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Homer's Riddle
The poet Homer is a bit of a riddle himself: tradition holds that he was blind, and various Greek cities claim to be his birthplace, but otherwise there is not much we know for sure about the man (or woman, as some scholars have claimed!) who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssee. There is no concrete evidence that shows that Homer was even a real person!
Still, let’s stick with the legend. According to the legend, Homer himself did not know where he was born and he once stopped at Delphi to see if the Oracle could help him out. He was told
`The isle of Ios is your mother’s country and it shall receive you dead; but beware the riddles of young children.’
As an old man, he happened to visit the island of Ios, and when he sat on the shore one day he met some children of local fishermen coming back from the sea and asked them what they had caught. They replied:
What we caught we threw away, and what we didn’t catch we kept
While Homer was trying to work it out, he remembered the oracle and realised his time was up. While still trying to figure out the answer to the riddle, he slipped, bumped his head and died.
So, can you answer the riddle instead?
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The fishermen (fisher-children) concentrated their efforts on the conquest of their
activity. What they caught was of subsidiary importance to what they didn't. They
know that making the catch and dozing back on it complacently will not do, they are
striving forwards. What is yet to come is more important to them, perhaps, than
what they have done. It may be they are ambitious, insatiate fishermen, forever
keeping in mind the 'fish that got away'. This is the best interpretation I can offer
at this hour of the morning time! I must be off to school. Good luck!