by Jack Lindsay
First we may repeat that there is nothing inherently unlikely in a story such as that of Helen owning a factual basis. We find similar stories circulating in the Germanic heroic age that followed the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West. In Beowulf we hear of Heathcyn carrying off a Swedish queen with disastrous consequences. Prokopios tells how the war between the Angli and the Warni in the mid-sixth century AD arose through Radiger repudiating his marriage contract with the English king’s sister. Gregory of Tours tells how the breakdown of the Burgundian kingdom came about through Hrithhild demanding that her sons should take vengeance for the murder of her parents; how Hilderberht invaded Spain after his sister Hlothhild had been ill-treated by her husband the Visigothic king Amalric; how the proud and jealous Amaloberga, wife of Irminfrith, was responsible for the dissensions bringing down the Thuringian kingdom. We see that womenfolk of the ruling classes in such an age were often headstrong and passionate, and able to cause far-reaching troubles.
We cannot here examine the Homeric world in detail; but in general we may claim that, with all the changes and modifications which must have gone on in recited poems over four or five hundred years, there is still a strong imprint of the Bronze Age. The most striking lapse in tradition is the Dark-Age obliteration of any memory of the highly organized Mykenean states, with their bureaucracy of scribes and their use of writing. Such systems must have been so foreign to later experience that they were largely forgotten except for a general sense of lost splendours and of the power exercised by the king of Mykenai as a sort of overlord. The scale of life had shrunk. Homer was impressed by the way in which Odysseus or Alkinoos kept fifty women at work in his house; yet the Pylos tablets, dealing with a single locality over a short period of time, mention the names of 645 slavewomen, together with some 370 girls and 210 boys. But many items often cited as showing a post-Mykenean culture do not carry much weight, eg Odysseus’ brooch or Athena’s golden lamp. Temples standing on their own have been considered post-Mykenean; but now the discovery of a Mykenean temple on Keos with cult-statues, some life-sized, has shown the argument to be fallacious. Hardly any objects mentioned in the poems cannot be paralleled from the Mykenean period. Outstanding examples are the boar’s-tusk helmet of Iliad X, which Homer describes correctly in its smallest details, Nestor’s cup, Penelope’s couch, Helen’s silver work-basket on wheels, the huge body-shields — though these latter seem to have fallen into disuse some generations even before the fall of Mykenai. We may add Odysseus’ palace, though this type of house-plan may have survived some time at Athens.
The reference to Phoinikians has been taken as anachronistic, but the Mykeneans may already have used this name for the folk of the region later called Phoinikia, as they used it to denote a spice, a colour, a fabulous monster. The prominence of Sidon is noteworthy; for this town was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age; and though the site was reoccupied, Tyre overshadowed it in the Early Iron Age. The place name Byblos certainly entered Greek before 1200 BC, when the pronunciation changed from Bubla to Gubla; also Tyre and Sidon must have become Greek words when their initial letters were still distinguished in Phoinikian. The tablets show that word-borrowing from Semitic in Mykenean days included the terms for gold, lion, cummin, cyperus, chiton.
Cremation indeed seems an Iron-Age feature, though sporadically used in the late Mykenean period. Oddly, it was practised by Trojans of the cities VI—VIIa. Anyhow, the burnings of the dead in Homer are mostly of warriors dying in a foreign land where tomb desecration was feared. The most significant argument by far for the antiquity of Homeric material lies in the Catalogue of Ships, which seems certainly to reflect to a substantial extent the situation in the Bronze Age. If such a detailed record of factual conditions could be orally transmitted over some five hundred years, we can have no difficulty in believing that the narrative sections of the Iliad have also a long and solid tradition behind them.
There was beyond doubt far more continuity between 1200 BC and 800 BC than has been thought. We must not look on the so-called Dorian invasion (the movement south of Greek tribes in a more primitive condition) as a mass irruption completely transforming the situation. There may well have been only raids on Mykenean centres already weakened by internal regressions, both social and economic. In art there was something like a continuous tradition, despite checks and declines, in the relatively broken-down world after 1000 BC. The horses in Geometric art suggest a survival of the Mykenean custom of horse-drawn funerals; they appear on funerary vases. Birds are associated with chariots in Mykenean art, and we find them in a similar role in Geometric. Greek artists may have known of Mykenean works in various ways. We meet early material in later contexts, later objects connected with earlier graves or structures, buildings carried over or against Mykenean architecture; and continuities in technical procedures can be traced. The Keos temple and many other later details suggest an unbroken tradition in many cult-practices. Most important of all we must realize that, with all the differences, there must have been many similar social elements among the Achaians of Agamemnon and the Greeks of the Dark Ages. The bureaucratic apparatus had gone; the great Wanax or overlord had gone; the Basileis, lords or princes, had turned into petty kings — and were finally to disappear in historical Greece. (Anax survived in a few cult-titles as with the Dioskouroi; basileus too survived in priestly titles such as that of the Archon Basileus at Athens.) What had been a well-organized sort of tribal-feudal society broke down into much more rudimentary systems; but under the various superstructures of power there must have been certain tribal elements not so different in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The breakdown was in no sense a simple reversion to earlier tribal forms. The political unit became smaller and the exploitation of large groups of slaves by palace systems faded out; but this development may well have been a gain for the peasantry in general. If we may judge from the Odyssey, the post-Mykenean system retained many sophisticated elements of social differentiation despite the large-scale fall in standards of living, which would have hit the chieftains most of all.
So we must not think of a Bronze-Age world remembered in bardic traditions across centuries of quite different social formations. After we have carefully pointed out this or that detail in the epics which can be labelled Bronze Age or Iron, in the last resort what we see is an indissoluble fusion of elements from both ages — or rather, the process by which the Mykenean elements have been modified and expanded during the Dark Ages and the early Ionian period, has produced a living work of art, not a mosaic of bits from here, there and somewhere else. Each poem is traditional, historical, legendary, rooted in Mykenai and Troy VIIa, and yet using a perspective determined by the Dark Ages. It is an individual creation in which the organizing poetic vision is at no points opposed to the other elements — traditional, historical, legendary.[56]
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Troy was founded around 3000 BC by settlers who seem to have come by sea from the south-east and who moved from the floodable land near the estuary of the Skamandros to the higher ground, a ridge, east of the river valley. They felt insecure, for from the outset they fortified the site with a wall; they must have thus become the city dominating the north-west corner of Anatolia. Seven main stages of the city can be made out. After about five hundred years some conflict, apparently internal, destroyed the city; and the second settlement, with a palatial megaron or hall, was burned down after some three hundred more years. A yet stronger wall, with small projecting towers, was built. The place prospered; there were flocks of sheep and goats, and much spinning and weaving went on. The spread of Trojan pottery to the Cyclades and Greek mainland, as also to Central Anatolia, Kilikia, and north Syria, suggests a considerable trade, presumably in livestock and woollen textiles; timber from Mt Ida may also have been exploited. The city went on expanding. Troy IV covered some four acres and the people used domed ovens. With Troy VI we are in the Middle Bronze Age of the Aegean, with the citadel a powerful royal stronghold. The horse came in, and new pot shape
s (called grey Minyan ware). The whole defensive system showed in the Late Bronze Age a very high level of military engineering for the period.
The ethnic affiliations in all these developments are obscure; and we must beware of thinking that the advent of the Minyan ware, for instance, means a complete or even substantial change in the population. Certainly during the second millennium BC peoples with an Indo-European speech basis did become powerful in Mitanni, Central Anatolia and the Aegean. They seem connected with the horse. What we must avoid is any idea of the Aegean suddenly becoming Greek in the sense we use that term of the historical periods after the eighth century. The Greeks of history clearly represented a combination of many elements; what sections derived more or less directly from the intrusive folk of the second millennium must have gone through many changes, by intermarriages and by fusions or interactions of cultures. The newcomers in Greece largely took over the Minoan palace organization they found in the Aegean, as well as its cults. We may infer that they did not come in a mass invasion, but imposed themselves as a ruling class on existing peasantries. Still, as long as we keep these points in mind, we can think of a Greek-speaking Mykenean world as the predecessor of the Aegean of the Dark Ages and of Homer’s day with its colonization of the eastern shores of the sea.[57]
Troy VI lasted from about 1800 to 1300; its end seems to have come through an earthquake. The rebuilt town, Troy VIIa, lasted on till about 1240 and may be taken as Priam’s realm. The walls were hastily rebuilt with materials from fallen houses; and houses were now smaller and crowded together, divided by party-walls (which do not seem to occur in Troy VI). The city fell by attack and capture. The date of its sacking would then seem to be not far from the year 1184 which was given by Eratosthenes; he based his calculations on the genealogies of Spartan kings and others, thus arriving at the year 1104 for the Dorian invasion (328 years before the First Olympiad, 776); by adding two generations of forty years each he dated the capture 1184. Other ancient reckoners produced dates ranging from 1334 (Douris of Samos) to 1135 (Ephoros of Kyme in Aiolis). On the mainland all major Mykenean cities (except perhaps in Attika) had been broken down by the end of the ceramic phase IIb. Mykenai, Tiryns, Pylos, Gla, and almost certainly Thebes were burned down; most of the smaller settlements such as Prosymna, Zygouros, Berbati, were burned and deserted. So by about 1200 the power of the Mykenean mainland was destroyed; the areas named in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships as providing the main contingents against Troy were abandoned and brought down to a low level. The expedition of Agamemnon must then have come about a generation or so earlier, and the tradition of disasters following the sack of Troy would presumably represent a memory of the breakdown of mainland Mykenean civilization not long after. At Troy the survivors did their best to rebuild the site; but about 1200 or soon afterwards newcomers with a characteristic knobbed ware took over. Around 1100 the settlement was again destroyed by fire, and the site was deserted for some four centuries until new settlers came in. But now Troy was in effect a Greek colony, part of the Hellenic world.[58]
The origins of the Homeric epics must then go back to the thirteenth century BC, but as we would expect with an oral bardic tradition the original lays, whatever they were like, have been expanded and adapted, put together and reorganized in varying combinations over the centuries. Steadily the manners of the Mykenean age have been changed to fit in with the social conditions of the bards, so that the systems at Ithaka or Sparta which we find described in the Odyssey are essentially those of the Dark Ages. The fighting in the Iliad shows a mixture of Bronze-Age and later elements. But many formulas of the epic style certainly go back to Mykenean days, and thus we have a strong argument for the hexameter itself, no doubt in a ruder form, similarly going back.
In the Iliad Andromachē remarks on the weakness of the western wall: ‘As for your host, let it stand by the wild figtree where the city can most easily be scaled and the wall is open to assault.’ Three times, she says, the Greeks tried to enter there: ‘whether it’s someone skilled in prophecy told them, or their own spirit [thymos] drives them there and urges them on.’ Her comments are upheld by archaeology. The walls were not as straight and steep as at Mykenai and Tiryns; they could be climbed up to the angle where the battlements began. ‘Three times Patroklos set his foot on an angle of the high wall and three times Apollo pushed him back.’[59]
Homer has many epithets for Troy, some conventional, used for any town, though appropriate in suggesting a well-built city with fertile and open land around, general amenities and important cults. Six are used for Troy alone. Eudmetos, normally used for towers, walls, altars, here stresses the solid work of the whole city; euteicheos refers to the strong walls (where some patching-up in period VIIa can be noticed); eupyrgos seems to point to the wall-towers, at least four of which survived from VI into VIIa. Towers also existed at Mykenai and Tiryns, but were there connected with the gates; they may have been fewer than at Troy. Ophryoessa gives an effect of the town’s forbidding aspect as it rose on its ridge, and helps to suggest the doom to come; eupolos refers to the horse-breeding on the plains. The Trojans are called horse-tamers twenty-one times in the Iliad, and they must have owed much wealth and power to their horses. Finally Troy is called aty mega, a great city. Mega hardly fits the extent; the remains of VI and VIIa at their widest points measure only some two hundred yards, and they cover not more than five acres. Homer does not give the effect of a large force located there. But mega may refer to strength, wealth, prestige.
Five more epithets are suitable, though not confined to Troy. Aipē suggests the way in which Hissarlik rises steeply on the north and western sides; men of Troy IX did much levelling on the other two sides, to help the approach to the sea. Hypsipylos, tall-gated, refers to the number as well as the height of the gates; seven have been found in VI, not all existing at the same time, but four must have been used at most phases of VI and carried on into VIIa, while there may have been other gates that do not survive. Homer knows of the Great Tower of Ilion, apparently near the Skaian Gate, and a Dardanian Gate leading south to Mt Ida. Hypsipylos is also used of Mysian Thebes, which had close relations with Troy and lay on a strategic position at the head of the Adramyttian Gulf. No epithet describes the fortifications of Mykenai; Tiryns is merely said to be walled; seven gates are attributed to Boiotian Thebes, while Egyptian Thebes is the hundred-gated. Enempoeesa evokes the fact that the north wind blows a great deal on the site. Eunaiomenon seems to mean well-populated; it is employed also of Kos and Sidoniē. Euryagyia used to be taken to refer to Troy VI where there was an unoccupied space between the walls and the buildings they enclosed; but it is also used of Mykenai and Athens where there was no such space, and at Troy the space was built on after the earthquake. So the meaning is probably ‘broad-streeted’. Troy VII had well-paved and drained streets; we may note in particular the street running from the south gate to the citadel, in which a bronze arrowhead was found. At Mykenai too a royal road went from the Lion Gate to the summit; and Athens had a well-made approach.[60]
For an epithet applied to the Achaians which seems to go back to Mykenean days we may take euknēmis, well-greaved. It has been argued that this might refer to the hoplite armour that came in about 700 BC; but it is almost certainly a Mykenean touch. We see the superior warriors of the Bronze Age with their greaves on monuments; and several remains of them have been found, with wire lace to fasten up the back. The dates are from about 1400 to 1200, and the sites lie in the Peloponnesos and Cypros.[61] What makes it sure that Homer is not dealing with contemporary armour but with an ancient device is the fact that he does not really think of his warriors as greaved. Thus, he forgets the greaves when Pandaros hits Menelaos with an arrow. Further, in the thirteenth century greaves were eminently characteristic of the Achaians and of no other peoples in the eastern Mediterranean. (Goliath wears them, but he is a Philistine with Aegean links.) In the thirteenth century the big body-shield was replaced by a small round shield and corselet, so th
at warriors could distribute the armour weight better about their persons and thus combine mobility and protection. In the eastern Mediterranean most peoples adopted the round shield and some sort of corselet; only the Mykeneans added the greaves.[62]
Fragments of the relief on a silver rhyton from Shaft Grave IV at Mykenai, Cretan in origin, show an intriguing scene of battle.[63] On the right are towers set on a steep slope; on the left are olive trees. On the battlements several women look on with vivacious gestures at the fighting below. Warriors defend the fortress with slings and crossbows; their hair is cut short and they are all naked save for two on the extreme right who seem in command and who wear short stiff cloaks (which may however be shields). On the main fragment we do not see the enemy — except for the upper part of man at the lower edge, who wears a helmet with flowing plume and a short-sleeved chiton; he seems to be punting a boat (which we cannot see). Four boar’s-tusk helmets appear to belong to men in the boat. One of the smaller fragments shows another part of the fortified towers, with a man whose hair is short like those of the fighters on the slope. The Minoan character of the towers is underlined by the addition of horns-of-consecration. A second fragment shows six naked figures, perhaps swimming in water, while other fragments have a pattern representing shallow water and a rocky sea-bed.[64]
The women on the battlements overlooking a battle remind us of Helen at the Skaian Gate; and the rhyton indeed is one of the earliest known artworks which make a new approach to comprehensive illustration, to single perspective, and to an epic rendering of a war scene.[65] But though the scene here is often referred to as a siege, all we can say is that a fortified settlement is being attacked — perhaps as the first step to a prolonged siege. The theme has been described as a barbarian assault on a Minoan outpost. But difficulties arise over the fact that we cannot give an example of any such outpost; and just what is happening in the battle is hard to make out. A rather forced interpretation sees the arrivals as Creto-Mykeneans who have attempted to disembark warriors for a siege, but have been attacked by native barbarians and forced to make their escape by sea.[66] There are indeed three groups: the women on the battlements who seem Minoans by the style of their dress and the architecture of the towers; the men in the boat, who are mainland Greeks if we may trust the chiton — a non-Minoan feature, but worn by warriors on the fragment of a Tiryns fresco — and the helmets, which show a plumed type that we see on a gold ring, while plates of boar’s-tusk for a second type have been found in the same grave as the rhyton; finally the fighters on the slope, who are neither Minoan nor Mykenean, with their cropt hair, nakedness, slings and bows and arrows. (Slings and bows do not occur in Mykenean art as battle-weapons; the bow is shown in use only during hunts. But slings may appear in an early fresco at Knossos; and we know from the tales of Paris, Herakles, and Philoktētēs, that the bow was wielded by Mykenean heroes. The argument that the weapons are here barbarian is thus not strong; but the general effect of the naked fighters is certainly uncouth and non-heroic.) The scene has been suggested as Anatolian; and somehow Minoan ladies, Mykenean warriors, and local tribesmen have been brought together. Because of the difficulties raised by these suppositions it has been argued that the scene is based on some story which the artist could not easily define and to which he could not give a convincing contemporary location. But even if this were so, we still have here an attempt to depict an heroic event of a quite different character than a generalized battle-scene, a march of warriors, or a hunting episode. In fact, if it is legend and not a recent event which the artist is treating we are all the more definitely confronted with an epical scene.[67] One of the fragments shows with the swimmers an animal that has been taken to be a hippopotamus, but which is more likely some sort of sea-monster. However, it has been made the basis for the argument that an Egyptian original lies behind the relief. But even if Cretan artists had seen Egyptian war-pictures, as doubtless some of them at certain times had, there is no point in seeking a link here. The Egyptian coast had no such steep slopes, and the scene, however enigmatic, is Minoan-Mykenean throughout.
