The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology

[Misty Allen]

Pidima, and Karteroli. The upper plain is as yet devoid of Mycenaean remains. 2 On the western coast a few Mycenaean finds were made at Mothone and at Cyparissia. A really important Mycenaean site was that Pylus near which the island of Sphacteria is situated. A little toward the north at Tragana are a prehistoric acropolis and two tholos tombs, of which one has been excavated and has yielded beautiful late Mycenaean vases. Near by at Osman Aga are other tholos tombs. 3

[Misty Allen]

The place in the western Peloponnese where the most important discoveries from the Mycenaean age have been made is the village of Kakovatos on the coast about six miles north of the mouth of the Neda and the boundary of Messenia. Here are an acropolis with remains of walls, a palace, Mycenaean sherds, and three tholos tombs of fair size; though they



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have been robbed, enough remains to show that they once were very rich. Especially notable are the beautiful ceramics belonging to the second Mycenaean period. To the same period belong also the ceramics found in the tholus tomb of the Messenian Pylos, and others from Kleidi, which is on the coast somewhat north of Kakovatos, near Samikon, and which Professor Dörpfeld identifies with the Homeric Arene. 4 Following certain ancient authors who sought the Homeric Pylos in this neighborhood, he put forward the opinion that the Mycenaean site at Kakovatos is to be identified with the Homeric Pylos, the city of Nestor. This view has attracted attention to this place and is widely accepted, but is also contested.

[Misty Allen]

To the west of the Upper Messenian plain is the plain of Sulima through which the railway to Cyparissia now passes. Here Dr. Valmin made interesting discoveries. 5 The two plains are separated by a ridge now called Malthi. On this ridge was a Mycenaean settlement built upon an earlier Helladic one, with an apsidal house. A Mycenaean house of fairly large proportions has been excavated. In the plain below this ridge are two tholos tombs of which one has been excavated, and a little farther toward the west near Kopanaki four others have been discovered, of which one has been cleared. The tombs excavated had been thoroughly plundered so that the finds were poor; they belong to



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the Late Mycenaean period, thus proving that the Mycenaean settlement in the Sulima plain is decidedly later than that on the western coast. The great number of tholos tombs shows that this district in the interior but not far from the western coast had a certain importance in the Late Mycenaean age.

[Misty Allen]

This tract, viz., westernmost Messenia and Triphylia, was thus much more covered with Mycenaean settlements than any other in the western Peloponnese, while finds from the Mycenaean age are elsewhere very scarce. It appears that the Mycenaean settlers came over the sea, first taking possession of some suitable points on the coast and only at a late period proceeding along the river of Cyparissia upward to the Sulima plain. The settlers in this plain cannot have come from the south or east, for the Upper Messenian plain shows no traces of Mycenaean habitation.

[Misty Allen]

This fairly dense Mycenaean population on the western coast of the Peloponnese cannot but be brought into relation with the Homeric tradition of the dominion of Nestor, king of Pylos. Dr. Leaf passed over this dominion in his suggestive book on Homer and History, but it is worth an inquiry since archaeological discoveries have lent color to the old tradition and to the fragments of a Pylian epos incorporated into Homer. But here the perplexing question arises: Which site was Nestor's Pylos? Professor Dörpfeld holds it to be identical with Kakovatos, but many scholars adhere to the old opinion that it was the Messenian Pylos. The settlements of the Sulima plain are separated by a considerable distance from those on the coast and hardly

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contribute to the solution of this problem; access to them may be a little more difficult from the Messenian Pylos than from Kakovatos-Pylos.

It is of course a good argument in support of Professor Dörpfeld's opinion that the site of Kakovatos was evidently the most important in this region, to judge from the number, size, and richness of its tholos tombs; it is moreover, according to the finds, earlier than the Messenian Pylos. The journey of Telemachus in a carriage from Pylos to Sparta, described in the Odyssey, has been vigorously discussed in this connection; 6 I

[Misty Allen]

pass over it because the question cannot be solved with certainty; I think that too much importance has been attached to it. Dörpfeld's other arguments, drawn from the Pylian epos incorporated into Homer, a source which ought to possess far better local information than the late poem of the Telemachia, seem to be irrefutable. The war with the Epeans or Eleans on the borders of the river of Alpheus, the situation of the town besieged by the Elean foes of the Pylians--Thryoessa, far-off at Alpheus in the extreme part of the sandy Pylos 7--prove that the Pylian dominion extended to this river and included Triphylia and Pisatis. There

[Misty Allen]

was also friendly intercourse with the Eleans; Nestor was victorious in the funeral games of Amarynceus, an Epean prince. 8 That the Pylians had intercourse principally with the Eleans or Epeans makes it more probable that Kakovatos rather than the distant Messenian Pylos was Nestor's Pylos. Even the war with the Arcadians 9 is better suited for the Triphylian





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 Pylos than for the Messenian. The latter town may have belonged to the dominion but the capital was Kakovatos-Pylos.

Thus the extent of the dominion of Pylos is determined except for the problem involved in the much discussed verses of the Iliad in which Agamemnon promises to give to Achilles, if he lets himself be appeased, along with the hand of his daughter, seven towns all near the sea at the extreme of the sandy Pylos. 10 Most of these towns were unknown in historical times and their situation is uncertain, but Cardamyle is situated on the eastern side of the Messenian gulf and Pherae is identified with Pharai near the innermost recess of the gulf.

[Misty Allen]

Consequently the inference is that the other towns also were situated around the gulf, 11 and from this the further conclusion is deduced that the dominion of Pylos included the whole of the historical province of Messenia. It seems, however, not certain that the word "extreme," νέαται Πύλου, necessarily is to be understood "in the extreme part of the dominion of Pylos," as it certainly must be in the case of Thryoessa. The translation "at the confines of the dominion of Pylos" is also possible, and if this is adopted nothing is said of the political situation of the seven towns. This may certainly have varied. For if Agamemnon promises to give away the seven towns they must needs be in his hands; he cannot give away what is in the possession of a vassal, the prince of Pylos. This passage implies that the seven towns on the Messenian gulf did not belong



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to the dominion of Pylos but bordered on it. Only the latter interpretation can be admitted here, if it is not to be surmised that the poet has taken over the phrase carelessly from the Pylian epos.

In view of this discussion it is comprehensible that scholars have thought according to the usual geographical units and have identified the dominion of Pylos with the historical province of Messenia in general, perhaps with the addition of Triphylia. But this has, in my opinion, vitiated the problem. The boundaries were not the same in the Mycenaean age as in the historical age. The fact that the Mycenaean civilization at the beginning

[Misty Allen]

of its second period gained a foothold on the coast and only much later spread inward to the plain of Sulima proves that the Mycenaeans came oversea. Both the Messenian and the Triphylian Pylos are typical Viking towns founded at suitable places near the coast far from the base of emigration. 12 Thence the Mycenaeans spread inward at a later time only. The fact that a denser Mycenaean habitation is found only in the Sulima plain, the Upper Messenian plain showing no traces of Mycenaean settlements, proves that the Mycenaean center was on the western coast. In the beginning the Mycenaean Vikings may have passed the Messenian gulf without stopping, if they did not perhaps come from the Corinthian


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gulf. Later on they tried to gain a foothold even on the coasts of the Messenian gulf, and this is reflected in the Homeric passage concerning the seven Messenian towns.

The fact that the Mycenaean civilization came to the western Peloponnese oversea is retained by the mythical tradition according to which the Minyans immigrated to these parts. Much has been written about the Minyans of Orchomenus and we must recur to them and their relations with Pylos at length in a later chapter. Here I only state that the tradition cannot be disregarded and that its reliability is proved by the mention in the Iliad of a river, Minyeios, in the district of Pylos. 13 Discussing its identity, Strabo proposes that it got its name either from the Minyans who came with Neleus' wife, Chloris, from Orchomenus in Boeotia, or from the