Rediscovering the World of Homer

Five Works from the Mycenaean Age to Homer

For all its monsters, shipwrecks and heroic exploits, The Odyssey is, at its heart, a poem about hospitality. Few aspects of the Homeric epics have received more scholarly attention than the institution the Greeks called xenia, the reciprocal obligations governing the relationship between host and guest. From Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus to more recent studies of Homeric society, hospitality has been understood not only as a matter of etiquette but as one of the fundamental structures through which the poem imagines political authority, social hierarchy and moral order. It is no coincidence that some of the most decisive episodes in the narrative take place not on the battlefield or at sea, but within the household, where strangers are received, feasts are shared and alliances are forged through the exchange of food, wine and gifts.

The prominence of hospitality in the Homeric poems is particularly significant because it lies at the intersection of two profoundly different historical worlds. The events traditionally associated with the Trojan War belong, if they preserve any historical memory at all, to the Late Bronze Age of the eastern Mediterranean. Homer himself, however, is generally thought to have composed the Odyssey several centuries later, during the late eighth or early seventh century BC, after the collapse of the Mycenaean palace system and the disappearance of the Linear B script. Between these two periods, the political and social landscape of Greece underwent a profound transformation marked by the abandonment of the great palatial centres and the gradual emergence of new forms of political organisation and artistic expression. The Odyssey is therefore neither a contemporary account of the Mycenaean world nor a straightforward reflection of Homer's own society. Rather, it is the product of a long oral tradition in which older memories and inherited traditions were continually reshaped through the cultural assumptions of a later age. The centrality of xenia belongs to this later poetic tradition, although the practices of feasting and receiving guests that underpin it almost certainly have much older antecedents.

The rediscovery of the Bronze Age during the nineteenth century fundamentally altered scholarly understandings of the Homeric epics. Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at Hisarlik and Mycenae first demonstrated that a sophisticated civilisation had flourished in Greece centuries before the Classical period, whilst the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s confirmed that the Mycenaeans spoke an early form of Greek. Although these discoveries did not prove the historical accuracy of the Homeric poems, they transformed the questions scholars could ask of them.

It is within this context that pottery assumes a particular importance. Few categories of archaeological material illuminate the ancient Greek world with such consistency or abundance. Unlike monumental sculpture, which survives only sporadically for these early periods, ceramic vessels accompany almost every aspect of domestic, religious and social life. They record changing artistic traditions, technological developments, patterns of trade and, perhaps most importantly, the rituals through which Greek society understood itself. Drinking cups, mixing bowls and water vessels are material witnesses to the practices that Homer describes with such remarkable consistency throughout the Odyssey.

The five vessels brought together at Colnaghi London offer an opportunity to consider that material world more closely. They belong to the broader archaeological landscape within which the poem was composed and imagined, revealing the forms, functions and artistic traditions that shaped everyday life in the Greek world from the Late Bronze Age to the early Archaic period.

Kylix, Greek, Mycenaean, ca. 14th century BC. Terracotta. H. 17 cm (6¾ in.).

Kylix, Greek, Mycenaean, ca. 14th century BC. Terracotta. H. 12.4 cm (4⅞ in.).

Dating to the fourteenth century BC, these two Mycenaean kylikes belong to a period of considerable cultural expansion on the Greek mainland. Their elegant, low stems distinguish them from many contemporary examples and anticipate the proportions of later Greek drinking cups, whilst their painted decoration reflects a visual language inherited from Minoan Crete but transformed through distinctly Mycenaean innovations. Particularly striking is the increasing tendency towards abstraction that characterises Mycenaean pottery of this period. Rather than depicting recognisable figures, the painted motifs privilege rhythm, symmetry and repetition, dissolving the boundaries between vegetal and marine forms into highly ordered decorative schemes.

Krater, Greek, Proto-Geometric Period, ca. mid-9th century BC (CG 7204). Terracotta. H. 21.9 cm (8⅝ in.).

This Proto-Geometric krater, used for mixing wine with water before serving, exemplifies the period’s preference for carefully ordered geometric decoration. Concentric circles, horizontal bands and stylised deer-head handles replace the more fluid ornament of the Bronze Age, reflecting the emergence of a new decorative language that would come to define early Iron Age Greek ceramics. Its function is equally revealing. Greek wine was ordinarily diluted with water before consumption, and the krater occupied a central position within communal drinking, mediating the rituals of feasting and hospitality that continued to shape Greek social life.

Eleven Wheel-Made Black Slipware Vessels, Cyprus, Cypro-Geometric Period III, ca. 850–750 BC. Terracotta. Various dimensions.

This group of wheel-made Black Slipware vessels, produced in Cyprus between approximately 850 and 750 BC, illustrates the remarkable refinement achieved by Cypriot potters during the Cypro-Geometric period. Unlike earlier hand-modelled examples, these vessels were thrown on a potter's wheel, producing increasingly regular and symmetrical forms. Their characteristic black slip, applied over buff or reddish-brown clay, demonstrates the technical sophistication that came to define Cypriot ceramics of the period.

Hydria, Greek, Crete, ca. 700 BC. Terracotta. H. 36.8 cm (14½ in.).

Produced in Crete around 700 BC, this hydria belongs to the period in which Homer is generally believed to have composed the Odyssey. Designed for collecting and transporting water, its broad shoulder, narrow neck and three handles combine practical efficiency with elegant proportion, whilst its decoration of scrolling tendrils, foliate motifs and concentric circles reflects the continuing vitality of geometric ornament in the early Archaic period. As one of the characteristic vessel types of the Greek world, the hydria speaks not only to the practical demands of everyday life but also to the domestic rituals that formed the backdrop to the scenes of hospitality so carefully described throughout the Homeric epics.

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