"Somewhere along the Ionian coast opposite Crete and the islands was a town of some sort, probably of the sort that we should call a village or hamlet with a wall. It was called Ilion but it came to be called Troy, and the name will never perish from the earth. A poet who may have been a beggar and a ballad-monger, who may have been unable to read and write, and was described by tradition as blind, composed a poem about the Greeks going to war with this town to recover the most beautiful woman in the world. That the most beautiful woman in the world lived in that one little town sounds like a legend; that the most beautiful poem in the world was written by somebody who knew of nothing larger than such little towns is a historical fact. It is said that the poem came at the end of the period; that the primitive culture brought it forth in its decay; in which case one would like to have seen that culture in its prime. But anyhow it is true that this, which is our first poem, might very well be our last poem too. It might well be the last word as well as the first word spoken by man about his mortal lot, as seen by merely mortal vision. If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die."
-G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Though The Iliad may seem at the outset to be fantastical, given how full it is of gods and goddesses appearing will-nilly from the heavens, nevertheless the epic is solidly a long war poem, a lay much more akin to Das Nibelungenlied than its more fabulous sibling, The Odyssey. Consider, for example, the wondrous creatures which populate The Odyssey, the islands upon which dwell one-eyed giants, caves which house multi-headed terrors, and sorceresses who transform men into literal swine; none of these types of mythological elements are present in The Iliad -- they are too fantastical for an epic as reality-grounded as The Iliad. Apart from the appearances of the myriad of deities and spirits which populate the Asiatic-Grecian pantheon, Homer's war epic should be read as an exaggerated war tale, a rather impressive interweaving of post-war soldiers' songs about the might of their chieftains and their amazing feats in besieging the Hittite cities in the far-off Anatolian Troad. To put it more simply, this poem is the Hellenic answer to the historical books of The Bible which tell of the settling in Canaan, the establishment of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the many adventures of the kings and prophets of the Hebrews; indeed, Homer's lines have been invoked much in the same way as Bible verses, and Homer's treatment of the Grecian divine -- Zeus et al. -- was taken as gospel by Greeks for generations afterwards and treated with great respect as original canon.
Anyway, the background:
Background
The Invasions of the Akhaians
The Indo-European peoples, once a unified group, separated from each to found settlements all over Europe and the Mediterranean from c. 4000 B.C. to 1000 B.C. A group of invading migrants moved south into the Grecian mainland c. 2000 B.C. and began to battle and displace the native population, the Pelasgians, who themselves were a Cycladic people, possibly of Anatolian or Egyptian origin, who had inhabited the islands and coasts of the Aegean. Given that the word "Greek" and its derivations were bestowed upon this people by the Romans many centuries later, it would be anachronistic to refer to these violent invaders as such; so, they are sometimes called Mycenaeans (after one of their late great city centers in the Peloponnese, Mykenai), but I shall call them Akhaians, the most prominent name Homer uses to refer to them in The Iliad (Ἀχαιοὶ), while the other two are Danaoi (Δαναοί) and the Argeioi (Ᾰ̓ργεῖοι, usually anglicized as "Argives" via Latin Argivi). These Akhaians spoke a form of Indo-European which we shall refer to as Proto-Greek, as it is the forerunner to all the Greek dialects known today.
In the western regions of the Grecian mainland, the Akhaian influence became strongly felt, for there were few Pelasgians there. On the eastern coast and in the islands, the Pelasgian influence was more prominent and it is safe to bet that the invading Akhaians interbred with the indigenous inhabitants to some degree.
There are a number of cities (and other place names) in the eastern coastal regions of Greece, not to mention the islands, which display many of the same traits and naming conventions: Athens, Mycenae, Mytilene, Messene, Corinth, and Tiryns to name a few. The names of these cities are non-Indo-European (they feature suffixes and sound clusters which are not found in Indo-European languages) and thus point to a non-Akhaian origin, probably Pelasgian: Athenai, Mukenai, Mutilene, Messene, Korinthos, and Tiryntha. After invading southward and then eastward, the Akhaians took these fortified cities, but kept (more or less) the original Pelasgian name.
It must have taken the northern invaders some time to learn boat making and sailing, for the Akhaians were a land-locked people who had migrated south to a coastal peninsula. It has been theorized that the Indo-European root "pelask" may have given us the Akhaian or later Greek name for the Pelasgian people, for this is the word meaning "plain" but may have became the Akhaian word for sea, the ever-stretching plain of water which these northern invaders gave to this geographical feature, hitherto unseen to them, and the people who sailed upon it.
In other words, when it came to sailing, the Akhaians were faced with a somewhat steep learning curve.
But the they eventually got the hang of it, a fact attested to by a generally held agreement as to the impressive prowess of the Greek peoples upon the open sea, and evidence of their presence on the many islands which litter the Aegean. Crete seemed to fall to the invaders in c. 1420 B.C, if archaeological dating is to be trusted - the sack of an island necessitates a means to get there, so after some six or so centuries, it would appear that the once land-locked northerners had proved their mastery of the waterways. With Crete's fall, the advent of the written word came to the Akhaians, for they adopted the yet-indecipherable Cretan Linear A to write their Proto-Greek tongue - we call this version Linear B, or Mycenaean Greek.
Egyptian records of this time begin to mention a people called the Akaiwasha, and a "sea people" also known as the D(T)-n-j, or Denyen who have begun to raid the North African coast. Another Homeric name for the Akhaians is the Danaoi; could these peoples be one in the same, the Akaiwasha the Akhaioi, and the Denyen the Danaoi? Linguistics suggests that these clues might be linked.
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| The Pylos Tablet, written in Linear B. |
Raids upon the coast of Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) put the sea-faring Akhaians in contest with the Hittites, a people whose records from c. 1300 - 1200 B.C. make note of an aggressive people from a land in the west called Ahhiyawa -- these documents could indeed be referring to Homer's Akhaioi, just as the Egyptians mention trouble with the sea-faring Denyen (Danaoi) and the Akaiwasha (Akhaioi).
On the northwestern coast of Anatolia near the mouth of the Hellespont lay a Hittite city called Wilusa. Early in the history of the Greek language, the sound indicated by the modern letter "w", the digamma (F, f), dropped out of the language; for the Akhaians, the Hittite name of Wilusa became their Proto-Greek Wilion, and their descendants called it Ilion (cf. Iliad) after the "w" disappeared - this city was also called Troia or the Hittite Truwisa. Today it is commonly known as Troy.
West Vs. East
Herodotos of Halikarnassos in Southern Asia Minor begins his Histories by positing that the strife of the near-contemporary Greco-Persian Wars of 490 - 479 B.C. was originally due to a series of girl-napping incidents: Zeus kidnapped Io and Europa, bringing the young girls west; Jason went East and kidnapped Medeia (more accurately, she went along with him after he seduced her); and Alexandros (more commonly known as Paris) kidnapped Helen (more accurately, she went along with him after he seduced her) -- it was this last rape which, according to the poets, caused the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Iliad, which may be called, The Song of Ilion.
The Dorian Invasion
Few theories in classical scholarship match The Dorian Invasion in terms of violating the basics of sound research in favor of hopeful yet groundless suppositions to fill in the gaps. The theory works something like this: in the 1820s and '30s, a desire grew amongst Hellenic scholars to account for the apparent differences in the Trojan War/Heroic Age culture of the Akhaioi and the cultures of the post-Dark Age Classical Greeks. Thomas Keightly, an Irish writer known for writing fairy tales and compiling "fit-for-ladies" editions of Graeco-Roman mythology and history, referred to the event first as the "Dorian Migration" in his textbook on Greek history (1831) and then later as the "Dorian Invasion" in his text on Greek mythology (1837). William Mitford writes of the "Return of the Heracleidae" in his History of Greece (1823), and describes the event as an invasion and conquest of the Peloponnese by the northern Dorians. Drawing from references to an event mentioned by Herodotos and Thoukydides, these scholars began to write about a second invasion of the Hellenic mainland, an invasion which wiped out the Mycenaeans/Akhaians just as they had once invaded and destroyed the Pelasgians. These northern barbarian warriors were called the Dorians, who some scholars wrote of as wielding iron weaponry which surpassed the bronze armor and edges of the Mycenaean forces. In the Classical Age, the Dorians were an ethnic branch the Hellenic people living prominently in the Peloponnese and the western regions of northern Greece. When a Classical Greek would think of a Dorian, they would have thought first of a Spartan (as in Herodotos' statement that King Kroisos equated Dorians with Lakedaimonians).
In the end, the theory strives to explain how this Doric people came to arrive where they came to arrive; however, the theory's proponents seem to have little issue ignoring or warping the evidence in favor of this supposed second invasion.
Firstly, here follows the pertinent passage concerning the Dorians and their origins from the first book of Herodotos' Historiai:
[KLEIO.56] τούτοισι ἐλθοῦσι τοῖσι ἔπεσι ὁ Κροῖσος πολλόν τι μάλιστα πάντων ἥσθη, ἐλπίζων ἡμίονον οὐδαμὰ ἀντ᾽ ἀνδρὸς βασιλεύσειν Μήδων, οὐδ᾽ ὦν αὐτὸς οὐδὲ οἱ ἐξ αὐτοῦ παύσεσθαι κοτὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἐφρόντιζε ἱστορέων τοὺς ἂν Ἑλλήνων δυνατωτάτους ἐόντας προσκτήσαιτο φίλους, ἱστορέων δὲ εὕρισκε Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Ἀθηναίους προέχοντας τοὺς μὲν τοῦ Δωρικοῦ γένεος τοὺς δὲ τοῦ Ἰωνικοῦ. ταῦτα γὰρ ἦν τὰ προκεκριμένα, ἐόντα τὸ ἀρχαῖον τὸ μὲν Πελασγικὸν τὸ δὲ Ἑλληνικὸν ἔθνος. καὶ τὸ μὲν οὐδαμῇ κω ἐξεχώρησε, τὸ δὲ πολυπλάνητον κάρτα. ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ Δευκαλίωνος βασιλέος οἴκεε γῆν τὴν Φθιῶτιν, ἐπὶ δὲ Δώρου τοῦ Ἕλληνος τὴν ὑπὸ τὴν Ὄσσαν τε καὶ τὸν Ὄλυμπον χώρην, καλεομένην δὲ Ἱστιαιῶτιν· ἐκ δὲ τῆς Ἱστιαιώτιδος ὡς ἐξανέστη ὑπὸ Καδμείων, οἴκεε ἐν Πίνδῳ Μακεδνὸν καλεόμενον· ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ αὖτις ἐς τὴν Δρυοπίδα μετέβη καὶ ἐκ τῆς Δρυοπίδος οὕτω ἐς Πελοπόννησον ἐλθὸν Δωρικὸν ἐκλήθη.
And when these verses came back to him, Kroisos was most pleased above all, hoping that a mule would in no way rule as king over the Medes instead of a man: so, neither he himself nor those who came after him would lose his empire. And after he learned these things, he sought who the mightiest of the Hellenes might be and how to win them over as friends, and in so doing he discovered the Lakedaimonioi and the Athenaioi to be the chief peoples, the former being of the Doric tribe and the latter of the Ionic. For these have been the foremost distinguished peoples, being in existence from the beginning, one as a Pelasgian people [the Ionians] and the other as a Hellenic people [the Doric]. And never have the Pelasgoi left from their home, while the other hath wandered very far and wide. For in the time of King Deukalion, the Hellenic race lived in the land of Phthia, and under the leadership of Doros, a son of Hellen, they dwelt in the land at the base of Ossa and Olympos, a place called Histiaiotis. And from Histiaios they were driven out by the Kadmeioi, and then they dwelt in Pindos, calling it Makednon. And thence unto Dryopis they passed over and from Dyropis they came to the Peloponnese and were called the Doric tribe.
Hardly an invasion. So, the Dorians, the tribe of Doros, a son of Hellen, son of Deukalion (the Greek Noah), were driven from their northern homeland by the southern Kadmeioi, the Cadmeans, i.e. the Thebans? They then moved to a place they called Makednon (Macedon?) and then moved to Dryopis, and then the Peloponnese, i.e. Sparta, which becomes inextricably linked with the Dorians. The verbs here do not denote any violent action. The most active verb in the whole account of the Dorians' movements is actually passive, as it describes the Doric tribe being "up-rooted" ἐξανέστη, "taken out after lifting up from a seated position" by the Kadmeioi. If anything, that describes an invasion, only it happened to the Dorians. The other verbs are variants of standard moving verbs and are more migratory in nature (μετέβη and ἐλθὸν).
It is to be here noted that in a commentary of this passage, editors W.W. How and J. Wells take time to describe the details of the Dorian Invasion in a section they entitled, "Evidence for reality of Dorian invasion", claiming that the facts concerning the invasion were "fully-developed" in the time of Herodotos. The "evidence" which follows amounts to thus: quoting Tyrtaios fr. 2 and Pindar's Pythian Ode I.63, the event must have been an invasion (or maybe not: "Beloch argues the story is an invention"), and is based upon the following enumerated "facts":
- "Modern archaeological research tends to vindicate the accuracy of Greek myths in their general outlines.
- "If tradition is ever good evidence, it would be so for an event of such importance.
- "Tradition is confirmed by the existence of subject classes (probably subject races) in many parts of the Peloponnese.
- "The Dorians always looked on themselves as being new-comers in the Peloponnese.
- "The tradition explains such facts as resemblance of Dorian and Aeolian dialects (Busolt, i. 195) and the connexion of the Lacedaemonians with Doris, which is of great importance in historic times."
-W.W. How & J. Wells, commentary on Herodotos' Historiai. Kleio.56
Immediately following this less-than-impressive enumeration, the editors admit that "[i]t must be frankly admitted, however, that we know nothing of the details of the Invasion."
Armed with that knowledge, we turn our attention back to Herodotos, good storyteller that he is:
[KLEIO.57] ἥντινα δὲ γλῶσσαν ἵεσαν οἱ Πελασγοί, οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως εἰπεῖν. εἰ δὲ χρεόν ἐστι τεκμαιρόμενον λέγειν τοῖσι νῦν ἔτι ἐοῦσι Πελασγῶν τῶν ὑπὲρ Τυρσηνῶν Κρηστῶνα πόλιν οἰκεόντων, οἳ ὅμουροι κοτὲ ἦσαν τοῖσι νῦν Δωριεῦσι καλεομένοισι (οἴκεον δὲ τηνικαῦτα γῆν τὴν νῦν Θεσσαλιῶτιν καλεομένην ), καὶ τῶν Πλακίην τε καὶ Σκυλάκην Πελασγῶν οἰκησάντων ἐν Ἑλλησπόντῳ, οἳ σύνοικοι ἐγένοντο Ἀθηναίοισι, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα Πελασγικὰ ἐόντα πολίσματα τὸ οὔνομα μετέβαλε· εἰ τούτοισι τεκμαιρόμενον δεῖ λέγειν, ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικόν, τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος ἐὸν Πελασγικὸν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε. καὶ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε οἱ Κρηστωνιῆται οὐδαμοῖσι τῶν νῦν σφέας περιοικεόντων εἰσὶ ὁμόγλωσσοι οὔτε οἱ Πλακιηνοί, σφίσι δὲ ὁμόγλωσσοι· δηλοῦσί τε ὅτι τὸν ἠνείκαντο γλώσσης χαρακτῆρα μεταβαίνοντες ἐς ταῦτα τὰ χωρία, τοῦτον ἔχουσι ἐν φυλακῇ.
And whatever the language it was the Pelasgoi spoke, I do not have any idea with certainty. But if we take as read how the speech of the Pelasgoi of the present day is, it like how the Tyrsenoi who live around the city of Kreston speak -- and indeed, they themselves were once neighbors of a people now called the Dorioi, who were dwelling at that very time in a place now called Thessaliotis. It also sounds like how the Pelasgoi speak where they have dwelt at Plakie and Skylake on the Hellespont, and there they had dwelt alongside the Athenaioi, and a great many of the Pelasgic towns adopted their name. And if we take as read how their speech is, the Pelasgoi were speaking a barbaric [i.e. non-Greek] tongue. And indeed if it is so, then the whole Pelasgic race spoke like that, and Attika, being Pelasgic, altogether changed in the movement towards the Hellenes and learned to change their tongue. For indeed, neither do the Krestonians of today speak like their neighbors, nor do the Plakienians speak like anyone around them. So it is clear that they have kept the characteristics of their tongue while adopting the lands where they are now and there have they preserved those characteristics.
What Herodotos is describing here is the Akhaian/Mycenaean migration and invasion southward, the event which displaced or "changed" (μεταβολῇ and μετέμαθε) the Pelasgians. Everyone, this is the Dorian invasion, just not the Dorian (majuscule) I-nvasion you're looking for. The Dorians, the Dorioi, ARE the Akhaioi, just as the Akhaioi are the Danaoi, just as the Danaoi are the Argeioi, just as the Argeioi are the Greeks.
They're all the same people. The Akhaioi were the northern inhabitants of the Grecian peninsula and the Balkans. They invaded (or just migrated, as Herodotos' account above seems a little mellow) southward, removing. perhaps violently or otherwise, the Pelasgian presence in the Peloponnese and the coast. As recounted above, the Pelasgian presence was still felt in Attika and Athens and the islands of the Aegean (around the Hellespont, Herodotos writes). The mistake the Dorian Invasion Theory proponents have made is that they have split the one and only singular large-scale invasion/migration/influence southward (this Akhaian/Mycenaean/Danaoi/Dorian event) into two separate events because of a confusion of tribal names and translations. Indeed, this will become clearer as we continue.
[Kleio.58] τὸ δὲ Ἑλληνικὸν γλώσσῃ μὲν ἐπείτε ἐγένετο αἰεί κοτε τῇ αὐτῇ διαχρᾶται, ὡς ἐμοὶ καταφαίνεται εἶναι· ἀποσχισθὲν μέντοι ἀπὸ τοῦ Πελασγικοῦ ἐόν ἀσθενές, ἀπό σμικροῦ τεο τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁρμώμενον αὔξηται ἐς πλῆθος τῶν ἐθνέων, Πελασγῶν μάλιστα προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐθνέων βαρβάρων συχνῶν. πρόσθε δὲ ὦν ἔμοιγε δοκέει οὐδὲ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν βάρβαρον, οὐδαμὰ μεγάλως αὐξηθῆναι.
And the Hellenic race hath ever spoken its own tongue, as it appears to me. It was a branch of the Pelasgic tongue, and starting weak from small beginnings, grew and was increased by many speakers whom the Pelasgoi approached and with whom other barbaric peoples allied. And before all of these facts, it hath been clear to me that neither was the Pelasgic race, a barbaric [non-Greek] one, one which bred very much.
-Herodotos of Halikarnassos, Kleio (Book I); 56-58. Trans. is my own.
Notably, the commentary mentioned above has nothing to say on this passage. Either way, the passage rather conclusively blows an irreparable hole in the Dorian Invasion Theory: the Pelasgians spoke a non-Greek, but maybe an Indo-European tongue, while the "Hellenic race hath ever spoken its own tongue", originally a minor branch of the Pelasgic. According to Herodotos, the Hellenes, i.e. the Dorians, i,e, the Akhaians, i.e. the Danaoi, i.e. the Mycenaeans have always spoken a form of Greek. And indeed, linguistical evidence recovered by archaeology confirms that claim to be true: Linear B is an early form of Greek, so-called Proto-Greek, and so there has been an unbroken chain of Greek speakers in Greece since the Akhaian/Mycenaean migration. For the Dorian Invasion to be true, then a barbaric non-Greek speaking people came south and conquered by displacement or murder the native Greek-speaking populace. If this is true, then why does this new barbaric ruling class start speaking Greek? The proponents of the Doric Invasion Theory have to explain how the Dorian Invasion fits into the facts that both the Greeks' own historians (like Herodotos) say that the inhabitants of the mainland have always spoken Greek since their southward migration/invasion, when they displaced the Pelasgians, and archaeology conclusively proves that. Did these conquering Dorians stop speaking their non-Greek tongue and adopt their conquered people's Greek language? What was the Doric non-Greek language? How exactly did Greek survive from the Mycenaean Proto-Greek written in Linear B to the Pre-Classical Greek of the centuries emerging from the Dark Ages, after the time of the so-called Doric Invasion? How did The Iliad survive, for it is a poem sung in Grecian tongues before the Doric Invasion and then continues to be sung and celebrated afterward? How can the invaders be Dorians if Herodotos says that the Dorians were Hellenes and therefore Greek. Indeed, if Herodotos is to be believed, he implies that the Pelasgians' low population is the reason for the growth of Hellenic presence south of their north homeland: they moved south and their numbers grew; the Pelasgians did not, and centered in Attika and the coasts and islands.
I will argue, however, that an event did happen which caused the cultural changes we find in the Dark Ages: the Trojan War. As the raids on Hittite land in Asia Minor increased, centering mostly around a long siege against Wilusa, the great city the Akhaian raiders called Ilion, the demographics of the mainland Greece changed; indeed, let us recall that Danaan/Akhaian forces even made attacks upon Egyptian land. In the absence of the warrior raiders carrying out eastern sieges by plying their warships on the Aegean and greater Mediterranean waters, could there have been fighting back at home on the Grecian mainland, perhaps a civil war in which power changed hands to a previous underclass? Or could it have been as Herodotos implied, a non-violent decline in population of the eastern mainland Greeks of Mycenae, the Argolid, Attika, and Boiotia in favor of a takeover of the culture of the western Greeks, the more Doric element in the Akhaian people?
In the Greeks' own mythology, such a parallel event appears: the attempts made by Aigisthos and Penelope's suitors in Homer's Odyssey to usurp the power and property of the ruling class, namely Agamemnon and Odysseus, kings who were winning glory raiding the rich cities of Asia Minor. The Greek mythologies refer to the "Return of the Heracleidae", the "Sons of Herakles", the kings descended from Perseus, the four-times father of Herakles. The Perseid kings rule the Argolid and the Peloponnese in the early stories of the Greek legends, but when Herakles' father Amphitryon is exiled by the accidental killing of his brother, the brother next-in-line, Sthenelos, inherits the kingdom of Mykenai. Thus, Sthenelos' son Eurystheus becomes king over Herakles, and compels the latter to undergo the famous Twelve Labors. After Herakles' death, Eurystheus brutally persecutes his children, the Herakleidai, who flee to Athens. In the absence of Eurystheus, Atreus and Thystes, sons of Pelops, son of Tantalos, who was a king of Lydia in Asia Minor, took the kingdom for themselves. Thus control of the Peloponnese and the Argolid passes under the control of the Atreus and the Atreidai, his sons, Agamemnon and Menalaos, who in turn wage their war at Ilion and Asia Minor, the land of their grandfather. In their own absence, could not the Herakleidai have assumed control? Indeed, could this not be the meaning of the "return" mentioned above?
This summary is rather like how the historian Thoukydides describes the events following the Trojan War:
[A.12] ἐπεὶ καὶ μετὰ τὰ Τρωικὰ ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἔτι μετανίστατό τε καὶ κατῳκίζετο, ὥστε μὴ ἡσυχάσασαν αὐξηθῆναι. ἥ τε γὰρ ἀναχώρησις τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐξ Ἰλίου χρονία γενομένη πολλὰ ἐνεόχμωσε, καὶ στάσεις ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ὡς ἐπὶ πολὺ ἐγίγνοντο, ἀφ’ ὧν ἐκπίπτοντες τὰς πόλεις ἔκτιζον. Βοιωτοί τε γὰρ οἱ νῦν ἑξηκοστῷ ἔτει μετὰ Ἰλίου ἅλωσιν ἐξ Ἄρνης ἀναστάντες ὑπὸ Θεσσαλῶν τὴν νῦν μὲν Βοιωτίαν, πρότερον δὲ Καδμηίδα γῆν καλουμένην ᾤκισαν (ἦν δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀποδασμὸς πρότερον ἐν τῇ γῇ ταύτῃ, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ ἐς Ἴλιον ἐστράτευσαν), Δωριῆς τε ὀγδοηκοστῷ ἔτει ξὺν Ἡρακλείδαις Πελοπόννησον ἔσχον. μόλις τε ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ ἡσυχάσασα ἡ Ἑλλὰς βεβαίως καὶ οὐκέτι ἀνισταμένη ἀποικίας ἐξέπεμψε, καὶ Ἴωνας μὲν Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ νησιωτῶν τοὺς πολλοὺς ᾤκισαν, Ἰταλίας δὲ καὶ Σικελίας τὸ πλεῖστον Πελοποννήσιοι τῆς τε ἄλλης Ἑλλάδος ἔστιν ἃ χωρία. πάντα δὲ ταῦτα ὕστερον τῶν Τρωικῶν ἐκτίσθη.
And after the Trojan War, Hellas yet migrated and established colonies, with the result that not in peace did they grow in power. For the departure from Ilion was implemented too late, and so many things changed, and seditions in a good portion of the cities were engendered, and the refugees driven out from these places established their own cities elsewhere. For those who are now known as the Boiotoi, when it was the sixtieth year after the taking of Ilion, were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians and then they established a colony in the land now known as Boiotia, but before was called Kadmeia, a portion of which dwelt earlier in that land and also warred at Ilion. The Dorians, in the eightieth year following that war, in alliance with the Herakleidai did hold the Peloponnese. It was only just after so much time that Hellas was steadily peaceful, and no longer in a period of upheaval, did send out colonies: Ionia the Athenaioi peopled, as well as many of the islands, while most of Italy and Sikelia the Peloponnesioi did the same, and to the rest of Hellas' countryside. And all of these colonies were peopled after the Trojan War.My, it is interesting how the event is characterized in the Thoukydides' passage above! The Dorians merely "hold" (ἔσχον) the Peloponnese with the Herakleidai (ξὺν Ἡρακλείδαις), which I take to mean an alliance of some kind, some sort of joining together. However, the event does not seem to be an invasion, but more like a "moving-in" (κατῳκίζετο) or migration (μετανίστατό) caused by a general upheaval (ἀνισταμένη) brought on by some sort of factious revolutions (στάσεις) in the majority of the cities (ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ὡς ἐπὶ πολὺ) in the wake of the Trojan War.
In the end, no matter how it happened, the great city centers like Mycenae were abandoned, Linear B disappeared, commerce collapseed, and people began living sparsely and further apart. It is here that the scholars of yesteryear have placed the Dorian Invasion to account for these so-called "Dark Ages" and to explain how the Classical Greeks linked to the Mycenaeans, but the theory has been rather neatly taken apart and is unable to stand up to scrutiny. The very passages in the Greek historians which have been used to defend the theory of a Dorian Invasion actually dispel every so-called fact used to justify continued belief in the existence of such an event.
The "Homeric Question"
Sometimes referred to as "The Homeric Problem", the question which has plagued scholars from the ancient world onward is "who was Homer?" Linked with this query are questions pertaining to whether this Homer was one person or many; whether The Iliad and The Odyssey are both the works of the same poet(s); whether this poet (or these poets) crafted the story and lines by himself (or themselves), or whether he (or they) drew from existing material and modified it himself (themselves). It is more than likely that we will never answer these questions, but it quite fun to play detective. Outlined below is a brief sketch of the most important discoveries and advancements made in answering the Homeric Question:
Wolfe -
Lachmann -
Nitzsh -
Grote -
For convenience's sake, we speak of The Iliad as being composed by "Homer", a singular individual; however, the author should be understood to be humanity itself, for the song was passed upon the lips for generations before being finally put to pen as Greece emerged from her Dark Age, and then the poem was afterwards compiled and arranged and codified into the form which we now possess. The text must have been subjected to so many interpolations, emendations, corrections, and (one imagines) deletions and similar erasures, that the mind reels at fathoming how many persons have had a voice and a hand in shaping the The Iliad as we have it today. What is it which lies inside each successive generation of humankind to which this poem has spoken and imparted some wisdom concerning the human condition?
ὉΜHΡΟΥ ἸΛIAΣ - ῬAΨΩΔIA A' - Homer's The Iliad - "The Song of Ilion" Book I
ὉΜHΡΟΥ ἸΛIAΣ - ῬAΨΩΔIA B' - Homer's The Iliad - "The Song of Ilion" Book II
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