Secret History #16: The Big Bang of Greek Civilization

Homer, the blind poet who composed the Iliad and Odyssey around 800-750 BCE, is considered the foundational figure of Greek civilization.

City-states emerging along major trade routes - initially in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and later Greece.

All empires - China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mycenaean Greece - develop these same bureaucratic patterns regardless of geographic or cultural differences.

The Mycenaean Greeks ruled the Aegean during the Bronze Age (circa 1600-1100 BCE) as a centralized bureaucratic empire.

Greek citizens in autonomous city-states (poleis) like Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and hundreds of others throughout the Greek world.

All male citizens in Greek poleis, regardless of occupation - even farmers had to master rhetoric.

Imperial bureaucracies versus democratic city-states - comparing Mycenaean Linear B with later Greek developments.

The Greeks, building on Phoenician consonantal writing, created the first true alphabet with vowels around 800 BCE.

Greek raiders repeatedly attacked Troy during the Bronze Age; Homer transformed these events into the epic Trojan War mythology around 800 BCE.

Paris, prince of Troy, forced to judge which goddess - Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite - deserved a golden apple marked “to the most beautiful.”

Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, whose wrath drives the Iliad’s plot after Agamemnon dishonors him by taking his war prize, Briseis.

Priam, the aged king of Troy, visits Achilles, his son Hector’s killer, to beg for his son’s body. Achilles, consumed by rage and grief, must choose how to respond.