The famous ancient Greek philosopher and poet-storyteller Homer is a legendary figure in ancient history. It is he who is considered the creator of the epic poems called “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, but nothing is known for certain about this person.
In ancient times, nine biographies of Homer were written, but all of them were based only on ancient legends. According to one of these legends, as many as seven cities competed for the right to be called the poet’s homeland: Argos, Athens, Colophon, Rhodes, Salamis, Smyrna and Chios.
Modern scientists tend to believe that the poet lived in the 8th century BC. e. But the ancient Greek historian Herodotus believed that Homer created already in the 9th century BC. e. Since the 18th century, the “Homeric question” has existed in science. It is based on the controversy surrounding the authorship, time and history of the creation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.
It is assumed that these works were written much later than the events reflected in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e. They most likely developed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece or in its environs.
The tradition of portraying Homer as blind is also unlikely to have any basis in reality. The image of a blind, prudent old man was characteristic of the ancient perception of reality, since the ancient Greeks saw an inextricable connection between the poetic gift and the prophetic gift.
There is also an ancient work called the Contest between Homer and Hesiod. It tells the story of a creative duel between poets, in which Hesiod won the official victory, but the public was clearly on Homer’s side.
In addition to the famous epic poems, other works are sometimes attributed to Homer, for example, the “Homeric Hymns” or the poem “Margate”. But it has been reliably established that they were created much later than the Iliad and Odyssey. The poet died, according to the testimony of Pausanias and Herodotus, on the island of Ios (Cyclades archipelago).
Homer, whose biography interests many today, is the first poet Ancient Greece, whose works have survived to this day. He is still considered one of the best European poets today. However, there is no reliable information about Homer himself. Nevertheless, we will try to reconstruct his biography, at least in general terms, based on the available information.
What does Homer's name mean?
The name "Homer" first appears in the 7th century. BC e. It was then that Callinus of Ephesus gave this name to the creator of the Thebaid. They tried to explain the meaning of this name back in antiquity. The following options were offered: “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “following” (Aristotle), “hostage” (Hesychius). However, modern researchers believe that all of them are as unconvincing as the proposals of some scientists to attribute to him the meaning of “accompanist” or “compiler”. Surely in its ionic form this word is a real personal name.
Where is Homer from?
The biography of this poet can only be reconstructed speculatively. This even applies to Homer's birthplace, which is still unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be considered his homeland: Chios, Smyrna, Salamis, Colophon, Argos, Rhodes, Athens. It is likely that the Odyssey and the Iliad were created on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, which was inhabited at that time by Ionian tribes. Or perhaps these poems were composed on one of the adjacent islands. The Homeric dialect, however, does not provide any precise information about which tribe Homer belonged to, whose biography remains a mystery. It is a combination of the Aeolian and Ionian dialects of ancient Greek. Some researchers suggest that it is one of the forms of the poetic Koine that formed long before Homer.
Was Homer blind?
Homer is an ancient Greek poet, whose biography has been reconstructed by many, from ancient times to the present day. It is known that he is traditionally depicted as blind. However, it is most likely that this idea of him is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography, and does not come from real facts about Homer. Since many legendary singers and soothsayers were blind (in particular, Tiresias), according to the logic of antiquity, which linked the poetic and prophetic gifts, the assumption that Homer was blind seemed plausible.
Years of Homer's life
Antique chronographs also differ in determining the time when Homer lived. The writer whose biography interests us could create his works in different years. Some believe that he was a contemporary, that is, he lived at the beginning of the 12th century. BC e. However, Herodotus argued that Homer lived around the middle of the 9th century. BC e. Modern scholars tend to date his activities to the 8th or even 7th century BC. e. At the same time, Chios or another region of Ionia, located on the coast of Asia Minor, is indicated as the main place of life.
Homer's work
In ancient times, Homer, in addition to the Odyssey and the Iliad, was credited with the authorship of several other poems. Fragments of several of them have survived to this day. However, today it is believed that they were written by an author who lived later than Homer. This is the comic poem "Margit", "Homeric Hymns", etc.
It is clear that the Odyssey and Iliad were written much later than the events described in these works. However, their creation can be dated no earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. Thus, Homer's life can be attributed to the period from the 12th to the 7th century BC. e. However, the latest date is the most likely.
Duel between Hesiod and Homer
What more can be said about such a great poet as Homer? Biography for children usually omits this point, but there is a legend about a poetic duel that took place between Hesiod and Homer. It was described in a work created no later than the 3rd century. BC e. (and some researchers believe that much earlier). It's called "The Contest between Homer and Hesiod." It tells that the poets allegedly met at games in honor of Amphidemus, held on about. Euboea. Here they read their best poems. The judge at the competition was King Paned. Victory was awarded to Hesiod because he called for peace and agriculture, and not for massacres and war. However, the audience's sympathies were precisely on Homer's side.
Historicity of the Odyssey and Iliad
In science in the mid-19th century, the prevailing opinion was that the Odyssey and the Iliad were unhistorical works. However, he was refuted by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann, which he carried out in Mycenae and on the Hissarlik hill in the 1870-80s. The sensational discoveries of this archaeologist proved that Mycenae, Troy and the Achaean citadels existed in reality. The contemporaries of the German scientist were struck by the correspondence of his findings in the 4th hipped tomb, located in Mycenae, with the descriptions made by Homer. Egyptian and Hittite documents were later discovered that show parallels with the events of the Trojan War. A lot of information about the time of action of the poems was provided by the decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary writing. However, the relationship between Homer's works and available documentary and archaeological sources is complex and cannot therefore be used uncritically. The fact is that in traditions of this kind there should be large distortions of historical information.
Homer and the education system, imitation of Homer
The ancient Greek education system, which emerged towards the end of the classical era, was based on the study of Homer's works. His poems were memorized in whole or in part, recitations were organized based on their themes, etc. Later, Rome borrowed this system. Here since the 1st century AD. e. Virgil took Homer's place. Large hexametric poems were created in the post-classical era in the dialect of the ancient Greek author, as well as in competition with or in imitation of the Odyssey and Iliad. As you can see, many were interested in the work and biography of Homer. A summary of his works formed the basis for many works by authors who lived in Ancient Rome. Among them we can note the “Argonautica” written by Apollonius of Rhodes, the work of Nonnus of Panopolitanus “The Adventures of Dionysus” and Quintus of Smyrna “Post-Homeric Events”. Recognizing the merits of Homer, other poets of ancient Greece refrained from creating a large epic form. They believed that flawless perfection could only be achieved in a small work.
Homer's influence on the literature of different countries
In ancient Roman literature, the first surviving work (albeit in fragments) was a translation of the Odyssey. It was made by the Greek Livius Andronicus. Let us note that the main work of Rome - in the first six books is an imitation of the Odyssey, and in the last six - of the Iliad. In almost all the works of antiquity one can discern the influence of the poems that Homer created.
His biography and work were also of interest to the Byzantines. In this country Homer was carefully studied. To date, dozens of Byzantine manuscripts of his poems have been discovered. This is unprecedented for works of antiquity. Moreover, Byzantine scholars created commentaries and scholia on Homer, compiled and rewrote his poems. Seven volumes are occupied by Archbishop Eustathius' commentary on them. Greek manuscripts came to the West in the last years of the Byzantine Empire, and then after its collapse. This is how Homer was rediscovered by the Renaissance.
The short biography of this poet, created by us, leaves many questions unresolved. All of them together constitute the Homeric question. How did different researchers solve it? Let's figure it out.
Homeric question
The Homeric question is still relevant today. This is a set of problems that relate to the authorship of the Odyssey and the Iliad, as well as to the personality of their creator. Many pluralist scholars believed that these poems were not truly the works of Homer, who many believed did not exist at all. Their creation is attributed to the 6th century BC. e. These scholars believe that the poems were most likely created in Athens, when songs of different authors, passed down from generation to generation, were collected together and recorded in writing. Unitarians, on the contrary, defended the compositional unity of Homer's creations, and therefore the uniqueness of their creator.
Homer's poems
This ancient Greek author is a brilliant, priceless work of art. Over the centuries, they have not lost their deep meaning and relevance. The plots of both poems are taken from a multifaceted and extensive cycle of legends dedicated to the Trojan War. The Odyssey and Iliad depict only small episodes from this cycle. Let us briefly characterize these works, completing our story about such a great man as Homer. The poet, whose brief biography we reviewed, created truly unique works.
"Iliad"
It talks about the events of the 10th year of the Trojan War. The poem ends with the death and burial of the main Trojan warrior Hector. The ancient Greek poet Homer, whose brief biography is presented above, does not talk about further events of the war.
War is the main thread of this poem, the main element of its characters. One of the features of the work is that the battle is depicted mainly not as bloody battles of the masses, but as a battle of individual heroes who demonstrate exceptional strength, courage, skill and perseverance. Among the battles, one can highlight the key duel between Achilles and Hector. The martial arts of Diomedes, Agamemnon and Menelaus are described with less heroism and expressiveness. The Iliad depicts very vividly the habits, traditions, moral aspects of life, morality and life of the ancient Greeks.
"Odyssey"
We can say that this work is more complex than the Iliad. In it we find many features that are still being studied from a literary point of view. This epic poem mainly deals with the return of Odysseus to Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War.
In conclusion, we note that the works of Homer are a treasury of wisdom of the people of Ancient Greece. What other facts might be interesting about a person like Homer? short biography for children and adults often contains information that he was an oral storyteller, that is, he did not speak writing. However, despite this, his poems are distinguished by high skill and poetic technique, they reveal unity. "The Odyssey" and "Iliad" have characteristic features, one of which is the epic style. The sustained tone of the narrative, unhurried thoroughness, complete objectivity of the image, unhurried development of the plot - these are character traits works that Homer created. A short biography of this poet, we hope, has aroused your interest in his work.
(ca. 8th century BC - 8th century BC, Ios island)
Biography
Homer is the legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, who is credited with creating the Iliad and Odyssey.
Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer. It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e.
Homer's birthplace is unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that the Homeric dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, which was formed long before the estimated time of Homer’s life.
In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric Hymns”, the comic poem “Margate”, etc.
The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist.” This word in its Ionian form?????? - almost certainly a real personal name.
Bibliography
Iliad
- Odyssey
Film adaptations
1911 - Odyssey / L "Odissea
1924 - Elena / Helena
1954 - The Wanderings of Odysseus / Ulisse
1956 - Helen of Troy / Helen of Troy
1968 - The Adventures of Odysseus / L "odissea
1987 - Odyssey / The Odyssey
1991 - Odyssey / L "odissea
1995 - The View of Odysseus / To vlemma tou Odyssea
1995 - Achilles / Achilles
1997 - Odyssey / The Odyssey
2003 - Helen of Troy / Helen of Troy
2003 - Odyssey / L "odyssee
2004 - Troy
2008 - Odysseus and the Cyclops
2012 - Odyssey / The Odyssey
Interesting Facts
* In the middle of the 19th century, the prevailing opinion in science was that the Iliad and Odyssey were unhistorical. However, Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlik Hill and Mycenae showed that this was not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, which reveal certain parallels with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary script (Linear B) has provided a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments in this script have been found. However, the data from Homer's poems relate in a complex way to the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data from the “oral theory” indicate the very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.
* The education system in Ancient Greece that emerged towards the end of the classical era was built on the study of Homer’s poems. They were memorized partially or even completely, recitations were organized on its topics, etc. This system was borrowed by Rome, where Homer took place from the 1st century. n. e. Virgil took over. In the post-classical era, large hexametric poems were created in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as competition with the Iliad and Odyssey. Among them are “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes, “Post-Homeric Events” by Quintus of Smyrna and “The Adventures of Dionysus” by Nonnus of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, while recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that "in great rivers muddy water"(Callimachus), that is, that only in a small work can one achieve impeccable perfection.
* In the literature of Ancient Rome, the first surviving (fragmentary) work is the translation of the Odyssey by the Greek Livius Andronicus. The main work of Roman literature - the heroic epic "Aeneid" by Virgil - is an imitation of the "Odyssey" (the first 6 books) and the "Iliad" (the last 6 books). The influence of Homer's poems can be seen in almost all works of ancient literature.
* In Byzantium, Homer was well known and carefully studied. To this day, dozens of complete Byzantine manuscripts of Homeric poems have survived, which is unprecedented for works of ancient literature. In addition, Byzantine scholars transcribed, compiled, and created scholia and commentaries on Homer. Archbishop Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey occupies seven volumes in the modern critical edition. During the last period of the Byzantine Empire and after its collapse, Greek manuscripts and scholars found their way to the West, and the Renaissance rediscovered Homer.
* The Homeric question is a set of problems related to the authorship of the ancient Greek epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and the personality of Homer. Many scholars, called “pluralists,” argued that the Iliad and Odyssey in their present form are not the works of Homer (many even believed that Homer did not exist at all), but were created in the 6th century. BC e., probably in Athens, when the songs of different authors passed down from generation to generation were collected and recorded. The so-called “Unitarians” defended the compositional unity of the poem, and thereby the uniqueness of its author.
* Dante Alighieri places Homer in the first circle of Hell as a virtuous non-Christian.
* A crater on Mercury is named after Homer.
* Fragments from Homer were also translated by Lomonosov; the first large poetic translation (six books of the Iliad in Alexandrian verse) belongs to Yermil Kostrov. The translation of Nikolai Gnedich’s “Iliad” is especially important for Russian culture, which was carried out from the original with special care and very talented (according to reviews of Pushkin and Belinsky). Homer was also translated by V. A. Zhukovsky, V. V. Veresaev and P. A. Shuisky.
Biography
Homer is considered a legendary poet because we know nothing reliably about him. He was the author of two heroic poems of antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are among the first monuments of world literature.
First of all, it is necessary to find out what the Greeks themselves knew about Homer. There are nine biographies of Homer in ancient literature, but they all contain fairy-tale and fantastic elements. There is information that in the first half of the 6th century. BC. the Athenian legislator Solon ordered the performance of Homer's poems at the Panathenaic festival and that in the second half of the same century, the tyrant Peisistratus convened a commission of four people to record Homer's poems. From this we can conclude that already in the 6th century. BC. Homer's text was quite well known, although what kind of works they were was not precisely established.
There is no consensus about the birthplace of Homer. According to ancient tradition, “seven cities” (Chios, Smyrna, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens) argued for the honor of being called the homeland of Homer. Although the overwhelming number of sources still refers it to the city of Chios in Ionia. At the same time, other cities of Ionia are also named.
The poems are written in the so-called Homeric dialect. But it does not give us accurate information about Homer’s tribal affiliation, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language.
There was also no consensus about the time of Homer's life. Various Greek writers dated his life to centuries ranging from the 12th to the 6th BC.
Serious study of Homer's poems began in the Hellenistic era in the 4th - 2nd centuries. BC. I studied his poems whole line scientists of the Library of Alexandria, among whom the most famous are: Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Didymus. But they also do not provide any accurate biographical information about Homer.
The general and popular opinion of all antiquity about Homer was that he was an old and blind singer who, inspired by the muse, led a wandering lifestyle and himself composed both the two poems known to us and many other poems.
Homeric question.
Science has always been interested in the question: who is the author of the Odyssey and the Iliad? In the ancient period, most scientists believed that of all the heroic epics, only the Iliad and the Odyssey belonged to Homer. At the same time, there were scientists who drew attention to the presence of some significant differences between the poems and concluded from this that they could not belong to the same author. Such scientists were called “horizonts”, i.e. separators. Among them, the most famous are Xenon and Hellanicus.
Of great importance in the history of the Homeric question was the “Dissertation on the Iliad” by the French abbot François D'Aubignac (died 1676), written in 1664, but published only 50 years later - in 1715. In this work for the first time there was the idea has been expressed that the Iliad is not the work of one author, but a combination of songs by different singers, collected long before Pisistratus. Comparing all the ancient information about Homer, D’Aubignac came to the conclusion that Homer as an individual never existed, that the word “Homer” meant “blind,” and Homer’s “Iliad” is “a collection of songs of the blind.” Although until the end of the 18th century. The general opinion prevailed that Homer was the sole author of the Iliad and Odyssey, a folk storyteller and performer of his works. In modern times, different theories have emerged about the authorship of these works. There are three main theories.
1. The theory of small songs. According to this theory, the works were based on various songs of the aeds (singers), and Homer was just a rhapsodist (stitcher). The creator of this theory is F.A. Wolf (Wolf, 1759 – 1824). This point of view was shared by K. Lachman, I.G. Fichte, W. Humboldt and F. Schlegel.
2. The theory is unitary (unity). Unitarians believed that all works were written by one author. This theory was scientifically substantiated by G.V. Nich (Nitzsch, 1790 – 1861). This theory was adhered to by F. Hegel,
3. Main grain theory. The “unitary” theory is directly opposite to the “small song theory”, its antithesis. As if their synthesis was the “theory of the main grain” (Kerntheorie), or the theory of gradual “expansion”. Its essence lies primarily in the recognition of two opposing features of the structure of the poems - unity, i.e. a harmonious artistic plan, giving integrity to the poems, and diversity, i.e. various deviations from the main plan. The creator of this theory was Gottfried Hermann (Hermann, 1772 - 1848), and this theory received its further development from the English historian George Grote (Grote, 1794 - 1871). In Russian science, supporters of the “main grain” theory were P.M. Leontyev, S.P. Shestakov, F.G. Mishchenko, F.F. Zelinsky, L.F. Voevodsky, A.A. Zakharov.
In the 1960s, American researchers put all the songs of the Iliad through a computer, which showed that there was only one author of this poem.
Interesting facts from life
* In antiquity, Homer was considered a sage: “Wiser than all the Hellenes put together.” He was considered the founder philosophical thought, philosophical poet. His poems were seen as the beginning of geography, physics, mathematics, medicine and aesthetics.
Bibliography
*Iliad
* Odyssey
Film adaptations of works, theatrical productions
* Ulysses (in the domestic release “The Wanderings of Odysseus”) (1953). Dir. M. Camerini.
* The Adventures of Odysseus (1969). Dir. F. Rossi.
* Odyssey (1997). Dir. A. Konchalovsky.
* Helen of Troy (2003) Dir. D. Kent Harrison
* Troy (2004). Dir. V. Petersen.
Biography (en.wikipedia.org)
Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.
It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e. According to Herodotus, Homer lived 400 years before him; other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War.
Homer's birthplace is unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that the Homeric dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, which was formed long before the estimated time of Homer’s life.
Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this idea does not come from the real facts of Homer’s life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. Since many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind (for example, Tiresias), according to ancient logic that connected the prophetic and poetic gifts, the assumption of Homer’s blindness looked very plausible. In addition, the singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is blind from birth, which could also be perceived as autobiographical.
There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, much earlier. The poets allegedly met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus and each read their best poems. King Paned, who acted as a judge at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. However, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.
In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII - V centuries BC, considered, along with Homer, the oldest examples of Greek poetry), the comic poem “Margit”, etc. .
The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”. This word in its Ionian form?????? - almost certainly a real personal name.”
Homeric question
Antique period
Legends of this time claimed that Homer created his epic based on the poems of the poetess Fantasia during the Trojan War.
"Analysts" and "Unitarians"
Until the end of the 18th century, the prevailing opinion in European science was that the author of the Iliad and Odyssey was Homer, and that they were preserved approximately in the form in which they were created by him (however, already the Abbe d'Aubignac in 1664 in his " Conjectures academiques" argued that the Iliad and Odyssey are a series of independent songs collected together by Lycurgus in Sparta in the 8th century BC). However, in 1788, J. B. Viloison published the scholia to the Iliad from the Codex Venetus A, which in their volume significantly exceeded the poem itself and contained hundreds of variants belonging to ancient philologists (mainly Zenodotus, Aristophanes and Aristarchus). After this publication, it became clear that Alexandrian philologists considered hundreds of lines of Homeric poems doubtful or even inauthentic; they did not cross them out from the manuscripts, but marked them with a special sign. Reading the scholia also led to the conclusion that the text of Homer we have belongs to Hellenistic times, and not to the supposed period of the poet's life. Based on these facts and other considerations (he believed that the Homeric era was unwritten, and therefore the poet was not able to compose a poem of such length), Friedrich August Wolf in his book “Prolegomena to Homer” put forward the hypothesis that both poems are very significantly, radically changed in the course of existence. Thus, according to Wolf, it is impossible to say that the Iliad and the Odyssey belong to any one author.
Formation of the text of the Iliad (in its more or less modern form) Wolf dates it to the 6th century BC. e. Indeed, according to a number of ancient authors (including Cicero), Homer's poems were first collected and written down at the direction of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus or his son Hipparchus. This so-called “Pisistratan edition” was needed to streamline the performance of the Iliad and Odyssey at the Panathenaea. The analytical approach was supported by contradictions in the texts of the poems, the presence of multi-temporal layers in them, and extensive deviations from the main plot.
Analysts have made various assumptions about how exactly Homer's poems were formed. Karl Lachmann believed that the Iliad was created from several songs small size(the so-called “theory of small songs”). Gottfried Hermann, on the contrary, believed that each poem arose through the gradual expansion of a small song, to which everything was added new material(the so-called “primordial core theory”).
Wolf's opponents (the so-called "Unitarians") put forward a number of counterarguments. Firstly, the version of the “pisistratan edition” was questioned, since all reports about it are quite late. This legend could have appeared in Hellenistic times by analogy with the activities of the then monarchs, who took care of the acquisition of various manuscripts (see Library of Alexandria). Secondly, contradictions and deviations do not indicate multiple authorship, as they inevitably occur in large works. “Unitarians” proved the unity of the author of each of the poems, emphasizing the integrity of the plan, the beauty and symmetry of the composition in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.
"Oral theory" and "neoanalysts"
The assumption that Homer's poems were transmitted orally, since the author lived in an unwritten time, was expressed in antiquity; since there was information that in the 6th century BC. e. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus gave instructions to develop the official text of Homer's poems.
In the 1930s, American professor Milman Parry organized two expeditions to study the South Slavic epic with the aim of comparing this tradition with the texts of Homer. As a result of this large-scale research, an “oral theory” was formulated, also called the “Parry-Lord theory” (A. Lord is the successor to the work of the early deceased M. Parry). According to the oral theory, Homer's poems contain undoubted features of oral epic storytelling, the most important of which is a system of poetic formulas. An oral storyteller creates a song anew each time, but considers himself only a performer. Two songs on the same plot, even if they are radically different in length and verbal expression, from the point of view of the narrator - the same song, only “performed” differently. Storytellers are illiterate, since the idea of a fixed text is detrimental to improvisational technique.
Thus, from the oral theory it follows that the text of the Iliad and Odyssey acquired a fixed form during the lifetime of their great author or authors (i.e. Homer). Classic version oral theory involves recording these poems under dictation, since if they were transmitted orally within the framework of the improvisational tradition, their text would radically change the very next time it was performed. However, there are other explanations. The theory does not explain whether both poems were created by one or two authors.
In addition, the oral theory confirms the ancient ideas that “there were many poets before Homer.” Indeed, the technique of oral epic storytelling is the result of a long, apparently centuries-long development, and does not reflect the individual characteristics of the author of the poems.
Neoanalysts are not modern representatives of analyticism. Neoanalysis is a direction in Homeric studies that deals with identifying earlier poetic layers used by the author of (each of) the poems. The Iliad and Odyssey are compared with the Cyclical poems that have survived to our time in retellings and fragments. Thus, the neoanalytic approach does not contradict mainstream oral theory. The most prominent modern neoanalyst is the German researcher Wolfgang Kuhlmann, author of the monograph “Sources of the Iliad.”
Artistic Features
One of the most important compositional features of the Iliad is the “law of chronological incompatibility” formulated by Thaddeus Frantsevich Zelinsky. It is that “In Homer, the story never returns to its point of departure. It follows that parallel actions in Homer cannot be depicted; Homer’s poetic technique knows only the simple, linear, and not the double, square dimension.” Thus, sometimes parallel events are depicted as sequential, sometimes one of them is only mentioned or even suppressed. This explains some apparent contradictions in the text of the poem.
Researchers note the coherence of the works, the consistent development of action and the integral images of the main characters. When comparing Homer's verbal art with the visual art of that era, one often talks about the geometric style of the poems. However, opposing opinions in the spirit of analyticism are also expressed about the unity of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The style of both poems can be described as formulaic. In this case, a formula is not understood as a set of cliches, but as a system of flexible (changeable) expressions that are associated with a specific metric place in a line. Thus, we can talk about a formula even when a certain phrase appears in the text only once, but it can be shown that it was part of this system. In addition to the actual formulas, there are repeated fragments of several lines. For example, when one character retells the speeches of another, the text can be reproduced again in full or almost verbatim.
Homer is characterized by compound epithets (“swift-footed,” “rose-fingered,” “thunderer”); the meaning of these and other epithets should be considered not situationally, but within the framework of the traditional formulaic system. Thus, the Achaeans are “lush-legged” even if they are not described as wearing armor, and Achilles is “swift-footed” even when resting.
Historical basis of Homer's poems
In the middle of the 19th century, the prevailing opinion in science was that the Iliad and Odyssey were unhistorical. However, Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlik Hill and Mycenae showed that this was not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, which reveal certain parallels with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary script (Linear B) has provided a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments in this script have been found. However, the data from Homer's poems relate in a complex way to the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data from the “oral theory” indicate the very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.
Homer in world culture
In Europe
The education system in Ancient Greece that emerged towards the end of the classical era was built on the study of Homer's poems. They were memorized partially or even completely, recitations were organized on its topics, etc. This system was borrowed by Rome, where Homer took place from the 1st century. n. e. Virgil took over. In the post-classical era, large hexametric poems were created in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as competition with the Iliad and Odyssey. Among them are “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes, “Post-Homeric Events” by Quintus of Smyrna and “The Adventures of Dionysus” by Nonnus of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that “in great rivers there is troubled water” (Callimachus), that is, that only in a small work can one achieve flawless perfection.
In the literature of Ancient Rome, the first surviving (fragmentary) work is the translation of the Odyssey by the Greek Livius Andronicus. The main work of Roman literature, the heroic epic “Aeneid” by Virgil, is an imitation of the “Odyssey” (the first 6 books) and the “Iliad” (the last 6 books). The influence of Homer's poems can be seen in almost all works of ancient literature.
Homer is practically unknown to the Western Middle Ages due to too weak contacts with Byzantium and ignorance of the ancient Greek language, but the hexametric heroic epic retains great importance in culture thanks to Virgil.
In Byzantium, Homer was well known and carefully studied. To this day, dozens of complete Byzantine manuscripts of Homeric poems have survived, which is unprecedented for works of ancient literature. In addition, Byzantine scholars transcribed, compiled, and created scholia and commentaries on Homer. Archbishop Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey occupies seven volumes in the modern critical edition. During the last period of the Byzantine Empire and after its collapse, Greek manuscripts and scholars found their way to the West, and the Renaissance rediscovered Homer.
Dante Alighieri places Homer in the first circle of Hell as a virtuous non-Christian.
A crater on Mercury is named after Homer.
In Russia
Fragments from Homer were also translated by Lomonosov; the first large poetic translation (six books of the Iliad in Alexandrian verse) belongs to Yermil Kostrov (1787). Particularly important for Russian culture is the translation of Nikolai Gnedich’s “Iliad” (completed in 1829), which was carried out from the original with special care and very talented (according to reviews of Pushkin and Belinsky).
Homer was also translated by V. A. Zhukovsky, V. V. Veresaev and P. A. Shuisky ("Odyssey", 1948, Ural University Publishing House, circulation 900 copies)
Literature
Texts and translations
* Russian prose translation: The Complete Works of Homer. / Per. G. Yanchevetsky. Revel, 1895. 482 pp. (supplement to the Gymnasium magazine)
* In the “Loeb classical library” series, works were published in 5 volumes (No. 170-171 - Iliad, No. 104-105 - Odyssey); and also No. 496 - Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Biographies of Homer.
* In the “Collection Bude” series, the works are published in 9 volumes: “Iliad” (introduction and 4 volumes), “Odyssey” (3 volumes) and hymns.
* Krause V. M. Homeric Dictionary (to the Iliad and Odyssey). From 130 pics. in the text and a map of Troy. St. Petersburg, A. S. Suvorin. 1880. 532 stb. (example of a pre-revolutionary school publication)
* Part I. Greece // Ancient literature. - St. Petersburg: Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, 2004. - T. I. - ISBN 5-8465-0191-5
Monographs on Homer
* For bibliography, see also the articles: Iliad and Odyssey
* Petrushevsky D. M. Society and state in Homer. M., 1913.
* Zelinsky F. F. Homeric psychology. Pg., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences, 1920.
* Altman M.S. Remnants of the tribal system in proper names in Homer. (News of GAIMK. Issue 124). M.-L.: OGIZ, 1936. 164 pp. 1000 copies.
* Freidenberg O. M. Myth and literature of antiquity. M.: Vost. lit. 1978. 2nd ed., add. M., 2000.
* Tolstoy I. I. Aeds: Ancient creators and bearers of the ancient epic. M.: Nauka, 1958. 63 pp.
* Losev A.F. Homer. M.: GUPI, 1960. 352 pp. 9 t.e.
* 2nd ed. (Series “Life of Remarkable People”). M.: Mol. Guards, 1996=2006. 400 pp.
* Yarho V.N. Guilt and responsibility in the Homeric epic. Bulletin of Ancient History, 1962, No. 2, p. 4-26.
* Sugar N. L. Homeric epic. M.: KhL, 1976. 397 pp. 10,000 copies.
* Gordesiani R.V. Problems of the Homeric epic. Tb.: Tbil Publishing House. Univ., 1978. 394 pp. 2000 copies.
* Stahl I.V. The artistic world of the Homeric epic. M.: Nauka, 1983. 296 pp. 6900 copies.
* Cunliffe R. J. A lexicon of the homeric dialect. L., 1924.
* Leumann M. Homerische Wurter. Basel, 1950.
* Treu M. Von Homer zur Lyrik. Munchen, 1955.
*Whitman C.H. Homer and the heroic tradition. Oxford, 1958.
* Lord A. Storyteller. M., 1994.
Homer's Reception:
* Egunov A. N. Homer in Russian translations of the 18th-19th centuries. M.-L., 1964. (2nd ed.) M.: Indrik, 2001.
I. Introduction.
The works of Homer, the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", are the first known monuments of ancient Greek literature and, at the same time, the first monuments of literature in Europe in general. Containing a huge number of different kinds of legends and being very significant in size, these poems could not appear suddenly, in the form of the work of only one brilliant writer. Even if they were compiled by one poet, they were compiled on the basis of centuries-old folk art, in which modern science establishes a reflection of the most diverse periods of the historical development of the Greeks. These works were recorded for the first time only in the second half of the 6th century. BC. Consequently, the folk materials for these poems were created even earlier, at least two or three centuries before this first recording, and, as modern scholarship shows, the Homeric poems reflect even earlier periods of Greek history.
The plot of Homer's poems is different episodes of the Trojan War. The Greeks fought wars in Asia Minor for many centuries. However, it was the war with Troy that was especially imprinted in the memory of the ancient Greeks, and many different literary works were devoted to it, and, in particular, several special poems.
For a long time, the events described in Homer’s poems were considered fiction, beautiful legends, clothed in beautiful poetry, without any basis in reality. However, the amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was lucky, after many failures, to uncover the layers of ancient cities on the Hissarlik hill in Asia Minor (in the territory of modern Turkey), where Homer’s “Holy Troy” once stood. After this success, Schliemann began excavating Mycenae and Tiryns, ancient cities mentioned in Homer's poems. He discovered many monuments of exceptional historical significance, and his discoveries marked the beginning of the study of the Mycenaean period in Greek history.
Through the efforts of archaeologists, historians and philologists, a broad picture of the life of the ancient Greek tribes in the pre-Homeric and Homeric eras was recreated. However, in Homer's poems there are references to iron weapons, which the Mycenaean era did not yet know. Apparently, the heroic epic of the ancient Greeks developed gradually on the basis of the historical reality of several eras and finally took shape in the 8th century BC. But among the numerous literary works of antiquity that have survived to our time, none of them had such a strong influence on the further development of universal human culture as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
II. Homer in the history of ancient culture.
The Greeks believed that the epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were composed by the blind poet Homer. Seven Greek cities claimed to be the poet's birthplace. At the same time, there is no reliable evidence about Homer, and in general it cannot be considered proven that both poems were created by the same person. Both poems contain ancient legends, “travelers' tales” and evidence of the Mycenaean era, and at the same time, the clarity of the plot and the relief of the characters of the heroes makes the Iliad and Odyssey unlike oral epic poems. At the time of Pisistratus, both poems were already known in their final form. Apparently, the author of the Iliad was an Ionian and wrote the poem around 700 BC. based on rich material from Trojan battles. All the events of the Iliad take place over the course of several weeks, but the reader is assumed to know the entire background of the Trojan War. It is possible that the Odyssey was written later by the same author.
The relationships of the heroes of the Odyssey are more complicated, their characters are less “heroic” and more refined; The author shows a deep knowledge of the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. There is a very close logical connection between the poems, and it is possible that the Odyssey was conceived as a continuation of the Iliad. Alexander the Great always carried with him a volume of the Iliad, but the Odyssey still seems to be a more original work.
It can be assumed that the blind old man Demodocus, depicted in the eighth song of the Odyssey, singing before the guests of King Alcinous on the island of the Phaeacians, served as a kind of prototype for the idea of Homer himself back in antiquity. Scientists are still arguing about whether there really was a brilliant creator of the Iliad and Odyssey, or whether each poem had its own author, or whether they were disparate songs brought together by some editor.
All the existing 9 ancient biographies of Homer are full of fiction and are later forgeries. So, for example, the biographies of Homer, signed with the names of Herodotus and Plutarch, contradict what Herodotus and Plutarch themselves say about Homer.
For all the ancient Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey were not only their favorite reading. They were taught in schools. Teenagers and young men learned valor from the examples of heroes of ancient legends.
How widely the poems of Homer were known can be judged by an interesting discovery made in the Northern Black Sea region, where prosperous Greek colonies were located in ancient times. This is a fragment of stone on which is carved the beginning of Homer’s verse from the Iliad - “The stars have advanced...”. Since the inscription is unfinished and made with errors, scientists assume that it was carved either by a novice stone-cutter or by an apprentice carver performing an exercise. But this fragment of stone with an unfinished verse, carved in the 2nd century BC, is valuable as evidence of how great Homer's fame was. On the northernmost edge of the Greek ecumene (inhabited world), simple artisans knew the verses of the Iliad.
The dissemination and, perhaps, the very creation of the poems took place with the help of the Aeds - singers mentioned in Homer (Demodocus in Alcinous, Phemius in Ithaca). Later, the poems were distributed by professional singer-reciters, the so-called. rhapsodes ("song stitchers"). They then began to be called Homerids, about whom it is stated that at first they were singers from the family of Homer, but later they began to call all other singers this way. The name of one homerid, Cynephs of Chios, has been preserved, who, according to legend, inserted many of his own poems into Homer. In the 8th - 7th centuries, the Homerids spread throughout Greece. Entire competitions of rhapsodes are established in different places, especially in Athens during the Panathenaic festivals. Sources speak of a decree by Solon (the legislator in Athens in the first half of the 6th century BC) regarding the execution at the Panathenaea exclusively of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and moreover, in a certain, strictly sequential order. As for the first recording of Homer’s poems, later sources (Cicero, Pausanias, Aelian, etc.) attribute it to a special commission under Pisistratus in Athens. The late nature of these sources has led some scholars to doubt the existence of a commission under Pisistratus, which, however, is unnecessary criticism.
The recording of Homer's poems was made no later than the 6th century BC. and had national significance.
Let's consider summary poems
III. "Iliad".
In the Iliad, the Olympian gods are the same characters as people. Their transcendental world, depicted in the poem, is created in the image and likeness of the earthly world. Gods from ordinary people They were distinguished only by divine beauty, extraordinary strength, the gift of transforming into any creature and immortality.
Like people, the supreme deities often quarreled among themselves and even fought. A description of one of these quarrels is given at the very beginning of the Iliad, when Zeus, sitting at the head of the feasting table, threatens to beat his jealous and irritable wife Hera because she dared to object to him. Lame Hephaestus persuades his mother to come to terms and not quarrel with Zeus over mortals.
Thanks to his efforts, peace and fun reign again. Golden-haired Apollo plays the lyre, accompanying a choir of beautiful muses. At sunset, the feast ends and the gods disperse to their palaces, erected for them on Olympus by the skillful Hephaestus.
The poems consisted of songs, each of which could be performed separately, as an independent story about one or another event in the life of its heroes, but all of them are somehow related to the Trojan War.
The cause of the Trojan War was the abduction of Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, by Paris, the son of the Trojan king Priam. Insulted, Menelaus called on other kings for help. Among them were Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax and Achilles. The Achaean warriors occupied the plain between Troy and the sea, pulled ships ashore and set up their camp, from which they made sorties, plundering and destroying small settlements. The siege of Troy lasted 10 years, but the poems describe only Last year war. (Here it should be noted that Homer calls the Greeks Achaeans, also calling them Danaans and Argives, and not at all Greeks or even Hellenes, as the Greeks themselves began to call themselves later).
Starting from the third song of the Iliad, there is a description of the battles between the Achaeans and Trojans. The gods actively intervene in these battles between individual heroes. The poem ends with a description of the solemn burial of the heroic leader of the Trojans, Hector.
In the Iliad the phenomena are reproduced in vivid terms real life and the life of the ancient Greek tribes.
What predominates, of course, is a description of wartime life, and the poem is full of realistic depictions of scenes of death, cruel mutilations, and pre-death convulsions.
However, the battle is most often depicted not as a mass battle, but as a duel between individual heroes, distinguished by strength, valor and martial art. But the exploits of the heroes, so colorfully described by Homer, do not obscure all the horrors of war from the poet’s gaze. He reproduces scenes of violence and merciless cruelty of the victors in bright and accusatory realistic colors.
Old Greek Ὅμηρος
legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller
8th century BC e.
short biography
The famous ancient Greek poet, whose work not only served as a model for all ancient creators - he is considered the progenitor of European literature. Many representatives of modern generations associate ancient culture with his name, and acquaintance with world literature usually begins with the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, which belonged to (or were attributed to) this legendary author. Homer is the first ancient Greek poet whose creative legacy has survived to this day, and about half of the ancient Greek papyri of literary content discovered to date are fragments of his works.
There are no reliable, historically confirmed data about the personality of Homer, his life path, and they were unknown even in antiquity. In antiquity, 9 biographies of Homer were created, and all of them were based on legends. Not only the years of his life are unknown, but also his century. According to Herodotus, this was the 9th century. BC e. Scientists of our time call approximately the 8th century. (or 7th century) BC e. There is no exact information about the place of birth of the great poet. It is believed that he lived in one of the areas of Ionia. Legend has it that as many as seven cities - Athens, Rhodes, Smyrna, Colophon, Argon, Salamis, Chios - challenged each other for the honor of calling themselves the birthplace of Homer.
According to tradition, the great poet is portrayed as a blind old man, but scientists are of the opinion that this is the influence of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, a feature of the biographical genre. The Greeks saw the relationship between poetic talent and prophetic gift in the example of many famous personalities who were deprived of sight, and believed that Homer belonged to this glorious cohort. In addition, in the Odyssey there is such a character as the blind singer Demodocus, who was identified with the author of the work himself.
From the biography of Homer there is such an episode as a poetic competition with Hesiod on the island of Euboea. Poets read their best works at games organized in memory of the deceased Amphidemus. The victory, according to the will of the judge, went to Hesiod, since he glorified the peaceful life and work of farmers, but legend says that the public sympathized more with Homer.
Like everything else in Homer’s biography, it is not known for certain whether the famous poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” belonged to his pen. In science since the 18th century. there is the so-called Homeric question - this is the name of the controversy surrounding the authorship and history of writing legendary works. Be that as it may, it was they who brought the author fame for all time and entered the treasury of world literature. Both poems are based on legends and myths about the Trojan War, i.e. about the military actions of the Achaean Greeks against the inhabitants of the Asia Minor city, and represent a heroic epic - a large-scale canvas, the characters of which are both historical characters and heroes of myths.
The ancient Greeks considered these poems sacred, solemnly performed them on public holidays, they began and completed the learning process with them, seeing in them a treasury of a wide variety of knowledge, lessons of wisdom, beauty, justice and other virtues, and their author was revered almost as deity. According to the great Plato, Greece owes its spiritual development to Homer. The poetics of this master of words had a huge influence on the work of not only ancient authors, but also recognized classics of European literature living many centuries later.
There are so-called Homeric hymns, which in ancient times were attributed to the great blind man, but neither they nor other works of which Homer was called the author belong to his creative heritage.
According to Herodotus and Pausanias, death overtook Homer on the island of Ios (Cyclades archipelago).
Biography from Wikipedia
Homer(ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, 8th century BC) - legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems “Iliad” (the oldest monument of European literature) and “Odyssey”.
Approximately half of the ancient Greek literary papyri found are passages from Homer.
Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.
It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e. According to Herodotus, Homer lived 400 years before him, which puts the date at 850 BC. e. An unknown historian in his notes indicates that Homer lived 622 years before Xerxes, which indicates 1102 BC. e. Other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War. On this moment There are several dates of birth and evidence for them.
Homer's birthplace is unknown. According to the epigram of Gaul, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland in the ancient tradition: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, and variations of this epigram are also called Kima, Chios, Pylos and Ithaca. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that his dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, which was formed long before the estimated time of Homer's life.
Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this idea does not come from the real facts of his life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. Also, the name “Homer”, according to one version of its reading, means “not sighted” (ὁ μῆ ὁρῶν). Since many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind (for example, Tiresias), according to ancient logic that connected the prophetic and poetic gifts, the assumption of Homer’s blindness looked very plausible. In addition, the singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is blind from birth, which could also be perceived as autobiographical.
There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, much earlier. The poets allegedly met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus and each read their best poems. King Paned, who acted as a judge at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. At the same time, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.
In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, considered, along with Homer, the oldest examples of Greek poetry), the comic poem “Margit”, etc. .
The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”.<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name."
Homeric question
The set of problems associated with the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, their emergence and fate before the moment of recording, was called the “Homeric question.” It arose in antiquity, for example, then there were claims that Homer created his epic based on poems by the poetess Fantasia during the Trojan War.
"Analysts" and "Unitarians"
Until the end of the 18th century, the prevailing opinion in European science was that the author of the Iliad and Odyssey was Homer and that they were preserved approximately in the form in which they were created by him (however, already the Abbe d’Aubignac in 1664 in his “ Conjectures académiques" argued that the Iliad and Odyssey are a series of independent songs collected together by Lycurgus in Sparta in the 8th century BC. e.). However, in 1788, J. B. Viloison published the scholia to the Iliad from the Codex Venetus A, which in their volume significantly exceeded the poem itself and contained hundreds of variants belonging to ancient philologists (mainly Zenodotus, Aristophanes and Aristarchus). After this publication, it became clear that Alexandrian philologists considered hundreds of lines of Homeric poems doubtful or even inauthentic; they did not cross them out from the manuscripts, but marked them with a special sign. Reading the scholia also led to the conclusion that the text of Homer we have belongs to Hellenistic times, and not to the supposed period of the poet's life. Based on these facts and other considerations (he believed that the Homeric era was unwritten, and therefore the poet was not able to compose a poem of such length), Friedrich August Wolf in his book “Prolegomena to Homer” put forward the hypothesis that both poems are very significantly, radically changed in the course of existence. Thus, according to Wolf, it is impossible to say that the Iliad and the Odyssey belong to any one author.
Wolf dates the formation of the text of the Iliad (in its more or less modern form) to the 6th century BC. e. Indeed, according to a number of ancient authors (including Cicero), Homer's poems were first collected and written down at the direction of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus or his son Hipparchus. This so-called “Pisistratan edition” was needed to streamline the performance of the Iliad and Odyssey at the Panathenaea. The analytical approach was supported by contradictions in the texts of the poems, the presence of multi-temporal layers in them, and extensive deviations from the main plot.
Analysts have made various assumptions about how exactly Homer's poems were formed. Karl Lachmann believed that the Iliad was created from several small songs (the so-called “small song theory”). Gottfried Hermann, on the contrary, believed that each poem arose through the gradual expansion of a small song, to which more and more new material was added (the so-called “original core theory”).
Wolf's opponents (the so-called "Unitarians") put forward a number of counterarguments. Firstly, the version of the “pisistratan edition” was questioned, since all reports about it are quite late. This legend could have appeared in Hellenistic times by analogy with the activities of the then monarchs, who took care of the acquisition of various manuscripts. Secondly, contradictions and deviations do not indicate multiple authorship, as they inevitably occur in large works. “Unitarians” proved the unity of the author of each of the poems, emphasizing the integrity of the plan, the beauty and symmetry of the composition in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.
"Oral theory" and "neoanalysts"
The assumption that Homer's poems were transmitted orally, since the author lived in an unwritten time, was expressed in antiquity; since there was information that in the 6th century BC. e. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus gave instructions to develop the official text of Homer's poems.
In the 1930s, American professor Milman Parry organized two expeditions to study the South Slavic epic with the aim of comparing this tradition with the texts of Homer. As a result of this large-scale research, an “oral theory” was formulated, also called the “Parry-Lord theory” (A. Lord is the successor to the work of the early deceased M. Parry). According to the oral theory, Homer's poems contain undoubted features of oral epic storytelling, the most important of which is a system of poetic formulas. An oral storyteller creates a song anew each time, but considers himself only a performer. Two songs on the same plot, even if they are radically different in length and verbal expression, from the point of view of the narrator - the same song, only “performed” differently. Storytellers are illiterate, since the idea of a fixed text is detrimental to improvisational technique.
Thus, from the oral theory it follows that the text of the Iliad and Odyssey acquired a fixed form during the lifetime of their great author or authors (i.e. Homer). The classic version of oral theory involves recording these poems under dictation, since if they were transmitted orally within the framework of the improvisational tradition, their text would radically change the next time they were performed. However, there are other explanations. Whether both poems were created by one or two authors, the theory does not explain.
In addition, the oral theory confirms the ancient ideas that “there were many poets before Homer.” Indeed, the technique of oral epic storytelling is the result of a long, apparently centuries-long development, and does not reflect the individual characteristics of the author of the poems.
Neoanalysts are not modern representatives of analyticism. Neoanalysis is a direction in Homeric studies that deals with identifying earlier poetic layers used by the author of (each of) the poems. The Iliad and Odyssey are compared with the Cyclical poems that have survived to our time in retellings and fragments. Thus, the neoanalytic approach does not contradict mainstream oral theory. The most prominent modern neoanalyst is the German researcher Wolfgang Kuhlmann, author of the monograph “Sources of the Iliad.”
Homer (circa 460 BC)
Artistic Features
One of the most important compositional features of the Iliad is the “law of chronological incompatibility” formulated by Thaddeus Frantsevich Zelinsky. It consists in the fact that “in Homer the story never returns to the point of its departure. It follows that parallel actions in Homer cannot be depicted; Homer’s poetic technique knows only the simple, linear, and not the double, square dimension.” Thus, sometimes parallel events are depicted as sequential, sometimes one of them is only mentioned or even suppressed. This explains some apparent contradictions in the text of the poem.
Researchers note the coherence of the works, the consistent development of action and the integral images of the main characters. When comparing Homer's verbal art with the visual art of that era, one often talks about the geometric style of the poems. However, opposing opinions in the spirit of analyticism are also expressed about the unity of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The style of both poems can be described as formulaic. In this case, a formula is not understood as a set of cliches, but as a system of flexible (changeable) expressions that are associated with a certain metric place in a line. Thus, we can talk about a formula even when a certain phrase appears in the text only once, but it can be shown that it was part of this system. In addition to the actual formulas, there are repeated fragments of several lines. For example, when one character retells the speeches of another, the text can be reproduced again in full or almost verbatim.
Homer is characterized by compound epithets (“swift-footed,” “rose-fingered,” “thunderer”); the meaning of these and other epithets should be considered not situationally, but within the framework of the traditional formulaic system. Thus, the Achaeans are “lush-legged” even if they are not described as wearing armor, and Achilles is “swift-footed” even when resting.
Historical basis of Homer's poems
In the middle of the 19th century, the prevailing opinion in science was that the Iliad and Odyssey were unhistorical. However, Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlik Hill and Mycenae showed that this was not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, which reveal certain parallels with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary script (Linear B) has provided a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments in this script have been found. However, the data from Homer's poems relate in a complex way to the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data from the “oral theory” indicate the very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.
The point of view has now been established that the world of Homer’s poems reflects a realistic picture of life in recent times during the ancient Greek “dark ages.”
Homer in world culture
The influence of Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" on the ancient Greeks is compared with the Bible for the Jews.
The education system in Ancient Greece that emerged towards the end of the classical era was built on the study of Homer's poems. They were memorized partially or even completely, recitations were organized on its topics, etc. This system was borrowed by Rome, where Homer took place from the 1st century. n. e. occupied by Virgil. As Margalit Finkelberg notes, the Romans, who saw themselves as the descendants of the defeated Trojans, rejected the Homeric poems, the consequence of which was that they, while continuing to maintain their canonical status in the Greek-speaking East, were lost to the Latin West until the Renaissance.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema "Reading Homer", 1885
In the post-classical era, large hexametric poems were created in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as competition with the Iliad and Odyssey. Among them are “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes, “Post-Homeric Events” by Quintus of Smyrna and “The Adventures of Dionysus” by Nonnus of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that “in great rivers there is troubled water” (Callimachus) - that only in a small work can one achieve flawless perfection.
