Conquest 71
years old when the son mentioned on it was born. In ordinary times, such a
presumption would be implausible. In a time of endemic warfare—the early
reaches of it a period of profound disorder—it is inconceivable. In the tale we
are told, there is evidently an important chronological gap.^18
Moreover, tradition held that in Laconia the town of Amyclae managed to
avoid destruction at the time of the original invasion. The early fifth-century
Theban poet Pindar appears to have regarded it as pre-Dorian, and there is
later literary evidence suggesting that it may at some point in this period have
had its own king. The archaeological record is consistent with the assumption
that what scholars call a sub-Mycenaean community survived the collapse of
Mycenaean civilization for some time in the vicinity of Amyclae, and it sug-
gests that, in the immediate aftermath of the Bronze Age, the population of
Laconia was elsewhere—except, for a time, at the coastal refuge Epidauros
Limera—exceedingly sparse.^19
Not until the second half of the tenth century are there any material re-
mains suggesting the presence of a settlement in the vicinity of the hill, mod-
est in height, that later served as the Spartan acropolis. In that very period
there is, for the first time, evidence near Amyclae and elsewhere for a sharp
change in material culture—with the sudden appearance of painted pottery
in a style, reflecting the invention of new techniques of production, radically
distinct from the style dominant at the end of the Mycenaean age. Tellingly,
this particular style of Proto-Geometric pottery closely resembles the ceramic
ware in use at this time in Aetolia and elsewhere in northwestern Greece
where the Dorians are said to have made their homes before they were in-
duced to cross the Corinthian Gulf.
From this, one might conclude that Laconia was subject to two invasions
—a violent assault by an unknown foe roughly two generations after the Tro-
jan War, and an infiltration of Dorians nearly two centuries thereafter—and
that in the legends these two incursions were telescoped and conflated, as often
happens with oral traditions. It is also possible, however, that there was only
one invasion and that some of the original invaders stayed on, not settling
down right away in any one place for the practice of agriculture, but tending
herds of cattle or flocks of sheep and goats like the transhumant Vlachs of a
much later age; moving back and forth seasonally between summer pastures
in northern Greece and the warmer climate of the southern Peloponnesus, as
the latter would do; and, like them, leaving nary a trace.^20
Students of ancient history should take Thucydides’ warning to heart.