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_ _

_I The Mycenaean Empire _

_was a great power in the Aegean from the 14th century to the 12th
century B.C. The characters in the Iliad and Odyssey are Mycenaean
Greeks. But this great civilization was destroyed in the 12th century.
What happened?_

_ _

_II The Greek Dark Age_

_In the 12th century B.C., the Mycenaean cities, including Mycenae,
Sparta, Tiryns, Argos, Thebes, were destroyed. Scholars once thought
that the "Dorian invasions" from the north were the cause, but
scholars also speculate that the Mycenaean civilization destroyed
itself, either with constant war with each other (civil war) or with
more distant cities such as Troy. Does the story of the Trojan War
point to a race of people so committed to war that they left their
cities defenseless and vulnerable to foreign invasion? Or does the
story of the Trojan War point to civil war, an era in which cities
fought each other and destroyed themselves? _

_Whatever the cause, there was famine, destruction of the palace
cities, the loss of writing as well as crafts, and migrations of
displaced Mycenaeans to mainland Greece and to Asia Minor (presently
Turkey). A dark age persisted for three centuries, then in the 8th
century B.C., a Renaissance of Greek culture. _

_ _

_III Greek Archaic Age (Renaissance)_

_Homer is the embodiment of that Renaissance. Ionian settlements
(Ionia was once a part of the Mycenaean empire) on the coast of Asia
Minor produced the first Greek city states, such as Ephesus; the
location was perfect for a flowering of culture; these city states
were along the trade routes to Mesopotamia, and through trade these
people had contact with Egyptian mathematics, Mesopotamian astronomy.
A new individualism was coming to the fore. One explanation was that
the "political extinction of Mycenaean civilization had left a vacuum
of power that made it possible for small, independent city-states to
emerge without being overwhelmed by large states" (Martin 53). During
the centuries of the Dark Age "the general level of poverty in the
early Greek Dark Age might suggest that many communities were
relatively egalitarian in this period, at least as compared with the
manifest hierarchy of Mycenaean civilization" (Martin 39). The
egalitarian spirit coupled with the power vacuum may have fostered the
ideals of democracy that began in these early city-states._

_"The economic revival of the Archaic Age and the growth in the
population of Greece evident by this time certainly gave momentum to
the process[formation of city-states]. Men who managed to acquire
substantial property from success in agriculture or commerce could now
demand a greater say in political affairs from the social elite, who
claimed preeminence based on their wealth ". . . (Martin 60)._

_In this area and time, Homer lived. His work celebrated the last
great exploits of the Mycenaean ancestors: the heroic age. But the
Iliad and Odyssey say more about the 8th century B.C. than about
Mycenae._

_"As the subject matter of the Iliad, Homer did not choose a splendid
enterprise, but an episode of disorder which presaged the catastrophe
that was to overcome Mycenaean civilization. . . . The Iliad, now,
furnishes a paradigmatic study of the causes of decline in the
Aegean-wide Mycenaean order" (Voegelin 64). The important word here is
"study," for the Iliad and the Odyssey examine the failures of a past
civilization and analyze what is needed for a more successful future
age. _

_Analogy_

_Imagine if our world was destroyed; all our cities burned; our books
and technology lost. Imagine we had to catch a space shuttle and
wander around the universe for three hundred years; in that time we
told ourselves and our children stories about what went wrong. Why we
were destroyed. We had three hundred years to analyze our mistakes and
three hundred years to think about how we'd do it differently when we
finally came to a planet in the universe that was habitable. Our Iliad
would be about our past greatness, perhaps exaggerated as stories
about greatness tend to be. Perhaps in our Iliad we would glorify our
last great battle before the end, the last great leaders before the
darkness. Our Odyssey would be the stories of the time of our
wandering and the days when we finally found a new home to permanently
settle. Our Iliad and Odyssey would preserve the lessons we learned
through our sufferings: the tragedy of our destroyed America; the
sufferings of our wanderings in an uncivilized, hostile universe; our
determination to create a better place for ourselves and future
generations. _

_So the Greek Iliad and Odyssey which we will be studying are about
the loss of civilization (Iliad), the wanderings (Odyssey) and the
establishment of a new order (Odyssey) in Ithaka. The end of the
Oyssey leaves certain problems to the future -- the 8th century of
Homer could get just so far with the problems of justice -- a future
that would bloom into the magnificence of 5th century B.C. Athens.
Athens was the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We in
the West revere it because Athens created so many of our social
institutions, such as democracy and trial by jury. The philosophers of
Athens, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle shaped our thoughts. It was no
accident that so much happened in 5th century Athens; these Athenians,
who also invented theater and created some of the greatest sculpture
and architecture in the world, were great because they came from a
great civilization of the past; Athenian ancestors carried the lessons
of that past with them in the Iliad and the Odyssey. This is why we
study the Iliad and the Odyssey today; they are manuals of
civilization. _

_Works Cited_

_Martin, Thomas. Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic
Times. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996._

_Voegelin, Eric. "Order and Disorder." Critical Essays on Homer. ed.
Kenneth Atchity. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987._

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References

1. http://iws.ccccd.edu/Andrade/andrade/andrade.html
2. http://iws.ccccd.edu/Andrade/andrade/aw.html
3. http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/IliadOdyssey.HTML