The Poetics of Violence at Phaleron

This chapter will explore the lives and deaths of men interred in a cemetery located in the Phalero delta, beyond the walls of Athens, where Attica meets the sea. Sources indicate that Attic Greece at this time was struggling overall with the shift from aristocratic monopoly over power (and violence) and the assumption of democratic control, which emerged along with a series of laws and reforms promoted by figures such as Drakon (c 650–600 BCE), Solon (c 630–560 BCE), and Cleisthenes (?–c 570 BCE). The cemetery at Phaleron was in use during this fraught period in Athenian history (eighth to fifth centuries BCE), one that witnessed considerable turbulence and landmark changes, resulting ultimately in the formation of what is now widely seen as the world’s first complex democracy. It is against the background of these larger sociopolitical developments that we examine the remains from the Phaleron cemetery of those executed en masse and those whose lives ended less violently. We present here a preliminary exploration of 30 ancients known archaeologically by such distinctively different deaths and interments. Our inference about poetics and circumstances of death is but one of several possible theoretical treatments for life histories during this important period. We therefore offer a preliminary discussion of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of violence, using the Phaleron cemetery as a preliminary case study.