The Age of Heroes
Trojan War: Achilles tending Patrocles. Wikimedia Commons
Gods and Heroes of the European West
1500 - 500 B.C.
The Dialogue of North and South
Friedrich Nietzsche was, according to Campbell, the first to recognize the force in the Greek heritage of an interplay of two mythologies: the pre-Homeric Bronze Age heritage of the peasantry, in which release from the yoke of individuality was achieved through group rites including rapture; and the Olympian mythology of measure and humanistic self-knowledge that is epitomized for us in Classical art.
Around 3500 B.C. Greece was inhabited by people of an agrarian-pastoral culture of high neolithic type. Then, as shown by ruins, one of Greece’s northernmost towns (Sérvia on the Haliacmon) was destroyed by fire around 2500 B.C., by a totally different type of people coming from the north. This new, invading culture was of a patriarchal type, in contrast to the matriarchal culture of the previous inhabitants. The subsequent stages of the dialogue of these two prehistoric cultures in Greece, may be summarized for our purpose in the following schedule:
Phase 1: Early Helladic Greece – Troy I to V; about 2500 – 1900 B.C.
Arrival and establishment of early Bronze Age forms; fusion with neolithic predecessors; impressive development of buildings. Troy, controlling entrance to the Dardanelles, grows from fishing village (Troy I) to large commercial port (Troy V).
Phase 2: Middle Helladic Greece – Troy VI early phase; about 1900 – 1600 B.C.
Violent destructions in eastern Greece. Appearance of Megaron type of dwelling (construction type used by the invaders). Fall of Troy V, and founding of a fortified Troy (VI). The horse appears (a Hurrian-Kassite contribution from the East?). New and powerful dynasty appears in Mycenae.
Phase 3: Late Helladic (I) – Troy VI Early Middle Phase; about 1600 – 1500 B.C.
Period of the apogee of Crete; dominance of Knossos throughout the Aegean. Great extension of Mycenaen influence throughout Argolis and into Boeotia: similar dynasties appear at Thebes, Goulas, and Orchomenus. Trade meanwhile increasing with Troy.
Phase 4: Late Helladic (II) – Troy VI Late Middle Phase; about 1500 – 1400 B.C.
Rise of Mycenae over Crete. Strong fusion of Mycenaen and Minoan art forms (Minoan dominant). Trade throughout Sea of Crete to detriment of Knossos. Cretan palaces destroyed (about 1450 B.C.; earthquake? Attack? Or both, in succession?). Mycenaen – Cretan connections interrupted. Mycenaen colonies in Rhodes and Cos.
Phase 5: Late Helladic (III A) – Troy VI Final Phase; about 1400 – 1300 B.C.
Hittite hegemony in Asia Minor, associated with Troy: Hittite King Mursilis II (1345 – 1315 B.C.) mentions kings of Ahhiyava (Achaeans). Acheans are now fighting as allies of Hittites and as mercenaries in Egypt. Period of Ikhnaton (1377 – 1358 B.C.): Habiru are harassing Syria and Palestine. Mycenaen conquest of Crete (about 1400 B.C.). Palace of Mycenae greatly enlarged (about 1350 B.C.). Cretan cities revive under Achaeans. Troy is also flourishing within massive fortifications. Troy VI destroyed by earthquake (about 1300 B.C.).
Phase 6: Homer’s Troy (Troy VII): about 1300 – 1184 B.C.
Here we arrive at the epic date of the deeds of Homer’s heroes, as well as those of the Book of Judges. The two heroic ages were simultaneous. In both domains there had been a long period of interplay and adjustment between settled agricultural and intrusive pastoral-warrior peoples, after which – very suddenly – overwhelming onslaughts of fresh pastoral-warrior folk (in Palestine the Hebrews, in Greece the Dorians) precipitated a veritable “Götterdämmerung” and the end of the world age of the people of bronze. The exploits of the heroes of Homer’s tales fall in the period about 1250 – 1150 B.C., and the epics took shape in the following three centuries, coinciding approximately with the biblical, dated roughly as follows:
850 B.C.: Iliad – Yahwist Text
750 B.C.: Odyssey – Elohim Text
The Marriages of Zeus
It is instructive to contrast the history of the early Bronze Age cities of the Indus Valley with those of the Aegean. The dates of the two developments were about the same, 2500 – 1500 B.C.
The remoteness of India from the primary centers of Bronze Age civilization left the promising Indus cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa to expire. Moreover, when the Indo-Aryan chariot fighters, cattle-herders and Vedic chanters with their pantheon of Aryan gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Vayu, Agni and the others) shattered the Indus cities and passed on to the Gangetic plain, about 1500 – 1000 B.C., they too were exhausted and absorbed into the timeless, all-absorbing and regenerating substance of the mother-goddess Kali.
In the Aegean, on the other hand, the new orders of civilization came into a zone within call of descendants of the paleolithic Great Hunt on the broadly spreading animal plains of the north, who furthermore had been receiving and assimilating for centuries unremitting influences from the chief creative centers of the nuclear Near East. After the first of the Aryan or proto-Aryan waves struck south, about 2500 B.C., there followed others, wave after wave, until – in direct contrast to what happened in India – it was not the mythic order of the goddess that consumed the gods, but the other way round.
The Olympian Zeus conquered the serpent son and consort of the goddess-mother Gaea. In the present day contemplation of Greek mythology it appears slightly embarrassing to see the multiplicity of conquests of women that Zeus made. The particular problem faced by Zeus in that period, however, was simply that wherever the Greeks came, in every valley, every isle, and every cove, there was a local manifestation of the goddess-mother of the world whom he – as the great god of the patriarchal order – had to master in a patriarchal way. In this way, the local matriarchal cultures were overtaken and integrated into the patriarchal Greeks’ mythology. The methods Zeus employed to get his way were of course numerous, often by stratagems where he transformed himself into bulls, serpents, swans and showers of gold.
The Night Sea Journey
Throughout all patriarchal mythologies, the function of the female has been systematically devalued. Her role is cut down, or even out, in myths of the origin of the universe and in hero legends. When they have not been reduced to the status of mere objects, they have been depicted either as incarnate demons or as mere allies of the masculine will. The idea of an effective dialogue seems never to occur.
The masculine dream world around which the female role in mythology is formed, resides in: a) her beauty of form (Aphrodite), b) her constancy and respect for the marriage bed (Hera), and c) her ability to inspire excellent males to excellent patriarchal deeds (Athene). On top of this, as seen in the judgment of Paris, the winner of the beauty contest cheats. Aphrodite promises Paris that if she – among the three beauties competing for the golden apple thrown by Eris at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis - is given the golden apple, she will procure for Paris the beautiful Helen (who is already married to Menelaus). (The late Classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison expressed her disgust that a vulgar beauty contest, complicated by bribery still more vulgar, was seen as the start of the monumental epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and all that followed in its train.)
The patron god of the Iliad is Apollo, the god of light world and of the excellence of heroes. The tragic sense of that work lies in its deep joy in life’s beauty and excellence, the noble loveliness of fair women, the real worth of manly men, yet its recognition of the terminal fact, that the end of it is all ashes. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, the patron god of Odysseus’s voyage is the trickster Hermes, guide of souls to the underworld, the patron also of rebirth and lord of the knowledges beyond death, which may be known to his initiates even in life. He carries the symbol of the caduceus, the two serpents intertwined. He is the male associated with the triad of those goddesses of destiny – Aphrodite, Hera and Athene – who in the legend caused the Trojan War. Odysseus goes under the world in the West, visits the realm of the dead, and comes up in the extreme East – whereas Penelope is sitting at home weaving a web and unweaving, like the moon.
The solar and lunar analogies is in large part derived from the cosmological symbology of the Age of Bronze. A fundamental idea of all the pagan religious disciplines, both of the Orient and the Occident, during the period concerned (first millennium B.C.) was that the inward turning of the mind (symbolized by the sunset) should culminate in a realization of an identity in essence of the individual (microcosm) and the universe (macrocosm), which, when achieved, would bring together in one order of act and realization, the principles of eternity and time, sun and moon, male and female, Hermes and Aphrodite (Hermaphroditus), and the two serpents of the caduceus. The image of “Meeting of Sun and Moon” is everywhere symbolic of this instant, and the only unsolved questions in relation to its universality are: a) how far back it goes, b) where it first arose, and c) whether from the start it was read both psychologically and cosmologically.
The Polis
The leap from the dark age of Homer’s barbaric warrior kings to the day of luminous Athens is great. The Greeks, after an ordeal of fire such as few could have survived, had beaten back decisively the numerically overwhelming hordes of Persia, not once, but four times. They were on the brink now of the most decisively productive century for the maturation of man’s mind in the history of the world. After coming down through all these millenniums of religion, the earthly humanity of the Greek polis represented a marvel of new thought.
The impact of this turn upon the panorama of mythology is evident, first in the extreme anthropomorphism of the Greek pantheon, and then in the vague yet always felt presence of the force of Moira (destiny), which limits even the gods. In contrast to the earlier Bronze Age view of serene, mathematically ordered process defined by the rhythm of the planets, the Greek view suggests an indefinable circumscription, within the bounds of which both the gods and men work their individual wills – ever in danger of violating the undefined bounds and being struck down. In contrast to the biblical view, where a freely willing personal god is antecedent to the order of the universe, himself unlimited by law, the Greek gods were themselves aspects of the universe – children of Chaos and the great Earth.
In Homer’s epics the great male Zeus stands above the action in a way that might seem at first to resemble the role of Yahweh. However, Zeus governs the field only in relation to man, being himself limited by the grain of destiny. Moreover, his power is countered by other gods, indeed even by men who beguile other gods to their will. The type of scholarship characteristic of both the synagogue and the mosque, therefore, where the meticulous search for the last grain of meaning in scripture is honored above all science, never carried the Greeks away. In the great Levantine traditions such scholasticism is paramount and stands opposed to the science of the Greeks. The rational study of the world as a field of facts to be observed, began with the Greeks.
Friedrich Nietzsche was, according to Campbell, the first to recognize the force in the Greek heritage of an interplay of two mythologies: the pre-Homeric Bronze Age heritage of the peasantry, in which release from the yoke of individuality was achieved through group rites including rapture; and the Olympian mythology of measure and humanistic self-knowledge that is epitomized for us in Classical art.
Around 3500 B.C. Greece was inhabited by people of an agrarian-pastoral culture of high neolithic type. Then, as shown by ruins, one of Greece’s northernmost towns (Sérvia on the Haliacmon) was destroyed by fire around 2500 B.C., by a totally different type of people coming from the north. This new, invading culture was of a patriarchal type, in contrast to the matriarchal culture of the previous inhabitants. The subsequent stages of the dialogue of these two prehistoric cultures in Greece, may be summarized for our purpose in the following schedule:
Phase 1: Early Helladic Greece – Troy I to V; about 2500 – 1900 B.C.
Arrival and establishment of early Bronze Age forms; fusion with neolithic predecessors; impressive development of buildings. Troy, controlling entrance to the Dardanelles, grows from fishing village (Troy I) to large commercial port (Troy V).
Phase 2: Middle Helladic Greece – Troy VI early phase; about 1900 – 1600 B.C.
Violent destructions in eastern Greece. Appearance of Megaron type of dwelling (construction type used by the invaders). Fall of Troy V, and founding of a fortified Troy (VI). The horse appears (a Hurrian-Kassite contribution from the East?). New and powerful dynasty appears in Mycenae.
Phase 3: Late Helladic (I) – Troy VI Early Middle Phase; about 1600 – 1500 B.C.
Period of the apogee of Crete; dominance of Knossos throughout the Aegean. Great extension of Mycenaen influence throughout Argolis and into Boeotia: similar dynasties appear at Thebes, Goulas, and Orchomenus. Trade meanwhile increasing with Troy.
Phase 4: Late Helladic (II) – Troy VI Late Middle Phase; about 1500 – 1400 B.C.
Rise of Mycenae over Crete. Strong fusion of Mycenaen and Minoan art forms (Minoan dominant). Trade throughout Sea of Crete to detriment of Knossos. Cretan palaces destroyed (about 1450 B.C.; earthquake? Attack? Or both, in succession?). Mycenaen – Cretan connections interrupted. Mycenaen colonies in Rhodes and Cos.
Phase 5: Late Helladic (III A) – Troy VI Final Phase; about 1400 – 1300 B.C.
Hittite hegemony in Asia Minor, associated with Troy: Hittite King Mursilis II (1345 – 1315 B.C.) mentions kings of Ahhiyava (Achaeans). Acheans are now fighting as allies of Hittites and as mercenaries in Egypt. Period of Ikhnaton (1377 – 1358 B.C.): Habiru are harassing Syria and Palestine. Mycenaen conquest of Crete (about 1400 B.C.). Palace of Mycenae greatly enlarged (about 1350 B.C.). Cretan cities revive under Achaeans. Troy is also flourishing within massive fortifications. Troy VI destroyed by earthquake (about 1300 B.C.).
Phase 6: Homer’s Troy (Troy VII): about 1300 – 1184 B.C.
Here we arrive at the epic date of the deeds of Homer’s heroes, as well as those of the Book of Judges. The two heroic ages were simultaneous. In both domains there had been a long period of interplay and adjustment between settled agricultural and intrusive pastoral-warrior peoples, after which – very suddenly – overwhelming onslaughts of fresh pastoral-warrior folk (in Palestine the Hebrews, in Greece the Dorians) precipitated a veritable “Götterdämmerung” and the end of the world age of the people of bronze. The exploits of the heroes of Homer’s tales fall in the period about 1250 – 1150 B.C., and the epics took shape in the following three centuries, coinciding approximately with the biblical, dated roughly as follows:
850 B.C.: Iliad – Yahwist Text
750 B.C.: Odyssey – Elohim Text
The Marriages of Zeus
It is instructive to contrast the history of the early Bronze Age cities of the Indus Valley with those of the Aegean. The dates of the two developments were about the same, 2500 – 1500 B.C.
The remoteness of India from the primary centers of Bronze Age civilization left the promising Indus cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa to expire. Moreover, when the Indo-Aryan chariot fighters, cattle-herders and Vedic chanters with their pantheon of Aryan gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Vayu, Agni and the others) shattered the Indus cities and passed on to the Gangetic plain, about 1500 – 1000 B.C., they too were exhausted and absorbed into the timeless, all-absorbing and regenerating substance of the mother-goddess Kali.
In the Aegean, on the other hand, the new orders of civilization came into a zone within call of descendants of the paleolithic Great Hunt on the broadly spreading animal plains of the north, who furthermore had been receiving and assimilating for centuries unremitting influences from the chief creative centers of the nuclear Near East. After the first of the Aryan or proto-Aryan waves struck south, about 2500 B.C., there followed others, wave after wave, until – in direct contrast to what happened in India – it was not the mythic order of the goddess that consumed the gods, but the other way round.
The Olympian Zeus conquered the serpent son and consort of the goddess-mother Gaea. In the present day contemplation of Greek mythology it appears slightly embarrassing to see the multiplicity of conquests of women that Zeus made. The particular problem faced by Zeus in that period, however, was simply that wherever the Greeks came, in every valley, every isle, and every cove, there was a local manifestation of the goddess-mother of the world whom he – as the great god of the patriarchal order – had to master in a patriarchal way. In this way, the local matriarchal cultures were overtaken and integrated into the patriarchal Greeks’ mythology. The methods Zeus employed to get his way were of course numerous, often by stratagems where he transformed himself into bulls, serpents, swans and showers of gold.
The Night Sea Journey
Throughout all patriarchal mythologies, the function of the female has been systematically devalued. Her role is cut down, or even out, in myths of the origin of the universe and in hero legends. When they have not been reduced to the status of mere objects, they have been depicted either as incarnate demons or as mere allies of the masculine will. The idea of an effective dialogue seems never to occur.
The masculine dream world around which the female role in mythology is formed, resides in: a) her beauty of form (Aphrodite), b) her constancy and respect for the marriage bed (Hera), and c) her ability to inspire excellent males to excellent patriarchal deeds (Athene). On top of this, as seen in the judgment of Paris, the winner of the beauty contest cheats. Aphrodite promises Paris that if she – among the three beauties competing for the golden apple thrown by Eris at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis - is given the golden apple, she will procure for Paris the beautiful Helen (who is already married to Menelaus). (The late Classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison expressed her disgust that a vulgar beauty contest, complicated by bribery still more vulgar, was seen as the start of the monumental epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and all that followed in its train.)
The patron god of the Iliad is Apollo, the god of light world and of the excellence of heroes. The tragic sense of that work lies in its deep joy in life’s beauty and excellence, the noble loveliness of fair women, the real worth of manly men, yet its recognition of the terminal fact, that the end of it is all ashes. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, the patron god of Odysseus’s voyage is the trickster Hermes, guide of souls to the underworld, the patron also of rebirth and lord of the knowledges beyond death, which may be known to his initiates even in life. He carries the symbol of the caduceus, the two serpents intertwined. He is the male associated with the triad of those goddesses of destiny – Aphrodite, Hera and Athene – who in the legend caused the Trojan War. Odysseus goes under the world in the West, visits the realm of the dead, and comes up in the extreme East – whereas Penelope is sitting at home weaving a web and unweaving, like the moon.
The solar and lunar analogies is in large part derived from the cosmological symbology of the Age of Bronze. A fundamental idea of all the pagan religious disciplines, both of the Orient and the Occident, during the period concerned (first millennium B.C.) was that the inward turning of the mind (symbolized by the sunset) should culminate in a realization of an identity in essence of the individual (microcosm) and the universe (macrocosm), which, when achieved, would bring together in one order of act and realization, the principles of eternity and time, sun and moon, male and female, Hermes and Aphrodite (Hermaphroditus), and the two serpents of the caduceus. The image of “Meeting of Sun and Moon” is everywhere symbolic of this instant, and the only unsolved questions in relation to its universality are: a) how far back it goes, b) where it first arose, and c) whether from the start it was read both psychologically and cosmologically.
The Polis
The leap from the dark age of Homer’s barbaric warrior kings to the day of luminous Athens is great. The Greeks, after an ordeal of fire such as few could have survived, had beaten back decisively the numerically overwhelming hordes of Persia, not once, but four times. They were on the brink now of the most decisively productive century for the maturation of man’s mind in the history of the world. After coming down through all these millenniums of religion, the earthly humanity of the Greek polis represented a marvel of new thought.
The impact of this turn upon the panorama of mythology is evident, first in the extreme anthropomorphism of the Greek pantheon, and then in the vague yet always felt presence of the force of Moira (destiny), which limits even the gods. In contrast to the earlier Bronze Age view of serene, mathematically ordered process defined by the rhythm of the planets, the Greek view suggests an indefinable circumscription, within the bounds of which both the gods and men work their individual wills – ever in danger of violating the undefined bounds and being struck down. In contrast to the biblical view, where a freely willing personal god is antecedent to the order of the universe, himself unlimited by law, the Greek gods were themselves aspects of the universe – children of Chaos and the great Earth.
In Homer’s epics the great male Zeus stands above the action in a way that might seem at first to resemble the role of Yahweh. However, Zeus governs the field only in relation to man, being himself limited by the grain of destiny. Moreover, his power is countered by other gods, indeed even by men who beguile other gods to their will. The type of scholarship characteristic of both the synagogue and the mosque, therefore, where the meticulous search for the last grain of meaning in scripture is honored above all science, never carried the Greeks away. In the great Levantine traditions such scholasticism is paramount and stands opposed to the science of the Greeks. The rational study of the world as a field of facts to be observed, began with the Greeks.