The extra­ordinary influence of the Iliad and Odyssey
I&#x27;m fascinated by old stories. Stories are the oldest medium, and they&#x27;ve proven to be surprisingly good stores of information. Erik the Red was real, and he navigated to lands across the ocean just like the old stories said he did.<p>I think the writer sells short the comparison of Homer to the bible. It goes a lot deeper than &quot;the one book everyone knows.&quot;<p>Homer is often thought to be describing events during the bronze dark age, the period between the collapse of middle eastern bronze age empires and the rise of iron age empires (like the greek one).<p>This is what the bible is too, to a large extent. The exodus, judges, King David, prophets, heros... Stories about the legendary dark age written by decendants during the early iron age.<p>As civilization (and population) re-grew these stories formed a cultural core. Judeans got swept into the aramean, babylonian, persian and later hellenic empires. The library of knowledge grew enourmously. But, the old stories still remained at the heart of the cultural.<p>Something similar happenned in greece. Greeks civilisation grew. greek scholarship  got advanced, and worldly. They later created a world empire, existed under the roman empire. Still the stories remained, a stable foundation for more culture to graft onto.<p>In both cases, we have stories from the bronze age, that somehow remained important enough for <i>100 generations</i> to remain at the heart of cultures today. Stories of desert nomads and aegean pirates on the margins of civilisation.