From: jpisc98357@...
Message: 8529
Date: 2001-08-15
Why is it no one offers hard evidence that it
can't be so? And would the same people also please offer evidence that Troy
is a figment of Homer's imagination, created to enhance the past of the
Greek?
Dear Thorsten,
I am a historian, not a linguist and enjoy your sometimes wide ranging
speculations as fun, not as an inspirational lunge for a previously unknown
truth.
Demanding that someone challenge your speculations with evidence that some
event could not possibly have happened is asking too much of the forum's more
serious members.
If you have a speculative theory based upon some evidence: contemporary
writers from the classical world, inscriptions, archaeological evidence or
anything else, you should feel free to offer it as a hypothesis open for
intellectual discussion but I would caution you to include any obvious date
that you know of that will but doubt on your theory.
We all love Homer not because he captured for all time some serious
historical events from the end of the Bronze Age but because his work was the
first master work of Western Civilization and formed the basic structure for
our literature till this day. His work was truely timeless. That being
said, the attempts to link the Trojan heroes to the founding of royal
lineages from Rome, Etruria, Skythia or Thule are preposterous. The Iliad
and the Odyssey are literature that gives us a glimpse of the Bronze Age not
histories that define it.
Snorri was not writing a history, he was trying to connect the dots
linking the Germanic tribes to a glorious past as was Vergil when he wrote
the Aeneid. A connection to a Golden Age allows some of that glory rub off
on us. If Snorri was inspired by Virgil, the result could indeed be a
parallel epic.
Best regards, John Piscopo
http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com
PO Box 137
Western Springs, IL 60558-0137
(708)246-7111