How old is our Iliad?
Casey Dué explores this complex question in the following CHS Essentials video, recorded in October 2015. Dué’s analysis includes a discussion of the Shield of Achilles as described in Iliad scroll 18. She also considers evidence from Bronze Age, miniature frescoes from Thera, Greece.
This discussion draws on evidence presented in “A Tale of Two Cities: The Miniature Frescoes from Thera and the Origins of Greek Poetry,” by Sarah Morris, published in the American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989).
Read the following works by Casey Dué online at the CHS website:
- The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy
- Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis
- Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush (with Mary Ebbott)
For more on the miniature Theran frescoes, read the following posts by Gregory Nagy at Classical Inquires:
- The idea of ‘finders keepers’ as a signature for two sea-empires
- Looking through rose-colored glasses while sailing on a sacred journey