The taming of the aristoi – an ancient Greek civilizing process?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss how the increasing social control of violence and aggression, which characterized the period from the Archaic to the Classical Age in ancient Greece, can be explained as an Eliasian civilizing process. Particularly crucial for this development is the question of how the city-state’s distinctive urban-political structures were the locus of this civilizing process. Accordingly, it is argued that not only are Elias’s key concepts analytically relevant to the ancient Greek civilizing process, but also that they are to be reassessed in the light of the ancient Greek city-state culture. Thus, by the advancing of the argument that the civilizing process is not a uniquely western phenomenon, which occurred in western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19^th century, the analytical relevance of Elias is re-evaluated and augmented.

Keywords

ancient Greece aristocracy civilizing process Norbert Elias

Introduction

Within historical sociology there are a few but tentative attempts to apply Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilizing process to ancient Greece.¹ In light of this, the aim of this article is to discuss how the increasing social control of violence and aggression that characterized the period from the Archaic to the Classical Age can be explained as a civilizing process. This is achieved through an analysis of a wide array of sources, from literary to archaeological and iconographic.

By arguing that the civilizing process is not a uniquely western phenomenon that occurred in western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19^th century, we may challenge and extend the analytical relevance of Elias, which, in turn, also affords us the potential to counter the main argument of Hans Peter Duerr’s (1988) criticism: that civilization is a social constant in all cultures across time and space. Thus, it is by extending Elias’s theory to antiquity that the theory has a wider analytical potential.

Since Elias and his successors did not include antiquity in the original development of the theory of the civilizing process, it is argued that the theory’s basic concepts must be revised in light of the results of the newest research in ancient history. Particularly important is the question of how the city-state’s peculiar urban-political structures were conducive to and the locus of these civilizing processes. Thus it is argued that Elias’s key concepts, the royal mechanism, chains of interdependence, internalization of morality, etc. not only are analytically relevant to the ancient Greek civilizing process but must be situated in and reformulated in relation to the ancient Greek city-state culture.

Bearing arms

According to Elias, the monopoly of violence is a significant factor in the civilizing process, since it entails a greater degree of self-control for the individuals who live in pacified spaces (Elias, 2012[1939]). To argue for a civilizing process in ancient Greece it is therefore essential to demonstrate that a similar monopolization of violence took place there, and that is exactly what the British/Dutch ancient historian Hans van Wees has done in the chapter ‘Greeks Bearing Arms: The State, the Leisure Class and the Display of Weapons in Archaic Greece’ (1998). Here he documented how the Greek aristocracy gradually went from being armed to completely ceasing to bear arms in public, thereby contributing to a monopolization of violence. Although van Wees convincingly documented this process, his attempts to explain the causes never seemed quite adequate.² Neither did van Wees discuss Elias in his article but he previously discussed him in an earlier work, Status Warriors (1992), where van Wees dealt with the more general phenomenon of violence in Archaic Greece. However he is reluctant about accepting the notion of a civilizing process as he believes it is built on an erroneous conception of humankind as basically aggressive (van Wees, 1992: 63).³

Literary sources

In the time from the Early Archaic to the Classical Period (c. 750–400 BC), Greek culture underwent significant changes. One of the most important of these was a gradual decline in weapon possession which can be identified in a variety of sources, including the literary.

In works like the Iliad and the Odyssey, which to some degree reflect the social conditions in the Early Archaic Period (c. 750–700 BC),⁴ the heroes, for example, put on their weapons before they are dressed, and they wear them in peacetime as in war, both swords and spears (cf. van Wees, 1998: 35–6). In stark contrast to this is the attitude towards armament in the Classical Period. Here, for example, a comedy writer such as Aristophanes in his Lysistrata can parody how soldiers are carrying weapons around inside the city of Athens, apparently because it seemed offensive, even though the Athenians at that time were involved in the Peloponnesian War:

Lysistrata: First and foremost, if we only could stop them getting to the square, splintering mad and in full armour.

Old woman: Yes, by Aphrodite!

Lysistrata: They are at present walking around fully armoured among the pottery workshops and herb stands in the square, as if they were Corybants!⁵

In the literary sources we see that the Greeks in the Classical Period considered it unthinkable to carry weapons in public. Great thinkers such as Thucydides and Aristotle were aware that the Greeks must have undergone a significant change when they went from being armed in the Archaic Period to showing such disapproval towards wearing arms in the Classical Period. They even discussed some possible explanations of the causes of this development. In the following passage Thucydides makes just such an observation of how the Greeks went from being armed to completely ceasing this practice, and he explains it with the gradual increase in security and an appropriation of luxurious manners from the East:

For throughout Greece everyone was once carrying weapons as people’s homes were unprotected and their contact with each other insecure. To walk around with weapons was a normal part of your lifestyle, and it remains so among the foreigners. The areas of Greece where people still live in the same way are a witness that all lived in a similar manner at that time. The Athenians were the first to lay down their arms and adopt a more luxurious style by relaxing their lifestyles. It is also not long ago that the older generation of aristocrats there stopped wearing linen coats and tying up their hair into a knot by attaching it with gold grasshoppers, what the orientalizing lifestyle had led to. (Thucydides 1.6)

In this passage, it is interesting to note that not only does Thucydides explain why the Greeks were previously carrying weapons because their society was characterized by a lack of protection and mutual uncertainty between people (the absence of the monopoly of violence). But he adds a sociological observation: that the Athenians went from carrying weapons to having a more luxurious lifestyle. This process is similar to the one that took place in modern European history where, according to Elias (2006), the aristocracy’s refinements of manners in the court society was a crucial element in the civilizing process. Likewise, Thucydides seems to connect a progressive civilization in the form of disarmament with a similar transformation from a warrior aristocracy into a luxurious and eastern-orientated one.

Interestingly enough, not only do we have Thucydides’ observation of the evolution from the Archaic to the Classical Period, but it seems that Aristotle also was aware that the Greeks once had carried arms and now had abolished the practice completely, as they had done with similar antiquated customs:

The Greeks used for instance to carry arms and buy their wives from each other. On the whole, all the remnants of old customs that still exist around are completely foolish. (Aristotle, Politics: bk 2, 1268b)

For Aristotle, writing in the second half of the 4^th century BC, it was just as barbaric and uncivilized behaviour to bear arms, as it was to buy a wife. This dramatic shift in attitude must, therefore, have been a product of a similar dramatic social development, a development we can best understand by examining a variety of diverse sources, from funeral goods to poetry.

Grave goods

One excellent source to illustrate the evolution of the possession of weapons is grave goods. Through an analysis of excavated tombs in the period from 1050 to 700 BC, Hans van Wees has been able to demonstrate how the Greek aristocrats in the Early Archaic Period (the Geometric Period) were buried with weapons but gradually over time were buried completely without them. As you can see from Table 1, burials with weapons peaked in the period 900–800 BC. However, shortly thereafter, around 735 BC, this practice dropped drastically.

Table 1.

Graves and grave goods in Athens.

	Funerals		Weapons			Other valuables
Period	in all	per year	in all	per grave	per year	in all	per grave	per year
PG 1050–900	194	1.29	16	0.08	0.11	48	0.25	0.32
EG-MGI 900–800	77	0.77	22	0.29	0.22	76	0.99	0.76
MGII-LGI 800–735	68	1.00	8	0.12	0.12	52	0.76	0.80
LGII 735–700	141	4.03	0	0	0	35	0.25	1.00

Key: EG = Early Geometric.

LG = Late Geometric.

MG = Middle Geometric I and Middle Geometric II.

PG = Pre-Geometric.

Source: The table is from van Wees (1998: 338).

The changes in funeral practices here demonstrate a marked shift in the perception of what it seemed appropriate to bury men with. From these findings, it appears that where weapons were a natural status symbol for men in the Early Archaic/Geometric Period they completely ceased to have this function around the end of the 8^th century BC.

Legislation

What were the reasons why the Greeks ceased to bear arms? In some city-states it seems to have been achieved through legislation, such as in Lokroi where Zaleukus is said to have drafted a law banning weapons from the council chamber [bouleuterion]. Charondas of Katane, whose laws were used in city-states like Naxos, Leontinoi, Zankle, Rhegion and Kyme, prohibited the carrying of weapons in public assembly. In Syracuse in 412 BC a committee, led by the democrat Diocles, drafted a code of law which among other things forbade the people to bear arms in the agora under pain of the death penalty, and this code was used in many other city-states in Sicily. Finally, there is an anecdote about the famous lawgiver Lycurgus, who after being wounded during a meeting forbade citizens to bring staffs with them to the people’s assembly.⁶

As van Wees notes, many of these laws are known only from anecdotes and are difficult to date, but nevertheless, they provide a glimpse of a widespread phenomenon in this period in Sicily, southern Italy and possibly in Sparta: the banning of weapons in public spaces (van Wees, 1998: 337–8, nn. 15–18). On the other hand, there is no certified law from Athens prohibiting the possession of weapons which seems puzzling, as men stopped bearing weapons in Athens at around this period as well. Therefore, one must, in the case of Athens, suppose either that the laws have not passed down to us, or that the aristocracy put their weapons away for other reasons.

Iconography

A major source for the development of disarmament is the Greek vase-painting. Here it is possible to follow a gradual development from a state of affairs where nearly everyone is wearing weapons to a state where none is. This development follows a significant advancement from men carrying swords, then spears, then staffs and then eventually nothing. In the course of this process, there is an interesting short period in which Greek aristocrats are depicted with parasols.

On the oldest vases, the Geometric, one sees numerous men armed with swords in war scenes. However, apart from outright armed warriors one also finds images of civilians who wear swords when, for example, greeting warriors going on an expedition, and later, in the Archaic Period, one finds images of civilians carrying swords when attending or participating in religious and secular events (van Wees, 1998: 344).

From the middle of the 7^thcentury, the depiction of men with swords ceases completely. One reason for this could be that the aristocracy now placed more emphasis on highlighting its own position by displaying conspicuous leisure through a new style of dress, the cloak [himation], which signalled a relaxed and idle state, distant from physical work, and this came to stand in the way of the more bellicose style, where it was the activity and being armed that was emphasized (van Wees, 1998: 352–62).

Besides these reasons, one might also add that a change in the nature of warfare may have played a large role. Men at that time probably ceased to carry swords and instead used spears, due to the fact that Greek warfare had now developed completely into hoplite warfare, whereby the more fence-oriented warfare had died out. Even for the Homeric heroes the spear was their main weapon, and unlike later European history where the sword has been the preferred mêlée weapon and still has a place in official parades featuring military officers, the spear completely took over this role in Greek warfare (van Wees, 1994: 133).

The depiction of civilian men armed with spears on Greek vases lasted from about 650 to 500 BC and at the end of the 6^th century vase painters cease to depict men with spears. We thus see a major shift from a time where men considered it appropriate to walk around armed with a spear as part of their civil outfit, via the cloak [himation], to a time where men only were armed as hoplites going abroad on military campaigns. In all other circumstances they were civilians armed with nothing but their cloak and a staff when walking around the city and its surroundings.

The staff can be seen as the last stage of bearing arms, for a staff is more than just a means to support oneself. As Thorstein Veblen showed, it both functions as a tool to signal the user’s dissociation from physical labour, that is, as a display of conspicuous leisure, and at the same time it also has an association with sport and typically plays a part in hunting and sports clothing. Thus, it displays active and warlike qualities, rather than being a symbol of a weak man’s need to support himself (Veblen, 1994[1899]: 162).

The staff can, therefore, be seen as the final step towards full disarmament. It is in a sense an amputation of the last violent feature of the outfit of men. From having carried swords and spears the nobility now became civilized to the extent that it had sublimated its arms to a mere symbol. The staff as a masculine and potent symbol would be worn for a while yet into the Classical Period, and one still sees the staff in many scenes depicting the aristocracy’s hobbies, such as discussions and courtship of boys. In these scenes, people often have a staff to lean on. It makes their bodies even more immobile for work, and when aristocrats simultaneously are depicted watching sports, it conveys the impression of relaxation and superiority achieved through total leisure (van Wees, 1998: 59–61).

Tyrants, aristocrats and citizens

In some of the written sources that speak of the aristocracy’s armament descriptions of men armed with clubs appear which supplement the picture of the development of bearing arms. For example, when the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus made his first coup in the year 561 BC the bodyguards he surrounded himself with were now armed with clubs:

The Athenian people, who had thus been deceived, gave him [sc. Peisistratus] 300 men, chosen from the city. The men were not spear-bearers for Peisistratus, but club-bearers, for they carried clubs of wood, whither they followed him. (Hdt. 1.59; cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 14.1; Plut. Solon 30)

This story seems to indicate that the tyrant’s bodyguards before Peisistratus were spearmen, and Aristotle also tells us that the tyrant Periander of Corinth used spearmen [doryphoroi] as bodyguards, and Plato also considered spearmen the instrument that tyrants used to seize power. Of other tyrants who had spearmen as guards, Aristotle mentions Theagenes of Megara and Dionysus the Elder (Arist. Corp. Aristot. fr. 516, ed. Rose; Plato Rep. 566b).

The development we are witnessing at Peisistratus’ seizure of power can thus be seen as part of the civilizing process: as a shift from a more violent and direct exercise of power to a more civilized one. For when Peisistratus got a force of men carrying clubs assigned to him this can be seen as an expression of a development towards a more civilized form of justice. As McGlew writes about the club: ‘It has its place rather in situations where the intention is to correct and reform, to hurt without necessarily inflicting permanent harm’ (McGlew, 1993: 76; emphases added). Hereby the guards got a new role as a rudimentary police force that could punish and correct the citizens using their clubs.

Another interesting aspect of Peisistratus’ and other tyrants’ seizure of power is the fact that the transition from aristocratic rule to a tyranny was part of a general progress towards a monopolization of power. Thus, the power of the city-state became more centralized by their takeover. The reason for this lay in the tyrant’s entrenched animosity against the former ruling class, the aristocrats. This animosity arose from the fact that the main competition to the tyrant’s power came from the aristocracy, and it was from here that the conspiracies against the tyrant’s life were formed (cf. Arist. Pol. 1311a 14–21). Tyrants, therefore, had to secure their power by making sure that they and only they were able to exercise it. For instance, in Peisistratus’ case, Herodotus explains, even the sons of his political opponents were expelled (Hdt. 1.64).

According to Elias (2012[1939]) when the ruler thus starts to monopolize power, the process is called the ‘monopoly mechanism’. Elias considers this mechanism as the other major factor in the civilizing process, besides the ‘royal mechanism’. Where the royal mechanism relates to the central authority’s role in mediating the power struggles between the aristocrats and groups in society, the monopoly mechanism relates to the overall concentration of power in the hands of one person or group. Elias argues that the monopoly mechanism works in a major social unit, where the competition for resources will result in still more being excluded from the competition and becoming directly or indirectly dependent on an ever-dwindling number of victors who control more and more opportunities. This monopoly can again at a later stage be transferred to a larger social group.

For our purpose here, it is relevant that Elias (in addition to tax collection) describes the monopoly mechanism’s main effect as the monopolization of violence. The process begins when a whole class controls unorganized opportunities and the distribution is determined in open competition and by violent means. Next, the options are now more and more centrally organized and become out of reach for a single class. The benefits from the monopoly of opportunities will thus be equally distributed with respect to the mutual interdependence between classes and will not be controlled for the sole interests of a single individual or class. Thereby, there is no longer left any place in society for a single class’s or individual’s violent struggle (Elias, 2012[1939]).

With respect to ancient Greek history, we have not yet reached the last steps in the civilizing process, as it requires that the people increasingly have their share of power. But the transition from a more loose monopoly which Elias simply calls the ‘monopoly potential’ to an actual monopolization of violence has a clear parallel in the Archaic Era of tyrants seizing power. Tyrants came from the ranks of the aristocracy (Arist. Pol. 1310b; cf. Murray, 1993: 138–9). It is also clear that their takeover was one of fierce competition with other aristocrats. An important effect of this monopolization of power was a monopoly of violence. From an initial state where all aristocrats were free to compete for influence and resources, their options were increasingly curtailed, and where all the heads of the large families took part in the struggles for power in the beginning, in a short span of years, in the case of Athens, a single aristocrat, Peisistratus, eventually possessed the monopoly of violence, and thus effectively limited the other aristocrats’ exercise of power.

But even when Peisistratus gained power, his doing so was assisted by means of clubs and not by the more deadly spears. There must therefore already have developed a major restraint in relation to the performance of violence, a restraint that was largely due to the royal mechanism that changed aristocrats’ behaviour towards each other from a more violent, competing form to a more polite one. This trend was further reinforced by the monopoly mechanism, which cut more and more aristocrats off from the opportunity to gain power and resources after first being dependent on a group of ever fewer and ever more powerful leaders.

Although there are many differences between Archaic Greece and the period and geographical area Elias describes, namely Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19^th century, it still seems plausible that the royal mechanism and monopoly mechanism can be used to explain ancient Greece. The model seems to explain why the aristocracy in ever lesser degrees carried weapons while they pursued a more luxurious lifestyle. This lifestyle Elias associates with the ‘court society’, but we find similar dynamics in the Greeks’ ‘symposium culture’. Where Elias’ court society is the space where the aristocracy restructured their habits from a warlike to a civilized way of life, the symposium, I will argue, represents a similar space in the case of ancient Greece.

On the whole it seems as if the tyrants’ limitation of the aristocracy’s violent lifestyle went quite well with the common people, when we, for instance, consider the behaviour of the aristocratic Penthelidai, and how they had the habit of walking around in the streets of Mytilene beating up common people with clubs [korynai] (Arist. Ath. Pol. 1311b: 26–8). It does not seem surprising then that Pittakos of Mytilene’s law which stipulated that crimes committed in drunkenness should be punished twofold was directed against this violent and drunken behaviour by these aristocrats; a measure that was greatly appreciated by the common people (regarding Pittakos’ law: Arist. Pol. 1274b 18–23; cf. McGlew, 1993: 95 n. 16.)

The aristocracy’s more ‘physical activity’ was no longer possible in a complex society, where it was only one man who held power. The tyrant’s power was assured only as long as he could out-manoeuvre the aristocrats by gaining the people’s favour, and it was especially at the expense of the people that the aristocracies in the past had wielded power. The limitation of the aristocracy’s freedom evolved, then, as an interdependent relationship between the disarmed aristocracy and the reigning tyrant. The more their influence in the city was limited, the more dependent on the tyrant they became and the greater impact his demands had. According to Elias, this process of the monopolizing of violence becomes internalized so that people’s self-control develops:

The monopolization of physical violence, the concentration of arms and armed troops under one authority, makes the use of violence more or less calculable, and forces unarmed people in the pacified social spaces to restrain their own violence through foresight or reflection; in other words it imposes on people a greater or lesser degree of self-control. (Elias, 2012[1939]: 411)

‘Know thyself’

In this context it is interesting that the famous inscriptions at the temple of Delphi, ‘Know thyself’ [gnothi seauton] and ‘Nothing to excess’ [meden agan], perhaps were set up at this time and maybe even by one of the tyrants among the Seven Wise, if we dare trust Diogenes Laertios (Pausanias 10.24.1; Diog. Laer. 1.39–41). These famous maxims can thus be seen in the light of the civilizing process. The self-control that they commanded the visitors to exercise appears to be an innovation in the Archaic Period. By comparison, in the Iliad by Homer we hear, for instance, how Achilles needs an external force in the form of Athena to hold him back from attacking Agamemnon. The external control of impulses was gradually replaced by an internalized brake in the form of self-control [sophrosyne], and this type of self-control seems precisely to have emerged because of an increased monopolization of violence in the city-states. Besides self-control, the phrase ‘Nothing in excess’ [meden agan] shows that perhaps people had begun to become more aware of civility itself. The message that these maxims convey seems actually to respond quite closely to what Elias describes as ‘civility’ (Elias, 2012[1939]).

This move to a more civilized self-understanding within the aristocracy can perhaps also be discerned in the changes that occur from the heroes being called ‘beautiful and strong’ [kalos te megas] in the Iliad and Odyssey (Hom. Il. 21.108; Od. 9.513), to aristocrats calling themselves ‘beautiful and good’ [kalos k'agathos] in the Archaic and Classical Periods (e.g. Hdt. 1.30).

These telling signs are only some of many from this period showing how culture and education began to play an increasingly important role for the aristocracy’s self-consciousness, and how conduct and correct behaviour had an increasingly important role in the aristocracy’s self-understanding.

Poetry

Another interesting source for a Greek civilizing process is the change in attitude one might trace in poets’ views on issues such as war and sex. For instance, when comparing Archilochus’ descriptions of his own war experiences from the middle of the 7^th century and Tyrtaeus’ war admonitions for Sparta with Anacreon’s poems about wine and the symposium’s joys, one finds a very sharp contrast. The lyric poet Alcaeus occupies here a middle position, since he is both apt to praise the joys of the symposium while at the same time being able to show great malice regarding the tyrant Myrsilos’ death and displaying great pleasure over a home filled with weapons (regarding Myrsilos, P–L fr. 332; regarding weapons: P–L fr. 357). Precisely this phenomenon is important, since there is a clear development from Alcaeus describing a home filled with weapons that seem to have been used to mobilize a group of supporters, to a poet such as Anacreon, who just two generations later insists on hearing only about wine and love. It can be argued that already Archilochus sings of wine in the poem about how his spear earns him his wine, which he in turn drinks while he is leaning on it (Archil. fr. 2 [West]). But it is not just the subject of wine that indicates the degree of civility, rather the poem reinforces the point because he ‘wins his wine by his spear’.

This martial style in turn completely disappeared when we reach Anacreon, who writes:

I am not a friend of him who speaks of tearful strife and war, while reclining and drinking by the full mixing vessel. But I am a friend of him that while he mixes the Muses’ glorious gifts with Aphrodite’s is aware of the wonderful celebration. (Anac. fr. 2; [West])

Stimulus from the East

The staff is not even the height of leisure for in a period of approximately 30 years from 505 to 470 BC we see men bearing parasols. A parasol bears no resemblance to a weapon and can only signal a complete degree of preoccupation with anything other than physical activity, a lifestyle of luxury that was linked with the rest of the wearer’s lifestyle (van Wees, 1998: 61–2). The parasol was part of the aristocracy’s garments at a time when they are seen in their most eye-catching outfit, an outfit that was inspired by the Persian and Lydian nobility’s way of dressing. This distinctive style was characterized by fluttering robes, long and decorated hair, gold, jewellery, perfume, wine, song and a general emphasis on everything sensual (Kurke, 1992: 96; cf. Neer, 2002: 19).

The reasons for this apparent imitation of the splendour [habrosyne] of the Lydians are explained by the art historian Richard Neer as a form of political manifestation through fashion: by imitating the oriental fashion, the nobility could showcase themselves as a second Croesus. This fashion was especially suited to the symposium, where the roles were being negotiated already, and where the concept of the multicoloured character [poikilon ethos] was central. It should be understood in the sense that the symposium was a form of theatre where you could shape your character and behaviour by adapting it to the other participants and circumstances (Neer, 2002: 14–27).

This provides an interesting perspective on the question of bearing arms, since the Greek aristocracy took up this oriental way of lifestyle at the same period and to the same extent as they lost their own autonomous power. And, as Elias points out, it is a clear example of the power of the court society when the nobility because of their mutual contact with each other must give up their more explicit and martial behaviour in favour of a more refined, urbane and civilized behaviour. Although the Greek aristocracy did not frequent Croesus’ court, it seems, however, that they took over much of what one immediately associates with the splendour of the eastern courts. Neer also suggests that it is striking that most of the so-called ’Anacreontic’ vases with all their Lydian extravagance were produced in the period during the Peisistratids and Cleisthenes’ introduction of democracy in Athens – at a time when the aristocracy was politically weak. This suggests that the vase paintings in some way were designed to compensate for the loss of political influence (Neer, 2002: 22).

All this leads to the conclusion that the Greek aristocracy under the impact of changes in society–power consolidation among fewer and fewer and the monopoly of violence, refined their ways and attained a less belligerent style. This style was largely inspired by the Lydian/Persian culture as a way to take over their esteemed position.

The people’s imitation of the aristocracy

The new aristocratic lifestyle that Alcaeus represented spread over time to the community. We find a good example of this in comedy-writer Aristophanes’ work The Wasps, where there is a scene with a culture clash between the peasant Philocleon and his young, clever son Bdelycleon as they are heading to a symposium. First, there is a description of how to dress and behave at a symposium: Bdelycleon focuses first on the clothes, and he gets his old father to take a cloth-like cape, some kind of thick Persian cloak, and put some Spartan slippers on. Then he tells him he must learn to walk with the air of a millionaire and in a snobbish manner (vv. 1132–7). After the dressing, Bdelycleon explains how one should speak at a symposium. Philocleon suggests telling dirty jokes while Bdelycleon tells him to talk about things that have to do with the management of the household (vv. 1179–80) or prestigious political positions (vv. 1187–8). Eventually Bdelycleon suggests that Philocleon should talk about sports in a knowing way (vv. 1190–3). Bdelycleon tries to get Philocleon to tell about all the manly pursuits he followed in his youth but without much luck (vv. 1197–1207). At last Bdelycleon comes to a longer description of how you should act and behave during the symposium. He must learn to behave elegantly and be urbane socially (vv. 1212–17).

This description of the required behaviour at a symposium is quite interesting in relation to the overall theory of the civilizing process. For in Bdelycleon’s description of how one should behave at a symposium one clearly sees how the aristocracy completely had changed their bellicose lifestyle. The most noticeable feature of this prescribed behaviour is the consideration of other persons’ feelings: Bdelycleon constantly tries to get his old peasant father to behave decently so that he will not cause offence. Here, dirty jokes are not appropriate. In sharp contrast, Philocleon shows a clear understanding of what manners and subject matters will be the most appropriate and civil in the company with other guests. Besides revealing the growing refinement of the Greek aristocracy, this passage also reveals another interesting fact, namely that the knowledge of upper-class habits must have been quite widespread in Aristophanes’ time, and that the aristocracy’s habits had become known to a larger proportion of the population in democratic Athens.

A good parallel to this description of the increasing demands of etiquette is Elias’s discussion of the various manuals for polite manners, which developed from the Renaissance onwards, in which very specific rules are set out in regard to how one should eat and drink and especially what not to do such as picking one’s nose or eating with a knife. These handbooks of manners were for Elias the best source for his study of the civilizing process, and I will argue that there is a clear parallel here between the development of increasingly more refined manners at the court society from the Renaissance onwards and the Greek aristocrats’ development of a corresponding etiquette for good behaviour at the symposia.

Aristocrats, citizens and the city-state

During the 5^th century, two things happen with the eastern refinement [habrotes] that the aristocracy had borrowed from the Lydians. First, the aristocracy was no longer the only group in the city-states practising a luxurious lifestyle, the people was also increasingly imitating them. Second, from the time of the Persian wars (480 BC) and onwards there was a development where the more explicit aspects of the Lydian and Persian culture were more and more shunned. Again, it is well elucidated by Thucydides (1.6) who writes:

The first who started to wear the simpler style of clothes, which are still in use today, was the Spartans. There, the rich also changed their lifestyle in other respects, so that they thereby were equal to the people in the highest degree.

The ancient historian A. G. Geddes has in an interesting study (1987) explained how Greek clothing went from a more luxurious Ionic-Lydian style of dress to a more ‘Spartan’ one in the form of a short chiton with a large cloak [himation]. Here he finds the reason in the fact that the Athenians by the 5^th century were proud to be: ‘[L]eisured, fit – fighting fit one might say – equal and like-minded, and that is the message that the clothes are meant to communicate’ (Geddes, 1987: 331, cf. 323–31; emphases added). These conditions were brought about by internal changes in society and a general contempt for the Persians, Lydians and Ionians after the Persian Wars (cf. Hdt. 1.71.19–20). We can thereby imagine a process where the Athenians under the influence of the new democracy were about to change their habits, pushing the upper class to change their clothes from a more extravagant Lydian-oriented style to a more egalitarian one. This process was further reinforced after the victory over the once-dreaded Persians in the Persian Wars, because now the ordinary Athenian looked with suspicion and contempt on everything that the aristocracy had adopted from the East because it was now associated with decadence and weakness; in short, the Greeks defined themselves in opposition to what they understood by ‘the Other’ (barbarians, women, slaves and all other opposites) (cf. Hall, 1991: 56–62).

The aristocracy’s monopoly of opportunities was now transferred to the citizen population, which in its entirety had thus taken over large parts of the aristocratic ideology and its characteristic claim to their civilized status: to be ‘kaloi k'agathoi’ (cf. Ober, 1991: 259–66). The aristocracy preserved, however, an important role in the democracy, since its members served as rhetores [speakers] and strategoi [generals], roles and offices that gave them considerable influence on the policy that was passed (cf. Ibid.: 104–21; Hansen, 1991: 272–3). Thus, it can be seen how the aristocracy itself adapted to the new political system. Aristocrats should act as good democrats and could no longer risk the conspicuous display of previous generations.

The monopoly of violence was thus transferred entirely to the civil population. It was in turn expected of the hoplites that each man had an entire set of equipment at home, and in case of an internal uprising in the city [stasis] they could pick up their weapons and defend their democracy (Herman, 2006: 216–58). This monopoly only furthered the citizens’ attitudes towards weapons. It was now seen as an absurdity even for soldiers under a situation of crisis to walk around with weapons within the city walls, and it became a hallmark of the civilized Greek citizen that, dependent on the state’s laws, he could walk unarmed in his town in contrast to the uncivilized barbarians. This process continued and was further strengthened with time so that Aristotle, writing in the 4^th century, could write with contempt about a time so barbaric that ‘the Greeks were bearing arms’.

Confronting Elias’s reservations

From these diverse examples it is argued in the following sections that Elias’s theory of the civilizing process can be applied to ancient Greece and help to explain why the Greeks went from bearing arms and displaying other expressions of external violence to becoming unarmed, more civilized and aware of themselves as moral subjects.

It is worth noting here that Elias did not originally believe that the civilizing process could be applied to the ancient world because it was too different in its social and economic structures compared with later periods and that the civilizing process only really started to take place at the end of the Middle Ages (Elias, 2012). Elias’s reservations stemmed first and foremost from his view that, in contrast to the Middle Ages, the ancient economy was entirely built upon the use of slaves, which again made it impossible for the citizens to acquire the same economic and social position as that of the later medieval burgher, which Elias saw as so important for the civilizing process in the European towns. In antiquity the majority of the citizens, according to Elias, did not have sufficient importance or position to be significant enough in the eyes of the nobility. Against this reservation, there are several things to object to. First, Elias built his analysis of the ancient economy mainly on the Roman Empire, which coloured his general analysis of antiquity. Additionally he subscribed to a particular school within the study of ancient economies, the so-called ‘primitivists’, which also included Max Weber. According to these, the basic features of the ancient economy were that the majority of the population were peasants who strove only for subsistence and self-sufficiency. This picture of the ancient economy has since been developed considerably and today many ancient historians belong to the ‘modernist’ school, which sees the economy as more advanced and not so different from later periods (cf. van Wees, 2009: 444, n. 1.).

The main argument for transferring the civilizing process to the ancient world, however, is that even if the ancient citizens were not an equally significant counterweight to the aristocracy by virtue of their economic position, it seems that they had power by virtue of their great political influence which gave them a very strong position in the city-states in relation to the aristocracy (cf. Ober, 1991). This position they had already begun to assert in the Archaic Period, especially in democratic city-states like Athens, where the greatly challenged aristocracy increasingly had to develop its social attitudes and manners in response to the more politically strong citizens.

Revaluating Elias’s concepts in light of these findings

A persistent criticism raised by the German ethnographer Hans Peter Duerr has been that Elias’s theory of the civilizing process is not consistent with ethnological studies, which Duerr and others have made of various peoples through time and across cultures. According to Duerr, civilization is a social constant in all cultures across time and space, and he therefore dismisses the civilizing process as a ‘myth’.

In relation to this criticism I have argued that by extending and applying the civilizing process to ancient Greece we can address parts of this criticism, since, on the one hand, the Greeks showed a clear progression from a less to a more civilized state (contra Duerr). On the other hand this also shows that the civilizing process is not a uniquely modern European phenomenon. Given this, it would be natural to look closer at some of the peoples and nations that Duerr used for his arguments and see if some of them actually have not experienced civilizing processes throughout periods of their history by using a more extended version of Elias’s theory which is not solely based on the premise that the only situation where a civilizing process can take place is a result of a dynamic competition between a mercantile citizenship and an aristocracy centralized around a monarch.

By thus opening up the possibility that factors other than those developed by Elias can be important in a civilizing process, it seems promising to try to apply a more extended version of the theory of the civilizing process to other cultures. By doing this it is also possible to counter the criticisms of Elias’s theory that it is ethnocentric but even more importantly it could perhaps explain yet unknown relationships between historical processes and the development of the individual’s habitus in other cultures, a work already begun by Eiko Ikegami (1997) with regard to Japan and Susanne Brandtstädter (2003) in relation to China. The theory could therefore show its unique strength in connecting different heterogeneous source types together from other nations over long periods of time and thus furthering the understanding of these nations, some of whom have yet to be studied in a broader, longer and truly Eliasian perspective.

Footnotes

Notes

References

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