Posted on 01/05/2015 1:09:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In Why Homer Matters, historian and award-winning author Adam Nicolson suggests that Homer be thought of not as a person but as a tradition and that the works attributed to him go back a thousand years earlier than generally believed.
Speaking from his home in England, Nicolson describes how being caught in a storm at sea inspired his passion for Homer, how the oral bards of the Scottish Hebrides may hold the key to understanding Homer's works, and why smartphones are connecting us to ancient oral traditions in new and surprising ways...
About ten years ago, I set off sailing with a friend of mine. We wanted a big adventure, so we decided to sail up the west coast of the British Isles, the exposed Atlantic coast, visiting various remote islands along the way. I had thrown into my luggage a copy of The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, having never really looked at Homer for about 25 years.
We had a rough time. Our instruments broke, and it had been a big hike from Cornwall. Lying in my bunk tied up next to a quay in southwest Ireland, I opened this book and found myself confronted with what felt like the truth -- like somebody was telling me what it was like to be alive on Earth, in the figure of Odysseus.
Odysseus is the great metaphor for all of our lives: struggling with storms, coming across incredibly seductive nymphs, finding himself trapped between impossible choices. I suddenly thought, This is talking to me in a way I would never have guessed before.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
“....no weaker Authority than the ingenious Pindar’s the Prince of the Lyricks: He lets us know , that the Homeridae ( a family in Chios, thought to be desended from our Poet) followed the occupation of their Founder, and were for the most part ,what he calls Singers of flowing Verse....”
“....but the Composition of one Cynaethus; a Chian too, and a great Rhapsodist, who has the honour to be the first man to sing Homer’s Works in Sicily; and who is said to have been the author of a good many of the Verses, that pass under the poet’s name in the Iliad and Odyssey. These Poems. they tell you , Homer did not commit to writting himself; but his posterity in Chios, and the Rhapsodists whoo were for ever repeating , had got them by heart; and his Cynaethus, their chief, while he preserved Homer’s Verses, and put them together , did intermix a good many of his own invention......”
(Thomas Blackwell, 1757)
The Ancients are convinced of his existence.
The second paragraph adds credence to the ‘Ghost writer” theory.
It doesn’t prove anything beyond all reasonable doubt ,but has a certain plausibility to it ,imho. :)
I solved that question long ago doing rock-solid genetic research on y Amiga computing machine.
The man we know as "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (or II)" is not, as many think, the scion of a long line of Luo involuntary personnel agents, recruiting talent for Arab enterprises. He is beyond shadow of scientific doubt,
This of course, was well known to the Bilderbergers, the Tri-Lateral Commision, NATO, and the UN. You see, if we did not accept him (in two exciting elections) as our King (or POTUS), the Louisiana Purchase would become invalid and we would have to return most of the United States to France.
I had full documentation on this and conclusive DNA, but it went down in the crash of a small commuter plane off the coast of Hawaii. I preserved my work on the Hard Drive of the Amiga and will shortly be cutting 45 RPM records for those who need a copy for their own files.
Like the Chicken or Egg, we will never know, but it must be churned over in case of a Eureka moment.
The guy NEVER answers his texts. His Facebook page is broken and he hasn't Tweeted in 2800 years. They're gonna close his account if he keeps this stuff up.
You see part of the reason that the library was so big was that they had a scriptorium.
They did not have just one copy of their books but many. That way every time there was a fire they could refurnish the library. People in the town also had major libraries of works and any ship that came through was asked if they had any new books on board and copies where made of those books.
The Library's collection was dynamic, constantly growing and expanding.
So no, the ancient books were not destroyed centuries before they were still in the Library until the the Caliph of Baghdad decided to burn all of them with the exception of the books by Aristotle.
Another explanation of these phrases, I think from Albert Lord's book, is that they fit into the pattern of rhythm for the poetry. "Wine-dark sea" likewise.
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