The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

Appendix One

to suppose that Aeolic arose from the cohabitation of North

Greek raiders with South Greek wives, concubines, and slaves.

The above scenario for the end of the Bronze Age in the

Aegean implies that all through the LH HI period, from the

fourteenth century to the twelfth, there were many Greek

speakers in Thessaly. Although more concentrated, they were

not necessarily more numerous than the South Greek speakers.

The raiders' success, ca. 1200 B.C., in terrorizing and ulti-

mately dislodging the South Greek speakers was more likely a

simple result of the advantage that sea-borne aggressors, all of

them adept as spear-throwing infantrymen, had over defend-

ers. A band of raiders could select a prey on which to pounce

and assemble enough ships to guarantee success. The chosen

place, no matter how well defended, would eventually have

succumbed. As we have seen, the palace at Pylos counted on at

least two hundred chariots; several thousand spear-throwing

marauders, arriving suddenly in sixty or eighty ships, would

have been a force sufficient to overwhelm whatever forces the

palace could muster.

The raids seem to have continued for as long as there were

places worth raiding. By the late twelfth century, however,

raiding no longer was worth the effort, and the pattern of ex-

ploitation changed. The Dorians, I would suggest, were North

Greek latecomers who, faute de mieux, had to content them-

selves with settling down in the despoiled land and with ex-

ploiting the helots who worked it.

The reconstruction here presented of the end of the Greek

Bronze Age has as its prerequisite the thesis that at the end of

the Late Helladic period, many—perhaps between a third and

a half—of the people in the best parts of central and southern

fling them into the sea to-morrow. The women are suitably tied up and
guarded. The old one who kept shrieking curses has been spiked with a
lance and tossed over a cliff. The wailing and sobbing of the rest will stop
in a day or two: if it torments you, you can easily move a few paces away
out of the sound. If it still rings in your ears, drink two more cups and you
will not mind it."

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