World of Homer: 9th or 10th century (not a witness)

based on the nature of oral poetry

"a past that was known to him through oral transmission by the bards who preceeded him"

Homeric World: conflated time periods

based on archeological evidence (bronze weaponry, tradition of hospitality)

"who depends on predecessors of many period, and admits elements from his own experience and imagination into the bargain is far freer. he can select, he can conflate, he can idealise"

World of Homer: Bronze Age!

based on recent archaeology and scholarship

"Troy invites war" but not the seige described by Homer

"There are clear signs of later Greece in the epics; Homer lived perhaps around 700 B.C." with knowledge about the Bronze Age (of weaponry, government, scale, cities)

Orthodox view: hoplite warfare developed simultaneiously with the rise of the polis, late 8th c

uses Thucydides and knowlege of Greek conflict

objective was to othismos through the enemy

"ranks to the rearpiled up behind their leaders and bunched together laterally to seek protection in the line of sheilds"

individual/looser ranks, blend of Homer and Hanson

gradually shifted to formal hoplite warfare

iconographic/literary evidence (chigi vase, tyrtaeus)

"the phalanx continued to develop throughout the seventh century, and quite possible throughout the archaic age"

“the need to control helots and deter rebellion played a dominant role in shaping Spartan society”

source: Thucydides massacre, Plutarch, Myron

they were a danger that had to be kept under control and the Spaprtan lifestyle guaranteed that an army would always be ready to put down a helot threat

argues that the helots understood their place in society and lived comfortably farming with their families

only uprisings because of natural disasters/civil strife

neodamodeis: peaceful freed helots

"Spartiates were in fact for the most part confident of their helots' loyalty"

Solon was not trying to create a new structure of government. No Council of 400. Economic reforms to appease everyone/reforms that would be accepted

no other evidence of democratically minded laws

the aristocrat-dominated government "though carefully defined and limited by Solon in his code, remained substantially the same as before"

Solon was revolutionary in preparing Athens for Democracy

"positive historical fact"

Council of 500 seems much more random without it