Difference between revisions of "Homer" - New World Encyclopedia

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[[Image:Homer_British_Museum.jpg|thumb|right|Bust of Homer in the [[British Museum]]]]
 
[[Image:Homer_British_Museum.jpg|thumb|right|Bust of Homer in the [[British Museum]]]]
  
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'''Homer''' ([[Greek language|Greek]] {{polytonic|Ὅ}}&#x03B.C.E.;ηρος ''Hómēros'') was a legendary early [[Greek literature|Greek]] [[poet]] and [[rhapsode]] traditionally credited with the composition of the ''[[Iliad]]'' ({{polytonic|Ἰλιάς}}) and the ''[[Odyssey]]'' ({{polytonic|Ὀδύσσεια}}). He is without a doubt the most influential poet in all of Western literature, his works being, as they are, some of the oldest surviving documents in any language. For all of antiquity and most of modernity, Homer's influence on literature has been unequalled.  
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'''Homer''' ([[Greek language|Greek]] {{polytonic|Ὅ}}&#x03B.C.E.;ηρος ''Hómēros'') was a legendary early [[Greek literature|Greek]] [[poet]] and [[rhapsode]] traditionally credited with the composition of the ''[[Iliad]]'' ({{polytonic|Ἰλιάς}}) and the ''[[Odyssey]]'' ({{polytonic|Ὀδύσσεια}}). He is without a doubt the most influential poet in all of Western literature. His works are some of the oldest surviving documents in any language. For all of antiquity and most of modernity, Homer's influence on literature has been unequalled. Although Homer established many techniques that are still used, his contribution to poetry is not so much about technicality as it is about content. Homer demonstrated better than anyone else up to his time what it was possible for poetry to do, what kind of stories it was possible to tell, and how to tell them in a way so gripping they would still be memorable after thousands of years. In this sense, Homer's contributions are not just to poetry, but to fiction as a whole.
  
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Tradition held that Homer was [[blindness|blind]], and various [[Ionia]]n cities are claimed to be his birthplace, but otherwise his biography is a blank slate. There is considerable scholarly debate about whether Homer was actually a real person, or the name given to one or more oral poets who sang traditional epic material.
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==Life==
  
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Regardless, Homer's epics are, without a doubt, the two most influential poems in all of Western literature. Simply put, Homer was the first major poet whose works were written down, and as a result, he takes precedence over all the [[poetry]] that has succeeded him. Succeeding poets have made reference to Homer for thousands of years, and any poet writing in the tradition must at some point come to terms with Homer. No other poet has been imitated more, referenced more, or read more than Homer.
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We know almost nothing of Homer's life; and, surprisingly, the writers of antiquity knew little more. No record of Homer's life, real or pretended, ever existed. [[Herodotus]] (2.53) maintains that [[Hesiod]] and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before [[850 B.C.E.]]. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries B.C.E., but none of these statements has any claim to the character of external evidence. Other than a putative date of birth, the only thing which authors of antiquity agree upon is that Homer was [[blindness|blind]], and that he probably lived in the Greek isles of the Mediterranean. Beyond this, nothing of Homer's life is known or even hinted at in his own writings.  
  
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==Ancient Accounts of Homer==
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Due to this dearth of information, scholars, for nearly a hundred years, have begun to question whether Homer ever really existed. Through textual research it has become clear that the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the [[8th century B.C.E.]]. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the [[Athens|Athenian]] [[tyrant]] [[Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus)|Hipparchus]], who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the [[Panathenaea|Panathenaic festival]]. Many [[classicist]]s hold that this reform must have involved the production of a [[canon (fiction)|canon]]ical written text, and that the name "Homer" was later somehow attached to this amalgamation.
  
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Of the date of Homer probably no record, real or pretended, ever existed. [[Herodotus]] (2.53) maintains that [[Hesiod]] and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before [[850 B.C.E.]]. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries B.C.E., but none of these statements has any claim to the character of external evidence.
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Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common [[joke]] has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the classical scholar [[Richmond Lattimore]], author of well regarded poetic translations to [[English language|English]] of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?" [[Samuel Butler (1835-1902)|Samuel Butler]] was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the ''Odyssey'' (but not the ''Iliad''), an idea further speculated on by [[Robert Graves]] in his novel ''[[Homer's Daughter]]''.
  
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Other than this putative date of birth, the only thing which authors of antiquity agree upon is that Homer was [[blindness|blind]], and that he probably lived in the Greek isles of the Mediterranean. Beyond this, nothing of Homer's life is known or even hinted at in his own writings.  
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In Greek his name is ''Homēros'', which is Greek for "hostage". This has led to the development of a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the [[Homeridae]], which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they were entrusted with remembering Greece's stock of epic poetry in the times before literacy came to the ancient world.
  
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==Homeric studies==
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Most Classicists would agree that, whether there was ever such a composer as "Homer" or not, the Homeric poems are the product of an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (''aoidoi''). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat. It has hence been speculated that the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' could have been '''oral-formulaic''' poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases. [[Milman Parry]] and [[Albert Lord]] pointed out that an oral tradition to compose a poem of the length and complexity of the ''Iliad'' is not as far-fetched as it might seem; in a paper on the subject, Parry and Lord make reference to the recent discovery of an oral culture living in remote parts of contemporary [[Yugoslavia]], where poet-rhapsodes compose on-the-spot epics using formulas remarkably similar to those found in Homer.
  
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The study of Homer is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity. Purely in terms of quantity it is one of the largest of all literary sub-disciplines: the annual publication output rivals that on [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia; in the last few centuries they have revolved around the process by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted down to us, first orally, and later in writing.
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==Poetry==
  
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===The Homeric Question===
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Many poems that were ascribed to Homer in antiquity are now known to be spurious. Many other poems that Homer may have actually written have been lost. Of what survives, only the epic ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' are considered to be authoritatively Homeric works. The two poems are closely related in style and language as well as content. Both poems are concerned with the [[Trojan War]] and its aftermath, and both involve the actions of epic heroes, such as [[Achilles]] and [[Odysseus]], who are more like the gods of mythological stories than the three-dimensional characters of contemporary fiction.
  
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The most pressing question in Homeric studies, and in the scholarly consideration of Homer in general, is now so common that it has become referred to as "The Homeric Question": Simply put, the question is: Did Homer actually exist?
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With regards to Homer' poetic style, many of his most prominent characteristics were pointed out by 19th Century poet [[Matthew Arnold]]. "The translator of Homer," he writes, "should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble." (''On ranslating Homer'', p. 9).
  
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Scholars generally agree that the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the [[8th century B.C.E.]]. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the [[Athens|Athenian]] [[tyrant]] [[Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus)|Hipparchus]], who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the [[Panathenaea|Panathenaic festival]]. Many [[classicist]]s hold that this reform must have involved the production of a [[canon (fiction)|canon]]ical written text, and that the name "Homer" was later somehow attached to this amalgamation of texts.  
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In contrast to the other canonical epic poets [[Virgil]], [[Dante]], and [[John Milton|Milton]], Homer's poetry is characterized by plain-spoken language and straight-forward, rapidly moving narrative. The rapidity of Homer is probably a result of his use of dactylic hexameter, a meter which tends to sound hurried to most listeners (it has often been called the "hoofbeat" meter, in contrast to the iamb's "heartbeat.") Homer's plainness is probably an attribute of his time; being an oral poet, Homer could not afford to confuse himself or his audience with convoluted metaphors and digressions, and as a result his epics sound much like the work of a master story-teller. Homer's "nobility", as Arnold calls it, is probably the most difficult aspect of his poetry for contemporary readers to digest. Simply put, there are no moral dilemmas in Homer. The heroes of the epics often do things that today we would find horrifying; but there is never any doubt in their minds (or, for all we can discern, Homer's mind) that what they are doing is eminently right.  
  
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Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common [[joke]] has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the classical scholar [[Richmond Lattimore]], author of well regarded poetic translations to [[English language|English]] of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?" [[Samuel Butler (1835-1902)|Samuel Butler]] was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the ''Odyssey'' (but not the ''Iliad''), an idea further speculated on by [[Robert Graves]] in his novel ''[[Homer's Daughter]]''.
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===The ''Iliad''===
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The ''Iliad'' narrates several weeks of action during the tenth and final year of the [[Trojan War]], concentrating on the wrath of [[Achilles]]. It begins with the dispute between Achilles and [[Agamemnon]], and ends with the funeral rites of [[Hector]]. Neither the background and early years of the war ([[Paris (mythology)|Paris]]' abduction of [[Helen]] from [[monarch|King]] [[Menelaus]]), nor its end (the death of [[Achilles]]), are directly narrated in the ''Iliad''. The ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' are part of a larger cycle of epic poems of varying lengths and authors; only fragments survive of the other poems, however.
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Of the many themes in the ''Iliad'', perhaps the most important is the idea of what a hero is. Achilles is forced to make a choice between living a long life or dying young on the battlefield. For the Greeks of Homer's day, the latter would have been a better choice because death in battle leads to honor and glory which were the most important values of the day — more important than even right and wrong. One of the remarkable things about the ''Iliad'' is the way that Achilles, especially in Book 9, both embraces concepts of honor and glory and also rejects them.
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====Plot and Themes====
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In the midst of the war, [[Apollo]] has sent a plague against the Greeks, who captured the daughter of the priest [[Chryses]] and gave her as a prize to [[Agamemnon]]. He is compelled to restore her to her father. Out of pride, Agamemnon takes [[Briseis]], whom the Athenians had given [[Achilles]] as a reward. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age, follows the advice of his mother, [[Thetis]], and withdraws from battle in revenge and the allied [[Achaean]] (Greek) armies nearly lose the war.
  
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In Greek his name is ''Homēros'', which is Greek for "hostage". This has led to the development of a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the [[Homeridae]], which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they were entrusted with remembering Ionia's stock of epic poetry in the times before literacy came to ancient Greece.
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In counterpoint to Achilles' pride and arrogance stands the Trojan prince [[Hector]], son of King [[Priam]], with a wife and child, who fights to defend his city and his family. The death of [[Patroclus]], Achilles' dearest friend or lover, at the hands of Hector, brings Achilles back to the war for [[revenge]], and he slays Hector. Later Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles disguised as a beggar to ransom his son's body back, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.
  
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Most Classicists would agree that, whether there was ever such a composer as "Homer" or not, the Homeric poems are the product of an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (''aoidoi''). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat. It has hence been speculated that the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' could have been '''oral-formulaic''' poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases. [[Milman Parry]] and [[Albert Lord]] pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of [[epic poetry]] in the exclusively oral cultures. Parry and Lord in particular make reference to their discovery of an exclusively oral tradition found in remote parts of contemporary [[Yugoslavia]], where poet-rhapsodes compose on-the-spot epics using formulas remarkably similar to those found in Homer.
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The poem is a poignant depiction of the tragedy and agony of friendship and family destroyed by battle. The first word of the Greek poem is "Μηνιν" ("mēnin", meaning "wrath"); the main subject of the poem is the wrath of Achilles; the second word is "aeide", meaning "sing"; the poet is asking someone to sing; the third word is "thea", meaning "goddess"; the goddess here being the "Mousa" or "muse"; a literal translation of the first line would read "Wrath, sing goddess, of Peleus' son Achilles" or more intelligibly "Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles".
  
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==Homeric style==
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====Book summaries====
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* Book 1: Ten years into the war, [[Achilles]] and [[Agamemnon]] quarrel over a slave girl, [[Achilles]] withdraws from the war in anger
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* Book 2: [[Odysseus]] motivates the [[Greeks]] to keep fighting; [[Catalogue of Ships]], Catalogue of Trojans and Allies
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* Book 3: [[Paris]] challenges [[Menelaus]] to single combat
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* Book 4: The truce is broken and battle begins
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* Book 5: [[Diomedes]] has an aristea and wounds [[Aphrodite]] and [[Ares]]
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* Book 6: [[Glaucus]] and [[Diomedes]] greet during a truce
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* Book 7: [[Hector]] battles Ajax
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* Book 8: The gods withdraw from the battle
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* Book 9: [[Agamemnon]] retreats: his overtures to [[Achilles]] are spurned
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* Book 10: [[Diomedes]] and [[Odysseus]] go on a spy mission
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* Book 11: [[Paris]] wounds [[Diomedes]], and [[Achilles]] sends [[Patroclus]] on a mission
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* Book 12: The [[Greeks]] retreat to their camp and are besieged by the [[Trojans]]
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* Book 13: [[Poseidon]] motivates the [[Greeks]]
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* Book 14: [[Hera]] helps [[Poseidon]] assist the [[Greeks]]
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* Book 15: [[Zeus]] stops [[Poseidon]] from interfering
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* Book 16: [[Patroclus]] borrows [[Achilles]]' armour, enters battle, kills [[Sarpedon]] and then is killed by [[Hector]]
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* Book 17: The armies fight over the body and armour of [[Patroclus]]
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* Book 18: [[Achilles]] learns of the death of [[Patroclus]] and receives a new suit of armour
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* Book 19: [[Achilles]] reconciles with [[Agamemnon]] and enters battle
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* Book 20: The gods join the battle; [[Achilles]] tries to kill [[Aeneas]]
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* Book 21: [[Achilles]] fights with the river [[Scamander]] and encounters [[Hector]] in front of the [[Trojan]] gates
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* Book 22: [[Achilles]] kills [[Hector]] and drags his body back to the [[Greeks|Greek]] camp
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* Book 23: Funeral games for [[Patroclus]]
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* Book 24: [[Achilles]] lets [[Priam]] have [[Hector]]'s body back, and he is burned on a pyre 
  
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The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer were pointed out quite well by 19th Century poet [[Matthew Arnold]]. The translator of Homer, he says, should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble (''On Translating Homer'', p. 9).
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===The ''Odyssey''===
  
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The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of [[hexameter]] verse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought, that is, the grammatical form of the sentence is guided by the structure of the verse; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the grammar, the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divided by tolerably uniform pauses produces a swift flowing movement, such as is rarely found when the periods have been constructed without direct reference to the meter. That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults of being either jerky or monotonous is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetical skill. The plainness and directness both of his thought and expression were doubtless qualities of his age.  
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The '''''Odyssey''''' ([[Greek language|Greek]]: Οδύσσεια, ''Odússeia'') is the second of the two great [[Hellenic civilization|Greek]] [[epic poetry|epic poems]] ascribed to [[Homer]]. The 11,300 line poem follows [[Odysseus]], king of [[Ithaca]], on his voyage home after a heroic turn in the [[Trojan War]].  It also tells the story of Odysseus' wife [[Penelope]] who struggles to remain faithful, and his son [[Telemachus]] who sets out to find his father. In contrast to the Iliad, with its extended sequences of battle and violence, all three are ultimately successful through use of [[cleverness]], and the support of the goddess [[Athena]]. This cleverness is most often manifested by Odysseus' use of [[disguise]] and, later, [[recognition]]. His disguises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal (telling the [[Cyclops]] [[Polyphemus]] that his name is "Nobody" then escaping after blinding the Cyclops because Polyphemus cries foul at the hands of "Nobody").
  
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Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression and plainness of thought, these are not the distinguishing qualities of the other canonical epic poets, [[Virgil]], [[Dante]], and [[Milton]]. (Dante mentions Homer in ''[[Divine Comedy#Inferno|Inferno]]'' IV,88, ranking him as ''Poet sovereign'' just above [[Horace]], [[Ovid]] and [[Virgil]].) On the contrary, these qualities belong rather to the humbler lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed. Homer does not have any use for the ornate complexity found in so many later epic poets; he is rough and plain-spoken in a way that is refreshingly contemporary. Moreover, as Arnold suggests, through this roughness there is a certain sense of nobility that shines through—though plain and unadorned and in some cases even redundant, one is still left in awe of the power of Homer's language, of the commanding, noble story that he is able to craft effortlessly, without need of the more advanced tropes and techniques that would develop after his time. It is this powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of poetry to which he has been compared.
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The ''Odyssey'' consists of twenty-four books and begins, as do many ancient epics, [[In medias res|in medias res]], meaning that the action begins in the middle of the plot, and that prior events are described through flashbacks or storytelling. The first four books, known as the Telemachiad], trace [[Telemachus]]' efforts to maintain control of the palace in the face of suitors who would have his inheritance, and his mother [[Penelope]]'s hand in marriage.  Failing that, Athena encourages him to find his father. In book 5, we find Odysseus near the end of his journey, a not entirely unwilling captive of the beautiful nymph [[Kalypso (mythology)|Calypso]], with whom he's spent 7 of his 10 lost years. Released from her wiles by the intercession of his patroness [[Athena]] and her father [[Zeus]], he departs.  His raft is destroyed by his nemesis [[Poseidon]], who is angry because Odysseus blinded his son, [[Polyphemus]]. When Odysseus washes up on Scheria, home to the [[Phaeacians]], the naked stranger is treated with traditional Greek hospitality even before he reveals his name. Odysseus satisfies the Phaeacians' curiosity, telling them - and us - of all his adventures since departing from Troy. This renowned, extended "flashback" leads him back to where he stands, his tale told. The shipbuilding Phaeacians finally loan him a ship to return to Ithaca, where, home at last, he regains his throne, reunites with his son, metes out justice to the suitors, and reunites with his faithful wife Penelope.
  
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To fully appreciate Homer, it is necessary to recognize the historical connection between the Iliad and Odyssey and the ballad literature which undoubtedly preceded them in ancient Greece. It may even be admitted that the swift-flowing movement, and the simplicity of thought and style, which we admire in the Iliad are an inheritance from these earlier, lost poetic forms. Even Homer's hexameter verse was first used earlier in ancient ballads and songs, only fragments of which now survive.
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====Book summaries====
  
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Like the French epics, such as the [[Chanson de Roland]], Homeric poetry is indigenous, and is distinguished by this fact, and by the ease of movement and the simplicity which result from it, from poets such as Virgil, Dante and Milton. It is also distinguished from them by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil's poetry a sense of the greatness of [[Roman Empire|Rome]] and Italy is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the chosen delicacy of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics are pervaded by the sentiment of fear and hatred of the [[Saracens]]. But in Homer the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political event; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad; the beginning of the war is not the beginning of the poem. Even the heroes are not the chief national heroes of Greece. The interest lies wholly in the picture of human action and feeling, and it is this human picture, and the attention paid to it by Homer, that have made his verses a lasting work of art.
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* Book 1: The gods agree that Odysseus has been marooned too long and deserves to be returned home. Athena sets out to help him, and on the way visits Telemachus.
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* Book 2: Penelope's suitors mock Telemachus. With Athena's help, he sets out for Pylos for news of his father.
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* Book 3: Telemachus converses with the sage Nestor, who suggests that he seek out Menalaus, who was also stranded after the war.
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* Book 4: Menelaus tells while he was stranded in Egypt he learned that Odysseus was marooned on the isle of Calypso.
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* Book 5: At the command of Zeus, Calypso lets Odysseus go free; Poseidon creates a terrible storm to thwart him.
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* Book 6: Odysseus washes ashore and is found by Nausicaa, princess of the Phaeacians.
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* Book 7: The king invites Odysseus to a banquet at the palace, and promises to help him so long as his guests are suitably entertained.
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* Book 8: During the banquet, Odysseus cannot hold back his sadness and begins to weep. The king implores him to tell the guests his name and where he comes from.
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* Book 9: Odysseus introduces himself as a hero, and begins a long flashback beginning with he and his men's capture by the Cyclops.
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* Book 10: Odysseus' men are attacked by giants after misguiding the ship. The survivors are captured by the sorceress Circe and turned into swine.
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* Book 11: Odysseus frees his men and escapes; they visit the underworld, to seek the advice of the dead prophet Tiresias.
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* Book 12: Odysseus' ship passes by the Sirens and the sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis; the ship lands on the Island of Apollo, and Odysseus' men sacrifice the god's sacred cattle; Zeus kills all of them except Odysseus, who washes ashore on the isle of Calypso.
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* Book 13: The king, in awe, orders a ship for Odysseus to be taken home at once; Athena, in disguise, guides him there. 
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* Book 14: Eumaeus, a kindly swineherd, is the first to meet Odysseus, although he does not recognize him.  
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* Book 15: Athena warns Telemachus of the suitors' ambush; meanwhile, Odysseus listens to Eumaeus tell the story of his life.
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* Book 16: Evading the suitors' ambush, Telemachus is led by Athena to the farmstead of Eumaeus to reunite with his father.
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* Book 17: Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus returns to his home and begs food from the suitors, who berate and abuse him.
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* Book 18: Irus, a real beggar and lackey for the suitors, arrives and eggs Odysseus into a fist fight; Odysseus wins easily.
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* Book 19: Odysseus has a long talk with Penelope but does not reveal his identity; Penelope has a maid of the house wash Odysseus feet, and she recognizes him by a scar on his leg; Odysseus implores her to be silent until he has finished his plot for revenge.
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* Book 20: Odysseus asks Zeus for a sign and receives it; a wandering prophet visits the suitors and warns them of their imminent doom.
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* Book 21: Penelope appears before the suitors and challenges them to string the bow of Odysseus; all of them fail, until the bow is passed to Odysseus.
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* Book 22: Telemachus, Eumaeus, and another faithful herdsman join Odysseus fully armed, and together they slay the suitors with bow and arrow.
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* Book 23: Odysseus purges the blood-drenched mansion with fire; the suitors' kinfolk learn what has happened.  
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* Book 24: Odysseus visits his father, King Laertes, working like a peasant at a vineyard; the suitors' kin gather around them and call for Odysseus to fight to the death; Laertes, Odysseus, and Telemachus meet the challenge, but before fighting can begin Athena stops everything and commands them all to live in peace.  
  
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==Historicity of the Iliad==
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==Historicity of the Iliad and Odyssey==
  
 
Another significant question regards the possible historical basis of the events that take place in Homer's poems. The commentaries on the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' written in the [[Hellenistic]] period began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists continue the tradition.
 
Another significant question regards the possible historical basis of the events that take place in Homer's poems. The commentaries on the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' written in the [[Hellenistic]] period began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists continue the tradition.

Revision as of 18:25, 2 April 2006

Bust of Homer in the British Museum

Homer (Greek ὍB.C.E.;ηρος Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and rhapsode traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad (Ἰλιάς) and the Odyssey (Ὀδύσσεια). He is without a doubt the most influential poet in all of Western literature. His works are some of the oldest surviving documents in any language. For all of antiquity and most of modernity, Homer's influence on literature has been unequalled. Although Homer established many techniques that are still used, his contribution to poetry is not so much about technicality as it is about content. Homer demonstrated better than anyone else up to his time what it was possible for poetry to do, what kind of stories it was possible to tell, and how to tell them in a way so gripping they would still be memorable after thousands of years. In this sense, Homer's contributions are not just to poetry, but to fiction as a whole.

Life

We know almost nothing of Homer's life; and, surprisingly, the writers of antiquity knew little more. No record of Homer's life, real or pretended, ever existed. Herodotus (2.53) maintains that Hesiod and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 B.C.E. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries B.C.E., but none of these statements has any claim to the character of external evidence. Other than a putative date of birth, the only thing which authors of antiquity agree upon is that Homer was blind, and that he probably lived in the Greek isles of the Mediterranean. Beyond this, nothing of Homer's life is known or even hinted at in his own writings.

Due to this dearth of information, scholars, for nearly a hundred years, have begun to question whether Homer ever really existed. Through textual research it has become clear that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century B.C.E. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical written text, and that the name "Homer" was later somehow attached to this amalgamation.

Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the classical scholar Richmond Lattimore, author of well regarded poetic translations to English of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?" Samuel Butler was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further speculated on by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter.

In Greek his name is Homēros, which is Greek for "hostage". This has led to the development of a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they were entrusted with remembering Greece's stock of epic poetry in the times before literacy came to the ancient world.

Most Classicists would agree that, whether there was ever such a composer as "Homer" or not, the Homeric poems are the product of an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (aoidoi). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat. It has hence been speculated that the Iliad and Odyssey could have been oral-formulaic poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases. Milman Parry and Albert Lord pointed out that an oral tradition to compose a poem of the length and complexity of the Iliad is not as far-fetched as it might seem; in a paper on the subject, Parry and Lord make reference to the recent discovery of an oral culture living in remote parts of contemporary Yugoslavia, where poet-rhapsodes compose on-the-spot epics using formulas remarkably similar to those found in Homer.

Poetry

Many poems that were ascribed to Homer in antiquity are now known to be spurious. Many other poems that Homer may have actually written have been lost. Of what survives, only the epic Iliad and Odyssey are considered to be authoritatively Homeric works. The two poems are closely related in style and language as well as content. Both poems are concerned with the Trojan War and its aftermath, and both involve the actions of epic heroes, such as Achilles and Odysseus, who are more like the gods of mythological stories than the three-dimensional characters of contemporary fiction.

With regards to Homer' poetic style, many of his most prominent characteristics were pointed out by 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold. "The translator of Homer," he writes, "should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble." (On ranslating Homer, p. 9).

In contrast to the other canonical epic poets Virgil, Dante, and Milton, Homer's poetry is characterized by plain-spoken language and straight-forward, rapidly moving narrative. The rapidity of Homer is probably a result of his use of dactylic hexameter, a meter which tends to sound hurried to most listeners (it has often been called the "hoofbeat" meter, in contrast to the iamb's "heartbeat.") Homer's plainness is probably an attribute of his time; being an oral poet, Homer could not afford to confuse himself or his audience with convoluted metaphors and digressions, and as a result his epics sound much like the work of a master story-teller. Homer's "nobility", as Arnold calls it, is probably the most difficult aspect of his poetry for contemporary readers to digest. Simply put, there are no moral dilemmas in Homer. The heroes of the epics often do things that today we would find horrifying; but there is never any doubt in their minds (or, for all we can discern, Homer's mind) that what they are doing is eminently right.

The Iliad

The Iliad narrates several weeks of action during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War, concentrating on the wrath of Achilles. It begins with the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon, and ends with the funeral rites of Hector. Neither the background and early years of the war (Paris' abduction of Helen from King Menelaus), nor its end (the death of Achilles), are directly narrated in the Iliad. The Iliad and the Odyssey are part of a larger cycle of epic poems of varying lengths and authors; only fragments survive of the other poems, however.

Of the many themes in the Iliad, perhaps the most important is the idea of what a hero is. Achilles is forced to make a choice between living a long life or dying young on the battlefield. For the Greeks of Homer's day, the latter would have been a better choice because death in battle leads to honor and glory which were the most important values of the day — more important than even right and wrong. One of the remarkable things about the Iliad is the way that Achilles, especially in Book 9, both embraces concepts of honor and glory and also rejects them.

Plot and Themes

In the midst of the war, Apollo has sent a plague against the Greeks, who captured the daughter of the priest Chryses and gave her as a prize to Agamemnon. He is compelled to restore her to her father. Out of pride, Agamemnon takes Briseis, whom the Athenians had given Achilles as a reward. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age, follows the advice of his mother, Thetis, and withdraws from battle in revenge and the allied Achaean (Greek) armies nearly lose the war.

In counterpoint to Achilles' pride and arrogance stands the Trojan prince Hector, son of King Priam, with a wife and child, who fights to defend his city and his family. The death of Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend or lover, at the hands of Hector, brings Achilles back to the war for revenge, and he slays Hector. Later Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles disguised as a beggar to ransom his son's body back, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.

The poem is a poignant depiction of the tragedy and agony of friendship and family destroyed by battle. The first word of the Greek poem is "Μηνιν" ("mēnin", meaning "wrath"); the main subject of the poem is the wrath of Achilles; the second word is "aeide", meaning "sing"; the poet is asking someone to sing; the third word is "thea", meaning "goddess"; the goddess here being the "Mousa" or "muse"; a literal translation of the first line would read "Wrath, sing goddess, of Peleus' son Achilles" or more intelligibly "Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles".

Book summaries

  • Book 1: Ten years into the war, Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel over a slave girl, Achilles withdraws from the war in anger
  • Book 2: Odysseus motivates the Greeks to keep fighting; Catalogue of Ships, Catalogue of Trojans and Allies
  • Book 3: Paris challenges Menelaus to single combat
  • Book 4: The truce is broken and battle begins
  • Book 5: Diomedes has an aristea and wounds Aphrodite and Ares
  • Book 6: Glaucus and Diomedes greet during a truce
  • Book 7: Hector battles Ajax
  • Book 8: The gods withdraw from the battle
  • Book 9: Agamemnon retreats: his overtures to Achilles are spurned
  • Book 10: Diomedes and Odysseus go on a spy mission
  • Book 11: Paris wounds Diomedes, and Achilles sends Patroclus on a mission
  • Book 12: The Greeks retreat to their camp and are besieged by the Trojans
  • Book 13: Poseidon motivates the Greeks
  • Book 14: Hera helps Poseidon assist the Greeks
  • Book 15: Zeus stops Poseidon from interfering
  • Book 16: Patroclus borrows Achilles' armour, enters battle, kills Sarpedon and then is killed by Hector
  • Book 17: The armies fight over the body and armour of Patroclus
  • Book 18: Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus and receives a new suit of armour
  • Book 19: Achilles reconciles with Agamemnon and enters battle
  • Book 20: The gods join the battle; Achilles tries to kill Aeneas
  • Book 21: Achilles fights with the river Scamander and encounters Hector in front of the Trojan gates
  • Book 22: Achilles kills Hector and drags his body back to the Greek camp
  • Book 23: Funeral games for Patroclus
  • Book 24: Achilles lets Priam have Hector's body back, and he is burned on a pyre

The Odyssey

The Odyssey (Greek: Οδύσσεια, Odússeia) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer. The 11,300 line poem follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his voyage home after a heroic turn in the Trojan War. It also tells the story of Odysseus' wife Penelope who struggles to remain faithful, and his son Telemachus who sets out to find his father. In contrast to the Iliad, with its extended sequences of battle and violence, all three are ultimately successful through use of cleverness, and the support of the goddess Athena. This cleverness is most often manifested by Odysseus' use of disguise and, later, recognition. His disguises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal (telling the Cyclops Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody" then escaping after blinding the Cyclops because Polyphemus cries foul at the hands of "Nobody").

The Odyssey consists of twenty-four books and begins, as do many ancient epics, in medias res, meaning that the action begins in the middle of the plot, and that prior events are described through flashbacks or storytelling. The first four books, known as the Telemachiad], trace Telemachus' efforts to maintain control of the palace in the face of suitors who would have his inheritance, and his mother Penelope's hand in marriage. Failing that, Athena encourages him to find his father. In book 5, we find Odysseus near the end of his journey, a not entirely unwilling captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso, with whom he's spent 7 of his 10 lost years. Released from her wiles by the intercession of his patroness Athena and her father Zeus, he departs. His raft is destroyed by his nemesis Poseidon, who is angry because Odysseus blinded his son, Polyphemus. When Odysseus washes up on Scheria, home to the Phaeacians, the naked stranger is treated with traditional Greek hospitality even before he reveals his name. Odysseus satisfies the Phaeacians' curiosity, telling them - and us - of all his adventures since departing from Troy. This renowned, extended "flashback" leads him back to where he stands, his tale told. The shipbuilding Phaeacians finally loan him a ship to return to Ithaca, where, home at last, he regains his throne, reunites with his son, metes out justice to the suitors, and reunites with his faithful wife Penelope.

Book summaries

  • Book 1: The gods agree that Odysseus has been marooned too long and deserves to be returned home. Athena sets out to help him, and on the way visits Telemachus.
  • Book 2: Penelope's suitors mock Telemachus. With Athena's help, he sets out for Pylos for news of his father.
  • Book 3: Telemachus converses with the sage Nestor, who suggests that he seek out Menalaus, who was also stranded after the war.
  • Book 4: Menelaus tells while he was stranded in Egypt he learned that Odysseus was marooned on the isle of Calypso.
  • Book 5: At the command of Zeus, Calypso lets Odysseus go free; Poseidon creates a terrible storm to thwart him.
  • Book 6: Odysseus washes ashore and is found by Nausicaa, princess of the Phaeacians.
  • Book 7: The king invites Odysseus to a banquet at the palace, and promises to help him so long as his guests are suitably entertained.
  • Book 8: During the banquet, Odysseus cannot hold back his sadness and begins to weep. The king implores him to tell the guests his name and where he comes from.
  • Book 9: Odysseus introduces himself as a hero, and begins a long flashback beginning with he and his men's capture by the Cyclops.
  • Book 10: Odysseus' men are attacked by giants after misguiding the ship. The survivors are captured by the sorceress Circe and turned into swine.
  • Book 11: Odysseus frees his men and escapes; they visit the underworld, to seek the advice of the dead prophet Tiresias.
  • Book 12: Odysseus' ship passes by the Sirens and the sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis; the ship lands on the Island of Apollo, and Odysseus' men sacrifice the god's sacred cattle; Zeus kills all of them except Odysseus, who washes ashore on the isle of Calypso.
  • Book 13: The king, in awe, orders a ship for Odysseus to be taken home at once; Athena, in disguise, guides him there.
  • Book 14: Eumaeus, a kindly swineherd, is the first to meet Odysseus, although he does not recognize him.
  • Book 15: Athena warns Telemachus of the suitors' ambush; meanwhile, Odysseus listens to Eumaeus tell the story of his life.
  • Book 16: Evading the suitors' ambush, Telemachus is led by Athena to the farmstead of Eumaeus to reunite with his father.
  • Book 17: Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus returns to his home and begs food from the suitors, who berate and abuse him.
  • Book 18: Irus, a real beggar and lackey for the suitors, arrives and eggs Odysseus into a fist fight; Odysseus wins easily.
  • Book 19: Odysseus has a long talk with Penelope but does not reveal his identity; Penelope has a maid of the house wash Odysseus feet, and she recognizes him by a scar on his leg; Odysseus implores her to be silent until he has finished his plot for revenge.
  • Book 20: Odysseus asks Zeus for a sign and receives it; a wandering prophet visits the suitors and warns them of their imminent doom.
  • Book 21: Penelope appears before the suitors and challenges them to string the bow of Odysseus; all of them fail, until the bow is passed to Odysseus.
  • Book 22: Telemachus, Eumaeus, and another faithful herdsman join Odysseus fully armed, and together they slay the suitors with bow and arrow.
  • Book 23: Odysseus purges the blood-drenched mansion with fire; the suitors' kinfolk learn what has happened.
  • Book 24: Odysseus visits his father, King Laertes, working like a peasant at a vineyard; the suitors' kin gather around them and call for Odysseus to fight to the death; Laertes, Odysseus, and Telemachus meet the challenge, but before fighting can begin Athena stops everything and commands them all to live in peace.

Historicity of the Iliad and Odyssey

Another significant question regards the possible historical basis of the events that take place in Homer's poems. The commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written in the Hellenistic period began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists continue the tradition.

The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the late 19th century began to convince scholars there was a historical basis for the Trojan War. Research (pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord) into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages began to convince scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until someone bothered to write them down. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and others, convinced scholars of a linguistic continuity between 13th century B.C.E. Mycenaean writings and the poems attributed to Homer.

It is probable, therefore, that the story of the Trojan War as reflected in the Homeric poems derives from a tradition of epic poetry founded on a war which actually took place. However, it is crucial not to underestimate the creative and transforming power of subsequent tradition: for instance, Achilles, the most important character of the Iliad, associated with Thessaly, has probably been added to a story where the attackers of Troy were from the Peloponnese.

Selected bibliography

Editions

(texts in Homeric Greek)

  • Demetrius Chalcondylas editio princeps, Florence, 1488
  • the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
  • Wolf (Halle, 1794-1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)
  • Spitzner (Gotha, 1832-1836)
  • Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858)
  • La Roche (Odyssey, 1867-1868; Iliad, 1873-1876, both at Leipzig)
  • Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889-1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 1907)
  • W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886-1888; 2nd ed. 1900-1902)
  • Merry and Ridciell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
  • Monro (Odyssey xiii.-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
  • Monro and Allen (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).
  • D.B. Monro and T.W. Allen 1917-1920, Homeri Opera (5 volumes: Iliad = 3rd edition, Odyssey = 2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0198145284, ISBN 0198145292, ISBN 0198145314, ISBN 0198145322, ISBN 0198145349
  • H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3487094584 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3487094592
  • M.L. West 1998-2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3598714319, ISBN 3598714351
  • P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3598714327
  • Ilias in Wikisource
  • Odyssee in Wikisource

English translations

General works on Homer

  • I. Morris and B. Powell 1997, A New Companion to Homer, Leiden. ISBN 9004099891
  • Robert Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer, CUP, Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0521012465
  • A.J.B. Wace and F.H. Stubbings 1962, A Companion to Homer, London. ISBN 0333071131

Influential readings and interpretations

  • E. Auerbach 1953, Mimesis, Princeton (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern), chapter 1. ISBN 069111336X
  • M.W. Edwards 1987, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, Baltimore. ISBN 0801833299
  • B. Fenik 1974, Studies in the Odyssey, Wiesbaden ('Hermes' Einzelschriften 30).
  • I.J.F. de Jong 1987, Narrators and Focalizers, Amsterdam/Bristol. ISBN 1853996580
  • G. Nagy 1979, The Best of the Achaeans, Baltimore. ISBN 0801860156

Commentaries

Trends in Homeric scholarship

"Classical" analysis

  • A. Heubeck 1974, Die homerische Frage, Darmstadt. ISBN 3534038649
  • R. Merkelbach 1969, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee (2nd edition), Munich. ISBN 3406032427
  • D. Page 1955, The Homeric Odyssey, Oxford.
  • U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1916, Die Ilias und Homer, Berlin.
  • F.A. Wolf 1795, Prolegomena ad Homerum, Halle. Published in English translation 1988, Princeton. ISBN 0691102473

Neoanalysis

  • M.E. Clark 1986, "Neoanalysis: a bibliographical review," Classical World 79.6: 379-94.
  • J. Griffin 1977, "The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer," Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39-53.
  • J.T. Kakridis 1949, Homeric Researches, London. ISBN 0824077571
  • W. Kullmann 1960, Die Quellen der Ilias (Troischer Sagenkreis), Wiesbaden. ISBN 3515002359

Homer and oral tradition

  • E. Bakker 1997, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse, Ithaca NY. ISBN 0801432952
  • J.M. Foley 1999, Homer's Traditional Art, University Park PA. ISBN 0271018704
  • G.S. Kirk 1976, Homer and the Oral Tradition, Cambridge. ISBN 0521213096
  • A.B. Lord 1960, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge MA. ISBN 0674002830
  • M. Parry 1971, The Making of Homeric Verse, Oxford. ISBN 019520560X

Dating the Homeric poems

External links

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