How shall we reconstruct the life of Achaean Greece (1300-1100 b.c.) out of the poetry of its legends? Our chief reliance must be upon Homer, who may never have existed, and whose epics are younger by at least three centuries than the Achaean Age. It is true that archeology has surprised the archeologists by making realities of Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Cnossus, and other cities described in the Iliad, and by exhuming a Mycenaean civilization strangely akin to that which spontaneously takes forum between the lines of Homer; so that our inclination today is to accept as real the central characters of his fascinating tales. None the less, it is impossible to say how far the poems reflect the age in which the poet lived, rather than the age of which he writes. We shall merely ask, then, what did Greek tradition, as gathered together in Homer, conceive the Homeric Age to be? In any case we shall have a picture of Hellas in buoyant transit from the Aegean culture to the civilization of historic Greece.

The Achaeans (i.e., the Greeks of the Heroic Age) impress us as less civilized than the Mycenaeans who preceded them, and more civilized than the Dorians who followed them. They are above all physical––the men tall and powerful, the women ravishingly lovely in an unusually literal sense. Like the Romans a thousand years after them, the Achaeans look down upon literary culture as effeminate degeneration; they use writing under protest, and the only literature they know is the martial lay and unwritten song of the troubadour. If we believe Homer we must suppose that Zeus had realized in Achaean society the aspiration of the American poet who wrote that if he were God he would make all men strong, and all women beautiful, and would then himself become a man. Homeric Greece is kalligynaika – it is a dream of fair women. The men too are handsome, with their long hair and their brave beards; the greatest gift that a man can give is to cut off his hair and !ay it as an offering upon the funeral pyre of his friend. Nakedness is not yet cultivated; both sexes cover the body with a quadrangular garment folded over the shoulders, tied with a clasp pin, and reaching nearly to the knees; the women may add a veil or a girdle, and the men a loincloth-which, as dignity increases, will evolve into drawers and trousers. The well to do go in for costly robes, such as that which Priam brings humbly to Achilles in ransom for his son." The men are barelegged, the women bare-armed; both wear shoes or sandals outdoors, but are usually barefoot within. Both sexes wear jewelry, and the women and Paris anoint the body with "rose-scented oil."

How do these men and women live? Homer shows them to us tilling the soil, sniffing with pleasure the freshly turned dark earth, running their eyes with pride along the furrows they have ploughed so straight, winnowing the wheat, irrigating the fields, and banking up the streams against the winter floods; he makes us feel the despair of the peasant whose months of toil are washed out by "the torrent at the full that in swift course shatters the dykes, neither can the long line of mounds hold it in, nor the walls of the fruitful orchards stay its sudden coming." The land is hard to farm, for much of it is mountain, or swamp, or deeply wooded hill; the villages are visited by wild beasts, and hunting is a necessity before it becomes a sport. The rich are great stockbreeders, raising cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and horses; one Erichthonius keeps three thousand brood mares with their foals. The poor eat fish and grain, occasionally vegetables; warriors and the rich rely upon great portions of roast meat; they breakfast on meat and wine. Odysseus and his swineherd eat, between them, a small roast pig for luncheon, and a third of a five-year-old hog for dinner. They have honey instead of sugar, meat fat instead of butter; instead of bread they eat cakes of grain, baked large and thin on a plate of iron or a hot stone. The diners do not recline, as the Athenians will do, but sit on chairs; not at a central table but along the walls, with little tables between the seats. There are no forks, spoons, or napkins, and only such knives as the guests may catty; eating is managed with the fingers. The staple drink, even among the poor and among children, is diluted wine.

The land is owned by the family of the clan, not by the individual; the father administers and controls it, but he cannot sell it" In the Iliad great tracts are called the King's Commons or Demesne (temenos); in effect it belongs to the community, and in its fields any man may pasture his flocks. In the Odyssey these common lands are being divided, and sold to-or appropriated by-rich or strong individuals; the commons disappears in ancient Greece precisely as in modern England.

The soil might yield metal as well as food; but the Achaeans neglect to mine the earth, and are content to import copper arid tin, silver and gold, and a strange new luxury, iron. A shapeless mass of iron is offered as a precious prize at the games held in honor of Patroclus, it will make, says Achilles, many an agricultural implement. He says nothing of weapons, which are still of bronze. The Odyssey describes the tempering of iron [When a smith tempers in cold water a great ax or an adze, it gives off a hissing; this is what gives iron its strength.], but that epic probably belongs to a later age than the Iliad.

The smith at his forge and the potter at his wheel work in their shops; other Homeric craftsmen – saddlers, masons, carpenters, cabinetmakers-go to work at the home that has ordered their product. They do not produce for a market, far sale or profit; they work long hours, but leisurely, without the sting and stimulus of visible competition. The family itself provides most of its needs; everyone in it labors with his hands; even the master of the house, even the local king, like Odysseus, makes bed and chairs for his home, boots and saddles for himself; and unlike the later Greeks he prides himself on his manual skill. Penelope, Helen, and Andromache, as well as their servant women, are busy with spinning, weaving, embroidery, and household cares; Helen seems lovelier when she displays her needlework to Telemachus' than when she walks in beauty on the battlements of Troy.

The craftsmen are freemen, never slaves as in classic Greece. Peasants may in emergency be conscripted to labor for the king, but we do not hear of serfs bound to the soil. Slaves are not numerous, nor is their position degrade; they are mostly female domestics, and occupy a position in effect as high as that of household servants today, except that they are bought and sold for long terms instead of for precariously brief engagements. On occasion they are brutally treated; normally they are accepted as members of the family, are cared for in illness or depression or old age, and may develop a humane relation of affection with master or mistress. Nausicaa helps her bondwomen to wash the family linen in the stream, plays ball with them, and altogether treats them as companions. If a slave woman bears a son to her master, the child is usually free' Any man, however, may become a slave, through capture in battle or in piratical raids. This is the bitterest aspect of Achaean life.

Homeric society is rural and local; even the "cities" are mere villages nestling against hilltop citadels. Communication is by messenger or herald, or, over long distances, by signs! fires flashing from peak to peak.' Overland traffic is made difficult and dangerous by roadless mountains and swamps and bridgeless streams. The carpenter makes carts with four wheels boasting of spokes and wooden tires; even so mast goods are carried 6y mules or men. Trade by sea is easier, despite pirates and storms; natural harbors are numerous, and only on the perilous four-day trip from Crete to Egypt does the ship lose sight of land. Usually the boat is beached at night, and crew and passengers sleep on trusty land. In this age the Phoenicians are still better merchants and mariners than the Greeks. The Greeks revenge themselves by despising trade, and preferring piracy.

The Homeric Greeks have no money, but use, as media for exchange, ingots of iron, bronze, or gold; the ox or cow is taken as a standard of value. A gold ingot of fifty-seven pounds is called a talent (talanton, weight). Much barter remains. Wealth is computed realistically in goods, especially cattle, rather than in pieces of metal or paper that may lose or alter their value at any moment through a change in the economic theology of men. There are rich and poor in Homer as in life; society is a rumbling cart that travels an uneven road; and no matter how carefully the cart is constituted, some of the varied objects in it will sink to the bottom, and others will rise to the top; the potter has not made all the vessels of the same earth, or strength, or fragility. Already in the second book of the Iliad we hear the sound of the class war; and as Thersites flies oratorically at Agamemnon we recognize an early variation on a persistent theme.

As we read Homer the impression forms that we are in the presence of a society more lawless and primitive than that of Cnosjus or Mycenae. The Achaean culture is a step backward, a transition between the brilliant Aegean civilization and the Dark Age that will follow the Dorian conquest. Homeric life is poor in art, rich in action; it is unmeditative, buoyant, swift; it is too young and strong to bother much about manners or philosophy. Probably we misjudge it by seeing it in the violent crisis or disorderly aftermath of war.

There are, it is true, many tender qualities and scenes. Even tile warriors are generous and affectionate; between parent and child there is a love as profound as it is silent. Odysseus kisses the heads and shoulders of the members of his family when, after their long separation, they recognize him; and in like manner they kiss him. Helen and Menelaus weep when they learn that this noble lad, Telemachus, is the son of the lost Odysseus who fought so valiantly for them. Agamemnon himself is capable of tears so abundant that they remind Homer of a stream pouring over rocks. Friendships are fpm among the heroes, though possibly a degree of sexual inversion enters into the almost neurotic attachment of Achilles to Patroclus, especially to Patroclus dead. Hospitality a lavish, for "from Zeus are all strangers and beggars."' Maids bathe the foot or the body of the guest, anoint him with unguents, and may give him fresh garments; he receives food and lodging if he needs them, and perhaps a gift." "Lo," says "fair-cheeked Helen," as she places a costly robe in Telemachus' hands, "I too give thee this gift, dear child, a remembrance of the hands of Helen, against the day of thy longed-for marriage, for thy bride to wear." It is a picture that reveals to us the human tenderness and fine feeling that in the Iliad must hide themselves under the panoply of war.

Even war does not thwart the Greek passion for games. Children and adults engage in skillful and difficult contests, apparently with fairness and good humor; Penelope's suitors play draughts, and throw the disk or javelin; the Phaeacian hosts of Odysseus play at quoits, and a strange medley of ball and dance. ["Then Alcinous ordered Halias and Laodamas to dance, by themselves, for never did any one dare join himself with them. They took in their hands the fine ball, purple-dyed . . .and played. The first bending his body right back, would hurl the bail towards the shadowy crowds, while the other in his turn would ring high into the air and catch it gracefully before his feet touched the ground. Then, after they had made full trial of tossing the high, they began passing it back and forth between them, all the while they danced upon the fruitful earth."] When the dead Patroclus has been cremated, according to Achaean custom, games are played that set a precedent for Olympia – foot races, disk-throwing, javelin-throwing, archery, wrestling, chariot races, and single combat fully armed; all in excellent spirit, except that only the ruling class may enter, and only the gods may cheat.

The other side of the picture is less pleasing. As a prize for the chariot race Achilles offers "a woman skilled in fair handiwork"; and on the funeral pyre horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, and human beings are sacrificed to keep the dead Patroclus well tended and fed." Achilles treats Priam with fine courtesy, but only after dragging Hector's body in mangled ignominy around the pyre. To the Achaean male, human life is cheap; to take it is no serious matter; a moment's pleasure can replace it. When a town is captured the men are killed or sold into slavery; the women are taken as concubines if they are attractive, as slaves if they are not. Piracy is still a respected occupation; even kings organize marauding expeditions, plunder towns and villages, and enslave their population; "Indeed," says Thucydides, "this came to be the main source of livelihood among the early Hellenes, no disgrace being yet attached to the occupation," but some glory; very much as, in our times, great nations may conquer and subjugate defenseless peoples without loss of dignity or righteousness. Odysseus is insulted when he is asked is he a merchant, "mindful of the gains of his greed";" but he tells with pride how, on his return from Troy, his provisions having run low, he sacked the city of lsmarus and stored his ships with food; or how he ascended the river Aegyptus "to pillage the splendid fields, to carry off the women and little children, and to kill the men."" No city its safe from sudden and unprovoked attack.

To this lighthearted relish for robbery and slaughter the Achaeans add as unabashed mendacity. Odysseus can hardly speak without lying, or act without treachery. Having captured the Trojan scout Dolon, he and Diomed promise him life if he will give them the information they require; he does, and they kill him. It is true that the other Achaeans do not quite equal Odysseus in dishonesty, but not because they would not; they envy and admire him, and look up to him as a model character; the poet who pictures him considers him a hero in every respect; even the goddess Athena praises him for his lying, and counts this among the special charms for which she loves him. "Cunning must he be and knavish," she tells him, smiling, and stroking him with her hand, "who would go beyond thee in all manner of guile, aye, though it were a god that met thee. Bold man, crafty in counsel, insatiate in deceit, not even in thine own land, it seems, wast thou to cease from guile and deceitful tales, which thou lovest from the bottom of thine heart."

In truth we ourselves are drawn to this heroic Munchausen of the ancient world. We discover some likable traits in him, and in the hardy and subtle people to which he belongs. He is a geode father, and in his own kingdom a just ruler, who "wrought no wrong in deed or word to any man in the land." "Never again," says his swineherd, "shall I find a master so kind, how far soever I go, not though I come again to the house of my father and mother!" We envy Odysseus his "form like unto the immortals," his frame so athletic that though nearing fifty he throws the disk farther ;;than any of the Phaecaan youths; we admire his "steadfast heart," his "wisdom like to Jove's"; and our sympathy goes out to him when, in his despair of ever seeing again "the smoke leaping up from his own land," he yearns to die, or when, in the midst of his perils and sufferings, he steels himself with words that old Socrates loved to quote: "Be patient now, my soul; thou host endured still worse than this." He is a man of iron in body and mind, yet every inch human, and therefore forgivable.

The secret of the matter is that the Achaean's standard of judgment is as different from ours as the virtues of war differ from those of peace. He lives in a disordered, harassed, hungry world, where every man must be his own policeman, ready with arrow and spear, and a capacity for looking calmly at flowing blood. "A ravening belly," as Odysseus explains, "no man can hide . . . . Because of it are the benched ships made ready that bear evil to foeman over the unresting sea." Since the Achaean knows little security at home, he respects none abroad; every weakling is fair play; the supreme virtue, in his view, is a brave and ruthless intelligence. Virtue is literally virtus, manliness, arete, the quality of Arcs or Man. The good man is not one chat is gentle and forbearing, faithful and sober, industrious and honest; he is simply one who fights bravely and well. A bad man is not one that drinks too much, lies, murders, and betrays; he is one that is cowardly, stupid, or weak. There were Nietzscheans long before Nietzsche, long before Thrasymachus, in the lusty immaturity of the European world.

Achaean society is a patriarchal despotism tempered with the beauty and anger of woman, and the fierce tenderness of parental love. [There are vestiges of an caller and "matriarchal" condition: before Ceccops, said Athenian tradition, "children did not know their own father" – i.e., presumably, descent was reckoned through the mother; and even in Homeric days many of the gods especially worshiped by Greek cities were goddesses – Hera at Argos, Athena at Athens, Demeter and Petsephone at Eleusis-with no visible subordination m any male deity.] Theoretically the father is supreme: he may take as many concubines as he likes [Theseus had so tinny wives that an historian drew up a learned catalogue of them.], he may offer them to his guests, he may expose his children on the mountaintops to die, or slaughter them on the altars of the thirsty gods. Such paternal omnipotence does not necessarily imply a brutal society, but only one in which the organization of the state has not yet gone far enough to preserve social order; and in which the family, to create such order, needs the powers that will later be appropriated by the state in a nationalization of the right to kill. As social organization advances, paternal authority and family unity decrease, freedom and individualism grow. In practice the Achaean male is usually reasonable, listens patiently to domestic eloquence, and is devoted to his children.

Within the patriarchal framework the position of woman is far higher in Homeric than it will be in Periclean Greece. In the legends and the epics she plays a strong role, from Pelops' courtship of Hippodameia to Iphigenia's gentleness and Electra's hate. The gynaeceum does not confine her, nor does the home; she moves freely among men and women alike, and occasionally shares in the serious discourse of the men, as Helen does with Menelaus and Telemachus. When the Achaean leaden wish to fire the imagination of their people against Troy they appeal not to political or racial or religious ideas, but to the sentiment for woman's beauty; the loveliness of Helen must put a pretty face upon a war for land and trade. Without woman the Homeric hero would be a clumsy boor, with nothing to live for or die for; she teaches him something of courtesy, idealism, and softer. ways.

Marriage is by purchase, usually in oxen or their equivalent, paid by the suitor to the father of the girl; the poet speaks of "cattle-bringing maidens." The purchase is reciprocal, for the father usually gives the bride a substantial dowry. The ceremony is familial and religious, with much eating, dancing, and loose-tongued merriment. "Beneath a blaze of torches they led the brides from their chambers through the city, and loud rose the bridal . The young men whirled in the dance, and high among them did sound the flute and the lyre"; so changeless are the essentials of our life. Once married, the woman becomes mistress in her home, and is honored in proportion to her children. Love in the truest sense, as a profound mutual tenderness and solicitude, comes to the Greeks, as to the French, after marriage rather than before; it is not the spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two bodies, but the fruir of long association in the cares and industries of the home. The Homeric wife is as faithful as her husband is not. There are three adulteresses in Homer – Clytaemnestra, Helen, and Aphrodite; but they do injustice to the mortal average, if not to the divine. Formed out of this background, the Homeric family (barring the enormities of legends that play no part in Homer) is a wholesome and pleasing institution, rich in fine women and loyal children. The women function not only as mothers but as workers; they grind the grain, card the wool, spin, weave, and embroider; they do little sewing, since garments are mostly without seams; and cooking is normally left to men. Amid these labors they bear and rear children, heal their hurts, pacify their quarrels, and teach them the manners, morals, and traditions of the tribe. There is no formal education, apparently no teaching of letters, no spelling, no grammar, no books; it is a boy's utopia. The girl is taught the arts of the home, the boy those of the chase and war; he learns to fish and swim, to till the fields, set snares, handle animals, aim the arrow and the lance, and take care of himself in all the emergencies of a half-lawless life. When the oldest boy grows up to manhood he becomes, in the absence of his father, the responsible head of the family. When he marries he brings his bride to his father's home, and the rhythm of the generations is renewed. The individual members of the family change with time, but the family is the lasting unit, surviving perhaps for centuries, and forging in the turbulent crucible of the home the order and character without which all government is in vain.

The Achaeans leave to merchants and lowly scribes the art of writing, which has presumably been handed down to them from Mycenaean Greece; they prefer blood to ink and flesh to clay. In all of Homer there is but one reference to writing," and there in a characteristic context; a folded tablet is given to a messenger, directing the recipient to kill the messenger. If the Achaeans have time for literature it is only when war and marauding allow a peaceful interlude; the king or prince gathers his retainers about him for a feast, and some wandering minstrel, stringing the lyre, recounts in simple verse the exploits of ancestral heroes; this is, for the Achaeans, both poetry and history. Homer, perhaps wishing like Pheidias to engrave his own portrait upon his work, tells how Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, calls for such song in entertaining Odysseus. "Summon hither the divine minstrel, Demodocus; for to him above all others has the god granted skill in song . . . . Then the herald drew near, leading the good minstrel, whom the Muse loved above all other men, and gave him both good and evil; of his sight she deprived him, but gave him the gift of sweet song "

The only art except his own that interests Homer is toreutics – the hammering of metals into plastic forms. He says nothing of painting or sculpture, but calls up all his inspiration to describe the scenes inlaid or damascened upon Achilles' shield, or raised in relief upon Odysseus' brooch. He speaks briefly but illuminatingly about architecture. The common dwelling in Homer is apparently of sun-dried brick with a footing of stone; the floor is ordinarily of beaten earth, and is cleaned by scraping; the roof is of reeds overlaid with clay, and slopes only enough to carry off the rain. The doors are single or double, and may have bolts or keys. In the better dwellings the interior walls are of painted stucco, with ornamental border or frieze, and are hung with weapons, shields, and tapestries. There is no kitchen, no chimney, no windows; an opening in the roof of the central hall lets out some of the smoke that may rise from the hearth; the rest finds its way through the door, or settles in soot on the walls. Rich establishments have a bathroom; other content themselves with a tub. The furniture is of heavy wood, often artistically carved and finished; Icmalius fashions for Penelope an armchair set with ivory and precious metals; and Odysseus makes for himself and his wife a massive bedstead designed to last for a century.

It is characteristic of the age that its architecture ignores temples and spends itself upon palaces, just as Periclean architecture will neglect pa[aces and lavish itself upon temples. We hear of the "sumptuous home of Paris, which that prince had built with the aid of the most cunning architects in Troy"; of King Alcinous' great mansion, with walls of bronze, frieze of blue-glass paste, doors of silver and gold, and other features that may belong rather to poetry than to architecture; we hear something of Agamemnon's royal residence at Mycenae, and a great deal about Odysseus' palace at Ithaca. This has a front court, paved in part with stone, surrounded by a palisade or plastered wall, and adorned with trees, stalls for horses, and a heap of steaming dung on which Odysseus' dog Argos makes his bed in the sun." A large pillared porch leads to the house; here the slaves sleep and often the visitors. Within, an anteroom opens upon a central hall supported by pillars, and sometimes lighted not only by the opening in the roof, but by a narrow clerestory or open space between the architrave and the eaves. At night braziers burning on tall stands give an unsteady illumination. In the center of the hall is the hearth, around whose sacred fire the family gathers in the evening for warmth and good cheer, and debates the ways of neighbors, the willfulness of children, and the vicissitudes of states.

How are these passionate and vigorous Achaeans ruled? In peace by the family, in crisis by the clan. The clan is a group (genos, literally a genus) of persons acknowledging a common ancestor and a common chieftain. The citadel of the chieftain is the origin and center of the city; there, as his force subsides into usage and law, clan after clan gathers, and makes a political as well as a kinship community. When the chieftain desires some united action from his clan or city, he summons its free males to a public assembly, and submits to them a proposal which they may accept or reject, but which only the most important members of the group may propose to change. 1n this village assembly – the one democratic element in an essentially feudal and aristocratic society – skilled speakers who can sway the people are valuable to the state; already, in old Nestor, whose voice "flows sweeter than honey from his tongue," and in wily Odysseus, whose words fall "like snowflakes upon the people," we have the beginnings of that stream of eloquence which will reach greater heights in Greece than in any other civilization, and will finally submerge it in ruin.

When all the clans must act at once the chieftains follow the lead of the strongest of their number as king, and report to him with their armies of freemen and attendant slaves. Those chieftains who are nearest to the king in residence and respect are called the King's Companions; they will be called that again in Philip's Macedonia and in Alexander's camp. In their boule, or council, the nobles exercise full freedom of speech, and address the king as merely and temporarily fast among equals. Out of these institutions-public assembly, council of nobles, and king-will come, in a hundred varieties and under a thousand shibboleths and phrases, the constitutions of the modem Western world.

The powers of the king are narrowly limited and very wide. They are limited in space, for his kingdom is small. They are limited in time, for he may be deposed by the Council, or by a right which the Achaeans readily recognize-the right of the stronger. Otherwise his rule is hereditary, and has only the vaguest boundaries. He is above all a military commander, solicitous for his army, without which he might be found in the wrong. He sees to it that it is well equipped, well fed, well trained; that it has poisoned arrows,' lances, helmets, greaves, spears, breastplates, shields, and chariots. So long as the army defends him he is the government – legislature, executive, judiciary. He is the high priest of the state religion, and sacrifices for the people. His decrees are the laws, and his decisions are final; there is as yet no word for law. Below him the Council may sit occasionally to judge grave disputes; then, as if to set a precedent far all courts, it asks for precedents, and decides accordingly. Precedent dominates law because precedent is custom, and custom is the jealous older brother of law. Trials of any kind, however, are rare in Homeric society; there are hardly any public agencies of justice; each family must defend and revenge itself. Violence abounds.