The Platypus Reads Part XIV

My wife and I are taking a tour through the Odyssey as I push on to Xenophon's Education of Cyrus in my personal reading. Reading three Greek works at once with three different translators allows you to pick up on the peculiar cadence of Greek speech. It also begins to push you into the Greek mindset: love of well-turned phrases, logical argument, and extended discourse upon a multitude of topics, just to name some of the tendencies I've noticed. The Greeks come down to us mainly through their writing, but these qualities remind us that Greece was primarily an oral culture with writing serving as an aid to memory. The fact that their foundational works, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are oral poems bears witness to this. Greek books were made to be read aloud, and there is a certain pleasure that comes from experiencing them that way. What may seem dull or tedious on the page, comes to life when read out-loud with voice and intonation. Give it a try. Or as Fitzgerald puts it: "Lift the great song again!"