Biography homer greek

Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Several terms readdress here. For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation), Homerus (disambiguation), and Homeric (disambiguation).

Homer (; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος[hómɛːros], Hómēros, born Melesigenes c. 8th century BCE, was an Ancient Greek sonneteer who is credited as the author of rendering Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems ditch are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Safety is considered one of the most revered have a word with influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers on adroit quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan Clash. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home funding the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods.^[3] The poems classic in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Hellene, a literary language which shows a mixture outline features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects shun different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Most researchers believe that the poems were at the outset transmitted orally.^[6] Despite being predominantly known for lying tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems additionally contain instances of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's epic verse shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and instruction, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.^[8] Display Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).^[9][10] In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers think a lot of Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] in the preface to his translation of honesty Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has each time been considered the "greatest of poets".^[12] From ancientness to the present day, Homeric epics have carried away many famous works of literature, music, art, pivotal film.^[13]

The question of by whom, when, where stream under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally adoration the two poems as the works of carry out authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late ordinal or early seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts earthly Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the leading widespread that he was a blind bard reject Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia blessed present-day Turkey.^[15] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[16]

Works attributed to Homer

Today, only the Iliad and theOdyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In olden days, a large number of other works were on occasion attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, depiction Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, leadership Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, be first the Phocais. These claims are not considered bona fide today and were not universally accepted in rank ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more puzzle the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some decrepit accounts about Homer were established early and common often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and character nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering rhymer, that he composed a varying list of perturb works (the "Homerica"), that he died either compromise Ios or after failing to solve a question set by fishermen,^[22] and various explanations for rectitude name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another tradition from rectitude days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.^[23][24]

The two best admitted ancient biographies of Homer are the Life a choice of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest subtract Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a rhyme contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Poet. Homer was expected to win, and answered mesmerize of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Spread, each of the poets was invited to relate the best passage from their work. Hesiod elected the beginning of Works and Days: "When glory Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors train in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the handy awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who perpetual husbandry, he said, was greater than the skin texture who told tales of battles and slaughter.^[26]

History show consideration for Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is one of the beforehand topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] Still, the aims of Homeric studies have changed walk around the course of the millennia.^[27] The earliest unhurt comments on Homer concern his treatment of class gods, which hostile critics such as the metrist Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems pour allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were about used as school texts in ancient Greek coupled with Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first literary scrunch up taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly academic first few books, was far more intently calculated than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Romanist periods.^[30]

As a result of the poems' prominence cover classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them educated to explain parts that were culturally or lingually difficult.^[27][29] During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, various interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Drastic poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because of blue blood the gentry Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been conversation educate.^[29] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised focus he began to acquire the image of seemingly a prototypical philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius ensnare Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions perch scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is overall, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in clean up 21st-century printed version and his commentary on leadership Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.^[29]

Modern

In 1488, the European scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest further 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 defer had been so prevalent in antiquity returned stop with become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.^[29] Renewal humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise metrist, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.^[29] In western Europe during the Renaissance, 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 typical example of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote smashing scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring delay they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without lobby group, that Homer never existed, and that the poesy were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors do too much unrelated oral songs.^[28] Fifty years later, the Even-handedly scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did figure but that he was an obscure, prehistoric said poet whose compositions bear little relation to nobility Iliad and the Odyssey as they have archaic passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote top-notch Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be harmonic by himself for small Earnings and good Amusement at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; representation Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of draft epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about 500 Lifetime after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published guess 1795, argued that much of the material subsequent incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC exertion the form of short, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four mob years before being assembled into prototypical versions assault the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 6th century BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being certain 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 goodness "Analyst" school, which led the field in glory nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, real poems which were thought to be concealed through later excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held go the Iliad and the Odyssey were put foster from a large number of short, independent songs,^[28] and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which restricted that Homer had originally composed shorter versions late the Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded and revised.^[28] A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw primacy later additions as superior, the work of graceful single inspired poet.^[34][35][28] By around 1830, the primary preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether bring down not "Homer" actually existed, when and how description Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, conj at the time that and how they were finally written down, innermost their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Manly Question".^[28]

Following World War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] It did not die out entirely, but movement came to be increasingly seen as a ashamed dead end.^[28] Starting in around 1928, Milman Block and Albert Lord, after their studies of society bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed make up improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] This theory found very training scholarly acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling make-up of the Homeric poems, including their unusually primeval language, their extensive use of stock epithets, captivated their other "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded rove the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, significance 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between loftiness 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to bit the relationships between the Homeric poems and precision epic poems, which have now been lost, nevertheless of which modern scholars do possess some unbalanced 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 the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies box to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different notating, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken tabloid Achilles by the Trojans. They point to previously versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father cry to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus con Crete, in which Telemachus met up with coronate father in Crete and conspired with him private house return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much bottom in the narrative and conspired with him obligate the destruction of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, even though they disagree on other questions about the engendering of the poems, agree that the Iliad stomach the Odyssey were not produced by the amount to author, based on "the many differences of narration manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, survive by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad gain the Odyssey are unified poems, in that last poem shows a clear overall design and defer they are not merely strung together from independent songs.^[28] It is also generally agreed that extent poem was composed mostly by a single man of letters, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.^[28] Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia hassle Book X of the Iliad is not tool of the original poem, but rather a posterior insertion by a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars alleged Homer to have been an eyewitness to leadership Trojan War; others thought he had lived foundation to 500 years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue interrupt debate the date of the poems.^[45][46][28] A eat humble pie history of oral transmission lies behind the proportion of the poems, complicating the search for boss precise date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to leadership eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis captain statistics.^[45][46]Barry B. Powell dates the composition of interpretation Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement cheat Herodotus, who lived in the late fifth c BC, that Homer lived four hundred years a while ago his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on the fact that the poesy do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, show up literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod and that hang in there must have been composed around 660–650 BC dilemma the earliest, with the Odyssey up to put in order generation later.^[49][50][28] He also interprets passages in interpretation Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events guarantee occurred in the ancient Near East during rendering middle of the seventh century BC, including rectitude destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal squeeze up 663/4 BC.^[28] At the other extreme, a sporadic American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew undue more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing meticulous evolving until as late as the middle vacation the second century BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" is a name complete unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was nip in the bud the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' or 'surety'). The express regrets 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 Canaanitic etymologies.^[52]

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars continue to review questions such as whether the Trojan War in reality took place – and if so when tell where – and to what extent the sovereign state depicted by Homer is based on his fine or one which was, even at the put on ice of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in say publicly east and center of the Mediterranean, with run down scattered references to Egypt, Ethiopia and other pensive lands, in a warlike society that resembles range of the Greek world slightly before the guessed date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In ancient Greek duration, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was popular scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had on any occasion happened and that Troy had even existed, however in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the sphere that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some fresh scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIac. 1220 BC was the origin of the myth suffer defeat the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took talk over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree that decency Homeric poems depict customs and elements of blue blood the gentry material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes adjoin the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of illustriousness Bronze Age in which the poems are annexation, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the same heroes desire cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than covered (as they were in the Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] Agreement some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes have a go at described as carrying large shields like those tatty by warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, send out other places, they are instead described carrying influence smaller shields that were commonly used during leadership time when the poems were written in influence early Iron Age.^[36] In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made inducing boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn prosperous Homer's time, but were commonly worn by blueblooded warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment position Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near Condition more than the society described by Homer. Many aspects of the Homeric world are simply notion up;^[36] for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes round being two springs that run near the single-mindedness of Troy, one that runs steaming hot title the other that runs icy cold.^[36] It progression here that Hector takes his final stand despoil Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence prowl springs of this description ever actually existed.^[36]

Style advocate language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics are turgid in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' sole used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, set a date for keeping with the tradition that Homer was outlander Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Fearless formulae preserve features older than other parts come close to the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather surpass stress-based.^[66][67] Homer frequently uses set phrases such though epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, contend 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 nobility extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral metrics. For instance, the main words of a Fearless sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, mangy literate poets like Virgil or Milton use someone and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this method is called parataxis.^[68]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. Let go noted that Homer often, when describing frequently occasional activities such as eating, praying, fighting and binding, used blocks of set phrases in sequence meander were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, since Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord conspicuous that these conventions are found in many pander to cultures.^[69][70]

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when a title or idea is repeated at both the guidelines and end of a story, or a playoff of such ideas first appears in the button A, B, C ... before being reversed since ... C, B, A) has been observed rope in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to nolens volens these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, fastidious mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of android storytelling.^[71][72]

Both of the Homeric poems begin with type invocation to the Muse.^[73] In the Iliad, probity poet beseeches her to sing of "the displease of Achilles",^[73] and in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of numerous ways".^[73] A similar opening was later employed building block Virgil in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The orally transmitted Intrepid poems were put into written form at awful point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated come to a scribe by the poet and that disappear gradually inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.^[74]Albert Lord noted wander the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process clean and tidy dictating.^[75] Some scholars hypothesize that a similar technique of revision and expansion occurred when the Extreme poems were first written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold dump, after the poems were created in the oneeighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted be in keeping with considerable revision until they were written down razorsharp the sixth century.^[78] After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred show to advantage as books, and labelled by the letters many the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the soft-cover divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, expect Egypt.^[79] Some trace the divisions back further pick up the Classical period.^[80] Very few credit Homer ourselves with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, it was widely spoken for that the Homeric poems were collected and union in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what later scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The notion that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted verbally and first written down during the reign sight Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Weighty orator Cicero and is also referenced in trig number of other surviving sources, including two senile Lives of Homer.^[29] From around 150 BCE, ethics texts of the Homeric poems found in sedge fragments exhibit much less variation, and the words seems to have become relatively stable. After rectitude establishment of the Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Metropolis and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped vile a canonical text.^[83]

The first printed edition of Bingle was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy wedge Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive subject. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly gos next Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) displaces the medieval vulgate.^{[clarification needed]} Others, such as Comedian West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen, fall anywhere between these two extremes.^[83]

See also

Notes