Credibility of Ancient Greek information?

[Sir_Loin]

As we know, much of what we know about the ancient Greeks comes through the careful analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey- two of Homer's epics.

But what credibility do these sources hold? Who's to say that "Homer" wasn't very accurate.. He was supposed to be blind after all..
So perhaps he got someone to write them for him- someone who could have easily warped his words.

Thoughts?

 

[Estro Felino]

What we are sure about is that Homer didn't write neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey.
Historians seriously doubt that Homer even existed.

those are epics about legends and mythology. Greek Historians did write about history, like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophanes, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus,and few others.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

As we know, much of what we know about the ancient Greeks comes through the careful analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey- two of Homer's epics.

Almost nothing of what we know of the ancient Greeks comes from these sources. Epic Greek (the "dialect" in which the Iliad and the Odyssey survive) isn't actually a dialect but a conglomerate of dialects and archaisms, some of which predate Mycenaean Greek which survives in the Linear B script. By the time the "father of history", Herodotus, lived and wrote, the ancient Greeks were already unfamiliar with certain sounds in Homer and the letter (digamma) used to represent them.

But what credibility do these sources hold?

while I consider it a fairly well established but by no means unquestionable hypothesis that archaeological excavations have found "Troy" or Ilium (that is, the Ilium of the Iliad is a real place), the idea that there is anything more we can say about the history of "the Trojan war" and Homer's characters borders on conspiracy level speculation. Yet this has been an ongoing debate among historians, linguists, and archaeologists almost since the Hittite texts were recovered. The most infamous scholar here is (I believe) Latacz, whose book Troia und Homer. Der Weg zur Lösung eines alten Rätsels I did not know was the German original of the book I bought (Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an old mystery) until I received it, which really annoyed me because
1) It means that at some point I'll have to buy the German edition and I've wasted my money and
2) It was a stupid and easily corrected mistake that I have only myself to blame, which is the worst possible situation when it comes to laying blame for a problem one has at the feet of anyone or doors of any establishment.

That said, Latacz's final section opens with a reference to a chapter from Bryce's The Kingdom of the Hittites: "In 1998 one of the leading Hittite scholars, Trevor Bryce, attempted to collate some of these facts, if far from all, in order to present a general picture in a separate chapter of his book, The Kingdom of the Hittites, which he entitled ‘The Trojan war: myth or reality?’ He concludes that there can no longer be any doubt that the story of the Trojan War has a basis in history". Latacz concurs, and closes his book with "We can then formulate our conclusion thus: at the point which research has now reached, it may be that we cannot yet say anything definite about the historicity of the ‘Trojan War’. However, the possibility that a historical event could underlie the tale of Troy/Wilios...has not diminished as a result of the combined research endeavours of various disciplines during the last twenty years or so. Quite the reverse: it has grown ever stronger.
The abundance of evidence pointing precisely in this direction is already almost overwhelming. And it grows with every month in which new shafts are driven into the mine of mystery by archaeologists, scholars in Anatolian, Hittite, and Greek studies, linguists, and many other representatives of divergent disciplines, all working with strict objectivity and all under the spell of the problem of Troy...The earlier uncertainty dissolves and the solution seems nearer than ever. It would not be surprising if, in the near future, the outcome states: Homer is to be taken seriously."

Thankfully, although there are those who, to varying degrees, would say they agree with the above, it is by no means unchallenged and (although I have not done the research necessary to say this with certainty) I would hazard a guess that most scholars who have participated in the research describe would not agree.

Who's to say that "Homer" wasn't very accurate.

Then we'd certainly have almost no knowledge about who the Trojans were or the social structure of Cyclopes communities. However, we'd know a lot about the ancient Greeks.

So perhaps he got someone to write them for him- someone who could have easily warped his words.

Or he didn't exist and his person was invented because nobody knew the origins of the name for the Homeridae. The question is, what would we know less about that we think we know of now?