Do you guys think that the stories are true? Do you think achilles, hector, paris and Agamemnon were real people or just made up.
[quote]Rippemanewone wrote:
Do you guys think that the stories are true? Do you think achilles, hector, paris and Agamemnon were real people or just made up.[/quote]
Yes.
[quote]Rippemanewone wrote:
Do you guys think that the stories are true? Do you think achilles, hector, paris and Agamemnon were real people or just made up.[/quote]
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.
[quote]Flop Hat wrote:
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.[/quote]
Achilles…famous immortal man. Ajax…famous toilet cleaner.
but seriously…read Homer’s Iliad. good stuff.
Sing, Muse, of Achilles’ wrath, which brought sorrow and death to the Achean camp!
Read it. x2 good stuff.
I think everything was based in reality, but there was some poetic license.
[quote]iamthewolf wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.
Achilles…famous immortal man. Ajax…famous toilet cleaner.
but seriously…read Homer’s Iliad. good stuff.[/quote]
well even if Achilles were real, I wouldn’t call him immortal, being that he got killed and all.
[quote]Flop Hat wrote:
iamthewolf wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.
Achilles…famous immortal man. Ajax…famous toilet cleaner.
but seriously…read Homer’s Iliad. good stuff.
well even if Achilles were real, I wouldn’t call him immortal, being that he got killed and all.
[/quote]
He was immortal except for that stupid ankle. 
[quote]pushmepullme wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
iamthewolf wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.
Achilles…famous immortal man. Ajax…famous toilet cleaner.
but seriously…read Homer’s Iliad. good stuff.
well even if Achilles were real, I wouldn’t call him immortal, being that he got killed and all.
He was immortal except for that stupid ankle. ;-)[/quote]
Ya know, everybody’s always saying you shouldn’t double dip, but if Thetis had dipped Achilles in the river Styx twice, he would have been totally invulnerable. It just goes to show - double dipping is in fact a good thing. Plus, whenever I do it, I get all the guacamole to myself.
On a more serious note, most of the more important characters from the Iliad probably existed in some form or another, but there are hundreds of minor characters of little to no consequence, many of whose names I suspect Homer just made up on the spot.
Actually a lot of the minor names would have been jokes or compliments to people that were around at the time, also the poem was meant to be listened to by a group audience, not read alone.
Much like Dante and Shakespear you have to remember that Homer was writing for a contemporary audiance, the feats that were perscribed to aparantly randomly named individuals would have been references that the audience would have got however we, thousands of years later are not in on the reference.
[quote]pushmepullme wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
iamthewolf wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
Everyone but Achilles was real. Ajax was actually Achilles.
Achilles…famous immortal man. Ajax…famous toilet cleaner.
but seriously…read Homer’s Iliad. good stuff.
well even if Achilles were real, I wouldn’t call him immortal, being that he got killed and all.
He was immortal except for that stupid ankle. ;-)[/quote]
Actually, he wasn’t invulnerable in Homer’s version. That whole immortality deal came about in legends much later. That’s part of what makes him so badass in the Iliad.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Actually a lot of the minor names would have been jokes or compliments to people that were around at the time, also the poem was meant to be listened to by a group audience, not read alone.
Much like Dante and Shakespear you have to remember that Homer was writing for a contemporary audiance, the feats that were perscribed to aparantly randomly named individuals would have been references that the audience would have got however we, thousands of years later are not in on the reference.[/quote]
I think a lot of the minor names would’ve been names to fit the rhyme and rhythm, which may have also had contemporary meaning. Remember, it was originally spoken, not written, so the poem was full of words used to trip the speaker’s memory.
I got in trouble in an English Lit class for making a similar comment to that.
The teacher asked us to think about why the poet had picked the particular word and I ventured that maybe, just maybe, because it rhymed with the one above. I was asked to leave the class. 
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Actually a lot of the minor names would have been jokes or compliments to people that were around at the time, also the poem was meant to be listened to by a group audience, not read alone.
Much like Dante and Shakespear you have to remember that Homer was writing for a contemporary audiance, the feats that were perscribed to aparantly randomly named individuals would have been references that the audience would have got however we, thousands of years later are not in on the reference.[/quote]
First of all Homer could not write. You have to remember this poem was composed orally hence all the repetition. He didn’t keep on repeating “rosy fingered dawn” for literary effect, he did it because it fits well in the dactyllic hexameter he used. Generally speaking oral cultures place alot of emphasis on the veracity of their myths, so he would have been trying to be as accurate as possible, and would not be busy trying to make jokes or impress certain members of his audience. Moreover when you’re trying to recite a 60,000 line epic you’re bound to make some mistakes and forget some names. Oral poems are rife with such misteps and mistakes. The first example that jumps to my mind is line 18 of Beowulf, in which the author says:
“Beowulf waes breme - blaed was wide spang-”
when he’s supposed to be talking about some proto-Germanic fertility figure named Beow. He jumps the gun and accidentally uses the name Beowulf instead. This kind of stuff is amazingly common in all oral poetry.
/rant
[quote]ctschneider wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Actually a lot of the minor names would have been jokes or compliments to people that were around at the time, also the poem was meant to be listened to by a group audience, not read alone.
Much like Dante and Shakespear you have to remember that Homer was writing for a contemporary audiance, the feats that were perscribed to aparantly randomly named individuals would have been references that the audience would have got however we, thousands of years later are not in on the reference.
First of all Homer could not write. You have to remember this poem was composed orally hence all the repetition. He didn’t keep on repeating “rosy fingered dawn” for literary effect, he did it because it fits well in the dactyllic hexameter he used. Generally speaking oral cultures place alot of emphasis on the veracity of their myths, so he would have been trying to be as accurate as possible, and would not be busy trying to make jokes or impress certain members of his audience. Moreover when you’re trying to recite a 60,000 line epic you’re bound to make some mistakes and forget some names. Oral poems are rife with such misteps and mistakes. The first example that jumps to my mind is line 18 of Beowulf, in which the author says:
“Beowulf waes breme - blaed was wide spang-”
when he’s supposed to be talking about some proto-Germanic fertility figure named Beow. He jumps the gun and accidentally uses the name Beowulf instead. This kind of stuff is amazingly common in all oral poetry.
/rant[/quote]
^ yeah, what he said. 
This is motivating me to dig up my old books from college. While it sucked that the bookstores never bought them back, I’m glad now that I’ve still got them around.
[quote]pushmepullme wrote:
ctschneider wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Actually a lot of the minor names would have been jokes or compliments to people that were around at the time, also the poem was meant to be listened to by a group audience, not read alone.
Much like Dante and Shakespear you have to remember that Homer was writing for a contemporary audiance, the feats that were perscribed to aparantly randomly named individuals would have been references that the audience would have got however we, thousands of years later are not in on the reference.
First of all Homer could not write. You have to remember this poem was composed orally hence all the repetition. He didn’t keep on repeating “rosy fingered dawn” for literary effect, he did it because it fits well in the dactyllic hexameter he used. Generally speaking oral cultures place alot of emphasis on the veracity of their myths, so he would have been trying to be as accurate as possible, and would not be busy trying to make jokes or impress certain members of his audience. Moreover when you’re trying to recite a 60,000 line epic you’re bound to make some mistakes and forget some names. Oral poems are rife with such misteps and mistakes. The first example that jumps to my mind is line 18 of Beowulf, in which the author says:
“Beowulf waes breme - blaed was wide spang-”
when he’s supposed to be talking about some proto-Germanic fertility figure named Beow. He jumps the gun and accidentally uses the name Beowulf instead. This kind of stuff is amazingly common in all oral poetry.
/rant
^ yeah, what he said.
This is motivating me to dig up my old books from college. While it sucked that the bookstores never bought them back, I’m glad now that I’ve still got them around.[/quote]
You might want to check out some books by Gregory Nagy if you are interested in this sort of thing (as pertains to the Homeric epic).
Try: http://www.stoa.org/hopper/toc.jsp?doc=Stoa:text:2003.01.0006:chapter=3:section=12
or look up ‘Best of the Achaians’.
/hijack
Sorry, OP, not very helpful!
yeah dude im sure they were totally real people.
they get together on thursdays to play cards with superman, santaclaus and barak obama.
My guess is that the story is based off a true event. While the characters themselves may not be real, there is a strong chance they represented real people who fought in that battle to control a city… Whether or not it was actually called Troy is debatable.
Fun story none the less.
Well that German guy did find an ancient city using the Iliad as a guide. But was it Troy or just an ancient city?
And did the war happen?
Took a greek something or other class in college. The professor was really all about this stuff and “in the forefront of greek literature” or however you say he is kinda a big deal in this stuff.
A few of the major points he wanted to drive home during the class (and this is one theory, but he claims its the emerging one that more and more people are getting behind).
-
There was no one “Homer”. (I don’t remember if homer was a nonsensical greek word, or just some real generic title). Homers works were probably pulled together after 100s of yrs of oral story telling.
-
There was a “dark ages” where literature was non-exsistant for like 100s of yrs and these works came to be at the end of that period.
-
The stories rhyme because by rhyming it allowed bards (traveling story tellers) to memorize the important points.(If you read the text, most names are constantly followed by a description. ie Achilles, he of fleet feet (i made that up, but you get the idea) because that helped with the rhyming/tempo in greek.)
4)Bards trained to be able to recite these stories and it was how they made a living. They would travel to dinner parties of kings. Greeks were big on treating travelers first class. So if a bard was entertaining he could have a good couple of nights telling different parts of the story to the king and his people. The illiad and odyssey were the two big stories people wanted to hear. And if you wanted to be kept around you had to tell the story better than previous bards. That is where all the stories seem to get the “divine” elements.
To expand on that last point. The stories first started out as just the humans battling. One day a bard throws out how a god helped the hero. Going forward each bard adds more and more godly intervention until you get all the gods/achilles immortality/birth from a river god etc.
Cool note, his theory was that the base story of the illiad/oddyssey came first and the gods stories were built in later, so the “religion” was made long after the original story.
5)Those long, disjoint battle descriptions that seem to go one forever where they name a bunch of unimportant people, were displays of the bards talent. If you see, most of the time the bard will say something like “I would never be able to tell you all the details but…” and then proceeds to tell you 8 pages of details. Its like he’s hustling the king by playing modest, then going into this huge description to seem like hes the man.
Hopefully long ass post make sense. In summary, there is probably some truth in the story somewhere, but for 100s of yrs bards went and added their own twist to try to get gifts from kings by entertaining them.
And OG, my professor was not a huge fan of that german guy. He basically said that the guy sold out, and there is no way the mound he found could have been troy (not in the right spot, doesn’t fit any description of troy, etc.) but the guy just wants recognition and fame. Not trying to say anything one way or another about your post, just always find it funny when academics fight.
Anyone else want to show off their intellect by pointing out to me that it was presented orally not in writing (even though I said that in my first post?)
When you say Homer couldn’t write, who exactly are you talking about? There is no proof that there was actually an historical figure of Homer. Even if there was an actual figure, it is not clear whether it was this person or someone else who finally wrote down the epics which had been transmitted orally for years.
And if you think that someone who was basically earning a crust by telling stories to rich nobles wouldn’t try to earn extra by throwing in relevent references, perhaps you could explain why not?