|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
|
|
|
William Smith,
A Smaller History of Ancient Greece|
|
CHAPTER II
Origin of the Greeks, and the Heroic Age
Page 6
The Iliad closes with the burial of Hector. The death of Achilles and the capture of Troy were related in later poems. The hero of so many achievements perishes by an arrow shot by the unwarlike Paris, but directed by the hand of Apollo. The noblest combatants had now fallen on either side, and force of arms had proved unable to accomplish what stratagem at length effects. It is Ulysses who now steps into the foreground and becomes the real conqueror of Troy. By his advice a wooden horse is built, in whose inside he and other heroes conceal themselves. The infatuated Trojans admit the horse within their walls. In the dead of night the Greeks rush out and open the gates to their comrades. Troy is delivered over to the sword, and its glory sinks in ashes. The fall of Troy is placed in the year 1184 B.C.
The return of the Grecian leaders from Troy forms another series of poetical legends. Several meet with tragical ends. Agamemnon is murdered on his arrival at Mycenae, by his wife Clytaemnestra and her paramour AEgisthus. But of these wanderings the most celebrated and interesting are those of Ulysses, which form the subject of the Odyssey. After twenty years' absence he arrives at length in Ithaca, where he slays the numerous suitors who devoured his substance and contended for the hand of his wife Penelope.
The Homeric poems must not be regarded as a record of historical persons and events, but, at the same time, they present a valuable picture of the institutions and manners of the earliest known state of Grecian society.
In the Heroic age Greece was already divided into a number of independent states, each governed by its own king. The authority of the king was not limited by any laws; his power resembled that of the patriarchs in the Old Testament; and for the exercise of it he was responsible only to Zeus, and not to his people. But though the king was not restrained in the exercise of his power by any positive laws, his authority was practically limited by the BOULE; or council of chiefs, and the Agora, or general assembly of freemen. These two bodies, of little account in the Heroic age, became in the Republican age the sole depositories of political power.
To Chapter III : General
Survey of the Greek People. National Institutions 
Back to the History of Ancient Greece Contents
|
|
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-ancient-greece-2-origin.asp?pg=6
