Did "Ancient" Greece have Ancient History?

In 420 BCE, the southwest corner of the Acropolis was encased in a stone bastion. On top of this bastion was a dedication to Athena, the temple of Athena Nike, Athena of Victory. The structure was designed to greet those visiting the goddess's sanctuary. As a celebrant traveled up the main route towards the citadel, he or she would pass by a portal to the past. The bastion wall contained a small niche divided with a stone post. Directly behind this niche was another, corresponding niche, this one in a centuries earlier Mycenaean Cyclopean wall. The ancient niche was encased and protected by the classical sheathing. When we think of ancient Greece, we think of a young society isolated from time. Did they have a conception of ancient history? The answer hinges on technology and mentality. The Mycenaeans who flourished on the mainland from around 1400 to 1100 BCE spoke an earlier form of Greek called Linear B. The fall of their civilization marked the end of the Bronze Age. Experts have often linked historical engagement with Mycenaean physical monuments with the circulation of Homeric poetry in the 8th century BCE. The books of the Iliad and the Odyssey contain place names and individuals which, as far back as our evidence can go, are associated with the palaces and tombs visible in the landscape of Greece. The palace and tomb at Mycenae are associated with the Homeric Agamemnon. The ruins of Tiryns are connected with the mighty deeds of Heracles. This tradition describes what the Greeks would consider their history. It was using this evidence, the place names in the Iliad and the traditions surrounding the abandoned monuments, that Heinrich Schliemann was able to identify and excavate the sites of Mycenaean Troy. He was obsessed with the stories of Homer and the ancient Mediterranean civilizations. He dedicated his life's work to unveiling the actual physical remains of the cities of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But claiming that the Homeric poems described events which might have happened long ago is not quite the same thing as calling them The Homeric poems emerged alongside the technology of writing. The technology which came before, orality, was and is notoriously malleable and inconsistent. In normal circumstances, it probably wasn't possible for a Greek to make a claim about anything beyond the events his grandparents had seen. While genealogy was a central component of Greek thought in the Archaic period, and it permeates the Iliad and the Odyssey, there are actually very few confirmed instances of Bronze Age tombs assigned to the heroes of Greek myth. An overwhelming number of the confirmed cases are in the Peloponnesus, Agamemnon at Mycenae, Pelops at Olympia, and Menelaus at Sparta. None of them display evidence of continuous use from the Bronze Age through to the Classical period. But Mycenaean tombs were visited and occasionally reused as burial sites. The items deposited include offerings of pottery and occasionally small bronze figurines. On specific occasions of the year, the Greeks would eat and drink communally at these tombs to commemorate or memorialize the locations and people within. One way to look at the evidence for ancient history in Greece is to see the worship at these Bronze Age tombs as simple honors given by ordinary Greeks to unidentified ancestors. This would relegate the shrines and tombs assigned to the characters in Homer to attempts to co-opt the heroes of epic for non-religious purposes. Looked at in this way, the identification between monument and mythological figure was primarily a literary phenomenon. It was inspired by the popularity of Homer himself. From this point of view, while the Iliad and the Odyssey were important cultural artifacts, they were not history, so to speak. They didn't inspire or confirm a serious connection between the visible ruins of Mycenaean culture and the Greeks of the Classical period. But important though he is, Homer is not the be-all, end-all of ancient Greek culture. This is the Menelaion at Sparta. Integrated into an abandoned Middle Helladic settlement, the structure was a cenotaph. It contained no tomb, but still, Helen and Menelaus were believed to be buried within. In Spartan culture, Helen was not the problematic, compromised woman who abandoned Menelaus and launched a thousand ships. Dedicatory inscriptions confirm that at the Menelaion, Helen and Menelaus were worshipped together as a happily married pair. Written on the mouth of a bronze flask dating to the last quarter of the 7th century, we find, Danus dedicated this to Helen and Menelaus. In our sources, Menelaus is less important than Helen. It was Helen who established Menelaus as a partner in her house and a sharer of her throne at Sparta forever. We don't know exactly what form the worship of Helen took at Sparta. It is possible young women were possessed to the Menelaion in painted wicker carriages decorated with wild animals. This procession could have been accompanied by an image or eidolon of Menelaus, which mimicked the real burials of historical kings at Sparta. It is no surprise that of all the Greek cities, Sparta had the most consistent links to Egypt. The citadels and monumental tombs of the Mycenaeans were constant reminders to the classical Greeks of their past. The Acropolis of Athens was built on the foundations of a bronze age citadel. For a people who styled themselves as indigenous, autochthonous in Greek, this fact was significant. The window to the Mycenaean niche was visible to all entering the sacred seat of Experts have theorized that both niches were altars or shrines, places of veneration. Because of the characteristics of the oral culture which formed the history of the Greeks, monuments such as these were always capable of generating significance, even if this significance wasn't consistent across centuries. Alright guys, that's it. Thank you very much for watching. If you found this video entertaining or informative in any way, please do like and subscribe. It would help me out a lot. And I'll see you in the next one. See you later.