Homer: Iliad: Book II: The Catalogue of Ships (continued)  – Introduction: Lines 76-108 (Click to ENLARGE):



With this post, we continue our translation of the Introduction to Book II of Homer’s Iliad, which contains the famous Catalogue of Ships (lines 484-779). You can find the Introductory texts to Book II of the Iliad in sequence by clicking on the Heading, “Iliad: Book II” at the top of our home page, right under the title, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae. I have so far translated lines 1-108 of the Introduction, and I shall soon post lines 109-130, which will bring my translation of the Introduction to Book II of the Iliad to an end.

I have translated the Introduction specifically to provide the setting for the translation of the entire Catalogue of Ships (lines 484-779). which is much more germane to our purposes, given that the a good deal of the grammar and vocabulary of Catalogue of Ships (lines 484-779) can be seen to have been either directly or indirectly derived from the much earlier Mycenaean Greek grammar and vocabulary in Linear B, and from that of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the closest cousin of the East Greek dialects to Mycenaean Greek. I shall shortly post (what I consider to be) the remainder of the Introduction to Book II of the Iliad, that is, lines 109-130, after which I will jump straightaway to the Catalogue of ships, starting at line 484 of Book II, and proceeding all the way to the end of the Catalogue of Ships (line 779). I expect this translation to take up the rest of 2014 and the better part of 2015.

IT IS WELL-NIGH IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT MYCENAEAN GREEK GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY IN LINEAR B WITHOUT RECOURSE TO BOTH THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS IN BOOK II OF THE ILIAD, AND TO THE FAMOUS “IDALION” TABLET IN ARCADO-CYPRIOT LINEAR C, both of which I intend to translate by early 2016 at the latest, all things being equal.

Richard