Comment by Timpy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timpy | Hacker News Reader

> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad

Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I know classicists debate these things all the time, but it seems like the author is just riffing "shout out to people who know these classics." I'll gladly be corrected on this point, but when I read this I began to suspect the author has no idea what they're talking about.

> Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book?

I doubt they viewed Homer like religious people view their sacred texts. However, Ancient Greek writers do quote and discuss Homer extensively. For example, Herodotus and Thucydides reference (and speculate) about Homer. Plato's dialogues refer to Homer a lot. Seneca, several hundred years later, is still quoting Homer with the assumption that his audience will know the poems quite well.

No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavor, so things that had many surviving copies could be inferred as having been regarded as important, even if we did not have any other indicators.

I have no idea where the author gets this idea.

Afaik, they did not even read them. They were poems to be memorized and remembered. So one person would learn it and recite it to others. That is why it is a poem and that is why it contains repetitive parts - so that it remembers easily.

Also, Homer likely was not one person. The origin of the poem is not entirely clear, but speculations are that the poem is result of oral tradition written down at some point.

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