Talk:Mythical chronology of Greece

This article was nominated for deletion on May 23, 2005. The result was to keep. An archived record of this vote can be found here.

Mindspillage (spill yours?) 05:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article was nominated for deletion on 26 October, 2006. The result was to delete. An archived record of this vote can be found here.

manifesto

Everyone who has read Jerome's Chronicon, the Parian Marble calendar and Tatians Address to the Greeks will know the sequence of events and the dates of most of the chronology given here already. Eusebius (the source Jerome used) preserved the Athenian, Argive/Mycenaean, Spartan, Sicyonian, Corinthian and Macedonian king lists given by Diodorus so its relatively easy to reconstruct the traditional time line from the several hundred Latin and Armenian translations that are still extant which place the end of the Trojan War 1183 BC and the Dorian Invasion in 1103 BC (confirmed by Thucydides and Diodorus) and then fill in the missing pieces using other authors. The chronology of Herakles is given year by year by Apollodorus until his apotheosis so most of the 13th century chronology is based around that. Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel provides additional information and Herodotus gives dates for the various Gods who Eusebius in Preparation of the Gospel shows were past kings, therefore reference to them is historically justified.

The fact that over 100 translations of Jerome's Chonicon are still around today is an indication of how the traditional chronology was considered to be mainstream history well into the renaissance and beyond.

Archaeological evidence supports the traditional date for the Trojan War and the traditional date for Troy's destruction by Herakles. More information about this can be found in Michael Wood's, In Search of the Trojan War. Archaeologists have also discovered the remains of Jason's palace at Iolcus and more about this can be found in Michael Wood's, In Search of Myths and Heroes.

The regal years given in Jerome's Chonicon prior to 1400 BC have been synchronously statistically renormalized so that the reign of Apis the king of Argos in both the Sicyonian and Argive king lists coincides. (The text states Phoroneus the previous king of Argos fought against Telichis king of Sicyon and drove him out). The ratios of the regal years in the upper part of both king lists have been used and new dates calculated in the same ratios to fit in with the figure Tatian gives for the reign of Inachus (father of Phoroneus) and Ahmose 400 years before the Trojan War. This places the Ogygian Deluge at the time of the Thera Euruption and Aegean and Mediterranean Tsunami of 1628 BC (using the dendrochronological date). Similar adjustments have been made to the Athenian king list to synchronise the date of the Deukaloin flood.

If you do not have access to the full Latin text of Jerome's Chronicon (assuming you can also read it) and the full texts of Eusebius and Diodorus and are not competent in advanced statistical modelling for the purposes of historical reconstruction leave this chronology alone.

As long as you know what you are talking about you are free to make corrections and additions to the descriptions of events already given and add events that occurred at the same time.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

This is an interesting article, but I think it needs a fair degree of introductory material to explain what, precisely, it is. john k 15:43, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Let me add that many of the synchronisms with archaeological events, especially with Egyptian history (and the Biblical flood) seem dubious. I'd suggest sticking to the actual Minoan and Mycenaean archaeology. john k 16:02, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Biblical references removed. Kept Egyptian references which relate to known contact with Mycenaean's.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

Brazen Age

Why Brazen Age instead of Bronze Age? RickK 20:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Because thats what Hesiod calls it in his 5 ages of mankind.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

Because thats what Hesiod calls it in his 5 ages of mankind. How odd. And here all this time I thought Hesiod wrote in Greek. Wouldn't we want to use what he called it? Or should we translate it into proper English, in which case it's Bronze Age? RickK 21:38, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, brazen means "made of brass." Brass is not the same thing as Bronze. john k 22:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Its translated BRAZEN AGE in all the standard texts.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

No, it's not. Lectiodifficilior 08:58, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sources, original research, etc.

Argyros, given your work on Bible chronology, I wonder if you might be a bit more clear on where you derive the dates here. The traditional chronologies preserved by various ancient historians, so far as they can be reconciled with one another, are encyclopedic and worthy of discussion, but, again, specific reconstructions you've created are not appropriate for wikipedia. This is not to say that the reconstructions you have done are wrong, just that wikipedia is not a place for putting up original research that contradicts the main trends of modern scholarship. If you could explain a bit more how you devised this chronology, that would be helpful. john k 21:35, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

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I already told you where the dates come from. They are based on Jerome's Chronicon which is a Latin translation of Eusebius chronology which is based on Diodorus chronology.

Find a source that says Eusebius is primarily based on Diodorus' chronology. Lectiodifficilior 09:14, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Jerome's Cadmian king list from 1454 BC onwards when Cadmus went to Syria is taken literally. His Argive king list is used from 1503 BC onwards is literal. His Cretan king list from aproximaltly 1550 BC is taken literally. His Trojen king list from about 1415 BC is used literally as given.

The whole of Jerome's Chronicon is written in tabular form. Each line of text matches a year. Some lines overrun several years. If you know your Greek mythology well you can elaborate on Jeromes notes. ie. When Jerome mentions Cadmus ruled Thebes in 1425 then its blatantly obvious that all the things that Cadmus did in Thebes occurred at this time even if Jerome does not mention them all.

You argument about original research is completely ridiculous. All research is original research otherwise there would be not point in doing it since its already been done.

Wikipedia forbids original research (see Wikipedia:No original research). Yes this can be galling, but there are good reasons for it. Even if there were not, it's an official policy. Lectiodifficilior 09:14, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The entire point of Wikipedia is to allow people to share information freely and that does not mean adhering to certain claques of academia and ignoring others. It means doing historical research and compiling the best chronology possible then subjecting it to academic scrutiny which is not what you are doing here because I doubt that you are even qualified. If you are fluent in ancient Greek and Latin and understand how and why the ancient texts were written and what they are discussing, if you have knowledge of the history of the period in question then lets discuss Jerome's Chronicon Line by Line. Lets do the same with Tatian and Diodorus and Apollodorus and the rest. You show me where I am wrong and I'll show you where I am right.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

Part of the point about the no-original-research policy is to avoid this kind of argument over facts. Debates like this should take place in peer reviewed journals and other such media, not in reference works. Lectiodifficilior 09:14, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Argyros - any material taken as given from Jerome/Eusebius seems fine to me, so long as it is mentioned as such. This material is just as valid as, say, the traditional dates for the Kings of Rome, the traditional dates for early High Kings of Ireland, and other pseudohistorical legendarium from old times. That is to say, it is fine to list it, so long as we are clear that it has a completely separate level of reliability as histoircal fact from, say, the Assyrian King List. That said, original research is definitively inappropriate. The purpose of an encyclopedia is not to create our own theories, but to relate already established human knowledge. A certain degree of massaging of the text into coherence seems fair (although I'd prefer to present it with all warts), but extrapolations not specifically based on dates given in the primary sources is not appropriate. You clearly know a lot about this and have done a lot of work, but I'm still concerned that the border between what you've taken directly from the sources, and what you have extrapolated, is not clear enough. john k 01:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

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All the extrapolations I have made are based on figures given by Diodorus, Jerome, Eusebius, Tatian, Apollodorus and Herodotus etc.

"etc" means what. Can we add Manetho, Berossus, Syncelus, the Marmor Parium, the Chronicon Paschale and—what?—a half-dozen other chronographical works, then we let you loose on the mythography? It would be interesting to throw all this stuff together and play with the numbers. But it could come out a million different ways. It would be neat to see how you do the work, but this is clearly original research. Lectiodifficilior 09:23, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The choice of which of the sources to use for a particular historical event is made in the same way as with any other history, say that of 15th century Egypt, using expert opinion on which sources are most reliable and which dating methods are most reliable. Most of Jerome's very early dating (2000-1600 BC) has to be rejected as unreliable because it contradicts itself but the sequence of events is still valid if the parallel king lists are separated. Tatian is a more reliable source for the date of Inachus c.1600 BC than Jerome. If people want to know what each of them has said then they can read the original texts, but this is not a place for original texts and most translations are still under copyright. What people want and what I have provided is a reliable chronology of the mythical period in Greek history based on all the available sources. That is what the purpose of an enclopaidia is. I have used the same methods that have been used to reconstruct lost Hellenistic period history from written sources and very early Egyptian history where most of the numerology is nonexistent so statistical approximations have to be made on lengths of reign etc. If you don't already know, these statistical approximations by Egyptologists have led to there being 3 conflicting Egyptian chronologies because the top is open ended.

There are a bunch of different ancient (Greco-Roman) chronologies of Egypt, not a single one. All have been mostly mooted by Egyptian evidence. What are you aiming for here? Lectiodifficilior 09:23, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have stated a margin of error on my figures. Within that range, +/-15 years the chronology is as reliable as any Egyptian chronology for the same period. If you want to dispute that then the usual scientific test is to show that the given data deviates from true dates by 4 times the given margin of error or more.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

The whole tenor here is the language of junk-scholarship, autodidacticism run amok. Remove. Lectiodifficilior 09:23, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Argyros, you seem to be suggesting here that these dates refer to events that actually happened, and can thus be discovered to be true in the way that, say, events from ancient Egyptian history can be. Do I need to say that this is a highly problematic idea? Most people do not believe that the events of Greek mythology actually occurred - thus there was no Inachus, so it becomes difficult to say that one source is better than another for determining when he lived, since he's a mythical figure. We need to be very careful when presenting dates for legendary events. Can you point us to any secondary sources that discuss these kinds of issues? john k 13:00, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

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I suggest you try reading the sources I quoted. All of the ancient writers believed the heroes existed and that the events occurred and were later mythologized by the poets who were paid to make the ancestors of the citizens look good. There is not one dissenting voice among any of the ancient historians concerning this. It is only in the first half of the 20th Century that their historicity was disputed by politically motivated historical revisionists. That entire theory which was no more than a passing fad was put to an end with the decipherment of Linear B script as Greek by Ventris.

Schliemann believed in the Trojan War and proved the existence of Troy by discovering it. Michael Wood in "In Search of the Trojan War" concluded that the events surrouding the Trojan War were most probably based on real history and real people. He has also come to the same conclusion about the voyage Jason and the Argonauts in "In Search of Myths and Heroes." If Agamemnon, Perseus, Danaus and Inachus didn't live in Mycenae and Argos then who did. The weight of all the evidence points towards their existence as distinct kings. They had decedents that were ruling Sparta and Athens and every other Greek city state at the time of Herodotus as he clearly states in his histories. Now of course there weren't any such things as Medusas or Hydras and the like and Diordorus in the first 6 books of his Bibliothiki gives rational explanations for how these mytholgisations came about by going back to the original records. For example the Hydra was actually a very smelly lake whose foul waters were leaking over the land.

If you are not competent in the original texts in their original languages of Greek and Latin I do not think you are in any fit position to review any of my contributions. You don't sound like you have read Diodorus even in translation.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

Argyros, yes, ancient writers did tend to believe that the heroes existed. I don't see how that means they are right. Generally, unless there is evidence for the existence of specific individuals, which, in this case, there is not, we tend to view them as legendary - perhaps they existed in some form, but the evidence is not sufficient to be certain. Your contentions that one has to be able to read Greek and Latin to have any say here is not helpful. You have yet to offer any kind of rreal response to the fact that what you are doing here is original research, at least in part. john k 23:16, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

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Have you read Jerome's Chronicon or not ?

Have you read books 1 to 6 of Diodorus Siculus ?

Have you read Tatian ?

The full text of Jerome's Chronicon is only available in Latin, ancient Armenian or German so I presume you can understand one of these languages well enough to read numbers and names of individuals and do the arithmetic (unless you have access to the unpublished online collaborative translation which I doubt since I do not recognise your initials). You also have to be competent in classical Greek, Babylonian and Persian history to start off with because that's were the universally accepted baselines for the dating of ancient events come from. I presume you know when Cyrus conquered Babylon, when Rome was founded and when the first Olympiad occurred because those are the standard baselines.

I restate that Jerome's Cadmian king list from 1454 BC onwards when Cadmus went to Syria is taken literally. His Argive king list is used from 1503 BC onwards is literal. His Cretan king list from aproximaltly 1550 BC is taken literally. His Trojen king list from about 1415 BC is used literally as given.

If you want to dispute any of these figures which I have taken literally provide evidence. Claiming that the people are mythical is not sufficient since I have already titled the page as "MYTHICAL Chronology of Greece". There's already a biblical chronology so I don't see why there should not be a mythical Greek one. In fact there's even a chronology of all the Star Trek stories in Wikipedia.

If you want to dispute my use of Tatians date for the time of Inachus provide evidence supporting a more credible alternative.

If you don't believe that Odysseus, Jason and Perseus existed that is just your point of view. The existence of these people is founded on archaeological evidence of palaces in the places and times they should be in and Greek, Hittite and Egyptian inscriptions which name the entire pantheon of Greek Gods and are full of Homeric names unlike the existence of Abraham for which there is almost nothing. But we are not here to prove the existence of either. We are here to provide a chronology of events that was used by the ancients. I have qualified the chronology with an error margin so if you dispute any of the dates the standard scientific test is to prove that they are out by more than 4 times the margin of error. What that means is if you think the date that Diodorus, Jerome and Tatian give for the end of the Trojan War is wrong you will have to find a better date that shows that their date is out by more than 60 years and prove it. The generally accepted date published by all the archaeologists since Schliemann is that Troy VIIA dating to c.1200 BC is the Troy of Homer which matches the traditional date for the end of the Trojan War which is 1183 BC.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

I have no problem with giving dates from Jerome/Eusebius. A page detailing early chronology according to Eusebius (in whatever forms we have him) would be useful. However, again, I would be interested to see what modern scholarship there is on this stuff. As I've said, I think a mythical chronology is perfectly fine. But a mythical chronology devised by wikipedia editors consists of original research. If there is contradiction among the various sources, it is not our job to reconcile them - this is doing original work, which is forbidden. Fitting pieces together in instances where they do not conflict makes more sense, perhaps. At any rate, I wish you would quit insisting that unless I can read Jerome's version of the chronicle in Latin, I am incapable of comment (BTW, I suspect I do have in German, at least, and possibly in Latin, as well, to read a list of names and dates. Unfortunately, I have no idea where this text can be found.) At any rate, my point is not to dispute with you on the finer points of whose chronology is more credible. For all I know, yours may be the best-devised such chronology in existence. But the basic fact is that, given that the sources do not agree, and there has been no published scholarly work on the subject (due to the fact that scholars generally don't believe that there is a real chronology to unravel here), adding in your own calculations - whether they are correct or not - consists of original research and can't be here. john k 16:57, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

There's a lot of discussion of the texts, most of it trying to figure out discrepancies between authors (or author's different translations and redactions) and figuring out how dates were produced (eg., finding "generation" multiples, etc.). My problem here is that this sort of detail work is too original. It would be one thing to set forth the chronology of one source (ie., Eusebius), or a general discussion of the principles and main texts of Greek chronography, another to try to meld different sources like Eusebius and Diodorus—and without extensive citation and argument to boot! As for languages, you really should avoid slapping people around with your language skills, particularly when you don't provide much proof of your own competence and when people who do know the languages find your position equally weak.unpersuasive. It's bad form. Anyway, how's your Armenian, or are you getting your Eusebius through Karst? I vote removal. Lectiodifficilior 09:11, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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If you have not read the work of a specific writer then it would seem to be pretty obvious that you are not in the position to comment on them authoritatively and any comments that you do make based on other peoples comments are clearly going to be based on prejudice.

"The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition" by Alden A. Mosshammer, Bucknell University Press (July 1, 1979) is one modern work on the subject, so you are making comments out of thin air by saying that "there has been no published scholarly work on the subject".

And who says "that the sources do not agree". Which sources of what and where don't they agree ?

Can you please state what your qualifications are in this area and tell me what you have actually read and where you are getting these statements from.

Like it or not most modern scholars are agreed on the traditional date of the end of the Trojan War (1183 BC) being accurate. Most modern scholars are also agreed on the upper limit for the arrival of Achaean Greek speaking people in the Greek peninsula in two waves in 2200 BC and 1900 BC. In "The Glory that was Greece" by J. C. Stobart (4th edition 1964) the author speaks of King Minos as a real historical figure who "may have played Backgammon according to the Minoan rules of the respectable game" in the Late Minoan period in about 1450 BC (see chapter I). So given his dating we can consider that Asterius his father, Lapis his father, and Cydon his father who accoding to Jerome rulled in 1550 BC fit into the dating accepted by modern historians.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyrosargyrou (talk • contribs) .

Too zany to struggle with

Where would one begin to explain? --Wetman 08:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Bullets

To Arcadian

The text was easier to read and to follow before it was bulleted and followed the same formating as Timeline of Ancient Greece. Can you please change it back.--Argyrosargyrou 20:57, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Arcadian 00:45, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

What's the point of this article?

As far as I can tell, this article is a timeline synthesized from various hellenistic and ecclesiastical chronographers. I suppose there's a case to be made that Wikipedia should tell us about ancient chronography, but I don't think this article does a good job of that.

The worst problem with the article is that it presents itself as an accurate chronology. From the comments of the main author of the article in the discussion above, it's clear that the article is intended to set out a true timeline of Greek history. Obviously, that's goofy--regardless of whether you think there was a historical Heracles around which legends accrued, there's no reliable way to establish that he was born on February 10, 1286 BC. Certainly no reputable scholar would endorse this date, nor could you find very many scholars who would say that Typhon was defeated in 1628 BC. The additions of genuine historical events or archaeological finds suggest that this chronology has some kind of relationship with real history (and of course, another issue is that the calendar date of the Minoan-related stuff is controversial).

The other problem is that this article is original research--it's a synthesis of multiple sources. Here's one example:

800: Hesiod is murdered. (based on the date given by Herodotus, and the middle date given by Jerome)

This item is based on an original editorial judgment about the reliability of Herodotus and the range of dates given by Jerome. This is exactly the kind of situation where a modern scholarly source should be cited. The only citations in the article, though, are for historical events like the Thera eruption; these situations where ancient chronographers gave different dates for an event have no citations, and the editor(s) seem to have made decisions based on their own judgments of which source is more reliable, etc.

At the top of the talk page is a link to an old request for deletion of this article. Consensus then (June 7, 2005) was to keep this article, but all of the commenters agreed that it needed serious work, especially in regard to citations and original research. To date, the improvements haven't happened. Given the lack of improvement, should this article even be here? --Akhilleus (talk) 21:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Undeleted talkpage and article history

This article used to be a collection of dates from Jerome's chronicle and other sources. It was deleted in 2006, but some of its content hangs around here. I have undeleted the edit history because of this, and because it is useful as raw material, it is not my intention to overturn the 2006 AfD discussion, the title remains a redirect to Chronicon (Jerome). --dab (𒁳) 13:12, 6 January 2011 (UTC)