The Dorian Invasion reviewed in the light of some New Evidence

Stanley Casson

doi:10.1017/S0003581500002249

The Dorian Invasion reviewed in the light of some New Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012

Stanley Casson

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The Dorian invasion, as an episode in Greek history, exhibits few complexities. Ancient tradition is unanimous upon the fact that the invasion was at once a more or less definite event or series of events in time and a clear turning-point in historical development. Modern historians of ancient Greece have largely twisted the comparatively clear tradition of antiquity into a variety of theories, and the whole question in their hands remains a problem which from their point of view is still sub iudice.

Archaeological research on the other hand, as is not infrequently the case, serves to amplify and explain the ancient traditions in a more satisfactory way. No very clear attempt has as yet been made by archaeologists to establish the facts of the Dorian invasion or to track down the historical Dorians. But the results of recent research in the Peloponnese on sites where tradition places the Dorians in fullest force points to a culture at these sites which, appearing about the eleventh century B.C, has all the characteristics of the culture of an invader, and differs radically and completely from what we know to have been mainland culture during the millennium preceding the eleventh century B.C.

The purpose of this paper is to review the archaeological evidence concerning the Dorians in the light both of the literary tradition and of some new archaeological discoveries.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1921 , pp. 199 - 221

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500002249 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1921

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^{page 199 note 1} See, for instance, the curious theories of Pareti, L. in Storla di Sparta Arcaica (Florence, 1917).Google Scholar He dates the beginning of the Dorian invasion in the 15th century B.C. and the end of the Late Minoan III period at 900 B.C. (pp. 139–140), believes that the Dorians were also called Achaeans (p. 87) and that they have nothing to do with either the destruction of Mycenaean culture or with the growth of ‘Geometric’ art.

^{page 199 note 2} But see The Early Age of Greece, passim, and Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907, p. 295, ‘Who were the Dorians?’.

^{page note 3} Wace, and Blegen, , B.S.A., xxii, pp. 177–89Google Scholar.

^{page 200 note 1} viii. 73.

^{page 200 note 2} ii. 13. 1.

^{page 200 note 3} See Paus. viii. 5. 6.

^{page 201 note 1} i. 56, repeated by Steph. Byz. s. v. Δώριον.

^{page 201 note 2} Elsewhere (viii. 43) Herodotus says that the men of Sicyon, Epidaurus, and Troezen are Δωρικόν τε καὶ Μακεδνὸν ἔθνος, having come latest of all from Greece.

^{page 201 note 3} v. 1. 2.

^{page 202 note 1} Referred to hereafter as that of Athena Chalkioikos and Artemis Orthia respectively.

^{page 202 note 2} B.S.A., xiii, p. 72 and p. 145.

^{page 202 note 3} Ibid, p. 111.

^{page 202 note 4} Ibid, p. 72 and p. 136.

^{page 202 note 5} viz. certain ‘spectacle’ brooches of bone, which are identical with some found at Ephesus and there dated at 700 B.C.

^{page 202 note 6} B.S.A., xiii, p. 72 and chronological diagram p. 61.

^{page 204 note 1} Times Literary Supplement, 19th August 1920.

^{page 204 note 2} Dawkins in B.S.A. xvi, p. 11. Cf. Peter, Chron. Tables, 8.

^{page 204 note 3} Summarized, in Clinton, , Fasti Hellenici ii (1841), pp. vi–viii.Google Scholar

^{page 204 note 4} See nos. 223, 296, 300 (spectacle brooches) and 640, 645, 646 (horses) in the National Museum, Athens. These have not been published by Carapanos, Dodone et ses ruines, Paris, 1878Google Scholar.

^{page 205 note 1} See nos. 14563 and 14757 in the National Museum.

^{page 206 note 1} Olympia, Bronzes, , pl. XIV. nos. 201, 216, 222, 223Google Scholar, and cf. with B.S.A. xiii, p. 111, fig. 2, e.g. (Sparta). Cf. also Olympia, Pl. XI, 158, with Sparta loc. cit. fig. 2. f.

^{page 206 note 2} Ath. Mitth. 1906, p. 206, ‘Meines Erachtens haben wir in den “geometrischen” Gegenständen dieser ältesten Schicht den ursprünglichen Stil der Achäer zu erkennen, den diese seit Alters besassen, bevor sie die vom Osten kommende kretische und mykenische Kunst kennen gelernt und zum Teil angenommen hatten’, and p. 207, ‘Die Bronzen und Terracotten des “europäisch-geometrischen” Stiles. … gehörten dann nicht ausschliesslich in die nachmykenische Zeit … sondern … konnten zum Teil sogar vormykenisch sein’, and p. 217, ‘In demalten Heiligtume von Olympia und in der Stadt des Odysseus auf Leukas haben die Achäer ihre uralte geometrische Kunst lange bewahrt; fremde Kunstgegenstände finden sich dort in der ältesten Schicht nur vereinzelt’, etc.

^{page 206 note 3} ‘Who were the Dorians?’ p. 296.

^{page 206 note 4} Ath. Mitth. 1906, p. 208. Dörpfeld here dates them at 1500–1000 B.C. See also Der sechste Brief über Leukas-Ithaka, 1911, p. 19.

^{page 206 note 5} Ath. Mitth. 1906, p. 208.

^{page 207 note 1} See B.S.A. xxiii, p. 30.

^{page 207 note 2} Wace, & Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, p. 216Google Scholar.

^{page 207 note 3} Paris, B., Élatée, 1892, p. 286, fig. 25, p. 285, fig. 24, and figs. 32–34, and National Museum Athens, nos. 14571, 14594Google Scholar.

^{page 207 note 4} Cf. B.S.A. xiii, p. 111, fig. 2, e.g. with De Ridder, Catalogue des Bronzes trouvés sur l'Acrcpole d'Athènes, nos. 485, 487, 489–492, 495, 501.

^{page 208 note 1} B.C.H. xix, p. 273 & pl. IX. cf. with B.S.A. xiii, p. 80, fig. 18a and other similar ivories.

^{page 208 note 2} B.C.H. xix, fig. 17, p. 294.

^{page 208 note 3} Furtwängler, , Aegina, pl. 125Google Scholar.

^{page 208 note 4} Furtwängler, , op. cit. pl. 113, wGoogle Scholar.

^{page 208 note 5} Waldstein, , Argive Heraeum, pl. 72, 8–12, pl. 73, 13, 14, pl. 74, 17Google Scholar.

^{page 208 note 6} Waldstein, , op. cit. pl. 77, 42 & 76, 40Google Scholar, cf. with B.S.A. xiii, p. 111, fig. 2, d, b, respectively, see also the other examples shown on those plates.

^{page 209 note 1} Waldstein, , op. cit. pl. 85, 818Google Scholar, cf. with B.S.A. xiii, p. 113, fig. 3, b, d, e; it should be observed that this brooch differs from the Spartan examples in consisting of wire, a section of which would be rectangular and not circular. The same peculiarity occurs in the Pateli brooches. See also Waldstein, , op. cit. pl. 84, 817 a, b, 819, 820Google Scholar.

^{page 209 note 2} Not given in Waldstein's plates, but in the National Museum, Athens.

^{page 209 note 3} Waldstein, , op. cit. pl. 139, 1–3Google Scholar, cf. with B.S.A. xiii, fig. 24, b–e, p. 90.

^{page 209 note 4} This find has not been published, but see B.S.A. xxiii, p. 30 & p. 32, note 1.

^{page 209 note 5} B.S.A. xxiii, p. 36.

^{page 209 note 6} B.S.A. xxiii, p. 32 & 36–38, & pl. vii, viii.

^{page 211 note 1} See Naue, , Die vorrömischen Schwerter (1903) pl. xxxiv–xxxvi.Google Scholar

^{page 211 note 2} B.S.A. xxiii, p. 21.

^{page 212 note 1} Ridgeway, l. c. 296, gives the precise date of 1104 B.C. for the Dorian invasion despite the evidence of Pausanias, who shows that it lasted at least a century. The artistic growth of Sparta, of course, closed down abruptly in the sixth century B.C. owing to a change of internal policy and the rise of a militarist aristocracy who considered that Art and Empire were uncongenial companions.

^{page 212 note 2} viii. 73, cf. viii. 43 where the inhabitants of certain towns are said to be Δωρικόν τε καὶ Μακεδνὸν ἔθνος, ἐξ Ἐρινεοῦ τε καὶ Πίνδου καὶ τῆς Δρυοπίδος ὕστατα ὁρμηθέντες. This was the latest phase of the invasion.

^{page 213 note 1} See B.S.A. xiii, p. 73–4.

^{page 213 note 2} The islands have not been dealt with here since my object is only to examine the invasions of the mainland.

^{page 213 note 3} Odyssey iii. 464–497.

^{page 213 note 4} Homer and History, p. 366–7.

^{page 214 note 1} This Histiaeotis below Mt. Ossa (as Herodotus expressly says, i. 56) must not be confused with the Histiaeotis in Euboea.

^{page 214 note 2} Herodotus v. 72.

^{page 214 note 3} Thucydides i. 2; and see Hogarth Ionia and the East, p. 38.

^{page 214 note 4} Herodotus vi. 137.

^{page 214 note 5} See Grote, vol. ii, p. 312.

^{page 215 note 1} Herodotus v, 69.

^{page 215 note 2} Pausanias ii, 38. 1.

^{page 215 note 3} See Grote, vol. ii, p. 312.

^{page 215 note 4} Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1912, pp. 12, 7–41.

^{page 215 note 5} Professor Gardner outlines the position thus: ‘What seems clear is that Macedonia still remained within the circle of northern influence in the sixth century; i t does not seem to have been fully Hellenized until after the time of Alexander.’

^{page 216 note 1} i, 56. See also viii, 43.

^{page 216 note 2} Sacken, Von, Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt, pl. xiii, 9, 9a, 10 (spectacle brooches), pl. xv, 4–7 (horses), pl. xviii, 35, & xxiv, 6, 7, 8 (birds), pl. v. 10 (sword)Google Scholar.

^{page 217 note 1} The World of Homer, p. 146.

^{page 217 note 2} Burlington Magazine, xiv, 66.

^{page 217 note 3} See Hogarth, , Ionia and the East, p. 39 and passimGoogle Scholar.

^{page 218 note 1} Annuario della Scuola archeologica a Atene, 1914.

^{page 218 note 2} B.S.A. xii, p. 78, fig. 17 a.

^{page 218 note 3} See the pithos fragment published by Pernier in Annuario.

^{page 218 note 4} Times Literary Supplement, 19th August 1920.

^{page 219 note 1} B.S.A., xvi, 258 ff.

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