The Iliad, an epic poem describing the heroes and events of Trojan war, is one of the oldest extant pieces of Western literature. But just how old is it? A new study uses linguistic genetic relationships to compare the vocabulary used in The Iliad with Modern Greek and an earlier (and distantly related) Hittite lexicon. The study dates the text to around 762 B.C.E.—supporting the traditional, but often debated, eighth century B.C.E. date. The epic refers to events at the end of the Late Bronze Age, several centuries before the poem was composed, and it was considered an early literary achievement by classical Greeks centuries after its composition. The Iliad likely began as a diverse group of poems passed down by oral poets over a long period before reaching its present form. Traditionally attributed to the enigmatic bard Homer, the new study decontextualizes the epic—as we know it today—from its murky origins by relying entirely on statistical analysis.
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The Historic Homer in the BAS Library
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What the hay is linguistic genetics? Is that some kind of joke, or merely a misleading metaphor? And why would you use the term “decontextualize”? I’m pretty sure exactly what they’re trying to do is put it into wider context.