Civilisation
In 4000 BC, an Early Bronze Age civilisation flourished in the Cyclades islands, which lie between Athens and Crete. Not a lot is known about these people, but they produced some wonderful marble figures of humans: these have a very abstract look, often with no facial features other than a nose. They are reminiscent of the giant heads of Easter Island or the sculptures of Henry Moore. The Cycladic civilisation appears to have died out or been incorporated into other civilisations in about 2000 BC.
The Minoans In the Middle Bronze Age, the Minoan Civilisation of Crete started to develop around 2500 BC. The Minoans were extremely advanced, with art, music and architecture. They built huge palaces on Crete, with hundreds or even thousands of rooms. They decorated these with beautiful frescoes (wall paintings) – these show the people dressed in amazing finery, with highly coiffured hair and ornate jewellery. Much of this jewellery has been recovered from excavations of the palaces. The Minoans do not appear to have been a Greek-speaking people, but it is not known what language they did speak. They had a form of writing which is now known as Linear A. This appears to be a syllabic script, with each symbol representing one syllable, but it has never been deciphered. Minoan remains have been found in Santorini which is the southernmost of the Cyclades islands, and the first major island north of Crete.
The Volcano of Santorini erupted in about 1650 BC, with devastating effect. The Minoan settlement there was wiped off the face of the earth, buried beneath metres of pumice, and was not in fact rediscovered until the 20th Century. It is not known what effect the volcanic eruption had on Crete, but it seems likely that the Minoan fleet would have been badly damaged by tsunamis.
The Mycenaeans The Mycenaean Civilisation was another Bronze Age Civilisation, which started in about 2000 BC. It grew up in the Peloponnese peninsula (to the southwest of Athens) but spread to other areas of Greece. It is named after its biggest city, Mycenae, which is in the Plain of Argos near to modern day Corinth. Mycenaean buildings, unlike the Minoan ones, are heavily fortified. They are built with huge stones, which the later Greeks called ‘cyclopean’, because they thought that only a cyclops, a type of one-eyed giant, could have moved such stones. The most distinctive feature of the palace of Mycenae is the Lion Gate with its carved lions guarding the doorway. The Mycenaeans spoke a very ancient sort of Greek, so they could be considered the first Greeks. They appear to have invaded Crete in 1450 BC, burning down all the palaces and then rebuilding them again.
After the rebuilding, the palaces were under Mycenaean control and Greek was spoken throughout Crete. They took the writing system of the Minoans and adapted it to suit their own language. They then used this in Crete and in their cities on the Greek mainland for writing records. This system is known as Linear B. Unfortunately Linear B does not seem to have been used to write down any literature or accounts of history – it is used purely for stock lists. Mycenaean civilisation came to an abrupt end in about 1200 BC. Why it ended is a mystery. Perhaps it was civil war or maybe an uprising of slaves; nobody knows for certain what happened.
The Beginnings of Greek Literature In about 800 BC, a new form of writing appeared in Greece. This was the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks used it and changed it to suit their own language, making the Greek Alphabet which is still used in Greece to this day. It is also the forerunner of our Roman alphabet and of the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet. The earliest pieces of literature to survive in the Greek language are the two epic poems attributed to the poet Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both of these talk about the Trojan War, a supposed war between the Achaians and the Trojans. The Iliad tells of an incident in the war, while the Odyssey tells of the home journey of the hero Odysseus (also known as Ulysses, which was his Roman name) after the war. Both are huge poems. They appear to tell of a time when King Agamemnon ruled the Achaians in Mainland Greece.
These poems were first written down in about the 8th Century BC, but it is clear that they date from long before that. Exactly how old they are and whether they are historically accurate is a matter for debate. Some believe that they describe the time when the Mycenaeans ruled Mainland Greece, and feel that Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus and all the others were genuine characters.
These people set the events of the poems in about 1200 BC. Others think they were written much later and are purely imaginary, but based on folk memories of the earlier era.Many other Greek legends were also written down soon after this, such as the stories of Oedipus, Jason and Theseus. Many of these are set in Mycenaean cities such as Thebes, or Mycenae itself. This suggests that they date back to Mycenaean times, but they may have just become associated with these cities because of their antiquity, in the way that a modern writer may set a piece of fiction in ancient Rome.One thing is for certain; by about 800 BC, Greece had a strong tradition of storytelling, and a pantheon of gods and goddesses in whose hands it was believed the fate of the people lay. Most of us will have heard of Zeus, Poseidon and Aphrodite, although we may know them by their Roman names of Jupiter, Neptune and Venus.
What’s a Greek Urn?
At the same time, a tradition in pottery grew up, in which earthenware pots were decorated in an elaborate red and black style with pictures showing scenes from mythology and everyday life. In ‘black figure’ style, they painted the figures in black paint on the red background of the ceramic material. In ‘red figure’, they painted the background black and left the red colour to show through for the figures, the details of which were then picked out in thin black lines.
There were three main styles. From earliest to latest these were: Corinthian style, showing processions of animals and floral patterns in black figure; early Athenian, showing scenes from mythology in both black and red figure; and later Athenian, showing everyday scenes in red figure.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of these pots and urns, showing every aspect of Greek life, so we have an incredible record of what the everyday Greeks did and looked like. This makes the ancient Greek culture one of the best documented in history.
The Archaic Age 800 – 500 BC By about 800 BC, various cities had grown up, each ruling over the agricultural land around it. Athens, Thebes, Corinth and Sparta are the most famous of them, but there were many more. As agricultural land is scarce due to the high mountains, and the cities needed to expand their land to support their growing populations, a process of colonisation started, where groups would go out in ships and found new cities. The new cities would send food back to the mother city. In this way, Greek-speaking cities grew up all around the Mediterranean and on the Black Sea. Such cities as Malaca (Malaga) in Spain, Massalia (Marseilles) in France, Syracuse in Sicily and Byzantion (Istanbul) in Turkey all started out as Greek colonies. There were hundreds of such cities, and the Greek world spread to include most of Southern Italy, the west coast of Turkey, the northern part of Libya, most of the coast of the Black Sea, and the island of Cyprus, and small patches dotted around the coast of the Med.
The Classical Age 500 – 350 BC
The height of Greek civilisation is generally considered to be the period 500 to 350 BC. This is known as the Classical Age. It is the time when Greek sculpture reached its most advanced form, and many elegant temples such as the Parthenon were built. The new art form of ‘drama’ was developed, and many of the plays that were written at that time are still performed to this day. This time also saw the great Greek philosophers: Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. The Greeks were always a war-like people, and the Classical Age saw two major wars. The first of these wars was the Graeco-Persian War, in which the Greeks successfully united to repel an invasion from Persia. After this, two cities came to prominence, Athens and Sparta, with most other cities siding with one or the other. This culminated in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which eventually resulted in victory for Sparta and the ruin of Athens.