TheIliad centers on a quarrel between KingAgamemnon and the warriorAchilles during the last year of theTrojan War. TheOdyssey chronicles the ten-year journey ofOdysseus, king ofIthaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, theOdyssey especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods.[3] The poems are inHomeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, aliterary language which shows a mixture of features of theIonic andAeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.[4][5] Most researchers believe that the poems were originallytransmitted orally.[6] Despite being predominantly known for their tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also containinstances of comedy and laughter.[7]
The Homeric poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.[8] ToPlato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν,tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).[9][10] InDante Alighieri'sDivine Comedy,Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;[11] in the preface to his translation of theIliad,Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets".[12] From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.[13]
The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances theIliad andOdyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.[14] Manyaccounts of Homer's life circulated inclassical antiquity, the most widespread that he was a blindbard fromIonia, a region of central coastalAnatolia in present-day Turkey.[15] Modern scholars consider these accountslegendary.[16]
Today, only theIliad andtheOdyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including theHomeric Hymns, theContest of Homer and Hesiod, severalepigrams, theLittle Iliad, theNostoi, theThebaid, theCypria, theEpigoni, the comic mini-epicBatrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), theMargites, theCapture of Oechalia, and thePhocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.[17][18][19]
Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blindbardDemodocus),[20][21] that he resided atChios, that he was the son of theriver Meles and the nymphCritheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either inIos or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen,[22] and various explanations for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος,Hómēros).[20] Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperorHadrian saysEpicaste (daughter ofNestor) andTelemachus (son ofOdysseus) were the parents of Homer.[23][24]
In the early fourth century BCAlcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer andHesiod. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning ofWorks and Days: "When thePleiades born ofAtlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from theIliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praisedhusbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter.[26]
Part of an eleventh-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writings on the top and right side arescholia.
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.[27][28][29] Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia.[27] The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poetXenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.[29] The allegoristTheagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems areallegories.[29] TheIliad and theOdyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.[27][29][30] They were the first literary works taught to all students.[30] TheIliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than theOdyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.[30]
As a result of the poems' prominence inclassical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult.[27][29] During theHellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially theStoics, who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.[29] Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate.[29] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher.[29]Byzantine scholars such asEustathius of Thessalonica andJohn Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions andscholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.[31][29] Eustathius's commentary on theIliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on theOdyssey an additional nearly 2,000.[29]
In 1488, the Greek scholarDemetrios Chalkokondyles published inFlorence theeditio princeps of the Homeric poems.[29][32] The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.[29][28][27] The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of theRenaissance.[29] Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.[29] In western Europe during theRenaissance,Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.[33]
In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom,François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs.[28] Fifty years later, the English scholarRichard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to theIliad and theOdyssey as they have been passed down.[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; theIlias he wrote for men, and theOdysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of an epic Poem tillPisistratus' time, about 500 Years after."[28]
Friedrich August Wolf'sProlegomena ad Homerum, published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into theIliad and theOdyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs,[34][35][28] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of theIliad and theOdyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors.[34][35][28] After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities.[34][35][28] Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences.[34][35][28][36]
Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that theIliad and theOdyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs,[28] and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of theIliad and theOdyssey, which later poets expanded and revised.[28] A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet.[34][35][28] By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".[28]
FollowingWorld War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.[28] It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end.[28] Starting in around 1928,Milman Parry andAlbert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas.[37][36][28] This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling features of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.[36] Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.[28]
Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of theIliad andOdyssey. These anomalies point to earlier versions of theIliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of theOdyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors.[40]
Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that theIliad and theOdyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of theOdyssey in relation to theIliad."[41][42][43][28] Nearly all scholars agree that theIliad and theOdyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.[28] It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.[28] Nearly all scholars agree that theDoloneia in Book X of theIliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet.[28]
Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to theTrojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.[44] Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems.[45][46][28] A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date.[47] At one extreme,Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.[45][46]Barry B. Powell dates the composition of theIliad and theOdyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement fromHerodotus, who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on the fact that the poems do not mentionhoplite battle tactics,inhumation, or literacy.[48]
Martin Litchfield West has argued that theIliad echoes the poetry ofHesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with theOdyssey up to a generation later.[49][50][28] He also interprets passages in theIliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction ofBabylon bySennacherib in 689 BC and theSack of Thebes byAshurbanipal in 663/4 BC.[28] At the other extreme, a few American scholars such asGregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC.[45][46][28]
"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greekὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' or'surety'). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.[51][52]
Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society
Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of theMediterranean, with some scattered references toEgypt,Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.[53][54][55][56]
Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of theBronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than the laterIron Age during which they were composed;[36][58][59] yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).[36][58][59] In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during theMycenaean period,[36] but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during the time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age.[36]In theIliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing ahelmet made of boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.[60][61][62]
The decipherment ofLinear B in the 1950s byMichael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of the Bronze AgeAegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer.[63] Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up;[36] for instance, theIliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold.[36] It is here thatHector takes his final stand against Achilles.[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed.[36]
The Homeric epics are written in an artificialliterary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epichexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based onIonic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that theIliad was composed slightly before theOdyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems.[64][65]
The poems were composed in unrhymeddactylic hexameter; ancient Greekmetre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.[66][67] Homer frequently uses set phrases such asepithets ('craftyOdysseus', 'rosy-fingeredDawn', 'owl-eyedAthena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'),simile, type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets likeVirgil orMilton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is calledparataxis.[68]
The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating,praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures.[69][70]
'Ring composition' orchiastic structure (when a phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling.[71][72]
Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to theMuse.[73] In theIliad, the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles",[73] and in theOdyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".[73] A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in hisAeneid.[73]
The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to ascribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of theIliad andOdyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.[74]Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating.[75] Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.[76][77]
Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century.[78] After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of theGreek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars ofAlexandria, in Egypt.[79] Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.[80] Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.[81]
In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE byPisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".[82][29] The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman oratorCicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancientLives of Homer.[29] From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of theLibrary of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such asZenodotus of Ephesus,Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particularAristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.[83]
The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy byDemetrios Chalkokondyles. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts,papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition ofArthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate.[clarification needed] Others, such asMartin West (1998–2000) orT. W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.[83]
Him with that falchion in his hand behold, Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign;
^Alexander Pope's Preface to his translation of the Iliad: "Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellencies; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry."
^The riddle was: "We left whatever we caught and carry whatever we didn’t". (The solution: lice.)"A Riddle, and How Homer Went Blind".Sententiae Antiquae. Retrieved8 November 2024.
^Steve Reece, "Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: From Oral Performance to Written Text", in Mark Amodio (ed.),New Directions in Oral Theory (Tempe: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005) 43–89.
^Albert B. Lord,The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960).
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de Jong, Irene J. F. (2004).Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (2nd ed.). London: Bristol Classical Press.ISBN978-1-85399-658-0.
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N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000,Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Exeter.ISBN0-85989-684-6
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Janko, Richard (1982).Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-23869-4.
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Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homerica. The Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Evelyn-White, Hugh Gerard. London; New York: Heinemann; MacMillen. 1914.
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