OK, I am overwhelmed with conflicting information – the “why” of so many translations seem to be rooted in several factors – The big two that I find is: those who believe it is important to read the poem with a beat that our western ears will relate rather than the beat inherent to the old Greek and then, others who believe the question to prove [and with each new proof there must be an adjust to the translation] how the length of this story could be passed down intact much less remembered during the oral tradition.
The books I am getting the most information from are Michael Wood, ‘In Search Of the Trojan War’ and M.I. Finley’s, ‘The World of Odysseus’ and the intro to my copy of Fagles Odyssey.
First, let me get a few smaller bits of information out for us to chew on – After the time when Gods no longer shouted and spoke from mountain tops and sea floors as caretakers of the universe - the concept of rain was explained – seems the sky was considered a large inverted bowl that would spring leaks as holes were opened and so the concern - a large hole would open drowning/flooding the known world. Moreover, the known world was located in the middle of an endless sea of water that was held up by huge tree trunks with deep roots.
Michael Wood in his book, names all the heroes and their families from all the sources of antiquity and explains how each was killed off – the ’Age of Heroes’ was broken apart and destroyed, the god-like race of hero-men who lived between the Bronze Age and the age of Iron. Some of his litany of heroes include; Agamemnon, murdered by his wife. Menelaos and Odysseus along with Mopsus wander onto Anatolia where after they settle were attacked by pirates. Diomedes, Philoktetes and Idomeneus find new lands in Italy, Sicily and western Anatolia.
Thucydides in the 5th century tells of constant resettlements till finally the Greek-speaking peasantry from the north, Dorian’s mark the end of Agamemnon’s world and the Dark Age follows.
The belief that Ajax defiled Athena’s alter during the sack of Troy incurring her everlasting enmity, was so strong that as late as the 4th century BC barefoot maidens with shorn hair lived out their days like slaves in extreme poverty cleaning the precinct of Lokris.
Joseph, the Jewish historian of the first century AD writes that the Greeks have no accurate good source for their prehistoric past. Oral tradition was all they had to rely on. However, the Romans are fired up by the legend, as Alexander claimed ancestry for Achilles, Julius Caesar called the Trojan Aeneas his ancestor.
Justine worshipped the ‘old gods’ despite his uncle Constantine adopted Christianity as the official ‘state’ religion writing a letter hoping the hated ‘Galilean’ [Jesus] would not in the end conquer. When he travels to the city of Ilium Novum to make his offering of oil he is relived to find the Christian Bishop keeping the flame burning at the tomb of Achilles. The two take a stroll around the city swapping Homeric tags.
The early middle ages Christology rejects Homer as the devil’s entertainment. Byzantium is the enemy of Hellenism and Homer rests with the pagans. Knowledge of Greek almost vanished until the nineteenth century.
And yet, it is during the early middle ages in St. Marks in Venice we have the oldest known complete hand written copy of the Iliad created about AD 900. Also in Italy, the first printed edition of Homer was issued in Florence in 1488.
Most interesting, not long before the fall of Rome historian, Ammianus Marcellinus tells a story that fugitive Trojans settled in Gaul. The story served political ends. - In 550AD, the King of Italy was supposed to be related to these escaped Trojans. The story in Britain ties Wales as related by Nennius and the founder of Britain, Brutus was declared descended from Ilius popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth who has Brutus finding London as Troynovan. Most Elizabethan poets accept the story; the Tudors ascending the throne after Bosworth assume they will usher in the Golden Age.
Ok back to Homer’s poem – there are many scrapes of incomplete as well, as many as 6 separate stories showing up in pieces on numerous fragments of papyrus, a few as old as the 3rd century BC. Athenian Hipparchus in 6th C. BC, reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry.
M.I.Finley offers the dichotomy with each point of scholarship suggesting what is taken for granted by each school of thought cannot be backed up – However, recently we see words in published essays and Introductions saying, ‘suggesting a guiding hand’ ‘Building-blocks’ Bard or Poet’s ‘construct’ – All another way of suggesting the finding of Milman Parry is present.
Milman Parry demonstrates the influence of Darwin's publication of The Origin of Specieson the life sciences. Along with his assistant-successor Albert Lord, in1934 they meet a Serbian Bard, who chants a story as long as the Odyssey during a two week recital of two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon. He follows in the footsteps of a Nineteenth Century Bard from the Hindu Kush who shared this formula to “sing every song; for God has planted the gift of song in my heart”. – Neither of these Bards could read or write – To do this Parry finds they had at their disposal necessary raw material, that includes masses of incidents and formulas; the accumulation of generations of minstrels.
Chanting is not the language of everyday speech with a meter imposed including, repeated lines, [that many translators try to omit] an artificial word order and predicted rest stops during which time the orator is preparing the next episode.
Parry and Lord explain, the tales of ‘Mortal Heroes’ have a pattern that fit incidents of the coming of dawn and of night, scenes of combat, burial, feasting, drinking, dreaming – descriptions of palaces, meadows, arms, treasure - metaphors of the sea, pasturage, and so on… characteristic are incidents particular to the hero, strange grammatical forms and vocabulary evolves including an artificial dialect, which in the case of the Iliad and Odyssey no Greek ever spoke. He suggests the greater the accumulated material the greater the poet’s freedom.
He goes on to explain that the Greek world of the 8th and 7th centuries BC was mostly unlettered despite the introduction of the alphabet and therefore, literature continued to be oral. The men who could read were in the hundreds however, the stores were heard and re-heard by tens of thousands all over Hellas. In historical times, the ritual drama was most often performed during great festive occasions with professional reciters who lived, worked, and died within his tribe or community.
Traveling artists were important in Greece and were the first to take on the lack of political centralization diverging further and further from the original story to keep territorial disputes from erupting until the 4th century AD when Solon prescribed Homer in a fixed order.
Both Finely and Wood sound so authoritarian in their conclusions that I am struck when I read others who have different opinions – first I check to see when their article was written thinking it was before Parry and Lord – but no – and so I think we have landed ourselves in a scholar’s soup du jour – they are still sorting opinions until more conclusive evidence is discovered.
