Homer is the legendary poet-storyteller of Ancient Greece. It is he who is credited with creating the Iliad and Odyssey.
Unfortunately, there is no reliable information about the life and personality of Homer. It is only known that the Iliad and Odyssey were created later than the events they describe, but earlier than the 6th century BC, when their existence was reliably established. It turns out that the period of Homer’s life could be dated from the 12th to the 7th century BC. The latest date is considered the most likely.
Homer's birthplace is also unknown. Seven cities defended the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. According to Herodotus and Pausanias, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Presumably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece or on one of the islands that are adjacent to it.
Homer was portrayed as blind. Probably, in reality this was not the case, it was just the way it was accepted in the genre of ancient biography. Moreover, many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind, so the assumption that Homer was blind looked very plausible.
Homer (circa 460 BC)
Interesting to know: According to one of the legends, described in the “Contest between Homer and Hesiod,” a poetic duel took place between Homer and Hesiod. Allegedly, the poets met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus. There they read their best poems. The judge at the competition was King Paned, who attributed the victory to Hesiod. The king was pleased that he called the people to agriculture and peace, and not to war and massacres. But the audience's sympathies were still on Homer's side.
Homer is credited with works that were created later: the comic poems “Margate”, “The War of Mice and Frogs”, a cycle of works about the Trojan War and the return of heroes to Greece, for example, “Cypria”, “Ethiopida”, “The Lesser Iliad”, “The Capture” Ilion", "Returns". Under the name "Homeric Hymns" there was a collection of 33 hymns to the gods. Even in ancient times, the “Homeric question” arose, which is now understood as a set of problems associated with the origin and development of the ancient Greek epic.
In antiquity, Homer's poems personified Hellenic unity and heroism and were a source of wisdom and knowledge of all aspects of life. According to Strabo, Homer was the only poet of antiquity who knew almost everything about the ecumene, its inhabitants, their origin, way of life and culture. Homer's data was considered the most authentic and trustworthy. They were used by Thucydides, Pausanias, and Plutarch.
Greek children learned to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer was quoted, commented on, and explained allegorically. Pythagorean philosophers read selected passages from Homer's poems. Thus, they called for correction of their souls. According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great always carried a copy of the Iliad with him. He kept it under his pillow along with the dagger.
Bust of Homer in the Louvre
Homer is one of the oldest poets of antiquity, the author of world-famous epic works, including the Odyssey and the Iliad. He lived in the 8th - 7th centuries BC. According to Herodotus, the writer created his masterpieces in the ninth century.
Some chronographs claim that Homer was a contemporary of the Trojan War, and he died in the 12th century BC. Research proves that more than half of the papyri found came from his pen. Little is known about the life path and personality of the creator.
Myths and facts from the life of the poet
There is still debate among scientists about the date and place of Homer's birth. Most of them believe that the poet lived in the eighth century BC. If we talk about the place where the author of the epic poems lived, seven cities are most often named, each of which is located on the territory of the country of Ionia.
Among them are Rhodes, Smyrna, Athens, Colophon, Argos, Salamis and Chion. His most famous epic poems were written on the Asia Minor coast of Greece. There is a possibility that this happened on one of the islands that were adjacent to this country.
The Greeks actively spread the legend that the poet was born in Smyrna near the Meles River. His mother is called Crifeis. According to stories written at that time, the learned man Phemius fell in love with Homer's mother, after which he took his son as his student. The young man learned quickly and was soon able to surpass his teacher. After the death of Femia, the school came into the possession of the poet. People from all over the country came to him for wise conversation. Among them was the sailor Mentes, who persuaded Homer to go on a trip with him, closing the school.
The legends say that the young creator was very inquisitive, so he carefully studied the culture of each place he visited. He noticed every little thing, and then gradually began to describe the events he saw. The Greeks claim that the writer went blind after visiting Ithaca. Some sources state that this was only temporary blindness, and vision was quickly restored. Others are inclined to believe that Homer remained blind until the end of his days. It was during this period that the dawn of his creativity occurred.
Homer traveled a lot, helped people, and even raised the children of a rich gentleman. In adulthood he settled in the city of Chios, where he founded a school. Local residents showed him respect in every possible way, so the writer could teach their children in comfort. After some time, he got married, and the family had two sons and a daughter.
Researchers gleaned some facts from ancient manuscripts and paintings depicting the writer. Thus, in most sculptures he was shown as blind. At that time, it was customary to portray representatives of the literary professions as blind, so it is impossible to prove whether this information is true. The Greeks believed that there was some connection between writing talent and the inability to see. Moreover, one of the characters in the Iliad also had vision problems. That is why literary scholars are inclined to conclude that this feature was just a reconstruction.
To draw conclusions about the origin of the author, scientists studied in detail the language of his works. But even the dialectical features of the language did not help to get closer to the truth, since they combined too many words from the Ionian and Aeolian dialects. This combination is called a special poetic koine, formed long before the birth of the creator. The meaning of Homer's name is traditionally deciphered as “blind” and “hostage”.
We also know about a kind of poetic duel in which Homer and Hesiod took part. They read their works to an audience on one of the islands. King Paned was appointed judge of this battle. Homer lost the competition because his poetry contained too many calls for war and battles. In contrast, Hesiod advocated peace, so he actively promoted agriculture and hard work for the good. However, visitors to the island were more favorable to the losing poet.
It is known that death overtook Homer on the island of the Cyclades archipelago. He was very sad, did not look at his feet, as a result of which he tripped over a stone. Some sources claim that the poet died of grief, because shortly before the collision he was unable to solve the riddle of the local fishermen. Other researchers are inclined to believe that Homer was sick.
Homer's work
As mentioned above, Homer was the author of acclaimed epic poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. In addition, other works were often attributed to him, which were published much later. Among them is a comic poem called “Margit”, the cycle “Cypris”, “Homeric Hymns” and other works.
Representatives of the Library of Alexandria did a tremendous amount of work to establish the authorship of each work. They studied the manuscripts, compared the language and the storyline followed by the authors of the poems. As a result, even today there are disputes among scholars about which texts belong to Homer and which were undeservedly attributed to him.
Philologists recognize that it was this poet who became the first of his kind. They are amazed by the unity of action, the original concept and style of the story. According to researchers, the poems reflect the technique of folk singers. Like them, Homer created stable phrases, from which it was then easy to create large songs.
Homeric question
All discussions related to the two epic poems are usually called the Homeric question. Indeed, there were many dubious facts in the history of the study of these works. Even in ancient times, some people stated that Homer borrowed the plot for his poems from the poetess Fantasia, who lived during the Trojan War.
For a long time, European art critics adhered to the point of view about the undoubted authorship of the poet. It was also taken for granted that the Iliad and Odyssey were published with a minimum number of corrections. But at the end of the 17th century, philologists discovered other versions of the songs of the Iliad. This cast doubt not only on Homer's authorship, but also on the integrity of the work. Some researchers argued that each song was separate from the others, while others advocated the unity of the author’s thoughts.
Since epic poems have undergone many editions, literary scholars consider it inappropriate to attribute authorship to any one person. Inconsistencies in temporal and spatial frameworks, deviations from the plot and contradictions were found in the texts. That is why analysts came to the conclusion that the poem was constantly expanding, and more than one person was involved in this process.
There are also opponents of analysts, the so-called unitarians. They argue that Homer was the sole author of the two poems. They refute all the arguments of their opponents with the idea that in every great work there are inevitably errors and contradictions. The Unitarians emphasize the integrity of the plan, the symmetry and beauty of the composition of both poems.
Translations of the poet
Special mention should be made of the language of epic poems. Homer preferred to use phrases that did not appear in real speech. There were a lot of dialectisms, and the poet arranged his texts metrically in the size of a hexameter. Each song consisted of six feet, with short and long syllables alternating moderately. That is why an adequate translation of the Iliad and Odyssey required titanic efforts and talent.
The first translations saw the world even before our era. In the third century, a Roman poet created a Latin version of the Odyssey. Children from Greece learned to read using the works of Homer. In the 15th century, a translation into Italian appeared; three centuries after that, the epic poems gradually began to be translated into English, Russian and German. Mikhail Lomonosov was the first to use the most complex Alexandrian verse during translation. After it, a partial translation by Kostrov appeared in iambic meter, and then some prose versions became known. V. Zhukovsky and N. Gnedich are rightfully considered unsurpassed translators of Homer in Russia.
Homer is a 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).
The Greek poet Homer was born approximately between the 12th and 18th centuries BC. He is famous for the epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", which had a huge influence on the European literary tradition. What else is known about Homer as their supposed author - read on.
Homeric question
Homer's biography still remains a mystery, since the real facts from his life are unknown. Some scholars believe it was one person; others think that these iconic works were created by a whole group of poets.
The literary style of Homer, whoever he was, falls more into the category of a poet-storyteller, as opposed to the image of a lyric poet, for example, like Virgil or Shakespeare. These stories have repetitive elements, almost like a song's chorus, which may suggest a musical component. However, Homer's works are designated as epic rather than lyric poetry.
It was also not possible to determine the exact place where Homer was born, although scientists are still trying. It has long been said that seven cities claimed to be the poet’s hometown: Smyrna, Ithaca, Colophon, Argos, Pylos, Athens, Chios. But scientists are getting closer to the opinion that Homer was from Smyrna (now Izmir in Turkey) or lived near Chios, an island in the eastern Aegean Sea.
All this speculation about who he was eventually led to what is now known as the "Homeric question": did Homer really exist at all? This is considered one of the greatest literary mysteries today. But while these authorship issues may never be resolved, the poet Homer - fictional or real - is still revered for his epic and influential works of poetry around the world: the Iliad and the Odyssey.
In fact, with such a colossal lack of information, almost every aspect of Homer's biography originates from his works. For example, the fact that Homer was blind - this statement is based solely on the character of the Odyssey, a blind singer-storyteller named Demodocus.
Famous poems of Homer
The Iliad and Odyssey can be called the basis of all modern literature, and the poet himself is its forefather. These poems represent spirituality, wisdom, justice and courage. For many, Homer's works became the very first books - children in Ancient Greece were often taught to read from them. Translations of these poems into Latin appeared in the 3rd century BC. e., although the first translation into Russian was already in the 18th century.
The name "Iliad" comes from "Ilion", the second name of the city of Troy. In the poem, Homer describes an excerpt from the history of the ten-year Trojan War: the last forty-nine days before the fall of Troy. The central character of the poem turns out to be Achilles, a strong and valiant warrior, thirsting for revenge for his murdered friend Patroclus.
Despite the fact that Homer's poem "The Iliad" is replete with scenes of battles, the main message of this poem is humanistic. Here even Zeus admits his dislike for the god of war, just as Achilles condemns any war other than defensive ones.
In the Odyssey, Homer tells us about the post-war period - a long and adventurous return from the Trojan War. The main character of the poem, another hero of Greek mythology, Odysseus, ten years after the end of the war, is still looking for a way back to his homeland and finds himself in different stories. Unlike the strong and brave Achilles from the Iliad, Odysseus’s main trump card is his sharp mind, thanks to which he managed to get out of more than one scrape, and even help others.
The poem is constructed in a light, fairy-tale genre. It wonderfully reveals the features of life, material culture, customs and traditions, as well as the organization of society in Ancient Greece.
Although in general modern science is inclined to attribute only the Iliad and the Odyssey to the works of the ancient Greek poet, Homer, according to some scientists, is also considered the author of poems called “The War of the Mice and Frogs”, “Margit”, as well as a collection of thirty-three divine hymns called "Homeric Hymns".
And now we invite you to listen to an interesting discussion of Homer’s poem “The Iliad” in the following video:
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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; other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War.
Homer's birthplace is unknown. In the ancient tradition, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. As Pausanias also reports, 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. 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 options “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” () 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.”
Legends of Ancient times claimed that Homer created his epic based on the poems of the poetess Fantasia during the Trojan War.
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).
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 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 “primitive 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”.