Odyssey - The Far West of Ancient Sailing (original) (raw)

History versus the Homeric "Iliad": A View from the Ionian Islands

The Classical World, 2006

is every Mycenaean scholar's passion. .. but if one thing is more certain than another in dealing with Greece, it is that every generation, let alone century or millennium, saw changes more profound than the simple classicist likes to acknowledge. It seems more honest, even refreshing, not to invoke Homer as decoration or instruction.' Four decades since Emily Vermeule made this cautious remark in the preface to her Greece in the Bronze Age (1964), we may acknowledge the fact that Homer is still an object of passion for most endeavors into the Mycenaean world. The debate over the historicity of Homer (whether the poems attributed to him reflect certain historical conditions and when these can be dated) has not ceased to absorb scholarly thought. It is a fact that an attempt to interpret and confirm Homer as a historical work was a major driving force in Aegean prehistoric research during the pre-World War II years. In tracing patterns of connection between the world of the poems and that documented by archaeological data, some scholars have attempted to examine differences and similarities between habitation patterns revealed by archaeological surveys or regional studies and relevant information stated or implied in various sections of the epic, most notably the so-called "Catalogue of Ships" (NqCov KU,TAo'yos, I. 2.483-760).2 Following this line of thought, the present A short version of this paper was included in a lecture on the problems of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age period in the Ionian Islands at the seminar entitled "Potters and Pottery Workshops in the Aegean: Late 13th century to 800 B.C.," directed by N. Kourou and N. Sgouritsa (Department of Archaeology and Art History, University of Athens) in January 2003. 1 thank them both for discussion and encouragement, as well as G. S. Korres (Department of Archaeology and Art History, University of Athens) for his continuous interest. Thanks are also extended to Theodora Konstantinidi for checking my English. 1 am also grateful to Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood (University College, Dublin) for a discussion on the ideas presented in this text. The author is also grateful to the editor and the two anonymous referees of CW for their remarks on an earlier draft of this text. Naturally, I remain solely responsible for any error or misconception, which may be included here. The title of this article is derived from Sir Denys Page's History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959). E. T. Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago 1964) x. 2 See, for instance, T. W. Allen, The Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Oxford 1921); D. L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad, Sather Classical Lectures 31 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959); A. Giovannini, Ltude Historique sur les Origines du Catalogue des Vaisseaux, Travaux publies sous les auspices de la Societe Suisse des Sciences Humaines (Beme 1969); and especially R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford 1970). The most recent critical work on the 371 I See E. S. Sherratt's "Reading the Texts: Archaeology and the Homeric Question," Antiquity 64 (1990) 808, for a brief overview of most past approaches, which cover most current trends. Special reference to some of the works cited by Sherratt is made here only if appropriate to the subject of the paper. 8 0. T. P. K. Dickinson, "Homer, the poet of the Dark Age," G&R 33.1 (1986) 20-37. The identification of Homer's world as essentially "Dark Age" (tenth to ninth centuries B.C.) had been proposed by Sir Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus, rev. ed. (London 1956). For the most recent historiography of the problem, see the forthcoming paper by S. P. Morris, "The Iron Curtain: Homer, Finley and the Bronze Age," in the Proceedings of the Eleventh International Aegean Conference (above, n.2). Dickinson (above, n.8) 24. 10 Dickinson (above, n.8) 23-30. '5 See Hope Simpson and Lazenby (above, n.2) on a Mycenaean date (although not of a specific period); Dickinson (above, n.8) on an Early Iron or Dark Age date; J. K. Anderson, "The Geometric Catalogue of Ships," in J. B. Carter and S. P. Morris, eds., The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin 1995) on a Geometric date; and Giovannini (above, n.2) on a late Iron Age date (seventh century B.C.). "6 This remark originally referred to the date of composition of the Odyssey. See Page (above, n.6) 192. '4 Along with the already mentioned aspect of Early Iron Age monumentality (e.g., the Lefkandi elaborate apsidal building). " Dickinson (above, n.8) 21.

The Odyssey, the Black Sea, and an Endless Voyage to a Utopian Destination

This paper examines an aspect of the broader issue of the geography of the Odyssey, the primary stimulus being the references of the poem to places that could be associated with the Black Sea, namely the Aeaea and the entrance to the Underworld. As we shall see, while these particular places are indeed relevant to the Black Sea region, they do not belong to the context of a specific journey with specific halts in a specific geographical sequence. The Odyssey is a synthesis of many different episodes, and there is no point in trying to trace a complete geographical course for Odysseus' voyage.

'Field notes from the Odyssey: the fabulous ethnography of Aiolie, Aiaie, and Ogygie'

Mare Nostrum, vol. 12.v, pp.1-20, 2021

Odysseus’ ethnographic digressions in books 9-12 of the Odyssey—the so- called Apologue—have served as the premier paradigm for mythic and actual ethnography from Herodotus through Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, and more particularly, for the ‘I-witnessing approach’ of ethnography. Among the peoples and lands and styles of thinking he encountered (Odyssey 1.3), the hero also became acquainted with several islands. As microcosms of larger societies, islands furnish ‘master metaphors’ and models with which to think about culture. In this article I discuss three islands from the Apologue in the chronological order of Odysseus’ travels. They are inseparable from their geography and the personality and ‘life style’ of their inhabitants, as will be seen; these islands adumbrate the moral and gendered mythic cartography of Archaic Greece.

The Ideology of Seafaring in the Odyssey and Telemachos' Hanging of the Slave Girls (Od. 22,461-474)

Mediterranean Connections. How the Sea Links People and transforms Identities, 2023

This article offers a new interpretation of the much-debated hanging of the unfaithful maidservants by Telemachos in book 22 of the Odyssey. It is based upon a historical approach to the Homeric Society (7th century BCE), which attached integral importance to the representation of one's social rank, and an analysis of the Homeric Society's perception and evaluation of the sea, showing why the seafaring man was held in high esteem. Both aspects are combined with a close reading of the scene in question to demonstrate that the extreme punishment of the maids is unavoidable and that Telemachos' hanging of the slave girls-which is a change from Odysseus' original order to decapitate them-is a well-calculated act by a young man who has increased his personal prestige by the successful overseas voyage and therefore needs to demonstrate his new standing symbolically. It is thus shown how fundamentally the mastering of the sea-with all of the difficulties involved and resulting profits-is the essential element in the Odyssey and in this particular scene. Telemachos, Homeric society, hospitality networks, prestige and representation Odysseus, the most intelligent and cleverest of all Greek heroes, is the protagonist of the Odyssey, one of the oldest pieces of Greek literature. 2 The well-known ruler of the island Ithaca invented the famous wooden horse, outplayed the gigantic

Ithaca Beyond Homer: A Classical and Hellenistic Polis

J. Pascual and M. V. García Quintela (eds). Greek Landscapes, Gerión 40/2, pp. 495-527 , 2022

Beyond the Bronze Age and Geometric Period through landscape analysis and the GIS, we can prove that the polis of Ithaca in the Classical and Hellenistic periods was characterized by the expansion of the settlements, and the construction of numerous fortifications, so that once this process had concluded, all of the cultivable land on the island was brought into play and all of the population centers would have been interconnected and visual surveillance would have existed throughout all parts of the island liable to be exploited. In short, Ithaca was an independent city-state community fully structured from a political, religious and economic point of view that was flourishing and expanding during the Classical and Hellenistic Periods.