A TRAVEL TO LONDON, A NEW VERSION OF 'THE ODYSSEA'

Loli Stone, Homer & Juan Stone, Triangle in Ithaca

Today, The Stones have spent their last day in Ithaca. It has been an amazing short Greek travel that has helped them to meet each other better and to share beautiful unforgettable experiences in Ulysses's homebirth.

It has been a special travel for Loli and Juan Stone because they have decided to take some days to think about their future together. Whatever it happened, Juan is going to remember Loli every day because she was as united to him as a shadow, although he is an adventurous brave man and he trusts on love.

The family has been shocked with this news and they have tried to convince Loli using some English grammar (Imperative & Should) but it has been impossible. Carlos Stone has said that Ithaca remembers him Agatha Christie's And then there were none, but The Grandma has thought about another Christie's novel, Triangle at Rhodes.

More information: Should-Shouldn't I & II

More information: Imperative I, II, III & IV

More information: Travel Budget Template

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The Grandma has explained some stories to try to cheer the family up but they were astonished with Loli's departure. She has been talking a little about King Arthur and about the figure of the Sibyl trying to search a relation between Ancient Greek and Sant Boi de Llobregat with the Romans as a nexus.

The sibyls were oracles in Ancient Greece. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.

She has talked about the presence of some ancient caves in Sant Boi and their possible relation with ancient hermits who also lived in caves, as the ancient Greek Sibyls and finally, she has explained some facts about The Song of the Sibyl, a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant, the lyrics of which comprise a prophecy describing the Apocalypse, which has been performed in some Mediterranean churches, on Christmas Eve nearly uninterruptedly since medieval times. It was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on 16 November, 2010.

More information: Eremistisme a Sant Boi de Llobregat? (Catalan Version)

More information: The Song of Sibyl, The Day of Judgement

Paying attention to the Sibyl -or to random-, the family has chosen to prepare their next travel to London. The social situation with a health crisis can do that this new travel was an Odyssey, because of this; The Grandma has decided to offer some rules and advice:

-Don't be panic

-Follow the official channels

-Trust in the British government

-Take your passport always with you

-Don't go alone (we are a family)

-You shouldn't be worried, you should enjoy the travel

-You should use your credit card (unfinished credit) to avoid touching notes and coins

-You should talk to everyone to practice English (it is a fantastic opportunity)

-You should use your new IPhone11, if you have any kind of trouble (911)

-Take a lot of photos and share with the family by Signal

Roll of the dice! (Alea iacta est!).

More information: National Health Service (NHS)

The Odyssey, in Greek Ὀδύσσεια, is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.

The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, known as Ulysses in Roman myths, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy.

It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres, in Greek  Μνηστῆρες or Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Carlos, And then there were none & The Odyssey

The Odyssey continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. Many scholars believe the original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos (epic poet/singer), perhaps a rhapsode (professional performer), and was more likely intended to be heard than read. The details of the ancient oral performance and the story's conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars.

The Odyssey was written in a poetic dialect of Greek -a literary amalgam of Aeolic Greek, Ionic Greek, and other Ancient Greek dialects- and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, and the influence on events of choices made by women and slaves, besides the actions of fighting men. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.

The Odyssey has a lost sequel, The Telegony, which was not attributed to Homer. It was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta. In one source, the Telegony was said to have been stolen from Musaeus of Athens by either Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene.

Odysseus' name means troubl" in Greek, referring to both the giving and receiving of trouble -as is often the case in his wanderings. An early example of this is the boar hunt that gave Odysseus the scar by which Eurycleia recognizes him; Odysseus is injured by the boar and responds by killing it. Odysseus' heroic trait is his mētis, or cunning intelligence. He is often described as the Peer of Zeus in Counsel. This intelligence is most often manifested by his use of disguise and deceptive speech.

More information: The Conversation

As he sails away from the island of the Cyclopes, he shouts his name and boasts that nobody can defeat the Great Odysseus. The Cyclops then throws the top half of a mountain at him and prays to his father, Poseidon, saying that Odysseus has blinded him. This enrages Poseidon, causing the god to thwart Odysseus' homecoming for a very long time.

The Odyssey is written in dactylic hexameter. It opens in medias res, in the middle of the overall story, with prior events described through flashbacks or storytelling.

The events in the main sequence of the Odyssey, excluding Odysseus' embedded narrative of his wanderings, take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands. There are difficulties in the apparently simple identification of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithakē (Ιθάκη).

The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scheria, pose more fundamental problems, if geography is to be applied: scholars, both ancient and modern, are divided as to whether or not any of the places visited by Odysseus, after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca, are real

Download The Odyssey by Homer

 A man who has been through bitter experiences

and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.

Homer

PENELOPE, THE BRAVE CLEVER PATIENT GREEK HEROINE

March, 8, International Women's Day

International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on the 8th of March every year around the world. It is a focal point in the movement for women's rights.

Commemoration of International Women's Day today ranges from being a public holiday in some countries to being largely ignored elsewhere. In some places, it is a day of protest; in others, it is a day that celebrates womanhood.

The earliest Women's Day observance, called National Woman's Day, was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel.

There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers Kandel and Picq have described this as a myth created to detach International Women's Day from its Soviet history in order to give it a more international origin.

The Stones are celebrating the IWD in Ithaca, where they are spending some days. The Grandma wants to support this day claiming for the defence of Civil and Human Rights, basically respect and equality.

To commemorate this important day, The Stones have visited Penelope, one of the bravest and most popular Greek heroines in universal Literature, who fighted against all the adversities with her husband Ulysses and  her son Telemachus.

More information: Saint John's College

In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope, in Greek Πηνελόπεια or Πηνελόπηis the wife of Odysseus, who is known for her fidelity to Odysseus while he was absent, despite having many suitors. Her name has therefore been traditionally associated with marital fidelity.

The origin of her name is believed by Robert S. P. Beekes to be Pre-Greek and related to pēnelops (πηνέλοψ) or pēnelōps (πηνέλωψ), glossed by Hesychius as some kind of bird, today arbitrarily identified with the Eurasian wigeon, to which Linnaeus gave the binomial Anas penelope, where -elōps (-έλωψ) is a common Pre-Greek suffix for predatory animals; however, the semantic relation between the proper name and the gloss is not clear. In folk etymology, Pēnelopē (Πηνελόπη) is usually understood to combine the Greek word pēnē (πήνη), weft, and ōps (ὤψ), face, which is considered the most appropriate for a cunning weaver whose motivation is hard to decipher.

Penelope is the wife of the main character, the king of Ithaca, Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman mythology), and daughter of Icarius of Sparta and his wife Periboea. She only has one son by Odysseus, Telemachus, who was born just before Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War. She waits twenty years for the final return of her husband, during which she devises various strategies to delay marrying one of the 108 suitors, led by Antinous and including Agelaus, Amphinomus, Ctessippus, Demoptolemus, Elatus, Euryades, Eurymachus and Peisandros.

On Odysseus's return, disguised as an old beggar, he finds that Penelope has remained faithful. She has devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until Melantho, one of twelve unfaithful slave women, discovers her chicanery and reveals it to the suitors. 

The Stones visit Ithaca guided by Penelope

Because of her efforts to put off remarriage, Penelope is often seen as a symbol of connubial fidelity. But because Athena wants her to show herself to the wooers, that she might set their hearts a-flutter and win greater honor from her husband and her son than heretofore, Penelope does eventually appear before the suitors.

She is ambivalent, variously asking Artemis to kill her and, apparently, considering marrying one of the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads may have her hand. For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero.

More information: Study

There is debate as to whether Penelope is aware that Odysseus is behind the disguise. Penelope and the suitors know that Odysseus, were he in fact present, would easily surpass all in any test of masculine skill, so she may have intentionally started the contest as an opportunity for him to reveal his identity. On the other hand, because Odysseus seems to be the only person, perhaps excepting Telemachus, who can actually use the bow, she could just be further delaying her marriage to one of the suitors.

When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors are able to string the bow, but Odysseus does, and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors -beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup- with help from Telemachus, Athena and two slaves, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd.

Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory, with a little makeover by Athena; yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned -she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene- and tests him by ordering her slave Eurycleia to move the bed in their bridal-chamber.

Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (ὁμοφροσύνη, like-mindedness).

More information: Minerva Union

Homer implies, that from then on, Odysseus would live a long and happy life together with Penelope and Telemachus, wisely ruling his kingdom and enjoying wide respect and much success.

Penelope is recognizable in Greek and Roman works, from Attic vase-paintings -the Penelope Painter is recognized by his representations of her- to Roman sculpture copying or improvising upon classical Greek models, by her seated pose, by her reflective gesture of leaning her cheek on her hand, and by her protectively crossed knees, reflecting her long chastity in Odysseus' absence, an unusual pose in any other figure.

Latin references to Penelope revolved around the sexual loyalty to her absent husband. It suited the marital aspect of Roman society representing the tranquility of the worthy family. She is mentioned by various classical authors including Plautus, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, Martial and Statius. The use of Penelope in Latin texts provided a basis for her ongoing use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a representation of the chaste wife. This was reinforced by her being named by Saint Jerome among pagan women famed for their chastity.

More information: The Telegraph

How I wish chaste Artemis would give me a death so soft,

and now, so I would not go on in my heart grieving all my life,

and longing for love of a husband excellent in every virtue.

Penelope, The Odyssey

KONSTANTINOS PETROU KAVAFIS'S POEM 'ITHAKA'

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis

After a Loli Stone's masterclass about The Iliad, accompanied by Homer, The Stones have decided to visit the island. Ithaca is a wonderful Mediterranean island and a fantastic place to practice trekking.

The family has decided to discover the hidden places of the island by foot. While The Stones enjoyed and contemplated the views, Daniel Stone was playing his fidle and Loli Stone was reciting one of the most transcendental and beautiful poems ever written, Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis's Ithaca.

Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, also known as Constantine Peter Cavafy, in Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (April 29 1863-April 29, 1933) was an Egyptiot Greek poet, journalist and civil servant. His consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important figures not only in Greek poetry, but in Western poetry as well.

Kavafis wrote 155 poems, while dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. During his lifetime, he consistently refused to formally publish his work and preferred to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it out himself and give it away to anyone interested.

His most important poems were written after his fortieth birthday, and officially published two years after his death.

More information: Poetry Foundation

Kavafis was born in 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Greek parents, originated from the Greek community of Constantinople (Istanbul), and was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church.

His father's name was Πέτρος Ἰωάννης, Petros Ioannēs -hence the Petrou patronymic (GEN) in his name- and his mother's Charicleia. His father was a prosperous importer-exporter who had lived in England in earlier years and acquired British nationality. After his father died in 1870, Kavafis and his family settled for a while in Liverpool.

David & Loli Stone recite Kavafis's Ithaka in Aetos

In 1876, his family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873, so, by 1877, they had to move back to Alexandria.

In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family to move again, though temporarily, to Constantinople. This was the year when a revolt broke out in Alexandria against the Anglo-French control of Egypt, thus precipitating the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. Alexandria was bombarded by a British fleet, and the family apartment at Ramleh was burned.

In 1885, Kavafis returned to Alexandria, where he lived for the rest of his life. His first work was as a journalist; then he took a position with the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works for thirty years. Egypt was a British protectorate until 1926.

He published his poetry from 1891 to 1904 in the form of broadsheets, and only for his close friends. Any acclaim he was to receive came mainly from within the Greek community of Alexandria. Eventually, in 1903, he was introduced to mainland-Greek literary circles through a favourable review by Gregorios Xenopoulos.

He received little recognition because his style differed markedly from the then-mainstream Greek poetry. It was only twenty years later, after the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), that a new generation of almost nihilist poets would find inspiration in Kavafis's work.

More information: Cambridge Scholars

He died on April 29, 1933, his 70th birthday. Since his death, Kavafis's reputation has grown. His poetry is taught in school in Greece and Cyprus, and in universities around the world.

E. M. Forster knew him personally and wrote a memoir of him, contained in his book Alexandria. Forster, Arnold J. Toynbee, and T. S. Eliot were among the earliest promoters of Kavafis in the English-speaking world before the Second World War. In 1966, David Hockney made a series of prints to illustrate a selection of Kavafis's poems, including In the dull village.

Kavafis was instrumental in the revival and recognition of Greek poetry both at home and abroad. His poems are, typically, concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieux that have played roles in Greek culture. 

Visiting the Alalkomenes Acropolis, Ithaca

Uncertainty about the future, sensual pleasures, the moral character and psychology of individuals, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existential nostalgia are some of the defining themes.

Besides his subjects, unconventional for the time, his poems also exhibit a skilled and versatile craftsmanship, which is extremely difficult to translate.

Kavafis was a perfectionist, obsessively refining every single line of his poetry. His mature style was a free iambic form, free in the sense that verses rarely rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his poems, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony.

Kavafis drew his themes from personal experience, along with a deep and wide knowledge of history, especially of the Hellenistic era. Many of his poems are pseudo-historical, or seemingly historical, or accurately but quirkily historical.

One of Kavafis's most important works is his 1904 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. The poem begins by describing a city-state in decline, whose population and legislators are waiting for the arrival of the barbarians. When night falls, the barbarians have not arrived. The poem ends: What is to become of us without barbarians? Those people were a solution of a sort.

More information: Poets

In 1911, Kavafis wrote Ithaca, inspired by the Homeric return journey of Odysseus to his home island, as depicted in the Odyssey.

The poem's theme is the destination which produces the journey of life: Keep Ithaka always in your mind. / Arriving there is what you’re destined for. The traveller should set out with hope, and at the end you may find Ithaca has no more riches to give you, but Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Almost all of Kavafis's work was in Greek; yet, his poetry remained unrecognized and underestimated in Greece, until after the publication of the first anthology in 1935 by Heracles Apostolidis, father of Renos Apostolidis.

His unique style and language, which was a mixture of Katharevousa and Demotic Greek, had brought him under the criticism of Kostis Palamas, the greatest poet of his era in mainland Greece, and his followers, who were in favour of the simplest form of Demotic Greek.

He is known for his prosaic use of metaphors, his brilliant use of historical imagery, and his aesthetic perfectionism. These attributes, amongst others, have assured him an enduring place in the literary pantheon of the Western World.

More information: The New Yorker

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
 

Konstantinos P. Kavafis

LOLI STONE TALKS ABOUT GREECE, HOMER & 'THE ILIAD'

Homer

The Stones have just arrived to Ithaca this evening. They have gone to their hotel directly where Homer, an old Grandma's friend, was waiting for them. After unpacking their baggage and having a hot shower, all the members of the family have joined in the great hall to listen to Loli Stone. It is an emotive travel for her because she has returned at home -she is Greek- and she has met one of her most admired Greek poets, Homer.

Loli and Homer have offered an interesting conference about the Iliad to The Stones, who have discovered unknown stories and have enjoyed a lot with this experience.

Homer, in Ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war.

The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.

The Homeric Question -concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed- continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and, according to some, the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius.

More information: Cliffs Notes

The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that Homer is best seen as a label for an entire tradition. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.

The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.

From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who has taught Greece -ten Hellada pepaideuken.

Loli Stone & Homer read The Iliad

The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or Kunstsprache only used in epic hexameter poetry.

Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia.

Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey, and that Homeric formulae preserve older features than other parts of the poems.

The Iliad, in Ancient Greek Ἰλιάς, sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium, is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer.

Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.

Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.

More information: Facts and Details

The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, also attributed to Homer. Along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. In the modern vulgate, the standard accepted version, the Iliad contains 15,693 lines; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects.

The poem dates to the archaic period of Classical Antiquity. Scholarly consensus mostly places it in the 8th century BC, although some favour a 7th-century date. Herodotus, having consulted the Oracle at Dodona, placed Homer and Hesiod at approximately 400 years before his own time, which would place them at c.850 BC.

The historical backdrop of the poem is the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse, in the early 12th century BC. Homer is thus separated from his subject matter by about 400 years, the period known as the Greek Dark Ages. Intense scholarly debate has surrounded the question of which portions of the poem preserve genuine traditions from the Mycenaean period. The Catalogue of Ships in particular has the striking feature that its geography does not portray Greece in the Iron Age, the time of Homer, but as it was before the Dorian invasion.

Venetus A, copied in the 10th century AD, is the oldest fully extant manuscript of the Iliad. The first edition of the Iliad, editio princeps, edited by Demetrius Chalcondyles and published by Bernardus Nerlius, and Demetrius Damilas in Florence in 1488/89.

Download The Iliad by Homer

No man or woman born, coward or brave,

can shun his destiny.

Homer, The Iliad