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42477 results in Collections

Page 2029 of 2124

  • Preface

  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp xvii-xxii

  • Summary

    In this volume we come to the transition from the archaic to the classical period in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is marked by the major events by which the Achaemenid empire of Persia came into conflict with the Greek city states, events which brought the concepts of Greek and Barbarian, freedom and despotism into the sharpest focus. But collision did not rule out influence, before and after the two years, 480 and 479, in which battle was most closely joined.

    We begin by considering the geography and earlier history of the Iranian uplands where the Persian empire originated; it is now possible to do more than has previously been done in setting the archaeological against the literary picture; in the process it becomes clear how little we can say with confidence about the Median kingdom which Cyrus overthrew. But Cyrus' stature as a great leader can be more closely placed in its historical context and more justice than usual done to his son Cambyses.

    That the empire survived for more than a generation was the work of Darius, who rescued it from disintegration and gave it solid institutions which carried it through the reverses sustained by his son Xerxes. The Persepolis excavations and the new texts which they produce are now making it possible to draw a picture of these institutions and their attendant culture which is at least partly independent of the Greek authors through whose eyes the empire has usually been seen.

  • 3a - Babylonia from Cyrus to Xerxes

  • from 3 - The major regions of the empire
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 112-138

  • Summary

    This chapter presents an outline of the history of Babylonia from Cyrus II to Xerxes. The historiographic texts from Babylonia providing an outline of the main political events are very sparse, the major one being the Nabonidus Chronicle, which covers the whole reign of Nabonidus, last king of Babylonia, the rise of Cyrus and his conquest of Babylonia. The major political event which is partly reflected in Babylonian documents is the seizure of royal power by Bardiya, the brother of Cambyses. Bardiya was killed by Darius and his fellow conspirators on 29 September, and no Babylonian text dated by him later than 20 September has yet been found. On Bardiya's assassination Babylonia revolted immediately under the leadership of the Babylonian Nidintu-Bel who took the name Nebuchadrezzar (III). Xerxes' relations with Babylonia have been generally sought in the development of his titulature; the earliest texts like those of his Achaemenid predecessors regularly call him 'King of Babylon and Lands'.

  • 1 - The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses

  • from PART I - THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 1-52

  • Summary

    The Median and Achaemenid periods define a critical disjunction in history. Iranians, more particularly the Medes and the Persians, first appear in history in the ninth-century BC cuneiform texts touching on the western half of the plateau. For some time thereafter the Medes and Persians are only two of several ethnic and political groups found in the Zagros mountains. Only late in the seventh century BC do the Medes apparently begin to become the dominant power even in Media. Cyrus is the son of Cambyses, grandson of Cyrus, and a descendant of Teispes. Cambyses succeeded to the throne in September 530 BC after Cyrus' death. Four years after ascending the throne Cambyses marched against Egypt. Amasis, the shrewd penultimate ruler of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, attempted to bolster his defences by securing the aid of the Cypriots and other islanders in order to cut off any possibility of a Persian invasion by sea.

  • 14 - The Iron Age: the peoples of Italy

  • from PART III - THE WEST
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 676-719

  • Summary

    The trend towards more permanent settlements and diversified economies continued unabated in the Iron Age and led to the development of distinct and stable regional cultures. The most characteristic of Apulian craft products, the pottery, brightly illustrates the strength and independent taste of the local culture. Traditional, conservative and selective in their use of Greek models, the Apulian potters produced types and designs largely of their own invention. Geographical proximity made it very easy for Apulian traders and craftsmen to import and often imitate the products of the Greek world. From the ninth century, there were close contacts and frequent exchanges between the Mid-Adriatic region and the Liburnian and Istrian zones across the Adriatic. The rivers that traverse the Mid-Adriatic region served as arteries of communication with Tyrrhenian Italy. The Roman tradition about the Umbri being the most ancient people of Italy becomes understandable, and the more innovatory and evolved character of their language as compared with Oscan.

  • 12 - Italy from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age

  • from PART III - THE WEST
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 623-633

  • Summary

    In approximately 740 BC, an amphora of Greek type bearing various inscriptions was deposited in the cemetery of the Euboean establishment at Pithecusa on the Bay of Naples. 'Apennine', 'Sub-Apennine' and 'Proto-Villanovan' are among the adjectives that describe certain cultural features of the Middle, Recent and Final Bronze Ages in Italy; pottery and other cultural material may thus, for example, be defined as 'Proto-Villanovan' in appearance but not in date. The cultural term 'Villanovan' was coined in the mid-nineteenth century to describe certain Iron Age funerary material excavated in the first instance near Bologna, and, later in the same century, south of the Apennines in southern Etruria as well. There are, however, a number of cases of Proto-Villanovan objects in Villanovan graves at certain coastal and mainstream centres of southern Etruria. At Vetulonia, one Proto-Villanovan ossuary is apparently associated with an Early Iron Age fibula in the Poggio alia Guardia cemetery.

  • 5 - The reform of the Athenian state by Cleisthenes

  • from PART II - THE GREEK STATES
    • By Martin Ostwald, William R. Kenan, Jr, Professor of Classics, Swarthmore College, and Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvani
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 303-346

  • Summary

    There is little contemporary evidence for the history of Athens in the decade following the fall of the Pisistratid tyranny. Herodotus wrote some sixty or seventy years after Cleisthenes' reforms, and the internal history of Athens is for him incidental to other concerns. Membership in a deme constituted the most important indication of Athenian citizenship. The substitution of the deme for the phratry as the smallest political unit was one way in which the influence of the noble families was fragmented. The new tribal organization will have had an impact on legislation and policy-making. The Solonian constitution became much more populist than it had been under Solon. For disuse under the tyranny had brought about an eclipse of Solon's laws and had made Cleisthenes enact new legislation in his attempt to gain the favour of the masses. It was in this connexion that the law on ostracism was enacted.

  • 9 - The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes

  • from PART II - THE GREEK STATES
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 491-517

  • Summary

    In the Persian records 'the lands beyond the sea' were mentioned first at the time of Darius' campaign in Europe. In this campaign only some of the Allies were involved. The Allies as a whole were Boeotia, Phocis and the Peloponnesian states, apart from Argos and probably Achaea. For the campaign, Darius appointed Datis, a distinguished Mede, as commander in the field and Artaphernes, his own nephew, as his personal representative. The ratio between the fighting men and the other personnel is much as in the expedition sent by Athens to Sicily. A few days were spent in organizing the base at Eretria. The Greeks were superior in armament for hand-to-hand fighting. The Greeks attacked with a 2.4 metre long spear and a sword, whereas the Persians relied on a short spear and scimitar and on the archery in which they excelled.

  • 7c - Material culture

  • from 7 - Archaic Greek society
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 414-430

  • Summary

    Athens' achievements in the Persian Wars, the brilliance of Periclean Athens and the activity of her own historians have ensured that even of the archaic period, before the Persian Wars, Athens occupies the centre of the stage. Almost all the substantial building activity of archaic Athens appears to fall in the period of the tyrants. The Athens left by the tyrants was already remarkable for the variety and number of its public buildings. Most plentiful source of material evidence for late archaic Athens is pictorial, mainly figure-decorated vases and to a lesser degree works of sculpture in the round or in relief. The Thessalians were the cavalrymen par excellence of the mainland and had been much involved in the local wars of central Greece, from the Lelantine to the first Sacred War. The ordinary Greek cavalryman is shown on vases bare-headed and fighting with spear only, and the occasional mounted archer appears.

  • 6 - Greece before the Persian invasion

  • from PART II - THE GREEK STATES
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 347-367

  • Summary

    This chapter concerns the general situation in Greece during the last quarter of the sixth century and the start of the fifth: the years when Persia's defeat and annexation of the non-Greek kingdoms which bordered the Aegean to east and south brought the power of her empire significantly near to the Greeks of the Aegean and the mainland itself. Sparta herself had recently been expending her military resources in challenging successfully the power of Argos for control of the districts north and east of Parnon: the Thyreatis and Cynuria down to and including Cythera. In 519, Cleomenes and the military League entered Boeotian politics. At the request of Athens, King Cleomenes undertook to arrest the Aeginetan medizers. He went, apparently, with little or no military support, and this gave his opponents at Sparta, foremost among them his co-king Demaratus, the chance to stiffen the Aeginetan resistance.

  • 16 - Carthaginians and Greeks

  • from PART III - THE WEST
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 739-790

  • Summary

    In the fifth century, Motya developed into a strongly-walled town, half of whose population was Greek and which conducted flourishing commerce with Elymians and Greeks. It became one of the key points of Carthaginian control over the narrow passage between Africa and Sicily, and the main naval base for Carthaginians in their wars against the Sicilians. The striking prosperity of sixth-century Selinus and Acragas speaks eloquently against the assumption that Malchus' 'long wars' in Sicily were waged against the Greeks. For this reason it has been very plausibly argued that his enemy may in fact have been Punics from Motya and elsewhere who tried to resist their mother-city's attempts to dominate them. Some frontier clashes between pro-Punic Selinus and the Acragantines may have served as a pretext for Gelon's propaganda. There is no better evidence of the vitality of Sicilian civilization in the first quarter of the fifth century than the swift rise of Acragas and Syracuse.

  • 7d - Coinage

  • from 7 - Archaic Greek society
    • By Colin Kraay, Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 431-445

  • Summary

    This chapter describes the origin of coinage in mainland Greece. But coinage certainly started at an earlier date in Asia Minor, where the most readily available metal was alluvial electrum rather than silver. In the Peloponnese the transition from a utensil currency to a currency of silver appears to have begun under Pheidon in the first half of the seventh century but true coins are unlikely to have been minted at Aegina before the sixth century. The earliest datable context for an Aeginetan coin is the foundation deposit of the audience-hall of Darius I at Persepolis, which can be no earlier than circa 515. The most remarkable characteristic of the archaic coinage of South Italy is its uniformity in both weight standard and fabric. The practice of coining is seen to have been spreading across the Greek world during the sixth century though it was still a rather recent phenomenon in the West.

  • 3f - Persia in Europe, apart from Greece

  • from 3 - The major regions of the empire
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 234-253

  • Summary

    The revenge motive arising from Scythian attacks on the Medes in Asia a century or so earlier hardly accounts for a Persian king attacking Scythians in Europe. The real intention of Darius was made clear by the building of a bridge across the Bosporus. Darius commemorated the bridge by erecting two columns of white stone with inscriptions in cuneiform and in Greek letters. Herodotus described the campaign from the Scythian point of view, which shows that he relied chiefly on Scythian informants. The existence of a satrapy in Europe, called 'Skudra', is known from Persian inscriptions. The name 'Skudra' was probably Phrygian for the homeland which the Phrygians had left in migrating to Asia. In cultural terms, Thrace looked not to Greece but to Scythia, Asia Minor and Persia. In the last decades of the sixth century large tombs with gifts of gold and silver vessels and jewellery, and sometimes bronze helmets and cuirasses, became much more frequent.

  • 2 - The consolidation of the empire and its limits of growth under Darius and Xerxes

  • from PART I - THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 53-111

  • Summary

    Darius and his successors ruled a large land mass containing a bewildering variety of ethnic groups for almost two hundred years. They did it with very little violence and without the need for the almost annual military activity characteristic of the smaller Assyrian empire. Xerxes was a powerful figure, but it would seem that he never lived up to his early promise and was certainly never the king, or perhaps the man, that his father Darius had been. Early in the reign of Xerxes rebellion broke out in Babylon. Whatever the timing or cause of the revolt in Babylon, it is put down with a firm hand. Xerxes sends Megabyxus in command of troops to crush the revolt, which is apparently accomplished in almost no time at all. In the end, Xerxes has the honour to be the first of the great Achaemenid kings to be assassinated.

  • 7a - Religion and the state

  • from 7 - Archaic Greek society
  • Edited by John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 November 1988, pp 368-388

  • Summary

    In a well-known story, Herodotus records how the Samians rescued three hundred boys whom Periander of Corinth was sending from Corcyra to Alyattes of Lydia to become eunuchs. The story illustrates the vocabulary and syntax of Greek ritual. More important, it throws light on the relationship between two ways of defining a community. On the one hand the political decision which the Samians have by implication taken is portrayed as one taken purely within the matrix of cult and ritual. On the other hand the story represents the political society of the Samians as being in full charge of their own religious practices. Neither Samos nor any Greek state was controlled by priests or prophets. It is this relationship between a society conceived of as embedded in cult and ritual and the same society conceived of as an autonomous political actor. Religion became a dependent appendage of national sentiment, and individual piety received an out and out deathblow'.

  • 4 - Byzantine political thought

  • from II - Byzantium
  • Edited by J. H. Burns, University of London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    19 May 1988, pp 49-80

  • Summary

    The Byzantine Empire, or the Byzantinisation of the Roman Empire, began with the conversion to Christianity of Constantine and his foundation of Constantinople on the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. At once the main elements of Byzantine political thought are gathered together in one sentence. For Byzantine civilisation was an amalgam of three ingredients: Greek, Roman and Christian. Its political theory derived from the first two of those ingredients, which were tempered to accommodate the third. Its originators and its first apologists were the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, and the first historian of the Christian Church, Eusebius of Caesarea. The sincerity of Constantine's conversion has often been questioned, but his own writings leave little room for doubt that he saw himself as the servant and representative on earth of the Christian God. None of the Christians in his empire thought otherwise. The majority of his subjects were still pagan. They were shocked and offended that their emperor had seen fit to embrace a minority religion. But their pagan theorists, such as Themistius, were able to mitigate the shock by appealing to the Hellenistic theories of kingship. Here was common ground where pagan and Christian could meet on the subject of monarchy.

    Themistius regarded earthly monarchy as a copy of the kingship of Zeus, the supreme emperor (basileus). The kingdom of this world would be a reflection, a replica of that higher model. The king must possess and display a whole catalogue of virtues. Such notions can be traced back to the political theorists of Greek antiquity.

Page 2029 of 2124