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Ancient and Medieval Bards – Surprising Facts About Some of History’s Greatest Poets

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2025 17 min

Poets - Statue of Al-Mutanabbi, the Arabic Language's greatest bard, in Baghdad — Statue of Al-Mutanabbi, the Arabic Language's greatest bard, in Baghdad. Chaldean News

1. Key Words are Key to the Iliad and Odyssey

Ancient Roman mosaic depicting Odysseus tied to his ship’s mast, while listening to the Sirens. Bardo Museum, Tunis

Memorization was further eased by reliance on a number of fixed phrases to express ideas in similar parts of verse. For example, references to Odysseus with the single word “divine”, two worded “many counseled”, or three worded “much-enduring divine” depending on where “Odysseus” appears in a verse, and how much space is left that needs filling for that verse to come out in the desired hexameter. In essence, once a bard learned the limited number of stock phrases, he need not memorize the entire poem, such as the 16,000 verses of the Iliad, but only the key words. Once a particular word is mentioned, the singer need simply select from the limited number of appropriate stock phrases, depending on where in a verse the key word is mentioned.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Arab America – Al Mutanabbi: The Greatest Arab Poet

BBC – Li Bai and Du Fu: China’s Drunken Superstar Poets

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Mutanabbi

Encyclopedia Britannica – Petrarch

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – Ferdowsi: The Poet and the Legend

Ford, Andrew Laughlin – Homer: The Poetry of the Past (1992)

Frank, Tenney – Vergil: A Biography (1965)

Guardian, the, November 15^th, 2003 – The Dead Poet’s Tale

Hollway-Calthrop, Henry – Petrarch, His Life and Times (1907)

Jones, Terry – Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery (2003)

Murray, Gilbert – The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907)

Paris Review, January 23^rd, 2019 – The Poet With Many Names, and Many Deaths

Shahbazi, A. Shapour – Ferdowsi: A Critical Biography (1991)

Suetonius – The Life of Virgil

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.