With regard to those same early Archaic times, one hears—for example, in the poetry of the 7th-century Boeotian Hesiod—of control, sometimes oppressively exercised, by basileis (singular basileus). That word is usually translated as “kings,” and such titles as the Athenian basileus (an official, or archon, with a defined religious competence, conveniently but less correctly called the archon basileus by modern scholars) are then explained as survivals of an age of monarchy. That account in terms of fossilization certainly eases the awkwardness of explaining why, for instance, the wife of the archon basileus was held to be ritually married to the god Dionysus. The very existence of kingship in Geometric (as opposed to Mycenaean) Greece, however, has been challenged, and a case has been made (though not universally accepted) for seeing most of those Archaic basileis not as kings in any sense but as hereditary nobles. In the latter case, there is no great difference between those basileis and such aristocrats as the Bacchiadae. Symposia and gymnasia
Life inside the Archaic Greek societies ruled by such families can be reconstructed only impressionistically and only at the top of the social scale; the evidence, to an extent unusual even in Greco-Roman antiquity, is essentially elitist in its bias. Aristocratic values were transmitted both vertically, by family oral traditions, and horizontally, by means of a crucial institution known as the symposium, or feast, for which (many literary scholars now believe) much surviving Archaic poetry was originally written. Perhaps much fine painted pottery was also intended for that market, though the social and artistic significance of such pottery is debated. Some scholars insist that the really wealthy would at all times have used gold and silver vessels, which, however, have not survived in any numbers because they were melted down long ago.
Symposia were eating and dining occasions with a strong ritual element; their existence is reflected in the marked emphasis, in the Homeric poems, on ostentatious feasting and formal banqueting as assertions of status (what have been called “feasts of merit”). Thus, Sarpedon in Homer’s Iliad reminds Glaucus that both of them are honoured with seats of honour and full cups in Lycia and with land (a sacred precinct, or temenos) to finance all the feasting. Symposia were confined to males (a reminder of the military ethos so prevalent in Homer); although when the institution was introduced, along with the vine, to Etruria—where much of the visual evidence comes from—it changed its character and became open to both sexes. The Greek symposium proper can be seen as an instrument of social control; it is a more-tangible unit of social organization, and one with better-attested Homeric antecedents, than the problematic genē or phratries discussed above.
In Classical times, strong homosexual attachments were another way in which values were inculcated, passed on by the older man (the erastes) to the younger eromenos, or beloved. The gymnasium was the venue where such relationships typically developed. As with the symposium, there was an almost ritual element to it all; certain gifts—such as, for example, the gift of a hare—were thought especially appropriate. The date, however, at which Greek homosexuality became a central cultural institution is problematic; it is notoriously absent from the Homeric poems, a fact that some scholars explain as being the result of poetic reticence. The more-plausible view is that homosexuality was in some way connected with the rise of the polis and was part of what has been called the “8th-century renaissance.” If so, Homer’s silence is after all significant: he does not mention it because in his time it was not yet important.
Both symposia and gymnasia in different ways mirrored or were preparatory to warfare (see below). Interpolis athletic competitions (such as the Olympic Games) are another reflection of warfare. Epinician poetry of the Classical period (that is, “victory poetry” like that of Pindar, whose epinician odes celebrate the athletic victories of aristocratic individuals) constantly uses the language of war, fighting, and victory. Indeed, one influential view of organized athletic competitions is that they are a restructuring of the instinct to hunt and kill. Formal relationships
With the great athletic festivals, which brought Greeks together at set intervals of years to Olympia and later to Delphi, Nemea, and the Isthmus (the four great Panhellenic, or “all-Greek,” games), one passes from the internal organization of individual Greek societies to their interrelationships. Two kinds of powerful interrelationship have already been noted—that between colonizing or mother city and daughter city and the shared membership of an amphictyony. Mythical links between one city and another were maintained and exploited throughout all periods by a process which has been felicitously called “kinship diplomacy.” The most common such link was that between mother and daughter city and involved the stressing of shared ancestry—that is, common descent from some mythical hero or founder figure. Such kinship diplomacy was taken very seriously by all parties and as late as the Hellenistic period was the basis for alliances or other sorts of common action. Modern historians tend to stress the “particularism” of Greek culture—i.e., the separate development and carefully cultivated local identity of the individual polis. Networks of kinship diplomacy were one means by which this particularism was softened in practice.
At the individual level, the basic institution in intercity relationships was that of “guest-friendship,” or xenia. That was another area where ritual elements were present to such a marked degree that the whole institution has been called “ritualized friendship.” The same aristocrats who drank and heard poetry together inside their own communities naturally expected to find comparable groups inside other states. They cemented their ties, which had perhaps been formed on initially casual or trading visits, with formal relationships of xenia. At some point quite early in the Archaic period that institution developed into something still more definite, the proxenia. Proxenoi were citizens of state A living in state A who looked after the interests of citizens of state B. The status of proxenos was surely in origin hereditary, but by Thucydides’ time one hears of “voluntary proxenoi” (etheloproxenoi). The antiquity of the basic institution is not in doubt, however much the 5th-century Athenian empire may have exploited and reshaped it for its own political convenience; a 7th-century inscription from the island of Corcyra mentioning a proxenos from Locris is the earliest attestation of the institution.