Achaeans

 

people of ancient Greece, of unknown origin. In Homer, the Achaeans are specifically a Greek-speaking people of S Thessaly. Historically, they seem to have appeared in the Peloponnesus during the 14th and 13th cent. B.C., and c.1250 B.C. they became the ruling class. There is no sharp line of separation between the earlier Mycenaean civilization and the Achaean; the cultures seem to have intermingled. The invasions of the Dorians supposedly forced some of the Achaeans out to Asia Minor; others were concentrated in the region known in classical times as Achaea.

This article is about the ancient people of the Achaeans. See Achaea (MUD) for the MUD.

The Achaeans (in Greek Ἀχαιοί, Akhaioi) is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad (used 598 times) and Odyssey. The other names are the Danaans (Δαναοί, used 138 times in the Iliad) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι, used 29 times in the Iliad). In the historical period, the Achaeans were the inhabitants of the region of Achaea, a region in the north central part of the Peloponnese. The city states of this region formed a confederation known as the Achaean League which was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.

The Achaeans are one of the four main tribes occupying the ancient Greek mainland (Achaeans, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians). The name Achaeans came to mean all the Greeks at the time of the Trojan War. [1]

The Homeric Achaeans would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from ca. 1600 BC, with a history as a tribe that may have gone back to the prehistoric Hellenic immigration in the late 3rd millennium BC. It has been suggested that the Achaeans had not settled in the Greek mainland until the Dorian invasions of the 12th century BC. It is possible that Homer's Achaean leaders, held power in the mycenean world but were replaced by the Dorians. Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of these earlier Achaeans.

Some Hittite texts mention a nation lying to the west called Ahhiyawa. An important example is the Tawagalawa Letter^[1] written by an unnamed Hittite king of the empire period (14th century B.C.) to the king of Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal and suggesting that Miletus (Millawanda) was under his control. It also refers to an earlier "Wilusa episode" involving hostility on the part of Ahhiyawa. In the earliest reference to this land, in a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta,^[2] it is called Ahhiya. Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy (note the similarity with (ϝ)Ίλιον, (w)Ilion, the name of the acropolis of Troy). However the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek; the earlier debate was summed up in 1984 by Hans G. Güterbock of the Oriental Institute.^[3]

In Greek mythology

In Greek mythology the perceived cultural divisions among the Hellenes were represented as legendary lines of descent that identified kinship groups, among them the Achaeans. Hellen, Graicos, Magnis, and Macedon were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only people who survived the Great Flood. The family was originally named after the elder son Graikoi but renamed later after Hellen who was proved to be the strongest. Sons of Hellen and the nymph Orsiis were Dorus, Xuthos, and Aeolus; sons of Xuthos were Ion and Achaeus.^[4] The Greek ethnoi were named in their honor Achaeans, Danaans, Kadmeioi, Hellenes, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians. Kadmos and Danaos came from Egypt, and Pelops from Phrygia settled in the mainland Greece and were assimilated and Hellenized.

See also

• Achaea, Achaea (province)
• Aegean civilization
• Mycenaean Greece
• Historicity of the Iliad
• Mycenaean language
• Homer
• Troy
• The Achaean League was a confederation of Greek city states in Achaea, a territory on the northern coast of the Peloponnese. An initial confederation existed during the 5th through the 4th century BC.

Notes

External links

• Sites and Photos: Mediterranean and Classical Archaeology Images
• Detailed cultural studies of Minoan Crete and relations with the mainland "Mycenean" tribes of Achaians

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