Homer and Mycenae, Part I: Heroic Greek Society
L.R. Palmer describes what we can learn of social stratification in ancient Greece from its epics.
The bronze age of Greece is at present unilluminated by any contemporary record.” Thus wrote in 1950 Miss H.L. Lorimer, author of the most authoritative work in English on Homeric archaeology. Some three years later, Michael Ventris opened the door to the archives room of the Mycenaean palaces of Pylos and Knossos, so that we can now read Greek records some five to seven centuries earlier than the date of Homer, earlier even than the traditional date for the fall of Troy (1180 B.C.).
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