More Important Topics of Cylinder

Trojan Cicle: since Leda (mother of helen) and the swan until end of the Trojan War. We have four Projection Cylinders devoted Troy: 1) Precedents 2) First 9 years 3) Tenth year of Wart and 4) Fall of Troy. Almost images in the cylinders belong to the classical greek art.

Topics on Cylinder

Greece, Zeus, Father of Gods and Men, Zeus in Cult, Leda and the Swan, Greek mythology, Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, Polydeuces, Theseus kidnap Helen, Castor and Pollux, Peleus and Thetis, Thetis, Peleo, Peleus, The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis, gods, Eris, Strife, Tethis dipped Achilles in the waters of the infernal river Styx, Achilles and Quiron, Paris, also known as Alexander, in the Ida Mount, Helen, Queen of Sparta, Trojan War, The Judgement of Paris, goddesses, Hera, Juno, Athena, Minerva, Aphrodite, Venus, Paris kidnap Helen, In Troy, Helen and Paris were married, Embassy to Priam, Agamenon and Menelaus, Mycenae, Aegean civilization, Weapons, Armors, Shields, Swords, To the left Mycenaean helmet, Greek soldiers, Aias, Greek, Of the Earth, or Ajax, king of Salamis, Achilles, Akhilleus Aiákidês, also transliterated as Achilleus, Akhilles, or Akhilleus, Achilles in the Trojan War, Troilus, Agamemnon and the death of Patroclus, Memnon, Cycnus, Penthesilea, the death of Achilles,The Argo,Argonauts, Homer, Micenic Ships.

Though he was the god of the sky and thunder, he was also the most supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity.

The various titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority: Olympios emphasized Zeus's kingship over both the gods and the Panhellenic festival at Olympia.

A related title was Panhellenios, ('Zeus of all the Hellenes') to whom Aeacus' famous temple on Aegina was dedicated.

As Xenios, Zeus was the patron of hospitality and guests, ready to avenge any wrong done to a stranger.

As Horkios, he was the keeper of oaths. Liars who were exposed were made to dedicate a statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary of Olympia.

As Agoraios, Zeus watched over business at the agora, and punished dishonest traders

Panhellenic Cults of Zeus

The major center at which all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia. The quadrennial festival there featured the famous Games. There was also an altar to Zeus made not of stone, but of ash - from the accumulated remains of many centuries' worth of animal victims immolated there.

Outside of the major inter-polis sanctuaries, there were certain modes of worshipping Zeus that were shared across the Greek world. Most of the above titles, for instance, could be found at any number of Greek temples from Asia Minor to Sicily. Certain modes of ritual were held in common as well: sacrificing a white animal over a raised altar, for instance.

On the other hand, certain cities had Zeus-cults that operated in markedly different ways.

Some Local Zeus-Cults

In addition to the Panhellenic titles and conceptions listed above, local cults maintained their own idiosyncratic ideas about the king of gods and men. A few examples are listed below.

Cretan Zeus

On Crete, Zeus was worshipped at a number of caves at Knossos, Ida and Palaikastro. The stories of Minos and Epimenides suggest that these caves were once used for incubatory divination by kings and priests. The dramatic setting of Plato's Laws is along the pilgrimage-route to one such site, emphasizing Cretan knowledge. On Crete, Zeus was represented in art as a long-haired youth rather than a mature adult, and hymned as ho megas kouros "the great youth". With the Kouretes, a band of ecstatic armed dancers, he presided over the rigorous military-athletic training and secret rites of the Cretan paideia.

Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia

Laconian kylix of the 6th century BC, showing Zeus Lykaios with an eagle.The title Lykaios is morphologically connected to lyke "brightness", and yet it looks a lot like lykos "wolf". This semantic ambiguity is reflected in the strange cult of Zeus Lykaios in the backwoods of Arcadia, where the god takes on both lucent and lupine features. On the one hand, he presides over Mt Lykaion ("the bright mountain") the tallest peak in Arcadia, and home to a precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast (Pausanias 8.38).

On the other hand, he is connected with Lycaon ("the wolf-man") whose ancient cannibalism was commemorated with bizarre, recurring rites. According to Plato (Republic 565d-e), a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every eight years to Zeus Lykaios, and a single morsel of human entrails would be intermingled with the animal's. Whoever ate the human flesh was said to turn into a wolf, and could only regain human form if he did not eat again of human flesh until the next eight-year cycle had ended.

Subterranean Zeus

Although etymology indicates that Zeus was originally a sky god, many Greek cities honored Zeuses who lived underground. Athenians and Sicilians honored Zeus Meilichios ("kindly" or "honeyed") while other cities had Zeus Chthonios ("earthy"), Katachthonios ("under-the-earth) and Plousios ("wealth-bringing"). These deities might be represented indifferently as snakes or men in visual art. They also received offerings of black animal victims sacrificed into sunken pits, as did chthonic deities like Persephone and Demeter, and also the heroes at their tombs. Olympian gods, by contrast, usually received white victims sacrificed upon raised altars.

In some cases, cities were not entirely sure whether the daimon to whom they sacrificed was a hero or an underground Zeus. Thus the shrine at Lebadaea in Boeotia might belong to the hero Trophonius or to Zeus Trephonius ("the nurturing"), depending on whether you believe Pausanias or Strabo. The hero Amphiaraus was honored as Zeus Amphiaraus at Oropus outside of Thebes, and the Spartans even had a shrine to Zeus Agamemnon.

Oracles of Zeus

Although most oracle sites were usually dedicated to Apollo, the heroes, or various or goddesses like Themis, a few oracular sites were dedicated to Zeus.

The Oracle at Dodona

The cult of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus, where there is evidence of religious activity from the 2nd millennium BC onward, centered around a sacred oak. When the Odyssey was composed (circa 750 BC), divination was done there by barefoot priests called Selloi, who lay on the ground and observed the rustling of the leaves and branches (Od. 14.326-7). By the time Herodotus wrote about Dodona, female priestesses called peleiades ("doves") had replaced the male priests.

Zeus' wife at Dodona was not Hera, but the goddess Dione — whose name is a feminine form of "Zeus". Her status as a titaness suggests to some that she may have been a more powerful pre-Hellenic deity, and perhaps the original occupant of the oracle.

The Oracle at Siwa

The oracle of Ammon at the oasis of Siwa in Libya did not lie within the bounds of the Greek world before Alexander's day, but it already loomed large in the Greek mind during the archaic era: Herodotus mentions consultations with Zeus Ammon in his account of the Persian War. Zeus Ammon was especially favored at Sparta, where a temple to him existed by the time of the Peloponnesian War (Pausanias 3.18).

Other Oracles of Zeus

The chthonic Zeuses (or heroes) Trophonius and Amphiaraus were both said to give oracles at the cult-sites.

Zeus and Foreign Gods

Zeus was equivalent to the Roman god Jupiter (from Jovis Pater or "Father Jove") and associated in the syncretic classical imagination with various other deities, such as the Egyptian Ammon and the Etruscan Tinia. He (along with Dionysus) absorbed the role of the chief Phrygian god Sabazios in the syncretic deity known in Rome as Sabazius.

Zeus in Myth

Cronus sired several children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, but swallowed them all as soon as they were born, since he had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own son as he had overthrown his own father. But when Zeus was about to be born, Rhea sought Uranus and Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Cronus would get his retribution for his acts against Uranus and his own children. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, handing Cronus a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed.

Rhea hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. According to varying versions of the story: He was then raised by Gaia.

He was raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, soldiers, or smaller gods danced, shouted and clapped their hands to make noise so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cry.

He was raised by a nymph named Adamanthea. Since Cronus ruled over the Earth, the heavens and the sea, she hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth, sea and sky and thus, invisible to his father.

He was raised by a nymph named Cynosura. In gratitude, Zeus placed her among the stars after her death.

He was raised by Melissa, who nursed him with goat-milk

Zeus becomes king of the gods

After reaching manhood, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge the other children in reverse order of swallowing: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, then the rest. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus' stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Gigantes, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes, from their dungeon in Tartarus; he killed their guard, Campe. As gratitude, the Cyclopes gave him thunder and the thunderbolt, or lightning, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Together, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, along with the Gigantes, Hecatonchires and Cyclopes overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. The Titans were then cast into a shadowy underworld region known as Tartarus.

After the battle with the Titans, Zeus shared the world with his elder brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus got the land, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the world of the shadows (the dead).

Gaia was upset at the way Zeus had treated the Titans, because they were her children. Soon after taking the throne as king of the gods, Zeus had to fight some of Gaia's other children, the monsters Typhon and Echidna.

He vanquished Typhon and trapped him under a mountain, but left Echidna and her children alive as challenges for future heroes.

The Joys of Married Life

Zeus was brother and husband of Hera. Their children were Hephaistos, Eileithyia, Hebe and Ares. Zeus is famous for his many extramarital affairs with various goddesses — notably Demeter, Latona, Dione and Maia — and mortal women — notably Semele, Io, Europa and Leda (for more details, see "Affairs" below), as well as many nymphs. His wife, Hera, was very jealous and consistently tried to harm Zeus' mistresses and their children by him. For a time, a nymph named Echo had the job of distracting Hera from his affairs by incessantly talking.

When Hera discovered the deception, she cursed Echo to only speak the words of others (hence our modern word "echo".

But there is much more to this legendary figure, so read on to learn more about the story of Leda.

Like so many women in ancient Greece (both real and mythological), Leda was important as a wife and mother. In legend, she was the wife of Tyndareus (a king of Sparta).

Leda was the mother to many noble children, including thefamous beauty Helen, the heroine Clytemnestra, and the twins Castor and Polydeuces (the pair, incidentally, were also known as the Dioscuri). However, this is where the story of Leda becomes complicated. For while Leda was the mother to all of the characters listed above, her husband Tyndareus was not the father of every child. Let us explore this subject in a bit more detail.

According to myth, Leda was approached by the god Zeus while he was masquerading as a swan. Indeed, Zeus made love to Leda in this form. And the memorable union between Leda and the Swan (who, remember, was actually Zeus) has long been immortalized by painters and poets. In addition to influencing artists, however,this coupling also influenced mythology.

Here is another poetic plot twist - the legend is that Helen was born from an egg because her father Zeus appeared as a swan when he impregnated Leda (it should be mentioned that some versions of the tale instead claim that it was the goddess Nemesis who laid the egg from which Helen hatched). Additionally, some ancient sources state that Polydeuces was also the son of Zeus, while his twin brother Castor was Tyndareus's child.

Complications aside, it is clear that Leda's legend is quite meaningful in mythology. Her role as the mother to some illustrious offspring, as well as her notorious affair with Zeus, makes Leda a mythological heroine worth remembering.

Pirithous chose Persephone. They left Helen with Theseus's mother, Aethra, and travelled to the underworld, domain of Persephone and her husband, Hades. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and laid out a feast, but as soon as the two visitors sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them fast. Or, in some versions, the stone itself grew and attached itself to their thighs.

Heracles freed Theseus but the earth shook when he attempted to liberate Pirithous, and Pirithous had to remain in Hades for eternity. When Theseus returned to Athens, the Dioscuri had taken Helen and Aethra back to Sparta. When Heracles had pulled Theseus from the chair where he was trapped, some of his thigh stuck to it; this explains the supposedly lean thighs of Athenians.

Leda gave birth to an egg, from which sprang the twins. Helen, so famous afterwards as the cause of the Trojan war, was their sister.When Theseus and his friend Pirithous had carried off Helen from Sparta, the youthful heroes Castor and Pollux, with their followers, hasted to her rescue.

Theseus was absent from Attica, and the brothers were successful in recovering their sister. Castor was famous for taming and managing horses, and Pollux for skill in boxing. They were united by the warmest affection, and inseparable in all their enterprises. They accompanied the Argonautic expedition.

During the voyage a storm arose, and Orpheus prayed to the Samothracian gods, and played on his harp, whereupon the storm ceased and stars appeared on the heads of the brothers.

From this incident, Castor and Pollux came afterwards to be considered the patron deities of seamen and voyagers, and the lambent flames, which in certain sates of the atmosphere play round the sails and masts of vessels, were called by their names. After the Argonautic expedition, we find Castor and Pollux engaged in a war with Idas and Lynceus.

Castor was slain, and Pollux, inconsolable for the loss of his brother, besought Jupiter to be permitted to give his own life as a ransom for him. Jupiter so far consented as to allow the two brothers to enjoy the boon of life alternately, passing half year under the earth and half year in the heavenly abodes. According to another form of the story, Jupiter rewarded the attachment of the brothers by placing them among the stars as Gemini, the Twins.

They received divine honors under the name of Dioscuri (sons of Jove). They were believed to have appeared occasionally in later times, taking part with one side or the other, in hard-fought fields, and were said on such occasions to be mounted on magnificent white steeds. Thus, in the early history of Rome, they are said to have assisted the Romans at the battle of Lake Regillus, and after the victory a temple was erected in their honor on the spot where they appeared.

She was the mother of Achilles

Nereus and Doris had fifty daughters (Theogony, 264). Thetis is one of the Daughters of Nereus. As a group, they are called the Nereids. Thetis was given to Peleus (a mortal) for his undying devotion to the gods on Olympos. Thetis and Peleus had a magnificent son, Achilleus. The fate of Achilleus was known to Thetis. Simply put, Achilleus could return to his father and die happy yet forgotten, or, he could die at Troy and be remembered forever as a hero.

To protect her son in battle, Thetis provided Achilleus with armor made by Hephaistos, the smith of the gods. But during the war at Troy, Achilleus was angered by Agamemnon, he refused tofight. Instead, he gave his armor to his friend Patroklos. Patroklos was killed as he pressed the attack to the walls of Ilion. The most brutal fighting of the war was for the armor of Achilleus and the body of Patroklos.

The disgrace to his friend’s body and the theft of his armor brought Achilleus into the battle, but not before Thetis could persuade Hephaistos to forge new armor for her, soon to be immortalized, son. When Achilleus strode into battle with his new armor, the Trojans fled in terror.

His divine protection was obvious from the blaze of his armor and his divine lineage was also obvious from his beauty and his enormous strength. The Trojans who did not have the good sense or swift feet to run away, were killed.

After Achilleus had had his revenge, Thetis led a procession of her sisters up from the depths to morn openly and to cast a divine mist over the body of Patroklos.

When Hephaistos was thrown from Olympos, Thetis and Eurynome healed him and gave him love and protection. The noble smith has never forgotten their kindness.

Peleo:

Peleus, who was driven fugitive from the island of Aegina, became in time king in Phthia. In his life he both plotted and was plotted against. He was born a mortal, but having married a goddess, his wedding party was, for several reasons, the greatest that has ever been.

However, his wife deserted him, and his heirs died before him. Yet Peleus, who is among the few privileged to have heard the song of the Muses, is now immortal and lives with Thetis in her father's house, or else dwells in the Islands of the Blest.

Peleus

Children of Aeacus. Once Zeus had transformed ants into men to cure the loneliness of King Aeacus of Aegina, this ruler married Endeis, and had by her two sons, Peleus and Telamon; others have said that Telamon was not Peleus' brother but his friend, himself being son of Actaeus 2 and Glauce 2, daughter of Cychreus, king of Salamis, an island off the coast of Attica in the Saronic Gulf not long from the island of Aegina.

Zeus and Poseidon had been once rivals for the hand of Thetis goddess, but because Themis, or the Moerae, or Proteus 2, or Prometheus 1 prophesied that the son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, they both withdrew. Others say, however, that Thetis would not consort with Zeus because she had been brought up by Hera, and that Zeus, wishing to punish her, married her to a mortal, his own grandson Peleus.

How Peleus caught Thetis

But because Thetis could easily evade anyone using her power to change into different forms, Proteus 2 (who also knew this art) gave Peleus the necessary instructions in order to conquer her saying: "... And though she take a hundred lying forms, let her not escape you, but hold her close, whatever she may be, until she take again the form she had at first." [Proteus 2 to Peleus. Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.250]

Others have said that it was the wise Centaur Chiron who instructed Peleus, and not Proteus 2. But whoever the teacher was, this is how Peleus, following those instructions, lay in wait for Thetis in the southern promontory of Magnesia, called Sepia, and there conquered the shape-changing goddess, who was reluctant to marry him; for, being herself a deity, a mortal was not the best she could get. And Thetis knew well the reasons of her defeat.

In it the Muses themselves sang; and this is why Peleus is counted among those who attained the highest prosperity of all mortal men.

But it was also at this party that Eris threw the fatal Applethat led to the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, and the Trojan War, in which her beloved son Achilles, mightier than his father, perished.

Knowing what would happen, Thetis tried to make her son immortal, but being prevented by Peleus, she left her husband's home forever, returning to the sea, her natural abode.Peleus gave his child Achilles to Chiron

to be educated by him, while himself, having Jason and the Dioscuri as allies, attacked and sacked Iolcus, capturing Queen Astydamia 3, who had plotted against him.

For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night (Nyx), and the son of Cronus who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth.

This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel. In Hesiod's Theogony (226–232) Strife the daughter of Night is less kindly spoken of as she brings forth other personifications as her children: But abhorred Eris ('Strife') bare painful Ponos ('Toil/Labor'), Lethe ('Forgetfulness') and Limos ('Famine') and tearful Algea (Pains/Sorrows), Hysminai ('Fightings/Combats') also, Malchai ('Battles'), Phonoi ('Murders/Slaughterings'), Androctasiai ('Manslaughters'), Neikea ('Quarrels'), Pseudea ('Lies/Falsehoods'), Amphillogiai ('Disputes'), Dysnomia ('Lawlessness') and Ate ('Ruin/Folly'), all of one nature, and Horkos ('Oath') who most troubles men upon earth when anyone wilfully swears a false oath.

The other Strife is presumably she who appears in Homer's Iliad Book 4 as sister of Ares and so presumably daughter of Zeus and Hera: Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares, she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier.

Zeus sends her to rouse the Achaeans in Book 11 of the same work.

The most famous tale of Eris ('Strife') recounts her initiating the Trojan War. The goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite had been invited along with the rest of Olympus to the forced wedding of Peleus and Thetis, who would become the parents of Achilles, but Eris had been snubbed because of her troublemaking inclinations.

She therefore (in a fragment from the Cypria as part of a plan hatched by Zeus and Themis) tossed into the party the Apple of Discord, a golden apple inscibed Kallisti – "For the most beautiful one", or "To the Prettiest One" – provoking the goddesses to begin quarreling about the appropriate recipient. The hapless Paris, Prince of Troy, was appointed to select the most beautiful. Greek mythological morality being what it was, each of the three goddesses immediately attempted to bribe Paris to choose her. Hera offered political power; Athena promised skill in battle; and Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. Paris was a red-blooded young man, and while the length of time he meditated on this problem is not recorded, he did eventually award the apple to Aphrodite.

When he was young she dipped him in the waters of the infernal river Styx, found in the Underworld.

Thus he became invulnerable, save for the spot on his heel where she held him.

Still others claim that to make Achilles immortal Thetis would nightly hold him over the fire to get rid of the mortal elements inherited from Peleus, and that in the daytime she would anoint his body with Ambrosia.

Peleus chanced upon his infant son in the fire one night and freaked out on Thetis. In disgust she tossed down the child and left both him and Peleus, rejoining her fellow Nereids. Thetis never stopped caring for her son, however, and always kept an eye out for his welfare. However, the generally accepted version of his immortality is that indeed Thetis dipped Achilles in the river Styx, holding the baby by his heel.

Chiron taught Achilles the arts of riding, hunting, archery, pipe-playing, healing and more.

The Muse Calliope taught him to sing. Achilles exemplified the best qualities of a warrior, coupled with the soul of a poet.

He killed his first boar when he was only six years old and every day brought wild animals back to Chiron. Athena and Artemis gazed in wonder at this handsome golden-haired child, impressed at his swiftness and skill - Achilles could overtake and kill stags without the help of hounds. When Achilles was nine years old the prophet Calchas declared that Troy would never be taken without

the help of Achilles.Thetis knew that her son would either die young as a hero at Troy, or live an inglorious life at home. She did her utmost to preserve the life of Achilles, even going so far as to disguise him as a girl and sending him away to Lycomedes, king of Scyros.

There he lived under the name of Cercysera, Aissa, or Pyrrha, it is said. Achilles wanted nothing to do with dressing like a girl but

he realized that it was the only way to get close to King Lycomedes's beautiful daughter. This affair with the king's daughter, Diedameia, produced a son named Pyrrhus, later called Neoptolemus.

Thus disguised as a young woman Achilles lived quietly at Scyros until the leaders of the Greek expedition against Troy, who were Odysseus, Nestor and Ajax, arrived and asked to speak to Achilles. They wanted him to join them in the Trojan War. King Lycomedes insisted that he wasn't there, and offered the men a search of the palace. The search failed to expose Achilles, so Odysseus resorted to trickery.

The Greeks had brought a pile of gifts to Scyros, mostly jewels, girdles, fancy embroidered dresses and colorful cloth. Odysseus asked the ladies to pick their choice of any gift, but instructed his men to sound a sudden trumpet blast and clash of arms outside the palace. All the girls had gathered around the gold and finery, ooohing and aaahing, but one girl showed absolutely no interest in the jewels, but instead seemed fascinated by the swords, spears and arms that were part of the gifts.

So when the trumpet blew and the sounds of fighting were heard, one of the "young girls", the disguised Achilles, instinctively stripped to the waist and grabbed the sword and shield, readying for battle. Thus Achilles was exposed, and he promptly agreed to join the Greek expedition, and lead to Troy his army of Myrmidons, which was what his warriors were called.

Before he left Achilles married his sweetheart, the pregnant Deidameia. Then he brought a fleet of fifty or sixty ships to join his fellow Greeks at Aulis. He was fifteen years old at the time

Probably the most well known was his abduction of, or elopement with, Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan war.

Later in the war, he fatally wounds Achilles in the heel with an arrow, as foretold by the dying Hector.When Paris was born, an oracle claimed he would be the downfall of Troy. His parents had one of their henchmen take him to Mount Ida, hoping he would stay out of trouble there.

In Greek mythology, Oenone ("wine woman") was the first wife of Paris. She was a mountain nymph (an Oread) on Mount Ida in Phrygia, a mountain associated with the Mother Goddess Cybele. Her father was Cebren, a river-god. Her very name links her to the natural but civilizing gift of wine.

The Trojan prince Paris fell in love with her when he was still a sheperd on the slopes of Mount Ida. They married and Oenone gave birth to a son, Corythus. When Paris later abandoned her to return to Troy and sail across the Aegean to kidnap Helen, Queen of Sparta, Oenone predicted the Trojan War.

Out of revenge for Paris' treason, she sent Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy. Another version has it that she used her son to drive a

rift between Paris and Helen and Paris, not recognizing his own son, killed him. When Paris was mortally wounded by Philoctetes' arrow, he begged Oenone to heal him, but she refused and Paris died. Overcome with guilt, she threw herself onto his burning funeral pyre.

According then to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her father and husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. In some versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance.

As the story goes, Zeus cohabited with Leda in the form of a swan on the same night as her husband, King Tyndareus. To the former she gave birth to Helen and Polydeuces, and to the latter, Clytemnestra and Castor.

In some versions she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. Two Athenians, Theseus and Pirithous, pledged to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen. He and Pirithous kidnapped her and decided to hold onto heruntil she was old enough to marry. Pirithous chose Persephone. They left Helen with Theseus' mother, Aethra and travelled to the underworld, domain of Persephone and her husband, Hades. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast; as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there.

When it was time for Helen to marry, many Greek kings and princes came to seek her hand or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. Among the contenders were Odysseus, Menestheus, Ajax the Great, Patroclus and Idomeneus, but the favourite was Menelaus who did not come in person but was represented by his brother Agamemnon, both of whom were in exile, having fled Thyestes. All but Odysseus brought many and rich gifts with them.

Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with him. This stratagem succeeded and Helen and Menelaus were married. Following Tyndareus' death, Menelaus became king of Sparta because the only male heirs, Castor and Polydeuces, had died and ascended to Mt. Olympus.

Some years later, Paris, a Trojan prince came to Sparta to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Aphrodite after he had chosen her as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning the wrath of Athena and Hera. Helen fell in love with him, as the goddess had promised, willingly leaving behind Menelaus and Hermione, their nine-year-old daughter, to be with her new love.

When he discovered that his wife was missing, Menelaus called upon all the other suitors to fulfill their oaths, thus beginning the Trojan War. Virtually all of Greece took part, either attacking Troy with Menelaus or defending it from them.

Helen is often called "the face that launched a thousand ships", though this phrase is post-classical, from Christopher Marlowe:

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burned the topless towers of Ilium?

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

In Goethe's version, Helen has a son by Faust named Euphorion.

Helen's relationship with Paris varies depending on the source of the story. In some, she loved him dearly (perhaps caused by Aphrodite, who had promised her to Paris). In others, she was a cruel, selfish woman who brought disaster to everyone around her, and she hated him. One version, used by Euripides in his play Helen claims Hermes fashioned a likeness of her out of clouds at Zeus's request, and Helen never even went to Troy, having spent the entire war in Egypt.

When Paris died in the war, his brother, Deiphobus, married Helen. Deiphobus was killed by Menelaus in the sack of Troy. Menelaus had demanded that only he should slay his faithless wife; but, when he raised his sword to do so, the sight of her beauty caused him to let the sword drop from his hand. Instead, he led her in safety to the Greek ships. Helen returned to Sparta with Menelaus. After Menelaus' death, Helen was exiled by their son, Megapenthes. According to another version, used by Euripides in his Orestes, Helen had long ago left the mortal world by then, having been taken up to Olympus almost immediately after Menelaus's return.

Homer. Iliad; Homer. Odyssey; Euripides. Electra; Apollodorus. Bibliotheke III, x,7-xi, 1; Apollodorus. Epitome II, 15-III, 6; V, 22; VI, 29; Plutarch. Theseus.

An estimation of her life based on the traditional dates of the Trojan War:

1225 BC - Birth of Helen to King Tyndareus of Sparta and his wife Leda. Thanks to her beauty she will later be considered daughter of Zeus.

1213 BC - At the age of twelve Helen is abducted by King Theseus of Athens who marries her against her father's and brothers' consent. During the absence of Theseus, her brothers Castor and Polydeuces help a revolt by his cousin Menestheus. Menestheus gains the throne and returns Helen to her brothers. According to some versions Helen was pregnant and a few months later gives birth to Iphigeneia. She trusts her daughter to her married sister Clytemnestra who will raise her as her own. Soon Menestheus of Athens and other Kings and princes gather at Sparta as Helen's suitors.

1212 BC - Tyndareus marries Helen to Menelaus of Mycenae. Menelaus' brother is King Agamemnon who is married to Helen's sister Clytemnestra.

Helen soon gives birth to Hermione. The early deaths of her brothers Castor and Polydeuces, soon make Menelaus Tyndareus successor at the throne of Sparta.

1203 BC - After nine years of marriage, Paris of Troy visits Sparta and in Menelaus' absence convinces Helen to flee with him. Menelaus discovers that his wife and guest betrayed him and starts contemplating war. King Priam of Troy marries Helen to Paris. Menelaus' preparations of war and gathering of allies and armies took him ten years according to some versions.

1194 BC - Beginning of the Trojan War.

1184 BC - Paris mortally wounded in battle by Philoctetes. Priam marries Helen to Deiphobus, a younger brother of Paris.

April 24, 1184 BC - Fall of Troy. Deiphobus is slain by Menelaus who reclaims Helen as his wife. They sail on their return journey but are stranded on the shores of Egypt.

1176 BC - After spending eight years in Egypt, they manage to set sail again and reach the shores of Peloponnesus. According to Euripides they visit Mycenae, arriving shortly after the murders of King Aegisthus, who was Menelaus' first cousin, and Queen Clytemnestra, who was Helen's sister, by their common nephew Orestes, the new King of Mycenae. Orestes attempts to kill his aunt but fails. The royal couple return to Sparta (or else Helen is taken off by Apollo)

1174 BC - According to the Odyssey, Telemachus of Ithaca visits Sparta seeking information about his father Odysseus.

Menelaus and Helen reply that they haven't heard of him since they left Troy ten years ago. They mourn their many lost relatives and friends.

1154 BC - According to Pausanias, Menelaus dies of old age and natural causes. Megapenthes, his illegitimate son, seizes the throne and exiles Helen.

He soon loses the throne to his first cousin King Orestes of Mycenae who is married to Hermione, the only legitimate daughter of Menelaus and Helen and half-sister of Megapenthes.

By this point Orestes had also seized the vacant thrones of Argos and Arcadia and becomes the sole ruler of Peloponnesus.

Helen seeks refuge in Rhodes near Polyxo, widow of Tlepolemus, an old friend of hers. Tlepolemus was famously the first man to be killed during the Trojan War.

In revenge for her husband's death, Polyxo ordered her maidens to pretend to be the ghosts of the many dead seeking revenge from Helen. Helen committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree.

After her death she is deified.

Assuming the story is, to some extent, based on a real event it is worth knowing that this and many other Greek legends point to the existence of a matrilineal inheritance system.

Thus Menelaus' right to the throne is based on his being married to the daughter of the previous king. However beautiful Helen may have been this gives a more cynical reason to fight over her.

list was Eris (goddess of discord), and upon turning up uninvited she threw a golden apple on to the table, with the inscription ('for the fairest'). Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera (Juno), Athena (Minerva) and Aphrodite (Venus).

They asked Zeus to judge which of them was fairest, and eventually Zeus declared that Paris, a Phrygian mortal, would judge their cases.

All three of the candidates attempted to bribe Paris; Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered skill in wisdom and war, and Aphrodite offered the love of the world's most beautiful woman.

This was Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Paris accepted Aphrodite's gift, receiving Helen and the enmity of the Greeks.

The Greeks' expedition to retrieve Helen is the borderline mythological basis of the Trojan War.

The goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite had been invited along with the rest of Mount Olympus to the forced wedding of Peleus and Thetis, who would become the parents of Achilles, but Eris (the goddess of strife) had been snubbed because of her troublemaking inclinations. Eris therefore tossed into the party a golden apple inscribed with the word "Kallisti" -- "For the most beautiful one" -- provoking the goddesses to begin quarreling about the appropriate recipient.

Paris was appointed to select the most beautiful. Greek mythological morality being what it was, each of the three goddesses immediately attempted to bribe Paris to choose her. Hera offered political power and control of all of Asia, Athena skill in battle, wisdom and the abilities of the greatest warriors, and Aphrodite the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite.

Since Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, she had had many suitors. To keep the peace between them, Odysseus made them all promise to defend the marriage of Helen and whomever she chose. She chose Menelaus and when Paris kidnapped her, arriving on a boat built by Phereclus (according to some, she fell in love with Paris and left willingly), all of Greece attacked Troy -- the Trojan War.

In Troy, Helen and Paris were married.

This occured around 1200 B.C. Menelaus, however, was outraged to find that Paris had taken Helen. Menelaus then called upon all of Helen's old suitors, as all of the suitors had made an oath long ago that they would all back Helen's husband to defend her honor. Many of the suitors did not wish to go to war. Odysseus pretended to be insane but this trick was uncovered by Palamedes. Achilles, though not one of the previous suitors, was sought after because the seer Calchas had stated that Troy would not be taken unless Achilles would fight.

One of the most interesting stories is of Cinyras, king of Paphos, in Cyprus, who had been a suitor of Helen. He did not wish to go to war, but promised Agamemnon fifty ships for the Greek fleet. True to his word, Cinyras did send fifty ships. The first ship was commanded by his son. The other forty-nine, however, were toy clay ships, with tiny clay sailors. They dissembled soon after being placed in the ocean (Tripp, 584-584).

The Greek fleet assembled, under Agamemnon's inspection, in Aulis. However, Agamemnon either killed one of Diana's sacred stags or made a careless boast. Either way, Diana was outraged and she calmed the seas so that the fleet could not take off.

The seer Calchas proclaimed that Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, must be sacrificed before the fleet could set sail. This was done, and the Greek ships set off in search of Troy.

Finding Troy proved difficult, however, and the Greek fleet at first landed in Mysia. According to Herodotus, the Greeks were under the impression that Helen had been taken by the Teuthranians (Teucrians), and though the Teuthranians denied such allegations, the Greeks layed siege to the city (Herodotus, Bk. II.118). The Greeks ultimately prevailed, but suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Telephus, king of the Teuthranians, and, at the end, were still without Helen. Telephus, in the course of the war, was wounded by Achilles.

With no where else to turn, the Greeks returned home.

The Trojan War might not have happened had not Telephus gone to Greece in the hopes of having his wound cured. Telephus had been told by an oracle that only the person who wounded him (in this case, Achilles) could cure him. Achilles assented and Telephus told the Greeks how to get to Troy.

Embassy to Priam

Odysseus, known for his eloquence, and Menelaus were sent as ambassadors to Priam. They demanded Helen and the stolen treasure be returned. Priam refused, and Odysseus and Menelaus returned to the Greek ships with the announcement that war was inevitable)

Another account makes him the son of Pleisthenes (the son or father of Atreus), who is said to have been Aerope's first husband.

Atreus was murdered by Aegisthus, who took possession of the throne of Mycenae and ruled jointly with his father Thyestes.

During this period Agamemnonand Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters Clytemnestra and Helen they respectively married. By Clytemnestra, Agamemnon had three daughters, Iphigeneia, Electra, Chrysothemis, and a son, Orestes. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus, and Agamemnon, with his brother's assistance, drove out Aegisthus and Thyestes, and recovered his father's kingdom. He extended his dominion by conquest and became the most powerful prince in Greece.

Agamemnon took part in the Trojan War on the side of the Greeks. Before Agamemnon's fleet left for Troy, however, the winds suddenly stopped and the ships would not move from Aulis, a port in Boeotia; Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis by slaying a hind sacred to her and boasting himself a better hunter.

The army was visited by a plague, and the fleet was prevented from sailing by the total absence of wind. Calchas announced that the wrath of the goddess could only be propitiated by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (daughter of Agamemnon).

Agamemnon agreed and sacrificed her. Alternatively, Artemis accepted a deer in her place and took Iphigeneia away to Crimea where she prepared others for sacrifice to Artemis. Still others sources claim he was prepared to but Artemis whisked her to Taurus in Crimea. Hesiod said she became the goddess Hecate.

During the Trojan War, Agamemnon killed Antiphus. Agamemnon's teamster, Halaesus, later fought with Aeneas in Italy.

Little is heard of Agamemnon until his quarrel with Achilles. Agamemnon took the maiden Briseis as his own and Achilles was angry--their anger forms one of the major plot points of the Iliad. After the capture of Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, fell to his lot in the distribution of the prizes of war.

On his return, after a stormy voyage, he landed in Argolis or was blown off course and landed in Aegisthus' country. Aegisthus, who in the interval had seduced Clytemnestra, invited him to a banquet at which he was treacherously slain, Cassandra also being put to death by Clytemnestra. According to the account given by Pindar and the tragedians, Agamemnon was slain by his wife alone in a bath, a piece of cloth or a net having first been thrown over him to prevent resistance. Her wrath at the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and her jealousy of Cassandra, are said to have been the motives of her crime. The murder of Agamemnon was avenged by his son Orestes.

Although not the equal of Achilles in bravery, Agamemnon is a dignified representative of kingly authority. As commander-in-chief, he summons the princes to the council and leads the army in battle. He takes the field himself, and performs many heroic deeds until he is wounded and forced to withdraw to his tent. His chief fault is his overweening haughtiness, due to an over-exalted opinion of his position, which leads him to insult Chryses and Achilles, thereby bringing great disaster upon the Greeks.

But his family had been marked out for misfortune from the outset. His kingly office had come to him from Pelops through the blood-stained hands of Atreus and Thyestes, and had brought with it a certain fatality which explained the hostile destiny which pursued him.

The fortunes of Agamemnon have formed the subject of numerous tragedies, ancient and modern, the most famous being the Oresteia of Aeschylus. In the legends of Peloponnesus, Agamemnon was regarded as the highest type of a powerful monarch, and in Sparta he was worshipped under the title of Zeus Agamemnon. His tomb was pointed out among the ruins of Mycenae and at Amyclae.

In works of art there is considerable resemblance between the representations of Zeus, king of the gods, and Agamemnon, king of men. He is generally characterized by the sceptre and diadem, the usual attributes of kings Menelaus (also transliterated as Meneláos), in Greek mythology, was a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope.

Atreus was murdered by his nephew, Aegisthus, who took possession of the throne of Mycenae and ruled jointly with his father Thyestes. During this period Menelaus and his brother, Agamemnon took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters Helen and Clytemnestra they respectively married. Helen and Menelaus had one daughter, Hermione.

Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus (whose only sons, Castor and Polydeuces became gods), and Agamemnon, with his brother's assistance, drove out Aegisthus and Thyestes, and recovered his father's kingdom. He extended his dominion by conquest and became the most powerful prince in Greece.

When it was time for Helen, Tyndareus's daughter, to marry, many Greek kings and princes came to seek her hand or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. Among the contenders were Odysseus, Menestheus, Ajax the great, Patroclus and Idomeneus, but Menelaus was the favorite though, according to some sources, he did not come in person but was represented by his brother Agamemnon. All but Odysseus brought many and rich gifts with them.

Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with the chosen one. This stratagem succeeded and Helen and Menelaus were married. Following Tyndareus's death, Menelaus became king of Sparta because the only male heirs, Castor and Polydeuces had died and ascended to Mount Olympus.

Some years later, Paris, a Trojan prince came to Sparta to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Aphrodite. Helen fell in love with him and left willingly, leaving behind Menelaus and Hermione, their nine-year-old daughter.

Menelaus called upon all the other suitors to fulfill their oaths, thus beginning the Trojan War. Virtually all of Greece took part, either attacking Troy with Menelaus or defending it from them.

In the Iliad Menelaus fights bravely and well, even when wounded, and distinguishes himself particularly by recovering the body of Patroclus after the latter is killed by Hector. Although he is depicted as a reasonably wise and just leader, he has a tendency to rattle off fatuous bromides in the most inappropriate circumstances.

During the war, Menelaus' weapon-carrier was Eteoneus. (Odyssey IV, 22, 31.)

After the Greeks won the Trojan War, Helen returned to Sparta with Menelaus (though she had married Paris' brother, Deiphobus, after Paris' death, Menelaus killed Deiphobus). According to some versions, Menelaus stayed in the court of King Polybus of Thebes for a time after the war.

According to the Odyssey, Menelaus' homebound fleet was blown by storms to Crete and Egypt where they were unable to sail away because the wind was calm.

Menelaus had to catch Proteus, a shape-shifting sea god to find out what sacrifices to which gods he would have to make to guarantee safe passage.

Proteus also told Menelaus that he was destined for Elysium (Heaven) after his death. Menelaus returned to Sparta with Helen.

After Menelaus' death, his illegitimate son Megapenthes sent Helen into exile.

In the second millennium BC Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek civilization, a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece.

The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenean in recognition of Mycenae's leading position.The acropolis or "high city" of Mycenae is believed to have been fortified as early as 1500 BC, as evidenced by grave-shafts dating from that period. In around 1350 BC the fortifications on the acropolis, and other surrounding hills, were rebuilt in a style known as "cyclopaean," because the blocks of stone used were so massive that they were thought in later ages to be the work of the one-eyed giants known as Cyclops. Within these walls, parts of which can still be seen, monumental palaces were built.

In later periods the Mycenaeans stopped burying their kings in grave shafts, and instead built enormous circular tombs called tholoi, often built into the sides of hills.

The largest of these was discovered by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. Since it had long ago been looted of its contents, he did not realise it was a tomb and called it the Treasury of Atreus. It is so large he was able to entertain the Emperor of Brazil to lunch in it.

The best known feature of Mycenae is the Lion Gate, which was built in about 1250 BC. At this time Mycenae must have been a thriving city, whose political, military and economic power extended as far as Crete, Pylos in the western Peloponnese, and to Athens and Thebes.

By 1200 BC, however, the power of Mycenae was declining; during the 12th century, Mycenaean dominance collapsed. This is traditionally attributed to a Dorian invasion of Greeks from the north, although some historians now doubt that such an invasion took place.

The memory of the power of Mycenae lingered in the minds of the Greeks through the subsequent centuries, commonly known as the Dark Age. The epic poems attributed by the later Greeks to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, preserve memories of the Myceanean period.

Homer's poems make Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, the leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War.The entrance of the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, actually a circular tomb or tholosDuring the early Classical period, Mycenae was once again inhabited, though it never regained its earlier importance.

Mycenaeans fought at Thermopylae and Plataea during the Persian Wars. In 468 BC, however, troops from Argos captured Mycenae and expelled the inhabitants. In Hellenistic and Roman times, the ruins at Mycenae were a tourist attraction (just as they are now). A small town grew up to serve the tourist trade. By late Roman times, however, the site had been abandoned.

The first excavations at Mycenae were carried out by the Greek archaeologist Pittakis in 1841. He found and restored the Lion Gate. In 1874 Schliemann arrived at the site and undertook a complete excavation. Schliemann believed in the historical truth of the Homeric stories and interpreted the site accordingly.

He found the ancient shaft graves with their royal skeletons and spectacular grave goods. When he found a gold death mask in one of the tombs, he exclaimed: "Behold the face of Agamemnon!"

Since Schliemann's day more scientific excavations have taken place at Mycenae, mainly by Greek archaeologists but also by the British School at Athens. The acropolis was excavated in 1902, and the surrounding hills have been methodically investigated by subsequent excavataions.

Today Mycenae, one of the foundational sites of European civilization, is a popular tourist destination, a few hours' drive from Athens. The site has been well-preserved, and the massive ruins of the cyclopaean walls and the palaces on the acropolis still arouse the admiration of visitors, particularly when it is remembered that they were built a thousand years before the monuments of Classical Greece.

Aegean civilization

It is the general term for the prehistoric civilizations in Greece and the Aegean. It was formerly called "Mycenaean" because its existence was first brought to popular notice by Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae starting in 1876. However, subsequent discoveries have made it clear that Mycenae was not its chief center of Aegean civilization in its earlier stages (or perhaps at any period), and accordingly it is more usual now to use the more general geographical title.

Distinctive features

The uniqueness of Aegean civilization has never been in doubt, since its remains came to be studied seriously. For a time the surviving remains were thought to have originated with Egyptions or Phoenicians, but with more remains uncovered this was shown to be untrue. The Aegean civilization developed three distinctive features.

Indigenous script

An indigenous writing system existed which consisted of characters with which only a very small percentage were identical, or even obviously connected, with those of any other script. The decipherment in the 1950s of Linear B unlocked the meaning of this script, but an earlier script Linear A remains undeciphered.

Art

Aegean Art is distinguishable from those of other early periods and areas. Its borrowings from other contemporary arts are clear, especially in its later stages, but received an essential modification at the hands of the Aegean craftsman, and the product is stamped with a new character, namely realism and is a precursor of Hellenic art. The fresco-paintings, ceramic motifs, reliefs, free sculpture and toreutic handiwork of Crete have supplied the clearest proof of it, confirming the impression already created by the goldsmiths' and painters' work of the Greek mainland (Mycenae, Vaphio, Tiryns).

Architecture

The arrangement of Aegean palaces is of two main types.

First (and perhaps earliest in time), the chambers are grouped around a central court, being linked one with the other in a labyrinthine complexity, and the greater oblongs are entered from a long side and divided longitudinally by pillars.

Second, the main chamber is of what is known as the megaron type, i.e. it stands free, isolated from the rest of the plan by corridors, is entered from a vestibule on a short side, and has a central hearth, surrounded by pillars and perhaps open to the sky; there is no central court, and other apartments form distinct blocks. For possible geographical reasons for this duality of type see Crete. In spite of many comparisons made with Egyptian, Babylonian and Hittite plans, both these arrangements remain out of keeping with any remains of earlier or contemporary structures elsewhere.

A type of tomb, the dome or "bee-hive," of which the grandest examples known are at Mycenae. The Cretan 'larnax' coffins, also, have no parallels outside the Aegean.

History of Aegean Civilization

In the absence of written records, only a summary history can be derived from monuments and archaeological remains. But the decipherment of writings in recent times has added much new knowledge.

Origin and continuity

A great deal of evidence has been uncovered by archaelogy which answers the question how much the Aegean civilisation, which existed for at least three thousand years, can be regarded as continuous. Aegean civilization had its roots in a long-lasting primitive Neolithic period. This period is represented by a stratum,at Knossos in places nearly 20 ft thick, which contains stone implements and shards of handmade and hand-polished vessels, showing a progressive development in technique from bottom to top.

This Minoan stratum is seemingly earlier than the lowest layer at Hissarlik. It closes with the introduction of incised, white-filled decoration on pottery, whose motifs are found reproduced in monochrome pigment. Following the end of this period was the beginning of the Bronze Age, and the first of the Minoan periods (see Crete). Thereafter, by exact observation of stratification, eight more periods have been distinguished, each marked by some important development in pottery. These periods fill the whole Bronze Age, with whose close, by the introduction of the superior metal, iron, the Aegean Age is conventionally held to end.

Iron came into general Aegean use about 1000 B.C., and possibly was the means by which a body of northern invaders established their power on the ruins of the earlier dominion. Throughout the nine Knossian periods, following the Neolithic period, there is evidence of a perfectly orderly and continuous evolution in, at any rate, ceramic art. From one stage to another, fabrics, forms and motifs of decoration develop gradually; so that, at the close of a span of more than two thousand years, at the least, the influences of the beginning can still be clearly seen and no trace of violent change can be detected. This fact would go far to prove that the civilization continued fundamentally and essentially the same throughout.

It is supported by less abundant remains of other arts. That of painting in fresco, for instance, shows the same orderly development for the later part of the period. In religion, it can at least be said that there is no trace of sharp change; beginning with a uniform nature worship passing through all the normal stages down to the anthropism in the latest period. There is no appearance of intrusive deities or cult-ideas.

The Aegean civilization was indigenous, firmly rooted and strong enough to persist essentially unchanged and dominant in its own geographical area throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

There is slight evidences of such changes as might be due to the intrusion of small conquering tribes, which adopted the superior civilization of the conquered people and became assimilated with them. The various rebuildings of the palace at Knossos give credence to this. A similar rebuilding took place at the same period at Phaestus, and possibly at Hagia Triada.

The megaron arrangement, occurs the palaces discovered in the north of the Aegean area, at Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarlik,indicating there were late for none are of the designs so characteristic of Crete.

Chronology.

The Chronology was originally based on linking archaeological remains with known Egyptian remains which can be dated to Dynasties.

The first was inferred from a similarity between early Minoan vases and others found in Egypt and dated to the 1st Dynasty [4000BC]]

Other remains found at Knossos are similar to the 12th Dynasty c2500BCEgyptian remains.

A diorite statuette, referable by its style and inscription to the 13th Dynasty, was discovered in deposit in the Central Court,of Knossos and a cartouche of the "Shepherd King," Khyan, was also found there. He is usually dated about 1900 B.C.

Discoveries of scarabs and other Egyptian objects made at Mycenae, Ialysus, Vaphio, and others. with the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1600-1400 BC). While in Egypt itself, Refti tributaries, bearing vases of Aegean form, and themselves similar in fashion of dress and arrangement of hair to figures on Cretan frescoes and gems , are depicted under this and the succeeding Dynasties (e.g. Rekhmara tomb at Thebes).

Actual vases of late Minoan style have been found with remains of the 18th Dynasty, while in the Aegean area itself was evidence of a great wave of Egyptian influence beginning with this same Dynasty, such as the Nilotic scenes depicted on the Mycenae daggers, on fresco and other artefacts.

The end of Aegean civilisation is less certain -- iron does not begin to be used for weapons in the Aegean until about 1000 BC, perhaps coinciding with the incursion of northern tribes remembered by the classical Greeks as the Dorian Invasion. This incursion did not altogether stamp out Aegean civilization, at least in the southern part of its area. But it finally destroyed the palace at Knossos and initiated the Geometric Age, with which the history of Aegean civilization proper can be said to have closed.

Annals

From anthropological data based on skull shapes, a people, similar to the Mediterranean race of North Africa, was settled in the Aegean area from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in an undeveloped state until far into the 4th millennium B.C..

In Crete, however, it had long been developing a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Egyptian Dynasties 11 and 12. (2500 B.C.?) the scattered communities of the center of the island coalesced into a strong monarchical state, the Minoan civilization, whose capital was at Knossos. There the king, probably also high priest of the prevailing nature-cult, built a great stone palace, and received the tribute of lesser communities, likely of whom the prince of Phaestus, who commanded the Messara plain, was chief. The Minoan monarch had maritime relations with Egypt, and presently sent his wares all over the south Aegean (e.g. to Melos in the earlier Second City Period of Phylakope) and to Cyprus, receiving in return such commodities as Melian obsidian knives. A system of pictographic writing came into use early in this Minoan period, but only a few documents made of durable material have survived. Pictorial art of a purely indigenous character, whether on ceramic material or plaster, made great strides, and from ceramic forms we may infer also a high skill in metallurgy.

The absence of fortifications both at Knossos and Phaestus suggest that at this time Crete was internally peaceful and externally secure. Small settlements, in very close relation with the capital, were founded in the east of the island to command fertile districts and assist maritime commerce. Gournia and Palaikastro fulfilled both these ends: Zakro must have had mainly a commercial purpose, as the starting-point for the African coast. The peak of this dominion was reached about the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., and thereafter there ensued a certain, though not very serious, decline.

Meanwhile, at other favourable spots in the Aegean, but chiefly on sites in easy relation to maritime commerce, e.g. Tiryns and Hissarlik, other communities of the early race began to arrive at civilization, but were naturally influenced by the more advanced culture of Crete in proportion to their nearness or vicinity. Early Hissarlik shows less Cretan influence and more external (i.e. Asiatic) than early Melos. The inner Greek mainland remained still in a backward state.

Five hundred years later -- about 1600 B.C. -- certain striking changes have taken place. The Aegean remains have become astonishingly uniform over the whole area; the local ceramic developments have almost ceased and been replaced by ware of one general type both of fabric and decoration. The Cretans have avoided their previous decadence and are once more possessors of a progressive civilization. They have developed a more convenient and expressive written language by stages, which is best represented by the tablets of Hagia Triada. The art of the entire area gives evidence of one spirit and common models. In religious representations it shows the same anthropomorphic personification and the same ritual furniture. Objects produced in one locality are found in others. The area of Aegean influence has widened and become more busy. Commerce with Egypt, for example, has increased in a marked degree, and Aegean objects or imitations of them are found to have begun to penetrate into Syria, inland Asia Minor, and the central and western Mediterranean lands, e.g. Sicily, Sardinia and Spain. There can be little doubt that a strong power was now fixed in one Aegean center, and that all the area had come under its political, social and artistic influence.

The seat of power was in Crete, but envigorated by an influx of new blood from the north, large enough to instil fresh vigour, but too small to change the civilization in its essential character.

This Cretan dominance was short-lived. The security of the island was apparently violated not long after 1500 BC, when the palace at Knossos was sacked and burned, and Cretan art suffered an irreparable blow, due to the invasion of all the Aegean lands (or at least the Greek mainland and isles) by some less civilized conquerors, who remained politically dominant, but, like their forerunners, having no culture of their own, adopted, while they spoiled, that which they found. Who these invaders were we cannot say, but the probability is that they too came from the north and were precursors of the later "Hellenes." Under their rule peace was re-established, and art production, though of inferior quality, became abundant again among the subject population. The northern part of the palace at Knossos was re-occupied by chieftains who have left numerous rich graves, and general commercial activity must have been resumed because the uniformity of the decadent Aegean products and their wide distribution become more marked than ever.

About 1000 BC a final catastrophe took place. The palace at Knossos was once more destroyed, never to be rebuilt or re-inhabited. Iron took the place of bronze, and Aegean art ceased on the Greek mainland and in the Aegean isles, including Crete, together with Aegean writing. In Cyprus and perhaps on the south-west Anatolian coasts, there is some reason to think that the cataclysm was less complete, and Aegean art continued to languish, cut off from its fountain-head. Such artistic faculty that survived elsewhere was made in the lifeless geometric style that is reminiscent of the later Aegean, but wholly unworthy of it. Also, cremation took the place of burial of the dead.

This great disaster, which cleared the ground for a new growth of local art, was probably due to yet another incursion of northern tribes, more barbarous than their predecessors, but possessed of superior iron weapons -- those tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as the Dorians. They crushed a civilization already hard hit, and it took two or three centuries for the Aegean artistic spirit, probably preserved in suspended animation by the survival of Aegean racial elements, to blossom anew. On this conquest seems to have ensued a long period of unrest and popular movements, known to Greek tradition as the Ionian Migration and the Aeolic and Dorian "colonizations". When once more we see the Aegean area clearly, it is dominated by the Hellenes, though it has not lost all memory of its earlier culture.

Political Organization

Evidence of monarchy at all periods on Crete can be found by the great Cretan palaces and the fortified citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarlik, each containing little more than one great residence, surrounded by smaller buildings for the townsfolk. Pockets of local developments of art before the middle of the 2nd millennium BC suggest the early existence of separate traditions, of which the strongest was the Minoan. After that date the evidence strongly suggests that one political dominion was spread for a brief period, or for two brief periods, over almost all the area. The great number of tribute-tallies found at Knossos perhaps indicates that the center of power was always there.

Religion

The fact that shrines have so far been found within palaces and not certainly anywhere else indicates that the kings kept religious power in their own hands. Perhaps they were themselves high-priests. Religion in the area seems to have been essentially the same everywhere from the earliest period, consisting of features like the cult of a Divine Principle, resident in dominant features of nature (sun, stars, mountains, trees, etc.) and of controlling fertility. This cult passed through an aniconic stage, from which fetishes survived to the last, these being rocks or pillars, trees, weapons (e.g. bipennis, or double war-axe, shield), etc. When the iconic stage was reached, about 2000 BC, we find the Divine Spirit represented as a goddess with a subordinate young god, as in many other east Mediterranean lands. The god was probably son and mate of the goddess, and the divine pair represented the genius of Reproductive Fertility in its relations with humanity. The goddess sometimes appears with doves, as uranic (heavenly), at others with snakes, as chthonic (earthly). In the ritual, fetishes, often of miniature form, played a great part: all sorts of plants and animals were sacred: sacrifice (not burnt, and not human), dedication of all sorts of offerings and simulacra, invocation, etc., were practised. The dead, who returned to the Great Mother, were objects of a sort of hero-worship. This early nature-cult explains many anomalous features of Hellenic religion, especially in the cults of Artemis and Aphrodite.

Social Organization

There is a possibility that features of a primeval matriarchate long survived; but there is no certain evidence. Of the organization of the people under the monarch we are ignorant. There are so few representations of armed men that it seems doubtful if there can have been any professional military class. Theatre-like structures found at Knossos and Phaestus, within the precincts of the palaces, were perhaps used for shows or for sittings of a royal assize, rather than for popular assemblies. The Minoan remains contain evidence of an elaborate system of registration, account-keeping and other secretarial work, which perhaps indicates a considerable body of law. The line of the ruling class was comfortable and even luxurious from early times. This can be seen by the fine stone palaces, richly decorated, with separate sleeping apartments, large halls, ingenious devices for admitting light and air, sanitary conveniences and marvellously modern arrangements for supply of water and for drainage. Even the smaller houses, after the Neolithic period, seem also to have been of stone, plastered within. After 1600 B.C. the palaces in Crete had more than one story, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, etc. In this later period, the distinction of blocks of apartments in some palaces has been held to indicate the seclusion of women in harems, at least among the ruling caste. Minoan frescoes show women grouped apart, and they appear alone on gems. Flesh and fish and many kinds of vegetables were evidently eaten, and wine and beer were drunk. Vessels for culinary, table, and luxurious uses show an infinite variety of form and purpose.

Craftsmen's tools of many kinds were in use, bronze succeeding obsidian and other hard stones as the material. Seats are found carefully shaped to the human form. At least on Crete there was evidently a large-scale olive- and vine-culture.

Chariots were in use in the later period, as is proved by the pictures of them on Cretan tablets, and therefore, probably, the horse also was known. Indeed a horse appears on a gem impression. Main pathways were paved. Sports, probably more or less religious, are often represented, e.g. bullfighting, dancing, boxing, armed combats.

Commerce

Commerce was practised to some extent in very early times, as is proved by the distribution of Melian obsidian over all the Aegean area and by the Nilotic influence on early Minoan art. We find Cretan vessels exported to Melos, Egypt and the Greek mainland. Melian vases came in their turn to Crete. After 1600 B.C. there is very close commerce with Egypt, and Aegean things had their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean. No traces of currency have come to light, unless certain axeheads, too slight for practical use, had that character. Standard weights have been found, as well as representations of ingots. The Aegean written documents have not yet proved (by being found outside the area) to be epistolary (letter writing) correspondence with other countries. Representations of ships are not common, but several have been observed on Aegean gems, gem-sealings and vases. They are vessels of low free-board, with masts. Familiarity with the sea is proved by the free use of marine motives in decoration.

Discoveries, later in the twentieth century, of sunken trading vesels round the coasts of the region have brought forth an enormous amnount of new information about those times.

Treatment of the Dead

The dead in the earlier period were laid (so far as we know at present) within cysts constructed of upright stones. These were sometimes inside caves. After the burial the cyst was covered in with earth. A little later, in Crete, bone-pits seem to have come into use, containing the remains of many burials. Possibly the flesh was boiled off the bones at once ("scarification") or left to rot in separate cysts a while. Afterwards the skeletons would be collected and the cysts re-used. Coffins are of small size, contain corpses with the knees drawn up to the chin. They are found in excavated chambers or pits. In the later period, a peculiar "bee-hive" or "tholos" tombs became common, sometimes wholly or partly excavated, sometimes (as in the magnificent Mycenaean "treasuries") constructed domewise. The shaft-graves in the Mycenae circle are also a late type, paralleled in the later Minoan cemetery. The latest type of tomb is a flatly vaulted chamber approached by a horizontal or slightly inclined way, whose sides converge above. At no period do the Aegean dead seem to have been burned. Weapons, food, water, cosmetics and various trinkets were laid with the corpse at all periods. In the Mycenae circle an altar seems to have been erected over the graves, and perhaps slaves were killed to bear the dead chiefs company. A painted sarcophagus, found at Hagia Triada, also possibly shows a hero-cult of the dead.

Artistic Production

Ceramic art reached a specially high standard in technique, form and decoration by the middle of the 3rd millennium BC on Crete. The products of that period compare favorably with any potters' work in the world.

The same may be said of fresco-painting, and probably of metal work. Modelling in terra cotta, sculpture in stone and ivory, engraving on gems, were following it closely by the beginning of the 2nd millennium. After 2000 BC all these arts revived, and sculpture, as evidenced by relief work, both on a large and on a small scale, carved stone vessels, metallurgy in gold, silver and bronze, advanced farther. This art and those of fresco- and vase-painting and of gem-engraving stood higher about the 15th century B.C. than at any subsequent period before the 6th century.

The manufacture, modelling and painting of faience objects, and the making of inlays in many materials were also familiar to Aegean craftsmen, who show in all their best work a strong sense of natural form and an appreciation of ideal balance and decorative effect, such as are seen in the best products of later Hellenic art. Architectural ornament was also highly developed.

The richness of the Aegean capitals and columns may be judged by those from the "Treasury of Atreus" now set up in the British Museum; and of the friezes we have examples in Mycenaean and Minoan fragments, and Minoan paintings. The magnificent gold work of the later period, preserved to us at Mycenae and Vaphio, needs only to be mentioned. It should be compared with stone work in Crete, especially the steatite vases with reliefs found at Hagia Triada. On the whole, Aegean art at its two great periods, in the middle of the 3rd and 2nd millennia respectively, will bear comparison with any contemporary arts.

Evidence of Aegean civilization

For details of monumental evidence the articles on Crete, Mycenae, Tiryns, Troad, Cyprus, etc., must be consulted. The most representative site explored up to now is Cnossus (see Crete) which has yielded not only the most various but the most continuous evidence from the Neolithic age to the twilight of classical civilization. Next in importance come Hissarlik, Mycenae, Phaestus, Hagia Triada, Tiryns, Phylakope, Palaikastro and Gournia.

A. INTERNAL EVIDENCE

Structures; Ruins of palaces, palatial villas, houses, built dome- or cist-graves and fortifications (Aegean islands, Greek mainland and northwestern Anatolia), but not distinct temples; small shrines, however, and temene (religious enclosures, remains of one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904) are represented on intaglios and frescoes. From the sources and from inlay-work we have also representations of palaces and houses.

Structural Decoration; Architectural features, such as columns, friezes and various mouldings; mural decoration, such as fresco-paintings, coloured reliefs and mosaic inlay.

Furniture; (a) Domestic furniture, such as vessels of all sorts and in many materials, from huge store jars down to tiny unguent pots; culinary and other implements; thrones, seats, tables, etc., these all in stone or plastered terra-cotta. (b) Sacred furniture, such as models or actual examples of ritual objects; of these we have also numerous pictorial representations. (c) Funerary furniture, e.g. coffins in painted terra-cotta.

Art products; E.g. plastic objects, carved in stone or ivory, cast or beaten in metals (gold, silver, copper and bronze), or modelled in clay, faience, paste, etc. Very little trace has yet been found of large free-standing sculpture, but many examples exist of sculptors' smaller work. Vases of all kinds, carved in marble or other stones, cast or beaten in metals or fashioned in clay, the latter in enormous number and variety, richly ornamented with coloured schemes, and sometimes bearing moulded decoration.

Examples of painting on stone, opaque and transparent. Engraved objects in great number e.g. ring-bezels and gems; and an immense quantity of clay impressions, taken from these.

Weapons, tools and implements; In stone, clay and bronze, and at the last iron, sometimes richly ornamented or inlaid. Numerous representations also of the same. No actual body-armour, except such as was ceremonial and buried with the dead, like the gold breastplates in the circle-graves at Mycenae.

Articles of personal use; E.g. brooches (fibulae), pins, razors, tweezers, etc., often found as dedications to a deity, e.g. in the Dictaean Cavern of Crete. No textiles have survived.

Written documents; E.g. clay tablets and discs (so far in Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin, papyrus, etc.; engraved gems and gem impressions; legends written with pigment on pottery (rare); characters incised on stone or pottery. These show two main systems of script (see Crete).

Excavated tombs; Of either the pit or the grotto kind, in which the dead were laid, together with various objects of use and luxury, without cremation, and in either coffins or loculi or simple wrappings.

Public works; Such as paved and stepped roadways, bridges, systems of drainage, etc.

B. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE

Monuments and records of other contemporary civilizations; E.g. representations of alien peoples in Egyptian frescoes; imitation of Aegean fabrics and style in non-Aegean lands; allusions to Mediterranean peoples in Egyptian, Semitic or Babylonian records.

Literary traditions of subsequent civilizations; Especially the Hellenic; such as, e.g., those embodied in the Homeric poems, the legenda concerning Crete, Mycenae, etc.; statements as to the origin of gods, cults and so forth, transmitted to us by Hellenic antiquarians such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, etc.

Traces of customs, creeds, rituals, etc; In the Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the civilization in which they were practised and indicating survival from earlier systems. There are also possible linguistic and even physical survivals to be considered.

Mycenae and Tiryns are the two principal sites on which evidence of a prehistoric civilization was remarked long ago by the classical Greeks.

The discovery of Aegean civiliation

The curtain-wall and towers of the Mycenaean citadel, its gate with heraldic lions, and the great "Treasury of Atreus" had borne silent witness for ages before Heinrich Schliemann's time; but they were supposed only to speak to the Homeric, or at farthest a rude Heroic beginning of purely Hellenic, civilization. It was not until Schliemann exposed the contents of the graves which lay just inside the gate, that scholars recognized the advanced stage of art to which prehistoric dwellers in the Mycenaean citadel had attained.

There had been, however, a good deal of other evidence available before 1876, which, had it been collated and seriously studied, might have discounted the sensation that the discovery of the citadel graves eventually made. Although it was recognized that certain tributaries, represented e.g. in the XVIIIth Dynasty tomb of Rekhmara at Egyptian Thebes as bearing vases of peculiar forms, were of some Mediterranean race, neither their precise habitat nor the degree of their civilization could be determined while so few actual prehistoric remains were known in the Mediterranean lands.

Nor did the Aegean objects which were lying obscurely in museums in 1870, or thereabouts, provide a sufficient test of the real basis underlying the Hellenic myths of the Argolid, the Troad and Crete, to cause these to he taken seriously. Aegean vases have been exhibited both at Sevres and Neuchatel since about 1840, the provenience (i.e. source or origin) being in the one case Phylakope in Melos, in the other Cephalonia.

Ludwig Ross, the German archaeologist appointed Curator of the Antiquities of Athens at the time of the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece, by his explorations in the Greek islands from 1835 onwards, called attention to certain early intaglios, since known as Inselsteine; but it was not until 1878 that C. T. Newton demonstrated these to be no strayed Phoenician products. In 1866 primitive structures were discovered on the island of Therasia by quarrymen extracting pozzolana, a siliceous volcanic ash, for the Suez Canal works.

When this discovery was followed up in 1870, on the neighbouring Santorin (Thera), by representatives of the French School at Athens, much pottery of a class now known immediately to precede the typical late Aegean ware, and many stone and metal objects, were found. These were dated by the geologist Ferdinand A. Fouqué, somewhat arbitrarily, to 2000 B.C., by consideration of the superincumbent eruptive stratum.

Meanwhile, in 1868, tombs at Ialysus in Rhodes had yielded to Alfred Biliotti many fine painted vases of styles which were called later the third and fourth "Mycenaean"; but these, bought by John Ruskin, and presented to the British Museum, excited less attention than they deserved, being supposed to be of some local Asiatic fabric of uncertain date. Nor was a connection immediately detected between them and the objects found four years later in a tomb at Menidi in Attica and a rock-cut "bee-hive" grave near the Argive Heraeum.

Even Schliemann's first excavations at Hissarlik in the Troad did not excite surprise. But the "Burnt City" of his second stratum, revealed in 1873, with its fortifications and vases, and a hoard of gold, silver and bronze objects, which the discoverer connected with it, began to arouse a curiosity which was destined presently to spread far outside the narrow circle of scholars. As soon as Schliemann came on the Mycenae graves three years later, light poured from all sides on the prehistoric period of Greece. It was recognized that the character of both the fabric and the decoration of the Mycenaean objects was not that of any well-known art.

A wide range in space was proved by the identification of the Inselsteine and the Ialysus vases with the new style, and a wide range in time by collation of the earlier Theraean and Hissarlik discoveries. A relationship between objects of art described by Homer and the Mycenaean treasure was generally allowed, and a correct opinion prevailed that, while certainly posterior, the civilization of the Iliad was reminiscent of the Mycenaean.

Schliemann got to work again at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased our knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognize the Aegean remains in his "Lydian" city of the sixth stratum. These were not to be fully revealed until Dr. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, who had become Schliemann's assistant in 1879, resumed the work at Hissarlik in 1892 after the first explorer's death. But by laying bare in 1884 the upper stratum of remains on the rock of Tiryns, Schliemann made a contribution to our knowledge of prehistoric domestic life which was amplified two years later by Christos Tsountas's discovery of the Mycenae palace. Schliemann's work at Tiryns was not resumed till 1905, when it was proved, as had long been suspected, that an earlier palace underlies the one he had exposed.

From 1886 dates the finding of Mycenaean sepulchres outside the Argolid, from which, and from the continuation of Tsountas's exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenae, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann's princely gift, has been gathered into the National Museum at Athens. In that year dome-tombs, most already rifled but retaining some of their furniture, were excavated at Arkina and Eleusis in Attica, at Dimini near Volo in Thessaly, at Kampos on the west of Mount Taygetus, and at Maskarata in Cephalonia. The richest grave of all was explored at Vaphio in Laconia in 1889, and yielded, besides many gems and miscellaneous goldsmiths' work, two golden goblets chased with scenes of bull-hunting, and certain broken vases painted in a large bold style which remained an enigma until the excavation of Cnossus.

In 1890 and 1893 Staes cleared out certain, less rich dome-tombs at Thoricus in Attica; and other graves, either rock-cut "bee-hives" or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidna in Attica, in Aegina and Salamis, at the Heraeum (see Argos) and Nauplia in the Argolid, near Thebes and Delphi, and not far from the Thessalian Larissa.

During the Acropolis excavations in Athens, which terminated in 1888, many potsherds of the Mycenaean style were found; but Olympia had yielded either none, or such as had not been recognized before being thrown away, and the temple site at Delphi produced nothing distinctively Aegean. The American explorations of the Argive Heraeum, concluded in 1895, also failed to prove that site to have been important in the prehistoric time, though, as was to be expected from its neighbourhood to Mycenae itself, there were traces of occupation in the later Aegean periods.

Prehistoric research had now begun to extend beyond the Greek mainland. Certain central Aegean islands, Antiparos, Ios, Amorgos, Syros and Siphnos, were all found to be singularly rich in evidence of the middle-Aegean period. The series of Syran built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Legean. Melos, long marked as a source of early objects but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, yielded at Phylakope remains of all the Aegean periods, except the Neolithic.

A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age (such as is given by J. L. Myres and M. O. Richter in Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum) shows more than twenty-five settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of Salamis, has yielded the richest Aegean treasure in precious metal found outside Mycenae. E. Chantre in 1894 picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissariik, in central Phtygia and at Pteria (q.v.), and the English archaeological expeditions, sent subsequently into north-western Anatolia, have never failed to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndncus, Sangarius and Halys.

In Egypt in 1887 W. M. F. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum, and farther up the Nile, at Tell el-Amarna, chanced on bits of no fewer than 800 Aegean vases in 1889. There have now been recognized in the collections at Cairo, Florence, London, Paris and Bologna several Egyptian imitations of the Aegean style which can be set off against the many debts which the centres of Aegean culture owed to Egypt. Two Aegean vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Aegean and especially Cypriote pottery have been turned up during recent excavations of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund.

Southeastern Sicily, ever since P. Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, has proved a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Aegean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik. Sardinia has Aegean sites, e.g. at Abini near Teti; and Spain has yielded objects recognized as Aegean from tombs near Cadiz and from Saragossa.

One land, however, has eclipsed all others in the Aegean by the wealth of its remains of all the prehistoric ages— Crete; and so much so that, for the present, we must regard it as the fountainhead of Aegean civilization, and probably for long its political and social centre. The island first attracted the notice of archaeologists by the remarkable archaic Greek bronzes found in a cave on Mount Ida in 1885, as well as by epigraphic monuments such as the famous law of Gortyna. But the first undoubted Aegean remains reported from it were a few objects extracted from Cnossus by Minos Kalokhairinos of Candia in 1878.

These were followed by certain discoveries made in the S. plain Messara by F. Halbherr. Unsuccessful attempts at Cnossus were made by both W. J. Stillman and H. Schliemann, and A. J. Evans, coming on the scene in 1893, travelled in succeeding years about the island picking up trifles of unconsidered evidence, which gradually convinced him that greater things would eventually be found. He obtained enough to enable him to forecast the discovery of written characters, till then not suspected in Aegean civilization. The revolution of 1897-98 opened the door to wider knowledge, and much exploration has ensued, for which see Crete.

Thus the "Aegean Area" has now come to mean the Archipelago with Crete and Cyprus, the Hellenic peninsula with the Ionian islands, and Western Anatolia.

Evidence is still wanting for the Macedonian and Thracian coasts. Offshoots are found in the western Mediterranean area, in Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and in the eastern Mediterranean area in Syria and Egypt. About the Cyrenaica we are still insufficiently informed.

Mycenaean helmet (Boar's tusk helmet), maybe

used by the warriors in the Trojan war and Mycenaean armor not like the hoplites later used or the Troy film suggested. The example from around 1450 BC was found in Mycenae, Dendra (Dendra Panoply).

Was this panoply used by charioteers? It is assumed that it was too heavy and not flexible enough to allow fast movements for a foot soldier but it could be used as armour of a warrior on a chariot who had a long spear as a weapon.

This example belongs to some important person found in a tomb in Dendra

and now can be seen in the archaeological museum

of Nauplio, Greece.

No actual shields have survived because the Mycenaeans made shields out of wood covered by animal hides, so they have disintegrated over time, unlike metal objects, like this dagger made of gold and bronze.The Homeric dagger has an inlaid decoration showing warriors with shields. The rectangular one is known as a "tower" shield.

The second greatest Greek warrior of the Trojan War, Ajax, used this sort of shield.

In the Dark Age, the Homeric bards had this inherited tradition of how Bronze Age shields were made, and there are short references to them in the Iliad.

They also had a Dark Age tradition of decorating shields and bowls with various scenes, such as on this shield from the island of Crete.

All these elements and more come together in Book 18 of the Iliad.

The gods, specifically the blacksmith Hephaestus, make Achilles a brand-new shield and there is a 130-line description of the shield

What can you say about a shield for 130 lines? What the Homeric poets did was describe a shield made of Mycenaean metals, assembled using Mycenaean techniques, but with scenes laid out according to a Dark Age design, and showing a panorama of Dark Age life.

It is the world of the Dark Ages in Bronze Age trappings, much like the Iliad itself.

The Homeric poem describe a shield inspired by and roughly designed like these decorated shields of the Dark Age.

But the materials, bronze, gold and tin, are Mycenaean.

The individual scenes described, however, predominantly belong to Dark Age life, though Mycenaean and even Minoan elements creep in.

Trojan War happened 7 centuries before. However as we are familizarized with these representations, he have taken this concept and in these cylinders we have represented the war with VII-IV centuries greek images

Greek soldiers had to buy their own weapons and armour. A wealthy citizen could afford the best spears and swords, and the strongest shields and body armour. Poor soldiers would have to make do with whatever equipment they could afford.After winning a battle soldiers sometimes hung their armour in trees, or inside a temple, as a "thank you" to the gods.

In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature and colossal frame, second only to Achilles in strength and bravery, and the 'bulwark of the Achaeans'.

He was trained by the centaur Chiron (who had also trained his father, Hercules, and Achilles' father Peleus), at the same time as Achilles was.

Outshined only by his cousin, Ajax was the most valuable king in the battlefield, though not as smart as Nestor, Idomeneus, or, of course, Odysseus.

He commanded his army wielding a great axe and a huge shield made of seven ox-hides with a layer of bronze, always accompanied by the prince Teucer. He was indeed a great asset to king Agamemnon's army. He is not wounded in any of the battles described in the Iliad, and he is the only principal character on either side who does not receive personal assistance from any of the gods who take part in the battles. As such, he embodies the virtues of hard work and perseverance.

In Greek mythology, Achilles (etymology unknown), grandson of Aeacus, was the greatest and the central character of Homer's Iliad.

Achilles was the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons in Phthia (SE Thessaly), and the sea nymph Thetis.

Zeus and Poseidon had forced her for her hand until an oracle revealed she would bear a son greater than his father, whence they wisely chose to give her to someone else.

According to legend, Thetis had tried to make Achilles invincible by dipping him in the river Styx, but forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable so he could be killed by a

blow to that heel.Homer, however, deliberately makes no mention of this; Achilles cannot be a hero if he is not at risk. Homer, however, does mention his being wounded, although not seriously, in the Illiad. In an earlier and less popular version of the story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus gave him (together with his young friend Patroclus) to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, to raise.

Achilles in the Trojan War

Telephus

When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus. The wound would not heal and Telephus asked an oracle who stated that "he that wounded shall heal".

According to others' reports about Euripides' lost play about Telephus, he went to Aulis, pretending to be a beggar and asked Achilles to help heal his wound. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Alternatively, Telephus held Orestes for ransom, the ransom being Achilles' aid in healing the wound. Odysseus reasoned that the spear had inflicted the wound and the spear must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus healed. This is an example of sympathetic magic.

During the Trojan War

“The Rage of Achilles” by Giovanni Battista TiepoloAchilles is one of the only two people described as "god-like" in the Iliad. This does not just refer to his supreme fighting ability, but also to his attitude. He shows a complete and total devotion to the excellence of his craft and, like a god, has almost no regard for life. Not his own — clearly he does not mind a swift death, so long as it is glorious — and not really of others. His anger is absolute. The humanization of Achilles by the events of the war is the main theme of the Iliad. Achilles' charioteer's name was Automedon.

Troilus

While this youngest son of Priam and Hecuba (some say that it was Apollo who fathered Troilus on Hecuba) was watering his horses at the Lion Fountain outside the walls of Troy, Achilles saw him and fell in love with his beauty (whose "loveliness of form" was described by Ibycus as being like "gold thrice refined"). The youth rejected his advances and took refuge inside the temple of Apollo Timbraeus. Achilles pursued him into the sanctuary and decapitated him on the god's own altar. (Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron) At the time Troilus was said to be a year short of his twentieth birthday, and the legend goes that if Troilus had reached his twentieth year, Troy would have been invincible.

Agamemnon and the death of Patroclus

Ancient Greek depiction of male lovers Patroclus and Achilles in pederastic scene Patroclus' penis is exposed in reference to the sexual aspect of their relationship.Achilles took twenty-three towns outside Troy, including Lyrnessos, where he captured Briseis to keep as a concubine. Meanwhile, Agamemnon took a woman named Chryseis and taunted her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, when he attempted to buy her back. Apollo sent a plague through the Greek armies and Agamemnon was forced to give Chryseis back to her father; however he took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss.

This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad: Achilles becomes enraged and refuses to fight for the Greeks any further. The war goes badly, and the Greeks offer handsome reparations to their greatest warrior; Achilles still refuses to fight in person, but he agrees to allow Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus is killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistakes him for Achilles.

Achilles is overwhelmed with grief for his dear friend and lover, and the rage he once harbored toward Agamemnon begins shifting to Hector. Thetis, his mother, rises from the sea floor and berates him for excessive grief, reminding him it is a fine thing to sleep with women too. She obtains magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus, and he returns to the fighting, killing Hector. He desecrates the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy three times, and refuses to allow it to receive funeral rites. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector's father, comes secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relents; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he receives Priam graciously and allows him to take the body away.

The greatness of Achilles lies in not just being the greatest Greek fighter ever, but in knowing the choice provided to him by Destiny. His mother Thetis had prophecied to him that if he pulled out of the Trojan War, he would enjoy a long and a happy life. If Achilles fought, however, he would die before the Walls of Troy but assure an everlasting glory, surpassing that of all other heroes. He had made the choice, and coming face to face with it showed his greatness.

Xanthus

During the Trojan War, Xanthus, a magical horse, was rebuked by Achilles for allowing Patroclus to be killed. Xanthus responded by saying that a god had killed Patroclus and a god would soon kill Achilles also.

Memnon, Cycnus, Penthesilea, the death of Achilles

Shortly after the death of Hector, Achilles defeated Memnon of Ethiopia, Cycnus of Colonae and the Amazonian warrior Penthesilia (with whom Achilles also had an affair in some versions). As predicted by Hector with his dying breath, Achilles was thereafter killed by Paris — either by an arrow to the heel, or in an older version by a knife to the back while visiting Polyxena, a Trojan princess. Both versions conspicuously deny the killer any sort of valor, and Achilles remains undefeated on the battlefield. His bones are mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games are held. Like Ajax, he is represented (although not by Homer) as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube.

The Fate of Achilles' Armor

Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Ajax the great. They competed for it and Odysseus won. Ajax went mad with grief and vowed to kill his comrades; he started killing cattle (thinking they were Greek soldiers), and then himself.

However the identity of Homer is not certain and the stories which make up the Iliad and the Odyssey may be the products of a long oral tradition of story telling in ancient Greece which was not committed to written text until as late as the 6th Century BCE.Under such circumstances errors and anachronisms might be expected to abound in accounts of events that took place during the Trojan war as much as 600 years earlier.

For the practical historian it is noteworthy that in practice the ships described in Homer appear to be carefully delineated from those of the period in which the texts were actually written. For example Homer never speaks of the ram, although the ram was a prominent feature of post 8th century BCE Greek galleys, nor does he describe multi-banked galleys, which are found in Greek ship iconography after the 8th century BCE and before the Homeric poems were written.

We can assume that Homer was familiar with these elements of ship technology of but did not mention these features as part of the configuration of the ships that were used during the Trojan Wars..

The advantage we have is that the artisans of the ancient Greece cultures often illustrated events similar to those that are described in the stories written by the Greek poets. Similar themes to those in the classical Greek Poems were frequently painted on Vases and other ceramics starting as early as the Geometric period 1600 BCE.

Later illustrations on Attic vases reflected classical Greek Literary and mythological themes. Attic vases were containers and can be thought of in many respects to be the first commercial packaging with pictures on them. The artisans would take a utilitarian item and decorate them with aspects of story lines from the culture. For simple artistic reason’s few utilitarian items are richer in their content than the Greek attic vases.

This decorative tradition was begun in the area of Aegean Sea with the Minoan potters as early as 1700BCE. It should be noted that the iconography of daily life was painted on pottery and recorded as decorum in the culture long before written records of the same activities began to occur as literature and poetry. This trend of the artisans illustrating aspects of the culture in which they lived in non textual Iconographies is true for cultures other that the Agean as well as the early Greeks. This gives archeologists and investigators the advantage of being able to see and understand aspects of the culture of ancient Greece which are not clearly delineated in the written records of the culture.

Someone in their wisdom has said a picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of the prehistoric cultures of the Aegean Sea we have a visual record that tells a story, all you have t o do is read the writing on the wall or pottery so to speak.

The ships found in Homer are usually described as fast and hollow, which means without a deck or open, long, narrow, low and light, with black painted hulls. There were no accommodations for living in them and they were built to be hauled onto a beach at night so that the crews could camp on the shore. Speed and flexibility were the premium with these boats. Gear was stowed under vestigial decks at the stem and the stern. These are also features that were also common to later Greek warships, most notably the trieres or trireme.

The key to the speed of and ability to navigate these ships were the crews. Men on oars were the mechanism for maneuverability and the wind in their sails was the primary motor for long distance travel.

Phoenician Coin

Homer classifies his ships into a number of well-defined types that have no exact parallel in the ships of the 8th century. There are, for example, small twenty oared galleys used for transport, exploration or dispatch duties. The fifty oared pentecontor (25 oars per side) which was used as a troop carrier, and the larger 100 oared vessels (50) per side) which were used as heavy transports. He does not anywhere in his writing mention the thirty-oared triacontor, which was in common use in the eight century.

Amphora

Pottery of the Cyclidic culture from Thera 1600 BCE demonstrates the extensive use of iconography for decorative purposes within the Aegean Cultures. These types of features were traditionally used on pottery of the Aegean cultures, though they varied in style and proficiency of execution, for the next 1400 years.

The images in this iconography gives us clues to cultural exchanges that occurred which would be unavailable through the written records. Much of the Iconography suggests several cultural influences and where written records are not available are the only means to do analysis of the social dynamics of the ancient world.

Where shipbuilding is discussed in Homer, most obviously in the famous passage from Calypso's island, Homer speaks in technological terms such as keels, stem and sternposts, frames, planks, gunwales, cross beams and through beams fastened with treenails and mortise and tendon joints fabricated from a variety of preferred woods including oak, poplar, pine and fir.

These methods of construction were certainly common in the eight century and had probably developed from similar methods used in the previous millennium. One of the best records of ship iconography from this historic era are those recorded by the Egyptians during the Invasion of the Sea peoples into Egypt during approximately the same time period of 1200 BCE.

An overview of iconography from the eastern Mediterranean would suggest that the ship building technologies were know and shared between cultures. The Egyptians were known to have sought the support of ship builders and traded for timbers for ship building from Byblos as early as the construction of the Pyramid complex of the Pharaoh Sahure 2450 BCE. This would explain the projecting forefoot, not at this stage a ram, which is characteristic of the limited iconography for this period, particularly the Pylos vase and the Gazi Larnax as having derived from Egyptian ships which prominently featured these characteristics as early as 1250 BCE.

The oars in Homeric galleys were rowed against thole pins and held in place by a leather strap. Only one steering oar was used , again this is consistent with the twelfth century Mycenaean iconography, and also with the ships illustrated in Thera Frescos from the 16 th Century BCE. Twin steering oars were standard by the 6th century. Where sails are described the mast was usually dismountable and was set in the tabernacle above the keel and held in place by two forestays and one backstay without shrouds. A single loose-footed square sail was used made up of patches of linen. Standing rigging included braces to the yardarm, sheets, and brailing lines. Homeric ships were also expected to carry lines and stone anchors, and they may have been equipped with bilge drain plugs to facilitate and drying out the boats after beaching.

The Argo

Argo was the name of a Greek navigation system. The Argo was built near Pelion Mount most possibly at Pagasses. The story of the Argos ispure high adventure. The men who took part in the expedition were called Argonautae or Minyas, and the journey was the Argonautica Expedition or the Argonautica.

The shape of the ship was oblong and this is the reason for giving her the name "the long vessel", as well. It was the first long vessel as, until that time, the Greeks had been using mostly small round-shaped ships. Some sources say that the Argo was a fifty-oared ship while some others say that there were thirty oars on each side. Hence, they estimate that the Argo's length must have been between 22 or 25 meters. The wood that was used was probably oak and pine. The Argo was equipped with all those implements and tacking necessary for the management and guiding of the ship. It was a hard constructed ship, able to sail in open seas and stand up well to the blows of huge waves.

Although the Argo - and most prehistoric Hellenic ships - had no engine, she had a great advantage compared to the ships of today. The ship would not need a port to call at. Because of her low draught she could be hauled ashore at the convenience of the crew as weather or other circumstances may have demanded.

Because she had to be hauled up the beach in order to avoid possible destruction by a sea-storm, the Argo did not have a deck as its additional weight would render her hauling more difficult or impossible. The ability to haul ashore was a great advantage of the prehistoric Hellenic vessels, which made possible the accomplishment of those amazing and incredible explorations made at that time.

At the prow of the ship Athena fitted in a "speaking" timber from the oak of Dodona, which would advise the Argonauts on the right course. In fact, that "speaking " timber ("Koraki" in the Hellenic nautical terminology) operated like a compass, and it corresponded to the North while the steering oar ("Diaki" in the Hellenic nautical terminology) to the South. The imaginary line between the steering oar and the "speaking" timber extended towards a certain point of the horizon-which was determined by the positions of stars (I.E. the Pole Star)- enabled the Captain to trace the course of the ship approximately

Fortunately for the historian even quite small boats represent a considerable expenditure of labor and wealth and required a high degree of organization to navigate and operate. Boats therefore were usually valuable and prized objects in the societies that produced them. Boats are also relatively large structures. Indeed they are still probably the largest moving objects made by man and for this reason alone ships and boats have imposed themselves on the imaginations of artists and story tellers from the earliest times to the present day. We are fortunate to have pictures of ships appear in many forms and in many different places.

The formulation of crews to man the ships represented a major commitment and effort to create team work, all involved knowing they were dependent on one another for the ultimate success of the voyages.

Where societies were particularly reliant on ships for trade and war the ship became an important part of the culture, perhaps a dominant part as in the case of the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and the Vikings. Traditionally and by definition the seafaring boat and ship has been identified with trading enterprises and exploratory adventures into the unknown and in some cultures it was associated with the ultimate voyage from life to death, which is why boats find their way into Egyptian pyramids and the graves of Saxon and Viking nobles. From antiquity to the Renaissance the ship became the vehicle for exploration and discovery into Africa and the Known World. In this role, too, ships and boats have appealed to the artist and cultural historian.

Fortunately representations of ships are widespread throughout recorded history. How accurate these pictures are is another matter, depending on the cultural attitudes and technical competence of the artists. Ship iconography as found on artifacts is beset with distortions however the images remain from antiquity giving us critical and credible clues to the use and evolution of ships and boats in various cultures.

Fortunately modern archeology is allowing us to fill in some of the blanks as deep water finds are revealing additional information on ship building technologies and trade associations.

A few ancient authors credited him with the entire Epic Cycle, which included further poems on the Trojan War as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Tradition held that Homer was blind, and various Ionian cities are claimed to be his birthplace, but otherwise his biography is a blank slate.

It has repeatedly been questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"; the "Batrachomyomachia", Homeric hymns and cyclic poems are generally agreed to be later than these two epic poems.

An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat.Could the Iliad and Odyssey have been oral-formulaic poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases? Milman Parry and Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in an exclusively oral culture.

Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate.

The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis", wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe in the 6th century BC or earlier. More radical Homerists, such as Gregory Nagy, contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period.

Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer... So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the

classical scholar Richmond Lattimore, author of a good poetic translation to English of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?". Samuel Butler was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further speculated on by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter.

In Greek his name is "Homeros" which is Greek for "hostage". There is a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridai, which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e. descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they would not get killed in battles. Thus they were entrusted with remembering the area's stock of epic poetry, to remember past events, in the times before literacy came to the area.

Historical Aspects of the Poems

This marble bust of Homer, a Roman copy of a Greek original, is now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, Italy.See main article Troy.

Another significant question regards the tales' possible historical basis. The commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written in the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC) began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists and BBC television producers continue the tradition.

The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the late 19th century began to convince scholars there was a historical basis for the Trojan War. Research (pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord) into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages began to convince scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until someone bothered to write them down. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and others convinced scholars of a linguistic continuity between 13th century BC Mycenaean writings and the epic poems attributed to Homer.

It comprises the collected legends of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition.

Our surviving sources of mythology are literary reworkings of this oral tradition, supplemented by interpretations of iconic imagery, sometimes modern ones, sometimes ancient ones, as myth was a means for later Greeks themselves to throw light on cult practices and traditions that were nolonger explicable. The historian must sometimes deduce from hints in imagery, such as in vase paintings, and offhand references the recognition of mythic themes tacitly expressed in cult practice.

The general issues in reading myth are discussed in Mythography.

In their various legends, stories and hymns the gods of ancient Greece are all described as human in appearance: the few chimerical beings such as the Sphinx all have Near Eastern or Anatolian origins. The Greek gods may have birth myths but they are unaging. The gods are nearly immune to wounds and to all sickness, capable of becoming invisible, able to travel vast distances almost instantly, and able to speak through human beings with or without their knowledge. Each has his or her own specific appearance, genealogy, interests, personality, and area of expertise; however, these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another.

When these gods were called upon in poetry, prayer or cult, they are referred to by a combination of their name and epithets, that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves. A Greek deity's epithet may reflect a particular aspect of that god's role, as Apollo Musagetes is "Apollo, [as] leader of the Muses." Alternatively the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, sometimes already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece. A goddess who had accumulated many such epithets is Demeter.

In such mythic narratives, these beings are described as a large multi-generational family. Their oldest members created the world, but succeeding generations overcame the older gods. The Olympian twelve gods most familiar from ancient Greek religion and Greek art are described in epic poems as having appeared in person to the Greeks during the "age of heroes."

They provided the struggling ancestors of the Greeks with a limited number of miracles, taught them a selection of useful skills, taught them the methods of worshipping the gods, rewarded virtue and punished vice, and fathered children by humans. These half-human, half divine children are collectively known as "the heroes," and until the establishment of democracy their descendents claimed the right to rule on the basis of their divine ancestry.

Nature and sources of Greek mythology

While all cultures throughout the world have their own mythologies, the term is a Greek coinage, and had a specialized meaning within Greek culture.

The Greek term muthologia is a compound of two smaller words:

muthos — which in Homeric Greek means roughly "a ritualized speech act", as of a chieftain at an assembly, or of a poet or priest.

logos — which in Classical Greek stands for "a convincing story, an ordered argument".

In the original sense, therefore, a mythology is an attempt to bring sense to the stylized narratives that the Greeks recited at festivals, whispered at shrines, and bandied about at aristocratic banquets. Since few breeds of men are more prone to squabbling than poets, priests and aristocrats, contradictions in the material are rife. Moreover, they are part of the fun.

Several types of primary source are available for the study of Greek mythology.

Achilles binds the wound of Patroclus: the Trojan War formed a context for many cycles of Greek myth. Patroclus' penis is exposed to the sexual aspect of their pederastic relationship. Such relationships were a common element of Greek mythology, most notably that of Zeus and Ganymede.The poetry of the Archaic and Classical eras — composed primarily for performance at cultic festivals or aristocratic banquets, and thus part of muthos in the Homeric sense. This includes:

the Homeric Odyssey, Iliad and Hymns

the Hesiodic Theogony.

the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes

the choral hymns of Pindar and Bacchylides.

The work of historians, like Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and geographers, like Pausanias and Strabo, who made travels around the Greek world and noted down the stories they heard at various cities.

The work of mythographers, who wrote prose treatises based on learned research attempting to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets. The Bibliotheke by Apollodorus of Athens is the largest extant example of this genre.

The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which although composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise, nevertheless contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of:

The Hellenistic poets Apollonius of Rhodes and Callimachus.

The Roman poets Hyginus, Ovid, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Virgil.

The Late Antique Greek poets Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus.

The ancient novels of Apuleius, Petronius, Lollianus and Heliodorus.

Overview

The scope of Greek mythology is enormous. It extends from the horrific crimes of the early gods and the bloody wars of Troy and Thebes, to the childhood pranks of Hermes and the touching grief of Demeter for Persephone. The legions of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, monsters, daemons, nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs that one encounters in traversing this vast landscape are beyond count.

Greek mythology has an approximate internal chronology. While contradictions in the material make an absolute timeline impossible, it breaks down roughly into:

an age of gods,

an age when men and gods mingled freely, and

an age of heroes where divine activity was more limited.

While the myths of the age of gods have often been more interesting to contemporary students of myth, Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for those of the age of heroes: the heroic Iliad and Odyssey, for example, dwarfed the divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity.

Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

The age of gods

Like their neighbors, the Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love, while Ares was the god of war and Hades the god of the dead. Some deities like Apollo and Dionysus revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others like Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. There were also site-specific deities, such as river gods and nymphs of springs and caves, and venerated tombs of local heroes and heroines.

Although there were hundreds of beings that could be considered "gods" or "heroes" in one sense or another, some figured only in folklore or were honored locally in particular places (e.g. Trophonius) or at particular festivals (e.g. Adonis). Major sites of ritual, the large temples, were dedicated mostly to a small circle of gods, chiefly the twelve Olympians, Heracles and Asclepius and in some places Helios.

These deities were the centers of the large pan-Hellenic cults. Many regions and individual villages had their own cults centered on nymphs, minor deities, heroes or heroines unknown elsewhere; most cities also worshipped the major gods with peculiar local rites and had peculiar local legends about them.

The first gods

One type of narrative about the age of gods tells the story of the birth and conflicts of the first divinities: Chaos, Night, Eros, Uranus, Gaia, the Titans and the triumph of Zeus and the Olympians. Hesiod's Theogony is an example of this type. It was also the subject of many lost poems, including ones attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus, Epimenides, Abaris and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently-unearthed papyrus scraps.

The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogony, or song about the birth of the gods, to be the prototypical poetic genre - the prototypical muthos - and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus, the archetypal poet, was also the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in the Argonautica, and to move the stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades.

When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the first thing he does is to sing the birth of the gods. Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods, but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet's function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses.

New gods

Another type tells the story of the birth, struggles and exploits, and eventual ascent into Olympus of one of the younger generation of gods: Apollo, Hermes, Athena, etc. The Homeric Hymns are the oldest source of this kind of story.

They are often closely associated with cult-centers of the god in question: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a compound of two earlier narratives: one telling of his birth at Delos, the other of his establishment of the oracle at Delphi. Similarly, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, with its tale of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, narrates the back-story of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The age of gods and men

Bridging the age when gods lived alone and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited was a transitional age in which gods and men moved freely together.

The most popular type of narrative that confronts gods with early men involves the seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god (most often Zeus), resulting in heroic offspring. In a few cases, a female divinity mates with a mortal man, as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where the goddess lies with Anchises to produce Aeneas. The marriage of Peleus and Thetis, which yielded Achilles, is another such myth.

Another type involves the appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, when Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus' table and gives it to his own subjects - revealing to them the secrets of the gods, when Prometheus or Lycaon invents sacrifice, when Demeter teaches agriculture and the Mysteries to Triptolemus, or when Marsyas invents the aulos and enters into a musical contest with Apollo.

Yet another type belongs to Dionysus alone: the god wanders through Greece from foreign lands to spread his cult. He is confronted by a king, Lycurgus or Pentheus, who opposes him, and whom he punishes terribly in return.

The age of heroes

The age of heroes can be broken down around the monumental events of the Argonautic expedition and the Trojan War. The Trojan War marks roughly the end of the Heroic Age.

Early heroes

Perseus with the Head of MedusaAmong heroes, Heracles is practically in a class by himself. His fantastic solitary exploits, with their many folk tale themes, provided much material for popular legend. His enormous appetite and rustic character also made him a popular figure of comedy, while his pitiful end provided much material for tragedy.

The other members of the earliest generation of heroes, such as Perseus and Bellerophon, have many traits in common with Heracles. Like him, their exploits are solitary, fantastic and border on fairy tale, as they slay monsters like Medusa and the chimera. This generation was not as popular a subject for poets; we know of them mostly through mythographers and passing remarks in prose writers. They were, however, favorite subjects of visual art.

The generation of the Argonauts

Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason on the expedition to fetch the Golden Fleece. This generation also included Theseus, who went to Crete to slay the Minotaur; Atalanta, the female heroine; and Meleager, who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey.

Royal crimes

In between the Argo and the Trojan War, there was a generation known chiefly for its horrific crimes. This includes the doings of Atreus and Thyestes at Argos; also those of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes, leading to the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Seven Against Thebes and Epigonoi. For obvious reasons, this generation was extremely popular among the Athenian tragedians.

"The Rage of Achilles" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Troy and aftermath

As the turning point between the Heroic Age and what the Greek considered the historical period, the Trojan War, its preludes and epilogues, outweighs the rest of the age combined in the sheer amount of source material available. The Trojan cycle includes:

The events leading up to the war: the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis.

The events of the Iliad, including the quarrel of Achilles with Agamemnon and the deaths of Patroclus and Hector.

The ruse of the Trojan Horse and the destruction of Troy.

The homecomings of heroes from Troy, including the wanderings of Odysseus and the murder of Agamemnon

The children of the Trojan generation: e.g. Orestes and Telemachus

Theories of origin

In antiquity, authors like Herodotus speculated that the Greeks had borrowed their gods wholesale from the Egyptians. Later, Christian writers would attempt to explain Hellenic paganism as a degeneration of Biblical religion.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the sciences of archaeology and linguistics were brought to bear on the origins of Greek mythology.

Historical linguistics, on the one hand, shows that certain parts of the Greek pantheon were inherited from Indo-European society along with the roots of the Greek language. Thus, for example, the name Zeus is cognate with Latin Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus and Germanic Tyr (see Dyeus), as is Ouranos with Sanskrit Varuna. In other cases, close parallels in character and function suggest a common heritage, yet lack of linguistic evidence makes it difficult to prove — as in the case of the Greek Moirae and the Norns of Norse Mythology.

Archaeology, on the other hand, has shown extensive borrowing by the Greeks from the civilizations of Asia Minor and the Near East. Cybele is a clear example of borrowing from Anatolian culture, while Aphrodite takes much of her iconography and titles from goddesses of the Semitic world such as Ishtar and Astarte.

Textual studies reveal multiple layers in tales, such as secondary asides bringing Theseus into tales of The Twelve Labours of Herakles. Such tales concerning tribal eponyms are thought to originate in attempts to absorb mythology of one tradition into another, in order to unite the cultures.

In addition to Indo-European and Near Eastern origins, some scholars have speculated on the debts of Greek mythology to the still poorly-understood pre-Hellenic societies of Greece, such as the Minoans and so-called Pelasgians. This is especially true in the case of chthonic deities and mother goddesses. For some, the three main generations of gods in Hesiod's Theogony (Uranus, Gaia, etc.; the Titans and then the Olympians) suggest a distant echo of a struggle between social groups, mirroring the three major high cultures of Greek civilization: Minoan, Mycenaean and Hellenic.

The extensive parallels between Hesiod's narrative and the Hurrian myth of Anu, Kumarbi, and Teshub makes it very likely that the story is an adaptation of borrowed materials, rather than a distorted historical record. Parallels between the earliest divine generations (Chaos and its children) and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish are possible (Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins: NY, Biblo-Tannen, 1974).

Jungian scholars such as Karl Kerenyi have preferred to view the origin of myths (and dreams) in universal archetypes. Though not all readers are confident of interpretations of myth in terms of Carl Jung's psychology of dreams (by Kerenyi or Campbell for examples), most agree that myths are dreamlike in two aspects: they are not consistent, perhaps not wholly consistent even within a single myth-element; and they often reflect some momentary experience of the essence of the godhead, some epiphany, which then must be assembled into a narrative thread, much as dreams are recreated as sequential happenings.

In sum, the origins of Greek mythology remain a fascinating and open question.

Did the Greeks believe their myths?

To the Greeks, mythology was literally a part of their history; few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace one's descent from a mythological hero or a god.

On the other hand, philosophers like Xenophanes were already beginning to label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies in the 6th century BC; this line of thought found its most sweeping expression in Plato's Republic and Laws. More sportingly, the 5th century BC tragedian Euripides often played with the old traditions, mocking them, and through the voice of his characters injecting notes of doubt. In other cases Euripides seems to be directing pointed criticism at the behavior of his gods.

Poets, especially in the later Roman empire, often adapted stories of characters in Greek myth in ways that did not reflect earlier actual beliefs. Many of the most popular versions of these myths that we have today were actually from these fictional retellings and not the actual myths.

Hellenistic rationalism

The skeptical turn of the Classical age became even more pronounced in the Hellenistic era. Most daringly, the mythographer Euhemerus claimed that stories about the gods were only confused memories of the cruelty of ancient kings. Although Euhemerus's works are lost, interpretations in his style are frequently found in Diodorus Siculus.

Rationalizing hermeneutics of myth became even more popular under the Roman Empire, thanks to the physicalist theories of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, as well as the pragmatic bent of the Roman mind. The antiquarian Varro, summarizing centuries' worth of philosophic tradition, distinguished three kinds of gods:

The gods of nature: personifications of phenomena like rain and fire.

The gods of the poets: invented by unscrupulous bards to stir the passions.

The gods of the city: invented by wise legislators to soothe and enlighten the populace.

Cicero's De Natura Deorum is the most comprehensive summary of this line of thought.