Work In Progress
Samuel Butler shocked classicists when he asserted that the Odyssey had not been written by a man, Homer, but by a Greek Authoress identified as Nausicaa who lived in Trapani, Sicily, then part of the diaspora of Ellas (Greece).
At first, Butler himself could not believe this paradoxical assertion. But, later, through a detailed scholastic analysis he articulated the case for this non-unitarian statement, and his analysis is difficult to reject, unless one feels more comfortable with the idea that Homer was the author of both Epics because this has been the prevailing unitarian and historic mind-set.
I also feel personally more comfortable with Homer than with an Authoress from Sicily, but one fact is abundantly clear: there are too many examples of expressions that do not come natural to a man whereas they belong to the mind-set of a woman; hence the reason why there are many expressions in the Odyssey where feminine views and interpretations abound. There are also a number of errors that are difficult to ascribe to Homer whereas they become acceptable for an Authoress. We cannot deny that such a person could have existed, but it is not easy to accept that such an Authoress, the first and greatest female Novelist of the Western World, could have remained unidentified for some 2500 years, and that Scholars failed to identify her for all this time. Even the Latin Masters and, later, Dante who identified the Doloneia in Book X of the Odyssey and placed Odysseus and Diomedes in the VIII circle of the Inferno, failed to idenitfy the gender of the author. Other clues are embedded in this poem that strengthens Butler's viewpoint and clarify some apparent errors that a man, such as Homer, would not have made. In line with the prevailing culture of the time, a female person would not have been an expert in applied Geography, mainly because she would not have travelled on ships or visited distant places. Maturity in Geography required extensive personal travelling (see Strabo and Polybius) which would have resulted in a more intimate knowledge with the parts of a ship and the effects of navigation.
I am more than ever convinced that the Authoress of the Odyssey was Nausicaa or her mother, Queen Arete.
The following notes are the result of a systematic critical research into this assertion or paradox. A kind of "testing the hypothesis" analysis is still under way and I am battling with finding a suitable quantitative model to make it more amenable with the principles of inferential statistics.
Background
Based on archeological artefacts and consolidated scholarly teachings, Western Civilization is thought to have started in the Aegean islands of the Mediterranean Sea, especially those centred in and around the Cyclades and especially Crete, where it found its maximum expression and advancement. It extended and included towns that became established along the coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, and, on the western side, those of Southern Italy, Magna Graecia, and obviously Sicily which was then an integral part of the Greek diaspora. This development occurred over a period of about 2000 years, more precisely from 3400 B.C. to 1500 B.C., and can be more conveniently divided into five sub-periods:
3400-3000 B.C. Early Cretan or Minoan Civilization
3000-1600 B.C. Middle Cretan or Minoan Civilization
1600-1500 B.C. Late or Recent Cretan or Minoan Civilization
1250-1100 B.C. Micenean Civilization and Trojan War.
The gap between 1500 B.C. and 1250 B.C. (some texts prefer the gap extended to the period 1500 B.C. to 1200 B.C.) is largely unquantified and the prevailing view, based on my readings, is that during this period some major catastrophic event, such as an earthquake, took place. This gave the Micenean Civilazion in the gulf of Argopolis and other cities of the Southern Peloponnesian peninsula, Tyrins, Argos, Pylos, Mycenae, et al, the opportunity to take over and continue the Cretan Civilization.
Let's dwell for a while on this long period of some 2000 years, the same period of time that separates us today from the time of Christ or Julius Caesar, if you like. From a technological viewpoint we can say that progress was very slow and likely to have been concentrated in the latter part of the second period and the third period. Since technological progress is generally exponential in form, this assumption becomes quite plausible. This technological progress enabled other arts and trades to develop and improve thus giving rise to metal skills in tool-making, household wares, weapons and artistic metal work in bronze, silver and gold. Notably, the Etruscans were the most skilled artisans in metalwork and the earliest to use iron in the Bronze Age, a fact that was known to Greek poleis. Artefacts reveal a high level of advancement in skills and beauty of the art in all the artefacts they produced.
Ad rem, comparatively speaking, Civil Engineering did make a slower progress, as the basic method of construction remained essentially megalithic though strongly enriched in terms of size and room layouts, temple construction and internal decor. Commercial exchanges, on the other hand, did flourish and this brought about similar spiritual influences that resulted in a common set of religious deities and practices of worship. But trade differences, and control of the processes of wealth and power, brought about competition between the Mycenean entities and those on the shores of Asia Minor, with Troy being the leading polis since its strategic position and effective government made her an affluent town that dominanted the regions beyond the Hellespont. Control of the seas, trade and wealth, rather than the abduction of goddess-like Helen, eventually resulted in the Trojan War and the stories sung by the ἀοιδός Homer in his two epic books that form the cornestone of Western Literature, and through which we can learn about the exact thinking and socio-political system of the Micenean and the following Hellenic Archaic Civilization.
One fundamental fact around which there is no doubt is that the Trojan War did indeed take place and scholars fix the date of the fall of Troy VI-VII around the year 1181 B.C. or 1184 B.C. Now this date is not given with an absolute mathematical accuracy, in the same way that the geometry imported by Thaletes from Egypt and Maesopotamia did not become a precision geometry until Pythagoras, Democritus and Eudossos did some fundamental research, and through abstraction turned it into a precision geometry, amenable to the language of science and applicable to many different types of problems. Hence a few years of tolerance around this date or period are acceptable.
I am going to show that a simple analysis can place the occurence of this epic war to the year 1188 B.C. or failing this date that of 1157 B.C.
Go to the page Date of the Trojan War.