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El mundo de Odiseo
En El mundo de Odiseo se hace una incursión al universo de la Grecia antigua, a través de los famosos poemas la Ilíada y la Odisea de Homero. Un mundo tan especial que el autor considera que debemos conocerlo a fondo, para que no creamos, al leer aquellas obras, que Homero tenía una idea muy extraña de justicia, o que sus personajes no se comportan como seres humanos verdaderos.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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About the author
Moses I. Finley
73 books65 followersSir Moses I. Finley was an American and English classical scholar. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
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February 16, 2016
Revisiting the Odyssey, after not having touched Homer for a few years, I also tumbled upon this book thanks to Steve’s review. I have therefore welcomed this read as an approach to Homer’s epic world.
Because that is precisely what Finley says, that Homer’s was an Epic World.
Steve has already given the background to Finley and his times and circumstances. The fact that this book is published by NYRB is already a sign that it holds a special place to that of any other (scholarly) works on Homer. I imagine that it has earned its slot with this publishing house by both: Finley’s political leanings; and what was a strikingly original proposition at the time of publication, 1954.
Finley adamantly defended that Homer’s two poems are not history. They are fiction. Schliemann’s pretentions were just so, and the eventual full understanding of the Linear B Tablets completely changed our view of ancient times in the Aegean territories.
In my warming up to the Odyssey it has helped me to read in Finley that Homer’s time probably was around 750 BC period; that he was not writing about the lost Mycenaean period (13-12C BC); and that neither was he writing about his own times. Finley proposes the setting of the poems to the period before Homer (10-9C BC), the so-called Dark Ages of the Greek classical world.
And as dark times were dark, the most Finley dares to draw from the epics is a series of observations on the social institutions and social values that are represented. Finley’s analysis therefore is not literary, and as mentioned, neither is he providing an archaeological report--even if he uses archaeological knowledge. His view is that of an anthropologist.
Many of Finley’s observations are fascinating. I particularly liked his attention paid to the way oral traditions function and how Bards construct their poems. He mentions how in the 1930s an illiterate Serbian Bard had been asked to produce a rhymed poem that he completely composed it anew as he went along, taking several days to narrate the full story. From this he draws some rules that can be applied to Homer’s composition.
The Bard
But I also found, as I often do with anthropologists, that some of Finley’s findings are just too obvious. For example, he develops amply the important practice of gift giving, and deduces that reciprocity, in one way or other, was expected (really?). And in this I agree with Yann’s opinion of this book. Once Finley has discarded the poems as documents, and chosen not to analyze them from a literary point of view, what can he then say that any attentive reader and observer of human nature, in general, would not have also noticed?
Gift giving
This edition comes with two important Appendixes, both provided by Finley almost twenty years after his main essay. They provide interesting reading. In the first he revisits his main theories, and in the latter he censures directly Schliemann’s claims. These have now been completely discarded and I recommend the amusing The Fall of Troy
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Reading The Oxford History of the Classical World, in his essay on Homer, Oliver Taplin comments on Finley's book. He says: Finley's case is that Homer is consistent and anthropologically plausible in such matters as Agamemnon's constitutional position, the inheritance customs on Ithaca, the status of wives and monogamy, the legal and social treatment of murderers, to give four examples. I would maintain that in all four cases the poems are in fact inconsistent, treating the issue differently in different contexts....
... and from there proceeds to expand a bit more on the specifics of those four cases...
Read
November 5, 2015
The Blinding of Polyphemus
Just before he ran afoul of the Communist witch hunt in 1954, was fired from Rutgers and ended up a knighted Master of a college at Cambridge University, Moses I. Finley (1912-1986) published this little gem. Since he wrote this for a non-academic audience (it was first published by Viking Press), he does not argue, cite or support at length - he just describes the world of Odysseus in the light of archaeological, philological and other data known up to 1954, relying heavily on a close reading of the Odyssey.
I emphasize that Finley discusses the Odyssey not as a literary text so much as a historical text, and not as a history of some "Trojan War" (this notion, and the notion that Schliemann's Troy was the Troy of the Iliad, he deflates quickly) but as a social history of a particular moment on the peninsula we now call Greece. The first historical task is to determine the time.
Finley locates the actual time - as opposed to the represented time - of "Odysseus' world" not where I had naively accepted it to be; the received notion from such sources as Herodotus set the Homeric poems in Mycenaean times (12th - 14th century BCE).(*) According to Finley, the Odyssey was written in the 7th century BCE, a little less than a century after the Iliad was written, and the world it describes is not really the relatively distant past as the text pretends, but is primarily that of the 9th and 10th centuries BCE with anachronistic admixtures from both before and after that time.
After explaining the craft of the bards from whose oral tradition the Homeric poets selected and sewed together various pieces, Finley briefly points out the elements of the Homeric text(s) which stem from the standard tools of this craft. But he also points out that it is the art of the selection and the sewing together of the disparate pieces which set the Iliad and the Odyssey apart from the other epic poems of the time. And here I mean not the work of Hesiod, but of five other lengthy epics written down around the same time which survived for at least five more centuries (they were in Alexandria's fabled library) but later disappeared except for remnants in anthologies or quotations appearing in other books.
Finley attributes the survival of the Iliad and the Odyssey precisely to their quality. He reminds us that as the reed paper and skins on which the texts were written decayed with time, it was necessary for someone to care enough about the texts to re-write them by hand. In hoards of Greek manuscripts found preserved in the Egyptian desert a large percentage of the (incomplete due to imperfect preservation) texts were copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Many centuries after Homer's time, if one collected ancient Greek texts one was sure to want a copy of those two but rarely the other five.
What about the texts we actually have? According to Finley, the oldest complete texts of the Odyssey we possess date to the 10th century CE. In what relation do they stand to the 7th century BCE text? As mentioned, many fragments of Homer have been found in Egyptian hoards, and the corresponding passages in the monastery texts coincide remarkably well with these old fragments, some of which date back to the 3rd century BCE. OK, that leaves a gap of some 400 years. It appears that internal philological evidence strongly suggests that the text in our possession was established in Athens between 560 and 527 BCE. But Finley assures us that because all Greeks knew Homer's stories well, this Athenian text could not have differed markedly from the original(s) and still survived. So we have some reason to believe that the text that has come down to us closely corresponds to "Homer" 's, and therefore is reporting on customs, social structures, values, religious beliefs, etc. as would a man of the 7th century BCE who is trying to present a somewhat earlier world with convincing detail but incomplete knowledge, with the knowledge of tradition.(**) He must, therefore, fill the many gaps with details from his own world.
So on this basis Finley reads from the Odyssey these customs, etc. and gives us a surprisingly detailed and complete view of the warrior society which was pre-Archaic Greece. Interesting indeed are the many differences and similarities with the earlier Mycenaean age and the later Classical age.
For example, in this "time of Odysseus" the basic social and economic unit is the oikos; this consists of a father, his wife, all of their sons and their spouses and children, if any, all of their unmarried daughters, their slaves and free retainers. The sons did not establish independent households until their father's death. The oikos acted as a unit with the father acting as basileus (the same term used for kings). All of the goods of the oikos were kept and distributed centrally. The larger social structures were informal and loose. The local oikoi collaborated when necessary in an agora (which meant meeting/meeting place then, not marketplace as it did later - there were no marketplaces in "Odysseus' time" and merchants were despised) led by the "noblemen," a strictly hereditary class. The king was the "first among equals" in this local class (kings there were aplenty in Greek-speaking lands at this time) and was often enough replaced by force. That the king's son would become king at his father's death was by no means assured.(***) "Justice" was either obtained by the offended oikos through its own action or not at all.
This loose social structure and the near total lack of value set in the notion of community, as opposed to honor, renown, and respect of the individual, contrasts mightily both with the Mycenaean palace states and the later classical polis and is just one example of many unique aspects of Dark Age Greece that Finley finds through a close reading of the Homeric texts.
I know that I will have to re-read the Homeric poems with this new perspective, for when I first read them long ago I read them as great stories, well told, and not as expressions of the values of a society which was, let's face it, quite alien to the globalized mass-mediatized mercantile society we now live in, where the highest values are wealth, celebrity, comfort and safety.
(*) One of the few supporting points Finley does mention is that prior to the mysterious Catastrophe that wiped out much of eastern Mediterranean culture during the 12th century BCE, warfare in the region was carried out by vast arrays of chariots with infantry used only as screens. In the Iliad the chariots are used only to transport the heroes to the battlefield, where they dismounted and fought on foot. A complete anachronism if the battle is set in Asia Minor before 1200 BCE.
(**) Unwritten traditions change over time under various social pressures, which is probably the mechanism behind Finley's observation that the actual time of the Homeric poems is only a century or two preceding their inscription onto paper.
(***) Of course, this is the motive behind the actions of the 108 suitors of Odysseus' wife, Penelope; although Finley is uncertain why the agora did not simply choose a replacement for Odysseus, the intent of each of the suitors is to assure he will be chosen the next King of Ithaca by having the advantage of wedding the former Queen.
Rating
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May 23, 2011
Ah, for the golden age of academic writing. Is it beautiful? No. But it is clear, concise and argumentative. No 'pointing out a problem' stuff here; Finley just gives you the answers as he sees them. You'll be in no doubt as to what he thinks at any stage in your reading. For instance, "the historian of ideas and values has no more Satanic seducer to guard against than the man on the Clapham omnibus." Love it.
But this isn't popular history by any means, for good and bad. There are no catchy anecdotes, no sex and murder stories. It's just a solid suggestion of what a world looked like, in this case, the 'Dark Ages' in the eastern Mediterranean, after the Mycenaeans and before the time the Homeric poems were coming together. Basically, not very attractive.
As a side note, I should say that I was biased in favor of liking this book after I found out some of Finley's life story. According to wikipedia:
"He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer."
He was fired at the end of the year and could never work in the U.S. again. A political martyr who ended up becoming a British citizen and getting knighted, after hanging out with the Frankfurters in New York? That's my kind of man.
But this isn't popular history by any means, for good and bad. There are no catchy anecdotes, no sex and murder stories. It's just a solid suggestion of what a world looked like, in this case, the 'Dark Ages' in the eastern Mediterranean, after the Mycenaeans and before the time the Homeric poems were coming together. Basically, not very attractive.
As a side note, I should say that I was biased in favor of liking this book after I found out some of Finley's life story. According to wikipedia:
"He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer."
He was fired at the end of the year and could never work in the U.S. again. A political martyr who ended up becoming a British citizen and getting knighted, after hanging out with the Frankfurters in New York? That's my kind of man.
November 17, 2017
A thorough look into the sociological implications of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” Finley discounts the possibility of a real Trojan War on the same grand scale as told by Homer, but he finds value in what the famous orator has to tell us about the Greek ‘hero’ society of that period. I admire Finley’s direct approach to the controversial topics, but the material is a little dry. A good book, but best suited for passionate fans of Homer.
September 19, 2021
Overall a refreshing and original perspective on the Homeric works, yet I didn't really feel engaged as a reader. The academic emphasis of the work comes off as dry and is a bit repetitive at certain points. In the end it gets the job done, though. Finley provides the reader with a thorough analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey and provides historical context. Mainly through the lens of the mentality, morality and (religious) customs prevailing in Odysseian/Homeric Ancient Greece.
Without a doubt a must read for anybody interested in the historic context of the world described in the Homeric works, but take your time for it.
Without a doubt a must read for anybody interested in the historic context of the world described in the Homeric works, but take your time for it.
November 19, 2016
Appendix II, with its apoplectic rant against Schliemann's Troy and the false leads provided by the archaeological record in general, is alone worth the price of the book.
April 29, 2020
In a measure, these virtues, these values and capacities, were shared by many men of the period, for otherwise there could have been no distinct age of heroes between the bronze and the iron. Particularly in the Odyssey the word "hero" is a class term for the whole aristocracy, and at times it even seems to embrace all the free men.
Finley provides dazzling yet largely plain-spoken erudition. The expat is also largely certain. Strange behavior, that, for a historian, even a Marxist one Finley didn't pen the book on a tendency or a cantankerous But or If. The world-view of the Iliad and The Odyssey ae explored and situated largely in contrast with the evidence of archeology. The concept of Oikos or the fortified family unit and the practice of gift-giving serve as templates for exploring both narratives. There is a lament at the absence of the common born. Oh and there’s a rancor with the anachronistic.
I was fascinated throughout.
Finley provides dazzling yet largely plain-spoken erudition. The expat is also largely certain. Strange behavior, that, for a historian, even a Marxist one Finley didn't pen the book on a tendency or a cantankerous But or If. The world-view of the Iliad and The Odyssey ae explored and situated largely in contrast with the evidence of archeology. The concept of Oikos or the fortified family unit and the practice of gift-giving serve as templates for exploring both narratives. There is a lament at the absence of the common born. Oh and there’s a rancor with the anachronistic.
I was fascinated throughout.
November 5, 2021
Super classico della storiografia che a piu' di sessant'anni di distanza non risente piu' di tanto del tempo trascorso. Qualche dettaglio scientifico puo' si essere stato superato si, ma tutto il complesso dell'analisi della societa' ellenica, o meglio della societa' dell'Epoca degli Eroi, e' ancora affascinante e ampiamente appagante.
August 11, 2014
Quoi de mieux pour pour profiter plus pleinement d'une œuvre de fiction que de se documenter sur l'univers dans lequel il prend place, mais aussi du monde dans lequel vivait l'écrivain qui l'a composé? En effet, il est rare qu'il ne tire pas une partie de son inspiration de ce qu'il a devant les yeux. Ainsi, la connaissance de ce contexte ne peut qu'aider à une meilleur intelligence du travail de l'auteur, et donc sans doute à un plus grand plaisir de lecture. Mais ce que propose Moses Finley dans cette petite étude intitulée le monde d'Ulysse, c'est plutôt un cheminement inverse: partir de l’œuvre de fiction homérique pour tenter de mieux comprendre le monde d'Homère et le monde d'Ulysse que nous connaissons bien mal par ailleurs, pour nous en brosser la peinture la plus plus vraisemblable possible.
Quoique pleine de promesses, cette démarche est évidemment hérissée de difficultés pointues: les événements ont-ils eu lieu? A quelle époque a vécu Homère? Quel délai entre la composition de l’œuvre et les événements? L'univers décrit est-il plus contemporain à Homère, ou décrit-il ces fameux temps héroïques? Finley ne les cache pas, marche le plus souvent sur des œufs, mais pas toujours. Globalement, Finley restreint au plus ses hypothèses, et les corrobore par des travaux d'autres domaines des sciences humaines. Mais j'ai regretté que ces fameux travaux ne soient le plus souvent que cités en passant, et ne servent au final pour le lecteur béotien que d'arguments d'autorité, à moins qu'il ne s’embarrasse à acheter et à compulser la très copieuse bibliographie de l'auteur.
Ainsi, par cette méthode, le monde d'Ulysse décrit par Finley, c'est grosso modo celui que découvre une simple lecture de l'Odyssée. J'ai donc eu du mal à me passionner pour l'ouvrage: l’intérêt de l’œuvre d'Homère, n'est ce pas plutôt le formidable foisonnement qu'elle a suscité, que ce soit pour enrichir son univers de nouvelles fictions, ou pour servir de support aux philosophes et exégètes qui se sont penchés pendant des siècles sur sa trame? N'est ce pas une œuvre qui a été lue et étudiée par tout les petits grecs? Se familiariser avec elle, n'est ce pas nous rendre plus à même d'apprécier un référentiel commun auquel ils n'ont eu cesse de se référer? A côté de ça, l'hypothétique caractère historique de cette épopée sur lequel Finley nous fait loucher, que les anciens avaient eu le bon sens de négliger, me semble d'une bien moindre importance; mais bon, pour moi, le plus gros problème n'est pas là.
Ce qui m'a finalement le plus irrité dans cette lecture, c'est que Finley m'a semblé n'avoir aucune sympathie pour son sujet, et qu'il assomme et glace le lecteur avec une ironie froide et amère qui tombe presque toujours mal à propos. Plus d'une fois il m'est arrivé de sursauter comme un diable diable de sa boîte en lisant tel ou tel préjugé asséné avec aplomb. On dirait un de ces romains que la jalousie a entraîné à fustiger avec d'acrimonieux sarcasmes aussi gratuits qu'injustes ces satanés graeculi qui ont imposé leur culture à leur vainqueur. Aussi, je préfère de beaucoup la délicate finesse d'un Buffière, l'alacrité enthousiaste d'un Vidal-Naquet, l'industrieuse et ouverte curiosité d'une Jouanno, ou encore l'érudition active et imaginative d'un Victor Bérard à l'ennuyeux et désagréable compte-rendu d'un pisse-froid. Un peu déçu, donc, par ce livre qui n'a pas vraiment réussi à m'enthousiasmer.
July 15, 2013
Finley's book must count among the very small set of superb introductions ... to anything. Like the very few such superlative overviews/introductions, Finley starts with square one, as in, "this is the very first thing you need to understand;" "this is the second thing;" and "because you understand thing one and thing two, I can tell you about things three and four, which derive from thing one and thing two in the ways I shall describe," and so on until he delineates all the domains of the field - all the dimensions of the question at hand. I only wish a similar book or article existed in the domain of signal processing - which remains a black art unnecessarily, I think, beacuse there isn't such a book.
Then there is the problem of level of detail. Finley controls his discussions masterfully - just enough detail to achieve his purpose, i.e. to define each domain in the world of Odysseus, "heoric culture," that is, rather than the whole of ancient society, economy and culture, so that one has it firmly in mind - and no more - not one jot or tittle.
And this is just the sort of book that should go/has gone through many editions to reflect accretions/accumulation of knowledge and the author's assessment of them. Obviously, any field of inquiry changes - or should change - unless it's not worth the bother. [Counted cross-stitch springs to mind - for some reason.] And so anyone who pretends to mastery of a field must absorb new detail and extract its meaning and significance for the questions at hand. I read one of the later editions of Finley's book - at least twenty years younger than the first, and it was clear that Finley had read most of the relevant literature that had appeared since and had grappled with it - or so his bibliographical essay suggests, modifying his original delineations and conclusions. Or so it appears.
Such persons are rare indeed, and even fewer write with the clarity of purpose and directness/simplicity of style as Finley possessed and employed. I suppose a reader of Homer's poems could ignore this book, but I can't imagine why he/she would.
A non sequitor follows:
It's interesting. Many of Finley's comments apply with certain qualifications to the world of the American South during the late antebellum period, as primitive and archaic as it was at that time - and remains in certain of its salient attributes. [By the way, I'm descended directly from a shareholder in the Virginia Company of London, Henry Dawkes, whose name appears in the second charter, signed by James I in 1606, who came to Jamestown in 1609/1610 at the end of the starving time there and one of whose sons survived the Jamestown massacre of 1622. So I yield to no one on the point of Southern Anglo-American heritage. I'm no bigot. I just know those folks better than most.] Bertram Wyatt-Brown's "Southern Honor" covers hundreds of pages with words devoted to the similarities. So one need not be a student of ancient Greece/Mediterranean world in order to understand and benefit from Finley's discussion of "heroic culture" and the world of Odysseus. In fact, it illuminates other worlds.
Then there is the problem of level of detail. Finley controls his discussions masterfully - just enough detail to achieve his purpose, i.e. to define each domain in the world of Odysseus, "heoric culture," that is, rather than the whole of ancient society, economy and culture, so that one has it firmly in mind - and no more - not one jot or tittle.
And this is just the sort of book that should go/has gone through many editions to reflect accretions/accumulation of knowledge and the author's assessment of them. Obviously, any field of inquiry changes - or should change - unless it's not worth the bother. [Counted cross-stitch springs to mind - for some reason.] And so anyone who pretends to mastery of a field must absorb new detail and extract its meaning and significance for the questions at hand. I read one of the later editions of Finley's book - at least twenty years younger than the first, and it was clear that Finley had read most of the relevant literature that had appeared since and had grappled with it - or so his bibliographical essay suggests, modifying his original delineations and conclusions. Or so it appears.
Such persons are rare indeed, and even fewer write with the clarity of purpose and directness/simplicity of style as Finley possessed and employed. I suppose a reader of Homer's poems could ignore this book, but I can't imagine why he/she would.
A non sequitor follows:
It's interesting. Many of Finley's comments apply with certain qualifications to the world of the American South during the late antebellum period, as primitive and archaic as it was at that time - and remains in certain of its salient attributes. [By the way, I'm descended directly from a shareholder in the Virginia Company of London, Henry Dawkes, whose name appears in the second charter, signed by James I in 1606, who came to Jamestown in 1609/1610 at the end of the starving time there and one of whose sons survived the Jamestown massacre of 1622. So I yield to no one on the point of Southern Anglo-American heritage. I'm no bigot. I just know those folks better than most.] Bertram Wyatt-Brown's "Southern Honor" covers hundreds of pages with words devoted to the similarities. So one need not be a student of ancient Greece/Mediterranean world in order to understand and benefit from Finley's discussion of "heroic culture" and the world of Odysseus. In fact, it illuminates other worlds.
December 25, 2010
Published almost half a century ago, M. I. Finley's The World of Odysseus is perhaps one of the most reliable books about what we can learn from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. As much as we love to find that great literature and history can be made to mesh, what we do not about Homer's world greatly exceeds what we do know.
For instance, we are not sure where Troy is located, whether there was a historical Trojan War, whether Achaians (whether under Agamemnon or some other leader) ever invaded Troy, when the putative Trojan War took place, where the locations in Odysseus's ten year wanderings are to be found on a map, whether Odysseus actually ruled from Ithaca, whether there was a single poet who wrote both Greek epics, where he/they came from, whether he/they were really blind or even male, and so on. Finley derides the whole notion of "Homer-as-war-correspondent," namely, as a reliable guide to the who, what, why, when, and where of historical fact.
What Finley does provide is an inventory of what life in the time of Odysseus was liked based on internal evidence from the epics. As such, it is eminently readable and eye-opening, especially to one who, like myself, just finished re-reading Homer's Odyssey.
For instance, we are not sure where Troy is located, whether there was a historical Trojan War, whether Achaians (whether under Agamemnon or some other leader) ever invaded Troy, when the putative Trojan War took place, where the locations in Odysseus's ten year wanderings are to be found on a map, whether Odysseus actually ruled from Ithaca, whether there was a single poet who wrote both Greek epics, where he/they came from, whether he/they were really blind or even male, and so on. Finley derides the whole notion of "Homer-as-war-correspondent," namely, as a reliable guide to the who, what, why, when, and where of historical fact.
What Finley does provide is an inventory of what life in the time of Odysseus was liked based on internal evidence from the epics. As such, it is eminently readable and eye-opening, especially to one who, like myself, just finished re-reading Homer's Odyssey.
November 14, 2015
A reread, I realized. Though read many years ago, I still found this to be an interesting book and a fine companion to a reading of the Iliad. Finley's subject is the revelation of the real Greece which existed behind Homer's 2 heroic poems. His research and a lifetime of Homer studies allowed him to write material explaining Greek morals and values, the role of community and how kinship and even individual households fit into it, labor and wealth, leadership, and Homer's own relationship with and mastery of the bardic tradition he practiced. There are 3 appendices, the most useful being an appraisal of the famous excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Hissarlik along the Aegean coast of Turkey which he declared were the remains of Troy. This is a classical work of scholarship which provides complementary background to a reading of the Iliad and Odyssey. I enjoyed reading it again.
January 17, 2026
This book can be divided into two parts: (1) the dating of the events described by the Homeric poems as being in the Greek Dark Ages (10th and 9th centuries BC) and (2) the social landscape of this "world of Odysseus".
The evidence is clear that Homer was harkening back to an age of heroes, though Finley is quick to note that Homer's descriptions of culture and geography cannot be factually considered a replication of Greece's Mycenean Bronze Age (which collapsed around 1200 BC).
My purpose in reading this book was to prime myself for an upcoming read of Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation. Particular highlights from the meat of the text (commentaries on wealth, labor, community/kinship, and morals) helped to broaden my understanding of why these famed characters act the way they do in the poems.
Finley's prose often bounced off my obstinate mind in disagreeable fashion, which was curious considering I found myself in total agreement with his facts and method. I'd advise skipping the appendices in this NYRB edition, as those 40 pages were such a drag.
The evidence is clear that Homer was harkening back to an age of heroes, though Finley is quick to note that Homer's descriptions of culture and geography cannot be factually considered a replication of Greece's Mycenean Bronze Age (which collapsed around 1200 BC).
My purpose in reading this book was to prime myself for an upcoming read of Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation. Particular highlights from the meat of the text (commentaries on wealth, labor, community/kinship, and morals) helped to broaden my understanding of why these famed characters act the way they do in the poems.
Finley's prose often bounced off my obstinate mind in disagreeable fashion, which was curious considering I found myself in total agreement with his facts and method. I'd advise skipping the appendices in this NYRB edition, as those 40 pages were such a drag.
April 13, 2021
Finley makes a number of fascinating arguments about the extent to which the Odyssey reveals anything about either its age of composition or the earlier events it claims to recall.
July 3, 2021
This is a wonderfully well-written book about the world of the Homeric poems - which says essentially that many of the customs in the poems reflect actual customs of other early societies, and so cannot be discounted as mere mythology. Therefore, despite the fictional aspects of the poems, they do contain a kernel of truth about the pre-classical/Mycenaean Greek world - essential outlooks on bravery, wars, etc., that for better or worse became the foundation of the Greek ethical outlook and were henceforth handed down to Western society as well. The basic message of the book is that these books - albeit mostly fiction, since it has been impossible to corroborate or establish with certainty that there was ever even a Trojan War - do contain truthful insights into Greek warrior culture, which informed subsequent Greek/classical society and resonates down through the ages to our present era.
Here are the quotes:
From the Preface:
¨The social institutions and values make up a coherent system, and, from our present outlook, a very alien one, but neither an improbable nor an unfamiliar one in the experience of modern anthropology.¨
From the book:
¨Intricate analysis of the remains and of place-names has demonstrated that people speaking Greek (or proto-Greek), but ignorant of the art of writing, first appeared on the scene before 2000 B.C.¨
¨There were thinkers among the Greeks who doubted that this [memorization of the Homeric poems] was a good or desirable practice. To those who called Homer the teacher of Hellas, Plato replied (Republic 607A): Yes, he is ¨first and most poetical among the tragic poets,¨but a proper society would bar all poetry¨ with the sole exception of hymns to the gods and encomia to the good.¨"
¨The myth-making process...went on continuously wherever there were Greeks, always by word of mouth and often ceremonially. It was activity of the highest social (and human) importance, not just the casual daydreaming of a poet here, a more imaginative peasant there.¨
¨As men listened to the narratives, in rituals, at festivals, or on other social occasions, they lived through a vicarious experience. They believed the narrative implicitly.¨
¨By Herodotus´ time, and for many years before, Greek settlements were to be found not only all over the area of modern Hellas but also along the Black Sea, on the shores of what is now Turkey, in southern Italy and Sicily, on the North African coast, and on the littoral of southern France. Within this ellipse of some fifteen hundred miles at the poles, there were hundreds and hundreds of communities, often differing in their political structures and always insisting on their separate sovereignties.¨
¨A human society without myth has never been known, and indeed it is doubtful whether such a society is at all possible.¨
¨In our present texts, each poem is divided into twenty-four ¨books,¨ one for each letter of he Greek alphabet. This was presumably a late arrangement, the work of the Alexandrian scholars.¨
¨Properly to dissect the poems, one must read them without reference to the Alexandrian division.¨
¨Each reminiscence and genealogical tale could have circulated, and unquestionably did, as an independent short heroic poem.¨
¨The Greek world of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. was mostly unlettered, despite the introduction of the alphabet.¨
¨The recitation of poetry, heroic, lyric or dramatic, was always an essential feature of the numerous religious festivals.¨
¨As the recognized authority on early history, Homer was often an embarrassment-- the Athenians, for example, whose pathetically small role in the great ¨national¨ war against Troy was increasingly incommensurate with their ascending role in Greek political affairs.¨
¨The language of the ¨hymns¨ is Homeric, and the comparison ends right there; they are on a lower plane not only as literature but in their conceptual world, in their view of the gods.¨
¨[Homer´s] ... gods had temples, and the Mycenaeans built none, whereas the latter constructed great vaulted tombs in which to bury their chieftains and the poet cremates his.¨
¨...not only was the Homeric world without writing or record-keeping, but it was one in which the social system was too simple and the operations too restricted, too small in scale, to require either the inventories or the controls recorded on the [Linear B] tablets.¨
¨The nature of the economy served to seal and preserve the class line. Wherever the wealth of the household is so decisive, unless there is mobility in wealth, unless the opportunity exists to create new fortunes, the structure become caste-like in its rigidity. This was the case in Ithaca.¨
¨Greek soil is poor, rocky and waterless, so that perhaps no more than twenty per cent of the total surface of the peninsula can be cultivated."
¨With their flocks and their labor force, with plentiful stone for building and clay for pots, the great households could almost realize their ideal of absolute self-sufficency.¨
¨The twin uses of treasure were in possessing it and in giving it away, paradoxical that may appear.¨
¨Behind the market lies the profit motive, and if there was one thing that was taboo in Homeric exchanges it was gain in the exchange. Whether in trade or in any other mutual relationship, the abiding priciple was equality and mutual benefit.¨
¨In this world custom was as binding upon the individual as the most rigid statutory law of later days.¨
¨But the exceptional instance is far less noteworthy than the essential point that, in a strict sense, the ethics of the world of Odysseus prohibited the pratice of trade as a vocation.¨
¨Theft of property is mean,¨ protested Plato (Laws 941B), seizure by force shameless; none of the sons of Zeus delighted in fraud or violence, nor practiced either. Therefore, let no one be falsely persuaded by poets or by some myth-tellers in these matters.¨
¨There was something equivocal about Odysseus as a hero precisely because of his most famed quality, his craftiness.¨
¨Yet there is no single word in either the Iliad or the Odyssey that is in fact a synonym for ¨merchant.¨ By and large, the provisioning of the Greek world with whatever it obtained from the outside by peaceful means was in the hands of non-Greeks, the Phoenicians in particular. They were really a trading people, who sailed from one end of the known world to the other, carrying slaves, metal, jewelry, and fine cloth.¨
¨The inference is permissible, however, that some of their difficulties were alleviated by barter, primarily with one another, and without the instrumentality of a formal market, absolutely unknown in this world.¨
¨With respect to work and wealth...the determinant was always the particular social grouping to which one belonged, not the skills, desires or enterprise of an individual.¨
¨The profundity of the Greeks´ kinship attachment, throughout their history, is immediately apparent from their passion for genealogies. That never changed radically at any time.¨
¨The coexistence of three distinct but overlapping groups, class, kin and oikos, was what defined a man´s life, materially and psychologically.¨
¨The original Greek migrants into the eastern Mediterranean region were not primitive hunters. They were a pastoral people who, so the signs seem to say, had learned the art of agriculture as well.¨
¨The Homeric assembly thus provided the kings with a test of public opinion, as the council of elders revealed the sentiment among the nobles.¨
¨Blood vengeance is but the most dramatic indicator that in the world of Odysseus personal power meant the strength of the household and the family. In that sense the personalization of kingly power went very deep.¨
¨The world of Odysseus was split into many communities more or less like Ithaca. Among them, between each community and every other one, the normal relationship was one of hostility, at times passive, in a kind of armed truce, and at times active and bellicose.¨
¨...Homer reflected the views and values of the aristocracy, from the opening line of the Iliad to the final sentence of the Odyssey.¨
¨Odysseus ... was the man of many devices, and his superior skill that respect took the form of deception and mendacity.¨
¨Odysseus lied all the time, on the assumption that it could do no harm and might turn out useful in the end; and he lied cleverly.¨
¨...Hector chose honorable death by combat, and the end of his city and his people. Once when Polydamas pointed to an ill omen as ground for caution, Hector brushed him off with¨One omen is best, to fight back for one´s fatherland" (XII.243). But his whole course of behavior gave the lie to that retort. The fact is that such a notion of social obligation is fundamentally non-heroic. It reflects the new element, the community..."
¨...when Agamemnon took the girl Briseis from [Achilles] ... his honor was openly shamed, and once ¨honor is destroyed the moral existence of the loser collapses. [Bruno Snell, ¨The Discovery of rhe Mind, p. 160]¨
¨It is in the nature of honor that it must be exclusive, or at least hierarchic. When everyone attains equal honor, then there is no honor for anyone. Of necessity, therefore, the world of Odysseus was fiercely competitive, as each hero strove to outdo the others.¨
¨The contest was to play a tremendous part in Greek public life in later centuries. Nothing defines the quality of Greek culture more neatly than the way in which the idea of competition was extended from physical prowess to the realm of the intellect, to feats of poetry and dramatic composition.¨
¨Wealth was an unequivocal good; the more welath, the greater the good, a subject for boasting, not for concealment.¨
¨At no point was the bond between ceremonialism and the satisfaction of material wants more tightly knit than in the endless feasting.¨
¨...it was feasting that occupied the heroes when they were not immediately engaged in the pursuits of combat...¨
¨Just as there could be no ceremonial occasion without gifts of treasure, so there could be none without a feast.¨
¨Not only was this a man´s world, it was one in which the inferior status of women was neither concealed nor idealized, which knew neither chivalry nor romantic attachments.¨
¨...the genealogies ... gave most aristocratic families, and even whole tribes, divine ancestry.¨
¨It is inconceivable that this passion for divine genealogy was mere poetic fancy. Here was sanction for aristocratic privilege, for rule by might, and an ideology that no one believes is an absurdity.¨
¨The whole of heroic society was reproduced on Olympus in its complexities and its shadings. The world of the gods was a social world in every respect, with a past and a present, with a history, so to speak.¨
¨The humanization of the gods was a step of astonishing boldness. To picture supernatural beings not as vague, formless spirits, or as monstrus shapes, half bird, half animal, for instance, but as men and women, with human organs and human passions, demanded the greatest audacity and pride in one´s humanity.¨
¨Age-old magical practices and cults, such as those associated with hot springs, continued to flourish."
¨Honor him like a god with gifts¨ is a recurrent phrase about kings; the converse is that the gods are to be honored like kings with gifts. In practice that meant gifts of food, of feasting, through burnt offerings, and gifts of treasure, through dedications of arms and cauldrons and tripods arrayed in the temples.¨
¨For Homeric religion ... this is not a pertinent judgment, not because Homer´s gods were incapable of wickedness, but because they were essentially devoid of any ethical quality whatsoever.¨
¨This is what the line of philosophers from Xenophanes to Plato protested, the indifference of the Homeric gods in moral matters.¨
¨The evils of which Achilles spoke were mishaps, not the evils of the Decalogue. And there was no reverential fear of the gods.¨
¨In the case of Hesiod we are certain, as we cannot be for the poet of the Iliad: it was he who organized the individual gods into a systematic theogony and made justice into the central problem of existence, human as well as divine. From Hesiod a straight line leads to Aeschylus and the other great tragedians.¨
¨...the formulas, the building blocks of the poems, possessed the necessary flexibility for both moving the substance along with changes in the world itself and, at the same time, restraining it from excessive contemporaneity.¨
Here are the quotes:
From the Preface:
¨The social institutions and values make up a coherent system, and, from our present outlook, a very alien one, but neither an improbable nor an unfamiliar one in the experience of modern anthropology.¨
From the book:
¨Intricate analysis of the remains and of place-names has demonstrated that people speaking Greek (or proto-Greek), but ignorant of the art of writing, first appeared on the scene before 2000 B.C.¨
¨There were thinkers among the Greeks who doubted that this [memorization of the Homeric poems] was a good or desirable practice. To those who called Homer the teacher of Hellas, Plato replied (Republic 607A): Yes, he is ¨first and most poetical among the tragic poets,¨but a proper society would bar all poetry¨ with the sole exception of hymns to the gods and encomia to the good.¨"
¨The myth-making process...went on continuously wherever there were Greeks, always by word of mouth and often ceremonially. It was activity of the highest social (and human) importance, not just the casual daydreaming of a poet here, a more imaginative peasant there.¨
¨As men listened to the narratives, in rituals, at festivals, or on other social occasions, they lived through a vicarious experience. They believed the narrative implicitly.¨
¨By Herodotus´ time, and for many years before, Greek settlements were to be found not only all over the area of modern Hellas but also along the Black Sea, on the shores of what is now Turkey, in southern Italy and Sicily, on the North African coast, and on the littoral of southern France. Within this ellipse of some fifteen hundred miles at the poles, there were hundreds and hundreds of communities, often differing in their political structures and always insisting on their separate sovereignties.¨
¨A human society without myth has never been known, and indeed it is doubtful whether such a society is at all possible.¨
¨In our present texts, each poem is divided into twenty-four ¨books,¨ one for each letter of he Greek alphabet. This was presumably a late arrangement, the work of the Alexandrian scholars.¨
¨Properly to dissect the poems, one must read them without reference to the Alexandrian division.¨
¨Each reminiscence and genealogical tale could have circulated, and unquestionably did, as an independent short heroic poem.¨
¨The Greek world of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. was mostly unlettered, despite the introduction of the alphabet.¨
¨The recitation of poetry, heroic, lyric or dramatic, was always an essential feature of the numerous religious festivals.¨
¨As the recognized authority on early history, Homer was often an embarrassment-- the Athenians, for example, whose pathetically small role in the great ¨national¨ war against Troy was increasingly incommensurate with their ascending role in Greek political affairs.¨
¨The language of the ¨hymns¨ is Homeric, and the comparison ends right there; they are on a lower plane not only as literature but in their conceptual world, in their view of the gods.¨
¨[Homer´s] ... gods had temples, and the Mycenaeans built none, whereas the latter constructed great vaulted tombs in which to bury their chieftains and the poet cremates his.¨
¨...not only was the Homeric world without writing or record-keeping, but it was one in which the social system was too simple and the operations too restricted, too small in scale, to require either the inventories or the controls recorded on the [Linear B] tablets.¨
¨The nature of the economy served to seal and preserve the class line. Wherever the wealth of the household is so decisive, unless there is mobility in wealth, unless the opportunity exists to create new fortunes, the structure become caste-like in its rigidity. This was the case in Ithaca.¨
¨Greek soil is poor, rocky and waterless, so that perhaps no more than twenty per cent of the total surface of the peninsula can be cultivated."
¨With their flocks and their labor force, with plentiful stone for building and clay for pots, the great households could almost realize their ideal of absolute self-sufficency.¨
¨The twin uses of treasure were in possessing it and in giving it away, paradoxical that may appear.¨
¨Behind the market lies the profit motive, and if there was one thing that was taboo in Homeric exchanges it was gain in the exchange. Whether in trade or in any other mutual relationship, the abiding priciple was equality and mutual benefit.¨
¨In this world custom was as binding upon the individual as the most rigid statutory law of later days.¨
¨But the exceptional instance is far less noteworthy than the essential point that, in a strict sense, the ethics of the world of Odysseus prohibited the pratice of trade as a vocation.¨
¨Theft of property is mean,¨ protested Plato (Laws 941B), seizure by force shameless; none of the sons of Zeus delighted in fraud or violence, nor practiced either. Therefore, let no one be falsely persuaded by poets or by some myth-tellers in these matters.¨
¨There was something equivocal about Odysseus as a hero precisely because of his most famed quality, his craftiness.¨
¨Yet there is no single word in either the Iliad or the Odyssey that is in fact a synonym for ¨merchant.¨ By and large, the provisioning of the Greek world with whatever it obtained from the outside by peaceful means was in the hands of non-Greeks, the Phoenicians in particular. They were really a trading people, who sailed from one end of the known world to the other, carrying slaves, metal, jewelry, and fine cloth.¨
¨The inference is permissible, however, that some of their difficulties were alleviated by barter, primarily with one another, and without the instrumentality of a formal market, absolutely unknown in this world.¨
¨With respect to work and wealth...the determinant was always the particular social grouping to which one belonged, not the skills, desires or enterprise of an individual.¨
¨The profundity of the Greeks´ kinship attachment, throughout their history, is immediately apparent from their passion for genealogies. That never changed radically at any time.¨
¨The coexistence of three distinct but overlapping groups, class, kin and oikos, was what defined a man´s life, materially and psychologically.¨
¨The original Greek migrants into the eastern Mediterranean region were not primitive hunters. They were a pastoral people who, so the signs seem to say, had learned the art of agriculture as well.¨
¨The Homeric assembly thus provided the kings with a test of public opinion, as the council of elders revealed the sentiment among the nobles.¨
¨Blood vengeance is but the most dramatic indicator that in the world of Odysseus personal power meant the strength of the household and the family. In that sense the personalization of kingly power went very deep.¨
¨The world of Odysseus was split into many communities more or less like Ithaca. Among them, between each community and every other one, the normal relationship was one of hostility, at times passive, in a kind of armed truce, and at times active and bellicose.¨
¨...Homer reflected the views and values of the aristocracy, from the opening line of the Iliad to the final sentence of the Odyssey.¨
¨Odysseus ... was the man of many devices, and his superior skill that respect took the form of deception and mendacity.¨
¨Odysseus lied all the time, on the assumption that it could do no harm and might turn out useful in the end; and he lied cleverly.¨
¨...Hector chose honorable death by combat, and the end of his city and his people. Once when Polydamas pointed to an ill omen as ground for caution, Hector brushed him off with¨One omen is best, to fight back for one´s fatherland" (XII.243). But his whole course of behavior gave the lie to that retort. The fact is that such a notion of social obligation is fundamentally non-heroic. It reflects the new element, the community..."
¨...when Agamemnon took the girl Briseis from [Achilles] ... his honor was openly shamed, and once ¨honor is destroyed the moral existence of the loser collapses. [Bruno Snell, ¨The Discovery of rhe Mind, p. 160]¨
¨It is in the nature of honor that it must be exclusive, or at least hierarchic. When everyone attains equal honor, then there is no honor for anyone. Of necessity, therefore, the world of Odysseus was fiercely competitive, as each hero strove to outdo the others.¨
¨The contest was to play a tremendous part in Greek public life in later centuries. Nothing defines the quality of Greek culture more neatly than the way in which the idea of competition was extended from physical prowess to the realm of the intellect, to feats of poetry and dramatic composition.¨
¨Wealth was an unequivocal good; the more welath, the greater the good, a subject for boasting, not for concealment.¨
¨At no point was the bond between ceremonialism and the satisfaction of material wants more tightly knit than in the endless feasting.¨
¨...it was feasting that occupied the heroes when they were not immediately engaged in the pursuits of combat...¨
¨Just as there could be no ceremonial occasion without gifts of treasure, so there could be none without a feast.¨
¨Not only was this a man´s world, it was one in which the inferior status of women was neither concealed nor idealized, which knew neither chivalry nor romantic attachments.¨
¨...the genealogies ... gave most aristocratic families, and even whole tribes, divine ancestry.¨
¨It is inconceivable that this passion for divine genealogy was mere poetic fancy. Here was sanction for aristocratic privilege, for rule by might, and an ideology that no one believes is an absurdity.¨
¨The whole of heroic society was reproduced on Olympus in its complexities and its shadings. The world of the gods was a social world in every respect, with a past and a present, with a history, so to speak.¨
¨The humanization of the gods was a step of astonishing boldness. To picture supernatural beings not as vague, formless spirits, or as monstrus shapes, half bird, half animal, for instance, but as men and women, with human organs and human passions, demanded the greatest audacity and pride in one´s humanity.¨
¨Age-old magical practices and cults, such as those associated with hot springs, continued to flourish."
¨Honor him like a god with gifts¨ is a recurrent phrase about kings; the converse is that the gods are to be honored like kings with gifts. In practice that meant gifts of food, of feasting, through burnt offerings, and gifts of treasure, through dedications of arms and cauldrons and tripods arrayed in the temples.¨
¨For Homeric religion ... this is not a pertinent judgment, not because Homer´s gods were incapable of wickedness, but because they were essentially devoid of any ethical quality whatsoever.¨
¨This is what the line of philosophers from Xenophanes to Plato protested, the indifference of the Homeric gods in moral matters.¨
¨The evils of which Achilles spoke were mishaps, not the evils of the Decalogue. And there was no reverential fear of the gods.¨
¨In the case of Hesiod we are certain, as we cannot be for the poet of the Iliad: it was he who organized the individual gods into a systematic theogony and made justice into the central problem of existence, human as well as divine. From Hesiod a straight line leads to Aeschylus and the other great tragedians.¨
¨...the formulas, the building blocks of the poems, possessed the necessary flexibility for both moving the substance along with changes in the world itself and, at the same time, restraining it from excessive contemporaneity.¨
November 6, 2018
If the course of your education was anything like mine, you first encountered Homer somewhere around the beginning of what Americans call “high school” (which begins at roughly age thirteen). Depending on your enthusiasm, you were excited or bored to tears – but in either case, it’s almost certain that both you and the teacher at the front of the classroom were woefully underprepared for the undertaking. Shakespeare is usually introduced at around the same time and can induce the same kinds of fear and loathing in its first-time audience. As helpful and appreciated as they always are, first-time readers can usually do without a summary of Elizabethan England, or the three-dimensional panorama of the Globe Theatre that obligatorily adorned every English teacher’s classroom.
Being seven or eight times more removed in history from us, however, it is nearly as impossible to go forward with Homer without some sort of trusty cicerone – a Virgil to the new student’s Dante if you will. Without it, new readers will wonder why Odysseus and his shipmates kept endlessly running into strangers toward whom they felt a compulsive need to tell their story from the very beginning, especially as apparent repayment for food and wine. The teacher, usually just one chapter ahead of the precocious students, never knew his oikos from his xenos, despite the fact that he felt like Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society for even teaching it.
At barely 150 pages, this is hardly the comprehensive guide that most of us need in order to take Homer seriously, but this New York Review of Books reprint by M. I. Finley does a perfectly capable job of introducing the reader into a world with which she must have at least marginal familiarity in order to enjoy Homer. The major topics covered include the transmission of Greek literature, the writing and performance of Greek oral poetry, and ample information about the economic, social, and political organization of ancient Greek society to make sense of Homer’s story.
The first chapter is a discussion of the Greek alphabet, some broad trends in Greek literature, and a summary of how the Greeks themselves viewed their myths. Finley makes the interesting claim (whether it’s controversial, I’m not educated enough to say) that the writers of the Iliad and the Odyssey were very probably two different people. The second chapter covers the historicity, chronology, and oral transmission of the Homeric epics. The last chapters cover ground that, at least as far as I can tell, is less well-documented, including the economics of gift-giving (absolutely central to anyone who wants to understand The Odyssey at all), Homer’s theology, the monarchical system, and the function of the assembly (especially important in the Iliad).
All in all, it’s worth looking at if you’re want to either start or expand that corner of your home library dedicated to the ancient world the Homeric epics in particular.
Being seven or eight times more removed in history from us, however, it is nearly as impossible to go forward with Homer without some sort of trusty cicerone – a Virgil to the new student’s Dante if you will. Without it, new readers will wonder why Odysseus and his shipmates kept endlessly running into strangers toward whom they felt a compulsive need to tell their story from the very beginning, especially as apparent repayment for food and wine. The teacher, usually just one chapter ahead of the precocious students, never knew his oikos from his xenos, despite the fact that he felt like Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society for even teaching it.
At barely 150 pages, this is hardly the comprehensive guide that most of us need in order to take Homer seriously, but this New York Review of Books reprint by M. I. Finley does a perfectly capable job of introducing the reader into a world with which she must have at least marginal familiarity in order to enjoy Homer. The major topics covered include the transmission of Greek literature, the writing and performance of Greek oral poetry, and ample information about the economic, social, and political organization of ancient Greek society to make sense of Homer’s story.
The first chapter is a discussion of the Greek alphabet, some broad trends in Greek literature, and a summary of how the Greeks themselves viewed their myths. Finley makes the interesting claim (whether it’s controversial, I’m not educated enough to say) that the writers of the Iliad and the Odyssey were very probably two different people. The second chapter covers the historicity, chronology, and oral transmission of the Homeric epics. The last chapters cover ground that, at least as far as I can tell, is less well-documented, including the economics of gift-giving (absolutely central to anyone who wants to understand The Odyssey at all), Homer’s theology, the monarchical system, and the function of the assembly (especially important in the Iliad).
All in all, it’s worth looking at if you’re want to either start or expand that corner of your home library dedicated to the ancient world the Homeric epics in particular.
August 12, 2016
A clear, concise and fascinating look at the world of Ancient Greece, M.I. Finley's The World of Odysseus busts a ton of myths about two of the most famous stories to emerge from the ancient world and lays out a clear vision of how Finley thinks things were nearly 3,000 years ago.
On the surface, it sounds like one of two things: dull, full of academic jargon and of little interest to the average person, or full of supposition and guesswork. Surprisingly, it's neither of them. Finley supports his opinions with careful readings of Homer, opposing them against other Ancient Greeks (Hesiod, generally), and with the support of our knowledge of oral epics in other cultures and other ancient societies. And the way he does it, carefully laying out an opinion and explaining why how he reached it, never comes across as overly academic - or in a way that talks down to his readers.
In a nutshell, Finley lays out a thesis that neither The Iliad or The Odyssey have any real basis in fact: they may have been a Troy, but it certainly wasn't subject to a ten-year siege, for example, or that one can chart Odysseus' journey on a map. He goes a step further, too, explaining customs between city-states (finally, a good explanation for the gift-giving!), between a king and his community and man and the gods (a really interesting note: the sun god Helios has such little power he has to get Zeus to react to Odysseus' men eating his cattle).
It's a short read, but one that's remarkably full of insight. Recommended!
On the surface, it sounds like one of two things: dull, full of academic jargon and of little interest to the average person, or full of supposition and guesswork. Surprisingly, it's neither of them. Finley supports his opinions with careful readings of Homer, opposing them against other Ancient Greeks (Hesiod, generally), and with the support of our knowledge of oral epics in other cultures and other ancient societies. And the way he does it, carefully laying out an opinion and explaining why how he reached it, never comes across as overly academic - or in a way that talks down to his readers.
In a nutshell, Finley lays out a thesis that neither The Iliad or The Odyssey have any real basis in fact: they may have been a Troy, but it certainly wasn't subject to a ten-year siege, for example, or that one can chart Odysseus' journey on a map. He goes a step further, too, explaining customs between city-states (finally, a good explanation for the gift-giving!), between a king and his community and man and the gods (a really interesting note: the sun god Helios has such little power he has to get Zeus to react to Odysseus' men eating his cattle).
It's a short read, but one that's remarkably full of insight. Recommended!
March 19, 2015
Quite frankly, I don't know why anyone would see Homer as a good study of what was, but Finley's quasi rebuttal is packed full of data and insight.
August 4, 2024
This definitely gave me some insights into the world in which the Odyssey and the Illiad are set. I can't imagine this would work for someone who hasn't read both of these books as well as Hesiod's Theogony, as there are almost continuous references to passages and things that happened in each of these books. I found this easy to put down at times, and some aspects (gift-giving) seemed repetitive.
October 15, 2025
M.J. Finley examines the world of Bronze Age Greece through the lens of Homer’s two great epics. He examines how the Greeks lived, how the culture of gift giving and hospitality worked, what honor meant, and the focus on individual and kinship rather the society. This is a short but fascinating and insightful book.
August 15, 2025
While compelling, I did not like this book because I personally choose to believe that everything Homer wrote was 100% accurate.
May 1, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in June 1999.
The World of Odysseus is the book which made Finley's name as a classical scholar. He takes a fresh look as a historian at Homer's two great poems, which (even if not by the same hand) show many similarities in the world they depict. He uses insights derived from studies of other peoples based on an oral tradition to assess how the Odyssey and Iliad might relate to historical fact. (Poems like the Nibelungenlied and the Yugoslav poetry studied by Milman Parry include events and people known from more conventional historical sources, making this easier.)
Finley manages to distinguish two kinds of writing in Homer, other than principally fanciful episodes (like the Cyclops encounter in the Odyssey). There are distorted reflections of some past time, and insertions from the poet's own time. Sometimes they are combined, as in the descriptions of chariot fighting: the poet knows that chariots were used, but not how (because the use had died out by his time), so imagines them to be a kind of taxi to get to the battlefield, where the hero gets out to fight on foot. The description of gift exchange, which closely parallels similar systems known to anthropologists, is ancient; similes involving iron are contemporary.
Finley discusses many issues related to his theme, and is always interesting and convincing. There is the relationship between the poems and the Linear B tablets; between the poems and the excavations by Schliemann and others at Hissarlik and in Greece; between the works of Homer and Hesiod, near contemporaries; how later editing (known to have occurred) might have affected the poems; the existence and identity (identities) of Homer; the attitude towards the gods revealed in the poems (a downplaying of the more homely, primitive gods like Dionysus and Demeter). To a non-classicist like myself, his conclusions always seem to make sense. It is the romantic weight of the poems themselves, as evidenced in the desire to connect Hissarlik to the Troy of the Iliad by going beyond the archaeological evidence, which meant that The World of Odysseus caused such controversy.
The World of Odysseus is the book which made Finley's name as a classical scholar. He takes a fresh look as a historian at Homer's two great poems, which (even if not by the same hand) show many similarities in the world they depict. He uses insights derived from studies of other peoples based on an oral tradition to assess how the Odyssey and Iliad might relate to historical fact. (Poems like the Nibelungenlied and the Yugoslav poetry studied by Milman Parry include events and people known from more conventional historical sources, making this easier.)
Finley manages to distinguish two kinds of writing in Homer, other than principally fanciful episodes (like the Cyclops encounter in the Odyssey). There are distorted reflections of some past time, and insertions from the poet's own time. Sometimes they are combined, as in the descriptions of chariot fighting: the poet knows that chariots were used, but not how (because the use had died out by his time), so imagines them to be a kind of taxi to get to the battlefield, where the hero gets out to fight on foot. The description of gift exchange, which closely parallels similar systems known to anthropologists, is ancient; similes involving iron are contemporary.
Finley discusses many issues related to his theme, and is always interesting and convincing. There is the relationship between the poems and the Linear B tablets; between the poems and the excavations by Schliemann and others at Hissarlik and in Greece; between the works of Homer and Hesiod, near contemporaries; how later editing (known to have occurred) might have affected the poems; the existence and identity (identities) of Homer; the attitude towards the gods revealed in the poems (a downplaying of the more homely, primitive gods like Dionysus and Demeter). To a non-classicist like myself, his conclusions always seem to make sense. It is the romantic weight of the poems themselves, as evidenced in the desire to connect Hissarlik to the Troy of the Iliad by going beyond the archaeological evidence, which meant that The World of Odysseus caused such controversy.
Read
May 18, 2024An attempt to construct pre-literate Greece through the Homeric oral epics. Broadly interesting, though one does get the sense that an awful lot of this is riding on what might have been a throw away line by an itinerant half-drunk poet (most poets are half-drunk most of the time, I don't see why it would have been any different in ancient Greece.)
This is remains an attempt to glean the world of pre-literate Greece from its most famous literary product. I can't say I found all of it persuasive on a re-read.
This is remains an attempt to glean the world of pre-literate Greece from its most famous literary product. I can't say I found all of it persuasive on a re-read.
November 22, 2020
A tour of force... quite an excellent guide touring into the Odysseus ambiance and cultural tolling of the time... exploring the dark ages of Greek Ancient history... superb!
June 17, 2025
Yaklaşık yarım yüzyıl önce yayınlanan M. I. Finley'in Odysseus'un Dünyası, Homeros'un İlyada ve Odysseia'sından öğrenebileceğimiz şeyler hakkında belki de en güvenilir kitaplardan biri. Edebiyat ve tarihin bir araya getirilebileceğini keşfetmeyi ne kadar sevsek de, Homeros'un dünyası hakkında bilmediklerimiz bildiklerimizi fazlasıyla aşmakta.
Örneğin, Akaların (ister Agamemnon ister başka bir lider altında olsun) Truva'yı işgal edip etmediğinden, varsayılan Truva Savaşı'nın ne zaman gerçekleştiğinden, Odysseus'un on yıllık gezintilerindeki yerlerin bir haritada nerede bulunabileceğinden, Odysseus'un gerçekten İthaka'dan hüküm sürüp sürmediğinden, her iki Yunan destanını da yazan tek bir şair olup olmadığından, nereden geldiğinden, gerçekten kör mü yoksa erkek mi olduğundan vb. emin değiliz.
Finley'nin sunduğu şey, destanlardan elde edilen içsel kanıtlara dayanarak Odysseus zamanındaki yaşamın nasıl beğenildiğine dair bir envanter. Bu nedenle, özellikle benim gibi Homeros'un Odysseia'sını tekrar tekrar okumuş biri için son derece güvenilir ve zihin açıcı bir eser.
Örneğin, Akaların (ister Agamemnon ister başka bir lider altında olsun) Truva'yı işgal edip etmediğinden, varsayılan Truva Savaşı'nın ne zaman gerçekleştiğinden, Odysseus'un on yıllık gezintilerindeki yerlerin bir haritada nerede bulunabileceğinden, Odysseus'un gerçekten İthaka'dan hüküm sürüp sürmediğinden, her iki Yunan destanını da yazan tek bir şair olup olmadığından, nereden geldiğinden, gerçekten kör mü yoksa erkek mi olduğundan vb. emin değiliz.
Finley'nin sunduğu şey, destanlardan elde edilen içsel kanıtlara dayanarak Odysseus zamanındaki yaşamın nasıl beğenildiğine dair bir envanter. Bu nedenle, özellikle benim gibi Homeros'un Odysseia'sını tekrar tekrar okumuş biri için son derece güvenilir ve zihin açıcı bir eser.
October 4, 2024
La obra de Finley, no solo esta, sino una buena parte de ella en su conjunto, es de obligada lectura para comprender tanto la sociedad y cultura que son descritas en las épicas homéricas como las que son contemporáneas a la escritura de las mismas. El Mundo de Odiseo abarca de forma brillante y clara la difícil tarea de explicar la cuestión homérica y fundamentalmente lo hace desde un punto de vista antropológico e histórico-materialista. ¿Es de indiscutible herencia micénica la sociedad heroica descrita por Homero o, por el contrario, hay una influencia clara de las instituciones y formas de relación interpersonal correspondientes a la época y el momento de composición del poema? A estas preguntas intenta responder Finley dese una aproximación materialista al texto homérico y plantea sus hipótesis a este inacabado debate sobre el estado de la cuestión, para muchos el primero de la historia de la literatura occidental.
August 13, 2025
Consulté con mi mentora acerca de este libro, antes de aventurarme en él.
Finley es el gran historiador del mundo griego en el siglo XX, y este texto es una joya sin parangón para quienes estén interesados en el tema.
Finley postula que, si bien podría existir una relación entre el mundo de Homero y los micénicos (puramente lingüística, además), es indudable que La Ilíada y la Odisea fueron escritos en un periodo muy diferente al siglo XIII a.C.
A través de un minucioso análisis de los pasajes de ambos textos épicos, así como del mundo que construye Homero, Finley contrasta la visión heroica, los ritos, los Dioses y la propia prosapia del texto con lo que conocemos de los tres trágicos y, posteriormente, Platón y Aristóteles.
Podemos concluir, por ende, que el mundo que pintó Homero para nosotros no está situado en el siglo XIII ni en el VI a.C., sino en la "época oscura" de la historia griega, por la cual apenas navegamos (y siempre con cautela) gracias a alguna que otra tablilla que sirve, como a Odiseo, a modo de balsa.
Qué belleza de texto.
Finley es el gran historiador del mundo griego en el siglo XX, y este texto es una joya sin parangón para quienes estén interesados en el tema.
Finley postula que, si bien podría existir una relación entre el mundo de Homero y los micénicos (puramente lingüística, además), es indudable que La Ilíada y la Odisea fueron escritos en un periodo muy diferente al siglo XIII a.C.
A través de un minucioso análisis de los pasajes de ambos textos épicos, así como del mundo que construye Homero, Finley contrasta la visión heroica, los ritos, los Dioses y la propia prosapia del texto con lo que conocemos de los tres trágicos y, posteriormente, Platón y Aristóteles.
Podemos concluir, por ende, que el mundo que pintó Homero para nosotros no está situado en el siglo XIII ni en el VI a.C., sino en la "época oscura" de la historia griega, por la cual apenas navegamos (y siempre con cautela) gracias a alguna que otra tablilla que sirve, como a Odiseo, a modo de balsa.
Qué belleza de texto.
April 13, 2022
A very good insight into Homer, Greek history and Greek history as portrayed by Homer.
A bit dry in some places but in others it was fascinating and thoroughly held my attention.
There was lots of etymology, always a bonus, and I learned quite a few new Greek words and have a greater understanding of those I already knew.
My biggest take away is understanding why the Iliad is sometimes considered the greater poem and I believe that I can make a very good argument both for why the poems have the same author and don't.
Although, ironically, not much was actually said about Odysseus (but that make sense if you only wanted to learn about his world, which this book talks about extensively).
A bit dry in some places but in others it was fascinating and thoroughly held my attention.
There was lots of etymology, always a bonus, and I learned quite a few new Greek words and have a greater understanding of those I already knew.
My biggest take away is understanding why the Iliad is sometimes considered the greater poem and I believe that I can make a very good argument both for why the poems have the same author and don't.
Although, ironically, not much was actually said about Odysseus (but that make sense if you only wanted to learn about his world, which this book talks about extensively).
January 24, 2018
Published in 1954, this short introduction to the culture of the society that may have created the Iliad and the Odyssey is a useful accompaniment to reading those works. The author uses information from a variety of sources, including Homer’s epics themselves. Succinct and occasionally dry, the book is packed with details. While obviously this does not reflect research from the past sixty-odd years, classic scholar Bernard Knox makes the case for the book’s continued relevance in his introduction
October 12, 2013
"Finley a facut vâlvă acum câteva decenii prin teoria sa destul de curajoasă: Iliada și Odiseea ar fi fost inspirate de societatea Epocii Întunecate elene, perioadă situată după dezastrul micenian. Poemele nu ar fi nici invenții, cum s-a crezut pentru o vreme, nici legende din vechime. După o uzuală speculație despre Homer, o denumire care pentru istoric ascunde doi autori, ne este explicat statutul celor două opere literare, în același timp și manuale, fundamentul religiei sau surse de modele etice.
Să nu uităm că, atunci când Platon dorea să-i gonească pe poeți din cetatea ideală, el se referea, în principal, la Homer. În eterna dispută dintre poezie și filosofie, se pare că cea din urmă a pierdut, în ciuda iluziilor intelectualilor: din cele peste 1200 manuscrise găsite în Egipt până în momentul redactării Lumii lui Odiseu, 550 erau legate de Iliada și Odiseea, ”Platon e reprezentat doar prin 36 de papirusuri, Aristotel prin 6”[2] . Teoriile după care metafizica e sursa răului sau a binelui cad din rațiunea unui interes insuficient.
Grecii considerau poemele autentice, le interpretau ad litteram și-ar fi fost transmise, printr-o metodă admirabilă, sugerată de cercetările lui Milman Parry în Bosnia. Într-o perioadă în care scrisul aproape dispăruse, barzii au memorat Iliada și Odiseea prin formule stil ”Ahile cel iute”, repetate de-a lungul recitărilor. Așa s-ar explica asemănările și diferențele între ele, de pildă, Odiseea se petrece în Vest, întâlnim mai puțini zei, acțiunea se centrează în jurul lui Ulise.
Civilizația miceniană se prăbușișe, din motive încă neclare, crize interne, migrație sau cucerire, lumea polis-urilor încă nu venise, deși unele elemente sunt anunțațe. Între cele două s-a discutat, în literatura de specialitate despre un fel de Ev Mediu, în care scriitura dispăruse. Iliada și Odiseea vorbesc despre o mare expediție din trecut, însă oamenii trăiesc într-o altă epocă.
Povestea vine dinaintea sfârșitului lumii, societatea din poeme este ”post-apocaliptică”. Au trecut crizele, noii emigranți se așează, unele centre își revin, nimeni știe cum conduceau regii din legende. Pentru a înțelege dimensiunile diferențelor, în Iliada, este suficient celebrul exemplu al carele de lupta, folosite ca mijloace de transport, purtând niște nobili interesați mai curând de dueluri decât de lupa organizată.
Ce ne spun poemele despre lumea lor, după Finley? Avem de-a face cu o societate stratifică în care aristoi, nobilii, controlau avuția și puterea; cu bariere rigide: ”crearea unor noi averi … nu era cu putință, … căsătoria era strâns legată de clasă”[3] . Îndeletnicirea lor principală: războiul și prada, oferind scena unor moravuri brutale, bărbații învinși omorâți, femeile transformate în sclave.
Majoritatea populației ar fi fost formată din țărani, crescători de animale, uneori mici meșteșugari. Societatea era grupată în gospodării familiale, ”oikos”, cu argați și sclavi, dintre care, evident, cele mai importante aparțineau nobililor. ”Bogăția casnică e elementul hotărâtor … baza e pământul”[4], schimburile era organizat într-un sistem de daruri asemănător celui potlatch din Nordul Americii.
Aristocrația trăia pentru prestigiu, după cum ne sugerează legenda lui Ahile, mai curând decât pentru mizele concrete ale conflictelor. Legăturile de familile se amestecă cu practica răzbunărilor, crimele țin de dreptul privat, așa cum ne arată trilogia Orestia, ce avea să glorifice superioritatea polis-ului conservator asupra societății arhaice. Cu toate acestea, nu lipsea forme ale comunității politice.
Regele, un fel de primul între egali, putea convoca adunarea, care era limitată la sfaturi, dar dreptul de a vorbi aparținea nobililor. ”Basileul” trebuia să țină cont de opinia publică, dar și de tradiția îndeobște religioasă, pe care o vedem reprezentată uneor de preoți-profeți și cititori în vise. Femeile aveau un statut inferior bărbaților, fără acces la decizii, uneori tratate ca pradă de război.
În același timp, în poeme, zeii erau tratați ca oamenii, cu pasiuni și interese concrete și mai ales, ceea ce a șocat pe mulți puritani, nu erau morali, nu îi forțau pe oameni să se conforme unui ideal etic, iar norocul și soarta jucau un rol decisiv. Prin această mitologie, se conturează o formă incipientă de umanism, indivizii fiind creaturi asemănătoare zeilor din punct de vedere al caracterului și motivațiilor; erau deseori înrudiți, se luptau unii cu ceilalți etc. ”După ce Homer prefăcuse pe zei în oameni, omul avea să învețe să se cunoască pe sine”[5] , subliniază Finley.
Și-aici ne întâlnim cu o mai veche ambiguitate a filosofilor talentați; nu doar că poezia amenință domeniul ideilor, ci și inspiră filosofia sau, cel puțin îi deschide drumul. Teza lui Finley a fost contestată, lipsesc alte izvoare primare pentru a o confirma sau infirma; ceea ce rămâne în picioare este ambiția de a reconstrui o epocă din perspectiva mentalităților și-a ideii că uneori, în spatele legendelor, se află ceva adevărat. Ușor de citit, cu un argument clar și bine prezentat, Lumea lui Odiseu include o prefață a autorului pentru ediția românească.
[1] www.anticariatultau.ro.
[2] M. I. Finley, Lumea lui Odiseu, Editura Științifică, 1986, p. 6.
[3] Idem., p. 74.
[4]Idem., p. 82.
[5]Idem., p. 182"
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Să nu uităm că, atunci când Platon dorea să-i gonească pe poeți din cetatea ideală, el se referea, în principal, la Homer. În eterna dispută dintre poezie și filosofie, se pare că cea din urmă a pierdut, în ciuda iluziilor intelectualilor: din cele peste 1200 manuscrise găsite în Egipt până în momentul redactării Lumii lui Odiseu, 550 erau legate de Iliada și Odiseea, ”Platon e reprezentat doar prin 36 de papirusuri, Aristotel prin 6”[2] . Teoriile după care metafizica e sursa răului sau a binelui cad din rațiunea unui interes insuficient.
Grecii considerau poemele autentice, le interpretau ad litteram și-ar fi fost transmise, printr-o metodă admirabilă, sugerată de cercetările lui Milman Parry în Bosnia. Într-o perioadă în care scrisul aproape dispăruse, barzii au memorat Iliada și Odiseea prin formule stil ”Ahile cel iute”, repetate de-a lungul recitărilor. Așa s-ar explica asemănările și diferențele între ele, de pildă, Odiseea se petrece în Vest, întâlnim mai puțini zei, acțiunea se centrează în jurul lui Ulise.
Civilizația miceniană se prăbușișe, din motive încă neclare, crize interne, migrație sau cucerire, lumea polis-urilor încă nu venise, deși unele elemente sunt anunțațe. Între cele două s-a discutat, în literatura de specialitate despre un fel de Ev Mediu, în care scriitura dispăruse. Iliada și Odiseea vorbesc despre o mare expediție din trecut, însă oamenii trăiesc într-o altă epocă.
Povestea vine dinaintea sfârșitului lumii, societatea din poeme este ”post-apocaliptică”. Au trecut crizele, noii emigranți se așează, unele centre își revin, nimeni știe cum conduceau regii din legende. Pentru a înțelege dimensiunile diferențelor, în Iliada, este suficient celebrul exemplu al carele de lupta, folosite ca mijloace de transport, purtând niște nobili interesați mai curând de dueluri decât de lupa organizată.
Ce ne spun poemele despre lumea lor, după Finley? Avem de-a face cu o societate stratifică în care aristoi, nobilii, controlau avuția și puterea; cu bariere rigide: ”crearea unor noi averi … nu era cu putință, … căsătoria era strâns legată de clasă”[3] . Îndeletnicirea lor principală: războiul și prada, oferind scena unor moravuri brutale, bărbații învinși omorâți, femeile transformate în sclave.
Majoritatea populației ar fi fost formată din țărani, crescători de animale, uneori mici meșteșugari. Societatea era grupată în gospodării familiale, ”oikos”, cu argați și sclavi, dintre care, evident, cele mai importante aparțineau nobililor. ”Bogăția casnică e elementul hotărâtor … baza e pământul”[4], schimburile era organizat într-un sistem de daruri asemănător celui potlatch din Nordul Americii.
Aristocrația trăia pentru prestigiu, după cum ne sugerează legenda lui Ahile, mai curând decât pentru mizele concrete ale conflictelor. Legăturile de familile se amestecă cu practica răzbunărilor, crimele țin de dreptul privat, așa cum ne arată trilogia Orestia, ce avea să glorifice superioritatea polis-ului conservator asupra societății arhaice. Cu toate acestea, nu lipsea forme ale comunității politice.
Regele, un fel de primul între egali, putea convoca adunarea, care era limitată la sfaturi, dar dreptul de a vorbi aparținea nobililor. ”Basileul” trebuia să țină cont de opinia publică, dar și de tradiția îndeobște religioasă, pe care o vedem reprezentată uneor de preoți-profeți și cititori în vise. Femeile aveau un statut inferior bărbaților, fără acces la decizii, uneori tratate ca pradă de război.
În același timp, în poeme, zeii erau tratați ca oamenii, cu pasiuni și interese concrete și mai ales, ceea ce a șocat pe mulți puritani, nu erau morali, nu îi forțau pe oameni să se conforme unui ideal etic, iar norocul și soarta jucau un rol decisiv. Prin această mitologie, se conturează o formă incipientă de umanism, indivizii fiind creaturi asemănătoare zeilor din punct de vedere al caracterului și motivațiilor; erau deseori înrudiți, se luptau unii cu ceilalți etc. ”După ce Homer prefăcuse pe zei în oameni, omul avea să învețe să se cunoască pe sine”[5] , subliniază Finley.
Și-aici ne întâlnim cu o mai veche ambiguitate a filosofilor talentați; nu doar că poezia amenință domeniul ideilor, ci și inspiră filosofia sau, cel puțin îi deschide drumul. Teza lui Finley a fost contestată, lipsesc alte izvoare primare pentru a o confirma sau infirma; ceea ce rămâne în picioare este ambiția de a reconstrui o epocă din perspectiva mentalităților și-a ideii că uneori, în spatele legendelor, se află ceva adevărat. Ușor de citit, cu un argument clar și bine prezentat, Lumea lui Odiseu include o prefață a autorului pentru ediția românească.
[1] www.anticariatultau.ro.
[2] M. I. Finley, Lumea lui Odiseu, Editura Științifică, 1986, p. 6.
[3] Idem., p. 74.
[4]Idem., p. 82.
[5]Idem., p. 182"
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