Lecture 3 - The Dark Ages part 2

Our topic today is the Dark Ages and the world of Homer.

Of course, you have as one of your reading assignments a problem that deals precisely with that question that asks the subordinate questions, was there a world, a real world, Homer's poems refer to.

If so, what world was it? Was it the world of the Mycenaean Bronze Age? Was it the world that succeeded that Bronze Age that we call the Dark Ages? Was it the world in which tradition says Homer himself lived that we think of as the transition to the classical, well first to the archaic and then to the classical period, the period in which we think about the dawn of the polis? That really is the question we are wrestling with, and of course behind it all is the idea, can we seek any historical information from Homer's poems at all? It would be a terrible blow to me and everybody else in the field if the answer was no.

because just about everything we have to say about this period between the Bronze Age and the emergence of the polis, most of it involves inferences from our understanding of what the Homeric poems tell us.

but I think we need to take a hard look at what we can do.

I thought it would be worthwhile reading a sentence each from the introductory paragraphs that we provide for you in the problem to show you the range of opinion that is pretty representative of what scholars think or have thought on the subject.

Moses Finley says, if then the world of Odysseus is to be placed in time as everything we know from the comparative study of heroic poetry says it must, the most likely centuries seem to be the tenth and the ninth, that is to say what we call the dark ages.

Anthony Andrews says, it may be that the epic tradition had at some stage used as a model for the army before Troy, an idealized version of some of those bands of colonists who settled the coast of Asia Minor in post-Mycenaean times.

If you look at the whole story that he tells, that really means quite soon after the fall of the Mycenaean world.

probably maybe a century earlier than what Finley suggests.

Then A.M. Snodgrass says, I offer this as a further argument against the existence of a historical Homeric society.

There isn't anything to be found is what Snodgrass says.

Ian Morris writes, the balance of probability seems to be in favor of a consistent basis to the society of the poems derived from Greece in the eighth century B.C., which would be at the end of the period we've been talking about, the transition to the world of the polis, Homer's own time when he lived and rose.

Finally, Barry Strauss says, ironically, the more Homer exaggerates, the more authentic he is as a representative of the Bronze Age.

So, what do we do? Well, all of these are learned and clever men, but I don't think that they're all equally right.

But what I should also report to you is that I think there is a widespread consensus among most people who study the subject.

That doesn't mean that consensus is correct, but not all of these opinions are shared by the same number, by no means, of scholars.

Some of them are far out.

I would say the one that says you can't learn anything from this is an outlier.

The notion that this is about the Mycenaean world is an outlier.

and then you get to, I would say the largest consensus is something like Finley's consensus, but people verging in both directions from that.

What you'll hear from me is essentially that consensus point of view.

It strikes me as being better supported than the others, but we really have to keep an open mind because in this prehistoric period, which really we still are in such a period, you have to be very modest about what you think you know about it.

Almost everything is inference and judgment and very little is anything that you want to call proof.

With those warnings, let me tell you sort of what I think most people think about this.

Our topic today is the Dark Ages and the world of Homer.

Of course, you have as one of your reading assignments a problem that deals precisely with that question that asks the subordinate questions, was there a world, a real world, Homer's poems refer to.

If so, what world was it? Was it the world of the Mycenaean Bronze Age? Was it the world that succeeded that Bronze Age that we call the Dark Ages? Was it the world in which tradition says Homer himself lived that we think of as the transition to the classical, well first to the archaic and then to the classical period, the period in which we think about the dawn of the polis? That really is the question we are wrestling with, and of course behind it all is the idea, can we seek any historical information from Homer's poems at all? It would be a terrible blow to me and everybody else in the field if the answer was no.

because just about everything we have to say about this period between the Bronze Age and the emergence of the polis, most of it involves inferences from our understanding of what the Homeric poems tell us.

but I think we need to take a hard look at what we can do.

I thought it would be worthwhile reading a sentence each from the introductory paragraphs that we provide for you in the problem to show you the range of opinion that is pretty representative of what scholars think or have thought on the subject.

Moses Finley says, if then the world of Odysseus is to be placed in time as everything we know from the comparative study of heroic poetry says it must, the most likely centuries seem to be the tenth and the ninth, that is to say what we call the dark ages.

Anthony Andrews says, it may be that the epic tradition had at some stage used as a model for the army before Troy, an idealized version of some of those bands of colonists who settled the coast of Asia Minor in post-Mycenaean times.

If you look at the whole story that he tells, that really means quite soon after the fall of the Mycenaean world.

probably maybe a century earlier than what Finley suggests.

Then A.M. Snodgrass says, I offer this as a further argument against the existence of a historical Homeric society.

There isn't anything to be found is what Snodgrass says.

Ian Morris writes, the balance of probability seems to be in favor of a consistent basis to the society of the poems derived from Greece in the eighth century B.C., which would be at the end of the period we've been talking about, the transition to the world of the polis, Homer's own time when he lived and rose.

Finally, Barry Strauss says, ironically, the more Homer exaggerates, the more authentic he is as a representative of the Bronze Age.

So, what do we do? Well, all of these are learned and clever men, but I don't think that they're all equally right.

But what I should also report to you is that I think there is a widespread consensus among most people who study the subject.

That doesn't mean that consensus is correct, but not all of these opinions are shared by the same number, by no means, of scholars.

Some of them are far out.

I would say the one that says you can't learn anything from this is an outlier.

The notion that this is about the Mycenaean world is an outlier.

and then you get to, I would say the largest consensus is something like Finley's consensus, but people verging in both directions from that.

What you'll hear from me is essentially that consensus point of view.

It strikes me as being better supported than the others, but we really have to keep an open mind because in this prehistoric period, which really we still are in such a period, you have to be very modest about what you think you know about it.

Almost everything is inference and judgment and very little is anything that you want to call proof.

With those warnings, let me tell you sort of what I think most people think about this.