Although the Mycenaeans of the Late Bronze Age were Greek speakers, the cultural label “Greek” is habitually applied first in the Iron Age. In the next seven chapters, we shall examine the cities of the Greeks in the first millennium BC, the heyday of ancient Greek civilization before it was absorbed into the expanding Roman state. The nature of the Greek urban experience will be our focus, with attention paid to city plans and architecture; pottery, sculpture, and other objects that characterized the ancient Greek world; and the social, economical, and ideological contexts. This first chapter will explore the early development of cities, their cemeteries, and religious centers (sanctuaries), and such fruits of foreign contacts as the alphabet and coinage.
Although unified in their culture, the Greeks lived divided into a multitude of city-states and ethnoi until the later fourth century BC. No one city, no great warrior king rose out of the village-based society of the eleventh to ninth centuries to dominate the others. This political organization recalls that of Sumer, but contrasts with the kingdoms of the Near East in the second and first millennia BC and of Egypt. The city-state, or polis as the Greeks called it, became a characteristic unit of government during the eighth century BC in the eastern half of southern and central Greece and throughout the Aegean basin: areas, perhaps coincidentally, where Mycenaean culture had flourished. In contrast, the ethnos, often translated as “tribal state” or “nation,” typically a loose association of villages spread over a large area, was found in the western and northern areas of the Greek peninsula. The great achievements of Greek culture are associated with the city-states, so we shall focus on them.
World History
