Trailer The Odyssey full trailer

[Morrus]

I don’t wanna hear opinions about ancient Greek and Latin from people who don’t have at least graduate degrees in Ancient Greek and Latin.

It’s kind of like how I don’t want to hear opinions about my kidney from someone who hasn’t gone to medical school.

People have opinions about all sorts of things. Requiring everybody to have a graduate degree in anything they have an opinion about is gonna restrict your conversational opportunities pretty drastically.

 

[Umbran]

This below is what Google Ai provides...

Mod note:
EN World is a site where people talk to people. We are interested in what you have to say, not what Google AI has to say.

Next time, please just wait until you have time to formulate your own response, and don't post the AI-dump. Thanks.

 

[jian]

This below is what Google Ai provides, but I will over the weekend try find the text in the original regarding Eumaeos to see if the word doulos is used.

Oh good God, man, please do that, just go and learn some Ancient Greek and find the text, it’s not very hard. Google can’t really help you much here, it’s exactly the sort of thing it gets wrong.

Otherwise you’re presenting exactly the position that Bret Devereaux decries.

 

[Autumnal]

There are situations in which a layperson can become very well-informed about a subject. There are lay historians who win plaudits and widespread respect for. Their work. Support communities for illnesses that are difficult to diagnose and to treat routinely include people who qualify as subject matter specialists. And so on.

But those who count this way tend not to be boots and bullies, and they tend to be honest about the limits of their understanding.

 

[jian]

I don’t wanna hear opinions about ancient Greek and Latin from people who don’t have at least graduate degrees in Ancient Greek and Latin.

It’s kind of like how I don’t want to hear opinions about my kidney from someone who hasn’t gone to medical school.

Edit: as that article attests, one of the great failings of the rise of the Internet is that it has empowered ignorant people to think their opinions about specialized subjects belong in the same conversation as expert opinions.

Thank you kindly but you definitely shouldn't take my opinion for it - we did a (small) chunk of the Odyssey at school 35 years ago. I remember it well* but I definitely don't have any classics degrees.

*The most abiding memory is the repeated use of the phrase "rhododactylos Eos" ("rosy-fingered dawn") which often occasioned sniggering among us. In our defence, we were 15.

 

[Clint_L]

People have opinions about all sorts of things. Requiring everybody to have a graduate degree in anything they have an opinion about is gonna restrict your conversational opportunities pretty drastically.

Respectfully, Ancient Greek and Latin are not things you can have a reasonable opinion about without extensive training and fluency. Sure, people are entitled to their opinions about anything, but on certain subjects there is a level of qualification beneath which the opinion is meaningless. That was the context of my comment.

I'm reminded of when my dumbass cousin started to lecture my spouse about fisheries conservation and why it was all a conspiracy. My spouse is a fisheries biologist by training who at the time was working on a conservation project involving cryopreserving DNA (milt, specifically) from endangered salmon runs. (They shut him down very quickly).

So on specialized subjects, I, personally, don't wanna hear an opinion from someone who doesn't have the credentials, like the idiots discussed in the article. Their opinion about the linguistics of the Odyssey and the culture of the period is worthless.

Edit: I also note that real experts tend to be cautious with their opinions, and take care to be precise with their language and the extent of their conclusions, none of which apply to the bozos taking issue with this film for their ideological purposes.

 

[Clint_L]

Thank you kindly but you definitely shouldn't take my opinion for it - we did a (small) chunk of the Odyssey at school 35 years ago. I remember it well* but I definitely don't have any classics degrees.

*The most abiding memory is the repeated use of the phrase "rhododactylos Eos" ("rosy-fingered dawn") which often occasioned sniggering among us. In our defence, we were 15.

And you were very precise about the nature of your qualifications and the extent to which they are applicable. That's as it should be with specialized knowledge, and your opinion on the matter is, I think, relevant, limited, and honestly expressed.

 

[Autumnal]

Oh, I wanted to add: one thing laypeople can do is a be a conduit for info from others. There’s a lot of technical knowledge I don’t have, but I’ve read or watched presentations from people who do, and I can bring them into discussions with my fellow nerds. Being a good citer is itself a skill, or set of skills, one can develop with practice.

Also, there are often pieces of a complex subject that a layperson can take hold of and do something with. Like I did above with “Emily Wilson doesn’t just use ‘slave’. As Lady of the Library pointed out in her response to Metatron on YouTube, in chapters 1, 15, and 19, Wilson does use it, but also the words for specific occupations and household positions of those in Penelope’s.household.” That’s something I can go look up and find that, sure enough, those words are all there. Those insisting Wilson only used ‘slave’ are objectively wrong in a way monolingual me can check.

Knowing what you are and aren’t qualified to say often - at least for me - opens up fairly significant fields where lay knowledge is valuable, without poaching on the turf where you own clues can never go frolic safely.

 

[fba827]

this looks fun. I’m looking forward to it.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Well, yes. It's a fantasy tale. None of it is historically accurate. It's about as historical as Lord of the Rings is.

Wrong category and not a good comparison, the Odyssey is more comparable to the Passion of the Christ, not Lord of the Rings, its concidered sacred text along with the rest of the Greek Epic Cycle, a set of 8 religious epic poems, of which only 2 survive (with two functional prequels of sorts), which inspired Roman Religious Epic Poems.

Folks forget the ancients and neopagans alike don't view Homer like J.R.R Tolkien, J.R.R Martin, Ed Greenwood, or RA Salvatore, he was divinely inspired, the neoplatonists in particular worked hard to reconcile Homer with Plato (also seen as divinely inspired) in their theology.

I think folks have seen Polythiest Gods in comic books and comic book movies so often, which is fine I love those movies too they help keep interest in the Gods alive for future generations, that they forget the actual religious source of those myths.