Homer and The Song of Roland

Bust of Homer

The following is a brief look at some of the anachronisms and errors in the Epic The Song of Roland. I have in previous postings mentioned that Homer’s Iliad is not a valid guide to the social, much less historical aspects of Mycenaean society. It is extremely unlikely that given that we know that the epic is a very poor guide to Mycenaean social realities that it is a better guide to Mycenaean history.1 We know about the social reality of Mycenaean society through the decipherment of Linear B. The tablets contain no historical data or literature but they provide a clear glimpse of Mycenaean society and that society is not the society of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In fact the society is very different from the society described in Homer’s epics, to such an extent has to be qualitatively different.2