Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
Pg 135: “Social Order”
PANEL 1
An aerial view of the Mycenaean palace buildings atop the Acropolis at Athens.
NARRATION:
Mycenaean civilization enjoyed remarkable stability.
For hundreds of years, Athens’ world seemed to have found its perfect balance.
Most Mycenaean towns, Athens included, didn’t even bother to erect defensive walls!
PALACE VOICE 1:
Barricade ourselves?
Against our neighbors? Absurd.
PANEL 2
A modern-looking conference room. Seated around the table are some ruling-class elites. An old man with a cane is entering the room. An elite man is giving a presentation with graphs and a pie chart. The woman key bearer has turned to address the reader.
NARRATION:
What Athens did not have was democracy.
As usual, kinship-based households and tribes managed most day-to-day societal needs, while an elite class directed the affairs of state.
KEY BEARER:
Who else has the wherewithal to get it all done?
The prestige?
The time?
NARRATIVE:
(Pointing to the old man) The Basileus was the official who coordinated all the tribal chiefs.
BASILEUS:
Sorry I’m late. My other meeting ran long.
…As usual.
The lower right corner of the panel appears to have some minor smoke damage.
PANEL 3
A futuristic landscape like a cross between an org chart and a computer chip, in neon pink against a deep purple background.
NARRATION:
These elites ran command economies at home—dictating how their people’s crops, resources, and surpluses were to be collected, stored, and re-distributed.
ORG CHART VOICE 1:
Not that we grow much here in Athens.
ORG CHART VOICE 2:
Worst soil in Attica…
ORG CHART VOICE 3:
Stick to the plan, folks.
PANEL 4
Much of this panel is obscured by flames and smoke damage.
It depicts a Bronze-Age merchant vessel pulling up to a dock. A large amount of timber is stacked up at the dock. The ship is overflowing with honey. People on the dock and on the boat are speaking to each other.
NARRATION:
And it was those same elites who conducted all the international trade (literally trade—money hadn’t been invented yet). Greek cities exchanged local wines and timber for grain from Ukraine… tin from Afghanistan… linen and jewelry from Egypt… glass from Mesopotamia…
MAN ON PIER:
How much lumber does Pharaoh want for that boatload of honey?
MAN ON BOAT:
How much have you got?
PANEL 5
Much of the panel has entirely burned away, and flames and smoke hide most of the right-hand half of the panel. It appears that the bottom right of the entire page is burning up.
An elite man stands in front of a chart that resembles an old food pyramid. He’s steepled his fingers and is explaining something to the reader.
NARRATIVE:
Peace and prosperity depended on a rigid, inflexible social hierarchy.
The top caste of aristocratic elites ruled, with a sacred duty to provide, to protect, and to keep the gods happy.
Then came the bulk of society: the free households of farmers, herders, fishermen, mariners, artisans…
At the bottom, slaves worked the fields, rowed the galleys, provided services, and generally did much of the labor that a thriving civilization requires.
ELITE MAN:
[Most of his words are concealed by flame. Here’s what is legible.]
Our society has structu
(Like our clothin
that lazy loose drap
If you ask me, struct
makes civi tion oss
[The rest of the page has been completely consumed by fire. All that can be seen behind the page is blackness.]
Nice fire effect. I’m curious how you made it.
Thanks! The trick is a lot of transparent layers, and a judicious use of smudge and push brushes.
What did Athenian people wear in the winter? Those women would be freezing, and the men would not exactly be warm.
Wool fabric was plentiful, and so for warmth they wore woolen robes and cloaks and such.
The climate was very mild, however, so most days they wouldn’t need to. Men generally wore very little, as a matter of fact—just a short skirt or a knee-length skirt most of the time. Women were much more modest, wearing full-length skirts that reached the ankles. (I’m picturing a woman’s exposed calf being seen as risqué, and to show her knee scandalous! But those may well be anachronistic cultural conceptions they didn’t even have). As we’ve seen, above the waist, women didn’t really cover up. Elite women might wear just a short bolero-jacket-type thing, but it didn’t cover their breasts. One thing that elite-class women sometimes wore was a small apron-looking panel around their waist, which nobody is really sure what it was for (my favorite theory is that it was like a heraldic badge showing off your family and rank). The fuller tunics and shirts I’ve depicted men wearing didn’t really appear until late in the Bronze Age, and I surmise they were more ceremonial, or maybe even just something to be worn under metal armor. Whatever they wore, Bronze Age clothing seems to have had a lot more to do with social signaling than with covering up or protection from the elements.
The really interesting thing to me, though (which the guy obscured by flames was starting to get at, and which I intend to mention when the time comes), is that Greek peoples of the Bronze Age wore highly-structured clothing sewn together from carefully-shaped pattern pieces. The loose and drapey peplos and chiton we know from classical Greece were far more rudimentary garments, made of a single large rectangle and nothing more—which were simply draped and held together with pins and belts. Furthermore, the Bronze Age towns had specialized textile “factories” that made everything from simple linens to rich luxurious fabrics. (Part of the Key Bearers’ compensation was an annual allotment of rich fabrics made by the civic textile shop!) In classical Greece, on the other hand, textiles were much more basic, and were almost entirely made in the home.
It’s almost as if Athens went from a world of sophisticated fashion designers, patternmakers, textiles, and trim, to a world that didn’t even know how to sew. I wonder what happened.
Everything changed when the sea peoples attacked XD
lol