CNEART 430: Homer, Troy, and the Trojan War

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CNE/ART 430 Homer, Troy, and the Trojan War
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Timeline Greek history and literature

• Bronze Age
• Mycenaean civilization dominant from 14th c.
  until c. 1200, the end of Myc. civ. on the
  mainland.
• Oral poetry, no written literature (just economic
  records, etc.)

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Dark Age

• Mainland palace centers destroyed by natural and
  human disasters, slow abandonment of sites.
• Widespread population shifts and movements, new
  centers arise.
• Oral poetic tradition

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Geometric Greece (900-700)

• Circa 750 BCE one workshops activity shows the
  rebirth of representational art.
• Homer culminates the oral tradition Iliad and
  Odyssey composed and then written down.

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Archaic Greece (700-500)

• Lyric poets (Sappho, Alkaios, etc.)
• Rise of the polis
• Rise of sanctuaries (panhellenic)
• Colonization
• Invention of alphabet
• Earliest Greek writing poetry (hexameter)

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Early Greek Inscription

• Retrograde, hexameter
• On drinking cup
• Nestor had a fine drinking cup, but anyone who
  drinks from this cup will soon be struck with
  desire for fair-crowned Aphrodite.

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Timeline Summary