MODEST Hittite tablets from Boghaz Keui, of approximately 1325 B.C., speak of the “Ahhijava” as a people equal in power to the Hittites themselves. An Egyptian record towards 1221 B.C. mentions the “Akaiwasha” as joining other “Peoples of the Sea” in a Libyan invasion of Egypt, and describes them as a roving band “fighting to fill their bellies.”1 In Homer the Achaeans are, specifically, a Greek-speaking people of southern Thessaly;2 often, however, because they had become the most powerful of the Greek tribes, Homer uses their name for all the Greeks at Troy. Greek historians and poets of the classic age called the Achaeans, like the Pelasgians, autochthonous—native to Greece as far back as memory could recall; and they assumed without hesitation that the Achaean culture described in Homer was one with that which has here been termed Mycenaean. Schliemann accepted this identification, and for a brief while the world of scholarship agreed with him.
In 1901 an unusually iconoclastic Englishman, Sir William Ridgeway,3 upset this happy confidence by pointing out that though Achaean civilization agreed with the Mycenaean in many ways, it differed in vital particulars. (1) Iron is practically unknown to the Mycenaeans; the Achaeans are familiar with it. (2) The dead in Homer are cremated; in Tiryns and Mycenae they are buried, implying a different conception of the afterlife. (3) The Achaean gods are the Olympians, of whom no trace has been found in the culture of Mycenae. (4) The Achaeans use long swords, round shields, and safety-pin brooches; no objects of such form appear in the varied Mycenaean remains. (5) There are considerable dissimilarities in coiffure and dress. Ridgeway concluded that the Mycenaeans were Pelasgians, and spoke Greek; that the Achaeans were blond “Celts,” or Central Europeans, who came down through Epirus and Thessaly from 2000 onward, brought with them the worship of Zeus, invaded the Peloponnesus about 1400, adopted Greek speech and many Greek ways, and established themselves as feudal chieftains ruling from their fortress-palaces a subjugated Pelasgian population.
The theory is illuminating, even if it must be substantially modified. Greek literature says nothing of an Achaean invasion; and it would not be wise to hang a rejection of so unanimous a tradition upon a gradual increase in the use of iron, a change in modes of burial or coiffure, a lengthening of swords or rounding of shields, or even a safety pin. It is more likely that the Achaeans, as all classic writers supposed, were a Greek tribe that, in its natural multiplication, expanded from Thessaly into the Peloponnesus during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, mingled their blood with the Pelasgo-Mycenaeans there, and, towards 1250 B.C., became the ruling class.4 Probably it was they who gave Greek to the Pelasgians, instead of receiving it from them. In such place names as Corinth and Tiryns, Parnassus and Olympia,* we may have echoes of a Creto-Pelasgo-Mycenaean tongue.5 In the same manner, presumably, the Achaeans superimposed their mountain and sky gods upon the “chthonic” or subterranean deities of the earlier population. For the rest there is no sharp line of separation between the Mycenaean culture and that later phase of it, the Achaean, which we find in Homer; the two ways of life seem to have mingled and melted into one. Slowly, as the amalgamation proceeded, Aegean civilization passed away, dying in the defeat of Troy, and Greek civilization began.
The legends of the Heroic Age suggest both the origins and the destinies of the Achaeans. We must not ignore these stories; for though a sanguinary fancy enlivens them, they may contain more history than we suppose; and they are so bound up with Greek poetry, drama, and art that we should be at a loss to understand these without them.†
Hittite inscriptions mention an Atarissyas as King of the Ahhijavas in the thirteenth century B.C.; he is probably Atreus, King of the Achaeans.6 In Greek story Zeus begat Tantalus, King of Phrygia,* who begat Pelops, who begat Atreus, who begat Agamemnon. Pelops, being exiled, came to Elis in the western Peloponnesus about 1283, and determined to marry Hippodameia, daughter of Oenomaus, Elis’ king. The east pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia still tells us the story of their courtship. The King made a practice to test his daughter’s suitors by competing with them in a chariot race: if the suitor won he would receive Hippodameia; if he lost he was put to death. Several suitors had tried, and had lost both race and life. To reduce the risks Pelops bribed the King’s charioteer, Myrtilus, to remove the linchpins from the royal chariot, and promised to share the kingdom with him if their plan succeeded. In the contest that ensued the King’s chariot broke down, and he was killed. Pelops married Hippodameia and ruled Elis, but instead of sharing the kingdom with Myrtilus he threw Myrtilus into the sea. As Myrtilus sank he laid an ominous curse upon Pelops and all his descendants.
Pelops’ daughter married Sthenelus, son of Perseus and King of Argos; the throne passed down to their son Eurystheus, and, after the latter’s death, to his uncle Atreus. Atreus’ sons Agamemnon and Menelaus married Clytaemnestra and Helen, daughters of King Tyndareus of Lacedaemon; and when Atreus and Tyndareus died, Agamemnon and Menelaus between them ruled all the eastern Peloponnesus from their respective capitals at Mycenae and Sparta. The Peloponnesus, or Island of Pelops, came to be called after their grandfather, whose descendants had quite forgotten the curse of Myrtilus.
Meanwhile the remainder of Greece was also busy with heroes, usually founding cities. In the fifteenth century before our era, said Greek tradition, the iniquity of the human race provoked Zeus to overwhelm it with a flood, from which one man, Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, alone were saved, in an ark or chest that came to rest on Mt. Parnassus. From Deucalion’s son Hellen had come all the Greek tribes, and their united name, Hellenes. Hellen was grandfather of Achaeus and Ion, who begot the Achaean and Ionian tribes, which, after many wanderings, peopled respectively the Peloponnesus and Attica. One of Ion’s descendants, Cecrops, with the help of the goddess Athena, founded (on a site whose acropolis had already been settled by Pelasgians) the city that was named after her, Athens.8 It was he, said the story, that gave civilization to Attica, instituted marriage, abolished bloody sacrifices, and taught his subjects to worship the Olympian gods—Zeus and Athena above the rest.
The descendants of Cecrops ruled Athens as kings. The fourth in line was Erechtheus, to whom the city, honoring him as a god, would later dedicate one of its loveliest temples. His grandson, Theseus, about 1250, merged the twelve demes or villages of Attica into one political unity, whose citizens, wherever they lived, were to be called Athenians; perhaps it was because of this historic synoikismos, or municipal cohabitation, that Athens, like Thebes and Mycenae, had a plural name. It was Theseus who brought order and power to Athens, ended the sacrifice of her children to Minos, and gave her people security on the roads by slaying the highwayman Procrustes, who had liked to stretch or cut the legs of his captives to make them fit his bed. After Theseus’ death Athens worshiped him, too, as a god. As late as 476, in the skeptical age of Pericles, the city brought the bones of Theseus from Scyros and deposited them as sacred relics in the temple of Theseus.
To the north, in Boeotia, a rival capital had equally stirring traditions, destined to become the very substance of Greek drama in the classic age. Late in the fourteenth century B.C. the Phoenician or Cretan or Egyptian prince Cadmus founded the city of Thebes at the meeting of the roads that cross Greece from east to west and from north to south, taught its people letters, and slew the dragon (perhaps an ancient phrase for an infecting or infesting organism) that hindered the settlers from using the waters of the Areian spring. From the dragon’s teeth, which Cadmus sowed in the earth, sprang armed men who, like the Greeks of history, attacked one another until only five survived; these five, said Thebes, were the founders of her royal families. The government established itself on a hill citadel called the Cadmeia, where in our own time a “palace of Cadmus” has been unearthed.* There, after Cadmus, reigned his son Polydorus, his grandson Labdacus, and his great-grandson Laius, whose son Oedipus, as all the world knows, slew his father and married his mother. When Oedipus died his sons quarreled over the scepter, as is the habit of princes. Eteocles drove out Polynices, who persuaded Adrastus, King of Argos, to attempt his restoration. Adrastus tried (ca. 1213), in the famous war of the Seven (Allies) against Thebes, and again sixteen years later in the war of the Epigoni, or sons of the Seven. This time both Eteocles and Polynices were killed, and Thebes was burned to the ground.
Among the Theban aristocrats was one Amphitryon, who had a charming wife, Alcmene. Her Zeus visited while Amphitryon was gone to the wars; and Heracles (Hercules) was their son.* Hera, who did not relish these jovial condescensions, sent two serpents to destroy the babe in the cradle; but the boy grasped one in each hand and strangled them both; therefore he was called Heracles, as having won glory through Hera. Linus, oldest name in the history of music, tried to teach the youth how to play and sing; but Heracles did not care for music, and slew Linus with the lyre. When he grew up—a clumsy, bibulous, gluttonous, kindly giant—he undertook to kill a lion that was ravaging the flocks of Amphitryon and Thespius. The latter, King of Thespiae, offered his home and his fifty daughters to Heracles, who rose to the occasion manfully.10 He slew the lion, and wore its skin as his garb. He married Megara, daughter of Creon of Thebes, and tried to settle down; but Hera sent a madness upon him, and unwittingly he killed his own children. He consulted the oracle at Delphi, and was instructed to go and live at Tiryns and serve Eurystheus, the Argive king, for twelve years; after which he would become an immortal god. He obeyed, and carried out for Eurystheus his famous twelve labors,† Released by the king, Heracles returned to Thebes. He performed many other exploits; he joined the Argonauts, sacked Troy, helped the gods to win their battle against the giants, freed Prometheus, brought Alcestis back to life, and, now and then, killed his own friends by accident. After his death he was worshiped as hero and god; and since he had had countless loves, many tribes claimed him as their progenitor.*
His sons made their home at Trachis in Thessaly; but Eurystheus, fearing lest they depose him in revenge for the unnecessary labors that he had laid upon their father, ordered the Trachinian king to exile them from Greece. The Heracleidae (i.e., children of Heracles) found refuge in Athens; Eurystheus sent an army to attack them, but they defeated and killed him. When Atreus came against them with another force, Hyllus, one of the sons, offered to fight any of Atreus’ men in single combat, on condition that if he won, the Heracleidae should receive the kingdom of Mycenae; if he lost, the Heracleidae would depart and not return for fifty years, after which time their children were to receive Mycenae.12 He lost, and led his partisans into exile. Fifty years later a new generation of Heracleidae returned; it was they, not the Dorians, said Greek tradition, who, being resisted in their claims, conquered the Peloponnesus, and put an end to the Heroic Age.
If the tale of Pelops and his descendants suggests the Asia Minor origin of the Achaeans, the theme of their destiny is struck in the story of the Argonauts. Like so many of the legends that served as both the historical tradition and the popular fiction of the Greeks, it is an excellent narrative, with all the elements of adventure, exploration, war, love, mystery, and death woven into a fabric so rich that after the dramatists of Athens had almost worn it bare it was rewoven into a very passable epic, in Hellenistic days, by Apollonius of Rhodes. It begins in Boeotian Orchomenos on the harsh note of human sacrifice, like Agamemnon’s tragedy. Finding his land stricken with famine, King Athamas proposed to offer his son Phrixus to the gods. Phrixus learned of the plan and escaped from Orchomenos with his sister Helle, riding with her through the air on a ram with a golden fleece. But the ram was unsteady, and Helle fell off and was drowned in the strait which after her was called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached land and found his way to Colchis, at the farther end of the Black Sea; there he sacrificed the ram and hung up its fleece as an offering to Ares, god of war. Aietes, King of Colchis, set a sleepless dragon to watch the fleece, for an oracle had said that he should die if a stranger carried it off; and to better assure himself he decreed that all strangers coming to Colchis should be put to death. His daughter Medea, who loved strange men and ways, pitied the wayfarers who entered Colchis, and helped them to escape. Her father ordered her to be confined; but she fled to a sacred precinct near the sea, and lived there in bitter brooding till Jason found her wandering on the shore.
Some twenty years before (Greek chronologists said about 1245), Pelias, son of Poseidon, had usurped the throne of Aeson, King of Iolcus in Thessaly. Aeson’s infant son Jason had been hidden by friends, and had grown up in the woods to great strength and courage. One day he appeared in the market place, dressed in a leopard skin and armed with two spears, and demanded his kingdom. But he was simple as well as strong, and Pelias persuaded him to undertake a heavy task as the price of the throne—to recover the Golden Fleece. So Jason built the great ship Argo (the Swift), and called to the adventure the bravest spirits in Greece. Heracles came, with his beloved companion Hylas; and Peleus, father of Achilles; Theseus, Meleager, Orpheus, and the fleet-footed maiden Atalanta. As the vessel entered the Hellespont it was halted, seemingly by some force from Troy, for Heracles left the expedition to sack the city and kill its King Laomedon, and all his sons but Priam.
When, after many tribulations, the Argonauts reached their goal, they were warned by Medea of the death that awaited all strangers in Colchis. But Jason persisted; and Medea agreed to help him gain the Fleece if he would take her to Thessaly and keep her as his wife until he died. He pledged himself to her, captured the Fleece with her aid, and fled back to his ship with her and his men. Many of them were wounded, but Medea quickly healed them with roots and herbs. When Jason reached Iolcus he again asked for the kingdom, and Pelias again delayed. Then Medea, by the arts of a sorceress, deceived the daughters of Pelias into boiling him to death. Frightened by her magic powers, the people drove her and Jason from Iolcus, and debarred him forever from the throne.13 The rest belongs to Euripides.
A myth is often a bit of popular wisdom personified in poetic figures, as the story of Eden suggests the disillusionment of knowledge and the liabilities of love; legend is often a fragment of history swelling with new fictions as it rolls down the years. It is probable that in the generation before the historic siege of Troy the Greeks had tried to force their way through the Hellespont and open the Black Sea to colonization and trade; the story of the Argonauts may be the dramatized memory of that commercial exploration; and the “golden fleece” may refer to the woolen skins or cloths anciently used in northern Asia Minor to catch particles of gold carried down by the streams.14 A Greek settlement was actually made, about this time, on the island of Lemnós, not far from the Hellespont. The Black Sea proved inhospitable despite its propitiating name, and the fortress of Troy rose again after Heracles’ visitation to discourage adventures in the strait. But the Greeks did not forget; they would come again, a thousand ships instead of one; and on the plain of Ilion the Achaeans would destroy themselves to free the Hellespont.
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 form 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 kalligynaika15—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 lay it as an offering upon the funeral pyre of his friend.16 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.17 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.”18
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;19 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.”20 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.21 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.22 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 carry; eating is managed with the fingers.23 The staple drink, even among the poor and among children, is diluted wine.
The land is owned by the family or the clan, not by the individual; the father administers and controls it, but he cannot sell it.24 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.25
The soil might yield metal as well as food; but the Achaeans neglect to mine the earth, and are content to import copper and 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,26 it will make, says Achilles, many an agricultural implement. He says nothing of weapons, which are still of bronze.27 The Odyssey describes the tempering of iron,* 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, for sale or profit; they work long hours, but leisurely, without the sting and stimulus of visible competition.29 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 Telemachus30 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 degraded; 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.31 If a slave woman bears a son to her master, the child is usually free.32 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 signal fires flashing from peak to peak.33 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 most goods are carried by 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).34 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.35
As we read Homer the impression forms that we are in the presence of a society more lawless and primitive than that of Cnossus 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 the 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.36 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.37 Agamemnon himself is capable of tears so abundant that they remind Homer of a stream pouring over rocks.38 Friendships are firm 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 is lavish, for “from Zeus are all strangers and beggars.”39 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.40 “Lo,” says “faircheeked 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.”41 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.* 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.42
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.44 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 such an occupation,”45 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”;46 but he tells with pride how, on his return from Troy, his provisions having run low, he sacked the city of Ismarus 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.”47 No city is safe from sudden and unprovoked attack.
To this lighthearted relish for robbery and slaughter the Achaeans add an 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.48 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.”49
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 gentle 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!”50 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 Phaeacian youths; we admire his “steadfast heart,” his “wisdom like to Jove’s”;51 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 hast endured still worse than this.”52 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.”53 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 Ares or Mars. The good man is not one that 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.* Theoretically the father is supreme: he may take as many concubines as he likes,† 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 leading 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 leaders 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.”56 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 song. The young men whirled in the dance, and high among them did sound the flute and the lyre”;57 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 fruit 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,58 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.”59
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.60 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; others 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 palaces 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”;61 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. In 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,”62 and in wily Odysseus, whose words fall “like snowflakes upon the people,”63 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 first 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 modern 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,64 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.65 Below him the Council may sit occasionally to judge grave disputes; then, as if to set a precedent for 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.
To support his establishment the king does not levy taxes; he receives, now and then, “gifts” from his subjects. But he would be a poor king if he depended upon such presents. His chief income is derived, presumably, from tolls on the plunder that his soldiers and his ships gather on land or sea. Perhaps that is why, late in the thirteenth century, the Achaeans are found in Egypt and Crete; in Egypt as unsuccessful buccaneers, in Crete as passing conquerors. Then, suddenly, we hear of them inflaming their people with a tale of humiliating rape, collecting all the forces of all the tribes, equipping a hundred thousand men, and sailing in a vast and unparalleled armada of a thousand ships to try their fortunes against the spearhead of Asia on the plains and hill of Troy.
Was there such a siege? We only know that every Greek historian, and every Greek poet, and almost every temple record or legend in Greece, took it for granted; that archeology has placed the ruined city, generously multiplied, before our eyes; and that today, as until the last century, the story and its heroes are accepted as in essence real.66 An Egyptian inscription of Rameses III reports that “the isles were restless” toward 1196 B.C.;67 and Pliny alludes to a Rameses “in whose time Troy fell.”68 The great Alexandrian scholar Eratosthenes, on the basis of traditional genealogies collated late in the sixth century before Christ by the geographer-historian Hecataeus, calculated the date of the siege as 1194 B.C.
The ancient Persians and Phoenicians agreed with the Greeks in tracing the great war to four abductions of beautiful women. The Egyptians, they said, stole Io from Argos, the Greeks stole Europa from Phoenicia, and Medea from Colchis; did not a just balancing of the scales require that Paris should abduct Helen?*69 Stesichorus in his penitent years, and after him Herodotus and Euripides, refused to admit that Helen had gone to Troy; she had only gone to Egypt, under constraint, and had merely waited there a dozen years for Menelaus to come and find her; besides, asked Herodotus, who could believe that the Trojans would fight ten years for one woman? Euripides attributed the expedition to excess population in Greece, and the consequent urge to expansion;70 so old are the youngest excuses of the will to power.
Nevertheless it is possible that some such story was used to make the adventure digestible for the common Greek; men must have phrases if they are to give their lives. Whatever may have been the face and shibboleth of the war, its cause and essence lay, almost beyond doubt, in the struggle of two groups of powers for possession of the Hellespont and the rich lands lying about the Black Sea. All Greece and all western Asia saw it as a decisive conflict; the little nations of Greece came to the aid of Agamemnon, and the peoples of Asia Minor sent repeated reinforcements to Troy. It was the beginning of a struggle that would be renewed at Marathon and Salamis, at Issus and Arbela, at Tours and Granada, at Lepanto and Vienna. . . .
Of the events and aftermath of the war we can relate only what the poets and dramatists of Greece have told us; we accept this as rather literature than history, but all the more for that reason a part of the story of civilization; we know that war is ugly, and that the Iliad is beautiful. Art (to vary Aristotle) may make even terror beautiful—and so purify it—by giving it significance and form. Not that the form of the Iliad is perfect; the structure is loose, the narrative is sometimes contradictory or obscure, the conclusion does not conclude; nevertheless the perfection of the parts atones for the disorder of the whole, and with all its minor faults the story becomes one of the great dramas of literature, perhaps of history.
(I)* At the opening of the poem the Greeks have already besieged Troy for nine years in vain; they are despondent, homesick, and decimated with disease. They had been delayed at Aulis by sickness and a windless sea; and Agamemnon had embittered Clytaemnestra, and prepared his own fate, by sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia for a breeze. On the way up the coast the Greeks had stopped here and there to replenish their supplies of food and concubines; Agamemnon had taken the fair Chryseis, Achilles the fair Briseis. A soothsayer now declares that Apollo is withholding success from the Greeks because Agamemnon has violated the daughter of Apollo’s priest, Chryses. The King restores Chryseis to her father, but, to console himself and point a tale, he compels Briseis to leave Achilles and take Chryseis’ place in the royal tent. Achilles convokes a general assembly, and denounces Agamemnon with a wrath that provides the first word and the recurring theme of the Iliad. He vows that neither he nor his soldiers will any longer stir a hand to help the Greeks.
(II) We pass in review the ships and tribes of the assembled force, and (III) see bluff Menelaus engaging Paris in single combat to decide the war. The two armies sit down in civilized truce; Priam joins Agamemnon in solemn sacrifice to the gods. Menelaus overcomes Paris, but Aphrodite snatches the lad safely away in a cloud and deposits him, miraculously powdered and perfumed, upon his marriage bed. Helen bids him return to the fight, but he counterproposes that they “give the hour to dalliance.” The lady, flattered by desire, yields. (IV) Agamemnon declares Menelaus victor, and the war is apparently ended; but the gods, in imitative council on Olympus, demand more blood. Zeus votes for peace, but withdraws his vote in terrified retreat when Hera, his spouse, directs her speech upon him. She suggests that if Zeus will agree to the destruction of Troy she will allow him to raze Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta to the ground. The war is renewed; many a man falls pierced by arrow, lance, or sword, and “darkness enfolds his eyes.”
(V) The gods join in the merry slicing game; Ares, the awful god of war, is hurt by Diomed’s spear, “utters a cry as of nine thousand men,” and runs off to complain to Zeus, (VI) In a pretty interlude the Trojan leader Hector, before rejoining the battle, bids good-by to his wife Andromache. “Love,” she whispers to him, “thy stout heart will be thy death; nor hast thou pity of thy child or me, who shall soon be a widow. My father and my mother and my brothers all are slain; but, Hector, thou art father to me and mother, and thou art the husband of my youth. Have pity, then, and stay here in the tower.” “Full well I know,” he answers, “that Troy will fall, and I foresee the sorrow of my brethren and the King; for them I grieve not; but to think of thee a slave in Argos unmans me almost. Yet, even so, I will not shirk the fight.”71 His infant son Astyanax, destined shortly to be flung over the walls to death by the victorious Greeks, screams in fright at Hector’s waving plumes, and the hero removes his helmet that he may laugh, weep, and pray over the wondering child. Then he strides down the causeway to the battle, and (VII) engages Ajax, King of Salamis, in single combat. They fight bravely, and separate at nightfall with exchange of praise and gifts—a flower of courtesy floating on a sea of blood, (VIII) After a day of Trojan victories Hector bids his warriors rest.
Thus made harangue to them Hector; and roaring the Trojans applauded.
Then from the yoke loosed their war-steeds sweating, and each by his chariot
Tethered his horses with thongs. And then they brought from the city,
Hastily, oxen and goodly sheep; and wine honey-hearted
Gave them, . . . and corn from the houses.
Firewood they gathered withal; and then from the plain to the heavens
Rose on the winds the sweet savor. And these by the highways of battle
Hopeful sat through the night, and many their watchfires burning.
Even as when in the sky the stars shine out round the night-orb,
Wondrous to see, and the winds are laid, and the peaks and the headlands
Tower to the view, and the glades come out, and the glorious heaven
Stretches itself to its widest, and sparkle the stars multitudinous,
Gladdening the heart of the toil-wearied shepherd—even as countless
‘Twixt the black ships and the river of Xanthus glittered the watchfires
Built by the horse-taming Trojans by Ilium.
Meanwhile the war-wearied horses, champing spelt and white barley,
Close by their chariots, waited the coming of fair-throned Dawn.72
(IX) Nestor, King of Elian Pylus, advises Agamemnon to restore Briseis to Achilles; he agrees, and promises Achilles half of Greece if he will rejoin the siege; but Achilles continues to pout, (X) Odysseus and Diomed make a twoman sally upon the Trojan camp at night, and slay a dozen chieftains, (XI) Agamemnon leads his army valiantly, is wounded, and retires. Odysseus, surrounded, fights like a lion; Ajax and Menelaus cleave a path to him, and save him for a bitter life, (XII-XIII) When the Trojans advance to the walls that the Greeks have built about their camp (XIV) Hera is so disturbed that she resolves to rescue the Greeks. Oiled, perfumed, ravishingly gowned, and bound with Aphrodite’s aphrodisiac girdle, she seduces Zeus to a divine slumber while Poseidon helps the Greeks to drive the Trojans back, (XV) Advantage fluctuates; the Trojans reach the Greek ships, and the poet rises to a height of fervid narrative as the Greeks fight desperately in a retreat that must mean death.
(XVI) Patroclus, beloved of Achilles, wins his permission to lead Achilles’ troops against Troy; Hector slays him, and (XVII) fights Ajax fiercely over the body of the youth, (XVIII) Hearing of Patroclus’ death, Achilles at last resolves to fight. His goddess-mother Thetis persuades the divine smithy, Hephaestus, to forge for him new arms and a mighty shield, (XIX) Achilles is reconciled with Agamemnon, (XX) engages Aeneas, and is about to kill him when Poseidon rescues him for Virgil’s purposes, (XXI) Achilles slaughters a host of Trojans, and sends them to Hades with long genealogical speeches. The gods take up the fight: Athena lays Ares low with a stone, and when Aphrodite, going for a soldier, tries to save him, Athena knocks her down with a blow upon her fair breast. Hera cuffs the ears of Artemis; Poseidon and Apollo content themselves with words, (XXII) All Trojans but Hector fly from Achilles; Priam and Hecuba counsel Hector to stay behind the walls, but he refuses. Then suddenly, as Achilles advances upon him, Hector takes to his heels. Achilles pursues him three times around the walls of Troy; Hector makes a stand, and is killed.
(XXIII) In the subsiding finale of the drama Patroclus is cremated with ornate ritual. Achilles sacrifices to him many cattle, twelve captured Trojans, and his own long hair. The Greeks honor Patroclus with games, and (XXIV) Achilles drags the corpse of Hector behind his chariot three times around the pyre. Priam comes in state and sorrow to beg for the remains of his son. Achilles relents, grants a truce of twelve days, and allows the aged king to take the cleansed and anointed body back to Troy.
Here the great poem suddenly ends, as if the poet had used up his share of a common story, and must leave the rest to another minstrel’s lay. We are told by the later literature how Paris, standing beside the battle, slew Achilles with an arrow that pierced his vulnerable heel, and how Troy fell at last through the stratagem of the wooden horse.
The victors themselves were vanquished by their victory, and returned in weary sadness to their longed-for homes. Many of them were shipwrecked, and some of these, stranded on alien shores, founded Greek colonies in Asia, the Aegean, and Italy.73 Menelaus, who had vowed that he would kill Helen, fell in love with her anew when the “goddess among women” came to him in the calm majesty of her loveliness; gladly he took her back to be his queen again in Sparta. When Agamemnon reached Mycenae he “clasped his land and kissed it, and many were the hot tears that streamed from his eyes.”74 But during his long absence Clytaemnestra had taken his cousin Aegisthus for husband and king; and when Agamemnon entered the palace they slew him.
Sadder still was the home-coming of Odysseus; and here probably another Homer has told the tale in a poem less powerful and heroic, gentler and pleasanter, than the Iliad.* Odysseus, says the Odyssey, is shipwrecked on the island of Ogygia, a fairyland Tahiti, whose goddess-queen Calypso holds him as her lover for eight years while secretly he pines for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, who pine for him at Ithaca.
(I) Athena persuades Zeus to bid Calypso let Odysseus depart. The goddess flies to Telemachus, and hears with sympathy the youth’s simple tale: how the princes of Ithaca and its vassal isles are paying court to Penelope, seeking through her the throne, and how meanwhile they live gaily in Odysseus’ palace, and consume his substance, (II) Telemachus bids the suitors disperse, but they laugh at his youth. Secretly he embarks upon the sea in search of his father, while Penelope, mourning now for both husband and son, holds off the suitors by promising to wed one of them when she has completed her web—of which she unweaves at night as much as she has woven by day. (III) Telemachus visits Nestor at Pylus and (IV) Menelaus at Sparta, but neither can tell him where to find his father. The poet paints an attractive picture of Helen settled and subdued, but still divinely beautiful; she has long since been forgiven her sins, and remarks that when Troy fell she had grown tired of the city anyway.*
(V) Now for the first time Odysseus enters the tale. “Sitting on the shore” of Calypso’s isle, “his eyes were dry of tears, and his sweet life ebbed away, as he longed mournfully for his return. By night indeed he would sleep by Calypso’s side perforce in the hollow caves, unwilling beside the willing nymph, but by day he would sit on the rocks and the sands, rocking his soul with tears and groans, and looking over the unresting sea.”78 Calypso, having detained him one night more, bids him make a raft and set out alone.
(VI) After many struggles with the ocean, Odysseus lands in the mythical country of Phaeacia (possibly Corcyra-Corfu), and is found by the maiden Nausicaa, who leads him to the palace of her father, King Alcinous. The lass falls in love with the strong-limbed, strong-hearted hero, and confides to her companions: “Listen, my white-armed maidens. . . . Erewhile this man seemed to me uncomely, but now he is like the gods that keep wide heaven. Would that such a one might be called my husband, dwelling here, and that it might please him here to abide.”79 (VII-VIII) Odysseus makes so good an impression that Alcinous offers him Nausicaa’s hand. Odysseus excuses himself, but is glad to tell the story of his return from Troy.
(IX) His ships (he tells the King) were borne off their course to the land of the Lotus-Eaters, who gave his men such honey-sweet lotus fruit that many forgot their homes and their longing, and Odysseus had to force them back to their ships. There they sailed to the land of the Cyclopes, one-eyed giants who lived without law or labor on an island abounding in wild grain and fruit. Caught in a cave by the Cyclop Polyphemus, who ate several of his men, Odysseus saved the remnant by lulling the monster to sleep with wine, and then burning out his single eye. (X) The wanderers took again to the sea, and came to the land of the Laestrygonians; but these, too, were cannibals, and only Odysseus’ ship escaped them. He and his mates reached next the isle of Aenea, where the lovely and treacherous goddess Circe lured most of them into her cave with song, drugged them, and turned them into swine. Odysseus was about to slay her when he changed his mind and accepted her love. He and his comrades, now restored to human form, remained with Circe a full year. (XI) Setting sail again, they came to a land perpetually dark, which proved to be the entrance to Hades; there Odysseus talked with the shades of Agamemnon, Achilles, and his mother, (XII) Resuming their voyage, they passed the island of the Sirens, against whose seductive strains Odysseus protected his men by putting wax into their ears. In the straits (Messina?) of Scylla and Charybdis his ship was wrecked, and he alone survived, to live for eight long years on Calypso’s isle.
(XIII) Alcinous is so moved with sympathy by Odysseus’ tale that he bids his men row Odysseus to Ithaca, but to blindfold him lest he learn and reveal the location of their happy land. On Ithaca the goddess Athena guides the wanderer to the hut of his old swineherd Eumaeus, who (XIV), though not recognizing him, receives him with Gargantuan hospitality, (XV) When Telemachus is led by the goddess to the same hut Odysseus (XVI) makes himself known to his son, and both “wail aloud vehemently.” He unfolds to Telemachus a plan for slaying all the suitors, (XVII-XVIII) In the guise of a beggar he enters his palace, sees the wooers feasting at his expense, and rages inwardly when he hears that they lie with his maidservants at night even while courting Penelope by day. (XIX-XX) He is insulted and injured by the suitors, but he defends himself with vigor and patience, (XXI) By this time the wooers have discovered the trick of Penelope’s web, and have forced her to finish it. She agrees to marry whichever or them can string Odysseus’ great bow—which hangs on the wall—and shoot an arrow through the openings of twelve axes ranged in line. They all try, and all fail. Odysseus asks for a chance, and succeeds. (XXII) Then with a wrath that frightens everyone, he casts off his disguise, turns his arrows upon the suitors, and, with the help of Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Athena, slays them all. (XXIII) He finds it hard to convince Penelope that he is Odysseus; it is difficult to surrender twenty suitors for one husband, (XXIV) He meets the attack of the suitors’ sons, pacifies them, and re-establishes his kingdom.
Meanwhile in Argos the greatest tragedy in Greek legend was pursuing its course. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, grown to manhood and aroused by his bitter sister Electra, avenged their father by murdering their mother and her paramour. After many years of madness and wandering Orestes ascended the throne of Argos-Mycenae (ca. 1176 B.C.) and later added Sparta to his kingdom.* But from his accession the house of Pelops began to decline. Perhaps the decline had begun with Agamemnon, and that vacillating chieftain had used war as a means of uniting a realm that was already falling to pieces. But his victory completed his ruin. For few of his chieftains ever returned, and the kingdoms of many others had lost all loyalty to them. By the end of the age that had opened with the siege of Troy the Achaean power was spent, the blood of Pelops was exhausted. The people waited patiently for a saner dynasty.
About the year 1104 B.C. a new wave of immigration or invasion came down upon Greece from the restlessly expanding north. Through Illyria and Thessaly, across the Corinthian Gulf at Naupactus, and over the Isthmus at Corinth, a warlike people, tall, roundheaded, letterless, slipped or marched or poured into the Peloponnesus, mastered it, and almost completely destroyed Mycenaean civilization. We guess at their origin and their route, but we know their character and their effect. They were still in the herding and hunting stage; now and then they stopped to till the soil, but their main reliance was upon their cattle, whose need for new pasturage kept the tribes ever on the move. One thing they had in unheard-of quantity—iron. They were the emissaries of the Hallstatt* culture to Greece; and the hard metal of their swords and souls gave them a merciless supremacy over Achaeans and Cretans who still used bronze to kill. Probably from both west and east, from Elis and Megara, they came down upon the separate little kingdoms of the Peloponnesus, put the ruling classes to the sword, and turned the Mycenaean remnant into helot-serfs. Mycenae and Tiryns went up in flames, and for some centuries Argos became the capital of Pelops’ isle. On the Isthmus the invaders seized a commanding peak—the Acrocorinthus—and built around it the Dorian city of Corinth.80a The surviving Achaeans fled, some of them into the mountains of the northern Peloponnesus, some into Attica, some overseas to the islands and coasts of Asia. The conquerors followed them into Attica, but were repulsed; they followed them to Crete,81 and made final the destruction of Cnossus; they captured and colonized Melos, Thera, Cos, Cnidus, and Rhodes. Throughout the Peloponnesus and Crete, where the Mycenaean culture had most flourished, the devastation was most complete.
This terminal catastrophe in the prehistory of Aegean civilization is what modern historians know as the Dorian conquest, and what Greek tradition called the Return of the Heracleidae. For the victors were not content to record their triumph as a conquest of a civilized people by barbarians; they protested that what had really happened was that the descendants of Heracles, resisted in their just re-entry into the Peloponnesus, had taken it by heroic force. We do not know how much of this is history, and how much is diplomatic mythology designed to transform a bloody conquest into a divine right. It is difficult to believe that the Dorians were such excellent liars in the very youth of the world. Perhaps, as disputants will never allow, both stories were true: the Dorians were conquerors from the north, led by the scions of Heracles.
Whatever the form of the conquest, its result was a long and bitter interruption in the development of Greece. Political order was disturbed for centuries; every man, feeling unsafe, carried arms; increasing violence disrupted agriculture and trade on land, and commerce on the seas. War flourished, poverty deepened and spread. Life became unsettled as families wandered from country to country seeking security and peace.82 Hesiod called this the Age of Iron, and mourned its debasement from the finer ages that had preceded it; many Greeks believed that “the discovery of iron had been to the hurt of man.”83 The arts languished, painting was neglected, statuary contented itself with figurines; and pottery, forgetting the lively naturalism of Mycenae and Crete, degenerated into a lifeless “Geometrical Style” that dominated Greek ceramics for centuries.
But not all was lost. Despite the resolution of the invading Dorians to keep their blood free from admixture with that of the subject population—despite the racial antipathies between Dorian and Ionian that were to incarnadine all Greece—there went on, rapidly outside of Laconia, slowly within, a mingling of the new stocks with the old; and perhaps the addition of the vigorous seed of Achaeans and Dorians with that of the more ancient and volatile peoples of southern Greece served as a powerful biological stimulant. The final result, after centuries of mingling, was a new and diverse people, in whose blood “Mediterranean,” “Alpine,” “Nordic,” and Asiatic elements were disturbingly fused.
Nor was Mycenaean culture entirely destroyed. Certain elements of the Aegean heritage—instrumentalities of social order and government, elements of craftsmanship and technology, modes and routes of trade, forms and objects of worship,84 ceramic and toreutic skills, the art of fresco painting, decorative motives and architectural forms—maintained a half-stifled existence through centuries of violence and chaos. Cretan institutions, the Greeks believed, passed down into Sparta85 and the Achaean assembly remained the essential structure of even democratic Greece. The Mycenaean megaron probably provided the ground plan of the Doric temple,86 to which the Dorian spirit would add freedom, symmetry, and strength. The artistic tradition, slowly reviving, lifted Corinth, Sicyon, and Argos to an early Renaissance, and made even dour Sparta, for a while, smile with art and song; it nourished lyric poetry through all this historyless Dark Age; it followed Pelasgian, Achaean, Ionian, Minyan exiles in their flight-migration to the Aegean and Asia, and helped the colonial cities to leap ahead of their mother states in literature and art. And when the exiles came to the islands and Ionia they found the remains of Aegean civilization ready to their hands. There, in old towns a little less disordered than on the Continent, the Age of Bronze had kept something of its ancient craft and brilliance; and there on Asiatic soil would come the first reawakening of Greece.
In the end the contact of five cultures—Cretan, Mycenaean, Achaean, Dorian, Oriental—brought new youth to a civilization that had begun to die, that had grown coarse on the mainland through war and plunder, and effeminate in Crete through the luxury of its genius. The mixture of races and ways took centuries to win even a moderate stability, but it contributed to produce the unparalleled variety, flexibility, and subtlety of Greek thought and life. Instead of thinking of Greek culture as a flame that shone suddenly and miraculously amid a dark sea of barbarism, we must conceive of it as the slow and turbid creation of a people almost too richly endowed in blood and memories, and surrounded, challenged, and instructed by warlike hordes, powerful empires, and ancient civilizations.