I skipped the first two hundred pages of
this book and then reluctantly sat it down seventy-five pages later. The first two hundred pages of Fox’s book
consist of a thorough, dense, complete history of the ancient world from the
sinking of Atlantis to the conquests of Alexander the Great. (Yeah, Atlantis happen. Those less romanticly inclined refer to the
event as the “eruption of Thera”.) I praise Fox for an excellent account of the
Ancient Greeks and the lands they visited and colonized. (The retelling obsessively returns to the
long island of Euboaea, Northeast of Athens.)
Since my area of research is Greek
mythology and since I felt comfortable with my knowledge of the history,
geography and cultures involved, I started reading at Chapter 12.
There’s lots of good
stuff here. Fox defines myth rather
nicely; “…’myth’, our word for tales
about named individuals, distncit from ‘folk tales’.” And takes an contemproary approach to his
study of Homer, “There are lots of ‘tales with in a tale’, shorter tales of
travel which Homer causes his heroes to tell, particularly in the Odyssey. They lie off the main lines of the plot which
he inherited…”
Fox follows the
legends of Heracles,Io, Daedalus, Perseus and Bellephron around the
Mediteranean and best summarizes the approach to these studies with; “…the travels of Mopsus the hero are not evidence for a ‘migrant
charismatic’ who was bringing widom fro the Near East to the Greek world. Theuy ar evidence…for the flexibiilyt of of
Greeks and their myths as they explained a newly found Asian kindom, responded
to civi rivilaries and forged bonds of kinship between un related peoples”
Classicists are obssesed wit
the songs of Homer. Many of the tales
that and his almost comtemporary poet Hesiod tell, are oddly familiar to tales
of gods in the Near East. Here’s Fox’s
take on that; “…Hittite and Canaanite
stories date back at least to 1200 BC…If Greeks ever picked up these tales…They
had to learn them from conversations….By
a remarkable accident of survival, we have evidence for the formal telling of
one group of stories in a specific place.
It survives in fragmentary Hittite texts which date back the late theirteenth century BC …they are list
of cult-offereings in honor of Mount Hazzi…Among the honours were the ‘singing of
the song of kingship’…’” Which Fox
goes on to equate with Zeus’ overthrow of Cronus and the Middle Eastern tales
of the storm god overthrowing the elder gods.
Sadly at this point I closed
the book. I just started an on-line
course at Harvard from edX; The Ancient Greek Hero and must spend my reading time on my
studies. But, I hope you will find
time for “Traveling Heroes”
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