A HISTORY OF THEATRE
Introduction When the first human being dropped out of a tree or woke up in Eden, looked around and saw
another human being, at that moment theatre was born. The urge to communicate to others, to share an experience and to stimulate a reaction in others, all these basic urges lie at the heart of theatre.
Humans tried to bring order and gain empowerment over their lives and their environment in the face of a seemingly chaotic universe filled with awesome powers. By taking on the appearance of other beings and forces, by moving their movements and sounding their sounds, the human could understand another being by becoming one. This process of becoming another being gave them a sense of power and a belief that they understood the being they became.
Gradually groups of people banded together into tribes. Tribes coalesced into peoples. Slowly, and with great difficulty, they came to understand agriculture and husbandry. They discovered the possibilities of shaping and manipulating wood, rock and metals. They come to know fire and how it could change mud into pottery and sand into glass.
Finally, they discovered the secrets of a heat so great that lumps of metallic rock could be transformed into metals. With metal, heat, and a great deal of effort, all sorts of useful and beautiful things could be made, swords, ploughshares and statues. With this knowledge and these skills, peoples became nations and began to build cities and establish what we now call civilizations.
As civilizations come into being it became necessary for the rulers and priests to communicate to their people. Kings need to share their dreams of conquest and desires for prosperity and order with their subjects. Priests need to stimulate their flocks to obedience and worship the awesome power of their gods. Theatre provides the obvious means to accomplish these goals.
It is only with the rise of a small, aggressive, independent minded people, known as the Greeks, that theatre is taken out of the hands of priests and kings and given to the people. For the first time in human history, theatre is given a place of its own and a function to serve the whole society. Four great playwrights use that place and fill that function so well that their works continue to work their magic through succeeding civilizations down to the present day.
The theatre might have been lost in the mists of time and distance were it not for one other passionate people, the Romans. After the decline in prosperity and influence of Greece, the Macedonion General Alexander plants theaters and Greek plays from India to Spain. The breakup of Alexander's empire leaves Rome to pick up the pieces. Rome carries Greek ideas and Greek theatre from Africa to England and from Spain to Germany. The Romans plant theatre so widely and so deeply in the territory they conquer, that it is able to survive the long Dark Ages of social disintegration and economic dissolution. In the Middle Ages, the theatre remerges under the protection of the Church, gradually moving out on its own. Finally, theatre will rise again in all its many forms with the rise of humanism. It will again escape the hands of kings and priests and belong to the people.
CHAPTER ONE..................................Before the Ionians [sample chapter - ChapOne ] CHAPTER TWO..................................The Greeks Theatre Is Born In Athens - Chapter Two CHAPTER THREE................................The Hellenistic World Through Alexander, Theatre
Spreads Throughout The Known World - chap3 CHAPTER FOUR.................................The Romans From Greek Imitations Through
Technical Innovation - chap4 CHAPTER FIVE.................................After The Fall The Dark Ages and Why They Aren't So
Dark chap5 CHAPTER SIX..................................Into The Middle Ages chap6
next Chapter One or PartTwo back Theatre History home Home
CHAPTER ONE
Before the Ionians
Introduction
When the first truly human trait appeared, the need and the urge to communicate something beyond pointing to an object, we learned to show and tell. Human communication grew on the development of symbols, something that conveys more meaning than just a sign. With a growing repertoire of symbols, visual and spoken, we moved down the path of being human.
Long before the first appearance of the human activity we call theatre, there was the development of theatrical elements. These elements seem to be central to the human experience. The primary theatrical element is difficult to describe, but it involves the awareness of a power beyond the visible world and the invoking, embodying and manipulating of that power. For convenience we can call this element "magic."
The other elements are easy to understand. Everyone, regardless of the society they grow up in, plays at being someone else, seeks out and wears costumes, loves masks and disguises, practices and does special gestures, movements and dance. Everyone enjoys activities that make use of these elements, especially when they are done with a group.
As human history emerged from the mists of pre-recorded history and into recorded time we find any number of places where theatrical elements are coming together and becoming more sophisticated and organized. While there are undoubtedly many occasions when these come together among the common people, at their celebrations and festivals, written records deal only with those that involve rulers and priests. The most extensive records we know of at this time come to us from Egypt.
While these ancient civilizations left extensive records, written and drawn in great detail, other Mediterranean societies were developing, flourishing and changing. These other societies left very little in the way of written records, but their characteristics, gods, heroes and myths came down to the Greeks who would develop the theatre we know.
The Tap Root: Play PLAY IS MORE THAN " SHOW AND TELL" As a number of people have said, play is
older than culture and whatever else theatre may be, it is certainly a play activity. Play brings order out of chaos. There is nothing ordinary or "real" about play. It is a voluntary
and conscious stepping outside chaotic and uncertain real life into a very special world of order with rules all its own. Although play doesn't put food on the table or a roof over your head it does seem to be a human necessity. In some way play makes real life meaningful.
Through play a society expresses and affirms its identity, values, ideals and ways of doing things because all play means something. In this way play contributes to the well-being of the society or the group. It establishes and reaffirms the identity of the society. In this way it is essential and more important to the group than food, shelter or survival.
Play can only be understood as a totality with its own rules, its own time and space. Every kind of play has its own playing field and a definite beginning and end to the play activity. Inside the activity there is a very special and absolute order which creates a limited perfection. To be able to play, the players must play by the rules and this creates tension. In play the courage, tenacity, resources, and, above all, the player's sense of fairness are tested to the limits.
After the game is over those who have been players are a community. This sense of community, based on the feelings of shared experience, being apart together in an exceptional situation, binds the group together. It makes the magic of the experience last long after the play activity is over. Permanent social groupings are dependent on such play activities to keep alive the specialness of the group and the meanings central to it.
Playing isn't just "pretend" but an exciting, absorbing, rapturous and intense involvement in something meaningful and satisfying. Players believe in their play. That is the basic law of play. It requires unquestioning belief. In playing, the laws and customs of everyday life don't count. The players are different than they are in real life, and they do things differently.
The differentness of the player is obvious in "dressing up," masks and disguises. A disguised or masked individual plays another part. They become another being. Often this being is more terrible or more beautiful, and more powerful, than any human could be. The player uses their imagination, makes an image and identifies with that image. Something invisible takes form.
Playing involves actions. The meaning of the play can be found in the acting out of the intentions and interactions of the players within the rules of the game. The actions make a complete and meaningful pattern. When the pattern is complete, the activity is over.
Magic
A human being experiences the real world as a chaotic and confusing place. There are powerful forces at work every where. Sun, wind, storm, tides, volcanoes, earthquakes, all the forces of nature happen without visible cause. Plants, animals and human beings are born, grow and die, without visible cause. Edible plants, animals to hunt, appear and disappear with no discernible cause. In order to survive, humans had to learn about cause and effect where that was possible. They also had to come up with some way of dealing with all the forces which seemed to have no visible cause.
One way of dealing with these mysterious forces was through play. Wherever these forces came from, they were not "here" in this real world, but, through play, they could be imagined, made into an image and brought into the play world. If you wanted a herd of antelope to come near enough to be hunted you could disguise yourself as an antelope, move like an antelope, become an antelope. By becoming an antelope the player could come to understand the forces that moved the antelope and work to bring that quarry near. In becoming another being, the player had to temporarily give up their own identity, their own personhood which existed outside the play, and permit themselves to be taken over. The player is "seized," by the force or the spirit of the being they had to become. Other players believe that the force has appeared among them. They witness the force acting upon themselves and upon other beings. They have witnessed power and they have made magic together. In this way the playing has served the group and the society. They will carry their knowledge and confidence into the real world and the real hunt.
More Than Hunting Most of what we know about early societies is about hunting and gathering food. Not only do
we have cave paintings and hunting tools from thousands of years ago, we also have a few societies in New Guinea, South America and Australia where we can see people who are still engaged in these activities. We can also see the play activities, the rites and rituals, which these societies perform in relation to acquiring food.
There are other human concerns of these early people and their behavior in relation to these is more difficult to understand. Fertility of the plants, the animals and humans is one of the major concerns. We know that there are any number of rites and rituals relating to fertility. The number of studies done and books written on this subject fill whole libraries.
We can visit the Hopi or Zuni Indians in Arizona and witness the Kachina dances, but our society is so different from theirs that we can understand very little of the real meaning in these performances. We cannot witness these, we can only see them. To truly be a witness requires that we also be a player, and that we know the rules and understand the real meaning of what we see and hear.
Rites and rituals relating to human fertility are even farther from our understanding. Today we know too much about the technical details of cause and effect to understand the point of view of people thousands of years ago. We have found thousands of "fertility" statues and dolls which were made at different times and in different places all over the world. We know nothing of what they meant or how they related to the societies that produced them. It is generally agreed that they have some relation to what is generally called the "Mother" religion, but we know nothing of the rites and rituals which these numerous societies performed. Being human ourselves, we can imagine they were concerned with invoking forces and powers to ensure that the women of that society gave birth to many healthy babies and that the health and well being of all the members of the society was promoted and protected. Other rites and rituals dealt with the mystery of death. We find this much easier to understand because we still have our own rites and rituals concerning death.
The Hero One of the interesting aspects of early rituals dealing with death leads down through
thousands of years and into recorded history. It also directly affects the development of theatre. This aspect concerns the notion of what we have come to call the hero. There have been any number of books and articles written on the subject of the hero. This, alone, tells us the subject is regarded as important. There are, however, a few things that can be said as a starting point.
A hero is defined by the society in which it occurs. The gender of a hero is determined by the characteristics the society wants to embody. It is only later that we begin to use the term "heroine" to identify a female hero and often "heroine" is used simply to identify the female with whom the hero is involved. Consequently, it will be less confusing if the term hero is understood to apply to a female, a male, a god or any other creature who embodies the characteristics which a particular society regards as important and central to their value system. The characteristics which define a hero come from two sources.
First, the hero is the central figure in the action. As we noted earlier, the player who becomes the dominant force, or embodies the particular power which is central to the play action, is the key to understanding the meaning of the action. No doubt, in prehistory, the member of society who played this hero role was the high priest or shaman. Naturally the spiritual leader of a society was more likely to be in closer touch with the invisible world than someone else. Later, when society was more highly organized, the ruler (King, Pharaoh, whatever the title) would be the hero of those activities which concerned governing, ruling, and even military matters.
The second source of the hero is related to the death rituals referred to above. When the individual who died was considered by the society to have been a particularly admirable person; someone who had lived a life that exemplified the best traits of the society; or, someone who had done deeds that greatly benefited the society; that person would be remembered as a hero. That individual would become the central character in play activities in The second source of the hero is related to the death rituals referred to above. When the individual who died was considered by the society to have been a particularly admirable person; someone who had lived a life that exemplified the best traits of the society; or, someone who had done deeds that greatly benefited the society; that person would be remembered as a hero. That individual would become the central character in play activities in
Quite distinct from these two sources of the hero was the development of the comic hero. This figure appeared in other rituals concerning social manners, mores and common matters of the community. There were two kinds of comic hero. The most popular one was the "bad guy" who got his just deserts. This kind would embody the society's view of those characteristics which were unpopular and unacceptable behavior. These heroes would engage in actions rejected by the society and would meet with terrible and funny consequences.
The other comic hero was the typical citizen who encountered the typical range of misfortune and disaster and made the typical mistakes in everything they did. This comic hero always managed to bounce back from every catastrophe and, usually by good luck rather than skill, come out on top at the end. We know almost nothing of the historical development of the comic heroes and their actions. When we reach historical times and recorded events, they appear fully developed in many cultures. We will meet they later under the name of farces in Ancient Greece and Etrusca. What is most relevant about heroes, comic and serious, is how they embody the primary concerns of the society in which they appear. When these concerns are shared by other societies in other times and places, these heroes will be used again.
The TIMELINE for pre-history:
ca. 9,000 BCE the earliest evidence of the city of Catal Huyuk
ca. 6,250 to 5,000 BCE the city of Catal Huyuk flourishes 8,350 - 7,350 BCE the city of Jericho flourishes 7,000 BCE early copper 6,000 BCE first known pottery and woolen textiles 5,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE sophisticated copper work
[traditional date of creation for Creationists falls in here] 4,000 BCE Bronze casting and first use of plough 3,500 BCE Megalith tombs in British Isles, Brittany, Iberian peninsula invention of wheel,
plough and sail (Near East) 3100 BCE pictograph writing 3000 BCE development of major cities in Near East
Historical Times
The Rise of The Highly Organized Societies Cities And Dynastic Rulers
The emergence of the first civilizations marks a new phase of world history. They arose almost simultaneously in four different areas of the world, apparently unconnected with each other. Two of these areas, the Indus valley on the Indian subcontinent and the Yellow River in China, are not directly relevant here since they had no known connection with, or influence on, the development of theatre in the west. The other two, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the valley of the Nile, are relevant. These cradles of civilization and the many societies that grew up in and around them directly affected the rise of theatre and the society that gave it birth. The characteristic feature of these civilizations was the city.
Interestingly enough, the earliest cities we know anything about (Jericho in Palestine and Catal Huyuk on the Anatolian plain of Turkey) are not located in either of these cradles of civilization. These two cities are relics of civilizations we know very little about and are useful here only as reference points in time which reveal human society in command of metal working, highly organized, with wide spread commerce and a social organization capable of building extensive cities. It is only after the development of writing that we are able to discover details about Egypt and the Middle East, as well as other societies that rose and fell throughout these centers and around the Mediterranean.
The city became an increasingly dominant social form of organizing people. A city meant a complex division of labor, a literate priesthood to keep track of things, monumental public buildings, political and religious hierarchies, a divine kingship and some sort of an empire to supply the needs of the city.
There are two important thing we know about these societies: first, none of them developed theatre; second, as time passed all of them developed the full range of theatrical elements needed for the birth of theatre. Knowing something about the societies in which theatre does not develop enables us to better understand what theatre is and how it relates to those other societies in which it does appear.
The most obvious characteristic of these civilizations, that seems to preclude the development of theatre, is religion. If the ruler is descended from the gods and only the priesthood is literate then these two segments of the society have a monopoly on direct access to the supernatural powers and to communication with them. In order to maintain their power and authority they will tend to be ruthless and their gods will demand strict obedience and great sacrifice from the rest of the population. The municipal buildings will be primarily temples and residences of the king and the priesthood.
These highly structured societies use rituals to demonstrate and confirm the power of the king and priests to the population. They develop elaborate costumes, use masks and make-up, carry symbols of authority ("props"), appear in, and in front of, spectacular architecture and decorations (scenery), engage in complex rites and rituals (plots) involving significant actions that reveal the awesomeness of their power.
Memphite Sacred Drama
ca. 3100 BCE Memphite Drama (Coronation Festival Play) We can learn something of what these religious and political rituals were like from some
"dramatic" texts, especially the Egyptian writings, including the so-called " Memphite Creation Play."*
The text contains a "presenter"'s narrative and a libretto, or sequence of dialog, of a sacred drama. The drama opens with a fight, combat or "contest", between two Egyptian gods, Horus and Set, followed by Horus' accession to the Kingship of the Upper and Lower Egypt, which is followed by the death and resurrection of another god, Osiris. The drama is followed in the text by a hymn to the prime god of the city Memphis, Ptah.
This text was apparently used at the annual festival on the first day of spring. The festival celebrated the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth (death in winter and rebirth in spring). It put special emphasis on the death and resurrection of Osiris and on the coronation of the king as the symbol of the regenerated community. The king was identified with the god Horus and was descended from him. At another Egyptian city, Edfu, the festival drama was known as the "New Year of Horus". Both dramas featured combat between two teams.
The combat between Horus and Set is the typical ritual combat between all of the opposites: the old year and the new, summer and winter, life and death, rain and drought, etc. The death and rebirth of Osiris reinstates the king for another year. The plot or pattern of action is typical of many sacred dramas and can be useful here as a plot outline to compare with later real plays.
ACT ONE: COMBAT There is a fight between Horus and Set. The Holy Family of the Nine Great Gods persuades Geb, the god of the earth, to stop the fight. Geb makes Set king of Upper Egypt and Horus king of Lower Egypt.
ACT TWO: UNIFICATION AND CORONATION Geb resents Set and makes his own son, Horus, king of both, uniting the two Egypts. The king is coronated as the embodiment of Horus and "sole inheritor" of the united land.
ACT THREE: DEATH AND REBIRTH Set attacks Osiris and he lies in the reeds, by the water's edge, on the point of death. His wife, Isis, son Horus and Nephthys rescue him and bring him back to life.
ACT FOUR: THE KING IS INSTALLED IN A NEWLY CONSTRUCTED PALACE This involves a procession to the new palace and the installation of the king.
ACT FIVE: THE DISSENSIONS IN THE LAND ARE RESOLVED AND ORDER IS ESTABLISHED Set is reconciled with Horus. All strife ceases. Continued prosperity is established. Everybody apparently shakes hands and makes up. the last line is "...wipe away the tear from every face..."*
ACT SIX: PROCESSION INTO THE CITY The text of this is lost but it seems to praise the city and confirm the rule of the king over the city.
EPILOG: A HYMN TO PTAH A hymn of praise to the patron god of the city of Memphis. It emphasizes the connections between the gods and between the gods and the king. It praises the city as being the special care of Ptah.
Societies progress and ca. 2500 BCE there is evidence of early copper culture in the Mediterranean islands. At the same time (about six hundred years after the Memphis play) there is another similar theatrical activity, the Abydos Passion Play. This play is obviously Societies progress and ca. 2500 BCE there is evidence of early copper culture in the Mediterranean islands. At the same time (about six hundred years after the Memphis play) there is another similar theatrical activity, the Abydos Passion Play. This play is obviously
Wrapup
By this point in time we have all the theatrical elements needed to create real theatre. The plot which centers on conflict and ends with a resolution of all major conflicts, dialog, characters, thought, scenery, props, masks or make-up and architecture for a public assembly. We also have well organized societies with large populations, good prosperity and large buildings. The only thing missing is a desire on the part of the society for theatrical activities apart from their political and religious dramas. This is a situation which will reccur much later, in Medieval times.
The Mediterranean World That The Ionions Came Into The Mediterranean world was a busy place with all sorts of folks coming and going. People
(ethnic and linguistic groups) were constantly moving into the built up parts, settled in unoccupied places, fighting each other, conquering or being conquered, taking captives for slaves or being enslaved and generally keeping the whole eastern end of the Mediterranean humming.
Meanwhile there were adventurous merchant types who sailed all over the Sea, and probably ventured out into the Atlantic, buying goods in one place and selling them in others. A recent shipwreck found off the coast of Turkey dates from around 4000 BCE and was filled with goods imported from around the coast from Egypt to Greece.
Changing copper into bronze by adding a little tin had greatly improved the metals market by 3000 BCE. and a small multinational area blossomed in and around the Mediterranean sea. Trade came from as far away as India. One of the societies central to this vigorous trade was the Minoans.
The Minoans Beginning about 3000 BCE
In the eastern end of the Mediterranean a civilization began to develop centered on the island of Crete. It's only recently that we've found out enough about these people, the Minoans, to learn something of their place in the development of the later cultures of Greece.
The mountainous island of Crete lies at the southern edge of the Aegean Islands, a chain of islands linking Greece with the Turkish mainland. South of Crete there is nothing but sea until you reach the African coast. At this point in time, when most sailing vessels hugged the coast, Crete was fairly remote from Egypt, the nearest civilized power.
Neolithic ancestors of the Minoans arrived by sea and became a great seafaring people with Crete as the center of their empire. Their civilization was rich and powerful. Even Egypt Neolithic ancestors of the Minoans arrived by sea and became a great seafaring people with Crete as the center of their empire. Their civilization was rich and powerful. Even Egypt
a time when Egypt has a tendency to conquer any prosperous civilization it could reach. The Minoans developed their own form of writing, were renowned all over the Mediterranean for their craftsmanship in pottery, all kinds of metal work, carpentry, weaving and all varieties of manufactured goods. They exported perfume, olive oil and grain. They were famous as a center of worship of the Mother goddess and for their athletic bull dancing.
The symbol of the bull, the strange athletic activity of bull-leaping and the myth of the monster bull in the palace maze, all may owe something to the prevalence of earthquakes in the area. One of the most prominent archeologists on Crete, Sir Arthur Evans, describes the sound of an earthquake he experienced there as being like the muffled roar of an angry bull*. Of the more than ninety cities on Crete, the capital, Knossos was the most beautiful and extensive. Even the plumbing was exceptional.
A number of aspects of the Minoan culture would be transmitted down to the Greeks. The Minoan version of the Mother goddess seems to have migrated to Greece Two familiar myths of the Greeks tell of this civilization. The first concerns the king of the Greek gods, Zeus, who was supposedly born on Crete's Mount Ida and had his tomb there on Mount Juktas. Zeus, in the shape of a bull, pursued the beautiful girl, Europa, and carried her on his back to Crete. There he seduced her and she gave birth to three sons, one of whom, Minos, became the king of Crete.
The second legend concerns the Greek hero Theseus. Athens sent seven youths and seven maidens as tribute to King Minos every nine years. These were given to the monster, part bull, part man, which King Minos kept in the labyrinth of his palace. One year Theseus chose to go as one of the youths. Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of thread to unravel as he went into the labyrinth. He killed the monster and fled with the girl. Later plays of the classical Greek period include stories of Theseus and his later wife, Phaedra. These myths and many of the splendid products of the Minoan culture made their way to Greece by way of another obscure group of people, the Mycenaeans.
The Mycenaeans
Mycenae 1600-1100 BCE Direct Predecessors And Source Of Heroes And Plots
Outside Athens there is evidence of an early fortified town that dates back to at least 2000 BCE. Other Mycenaean towns are even older. Between 2000 and 1700 BCE the mainland of Greece was invaded by waves of the first Greek-speaking peoples. They came, apparently, from Anatolia and conquered Troy at the same time, settling there about 1950 BCE. These immigrants came under the influence of the Minoans of Crete.
Mycenae reveals a fascinating mixture of the civilized and the barbaric in its culture. Their architecture was far from sophisticated. Some of their metalwork seems to come from the Caucasus or the northern steppes. The horse-drawn chariots come from western Asia and there are remains of trade goods, such as amber beads, from the Baltic. The more sophisticated goods found in their graves came from Crete, especially gold and bronze jewelry, weapons and armor.
We have no written record of Mycenae but they had, as did many other cultures, a strong oral tradition. Oral tradition rested in a special class who were trained from early youth to memorize very long passages of history, legends and tales of heroes. These Bards would recite or sing passages at special events and for the entertainment of the king and the people. We know a great deal about the work and tradition of the Bard from other cultures: the Celts, particularly the Irish; and the Scandanavian, especially the Norse.
The Mycenaeans seem to have been in a close trading relationship with Crete and apparently worshiped the Cretan Mother goddess. What we know about this culture comes from archeological study and the later Greek writings when the main body of their oral traditions were written down.
We do know that there were two massive natural disasters that completely changed the cultures of Minoa and Mycaena. The first, and earliest, directly affected the Minoans. Somewhere between 1500 and 1450 BCE there was a cataclysmic volcanic eruption and accompanying earthquakes which almost completely obliterated the island of Thera sending clouds of volcanic ash into the atmosphere to circle the globe for years.
Thera was some miles due north of Crete and was the religious center of the worship of the Mother goddess. Most of the buildings on Crete were destroyed by this event although the main palace at Knossos survived to be burned at a later date. Much later the Greeks would attribute this kind of event to Poseiden the "earth-shaker". The Minoan civilization limped along for another few hundred years but mainly in the hands of new immigrants and invaders. The glory that was Crete at the height of its powers was gone as * ca. 1450 BCE marks the end of Minoan civilization. This left a power vacuum in the Aegean sea and the Mycenaeans rapidly moved in to fill it.
Everything we know about the people and events of the Mycenaean period come from later writings in classical Greece. The accuracy of these accounts, five hundred to a thousand years after the people lived and events transpired, is fantastically accurate. The faithfulness of the bards is uncanny. Rooms, furniture, shield and armor have been found in places and dated to times that match exactly the stories. It was, in fact, these stories which led men to search in the right places, dig, and recover all of the archeological material we know of today.
The Mycenaean society resembled the despotic kingdoms of the Near East much more than it did the later Greek city-states. There are records from Crete under the Mycenaean rule that tell a great deal about the economy and commerce of these people. There are lists of the king's possessions, women engaged in weaving and supplies brought in for the manufacture of perfumed oil.
The Mycenaean seem to have brought their own gods with them, It is from this society that we first hear of the gods of Mount Olympus, Zeus, their king, and the multitude of other gods, demigods and the humans they interacted with. The pantheon of gods, their history and escapades is much too involved and lengthy to go into here. It is a marvelous story all its own, but, as it leads to the theatre works of the Greeks, we need to know that the story begins here.
Greek Mythology of Gods and original creation - CHAOS - primeval state of confusion and shapelessness GE or GAEA - mother earth, who emerged from Chaos, nourishes all life, receives all in death, mother of numerous offspring
First Generation of Gods: URANUS, heaven, son of Gaea, rules with her, he ruled heaven, she ruled earth - they produced a large number of offspring - the most important were the TITANS, these were exceptionally strong and personified natural forces. OCEANUS (a river encircling earth) RHEA (agriculture) CRONUS (cyclical agricultural time) IAPETUS (volcanoes) PROMETHEUS fore-thinker ATLAS strength
Here, too, we find all the great heroes, the royal houses and the mighty and tragic events that make up the body of Greek legend and form the basis for almost all the great Greek tragedies. Many of these are to be found in the stories about the greatest Mycenaean event, the Trojan War Others dealt with Kings and events from an earlier period. Theseus, for example, mentioned above in relation to the Minos Bull monster, become king of Athens on the death of his father Aegeus. There are a number of legends about this family.
Oedipus and his relatives come to us from this period. The major players of the Trojan war who ruled the various parts of Mycenae provide a number of plots and characters. The leader of the Greek host, Agamemnon, shows up as the starting point of the great Aeschylean trilogy, the Oresteia.
It is very unclear what happened to wipe out this culture that had taken over the rich trade of the Minoans and enlarged it. There are several factors we do know about which must have contributed to their decline.
First was the Trojan War which definitely seems to have taken place, although we are not quite sure when. Troy, on the northwestern coast of Turkey, had moved in to fill the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Hittite kingdom. Placed, as it was, on the crossroads of trade from the north and trade from the east, it had grown fat and led a confederacy to rival the Mycenaeans. There was extensive trade between them. The abduction of Helen, wife of the Mycenaean Menelaeus (brother of Agamemnon) may or may not have actually occurred. If so, it was probably a useful pretext to launch a war of plunder on a city renowned for its gold. There is a suspiciously similar story from an earlier date in Canaanite literature.
However it began, the Trojan War debilitated the victors as well as destroying Troy At roughly the same time a strange bunch known simply as the Sea Peoples invaded the Syrian coast and cut off much of the Mycenaean trade with Asia. This no doubt led to an even greater economic depression. And, if this wasn't enough, a really rugged group of barbarians know as the Dorians, also Greek speaking, began overrunning Greece from the north around 1150 BCE
The natural event which may have precipitated these migrations was a change in the weather. In the Aegean the weather took a turn for the impossible. The stony, mountainous land of Greece had never been an agricultural bread basket, but it had sufficient rain and good growing weather for millennia to provide for a rising population. Suddenly, around 1200 BCE there was a drop in world temperature and the weather pattern changed over Europe. The Atlantic storm track, which had previously brought satisfactory rainfall to Eastern Greece, The natural event which may have precipitated these migrations was a change in the weather. In the Aegean the weather took a turn for the impossible. The stony, mountainous land of Greece had never been an agricultural bread basket, but it had sufficient rain and good growing weather for millennia to provide for a rising population. Suddenly, around 1200 BCE there was a drop in world temperature and the weather pattern changed over Europe. The Atlantic storm track, which had previously brought satisfactory rainfall to Eastern Greece,
Briefly, let's recap the timeline of current events: ca.1200 BCE there is a big change in the weather invasions of "Sea Peoples" into Mediterranean disruption of tin trade and a switch from bronze to IRON beginning of Jewish Religion collapse of Hittite Empire Mycenean civilization collapses c.1100 BCE Final destruction of Mycenae and the appearance of early city-states ruled by kings accompanies the Dorian move down through Greece into the Peloponnese
At the end of the Bronze Age a bunch of barbarous peoples overrun the Mycenaean and Hittite civilizations. The Mycenaean refugees escaped over seas.
The entire Aegean plunges into a Dark Age. Migrations increase and we finally see the appearance of the really bright wing of the Greek speaking people, the Ionians, who start migrations into Asia Minor between 10 and 1000 BCE Somehow the history and the oral tradition of the Mycenaeans survive through the bards, and both the Dorians and the Ionians really take it to heart as their own. After all, it is in Greek.
10 to 1000 BCE The Ionian Greeks migrate south and west, to Ionia. The people who will
be known as the Etruscans arrive in Italy. The Phonecians spread throughout Mediterranean. c.1100 - c.800 BCE DARK AGE Finally, the weather in eastern Greece, the Aegean and Asia Minor returns to normal rainfall. The art of writing has been lost among the Greeks and when writing reemerges it is a diffrent form, recognizable as ancient Greek. 900 BCE Dorian Greek migrations to Aegean islands and Asia Minor
Homer
All of which leads to a rather misty character called Homer. Misty because no one is really sure that there was such a person. It may be that there were a number of writers, or there really may have been such a man. Whatever the case, sometime around 800 and 700 BCE, Homer composes the world's two greatest epics about the Trojan War, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The works are obviously Ionian and infinitely superior in literary value to anything else that survives from the whole period. Western literature begins with Homer. He lived on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, probably in Smyrna or Chios. He was said to be blind. Epics are long narrative poems written in a dignified style about really important and majestic themes. They concern the doings of the culture's heroes from early times. Usually they deal with that part of the legendary past that the people want to remember and want as a model for society now. Of course, they include a lot about the influence of the gods.
Greek Mythology of Gods - the Second Generation The Titan children of Uranus rebel and depose him from power and begin to run things themselves headed by CRONUS and RHEA who produce more children:
HESTIA (fire of the hearth) HADES (underworld) DEMETER (grain and agriculture) POSEIDON (sea and horses) HERA (patron of marriage) ZEUS (intelligence, sky and storms). Greek Mythology of Gods the Third Generation Another rebellion led by Zeus results in a battle between Titans and Gods, between intelligence and brute strength. Zeus and his generation win and reorganize running the universe. The result is that Cronus is banished along with all but three of the Titans. These are:
Atlas who is assigned to hold up the heavens, Oceanus who has been neutral Prometheus who sided with Zeus (and who approves intelligence and opposes force and brings fire to mankind.) The victors divide up the universe. Of the twelve leaders, Zeus gets the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld, and all take an interest in earth. This newest group is called the "Olympian gods," after Mount Olympus where they supposedly dwell. They each have particular spheres of power. The Twelve Olympians ZEUS king of gods HERA patron of marriage HESTIA domestic life DEMETER grain, agriculture POSEIDON sea, horses HEPHAESTUS fire, smith of gods ARES offensive war APHRODITE love beauty, fertility ATHENA wisdom, defensive war, HERMES cunning, messenger of gods, god of thieves, etc. APPOLO sun, music, prophecy, archery, medicine ARTEMIS hunting, wild animals, moon, childbirth
The Iliad
This epic deals with events personalities and gods on the Greek side involved in forty-seven days in the tenth year of the Trojan War. It is necessary to be familiar with who the characters are, who the gods are, and what has happened to start the war and for the past ten years. All that is a bit much to cover here, but since the Greek period is based on the doings of many of these episodes we will take a quick look at the major players.
TROY (Ilium) - Ruled by King Priam, his wife Hecuba, their sons Paris and Hector, his wife Andromache, their infant son Astyanax; Priam's son-in-law Aeneas, Priam's daughter Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo and a prophetess. These were the main players on the Trojan side. The allies of Troy in this war were Pandarus, Sarpedon and Glaucus from Lycia. The ACHAEANS (Greeks) - This group was more complicated since it was made up of leaders and heroes from a number of places, a sort of United Nations force from all over Greece. They weren't too happy working together, but reluctantly agreed to let Agamemnon (King of Mycenae) lead the coalition. He was regarded as the best general. The other prominent leaders were Menelaus, his brother, King of Sparta and husband of the abducted Helen (the one blamed for the whole thing); Achilles (the one with the vulnerable heel) the greatest hero, from Thessaly, accompanied by his friends and relations; his cousin, Ajax (a terrific fighter but short on brains) from Salamis; Achilles friends Antilochus and Patroclus; then there were the contingent from other Greek societies Diomedes, son of the King of Argos; Idomeneus, from Crete; Nestor, son of the King of Pylos; and finally, Odysseus King of Ithaca (more about him later as the hero of the Odyssey).
Briefly - The Trojan War As usual the trouble begins with the gods. At a wedding party there is a beauty contest for the
most beautiful of three goddesses. Not wanting to play favorites, Zeus made Paris of Troy the judge. Each goddess offered him bribes. In the "Judgement of Paris" the golden apple award most beautiful of three goddesses. Not wanting to play favorites, Zeus made Paris of Troy the judge. Each goddess offered him bribes. In the "Judgement of Paris" the golden apple award
Aphrodite takes Paris to visit the happy couple. The husband goes off on a trip to Crete and Paris hops a ship with the fair Helen and sails home to Troy. When Menelaus gets home and finds his wife missing the call goes out for a war party. Not everyone answers the draft call right away. Odysseus doesn't want to leave his wife and son to fight for a cheating woman. Achilles's mother doesn't want to send her boy to war because she knew he was going to die there, so she puts him in women's clothes. But both heroes are tracked down and join the war party.
Everybody met on the coast at Aulis where a thousand ships waited to carry the host of Greek warriors over the sea. But the wind kept blowing the wrong way. The soothsayer Calchas figured out that the only way to fix the wind was to sacrifice Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. As a father he wasn't too happy about this, but as Commander in Chief he didn't see much choice. It was either kill her or his reputation and ambition to conquer Troy. Ambition won out she had been sacrificed. The wind changed and they were off to Troy. The ships landed, the battle began and all the heroes did their best for home and glory. This went on for nine years and nobody gained an inch. Then the gods began to fight too. Agamemnon had made off with a priest's daughter and that made Apollo mad. He began to help the Trojans and spread disease among the Greeks. The girl had to be returned but Agamemnon took Achilles' girl as a replacement. This made Achilles mad and he stayed in his tent and sulked. By now the war had reached Olympus, what with each side praying for help the other gods began to take sides.
The gods on the side of the Greeks were: Athena and Hera (because they lost the beauty contest), Poseidon (because they were sea people), Hephaestus, Thetis (Achilles' mother and a sea nymph) The gods pulling for Troy were: Aphrodite (on the side of Paris), Ares (always sided with her), Apollo, Artemis (sided with her brother), Zeus (sometimes, because he was caught between Hera and Thetis). There followed a series of meddling and interference by the gods, now one way, now the other. There were spectacular fights between heroes from both sides and one by one they die. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector.