Reviewing “Ulysses Found” by Ernle Bradford

While sorting through some of my books to donate, I found Ulysses Found. This book was one of simply gobs of volumes that I’d pulled from a book drop when our local public school was doing a purge of older works. I know that, at some point several years ago, I had read this book, but I could neither remember anything about the book nor why it was in the Donation Pile in the first place.

Ernle Bradford was a British author who happened to have a lot of experience sailing the Mediterranean. His reason for writing the book in the first place was that he seemed to “recognize” islands and coastlines, connecting his travels to the so-called mythological places in Homer’s Odyssey. From chapter to chapter, he traces the epic journey through real-life geography.  

I’m not usually on the extreme side of skepticism when it comes to claims that “such-and-such legendary figure was based in historical reality.” After all, they found Troy from The Iliad, even after centuries of people dismissing it as a fantasy. Surely that implies that a king from Ithaka might have had a hard time getting home after the Trojan War. And, if said king had any of the shifty big-headedness that Odysseus/Ulysses displays in the stories, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he elaborated his tale with monsters, deities, and accounts of his own derring-do.*

I can even imagine a husband arriving home very belatedly and making up such an excuse for his wife. “You see, Penelope, there were these Cyclopes….” (Though, including all the philandering was probably in bad taste, especially after his wife spent twenty years fending off suitors to stay faithful to him.)

Unlike Troy, however, Bradford’s connections of story to fact are not based in archeological evidence, but more the similarity of certain topographical features, oral histories (usually from people whose livelihood hinges on tourism to “Calypso’s Cave,” so aren’t completely unbiased sources), and his gut feelings.  

After reading it a second time, I think I know why I was going to donate it. Drawing parallels and noting linguistic similarities (Calypso—who Bradford theorizes may have been a Phoenician priestess, not an immortal nymph—must have been on Malta, since both words have roots that mean “hidden”) is interesting, but not very substantial evidence.

Then there’s Bradford’s writing style. At first, it was pretty good. Then I started noticing some weird tangents he would go on. For example:

“Some scholars are as reluctant to accept the simple version of things as are the followers of the rancid Baconian heresy.” – page 204

I assume he’s referring to the people who think some or all of Shakespeare’s plays were written by Francis Bacon.** But what does it have to do with Homer? And speaking of Homer, he kept saying “Homer wrote” and “As Homer was writing”…did I miss something? Did Bradford have secret knowledge that Homer actually existed? Because as far as I was aware even his existence is still up for debate, as well as when and how the poems attributed to him migrated from oral to written form. (It has a name and everything: The Homeric Question.)

This was simply not the book I wanted it to be. So, until I locate another, more archeologically-grounded tome, I guess I have no choice but to keep looking for Ulysses.

 

*This is possibly the first time I’ve written “derring-do” in my life. Am I the only one who feels like that spelling is weird?

**And, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the colorful, if rather nauseating, pun created by the adjective “rancid.”