G.P. Goold, 'Homer and the Alphabet'.

[bouteillebleu]

I've just finished an essay on the transmission of the Iliad and the Odyssey during antiquity, and G. P. Goold's article on Homer and the development of the Greek alphabet has wonderful footnotes. I quote parts of a few of them below. (Hopefully the best parts.)

2. A murderous attack on the theory forms a particularly enjoyable chapter of Wilamowitz's Homerische Untersuchungen...
10. Meillet... even wonders whether σπηεσσι (e.g. Odyssey 9.400) is a mistransliteration of ΣΠΕΣΙ, the correct form being σπεεεσσι !
13. "Intolerable," says Palmer intolerantly, apud M. Platnauer, Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship...
22. Touching the so-called Pisistratean recension (as opposed to a copy of Homer which may have been made for Pisistratus) I accept Davison's contention... that the story is a fiction of the Pergamenes designed to discredit Aristarchus, and is based on nothing more than implausible slanders of Megarian irredentists.

And the last line (minus the quotation), describing Homer as compared to his predecessors whose poetry was not recorded in writing:

He is Tiresias, and even in the land of the hereafter can speak to the generations of eternity; they are the merest shadows, without name as without voice.

Comments

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Waaaaaaaa! You've done the essay :( *gets reminded of work that's more than reading stuff*

But Goold sounds so very cool. I like that in something I have to read for an essay, cheers me up. Though sarcastic/witty scholar types make me jealous because they remind me how long it must be before I could be cool enough to write something like that :/

[bouteillebleu.livejournal.com]

I've still got four more essays to do after that one, and it did have a far more interesting and answerable title than the usual '"Linguistics examiners are known for their lack of originality in setting questions." Discuss.' type of essays that I usually get in Linguistics. :)

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

:(

post the whole thing under a cut?