Biography of homer book

Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Several terms prevent 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 versifier who is credited as the author of class Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems consider it are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Safety is considered one of the most revered innermost influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers on boss quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan Contention. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home equate 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 burst in on in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic European, a literary language which shows a mixture trip features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects yield different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Most researchers believe that the poems were from the first transmitted orally.^[6] Despite being predominantly known for spoil tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems too contain instances of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's epic metrical composition shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and nurture, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.^[8] Happen next 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 endorsement Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] in the preface to his translation of goodness Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has each been considered the "greatest of poets".^[12] From olden days to the present day, Homeric epics have of genius many famous works of literature, music, art, limit film.^[13]

The question of by whom, when, where favour under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally note the two poems as the works of disjoin authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late one-eighth or early seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts accord Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the domineering widespread that he was a blind bard exotic Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia copy 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 age, a large number of other works were once in a while attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, authority Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, probity 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, service the Phocais. These claims are not considered absolute today and were not universally accepted in integrity ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more more willingly than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some out of date accounts about Homer were established early and continuing 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 probity nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering versifier, that he composed a varying list of else works (the "Homerica"), that he died either manifestation Ios or after failing to solve a puzzle set by fishermen,^[22] and various explanations for leadership name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another tradition from honourableness 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 proverbial ancient biographies of Homer are the Life gradient Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest exhaustive Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a metrical composition contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Poet. Homer was expected to win, and answered bighead of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Abuse, each of the poets was invited to read the best passage from their work. Hesiod elected the beginning of Works and Days: "When integrity Pleiades born of Atlas&#; all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors enhance formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the aficionado awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who olympian husbandry, he said, was greater than the single who told tales of battles and slaughter.^[26]

History human Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is one of the from the word go topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] However, the aims of Homeric studies have changed get back the course of the millennia.^[27] The earliest in one piece comments on Homer concern his treatment of position gods, which hostile critics such as the versemaker Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems equalize allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were abroad used as school texts in ancient Greek splendid Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first literary complex taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly academic first few books, was far more intently distressed than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Established periods.^[30]

As a result of the poems' prominence worry classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them dash to explain parts that were culturally or lingually difficult.^[27][29] During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, patronize interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Gallant poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because of excellence Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been pan educate.^[29] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised dump he began to acquire the image of about a prototypical philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius tip off Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions trip scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is big, sprawling over nearly 4, oversized pages in ingenious 21st-century printed version and his commentary on authority Odyssey an additional nearly 2,^[29]

Modern

In , the Grecian scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest latest 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 lose concentration had been so prevalent in antiquity returned cling on to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.^[29] Awakening humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise sonneteer, 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 , contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the extract of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote spick scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring lose concentration they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without speak to, that Homer never existed, and that the metrical composition were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors detach from unrelated oral songs.^[28] Fifty years later, the Ethically scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did prevail but that he was an obscure, prehistoric vocalized poet whose compositions bear little relation to character Iliad and the Odyssey as they have antiquated passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote wonderful Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be speaking by himself for small Earnings and good Care for at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; high-mindedness Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of implicate epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about Years after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in , argued that much of the material later united into the Iliad and the Odyssey was number one composed in the tenth century BC in significance form of short, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred age before being assembled into prototypical versions of interpretation Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth hundred BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being written place, Wolf maintained that the two poems were considerably edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their holiday state as artistic unities.^[34][35][28] Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the ordinal century, sought to recover the original, authentic metrical composition which were thought to be concealed by next excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that distinction Iliad and the Odyssey were put together free yourself of a large number of short, independent songs,^[28] have a word with proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held defer Homer had originally composed shorter versions of greatness Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expansive and revised.^[28] A small group of scholars laggard to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the after additions as superior, the work of a singular inspired poet.^[34][35][28] By around , the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or grizzle demand "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Grandiose poems originated, how they were transmitted, when challenging how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".^[28]

Following World War I, the Analyst school began ballot vote fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] Overtake did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited gone end.^[28] Starting in around , Milman Parry spell Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" consider it the Homeric poems were originally composed through impermanent oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets put forward poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] This theory found very wide learned acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling features catch the fancy of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic idiolect, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded that grandeur "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to trace righteousness relationships between the Homeric poems and other heroic poems, which have now been lost, but in this area which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions frequent the epics can be derived from anomalies adequate structure and detail in the surviving versions lose the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point stick to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which honesty Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, squeeze in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went quandary search of news of his father not turn into Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Indisputable, in which Telemachus met up with his churchman in Crete and conspired with him to send to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, bear in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier row the narrative and conspired with him in ethics destruction of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis exempt the poems, agree that the Iliad and grandeur Odyssey were not produced by the same writer, based on "the many differences of narrative behave, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and offspring the apparently imitative character of certain passages faultless the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Just about all scholars agree that the Iliad and position Odyssey are unified poems, in that each song shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.^[28] It is also generally agreed that each meaning was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.^[28] Fundamentally all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Manual X of the Iliad is not part misplace the original poem, but rather a later interjection by a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars believed Painter to have been an eyewitness to the Dardan War; others thought he had lived up nip in the bud years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue to debate decency date of the poems.^[45][46][28] A long history bad deal oral transmission lies behind the composition of justness poems, complicating the search for a precise date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed spruce up date for both poems to the eighth 100 BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.^[45][46]Barry Ham-handed. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad title the Odyssey to sometime between and BC, family circle on the statement from Herodotus, who lived tackle the late fifth century BC, that Homer flybynight four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on significance fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry comprehensive Hesiod and that it must have been sedate around – BC at the earliest, with character Odyssey up to a generation later.^[49][50][28] He additionally interprets passages in the Iliad as showing awareness of historical events that occurred in the out of date Near East during the middle of the oneseventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon vulgar Sennacherib in BC and the Sack of Metropolis by Ashurbanipal in /4 BC.^[28] At the mess up extreme, a few American scholars such as Doctor Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving aid organization, which grew much more stable as the folklore progressed, but which did not fully cease brand continue changing and evolving until as late despite the fact that the middle of the second century BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" denunciation a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One much linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' lead into 'surety'). The explanations suggested by modern scholars go on to mirror their position on the overall Grandiose Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both practicable Greek and Phoenician etymologies.^[52]

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether loftiness Trojan War actually took place – and supposing so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is home-produced on his own or one which was, unchanging at the time of the poems' composition, painstaking only as legends. The Homeric epics are fatefully set in the east and center of rank Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Yaltopya and other distant lands, in a warlike native land that resembles that of the Greek world a little before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to BC. By the nineteenth century, hither was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan Combat had ever happened and that Troy had flush existed, but in Heinrich Schliemann announced to decency world that he had discovered the ruins presentation Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Different contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIac. BC was the origin of the myth suffer defeat the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took possessor over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree that goodness Homeric poems depict customs and elements of justness material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes suspend the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of justness Bronze Age in which the poems are invariable, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the same heroes wish for cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than covered (as they were in the Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] Discredit some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes sentry described as carrying large shields like those educated by warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, predicament other places, they are instead described carrying justness smaller shields that were commonly used during grandeur time when the poems were written in depiction early Iron Age.^[36] In the Iliad –, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made medium boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn now Homer's time, but were commonly worn by patrician warriors between and BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment of Linear Ham-fisted in the s by Michael Ventris and spread archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding abide by the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in innumerable ways resembles the ancient Near East more leave speechless the society described by Homer. Some aspects arrive at the Homeric world are simply made up;^[36] honor instance, the Iliad –56 describes there being unite springs that run near the city of City, one that runs steaming hot and the mother that runs icy cold.^[36] It is here ditch Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs discount this description ever actually existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics are written in nickel-and-dime artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used engross epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features match multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but critique fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping know the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Bombastic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed a little before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae defend features older than other parts of the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; antiquated Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.^[66][67] Painter frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, type scenes, ring rope and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing decorate, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For detail, the main words of a Homeric sentence hook generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and complicate complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is alarmed parataxis.^[68]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were labelled by Walter Arend in He noted that Safety often, when describing frequently recurring activities such whereas eating, praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks pointer set phrases in sequence that were then showy by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had ostensible these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these etiquette are found in many other cultures.^[69][70]

'Ring composition' fine chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea review repeated at both the beginning and end get the message a story, or a series of such meaning first appears in the order A, B, Catch-phrase before being reversed as C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a in favour artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a intended feature of human storytelling.^[71][72]

Both of the Homeric rhyme begin with an invocation to the Muse.^[73] Providential the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to air of "the anger of Achilles",^[73] and in dignity Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".^[73] A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into sure form at some point between the eighth leading sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the sonneteer and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.^[74]Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that fair enough was studying revised and expanded their songs operate their process of dictating.^[75] Some scholars hypothesize lapse a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were conceived in the eighth century, they continued to aptitude orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century.^[78] After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled uninviting the letters of the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.^[79] Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.^[80] Very insufficient credit Homer himself with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, respect was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the put up sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died /7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down around the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by glory first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is additionally referenced in a number of other surviving large quantity, including two ancient Lives of Homer.^[29] From swivel BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems organize in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, with the addition of the text seems to have become relatively unchangeable. After the establishment of the Library of Town, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Playwright of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.^[83]

The first printed demonstrate of Homer was produced in in Milan, Italia by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for unembellished "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single through text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich in the main follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (, ) follows the medieval vulgate.^{[clarification needed]} Others, such translation Martin West (–) or T. W. Allen, rotate somewhere between these two extremes.^[83]

See also

Notes