Essay Question:

What historical reality lies behind the Homeric poems?

Essay written by David Rohl (1st Year Ancient History/Egyptology).

Submitted to Riet van Bremen on 22nd February 1988.

If ever there was a topic to generate passion and controversy in the study of ancient history it must surely be the question of the historical reality behind the epic traditions of the so-called 'Homeric Poetry'.

The Introduction of the Greek Dark Age

This most hotly contested of debates seems to have begun with a number of important discoveries at the end of the last century which instigated a major rethink over the chronology of Greece for the pre-Classical Period. The principal discovery came not from Greece or the Aegean but rather from Egypt, where, in the 1880s, William Flinders Petrie and others began to turn up Minoan and Greek pottery at the sites of Kahun and el-Amarna. At these sites the archaeologists found sherds with typical Minoan (Kahun) and Late Helladic (el-Amarna) decoration which, with reconstruction, took on the familiar shapes of the stirrup jars, so characteristic of the era which has become known as the Mycenaean Period. The imported pottery from el-Amarna was found in an archaeological context which dated it to the end of the 18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC) and later work showed that the pottery phase concerned (LHIIIB) was predominant 100-150 years before the end of the Late Bronze Age and the collapse of the Mycenaean culture of central and southern Greece.

The true significance and implication of this discovery was clear and undeniable - the Mycenaean Period would have to be pushed backwards in time in order for its end to fall within the time span of the 20th Dynasty in Egypt c. 1200-1070 BC rather than its previously assumed end at around 800 BC. This, of course, resulted in a major rewriting of early Greek history and the introduction of the c. 350-year Dark Age, with all its problematical consequences for the Greek historian.

Petrie announced his dramatic conclusions in an article entitled 'The Egyptian Bases of Greek History' which included the following somewhat pompous statement:

"... now the main light on the chronology of the civilizations of the Aegean comes from Egypt; and it is Egyptian sources that must be thanked by classical scholars for revealing the real standing of the antiquities of Greece. Without the foreign colonies on the Nile, they would still be groping in speechless remains, which might cover either a century or a thousand years, for aught that could be determined in Greek excavations." [1]

This rather typical attitude of the 19th century Egyptologists towards the histories of cultures outside Egypt is one of the major causes of the current problems in early Greek history, for it is now taken for granted that Egyptian chronology is fixed and secure and that the chronologies of the rest of the ancient world must be dependent on Egypt for their dating. The question must therefore be asked as to why this should in fact be the case when the literary and archaeological evidence from Greece, as outlined below, seems to point us in a different direction.

It is easy to forget the fact that, previous to Petrie's announcement, the world of Greek scholarship had assumed a much lower date for the Mycenaean Period and a continuity between it and the following Archaic Period. Pre-el-Amarna Greek scholars simply saw the invasion of the Dorians as the reason for the sudden change in culture and that this invasion was followed by a relatively brief period of decline brought about by the arrival of a less cultured population. This original view of events was not really surprising, because the ancient Greeks themselves had given very little impression in their own writings of a long period of abandonment and stagnation following the 'Heroic Age'. As Finley notes:

"The Greek antiquarians who put the story into writing more than 500 years afterwards had no notion of the great breakdown of about 1200 B.C., no idea of a Bronze Age, and therefore no sense of the very considerable time-span of the Dark Age." [2]

Hesiod of Boeotia complains of the slow and inexorable decline of civilisation since the Heroic Age, not of a sudden catastrophe from out of which Greece was gradually pulling itself into the daylight. It was only with the advent of archaeology that this Dark Age lacuna in Greek history was to appear in the text books. The modern view concerning the role of the Dorians and the end of the Bronze Age in Greece is aptly summed up by Oliva:

"Earlier scholars tended to link the end of this [Mycenaean] civilization with the 'Dorian invasion', that is to say, with the arrival on the Greek mainland of the last wave of Greek-speaking invaders. More recent archaeological research, however, has shown the Dorian settlement of the Peloponnese to be of more recent date; it can thus hardly have anything to do with the catastrophe that befell the Late Helladic centres, upset their economic stability and broke the political power of the Mycenaean rulers." [3]

Modern scholarship had decided that the historical material handed down to us by the Greek historians was completely unreliable for this period because it not only claimed short genealogies back to the heroic age but also that the colonisation movement resulted from the invasion of the Dorians. This could not be, because the end of the Bronze Age was now too remote in time for any such connection. The writings of Homer and Hesiod and later Herodotus and Thucydides, therefore, were all rejected in favour of the new interpretation of events for the Bronze to Iron Age transition:

"So, it seems, there is good reason to reject all or most accounts of links with Mycenaean Greece, together with the high chronology of the movements of peoples, and the venerable ancestry of royal families." [4]

Homerica in the light of the introduction of the new Dark Age

One of the most obvious ways this revision of the chronology affected our understanding of Greek history was that it changed our thinking in terms of the Homeric traditions and the date of both Homer himself and the writing down of the epic poetry.

Whereas until then Homer was seen to be a near contemporary of the events of the Trojan War and originator of the narratives, now, in the view of a number of eminent scholars, the final version of the epics had to be relegated to the position of a redaction of an oral tradition collated from a variety of earlier sources. This flew in the face of the direct evidence of the poetry itself which showed a continuity of style indicative of a single author of some genius. Hesiod too was brought down into the 8th century even though, in his Theogony, he was heavily influenced by the Hittite Epic of Kumarbi which could not reasonably have survived the end of the Bronze Age and the collapse of the Hittite Empire [5].

There was, however, little choice in the matter as it had also become clear from the archaeological evidence that the Greeks did not adopt the Phoenician alphabetic script until the late-9th to 8th centuries and so the poems could not have been written down in their developed scriptual form until 'at the widest limits between 800 and 680 B.C.' [6]. Thus all these factors were brought together in a new hypothesis summed up by Coldstream:

"... these sagas – and especially the saga of Troy – were elaborated in hexameter verse by many generations of Ionian bards, until Homer himself gave them monumental expression." [7]

So there was now a choice of two options: either Homer lived in the mid-8th century (some 400 to 500 years after the Trojan War) and collated the oral poetry in written form, or he must be placed vaguely somewhere in the 11th- to 9th-century Dark Age period as an oral poet whose works were later to be transcribed in the newly developed Greek script of the 8th century by a scribal school. This latter view would require a Greek oral tradition of some sophistication which had maintained the works of Homer intact for at least the last two centuries of the Dark Age or pre-Archaic Period. Few scholars were prepared to place Homer any earlier than 1000 BC at the very extreme and so he lost his previously assumed place as a near contemporary of the events about which he sang. A further possibility, perhaps less well supported, has been coupled to the late date hypothesis for the life of Homer which even goes as far as to suggest a style for the narratives influenced almost entirely by the 8th-century environment. Austin and Vidal-Naquet are forced by these same Homeric narrative anachronisms to ask the question:

"Should one consider the Homeric poems to reflect primarily the time in which they were composed, that is to say (according to the chronology most widely accepted at the moment) the eighth century, with the Iliad coming at the beginning of the century or slightly earlier, and the Odyssey in the second half?" [8]

Here then was the crux of the issue: the date for Homer, and by implication the Homeric epic poetry, had been removed from its earlier secure setting and released to wander around in the twilight of the new Dark Age unable any longer to hold on to a firm chronological anchor point. This issue can best be elaborated upon by repeating the questions that now arose concerning Homer after the insertion of a dark age into the history of ancient Greece [9].

On his knowledge of the Late Bronze Age:

1. How did Homer know of so many social and cultural aspects of Mycenaean/ Achaean civilisation if he lived anything up to 400 years after the end of the Bronze Age and following at best a good part of the Dark Age in which most of what had gone before must surely have been forgotten?

2. How is it possible that archaeological excavations at the site of Hisarlik have shown that Homer was able to correctly and accurately describe a number of architectural features of the Trojan citadel even though the Late Bronze site would have been wholly covered in debris and sedimentation by the poet's own time? Two such examples are found in Iliad VI, 434 (the weak part of Troy's wall later found by Dorpfeld) and VI, 386 (where Homer indicates the emplacement of a shrine outside the 'Scaean Gate' - just as was found at the foot of the south gate at Troy by the archaeologists) [10].

3. How could he have known the names of so many Mycenaean population centres on the Greek mainland when a great number had been abandoned, covered over and forgotten by the 8th century? Although some scholars attribute the 'Catalogue of Ships' (Book II) to another source, the mere fact that it is included in the Iliad allows this anomaly to stand [11].

On his knowledge of the Early Iron Age:

4. Why is it that he introduces a mix of both Bronze and Iron Age armour and weaponry into the Iliad, suggesting that he could not have died before the introduction of iron into the battle equipment of the Greeks?

5. Why does he describe the Achaeans of c. 1250 BC burning the bodies of their slain noblemen on funeral pyres when cremation did not become the common practice of the Greeks for another 200 years? Finley points to this anomaly when he tells us that 'By about 1050 cremation of adults had become universal in most of the Greek world ...' but that previously 'The Mycenaean world buried its dead; ...'. Thus he concludes that 'The Iliad and the Odyssey remain firmly anchored in the earlier Dark Age on this point ...' [12].

These questions led Finley to postulate that the Homeric tradition was a child of the Dark Age and that only an orator of that transitional period could have retained knowledge of both the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of Greece. This hypothesis certainly has its attractions but in itself was born purely out of necessity, resulting directly from the 'Dark Age Problem'. In essence Finley seems to have been correct in assigning the poems to the transition but he was unable to take that extra step forward by suggesting that this transition was in fact very short indeed and fell entirely within the first century of the Archaic Period, there being no extended Dark Age between it and the earlier Helladic phase.

A return to a 10th century Iliad and rejection of the Dark Age

The arguments that the Dark Age Period of the eastern Mediterranean was a scholarly invention of the Victorian age are about to be published in a major article (by UCL post-graduates James, Kokkinos, Thorpe and Frankish) entitled 'Bronze to Iron Age Chronology in the Old World: Time for a Reassessment?'. Advanced copies of the paper have been circulated amongst Greek and Near Eastern Dark Age specialists and archaeologists, and it is clear from the initial reaction that the authors' findings are being treated seriously. Respected academics such as Parr and Mellaart in the Institute of Archaeology and Coldstream in the Department of Classical Archaeology at UCL are currently considering the implications. Reaction from outside UCL has been equally positive: Renfrew regards this reassessment as 'splendidly provocative' and Snodgrass wishes to 'welcome the proposal for a radical reappraisal of accepted schemes'.

The inclusion of initial academic reactions here is to simply stress that a new idea – however outrageous it might appear at first glance – is worthy of consideration if it leads to solutions to some of the many problems which have arisen for the early history of Greece as developed over the last century.

There is neither space nor point in reviewing the case in detail here, but it is important to state that a model for a new chronology is currently being developed which removes the Greek Dark Age and returns the collapse of the Mycenaean culture to a date of c. 850-800 BC. Such a step would solve at one go the problems of Homeric scholarship, return the Dorians to their original role as the overthrowers of the Achaean civilisation, dramatically revise our view of the reasons for the population increase which initiated the colonisation movement, and eliminate the multiplicity of problems surrounding the loss of skills and craftsmanship at the end of the Bronze Age and their sudden reappearance 400 years later in the Archaic Period. This last point is important for the new proposal and is best summed up by the authors themselves:

"According to the generally accepted scheme, Mycenaean civilisation collapsed c. 1200 BC, after which literacy and the arts of ivory working, painting, metalworking, jewellery manufacture, relief sculpture and architecture largely disappeared until the renaissance of Greek civilisation around 800 BC. Population is thought to have sharply declined, as the evidence for settlements during this period becomes scarce. Practically the only craft of which there is any continuous evidence from 1200 to 800 BC is pottery, most of which, however, is represented by tomb finds rather than stratified deposits ..."

"The scenario just described is rendered even stranger by the fact that Mycenaean forms and traditions frequently reappear after the hiatus. Moreover, they generally recur in material of a luxury character, the kind of goods which one would have expected to disappear during the cultural 'Dark Age' generally envisaged ..."

The disappearance of a wide range of skills (from literacy and ivory working to building in stone) needs to be considered in the context of the contraction of economy and settlement following the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation. However, their reappearance (as yet unsatisfactorily explained), when taken in conjunction with the patchy nature of the stratigraphy for the Greek 'Dark Age', provides circumstantial evidence suggesting that our present chronology may be overstretched. Protogeometric and later buildings and occupational remains frequently occur immediately above Mycenaean structures with no intervening strata. What makes these instances puzzling is not so much the absence of occupational debris but the lack of any natural accumulation of sediment or silt over the centuries. [13]

In this essay we are dealing with just one aspect of these consequences – the effect of such a revision on our understanding of the Homeric traditions – and, if we are allowed to adopt this scheme for a brief moment in order to assess the potential consequences, we can see some immediate and obvious results:

1. Homer is now singing his epic poetry to audiences whose fathers witnessed the disturbances at the end of the Bronze Age. It is only c. 100 years since the fall of Troy. Details of the siege, the armour and social structure of Mycenaean civilisation are still fresh in the memory. The ruins of Bronze Age Troy remain unburied in Homer's time.

2. The Iron Age anomalies interspersed into the narratives are now explainable because there are no centuries of total impoverishment and loss of craftsmanship separating the two ages. The use of limited amounts of iron and the wearing of greaves is indicative of an intermediate phase in the practice of warfare, a practice which would make the full transition to the Hoplite system within a century and a half or less [14].

3. Cremation can now be seen in its correct context. The Achaeans, as a necessity of warfare undertaken a long way from their homeland, adopt cremation for their war casualties, with the practice being maintained in the following century when the Mycenaeans were forced to emigrate to the Aegean islands as a result of the Dorian invasion. So it is, for example, that we find Tholos tombs with cremation burials at Salamis on Cyprus which are datable to the early Iron Age and Euboean colonists at Pithecusae quenching funeral pyres with wine as described in the Iliad [15].

4. The genealogies of the Greeks themselves are now shown to be quite accurate and not compressed as is currently argued. Thus Pythagoras (mid-6th century) did indeed live 6 or 7 generations after the time of Temenos, a leader of the Heraclids, who was credited with seizing the Peloponnese at the end of the Bronze Age (now c. 800-750 BC). The genealogical link of the early Spartan kings to Heracles, which is argued has no bearing on reality due to the short number of generations given, can now be reinstated.

5. Thucydides' information that, following the Trojan War, there was a period of 80 years of disturbance and upheaval leading up to the Dorian Invasion can now be accepted because there is no prolonged Dark Age between these two events. The so-called 'Dark Age', in effect, has been reduced to just 3 generations.

6. The initial colonisation movement occurs because the influx of a new group of peoples from the north has resulted in over-population in the old Mycenaean homelands. The shortage of food and the new threat from invading Dorians forces the indigenous population to seek new homes in the recently explored coastal regions of the eastern Mediterranean. [16]

7. The story of Aeneas, refugee from the Trojan War, travelling to Carthage to meet the city's founder, Dido, can now have a basis in reality as the date for the founding of Carthage (c. 825 BC) falls soon after the Trojan War.

8. The archaeology of Troy itself is cured of its anomalies. The local Grey Minyan Ware of City VII (probably Priam's Troy) now has a continuity with the identical ware of City VIII (Archaic/Classical Ilium), whereas before it was necessary to suggest that the site was abandoned for 400 years and, as a result, the technology of Grey Minyan pottery making was re-exported to the site 16 generations later. The Bukelkeramik of City VIIB now takes its rightful place as the native ware of the invading Phrygians brought with them from their homeland in the Balkans.

These are just a few of the consequences for Homer and early Greek studies that come readily to mind. If the new hypothesis opens up such rich potential for further study of this very interesting period in Greek history, then proper consideration of the scheme should be given by the recognised experts in the field to test further the potential of this simple but attractive alternative. It may yet hold the answers to many of the problems that beset the study of our surviving corpus of Homeric poetry and resolve at least some of the disagreements that have preoccupied Homeric scholars over the last hundred years.

Notes and References

1. W. M. Flinders Petrie, 'The Egyptian Bases of Greek History', Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol. XI (October 1890), p. 271.

2. M. I. Finley: Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages, (London, 1981), p. 78.

3. P. Oliva: The Birth of Greek Civilization, (London 1981), p. 33.

4. V. R. d'A. Desborough: op. cit. The Greek Dark Ages, p. 324.

5. R. Sealey: A History of the Greek City States, p. 28.

6. G. S. Kirk in Homer: The Odyssey (trans. W. Shewring), (Oxford, 1980), p. xvi.

7. J. N. Coldstream: Geometric Greece, (London, 1977), p. 342.

8. M. M. Austin & P. Vidal-Naquet: Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An Introduction, (London, 1986), pp. 37-38.

9. For convenience the author of the narratives and indeed the narratives themselves will be referred to as the work of Homer even though there is no actual proof, other than the view of the ancient Greeks themselves, as to who originated the epics under discussion here.

10. M. Wood: In Search of the Trojan War, (London, 1985), p. 143.

11. R. J. A. Talbert: Atlas of Classical History, (London, 1985), p. 8.

12. M. I. Finley: op.cit., Early Greece, (London, 1981), p. 80.

13. P. J. James et. al: op. cit. Bronze to Iron Age Chronology..., pp. 19 & 22.

14. R. Sealey: A History of the Greek City-States: ca. 700-338 B.C., (London, 1976), p. 30.

15. J. N. Coldstream: op. cit. Geometric Greece, pp. 349-50.

16. The effect of this hypothesis on the subject of the early colonisation of the Greeks will be delt with in Essay Two - 'Why did the Greeks go overseas'?, forthcoming.