The Spear, the Scroll and the Pebble

How the Greek city-state developed as a male warrior-citizen collective

By Richard A. Billows

Professor Richard A Billows, Professor of History at Columbia University, reviews the form and function of the Greek city-state, which established the modern ways of society as we know it. Drawing upon the usual first-hand sources – Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Homer, Diodorus, but also challenging some established perspectives, Billows argues that the Greek city-state’s developments of mass literacy, citizen-warrior armies and political systems formed the city-state and the beginnings of western civilization as we know it.

Warriors of the State

The title is also important to dissect from the outset: Starting with the spear, the book examines how the citizens took on the role of defence for the state but also an important part of investiture where such a citizen demanded - through his involvement in defence of the city - a say in political decision making. Whether that be limited to fewer citizens as in Sparta or the democratic approach of Athens.

The Pebble, represents the growth of collective political systems – again, such as oligarchy in Sparta or democracy in Athens, although Billows argues that actually these systems are far more alike than has been commonly illustrated. for example through many of the warriors of respective states having a vote - even in the notoriously oligarchic Sparta.

The Scroll represents literacy and the adoption of the alphabet, the crucial bridge between different peoples within and outside of society. Inheriting the alphabet from the Phoenicians, sharing of information for trade, politics, law and other institutions ensured that civilization, law and the written word began to bind all strata of society. Billows emphasizes that literacy was more likely far more widespread than has been commonly acknowledged, and was important for the collective decision-making.

These three phenomena tie together a military male collective – literate, no matter the role in society, but where the influential decision makers or voters were usually part of the hoplite phalanx or the military force. These military forces wanted a say in the decision making of their polis, and so through voting systems (vocal in Sparta, or the pebble in Athens) were able to obtain rights. These developments were crucial for the Greek city-state.

This is, unsurprisingly quite a scholarly book, and before looking at the aforementioned three areas, SSP gives a background in early city-state formation and the economic underpinnings of society. This section is admittedly fairly dry, and to be honest the whole book is very much for those very invested in the subject – it comes across as an academic work first and foremost. But it is detailed and accurate – not shying away from Greek terms or knowledge even of smaller subjects such as hoplite warfare – sunaspismos or shields together, for example.

Dry, but fertile

Despite sometimes being dry, it is enjoyable for these questions such as whether oligarchy in Sparta and democracy in Athens were all that different or the question of whether literacy was really widespread. For the latter question, the book challenges the assertion that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in one approach – but also considering the scant evidence we do have such as of a tale of Mykalessos in Thucydides. Boys in a school were massacred by marauding Thracians and Thucydides mentions that it was the larger of the schools in the area. Mykalessos as a rural town having at least two schools suggests that they were by no means few and far between.

The book is dense and sometimes impressive: in arguing for a male warrior-citizen collective it did not even need to focus too much on Sparta, which I think would have been a mistake since it would have levelled at it the argument that Sparta was distinct and different from the average city-state (although this itself raises several questions and debates of its own). Instead even the outliers such as Sparta are illustrated to have more commonalities than one might think, and clearly Athens herself, often thought to be a bastion of progression compared to many other locales, is perhaps to place too much credit on her. Clearly change had to occur all over the Greek world to make so much progress, and much of it was indeed attributable to Athens, but the Ancient Greek world was built up of traders, farmers and rural communities, many smaller and scattered. These strata of society also had to play a role in the formation of the Greek city-state, which Billows so successfully elucidates.

Autarkia, or the taking of personal responsibility was considered important by citizens and perhaps partly why there was such deep change. Instead of only the highest strata of society accessing high-level thinking, those with less means at their disposal could read, access and take responsibility for self-involvement in their city-state by engaging with philosophical, literal and historic works, which influenced many of the trends we saw in military, politics and education.

Final Score

The book is necessarily compact and refined in its arguments. For sure some scholars will disagree, but the arguments are often fairly streamlined. I myself was sceptical on the occasional point, and perhaps at under 190 pages sometimes it leaves itself open for critique, but I think Billows really had a clear and refined line of reasoning which was edited well. For that, and for those interested then, The Spear, The Scroll and The Pebble is a great read about the formation and influence of the male citizen in the Ancient Greek city-state. But it is definitely one for the passionate student of Greek Ancient History and not the casual reader.

8/10