, now conjectured to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod.]] Hesiod (Greek: Hēsíodos; or ) was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC. Since at least Herodotus's time (Histories, 2.53), Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired. Scholars disagree about who lived first, and the fourth-century BC sophist Alcidamas' Mouseion even brought them together in an imagined poetic agon, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Aristarchus first argued for Homer's priority, a claim that was generally accepted by later antiquity.

Hesiod's writings serve as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes identified as the first economist), archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.

Life

J. A. Symonds writes that "Hesiod is also the immediate parent of gnomic verse, and the ancestor of those deep thinkers who speculated in the Attic Age upon the mysteries of human life."

Some scholars have doubted whether Hesiod alone conceived and wrote the poems attributed to him. For example, Symonds writes that "the first ten verses of the Works and Days are spurious—borrowed probably from some Orphic hymn to Zeus and recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias."

As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated around Hesiod. Unlike Homer's case, however, some possible autobiographical details have survived: a few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in Works and Days; some further inferences derive from his Theogony. His father came from Cyme in Aeolis, which lay between Ionia and the Troad in Northwestern Anatolia, but crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works, l. 640). Hesiod's patrimony there, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses.

Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod directed to him in Works and Days, but in the introduction to his translation of Hesiod's works, Hugh G. Evelyn-White provides several arguments against this theory. Gregory Nagy, on the other hand, sees both Persēs ("the destroyer": / perthō) and Hēsiodos ("he who emits the voice:" / hiēmi + / audē) as fictitious names for poetical personae.

The Muses traditionally lived on Helicon, and, according to the account in Theogony (ll. 22-35), gave Hesiod the gift of poetic inspiration one day while he tended sheep (compare the legend of Cædmon). Hesiod later mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod (Works and Days ll.654-662). Plutarch first cited this passage as an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, based on his identification of Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria, which occurred around 705 BC. Plutarch assumed this date much too late for a contemporary of Homer, but most Homeric academics would now accept it. The account of this contest, followed by an allusion to the Trojan War, inspired the later tales of a competition between Hesiod and Homer.

Two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle that predicts accurately after all.

The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram of Chersios of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death) claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra, the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and placed them in a place of honour in their agora, beside the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous founder, and in the end came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" ( / oikistēs).

Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.

The legends that accumulated about Hesiod are recorded in several sources: the story "The poetic contest ( / Agōn) of Homer and Hesiod;" a vita of Hesiod by the Byzantine grammarian John Tzetzes; the entry for Hesiod in the Suda; two passages and some scattered remarks in Pausanias (IX, 31.3–6 and 38.3–4); a passage in Plutarch Moralia (162b).

Works

Of the many works attributed to Hesiod, three survive complete and many more in fragmentary state. Our witnesses include Alexandrian papyri, some dating from as early as the 1st century BC, and manuscripts written from the eleventh century forward. Demetrius Chalcondyles issued the first printed edition (editio princeps) of Works and Days, possibly at Milan, probably in 1493. In 1495 Aldus Manutius published the complete works at Venice.

Hesiod's works, especially Works and Days, are from the view of the small independent farmer, while Homer's view is from nobility or the rich. Even with these differences, they share some beliefs regarding work ethic, justice, and consideration of material items.

Some (e.g. A. D. Momigliano) have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod. This is rejected by Paul Cartledge as Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification.

Works and Days

Hesiod wrote a poem of some 800 verses, the Works and Days, which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land. This poem is one of the earliest known musings on economic thought.

This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in a hive.

Theogony

, by Gustave Moreau]] "Theogony," a poem which uses the same epic verse-form as the "Works and Days", is also attributed to Hesiod. Despite the different subject matter, most scholars, with some notable exceptions (like Evelyn-White), believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M.L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him."

The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, and Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to the fifth-century historian Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes.

The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis. This cultural crossover would have occurred in the eighth and ninth century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria. (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East.)

Other writings

A short poem traditionally no longer attributed to Hesiod is The Shield of Heracles ( / Aspis Hērakleous). This survives complete; the other works discussed in this section survive only in quotations or papyrus copies which are often damaged.

Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiae (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions.

Several additional poems were sometimes ascribed to Hesiod:

Aegimius

Astrice

Chironis Hypothecae

Idaei Dactyli

Wedding of Ceyx

Great Works (presumably an expanded Works and Days)

Great Eoiae (presumably an expanded Catalogue of Women)

Melampodia

Ornithomantia

Scholars generally classify all these as later examples of the poetic tradition to which Hesiod belonged, not as the work of Hesiod himself. The Shield, in particular, appears to be an expansion of one of the genealogical poems, taking its cue from Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles.

"Portrait" Bust

The Roman bronze bust of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, was first reidentified by Gisela Richter as a fictitious portrait meant for Hesiod, though it had been recognized that the bust was not in fact Seneca since 1813, when an inscribed herma portrait with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow her identification.

Manuscripts

Mss. of Works and Days:

S Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1090

A Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-9 (4th cent.).

B Geneva, Naville Papyri Pap. 94 (6th cent.).

C Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2771 (11th cent.).

D Florence, Laur. xxxi 39 (12th cent.).

E Messina, Univ. Lib. Preexistens 11 (12th-13th cent.).

F Rome, Vatican 38 (14th cent.).

G Venice, Marc. ix 6 (14th cent.).

H Florence, Laur. xxxi 37 (14th cent.).

I Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).

K Florence, Laur. xxxii 2 (14th cent.).

L Milan, Ambros. G 32 sup. (14th cent.).

M Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana 71 (15th cent.).

N Milan, Ambros. J 15 sup. (15th cent.).

O Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2773 (14th cent.).

P Cambridge, Trinity College (Gale MS.), O.9.27 (13th-14th cent.).

Q Rome, Vatican 1332 (14th cent.).

These MSS. are divided by Rzach into the following families, issuing from a common original: --

a = C

b = F,G,H

a = D

b = I,K,L,M

a = E

b = N,O,P,Q

Mss. of Theogony:

N Manchester, Rylands GK. Papyri No. 54 (1st cent. B.C. - 1st cent. A.D.).

O Oxyrhynchus Papyri 873 (3rd cent.).

A Paris, Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Graec. (papyrus) 1099 (4th-5th cent.).

B London, British Museam clix (4th cent.).

R Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-9 (4th cent.).

C Paris, Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).

D Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).

E Florence, Laur., Conv. suppr. 158 (14th cent.).

F Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2833 (15th cent.).

G Rome, Vatican 915 (14th cent.).

H Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2772 (14th cent.).

I Florence, Laur. xxxi 32 (15th cent.).

K Venice, Marc. ix 6 (15th cent.).

L Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2708 (15th cent.).

These MSS. are divided into two families:

a = C,D

b = E,F

c = G,H,I

= K,L

Mss. of Shield of Heracles:

P Oxyrhynchus Papyri 689 (2nd cent.).

A Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-29 (4th cent.).

Q Berlin Papyri, 9774 (1st cent.).

B Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).

B Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).

D Milan, Ambros. C 222 (13th cent.).

E Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).

F Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2773 (14th cent.).

G Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2772 (14th cent.).

H Florence, Laur. xxxi 32 (15th cent.).

I London, British Museaum Harleianus (14th cent.).

K Rome, Bibl. Casanat. 356 (14th cent.)

L Florence, Laur. Conv. suppr. 158 (14th cent.).

M Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2833 (15th cent.).

These MSS. belong to two families:

a = B,C,D,F

b = G,H,I

a = E

b = K,L,M

To these must be added two MSS. of mixed family:

N Venice, Marc. ix 6 (14th cent.).

O Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2708 (15th cent.).

Mss. of the fragments of Catalogue of Women:

Berlin Papyri 7497 (1) (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 7.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri 421 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 7.

"Petrie Papyri" iii 3. -- Frag. 14.

"Papiri greci e latine", No. 130 (2nd-3rd cent.). -- Frag. 14.

Strassburg Papyri, 55 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 58.

Berlin Papyri 9739 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 58.

Berlin Papyri 10560 (3rd cent.). -- Frag. 58.

Berlin Papyri 9777 (4th cent.). -- Frag. 98.

"Papiri greci e latine", No. 131 (2nd-3rd cent.). -- Frag.99.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358-9.

Notes

References

Allen, T. W. and Arthur A. Rambaut, 'The Date of Hesiod', The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 35 (1915), 85-99

Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.

Lamberton, Robert, Hesiod, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0300040687

Murray, Gilbert, A History of Ancient Greek Literature, New York : D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Cf. pp. 53 and onward for Hesiod.

Peabody, Berkley, The Winged Word: A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally Through Hesiod's Works and Days, State University of New York Press, 1975. ISBN 0873950593

Pucci, Pietro, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. ISBN 0801817870

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1925.

Symonds, John Addington, Studies of the Greek Poets, 1873.

Taylor, Thomas, A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 1791.

Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. xliii-xlvii.

Selected translations

George Chapman, The Works of Hesiod, London, 1618, dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon.

Cooke, Hesiod, Works and Days, Translated from the Greek, London, 1728

Sinclair, Thomas Alan (translator), Hesiodou Erga kai hemerai, London, Macmillan and co., 1932.

West, Martin Litchfield (translator), Hesiod Works & Days, Oxford University Press, 1978, ISBN 0-19-814005-3. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary.

Athanassakis, Apostolos N., Theogony ; Works and days ; Shield / Hesiod; introduction, translation, and notes, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. ISBN 0801829984

Frazer, R.M. (Richard McIlwaine), The Poems of Hesiod, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. ISBN 0806118377

Tandy, David W., and Neale, Walter C. [translators], Works and Days: a translation and commentary for the social sciences, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ISBN 0520203836

Schlegel, Catherine M., and Henry Weinfield, translators, Theogony and Works and Days, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2006

Most, Glenn, translator, Hesiod, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006-07.

Further reading

Lucas, Frank Laurence, 'Two Poets of the Peasantry', a comparative essay on Hesiod and Langland, Studies French and English (1934), pp.23-75 us.archive.org

Athanassakis, Apostolos N., [guest editor], Essays on Hesiod I, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature, Vol. 21, no 1 (1992), and Essays on Hesiod II, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature, Vol. 21, no 2 (1992), La Trobe University and Aureal Publications, Australia. latrobe.edu.au

Athanassakis, A.N., Cattle and Honour in Homer and Hesiod, Ramus, v.21, n.2 (1992), pp. 156–186.

Martin, Richard P. Hesiod's metanastic poetics, Ramus, 21 (1992), 11-33.

Debiasi, Andrea. Esiodo e l'Occidente. Roma, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2008, 220 p. (Hesperìa, 24).

External links

Hesiod, Works and Days Book 1 Works and Days Book 2 Works and Days Book 3 Translated from the Greek by Mr. Cooke'' (London, 1728). A youthful exercise in Augustan heroic couplets by Thomas Cooke (1703–1756), employing the Roman names for all the gods.

Web texts taken from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, published as Loeb Classical Library #57, 1914, ISBN 0-674-99063-3:

*Scanned text at the Internet Archive, in PDF and DjVu format

* Perseus Classics Collection: Greek and Roman Materials: Text: Hesiod (Greek texts and English translations for Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles with additional notes and cross links.)

* Versions of the electronic edition of Evelyn-White's English translation edited by Douglas B. Killings, June 1995:

** Project Gutenberg plain text.

** Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE: The Online Medieval and Classical Library: Hesiod

** Sacred Texts: Classics: The Works of Hesiod (Theogony and Works and Days only)

** Hesiod and the Arcadian theme in the paintings Shepherds of Arcadia - Et in Arcadia Ego

Category:Ancient Greek poets Category:Ancient Boeotian poets Category:Early Greek epic poets Category:8th-century BC births Category:8th-century BC Greek people Category:8th-century BC poets Category:Ancient Greek didactic poets

In the Western classical tradition Homer (; Ancient Greek: , Hómēros), is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics are at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.

When he lived is controversial. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC; while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th Century BC.

For modern scholars "the date of Homer" refers not to an individual, but to the period when the epics were created. The consensus is that "the Iliad and the Odyssey date from around the 8th century BC, the Iliad being composed before the Odyssey, perhaps by some decades," i.e. earlier than Hesiod, the Iliad being the oldest work of Western literature. Over the past few decades, some scholars have argued for a 7th-century date. Some of those who argue that the Homeric poems developed gradually over a long period of time give an even later date for composition of the poems; according to Gregory Nagy for example, they only became fixed texts in the 6th century. The question of the historicity of Homer the individual is known as the "Homeric question"; there is no reliable biographical information handed down from classical antiquity. The poems are generally seen as the culmination of many generations of oral story-telling, in a tradition with a well-developed formulaic system of poetic composition. Some scholars, such as Martin West, claim that "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name."

The formative influence played by the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece.

Life and legends

(1825–1905). The scene portrays Homer on Mount Ida, beset by dogs and guided by the goatherder Glaucus. (The tale is told in Pseudo-Herodotus).]]

"Homer" is a Greek name, attested in Aeolic-speaking areas, and although nothing definite is known about him, traditions arose purporting to give details of his birthplace and background. The satirist Lucian, in his True History, describes him as a Babylonian called Tigranes, who assumed the name Homer when taken "hostage" (homeros) by the Greeks. When the Emperor Hadrian asked the Oracle at Delphi about Homer, the Pythia proclaimed that he was Ithacan, the son of Epikaste and Telemachus, from the Odyssey. These stories were incorporated into the various Lives of Homer compiled from the Alexandrian period onwards. Homer is most frequently said to be born in the Ionian region of Asia Minor, at Smyrna, or on the island of Chios, dying on the Cycladic island of Ios. A connection with Smyrna seems to be alluded to in a legend that his original name was Melesigenes ("born of Meles", a river which flowed by that city), with his mother the nymph Kretheis. Internal evidence from the poems gives evidence of familiarity with the topography and place-names of this area of Asia Minor, for example Homer refers to meadow birds at the mouth of the Caystros (Iliad 2.459ff.), a storm in the Icarian sea (Iliad 2.144ff.), and mentions that women in Maeonia and Caria stain ivory with scarlet (Iliad 4.142).

The association with Chios dates back to at least Semonides of Amorgos, who cited a famous line in the Iliad (6.146) as by "the man of Chios". An eponymous bardic guild, known as the Homeridae (sons of Homer), or Homeristae ('Homerizers') appears to have existed there, tracing descent from an ancestor of that name, or upholding their function as rhapsodes or "lay-stitchers" specialising in the recitation of Homeric poetry. Wilhelm Dörpfeld suggests that Homer had visited many of the places and regions which he describes in his epics, such as Mycenae, Troy, the palace of Odysseus at Ithaca and more. According to Diodorus Siculus, Homer had even visited Egypt.

The poet's name is homophonous with ὅμηρος (hómēros), "hostage" (or "surety"), which is interpreted as meaning "he who accompanies; he who is forced to follow", or, in some dialects, "blind". This led to many tales that he was a hostage or a blind man. Traditions which assert that he was blind may have arisen from the meaning of the word in both Ionic, where the verbal form ὁμηρεύω (homēreúō) has the specialized meaning of "guide the blind", and the Aeolian dialect of Cyme, where ὅμηρος (hómēros) is synonymous with the standard Greek τυφλός (typhlós), meaning 'blind'. The characterization of Homer as a blind bard goes back to some verses in the Delian Hymn to Apollo, the third of the Homeric Hymns, verses later cited to support this notion by Thucydides. The Cumean historian Ephorus held the same view, and the idea gained support in antiquity on the strength of a false etymology which derived his name from ho mḕ horṓn (ὁ μὴ ὁρῶν: "he who does not see"). Critics have long taken as self-referential a passage in the Odyssey describing a blind bard, Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacian king, who recounts stories of Troy to the shipwrecked Odysseus.

Many scholars take the name of the poet to be indicative of a generic function. Gregory Nagy takes it to mean "he who fits (the Song) together". ὁμηρέω (homēréō), another related verb, besides signifying "meet", can mean "(sing) in accord/tune". Some argue that "Homer" may have meant "he who puts the voice in tune" with dancing. Marcello Durante links "Homeros" to an epithet of Zeus as "god of the assemblies" and argues that behind the name lies the echo of an archaic word for "reunion", similar to the later Panegyris, denoting a formal assembly of competing minstrels.

Some Ancient Lives depict Homer as a wandering minstrel, like Thamyris or Hesiod, who walked as far as Chalkis to sing at the funeral games of Amphidamas. We are given the image of a "blind, begging singer who hangs around with little people: shoemakers, fisherman, potters, sailors, elderly men in the gathering places of harbour towns". The poems give us evidence of singers at the courts of the nobility. Scholars are divided as to which category, if any, the court singer or the wandering minstrel, the historic "Homer" belonged.

Works attributed to Homer

The Greeks of the sixth and early fifth centuries understood by "Homer", generally, "the whole body of heroic tradition as embodied in hexameter verse". Thus, in addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, there are "exceptional" epics which organize their respective themes on a "massive scale". Many other works were credited to Homer in antiquity, including the entire Epic Cycle. The genre included further poems on the Trojan War, such as the Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Cypria, and the Epigoni, as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), and the Margites were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely. Two other poems, the Capture of Oechalia and the Phocais'' were also assigned Homeric authorship, but the question of the identities of the authors of these various texts is even more problematic than that of the authorship of the two major epics.

Problems of authorship

The idea that Homer was responsible for just the two outstanding epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, did not win consensus until 350 BC. While many find it unlikely that both epics were composed by the same person, others argue that the stylistic similarities are too consistent to support the theory of multiple authorship. One view which attempts to bridge the differences holds that the Iliad was composed by "Homer" in his maturity, while the Odyssey was a work of his old age. The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric Hymns and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Most scholars agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardisation and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. An important role in this standardisation appears to have been played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical written text.

Other scholars still support the idea that Homer was a real person. Since nothing is known about the life of this Homer, the common joke—also recycled with regard to Shakespeare—has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name." Samuel Butler argues, based on literary observations, that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter and Andrew Dalby in Rediscovering Homer.

Independent of the question of single authorship is the near-universal agreement, after the work of Milman Parry, that the Homeric poems are dependent on an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (aoidoi). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems contain many formulaic phrases typical of extempore epic traditions; even entire verses are at times repeated. Parry and his student Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in a predominantly oral cultural milieu, the key words being "oral" and "traditional". Parry started with "traditional": the repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and were useful to him in composition. Parry called these repetitive chunks "formulas".

Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis", wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe between the 8th and 6th centuries. The Greek alphabet was introduced in the early 8th century, so it is possible that Homer himself was of the first generation of authors who were also literate. The classicist Barry B. Powell suggests that the Greek Alphabet was invented c. 800 BC by one man, probably Homer, in order to write down oral epic poetry. More radical Homerists like Gregory Nagy contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BCE).

Homeric studies

The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. In the last few centuries, they have revolved around the process by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted over time to us, first orally and later in writing.

Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric Question), schools of thought which emphasized on the one hand the inconsistencies in, and on the other the artistic unity of, Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theory, the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis, the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.

Homeric dialect

The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter.

Homeric style

Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that Homer was unique among the poets of his time, focusing on a single unified theme or action in the epic cycle.

The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer are well articulated by Matthew Arnold:

[T]he translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author:—that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and finally, that he is eminently noble.

.]]

The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of hexameter verse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought, or the grammatical form of the sentence, is guided by the structure of the verse; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the syntax—the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divided by tolerably uniform pauses—produces a swift flowing movement such as is rarely found when periods are constructed without direct reference to the metre. That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults, that is, without becoming either fluctuant or monotonous, is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetic skill. The plainness and directness of both thought and expression which characterise him were doubtless qualities of his age, but the author of the Iliad (similar to Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed this gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.

Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets Virgil, Dante, and Milton. On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed. The proof that Homer does not belong to that school—and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad poetry—is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems and, as regards style, by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold: the quality of nobleness. It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad-poetry and popular epic.

Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigenous and, by the ease of movement and its resultant simplicity, distinguishable from the works of Dante, Milton and Virgil. It is also distinguished from the works of these artists by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil's poetry, a sense of the greatness of Rome and Italy is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the considered delicacy of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics display sentiments of fear and hatred of the Saracens; but, in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political events; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad; and even the protagonists are not comparable to the chief national heroes of Greece. So far as can be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emotion, and of drama; indeed, his works are often referred to as "dramas".

History and the Iliad

The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik in the late 19th century provided initial evidence to scholars that there was a historical basis for the Trojan War. Research into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages, pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord, began convincing scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until they are written down. The epic weaves brilliantly the (scattered remains) of these distinct tribal narratives, exchanged among clan bards, into a monumental tale in which Greeks join collectively to do battle on the distant plains of Troy.

Hero cult

, by Archelaus of Priene. Marble relief, possibly of the 3rd century BC, now in the British Museum.]]

In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several cities. A shrine, the Homereion, was devoted to him in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC. This shrine is described in Aelian's 3rd century work Varia Historia. He tells how Ptolemy "placed in a circle around the statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a painting of the poet by the artist Galaton, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspect of Oceanus as the source of all poetry.

A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt, depicts the apotheosis of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife or sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated poet, flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo, the god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses. Zeus, the king of the gods, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly that the Greeks considered Homer not merely a great poet but the divinely inspired reservoir of all literature.

Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus, and Smyrna, which were among the city-states that claimed to be his birthplace. Strabo (14.1.37) records a Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another Homereion.

Transmission and publication

Though evincing many features characteristic of oral poetry, the Iliad and Odyssey were at some point committed to writing. The Greek script, adapted from a Phoenician syllabary around 800 BCE, made possible the notation of the complex rhythms and vowel clusters that make up hexameter verse. Homer's poems appear to have been recorded shortly after the alphabet's invention: an inscription from Ischia in the Bay of Naples, ca. 740 BCE, appears to refer to a text of the Iliad; likewise, illustrations seemingly inspired by the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey are found on Samos, Mykonos and in Italy dating from the first quarter of the seventh century BCE. We have little information about the early condition of the Homeric poems, but in the second century BCE, Alexandrian editors stabilized this text from which all modern texts descend.

In late antiquity, knowledge of Greek declined in Latin-speaking western Europe and, along with it, knowledge of Homer's poems. It was not until the fifteenth century AD that Homer's work began to be read once more in Italy. By contrast it was continually read and taught in the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire where the majority of the classics also survived. The first printed edition appeared in 1488.

See also

Topics

Modern scholars

Richard Bentley

Ioannis Kakridis

Adolf Kirchhoff

Geoffrey Kirk

Karl Lachmann

Walter Leaf

Albert Lord

David Binning Monro

Karl Otfried Müller

Gilbert Murray

Gregory Nagy

Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch

Milman Parry

Barry B. Powell

Heinrich Schliemann

William Bedell Stanford

Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison

Alan Wace

Martin Litchfield West

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff

Friedrich August Wolf

Notes

Selected bibliography

Editions

(texts in Homeric Greek)

Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488

the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)

Th. Ridel, Strassbourg, ca. 1572, 1588 and 1592.

Wolf (Halle, 1794–1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)

Spitzner (Gotha, 1832–1836)

Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858)

La Roche (Odyssey, 1867–1868; Iliad, 1873–1876, both at Leipzig)

Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889–1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 1907)

W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886–1888; 2nd ed. 1900-1902)

W. Walter Merry and James Riddell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)

Monro (Odyssey xiii.-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)

Monro and Allen (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).

D.B. Monro and T.W. Allen 1917-1920, Homeri Opera (5 volumes: Iliad = 3rd edition, Odyssey = 2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814528-4, ISBN 0-19-814529-2, ISBN 0-19-814531-4, ISBN 0-19-814532-2, ISBN 0-19-814534-9

H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2

M.L. West 1998-2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9, ISBN 3-598-71435-1

P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7

*

Interlinear translations

The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text ISBN 978-1607252986

English translations

This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Augustus Taber Murray (1866–1940)

*Homer: Iliad, 2 vols., revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1999).

*Homer: Odyssey, 2 vols., revised by George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1995).

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)

*The Iliad, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004) ISBN 0-374-52905-1

*The Odyssey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998) ISBN 0-374-52574-9

Robert Fagles (1933–2008)

*The Iliad, Penguin Classics (1998) ISBN 0-14-027536-3

*The Odyssey, Penguin Classics (1999) ISBN 0-14-026886-3

Stanley Lombardo (b. 1943)

*Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company (1997) ISBN 0-87220-352-2

*Odyssey, Hackett Publishing Company (2000) ISBN 0-87220-484-7

*Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-08-3

*Odyssey, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-06-7

*The Essential Homer, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-12-1

*The Essential Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-10-5

Samuel Butler (novelist) (1835–1902)

*The Iliad, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-04-1

*The Odyssey, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-05-8

Herbert Jordan (b. 1938)

*"Iliad", University of Oklahoma Press (2008) ISBN 9780806139746 (soft cover); ISBN 9780806139425 (cloth bound)

General works on Homer

Pierre Carlier, Homère, Fayard 1999. ISBN 2-213-60381-2

Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le monde d'Homère, Perrin 2000. ISBN 2-262-01181-8

Jacqueline de Romilly, Homère, Presses Universitaire de France, 5th ed. 2005. ISBN 2-13-054830-X

J. Latacz 2004, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-926308-6; 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig 2005 (in Spanish 2003 ISBN 84-233-3487-2, modern Greek 2005 ISBN 960-16-1557-1)

Robert Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-01246-5

I. Morris and B. B. Powell 1997, A New Companion to Homer, Leiden. ISBN 90-04-09989-1

B. B. Powell 2007, "Homer," 2nd edition. Oxford. ISBN 978-1-4051-5325-5

Influential readings and interpretations

E. Auerbach 1953, Mimesis, Princeton (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern), chapter 1. ISBN 0-691-11336-X

M.W. Edwards 1987, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, Baltimore. ISBN 0-8018-3329-9

B. Fenik 1974, Studies in the Odyssey, Wiesbaden ('Hermes' Einzelschriften 30).

M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus 1954, rev. ed. 1978.

I.J.F. de Jong 1987, Narrators and Focalizers, Amsterdam/Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-658-0

G. Nagy 1980, "The Best of the Achaeans", Baltimore. ISBN 978-0801860157

Commentaries

Iliad:

*P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London. ISBN 1-85399-657-2

*G. S. Kirk (gen. ed.) 1985-1993, The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-28171-7, ISBN 0-521-28172-5, ISBN 0-521-28173-3, ISBN 0-521-28174-1, ISBN 0-521-31208-6, ISBN 0-521-31209-4

*J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002-, Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868–1913) (6 volumes published so far, of an estimated 15), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-74307-6, ISBN 3-598-74304-1

*N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Exeter. ISBN 0-85989-684-6

*M.W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-89855-5

Odyssey:

*A. Heubeck (gen. ed.) 1990-1993, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (3 volumes; orig. publ. 1981-1987 in Italian), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814747-3, ISBN 0-19-872144-7, ISBN 0-19-814953-0

*P. Jones (ed.) 1988, Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-038-8

*I.J.F. de Jong (ed.) 2001, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-46844-2

Trends in Homeric scholarship

;"Classical" analysis

A. Heubeck 1974, Die homerische Frage, Darmstadt. ISBN 3-534-03864-9

R. Merkelbach 1969, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee (2nd edition), Munich. ISBN 3-406-03242-7

D. Page 1955, The Homeric Odyssey, Oxford.

U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1916, Die Ilias und Homer, Berlin.

F.A. Wolf 1795, Prolegomena ad Homerum, Halle. Published in English translation 1988, Princeton. ISBN 0-691-10247-3

;Neoanalysis

M.E. Clark 1986, "Neoanalysis: a bibliographical review," Classical World 79.6: 379-94.

J. Griffin 1977, "The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer," Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39-53.

J.T. Kakridis 1949, Homeric Researches, London. ISBN 0-8240-7757-1

W. Kullmann 1960, Die Quellen der Ilias (Troischer Sagenkreis), Wiesbaden. ISBN 3-515-00235-9

;Homer and oral tradition

E. Bakker 1997, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse, Ithaca NY. ISBN 0-8014-3295-2

J.M. Foley 1999, Homer's Traditional Art, University Park PA. ISBN 0-271-01870-4

G.S. Kirk 1976, Homer and the Oral Tradition, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-21309-6

A.B. Lord 1960, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge MA. ISBN 0-674-00283-0

M. Parry 1971, The Making of Homeric Verse, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-520560-X

B. B. Powell, 1991, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, ISBN 0-521-58907-X

Dating the Homeric poems

R. Janko 1982, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-23869-2

External links

Iliad by Homer

Works by Homer at Project Gutenberg.

Iliad bilingual edition bks 1-12 at archive.org

Collection of Homer-related links

Greek lessons based on Homer

Clyde Pharr, Homer and the study of Greek

Homer

SORGLL: Homer, Iliad, Bk I, 1-52; read by Stephen Daitz

Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again A former college president attended St. John's College and wrote a memoir about his experience reading Homer, rowing Crew, and examining the importance of a liberal arts education in today’s society.

Translation issues: Iliad translator Herbert Jordan (U. of Oklahoma Press 2008) describes translation issues including: how literal should it be; whether to call the besiegers Achaeans, Argives, Danaans, or Greeks; how—and whether—to translate "winged words"; what the wall by the ships looked like; whether the besiegers slept in tents, huts, camps—or nothing.

Category:Oral epic poets Category:Epic poets Category:Blind people * Category:Mythography Homer Homer Category:8th-century BC poets Category:Mycenaean Greece Category:Greek historical hero cult Category:Greek culture heroes Category:Ancient Chians Category:Ancient Smyrnaeans Category:Deified people