I'd forgotten the reference (BAR is
a nice organization).
Indeed. The Wiliusiad.
Homer was from Ionia -- in Asia Minor -- not that far down from the Troad.
His Greek is usually bracketed as 'Homeric', in that it's heavily literary, and
not something anyone ever spoke. But it's close to
ancient Attic.
Robert Graves praises the
Iliad as a Homeric joke. As a matter of fact, he correctly informs us that
Homer presents the scions of Troy more happily than he does the thugs of
Mycenean Greece.
The idea is that Homer was of a
higher cultural status than the Doric oafs he sang to, and that the pigs he
sang to never got the joke.
More realistically, we are dealing
with old stories that got sent through the mytho-literary Cusinart. It's
like the Arthurian cycle, where a nugget of historical truth (Arthur as an
immediately post-Roman dux bellorum) is combined with Celtic
mythology (Merlin, Uther Pendragon, Morgana-le-Fey, etc), and then later,
combined with the Grail Trail (where Valais in Switzerland gets displaced to
Wales, in Britain).
The same thing has happened more
recently with American Christmas. The Clement Moore poem, the Coca-Cola Santa
Claus, and the Gene Autry song about Rudolph, together with Frosty the Snowman
et al, all joins with ornate baby Jesus scenes in Japan.
I'm saying the Iliad is
conflate. We are told there were two Trojan Wars. Trojan War I was the one about
Hesione (the face that launched six ships), and how Herakles rescued her a la
Andromeda-at-Jaffa. TWII was about Helen -- with two assemblies at Aulis. And
ca. 1800 -- well before any Trojan date, the Mediterraneans were into mosiacs
that displayed seamen sacking the city from the sea.
Homer was like Shakespeare. Both
are beyond any historical recovery. They were --so good-- that they probably
really do play jokes on us.
Mark.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 3:36
PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Ilios
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 8:29 PM
Subject: RE: [tied] Ilios
Here's something more about the identification
of Wilusa as Troy. The Luwian poem I referred to (which C. Watkins calls,
tongue in cheek, "The Wilusiad") is mentioned there. On the linguistic side,
Wilusa = *wi:l-us-a-, where -us- is the same placename-forming suffix that we
find in Hattusa-. The corresponding Greek suffix is *-jo-, hence the Greek
calque Wi:l-ijo-s > Ilios /i:lios/. I'm not sure what the "wi:l-" part is
-- most likely an ethnic name. Hypothetical Hittite *Wi:lumna-, Luwian
*Wi:luwanni- (?) would correspond to Greek Ilios 'Ilian = Trojan'. Has anyone
heard of such ethnonyms on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor?
Piotr