Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [89]
More widely accepted is the idea that these war-loving, chariot-driving Mycenaeans were responsible for what the modern business world might call a “hostile takeover.” When they came crashing into the Greek mainland, they apparently brought with them a set of their own, very old gods, such as the sky father, Zeus; the Earth Mother, Demeter; and Hestia, the virgin goddess of the hearth. The local farmers they encountered and subdued on mainland Greece probably worshipped an ancient Earth Mother, who became Hera. And the very stormy marriage of Zeus, the conquerors’ sky god, and Hera, the fertility goddess of the conquered locals, may actually symbolize the merger of these two ancient mythologies. The concentration of power in such cities as Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes, all of which are featured prominently in Greek myths, is another clue that many of the Greek myths and legends may have originated in their familiar form during this Mycenaean Period.
Mycenae and most other settlements on the Greek mainland were destroyed sometime after 1200 BCE, ushering in a Greek Dark Age, the third major period in Greek history, which lasted until about 800 BCE. Historians do not know why Mycenaean Greece fell into chaos. Perhaps climate change led to famine. Suspicion also falls on the invasion of another group, Greek-speakers called Dorians, from northern Greece, who moved south into the region, forcing many Mycenaeans to flee to Asia Minor. One reason the lights went out during this Dark Age was that somehow Greek knowledge of writing (which used a form called Linear B adapted from the Minoans) was lost, and the Greeks only began to write again sometime after 800 BCE.
That is about the time that someone familiar with Phoenician writing invented the Greek alphabet. Phoenician writing only had signs for consonants; some clever but anonymous Greek added indications for vowel sounds. For the first time—experts generally agree—writing could approximate the sound of the human voice (and that system is the basis for the writing you are now reading). With that development, the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were presumably written down for the first time sometime after 800 BCE, along with the works of a Greek poet named Hesiod, who conveniently catalogued the history and exploits of the gods.
The Dark Ages gave way to a fourth historical period, called the Archaic Age (800–490 BCE), with the emergence of the written Greek language, the return of those who had moved away, and the spreading of colonies in the west—in Southern Italy and Sicily. This period marked the beginnings of the polis, or Greek-city states, which would usher in the greatest developments in Greek history. Established as centers of trade and religion, each city-state was surrounded by walls to protect it against invasion. Within the city, there was usually a fortified hill—an acropolis—and at the center of each city was the agora—an open area that served as a market area and city center.
Finally, Greece flowered spectacularly in the Classical Period (490–323 BCE). This Golden Age was centered in Athens and had its earliest flowering with the Athenian lawmaker Solon’s democratic reforms in 594 BCE. It continued to grow over the next few centuries, bursting into full bloom in the Greece many of us think of when we think of the ancient world. A key moment came with the defeat of the Greeks’ great foreign rivals, the Persians, in a series of wars fought between