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Homer, The Poet of the Dark Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

O. T. P. K. Dickinson
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Extract

This paper began as a lecture to an extramural weekend course on the Greek Dark Age, organized in Oxford by the Department of External Studies in December 1983. It was intended to suggest that the world of the Homeric poems, insofar as it had any relationship with reality, was more likely to reflect the conditions of the Dark Age than those of Mycenaean Greece, and it was born of increasing frustration at the dominance of what I will call the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation of Homer, particularly at the popular level. The recent BBC series In Search of the Trojan War has done nothing to lessen this dominance – indeed, it barely suggested that such an interpretation had been seriously challenged – and the theme of the lecture has therefore lost none of its relevance. In presenting a considerably revised version here, I have not attempted to offer an exhaustively argued and documented discussion, which would require a book, and must refer the reader to more extensive treatments of the topic for fuller details. Rather, I have decided to leave it as a rather provocative exposition of a case which deserves to be made. I have made some attempt to step outside the framework in which the discussion has often been conducted, which to my mind unduly favours the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation, but readily acknowledge that many of my arguments have been presented in similar form by others, and that some have been admitted to have force by those who in general support the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation. Given the quantity of writing on the topic, it is only too likely that I have neglected some discussions, and I have given references mainly to Homeric sources and to recent archaeological finds of relevance. Finally, I should make it clear that it is not my primary purpose to discuss the historicity of the Trojan War or of the Greek heroic legends generally, though this has often been made to depend on the supposedly Mycenaean content of the Homeric poems, at least in part.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 20 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

Notes

1. I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Dorothea Gray, my first teacher in Homeric and Mycenaean archaeology. I am grateful to Mr Trevor Rowley, Director of the Department of External Studies at Oxford, for the invitation to give the lecture upon which it is based. Though I have discussed this topic with many colleagues over the years, I take full responsibility for all views expressed.

2. The most comprehensive discussion of the Homeric sources is Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950)Google Scholar, now rather outdated but still very valuable. The most recent survey of the topic in some detail is Luce, J. V., Homer and the Heroic Age (London, 1975)Google Scholar. The most accessible and comprehensive discussion of the Dark Age is Snodgrass, A. M., The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh, 1971)Google Scholar; Desborough, V. R., The Greek Dark Ages (London, 1972)Google Scholar covers the eleventh and tenth centuries, and Coldstream, J. N., Geometric Greece (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar the ninth and eighth, with greater concentration on archaeological detail.

3. The most consistent proponent of a specifically Dark Age setting for the poems has been Sir Moses Finley, principally in The World of Odysseus (London, 2nd ed. 1977)Google Scholar. Some important comments are made by Kirk, G. S., CAH 3 Vol. 11:2, Ch. XXXIX(b)Google Scholar, and Snodgrass, A. M., JHS 94 (1974), 114–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Chadwick, J., Diogenes 77 (1972), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago, 1964), p. xGoogle Scholar.

5. Finley, , op. cit., p. 17Google Scholar.

6. Some of these points were made as long ago as Nilsson, M. P., The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1932), pp. 3–4, 31, 187Google Scholar; see also for general comments Goody, J. R. (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 30–34Google Scholar, and for more specific comments relevant to Homer, and Greek, mythology Finley, op. cit., pp. 47, 170–1Google Scholar, and Cartledge, P., Sparta and Lakonia (London, 1979), Ch. 5 and Appendix 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Irish material see Corráin, D. Ó., Ireland Before the Normans (Dublin, 1972), pp. 74–78Google Scholar.

7. Stesichorus seems to have been the first to associate Agamemnon and Orestes with Sparta; Pindar (Pythians 11.32) has Amyclae. The motive is surely the legitimation of Spartan claims to primacy in the Peloponnese as against Argos; cf. Cartledge, , op. cit., pp. 138–9, and Hdt. 7.159Google Scholar.

8. Chadwick, J., The Mycenaean World (Cambridge, 1976), p. 183Google Scholar.

9. CQ 67 (1973), 179–92, especially 187–8Google Scholar.

10. Il. 23.826–35.

11. The recent illustration, in the last programme of In Search of the Trojan War, of specifically Late Helladic IIIC sherds as from Troy VIIA introduces a new dimension to the discussion, since it would indicate that the destruction of Troy VIIA must post-date the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces! However, in this paper I have chosen to discuss the traditional association of the Trojan War with the world of the palaces, because it dominates the literature.

12. See, e.g., Gantz, J., Early Irish Myths and Sagas (London, 1982), passimGoogle Scholar; also Sandars, N. K., The Epic of Gilgamesh (London, 1960), pp. 73, 83, 86, 93Google Scholar.

13. See Popham, M. R., Sackett, L. H., and Themelis, P. G., Lefkandi I (Oxford, 1980), especially pp. 168–96Google Scholar on the Toumba cemetery (on which see also BSA 77 (1982), 213–48)Google Scholar, and Popham, M. R., Touloupa, E., and Sackett, L. H., Antiquity 56 (1982), 169–76 on the ‘Heroön’CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Anticleia's words (Od. 11.218–22) imply that it is normal, as does its use for the Greek and Trojan dead in general (Il. 7.417–32) and for the insignificant Elpenor (Od. 12.11–15); in no case is there a suggestion that it is an abnormal rite forced by circumstance, as the theory that it was adopted from the Trojans during the Trojan War would require.

15. Kurtz, D. and Boardman, J., Greek Burial Customs (London, 1971), p. 27Google Scholar; the larnakes are in fact earlier than suggested there.

16. See most recently Burkett, W., Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), pp. 43–46Google Scholar on the Linear B evidence, 51–52 on the absence of Apollo and Aphrodite (and 47–53 generally on continuity into and through the Dark Age), 149 with n. 3 on doubts over Artemis, and Chadwick, , op. cit., p. 88 on doubts over AthenaGoogle Scholar. Pa-ja-wo = Paieon is a separate god from Apollo even in Homer (Il. 6.899–900, Od. 4.232), so cannot represent him.

17. Delphi as an oracle, Od. 8.79–81, as wealthy, surely because of dedications, Il. 9.904–5.

18. Od. 19.226–31; the closest parallels seem late eighth or seventh century.

19. Lorimer, , op. cit., pp. 377–83Google Scholar is an extensive discussion of the Homeric sources.

20. Il. 14.182–3, Od. 18.296–7; cf. Popham, , Sackett, , and Themelis, , op. cit., p. 221, Pl. 231dGoogle Scholar; BSA 77 (1982)Google Scholar, Pl. 30(b) shows a related form. See Higgins, R., Greek and Roman Jewellery (London, 1961), pp. 72–73Google Scholar on Mycenaean earrings generally.

21. See the discussion in Coldstream, , op. cit., pp. 334–8Google Scholar.

22. Archaeological Reports for 1979–80, 29, Fig. 50: a sherd from Tiryns.

23. Lorimer, , op. cit., p. 273Google Scholar; CAH1 III: 1, p. 531.

24. Probably the latest context is a Sub-Minoan grave at Knossos, (Archaeological Reports for 1982–83, 53)Google Scholar; see Luce, , op. cit., pp. 103–4Google Scholar for some other late contexts and representations. For the Delos plaque see CAH3 Plates to Vols I and II, PI. 124(c), and on the context, Coldstream, , op. cit., p. 215Google Scholar.

25. Especially Snodgrass, A. M., Early Greek Armour and Weapons (Edinburgh, 1964), fig. 15bGoogle Scholar; in fig. 27 and in BSA 67 (1972)Google Scholar, pis. 5c, 10a, the shields look long, but the whole leg below the knee seems to be shown.

26. See Coldstream, , op. cit., pp. 287–8Google Scholar.

27. Crouwel, J. H., Chariots and Other Means of Land Transport in Bronze Age Greece (Amsterdam, 1981), Ch. VI, especially pp. 121–1Google Scholar; also Crouwel, , BICS 25 (1978), 174–5Google Scholar.

28. Crouwel, , op. cit., pp. 72–73Google Scholar, also 143–4 on likely obsolescence.

29. Il. 6.242–50; cf. Lorimer, , op. cit., p. 431Google Scholar.

30. On this general topic, see Knox, M. O., CQ 67 (1973), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Plommer, H., JHS 97 (1977), 75–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unit IV–1 in its later form at Nichoria (McDonald, W. A., Coulson, W. D. E., and Rosser, J., Excavations at Nichoria in Southwest Greece Vol. III (Minneapolis, 1983), pp. 33–40)Google Scholar has a side-entrance, also a small fenced yard; it is probably ninth century, at latest early eighth, in date.

31. Od. 6.9–10 and 262–7.

32. Muhly, J. D., Berytus 19 (1970), 17–64Google Scholar.

33. The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar.

34. Apart from the reference in the Catalogue of Ships, it is named at Il. 4.52, Od. 1.93 and 285, 2.214, 327, and 359, 4.10, 11.460, and 13.412, frequently as the equivalent of Nestor's Pylos and/or in the company of other known towns, Mycenae, Argos, and Orchomenos. As noted by Cartledge, , op. cit., p. 338Google Scholar, the name of the Menelaion site, the most important known in late Mycenaean Laconia, was most probably Therapne; its absence from the Catalogue presents yet another problem to the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation, since it was occupied in both the thirteenth and twelfth centuries.

35. See Giovannini, A., Étude Historique sur les Origines du Catalogue des Vaisseaux (Berne, 1969), pp. 25, 31Google Scholar. This neglected study has gathered a great deal of useful information on the existence in the seventh century and later, so probably earlier too, of the majority of the Catalogue sites, though the ultimate conclusion, that the Catalogue is based on the itinerary of Delphic thearodokoi, is hard to accept.

36. Minos 14 (1973), 57Google Scholar.

37. See for example Simpson, Hope and Lazenby, , op. cit., pp. 19Google Scholar (Hyria), 44 (Lilaia), 128 (Alope), and on Dorion p. 85, with which compare McDonald, W. A. and Simpson, R. Hope, AJA 73 (1969), 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, under Malthi (Vasiliko). Giovannini's comments on the assumptions involved in the identification of Hyria, Dorion, and also Pylos, and Krisa, , op. cit., pp. 19–21Google Scholar, seem perfectly just.

38. West, , op. cit., 191–2Google Scholar.

39. Op. cit., pp. 162–9; cf. also Simpson, Hope, Mycenaean Greece (New Jersey, 1981), p. 251Google Scholar.

40. Thuc. 1.12.3; the explanation for their presence in the Trojan War is notably lame, since what is in question is not some Boeotians but a contingent representing almost the whole of Classical Boeotia.

41. Cf. Chadwick, , Minos 14 (1973), 55–8Google Scholar; the references in Od. 3.4 and 386–7 imply a virtually coastal location.

42. Il. 4.376–81, the excuse being that Zeus sent bad omens.

43. Cf. Il. 2.572 and Hdt. 5.67.

44. E.g. Od. 11.184–7, where Telemachus takes it in turn to be host and guest, ‘as a justicedealing man should’, the implication being that those who feast him are also justice-dealing men of comparable status; cf. Il. 18.503–6; also Od. 21.21, when Odysseus' father ‘and the other elders’ send him on a public errand.

45. Od. 4.622–3, a reference not normally cited, to my knowledge.

46. Od. 4.81–85, 90–91; cf. 128–9 for Menelaos, 19–283–6,293–5 for Odysseus.