Homer’s Iliad

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C h a p te r s ( h tt p s : //co l o r s t a te .g r l co n te n t .co m /we s te r n c i v p re m o d e r n /pa g e /c h a p te r s ) C h a p te r 3 : A rc h a i c a n d C l a s s i c a l G re e ce ( h tt p s : //co l o r s t a te .g r l co n te n t .co m /we s te r n c i v p re m o d e r n /pa g e /c h 3 ) C h a p te r 3 : B ro n ze A g e G re e ce – T h e M yce n a ea n s ( h tt p s : //co l o r s t a te .g r l co n te n t .co m /we s te r n c i v p re m o d e r n /pa g e /c h 3 p g 1 )

Mycenaean Potter y. Image © Shutterstock, Inc.

THE MYCENAEANS

Bronze Age Greece—The Mycenaeans In the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site of

Mycenae, the center of the Mycenaean civilization which

�ourished on mainland Greece between 1600 and 1100

BC. This city was thought to be ruled by the legendary king,

Agamemnon, the commander of Greek forces during the

Trojan War.  Although the Mycenaeans created a

commercial network like the Minoans (Mycenaean pottery

has been found in Syria, Egypt, Sicily, and southern Italy),

they were predominately a warrior society.

 

MENU

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Mycena ean Greece.

 

Military success enabled them to conquer Crete and some Aegean islands, bringing them into

the fold of Mycenaean society. Despite their militaristic nature, the Mycenaean culture was

unable to unify into a large empire, largely due to the geographical nature of Greece and the

internal divisions of each military leader.

 

Linear B was the main script of the Mycenaeans and much of the extant script describes the

supply lists for kings’ armies.   Many of the tablets describe grain rations and armor allocations.

Many scholars agree that the Mycenaeans brought Linear B to Crete upon conquest, which

explains the existence of two scripts on the island.  Perhaps it was the commercial success of

Minoan culture that drew the Mycenaeans to Crete.

 

Much of the military adventures of the Mycenaeans come down to use from the epic poems of

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which will be discussed below.  Scholars have hotly debated the

historical veracity of these poems—did the Greeks and Trojans go to war, ending in the sack of

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Troy around 1250 BC?  Could these poetic stories reveal a truth, the details of which are now

part legend, part history?  Many scholars agree that Homer’s account of the Trojan War has

some basis in fact.

 

The Mycenaean society ended abruptly around 1200 BC.  The cause of this decline is, like

many issues of the ancient past, debated.  Some scholars argue mainland Greece was invaded,

either by the Dorians—a Greek culture who spoke a dialect of early Greek.  Or, alternatively,

the Sea Peoples, who caused much calamity in Egypt and the Levant (present day Lebanon,

Syria, and Israel) during the same time.  Finally, environmental factors of famine, drought,

plague, and civil strife could have been to blame.  Most likely, it was a combination of

environmental, internal con�ict, and external invasions, which lead to the collapse of

Mycenaean society.  Upon the collapse of the Mycenaeans, Greece enters a depressed

economic and cultural condition called the Dark Age (1200–800 BC).

 

 

Dark Age Greece Although population declined and food production was stunted during this period, a more

severe indication of Dark Age Greece is the lack of writing.  It seems that after the fall of the

Mycenaean sites, the use of Linear B was forgotten either entirely or was so rare that no

evidence survives.  The l a s t ex t a n t t a b l e t

( h t t p s : //e n .w i k i p e d i a . o r g / w i k i / L i n e a r _ B # /m e d i a / F i l e : N A M A _ L i n e a r _ B _ t a b l e t _ o f _ P y l o s . j p g )

is from Pylos and dates to c. 1100 BC. Perhaps it was the dif�culty in mastering the script

itself, or that the depressed economic situation no longer required scribes to record what little

trade and commerce survived.  The signi�cance of the loss of writing cannot be overstated.  It

is this lack of literary sources which lead historians to refer to the period as the Dark Age; little

to no illumination is available.

 

Due to the depressed state of mainland Greece at the time, many Greeks began to migrate

throughout the Aegean, settling various islands and the west coast of Asia Minor, modern-day

Turkey.

 

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Archaic Greece.

 

Although much of the same Mycenaean regions were still occupied, there were no palaces

ruled by kings, no central economies, and little political structure. Throughout the period,

agriculture began to be revived, as well as trade and commerce.  An important transition from

the use of bronze to iron in weaponry and tools made them cheaper and thus more accessible. 

Finally, by the eighth century BC, the Greeks once again began to write.  They adopted the

Phoenician alphabet, a twenty-four letter alphabet which enabled them to make combinations

of letters into words. Learning to read and write was now available and easier than before.

There was no complete break from Mycenaean culture through the Dark Ages, however, as

oral tradition kept Greek culture alive, as we shall see below.  At the very end of this period

emerges the work of Homer, one of the greatest poets of all time.

 

Review Question

What was the language of the Mycenaeans?

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Linear A

Cuneiform

Linear B

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