The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age. John Bagnell Bury
from Argolis. “Well-built Lyttus”, in its central site, also of Homeric fame, and Polyrrhenion, “rich in sheep”, in the north-western corner, a haunt of the divine huntress Dictynna, were both colonised from Laconia. In the mid part of the north coast, Cnosus “the great city” of Minos, Cnosus “the broad,” set on a hill, had existed in the heroic age but was re-peopled by Dorians.
The island then, colonised first by a folk closely akin to those who conquered Lacedaemon and Argos, colonised again by those very conquerors, may be said to be doubly “Dorian”; and there is thus a double reason for resemblances between Laconian and Cretan institutions. In the Cretan cities themselves there were of course many local divergences, but the general resemblances are so close, wherever we can trace the facts, that for our purpose we may safely follow the example of the ancients in assuming a general type of Cretan polity.
The population of a Cretan state consisted of two classes, warriors and serfs. In a few cases where one city had subjugated another, the people of the subject city held somewhat the same position as the Laconian Perioeci and formed a third class, but these cases were exceptional. In general, one of the main differences between a Cretan state and Sparta was that the Cretan state had no perioeci. There were two kinds of serfs, mnoitai and aphamiotai. The mnoites belonged to the state, while the aphamiotes, also called clarotes or “lot-men”, were attached to the lots of the citizens, and belonged to the owners of the lots. These bondsmen cultivated the land themselves and could possess private property, like the Spartan Helots, but though we do not know exactly what their obligations were, they seem to have been in some ways in a better condition than the bondsmen of Laconia. If the pastas or lord of a Cretan serf died childless, the serf had an interest in his property. He could contract a legal marriage, and his family was recognised by law. The two privileges from which he was always jealously excluded were the carrying of arms and the practice of athletic exercises in the gymnasia. Unlike the Helots, the Cretan serfs found their condition tolerable, and we never hear that they revolted. The geographical conditions of the Cretans enabled them to excuse their slaves from military service.
Of the monarchical period in Crete we know nothing. In the sixth century we find that monarchy has been abolished by the aristocracy, and that the executive governments are in the hands of boards of ten annual magistrates, entitled kosmoi. The kosmoi were chosen from certain important clans (startoi), and the military as well as the other functions of the king had passed into their hands. They were assisted by the advice of the Council of elders which was elected from those who had filled the office of kosmos. The resolves of the kosmoi and Council were laid before the agorai or general assemblies of citizens, who merely voted and had no right to propose or discuss.
There is a superficial resemblance between this constitution, which prevailed in most Cretan cities, and that of Sparta. The Cretan agora answers to the Spartan apella, the Cretan to the Spartan gerusia, and the kosmoi to the ephors. The most obvious difference is that in Crete there was no royalty. But there is another important difference. The democratic feature of the Spartan constitution is absent in Crete. While the ephors were chosen from all the citizens, in a Cretan state only certain noble families were eligible to the office of kosmos; and, as the gerusia was chosen from the kosmoi, it is clear that the whole power of the state resided in a privileged class consisting of those families or clans. Thus the Cretan state was a close aristocracy.
The true likeness between Sparta and Crete lies in the circumstance that the laws and institutions of both countries aimed at creating a class of warriors. Boys were taught to read and write, and to recite certain songs ordained by law; but the chief part of their training was bodily, with a view to making them good soldiers. At the age of seventeen they were admitted into “herds”, agelai, answering to the Spartan buai, which were organised by sons of noble houses and supported at the expense of the state. The members of these associations went through a training in the public gymnasia or dromoi, and hence were called dromeis. Great days were held, on which sham fights took place between these “herds” to the sound of lyres and flutes. The dromeus was of age in the eyes of the law, and he was bound to marry, but his wife continued to live in the house of her father and kinsman, until he passed out of the state of a dromeus and became a “man.” The men dined at public messes called andreia, corresponding to the Spartan phiditia, but the boys were also permitted to join them. These meals were not defrayed altogether, as at Sparta, by the contributions of the members, but were partly at least paid for by the state; and the state also made provision for the sustenance of the women. The public income, which defrayed these and other such burdens and maintained the worship of the gods, must have been derived from public land cultivated by the mnoites, and distinct from the land which was apportioned in lots among the citizens.
We see then that in the discipline and education of the citizens, in the common meals of the men, in general political objects, there is a close and significant likeness between Sparta and Crete. But otherwise there are great differences. (1) In Crete there were, as a rule, no Perioeci; (2) the Cretan serfs lived under more favourable conditions than the Helots, and were not a constant source of danger; (3) kingship did not survive in Crete, and consequently (4) the functions which in Sparta were divided between kings and ephors were in Crete united in the hands of the kosmoi; (5) the Cretan state was an aristocracy, while Sparta, so far as the city itself was concerned, was a limited democracy; a difference which clearly reveals itself in (6) the modes of electing kosmoi and ephors; (7) there is a more advanced form of communism in Crete, in so far as state stores contribute largely to the maintenance of the citizens. If one city had become dominant in Crete and reduced the others to subjection, the resemblance between Laconia and Crete would have been much greater. A class of Cretan perioeci would have forthwith been formed.
SECT. 5. THE SUPREMACY AND DECLINE OF ARGOS. THE OLYMPIAN GAMES
The rebellion of Messenia had been especially formidable to Sparta, because the rebels had been supported by two foreign powers, Arcadia and Pisa. Part of Arcadia seems to have been united at this time under the lordship of the king of the Arcadian Orchomenus. The king of Pisa on the Alpheus had recently risen to new power and honour with the help of Argos; and Argos itself had been playing a prominent part in the peninsula under the leadership of her king Pheidon. The reign of this king was the last epoch of Argos as an active power of the first rank. We know little about him, but his name became so famous that in later times the royal house of distant Macedonia, when it reached the height of its success in Alexander the Great, was anxious to connect its line of descent with Pheidon. Under his auspices a system of measures was introduced into Argos and the Peloponnesus. These measures were called after his name Pheidonian, and were likewise adopted at Athens; they seem to have been closely connected with the Aeginetan system of weights. But the only clear action of Pheidon is his expedition to the west. He led an Argive army across Arcadia to the banks of the Alpheus, and presided there over the celebration of the Olympian festival, which is now for the first time heard of in the history of Greece.
The altis or sacred grove of Olympia lay, under the wooded mount of Cronus, where the river Cladeus flows into the Alpheus, in the angle between the two streams. It was dedicated to the worship of Zeus; but the spot was probably sacred to Pelops, before Zeus claimed it for himself, and Pelops, degraded to the rank of a hero, kept his own sacred precinct within the larger enclosure. The sanctuary was in belongs to the territory of Pisa, and there is no doubt that the care of the worship and the conduct of the festivals belonged originally to the Pisan community. But the men of Elis, the northern neighbours of Pisa, set their hearts on having the control of the Olympian sanctuary, which, though it is not once mentioned, as Delphi and Dodona are mentioned, in the poems of Homer, must by the seventh century have won a high prestige in the Peloponnesus and drawn many visitors. As Elis was stronger than Pisa, the Eleans finally succeeded in usurping the conduct of the festival. Games were the chief feature of the festival, which was held every fourth year, at the time of the second full moon after midsummer’s day. The games at first included foot-races, boxing, and wrestling; chariot-races and horse-races were added later. Such contests were an ancient institution in Greece. We know not how far back they go, or in what circumstances they were first introduced, but the funeral games of Patroclus, described in the Iliad, permit us to infer that they were a feature of Ionian life in the ninth century. We can see but dimly into the political relations of Pheidon’s age;