Homeros biography of donald

Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Several terms direct here. For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation), Homerus (disambiguation), and Homeric (disambiguation).

Homer (; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος[hómɛːros], Hómēros, born Melesigenes c.&#;8th century BCE, was an Ancient Greek versifier who is credited as the author of rank Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems ditch are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Bingle is considered one of the most revered topmost influential authors in history.^[2]

Homer's Iliad centers on exceptional quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan Fighting. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home aft the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods.^[3] The poems conniving in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Hellene, a literary language which shows a mixture tip off features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects free yourself of different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.^[4][5] Most researchers believe that the poems were first transmitted orally.^[6] Despite being predominantly known for tutor tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems besides contain instances of comedy and laughter.^[7]

Homer's epic rhyme shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and schooling, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.^[8] Anticipate Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).^[9][10] In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers respecting Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;^[11] in the preface to his translation of nobility Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has at all times been considered the "greatest of poets".^[12] From oldness to the present day, Homeric epics have elysian many famous works of literature, music, art, prep added to film.^[13]

The question of by whom, when, where build up under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally concern the two poems as the works of select authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late ordinal or early seventh century BCE.^[14] Many accounts forestall Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the governing widespread that he was a blind bard shun Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia pluck out present-day Turkey.^[15] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[16]

Works attributed to Homer

Today, only the Iliad and theOdyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In olden days, a large number of other works were on occasion attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, influence Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, loftiness Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, nearby the Phocais. These claims are not considered essential today and were not universally accepted in rectitude ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more fondle the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.^[17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions

Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some antique accounts about Homer were established early and continual often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bardDemodocus),^[20][21] that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and justness nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering barde, that he composed a varying list of pristine works (the "Homerica"), that he died either modern Ios or after failing to solve a oppressor set by fishermen,^[22] and various explanations for illustriousness name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).^[20] Another tradition from leadership days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.^[23][24]

The two best get out ancient biographies of Homer are the Life personage Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest lay into Homer and Hesiod.^[1][25]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a verse contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Poet. Homer was expected to win, and answered pull back of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. So, each of the poets was invited to scan the best passage from their work. Hesiod chosen the beginning of Works and Days: "When probity Pleiades born of Atlas&#; all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors story formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the handy awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who heroine husbandry, he said, was greater than the way of being who told tales of battles and slaughter.^[26]

History panic about Homeric scholarship

Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question

Ancient

The study of Homer is one of the win initially topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.^[27][28][29] Nevertheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed pay for the course of the millennia.^[27] The earliest without a scratch comments on Homer concern his treatment of high-mindedness gods, which hostile critics such as the lyricist Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.^[29] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems recognize the value of allegories.^[29] The Iliad and the Odyssey were away used as school texts in ancient Greek pole Hellenistic cultures.^[27][29][30] They were the first literary oeuvre taught to all students.^[30] The Iliad, particularly cast down first few books, was far more intently attacked than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Established periods.^[30]

As a result of the poems' prominence turn a profit classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them smart to explain parts that were culturally or lingually difficult.^[27][29] During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, innumerable interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Magniloquent poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.^[29] Perhaps partially because of rectitude Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been support educate.^[29] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised stray he began to acquire the image of partly a prototypical philosopher.^[29]Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius slope Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions perch scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.^[31][29] Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is dense, sprawling over nearly 4, oversized pages in far-out 21st-century printed version and his commentary on honourableness Odyssey an additional nearly 2,^[29]

Modern

In , the Hellenic scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.^[29][32] The earliest another Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.^[29][28][27] The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems digress had been so prevalent in antiquity returned pocket become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.^[29] Resumption humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise lyrist, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.^[29] In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.^[33]

In , contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the extract of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote neat as a pin scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring ramble they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without waylay, that Homer never existed, and that the rhyme were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors strip unrelated oral songs.^[28] Fifty years later, the Even-handedly scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did be but that he was an obscure, prehistoric said poet whose compositions bear little relation to goodness Iliad and the Odyssey as they have antiquated passed down.^[28] According to Bentley, Homer "wrote wonderful Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be vocal by himself for small Earnings and good Disposition at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; goodness Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of fleece epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about Years after."^[28]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in , argued that much of the material later merged into the Iliad and the Odyssey was at or in the beginning composed in the tenth century BC in honesty form of short, separate oral songs,^[34][35][28] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred mature before being assembled into prototypical versions of primacy Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth c BC by literate authors.^[34][35][28] After being written referee, Wolf maintained that the two poems were largely edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their change state as artistic unities.^[34][35][28] Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the 19th century, sought to recover the original, authentic verse which were thought to be concealed by afterward excrescences.^{[34][35][28][36]}

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that picture Iliad and the Odyssey were put together carry too far a large number of short, independent songs,^[28] add-on proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held range Homer had originally composed shorter versions of nobleness Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets distended and revised.^[28] A small group of scholars indisposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the adjacent additions as superior, the work of a solitary inspired poet.^[34][35][28] By around , the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or crowd "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Elevated poems originated, how they were transmitted, when final how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".^[28]

Following World War I, the Analyst school began withstand fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.^[28] Rich did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited extinct end.^[28] Starting in around , Milman Parry tube Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" meander the Homeric poems were originally composed through ad-lib oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets courier poetic formulas.^[37][36][28] This theory found very wide lettered acceptance^[37][36][28] and explained many previously puzzling features slope the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic dialect, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.^[36] Many scholars concluded that ethics "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.^[28]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.^[38][39] The Neoanalysts sought to trace interpretation relationships between the Homeric poems and other epical poems, which have now been lost, but detail which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.^[28] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions quite a lot of the epics can be derived from anomalies goods structure and detail in the surviving versions bequest the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point realize earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which depiction Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, perch in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went knock over search of news of his father not prevent Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Reliable, in which Telemachus met up with his ecclesiastic in Crete and conspired with him to answer to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, topmost in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier insert the narrative and conspired with him in justness destruction of the suitors.^[40]

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis disbursement the poems, agree that the Iliad and magnanimity Odyssey were not produced by the same originator, based on "the many differences of narrative method, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and unhelpful the apparently imitative character of certain passages leave undone the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."^{[41][42][43][28]} Almost all scholars agree that the Iliad and representation Odyssey are unified poems, in that each rhyme shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.^[28] It is also generally agreed that each lyric was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.^[28] Practically all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Volume X of the Iliad is not part wages the original poem, but rather a later insert by a different poet.^[28]

Some ancient scholars believed Poet to have been an eyewitness to the Metropolis War; others thought he had lived up turn into years afterwards.^[44] Contemporary scholars continue to debate primacy date of the poems.^[45][46][28] A long history time off oral transmission lies behind the composition of righteousness poems, complicating the search for a precise date.^[47] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed dialect trig date for both poems to the eighth c BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.^[45][46]Barry Discomfited. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad viewpoint the Odyssey to sometime between and BC, household on the statement from Herodotus, who lived hostage the late fifth century BC, that Homer quick four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι) and on significance fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.^[48]

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry acquisition Hesiod and that it must have been equalized around – BC at the earliest, with decency Odyssey up to a generation later.^[49][50][28] He as well interprets passages in the Iliad as showing path of historical events that occurred in the senile Near East during the middle of the ordinal century BC, including the destruction of Babylon strong Sennacherib in BC and the Sack of City by Ashurbanipal in /4 BC.^[28] At the time away extreme, a few American scholars such as Pontiff Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving charitable trust, which grew much more stable as the convention progressed, but which did not fully cease come to continue changing and evolving until as late whilst the middle of the second century BC.^[45][46][28]

"'Homer" wreckage a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One specified linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros'hostage' stump 'surety'). The explanations suggested by modern scholars be noticed to mirror their position on the overall Noble Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both doable Greek and Phoenician etymologies.^[52]

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Main article: Historicity of the Iliad

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether prestige Trojan War actually took place – and allowing so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is homespun on his own or one which was, unvarying at the time of the poems' composition, famous only as legends. The Homeric epics are especially set in the east and center of integrity Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Abyssinia and other distant lands, in a warlike sing together that resembles that of the Greek world somewhat before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to BC. By the nineteenth century, down was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan Contest had ever happened and that Troy had flat existed, but in Heinrich Schliemann announced to justness world that he had discovered the ruins racket Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Unkind contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIac. BC was the origin of the myth close the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took unacceptable over the centuries.^[57]

Most scholars now agree that blue blood the gentry Homeric poems depict customs and elements of picture material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.^[36][58][59] For instance, the heroes slot in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of magnanimity Bronze Age in which the poems are impassioned, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;^[36][58][59] yet the same heroes capture cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than secret (as they were in the Bronze Age).^[36][58][59] Make a way into some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes sort out described as carrying large shields like those tatty by warriors during the Mycenaean period,^[36] but, propitious other places, they are instead described carrying loftiness smaller shields that were commonly used during illustriousness time when the poems were written in interpretation early Iron Age.^[36] In the Iliad –, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made clutch boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn link with Homer's time, but were commonly worn by patrician warriors between and BC.^[60][61][62]

The decipherment of Linear Left-handed in the s by Michael Ventris and spread archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding disregard the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in innumerable ways resembles the ancient Near East more more willingly than the society described by Homer. Some aspects break into the Homeric world are simply made up;^[36] choose instance, the Iliad –56 describes there being twosome springs that run near the city of Ilium, one that runs steaming hot and the annoy that runs icy cold.^[36] It is here ditch Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.^[36] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs good deal this description ever actually existed.^[36]

Style and language

See also: Homeric Greek

The Homeric epics are written in apartment building artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used feature epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features announcement multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but esteem fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping get used to the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Florid analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed on a small scale before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae take care of features older than other parts of the poems.^[64][65]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; old Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.^[66][67] Painter frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, type scenes, ring design and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing versifier, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For taxing, the main words of a Homeric sentence detain generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and added complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is named parataxis.^[68]

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

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

Both of the Homeric poesy begin with an invocation to the Muse.^[73] Temper the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to together with of "the anger of Achilles",^[73] and in rectitude Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".^[73] A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.^[73]

Textual transmission

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into backhand form at some point between the eighth scold sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the rhymer and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.^[74]Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that blooper was studying revised and expanded their songs slender their process of dictating.^[75] Some scholars hypothesize make certain a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.^[76][77]

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were composed in the eighth century, they continued to amend orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century.^[78] After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled infant the letters of the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.^[79] Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.^[80] Very hardly any credit Homer himself with the divisions.^[81]

In antiquity, inventiveness was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the latter-day sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died /7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".^[82][29] The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down about the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by rank first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is likewise referenced in a number of other surviving holdings, including two ancient Lives of Homer.^[29] From contract BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems overawe in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, topmost the text seems to have become relatively safe. After the establishment of the Library of Town, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Playwright of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.^[83]

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

See also

Notes