Time cools me with laughter

[sovay]

Good morning, says the world, sociopolitically everything is on fire and environmentally it feels just the same and you spent too much of your afternoon on difficult phone calls with doctors and bureaucracy, but here is a third-century CE clay tablet engraved with an extract from Odyssey 14, which no one expected to exist. Don't say I never gave you nothing.

Comments

[gwynnega]

It is an excellent thing, amid all the not-excellent stuff.

[sovay]

It is an excellent thing, amid all the not-excellent stuff.

I feel I should value every good thing I can get these days.

[radiantfracture]

Another excellent thing is the artful congruence of your two icons.

A most pleasing tablet, though, too.

[sovay]

Another excellent thing is the artful congruence of your two icons.

I maintain my reply was in character.

A most pleasing tablet, though, too.

It really made me happy.

[kore]

Wow, that is great. -- How do you hear about these, do you have news alerts?

[sovay]

Wow, that is great. -- How do you hear about these, do you have news alerts?

I just saw it in the Guardian! I do not have any kind of systematic news-collecting. I sort of read as many media sites as I can stand, and The New Yorker and New York Review of Books in print, and the paper version of the Boston Globe whenever I visit my parents.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, how cool!

[sovay]

Oh, how cool!

I want to know if it has variants from the version we know!

[selidor]

Between that and the successful cave rescue, it's a nice reminder that good things go on and can be accomplished, and all the grace notes still keep happening.

[sovay]

Between that and the successful cave rescue, it's a nice reminder that good things go on and can be accomplished, and all the grace notes still keep happening.

Yes! I saw the news about the cave rescue. I had been so worried there would be a last-minute monsoon. That was also good.

[nineweaving]

Two excellent things, both about homecoming.

Nine

[sovay]

Two excellent things, both about homecoming.

Yes! An important thing itself, especially now.

[asakiyume]

What's crazy is that that fragment is still 11 centuries from the time of the Odyssey's composition. More than a millennium earlier. I know Gilgamesh and things are even older, but those others don't live in the present with such vibrancy. The Odyssey has had an active, interactive grip on human imagination continuously for so long!

...

Or now I'm having doubts. Was it continuous? I suppose that's what wikipedia's for...

[sovay]

I know Gilgamesh and things are even older, but those others don't live in the present with such vibrancy. The Odyssey has had an active, interactive grip on human imagination continuously for so long!

Oral traditions are flexible, durable, and extremely important!

Or now I'm having doubts. Was it continuous? I suppose that's what wikipedia's for...

I think of it as continuously known, just not continuously recorded, or recorded in any fashion that survived. (There is a lot of attestation in visual art and other texts make reference to it, including ancient biographies of Homer which otherwise can't be trusted so far as you can throw a statue.) Maybe more of the older versions will turn up now that we know they exist. As I said to thisbluespirit, I really want to know if this version varies from the one we've had in twelfth-century CE manuscript onward.

[selidor]

Oh! I saw this consideration, which has a nice transcription that might be of interest, since you can read it directly :)

[sovay]

Oh! I saw this consideration, which has a nice transcription that might be of interest, since you can read it directly

Thank you! That is of great interest and value to me!