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 SATHER CLASSICAL LECTURES
VOLUME EIGHT

THE MYCENAEAN ORIGIN

OF

GREEK MYTHOLOGY
 was born in Kristianstad, Swe-
M A R T I N PERSSON N I L S S O N
den, in 1874. He was educated at the University of Lund
and became Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient
History there. He was Sather Professor of Classical Litera-
ture at the University of California in 1930-31. Professor
Nilsson is the author of many books on Greek history,
religion, literature, and politics, some of which are The
History of Greek Religion, 1925 (2nd edition, 1949);
Minoan-My cenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek
Religion, 1927 (2nd edition, 1950); Homer and Mycenae,
1933; Age of the Early Greek Tyrants, 1936; Greek Piety,
1948; Cults, Myths, Oracles and Politics in Ancient Greece,
1951; Greek Popular Religion, 1940; and The Dionysiac
Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age, 1957.
THE MYCENAEAN ORIGIN
OF

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

BY

MARTIN P. NILSSON
PROFESSOR OF C L A S S I C A L A R C H A E O L O G Y AND
A N C I E N T H I S T O R Y IN T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF LUND,
SATHER PROFESSOR OF C L A S S I C A L L I T E R A T U R E
I N T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF CALIFORNIA
I93O-3I

A N E W INTRODUCTION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

BY
EMILY VERMEULE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
 COPYRIGHT 1 9 3 2 , 1972
BY
T H E R E G E N T S OF T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
B E R K E L E Y AND L O S A N G E L E S
U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A PRESS, L T D .
LONDON, ENGLAND
REISSUED, 1 9 7 2
F I R S T PAPERBACK E D I T I O N , 1 9 7 2
ISBN: 0 - 5 2 0 - 0 1 9 5 1 - 2 CLOTH
ISBN: 0 - 5 2 0 - 0 2 1 6 3 - 0 PAPER

PRINTED I N T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 C O N T E N T S
PAGE
I N T R O D U C T I O N AND B I B L I O G R A P H Y
BY E M I L Y V E R M E U L E VII

CHAPTER I. H o w O L D is G R E E K MYTHOLOGY? 1
The myths in literature, 1. Comparative mythology, 2.
Euhemerism, 3. Historical school of mythology, 5.
Mythology and epics, 8. The Homeric question, 10.
Archaeological and historic evidence, 12. Comparative
study of epics, li. Development of epics, 16. The epi-
cal technique, 18. Mycenaean origin of Greek epics, 21,
Its development, 23. Mycenaean origin of myths, 26.
Myths in Mycenaean art, 31.
CHAPTER II. M Y C E N A E A N C E N T E R S AND
MYTHOLOGICAL CENTERS 35

SECTION I. ARGOLIS 36
Mycenaean sites 36. Perseus 40. Danae42. Atreus43.
Pelops 44. Agamemnon 45. Agamemnon as a god 46,
in Asia Minor 48. Tiryns 50. Bellerophon 51. Ionia
in mythology 54. Allies of the Trojans 55. Lycians
and Cilicians 57. Greeks in S. Asia Minor 59. The
Proetides 62. Io 63. Argos 63. The Danaides 64.
SECTION II. LACONIA 68
Laconia in the Mycenaean age 68. Agamemnon at
Sparta 69. Helen 73. Hyacinthus 76. The Dioscuri
76. The Apharetidae 78.
SECTION III. T H E DOMINION OF PYLOS 79
Messenia etc. in the Mycenaan age 79. Nestor's Pylos
82. The Seven Cities 84. The Minyans 86. The
Pylian epos 87.
SECTION IV. T H E REST OF T H E PELOPONNESE.. 90
Mycenaean remains; myths 90. Myths of Olympia 91.
SECTION V. T H E IONIAN ISLANDS 9$
Ithaca 95. Odysseus and the Cephallenians 96. Cycle
of Odysseus 99.
SECTION VI. SOUTHERN BOEOTIA 100
Mycenaean remains 100. Thebes 101. Oedipus 102.
The War of the Seven 106. Adrastus 113. Amphiaraus
115. Tydeus 116. Capaneus 117. The cycle of the
Seven 118. The Epigonoi 120. Cadmus 120. Founda-
 rion myths 122. Amphion and Zethus 124. Cadmus the
Phoenician 126.
SECTION VII. NORTHERN BOEOTIA AND
SOUTHERN THESSALY 127
Orchomenus 127. Gla 128. The Minyans and Orcho-
menus 129. Athamas 133. The Argonauts 136. My-
cenaean remains around Iolcus 137. The Minyans in
Thessaly 139. Tyro 141. The Minyans and Pylos 142.
The league of Calaureia 144. AuÚs 14S. The Min-
yans as traders 146. Delphi 148. Trade 148. Other
tribes ISO. Decline of Minyan power 151. Coloniza-
tion of Ionia 153. Achilles 156. The Centaurs 158.
SECTION VIII. ATTICA 159
Mycenaean remains 159. Mythical kings, etc. 162.
Theseus 163. Birth and youth 165. Troezen 167. The
Marathonian bull 169. The rape of Helen 170. The
abduction of Ariadne 171, of Persephone 173. Peirithous
174. The Labyrinth 175. The Minotaur 176. Minos
177.
SECTION IX. CONCLUSION 181
Argolis 181. Midea 182. Other provinces of the Pelo-
ponnese 182. Central Greece 184. Calydon 186.
CHAPTER III. HERACLES 187
The cycle of Heracles 188. Names of personages in
folktale and in myth 189. Localization of myths 192.
Cults of Heracles 193. Alleged Hracles epos 194. Clas-
sification of myths 195. The praxeis 196. Homeric
myths 198. The strong man 201. The fight with Death
203. The apotheosis 205. Localization at Thebes and
at Tiryns 206. Eurystheus' vassal 209. Cycles of La-
bor 211. The Labors 213. Character of the Labors 217.
Conclusion 219.
CHAPTER I V . OLYMPUS 227
The Pantheon in various peoples 221. The Greek State
of the Gods 222. The fifth book of the Iliad 225. The
mountain of the Gods 228. The Heavens 229. Why
the Gods dwell on Olympus 230. Thessalian origin of
epics 232. The tagos 233. Mt. Olympus 234. Olym-
pus pre-Greek 236. The Mycenaean kingship 238.
The King of the Gods 234. The State of die Gods 248.
INDEX 252
 INTRODUCTION

BY EMILY VERMEULE

Martin Persson Nilsson (1874-1967) was an extraordi-

nary scholar who shaped many classical fields with a
mastery and insight not often seen now. He was extraordi-
nary both in the great range of his knowledge and in the
lucid balance of his expressed judgments. It is not surpris-
ing that his classic Sather Lectures at the University of
California, Berkeley, delivered in 1930-31, should still be
in demand. They were part of a trio of Nilsson master-
pieces which exerted a powerful influence on the form of
studies in Bronze Age Greece; the others were Homer and
Mycenae (1933) and, the greatest of all, The Minoan-
Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion
(1928, revised 1950). If we had not these books, created
in one defined span of his far-ranging life work, our
attitudes toward the earliest Greeks would probably have
remained far more disjointed and abstract, deprived of an
infusing sense of the seeds of later Greek heritage in an
antique society. What is surprising, superficially, is that
the Sather Lectures have not yet been superseded, either
in intellectual concepts or in originality. They are wanted
not only as a valued document in a special period of
Mycenaean studies, but as the most challenging basic source
attempting to harmonize Greek mythology and physical
survivals from the second millennium B.C.
In the normal course of scholarship, nothing ages more
swiftly than a general interpretation tightly keyed to
Vlll INTRODUCTION

recent archaeological finds. Since the greater part of

Nilsson's Sather Lectures, the second chapter with its
nine geographical subdivisions, is devoted to a broad sur-
vey of Mycenaean archaeology in the provinces of Greece
before 1930, and to how the surviving myths of those lands
might be interpreted in connection with the Mycenaean
past, one might imagine that the massive archaeological
discoveries of the past forty years might alter his conclu-
sions. It is not really so. I do not believe that the value of
the lectures is dimmed by the discovery of new sites,
stratigraphic levels, pottery sequences, or even treasures.
Certainly Nilsson would have enjoyed some recent revela-
tions very much, and he lived long enough to confront
others. Yet, in most areas Nilsson's early judgment came
close enough to the later truth so that where the archaeo-
logical record was poor through lack of probing, he pre-
dicted correctly its future enrichment. In some cases he
formed beliefs, based on classical information about the
relative importance of parts of Greece, which were much
later verified by excavation. This is so with the Pylos
district, and with Boiotia, where his assessments of the
legends about Nestor or Kadmos gave those parts of the
Greek countryside their fair position long before the most
exciting treasures came from the soil.
The Nilsson Sather Lectures are constantly refreshing
in their open-mindedness; their welcome of the most
"un-Homeric" relics of Bronze Age culture at their true
value as evidence for a way of life, rather than direct
illustrations of later poetry and myth; their profound
sense of the interaction between poetry and archaeology.
There have been few scholars of classical language and
religion who so appreciated the necessity of being intel-
lectually aware of the state of affairs under the dirt. Nilsson
 INTRODUCTION IX

was, in a way, the last of the broad humanists of the classics,

refusing to be penned into a specialist corner or image, a
prodigious reader, interested in everything that touched
his imagination, exceptionally gifted in the power of har-
monizing complex small facts into large and reasonable
theories.
The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology has one
obvious claim on our minds: since it was written, no one
has questioned the underlying premise, although it was
startlingly original at the time. Nilsson was the first scholar
to recognize on a broad front the linked relationships be-
tween the classical literary expression of myth and the old
Bronze Age roots of myth. These relationships are partly
still obscure, since a few creative links are naturally lost
between the partly literate society of the thirteenth cen-
tury and the fully literate society of the seventh, split by
long years of loss of literacy, loss of picture-making, mi-
grations, and a change of script and culture. Still, the
relationships are historically necessary, intellectually
sound, and persuasive. As Nilsson points out (p. 31), the
Mycenaean origin of Greek mythology (and of much else
that is Greek) had not been proposed before because
scholars were looking in the wrong directions, looking for
Mycenaean images which might be understood as illustra-
tions of classical stories. They still do. There is no aesthetic
manual of Bronze Age Greek art yet, and its functions are
often misunderstood. The optimistic procedure of hunting
for prehistoric views of Theseus or Europa rendered in a
style which might foreshadow fifth-century painting was
based on a faulty understanding of myth, and of how myth
must be elaborated by successive generations of artists and
poets to survive at all.
The yearning for a naif one-to-one correlation between,
X INTRODUCTION

for example, the plays of Sophokles and the royal treasures

of Mycenaean kingship was exactly the stimulus for such
famous forgeries as the Thisbe Treasure, around which
Nilsson so discreetly passes in silence. Most designs on the
gold rings of Thisbe are evocations of ritual meant to
enchant minds freshly stirred by the excavations of Sir
Arthur Evans at Knossos, but for classicists whose image of
Boiotia focused on Oidipous, the forger inserted the con-
frontation with the Sphinx and the murder of Laius in the
best academic style, and scenes from life in the House of
Atreus were added to complete the necessary gestures
toward Homer and the tragedians. Nearly sixty years ago
the Thisbe Treasure was made to link the fifth century
B.C. and the Bronze Age, and no one has been able to dig
up better Mycenaean illustrations of the themes of classi-
cal tragedy since, which is scarcely surprising. Similar
cult imagery exists in both ages, of course, or themes of
chariots or mourners, and many monsters pass happily
across the gap, the sphinxes and centaurs and griffins, carry-
ing with them a burden of symbol still not clear to us. The
general principles of Mycenaean art, however, prevent it
from illustrating myth in the sense of story, from picturing
the specific, the tied-down incident, the evanescent mo-
ment or individual hero. Like most Bronze Age arts, it han-
dles typical scenes for decorative purposes and deploys re-
peated events with wide appeal—such as sieges, hunts, duels,
or processions—in a formulaic style with counterparts in
Egypt or Anatolia. The poetry may have been more fo-
cussed in special moments, we cannot tell. Many Egyptian
and Anatolian tales flourished apart from art, or received
only glancing references in art, and the Aegean world may
have shared this attitude.
Martin Nilsson's freedom from "classical" expectations
 INTRODUCTION xi

in facing the Bronze Age, and his long mastery in realms

of cult and folklore, allowed him to understand the ways
in which Bronze Age beliefs were ultimately converted,
often in curious forms, to the myths and personalities with
which we are more familiar. His demonstrations of the web
of connections between classical myths and major Mycen-
aean centers of culture were indisputable. His stress on the
early linguistic character of the names of many mythologi-
cal heroes, following Paul Kretschmer, has been part of
the gospel ever since. Although Nilsson's lectures were
composed before Milman Parry's investigations of the
oral character of Homeric poetry, Nilsson had already
perfectly understood the situation, and his remarks on the
nature of singing and composing epic poetry (pp. 18-19)
have not been bettered. Like most scholars of his age, he
was considerably influenced by analytical criticism of
Homer and spoke with more assurance of what was early
and what was late in the Iliad and Odyssey than is now
the fashion, just as in his own day he speaks of comparative
mythology going out of fashion, while it is now once more
popular. Fluctuations in patterns of thought are amusing,
but Nilsson's understanding of the Mycenaeans is not sub-
ject to fluctuating opinion and is a permanent contribution.
Nilsson would, of course, have enjoyed to the utmost
the chance to use the Linear B texts of Knossos, Pylos,
Mycenae, and Thebes, had they been deciphered in time
for his Sather Lectures instead of twenty years after. Since
he was one of the few scholars of 1930 to regard the
Mycenaeans as Greek, in race and language, the oppor-
tunity to read the early Greek from "Nestor" 's or "Kad-
mos" ' domains would have afforded great pleasure but not
altered his conclusions, with the exception, perhaps, of the
old clay tablets' tentative demonstration of the existence
Xll INTRODUCTION

of the god Dionysos in the Bronze Age; till 1953 that curi-
ous divinity was considered "late." In 1954, when he wrote
"The Historical Consequences of the Deciphering of the
Mycenaean Script," Nilsson still found Dionysos surpris-
ing, and "felt relieved" to read there was no evidence for
considering the name to be divine.1 He also doubted that
tablets would ever be found in places like Thebes, believ-
ing that the Mycenaeans were "Greeks and warring
princes, not heads of an administrative apparatus. Like
Theodoric the Great they may not have learnt the art of
writing. They had other business."2 The perceptions are
centrally correct even though the facts change.
Until the end of his life, Nilsson kept up with excavation
reports; he knew the contents of tombs, the fragments of
frescoes or ivories, the chronological range of vases, with
great precision, and was delighted by new finds. He main-
tained a constant practical judgment about the worth of
remains as elements of scholarship, never mistaking the
artefact for an end in itself, always viewing it as an his-
torical document.
The historical conclusions Nilsson drew in his strong
survey of the Mycenaean world are only slightly modified
by new material. Olympia has been drawn firmly within
the Mycenaean realm; Messenia and Boiotia are now seen
to be thickly studded with remains of the Late Bronze
Age; Lakonia and Thessaly are more strongly represented
than before; the marginal but interesting penetrations of
Mycenaeans into southern and eastern Asia Minor, at places
like Miletos and Miiskebi, are attracting more historical
regard; and Ugarit and Enkomi in the Levant have become
* Opuscula Selecta III (1960) 489 ff., J09.
2 Ibid. J01.
 INTRODUCTION Xlll

famous for their Mycenaean connections since these Sather

Lectures were composed. The sequence at Troy was also
clarified within a few years, and the whole cultural period
in Greece after "the Trojan War" is being put in its proper
perspective as an inventive and energetic phase when epic
tales may have flourished particularly, perhaps invested
with added glamor and poignancy as the princely environ-
ment of former generations faded away. There is also,
perhaps, an increasing appreciation that some of the myths
which Nilsson called Mycenaean may be even older, liv-
ing in the earlier populations of Greece or the islands, or
brought into Greece from older homelands by the early
Greek adventurers. Once Nilsson crossed the bridge from
classical to Bronze Age, the whole sphere of this area of
scholarship was opened to every student.
A few recent physical surveys of the older Greek world
are listed below, as resources for facts, but there has been
no comparable resurvey either of the myths or of the in-
tangible qualities of Mycenaean society. A few years ago,
it was said that, if one lecture of the more than four hun-
dred Sather Lectures delivered had to be chosen as the
most valuable, it might be Nilsson's last, entitled "Olym-
pus."3 That lecture explores the nature of the kingdom of
the gods as Homer sang of it, and its possible model in the
real kingdoms of the Mycenaean age. It is in this capacity
to move beyond the archaeological toward the religious
and imaginative, that Nilsson's ideas have remained potent
and his writing valuable independent of the passage of
time. The Sather Lectures will survive like the myths they
describe.
3 S. Dow, Fifty Years of Sathers (1965) 22.
XIV BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Älin, Das Ende der my kenischen Fundstätten auf dem

griechischen Festland, Studies in Mediterranean Arch-
aeology 1, 1962.
L. Banti, "Myth in Pre-Classical Art," American Journal
of Archaeology 58 (1954) 307.
V. R. d'A. Desborough and N. G. L. Hammond, "The End
of the Mycenaean Civilization and the Dark Age,"
Cambridge Ancient History II2, ch. xxxvi, 1962.
V. R. d'A. Desborough, The Last Mycenaeans and their
Successors, 1964.
W . C. K. Guthrie, "The Religion and Mythology of the
Greeks," Cambridge Ancient History II2, ch. xlv,
1961.
V. Karageorghis, "Myth and Epic in Mycenaean Vase-
Painting," American Journal of Archaeology 62
(1958) 383.
G. Kirk, The Songs of Homer, 1962.
H. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, 1950.
M. Nilsson, The Minoan-My cenaean Religion2, 1950.
Geschichte der griechischen Religioni2,1, 1941.
A. Persson, The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times,
1942.
R. Hope Simpson, A Gazetteer and Atlas of Mycenaean
Sites, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Uni-
versity of London, Supplement 16, 1965.
R. Hope Simpson and J. Lazenby, The Catalogue of Ships
in Homer's Iliad, 1970.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY xv

F. Stubbings, "The Rise of Mycenaean Civilization," "The

Expansion of Mycenaean Civilization," "The Reces-
sion of Mycenaean Civilization," Cambridge Ancient
History II2, chs. xiv, xxii, xxvii, 1963-1965.
E. Vermeule, "Mythology in Mycenaean Art," Classical
Journal 54 (1958) 97. Greece in the Bronze Age, 1964.
"Gotterkult," Archaeologia Homerica (1963), 1972.
A. J. B. Wace and F. Stubbings, A Companion to Homer,
1962.
T. B. L. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer, 1958.
 CHAPTER I

HOW OLD IS GREEK MYTHOLOGY?

The question: How old is Greek mythology? may at

first sight seem idle, for Greek mythology is obviously
of many different ages. For example, many geneal-
ogies and eponymous heroes created for political
purposes are late, such inventions having been made
through the whole historical age of Greece; yet most
of them are earlier than the very late myths like the
campaigns of Dionysus, or the great mass of the
metamorphoses, especially the catasterisms, which
were invented in the Hellenistic age. The great
tragic poets reshaped the myths and left their im-
print upon them, so that the forms in which the
myths are commonly known nowadays often have
been given them by tragedy. Similarly, before the
tragic poets, the choric lyric poets reshaped them.
The cyclical epics also are thought to have exercised
a profound influence upon the remodeling of the
myths. In Homer we find many well-known myths,
often in forms differing, however, from those in
which they are related later. Finally, it cannot be
doubted that myths existed before Homer.
Our question concerns, however, not the reshaping
and remodeling of myths, which often consists only
of an imitation of current patterns, but the real
creation of myths, especially the creation of the
great cycles of myths. From this standpoint, the
Hellenistic and many earlier myths may be put to
2 HOW OLD IS GREEK MYTHOLOGY?

one side. The tragic poets hardly invent new myths

but do reshape old ones, often in a very thorough
fashion, and the same is to be said of the choric
lyric poets. For the glory and fame of ancient
poets depended not, like that of modern poets, on
their invention of something quite new and original,
but rather on their presentation of the old traditional
material in new and original fashion.
Consequently our question concerns the old stock
of mythology after all secondary inventions have
been discarded and is really not so idle as may appear
at first glance. In fact various attempts have been
made to give an answer, although the question has
not been put so simply and straightforwardly as it
is here, but has been enveloped in inquiries and
reasonings having other purposes. The point, how-
ever, which I wish to emphasize is the importance
of the principles which underlie our research and
determine our procedure.
I pass over comparative mythology very lightly,
because it began to lose favor in my youth, thirty
years ago or more, and nowadays is very little
reckoned with in scientific discussion. But I should
like to draw attention to one point of some interest
in this connection. Comparative mythology was
so called because it compared Greek myths with
those of other Aryan peoples and by this means
tried to discover the original myths and religion of
the Aryan people from whom the peoples of Europe
and some peoples of Asia are descended, just as
comparative philology discovered by similar means
that the languages of these peoples were derived
from the language once spoken by the old Aryans.
 COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 3

The underlying supposition was clearly that the

Greek myths were pre-Greek in the sense that the
Greeks had taken them over from the Aryans and
brought them with them when they immigrated into
Greece. Comparative mythology overlooked, how-
ever, the very important distinction between divine
and heroic mythology and thought erroneously
that the heroic myths were derived from the same
source as the myths concerning the gods. This
source it found in the phenomena of nature. If the
view of comparative mythology were right, these
lectures would really be pointless, for then it must
needs be admitted that Greek mythology existed
not only in the pre-Homeric age but also before the
Greeks immigrated into Greece. But since the
seventies of the last century the whole problem
has been extraordinarily deepened and complicated.
We have learned to distinguish between religion and
mythology and we have learned to know a new
epoch of Greece which cannot be considered as
wholly prehistoric in the usual sense of the word—
the Mycenaean age.
Max Miiller and his followers condemned Euhem-
erism, but this theory has come to the fore again in
recent years. In my opinion the reaction is just but
goes too far. Certain English scholars take myth-
ology as reproducing actual historical facts, just as
the logographers did when they brought the myths
into a historical system. They do not, of course, over-
look the fabulous elements of the myths but think
that the mythical persons and such exploits as are
not of a fabulous character are good history, and
they go so far as to accept without question the
4 HOW OLD IS GREEK MYTHOLOGY?

mythical genealogies and the mythical chronology.

I am unable to do this. I know and appreciate the
tenacity of folk memory, but I know also how
popular tradition is preserved—and confused and
remodeled. The remodeling affects especially the
chronological relations of the personages, which are
changed freely.1 In so far as epical tradition is
concerned, the right analogy is not the traditions
which have an historical aspect but the Nibelungen-
lied and the Beowulf and similar epical traditions
which I shall characterize later. We know how
badly historical connections fared in them, how
history was confused and mixed up with fabulous
elements. If good historical tradition is to be pre-
served, an undisturbed life both in regard to settling
and to civilization is an absolute condition, but the
downfall of the Mycenaean civilization was a most
stormy and turbulent age, and its turmoils, which
mixed up the Greek tribes and changed their places
of settlement, mixed up and confused their traditions,
too. The historical aspect of Greek mythology and
especially the mythical chronology are products of
the systematizing of the myths by the poets of
cyclical epics and still more the product of rationali-
zation and historification by the logographers.2
'See my article "Ueber die Glaubwürdigkeit der Volksüberlieferung
bes. in Bezug auf die alte Geschichte" in the Italian periodical Scientia,
1930, pp. 319 et seq.
2
The lectures of one of my predecessors in the Sather professorship,
Professor Myres, came into my hands through the kindness of the author
after my lectures had already been written down. Professor Myres
thinks that heroic genealogy makes up a fairly reliable chronological
scheme. My different standpoint I hope to justify in the following
pages. I have tried to take justly into account the circumstances of
time, of popular tradition, and of the transmission of epic poetry.
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