The family of Diagoras of Rhodes

1
The family of Diagoras of Rhodes

• He lived 5th cen. B.C., known for boxing. Other
  relatives were also athletes
• Pausanias in 2nd cen A.D. saw his statue and
  wrote about it in The Description of Greece
  travel guide.
• Married women not permitted at Olympics.
  Unmarried ok
• Pancration/pankration boxing and wrestling
• Some Diagorids temporarily in exile. Same fate as
  many aristocrats.

2
Opinion of Xenophanes 6 B.C.

• It is unfair that athletes receive special
  treatment.
• Brawn is not better than brains
• Victory by these people does not improve matters
  for the polis

3
The Crisis of the Archaic Polis

• New prosperity
• Interest in art
• Nouveau riche class and resulting tension with
  aristocracy
• Theognis opinion on marrying outside of ones
  social class

4
Corinth

• In Corinth, Cypselus the tyrant replaced his
  familys oligarchy with his own tyranny and ruled
  657-627 B.C.
• Cruel
• His son Periander ruled 627-587 B.C.
• Even more cruel than father.

5
Athens

• 594 B.C. Solon appointed lawgiver
• Abolished sharecropping and slavery for debtors
• Organized social classes according to wealth

6
Athens

• No helots unlike Sparta
• assembly of adult males, council of aristocrats
  and elected magistrates
• 594 B.C. Solon the aristocratic poet and lawgiver
  to the Athenians reorganized society according to
  wealth into 4 classes. The 1st 3 could hold
  office, the 4th could not. He abolished
  sharecropping, debts up to that point and said
  that debtors could not be sold into slavery for
  failing to pay.
• Encouraged people to use the lawcourts.
• Solon could only fix matters to a certain extent.
  Eventually tyranny (the rule of an absolute
  military-style ruler) took over.

7
Athens 2

• Cleisthenes divided Athens into demes. The demes
  were divided into 10 tribes. arbitrary division
  of people so they wouldnt interact on clan
  lines. From the divisions came members of a new
  Council, jurors, generals, commissioners.
• Assembly of all male citizens was sovereign but
  delegated duties to the Council and the courts.
  The people took over committees which supervised
  food and water supplies and public buildings.
• Polis society had conditions of entry parentage

8
Society

• The rich were expected to give banquets, public
  buildings, maintain warships.
• Booty, tribute and tax were the property of the
  comm. Citizens did not want outsiders getting a
  cut of this money.
• If you owned land you had a right and a duty to
  participate in civic affairs. Foreigners were
  viewed with suspicion.
• Citizens, Slaves and the Economy
• Citizens were only a part of the inhabitts of a
  polis. Others were permanent residents called
  metics or just vistitors. There were slaves and
  freed slaves. Freed slaves had the same status as
  metics.
• Slavery was of 2 types. state slaves called
  Helots only in Sparta and chattel-slaves which
  were personal property in Sparta and everywhere
  else.
• Chattel slaves were allowed to keep a portion of
  their earnings and save up for freedom.
• There were no real jobs. There was just
  agriculture. Greeks would not have understood the
  concept of working for someone else as being any
  difft from slavery. No matter how poor you were
  it was better to have your own little plot of
  land and be your own boss.

9
The economy, education and personal identity

• Land had to be kept in the family as a kind of
  insurance policy for future generations. Most
  education was informal. It was the same idea as
  in Mesa you learned by watching your parents and
  if you were male you learned by watching other
  men attend the agora, palaestra (wrestling
  ground) or gymnasium
• Gymnasium German for high school. Lycee
  French for high school and we use word Academy.
  Plato founded the Academy. Aristotle founded the
  Lyceum.
• Womens education focused on the tradl
  housekeeping, care of children and making of
  clothes. They were also involved in rel.
  festivals.

10
MarriageOikos

• Marriages were arranged. Men of 30 married
  teenager half their age and had to instruct these
  young girls in how to run a household. Women were
  legal minors for their whole lives in most of
  Greece except in Sparta where there could choose
  their own husbands, own property, even have
  relations with a man who wasnt their husband if
  it meant there was a chance of producing athletic
  children.
• Infant mortality and death in childbirth were
  common.
• A girl had to have a dowry if she had a hope of
  marrying.
• Oikos husband, wife, children, slaves and house
  w piece of property. Income from farm and income
  brought in by wife as dowry.
• A wife gave orders to the slaves but husband gave
  orders to everyone. It wasnt an equal
  partnership.

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MarriageOikos contd

• If wife left, dowry did leave with her and she
  went back to fathers house for him to find new
  husband. If her husband died, she also went back
  to dads house.
• Reputation Greece was always a shame culture.
  Everyone knew everyone elses biz and commented
  upon your comings and goings. If someone in your
  house was not a capable managerof money or was
  unchaste, this was known to all and would affect
  the chances that anyone would want to marry into
  your family.
• Adultery was so serious that a man could kill his
  wife and her lover. No questions asked.
• Mens club atmosphere. All own property, all
  farmers, all fight together as hoplites in the
  phalanx, all support each other in lawsuits.

12
Culture and Society in the Archaic Age

• Greeks thought of themselves as citizens of
  their poleis but they were all unified by art,
  architecture, mythology, poetry, the beginnings
  of natural science and mathematics etc. It wasnt
  confined only to the elite.
• Literacy in Greece was especially impressive.
  Laws were hung up for people to read.
• Ethnicity Greeks went by many names in Homer
  Achaeans, Danaans, Mycenaeans, Argives. They
  dont start to call themselves by 1 name Hellenoi
  until 8th cen B.C. Greeks could easily have
  become assimilated into local culture in colonies
  which they founded. Instead they turned the
  colonies Greek because of the Gk high culture.
• Hesiod explained in his Theogony how the gods
  came to be. Explained the way that humans changed
  as a race in the 5 ages of man in The Works and
  Days.

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Culture and Society in the Archaic Age contd

• Gods in Homer are not interested in justice. Just
  like Myc chieftains they thereaten people with
  brute force and enjoy feasting.
• Hesiod does talk about the gods punishing the
  unjust. People started to worry less about glory
  and more about justice and expected more from
  their gods.
• Homer and Hesiod unified Gk culture by explaining
  where gods and men came from, how they evolved
  and changed, how a common mythology unified all
  Gks, how they could all look back to common
  ancestors in Trojan war and it was easy for all
  to see how far civ had progressed since the
  protodemocratic assembly of Homer to the
  quasidemocratic institutns of the Archaic age and
  then later to true democracy.

14
Religion

• State and local levels
• Celebrated rites of passage
• Priests/priestesses performed rituals but did not
  advise on morality
• All citizens were expected to worship in public
  and in private
• Comedy and tragedy performed for the enjoyment of
  the gods

15
Temples

• Cella home of the cult statue
• Parts of the temple could be decorated with
  carved scenes
• An entire industry emerged in temple
  construction, beautification and preservation
• Hubris and nemesis/ate
• Find out will of the gods by visiting oracle at
  Delphi

16
Mystery religions

• Women and slaves were also welcome
• Promise of a happy afterlife
• Most important belonged to Dionysus, Orpheus,
  Demeter

17
Archaic Period VaseDionysus with Maenad 540 B.C.
18
Athletics

• Mostly for wealthy
• A tradition since Mycenaean age
• Funeral games for dead nobleman
• 5 major athletic contests which were also
  religious events
• Pindar 6th cen B.C. celebrated victorious
  athletes in poems

19
Symposium

• Feast of aristocratic warriors turned into
  drinking party in later times
• Section from Plato is evidence of what took place
  there i.e. drinking, wearing garlands, music, sex
• Pottery with special scenes (mythology, sex,
  sports, war) brought out for symposium

20
Science

• Homeric gods not interested in justice.
• Zeus in Hesiod was interested in justice
• 6 B.C. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes tried to
  determine what the world was made of using
  science not mythology
• Belief that Earth was the centre of the universe
• 6 B.C. Pythagoras used ratios to explain music
  and proportions of statues