Hellenes – Ancient Greek Mythology

The two hundred years after 800 B.C. saw a great expansion of the Greeks by colonisation. Colonisation is a more orderly kind of migration. The Greeks now lived in numerous small communities, often no more than towns with surrounding farmlands. They are therefore called “city-states”. Some of these city-states now sent out colonies to southern Italy, Sicily and also to the Black Sea. These colonies became independent but they kept in touch with their mother-city. Miletus in Ionia sent out many of the Black Sea colonies. Byzantium, now Istanbul, was founded by Megara a city near Athens. The most important of the western colonies, Syracuse, was founded by Corinth. Sparta founded Taras (Taranto) in Italy. Marseilles in the south of France was first colonised by Greeks from Asia Minor. One of the Aegean islands founded Cyrene in North Africa. A map of the Greek world about 600 B.C., when the period of colonisation was over, has therefore to cover most of the Mediterranean. When a people expands in this way it is usual to speak of their “empire” and a map of it shows somewhere a city in extra large print, which is the capital — Babylon, for example, or Egyptian Thebes, or Rome. At this time (c. 600 B.C.) the Greek city-states and their colonies, being independent of each other, did not constitute an empire and acknowledged no capital. There were however two places which all Greeks regarded with reverence. One was Delphi and the other was Olympia.

The “Dark Age” of Greece (c. 1100 – 800) was a time of migration and settlement. Whole peoples were in migration mode. People on the move do not have time to write records for us to read later nor do they build palaces which we can dig up. So there is no continuous history of this period, though during it Homer (c. 900) and Hesiod (c. 800) wrote their poems. (Hesiod’s contained two very different ingredients — stories of the gods and practical advice about country life.) The Achaeans were overcome by invaders from the north called Dorians, who occupied the Peloponnese. Some of them also occupied part of the coast of Asia Minor and Crete. The Dorians did not invade the peninsula on which Athens stood, but Achaeans and kindred peoples called Ionians, who had been forced out of other parts of Greece, took refuge there. In time some of these migrated to Asia Minor. The coastal area which they occupied was called Ionia. The distinction between Dorian and non-Dorian parts of Greece gradually ceased to be important. The point to remember about the Dorian invasion is that it left Greeks settled in Ionia as well as on the Aegean islands and the mainland. They were destined, however, to go further afield than that.

Parts of the story of the Trojan War are told in two poems the Iliad (Ilium = Troy) and the Odyssey (Odysseus was one of the Greek Generals) by Homer, the earliest Greek poet. A hundred years ago the war was regarded as a legend, but a German-American, Heinrich Schliemann, who had learned to love Homer as a boy and became immensely rich, determined to try and find Troy by digging. He succeeded, in 1871 and later proceeded to excavate Mycenae. He made many mistakes, but his work and the work of those who followed him have made it possible to answer ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Was there a Trojan War?’ We now know that from about 2500 B.C. a number of great cities existed on the site of Troy, each one built on top of the ruins of its predecessor. The sixth city was built about 1500 B.C. and its destruction by the Greeks is now thought to have taken place about 1180 B.C., that is, about the time when the great days of Mycenae were coming to an end. We know nothing at all about the course of the war, but its cause may well have been a quarrel over Black Sea trade. Troy’s position naturally tempted her to try and exact tribute from ships passing through the Hellespont. Homer and the archaeologists thus give us some sort of picture of the Greeks in about 1200 B.C., but after the end of the Trojan War we enter a period of several centuries about which neither legends nor written accounts nor archaeologists can tell us very much.

In the tenth year of the war the Greek hero Achilles slew Hector, the Trojan, in single combat. (Paris, the cause of all the trouble, never distinguished himself very much in the fighting.) The death of Hector was a cruel blow to the Trojans, particularly to Hector’s old father Priam; but they still did not surrender. In the end they were beaten by a trick. The Greeks built a huge wooden horse, big enough to hold a number of fully armed men. They put the pick of their warriors inside the horse and left it on the shore. All the rest of the Greek army sailed away. Hector were supposed to think that the Greeks had given up hope and gone home; but in fact they had only withdrawn to an island nearby. The Trojans streamed out of their city and strolled delightedly through the deserted Greek camp and along the shore where the Greek ships had been drawn up. The wooden horse started them arguing. Should they destroy it? Or should they drag it into their city and keep it there as a memorial of their victory? One Trojan, Laocoon, had no doubts. “I fear the Greeks, even when they bring us gifts”, he said and threw his spear at the horse’s great wooden belly. There was a hollow sound and perhaps Laocoon would have persuaded the Trojans to open up the horse straight away if their attention had not at that moment been distracted by something even more interesting — the discovery of a live Greek. This Greek was a young spy named Sinon. His hands were bound and he had a plausible story to tell. The Greeks, he said, had been going to make a human sacrifice of him in order to ensure that the gods would …

Helen “of Troy“ was in fact Helen of Sparta where she was the wife of King Menelaus. She only spent part of her life in Troy, but it was those years which made her famous. The cause of her going there was the following. The three goddesses, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite (goddess of love) were attending a wedding, when a golden apple was thrown among the guests. It was inscribed “to the fairest”. Naturally, each of the three goddesses claimed it. Zeus ordered Hermes to take them to Mount Ida, near Troy, where Paris would settle their dispute. Paris was the son of King Priam, but it had been prophesied that he would cause trouble; so he had left the court and was working on Mount Ida as a shepherd. Instead of letting Paris decide simply by looking at them, the three goddesses all offered him bribes. Hera said she would make him a powerful ruler if he chose her. Athena offered him fame as a warrior. However, Aphrodite promised Paris that if he would award her the golden apple she would give him the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife. Paris gave the golden apple to Aphrodite. Aphrodite kept her promise, but not in the way one might have expected. Instead of finding a beautiful unmarried girl for Paris, she caused him to fall in love with Helen of Sparta and he eloped with her to Troy. This was an outrageous thing to do. It is not surprising that the poets who told the story made Helen of Troy the cause of a ten year war.

So much for the legend. What of the facts? At Cnossos, near Herakleion, in Crete are the ruins of an enormous palace, which must have needed somebody like Daedalus to design it. Its honeycomb of cavernous cellars, traces of which still remain, might well have given rise to stories of a “labyrinth” and though no pictures of the Minotaur himself have been found, bulls occur frequently in the paintings which can still be seen upon the palace walls. Sir Arthur Evans began to excavate this great palace in 1899 and called it “The Palace of Minos”. He did not find evidence that a king called Minos had built it. Minos remains legendary, but the name was dignified and convenient. From excavations at Cnossos and elsewhere in Crete, it has been possible to trace the history of Cretan civilization back to about 3000 B.C. So it is here, not on the mainland, that a history of Greece ought to begin. Crete is only 180 miles from the coast of North Africa, along which ships could sail to Egypt. Archaeologists have been able to show that Crete did in fact have links with Egypt as well as with the ancient civilizations of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. A copper axe found at Cnossos shows that Crete probably received copper from Egypt as early as 3000 B.C. and the Cretans later learned pottery and other arts from the Egyptians. By 2000 B.C. Crete was a highly civilized country. Writing, to which dogged scholarship has only recently found the key, had been developed; but as there were no papyrus marshes, clay tablets were used. The pottery and metalwork industries had made a thriving foreign trade possible. The first palaces had been built and much of the island was united under one line of Kings. The …

The Greeks, then, had their story of the creation of the world, of a great flood and a heroic ancestor; but the only fact we have met so far is that a tribe called Hellenes did in fact exist in Northern Greece. The search now turns southward, to Crete. Once again we begin with a legend. Minos, King of Crete, had a brilliantly athletic son, Androgeus, a beautiful daughter, Ariadne and a monster, the Minotaur, (half bull, half man). The Minotaur was kept shut up in a labyrinth, a vast network of caves and underground passages, designed by Daedalus, a brilliant Athenian exile. Androgeus was happy and successful. Too successful. For, when he had competed in the games at Athens and won every event, Aegeus, King of Athens, had him put to death. Minos then made war on the Athenians to avenge his son’s death and compelled them to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete every year as victims for the Minotaur. When he grew up, Theseus, the son of King Aegeus, volunteered to be one of the unlucky fourteen and sailed with them to Crete in their black-sailed ship. He had made up his mind to kill the Minotaur. King Aegeus, praying that his son might succeed, had a white sail put on board the ship and gave orders for it to be hoisted on the homeward voyage, if Theseus were alive. In Crete, Ariadne the daughter of King Minos, helped Theseus by giving him a ball of thread. He fixed the end of this at the entrance of the labyrinth and unwound it as he went along. So he not only succeeded in killing the Minotaur but was also able to escape with his companions. On the voyage back to Athens there was a good deal …

GREECE is a country that people go to on cruises in spring, summer and autumn. Like other people who go on cruises, they are in search of sunshine. They pack bathing suits. But, unlike most other people who go on cruises, they also pack a lot of books-The Iliad, The Odyssey, How to enjoy GreekArt, The Greek CityState, The Play: of Sophocles. Some of the books are in Greek, e.g., The Apology of Socrates. There is another queer thing about cruising to Greece. The labels on the passengers’ luggage probably do not have the word “Greece” on them at all. Instead you will find the word “Hellenic”. This is a “Hellenic” cruise and the king of the country the passengers are about to visit is called King of the Hellenes, not King of Greece. When they buy their first postage stamps after arriving in Athens they will find them inscribed, which in English would be written HELLAS. The fact is that the Greeks, who call themselves Hellenes, have a very long and in some respects very splendid history. They are proud of it and people of other countries approach Greece with reverence. Reverence means loving and admiring at the same time. It is a much more serious feeling than usually comes over a person looking at Stonehenge or the Pyramids. Who were the Hellenes, whom we call Greeks because the Romans called them Greeks? This is the first of many questions about early Greek history to which there are two answers — the truth, as far as we have been able to get at it and the myths and legends told among the ancient Greeks themselves. It is usually convenient to put the old story first and the truth, as far as it is known, second. For the truth is usually …