{"id":10138,"date":"2023-11-20T03:29:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T08:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=10138"},"modified":"2025-06-03T03:32:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T08:32:21","slug":"132-bronze-age-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=10138","title":{"rendered":"132. Bronze Age Athens"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1184\" src=\"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/pt02pg109-Bronze-Age-Athens.webp\" alt=\"During the Bronze Age, Athens was part of the Mycenaean &quot;palatial&quot; civilization. What does that mean?\" class=\"wp-image-10139\" style=\"object-fit:cover\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/pt02pg109-Bronze-Age-Athens.webp 1200w, https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/pt02pg109-Bronze-Age-Athens-768x758.webp 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><iframe style=\"border-style: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/pannellum-2.5.6\/src\/standalone\/pannellum.htm#panorama=https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Nestor-Throne-Room-8100.png&amp;autoLoad=true\" width=\"700px\" height=\"350px\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">(Yay! Another 3-D view! Go full-screen, click, drag, and zoom to explore.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><div class=\"bg-margin-for-link\"><input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='69e5671630fd19067323123' value='69e5671630fd19067323123'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-69e5671630fd19067323123' value='View Transcript'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-69e5671630fd19067323123' value='Close Transcript'><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-69e5671630fd19067323123' ><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Constitutional Law<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Part 2: \u201cWhat Were They Thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Digression: \u201cA History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Pg 132: \u201cBronze Age Athens\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">PANEL 1<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">A topographic map of Attica, with a scale of miles and with Athens located.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Athens is located on a little peninsula called <strong>Attica.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Attica looks a bit like\u2026 a horse\u2019s head?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">PANEL 2<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">A nighttime view of the Aegean region, showing Greece, Crete, Anatolia, Thrace, and all the little islands. Scores of settlements are brightly lit, and major urban sites are shown in reddish orange. Athens is located.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Bronze Age Athens was part of the flourishing <strong>Mycenaean<\/strong> civilization\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u2026A cosmopolitan, highly interconnected world of cities, trade, and high culture.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">PANEL 3<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">An overhead view of the palace complex of Mycenae, as it would have looked around 1250 B.C. Smoke rises from the stepped roof of the main temple building.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Each city centered on a <strong>\u201cpalace\u201d<\/strong>\u2014the usual compound of ritual spaces and administrative buildings. Just like everywhere else, government was religion, religion was government, and you demonstrated your patriotic identity by participating in the festivals and sacrifices for the civic gods.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">(Your <strong>core<\/strong> identity, of course, would always be your ancestral lineage: Your family. Your <strong>tribe.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">PANEL 4<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">A 3-D spherical panorama of the interior of the main temple room of the palace at Pylos, as it would have looked around 1250 B.C. Readers can click, drag, and zoom to explore the chamber. Explanatory narrations hang suspended in midair near various parts of the room. There are several Easter eggs hidden throughout the illustration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The walls are covered in colorful frescoes, the ceiling and support beams are intricately decorated, and the floor is tiled with an array of diverse colorful patterns. In the center of the room is a great hearth. The king\/high priest is seated before a fresco of a mythical of griffin caught between a lion and a leopard. A procession of priests and priestesses bearing offerings is entering from chambers outside, past murals depicting such processions. They are led by a woman wearing a brightly-colored tiered dress, open at the bosom.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">On the wall opposite the high priest, Poseidon rules over the creatures of the deep, while Artemis receives homage from birds, deer, and two leashed dogs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The two main gods at Pylos were Poseidon, god of the sea, and Artemis, goddess of nature, wild animals, and the dance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Looking straight up, we see there is a second story that is open to the sky above the hearth fire. More women in tiered dresses with open bosoms stand at railings to watch the proceedings below and chat. The ceiling of the second story is decorated like a night sky, and the pillars are decorated with frescoes of birds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Women had a big space all their own on the second level. It was decorated with many frescoes of animals and nature scenes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">On the wall behind the chief priest, to his right, is a fresco depicting young men leaping over a charging bull.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Bull-leaping demonstrated that this force of nature was at its peak vitality when sacrificed. (The bull, that is. Probably not the athletes. Then again, consider the human sacrifices of Etruscan gladiators and Mayan ball players.) The ritual lives on in Mediterranean sports like Course Landaise, Recortes, and Bullfighting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The woman leading the procession holds a long brass rod, shaped like the hand-crank to an old car, with a wooden handle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">That bronze thing she\u2019s holding is a key. Who is she? What\u2019s that key for? I\u2019ll tell you in a moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">In the great hearth, a fire burns inside a large metal footed vessel, intricately decorated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">This hearth fire is the living soul of the city\u2014just as your home\u2019s hearth fire is the soul of your lineage. Don\u2019t let either one go out!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">There are four great red columns holding up the ceiling, and others like them are visible in the chambers beyond.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">NARRATION:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">This is a re-creation of the throne room or \u201cmegaron\u201d (\u201cbig room\u201d) of the palace complex at Pylos.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">If you\u2019ve read Homer\u2019s <em>Iliad<\/em>, this was the palace of King Nestor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">I\u2019ve taken a <strong>lot<\/strong> of artistic license here. If you want more info about what it actually looked like, first check out Mabel Lang, <em>The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia, Vol. 2: The Frescoes<\/em>, Princeton University Press, 1969. Then look at more recent interpretations like Shannon Lafayette Hogue, \u201cThe Palatial Megaron and Upper Story in the Palace of Nestor: Evidence for a New Reconstruction,\u201d <em>Hespera<\/em>, Vol. 92, No. 1 (2023).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><\/div><\/div><a id='bg-showmore-action-69e5671630fd19067323123' class='bg-showmore-plg-link bg-arrow '  style=\" color:#9ca7a5;;\" href='#'>View Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Yay! Another 3-D view! Go full-screen, click, drag, and zoom to explore.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10501,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions\/10501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}