GREECE IN THE MAKING, 1200479 BC
Greece in the Making is an accessible and comprehensive account of Greek history from the end of the bronze age to the classical period. The first edition of this book broke new ground by acknowledging that, barring a small number of archaic poems and inscriptions, the majority of our literary evidence for archaic Greece reported only what later writers wanted to tell, and so was subject to systematic selection and distortion. This book offers a narrative which acknowledges the later traditions, as traditions, but insists that we must primarily confront the contemporary evidence, which is in large part archaeological and art-historical, and must make sense of it in its own terms.
By reading later traditions in the light of what we now know of early iron age Greece from archaeology and of what early Greek poetry, including the Homeric epics, reveals, this book creates a new history of this crucial period in which the Greek city-states developed the political and cultural forms which gave birth to the earliest democracies and to such seminal literary forms as Greek tragedy.
In this second edition, as well as updating the text to take account of recent scholarship, and reordering some material, Robin Osborne has addressed more explicitly the weaknesses and unsustainable interpretations which the first edition chose merely to pass over. He now spells out why this book features no rise of the polis and no colonisation, and why the treatment of Greek settlement abroad is necessarily spread over various chapters. Students and teachers alike will particularly appreciate the enhanced discussion of economic history and the more systematic treatment of issues of gender and sexuality.
Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Kings College Cambridge and of the British Academy. He has published widely on ancient Greek history, archaeology and art, including Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City and its Countryside (1987), Archaic and Classical Greek Art (1998), and Greek History (Routledge Classical Foundations, 2004).
ROUTLEDGE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Series editor: Fergus Millar
- THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT BAY, AD 180395
David S. Potter
- THE GREEK WORLD 479323 BC
Third Edition
Simon Hornblower
- THE GREEK WORLD AFTER ALEXANDER 32330 BC
Graham Shipley
- THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST C.3000330 BC
Amlie Kuhrt
- THE ROMAN WORLD 44 BCAD 180
Martin Goodman
- THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000264 BC)
Tim Cornell
- THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITY
AD 395600
Averil Cameron
Forthcoming:
- THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 26444 BC
Edward Bispham
GREECE IN THE MAKING, 1200479 BC
Second Edition
Robin Osborne
First published 1996
Reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003 (twice), 2005, 2006 (three times)
This second edition published in 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
1996 and 2009 Robin Osborne
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-88017-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0-415-46992-9 (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0-415-46991-0 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-88017-X (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-46991-3 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-46992-0(hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-88017-3 (ebk)
FOR JOHN, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
FIGURES
The following were reproduced with kind permission. While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.
Map of sites mentioned in Cyrene settlement account
J. W. Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs. Copyright Manchester City Art Galleries
Labour supply and food demands during a hypothetical family life-cycle, after T. W. Gallant, Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1991), figure 4.10
Distribution of sites in Late Helladic IIIA2IIIB after O. T. P. K. Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age (Cambridge, 1994), figure 4.24
Distribution of sites in Late Helladic IIIC after K. T. Syriopoulos, Eisagoge eis ten arkhaian Hellenike historian: Hoi metabatikoi khronoi apo tes mykenaikes eis ten arkhaiken periodon, 1200700 p.Kh., 2 vols (Athens, 19834), map 2
Late Helladic IIIC Lefkandian-style pyxis from Lefkandi. Ht 0.18 m. Courtesy of Mervyn Popham
Distribution of sites 11251050 BC after K. T. Syriopoulos, Eisagoge eis ten arkhaian Hellenike historian: Hoi metabatikoi khronoi apo tes mykenaikes eis ten arkhaiken periodon, 1200700 p.Kh., 2 vols (Athens, 19834), map 3
Distribution of sites 10501000 BC after A. M. Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece (Berkeley, CA, 1987), figure 52
Sub-mycenaean amphora from Kerameikos cemetery inv. 421. Ht 0.34 m. Courtesy of the Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Athens Neg. no. D-DAI-ATH-Ker2616
Attic protogeometric amphora from Kerameikos inv. 2024. Courtesy of the Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Athens Neg. no. D-DAI-ATH-Ker4247
Karphi. Photograph: author
Lefkandi Heroon plan. Courtesy of Mervyn Popham
Engraved near-eastern bronze bowl from Toumba cemetery (T.55.28). Courtesy of Mervyn Popham
Pendent-semicircle plate from Toumba cemetery (T.55.4). Courtesy of Mervyn Popham
Cretan protogeometric B pithos from the Fortetsa cemetery (Fortetsa 1440). Courtesy of J. N. Coldstream
Map of west Cretan ninth- and eighth-century sites
Map of Arkadian tenth- to eighth-century sites
Tenth- to eighth-century sites in the Argive plain
Tenth- to eighth-century sites in the southern Argolid, indicating the contribution of intensive field survey (after M. H. Jameson, C. N. Runnels, and Tj. van Andel, A Greek Countryside: The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day (Stanford, CA, and Cambridge, 1994), figures 4.1 and 4.20)
Sites in Attica occupied in the Dark Age prior to 800 BC
Sites in Attica occupied during the eighth century BC
Two versions of changing grave numbers in Athens from the Dark Age to 700 BC and beyond: a) Snodgrass 1980 version; b) Morris 1987 version. After I. Morris, Burial and Ancient Society (Cambridge, 1987), figures 23 and 22
Increasing site numbers in Attica, the Corinthia, and the Argolid after I. Morris, Burial and Ancient Society (Cambridge, 1987), figure 54
Two Attic gold bands of the mid-eighth century: a) Athens 15309 from Kerameikos cemetery (gr. 72). Length 0.36 m. Courtesy of the Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Athens Neg. no. D-DAI-ATH-Ker596; b) Length 0.335 m. Courtesy of the National Museum, Copenhagen, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities.