Book Review: Travelling Heroes(in the epic age of Homer) by Robin Lane Fox

Travelling Heroes (in the epic age of Homer)

by Robin Lane Fox

Knopf

p.  2008  (1st ed. US 2009)

Robin Lane Fox is a current professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, which is basically the most prestigious post of Ancient History in the entire world (English speaking or not) so he is a brilliant scholar just as a matter of course.  I would personally compare him to David Hackett Fisher in the United States, though I devoured this book in less then a day, and I gave Fisher's most recent book (biography of French explorer Champlaign) to my mother in law without bothering to read past page 50.

In Travelling Heroes Fox tackles would can loosely be described as "assorted scholarly debates over the greek epic era and sources of homeric myths."  Fox is conversant with many discplines outside of history, and in particular he uses recent archaleogical discoveries in the Middle East to buttress his argument that Homer wrote in the 8th century and the "Epic Era" was roughly 780- 720 BC as experienced by the Euboeans.

Through out the book Fox emphasizes linking mythic events to history by describing the myths in terms of physical geography that the Euboean travellers would have encountered in the 8th century B.C.

His chapter on the mountain that is presently known as Mount Aqraa is perhaps the single most illuminating chapter on any subject that I'll read about this year.  Mount Aqraa is a rather imposing looking mountain that happens to be set right next to the Sea on the Turkish/Syrian border.

It is equidistant between Greece and biblical Israel.  During the 8th century, and way, way earlier then that, the resident ethnic group was the neo-Hittite's and they worshipped a storm god named "Baal."  The Hittite's are a indo-european speaking people, and this storm god figure is consonant with Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, etc.  Anyways, the Hittite's worshipped this storm god at this mountain, and they were way, way older in terms of a civilization then either the greeks or the israelites.  So old, in fact, that the residents during the eighth century were neo-Hittites and not even the original Hittites.  Fox convincingly argues that this mountain and it's diety, similar to Zeus, made a deep impression on "dark age" greeks.  Similarly, this locus had a similar inspirational, shall we say, impact on the man writing the old testament.  In fact, Fox argues that Homer and the hypothetical author of the Bible ("J") lived within a single generation of one another.

Lane also gives other good examples of "Eastern" intrusion into Greek culture- particularly via the ancient, ancient cult of adonis (who might be the inspiration for Jesus, too.) but discredits just as many of these types of arguments, particularly those that seek to take away credit from Homer.  Overall he paints an ancient world where Greeks were eager to learn, but lacked the ability to really listen to other cultures.  

In the fine tradition of all ancient history, you can't help compare the Greek's cultural tone-deafness to our present American situation.  This book is literally filled with example of mythic names that came from Greeks not properly understanding what the "Natives"(who were more advanced in the east, and less in the west) were telling them.  It's similar to what happens here with Native American place names, although there the mistakes are always literal, i.e. monkey island because a Greek misheard an Etruscan and the Etruscan word sounded like the greek word for "monkey."

Fox undoubtably takes some positions on specific dates and arguments that will arouse opposition but I didn't take all of what he wrote as true, it's quite easy to identify places where he is simply arguing a position and doesn't have enough evidence.  Specifically- the top of Mount Aqraa is a restricted Turkish military zone and no archaeological work has been done there in close to a century.