Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: Let's talk about The Iliad

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

So what does the future hold for group reading of the classics? Or is everyone still coming to completion on The Iliad?

I would be up for the The Odyssey in the near future. That and at some point the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf that I recently finished. Great read, though even with obtaining the bilingual edition with the Old English side by side with the modern was not revealing in understanding the original text. Any Anglo-Saxon scholars out there to match our Latin and Greek experts? Interesting bit of information I did not know before reading the introduction. The only reason we even know of the epic Beowulf is from a single copy that survived the Middle Ages. And that copy was almost destroyed by fire in 1731.

Yes, that is absolutely astonishing isn't it - mind you, the odds on any piece of text surviving the vicissitudes of climate, environmental, political and social upheaval that work has, are incredibly high.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Yes, that is absolutely astonishing isn't it - mind you, the odds on any piece of text surviving the vicissitudes of climate, environmental, political and social upheaval that work has, are incredibly high.

The poems of Catullus (one of the greatest of the Roman poets) are similarly "single source". His work was known only via fragments and references by later authors until an anthology containing 116 items of his poems and epigrams was discovered in a monastic library in 1300. This original source manuscript has since disappeared, but, fortunately, three copies made from it survive.

So the The Odyssey on the near horizon? That's sounds good.

I recently completed a book, The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel, about how one of Archimedes major works barely survived to reach modern eyes despite one attempt to completely erase the only existing copy so that Medieval monks could use the parchment for copying scripture.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

So the The Odyssey on the near horizon? That's sounds good.

I recently completed a book, The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel, about how one of Archimedes major works barely survived to reach modern eyes despite one attempt to completely erase the only existing copy so that Medieval monks could use the parchment for copying scripture.

That's actually precisely how many classical texts DID survive - the parchment (parchment was extremely expensive) was re-used for a religious text. A parchment that's been re-used in this way is called a palimpsest.

[sun surfer]

Nice to see some interest in an Odyssey read!

I think it'll be an interesting contrast with the Iliad read, since the Iliad was a stationary, comparatively realistic war epic of a short period of time, while the Odyssey looks to be much more fantastical and full of travel and adventure. It'll be interesting to see the similarities and differences between these two epics "by the same author"; I'm especially interested to see how similar the overlapping characters are to their depiction in the Iliad.

Overall, not having read the Odyssey yet but knowing its basic storyline, I'm wondering if the Iliad may be the better look into ancient psychology, philosophy and humanism (and of course war) with its relative realism, sympathetic characterisations, many beautiful similes and overarching tragic quality, while the Odyssey might delve deeper into their varied religious mythos and perhaps just be more fun.

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I recently completed a book, The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel, about how one of Archimedes major works barely survived to reach modern eyes despite one attempt to completely erase the only existing copy so that Medieval monks could use the parchment for copying scripture.

That's interesting to think how some works have so barely survived. It's also a bit sad to think of the flip side, of the others that are lost.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

That's interesting to think how some works have so barely survived. It's also a bit sad to think of the flip side, of the others that are lost.

A figure that's often quoted is that we have around about 5% of the literature from the classical Greek and Roman periods.

Sometimes works have survived accidentally (eg as palimpsests); others have been deliberately preserved. An example of the latter is the Greek philosopher Plato. We possess the complete works of Plato simply because his philosophical ideas tie in very nicely with Christianity, and hence his work was preserved and copied by the early Christian church.