Cimmerians: 1st mention in Homer's Odyssey

[Anonymous]

As a student of classical philology I read last week in Homer's Odyssey and found the first mention of Cimmerians in literature as far as I know. It is in Book XI, lines 14-19.
Odysseus sails to the edge of the world on his quest to get an oracle from the dead seer Teiresias. There he digs a hole, exercises a blood sacrifice and conjures various souls.
The land, where he lands his ship, is Cimmeria:

All day long her [i.e. the ships's] sails
were full as she held her course over the sea, but when the sun went
down and darkness was over all the earth, we got into the deep
waters of the river Oceanus, where lie the land and city of the
Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays
of the sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down
again out of the heavens, but the poor wretches live in one long
melancholy night.
(English translation from http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joelja/odyssey.html#b11)

Compare this to REH's descriptions (or to the chapter in RoK)!
Since Homer's Odyssey is a classic and was surely available in Howard#s family, I think it is clear what REH's source was.

 

[Anonymous]

Herodotus wrote about them at some length. Howard could have drawn from numerous historical sources.

 

[Anonymous]

You may be right about the Odyssey being the first mention, though --- Homer's got 300 years on Herodotus

 

[Anonymous]

I have to confess I don't know much about Homer. I had thought he lived around 800 BC, but it turns out they're not even certain he did live... and I seem to recall something about the works being oral traditions long before they were ever written down anyway. But, yeah, older than Herodotus, anyway.

 

[cornelius]

Thanks guests , I had no idea Cimmeria was anything other than a fictional invention . I love this sort of stuff , knowing the background of the fiction always makes it more enjoyable for me .

 

[The King]

Don't forget that the Greek "C" is in fact spoken as a "K" (Kimmeria). Anyway the Greek mythology also tells of a northern land called Hyperboria which was presumably located in the North-East of the Celts. It could be actual Scandinavia, Germany or better the Baltic States.

Most interesting too is a theory that Atlantis was an island located somewhere near Helgoland in the Northern Sea which would fit with Howard's Atlantis because the Plato theory suggests that Atlantis was between actual America and Africa.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't want to start a scholarly discussion, but I don't think that REH draws his Cimmeria as a brooding, dark country from another source than Homer's Odyssey.
For example are the Cimmerians mentioned bei Herodot (book 4, chapters 11-12) just a nation / tribe in war with the Scythians. Their land is not described in any way.
As far as I know, there is no other source that describes Cimmeria in the mentioned way.
Now enough, else you think I'm a little smartass.

 

[The King]

I don't want to start a scholarly discussion, but I don't think that REH draws his Cimmeria as a brooding, dark country from another source than Homer's Odyssey.
For example are the Cimmerians mentioned bei Herodot (book 4, chapters 11-12) just a nation / tribe in war with the Scythians. Their land is not described in any way.
As far as I know, there is no other source that describes Cimmeria in the mentioned way.
Now enough, else you think I'm a little smartass.

You don't know me but you already have a poor opinion of me if you think I would imagine that. This is an open forum and nobody can pretend to know the Howardian truth. Discussions however allow us to progress in that knowledge.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey, I don't have a bad opinion about anyone on this forum; my end sentence was just a phrase from a student of the Greek language who experiences sometimes not the greatest enthusiasm from his engineer-friends in talks regarding classical antiquity... :lol:

Hyperboreans: the translation is "people beyond the boreas, i.e. beyond the northwind". They are e.g. mentioned in Herodot (book 4, chapters 32-36). In Greek literature they are described as pious, cheerful and peaceful people...

REH apparently used something we in Germany call poetic liberty