Greece, Rome, and Western Civilization

I. Greek City States

A. Emergence--many of the same forces that aided the emergence of a new civilization in Greece were similar to those forces that helped to create new civilizations in northern India and China--diffusion of new techniques in iron working and agriculture, the growth of trade, the growth of craft skills, and the development of an alphabet

B. Barrenness of land--in contrast to the development of other civilizations, however, Greece offered little in the way of agriculture--which led Greeks to “colonize” other lands.

1. Contact with Phoenician traders--who were widely travelled within the Mediterranean, and who exposed the Greeks to a wider diffusion of knowledge and techniques

2. Dispersal of Greeks--as mercenaries and exiles also led to the collection of disparate knowledge in Greece.


C. Importance of slavery--unlike other great civilizations, the creation of the surplus in Greece was largely reliant upon the use of slaves.

1. Slavery existed before civilization, but was used largely to supplement other labor, or to provide personal service to the ruling elites; agricultural work and artisnal crafts were left to the free and semi-free citizens

2. Slaves were usually non-Greeks seized as prizes of war. Their polyglot origins kept plotting among slaves at a minimum.



3. Spartan exception--there were no slaves in Sparta (located on the most fertile plain in Greece), although the ruling class lived off the tribute from “Helot” cultivators--and the ruling class emphasized austerity to minimize stress in the society.

4. Why no slave revolts?—Greeks obtained slaves as spoils of war, from much of the Mediterranean basin. Often, the only common language these slaves shared was the Greek of their captors. While slaves performed much of the agricultural work that provided the food surplus—and the ability for the Greeks to spend time on philosophy and mathematics.

D. Gifts of the Surplus--without slaves to produce the surplus, their would be little of what we think of as the flowering of Greek civilization.

1. Aristotle and Polybus spoke to the “necessity” of slavery

2. Democracy--most Greek city-states were ruled by oligarchies, who taxed those under them for state expenditures that benefited mainly themselves. This created pressure from below to reform government; in Athens, this led to “democracy” (rule by the people) for male citizens--excluding women and slaves.

a) This in turn led to reaction from the economic elites, who accused those politicians who saw themselves as representing the non-elites of “demagoguery” and “rule by mob,” and often looked to forces outside Athens to help them overthrow democratic forces.

3. Advances in science, math, philosophy.



II. Roman Empire--Rome largely appropriated most of their cultural and political institutions from the Greeks; Rome’s innovations lie in administering a huge empire and in feats of civil engineering (roads and aqueducts). The Romans, however, did little to advance the knowledge that they appropriated from other peoples.

A. Roman Republic--after defeating the Etruscans in the 6th century BCE, Rome established a republic, and used the infantry conscripted (drafted) from the independent peasantry to fight wars of conquest to bring other settlements into the Roman sphere of influence.

1. Patrician control--this Roman Republic was not a true republic, in that not all people were represented in the political institutions, which were controlled by a few patrician families.

2. Patrician greed--as commanders of the Roman Legion, patricians took the lion’s share of conquered land.

3. Plebian resistance--patrician greed fed resistance to their rule by the lower sort, or “plebians,” but with relatively minor changes (allowing a few select plebians the right to hold political office) the patrician families were able to retain control of the government.



B. Roman Empire

1. Wars of conquest--The Roman practice of expropriating land from conquered peoples initially kept the plebians who did most of the fighting content, since they shared in a portion of the spoils of war. As time wore on, however, plebians received less and less land, while land prices in these conquered areas increased, causing them to go into debt and often lose the land they previously had received.


2. Slavery--became increasingly important to the ruling elite, who used slaves on the land they acquired to produce the surplus that provided them with the patrician lifestyle.

a) By the 1st century BCE there were more than 2 million slaves out of a population of 5.25 million people in the empire (or nearly 40% of the population)

b) Slavery led to the gradual impoverishment of free labor in Rome; the free populations stagnated, and many poor parents abandoned their children that they could no longer afford; these children often ended up being sold in slave markets.