The Dipylon Geometric pottery of Athens and the Iliad are amazing manifestations of the inherent potentialities of Greek civilization; but both were among the last products of a phase which was ending. Greek civilization was swirling toward its great revolution, in which the developed qualities of the Hellenic outlook were suddenly to break forth. The revolution was well under way before 700 B.C., and premonitory signs go back virtually across the century. The era, however, is Janus-faced. While many tokens point forward, the main achievements stand as a culmination of the simple patterns of the Dark ages. The dominant pottery of the century was Geometric; political organization revolved about the basileis; trade was just beginning to expand; the gods who protected the Greek countryside were only now putting on their sharply anthropomorphic dress.

The modern student, who knows what was to come next, is likely to place first the factors of change which are visible in the eighth century. Not all men of the period would have accepted this emphasis. Many potters clung to the past the more determinedly as they were confronted with radically new ideas; the poet of the Iliad deliberately archaized. Although it is not possible to sunder old and new in this era, I shall consider in the present chapter primarily the first decades of the eighth century and shall interpret them as an apogee of the first stage of Greek civilization.