Draft:Dorian invasion

Dorian invasion
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The Dorian invasion is a now-rejected theory which postulated that sometime shortly after the Trojan War, in the period now called the Early Iron Age, a group of Greeks speaking Dorian dialects invaded displaced or conquered the original (also Greek) population. The original source for this belief are reports in ancient sources, such as Thucydides, that such an invasion happened. Nineteenth century scholars also embellished the theory with the supposition that the Dorian invaders brought ironworking along with changes in material culture such as pins, brooches, and pottery.

It is the consensus of scholars today that no Dorian invasion occurred. There is no definitive proof of any such invasion. Nor do changes in material culture align well with any time frame in which any such invasion could be supposed. The changes in material culture that did occur are better explained by prolonged intra-Greek migration, especially away from Bronze Age citadels such as Mycenae, with a prolonged period of development from late Bronze Age Greece.

Classical period

Main page: Draft:Return of the Heracleidae

Distribution of the major dialects of Ancient Greek within the Aegean region and Cyprus, c. 500 – c. 323 BCE

In the classical period (that is, from c. 600 BCE), the Dorians were an ethno-linguistic group, speaking the Doric dialect of Greek, concentrated in the southern Peloponnese and later spreading to Crete, Sicily and the Dodecanese. The ancient Greeks considered the Dorians to have originated from central and northern Greece. They were believed have migrated to the Peloponnese along with the descendants of the hero Heracles (the Heracleidae), around the end of the age of heroes (roughly the Late Bronze Age or the late second millennium BCE), shortly after the Trojan War. The fifth-century historians Thucydides and Herodotus dated this migration to eighty years after the fall of Troy. Two further migrations were believed to have occurred: the first resulted in the foundation of Doric colonies in the southern Aegean and in Asia Minor, while the second, in the eighth century BCE, established Doric-speaking communities at Cyrene and in Magna Graecia. The myth appears to have originated at the end of the Early Iron Age, and to have combined earlier traditions ascribing different homelands and ancestors to the Dorians.

Several cultural forms were identified as "Dorian" in classical times, such as the Doric order of architecture, the Dorian mode in music, and the Doric dialect of the Greek language. These were not exclusive to communities considered Dorian, some of which used other linguistic dialects: Halicarnassus, for instance, was considered a Dorian city into the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE), but used Ionic for official inscriptions from the fifth century BCE. The Doric dialect itself was diverse and closely related to other varieties of Greek, and may not have originated from a single proto-dialect.

The Doric Hexapolis, a federation of six cities of the southeastern Aegean based around the sanctuary of Apollo Triopios near Knidos, seems to have been the earliest invocation of Dorian identity in inter-polity relations: it was probably established before the early sixth century BCE. Elsewhere, except in Sparta, Dorian ancestry may have been invoked primarily by ruling elites. Its prominence in inter-polity relations declined from the fourth century BCE. During the Roman period, particularly around the foundation of the inter-city Panhellenion league by Hadrian in 131/132 CE, interest in Dorian identity returned, as cities were often required to demonstrate a Dorian origin in order to be admitted to the league.

The narrative of the Dorian invasion was particularly important in Sparta, where it formed the city's foundation myth. The seventh-century Spartan poet Tyrtaeus wrote of the Spartans as Dorians, who arrived in the land of Laconia from Erineus, in northern Greece, with the Heracleidae. There, Zeus and Hera granted Sparta to the Heracleidae: the two Spartan royal lines claimed descent from Heracles into the classical period. The version of the invasion narrative used in Sparta seems to have been a pastiche of various mythical narratives, with only a tenuous connection to the ancient Greeks' understanding of the Dorians as a people: the historian Nigel Kennell has called it "drastically underwritten" and likely to have developed in Laconia itself. In the fifth century, Sparta used the myth to justify the Tanagra campaign of 457, in which they sent troops to fight on behalf of Doris, believed to be the homeland of the Dorians, against an invasion from Phocis, an ally of Sparta's enemy Athens. During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Sparta asserted kinship with its Peloponnesian allies through a claim of common Dorian heritage. Around the reign of Hadrian, Sparta underwent a campaign of reasserting itself as the quintessential Dorian city, including efforts to re-establish what were considered primordial Doric cultural forms, including the "hyperdoricisation" of its dialect.

Modern historiography

Current consensus

Main article: Late Bronze Age collapse

The theory that the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese from abroad or otherwise migrated there from another place in Greece is rejected as a "scholarly mirage". It is generally agreed that the collapse of Mycenaean palatial civilisation is better explained by endogenous factors, such as natural disaster, social conflicts or the breakdown of the palaces' socio-economic model. Cultural features previously believed to have been introduced by the Dorian invasion, such as iron-working, protogeometric pottery, cist graves and cremation, are now known either to have predated the palatial destructions or to have originated in areas of Greece, such as Attica and Euboea, which were not considered to have been affected by the invasion.

Bibliography

Modern sources

• Broodbank, Cyprian (2013). The Making of the Middle Sea. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-999978-1.
• Chadwick, John (1972). The Mycenaean World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29037-1.
• Cline, Eric H. (2024). After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilisations. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-19213-0. LCCN 2023022187.
• Cook, R. M. (1962). "The Dorian invasion". Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. 8: 16–22. JSTOR 44712965.
• Daniel, John Franklin; Broneer, Oscar; Wade-Gery, H. T. (1948). "The Dorian invasion: the setting". American Journal of Archaeology. 52 (1): 107–110. JSTOR 500556.
• Dickinson, Oliver (2006). The Aegean from Bronze to Iron Age: Continuity and Change. New York: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-77871-3.
• Eder, Birgitta (2013). "Dorians". Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah02058.
• Hall, Jonathan M. (1997). Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511605642. ISBN 978-0-521-78999-8.
• Hall, Jonathan M. (2014). A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca 1000–479 BC (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-118-30127-2.
• Hall, Jonathan M. (2013). "Dorians". In Wilson, Nigel (ed.). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. New York: Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9780203958766. ISBN 978-1-136-78800-0.
• Kennell, Nigel M. (2010). Spartans: A New History. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 978-1-4443-6053-0.
• Knapp, A. Bernard; Manning, Stuart (2016). "Crisis in Context: The End of the lLate Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean". American Journal of Archaeology. 120 (1): 99–149. JSTOR 10.3764/aja.120.1.0099.
• Malkin, Irad (2024). Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-46605-9.
• Middleton, Guy D. (2017). Understanding Collapse: Ancient History and Modern Myths. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-15149-9.
• Middleton, Guy D, ed. (2020). Collapse and Transformation: The Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age in the Aegean. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN 978-1-78925-428-0.
• Murray, Sarah C. (2017). The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy: Imports, Trade, and Institutions 1300-700 BCE. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-18637-8.
• Nagy, Gregory (8 November 2019). "Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVI, with a focus on Dorians led by kingly 'sons' of Hēraklēs the kingmaker". Classical Inquiries. Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. Retrieved 9 October 2024.
• Nagy, Gregory (15 November 2019). "Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVII, with placeholders that stem from a conversation with Tom Palaima, starting with this question: was Hēraklēs a Dorian?". Classical Inquiries. Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. Retrieved 9 October 2024.
• Palaima, T. G. (1998). "Special vs Normal Mycenaean: Hand 24 and Writing in the Service of the King?". In Bennet, John; Driessen, Jan (eds.). Studies Presented to J. T. Killen. Salamanca: Ediciones universidad de Salamanca. pp. 205–221.
• Papadopoulos, John K. (2014). "Greece in the Early Iron Age: Mobility, Commodities, Polities, and Literacy". In Knapp, A. Bernard; van Dommelen, Peter (eds.). The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean. Cambridge University Press. pp. 178–195. doi:10.1017/CHO9781139028387.014. ISBN 978-0-521-76688-3.
• Priestley, Jessica (2014). Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture: Literary Studies in the Reception of the Histories. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-965309-6. LCCN 2013945562.
• Robertson, Noel (1980). "The Dorian Invasion and Corinthian Ritual". Classical Philology. 75 (1): 1–22. JSTOR 267822.
• Stiebing, William H. (1980). "The End of the Mycenaean age". The Biblical Archaeologist. 43 (1): 7–21. JSTOR 3209748.
• Thomas, Carol G.; Conant, Craig (2009). Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200–700 BCE. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-00325-6.
• Voutsaki, Sofia (2000). "Review: The Dorian Invasion". Classical Review. 50 (1): 232–233. ISSN 0009-840X. JSTOR 3065393.

Ancient sources

• Herodotus. Histories – via Perseus Digital Library.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Pausanias. Description of Greece – via Perseus Digital Library.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War – via Perseus Digital Library.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

External links

• Gainsford, Peter (7 March 2022). "The Dorian invasion and the Nazis". Kiwi Hellenist.