Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Map 1 The Greek World
- Map 2 Attica
- Introduction
- 1 The Homeric State
- 2 The Archaic State
- 3 Economic and Political Development; Tyranny and After
- 4 Sparta
- 5 Athens
- 6 Women and Children
- 7 Economic Life
- 8 Religion
- 9 Other Cities
- 10 Beyond the Single City
- 11 The Hellenistic and Roman Periods
- Bibliography
- Index of Texts
- Index of Names and Subjects
1 - The Homeric State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Map 1 The Greek World
- Map 2 Attica
- Introduction
- 1 The Homeric State
- 2 The Archaic State
- 3 Economic and Political Development; Tyranny and After
- 4 Sparta
- 5 Athens
- 6 Women and Children
- 7 Economic Life
- 8 Religion
- 9 Other Cities
- 10 Beyond the Single City
- 11 The Hellenistic and Roman Periods
- Bibliography
- Index of Texts
- Index of Names and Subjects
Summary
The earliest surviving works of Greek literature are the Iliad and the Odyssey, epic poems attributed to Homer. The poems were written c. 750–700, and represent the culmination of generations of oral poetry. They tell stories of the late Mycenaean world, the Iliad an episode in a siege of Troy by the combined forces of the Greek states which was believed to have taken place early in the twelfth century, and the Odyssey the delayed return of Odysseus to Ithaca after that siege. Whether there is any truth behind the stories is disputed; it is certain that details were incorporated in the epic tradition at various times between the Mycenaean age and Homer's own age. The states which Homer depicts are simpler than the Mycenaean states, with none of the bureaucracy attested in the Linear B tablets, and with no peaceable intercourse between states except on the basis of guest-friendship between noble families. In this respect the world depicted is most like that of the ‘dark age’ between the Mycenaean age and the time of Homer. There was no one time when life was exactly as depicted by Homer, but the world which he depicts is important, because it was believed by classical Greeks to be the world out of which their own had developed.
The poems are composed as much of phrases forming part or the whole of a hexameter line as of individual words.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Greek City StatesA Source Book, pp. 11 - 21Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007