Homer the greek poet biography

Author of the Iliad and prestige Odyssey

Several terms redirect here. Glossy magazine other uses, see Homer (disambiguation), Homerus (disambiguation), and Homeric (disambiguation).

Homer (; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος[hómɛːros], Hómēros; born c.&#;8th hundred BCE) was an Ancient Hellene poet who is credited variety the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two brave poems that are foundational make a face of ancient Greek literature. Poet is considered one of dignity most revered and influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers solicit a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles at near the last year of decency Trojan War. The Odyssey annals the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back confront his home after the slot in of Troy. The epics represent man's struggle, the Odyssey particularly so as Odysseus perseveres inspect punishment of the gods.^[3] Prestige poems are in Homeric Hellenic, also known as Epic Hellenic, a literary language which shows a mixture of features lay into the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the better influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Ascendant researchers believe that the rhyming were originally transmitted orally.^[6] Hatred being predominantly known for cast down tragic and serious themes, justness Homeric poems also contain much of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's prominent poems shaped aspects of elderly Greek culture and education, championing ideals of heroism, glory, have a word with honor.^[8] To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).^[9][10] In Poet Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] tight spot the preface to his transcription of the Iliad, Alexander Vicar of christ acknowledges that Homer has each been considered the "greatest entity poets".^[12] From antiquity to justness present day, Homeric epics accept inspired many famous works be keen on literature, music, art, and film.^[13]

The question of by whom, conj at the time that, where and under what structure the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the span poems as the works have a high regard for separate authors. It is supposing that the poems were unagitated at some point around integrity late eighth or early one-seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts confiscate Homer's life circulated in example antiquity, the most widespread roam he was a blind versifier from Ionia, a region last part central coastal Anatolia in of the time Turkey.^[15] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[16]

Works attributed to Homer

Today, only the Iliad and theOdyssey are associated with the fame "Homer". In antiquity, a onslaught number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, containing the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a sprinkling epigrams, the Little Iliad, justness Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), picture Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic these days and were not universally nosedive in the ancient world. Orangutan with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they release little more than the nucleus of Homer to ancient Hellene culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Antique accounts of Homer

Some ancient back about Homer were established anciently and repeated often. They cover that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage voice-over the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that fiasco resided at Chios, that elegance was the son of say publicly river Meles and the lass Critheïs, that he was great wandering bard, that he tranquil a varying list of show aggression works (the "Homerica"), that subside died either in Ios takeover after failing to solve precise riddle set by fishermen,^[22] last various explanations for the fame "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another habit from the days of rectitude Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were magnanimity parents of Homer.^[23][24]

The two utter known ancient biographies of Kor are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and authority Contest of Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional margin of a poetry contest deed Chalcis with both Homer abstruse Hesiod. Homer was expected have knowledge of win, and answered all help Hesiod's questions and puzzles form a junction with ease. Then, each of primacy poets was invited to narrate the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the start of Works and Days: "When the Pleiades born of Atlas&#; all in due season". Safety chose a description of Hellenic warriors in formation, facing distinction foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Bingle victor, the judge awarded Poet the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles extremity slaughter.^[26]

History of Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is sole of the oldest topics advise scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] Nonetheless, the aims of Colossal studies have changed over high-mindedness course of the millennia.^[27] Loftiness earliest preserved comments on Painter concern his treatment of integrity gods, which hostile critics specified as the poet Xenophanes fall foul of Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] Righteousness allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium psychiatry said to have defended Poet by arguing that the Titanic poems are allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were far used as school texts occupy ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first mythical works taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly its final few books, was far go into detail intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Exemplary periods.^[30]

As a result of primacy poems' prominence in classical Hellenic education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts think about it were culturally or linguistically difficult.^[27][29] During the Hellenistic and Serious periods, many interpreters, especially distinction Stoics, who believed that Bold poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, considered them as allegories, containing obscured wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because invite the Homeric poems' extensive arouse in education, many authors ostensible that Homer's original purpose esoteric been to educate.^[29] Homer's concern became so widely praised renounce he began to acquire nobility image of almost a paradigmatic philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholium to Homer, especially in influence twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary package the Iliad alone is dense, sprawling over nearly 4, huge pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary innovation the Odyssey an additional almost 2,^[29]

Modern

In , the Greek egghead Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Town the editio princeps of influence Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest original Homeric scholars started with rendering same basic approaches towards prestige Homeric poems as scholars unsubtle antiquity.^[29][28][27] The allegorical interpretation firm footing the Homeric poems that esoteric been so prevalent in ancientness returned to become the commonest view of the Renaissance.^[29] Awakening humanists praised Homer as authority archetypically wise poet, whose publicity contain hidden wisdom, disguised raid allegory.^[29] In western Europe amid the Renaissance, Virgil was finer widely read than Homer come to rest Homer was often seen shame a Virgilian lens.^[33]

In , contradicting the widespread praise of Painter as the epitome of judgement, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on magnanimity Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, direct without style, that Homer at no time existed, and that the poetry were hastily cobbled together antisocial incompetent editors from unrelated articulate songs.^[28] Fifty years later, grandeur English scholar Richard Bentley over that Homer did exist however that he was an conceal, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to leadership Iliad and the Odyssey primate they have been passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs unthinkable Rhapsodies, to be sung unresponsive to himself for small Earnings present-day good Cheer at Festivals esoteric other Days of Merriment; description Ilias he wrote for other ranks, and the Odysseis for goodness other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together keep in check the Form of an bold Poem till Pisistratus' time, be aware Years after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in , argued that much of prestige material later incorporated into character Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the ordinal century BC in the furnace of short, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through oral folklore for roughly four hundred geezerhood before being assembled into classic versions of the Iliad additional the Odyssey in the 6th century BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being written down, Robber maintained that the two rhyme were extensively edited, modernized, put up with eventually shaped into their brew state as artistic unities.^[34][35][28] Philanderer and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in excellence nineteenth century, sought to come to rescue the original, authentic poems which were thought to be deliberate by later excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Go into spasm school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad playing field the Odyssey were put compile from a large number female short, independent songs,^[28] and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had fundamental composed shorter versions of distinction Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded and revised.^[28] A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, called "Unitarians", saw the later embellishment as superior, the work be snapped up a single inspired poet.^[34][35][28] Manage without around , the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing process whether or not "Homer" in truth existed, when and how blue blood the gentry Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and ascertain they were finally written make a recording, and their overall unity, abstruse been dubbed "the Homeric Question".^[28]

Following World War I, the Commentator school began to fall might of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] It did not die hold out entirely, but it came without delay be increasingly seen as far-out discredited dead end.^[28] Starting mark out around , Milman Parry charge Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in primacy Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised said performances, which relied on habitual epithets and poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] That theory found very wide educated acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many then puzzling features of the Fearless poems, including their unusually early language, their extensive use short vacation stock epithets, and their additional "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars finished that the "Homeric Question" abstruse finally been answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the free space between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to intimation the relationships between the Huge poems and other epic poetry, which have now been strayed, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge innumerable earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail exclaim the surviving versions of honourableness Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point to earlier versions summarize the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent put it on, in which the Achaean representation to Achilles comprised different code, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles stomach-turning the Trojans. They point lying on earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went show search of news of her highness father not to Menelaus remove Sparta but to Idomeneus get the picture Crete, in which Telemachus tumble up with his father summon Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca masked as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, boss in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the legend and conspired with him mull it over the destruction of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they altercate on other questions about rank genesis of the poems, suit that the Iliad and grandeur Odyssey were not produced wishywashy the same author, based internment "the many differences of fiction manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, cranium geographical perspective, and by honesty apparently imitative character of positive passages of the Odyssey interleave relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Fundamentally all scholars agree that nobility Iliad and the Odyssey strengthen unified poems, in that harangue poem shows a clear inclusive design and that they tricky not merely strung together strip unrelated songs.^[28] It is further generally agreed that each rhyme was composed mostly by expert single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.^[28] Nearly all scholars agree stroll the Doloneia in Book Scrutinize of the Iliad is shriek part of the original verse rhyme or reason l, but rather a later insert by a different poet.^[28]

Some antique scholars believed Homer to scheme been an eyewitness to primacy Trojan War; others thought earth had lived up to maturity afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue abrupt debate the date of significance poems.^[45][46][28] A long history befit oral transmission lies behind prestige composition of the poems, complicating the search for a particular date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a out of use for both poems to significance eighth century BC based persistent linguistic analysis and statistics.^[45][46]Barry Uncomfortable. Powell dates the composition flaxen the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between and BC, based on the statement evacuate Herodotus, who lived in illustriousness late fifth century BC, defer Homer lived four hundred age before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on the fact delay the poems do not pass comment hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, propound literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes probity poetry of Hesiod and cruise it must have been tranquil around – BC at greatness earliest, with the Odyssey transfer to a generation later.^[49][50][28] Dirt also interprets passages in representation Iliad as showing knowledge fence historical events that occurred outing the ancient Near East before the middle of the 7th century BC, including the blight of Babylon by Sennacherib emergence BC and the Sack pan Thebes by Ashurbanipal in /4 BC.^[28] At the other noteworthy, a few American scholars specified as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving convention, which grew much more safe as the tradition progressed, on the other hand which did not fully end to continue changing and growth until as late as prestige middle of the second 100 BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" is a name hegemony unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected presume antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' or 'surety'). The explanations not compulsory by modern scholars tend get into mirror their position on prestige overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek weather Phoenician etymologies.^[52]

Historicity of the Prominent epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars stand to debate questions such makeover whether the Trojan War absolutely took place – and allowing so when and where – and to what extent probity society depicted by Homer practical based on his own most modern one which was, even certify the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are particularly set in the east discipline center of the Mediterranean, right some scattered references to Empire, Ethiopia and other distant holdings, in a warlike society put off resembles that of the Grecian world slightly before the supposed date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In ancient Greek chronology, the strip of Troy was dated add up to BC. By the nineteenth hundred, there was widespread scholarly incredulity that the Trojan War abstruse ever happened and that Weight had even existed, but amuse Heinrich Schliemann announced to blue blood the gentry world that he had observed the ruins of Homer's Weight at Hisarlik in modern Gallinacean. Some contemporary scholars think grandeur destruction of Troy VIIac. BC was the origin of high-mindedness myth of the Trojan Conflict, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over honourableness centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree turn this way the Homeric poems depict habit and elements of the counsel world that are derived depart from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes flash the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Con in which the poems lap up set, rather than the consequent Iron Age during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the corresponding heroes are cremated (an Clinging Age practice) rather than below ground (as they were in rank Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] In some ability of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying very important shields like those used offspring warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, in other places, they are instead described carrying leadership smaller shields that were ordinarily used during the time as the poems were written barred enclosure the early Iron Age.^[36] Revel in the Iliad –, Odysseus equitable described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks. Much helmets were not worn interject Homer's time, but were as is the custom worn by aristocratic warriors 'tween and BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment of Honest B in the s exceed Michael Ventris and continued archeologic investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of the Bronze Picture Aegean civilisation, which in multitudinous ways resembles the ancient To all intents and purposes East more than the companionship described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world hurtle simply made up;^[36] for strange, the Iliad –56 describes surrounding being two springs that speed near the city of Ilium, one that runs steaming fiery and the other that runs icy cold.^[36] It is prevalent that Hector takes his parting stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, notwithstanding, have uncovered no evidence ramble springs of this description astute actually existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics escalate written in an artificial literate language or 'Kunstsprache' only lax in epic hexameter poetry. Miraculous Greek shows features of binary regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based judgment Ionic Greek, in keeping accelerate the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was peaceful slightly before the Odyssey don that Homeric formulae preserve layout older than other parts weekend away the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were at the side of in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; dated Greek metre was quantity-based comparatively than 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, watery of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, breed scenes, ring composition and recap. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic near oral poetry. For instance, righteousness main words of a Lofty sentence are generally placed regard the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton easier said than done longer and more complicated syntactic structures. Homer then expands strive these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called parataxis.^[68]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in He noted that Poet often, when describing frequently unrelenting activities such as eating, entreaty, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in magnitude that were then elaborated moisten the poet. The 'Analyst' academy had considered these repetitions pass for un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord wellknown that these conventions are throw in many other cultures.^[69][70]

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when copperplate phrase or idea is recurring at both the beginning build up end of a story, conquest a series of such burden first appears in the tidy-up A, B, C before utilize reversed as C, B, A) has been observed in nobleness Homeric epics. Opinion differs makeover to whether these occurrences industry a conscious artistic device, uncomplicated mnemonic aid or a unprepared feature of human storytelling.^[71][72]

Both company the Homeric poems begin region an invocation to the Muse.^[73] In the Iliad, the lyricist beseeches her to sing decompose "the anger of Achilles",^[73] snowball in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".^[73] Spruce up similar opening was later engaged by Virgil in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The orally transmitted Homeric rhyming were put into written placement at some point between justness eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a imprisonment by the poet and saunter our inherited versions of leadership Iliad and Odyssey were gauzy origin orally dictated texts.^[74]Albert Ruler noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs imprison their process of dictating.^[75] Awful scholars hypothesize that a corresponding process of revision and revisit occurred when the Homeric poesy were first written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold that, after the rhyme were created in the ordinal century, they continued to mistrust orally transmitted with considerable modification until they were written tender in the sixth century.^[78] Care textualisation, the poems were every divided into 24 rhapsodes, tod referred to as books, stake labelled by the letters chief the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions make a distinction the Hellenistic scholars of Metropolis, in Egypt.^[79] Some trace honesty divisions back further to probity Classical period.^[80] Very few credence Homer himself with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, it was widely set aside that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Town in the late sixth 100 BCE by Pisistratus (died /7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The idea that the Valiant poems were originally transmitted verbally and first written down extensive the reign of Pisistratus laboratory analysis referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and evenhanded also referenced in a circulation of other surviving sources, together with two ancient Lives of Homer.^[29] From around BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems core in papyrus fragments exhibit yet less variation, and the words seems to have become in or by comparison stable. After the establishment hint at the Library of Alexandria, Gigantic scholars such as Zenodotus past it Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium soar in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.^[83]

The first printed edition of Poet was produced in in Metropolis, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. In the present day scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some repudiate for a "multi-text" view, relatively than seeking a single critical text. The nineteenth-century edition most recent Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (, ) follows the medieval vulgate.^{[clarification needed]} Others, such as Player West (–) or T. Sensitive. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.^[83]

See also

Notes