You tell me to obey the long winged birds; but I do not care whether they fly on the right to the dawn and the sun, or on the left to shadowy darkness. I put my trust in the counsel of mighty Zeus, who rules all things mortal and immortal: one bird is best, to fight for the fatherland.
(Iliad 12.237ff)
The evidence of heroic epic is fragmentary and potentially misleading; but it can be related to the subsequent development of Greek society. It can also be supported from comparative material: all the institutions of the Homeric world outside those of the polis find many parallels in other societies. But the usefulness of comparative material is not only in the way that it reveals the presuppositions behind isolated phenomena and suggests interpretations of them. It is also the interrelations between the institutions which can best be understood through comparing societies with similar structures. For instance, the Waigal valley area of Nuristan (eastern Afghanistan) possesses a ‘society in which leaders have influence rather than authority and where an uncomplicated technology is used to meet the demands of a highly competitive ethos’. In this pastoral community, rank is sought and achieved through competitive feasts of merit, bridewealth and dowry are exchanged, disputes are settled by mediation through the elders. The objects of status are made by a separate and inferior class of craftsmen, and are even tripods, bowls and cups. The original warrior aims of killing Muslims in raids have had to be suspended; but the society exhibits the structural interrelation of many of the central aspects of early Greek society, and an ethic which is remarkably similar.
Similarly the process of state formation has been studied in a number of traditional societies in Africa and Polynesia. The Homeric society fits well this picture of the development of more complex political structures from a low basis of material culture through the emergence of the ‘big-man’, whose power rests initially on his ability to persuade the community to follow him as leader, but who succeeds in institutionalising his status in warfare, the judgment of disputes, and through ritual hospitality. Such personalised leadership, being fluid and without stable support structures, can often lead forward into more complex forms of social organisation.
The slow evolution of the Dark Age resulted in a world which might seem static and fixed in its aristocratic ideas. But the differences between nobility and people were not great in economic terms; the distinction rested on birth and consequent style of life. As the organs of the polis gained more signifìcance, the tension between the noble’s world of honour and the people’s world of justice became increasingly apparent; and the structural dissonance already present reacted with new factors to produce a century of change as swift and as fundamental as any in history.
AS CONSERVATIVE philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw, one of the most powerful elements leading to change in early Greece was a natural one – the sea, offering a constant invitation to contact and to trade with other peoples. The Greek world created by the migrations of the Dark Age was already not so much a land as a sea unit, centred on the Aegean; local trade on a small scale existed from the eleventh century onwards, and a certain number of eastern artefacts or skills found their way into the area, by stages from Cyprus to Crete or Rhodes and on, or as a result of sea-raiding.
Short-haul trading was never an activity of high social status; in a land famed for its seamanship, Odysseus is insulted by a Phaeacian nobleman: ‘you seem like one who travels with a well-benched ship, a master of sailors that are merchantmen, a man mindful of his cargo, watching his route and the gains he has snatched: you look no athlete’ (Odyssey 8.159ff). Hesiod’s instructions on seafaring (Works and Days 617–94) are mainly concerned with when and why not to go to sea: his gloomy view of trade is based on his father’s experience, and reflects the small profits and comparatively high risks involved in such Aegean trading.
But this was not the only form of trade. Most attempts to assess the role of trade in the earliest period misunderstand it because they fail to distinguish between local and long distance trade; they assume a model of trade which is in fact only appropriate in the more developed economic conditions of the late archaic and classical periods, when bulk trade in commodities had developed. Because this was increasingly carried on by professional merchants, and because the quantity of trade earlier (and hence its strictly economic effect) must have been slight, there is a tendency to underestimate the importance of trade in early Greece both as a political factor and as a catalyst of social and cultural change.
It was the aristocracy who must have given the initial impetus to wider exploration beyond the Aegean, by creating a demand for two commodities. The first was metals, and especially crude iron from which to manufacture their increasingly complex weapons and armour; the goddess Athene, visiting Ithaca in disguise, claims to be an aristocrat, ruler of the oar-loving Taphians, on a voyage carrying shining iron to Temesa in exchange for copper (Odyssey 1.180ff). The second requirement of an increasingly prosperous aristocracy was for the finished luxury goods which their competitive life style demanded and which were often beyond the skills of Greek craftsmen. It was in these two spheres that the high risks of long distance trade were offset by high profits; and one area which could clearly supply both needs was the near east.
The earliest Greek contacts were with the Canaanites of the Levantine coast, a people known to the Greeks as Phaenicians, probably because of their monopoly of the only colour-fast dye in antiquity, the purple (phoinix) extract from the murex shellfish. The coastal cities of Phoenicia controlled the great pine and cedar forests of the Lebanon, the chief source of timber for Egypt, as for King Solomon; they had long owed their prosperity to this and to their position as middlemen between Mesopotamia and Egypt. The collapse of Hittite and Egyptian power in the early Dark Age left them independent; and even after Assyrian expansion began in the ninth century, their position was little affected: the navies of Sidon, Tyre and Byblos controlled the south and eastern Mediterranean seaways for themselves or as Persian vassals until the conquests of Alexander the Great.
Phoenician culture was urban: the cities were usually independent of each other, and built on heavily fortified coastal islands or headlands. Their art shows the typical characteristics of a trading civilization: eclecticism in forms and motifs from Mesopotamia and especially Egypt, mass production, and a concentration of craftsmanship on small easily transported objects in precious materials such as metal and ivory ; the textiles for which they were famous have not survived. Their prosperity is denounced by the Old Testament prophets; Ezekiel for instance in the sixth century describes the trade of Tyre in detail:
Tarshish (in Spain) was a source of your commerce, from its abundant resources offering silver and iron, tin and lead, as your staple wares. Javan (Ionia, the Greeks), Tubal (in Cappadocia) and Meshech (Phrygia) dealt with you, offering slaves and vessels of bronze as your imports … Rhodians dealt with you, great islands were a source of your commerce, paying what was due to you in ivory and ebony… Dealers from Sheba (Aden) and Raamah (S. Arabia) dealt with you, offering the choicest spices, every kind of precious stone and gold, as your staple wares. Harran, Kanneh and Eden (in Mesopotamia), dealers from Asshur (Assyria) and all Media, dealt with you; they were your dealers in gorgeous stuffs, violet cloths and brocades, in stores of coloured fabric rolled up and tied with cords; your dealings with them were in these.
(Ezekiel 27.12–24)
The Greeks themselves believed that there had been earlier Phoenician settlements both in mainland Greece and the islands, and at the sites of many of their western colonies; the most famous of these stories is that of Kadmos (p. 93). But there is no archaeological evidence for such settlements, and the picture given in the Odyssey seems more plausible. Here the Phoenicians are traders, welcomed if mistrusted by the Greeks; such casual trade can be supported by eastern finds on Greek sites, and can be dated between the tenth and eighth centuries. More permanent contact began in the ninth century when the Phoenicians moved into eastern Cyprus, and founded Kition.
Many aspects of the culture and development of the Phoenician and Greek cities