Piracy in ancient Greece

Piracy in ancient Greece


http://www.historyextra.com/blog/skull-and-cross-bones-ahoy

Tuesday 13th July 2010
Submitted by: Michael Scott

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Piracy has been in the headlines in the UK a lot recently, particularly following the on-going abduction of a British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean in 2009. The realities of this gruesome situation are a far cry from the romanticised notion of pirateering embodied in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

In the ancient Greek world, however, piracy was, much more than just an occasional headline, it was an endemic part of how the ancient world operated. Alongside the continual military campaigns that crisscrossed the Aegean sea, a citizen of any city was perfectly free to fit out a private ship, capture enemy vessels and keep the spoils for themselves.

Often these ‘pirate’ ships would band together into their own pirate fleets to increase their chances of success. Certain islands in the Aegean were renown for providing safe harbour for pirates, like the island of Melos, and others were well known as places in which to trade stolen goods and slaves, like the island of Aegina just off the coast of Athens.

Outside the Aegean was no safer. The Adriatic sea, between Italy and Greece, had an even more cosmopolitan mix with Greek and Etruscan (the native inhabitants of Italy before the Romans) pirates sharing the waters. Indeed the city of Zankle (modern day Messina) on the coast of Sicily was well known for producing some of the most ferocious and successful pirates in the whole of the ancient world.

But what is even more interesting is the reaction of the city and state authorities of ancient Greece to the problem of piracy. There were occasional attempts to attack pirate vessels and ransoming captured individuals was not unheard of. But much more often, city authorities chose to work with the pirates.

Generals would sometimes employ pirate ‘fleets’ as a ‘shock and awe’ first wave of attack before sending in their own troops. Conversely the admirals of large city fleets would often extract protection money from islands in the Aegean to keep them safe from pirates.

But perhaps the most outrageous case is this. In 355 BC, according to the orator Demosthenes, Athenian ambassadors were on their way to Karia in Turkey on state business when they made a detour to capture a ship sailing from Egypt and pocketed for themselves the wealth on board!

Reprinted from Neos Kosmos www.neoskosmos.com

Looking at ancient Greece... from South America

Looking at ancient Greece... from South America


http://www.historyextra.com/blog/looking-ancient-greece-south-america

Tuesday 28th December 2010
Submitted by: Michael Scott

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I was recently working in Rio di Janeiro at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) university where I was invited to give a course of lectures about ancient Greek democracy to Brazilian students of international politics, law, economics and history. It was, I must admit, a surprising request to be invited to Brazil to teach about a place 10,000 km and 2,500 years away.

While people often turn to ancient Greece for explanations of the language, culture, art, architecture, philosophy and politics in Western Europe, the US and in Australia, it seems slightly more bizarre to imagine ancient Greece being thought of as a subject directly relevant to South America. It is equally more bizarre to have written this column about ancient Greece, in Rio, for publication in Australia (and the UK) – an image of the globalised world in which we live!

Working with the students in Rio, though, has helped me realise just why ancient Greece is relevant, even in Brazil. It is not only Brazil's Portuguese and French heritage that has imported linguistic, cultural and architectural echoes of ancient Greece into modern-day Brazil. Nor is it only because of the importance FGV attaches to providing a classically ´well-rounded´ education fostered within a Brazilian outlook that has traditionally been orientated towards Europe rather than the rest of Latin America. Nor indeed is it only because ancient Greece has recently been used to test modern theories of international politics, like democratic peace theory (the idea that democracies don’t make war on one another – sadly the ancient Greek example doesn't obviously support that idea).

But it is also, more importantly, because of the way in which ancient Greece is still continually used as an active currency for comparison, exhortation and justification in our modern world, a world in which Brazil is playing an increasingly important role.

To the students of international politics at FGV in Brazil, it is worth learning about ancient Greece because they want to be able to understand and judge better the use made of 'the [ancient] Greek example' across the international political world. Interestingly, Brazil itself has also begun to make its own use of that example.

Following the recent clamp-down by police on drug trafficking in the favelas in Rio over the last month, a great deal of praise has been heaped on the police and particularly its crack units, to such an extent that they have been compared to the warriors of ancient Sparta (as have US Marines over the last years, too). It seems that the legacy of ancient Greece is alive and well in Brazil and the rest of the world.

Reprinted from Neos Kosmos www.neoskosmos.com

Ancient Greek healthcare: as contentious as today?

Ancient Greek healthcare: as contentious as today?


http://www.historyextra.com/blog/ancient-greece/ancient-greek-healthcare-contentious-today

Thursday 13th May 2010
Submitted by: Michael Scott

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America has just voted through its biggest health-care reform in decades. But what was medical treatment like in ancient Greece?

Ancient Greece was, first and foremost, a world full of gods – gods who determined much of people’s lives. So, it will come as no surprise that when ancient Greeks were ill, they often believed a god was responsible for the illness. Epilepsy, for example, was known simply in ancient Greece as the Sacred Disease.

In search for a cure, the Greeks also turned to the gods – either in an effort to appease the god who have caused their illness or to the god of healing, Asclepius, who they hoped would cure them.

The great sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros – which so many people still visit today for its magnificent theatre – was one of the sanctuaries to the god of healing built during the early part of the 4th century BC. People would come to the temple in the sanctuary and pay a fee to the priests to sleep there, hoping the god would come to them in a dream and cure them, or tell them how they could be cured.

But, over time, the god-cure route stopped being the only option. During the 4th century BC, the development of medical knowledge about the human body, and about human illness started to take off.

Hippocratus, for example, whose Hippocratic oath doctors still swear today, was making his investigations of the human body and human disease at just this time and offering alternative practical remedies to many problems that did not depend on the gods.

The sacred disease, it is argued in the Hippocratic corpus of medical writing, had nothing to do with the gods, but had human causes and human solutions. The era of scientific medicine had begun.

By the end of the 4th century BC, the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros may have been genuinely worried about the threat this new ‘medicine’ posed to its flow of ‘customers’. The sanctuary responded by commissioning a whole series of ‘success stories’ to be written up on stone and displayed at the sanctuary.

Those ‘stories on stone’ have survived to today and make fascinating reading. The god is claimed to have helped a woman pregnant for 5 years to give birth, to have cured wounds that had seeped pus for years, to have given the dumb back their voice and even the bald their hair. It seems that, even in ancient Greece, there was disagreement about who provided better healthcare.

Reprinted from Neos Kosmos www.neoskosmos.com

An Ancient Greek sense of humour

An Ancient Greek sense of humour

http://www.historyextra.com/blog/ancient-greek-sense-humour


Tuesday 14th December 2010
Submitted by: Michael Scott

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Were the ancient Greeks funny? It’s a question not often asked. When thought about, most people will turn to the ‘comedies’ put on at different religio-theatrical festivals across ancient Greece, most notably in Athens. The majority surviving for us today are by Aristophanes, writing across the divide of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, but some also survive by Menander writing later in the 4th century BC.

Aristophanes makes political jokes, imitates the politicians of the day (who without doubt were often sitting in the audience) and uses exaggeration and caricature to pass comment on the social and political well being of the city. The caricature of ‘Demos’ – the people – is, for example, an old man who is easily hood-winked. What we have of Menander on the other hand seems to reveal a comic writer much more concerned with representing a kitchen-sink-drama style portrayal of domestic hilarity.

But did the Ancient Greeks tell jokes? Yes they did. Sources tell of ‘joke-groups’ who met to trade and test their wit, like the group of 60 who met in the Temple of Heracles in Athens in the 4th century BC, and whom even Philip of Macedon paid to send him a collection of their best.

A much later text that has survived down to us is the ‘Philogelos’ – 'the laughter lover' – compiled by Hierocles and Philagrius (of which almost nothing is known) in perhaps the AD 4th century. Here the compilation reveals something of the nature of Greek jokes – and they are surprisingly like are own.

There are those that focus on the ‘buffon’, the idiot, who does something stupid and funny, which have a remarkable parallel, as some scholars have already pointed out, with the ‘English, Scottish and Irish’ jokes still told in Britain today in which the Irish person always does something ridiculous (and which, I’d wager, every country has a version, which simply varies the nationalities).

One ancient Greek idiot joke reads: “An idiot, wanting to go to sleep but not having a pillow, told his slave to set an earthen jar under his head. The slave said that the jug was hard. The idiot told him to fill it with feathers.”

There are also the comic insults, listed so as to be used in instant one-line put downs – “You don’t have a face, but a fireplace” reads one. But my particular favourites are the ‘doctor’ jokes: “A person went to a doctor and said “doctor, whenever I get up from sleeping, I’m groggy for a half an hour afterwards and only after that am I all right” To which the doctor replied: “Get up half an hour later.”

Reprinted from Neos Kosmos www.neoskosmos.com

Ancient Greek democracy: as similar to ours as we think?

Ancient Greek democracy: as similar to ours as we think?




Thursday 18th March 2010
Submitted by: Michael Scott
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Ancient Greece’s most famous export to this day is arguably democracy. America, alongside many nations, recently celebrated the 2500th ‘anniversary’ of the invention of democracy in ancient Athens and its links with today’s democracies in America and around the globe. But was ancient Athenian democracy as alike to democracies of today as we may like to think?

The more you look at the facts, the more the ancient democracy of Athens and the democracies of today look different. Ancient Athens only allowed a very small group of men resident in Athens the vote. Women and foreigners were excluded.

Athens’ democracy also demanded a lot of time: adult male citizens who had the vote had to put a halt to their jobs and take up positions of authority within the democratic system on a rota system. They also had to go to the Athenian assembly (the Pnyx) on a regular basis to debate and vote on important issues like going to war.

This dedication of so much time to the democratic system was made easier because many of these citizens had a good number of slaves working for them, and Athens also eventually decided to encourage citizens further by paying them to come to the assembly and to undertake other democratic duties like acting as jurors in the law courts.

So, Athenian democracy was not our ideal of equal freedom and rights, but more like a select club, facilitated to some extent by a slave population and in addition only really made possible, many scholars argue, by Athens’ control over a large and profitable empire which kept money pouring into the city.

But at the same time we should not be too complacent as to think that we are more ‘democratic’ now. It is my bet that just as we may not want to recognize Athens’ democracy as properly democratic, so too an ancient Athenian would not recognize many of our democratic systems today as ‘true’ democracies.

Ancient Athenians participated in a direct democracy: every citizen went to the assembly and voted on the issues. Moreover, if they were voting on whether or not to go to war, the voters did not go home afterwards to put their feet up while professional soldiers carried out their orders, they went home to pick up their armour and go off to fight.

To a democrat of ancient Athens, today’s democracies, where the majority of voters elect representatives to make most of the decisions for them (and who then rely on professionals to carry out those decisions), wouldn’t merit the label of democracy either.

Reprinted from Neos Kosmos www.neoskosmos.com

希臘城邦

希臘城邦

        城邦或稱城市國家,是在一定歷史條件下由原始公社演化而來的一種公民集體。公元前8～前4世紀古代希臘歷史的顯著特點是各地區經濟﹑政治﹑文化發展不平衡,數百個城邦并存,出現過許多城邦聯盟。一般情況下,一個城邦包括城市和鄉村兩部分。這裹所說的城市,系指易於防守﹑往往筑有城2c牆的政治和宗教中心。很大一批城邦是由原有城邦派出的移民建立的。

城邦的面積和居民

所有希臘城邦都是小國。處於鼎盛時期的斯巴達 是當時希臘首屈一指的大國,也祗擁

特爾斐城邦遺址 有約8 400平方公里土地。雅典的面積約2 550平方公里,阿爾戈斯約1 400平方公里。面積約8 260平方公里的克里特島上有近百個城邦,面積約1 650平方公里的位於中部希臘的福基斯地區有22個城邦。

希臘城邦的居民按照政治地位可以分為3大類:①擁有公民權因而能夠參加政治活動的自由人。公民之間一般有源於氏族部落的血緣關系,男子成年後要舉行成丁禮,履行一定手續取得公民權。公元前451年雅典的法律規定,祗有父母均為雅典人的成年男子才能取得公民權。②沒有公民權的自由人。他們或是來自外邦的移民(例如雅典的“异邦人”),或是由於特定的歷史原因而與當權的公民集體處於不平等地位者(例如斯巴達的“邊民”),或是因貧困而失去公民資格者,或是因違法而被剝奪了公民權者,或是被釋放的奴隸。在一定的條件下,他們可能獲得或恢復公民權。但城邦一般不輕易將公民權授予這些人,并且嚴格禁止冒稱公民。③處於被剝削﹑奴役地位的奴隸。奴隸多系非希臘人,但也有一部分是希臘人,例如斯巴達的“黑勞士”。

多數希臘城邦公民人數不足5 000。公元前479年,普拉蒂亞的公民約不超過2 000人,而邁錫尼祗有600人左右。斯巴達的公民在公元前7世紀最多時曾達9 000人,以後逐漸減少,至公元前371年,祗有2 500～3 000人。公元前480年左右,雅典有公民2.5～3萬人。至於其他居民,公元前371年,斯巴達的沒有公民權的自由人有4～6萬人,黑勞士有14～20萬人。公元前480年左右,雅典的沒有公民權的自由人有4 000～5 000人,奴隸3～4萬人。

每個城邦的公民作為一個整體構成統治集團,與沒有公民權的自由人和奴隸相對立。公民集體剝削和統治沒有公民權的自由人和奴隸,但并非所有城邦的每個公民都是奴隸主。多數城邦的多數公民是自食其力的小生產者。在沒有公民權的自由人中,也有不少人擁有相當數量的奴隸。作為剝削階級的奴隸主分為公民和非公民兩部分,這是城邦這種早期國家的特點之一。

所有城邦在形成時期,農業都是最主要的生產部門,作為主要生產資料的土地祗有公民才有權佔有。除斯巴達在“平等者公社”形成之後公民完全不從事生產勞動外,大多數城邦中多數公民從事農業生產。在雅典﹑科林斯等工商業一度頗為發達的城邦中,從事手工業﹑航海業和商業的公民也在經濟和政治生活中起重要作用。

城邦的各種制度

城邦的重要任務是保衛國家的獨立和內部安全。在城邦中,全體成年男性公民組成一個軍人團體,每個公民有隨時應征參戰的義務,而且在一般情況下由應征者自己負擔軍需和武器裝備。除僭主當政時期外,一般城邦內部沒有脫離公民集體﹑凌駕於公民集體之上的常備軍。公民兵制的瓦解和雇傭兵制的發展是城邦衰落的重要標誌。

富有公民必須履行廣泛的公益捐獻義務,這是希臘城邦的一項重要制度。所謂公益捐獻,乃是富有公民對國家的不可推卸的捐獻義務。以雅典為例,公益捐獻可分為兩類:一類與戰爭有關,如負責裝備戰艦;一類與祭祀﹑舉辦節慶日的各項活動有關,如組織悲劇﹑喜劇的演出及競技等。富有公民的公益捐獻從一個方面揭示了城邦這種公民集體的特點。即使在民主得到充分發展的雅典,左右國家事務的主要還是公民中的富有階層,領袖人物幾乎全由富人充當。富有公民將其剝削所得的一部分拿出來供公民中的貧窮階層分享,既可增強他們自己在公民集體中的地位,又可加強公民集體的凝聚力。公民集體的團結則是保障有效地向外擴張﹑維護獨立以及鎮壓和統治沒有公民權的自由人﹑奴隸和外邦的最重要的條件。

城邦沒有職業官吏組成的官僚機構和向公民徵收直接稅的常設財政機構。一般說來,每個城邦都有3種政治機構:由成年男子構成的公民大會﹑議事會(如斯巴達的長老會議﹑雅典的五百人會議)和經選舉產生的(或至少需得到公民大會確認的)公職人員,首先是負責軍事指揮的公職人員。在希臘城邦的歷史上有過君主制,也有過具有個人獨裁色彩的僭主政治;但在城邦制度發達時期,以共和政體居多。共和政體中又有民主共和與貴族共和之別。長期實行民主共和政治的主要是雅典等少數城邦。在古代希臘,任何社會組織,無論家庭﹑氏族﹑胞族﹑部落或國家,同時也是宗教聯合體,有各自的祭祀偶像。當時沒有獨立的祭司階層,族長和各種公職人員兼起祭司作用。祭神和組織各種節慶活動是城邦政權機構的重要職責。

城邦的衰落和歷史意義

以雅典和斯巴達為代表的希臘城邦,在公元前5世紀經歷了繁榮時期。從公元前4世紀起逐漸衰落。由於公民中貧富分化加劇,公民權與土地的關系日趨松弛,公民集體內部矛盾增加,公民兵制開始瓦解。公元前338年馬其頓國王亞歷山大大帝的征服以及公元前323～前30年的希臘化時代許多國王對希臘的奴役,剝奪了希臘絕大多數城邦的政治獨立,瓦解了原有的公民集體,使這些城邦演變成在龐大的中央集權管轄下的地方自治單位。 作為經濟﹑政治﹑社會﹑意識形態統一體的城邦的產生和發展,對古代希臘的歷史有著深刻的影響。希臘文化,無論是文學藝術,還是哲學﹑倫理學﹑政治學和宗教等,無不打上城邦制度的深刻印記。

http://www.ebaomonthly.com/window/discovery/travel/greece/greece_city.htm

從雅典奧運講述古希臘神話

從雅典奧運講述古希臘神話


http://big5.huaxia.com/wh/zsc/00235919.html

08/24/2004/13:58 華夏經緯網



　　在雅典奧運會開幕式上，希臘人以極其巧妙的構思和表現形式，將希臘文明的發展過程一幕幕展現在觀眾面前，充滿寓意和哲理。從開幕式錶演到最後點燃聖火，古希臘神話傳說再次成為人們表達理想和追求的重要載體。

　　歐羅巴和愛琴海的故事

　　按照古希臘神話傳說，如開幕式第一艘船所展示，宙斯愛上了腓尼基公主歐羅巴，把自己變成一條牛，馱著好奇的公主破浪渡海，來到一塊新的大陸，那 塊大陸從此就以“歐羅巴”命名，開始了歐洲文明。古希臘人生活的範圍與現今的希臘版圖差不多，包括海中島嶼及周圍地區，開幕式整個場景寓意著愛琴海是希臘 文明的搖籃這一主題。據說宙斯出生後，其母把他藏在克裏特的山洞裏，以免遭受其父克羅諾斯的殘害。宙斯長大後，推翻了克羅諾斯的殘暴統治，成為新的主神。 希臘北部的高峰奧林波斯成為眾神主要居地。神和凡人結合，生出英雄。彌諾斯據說就是宙斯和歐羅巴之子。在彌諾斯統治克裏特時期，古希臘文明出現了第一個發 展高峰，即克裏特文明，時間在約西元前3000年—西元前1700年左右。在很長的時期裏，這一被荷馬稱為“有100座城市”的克裏特文明是以神話傳說的 形式流傳後世的，但現代考古發掘證明，傳說包含真實，彌諾斯宮建築規模之宏偉和物質財富之豐裕一直令世人驚嘆。

　　愛琴海也見證了古代希臘人生存的辛酸。雅典人得罪了彌諾斯，不得不每年向彌諾斯納貢7對童男童女，作為彌諾斯迷宮裏的怪物牛人的食物。後來雅典 英雄忒修斯勇敢地前往克裏特，殺死了牛人，為城邦解除了磨難。站在海岸岩巔盼望兒子勝利歸來的忒修斯的父親看見返航的船桅上仍然挂著黑帆，以為兒子已慘遭 不幸，悲痛得跳海而死，從此這片大海即以他的名字命名為“愛琴海”。

　　邁錫尼文明和雅典文明

　　克裏特文明因某種至今仍未明瞭的原因突然衰落和消失了，文明的發展中心移到巴爾幹半島南部的伯羅奔尼撒，這就是開幕式第二艘船表現的邁錫尼文 明。邁錫尼被稱為“黃金的”城市，古希臘神話傳說中的許多故事都同這一文明相聯繫，例如阿爾戈船冒險遠航尋取金羊毛等。由“金蘋果”引起特洛伊戰爭則是古 希臘人強大的又一次大展示。戰爭在希臘人和愛琴海東北隅的特洛伊人之間進行，天神們也因各自的好惡分成兩派，在戰爭中各助一方。荷馬史詩為後人生動地記述 了有關那次戰爭的神話傳說。在這裡，神話和歷史再次交織在一起。歷史借助神話傳說而流傳，神話傳說使歷史更迷人。

　　希臘人取得了特洛伊戰爭的勝利，但是邁錫尼文明隨之衰落。代之而起的是希臘文明發展的另一個階段，即雅典文明。這是一個理性高度發展的時期，古 希臘戲劇、文學、哲學、藝術等都達到巔峰，古希臘文明發展進入古典時期，開幕式上展示的劇場遺址就是這一時期文明高度發展的有力見證。

　　通過神來肯定自己，讚美自己

　　隨著生產力和科學技術的發展，神話傳說失去了繼續產生的可能性，但古代神話傳說則以其豐富的內容及內涵繼續流傳。古典時期的希臘作家和藝術家們 主要利用神話題材來表現和解釋社會發展中出現的矛盾和問題，藉以表現他們對自然、社會和自身的認識。特洛伊戰爭過程中的許多悲慘故事，阿伽門農家族的衰亡 史，安提戈涅的悲劇性命運等，都曾經一次次震撼人們的心靈。古希臘人按照自身創造了神，通過神來肯定自己，讚美自己，從而才有宙斯、阿波羅、雅典娜、阿爾 特彌斯、赫爾墨斯等許多充滿力量、智慧的優美形象，也才有擲餅者、競技優勝者等許多和神一樣優美的人的形象。

　　雅典娜本是一個古老的神祗，富有智慧，司掌的職能包括自然力量和人們日常生活的各個方面。奧林波斯神係居於主要地位後，各種古代神話傳說都與宙 斯聯繫起來，雅典娜也成了宙斯的女兒。她在同尚武的海神波塞冬爭奪作為後來以她的名字命名的城市雅典的保護神時獲勝。她送給雅典人橄欖樹，從此橄欖樹成為 雅典人的重要種植作物，也成為和平的象徵。

　　開幕式中出現的有關馬人的傳說在古希臘神話中佔有特殊的位置。馬人最初可能產生於圖騰崇拜。傳說中的馬人狂放野蠻，他們在與相鄰部落的戰爭中被 打敗，標誌著野蠻被文明戰勝。荷馬史詩提到這一戰爭，它的寓意性很受重視，被用來以雕塑形式裝飾宙斯、雅典娜和阿波羅等的神廟。馬人中的克戎與其他馬人的 來歷不一樣，他智慧、善良、公正，懂醫術、音樂、體操，有預知能力，成為智慧的象徵。他曾試圖改變其他馬人的野蠻性，但未成功。他是許多希臘英雄，如阿喀 琉斯等的導師，因而受到普遍的尊敬和愛戴。

　　愛神在古希臘神話傳說中佔有重要地位。古希臘人認為，愛是和宇宙同時出現的。宇宙本是一片混沌，因為有愛，才產生了天和地，出現了人類。因此在 古希臘神話中，愛神埃羅斯是一個古老的神祗，形像是一個老人。即便是阿佛羅狄忒，原本也具有悠久的歷史，只是在以宙斯為首的奧林波斯神流行以後，她才成為 宙斯的女兒。阿佛羅狄忒成為愛和美的象徵和崇拜對象以後，埃羅斯也被改變了身份，成了阿佛羅狄忒的兒子，背生雙翼，肩背弓箭，幫助阿佛羅狄忒在神界人間傳 播愛情。

　　希臘神話曾對古希臘文化的發展產生過巨大影響，也影響到後世歐洲文化的各個方面。雅典奧運會開幕式中對其的廣泛借用，表現文明、和平、進取和愛的主題，充分體現了希臘神話的巨大魅力和不朽價值。（王煥生）(作者係中國社會科學院外文所研究員）

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