The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

after the end of the Bronze Age. 43 Drews further shows
that the round shield is used together with a slashing
sword, two spears or javelins, and metal greaves in handto-hand
fighting by skirmishers. 44 In an earlier period,
Greek infanterists were used to the towershield, which
covered the entire body. The latter shield also turns up in
the Iliad particularly in association with the Salaminian
hero Aias. But sometimes the poet (= poetic tradition
epitomized in Homeros) gets confused and calls the towershield
(sakos) “small” (Iliad XIV, 376) and wrongly associates
it with greaves (Iliad III, 330-5), whereas the round
shield (aspis) is stated to “reach the feet” (Iliad XV, 645-
6). 45 Another striking Late Bronze Age reminiscent besides
the towershield is the boar’s tusk helmet (Iliad X,
261-5). An important factor, however, in Late Bronze Age
fighting is formed by the chariot. In Egyptian reliefs it is
shown that the chariot was used as a mobile platform to
shoot arrows with the composite bow. 46 In the Iliad the
chariots are sometimes used for fighting with a long lance
or spear, just as it is depicted on a Late Helladic IIA seal
from Vapheio in the Argolid. 47 But in general the original
use of the chariot as a mobile platform from which the
warrior actually fights seems no longer clear to the poet
and he stages it, in line with pictorial evidence from Late
Helladic IIIC, 48 as a taxi for elite warriors to move to the
front, where they get out and fight on foot as infanterists
(note, however, that in some instances, as at the beginning
of Iliad XII, this tactic is merely determined by the terrain,
because the chariots cannot possibly cross the ditch in
front of the wall near the ships of the Greek camp).
43 Drews 1993a: 177-9.
44 Drews 1993a: 176-208.
45 For the erroneous coalescence of these data into a very “big
round shield” which can only be carried by fairy tale heroes, see
van Wees 1992: 17-22.
46 Drews 1993a: 104-34; Drews 1988: 84 ff.
47 Crouwel 1981: Pl. 11; cf. Wiesner 1968: F 27; F 95.
48 E.g. Crouwel 1981: Pl. 59; note that Crouwel’s (1981: 119 ff.)
downplaying of the early evidence for Mycenaean warriors actually
fighting from the chariot, reducing it to the scene of the seal
from Vapheio just mentioned to the neglect of, for example, the
scenes on the stelae from the shaft graves (Crouwel 1981: Pls. 35-
7), is induced by his preoccupation with the most common Homeric
use of the chariot as a taxi, so that his conclusion (Crouwel
1981: 151) that the iconographic evidence agrees with this particular
Homeric use is not only a simplification of the state of affairs
but in effect rests on circular reasoning.
26
The palace-bound civilization of Late Bronze Age
Greece was characterized by an intricate system of administration
on clay tablets inscribed in Linear B. Homeros, on
the other hand, is totally unaware of this script – his only
reference to a regular script, the smata lugra “baneful
signs” in the Bellerophon story (Iliad VI, 168), defines this
as an exotic phenomenon.
It also seems reasonable to suggest that the use of
clothing pins or fibulae, as referred to in both the Iliad (X,
133; XIV, 180 [both verbal forms]) and the Odyssey (XIX,
226; 256), constitutes an Early Iron Age feature, because
these objects only turn up in graves from the latter period.
Note in this connection that the peron according to Herodotos
is a characteristic feature of Doric dress. 49
Finally, there are some names paralleled only for
Early Iron Age texts. This has a bearing on the Arimoi in
the territory where Typhoeus is situated, which probably
refers to the volcanic island of Pithecussae off the coast of
present-day Naples in Italy, and hence we are likely to be
dealing here with Aramaeans (Iliad II, 781-3); 50 the Kimmerians,
who invaded Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia
from the Russian Crimea at the end of the 8th century BC
and therefore are thoroughly out of place in the context of
Odysseus’ visit to the underworld somewhere in the central
Mediterranean (Odyssey XI, 14); lake Gygaia in Maeonia,
likely to be named after the Lydian tyrant Gyges, who
ruled from 685 to 657 BC (Iliad XX, 390-1; cf. II, 865); 51
and the Dorians on Crete, who, as we have shown above,
can only be surmised to have colonized the island at the
end of the Submycenaean or beginning of the Protogeometric
period (Odyssey XIX, 177).
Notwithstanding these Early Iron Age features, which
have filtered in during the hundreds of years of improvised
epic performances by the bards and which no doubt can be
multiplied by closer study, the heart and core of the Homeric
poems reflects a Late Bronze Age politico-historical
setting. One of the strongest arguments to underline this
statement is formed by the fact that Heinrich Schliemann
on the basis of the geographical information in Homeros’
epics excavated the citadels of Troy (1870), Mycenae
(1876), and Tiryns (1884) – an empirical approach in the
49 Lorimer 1950: 337; cf. also porp mentioned in Iliad XVIII,
401. For the Dark Ages in general, see Desborough 1972 and
Snodgrass 2000.
50 Bernal 1991: 192.
51 Kullmann 1999: 192.