Dorian invasion

Last updated

The Dorian invasion is a concept devised by historians of Ancient Greece to explain the replacement of pre-classical dialects and traditions in Southern Greece by the ones that prevailed in Classical Greece. The latter were named "Dorian" by the ancient Greek writers, after the Dorians, the historical population that spoke them.

Contents

Greek legend asserts that the Dorians took possession of the Peloponnese in an event called the Return of the Heracleidae (Ancient Greek : Ἐπιστροφὴ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν). Nineteenth-century Classical scholars saw in the legend a possibly real event they termed the Dorian invasion. The meaning of the concept has changed several times, as historians, philologists and archaeologists used it in attempts to explain the cultural discontinuities expressed in the data of their fields. The pattern of arrival of Dorian culture on certain islands in the Mediterranean, such as Crete, is also not well understood. The Dorians colonised a number of sites on Crete such as Lato. [1]

Despite nearly 200 years of investigation, the historicity of a mass migration of Dorians into Greece has never been established, and the origin of the Dorians remains unknown. Firm archeological evidence of such an invasion has not been established. Nonetheless, the pervasiveness of the Dorians in literature means that most historians do not reject the theory. [2] Some have linked them or their victims with the emergence of the equally mysterious Sea Peoples during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The meaning of the phrase "Dorian invasion" as an explanation for the cultural and economic breakdown after the Mycenaean period and into the Greek Dark Ages has become to some degree amorphous.

Return of the Heracleidae

Heracles and Athena, an Attic red-figure vase Athena Herakles Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2648.jpg
Heracles and Athena, an Attic red-figure vase

Classical tradition, as recorded for example in Herodotus, describes the "Return of the Heracleidae" (Ἐπιστροφὴ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν), the descendants of Heracles, who were exiled at his death and returned in later generations to reclaim the dominion that Heracles had held in the Peloponnese. The Heraclid leaders were the brothers Kresphontes and Temenos, as well as the twins Eurysthenes and Prokles, all descendants of Heracles. They divided most of the Peloponnese into three parts: Kresphontes took Messenia, Temenos the north-east, and the twins Laconia, thus becoming the first dual kings of Sparta. [3]

The Greece to which the tradition refers is the mythic one, now considered to be Mycenaean Greece. The details differ from one ancient author to another, the commonality being that a traditional ruling clan traced its legitimacy to Heracles.

The Greek words referring to the influx of the Dorians are katienai [4] and katerchesthai, literally "to descend", "come down" or "go down" or, less commonly, "be brought down". It means a descent from uplands to lowlands, or from earth to grave, or rushing down as a flood, or sweeping down as a wind, or those who have returned from exile by ship. This sweeping down upon the Peloponnesus invited the English translation "invasion".

There is a distinction between Heracleidae and Dorians. George Grote summarizes the relationship as follows: [5]

Herakles himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king Aegimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithae  ... Herakles defeated the Lapithae and slew their king Koronus; in return for which Aegimius assigned to his deliverers one third part of his whole territory and adopted Hyllus as his son.

After the death of Heracles, Hyllus (a Perseid) was driven from the state of Mycenae into exile by a dynastic rival, Eurystheus (another Perseid): [6]

After the death ... of Herakles, his son Hyllos and his other children were expelled and persecuted by Eurystheus ... Eurystheus invaded Attica, but perished in the attempt ... All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives ... with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only by the Herakleids ...

The Pelopid family now assumed power. The Heraclids "endeavored to recover the possessions from which they had been expelled" but were defeated by the Ionians at the Isthmus of Corinth. Hyllus staked peace for three generations against immediate reoccupation on a single combat and was killed by Echemus of Arcadia.

The Heracleidae now found it prudent to claim the Dorian land granted to Heracles: [5] "and from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion." Three generations later the Heracleidae with Dorian collusion occupied the Peloponnesus, an event Grote terms a "victorious invasion". [6]

The term "invasion"

6th-century BC cup from Laconia, the center of the classical Dorians, representing Nike, the goddess of victory, attending upon a Spartan warrior Rider BM B1.jpg
6th-century BC cup from Laconia, the center of the classical Dorians, representing Nike, the goddess of victory, attending upon a Spartan warrior

The first widespread use of the term "Dorian invasion" appears to date to the 1830s. A popular alternative was "Dorian migration". For example, in 1831 Thomas Keightley was using "Dorian migration" in Outline of History; by 1838 in The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy he was using "Dorian invasion".

Neither of those two words exactly fits the events, as they imply an incursion from outside a society to within; but the Dorians were not outside of either Greece or Greek society. William Mitford's History of Greece (1784–1810) [7] described a "Dorian conquest" followed by "a revolution in Peloponnesus so complete that, except in the rugged province of Arcadia, nothing remained unaltered". [8]

In 1824 Karl Otfried Müller's Die Dorier was published in German and was translated into English by Tufnel and Lewis for publication in 1830. They use such terms as "the Doric invasion" [9] and "the invasion of the Dorians" [10] to translate Müller's "die Einwanderung von den Doriern" (literally: "the immigration of the Dorians"), [11] which was quite a different concept.

On one level the Einwanderung meant no more than the Heraklidenzug, the return of the Heracleidae. However, Müller was also applying the sense of Völkerwanderung to it, which was being used of the Germanic migrations. Müller's approach was philological. In trying to explain the distribution of tribes and dialects he hypothesized that the aboriginal or Pelasgian population was Hellenic. His first paragraph of the Introduction asserts: [12]

The Dorians derived their origin [der Ursprung des dorischen Stammes] from those districts in which the Grecian nation bordered toward the north upon numerous and dissimilar races of barbarians. As to the tribes which dwelt beyond these borders we are indeed wholly destitute of information; nor is there the slightest trace of any memorial or tradition that the Greeks originally came from those quarters.

Müller goes on to propose that the original Pelasgian language was the common ancestor of Greek and Latin, [13] that it evolved into Proto-Greek and was corrupted in Macedon and Thessaly by invasions of Illyrians. This same pressure of Illyrians drove forth Greeks speaking Achaean (including Aeolian), Ionian, and finally Dorian in three diachronic waves, explaining the dialect distribution of Greek in classical times. [14]

Following this traditional view, the linguist Albert Thumb noticed that in the Peloponnesus and in the islands, where the Dorians established themselves, their dialect showed elements of the Arcadian dialect. This can be explained if the Dorians conquered a Pre-Doric population, which was pushed into the Arcadian mountains. Where the Dorians were a minority, there is a mixed dialect, as in Boeotia, or the Dorians adopted the existing dialect, as in Thessaly. [15] [16] To the Achaeans described by Homer belongs the Aeolic-Arcadian dialect in the whole of eastern Greece, with the exception of Attica, where the Ionians were confined. The contrasting belief that "Achaeans", as understood through Homer, is "a name without a country", an ethnos created in the Epic tradition, [17] has modern supporters among those who conclude that "Achaeans" were redefined in the 5th century BC, as contemporary speakers of Aeolic Greek. The Ionians must be considered the oldest first wave of the Greek migration. [18] [16]

In 1902, K. Paparigopoulos, calling the event the "Descent of the Heraclidae", stated that the Heraclidae came from Thessaly after being expelled by the Thessalians living in Epirus. [19]

Kretschmer's external Greeks

Toward the end of the 19th century the philologist Paul Kretschmer made a strong case that Pelasgian was a pre-Greek substrate, perhaps Anatolian, [20] taking up a classical theme of remnant populations existing in pockets among the Greek speakers, in mountainous and rural Arcadia and in inaccessible coasts of the far south. This view left Müller's proto-Greeks without a homeland, but Kretschmer did not substitute the Heracleidae or their Dorian allies from Macedon and Thessaly. Instead he removed the earliest Greeks to the trail leading from the plains of Asia, where he viewed the Proto-Indo-European language as having broken up about 2500 BC. Kretschmer suggested that somewhere between that Asian homeland and Greece a new cradle of the Greek tribes developed, from which Proto-Ionians at about 2000 BC, Proto-Achaeans at about 1600 BC and Dorians at about 1200 BC came to swoop down on an increasingly less aboriginal Greece as three waves of external Greeks. [21]

Kretschmer was confident that if the unknown homeland of the Greeks was not then known, archaeology would find it. The handbooks of Greek history from then on spoke of Greeks entering Greece. As late as 1956 J. B. Bury's History of Greece (3rd edition) wrote of an "invasion which brought the Greek language into Greece". Over that half-century Greek and Balkan archaeology united in an effort to locate the Dorians further north than Greece. The idea was combined with a view that the Sea Peoples were part of the same north-south migration about 1200 BC.

The weakness in this theory [22] is that it requires both an invaded Greece and an external area where Greek evolved and continued to evolve into dialects contemporaneously with the invaded Greece. However, although the invaded Greece was amply represented by evidence of all sorts, there was no evidence at all of the external homeland. Similarly, a clear Greek homeland for the Sea Peoples failed to materialize. Retaining Müller's three waves and Kretschmer's Pelasgian pockets the scholars continued to search for the Dorians in other quarters. Müller's common ancestor of Greek and Latin had vanished by 1950; and by 1960, although still given lip service, the concept of Greek developing outside of Greece was in decline. [23]

Greek origin in Greece

A map of Greek dialects after the event or events termed "the Dorian invasion". Before this, the dialect spoken in the later Dorian range (except for Doris itself) is believed to have been Achaean, from which Arcadocypriot and Aeolic descended. Doric displaced Achaean in southern Greece. AncientGreekDialects (Woodard) en.svg
A map of Greek dialects after the event or events termed "the Dorian invasion". Before this, the dialect spoken in the later Dorian range (except for Doris itself) is believed to have been Achaean, from which Arcadocypriot and Aeolic descended. Doric displaced Achaean in southern Greece.

Additional progress in the search for the Dorian invasion resulted from the decipherment of Linear B inscriptions. The language of the Linear B texts is an early form of Greek now known as Mycenaean Greek. Comparing it with the later Greek dialects scholars could trace the development of the dialects from the earlier Mycenaean. For example, classical Greek anak-s (ἄναξ), "king", was postulated to be derived from a reconstructed form *wanak- (ϝάναξ). In the Linear B texts appears the form 𐀷𐀩𐀏, wa-na-ka, sometimes accompanied by the 𐀷𐀀𐀭, wa-na-sa (ϝάνασσα, "queen").

Ernst Risch lost no time in proposing that there was never more than one migration, which brought Proto-Greek into Greece. Proto-Greek is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek and then dissimilated into dialects within Greece. [24] Meanwhile, the linguists closest to the decipherment were having doubts about the classification of Proto-Greek. John Chadwick summarizing in 1976 wrote: [25]

Let us therefore explore the alternative view. This hypothesis is that the Greek language did not exist before the twentieth century B.C., but was formed in Greece by the mixture of an indigenous population with invaders who spoke another language ... What this language was is a difficult question ... the exact stage reached in development at the time of the arrival is difficult to predict.

Vladimir I. Georgiev suggested that: [26]

The Proto-Greek region included Epirus, approximately up to Αυλών[Aulṓn, today Vlorë ] in the north including Paravaia, Tymphaia, Athamania, Dolopia, Amphilochia, and Acarnania, west and north Thessaly (Hestiaiotis, Perrhaibia, Tripolis, and Pieria), i.e. more or less the territory of contemporary northwestern Greece

In another ten years the "alternative view" was becoming the standard one. J. P. Mallory wrote in 1989 concerning the various hypotheses of Proto-Greek that had been put forward since the decipherment: [27]

Reconciliation of all these different theories seems out of the question ... the current state of our knowledge of the Greek dialects can accommodate Indo-Europeans entering Greece at any time between 2200 and 1600 BC to emerge later as Greek speakers.

By the end of the 20th century the concept of an invasion by external Greek speakers had ceased to be the mainstream view (although still asserted by a minority); thus Geoffrey Horrocks writes: [28]

Greek is now widely believed to be the product of contact between Indo-European immigrants and the speakers of the indigenous languages of the Balkan peninsula beginning c. 2,000 B.C.

If the different dialects had developed within Greece no subsequent invasions would be required to explain their presence.

Destruction at the end of Mycenaean IIIB

A record of Pylos, preserved by baking in the fire that destroyed the palace about 1200 BC, according to the excavator, Carl Blegen. The record must date to about 1200 BC, as the unbaked clay, used mainly for diurnal or other short-term records, would soon have disintegrated. NAMA Linear B tablet of Pylos.jpg
A record of Pylos, preserved by baking in the fire that destroyed the palace about 1200 BC, according to the excavator, Carl Blegen. The record must date to about 1200 BC, as the unbaked clay, used mainly for diurnal or other short-term records, would soon have disintegrated.

Meanwhile, the archaeologists were encountering what appeared to be a wave of destruction of Mycenaean palaces. Indeed, the Pylos tablets recorded the dispatch of "coast-watchers", to be followed not long after by the burning of the palace, presumably by invaders from the sea. Carl Blegen wrote: [29]

The telltale track of the Dorians must be recognized in the fire-scarred ruins of all the great palaces and the more important towns which ... were blotted out at the end of Mycenaean IIIB.

Blegen follows Furumark [30] in dating Mycenaean IIIB to 1300–1230 BC. Blegen himself dated the Dorian invasion to 1200 BC.

A destruction by Dorians has its own problems (as discussed in the next section) and is not the only possible explanation. At approximately this time Hittite power in Anatolia collapsed with the destruction of their capital Hattusa, and the late 19th and the 20th dynasties of Egypt suffered invasions of the Sea Peoples. A theory, reported for instance by Thomas and Conant, attributes the ruin of the Peloponnese to the Sea Peoples: [31]

Evidence on the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean kingdom of Pylos describing the dispatch of rowers and watchers to the coast, for instance, may well date to the time that the Egyptian pharaoh was expecting the arrival of foes.

The identity of the foes remained a question. The evidence suggests that some of the Sea Peoples may have been Greek. However, most of the destroyed Mycenaean sites are far from the sea, and the expedition against Troy at the end of this period shows that the sea was safe. Desborough believes that the sea was safe in central and south Aegean in this period. [32]

Michael Wood suggests relying on tradition, especially that of Thucydides: [33]

[L]et us not forget the legends, at least as models for what might have happened. They tell us of constant rivalries with the royal clans of the Heroic Age – Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Aigisthes, and so on ...

In summary, it is possible that the Mycenaean world disintegrated through "feuding clans of the great royal families". [33] The possibility of some sort of internal struggle had long been under consideration. John Chadwick, after following and critiquing the development of different views, in 1976 settled on a theory of his own: [34] There was no Dorian invasion. The palaces were destroyed by Dorians who had been in the Peloponnese all along as a subservient lower class (Linear B: 𐀈𐀁𐀫, do-e-ro, "male slave"; latter Greek form: δοῦλος), [35] and now were staging a revolution. Chadwick espoused the view that northern Greek was the more conservative language, and proposed that southern Greek had developed under Minoan influence as a palace language.

Mylonas joins two of the previous possibilities. He believes that some developments in Argolis and attempts for recovery after 1200 BC, can be explained by an internal fighting, and by an enemy pressure, by the Dorians. Even if the Dorians were one of the causes of the Bronze age collapse, there is evidence that they brought with them some new elements of culture. It seems that the Doric clans moved southward gradually over a number of years, and they devastated the territory, until they managed to establish themselves in the Mycenaean centres. [32]

Invasion or migration

The northern (to south) Dorian migration in H. G. Wells' The Outline of History (1920) Wells Hellenic races.png
The northern (to south) Dorian migration in H. G. Wells' The Outline of History (1920)

After the Greek Dark Ages, much of the population of the Peloponnese spoke Dorian, while the evidence of Linear B and literary traditions, such as the works of Homer, suggests that the population had spoken AchaeanMycenaean Greek – before. In addition, society in the Peloponnese had undergone a total change from states ruled by kings presiding over a palace economy to a caste system ruled by a Dorian master ethnos at Sparta.

According to the scholar H. Michell: [36] "If we assume that the Dorian invasion took place some time in the twelfth century, we certainly know nothing of them for the next hundred years." Blegen admitted that in the sub-Mycenaean period following 1200, "the whole area seems to have been sparsely populated or almost deserted." [29]

The problem is that there are no traces of any Dorians anywhere until the start of the Geometric period about 950 BC. This simple pottery decoration appears to be correlated with other changes in material culture, such as the introduction of iron weapons and alterations in burial practices, from Mycenaean group burials in tholos tombs to individual burials and cremation. These can certainly be associated with the historical Dorian settlers, such as those of Sparta in the 10th century BC. [36] However, they appear to have been general over all of Greece; moreover, the new weapons would not have been used in 1200 BC.

The scholars were now faced with the conundrum of an invasion at 1200 BC but a resettlement at 950 BC. One explanation is that the destruction of 1200 BC was not caused by them, and that the quasi-mythical return of the Heracleidae is to be associated with settlement at Sparta c. 950 BC. On the one hand, it is possible that the destruction of the Mycenaean centres was caused by the wandering of northern people (Dorian migration): destroying the palace of Iolcos (LH III C-1), the palace of Thebes (late LH III B), then crossing Isthmus of Corinth (end of LH III B) and destroying Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos, and returning northward. However, Pylos was destroyed by a sea-attack, the invaders left behind no traces of weapons or graves, and it cannot be proved that all the sites were destroyed about the same time. [37] It is also possible that the Doric clans moved southward gradually over a number of years, devastating the territory, until they managed to establish themselves in the Mycenaean centres. [38]

Closing the gap

Athenian proto-geometric pottery Amphora protogeometric BM A1123.jpg
Athenian proto-geometric pottery
Geometric pottery, Dorian Argos Horses manger Louvre A513.jpg
Geometric pottery, Dorian Argos

The quest for the Dorian invasion had begun as an attempt to explain the differences between Peloponnesian society depicted by Homer and the historical Dorians of classical Greece. The first scholars to work on the problem were historians researching the only resources available to them: the Greek legends. The philologists (later linguists) subsequently took up the challenge but in the end only brought the problem into sharper definition. Finally the archaeologists have inherited the issue. Perhaps some distinctively Dorian archaeological evidence will turn up or has turned up giving precise insight as to how and when Peloponnesian society changed so radically.

The historians had defined the Greek Dark Ages, a period of general decline, in this case the disappearance of the palace economy and with it law and order, loss of writing, diminishment of trade, decrease in population and abandonment of settlements (destroyed or undestroyed), metals starvation and loss of the fine arts or at least the diminution of their quality, evidenced especially in pottery. By its broadest definition the dark age lasted between 1200 and 750 BC, the start of the archaic or orientalizing period, when influence from the Middle East via the overseas colonies stimulated a recovery.

A dark age of poverty, low population and metals starvation is not compatible with the idea of great population movements of successful warriors wielding the latest military equipment sweeping into the Peloponnese and taking it over to rebuild civilization their way. This dark age consists of three periods of art and archaeology: sub-Mycenaean, Proto-geometric and Geometric. The most successful, the Geometric, seems to fit the Dorians better, but there is a gap, and this period is not localized to and did not begin in Dorian territory. It is more to be associated with Athens, an Ionian state.

Still, the Dorians did share in the Geometric period and therefore to find its origin might be perhaps to find the origin of the Dorians. The Geometric originated by clear transition from the Proto-geometric. The logical break in material culture is the start of the Proto-geometric at about 1050 BC, which leaves a gap of 150 years. The year 1050 BC offers nothing distinctively Dorian either, but if the Dorians were present in the Geometric, and they were not always in place as an unrecorded lower class, 1050 BC is most likely time of entry. Cartledge says humorously: [39]

It has of late become an acknowledged scandal that the Dorians, archaeologically speaking, do not exist. That is, there is no cultural trait surviving in the material record for the two centuries or so after 1200 which can be regarded as a peculiarly Dorian hallmark. Robbed of their patents for Geometric pottery, cremation burial, iron-working and, the unkindest prick of all, the humble straight pin, the hapless Dorians stand naked before their creator – or, some would say, inventor.

The question remains open to further investigation.

See also

Notes

  1. Hogan, C. Michael (10 January 2008). "Lato Hillfort". The Modern Antiquarian. Julian Cope.
  2. Lemos, I. S.; Lemos, L. C. A. I. S. (2002). The Protogeometric Aegean: The Archaeology of the Late Eleventh and Tenth Centuries BC. Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology. Oxford University Press. p. 191. ISBN   978-0-19-925344-9 . Retrieved 2021-04-28.
  3. Forrest, History of Sparta, p. 24.
  4. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (2007) [1940]. "κατεῖναι". Greek-English Lexicon. Medford: Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University.
  5. 1 2 George Grote, Greece Part I, Chapter XVIII, Section I: "Return of the Herakleids into Peloponnesus".
  6. 1 2 George Grote, Greece Chapter IV: "Heroic Legends : Exile of the Herakleids."
  7. Mitford's single-volume first edition came out in 1784 to be followed by a second edition containing Volumes I and II in 1789. The remainder of the initial 8-volume set was published by 1810. The third edition of 1821 had more volumes. Some 29 editions more followed. Mitford's work features marginal notes stating the ancient sources.
  8. Mitford, William (1823). The History of Greece. Vol. I. Boston: Timothy Bedlington and Charles Ewer, Cornhill. p. 197.
  9. Müller 1830 , p. 107.
  10. Müller 1830 , p. 97.
  11. Müller 1844 , p. 85.
  12. Müller 1830 , p. 1.
  13. Müller 1830 , pp. 6–7.
  14. Müller 1830 , pp. 11–19.
  15. Thumb, A. (1932). Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (in German).
  16. 1 2 Nilsson, Martin. Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion (in German). Munich: C. F. Beck. p. 330.
  17. As William K. Prentice expressed this long-standing skepticism of a genuine Achaean ethnicity in the distant past, at the outset of his article "The Achaeans" (see Prentice 1929 , p. 206).
  18. Myres, J. L. (1930). Who were the Greeks?.
  19. Paparigopoulos, K. (1995) [first published 1902]. Ιστορια Ελληνικου Εθνουσ[History of the Greek Nation] (in Greek). Vol. 1 (Demotic Greek ed.). p. 189.
  20. Hall, Jonathan M. (2002). Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 40. ISBN   0-226-31329-8. Paul Kretschmer ... had pointed to elements in Greek vocabulary ... that appeared to be non-Hellenic, and therefore pre-Hellenic ... for example, the -nth- suffix in Tirynthos ... which Kretschmer believed had been transmitted to Greece from Anatolia.
  21. Drews 1988 , p. 8: "Paul Kretschmer concluded that there had been three Greek invasions of Greece during the Bronze Age. The last of these, ca. 1200 B.C., was surely the Dorian Invasion."
  22. A survey of the problems connected with the historicity of the "Dorian invasion" may be found in Hall, J. M. (2007). "Chapter 3". A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200–479 BCE. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. ISBN   0631226672.
  23. Drews 1993 , p. 63: "The old view – that the Dorian invasion proceeded from the central Balkans and that it occurred ca. 1200 – is now maintained by only a few archaeologists and against increasing evidence to the contrary."
  24. Risch, Ernst (1955). "Die Gliederung der griechischen Dialekte in neuer Sicht" [The structure of the Greek dialects from a new perspective]. Museum Helveticum (in German). 12: 61–75. The argument is summarized, and Risch is cited, in Drews 1988 , p. 39.
  25. Chadwick, John (1976). The Mycenaean World . Cambridge University Press. pp.  2–3. ISBN   0-521-21077-1.
  26. Georgiev, Vladimir Ivanov (1981). Introduction to the history of the Indo-European languages. Pub. House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. p. 156. ISBN   9789535172611.
  27. Mallory, J. P. (1991). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. New York: Thames and Hudson. p.  71. ISBN   0-500-27616-1.
  28. Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997). "Homer's Dialect". In Morris, Ian; Powell, Barry B. (eds.). A New Companion to Homer. Leiden, Boston: Brill. pp. 193–217. ISBN   90-04-09989-1.
  29. 1 2 Blegen, Carl (1967). "The Mycenaean Age: The Trojan War, the Dorian Invasion and Other Problems". Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple: First Series, 1961–1965. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 30. LC 67-14407..
  30. Furumark, Arne (1972). Mycenaean Pottery. Svenska institutet i Athen. ISBN   91-85086-03-7. This book, a pottery lookup reference, arranges pottery by stylistic groups, assigning relative dates correlated when possible to calendar dates, along with the evidence. It is the standard pottery reference for Mycenaean times.
  31. Thomas, Carol G.; Conant, Craig (2005). The Trojan War. Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Press. p. 18. ISBN   0-313-32526-X.
  32. 1 2 Mylonas 1966 , pp. 230, 231
  33. 1 2 Wood, Michael (1987). In Search of the Trojan War . New York: New American Library. pp.  251–252. ISBN   0-452-25960-6.
  34. Chadwick, John (1976). "Who were the Dorians?". Parola del Passato. 31: 103–117. Chadwick's point of view is summarized and critiqued in Drews 1988 , Appendix One: The End of the Bronze Age in Greece.
  35. "Palaeolexicon - The Linear B word ma-ka". www.palaeolexicon.com.
  36. 1 2 Michell, H. (1964). Sparta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 7.
  37. Mylonas, pp. 227, 228
  38. Mylonas, pp. 231, 232
  39. Cartledge, Paul (2002). Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300–362. Routledge. p. 68. ISBN   0-415-26276-3.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Achaeans (Homer)</span> Collective name of the Greeks in Homers poems

The Achaeans or Akhaians is one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorians</span> Ancient ethnic group of Greek people

The Dorians were one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Hellenes of Classical Greece divided themselves. They are almost always referred to as just "the Dorians", as they are called in the earliest literary mention of them in the Odyssey, where they already can be found inhabiting the island of Crete.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heracleidae</span> Descendants of Heracles

The Heracleidae or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles (Hercules), especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira. Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus. These Heraclids were a group of Dorian kings who conquered the Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae, Sparta and Argos; according to the literary tradition in Greek mythology, they claimed a right to rule through their ancestor. Since Karl Otfried Müller's Die Dorier, I. ch. 3, their rise to dominance has been associated with a "Dorian invasion". Though details of genealogy differ from one ancient author to another, the cultural significance of the mythic theme, that the descendants of Heracles, exiled after his death, returned some generations later to reclaim land that their ancestors had held in Mycenaean Greece, was to assert the primal legitimacy of a traditional ruling clan that traced its origin, thus its legitimacy, to Heracles.

In Greek mythology, Hyllus or Hyllas (Ὕλᾱς) was a son of Heracles and Deianira and the husband of Iole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Messene</span> Place in Greece

Messene, officially Ancient Messene, is a local community within the regional unit of Messenia in the region (perifereia) of Peloponnese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temenus</span>

In Greek mythology, Temenus was a son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Aristodemus.

In Greek legends, Procles was one of the Heracleidae, a great-great-great-grandson of Heracles, and a son of Aristodemus and Argia. His twin was Eurysthenes. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Procles married Anaxandra, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonoe, sister of his sister-in-law Lathria, and was the father of Soos and the grandfather of Eurypon, founder of the Eurypontid dynasty of the Kings of Sparta.

Eurysthenes was king of Sparta and one of the Heracleidae in Greek mythology. He was a son of Aristodemus and Argia, daughter of Autesion. He had a twin brother, Procles. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonoe, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, and was the father of his successor, Agis I, founder of the Agiad dynasty of the Kings of Sparta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doric Greek</span> Ancient Greek dialect

Doric or Dorian, also known as West Greek, was a group of Ancient Greek dialects; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. Doric was spoken in a vast area, including northern Greece, most of the Peloponnese, the southern Aegean, as well as the colonies of some of the aforementioned regions, in Cyrene, Magna Graecia, the Black Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona, Delphi, and Olympia, as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and Olympic Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ionians</span> One of the four major ancient Greek tribes

The Ionians were one of the four major tribes that the Greeks considered themselves to be divided into during the ancient period; the other three being the Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans. The Ionian dialect was one of the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and Aeolian dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Names of the Greeks</span> Ethnonyms for the Greeks

The Greeks have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is Hellen, pl. Hellenes (Ἕλληνες); the name Greeks was used by the ancient Romans and gradually entered the European languages through its use in Latin. The mythological patriarch Hellen is the named progenitor of the Greek peoples; his descendants the Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans and Ionians correspond to the main Greek tribes and to the main dialects spoken in Greece and Asia Minor (Anatolia).

The Proto-Ionians are the hypothetical earliest speakers of the Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek, chiefly in the works of Jean Faucounau. The relation of Ionic to the other Greek dialects has been subject to some debate. It is mostly grouped with Arcadocypriot as opposed to Doric, reflecting two waves of migration into Greece following the Proto-Greek period, but sometimes also as separate from Arcadocypriot on equal footing with Doric, suggesting three distinct waves of migration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Messenian War</span> War between Messenia and Sparta

The First Messenian War was a war between Messenia and Sparta. It began in 743 BC and ended in 724 BC, according to the dates given by Pausanias.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Sparta</span>

The history of Sparta describes the history of the ancient Doric Greek city-state known as Sparta from its beginning in the legendary period to its incorporation into the Achaean League under the late Roman Republic, as Allied State, in 146 BC, a period of roughly 1000 years. Since the Dorians were not the first to settle the valley of the Eurotas River in the Peloponnesus of Greece, the preceding Mycenaean and Stone Age periods are described as well. Sparta went on to become a district of modern Greece. Brief mention is made of events in the post-classical periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Achaea (ancient region)</span> Region in Greece

Achaea or Achaia is the northernmost region of the Peloponnese, occupying the coastal strip north of Arcadia. Its approximate boundaries is to the south of the mountain range of Erymanthus, to the south-east the range of Cyllene, to the east Sicyon, and to the west the Larissos river. Apart from the plain around Dyme, to the west, Achaea is generally a mountainous region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phocis (ancient region)</span> Region of Ancient Greece

Phocis was an ancient region in the central part of Ancient Greece, which included Delphi. A modern administrative unit, also called Phocis, is named after the ancient region, although the modern region is substantially larger than the ancient one.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Achaeans (tribe)</span> Inhabitants of the region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese

The Achaeans were one of the four major tribes into which Herodotus divided the Greeks, along with the Aeolians, Ionians and Dorians. They inhabited the region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese, and played an active role in the colonization of Italy, founding the city of Kroton. Unlike the other major tribes, the Achaeans did not have a separate dialect in the Classical period, instead using a form of Doric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron Age Greek migrations</span> Greek migrations (11th to 9th century BCE)

The Iron Age Greek migrations were effected by a population of émigrés from amidst the displacements and reconstruction that occurred in Greece proper from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 9th century BCE. The movements resulted in the settlement of the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Crete and the western coast of Asia Minor and the founding of new cities, which afterwards became centers of the Greek civilization. The migrations by various tribal groups were effected in consecutive waves known as the Aeolic, Ionian, Doric and Achaean (Arcadian) migrations. The movements differed from the Greek colonisation of the Archaic period in that they were more ad hoc affairs, rather than being the result of a planned process of colonisation on the part of the mother city. They are also less well-documented historically and in folk histories are often said to have been led by a mythologized or semi-legendary leader, such as Hercules or Orestes.