Irad Malkin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199734818
- eISBN:
- 9780199918553
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199734818.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE, European History: BCE to 500CE
Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period, when Greeks founded coastal city-states and ...
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Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period, when Greeks founded coastal city-states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion, and the settlements (“colonies”) originated from a multitude of mother cities. The “Greek center” was virtual, at sea, created as a back-ripple effect of cultural convergence following the physical divergence of independent settlements. “The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples” (Cicero). Overall and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making, and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors, such as the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between “center and periphery” hardly mattered (all was peri-, “around), nor was a bipolar contrast with barbarians of much significance. Rather, not only did Greek civilization constitute a decentralized network, but it also emerged, so this book claims, owing to its network attributes. Following a section on networks and history, it demonstrates its approach through case studies involving Rhodes, Sicily, the Far West (Phokaians), and the Phoenicians. The book concludes that it was a network dynamics of small worlds that rapidly foreshortened connectivity and multiplied links and hubs, thus allowing the flows of civilizational content and self-aware notions of identity to overlap and proliferate. Drawing on Mediterranean studies, ancient history, archeology, and network theory (especially in physics and sociology), this book offers a novel approach to historical interpretation.Less
Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period, when Greeks founded coastal city-states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion, and the settlements (“colonies”) originated from a multitude of mother cities. The “Greek center” was virtual, at sea, created as a back-ripple effect of cultural convergence following the physical divergence of independent settlements. “The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples” (Cicero). Overall and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making, and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors, such as the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between “center and periphery” hardly mattered (all was peri-, “around), nor was a bipolar contrast with barbarians of much significance. Rather, not only did Greek civilization constitute a decentralized network, but it also emerged, so this book claims, owing to its network attributes. Following a section on networks and history, it demonstrates its approach through case studies involving Rhodes, Sicily, the Far West (Phokaians), and the Phoenicians. The book concludes that it was a network dynamics of small worlds that rapidly foreshortened connectivity and multiplied links and hubs, thus allowing the flows of civilizational content and self-aware notions of identity to overlap and proliferate. Drawing on Mediterranean studies, ancient history, archeology, and network theory (especially in physics and sociology), this book offers a novel approach to historical interpretation.
Irad Malkin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199734818
- eISBN:
- 9780199918553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199734818.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses categories of long-, mid-, and short-distance connectivity in the Mediterranean in relation to Phokaian emporia (trading stations) and colonies (notably Massalia and Emporion). ...
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This chapter discusses categories of long-, mid-, and short-distance connectivity in the Mediterranean in relation to Phokaian emporia (trading stations) and colonies (notably Massalia and Emporion). Nodes that appear physically distant from each other were sometimes more rapidly connected because of reduced degrees of separation within the network, which itself lasted for centuries. Massalia, a coastal foundational colony, illustrates the maritime perspective and orientation (cf. Arles, by the River Rhône and oriented to the hinterland, was a mixed settlement). Conflicts over Alalia (Corsica) with Carthaginians and Etruscans indicate the transition from “many-to-many” networks to more hub-oriented networks as zones of influence. Regional clusters may contain not only hegemonic centers but also mixed settlements, some of which were founded in response to Greek settlement (“antipolis” foundations). It is a porous middle ground, both concretely and metaphorically, and it is the middle ground, with its material and cultural “dialogue” among various “actors” (as we see, e.g., at Emporion or in commercial transactions on lead tablets), that constitutes the “edges” of Mediterranean networks.Less
This chapter discusses categories of long-, mid-, and short-distance connectivity in the Mediterranean in relation to Phokaian emporia (trading stations) and colonies (notably Massalia and Emporion). Nodes that appear physically distant from each other were sometimes more rapidly connected because of reduced degrees of separation within the network, which itself lasted for centuries. Massalia, a coastal foundational colony, illustrates the maritime perspective and orientation (cf. Arles, by the River Rhône and oriented to the hinterland, was a mixed settlement). Conflicts over Alalia (Corsica) with Carthaginians and Etruscans indicate the transition from “many-to-many” networks to more hub-oriented networks as zones of influence. Regional clusters may contain not only hegemonic centers but also mixed settlements, some of which were founded in response to Greek settlement (“antipolis” foundations). It is a porous middle ground, both concretely and metaphorically, and it is the middle ground, with its material and cultural “dialogue” among various “actors” (as we see, e.g., at Emporion or in commercial transactions on lead tablets), that constitutes the “edges” of Mediterranean networks.
Irad Malkin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199734818
- eISBN:
- 9780199918553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199734818.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE, European History: BCE to 500CE
Self-aware networks of cults articulated circles of collective identity: the polis (here Phokaia), region (Ionia, the West), the subethnic “Phokaian” (Greeks in the west), “Ionian,” and the “Greek.” ...
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Self-aware networks of cults articulated circles of collective identity: the polis (here Phokaia), region (Ionia, the West), the subethnic “Phokaian” (Greeks in the west), “Ionian,” and the “Greek.” The Ionians in Asia Minor came there from the west; in the sixth century, facing Lydians and Persians, they considered going west (Sardinia). Movement and distance consolidate wider networks of belonging. The Phokaians established Apollo Delphinios in Massalia, to be common to all Ionians while expressing the opening of a “new land” for Greeks. Artemis Ephesia was also Anatolian (mother of the gods? Cybele?), her statue was aboriginal (the Amazons), and she was worshipped in Lydian Sardis. She was also the Ionian hegemônê, leader, with a pan-Ionian status particularly at Ephesos. An “Oriental” goddess now moved to the West with the Phokaians, and an Ephesian priestess, placed on promontories (“daylight houses), disseminated (exceptional in Greek religion) among non-Greeks (Iberians, Ligurians, Celts, and Romans), while copying her cult statue and rites. Her cult was part of an identifying set of nomima (with an excursus) taught “in the Greek way” (hellenisti). The Roman adoption of her statue (Aventine Diana) and dedications in the Massaliot treasury at the Panhellenic Delphi illustrate the intermeshing and widening of networks.Less
Self-aware networks of cults articulated circles of collective identity: the polis (here Phokaia), region (Ionia, the West), the subethnic “Phokaian” (Greeks in the west), “Ionian,” and the “Greek.” The Ionians in Asia Minor came there from the west; in the sixth century, facing Lydians and Persians, they considered going west (Sardinia). Movement and distance consolidate wider networks of belonging. The Phokaians established Apollo Delphinios in Massalia, to be common to all Ionians while expressing the opening of a “new land” for Greeks. Artemis Ephesia was also Anatolian (mother of the gods? Cybele?), her statue was aboriginal (the Amazons), and she was worshipped in Lydian Sardis. She was also the Ionian hegemônê, leader, with a pan-Ionian status particularly at Ephesos. An “Oriental” goddess now moved to the West with the Phokaians, and an Ephesian priestess, placed on promontories (“daylight houses), disseminated (exceptional in Greek religion) among non-Greeks (Iberians, Ligurians, Celts, and Romans), while copying her cult statue and rites. Her cult was part of an identifying set of nomima (with an excursus) taught “in the Greek way” (hellenisti). The Roman adoption of her statue (Aventine Diana) and dedications in the Massaliot treasury at the Panhellenic Delphi illustrate the intermeshing and widening of networks.
