Chapter 2, The Early Iron Age - Classics 1000

Agamemnon

Basileus

The term for the legitimate single ruler, the “king.” In Mycenaean society, the title qasileu denoted a village or district administrator; in the Early Iron Age basileis (plural) became the warrior-chiefs who ruled the villages and districts

Demos

A territory and the people who lived in it; thus, “the land” and “the people.” The concept occurs in the Linear B tablets in the form damo, meaning, apparently, a village community and its free inhabitants

Geometric Style

The dominant style of vase painting from around 900 to 700 BC. A wider variety of motifs were used than is evident in the preceding Protogeometric style, and linear and angular patterns appeared.

Helen

Was brought back to Troy by the son of King Priam. The wife of Menelaus (ruler of the Spartans)

Hesiod

Period of lyric poetry

Homer

Greek poet

Kleros

An allotment of farmland sufficient to support a citizen-family that was passed on in perpetuity through the male line. In oligarchic states, full citizenship was frequently tied to the possession of a certain amount of land

Lefkandi

On the island of Euboea, a bustling Mycenaean town that prospered after the Early Iron Age.

Menelaus

The ruler of the Spartans and the husband of Helen

Oikos

(“household,” “estate”) The fundamental social and economic unit in Greek society, including the family group, its house, its land, its animals, and its property, including slaves

Phoenicians

Protogeometric Style

A kind of pottery that developed around 1050 BC, when an improved wheel and the use of rulers and multiple brushes on a single arm, enabled potters to develop a wider variety of shapes with primarily geometric decoration.

Troy

The mythical city, found by Heinrich Schliemann

Xenia

Guest friendship