Dr. David Butterfield
speaker
616 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 22 Jul
Dr. David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
That's Homer, the poet, plucking the lyre as he tells us that.
and having strung the bow, shoots it through the axes and then just starts slaughtering everyone.
So he's armed and dangerous and ready to go and the threat disappears by virtue of complete dispatch of all 108 suitors.
Brilliant question and so important.
So the ancient Greeks knew about the same as us about this thing we call Homer, i.e.
almost nothing.
What existed was a very complex poetic tradition of song.
In the evening, you'd get around the fire, have a few drinks, and some skilled musician would chant or sing a song in this very complicated metrical form, which would tell a tale of the great figures of the past, the heroes that we've learned about since we were yay high.
That is an oral tradition.
Why?
Because the Greeks lost writing.
They had the technology of writing in the second millennium BC, but the Bronze Age collapse caused them to lose that very skill.
So there is a Greek Dark Ages in the 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th centuries.
Nobody can write, so they've forgotten how to.
In the eighth century, the Phoenicians reintroduce an alphabet to the Greek world and the Greeks instantly take it up.
That is when these oral poems, which were told over a few hours each evening, take a written form.
The name Homer appears at that time.
Who was he?
He probably was a person.
He probably was a very successful performer, man in demand on the circuit.
Showing 461–480 of 616 · page 24 of 31
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