1. CLAS/HIST3001 Greek Dark Ages II: Community and the Advent of Writing

2. Review ● Using Homer to reconstruct Dark Age society

3. Ethics of the Iliad ● Aretê ('excellence') of individual in war ● Seek to acquire timê ('honour'), akin to modern representations of American ghetto culture ● Established in highly public, zero-sum contexts – prizes at athletic competition – distribution of war booty

4. Permanence of These ● Not just military: “Potter resents potter and carpenter resents carpenter and beggar is jealous of beggar” Hesiod Works and Days 20ff. ● An iron-clad code, see Hector's address to his wife in Iliad 6 (Pomeroy p. 62) ● The suicide of Ajax (see image)

5. Dark Age Religion ● This period sets the pattern basically until conflict with Xianity in yrs. AD ● Polytheistic – Adaptive ● gods are self-interested and blessed – In large part, not concerned with morality ● they concern themselves only tangentially with humans ● Worship through sacrifice, prayer, song, procession ● Oracles are a line of communication

6. Hesiod's Theogony

7. Luxury Goods and Network of Trade ● Bronze tripod (“three- foot”) cauldron ● Gift, burial, etc. ● Skills, materials from East

8. Archaic Greek Trade Posts

9. Phoenicians

10. Greek Traders Borrow Phoenician Writing

11. Phoenician a Semitic Language

12. Earliest Greek Writing: Cup of Nestor c. 725 ● “I am the fine drinking cup of Nestor. May desire of beautiful Aphrodite seize whoever drinks from me.” ● From ancient Pithekoussai, off Italian coast ● Cp. with Linear B

13. Read the Earliest Word of the West!

14. Evidence from a 5 th C. Historian ● How does the historian Herodotus, writing hundreds of years later, explain the adoption of writing? – myth – a specific person

15. Refinement of Protogeometric Pottery

16. Geometric Pottery

17. Early Archaic Geometric Pottery

18. Art, Writing and Literature Develop Through Similar Process ● Aggregation and meaningful repetition of small set of basic units: – Language, the alphabet – Literature, the Epic formulas and set-pieces – Art, the geometric elements: circles, checkerboard, meander, finally people ● What about political development of this time? C7 p. 39-41