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The Dorians were a very important group of people. Before, in ancient Greece, there
were two main groups of Greeks: the Dorians and the Ionians. The Dorians lived in
Sparta and are said to have come from Epirus and Macedonia. Most archeologists
aren·t sure though because they have yet to find any archeological evidence that
would lead them to believe they came from Epirus and Macedonia. Important Dorian
cities include: Sparta, Rhodes, Corinth, and Argos. In Sparta, they were the ´upper
classµ and kept the indigenous people as their serfs. Dorians in Sparta weren·t allowed
to mate with the indigenous people since they were very powerful when it came to
military in Sparta. This helped them achieve their most famous accomplishment
starting from 1200 B.C.: take over the Mycenaean civilization from Macedonia
southwards all the way until Peloponnese (most southern tip of mainland Greece) and
even part of Italy. This astonished many people since the Dorian·s society was not as
developed as the Mycenaean·s. This may seem like a great thing but when combined
with the civil war in Mycenaean, it resulted in the Greek Dark Ages. So with the
Dorian·s less developed economy, society, and the Mycenaean civil war, Greece was
plunged into the Dark Ages. During the Dark Ages the Mycenaean writing was rarely
practiced, the urbanized areas were declining in population, and many important parts
of the Mycenaean culture were lost too. Much more was also lost.
Who were the Ionians then? They were the people who lived in Turkey, which
was known as Asia Minor. They fled from Greek Mainland before 1000 B.C., probably
fleeing from the Dorians and other invading tribes. It was said that the Athenians
originally colonized Ionia, although this was disputed by a few Ionians such as
Herodotus, a historian from these times. By 700 B.C., Ionia had a very advanced
culture c. Homer was an Ionian bard who first wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey in the
Ionian Dialect. Other renowned Ionian philosophers were Thales of Miletus and
Pythagoras. East of the Greek mainland, all Greeks were referred to as Ionian. In the
late 500 B.C., the Persian Empire controlled Ionia. Ionia tried to rebel for five years
before being crushed in 495 B.C. Following the Persian control, Ionia was occupied by
Athenians, Persians again, and Alexander the Great before being handed over to
Rome in the will of King Attalus the third of Pergamum. During the Roman Empire,
the Ionian cities of Ephesus, Miletus, Samos, and Smyrna became some of the most
prosperous and important cities in the Roman Empire. These miraculous cities did not
last long though, because the Dorians soon took them over.
It didn·t take long before the Dorians wanted to conquer all of Greece and not
just the Ionian part of it. They expanded southward and towards the coastal regions
in hopes of conquering this land too. They did not, however, expect to find the
Phoenicians on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Phoenicians were
people who had always been close to the sea and were masters of boat-making and
much more. They practically ruled the international shipping industry on the eastern
coast. Their important cities were Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Tyre was the head port city
of the Phoenicians. Tyre itself was no match for the Dorian military. The Phoenicians
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had been conquered. The Dorians mainly took three things from the Phoenicians: their
land, their pride, and their alphabet. The Dorians adopted the Phoenician alphabet in
order to communicate. The Dorians did make their own minor adjustments though.
The Dorians did change much of the culture of the native people whom they
overtook. The Dorians were classified as ´top class.µ The people they overtook became
their serfs, wives, or laborers. A citizen was expected to do all of their work; this is
because only men could become citizens. Women had to stay home and do their chores
(take care of young children, cook, clean, etc.) A serf was expected to do all of their
work correctly and receive little or no kindness from their masters. They could be sold
with the land if the master wished it so. , the marriage rituals were changed. Also,
marriage rituals were different in all cities but some of the most drastic changes took
place in Athens. Before the Dorians, the city of Athens the woman would marry to
form alliances. This way if a man (citizen) married a foreign woman, the children would
not have lower status just because the mother was foreign. It was hard for an
Athenian father to find their daughters husbands, because lower status people would
give a larger dowry to get their daughters· married to Athenian men, so Athenian
daughters couldn·t find as many available Athenian husbands. Then the Dorians took
over and the Peruvian citizenship Law of 451 made it a law that if the parents of a
child were not both citizens then the child could not be a citizen. This made 1st
cousins, uncles, and nieces marry to remain citizens. The Incest laws only prohibited
ascendants and descendants, half-siblings of the same mother, and full siblings from
marriage. Another cultural element that changed thanks to the Dorians was the
rituals for dead people. Normally the body was washed, anointed with oil, and then the
women took care of the funeral, which was divided into three parts. They were:
Prostheses (laying out of the body), Ekphora (funeral procession), and the internment
(burial) of the body or cremation of the remains. Friends came to mourn the deceased
person, like a wake. During the procession, which was usually during Dawn, the
deceased was buried with little personal objects. They used elaborate statues among
other things to mark the grave of their family or friend. From here it said that the
people hoped that their friend either went to the Elysian Fields or Tartarus. The
Elysian Fields was the final resting place for people of virtue or heroes who have done
heroic deeds. Tartarus was the pit where the Titans were sent in exile by Zeus· wicked
men. They were sent there for their crimes. But first their friends had to pass the
River Styx, Cerberus, and Hades, the god of the underworld himself. First, they passed
the River Styx, which is the river of eternal sleep, it served as a crossroad where the
living world met death and mortal world met the immortal world. Next, they had to
pass Cerberus, a three headed dog that guarded the underworld. Lastly, there was
Hades, god of the dead and death itself. He was also the god of hidden wealth (i.e.
fertile soil, rained gold and silver, etc.) After the Dorians took over, cremation began
rather than burial. The people were still given statues, pottery and other gifts. The
people believed in this and in many other things such as the epic poem of The Iliad.
This is a story about how Menelaus lost his beloved wife, Helen, to a guest, Paris. Paris
lived in Troy and had been chosen by the Zeus to pick the fairest out of the three
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goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. He accepted Helen as a bribe from
Aphrodite. So he sailed to Sparta and was welcomed there as a guest by Menelaus and
his wife Helen. As luck (or the gods) would have it Menelaus had to sail to Crete so as
to attend his grandfather·s funeral. During this time, Helen and Paris became lovers
and fled by boat at night back to Troy. When Menelaus returned, he found that his
wife and some of his prized possessions had gone back to Troy with Paris but that
Helen had left her nine year old daughter Hermione behind. Then, he remembered the
oath that Helen·s past suitors had made; that they would help him if it were ever
necessary. So he gathered up the men and set sail for Troy to fight for Helen. It was
called the Trojan War. It lasted for ten years. Paris had allies and so did Menelaus in
the war. The peoples who helped Paris the most were people from Asia Manor and the
Amazons. The Amazons were believed to have lived n ear the Black Sea, the Edge of
the Known
World. They
may or may not
have existed.
Amazons were
women
warriors and
were called
´man-hatersµ
by the Greek
playwright
Aeschylus.
They were
supposed to
have
descended
from Ares, the
God of War, as they were very highly skilled in battle. They fought with bows and
arrows, spears, axes, and crescent-shaped shields. They were only female and they
mated with men of other nations. When they had children, they kept the daughters
and either killed, sent away, or made slaves of their sons. Their name comes from a
Greek word meaning ´without breastsµ because it was said that Amazons cut off their
right breasts to better draw their bows. It is also said that because Amazons relied
only upon the meat they hunted for food, the word Amazon is derived from a Greek
word meaning ´without grain.µ The myth continued into the 1800·s when Spanish
explorers named the longest river in South America, the Amazon after seeing female
warriors leading their men into battle. To this day, independent, strong women are
referred to as Amazons because of the possible myth.
In conclusion, the Dorians threw Greece into the Dark Ages since they
conquered many other peoples who were more advanced than they were and in the
process many native cultural elements of the indigenous people were lost.