Monday, December 17, 2007

Groeg ydy a what the heck does that mean?

Groeg ydy abar a ognise bod 'n lladdedig ail a ail
To get that, I took a quote from an archaeologist: "Greece is a corpse that must be [killed? murdered? buried?] again and again", and I ran it through an English-to-Welsh translator. It certainly wasn't 100% historically accurate for me to put it into modern Welsh, but it was the closest-to-accurate translator I could find in the time I had available.

Nowadays, that same translator site refuses to put it back to English, so I'm missing one critical word mid-sentence.

The original quote was a comment (by Sir Moses Finley, if I recall correctly) on how historical evidence in the Mediterranean does not support the idea of the events of the Illiad happening during the lifetime of the Greek civilization. He was arguing against the view of Hisserlik being Troy. Iman Wilkens references him in "Where Troy Once Stood".

I've always thought that Iman Wilkens' Troy-In-England would be a really cool time & place to set a game. So it was only natural that my time-travelling PCs would have a layover there. Since I'd only have 1 or 2 sessions to explore it, I needed to focus on communicating the concept, not aiming for historical accuracy.

Here's some relevant links about Wilkens' research and ideas:
I wrote my own summary of Wilkens' theories in a post on repeatedexpletives.
Wilkens' own site which goes into a lot more detail on Troy as an ancient Celtic Oral Tradition that the Greeks merely adopted.
Wikipedia has a decent-enough article on Iman's book, though the various editor's biases show through in places. The contrast from section to section is somewhat amusing.

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