In the Western classical tradition Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics are at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.
Easton Press Homer books
The Odyssey - 100 Greatest Books Ever Written - 1978
The Iliad - 100 Greatest Books Ever Written - 1979
Franklin Library Homer books
The Iliad - 100 Greatest Books of All Time - 1976
The Odyssey - The Great Books of the Western World - 1978
The Iliad - The Great Books of the Western World - 1978
Who was Homer?
Homer is a Greek name, attested in Aeolic-speaking areas, and although nothing definite is known about him, traditions arose purporting to give details of his birthplace and background. The satirist Lucian, in his True History, describes him as a Babylonian called Tigranes, who assumed the name Homer when taken "hostage" (homeros) by the Greeks. When the Emperor Hadrian asked the Oracle at Delphi about Homer, the Pythia proclaimed that he was Ithacan, the son of Epikaste and Telemachus, from the Odyssey. These stories were incorporated into the various Lives of Homer compiled from the Alexandrian period onwards. Homer is most frequently said to be born in the Ionian region of Asia Minor, at Smyrna, or on the island of Chios, dying on the Cycladic island of Ios. A connection with Smyrna seems to be alluded to in a legend that his original name was Melesigenes ("born of Meles", a river which flowed by that city), with his mother the nymph Kretheis. Internal evidence from the poems gives evidence of familiarity with the topography and place-names of this area of Asia Minor, for example Homer refers to meadow birds at the mouth of the Caystros (Iliad 2.459ff.), a storm in the Icarian sea (Iliad 2.144ff.), and mentions that women in Maeonia and Caria stain ivory with scarlet (Iliad 4.142).
The association with Chios dates back to at least Semonides of Amorgos, who cited a famous line in the Iliad (6.146) as by "the man of Chios". An eponymous bardic guild, known as the Homeridae (sons of Homer), or Homeristae ('Homerizers') appears to have existed there, tracing descent from an ancestor of that name, or upholding their function as rhapsodes or "lay-stitchers" specialising in the recitation of Homeric poetry. Wilhelm Dörpfeld suggests that Homer had visited many of the places and regions which he describes in his epics, such as Mycenae, Troy, the palace of Odysseus at Ithaca and more. According to Diodorus Siculus, Homer had even visited Egypt.
The poet's name is homophonous with ὅμηρος (hómēros), "hostage" (or "surety"), which is interpreted as meaning "he who accompanies; he who is forced to follow", or, in some dialects, "blind". The led to many tales that he was a hostage or a blind man. Traditions which assert that he was blind may have arisen from the meaning of the word in both Ionic, where the verbal form ὁμηρεύω (homēreúō) has the specialized meaning of "guide the blind", and the Aeolian dialect of Cyme, where ὅμηρος (hómēros) is synonymous with the standard Greek τυφλός (typhlós), meaning 'blind'. The characterization of Homer as a blind bard goes back to some verses in the Delian Hymn to Apollo, the third of the Homeric Hymns, verses later cited to support this notion by Thucydides. The Cumean historian Ephorus held the same view, and the idea gained support in antiquity on the strength of a false etymology which derived his name from ho mḕ horṓn (ὁ μὴ ὁρῶν: "he who does not see"). Critics have long taken as self-referential a passage in the Odyssey describing a blind bard, Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacian king, who recounts stories of Troy to the shipwrecked Odysseus.
Many scholars take the name of the poet to be indicative of a generic function. Gregory Nagy takes it to mean "he who fits (the Song) together". ὁμηρέω (homēréō), another related verb, besides signifying "meet", can mean "(sing) in accord/tune". Some argue that "Homer" may have meant "he who puts the voice in tune" with dancing. Marcello Durante links "Homeros" to an epithet of Zeus as "god of the assemblies" and argues that behind the name lies the echo of an archaic word for "reunion", similar to the later Panegyris, denoting a formal assembly of competing minstrels.
Some Ancient Lives depict Homer as a wandering minstrel, like Thamyris or Hesiod, who walked as far as Chalkis to sing at the funeral games of Amphidamas. We are given the image of a "blind, begging singer who hangs around with little people: shoemakers, fisherman, potters, sailors, elderly men in the gathering places of harbour towns". The poems give us evidence of singers at the courts of the nobility. Scholars are divided as to which category, if any, the court singer or the wandering minstrel, the historic "Homer" belonged.
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. 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 over time to us, first orally and later in writing.
Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric Question), schools of thought which emphasized on the one hand the inconsistencies in, and on the other the artistic unity of, Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theory, the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis, the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.
Period
For modern scholars "the date of Homer" refers not to an individual, but to the period when the epics were created. The consensus is that "the Iliad and the Odyssey date from around the 8th century BC, the Iliad being composed before the Odyssey, perhaps by some decades," i.e. earlier than Hesiod, the Iliad being the oldest work of Western literature. Over the past few decades, some scholars have argued for a 7th century BC date. Oliver Taplin believes that the conclusion of modern researchers is that Homer dates to between 750 to 650 BC. Some of those who argue that the Homeric poems developed gradually over a long period of time give an even later date for the composition of the poems; according to Gregory Nagy for example, they only became fixed texts in the 6th century BC. The question of the historicity of Homer the individual is known as the "Homeric question"; there is no reliable biographical information handed down from classical antiquity. The poems are generally seen as the culmination of many generations of oral story-telling, in a tradition with a well-developed formulaic system of poetic composition. Some scholars, such as Martin West, claim that "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name."
Works attributed to Homer
The Greeks of the sixth and early fifth centuries understood by "Homer", generally, "the whole body of heroic tradition as embodied in hexameter verse". Thus, in addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, there are "exceptional" epics which organize their respective themes on a "massive scale". Many other works were credited to Homer in antiquity, including the entire Epic Cycle. The genre included further poems on the Trojan War, such as the Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Cypria, and the Epigoni, as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), and the Margites were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely. Two other poems, the Capture of Oechalia and the Phocais were also assigned Homeric authorship, but the question of the identities of the authors of these various texts is even more problematic than that of the authorship of the two major epics.
The Odyssey
The
Odyssey is an epic poem by Homer, recounting the wanderings of the
Greek hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy, Like the Iliad, it is
regarded as one of the greatest books ever produced. Particularly
noteworthy in the Odyssey are the majesty of language, the saga like
descriptions of Odysseus' desperate efforts to return to his home in
Ithaca, and the detailed declination of the hero's character.
Homer's narrative begins with the victorious Greeks returning to their
homes after sacking Troy. Odysseus' ships are driven by a storm on the
coast of Thrace, where he plunders the land of the Chicones but loses a
number of his crew. When he re embarks, a north wind blows his vessels
to the country of the Lotophagi, on the coasts of Libya, where some of
the companions of Odysseus eat the wondrous fruit and wish to rest
forever. However their leader compels them to leave the land, and,
sailing north again, they touch at the Island of Goats, where Odysseus
leaves his fleet. Thence, with one ship, he proceeds to the land of the
Cyclopes, where occurs the adventure in the cave of Polyphemus. With his
reunited fleet he now visits the island of AEolus, ruler of the winds,
who gives him a favoring breeze and the unfavorable winds tied in a
skin. His companions, in search of treasure, open the skin, and at once
they are swept back to island from which they are now sternly excluded.
They then reach the land of the Laestrygonians, a race of cannibals who
destroy all the ships but one, in which Odysseus escapes, landing next
on the island of AEaea, inhabited by the sorceress Circe. After a year's
sojourn there he is sent by Circe to the Kingdom of Hades, to inquire
about his return from the seer Tiresias. Tiresias tells Odysseus the
implacable enmity of the sea god Poseidon, whose son, Polyphemus,
Odysseus has blinded, but encourages him at the same time with assurance
that he will yet reach Ithaca in safety, if he does not meddle with the
herds of the sun god Helios in Thrinacia.
Odysseus next passes in safety the perilous island of Sirens, but, when
he sails between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis, Scylla devours six
of his companions. He next comes to Thrinacia, where his crew insists on
landing; while they are storm bound and while Odysseus is asleep, they
kill, in spite of their oath, some of the cattle of Helios. When they
sail away a fierce storm arises and Zeus sends forth a flash of
lightning that destroys the ship. Everyone on board is drowned except
Odysseus, who clings to the mast and is finally washed ashore on the
island of Ogygia, the abode of the nymph Calypso, by whom he is held for
seven years. The nymph offers him immortality if he will remain, but
his love for his wife Penelope and longing for his home is too strong,
and at the entreaty of his special guardian, Athena, Zeus sends Hermes,
messenger of the gods, to command his release. Sailing eastward in a
skiff of his own building, he is seen by the implacable Poseidon, who
rouses against him a terrible storm which wrecks his skiff. He barely
escapes, by the aid of the sea goddess Leucothea to the land of the
Phaeacians. Naked and worn by fatigue, Odysseus falls asleep, but is
found by Nausicaa, daughter of the King, Alcinous; she receives him
kindly and brings him to the city. Entering the palace under Athena's
protection, he is entertained by the King, who promises him safe convoy
to his home. On the magic Phaeacian ship he falls asleep, and is landed,
at Ithaca, with the rich presents of the Phaeacians, while still
unconscious.
Disguised as a beggar, he goes to the hut of the swineherd Eumaeus, and
there meets and reveals himself to his son Telemachus. The next day he
is brought by Eumaeus to the palace, where he is recognized only by his
old dog, Argus, and is harshly treated by the suitors of his wife, who
during his long absence have been living riotously on his estate. After
an interview with the unsuspecting Penelope, to whom he foretells her
husbands return, he is recognized by his old nurse. Eurycleia, whom he
binds to silence. When the suitors all fail to string the great bow, the
test Penelope has proposed for her suitors, Odysseus takes it, easily
strings it, and shoots the arrow through a row of twelve axes. Then,
aided by Telemachus, Eumaeus, and the cowherd Philaetius, he slays all
the insolent suitors. The last book of the Odyssey records his
recognition by his father, Laertes, and a final reconciliation with the
friends of the suitors, brought about by Athena's aid.
The Iliad
The
Iliad is an epic poem by the Greek poet Homer, recounting the siege and
destruction of Troy during the Trojan War, around 1200 B.C. The Iliad
is regarded by literary historians as the first great Greek poetic work
in Greek literature, and has been considered for generations as one of
the great supreme masterpieces of world literature. Especially notable
in the Iliad are the heroic action, the dramatic emotional crises
engendered by by the clashing personalities of the Iliad's characters,
and the imaginative beauty of it's language. The exact date that the
Iliad was written is uncertain, however it is believed by some to have
been written in the 10th century B.C. The first text of the Iliad is
known to have appeared in the 6th century B.C. in Athens, where it was
recited at the annual festival of Panathenea by Professional
Rhapsodists. This mystery is famous as part of the Homeric Question
which involves the question of the true identity of Homer.
The text of the Iliad as it exists today dates from writtings around 150
B.C. in Alexandria, and is divided into the twenty four books of the
Iliad.
Historical Aspects of the Poems
Another significant question regards the tales' possible historical basis. The commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written in the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC) 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 BC Mycenaean writings and the epic poems attributed to Homer.
Identity and authorship
Tradition holds that Homer was blind, and various Ionian cities claim to be his birthplace, but otherwise little is known about his life. There is considerable scholarly debate about whether Homer was a real person, or the name given to one or more oral poets who sang traditional epic material.
Greek Homēros means "hostage." There is a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means "of hostages," i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. These men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, hence they would not get killed in battles. Thus they were entrusted with remembering the area's stock of epic poetry, to remember past events, in the times before literacy came to the area.
It has repeatedly been questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both the Iliad and the Odyssey. While many find it unlikely that the Odyssey was written by one person, others find that the epic is generally in the same writing style, and is too consistent to support the theory of multiple authors. The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric hymns, and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey. Most accounts of the "Illiad" and the "Odyssey" are generally accepted to be written by Homer.
Homer was even at one time credited with the entire Epic Cycle, which included further poems on the Trojan War as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War," Βατραχομυομαχία), and the Margites were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely.
Most scholars generally agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. 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.
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,". Samuel Butler argued that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter.
Most Classicists would agree that, whether or not there was ever such a composer as "Homer," 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. Could the Iliad and Odyssey 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 an exclusively oral culture. The crucial words are "oral" and "traditional." Parry started with "traditional." The repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and they were useful to the poet in composition. He called these chunks of repetitive language "formulas."
Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis," wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe between the 8th and 6th centuries. The Greek alphabet was introduced in the early 8th century, so that it is possible that Homer himself was of the first generation of rhapsodes that were also literate. More radical Homerists, such as Gregory Nagy, contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC).
Homeric style
Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that Homer was unique among the poets of his time, focusing on a single unified theme or action in the epic cycle.
The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer are well articulated by Matthew Arnold:
The translator of Homer 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.
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, or 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 syntax—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 periods are constructed without direct reference to the metre. That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults, that is, without becoming either fluctuant or monotonous, is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetic skill. The plainness and directness of both thought and expression which characterise him were doubtless qualities of his age, but the author of the Iliad (similar to Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed this gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.
Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets Virgil, Dante,[86] and Milton. On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed. The proof that Homer does not belong to that school—and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad poetry—is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems and, as regards style, by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold: the quality of nobleness. It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad poetry and popular epic.
Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigenous and, by the ease of movement and its resultant simplicity, distinguishable from the works of Dante, Milton and Virgil. It is also distinguished from the works of these artists by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil's poetry, a sense of the greatness of Rome and Italy is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the considered delicacy of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics display sentiments of fear and hatred of the Saracens; but, in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political events; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad; and even the protagonists are not comparable to the chief national heroes of Greece. So far as can be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emotion, and of drama; indeed, his works are often referred to as "dramas".
Source and additional information: Homer