Why Homer Matters

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Why Homer Matters Page 36

by Adam Nicolson


  Hebrews

  Hebrides

  Hecabē

  Hecamēdē

  Hector

  death of

  hair of

  hands of

  meeting of Achilles and

  Heidelberg

  Helen

  jewels of

  weaving and

  helmets

  Hephaestus

  Hera

  Heracles

  heraldry

  Hermes

  Herodotus

  heroism

  loneliness and

  warrior

  hexameters

  hieroglyphs

  hinges

  Hippothoos

  Hisarlik

  Hitler, Adolf

  Hittites

  homelessness

  Homer

  Alexandrian library

  Analyst vs. Unitarian debate

  as blind outsider

  departures

  early manuscripts

  Fagles translations of

  finding

  first printed Greek

  formulas in

  gang behavior

  hands and

  Hawara

  hexameters

  horses and

  Keats and

  loving

  Magny dinners on

  medieval manuscripts

  mirror images of

  multiple

  name

  as oral text

  Parry on

  phrases

  Pope translation of

  Question

  reality and

  repetition

  seeking

  steppes and

  structure of

  transitional

  Troy and

  unknowability of

  Venetus A

  Villoison edition

  visit to Hades

  written

  See also Iliad; Odyssey

  Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo

  Homeridae

  honey

  honor

  horses

  Bronze Age White Horse

  burials

  steppes and

  Trojan

  Huelva

  Hugo, Victor

  humanism

  Hungary

  Hunt, Leigh

  hunter-gatherers

  Huqqana

  Hutchinson, Sara

  Iberian stone stelae

  Icarus

  Iceland

  Iliad

  Alexandrian library

  Byzantine editions

  Chapman translation

  early manuscripts

  gang behavior

  Greek vs. Trojan treatment of women in

  hands in

  Hawara

  hexameters

  horses and

  internal contradictions

  Lattimore translation

  medieval

  as oral text

  Pope’s preface to

  Pope translation

  as precursor to Odyssey

  reality of

  steppes and

  suffering and death

  Venetus A

  Villoison edition

  See also specific characters and themes

  immortality

  India

  Ingul River

  Ion

  Ionian Sea

  Ios

  Iphidamas

  Iphimedeia

  Iraq

  Iraq War

  Ireland

  iron

  in Bronze Age

  pyrites

  Iron Age

  Isaiah

  Ischia

  Istanbul

  Italy

  Renaissance

  Ithaca

  Odysseus returns to

  ivory

  Jacob

  Jacobs, Bruce

  javelins

  Jesus Christ

  jewelry

  of Troy

  Jews

  Johnson, Dr.

  Jonah

  Kadmos

  Kafkalas, Andrea

  Kagamunas

  Karagod

  Kazakhstan

  Keats, John

  Endymion

  Homer and

  Homer Sonnet

  Kent

  kleos aphthiton

  knights

  Knockers

  Knossos

  Kokytus

  Korfmann, Manfred

  Kreipe, General

  Kundera, Milan

  kurgans

  Laertes

  lances

  language

  Hittite

  Homeric phrases

  Proto-Indo-European

  steppes and

  See also specific languages; vocabulary

  lapis lazuli

  Latin

  Latium

  Lattimore, Richmond

  Iliad translation

  Odyssey translation

  law

  lazurite

  Lebanon

  Leipzig

  Lesbos

  Leucothea

  Levant

  libations to goddesses

  Linear A

  Linear B

  Lithuania

  lochos

  Logue, Christopher

  London

  loneliness

  Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

  Lord, Albert

  Los Angeles gangs

  love

  Homer

  Lycaon

  Lycia

  lyre

  Macdonald, Duncan

  Madduwatta

  Madrid

  magic

  Magny dinners

  malachite

  maps:

  Bronze Age world

  world of the ancient Greeks

  Marathon

  Mariya

  masks

  burial

  Massalia

  McMillan, Angus

  Medédović, Avdo

  Medici family

  Mediterranean

  Megara

  Melanthius

  Meles

  Melesigenes

  memorials

  stone stelae

  memory

  Menelaus

  Meriones

  Mertz, Henriette

  Mesopotamia

  metals

  Bronze Age

  bronze spearheads

  mining

  Ulu Burun ship wreck

  See also specific metals

  metaphysics

  Michelangelo

  Middle Ages

  Homer manuscripts

  Milan

  milk

  Milton, John

  Paradise Lost

  mines

  ghosts

  Minoan civilization

  Mnemosyne

  modernism

  modern voyages

  money

  Mongols

  Monte Vico

  Moscow

  Moss, Billy

  Motion, Andrew

  mountains

  Mount Epomeo

  Muir, Edwin

  Müller, Max

  Munich

  Murray, A. T.

  Muses

  music

  of hexameters

  lyre

  sung poems

  Mycenae

  Shaft Graves

  Myrine

  Myrmidons

  Naples

  Nastes

  National Archaeological Museum, Athens

  nature

  Nausicaa

  Nazism

  Neoptolemos

  Nestor

  Newfoundland

  Nikshitch, Bégan Lyútsa

  Nile River

  Nineveh

  nomadism

  North Sea

  Norway

  nostalgia

  Notopoulos, James

  Odessa

  Odysseus

 
; arrives home

  departures

  hands of

  raft of

  at sea

  Trojan War and

  visit to Hades

  Odyssey

  Chapman translation

  departures

  early manuscripts

  Fagles translation

  hexameters

  internal contradictions

  Lattimore translation

  medieval

  as oral text

  preexistence of Iliad and

  reality and

  sea voyages

  visit to Hades

  See also specific characters and themes

  Oedipus

  oil

  jars and pots

  Old Testament

  olives

  Olympus

  Troy and

  oral text

  Homer as

  Orchomenos

  Orion

  Orkney

  ostrich eggshells

  Oswald, Alice

  Ovid

  Oxford University

  Bodleian Library

  Pacific Ocean

  Paine, Thomas

  palaces

  Palamēdēs

  Palmyra

  Panathenaia

  papyri

  Paris

  hair of

  Paris (city)

  Magny dinners

  Parisii tribe

  Parry, Milman

  composition-in-performance method

  Homeric studies

  Patroclus

  death of

  Peloponnese

  Penelope

  return of Odysseus

  weaving

  Penguin

  Persephone

  Petrarch

  Petrie, William Flinders

  Phaeacians

  Phereclus

  Philistines

  Phoenicians

  alphabet

  phrases, Homer

  Pieria

  pigs

  Pithekoussai

  pottery

  Plato

  Republic

  Pleiades

  Plutarch

  Poland

  polytlas

  pontos atrygetos

  Pope, Alexander

  preface to Iliad

  translation of Homer

  Porter, James I.

  Portugal

  Poseidon

  pottery

  crater

  gray-and-ocher

  Pithekoussai

  shards

  Pound, Ezra

  preclassicism

  prēktēres

  Priam

  hands of

  treasures of

  Proto-Indo-Europeans

  psyches

  Ptolemies

  Pylos

  Pyriphlegethon

  Pythia

  Quakers

  quartzite

  rape

  reality

  Homer and

  Renaissance

  Renan, Ernest

  repetition

  Retjenu

  Rexroth, Kenneth

  Rhodes

  Rieu, E. V.

  Rio Tinto

  Romania

  Rome

  ancient

  Biblioteca Nazionale

  Rorty, Richard

  Russia

  Sainte-Beuve, Charles

  St. Louis gangs

  Saint-Victor, Comte de

  Samothrace

  Sánchez-Jankowski, Martín

  Sardinia

  Sarpedon

  Saul

  Saxons

  Sayce, Archibald

  Scandinavia

  scarabs

  Scheria

  Schliemann, Heinrich

  Schliemann, Sophia

  scholia

  Schulten, Adolf

  Fontes Hispaniae Antiquae

  Scotland

  scribes

  Scylla and Charybdis

  Scythians

  sea

  departures

  evil

  -as-land

  Odysseus at

  sailing ships and

  storms

  unharvestable

  vengeful

  seals

  Seferis, George

  Septuagint manuscripts

  sex

  Sfakia

  Shaft Graves

  Shakespeare, William

  Hamlet

  sheep

  Shelley, Percy Bysshe

  shells

  Sherratt, Andrew and Susan

  shields

  of Achilles

  ships

  departures

  modern voyages

  navigation by stars

  Odysseus at sea

  sailing

  technology

  Ulu Burun wreck

  Sicily

  Sidon

  silver

  Simpson, Colton

  Sinai Desert

  Sinopē

  Sintashta

  Sirens

  Sistine Chapel

  sky

  stars

  Skye

  slaves

  women

  Smyrna

  Socrates

  Sokos

  Sontag, Susan

  Sophocles

  Sorbonne

  South Uist

  Spain

  mines

  stone stelae

  Sparta

  spearheads, bronze

  Spenser, Edmund

  Faerie Queene

  spices

  spindles

  spirals

  spondees

  stars

  Steele, Richard

  stelae, stone

  steppes

  Achilles and

  burial mounds

  Homer and

  horses and

  language and

  Stone Age

  stone axes

  Stonehenge

  stone stelae

  Styx

  sublime

  Sumer

  Sumerian poetry

  Sweden

  Swift, Jonathan

  Switzerland

  swords

  Syracuse

  Syria

  tablets, writing

  Hattusa

  Linear B

  Taine, Hippolyte

  Tale of Sinuhe, The

  Tambakis, Lefteris

  taxes

  technology, ship

  Telemachus

  textiles

  Thanet

  Thapsos

  Thebes

  Thessalonica

  Thessaly

  Thomas, Martin

  Thrace

  timber

  time

  tin

  Tiresias

  Tiryns

  Tocharian B

  Tolo

  Tolstoy, Leo

  Tories

  trade

  Pithekoussai

  translations

  Chapman

  Fagles

  Lattimore

  Trojan Horse

  Trojan War

  animality of

  gang behavior

  suffering and death

  See also Iliad

  Troy

  archaeology

  Greek governance of

  Homer and

  Olympus and

  treasures of

  weaving

  women of

  See also Trojan War

  Turkestan

  Turkey

  Tyre

  Tyro

  Ukraine

  Ulu Burun ship wreck

  unliftable cup

  Ur

  Ural Mountains

  Uruk

  Usatovo

  Vatican

  Venetus A

  Venice

  Biblioteca Marciana

  Ventris, Michael

  Vermeule, Emily

  Ves
uvius

  Vienna

  Vikings

  Villoison, Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d’Ansse de

  Iliad edition

  Virgil

  Aeneid

  vocabulary

  Vujnović, Nikola

  Wales

  wandering

  warriors

  Bronze Age

  hair of

  hands of

  heroism

  horses and

  lyre of

  Proto-Indo-European

  shields

  stone stelae

  Trojan War and

  See also specific warriors; Trojan War; weaponry

  water

  baths

  See also sea

  weaponry

  bronze

  in graves

  rape and

  See also specific weapons; warriors

  weaving

  Weil, Simone

  “The Poem of Force”

  wind

  sailing ships and

  wine

  jugs and cups

  winnowing fan

  Wolf, Friedrich August

  Homeric Question

  women

  childbirth

  graves of

  Greek vs. Trojan treatment of

  Helen

  Hittite

  hung by Odysseus

  Penelope

  Proto-Indo-European

  slaves

  theft of

  of Troy

  weaving

  See also specific women and goddesses

  Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own

  Wordsworth, William

  world of the ancient Greeks

  World War II

  cryptography

  Wright, Richard

  writing

  early Greek

  Homer

  Linear A

  Linear B

  Phoenician alphabet

  tablets

  Xanthos

  Yeats, William Butler

  Young, Douglas

  Yugoslav guslars

  Zacos, George

  Zenodotus

  Zeus

  The battle face of the Iliad: brutal, excluding, potent. One of the golden masks discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae in 1876.

  Throbbing with desire for the Sirens, Odysseus, bound to his ship, resists the illusions of nostalgia. From a storage jar made in Athens in about 480 BC.

  A 6th-century BC lekythos shows the tiny mosquito of a dead man’s soul half-hovering above his head. For Homer, life itself was rich, life-after-death terminally diminished.

  “Battle was sweeter to them than the land of their fathers.” The sword-bearing charioteer, hunched over in his war-lust, drives against an enemy. A limestone stele from the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, ca. 1600 BC.

  A gold drinking cup covered in the interlaced, bind-and-release spirals which entranced Homer’s world.

  Scales in the Shaft Graves, made of gold so thin they could only have weighed the butterfly souls impressed on them.

  His father’s son: tiny, dead Mycenaean princelings went to their graves encased in gold, front and back, a habit of reverencing the children of the great which goes back to the steppes.

  Odysseus, half-dead from days at sea, emerges naked and a little rough, to find Nausicaa on shore. A 5th-century Athenian party cup shows the scene which, in Chapman’s translation, first convinced John Keats of Homer’s greatness.

  The Iliad in Extremadura: a Late Bronze Age stele now in Badajoz shows a warrior, his sword and the giant shield marked with the concentric rings of the cosmos.

  Metal heroes: Extremaduran figures with shield, swords, bow, spear and two objects central to the hero-complex: a bubble-handled mirror, for beauty, and a musical instrument, for epic song. Both men have large, “man-slaughtering-hands.”

 

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