The most potent potable

Monkey Island / Ischia has yielded up some more secrets. The indefatigable Mindy Weisberger writes about Cremation 168: the tomb of Nestor's Cup so-called.

Cremation was the Archaic Age standard (and for Homer) - not like the Mycenaeans, who buried their kings complete with (famous) gold masks, like the Egyptians. Quite a few ashes were interred in this tomb, all from adults. Earlier the thought was that a child was here, but in that case - why this cup?

This Geometric kotyla, stylistically from the late 700s BC, bears a Semitic-order Greek inscription. The alphabet is Euboean, which makes it the ancestor to our alphabet by way of Etruria. Its text makes reference to Homeric metre - and to an already-legendary Nestor with his famous wine-cup (eupoton poterion). The parallel is to The Iliad 11.632-637. Although the cup is pretty, as they said of my boi Alexander Pope - I question if it be Homer.

To put my cards on this table I consider The Iliad a conscious composition and "Homer" to be as good a name for its composer as any. I assume The Odyssey a sequel like Cypria is The Prequel. The Odyssey's Demodokos character is a certain deliberate nod to earlier stock - we'll get to him. The Odyssey has survived on account of not being an outright fanfic. Where that stock is not the Iliad itself; said stock may well be contemporary with our man of Halicarnassus. Or even earlier.

Back to this cup's text I find the Last Word in D Gary Miller's Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors, 145-6. Some of the text's flourishes are Homeric, such as ἵ̄μερος αἱρεῖ. However for Καλλιστέφανος (sic) Demodokos in Odyssey 8.267, singing in that Scheria / Phaeacia phantasia, will use εὐστεφάνου τ᾽ Ἀφροδίτης as will many imitators; although we do get Καλλιστέφανος for other goddesses. Note gender: also masculine. In light of the Dipylon vase: Greeks will be Greeks . . .

As paralleling so much the Archaic epic tradition, finding what sort of Greek composed this particular text is a trick. Miller does see some Eretrianisms through the poetic stock. So yeah: Euboean.

The eastern Med hosted a lively trade in Greek epic hexameter up to the tail-end of the Archaic Age. All Homer did was to cobble these tropes into the best (anti-)war poem we'll ever have. This might have been in reaction to Hesiod, who made up his own epic-style poems; or maybe Hesiod reacted to The Iliad.

So we may have a Euboean reference to The Iliad across the water, and associated Demodokos hymnody. Or, a reference to all Homer's antecessors. Or maybe this was a deliberately-archaising cup set to the kiln centuries later based on an earlier model - but it all looks very, very early to mine eyes.