Homer

Homer (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, Template:Transliteration; possibly born Template:Circa) was an Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his authorship, Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.<ref name="Britannica" />

The Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Despite being predominantly known for their tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.<ref name="Bell">Bell, Robert H.; "Homer's humor: laughter in the Iliad", hand 1 (2007), 596.</ref>

The Homeric poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Template:Transliteration).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;<ref>Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto IV, 86–88 (Longfellow's translation):<poem>Him with that falchion in his hand behold, ⁠Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign;</poem></ref> in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets".<ref>Alexander Pope's Preface to his translation of the Iliad:
"Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellencies; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry."</ref> From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The question of by whom, when, where, and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.<ref>Template:Cite book
Template:Cite book
Template:Harvnb</ref>

Works attributed to Homer

File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874).jpg

Homer and His Guide (1874) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Today, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, the 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, and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfn

Ancient biographical traditions

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus),<ref name="Graziosi">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Odyssey, 8:64ff.Template:Full citation needed</ref> that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen,<ref>The riddle was: "We left whatever we caught and carry whatever we didn't". (The solution: lice.) {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and various explanations for the name "Homer" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Template:Transliteration).<ref name="Graziosi" /> Another tradition from the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.<ref>"Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica" (Contest of Homer and Hesiod)</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.<ref name="Lefkowitz2013">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days: "When the Pleiades born of Atlas [...] all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

History of Homeric scholarship

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

Ancient

File:Townley Homer.jpg

Part of an eleventh-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writings on the top and right side are scholia.

The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.<ref name="Dickey2012">Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="West2011"/><ref name="Lamberton2010">Template:Cite book</ref> Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia.<ref name="Dickey2012"/> The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.<ref name="Dickey2012"/><ref name="Lamberton2010"/><ref name="Hunter2018">Template:Cite book</ref> They were the first literary works taught to all students.<ref name="Hunter2018"/> The Iliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.<ref name="Hunter2018"/>

As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult.<ref name="Dickey2012"/><ref name="Lamberton2010"/> During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="Lamberton2010"/> Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/>

Modern

File:Page from the first printed edition (editio princeps) of collected works by Homer.jpg

lang}}

In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/><ref name="West2011"/><ref name="Dickey2012"/> The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs.<ref name="West2011"/> Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down.<ref name="West2011"/> According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about 500 Years after".<ref name="West2011"/>

Giambattista Vico analysed Homer and other ancient writings in his philological treatise The New Science (1744), and concluded that Homer was not one man, but many, or an amalgum of other writers. Vico writes "he was a purely ideal poet who never existed as a particular man" and that "Homer was an idea or a heroic character of Grecian men insofar as they told their histories in song".<ref>Vico, Giambattista, The New Science, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1986, orig. 1744, page 323, §873</ref>

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs,<ref name="Heiden18thcenturyscholarship">Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="Heidennineteenth century scholarship">Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="West2011"/> which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors.<ref name="Heiden18thcenturyscholarship"/><ref name="Heidennineteenth century scholarship"/><ref name="West2011"/> After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities.<ref name="Heiden18thcenturyscholarship"/><ref name="Heidennineteenth century scholarship"/><ref name="West2011"/> Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences.<ref name="Heiden18thcenturyscholarship"/><ref name="Heidennineteenth century scholarship"/><ref name="West2011"/><ref name="Taplin1986">Template:Cite book</ref>

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs,<ref name="West2011"/> and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded and revised.<ref name="West2011"/> A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet.<ref name="Heiden18thcenturyscholarship"/><ref name="Heidennineteenth century scholarship"/><ref name="West2011"/> By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".<ref name="West2011"/>

Following World War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.<ref name="West2011"/> It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end.<ref name="West2011"/> Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas.<ref name="Foley1988">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Taplin1986"/><ref name="West2011"/> This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance<ref name="Foley1988"/><ref name="Taplin1986"/><ref name="West2011"/> and explained many previously puzzling features of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.<ref name="Taplin1986"/> Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.<ref name="West2011"/>

Meanwhile, the "Neoanalysts" sought to bridge the gap between the "Analysts" and "Unitarians".<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref> The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.<ref name="West2011"/> Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors.<ref>Reece, Steve; "The Cretan Odyssey: A Lie Truer than Truth", American Journal of Philology, 115, 1994, 157–173. The_Cretan_Odyssey</ref>

Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="West2011">Template:Cite journal</ref> Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.<ref name="West2011"/> It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.<ref name="West2011"/> Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet.<ref name="West2011"/>

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems.<ref name="Graziosi2002"/><ref name="Fowler2004"/><ref name="West2011"/> A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.<ref name="Graziosi2002">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="Fowler2004">Template:Harvnb</ref> Barry B. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus, who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="West2011"/> He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 664/663 BC.<ref name="West2011"/> At the other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC.<ref name="Graziosi2002"/><ref name="Fowler2004"/><ref name="West2011"/>

"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration Template:Gloss or Template:Gloss). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.Template:Sfn<ref name="east_face_622">Template:Cite book</ref>

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

File:Homeric Greece.svg

Greece according to the Iliad

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa Template:Circa 1220 BC was the origin of the myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.<ref name="Taplin1986"/><ref name="SacksMurrayBrody2014">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="MorrisPowell1997">Template:Harvnb</ref> For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;<ref name="Taplin1986"/><ref name="SacksMurrayBrody2014"/><ref name="MorrisPowell1997"/> yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).<ref name="Taplin1986"/><ref name="SacksMurrayBrody2014"/><ref name="MorrisPowell1997"/> In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period,<ref name="Taplin1986"/> but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during the time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age.<ref name="Taplin1986"/>

In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of the Bronze Age Aegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer.Template:Sfn Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up;<ref name="Taplin1986"/> for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold.<ref name="Taplin1986"/> It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.<ref name="Taplin1986"/> Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed.<ref name="Taplin1986"/>

Style and language

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

File:Cropped image of Homer from Raphael's Parnassus.jpg

Detail of The Parnassus (painted 1509–1510) by Raphael, depicting Homer wearing a crown of laurels atop Mount Parnassus, with Dante Alighieri on his left and Virgil on his right

The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or "Kunstsprache" only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ("crafty Odysseus", "rosy-fingered Dawn", "owl-eyed Athena", etc.), Homeric formulae ("and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men", "when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light", "thus he/she spoke"), simile, type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called parataxis.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

The so-called "type scenes" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The "Analyst" school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

"Ring composition" or chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse.<ref name="Adler2003">Template:Cite book</ref> In the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles",<ref name="Adler2003"/> and in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".<ref name="Adler2003"/> A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.<ref name="Adler2003"/>

Textual transmission

File:Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, English (born Netherlands) - A Reading from Homer - Google Art Project.jpg

A Reading from Homer (1885) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts.<ref>Steve Reece, "Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: From Oral Performance to Written Text", in Mark Amodio (ed.), New Directions in Oral Theory (Tempe: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005) 43–89.</ref> Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating.<ref>Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1960).</ref> Some scholars hypothesise that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.<ref>U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homerische Untersuchungen, (Berlin, 1884), 369; R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, (Oxford, 1968), 116–117.</ref> Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.<ref>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}; S. West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer, (Cologne, 1967), 18–25.</ref> Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.<ref>Template:Multiref</ref>

In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/527 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Lamberton2010"/> The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer.<ref name="Lamberton2010"/> From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.<ref name=Haslam2012>Template:Harvc {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate.Template:Clarify Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.<ref name="Haslam2012"/>

See also

• Achaeans (Homer)
• Bibliomancy
• Catalogue of Ships
• Creophylus of Samos
• Cyclic Poets
• Deception of Zeus
• Early Greek cosmology
• Geography of the Odyssey
• Greek mythology
• Homeric psychology
• Homer's Ithaca
• List of Homeric characters
• Sortes Homericae
• Tabulae Iliacae
• Telemachy
• The Golden Bough
• Trojan Battle Order
• Trojan War in literature and the arts
• Venetus A manuscript

References

Bibliography

• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book

Editions

Texts in Homeric Greek

• Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488
• the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
• 1st ed. with comments, Micyllus and Camerarius, Basel, 1535, 1541 (improved text), 1551 (incl. the Batrachomyomachia)
• Th. Ridel, Strasbourg, c. 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)
• William Walter Merry and James Riddell (Odyssey i–xii, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
• Monro, D. B. (Odyssey xiii–xxiv with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
• Monro, D. B. and Allen, T. W. (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, Template:ISBN
• H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim, Template:ISBN, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim, Template:ISBN
• P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig, Template:ISBN
• M. L. West 1998–2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig, Template:ISBN
• M. L. West 2017, Homerus Odyssea, Berlin/Boston, Template:ISBN

Interlinear translations

• The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text, Template:ISBN

English translations

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey:

• Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)
  • The Iliad, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004) Template:ISBN
  • The Odyssey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998) Template:ISBN
• Robert Fagles (1933–2008)
  • The Iliad, Penguin Classics (1998) Template:ISBN
  • The Odyssey, Penguin Classics (1999) Template:ISBN
• Stanley Lombardo (b. 1943)
  • Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company (1997) Template:ISBN
  • Odyssey, Hackett Publishing Company (2000) Template:ISBN
  • Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) Template:ISBN
  • Odyssey, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) Template:ISBN
  • The Essential Homer, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) Template:ISBN
  • The Essential Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) Template:ISBN
• Barry B. Powell (b. 1942)
  • Iliad, Oxford University Press (2013) Template:ISBN
  • Odyssey, Oxford University PressI (2014) Template:ISBN
  • Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: The Essential Books, Oxford University Press (2014) Template:ISBN
• Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
  • The Iliad, Red and Black Publishers (2008) Template:ISBN
  • The Odyssey, Red and Black Publishers (2008) Template:ISBN
• Emily Wilson (b. 1971)
  • The Odyssey, W. W. Norton (2017) Template:ISBN
  • The Iliad, W. W. Norton (2023) Template:ISBN

General works on Homer

• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 2003 Template:ISBN. In modern Greek, 2005 Template:ISBN
• Template:Cite EB1911
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book

Influential readings and interpretations

• Template:Cite book (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern)
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Reece, Steve; The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993

Commentaries

• Iliad:
  • P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London Template:ISBN
  • G. S. Kirk (gen. ed.) 1985–1993, The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge Template:ISBN
  • Joachim 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 Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN
  • N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Exeter Template:ISBN
  • M. W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago Template:ISBN
• Odyssey:
  • A. Heubeck (gen. ed.) 1990–1993, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (3 volumes; orig. publ. 1981–1987 in Italian), Oxford Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN
  • P. Jones (ed.) 1988, Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Bristol Template:ISBN
  • I. J. F. de Jong (ed.) 2001, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge Template:ISBN

Dating the Homeric poems

• Template:Cite book

Further reading

• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite magazine

External links

• Works by Homer at Perseus Digital Library
• Template:StandardEbooks
• Template:Gutenberg author
• Template:Internet Archive author
• Template:Librivox author
• Template:Cite book
• The Chicago Homer Template:Webarchive
• Template:Trim Template:PAGENAMEBASE at the Internet Speculative Fiction DatabaseTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}

• {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}