Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski
I took the technical route of education and in all my years of schooling I never once had an assignment to read any of the classics. That makes me somewhat of a dummy in this crowd so I thought I would at least start to cover some basics. Hence, I recently bought a copy of the Illiad and just finished it yesterday. At SU's recommendation, I bought the Stanley Lombardo translation. It's an extremely modern translation, i.e., uses contemporary expressions that may offend some purists (so I hear, anyway). I haven't read any other translations, so I am not able to compare, but I did enjoy it. When I was wading through some of the more boring parts (and there are plenty), I at least could appreciate the lively writing style.
Anyway, I have a few observations/questions. Be gentle with me and try to contain your laughter and ridicule.
1) I kept expecting to read about the trojan horse. Does that come in the Odyssey?
2) The constant intervention of the gods took me a while to get used to. Every time a fight started to get exciting, a god would swoop down from Olympus and mess it up. It was interesting to note that the characters didn't seem to get too upset about the meddling. Just took it in stride. Even when they knew they were about to die.
3) I thought the best part of the book was the battle between Hector and Achilles. I am not sure why, but I was struck by the story-telling, imagery, and drama as Achilles was chasing Hector around the gates of Troy and cutting off his escape.
4) That Achilles was one bad-ass warrior. Dragging Hector's body around and trying to get the dogs to eat it rather than hand it over. Sacrificing twelve young Trojan boys to honor his fallen friend. Killing people as they begged to be spared.
5) Next time I am going to read the introduction after finishing the book. Not only did it go through the entire story-line (thus spoiling some parts for me), but it would have been more meaningful after finishing the book.
6) In the introduction, it said that both the Illiad and the Odyssey were handed down orally and not put into written form for several hundred years. Did I read that correctly? It's hard for me to believe that such a long story (500 pages in this case) full of such vivid detail could survive in oral form.
On to the Odyssey.
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I just discussed question 6 with one of the professors of our classics department. It isn't likely that the word for word text was memorized and preserved for so long intact. We've seen just a few of the problems of textual transmission with the New Testament-- the chances of the Iliad or the Odyssey being better preserved are negligible.
The stories themselves, on the other hand, were undoubtedly handed down in oral form. The Trojan Wars (or, at the very least, the events that inspired the stories of the Trojan Wars) would have taken place between 1300 BC and 1200 BC. Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey around 800 BC-- it's likely that he simply was the guy who wrote the story in its epic form. This, incidentally, argues all the more in favor of a single composer, which sheds some light on the so-called
Homeric Question.
And speaking of which, I just can't resist an old zinger:
"The Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name"