Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece declassified.

Episode 18.

A history of epic.

On this podcast, we've talked about the Iliad, and we've talked about The Odyssey,

dedicating a full episode to each epic.

As you will have gathered by now, the Homeric epics have been hugely influential over the millennia.

And you can find Homeric echoes and influences in countless movies and popular books today.

But it's not just their status as influential classics that make the Iliad and Odyssey worth your time.

These epics open up a whole world of fascinating questions,

not just about ancient Greece, but about human history and society in general.

For example, there are elements within the epics that are very similar to other stories told by other cultures in completely

different parts of the globe, separated from the Greeks by entire oceans. So how do we explain that?

Here's another interesting question. As you'll recall from previous episodes,

the Homeric epics are thought to be products of a long oral tradition of storytelling of an

illiterate society that were finally written down when that society became literate. Well,

if that's the case, and these stories that are told and retold from generation to generation

serve as a kind of collective memory of a society that has no written records,

then how far back in time can such a collective memory reach?

How you answer that question will profoundly affect how you understand prehistory,

not just of the Greeks,

but of any culture whose myths and legends you might be interested in.

Furthermore, if these epics grew and developed over time

...