From Oral Tradition to Canon: A history of the Iliad and the Odyssey

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By Petros Koutoupis

He [Agamemnon] evidently brought the largest numbers of ships to Troy and, in addition to his own, provided a fleet for the Arcadians – Homer declares, if he is sufficient authority.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, II.9

Myth. What is a myth? It is a foundation story. An origin. The Greek word mythos simply meant a traditional tale (or tales). And the Greeks (who called themselves Hellenes) were some of the greatest mythmakers in history. Enough so that other cultures which included the Etruscans and later Romans adopted much of the Greek culture including the tales surrounding the Trojan War. These stories were so well preserved in Western culture that up until the 19th century CE, it had long been believed that civilization began with the Greeks.

First and foremost, it is important to understand the general purpose for a myth. Mythology was much more than a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon. To quote a dear friend, Steven Pyatt, “Mythology was the science of the day, a way to explain the natural world from the perspective of pre-scientific cultures and civilizations.” Myth was also a method by which content was transferred. Like the news today.

Rediscovering Writing

The Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the oldest narratives to withstand time. Accredited to Homer, these poetic verses have preserved memories from an era gone by, an age of heroes. Although, it beckons the question, “Through what means?” That is, how did we get the versions we know and enjoy today?

After the collapse of the LBA, the Greek Dark Age brought with it the loss of an advanced culture and the loss of recorded history. It essentially wiped the Greeks off of the historical record until they later reappeared in Anatolia at around the 8th century BCE. Prior to the disappearance of the Mycenaean Greeks, writing was utilized in all of the Aegean to record inventory and trades. The Mycenaean script is referred to as Linear B; an adaptation of the earlier used Minoan Linear A. Linear A and B comprise of hundreds of signs that represent syllabic, ideographic, and semantic values. To date, Linear B has been the only deciphered script,[1] providing insight into the more archaic form of Greek spoken by the Mycenaeans.[2] Linear A is largely undeciphered, however, it is generally believed that the language of the Minoans was of an Indo-European subset, possibly closely related to a more archaic form of Luwian which was spoken in and around the Anatolian region.

A collection of Linear A and B written tablets. Courtesy of the Field Museum of Natural History and the temporarily featured exhibit The Greeks – Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. Author’s photograph. Courtesy of the Field Museum.

The application of the Linear B script seems to have been confined and limited to only administrative contexts and likely used solely by the elite class. Although, it must be noted that a small subset of clay tablets from the thousands excavated have been deciphered. This has long been and continues to be part of the challenge when attempting understand the Mycenean culture, religion, etc. Shortly after the collapse of the Mycenaean palace-centered states (and the elite class with it) and the decline of the Mycenaean influence across the Aegean, the use of Linear B (and any other form of Aegean writing) disappeared with it.