Greece
and Medieval Europe
Theme: Alternatives to centralized empire
Lesson 8
Part 1: Greece
ID & SIG:
• advantages of women in Sparta, cults,
Hellenikon, helot, patriarchal society, polis,
Athens, Corinth, democracy, oligarchy,
Pericles, Solon, Sparta, tyrants
Mycenaean Society
• The Mycenaeans
established a society
on the Greek
peninsula beginning
with migrations in
2200 B.C.
• From 1500 to 1100
B.C., they expanded
their influence
beyond the Greek
peninsula,
overpowering
Minoan society in
Crete
Trojan War
• About 1200 B.C., the
Mycenaeans fought the
Trojan War with the city of
Troy in Anatolia
• At the same time, foreigners
invaded the Mycenaean
homeland
• From 1100 to 800 B.C.,
chaos reigned throughout
the eastern Mediterranean
• In the absence of a
centralized state or empire,
local institutions took the
lead in restoring political
order to Greece
– City-states
The Trojan Horse
Hellenikon
• Concept of Herodotus to reflect the Greeks’
being of “shared blood, shared language, shared
religion, and shared customs”
• Established an ethnic identity that set them apart
from the “barbarians”
• However, Hellenikon lacked a common political
component
– In the absence of a centralized state or empire, local
institutions took the lead in restoring political order to
Greece
• City-states (polis)
Cities
The Acropolis of Athens
Cities: The Polis
• The city-state or polis was originally a fortified
site that provided refuge in war or other
emergencies
– Gradually they attracted increasing populations, took
on an urban character, and began to exert authority
over the surrounding regions
• Much authority was based on the possession of large hoplite
armies
– Levied taxes on their hinterlands and appropriated a
portion of the agriculture surplus to support the urban
population
Cities: The Polis
• Poleis were different because they
developed independently of each other
– Different traditions, economies, political
systems, etc
• Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes are
examples
– These will be discussed in greater detail in
Lesson 15.
Government
Sparta, Athens, Corinth
Sparta
Sparta
Sparta: Helots
• Helots were servants of the Sparta state
– Not chattel slaves, but not free either
– By the 6th Century B.C., helots probably
outnumbered Sparta citizens by 10 to 1
– The large number of helots allowed the Spartans to
cultivate their region efficiently, but also posed the
threat of constant rebellion
• Sparta responded for the need for order by
military means
Sparta: Society
• In theory, all Spartans citizens were equal
– To discourage economic and social distinctions,
Spartans observed an extraordinarily austere lifestyle
as a matter of policy
• No jewelry, elaborate clothes, luxuries, or
accumulation of great private wealth
– Even today, “spartan” means
• Practicing great self-denial
• Unsparing and uncompromising in discipline or
judgment
• Resolute in the face of pain or danger or adversity
Sparta: Society
• “Come back with your shield - or on it”
was the reported parting cry of Spartan
mothers to their sons.
Sparta: Society
• What distinctions did exist in Spartan society were
based not on wealth or social status, but on
prowess, discipline, and military talent
• Spartan educational system cultivated such
attributes from an early age
– Boys left their homes at age seven to live in
military barracks under a rigorous regime of
physical training
– At age 20 they went into the military where they
served until retirement
Sparta: Society
• Women married at age
18 or 20 but did not live
with their husbands
– The men stayed in the
barracks until about
age 30 when they
began to set up
households with their
wives and children
– Women maintained
strict physical regimes
in the hopes of bearing
strong children
Patriarchal Society
• Male family heads ruled their households
– Greek women fell under the control of their fathers,
husbands, or sons
• In most poleis, women could not own landed
property
• The only public position open to Greek women
was priestess of a religious cult
• In Sparta, men were still the family authorities,
but women had more opportunities
Advantages of Women in Sparta
over Women in Athens
• Girls were given a good education in both the arts and
athletics.
• Women were encouraged to develop their intellect.
• Women owned more than a third of the land.
• There was less difference in age between husbands and
wives, and girls in Sparta married at a later age than
their sisters in Athens.
• Husbands spent most of their time with other men in the
military barracks; since the men were rarely home, the
women were free to take charge of almost everything
outside of the army.
• Mothers reared their sons until age 7 and then society
took over. Fathers played little or no role in child care.
Sparta: Government
• Highly unusual
government that
contained elements
of democracy,
timocracy,
monarchy, and
oligarchy
King Leonidas
ca. 530 BC-480 BC
Sparta: Government
• Oligarchy
– Rule by a few
– Power was in the
hands of five men
called Ephores who
were elected
annually by the
Council of Elders
• Timocracy
– Government by
people of honor
– All Ephores were over
the age of 60 and had
completed their
military career
– The Ephores
controlled all daily life
in Sparta
Sparta: Government
• Monarchy
– Rule by a hereditary
sovereign
– Under the five
Ephores there were
two Kings that came
from the two noble
families of Sparta
– With divine approval,
shown in an oracle or
an omen, the Ephores
had the power to force
the Kings’ abdication
• Democracy
– Election based on
numerical majority
– Under the Kings were
the Council of the Elders.
– The council passed laws
and elected the five
Ephores
– Beneath them all you
had the rest of the free
Spartan men who voted
for the Council of Elders
Athens
Athens
• Whereas Sparta tried to establish order by
military means, Athens instead tried a
government based on democratic principles
– Sought to negotiate order by considering the
interests of the polis’s various constituencies
• Citizenship was restricted to free adult males,
but government offices were open to all citizens
– Broadened the political base
Athens: Solon
• As tensions developed between
aristocrats and less privileged
classes, Solon devised a
compromise
• Aristocrats were allowed to keep
their lands, but at the same time
Solon cancelled debts, forbade debt
slavery, and liberated those already
enslaved for debt
• To prevent future abuses, he
provided governmental
representation for the common
classes by opening the councils of
the polis to any citizen wealthy
enough to devote time to public
affairs, regardless of lineage
Athens: Pericles
• Solon’s reforms gradually
transformed Athens into a
democratic state, but the
high tide of Athenian
democracy was reached
under the leadership of
Pericles from 443 to 429
B.C.
• His government included
hundreds of officeholders
from common classes
• Pericles boasted that
Athens was “the
education of Greece”
Ostrakaphoria
• Each year Athenians
would decide whether
to hold an election to
banish someone from
the city for 10 years
• Means to prevent
politicians from dividing
the community and to
stop tyrants before they
seized power
• First ostrakaphoria held
in 487 B.C.
ostraka,
ballots made from
pieces of pottery
Corinth
Periander, second
tyrant of Corinth
Corinth
• Founded in the 10th Century B. C.
– Strategically located
• Guards the narrow isthmus that connects
the Peloponnesus to the mainland and
hosts the important harbors of Lechaeum
and Cenchreae
– Became the richest port and the largest city in
ancient Greece
Corinth
• The two seaports were
only four miles apart
– Lechaeum, the western
harbor in the Corinthian
Gulf was the trading
port to Italy and Sicily
– Cenchreae, the eastern
harbor in the Saronic
Gulf, was the port for
the eastern
Mediterranean
countries
Corinth: Diolkos
• Periander constructed a
five foot wide rock-cut tract
for wheeling small ships
and their unloaded cargo
from one gulf to the other
• By 400 B.C., a double wall
ran from Corinth to
Lechaeum to protect a two
mile rock paved street,
about 40 feet wide, leading
to the port
Corinth: Government
• With increased wealth and more
complicated trade relations and social
structures, some city-states overthrew
their traditional hereditary kings
– Corinth, the richest city-state, led the way
– Instead of developing long-term solutions to
the societal and economic problems,
ambitious politicians or generals called
“tyrants” seized power by irregular means and
ruled without being subject to the law
Corinth: Government
• Tyrants were usually members of the ruling
aristocracy who either had a personal grievance
or led an unsuccessful faction
• They were generally supported by the politically
powerless new wealthy and by poor farmers
• Once in power they often seized land from the
aristocrats and divided it among their own
supporters
Corinth: Government
• Tyrants were not necessarily oppressive
despots
– Many were quite popular, in part due to the
public works programs they established and
the debts they cancelled
– The word “tyrant” comes from how they
gained power rather than how they governed
Corinth: Government
• Tyrants maintained order by:
– reinforcing the state’s centralization by
consolidating power
– encouraging individuals to identify with the
state through their capacity as citizens and
building a common consciousness
– pursuing peaceful relations with other tyrants
• Did not want to build a citizen army because it
might become a threat to their rule
Review
• What is Hellenikon?
• What maintained order in Greece in the
absence of centralized political authority?
• How was order maintained in
– Athens
– Sparta
– Greece
Part 2: Medieval Europe
Theme: Order in the absence of empire
Lesson 18
ID & SIG:
• chivalry, feudal system, lords, manors,
serfs, “three estates”
Regional States
• Germanic invaders
toppled Rome’s authority
in the late 5th Century
A.D. but no clear
successor to centralized
authority emerged
– The Franks
temporarily revived
empire; the high point
of which was the reign
of Charlemagne from
768-814
Charlemagne
Regional States
• After Charlemagne, his
successor Carolingians had no
effective means of defending
against Magyars, Muslims,
Vikings, and other invaders
• In response, European nobles
sought to protect their lands
and maintain order in their own
territories
• Political authority in early
medieval Europe thus
devolved into competing local
and regional jurisdictions with
a decentralized political order
– “Feudalism”
Viking long ship
“Feudalism”
• There really was no “feudal system” if that implies a neat
hierarchy of lords and vassals who collectively took
charge of political and military affairs
• Because the feudal hierarchy arose as a makeshift for
defense against invaders, it always had a provisional, ad
hoc, and flexible character
– There was no “system”
• However, medieval European society was characterized
by:
– Fragmentation of political power
– Public power in private hands
– Armed forces secured through private contracts
Medieval Society
Early Middle Ages (450-1050)
• The country was not governed by the king but by
individual lords who administered their own
estates, dispensed their own justice, minted their
own money, levied taxes and tolls, and
demanded military service from vassals
• Usually the lords could field greater armies than
the king
– In theory the king was the chief feudal lord, but in
reality the individual lords were supreme in their own
territory
• Many kings were little more than figurehead rulers
Retainees
• The nobles maintained their armies by
offering grants, usually land, to armed
retainees
• In exchange for the grants, the retainees
pledged their loyalty and military service to
their lords
– The retainees gained increased rights over
their land, to include the prerogative to pass
on their rights to the heirs
Political-Military Relationship
• A close relationship between political and
military authorities developed
– As a result, political authorities and military specialists
merged into a hereditary noble class which lived off
the surplus agricultural production that it extracted
from the cultivators
– Only by tapping into this surplus could the lords and
their retainees secure the material resources
necessary to maintain their control over military,
political, and legal affairs
Serfs
• Free peasants sought
protection from a lord and
pledged their labor and
obedience in exchange for
security and land to cultivate
• Beginning in the mid 17th
Century, this category
became recognized as serfs–
neither fully slave nor fully
free
– Not chattel slaves subject to
sale by their master
– But still owed obligations to the
lords whose lands they
cultivated
Serfs’ Obligations
• Had the right to work certain lands and to pass
those lands on to their heirs
• In exchange they had to perform labor services
and pay rents in kind (a portion of the harvest,
chickens, eggs, etc)
• Male serfs typically worked three days a week
for their lords with extra services during planting
and harvesting times
• Women serfs churned butter, spun thread, and
sewed clothes for their lords and their families
Serfs’ Obligations
• Since the lord
provided the land, the
serfs had little
opportunity to move
and had to get the
lord’s permission to
do so
– Even had to pay fees
to marry someone who
worked for a different
lord
Manors
• Manors were large estates
consisting of fields, meadows,
forests, agricultural tools,
domestic animals, and serfs
• The lord of the manor and his
deputies provided government,
administration, police services,
and justice for the manor
• Many lords had the authority to
execute serfs for serious
misconduct
• In the absence of thriving cities
in rural areas, manors became
largely self-sufficient
communities
Transition to the High Middle Ages
(1050 to 1400)
• The regional stability of the early middle ages allowed
local rulers to organize powerful regional states
– Holy Roman Empire
– Capetian France
– Norman England
– Papal States
– etc
• The kings of England and France used their
relationships with retainees to build powerful, centralized
monarchies
– Still no one could consolidate all of Europe under a
single empire
Three Estates of Medieval Society
• Those who pray
– The clergy of the
Roman Catholic
Church
• Those who fight
– Nobles
• Those who work
– Peasants
• The result was a
society marked by
political, social, and
economic inequality
Chivalry
• Church officials
originally proposed a
chivalric code to curb
fighting within
Christendom
• By the 12th Century,
the ritual by which a
young man became
a knight commonly
included the
candidate placing his
sword upon an altar
and pledging his
service to God
Chivalry
• With chivalry, warriors were
encouraged to adopt higher
ethical standards and refined
manners and become cultivated
leaders of society
• The chivalric code called for a
noble to devote himself to the
causes of order, piety, and the
Christian faith rather than
seeking wealth and power
How was order maintained in the
Early Middle Ages?
How was order maintained in the
Early Middle Ages?
• In the absence of a strong centralized
authority, local political and military elites
worked out various ad hoc ways to
organize and protect their territories
– Lords and retainees
– Manors
– Serfs
How was order maintained in the
High Middle Ages?
How was order maintained in the
High Middle Ages?
• The regional stability of the Early Middle
Ages allowed powerful regional states to
be built, but there was still no single
European Empire
• The code of chivalry helped provide some
order and protection for those who
otherwise would be most vulnerable to
unchecked power
Next
• Midterm