ORIGIN OF THE ODYSSEY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28268, 4 May 1957, Page 4

ORIGIN OF THE ODYSSEY

City Professor’s

New Book

“If Professor L. G. Pocock’s contention that The Odyssey was of Sicilian origin became generally accepted by scholars it would be the most important discovery in the history of Homeric scholarship, said the president of the Christchurch Classical Association (Mr A. C. Brassington). Professor Pocock’s book “The Sicilian Origin of The Odyssey,” was published a few days ago by the New Zealand University Press. It develops the argument of his earlier “The Landfall of Odysseus: Clue and Detection in The Odyssey,” which was published in 1955, and adduces further topographical evidence that The Odysey, although ascribed by tradition to Homer, was not an eastern Mediterranean work, but a poem of Trapani, in the northwest of Sicily—a theory first advanced by Samuel Butler. “The implications of the argument will unsettle the world of classical scholarship in a most fundamental way, and whether Professor Pocock will be compared in 100 years with Professor Bickerton or Sir Ernest Rutherford would be a most interesting speculation,” said Mr Brassington.

“Whatever the final verdict of the learned world, Professor Pocock has written a most

stimulating and original book, which will reflect the greatest credit on him and Canterbury University College.