Ancient World Review

The Mystery Of Homer

"The Greeks and Romans always thought that the legendary poet Homer was the greatest author ever. However, we know hardly anything about the man or men who composed the Iliad ... or the Odyssey. At the moment, most scholars agree that these texts were dictated to a writer by a very capable bard, who used older, oral traditions, at the beginning of the eighth century BCE. We do not know to what extent later poets have made additions or changes to the two epics." Source: Livius.

Comment: Homer's a mystery. No one knows who he was, where he came from, when he lived, where he lived, or whether he actually composed the Iliad and Odyssey, the foundation works of western literature. At one point, scholars doubted that he even existed, but the consensus today is that he was a real historical figure who lived in the 8th century BC. As far as I can tell, this consensus is based on just one source--the histories of Herodotus, who wrote that Homer lived around 400 years before his time.

There are other sources which place Homer as far back as the 12th century BC, closer to the time the Trojan War is thought to have taken place. It's all very murky, though.  The vague image we have of Homer is based on ancient writers who may or may not be reliable and who contradict each other in various ways. The only point of agreement is that Homer was a blind bard who lived on an island in the Mediterranean:

"According to a hymn written in honour of the god Apollo, [Homer] was a blind man from the island of Chios, in the eastern Mediterranean. Chios was home to a guild of poets, or rhapsodists, called the Homeridai, and seems to be one of the most likely candidates. However, many other Greek cities have also claimed to have been his home..." Source: PBS.

The image of Homer as a stern, bearded man with longish hair (as shown in the video) could be accurate, I suppose, but I have no idea how old these various busts are and his appearance could just be a convention, much like the popular images we have of Jesus and Socrates. Responding to the lack of information available in the ancient sources, scholars have tried to analyze the Iliad and Odyssey for clues about Homer's life, but this had led to more complications and controversy.

Some modern scholars have questioned the idea that the poems were written by the same author. Most argue that they weren't originally written down at all -- something Homer couldn't have done himself if he was blind -- but were the result of a long tradition of oral poets reciting by memory and improvising scenes as they went along. In other words, the poems were a group effort until Homer (or someone) finally put them into writing. If Homer was responsible, he would have had to dictate the poems from memory to someone who knew how to write. This scenario seems to be the standard view among scholars right now.

Another view is that the Iliad was written by one man, the Odyssey by another. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "most scholars [now] see each [of the poems] as the work of one author. Whether he was the same for both remains uncertain. They have a great deal of common phraseology, but the Odyssey is less archaic in language and more repetitive in content; it views the gods rather differently, and for a few common things it uses different words. Such changes might occur in the lifetime of one person. As nothing reliable is known about Homer, perhaps the question is not important." [Emphasis added]

I wish we knew more about Homer, but at the same time I like the fact that he's still a mystery. Now that the physical wilderness has almost disappeared except for a few unexplored regions at the bottom of the sea, the distant past is one of the few things left that remains unknown and mysterious. The ancient world, in many respects, is still terra incognita and I hope it remains that way. If we knew everything there is to know, we'd find ourselves living in a cognitive prison and life would lose a lot of its fascination.

Personally, I like to think that Homer lived in the 12th century BC, that he wrote both poems himself and that he composed the Iliad when he was younger and the Odyssey when he was older and more experienced. I don't have any evidence to support that, but it doesn't matter. When it comes to Homer, I'm a hopeless Romantic. Even if he was blind and illiterate in real life, I like to picture him back in the 12th century, hunched over a table in a small house on a Greek island somewhere, writing his epics on papyrus scrolls with a reed pen by the light of a torch or a brazier in the middle of the night.

Homeric Epics Written Around 762 BC?

Note: the image of Homer as a blind bard is now considered to be legendary.

"One of literature's oldest mysteries is a step closer to being solved. A new study dates Homer's The Iliad to 762 BCE and adds a quantitative means of testing ideas about history by analyzing the evolution of language." Source: Science Daily (2013).

Note: The researchers in this study "compared the Greek vocabulary in Homer's Iliad to modern Greek, relying on a 200-word lexicon found in every language and contrasting the distantly related Hittite as an indicator of divergence.

"Their methods date Homer's language to 762 BCE. The statistical model [according to one of the researchers] 'is completely ignorant to history -- it doesn't know who Homer is and doesn't know Greek.' Accordingly, the potential date ranges from the improbable extremes of 376 BCE to 1157 BCE. But the estimate attaches a robust likelihood to the date, and it ties nicely to Nestor's Cup, a vase dated to 723 BCE that is thought to carry an inscription from The Iliad."

Comment: I have no idea how reliable this study was, but the date the researchers came up with seems to fit (roughly) with the scanty evidence available. For instance, Herodotus, thought to have lived during the late fifth century BC, said that Homer lived 400 years before his time, i.e. sometime during the ninth or eighth centuries BC.  And Nestor's Cup, a wine cup discovered on the island of modern Ischia, has been dated to the eighth century BC. If the inscription on the vase is actually from the Iliad, then the epic must have been written before or around the same period when the vase was manufactured.

University Edits Classic Greek Poem To Avoid Offending Students

"Administrators at the University of Reading in England recently cut several lines referring to domestic violence from a classic Greek poem to avoid offending students." Source: The College Fix.

"The 2,000-year-old poem, Types of Women, by Semonides of Amorgos, is taught to first-year classics students at the school and makes reference to silencing women through violence.

"Documents obtained by The UK Daily Mail include a statement by school administrators:

"'The portion of the poem now omitted involved a brief reference to domestic violence,' read the statement. 'That portion has subsequently been removed because, while the text as a whole is vitriolic, that part seemed unnecessarily unpleasant and (potentially) triggering.'"

Comment: I'm amazed that this woke university department teaches Semonides at all. According to Wikipedia, "The first 94 lines [of his poem] describe ten women, or types of women: seven are animals, two are elements, and the final woman is a bee. Of the ten types of women in the poem, nine are delineated as destructive: those who derive from the pig, fox, dog, earth, sea, donkey, ferret, mare, and monkey. Only the woman who comes from the bee is considered to make a good wife [who probably doesn't exist]." The destructive women, variously described as fat, loathsome, amoral, lazy, sex-crazed, etc., are almost impossible to control. They won't stop their "barking" even if you smack them around or knock out their teeth with a stone and can only be subdued with extreme violence.

This is hilarious stuff. Highly recommended.

One translation of Types of Women can be found here.

Readings From The Odyssey In Reconstructed Ancient Greek

"Among speakers of Modern Greek, from the Byzantine Empire to modern Greece, Cyprus, and the Greek diaspora, Greek texts from every period have always been pronounced by using the contemporaneous local Greek pronunciation. That makes it easy to recognize the many words that have remained the same or similar in written form from one period to another. Among Classical scholars, it is often called the Reuchlinian pronunciation, after the Renaissance scholar Johann Reuchlin, who defended its use in the West in the 16th century." (Wikipedia)

"Nevertheless, Greek textbooks for secondary education give a summary description of the reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek."

Comment: I don't know how historically accurate they are, but there's something primordial and profound about these reconstructed Greek readings. I guess a lot of this effect depends on the reader, though. Next video is a different (I think) recording of the same material.

This particular recording (of the first rhapsody) is available from AncientGreek.eu, which provides audio recordings of ancient Greek texts. I'm not sure who the reader is, but he explained the approach he took with this particular recording:

"This recitation is trying to find a balance between dramatisation and metrical correctness. I’ve avoided excess on both sides: not to render it as mechanically rhythmic as it usually happens in educational context on all levels and, not over-dramatise it, as is often the case in live performances in larger venues. I hope this is a proper approach for this medium."

The Cyclopes

Clip from the 1958 classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with widescreen stop-motion animation by the legendary Ray Harryhausen.

Notes: The giant one-eyed Cyclopes are well-known from The Odyssey. "In Homer they are savage and pastoral, and live in a distant country without government or laws," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "... But in Hesiod, the Cyclopes ... are divine craftsmen who make Zeus his thunderbolt in gratitude for their release from imprisonment by their father Uranus (Heaven; their mother is Earth). They often appear ...  as Hephaestus' workmen, and often again are credited with making ancient fortifications ..."

The Cyclopes were worshiped in parts of the ancient Greek world, but this was apparently limited. According to the OCD, "their only known cult is on the Isthmus of Corinth, where they received sacrifices at their altar."

The clip above is from the best dramatization of the Odyssey I've seen so far -- the 1997 British-American miniseries starring Armand Asante. If you haven't seen this, you should check it out.

The cyclopes in Hesiod who forged Zeus's thunderbolt are apparently known as the Elder Cyclops or Kyklopes, according to Theoi Greek Mythology.  "The tribe of younger Kyklopes which Odysseus encountered on his travels were a different breed altogether, probably born from the blood of the castrated sky-god Ouranos [Uranus]."

In one version of the myth I've read, the Elder Cyclopes were so frightening that their father locked them away in Tartarus, "the deepest region of the underworld, lower even than Hades," according to the OCD. In another version, they were imprisoned by Cronus, "the youngest of the Titans, sons of Uranus and Gaia ..." (OCD).

According to Wikipedia, "when Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard. Zeus killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans."

I've always felt kind of sorry for Polyphemus, the cyclops in The Odyssey. The description of his blinding is absolutely incredible, though. The following excerpt is from the Fagles translation, Book 9: In The One-Eyed Giant's Cave. Click on the embedded player below. It's a lousy reading, but what do you expect? I'm no Wayne June.

Cyclops Blinding The Odyssey

First Victims Of Late Bronze Age Thera Eruption Discovered

Video from 2016. According to some theories, the massive Thera/Santorini eruption may have been responsible for the mysterious Bronze Age collapse which occurred between 1200 and 1150 BC.

"In a remarkable discovery, the first-ever in situ victims of one of the largest natural disasters witnessed in human history have been found some 3,500 years later." (Archaeology News Network)

"An articulated human and dog skeleton were discovered within tsunami debris along the Turkish coast. The remains date back to the Late Bronze Age Thera eruption (modern-day Santorini), according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Minoans, The Archaeological Evidence Of Decline

Lecture from 2020. Karl-James Langford. Archaeology CYRMU (Wales).

Note: The collapse of the Minoan civilization is often attributed to an explosive volcanic eruption that occurred on the island of Thera around 1600 BC. There's no question that the devastation caused by this eruption played a large role in the fall of Minoa, but it appears that the situation may have been more complex than that:

"Many archaeologists believe that the eruption triggered a crisis, making the Minoans vulnerable to conquest by the Mycenaeans. According to Sinclair Hood, the Minoans were most likely conquered by an invading force. Although the civilization's collapse was aided by the Thera eruption, its ultimate end came from conquest. Archaeological evidence suggests that the island was destroyed by fire, with the palace at Knossos receiving less damage than other sites on Crete. Since natural disasters are not selective, the uneven destruction was probably caused by invaders who would have seen the usefulness of preserving a palace like Knossos for their own use. Several authors have noted evidence that Minoan civilization had exceeded its environmental carrying capacity, with archaeological recovery at Knossos indicating deforestation in the region near the civilization's later stages." (Wikipedia)

2021 Underwater Survey Of Antikythera Shipwreck Concluded

Video from May, 2021.

"The Ministry of Culture and Sports announced the completion of the preliminary and exploratory works for the year 2021 on the Shipwreck of Antikythera. The new five-year underwater research programme is being conducted by the Swiss School of Archaeology under Dr. Angeliki G. Simosi, Head of the Euboea Ephorate of Antiquities and Lorenz E. Baumer, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Geneva." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"...The first expedition of the second five-year programme took place between October 1-10 and focused on a detailed mapping of the site of the Antikythera wreck and the creation of its complete photogrammetric three-dimensional model in high resolution."

 

France Promotes Teaching Of Ancient Greek & Latin To Fight "Wokeism"

It's impossible to be woke and speak classical Latin at the same time. Unfortunately, as shown in this clip from the TV series, Barbarians, it is possible to sound like a toothless whore trying to recite poetry if you don't speak with the correct accent.

"France’s education minister has announced plans to boost the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin in an effort to fight the proliferation of wokeism and 'develop the culture' of the country’s younger generations." Source: RT.

"Speaking on Monday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, a leading figure in France’s war on woke, said that ancient Greek and Latin would become available to sixth formers pursuing vocational courses next year, as well as middle school students.

"Blanquer wants sixth formers to have the opportunity to 'develop their culture' by reading ancient philosophers while gaining the technical qualifications that the economy demands."

Comment: This is a step in the right direction, but I'm afraid it's going to take more extreme measures to fight wokeism in France or anywhere else, for that matter.

Reconstructed ancient Greek pronunciation. Elegant and sophisticated, but not as bad-ass as classical Latin.

The Sound Of Ancient Languages

The ancient Greek in this video sounds very sophisticated. The Viking language sounds almost as hard-ass as classical Latin, while ancient Egyptian is incredibly sinister. It reminds me of the voice Eleanor hears through the wall in The Haunting -- the classic 1963 film, not the execrable 1999 remake.