From the pulse-pounding world of statistical research, we have a story that says the Iliad and Beowulf and the Irish epic Tain Bo Cualinge are all literally true in every detail.

Ha, ha. No, they’re not saying that. What they’re saying, as best I understand it, is that the social relationships portrayed in those ancient epics are more realistic than those in modern fiction.

“Of the three myths, the network of characters in the Iliad has properties most similar to those of real social networks,” they write in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters). “This similarity perhaps reflects the archaeological evidence supporting the historicity of some of the events (the tale describes).”

Similarly, the way the characters of Beowulf are linked together “has some properties similar to real social networks,” they write. This confirms the archaeological evidence that a number of the characters are based on real people, “although the events of the story often contain elements of fantasy.”

Because, apparently, even though modern fiction is considered more realistic in terms of how people really relate to each other, modern fiction also oversimplifies enormously.

Or maybe it’s just that ancient people had big families and were proud of it, while we today have small families and generally try to keep them out of sight.

I know that I oversimplify in my Viking novels. One of the things you can’t miss in the Icelandic sagas is all the genealogies (I made some jokes about it in West Oversea). These things mattered to the original audiences. They knew those farms and those families, and the affiliations mattered. I keep the relatives pretty much to a bare minimum in my stories, and even so I have to add character lists so the readers can keep their score cards straight.

In general, I don’t like novels with large casts. I lose track. “There will be fewer, and better Russians,” said Stalin, and I can only wish Tolstoy had said the same.

Tip: Threedonia