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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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How, like, preexisting are we talking though? The Trojan War (supposedly) happened some 400-500 years before the Odyssey and the Iliad reached their moden forms. Even if they were stories that were passed down from the conflict till their final form, you'd still expect to see massive change as successive cultures inserting their own values and re-interpretations. It's taken us far less long to re-do many of our classic books and movies in ways that fit with our evolving culture.

Or put otherwise, the Greeks of the Dark Ages had forgotten how their ancestors read and wrote, forgot how they built their architecture, forgot how they sustained urban life or organized their societies, but we're sure they didn't forget anything else?

What archeological evidence do we have from then? Honest question I don't much about it. I also don't know anything about The Tale of Sinuhe, would definitely be interested to learn more.

The indo-european expansion is reasonably well archeologically studied, and physical evidence shows that it involved lots of raping/sexual slavery and destroying of settlements. There are also remains in the southern Levant showing that the conquests of the bible happened more or less similarly to how the bible says they did. Obviously these two topics attract a lot of archeological attention, but Troy was, notably, destroyed in war and filled with human remains in the year calculated by Jerome based off of the bible and Greek mythology, as well.

I don't think anyone actually knows for sure how preexisting oral tradition is to the actual writing of the Trojan cycle. We can, however, be pretty sure on the basis of archaicisms in the Greek that it wasn't written from scratch by Homer.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Story_of_Sinuhe

So I misremembered- he didn't join the indo-europeans. Just a random tribe in Canaan. And it was probably fictionalized but discussing very real behavior. So yes, weaker evidence than I thought it was, but still directionally correct.

One thing that's pretty remarkable is that the Greek bards were able to pass down the story of the Trojan War for 500 years or so without access to written records. At one point, historians thought that the ancient Troy was surely mythical. Then it was unearthed by a German archaeologist in the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad

My general bias is to doubt the validity of orally transmitted information. But the Greek bards did have methods to preserve information fidelity, such as cadence and epithets. Think of these as a sort of "check sum" that would allow data to be transmitted with less error.

If I recall correctly, there were some other details that the Iliad gets right. For example (and this is from memory) I believe that chariots were mentioned as a method of warfare. This would have been true in the Bronze Age, but not 500 years later when the Iliad was first written down.

If I recall correctly, there were some other details that the Iliad gets right. For example (and this is from memory) I believe that chariots were mentioned as a method of warfare. This would have been true in the Bronze Age, but not 500 years later when the Iliad was first written down.

On the flip side, I've heard that most of the tech is more rooted in their modern era, and the period-accurate stuff is more the exception:

[The Iliad's] final form was probably secured in the 700-600s BC, and most of the technology, art, and so forth described in the poem matches the archeology of this period. But hidden in the Iliad are remnants of an earlier era. The third slide of this presentation includes an image of a boar tusk helmet dug up from a 14th century BC archaeological site and a passage from the Iliad describing this same sort of helmet. Its appearance in the narrative would be something like a galleon from the Spanish Armada appearing in a World War II drama.

Interesting point that the rigid structure of the poetry might make it easier to keep the story preserved via strict guardrails.

What are “epithets” in this context? Is there published research or articles on this checksumming process?

Epithets were descriptors of a character in epic poetry which appeared repeatedly throughout the poem- swift Achilles, pious Aeneas, wise Odysseus, etc, etc.

The other attraction of epithets is that they scan well. For example, wise Odysseus is polumetis odysseus in the original greek, which has the syllable pattern short-short-long-short short-long-long. The standard second half of a hexameter is long-short-short, long-short-short, long-long, so wise Odysseus fills out a line-end nicely.

This refers to nicknames or descriptors such as "wrathful Achilles" and (I think) "wine dark sea" which appear repeatedly in the text. I'm not a classicist, and I don't have any privileged access to research, but I believe it's speculated that these were intended to maintain cadence and help with memory.

For example, let's say I am reciting the epic poem of Donald Trump. I can't remember if this section is about Hillary Clinton or the New York Times. Knowing that it's "Lying Hillary", and the "Failing New York Times" might help me to keep it straight, especially if we're to maintain a cadence.

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