• chaogomu
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    5 months ago

    And we know the works of Homer because they were written down.

    • @entropicdrift
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      5 months ago

      … by other people, yeah. The point is that the bard himself didn’t write. He went around and recited his epic poems from memory.

      • chaogomu
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        05 months ago

        Reciting from memory is a bardic skill, but those “other people” were his dedicated assistants.

        Well, possibly. We don’t know when Homer went blind, or if he was ever actually blind.

        All we really know is that the two biographies written about him were written at least 400 years after his death. Both are highly questionable, but both still say that Homer was literate, or at least well educated, before losing his sight.


        All we actually know is that Homer wrote the Iliad (or parts of it) and the Odyssey.