Illyrian and Epirotic tribes in Illyris and west Macedonia

‘Illyris’, a geographical term which the Greeks applied to a territory neighbouring their own, covers more or less the area of northern and central Albania down to the mouth of the Aous. A description of the country has been given in CAH III.1, 619ff and 623.

Within Illyris the people to the north of the Shkumbi valley in Illyria were remarkably conservative in their practices during the period, c. 750–530 B.C., and indeed until the beginning of the Hellenistic period. In the Zadrime plain and in the Mati valley tumulus-burial was practised as in the past, and without diminution until late in the fourth century; thereafter a few tumuli only were added to the existing hundreds. Similarly the local styles of pottery persisted and the influence of Greek pottery was very slight. The tumuli were used for members of the warrior or aristocratic class. They were buried with iron weapons (spearheads up to 70 cm long, cutlasses up to 60 cm, battle-axes, knives, occasionally swords) and sometimes with bronze armour (shield, cuirass, helmet, occasionally greaves). The jewellery and fibulae of bronze in the graves were of Glasinac types, and the beads were mostly of amber. In the area of Kukës on the Drin (ancient Drilon) the majority of the burials in the cemeteries of tumuli at Çinamak, Krume and Këneta were made in the seventh to fourth centuries B.C..

Volume III.I described the emergence of Greece from Dark Ages of depopulation and relative poverty to the acme of its Geometric civilization. The new prosperity and growth of the young city-states led them to look for new frontiers to conquer or settle, to eye each other's prosperity with cupidity, and their rulers and people to give thought to safeguarding their own wealth and status in the new societies of Archaic Greece. Volume in. 3 explores this growth, its causes and course, the dissensions and the faltering steps along the path to political stability.

The first chapter deals with that intercourse with the older civilizations of the east and Egypt which opened Greek eyes to materials, techniques and trading profits denied to them since the collapse of their Bronze Age civilization. This is a story which begins in the ninth and eighth centuries; but in the eighth and seventh the Greeks begin to turn to other Mediterranean areas, and we witness that spread of the Greek city-state to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean sea, to the sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, which opened a new epoch in the history of western man.

The effects of this expansion, unprecedented in geographical scope, were manifold. The Greeks of the founding states gained greatly in prosperity, because the volume of seaborne trade increased by leaps and bounds and they were still the main exporters of manpower, weapons and finished goods.

It would be heartening to believe that our knowledge of the material conditions of life in ancient Greece improves as attention shifts from the earlier periods to the later. In many respects it becomes the poorer and it is for the earliest settlements and their comparatively simple trappings that we have the fullest evidence. Continuous occupation of the major sites has rendered it difficult to do more than sample the evidence for any given period and it is possible, for instance, still to be unsure whether even Athens had a city wall in the sixth century B.C.: evidence for it is allusive only, in texts, and on the ground there is nothing. Criteria other than acreage have to be applied to determine population numbers and in the Archaic period none inspire confidence. Even relative growth and decline, which might be gauged from the sizes of cemeteries, must depend upon more complete survival and excavation that it has generally proved possible to achieve. While the increasing sophistication of life greatly diversifies the archaeological record it has also meant that the range of possibly relevant evidence has widened to include important classes of objects which have survived irregularly (metalwork) or not at all (parchment, papyri, textiles). True, the figure arts of Greece tell more through detailed depiction of life. This has meant, for instance, that we learn about eighth-century weapons mainly from excavated objects, sixth-century ones from pictures of them or allusions in poetry, and it is not easy to say which period is the more reliably and completely served.

The history of the Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy down to 500 B.C. is hardly at any point a connected story. We have, on the one hand, a number of isolated events, or, at best, episodes, preserved in very varied literary sources from Herodotus to Athenaeus, and, on the other, a constantly growing body of archaeological material, which is richly informative on a restricted range of topics, and which presents the historian with many difficulties in interpretation. T. J. Dunbabin attempted a historical synthesis on the basis of the literary sources and the archaeological evidence then available in his book The Western Greeks (1948), to which the title of this chapter pays tribute. More is known archaeologically today, but in many respects his historical interpretation still dominates scholars in the field.

In the period under discussion the largest quantity of solid historical material about the western Greeks relates to colonization, and so much of this chapter is inevitably about colonization. We have discussed the major foundations in Sicily and southern Italy before 700 in the previous chapter, so our first section concerns the major foundations between 700 and 500. The next discusses the expansion of the Greek colonies, which includes further colonization in addition to the relations with the non-Greek peoples. Then we shall look at the relations between Greeks and Phoenicians in Sicily, which also involve the last major attempts at colonization by the Greeks in the period under review. Finally we shall consider the internal developments of the Greek city-states, and their relations.

Introduction

During the three centuries surveyed in this chapter (800–500 B.C.) the economic and social structure of the Greek world underwent massive alterations which set the framework for the Classic age. The general character and the tempo of development can be discerned; causes and interrelationships are often obscure. For present purposes Hesiod (Works and Days only), Solon, Theognis and Herodotus provide the most valuable literary testimony. The difficulties in using Homer as a historical source, suggested in CAH II.2, chapter 39b, must lead one to cite the epics only with caution; Aristotle, Plato and other later authors are occasionally helpful if we keep in mind their very different intellectual milieu. Significant archaeological evidence will be noted briefly, for the second part of this chapter will survey the physical material more fully.

Economically the volume of output increased tremendously, as measured against earlier centuries, and was much diversified in types of products and in their styles. Industrial and commercial activity tended to concentrate at urban centres in the more advanced parts of Greece. After his conquest of Asia Minor the Persian king Cyrus asked about the nature of the Spartans (Hdt. I. 153), and upon receiving an answer purportedly commented, ‘I have never yet been afraid of any men who have a set place in the middle of their city, where they come together to cheat each other and forswear themselves.’ To this emphasis on the role of economically independent elements in Hellenic markets a modern observer would add the important fact that the accepted Greek standard of value had by Cyrus' day become coined money, even if coins themselves were not always actually used in the exchange of goods and services.