The
400 years in Greek history after the fall of the Mycenaeans is often
called the "Dark Ages." It was indeed an illiterate time
which was backward when compared with the great bronze age civilizations,
the Mycenaeans and Minoans.
However,
this was the time of Homer and the evolution of the great epic poems,
The
Iliad
and The Odyssey. It was also the formative time of the later classical
Greek civilization. The later Greeks believed that the poems were
written by one man, Homer. Historians today are divided on whether
there was one or many authors, but it is clear that the poem, through
its many tellings, was modified over the years.
The
Iliad and Odyssey came out of centuries of oral poetry, in which
bards composed and recited complex and long passages. They and their
audiences believed that they were reciting history, tales which
actually happened. None of it was written down, for there was no
written language. This meant that there was not as much flexibility
for Homer as there was for later epic poets such as Vergil, who
composed the great Roman epic, the Aeneid.
Because
the poetry was orally transmitted, the subject matter was limited
- Greece's heroic past, and the language was stylized. When writing
eventually came back to Greece, the poems were written down for
the first time. Most of the oral poetry never made it into written
language, but these two poems were special to the Greeks.
There
were many heroic themes of the oral epics, but the most popular
was the story of the Trojan War, the
Greek victory, and the return home of the heroes.
Return
to the Excavations at Mycenae
Part
of The Long-Haired Achaeans: the
Mycenaeans, a HistoryWiz exhibit |
