
The extra­ordinary influence of the Iliad and Odyssey - pepys
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/measure-of-homer-review/
======
netcan
I'm fascinated by old stories. Stories are the oldest medium, and they've
proven to be surprisingly good stores of information. Erik the Red was real,
and he navigated to lands across the ocean just like the old stories said he
did.

I think the writer sells short the comparison of Homer to the bible. It goes a
lot deeper than "the one book everyone knows."

Homer is often thought to be describing events during the bronze dark age, the
period between the collapse of middle eastern bronze age empires and the rise
of iron age empires (like the greek one).

This is what the bible is too, to a large extent. The exodus, judges, King
David, prophets, heros... Stories about the legendary dark age written by
decendants during the early iron age.

As civilization (and population) re-grew these stories formed a cultural core.
Judeans got swept into the aramean, babylonian, persian and later hellenic
empires. The library of knowledge grew enourmously. But, the old stories still
remained at the heart of the cultural.

Something similar happenned in greece. Greeks civilisation grew. greek
scholarship got advanced, and worldly. They later created a world empire,
existed under the roman empire. Still the stories remained, a stable
foundation for more culture to graft onto.

In both cases, we have stories from the bronze age, that somehow remained
important enough for _100 generations_ to remain at the heart of cultures
today. Stories of desert nomads and aegean pirates on the margins of
civilisation.

~~~
beaconstudios
perhaps because the messages they carry transcend time. Fundamentally many of
the old stories we still value have moral or philosophical components that are
foundational to our cultures.

~~~
watwut
What does that mean, practically? For Odysseus for example, what foundational
message does it have? I read it and it was interesting and even fun, I don't
know what philosophical or moral component you have in mind. It had nuanced
characters, but even that seems to be ignored by our popular culture which
focuses exclusively on sirens and such.

~~~
christudor
Not the OP, but surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the
Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the
girl, the bad guys lose.

~~~
forapurpose
> surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea
> that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys
> lose.

There's nothing good about Odysseus; he's a bad person and, IMHO, one of the
most annoying, obnoxious personalities in literature. He leads his group
around murdering and pillaging, not to mention using and manipulating - he's
renowned for his lying and trickery. He gets his men killed over and over due
to his capricious, pointless acts of ego - at one point much of his fleet is
sunk and men die because he pointlessly taunts enemies as they sail away. But
if someone should act against him, he switches to victimhood and moral outrage
- poor Odysseus! All his troubles and tribulations!

In the end he returns home alone, having gotten all his men killed, and
encounters the 'suitors', who presume that with him missing for 20 years,
likely he won't return. They are peaceably [EDIT: up to a point then that
changed; see the reply below], though obnoxiously in some ways, competing to
see who gets his throne and his wife's hand - leaving the choice to her [EDIT:
though as the reply below states, she is being forced to marry one of them;
she can't say no]. He slaughters them all, indiscriminately, for their
presumption. The slave girls (did I mention that he takes and keeps slaves?)
that are suspected (there is no trial or evidence or anything more than
someone's accusation) of the grave crime of dalliances with the suitors, he
unceremoniously has a rope wrapped around all their necks and hangs them
together. Then he says, we need to replenish our stocks - depleted so unfairly
by the mean suitors! - so we'll soon set out to raid and steal them.

Is this a good man? Did the good guy win? The Odyssey is a rich story of and
study in personality and in human relations, and in politics; it's not at all
about justice.

~~~
watwut
You left out that suitors are planning to kill Telemachus, son of Penelope and
Odysseus. That is not a minor detail. The suitors are described as abusive.
Penelope does not want them there and Telemachus does not want them there.
Both complain about suitors wasting house resources, killing animals, giving
nothing useful in return and slowly bankrupting household. Pretty much any
character complains about their behavior.

Penelope does not want any of them, she is however forced to choose.
Telemachus ask them to leave the house openly, they refuse and treat him
badly.

Penelope wants Odysseus come home soon and hopes for him coming home, because
only him is assumed to be able to get suitors out of house. So much for
Penelope _freely_ choosing from them.

Odysseus is pirate and warlord through and poem is not hiding it. It is about
warlord without glorifying the said warlord the way action movies tend to
glorify similar characters.

~~~
forapurpose
> You left out that suitors are planning to kill Telemachus, son of Penelope
> and Odysseus. ... Penelope does not want any of them, she is however forced
> to choose.

Agreed, those are major omissions on my part (due to writing quickly and not
thinking it through, sorry). However, they don't change my overall point. The
worst person in the story is Odysseus (unless I'm overlooking some secondary
character), who would have done the same and worse, and if there was any
justice he would have been captured, tried, and imprisoned long ago - by the
Trojans before the story began, in fact.

> Pretty much any character complains about their behavior.

That's not a reason to murder people. Also, the narrator is very sympathetic
to Odysseus and makes his enemies unlikable, as narrators do. I take the
narrator's depictions of them with a grain of salt.

~~~
watwut
Only suitors are so unlikeable. The other characters are either described by
Odysseus himself or not nearly as much unlikeable. And also, narrator describe
moments when one of suitors attempt to calm their behavior. I don't think
narrator goes out of way as contemporary "narrators do". This is imo where
Odysseus is different then action movies and adventure books, altrough people
project that attitude on the poem.

The characters complains are concrete and provide multiple vitnesses to the
abuse. The suitors are described to be abusive, threaten people living in
house, mistreat them, kill animals and refuse to leave with open threat of
violence if you try to make them leave.

The good innocent boys interpretation is not supported by the text, even if
you mistrust the narrator. You can make that case about cyclop where Odysseus
is intruder, but not about suitors.

~~~
forapurpose
> The good innocent boys interpretation

That's not at all what I'm saying. I don't think we disagree very much.

------
christudor
I wish reviewers would stop latching on to the concept of “relevance” when
describing the merits of an ancient text. Such a strangely utilitarian way of
thinking about literature, as if its value lies in what it can do for us
today.

Also, this seems to me to be utterly unfounded: “Which poem is better, the
Iliad or the Odyssey? I don’t have hard numbers to back this up, but today it
seems pretty clear that the Odyssey wins hands down in the mass popularity
stakes.“

~~~
jasode
_> Also, this seems to me to be utterly unfounded: “Which poem is better, the
Iliad or the Odyssey? I don’t have hard numbers to back this up, but today it
seems pretty clear that the Odyssey wins hands down in the mass popularity
stakes.“_

The _" which is better"_ is unanswerable but in terms of _popularity_ , the
evidence seems to show that The Odyssey is more well-known to _today 's_
readers.

One reason is that many USA high schools use The Odyssey instead of the The
Iliad in reading assignments.

As for another datapoint to popularity, compare the number of ratings &
reviews of The Odyssey (~760k) vs The Iliad (~305k) on Goodreads[1][2].
Similar popularity differences can be found on Amazon for other translations.

The 2004 film _Troy_ may have increased awareness of The Iliad but it still
seems like The Odyssey is more popular.

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey)

[2]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad)

~~~
koboll
The Odyssey is the archetype for an entire genre of "road trip" stories
throughout history. It's also, more broadly, a key point of influence for many
aspects of the Campbellian hero's journey. The Iliad simply hasn't exerted the
same level of influence on storytelling.

~~~
simonh
That’s probably true, The Odyssey is a coherent story with a single
protagonist and works better as a whole narrative. The Iliad is really a
collection of stories, but taken together it’s a treasure trove of characters,
events and ideas.

The Golden Apple, the beauty contest of the goddesses, Helen’s elopement with
Paris, the Greeks burning their boats, the story of Achilles and his famous
vulnerable spot and death, the wooden horse, the destruction of Troy.

Its a huge fund of anecdotes, sayings and archetypes that infuse western
society.

~~~
christudor
Most of the stories you mention in relation to the Iliad don't actually appear
in the Iliad, you know.

Also, if anything can be described as "a collection of stories", it strikes me
that Books 9-12 of the Odyssey (Odysseus' stories about the Cyclops, the
Laestrygonians, the Lotus-Eaters, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cattle of the Sun,
etc.) fit the bill much better than anything in the Iliad.

------
rezmason
Sidenote:

In the past, if you were wealthy and powerful, or nationalistic, you'd try to
trace your ancestry or your people's lineage back to Troy. Caesar did it, the
Habsburgs did it, and so did Trithemius, for some reason.

That is Johannes Trithemius, a 14th and 15th century librarian and abbot with
a marked interest in the occult. (Turns out he was also an early practitioner
of cryptography.)

Early on, Trithemius built an awesome library at his monastery, but then they
split up and he became a counselor to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian. The
Emperor was of Habsburg descent, and the Habsburgs and other Franks were
claiming Trojan ancestry... so Trithemius wrote an elaborate fake history of
the Franks, leading back to Troy, and had it published.

There's a lot more to this guy than just that. He wrote "Steganographia" and
"Polygraphia", which are dripping with occult influence but turn out to be a
combination of fake alphabets and substitution ciphers. But because of his
man-crush on Maximilian, he committed this extremely intricate forgery and
obliterated his reputation. That's how significant the Trojan War was in the
1500s.

Fun fact: Polygraphia's fake alphabets include Theban, which Wiccans now use
to write spells, and two fake Frank languages (one that he said was used by a
fake Frank philosopher) to bolster his fake Frank history.

Oh and he invented the bibliography. Here's one now.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=6lE-
OdAQPJsC&lpg=PA59&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=6lE-
OdAQPJsC&lpg=PA59&ots=WkWL16iQfa&dq=trithemius%20conjures%20the%20past&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[http://microcosmographia.com/2012/12/15/johannes-
trithemius-...](http://microcosmographia.com/2012/12/15/johannes-trithemius-
and-the-orthographies-of-invention/)

[https://reader.digitale-
sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/...](https://reader.digitale-
sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10943192_00496.html?zoom=0.5&numScans=2)

[http://old.post-
gazette.com/healthscience/19980629bspirit1.a...](http://old.post-
gazette.com/healthscience/19980629bspirit1.asp)

------
frereubu
One of my literary touchstones is "War Music", a re-telling or re-imagining of
the Iliad by the British poet Christopher Logue. I've read a couple of
translations, but this is the one that really set my head alight because he
takes liberties with the content (including occasionally delicious
anachronisms like "the thumping of helicopters overhead") without taking
liberties with the story. It feels faithful to the original yet very modern in
its expression. He was dedicated to performing poetry, and I think this comes
out in the text - I found myself hearing the sounds of the words in my head as
I read it.

~~~
christudor
Totally agree with this. I think War Music is one of the greatest
‘translations’ of an ancient work ever written.

------
steve_gh
Can I also recommend Adam Nicolson's "The Might Dead: Why Homer Matters", as
an excellent read, which explains how and why Homer is still relevant today.

------
zokessss
Interestingly, Indian culture is also heavily influenced by epic poems i.e.
Mahabharata and Ramayana

~~~
christudor
These are essentially holy scripture in Hindu culture, aren’t they? The
Bhagavid Gita is taken from the Mahabharata, for example...

------
coldtea
> _Paradoxically, in spite of its Christianization, the Byzantine Empire: ". .
> . saw to the transmission of the old authors. The classical tradition was
> thus maintained in Byzantium where, from 425 to 1453, the schools of
> Constantinople remained its pillars. This is why it is unsuitable to speak
> about the “Renaissance” in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the West, on the
> other hand, the rediscovery of Homer was a striking fact for the first
> Italian humanists."_

The Christianization of the Byzantines was not some crude "Old Testament as
literal truth" kind of dogma, but a mix of New Testament ideas with neo-
platonism and influences from ancient Greek thought. The early theologians
(considered "saints") had all studied those philosophies and had extended
knowledge of ancient Greek thought.

Early Christianism was much more subtle than the crude version of Christianism
post protestantism (protestantism itself being a fundamentalist movement, to
go "back to roots" and back to the book, it's easy to understand why. It was a
version of the religion for simple minded Germanic folk at the time that
couldn't handle much subtlety).

Homer, to get back to the point, was official reading in Byzantine school
education.

Worth noting, that unlike the western empire, that had the rule of the pope,
the Byzantium had separate church and state.

~~~
azeotropic
This is a really bizzare comment. The early Protestant reformers were all
highly educated academics. Luther was a classically educated professor of
theology. Calvin was a university educated lawyer who had published
commentaries on Seneca (a Stoic philosopher). Philip Melanchthon was a
university lecturer on oratory and Latin literature, and published a Greek
grammar. It is a bit of a stretch to paint them as simple-minded Germanic folk
(especially since Calvin was French). All of them were familiar with the
theology of the early church fathers and appeal to it in their writings.

While the pope had plenty of temporal power in the renaissance, it's certainly
incorrect to say that any pope ruled anything that could be called the western
empire before that. Instead of a strict separation of church and state, the
Byzantine emperor Justinian appointed 3 successive popes after re-conquering
Italy from the ostrogoths.

~~~
tpm
Luther certainly was not a simple-minded German folkperson, however in his
time the Mass was commonly in Latin, which was not understood by the folk. One
of important results of the Reformation was the translation of the Bible and
liturgy in the language of the people (this happened in Czech lands already at
the time of Jan Hus, but not elsewhere). The Catholic hierarchy was also
perceived to be highly corrupt and the teachings not accessible by the common
people, so the Reformation aimed to change all that. This is sort of what I
feel where the OP is going with his comment.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, that's part of where I was going.

The new theology caught on as a simplified "back-to-basics" doctrine for the
masses, and shed a lot of the subtlety of earlier theology.

Instead of being less indoctrinated protestants became more fundamentalist and
less nuanced than Catholics -- which can be seen in a very crude example in
today's "bible belt" version of christianity (and even someone like Nietzsche
alluded to that kind of influence by Luther).

------
eruci
At the same time we have an utterly boring/dogmatic salad of tales, such as
the Bible and Quran, which remain important in the modern world - due to the
still prevalent ignorant multitude. They would not mind if you desecrate the
Iliad though. It belongs to a different audience.

~~~
netcan
That's a little harsh, perhaps.

The legacy of be blical stories is far deeper tham dogma. The other day, i
watched a (very sacreligious) cartoon (castlelvania e1). In it, Dracula's wife
is burned at the stake for witchraft, by the church. On her way out, she calls
out to dracula. " _Forgive them! Don 't take vengence. They don't know what
you're doing._"

This is exactly what the author is talking about. The dogma isn't there. If
the scene was boring or banal it wouldn't have been recreated in the cartoon.

Still, its a reference everone gets, and the metaphor is extremely deep.

~~~
Latteland
Well, in our modern world, we still face passionate denunciation of women and
people hating on gays Etc because someone wrote something thousand of years
ago. So it's okay though point out problems with these originalist documents.

------
natmaka
Dominique Venner analysis: [https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/homer-
the-european-...](https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/homer-the-european-
bible-part-1/)

TLDR; [https://thegoldenone.se/2018/02/21/dominique-verner-epic-
quo...](https://thegoldenone.se/2018/02/21/dominique-verner-epic-quote-on-the-
iliad/)

~~~
stlee42
natmaka, are you aware that those websites preach racism?

linked from 'about' page: [https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/new-right-
vs-old-ri...](https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/new-right-vs-old-
right/) quote: "Second, because of the leading role of the organized Jewish
community in engineering the destruction of European peoples, and because the
United States is the citadel of Jewish power in the world today, the North
American New Right must deal straightforwardly with the Jewish Question."

Holy shit.

also, [https://thegoldenone.se/2015/04/20/why-hitler-is-so-
popular-...](https://thegoldenone.se/2015/04/20/why-hitler-is-so-popular-and-
why-we-need-new-role-models/)

~~~
natmaka
No, I wasn't aware, nor do I share the opinions expressed in the documents you
point to, but if I find a pertinent and interesting document I point towards
it whatever the website publishes otherwise.

Even if I knew I would have proposed this link to a document in my opinion
pertinent and where I don't find any racism-preaching (this particular
website/the Web/the universe all have their share of shit).

I'm all for exposing and debunking dumb and dangerous doctrines instead of
feigning not to know about them and letting some think that they have to be
true because no one criticizes them, therefore I don't refrain to directly
link to such material, while expressing at least that (and, better, why) I
don't agree (as you just did).

The author discussed in the documents I linked to is Dominique Venner. He
wrote a book titled "Histoire et Tradition des Européens: 30 000 ans
d'identité" which seems pertinent to me in this thread because it exposes a
thesis about the relative importance in European cultures of Homer's literary
work. Venner was considered far-right, I don't know he was nor if it extended
to sheer racism and such fuckery, but it may explain why one may find many
material from/about him on such websites but not much elsewhere as, IMHO
sadly, censorship and ad hominem are far too common. Racism is as dumb and
dangerous as censorship.

