The author’s aim is to identify the factors that brought about the Classical Greek city-state, which he defines by three primary characteristics: military defence of the city-state based on the participation of a broad subset of the male population (the spear of the title); a political system based to some extent on egalitarian principles (the pebble); and, finally, widespread literacy, seen by the author as a prerequisite for informed participation in the political life of the polis (the scroll). The book is divided into five chapters with three appendices, the first two chapters dealing with the origins (1) and economic development (2) of the city-state. Chapters 3-5 discuss the military aspect, the role of collective decision-making and the importance and degree of literacy, respectively.
Chapter 1 examines Greek political development exemplified by five different types of society in the Archaic and Classical periods. An Urform, supposedly seen as more “backward and primitive” by the likes of Thucydides and Aristotle (p. 6), is referred to as the ethnos model, exemplified by Phokis: tribal societies without an urban centre and consisting of villages and other settlement types, which nevertheless remained prevalent in mainland Greece well into the Classical period and covered “virtually the whole of the northern and central regions (Macedonia, Epeiros, Thessaly, Akarnania, Aitolia, Lokris, Phokis, and even to some extent Boiotia) and much of the Peloponnesos (Achaia, most of Arkadia, and after a fashion Elis)” (p. 7). Billows notes (n. 22) that LSJ “unfortunately […] overlooks the political sense of the word, roughly translatable as ‘tribal state,’” just as there is no RE entry on it (p. 17 n. 9). It may be added that the same applies to the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, and in fact it is not easy to find this lexical definition anywhere: the reason may be that ethnos (as opposed to koinon) in fact does not reliably imply any particular type of political entity.[1] The word polis in a Phokian context, so Billows, can only mean town “for the simple reason that none of these poleis ever acted as an independent political community […]” (p. 30). But this seems too dismissive: at least, J. McInerney took the Phokian ethnos itself to be a late phenomenon, the local identity of the poleis of Phokis being of prime importance.[2] To take but one similar example, Arkadia was rife with poleis—no fewer than 40—acting as independent political entities.[3] An evolutionary approach is also applied to what are termed centrifugal and centripetal models: the former is illustrated by Thebes, whose struggle to control the Boiotian koinon is seen as an attempt to subsume the recalcitrant Boiotian poleis into a Theban superstate. The two subtypes of the centripetal model are exemplified by Athens and Sparta, who consolidated power centrally, though in radically different ways.
Chapter 2 assesses the economic development of early poleis, starting with a fascinating broad-scope assessment of the climatological and geological conditions in Greece and their significance for agriculture. Billows links the transition from nomadism and transhumance to crop agriculture with urbanisation in the emerging polis, and the need for a more diversified economy: localised specialisation, along with an increased demand for consumption given the growing number of landowners, brought about the exchange of surplus products and services. This fostered an economy that was, from early on, more diversified, monetised and trade-based than is normally admitted, including long-distance maritime trade. An overview of the costs of living, and of a low to average income, is illuminating and gives a welcome perspective on how the poorer people might manage day-to-day life, even if Athenocentric sources largely from the Classical period are pressed into service to cover the Greek world in its entirety and span the Archaic to the early Hellenistic period.
Chapter 3 deals with citizen participation in the defence of the polis. The developmental point of departure here is, as often in the book, the Homeric poems. In this instance, the duels between chieftains which make up the bulk of the fighting in the Iliad are taken as representative of an earlier, aristocratic system, which was supplanted by egalitarian armies of hoplites—essentially a ‘middle class’ in mass formation,[4] keeping pace with the broadening of land ownership. While this development is in itself plausible, the author’s faith in the Homeric poems—which are frequently cited as a consistent and accurate representation of society at their supposed date of composition (taken to be 750–700 BC: p. 19 n. 18)—sometimes forces some less fortunate conclusions. Thus, the undeniable elements of massed fighting in the Iliad documented by J. Latacz[5] are dismissed as “anachronistic revision or interpolation” (p. 93), because they are no easy fit with the aristocratic duels. Yet one would think that such is to be expected with an oral tradition where “orally composing bards like ‘Homer’ inevitably portray their stories and characters in terms of the ideas, outlooks, and ways of doing things they and their audiences are familiar with” (p. 87), but must at the same time include load-bearing narrative elements from the tradition: the poems are literature, products of a long and malleable oral tradition, not historiography, and complete consistency cannot be expected. But since the hoplite shield is not attested before c. 700, it cannot figure in the poems (p. 91 and n. 41);[6] the hoplite revolution becomes a necessity because massed fighting cannot have existed before, or it would appear in the poems (it does, but is an interpolation [pp. 93–102]). And so Billows suggests that hoplite weapons and armour were invented ex nihilo for aristocratic duel purposes, but fortuitously proved ideal for the suddenly emerging phalanx, which may have been invented by a prōtos heuretēs (possibly Pheidon of Argos (pp. 99–100).
Chapter 4 argues that military participation enabled citizens to claim a share in the political decision-making of the polis, not only in Athens, but also in differently structured states such as Sparta and Boiotia. This underlines the correct observation made at the outset (p. 4): the Greeks never conceived of a state in the abstract, but one made up of the totality of its male citizens: political decisions were made by hoi Athenaioi, not ‘Athens’. On this it builds the trenchant observation that oligarchies and democracies were not so structurally different after all: the collective—the assembly—was always the sovereign element, differing mainly in how narrowly citizenship was defined. After an overview of early Greek political theory (and a surprising reading of the ‘Old Oligarch’ as “behind a masquerade of traditionalist attack […] in fact a sophistic defense of democracy as a valid governing system” [p. 118]), Billows posits a citizen mass informed about the community’s laws, policies and agreements as a requirement for proper participation, so that each citizen “has to have knowledge of what these laws, policies, agreements and so on are” (p. 128).
Chapter 5 deals with this question, making no bones about the conclusion from the outset: literacy must have been widespread in order to address this need, and the attendance of schools teaching reading and writing in fact compulsory for future citizens. Plato (Crito) and Aischines are cited in support of this view, but apart from the fact that the childhoods of Sokrates and Aischines are separated by 80 years, it cannot be inferred from these sources that education was compulsory—just that regulation existed for such education as there was. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand Aristotle’s grumble at Politics 1337a 21–26, that “[e]ducation too must be one and the same for all, and […] its supervision must be communal, not private as it is at present, when each individual supervises his own children privately and gives them whatever private instruction he thinks best.”[7] As Billows states, the Greek alphabet made achieving very basic or craft literacy comparatively easy (p. 141), so that it could be picked up in a year or two (p. 146)—which may nevertheless have been a considerable leisure requirement for the poorer subsets. Still, as Protagoras presents it, synēsein ta gegrammena is quite a step up from ta grammata mathein.[8] It is by no means certain that laws and decrees were meant to be read by all, or that being informed meant being au fait with them all: by being posted, they became fixed and tangible, accessible for consultation (as Billows suggests for, e.g., treaties, p. 133). But literacy was not a requirement for participation in juries, councils or assemblies, where business was conducted orally, and thus not a necessity for ‘sharing in the constitution.’
In the conclusion, Billows synthesises his three prerequisites for the citizen collective and—with support in modern neuroscience (only introduced at this point, pp. 179–82)—singles out mass literacy as the crucial factor, to the point that reading and writing actually rewired ancient Greek brains and enabled them to think of themselves as possessing a “narrative identity” (pp. 180–2), and engendering critical thinking.
The book, which is aimed not solely at specialists, is clearly written and an enjoyable and stimulating read, in no small part thanks to Billows’ evident enthusiasm. While not presenting new data, it succeeds in reshuffling the cards, thereby eliciting interesting questions and pointing the way to similar investigative approaches to polis society, e.g. by including other aspects than the male warrior-citizen collective—slaves, women and other marginalised groups that certainly also defined society and perspectives in the city-state. Less fortunately, the thrust of the argument sometimes veers toward the teleological, and earlier periods sometimes feel like stepping-stones on the way to the ‘reference standard’ of the fully developed Classical polis and the fusing of spear, scroll and pebble. This is reinforced by the priority given to Classical and later sources: to give an example, the discussion of policy-making skips from Homer directly to Herodotos, bypassing, e.g., Archilochos, Theognis and Solon (pp. 107–16).
I noted relatively few errors or misprints.[9] Unfortunately, the editors have opted for endnotes (not continuous either, but starting over at every chapter), containing abbreviated citations, to be found in the bibliography. Consequently, the reader must turn pages twice for every reference, which hampers reading flow and immersion. Missing hyphenation sometimes makes for awkwardly spaced lines.
Notes
[1] See C. Morgan, Early Greek States Beyond the Polis. London & New York 2003: 7–8.
[2] J. McInerney, The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis. Austin 1999: 134–35.
[3] See T.H. Nielsen, Arkadia and Its Poleis in the Archaic and Classical Periods. Göttingen 2002: 309–411.
[4] See, however, H. van Wees, “The Myth of the Middle-Class Army: Military and Social Status in Ancient Athens,” in T. Bekker-Nielsen & L. Hannestad (eds.), War as a Cultural and Social Force. Essays on Warfare in Antiquity. Copenhagen 2001.
[5] Il. 4.274–82; 4.422–29; 7.61–66; 8.60–63; 11.592–95; 12.105–7; 13.128–33; 13.795–801; 15.615–16; 16.210–17; 17.262–71; 17.354–55; 17.364–65; J. Latacz, Kampfparänese, Kampfdarstellung und Kampfwirklichkeit in der Ilias bei Kallinos und Tyrtaios. Munich 1977.
[6] For a selection of the rich variation of shield types comprising both round shields and large body shields consistent with Mycenaean and Minoan types, see Il. 5.182; 5.452–53; 6.117–18; 7.219-23; 8.192–93; 8.266–70; 11.485; 12.425–26; 13.611; 14.371; 14.402–6; 15.645–48; 17.128; 20.267–72, 20.279–81; 21.581; 22.294.
[7] Reeve transl.
[8] Pl. Prot. 325e–326a, and see D.M. Pritchard, “Athens”, in W.M. Bloomer (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education. Chichester (2015), at 117–21.
[9] Chiefly missing are diacritics (absent in mentalité, manqué, entrepôt, régime, cité, Lovén); “polias” (p. 8 n. 30) for poleis; “Nonnius” (p. 152) for Nonnus; p. 87 n. 19 appears to be a defective URL. The word “tyranneia” (p. 107) does not exist: tyrannis must be meant.