The Homeric Question Revisited: An Essay on the History of the Ancient Greeks

By Dimitris G. Michalopoulos

How did Socrates and Plato know that our planet is shaped like a ball? How were they aware that the earth has twelve tectonic plates? Were the Persians conquered at the naval battle of Salamis thanks to missiles launched from the nearby Thriasion Plain? How can Theocritus’ accurate knowledge of the American continent and Plutarch’s awareness of the Sargasso Sea be explained? Who was the real victor of the Trojan War, the Greeks or the Trojans? Can the aftermath of that legendary war in Anatolia be regarded as proof that the Greeks were conquered by the Trojans and not vice-versa? In point of fact, almost the whole of ancient Greek civilization is still an enigma. This book, taking as its starting point the assurance of Strabo, the famous geographer of the age of Pax Romana, that Odysseus’s peregrinations took place in the Atlantic Ocean, provides evidence for the veracity of this statement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academica Press
• Release date: Nov 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781680537017

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Cover: The Homeric Question Revisited: An Essay on the History of the Ancient Greeks by Dimitris G. Michalopoulos

The Homeric Question Revisited:

An Essay on the History of the Ancient Greeks

Dimitris G. Michalopoulos

Academica Press

Washington~London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Michalopoulos, Dimitris G. (author)

Title: The homeric question revisited : an essay on the history of the ancient greeks | Dimitris G. Michalopoulos

Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2022. | Includes references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022944777 | ISBN 9781680537000 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781680537017 (e-book)

Copyright 2022 Dimitris G. Michalopoulos

In memory of my Teachers

at the Italian School of Athens

and the National and Kapodistrian

University of Athens

Contents

Abbreviations

Notice

As A Prologue:

De Profundis

Part One.

The Greek Enigma

Chapter 1.

The Problem of a Map

Chapter 2.

The Atlantic Ocean, Americas, and the Ancient Greeks

Chapter 3.

Odysseus, Homer and the Sack of Troy

Chapter 4.

Sparta

Part Two

Forgotten Trips

Chapter 5.

Ancient Itineraries and Ships

Chapter 6.

Mediterranean Trips

Chapter 7.

Oceanic Adventures

Chapter 8.

Back to the strepitus mundi

Chapter 9.

Ultima Thule

Chapter 10.

George Gemistos Plethon

As an Epilogue

Chapter 11.

Conclusions

Chapter 12.

A Final Remark

Sources and Bibliography

Notes

Index

Abbreviations

Notice

Greek names are written in compliance with their established (and frequently anglicized) form. In the notes and in the Bibliography, however, the rules of the U.S. Library of Congress regarding transliteration from Greek are strictly observed.

As A Prologue:

De Profundis

In the late 1960s in Greek secondary schools (Gymnasia), the works of ancient Greek philosophers were taught in the original, in the ancient Greek language. While we were in class reading and translating into modern Greek Plato’s Phaedo, our eyes suddenly fell on the famous passage where our planet is described by the great thinker of the pre-Christian era as if seen from space.¹

We, the pupils, remained silent for a moment, then looked at each other, and at last I found the courage to ask our teacher: What does this mean? And she, a very kind and lettered lady, grinned and answered: All right, kids! Let it pass.

---

We let it pass, indeed. And the years went by. I was now a student at the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Our Professor of ancient history, Nikolaos I. Karmiris (1930-1977), used to stress his doubts whether the adventures of Odysseus took place exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea, based on some of Homer’s verses concerning the Laestrygonians.² Furthermore, during his lectures on the naval battle of Salamis (480 BC), he would sometimes hint at the fantastic technological superiority of the ancient Greeks. But what do you mean? I asked him in a break. "Look into Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles, he answered promptly. There you will find an allusion to missiles launched from Thriasian Plain, near Eleusis.³ And after a short silence, he added: Think about the automata, too, those mysterious weapons mentioned by Herodotus".⁴

That was not all; both in his lectures and during the conversations with his students, it became clear that he shared the opinion of Spyridon Marinatos (1901-1974), the renowned Greek archaeologist, that almost all of the ancient Greek wisdom was imported from the Orient: Ex Oriente Lux!⁵ According to both of them, Karmiris and Marinatos, the ancient Greeks were not racially unified but were simply bound by a more-or-less common religion and, eventually, by a common tongue.⁶ The Greek nation - and by no means race⁷ - was actually formed in the fifth century BC thanks to the Persian Wars. As a result, the key to the riddle of ancient Greek civilization and wisdom was to be found in the sanctuaries and oracles dispersed throughout Greece. That is why Karmiris insisted that systematic digs should take place - at least in Eleusis and in the Thriasian Plain.

Alas! Marinatos passed away accidentally on the island of Thera in 1974; an autopsy on his body was never conducted.⁸ And Karmiris died prematurely - and almost violently - in 1977.⁹

---

The years went by… And I, involved in the strepitus mundi (the roar of the world), had no time to look further into the remarks of N. I. Karmiris. It was thanks to the commotion universally caused in 1987 by the appearance of Martin Bernal’s book on the Afroasiatic roots of classical Civilization,¹⁰ that I began researching again. I was then Director of the Museum of the City of Athens and I wanted to have a clear idea of what was going on. And at last… what a surprise! The oriental roots of Classical Wisdom were indeed known as early as the Graeco-Roman era! Pausanias, for instance, had stated that Plato had adopted the ideas of the Chaldaeans and the Indian magi and that Egyptian artists had been working in Greece.¹¹

That was the spark of new research; and eventually one of Marinatos’s aphorisms came to mind: Someone on the island of Cephalonia was looking for the helmet of Odysseus; for since the Homeric hero was Greek, he must have had a helmet. Marinatos, nonetheless, cut him short: Odysseus wore a cap!¹² What was he trying to say? Was Odysseus not a Greek? In any event, the cunning resourcefulness of the king of Ithaca was considered a characteristic of the Egyptians and not of the Greeks.¹³

Be that as it may, what Martin Bernal claimed was a commonplace (locus communis) in ancient Greek literature. There were Egyptians who considered themselves to be in a measure akin to the Athenians.¹⁴ The Greek pantheon, moreover, was of Egyptian origin.¹⁵ And, most importantly, the Hebrew Exodus took place partially in Greece:

When in ancient times a pestilence arose in Egypt, the common people ascribed their troubles to the workings of a divine agency; for indeed with many strangers of all sorts dwelling in their midst and practising different rites of religion and sacrifice, their own traditional observances in honour of the gods had fallen into disuse. Hence the natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners, their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven from the country, and the most outstanding and active among them banded together and, as some say, were cast ashore in Greece and certain other regions; their leaders were notable men, chief among them being Danaüs and Cadmus.¹⁶

The majority of the people, nonetheless, immigrated into a country not far from Egypt, with Moses as their leader, a very wise and valiant man.¹⁷

The knowledge that Danaus and Cadmus were not of Greek origin was common even among Byzantine scholars.¹⁸ The name Cadmus, in fact, is said to come from a Semitic word meaning eastern;¹⁹ and Danaus, thanks to his technological wisdom, had been able to save Argolis, in the Peloponnesus, from prolonged drought.²⁰ Moreover, Constantine Paparrigopoulos (1815-1891), who is regarded as the national historian of modern Greece, was certain that the main elements of Greek civilization were imported into Ancient Greece by Egyptians and Semites.²¹ In brief, the Greek/Hellenic civilization did exist; but we are still in the dark about its remote ancestry and roots. For, contrary to what Plato may have wished, we are not ruled by philosophers. As a result, it is politics that decide on what wisdom is, and not vice-versa. That is why a British archaeologist who worked some years ago in Greece stated: Before announcing what we have found in our excavations, we should first determine what the term ‘Greek’ means.²²

I, too, subscribe to such a wise opinion; therefore, and in accordance with Thucydides,²³ the term Greek is often used merely conventionally in the pages that follow.

---

This book does not endeavour to provide answers to all Greek riddles. Such a task would simply be impossible. Accordingly, the purpose of this little volume is to furnish proof that the peregrinations recounted in the Odyssey occurred in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Americas and, furthermore, that the name Homer (Ὅμηρος) is nothing more than a symbolic name.

My research, moreover, unlike that of Henriette Mertz,²⁴ Enrico Mattievich,²⁵ and Siegfried Pyrrhus Petrides,²⁶ pioneers in the relevant scientific field, has an almost exclusively philological character. That is why it has obvious limits.

Who was Homer? Who endowed him with such a beautiful tongue? Let us stress it once more: we do not know! The only thing which may be regarded as certain is that the whole of the Homeric Poems is to a certain extent a copy-paste endeavour. In other words, they are peripeteias which occurred in very remote times and which were recounted in an artificially created tongue in order to achieve the unification of the various peoples who initially dwelt in the Greek lands.

---

Α book is never the product of a single person. In point of fact, there are many who, as a rule inconspicuously, contribute to its creation; and the least that the author can do is to thank them. I express, therefore, my thanks firstly to the Board of Directors of the Institute of Hellenic Maritime History who, as early as the beginning of the 2010s, adopted my opinion that the trips of Homer’s Odysseus occurred in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Americas, and published the first findings of my research. Since, moreover, the present book is based on another one which I authored and published in Greek in 2016,²⁷ I warmly thank my friend A. Livadas who generously read the manuscript and corrected many infelicities of style. I would also like to thank my dear colleague, Dr. İbrahim Alper Arısoy, Professor at Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir, who wholeheartedly followed and efficaciously assisted my research from the very beginning until the end. And, last but by no means least, I am grateful to Calliope, my wife, for her long months, nay! years, of silent patience.

Needless to say, I consider myself to be the only one responsible for any existing errors.

D. G. M.

Part One.

The Greek Enigma

Special histories, therefore, contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.

Polybius, The Histories I. 4 (transl. W. R. Paton)

Chapter 1.

The Problem of a Map

In 1929, a world map was discovered in the Library of Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, Turkey, in which the Americas were represented with surprising accuracy.¹ This map was made in 1513 by Pîrî Reîs, a Turkish seafarer, allegedly born in 1470, and was submitted to Sultan Selim in 1517;² the Padishah, however, paid no attention to the map.³ The cartographer, therefore, lived in the margins until 1547 when he was appointed Admiral of the Indian Ocean.⁴ However, he did not excel in this post and in 1554 was beheaded because of a defeat he had suffered.⁵

The paradox with Pîrî Reîs' world map has to do with the eastern coastline of the Americas. For it is unlikely that in 1513, that is, merely two decades after Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the New World (1492), one could have such a good knowledge of the Americas’ coastline. Only the Strait of Magellan was not represented. Yet, Antarctica was more or less accurately drawn by the future Admiral of the Indian Ocean. How can this be explained?

South America in the Map of Pîrî Reîs. (Source: Fikret Sarıcaoğlu, Pîrî Reîs’in dünya haritası 1513/The World Map of Pîrî Reîs 1513 [Ankara: the Republic of Turkey. Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2013].)

Paradoxical as it may appear, the answer is simple. Europeans had believed throughout the Middle Ages that the Earth was flat. The elites, however, knew that the earth was spherical.⁶ The proof is to be found in the equestrian statue of himself that Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565) had set up at Constantinople. With his left hand he carried a sphere with a cross fixed on it, signifying that through faith in the cross he had gained dominion over the world. The sphere represented the earth because of its spherical shape.⁷ It goes without saying that this knowledge was based on the works of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Indeed, Aristotle (364-322 BC) was the first to declare that the Pillars of Hercules (= Gibraltar) were as if linked to India.⁸ And later on, Strabo, who straddled the last century BC and the first century AD, provided the necessary explanation: since the earth is spheroid⁹ there were people who were convinced that one can reach India from the Iberian Peninsula, sailing through the Atlantic.¹⁰

Nevertheless, the most accurate answer was given by Plutarch: he wrote of a great continent which surrounded the [Atlantic] Ocean.¹¹

Despite some errors, the information given