century that witnesses the earliest buildings with a recognizably public function. At Argos, for example, inscribed and uninscribed lead plaques and weights were found in association with a complex excavated beneath the classical stoa in the Agora (Pariente, Piérart, and Thalmann 1998: 212–213) while a similarly public function has been attributed to a four-room structure with a hearth and clay seals at Koukounaries (Schilardi 1996: 52); a theater-like wooden structure dating to c. 600 BC and found at Metapontum in South Italy has been possibly identified as the seat of the city’s assembly (Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994: 65–67).
It is only with the transition to a stratified society that we can talk about the emergence of a true aristocracy. Granted, the values that Homeric heroes articulate—honor, status, prestige goods, and athletic and martial prowess—are precisely those that define the aristocratic ethos in the archaic period (Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 189) but, numerically speaking, Homeric basileis are simply not numerous enough to constitute an aristocratic “class.” There are leaders (basileis) and followers (laoi). From the seventh century, however, a nascent aristocratic consciousness is identifiable in an unashamedly elitist terminology that distinguishes between an aristocratic group of insiders, termed variously kaloi (“beautiful” or “fair”), agathoi (“good”), or esthloi (“good” or “brave”) and a much larger group of outsiders or inferiors, designated as kakoi (“ugly” or “bad”) and deiloi (“cowardly” or “wretched”).13 The divisions are especially pronounced in the Theognidea. “It is because I am well disposed to you, Kyrnos,” the poetic voice proclaims, “that I will offer you advice that I myself, as a child, learned from agathoi”(1.27–8). The poet continues: “Do not associate with men who are kakoi, but always hold close to the agathoi; drink and eat with them, sit with them and ingratiate yourself with those whose power is great; for you will learn esthla from those who are esthloi” (1.31–5). In a similar vein, the sixth-century elegiac poet Phocylides of Miletus (fr. 6 W) warns his addressee “to avoid being the debtor of a kakos, lest he cause you grief by demanding repayment at an inopportune time.”
Hans van Wees has argued that the dualistic terminology in the Theognidea should not be seen in terms of class consciousness. Drawing on studies of the Sicilian Mafia, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra in the United States, van Wees concludes that Theognis presents “a highly favorable self-image of one section of the elite contrasted with a deeply hostile image of their political rivals,” where terms such as agathos and kakos refer to social standing rather than class affiliation (2000: 60–61). This is largely because he finds no evidence for an aristocratic ideology or for an endangered hereditary aristocracy in the poems of Theognis (2000: 65; cf. Rose 2009: 476). But this is to downplay the importance Theognis attaches to genos (“birth” or “lineage”)—a word that is freighted with indelible hereditary connotations. As he tells Cyrnus, “do not wonder that the genos of the citizens is becoming diluted, because what is esthla is being intermingled with what is kaka” (1.191–192). The analogy that he offers here involves the breeding of thoroughbred horses (ἵππους εὐγενέας: 1.183–4). Furthermore, this sort of elitist terminology is by no means limited to Theognis. For van Wees, the evaluative terms agathoi and kakoi are defined by the faction to which the poetic voice belongs, but that interpretation does not work with Solon’s comment (fr. 34 W) that “it did not please me …that esthloi and kakoi should have an equal share of our country’s rich land.” Here, Solon clearly distinguishes between two groups but proclaims allegiance to neither (cf. fr. 37, where he describes himself as a “boundary marker in no-man’s land”). Alcaeus’ complaint (fr. 130 B Campbell) that he has been dispossessed of his ancestral property or Callinus’ reference (fr. 1 W) to a genos of immortal ancestors, or Tyrtaeus’ exhortation (fr. 10 W) not to disgrace one’s genos do actually imply some sort of hereditary self-validation within elite consciousness.
Conflict and Tyranny
Van Wees is, however, correct in two respects. First, the ruling elites were not a hermetically sealed group and aristocratic status was always precarious (cf. Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 188). Alcaeus’ claim (frr. 75, 348 Campbell) that Pittacus was κακοπατρίδαν (“of mean ancestry”) might be a disingenuous slur rather than a social fact, but when he establishes a symmetry between people of humble origins who became agathoi and esthloi who have become deiloi, there is an implication of volatile social mobility. Second, much of the violence that characterizes the Theognidea and other works of archaic Greek poetry is due primarily to deeply rooted conflict within the elite (Forsdyke 2005: 59).
This is not the ideological conflict that Kurke (1992; 1999: 23–37) and Morris (1996; 2000: 155–191) have posited among the elite class between two very different mentalities: on the one hand, an elitist ideology, represented by the Homeric epics, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon, which sought to elide distinctions between Greeks and non-Greeks, males and females, and mortals and divinities in order to highlight a basic division between elites and non-elites; and on the other, a “middling” ideology, articulated by Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Phocylides, and Xenophanes, which excluded women, slaves, and outsiders in order to construct a community of equal male citizens.14 Rather, this was a ruthless, violent, and very real scramble for power and property in order to secure or maintain wealth and status, with catastrophic consequences for the larger community, elite and non-elite alike. At Mytilene, for example, Sappho’s references to Near Eastern luxury items (e.g., frr. 39, 92, 98 Campbell) or Alcaeus’ comment on mercenary payments from Lydia (fr. 69 Campbell), together with Herodotus’ testimony (2.178.2) that the city was involved in establishing the Hellenion at Naucratis and the archaeological evidence of ceramic exports, all suggest that Mytilenean elites were engaging in an increasingly competitive quest for investment outside the island that ultimately ended up threatening the internal social order (Spencer 2000; Forsdyke 2005: 37–47).
Solon (fr. 4.6–13 W) gives a vivid description of the destructive consequences of intra-elite competition in early sixth-century Attica:
But the citizens themselves, through their foolishness and being persuaded by material greed, want to destroy a great polis, and the mind of the leaders of the dēmos is unjust, and they are ready to suffer much pain for their great violence. They do not understand how to curb excess nor to organize peacefully the celebrations of the feast that is at hand, but they grow wealthy, yielding to unjust deeds; sparing neither sacred nor public property, they steal rapaciously, this one from here, that one from there.
A plausible reconstruction of the background to this unrest is that elite landholders were bringing previously common but marginal land into cultivation through intensified agricultural practices and that they were recruiting smallholders or landless laborers to farm the newly acquired land for a pittance—the so-called hektemoroi ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 2.2; Plut. Vit. Sol. 13).15 Plutarch adds that the poor were also in the habit of offering their own liberty as security against debts owed on loans from the wealthy, which may lie behind Solon’s own comment (fr. 4.23–25 W) that “many of the poor go to a foreign country, sold and bound in unseemly fetters.” Matters came to a head and Solon was appointed as an arbitrator. He canceled debts and prohibited enslavement for debt default ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 6; Plut. Vit. Sol. 15) though, as we have already seen, he was not minded to give the esthloi and the kakoi equal shares in the land (fr. 34.8–9 W) and felt that he had given “the dēmos as much privilege as was sufficient” (fr. 5.1 W).16
It is within the context of elite contestation of power that the phenomenon of tyranny is best viewed. Indeed, Solon makes a point (frr. 32, 33, 34 W) of claiming that he could have seized tyranny and Elizabeth Irwin (2005: 205–61) has detailed how Solon exploited contemporary political discourse to construct an autocratic position that, in many ways, was ambiguously close to tyranny.17 Our understanding of archaic tyranny has been impeded by a pervasive—though not universal—negative
