Bow made of ibex horn in the Iliad - a bit highbrow perhaps.

Pine Marten

Well-Known Member
I'm currently reading Homer's Iliad, and this morning, as I was commuting to work on the Tube, I read this part of Song 4, in which Athena convinces an archer on the Trojan side called Pandarus to try to shoot Melenaus. By the sounds of it, this chap has rather an interesting bow made of ibex horn:

"His fool's heart was persuaded, and he took his bow from its case. This bow was made from the horns of a wild ibex which he had killed as it was bounding from a rock; he had stalked it, and it had fallen as the arrow struck it to the heart. Its horns were sixteen palms long, and a worker in horn had made them into a bow, smoothing them well down, and giving them tips of gold."

Now Pandarus is from a city called Zelea, on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara, as shown in this old map:

View attachment 43162

Finally, "sixteen hands" is 1.28m. So here's my question: what sort of ibex with horns that long did Pandarus stalk in that part of the world, four thousand years ago? And does anyone know of any instances of bows being made with ibex horn?
 
I Can't be much help but googled ibex horn bow and it appears that they have been used in composite bows.
 
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I used to make a few bows when I had spare time. Long/recurve Bows come in a couple flavors. The first is a self bow, basically just wood. You English types were famous for your yew self bows (Battle of Agincourt and all that).

The he other flavor is a composite bow. These may have horn or other material on the face (front) of the bow to stiffen and strengthen it. Often this was horn. The belly of the bow was often covered with sinews that were covered and adhered to the wood with hide glue. In some cases wood was omitted completely and the main body of the bow was scraped down horn.

Quite a a few bows also used horn or antler at the tips to hold the bow string.
 
yon mongol bows were composite and far outranged the chineese,hungarian and polish bows of the armys they destroyed.the odyssey is a better book :old:
 
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Mr. Gain, that's the jackpot, and a fascinating discovery! On the first page, the authors of the study point out that Herodotus mentioned the Scythians and their bows, but that it's an incomplete description. But Homer, writing over 400 years before Herodotus, gives us construction materials and the correct dimensions! The paper states that the bows are all about 115cm long, and Homer's ibex is 128cm. Figure 12 shows that there's a considerable loss of horn, so that all makes sense. Homer is describing events that happened something like 400 years before him, which places this bow perhaps 200 years before the oldest ones described in this paper. Maybe Homer had seen bows like this in his time, who knows. Nevertheless, this matching of archaelogical record with a detail of an almost 3000 year old poem is amazing.
 
Homer is describing events that happened something like 400 years before him, which places this bow perhaps 200 years before the oldest ones described in this paper. Maybe Homer had seen bows like this in his time, who knows. Nevertheless, this matching of archaelogical record with a detail of an almost 3000 year old poem is amazing.

As a kid I was taught the Odyssey and the Iliad at school at the original. I remember the teacher explaining that what we were reading was not fiction, but actual History, and that all places, events and details were to be treated as historical fact. As an 11 year old I found that odd, but growing up and visiting some of the places and seeing artefacts described in these two poems (written in the most amazing meter, the hexameter [look it up, it is a difficult feat to achieve]) I was amazed at not only the fact that the poet lived so long after the events he was describing, but on the fact that, despite these poems being passed on orally generation by generation, they were so accurate...
 
As a kid I was taught the Odyssey and the Iliad at school at the original. I remember the teacher explaining that what we were reading was not fiction, but actual History, and that all places, events and details were to be treated as historical fact. As an 11 year old I found that odd, but growing up and visiting some of the places and seeing artefacts described in these two poems (written in the most amazing meter, the hexameter [look it up, it is a difficult feat to achieve]) I was amazed at not only the fact that the poet lived so long after the events he was describing, but on the fact that, despite these poems being passed on orally generation by generation, they were so accurate...

I probably have no imagination, but it seems to me that it is much easier to start with real objects, characters and events than to make them up.

These are naturally embellished or simplified by other factors, and by subsequent phases in the poetic or myth-making process, but I suspect that the starting point, even for far more creative minds than mine, almost always lies in reality.

Along these lines, and stimulating -thus also somewhat contested-, are Robert Graves' explorations of the sources of Greek Myths in his book of the same title.
 
Well neither the Iliad or the Odyssey set out to be history textbooks, they're a kind of embellished historical fiction, but they are also akin to sacred texts, the closest thing the ancient Greeks had to the Bible. The gods are forever directly intervening in the affairs of men. That being said, they are almost certainly based in genuine historical events, at least the Iliad is. They may be an amalgamation of events, strung together into a coherent narrative. The entire poem is built around quite a sophisticated narrative device. The Trojan war lasts a decade, but the poem covers events only in the last year, spun around a single event: Achilles going on strike. As regards oral tradition, I don't read ancient Greek and am in no position to offer a first hand view, but others who are seem to think that certainly most of it was written down as a coherent work, even if it was based on orally transmitted stories and performed in that way subsequently. It's written in a consistent idiom from Asia Minor, probably over twenty or thirty years which would account for an evolving style as it moves along. The Odyssey suggests that by then, Homer was an older man who had lived a little. I read somewhere recently a reader saying that the books made far more sense to him now than they did when he was young as they touched on experiences that don't make sense as a younger person.

Anyway, quite apart from all that, this bow and ibex thing is archaeological record matching ancient poetry, and that's like finding a verifiable piece of Noah's Ark or somesuch. Brilliant.
 
Update from this morning: Menelaus was fine, the arrow hit his belt buckle and only just pierced it, so a bit of superficial bleeding only. I suspect that Pandarus is going to have his Lycian backside kicked pretty severely in the following pages, and his 1m28 ibex bow shoved somewhere.
 
PM - have you got to the journey through the underworld. Are you readng the translation or in the Latin. I da a brilliant Latin master at school and would love to have read classics, but instead went down the science / engineering / agriculture route.

What always amazes me is where would mankind be now if we hadn't had the dark ages and the library in Alexandria wasn't burnt to the ground.
 
The journey through the underworld is in the Odyssey I believe, I'm only on the Iliad for now! I'm reading it in a French translation. I'm afraid that I don't speak ancient Greek and I was no great Latinist either. I am also a lapsed, non-practising engineer. But my interest in what I subsequently discovered was called "the Classics" dates from childhood. It came originally from a book cover with a detail of a vase showing Theseus killing the minotaur. The subsequently, aged about 9 or 10 I read a version adapted for children of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Twenty-five years later, I thought I should perhaps bring myself up to speed with the full version.

As regards Alexandria, well thank God for the Muslims scholars translating all the Greek texts into Arabic for us so that we could then translate them back to Latin because otherwise we really wouldn't have had much left.
 
He does then proceed to kill ALL his guests with it though. Which to be honest, by any normal measure, is just not OK behaviour, even if they were freeloading a bit and he is the king.
 
Messenger to Harry Percy, Duke of Northumberland 'My Lord Duke! They have War bows!'

Duke of Northumberland 'The thievin' basteds...reet; send wor best knights to fetch wor bows back'
 
Messenger to Harry Percy, Duke of Northumberland 'My Lord Duke! They have War bows!'

Duke of Northumberland 'The thievin' basteds...reet; send wor best knights to fetch wor bows back'

I very rarely use this smiley, even when greatly amused, but on this occasion it seems only right to make an exception...

:rofl:
 
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