Pg. 97-98 (2)

The Greeks In A Dark Age

World History, Comprehensive Volume, 3rd Edition, by William J. Duiker & Jackson J. Spielvogel.

 

 

After the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, Greece entered a difficult era of declining population and falling food production. Historians refer to it as a Dark Age. Not until 850 B.C.E. did farming revive. At the same time, some new developments were forming the basis for a revived Greece.

 

During the Dark Age, large numbers of Greeks left the mainland and migrated across the Aegean Sea to various islands and especially to the southwestern shore of Asia Minor, a strip of territory that came to be called Ionia. Based on their dialect, the Greeks who resided there were called Ionians. Two other groups of Greeks settled in established parts of Greece. The Aeolian Greeks who were located in northern and central Greece colonized the large island of Lesbos and the adjacent territory of the mainland. The Dorians established themselves in southwestern Greece, especially in Peloponnesus, as well as on some of the south Aegean islands including Crete.

 

Other important activities occurred in this Dark Age as well. There was a revival of some trade and some economic activity besides agriculture. Iron replaced bronze in the construction of weapons, making them affordable for more people. And at some point in the 8th century B.C.E., the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet to give themselves a new system of writing. Neat the very end of this so-called Dark Age appeared the work of Homer, who has come to be viewed as one of the truly great poets of all time.

 

Homer
 
The Origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the first great epics of early Greece, are to be found in the oral tradition of reciting poems recounting the deeds of heroes of the Mycenaean age. It is generally assumed that early in the 8th century B.C., Homer made use of these oral traditions to compose the Iliad, his epic of the Trojan War. The war was caused by an act of Paris, a prince of Troy. By kidnapping Helen, wife of the king of the Greek state of Sparta, he outraged all the Greek. Under the leadership of the Spartan king’s brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, the Greeks attacked Troy. Ten years later, the Greeks finally won and sacked the city.
 
But the Iliad is not so much the story of the war itself as it is the tale of the Greek hero Achilles and how the “wrath of Achilles” led to disaster. As is true of all great literature, the Iliad abounds in universal lessons. Underlying them all is the clear message, as one commentator has observed, that “men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty.  
 
Although the Odyssey has long been considered Homer’s other masterpiece, some scholars believe that it was composed later than the Iliad and was probably not the work of Homer. The Odyssey is an epic romance that recounts the journeys of one of the Greek heroes, Odysseus, after the fall of Troy and his ultimate return to his wife. But there is a larger vision here as well: the testing of the heroic stature of Odysseus until, by both cunning and patience, he prevails. In the course of this testing, the underlying moral message is “that virtue is a better policy than vice.”  
 
Although the Iliad and the Odyssey supposedly deal with the heroes of the Mycenaean age of the 13th century B.C.E., many scholars believe that they really describe the social conditions of the Dark Age. According to the Homeric view, Greece was a society based on agriculture in which a landed warriors-aristocracy controlled much wealth and exercised considerable power. There is no doubt that Homer’s society was divided along class lines with the warrior-aristocrats as the dominant group. Homer’s world reflects the values of aristocratic heroes.
 
This, or course, explains the importance of Homer to later generations of Greeks. Homer did not so much record history; he made it. The Greeks regarded the Iliad and the Odyssey as authentic history and as the works of one poet, Homer. These masterpieces gave the Greeks an ideal past with a legendary age of heroes and came to be used as standard texts for the education of generations of Greek males. As on Athenian stated, “My father was anxious to see me develop into a good man…and as a means to this end he compelled me to memorize all of Homer.” The values of Homer inculcated were essentially the aristocratic values of courage and honor. It was important to strive for the excellence benefiting a hero, which the Greeks called aręte. In the warrior-aristocratic world of Homer, aręte is won in struggle or contest. In his willingness to fight, the hero protects his family and friends, preserves and expands his own honor and that of his family, and earns his reputation. In the Homeric world, aristocratic women, too, were expected to pursue excellence. Penelope, for example, the wife of Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey, remains faithful to her husband and displays great courage and intelligence in preserving their household during her husband’s long absence. Upon his return, Odysseus praises her for her excellence: “Madame, there is not a man in the wide world who could find fault with you. For your fame has reached heaven itself, like that of some perfect king, ruling a populous and mighty state with the fear of god in his heart, and upholding the right.”
 
To a later generation of Greeks, these heroic values formed the core of aristocratic virtue, a fact that explains the tremendous popularity of Homer as an educational tool Homer gave to the Greeks, a single universally accepted model of heroism, honor, and nobility. But in time, as a new world of city-states emerged in Greece, new values of cooperation and community also transformed what the Greeks learned from Homer.

 

 

Pg. 99

Homer’s Ideal of Experience

 

The Iliad and the Odyssey, which the Greeks believed were both written by Homer, were used as basic texts for the education of Greeks for hundreds of years during antiquity. This passage is from the Iliad, describing the encounter between Hector, prince of Troy, and his wife Andromache, illustrates the Greek ideal of gaining honor through combat. At the end of the passage, Homer also revels what became the Greek attitude toward women: they are supposed to spin and weave and take care of their households and children.

 

from Homer's Iliad:

 

Hector looked at his son and smiled, but said nothing. Andromache, bursting into tears, went up to him and put her hand in his. “Hector,” she said, “you are possessed. This bravery of yours will be your end. You do not think of your little boy or your unhappy wife, whom you will make a widow soon. Some day the Achaeans (Greeks) are bound to kill you in a massed attack. And when I lose you I might as well be dead…I have no father, no mother, now…I had seven brothers too at home. In one day all of them went down to Hades’ house. The great Achilles of the swift feet killed them all…

 

“So you, Hector, are father and mother, and brother to me, as well as my beloved husband. Have pity on me now; stay here on the tower; and do not make your boy an orphan and your wife a widow…”

 

“All that, my dear,” said the great Hector of the glittering helmet, “is surely my concern. But if I hid myself like a coward and refused to fight, I could never face the Trojans and the Trojan ladies in their trailing gowns. Besides, it would go against the grain, for I have trained myself always, like a good soldier, to take my place in the front line and win glory for my father and myself…”

 

As he finished, glorious Hector held out his arms to take his boy. But the child shrank back with a cry to the bosom of his girdled nurse, alarmed by his father’s appearance. He was frightened by the bronze of the helmet and the horsehair plume that he saw nodding grimly down at him. His father and his lady mother had to laugh. But noble Hector quickly took his helmet off and put the dazzling thing on the ground. Then he kissed his son, dandled him in his arms, and prayed to Zeus and the other gods: “Zeus, and you other gods, grant that this boy of mine may be, like me, preeminent in Troy; as strong and brave as I; a mighty king of Ilium. May people say, when he comes back from battle, ‘Here is a better man than his father.’ Let him bring home the bloodstained armor of the enemy he has killed, and make his mother happy.”

 

Hector handed the boy to his wife, who took him to her fragrant breast. She was smiling through her tears, and when her husband saw this, he was moved. He stroked her with his hand and said, “My dear, I beg you not to be too much distressed. No one is going to send me down to Hades before my proper time. But fate is a thing that no man born to a women, coward or hero, can escape. Go home now, and attend to you own work the loom and the spindle, and see that the maidservants get on with theirs. War is men’s business; and this war is the business of every man in Ilium, myself above all.”