by Will Durant
The theory is illuminating, even if it must be substantially modified. Greek literature says nothing of an Achaean invasion; and it would not be wise to hang a rejection of so unanimous a tradition upon a gradual increase in the use of iron, a change in modes of burial or coiffure, a lengthening of swords or rounding of shields, or even a safety pin. It is more likely that the Achaeans, as all classic writers supposed, were a Greek tribe that, in its natural multiplication, expanded from Thessaly into the Peloponnesus during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, mingled their blood with the Pelasgo-Mycenaeans there, and, towards 1250 B.C., became the ruling class.4 Probably it was they who gave Greek to the Pelasgians, instead of receiving it from them. In such place names as Corinth and Tiryns, Parnassus and Olympia,* we may have echoes of a Creto-Pelasgo-Mycenaean tongue.5 In the same manner, presumably, the Achaeans superimposed their mountain and sky gods upon the “chthonic” or subterranean deities of the earlier population. For the rest there is no sharp line of separation between the Mycenaean culture and that later phase of it, the Achaean, which we find in Homer; the two ways of life seem to have mingled and melted into one. Slowly, as the amalgamation proceeded, Aegean civilization passed away, dying in the defeat of Troy, and Greek civilization began.
II. THE HEROIC LEGENDS
The legends of the Heroic Age suggest both the origins and the destinies of the Achaeans. We must not ignore these stories; for though a sanguinary fancy enlivens them, they may contain more history than we suppose; and they are so bound up with Greek poetry, drama, and art that we should be at a loss to understand these without them.†
Hittite inscriptions mention an Atarissyas as King of the Ahhijavas in the thirteenth century B.C.; he is probably Atreus, King of the Achaeans.6 In Greek story Zeus begat Tantalus, King of Phrygia,* who begat Pelops, who begat Atreus, who begat Agamemnon. Pelops, being exiled, came to Elis in the western Peloponnesus about 1283, and determined to marry Hippodameia, daughter of Oenomaus, Elis’ king. The east pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia still tells us the story of their courtship. The King made a practice to test his daughter’s suitors by competing with them in a chariot race: if the suitor won he would receive Hippodameia; if he lost he was put to death. Several suitors had tried, and had lost both race and life. To reduce the risks Pelops bribed the King’s charioteer, Myrtilus, to remove the linchpins from the royal chariot, and promised to share the kingdom with him if their plan succeeded. In the contest that ensued the King’s chariot broke down, and he was killed. Pelops married Hippodameia and ruled Elis, but instead of sharing the kingdom with Myrtilus he threw Myrtilus into the sea. As Myrtilus sank he laid an ominous curse upon Pelops and all his descendants.
Pelops’ daughter married Sthenelus, son of Perseus and King of Argos; the throne passed down to their son Eurystheus, and, after the latter’s death, to his uncle Atreus. Atreus’ sons Agamemnon and Menelaus married Clytaemnestra and Helen, daughters of King Tyndareus of Lacedaemon; and when Atreus and Tyndareus died, Agamemnon and Menelaus between them ruled all the eastern Peloponnesus from their respective capitals at Mycenae and Sparta. The Peloponnesus, or Island of Pelops, came to be called after their grandfather, whose descendants had quite forgotten the curse of Myrtilus.
Meanwhile the remainder of Greece was also busy with heroes, usually founding cities. In the fifteenth century before our era, said Greek tradition, the iniquity of the human race provoked Zeus to overwhelm it with a flood, from which one man, Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, alone were saved, in an ark or chest that came to rest on Mt. Parnassus. From Deucalion’s son Hellen had come all the Greek tribes, and their united name, Hellenes. Hellen was grandfather of Achaeus and Ion, who begot the Achaean and Ionian tribes, which, after many wanderings, peopled respectively the Peloponnesus and Attica. One of Ion’s descendants, Cecrops, with the help of the goddess Athena, founded (on a site whose acropolis had already been settled by Pelasgians) the city that was named after her, Athens.8 It was he, said the story, that gave civilization to Attica, instituted marriage, abolished bloody sacrifices, and taught his subjects to worship the Olympian gods—Zeus and Athena above the rest.
The descendants of Cecrops ruled Athens as kings. The fourth in line was Erechtheus, to whom the city, honoring him as a god, would later dedicate one of its loveliest temples. His grandson, Theseus, about 1250, merged the twelve demes or villages of Attica into one political unity, whose citizens, wherever they lived, were to be called Athenians; perhaps it was because of this historic synoikismos, or municipal cohabitation, that Athens, like Thebes and Mycenae, had a plural name. It was Theseus who brought order and power to Athens, ended the sacrifice of her children to Minos, and gave her people security on the roads by slaying the highwayman Procrustes, who had liked to stretch or cut the legs of his captives to make them fit his bed. After Theseus’ death Athens worshiped him, too, as a god. As late as 476, in the skeptical age of Pericles, the city brought the bones of Theseus from Scyros and deposited them as sacred relics in the temple of Theseus.
To the north, in Boeotia, a rival capital had equally stirring traditions, destined to become the very substance of Greek drama in the classic age. Late in the fourteenth century B.C. the Phoenician or Cretan or Egyptian prince Cadmus founded the city of Thebes at the meeting of the roads that cross Greece from east to west and from north to south, taught its people letters, and slew the dragon (perhaps an ancient phrase for an infecting or infesting organism) that hindered the settlers from using the waters of the Areian spring. From the dragon’s teeth, which Cadmus sowed in the earth, sprang armed men who, like the Greeks of history, attacked one another until only five survived; these five, said Thebes, were the founders of her royal families. The government established itself on a hill citadel called the Cadmeia, where in our own time a “palace of Cadmus” has been unearthed.* There, after Cadmus, reigned his son Polydorus, his grandson Labdacus, and his great-grandson Laius, whose son Oedipus, as all the world knows, slew his father and married his mother. When Oedipus died his sons quarreled over the scepter, as is the habit of princes. Eteocles drove out Polynices, who persuaded Adrastus, King of Argos, to attempt his restoration. Adrastus tried (ca. 1213), in the famous war of the Seven (Allies) against Thebes, and again sixteen years later in the war of the Epigoni, or sons of the Seven. This time both Eteocles and Polynices were killed, and Thebes was burned to the ground.
Among the Theban aristocrats was one Amphitryon, who had a charming wife, Alcmene. Her Zeus visited while Amphitryon was gone to the wars; and Heracles (Hercules) was their son.* Hera, who did not relish these jovial condescensions, sent two serpents to destroy the babe in the cradle; but the boy grasped one in each hand and strangled them both; therefore he was called Heracles, as having won glory through Hera. Linus, oldest name in the history of music, tried to teach the youth how to play and sing; but Heracles did not care for music, and slew Linus with the lyre. When he grew up—a clumsy, bibulous, gluttonous, kindly giant—he undertook to kill a lion that was ravaging the flocks of Amphitryon and Thespius. The latter, King of Thespiae, offered his home and his fifty daughters to Heracles, who rose to the occasion manfully.10 He slew the lion, and wore its skin as his garb. He married Megara, daughter of Creon of Thebes, and tried to settle down; but Hera sent a madness upon him, and unwittingly he killed his own children. He consulted the oracle at Delphi, and was instructed to go and live at Tiryns and serve Eurystheus, the Argive king, for twelve years; after which he would become an immortal god. He obeyed, and carried out for Eurystheus his famous twelve labors,† Released by the king, Heracles returned to Thebes. He performed many other exploits; he joined the Argonauts, sacked Troy, helped the gods to win their battle against the giants, freed Prometheus, brought Alcestis back to life, and, now and then, killed his own friends by accident. After his death he was worshiped as hero and god; and since he had had countless loves, many tribes claimed him as their progenitor.*
His sons made their home at Trachis in Thessaly; bu
t Eurystheus, fearing lest they depose him in revenge for the unnecessary labors that he had laid upon their father, ordered the Trachinian king to exile them from Greece. The Heracleidae (i.e., children of Heracles) found refuge in Athens; Eurystheus sent an army to attack them, but they defeated and killed him. When Atreus came against them with another force, Hyllus, one of the sons, offered to fight any of Atreus’ men in single combat, on condition that if he won, the Heracleidae should receive the kingdom of Mycenae; if he lost, the Heracleidae would depart and not return for fifty years, after which time their children were to receive Mycenae.12 He lost, and led his partisans into exile. Fifty years later a new generation of Heracleidae returned; it was they, not the Dorians, said Greek tradition, who, being resisted in their claims, conquered the Peloponnesus, and put an end to the Heroic Age.
If the tale of Pelops and his descendants suggests the Asia Minor origin of the Achaeans, the theme of their destiny is struck in the story of the Argonauts. Like so many of the legends that served as both the historical tradition and the popular fiction of the Greeks, it is an excellent narrative, with all the elements of adventure, exploration, war, love, mystery, and death woven into a fabric so rich that after the dramatists of Athens had almost worn it bare it was rewoven into a very passable epic, in Hellenistic days, by Apollonius of Rhodes. It begins in Boeotian Orchomenos on the harsh note of human sacrifice, like Agamemnon’s tragedy. Finding his land stricken with famine, King Athamas proposed to offer his son Phrixus to the gods. Phrixus learned of the plan and escaped from Orchomenos with his sister Helle, riding with her through the air on a ram with a golden fleece. But the ram was unsteady, and Helle fell off and was drowned in the strait which after her was called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached land and found his way to Colchis, at the farther end of the Black Sea; there he sacrificed the ram and hung up its fleece as an offering to Ares, god of war. Aietes, King of Colchis, set a sleepless dragon to watch the fleece, for an oracle had said that he should die if a stranger carried it off; and to better assure himself he decreed that all strangers coming to Colchis should be put to death. His daughter Medea, who loved strange men and ways, pitied the wayfarers who entered Colchis, and helped them to escape. Her father ordered her to be confined; but she fled to a sacred precinct near the sea, and lived there in bitter brooding till Jason found her wandering on the shore.
Some twenty years before (Greek chronologists said about 1245), Pelias, son of Poseidon, had usurped the throne of Aeson, King of Iolcus in Thessaly. Aeson’s infant son Jason had been hidden by friends, and had grown up in the woods to great strength and courage. One day he appeared in the market place, dressed in a leopard skin and armed with two spears, and demanded his kingdom. But he was simple as well as strong, and Pelias persuaded him to undertake a heavy task as the price of the throne—to recover the Golden Fleece. So Jason built the great ship Argo (the Swift), and called to the adventure the bravest spirits in Greece. Heracles came, with his beloved companion Hylas; and Peleus, father of Achilles; Theseus, Meleager, Orpheus, and the fleet-footed maiden Atalanta. As the vessel entered the Hellespont it was halted, seemingly by some force from Troy, for Heracles left the expedition to sack the city and kill its King Laomedon, and all his sons but Priam.
When, after many tribulations, the Argonauts reached their goal, they were warned by Medea of the death that awaited all strangers in Colchis. But Jason persisted; and Medea agreed to help him gain the Fleece if he would take her to Thessaly and keep her as his wife until he died. He pledged himself to her, captured the Fleece with her aid, and fled back to his ship with her and his men. Many of them were wounded, but Medea quickly healed them with roots and herbs. When Jason reached Iolcus he again asked for the kingdom, and Pelias again delayed. Then Medea, by the arts of a sorceress, deceived the daughters of Pelias into boiling him to death. Frightened by her magic powers, the people drove her and Jason from Iolcus, and debarred him forever from the throne.13 The rest belongs to Euripides.
A myth is often a bit of popular wisdom personified in poetic figures, as the story of Eden suggests the disillusionment of knowledge and the liabilities of love; legend is often a fragment of history swelling with new fictions as it rolls down the years. It is probable that in the generation before the historic siege of Troy the Greeks had tried to force their way through the Hellespont and open the Black Sea to colonization and trade; the story of the Argonauts may be the dramatized memory of that commercial exploration; and the “golden fleece” may refer to the woolen skins or cloths anciently used in northern Asia Minor to catch particles of gold carried down by the streams.14 A Greek settlement was actually made, about this time, on the island of Lemnós, not far from the Hellespont. The Black Sea proved inhospitable despite its propitiating name, and the fortress of Troy rose again after Heracles’ visitation to discourage adventures in the strait. But the Greeks did not forget; they would come again, a thousand ships instead of one; and on the plain of Ilion the Achaeans would destroy themselves to free the Hellespont.
III. HOMERIC CIVILIZATION
How shall we reconstruct the life of Achaean Greece (1300-1100 B.C.) out of the poetry of its legends? Our chief reliance must be upon Homer, who may never have existed, and whose epics are younger by at least three centuries than the Achaean Age. It is true that archeology has surprised the archeologists by making realities of Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Cnossus, and other cities described in the Iliad, and by exhuming a Mycenaean civilization strangely akin to that which spontaneously takes form between the lines of Homer; so that our inclination today is to accept as real the central characters of his fascinating tales. None the less, it is impossible to say how far the poems reflect the age in which the poet lived, rather than the age of which he writes. We shall merely ask, then, what did Greek tradition, as gathered together in Homer, conceive the Homeric Age to be? In any case we shall have a picture of Hellas in buoyant transit from the Aegean culture to the civilization of historic Greece.
1. Labor
The Achaeans (i.e., the Greeks of the Heroic Age) impress us as less civilized than the Mycenaeans who preceded them, and more civilized than the Dorians who followed them. They are above all physical—the men tall and powerful, the women ravishingly lovely in an unusually literal sense. Like the Romans a thousand years after them, the Achaeans look down upon literary culture as effeminate degeneration; they use writing under protest, and the only literature they know is the martial lay and unwritten song of the troubadour. If we believe Homer we must suppose that Zeus had realized in Achaean society the aspiration of the American poet who wrote that if he were God he would make all men strong, and all women beautiful, and would then himself become a man. Homeric Greece is kalligynaika15—it is a dream of fair women. The men too are handsome, with their long hair and their brave beards; the greatest gift that a man can give is to cut off his hair and lay it as an offering upon the funeral pyre of his friend.16 Nakedness is not yet cultivated; both sexes cover the body with a quadrangular garment folded over the shoulders, tied with a clasp pin, and reaching nearly to the knees; the women may add a veil or a girdle, and the men a loincloth—which, as dignity increases, will evolve into drawers and trousers. The well to do go in for costly robes, such as that which Priam brings humbly to Achilles in ransom for his son.17 The men are barelegged, the women bare-armed; both wear shoes or sandals outdoors, but are usually barefoot within. Both sexes wear jewelry, and the women and Paris anoint the body with “rose-scented oil.”18
How do these men and women live? Homer shows them to us tilling the soil, sniffing with pleasure the freshly turned dark earth, running their eyes with pride along the furrows they have ploughed so straight, winnowing the wheat, irrigating the fields, and banking up the streams against the winter floods;19 he makes us feel the despair of the peasant whose months of toil are washed out by “the torrent at the full that in swift course shatters the dykes, neither can the long line of mounds hold it in, nor the walls of the fruitful orchards stay its sudde
n coming.”20 The land is hard to farm, for much of it is mountain, or swamp, or deeply wooded hill; the villages are visited by wild beasts, and hunting is a necessity before it becomes a sport. The rich are great stockbreeders, raising cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and horses; one Erichthonius keeps three thousand brood mares with their foals.21 The poor eat fish and grain, occasionally vegetables; warriors and the rich rely upon great portions of roast meat; they breakfast on meat and wine. Odysseus and his swineherd eat, between them, a small roast pig for luncheon, and a third of a five-year-old hog for dinner.22 They have honey instead of sugar, meat fat instead of butter; instead of bread they eat cakes of grain, baked large and thin on a plate of iron or a hot stone. The diners do not recline, as the Athenians will do, but sit on chairs; not at a central table but along the walls, with little tables between the seats. There are no forks, spoons, or napkins, and only such knives as the guests may carry; eating is managed with the fingers.23 The staple drink, even among the poor and among children, is diluted wine.
The land is owned by the family or the clan, not by the individual; the father administers and controls it, but he cannot sell it.24 In the Iliad great tracts are called the King’s Commons or Demesne (temenos); in effect it belongs to the community, and in its fields any man may pasture his flocks. In the Odyssey these common lands are being divided, and sold to—or appropriated by—rich or strong individuals; the commons disappears in ancient Greece precisely as in modern England.25