From: Mark Odegard
Message: 4425
Date: 2000-10-17
From: petegrayMark said:'Homeric' Greek ...is close to ancient Attic.
and he appears to date the Trojan Wars at ca. 1800
Ands says the Iliad is beyond any historical recovery.
It should be flagged up that not all scholars share his opinions on these three points.
Peter
This is an unfair characterization of my previous post (# 4357). I am being quoted out of context.I never said I dated the Iliad to ca. 1800 BCE; rather, I said, "And ca. 1800 -- well before any Trojan date, the Mediterraneans were into mosiacs that displayed seamen sacking the city from the sea".Homeric Greek is classified as Attic-Ionic. Do you challenge this? I said, about Homer that "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." By 'ancient Attic' I mean the Attic-Ionic of ca. 800-750 BCE.Yes, the Iliad is largely beyond historic recovery, almost as irrecoverable as the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt. The Iliad has an up to 1000 year jumble of historic and mytho-literary elements all glued together with no particular interest in presenting a Herodotus or Thucycides style history. Yes, we have the city we call Troy, but was this city the Troy Homer was thinking of?Certain of my comments are based on information found here:This is probably the best summary of the 'Trojan problem' on the web.Mark.