Chariots

[Razgovory]

The issue here is not whether the large-scale events had some truth to them, but whether the blow-by-blow tactics used during the fighting were accurately described.

The former is more likely to be transmitted than the latter.

Again, the example of how Europeans remembered Roman events hundreds of years later is instructive. They had of course written accounts to go by (which the dark ages Greeks did not), but nonetheless there was a definite tendency, prior to the rise of historical scholarship, to see Romans as basically fighting like contemporary europeans fought. Hell, European accounts of Biblical battles were often similar.

The problem here is that ancient Mycenae was a very different culture and had different social and political organization than dark ages Greece. The chances that the Mycenaens were (1) able to conduct large-scale siege operations hundreds of miles from their homelands and yet (2) fought battles as basically individual duels of champions (which was more a 'barbaric' or rather 'low level of social and political organization' trait) is, on its face, somewhat unlikely.

It is sort of as if an Irish Bard of the 8th centurty wrote a poem in which Julius Caesar beat up Pompey Magnus in hand-to-hand fighting during a massive cattle raid into Greece.

I think the question of whether any of it transmitted accurately or it's possible to tell that any one part is accurate over another.

[Razgovory]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets? 

To argue the other side, Raz...have you read the studies done on oral poets in Central Africa or the Northwest Coast?  There, many thousands of details are passes with great accuracy about heritage, actions, and events.  The point I am making is that one oral tradition might well be story influenced (with changing details) or detail oriented (with long lists using mnemonics) - they are for different purposes.

Do not hit on one or the other as all inclusive of "oral tradition" as that category is quite broad.

No, who did these studies?  It would seem to me very hard to prove the accuracy of oral tradition with out a corresponding written records.  I should point out that Milman's work was explicitly European and was consistent with the way Homer is read.  That narrows it down quite a bit.

[PDH]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets? 

To argue the other side, Raz...have you read the studies done on oral poets in Central Africa or the Northwest Coast?  There, many thousands of details are passes with great accuracy about heritage, actions, and events.  The point I am making is that one oral tradition might well be story influenced (with changing details) or detail oriented (with long lists using mnemonics) - they are for different purposes.

Do not hit on one or the other as all inclusive of "oral tradition" as that category is quite broad.

No, who did these studies?  It would seem to me very hard to prove the accuracy of oral tradition with out a corresponding written records.  I should point out that Milman's work was explicitly European and was consistent with the way Homer is read.  That narrows it down quite a bit.

I would have to dig through old resources to find this.  My point was that oral traditions covers quite a bit of room.  I would be leery of drawing too close of parallels.

[Malthus]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets? 

To argue the other side, Raz...have you read the studies done on oral poets in Central Africa or the Northwest Coast?  There, many thousands of details are passes with great accuracy about heritage, actions, and events.  The point I am making is that one oral tradition might well be story influenced (with changing details) or detail oriented (with long lists using mnemonics) - they are for different purposes.

Do not hit on one or the other as all inclusive of "oral tradition" as that category is quite broad.

I think my point would be that oral tradition can be quite accurate - about events and issues that are readily comprehensible to the persons transmitting them. In times of great social and cultural change, as in the fall of a "dark age", the oral tradition may not be a very reliable guide. For example, one would not want to rely too uncritically on (say) oral accounts of the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain - the stories of King Arthur, while they may have some germs of accuracy, tell you more about the people making the stories than they do about the fading Roman presence in Britian.

The problem is that it is very difficult for people at one level of social and political organization to really understand the actions and motivations of people at another. Hence, stories about people at another level get recast into a form more comprehensible to those making the stories. The names and events may be the same, but the stories - the guts of the stuff that people find interesting - are quite different.

The Iliad is a perfect example of this. The conflict over Troy would make perfect sense to a great power on the rampage - control over the trade through the hellespont has happened again and again in history. But that's not what the Iliad is about. If you read it, the setting of the Iliad is a story about revenge, a retaliatory raid conducted because of a woman-stealing and breach of the duties of hospitality.  The specifics of the story - how it opens - is that Achillies, the most prominent individual hero on the side of the Greeks, is sulking in his tent and refusing to fight because his overlord has taken away a slave-woman - a bit of booty he was particularly fond of.

This story makes prefect sense in the setting of a small-scale society in which raiding is a way of life. It does not make sense in the setting of major empires battling over long distance for control of trade-routes.

Similarly with the fighting. The bulk of the Iliad is an account of hand-to-hand battles between individual warriors, which follows a somewhat stereotypical pattern:

(1) The warriors recite their lineage and accomplishments;
(2) They work themselves up into a frenzy, taunting each other;
(3) They battle it out, mano-a-mano; and
(4) The winner strips the loser of his arms and either honours the fallen or dishonours the corpse (as Achilles does to Hector).

This "heroic" mode of warfare is worlds away from masses of light cavalry (or chariots) raining anonymous death from composite bows. The whole point of "Homeric" war is that the heroes show their individual mettle, and thus their worth, before everyone in hand-to-hand combat. 

[Barrister]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets?  They don't memorize a story but thousands or formalistic expressions that fit the meter.  The poet has a general idea of the story he wants to tell and combines two or three of these expressions together to get the line.  In this way the poem sort of writes itself and the poet can think about the next line before he finishes uttering the expression of the previous line.  It's thought that Homer worked the same way.  These expressions may be in the catalog of poets for hundreds of years.  So an expression from several hundred years ago my be combined with one the poet made up himself or has only been in the poetic community for fifty years.  The result is that the poems are very flexible, and change quite a bit.  For instance a poem was told an incident in WWII (which wasn't very long ago when it was recorded), but didn't resemble much the actual incident.  The poet filled it mostly with standard stock characters.  This is probably how most pre-literate oral poetry was conceived.  For example the Song of Roland which was composed in a much shorter period of time after the actual battle it lionizes and misidentifies one of the sides.  Christian Basques are replaced by idol worshiping Muslims.

Since serbia is a literate society there is probably a lot less need for oral tradition to record anything accurately.

I'm generally aware that the studies done on first nation and inuit oral histories have shown quite a bit of accuracy.

[Razgovory]

The rural Yugoslavia when the study was done not very literate.  I'm interested in how you would know Inuit oral history would be accurate.

[Razgovory]

I think my point would be that oral tradition can be quite accurate - about events and issues that are readily comprehensible to the persons transmitting them. In times of great social and cultural change, as in the fall of a "dark age", the oral tradition may not be a very reliable guide. For example, one would not want to rely too uncritically on (say) oral accounts of the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain - the stories of King Arthur, while they may have some germs of accuracy, tell you more about the people making the stories than they do about the fading Roman presence in Britian.

The problem is that it is very difficult for people at one level of social and political organization to really understand the actions and motivations of people at another. Hence, stories about people at another level get recast into a form more comprehensible to those making the stories. The names and events may be the same, but the stories - the guts of the stuff that people find interesting - are quite different.

The Iliad is a perfect example of this. The conflict over Troy would make perfect sense to a great power on the rampage - control over the trade through the hellespont has happened again and again in history. But that's not what the Iliad is about. If you read it, the setting of the Iliad is a story about revenge, a retaliatory raid conducted because of a woman-stealing and breach of the duties of hospitality.  The specifics of the story - how it opens - is that Achillies, the most prominent individual hero on the side of the Greeks, is sulking in his tent and refusing to fight because his overlord has taken away a slave-woman - a bit of booty he was particularly fond of.

This story makes prefect sense in the setting of a small-scale society in which raiding is a way of life. It does not make sense in the setting of major empires battling over long distance for control of trade-routes.

Similarly with the fighting. The bulk of the Iliad is an account of hand-to-hand battles between individual warriors, which follows a somewhat stereotypical pattern:

(1) The warriors recite their lineage and accomplishments;
(2) They work themselves up into a frenzy, taunting each other;
(3) They battle it out, mano-a-mano; and
(4) The winner strips the loser of his arms and either honours the fallen or dishonours the corpse (as Achilles does to Hector).

This "heroic" mode of warfare is worlds away from masses of light cavalry (or chariots) raining anonymous death from composite bows. The whole point of "Homeric" war is that the heroes show their individual mettle, and thus their worth, before everyone in hand-to-hand combat.

The thing is, there is no way to know if the "big things" are even accurate.  It's entirely possible that the story of Troy was an older story of a war in Greece that was transplanted to Western Anatolia to appeal to the "local market".  Or perhaps it started as a story about a raid on the steppes of Eurasia.  Or the city of Troy being sacked by someone else entirely or a mythical war of gods.  There is no real way to tell.  The Song of Roland is a good example since it gets the big things wrong.  There was a Battle of Roncevaux but Muslims weren't even there.

[dps]

The Iliad is a perfect example of this. The conflict over Troy would make perfect sense to a great power on the rampage - control over the trade through the hellespont has happened again and again in history. But that's not what the Iliad is about. If you read it, the setting of the Iliad is a story about revenge, a retaliatory raid conducted because of a woman-stealing and breach of the duties of hospitality. 

This story makes prefect sense in the setting of a small-scale society in which raiding is a way of life. It does not make sense in the setting of major empires battling over long distance for control of trade-routes.

It's hardly unknown, though, for wars to be triggered by some "small" event, even if the real reasons for the conflict are long-term clashes of strategic interests.

[Malthus]

The Iliad is a perfect example of this. The conflict over Troy would make perfect sense to a great power on the rampage - control over the trade through the hellespont has happened again and again in history. But that's not what the Iliad is about. If you read it, the setting of the Iliad is a story about revenge, a retaliatory raid conducted because of a woman-stealing and breach of the duties of hospitality. 

This story makes prefect sense in the setting of a small-scale society in which raiding is a way of life. It does not make sense in the setting of major empires battling over long distance for control of trade-routes.

It's hardly unknown, though, for wars to be triggered by some "small" event, even if the real reasons for the conflict are long-term clashes of strategic interests.

Certainly. The disconnect comes in what the poet has chosen to emphasize.

One could imagine a war "started" over woman-stealing but having multiple underlying reasons, like WW1 "started" over an assasination.

However, in reading the poem, *all* that the poet appears concerned about is the "heroic" issues - the personal honour and glory of the participants, Achillies sulking in his tent, his rage at the death of Patroclius, etc.

These are all the sorts of stories that would appeal to (for want of a better expression) a "barbarian" audience. It is difficult to imagine the army of (say) the Hittites or Assyrians operating in this manner. It indicates levels of military subordination and cohesion that are much lower than that of a truly organized kingdom or empire.

The point here is not that the war did not happen, or that the Iliad does not refer to the war. Rather, the point is that, even assuming the war against Troy happened and the Iliad is an account of it, the account we get of the war is viewed through the "lens" of a dark ages Greek audience.

This means that, although we can glean nuggets of truth from the account, we cannot take the actual actions of the participants in the Iliad - or their style of fighting - at face value. 

[Siege]

My guess is he's going on about the Triparte division theory.  Worker, Priest, Warrior.

Humm, awesome idea.

[crazy canuck]

I think my point would be that oral tradition can be quite accurate - about events and issues that are readily comprehensible to the persons transmitting them.

The scholars who argue the opposite side make the point that some of what is contained within the oral tradition was not readily comprehensible to the people who transmitted it and certainly not by the time of homer.  For example, they argue that place names that no longer existed, archaic phrases and words that no longer had meaning not to mention the detailed fleet lists are all examples of the oral tradition faithfully transmitting facts down through the ages although they no longer had meaning (or at least were not readily understood - your word "comprehensible) in the age they were reduced to writing.

[crazy canuck]

The point here is not that the war did not happen, or that the Iliad does not refer to the war. Rather, the point is that, even assuming the war against Troy happened and the Iliad is an account of it, the account we get of the war is viewed through the "lens" of a dark ages Greek audience.

More accurately the accuracy of the oral tradition is being attacked through the lens of someone who is unfamiliar with how accurate an oral tradition can be.

[HVC]

The point here is not that the war did not happen, or that the Iliad does not refer to the war. Rather, the point is that, even assuming the war against Troy happened and the Iliad is an account of it, the account we get of the war is viewed through the "lens" of a dark ages Greek audience.

More accurately the accuracy of the oral tradition is being attacked through the lens of someone who is unfamiliar with how accurate an oral tradition can be.

plus, you know, the crazy lense part. never underestimate the crazy.

[Malthus]

I think my point would be that oral tradition can be quite accurate - about events and issues that are readily comprehensible to the persons transmitting them.

The scholars who argue the opposite side make the point that some of what is contained within the oral tradition was not readily comprehensible to the people who transmitted it and certainly not by the time of homer.  For example, they argue that place names that no longer existed, archaic phrases and words that no longer had meaning not to mention the detailed fleet lists are all examples of the oral tradition faithfully transmitting facts down through the ages although they no longer had meaning (or at least were not readily understood - your word "comprehensible) in the age they were reduced to writing.

Reciting names and places does not affect the guts of the story, which has to do with the action. Again, refer to such "histories" as those of King Arthur. For all we know, guys like Arthur and Vortigen may have been real Romano-British names, and Mount Badonicus a real place.

A Celtic Bard may well sing a ballad of how Julius Caeser defeated Pompey Magnus in hand-to-hand combat, and then stole all his cattle and returned to Rome, because Pompey insulted Caeser in a boasting competition during a feast ... but we don't have to believe that this is an accurate account of the motives and action in the Civil War just because the names are accurate, do we? 

[crazy canuck]

Reciting names and places does not affect the guts of the story, which has to do with the action. Again, refer to such "histories" as those of King Arthur. For all we know, guys like Arthur and Vortigen may have been real Romano-British names, and Mount Badonicus a real place.

A Celtic Bard may well sing a ballad of how Julius Caeser defeated Pompey Magnus in hand-to-hand combat, and then stole all his cattle and returned to Rome, because Pompey insulted Caeser in a boasting competition during a feast ... but we don't have to believe that this is an accurate account of the motives and action in the Civil War just because the names are accurate, do we? 

You are ignoring the fact that the type of heavy bronze armour described by Homer has been confirmed through archeology. There is only one way a person could have been transported to the fight while wearing that kind of cumbersome weight - on the back of a chariot.  This is not Homer or Homers making things up out of whole cloth to conform to their own age.