Early Greece. Oswyn Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ an interest in the realistic portrayal of animal and vegetable life: this orientalizing style appears in Corinthian pottery first about 725, when the late Geometric style gives way to early proto-Corinthian. The invention of the Black Figure technique of painting came within a generation (middle proto-Corinthian, c. 700–650); in this the figures are painted in black silhouette and details are then engraved on the figures after firing.

      Corinthian pottery was the only ware widely exported for about a century; in the sixth century it was superseded by Athenian. Attic Black Figure began under the influence of Corinth (610–550), but quickly won pre-eminence, and in its mature phase (c. 570–25) reached an artistic perfection which has made it famous ever since. By about 530 a new technique of painting had been invented in Athens, the Red Figure technique, in which it is the background which is painted black, and the details of the figures are drawn in by brush. So individual are the styles of the different Black Figure and Red Figure artists that the same methods can be applied to distinguishing their hands as have been applied to Renaissance and later painters: the work of Sir John Beazley has resulted in the more or less certain identification of the work of over a thousand artists, and their classification both chronologically and into schools. Quite apart from our knowledge of painted pottery as an art form, this has given a chronological precision unknown in any other area of archaeology.

      In more general terms the contribution of archaeology to the study of early Greek history is enormously greater than for most periods of history. It has explained many aspects of the origins and growth of Greek culture, its interdependence and local variations, the external influences on it and the means by which they arrived. It has illuminated the patterns of trade and colonization, and the major advances in warfare which lie at the basis of Greek geographical expansion and the diffusion of political power to a widening circle. Archaeology of course has obvious limitations, in that it can only offer partial insight into the less material aspects of life – religion, politics, culture and ideas; but it is more important to point out the areas where it still has more to contribute. Archaeologists have tended to concentrate on change rather than on continuity, and to direct their attention to certain areas of culture whose relative importance is not obvious. Thus we still know more about town centres than about towns, and about towns than about the countryside, or about weapons than about agricultural implements, and much more about the dead than the living. Despite the fact that Greek archaeology has stood as a model for other periods for so long, much remains to be done; and what is done will illuminate especially those areas about which literary and epigraphic sources are comparatively silent. The light thrown on the Dark Age in the last generation is an outstanding example of what can be achieved; and recent developments in survey archaeology have begun to illuminate the history of the countryside.

III

       The End of the Dark Age: the Aristocracy

      ABOUT THE late eighth century, with Homer and Hesiod, literary evidence becomes available to supplement the fìndings of archaeology. But whereas Hesiod describes a real world contemporary with himself, it is obvious from the character of the Greek oral epic tradition that there are difficulties in using the Homeric poems for history. In some respects Homeric society is clearly an artificial literary creation. It is a natural tendency of all heroic epic to exaggerate the social status and behaviour of everyone involved, so that characters appear generally to belong to the highest social class and to possess great wealth and extraordinary abilities, in implicit contrast with the inequalities and squalor of the present age. Equally it is agreed that there are some minor elements in the Homeric poems from almost every period; the presence or absence of isolated phenomena cannot therefore be held to count for or against any particular date. This rule can be given a general negative extension, for the oral epic tradition consciously or unconsciously excludes whole areas of experience as irrelevant, or as known to be later than the heroic age: thus all signs of the coming of the Dorians and the Ionian migration are absent, as are many aspects of the poet’s own period. In general, omissions, however large, carry little weight for the argument.

      Nevertheless I would argue that there is a historical basis to the society described in Homer, in the poet’s retrojection of the institutions of his own day. Archaeological evidence suggests this. Though the poems show a number of Mycenean survivals, the Linear B tablets have revealed a society wholly different from that portrayed in Homer; equally the scanty evidence from the early Dark Age is incompatible with the material culture of the Homeric poems. Only in the later Dark Age do the archaeological and literary evidence begin to coincide over a wide range of phenomena. To take examples which have been used in the controversy, the emphasis on Phoenicians as traders points most probably to a period between 900 and 700, as does the typical display of wealth through the Storage and giving away of bronze cauldrons and tripods. The architecture of the Homeric house fìnds its closest parallels in the same period. Homeric burials are by cremation which points away from the Mycenean inhumation to the later Dark Age and onwards, though the actual funerary rites owe much to poetic invention, which in turn affected contemporary practices. The earliest and most striking instances have been found at Salamis in Cyprus, whose rulers, in close contact with Euboea and possessed of great wealth as vassals of Assyria, were practising complicated ‘Homeric’ funeral rites from the second half of the eighth century. On the mainland offerings of almost the same date found inserted into Mycenean tombs suggest that epic had created a new interest in the heroic past which itself influenced the development of hero cult.

      Admittedly some central aspects of Homeric society have been thought to show a basic confusion. In descriptions of fìghting, for instance, the chariot, which disappeared as a weapon of war at the end of the Mycenean period, is still an essential item of the aristocrat’s equipment; but the epic tradition no longer under stood its military use. Instead it has become a transport vehicle taking the heroes from place to place on the battlefield, and standing idly by as they dismount and fìght on foot: occasionally it even takes on the attributes of a horse and performs feats such as jumping ditches. This seems to be a combination of a Mycenean weapon with the tactics of the aristocratic mounted infantry of the late Dark Age. Again the Homeric warrior fights with a jumble of weapons from different periods: he can even start off to battle with a pair of throwing spears and end up fìghting with a single thrusting one. The metal used for weapons is almost invariably bronze, but for agricultural and industrial tools it is iron – a combination unknown in the real world, where the replacement of bronze by iron came first in the military sphere. Such examples do not however prove the artificiality of Homeric society. The elements all seem to belong to real societies: it is only their combination which is artifìcial; and when the different elements can be dated, they show a tendency to fall into two categories, dim reflections of Mycenean practices and a clearer portrayal of the late Dark Age world.

      More general considerations reinforce this conclusion. The process of continual re-creation which is implied by an oral epic tradition means that the factual basis of epic is little different from that implied in any oral tradition: the focus is sharpest on contemporary phenomena, but the existence of fixed linguistic rhythms and conventional descriptions leads back into the past; and since the poet is consciously re-creating the past, he will discard the obviously contemporary and preserve what he knows to be older elements. The reality of the resulting society must be tested by using comparative evidence from other cultures to show how compatible the different institutions described by Homer are, and whether the overall nature of the society resembles that of other known primitive societies. Finally there is a clear line of development from the institutions described in Homer to those which existed in later Greece.

      The differences in the way Homer and Hesiod portray society are not then to be explained chronologically: Homer’s society is of course idealized, and reaches back in time through the generations of his predecessors; Hesiod’s is fully contemporary. And the towns of Ionia which produced Homer were in many respects more sophisticated, more secure and more conservative than the social tensions of the peasant communities in Boeotia. But also Homer describes СКАЧАТЬ