(click on any image to see it at its original size)
The Dark Age
By about 1,000 BC, however, all the Minoan and Mycenaean
splendor had been wiped out. This begins the phase of ancient Greek history
we call the "Dark Age."
We call it the Dark Age because the massive cities of the previous centuries are destroyed or abandoned. Where Mycenae and Troy had populations in the thousands, villages of a few hundred now seem large. Where we used to find intricate grave offerings of gold and other works of art, we now find shabby vases like the one above. Where kings and royalty used to live in gigantic palaces, now chiefs of villages live in houses like the one on the right.
It is an extremely important time, however, because it is in this period that the Iliad is composed and eventually written down. The poets that sang of the Trojan War lived in this destitute world and sang of the lost glories of the Mycenaeans.
Looking Back on the Glory Days
This layering takes a variety of forms as you read the
Iliad.
The very language of the poem reflects the differences. For example, in
line 5 of the first book, Agamemnon is called an A)/NAX A)NDRW=N, which
translators usually render "leader of men." Wanax is the old Mycenaean
word for a ruler. It appears in the Iliad mainly in formulaic expressions
like that one. Just four lines later, however, Agamemnon is a BASILEU/S,
which is usually translated "king." Basileus is the word for "ruler"
in the Dark Ages and later, and the more common word in the Iliad
for ruler.
Mycenaean helmet and armor
(click on any image to see it at its original size)
Material can also vary. The Mycenaeans made extensive
use of bronze and you'll notice the warriors in the Iliad wear and
fight with bronze all the time. But after the Mycenaean world collapsed
and trade with the East declined, the Greek production of bronze dropped
as well and eventually iron took its place. Because of this change, you
also hear of the Mycenaean period called the Bronze Age and the Dark Age
called the Iron Age. And to Homer's original listeners, bronze weaponry
would have been an image from the distant past.
(click on any image to see it at its original size) |
Archaeologists have recovered still more Mycenaean
ware that would have been exotic to Dark Age audiences. Listen to this
description:
...while on his head
That is Homer describing to his Dark Age audience a classic Mycenaean helmet made from the tusks of wild boars. |
The Misunderstood Chariot
Because of archaeology, we have surviving examples of
these helmets and other materials to compare directly to such descriptions
in Homer.
Chariots have an interesting history. On the right you see a Mycenaean carving of a chariot driver. The Greeks were late in coming to chariots, which people such as the Hittites had already mastered. The Mycenaeans did use chariots in warfare somewhat, as this carving shows, but by the Dark Age, chariots were not used in warfare. They were more like limousines than practical vehicles.
The bottom band on this vase, from the end of the Dark Age, shows horse-drawn chariots being used in a funeral procession. In the Iliad you will notice that people travel around the battlefield in chariots but there are no formal chariot battles. This is again Dark Age reflection on Mycenaean practice.
The Alphabet
The most important change of the Dark Age for reading
the Iliad, however, did not concern warfare. It concerned an invention
that for us signals the end of the Dark Age and a renaissance, a rebirth,
of Greek society in the 8th century BC. You can see that this vase is a
much nicer one than the shabby example further above. This vase comes from
the latter part of the 8th century BC when Greek art is recovering from
its dark days. A little weird, but it's recovering.
This is the single most important invention of the Greek
Dark Ages: writing. When the Mycenaean world fell, their system for writing
Greek, Linear B, vanished and no Greek writing appeared for hundreds of
years afterward. Then in the 8th century BC, the Greeks borrowed the writing
system of the Phoenicians and modified it to develop the first Greek alphabet.
This is momentous in itself, since with some modifications this is the
alphabet we use today, as you can see on the chart to the right. The fellow
on the left is the god Apollo and he has, carved into his legs, some of
the earliest writing ever found in what we recognize as the Greek alphabet.
A transcription appears to the side. Interestingly enough, it includes
poetry and even a quote which also appears in Homer, from the Odyssey.
In fact, all the earliest writing samples so far discovered have ties to
Homeric poetry. In the first section on interest
in the Trojan War, we learned some of the mysteries of how and why
the Homeric poems were first written down. It would have been with
this new alphabet. Some scholars even believe that the Greeks developed
the alphabet specifically so that they could write down the poetry of Homer.
I personally doubt this is the case, but there is no doubt that one of
the first uses to which the Greeks put the alphabet was writing down songs
and poetry. Had this not happened, you would not likely be reading the
Iliad
in Greek, English, or any other language right now. And while that in and
of itself might not seem so terrible right now, you might not even have
anything to read at all.