Greek Dark Ages

Greek Periodization

Points of Reference

ca. 1645eruption of Thera (Knossos destroyed, rebuilt)
ca. 1380 Mycenean conquest of Crete, eastern Mediterranean
ca. 1200 Trojan War
ca. 750 Homer
479 Persian invasion

Bronze Age - 3,500 to 1,200 B.C.

Mesopotamia / Fertile Crescent

• Sumer
• Assyria
• Babylon
• Persia

Egypt

Greece

• Mycenean (southern Balkans)
• Minoan (Crete)

1. organize large numbers of people
2. engineering
3. writing
4. hierarchy

Minoan (Crete)
Eteo-Cretan
non-Indo-European
Greek Linear A

Mycenean (Balkans)
Indo-European, invaded ca. 2,000 B.C.
aggressive
Greek Linear B

Ioclus - Jason
Orchomenus - Athamos
Corinth - Creon
Mycenae - Agamemnon
Sparta - Menelaus
Pylos - Nestor
Ithaca -Odysseus

Myth
memory
stability of verse ...

Dorian

Greek Dark Ages
ca. 1200 - 700 B.C.

1. Historical - Thucydides, Peloponnesian War (433-399 B.C.)
2. Archaeology - Peloponnesus abandoned
   • Cyprus
3. Language
   • North Greek: Boeotians, Dorians (in Thessaly)
   • South Greek: Myceneans (in Peloponnesus)

Troy
Hittites
Embario (Chios)
Melitus (Ionia)

Myth: memory of cultural trauma

Geographic factors

• isolation
• regionalism

Archaic Greece (ca. 750 B.C. - 480/479)
Polis

• Attica - Athens
• Boeotia - Thebes
• Laconia - Sparta
• Euboea - Chalkis

Agriculture (George - a farmer)
yeoman farmer - private ownership of land
orchard - grafting
slavery
year-round work

autarkeia - self-sufficiency

Warfare
bronze age - cavalry, chariot
archaic, classical Greece = infantry
hoplites < hoplon (a shield) = "heavily armed infantry"

• breast plate
• helmet
• greaves
• shield
• spear
• sword

phalanx
casualties

• winner: 3-10% (av. 5%)
• loser: 10-20% (av. 14%)