THE NEW BEGINNINGS

The period that followed the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 1050–ca. 800 bc) represented a sharp break from the Mycenaean civilisation and was characterised by deep recession in material culture. It is true that archaeological discoveries of the last decades, first and foremost the famous Lefkandi tomb, have shown that there were pockets of continuity even in the so-called Dark Age. Yet, this evidence, indicative as it is of the complex mixture of continuities and discontinuities that characterised the transition to the Iron Age, cannot affect the general assessment of the relationship between Dark Age Greece and its Mycenaean predecessor, let alone account for the contrast with the epoch subsequent to it. The growth of population and a considerable increase in prosperity, which are discernible in the archaeological record since the early eighth century bc, fully justify singling out the Dark Age as a separate historical period. This is not yet to say that recession in material culture was the only feature by which the Dark Age was characterised.

Let us consider an additional version of the destruction of the Race of Heroes, the one found in the concluding part of the Catalogue of Women. This corrupted passage, which immediately follows the description of Helen's wedding, runs as follows: