Ancient Greek History Gift Guide (Part 4): Creators, Conquerors, Citizens
Seeing as though we are nearing the Christmas period, a time when many of our readers will likely be giving gifts to their families and friends, I thought I would offer a kind of guide to some books about ancient Greek history that are available.
Buying books can be very difficult. You must account for the recipient’s personal taste and, in this case, their level of familiarity with the subject matter. In order to properly offer readers a gift guide, these reviews examine these books not just through a historical lens but also through a consumer’s lens, looking at the price and quality of the book, so you can tailor your choice to fit whoever it is you’re getting a gift for, whether that is for someone on their way to study it at university or an enthusiast. In this installment of the Ancient Greek History Gift Guide, we will be taking a look at Creators, Conquerors, Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece by Robin Waterfield.
Creators, Conquerors, Citizens is very much a traditional account of ancient Greek history. Beginning in the Archaic period, with a brief account of what came before, the book chronicles the history and developments of the ancient Greek world until the fall of Ptolemaic Egypt to the Romans, the traditional end of the Hellenistic period, focusing on the broad sweeps of history. Creators, Conquerors, Citizens has the same pitfalls as previous traditional accounts of ancient Greek history. Since it is, primarily, a narrative history, interspersed with chapters discussing elements of Greek society, the book’s primary focus is on events that we have historical, narrative accounts for — the military and political history of ancient Greece. As such, much of the book is devoted to Athens, with Sparta, Syracuse, and the Hellenistic powers having a secondary importance. Yet Waterfield is conscious of the limitations of his approach, noting that the book is primarily concerned with “mainland Greeks” (I only had access to an epub version, so page numbers were unclear) and that, in the fifth century, “Greek history is very largely Spartan and Athenian history”. There is nothing, for instance, about the Greeks of the northern shores of the Black Sea, save that they were a source of grain for Athens, or about the Greeks of Magna Graecia beyond, primarily, Syracuse. Even poleis that normally have a secondary or tertiary focus in such histories go largely unremarked on. Samos, for example, is described as “one of the greatest states of the Archaic period”, but there was nothing from Waterfield’s account of Archaic Greece to back up this assertion. Creators, Conquerors, Citizens is full of such assertions, with no presentation of primary evidence, whether literary or archaeological, to support them — in fiction-writing terms, I suppose Waterfield is ‘telling’ as opposed to ‘showing’.
Despite these issues, there is much to admire about Waterfield’s account of Greek history. While it only covers the major events, not getting bogged down in detail, a reader unfamiliar in ancient Greek history will have a strong base from where they can explore the world of ancient Greece in greater detail. Moreover, Waterfield regularly — although not always, as I get into below — presents up-to-date information on the ancient Greek world. Tyranny, for example, is discussed not as a form of class struggle, as it was in Hall’s Introducing the Ancient Greeks (see here), but as arising because of intra-elite competition. What’s more, there were details included in Creators, Conquerors, Citizens which I had not encountered before, such as the resumption of worship at Mycenaean tombs in the Hellenistic period, and details that would unlikely have appeared in previous traditional histories, such as a brief note on how “Some of the first portraits of the Buddha ... bear a striking resemblance to Greek portraits of Apollo”. However, the significance of this last detail, much like the reference to Samos above, is hampered by a lack of any discussion about the Indo-Greeks.
That said, there were times where, despite Waterfield desiring “to provide an engaging, accessible, and up-to-date history of the ancient Greeks”, there were times when Waterfield falls back on older scholarship. This is most apparent in Waterfield’s discussion of Sparta. Waterfield starts this discussion well, acknowledging the issues with studying Sparta, such as the lack of Spartan sources and the fact that the Spartans would reinvent their own history, but quickly falters, reproducing points about Spartan history and society that have been questioned in recent years without referring to any debate surrounding these points. For example, the Second Messenian War and the Battle of Hysiae are both presented as definite historical events. As for the Second Messenian War, writers in the fifth century BC appear to only know of a single previous Messenian War (see Luraghi, 2008, p. 75), while the Battle of Hysiae is only recorded by Pausanias, writing in the second century AD (2.24.7). Moreover, Waterfield presents Sparta as a militaristic society, writing how the Spartans “adopted a particular lifestyle designed to make them supreme battlefield warriors”, which involved “weapons training” and “mock battles”. These last two points are outright fabrications and distortions of the evidence. Regarding weapons training, Stephen Hodkinson writes how “neither Xenophon’s nor Plutarch’s accounts [of the Spartan upbringing], which cover the entire upbringing from age 7 to age 30, makes any mention of training in military drills or use of weapons” (2006, p. 139). As for mock battles, the closest parallels are more akin to large-scale brawls among younger Spartans (Xenophon, Lacedaemonian Constitution 4.4–6; Plato, Laws 633b). Spartan military training appears to have simply extended to physical conditioning and marching drills, but as the Spartan army was not only composed of Spartiates but also of perioikoi and others — men who did not have the leisure time to train — such drills would not have been that difficult to master (see Hodkinson, 2006, pp. 133–134).
Similarly, in keeping with older scholarship, Waterfield presents Helots as serfs because “they could not be bought and sold”. Modern scholarship, however, largely agrees that the Helots were slaves. The key point is a passage from Ephorus, which states how Helots could not be sold “beyond the boundaries of the country” (quoted in Strabo, 8.5.4). Had there been a total ban on the sale of Helots within Spartan territory, this clause would have been unnecessary. Indeed, as Luraghi writes, “Only preconceived ideas about helotry can explain how some scholars have been able to interpret this clause as if it meant that it was forbidden to sell helots altogether” (2000, pp. 228–229; see also Hodkinson, 2000, p. 117).
Besides the general lack of depth to Waterfield’s account, his portrait of Sparta is the main issue I have with Creators, Conquerors, Citizens; however, this is a portrait of Sparta that is hard to avoid, being present in most, if not all, general treatments of ancient Greece. Unfortunately, it appears this is something all readers just starting to explore ancient Greek history are presented with. The rest of Creators, Conquerors, Citizens largely succeeds in Waterfield’s attempt “to provide an engaging, accessible, and up-to-date history of the ancient Greeks”. By avoiding getting bogged down in detail, academic debate, and source criticism, Waterfield ensures that readers entirely unfamiliar with ancient Greek history will not be overwhelmed, while leaving plenty of avenues for further study, with each chapter having a helpful selection of books for further reading. Readers who have previously explored ancient Greece in any detail, however, will likely be unsatisfied by this book.
References:
Hodkinson, S. Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2000.
Hodkinson, S. “Was classical Sparta a militaristic society?” In Sparta and War, edited by A. Powell and S. Hodkinson, pp. 111–162. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2006.
Luraghi, N. “Helotic Slavery Reconsidered.” In Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, edited by A. Powell and S. Hodkinson, pp. 227–248. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2000.
Luraghi, N. The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Creators, Conquerors, Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece by Robin Waterfield (ISBN: 9780198853121) is available from Oxford University Press.