The probably composition of the Odyssey from 1200 through 300 B.C.
I initially thought that The Odyssey was written by Homer, then, in my prime, by a father and his sons, then in my middle years by a father and his daughter. Now in my sure decline, having laid in the dark for hundreds of nights unable to read listening to audio of ancient poets, I suspect five Masters, standing on the shoulders of, or even conducting, scores of poets. This past weekend I thought that the book broke down into four portions finally assembled and edited by a fifth poet.
If the Trojan War happened in about 1200 [1220 thru 1177 is the period], then I suggest that poets were singing to their fellows during the ensuing migrations as depicted in the Aeneid by Virgil, a nation adrift like swans on the ocean. This tradition would build. Poets would gather, meet, trade tales, jam together by campfire like hobos or blues men of the 1920s and 30s, and build their mutual story.
Checking my friend’s Bob’s translation by Richmond Lattimore, I see that the old professor suspected four distinct works. Let us proceed by way of the 24 book structure left to us. These are my divisions, which do agree, in most respects with Lattimore’s, but for different reasons. I, unlike he, cannot make language-based judgments, but rather look at narrative structure and historical elements.
Telamachy
Books 1-4
The first four chapters are a latter “improvement” of The Odyssey, conducted by relatively sissy hands, perhaps feminine, in order to make the old hero tale palatable for sedentary dwellers of the various city states. The initial tale was of migratory nature. In the original, Telamachus “New-fighter,” the only son and heir of Odysseus has been a foundling at the Spartan court, a common Arуan theme seen in Nordic myth. The vicious politics of the kingdoms, tyrannies, oligarchies and democracies of the 500s and 400s B.C. set the probable time of this composition. I like Greek Italy, including Sicily as the scene of composition. This is the weakest, most tedious, sub book of The Odyssey. But I think not the latest.
The Phaecians
Books 5-8
These mythologized Phoenicians are placed in a nether realm, I think, in the Atlantic, and represent the Greek angst over the fact that they got their letters and athletic laws from the merchant/pirates who bundled off Io to Egypt, and are blamed for abducting the Good Swineherd and of inveigling a war chief in the lie told by Odysseus to the Good Swineherd in the original. The nearly magical seafaring ability of the Phaecians is extolled. They have the same customs as the Greeks but are “soft.” None of the prime or young men, can match old Odysseus, though. These books represent maximum feminine authority, with the young princess, rescuing Odysseus and her mother, the Queen, named Arete, [the most important word in Greek masculine culture!], assigned ultimate moral authority over the fate of the marooned hero.
It is my opinion, that an anonymous female poet, a young woman, who vested herself as the princess of the Phaecians, daughter of Alkinos and Arete, composed this work. I doubt she was a Homerid or a Sicilian philosopher, but a woman of Alexandria writing in the 200s, in the time of Theocritus and Apollonius. Part of this supposition is due to the extreme competition in ritual athletics between the Ptolemaic kings and the free cities and confederate leagues of Greece. This reached a head when Aristonikus of Egypt and Klitomachus of Thebes fought at the Olynpics, with the old rustic Theban prevailing over the younger man. I see this as the influence behind these four later books of Odysseus’ Wanderings, where Odysseus tells of his earlier wanderings. A second pick for authoress of the Phaecians would be a Consort of Corinth, where Klietomachus first earned fame at the Isthmian Agon, where also, Orion of Optima found refuge as a champion harper.
Proto Nostoi
[Earliest Wandering Homecoming]
Book 9 thru 12
These are the four best, and, I think, most ancient books. The Cimmerian bow, known since about 2,000 B.C., that burst on the scene in the hands of the Cimmerians themselves in Greek Asia about 675 B.C., is key. The First Homer places the Cimmerians in the Land of the Midnight Sun, and gives their bow to Odysseus as his own, and also indicates HIS deep Arуan ancestry as a Steppes Warrior in his journey to the Land of the Dead. The Cimmerians had not yet been driven into Asia Minor by the Scythians. This book had to have been written before 675 B.C. and, I think, was probably first composed in about 1100 B.C. a few generations after the Trojan War.
The author of this book would be the most ancient poet, probably working alone, like many of the poets of the 600s, homeless and uprooted by war. He has much in common with the poets that originally composed Gilgamesh and Beowulf, and I think represents the deepest tradition.
Wrath of Odysseus
Books 12-24
This section of the book, is the main story, and works as well as Beowulf without the earlier mythic tale or the two latter civic yarns. The author of this book goes to great lengths at the end to fulfill the ancestral journey back to the Arуan hinterland imposed upon Odysseus by the ghost of the slain poet in Odysseus’ Journey to the Land of the Dead.
The Wrath of Odysseus, which ends with the ghosts of the backstabbing, draft-dodging, rear-echelon sissies going to hell to inform those heroes slain at Troy and on the Homecoming, that Odysseus slaughtered them for threatening his wife and heir, while his old father Laertes yet lived, is the primal payoff that Modern readers do not get. The great fear, often realized, by warriors going off to war, that they would return to find that their property and women had been taken by lesser men who stayed behind, is here addressed. Of interest are the two deepest Arуan scenes that support the demand of the dead poet that Odysseus, travel with an oar so far inland that a man sees it and thinks it is a threshing beam, and that then he make sacrifice. These two supporting scenes, are the test of bending the bow imposed by Penelope, in her only really gutsy act, done at the command of her returning Master, and a story related by Herodotus…
Herdotus tells of the Scythians invading Media for a decade or more. They then returned home to find that their slaves had entered the beds of their wives and had taken over their property, and were prepared to defend it. The only question was, “Do we kill them, or whip them?” the Scythian warriors did not demean their swords with the blood of risen slaves but beat them back into submission. This is a story that came from the late 800s to early 700s B.C I see this version as a Scythian softening of the earlier Homecoming of Odysseus and his ilk, the slaughter of the suitors.
My opinion is that the final 12 chapters were written second, after 9 thru 11. This 12 book epic I suspect was sung by an original poet, and improved upon down the ages from about 1100, down thru to 750 B.C. Between 750 and 700 B.C. I suspect that a man named Homer and his family/troup added the four mythic books and and sung it as one great tale.
Finally, at some point about the lifetime of Archimedes of Syracuse, about 220 B.C., either in Alexandria, Athens or Syracuse, I suspect that The Odyssey was composed by a master hand, possibly a woman, but probably a sissy man, into the final 24 books to match with The Iliad.
The Iliad I suggest as a younger, more recent tale than The Odyssey in its first 4 books. There is a stronger case for a single author of The Iliad, who I suspect was a master of the original [final] 16 books of The Odyssey.
I have no language skill basis for these suspicions, as does Lattimore for his. Mine are purely based on narrative structure, evidence of post-composition editing into one book, and the anomalous Arуan archaic elements such as the bow test and shooting through ax head eyes, another classic Arуan steppes warrior weapon.
My verdict for authors is:
Books 1-4: A sissy, circa 500 B.C.
Books 5-8: A woman, circa 225 B.C.
Books 9-12: A Single man, probably named Homer, of remote antiquity circa 1150 B.C.
Books 13-24: A Fraternity of Poets, including a master named Homer, the Homerids, circa 725 B.C.
Editor?: A Poet of the age of Hellenistic decline, Circa 225 B.C., saving the work of his ancestors from the erasing heel of Time.
Thank you, Ryan.
