Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6478074" data-attributes="member: 23484">The problem with generalizations about mythology is that it's so easy for errors to creep in because of the aggregating nature of cultural storytelling. Details get added later and we (today) typically assume they were always there. That's the case with Most people know Achilles from Homer's Iliad. In that poem he isn't invulnerable; nor is he in tragedy, or any indications in Greek art. That detail isn't attested until the first-century CE Latin poem Achilleid, of which only a book and a half were written (it was left incomplete at the author's death). The same is true of your other examples:Again, only some sources suggest Gawain's strength follows the sun. Heracles is strong but I'm hard-pressed to find a source that says it was unmatched. You get the point.Again, this isn't quite true either. Whatever the story is with the bow, we are told that Telemachus had the ability to string it, and would have done so had his father not warned him off. (Odyssey 21.125-29). It's important that it's *not* a magic trick or a unique property, and it establishes that Telemachus is in fact every bit the measure of his father.Comparison with historical and mythical examples will always be inadequate. But if you do it, you need to be precise. Otherwise it's without meaning.</blockquote>