only a daughter or daughters, the oikos passed into the possession of the nearest male relative. He then merged this oikos with his own oikos, and in this way the original oikos was lost. That was a bad thing: to hand down the oikos across the generations was to maintain one’s ties with one’s ancestors, whose graves were often situated on the land of the oikos. Athens was protective of its oikoi: they were the foundations of the economic, political, and military life of the polis; it was the oikoi where the citizens were born, bred, and had their homes.
To be able to function within a society, one has to go through a process of socialization. Classical Athens was in many respects a very simple society, based on orality, where youngsters got their education at home and on the streets. Athenian mothers were most likely hardly educated, and could not contribute very much to the schooling of their children; but they did play their part in their early socialization: thus, they undoubtedly were the first to introduce them to myth and legend, not merely children’s stories but a serious first introduction to the history, religion, and politics of the community. Depending on the wealth of a household, there might also be slaves who took care of the children: wet nurses, nursemaids, and the paidagogos, an elderly slave entrusted with the education of the male children, who would provide basic instruction and accompany a boy who got some kind of schooling outdoors. In Athens, as in other Greek poleis (Sparta was the odd one out), education was a private affair. Until after the classical period, all teachers were entrepreneurs in whose business the polis did not interfere. There was no compulsory schooling, and how much education one got depended entirely on the wealth of one’s parents, who not only had to pay teachers, but also had to dispense with their son’s labor. Poorer children would start work at a very early age.
Formal education consisted of three main fields of study: literary, musical, and physical. A literary education implied learning to read and write, and reading the works of Homer and other canonical literature. So, at least part of the population was literate. The plethora of inscriptions, the fact that public announcements were made in writing, and the numerous examples of graffiti, some of which appear to have been authored by inexperienced writers, suggest that a sizable number of Athenians were able to read and write to some degree. Literacy, however, is a difficult concept to define: there any many levels of literacy, and we do not have any reliable numbers. At any rate, written texts did play an important part in Athenian society. Reading, one aspect of literacy, in the ancient world did not usually mean silent reading but reading aloud: in this still largely oral world, written texts were primarily intended to be spoken. Poetry was also supposed to be recited or sung.
This brings us to musical education: children were taught to sing, play instruments, and dance. Perhaps playing instruments was mainly an elite occupation, given the important role of music in the symposia, the drinking parties that were so central to a noble lifestyle. Some singing and dancing was probably taught to a larger section of the population, as it was quite important in the religious life of the polis. The dancing and singing chorus was an omnipresent phenomenon. To be a good dancer, one needs to be in good condition, and this is where physical education makes its appearance.
A proper Greek physical education consisted of running, jumping, spear throwing, discus throwing, boxing, and wrestling. Boys and men trained under the supervision of professional trainers at palaistra, private institutions, and gumnasia provided by the polis. Palaistra and gymnasiums were not only for sports: they were also important meeting places where citizens would get together. Often, other subjects were also taught there. Although the polis profited from having soldiers in good physical condition, physical education does not seem to have had a primarily military function. It appears to have been more important to have well-trained competitors in the games that were a part of many religious rituals.
After having received primary schooling between the ages of 7 and 14, the sons of the rich could go on to “secondary” and “higher” education. These were left to private initiatives as well, and were at first mainly provided by itinerant teachers. At a later stage, we find in Athens a kind of “university” such as the Akademeia run by Plato. Most teachers were designated as sophists. Originally, the name indicated someone with knowledge of a certain subject, an educated person, and a thinker or even a sage. Soon, however, it acquired a negative connotation: still today, sophistry means the use of specious arguments in order to deceive. A sophist was now seen as someone who had a way with words, one who could prove anything and convince anybody, and make wrong seem right; in other words, they were regarded as advocates of nihilism. The background to this negative image was the fact that sophists, especially the ones who were most in the public eye, focused on the relativity of human constructs. Instead of considering society’s values and norms as absolute and sanctioned by the gods, they looked at them from all sides, defended, if necessary, the opposite positions, and taught people the value of relativistic thinking. The famous Socrates belongs in these circles. He may have been an individualist who criticized everyone including the sophists, and he may have operated from different principles, but his so-called Socratic questioning had the same impact as the sophists’ discourse. At the same time, we should not forget that the main purpose of an ancient education was eminently practical, whether one was taught by a sophist or by some other scholar: to have rhetorical abilities and to be able to convince an audience were prerequisites for a career in ancient politics.
We have been talking about boys; girls were taught by their mothers and possibly by the family slaves. They learned how to run a household, and they knew what comprised the worldview of their society, especially women’s role. They were taught music and dance. But hardly any woman could hope for an education that went beyond these basic skills and basic know-how. This simply did not fit into ideas of what a woman would need in life. Also, the early age at which most Greek girls married, 14-15 years of age, made an extended education an impossibility.
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