Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics

Scholars have long assumed that early culture In Greece had Its origins In such Mediterranean sources as Egypt and Phoenicia. Rhys Corpenter here sets forth the stimulating thesis that "In order to explore the background and ancestry of Homeric epic we must travel north, not east or south." Through a series of striking comparisons with heroic poetry from northern Europe, he suggests that oral tradition may well have come Into Greece by way of Thrace. He traces the cult of "the sleeping bear" in Greek lore and literature, and presents a startling but convincing argument that both the Odyssey and the Old English epic of Beowulf are based in part on the well known folk tale of The Bearson. By skillful and Intricate historical analysis he also dates the Odyssey as late seventh century B.C., the Iliad as probably somewhat less than a century earlier.

Rhys Carpenter, for many years Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, is Professor Emeritus of Clasically Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.