An excerpt from Homer's Odyssey discovered on a tablet from the 3rd century AD

"Little alms, great joy". It is an invaluable gift that archaeologists have found in Greece this week. The Ministry of Culture announced Tuesday the discovery in Olympia, in the Peloponnese, of a block of terracotta engraved with thirteen verses of a rhapsody of Homer's Odyssey .

the first estimates, the tablet dates from the third century AD. BC, during the Roman period. "If this dating is confirmed, it could be the oldest written record of Homer's work discovered" in Greece, according to the ministry. The excerpt is taken from song 14, which describes Ulysses' return to his island of Ithaca, and his meeting with his pigman, Eumaios, who believes him dead.

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The plaque was discovered during surface excavations conducted by the Greek archaeological services, in cooperation with the German Institute of Archeology, around the remains of the temple of Zeus on the site of the cradle of the Olympic Games, in the western Peloponnese

First transmitted orally, the epic attributed to Homer, who would have composed the Iliad and Odyssey towards the end of the 8th century BC AD, was then transcribed before the Christian era on scrolls of which only a few fragments have so far been discovered in Egypt.

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This discovery should please Alexandre Farnoux, Director of the French School of Athens, who on the occasion of the National Days of Archeology last 15, 16 and 17 June called the government to invest more in the protection of the ruins. He is preparing for March 2019 an exhibition on Homer at the Louvre Lens. Ulysses has not finished revealing all his secrets.