The Homeric Aristocratic Oikos: a model of socio-economical aggregation

Maria Vania Cavalli Università degli Studi di Milano

Studies aimed at reconstructing the Homeric society, or one of its several aspects, have long time flourished, in particular since the deciphering of the Linear B, which enabled a higher degree of certainty and precision in the understanding of the Mycenaean society. M. Finley (The World of Odysseus, I ed 1957) provided a first, comprehensive analysis of the Homeric society and still represents a valid support. Anyway, more recent studies, for instance by B. Qviller (1981), W. Donlan (1997) or A. Schnapp- Gourbeillon (2002) highlight the need to modify - even substantially - aspects of this first reconstruction. While adopting as base for their studies the oikos-ct\\, Finley's same approach, these scholars acknowledge it as the basic unit - and, for some aspects, the only one - of the socio-economic organization of the Dark Ages, so that they uncover the opportunity to focus also on the internal dynamics of the oikos, in addition to the complex studies of the socio-economic networks linking families of the rich Homeric aristocracy with the social frameworks and rituals necessary to create and maintain them.

Capitalizing with pleasure on this methodological lesson, this paper focuses on the aristocratic oikos during the Homeric age, relying mostly on the literary source, with the goal of identifying and extracting a socio- economical framework of the oikos, in particular from the inner perspective of its internal structure.

Obviously, the term "oikos" does not encompass only family components, but also the belongings of the family defined lato sensu. The analysis performed covers both the internal dimension of the oikos, guardian of the properties carefully gathered over time, and the external one, characterized by the more mobile wealth coming from the πρόβασις and the harvests. This second dimension in particular provided me the most interesting results and enabled me to identify the model I was introducing you.

Gaia 12, 2008-2009, p. 69-76. 69