William Furley's "Myths, Muses and Mortals"

William Furley is emeritus professor of Greek at Heidelberg University and research fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, London. His publications include Greek Hymns and three editions of plays by Menander: Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Misoumenos.

Furley applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Myths, Muses and Mortals: The Way of Life in Ancient Greece, and reported the following:

Page ninety-nine of my book comes from a chapter on travel and exploration in ancient Greece. It illustrates the Greeks' spirit of enterprise and discovery by a work of fantasy, the True History, by the second-century (AD) satirical writer Lucian. He describes an adventurer's fantastic voyage into the unknown starting from the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) and exploring space, the heavenly bodies and far-flung lands. Here is an excerpt:

Although Lucian emphasizes that nothing he will relate of his fantasy journey is true, he says that makes him more honest than many other `historians' in that respect: `In one respect I am telling the truth---when I admit I'm lying.' (4) Lucian's narrator tells how he made preparations for a journey starting at the Pillars of Herakles. This landmark, the Straits of Gibraltar, was, for the Greeks, already the end of the known world. Their ships plied the Mediterranean, even if they knew that Phoenicians had gone further, even, by then, circumnavigating the continent of Africa, as they claimed (see Herodotus 4.42). So when Lucian's narrator says that he set off from Gibraltar to discover the `end of the world', this project was equivalent to that of Columbus in 1492: it was a voyage into the unknown. Although invented, the spirit in which he undertook the adventure is typical of the real-life spirit of Greek exploration by sea.

Page ninety-nine of my book is, as it happens, a useful sample of the whole. It illustrates my method throughout which is to introduce the Greek world through illustrative passages of literature and documentary evidence, place them in their historical context, and interpret the events and sentiments they are transmitting. The passage also reflects the intention of my book which is to explore the fascination of the ancient Greek world in an adventurous spirit, although my account is firmly grounded in the real written and visual record left by the Greeks.

The chapter on travel/exploration is one of nine focusing on various aspects of the 'Greek experience', ranging from love and celebration to warfare and philosophical thought. Central is a long section on Daily Life which, very roughly, follows important moments in the ancient Greek's day, from shopping in the morning at the Agora, messaging each other with writing tablets, to dinner-time entertainment and night-time street crime. As sources for these forays into ancient mentality I use works of literature from Homer at the beginning to the late Greek romantic novels, from historical works to courtroom speeches, from private curse tablets to public inscriptions. Most of our evidence comes from ancient Athens, but my scope covers writers and individuals from all over Greece and spans nearly a millennium. The emphasis throughout is not on history, although the story hangs on an historical frame, but on the Greeks' own expression of their feelings and experiences as they navigated these aspects of life. The text is illustrated by over fifty images, a good many of them taken by myself over the years.

Visit William Furley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue