Monday, 2/2: The End of the Bronze Age

I. Situation in the Aegean Region

Palace fortifications

Palace destructions

Troy

Near East (Hittites, Egypt and the 'Sea Peoples')

II. Explanations

Natural causes

Internal discord

Changes in military science

Invaders/raiders

III. Homer

Emergence from the Dark Age

Colonization, contacts with other societies

Writing

IV. Homer's Epic

oral composition

Bronze Age survivals (geography, military items, etc.)

V. Myths about the end of the Bronze Age

Wednesday, 2/4: Mythological Explanations of the End of the Bronze Age

I. Relevant Myths

Thebes -v- Argos (Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes)

Heracles at Troy

Attempted Dorian invasion

Trojan War

Return of the Greek Heroes from Troy

Dorian Invasion

II. Archaeological picture

Troy VI and VIIa

Dorian Invasions (trans-Isthmian wall?)

Strengthening of palace fortifications

Palace at Pylos

Athens -- autochthony

Friday, 2/6: Homeric Warfare and the Dark Age

I. Homer as evidence for the remote past and the recent past

Bronze age reflections

Dark age reflections

II. Warfare in the Iliad

Focus on one-to-one heroic battles

What else is going on?

III. Equipment

The chariot as taxi

Weapons

Armor

Super-human scale

Bronze and iron

IV. Types of combat

Evidence for hoplite tactics

Evidence against hoplite tactics

Mass encounters, but not massed (i.e. close formation) encounters

Mixture of techniques: long and short range, various weaponry

Pictorial evidence -- what period does Homeric warfare reflect

V. The 'Heroic Code'

Homer as an influential cultural text

Reasons for fighting

Status

What does it mean to be a warrior?