ic
Greece In the debate since antiquity over the Catalogue of Ships, the core questions have concerned the extent of historical credibility of the account, whether it was composed by Homer himself, to what extent it reflects a pre-Homeric document or memorized tradition, surviving perhaps in part from
Mycenaean times, or whether it is a result of post-Homeric development. According to some scholars, the inconsistencies between the Catalogue and the rest of the text and also the odd way it is inserted into the poem suggest that it was a later addition.
Wilhelm Dörpfeld notes that while in the
Odyssey Odysseus's kingdom includes Ithaca, Same, Dulichium, and Zacynthus, the Catalogue of Ships contains a different list of islands, again Ithaca, Same, and Zacynthus but now also Neritum, Krocylea, and Aegilips. The separate debate over the identity of Homer and the authorship of the
Iliad and the
Odyssey is conventionally termed "the
Homeric Question". The consensus before the mid-twentieth century was that the Catalogue of Ships was not the work of the man who composed the
Iliad, though great pains had been taken to render it a work of art; furthermore, that the material of the text is essentially Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean, while disagreement centers largely on the extent of later additions. If taken to be an accurate account, the Catalogue provides a rare summary of the geopolitical situation in early Greece at some time between the
Late Bronze Age and the eighth century BCE. Following
Milman Parry's theory of Homeric
oral poetry, some scholars, such as
Denys Page, argue that it represents a pre-Homeric recitation incorporated into the epic by Homer. In the most recent extended study of the Catalogue, Edzard Visser concludes that the Catalogue is compatible with the rest of the
Iliad in its techniques of verse improvisation, that the order of the names is meaningful and that the geographical epithets evince concrete geographical knowledge. Visser argues that this knowledge was transmitted by the heroic myth, elements of which introduce each geographical section. W. W. Minton places the catalogue within similar "enumerations" in Homer and
Hesiod, and suggests that part of their purpose was to impress the audience with a display of the performer's memory. The Catalogue was an important source for solving geopolitical matters. When the Athenians claimed
Salamis they cited the Catalogue of Ships which listed it among the Athenian troops, as proof of its moral allegiance to Athens.
Plutarch refers to a tradition according to which the Athenian politician
Solon inserted the relevant lines into the Catalogue to support the Athenian claim to Salamis, which was disputed with
Megara. ==Catalogue==