BMCR 2025.10.02

Le monde des Grecs au VIe siècle avant J.-C.

, , , Le monde des Grecs au VIe siècle avant J.-C. PUR-Référence. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024. Pp. 752. ISBN 9782753595736.

Review by

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

 

This volume collects 27 chapters on thematic topics in the sixth-century Greek world, joined by a brief introduction and longer concluding chapter by the editorial team on the question of the character of this century. The chapters are divided into three parts: Acteurs et pratiques, Espaces et circulations, and Écarts et systèmes. The chapters in the first part join an actor and a theme (e.g., Chapter 3 “Le marchand et le risque”); in the second, they address features of the landscape and movement through it (e.g., Chapter 11, “Colonnes, colonnades et paysages urbains”); and in the third, more abstract ideas such as the Greeks’ changing perception of themselves in the world (e.g., Chapter 27, Distances et confins).

This book is a part of the series PUR Référence, which the frontmatter describes as intended for researchers, students, professionals, and the educated public. On the publisher’s website, the volume bears such tags as “manuels et concours,” “agrégation histoire,” and “preparation aux concours.” While this is never stated in the volume, I suspect that it is intended as an aide for students preparing for the agrégation in history, the competitive examination for a career in secondary and university teaching within the French education system.[1] The new ancient history question added for the 2026 competition will be “Labor in ancient Greece during the archaic and classical periods (8th–4th centuries BCE),” and many chapters of this book reflect that prompt, which advocates a broad approach to labor and its social implications.[2] However, the topics treated also go beyond these parameters, and it is worth considering to what degree an audience not preparing for the agrégation will find value and interest in this book.

Above all, this volume is accessible. Most chapters are quite short (fewer than twenty pages) and all Greek is transliterated and/or translated, although a few of the authors also quote the Greek text in footnotes. Specialist debates are alluded to rather than relitigated,[3] and the emphasis is on providing an up-to-date portrait grounded in the source material. All of the contributions are richly illustrated with high-quality color images, which elucidate the concepts discussed while breaking up the walls of text.

Rather than treating the chapters individually, I would like to devote a few words to commenting on the significance of the volume for our understanding of the sixth century and the archaic period more broadly. The editors begin by acknowledging the inclination of historians to think in terms of slices of time, often on the scale of a century. Within this framework, they lament that the sixth century has been relatively neglected and is generally overpowered by the attention devoted to the centuries that surround it: either subsumed within the wider archaic period, or seen as less deserving of individual attention than the fifth and fourth (7). At the same time, they advocate a “long sixth century” (10) from the late seventh into the early fifth. One might reasonably ask whether the sixth century is neglected, or if the archaic period is merely a span of time in which our ability to think along the scale of a century is often impractical if not impossible.

A running theme of the volume is precisely this question of chronological scale. The title of the concluding chapter, “D’un Mégaklès à l’autre,” alludes to the Megakles who oversaw the execution of Cylon and his partisans (630s BCE), the Megakles who opposed Peisistratus (550s), and the Megakles who was ostracized (487/6). These homonymous figures reflect the changing parameters in which individual power was regulated and highlight how thinking across the scale of a long century (e.g., 630–487 BCE) can be thematically revealing (638–639). The editors note that one can think using the scale of a century while being aware of its limitations. For instance, over the course of a century, agricultural conditions are unlikely to change, but institutional ones might (e.g., the status of Attic peasants after Solon, or the formalization of helotage, 622–623). In fact, one of the strengths of the volume is that it combines approaches closely tied to century-level thinking with others that transcend this span of time; this creates an impression of the sixth century as part of a much broader history rather than a chronological period to be treated in isolation. The volume effectively deconstructs the century-scale thinking that it purports to champion.

Given this meta-historical framework, it is surprising that the volume does not treat the historiographic problem of archaic Greece. For some, the archaic period is above all defined by a shortage of information: it is a world with writing, but not a world of writing, and lacks the kind of narratives of political history that characterize, for instance, classical Greece.[4] Individual chapters are explicit about the difficulties of the source material, but the volume contains no overarching discussion devoted to the unique parameters of sixth-century historiography.

Despite the critique that the sixth century is lumped in with the archaic period rather than treated individually (7 n. 3), for many topics the sixth century is the archaic period. For example, in the arena of government, the sixth-century material dwarfs that of the seventh century. It is only in the sixth century—and usually the second half—that inscribed laws survive in any meaningful number.[5] Prosopography offers another proxy for comparison. While we can surely name fewer individuals of the sixth century than the fifth, the density of information relative to the seventh century is striking.[6] This makes it difficult to countenance claims that processions and definitions of status, to take just two examples, are characteristic sixth-century phenomena (thus 624–625). The question of whether one observes a phenomenon for the first time because it is new or because it is newly visible is one feature that makes the archaic period so historiographically interesting. In highlighting the innovations of the sixth century, it is important not to understate the degree to which this century offers a much richer corpus of source material than the rest of the archaic period.

In some sense, this is a theme for which the volume shows rather than tells, in that each of these chapters is a rich illustration of how one can analyze a given topic within the parameters of the sixth century. However, given that this volume seems intended for an introductory audience, some more explicit commentary on the difficulties of this undertaking may have been warranted, if only to highlight what an interesting approach this volume really offers. One will often find, in a volume on archaic Greece, a discussion of tyrants (Chapter 6); one will not always find, in the same volume, the architectural history of temples and stoas treated together under the rubric of columns and colonnades (Chapter 11), just one example of how this volume’s decision to take the sixth century as its starting point invites new juxtapositions of material.

This volume is well placed to introduce an audience to important questions, topics, and sources in the sixth century (and beyond). There are some oddities that might impede even this intended audience from profiting as much as possible from the volume. Given the density of illustrations, the geographic range of material explored, and the target audience, it is strange that maps are almost completely absent. In 27 chapters spanning 641 pages, I count 5.[7] Another oddity is the lack of internal cross-references. Since the material is treated thematically, it is unsurprising that the same topics appear multiple times. What is strange is that the reader is not always advised of this happy state of affairs. For instance, Chapter 25 laments that “unfortunately, we know few things about the procedures for commercial transactions in the archaic period”[8] (p. 572), without reference to Chapter 3, Le marchand et le risque, on precisely this problem. The laws of Solon appear in the chapter on marriage (Chapter 18) with an inset box discussing their physical form and content (p. 401), but this helpful guide is not cross-referenced in other discussions of Solon (e.g., Chapter 7, Chapter 21, Chapter 24). There are cross-references between some pairs of chapters,[9] but since one of the strengths of the volume is that it offers many different angles to think about the evidence, it might have been helpful to guide readers to these points of intersection.

Ultimately, this volume offers accessible, interesting treatments of a wide range of topics deriving from, but not limited to, the world of the sixth century. It is particularly appropriate for undergraduates or early stage graduate students who want to get a sense of the topography (metaphorically speaking) of this period. Given the level at which the discussions are pitched, academics may profit more from consulting the contributors’ other works.

 

Authors and Titles

Introduction / Francis Prost, Jean-Manuel Roubineau et Didier Viviers

Partie I. Acteurs et pratiques

  1. Le paysan et sa terre / Julien Zurbach
  2. L’artisan et la commande / Francis Prost
  3. Le marchand et le risque / Alain Bresson
  4. Le soldat et le métier des armes / Ioannis Chalazonitis
  5. L’athlète et la couronne / Jean-Manuel Roubineau
  6. Le tyran et la politique / Francis Prost
  7. Le magistrat et la loi / Michael Gagarin
  8. Le sage et la nature / Leopoldo Iribarren
  9. Le dieu et l’offrande / Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge

Partie II. Espaces et circulations

  1. Paysages et territoires / Julien Zurbach
  2. Colonnes, colonnades et paysages urbains / Jean-Yves Marc
  3. Marqueurs urbains : l’acropole / Roland Étienne
  4. Marqueurs urbains : l’agora / Emanuele Greco
  5. Marqueurs urbains : le rempart / Nota Kourou
  6. La tombe et l’espace funéraire / Reine-Marie Bérard
  7. La mule et le bateau / Patrice Pomey [†] et Georges Raepsaet

Partie III. Écarts et systèmes

  1. Libres et esclaves / Paulin Ismard
  2. Époux et épouses / Jérôme Wilgaux
  3. Erôs et culture / Sandra Boehringer
  4. Jeunes et vieux / Nadine Bernard
  5. Agathoi et kakoi / Evelyne Scheid-Tissinier
  6. Sociabilités et communauté / Pauline Schmitt Pantel
  7. La monnaie et la dette / Raymond Descat
  8. Le texte et l’autorité / Didier Viviers
  9. L’écrit et la voix / Didier Viviers
  10. Rencontres et face-à-face / Pierre Rouillard et Damien Agut-Labordère
  11. Distances et confins / Pierre Schneider

D’un Mégaklès à l’autre. Esquisse d’un siècle / Francis Prost, Jean-Manuel Roubineau et Didier Viviers

 

Bibliography

Koerner, R. and K.Hallof (ed.) 1993. Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der frühen griechischen Polis: aus dem Nachlass von Reinhard Koerner. Böhlau.

Gagarin, M. and P. Perlman. 2016. The Laws of Ancient Crete, c. 650–400 BCE. Oxford.

Hall, J.M. 2014. A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200–479 BCE. 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell.

Shapiro, H.A. 2007. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece, H. A. Shapiro (ed.), 1–9. Cambridge.

Verneuil, Y. 2017. Les Agrégés: Histoire d’une exception française. Belin.

 

Notes

[1] https://pur-editions.fr/product/10054/le-monde-des-grecs-au-vie-siecle-avant-j-c, accessed June 9, 2025. On the agrégation, see Verneuil 2017.

[2] Ministère de l’éducation nationale, de l’enseignmenet supérieur et de la recherche, “Concours externe de l’agrégation du second degré. Section histoire. Programme de la session 2026,” accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.devenirenseignant.gouv.fr/les-programmes-des-concours-d-enseignants-du-second-degre-de-la-session-2026-1496.

[3] E.g., Solon’s reforms (Chapter 1, 27–28) or the hoplite narrative (Chapter 4, 101, n. 1).

[4] Shapiro 2007, 5–6; Hall 2014, 320–325.

[5] To use Koerner’s 1993 collection of inscribed archaic laws as a neat encapsulation, out of 162 entries (I exclude the Gortyn Code), only 7 date to the seventh century, while 55 date to the sixth century. Out of the seventh-century inscriptions, four are from Dreros (nos. 90–93), two from Gortyn (nos. 117–119), and one from Tiryns (no. 31)—and other scholars would date the Gortynian material to the sixth rather than seventh century (e.g., Gagarin and Perlman 2016).

[6] For instance, the LGPN database (https://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/, accessed 13 June 2025) contains 2,950 dated to the seventh century, and more than twice as many—5,962—for the sixth. These numbers of course pale in comparison to the 5th century, which hits 17,291.

[7] Origins of sixth-century Olympic victors, p. 135; Panhellenic games, p. 136; tyrants, p. 144; Crete, p. 169; shipwrecks, p. 372.

[8] “On connaît malheureusement peu de choses sur les procédures de transactions commerciales de l’époque archaïque.”

[9] E.g., the discussion of Cretan laws in Chapter 24, pp. 521–524, references Chapter 7 on magistrates and laws, and vice versa.