' So
that the poems represent a gradual development in the use of armour
which may not unfairly be compared with the similar development
traceable in the Mycenaean remains.
On the whole, then, our conclusion is something like this: The
civilization which Schliemann discovered is not precisely that
of the Homeric poems, for the bloom of it belongs to a period
considerably anterior to the period of Achaean supremacy in Greece,
and was the work of a race differing from that of the chiefs who
fought at Troy; but, broadly speaking, what Homer describes is the
same civilization in its latest stage, when the men of Mycenaean
or Minoan stock who created it had passed under the dominion of the
invading Achaean overlords. The Achaean invasion was not, like that
which succeeded it, subversive of the great culture that belonged to
the conquered Mycenaean race; on the contrary, the invaders entered
into and became partakers of it, carrying on its traditions until
the gradual decay, which had begun already before they made their
appearance in Greece, was terminated by the Dorian invasion, or
whatever process of gradual incursion by ruder tribes may correspond
to what the later Greeks called by that name. And it is this last
stage of the Mycenaean culture, still existing, though under Achaean
supremacy, which is depicted in the Homeric poems.
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