Of the same name

[undyingking]

You might have heard the joke that X's books were in fact not written by X, but by another man of the same name. I find it interesting because, while being entertainingly silly as a proposition, it also asks a fairly serious question about what we mean by authorship and how historical record works. But that's not what this post is about! – I'm curious to know, as your recollection serves you:

[Poll #1666257]

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I've heard this before but never quite understood why everyone is happy to assume Herodotus didn't know what he was talking about in assuming Homer was an actual person.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

You don't understand why they would doubt that the Iliad and Odyssey are entirely the work of a single person, or you don't understand how they dare, even in the absence of any evidence, to doubt the authority of the mighty Herodotus regarding a person who supposedly lived 400 years previously and about whom Herodotus had no information other than oral tradition?

I'm no sadder to assume he was wrong than to assume he was right, certainly.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why they assume the passage of more time has somehow given later commentators more authority to declare Homer not to have been the author of both works.

The phrase "entirely the work of" is your wording, not mine. Obviously that seems a little unlikely if we're speaking of the versions with which Herodotus was familiar.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear, what statements of Herodotus' is it that everyone is accused of doubting, and what arguments did he make in support of those statements?

There's plenty of Herodotus' Histories that scholars are nowadays pretty confident is inaccurate, regardless of his proximity to events. For that matter there's plenty of Histories that his contemporaries thought was inaccurate.

I don't really see the issue - am I to assume that Jesus rose from the dead because Matthew the Gospel writer says so, and the passage of time can hardly grant me more authority to say otherwise? Is that actually how we do history?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's not a question of how awesome of infallible Herodotus wasn't. I asked why everyone was happy to assume Herodotus was wrong. I'm no expert, but as I understand it the way we do history is to provide evidence supporting a counterclaim.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I can't really answer then, since I can't tell what you mean by "everyone" (who?) assuming that Herodotus is wrong (in saying what?).

What I've observed is that people who are even interested though to consider it, are broadly receptive to suggestions that the two works probably weren't created in the form we have them, by a single author, in the date range held during the 5th Century BC. I don't think it's about "authority", though, so much as an idea that it's more complicated than that. It's not as if modern scholars are saying, "it was actually three people in 957BC, and they finished on a Tuesday afternoon" as a concrete counter-claim demanding specific proof.

I'm not familiar with what Herodotus actually said about Homer, that you're saying everyone assumes without evidence is wrong. I understand there was at the time an attribution to Homer of essentially the entirety of heroic literature, which seems a little unlikely. But if Herodotus didn't subscribe to that, or if he did but only as a knowing conceit, then for all I know he has made no actual assertions to be "wrong" about.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Also, the Histories are blatantly a 4th century fake anyway. Probably by Plato ;-)