Technology, which combines science and ideas for practical gains, touched all facets of ancient Greek life and included objects ranging from simple implements to sophisticated machines.
Date: From 20,000 b. c.e.
Category: Science and technology
Earliest Evidence In Hesiod’s Erga kai Emerai (c. 700 b. c.e.; Works and Days, 1618), Prometheus gave the Greeks their innovative faculties and shared the secret of fire with them. However, it was Athena who provided the necessary skill (techne) to produce sophisticated devices. In Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b. c.e.; English translation, 1611), Hephaestus, the god of the forge, was the ideal craftsman: He fashioned mechanical maidens as helpers and self-propelled tripods for the gods. With help from the Cyclopes, Hephaestus also created numerous wondrous works: lightning bolts for Zeus, armor of Achilles, and a mythical bronze-man, Talos, who guarded the Island of Crete. Ovid relates in his Metamorphoses (c. 8 c. e.; English translation, 1567) that Daedalus, the legendary craftsman of King Minos, created a wooden cow for Pasiphae, a labyrinth for the Minotaur, and wings for himself and his son Ikaros (Icarus).
The earliest archaeological evidence consists of Paleolithic scrapers and blades in stone and obsidian. By the Early Neolithic period, domestication of certain plants and animals led to larger cutting implements, grinding stones, hand-built pottery, and crude rubble architecture.
Agriculture and Manufacturing Food procurement and production required tools to break the soil (ploughs) and to process the harvest (sickles, threshing or winnowing devices). Prehistoric grinding stones gave way to grain mills and presses for olives and grapes.
Flax and wool were the first domesticated fibers. The warped-weighed loom and dyeing soon followed. Readily available wood was used for simple implements (spoons, bowls, etc.) as well as for carpentry (furniture, doors, etc.) and fuel (for cooking, metallurgy, etc.). Wood was also exploited for construction (posts, roofing, and columns) and early carved statues (xoanon). As in woodworking, gems and small stones could be cut with blades, pierced by bow-operated drills, and polished by bow-operated lathes.
Clay was fired to form mold-made roofing tiles or wheel-made pottery. Fine decorated pottery exploited the chemical properties of the clay slip to produce various effects, principally black-figured (sixth century b. c.e.) and red-figured (fifth to third centuries b. c.e.) decoration. Molds were used later to make relief-decorated vessels. Early glass vessels were either shaped over a core or mold-made. Gold leaf decoration placed between two layers of glass was a fourth century b. c.e. development.
The mining of metals, especially gold and silver, required multiple steps. Simple hand implements (picks, chisels, and bucks) would be used to loosen and transport the ore from the mine. Ores were then processed through various heating stages in a furnace. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, provided a flexible way to create sculpture using hammered plates over a wooden core (sphyrelaton), solid-cast figurines, or, by the late sixth century b. c.e., life-sized, hollow-cast statues using the lost-wax casting technique. Jewelry used several metal-working techniques that included additive processes—filigree (wire), granulation (grains), soldering, and enameling—or subtractive processes—engraving, carving, or piercing. Chemical processes such as the niello technique were also developed.
Standards Although Linear B (and probably Linear A) represented a sophisticated form of record keeping during the Bronze Age, the adoption of the Phoenician script for the Greek language in the eighth century b. c.e. marks a critical standardizing force. Consistent weights and measures allowed commodities to move readily beyond the local level. Coinage then replaced utensil money (cauldrons and spits). Accurate and precise measurements further allowed more sophisticated instruments and buildings to be constructed.
Mechanical Devices The literary sources mention many inventors, but with varying degrees of completeness or reliability. Vitruvius Pollio’s De architectura (c. 20 b. c.e.; On Architecture, 1711) records that Ktsebios of Alexandria (c. 270 b. c.e.) developed many water-powered and air-
Ionic pottery. (F. R. Niglutsch)
Powered machines, including one that was later adopted by Roman firefighters. Archimedes (c. 287-212 b. c.e., a mathematician from Syracuse, invented the compound pulley and a system for raising water using an enclosed screw. Less certain is the inventor of the astrolabe (c. third century b. c.e.), which was used for determining the position of the stars. The Antikythera mechanism (c. 80 b. c.e.) was a related instrument made of bronze and composed of sophisticated gears. It may have been used for locating the position of the Sun and Moon.
Construction Construction in the Bronze Age used timber columns and stone or mud-brick for walls, but always on a stone foundation. Corbelled vaulting was used for round tombs (tholos) and some citadel passageways on mainland Greece. The hallmark of Greek construction was post-and-lintel architecture (horizontal member spanning two vertical elements). From the eighth century b. c.e., this formed the basis for all architectural innovation. The transition from wood to stone also resulted in technical advances (cranes, clamps, centering dowels) and refinements (optical distortions).
Transportation Aside from two-horse and four-horse chariots (biga and quadriga, respectively), the Greeks also had a heavy wagon (tetra-kykle). Seafaring was possible on cargo ships with sails or on oared fighting vessels, of which the trireme (trieris) is the best known. At Alexandria, Sostratus of Cnidus, designed the famed Pharos lighthouse (c. 300 b. c.e.). The draining of Lake Kopaida in Boeotia and the Athos canal extension represented sophisticated hydraulic engineering feats.
Military Technology Hide and leather were certainly exploited for helmets and armor in the Bronze Age, but so too was bronze, which was also employed for spears and daggers. Siege equipment included rams, catapults, and giant siege towers, but was constantly adapting to meet new challenges. Huge irregular stones (cyclopean masonry) were used for the walls at the Bronze Age citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns. In the northwest of Turkey, Troy also enjoyed fortified walls of stone and mud-brick, but further strengthened by bastions and towers. Fortification walls continued to be made of mud-brick on stone foundations until the fifth century b. c.e., when all-stone walls became common.
Further Reading
Cullen, Tracey, ed. Aegean Prehistory. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2001.
Lawrence, A. W. Greek Architecture. 5th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996.
Oleson, John Peter. Bronze Age, Greek, and Roman Technology: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1986.
Rihll, T. E. Greek Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Schaps, David M. The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
White, K. D. Greek and Roman Technology. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Victor M. Martinez
See also: Agriculture and Animal Husbandry; Archimedes; Art and Architecture; Hesiod; Homer; Linear B; Military History of Athens; Mythology;
Navigation and Transportation; Pharos of Alexandria; Science; Trireme;
Troy; Warfare Before Alexander; Warfare Following Alexander; Weapons.
World History
