Timeline for In the Iliad, why does Homer list every captain involved in the Trojan war?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jan 30, 2017 at 16:28 | comment | added | Joshua Engel | That's correct. I naturally reverted to my English bias, but the Greeks did it slightly differently. My ancient Greek is pretty weak (though oddly, better than my modern Greek, which got me REALLY damn lost in Athens), but I believe they still had a fair bit of flexibility to shuffle words in a way that matches the patterns. And when they couldn't, they'd just jam it in. Proud and honorable ancient tradition. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 22:48 | comment | added | user14111 | Thanks for the reply. By "stress pattern" don't you mean pattern of long and short vowels? I'm an ignoramus about classical languages and literature, but I've heard that classical Greek verse was based on length rather than stress. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 18:23 | comment | added | Joshua Engel | @b_jonas - The Aeneid was specifically composed as propaganda, mimicking the style of the Iliad. So the Iliad was never as explicit about it, but it was sure to be cited. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 18:22 | comment | added | Joshua Engel | @user14111 - There are lots of ways to force a name to fit a meter when you need it to. You can put it in a place in the line where the meter matches the stress pattern, and unstressed syllables are somewhat malleable (cf "Romeo" in quora.com/How-many-syllables-is-Romeo). I suspect that the names themselves had a certain malleability as well, in an era when things weren't written down. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 13:02 | comment | added | b_jonas | So you're saying the Iliad has a political purpose too, even if not as strong as the Aeneid? Interesting. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 8:53 | comment | added | user14111 | I've been told that there were classical Greek words that Homer couldn't use because they didn't fit dactylic hexameter. So what would he have done if one of those captains had a name that wouldn't fit dactylic hexameter? Would he have changed the man's name, or left him out? | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 0:23 | history | answered | Joshua Engel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |