On this principle of division I must postpone the evolution of sculpture, architecture, society, and politics; for the developments in these areas make sense only if they are connected to the age of revolution itself. The growing contacts between Aegean and Orient are also a phase which should be linked primarily to the remarkable broadening of Hellenic culture after 750. We shall not be able entirely to pass over these connections to the East as we consider Ripe Geometric pottery, the epic and the myth, and the religious evolution of early Greece; the important point, however, is that these magnificent achievements, unlike those of later decades, were only incidentally influenced by Oriental models. The antecedents of Dipylon vases and of the Iliad lie in the Aegean past.

The pottery of the first half of the eighth century is commonly called Ripe Geometric. The severe yet harmonious vases of the previous fifty years, the Strong Geometric style of the late ninth century, display as firm a mastery of the principles underlying Geometric pottery; but artists now were ready to refine and elaborate their inheritance. The vases which resulted had different shapes, far more complex decoration, and a larger sense of style.

Beyond the aesthetic and technical aspects of this expansion we must consider the change in pottery style on broader lines. In earlier centuries men had had enough to do in rebuilding a fundamental sense of order after chaos. They had had to work on very simple foundations and had not dared to give rein to impulses. The potters, in particular, had virtually eschewed freehand drawing, elaborate motifs, and the curving lines of nature, while yet expressing a belief that there was order in the universe. In their vases were embodied the basic aesthetic and logical characteristics of Greek civilization, at first hesitantly in Protogeometric work, and then more confidently in the initial stages of the Geometric style. By 800 social and cultural security had been achieved, at least on a simple plane; it was time to take bigger steps, to venture on experiments.