BMCR 2009.06.37: King on Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200-479 BC. Second edition (first edition published 1996). Routledge History of the Ancient World

Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200-479 BC. Second edition (first
edition published 1996). Routledge History of the Ancient World.
London/New York:  Routledge, 2009.  Pp. xx, 377.  ISBN 9780415469913.
$41.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Cynthia King ([email protected])
Word count:  811 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-06-37.html
To comment on this review, see
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For the second edition of Robin Osborne's useful Greece in the Making,
1200-479 BC in the Routledge History of the Ancient World series,[[1]]
Routledge has managed to reduce the weight (the second edition is
almost half an inch thinner) and number of pages (396 to 377) without
losing text (and indeed accommodating some additions), illustrations,
and tables. The font is slightly smaller, but very clear, and
paragraphs in the first edition have sometimes been broken up to
improve readability. Space is also saved by removing the boxes around
the primary texts and printing them in bold. Illustrations and tables
have usually been reduced in size. Two illustrations which suffer from
reduction are Figure 35, the Siamese twin pedestaled krater in New York
14.130.15[[2]] and Figure 38a, the Chigi vase. Figure 32 and Table 5
documenting Greek settlements abroad are, however, much improved:
Figure 32 has been expanded to two pages and broken into four maps;
Table 5's font has been made larger and clearer.[[3]]

In substance, the chapters are essentially the same. "Setting the
Stage" which was Chapter 3 has switched places with the old Chapter 2,
"The Problem of Beginnings." The last sentence of the new Chapter 3
(65) should have been rewritten: it refers to a coming discussion of
"the physical environment of the Greek mainland and islands," that is,
the subject matter of the new Chapter 2. The chapter headings on each
page of Chapter 9 after the first page have an unfortunate misprint:
"52-479 BC" instead of 520-479 BC. The bibliographical notes (336-360)
have been brought up to date; reference to them would be easier if the
chapter to which they refer were noted in the heading for each page,
especially for chapters where the note encompasses several pages (for
example the note for Chapter 4 on pages 343-348). I also miss a regular
bibliography and find it interesting that Osborne provided a fine one
in his much smaller Greek History (Routledge 2004).[[4]] In fact, I
would recommend that the novice start with that book, in the Classical
Foundation series, even though it has only two pictures, and then
tackle Greece in the Making.

Osborne is rightly (in my opinion) skeptical of the traditions later
Greeks had about their early past: he believes in no Ionian migration,
no Dorian invasion (50-51)--"the Greeks of the archaic period knew
nothing about the Dark Age" (51); "archaic Greece is a prehistoric
period, for it is a period before history was written" (4). He advises
us (again rightly, in my opinion) to follow Herodotus' lead: "That
perceptions are context-dependent is something some early Greek
philosophers had insisted upon...; Herodotus' implicit recognition of
this in the way he writes down his researches is one that we ignore at
our peril" (4).

I am a bit put off by Osborne's claim that we study archaic Greece
because of its end (classical Greece) (3). We could do more justice to
these beginnings by turning to Susan Langdon's Art and Identity in Dark
Age Greece, 1100-700 B.C.E. (Cambridge 2008) for an account that makes
elegant use of the archaeological material. Also an approach that aims
to put archaic Greece in its wider "Near Eastern" context and to
problematize the simplistic categories of "Greek" and "Oriental" more
than justifies the study of archaic Greece. Ann C. Gunter's recent
book, Greek Art and the Orient (Cambridge 2009), shows us how we should
be seeing Greece, the Near East, and Egypt in the context of the
Assyrian Empire of the 8th and 7th centuries BC.[[5]]

An example of a new section of text comes at the end of Chapter 4,
"Forming Communities": "From Communities to Poleis?" (128-130).[[6]]
Osborne does not think that the term polis is useful in general: it
"has come to be invested with a technical sense which it did not
possess in antiquity" (129). Changes in the 8th century should not be
understood as connected with a so-called "rise of the polis"; the works
of Homer and Hesiod (Chapter 5, "The World of Hesiod and Homer") show
"the irrelevance of the polis to the existence of sophisticated
political understanding" (130).[[7]] The problem of leadership in the
Iliad, the vacuum created by Odysseus' absence in the Odyssey, Hesiod's
quarrel with his brother because of corrupt "kings" -- all show a
concern for political authority connected with leaders. "Monarchical
rulers too are good to think with, even, perhaps especially, in a
community that lacks them" (144).

I learned a great deal from the first edition of Greece in the Making,
and I think the changes made in the second edition clarify Osborne's
original points. Although I don't think he breaks new ground, it is
good that the book with its wealth of information will still be
available for it is a solid introduction to the problems of
understanding what was going on in the early Greek world.


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Notes:


1.   For a review of the first edition see Lynn E. Roller, BMCR 98.2.09
(http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1998/98.2.09.html) .

2.   NY 14.130.15 is not Attic Late Geometric I; it belongs to the
LGIIA Trachones Workshop. See the official publication: Mary B. Moore,
CVA, MMA 5 (von Zabern 2004), pls. 14-18, fig. 3. On page 162 Osborne
should put his reference to this illustration after "processions of
armed men in carts or chariots."

3.   The cover illustration has been changed to a double image based on
a Geometric bronze seated man holding an object to his mouth = fig. 34,
page 135 (Walters Art Museum 54.789). Also the illustration (fig. 42,
page 160) for the Near Eastern "motif of two facing animals which join
in a single frontal head" (159) has been changed from the beautiful
Ziwiyeh plaque in New York (MMA 51.131.1) to a gold belt perhaps from
Ziwiyeh in the British Museum. This belt has a repeating pattern
showing frontal heads developing from looped horns, not from facing
animals; recumbent deer are shown in the spaces between the heads. A
drawing of this hard to read object would have helped. I am also
puzzled by the discussion of the 'Mistress of the Animals' motif on
relief pithoi (157); this has not changed from the first edition (166).
It is not clear what he means by the 'Mistress of the Animals' pithos
since he gives no specific reference. One general reference is to M. E.
Caskey, AJA 80 (1976), 19-41, and I suppose he means Athens NM 5898,
pl. 4, figs. 12-13 which Caskey calls the Athens Potnia pithos.

4.   Reviewed by Robert W. Wallace, BMCR 2005.08.22.

5.   It is instructive to contrast her treatment of the inscribed (in
Aramaic) Hazael bronzes from a horse harness with Osborne's (260-261,
fig. 76). For Osborne these were booty captured by Hazael, raided by
Greeks, and opportunistically exchanged. By contrast, Gunter devotes a
chapter to exploring the implications of these "gifts" and those like
them, and she seems to favor Ingrid Strom's idea of sanctuary networks
with the distribution of certain objects linked by cult: "foreign"
horse trappings are widely dispersed in sanctuaries belonging to Hera,
Athena, Apollo, Artemis (124-154, especially 152-153). Gunter points to
the importance of the acquisition of objects from distant places: there
is a "perception of qualitative difference between goods, resources,
and persons deriving from 'here' and those deriving from 'there.'"
(138, drawing on the work of Mary W. Helms). Gunter's discussion of the
terms used to characterize "foreign" objects in the Aegean world is
worth reading (140-142); she would not approve of Osborne's "gewgaws"
(123).

6.   A sign that it is new is the addition (with a typo) to the Index
(373): "polis, 'bith of' 129-30".

7.   Unfortunately the last sentence of Chapter 4 is unintelligible:
"That this [the irrelevance of the polis in these poems] is if sic very
far from making these poems irrelevant to the social and political
conditions of the Greek world around 700 BC is something I explore in
the next chapter" (l30).