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Homer and the Odyssey Another Point of View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Colin Hardie
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Extract

British scholars have tended to believe in a single author of the Iliad and Odyssey more perhaps from right feeling than on a sound basis of argument. In his article Mr Casson frankly begins by ‘begging two separate questions’—that Homer wrote the Odyssey and that he was a single poet. The first is not so welcome an answer as the second. Mr Casson is not of course concerned to argue about either and only mentions in passing one argument-the oblique method of description in ‘both’ the Iliad and the Odyssey. Examples of it he calls ‘hints’ that make it easy for him to disregard half the contro-versy about Homer. The purpose of his article is, however, different, to show that Homer visited Ithaka. The aim of the present one is not primarily to reply to his main thesis except by the way, but rather to supplement it and suggest in outline another point of view than that implied by him.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 16 , Issue 63 , September 1942 , pp. 265 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1942

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References

1 ANTIQUITY, March 1942.

2 C.U.P. 1932.

3 Milman Parry, ‘L’épithète traditionelle dans Homère, Les Formules et la métrique d’Homère’ (Les Belles Lettres, Paris). ‘Studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology XLI, 1930, XLIII, 1932. ‘The Homeric Gloss’, Transactions of the American Philological Association LIX, 1928. ‘Enjambement in Homeric Verse’, ibid, LX, 1929.

4 Homer : the Origins and the Transmission, c. VIII, 177-201, ‘The Scheme of the Iliad and the Odyssey’. O.U.P. 1924.

5 G. M. Calhoun, ‘Myth and Marchen in Homer’. American Journal of Philology, LX, 1939, pp. 1-28

6 Myth and Ritual, ed. S. H. Hooke. O.U.P. 1933.

7 The Hero, Methuen, 1936.

8 Studies in the Odyssey, O.U.P. 1914.

9 Homère et les origines sacerdotales de l’épopée grecque, editions Denoel, Paris, 1938. 3 vols.

10 Les légendes épiques: recherches sur la formation des chansons de geste. Edouard Champion. 3rd ed. 1926. 4 vols.

11 C.U.P. 1942.

12 cf. Josephus, Apionem I, 12 ; Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 54-7; Vita Hesiodi, in Homer, vol. V, ed. by T. W. Allen, p. 222.

13 C.U.P. 1912.

14 The Growth of Civilisation, 1st ed. 1924, Pelican books, 1937.

15 Aristotle, fragments. Ed. Rose. Teubner. No. 637.

16 Lord Raglan, The Hero, p. 277 et sq., Homer, Od. 8, 261.

17 M. P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology. C.U.P. 1932.

18 Sir Arthur Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult. Macmillan, 1901.

19 T. W. Allen, The Homeric Catalogue, O.U.P. 192.

20 Homer, Iliad, IX, 149-53.

21 cf. Kinkel, Epicorum Graec. Frag. p. 243. cf. also Karl Meuli, Odyssee und Argonautika, Weidmann, 1921.

22 cf. T. W. Allen, Homer : the Origins and the Transmission.

23 Hesiod, Theogony, 1013.