Sam Arbesman finds similarities between the oral storytelling of myth. With generation retellings and small, effective adaptations over time, ancient tales were made more Lindy:

Over time though, each ever-retold story was sanded into a gem of a tale that could last all those years, not necessarily because the written text was preserved—to be found in a clay pot in some desert cave millennia hence, or etched into a rock so it could not be forgotten—but because there was a community devoted to its recounting.

I love this piece — a detailed analysis, backstory, and new map of Odysseus’s supposed voyages around the Mediterranean:

In 1597 the cartographer Abraham Ortelius became the first person to draw a map of Odysseus’ travels. Like many Homeric geographers, Ortelius identifies Scheria, home of the Phaeacians, with Corcyra (now known as Corfu) because of a passage from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War claiming the Phaeacians were the previous inhabitants of that island. While widely accepted, this identification of Scheria with Corcyra creates a problem. Homer clearly places Calypso’s island west of Scheria, but there is no island in...