The Helladic Period and Homer - Essay Example

 The Helladic Period and Homer The Helladic period in Greece stretched approximately from 2800 BC to 1000 BC and was incredibly culturally fertile. Not only were amazing works of art created—many of which survive to this day in the form of pottery—but many historic events occurred which in an interesting way later came to culturally dominate ancient Greece and subsequent eras. Geographically what can be sent to constitute Greece in the Helladic period? This is an excellent question and worth turning to a professional archaeologist to answer. According to R.J. Buck: The archaeological remains that are classified as belonging to the Middle Helladic period have been found in the Peloponnese, in Central Greece as far west as Aetolia and Ithaca, in Thessaly, and in Epirus as far west as Dodona. North of Thessaly occurs another, different culture, the Macedonian in the Cyclades still another, the Cycladic on the Adriatic coast of Epirus explorations have found few remains that can be ascribed to the first half of the second millennium B.C.; Crete, of course, is the province of the Minoan culture.1 Many amazing things were accomplished during this time. Not only did the Helladic period involve the establishment of agricultural communities in Greece, the first metalworking, and later the development of the Greek alphabet, but it played host to one of the greatest events in all of history: the Trojan War. The actual facts of this event are hard to pin down. We know that a big war happened on the present day site of Troy in the late Helladic period (probably around 1200 BCE2) thanks to excavation by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann. In the late 19th century, Schleimann found many items at the site including valuables he called Priam’s Treasure and Helen’s Jewels.3 But the actual truth of what happened is lost in the recesses of time. What we have instead of cold hard facts are the poems of Homer—namely the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which (especially the first) deal with the Trojan War. Homer himself was not an eyewitness account of the war, nor did he live in the Helladic period, but instead a few centuries after it. Nonetheless, the accounts of the great war that he composed make that period in history truly live. The Trojan war also marked a cultural renewal following a period of some centuries in the middle Helladic period where cultural activity began to fall off, according to archealogiests. There are many possible reasons for this original drop. According to one historian, it is best explained as a long stage of adjustment, during which the native people and the newcomers gradually merged into a single people through generations of intermarriage, and heir two cultures fused into a single Greek-speaking culture that contained elements of both . . . Population increased, new settlements grew up, there were advances in metallurgy, and contacts with the civilizations of Crete and the Near East began. There would lead, toward the end of the period, to a sudden cultural quickening . . .4 It makes sense that this period of consolidation and exploration would yield powerful tensions. Some of the new civilizations and neighbours the Greeks discovered would be friendly while others would be treacherous. It also makes sense that while energy was being put into these enterprises there would be less cultural products, like pottery or art, that might survive down the centuries and give us a sense of how people lives. What is interesting is to see how clearly these tensions that would come from new cultures rubbing together either through acculturation or exploration would soon explode in what would then have been the equivalent to a World War, the battle between Greeks and Trojans over Helen as told by Homer in the Iliad. Many people believe that both the Iliad and Odyssey are the two great sources for all other Western literature. Even in his own day, Homer was seen as a hero admired long after his death in many Greek cities.5 The fact that his stories have had such a long life and have been classics for so many centuries is a testament to how they evoke an amazing time and place. It is an interesting statement about history that there are sometimes intermediaries who bring to life whole eras from the past to the people of the future, without themselves having lived through the period. Homer’s accomplishment, and it is perhaps unlike anything else in literature, is to create the culture of a whole era out of thin air through the power of his talent. This is no small feat. No matter how distant the Helladic period may be from our own lives, or how much more attention ancient Greece proper receives—largely because of its extant literature—Homer reminds of us another time and place and the universal human emotions and actions that have reverberated throughout history. If only more poems were so evocative! Bibliography Buck, R. J.. “The Middle Helladic Period.” Phoenix. Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1966), 194. Morgan, Llewelyn. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pomeroy, Sarah, et al. Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Wood, Michael. In Search of the Trojan War. New York: New American Library, 1987 “Troy VII and the Historicity of the Trojan War.” Prehistory Archaeology of the Aegean. Dartmouth College site. March 18, 2000. http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/27.html Read More