Chapter Two, Lecture One

The Cultural Context of Classical Myth

To Greek Society

Cultural Context of Classical Myth

• “Myths reflect the society that produces them. In turn, they determine the nature of that society. They cannot be separated from the physical, social, and spiritual worlds in which a people lives or from a people’s history.”

Greek Geography

• Greece not rich in minerals or tillable land– mountainous

• Principal Areas:– Thessaly, Macedonia, Boeotia, Attica,

Peloponnesus, Argolis, Laconia, Elis– Maps of Greece

• Horses were scarce

Greek Geography

• Some areas rich in limestone, marble, and clay– the basis for Greek material culture– temples and pottery tell us much about their

gods and myths

• The Aegean Sea the greatest natural resource– Maps of Greece

Greek Geography

• Cycladic Islands and the Sporades

• Importance of trade and colonization

• Mountainous terrain encourage political independence of cities and spawned myths of city founders

Greek History

– 7000 BC Paleolithic

7000–3000 BC Neolithic

3000–1150 BC Bronze Age

Greek History

3000–1600: Early/Middle Bronze Age

1600–1150: Mycenaean (Late Bronze) Age

1150–800: Dark Age

800–490: Archaic Period

490–323: Classical Period

323–30: Hellenistic Period

Greek History

3000: Writing and Cities, Bronze

1600: Ascendancy of Mainland Greeks

1150: Sack and Collapse of Cities

800: Greek Alphabet

490: Persian Invasion of Greece

323: Death of Alexander the Great

30: Rome's Conquest of Egypt

Early/Middle Bronze Age3000–1600 BC

• Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC) peoples in the Greek area not Greek

• Agricultural peoples mainly

• Worshipped goddesses of fertility

Early/Middle Bronze Age3000–1600

• Minoans (on Crete)

• Started building elaborate palaces toward the end of the Early Bronze Age and beyond (2200–1450 BC)– Knossos Reconstruction and other images

The Origin of the Greeks2100 BC?

• Migration of a people, whom we call the Indo-Europeans – first around 2100 BC?

• Were no doubt speaking an early form of Greek– Their language the basis for many world

languages today

• Language of the people they replaced still in many place names and names for plants and animals

The Origin of the Greeks2100 BC?

• Appear to be more warlike that aboriginal peoples

• Society divided into – (1) kings and priests– (2) warriors– (3) food producers

The Late Bronze Age1600-1150 BC

• Known also as the Mycenaean Age

• People called “Mycenaean” because that is one of their main sites– They may have called themselves “Achaean”

• Mycenae taken over by Indo-Europeans in 1650 BC– Other Mycenaean sites: Thebes, Athens,

Orchomenus, Pylos

The Late Bronze Age1600–1150 BC

• Ruled by powerful and rich warrior kings

• Perhaps the Mycenaean destroyed the Minoan sites on Crete in 1450

• Ruled on Crete until 1400– Impressed by Minoan art and culture

• Their writing system: Linear B– Translated in 1952; proved to be an early

form of Greek

The Late Bronze Age1600–1150 BC

• Great heroic legends of classical myth set in this period

• Historically related to a conflict with Troy in about 1230?

• Perhaps the Trojans were Mycenaean Greeks themselves?

The Dark Age:1150–800 BC

• Great Mycenaean palaces destroyed around 1180–1150 BC

• The Dorian Invasion (a.k.a. the Heraclidae)

• Athens survived• Period of migration of Mycenaean Greeks

across the Aegean– Ionia and Aeolis on the western coast of

modern-day Turkey

The Dark Age:1150–800 BC

• Social disorganization, depopulation and impoverishment

• Petty kings and small dominions– Families and small villages

• The island of Euboea a possible exception– Continued contacts with the Near East– Greek alphabet first appears on Euboea,

allowing Homer and Hesiod to be written down

The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC

• Invention of the Greek alphabet

• Includes symbols for vowels, not just consonants

• Colonization from Euboea to southern Italy and Sicily

• A cultural revival

The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC

• The Greek polis– People identified themselves geographically

and not just by family ties– “Citizenship”– Competitiveness encouraged, not so much

cooperation

The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC

• Rebirth of commerce depended on the sea

• Greek economy thus decentralized and competitive, not like landed/river monarchies such as Egypt and Mesopotamia

• 6th century innovation of coined money spurned economic growth even more

The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC

• The “new” economy strains old social orders– Period of conflict between the old, landed

aristocracy (the aristoi) and the entrepreneurial class (the kakoi)

• Period of tyrants (650–600)– Perhaps can be thought of as populists– Negative connotation of the word tyrant from

the hostility of the literate aristoi

The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC

• Toward the end of the Archaic Period and series of conflicts with Persia

• Persia conquers the Greek cities on the western coast of Turkey

• Mainland Greeks drawn into the conflict

The Classical Period490–323

• A democracy in Athens (508 BC)– Cleisthenes– All free men had a stake in the city and a role

to play in its administration

• Persians first repelled by Athenian citizen army at Marathon in 490– “What a noble thing freedom is”

• Persians finally defeated in 480 by Athens and other Greek cities

The Classical Period490–323

• Classical floruit of Athens and Greece inspired by their national pride and their military prowess

• Greek cities fought with one another but they recognized that they were all Hellenes, different from the barbaroi around them

• The great “civil” war of the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War (431-404) fatally weakened them all

The Classical Period490–323

• Myth reworked and re-presented in new forms to reflect the political and social realities of the day– Tragedy above all

• Philosophy and science developed in the late Classical Period as a counterpoint to myth

The Classical Period490–323

• The Macedonian king Philip II overran the southern Greeks in 338 and changed the political landscape

• Greece cities yoked in a kingdom; their freedom limited

• Alexander the Great follows; leads campaign against Persia

• Death in 323 the conventional date for the end of the Classical Period

The Hellenistic Period: 323–30 BC

• Greek culture the “global” culture in the Mediterranean area

• Center moved from the “old” Greece to the new cities of Alexandria

• 146 BC, Greek mainland conquered by Rome, followed by another 100 years of conflict

• Finally pacified in 30 BC with the conquest of Egypt, by then a Greek dynasty

Beginning of the Roman Period

• 30 BC the beginning of the Roman period and the end of Greek “independence”

Next Lecture

Greek Society