Reply To: Lives of Leisure and War

[Celina Batchelder]

I agree with you that these differences don’t necessarily point to an all-war or an all-peace mindset for either culture, just a correlation. It’s true that the Mycenaeans may have seen life as less peaceful; we don’t exactly know the hardships they went through or the obstacles they had to face because of their lack of written history. We are left to speculate based on what was left behind; the Mycenaeans had more weapons at their excavation site, and for all we know this could have been a form of art or honoring the dead – not an indication of battle. I like your analysis of the differences in the octopus pottery. I agree that the lengthened tentacles take away from the relaxed art the Minoans created- this is something I felt when viewing these pieces but did not speculate on.
Thank you for sharing.