Ancient History and Classical Civilization, Department of History and Art History

Irad Malkin

Greek colonies: Fairness, Equality and the Lot

Wednesday March 27, 2019 – 16:00–17:30 – Drift 23 - 207 (34), Utrecht In the Archaic period (ca 750-500 BCE) the coastlines of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were dotted with some four hundred, newly founded Greek city states, constituting about 40% of the total number of all Greek city states at the time. No empire directed this colonization that set out from various mother cities and resulted in a “Small Greek World,” a de-centralized network of mostly independent political entities. “They shall sail on equal and fair terms” (isai kai homoiai) is a formula that expresses best the status of Greek settlers. But what does it mean to be “fair” in circumstances of taking possession of land, often by conquest, and settling over it? In general, “fairness” may mean “proper to one’s station.” Caribbean pirates, for example, acknowledged that the Cook ought to get more than the deck boy. However, for the archaic Greeks the reverse was true: fairness consisted in equality. The use of the Lot was often the means to achieve such equality and fairness. Colonists could be chosen by lot from their home communities (“a brother from brother”), thus equalizing everybody’s chances and not privileging senior brothers (the same holds true for partible inheritance by lot). Having arrived at a settlement site, Greeks strived for arithmetical equality in the results: not only for selecting settlers but also to distribute, by lot, equally-sized plots. The same word, klêros was used for both the “lot” and the “plot” of land. The Lot for the distribution of plots of land was applied to the pre-defined group of Greek settlers overseas (no locals were involved) who shared the land among them just as Homeric soldiers distributed booty by lot. Land was even left in reserve for future apportionment. A full awareness of a community emerges, both exclusive and inclusive, and applying the Lot as the means for what they understood as implementing equality and fairness.

Irad Malkin is the Maxwell Cummings Chair for Mediterranean History and Culture, Professor of Ancient Greek History at Tel Aviv University, and visiting professor of classics at Oxford University. A well-known specialist on early Greece, his books and articles are widely read by students and scholars of the ancient Mediterranean. Among these are Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (1987), Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean (1994), The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (1998), and A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011). He is the 2014 recipient of the Israel Prize in the field of history.