The Odyssey of Homer by William Russell Flint
i jsut love athena. when i was growing up, i was pretty much an athena cult of one.
The Odyssey is an automatic reblog.
(via marioemilio)
Radiolab Podcast: Why Isn’t the Sky Blue?
I can’t stop thinking about this. As a lifelong student of Homer and a longtime lover of science, languages and culture, this blew my mind like it hasn’t been blown in what feels like years. Absolutely incredible!
What is the color of honey, and “faces pale with fear”? If you’re Homer—one of the most influential poets in human history—that color is green. And the sea is “wine-dark,” just like oxen…though sheep are violet. Which all sounds…well, really off. Producer Tim Howard introduces us to linguist Guy Deutscher, and the story of William Gladstone (a British Prime Minister back in the 1800s, and a huge Homer-ophile). Gladstone conducted an exhaustive study of every color reference in The Odyssey and The Iliad. And he found something startling: No blue!
Supposedly Gladstone’s chapter on colors in Homer is available here; I will have to take a look at it, because wow.
(via waiting4achange)
I guarantee there are about five other people who will be interested in this, but guys, this review had me enthralled. It talks about translations of Homer into other languages, and redaction Library of Alexandra-style, and why we can rely on the Iliad as a historical source, and why the text is so freaking revolutionary, and just. The Iliad isn’t even the text of my heart (that’d be the Odyssey), but this makes me want to run back home and crack it open.
