Archive for the ‘Ancient Greece’ Category
Around 800 BC this enclosed, static society began to change. The spur was increasing population, growing prosperity at home and renewed contacts with traders from the Levant. The traders were Phoenicians, a Semitic people from the coast of modern Lebanon who founded Carthage near modern Tunis in 814 BC. The use of iron also spread, giving Greek farmers metal axes, ploughs and other useful implements. But Greek society remained essentially aristocratic, meaning ruled by aristori (the best), as hereditary nobles modestly called themselves.
Eastern influence first appear in art, depicting humans and animals, often mythical such as sphinxes, in freer if not yet realistic ways. But the greatest single change was revival of literacy. Around 770 BC Greeks, probably poets, adopted the Phoenician alphabet, adding the vowels needed for Greeks to make 24 letters and adjusting the symbols. Semitic aleph became Greek alpha, the first letter. More flexible and easier to learn than the 300 character Mycenaean system, the new alphabet spread around the the Greek world. Our own Roman alphabet derives directly from it. One of the first users of literacy was to record the works of homer, the greatest Greek poet.
HOMER’S ILIAD AND ODYSSEY
There are no reliable details about Homer’s life but he probably lived around 750 BC on the island of Chios or the Ionian mainland, and perhaps was blind. Whether the two great Homer poems, The Iliad an The Odyssey
, were written by the same person is still debated. Homer’s theme in The Iliad is wrath of Prince Achilles and disastrous effects on the last stages of the ten year Trojan War, of wich he gives only fleeting glimpses. In this grand tragedy he lauded heroic values such as philotimon (love of honour), arete (meaning variously courage, excellence, perfection), endurance and a fiercely competitive individualism.
By contrast in The Odyssey, his adventure story comedy, Odysseus triumphs chiefly by craftiness. Homers description of an aristocrat society led by kings, with the voices of common people such as Thersites firmly ignored, inadvertently mingles current Iron Age customs with those of the Bronze Age. His heroes ride into the battle in Mycenaean chariots and carry Bronze Age giant shields but they are cremated not buried as Mycenaean were. Although they lived in palaces , these are simply large houses of real Mycenae or Pylos. Queen Penelope, wife of wandering Odysseus her own wool. Homer’s influence on later Greeks has compared to that of the Bible an Shakespeare combined.
All Greeks with any education could quote Homer, and he inspired men as diverse as the philosopher Socrates and Alexander The Great. In portraying the twelve Olympians (the chief gods on Mt Olympus) light hardheartedly as super-sized humans, Homer’s writing had beneficial side effects. If even Zeus, king of the gods, could be portrayed as hen pecked by his wife Hera, there was small danger of Greeks being totally over-awed by their gods majesty. The Greeks never had a special priestly caste or clergy. This helped philosophy that quest for truth by non-religious means to spring up in Ionia two centuries later.
THE POET HESIOD
Balancing the exuberant aristocratic splendor of Homer’s world are the theognis and works and days of Hesiod, a poet who lived slightly later around 700 BC in rural Boeotia, an area noted for its dullness. An independent small farmer, Hesiod grumbles at the rich and at the weather, but provides useful advice to his feckless brother on when to sow or plough. He has a strong distrust of seafaring and a peasant attitude to accruing more land. In his Theognis hegave a systematic genealogy for the gods and an account of divine myths, darker in tone than Homer’s, that also prove very influential on later generations.
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In the 3rd millennium BC a prosperous Bronze Age culture developed in the Greek peninsula in small towns in the Pelopnnese. Around 2000bc they were destroyed by invaders, probably from the north, and for a time urban life totally disappeared.
Then in 1600 bc a new civilization emerged from the ashes and built amazing tombs at Mycenae in the north west Peloponnese filled with many gold artifacts. This was probably due to the rise of powerful new kings, not new invasions, but its not known for sure.
In Greek legend, including Homer’s great poems The Iliad and The Odyssey written in the 8th century BC, Mycenae was a paramount kingdom, so the first Greek civilization was called Mycenaean. But in Achaean, the term used by both Homer and contemporary Hittite kings in Anatolia who had diplomatic relations with them, is more apposite. Nothing suggests that Bronze age Greeks were politically united under Mycenae, although it probably controlled the Argolid plain beneath its citadel, from which paved roads radiated.
MYCENAEAN CULTURE EMERGES
Among cultural imports from Crete was writing in Linear B, subsequently adopted in Mycenaean centers. These included nearby Tiryns, Thebes and Orchomenus in central Greece, Athens and Pylos in the south west Peloponnese. Excavations at Pylos have unearthed a complete Mycenaean palace, with elegant tapering columns and murals depicting hippogriffs and other mythical figures. Uniquely, Pylos was unwalled Linear B tablets found they reveal a bureaucracy trying to control almost every aspect of daily life. Mycenaean culture spread north to Thessaly, across the Aegean to Miletus on the Asian shore and east to Cyprus. There was probably a palace near Sparta in the fertile Eurotas valley, but none has been found.
PROTECTINGÂ MYCENAE
Mycenaean wealth grew throughout the 14th century BC. It probably came from both trading and raiding piracy, Thucydides noted, was socially perfectly acceptable in legendary times. Greek artifacts mainly pottery, have been found as far as Sicily and as far east as Syria. Mycenaean outposts replaced Minoans after 1400BC, but the Mycenaeans soon ventured further north than Cretans had ever sailed. To protect Mycenae against threats from abroad or at home, massive new walls were built around its citadel, incorporating the earlier grave circles. The towering Lions Gate, with two lions flanking a pillar, dominated the new approach. Below, houses belonging to nobles, craftsmen and traders made up a little city. Most palaces had a pillared megarron (throne-room), but a few reveal much evidence of planning.
THE ENIGMA OF TROY
Up by the Hellespont (Dardanelles) the Mycenaeans found the ancient trading city of Troy, controlling trade routes from the Black Sea, a good enough cause for war. The Trojan War, the epic ten year war siege variously estimated to have occurred between 1250 and 1190BC, remains one of archeology’s enigmas. There was a city destroyed around there and then, Troy VIIA, and recent excavations have shown that this was larger than once thought, with impressive palaces. Perhaps a Greek army led by Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, did besieged Troy to retrieve Helen, the beautiful wife of the Spartan king, that was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris, as recounted by homer’s Iliad. Or perhaps it did not. But the 13th century certainly ended in general wars. Mycenaean civilization, top-heavy, collapsed soon after.
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