ABSTRACT

George Grote, taking his cue from Eratosthenes, sub-divided the ancient Greek past into a ‘mythical’ and a ‘historical’ portion. The dividing-line he put at 776, the traditional date established by the Sophist Hippias of Elis (c.400) for the foundation of the Olympic Games, which were a truly panhellenic festival open to all and only Greeks. I should myself put the dividing-line rather later, but recent scholarship has in a sense vindicated Grote by demonstrating that the years around 775 did indeed mark the beginning of a new epoch in Greek history. First, ‘after centuries of illiteracy…the country got a script once more: the simple, practical, easilytaught alphabet from which all our western scripts descend’ (Jeffery 1976, 25). Second, the movement of western ‘colonization’ began about this time, with the settlement of Euboian islanders on the island of Pithekoussai (modern Ischia) off the bay of Naples. Third, a great advance in metalworking was made, visible initially in the production of solid bronze figurines but culminating within a couple of generations in the manufacture of sophisticated armour of hammered bronze and such agricultural implements as Hesiod’s iron-shod plough. Finally, the Homeric epics, with all their ethical, religious and national significance, were being shaped into their monumental form.