[rellic]

One thing right off the bat!
“In the seventh century BCE, the Greek poet Homer wrote the Odyssey.”
Poets didn’t write, back then it was all told from memory.

Somebody later on wrote it down and as was tradition attributed the writings to the original story teller.
Not to themselves.

I love these stories and they inspired generations of people.
I checked my library and I still have the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Right next to Moby Dick!

[nickcarraway]

He had a prototype of a typewriter.

[PeterPrinciple]

Poets didn’t write, back then it was all told from memory.

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and because it was told from memory it used vivid words, pictures to tell the story.

They would imagine a room for example, have different objects in the room would remind of parts of the story. The teller would walk through the story in his mind.

We ,if doing it right. will create a word picture or emotion to help us remember a name.

[odawg]

“Poets didn’t write, back then it was all told from memory.”

Yes, I heard that but I don’t believe it. The ancient poets, earlier than that, wrote their poetry down. The Egyptians wrote literature strictly for entertainment and we still have them. In fact, all the earlier civilizations wrote in poetry but the Egyptians wrote in prose, which is why we have the Old Testament in prose. The Israelites picked up the method from the Egyptians.

700 B C would be approximately about the time of the Book of Judges in Israel’s history, more or less.

And it is obvious to me Homer wrote down his writings himself.

Homer’s writngs were the Greek’s scripture, and they used his writings as textbooks in school and developed a great civilizaton with them.