Western Civilization

Other important activities occurred in the Dark Age

as well. Greece saw a revival of some trade and some

economic activity besides agriculture. Iron came into

use for the construction of weapons. And at some

point in the eighth centuryB.C.E., the Greeks adopted

the Phoenician alphabet to give themselves a new sys-

tem of writing. Near the very end of this Dark Age

appeared the work of Homer, who has come to be

viewed as one of the great poets of all time.

Homer and Homeric Greece

TheIliadand theOdyssey, the great epic poems of early

Greece, were based on stories that had been passed down

from generation to generation. It is generally assumed

that early in the eighth centuryB.C.E., Homer made use

of these oral traditions to compose theIliad, his epic of

the Trojan War. The war was sparked by Paris, a prince

of Troy, whose kidnapping of Helen, wife of the king of

the Greek state of Sparta, outraged all the Greeks. Under

the leadership of the Spartan king’s brother, Agamem-

non of Mycenae, the Greeks attacked Troy. Ten years

later, the Greeks finally won and sacked the city.

But theIliadis not so much the story of the war

itself as it is the tale of the Greek hero Achilles (uh-KIL-

eez) and how the “wrath of Achilles” led to disaster. As

is true of all great literature, theIliadabounds in uni-

versal lessons. Underlying them all is the clear message,

as one commentator has observed, that “men will still

come and go like the generations of leaves in the for-

est; that [man] will still be weak, and the gods strong

and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters

more than his achievement; that violence and reckless-

ness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on

the innocent as well as on the guilty.”^1

TheOdyssey, Homer’s other masterpiece, is an epic

romance that recounts the journeys of a Greek hero

named Odysseus (oh-DIS-see-us) after the fall of Troy

and his ultimate return to his wife. But there is a larger

vision here as well: the testing of the heroic stature of

Odysseus until, by both cunning and patience, he pre-

vails. In the course of this testing, the underlying moral

message is “that virtue is a better policy than vice.”^2

Although theIliadand theOdysseysupposedly deal

with the heroes of the Mycenaean age of the thirteenth

century B.C.E., many scholars believe that they really

describe the social conditions of the Dark Age. According

to the Homeric view, Greece was a society based on agri-

culture in which a landed warrior-aristocracy controlled

much wealth and exercised considerable power. Homer’s

world reflects the values of aristocratic heroes.

Homer’s Enduring Importance

This, of course, explains the importance of Homer to

later generations of Greeks. Homer did not so much

record history as make it. The Greeks regarded theIliad

and theOdysseyas authentic history recorded by one

poet, Homer. These masterpieces gave the Greeks an

idealized past with a cast of heroes and came to be

used as standard texts for the education of generations

of Greek males. As one Athenian stated, “My father

The Slaying of Hector.This

scene from a late fifth-century

B.C.E. Athenian vase depicts the

final battle between Achilles and

the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles

is shown lunging forward with his

spear to deliver the fatal blow to

the Trojan prince, a scene taken

from Homer’sIliad. TheIliadis

Homer’s masterpiece and was

important to later Greeks as a

means of teaching the

aristocratic values of courage

and honor.

ª

The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY

52 Chapter 3 The Civilization of the Greeks

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