I have not read the book, as I’ve said above. I’ve tried to see if I could find the passage in question with Google books but I couldn’t. However, I could find this article by Ekirch himself where he claims that “To judge from textual references as early as Homer’s Odyssey, the prevailing mode of slumber for ages was biphasic”. So it’s not just Chapman’s reading according to Ekirch. The article doesn’t say specifically what part of the Odyssey he got it from, I found that from the reviews. Sorry, I’m just not interested enough to go and get the book. I really don’t have any opinion on Ekirch’s main thesis about sleep. What I have an opinion about is dropping names like “Homer’s Odyssey” to support one’s claims and just assuming you can get away with it.
The idea that Proteus is taking a nap strikes me as an overly literal reading. Why shouldn’t Proteus sleep at midday? He is a god after all.
He can sleep whenever he likes, and so can everyone else on this thread! If going to sleep at noon (ἦμος δ᾽ ἠέλιος μέσον οὐρανὸν ἀμφιβεβήκῃ) isn’t called a nap, what is then? Would you say that someone taking a NAP at NOON is evidence for him sleeping his NIGHTS in two phases?
Anyway, I wasn’t criticizing Chapman’s translation, just saying that it’s difficult, at least for me (I assure you that I read it with much more difficulty than the original), and I suppose also to another poster on this thread recently.
If going to sleep at noon (ἦμος δ᾽ ἠέλιος μέσον οὐρανὸν ἀμφιβεβήκῃ) isn’t called a nap, what is then? Would you say that someone taking a NAP at NOON is evidence for him sleeping his NIGHTS in two phases?
As I said in my post, but perhaps not clearly enough, this is a far too literal view. If we wish to read in Homer some evidence of “bi phasic” sleep then it is unlikely that it will be found in a literal reading of the text. If (and I have no idea one way or the other) this was a familiar concept in the ancient world perhaps we might expect to find somewhere some indirect evidence. So perhaps in the present passage which describes an act of going to sleep we might detect behind the text some suggestion of it, even if it is not all very conveniently and obviously laid out for us. So irrespective of when this act of going to sleep happens the general idea of what is involved in a sleep act is preserved. This is assuming that “bi phasic” sleep only happens at night. I have no idea whether that is what people believe or not.
This exchange is degenerating into a parody of Plato’s Ion.
I am not really interested in whether any of this “true”. I wouldnt think that evidence in Homer or anywhere else in the literary past added much to the scientific argument. I am interested in how Chapman understood Homer (whether “correctly” or not). I think it is also very interesting that Ekirch feels that an appeal to antiquity will bolster his case. It seems like the prestige of classics still shines in some quarters or is it just an appeal to some “new age” wisdom of ancients which if only we could recapture we would all live in sweetness and harmony.
But why should we get upset by any of this? It may encourage someone to read the Odyssey to find where these references are.
If going to sleep at noon (ἦμος δ᾽ ἠέλιος μέσον οὐρανὸν ἀμφιβεβήκῃ) isn’t called a nap, what is then? Would you say that someone taking a NAP at NOON is evidence for him sleeping his NIGHTS in two phases?