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Author Says a Whole Culture -- Not a Single 'Homer' -- Wrote 'Iliad,' 'Odyssey'
National Geographic ^
| January 4, 2015
| Simon Worrall
Posted on 01/05/2015 1:09:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv
click here to read article
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1
posted on
01/05/2015 1:09:44 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...
2
posted on
01/05/2015 1:10:42 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
To: SunkenCiv
3
posted on
01/05/2015 1:14:29 PM PST
by
Red Badger
(If you compromise with evil, you just get more evil..........................)
To: Red Badger
4
posted on
01/05/2015 1:17:55 PM PST
by
jonatron
To: SunkenCiv
Oh... so the Muslims did that, too?
5
posted on
01/05/2015 1:19:45 PM PST
by
MrB
(The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
To: SunkenCiv
6
posted on
01/05/2015 1:23:49 PM PST
by
Scrambler Bob
(/s /s /s /s /s, my replies are "liberally" sprinkled with them behind every word and letter.!)
To: SunkenCiv
He can say that if he wants to. Doesn’t make it true ... no, not even if it’s in a book.
7
posted on
01/05/2015 1:24:19 PM PST
by
Tax-chick
(Start the new year right: donate to Free Republic and adopt a kitten!)
To: SunkenCiv
Yeah and JEDP wrote the books of Moses in the Bible. Whatever.
I have 0% confidence in our corrupt “betters” in Academia.
8
posted on
01/05/2015 1:26:58 PM PST
by
jtal
(St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle ....)
To: SunkenCiv
It took a village to write that article.
9
posted on
01/05/2015 1:29:01 PM PST
by
DannyTN
To: SunkenCiv
Another interesting source is The Singer of Tales, by Albert Lord. Trying to understand Homer by studying oral epic poems from the Balkans, collected in the 1930s
To: SunkenCiv
"3,000 years haven't changed the human condition"
Much depends on culture. Islam worships violence. The age of reason may be associated with the renaissance, but it's generally endemic with western civilization, having a lot to do with the Greeks and the Jews. I've a copy of The Odyssey, unread for years. It's a shame that most of Homer's works were probably lost when the religion of peace burned down the Library of Alexandria and murdered its librarian. I guess it didn't contain enough copies of the Quran.
11
posted on
01/05/2015 1:31:00 PM PST
by
Telepathic Intruder
(The only thing the Left has learned from the failures of socialism is not to call it that)
To: Red Badger
12
posted on
01/05/2015 1:32:52 PM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
To: DannyTN
To: Tax-chick
Shakespeare used Petrarch so he didn’t write Julius Ceaser. FedEx use ATC so Fred Smith didn’t build that. Apple uses Al Gore’s internet so Steve Jobs didn’t build that.
I do added that Homer matters.
To: Red Badger
You beat everybody to it.
15
posted on
01/05/2015 1:37:21 PM PST
by
dfwgator
To: SunkenCiv
We went at this one for the better part of a week in my last Greek Civ class. Yes, these were oral poems that at last somebody wrote down, my Professor's opinion being that it was probably two somebodies a half century or so apart (he joked that the second guy was Jethro and nobody got it). They were never performed twice precisely alike, but there are recurring phrases, e.g. "rosy-fingered dawn", that serve as memory anchors. That said, whoever did finally commit them to script was an artist of the highest order.
The Iliad, as the article indicates, is a beautiful poem of brutal and savage behavior, and it is very obvious that the narrator considers that the losers were the more civilized people: Priam, pleading with Achilles for the body of his son Hector, tore at Greek hearts (and presumably Greek consciences) as well as ours; what little redemption one finds in Achilles stems from his change of heart in the face of that honest grief. That did not stop the assembled horde from burning Troy and enslaving the survivors, nor from casting Hector's infant son from the walls. What is remarkable is not that this "happened", nor that it was recorded, what is remarkable is that the Greek audience considered it savagery themselves.
To: Tax-chick
Actually it probably is true. The identity of, much less existence of, Homer is a long standing quandary. And most folks that are deep into the history think there probably was no Homer.
17
posted on
01/05/2015 1:43:51 PM PST
by
discostu
(The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
To: SunkenCiv
Modern scholars have determined that The Iliad and The Odyssey were not, in fact, written by Homer, but rather by another ancient Greek who had the same name.
18
posted on
01/05/2015 1:45:17 PM PST
by
rmh47
(Go Kats! - Got eight? NRA Life Member])
To: SunkenCiv
My question is what is new in this assertion? Its been a while since I read Iliad and the Odyssey but I was under the impression that Homer was not in any way the originator of that story but was essentially building on what was a preexisting history. The best estimates for Homers birth date places him 168 years after the fall of Troy. The best way to put this in context is to take for a moment the Civil War which began 154 years ago. Also Plato referred to Homer directly in his Republic as educator of all Greece so it would take a lot to convince me that Homer wasn’t important. The fact that we still discuss him today shows his literary importance. That said I’ve always been skeptical of “such and such describes all humanity” tropes. How can a description of a human conflict not encompass the culture it takes place in? However saying that any one writing captures the essence of everything about a culture and or humanity at large is to ignore the varied and the changing nature of culture.
19
posted on
01/05/2015 1:51:21 PM PST
by
Maelstorm
(Liberty is not something that is taken. It exists naturally in the absence of bureaucracy.)
To: SunkenCiv
Homer is an example of an author with an integrated mode of thought. His epic is the first work we know of to present a plot that integrates a story’s events from start to finish. Its events occur as or within a carefully structured progression; they follow from previous events and lead to inevitable consequences. The events are not juxtaposed, but united into a plot.
20
posted on
01/05/2015 1:54:20 PM PST
by
mjp
((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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