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Blackwell History of the Ancient World
A History of the Archaic Greek World: Ca. 1200-479 Bce
A History of the Archaic Greek World offers a theme-based approach to the development of the Greek world in the years 1200-479 BCE.
A Thematic study of this crucial formative period of Greek history, from the same series as P.J. Rhodes' A History of the Classical Greek World. Takes a critical and analytical look at evidence about the history of the archaic Greek World. Involves the reader in the practice of history by questioning and reevaluating conventional beliefs. Casts new light on traditional themes such as the rise of the city-state, citizen militias, and the origins of egalitarianism.
A Thematic study of this crucial formative period of Greek history, from the same series as P.J. Rhodes' A History of the Classical Greek World. Takes a critical and analytical look at evidence about the history of the archaic Greek World. Involves the reader in the practice of history by questioning and reevaluating conventional beliefs. Casts new light on traditional themes such as the rise of the city-state, citizen militias, and the origins of egalitarianism.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 5, 2025
Classicists have a tendency to focus on the classic and Hellenistic eras, when so much that matters to us today happened. The reason for this proclivity seems to be that the student of intellectual history will want to concentrate on the fifth century and later when philosophy in Greece really got going. If, however, we are fully to understand the classical period, we have to look back to the earlier primitive stage from which it springs. For, most of the time, the genealogy of ideas can best be portrayed as an evolution in the etymological sense of an unfolding.
There are, nonetheless, special problems attendant on the study of the archaic period. Can the relative scarcity of extant literary sources from the archaic era be overcome? The surprising answer to this rhetorical question is yes, as we will get to below. In Jonathan M. Hall’s A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200–479 BCE (second edition, Wiley Blackwell History of the Ancient World, 2014) the diligent student of history will find a sure guide to almost all that can be known about archaic Greece.
As Hall himself takes pains to stress in his preface, his will perforce be more a thematic rather than a strictly chronological reconstruction. Thus, let us note, Hall reads much faster than, say Maria Brosius’ parallel account of ancient Persia (which we have just reviewed here) because less dominated by recounting of facts, but more interpretive in nature. Now that, as a result of incessant archaeological campaigns during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we understand the near Eastern context better (see four previous volumes in the esteemed Wiley Blackwell series, reviewed by us here, here, here resp.here), it is worth revisiting the history of the Greeks, who, as anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the classical period is aware of, constantly interacted with the older civilizations to their east. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that fixed points for Greek chronology can be derived from near Eastern archaeology!
The first two chapters open with some high-level theoretical reflections on the nature and practice of history as a discipline, made concrete through a critical discussion of the example of the Lelantine war. A lot has been pieced together from fragmentary and scattered references to this protracted episode that must have occurred towards the end of the eighth century, which is of considerable interest as indicative of early Greek attitudes towards warfare (was there truly a chivalric code of the kind one is familiar with from the medieval era?), but Hall’s aim is to take the received interpretation apart and to question its validity. Consider this passage:
Attacking what he characterized as a ‘nineteenth-century fetishism of facts’ – represented above all by the German historian Leopold von Ranke’s insistence that the historian’s task was to how ‘how it actually was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen), as well as the positivist tendency to draw conclusions from facts (i.e., the ‘inductive method’) and the British empiricist tradition which posited a sharp distinction between subject and object, Carr argued that not all facts in the past are historical facts and that it is the historian who decides which facts should be considered significant and in what order of significance they should be ranked. In short, it was ridiculous to imagine that there existed any objective historical facts ‘out there’, independent of the interpretation of the historian. [p. 9]
Of course, there are some fairly objective facts (say, ‘Trajan built a column to memorialize his victory over the Dacians’) but these achieve significance for us only through the construction the historian puts upon them. Highlighting the issue of theory versus method, Hall takes exception to trends in post-modern theorizing which (reading between the lines) he looks down on as insufficiently serious from an intellectual point of view, for it is always easy to toss out some fashionable new theoretical perspective but hard to anchor it in real data. The latter task, which only deserves a scholar’s respect, calls for a rare discipline and a responsible method. Thus, trendy post-moderns can, as a rule, be dismissed as being unserious historians. Another point along similar lines:
Historians are often fond of distinguishing themselves from those they rather disparagingly call ‘antiquarians’. Antiquarians, it is argued, are interested in facts for their own sake while real historians are more concerned with interpreting those facts from a broader perspective that seeks to identify interconnections, causes and consequences. As we have seen in the previous chapter, however, facts and not ‘out there’, waiting to be discovered by the historian; rather, they too are established through a process of interpretation. [p. 16]
This leads to a useful description of sources and the distinction between primary and secondary. Hall outlines three tests of historicity of a source: temporal proximity, contextual fit and intentionality (including the unintentional category), see pp. 18-21. A subsidiary theme for this recensionist is Hall’s methodological sophistication. Hall directs his scholarly concern not just to what happened, but also to a systematic account of how we know about it. Chapter two offers many indications that there will be good instances of philological-type reasoning, so characteristic of the humanities (or at least classics) and so different from the hard sciences! (Though resembling historical sciences such as geology and paleontology.)
One may note in passing this difference from Maria Brosius’ history of ancient Persia, also in the prestigious Wiley Blackwell series: when Hall cites particular facts they are always marshaled to support a general view of what was happening whereas Brosius is content merely to chronicle. A good example may be found in Excursus I after chapter six [pp. 154-164] of how Hall airs philological considerations while reasoning openly about what may have been the truth of the historical figure of Pheidon of Argos; the frequent citations from all manner of sources demonstrate his complete command of the material.
What are the main historical (properly speaking) themes to be found in this book? The end of the Mycenaean world and its aftermath (chapter three); communities of place – i.e., the rise of the institution of the polis (chapter four); the colonial enterprise which saw the establishment of Greek communities all across the Mediterranean world and even up into the Black Sea (chapter five); the changing nature of authority, or the transition from the kings who, presumably, dominated during Mycanaean times to the emergence of a state equipped with laws and other institutions and the concomitant rise of an aristocracy (chapter six); the changing nature of warfare, from the heroic model of Homer’s Iliad to the hoplite infantry of classical times; the phenomenon of tyranny (chapter nine); agriculture and long-distance trade (chapter ten); the Persian invasions (Excursus IV) and, lastly, a delineation of the advent of what we have come to know as a characteristically Hellenic culture (chapter eleven, ‘Imagining Greece’). Throughout, the reader will be impressed with a wealth of information on all manner of details concerning the evolution of Greek civilization. A major omission, however, is the absence of any treatment of pagan Greek religion, which also must have arrived at its maturity during the long interval of the archaic period. There is, after all, much to say on this topic, as well – for instance, the whole question of the relation between the Olympian pantheon of Homer and influences originating from the Orient, such as Orphism and Dionysianism. Moreover, it was at the lower boundary, spanning the transition from archaic to classical, when the program of erecting temples got underway in earnest.
Excursus II immediately following chapter seven [pp. 190-199] on gaps in the archaeological record with respect to Crete and early Attica offers a specimen the high methodological tone of the author’s handling of his material. The issue in question is the use of archaeological evidence to support written sources – as will clearly be forced upon one in a period such as forms the topic of this book, in view of the paucity of written sources. What Hall wants to stress, however, is the inherent danger in allowing oneself to be misled thereby. Through a minute examination of burial patterns over time he wishes to throw light on two higher-order constructs of the sort that historians typically impose as scaffolding with which to interpret the past: the idea that mainland Greece went through a ‘Dark Age’ after the decline of Mycenaean civilization and a supposed disruption of the continuity of material culture in Crete at the end of the Bronze Age. Hall doesn’t have anything to say, however, about the interesting question as to why Athens came to assume such a dominant place in the Greek cultural sphere during the classical period.
As discussed in the closing chapter [p. 321f], the lower boundary of 480/479 does not mark a major change in culture (that is, with respect to its characteristic institutions, though it does mark the beginning of a more self-conscious pan-Hellenic identity in differentiation from Persia, subject to Hall’s reservation that this was more so for Athenians than for other Greeks, see p. 308). Hence, the effect of reading this book for this recensionist is to expand his view of Greek civilization several centuries farther back in time (at least to the eighth, and probably as Hall argues, to the eleventh century BC). Thus, one may come around to a perception in an altogether new light of two characteristic phenomena, namely, 1) the rise of the pre-Socratic movement and 2) the flourishing of Attic culture during the classical period, both comparatively late developments whereas as far as the pre-Socratics (from Thales, early sixth century forward) are concerned, at least, he had always considered them to be early. It is instructive to compare with the relative span, in western Europe, of the high Middle Ages (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries) as against that of the early Middle Ages (sixth through twelfth centuries). Four stars for high methodological quality as well as for being good history.
There are, nonetheless, special problems attendant on the study of the archaic period. Can the relative scarcity of extant literary sources from the archaic era be overcome? The surprising answer to this rhetorical question is yes, as we will get to below. In Jonathan M. Hall’s A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200–479 BCE (second edition, Wiley Blackwell History of the Ancient World, 2014) the diligent student of history will find a sure guide to almost all that can be known about archaic Greece.
As Hall himself takes pains to stress in his preface, his will perforce be more a thematic rather than a strictly chronological reconstruction. Thus, let us note, Hall reads much faster than, say Maria Brosius’ parallel account of ancient Persia (which we have just reviewed here) because less dominated by recounting of facts, but more interpretive in nature. Now that, as a result of incessant archaeological campaigns during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we understand the near Eastern context better (see four previous volumes in the esteemed Wiley Blackwell series, reviewed by us here, here, here resp.here), it is worth revisiting the history of the Greeks, who, as anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the classical period is aware of, constantly interacted with the older civilizations to their east. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that fixed points for Greek chronology can be derived from near Eastern archaeology!
The first two chapters open with some high-level theoretical reflections on the nature and practice of history as a discipline, made concrete through a critical discussion of the example of the Lelantine war. A lot has been pieced together from fragmentary and scattered references to this protracted episode that must have occurred towards the end of the eighth century, which is of considerable interest as indicative of early Greek attitudes towards warfare (was there truly a chivalric code of the kind one is familiar with from the medieval era?), but Hall’s aim is to take the received interpretation apart and to question its validity. Consider this passage:
Attacking what he characterized as a ‘nineteenth-century fetishism of facts’ – represented above all by the German historian Leopold von Ranke’s insistence that the historian’s task was to how ‘how it actually was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen), as well as the positivist tendency to draw conclusions from facts (i.e., the ‘inductive method’) and the British empiricist tradition which posited a sharp distinction between subject and object, Carr argued that not all facts in the past are historical facts and that it is the historian who decides which facts should be considered significant and in what order of significance they should be ranked. In short, it was ridiculous to imagine that there existed any objective historical facts ‘out there’, independent of the interpretation of the historian. [p. 9]
Of course, there are some fairly objective facts (say, ‘Trajan built a column to memorialize his victory over the Dacians’) but these achieve significance for us only through the construction the historian puts upon them. Highlighting the issue of theory versus method, Hall takes exception to trends in post-modern theorizing which (reading between the lines) he looks down on as insufficiently serious from an intellectual point of view, for it is always easy to toss out some fashionable new theoretical perspective but hard to anchor it in real data. The latter task, which only deserves a scholar’s respect, calls for a rare discipline and a responsible method. Thus, trendy post-moderns can, as a rule, be dismissed as being unserious historians. Another point along similar lines:
Historians are often fond of distinguishing themselves from those they rather disparagingly call ‘antiquarians’. Antiquarians, it is argued, are interested in facts for their own sake while real historians are more concerned with interpreting those facts from a broader perspective that seeks to identify interconnections, causes and consequences. As we have seen in the previous chapter, however, facts and not ‘out there’, waiting to be discovered by the historian; rather, they too are established through a process of interpretation. [p. 16]
This leads to a useful description of sources and the distinction between primary and secondary. Hall outlines three tests of historicity of a source: temporal proximity, contextual fit and intentionality (including the unintentional category), see pp. 18-21. A subsidiary theme for this recensionist is Hall’s methodological sophistication. Hall directs his scholarly concern not just to what happened, but also to a systematic account of how we know about it. Chapter two offers many indications that there will be good instances of philological-type reasoning, so characteristic of the humanities (or at least classics) and so different from the hard sciences! (Though resembling historical sciences such as geology and paleontology.)
One may note in passing this difference from Maria Brosius’ history of ancient Persia, also in the prestigious Wiley Blackwell series: when Hall cites particular facts they are always marshaled to support a general view of what was happening whereas Brosius is content merely to chronicle. A good example may be found in Excursus I after chapter six [pp. 154-164] of how Hall airs philological considerations while reasoning openly about what may have been the truth of the historical figure of Pheidon of Argos; the frequent citations from all manner of sources demonstrate his complete command of the material.
What are the main historical (properly speaking) themes to be found in this book? The end of the Mycenaean world and its aftermath (chapter three); communities of place – i.e., the rise of the institution of the polis (chapter four); the colonial enterprise which saw the establishment of Greek communities all across the Mediterranean world and even up into the Black Sea (chapter five); the changing nature of authority, or the transition from the kings who, presumably, dominated during Mycanaean times to the emergence of a state equipped with laws and other institutions and the concomitant rise of an aristocracy (chapter six); the changing nature of warfare, from the heroic model of Homer’s Iliad to the hoplite infantry of classical times; the phenomenon of tyranny (chapter nine); agriculture and long-distance trade (chapter ten); the Persian invasions (Excursus IV) and, lastly, a delineation of the advent of what we have come to know as a characteristically Hellenic culture (chapter eleven, ‘Imagining Greece’). Throughout, the reader will be impressed with a wealth of information on all manner of details concerning the evolution of Greek civilization. A major omission, however, is the absence of any treatment of pagan Greek religion, which also must have arrived at its maturity during the long interval of the archaic period. There is, after all, much to say on this topic, as well – for instance, the whole question of the relation between the Olympian pantheon of Homer and influences originating from the Orient, such as Orphism and Dionysianism. Moreover, it was at the lower boundary, spanning the transition from archaic to classical, when the program of erecting temples got underway in earnest.
Excursus II immediately following chapter seven [pp. 190-199] on gaps in the archaeological record with respect to Crete and early Attica offers a specimen the high methodological tone of the author’s handling of his material. The issue in question is the use of archaeological evidence to support written sources – as will clearly be forced upon one in a period such as forms the topic of this book, in view of the paucity of written sources. What Hall wants to stress, however, is the inherent danger in allowing oneself to be misled thereby. Through a minute examination of burial patterns over time he wishes to throw light on two higher-order constructs of the sort that historians typically impose as scaffolding with which to interpret the past: the idea that mainland Greece went through a ‘Dark Age’ after the decline of Mycenaean civilization and a supposed disruption of the continuity of material culture in Crete at the end of the Bronze Age. Hall doesn’t have anything to say, however, about the interesting question as to why Athens came to assume such a dominant place in the Greek cultural sphere during the classical period.
As discussed in the closing chapter [p. 321f], the lower boundary of 480/479 does not mark a major change in culture (that is, with respect to its characteristic institutions, though it does mark the beginning of a more self-conscious pan-Hellenic identity in differentiation from Persia, subject to Hall’s reservation that this was more so for Athenians than for other Greeks, see p. 308). Hence, the effect of reading this book for this recensionist is to expand his view of Greek civilization several centuries farther back in time (at least to the eighth, and probably as Hall argues, to the eleventh century BC). Thus, one may come around to a perception in an altogether new light of two characteristic phenomena, namely, 1) the rise of the pre-Socratic movement and 2) the flourishing of Attic culture during the classical period, both comparatively late developments whereas as far as the pre-Socratics (from Thales, early sixth century forward) are concerned, at least, he had always considered them to be early. It is instructive to compare with the relative span, in western Europe, of the high Middle Ages (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries) as against that of the early Middle Ages (sixth through twelfth centuries). Four stars for high methodological quality as well as for being good history.
March 24, 2022
i just wanted to learn about early greek history. This book seems to assume we're already experts on that and it just focuses on detailed minutiae of archaeology or various assumptions. Im not afraid of serious academic nonfiction, but i wasnt learning anything at all from this. One is better off reading the wikipedia page for Archaic Greece and then Herodotus and Plutarch.
I'm not even going to keep my copy of the book, going to sell it on ebay.
I'm not even going to keep my copy of the book, going to sell it on ebay.
June 14, 2019
I struggled with rating this book: I don't want to give it a 4 or a 5 because the process of reading it wasn't exactly pleasant. It's dry, but it has to be, because historical reconstructions and interpretations for this period have to be presented right alongside an exposition of the massive methodological challenges that accompany such efforts, given the near total lack of contemporary literary evidence and the clear intentional biases on the part of later writers. It's light on events and heavy on trends, but again, it really has to be, given the available evidence. If you want a comprehensive snapshot of current research on Greece between the end of the Mycenaean civilization at the end of the 13th century and the Persian invasions in the early 5th -- presented in a context that forces the reader to understand why we think what we think and why we can't leap to say more than we can say -- this book is about as good as you can get.
I find myself wishing that a similar review existed for the Mycenaean civilization, even given the insufficiency of available evidence to support a satisfying story embedded within a chronological sequence of events (maybe there is - I plan to check), so I guess there was something truly impressive here (because I'm not feeling like "pre-Classical Greece? never again!").
It was ultimately a truly headachy slog to get through this book, but the author solidly convinced me -- in spite of my strong desire to get a good story -- that any alternatives for presentation would either be way too heavy on unsupported imaginative reconstruction or too full of mind-numbingly boring details to read.
I find myself wishing that a similar review existed for the Mycenaean civilization, even given the insufficiency of available evidence to support a satisfying story embedded within a chronological sequence of events (maybe there is - I plan to check), so I guess there was something truly impressive here (because I'm not feeling like "pre-Classical Greece? never again!").
It was ultimately a truly headachy slog to get through this book, but the author solidly convinced me -- in spite of my strong desire to get a good story -- that any alternatives for presentation would either be way too heavy on unsupported imaginative reconstruction or too full of mind-numbingly boring details to read.
Read
October 4, 2018functions as evaluations of the credibility of long-standing narratives of primary and secondary sources about the Archaic greeks through the three principles of temporal proximity, contextuality, and intentionality
September 1, 2021
Good book! Even though it was generic and pretty much what you'd expect to read. I guess I shouldn't have been reading one history book after the other about the same theme.
November 4, 2015
Excellent discussion of the issues revolving around writing the history of Archaic Greece. I would recommend having some familiarity with the subject before reading this book in order to get the most out of what this book has to offer.
May 4, 2022
An excellent general coverage of the historiography of the period. This is not a first approach, try something with a more narrative approach, but you will get a much clearer idea of the realities of the history of the time.
May 20, 2025
More or less an encyclopedia for classicists—the archeological niches will be useful only maybe if one has vast prior study (which makes the title a bit misleading).
October 29, 2025
Fuck this book.
May 15, 2017
Jonathan Hall has not written a traditional history of the Archaic Greek world. It challenges narrative historical approaches in favour of a thematic approach to the important elements of Archaic Greece - "colonization", the emergence of the polis, warfare* - in fact, he challenges several narrative or "historical" events. Particularly prominent is the Lelantine War, deconstructed completely in the first seven pages of the book so that one can hardly understand how certain scholars maintain their belief in it; in the final chapter of the book he turns to the First Sacred War, in which he has perhaps more faith, but certainly not as it is described in later texts. One must wonder, however, how he can deconstruct these wars, but not apply the same methodological considerations to the Messenian Wars - clearly, to me, a construction of the Messenians after their independence from Sparta in the fourth century, the original war invented to explain how they came to be subjugated in the first place.
It is certainly a Greek history, too. This book is not for those looking for Etruscan or Phoenician interactions with Greece, for local responses to "colonization"**. Hall would argue that this is because it is a history, rather than an archaeology, and that it is only the Greeks for whom we have (semi-)reliable historical accounts in the Archaic period; indeed, in the last pages of the book he does so. If an archaeological account of such developments is what you are after, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World is perhaps a better bet.
The chronological bounds of this book might seem a bit long; Hall argues well and I agree that there is no significant break between the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces and the Archaic period as it is usually defined. As an archaeologist specializing in the Early Iron Age I do feel that he neglects to discuss very much of this period, but that is probably just my own prejudices getting in the way.
This book is certainly recommended to historians; as a general read it may not be what the layperson expects. But I do think that it would be good for non-academics to see this side of history, highly readable, largely sceptical, but still history, as it should be written.
* Personally, I disagree quite strongly with a lot of what Hall has to say about warfare. I think it's a shame that his sceptical approach to certain elements of the Greek world does not permeate every aspect. Perhaps it is the fault of the editors?
** "Colonization" should always be in inverted commas when discussing the Greeks or the Phoenicians, to distinguish the process from Roman colonia or the British Empire; but this is not the place to discuss the intricate details of the so-called colonial period of early Greek history.
It is certainly a Greek history, too. This book is not for those looking for Etruscan or Phoenician interactions with Greece, for local responses to "colonization"**. Hall would argue that this is because it is a history, rather than an archaeology, and that it is only the Greeks for whom we have (semi-)reliable historical accounts in the Archaic period; indeed, in the last pages of the book he does so. If an archaeological account of such developments is what you are after, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World is perhaps a better bet.
The chronological bounds of this book might seem a bit long; Hall argues well and I agree that there is no significant break between the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces and the Archaic period as it is usually defined. As an archaeologist specializing in the Early Iron Age I do feel that he neglects to discuss very much of this period, but that is probably just my own prejudices getting in the way.
This book is certainly recommended to historians; as a general read it may not be what the layperson expects. But I do think that it would be good for non-academics to see this side of history, highly readable, largely sceptical, but still history, as it should be written.
* Personally, I disagree quite strongly with a lot of what Hall has to say about warfare. I think it's a shame that his sceptical approach to certain elements of the Greek world does not permeate every aspect. Perhaps it is the fault of the editors?
** "Colonization" should always be in inverted commas when discussing the Greeks or the Phoenicians, to distinguish the process from Roman colonia or the British Empire; but this is not the place to discuss the intricate details of the so-called colonial period of early Greek history.
August 25, 2011
An excellent introductory volume that rivals the Routledge equivalent (Greece in the Making) for interest factor. Hall chooses to tackle some of the more obscure problems of Archaic Greek History right off the bat, which may put some people off as they are quite technical, but if you persevere, his engaging writing style and the richness of the history that he is covering are well worth the effort
June 30, 2014
This book did all it could, and more, to discourage further reading about Ancient Greece. Assuming previous knowledge, it goes back and forth between names of people, places, and Greek terms as though everyone reading is totally familiar. The book jacket says it will provide "thematic coverage" of the main events of the times, but when I finished it, I still couldn't tell you what the main events were. I did not learn much nor enjoy this book.
Read
September 25, 2015Another of the definitive histories of Dark Age and Archaic Greece, by one of the greatest living historians of the period.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews