DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0036
LANDMARKS OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD 3
For whatever view we may take of the origin of the
Homeric poems, we assuredly cannot regard them GrounA of
as thrown off at a single projection, and that on thisdistru8t
the scene and at the time with which they are concerned.
The arena of the epics is mainly the Achaean world as it
was before the Dorian conqueror overthrew its dynasties and
absorbed or displaced its populations. It is Achaean princes,
ruling their little domains in European Greece or leading a
crusade against the East long before the Dorian has come
in or the Ionian has pushed out, that Homer celebrates.
But Homer himself, if we are to take the consensus of his-
torical Greece, was an Ionian of Asia Minor who lived as
late at least as the ninth century b. c.
Thus the poet would be far removed from his proper
scene in European Greece and separated by centuries from
the overthrow of the social order and the supplanting of
the civilization which are wrought into the very texture of
his work. No wonder the poet or poets, thought of as
working at this double disadvantage and without written
records to bridge over the interval, should have failed to
obtain full faith and credit. Under these conditions, it
would seem too much to expect a true picture of the old
Achaean order even in its main outlines; and to fill in those
outlines with minute detail and light up the whole with life
and color — keeping all the time in touch with historic
reality — would be a yet more inconceivable task.
Hence the Heroic Age has been commonly regarded as
lying beyond the range of historic inquiry, if not forever
buried in prehistoric darkness. The life described NewU ht
in the poems, regarded as a mirror of the poet's jje£jj? Age
own time, has been taken for the earliest known
stage of Greek civilization, the childhood of the race. Just
twenty years ago, however, through unlooked-for discover-
For whatever view we may take of the origin of the
Homeric poems, we assuredly cannot regard them GrounA of
as thrown off at a single projection, and that on thisdistru8t
the scene and at the time with which they are concerned.
The arena of the epics is mainly the Achaean world as it
was before the Dorian conqueror overthrew its dynasties and
absorbed or displaced its populations. It is Achaean princes,
ruling their little domains in European Greece or leading a
crusade against the East long before the Dorian has come
in or the Ionian has pushed out, that Homer celebrates.
But Homer himself, if we are to take the consensus of his-
torical Greece, was an Ionian of Asia Minor who lived as
late at least as the ninth century b. c.
Thus the poet would be far removed from his proper
scene in European Greece and separated by centuries from
the overthrow of the social order and the supplanting of
the civilization which are wrought into the very texture of
his work. No wonder the poet or poets, thought of as
working at this double disadvantage and without written
records to bridge over the interval, should have failed to
obtain full faith and credit. Under these conditions, it
would seem too much to expect a true picture of the old
Achaean order even in its main outlines; and to fill in those
outlines with minute detail and light up the whole with life
and color — keeping all the time in touch with historic
reality — would be a yet more inconceivable task.
Hence the Heroic Age has been commonly regarded as
lying beyond the range of historic inquiry, if not forever
buried in prehistoric darkness. The life described NewU ht
in the poems, regarded as a mirror of the poet's jje£jj? Age
own time, has been taken for the earliest known
stage of Greek civilization, the childhood of the race. Just
twenty years ago, however, through unlooked-for discover-