wiseman, james. greece and early greeks

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Greece and Early Greeks Author(s): James Wiseman Source: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter, 1965), pp. 700-

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GREECE AND EARLY GREEKS1

James Wiseman

1 RE-CLASSICAL STUDIES ARE IN A

highly nervous state: there is much new information along with numerous detailed studies of various aspects of early Mediter ranean society and lately there has been a rebirth of general public interest. But this pervasive nervousness isn't new. It's

as

old as Schliemann's discovery of Troy nearly 90 years ago. And from that time also can be reckoned the beginnings of many long controversies contributing to the turmoil. These were prompted and nurtured not just by the variety of plausible interpretations based on available information, but also by the forceful, ingenious and (occasionally) sadly stubborn intellects of several of the dis putants. Attitudes towards opposing views have often been highly emotional: witness the conflicts of Schliemann and his legion of critics, Evans and Wace (et al.), Ventris and Co. and Beattie, and, more recently, Palmer and Boardman. A fresh approach, a

reconsideration of the problems from the start, or even a con

solidation of evidence is unusual if it only manages to escape contempt. The outsider has little hope of attaining that unusual state of grace: consider the reception by M. I. Finley2 of From the Silent Earth, an imaginative and worthwhile "report on the

Greek Bronze Age" by Joseph Alsop, a political analyst. Emily Vermeule is no outsider, but it's still a testy business to

become involved in a dozen such controversies all at once. She does this in her new book, Greece in the Bronze Age, easily the most important work of its kind to appear since The Mycenaean Age by Tsountas and Manatt was published in 1897. She treads softly in her Introduction ("This book is probably written at the

wrong time by the wrong person."), but the very writing of such a study is bold in itself. And what is more, the boldness is backed up by learning, careful research and even literary ability. Mrs. Vermeule has much to say and she says it very well.

The range of the book is staggering: from the Middle Palaeo lithic to the close of the era of the Late Bronze Age palaces society, trade, religion, art, life in general and particular. She dodges no major problems and if she doesn't solve them all to everyone's satisfaction (including the reviewer's), that is as it

must be. The book, of course, was never intended to be the last word on the

subjects concerned. Our present state of knowledge precludes finality. But Greece in the Bronze Age does offer a new


James Wise man 701

look at some old problems with many of the disproved theories left out. Most importantly, it provides a desperately needed gen eral view of preclassical Greece. Anyone?specialist, classicist-at

large, or utter layman?who has tried to find his way through the enormous bibliography on Greece-before-Homer, hoping to find some coherence, is aware of the need for just such a larger view.

Some of the better aspects of the book may be summed up briefly. The text is well-illustrated with 52 figures and there are 48 plates without a single bad or irrelevant picture. Appendices on "The Physical World" and on Neolithic pottery help keep the text uncluttered, and another appendix on "Building Activities and

Destruction Levels in the Late Mycenaean World," along with chronological charts of pottery types, are important and useful references for material scattered through hundreds of articles and books. The footnotes are neither quite as many nor always as full as would be useful, but these deficiencies are amply made up for by an extensive bibliography. The examples of sites and objects used for characterizing periods and techniques include several that are not readily available elsewhere, either because they ap peared in Modern Greek (still too little read) or because they have not yet been fully published. Examples include the frescoes at Thebes, the excavations at Keos, Myrsinochorion, Peristeria.

Vermeule is frankly at her best when dealing with art objects. The descriptions are lucid, the analyses and comparisons sensible, the language taut. She has chosen carefully and wisely where to be expansive. A full five pages are devoted to the Silver Siege Rhyton from Grave IV of Mycenae's Shaft Grave Circle A and her account is the best in print. This battered and fragmentary drink ing cup exhibits all the best features of one important aspect (representational scenes) of Shaft Grave art: "specific scenes per

vaded by a conventional, hybrid iconography, with real actors

performing timeless acts in rich detail." (p. 105) She dwells at equal length on the Procession Fresco at Thebes in which, she says, "we see a Mycenaean talent for rhythmical variations, not

regular but subtly counterpointed, as the women move across the

rippling ground in different poses meant to break monotony by undertones without disrupting the regularity essential to the pro cession scheme. But there is something mechanical about it in

spite of its finesse." (pp. 191-92) Even descriptions of pottery decoration, which can be deadly dull, are vivid and full of life. Of the Palace Style jars (Late Helladic II = LH II) from the tholoi at Kakovatos in Triphylia (the site D?rpfield thought was

Nestor's Pylos), she writes: "There are argonauts swimming in an

organized school though seaweed and rocks more orderly than their Minoan counterparts; sprays of stiff papyrus and rosettes, ivy leaves growing sidewise from rubbery stems against a dotted

background, lilies and iris in both the stiff upright and naturally blowing styles, unlikely trees with leaves like tennis racquets, the


702 GREECE AND EARLY GREEKS

mainland "ogival canopy" which was adopted later in reverse lend

lease by Crete, and large mainland spirals set horizontally like architectural friezes." (p. 130)

We are constantly reminded, too, of the people behind the stones and pots. Both chapter titles (e.g., "Life in a Mycenaean

Palace," "Society and History in the Mycenaean World") and sub chapter headings (e.g., on the Early Bronze Age: "Life and Art," "People, Religion, and Burial;" on the Early Mycenaean Age: "Development of a Mycenaean Culture") reflect the extent of archaeological detective work. The deductions appear through out the book, usually reasonable, frequently convincing. The brief vignette of life in a Middle Bronze Age village is a good example (pp. 74-75):

The indoor scene gives an impression of considerable in

dustry. Some houses have ovens in the main room, almost all have a little round hearth, perhaps off center out of the draft from the door. There is no evidence yet for the great central hearth circled by four pillars which marks the megaron of the Mycenaean world, but there is very likely a wooden pole on a stone base to hold up the rafters. In the back room the stores were kept: clay bins full of chick peas, which they loved inordinately or found easiest to grow, and other prod ucts of their farms. More sheds and stalls may frame a little dirt yard along one side of the house recalling the "palace storerooms" of ancient Dimeni. There are no palaces yet,

or

even spacious houses, although excavators

are always hope

ful. The "palace" at Malthi is five higgeldy rooms of which

the largest would fit inside Sesklo's big house; at Asine the "palace" is made of two houses side by side with a party

wall, for an expanding family, one supposes, scarcely royal in scope. Some efforts at community specialization are sug

gested by installations out in the open village: a big domed bake-oven at Eutresis, an oven or kiln and possibly a metal foundry at Lerna, a professional smith's shanty at Malthi (or is it Mycenaean?) with a collection of scrap-metal and broken bits for odd jobs. In less specialized households there is at least a certain neat routine for arranging the basically agricul tural domestic economy, as though village institutions had been fixed by long experience and a conventional turn of mind. The tools used are pathetic. The peasants rely on flint, a little obsidian (less than in Early Bronze, being poorer sailors at first), and stag antlers. A few metal weapons turn

up in the graves, but nothing to match Early Helladic even without graves. One feels that the Minyans had only recently emerged from a real Neolithic stage, and that although they

were clever at pottery they were at this point still behind in other techniques of civilization. They learned from those they


James Wiseman 703

had conquered or displaced, and by the middle of the period their own formal pottery tradition has been modified by other styles.

By its very scope the book exposes its author to numerous at tacks on detail, especially when dealing with the four most con troversial topics in pre-classical studies: the arrival of the Greeks in Greece, the Greeks in Crete, the Trojan War and, finally, the so-called Dorian invasion. It is on precisely these topics that

Vermeule is least forceful, though she does discuss them at some

length. This, however, is perhaps not so curious. There is so

much that we do not know that it would be closer to folly than honesty and valour to say, "This is the way it was." Still, because of the widespread and justifiable interest in them, these topics deserve the special consideration they receive in Greece in the Bronze Age, and they deserve it here.

The Coming of the Greeks

The Middle Bronze Age on the mainland of Greece (Middle Helladic = MH) begins about 1900 b.c. There are two chief types of pottery, now wheel-made, characteristic of this period:

Minyan ware, of which there are several varieties all having a characteristic

"soapy" feel, and Matt-painted ware, which ap pears slightly later than Minyan and has designs painted in dark, dull paint on a buff ground. It has been generally assumed that Minyan ware was brought into Greece by invaders and that those invaders were the first Greek speakers. The main reasons are as follows. (1) There is no break between MH and LH (=Mycenaean). More positively, a continuous cultural develop

ment can be detected from about 1900 on through the Myce naean period. Therefore, whoever the Mycenaeans were,

so

were the people of MH. (2) The Mycenaeans were Greeks, unless one prefers to accept neither the Linear B decipherment nor the archaeological evidence for cultural continuity from

Mycenaean to classical times. (3) There was an "invasion" ca. 1900 b.c., the evidence being mainly the difference in EH and

M H pottery types and the destruction level of several EH sites. (Asea, Malthi, Tiryns, Korakou, Zygouries, Aghios Kosmas,

Orchomenos, and Eutresis have all been alleged to show this break.3) (4) Greece was once inhabited by non-Greek speak ers. This is clear from the number of non-Greek words brought over into Greek for place names, some trees, birds and even a

few personal names surviving in mythology. Among the most distinctive are words with the suffix (possessive or locative) -ssos or-nthos (Parnassos, Korinthos). Some of the pre-Greek toponyms occur in places where there is no known Neolithic,

mainly in the Cyclades: (e.g., Koressos on Keos, Apeiranthos on Naxos), thereby setting a probable upper limit, the beginning of



EH, for the arrival of the -ssos and -nthos pre-Greek suffix users.

In addition, there are a number of toponyms in the eastern

Aegean where users of Minyan pottery never lived, this piece of evidence supporting in yet another fashion the assumption that the pre-Greek names did not arise in MH. (5) Indo-Euro pean peoples seem to have been making their first great incur sions into the Middle East at about the same time.

The coincidence of the arrival of the Greeks with the begin ning of MH has been put forward in the past most strongly by A.J.B. Wace. Others, however, have urged that the Greeks ar rived at the beginning of the LH period (ca. 1580), notably V. Gordon Childe and Martin P. Nilsson. Leonard Palmer has recently revived this view, identifying the MH "invaders" as

Luvians.4 Palmer's Luvian theory has already been answered, but more will be said below about a possible break between MH and LH.

The excavations at Lerna on the Gulf of Argos have done ser rious damage to point (3) above. There is at Lerna no archaeol ogical break between EH III and MH I, but there was a definite break between EH II and EH III (ca 2200 b.c.). John L. Cas key, the excavator, identified the inhabitants of EH III as prob ably new people. And they clearly inhabited the site into the

MH period when Minyan ware was being used. Furthermore, wheel-made pottery appears in EH III. Caskey suggested we may have been hasty in recognizing the "break" between EH III and MH I as the time of invasion and suggested a reconsid eration of the evidence. After all, many of the sites were exca

vated long ago and the distinctions among EH pottery types are now clearer. Vermeule states

categorically that: "EH III was brought by new people who sometimes destroyed EH II sites and sometimes

merged into them without violence." But she

adds, rather tamely, "The EH III people had a culture which anticipated the Middle Helladic Age in some ways, (p.28) In fn. 1 to Chapter II she identifies "Asine, Tiryns, Zygouries, per haps Corinth, and Aghios Kosmas" as being burned at the end of EH II, while citing only Eutresis and Orchomenos (Central Greece) as sites burned at the end of EH III. This is by no means a full catalog of EH sites, but there is more evidence in the way of destruction levels to support a "break" at the end of EH II than EH III.

There are a number of possible inferences that can be drawn from all this. The Greeks arrived in 2200 instead of 1900. Greece was invaded by a second horde of pre-Greek people in 2200 and they, in turn, gave way to the Greeks in 1900 who now

appear to have proceeded far more peacefully than imag

ined. There was no one invasion, but a series of movements

(from Anatolia most likely) that began at least by 2200 and continued on into MH. The latter is by far the most reasonable


James Wiseman 705

and it is that which Vermeule adopts. We are gradually draw ing away from the naive notion that all periods end in mass in vasions of barbarians ("from the north") who roar in at once, pillaging, burning and conquering all in a short period of time. Such occasions have been rare in historic times. It is

mainly cus

tom, perhaps, and the use of labels of concenience, whether ac

tual dates or other designations (e.g., EH III, MH I), that per petuate these ideas. Such terms as EH I, II, III, unfortunately, are often taken to be definite cultural distinctions, though in fact they represent only the approximately chronological develop

ment of certain types of pottery. EH III and MH I seem to be even more

widely separated: there is a turn of a millenium in

volved by our reckoning and a letter and number are different. We should be careful not to regard our terms of convenience as more exact than they are or signifying more than they do. The reader can

easily misunderstand their meaning as M.I. Finley

apparently did, since he castigates Vermeule's use of the term

"Minyans," though incidentally, she states (p. 72) that the word was coined as an

"archaelogical label" by Schliemann.5 The arrival of the Greeks, however, even in small groups over

several centuries towards the beginning of the second millenium B.C., is debatable. While there seems solid evidence for not dat ing the Greeks later, the evidence for not dating them earlier is shaky. The beginnings of the Early Bronze Age indicate perhaps

more clearly than any other period the arrival of new people, and the time span of their arrival?better perhaps, arrivals?is tremend ous: from ca. 3200 in the Cyclades, to ca. 3000 in southern Greece, to perhaps as late as 2700 in Thessaly. Not only are the innova tions in this period numerous, which would justify a distinct "archaeological label," but a large number of new towns are

founded. In addition, there is some reason to believe that the

Cyclades were after all inhabited during the neolithic period. Ob sidian was certainly being taken from Melos and used on the

mainland throughout the long neolithic age there, unless there is some yet unknown mainland site (and we would allow Central

Europe and Anatolia) where there can be found obsidian like that from Melos and Nisyros which was used at all prehistoric sites in Greece from the neolithic on. The steatopygous figurines cut in island marble are the predecessors of the Early Cycladic (^EC) idols and further indications of an island neolithic. Finally, there has been only limited excavation in the Cyclades and the argu ment is therefore largely from silence. Perhaps Caskey's excava tions on Keos, from which some startling finds have already come,

will provide some new insight here. All this leads to the sugges tion that there is nothing inherently improbable in the pre-Greek names being even neolithic and that the Greeks first began to find their way into Greece even earlier than EH III. The people of the early bronze age in the Mediterranean were traders. On the main



land EH sites dot the littoral; in Attica there is hardly a promon tory or inlet from Marathon to Peiraieus that does not have EH remains.

And if there were Greeks arriving, they are unlikely to have been the

only ones. In one of the most sensible comments on

migrations available, Vermeule says (pp. 62-63): In the five thousand years between Nea Nikomedia and the Shaft Graves there were constant interplays among Greece,

Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, and Crete. There could not be enough radically alien languages to supply each moving people with a fresh tongue. The movements were bound to create many local members of one or two broad linguistic families, and resemblances among their vocabulary words are not archaeologically identifiable with invasions. There is a good chance that the -nthos/ssos terminations were dis seminated locally by distantly linked people. There is also a

possibility that some second-millennium names of this type in Anatolia came from Crete or Greece, instead of going toward them. By "pre-Greek" one does not, or should not, imply "non-Indo-European." In archaeological terms, the

Early Helladic people would then be genuine forerunners of the Mycenaeans, and would have racial affinities with the

Luvians who emerged into national identity half a millenium later under the Hittite empire.

But those who would maintain that there were Greeks on the mainland before the Mycenaean period must explain somehow what happened toward the beginning of the 16th century B.C.

(beginning of Mycenaean = LH), for there is increased prosper ity and there seems to be a marked difference in burial customs (maily cists and single burials in MH; shaft graves, chamber tombs

and tholoi with multiple burials in LH). Those, however, who argue for an invasion, even of a military minority that seized con,

trol, have a more difficult task: they must show us a land from which the invaders might have come that had not only shaft graves and tholoi, but megarons as well. There are some shaf tgrave burials in the East, but no tholoi and no Mycenaean palace archi tecture with its distinctive megaron.

Now it is a fact that there is no general destruction of MH sites, no identifiable "archaeological break" between MH and

LH. In this connection, Palmer quotes Schachermeyr on the mis

taken notion that "historical events are always reflected in the

archaeological records of stylistic phases. Many historical up heavals occurred without leaving such traces behind them." Palm er then goes on to say that "if the 'no break' fact is upheld, then the corollary of our equation of Luvian with the Middle Helladic invaders is that the Greek invaders of Late Helladic times were

culturally so inferior or so similar to the Luvians that their in trusion caused no discernible break in the archaeological record."


James Wiseman 707

This is a curious hypothesis. If they were so "similar," why postu late their existence at all? It was the differences between MH and

LH that those who propose invaders seek to explain. And if they were

"culturally so inferior," how shall we ever explain, (whether the invaders brought them or created them on the spot) the shaft graves, tholoi, palace architecture, the art of their tombs and palaces, etc.? They are certainly not the products of people cul turally inferior to those of MH.

Perhaps we're too economically oriented. We see the nearly in

credible wealth of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, the power and prosperity manifested in the architecture and trade of Mycenaean Greece, and then the comparative poverty of an MH site such as Malthi in Triphylia. "Speaking honestly," Vermeule says (p. 81), "there is nothing in the Middle Helladic world to prepare us for the furious splendor of the Shaft Graves." But what is there about prosperity that demands invaders who speak a different tongue? Or invaders at all? Cannot people expand their own trade in terests, make themselves wealthier than they were?

The end of MH and beginning of LH was a time of transition: there is nowhere any evidence of a sharp break. Pottery shapes and decoration show a continuous development. The form of the shaft grave is, after all, a deepened and elaborated cist, wealth and ancestral pride perhaps accounting for the finer burial gifts and, in part, for the multiple burials. The experimentation, or at least variety, that we find in burial types of this transitional period is significant for the changes underway. Tholos tombs themselves

we now know are not later creations than shaft graves, though they do appear later at Mycenae. At Osman Aga in Messenia by the Bay of Navarino a tholos has been found that contains both

MH and LH I pottery. The ultimate origin is still not clear; Spyridon Marinatos has suggested that the idea came from cham ber tombs that had been cut in a circular form as some found in Messenia. That may be so, but there is no good evidence that chamber tombs themselves are earlier and the influence may be the other way. Carl Biegen has long maintained that they were indigenous creations of the Mycenaeans (i.e., Greeks). Tholos tombs are difficult to hide, and yet not one has been found in Asia

Minor or, for that matter, anywhere outside Greek lands. The Early Minoan vaulted tombs of the Mesara Plain cannot serve as

prototypes: they are built above ground, on level earth and with wholly different structural principles. Besides, there is a time gap that would be difficult indeed to account for. As for the archi tecture, we are missing constructions of the early Mycenaean age but, nevertheless, the "shotgun" megaron arrangement, with inner

hearth and columns, is known on the Greek mainland as early as EH and even in the neolithic period at Otsaki Maghoula, Dimini and other sites in Thessaly. Perhaps we should attribute to My cenaean genius not just his prosperity and wide-spread power



(deduced, incidentally, from material remains), but also the cre ative forces behind some of the material remains themselves. The Cretan influence in art is clear and undeniable, but even here we allow the Mycenaeans to have had originality. Let us not be so

suspicious of Mycenaean talent; someone developed circular, corbelled underground architecture. The earliest known tholoi come from Greece. There is none extant or ever heard of that is not Greek. The same can be said of the megaron, of numerous

pottery shapes, of Cyclopaean masonry. The creators very likely were Greeks.

It is possible that during the transitional period MH III?LH I there were a number of new dynasties established. Whether they represent Greek princes and followers moving from stronger,

more populous centers to other areas or developments within each town itself we cannot be sure. Legend (e.g., the stories con cerning the descendants of Aeolos or Perseus) favors the former, but conquest need not be involved. (Inter-state marriage, for example, might have been partly responsible.) The occasional coming to power of an alien, as in the legends of Kadmos and

Pelops, even if proved, would not justify a theory of a large-scale foreign invasion at the beginning of LH I.

The Greeks at Knossos

"For centuries the Palace lay deserted except for the ghosts of its departed glory mournfully wandering down the empty

mouldering stairways, the silence broken only by the crash of falling column or block." (J. D. S. Pendlebury, A Hand book to the Palace of Minos, p. 36)

Other ghosts from Knossos still wander. They haunt every study of Minoan Crete and one wonders if they will ever be laid to rest. It isn't likely in the immediate future. Outdated terminology (LM II), outmoded theories (a Cretan political domination of main land Greece), the field notebooks of Evans and Mackenzie (which

may prove to be the most persistent ghosts of all) must be dealt with, if only to make present disputes and conflicts comprehen sible. And any clue that leads even part of the way out of the

labyrinthine theories involving Minos' kingdom is grasped at. Vermeule offers a theory in a sub-chapter, "The Fall of Knossos

and the International Scene," that attempts to get at the most difficult of the Cretan mysteries, the history of Knossos leading up the destruction of the palace (ca. 1400). This sub-chapter (pp. 136-155), understandably rather long, includes a carefully sketched analysis of some of the disputes along with pertinent observations as to what can be expected to reveal the most precise information. As much of the history of the academic dispute is omitted as possible, and perhaps more: it seems to me that


James Wiseman 709

Palmer's charges against the inaccuracies of Evans deserve rather

more space and more consideration than they receive.

Vermeule's theory, then, is developed within the context of a

carefully sketched, carefully guarded analysis so that a number of rather dramatic suggestions slip in almost as casual observations. She comments further on her theory just as casually in later chap ters. The theory itself is partly old, partly new and, I think, generally unacceptable as regards the most important issue: the nature of the Greek intrusion into Crete. Her chief points may be summarized as follows.

After the devastating earthquake of MM IIIB, the Knossians rebuilt their palace and, not long afterwards, entered a new ceramic phase, LM IA. Knossos already had established trade routes to the mainland of Greece, and Mycenae and Pylos "were probably regular ports of call." There may even have been mar

riages between the royal house of Knossos and some of the My cenaean

royalty. Certainly there was extensive trade and it was most likely through the Cretans, or at least with their information about ports, that the Mycenaeans began to send their articles of trade to Egypt and the Near East. As the LM IA pottery "matures," something happens at Knossos: some sections of the

palace are remodeled and "a new, more formal and symmetrical spirit pervaded the decorative arts." The changes were occasioned by the "few Greeks" who came to Knossos to live and, somehow, to govern. The LM I pottery had continued to develop and, at this same time, a handsome Marine style LM IB was developed, not as a separate chronological style but as a special class of LM IA. The Palace Style pottery that has been called LM II as if it were chronogically later than LM I and earlier than LM IIIA1, was "an expression of the Greek influence at Knossos." The ceramic style of the whole island develops apace from LM I through LM IIIA1 when not only the Palace of Minos was burned but also all the other major palaces. The only difference was that the other palaces did not have LM II (i.e., Palace Style) pottery in their storerooms and outlying buildings as Knossos had. It should be noted, as Vermeule points out, that LM II wasn't even

found in the palace at Knossos, but rather in "depots outside the proper limits of the palace, in houses, such as the Little Palace, refurbished during the Greek period, and tombs of the new

Warrior Grave type along the road to the harbor." The LM IIIA1 style reflects a blending of the Greek and Cretan decorative styles.

The "few Greeks" who came to Crete seem to have been a band of enterprising warriors with an especially able captain who made himself king at Knossos. The new ruler and his retainers did not interfere with tradition and religion; Crete continued to prosper and Knossos, with Greek masters, was its leader. These Greek

warriors were so fascinated by the niceties of Cretan civilization that they imposed little change. Their influences were generally



more subtle: "At the artisan level military fashions exert a new influence. The horse and chariot become popular on gems; the crested helmet, body armor, flange-hilted horned' sword and figure-of-eight shield, razors, and amber spread through the island, reaching the south at Phaistos and Hagia Triada." Knossos

was extremely wealthy and had regular trade relations with the major ports of the Mediterranean. During their control of Knossos, then, in the 15th century, the Greeks "were forced to supervise the administration" of that wealth. Under that compulsion the

Greek masters had Linear Script A, in use in Crete for about two generations, adapted to their own language. This new script, Linear B, was used only at Knossos where the Greeks had their headquarters, the records being kept (presumably) by Cretan scribes. It was not until after the fall of Knossos that this knowl edge was transferred to their ancestral homes on the Mainland. Some natural

catastrophe, perhaps an earthquake, occurred about 1400 causing great damage to the chief states of Crete. Main landers, outraged perhaps by some continuing commercial fric

tion, seized this opportunity to sail to Crete and burn Knossos and other sites. Vermeule does not indicate whether or not she thinks the "Greek warrior aristocracy" at Knossos joined their kin or aided their subjects.

There are a number of attractive aspects to this view of fif teenth century Crete. Most attractive is the rearrangement of the

pottery sequence: it is sensible and brings the ceramic history of Knossos into closer relationship with the rest of Crete. The idea of the Greeks as an alien minority at Knossos, though not new, is developed and more integrated into a general view of the Aegean world, and this will doubtless appeal to many. It could go some way towards explaining the mixture of influences in Minoan pot tery during this period.

But this concept of an alien minority, a ruling class of warriors, at Knossos is unconvincing. Some of the problems in this interpre tation are manifest even in Vermeule's presentation, for she is

vague as to how the foreigners could have gained this power, non commital about their ties to the mainland and apparently even somewhat confused as to whether the ruling class ought to be "a small group of Greek soldiers" (p. 146; cf. "a few Greeks at

Knossos," p. 239) or "an extensive warrior aristocracy." (p. 244) I find it difficult to understand also how her account of contem porary Egyptian documentation fits in with her view of the Knossos situation. We are told that to the Egyptians, "the Knossos

problem does not exist," that it was Minoans who were painted on the Egyptian tombs, but Mycenaeans who left their wares. How could the Egyptians not be aware of such a change in

government at Knossos? It was after all Greeks with whom they must deal at least on an official level now. The matter of the Linear B tables I also find rather puzzling. "Knossos has twenty


James Wiseman 711

times more of the Linear B tables than Hagia Triada has Linear A" (p. 240), yet Linear A was presumably the language of the people and Linear B was Greek. This state of affairs does not seem consonant with "a few Greeks" at Knossos. Most trouble some of all are her comments on the Greek rise to power. "There

may have been little sense of nationality' or race distinction in men's awareness then a man came from Mycenae or Sidon or

Knossos or Kition as a potential contributor to mixed communi ties, with recognition of his special background but no particular prejudice. If a Mycenaean captain of soldiers became "Minos" at Knossos, the event may have been experienced by Cretans as interesting rather than threatening, so long as traditions and re

ligion were not violated and the town continued prosperous." (p. 151). Now the first statement hardly leads to the second, but

there is still a greater objection. It seems to me politically naive to imagine that the Cretans would merely find "interesting" the oust ing of their government by an armed Greek force (whether or not they arrived in Crete with standards raised), the sudden domi nance of a Greek warrior aristocracy, and its control not only of their political organization but also of their economy (attested by the Linear B tablets). It is more likely that if the Greeks seized control of Knossos in the fifteenth century, they maintained it by force. The fall of Knossos could then be understood in terms of a revolt of the people leading to an island-wide war, probably in volving also troops from the Mainland. The victorious Greeks

would have maintained control of a subdued and less vital Crete. But none of the theories about Minoan Crete is wholly satisfy

ing. There is too much unsettled. The Linear B tablets may be LM IIIB, as Palmer claims, and that later period far more pros perous and important than we have imagined.

The Trojan War This is not the place to go over the evidence for Mycenaean relics in the Iliad, but it would be cowardly to avoid at least a statement of opinion. There are reflections of Mycenaean life and times in the Iliad and the a priori evidence is strong that Mycenaeans, perhaps from the Mainland but not necessarily so, did destroy the city on the Hellespont that is celebrated in the epic. If the Heroic epics were dealing at all with a real place and a real war, the "Trojan War" was fought about the mound at Hissarlik and the city destroyed was Troy Vila. It cannot be absolutely proved that Troy Vila was not destroyed by some catastrophe other than war or, if the conquest be accepted, that the conquerors were My cenaeans. Such absolute proof would require contemporary docu

ments?and even then, I suspect, there would be cries of "forgery." There are no such documents that refer to the destruction of Troy. What we must do is consider the available evidence and



draw the most reasonable conclusions. That those conclusions cannot be

"proved" does not mean that they are wrong. If the date of the fall of Troy Vila could be put close to 1200,

then it would be possible (but still not necessary) to postulate some unnamed northern invaders as the conquerors, for we know that the whole Mediterranean area was under pressure by various

bands of warriors at that time. They would then have fallen at about the same time as many of the Greek citadels. M. I. Finley proposes a raid by northern barbarians and suggests that the tale of Greek participation in the destruction of Troy grew out of Achaeans' joining a "marauding force of northerners, just as they had been part of the mercenary force engaged by the Libyans when they attacked Egypt in the reign of Merneptah (1220 B.C. or thereabouts)."7 But the date, it would seem should not be placed that late. And even if it were, it is not true (as Finley claims) that "the most economical hypothesis is that Troy Vila

was destroyed by, or in association with, the marauding northern invasions." (p. 5). The most "economical" hypothesis in fact

would be to take some account of the epic poems and tradition, at least accepting the names of the opposing forces.

Finley's arguments in favor of the northern invaders, and his

entertaining but irrelevant accounts of the development of "Le chanson de Roland," the "Nibelungenlied" and Slavic accounts of the Battle of Kossovo in 1389, have been discussed and, I feel, refuted by J. L. Caskey, G. S. Kirk and D. S. Page.8 The theory, of course, is certainly not revolutionary. It is pre-Schliemann and, as its main virtue, serves to remind us, should anyone forget, that

we have no absolute proof that Mycenaean Greeks fought a war

with Trojans about the mound at Hissarlik at the time of Troy Vila.

One of the most dangerous practices in archaeological research

is to accept too readily the conclusions of a field archaeologist about his site. It is almost as dangerous as rejecting his conclu sions out of hand. In the matter of dating the fall of Troy Vila the dilemma is an especially difficult one because the alternative

positions current are nearly as extreme as I have indicated. And

each position carries with it a wholly different set of implications. Now the date of the fall of Troy Vila depends on the date of

the pottery found in the destruction level. If one leaves aside for the moment the assigning of absolute dates to Mycenaean pottery

?and there are differing opinions here, too?the problem becomes one first of identifying the pottery as belonging to one style or

another, i.e., the style of LH IIIB or LH IIIC. There is also in volved the more difficult task of identifying the pottery as belong ing to an earlier or later phase of one of those styles. Considering that the excavator of Troy was Carl Biegen, who, along with

A. J. B. Wace, first set up the pottery sequence classification for


James Wiseman 713

prehistoric pottery, and that there is no one whose career in pre historic studies is longer or more distinguished, one would feel that his pottery identifications at least would be reliable. If there

were to be a debate on the date of the pottery, one would expect it to be over the date of a style, not over which style was found

where. Somewhat surprisingly, that is not the case.

In the final publications of the excavations at Troy, Biegen wrote that Troy Vila "was founded when the ceramic style Mycenaean IIIA was just being superseded by that of IIIB and the settlement was destroyed at a time when the style of My cenaean IIIB had not yet given way to that of Mycenaean IIIC."9

He then assigned a date of ca. 1240 to the fall of Troy. Since his work at Troy in the 1930's, Biegen has excavated the Mycenaean site of Pylos and, along with his fellow excavators, has restudied the pottery from Troy a number of times. Not surprisingly, his comments on the pottery styles of Troy have become more precise. As a result of these years of work, he has pushed the date of the fall of Troy further back in time. "Some fragments of imported

Mycenaean pottery and associated local imitations show that the settlement was in general contemporary with an early stage of

Furumark's ceramic style IIIB when pottery of IIIA had not yet ceased to exist."10 He now gives a date "in the decade around 1270 or 1260" for its destruction.11 Since he dates the destruction of Pylos at the very end of LH IIIB (ca. 1200), the date fits very

well into the traditional relative chronology: the Dorians and the Herakleidai had conquered the Peloponnesos by about 80 years after the fall of Troy, Pylos itself falling two genertaions after Nestor. Mylonas seems to suggest that Biegen redated the end of Troy Vila to make his date fit the tradition, assigning 2 genera tions of 30 years and 10 years more for the remainder of Nestor's

reign. I'm inclined to think it more likely that the date was moved mainly because of a heightened understanding of Mycenaean pottery, by re-examination of the pottery from Troy and through the opportunity Biegen had to compare pottery at first-hand from the destruction levels of Pylos and Troy. If the destruction of each occurred at about the same time, surely it would have been ap parent in the pottery.

Whether or not the later date is indicated in the pottery is precisely the problem. Biegen, as we have seen, has stated that the latest pottery from Troy Vila is early LH IIIB. George

Mylonas has argued that the pottery indicates that Troy Vila fell in the

"closing years of the LH IIIB period."12 He adds further that there was considerable local pottery imitating Mycenaean types, with designs "approaching the LH IIIC style." He explains this phenomenon by suggesting that local potters, no longer able to import Mycenaean pottery, continued to imitate them and, in simplifying the designs, anticipated the LH IIIC style. Vermeule says that the pottery belongs to the "transitional ceramic period



LH IIIB-C" and, along with "most observers, noting the presence IIIC sherds in the destruction level, would correlate the siege

with the new period of Greek strength just before 1200" (pp. 276-78 ). Carl Nylander cites Arne Furumark, whose monumental study of Mycenaean pottery is indispensible for work with pre classical pottery as the authority for there being no LH IIIA sherds illustrated in the finds from Troy Vila and that there were "a number" of LH IIIC sherds.13 To complete the circle, Caskey, one of the excavators at Troy, has stated unequivocally in a recent article that there were no LH IIIC sherds in Troy Vila.14

All these conflicting statements still do not limit the complexi ties of the problem. The life-span of Troy Vila and the ceramic nature of Troy VIIb-1, one might think, would prove someone

wrong. Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way. As for the longevity of Vila, the excavators stated that the period was short, perhaps lasting no longer than a generation. Mylonas does not accept this, pointing out that Blegen's excavations were among the remains that had been "built in the free passage along the fortification wall in a hurry and under duress" and that these remains

"represent only the final and closing phase of Troy Vila." Consequently, he feels that no valid conclusion can be based on the length of the life-span of Troy Vila, though he implies that he believes in a longer rather than shorter one. The point may be well-taken, but it leads us back to the disputed identification of pottery. Is LH IIIC pottery present or not? And what of the LH IIIA pottery? That certainly has to be explained away, es

pecially if we are to consider it also as belonging to the remains of the end or near-the-end of Troy Vila. Mylonas' explanation of the presence of LH IIIA pottery is forced. He points out that all such sherds are local imitations and goes on to suggest that, since there were no imported IIIA pots found, they "would only indi cate that the local potters were repeating patterns learned in the past, even by their fathers, and established in the traditional repertory of their trade." Perhaps its juxtaposition to his theory concerning the LH IIIC patterns that he and other scholars have recognized (above, p. 713) make this idea seem more curious than it is. Still, if we adopt these two theories with the under standing that most of the finds are from remains that belong to the end of Troy Vila, we must imagine Trojan potters, more or less simultaneously, imitating Ilia motives, which their fathers learned, while anticipating IIC motives by a simplification of

patterns that they find on the IIIB pottery they are importing. The position is possible to maintain, I suppose, and especially if we remember that one type of pottery does not go out of existence one day and a new one became fashionable the next. But while possible, it is still strained and uncomfortable.

And what of Troy VIIb-1? Biegen said, "we are dealing with an immediate reoccupation of the site by the survivors who somehow


James Wiseman 715

escaped the disaster that laid the citadel of Troy Vila in smolder ing ruins."16 Everyone seems to accept that. Biegen went on to

say that Troy VIIb-1 "comes in with, but does not outlast the Granary class of Mycenaean pottery." Mylonas and others have justifiably taken that statement to mean that LH IIIC pottery was in use when Troy VIIb-1 was founded. But now Biegen tells us that "the pottery and other products differ little, when at all, from those of Period Vila."17 That should mean LH IIIB pottery and, presumably, it should also mean that the IIIC pottery ap peared not at the beginning but rather later in Troy VIIb-1. Here we reach another impasse: Caskey has stated that the stratigraphy in VIIb-1 is insufficient to prove IIIC pottery early or late in the

period.18 Despite all the studies of Mycenaean pottery, the categories of

styles are not nearly as well defined as we would like to believe or as the handy tags?LH IIIA, B, C?imply. Continued study and stratigraphical observation are still producing changes of date and greater precision. The destruction of a number of houses at

Mycenae that Wace dated only to LH IIIB not many years ago, is now dated to early IIIB by his daughter.19 If she is correct this may even have some bearing on the date (i.e., early or late LH IIIB) of the pottery from Troy Vila.

The consensus, then, favors a date near 1200 for the fall of Troy Vila, but the reasons are not compelling. To accept that date we have to dismiss the LH IIIA pottery the excavators said they found; we need to find LH IIIC pottery (or anticipatory motives) they say were not there; we need to insist that the IIIB pottery is late and not early. Until there is a re-examination of the pottery by experts accepting the same general categories of style for

Mycenaean pottery, or until the categorical arrangement of My cenaean pottery becomes better understood (and accepted gen erally by those who would use it), we had better stick to Biegens early date.

If nothing comes of such a controversy except a date, one would hope that even the experts would be disappointed. Certainly no body else is going to care much. But the date does carry with it extensive implications. Our understanding of what went on in the

Aegean in the 13th century is affected. The date is fundamental to our opinions about how large a kernel of truth can be found in the Greek traditions concerning not only Troy but the following decades on the mainland as well. For one thing, if Troy Vila was sacked later in time than the citadels of Greece (as an LH IIIC date would necessitate), we must give up any concept of a "Trojan War" involving Greeks from the mainland. And though such a change would not affect our appreciation of the Iliad as a

work of art, it most certainly would affect our speculations con cerning its creation. More importantly, even if we place the fall of Troy at just before 1200 (with Mylonas and Vermeule, among


7l6 GREECE AND EARLY GREEKS

others), the current interpretations of mainland events become less understandable. Even Vermeule's view of the "end of the empire," which is close to that held by Mylonas and seems to me the most reasonable, makes better sense if we can have a couple of

generations for a decline in strength and the spread of most of the Mycenaean centers. And, of course, there is the matter of tradition

again: is there nothing in it all?

The End of the Empire "Alter the Trojan War Greece was in a state of constant

movement and was being settled in a way that left her no peace to grow strong again. For the return of the Greeks from Troy took many years and brought many innovations, and civil wars happened in most cities, from which people escaped to found new places. ... By the eightieth year after the war, the Dorians and the Herakleidai were in possession of the Peloponnesos." (Thucydides 1.12, Ver

meule's translation.) A. J. B. Wace for many years before his death maintained a

firm disbelief in the "Dorian Invasion" as the descent upon southern Greece by a horde of barbarians who brought with them the Dark Ages (i.e., the period between the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces and the rise of Orientalising pottery in the late 8th century B.C.). No one, after all, has ever found any

material trace of any Dorian at the end of the Mycenaean period. Vermeule comments (p. 279)!

No one knows what a Dorian looked like, what pots he made or how to trace him archaeologically except by lan guage. The innovations which used to be attributed to him ?iron, cremation, a new "spectacle" fibula, a broad sword

type, and Protogeometric pottery?are now understood as

changes from various sources which come mostly from the Near East through Mycenaeans in contact with other cul tures, and are most characteristic of regions the Dorians never reached. It seems safe to say that the Dorians were

not an important element of Greek society until the advanced twelfth century and are not primarily responsible for the

wave of destructions in the late thirteenth. That destruction, involving so many distant sites of the Mediterranean,

was a

complicated series of migrations and counter-attacks made

possible by expanding population and great technological advance in a milieu of extreme political insecurity and self interest.

Vermeule's ideas concerning the destruction of the Mycenaean citadels (pp. 264-79) are a further development of Wace's and

may be summarized as follows. About 1300 the Mycenaean states were entering the period of greatest strength and of widest trade


James Wiseman 717

relations. It is probably not coincidental that at just that time the numbers of the Sea Peoples mentioned in Egyptian and Hittite records increases. These mysterious mercenaries, doubtless made

up of many sea-faring peoples, almost certainly included My cenaeans. The Sea Peoples fought on both sides (Hittite and Egyptian) at the Battle of Kadesh, ca. 1286. It was after this battle and the withdrawal of the Egyptians from Syria that the Mycenaean expansion into the Levant was most marked. (This period of expansion would be an appropriate time, incidentally, for the Trojan War. Vermeule, however, as I indicated above, places it near the end of the century. )

About the middle of the century most of the Mycenaean states either build large fortification walls or refurbish those they have. It is also at this time that the first palaces are burned (Thebes and

Gla, according to Vermeule, though Mylonas dates the destruc tion later). From the time of this great wall building to the end of the century is the period of the most monumental constructions of pre-classical Greece, including the Treasury of Atreus and the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and the Treasury of Minyas at

Orchomenos. Underground fountains were constructed at Athens,

Tiryns and Mycenae before 1200 in obvious anticipation of siege. The great wealth of the Mycenaean states obtained by trade and

plunder, was, however, not enough to ensure the safety of the

people from each other. For, with no trace of foreign invaders before or after the burning of the citadels, the walls must have been built to protect Mycenaeans from Mycenaeans.

By the end of the century most of the citadels have been burned or abandoned while others (Athens, some of the islands) receive refugees and continue to prosper.

Then a second attack afflicts places still worth attacking; Mycenae is finally taken. Sites by the sea are generally abandoned and there is a progressive withdrawal to safer hill-villages. People continue to bury each other at the old centers, but there is no architecture left to see how they lived after 1150 B.C.

It was during this troubled time that the Dorians began making their way from the northwest into southern Greece. They would have come in bands, some across the Corinthian Gulf, others perhaps sailing along the west coast from Epirus. On occasion one group might have joined one Mycenaean force in its war on another or, again, acted independently. Their move to the south

was made feasible "when the Achaians and Sea Peoples had broken the older balances of power which offered stability to the mainland economy. They do not cause the fall of the Mycenaean empire; they profit by more general conditions which would have broken it up in any case." In short, the fall of the Mycenaean states was due to revolution and civil war. Other Greeks?the

Dorians?moved into what was a political and economic near



vacuum. They did not fill it, and it was centuries before a state of any considerable power or wealth was to exist again.

The older theory of a Dorian invasion that struck all the major Mycenaean sites in swift succession is still maintained by Carl Biegen, among others. "I have no real doubts," he says (according to Alsop), "about the Greeks' tradition of the Dorian invasion. It fits afi the facts as we know them, including the very important facts concerning the distribution of the Dorian and other Greek dialects in classical times. I could believe in one social revolution, at Mycenae for instance, or even in two social revolutions, at

Mycenae and Tiryns, which are so close together. But it isn't sen sible, in my opinion, to assume that all the Bronze Age kingdoms except Athens could have been destroyed by revolutions which broke out almost simultaneously, from one end of Greece to the other. Furthermore, the philologists who've been working on our Pylos tablets think they've found evidence of preparations for an invasion."20

One suspects that Blegen's comments were simplified somewhat by Alsop for the general reader. For one thing, so far as I know, no one has maintained that all the Bronze Age kingdoms (except Athens) were destroyed by revolutions. Wars among the My cenaean states, which are as established in Greek tradition as the Dorian invasion, are an important aspect of this theory. Fur ther, even if the interpretation of the war preparation tablets from Pylos is correct (and this is not yet proved), the general theory is not harmed. The new theory fits, in fact, even better with tradi tion (if this is an asset) by allowing both the internal wars and the Dorians.

The Dorians could have had, though, a somewhat greater hand in events than Vermeule and others are willing to allow. There is, after all, a Mycenaean fortification wall that was built across the Isthmus of Corinth about the middle of the LH IIIB period.21

About a mile of the wall has been found, running from the modern village of Isthmia to a ravine near the Sanctuary of Poseidon. There are towers projecting from the wall towards the north and east indicating that it was manned by Peloponnesians. Vermeule says of the wall that it "runs north-south behind the eastern har bor, apparently defending farmland from sea raiders." (p. 264) This simply won't work. Farmland on the Isthmus cannot be pro tected by a wall from sea-raiders because they could sail to a point on the coast behind the wall. In any case, it has nothing to do with a harbor and Vermeule's location of the wall 'hehind the eastern harbor" is mysterious. If she means Kenchreai, that is some two miles away, and the wall could hardly be described as "behind." Other explanations I have heard for the wall are equally unconvincing: a terrace wall (with towers!) or a fortification wall for a settlement. But there is no settlement on the "inside" of the

wall and the topography does not allow for an encircling wall.


James Wisema n 719

Oscar Broneer, who found the wall, has called it what it cer

tainly appears to be, part of a trans-Isthmian fortification wall. Broneer's imaginative hypothesis, based on Herodotos ix.26, of

an encounter at the wall between the Herakleidai and the Pel oponnesian forces, the withdrawal of the invaders, and their sub sequent return by sea, in separate bands, accords well with tradi tion and can be fitted into the general picture of internal warfare already sketched. We can imagine a threat from the north that

would be of sufficient magnitude to compel a temporary truce among warring Mycenaean states for the purpose of meeting com

mon foes. It would not be an isolated example, even for Greek states defending the Isthmus. War seems to have halted tem porarily in the Peloponnesos and another such trans-Isthmian wall was built in 279 B.C. under threat of a Gallic invasion. The "normal" state of hostilities was resumed once the threat had disappeared.

NOTES 1

Emily Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age. University of Chicago Press, 1964. Pp. xix and 406; vol. XLVIII. $10.00.

2 The New York Review of Books, Vol. II, No. 5 (April 16, 1964), pp. 7-8, and the exchange of letters between Alsop and Finley, ibid., Vol. II, No. 8 (May 28,1964), pp. 21-23. From the Silent Earth was published by Harper and Row, New York, 1964.

zE.g., Chester G. Starr, The Origins of Greek Civuizatkm (1961), p. 32. A number of these sites must now be removed from the list; cf.

J. L. Caskey, "The Early Helladic Period in the Argolid," Hesperia, XXIX ( 1961 ), pp. 299-301.

4 Mycenaeans and Minoans, pp. 226-49. I take George Mylonas'

article, "The Luvian Invasions of Crete," Hesperia, XXXI (1962), pp. 284-309, to be ample refutation of Palmer's theories concerning the

movements of Luvians into Greece and Crete.

s The New York Review of Books, Vol. IV, No. 3 (March 11, 1965), p. 7.

6 Palmer, op.cit., p. 247. 7 "The Trojan War," JHS, LXXXIV (1964), p. 6.

8 Caskey, "Archaeology and the Trojan War," pp. 9-11; Kirk, "The Character of the Tradition," p. 12-17; Page, "Homer and the Trojan

War," pp. 17-20, all in JHS, LXXXIV ( 1964). 9 Carl W. Biegen et al, Troy IV, ( 1958), p. 12 . 10 A Companion to Homer ( 1962), p. 379. 11 Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple, "The Mycenaean

Age," (1962) pp. 27-28.



12 "Priam's X Troy and the Date of its Fall," Hesperia, XXXIII

(1964), p. 363. is

"The Fall of Troy," Antiquity, XXXVII ( 1963), p. 7. 14

"Archaeology and the Trojan War," op. cit., p. 10. 15

"Priam's Troy," op. cit., pp. 363-66.

!? Troy IV, p. 142.

17A Companion to Homer, pp. 379-80.

18 "Archaeology and the Trojan War," op. cit., p. 11.

19 Elizabeth French, "Pottery Groups from Mycenae: A Summary," BSA, LVIII(1963),p. 50.

20 Alsop, op. cit., p. 133.

21 Oscar Broneer, "The Isthmus of Corinth at the End of the Bronze

Age," Atti del settimo congresso internazionale di archeologia cassica, I (1961), pp. 243-49.

3


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Issue Table of ContentsArion, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter, 1965), pp. 555-726Volume InformationFront MatterEditorial: Toujours En Acte [pp. 555-561]Ekphrasis: Lights in Santa Sophia, from Paul the Silentiary [pp. 563-581]The Innocence of Oedipus: The Philosophers on "Oedipus the King": II [pp. 582-611]Fifteen from Sappho [pp. 612-616]"Aeternum per Saecula Nomen", the Golden Bough and the Tragedy of History: Part I [pp. 617-657]"Hamartia" in the "Poetics" and Aristotle's Model of Failure [pp. 658-664]Three from Horace [pp. 665-667]The Dual Vision of the "Theogony" [pp. 668-699]Greece and Early Greeks [pp. 700-720]Autolycus X [p. 721-721]Back Matter

wiseman, james. greece and early greeks

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