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ABOUT THE late eighth century, with Homer and Hesiod, literary evidence becomes available to supplement the fìndings of archaeology. But whereas Hesiod describes a real world contemporary with himself, it is obvious from the character of the Greek oral epic tradition that there are difficulties in using the Homeric poems for history. In some respects Homeric society is clearly an artificial literary creation. It is a natural tendency of all heroic epic to exaggerate the social status and behaviour of everyone involved, so that characters appear generally to belong to the highest social class and to possess great wealth and extraordinary abilities, in implicit contrast with the inequalities and squalor of the present age. Equally it is agreed that there are some minor elements in the Homeric poems from almost every period; the presence or absence of isolated phenomena cannot therefore be held to count for or against any particular date. This rule can be given a general negative extension, for the oral epic tradition consciously or unconsciously excludes whole areas of experience as irrelevant, or as known to be later than the heroic age: thus all signs of the coming of the Dorians and the Ionian migration are absent, as are many aspects of the poet’s own period. In general, omissions, however large, carry little weight for the argument.

Nevertheless I would argue that there is a historical basis to the society described in Homer, in the poet’s retrojection of the institutions of his own day. Archaeological evidence suggests this. Though the poems show a number of Mycenean survivals, the Linear B tablets have revealed a society wholly different from that portrayed in Homer; equally the scanty evidence from the early Dark Age is incompatible with the material culture of the Homeric poems. Only in the later Dark Age do the archaeological and literary evidence begin to coincide over a wide range of phenomena. To take examples which have been used in the controversy, the emphasis on Phoenicians as traders points most probably to a period between 900 and 700, as does the typical display of wealth through the Storage and giving away of bronze cauldrons and tripods. The architecture of the Homeric house fìnds its closest parallels in the same period. Homeric burials are by cremation which points away from the Mycenean inhumation to the later Dark Age and onwards, though the actual funerary rites owe much to poetic invention, which in turn affected contemporary practices. The earliest and most striking instances have been found at Salamis in Cyprus, whose rulers, in close contact with Euboea and possessed of great wealth as vassals of Assyria, were practising complicated ‘Homeric’ funeral rites from the second half of the eighth century. On the mainland offerings of almost the same date found inserted into Mycenean tombs suggest that epic had created a new interest in the heroic past which itself influenced the development of hero cult.

Admittedly some central aspects of Homeric society have been thought to show a basic confusion. In descriptions of fìghting, for instance, the chariot, which disappeared as a weapon of war at the end of the Mycenean period, is still an essential item of the aristocrat’s equipment; but the epic tradition no longer under stood its military use. Instead it has become a transport vehicle taking the heroes from place to place on the battlefield, and standing idly by as they dismount and fìght on foot: occasionally it even takes on the attributes of a horse and performs feats such as jumping ditches. This seems to be a combination of a Mycenean weapon with the tactics of the aristocratic mounted infantry of the late Dark Age. Again the Homeric warrior fights with a jumble of weapons from different periods: he can even start off to battle with a pair of throwing spears and end up fìghting with a single thrusting one. The metal used for weapons is almost invariably bronze, but for agricultural and industrial tools it is iron – a combination unknown in the real world, where the replacement of bronze by iron came first in the military sphere. Such examples do not however prove the artificiality of Homeric society. The elements all seem to belong to real societies: it is only their combination which is artifìcial; and when the different elements can be dated, they show a tendency to fall into two categories, dim reflections of Mycenean practices and a clearer portrayal of the late Dark Age world.

More general considerations reinforce this conclusion. The process of continual re-creation which is implied by an oral epic tradition means that the factual basis of epic is little different from that implied in any oral tradition: the focus is sharpest on contemporary phenomena, but the existence of fixed linguistic rhythms and conventional descriptions leads back into the past; and since the poet is consciously re-creating the past, he will discard the obviously contemporary and preserve what he knows to be older elements. The reality of the resulting society must be tested by using comparative evidence from other cultures to show how compatible the different institutions described by Homer are, and whether the overall nature of the society resembles that of other known primitive societies. Finally there is a clear line of development from the institutions described in Homer to those which existed in later Greece.

The differences in the way Homer and Hesiod portray society are not then to be explained chronologically: Homer’s society is of course idealized, and reaches back in time through the generations of his predecessors; Hesiod’s is fully contemporary. And the towns of Ionia which produced Homer were in many respects more sophisticated, more secure and more conservative than the social tensions of the peasant communities in Boeotia. But also Homer describes society from above, from the aristocratic point of view, whereas Hesiod’s vision is that of the lower orders, unable to envisage change but obsessed with the petty injustices of the social system and the realities of peasant farming. It is for this reason that I have not distinguished sharply the evidence of Homer and Hesiod, but have used them to create a composite picture of society at the end of the Dark Age. Given the different characteristics of the two types of epic it is however obvious that inferences drawn from Hesiod are more certain than inferences from heroic epic.

The subject matter of Homeric epic is the activities of the great, and it is their social environment which is portrayed most clearly. The word basileus, which is the normal title of the Homeric hero, in later Greek came to mean king; but in the Linear B tablets the king himself is called by a title which survives in certain passages of Homer, wanax: somewhere much lower in the hierarchy at loca1 level is a group of people called by a name which is clearly the later Greek basileus; presumably when the palace economy disappeared, it was these men who were left as the leaders in their communities. In Homer and Hesiod the word basileus is in fact often used in a way which is much closer to the idea of a nobility, a class of aristocrats, one of whom may of course hold an ill-defined and perhaps uneasy position of supremacy within the community. Agamemnon at Troy is the highest basileus among a group of equals whose powers and attributes are not essentially different from his. When Odysseus visits the ideal land of Phaeacia he meets many basilēes feasting in the house of Alcinous and Alcinous himself says, ‘twelve honoured basilēes rule as leaders over the people, and I am the thirteenth’ (Odyssey 8. 390–1 ). The basilēes to whom Hesiod appeals for justice are a group of nobles. Monarchy probably ceased to be a widespread phenomenon in Greece at the beginning of the Dark Age: once again Homer’s ambivalence is due to the combination of Mycenean reminiscence with later society.

The basilēes of early Greece are a group of hereditary nobles largely independent of each other and separated from the rest of the community by their style of life as much as by their wealth, prerogatives or power. Each stands at the head of a group which can be viewed in two different ways: in terms of hereditary descent, as his genos or family, and in terms of its economic counterpart, the oikos (household or estate).

The Homeric family is not a particularly extended group. It comprises essentially the head of the house, his wife and his adult sons with their wives and offspring, together with other members of the immediate family. On his death the property is divided equally by lot among his sons, who then set up separate households; male children by slave women mostly have some status, though a lower one than sons of the wife: at one point Odysseus claims to be a bastard from Crete; his father treated him the same as his other children, but when he died the estate was shared among these, while he received only a house and little else (Odyssey 14.202ff). The basic Greek word for a man’s land is klēros, what he has inherited by lot; his dearest possessions which he will not leave and for which he will fight are his family, his oikos and his klēros (Iliad 15.498; Odyssey 14.64). It is the details of the division by lot of their father’s estate which Hesiod and his brother are quarrelling about (Works and Days 37), and Hesiod proclaims, work hard ‘that you may buy the klēros of others, not another yours’ (341). Beyond the immediate kin, the genos seems to have little significance; genealogies are not important and seldom go back beyond the third generation. Names for more distant kin are few, though kinship by marriage has a special term, as do certain members of the mother’s family. A man may expect help from his father-in-law or son-in-law as from his friends (Odyssey 8.58iff; Hesiod, Works and Days 345). But in general it is the immediate family which counts: blood-money for killing a man is described as due to his brother or father (Iliad 9.632f), not to any wider group; and when Odysseus kills the suitors, the father of one takes up the blood-feud with the words ‘it brings great shame for future men to hear if we do not take vengeance for the deaths of our sons and brothers’ (Odyssey 24.433ff). Curiously it is only killing within the family which involves a wider group of relatives or supporters (Iliad 2.66iff; Odyssey 15.272ff). It is somewhat misleading therefore to translate genos as clan rather than family.

The patriarchal nature of the family is shown not only by the rules of inheritance. Marriages are arranged by the heads of the genos, often for reasons of political friendship; the bride comes from the same social class, but is not necessarily related or even from the same area. Achilles says that if he returns from Troy, his father Peleus will himself seek a wife for him; ‘for there are many Achaean women in Hellas and Phthia, daughters of nobles who defend their citadels, one of whom I shall make my beloved bride if I wish’ (Iliad 9.394ff). The arranging of the marriage seems to involve both the giving of bridegifts (for which there is a special word, hedna) by the family of the bridegroom to that of the bride, and the provision of a dowry for the bride by her relatives. It has been suggested that these practices are incompatible, and represent two different historical layers in Homer; but they are in fact found together in other societies. The purpose of the dowry is to endow the future household; the bridegift has a different aim, which is neither to purchase the bride nor to initiate a gift-exchange involving the bride: it is rather to impress the bride’s family with the wealth and status of the bridegroom’s family. This is shown by the competition for a particularly desirable bride: Penelope complains to her suitors, ‘this has not been established in the past as the right way for suitors to behave, who wish to woo a noble lady and the daughter of a rich man, and compete with one another; but they themselves bring oxen and fat sheep as a feast for the friends of the bride, and they give splendid gifts: they do not eat another’s livelihood without repayment’ (Odyssey 18.275ff). The gifts of such suitors are not conditional on winning the bride’s hand: the losers lose all, so that there is here no exchange agreed, merely a contest in giving. The bride joins the bridegroom’s genos: when Telemachus arrives at Menelaus’ palace, a double wedding feast is in progress: his (bastard) son is bringing home a bride; and his daughter, long ago promised by Menelaus to Achilles’ (bastard) son, is leaving home (Odyssey 4. 1ff). The submergence of the wife in the new family of her father-in-law is shown by the survival in the Iliad of a kinship term found also in other Indo-European languages, e(i)nater, for the relationship between the wives of brothers, who would normally have lived together in the same household. The greatest tragedy is the premature death of the head, leaving his sons too young to assert their rights; this is what Andromache fears for her son in Troy, now Hector is dead (Iliad 22.484ff), and it is this struggle which Telemachus faces on Ithaca as his father’s prolonged absence makes it more and more likely that he has died.

Lower down the social scale marriage was a more practical affair, closely related to inheritance. Hesiod regards women as a curse sent by Zeus, ‘a great pain for mortals, living with men, sharing not in dread poverty but in prosperity’, like drones in the hive, but necessary in order to avoid the worse fate of others sharing the inheritance (Theogony 590–612). A man will marry at thirty a virgin in her fifth year from puberty (Works and Days 695fr; rather old: 14–16 was later the common age of marriage for girls), and he will have only one son if possible; though if one lives long enough there are compensations in more (376ff). Despite the strength of certain incest tabus shown in myth, endogamy, marriage within a relatively restricted cycle of relations, was the rule in Greece, and served to preserve existing patterns of ownership: in classical Athens an heiress could legally be claimed in marriage by her father’s closest male relative, beginning with her uncle; the procedure involved a herald publicly inviting claimants to come forward.

Many of these differences between the aristocracy and the ordinary citizen survived. Throughout the archaic period marriage outside the community was common between aristocrats, and contributed considerably to their political power and to the development of relations between cities; when in the mid fifth century Athens passed a law that citizens must in future be of Athenian parentage on both sides, this was a popular, anti-aristocratic move; the proposer, Perikles, like other Athenian aristocrats, would have found many earlier members of his family debarred from citizenship by such a rule.

A similar tension between aristocracy and peasantry perhaps explains the development in the status of women in early Greece. Hesiod reflects the general attitude then and later; but, though the portraits of Penelope and Nausicaa are idealized, Homer suggests that there was a time when women of the aristocracy had a high social status and considerable freedom: they could move freely without escorts, discuss on equal terms with their husbands, and might even be present at the banquets in the great hall. They were responsible for a large part of the household’s economic activities, weaving, grinding corn, and the supervision of the women slaves and the storechamber. In later Greek society respectable women were largely confined to their quarters, and took little part in male social activities at home or in public. This change in status is probably related to the movement from an estate-centred life to a city-centred one: the urbanization of Greek culture in most communities saw the increasing exclusion of women from important activities such as athletics, politics, drinking parties and intellectual discussion; these characteristically group male activities resulted also in the growth in most areas of that typically aristocratic Greek phenomenon, male homosexuality – though in the Symposium (182a) Plato mentions Ionia as an exception. Apart perhaps from Achilles and Patroclus and Zeus and Ganymede, Homer portrays early Greek society as markedly heterosexual. Marriage customs seem to show a similar shift; the bridegifts so prominent in Homer disappear, and in classical Greece only the dowry is known. In other words women had once been valuable social assets in an age when family and marriage alliances were more important; in the developed city-state they were no longer at a premium.

Around the immediate family lay the oikos. The early Greek basileus worked his estate with the help of slaves and occasional hired labour. The status of hired labourer (thēs) is the worst on earth: ‘spare me your praise of death’, says Achilles to Odysseus in the underworld, ‘I would rather be on earth and hire myself to a landless man with little for himself to live on, than rule over all the corpses of the dead’ (Odyssey 11.488ff). The life of a labourer is scarcely different from that of a beggar, for both are free men who have lost their position in society as completely as they can, and are dependent on the charity of another – only the beggar is preserved from starvation by the protection of Zeus; as an insult one of Penelope’s suitors offers the beggar Odysseus a job on an upland farm in return for food and clothing (Odyssey 18.357ff). This attitude to wage labour as private misfortune and public disgrace was widely prevalent later, and had a profound effect in shaping the economy’s dependence on slave labour: casual labour or skilled labour were acceptable types of employment, but free men would not willingly put themselves in the power of another by hiring themselves out on a regular basis. By contrast the slave had a value and a recognized position in society; nor was he responsible for his own misfortune. ‘But at least I shall be master of my own house and of the slaves whom great Odysseus captured for me’, says Telemachus (Odyssey 1.397ff): in raiding and warfare it was traditional to kill the males of any captured city and enslave the women and children; kidnapping, piracy and trade were also sources of supply: the faithful swineherd Eumaeus tells how his city was not sacked, nor was he captured while tending the flocks: he was the son of a noble, stolen by Phoenician traders with the help of his Phoenician nurse (herself captured by Taphian pirates) and sold to Odysseus’ father, who had brought him up with his youngest child (Odyssey 15.352ff). For such reasons women were relatively common as household slaves; men were few, reared from childhood and highly valued: they were put in charge of farms and allowed families of their own.

The basic source of wealth in ancient Greece was agriculture, which changes slowly if at all. Barley, because of its hardiness, was always the chief crop in Greece; wheat was a secondary cereal. The widespread use of linen for clothing and ropes shows that flax was also grown. The scenes portrayed on the shield of Achilles include ploughing, reaping and the vintage (Iliad 18.541–72); Hesiod’s description of the farmer’s year largely concerns the same activities (Works and Days 383–617): ploughing and sowing must begin when the Pleiades set and the cranes pass overhead (October), at the start of the rainy season: this was the hardest work of the year, for the plough was a light wooden one tipped with iron, which merely scratched the surface without turning it, and had to be forced into the earth by the ploughman as he drove the oxen. Hesiod recommends two ploughs ready in case one splits, and a strong forty-year-old man; on the shield of Achilles the fallow is ploughed three times, and each man is given a drink as he reaches the end of the furrow; Odysseus watches the setting sun ‘as when a man longs for his supper, for whom all day two dark oxen have dragged the jointed plough through the fallow, and welcome to him the sunlight sinks, so that he may leave for his supper; and his knees shake as he goes’ (Odyssey 13.31ff).

Autumn and winter are the times for cutting wood for tools: keep away from the talkers round the fire in the smithy. With the rising of Arcturus (February-March) work begins again; the vines must be pruned before the swallow returns: when snails begin to climb the plants (May) it is time to start the harvest; the rising of Orion (July) signals the winnowing and storing of the corn. High summer is the only time that Hesiod recommends for resting, in the shade by a spring with wine and food – until the vintage when Orion and the Dog Star are in the centre of the sky (September).

Apart from these staple crops, various types of green vegetable and bean were cultivated, and fruit in orchards: outside the house of Alcinous there is a large orchard with pears, pomegranates, apples, fìgs and olives, together with a vegetable garden and two springs for irrigation (Odyssey 7.112ff). One fruit mentioned had not yet obtained the central importance it possessed later – the olive. Olive oil was already used in washing (like soap), but not yet apparently for lighting and cooking: the main hall was lit with braziers and torches, not oil lamps, and they cooked with animal fat. It seems that there was no specialized cultivation of the olive: this had to wait for a change in habits of consumption, and the growth of a trade in staple commodities between different areas; for the concentration on olive oil in Attica from the sixth century onwards presupposes both a more than local market and the ability to organize corn imports.

Another characteristic of early Greek agriculture has caused controversy since ancient times. Classical Greece was largely a cereal-eating culture, deriving its proteins from beans (the ancient equivalent of a vegetarian, the Pythagorean, abstained from them), fish, and dairy produce from goats and sheep. Meat was eaten mainly at festivals, after the animal had been sacrifìed to the gods and their entrails burned as offerings. But ancient scholars noted that the Homeric heroes were largely meat-eating. Moreover wealth was measured in head of cattle: slaves, armour, tripods, ransoms, women are valued at so many cattle, and the general adjectives for wealth often refer to livestock. Eumaeus describes his master’s wealth: ‘twelve herds of cattle on the mainland, as many flocks of sheep, as many droves of pigs, as many wandering herds of goats, that strangers graze and his own herdsmen’ (that is, hired and slave labour: Odyssey 14.100ff). In contrast, though Hesiod himself had his vision while tending sheep on Mt Helicon and could think of nothing better than tender veal or goat to go with his cheese and wine in the summer heat, he gives no instructions about animal husbandry: mules and oxen were beasts of burden, sheep and goats produced wool and milk products, but they were sidelines in the main business of agriculture. Horses were outside his interests, for they were few and belonged to aristocrats, to be used only in sport and warfare.

This clearly reflects a basic shift of emphasis in Greek agriculture away from animal husbandry, but the problem is how to date it. The Linear B tablets show that the Mycenean kings possessed large herds; and some scholars have seen the transition as occurring early in the Dark Age. But it seems more likely that it is a later phenomenon almost contemporary with Hesiod. Populations in movement tend to be pastoral rather than crop-growing; the animal bones found by tombs show that meat continued to be widely available for the funeral feast throughout the Geometrie period, and there are many terracotta fìgurines of domestic animals dedicated at early sanctuaries. But animals are wasteful in land-use. As the population began to grow, and men like Hesiod’s father moved into the uplands, animal husbandry gradually gave way to arable farming, until only the mountains were left for sheep and goats. It will have been the aristocrats who had the lands to keep to the old style longest; and it may also be that in Asia Minor pastures could be extended into the hinterland, in a way not possible in Greece and the islands. Homer and Hesiod between them record the transition.

The physical shape of the noble’s house provides the key to the relationship between production of wealth and its use to establish the social status of the basileus. Stripped of its heroic embellishments (so much easier to build in words than with the primitive technology of early Greece), it consists essentially of a courtyard, stables, perhaps a porch where guests might sleep, private chambers for storing wealth and weapons and for women’s quarters, and the great hall or megaron – a long room with seats round the walls and a central hearth. The master of the house may have his own private chamber, as Odysseus did, or he may sleep in the hall.

Archaeological evidence relates primarily to town settlements, and so to ordinary housing; but even these single room dwellings provide analogies to the wall seats and central hearths of the aristocracy, as if either the larger had grown from the smaller or peasants were imitating the nobility. The comparative absence of larger and more complex houses has worried archaeologists, and led many to try to relate the Homeric house across the Dark Age to the Mycenean palace. But such worries may be unfounded, for it seems that many of the nobles did not live in the towns; so that the fact that their houses have not been found is not surprising, for the countryside of Anatolia and even mainland Greece has been little explored. Essentially the oikos-economy is estate-centred and suggests a period when aristocrats lived separately from the community. The transition to city life was part of the same development whose effects have been seen in the social position of women and in agriculture. In these respects Asia Minor may well have been more conservative than mainland Greece, until the disturbances from the seventh century onwards, with the Cimmerian invasion and the attacks of Lydia, drove the Ionian Greeks into their coastal cities. Even then it seems that in some areas fortified farmsteads preserved a little of the old style of life.

Not all basilēes lived in the country: Alcinous’ house for instance is within the city walls (Odyssey 6 and 7). And two archaeological finds give reality and proportion to the poetic descriptions. At Zagora on Andros a housing complex of the late eighth century seems to belong together as a unit: it is prominently placed in the middle of the settlement near an open space and the site of a later temple. The main room in the complex is square and about 8 metres across, with a central hearth and benches along three walls. The eighth century settlement at Emporio on Chios is even more interesting. A primitive defence wall, which can hardly have been more than 2 metres high, ran round the hilltop, enclosing about 6 acres; the only two buildings within it were a later seventh century temple and, built into the wall and contemporary with it, a megaron hall 18 metres long, with three central columns and a porch supported by two more columns. Below the walls lay a village of perhaps 500 inhabitants; the larger houses were of the same megaron type with central columns and hearth, others had stone benches against the walls. Here perhaps is the roughly fortified residence of a loca1 basiletis, a refuge for his herds and for those living outside it, who must have regarded the owner of the main megaron as their leader. It was in such dim and smoke-fìlled halls as those of Zagora and Emporio that the poems of Homer were originally sung.

Early Greek society was not feudal: there was no class owing obligations to an arìstocracy in return for land, and no general serf population separate from the slaves, who were always recruited from outside the community. The various scattered forms of obligated servitude found later in Dorian communities like Sparta and Argos, or colonial cities like Syracuse, or in the static population of Athens, are not individual survivals of a general phenomenon, but special developments conditioned by the history of each area. Generally early Greece was a land of free peasantry, in which the distinction between aristocracy and people (dēmos) was a question of birth and life style, unencumbered by complex social structures.

In the absence of permanent ties of allegiance, despite the hereditary nature of the aristocracy, the establishment of personal status (timē) created a competitive society: status was important because activities such as warfare, raiding and piracy required the ability to attract supporters from outside the genos. It is for this reason that feasting and the entertainment of male companions (hetairoi) was an essential activity for the man of influence; it was this function of achieving rank by feasts of merit which the great hall served, and towards which the surplus production of the oikos was largely directed. For hetairoi seem to have been attracted by such displays of personal generosity, by the reputation of the leader and by ties of guest-friendship (xenia), more often than through marriage or blood connection.

Those who feasted in the great hall were men of the same class as their host. So Alcinous entertains the basilēes of Phaeacia, and Agamemnon the leaders of his contingents before Troy; even the suitors in Odysseus’ house are a band of aristocratic hetairoi merely outstaying their welcome. The feasting is reciprocai; the ghost of Odysseus’ mother in the underworld gives him news of Telemachus, who still ‘feasts at equal feasts’, ‘for all invite him’ (Odyssey 11.185f); Telemachus himself tells the suitors ‘leave my halls and prepare other feasts, eating your own belongings, going in turn from house to house’ (Odyssey 2.139f). Architecture and the activity of feasting are interwoven in Odysseus’ recognition of his own house: ‘Eumaeus, this must surely be the fine house of Odysseus: it would be easy to recognize and pick out even among many. There are buildings on buildings, and the court is well finished with a wall and cornice, and the double gates are well protected: no man could force it. And I see many men are feasting within, for the smell of fat is there and the lyre sounds, which the gods have made as companion to the feast’ (Odyssey 17.264ff). The emphasis laid on descriptions of feasting in the Homeric poems is no mere literary convention: it corresponds to a central feature in the life-style of the aristocracy, and the poetry of epic was already represented as the main form of entertainment at the feast. For Hesiod on the other hand the feast has a very different signifìcance: everyone brings their own contributions to a communal meal (Works and Days 72ff).

Two other characteristics of Homeric society helped to create the network of obligations which sustained the power of the nobility – the institution of guest-friendship and the role of the gift within it. Beyond his immediate geographical neighbourhood, the basileus could expect to be welcomed on his travels by men of the same class as himself: with them he would establish, or fìnd already established by his ancestors, that relationship between guest and host (both called xenos, the word for a stranger) which was especially sacrosanct, under the protection of Zeus Xenios: this was one of the epithets of Zeus related to his general role as guardian of those outside the community – guests, suppliants and beggars.

The stranger travelled empty-handed, but he was given not only board and lodging: everywhere he called he received also gifts (xeneia); indeed it is clear that this was the main purpose and profìt of peaceful travel. Menelaus and Helen travelled in order to amass great wealth and carne home from Egypt bringing rich gifts from their hosts (Odyssey 4.78ff); Menelaus suggests to Telemachus that they should make a journey together through Greece, ‘nor will anyone just send us away, but he will give us one thing to take, some well-made bronze tripod or cauldron or pair of mules or a gold cup’ (Odyssey 15.82ff). Such gifts were due under all circumstances as a matter of honour, even for a one night stand: ‘there they stayed the night, and he gave them xeneia’ (Odyssey 3.490). Odysseus had typically turned the custom to his own profìt and was even prepared to ask for his due: he would have been back home long ago if he had not been keen to ‘collect wealth through travelling over many lands, for Odysseus knows about gain above all other men’ ; ‘he is bringing much good treasure, acquired by asking among people’ – ‘enough to keep a man and his heirs to the tenth generation’ (Odyssey 19.268ff).

Though Homer must exaggerate their worth, he shows that these gifts were always of luxury items, and particularly of metalwork, drawn from the treasures of the household – copper, gold, Silver, fine fabrics and wines, cauldrons, mixing bowls, tripods, decorated armour and swords. They may have been given before: Menelaus presents Telemachus with a mixing bowl which he had received from the king of Sidon (Odyssey 15.113ff). If the thing got out of hand, one could perhaps recoup one’s outlay by a levy among the people, as Alcinous suggests (Odyssey 13.14f). As with marriage gifts there is not usually a direct exchange involved: in the first instance it is an expression of competitive generosity. The immediate return is the pleasure of news and stories; but there is the creation of a link for the future: ‘choose a good present and the return will be worthy’ (Odyssey 1.318ff); ‘you gave those gifts in vain though you gave thousands: for if you had come to the land of Ithaca while he was alive he would have sent you away with good return for your presents and a worthy xeneia, as is right when someone begins it’ (Odyssey 24.284). An old guest-friend of Priam ransoms one of his sons (Iliad 21.42). There is the great scene when Glaucus and Diomedes meet in battle and establish their lineage: ‘then you are a guest-friend of mine of old through my father’, for their fathers had met long ago and gifts had been exchanged. The two heroes agree not to fìght, and cement their ancestral friendship by an exchange of armour in which Zeus took away Glaucus’ wits, for he accepted bronze for gold (Iliad 6.119ff: this is the only passage where direct gift exchange is mentioned). A breach of the rules of guest-friendship was indeed the main cause of the Trojan war: for Paris stole Helen from Menelaus on such a visit, and Troy is therefore doomed.

Though they may resemble primitive commercial transactions in the element of immediate or ultimate return expected, such gift relations are really a quite different mode even of regulating exchange in the societies and areas where they operate, as Marcel Mauss has shown. In the Homeric world their purpose is not primarily related to profìt or even ultimate benefit, but (like bridegifts and the feasting of peers) to the acquisition of honour, and the creation of a network of obligations.

The relationships thus established both enhanced the standing of the basileus within the community, and created a band of hetairoi who might be called on to enable him to engage in the traditional activities of cattle raiding and piracy. The first of these must have caused considerable trouble, since the private action of a group could easily lead to public reaction from aggrieved neighbours. The dangers of the situation are well brought out in the story told by Nestor of his reprisal raid against the men of Elis, which seems initially to have been a private family venture. But the spoils were publicly distributed to any of the Pylian nobility who had a claim against the men of Elis, with the fortunate result that, when the entire Elean forces attacked, there was enough support in Pylos for a full scale battle to ensue (Iliad 11.67off). It is not surprising that these land raids seem normally to have been somewhat minor and clandestine affairs, and are mainly referred to as phenomena of the past.

Sea-raiding was different. As Thucydides says,

In early times the Greeks and the barbarians of the mainland coasts and islands, as they began to voyage abroad on ships more, turned to raiding, led by men of power for the sake of their own profit and the support of the poor; they would attack and plunder the towns which were unwalled or composed of isolated settlements; they triade most of their living from this, having no sense of shame in the profession, but rather glorying in it.

(Thucydides 1.5)

He goes on to note that in Homer the questions traditionally asked of new arrivals are ‘Strangers, who are you? From whence do you sail the watery wastes? Is it for trade, or do you wander at random like raiders over the sea, who voyage risking their lives and bringing harm to foreigners?’ (Odyssey 3.71ff and elsewhere). Raiding was carried on in long boats with up to fìfty oars (pentekonters), single banked, and a primitive sail for running before the wind. They were rowed by the fìghting men, who would beach the ship by a settlement and rely on surprise for success. It seems to have been carried on primarily against foreigners, not Greeks: the aims were cattle, women slaves and other booty; the chief danger was in delay, allowing the natives to call in help and counterattack. The activity was normally regarded as honourable; only Eumaeus the swineherd, as a representative of a lower class and a different morality, has his doubts: ‘the blessed gods do not love evil deeds, but honour justice and uprightness in men: when fierce and hostile men go against a foreign land and Zeus gives them booty, and they have filled their ships and departed for home, even in the hearts of these men falls mighty fear of divine vengeance’ (Odyssey 14.83ff). Odysseus is more realistic, cursing his belly ‘which gives much evil to men, for whose sake benched ships are rigged out to bring harm to enemies over the waste sea’ (Odyssey 17.286ff). Booty was shared among the participants according to their standing: the ‘share of booty’ (geras) of a man is also his ‘share of honour’.

Though primarily and perhaps originally related to the interests of the aristocracy, the way in which these warrior bands might benefit the community is clear. Odysseus spins a long story about his imaginary life in Crete, which shows this. After the account of his upbringing mentioned above (p. 38), he describes how, in spite of his dubious birth and poverty, he had married a wife from a landed family because of his prowess. Nine times he led a fleet against foreigners, and became rich and respected; so that when the expedition set off to Troy, public opinion forced him to be one of the leaders. The expedition it seems was a public venture. When he returned he went back to sea-raiding on his own account: he found it easy enough to fill nine ships. The companions feasted for six days and then set off for Egypt. There the expedition carne to grief as a result of delay, and the troubles of its imaginary leader began (Odyssey 14.199ff).

There are other indications that the poet envisaged the expedition to Troy as a public one: a public fine is mentioned for those who refused to go (Iliad 13.669ff), and the feasting was at public not private expense: ‘dear leaders and captains of the Argives, who drink at public cost with the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and each command your bands’ (Iliad 17.248ff; compare 4.3428ff). Institutionalized warfare was an area where the community had an interest in the maintenance of its aristocracy and their fìghting bands; the warrior might even be given a special grant of land by the people, a temenos (the word survives from Myceanean Greek, though its meaning may have changed): ‘Glaucus, why are we two especially honoured, with seats of honour and meat and full cups, in Lycia, and everyone looks on us as gods, and we possess a great temenos by the banks of the Xanthus, fair orchards and wheat-bearing fìelds? Now we must stand with the first of the Lycians and face fiery battle, so that the Lycians in their thick breastplates may say “Our nobles that rule in Lycia are great men, they eat fat sheep and drink the best honey-sweet wine. But they are powerful men, for they fìght with the first of the Lycians”’ (Iliad 12.310ff).

Homeric descriptions of fìghting are confused; but, combining them with the archaeological evidence from grave goods, it seems that warfare in the late Dark Age was heavily dependent on the individual champion and his companions, who constituted almost a warrior class. Only they had the resources to acquire the metal for their equipment: the rest of the community seems to have been lightly armed with primitive weapons, and to have done little more than watch the duels of the nobility. They were armed with bronze cuirass, greaves and helmet, and shields in a variety of shapes, held from a central grip and made from leather or bronze plates. The primary offensive weapons were iron swords and two or more spears, which could be thrown and used for thrusting. If it is right to interpret the anachronistic chariots as horses, it would seem that the warriors rode to battle with a mounted squire, but fought on foot: the development of a true cavalry is later.

Oral epic created a heroic past for a particular group in society and glorified its values; since the Homeric poems established themselves as the bible of the Greeks, the ethic they portray had a permanent influence on Greek morality. It is essentially a competitive ethic, expressed in the words of Glaucus, ‘always to be best and pre-eminent over others, and not to shame the seed of my fathers’ (Iliad 6.208f). The moral vocabulary concerns principally success or skill: a good man is good at something, at fighting or counsel; the word aretē is closer to ‘excellence’ than ‘virtue’. It is a public attribute measured by the amount of honour (timē) given by others to a man; and timē itself had a physical expression in the geras or share of booty due to him. It was also an individualistic ethic: a man’s timē was his own concern, even the gods cared little for any timē but their own; the chief exception to this self-regarding ethic was the duty to help a friend.

It has been described as a shame culture rather than a guilt culture: the sanctions protecting morality were not internal to a man but external, in the sense of shame (aidōs) that a man must feel at losing status before his peers: so public penalties were in terms of loss of property, for property was one aspect of honour. The gods have little to do with this morality, except in the sense that they largely conform to it. Only Zeus in a general way has some concern with the triumph of right, or at least the preservation of certain basic rules like those of guest-friendship. It is typical of such a culture that internal states of conflict are little recognized, and that admissions of fault or failure are hard to make, for they involve public loss of face: Homeric heroes do not deny responsibility for their actions, but they often also claim that an external divine force was responsible, and see no incompatibility. In fact the whole language of psychic phenomena is reified and externalized: mental states are identical with their physical symptoms, and head, lungs, belly and knees are thought of as the seats of the emotions.

This aristocratic style of life had its roots in a distant past of nomadic warrior bands, and never wholly disappeared in Greece. Its continuity can be illustrated from the history of the Greek word phratra, which is cognate with the almost universal Indo-European kinship term for brother (German Bruder, Celtic brathir, Latin frater, French frère). In Greek the word is not used of blood relationship; it rather designates a ‘brotherhood’, a social group. It is used twice in Homer: ‘divide your men by tribes (phylai), by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may help phratry and tribes tribes’ (Iliad 2.362f see also 9.63). The tribes were originally military divisions, the phratries presumably also – the old word perhaps for the bands of hetairoi. They seem to have been widespread as a political division smaller than the tribe. The power of the aristocratic genos in many cities down to the Persian Wars was dependent on the continuity of these political and social groupings around the genos; the names of the Bacchiadai and Kypselidai of Corinth or the Philaidai, Alkmeonidai and Peisistratidai of Athens, with their characteristic suffixes, claim descent from an often quite recent ancestor as a genos: but these aristocratic families clearly had far wider traditional support. In Athens for instance at least until Kleisthenes the phratries were a major political force; and each phratry seems to have been dominated by one or two noble families (see below p. 276). And long after they lost their political role the phratries continued as cult groups and social clubs.

Other less tangible attitudes survived. The moral code was one; the importance of drinking clubs another. The philosophic or literary symposium of Plato and others was one descendant, as were the rowdy hetaireiai or aristocratic clubs; these could be organized to influence court cases and elections and even used to overthrow the government of Athens through Street murders in 411 BC. And the prevalence of cases of drunken assault (hybris) by young aristocrats in the legal literature of the fourth century shows that the suitors were never really taught to behave.

A third continuity is the place of the gift or benefit in social relationships. The Christian notion of charity, giving without expectation of return (except in heaven) comes through Judaism from the ancient near east, a world of such gross inequalities that giving served merely to emphasize the gap between classes and the merits of the powerful in the eyes of God. In the more equal societies of Greece and Rome giving is for a return, and establishes a social relationship between giver and recipient in which one is temporarily or permanently under an obligation to the other.