The Coming of the Greeksupon thrusting-spears. But it is also possible that, like their
counterparts in Egypt, Mitanni, and India, Late Helladic char-
iot fighters were archers, armed with composite bows. And it
must be conceded that the tactics that had been employed by
the first generation of charioteers in Greece were not necessarily
the same as those in use at the end of the Late Helladic period.
That the chariot, however used, was of central importance
in Late Helladic Greece is obvious. Less obvious is the link
between the arrival of the chariot in Greece and the arrival of
Proto-Indo-European. The language and the vehicle arrived to-
gether. Wyatt has shown in detail that in early Greek (the Lin-
ear B tablets and the Homeric epics) the technical terms for the
parts of a chariot were all Indo-European words, derived from
"an Indo-European technical vocabulary." 42 Included here, of
course, are the more general vehicular terms, the Greek words
for wheel, yoke, and axle. That, however, is only the begin-
ning, and Wyatt focused his argument upon the words that are
specific to the light, spoked-wheel cart: the spoke, the felloe,
the nave, the cab, the rail, and the chariot itself in diverse
forms (the "carriage," the assembled chariot, the unassembled
chariot). For all of these objects the early Greeks had Indo-
European terms. As Wyatt has stated, "we may therefore con-
clude that the IE invaders of Greece knew the chariot when
they first entered Greece, and may assume that they arrived
with or on them." 43 Chariot warfare, along with "the Greeks,"
came to Greece ca. 1600 B.C.
The first charioteers at Mycenae were apparently the rulers
of a considerable state, possibly extending beyond the Argolid.
The clearest index of their position and power in the sixteenth
century, before a palace at either Mycenae or Tiryns was built,
is the enormous wealth of the shaft graves. The earliest of these
contained little besides the skeletons of very large men. By the
middle of the sixteenth century, however, the charioteers en-
- Wyatt, "The Indo-Europeanization of Greece," 104.
- Ibid., 107.
I/O