{"id":6410,"date":"2020-08-25T17:14:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-25T15:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=6410"},"modified":"2021-03-19T15:53:15","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T14:53:15","slug":"a-pig-in-a-poke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=6410","title":{"rendered":"A pig in a poke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a blog entry for the LRB<\/em> in 2018<\/a>, Emily Wilson gave a lesson in reportage gone awry – lost in translation or just plain misunderstood. Whichever, the claims circulating in the media at the time that a clay tablet discovered near Olympia, with lines from Book 14 of the Odyssey<\/em>, was perhaps the oldest extract from the epic, were way off-base – for all the reasons she explains in her entry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my purposes, I mention this in passing only because of where I am at the moment in my epic reading, and Emily Wilson’s comments in respect to the nature of the inscription. Following is some of the passage on the tablet, and in her own translation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His yard was high and visible for miles,\nof fieldstones topped with twigs of thorny pear.\nHe built it in the absence of his master,\nwith no help from Laertes or the mistress.\nAround the yard, he set a ring of stakes,\nof wood with bark stripped off. Inside the yard,\nhe made twelve sties all next to one another, \n...\n\nBook 14 [lines 8-14] The Odyssey<\/em>, trans. Emily Wilson <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Of course, we have here the beginning of Book 14<\/em>, and Odysseus, in the beggar’s guise created for him by Athena, is approaching the humble yard of the swineherd, Eumaeus. It is this descriptive passage that leads Wilson to wonder at the purpose of the artefact – the subject matter is hardly the most profound; perhaps its origins were of a more mundane or utilitarian nature than cultural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not exactly a pig in a poke, but close. Just as it is wise to check your purchases, so it is to double check sources of information. Emily Wilson ends on a positive note anyway:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bright side to this inaccurately reported story is that it reveals a hunger among the general public for news about the ancient world. […] Maybe this fake news story will inspire more people to investigate the ancient world for themselves, and also to realise that the stories told about the Odyssey<\/em> are \u2013 like the poem\u2019s wily, scheming, deceitful protagonist himself \u2013 not always to be taken at face value.<\/p>LRB Blog, 14 JULY 2018, “Making a Pigsty” by Emily Wilson<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a blog entry for the LRB in 2018, Emily Wilson gave a lesson in reportage gone awry – lost in translation or just plain misunderstood. Whichever, the claims circulating in the media at the time that a clay tablet discovered near Olympia, with lines from Book 14 of the Odyssey, was perhaps the oldest … Continue reading “A pig in a poke”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,8,13],"tags":[59,153,129],"class_list":["post-6410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classics","category-greece","category-my-odyssey","tag-emily-wilson","tag-london-review-of-books","tag-the-odyssey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6410"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6586,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6410\/revisions\/6586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}