37
votes
Accepted
Was Odysseus considered unfaithful to his wife in the Odyssey?
No.
Introduction
To begin with, the question Has Odysseus been unfaithful to his wife? would not make sense to the people of ancient Greece. Such a question presupposes that the Greeks had a ...
- 22.1k
28
votes
Why does this copy of the Iliad mention "the will of God"?
That's a poor translation, although an understandable one; it should be "Zeus".
First I checked a number of other English translations of the Iliad; it was easy to find the relevant passage ...
- 71.1k
22
votes
Accepted
Where was the Odyssean Ithaca?
TL;DR: Homer’s Ithaca is somewhere in the Ionian islands but his descriptions are hard to reconcile, so pending a really convincing archaeological find it is impossible to be sure how the descriptions ...
- 53.5k
21
votes
In the Iliad, why does Homer list every captain involved in the Trojan war?
Apparently, because it was true.
The Iliad as we know it was composed over some centuries, transmitted orally, before "Homer" synthesized the version that was written down. Practically every word in ...
- 5,028
20
votes
Accepted
Are there any recorded discrepancies between The Odyssey as oral tradition and The Odyssey as Homer transcribed it?
On the answer
Much of the structure of this answer is based on the very clear history of The Odyssey and The Iliad written by Nicolas Bertrand in a 2009 Article (PDF). The primary sources discussed ...
- 1,908
19
votes
Accepted
Where was Homer born?
A great deal of what is believed to have happened this long ago is based on accounts written centuries later and/or archaeological finds that are open to interpretation. If Homer did exist, it shouldn'...
- 314
17
votes
Where was Homer born?
Modern literature very much disputes that Homer existed.
Nothing is known for certain about Homer himself, and his very existence is now disputed; the Iliad and Odyssey may have different authors, ...
- 847
17
votes
Why does the Iliad start "in the middle"?
Whether the Iliad starts in the middle depends on what the subject of the poem is. If the subject is the whole Trojan War, then certainly the poem starts in the middle, and finishes well before the ...
- 53.5k
17
votes
Why does this copy of the Iliad mention "the will of God"?
The Greek is “Διὸς … βουλή” where “βουλή” means “will” and “Διὸς” is the genitive of “Ζεύς”, hence “will of Zeus”.
So why did Rouse translate “Zeus” as “God” here? This is clearly a deliberate ...
- 53.5k
16
votes
Why does Aphrodite speak like this while disguised as the old woman?
TL;DR: Aphrodite has disguised herself as a worker in wool, an occupation which Rouse stereotypes as northern English.
Aphrodite’s speech here is book III, lines 390–394:
δεῦρ᾽ ἴθ᾽: Ἀλέξανδρός σε ...
- 53.5k
14
votes
Accepted
Who first referred to Odysseus as Ulysses?
Ulysses is the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus, stemming from the Sicilian or alternate Latin form Ulixes. The first instance of these forms in literature that I can find is in the Odusia by Livius ...
- 4,412
14
votes
Why are all of these things described as "ambrosial" in "The Iliad"?
“Ambrosial” means “relating to the gods” in general, and does not only apply to their food.
ἀμβρόσιος […] poetic form of ἄμβροτος immortal, divine, rarely of persons […] in Homer, night and sleep are ...
- 53.5k
13
votes
Why does the Iliad start "in the middle"?
There was a whole cycle of poems detailing the Trojan war and its aftermath. See Wikipedia. Of these, only the two attributed to Homer have survived intact.
So you could think of it as starting in ...
- 11.6k
11
votes
Who first referred to Odysseus as Ulysses?
I am not a linguist, but I think it's worth mentioning that the Odysseus→Ulysses transformation is a special case of something called the "Sabine L": some words that had "d" sounds in Old Latin (or in ...
- 1,364
11
votes
Why is Nausicaa named 'burner of ships'?
I'm going to attempt an answer with the caveats that the materialists often find my etymological ideas on names to be poetic as opposed to scientific, and that I'd want to know what Graves thought but ...
- 4,178
11
votes
Accepted
What does "branch of Ares" mean in book II of "The Iliad"?
“Branch of Ares” is a literal translation of “ὄζος Ἄρηος”, for example in the passage quoted in the question:
οὐκ οἶος, ἅμα τῷ γε Λεοντεὺς ὄζος Ἄρηος
υἱὸς ὑπερθύμοιο Κορώνου Καινεΐδαο:
τοῖς δ᾽ ἅμα ...
- 53.5k
10
votes
What is a bootless oath?
The specific Butler passage you reference can be found on Perseus
line 272-348.
An alternate 1924 translation by A.T. Murray may also be found there.
The Murray is quite distinct from the Butler ...
- 4,178
10
votes
Accepted
Why is this line about prophecy in book 2 of the Odyssey thought to be "spurious"?
The possibly spurious line is 2.191:
πρῆξαι δ᾽ ἔμπης οὔ τι δυνήσεται εἵνεκα τῶνδε:
and he will in no case be able to do aught because of these men here
Homer. Odyssey 2.191. Translated by A. T. ...
- 53.5k
9
votes
Accepted
In Homer's Odyssey, how can the one-eyed Cyclops have multiple brows?
This issue has been puzzling commentators for thousands of years, if we take it broadly as "how many eyes did Homer think Polyphemus had, and why?"
The Greek text of Odyssey 9.389 uses the ...
- 1,474
8
votes
Accepted
Vultures and wives? What does this expression mean?
Pope uses “grateful” in this sense:
grateful, adj., 1. Pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome.
Oxford English Dictionary.
and not in the more usual sense of “feeling ...
- 53.5k
8
votes
Had Keats read any of Homer's works before reading Chapman's translation of them?
He was probably familiar with Alexander Pope's version, which was the prestigious version at the time.1 It's likely that Keats wasn't enamored with this version. He was famously critical of 18th ...
- 649
8
votes
Accepted
What is a bootless oath?
From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
useless, unprofitable
a bootless attempt
So we can replace the word bootless like this:
The oath he swore was useless, but it made Dolon more keen on ...
- 23.3k
8
votes
Why do Athena and Talthybios speak "plainly" in the Iliad?
The first case is book IV, line 92:
ἀγχοῦ δ᾽ ἱσταμένη ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
Here ἀγχοῦ = near; ἱσταμένη = standing; ἔπεα = words; πτερόεντα = feathered, winged; προσηύδα = spoke to, addressed. So ...
- 53.5k
8
votes
What does Nestor's love of a "good horse" have to do with anything?
This is book IV, line 318:
τὸν δ᾽ ἠμείβετ᾽ ἔπειτα Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ:
In A. T. Murray’s 1924 translation, that’s
To him then made answer the horseman, Nestor of Gerenia:
“ἱππότης” means “...
- 53.5k
8
votes
Why is Helen's speech here in the Iliad described as being given "warmly"?
The original Greek text is VI.332
τὸν δ᾽ Ἑλένη μύθοισι προσηύδα μειλιχίοισι:
where μειλιχίοισι means “gentle, soothing” (the word is related to μέλι meaning “honey”). This adjective does not seem ...
- 53.5k
7
votes
Accepted
Which ancient Greek politician punched a teacher for failing to carry his copy of Homer?
The anecdote appears in Plutarch’s life of Alcibiades:
After he [Alcibiades] had finished his education, he went into a school, and asked the master for a volume of Homer. When the master said that ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Why is the oath sworn to Dolon by Hector a "bootless" one?
It likely has to do with a quote by Automedon later in the Iliad:
“Alcimedon, what man beside of the Achaeans is of like worth to curb and guide the spirit of [Achilles'] immortal steeds, save only ...
- 4,178
6
votes
Can the Odyssey be consumed independently of the Iliad?
In addition to verbose's theoretical comments on the nature of myth, there is evidence that the two epics were, in fact, consumed separately in ancient Greece.
Aelian (Various History 13.14) attests ...
- 310
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible