Professor Edith Hall

Yes, it's an entire encyclopedia of their civilization and values. I think they were written down because of Greek colonization. So not many people really did know them completely off by heart. If you were going off to found, as they were in the Archaic Age, the 8th, 7th, 6th century, to found colonies on the far northern coast of the Black Sea or in Marseilles or in Egypt or

you know, all over the Mediterranean Black Sea periphery, then you needed to take your canonical poems with you. I think that that was the spur for them getting written down. So you could take your huge papyrus rolls of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod, because they told you everything that you really needed to know. They told you how to do a sacrifice. They told you how to fight the enemy.

you know, all over the Mediterranean Black Sea periphery, then you needed to take your canonical poems with you. I think that that was the spur for them getting written down. So you could take your huge papyrus rolls of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod, because they told you everything that you really needed to know. They told you how to do a sacrifice. They told you how to fight the enemy.

you know, all over the Mediterranean Black Sea periphery, then you needed to take your canonical poems with you. I think that that was the spur for them getting written down. So you could take your huge papyrus rolls of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod, because they told you everything that you really needed to know. They told you how to do a sacrifice. They told you how to fight the enemy.

They told you how to arm yourself. They told you how to be a heroic male who was going around intrepidly bonking enemies on foreign shores on the head. They were the cultural encyclopedia. And at Athens, we know that every year at the Panathenae, it's the big all Athenian festival in the summer from the 6th century. They were recited all the way through.

They told you how to arm yourself. They told you how to be a heroic male who was going around intrepidly bonking enemies on foreign shores on the head. They were the cultural encyclopedia. And at Athens, we know that every year at the Panathenae, it's the big all Athenian festival in the summer from the 6th century. They were recited all the way through.

They told you how to arm yourself. They told you how to be a heroic male who was going around intrepidly bonking enemies on foreign shores on the head. They were the cultural encyclopedia. And at Athens, we know that every year at the Panathenae, it's the big all Athenian festival in the summer from the 6th century. They were recited all the way through.

The Iliad was recited all the way through by teams of bards every summer. It actually takes about three days to do that.

The Iliad was recited all the way through by teams of bards every summer. It actually takes about three days to do that.

The Iliad was recited all the way through by teams of bards every summer. It actually takes about three days to do that.

You take with you this cultural heritage and the Iliad, of course, because it's about a united effort by Greeks, even though the word Greek doesn't occur in it yet. It numerates all these mainland Greek cities and some of the islands that sent forces to Troy. So for an awful lot of Greeks, wherever they went in the world, they could trace their ancestry.

You take with you this cultural heritage and the Iliad, of course, because it's about a united effort by Greeks, even though the word Greek doesn't occur in it yet. It numerates all these mainland Greek cities and some of the islands that sent forces to Troy. So for an awful lot of Greeks, wherever they went in the world, they could trace their ancestry.

You take with you this cultural heritage and the Iliad, of course, because it's about a united effort by Greeks, even though the word Greek doesn't occur in it yet. It numerates all these mainland Greek cities and some of the islands that sent forces to Troy. So for an awful lot of Greeks, wherever they went in the world, they could trace their ancestry.

They believed their own ancestors had been on the Greek side. at Troy. It's an extraordinarily long genealogy that you're taking with you wherever you went.

They believed their own ancestors had been on the Greek side. at Troy. It's an extraordinarily long genealogy that you're taking with you wherever you went.

They believed their own ancestors had been on the Greek side. at Troy. It's an extraordinarily long genealogy that you're taking with you wherever you went.

I don't. In my head, the pattern is that the story got gradually elaborated. It's in 24 books now, but it's got slightly more than that identifiable individual stories that rather than being three days recitation, you could sing of a particular battle during the war, or you could sing the funeral of Patroclus, or you could sing the row between Achilles and Agamemnon, or you could sing

I don't. In my head, the pattern is that the story got gradually elaborated. It's in 24 books now, but it's got slightly more than that identifiable individual stories that rather than being three days recitation, you could sing of a particular battle during the war, or you could sing the funeral of Patroclus, or you could sing the row between Achilles and Agamemnon, or you could sing

I don't. In my head, the pattern is that the story got gradually elaborated. It's in 24 books now, but it's got slightly more than that identifiable individual stories that rather than being three days recitation, you could sing of a particular battle during the war, or you could sing the funeral of Patroclus, or you could sing the row between Achilles and Agamemnon, or you could sing

the moment that Achilles meets his mother, Thetis. You can cut it down into individual lays, and I think that's how it was probably performed. It got elaborated and elaborated. I think we're probably talking not tens but hundreds of individual bards. They're called rhapsodes. stitches of song who performed it through the dark ages of Greece.