Am I the only one who finds it strange that Homer wrote about the Trojan War 5 centuries after it happened...

It's called historical fiction.

Homer didn’t exist

>I can't believe it would be possible today, but maybe they had much better memories than us.
Being a bard was literally a job. Not everyone had bardic memory because not everyone spent their entire life training to be a bard.

The Trojan was was actually a war between the Mycenaean Greeks and an empire sandwiched between the Greeks and the early Persians in Anatolia, who's last stand was at Troy.

It was a real war, possibly a "world war" of sorts for the ancient world, which was canonized and romanticized by oral stories for centuries before being written down by Homer.

Much like how Jesus was a Jewish rebel against the Roman Empire and was supposed to be their savior, and liberate the Jewish people before being summarily executed in a traditional Roman manner. Then the oral history warped through time before being written down hundreds of years later.

I think what happened in Jesus's case, his followers kept waiting for his kingdom to come. When it didn't come, in order to keep their cult alive, they started saying it's not a kingdom of this earth but of heaven.

>I'm aware of the fact that a lot of knowledge was passed down from generation to generation orally via poems. But is it really possible to transmit all those details -which, as you've said, are surprisingly accurate- for 5 centuries just through word of mouth? I can't believe it would be possible today, but maybe they had much better memories than us.

The Book of Joshua says that Jericho was destroyed sometime in the late 1300s BC and uninhabited until the 800s BC, yet was probably written down in its current form sometime in the 700s BC at the absolute earliest, and probably in the 500s. Archaeology has since shown this account to be basically correct.

>but maybe they had much better memories than us
they really did, herodotus bragged about remembering all 300 names of the spartans at thermopylae which is just a tiny example of how much they could remember, and this was after the period of oral tradition. they did also have set phrases and such to help them remember things though, which is why you see dawn rising with her golden fingers so often, or you see the same epiphets for the heroes, because they knew that this would fit the meter and could be fit in very nicely. as others have said then it is pretty clear that 'homer' didn't write the story 5 centuries after it happened, rather whoever homer refers to just likely created a concrete version of the oral tale. there must have been something special about homer's version because that was the one that survived and was lauded by the ancient greeks themselves.

Those are some really dumb questions, but I guess everyone has to be dumb before they attain knowledge.
Modern poets absolutely can write about the events from the 16th century, and so can novels of historical fiction. The difference in Homer's age was even smaller, though, since the changes in mindset were slower.
They cared about the Trojan war because it was not a historical event as we understand them today, as something that just happened somewhere in the past. To them it was a part of mythology, and so a constant and atemporal place in the collective culture. Like billions of Christians praying to some guy who technically lived 2000 years ago. But to them he is far more than a normal historical figure or event.
His reason for composing the poems was that it was his job, to retell and remind of the wisdom contained in the history (which was mythologized and embellished in the retellings across centuries, so it is useless to our understanding of historical knowledge, but to the Greeks it certainly held a different sort of knowledge/wisdom). See Iliad book 6 357-358.

>(which still exists in places like the former Yugoslav states),
AFAIK it barely exists at this point, maybe in the most extremely rural places.
>The archaeological evidence suggests it's pretty damn accurate too.
Does it? I read a detailed analysis of his geography of Ithaca and neighbouring islands, and it has some noticeable mistakes that cannot be sufficiently explained by natural changes of the coastline.

The first idea is completely retarded. The third, however, is not entirely unlikely. Keep in mind, though, these things are extremely hazy to our knowledge, it is not even known whether Homer existed, and the oldest manuscripts that we can know existed are only from the 6th century BC (for the Panathenaea festival where they demanded the rhapsodes to closely follow Homer's poems).

That's entirely valid too, and a great way to entrance those who would say "well what's in it for me to join your cult and do as you say" and they respond with "eternal happiness in heaven, and hell if you don't"

>AFAIK it barely exists at this point, maybe in the most extremely rural places.
Urbanites are quite different. You talk to a Belgrader a few years back and they'd have told you that old traditions like Slava are very kitsch and corny, you talk to almost anyone else and they're like "we never stopped doing it, did it in secret in communism, very important etc etc". I say a few years back because it's sort of back in to do those things, but there are people in the diaspora communities that still continue the epic poem tradition, as well as in non urban areas. Some urbanites do it too, but they're often members of weird ultra nationalist groups ime. Not always, just often.

I'll have to look up who did the research on the archaeology fitting the Homeric poems, I first heard about it in one of the "Great Courses" lectures on Greece.

Memory is a skill that can be developed. The current world record for memorizing the digits of pi is 70,000. Remembering 300 names is chump change in comparison

I think there's two main things at play in this. First of all there's less need to remember facts, we're in an age where critical thinking is prized above "knowing" things (thanks to Socrates, the Enlightenment and IQ tests in many ways). This isn't obviously better or worse, I quite like it in some ways. Secondly we do remember a lot of facts, but they're fucking useless fluff. If I were to say to you "If you wanna be my lover" or "The players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate" you probably immediately know that "You gotta get with my friends" and "I'm just gonna shake it off" respectively. Our minds are filled with zigga zig ahs.

yes, and having to use it constantly every day because there was no (and later during the early classical period, little) writing in day to day life means that almost everyone had a memory like that one autist today who memorised pi to 70,000 places

It was Parry and Lord who studied it.
I guess my image of the situation is incorrect, because although I am from Yugoslavia, my country probably never had a strong and influential oral tradition, and today it really does not exist anymore. Probably the stuff and people that Parry and Lord came across were from Serbia and Montenegro, who I guess valued that poetry more than we did.

FIRSTLY, HOMER DID NOT WRITE ANYTHING

SECONDLY, ORAL EPICS ARE PASSED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION... FILIP VISNJIC WAS SINGING ABOUT THE BATTLE OF KOSOVO (1389.) AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY

THIRDLY, I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW STUPID AND UNEDUCATED ALL OF YOU ARE

All of this has already been stated ITT in a much less brash way.

We think you're just rude. (but yes, people should understand what a rote tradition is). :3

Serbia has tended to have it stronger, I'm sure Croatia and Bosnia did too in the past. My (ethnic) Croatian and Bosnian relations from around my grandparents' generation did more or less the same set of traditions with the same food and dancing and so on as my predominantly ethnic Serbian family, but I think Croatia in particular actively lost those traditions (I guess a reaction to perceived Serbian hegemony).

I think we have a very weird and varied culture, so lots of different places have lots of different things going on. We lost a lot of our "proper" history as well in various ways (like libraries getting destroyed in the World Wars and massive social upheavals, or being), so it's hard in some ways to contextualise the Yugoslav history and culture in with European or World history and culture. I think a big part of that is when Western Europe was starting to have its "enlightenment" and rediscover classical culture, we were just leaving classical culture with the fall of the Eastern Empire.

>Homer wrote
I'm gonna stop you right there

My grand-parents from England had relatives who re-told stories about Romans and how much they hated them. That was 2000 years ago almost.
Before writing and social disruption/migration people's ancestral memories could be very long. My ancestors probably didn't venture more than ten miles from where they were born. When you have deep roots these stories become embedded just as deep.

>human history, beginning to 19th century
>everybody is just writing about everyone who came before them, often romanticizing the shit out of to pretend to be cool in how they relate
>19th century to present
>people start writing about nerdy shit that never happened or being hyper-focused on vapid, individualistic sentimentalism; social elites, the wealthy and famous, people generally detached from the normal human experience cry about how awesome love is and then how terrible life is
>this hasnt fucking stopped yet
Gee, I wonder why a contemporary writer wouldn't write about something that happened 500 years ago (although that shit still absolutely happens). Probably because they'd be too busy pontificating about how terrible it is to be an artist while living off of someone else's money and/or attending an elite university and/or being a member of the social elite.

Art is a fucking sham, so stop caring about it.

>ancestral memories