CLAS/HIST1631

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CLAS/HIST1631

• Homer's Heroes

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The Greek World in 776 BC
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Archaic Greek Trade Posts
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Phoenicians
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Earliest Greek Writing Cup of Nestor c. 725
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Read the Earliest Word of the West!
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Hoplite Warfare
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Hoplites in Formation

• 7th c. vase shows battle
• So named after hoplon, shield
• Closely linked, like scales on fish
• This appears to be a innovation (GP 14-15).

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What About Before 776 BC?

• To the people of that day, there was a great and
  glorious past, filled with marvellous heroes
• Achilles
• Agamemnon
• Helen of Troy

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Homer, the Poet of the Past

• 'His' great poems, Iliad and Odyssey, draw on
  vast reserves of 'oral tradition'
• Proven by modern comparisons to be made through
  'oral composition'

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The Trojan War

• Dated by ancients to 1280's BC
• Set in N. W. corner of Turkey
• City of Ilium claimed it was the same spot
• Fought by Great King of Greek city, Mycenae

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'Prehistory'

• History means human past or its study
• 'Prehistory' is therefore a funny term
• Not 'before human past'
• Rather, human past before its study
• Greeks started writing in roughly 776 BC
• So Greek prehistory is everything from century
  before (ninth C. BC), back

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• BASED ON A TRUE STORY
• Do we really want a true story, or do we want one
  that is satisfying?
• Does it matter?
• What does good literature have that history often
  does not?

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(No Transcript)
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Some Pessimistic Conclusions Current in 19th
Century

• Homer's poems and the legendary world they draw
  on are literary gold
• They are full of interactions with supernatural,
  places of incredible wealth
• Therefore they represent a convenient imagined
  past, agreed upon by the Greeks like they gods

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Heinrich Schliemann
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Citadel of Troy
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'Mask of Agamemnon'
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(No Transcript)
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Linear B Tablet