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The Dorian Invasion3

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

R. M. Cook
Affiliation:
Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge

Extract

The orthodox theory about the Dorian invasion and the Ionian migration is that the Dorians broke into the Peloponnese and destroyed the Mycenaean castles—a destruction, incidentally, that is not mentioned in the ancient tradition—and that the Ionians (or the people who became the Ionians) took refuge in Attica and after an interval moved on to Ionia; this interval is generally put at sixty years by the ancient chroniclers, though not apparently by Thucydides (1, 12, 4), and at from 125 to 200 years by modern archaeologists. The interval by itself makes this theory improbable. Could Attica have supported many refugees for sixty or more years, particularly if (as the pre-historians assert) the Late Mycenaean period was one of high population? And if they could have been supported, would they not have been absorbed into the Attic community, so that the migration would have been essentially Attic and not ‘Ionian’? There are, besides, die Ionian traditions that by-pass Attica.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 16 note 4 Dates for this period are not reliable, but give a rough idea of the intervals between events. The system I am following is—1200, destruction of Pylos and of the lower town and part of the citadel of Mycenae; 1125, final destruction of the citadel of Mycenae; 1000, beginning of Ionian migration.

page 17 note 1 Milojčić, V. (A.A. 19481949, pp. 1236Google Scholar) uses a very inadequate selection of artefacts to discover three intrusions in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages—(1) a possibly Illyrian invasion at the end of the thirteenth century (which destroyed the Mycenaean kingdoms), (2) a Dorian invasion at the end of the eleventh century, and (3) an Illyrian influx in the ninth and eighth centuries.

page 17 note 2 The classic statement is that of Beloch, K. J., Gr. Geschichte, 1, 2, 7696Google Scholar.

page 17 note 3 See Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., Documents in Mycenaean Greek, pp. 138 and 184Google Scholar; Palmer, L. R., Mycenaeans and Minoans, pp. 132–43Google Scholar.

page 17 note 4 It is worth noting that at Iolcus in Thessaly also the Mycenaean palace was destroyed about 1200 B.C. (Ergon, 1960, p. 57Google Scholar; B.C.H. 1961, p. 768Google Scholar).

page 18 note 1 Miletus—Weickert, C. in Neue deutsche Ausgrabungen im Mittelmeergebiet und im Vorderen Orient, pp. 181–96Google Scholar: see also reports in recent volumes of 1st. Mitt. Samos, settlement at the Heraeum—Samos, I (V. Milojčić, Die prähistorische Siedlung unter dem Heraion); tomb at Myloi, B.C.H. (1961), p. 839Google Scholar. For general references for Ionian sites see M. B. Sakellariou, La Migration grecque en Ionie. It is possible, as J. M. Cook has argued, that the Mycenaean remains in Ionia belong not to Greek but to Carian settlements (Greek Settlement in the Eastern Aegean and Asia Minor, pp. 14–15).

page 18 note 2 Cook, J. M. in Archaeological Reports for 19591960, p. 40Google Scholar: he mentions seven sites.

page 18 note 3 Following Desborough, V. R. d'A. (Protogeometric Pottery, p. 294)Google Scholar I accept 1025 B.C. as the approximate date when the Protogeometric style of pottery first appeared. Mr Desborough tells me that now he would put the beginning of Protogeometric not later than 1050, so coming near to W. Kraiker, who proposed the early years of the eleventh century (Kerameikos, 1, 163Google Scholar). This higher dating does not affect my argument.

page 18 note 4 Such institutions as the Spartan syssitia were not widespread in Dorian States in historical times and may well have been developed or introduced after the Dorian invasion. Nor is the ‘tribal’ system significant, since it was universal in Greek States, and though many Doric States used the same tribal names, it seems that in any State the tribes were roughly equal in numerical strength and so must have been recruited after the State had been settled: evidently ‘tribes’ were an artificial classification, convenient for military purposes.

page 18 note 5 A Late Mycenaean settlement existed at Parga on the Thesprotian coast (B.C.H. 1961, p. 733Google Scholar—tholos tomb and necropolis). This is in the region which the Dorians are often said to have inhabited before the invasion. But finds inland in Epirus show no great penetration of Mycenaean influence (see Dakaris, S. I., A.E. 1956, pp. 114–53Google Scholar; I owe this reference to Mr V. R. d'A. Desborough).

page 19 note 1 At Mycenae the lower settlement was fortified in the Hellenistic period, but not in the Late Bronze Age. The opinion that the Mycenaean castles were intended to dominate the surrounding country was implied by Curtius, E. (S.B. Berlin. Akad. 1892, 1191)Google Scholar and developed by Poulsen, F., Die Dipylongräber und die Dipylonvasen, p. 67.Google Scholar

page 19 note 2 So Chadwick, J., Greece and Rome (1956), p. 48Google Scholar; Starr, C. G., The Origins of Greek Civilisation, p. 61Google Scholar. The case for the overthrow of Mycenaean monarchy by the gentry alone was perhaps first put by Poulsen, F., Die Dipylongräber und die Dipylonvasen, pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

page 19 note 3 Though Herodotus despised the Ionians of Ionia, he shows no sign of accepting a ‘natural’ hostility between Dorians and Ionians generally. It appears, though, very strongly in the speeches of Thucydides (1, 124, 1; III, 86, 3; III, 92, 5; v, 9, 1; VI, 77, 1; VI, 80, 3; VI, 82, 2; VII, 5, 4) and—curiously—once as an observation of his own (VII, 57). See also E. Will, Doriens et Ioniens.

page 20 note 1 But Welter, G. (Troizen u. Kalaureia, p. 45Google Scholar) asserts that the earliest finds from the Amphictyonic temple of Poseidon at Calauria were late Geometric, S. Wide's Late Mycenaean material (A.M. 1895, pp. 297302Google Scholar) being from graves.

page 20 note 2 As is maintained by Cook, J. M. in Geras A. Keramopoullou, pp. 112–18Google Scholar. But, for example, the cult of Alexandra (and Agamemnon) at Amyclae hardly looks as if it is Homeric in origin; finds at that sanctuary too go back into the Geometric period (B.C.H. 1961, p. 685Google Scholar). Further, even in the seventh century the influence of Homer was not dominant, anyhow in art; in their mythological scenes vase-painters show no special preference for those taken from the Iliad and the Odyssey.

page 20 note 3 Notopoulos, J. A. (Hesp. 1960, pp. 177–97Google Scholar) argues this more fully, though I think he exaggerates the independence of the Homeric and the Hesiodic poems.

page 20 note 4 Cf. Od. XVII, 382–6.

page 20 note 5 Porzig, W., Indogerm. Forsch. (1954), pp. 147–69Google Scholar; Risch, E., Mus. Helv. (1955), 6176Google Scholar; Chadwick, J., Greece and Rome (1956), pp. 3850Google Scholar.

page 20 note 6 Conceivably other dialects of Ionic type may have existed in the Peloponnese in the early Iron Age, if later identifications of Ionians were based on similarity of dialect. For example, Herodotus says that the Cynurians were Ionians who were Dorized by the Argives and time (VIII, 73, 3). Further, the historical Achaeans, who were considered descendants of the pre-Dorian population and supplanters of Ionians in Achaea (Hdt. 1, 145), were coupled with Ionians in the familiar ethnical pedigree, which made Ion and Achaeus sons of Xuthus: though our first mention of Achaeus and Ion in this context is by Strabo (VIII, 383), they are implied by the Hesiodic fragment (Rzach, fr. 7) which names Xuthus as the third of Hellen's sons. The Achaeans, admittedly, spoke Doric by the late eighth century, to judge from the dialect of their colonies in South Italy, though curiously the only inscription of Sybaris, probably of the later sixth century, is--like Ionic, but unlike Doric—psilotic (VII Olympia Bericht, pp. 207–10).

page 21 note 1 So far as I know, the Euboean variety of Ionic is not attributed to emigrants from Attica, but is supposed to have developed in parallel elsewhere.

page 21 note 2 Some students have claimed that the form Μῆδοι from Oriental ‘Mada’ proves that the change from ᾱ to η was not completed at the time that the Ionians became acquainted with the Medes, though that acquaintance is not likely to have been before the late seventh or even the early sixth century. It seems to me easier to explain the form Μῆδοι by analogy or over-compensation, as also the Attic and Ionic Καρχηδόνιοι, a name presumably unknown to the Greeks till the late eighth century: here the Phoenician form is Kart-hadash, and in Boeotia we find Καρχηδόνιοι (I.G. VII, 2407= S.I.G. 3 1, 179).

page 21 note 3 In other words, the evolution from Submycenaean to Protogeometric was not, as is sometimes assumed, an inevitable law of nature. For the detailed evidence about the local variations in painted pottery see V. R. d'A. Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery: for Messenia there is now more material (e.g. B.C.H. 1961, p. 697Google Scholar and fig. 7—I cite this because of the illustration). It is perhaps worth mentioning that he sees an intimate connection of Attic with Orchomenian (195–8; 302).

page 21 note 4 The references are collected in M. B. Sakellariou, La migration grecque en Ionie.

page 22 note 1 Jeffery, L. H., The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, p. 353Google Scholar.

page 22 note 2 Mr J. N. Coldstream kindly pointed this out to me.

page 22 note 3 This is near the view of Thucydides (1, 12, 4), speaking of the period after the Dorian invasion—. Thucydides, who thought Athens the metropolis of Ionia (cf. 1, 2, 6; II, 15, 4; VII, 57, 4), denied any direct connection between the Dorian invasion and the Ionian migration. This was, I imagine, not from knowledge, but by reasoning on some such line as this—colonies were sent out only by prosperous states; the Dorian invasion disturbed prosperity; therefore the Ionian migration must have been much later. The conjunction of the Ionian migration and the Western colonization is perhaps intended to indicate identity not of time, but of circumstances. Still, it is interesting that Thucydides either did not know or could reject the usual tradition of the Dorian invasion.

page 22 note 4 The point is made well by Starr, C. G., The Origins of Greek Civilisation, pp. 73–4Google Scholar.

page 23 note 1 Photograph, by kind permission of Dr Pleket, facing p. 23. The sizes of different letters in this inscription differ widely, so that restoration cannot proceed on any mechanical count of the number of spaces available. Some necessary supplements make it clear that the left-hand edge of the stone got a little wider (that is, sloped outwards) as it went down; on the right-hand side the stone abruptly changed in width, probably immediately beneath 1. 8. (See also next note.)

page 23 note 2 Mrs Atkinson differs from Dr Pleket in her estimate of the length of lines on the right of the stone. The almost inevitable restoration of 1. 7, however, supports Dr Pleket as far as ll. 1–8 go, and MrWoodhead, A. G. in S.E.G. XVIII, at p. 182Google Scholar agrees with him.

page 23 note 3 Prof. Kunkel most graciously allowed me to profit by study of an early proof of his paper. I was unable to make use of Arangio-Ruiz, V., B.I.D.R. 3rd ser. III (1961), 323–42Google Scholar.