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Chapter 2
Lecture One of Two
The Cultural Context of Classical
Myth
To Greek Society
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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.”
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GREEK GEOGRAPHY
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Greek Geography
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Mountainous
Mostly dry, non-arable land
Torrid, dry summers
Pockets of land that could support agriculture
Very little minerals
Rich in limestone, good clay, and marble
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NASA
Satellite View of Greece
Greece is mountainous with only a few pockets of arable land. Thessaly is
circled.
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Map II: Southern and Central Greece
Locate Boeotia, Attica, Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, and Elis, regions
where agriculture was sustainable.
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University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive
Figure 2.1 Athens
In the distance is Mt. Pentelicon, where marble was quarried (and still is).
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Greek Geography
• The Aegean Sea the greatest natural resource
– Maps of Greece
• Cycladic Islands and the Sporades
• Importance of trade and colonization
• Mountainous terrain encourage political
independence of cities and spawned myths of
city founders
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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
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GREEK HISTORY
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Greek History
– 7000 BC
7000–3000 BC
3000–1150 BC
Paleolithic
Neolithic
Bronze Age
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Greek History
3000–1600: Early/Middle Bronze Age
1600–1150: Mycenaean (Late Bronze) Age
1150–800: Dark Age
800–480: Archaic Period
480–323: Classical Period
323–30: Hellenistic Period
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Greek History
3000: Writing and Cities, Bronze
1600: Ascendancy of Mainland Greeks
1150: Sack and Collapse of Cities
800: Greek Alphabet
490-480: Persian Invasion of Greece
323: Death of Alexander the Great
30: Rome's Conquest of Egypt
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The Origins of the Greeks
EARLY/MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
(3000-1600 B.C.)
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Early/Middle Bronze Age
• Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC) peoples in
the Greek area not Greek
• Agricultural peoples mainly
• Worshipped goddesses of fertility
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Early/Middle Bronze Age
• 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
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Early/Middle Bronze Age
• Migration of a people, whom we call the IndoEuropeans – around 2100 BC.
• Were no doubt speaking an early form of
Greek.
– Indo-European is the basis for many world
languages today
• Language of the people they replaced still in
many place names and names for plants and
animals.
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Early/Middle Bronze Age
• Appear to be more warlike than aboriginal
peoples
• Society divided into
– (1) kings and priests
– (2) warriors
– (3) food producers
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Mycenaean Age
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
(1600-1150)
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The Late Bronze Age
• Known also as the Mycenaean Age.
• People called “Mycenaean” because that is
one of their main sites.
– They may have called themselves “Achaean”
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Deutsches Archaologisches
Institut, Athens
Figure 14.1 Lions Gate at Mycenae
For more images of Mycenae, click here.
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Late Bronze Age
• Mycenae taken over by Indo-Europeans in
1650 BC.
• Other Mycenaean sites: Thebes, Athens,
Orchomenus, Pylos
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Late Bronze Age
• Ruled by powerful and rich warrior kings.
• Perhaps the Mycenaean destroyed the
Minoan sites on Crete in 1450.
– Impressed by Minoan art and culture
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Late Bronze Age
• Their writing system: Linear B (adapted from
Minoan Linear A).
– Translated in 1952; proved to be an early form of
Greek
– Does not record literature or myths, but consists
only of inventory records
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Late Bronze Age
• Great heroic legends of classical myth set in
this period.
• Historically related to a conflict with Troy in
about 1230.
– Were they Greeks or Hittites?
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THE DARK AGE
(1150-800)
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The Dark Age
• 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 modernday Turkey
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The Dark Age
• Social disorganization, depopulation and
impoverishment.
• Petty kings and small dominions.
– Families and small villages
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The Dark Age
• 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
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THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
(800-480)
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The Archaic Period
• Invention of the Greek alphabet.
• Includes symbols for vowels, not just
consonants.
• Colonization from Euboea to southern Italy
and Sicily.
• A cultural revival.
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The Archaic Period
• The Greek polis.
– People identified themselves geographically and
not just by family ties
– “Citizenship”
– Competitiveness encouraged, not so much
cooperation
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The Archaic Period
• 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.
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Figure 2.2 Papyrus
All ancient Greek literature was
originally recorded on papyrus. The
Greek alphabet, adapted from earlier
forms of writing, was the first time a
writing system aspired to be a
complete acoustic map of a spoken
language, including not just the
consonants and syllables of words, but
also their vowels. Our own "alphabet,"
whose name comes from the first two
letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha
beta), is only a slightly modified
version of the Greek alphabet.
From “The Wisconsin Papyri,” no. 76, vol. 1, no. 10, 468
AD. University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive
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The Archaic Period
• 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
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The Archaic Period
• 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
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THE CLASSICAL PERIOD
(480-323)
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The Classical Period
• 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
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York
Figure 2.3 A Greek Hoplite and a Persian
The Greeks were better equipped for hand-to-hand combat.
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Frank Miller's 300
PERSPECTIVE 2
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Perspective 2
• 300.
• The story of the Battle at Thermopylae in 480.
• Even today seen by some to be a metaphor for
the struggle of the West against "barbarism."
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The Classical Period
• 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.
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University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive
Figure 2.4 Sparta
Mt. Taygetus towers over the modern village of Sparta. In antiquity
Sparta was only a string of small villages.
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The Classical Period
• 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.
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The Classical Period
• 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.
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THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD
(323-30)
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The Hellenistic Period
• 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.
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The Hellenistic Period
• Finally pacified in 30 BC with the conquest of
Egypt, by then a Greek dynasty.
• 30 BC the beginning of the Roman period and
the end of Greek “independence.”
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End
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