From Mycenae to Homer

First published in 1958, this book aims to describe Greek art and poetry within this ambiguous period of ancient history (often referred to as the Greek ‘Dark Ages’), and to explore the possibilities of learning about Mycenaean civilisation from its own documents and not only from archaeology. Because they record Mycenaean civilisation in Mycenaean terminology, while Homer was writing in Ionian Greek at the beginning of the polis civilisation, the Homeric epics show how much in Homer is in fact Mycenaean.