Archaic Greece
(776 BC to 480 BC)
What happened?
The Archaic Greece was the period from the 8th century BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, after the battles of Plataea and Mykale. Everything changed in the fields of the economy and governance, military strategy and the emigration of a large part of the population. It was a time where the tyrant seized power. The word 'archaic', of Greek origin, comes from architecture, where this era precedes the architecture of Classical Greece engineering. Freely translated the word means 'from the beginning'. This was after the Dark Ages of Greece and succeeded by the Classical Period of Greece in the Classical Antiquity. The Greeks settled across the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, as far as Marseille in the west and Trapezus in the east. By the end of the Archaic Greece, they were part of a trade network that spanned the entire Mediterranean.
It all began with a massive increase of Greek population, plus a series of significant changes that rendered the Greek world entirely unrecognizable from the beginning. A revolution drew the political map of the Greek world and established poleis, distinctively Greek city-states. The intellectual revolution of the Classical Greece ended it.
During the time Greek politics, economics, international relations, warfare and culture saw developments. The groundwork for the Classical Greece was laid. The Greek alphabet was developed and the earliest surviving Greek literature was composed. Monumental sculpture and red-figure pottery began. These changes occurred due to the increasing population of Greece and its amount of trade that was increasing. This led to colonization and a new age of intellectual ideas, which Democracy was the most important. The famous hoplite became the core of Greek armies.
The earliest institutions of democracy were implemented under Solon in Athens. The reforms of Cleisthenes brought in Athenian democracy at the end of the period. In Sparta, many of the institutions credited to the reforms of Lycurgus, were introduced during the Archaic Period. The region of Messenia was brought under Spartan control. The Peloponnesian League was founded and made Sparta a dominant power in Greece.
Greek Amphora - Vase - Urn
± 800 BC to ± 480 BC
Pottery played a major role in everyday life in ancient Greece. It was used to store all kinds of products, such as wine, water, and olive oil. Usually, the pottery was decorated. Two well-known types of decoration are the red-figure pottery, where the figures are red and the background black, and the black-figure, where the colors are just the other way around. The red-figure technique is more modern.
In the 6th and 5th centuries BC Athens gained a monopoly on ceramic production. This was due to the careful finishing technique with solid materials, the typical clay that bakes orange-red and the art on the vase. The black-figure style, such as this vase, dates to 530 BC, with black silhouettes on an orange-red background, and was drawn archaic (= old-fashioned) in the beginning. The details were scratched and colored after firing with a hard marker. From this style onwards, the motifs applied are mythological scenes and scenes from everyday life. They give us a lot of information from that period.
Atlas was one of the children of the titan Iapetus in Greek mythology. Prometheus and Epimetheus were his brothers. During the war against Zeus, Atlas supported and guided the Titans. For this, Atlas was severely punished and sentenced to stand on Earth's Western edge, Gaia, and carry the vault of the sky, Uranus, on his shoulders. In this way, they could no longer maintain their original commitment.
Greek Large Arrow Head
± 600 BC to ± 300 BC
As with their forms of government, the Greeks had a specific fighting style of warfare. Greek soldiers were mostly small landowners who farmed their land. They were part of the privileged bourgeoisie, determined to defend their property by voluntarily serving as a foot soldier, a heavily armed hoplite. The archers had to support foot soldiers.
The battle in that period was decided by hoplites. Its name comes from ‘Hoplon’, which means ‘shield’. They were the heavily armed infantrymen. Greek soldiers fought in the phalanx order of battle. That means the soldiers protected themselves and the soldier to their left with their shields. They held a spear in their right hand.
A hoplite's equipment was called ‘panoplia’ (= all weapons). It consisted of a bronze helmet, a bronze cuirass (= breastplate), bronze shin plates or greaves (denda), a round shield (aspis), a spear (doru) and a short bronze sword (xiphos). Some also carried heavier hacking swords.
The dory or doru, was a long thrust spear of ± 2 - 3 meters, with a sharp point made of bronze or iron, mainly used in the phalanx. Due to the length of the spear, the second and third rows could stick their spear on the hoplite's shield in front of them. The shaft was normally made of ash wood. A pyramid-shaped bronze tip was attached to the underside of the spear to prop the spear into the ground or give the final blow to a fallen enemy. That point was also called the "lizard killer".