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Thucydides as Archaeologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

R. M. Cook
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Extract

In i.1–21 Thucydides gives a brief interpretation of early Greek history. This is important not only for the critical standard of its author, but also because in ten instances he says what his evidence is. Twice his evidence is archaeological. The two passages deserve careful study.

Mycenae had been destroyed by the Argives in the 460's and was deserted till the third century B.C. Thanks to modern archaeologists and Pausanias we can form some idea of what was to be seen in the time of Thucydides. Much of the Bronze Age wall, including the Lion Gate, should have been above ground; it was anyhow visible to Pausanias, and before him the Hellenistic fortifiers had made use of it. Some of the tholos tombs were open, to judge by finds made in their excavation and by Pausanias's mention of ‘underground treasuries of Atreus and his sons’. Of the Bronze Age palace and houses nothing was left above ground, so the stratification suggests. But the ruins of the city demolished in the 460's must still have survived, and its sanctuaries may have been intact; it would have been natural enough for the Argives to spare them, and there is some positive evidence that the temple on the summit of Mycenae and the sanctuary near the fountain house outside the Lion Gate were both kept in repair and that the Agamemnoneion over half a mile to the south was still visited.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 50 , November 1955 , pp. 266 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1955

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References

* This paper is an expansion of two notes read to the Cambridge Philological Society on January 21st, 1954.

1 See below, n. 29.

2 According to Diodorus (XI 65) it was in 468/7 B.C. that the Argives destroyed Mycenae. W. Kolbe reasonably shifts the date to about 460 B.C., when the Spartans were preoccupied by a revolt of Helots (Hermes 1937, 254–63). A. Andrewes prefers 465/4 B.C. (Phoenix, 1952, 5).

3 II 16. 5–6.

4 Geometric and Archaic and even Classical sherds and figurines were found (Wace, A. J. B., BSA XXV 295–6, 305, 320, 329, 364–6Google Scholar; Hood, M. S. F., BSA XLVIII 69–71Google Scholar). That in the Archaic period some tholoi were the sites of cults (and therefore were accessible) is rightly argued by J. M. Cook in Geras Antoniou Keramopoullou 114–15.

5 Tiles of the later fifth and fourth centuries B.C. were found in these areas (A. J. B. Wace, Mycenae 85–6; Hood, M. S. F., BSA XLVIII 27).Google Scholar

6 Cook, J. M., BSA XLVIII 34.Google Scholar

7 Thucydides does not argue or imply that Agamemnon's Mycenae was large for its time, as is asserted by Nicklin, T. (CR 1904, 199)Google Scholar. Probably he considered it smaller than Athens (see II 15, 2; cf. I 2, 6).

8 There were, it seems, no temples or urban sanctuaries in ‘Mycenaean’ Greece; but Thucydides, relying on Homer, could hardly have known this. Mr. M. S. F. Hood has kindly mentioned the Minoan shrine at Gournia and a supposed building at Eleusis (AJA 1933, 284–6); but one is in Crete and the other is only presumable.

9 Cf. the general tenor of Pausanias (II 16, 5) and Diodorus (XI 65). Pausanias, of course, knew what Thucydides had said: see VIII 27 1 with its echo of Thuc. I 10, 1.

10 I 8 1 and III 104 1–2.

11 The agreement of ξυντεθαμμὲνη shows that σκευῆ means something like ‘equipment’. It does not here, nor probably anywhere else, itself have the meaning of ‘style’.

12 See e.g. Hdt. VII 93—τὰ μὲν ἂλλα κατὰ περ ῾Ελληες ἐσταλμὲνοι, εὶΧον δὲ καὶ δρὲπανα καὶ ὲγΧειρὶδια

13 For general accounts see Hopkinson, J. H., JHS 1902, 47–8Google Scholar, and more fully Rhomaios, K. A., ADelt 1929, 181–223.Google Scholar The position of the enclosure is marked at 21 on the map, Délos I, pl. 1. The earlier pottery has been published (together with pieces from other sites) in Délos XV and XVII, the latest in Délos XXI. For the sickles see Rhomaios,) op. cit., 210–13, figs. 20–1.

14 A few later sherds seem to have intruded: see Rhomaios in Délos XXI 3.

15 One is of the Mycenaean (Délos XV, pl. 2. 19), the other of the Protogeometric period (Délos XVII, pl. 36, 7).

16 SB Preuss. Akad. der Wiss. 1906, 76–7.

17 Délos XI 49–50.

18 But it is not necessary or likely that all the ‘Carian’ graves contained arms. Arms would presumably not be buried with women or children, who together would naturally outnumber men.

19 Θὰπτω is used both of interment and cremation (e.g. Hdt. V 8).

20 MonPiot XVI, 31–2. He is followed by Rhomaios, op. cit., 211.

21 Graves of one period tend to be close together, so that Pisistratus may well have removed much more of one period than of another. The red-figure and part of the black-figure must, of course, belong to the clearance of 426/5 B.C. Incidentally the publication is not complete; but presumably the proportion published does not vary significantly from one group to another.

22 Cf. n. 28.

23 So Poulsen himself, Dipylongräber 39–41. Cf. Kraiker, W. in Kerameikos I 172–3.Google Scholar

24 MonPiot XVI 36–7, following Stavropoulos, D. (JHS 1902, 61).Google Scholar

25 For these sickles, which measure from 10 to 17 cm. across, see above, n. 13.

26 The Dorian invasion was not less than 700 years before 416 B.C. (V 112); that was eighty years after the Trojan war (I 12, 3); and Minos, who expelled our Carians, was a good generation earlier. It is perhaps relevant that some reputable archaeologists around 1850 considered Geometric and early Orientalising pottery not Greek but Phoenician.

27 Homer, in whom Thucydides had some faith, admits iron in his Heroic Age. Hesiod's account of the Ages does not say whether the Heroic Age did or did not use iron (Op. 143–76).

28 At Athens the sequence for adults is roughly this: in the Late Bronze Age inhumation, c. 1100 B.C. cremation, c. 800 B.C. inhumation, c. 700 B.C. cremation, c. 600 B.C. inhumation. There are other changes too. See K. Kübler, Bericht über den VI Internat. Kongress 428–30.

29 Homer or ‘old’ poets (5): 3.3, 5.2, 9.4, 10. 3–5, 13. 5. Tradition (3): 4, 9.2, 13.2. Archaeology (2): 8. 1, 10. 1–3. Modern analogy (3): 5. 2–6. 2, 8. 1, 10. 1–3 (and cf. 7).

30 Compare the graves at Eleusis apparently attributed in the fifth century B.C. to the Seven against Thebes (ILN September 12th, 1953, 402–3).