The Archaic period saw Greece reinvent itself. Scattered villages grew into the polis, the independent city-state with its own laws, gods, army and citizens. By the end of the period there were hundreds of them, from great powers such as Athens, Sparta and Corinth to tiny island communities.
Colonies across the sea
Driven by trade, land hunger and adventure, Greeks founded colonies all around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Syracuse in Sicily, Massalia (modern Marseille), Byzantion and Cyrene in Libya all began as Greek settlements. Greek speakers were soon spread so widely that Plato later compared them to frogs around a pond.
A shared Greek identity
Although the city-states were fiercely independent, they shared a language, a family of gods and great sanctuaries. By tradition the first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC, the oracle at Delphi became the most trusted voice in the Greek world, and the epics of Homer and the poems of Hesiod gave every Greek a common store of stories.
Tyrants, lawgivers and the first democracy
Political experiments were everywhere. Many cities fell under tyrants, sole rulers who seized power, often with popular support. In Athens the lawgiver Solon cancelled debts and reformed the constitution in 594 BC, and in 508 BC Cleisthenes reorganised the citizen body and gave real power to the assembly, a moment often seen as the birth of democracy. Art flourished too: the smiling kouros statues, black-figure and then red-figure pottery, and the first temples built in stone.
