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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'.[36] Thus, in addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, 'exceptional' epics which organize their respective themes on a 'massive scale'[37], 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 to his authorship. However, 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.
Problems of authorship
The idea that Homer was responsible for just the two outstanding epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, only won consensus by 350 B.C.E.[38]. While many find it unlikely that both epics were composed by the same person, others argue that the stylistic similarities are too consistent to support the theory of multiple authorship. One view which attempts to bridge the differences holds that the Iliad was composed by 'Homer' in his maturity, while the Odyssey was a work of his old age. The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric Hymns, and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Most scholars agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BCE. 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, still support the idea that Homer was a real person. Since nothing is known of the life of this Homer, the common joke, often recycled also in disputes about the authorship of plays ascribed to Shakespeare, has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name,"[1][2]. 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 and Andrew Dalby in Rediscovering Homer.[39]
Independently of the question of single authorship, there is near-universal agreement, after the work of Milman Parry[40] that the Homeric poems are dependent on 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 contain many formulaic phrases typical of extempore epic traditions; even entire verses are at times repeated. Milman Parry and his student Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in a predominantly oral cultural milieu. 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 authors who 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 BCE).
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Homeric studies
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Reconstitution of the world described by the Odyssey
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 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 emphasized 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
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Main article: Homeric Greek
The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter.
Homeric style
Aristotle in his Poetics, remarks that Homer was unique among the poets of his time for focusing on only a single, unified theme or action in the epic cycle.[41] The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer have been 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'.[42]
The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of the 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 the periods have been 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 poetical skill. The plainness and directness, both of thought and of expression, which characterize Homer 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.
Statue of Homer outside the Bavarian State Library in Munich.
Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not the distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets, Virgil, Dante[43], 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 resulting simplicity, is 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 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 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 event; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad, and even the heroes portrayed 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, Homer's works are often referred to as 'dramas'.
History and the Iliad
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Greece according to the Iliad.
The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik in the late 19th century began to provide evidence to scholars that 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 they are written down.[40] The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris (and others) convinced others 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. 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, is strongly associated with southern Thessaly, but his legendary figure is interwoven into a tale of war whose kings were from the Peloponnese. Tribal wanderings were frequent, and far-flung, ranging over much of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean.[44] The epic manages to weave brilliantly the disiecta membra of these distinct tribal narratives, exchanged among clan bards, into a monumental tale in which Greeks join collectively to do battle on the distant plains of Troy.
Hero cult
In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several cities. A shrine devoted to Homer, the Homereion was built in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC. This shrine is described in Aelian's 3rd century work Varia Historia. 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 poet is shown flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo, god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses. Zeus, the king of the gods, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly how the Greeks considered Homer not just a great poet, but the divinely inspired source of all literature.[45]
Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus and Smyrna, which were among the city-states that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. Strabo (14.1.37) records a Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another Homereion.[46]
Transmission and Publication
Though evincing many features characteristic of oral poetry, at some point, the Iliad and the Odyssey were committed to writing. The Greek script, adapted from a Phoenician syllabary around 800 BC, made possible the notation of the complex rhythms and vowel clusters that make up hexametric verse. Homer's poems appear to have been recorded shortly after the alphabet's invention; an inscription from Ischia in the Bay of Naples c. 740 BC appears to refer to a text of the Iliad and illustrations seemingly inspired by the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey are found on Samos, Mykonos, and in Italy in the first quarter of the seventh century BC. We have little information about the early condition of the Homeric poems, but Alexandrian editors stabilized the text in the second century BC, from which all modern texts descend.
In late antiquity knowledge of Greek declined in Latin-speaking western Europe, and along with it knowledge of Homer's poems. It is not until the fifteenth century that Homer's work began to be read once more in Italy. The first printed edition appeared in 1488.
See also
Homeric topics
Works ascribed to Homer
Notable Modern Homeric Scholars
References
- , Martin West, "The Invention of Homer," Classical Quarterly 49 (1999) 364.
- , Herodotus 2.53.
- , Barbara Graziosi, The Invention of Homer (Cambridge 2002) 98-101.
- , Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le monde d'Homère, Perrin 2000, p19
- , Hesiod was traditionally believed to be earlier than 'Homer', but few modern scholars still accord the former chronological priority. See M.L.West (ed.) Hesiod's Theogony, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1966 pp.40,46ff.
- , Gregory Nagy, "Homeric Poetry and Problems of Multiformity: The "Panathenaic Bottleneck," Classical Philology 96 (2001) 109-119.
- , Alfred Heubeck, in Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, J.B.Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey, vol.1 Clarendon Press, Oxford 1988, p.3
- , Michael Silk, Homer:The Iliad, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987 p.5
- , Lucian, Verae Historiae 2.20, cited and tr.Barbara Graziosi‚Inventing Homer:The Early Reception of Epic,’ Cambridge University Press, 2002 p.127
- , Parke, Herbert W. (1967). Greek Oracles, pages 136-137 citing the Certamen, 12.
- , There were seven of these, in addition to an account of a bardic competititon between Homer and Hesiod.F.Stoessl,'Homeros'in Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike in fünf Bänden, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 1979, Bd.2, p.1202
- , Kirk, G.S. (1965). Homer and the Epic: A Shortened Version of the Songs of Homer. London: Cambridge University Press, page 190.
- , Kirk, ibid.p.190
- , Homêreôn was one of the names for a month in the calender of Ios. H.G.Liddell, R.Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev.ed.Sir Henry Stuart-Jones, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968 ad loc
- , Kirk, op.cit.pp.191f.; G.S.Kirk,The Songs of Homer, Cambridge University Press, 1962 pp.272ff.))
- , Barry B. Powell, ‘Did Homer sing at Lefkandi?’, Electronic Antiquity, July 1993 vol.1, No.2
- , Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, p.307
- , 'The probability is that 'Homer' was not the name of a historical Greek poet but the imaginary ancestor of the Homeridai; such guild-names in -idai and -adai are not normally based on the name of an historical person'. M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon:West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1997 p.622. West hazards a conjectural Phoenician prototype for Homer's name, *benê ômerîm,('sons of speakers'), i.e. professional tale-tellers.
- , P.Chantraine, dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Klincksieck, Paris 1968, vol.2 (3-4) p.797 ad loc.
- , H.G.Liddell, R.Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev.ed.Sir Henry Stuart-Jones, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968 ad loc.
- , Pseudo-Herodotus, Vita Homeri1.3 in Thomas W. Allen, Homeri Opera, Tomus V,(1912) 1946 p.194. Cf. Lycophron, Alexandra, l.422
- , Homeric Hymns3:172-3
- , Thucidides, The Peloponnesian War 3:104
- , Odyssey, 8:64ff.
- , Barbara Graziosi,Inventing Homer:The Early Reception of Epic,’ Cambridge University Press, 2002 p.133
- , Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, John Hopkins University POress, Blatimore and London 1979 pp296-300
- , M.L.West (ed.), Hesiod Theogony,Clarendon Press, Oxford 1966 on line 39, p.170
- , Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, ibid.,p.
- , Filippo Càssola (ed.) Inni Omerici, Mondadori, Milan 1975 p.xxxiii
- , Marcello Durante, 'II nome di Omero', in Rendiconti Accademia Lincei, XII, 1957 pp.94-111
- , Marcello Durante, Sulla preistoria della tradizione poetica greca,Edizioni dell'Ateneo, Rome 1971 2 vols. vol.2 pp.185-204,esp.pp194ff.
- , Iliad,2.595
- , Hesiod, Works and Days,654-5; Martin P. Nilsson, Homer & Mycenae(12933) University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972 pp.207ff.
- , Joachim Latacz, Homer:His Art and His World, tr. James P.Holoka, Uni of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1996 p.29
- , Barbara Graziosi, ibid. esp. p.134
- , Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic', 4th.ed.ibid.p.93
- , William G.Thalman, Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Greek Epic Poetry, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1984 p.119
- , Gilbert Murray The Rise of the Greek Epic, 4th ed.1934, Oxford University Press reprint 1967 p.299
- , Mary Ebbott "Butler's Authoress of the Odyssey: gendered readings of Homer, then and now," (Classics@: Issue 3).
- , a b Adam Parry (ed) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1987
- , Aristotle, Poetics, 1451a 16-29. Cf. Aristotle, ‘On the Art of Poetry’ in T.S.Dorsch (tr.), Aristotle, Horace, Longinus:Classical Literary Criticism, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965 ch.8 pp.42-43
- , Matthew Arnold, 'On Translating Homer' (Oxford Lecture 1861) in Lionel Trilling (ed.) The Portable Matthew Arnold,(1949) Viking Press, New York 1956 pp.204-228 p.211
- , Dante has Virgil introduce Homer, with a sword in hand, as poeta sovrano (sovreign poet), walking ahead of Horace, Ovid and Lucan. Cf. Inferno IV,88
- , Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1907 pp.182f., slightly expanded in the 4th.ed.(1934) 1960 pp.206ff.
- , Morgan, Llewelyn, 1999. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 30.
- , Zanker, Paul, 1996. The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, Alan Shapiro, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Selected bibliography
Editions
(texts in Homeric Greek)
- Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488
- the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
- Th. Ridel, Strassbourg, ca. 1572, 1588 and 1592.
- 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)
- W. Walter Merry and James Riddell (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 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. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2
- M.L. West 1998-2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9, ISBN 3-598-71435-1
- P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7
- Ilias in Wikisource
Interlinear translations
English translations
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This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
General works on Homer
- Pierre Carlier, Homère, Fayard 1999. ISBN 2-213-60381-2
- Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le monde d'Homère, Perrin 2000. ISBN 2-262-01181-8
- Jacqueline de Romilly, Homère, Presses Universitaire de France, 5th ed. 2005. ISBN 2-13-054830-X
- J. Latacz 2004, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-926308-6; 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig 2005 (in Spanish 2003 ISBN 84-233-3487-2, modern Greek 2005 ISBN 960-16-1557-1)
- Robert Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer, CUP, Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-01246-5
- I. Morris and B. B. Powell 1997, A New Companion to Homer, Leiden. ISBN 90-04-09989-1
- B. B. Powell 2007, "Homer," 2nd edition. Oxford. ISBN 978-1-4051-5325-5
- Wace, A.J.B.; F.H. Stubbings (1962). A Companion to Homer. ISBN 0-333-07113-1.
Influential readings and interpretations
- E. Auerbach 1953, Mimesis, Princeton (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern), chapter 1. ISBN 0-691-11336-X
- M.W. Edwards 1987, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, Baltimore. ISBN 0-8018-3329-9
- B. Fenik 1974, Studies in the Odyssey, Wiesbaden ('Hermes' Einzelschriften 30).
- I.J.F. de Jong 1987, Narrators and Focalizers, Amsterdam/Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-658-0
- G. Nagy 1980, "The Best of the Achaeans", Baltimore. ISBN 978-0801860157
Commentaries
- Iliad:
- P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London. ISBN 1-85399-657-2
- G. S. Kirk (gen. ed.) 1985-1993, The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-28171-7, ISBN 0-521-28172-5, ISBN 0-521-28173-3, ISBN 0-521-28174-1, ISBN 0-521-31208-6, ISBN 0-521-31209-4
- J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002-, Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868-1913) (2 volumes published so far, of an estimated 15), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-74307-6, ISBN 3-598-74304-1
- N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Exeter. ISBN 0-85989-684-6
- M.W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-89855-5
- Odyssey:
Trends in Homeric scholarship
- "Classical" analysis
- A. Heubeck 1974, Die homerische Frage, Darmstadt. ISBN 3-534-03864-9
- R. Merkelbach 1969, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee (2nd edition), Munich. ISBN 3-406-03242-7
- 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 0-691-10247-3
- 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 0-8240-7757-1
- W. Kullmann 1960, Die Quellen der Ilias (Troischer Sagenkreis), Wiesbaden. ISBN 3-515-00235-9
- Rainer Friedrich, Formular Economy in Homer. The Poetics of the Breaches (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), Pp. 159 (Hermes Einzelschriften, 100).
- Homer and oral tradition
- E. Bakker 1997, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse, Ithaca NY. ISBN 0-8014-3295-2
- J.M. Foley 1999, Homer's Traditional Art, University Park PA. ISBN 0-271-01870-4
- G.S. Kirk 1976, Homer and the Oral Tradition, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-21309-6
- A.B. Lord 1960, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge MA. ISBN 0-674-00283-0
- M. Parry 1971, The Making of Homeric Verse, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-520560-X
- B. B. Powell, 1991, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, ISBN 0-521-58907-X
Dating the Homeric poems
External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about:
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Homer |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
?µ???? |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Author |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
ca. 8th century BC |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
|
| DATE OF DEATH |
|
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
(Source: Wikipedia) |
|