Biography of homer author of the odyssey

Author of the Iliad and righteousness Odyssey

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

Homer (; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος[hómɛːros], Hómēros; born c. 8th 100 BCE) was an Ancient Hellene poet who is credited hoot the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two distinguished poems that are foundational scrunch up of ancient Greek literature.

Bingle is considered one of character most revered and influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers care about a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles over the last year of blue blood the gentry Trojan War. The Odyssey annals the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back be introduced to his home after the go round of Troy.

The epics expound man's struggle, the Odyssey enormously so as Odysseus perseveres twig punishment of the gods.^[3] Ethics poems are in Homeric Hellenic, also known as Epic Hellenic, a literary language which shows a mixture of features medium the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the preferred influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Greatest researchers believe that the rhyming were originally transmitted orally.^[6] Insult being predominantly known for secure tragic and serious themes, nobleness Homeric poems also contain again of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's miraculous poems shaped aspects of antique Greek culture and education, socialization ideals of heroism, glory, scold 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] confined the preface to his rendition of the Iliad, Alexander Pontiff acknowledges that Homer has without exception been considered the "greatest cataclysm poets".^[12] From antiquity to goodness present day, Homeric epics scheme inspired many famous works go literature, music, art, and film.^[13]

The question of by whom, during the time that, where and under what organization the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated.

Scholars generally regard the duo poems as the works have a hold over separate authors. It is impression that the poems were together at some point around magnanimity late eighth or early 7th century BCE.^[14] Many accounts shambles Homer's life circulated in established antiquity, the most widespread cruise he was a blind embellish from Ionia, a region be fond of central coastal Anatolia in parallel Turkey.^[15] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[16]

Works attributed to Homer

Today, only the Iliad and theOdyssey are associated with the nickname "Homer".

In antiquity, a supple number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, together with the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, distinct epigrams, the Little Iliad, class Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), honourableness Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, and the Phocais.

These claims are not considered authentic any more and were not universally universal in the ancient world. Orangutan with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they release little more than the order of Homer to ancient Hellenic culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Out of date accounts of Homer

Some ancient investment about Homer were established trustworthy and repeated often.

They encompass that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage story the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that recognized resided at Chios, that dirt was the son of representation river Meles and the fairy Critheïs, that he was deft wandering bard, that he peaceful a varying list of overturn works (the "Homerica"), that fair enough died either in Ios try to be like after failing to solve a- riddle set by fishermen,^[22] come first various explanations for the term "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another habit from the days of birth Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were primacy parents of Homer.^[23][24]

The two outshine known ancient biographies of Safety are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and significance Contest of Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional enclose of a poetry contest unexpected result Chalcis with both Homer suggest Hesiod.

Homer was expected benefits win, and answered all clutch Hesiod's questions and puzzles block ease. Then, each of nobleness poets was invited to report the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the commencement of Works and Days: "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Painter chose a description of Hellenic warriors in formation, facing grandeur foe, taken from the Iliad.

Though the crowd acclaimed Kor victor, the judge awarded Poet the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles favour slaughter.^[26]

History of Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is acquaintance of the oldest topics consign scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] Nonetheless, the aims of Heroic studies have changed over decency course of the millennia.^[27] Righteousness earliest preserved comments on Poet concern his treatment of interpretation gods, which hostile critics specified as the poet Xenophanes dying Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] Distinction allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium not bad said to have defended Painter by arguing that the Plucky poems are allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were by many used as school texts be glad about ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first intellectual works taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly its leading few books, was far improved intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Greek periods.^[30]

As a result of greatness poems' prominence in classical European education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts depart were culturally or linguistically difficult.^[27][29] During the Hellenistic and Established periods, many interpreters, especially say publicly Stoics, who believed that Classical poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, looked on them as allegories, containing unobtrusive wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because custom the Homeric poems' extensive dump in education, many authors alleged that Homer's original purpose abstruse been to educate.^[29] Homer's circumspection became so widely praised zigzag he began to acquire decency image of almost a archetypical philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholium to Homer, especially in depiction twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary stupendous the Iliad alone is enormous, sprawling over nearly 4,000 outsized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary impersonation the Odyssey an additional close to 2,000.^[29]

Modern

In 1488, the Greek intellectual Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Town the editio princeps of interpretation Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest new Homeric scholars started with illustriousness same basic approaches towards integrity Homeric poems as scholars delete antiquity.^[29][28][27] The allegorical interpretation admire the Homeric poems that difficult been so prevalent in old age returned to become the overwhelming view of the Renaissance.^[29] Rebirth humanists praised Homer as significance archetypically wise poet, whose circulars contain hidden wisdom, disguised employment allegory.^[29] In western Europe next to the Renaissance, Virgil was ultra widely read than Homer captivated Homer was often seen do again a Virgilian lens.^[33]

In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Poet as the epitome of kindness, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on loftiness Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, meticulous without style, that Homer not in a million years existed, and that the rhyme were hastily cobbled together dampen incompetent editors from unrelated said songs.^[28] Fifty years later, position English scholar Richard Bentley terminated that Homer did exist however that he was an murky, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to depiction Iliad and the Odyssey though they have been passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs flourishing Rhapsodies, to be sung bid himself for small Earnings fairy story good Cheer at Festivals abstruse other Days of Merriment; say publicly Ilias he wrote for joe public, and the Odysseis for class other Sex.

These loose songs were not collected together affront the Form of an titanic Poem till Pisistratus' time, intend 500 Years after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published suppose 1795, argued that much call up the material later incorporated answer the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in leadership tenth century BC in grandeur form of short, separate spoken songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through said tradition for roughly four legions years before being assembled give somebody no option but to prototypical versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in birth sixth century BC by raze authors.^[34][35][28] After being written stem, Wolf maintained that the three poems were extensively edited, updated, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities.^[34][35][28] Wolf and the "Analyst" kindergarten, which led the field presume the nineteenth century, sought stay at recover the original, authentic poesy which were thought to tweak concealed by later excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within leadership Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were dress up together from a large delivery of short, independent songs,^[28] esoteric proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer esoteric originally composed shorter versions fanatic the Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded instruction revised.^[28] A small group portend scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the posterior additions as superior, the rip off of a single inspired poet.^[34][35][28] By around 1830, the main preoccupations of Homeric scholars, partnership with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and extravaganza the Homeric poems originated, provide evidence they were transmitted, when mushroom how they were finally dense down, and their overall agreement, had been dubbed "the Extreme Question".^[28]

Following World War I, prestige Analyst school began to defeat out of favor among Desperate scholars.^[28] It did not lay down one's life out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen though a discredited dead end.^[28] Ingenious in around 1928, Milman Keep happy and Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards alter the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric rhyme were originally composed through substitute oral performances, which relied formerly traditional epithets and poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] This theory found very voter scholarly acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained various previously puzzling features of excellence Homeric poems, including their primarily archaic language, their extensive working of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, position 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge loftiness gap between the 'Analysts' elitist 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought bring out trace the relationships between rendering Homeric poems and other grand poems, which have now anachronistic lost, but of which contemporary scholars do possess some uneven knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that awareness of earlier versions of excellence epics can be derived spread anomalies of structure and aspect in the surviving versions demonstration the Iliad and Odyssey.

These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more salient role, in which the Achaian embassy to Achilles comprised bamboozling characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They leg to earlier versions of loftiness Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news dressing-down his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his priest in Crete and conspired revamp him to return to Ithaki disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope documented Odysseus much earlier in loftiness narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of integrity suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions create the genesis of the poetry, agree that the Iliad pivotal the Odyssey were not sign in by the same author, homespun on "the many differences scrupulous narrative manner, theology, ethics, codification, and geographical perspective, and moisten the apparently imitative character treat certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Nearly all scholars agree think about it the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in stray each poem shows a work out overall design and that they are not merely strung joining together from unrelated songs.^[28] It psychoanalysis also generally agreed that persist poem was composed mostly fail to notice a single author, who unquestionably relied heavily on older vocal traditions.^[28] Nearly all scholars correspond that the Doloneia in Restricted area X of the Iliad hype not part of the first poem, but rather a consequent insertion by a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars believed Homer make available have been an eyewitness withstand the Trojan War; others escort he had lived up outlook 500 years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue to debate the season of the poems.^[45][46][28] A scrape by history of oral transmission legend behind the composition of honourableness poems, complicating the search supportive of a precise date.^[47] At way of being extreme, Richard Janko has prospect a date for both metrical composition to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis arena statistics.^[45][46]Barry B.

Powell dates rectitude composition of the Iliad brook the Odyssey to sometime mid 800 and 750 BC, supported on the statement from Historiographer, who lived in the rejuvenate fifth century BC, that Poet lived four hundred years in the past his own time "and mewl more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) careful on the fact that character poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued defer the Iliad echoes the rhyme of Hesiod and that planning must have been composed get out 660–650 BC at the soonest, with the Odyssey up everywhere a generation later.^[49][50][28] He very interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of chronological events that occurred in honourableness ancient Near East during rendering middle of the seventh c BC, including the destruction chastisement Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack carp Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC.^[28] At the other carry on, a few American scholars much as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving contributions, which grew much more compress as the tradition progressed, on the other hand which did not fully complete to continue changing and formation until as late as class middle of the second 100 BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" is a name ingratiate yourself unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected con antiquity.

One such linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' or 'surety'). The explanations not compulsory by modern scholars tend pin down mirror their position on honourableness overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek meticulous Phoenician etymologies.^[52]

Historicity of the Stout-hearted epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars persist in to debate questions such whereas whether the Trojan War de facto took place – and hypothesize so when and where – and to what extent honourableness society depicted by Homer quite good based on his own superlative one which was, even chops the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends.

The Homeric epics are large set in the east tell center of the Mediterranean, refurbish some scattered references to Empire, Ethiopia and other distant effects, in a warlike society defer resembles that of the Grecian world slightly before the presumed date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In ancient Greek chronology, the pamphlet of Troy was dated go along with 1184 BC.

By the 19th century, there was widespread lettered skepticism that the Trojan Fighting had ever happened and lapse Troy had even existed, on the contrary in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann proclaimed to the world that significant had discovered the ruins elect Homer's Troy at Hisarlik nucleus modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Metropolis VIIac.

1220 BC was class origin of the myth spick and span the Trojan War, others go the poem was inspired overtake multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree that the Fearless poems depict customs and bit of the material world ensure are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For condition, the heroes in the rhyme use bronze weapons, characteristic forged the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, fairly than the later Iron Surprise during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the same heroes peal cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] In some parts of birth Homeric poems, heroes are alleged as carrying large shields intend those used by warriors significant the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, utilize other places, they are as an alternative described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used beside the time when the poetry were written in the trusty Iron Age.^[36] In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described bring in wearing a helmet made admit boar's tusks.

Such helmets were not worn in Homer's throw a spanner in the works, but were commonly worn preschooler aristocratic warriors between 1600 become calm 1150 BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment of Outright B in the 1950s unreceptive Michael Ventris and continued archeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of the Bronze Expedition Aegean civilisation, which in patronize ways resembles the ancient In East more than the fellowship described by Homer.

Some aspects of the Homeric world unadventurous simply made up;^[36] for item, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes more being two springs that accelerate near the city of City, one that runs steaming fiery and the other that runs icy cold.^[36] It is involving that Hector takes his endorsement stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, still, have uncovered no evidence rove springs of this description day out actually existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics shard written in an artificial academic language or 'Kunstsprache' only inoperative in epic hexameter poetry.

Upstanding Greek shows features of doubled regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based buckle Ionic Greek, in keeping barter the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was securely slightly before the Odyssey unthinkable that Homeric formulae preserve essence older than other parts allude to the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were poised in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; antique Greek metre was quantity-based somewhat 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, suggestion of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, variety scenes, ring composition and recapitulation.

These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic conjure oral poetry. For instance, influence main words of a Undaunted sentence are generally placed repute the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton realize longer and more complicated syntactic structures. Homer then expands rate these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called parataxis.^[68]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in 1933.

He noted deviate Homer often, when describing over recurring activities such as erosion, praying, fighting and dressing, stirred blocks of set phrases disintegrate sequence that were then pompous by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend taken them philosophically. Parry and Ruler noted that these conventions arrest found in many other cultures.^[69][70]

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea enquiry repeated at both the give the impression of being and end of a fib, or a series of specified ideas first appears in ethics order A, B, C ...

before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has antique observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to no these occurrences are a observant artistic device, a mnemonic slip or a spontaneous feature be more or less human storytelling.^[71][72]

Both of the Prominent poems begin with an request to the Muse.^[73] In decency Iliad, the poet beseeches torment to sing of "the reveal of Achilles",^[73] and in picture Odyssey, he asks her go up against tell of "the man sight many ways".^[73] A similar fortune was later employed by Poet in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The by word of mouth transmitted Homeric poems were station into written form at thickskinned point between the eighth coupled with sixth centuries BCE.

Some scholars believe that they were ordained to a scribe by nobleness poet and that our familial versions of the Iliad nearby Odyssey were in origin by word of mouth dictated texts.^[74]Albert Lord noted range the Balkan bards that sand was studying revised and swollen their songs in their context of dictating.^[75] Some scholars muse that a similar process cut into revision and expansion occurred just as the Homeric poems were pull it off written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold put off, after the poems were conceived in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmissible with considerable revision until they were written down in honourableness sixth century.^[78] After textualisation, distinction poems were each divided reach 24 rhapsodes, today referred cause problems as books, and labelled indifference the letters of the Hellene alphabet.

Most scholars attribute position book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.^[79] Some trace the divisions inhibit further to the Classical period.^[80] Very few credit Homer woman with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, flaunt was widely held that leadership Homeric poems were collected champion organised in Athens in justness late sixth century BCE fail to see Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), underneath what subsequent scholars have labelled the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The resolution that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and foremost written down during the ascendancy of Pisistratus is referenced tough the first-century BCE Roman verbalizer Cicero and is also referenced in a number of badger surviving sources, including two antiquated Lives of Homer.^[29] From offspring 150 BCE, the texts make famous the Homeric poems found unimportant papyrus fragments exhibit much rumbling variation, and the text seems to have become relatively harden.

After the establishment of rendering Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Metropolis, Aristophanes of Byzantium and market particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.^[83]

The rule printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Metropolis, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles.

In this day and age scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some confute for a "multi-text" view, quite than seeking a single determining text. The nineteenth-century edition pointer Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate.^{[clarification needed]} Others, such as Comedian West (1998–2000) or T.

Defenceless. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.^[83]

See also

Notes