1. Remnants of Mycenaean Epic?
Homer as History
Remnants of Mycenaean Epic?

2. Periodization Dark Age: ca. 1200-ca. 750 BCE
Sub-Mycenaean: ca BCE
Protogeometric: ca BCE
Geometric Greece: ca BCE (Homeric Epics, Iliad and Odyssey)
Archaic Period: ca. 750-ca. 480 BCE

3. Sub-Mycenaean Vase Kerameikos Cemetery (Athens)

4. Dark Age and Geometric Greece Post-Mycenaean World (1050-700 BCE)
Palace Centers Destroyed (ca BCE)
Colonization of Asia Minor Coast
Crete (cf. Odyssey, ; Cyprus)
Rudimentary Material Culture on Mainland
non-literate society based on villages
approximate 75% population decline (?)
disruption of trade, disappearance of imports

5. Post-Mycenaean Movements

6. Language Map of Post-Mycenaean World

7. Discontinuities with Mycenaean Past
Cremation instead of Inhumation
Introduction of Iron-Working (from Cyprus)
Emergence of Athens (embarkation point for colonizers; leader in proto-geometric pottery ca BCE; continuity of habitation (?); continuous series of graves in Kerameikos from sub-Mycenaean times)
Disappearance of Literacy: Iliad 6.168: “baleful signs” (semata lugra)
Oral Poetic Tradition and Dactylic Hexameter

8. Homer, Iliad 6.168
To slay him he withheld, for his soul had awe of that; but he sent him to Lycia, and gave him baneful tokens, engraving in a folded tablet many signs and deadly, and bade him show these to his own wife's father, that he might be slain.

9. Troy and Asia Minor

10. Troy
2004

11. Geometric panel
Trojan Horse

14. Geometric Amphora

15. Homeric Poems and Geometric Folk Memory of Bronze Age Greece
Iliad and Odyssey: conservative nature of oral epic poetry
Discovery: Milman Parry and Serbo-Croatian epic
Reappearance of Writing in Greece ca BCE: Homeric epic and a society in transition

16. Mycenaean Survivals in Homer
King is wanax, not basileus
King is chief judge, priest, and warlord
Place names of no importance in Geometric period (Iliad 2, “Catalogue of Ships”)
Palace-controlled society

17. Dark Age
Migrations

18. Homeric World

19. Anachronisms: Homeric World as Composite World
Spear is thrown in Homer; Myceneans used thrusting spear
Crete an Achaean island in Homer
Cremation in Homer; no mention of tholos tombs
Homer has no knowledge of palace bureaucracies (Linear B)
Iron used for tools and implements; importance of Boeotia

20. Who Was Homer? Does It Matter?
Historical Personage?: “Homer was a man’s name, not the Greek equivalent of “Anonymous”, and that is the one certain fact about him” ~ M.I. Finley, World of Odysseus, 15
Circularity of the Biographical Tradition (Lefkowitz); Homer=“he who weaves together”? (Vermeule)

21. Representation of Homer

22. Homeric Influences: Homeric Ethics and the Competitive Excellences of the Warrior (Aristoi)
Akhilleus as Model: Individual over Community? Glorification of War?
Aristocratic Privilege (cf. Thersites at Iliad )
Status and the Gift (Briseis in Iliad 1): zero-sum competition
Apthniton Kleos; Arete
Homer’s Authority:
Thucydides on Trojan War (1.9-11)
Athenian/Megarian War, ca. 600 BCE (Plutarch, Solon, 10)

23. Of many an isle, and of all Argos king. [Homer, Iliad 2.108]
Thucydides, 1.9.4
The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his account of the transmission of the scepter, he calls him
Of many an isle, and of all Argos king. [Homer, Iliad 2.108]
Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be many), but through the possession of a fleet.

24. Plutarch, Solon 10.1
Notwithstanding all this, the Megarians persisted in their opposition, and both sides inflicted and suffered many injuries in the war, so that finally they made the Spartans arbiters and judges of the strife. Accordingly, most writers say that the fame of Homer favored the contention of Solon; for after himself inserting a verse into the Catalogue of Ships, he read the passage at the trial thus:--
Ajax from Salamis brought twelve ships, And bringing, stationed them near the Athenian hosts.