The Dark Age, 1050-800 BC
The end of the Mycenaean period (around 1100 BC) is followed by a period of four centuries known as the Geometric period because the flowing naturalistic elements formerly used to decorate pottery were replaced by geometric shapes. The surviving remains are mainly pottery, bronze and ceramic figurines, and bronze clothes fasteners, jewellery, and weapons. There are no large works of art in sculpture. Architectural remains are few because the period has not been extensively researched.
During the late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC), a confluence of events caused mainly by local factors brought about the downfall of all the major cultures of the Near East. Undoubtedly the earlier incidents of decay influenced the collapse that came later to some extent, but other factors were usually the primary causes. As it affected Greece, this phenomenon is commonly called the Dark Age; it extended approximately from 1050 to 800 BC.
The art of writing was largely lost after the fall of the Mycenaean palaces, so the only documentary source for this time is the later work of the poet Homer. The period was initially one of stagnation and cultural decline. The disruption that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces was great. Groups of people migrated to different areas, and the population declined, probably reaching its nadir in the tenth century BC. Archaeological records indicate that in the Dark Age most people lived in small communities in remote areas supported by subsistence farming. Organizationally Greece was a chiefdom society. Most trade and contacts with cultures in the Near East and elsewhere lapsed.
According to traditional accounts, after the Trojan War ended in 1183 BC, Hellas was engaged in removing and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, in 1104 BC the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy.
The distribution of the Hellenic tribes did not continue un-disturbed throughout the main periods of Greek history. It was entirely altered by an event called the Dorian migration, or sometimes the return of the Heracleids, which is placed by Thucydides about 80 years after the fall of Troy and thus about the year 1104 BC, according to the ordinary system of chronology. Before the great migration several smaller ones had taken place. One tribe, finding its territory too circumscribed, would move to another, expelling the inhabitants already settled there, who thus found themselves compelled to remove to some other district, where they treated the original inhabitants in the same way that they had been treated themselves. In this way there arose a general disturbance, till at last the hardy Dorian inhabitants of the mountainous region about Mount Aeta began a migration on a greater scale than had hitherto been attempted, and thus brought about a series of changes which resulted in an entirely new settlement of the Greek territory.
They first conquered a large part of northern Greece and then entered and subdued the greater part of the Peloponnesus, driving out or subjugating the Achseans, as the Achaeans had driven out or subjugated the Pelasgians. The Dorians are also said to have invaded Attica, where, however, they were baffled, according to the legend, by the self-devotion of Codrus, the king of that territory. It is said that an oracle had pronounced that in this war whichever side lost its king would be victorious, on which account strict orders were given to the Dorian soldiers to spare the life of the king of enemy. But Codrus disguised himself in the dress of a common herdsman, and going into the enemy's camp provoked a quarrel in which he met his death, on learning which the Dorians despaired of success and withdrew. In the legend in which this series of events has come down to us the Dorians are represented as having entered the Peloponnesus under Temenus, Cresphontes and Aristodemus, three descendants of Heracles, who had come to recover the territory of which their ancestors had been unjustly deprived by Eurystheus. Hence the name of the Return of Heracleids, sometimes given to this event.
The Achaean inhabitants of the Peloponnesus whom the Dorians found there had a three-fold fate. One part of them sought for new homes and turned their steps toward the part of the Peloponnesus occupied by the Ionians, whom they expelled, keeping for themselves their territory, which hence received the name of Achaia. Another part voluntarily submitted to the invaders, who imposed tribute upon them and excluded them from all share in the government; while a third part resisted to the last and were in the end reduced to the condition of slavery. In Laconia the former received the name Periceci (dwellers round) and the latter were called Helots.
The political extinction of Mycenaean civilization left a vacuum of power that made it possible for small, independent city-states to emerge without being overwhelmed by large states. During the early centuries of the Dark Age the general level of poverty might suggest that many communities were relatively egalitarian in this period, at least as compared with the manifest hierarchy of Mycenaean civilization. The egalitarian spirit coupled with the power vacuum may have fostered the ideals of democracy that began in these early city-states.
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