The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the polis as axis of greek history
symbolized it, Hector representing the tribal consciousness, Achilles the
individual man. Hector, the son of the Trojan king, longed to sacrifice himself
for his royal clan. Achilles, the Greek demigod, desired personal fame which
he preferred to a long life. Hector died still believing in the immortality of his
clan and its blood-ties, while fear of death is shown in Achilles’ mourning over
his friend Patroclus and in his words in the netherworld.
The fall of Troy brought about the transition from the age of bronze to that
of iron. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the earliest records of Hellas, appeared after
the Dorian invasion at the beginning of the Iron Age. Thus the curtain of the
stage of Hellas’ history rose!
2. METROPOLIS
The Repulse of the Persians
The first calendar, dating from the Olympian games of 776 bc (not the
first year these games were held), was connected with the erection of the
oldest temples on the site of the Hellenic festivals, in Olympia. These events
corresponded with the date of the foundation of Rome and with the important
astronomical change when the sun began to rise in the vernal equinox under
the sign of Aries, 747 bc. This was the time when the polis of Hellas colonized
in the east, west, south and north, gradually becoming a metropolis, a mothercity
protecting and defending her offspring. It marked the actual opening of
the Graeco-Roman period of culture and the beginning of Greek architecture.
Just as two millennia earlier the pyramids had introduced the epoch of Egypt,
so the Doric temple built in Olympia ushered in the history of Hellas.
Soon after that, Archilochus of Paros, in introducing the iambic and
trochaic measures, laid the cornerstone for the literature of the world. He was
called the first “Greek of flesh and blood”: the son of a noble father and a slave
mother, the offspring of a mixed marriage. 64 This fact shows us the trend of
the age in suddenly loosening the ties of the clans. In contrast to Hesiod, who
wrote epic verse, Archilochus, the first lyricist, addressed himself to the people
and used colloquialisms freely.
The seventh century presented great variety in the art and beauty of
the countless courts of the tyrants. At these courts the richest life of culture