Preface

This book attempts to present in readable format the basic political history of the Greeks from about 1300 BC, when their earliest written records (the Linear B texts) begin, down to the death of the last Hellenistic monarch, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 30 BC. It is primarily addressed to university students in a course on Greek History or in an historically structured course on Greek Civilization. All the same, I have tried to keep in mind students who, although in another course, may need to familiarize themselves with some aspect of Greek history - those who in a course on Roman History wish to read about the situation in Greece before the Romans destroyed Corinth in the Achaian War in 146 BC; or those who in a course on philosophy wish to know something about Dionysius II of Syracuse whom Plato attempted to turn into a “philosopher-king”; or those who in a course on Greek Literature require the basic story of the Peloponnesian War because the comic playwright Aristophanes constantly alludes to it.

After all, no course touching ancient Greece, no matter how tightly it may focus on literary, cultural, social, artistic, or philosophical material, can dispense with the basic historical framework - dates must be given, historical events mentioned, and important literary and philosophical personages as well as works of art placed into a context of contemporary historical events which therefore continually intrude into such discussions. It is accordingly those “contemporary historical events” which this book wishes to present in accessible form across a period of some thirteen centuries.

To do so between two covers has presented challenges and made difficult decisions inescapable, in particular in regard to what has been omitted - and I am only too aware that I will not have pleased everyone at every point. Yet coverage of thirteen centuries has allowed comparisons which may, I hope, partially compensate for the many omissions. In a discussion of the “Ahhiyawa Question” in the chapter on the Bronze Age the reader can be referred to the situation of Rhodes around 300 BC. The historical development of the Seleucid Kingdom in the third and second centuries BC can be viewed with the history of the Persian Empire in the fifth and fourth in the background.

By the same token, the long view of matters has affected the presentation at various points. The prominence of leagues in the third and second centuries meant that these states could not be edited out of the chapters on the preceding centuries for then they would have appeared out of nowhere in chapter 21 or so. As a consequence, classical Greece is no longer a world exclusively of city-states, which must accordingly share the stage with the ethne, the tribe - or league-states right from the start. In chapter 4, then, the polis and the ethnos are accordingly described as two forms of state without the traditional favoring of the polis as “the” Greek state. Covering the rise of the Hellenistic kings in the fourth and third centuries meant that the Greeks’ political development does not culminate with fifth-century Athenian democracy - their political development instead ebbs and flows from the Mycenaean monarchs to the oligarchs and democrats of the fifth and fourth centuries to the aforementioned Hellenistic kings in the third and second. Moreover, the political structure of the ethne receives its due alongside of Athenian democracy, and no attempt is made to prefer democracy over oligarchy. Taking the long view over thirteen centuries alters how one presents a specific period within that expansive timeframe.

The way, however, in which the nature of the evidence changes over the long span of time covered by this book has mandated a degree of unevenness from chapter to chapter. Where the evidence allows more to be said (for example, concerning the Peloponnesian War owing to Thucydides’ extensive treatment - chapters 13 and 14), I have not shrunk from doing so. The narrative of the Hellenistic period, on the other hand, often resembles an outline because the evidence (Appian, Justin, and Trogus’ prologues) simply allows for no more.

I have, however, accepted such unevenness as a necessary evil since a major goal in the writing of this book has been to keep students in constant touch with the chief narrative sources for Greek history. The Greek historiographical tradition is, among other things, a fine matter in its own right, and to give it pride of place in a book on Greek history should not require a defense. I have continually provided the references to it; I have attempted to give brief introductions to its main practitioners; I have paid it respect and deference. The desire to remain close to it has, unfortunately, severely constrained this textbook’s ability to discuss economic, cultural, social, and intellectual history - omissions, as indicated above, had to be made, and this consideration has dictated some of them.

All the same, efforts have been made to include some of this material as it became relevant to the political history: for example, see Box 24.4 for economic history; Box 13.3 for social history; Box 23.1 for cultural history; Box 17.2 for intellectual history. In no case could the treatment be systematic, however. No book can do everything, and the hope was to do one thing in satisfactory fashion as opposed to many things badly. Discussing social history well, for example, would have required detailed treatment of a different set of sources and would therefore have entailed the ejection of far too much of the material on the ancient historians who were always to stand front and center in this textbook. Moreover, for many areas of Greek civilization - literature, philosophy, art, religion - good handbooks which cover the ground far more thoroughly than I can in one book are readily available, and entering into a hopeless competition with them had little point.

Largely refraining from such a competition has, however, allowed me to dedicate more space to the chief historical sources and, beyond introducing them to students, to let the latter see, in outline at least, how the reconstruction of historical events is attempted. Textbooks far too often assert as incontestable fact what has merely been accepted as probable after argument, combination, and conjecture. A great deal of work stands behind, for example, a table of dates; and many dates, far from being certain, are matters of dispute - the student is entitled to know this. One must, moreover, read ancient historians alertly and even with skepticism, and I try to offer guides to doing this. Most importantly, ancient historians can and do contradict one another, and the student is entitled to know about this too - modern scholars can reconstruct historical events in different ways. In the Further Reading at the end of each chapter I have listed works of modern scholarship which often enough disagree with what I have stated, and if students take this disagreement as the starting point for their own reflections, then my work will have been well done indeed.

Next, in Herodotean fashion I have striven to allow each city or league to have its story when that is known. Greece is more than Athens and Sparta. The Phocians are among the obscurest of the Greeks, yet their day does come in the mid-fourth century, and they have a right to have their accomplishments mentioned (chapter 18). Inevitably the book includes much discussion of Athens and Sparta since there is much more evidence about those two cities, but the Boeotians, the Corinthians, and the Argives receive some space too. Moreover, I have attempted a reasonably full treatment of the history of the western Greeks. Besides chapter 5 on colonization, the West is dealt with in sections in chapters 10 and 14 as well as two additional complete chapters (17 and 22).

The inclusion of the Hellenistic period (chapters 20 to 25), which is absent from many Greek history textbooks, has actually allowed a partial remedy to one of the book’s omissions. Women do not figure prominently in the political history of the classical period, but the Hellenistic queens - Arsinoe, Cleopatra Thea, Cleopatra VII of Egypt to name just a few - are a different story entirely. These talented women quickly emerge as canny diplomats, influential power-brokers, and eventually as rulers in their own right. They deserve to be taken seriously, and I have attempted to provide a serious treatment.

The inclusion of the Hellenistic world at the end as well as the Mycenaean Age at the beginning will allow instructors, I hope, to maneuver among various starting and stopping points. Such points are to a degree arbitrary and occasionally determined by factors outside of an instructor’s control (for example, an administratively imposed switch from semesters to trimesters or historical inertia within a department). Sometimes, however, instructors will vary the chronological and geographical parameters of a course merely to keep it from going stale - start with the Mycenaeans and end just before Alexander; start with the Persian Wars and go down to the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC; include Sicily and end a little earlier. All are legitimate. The chapters on the Hellenistic period are written such that one could assign just the sections relevant to Macedonia and Greece if wishing to end with the Roman destruction of Corinth in 146 BC.

I have also tried to bear in mind that an instructor might wish to make a course in Greek History work together with another course in the same department. I have written chapter 2 with emphasis on the Linear B tablets instead of the archaeological remains in part because the archaeological material is covered in easily accessible format in many books, whereas the Linear B material is for the most part confined to specialist works which are anything but accessible. In addition, since most courses on the Aegean Bronze Age are archaeological in inspiration, and rightly so, the instructor of a course on Greek History which starts with the Bronze Age may legitimately not wish to compete with them. However, covering the Linear B material may usefully complement them. The hope, then, is that this textbook will allow the instructor to make the course on Greek History work hand-in-hand with an archaeological one.

Likewise, an instructor wishing to coordinate a course on Greek History with one on Roman History could use the relevant sections in chapters 22 to 25, in all of which I have striven to avoid intruding on the territory of the Roman historian to whose wisdom I happily defer for a full discussion of, for example, the nature of Roman imperialism. Chapter 22, on Sicily and southern Italy from the late fourth to the mid-third century restricts itself to the side of the story not told in the Roman history textbook and makes no attempt at discussing, for example, the Samnite Wars or the First Punic War in any detail. The aim, again, is to complement another course, not to compete with it. Moreover, a concerted effort is made in the final chapters to show how the states in the Near East with which the Romans contended in the late second and first centuries - Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia, Judea - had arisen. The story of Mithridates the Great of Pontus is told from the Hellenistic point of view with Mithridates firmly placed in his Hellenistic context - that is to say, not seen as a random Barbarian opponent of Rome. Others will have to judge to what degree I have been successful.

For many reasons this has not been an easy book to write. The latter stage in particular was complicated by the earthquakes which struck Christchurch in September of 2010 and February of 2011 and which forced the library of the University of Canterbury to close for several months on several occasions. I owe a great debt of thanks to Dr. Wolfgang Blosel (Dusseldorf and Essen) and Dr. Luke Fenwick (Oxford) who looked up references when all else failed. I also thank Dr. Frank Ropke (Heidelberg) for help with Egyptological matters. Several colleagues, especially Dr. Gary Morrison, generously shared their private holdings. Working without access to a library is an experience which I am not eager to repeat.

Finally, throughout the writing of this book, from start to finish, my two young sons, Timothy and Nicholas, have stood and played (loudly) in the background. In addition, their sister Josephine joined us in 2011. Because of them I became a familiar of the late hours in the evening and of the early hours in the morning. My wife endured my work on this book with a fortitude which has bordered on the heroic.

But it is now completed. My colleagues Prof. Graham Zanker and Dr. Morrison continually offered encouragement and advice and deserve express thanks for this. My chief and abiding collegial debt, however, is recorded elsewhere. Finally, I sincerely thank the editorial staff at Wiley-Blackwell, especially the phenomenally patient Deirdre Ilkson, for putting up with me and all my fussiness and for finding extremely polite ways of pointing out that this or that extended exposition was becoming difficult to comprehend and were better consigned to the rubbish bin.

Dabam in Aede Christi a. d. XI Kal. Feb. A. D. MMXIII.