Re: Info: The Trojan War

[edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com]

Poster: edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com

> >  Let's take the Trojan War as a good example:
> >
> >  The TW was basically fought by maybe a couple of hundred guys TOTAL and
> >  lasted MAYBE a couple of days, and it MIGHT have started over a woman.
> >  So somebody [Homer] says to himself, [in Greek of course]"Hey!  This
> >  sounds like a cool novel in the works!"  and proceeds to write _The
> >  Iliad_.  I suspect that somebody paid him to pretty it up.
>
> [...]
> The Trojan War was fought between Troy and all of Mycenian (sp) Greece.
> Mycenian Greece was about the third largest power of the region at that time.
>
> Besides, having seen the diagrams of the City of Troy at Hissilik, I
> really don't think it was successfully defended by less then a hundred
> men.  And seiges tend to last MUCH longer then two days...
>
> Besides, Homer didn't WRITE anything.  He was a rote bard, who learned
> and probably vastly improved the story of the Illiad, but who was
> supposedly blind, and couldn't write.

The way I heard it, it wasn't just his blindness that kept him from
writing, but also the fact that writing itself was a lost art in his
day; that is, Odysseus et al. had writing (Linear B) that Homer speaks
of, but he can't imagine how it worked, and the Greek writing system
had to be reinvented (or re-borrowed from the Semites) centuries
after Homer.

Or am I mistaken?

-- Alfredo
 
Alfredo el Bufon
Elvegast, Windmaster's Hill, Atlantia
edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com
______________________________________

Mens regnum bona possidet (A good mind possesses a kingdom).
                    --Seneca: Thyestes, ii. 380.

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