Product Description

The eighth century B.C. was the formative age of the great epics of Homer, a remote and, in some ways, mysterious era. In this groundbreaking book, Robin Lane Fox takes us into that time before history to explore questions ranging from the origins of the Greek gods to the spread of classical culture in the Mediterranean world. It is a remarkable tour de force of scholarship and creative reasoning, written with flair and the authority gained from a lifetime of study and personal experience of key sites.

Presented as a kind of historical detective story, Travelling Heroes draws upon archaeology, ancient texts, and new discoveries to develop a fresh and provocative thesis: that migrants from in the Greek island of Euboea settled in specific places both in the Near East and in Italy and that what they found there helped shape their most distinctive myths. In fascinating detail, Lane Fox describes the journeys of the travellers and the contacts they made with Phoenicians, Assyrians, and the people of north Cyprus and Syria, and he shows the way they drew themes—and even references to particular topographic features—into what would become the classic stories of gods and legend. He also offers new insights into Homer himself.

Robin Lane Fox is probably the most widely read historian of the ancient Greek world, and Travelling Heroes displays the same lively originality that marked his writing about the Bible in The Unauthorized Version and about the triumph of Christianity in Pagans and Christians. Learned but never dry, controversial but soundly based, it brings a distant and nearly forgotten time brilliantly to life again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139826 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-07
• Released on: 2009-04-07
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679444312
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael Dirda Over the years Robin Lane Fox -- a professor of ancient history at Oxford -- has brought out a number of scholarly yet exhilarating and reader-friendly books, including "The Search for Alexander," "Pagans & Christians" and "The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian." In his provocative "The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible," he dismantled many of the myths about the formation of the Hebrew Scriptures, approaching this culturally loaded material as a no-nonsense, non-believing historian. In nearly all his work, Lane Fox writes crisply about even complicated subjects, as befits a regular newspaper columnist: Besides being a noted classicist, he's also the gardening correspondent for the Financial Times. So I looked forward to enjoying "Travelling Heroes." I was even prepped for it: A year or so back I had happened to reread the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" and had done some collateral research into ancient Greek history and myth. Consequently, I figured that I was as well prepared a common reader as one might expect for this new look at the Mediterranean and Near Eastern culture of the 8th century B.C. Nonetheless, the book nearly defeated me. Lane Fox's thesis, to quote from the dust jacket, is that "migrants from the Greek island of Euboea settled in specific places both in the Near East and in Italy and that what they found there helped shape their most distinctive myths." In particular, topographic features, misconstrued names and indigenous local rites led to the association of already existing Greek classical myths and figures with particular geographical places. For instance, when Phoenicians in Cilicia (part of modern-day Turkey) said the word "Mopsu" -- a reference to a ruling house of Muksas or Mopsu -- the Greeks naturally heard the word "Mopsus," the name of one of their own legendary seers. Hence Mopsus, like Kilroy, had been there at some earlier time. "The Greek visitors did not invent a new mythical hero Mopsus in order to fit this 'Mopsu' into their own past," Lane Fox writes. "In their Greek myths they had such a hero already, the Mopsus who came from Greece and Claros. The names were irresistibly similar and the connection did not require great learning." What's more, to the Greeks, "a verbal coincidence often seemed like a sign or an omen." According to Lane Fox, these sailors from the island of Euboea, along with the Phoenicians, were the Mediterranean's greatest travelers and seem to have served as cultural Johnny Appleseeds. Much of "Travelling Heroes" focuses on archaeological digs and drinking cups, bowls and other bits of ancient dinnerware. Such physical evidence, as well as certain myths and fragments of poetry, suggests that Euboeans once lived in north Syria at a place called Al Mina, and also in east Sicily and in north Africa. These people were, according to one study, the mid-8th-century's "masters of the trade between the East Mediterranean and central Italy." So far, so good. As Lane Fox insists, "Their travels included journeys eastwards and with them as they travelled went a baggage of specific myths which they already knew. As we shall discover, they encountered myths in foreign lands which they assimilated too. They then believed that they had found specific items in these very same myths as they continued to travel even further across the sea. Particular myths thus became located like a 'songline' across the entire span of their travels." Lane Fox further explains that "we have followed the tracks of the Euboeans and their objects so closely because the trail of myths which they also laid will depend on their contacts with exactly located sites and landscapes." The point, if I've got this right, is that the Euboeans brought their myths with them, then happened to observe a distinctive rocky promontory or strangely shaped bay near some distant shore, or perhaps heard stories from the indigenous people of the East that recalled what they already knew. So they concluded, using myth-tinted imaginations, this must be the very place where Adonis, Heracles or the monstrous Typhon performed some marvel, or where the various ancient heroes tarried during their return from Troy. "If people in the west were well aware of Homer," argues Lane Fox, "surely they would want to locate some of his spellbinding stories in the 'new world' which they had found? In due course, most of the Homeric stories came to be placed on the east coast of Sicily or up by the Bay of Naples, along the very routes taken by Euboeans who traveled there from c. 800-780 BC onwards." Throughout "Travelling Heroes," Lane Fox labors relentlessly to prove the connection of various myth sites with Euboean trading posts. Consequently, his book is not merely scholarly, but also detailed and repetitive. Each chapter brings one more bit of pottery, one more name similarity, some possible association with Euboeans. Everything is scrupulously presented, and yet the sum total for this reader was first information overload, then tedium. One hungers for a clearer sense of why all this matters -- and for more of the charming facts that occasionally enliven these pages. Did you know that Dido, who killed herself out of love for Aeneas (see Virgil's "Aeneid"), was the niece of the Bible's Queen Jezebel? Or that Antony and Cleopatra's daughter married a learned King Juba, who traced his ancestry back to Heracles? The city of Lisbon was once called Olisippo, a name derived from that of Odysseus/Ulysses. The Greeks, we're told, "steered by the Great Bear, whereas Phoenicians more advisedly steered by the Little Bear" (that is, by the Big or Little Dipper). In a grave on Ischia there was discovered some pottery inscribed this way: "I am Nestor's cup, good to drink with, but whoever drinks from this cup, at once the desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite will seize him." Lane Fox calls this Europe's earliest literary allusion, since it clearly refers to Homer's "Iliad": Nestor -- the elderly counselor to the Greeks at Troy -- is said to possess a similar drinking vessel heavily embossed with gold. "Travelling Heroes" is unquestionably an important book, but its subject is too arcane, too specialized and too speculative for people with only a passing interest in classical antiquity. Why, I wonder, did a trade publisher bring it out? It should have been the ornament of some scholarly press's spring catalogue.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Oxford classicist Fox explores the 700s BCE, the century to which he imputes the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Explaining that this was an era of cultural contact between Greeks—specifically, those from the island Euboea—and residents of the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea, he delves deeply into the nature of that exchange. Aiming to evoke the Euboeans’ mind-set, he springs from the archaeological traces of their settlements to the gods and heroes of the Near East they adapted into their own myths. While there is considerable textual explication of Homer and Hesiod involved in Fox’s procedure, he pulls the mythical characters from the pages and places them in the physical landscapes with which the Euboeans not only associated them but believed they actively inhabited. So doing lends the appealing impetus of travel writing to Fox’s account that aids readers in absorbing the world of pagan belief. Detailed but recurrently on point, Fox will connect with readers drawn to the Homeric age. --Gilbert Taylor

Review
Praise for Robin Lane Fox’s Travelling Heroes

“Fox has produced a work of prodigious scholarship. . . . A major contribution to Classical scholarship. . . . Strongly recommended.”
—Clay Williams, Library Journal

“[Robin Lane Fox’s] intellectual discipline is impressive.”
—Kirkus Reviews

The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian

“Fox is a fluent, perceptive color commentator on the pageant of ancient history, while giving readers some idea of where the parade was headed.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Lane Fox's survey deserves to be widely read. Indeed, I cannot think of a better introduction to the subject for those with no prior knowledge. . . . Lane Fox's strong and clear narrative will stimulate those reacquainting themselves with this fascinating era as much as it enthralls newcomers.”
—The Washington Post

“Fox, the author of numerous works on classical civilization, is a masterful writer whose elegant but highly readable prose offers an evolving portrait of Greek and Roman culture over a period of roughly 900 years. . . . [Fox] discusses in often fascinating detail topics that are normally given short shrift in general histories. . . . This is an excellent work of scholarship and literature.”
—Booklist

The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible

“Biblical historiography, with an edge. . . . [S]ound and clearly argued. A wealth of information.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Magnificent...delivered with authority and verve. Learned but never pedantic, [Lane Fox] is an unfailingly incisive, thought-provoking, humane, courteous, and often entertaining guide.”
—The Economist

“A remarkable achievement . . . [Lane Fox] manages, like a skille...

Customer Reviews

A Challenging, Illuminating Book
Robin Lane Fox's "Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer" is a challenging, illuminating work. After a short introduction, the author presents a highly detailed examination of the archaeological evidence for the spread of Greeks - especially Greeks from the island of Euboea - through the Mediterranean in the 8th century BC, an examination so detailed that seemingly every piece and fragment of Euboean ceramics ever found outside of Greece is discussed.

After the archaeological exposition, Fox launches into his main subject: the creation and evolution of Greek myth and poetry as it was influenced by what these 8th century Euboean travelers saw and experienced. Fox contends that for the most part Greek myths were indigenous, not fundamentally borrowings from other peoples, but that the indigenous mythic elements were modified and shaped by the new worlds into which the Greeks were moving: not lands empty of other people, but lands where other people were already living and telling their own mythic tales. This long central portion of "Travelling Heroes" demands careful attention by the reader, as the evidence and arguments presented are complex and subtle. Of necessity, the foundations for the author's conclusions are less solid than the archaeological evidence presented earlier in the book; frequently, the evidence is linguistic or threaded through literary sources dating centuries later.

The final section of the book examines the direct effects of the 8th century Euboean experience upon the poems of Homer and Hesiod (Fox concludes that Homer most likely worked on Chios in the middle of the 8th century, while Hesiod came a few decades later).

Undoubtedly, Robin Lane Fox's conclusions will not find universal acceptance, but at a minimum this book provides a fascinating view of the foundations of much of Western culture.

Glad this wasn't exiled to academic purgatory
The Post reviewer criticizes this book for being too academic for the general public, but I found it to be fascinating. There are those of us who are students of history even though we aren't academics--we like to be challenged intellectually, too--we don't need to read another generalized history of the Greek world. This is a very well-written, exhaustively researched book and I highly recommend it.

Classic in Every Sense of the Word
This Robin Lane Foxes take on the "Greece v. the Near East" debate, i.e. to what extent classical Greek culture was inspired by the older, more well established of the near east, specifically the neo-hittite indo european speakers. Fox approaches the question by taking heavily from recent archaeological studies in the Mediterranean world and methodically discussing the "world" of 8th century Greek/Euboean adventurers. The writing style and scholarship are first rate, I literally gobbled this book up. Foxes conclusion is basically that the Greek/Euboeans were aware of Near Eastern religious practices largely through individual experiences both trading and settling in places like Crete. Fox outlines different points of contact and also does an excellent job charting western expansion in the 8th century.

Although I'm not a specialist in the field, I found his placement of Homer in the 8th century as convincing. I think Fox, while obviously conversant with some of the advances in "indo european" studies, is largely dismissive of that discipline, but of course it's impossible to ignore the relationship between Hittite culture and Greek myth.