It was in Early Roman Imperial times that the tradition began, inaugurated by Plutarch, to describe fifth-century BC Greek art as an era of "Classical" high achievement, against which all preceding and later art forms were to be judged. High Classical artists such as the sculptor Polycleitos also attempted to create "perfect" forms, as explained with mathematical precision in his treatise or "Canon" of ideal proportions. The eighteenth-century founder of Classical art criticism, J. J. Winckelmann, also focused on the fifth century and associated its artistic glories with the development of democracy (Fullerton 2000).
(p. 285b) Marble or bronze statues representing known Classical artists or schools are usually Roman copies, and may not always be precise reproductions; some now appear to be pastiche imitations
Since the beginnings of Classical archaeology in the eighteenth century, a desire to trace a specifically European "genius" for cultural achievement led to the wish to link the late Renaissance concept of the master-artist and masterwork back into Classical Greek art. Wilhelm Furtwangler, a late nineteenth-century art historian, attempted to reconstruct genealogies of great sculptors through later copies, which some have seen as trapping much subsequent scholarship into style history and the search for geniuses. A lack of interest in "art in its social context" was a negative result (Ridgway 1994). The same has been stated for Greek vase-painting (Beard 1991). The pioneering sociological approach in the edited volume exploring Greek vase-scenes, La cite des images (Berard 1984), introduced the concept of figured-vase scenes as a conversation in which themes relate to one another as a developing commentary on contemporary society. They were made by a community without style rather than by distinct individuals (Osborne 2004).
(p. 285c) Classical Greek art: primarily a public representation of self-definition or identity by an individual or a city
The counter-intuitive fact, that Classical Greek art and architecture represents a shared language of expression among a myriad of small and large states that were also united by mutual enmity and regular warfare can be explained by competitive emulation, what Colin Renfrew (1986) has termed "peer polity interaction." This competitive ethos also affected individual artists, who from the early revival of literacy often signed their works, and whose ambition to outdo each other is seen as a major stimulus for the continual evolution of styles in Greek art, not least the trend toward increasing naturalism and sophistication in representation (Spivey 1997). The spread of similar stylistic developments was encouraged by the known mobility of artists around the Greek world. In a movement dubbed "the death of the sculptor," recent specialists on Greek art have argued for a movement away from the traditional search for the works of isolated master-artists toward the ways in which symbolic material culture responded to the needs of contemporary society, thus focusing on power structures, audiences, and patrons (Hurwit 1997).
(p. 285d) Human figures dominate Late Archaic-Classical ceramic tableware
A regular aspect of Greek figured vases is their "tableau" character: the scene offers a set of values or behaviors rather than a free-flowing design. In house-interior scenes, for example, the stock figures - wife, servant, husband - are given stereotypical poses and roles and may not even be looking at each other (Beard 1991).
(p. 285e) Rarely the state erected or allowed the public placing of sculptures to mark exceptional events or individuals
Although statues honoring living individuals were comparatively rare, as they were regarded as dangerous to the cohesion of the citizen polis, they were not unknown. A striking example of very public commemoration was the practice in the precinct of the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia, of allowing victors in the games to have their home city erect a statue of them (Lehmann 2007). In Classical Athens, the heightened mentality of democracy, according to Stewart (1979), suppressed the early fifth-century tendency to commemorate politicians in a realistic way, such as the precocious image of Themistocles of ca. 470 BC. Tanner (1992) argues that fifth - to fourth-century images of politicians and generals in Athens from that of Pericles ca. 430 BC onward are idealized rather than naturalistic portraits.
(p. 286a) But it has long been known that added color was ubiquitous
It had already been discovered in 1822 that the architecture of the temple of Aphaea in Aeginan showed signs of painting, but more sensational were the traces of paint found in 1880 on the numerous Archaic maiden sculptures (korai) dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis and carefully buried after the 480 BC Persian sack (Brinkmann and Wunsche 2004, Gottschall 2005).
(p. 286b) The "Elgin Marbles" scrubbed with metal brushes
Anthony Snodgrass (pers. comm.) adds that not only the pediment sculptures but all other Parthenon fragments obtained by the British Museum were attacked with wire brushes, as well as with copper chisels.
(p. 286c) Bronzes being infinitely more expensive
Gill (1988) estimates that a Classical-era bronze statue cost some 3000 drachmas, of which perhaps 10 percent was for raw material. Surviving costs for carving temple sculpture on the late fifth-century Athenian Acropolis and at Epidauros range from 60 to 196 drachmas per figure. It may not be so surprising then that the Roman-era traveler Pausanias, on his visit to the Parthenon, mentions the obvious frontal pedimental scenes but fails to say anything about the frieze, reserving his detailed attention for the very expensive giant gold and ivory statue of Athena inside the building.
(p. 286d) Multiple reproduction of similar bronze statues
The lost-wax method, combined with the skill of metalworkers in modifying and recombining body parts, may account for the Roman encyclopedist Pliny's claim that the famous sculptor Lysippus had 1500 statues attributed to his workshop. Personal supervision may not have been necessary for much of this productivity (Hurwit 1997).
(p. 286e) Red-Figure ware
Red-Figure ceramics were invented ca. 525 BC in Athens (Arafat and Morgan 1998).
(p. 286f) An origin myth for the global importance of Europe in the development of world civilization
Classical Greece and then Imperial Rome have traditionally been regarded as the key early steps to Europe's development of an original civilization and world power during the Early Modern era.
(p. 286g) Beazley assigned these anonymous craftsmen a title based upon their favorite subject or a stylistic attribute
As with limited editions, assigning a figured vase to such a classic corpus enhanced its market value. (p. 287a) Vase-sets were of moderate cost
That Greek tableware had a clear value can be noted from evidence for a second-hand trade in them and repairs. Prices on batches naturally show that smaller vessels were cheaper, but do agree with Gill (1988) and Vickers (2004) on a surprisingly low cost, for example a fraction of a skilled workman's daily wage for a drinking cup and three days' wages for a large table-water container (Johnston 1991). Confirmation comes from the observation (Arafat and Morgan 1998) that ancient sources detail the creators of public monumental art, temples and free-standing sculptures, and wall-paintings, but ceramic art is never mentioned. For a positive review of the Gill-Vickers position see Pollitt (1995). As noted earlier (cf. Vickers 2004), the low status and relatively low value of figured pots relates both to the calculated high turnover per day per producer, perhaps usually equal to the expected norm for a skilled craftsman per day, and the equally low cost of basic foodstuffs such as cereals and olives. The lack of consensus, and indeed of communication toward achieving a
Point of view which takes note of all the evidence, can be seen from a recent publication of a fifth-century BC shipwreck at Alonessos (Hadjidaki 1996) in the Sporades islands. Vast layers of wine amphorae of local production and from the peninsula of Chalkidike led to an estimate of a load of 4200 such containers. Beneath 3-4 layers of such were found small numbers of black gloss tableware, probably in boxes and probably Athenian. As already noted in Chapter 11, in modern values the equivalent of a bottle of wine was around 6 euros, with an amphora being thus 286 euros (Vickers 2004). A painted vase by the Achilles Master has a price of 0.40 euros a piece. It seems clear that the potential value of the wine cargo dwarfed that of the tableware so one can reasonably see the latter as "space-filler" adding a small extra profit to the trip. Yet without consideration of this debate Hadjidaki suggests that the wine and tableware were being exchanged for each other on commercial trips linking Athens and Northern Greek wine-producing ports.
(p. 287a) Metalware in bronze, silver, and gold has almost all vanished through ancient recycling
In the city-state world of the Classical era, lavish grave goods declined from Geometric-Archaic times, with the rise of the ethos of citizen equality. Thus precious metal tableware of Greek manufacture can still be discovered as gifts in burials occurring in more peripheral, elitist societies of Northern Greece, and in "barbarian" societies such as the Thracian kingdom of the Northeast Aegean and Western Black Sea hinterland. These give an idea of what would have been on the tables of wealthier Southern Aegean families.
(p. 287b) White-ground ware
White-ground ware begins around 520 BC and its use is limited till the latter part of the fifth century BC, though shapes include cups, after which it is predominantly associated with the lekythos shape, for oil, and for burials in particular, as well as household oil use (Arafat and Morgan 1998).
(p. 287c) Human figures on Classical tablewares indicate a system of signs, where selective aspects of contemporary society are repeatedly on display
Nonetheless, in what has been humorously termed "the tyranny of the historical record," recent approaches to symbolic culture in Greek society have been skeptical about attempts to read into vase scenes and temple sculpture highly elaborate political messages, such as are claimed by Neer (2002) for Athenian figured vases in Archaic-Classical times.
(p. 287d) Focus on the viewer rather than the artist
The repetitive roles assigned to men and women, and the way in which they are dressed (or not) and positioned, on figured vases and in funerary sculpture can be taken to indicate desirable social norms, at least to those purchasing and displaying such works in their household or funerary enclosures. As such we are naturally entitled to ask how representative these portrayed gender relations are for different classes, and indeed for any real-life situation in contemporary life. This is a necessary qualification to return to.
(p. 287e) Style periods in Archaic and Classical art
It has, however, become apparent that the useful concept of period styles to date and describe the development of Greek art is too homogeneous, and allows us to forget to explain why styles evolve and change in the first place (Fullerton 2000). The variety of art on the late fifth century Acropolis complex is so considerable that Rhys Carpenter (cited in Fullerton 2000) was encouraged to suggest that parts were recycled from earlier buildings. Overemphasis on Athens also leads to neglect of other local schools of cultural production around the Aegean which do not always follow metropolitan trends and also have out-of-phase chronologies for similar art.
(p. 287f) Classical cityscapes remained dominated by the major temples of the polis' patron divinities
Although most Greek art is linked to religion, politics is rarely absent even here (Fullerton 2000), since Greek concepts of the gods revolved around mutual favors, the human gifts of dedications and sacrifices being regularly undertaken with the expectation of divine support. By honoring its major sacred patrons through majestic temples, statues, and gifts to temple treasuries, the state honored itself through conspicuous expenditure and thereby sought divine intervention to stimulate prosperity and external successes.
(p. 287g) The Acropolis has been given intensive scholarly and touristic attention from the early pioneers of Classical archaeology in the late eighteenth century AD
The detailed sketches of Classical Greek architectural art provided by Stuart and Revett in their four volumes of ancient Athenian monuments surviving in late Ottoman Athens (1762-1816), had a dramatic effect on Western European art and architecture, where hitherto its practitioners had had to base their knowledge of Greco-Roman art on discoveries in Italy, of Roman origin or of Roman copies in Greek style. It was a major stimulus to a Greek Classical revival and in turn to a more general turn to Neoclassicism during the nineteenth century.
(p. 289a) Athens had played a central role in the defeat of the Persians
The small temple of Athena Nike possessed a frieze of Greeks and Persians fighting and probably included the Athenian victory at Marathon (Arafat and Morgan 1998). Representation on temple art of a recent historical scene is almost unparalleled in Classical times, and underlines the contemporary political and ideological role of the Parthenon for late fifth-century Athens (Fullerton 2000). Since the cost of the Acropolis building program was to a considerable extent funded by contributions to the Delian League, by now effectively an obligatory tribute to a tightly controlled Athenian Empire, referring to Athens' role in staving off barbarian threats was also very appropriate for propaganda purposes.
(p. 289b) This location, together with the frieze's height, makes visibility from the ground very difficult
An interesting debate has developed on the issue of the extent to which Greco-Roman art was intended to be "read" in a complex way by the viewer. In a recent conference volume (Schultz and von den Hoff 2009; cf. review by Ma 2011) two diametrically opposed views are presented. Holscher contends that most public art was designed to give an impression to the viewer of seriousness, social appropriateness, and expense, and a community of shared generic values, but owing to the difficulty of seeing the details and in communicating subtleties, as Paul Veyne has argued, such art is low-intensity messaging which was not meant to be loaded with rich content requiring viewer decoding (Schultz and von den Hoff 2009). In opposition the rest of the volume has rather too many examples of over-interpretation, where architectural ornament is expected to speak of contemporary historical events.
(p. 289c) The Parthenon frieze: alternative interpretations have been proposed
The most influential alternative model is that of Connelly (1996) who believes the Parthenon frieze represents the mythical sacrifice by Athenian king Erechtheus of his three daughters to rescue the city, but at the same time the presented garments both represent the shrouds for the intending sacrificial victims and the new peplos for Athena, while the procession of Athenians equally merges the legendary ritual and the contemporary Panathenaia. If the frieze showed the Panathenaia, where is the ship drawn to the temple as part of the procession, and what is the significance in the central disputed scene of two figures with cushioned stools (?) on their heads? Connelly suggests the peplos being handed over by one girl is one shroud; the other two are being carried on their victims' heads. Yet other commentators cause problems with most interpretations by asserting that the peplos offerer, according to contemporary artistic convention, must be a boy! Fullerton (2000) pointedly reminds us that 98 percent of the frieze shows contemporary Athenians processing, while just 2 percent is under dispute as to what is being represented, so the emphasis on self-promotion is dominant. The real subject is simply the Athenians!
(p. 289d) It is exceptional rather than common to find living people portrayed, and these are victorious generals or Olympic victors representing the community
In fact there are quite a few examples where cities used a hero cult of living and dead generals and Olympic victors as competitive symbolic capital to enhance their status vis-a-vis other cities. The case of Euthymos of Locri in the early fifth century BC is discussed in this wider context by Currie (2002). The Spartan general Lysander went one step further, since he was honored as a god in his own lifetime.
(p. 290) The two main Classical architectural "orders" were used widely and even in the same complexes, so that style and context are more important than any link to dialect or ethnicity
There is nonetheless greater popularity for the Doric style on Mainland Greece, for Ionic in Asia Minor, and a local version of Doric on the Cyclades (Osborne 2000).
(p. 291a) The Greek theater: a form of public presentation of contemporary issues
Rhodes (2003) argues strongly against seeing Greek drama as essentially the product of democracy.
It is rather the result of the communal mentality of the polis, and indeed choruses performed in oligarchic states, while the same dramas were popular in kingdoms such as Macedon. Nonetheless he admits that the heightened questioning of state politics and values was possible only within democratic poleis, and naturally explains the complete dominance of Athenian plays in the surviving repertoire and ancient records of playwrights.
(p. 291b) Theatrical events once staged in the agora or on hill slopes were seen in the fifth to fourth centuries as worth embedding into large and expensive stone complexes
In Athens one of the major contexts for the development of drama was the festival of Dionysos, which seems to have started life as a great procession to the god's shrine on the south slope of the
Acropolis, culminating in sacrifices, feasting, and choral dances dedicated to the god. Formal dramas were being performed near the shrine by the early fifth century, and in this century wooden seating was added, replaced by stone in the fourth (Tomlinson 1995). There is debate as to who could attend Athenian plays: it seems citizen women could not, but loose women - prostitutes and hawkers - and also resident alien and other foreign males were permitted to (Katz 1998). Rhodes (2003) prefers to place the origins of Athenian drama in the sixth-century Archaic era and its development was probably sponsored by the Peisistratid tyrants.
(p. 291c) Black - and Red-Figure fine tableware is interesting for the insights it offers into how Greek society was supposed to work, for example in gender relations (Beard 1991) it indicates the dominance of the husband, and the importance he attaches to her wifely duties. However, purely chauvinistic readings of such scenes require some "deconstruction'
One view carries deconstruction a stage further. Ferrari (2003) disputes Beard's approach to figured vase scenes, that they can be a deliberate dialectic between mythical and everyday life: "We are not just dealing with a figure who is either Hector or an Athenian hoplite: we are dealing with a figure who can be and is both." Using the numerous vase scenes of richly dressed women at a public fountain of Late Archaic and Early Classical date, Ferrari suggests that these are so far from the accepted norms for the seclusion of upper-class women that all such scenes are negative portrayals of legendary women allowed too much public exposure. I am not convinced by the arguments presented, which also rest on accepting the male propaganda line delivered in Classical texts, that women were in actuality all but locked in their houses and only slaves were permitted to fetch water and other household necessities.
(p. 292a) The deceased woman looking at herself in the mirror symbolizes her relatives looking admirably into her remembered character
The ideal, that a man in his late twenties married a girl just after puberty, and the likelihood that both were relative, if not complete, strangers to one another on a personal level (but in kinship terms were often "relatives"), has led to a highly negative view of Classical marriage (Lyons 2003, Moraw 2003). This has been encouraged by highly chauvinistic statements attributed to elite Athenian males. Pericles in his Funeral Oration claims that women are at their best when never mentioned in company for good or ill. Lysias tells us that "the best of wives" was "a clever housekeeper and kept everything neat." Worst of all is Demosthenes: "we have hetairai for pleasure, concubines for everyday needs and women to produce legitimate children and keep a reliable management of the whole household." What modern Western European and American commentators seem to lack is knowledge of traditional arranged-marriage societies in the Mediterranean, including Greece, within living memory. I can recall a conversation in 1970s rural Greece with an educated couple whose marriage was just such an affair of a couple paired by parents and marriage-brokers, and who were hardly acquainted personally before their engagement. In answer to queries about such marriages the couple explained that "love" could not be expected at the start of such a marriage, but was something that would hopefully, and often did, grow as the relationship matured.
(p. 292b) Parties in the andron or formal dining-room of the house
The philosopher Plato's Symposium offers vignettes of the atmosphere at the more intellectual of such drinking-parties.
(p. 292c) Female nudity in Classical Greek art is extremely rare outside such "lowlife" contexts
Nonetheless, the rise of the female nude from the fourth century onward is linked to showing a more human side of the gods by Beaumont (1998), in line with wider trends in culture (see further below). Bonnet and Pirenne-Delforge (2004) point out that the recovery of the power of the female body brings Greek art back to its protohistoric beginnings in Geometric and earliest Archaic times, signifying a more inclusive interest in both genders who make up society. Significantly, in Spartan society ancient authors assert that female nakedness occurred in public, a source of curiosity to other Greeks, but there associated with athletic activity and an ethos where the reproductive power of women and their desirability was linked to the successful creation of new male warriors from strong, healthy, and fertile females. On the other hand, the shocking nudity of the Praxiteles' Aphrodite is modified through her representation as the goddess of love, her pose as rising from a bath, and the common knowledge that the human model was a prostitute. In contrast to these general trends, High Classical art of the later fifth century in Athens nonetheless pushed the boundaries of propriety in the use of clinging drapery in representing females for temple and grave reliefs and some vase scenes (Moraw 2003). The qualities of young women were allowed at times to include physical desirability. Moraw finds it difficult to reconcile this with the supposed societal norms as represented in texts and most other artworks.
(p. 293a) Athens had a special funeral place for its heroic war dead
See Leader (1997). Recently four communal tombs were discovered outside the West Gate of Athens (Wilford 2000) which are believed to be polyandreia, or war graves for soldiers associated with Athens' Peloponnesian War. Heroic associations are invoked for these several hundred cremated males by the burial rite and votive vases with warrior scenes. James Whitley (pers. comm.) points out, however, that the well-known tombstone of Dexileos shows that war dead could also have a private memorial elsewhere. This monument has now been the subject of a lengthy article by Hurwit (2007). His reading is intriguing and subtle. It seems that Dexileos, son of a rich family, was killed in 394 BC as an Athenian cavalryman and buried in the state war grave near the Dipylon Gate of Athens. Here a state stele recorded all citizen dead of this defeat and at Koroneia the same year. But a second memorial was erected nearby, probably by the mainly aristocratic community of cavalrymen (hippeis), where Dexileos would have been cited a second time. Yet a third grave stele with the famous relief of Dexileos seems to have been put up in the same general area by his family. Here the elite of Athens appear to be challenging the confines of the democratic ethos of communal equality on two occasions. Interestingly, this was a risky act shortly after the short but bloody period of oligarchic rule in Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War, and Hurwit sees this reflected in the inclusion among the Red-Figure vase gifts left at Dexileos' private memorial of one depicting the Tyrant-Slayers. It could be that the two youths shown in the memorial mentioned here in the text also demonstrate a private memorial from a wealthy family for dead buried elsewhere communally, or merely that the "ephebic" appearance of militarized young citizen males was an appropriate representation for that age, as suggested in the text.
(p. 293b) aristocratic members of the Parthenon procession frieze include naked riders
Hurwit (2007), however, reminds us that ca. 440 BC Pericles revised entry into the Athenian cavalry so that membership was broadened from a strictly aristocratic club, and hence their appearance on the later Parthenon procession frieze would have been more inclusive than my text implies.
(p. 293c) Evidence for the use of veiling for women
Although women are only rarely in iconography shown with veils drawn over the head and face, detailed analysis of clothing reveals that a scarf or veil is regularly present around the neck in preparation for veiling in the presence of strangers. Cairns (1996) and Llewellyn-Jones (2004) conclude that women in ancient Greece were both daily and routinely veiled in public, and suggest that the scant attention paid to this fact till recently in Classical scholarship is linked to the persistent requirement to dissociate the Greek world from that of Oriental societies where female veiling is a central aspect of orthodox Islamic practice.
(p. 293d) Women brought wealth to the household
In Athens, however, as probably in other city-states, women were strictly limited in their ability to conduct financial business. They could not deal with sums greater than 3-5 drachmas, or a week's pay for skilled craftsman. They could buy household supplies for the week but little else (Katz 1998).
(p. 293e) The respect of male citizens was at risk from the sexual attentions of other men toward their womenfolk
So females from puberty onward were constantly "protected" by modest clothing and, at least in the middle and upper classes, by a degree of seclusion within the home when male visitors were present.
(p. 294a) The higher aim of the human species included being able to defend the polis against its enemies
For the upper-middle and upper classes, who could afford the time, communal exercise in the gymnasium was ostentatious theater for manly exercise, tuning the body for its role in the citizen army formation of the phalanx. It was for such extra-home activities that our wealthier male citizen carries his walking stick in the characteristic scenes of daily life. Whitley (1994) in an insightful article discusses how the 192 Athenian citizens who died repelling the first Persian invasion at the battle of Marathon were treated as heroes from the age of the epic poems of Homer, and with even closer allusions to aristocratic prestige tumulus burials of the Late Geometric to Early Archaic era: a great tumulus was erected at the battlefield and the warriors cremated for interment within it. Although pre-battle finds were made in the excavation of the tumulus, the mass cremations are associated with early fifth-century ceramics and it seems that either the mound was built over earlier graves, or dedications included some antiques deemed suitable for heroes (V. Stissi, pers. comm.).
(p. 294b) The Olympian gods were, with few exceptions given perfect human bodies and chief among them were the males
Osborne (2008) observes that the identification of ideal male citizens and male gods was so strong that iconography includes gods who are shown as perfect men rather than with their usual mythical attributes: Dionysos, normally full of mature gravitas and bearded, is shown on the Parthenon pediment as a beardless, reclining young nude male. Also it comes as no surprise that in Athenian comedies the gods could be portrayed as absurd, since it was assumed that they had frailties like humans, and were not "perfect" personalities (Buxton 1998).
(p. 294c) The obsession with nude masculinity reflected a strategy where adolescent male sexual desire was diverted from largely unavailable female sexuality in order to strengthen a male-bonded public life
Robin Osborne (1985) and Crawley Quinn (2007) have investigated the extraordinary significance Athenians attached to Classical harms, small statues of the god Hermes, represented as a pillar with a bearded head and erect penis and placed outside the house doors, at least of the wealthier citizens. Their mutilation in 415 BC was considered a sign of an impending anti-democratic revolution. Their reading is an interesting one. As the kouros of Archaic times, with its elitist associations, declined in popularity, such herms may have come to represent an alternative form of public masculinity: the face of every citizen male Athenian, with frontal gaze and provocative male (sexual) power. The beard emphasizes the mature citizen with full political rights.
(p. 295a) An elite core of the polis army comprised pairs of male lovers
The army of the state of Thebes possessed such a Sacred Band, whose massed corpses in the heart of the conflict are said to have brought tears to the eyes of King Philip II of Macedon after his definitive defeat of Thebes and its allies at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Van Wees argues that the high cost of defeat in war, added to the regularity of inter-state warfare in Classical Greece, and the high proportion of adult males in the polis liable to be called up for active combat, led to the mentality that warlike prowess almost defined masculinity. He tellingly quotes the Laws of Plato: "in fact every city-state is always, by nature, in a state of undeclared war with every other city-state" (2000: 626a).
(p. 295b) In democratic states the decline of prestigious grave sculptures was promoted as anti-elite legislation
There has been debate on the representation of all social classes in funerary monuments. Some claim that the relatively low cost of the stone, an inscription, and even a simple figure design made them accessible to every free citizen (Nielsen 1989). Set against this are cultural filters, such as the clear imbalance in female citizen reliefs, the underrepresentation of metics and slaves, and the overall disproportionately low number of known grave monuments compared to even the most conservative estimate of the population of the city of Athens and other towns for which there are large databases of graves. It is difficult not to argue that the majority of citizens even were buried without formal carved stone markers, and this is clearly shown from large-scale cemetery excavations in Greece, where many thousands of graves have been dug for a small percentage of associated grave stelae. It is worth noting, however, in the context of figured gravestones, that scientific examination of plain tombstones has shown painted designs not clearly visible today to the naked eye. Stears (2000) considers these may have been cheaper substitutes for carved images.
(p. 295c) The equal emphasis on men and women in Athenian funerary art
But yet, lest we read too much emancipation into representational equality, it is still the case that family burial enclosures (periboloi) are usually dominated by a larger monument to one of the leading males, while inscriptions on gravestones are twice as common for men. It should be noted that in early fifth-century Athens, the strict enforcement of an egalitarian ethos led to the virtual disappearance of sculpted gravestones along with the kouros-kore statues (Fisher 1998). The scenic gravestones reappear, however, from around 440 BC, perhaps because their emphasis on civically approved virtues as opposed to individualistic promotion was no longer considered a threat to polis democracy.
(p. 295d) The middle to upper classes who could afford such funerary monuments
See the two previous notes above. Debate continues as to whether carved gravestones were the preserve of wealthier families or universal. That metics and slaves can have tombstones does not imply that the poorest disposed of them, since it is after all families, other relations, friends, and masters who probably pay for the gravestone. Women are commemorated in inscriptions in a ratio of 1 to 2 in relation to men in the total Athenian database, which might imply a dominance of unsigned stones, or that they were mostly not given grave markers at all - although, as earlier noted, they are represented on grave art as often as men.
(p. 295e) Rural cemeteries marking the estates of Classical farmers
In the city-state, proof of citizenship included being able to demonstrate citizen parenthood, one important piece of evidence being the ability to point to family graves. On the country estate they also serve to reinforce claims to land.
(p. 295f) Servants are often seen on vase and grave sculptures assisting in the home
Faithful slaves were nonetheless honored in death through their own non-figured, inscribed stelae in family grave-enclosures (Stears 1995). In fact there are numerous monuments to slaves from Athenian cemeteries (Nielsen 1989).
(p. 295g) Analysis of women on figured vases encourages the view that middle - and upper-class wives could create a parallel world in which perhaps men were intruders
There is growing interest in exploring the way that at least women of wealthier families were able to escape from the constraints put on their lives by conventional limits on their participation in nondomestic duties (Fornasier 2008). At Olympia there was a small-scale female version of the four-yearly Panhellenic Games, in honor of Hera, where women raced in competition with each other. At the Artemis sanctuary at Brauron, where girls of Athenian elite families served in the cult as a kind of rite de passage (the "little bears") before womanhood, there were also athletic competitions.
(p. 295h) Women had public and private cults of their own
Appropriately, women were particularly associated with cults for the fertility of crops and humans, such as Demeter and Kore. Roles linked to home duties included washing and weaving garments for cult statues and preparing ritual cakes. In October the Thesmophoria festival was solely for women and was Aegean-wide in both town and country (Katz 1998). Religious roles were often an opportunity for the polis elite to display their wealth and status without risking political implications: ritual processions were led by girls from leading families who also dominated the role of cult priestess. In Athens the rural cult of Artemis at Brauron was serviced by young girls from the best families (the "little bears"). But although feminist scholars might point out that priestesses played a central role in city and Panhellenic cults (Dierichs 2003), for example in the major sanctuaries of Delphi and Dodona where they were the oracular voices, Schachter (1990) considers that it was precisely because in male eyes a female official was a "non-person," unable to take political advantage from oracles, that they were preferred.
(p. 295i) Female goddesses should not be shown as children
As Beaumont (1994) shows, Classical children had no status beyond being trainee grown-ups in iconography, and are shown as "small adults" rather than as realistically infantile. On the portrayal of children see also Seifert (2006).
(p. 296a) Slaves were treated as family members and were often honored thus in death
See earlier note. As we shall shortly see, average Classical homes were not large enough for distinct areas set aside for slaves and servants, and this agrees with ancient written sources that they were treated as part of an extended household. When a new slave arrived in the home, a greeting ceremony occurred that was comparable to one for a new baby entering the family (Jameson 1990a). Several hundred Athenian tombstones have been assigned to slaves (Nielsen 1989).
(p. 296b) The abuse of slaves
A series of Boeotian Black-Figure cups, for example, amused diners with scenes of slaves being punished and tortured (Lohmann 2005), and Athenian comedies refer to similar suitable management of slaves. The Gortyn lawcode sets fines for injury to a slave at 1 percent of those for a free citizen (Thomas 2000).
(p. 296c) Building projects, craft workshops, and farming were widely carried out by mixed teams of citizens, free aliens (metics) and slaves
The construction of the Erechtheum on the Athens Acropolis, according to its surviving inscribed accounts, reveal that a quarter each of the construction team were slaves and citizens and half metics, while all the skilled workers, regardless of status, were paid 1 drachma a day (of course the slaves' owners pocketed their share) (Katz 1998). Slaves nonetheless were often distinguishable by dress, hairstyle, names, and for women - seen also in some vase-paintings - ornamental tattoos over their body (Fisher 1998). Their value can be judged by the information that slaves were sold in the late fifth century at prices between 100 and 300 drachmas: thus a year's work by a skilled craftsman bought an adult lifetime's work by a slave (Fisher 1998).
(p. 296d) At the Athenian silver mines at Laurion thousands of slaves were employed in brutal conditions, but even here skilled technicians lived like prosperous citizens
A very interesting category of slaves are described in ancient sources as "living apart," carrying out independent artisan and other work, but sending payments to their owners (Katz 1998). Slave revolts were exceedingly rare in ancient Greece, and this is explained by the fragmentation of this class, split into small numbers that belonged to individual houses or farm estates, from which a class consciousness and means of organization could not emerge. Only the Laurion mines created a potential for group revolt, but here a permanent force of soldiers was deployed, together with fortifications and the threat of severe punishments, so that reported uprisings are extremely rare (Lohmann 2005). Even when the Attic countryside was under enemy occupation at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and as many as 20,000 slaves could have taken the opportunity to escape their servitude, they did not take group action and hence were largely returned to slavery (Katz 1998).
(p. 296e) Houses and town planning
For a recent overview for the Classical Greek world see Hoepfner (2009).
(p. 296f) Early colonies such as Megara Hyblaea set out a formal land division
Recent research suggests that most early colonial towns had open plans reminiscent of the loose texture of homeland early cities, even if street grids were laid out. The latter also seem to have more than one orientation, following the lie of the land (Shipley 2005).
(p. 296g) The rise of gridplan town planning appears to reflect a conscious concept of dividing both town and country space into modular units appropriate to a middling-wealth citizen-farmer family
On this point see Boyd and Jameson (1981). Interestingly, these authors believe that the concept of mathematical land division was learned by Greek mercenaries and traders in Archaic Egypt. A common insula plan was a rectangle with a ratio of 1:6 on its sides, which at 100 x 600 Greek feet (around a third of a meter or comparable to an English foot) allowed for 24 houses of 50 x 50 ft or ca. 225 sq m plots, in two parallel rows separated by an alley. Clearly, over time the original identical plots might be modified through changes in ownership and excavated houses do show subsequent mergers or subdivision of property (Jameson 1990a). In theory this ought to have led to a rapid breakdown of the apparently equal plots, but this does not seem to be very visible. One likely reason is the short-term family memory of Classical Greece, common to many societies with limited private literacy. Normally families possessed no more than three generations of known family (Jameson 1990b). The house therefore was a resource that might change hands or pass into the possession of relatives, while if one son inherited the parental residence, other children would be expected to occupy new homes when they married and had a family. The relatively small-size of the typical house, allowing also for the expected presence of resident servants or slaves, suggests too that the home was not expected to be the future home of several families from parental offspring.
(p. 296h) Gridplan towns are associated with the city planner Hippodamus
Most commonly portrayed as evidence of his planning is the rigorous scheme at Miletos, his home town. However, this city was rebuilt after destruction during the Persian Wars and he would have been too young to have done more than observe this process. Moreover the well-known reconstruction plan is actually now known to be that of the town in Hellenistic and Roman times.
The Archaic and early Classical town, it seems, did have some elements of regular planning, but there is no archaeological case that the gridplan predates Hellenistic times (Shipley 2005). Hippodamus' career seems to belong to the second half of the fifth century. Although Piraeus began to be developed in the late 490s, its gridplan nonetheless seems to be mid-century and can genuinely, as our ancient sources state, be attributed to Hippodamus. Olynthus was largely set out in Northern Greece in 432 BC and reflects the same wave of popularity for mathematical symmetry based around domestic house-blocks of a regular size.
(p. 297) The andron has settings for dining-benches, mosaic - or plaster-floor, and decorated walls
Mosaics were invented in fifth-century BC Greece as decoration in the domestic context, initially using pebbles and with very simple designs (Dunbabin 1999) but their great elaboration and flourishing occurred in fourth-century Macedonia, linked with a regional lifestyle of extensive private and public dining-rooms (Arafat and Morgan 1998). There is evidence that mosaics may have been independently invented by Punic (North African Phoenician) societies in the same general era (see Chapter 14).
(p. 299a) Athenian sources state that some poorer folk did not possess storage space in their houses
Sources mention that the very poor may have dwelled in a house rented out to several people, a synoikia, which was also a less ostentatious way for the rich to exploit the housing market for investment without obvious display of wealth in property (Jameson 1990b). In Athens the large numbers of resident aliens, often working as merchants and craftspeople, were not allowed to own property. Renting a house and an estate from a citizen clearly offered an unobtrusive means for wealthier citizens to earn an income without exciting public disapproval in a way an extensive town mansion would have done (Shipley 2005). Property confiscation details in Athenian legal cases such as the 415 Herm mutilation trial reveal that the wealthy owned multiple property in more than one Attic community or deme (Millett 2000).
(p. 299b) The home-based, small-scale nature of most Greek craft and industry is clear
The Greek focus on the household/house (oikos) thus remains as true for farmer families as it is for the largely home-based, small-scale artisan and commercial family units which seem to have dominated the non-agricultural sector of towns. Larger workshops are, however, recorded in our texts; for example, the politician Demosthenes' father had a business with 50 craftspeople manufacturing knives and beds (Fisher 1998). At Halieis there was an industrial quarter, but here it is still argued that the working unit was a family-owned house (Jameson 1990b). Blazeby and Glazebrook have recently argued that many houses with large numbers of drinking-cups and erotic objects have been seen as rich homes or those with symposia, whereas they might often represent houses doubling as tavernas where wine was sold and/or brothels (Young 2009).
(p. 300a) The rise in the fourth century of more ostentatious homes
This trend may already have begun in the late fifth century, if we believe the Pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of Athens which states that some private homes had gymnasia, baths, and changing rooms. A notable exception to the rule of downplaying wealth in Classical nucleated settlements was the occasional construction of a tower as part of the home, a monument far commoner in the countryside where its prominence and expense excited less comment. This could be used to add domestic or storage space, but it seems to have been as much a form of conspicuous display of status (Lohmann 1992, 1993b).
Westgate (2010) in an excellent and thoughtful in-depth analysis of the House of the Mosaics in Eretria, of the mid-fourth century BC, underlines the fact that many trends of Hellenistic time toward monumentalization of the house and its decorative elaboration begin with certain pioneer examples such as this from Late Classical times. This particular house has a display court with multiple diningrooms, where different decorative schemes might already anticipate a practice argued later for Roman villas, of grading guests by prestige into more or less sophisticated reception areas. This has also been suggested for the dining-rooms in the palace of Aegeai in Macedonia. Apart from mosaic and wall-paintings the house had sculpture, decorative terracotta figurines on a display shelf, lavish upholstery, and marble tables. Since the peristyle of the display court is too early to reflect the influence of Macedonian palaces, and is very early for a house interior, Westgate suggests an imitation of public buildings such as temples or gymnasia (although given the context the stoa seems a better source, and this is an extended form of the common porch in Classical houses. In another house study Westgate (2007) also points out that the exterior of typical Greek houses of Classical times appear to have avoided ornamentation, in contrast to later Roman custom, underlining the view that Greek homes were made to avoid signs of wealth and status differences.
(p. 300b) At Olynthus the New Town has a minority of extra-large, well-decorated suburban "villae"
Such as the Villa of Good Fortune.
(p. 300c) Olynthus inscriptions record that house prices rose in more desirable locations, such as near the town center
It is also worth speculating whether the large-scale provision of comparable homes at Olynthus, given the element of cost just noted, covers the poorer sectors of this town's population. The older part of town, the South Hill, was little probed archaeologically, and seems not to have undergone a gridplan rebuild at the time of the vast extensions on the North Hill and Eastern Plateau. One can wonder whether, as in many cities of the world, the poor lived in more cramped houses in the Old Town, within an irregular, organic street plan. Nevett (2000) notes in passing that houses on the South Hill were smaller and more irregular and its known house prices were among the lowest.
Some have suggested that the multi-roomed typical family home of Classical times, developing as we have seen out of more modest, single-spaced cottages of the Early Iron Age, was a scaled-down emulation of elite mansions of the Geometric-Archaic era (Jameson 1990b). Although insufficient house complexes that could reflect the aristocracy have been excavated, imaginative reconstructions of the palace of Odysseus, based on the description in Homer, attempt to provide a source for Classical houses, with the major living unit, or oikos, copying the chieftain's hall, facing a court around which the rooms form homes for the retinue or storage spaces and stables. This plan, however, leans heavily on that better known from Mycenaean palaces and corresponds little to known "Dark Age" settlements where elite houses are postulated. As we have seen, the archaeological realities do not present such integrated complexes for the pre-Classical powerful and peasantry. The Lefkandi proto-temple plan for the elite house would, to judge by other settlements, have been set into an irregular scatter of simple huts.
Nonetheless the concept of emulation moving down the social scale is a plausible model for some aspects of the Classical house, and it would agree with other aspects of Classical citizen life where Archaic elite practices had "trickled down" to be a focus of emulation - the symposium feast, regular
Athletic training. In particular, the prestos type of house with a narrow porch/veranda before a main living room, is a scaled-down version of the linear Early Iron Age great house with its generic similarity to Mycenaean megaron houses (Jameson 1990a).
(p. 300d) Some ancient sources separate a female area of the home (gynoikenitis)
In a pioneer paper Susan Walker (1983) sought to isolate these gendered spaces in house-plans from several locations. Her example from Dystos, however, may not have been a family residence; Jameson (1990a) thinks it is perhaps that of a town governor. In another of her examples, the house on the Athens Areopagus hill, two blocks within the house have separate courtyard entrances, the upper leading into the andron and believed to have been exclusively male, the lower having the normal open access to the domestic parts of the home directly from the entry court and hence for female family use. However, such a separate entrance is very unusual; generally the house courtyard accesses all rooms.
(p. 300e) The andron-room for formal drinking-parties is associated by modern house analysts with the males of the family and their male guests. Yet the commonly recognizable andron might also have seen wider use at other times for the family as a whole
Archaeological evidence suggests that andron-rooms were normal not only for upper-class but also for at least middle-class citizens, as has been determined, for example, for typical citizen housing at Piraeus (Fisher 1998). In any case, couched dining-rooms were well known to citizens through their use for ritual dining in major sanctuaries, and for public dining-rooms for officials of the state (Tomlinson 1995). For couch dining-rooms reserved primarily for women in female-centered cults see Bookidis (1995).
(p. 300f) The view of many, that the lost upstairs rooms were the prime bedroom space, would leave few excavated traces
We noted earlier that Classical rooms seem mostly multifunctional, and hence lack fixed furnishings. For this reason, tracing sleeping arrangements has hitherto been fruitless.
(p. 301a) Both house-plans and images in art indicate that the house was primarily a female and family space
The accumulating evidence seems to be to run counter to the suggestion by Nevett (1995), repeated by Westgate (2007), that the courtyard house norm was in part designed for "panoptic" control of the movement of women in the household by its males. It seems more and more plausible that the ease of access to house spaces from the open yard and its veranda was for the convenience of the household whose day-to-day activities were run by older females.
(p. 301b) Olynthus remains our largest excavated house sample. However, excavated generations ago, only small samples of finds were recorded, from which a further selection occurred before publication. On average three finds per room were recorded
On the other hand, since Olynthus was sacked and only the really valuable items such as gold and silver were stolen, many whole vessels were uncovered (Cahill 2002), while the peaceful abandonment of Halieis allowed its population to take less valuable household items with them.
(p. 301c) The recent high-quality excavation at Halieis where House E produced 4100 ceramic finds
Halieis was abandoned, probably peacefully, in the early third century, so some objects were doubtless taken away. Olynthus was sacked by the Macedonians, who clearly carried off precious metal objects but little else, in theory allowing a larger sample of everyday house assemblages to be left in situ. The kind of detail available, nonetheless, for Halieis, due to highly meticulous excavation, can be shown from room 6-16 in this house, which appears to have been the kitchen, possessing a cupboard against the mudbrick wall abutting the yard. When the wall collapsed the contents of this cupboard spilled over into the Northwest corner of the yard (Locus XVII). The stored kitchen items are an extraordinarily rich and numerous collection of pottery.
(p. 303a) Hopfner and Schwandner's (1994) thesis that regular "estate-towns" such as Olynthus offer concrete expression for an overriding egalitarian ideal needs significant modification
Jameson's (1990a, 1990b) thoughtful reviews of Classical Greek houses conclude that despite criticism of the "democratic ethos" model, it remains the case that the vast majority of excavated houses from city-states confirm the predominance of a relatively egalitarian attitude to house size and furnishings. The ownership of several such properties clearly forms a way for the rich to invest in urban land without the opprobium they might draw from occupying a single large property within an urban insula. Gridplan towns with houses of comparable scale are not a feature of democratic constitutions such as Athens, where power was shared between lower and upper classes: indeed Olynthus itself seems to have been oligarchic or run by an upper-class minority (Shipley 2005). The real concept of importance is not democratia (power-sharing) but isonomia, or equal rights before the law and some meaningful role, at least, for all citizens in city politics. This seems to have been sufficient in the polis to encourage the material equivalence of unostentatious houses.
(p. 303b) Surprisingly, however, trade was not banished to urban fringes or special quarters
In the major Cretan city of Eleutherna, three excavated houses all with ceramic production associated with domestic accommodation suggests a potters' quarter of Hellenistic date, but the excavators believe this is also intramural household industry as identified inside Olynthis by Cahill (Tstatsaki 2010).
(p. 303c) Much of Crete followed a "Dorian" mode of society. Trade and industry were largely left to resident aliens
On Crete, Perlman (2004) disputes the lack of involvement by citizens of the Dorian serf-states in commerce and craft production. However, the textual evidence he uses is frequently ambiguous. There is also no reason to think that the small-scale artisanship and trading that he reveals was incompatible with citizens maintaining an estate sufficient to ensure that the male citizens involved kept their rights in the communal mess.
(p. 305a) A simple rural home may consist of a single, two-roomed structure with a small yard
These have been observed from the surface-visible plans of standing foundations on Euboea (Nevett 1999) and in Attica (Lohmann 1993a), as well as through geophysical and surface ceramic plotting in Boeotia, where the soil is deeper and house foundations buried (Bintliff 1992).
(p. 305b) The larger country residences may incorporate expensive, prominent towers
Archaeology and texts indicate that towers for private residences were already being constructed from the Late Archaic era. Most were mudbrick on substantial stone foundations. Only the very rich had a completely stone tower built, since an example of Naxos has been estimated to have cost 8000 drachmas (or some 40 years of income for a skilled craftsman!) (Lohmann 1993b).
(p. 305c) Regional surveys have identified a predominance of small "family farms," but ensembles of sites in contiguous blocks of countryside reveal a more complex hierarchy of rural residences which include larger estate centers and rural hamlets
On the Atene survey small farms were rare, such as site PH76 whose total built area, mostly courtyard, was a mere 336 sq m. The largest of the generally more extensive estate centers characterizing this deme was 3600 sq m (Lohmann 1993a). It is important to note that small farmers were prevented from expanding their estates, less by a shortage of land than by the fact that a family plus a slave could cultivate a farm of some 5 ha only with difficulty. It was the shortage of extra paid labor or additional slaves that would limit the maintenance of larger estates to the wealthy.
(p. 305d) The Late Classical author Isocrates remarks that for Athens the better houses and furnishings are rural
On Siphnos, when the rich gold and silver mines ran out, the wealthy invested in large rural estates. The island has 55 known rural towers associated with farms of Hellenistic age (Neer 2001).
(p. 307a) At regular intervals across the countryside there were villages
Lohmann (1993a) also notes that the larger and more fertile parishes/demes of Attica possessed alongside the main nucleation one or more satellite villages, such as Anaphlystos where three such villages accompanied the deme center.
(p. 307b) Boeotia, where perhaps 50 percent of the surface was cultivated in Classical times As calculated in Bintliff (1997).
(p. 307c) The Atene Survey: Numerous rural cemeteries were mapped
While in deeper-soiled areas such as Boeotia these are discovered as localized scatters of fine ceramics, here the thin soil and limited post-Classical land use allows the surface survival of grave terraces upon which monuments had once stood over the graves.
World History
