Homer TimelineHomer
Timeline
You must think of three historical periods for Homer:
(a) The Bronze Age, or Mycenaean period, about 1500 - 1100 BC;
(b) The so-called “Dark Age”, about 1100 - 800 BC;
(c) Homer’s own time, about 720 BC.
All three periods are reflected in Homer, and you are likely to be
asked about them.
The story is set in the Heroic Age, when gods walked and talked with
humans, and heroes were stronger than men are now. This is fantasy, but it is in part based on
historical memories from the Bronze Age and the Dark Age.
Homer as evidence for
these three periods:
In general:
(a)
What survives from the Bronze Age tends to be memories of
objects, such as the boar’s tusk helmet, or inlaid silverwork. There are occasional distorted memories
of
something else, such as the wealth of Egyptian Thebes, or techniques of
fighting from chariots.
(b)
What survives from the Dark Age is the values and social
structures by which the characters live.
Only once or twice do we see values or social structures from a later
date.
(c)
Our glimpses of Homer’s own time come most often in the
similes. Homer often stops the
narrative to increase the emotion by comparing what’s going on to something
from his own world.
