Re: Info: The Trojan War

[Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>]

Poster: Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>


On Fri, 23 Aug 1996 edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com wrote:
> 

> > 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?
> 
Probably not.  DeCamp records that there were at least a dozen Greek epics
like the Iliad and Odyssey -- the conclusion of the seige, the homecomings
of the various leaders, and whole other cycles like the sagas of Herakles
and of the Argonauts.  Homer got preserved by the accident of being picked
for public readings at one of the Panathenaias under Perikles: they had to
make written copies so the actors could learn their lines.  The others we
only know about because of the Greek practice of quoting with credit,
which literary men did to show how erudite they were.  Vanity has its
uses...

|---------Master Vuong Manh, C.P., Storvik, Atlantia---------|
|Now, let's stop and think: how would Bugs Bunny handle this?|
|----------------(dickeney@access.digex.net)-----------------|




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