As is well known, Lucian’s masterpiece Verae Historiae can be read as a travesty of Homer’s Odyssey. The present paper argues that with his fantastic voyage Lucian reacts not just to the Odyssey itself but also to the recent interpretation of the Odyssey by the Middle Platonic and Neopythagorean philosopher Numenios of Apameia. Lucian’s purpose, therefore, in writing the Verae Historiae was presumably to give back to Odysseus some of the resilience that interpretations like that of Numenios had taken away (...) from him, and in general to set mythological poetry free once again from the constraints the philosophers had laid on it. (shrink)

With the following paper the author responds to criticism concerning his argument about the origin of the legend of the Trojan War and about the role the wrath of Achilleus played in the development of Greek epic tradition. It is shown that the Serbian song of „Marko Kraljević and Mina of Kostur“ indeed represents the story-pattern of an insulted hero who reacts with anger and withdrawal from fighting and therewith forces his king to make amends. As there are similar stories (...) in the Indian and Iranian epic traditions, the story-pattern is probably of Indo-European origin and represents an oral tradition that precedes the „Iliad“. (shrink)