46594927-Humanities (Archeology of Homer)

8/13/2019 46594927-Humanities (Archeology of Homer)

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AuthorHomerwas A Greek poet, to whom are attributed the great epics, the Iliad,the story of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulysses'swanderings. The place of his birth is doubtful, probably a Greek colony on thecoast of Asia inor, and his date, once put as far back as !"## $%, from the

style of the poems attributed to him is now thought to be much later.Arguments ha&e long raged o&er whether his works are in fact by the samehand, or ha&e their origins in the lays of omer and his followers(omeridae), and there seems little doubt that the works were originallybased on current ballads which were much modified and e*tended. Of thetrue omer, nothing is positi&ely known. The so+called omeric hymns arecertainly of a later age.

Context (Odyssey and Iliad)early three thousand years after they were composed, the Iliad and theOdysseyremain two of the most celebrated and widely read stories e&er told,yet ne*t to nothing is known about their author. e was certainly anaccomplished Greek bard, and he probably li&ed in the late eighth and earlyse&enth centuries b.c.e. Authorship is traditionally ascribed to a blind poetnamed omer, and it is under this name that the works are still published.Greeks of the third and second centuries b.c.e., howe&er, already -uestionedwhether omer e*isted and whether the two epics were e&en written by asingle indi&idual.

ost modern scholars belie&e that e&en if a single person wrote the epics, hiswork owed a tremendous debt to a long tradition of unwritten, oral poetry.tories of a glorious e*pedition to the /ast and of its leaders0 fateful 1ourneys

home had been circulating in Greece for hundreds of years before the Iliadand Odyssey were composed. %asual storytellers and semiprofessionalminstrels passed these stories down through generations, with each artistde&eloping and polishing the story as he told it. According to this theory, onepoet, multiple poets working in collaboration, or perhaps e&en a series ofpoets handing down their work in succession finally turned these stories intowritten works, again with each adding his own touch and e*panding orcontracting certain episodes in the o&erall narrati&e to fit his taste.

Although historical, archaeological, and linguistic e&idence suggests that theepics were composed between 23# and 43# b.c.e., they are set in ycenaeanGreece in about the twelfth century b.c.e., during the $ron5e Age. This earlier

period, the Greeks belie&ed, was a more glorious and sublime age, whengods still fre-uented the earth and heroic, godlike mortals with superhumanattributes populated Greece. $ecause the two epics stri&e to e&oke thispristine age, they are written in a high style and generally depict life as it wasbelie&ed to ha&e been led in the great kingdoms of the $ron5e Age. TheGreeks are often referred to as 6Achaeans,7 the name of a large tribeoccupying Greece during the $ron5e Age.

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$ut omer0s reconstruction often yields to the realities of eighth+ andse&enth+century b.c.e. Greece. The feudal social structure apparent in thebackground of the Odyssey seems more akin to omer0s Greece than toOdysseus0s, and omer substitutes the pantheon of deities of his own day forthe related but different gods whom ycenaean Greeks worshipped. anyother minor but ob&ious anachronisms8such as references to iron tools and

to tribes that had not yet migrated to Greece by the $ron5e Age8betray thepoem0s later, Iron Age origins.

Of the two epics, the Odysseyis the later both in setting and, probably, dateof composition. The Iliadtells the story of the Greek struggle to rescue elen,a Greek -ueen, from her Tro1an captors. The Odysseytakes the fall of the cityof Troy as its starting point and crafts a new epic around the struggle of oneof those Greek warriors, the hero Odysseus. It tells the story of his nostos, or

1ourney home, to northwest Greece during the ten+year period after theGreek &ictory o&er the Tro1ans. A tale of wandering, it takes place not on afield of battle but on fantastic islands and foreign lands. After the unrelentingtragedy and carnage of the Iliad,the Odysseyoften strikes readers as comicor surreal at times. This -uality has led some scholars to conclude thatomer wrote the Odysseyat a later time of his life, when he showed lessinterest in struggles at arms and was more recepti&e to a storyline thatfocused on the fortunes and misad&entures of a single man. Others arguethat someone else must ha&e composed the Odyssey,one who wished topro&ide a companion work to the Iliadbut had different interests from thoseof the earlier epic0s author.

9ike the Iliad, the Odysseywas composed primarily in the Ionic dialect ofAncient Greek, which was spoken on the Aegean islands and in the coastalsettlements of Asia inor, now modern Turkey. ome scholars thus concludethat the poet hailed from somewhere in the eastern Greek world. ore likely,howe&er, the poet chose the Ionic dialect because he felt it to be moreappropriate for the high style and grand scope of his work. lightly laterGreek literature suggests that poets &aried the dialects of their poemsaccording to the themes that they were treating and might write in dialectsthat they didn0t actually speak. omer0s epics, moreo&er, are :anhellenic(encompassing all of Greece) in spirit and, in fact, use forms from se&eralother dialects, suggesting that omer didn0t simply fall back on his nati&etongue but rather suited his poems to the dialect that would bestcomplement his ideas.

The Odyssey - Overview / Summary

In the Odyssey there were three main characters. Odysseus is the hero of theepic. e is the son of 9aertes and is the king of Ithaca and a &ery respectedwarrior . e en1oys life, e&en while struggling to get home. e is restless,cle&er, and e&en tricky and is able to in&ent lies easily. After the Tro1an ;ar,the gods and goddess were mad that his plan helped the Greeks defendedthe Tro1ans. o they made Odysseus0 1ourney home as hard as possible. In

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the Odyssey, Odysseus is &ery bra&e, o&ercomes many superhuman forcesand is cle&er.


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clearly here on the presence of a &ery sophisticated story teller who ismanipulating certain con&entions of fiction in remarkable ways. , focusing on the ero Odysseus0sad&entures, we ha&e to keep close track of where we are, because narrati&e

lines come together when the father and son are reunited in $ook ?>I, andthe two stories march together to their common conclusion.

;hen I think of the Odyssey, I tend to concentrate much of my focus onOdysseus himself, and certainly most of the really famous incidents from thispoem concern the ad&entures of the main hero. I after I listened to the audiocarefully, I shouldn0t note 1ust how much emphasis the structure gi&es toOdysseus0s family, especially to his wife and son. In a way, the narrati&eemphasis in the structure puts pressure on me to see in this story more than

1ust the memorable e&ents in the hero0s life, reminding me that this story isalso about family and about how each principal members of that family playsand important role in the successful reunion and the restoration of a

traditional ruling household.

;hat0s remarkable about this (and also &ery frustrating) is that such anob&iously sophisticated narrati&e skill cannot 1ust arise from nothing.


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Iliad Overview/Summary

ine years after the start of the Tro1an ;ar, the Greek (6Achaean7) armysacks %hryse, a town allied with Troy. @uring the battle, the Achaeanscapture a pair of beautiful maidens, %hryseis and $riseis. Agamemnon, theleader of the Achaean forces, takes %hryseis as his pri5e, and Achilles, theAchaeans0 greatest warrior, claims $riseis. %hryseis0s father, %hryses, whoser&es as a priest of the god Apollo, offers an enormous ransom in return forhis daughter, but Agamemnon refuses to gi&e %hryseis back. %hryses thenprays to Apollo, who sends a plague upon the Achaean camp.

After many Achaeans die, Agamemnon consults the prophet %alchas todetermine the cause of the plague. ;hen he learns that %hryseis is thecause, he reluctantly gi&es her up but then demands $riseis from Achilles ascompensation.


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with such grief and rage that he agrees to reconcile with Agamemnon andre1oin the battle. Thetis goes to ount Olympus and persuades the godephaestus to forge Achilles a new suit of armor, which she presents to himthe ne*t morning. Achilles then rides out to battle at the head of the Achaeanarmy.

eanwhile, ector, not e*pecting Achilles to re1oin the battle, has ordered hismen to camp outside the walls of Troy. $ut when the Tro1an army glimpsesAchilles, it flees in terror back behind the city walls. Achilles cuts down e&ery

Tro1an he sees. trengthened by his rage, he e&en fights the god of the ri&er?anthus, who is angered that Achilles has caused so many corpses to fall intohis streams.


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characters, considering the poet's treatment of the gods in relation tomortals, or probing such minor themes as the guilt of elen or :aris.

/*ploring omer's philosophical beliefs, scholars still grapple with hispresentation of death, di&ine and human 1ustice, and the role of the citi5enand the state in society. The concepts of aids, aristeia,and other elements

of the heroic code ha&e also inspired considerable commentary. omer's richuse of simile continues to elicit interest, with scholars considering hisdescriptions of heroes as wild beasts, as well as his lyric e&ocation of humangentleness, care, and nurturing in the brutal conte*t of war. ;ith the ongoingproliferation of critical attention to the Iliad,the oldest and in some ways themost formidable work of ;estern literature has remained fresh and intriguingfor generation after generation of scholars and readers. It impresses as muchby its thematic comple*ity as by its stylistic simplicity, as much by itsdepiction of tragedy as by its celebration of life, and as much by its harshdescriptions of warfare as by its tender lyric poetry.

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46594927-Humanities (Archeology of Homer)