The World of Odysseus
Sep. 27th, 2015 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliThe World of Odysseus by Moses I. Finley
Looking at Homer's works and the world they are set in.
The rituals of gift exchange, the way they had a specific term for one's husband's brother's wife that later fell out of us when men started to set up their households while their fathers were still alive, social structure and those specialists who weren't in the aristocrats -- or heroes -- but were too valuable to be mere peasants, kingship and power, the morals (which Plato so deplored because of all the raids, or robbery), Odysseus's gratuitous lies, how the heroes were frequently called divine, and much more interesting stuff.
Looking at Homer's works and the world they are set in.
The rituals of gift exchange, the way they had a specific term for one's husband's brother's wife that later fell out of us when men started to set up their households while their fathers were still alive, social structure and those specialists who weren't in the aristocrats -- or heroes -- but were too valuable to be mere peasants, kingship and power, the morals (which Plato so deplored because of all the raids, or robbery), Odysseus's gratuitous lies, how the heroes were frequently called divine, and much more interesting stuff.