Part 1 (1/2)

The Cla.s.sical World.

by ROBIN LANE FOX.

Preface.

It is a challenge to be asked to write a history of some nine hundred years, especially when the evidence is so scattered and diverse, but it is a challenge which I have enjoyed. I have not a.s.sumed a familiarity with the subject but I hope that readers who do or do not have one will be drawn in and retained by what I have had s.p.a.ce to discuss. My hope is that they will leave it, as I have, with a sense of how this history varied but can still be made to hang together. I also hope that there will be parts which they will want to pursue, especially the many which I have had to compress.

I have not followed the conventional thematic presentation of cla.s.sical civilization which discusses a topic ('a gendered world', 'getting a living') across a thousand years in a single chapter. For theoretical reasons, I have chosen a form with a framework of narrative. I believe that changing relations of power, sharply changed by events, changed the meaning and context of most of these themes and that these changes are lost by taking the easy thematic short-cut. My approach is shared in contemporary areas of medical thinking ('evidence based medicine'), the social sciences ('critical juncture theory') and literary studies ('discourse a.n.a.lysis'). I owe it, rather, to the hard old historical method of putting questions to evidence, reading with it (not against it) in order to bring out more of what it says and constantly retaining a sense of turning points and crucial decisions whose results were shaped, but not predetermined, by their context.

I have had to make hard choices and say little on areas where I feel I know most. One side of me still looks to Homer, another to the still-green orchards near Lefkadia in Macedonia where my vaulted tomb, painted with my three great horses, sixty-petalled roses, Bactrian dancing girls and apparently mythical women awaits discovery by the skilled ephors of the Greek Archaeological Service in 2056. I have chosen to give slightly more s.p.a.ce to narrative for one cardinal era, the years from 60 to 19 BC BC, not only because they are of such significance for the role of my a.s.sumed reader, the Emperor Hadrian. They are so dramatic, even to my post-Macedonian eye. They also attach initially to the letters of Cicero, the inexhaustible reward for all historians of the ancient world.

I am extremely grateful to Fiona Greenland for her expert help with ill.u.s.trations. The jacket was the publisher's choice, but the descriptions of the ill.u.s.trations are otherwise mostly mine. I am also very grateful to Stuart Proffitt for comments on the first part which forced me to go back over it, and to Elizabeth Stratford for expert copy-editing and correction. Above all, I am grateful to two former pupils who turned a ma.n.u.script into discs, Luke Streatfeild initially and especially Tamsin c.o.x whose skill and patience have been this book's essential support.

Robin Lane Fox New College, Oxford

Hadrian and the Cla.s.sical World

The following was [resolved]... by the council and people of the citizens of Thyatira: to inscribe this decree on a stone stele and to place it on the Acropolis (at Athens)so that it may [be] evident to all the Greeks how much Thyatira has received from the greatest of kings since... he (Hadrian) benefited all the Greeks in common when he summoned, as a gift to one and all, a council from among them to the most brilliant city of Athens, the Benefactress... and when, on his proposal, the [Romans] approved [this] most venerable Panh.e.l.lenion [by decree] of the Senate and individually he [gave] the tribes and the cities a share in this most honourable Council...

Inscribed decree, c. c. AD 119/20, AD 119/20, found at Athens, concerning Hadrian's Panh.e.l.lenion The 'cla.s.sical world' is the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, some forty lifetimes before our own but still able to challenge us by a humanity shared with ours. The word 'cla.s.sical' is itself of ancient origin: it derives from the Latin word cla.s.sicus cla.s.sicus which referred to recruits of the 'first cla.s.s', the heavy infantry in the Roman army. The 'cla.s.sical', then, is 'first cla.s.s', though it is no longer heavily armoured. The Greeks and Romans did borrow from many other cultures, Iranian, Levantine, Egyptian or Jewish among others. Their story connects at times with these parallel stories, but it is their own art and literature, thought, philosophy and political life which are correctly regarded as 'first cla.s.s' in their world and ours. which referred to recruits of the 'first cla.s.s', the heavy infantry in the Roman army. The 'cla.s.sical', then, is 'first cla.s.s', though it is no longer heavily armoured. The Greeks and Romans did borrow from many other cultures, Iranian, Levantine, Egyptian or Jewish among others. Their story connects at times with these parallel stories, but it is their own art and literature, thought, philosophy and political life which are correctly regarded as 'first cla.s.s' in their world and ours.

In this world's long history, two periods and places came to be seen as particularly cla.s.sical: Athens in the fifth- and fourth-century BC BC was one, while the other was Rome from the first century was one, while the other was Rome from the first century BC BC to to AD AD 14, the world of Julius Caesar and then Augustus, the first Roman emperor. The ancients themselves shared this perspective. By the time of Alexander the Great they already recognized, as we still do, that particular dramatists at Athens in the fifth century 14, the world of Julius Caesar and then Augustus, the first Roman emperor. The ancients themselves shared this perspective. By the time of Alexander the Great they already recognized, as we still do, that particular dramatists at Athens in the fifth century BC BC had written 'cla.s.sic' plays. In the h.e.l.lenistic age ( had written 'cla.s.sic' plays. In the h.e.l.lenistic age (c. 33030 33030 BC BC) artists and architects adopted a cla.s.sicizing style which looked back to the cla.s.sical arts of the fifth century. Then Rome, in the late first century BC BC, became a centre of cla.s.sicizing art and taste, while cla.s.sical Greek, especially Athenian Greek, was exalted as good taste against 'Eastern' excesses of style. Subsequent Roman emperors endorsed this cla.s.sical taste and as time pa.s.sed, added another 'cla.s.sic' age: the era of the Emperor Augustus, their Empire's founding figure.

My history of the cla.s.sical world begins from a pre-cla.s.sical cla.s.sic, the epic poet Homer whom the ancients, like all modern readers, acknowledge as simply in a cla.s.s of his own. His poems are the first written Greek literature to survive. From then onwards, I shall explore how cla.s.sical Greece of the fifth and fourth centuries BC BC evolved and what it stood for, up to four hundred years after Homer's (probable) date ( evolved and what it stood for, up to four hundred years after Homer's (probable) date (c. 730 730 BC BC). I then turn to Rome and the emergence of its own cla.s.sical age, from Julius Caesar to Augustus (c. 50 50 BC BC to to AD AD 14). My history ends with the reign of Hadrian, the Roman emperor from 14). My history ends with the reign of Hadrian, the Roman emperor from AD AD 117 to 138, just before the first surviving use of the term 'cla.s.sics' to describe the best authors: it is attested in the conversation of Fronto, tutor to the children of Hadrian's successor in Rome. 117 to 138, just before the first surviving use of the term 'cla.s.sics' to describe the best authors: it is attested in the conversation of Fronto, tutor to the children of Hadrian's successor in Rome.1 But why choose to stop with Hadrian? One reason is that 'cla.s.sical literature' ends in his reign, just as it began with Homer: in Latin, the satirical poet Juvenal is its last widely recognized representative. But this reason is rather arbitrary, formed by a canon which is hard for those to share who read forward into later authors and who approach the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries AD AD with an open mind. A more relevant reason is that Hadrian himself was the emperor with the most evident cla.s.sicizing tastes. They are seen in his plans for the city of Athens and in many of the buildings which he patronized, and in aspects of his personal style. He himself looked back self-consciously on a cla.s.sical world, although by his lifetime what we call the 'Roman world' had been pacified and greatly extended. Hadrian is a landmark, too, because he is the one emperor who acquired a first-hand view of this world, one we would dearly like to share. In the 120s and early 130s he set out on several grand tours of an Empire which extended from Britain to the Red Sea. He spent time in Athens, its cla.s.sical centre. He travelled by s.h.i.+p and on horseback, a seasoned rider in his mid-forties who revelled in local opportunities for hunting. He went far afield to lands under Roman rule which no 'cla.s.sical' Athenian had ever visited. We are unusually able to follow his progress because we have the specially commissioned coins which were struck to commemorate his journeys. Even in uncla.s.sical places, they are vivid witnesses to Hadrian and his contemporaries' sense of an admired cla.s.sical past. with an open mind. A more relevant reason is that Hadrian himself was the emperor with the most evident cla.s.sicizing tastes. They are seen in his plans for the city of Athens and in many of the buildings which he patronized, and in aspects of his personal style. He himself looked back self-consciously on a cla.s.sical world, although by his lifetime what we call the 'Roman world' had been pacified and greatly extended. Hadrian is a landmark, too, because he is the one emperor who acquired a first-hand view of this world, one we would dearly like to share. In the 120s and early 130s he set out on several grand tours of an Empire which extended from Britain to the Red Sea. He spent time in Athens, its cla.s.sical centre. He travelled by s.h.i.+p and on horseback, a seasoned rider in his mid-forties who revelled in local opportunities for hunting. He went far afield to lands under Roman rule which no 'cla.s.sical' Athenian had ever visited. We are unusually able to follow his progress because we have the specially commissioned coins which were struck to commemorate his journeys. Even in uncla.s.sical places, they are vivid witnesses to Hadrian and his contemporaries' sense of an admired cla.s.sical past.2 These coins show a personified image of each province of Hadrian's Roman Empire, whether or not it had had a cla.s.sical age. They show uncla.s.sical Germany as a bare-breasted female warrior and uncla.s.sical Spain as a lady reclining on the ground: she holds a large olive-branch, symbol of Spain's excellent olive oil, with a rabbit beside her, Spanish rabbits being notoriously prolific. Most of Spain and all of Germany had been unknown to Greeks in the first cla.s.sical age, but the fine pictures on these coins connect them to cla.s.sical taste because they portray them in an elegant cla.s.sicizing style. Behind Hadrian's taste and the 'Hadrianic School' of artists who designed these images lies a cla.s.sical world which they themselves were acknowledging. It was based on the cla.s.sical art of the Greeks four or five hundred years earlier, examples of which could be admired conveniently by Romans because previous Romans had plundered them and brought them back to their own homes and cities.

These grand tours to Greece or Egypt, the west coast of Asia or Sicily and Libya gave Hadrian the chance of a global, cla.s.sical overview. He stopped at so many of the great sites of its past, but he was particularly respectful of Athens. He regarded it as a 'free' city and made it the spectacular beneficiary of his gifts, one of which was a grand 'library', with a hundred pillars of rare marble. He completed its enormous temple to the Olympian G.o.d Zeus which had been begun six centuries earlier but never finished. It was surely Hadrian who encouraged the new venture of an all-Greek synod, or Panh.e.l.lenion, excelling even the cla.s.sical Athenian statesman Pericles.3 From all over the Greek world, delegates were to meet in Athens, and were to hold a great festival of the arts and athletics every four years. Past Athenians had been credited with Panh.e.l.lenic projects, but this one was to be incomparably grand. From all over the Greek world, delegates were to meet in Athens, and were to hold a great festival of the arts and athletics every four years. Past Athenians had been credited with Panh.e.l.lenic projects, but this one was to be incomparably grand.

Those who idealize the past tend not to understand it: restoration kills it with kindness. Hadrian certainly shared the traditional pleasures of past Greek aristocrats and kings. He loved hunting as they had; he loved his horse, the gallant Borysthenes whom he honoured with verses on his death in southern Gaul;4 above all, he loved the young male Antinous, a spectacular instance of 'Greek love'. When Antinous died prematurely, Hadrian built a new city in his honour in Egypt and encouraged his cult as a G.o.d throughout his Empire. Not even Alexander the Great had done quite so much for his lifelong male love, Hephaestion. Like Hadrian's distinctive beard, these elements of Hadrian's life were rooted in previous Greek culture. But he could never be a cla.s.sical Greek himself, because so much around him had changed since the Athens of the great cla.s.sics, let alone since the pre-cla.s.sical Homer. above all, he loved the young male Antinous, a spectacular instance of 'Greek love'. When Antinous died prematurely, Hadrian built a new city in his honour in Egypt and encouraged his cult as a G.o.d throughout his Empire. Not even Alexander the Great had done quite so much for his lifelong male love, Hephaestion. Like Hadrian's distinctive beard, these elements of Hadrian's life were rooted in previous Greek culture. But he could never be a cla.s.sical Greek himself, because so much around him had changed since the Athens of the great cla.s.sics, let alone since the pre-cla.s.sical Homer.

The most audible change was the spread of language. Almost a thousand years earlier, in Homer's youth, Greek had been only a spoken language without an alphabet, and was only used by people from Greece and the Aegean. Latin, too, had been only a spoken language, at home in a small part of Italy, Latium, around Rome. But Hadrian spoke and read both languages, although his family traced back on both sides to southern Spain and his father's estates lay just to the north of modern Seville, miles from Athens and Latium. Hadrian's ancestors had settled in Spain as Latin-speaking Italians, rewarded for service in the Roman army nearly three hundred years before his birth. Of Latin-speaking descent, Hadrian was not 'Spanish' in any cultural sense. He himself had been brought up in Rome and favoured the archaic style of Latin prose. Like other educated Romans, he also spoke Greek: he was even known as a 'Greekling' because his pa.s.sion for Greek literature was so strong. So far from being Spanish, Hadrian was proof of the common cla.s.sicizing culture which now bound together the emperor's educated cla.s.s. It was based on the cla.s.sical homelands of the Greek and Latin language but it extended way beyond their boundaries. As Homer never could, Hadrian could pa.s.s through Syria or Egypt speaking Greek and he could also travel far away into Britain, speaking Latin.

His cla.s.sicizing mind surveyed a world of quite a different scale to Homer's. In the first cla.s.sical age, Athens, at its height, had contained perhaps 300,000 residents in its Attic territory, including slaves. By Hadrian's day, the Roman Empire is estimated (no more) to have had a population of about 60 million, extending from Scotland to Spain, from Spain to Armenia. No other empire, before or since, has ruled this great span of territory, but, on our modern scale, its total population was no greater than modern Britain's. It was concentrated in patches, maybe as many as 8 million in Egypt,5 where the river Nile and the grain harvest supported such a density, and at least a million, perhaps, in the mega-city of Rome which was also fed and supported by Egypt's harvests and its exported grain. Outside these two points, whole swathes of Hadrian's Empire were very thinly populated by our standards. Nonetheless, they required, in every province, detachments of the Roman army to keep the peace. Hadrian favoured many cities on his travels, but he also had to rule large areas which only had villages, not cla.s.sicizing towns at all. Where necessary, he ordered large stretches of walling to regulate peoples beyond the Empire, a most uncla.s.sical project. The most famous is Hadrian's Wall, in northern Britain, running from Wallsend near Newcastle westwards to Bowness. A ma.s.sive barrier, it was ten feet thick and fourteen feet high, partly faced in stone with 'intercastles' every mile, two signalling turrets between them and a ditch on the north side, ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. There were other 'Hadrian's walls' too, though nowadays they are less famous. In north Africa, beyond the Aures mountains of modern Tunisia, Hadrian approved stretches of walling and ditching which were to control contacts with the nomadic peoples of the desert along a frontier of some 150 miles. In north-west Europe, in upper Germany, he well understood the danger: here, he 'shut off the barbarians by tall stakes fixed deeply into the ground and fastened together like a palisade'. where the river Nile and the grain harvest supported such a density, and at least a million, perhaps, in the mega-city of Rome which was also fed and supported by Egypt's harvests and its exported grain. Outside these two points, whole swathes of Hadrian's Empire were very thinly populated by our standards. Nonetheless, they required, in every province, detachments of the Roman army to keep the peace. Hadrian favoured many cities on his travels, but he also had to rule large areas which only had villages, not cla.s.sicizing towns at all. Where necessary, he ordered large stretches of walling to regulate peoples beyond the Empire, a most uncla.s.sical project. The most famous is Hadrian's Wall, in northern Britain, running from Wallsend near Newcastle westwards to Bowness. A ma.s.sive barrier, it was ten feet thick and fourteen feet high, partly faced in stone with 'intercastles' every mile, two signalling turrets between them and a ditch on the north side, ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. There were other 'Hadrian's walls' too, though nowadays they are less famous. In north Africa, beyond the Aures mountains of modern Tunisia, Hadrian approved stretches of walling and ditching which were to control contacts with the nomadic peoples of the desert along a frontier of some 150 miles. In north-west Europe, in upper Germany, he well understood the danger: here, he 'shut off the barbarians by tall stakes fixed deeply into the ground and fastened together like a palisade'.6 Global walling had never been part of the cla.s.sical past. In the age of Athens' greatness, let alone of Homer's, there had never been a single ruler like Hadrian, an emperor, nor a standing army, like Rome's, of some 500,000 soldiers throughout the Empire. In the cla.s.sical age of Rome, the mid-first century BC BC, there had not yet been an emperor or standing army, either. Hadrian was heir to historical changes which had transformed Roman history. Hadrian respected the cla.s.sical Greek and Roman past and, wherever he went, he visited great relics of it, but did he understand the context in which it had once belonged, how it had evolved and how his own role as emperor had come about?

Certainly, Hadrian was famous for a love of 'curiosities' and an exploration of them.7 On his travels, he climbed volcanic Etna in Sicily and other conspicuous mountains; he consulted ancient oracles of the G.o.ds; he visited the tourist wonders of long-dead ancient Egypt. With a tourist's mind, he was also a cultural magpie who stored and imitated what he saw. Back in Italy, near Tivoli, he built himself an enormous, straggling villa whose features alluded explicitly to great cultural monuments of the ancient Greek past. Hadrian's villa was a vast theme-park which included buildings evocative of Alexandria and cla.s.sical Athens. On his travels, he climbed volcanic Etna in Sicily and other conspicuous mountains; he consulted ancient oracles of the G.o.ds; he visited the tourist wonders of long-dead ancient Egypt. With a tourist's mind, he was also a cultural magpie who stored and imitated what he saw. Back in Italy, near Tivoli, he built himself an enormous, straggling villa whose features alluded explicitly to great cultural monuments of the ancient Greek past. Hadrian's villa was a vast theme-park which included buildings evocative of Alexandria and cla.s.sical Athens.8 At this villa, after his beloved Antinous' death, he turned to writing his own autobiography. Almost nothing of it survives, but we can guess that it would have combined affectionate tributes to his male lover with a furtherance of his own urbane self-image. Hadrian was interested by philosophy and perhaps, in an Epicurean manner, he would have consoled himself against the fear of death.9 What he would not have done was to a.n.a.lyse the historical changes behind all that he had seen on his travels, from Homer to cla.s.sical Athens, from Alexander the Great's great Alexandria to the former splendours of Carthage (a city which he renamed Hadrianopolis after himself). Hadrian took the first emperor, Augustus, as his role-model, but he never seems to have wondered how Augustus' one-man rule had imposed itself on Rome after more than four hundred years of highly prized liberty. What he would not have done was to a.n.a.lyse the historical changes behind all that he had seen on his travels, from Homer to cla.s.sical Athens, from Alexander the Great's great Alexandria to the former splendours of Carthage (a city which he renamed Hadrianopolis after himself). Hadrian took the first emperor, Augustus, as his role-model, but he never seems to have wondered how Augustus' one-man rule had imposed itself on Rome after more than four hundred years of highly prized liberty.

This book aims to answer these questions for Hadrian and the many who are heirs to his sort of engagement, who travel in the cla.s.sical world, who look at cla.s.sical sites and who like to acknowledge that a 'cla.s.sical age' existed, even among the competing claims of ever more cultures around the world. It is a choice of highlights and it has least to say on subjects which would have concerned Hadrian least: the range of Greek kingdoms after Alexander the Great and, above all, the years of the Roman Republic between its sack of Carthage (146 BC BC) and the reforms of the dictator Sulla (81/0 BC BC). By contrast, the Athens of Pericles and Socrates and the Rome of Caesar and Augustus claim the limelight, as 'cla.s.sical' points in the past to which Hadrian attached himself.

Historians in Hadrian's own Empire were not unaware of the changes since these eras. Some of them tried to explain them, and their answers did not simply list military victories and members of Rome's imperial family. Part of the story of the cla.s.sical world is the invention and development of history-writing itself. Nowadays, historians try to apply sophisticated theories to the understanding of these changes, economics and sociology, geography and ecology, theories of cla.s.s and gender, the power of symbols or demographic models for populations and their age groups. In antiquity, these theories of ours were not explicit, or did not even exist. Instead, historians had favourite themes of their own, of which three were particularly prominent: freedom, justice and luxury. Our modern theories can deepen these ancient explanatory themes, but they do not entirely supplant them. I have chosen to emphasize these three because they were in the minds of the actors at the time and a part of the way in which events were seen, even when they do not suffice for our understanding of historical change.

Each of them is a flexible concept whose scope varies. Freedom, for us, entails choice and, for many people nowadays, implies autonomy or a power of independent decision. 'Autonomy' is a word invented by the ancient Greeks, but for them it had a clear political context: it began as the word for a community's self-government, a protected degree of freedom in the face of an outside power which was strong enough to infringe it. Its first surviving application to an individual is to a woman, Antigone, in drama.10 Freedom, too, was a political value, but it was sharpened everywhere by its opposite status, slavery. From Homer onwards, communities valued freedom in the face of enemies who would otherwise enslave them. Within a community, freedom then became a value of political const.i.tutions: alternatives were denounced as 'slavery'. Above all, freedom was the prized status of individuals, marking them off from slaves who were to be bought and sold. But, outside slavery, in what did an individual's freedom consist? Did it require freedom of speech or freedom to wors.h.i.+p whatever G.o.ds one chose? Was it the freedom to live as one pleased, or simply a freedom from interference? When did 'liberty' become wicked 'licence'? These questions had all been discussed by the time of Hadrian, who was hailed both as a liberator and as a G.o.d by Greeks among his subjects. Freedom, too, was a political value, but it was sharpened everywhere by its opposite status, slavery. From Homer onwards, communities valued freedom in the face of enemies who would otherwise enslave them. Within a community, freedom then became a value of political const.i.tutions: alternatives were denounced as 'slavery'. Above all, freedom was the prized status of individuals, marking them off from slaves who were to be bought and sold. But, outside slavery, in what did an individual's freedom consist? Did it require freedom of speech or freedom to wors.h.i.+p whatever G.o.ds one chose? Was it the freedom to live as one pleased, or simply a freedom from interference? When did 'liberty' become wicked 'licence'? These questions had all been discussed by the time of Hadrian, who was hailed both as a liberator and as a G.o.d by Greeks among his subjects.

The concept of justice had been no less contested. It was claimed by rulers, including Hadrian, and even in the age of Homer it was ascribed to idealized 'just' communities. Did the G.o.ds care for it or was the hard truth that justice was not a value which shaped their dealings with mortals? What was justice, philosophers had long wondered; was it 'giving each his due' or was it receiving one's deserts, perhaps because of behaviour in a previous life? Was equality just, and if so, what sort of equality? The 'same for one and all' or a 'proportional equality', which varied according to each person's riches or social cla.s.s?11 What system guaranteed it, one of laws applied by juries of randomly chosen citizens or one of laws applied and created by a single judge, a governor perhaps or the emperor himself? Much of Hadrian's own energy was spent on judging and answering pet.i.tions, the process through which we know him best. His answers to cities and subjects in his Empire sometimes survive where recipients inscribed them on stone. What system guaranteed it, one of laws applied by juries of randomly chosen citizens or one of laws applied and created by a single judge, a governor perhaps or the emperor himself? Much of Hadrian's own energy was spent on judging and answering pet.i.tions, the process through which we know him best. His answers to cities and subjects in his Empire sometimes survive where recipients inscribed them on stone.12 Others of his rulings survive in Latin collections of legal opinions. There is even a separate collection of Hadrian's own 'opinions' which were his answers to pet.i.tioners and were preserved as school exercises for translation into Greek. Others of his rulings survive in Latin collections of legal opinions. There is even a separate collection of Hadrian's own 'opinions' which were his answers to pet.i.tioners and were preserved as school exercises for translation into Greek.13 In the cla.s.sical Greek age, no Pericles or Demosthenes had answered pet.i.tions or given responses with the force of law. In the cla.s.sical Greek age, no Pericles or Demosthenes had answered pet.i.tions or given responses with the force of law.

Like justice and freedom, luxury was a term with a very flexible history. Where exactly does luxury begin? According to the novelist Edith Wharton, luxury is the acquisition of something which one does not need, but where do 'needs' end? For the fas.h.i.+on-designer Coco Chanel, luxury was a more positive value, whose opposite, she used to say, is not poverty, but vulgarity; in her view, 'luxury is not showy'. Certainly, it invites double standards. Throughout history, from Homer to Hadrian, laws were pa.s.sed to limit it and thinkers saw it as soft or corrupting or even as socially subversive. But the range of luxury and the demands for it went on multiplying despite the voices attacking it. Around luxury we can write a history of cultural change, enhanced by archaeology which gives us proofs of its extent, whether the bits of blue lapis lazuli imported in the pre-Homeric world (by origin, all from north-east Afghanistan) or rubies in the Near East imported after Alexander (they are shown, by a.n.a.lysis, to have come ultimately from unknown Burma).

By the time of the cla.s.sicizing Hadrian, the political freedoms of the past cla.s.sical age had diminished. Justice, to our eyes, had become much less fair, but luxuries, from foods to furnis.h.i.+ngs, had proliferated. How did these changes occur and how, if at all, do they interrelate? Their setting had been intensely political, as the context of power and political rights changed tumultuously across the generations, to a degree which sets this era apart from the centuries of monarchy or oligarchy in so much subsequent history. If this era is studied thematically, through chapters on 's.e.x' or 'armies' or 'the city-state', it is reduced to a false, static unity and 'culture' is detached from its formative context, the contested, changing relations of power. So this history follows the threads of a changing story, within which its three main themes have a changing resonance. Sometimes it is a history of great decisions, taken by (male) individuals but always in a setting of thousands of individual lives. Some of these lives, off the 'grand narrative', are known to us from words which people inscribed on durable materials, the lives of victorious athletes or fond owners of named racehorses, the lady in Alexander the Great's home town who had a curse written out against her hoped-for lover and his preferred Thetima ('may he marry n.o.body except me'), or the sad owner of a piglet which had trotted by his chariot all the way down the road to Thessalonica, only to be run over at Edessa and killed in an accident at the crossroads.14 Scores of these individuals surface yearly in newly studied Greek and Latin inscriptions whose surviving fragments stretch scholars' skills, but whose contents enhance the diversity of the ancient world. From Homer to Hadrian, our knowledge of the cla.s.sical world is not standing still, and this book is an attempt to follow its highways as Hadrian, its great global traveller, never did. Scores of these individuals surface yearly in newly studied Greek and Latin inscriptions whose surviving fragments stretch scholars' skills, but whose contents enhance the diversity of the ancient world. From Homer to Hadrian, our knowledge of the cla.s.sical world is not standing still, and this book is an attempt to follow its highways as Hadrian, its great global traveller, never did.

PART ONE.

The Archaic Greek World.

In Mainland Greece, the Archaic Age was a time of extreme personal insecurity. The tiny overpopulated states were just beginning to struggle up out of the misery and impoverishment left behind by the Dorian invasions when fresh trouble arose: whole cla.s.ses were ruined by the great economic crisis of the seventh century, and this in turn was followed by the great political conflicts of the sixth, which translated the economic crisis into terms of murderous cla.s.s warfare... Nor is it accidental that in this age the doom overhanging the rich and powerful becomes so popular a theme with the poets...

E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), 545 (1951), 545 The close personal a.s.sociation of the upper cla.s.ses at this time was a tremendous force in promoting the lightning swiftness of contemporary change; in intellectual outlook the upper cla.s.ses seem scarcely to have boggled at any novelty. With remarkable openness of mind and lack of prejudice they supported the cultural expansion which underlay cla.s.sical achievements and much of later western civilization. Great ma.s.ses of superst.i.tion and magic trailed down into historic times from the primitive Dark Ages... That past, as exemplified in the epics, was not dismissed in its most fundamental aspects, but writers, artists and thinkers felt free to explore and enlarge their horizons. The proximate cause, without doubt, was the aristocratic domination of life.