Homer's works list. Brief biography of the mysterious Homer

Homer by Antoine-Denis Chaudet, 1806.

Homer (ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, 8th century BC) is a legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems “Iliad” (the oldest monument of European literature and “Odyssey”).
About half of the ancient Greek literary papyri found are passages from Homer.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.

Homer - legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller

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.

Bust of Homer in the Louvre

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 Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that his dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, which was formed long before the estimated time of Homer's life.

Paul Jourdy, Homère chantant ses vers, 1834, Paris

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.

Homer. Naples, National Archaeological Museum

There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, much earlier. The poets allegedly met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus and each read their best poems. King Paned, who acted as a judge at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. At the same time, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.

In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, considered, along with Homer, the oldest examples of Greek poetry), the comic poem “Margit”, etc. .

The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) ​​were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”.<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name" (Boura S.M. Heroic poetry.)

Homer (circa 460 BC)

A.F. Losev: The traditional image of Homer among the Greeks. This traditional image of Homer, which has existed for about 3000 years, if we discard all the pseudo-scientific inventions of the later Greeks, comes down to the image of a blind and wise (and, according to Ovid, also poor), necessarily an old singer, creating wonderful tales under the constant guidance of the muse that inspires him and leading the life of some wandering rhapsodist. We find similar features of folk singers among many other nations, and therefore there is nothing specific or original about them. This is the most common and most widespread type of folk singer, the most beloved and most popular among different peoples.

Most researchers believe that Homer's poems were created in Asia Minor, in Ionia in the 8th century. BC e. based on mythological tales of the Trojan War. There is late ancient evidence of the final edition of their texts under the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in the mid-6th century. BC e., when their performance was included in the festivities of the Great Panathenaia.

In ancient times, Homer was credited with the comic poems “Margit” and “The War of Mice and Frogs”, a cycle of works about the Trojan War and the return of heroes to Greece: “Cypria”, “Aethiopida”, “The Lesser Iliad”, “The Capture of Ilion”, “Returns” ( so-called “cyclic poems”, only small fragments have survived). Under the name "Homeric Hymns" there was a collection of 33 hymns to the gods. During the Hellenistic era, philologists of the Library of Alexandria Aristarchus of Samothrace, Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium did a great deal of work collecting and clarifying the manuscripts of Homer’s poems (they also divided each poem into 24 cantos according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet). The sophist Zoilus (4th century BC), nicknamed “the scourge of Homer” for his critical statements, became a household name. Xenon and Hellanicus, so-called. “dividing”, expressed the idea that Homer may have owned only one “Iliad”

Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir (1809-1892). Home.

In the 19th century, the Iliad and Odyssey were compared with the epics of the Slavs, skaldic poetry, Finnish and German epics. In the 1930s The American classical philologist Milman Parry, comparing Homer's poems with the living epic tradition that still existed at that time among the peoples of Yugoslavia, discovered in Homer's poems a reflection of the poetic technique of folk singers. The poetic formulas they created from stable combinations and epithets (“swift-footed” Achilles, “shepherd of nations” Agamemnon, “much-witted” Odysseus, “sweet-tongued” Nestor) made it possible for the narrator to “improvise” perform epic songs consisting of many thousands of verses.

The Iliad and Odyssey belong entirely to the centuries-old epic tradition, but this does not mean that oral creativity is anonymous. “Before Homer, we cannot name anyone’s poem of this kind, although, of course, there were many poets” (Aristotle). Aristotle saw the main difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey from all other epic works in the fact that Homer does not unfold his narrative gradually, but builds it around one event - the basis of the poems is the dramatic unity of action. Another feature that Aristotle also drew attention to: the character of the hero is revealed not by the author’s descriptions, but by the speeches uttered by the hero himself.

Medieval illustration for the Iliad

The language of Homer's poems - exclusively poetic, “supra-dialectal” - was never identical to living spoken language. It consisted of a combination of Aeolian (Boeotia, Thessaly, the island of Lesbos) and Ionian (Attica, island Greece, the coast of Asia Minor) dialect features with the preservation of the archaic system of earlier eras. The songs of the Iliad and Odyssey were metrically shaped by the hexameter, a poetic meter rooted in Indo-European epic, in which each verse consists of six feet with a regular alternation of long and short syllables. The unusual poetic language of the epic was emphasized by the timeless nature of events and the greatness of the images of the heroic past.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874)

Sensational discoveries of G. Schliemann in the 1870s and 80s. proved that Troy, Mycenae and the Achaean citadels are not a myth, but a reality. Schliemann's contemporaries were struck by the literal correspondence of a number of his findings in the fourth shaft tomb in Mycenae with the descriptions of Homer. The impression was so strong that the era of Homer became associated for a long time with the heyday of Achaean Greece in the 14th-13th centuries. BC e. The poems, however, also contain numerous archaeologically attested features of the “heroic age” culture, such as mention of iron tools and weapons or the custom of cremation of the dead. In terms of content, Homer's epics contain many motifs, storylines, and myths gleaned from early poetry. In Homer you can hear echoes of Minoan culture, and even trace connections with Hittite mythology. However, his main source of epic material was the Mycenaean period. It is during this era that his epic takes place. Living in the fourth century after the end of this period, which he highly idealizes, Homer cannot be a source of historical information about the political, social life, material culture or religion of the Mycenaean world. But in the political center of this society, Mycenae, objects identical to those described in the epic (mainly weapons and tools) were found, while some Mycenaean monuments present images, things and even scenes typical of the poetic reality of the epic. The events of the Trojan War, around which Homer unfolded the actions of both poems, were attributed to the Mycenaean era. He showed this war as an armed campaign of the Greeks (called Achaeans, Danaans, Argives) under the leadership of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon against Troy and its allies. For the Greeks, the Trojan War was a historical fact dating back to the 14th-12th centuries. BC e. (according to Eratosthenes' calculations, Troy fell in 1184)

Karl Becker. Homer sings

A comparison of the evidence of the Homeric epic with archaeological data confirms the conclusions of many researchers that in its final edition it was formed in the 8th century. BC e., and many researchers consider the “Catalog of Ships” (Iliad, 2nd Canto) to be the oldest part of the epic. Obviously, the poems were not created at the same time: “The Iliad” reflects ideas about the person of the “heroic period”; “The Odyssey” stands, as it were, at the turn of another era - the time of the Great Greek colonization, when the boundaries of the world mastered by Greek culture expanded.

For people of antiquity, Homer's poems were a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism, a source of wisdom and knowledge of all aspects of life - from military art to practical morality. Homer, along with Hesiod, was considered the creator of a comprehensive and orderly mythological picture of the universe: the poets “compiled genealogies of the gods for the Hellenes, provided the names of the gods with epithets, divided virtues and occupations among them, and drew their images” (Herodotus). According to Strabo, Homer was the only poet of antiquity who knew almost everything about the ecumene, the peoples inhabiting it, their origin, way of life and culture. Thucydides, Pausanias (writer), and Plutarch used Homer’s data as authentic and trustworthy. The father of tragedy, Aeschylus, called his dramas “crumbs from the great feasts of Homer.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Homer and the Shepherds

Greek children learned to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer was quoted, commented on, and explained allegorically. The Pythagorean philosophers called on the Pythagorean philosophers to correct souls by reading selected passages from Homer’s poems. Plutarch reports that Alexander the Great always carried a copy of the Iliad with him, which he kept under his pillow along with a dagger.

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 “original core theory”).

Wolf's opponents (the so-called "Unitarians") put forward a number of counterarguments. Firstly, the version of the “pisistratan edition” was questioned, since all reports about it are quite late. This legend could have appeared in Hellenistic times by analogy with the activities of the then monarchs, who took care of the acquisition of various manuscripts (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”.

Old Greek Ὅμηρος

legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller

8th century BC e.

short biography

The famous ancient Greek poet, whose work not only served as a model for all ancient creators - he is considered the progenitor of European literature. Many representatives of modern generations associate ancient culture with his name, and acquaintance with world literature usually begins with the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, which belonged to (or were attributed to) this legendary author. Homer is the first ancient Greek poet whose creative legacy has survived to this day, and about half of the ancient Greek papyri of literary content discovered to date are fragments of his works.

There are no reliable, historically confirmed data about the personality of Homer, his life path, and they were unknown even in antiquity. In antiquity, 9 biographies of Homer were created, and all of them were based on legends. Not only the years of his life are unknown, but also his century. According to Herodotus, this was the 9th century. BC e. Scientists of our time call approximately the 8th century. (or 7th century) BC e. There is no exact information about the place of birth of the great poet. It is believed that he lived in one of the areas of Ionia. Legend has it that as many as seven cities - Athens, Rhodes, Smyrna, Colophon, Argon, Salamis, Chios - challenged each other for the honor of calling themselves the birthplace of Homer.

According to tradition, the great poet is portrayed as a blind old man, but scientists are of the opinion that this is the influence of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, a feature of the biographical genre. The Greeks saw the relationship between poetic talent and prophetic gift in the example of many famous personalities who were deprived of sight, and believed that Homer belonged to this glorious cohort. In addition, in the Odyssey there is such a character as the blind singer Demodocus, who was identified with the author of the work himself.

From the biography of Homer there is such an episode as a poetic competition with Hesiod on the island of Euboea. Poets read their best works at games organized in memory of the deceased Amphidemus. The victory, according to the will of the judge, went to Hesiod, since he glorified the peaceful life and work of farmers, but legend says that the public sympathized more with Homer.

Like everything else in Homer’s biography, it is not known for certain whether the famous poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” belonged to his pen. In science since the 18th century. there is the so-called Homeric question - this is the name of the controversy surrounding the authorship and history of writing legendary works. Be that as it may, it was they who brought the author fame for all time and entered the treasury of world literature. Both poems are based on legends and myths about the Trojan War, i.e. about the military actions of the Achaean Greeks against the inhabitants of the Asia Minor city, and represent a heroic epic - a large-scale canvas, the characters of which are both historical characters and heroes of myths.

The ancient Greeks considered these poems sacred, solemnly performed them on public holidays, they began and completed the learning process with them, seeing in them a treasury of a wide variety of knowledge, lessons of wisdom, beauty, justice and other virtues, and their author was revered almost as deity. According to the great Plato, Greece owes its spiritual development to Homer. The poetics of this master of words had a huge influence on the work of not only ancient authors, but also recognized classics of European literature living many centuries later.

There are so-called Homeric hymns, which in ancient times were attributed to the great blind man, but neither they nor other works of which Homer was called the author belong to his creative heritage.

According to Herodotus and Pausanias, death overtook Homer on the island of Ios (Cyclades archipelago).

Biography from Wikipedia

Homer(ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, 8th century BC) - legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems “Iliad” (the oldest monument of European literature) and “Odyssey”.

Approximately half of the ancient Greek literary papyri found are passages from Homer.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.

It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e. According to Herodotus, Homer lived 400 years before him, which puts the date at 850 BC. e. An unknown historian in his notes indicates that Homer lived 622 years before Xerxes, which indicates 1102 BC. e. Other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War. At the moment, there are several dates of birth and evidence for them.

Homer's birthplace is unknown. According to the epigram of Gaul, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland in the ancient tradition: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, and variations of this epigram are also called Kima, Chios, Pylos and Ithaca. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that his dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, which was formed long before the estimated time of Homer's life.

Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this idea does not come from the real facts of his life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. Also, the name “Homer”, according to one version of its reading, means “not sighted” (ὁ μῆ ὁρῶν). Since many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind (for example, Tiresias), according to ancient logic that connected the prophetic and poetic gifts, the assumption of Homer’s blindness looked very plausible. In addition, the singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is blind from birth, which could also be perceived as autobiographical.

There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, much earlier. The poets allegedly met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus and each read their best poems. King Paned, who acted as a judge at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. At the same time, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.

In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, considered, along with Homer, the oldest examples of Greek poetry), the comic poem “Margit”, etc. .

The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) ​​were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”.<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name."

Homeric question

The set of problems associated with the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, their emergence and fate before the moment of recording, was called the “Homeric question.” It arose in antiquity, for example, then there were claims that Homer created his epic based on poems by the poetess Fantasia during the Trojan War.

"Analysts" and "Unitarians"

Until the end of the 18th century, the prevailing opinion in European science was that the author of the Iliad and Odyssey was Homer and that they were preserved approximately in the form in which they were created by him (however, already the Abbe d’Aubignac in 1664 in his “ Conjectures académiques" argued that the Iliad and Odyssey are a series of independent songs collected together by Lycurgus in Sparta in the 8th century BC. e.). However, in 1788, J. B. Viloison published the scholia to the Iliad from the Codex Venetus A, which in their volume significantly exceeded the poem itself and contained hundreds of variants belonging to ancient philologists (mainly Zenodotus, Aristophanes and Aristarchus). After this publication, it became clear that Alexandrian philologists considered hundreds of lines of Homeric poems doubtful or even inauthentic; they did not cross them out from the manuscripts, but marked them with a special sign. Reading the scholia also led to the conclusion that the text of Homer we have belongs to Hellenistic times, and not to the supposed period of the poet's life. Based on these facts and other considerations (he believed that the Homeric era was unwritten, and therefore the poet was not able to compose a poem of such length), Friedrich August Wolf in his book “Prolegomena to Homer” put forward the hypothesis that both poems are very significantly, radically changed in the course of existence. Thus, according to Wolf, it is impossible to say that the Iliad and the Odyssey belong to any one author.

Wolf dates the formation of the text of the Iliad (in its more or less modern form) to the 6th century BC. e. Indeed, according to a number of ancient authors (including Cicero), Homer's poems were first collected and written down at the direction of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus or his son Hipparchus. This so-called “Pisistratan edition” was needed to streamline the performance of the Iliad and Odyssey at the Panathenaea. The analytical approach was supported by contradictions in the texts of the poems, the presence of multi-temporal layers in them, and extensive deviations from the main plot.

Analysts have made various assumptions about how exactly Homer's poems were formed. Karl Lachmann believed that the Iliad was created from several small songs (the so-called “small song theory”). Gottfried Hermann, on the contrary, believed that each poem arose through the gradual expansion of a small song, to which more and more new material was added (the so-called “original core theory”).

Wolf's opponents (the so-called "Unitarians") put forward a number of counterarguments. Firstly, the version of the “pisistratan edition” was questioned, since all reports about it are quite late. This legend could have appeared in Hellenistic times by analogy with the activities of the then monarchs, who took care of the acquisition of various manuscripts. Secondly, contradictions and deviations do not indicate multiple authorship, as they inevitably occur in large works. “Unitarians” proved the unity of the author of each of the poems, emphasizing the integrity of the plan, the beauty and symmetry of the composition in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

"Oral theory" and "neoanalysts"

The assumption that Homer's poems were transmitted orally, since the author lived in an unwritten time, was expressed in antiquity; since there was information that in the 6th century BC. e. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus gave instructions to develop the official text of Homer's poems.

In the 1930s, American professor Milman Parry organized two expeditions to study the South Slavic epic with the aim of comparing this tradition with the texts of Homer. As a result of this large-scale research, an “oral theory” was formulated, also called the “Parry-Lord theory” (A. Lord is the successor to the work of the early deceased M. Parry). According to the oral theory, Homer's poems contain undoubted features of oral epic storytelling, the most important of which is a system of poetic formulas. An oral storyteller creates a song anew each time, but considers himself only a performer. Two songs on the same plot, even if they are radically different in length and verbal expression, from the point of view of the narrator - the same song, only “performed” differently. Storytellers are illiterate, since the idea of ​​a fixed text is detrimental to improvisational technique.

Thus, from the oral theory it follows that the text of the Iliad and Odyssey acquired a fixed form during the lifetime of their great author or authors (i.e. Homer). The classic version of oral theory involves recording these poems under dictation, since if they were transmitted orally within the framework of the improvisational tradition, their text would radically change the next time they were performed. However, there are other explanations. Whether both poems were created by one or two authors, the theory does not explain.

In addition, the oral theory confirms the ancient ideas that “there were many poets before Homer.” Indeed, the technique of oral epic storytelling is the result of a long, apparently centuries-long development, and does not reflect the individual characteristics of the author of the poems.

Neoanalysts are not modern representatives of analyticism. Neoanalysis is a direction in Homeric studies that deals with identifying earlier poetic layers used by the author of (each of) the poems. The Iliad and Odyssey are compared with the Cyclical poems that have survived to our time in retellings and fragments. Thus, the neoanalytic approach does not contradict mainstream oral theory. The most prominent modern neoanalyst is the German researcher Wolfgang Kuhlmann, author of the monograph “Sources of the Iliad.”

Homer (circa 460 BC)

Artistic Features

One of the most important compositional features of the Iliad is the “law of chronological incompatibility” formulated by Thaddeus Frantsevich Zelinsky. It consists in the fact that “in Homer the story never returns to the point of its departure. It follows that parallel actions in Homer cannot be depicted; Homer’s poetic technique knows only the simple, linear, and not the double, square dimension.” Thus, sometimes parallel events are depicted as sequential, sometimes one of them is only mentioned or even suppressed. This explains some apparent contradictions in the text of the poem.

Researchers note the coherence of the works, the consistent development of action and the integral images of the main characters. When comparing Homer's verbal art with the visual art of that era, one often talks about the geometric style of the poems. However, opposing opinions in the spirit of analyticism are also expressed about the unity of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The style of both poems can be described as formulaic. In this case, a formula is not understood as a set of cliches, but as a system of flexible (changeable) expressions that are associated with a certain metric place in a line. Thus, we can talk about a formula even when a certain phrase appears in the text only once, but it can be shown that it was part of this system. In addition to the actual formulas, there are repeated fragments of several lines. For example, when one character retells the speeches of another, the text can be reproduced again in full or almost verbatim.

Homer is characterized by compound epithets (“swift-footed,” “rose-fingered,” “thunderer”); the meaning of these and other epithets should be considered not situationally, but within the framework of the traditional formulaic system. Thus, the Achaeans are “lush-legged” even if they are not described as wearing armor, and Achilles is “swift-footed” even when resting.

Historical basis of Homer's poems

In the middle of the 19th century, the prevailing opinion in science was that the Iliad and Odyssey were unhistorical. However, Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlik Hill and Mycenae showed that this was not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, which reveal certain parallels with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary script (Linear B) has provided a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments in this script have been found. However, the data from Homer's poems relate in a complex way to the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data from the “oral theory” indicate the very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.

The point of view has now been established that the world of Homer’s poems reflects a realistic picture of life in recent times during the ancient Greek “dark ages.”

Homer in world culture

The influence of Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" on the ancient Greeks is compared with the Bible for the Jews.

The education system in Ancient Greece that emerged towards the end of the classical era was built on the study of Homer's poems. They were memorized partially or even completely, recitations were organized on its topics, etc. This system was borrowed by Rome, where Homer took place from the 1st century. n. e. occupied by Virgil. As Margalit Finkelberg notes, the Romans, who saw themselves as the descendants of the defeated Trojans, rejected the Homeric poems, the consequence of which was that they, while continuing to maintain their canonical status in the Greek-speaking East, were lost to the Latin West until the Renaissance.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema "Reading Homer", 1885

In the post-classical era, large hexametric poems were created in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as competition with the Iliad and Odyssey. Among them are “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes, “Post-Homeric Events” by Quintus of Smyrna and “The Adventures of Dionysus” by Nonnus of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that “in great rivers there is troubled water” (Callimachus) - that only in a small work can one achieve flawless perfection.

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✪ History of Culture: Ancient Greece, Odyssey, Homer – Pustovit

✪ Homer and the Homeric question (narrated by philologist Nikolai Grintser)

✪ Homer - O D I S S E YA (audiobook part 1)

✪ Homer's poem "Iliad". Video lesson on General History 5th grade

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Biography

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.

There is a legend about a 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: “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” (Aristotle) ​​were proposed. or “blind” (Efor Kimsky), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist.”<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name."

Homeric question

The set of problems associated with the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, their origin and fate before the moment of recording, was called the “Homeric question”. It arose in antiquity, for example, then there were claims that Homer created his epic based on the poems of the poetess Fantasia during the Trojan War.

"Analysts" and "Unitarians"

Artistic Features

One of the most important compositional features of the Iliad is the “law of chronological incompatibility” formulated by Thaddeus Frantsevich Zelinsky. It consists in the fact that “in Homer the story never returns to the point of its departure. It follows that parallel actions in Homer cannot be depicted; Homer’s poetic technique knows only a simple, linear, and not a double, square dimension.” Thus, sometimes parallel events are depicted as sequential, sometimes one of them is only mentioned or even suppressed. This explains some apparent contradictions in the text of the poem.

Researchers note the coherence of the works, the consistent development of action and the integral images of the main characters. Comparing the verbal art of Homer with the visual art of that era, they often talk about the geometric style of the poems. However, opposing opinions in the spirit of analyticism are also expressed about the unity of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The style of both poems can be described as formulaic. In this case, a formula is not understood as a set of clichés, but as a system of flexible (changeable) expressions that are associated with a specific metric location in a line. Thus, we can talk about a formula even when a certain phrase appears in the text only once, but it can be shown that it was part of this system. In addition to the actual formulas, there are repeated fragments of several lines. For example, when one character retells the speeches of another, the text can be reproduced again in full or almost verbatim.

Homer is characterized by compound epithets (“swift-footed,” “rose-fingered,” “thunderer”); the meaning of these and other epithets should be considered not situationally, but within the framework of the traditional formulaic system. Thus, the Achaeans are “lush-legged” even if they are not described in armor, and Achilles is “swift-footed” even when resting.

Historical basis of Homer's poems

In the middle of the 19th century, the prevailing opinion in science was that the Iliad and Odyssey were unhistorical. However, Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlik Hill and Mycenae showed that this was not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, which reveal certain parallels with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabary writing (Linear letter B) gave a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments in this writing were found. However, the data from Homer's poems relate in a complex way to the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data from the “oral theory” indicate the very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.

According to modern opinion, the world of Homer’s poems reflects a realistic picture of life in recent times during the ancient Greek “dark ages”.

Homer in world culture

The influence of Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" on the ancient Greeks is compared with the Bible for the Jews.

In the post-classical era, large hexametric poems were created in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as competition with the Iliad and Odyssey. Among them are “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes, “Post-Homeric Events” by Quintus of Smyrna and “The Adventures of Dionysus” by Nonnus of Panopolitanus. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that "in great rivers there is troubled water" (Callimachus) - that only in a small work can one achieve flawless perfection.

In the literature of Ancient Rome, the first surviving (fragmentary) work is the translation of the Odyssey by the Greek Livy Andronicus. The main work of Roman literature - the heroic epic "Aeneid" by Virgil is an imitation of the "Odyssey" (the first 6 books) and the "Iliad" (the last 6 books). The influence of Homer's poems can be seen in almost all works of ancient literature.

Homer is practically unknown to the Western Middle Ages due to too weak contacts with Byzantium and ignorance of the ancient Greek language, but the hexametric heroic epic retains great importance in culture thanks to Virgil.

In Byzantium, Homer was well known and carefully studied. To this day, dozens of complete Byzantine manuscripts of Homeric poems have survived, which is unprecedented for works of ancient literature. In addition, Byzantine scholars transcribed, compiled, and created scholia and commentaries on Homer. Archbishop Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey occupies seven volumes in the modern critical edition. During the last period of the Byzantine Empire and after its collapse, Greek manuscripts and scholars found their way to the West, and the Renaissance rediscovered Homer.

• Dante Alighieri places Homer in the first circle of Hell as a virtuous non-Christian.

In Russia

Fragments from Homer were also translated by Lomonosov; the first large poetic translation (six books of the Iliad in Alexandrian verse) belongs to Yermil Kostrov (). Particularly important for Russian culture is the translation of Nikolai Gnedich’s “Iliad” (finished in), which was carried out from the original with special care and very talented (according to Belinsky’s reviews). Pushkin, in turn, spoke about the translation of Homer in the press twice: with the note “Homer’s Iliad, translated by Gnedich...” (“Literaturnaya Gazeta”, 1830, No. 2; see vol. 6) and the couplet “On the translation of the Iliad”:

Gnedich was a poet, a translator of the blind Homer, and his translation is similar to the model.

A month before this poem, Pushkin paid tribute to natural humor and wrote an epigram caused by a punning coincidence of circumstances (Homer was blind, and Gnedich was crooked). The epigram in the manuscript was carefully crossed out by Pushkin.

Homer was also translated by V. A. Zhukovsky, V. V. Veresaev and P. A. Shuisky (“Odyssey”, 1948, Ural University Publishing House, circulation 900 copies).

Already in our century, Homer was translated by: M. Amelin (First Song of the Odyssey, 2013); A. A. Salnikov translated the Iliad (2011) and the Odyssey (2014-2015) into modern Russian.

• A crater on Mercury is named after Homer.

Literature

Texts and translations

• With the advent of printing, the Iliad and Odyssey were first published in 1488 in Florence by Demetrius Chalcocondylus.
• Russian prose translation: Complete collection of Homer's works. / Per. G. Yanchevetsky. Revel, 1895. 482 pp. (supplement to the Gymnasium magazine)
• In the “Loeb classical library” series, the works were published in 5 volumes (No. 170-171 - Iliad, No. 104-105 - Odyssey); and also No. 496 - Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Biographies of Homer.
• In the “Collection Budé” series, the works are published in 9 volumes: “Iliad” (introduction and 4 volumes), “Odyssey” (3 volumes) and hymns.
• Krause V. M. Homeric Dictionary (to the Iliad and Odyssey). From 130 pics. in the text and a map of Troy. St. Petersburg, A. S. Suvorin. 1880. 532 stb. ( example of a pre-revolutionary school publication)
• Part I. Greece // Ancient literature. - St. Petersburg: Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, 2004. - T. I. - ISBN 5-8465-0191-5.

Monographs on Homer

• Petrushevsky D. M. Society and state in Homer. M., 1913.
• Zelinsky F. F. Homeric psychology. Pg., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences, 1920.
• Altman M. S. Remnants of the tribal system in proper names in Homer. (News of GAIMK. Issue 124). M.-L.: OGIZ, 1936. 164 pp. 1000 copies.
• Freidenberg O. M. Myth and literature of antiquity. M.: Vost. lit. 1978. 2nd ed., add. M., 2000.
• Tolstoy I. I. Aeds: Ancient creators and bearers of the ancient epic. M.: Nauka, 1958. 63 pp.
• Losev A. F. Homer. M.: GUPI, 1960. 352 pp. 9 i.e.
  • 2nd ed. (Series “Life of Remarkable People”). M.: Mol. Guards, 1996=2006. 400 pp.
• Yarkho V. N. Guilt and responsibility in the Homeric epic. Herald of Ancient History, 1962, No. 2, p. 4-26.
• Sugar N. L. Homeric epic. M.: KhL, 1976. 397 pp. 10,000 copies.
• Gordesiani R.V. Problems of Homeric Epic. Tb.: Tbil Publishing House. Univ., 1978. 394 pp. 2000 copies.
• Stahl I.V. The artistic world of Homer's epic. M.: Nauka, 1983. 296 pp. 6900 copies.
• Chelyshev P. V., Koteneva A. V. Essays on the history of world culture: gods and heroes of ancient mythology. M.: MGGU, 2013. 351 p. 100 copies ISBN 978-5-91615-032-2
• Chelyshev P.V. Ancient space and its inhabitants. – Lambert Academic Publishing, 2016. – 154 p. ISBN 978-3-659-96641-5
• Koteneva A. V. Psychology in the epic poems of Homer. Concepts, phenomena and mechanisms. – Lambert Academic Publishing, 2016. ISBN 978-3-659-95960-8
• Cunliffe R. J. A lexicon of the homeric dialect. L., 1924.
• Leumann M. Homerische Würter. Basel, 1950.
• Michalopoulos, Dimitri, L" Odyssee d"Homère au-delà des mythes, Le Pirée: Institut d'Histoire Maritime Hellene, 2016, ISBN 978-618-80599-2-4
• Treu M. Von Homer zur Lyrik. Munich, 1955.
• Whitman C.H. Homer and the heroic tradition. Oxford, 1958.
• Lord A. Narrator. M., 1994.

I. Introduction.

The works of Homer, the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", are the first known monuments of ancient Greek literature and, at the same time, the first monuments of literature in Europe in general. Containing a huge number of different kinds of legends and being very significant in size, these poems could not appear suddenly, in the form of a work of only one brilliant writer. Even if they were compiled by one poet, they were compiled on the basis of centuries-old folk art, in which modern science establishes a reflection of the most diverse periods of the historical development of the Greeks. These works were recorded for the first time only in the second half of the 6th century. BC. Consequently, the folk materials for these poems were created even earlier, at least two or three centuries before this first recording, and, as modern scholarship shows, the Homeric poems reflect even earlier periods of Greek history.

The plot of Homer's poems is different episodes of the Trojan War. The Greeks fought wars in Asia Minor for many centuries. However, it was the war with Troy that was especially imprinted in the memory of the ancient Greeks, and many different literary works were devoted to it, and, in particular, several special poems.

For a long time, the events described in Homer’s poems were considered fiction, beautiful legends, clothed in beautiful poetry, without any basis in reality. However, the amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was lucky, after many failures, to uncover the layers of ancient cities on the Hissarlik hill in Asia Minor (in the territory of modern Turkey), where Homer’s “Holy Troy” once stood. After this success, Schliemann began excavating Mycenae and Tiryns, ancient cities mentioned in Homer's poems. He discovered many monuments of exceptional historical significance, and his discoveries marked the beginning of the study of the Mycenaean period in Greek history.

Through the efforts of archaeologists, historians and philologists, a broad picture of the life of the ancient Greek tribes in the pre-Homeric and Homeric eras was recreated. However, in Homer's poems there are references to iron weapons, which the Mycenaean era did not yet know. Apparently, the heroic epic of the ancient Greeks developed gradually on the basis of the historical reality of several eras and finally took shape in the 8th century BC. But among the numerous literary works of antiquity that have survived to our time, none of them had such a strong influence on the further development of universal human culture as the Iliad and the Odyssey.

II. Homer in the history of ancient culture.

The Greeks believed that the epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were composed by the blind poet Homer. Seven Greek cities claimed to be the poet's birthplace. At the same time, there is no reliable evidence about Homer, and in general it cannot be considered proven that both poems were created by the same person. Both poems contain ancient legends, “travelers' tales” and evidence of the Mycenaean era, and at the same time, the clarity of the plot and the relief of the characters of the heroes makes the Iliad and Odyssey unlike oral epic poems. At the time of Pisistratus, both poems were already known in their final form. Apparently, the author of the Iliad was an Ionian and wrote the poem around 700 BC. based on rich material from Trojan battles. All the events of the Iliad take place over the course of several weeks, but the reader is assumed to know the entire background of the Trojan War. It is possible that the Odyssey was written later by the same author.

The relationships of the heroes of the Odyssey are more complicated, their characters are less “heroic” and more refined; The author shows a deep knowledge of the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. There is a very close logical connection between the poems, and it is possible that the Odyssey was conceived as a continuation of the Iliad. Alexander the Great always carried with him a volume of the Iliad, but the Odyssey still seems to be a more original work.

It can be assumed that the blind old man Demodocus, depicted in the eighth song of the Odyssey, singing before the guests of King Alcinous on the island of the Phaeacians, served as a kind of prototype for the idea of ​​​​Homer himself back in antiquity. Scientists are still arguing about whether there really was a brilliant creator of the Iliad and Odyssey, or whether each poem had its own author, or whether they were disparate songs brought together by some editor.

All the existing 9 ancient biographies of Homer are full of fiction and are later forgeries. So, for example, the biographies of Homer, signed with the names of Herodotus and Plutarch, contradict what Herodotus and Plutarch themselves say about Homer.

For all the ancient Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey were not only their favorite reading. They were taught in schools. Teenagers and young men learned valor from the examples of heroes of ancient legends.

How widely the poems of Homer were known can be judged by an interesting discovery made in the Northern Black Sea region, where prosperous Greek colonies were located in ancient times. This is a fragment of stone on which is carved the beginning of Homer’s verse from the Iliad - “The stars have advanced...”. Since the inscription is unfinished and made with errors, scientists assume that it was carved either by a novice stone-cutter or by an apprentice carver performing an exercise. But this fragment of stone with an unfinished verse, carved in the 2nd century BC, is valuable as evidence of how great Homer's fame was. On the northernmost edge of the Greek ecumene (inhabited world), simple artisans knew the verses of the Iliad.

The dissemination and, perhaps, the very creation of the poems took place with the help of the Aeds - singers mentioned in Homer (Demodocus in Alcinous, Phemius in Ithaca). Later, the poems were distributed by professional singer-reciters, the so-called. rhapsodes ("song stitchers"). They then began to be called Homerids, about whom it is stated that at first they were singers from the family of Homer, but later they began to call all other singers this way. The name of one homerid, Cynephs of Chios, has been preserved, who, according to legend, inserted many of his own poems into Homer. In the 8th - 7th centuries, the Homerids spread throughout Greece. Entire rhapsodist competitions are established in different places, especially in Athens during the Panathenaic festivals. Sources speak of a decree by Solon (the legislator in Athens in the first half of the 6th century BC) regarding the execution at the Panathenaea exclusively of the Iliad and Odyssey, and moreover, in a certain, strictly sequential order. As for the first recording of Homer’s poems, later sources (Cicero, Pausanias, Aelian, etc.) attribute it to a special commission under Pisistratus in Athens. The late nature of these sources has led some scholars to doubt the existence of a commission under Pisistratus, which, however, is unnecessary criticism.

The recording of Homer's poems was made no later than the 6th century BC. and had national significance.

Let's look at the summary of the poems.

III. "Iliad".

In the Iliad, the Olympian gods are the same characters as people. Their transcendental world, depicted in the poem, is created in the image and likeness of the earthly world. The gods were distinguished from ordinary people only by divine beauty, extraordinary strength, the gift of transforming into any creature and immortality.

Like people, the supreme deities often quarreled among themselves and even fought. A description of one of these quarrels is given at the very beginning of the Iliad, when Zeus, sitting at the head of the feasting table, threatens to beat his jealous and irritable wife Hera because she dared to object to him. Lame Hephaestus persuades his mother to come to terms and not quarrel with Zeus over mortals.

Thanks to his efforts, peace and fun reign again. Golden-haired Apollo plays the lyre, accompanying a choir of beautiful muses. At sunset, the feast ends and the gods disperse to their palaces, erected for them on Olympus by the skillful Hephaestus.

The poems consisted of songs, each of which could be performed separately, as an independent story about one or another event in the life of its heroes, but all of them are somehow related to the Trojan War.

The cause of the Trojan War was the abduction of Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, by Paris, the son of the Trojan king Priam. Insulted, Menelaus called on other kings for help. Among them were Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax and Achilles. The Achaean warriors occupied the plain between Troy and the sea, pulled ships ashore and set up their camp, from which they made sorties, plundering and destroying small settlements. The siege of Troy lasted 10 years, but the poems describe only the last year of the war. (Here it should be noted that Homer calls the Greeks Achaeans, also calling them Danaans and Argives, and not Greeks or even Hellenes, as the Greeks themselves began to call themselves later).

Starting from the third song of the Iliad, there is a description of the battles between the Achaeans and Trojans. The gods actively intervene in these battles between individual heroes. The poem ends with a description of the solemn burial of the heroic leader of the Trojans, Hector.

In the Iliad, the phenomena of real life and everyday life of the ancient Greek tribes are reproduced in vivid terms.

What predominates, of course, is a description of wartime life, and the poem is full of realistic depictions of scenes of death, cruel mutilations, and pre-death convulsions.

However, the battle is most often depicted not as a mass battle, but as a duel between individual heroes, distinguished by strength, valor and martial art. But the exploits of the heroes, so colorfully described by Homer, do not obscure all the horrors of war from the poet’s gaze. He reproduces scenes of violence and merciless cruelty of the victors in bright and accusatory realistic colors.