The Dreadful Dorians??

One of our tour guides on Crete didn't have much good to say about the Dorians...  He described them in terms which varied from brutal and thuggish to, at best, uncultured and ignorant.

Now, using my very sketchy reference collection, I'm trying to get my head round the Dorians.  Obviously, their material culture is very different from the indigenous Minoans, but as far as I can ascertain (please correct me if I'm wrong, all you legitimate Classicists!) a lot of the evidence for their arrival is based on Greek documentary sources.  This makes me suspicious from the outset.  There's lies, damned lies, and then there's history...

Anyway, according to my ubiquitious guide catalogue detailing the collections held in Heraklion Museum, the Dorian population movement happened to two phases.  The first wave settled in the Peloponnese in mainland Greece.  The most famous (or infamous!) product of this initial mainland influx was Sparta, whose soldier citizens enslaved the indigenous population, causing much consternation amongst their fellow Greeks for centuries to come. 

A second phase of Dorians then apparently moved from the Peloponnese to Crete, and they don't seem to have been much more fun to get along with than the Spartans...

Here's the goddess Athena, as interpreted by a Dorian craftsman:-
 

She's certainly not the kind of lady you'd want to pick a fight with.  Even more disturbing is their take on the Mother Goddess so beloved of the Minoans.  These are really odd little figurines.  They show quite clearly that there's a bit of give and take between the existing cultural beliefs and those of the incomers, but once again the resulting interpretation is crude and, let's face it, a bit brutal:-
 

The poppyheads on their diadems are a new development (I'm sure the priestesses had to take something to inspire their prophecies...) in figurines which just don't have the artisitic finesse of their Minoan faience predecessors...

I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to award the Dorians any awards for Marvellous Ceramic Accomplishments.  Sure, I couldn't match their abilities, but compared to Kamares Ware?  I know which I'd rather have in my museum case, thank you.

The same can't be said for their bronzes.  Now, I know the area around Sparta was famed for its metalworking, so I'm wondering if this skill with bronze casting is something which also accompanied Crete's immigrant population of Dorians.  I was rather struck by this set of votive figurines, cast in bronze, which form part of Crete's Dorian heritage:-

 

The statues represent the god Apollo (in the middle) with his mother Leto and sister Artemis (or should we say La-to and Ar-ta-mis, since we're talking Dorian.  I believe 'e's are pronounced as 'a's in the Dorian dialect).

These are lovely castings.  Very austere, almost grim, but unlike the pottery, they come across as accomplished and finely crafted pieces.  They're not quite up there with the Vix Krater (those of you who've been following this blog for a long while may well remember that one!) but they're still really nice.

Now here's a thought....  Looking back at the crude figures of Athena and the mother goddesses, could we be looking at the work of craftsmen who aren't used to manufacturing in this particular medium, because the simple flowing lines of the clay figures almost look as if they'd be better suited to bronze...

It's an interesting theory, and one for which I have absolutely no further evidence or references! 
 

The Dreadful Dorians??

One of our tour guides on Crete didn't have much good to say about the Dorians...  He described them in terms which varied from brutal and thuggish to, at best, uncultured and ignorant.

Now, using my very sketchy reference collection, I'm trying to get my head round the Dorians.  Obviously, their material culture is very different from the indigenous Minoans, but as far as I can ascertain (please correct me if I'm wrong, all you legitimate Classicists!) a lot of the evidence for their arrival is based on Greek documentary sources.  This makes me suspicious from the outset.  There's lies, damned lies, and then there's history...

Anyway, according to my ubiquitious guide catalogue detailing the collections held in Heraklion Museum, the Dorian population movement happened to two phases.  The first wave settled in the Peloponnese in mainland Greece.  The most famous (or infamous!) product of this initial mainland influx was Sparta, whose soldier citizens enslaved the indigenous population, causing much consternation amongst their fellow Greeks for centuries to come. 

A second phase of Dorians then apparently moved from the Peloponnese to Crete, and they don't seem to have been much more fun to get along with than the Spartans...

Here's the goddess Athena, as interpreted by a Dorian craftsman:-
 

She's certainly not the kind of lady you'd want to pick a fight with.  Even more disturbing is their take on the Mother Goddess so beloved of the Minoans.  These are really odd little figurines.  They show quite clearly that there's a bit of give and take between the existing cultural beliefs and those of the incomers, but once again the resulting interpretation is crude and, let's face it, a bit brutal:-
 

The poppyheads on their diadems are a new development (I'm sure the priestesses had to take something to inspire their prophecies...) in figurines which just don't have the artisitic finesse of their Minoan faience predecessors...

I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to award the Dorians any awards for Marvellous Ceramic Accomplishments.  Sure, I couldn't match their abilities, but compared to Kamares Ware?  I know which I'd rather have in my museum case, thank you.

The same can't be said for their bronzes.  Now, I know the area around Sparta was famed for its metalworking, so I'm wondering if this skill with bronze casting is something which also accompanied Crete's immigrant population of Dorians.  I was rather struck by this set of votive figurines, cast in bronze, which form part of Crete's Dorian heritage:-

 

The statues represent the god Apollo (in the middle) with his mother Leto and sister Artemis (or should we say La-to and Ar-ta-mis, since we're talking Dorian.  I believe 'e's are pronounced as 'a's in the Dorian dialect).

These are lovely castings.  Very austere, almost grim, but unlike the pottery, they come across as accomplished and finely crafted pieces.  They're not quite up there with the Vix Krater (those of you who've been following this blog for a long while may well remember that one!) but they're still really nice.

Now here's a thought....  Looking back at the crude figures of Athena and the mother goddesses, could we be looking at the work of craftsmen who aren't used to manufacturing in this particular medium, because the simple flowing lines of the clay figures almost look as if they'd be better suited to bronze...

It's an interesting theory, and one for which I have absolutely no further evidence or references! 
 

My Annual Soap Opera!

I've had it up to here with football, tennis, football, cricket, football, football, more football...

In case you haven't guessed, I don't much like sport.

 But...

I do like pro-cycling, and today saw the start of my annual fixation with the Tour de France. 

The Tour is like a complex novel.  The plot's very involved.  There's larger than life, and yet strangely vulnerable, characters.  There's a main thread of a plot - the yellow jersey (aka the Golden Fleece, perhaps) - and then there's a whole load of minor sub-plots threading through it.   There's drama and tension and all sorts of strange folk along the way.  And it's damned hard to follow.  And the setting's hard to beat - fields of sunflowers and lavender, little French market towns, glorious mountains.  There's magnificent heroes battling out in an epic confrontation - why, the Ancient Greeks would love it, I'm sure!  Men break bones and suffer all manner of hardship, and yet they keep on going regardless.

Yep, I'm hooked.  I'm rooting for Contador this year, because I'm fed up with the likes of Lance Armstrong and Cadel Evans trying to become celebrities (swaggering around with bodyguards, for Chrissake!  What are you thinking about??).  And Team Sky just doesn't hit the spot for me.  It's too commercialised and over-hyped.  But I will be cheering on Cav in the Green Jersey competition.

An aside to all would-be or actual team managers out there.  White skinsuits are a seriously bad idea.  They're fine in the blazing sun, but when it rains they're a no-no.  The end result is very nice for voyeurs who like oogling shapely young men as they strut their stuff in the time trials (the Ancient Greeks would approve of that, too) but it's probably not ideal for family viewing.  Lycra shorts are black for a reason.

My Annual Soap Opera!

I've had it up to here with football, tennis, football, cricket, football, football, more football...

In case you haven't guessed, I don't much like sport.

 But...

I do like pro-cycling, and today saw the start of my annual fixation with the Tour de France. 

The Tour is like a complex novel.  The plot's very involved.  There's larger than life, and yet strangely vulnerable, characters.  There's a main thread of a plot - the yellow jersey (aka the Golden Fleece, perhaps) - and then there's a whole load of minor sub-plots threading through it.   There's drama and tension and all sorts of strange folk along the way.  And it's damned hard to follow.  And the setting's hard to beat - fields of sunflowers and lavender, little French market towns, glorious mountains.  There's magnificent heroes battling out in an epic confrontation - why, the Ancient Greeks would love it, I'm sure!  Men break bones and suffer all manner of hardship, and yet they keep on going regardless.

Yep, I'm hooked.  I'm rooting for Contador this year, because I'm fed up with the likes of Lance Armstrong and Cadel Evans trying to become celebrities (swaggering around with bodyguards, for Chrissake!  What are you thinking about??).  And Team Sky just doesn't hit the spot for me.  It's too commercialised and over-hyped.  But I will be cheering on Cav in the Green Jersey competition.

An aside to all would-be or actual team managers out there.  White skinsuits are a seriously bad idea.  They're fine in the blazing sun, but when it rains they're a no-no.  The end result is very nice for voyeurs who like oogling shapely young men as they strut their stuff in the time trials (the Ancient Greeks would approve of that, too) but it's probably not ideal for family viewing.  Lycra shorts are black for a reason.