Thomas R. Martin ANCIENT GREECE Chapter 3: THE DARK AGE
Illustration: Prothesis Scene: the laying out of a corpse on a Geometric Period Attic Krater (wine mixing bowl), attributed to the Dipylon Master. 760-750 BCE. Paris, Louvre.
1. Why is this chapter called "The Dark Age"?
2. What years encompass the Dark Age in Greece, and why is it called a period of transition? (Transition between what?)
3. What fact does Martin call "the most startling indication of the severe conditions of life in the early Dark Age"? What explains this fact? What took the place of this loss? (37)
4. What is one of the false beliefs that later Greeks held about what happened at the fall of the Mycenaean kingdoms? Why do modern scholars reject the validity of this belief? (37-38)
5. How did the economic life, population , and architecture of Dark Age Greece differ from those in Mycenaean times?
6. What evidence exists to show that a "hierarchical social system survived in some spots or that it had revived as early as the late eleventh century"? (39)
7. Around 900 BCE the Dark Age became a little less dark. How do the "two burials from Athens illustrate the changes taking place during this period in metallurgical and agricultural technology"? (40-41)
8. What are the relative merits of iron and bronze? (40)
9. What distinction does Martin make between "aristocracy" and "elite social group," and why does he do so? (41-42)
10. How would the elite social groups employ their wealth appropriately "in public contexts"? (42)
11. When were the Iliad and Odyssey first written down? What form of writing did the Greeks use to record these poems, and where did that form come from?
12. What are the names of the first five letters of the Greek alphabet, and where do these names come from? (Table 2)
13. Where did the Greeks believe that Homer came from? What did Homeric poetry have to do with the Near East? If Homer did not make up the Iliad and Odyssey, who did?
14. What values does the "behavioral code" in epic poetry reflect in "real life" Greek history?
15. What do kleos, arete, and xenia mean, in terms of Homeric poetry and the values of the social elite which it portrays?
16. What evidence does Martin present to support his contention that "the society of Dark Age Greece expected as much of women as of men and entitled them to the same level of recognition for their achievements, or disgrace for their failures"? (45)
17. Where, when, and why were the Olympic games held? What part in the games did women have?
18. What is the etymology of the English word "gymnasium"?
19. What evidence does Martin give for his contention that "in eighth-century B. C. Greece the values of individual activity and pursuit of excellence by one's self were beginning to be channeled into a new context," which he calls "assertion of communal... interests"? (Be sure to define 'panhellenic' in your answer) (47)
20. What kinds of Greek communal activities took place in religious contexts?
21. What is the etymology of the word "myth," and how were Greek myths put into the.forms with we are familiar?
22. Who was Hesiod? Where did he live? What did he compose? What stories does it tell? What parallels does his Theogony have in the non-Greek world? What is the etymology and meaning of the word "theogony"?
23. How is Zeus in Hesiod's Works and Days different from the Zeus of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey?
24. What relationships between ordinary men and chiefs do the works of Hesiod and Homer demonstrate to illustrate the society of Dark Age Greece? How does the evidence in these poems indicate a move towards "new forms of political organization, those of the city-state"? (50)