Papyri of the Iliad; Also: Academic Conventions

In my recent blog post entitled Manuscripts, I wrote:

"[...]several months ago, I sent a email to a distinguished scholar, asking him whether he could round out some areas of my knowledge of the Oxyrhynchus papyri project: Are any of the papyri still in the boxes Grenfell and Hunt put them into between 1897 and 1904? Are we approaching the state of things where all that is left are tiny little pieces of papyrus? Questions like that.

"He hasn't gotten back to me. That hurts my feelings, but it's entirely his prerogative, of course. Finally today I sent an email to the general guestions-and-suggestions-etc address of the Oxyrhynchus project, which is perhaps where I should've inquired to begin with."

In Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad, Munich & Leipzig, 2000, p 87, M L West writes that, as the Egypt Exploration Society wished, he did not give any details of the 850 unpublished Oxyrhynchus papyri (Correction: 827 unpublished papyri used by West in his edition, plus 23 first published in Manfrdi et al, Papiri dell'Iliade, Florence, 2000. I think. Much of what I write in CI and about Classics on my blog should be proofread by experts before anyone thinks of taking it seriously, because of things I don't know and full-time academics do know.) used in his edition of the Iliad, 1998--2000, and he thanks them for their permission to now include their inventory numbers and summary details in his catalog of papyri of the Iliad, which contains a total of 1569 items.

Because of those details, I can see that those 850 papyri which in 2000 were either unpublished or published for the first time, are certainly not inconsequential little scraps. They seem generally to be about as big as most of the Homeric papyri already published. This does not give the impression that the Oxyrhynchus project is almost all out of significant papyri. I need to try to find out how many more have been published in the last 18 years, and discovered in that time, if the existence of those latter have been made known to the public.

To judge from West's pointed expression of thanks to the Egypt Exploration Society for their permission to divulge details about unpublished papyri, maybe the reason that neither the above-mentioned distinguished scholar nor anyone else from the EES has yet gotten back to me with details about unpublished papyri is that such details are conventionally thought of as proprietary secret knowledge of the EES, only rarely made public in extraordinary circumstances, such as when a scholar of West's stature is involved. I'm ignorant of the ways in which things are usually done in Classical Studies and papyrology, Perhaps I've been making making requests for information which are generally considered impolite at best. Consultation with some Classicists and papyrologists about mores and conventions, learning a little about the way things are usually done, certainly would do me no harm, and might save both myself and some scholars a great deal of future embarrassment.

Alexander Pope's Translation of The Iliad

In the War of Troy, the Greeks having sack'd some of the neighbouring Towns, and taken from thence two beautiful Captives, Chruseïs and Briseïs, allotted the first to Agagamemnon, and the last to Achilles. Chryses, the Father of Chruseïs and Priest of Apollo, comes to the Grecian Camp to ransome her; with which the Action of the Poem opens, in the Tenth Year of the Siege. The Priest being refus'd and insolently dismiss'd by Agamemnon, intreats for Vengeance from his God, who inflicts a Pestilence on the Greeks. Achilles calls a Council, and encourages Chalcas to declare the Cause of it, who attributes it to the Refusal of Chruseïs. The King being obliged to send back his Captive, enters into a furious Contest with Achilles, which Nestor pacifies; however as he had the absolute Command of the Army, he seizes on Briseïs in revenge. Achilles in discontent withdraws himself and his Forces from the rest of the Greeks; and complaining to Thetis, she supplicates Jupiter to render them sensible of the Wrong done to her Son, by giving Victory to the Trojans. Jupiter granting her Suit incenses Juno, between whom the Debate runs high, 'till they are reconciled by the Address of Vulcan.

The Time of two and twenty Days is taken up in this Book; nine during the Plague, one in the Council and Quarrel of the Princes, and twelve for Jupiter's Stay with the Æthiopians, at whose Return Thetis prefers her Petition. The Scene lies in the Grecian Camp, then changes to Chrysa, and lastly to the Gods on Olympus.

That's Alexander Pope's summary of Book 1 of Homer's Iliad -- the "argument," as such literary summaries used to be called. Pope's translation of the Iliad appeared between 1715 and 1720, during which time Pope was between 27 and 32 years old. Many poets have translated the Iliad into many languages (and some non-poets, let's face it). Hundreds of translations into English have been made. Once a decade or so someone will declare that the latest English translation is so magnificent that there's no need for another one, ever. Or at least for a very, very long time. At least once during the 20th century, a paperback edition carried a line from a review declaring that this translation was so good that another one wouldn't be needed for at least a century, and then the reviewer published his own translation, less than a century later.

I'm not a poet -- I'm a very, very, very, very good writer of prose, but with verse, not so much. I can't see myself holding my own in a debate with great poets about the relative merits of various translations of the Iliad. But I like Pope's very much. This is the way Pope begins the poem:

The Wrath of Peleus' Son, the direful Spring
Of all the Grecian Woes, O Goddess, sing!
That Wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy Reign
The Souls of mighty Chiefs untimely slain;
Whose Limbs unbury'd on the naked Shore
Devouring Dogs and hungry Vultures tore.
Since Great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the Sov'reign Doom, and such the Will of Jove.

Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated Hour
Sprung the fierce Strife, from what offended Pow'r?
Latona's Son a dire Contagion spread,
And heap'd the Camp with Mountains of the Dead;
The King of Men his Rev'rend Priest defy'd,
And, for the King's Offence, the People dy'd.

For Chryses sought with costly Gifts to gain
His Captive Daughter from the Victor's Chain.
Suppliant the Venerable Father stands,
Apollo's awful Ensigns grace his Hands:
By these he begs; and lowly bending down,
Extends the Sceptre and the Laurel Crown.
He su'd to All, but chief implor'd for Grace
The Brother-Kings, of Atreus' Royal Race.

What can I say, that works for me. Does this mean that Richmond Lattimore's version is no longer my favorite? No, it means that I love them both and don't feel that I have to choose one.

It's very strange that it has not occurred to me until just now to try translations of the Iliad into other languages, other than Latin. (Generally speaking, Latin translations of the Iliad are notorious for being not so good. Unless there are a lot of outstanding Latin translation of the Iliad of which I've never heard. That's certainly possible.) When things like that suddenly occur to me I get very happy.

The earliest English tranlsation of the Iliad of which I am aware is that of Arthur Hall, published in 1581, which begins:

I Thée beséech, O Goddesse milde, the hatefull hate to plaine,
Whereby Achilles was so wroong, and grewe in suche disdaine,
That thousandes of the Gréekish Dukes, in hard and heauie plight,
To Plutoes Courte did yéelde their soules, and gaping lay upright,
Those sencelesse trunckes of buriall voide, by them erst gaily borne,
By rauening curres, and carreine foules, in peeces to be torne.

Why Aren't Homer And The Pentateuch Mentioned More Often In The Same Breath?

They come from the same part of the world. Greece and the Western coast of Turkey aren't so far from Egypt and Israel. They each occupy a central, dominating place in a culture, first the Greek culture in the one case and through it the Graeco-Roman and its heirs; and in the other case the Jewish culture, and then through it Christendom and Islam and very many of the same cultural inheritors. The events portrayed by each of them occurred, if they occurred, in the 13th century BC or thereabout. They each existed as oral epic passed down for some time before they took written form. Each one took roughly the written form with which we're familiar no later than the 6th century BC.

In hindsight, we can see both Greece and Israel for the first time after what is called the Ancient Near East Dark Age or the Late Bronze Age Collapse: a period of chaos and destruction in Egypt and the Hittite and Canaanite civilisations in the 13th and 12th centuries, from which we have very few written documents. As with the European Dark Ages between AD 476 and 800, this period in the ancient Near East is sometimes called a Dark Age because very little contemporary writing sheds light on what happened, and also because what we do know about the era seems to have been very desolate and bleak and bloody. After this gap in the historical record, we can see Greece in what had been the territory of the Mycenaeans, and Israel in what had been Canaan. It's unclear to what extent the Greeks were descended from the Mycenaeans, and to what extent the Israelites were descended from the Canaanites. The Mycenaeans and the Canaanites had written with a syllabic script, and the Greek and Israelites both wrote with alphabets which both came from some original alphabet. We don't know exactly when or how the Greeks and the Israelites began to write.

Homer and the Pentateuch both describe events which may or may not have actually happened -- the Trojan War and its aftermath, and the Exodus -- but which if they did were no doubt significantly altered in the written versions. It's debatable whether there ever really was a Moses or Joshua, or an Achilles or Helen. Or a Homer. The parallels just don't stop.

Can it really be that these parallels are not often remarked upon and investigated?

Well, they should be mentioned in the same breath, for countless reasons, and if it's really the case that nobody before me has done so, then it's high time someone did and I'm someone and I'm mentioning them, so there!

"In 2000 Years People Will Believe Harry Potter Is True"

No, of course I don't believe that. I'm quoting stupid atheists, as I did in the blog post entitled We Possess the Works of Over Fifty Historians Who Were in Jerulsalem During Jesus' Supposed Lifetime, And None of Them Mention Him! And even if I ever did express such a harebrained notion, I would express it more elegantly, saying "nonfictional" rather than "true." ("Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?") This one about Harry Potter seems very popular, and it's staggeringly stupid, of course. (Was it actually started by someone like Dawkins or Hitchens? Harris seems a much more likely suspect.) When the Bible, or the Iliad,for example, was written, people regarded them as nonfiction. A lower percentage of their readers regards them as nonfictional today. Conversely, when the plays of Plautuswere first presented, over 2000 years ago, they were not thought of as depictions of actual people and events any more than Rowling's novels are today. And over the past 2000 years, people have not gradually come to think that they were depictions of actual people and events. Likewise, Dante's Divine Comedyand Shakespeare's Tempest,both clearly understood to be fiction right from the start, are not gradually being regarded as nonfiction.

If I were to argue in court that, indeed, there is a significant group of atheists running around loose who bear striking resemblances to religious fundamentalists, this garbage about Harry Potter just might be Exhibit A. (Hopefully 2000 years from now Rowling's mediocre children's novels will be long forgotten.) Just as a fundamentalist Christian will quote a verse or two from the KJVand stand there grinning smugly at you as if she just showed you something, so many a stupid atheist will say that 2000 years from now people will think Harry Potter is true, and stand there with the very same stupid smug grin on the front of his pointy head. When I first heard the term "fundamentalist atheist" a few years ago I found it to be ridiculous, and I wrote a blog post proudly claiming the intended insult as a label for my own, just like a punk rocker or a Gothic cathedral. Now I see that the term has its legitimate application. I still think that, by and large, the brightest folks tend to be atheists and the dimmest bulbs tend to believe in some deity or deities, but there are atheists who don't think about religion, but just parrot stupid memes about religion, just like the fundies. Let's make it perfectly clear now, I am not on their side. I am on the side of open minds, intellects which exert themselves and reach for more, people who are capable of being corrected. People who love to learn. It's never been atheists against believers with me. Scorsese and Cormac McCarthy and Kazantzakis and Kierkegaard are still my homies. Christianity is still stupid, but a person is often stupid in some areas and brilliant in others, and those four Christians are miles and miles brighter than these atheist yokels who just will not stop repeating their memes about Harry Potter becoming a religion over the next 2000 years and the Bible being written by illiterate [sic!] Bronze Age goat herders or by Constantine and the Pope at Nicea.