"Basing wound locations on Homer" Topic

I'm reading another book right now where the author at least references the Iliad to account for where wounds occur on hoplites.

The argument, as far as I can tell, is that these are works that Greeks heard or read and had to be realistic for them. So while the fighting style may have been different than it was during the classical period the wounds would still have to make sense to the men of the classical period to make the story work.

On the one hand if you look at any fictional thing today and you actually know anything about the thing it is fictionalizing you know that nothing is accurate in movies or TV.

Just about.

People swallow that stuff up anyway. But then people are pretty ignorant about a lot of stuff these days. So you can do almost any ridiculous thing in a medical drama and get away with it even if anyone that had worked in a hospital for more than an hour could call BS on the whole movie.

Still the Greeks who heard Homer would all (or almost all) have fought in a battle at some point. They would at least have known people wounded in battles.

So it isn't like you have a population that is hugely ignorant.

Maybe it did have to make sense to them.

On the other hand we aren't talking about normal people taking wounds either. We are talking about guys who were a couple of generations removed from Gods, if that. Some of them were the children of Gods.

I would think that, just as I'm willing to give a pass to super heroes on how much they can take because they are super, the Greeks might have been willing to give a little bit on the kind of injuries Sarpedon might have been able to inflict too.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the argument.

What do you guys think about this?

Also, why can't I stop eating these animal crackers~?

I've read the Illiad several times (I highly recommend it to everyone as much more exciting than the Odyssey – just my opinion – check out W.H.D Rouse translation – very good). To my amateur knowledge of hoplites – and I know that they could be more heavily armored in Mycenaean Bronze Age than in Classical times – it seems that the wounds could very well be realistic. Perhaps a touch dramatized (that spear severing the tounge as it goes through his head, for example). But I don't see why not. Maybe one more expert in archaic hoplite fighting could say otherwise, but I'm happy to believe it.

Even Homer didnt write Homer.
He told the tales, someone else wrote them down.

RavenscraftCybernetics wrote:

Even Homer didnt write Homer.
He told the tales, someone else wrote them down.

Actually, I have no difficulty in believing that Homer himself wrote down what he knew. He was only perhaps a generation or two removed from the actual conflict, and though not as prolific as today, there were certainly enough people who could write in the 8th/7th century BC. If he himself dd not write it down, it's also possible he dictated it to scribes who did.

I'll be quite happy when archeologists get their collectives heads out of their posterior rest areas and move the war up where it belongs, in the 8th/7th century BC and not back in the 1500's BC.

Doh!

oh, wrong Homer

Homer was blind. Did he finger the wounds? …Ugh!

Homer has been wounded so many times yet nothing kills him or maims him. Why Bart drove a nail into Homer's eye and Homer buried the claw end of the hammer into his eye. But 30 seconds later, he is fine. D'oh.

What about new age chronology make people think that the destruction of Troy should be moved to 7th and 8th century? Especially when Herodotus records many 7th century events of the region (and left that one out?!) I didn't know that anyone even theorized that. Don't the datings of the findings there nix that one right away?

Mirko Grmek's book Diseases in the Ancient Greek World has, in spite of its title, got a good discussion of the OP's issue (see, especially, pages 27-33).

Mars Ultor wrote:

What about new age chronology make people think that the destruction of Troy should be moved to 7th and 8th century? Especially when Herodotus records many 7th century events of the region (and left that one out?!) I didn't know that anyone even theorized that. Don't the datings of the findings there nix that one right away?

It depends upon whether you trust modern chronological dating of the ancient world. Virtually all archeologists use a chronology of ancient Egypt, developed by Egyptologists, as the foundation for their dating of events. The problem is that, over the past 60-75 years, that dating system has become suspect.

It has to do with two concerns. The first is that, early on, Egyptologists decided that they would synch their system with pottery, and assumed that pottery styles changed every 50 years. That may or may not be true. 25 years off at this site, 30 at another, and so on, and pretty soon you have a century or three of "dislocation" in your chronology of events.

Another is whether the scribes/priests who told Herodotus the story of Egypt and their list(s) of Kings and events were being honest, and not padding it a mite. Say by 500 years or so.

Only in Egypt is there a consistent timeline. In every other part of the (then) known world, there is a gap of some 500 years. Absolute dark ages. No writing, no pottery, no new construction, no stories, no burials, etc. It's absolutely impossible for Myceneans, Scythians, etc, to leave NOTHING for over 500 years. It's especially uncomfortable in that the Egyptians make no mention of any disruption in trade, communications, etc, during that time.

Thus, either some impossible cloak of darkness fell over the rest of the world for 5 centuries, leaving Egypt untouched, or something is wrong with the Egyptian timeline. Since that timeline is the foundation for dating other ancient events, then that becomes a real problem.

Add this into the mix: How does Homer know so much, so accurately, about the war with Troy, especially the arms and equipment that had, if historians are to be believed, fell out of use centuries before his time? How is he familiar with boar's tusk helmets? Te Dendra armour?

Is it not more likely that the war was closer to Homer's own time, say the 7th or 8th centuries BC than a gap of 500 years?

For myself, I say that Egyptologists have a lot to answer for, as I believe they have their dating system off by some 500 years. Their refusal to even consider such a thing impacts the rest of ancient history, skewing it and rendering it inaccurate, useless for most purposes.

That, of course, is my take on things. Bowman and others argue against it, but I believe I'm on the right side of the issue here.

V/R

That, of course, is my take on things. Bowman and others argue against it, but I believe I'm on the right side of the issue here.

That doesn't really address the incredible accuracy of carbon 14 dating for organic artifacts of this age.

From "The Early Bronze Age Chronology of Troy (Periods I–III):Pottery Seriation, Radiocarbon Dating and the Gap" Weninger et, al

"It is to be emphasised that, in the construction of both chronologies, we found it impossible to attribute any of the 14C-dated charcoal samples to the calendric time-scale, more precisely than with a (minimum) error of ± 30 yrs (68% confidence). A further (and significant) reduction in dating errors should be possible, we judge, if in the future a more extensive series of radiocarbon ages on
short-lived samples (e.g. animal bone, shell, charred grain) becomes available."

link

The guys doing the dating are fretting that they have a plus or minus 30 year error rate. Do you really think, with carbon 14 dating, there is a 500 year error for things dated around 1300 BCE?

Try This for Egyptian Chronology

link

"High-quality radiocarbon dating also offers the independent means to test and reject the several publications of the last decade which have argued that conventional Egyptian (and wider ancient Near Eastern) historical chronology is incorrect."

In every other part of the (then) known world, there is a gap of some 500 years. Absolute dark ages. No writing, no pottery, no new construction, no stories, no burials, etc.

As I have pointed out before, this is just plain wrong. There are abundant archaeological data (burials, pottery, construction) from Greece in the 'Dark Age' (aka Early Iron Age). To take only the pottery: there are twelve successive, clearly identifiable, Aegean pottery styles from the 500 years or so after 1200 BC (early LHIIIC; later LHIIIC; 'Submycenaean'; Early Protogeometric; Middle Protogeometric; Late Protogeometric: Early Geometric I; Early Geometric II; Middle Geometric I; Middle Geometric II: Late Geometric I; and Late Geometric II): their absolute chronology is difficult to establish but they are certainly not 'nothing', and their sequence is securely established by their excavation from deeply-stratified deposits.

How does Homer know so much, so accurately, about the war with Troy, especially the arms and equipment that had, if historians are to be believed, fell out of use centuries before his time? How is he familiar with boar's tusk helmets? Te Dendra armour?

Is it not more likely that the war was closer to Homer's own time, say the 7th or 8th centuries BC than a gap of 500 years?

Repeating myself again:

As for Homer, the apparent Mycenaean survivals (including the boars' tooth helmet, Ajax's big shield, and the preeminence of Mycenae itself as Agamemnon's home) don't need to be explained by the Mycenaean civilisation being in his own recent past – they make just as much (in fact, rather more) sense as a feature of a mature epic tradition in oral poetry that took a long time to develop. Apart from these scattered details, Homer's stories of the heroes at Troy and their world actually bear very little resemblance to the world of the Mycenaean Bronze Age as we understand it (albeit imperfectly) through its archaeological remains and the testimony of the Linear B tablets. Even in this limited context, collapsing the Greek 'Dark Age' to nothing creates vastly more chronological problems than it solves.

Actually, I have no difficulty in believing that Homer himself wrote down what he knew. He was only perhaps a generation or two removed from the actual conflict, and though not as prolific as today, there were certainly enough people who could write in the 8th/7th century BC. If he himself dd not write it down, it's also possible he dictated it to scribes who did.

Its even more likely that he never existed. At least not in the way we popularly see him.