Seelentag – Ordering the Kosmos. Roles of Prominence and Institutions in Archaic Crete (original) (raw)

Seelentag – An Epic Perspective on Institutionalization in Archaic Crete

2014

This article refers first to a faulty “master narrative” in our description and interpretation of political development in Archaic and Classical Greece, which is based upon a teleology of a road to (Athenian) democracy. These established views wrongly favor certain facets of the island’s polities that appear in Cretan laws. As an alternative, regarding the evidence at the center of the discussion on polis-formation, this contribution pleads for an interpretation of the development of Cretan institutions against the background of the Homeric and Hesiodic epics. In this way, it develops a model of sociopolitical integration of the elite and demos in the polis, which became possible through cooperation among the elites – also reflected in the epics.

The Great Inscription, its Political and Social Institutions, and the Common Institutions of the Cretans, in E. Greco and M. Lombardo (eds.), La Grande Iscrizione di Gortyna. Centoventi anni dopo la scoperta, Athens 2005, 175-194

In the eighth and seventh centuries Crete had been one of the most advanced regions in Greece. The Cretans adopted the alphabet very early; Cretan artists played a leading part in the development of Greek art, espe cially in the fields of metallurgy and stone sculpture; in the early seventh century they participated in colonisation, founding Gela together with the Rhodians; the Homeric hymn to Apollo associates the Cretans with the foundation of the sanctuary at Delphi. It is in this period of cosmopoli tanism and close contacts to the Orient, a period of a visible advance of trade, arts, and culture, that Crete seems to petrify. From the late seventh century onwards trade and arts do not disappear, but they certainly lost the innovative power they had had; the Cretan institutions do not keep pace with the developments in the rest of Greece; and although Crete was never isolated from the rest of Greece, its contacts with other Greek areas in the sixth and fifth centuries were not impressive. The decline of Crete as a cul tural pioneer in the Greek world goes hand in hand with the rise of its fame as a model of law and order. The Cretans did not any longer produce impressive works of art, but they produced more legal inscriptions than the rest of Greece taken together. 1 The age of innovation was followed by the age of delimitation; the age of experiments by the age of normativity and the prevention of change. The question I address in this paper is simple: Can we regard Crete as a homogeneous area of legal practices?

The inequality of homoioi. The conditions of political participation on Archaic and Classical Crete

originally published as "Die Ungleichheit der Homoioi. Bedingungen politischer Partizipation im archaisch-klassischen Kreta, Historische Zeitschrift 297, 2013, 320–53" (The original pagination is given in square brackets)

This paper explores why the demos of Cretan poleis in the Archaic and Classical Periods accepted hierarchical steering by political elites, despite the fact that the theoretical equality of all citizens was an essential element of their political imagination. All collectively binding decisions were made by a small circle of supreme magistrates and a council consisting of former magistrates; the citizen assembly, however, ratified these proposals – seemingly without any ability to debate or alter them – and took responsibility for them as the author of laws and decrees. A high degree of ethical homogeneity among political actors made this process possible. On the one hand, an identity-forging sense of solidarity among the citizens was fostered by the strict political exclusion of broad segments of the population; on the other, both written and unwritten laws regulated numerous aspects of public and private life. A rigid form of paideia organized by the polis, a system of age-classes, and the citizens’ participation in syssitia reproduced the hierarchical structures of the polis and ensured social obedience toward the authorities.

One Hundred-Citied Crete and the "Cretan ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ"

Classical Philology, 1992

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