Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer

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.

Robin Lane Fox is a distinguished British classicist with a number of signficant books to his credit that have helped expand the modern understanding of the ancient world. "Travelling Heroes" is another example of this. In this book, Fox attempts to probe and gain a greater comprehension of the bases for the Greek myths that form the background context for and also add a good deal of content to the Homeric tales, the Iliad and the Odyssey. He does this through careful consideration of ancient texts, the geography of the Homeric world, and by review of some of the most recent archaeological evidence. This inquiry lead the author to some rather startling conclusions: some of the most important Greek myths such as Zeus's victory over the monster Typhon can be attributed not only to Eastern influences from such faiths as those of the Assyrians and Hittites, they were also swayed by stories from the far West of antiquity (Italy and parts beyond) and also by the geographical features that were witnessed by the Greek "travelling heroes" of antiquity. Fox goes further in his hypothesis and specifically identifies the group of early Greek wanderers who he deems responsible for this enriching of Greek mythology: 8th Century BCE seafarers and colonists from the island of Euboea or its colonial offshoots. He is able to provide some fairly solid evidence for this theory in reliance on stratigraphic analysis of pottery deposits, other physical evidence at field sites (such as the presence of volcanic or earthquake activity), and through close reading and interpretation of ancient sources. Fox goes further to investigate how this mythic activity on the part of the early Euboeans did or didn't influence the work of near contemporaries such as Hesiod and Homer. He concludes with a brief, learned inquiry into the possible date when Homer's works were first set down in writing. I heartily recommend this book to anyone with an interest in antiquity, particularly the early days of Greek civilization. I must make the caveat, however, that the book may prove rather heavy going for laymen with little or no knowledge of or interest in archaeology. There is a good deal of discussion of pottery strata at the book's beginning which newcomers may find daunting. Nonetheless, once the reader slogs past this part, he or she will be rewarded with a fascinating examination of how the ancient Greek mind envisioned and dealt with the world around it, making sense of and linking various phenomena and place locations in the Mediterranean.

Just a brief note on this wonderful book. I found it by accident, doing research into mythic heroes, but wow, am I glad I did. This is one of the most fascinating reads I have had in a while. What Fox manages to accomplish is impressive: he relates an incredible amount of archaeological, historical, linguistic, literary, anthropological, and mythological data is a reader-friendly, accessible, easy-going way. I still don't quite know how he managed to make so much deep research easy and fun. You breeze right through this book and simply accumulate a treasure trove of information. He distills the hardest, most detailed theories into easily accessible conversation -- It's like learning from a good friend without realizing you're learning. My hat is off to Mr. Fox for a great, well-researched text. It is quite brilliant.

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.

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.