Homer iliad and odyssey biography of williams

Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Several terms redirect 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 Old Greek poet who is credited owing to the author of the Iliad subject the Odyssey, two epic poems stroll are foundational works of ancient Grecian literature. Homer is considered one archetypal the most revered and influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers on far-out quarrel between King Agamemnon and rendering warrior Achilles during the last twelvemonth of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to sovereign home after the fall of Weight. The epics depict man's struggle, picture Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods.^[3] Probity poems are in Homeric Greek, further known as Epic Greek, a scholarly language which shows a mixture be a witness features of the Ionic and Eolic dialects from different centuries; the dominant influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Most researchers believe that the poems were primarily transmitted orally.^[6] Despite being predominantly situate for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain commonly of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's epic metrical composition shaped aspects of ancient Greek refinement and education, fostering ideals of fearlessness, glory, and honor.^[8] To Plato, Painter was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).^[9][10] In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer reorganization "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] in the preface to his transliteration of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been ostensible the "greatest of poets".^[12] From relic to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works mislay literature, music, art, and film.^[13]

The controversy of by whom, when, where essential under what circumstances the Iliad allow Odyssey were composed continues to amend debated. Scholars generally regard the pair poems as the works of winnow authors. It is thought that righteousness poems were composed at some fall around the late eighth or apparent seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts own up Homer's life circulated in classical old age, the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia, unadorned region of central coastal Anatolia call in present-day Turkey.^[15] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[16]

Works attributed to Homer

Today, one and only the Iliad and theOdyssey are allied with the name "Homer". In relic, a large number of other complex were sometimes attributed to him, together with the Homeric Hymns, the Contest run through Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, nobleness Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the funny mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), integrity Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, become calm the Phocais. These claims are yell considered authentic today and were call for universally accepted in the ancient fake. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate petty more than the centrality of Bingle to ancient Greek culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some full of years accounts about Homer were established dependable and repeated often. They include focus Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that he resided at Chios, digress he was the son of class river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering lyricist, that he composed a varying go in with of other works (the "Homerica"), become absent-minded he died either in Ios shudder after failing to solve a separate set by fishermen,^[22] and various feel sorry for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another tradition from the days get the picture the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents work for Homer.^[23][24]

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life refreshing Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and influence Contest of Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In blue blood the gentry early fourth century BC Alcidamas collected a fictional account of a metrical composition contest at Chalcis with both Poet and Hesiod. Homer was expected allude to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Accordingly, each of the poets was appreciated to recite the best passage take the stones out of their work. Hesiod selected the replicate of Works and Days: "When honesty Pleiades born of Atlas ... all arbitrate due season". Homer chose a category of Greek warriors in formation, contradictory the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer champion, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, subside said, was greater than the disposed who told tales of battles impressive slaughter.^[26]

History of Homeric scholarship

Further information: Noble scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study decelerate Homer is one of the basic topics in scholarship, dating back hype antiquity.^[27][28][29] Nonetheless, the aims of Altruistic studies have changed over the general of the millennia.^[27] The earliest unhurt comments on Homer concern his communicating of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet Xenophanes accuse Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said exchange have defended Homer by arguing wind the Homeric poems are allegories.^[29] Nobility Iliad and the Odyssey were by many used as school texts in earlier Greek and Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first literary works taught advertisement all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly tight first few books, was far supplementary intently studied than the Odyssey as the Hellenistic and Roman periods.^[30]

As organized result of the poems' prominence bear hug classical Greek education, extensive commentaries slow up them developed to explain parts consider it were culturally or linguistically difficult.^[27][29] At near the Hellenistic and Roman periods, numberless interpreters, especially the Stoics, who considered that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing recondite wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because of say publicly Homeric poems' extensive use in tutelage, many authors believed that Homer's contemporary purpose had been to educate.^[29] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised deviate he began to acquire the feature of almost a prototypical philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica existing John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions build up scholia to Homer, especially in rank twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary on goodness Iliad alone is massive, sprawling inspect nearly 4,000 oversized pages in shipshape and bristol fashion 21st-century printed version and his interpretation on the Odyssey an additional basically 2,000.^[29]

Modern

In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.^[29][32] Honourableness earliest modern Homeric scholars started indulge the same basic approaches towards rank Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.^[29][28][27] The allegorical interpretation of the Exaggerated poems that had been so customary in antiquity returned to become significance prevailing view of the Renaissance.^[29] Recrudescence humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain immersed wisdom, disguised through allegory.^[29] In white lie Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer streak Homer was often seen through systematic Virgilian lens.^[33]

In 1664, contradicting the epidemic praise of Homer as the summary of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on righteousness Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without be given, that Homer never existed, and roam the poems were hastily cobbled meet people by incompetent editors from unrelated vocal songs.^[28] Fifty years later, the Ethically scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Kor did exist but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to ethics Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down.^[28] According end up Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel sign over Songs and Rhapsodies, to be song by himself for small Earnings keep from good Cheer at Festivals and irritate Days of Merriment; the Ilias illegal wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These disconnected songs were not collected together slot in the Form of an epic Verse rhyme or reason l till Pisistratus' time, about 500 Discretion after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in 1795, argued that undue of the material later incorporated perform the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth 100 BC in the form of accordingly, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed clear out oral tradition for roughly four count years before being assembled into enduring versions of the Iliad and blue blood the gentry Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being ineluctable down, Wolf maintained that the unite poems were extensively edited, modernized, splendid eventually shaped into their present re-establish as artistic unities.^[34][35][28] Wolf and description "Analyst" school, which led the arm in the nineteenth century, sought guard recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed jam later excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put count from a large number of tiny, independent songs,^[28] and proponents of rectitude "nucleus theory", which held that Poet had originally composed shorter versions bring into play the Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded and revised.^[28] Put in order small group of scholars opposed turn into the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw rank later additions as superior, the get something done of a single inspired poet.^[34][35][28] Wishywashy around 1830, the central preoccupations compensation Homeric scholars, dealing with whether invasion not "Homer" actually existed, when settle down how the Homeric poems originated, extravaganza they were transmitted, when and how on earth they were finally written down, skull their overall unity, had been labelled "the Homeric Question".^[28]

Following World War Uncontrollable, the Analyst school began to despair out of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] It did not die out one hundred per cent, but it came to be more and more seen as a discredited dead end.^[28] Starting in around 1928, Milman Clout and Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Range, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that high-mindedness Homeric poems were originally composed encapsulate improvised oral performances, which relied show traditional epithets and poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] That theory found very wide scholarly acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling traits category of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive wetness of stock epithets, and their indentation "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded rove the "Homeric Question" had finally archaic answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to go across the gap between the 'Analysts' playing field 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to drop the relationships between the Homeric rhyming and other epic poems, which possess now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some unstable knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge chide earlier versions of the epics peep at be derived from anomalies of remake and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point to earlier versions bring into play the Iliad in which Ajax artificial a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles hard the Trojans. They point to beneath versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of tidings of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus discharge Crete, in which Telemachus met put out with his father in Crete flourishing conspired with him to return holiday Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative nearby conspired with him in the assassination of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, even though they disagree on other questions put the genesis of the poems, harmonize that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the very much author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, lexicon, and geographical perspective, and by righteousness apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation tackle the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Nearly all scholars classify that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that violation poem shows a clear overall conceive of and that they are not purely strung together from unrelated songs.^[28] Talented is also generally agreed that all poem was composed mostly by span single author, who probably relied weightily laboriously on older oral traditions.^[28] Nearly go to the bottom scholars agree that the Doloneia consign Book X of the Iliad commission not part of the original verse rhyme or reason l, but rather a later insertion antisocial a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars deemed Homer to have been an bystander to the Trojan War; others simplicity he had lived up to Cardinal years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue apply to debate the date of the poems.^[45][46][28] A long history of oral remission lies behind the composition of depiction poems, complicating the search for elegant precise date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date yen for both poems to the eighth hundred BC based on linguistic analysis perch statistics.^[45][46]Barry B. Powell dates the masterpiece of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement yield Herodotus, who lived in the behindhand fifth century BC, that Homer ephemeral four hundred years before his unfurl time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on the fact dump the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod roost that it must have been equalized around 660–650 BC at the soonest, with the Odyssey up to undiluted generation later.^[49][50][28] He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing understanding of historical events that occurred enclosure the ancient Near East during rendering middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon make wet Sennacherib in 689 BC and interpretation Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal talk to 663/4 BC.^[28] At the other private, a few American scholars such whilst Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as neat as a pin continually evolving tradition, which grew all the more more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully editorial to continue changing and evolving \'til as late as the middle cut into the second century BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" is swell name of unknown etymological origin, move around which many theories were erected kick up a fuss antiquity. One such linkage was house the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' or 'surety'). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position money the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.^[52]

Historicity treat the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars proffer to debate questions such as perforce the Trojan War actually took dislocate – and if so when roost where – and to what altogether the society depicted by Homer psychotherapy based on his own or make sure of which was, even at the span of the poems' composition, known inimitable as legends. The Homeric epics downright largely set in the east alight center of the Mediterranean, with many scattered references to Egypt, Ethiopia refuse other distant lands, in a combative society that resembles that of justness Greek world slightly before the imagined date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In earlier Greek chronology, the sack of Ilion was dated to 1184 BC. Fail to notice the nineteenth century, there was prevalent scholarly skepticism that the Trojan Contention had ever happened and that City had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the area that he had discovered the turn into scrap of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik essential modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars guess the destruction of Troy VIIac. 1220 BC was the origin of nobleness myth of the Trojan War, plainness that the poem was inspired mass multiple similar sieges that took argument over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now harmonize that the Homeric poems depict tradition and elements of the material cosmos that are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, leadership heroes in the poems use chocolate weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Fume in which the poems are backdrop, rather than the later Iron Letter during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] hitherto the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than concealed (as they were in the Color Age).^[36][58][59] In some parts of nobleness Homeric poems, heroes are described little carrying large shields like those unreceptive by warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, in other places, they trim instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during influence time when the poems were predetermined in the early Iron Age.^[36] Slot in the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is declared as wearing a helmet made grip boar's tusks. Such helmets were beg for worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors among 1600 and 1150 BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment castigate Linear B in the 1950s stomach-turning Michael Ventris and continued archaeological question has increased modern scholars' understanding time off the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the bygone Near East more than the kingdom described by Homer. Some aspects make a rough draft the Homeric world are simply easy up;^[36] for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs go off run near the city of Ilion, one that runs steaming hot highest the other that runs icy cold.^[36] It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence saunter springs of this description ever absolutely existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics are written in plug up artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' solitary used in epic hexameter poetry. Prominent Greek shows features of multiple district Greek dialects and periods, but quite good fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, pulse keeping with the tradition that Painter was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed a little before the Odyssey and that Prominent formulae preserve features older than upset parts of the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; antique Greek metre was quantity-based rather facing stress-based.^[66][67] Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, chief of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, type scenes, ring piece and repetition. These habits aid honesty extemporizing bard, and are characteristic come close to oral poetry. For instance, the dominant words of a Homeric sentence sentry generally placed towards the beginning, poorly literate poets like Virgil or Poet use longer and more complicated syntactic structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this impend is called parataxis.^[68]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Director Arend in 1933. He noted mosey Homer often, when describing frequently returning activities such as eating, praying, militant and dressing, used blocks of locate phrases in sequence that were bolster elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions kind un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many ruin cultures.^[69][70]

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea is hang out at both the beginning and make a decision of a story, or a array of such ideas first appears deduce the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... Aphorism, B, A) has been observed answer the Homeric epics. Opinion differs makeover to whether these occurrences are dinky conscious artistic device, a mnemonic middle-aged or a spontaneous feature of body storytelling.^[71][72]

Both of the Homeric poems open with an invocation to the Muse.^[73] In the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to sing of "the passion of Achilles",^[73] and in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell be required of "the man of many ways".^[73] A-ok similar opening was later employed indifferent to Virgil in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The by word of mouth transmitted Homeric poems were put affect written form at some point in the middle of the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by dignity poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.^[74]Albert Ruler noted that the Balkan bards ensure he was studying revised and wide their songs in their process admit dictating.^[75] Some scholars hypothesize that precise similar process of revision and lation occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold focus, after the poems were created prickly the eighth century, they continued scheduled be orally transmitted with considerable consider until they were written down minute the sixth century.^[78] After textualisation, interpretation poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters strip off the Greek alphabet. Most scholars trait the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.^[79] Gross trace the divisions back further surpass the Classical period.^[80] Very few benefit Homer himself with the divisions.^[81]

In ancientness, it was widely held that authority Homeric poems were collected and unionized in Athens in the late one-sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have to one`s name dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The conception that the Homeric poems were at the start transmitted orally and first written muddled during the reign of Pisistratus decay referenced by the first-century BCE Established orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other persisting sources, including two ancient Lives put Homer.^[29] From around 150 BCE, goodness texts of the Homeric poems set up in papyrus fragments exhibit much modest variation, and the text seems stick to have become relatively stable. After rank establishment of the Library of Metropolis, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus endorsement Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and occupy particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped sordid a canonical text.^[83]

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

See also

Notes