More Notes on Greece

Today in class we took more notes on ancient Greece.

• influence began around 2000 BCE
• Mycenae - located on a rocky ridge on Peloponnesus, 20-foot thick wall
• dominated Greece from 1600-1100, controlled trade in regio
• 1400 BCE invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture (writing system, language, art, politics, literature, religion)
• Trojan War - 1200 BCE
• part of Greek mythology, til 19th century (most thought it was fiction be god/esses were in war)
• 1200 BCE mysterious "sea people" began to invade Mycenae and burnt palace after palace
• Dorians moved into the war-torn region, dominating from 150-750 BCE
• Dorians far less advanced
• trade based economy collapsed
• writing disappeared for 400 years
• Greek oral tradition - stories passed on by word of mouth
• Homer lived at the end of these "Greek Dark Ages"
• composed stories (epics) of Trojan War 750-700
• The Illiad - possibly 1 of the last conquest of Mycenaeans (Trojan War)
• The Odyssey - Odysseus attempts to return home after the Trojan War, thwarted by the angry god of the sea, Poseidon
• Odyssey was 12, 110 lines of dactylic hexameter
• "Homeric question" - Homer may have been a mythical creation himself
• blind wandering minstrel; a heroic figure
• Illiad and Odyssey may be the culmination of many generations of storytelling
• or homer actually existed and did all that