Last of the Mycenaeans

Last of the Mycenaeans

An Historical Novel of the Ancient World

Chris Craig 2013

Smashwords Edition

1st Edition

Copyright Chris Craig 2013

ISBN 978-0-9872454-3-4.

**********

Smashwords Edition License Note

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Put another way; if you enjoy this book (he said in the confident expectation that you will), then please pay the freight so the author can afford to sit down and write you another. Thanks.

Other titles by Chris Craig currently available:

Ancient History/Historical Fiction:

The House of Thunder Series:

The Father, The Son, THOT Companion

Australian Historical Fiction:

Lithgow

Catterthun

For other titles by Chris Craig, see them all at:

http://www.chriscraigbooks.com/

Check out the Last of The Mycenaeans Companion: a free web_book with maps, pictures and links to sites with information about the period, the people and their technology.

Find it at:

http://www.chriscraigbooks.com/lLotM_Companion.htm

If you have links, images or anything that would be of interst to other readers, please post it on: http://lastofthemycenaeans.blogspot.com.au/ so that it can be put on the Companion web site (with attribution, of course). You can help build the Companion web_book, and interest in the period.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

The End

Companion web site and blog links

Sample Chapter of The Father

Last of the Mycenaeans

Introduction

(return to ToC)

This is a story of the Mycenaeans: a people who lived and loved in Greece over a thousand years before the birth of Christ, as we measure time these days. A thousand years; thirty generations of men and women, each handing down their ways, their skills and knowledge to the next, until it stops. Then, for a people, comes the end.

The Mycenaeans originally came down into Greece from the north. They were Indo-European speaking people who brought with them advanced techniques in pottery, metallurgy and architecture. They displaced the established Neolithic inhabitants, ushering the Bronze Age into the region.

The Mycenaeans began arriving in Greece around 2,000 years B.C.. By 1,600 B.C., their civilisation had blossomed into regional dominance. Their ships plied the seas, trading near and far. They built splendid palaces; large structures of stone and plaster. These palaces had massive stone floors, plastered with lime and decorated with painted designs. The walls boasted friezes of translucent alabaster and painted frescoes. Great columns held up roofs of fired clay tiles.

Incorporated in the palaces were large warehouses and factories; they were centres of commerce and trade. Textiles and bronze artefacts were manufactured and the finest pottery made. Produce from the surrounding countryside was gathered and stored here and, together with manufactured goods, traded for treasure from other lands. They used writing to facilitate and record this trade. Scribes painstakingly carved the ‘Linear B’ script into clay tablets, documenting the flow of wealth through the palace gates.

These people and their palaces were dotted throughout what we now call Greece. But one palace complex grew to be the largest and most powerful: Mycenae. It gave its name to the people and the period: the Mycenaeans and Mycenaean Greece. Mycenae was situated some twenty kilometres by road from the coast, in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnese; the great southern part of Greece, south of the Isthmus of Corinth.

At the height of its prosperity, however, Mycenaean society became driven by fear. Around the great palaces and storehouses, around their wealth, they began to build huge walls and fortifications; massive structures. The walls, for instance, were some eight metres thick and ten metres high. They were constructed of huge, carved stone blocks. Cyclopean, later inhabitants of Greece were to label these constructions, convinced that only the giant Cyclops could have moved such huge blocks into position.

But what was it that prompted the Mycenaeans to pour so much of their wealth and toil into the construction of these massive walls? They had lived in these locations for some six hundred and fifty years without such walls (the walls appear around 1350 B.C.). Who was it they feared so much as to devote themselves to this effort? Who did they now feel such a need to defend themselves against?

It is a mystery. And the mystery deepens as the archaeological record contains no evidence of any significant invasion, or threat of one, around this time. Who were they defending against, then? Perhaps, it was themselves.

Early scholars believed that the Dorian Greeks (descendants of Hercules according to myth) presented a threat to the Mycenaeans, moving down from the north. But archaeology now confirms Homer’s view expressed in the Iliad: that the Dorians - ancestors of the later Greeks such as Pythagoras and Aristotle; the Greeks of the Classical period - were already in the region during the Mycenaean period but did not rise to prominence until perhaps two hundred years after the disappearance of the Mycenaeans. The descendants of Hercules were not the culprits on this occasion.

The subsequent habits of these Classical Greeks, however, may provide some explanation. Warfare between the Classical Greek city-states was endemic. They were not happy unless they were attacking a neighbouring city or defending their own. Certainly, the Mycenaeans were also a warlike folk. They conquered the Minoans of Crete, for example. They also famously conquered the windy city of the ancient world, Illios, or, as it has become better known, Troy.

Certainly the Mycenaeans shared many of the gods and beliefs of the later Greeks. It would seem reasonable to extrapolate many Classical period behaviours backwards in time, suggesting, to some degree at least, a cultural continuum in the region across the last two millennia B.C.. The importance the Classical Greeks attached to the works of Homer - the oral histories and then the written work - also suggests that they saw themselves as not unconnected to the Mycenaean era, despite the gap of two hundred years: the Greek Dark Ages, between Mycenaean and then Dorian dominance.

So it may have been that the Mycenaeans built their huge walls to defend against attacks from neighbours. Or, it has been suggested, they were built to defend against an even greater threat: their own people.

Most Mycenaean Greeks were small farmers living in villages and on farms. They tended flocks and tilled the soil, producing crops of wheat, barley, olives and grapes. Mycenaean society was highly stratified. The economy was centred on the palaces. The farmers, the ‘damos’, produced. The upper strata, the king or ‘Wanax’, through their representatives, collected and traded. It would not be unique in world history if tensions arose between those who produce and those who benefit most from the production. Particularly when times get tough.

In any event, we do know one thing for sure about the mighty Mycenaean fortifications: in the long run, they did not work.

The citadels were all destroyed over a relatively short period. The land became depopulated. The Mycenaeans declined and then disappeared. What was it that brought about this decline? Another mystery.

Again, the mystery is deepened by the absence of an invader in the archaeological record. Again the Dorians were originally thought to have been the culprits, but are now believed to have later filled a vacuum rather than to have overthrown the Mycenaean residents.

Many other theories have emerged in the effort to explain the disappearance of the Mycenaeans. Some centre on changing climate, suggesting prolonged drought brought them down. Failing soils are also thought to have had an effect. Raiders from the mountainous north are also suspected, carrying off spoil rather than invading and settling. It has been proposed that changes in warfare practiced during the period, particularly the adoption of the javelin by neighbouring barbarian tribes, allowed them to overcome the chariot armies of the Mycenaeans. Yet another theory suggests that the eruption of Hekla, a volcano in Iceland, caused a hemisphere wide darkening of the sun, crop failures, famine and societal collapse.

All of these theories are possible. None are mutually exclusive. And what can be seen clearly in the archaeological record is the effects of whatever changes did take place: the palaces and citadels were burned, the land became depopulated. The use of writing disappeared. The quality of the once famous Mycenaean pottery collapsed. Cold winds blew across an empty land; the two hundred year long Greek Dark Ages had begun.

As the name suggests, this book is the story of one of the Mycenaeans. He was not a king or a prince, just an ordinary man.

Chapter 1

(return to ToC)

Angeioplastis was a potter. He lived in the village of Tiridromos, a little way from Mycenae. He could take a load of pots to the Palace on a donkey and be back on the same day. That is how far it was from Tiridromos to the Palace and citadel of Mycenae.

He lived in one of the more substantial homes in the village. It was an old house. Many generations of his family had lived in it. He could remember his grandfather working at the pottery wheel in the same room in which he now sat. And then his father, and now Angeioplastis.

It had been a busy day already. In his father and grandfather’s time, they had been nothing but potters; they sold their pottery to the Palace for enough to live comfortably. They had no need to engage in other work. Times were changing, however. The demand from the Palace had fallen, and they did not give so much in return now. So Angeioplastis had been forced to start his own small vegetable farm on land behind his house. He had spent much of the morning working in this garden.

Then he had spent some time on his new project. He was building an additional room on the house. There was plenty of building material available, nowadays. Many people had gone in the hollow ships to new lands, and their houses were crumbling. But the stone and much of the timber was still good. There was plenty for Angeioplastis to choose from. He selected blocks and hauled them to his house on his one-wheeled hand cart. He carefully placed the stone blocks, fitting them together before covering them with a generous layer of white plaster.

Angeioplastis was not an old man, but he was no longer a young man either. When this room was finished, he would take a wife and begin his family. That was his plan. It was time.

But now it was time to do some pottery. Even though the Palace only required a small number of pots and jars these days, they still had to be made. He sat down at the pottery wheel and began to turn the bottom of it with his feet.

In his grandfather’s time, a boy had been employed to help turn the wheel, making a better and more even speed. But during his father’s time, that had stopped. There was not enough to feed a boy as well, not even then.

So Angeioplastis turned the wheel with his feet. He took a lump of clay and flung it onto the centre of the wheel, shaping it with wet hands. It formed into a perfect, smooth mound beneath his touch.

Like a woman, he thought as the wet clay mound slipped around under his hands.

Then he applied pressure to the sides of the mound and the clay thrust upwards between his palms.

Now like a man, Angeioplastis said to himself, smiling. It was a ritual; these thoughts came to his mind every time he began to turn the wet clay on his wheel.

He shaped the clay upwards and then, driving his fingers into its top, began to hollow it out and raise up the sides. With skilled fingers he began to bring the sides curving back in, closing up to a narrow, flared opening at the top. It would be a stirrup jar; a container for perfumed oils and such. These were Angeioplastis’ specialty.

At last the jar was finished, beautifully shaped and still wet. He moulded a strap of clay between his fingers and fixed it on to make a handle. As he sat admiring his handiwork for a moment, he heard a polite cough outside the open door of his workshop.

Who is it? Angeioplastis asked.

The Basileus, came the reply. The Basileus was effectively the mayor of Tiridromos.

Dimarchos, Angeioplastis said, rising and wiping his hands, come in! No, wait. I have a better thought. Sit on the patio there and I will bring out cool wine and water.

It would not be unwelcome, the Basileus admitted, sinking onto the long bench against the plaster wall of the house. And in the shade of the only tiled roof in Tiridromos! the Basileus noted, looking up at the roof over the patio.

My father’s work, Angeioplastis said, bringing out two stirrup jugs and going back inside for cups. Each generation of our family has added something to this house, he went on as he poured wine into the cups and offered water to the Basileus to mix with his wine.

How is your new room progressing? the Basileus asked, craning as if to look around the corner of the house.

Very well, Basileus. It will not be long now.

Yours will be the most substantial house in Tiridromos, next to mine of course, when you are finished, the Basileus observed.

And the only one with a fired tile roof over its patio, Angeioplastis pointed out.

Indeed, the Basileus agreed, taking a deep, appreciative draught of his wine.

It is good to see you as always, Angeioplastis said in the silence that followed, but is there something that I can help you with? He could see that the Basileus