3. The Homeric Age—Alike in Crete and on the
mainland the civilization disclosed by excavation comes abruptly to an
end. In Crete we can trace it back from c.
1200 b.c. to the Neolithic
period. From the Stone Age to the end of the Minoan Age the development is
continuous and uninterrupted. But between the culture of the Early Age and
the culture of the Dorians, who occupied the island in historical times,
no connection whatever can be established. Between the two there is a
great gulf fixed. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than
that presented by the rude life of the Dorian communities in Crete when it
is compared with the political power, the material resources and the
extensive commerce of the earlier period. The same gap between the
archaeological age and the historical exists on the mainland also. It is
true that the solution of continuity is here less complete. Mycenaean art
continues, here and there, in a debased form down to the 9th century, a
date to which we can trace back the beginnings of the later Greek art. On
one or two lines (e.g. architecture)
it is even possible to establish some sort of connection between them. But
Greek art as a whole cannot be evolved from Mycenaean art. We cannot
bridge over the interval that separates the latter art, even in its
decline, from the former. It is sufficient to compare the “dipylon”
ware (with which the process of development begins, which culminates in
the pottery of the Great Age) with the Mycenaean vases, to satisfy oneself
that the gulf exists. What then is the relation of the Heroic or Homeric
Age (i.e. the age whose life is
portrayed for us in the poems of Homer) to the Earliest Age? It too
presents many contrasts to the later periods. On the other hand, it
presents contrasts to the Minoan Age, which, in their way, are not less
striking. Is it then to be identified with the Mycenaean Age? Schliemann,
the discoverer of the Mycenaean culture, unhesitatingly identified
Mycenaean with Homeric. He even identified the shaft‑graves of
Mycenae with the tombs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Later inquirers,
while refusing to discover so literal a correspondence between things
Homeric and things Mycenaean, have not hesitated to accept a general
correspondence between the Homeric Age and the Mycenaean. Where it is a
case of comparing literary evidence with archaeological, an exact
coincidence is not of course to be demanded. The most that can be asked is
that a general correspondence should be established. It may be conceded
that the case for such a correspondence appears prima facie a strong
one. There is much in Homer that seems to find confirmation or explanation
in Schliemann’s finds. Mycenae is Agamemnon’s city; the plan of the
Homeric house agrees fairly well with the palaces at Tiryns and Mycenae;
the forms and the technique of Mycenaean art serve to illustrate passages
in the poems; such are only a few of the arguments that have been urged.
It is the great merit of Professor Ridgeway’s work (The
Early Age of Greece) that it
has demonstrated, once and for all, that Mycenaean is not Homeric pure and
simple. He insists upon differences as great as the resemblances. Iron is
in common use in Homer; it is practically unknown to the Mycenaeans. In
place of the round shield and the metal armour of the Homeric soldier, we
find at Mycenae that the warrior is lightly clad in linen, and that he
fights behind an oblong shield, which covers the whole body; nor are the
chariots the same in form. The Homeric dead are cremated; the Mycenaean
are buried. The gods of Homer are the deities of Olympus, of whose cult no
traces are to be found in the Mycenaean Age. The novelty of Professor
Ridgeway’s theory is that for the accepted equation, Homeric = Achaean =
Mycenaean, he proposes to substitute the equations, Homeric = Achaean =
post‑Mycenaean, and Mycenaean = pre‑Achaean = Pelasgian. The
Mycenaean civilization he attributes to the Pelasgians, whom he regards as
the indigenous population of Greece, the ancestors of the later Greeks,
and themselves Greek both in speech and blood. The Homeric heroes are
Achaeans, a fair‑haired Celtic race, whose home was in the Danube
valley, where they had learned the use of iron. In Greece they are
newcomers, a conquering class comparable to the Norman invaders of England
or Ireland, and like them they have acquired the language of their
subjects in the course of a few generations. The Homeric civilization is
thus Achaean, i.e. it is Pelasgian (Mycenaean) civilization, appropriated by a
ruder race; but the Homeric culture is far inferior to the Mycenaean.
Here, at any rate, the Norman analogy breaks down. Norman art in England
is far in advance of Saxon. Even in Normandy (as in Sicily), where the
Norman appropriated rather than introduced, he not only assimilated but
developed. In Greece the process must have been reversed.
The
theory thus outlined is probably stronger on its destructive side than on
its constructive. To treat the Achaeans as an immigrant race is to run
counter to the tradition of the Greeks themselves, by whom the Achaeans
were regarded as indigenous (cf.
Herod. viii. 73). Nor is the Pelasgian part of the theory easy to
reconcile with the Homeric evidence. If the Achaeans were a conquering
class ruling over a Pelasgian population, we should expect to find this
difference of race a prominent feature in Homeric society. We should, at
least, expect to find a Pelasgian background to the Homeric picture. As a
matter of fact, we find nothing of the sort. There is no consciousness in
the Homeric poems of a distinction of race between the governing and the
subject classes. There are, indeed, Pelasgians in Homer, but the
references either to the people or the name are extraordinarily few. They
appear as a people, presumably in Asia Minor, in alliance with the
Trojans; they appear also, in a single passage, as one of the tribes
inhabiting Crete. The name survives in “Pelasgicon Argos,” which is probably to be identified with the valley of the
Spercheius, and as an epithet of Zeus of Dodona. The population, however,
of Pelasgicon Argos and of Dodona is no longer Pelasgian. Thus, in the age
of Homer, the Pelasgians belong, so far as Greece proper is concerned, to
a past that is already remote. It is inadmissible to appeal to Herodotus
against Homer. For the conditions of the Homeric age Homer is the sole
authoritative witness. If, however, Professor Ridgeway has failed to prove
that “Mycenaean” equals “Pelasgian,” he has certainly proved that
much that is Homeric is post‑Mycenaean. It is possible that
different strata are to be distinguished in the Homeric poems. There are
passages which seem to assume the conditions of the Mycenaean age; there
are others which presuppose the conditions of a later age. It may be that
the latter passages reflect the circumstances of the poet’s own times,
while the former ones reproduce those of an earlier period. If so, the
substitution of iron for bronze must have been effected in the interval
between the earlier and the later periods.
It
has already been pointed out that the question whether the makers of the
Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations were
Greeks must still be regarded as an open one. No such question can
be raised as to the Homeric Age. The Achaeans may or may not have been
Greek in blood. What is certain is that the Achaean Age forms an integral
part of Greek history. Alike on the linguistic, the religious and the
political sides, Homer is the starting‑point of subsequent
developments. In the Greek dialects the great distinction is that between
the Doric and the rest. Of the non-Doric dialects the two main groups
are the Aeolic and Ionic, both of which have been developed, by a gradual
process of differentiation, from the language of the Homeric poems. With
regard to religion it is sufficient to refer to the judgment of Herodotus,
that it was Homer and Hesiod who were the authors of the Greek theogony .
. . . It is a commonplace that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. On the
political side, Greek constitutional development would be unintelligible
without Homer. When Greek history, in the proper sense, begins, oligarchy
is almost universal. Everywhere, however, an antecedent stage of
monarchy has to be presupposed. In the Homeric system monarchy is the sole
form of government; but it is monarchy already well on the way to being
transformed into oligarchy. In the person of the king are united the
functions of priest, of judge and of leader in war. He belongs to a family
which claims divine descent and his office is hereditary. He is, however,
no despotic monarch. He is compelled by custom to consult the council (boule) of the elders, or chiefs. He must ask their opinion, and, if he
fails to obtain their consent, he has no power to enforce his will. Even
when he has obtained the consent of the council, the proposal still awaits
the approval of the assembly (agora),
of the people.
Thus
in the Homeric state we find the germs not only of the oligarchy and
democracy of later Greece, but also of all the various forms of
constitution known to the Western world. And a monarchy such as is
depicted in the Homeric poems is clearly ripe for transmutation into
oligarchy. The chiefs are addressed as kings . . .,
and claim, equally with the monarch, descent from the gods. In Homer,
again, we can trace the later organization into tribe (tulh),
clan (genos), and
phratry, which is characteristic of Greek society in the historical
period, and meets us in analogous forms in other Aryan societies. The genos
corresponds to the Roman gens,
the tulh
to the Roman tribe, and the phratry to the curia.
The importance of the phratry in
Homeric society is illustrated by the well‑known passage (Iliad ix. 63) in which the
outcast is described as “one who belongs to no phratry” (atrhtor).
It is a society that is, of course, based upon slavery, but it is
slavery in its least repulsive aspect. The treatment which Eumaeus and
Eurycleia receive at the hands of the poet of the Odyssey
is highly creditable to the humanity of the age. A society which regarded
the slave as a mere chattel would have been impatient of the interest
shown in a swineherd and a nurse. It is a society, too, that exhibits many
of the distinguishing traits of later Greek life. Feasting and quarrels,
it is true, are of more moment to the heroes than to the contemporaries of
Pericles or Plato; but “music” and “gymnastic” (though the terms
must be understood in a more restricted sense) are as distinctive of the
age of Homer as of that of Pindar. In one respect there is retrogression
in the historical period. Woman in Homeric society enjoys a greater
freedom, and receives greater respect, than in the Athens of Sophocles and
Pericles.
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