"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - The Secret of Homer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

"But the ancients did believe Homer existed?" persisted Artem.
"The ancients did not know the analytical method developed in the middle of the
nineteenth century."
"In questions like this you have to integrate," someone remarked.
"What did you say? Integrate?" said I, laughing. "Technical terms again in a
lesson in the humanities?"
"Don't be angry," said Artem in conciliatory tones. "But it's difficult for me and
my comrades to believe that Homer never existed. The question must be gone into."
"Do you know, boys," I said, "how the ancients viewed this question? Seven
towns disputed the honour of being the birthplace of the poet, and an ancient
quatrain has come down to us:

'Attempt not to discover, where Homer was born, and who he was;
All cities proudly claim to be his birthplace;
the spirit is all, not the place;
The birthplace of the poet was the glory of the
'Iliad', the story of Odysseus.'

Nor is that all. Homer was thought to be the son of Apollo and the Muse
Calliope, he was called a native of Chios, Lydia, Cyprus, Thessaly, Luca, Rhodes,
and Rome; and even a descendant of Odysseus himself, the son of Telemachus and
Polycasta, daughter of Nestor."
"Warm!" cried Artem suddenly. "Warm! That last one's the theory to be
checked. It's no accident that Odysseus occupies such an important place in both
the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey'. There were special reasons that impelled the ancient
bard...."
"Or ancient bards," I hastened to add.
"No, the ancient bard to make Odysseus the central figure in the second epic.
Any way, the only song of the 'Iliad' that is not directly connected with the
subjectтАФthe wrath of Achilles and its consequencesтАФtells of the adventures of
Odysseus."
"You mean the 'Dolonia'?" I asked.
"I'm speaking of the song in which Odysseus and Diomedes go scouting and kill
the Trojan spy-"
"They kill Dolon the spy and so the song has been called 'Dolonia' by the
experts. But what follows from that?"
 "There was some connection between Homer and Odysseus. That's what
follows."
"As a matter of fact, the archaeologist Schliemann who got permission from the
Turkish government to 'excavate ancient Troy, had no doubts at all about the
existence of Odysseus. On the island of Ithaca, of which Odysseus was king,
Schliemann discovered the remains of the stump of an old olive-tree among some
stone ruins. You remember how to test Odysseus, his wife Penelope, ordered her
servant Eurycleia to carry her husband's bed outside, and the angry Odysseus said:
'...there's a wondrous contrivance
Hid in that well-wrought bed, which myself and no other invented.
Once, in the courtyard, there grew a leafy and
wide-spreading olive,
Flourishing and full-grown, and like to a
pillar in thickness.