: No, it's not a historical story--and it's even less of
: one than the Iliad and the Odyssey, given the known
: circumstances of its creation--and therefore it can't
: be used as strong evidence for historical theories.
Who's using it as evidence for historical theories? Besides, your "levels of canon" take on myths doesn't seem any more appealing regarding myths of the real world compared to Myth itself. It's either canon or its not; it's either myth or reality. More truth over less truth doesn't work in practice, and I've found it utterly unscientific to generalize and blend the lines, in my experience.
: The Julian gens was hardly unique in claiming divine
: descent--every patrician family in Rome had its own
: personal lineage traced back through various minor
: heroes to a god or two. These stories were often
: contradictory, but that didn't stop anybody. By the
: late Republic, it's unlikely that many people actually
: believed in any of them, or in Romulus--any more than
: modern Americans believe in Johnny Appleseed. Rome had
: a strict division between public and private religion,
: and you could believe pretty much whatever the hell
: you wanted as long as you observed the state-mandated
: holidays and made the appropriate sacrifices.
Yeah, but what's your point? I don't understand your reasoning for discrediting the story of Aeneas…for any reason.
: I haven't read enough of most of those stories to
: comment, but Plato's Atlantis is definitely nothing
: like Troy.
Wrong: City with walls covered in relatively precious metals, including tin, bronze, and others (such as a description by Homer uncanily similar to that of orichalcum); incredible naval civilization; technologically advanced, including canal systems and terraced farming; associated with the Mother Goddess or relative female deity; equally related as the "firey mare", the horse; holy shrine in the center; destroyed by war; destroyed by fire; sank beneath the waves.
In addition to Homer's story being remarkably similar to that of Plato's, Homer's story was based on the old Greek legends we were discussing earlier, including the one between the Greeks and the Atlanteans. The story is the same, undoubtedly (with Homer's added details, naturally, on the soap opera drama of it (which I don't mean negatively; it's the same kind of drama as between Alric and Balor, or Connacht and the Head, etcetera)).
: Its location is hundreds of miles away (and
: thousands of miles from the South Pacific, for that
: matter); its physical structure and economic and
: political roles are completely different, as is its
: ultimate end. And Plato should certainly not be
: viewed as a historical source. :-)
Not the South Pacific; the South China Sea, in between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Different how? They're practically the same. And Plato gets his information from the Egyptians, the same as Solon did.
: Stories of mass destruction by flood are certainly
: common, but this is hardly surprising when most known
: myths are handed down from cultures heavily dependent
: on river valleys.
But a river valley isn't described as the principle character of the flood in every story, but that of the civilization sinking beneath the waves (the water rising up) of an ocean or sea.
: The sea level hasn't risen all *that* fast--it's averaged
: about a meter every 150 years over the last 20
: millennia, and has slowed even beyond that in the last
: 5.
Omg no! The Pleistocene ended very quickly, very tragically when the glaciers very suddenly melted in 11,600 BP, and the water level rose some 150 meters in just a single millenium. The Darwinistic Gradualist theories your quoting are sorely outdated, Sili (lol, I love saying your name at the end of sentences because it sounds like "silly" :-)
: The silting process in the Scamander's mouth took
: place on a much more rapid time scale than did sea
: level changes.
How fast? I'm sure it couldn't have been much faster than only a thousand or so years time.
: Hissarlik would have been much closer
: to the ocean circa 1500 B.C.
What? What does the position of a river have to do with a city's proximity to the ocean?
: Not that it would need to
: be--a few miles is hardly an excessive distance
: between Troy and the coast, given the accounts of
: travel from the Greek camp to the city and back again
: in the Iliad.
No, it's not an excessive distance.
: The mountains near Hissarlik (more like hills, to an
: American) are principally to the east and south, as
: they were described in the Iliad. On the north and
: west sides, there's a nice flat plain stretching to
: the coast.
We obviously have conflicting resources; from a topographical map, it's clearly visible there are mountains in the way of the "plain" that supposédly existed there.
: And I'd point out that if inappropriately placed
: mountains disqualify Hissarlik to be Troy, and the
: location of Thera inside rather than outside the
: pillars of Hercules disqualifies it to be Atlantis,
: then a location in the South Pacific--thousands of
: miles from where Plato *or* Homer situated their
: cities, and thousands of years earlier--can hardly be
: more acceptable. :-)
The Pillars of Hercules, the Straits of Gibraltar, were named after the Phoenecians, *admittedly* after a similar formation from their "homeland."
Plato gives appropriate location. Homer gives appropriate location. Point out the innacuracies, please.
Plato places the date at 11,600 BP (interestly enough the same date as the end of the Pleistocene). Homer does not give an accurate date any more than "thousands of years before our time." What is "thousands of years earlier"?
: Actually, Homer was contemporaneous with Troy VIIb or
: Troy VIII.
Exactly. That disqualifies it from being Homer's Troy because Homer's Troy had to be in Homer's past, and VIIa is after (above) the older levels he was contemporary with.
: The prime candidate for Homer's Troy is
: Troy VIIa, which was destroyed by fire and war in the
: mid-thirteenth century, precisely when Mycenaean
: Greece was flourishing. Earlier Troys were destroyed
: by fire, earthquakes, or armed invasion. No, this is
: hardly unique--but it also isn't what is said to have
: happened to Atlantis.
Have you even read the Critias or the Timaeus? Atlantis was destroyed by earthquake, conflagration, and deluge. Those geologic events were preceded by a war between two peoples, and the geologic events were somehow caused (mysteriously, albeit) by the war itself.
: Iron is considerably stronger than bronze.
From the Encylopedia Britannica:
Bronze is also harder than pure iron and far more resistant to corrosion. The substitution of iron for bronze in tools and weapons from about 1000 BC was the result of iron's abundance compared to copper and tin rather than any inherent advantages of iron.
: True, it
: required increasing expense of copper and tin for
: Mediterranean people to switch from bronze to iron,
: but that's not because bronze is better; it's because
: the necessary mining, refining and metalworking
: industries to produce and work bronze were mature and
: reliable, and it simply wasn't worth it yet to try and
: figure out how to mass-produce iron artifacts. Where
: iron *was* available--as from meteors--it was prized
: for its strength.
Stronger as in more maluable, you mean?
: The "feminine Easterner" stereotype is in fact
: of Greek (especially Athenian) origin. My classics
: professor showed me a pot where an Athenian and a
: Persian were...ah...reenacting goatse.cx. The Persian
: was the Receiver.
The Receiver? Is this a Fallen Lord of Moagim? :-)
: The difference in the views of Troy is that the Greeks
: thought of Troy as a good manly Greek city, while the
: Romans classed it as an Asian town, filled with
: gelled-hair sissies surrounding poor virile misfit
: Aeneas.
Lol, the Romans never made the connection between Hissarlik and Troy.
