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§1 Descriptions of communities in the early Greek epics—like descriptions of places, people and things in general—tend to be cursory and formulaic. One of the features that does recur in the descriptions of communities is a collective meeting place, the agorē. Nearly every community in which a significant portion of the Ilias or Odusseia is set—including Troiē and the camp of the Akhaioi before it, Odusseus’ Ithakē and the Phaiēkes’ Skheriē—is said explicitly to possess an agorē. Further, the epics stage numerous pivotal scenes in this setting, including the quarrel between Akhilleus and Agamemnōn in the Ilias (1.54, 305) and Tēlemakhos’ denunciation of the Suitors in the Odusseia (2.10, 257). In addition, an agorē is mentioned in connection with the temporary camp of the Trōes before Troiē (e.g., 18.254) and the Cities on the Shield of Akhilleus (18.497, 531) in the Ilias; with the city of the Laistrugones (10.114), Nestōr’s Pulos (3.31) and Eumaios’ native Suriē (15.468) in the Odusseia; as well as with Hesiodic Askrē (Theogonia 89), the Eleusis of the Homeric Hymn 2 eis Dēmētran (296), and even the gods’ home on Olumpos (Ilias 8.2). Finally, its mention in similes and other hypothetical expressions makes clear that the agorē is not only part of the physical landscape of the epic world, but it is also embedded deeply in its culture.
§2 The significance of the epic agorē is reflected in turn in the fact that it is more than simply a place for assembly: it is a monumentalized space, sometimes said to be adorned with stone, and associated with two other recurring features of the Homeric community, city walls and temples. This space serves as the main arena for the expression of public opinion and for the instigation of collective action, and is attended by specialized institutions and practices. As such, the epic agorē, like its counterparts in the real world, embodies the uniquely collective aspect of the ancient Greek polis.
§3 An examination of three agorai in pre-Classical Greek epic will serve as an introduction to the nature of this space and its institutions, and as a basis for comparison with what is known from the material record about the emergence of the agorē in historical Greek communities. In the full account of the epic polis from which the present discussion is excerpted, the other agorai that appear in the epics, in particular those at Troiē and at the camp of the Akhaioi, can be seen to mirror the three described here in terms of their physical features, location relative to other monuments, and associated institutions. The overall picture of the epic agorē that emerges from this analysis suggests that it is part of a schematic pattern that includes the aforementioned walls and temples, and that took shape as the early Greek epic tradition was adapting to the emergence of the polis as the normative form of community among its audiences. The epics claim to recreate a distant past, but that past takes as its point of reference the world in which epic poets composed and performed.
μὲν ἐκήρυσσον, τοὶ δ’ ἠγείροντο μάλ’ ὦκα.
to summon to the agorē the long-haired Akhaioi.
The former summoned, and the latter assembled very quickly.
§6 Odusseus, it is revealed, has his own seat (thōkos) in the agorē. There is no indication that his is the only seat, which fact suggests one facet of the institutionalization and monumentalization of the epic agorē: permanent seats are maintained by at least the dominant families on Ithakē.
or does he declare and speak about some other public matter?
§8 As is often pointed out in discussions of Homeric society, this question reveals a conceptual distinction between public and private. The agorē as the regular arena to discuss such public concerns as taking measures for the defense of the community against an invasion, but a private issue could be the occasion of an assembly—though Aiguptos’ first, instinctive reaction is to assume otherwise. In any case, the point is made: the agorē at Ithakē, even if it has fallen into desuetude, is still felt by the characters to be the place for discussion of especially public, but also private, affairs.
the herald Peisēnōr, a man who knew wise counsels.
§10 Here a respected official carrying the title of kērux is in charge of enforcing order in the assembly by limiting the right to speak to one individual at a time, which right is enshrined in an artifact, the skēptron.
§12 The linkage of Themis, the personification of righteous, or at least orderly, behavior and the agorē seems well-established; thus for example the same goddess acts as kērux and convenes a pivotal divine assembly in the Ilias (20.4, discussed below). In the midst of the fierce debate that ensues, Zeus sends a pair of eagles as an omen into “the middle of the much-speaking agorē” (μέσσην ἀγορὴν πολύφημον ἱκέσθην, 2.150); for, since the people gather there, the agorē is an obvious place for the gods to communicate with them (and therefore a natural place to locate a temple, as will be seen below). With nothing resolved—for resolution would effectively end the Odusseia at Book 2—another of the Suitors “dissolved the agorē” (λῦσεν δ’ ἀγορήν, 2.257).
ξεῖνον, ὅτις μοι κεῖθεν ἅμ’ ἕσπετο δεῦρο κιόντι.
a stranger [Theoklumenos], who followed along with me from there as I was coming here.
§14 Tēlemakhos proceeds from his family’s home to the agorē and finds it thronged with people (πουλὺν ὅμιλον, 67): this is clearly a public space, and it is at some distance from the home of the ruling family. Tēlemakhos’ friend Peiraios meets him there together with Theoklumenos, whom Peiraios has brought “through the city to the agorē” (ἀγορήνδε διὰ πτόλιν, 72), suggesting that the agorē is figuratively, and perhaps literally, in the center of the community. Later, after Theoklumenos delivers a dire prophecy concerning the Suitors, they in response demand that he be sent from Odusseus’ house “to go into the agorē” (εἰς ἀγορὴν ἔρχεσθαι, 20.362).
αὐτοὶ δ’ εἰς ἀγορὴν κίον ἀθρόοι, ἀχνύμενοι κῆρ.
And they themselves went to the agorē, all together, anguished at heart.
§16 As at the agorē convened by Tēlemakhos near the beginning of the Odusseia, a public debate takes place between partisans of the Suitors and those of Odusseus (Odusseia 24.421-466). Roughly half of those assembled decide to arm and confront Odusseus and his supporters, while the rest apparently remain in the agorē (464-466) before proceeding to the edge of the polis (πρὸ ἄστεος, 468) for the final showdown.
§17 From all of this an idea of how the agorē at Ithakē was conceived can be deduced. It is an open space where people meet for public business as well as private (2.32, 44-45; 16.361-362) that seems to be centrally located within the polis (17.72), and to be some distance from the house of the most powerful family (2.9-13; 16.343-362; 17.61-64). Within this space, large numbers of people, or at least men, gather (17.67), young and old (16.361), and at least some of the more influential citizens are assigned special, permanent seats (2.14). A general (as opposed to private) meeting at the agorē is announced to the citizens throughout the city by kērukes, “heralds” (2.6-7, 37-38) at the request of an influential citizen (2.7); the preferred time is morning (1.372). Alternatively, the people may gather at the agorē spontaneously (24.420). The kērukes moderate discussion by handing a special staff (skēptron, 2.37) to a speaker. In sum, a host of institutions and practices is associated with the agorē on Ithakē.
§18 It is noteworthy that the agorē on Ithakē, though depicted outwardly as largely a tool of the ruling elite, nevertheless seems to possess real authority in its own right, up to and including the ability to exile the powerful if they commit serious crimes (16.381). At least theoretically, it appears, this decision-making body is responsible to some abstract notion of justice, as is reflected in the appeal by Tēlemakhos to Zeus and Themis in his denunciation of the Suitors (2.68-69).
Φαιήκων ἀγορήνδ’, ἥ σφιν παρὰ νηυσὶ τέτυκτο.
καρπαλίμως δ’ ἔμπληντο βροτῶν ἀγοραί τε καὶ ἕδραι.
to the Phaiēkes’ agorē, which had been built by them beside the ships.
λείηναν δὲ χορόν, καλὸν δ’ εὔρυναν ἀγῶνα.
and they smoothed a place for dancing and marked off the lovely assembly.
§24 Like the agorē on Ithakē, then, the one on Skheriē features seats (8.6, 16), is administered by public officials (kērukes, 8.8; kritoi, 8.258), is broadly attended (8.109), and is the locus of public action. In a sense, Skheriē is simply a more sophisticated version of Ithakē: the special seats here are of polished stone (ξεστοῖσι λίθοισι, 8.6), the agorē itself is paved (6.267), and the office of kērux is supplemented by that of the kritos (258). And whereas the citizens of Ithakē are shown worshipping in a “dusky grove of Apollōn” (20.278), the Phaiēkes have built for themselves a temple of Poseidōn, abutting their agorē (6.266). Further, there is a thematic connection that parallels the physical proximity here that links the agorē that serves as the locus of public action, the harbors and ships that provide the Phaiēkes with their livelihood (7.43, 8.5), and the temple to the sea god to whom they look for protection on the seas.
§27 Other assemblies at the divine agorē recur throughout the early epic corpus. Although the divine meeting place is not referred to specifically as an agorē in the Ilias until the beginning of Book 8 (8.2), and is only referred to using one of the previously mentioned synonyms in the Odusseia (5.3), it is clear that the meeting space thus described in the passages cited above is the same meeting space for the numerous other times that the gods meet on Olumpos for discussion.
and ordered them to return to the home of Zeus.
Hēphaistos had made with his knowing craftsmanship.
§29 In this extended treatment, further parallels between the divine and mortal agorē become apparent. In terms of its location, the gods’ agorē is close to the home of Zeus (20.7), unlike the ones at Ithakē and Skheriē, but like that of the Trōes, which is near the home of Priamos (Ilias 2.786-795), and that of the Akhaioi, which is near the quarters of Agamemnōn (7.382-383). The “polished colonnades” (ξεστῇς αἰθούσῃσιν, 11) in which the gods sit recall the polished stone seats of the Phaiēkes (Odusseia 8.11). The duties of kērux are here performed by Themis (4), the divine personification of established order, who as discussed above is associated with mortal agorai elsewhere (Odusseia 2.69, Ilias 11.807). Even on the level of the structure of the scene, the question put to Zeus by Poseidōn (16) mirrors that of Aiguptos at the agorē on Ithakē (Odusseia 2.28-29), while the broad, egalitarian nature of this assembly in Ilias 20 mirrors that of the assembly convened by Akhilleus in Book 19 (compare 20.7-9 with 19.42-45).
§30 The community of the gods is presented in the epics as an idealized polis: protected by a fortification wall (Ilias 5.749=8.393), the inhabitants gather at their communal agorē, where they discuss their collective future. Perhaps more than any other of the evidence presented here, the divine agorē demonstrates how deeply embedded in the consciousness of epic poets and their audiences this conception of society had become by the time the epics were achieving the forms documented in the manuscript tradition. For in depicting Olumpos, poets were constrained neither by any historical reality, nor, as far as can be determined, any very specific vision of the gods’ home that was current in ancient Greek theology or folk belief. The appearance of an agorē in the archetypal community on epic Olumpos, then, is a pure manifestation of how, according to the epic tradition at the time of textualization, things should be and had always been.
§33 In this case, it is not the abstract justice of Zeus that is invoked, but the kind of quotidian image with which the Hesiodic Erga kai Hēmerai engages (29-30).
then indeed we slept at the edge of sea’s surf.
§37 Here discussion means staging an agorē, even if only at a temporary site on an unknown shore. This metonymy, by which the designation for the activity is derived from the physical location, indicates that institutions associated with the agorē are taking on a symbolic life of their own.
§38 This impression is strengthened by the embedding of assumptions about social life that is to be found in scenes set at the agorē. One example is the time of day at which an agorē is convened. As observed earlier, the regular time is morning (Ilias 2.48, Odusseia 1.372, 9.170 = 10.187 = 12.316); gathering later in the day is termed “out of order” (Odusseia 3.137-138). Further, as has been seen, special public officials (kērukes, kritoi) play key roles in managing the agorē (Ilias 2.52, 38, 786-787; 9.9-13; 18.503; Odusseia 2.6; 8.8, 258-260), including stewardship of a staff, skēptron, described variously as “golden” (e.g., Ilias 1.234), “inherited” and “immortal,” (2.46), that helps to enforce order (see in particular Ilias 2.80, 101-107, 182, 265; 7.412; 14.939.38; Odusseia 2.38, 80). Indeed, these elements have been formalized to such an extent that it is possible to speak of an assembly type-scene, which is to say a flexible narrative pattern that can be used to describe, and may have been used to construct, epic assemblies. The centrality of the agorē to the action is in turn manifest in its central location within the community, whether at Ithakē (Odusseia 2.10, 24.420), Skheriē (Odusseia 6.266, 7.44, 8.5), the imaginary polis on Akhilleus’ Shield (Ilias 18.497), or at Troiē (Ilias 7.435-436).
§39 The picture of the agorē that emerges from the epics, then, is schematic and stylized. The poems show no apparent interest in depicting a specific agorē in a specific polis. Not every community mentioned in the epics possesses an agorē, but one does appear in connection with every community in which a significant portion of an epic narrative is set—in the poleis of Askrē, Eleusis, Ithakē, Pulos, Skheriē, and Troiē, the “pseudo-poleis” of Olumpos and the Greek camp at Troiē, along with a number of minor and hypothetical communities, including Eumaios’ Suriē, the Laistrugones’ Tēlepulos, the cities on Akhilleus’ shield, and in similes.
§40 The epic agorē is, in sum, ubiquitous. In order for a member of the audience at a performance of an early Greek epic to understand what is going on in the major scenes in the epics, he or she must therefore have had some sense of both what an agorē looks like and of the kinds of activities that go on there. By extension, translators and their reading audiences, when rendering the epics into other languages, consciously or not, rely on contemporary ideas about communal space when making sense of the agorē.
§41 Although Greek communities all through the ages, like communities generally, will have included places where people could gather for discussion, worship, trade and other group activities, the articulation of these spaces differed over time. Bronze Age Mycenaean communities seem to have created such areas as palace, rather than public, space, and the same seems to have been true, on a much smaller scale, in Early Iron Age communities. Beginning in the eighth century, however, as a brief survey will demonstrate, open space in a few Greek communities starts to become transformed into true public space. It should therefore be possible to identify a historical period that corresponds to the monumentalized and institutionalized epic agorē of the type that appears in the epics.
§42 What is thought to be the earliest material evidence for an agorē has been found on the southern edge of the Greek world, in Crete. At Dreros, on a space between two citadels, a flat, 23 x 40 meter rectangle, bounded at one corner by a flight of seven steps, has been identified as the first archaeologically visible Greek agorē. The area appears to have been part of a complex that included a temple with which it was aligned and two approach paths. The steps seem to have served as public seating, perhaps for religious as well as political purposes, and in this respect they recall the stone seats at Skheriē. The site was certainly later, if not from the first, dedicated to Apollōn Delphinios and associated with the aforementioned temple, as well as with a building that may have served government functions (prutaneion). Pottery from the temple dates to the last quarter of the eighth century, while legal inscriptions on the wall of the adjacent temple of Apollōn, together with an inscription that references “Zeus Agoraios” that date from the latter half of the seventh century establish the function of the space at least by this time. Elsewhere in Crete, at Amnisos, the port of Knossos, a putative agorē has been identified in proximity to a shrine of Zeus Thenatēs that has been dated to the eighth century.
§43 The other contemporary agorai are to be found on the eastern side of the Greek world. At Zagora on Andros, a community founded in the late ninth century and deserted around 700, an open space has been identified as potentially belonging to a complex that included a chieftain’s residence and a temple or shrine, possibly dedicated to Athēnē. Slightly later than Zagora, though resembling it in important respects, is Emporio on Chios, which was settled in the late eighth century and abandoned (except for its temple of Athēnē) some time in the seventh; there an open space for assembly may have been located on the acropolis. Finally, the excavators of Old Smyrna in Ionia suggested that an area just inside the city wall was left open when the town was reorganized around 700 BCE to serve as an agorē; this area was also associated with a temple of Athēnē.
§44 There are, then, only a few sites where agorai may have been established by 700 BCE, all of them at the edges of the Greek world. Moreover, the validity of the identification of the agorai at each of these sites has been called into question. It is not unlikely that Dreros and a few other eighth century Greek communities had agorai and associated institutions that were comparable to those in Homeric communities, and it is all but certain that some early agorai await discovery or are irrecoverable. What is equally clear, however, is that the agorē cannot be considered a common feature of Greek communities in the eighth century.
§45 The polis of Lato in the east of Crete was, like that at Dreros, built around two acropoleis, at the saddle between which was located a cluster of public buildings (though those excavated so far date only to the third or fourth century) at a space that modern excavators have termed an agorē; this space was apparently associated in the seventh century with some sort of hero cult or shrine that would be the site of a later temple. Further toward south central Crete, at Gortyn, an inscription refers to the agorē, for which two sites have been proposed; as elsewhere its establishment coincided with the synoecism of surrounding villages and the construction of temples, here in the course of the seventh century.
§46 Also in this century, a number of the new colonial foundations began to establish agorai. At Megara Hyblaia in eastern Sicily, where the earliest pottery dates from the second half of the eighth century, the settlement seems to have been arranged from the start in a grid pattern, and it is sometimes concluded that an agorē was part of the original plan. However, there is also evidence that not one but several grids were overlaid on the site and harmonized in the course of the city’s first century, which suggests to others that the archaic agorē at Megara Hyblaia was only established during the reorganization in the mid-seventh century. Founded perhaps a century after Megara Hyblaia, Selinous, on the southwest coast of Sicily, also seems to have elaborated a complex of public buildings centered on an agorē, though rather earlier in its history. At Metapontion in southern Italy, on the other hand, an agorē is associated with the very first layout of the city at the end of the seventh century.
§47 What might at first appear to be a variety of different settlement patterns in Magna Graecia has been explained by archaeologists in terms of a more or less simultaneous trend among the western Greeks. Thus, although Megara Hyblaia, Selinous and Metapontion were founded at different times, the monumentalization of public space that brought about the association of shrines and temples with a centrally located agorē occurred, not as an organic development requiring several generations in some cases, less in others, but rather as a product of the needs, desires, and probably of the agonistic and emulative instincts, of late seventh century poleis. That this process is particularly evident in colonies is natural, since new foundations, unlike those that had grown up organically back in Greece, could be planned and shaped to reflect the ideals and preconceptions of the colonizers and their native polis.
§48 An apparently similar trend is apparent in the seventh century Aegean on the island of Paros. At Koukounaries, an earlier site was abandoned and a new one developed in the seventh century that included a putative agorē. An agorē may also be indicated at a similar and contemporary settlement on the islet of Oikonomos off the shore of Paros; here it abuts the fortification wall. On the north Aegean island of Thasos, a seventh-century agorē has been identified in proximity to an apparently later temple of Apollōn. To the south, the island of Thera may also have been the site of an agorē, though the conjecture appears to be based largely on comparison with the Theran colony of Cyrene, founded in the second half of the seventh century. Finally, at Vroulia on Rhodes an agorē appears to have established on the edge of what was apparently a small and short-lived but nevertheless carefully planned community; here too the space is in proximity to the fortification wall and shrines or a temple.
§49 The evidence for the agorē in the seventh century, then, is more widespread than that for the eighth century, but it remains limited. At perhaps a dozen sites, the existence of an agorē is certain or nearly so, and there are a few other possibilities. Since Zagora and Emporio were both abandoned by about 700, the only sites for which there is inconvertible material evidence for functioning agorai in Greek communities in the seventh century are Dreros, Lato and Gortyn in Crete, Megara Hyblaia, Selinous and Metapontion in Magna Graecia, Thasos in the north Aegean, Paros and Thera in the Cyclades, and Vroulia on Rhodes. There is however little archaeological evidence for agorai on the Greek mainland before the sixth century, and it seems unlikely that significant numbers of earlier agorai remain undetected. In other words, the agorē was not a normative feature of Greek life in the eighth century, and is unlikely to have been so before the second half of the seventh. It is only from this latter point that “agorē-culture” can be considered a truly Panhellenic phenomenon—one exampled across Greece, and therefore meaningful for Panhellenic audiences.
§50 In the material record of early Greece, evidence for the collective decision to create, adorn and maintain an agorē goes hand-in-hand with that for other developments in the use of space that are signifiers of the polis. Specifically, at the same time that the agorē began to become a common feature of Greek poleis, so also did monumental places of public worship—temples—and monumental defensive works that protected most or all of a community, and these features also are exampled rarely before the mid-seventh century. The emergence of agorē-culture was a slow process: by around 700, only a few communities seem to have begun to feel the need to “say something” about the internal workings of their institutions by establishing agorai on a scale that is archaeologically visible. By 600, many communities across Greece were making statements in this language; by the end of the sixth century, Greek culture could truly be considered an agorē-culture, the first in the world to create consciously a public sphere.
§51 The early Greek epics, according to the analysis put forward above, assume an understanding of this language. These poems were composed and performed for audiences for whom it was natural that common people, heroes and gods alike, from Ithakē to Olumpos and all points in between, live in communities with defined public space for debate, space that was itself monumentalized and associated with other public monuments, in particular temples and city walls. Institutions such as the office of herald and preconceptions such as the proper time of day for meeting, along with formulaic language, suggest how deeply the agorē has become embedded in the epic tradition, which is of course one reflection of Greek culture itself.
§52 For the epic agorē is in the final analysis defined not so much by its monumentalization as by its status as public space. This is the true significance of the “staging an agorē” formula in the Odusseia and, by way of further example, of the remonstration against eavesdropping on others’ disputes in the agorē in the Erga kai Hēmerai (29-30). This physical space, open to all those possessing at least some direct political influence (female characters do not attend the epic agorē), is analogous to the space created by epic performances. Just as epic poetry is overtly public poetry (in contrast with, for example, sympotic poetry), it privileges the public spaces in which its characters live.
§53 My overall argument can be summed up as follows. The representation of poleis in archaic Greek epics corresponds to an attenuated and vague, but coherent reflection of the material and social conditions of the poleis inhabited by or at least known to those for whom the early epics were composed and performed. The nature of these audiences was heterogeneous: because the epics took shape during performances at religious centers frequented by people from different communities, they relied on assumptions that were meaningful for most or all audience members and peculiar to none. Put another way, the epics generated an abstraction of “Greekness” that was acceptable in a large portion of the Greek-speaking world at the time when the epics were taking the forms in which we have them. This Panhellenic ideology includes assumptions about what it means to live in a community: characters live in places defined by circuit walls and a ritual matrix of urban and rural religious sites; they worship at Panhellenic shrines as well as local temples; and their public lives center on an agorē.
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 ἀγορή is by far the most common term; synonyms include th(o)ōkos (e.g., Odusseia 2.26), aguris (Odusseia 3.31), hedrē (Odusseia 8.17), phēmis (Odusseia 15.468), agōn (Ilias 7.298), eirē (always plural; Ilias 18.531); hedos (Aspis 203), homēguris (Homeric Hymn 4 eis Apollōna 92).
 Thus Kenzler 1999:17: “Und bereits in den homerischen Epen wird deutlich, daß ein geordnetes Zusammenleben ohne die Agora nicht vorstellbar gewesen ist.” For the agorē as a defining feature of ancient Greek society, see Detienne 2000; Hammer 2000:337-338; Mazarakis Ainian 2000:109-137; Raaflaub 1997:9-20, 1993:54-55; Hölkeskamp 1994 and 1997; van Wees 1992:28-31, 33, 323 n11, 326 n27; Ulf 1990:164-171.
 See for example Van Wees 1992:33.
 The distinction is not entirely clear-cut: when elsewhere in the Odusseia (21.15-17) Odusseus is said to have traveled to Messenē with a claim against the whole people (πᾶς δῆμος, 17), he at least visits the household of the ruler (οἴκῳ ἐν Ὀρτιλόχοιο δαΐφρονος, 16), though it is not specified whether he pleads his case there or perhaps at an unmentioned but implicit agorē.
 For the role of the skēptron in assemblies see in particular Ilias 1.101-109, 2.185-186.
 On this separation see Scully 1990:101.
 In addition to here and at Ithakē, permanent stone seats for at least the more distinguished members of the community are to be found as well as in the agorai at Pulos (Odusseia 3.31), Olumpos (Ilias 8.439, 456), and the City at Peace on Akhilleus’ shield (Ilias 18.504).
 On the powers of the epic agorē see for example Saïd 2011:84; Crielaard 1995:243-244; Scully 1990:101-102. In non-Homeric accounts of Odusseus’ return, the hero is himself exiled by the Suitors’ families, for which see Marks 2008: 83-111, and Akhilleus seems to have been driven from the army of the Akhaioi by public opinion after his killing of Thersitēs in the Cyclic Aithiopis (Proklos p. 68.1-10 Bernabé).
 Scully 1990:102 connects the citation of Themis here with the use of the epithet “sacred” to describe the “circle” of the agorē depicted on the Shield of Achilles (Ilias 18.503-504).
 For ῥυτοῖσιν λάεσσι κατωρυχέεσσ’ ἀραρυῖα meaning “paved,” see Hainsworth in Heubeck et al. 1988:310-311 ad 6.267.
 The force of the plural (cf. Ilias 2.275, 788; Odusseia 8.16) is unclear.
 On agōn see above n1.
 This agorē is also presumably where the queen of the Phaiēkes, Arētē, “settles disputes for men” (ἀνδράσι νείκεα λύει, Odusseia 7.74). The similarity between the agorai on Ithakē and Skheriē is discussed by Scully 1990:101-102.
 See Dubbini 2011:28-29 on the significance of such language for the monumentalization of public space in the early polis.
 The divine agorē: Odusseia 5.3, Ilias 8.439, Homeric Hymn 2 eis Dēmētran 92, Homeric Hymn 3 eis Apollōna 92, Homeric Hymn 4 eis Hermēn 325-332, Theogonia 802-804.
 Indications about the location of these divine council scenes is found at Ilias 1.439-611, 4.1, 15.84-85, 22.166-87, 24.22-142; Odusseia 1.26-7, 5.3, 5.7, 12.377, 13.125-59, 14. 472-488.
 For the connection between Themis, Zeus and the agorē in this passage see Kenzler 1999:196-200, 206-208; cf. 48-49. E. Cook 1995:97 n11 suggests that the concept of themis serves to connect the gods as the guarantors of law with kings and judges as its enforcers.
 On this simile see recently Tsagalis 2012:331-333. Janko IC 4: 364-366 rightly discounts the view that the passage represents a later (and interpolated) view of the gods; for a similar formulation, see Theogonia 80-87. Cook 1995:45 n75 connects this passage with a divinely enforced cycle of transgression/warning/punishment.
 On the symbolic force of this simile see De Jong 2001:311 ad 12.428-441.
 On the temporal frame of Homeric similes see e.g., Edwards 1987:103.
 Compare the less frequent formula for ending an agorē: λῦσαν/εν δ’ ἀγορήν (Ilias 1.305, 19.276; Odusseia 2.257).
 Marks 2008:159-166; Beck 2005:191-195; De Jong 2001:45-47 ad Odusseia 2.6-259.
 On the central location of the epic agorē, with special reference to Skheriē as “an impression of what the poet and his audience thought a city should look like” [emphasis in original], see Crielaard 2009:351.
 See for example Kenzler 1999:304-326.
 Sjögren 2008:208: 83-84; McDonald 1943:61.
 Kenzler 1999:69-70; Mazarakis Ainian 1997:335-336; as he observes (368), the cave of Eileithuia at Amnisos is mentioned in the Odusseia (19.188-190).
 For the agorē see Mazarakis Ainian and Leventi 2009:218; Coldstream 2003 :315; Morris 1998:22-23; Kenzler 1999: 4-75; Mazarakis Ainian 1997:171-176 discusses the religious architecture. For the identification of the chieftain’s residence, see Cambitoglou et. al. 1971:31; Fig. IV shows the proximity of the putative agorē to the temple (buildings H30-31).
 Nicholls 1958-1959:75-79, 124-125. The excavators’ clearest statement on the subject seems to be the famous “imaginative reconstruction” of the seventh century city drawn by Nicholls and presented by J. Cook 1958-1959:15 Figure 3. Kenzler 1999:84 comments on the frequent comparison of Old Smyrna to Skheriē that serves as part of the basis for positing an agorē at the historical site. See also Snodgrass 1980:157, Coldstream 2003 :315.
 The absence of agorai on the mainland may of course reflect in part the difficulty of distinguishing an eighth century stratum; see for example the case of Eretria in Euboia discussed by Walker 2004:105 and Kenzler 1999:96-97.
 Perlman 2004:1173-1174; Kenzler 1999:112, and 67-69 discusses the tendency to cite the Cretan evidence in connection with the Homeric epics. For the layout of the urban center of Lato, see Gaignerot-Driessen 2012:61 Figure 1. For the public buildings see Coldstream 2003 :315; Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994:63-65; S. Miller 1978:78-86; for the comparison between Lato and Dreros, see Willetts 1976:151.
 Discussion and bibliography in Sjögren 2008:143, 204 n598; see further Coldstream 2003:402, 406-7; Perlman 2000:71-72. Martin 1951:229-232 postulates that the so-called “Pythian” agorē at Gortyn was founded in the seventh century but “plus tard, un héroon fut éléve sur l’esplanade et maintenit le caractère traditionnel de l’agora” (230).
 Thus for example De Angelis 2003:17-20.
 See the conclusions of Osborne 1998: 260. Svenbro 1982 distinguishes five separate grids, which he suggests may correspond to the five villages that composed the mother city, Megara. Morris 1998:23 argues that “It was not until after 650 that the area around the agorē [at Megara Hyblaia] began to look like late eighth-century Zagora, as the original plots of 100-120 square meters were filled by courtyard houses”; similarly Snodgrass 1980:157. Hall 2007:47 points out that “in reality there is little compelling evidence that it [the agorē] served this function much before its monumentalization a century later.” See further Kenzler 1999:89-91, 104.
 De Anglis 2003:128-131 (especially Figure 41), 143.
 Crielaard 2009:365-366; Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994:65-67; Adamesteanu 1979:305 cites a sixth-century inscription containing the words Διὸς ἀγορά.
 Osborne 1996:234-236; Grandjean 1988:292-299; Graham 1978:71; R. Martin 1951:236, 390-391; however, as these scholars acknowledge, the argument for so early a date is connected to an inscription mentioning Arkhilokhos, and is therefore contaminated by poet’s biographical tradition. The chronology at Thasos is difficulty owing to fourth-century reconstruction; Grandjean:294 and Graham:66-70 detail how the attempts to date certain structures to the first half of the seventh century require that the pottery sequence be ignored.
 Whitley 2001:171; Kenzler 1999:79-80; Lang 1996:193-194.
 Other possible candidates, for which the evidence is even more equivocal and disputed than the sites just discussed (see n36 above), include: Phaistos and Prinias: Sjögren 2008:143; Syracuse: Kenzler 1999:85-86; Athens: Papadopoulos 2003; Thebes: Symeonoglou 1985:137; Corinth: Kenzler 1999:93-94; Argos; Kenzler 1999:94-99.
 See the tabulations by Lang 1996:65 and Martin 1951:Tableau 1.
 On Panhellenism see Nagy 1990:52-81, and recently 2009:51-54.
 The extensive evidence that corroborates this statement belongs to the larger project from which the present essay is excerpted, but for an overview see the tabulations of Mazarakis Ainian 1997:420-424 for temples and Frederiksen 2011:201-206 for walls.
 On the creation of public space see Whitley 2001: 174; Hölscher 1999: 11-23, and 37-38 on the significance of the agorē as a space of “neutrality” in the historical Greek polis; see also Morris 1987: 7-8. On the nature of archaeological evidence for the differentiation of public and private space see Sjögren 2008: 138-157.
Descriptions of communities in the early Greek epics—like descriptions of places, people and things in general—tend to be cursory. Three features, however, recur with some frequency, each of which belongs to the public sphere: a central meetingplace (agorē), freestanding temples, and a city wall that encircles the entire settlement. Communities in which a significant part of an epic narrative is set—Troiē and the camp of the Akhaioi before it, Odusseus’ Ithakē and the Phaiēkes’ Skheriē, Hesiodic Askrē, the Eleusis of the second Homeric Hymn, and even the gods’ home on Olumpos—are said to possess at least an agorē, and often one or more of the other features. Further, these manifestations of public space form a kind of complex, frequently being associated with one another and represented as monumentalized, which is to say constructed of stone and conspicuous to the characters.
This arrangement of public space—indeed the very existence of such space—distances the representations of community in the epics from historical Bronze and Early Iron Age Greek communities. In this “pre-polis” era, assembly and worship seem to have been largely under the control of palaces or chieftains, and fortifications normally excluded a significant part of the population. In fact, a survey of the material record reveals that none of the three features that are the focus of this study appears with any regularity in ancient Greece before the midseventh century BCE.
The interpretation of these facts about the literary and material records advanced here proceeds from the idea that the agorē, temple and enceinte wall correspond to a schematic but coherent reflection of the material and social conditions of the communities known to the Greeks for whom the early epics were composed and performed. The nature of these audiences was Panhellenic: because the epics took shape during performances at religious centers that were frequented by people from various parts of Greece, they rely on images and concepts that were broadly meaningful for those in attendance. This synthetic vision of Greece includes the assumption that it is natural for characters to inhabit places defined by circuit walls, to worship at Panhellenic shrines and city temples, and to conduct their public lives in an agorē, all of which point to the historical context suggested above.
τούτου τε καὶ τοῦ Λεπρεατικοῦ τοῦ ἐν τῇ Τριφυλίᾳ καὶ τῇ Πισάτιδι, τρίτου δὲ τοῦ Μεσσηνιακοῦ τοῦ κατὰ Κορυφάσιον, ἕκαστοι τὸν παρά σφισιν ἠμαθόεντα πειρῶνται δεικνύναι, καὶ τὴν τοῦ Νέστορος πατρίδα τοῦτον ἀποφαίνουσιν.
This statement makes clear that the picture of Nestor’s land in the Iliad and Odyssey was sufficiently vague that various communities in the Western Peloponnese could lay claim to being the “real” Homeric Pylos.
Here I want to use Pylos as a means to explore one of the features that recur in epic representations of the polis, namely fortifications. While many communities are said to be walled in the epics, I am interested in how the absence of any reference to walls in connection with an epic polis might be perceived by various potential audiences. No city wall is mentioned in connection with Pylos in the Iliad and Odyssey; in the latter poem, for example, Telemakhos passes from the shore to Nestor’s home without ever being said to see a wall or to pass through a gate. Is this because the Odyssey conceives of Pylos as an unfortified community? Or is it because epic narrative tends to describe only those features that are of significance for the action? In terms of the example, does Telemakhos fail to encounter a wall because the Odyssey wants its audiences to think of Pylos as being unfortified, or because fortifications are irrelevant to the narrative?
It is, then, possible that the absence of walls in Homeric Pylos reflects the reality of any or all of these sites (with the possible exclusion of Lepreon), or, for that matter, that of the Bronze Age palace, which was, unusually, without walls, at least in its later phases (Davis 55-56). Each of these sites of course will have made its claim to being Nestor’s homeland at different points in time and for different reasons, which means that, over time, responses to Homeric Pylos must have evolved, and in turn fostered an evolution in Homeric Pylos itself (Frame 651-71, 745).
As was just suggested, physical features of communities in the epics tend to receive attention only when they are relevant to the plot; fortifications are called for when a community is under attack. Thus, of the two communities depicted on the Shield of Akhilleus, only the City at War is said to be fortified (Iliad 18.514). Since Homeric Pylos is never the setting of a siege, the nature of its defenses remain indeterminate.
As the setting for a battle narrative, Pylos is fortified. It would therefore seem that epic narrative constructs its urban settings on an ad hoc basis, building them up from generic ideas about what a city looks like.
But what about the audiences for these epics? What of someone who had lived in or near or had visited one of the putative Pyloses? He or she would naturally try to harmonize the mental image created by the poem with that of the (or a) “real” Pylos. From this perspective, the absence of fortifications makes for a relatively more Panhellenic Pylos, in that their mention in effect generates a piece of evidence against which rival claims to being the “real Pylos” might be judged. Performers of epics could be expected to avoid wading into such disputes, but also to correct elements of description that were irreconcilable with the real world(s) of those for whom they performed. By way of comparison, the real-world location of Homeric Sparta was unquestioned, and it was unwalled (e.g., οἱ δὲ Σπαρτιᾶται ἀτείχιστον ἔχοντες τὴν πόλιν, Xenophōn Hellenika 6.5.28), so any poet or poem would be discouraged from staging a siege there.
The hermeneutic being proposed here, then, is that representations of communities in early Greek epic need to be approached from multiple and mutually reinforcing perspectives. There is on the one hand a general tendency to rely on a generic conception of a polis, which includes a city wall. In the case of imaginary or hypothetical communities, this generic outline is the sole structuring theme; in the case of communities that have analogues in the real world of ancient Greece, on the other hand, the outline becomes refracted through the experiences of poets and their audiences.
As epic traditions evolved, in particular those that attracted a Panhellenic constituency, real-world knowledge on the part of poets and audiences would exert continued pressure to make the generic outline conform with the realities of communities that are also named in the epics (e.g., Luce 1998: 1). A Panhellenic narrative would thus be well served by a stripped down image of community that relies on features that are well represented across the Greek world, in order to avoid issues that had the potential to divide a Panhellenic audience—such as the question of where Nestor “really” lived.
Coleman, Joseph. 1986. Excavations at Pylos in Elis. Hesperia: Supplement XXI. Princeton.
Davis, J. ed. 1998. Sandy Pylos: An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino. Austin, TX.
Frame, Douglas. 2009. Hippota Nestor. Hellenic Studies 37. Washington, DC.
Luce, John. 1998. Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited. New Haven and London.
Roy, James. 2004. “Elis.” in An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation, Hansen, Mogens Herman and Thomas Nielsen, edd. Oxford. 489-504.
Shipley, Graham. 2004. “Messenia.” in An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation, Hansen, Mogens Herman and Thomas Nielsen, edd. Oxford. 547-568.
I begin with the commonplace that every story is selective in what it tells, and reliant upon the preconceptions of its target audience. A police procedural drama, for instance, will often feature scenes set at the police station, which might include a large room filled with desks where the detectives sit, a holding cell for criminal suspects, interview rooms with one-way glass, a separate office for the captain, and so on. For the experienced television and movie audience, the appearance of any of these features is natural, and lacks the intrinsic interest and need for explanation that, say, an in-house chicken coop would elicit. At the same time, this experienced audience can be expected to supply background, so that the scene can shift to an otherwise unmentioned bathroom or stairway if the plot so demands. It is our deep familiarity with this basic scenario, acquired through encountering countless variations on the crime-and-punishment theme, that makes us comfortable in this imaginary world.
This imaginary world, conversely, is a reflection of the “real-world” culture at large. The language that the detectives use, the clothes that they wear and the size of their phones and computers all point to a specific historical context, so that we the experienced audience can easily determine within a few years when a movie or program was produced. The correspondence between the real world and the artistic representation of it is of course not exact; for a variety of dramatic licenses are implicitly granted by the audiences, and, to return to my initial truism, every story necessarily condenses space and time and description, and relies on its target audience to fill in the gaps.
In this project I will be exploring the significance of some of the details that emerge in descriptions of the communities in which characters in early Greek epics live. I hope to make the case that these communities are more sophisticated than the historical Greek chiefdoms or kingdoms to which they are usually compared, and that they therefore reflect a significantly later historical context than has generally been appreciated. If I am right, we should look to these epics, in other words, as primary sources, at least in terms of their social worlds, for Greece on the eve of the Classical period. I hope to make the case for not simply a reorientation of our approach to the historical dimension of the surviving early Greek epics, but also a reassessment of what we think we know about the values and motivations that animate the characters.
To get an idea of what I’m up to here, let’s start with a passing reference in Odysseus’ account of his own adventures in the Odyssey. Having survived hostilities with the Kikones and the Kyklops, the hero and his men find themselves on the island of a people called the Laistrygones. The Greeks eventually make contact with the local king, whom they find at a place called in Homeric Greek an agorê, or in the better-known Attic dialect agora (Od. 10.114). In early Greek epic, as in ancient Greek culture generally, an agora is a communal space associated with government and religion. The placement of the Laistrygonian king at his community’s agora is not significant for the action, but it does have symbolic force. For when the Laistrygones prove to be cannibalistic like the Kyklopes, they, though mere men like the Greeks, manage to kill far more of Odysseus’ crew than do the one-eyed giants, precisely because of the capacity for organization represented by their agora. The Laistrygones’ success against the Greeks thus contrasts starkly with the experience of the Kyklopes, who, though possessing monstrous strength, are described specifically as lacking “council-bearing agoras” (Od. 9.112), and in the end prove comically unable to function as a community and aid their stricken comrade Polyphemos when Odysseus’ men blind him and escape.
The second detail I would like to consider is to be found in the realm of the gods as described in the Iliad. At one point the goddesses Here and Athene attempt to leave Olympos secretly, and as they do so they pass through what are described as “gates of heaven,” pulai ouranou (Il. 8.393). This passing mention demonstrates that Olympos is, at least at this moment, surrounded by walls—otherwise there would be no need for gates. The fact that these fortifications do not appear in contexts where they might actually serve a purpose—as in myths where the home of the gods is attacked by hostile forces—suggests that the mention of them at this point in the Iliad is not conditioned by any specific vision of Olympos. Rather, the “Gates of Heaven” seem to indicate a general tendency on the part of the Iliad to locate its characters in communities that are walled, so that as if by reflex the departing goddesses are made to pass through gates on their way to earth.
The third introductory passage takes us to the community on the island of Skherie that is home to the Phaiekes, or Phaeacians, the people who help Odysseus to complete the last leg of his homecoming after he is shipwrecked on their shores. Their city is also surrounded by a wall, and is also endowed with an agora; in addition, near this agora is located a “beautiful temple of Poseidon, embraced by stones sunk in the ground” (Od. 6.9-10, 266-72). Again, though none of the action of the Odyssey takes place in this temple, it nevertheless retains a symbolic significance given Poseidon’s close but conflicted relationships with both Odysseus and the Phaiakes. And again, the surreal world of the Phaiakes—who possess automatons and self-guided ships—takes as its reference the “real world,” this time in describing, if only in passing, the most distinctive product of ancient Greek architecture.
My argument is that these three features—agora, walls, temples—together represent the basic, bare outline of a community in early Greek epic poetry. Like the police squadroom, holding cell and captain’s office in a modern crime drama, this complex of features resides in the mind of the audience, to be activated whenever a character appears in the context of a community.

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