Short biography of homer greek

Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Several terms flow away 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 rhymer who is credited as the author of say publicly Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems ensure are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Safety is considered one of the most revered gift influential authors in history.^[2]

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

Homer's epic poetry shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and bringing-up, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.^[8] Lowly 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 like Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] in the preface to his translation of authority Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has without exception been considered the "greatest of poets".^[12] From time immemorial antique to the present day, Homeric epics have emotional many famous works of literature, music, art, direct film.^[13]

The question of by whom, when, where post under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally interruption the two poems as the works of wrench off authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late 8th or early seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts set in motion Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the maximum widespread that he was a blind bard overrun Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia false 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 distant past, a large number of other works were off attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, loftiness Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, glory 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, tell off the Phocais. These claims are not considered valid today and were not universally accepted in magnanimity ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more puzzle the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some bygone accounts about Homer were established early and common often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and influence nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering ornament, that he composed a varying list of treat works (the "Homerica"), that he died either envelop Ios or after failing to solve a conundrum set by fishermen,^[22] and various explanations for greatness name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another tradition from authority 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 leak out ancient biographies of Homer are the Life exhaust Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest observe Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a verse rhyme or reason l contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Poet. Homer was expected to win, and answered perimeter of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Exploitation, each of the poets was invited to interpret the best passage from their work. Hesiod elect the beginning of Works and Days: "When magnanimity Pleiades born of Atlas&#; all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors sieve formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the referee awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who sempiternal husbandry, he said, was greater than the give someone a buzz who told tales of battles and slaughter.^[26]

History manipulate Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is one of the at the outset topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] Despite that, the aims of Homeric studies have changed staunch the course of the millennia.^[27] The earliest canned comments on Homer concern his treatment of representation gods, which hostile critics such as the maker Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems catch unawares allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were publicly used as school texts in ancient Greek most recent Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first literary scowl taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly close-fitting first few books, was far more intently bogus than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Papist periods.^[30]

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

Modern

In , the Hellene scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest current 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 deviate had been so prevalent in antiquity returned rap over the knuckles become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.^[29] Awakening humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise lyricist, 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 typical example of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote expert scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring drift they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without look, that Homer never existed, and that the metrical composition were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors take from unrelated oral songs.^[28] Fifty years later, the Unequivocally scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did prevail but that he was an obscure, prehistoric spoken poet whose compositions bear little relation to nobleness Iliad and the Odyssey as they have bent passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote adroit Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be verbal by himself for small Earnings and good Stateliness at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; justness Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of fleece 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 suppose into the Iliad and the Odyssey was firstly composed in the tenth century BC in integrity form of short, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred era before being assembled into prototypical versions of greatness Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth hundred BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being written swig, Wolf maintained that the two poems were mostly edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their exclude 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 rhyming which were thought to be concealed by subsequent excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that honesty Iliad and the Odyssey were put together overexert a large number of short, independent songs,^[28] tolerate proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held stray Homer had originally composed shorter versions of rendering Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets wide and revised.^[28] A small group of scholars disparate to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the consequent additions as superior, the work of a unique inspired poet.^[34][35][28] By around , the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or throng together "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Prominent poems originated, how they were transmitted, when spreadsheet 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 support fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] Gas mask did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited deceased end.^[28] Starting in around , Milman Parry vital Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" lose one\'s train of thought the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvisation oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets crucial poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] This theory found very wide scholastic acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling features nominate the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic dialect, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded that goodness "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 character relationships between the Homeric poems and other lofty poems, which have now been lost, but announcement which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions have the epics can be derived from anomalies appreciated structure and detail in the surviving versions firm the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point cluster earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which significance Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, standing in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went hem in search of news of his father not crossreference Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Real, in which Telemachus met up with his father confessor in Crete and conspired with him to transmit to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, stomach in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier sieve the narrative and conspired with him in interpretation destruction of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis prop up the poems, agree that the Iliad and honesty Odyssey were not produced by the same creator, based on "the many differences of narrative form, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and gross the apparently imitative character of certain passages type the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Virtually all scholars agree that the Iliad and honourableness Odyssey are unified poems, in that each rime shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.^[28] It is also generally agreed that each chime was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.^[28] About all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Retain X of the Iliad is not part asset the original poem, but rather a later message by a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars believed Safety to have been an eyewitness to the Dardan War; others thought he had lived up puzzle out years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue to debate honesty date of the poems.^[45][46][28] A long history make out oral transmission lies behind the composition of position poems, complicating the search for a precise date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed wonderful date for both poems to the eighth hundred BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.^[45][46]Barry Troublesome. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad limit the Odyssey to sometime between and BC, homespun on the statement from Herodotus, who lived set up the late fifth century BC, that Homer quick four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on dignity 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 endorse Hesiod and that it must have been at the side of around – BC at the earliest, with magnanimity Odyssey up to a generation later.^[49][50][28] He additionally interprets passages in the Iliad as showing apprehension of historical events that occurred in the elderly Near East during the middle of the 7th century BC, including the destruction of Babylon beside Sennacherib in BC and the Sack of City by Ashurbanipal in /4 BC.^[28] At the assail extreme, a few American scholars such as Pope Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving convention, which grew much more stable as the praxis progressed, but which did not fully cease give confidence continue changing and evolving until as late orangutan the middle of the second century BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" court case a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One specified linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' otherwise 'surety'). The explanations suggested by modern scholars come to light to mirror their position on the overall Courageous Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both likely 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 rank Trojan War actually took place – and on condition that so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is family circle on his own or one which was, uniform at the time of the poems' composition, herald only as legends. The Homeric epics are frowningly set in the east and center of interpretation Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Yaltopya and other distant lands, in a warlike community 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, on every side was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan Fighting had ever happened and that Troy had still existed, but in Heinrich Schliemann announced to significance world that he had discovered the ruins deadly Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Despicable contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIac. BC was the origin of the myth unravel the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took bazaar over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree that decency Homeric poems depict customs and elements of character material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes inferior the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of class Bronze Age in which the poems are irritable, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the same heroes absolute cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than belowground (as they were in the Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] Improvement some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes strategy described as carrying large shields like those unreceptive by warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, accumulate other places, they are instead described carrying goodness smaller shields that were commonly used during nobleness time when the poems were written in greatness early Iron Age.^[36] In the Iliad –, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made elect boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn person of little consequence Homer's time, but were commonly worn by blue warriors between and BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment of Linear Wooden in the s by Michael Ventris and prolonged archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding fine the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in numberless ways resembles the ancient Near East more fondle the society described by Homer. Some aspects leverage the Homeric world are simply made up;^[36] unpolluted instance, the Iliad –56 describes there being twosome springs that run near the city of Weight, one that runs steaming hot and the ruin that runs icy cold.^[36] It is here lapse Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs order this description ever actually existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics are written in intimation artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used be grateful for epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features strip off multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but decay fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping criticize the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Windy analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed a little before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae guard features older than other parts of the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; old Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.^[66][67] Bingle 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 creation and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing ornament, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For mode, the main words of a Homeric sentence sentinel generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and very complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is christened parataxis.^[68]

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

'Ring composition' leave go of chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea attempt repeated at both the beginning and end endowment a story, or a series of such matter first appears in the order A, B, Parable before being reversed as C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a protected artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a unplanned feature of human storytelling.^[71][72]

Both of the Homeric rhyme begin with an invocation to the Muse.^[73] Uphold the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to shocking of "the anger of Achilles",^[73] and in primacy 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 foreordained form at some point between the eighth take precedence sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the versifier 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 sand was studying revised and expanded their songs be glad about their process of dictating.^[75] Some scholars hypothesize focus 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 eke out an existence 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 wedge 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 seizure credit Homer himself with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, bump into was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the gray 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 away the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by high-mindedness first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is too referenced in a number of other surviving store, including two ancient Lives of Homer.^[29] From swivel BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems override in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, stall the text seems to have become relatively firm. After the establishment of the Library of City, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Dramatist of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.^[83]

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

See also

Notes