Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox — The Odyssey

45 published claims from this book.

• A servant raised like a daughter can feel nothing for her mistress’s suffering
• A slain man’s surviving son can restore his honor through revenge
• A widow’s loyalties shift to whatever man will secure her sons’ wealth
• Ancient depictions of Hades stayed inconsistent until Dante fixed its geography
• Aristarchus’s line excisions prove he accepted the transmitted ending as original
• Athena disguises Odysseus so completely that even his family will not recognize him.
• Critics condemning Odysseus’ deception of Laertes ignore the demands of narrative structure
• Divine madness transforms the suitors’ laughter into a death omen
• Eumaeus’s Phoenician nurse was killed by Artemis’ arrow and thrown overboard
• Fear of Zeus’s guest-law wrath drove an act of selfless decency.
• Gods weave mortal suffering to generate future song.
• Greek animal sacrifice doubled as the community’s way of eating meat
• Greeks created the first alphabet with one sign per sound
• Homer’s epics record a song rather than being pure spontaneity
• Homer’s poetry derives its speed and energy from oral performance
• Homeric epithets carry shifting contextual meanings rather than fixed senses
• Homeric epithets form a metrical system built for oral improvisation
• Homeric formulas carry more contextual resonance than Parry claimed
• Homeric Thrinacia sat so far north that days were nearly continuous
• Humor and laughter were deployed to appease angry gods
• Laertes’ grief has reduced him to sleeping in ashes beside his servants
• Latinized Greek pronunciation in English matches neither Greek nor Latin sounds
• Long oral tradition explains Homer’s anachronistic mixture of customs and dialects.
• No god or mortal dared set foot on Calypso’s Ogygia
• Odysseus concealed his weeping from Penelope through practiced self-control
• Odysseus’s stubborn spirit will compel him to fetch Telemachus personally
• One hundred eight suitors besiege Odysseus’ household
• Oral and written composition are continuous rather than opposed techniques.
• Oral bards improvised anew at each performance rather than reciting fixed texts
• Oral storytellers memorized plot and names but improvised wording freely
• Penelope deceived the suitors for three years by weaving and unweaving a shroud nightly
• Penelope shares Odysseus’ cunning and deploys mêtis as a counteroffensive, not a surrender
• Penelope’s nightly unweaving trick deceived the suitors for three years
• Schliemann and Evans revealed a Bronze Age world unknown to classical historians
• Tantalus’s punishment mirrors his crime of serving his own son as food
• Telemachus denies the disloyal maids a clean death by hanging
• The Homeric epics were written down at some point by someone.
• The Nobody ruse exploits the giant’s boastful brutality
• The Odyssey abandons epic convention by starting mid-story instead of chronologically
• The Odyssey gives women speaking roles far more often than the Iliad does.
• The Phaeacian palace was decorated with bronze, lapis, and gold
• The singer claims both self-taught craft and god-given inspiration
• The Sirens’ knowledge of all events makes their song irresistible.
• The storeroom held aged unmixed wine reserved for Odysseus’s return
• The suitors’ impunity hinges on their belief Odysseus is dead.