I want to stick a fork in the outlet here: famous writings such as Odysseus are probably best understood to depict not how things were, but how things were modeled, saying more about an ancient collective aspirational conception of self than as how we'd parse their society if we were alongside them.
Oh, certainly. To the extent that Homeric heroes model the values of Mycenaean elite society, they do so aspirationally. I think the overall thesis survives that, though.
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Notes -
I want to stick a fork in the outlet here: famous writings such as Odysseus are probably best understood to depict not how things were, but how things were modeled, saying more about an ancient collective aspirational conception of self than as how we'd parse their society if we were alongside them.
Oh, certainly. To the extent that Homeric heroes model the values of Mycenaean elite society, they do so aspirationally. I think the overall thesis survives that, though.
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