Homer - Identity and authorship, Ancient accounts of Homer, Homeric studies, Homeric dialect, Homeric style
Greek poet, to whom are attributed the great epics, the Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulysses's wanderings. The place of his birth is doubtful, probably a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor, and his date, once put as far back as 1200 BC, from the style of the poems attributed to him, is now thought to be much later. Arguments have long raged over whether his works are in fact by the same hand, or have their origins in the lays of Homer and his followers (Homeridae), and there seems little doubt that the works were originally based on current ballads which were much modified and extended. Like much orally transmitted poetry, they are characterized by much use of repeated phrases, lines, epithets, and even paragraphs. Of the true Homer, nothing is positively known. The so-called Homeric hymns are certainly of a later age.
| Homer (Greek Ὅμηρος Hómēros) | |
|---|---|
| Bust of Homer in the British Museum | |
| Born | ca. 8th century BC |
Homer (Greek Ὅμηρος Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and aoidos ("singer") traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. whether Homer himself was a historical individual who lived during this period is debated by scholars.
Identity and authorship
Tradition holds that Homer was blind, and various Ionian cities claim to be his birthplace, but otherwise there is a lot known about Homer's life. There is concrete evidence that shows that Homer was a real person.
Greek Homēros means "hostage."
It has repeatedly been questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both 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.
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.
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,".
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). 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?
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.
Ancient accounts of Homer
Many passages in archaic and classical Greek poets and prose authors mention Homer or allude to him, and the eight preserved Lives of Homer purport to give the poet's birthplace and background. Modern scholarship, however, generally concludes that these accounts give no solid evidence on which to base a theory of Homer's identity.
Homeric studies
The study of Homer is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity. 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.
Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric question), which were schools of thought that emphasised on the one hand the inconsistencies, on the other the artistic unity, in Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theory, which is the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis, which is the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.
Homeric dialect
The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek.
Homeric style
The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer have been well articulated by Matthew Arnold: "the translator of Homer," he says, "should above all be penetrated by a sense of the four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid;
The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of the hexameter verse. 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 poetical skill. The plainness and directness, both of thought and of expression, which characterize Homer were doubtless qualities of his age;
Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not the distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets, Virgil, Dante, and Milton (Dante in fact mentions Homer in Inferno IV,88, ranking him as 'Poet sovereign' just above Horace, Ovid and Virgil). 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.
It may be recognized that there is an historical connection between the Iliad and Odyssey and the ballad literature which undoubtedly preceded them in Greece. But between earlier days and the time of Homer we must place the cultivation of epic poetry as an art.
Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigenous, and by the ease of movement and its resulting simplicity, is distinguishable from the works of Dante, Milton, and Virgil. but in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic. So far as can be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emotion, and of drama - indeed, Homer's works are oft referred to as 'dramas.'
Historicity of the Iliad
Another significant question regards the possible historical basis of the poems.
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 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.
Hero cult
In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several cities. A shrine devoted to Homer or Homereion was built in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC. He described how Ptolemy had "placed in a circle around the statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a painting of the poet by the artist Galaton, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspect of Oceanus as the source of all poetry.
A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt, depicts the apotheosis of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife/sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated Homer. The relief demonstrates vividly how the Greeks considered Homer not just a great poet, but the divinely inspired source of all literature.
Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus and Smyrna, which were among the city-states that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another Homereion.
Selected bibliography
Editions
(texts in Homeric Greek)
Demetrius Chalcondylas editio princeps, Florence, 1488 the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517) Wolf (Halle, 1794-1795; ISBN 0-19-814528-4, ISBN 0-19-814529-2, ISBN 0-19-814531-4, ISBN 0-19-814532-2, ISBN 0-19-814534-9 H. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2 M.L. ISBN 3-598-71431-9, ISBN 3-598-71435-1 P. ISBN 3-598-71432-7 Ilias in Wikisource Odyssee in Wikisource
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