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THE MYCENAEANS IN ITALY

 

During the Bronze Age, particularly from the 16th century [from the Middle Bronze Age 1] to the 11th century BC [at the end of the Bronze Age], intense contacts between indigenous groups in Southern Italy and Sicily and the Mycenaeans are confirmed with certainty: this is confirmed by the discovery in modern times of ceramics and metal objects of Aegean production in numerous Italian proto-historic contexts, both inhabited and necropolitan.In the Western Mediterranean the Mycenaeans sought raw materials, especially metals, to satisfy the needs and consumption of the new Peloponnesian aristocracies. The first contacts are documented by ceramics found in the Phlegraean archipelago (Vivara) and in the Aeolian archipelago (Lipari and Filicudi) and, to a lesser extent, in Apulia (in the Gargano and Porto Perone near Taranto). In fact, their traditional route in the Western quadrant of the Mediterranean involved passing through the Strait of Messina and then touching the Aeolian islands before heading into the Gulf of Naples.

However,  the greater intensity of the contacts was established in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., when the dominion of the Mycenaean kingdoms also extended to Crete.  Ceramics of that period have been found in various areas of the Peninsula and Sicily (especially in the Brindisi area, the Gulf of Taranto, the Ionian Calabria, the Aeolian islands, Ustica, in the area of Syracuse, the area of Agrigento) and even beyond (Sardinia and the Iberian peninsula). However at that historical moment the process was not managed by the Mycenaean centers of the Peloponnese alone, but also involved the islands of Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus. Therefore, at that time, next to the traditional Tyrrhenian route, the Mycenaeans added another, more Southern one, which connected the ports of the Levant (located in Lebanon, Cyprus, Rhodes, along the southern coasts of Crete) with Eastern and Southern Sicily and Southern Sardinia through the intermediate ports of the Nile delta, the coasts of Libya, Malta and Pantelleria. From the 13th century onwards in the most strategic points of these routes, important emporiums were founded by the Mycenaeans, in the past erroneously interpreted as real Mycenaean settlements, almost as  “ante litteram” (primitive) colonies.The collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, between the end of the XIII and the beginning of the XII centuries, caused a slowdown in relations between East and West. In the XI century B.C., as a result of social upheavals and movements of populations involving the Greek continent (the coming of the Dorians), imports ceased altogether and there began, both in the Aegean world and in the Italian peninsula and in Sicily, a long phase of closure. The Phoenicians would inherit from the Mycenaeans of Rhodes and Cyprus a  wealth of knowledge regarding  the resources and moorings of the distant West and about the routes to reach it.

In the late Bronze Age, contacts with the Aegean world modified the indigenous societies of Southern Italy and Sicily, which began to show a hierarchization and concentration of the inhabited areas, the appearance of huts and emerging tombs and of buildings specialized for the storage of foodstuffs, the provision of large quantities of metal, the emergence of specialized artisans (potters and metal workers) and the strengthening of trade and commerce. This would lead to the start of a social stratification process that involved the main areas of Southern Italy and Sicily, which, presented up to the 14th century BC. ( Middle Bronze Age 3) were largely undifferentiated socially. However, between the recent Bronze Age (13th-12th century BC) and the Final Bronze Age (11th-10th century BC) small territorial entities were assimilated into  the simple “chiefdoms”, a model elaborated by Anglo-Saxon archeology, to define communities led by chiefs. These communities were of the order of a few thousand inhabitants, already of a tendentially “proto-urban” nature. However, at this historical point,  the Mycenaean Kingdoms, which were complex “chiefdoms”, cannot be assigned this model, given the lack of princely burials, residences of royal rank and a far more articulated political organization in which the use of writing cannot be disregarded.

 

Excerpt from Gioacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia, Editori Laterza, 2011,   pp 12-16
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SYBARIS AND ITS EMPIRE – part 2

 

As we have seen, the empire of Sybaris went beyond the borders of the area directly marked by the sanctuaries. The foundation of Poseidonia made the Sybaris’ aims explicit to open a door on the Tyrrhenian Sea as close as possible to the flourishing Etruscan settlements of Campania, located just north of the Sele river, and at the same time, to control the communities of Oenotrians of the interior who, between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. were able to consolidate and to take on the role of attractive business partners. These were small inhabited areas that were in close contact with Sybaris from whom they learnt the use of writing and the alphabet, as shown by the inscription on the “Castelluccio” olla-shaped jar and, above all, the “Tortora cippus”. It is a kind of “lex sacra” (sacred law) written in a palaeo-Italic language (the language of the Oenotrians), adapting and integrating the Achaean alphabet used by Sybaris and Poseidonia.
The same Oenotrian communities used a certain coinage named by the modern scholars the “coins of the alliance”. They were incuse coins (with hollow images), probably beaten at Sybaris, which presented on one side the retrospective bull (which looks backwards) and on the other side the names of the towns such as PAL-MOL (Palinuro and the nearby Molpa), SIRINO-PYXOES (Sirinos in the “Valle del Noce” and Pixunte in the Gulf of Policastro).
For the maintenance of this complex political-institutional organisation, Poseidonia played a very important role. That Sybarite colony represented the last bastion of Achaean Hellenism in front of the flourishing Etruscan centres north of the Sele river and privileged mediator with the communities of Oenotrians gravitating on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This role was reiterated on the occasion of the foundation of Velia (Herodotus, I, 167) – Poseidonia favoured the foundation of Velia by the Phocaeans – but also in the Olympia treaty where Poseidonia together with the Gods, was called to guarantee the pact between Sybarites and the Serdàioi.
But the great power of Sybaris did not hold up to the innovative thrusts that rose from the great mass of the lower-middle social classes, kept away from the many riches. Towards the end of the 6th century, B.C. riots led to the rise of the tyranny of “Telis”, who was so strongly anti-aristocratic that in 510 B.C. 500 Sybarite nobles were forced to find shelter in the oligarchic Kroton, asking and obtaining asylum. When Telis asked for them to be returned, Kroton – where a strongly influential figure was Pythagoras – refused. The result was a war that saw Sybaris badly defeated. After a siege of 70 days, the city itself was destroyed forever by the diversion of the Crathis (Crati) river which submerged the remains (Strabo, VI, C 263). In this regard, Domenico Mussi, an Italian historian (1934-2010), has rightly pointed out that this war was not a simple fight between neighbouring Greek “pòleis” (cities), but two “pòleis” with opposite political and institutional orientations.
The outcome of the war profoundly changed the political scenario of “Magna Graecia”, and radically changed the previous balance, weakening the Achaean cities. The indigenous populations economically and/or politically linked to Sybaris went through a critical period, as can be seen from the downsizing of many main centres and their necropolises and the end of the emissions of the “coins of the alliance”.

Excerpt from: Gioacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia , Editori Laterza, 2011, pp 84-90

 

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SYBARIS AND ITS EMPIRE – part 1

 

 

The colonisation process of Southern Italy and Sicily lasted a couple of centuries and began in the 8th century B.C.

The first Achaean colony seems to have been Sybaris, in the middle of an alluvial plain between the mouths of the Crathis (Crati) river and the Coscìle river, the ancient Sybaris. According to Ephorus of Cyme, a Greek historian – c.  400 – 330 B.C. this Achaean city lived for 210 years and was destroyed in 510 B.C. by Kroton.  It can thus be traced back to 720 B.C. for its foundation. Strabo (VI, C 263) reports that oikistes (see Note) of Sybaris was Is who was a native of Elice, unknown city of Achaea in Greece.

The innumerable studies carried out on the proto-historic centres in the area of Sybaris, confirm that the arrival of the Achaeans in that territory and the subsequent foundation of Sybaris represented a strong impact on the indigenous villages.  All the centers of the early Iron Age (IX-VIII centuries B.C.) were destroyed and abandoned at the end of the 8th century B.C.   But as it happened for Syracuse, very probably Sybaris also did not exterminate the indigenous populations that inhabited the district. Many of them were probably enslaved or at least used as labour in the countryside and in the cities.

The Achaean “pòlis” (town) soon succeeded in creating a real empire, its merchants ascended along the rivers that flow into the Ionic Sea, they reached the central Apennine mountains and from there they descended along the rivers flowing into the Tyrrhenian Sea. They created a district totally controlled by Sybaris. Strabo (VI, C 263) described Sybaris as a real “empire” that in the Archaic period (600 B.C. – 480 B.C.), controlled 4 populations and 25 cities.

To understand the precocious territorial growth of this Achaean pòlis (town), it is interesting to consider also what Diodorus reported (XII, 9, 2): he wrote that Sybaris granted its citizenship to foreigners with relative ease.

This vast empire of Sybaris was articulated internally through different gradation, ranging from the direct control of the chòra politikè (territory outside the walls where farmers cultivated the fields and dedicated themselves to agriculture), to formally equal relations with some of the more distant communities. An important inscription found at Olympia, datable to the second half of the 6th century. B.C. preserves elements of fundamental importance that integrate the Strabo’s description. This is a peace treaty signed between Sybaris and their allies (Sýmmachoi) and the Serdàioi, an indigenous community that recent studies tend to place in the “Valle del Noce”, on the border between northern Tyrrhenian Calabria and Lucania. Ultimately the empire of Sybaris, beyond the original chòra, where indigenous people most probably worked as slaves, consisted of a substantial group of subdued communities (probably 4 populations and 25 cities, as Strabo says) and finally in a circle of allies (the Sýmmachoi of the  Olympia treaty), at least formally independent. In the Greek colonial world, this is probably the first example of a complex territorial entity, extended beyond the limited boundaries of traditional pòlis.

Very important were also the extra-urban sanctuaries of Sybaris, real projections of the city in the “chòra”. Through the sacred dimension, they marked the progressive control of this Achaean “pòlis” (town) on the territory and, at the same time, attracted the indigenous populations of the district, also assuming the role of privileged places of contact and exchange in the border areas. Since the time of the foundation, the sacred marked the limits of the “chòra” of Sybaris.        NOTE: The individual chosen by an ancient Greek polis (town) as the leader of any new colonisation.

 Excerpt from: Gioacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia , Editori Laterza, 2011, pp 84-90

 

 
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POMPEII CITY WALLS – Part 2

In general, however, the ancient Mediterranean populations, in founding the cities, took into account from the outset the prospect of demographic growth and strengthening of the settlement. For example, in Magna Graecia, most of the “poleis”, the cities, developed over the centuries within the limits defined at the time of the foundation – very rare exceptions are Taranto and Syracuse. (9)     Therefore, up until the beginning of the eighties of the last century, Pompeii seemed not to align itself with the most common types of walls at that historical moment. But in 1982 Stefano De Caro, director of the excavations of Pompeii from 1982 to 1984, decided to resume a series of excavations in the Vesuvian city both in the Northern sector of the fortification, near the Tower XI, and in the Southern one, in the stretch between “Porta Nocera” (Nocera Gate) and the Tower IV. The results obtained are one of the most important acquisitions for the reconstruction of the urban history of Pompeii. The Neapolitan archaeologist discovered a primitive city wall in local tufa rock, the so-called “pappamonte”, elaborating the hypothesis that in Pompeii three different wall circuits would have been superimposed: the oldest – precisely discovered by De Caro – dating back to the VI century BC., the second building circuit dating back to the IV century BC, and the third, the one visible today, dating back to the end of the II century BC     However, of particular interest is the fact that, according to De Caro, the first city wall, the one dating back to the VI century B.C. in “pappamonte”, extended almost as much as the whole area included in the subsequent Samnite fortification. In doing so, it contrasted the then more established theories, which hypothesized the existence of a first housing nucleus in a much more restricted area. (10)    Moreover, recent investigations in the courtyard of the “Stabian Baths” in Pompeii confirm that the cultural model of the German scholar Eschebach of 1979 must be completely revised: there is no evidence of remains from the Archaic period (roads, gates, fortifications) (11).

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

9. Gioacchino Francesco La Torre, op. cit., pag.158

10. Marco Fabbri, Difendersi, in Massimo Osanna e Carlo Rescigno, Pompei e i Greci, Electa, 2017, pag. 269

11. Monika Trümper, op. cit., pag. 265

 

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