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Homer

Homer (/ˈhmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros; born c. 8th century BC) was a 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. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.[2]

Homer
Marble terminal bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd c. BC.
Native name
Ὅμηρος
Bornc. 8th century BC
DiedIos[1]
LanguageHomeric Greek
GenreEpic
SubjectEpic Cycle
Notable works

Homer's 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 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.[3][4] Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.[5] Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.[6]

Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.[7] To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).[8][9] In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;[10] in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets".[11] From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.[12]

The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author.[13] It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.[13] Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey.[14] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.[15]

Works attributed to Homer edit

 
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 by no means 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.[16][17][18]

Ancient biographical traditions edit

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),[19][20] 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, and various explanations for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).[19] Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.[21][22]

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.[1][23]

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.[24]

History of Homeric scholarship edit

Ancient edit

 
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.[25][26][27] Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia.[25] 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.[27] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories.[27] The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.[25][27][28] They were the first literary works taught to all students.[28] The Iliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.[28]

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.[25][27] 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.[27] Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate.[27] Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher.[27] Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.[29][27] Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a twenty-first century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.[27]

Modern edit

 
Page from the first printed edition (editio princeps) of collected works by Homer edited by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Florence, 1489. Bibliothèque Nationale de France

In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps of the Homeric poems.[27] The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.[27][26][25] The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.[27] Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.[27] In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.[30]

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.[26] 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.[26] 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."[26]

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,[31][32][26] 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.[31][32][26] After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities.[31][32][26] 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.[31][32][26][33]

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,[26] 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.[26] A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet.[31][32][26] 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".[26]

Following World War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.[26] It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end.[26] 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.[34][33][26] This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance[34][33][26] 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.[33] Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.[26]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'.[35][36] 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.[26] 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.[37]

Contemporary edit

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."[38][39][40][26] 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.[26] It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.[26] 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.[26]

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.[41] Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems.[42][43][26] A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date.[44] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.[42][43] 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" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι), and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.[45]

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.[46][47][26] 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 663/4 BC.[26] 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.[42][43][26]

"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros 'hostage' or 'surety'). 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.[48][49]

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society edit

 
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.[50][51][52][53]

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 c. 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.[54]

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.[33][55][56] 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;[33][55][56] yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).[33][55][56] In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period,[33] 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.[33] 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.[57][58][59]

The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of Aegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer.[60] Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up;[33] 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.[33] It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.[33] Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed.[33]

Style and language edit

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

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.[61][62]

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based.[63][64] 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.[65]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), 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.[66][67]

'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.[68][69]

Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse.[70] In the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles",[70] and, in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".[70] A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.[70]

Textual transmission edit

 
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 BC. 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.[71] Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating.[72] Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.[73][74]

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.[75] 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.[76] Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period.[77] Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.[78]

In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BC), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".[79][27] 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 BC Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer.[27] From around 150 BC, the texts of the Homeric poems seem to have become relatively established. 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.[80]

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy. 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.[clarification needed] Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.[80]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ a b Lefkowitz, Mary R. (2013). The Lives of the Greek Poets. A&C Black. pp. 14–30. ISBN 978-1472503077.
  2. ^ "Learn about Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
  3. ^ Hose, Martin; Schenker, David (2015). A Companion to Greek Literature. John Wiley & Sons. p. 445. ISBN 978-1118885956.
  4. ^ Miller, D. Gary (2013). Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors: Introduction to the Dialect Mixture in Homer, with Notes on Lyric and Herodotus. Walter de Gruyter. p. 351. ISBN 978-1614512950. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  5. ^ Ahl, Frederick; Roisman, Hanna (1996). The Odyssey Re-formed. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801483356. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  6. ^ Bell, Robert H. "Homer’s humor: laughter in the Iliad." hand 1 (2007): 596.
  7. ^ Rutherford, R. B. (2010). Homer: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide. Oxford University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-19-980510-5.
  8. ^ Too, Yun Lee (2010). The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World. OUP Oxford. p. 86. ISBN 978-0199577804. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
  9. ^ MacDonald, Dennis R. (1994). Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew. Oxford University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0195358629. from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
  10. ^ Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto IV, 86–88 (Longfellow's translation):

    Him with that falchion in his hand behold,
    ⁠Who comes before the three, even as their lord.
    That one is Homer, Poet sovereign;

  11. ^ 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."
  12. ^ Latacz, Joachim (1996). Homer, His Art and His World. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472083534. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
  13. ^ a b Croally, Neil; Hyde, Roy (2011). Classical Literature: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 26. ISBN 978-1136736629. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  14. ^ Daisy Dunn (22 January 2020). "Who was Homer?". British Museum. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  15. ^ Wilson, Nigel (2013). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. Routledge. p. 366. ISBN 978-1136788000. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
    Romilly, Jacqueline de (1985). A Short History of Greek Literature. University of Chicago Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0226143125. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
    Graziosi 2002, p. 15
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  17. ^ Graziosi, Barbara; Haubold, Johannes (2005). Homer: The Resonance of Epic. A&C Black. pp. 24–26. ISBN 978-0715632826.
  18. ^ Graziosi 2002, pp. 165–168.
  19. ^ a b Graziosi 2002, p. 138
  20. ^ Odyssey, 8:64ff.[full citation needed]
  21. ^ "Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica" (Contest of Homer and Hesiod)
  22. ^ Parke, Herbert William (1967). Greek Oracles. pp. 136–137 citing the Certamen, 12.
  23. ^ Kelly, Adrian D. "Biographies of Homer". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0243
  24. ^ West, M. L. Theogony & Works and Days. Oxford University Press. p. xx.
  25. ^ a b c d e Dickey, Eleanor. "Scholarship, Ancient". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1307
  26. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa West, M. L. (December 2011). "The Homeric Question Today". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 155 (4): 383–393. JSTOR 23208780.
  27. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Lamberton, Robert (2010). "Homer". In Grafton, Anthony; Most, Glenn W.; Settis, Salvatore (eds.). The Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 449–452. ISBN 978-0-674-03572-0.
  28. ^ a b c Hunter, Richard L. (2018). The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-1-108-42831-6.
  29. ^ Kaldellis, Anthony. "Scholarship, Byzantine". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1308
  30. ^ Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, Renaissance through 17th Century". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1310
  31. ^ a b c d e Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 18th Century". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1311
  32. ^ a b c d e Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 19th Century". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1312
  33. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Taplin, Oliver (1986). "2: Homer". In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper; Murray, Oswyn (eds.). The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 50–77. ISBN 978-0198721123.
  34. ^ a b Foley, John Miles (1988). The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253342607.
  35. ^ Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 20th Century". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1313
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  37. ^ Reece, Steve. "The Cretan Odyssey: A Lie Truer than Truth". American Journal of Philology 115 (1994) 157–173. The_Cretan_Odyssey
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  49. ^ West, M. L. (1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 622.
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  55. ^ a b c Sacks, David; Murray, Oswyn; Brody, Lisa R. (2014). Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. Infobase Publishing. p. 356. ISBN 978-1438110202.
  56. ^ a b c Morris & Powell 1997, pp. 434–435
  57. ^ Wood, Michael (1996). In Search of the Trojan War. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-520-21599-3. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  58. ^ Schofield, Louise (2007). The Mycenaeans. Los Angeles, California: The J. Paul Getty Museum. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-89236-867-9. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  59. ^ Everson, Tim (2004). Warfare in Ancient Greece: Arms and Armour from the Heroes of Homer to Alexander the Great. Brimscombe Port: The History Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-0-7524-9506-4. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  60. ^ Morris & Powell 1997, p. 625.
  61. ^ Willi, Andreas. "Language, Homeric". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0792
  62. ^ Bakker, Egbert J. (2010). A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language. John Wiley & Sons. p. 401. ISBN 978-1444317404.
  63. ^ Edwards, Mark W. "Meter". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0913
  64. ^ Nussbaum, Gerry B. (1986). Homer's Metre: A Practical Guide for Reading Greek Hexameter Poetry. Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-0862921729.
  65. ^ Edwards, Mark W. "Style". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1377
  66. ^ Reece, Steve T. "Type-Scenes". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1488
  67. ^ Edwards, Mark W. (1992). "Homer and Oral Tradition: The Type-Scene". Oral Tradition. 7: 284–330.
  68. ^ Stanley, Keith (2014). The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Illiad. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400863372.
  69. ^ Minchin, Elizabeth. "Ring Composition". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1287
  70. ^ a b c d Adler, Eve (2003). Vergil's Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-7425-2167-4.
  71. ^ 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.
  72. ^ Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960).
  73. ^ Kirk, G. S. (1976). Homer and the Oral Tradition. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0521213097.
  74. ^ Foley, John Miles. "Oral Dictated Texts". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1029
  75. ^ Nagy, Gregory (1996). Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521558488.
  76. ^ U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1884) 369; R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1968) 116–117.
  77. ^ West, Martin L. "Book Division". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0253; S. West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne, 1967) 18–25.
  78. ^
  79. ^ Jensen, Minna Skafte (1980). The Homeric Question and the Oral-formulaic Theory. Museum Tusculanum Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-8772890968.
  80. ^ a b Haslam, Michael. "Text and Transmission". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1413

Sources edit

Selected bibliography edit

Editions edit

Texts in Homeric Greek

Interlinear translations edit

English translations edit

This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

General works on Homer edit

Influential readings and interpretations edit

Commentaries edit

Dating the Homeric poems edit

  • Janko, Richard (1982). Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23869-4.

Further reading edit

  • Buck, Carl Darling (1928). The Greek Dialects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homerica. The Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Evelyn-White, Hugh Gerard. London; New York: Heinemann; MacMillen. 1914.
  • Ford, Andrew (1992). Homer : the poetry of the past. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-2700-8.
  • Kirk, G. S. (1962). The Songs of Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon (revised ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press; Perseus Digital Library.
  • Murray, Gilbert (1960). The Rise of the Greek Epic (Galaxy Books ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Schein, Seth L. (1984). The Mortal Hero : An Introduction to Homer's Iliad. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05128-7.
  • Silk, Michael (1987). Homer: The Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83233-5.
  • Smith, William, ed. (1876). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. I, II & III. London: John Murray.
  • Thurman, Judith (18 September 2023). "Mother Tongue: How Emily Wilson makes Homer modern". The New Yorker (Long-form article on Emily Wilson's Homer translations). pp. 46–53.

External links edit

  • Works by Homer at Perseus Digital Library
  • Works by Homer in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
  • Works by Homer at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about Homer at Internet Archive
  • Works by Homer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Homer; Murray, Augustus Taber (1925). The Iliad with an English Translation (in Ancient Greek and English). Vol. I, Books I–XII. London; New York: William Heinemann; G. P. Putnam's Sons – via Internet Archive.
  • The Chicago Homer 4 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  • Homer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database  
  • Heath, Malcolm (4 May 2001). . Department of Classics, University of Leeds. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  • Bassino, Paola (2014). "Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources". Living Poets: a new approach to ancient history. Durham University. Retrieved 18 November 2014.

homer, several, terms, redirect, here, other, uses, disambiguation, disambiguation, disambiguation, ancient, greek, Ὅμηρος, hómɛːros, hómēros, born, century, greek, poet, credited, author, iliad, odyssey, epic, poems, that, foundational, works, ancient, greek,. Several terms redirect here For other uses see Homer disambiguation Homerus disambiguation and Homeric disambiguation Homer ˈ h oʊ m er Ancient Greek Ὅmhros homɛːros Homeros born c 8th century BC was a 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 Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history 2 HomerMarble terminal bust of Homer Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd c BC Native nameὍmhrosBornc 8th century BCDiedIos 1 LanguageHomeric GreekGenreEpicSubjectEpic CycleNotable worksIliadOdyssey Homer s 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 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 3 4 Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally 5 Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter 6 Homer s epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education fostering ideals of heroism glory and honor 7 To Plato Homer was simply the one who has taught Greece tὴn Ἑllada pepaideyken ten Hellada pepaideuken 8 9 In Dante Alighieri s Divine Comedy Virgil refers to Homer as Poet sovereign king of all poets 10 in the preface to his translation of the Iliad Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the greatest of poets 11 From antiquity to the present day Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature music art and film 12 The question of by whom when where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author 13 It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC 13 Many accounts of Homer s life circulated in classical antiquity the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia a region of central coastal Anatolia in present day Turkey 14 Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary 15 Contents 1 Works attributed to Homer 2 Ancient biographical traditions 3 History of Homeric scholarship 3 1 Ancient 3 2 Modern 3 3 Contemporary 4 Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society 5 Style and language 6 Textual transmission 7 See also 8 Notes 8 1 Sources 9 Selected bibliography 9 1 Editions 9 2 Interlinear translations 9 3 English translations 9 4 General works on Homer 9 5 Influential readings and interpretations 9 6 Commentaries 9 7 Dating the Homeric poems 10 Further reading 11 External linksWorks attributed to Homer edit nbsp 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 by no means 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 16 17 18 Ancient biographical traditions editFurther information Ancient accounts of Homer 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 19 20 that he resided at Chios that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheis 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 and various explanations for the name Homer Ὅmhros Homeros 19 Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste daughter of Nestor and Telemachus son of Odysseus were the parents of Homer 21 22 The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod 1 23 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 24 History of Homeric scholarship editFurther information Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question Ancient edit nbsp 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 25 26 27 Nonetheless the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia 25 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 27 The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories 27 The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures 25 27 28 They were the first literary works taught to all students 28 The Iliad particularly its first few books was far more intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods 28 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 25 27 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 27 Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems extensive use in education many authors believed that Homer s original purpose had been to educate 27 Homer s wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher 27 Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries extensions and scholia to Homer especially in the twelfth century 29 27 Eustathius s commentary on the Iliad alone is massive sprawling over nearly 4 000 oversized pages in a twenty first century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2 000 27 Modern edit nbsp Page from the first printed edition editio princeps of collected works by Homer edited by Demetrios Chalkokondyles Florence 1489 Bibliotheque Nationale de France In 1488 the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps of the Homeric poems 27 The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity 27 26 25 The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance 27 Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet whose writings contain hidden wisdom disguised through allegory 27 In western Europe during the Renaissance Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens 30 In 1664 contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom Francois Hedelin abbe 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 26 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 26 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 26 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 31 32 26 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 31 32 26 After being written down Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited modernized and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities 31 32 26 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 31 32 26 33 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 26 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 26 A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts dubbed Unitarians saw the later additions as superior the work of a single inspired poet 31 32 26 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 26 Following World War I the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars 26 It did not die out entirely but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end 26 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 34 33 26 This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance 34 33 26 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 33 Many scholars concluded that the Homeric Question had finally been answered 26 Meanwhile the Neoanalysts sought to bridge the gap between the Analysts and Unitarians 35 36 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 26 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 37 Contemporary edit 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 38 39 40 26 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 26 It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions 26 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 26 Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards 41 Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems 42 43 26 A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems complicating the search for a precise date 44 At one extreme Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics 42 43 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 kaὶ oὐ pleosi and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics inhumation or literacy 45 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 46 47 26 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 663 4 BC 26 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 42 43 26 Homer is a name of unknown etymological origin around which many theories were erected in antiquity One such linkage was to the Greek ὅmhros homeros hostage or surety 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 48 49 Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society editMain article Historicity of the Iliad nbsp 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 50 51 52 53 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 c 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 54 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 33 55 56 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 33 55 56 yet the same heroes are cremated an Iron Age practice rather than buried as they were in the Bronze Age 33 55 56 In some parts of the Homeric poems heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period 33 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 33 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 57 58 59 The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars understanding of Aegean civilisation which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer 60 Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up 33 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 33 It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles 33 Archaeologists however have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed 33 Style and language editSee also Homeric Greek nbsp Detail of The Parnassus painted 1509 1510 by Raphael depicting Homer wearing a crown of laurels atop Mount Parnassus with Dante Alighieri on his right and Virgil on his left 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 61 62 The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ancient Greek metre was quantity based rather than stress based 63 64 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 65 The so called type scenes typische Szenen 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 66 67 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 68 69 Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse 70 In the Iliad the poet beseeches her to sing of the anger of Achilles 70 and in the Odyssey he asks her to tell of the man of many ways 70 A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid 70 Textual transmission edit nbsp 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 BC 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 71 Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating 72 Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down 73 74 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 75 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 76 Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period 77 Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions 78 In antiquity it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Pisistratus died 528 7 BC in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the Peisistratean recension 79 27 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 BC Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources including two ancient Lives of Homer 27 From around 150 BC the texts of the Homeric poems seem to have become relatively established 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 80 The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan Italy 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 clarification needed Others such as Martin West 1998 2000 or T W Allen fall somewhere between these two extremes 80 See also edit nbsp Ancient Greece portal nbsp Poetry portal nbsp Literature portal 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 manuscriptNotes edit a b Lefkowitz Mary R 2013 The Lives of the Greek Poets A amp C Black pp 14 30 ISBN 978 1472503077 Learn about Homer s The Iliad and The Odyssey Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 31 August 2021 Hose Martin Schenker David 2015 A Companion to Greek Literature John Wiley amp Sons p 445 ISBN 978 1118885956 Miller D Gary 2013 Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors Introduction to the Dialect Mixture in Homer with Notes on Lyric and Herodotus Walter de Gruyter p 351 ISBN 978 1614512950 Retrieved 23 November 2016 Ahl Frederick Roisman Hanna 1996 The Odyssey Re formed Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0801483356 Retrieved 23 November 2016 Bell Robert H Homer s humor laughter in the Iliad hand 1 2007 596 Rutherford R B 2010 Homer Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide Oxford University Press p 31 ISBN 978 0 19 980510 5 Too Yun Lee 2010 The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World OUP Oxford p 86 ISBN 978 0199577804 Retrieved 22 November 2016 MacDonald Dennis R 1994 Christianizing Homer The Odyssey Plato and the Acts of Andrew Oxford University Press p 17 ISBN 978 0195358629 Archived from the original on 30 June 2017 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Divine Comedy Inferno Canto IV 86 88 Longfellow s translation Him with that falchion in his hand behold Who comes before the three even as their lord That one is Homer Poet sovereign 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 Latacz Joachim 1996 Homer His Art and His World University of Michigan Press ISBN 978 0472083534 Retrieved 22 November 2016 a b Croally Neil Hyde Roy 2011 Classical Literature An Introduction Routledge p 26 ISBN 978 1136736629 Retrieved 23 November 2016 Daisy Dunn 22 January 2020 Who was Homer British Museum Retrieved 7 March 2024 Wilson Nigel 2013 Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece Routledge p 366 ISBN 978 1136788000 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Romilly Jacqueline de 1985 A Short History of Greek Literature University of Chicago Press p 1 ISBN 978 0226143125 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Graziosi 2002 p 15 Kelly Adrian D Homerica In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0606 Graziosi Barbara Haubold Johannes 2005 Homer The Resonance of Epic A amp C Black pp 24 26 ISBN 978 0715632826 Graziosi 2002 pp 165 168 a b Graziosi 2002 p 138 Odyssey 8 64ff full citation needed Hesiod The Homeric Hymns and Homerica Contest of Homer and Hesiod Parke Herbert William 1967 Greek Oracles pp 136 137 citing the Certamen 12 Kelly Adrian D Biographies of Homer In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0243 West M L Theogony amp Works and Days Oxford University Press p xx a b c d e Dickey Eleanor Scholarship Ancient In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1307 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa West M L December 2011 The Homeric Question Today Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 155 4 383 393 JSTOR 23208780 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Lamberton Robert 2010 Homer In Grafton Anthony Most Glenn W Settis Salvatore eds The Classical Tradition Cambridge Massachusetts and London England The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press pp 449 452 ISBN 978 0 674 03572 0 a b c Hunter Richard L 2018 The Measure of Homer The Ancient Reception of theIliadand theOdyssey Cambridge England Cambridge University Press pp 4 7 ISBN 978 1 108 42831 6 Kaldellis Anthony Scholarship Byzantine In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1308 Heiden Bruce Scholarship Renaissance through 17th Century In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1310 a b c d e Heiden Bruce Scholarship 18th Century In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1311 a b c d e Heiden Bruce Scholarship 19th Century In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1312 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Taplin Oliver 1986 2 Homer In Boardman John Griffin Jasper Murray Oswyn eds The Oxford History of the Classical World Oxford England Oxford University Press pp 50 77 ISBN 978 0198721123 a b Foley John Miles 1988 The Theory of Oral Composition History and Methodology Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0253342607 Heiden Bruce Scholarship 20th Century In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1313 Edwards Mark W Neoanalysis In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0968 Reece Steve The Cretan Odyssey A Lie Truer than Truth American Journal of Philology 115 1994 157 173 The Cretan Odyssey West M L 1999 The Invention of Homer Classical Quarterly 49 2 364 382 doi 10 1093 cq 49 2 364 JSTOR 639863 West Martin L Homeric Question In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0605 Latacz Joachim Bierl Anton Olson S Douglas 2015 New Trends in Homeric Scholarship in Homer s Iliad The Basel Commentary De Gruyter ISBN 978 1614517375 Said Suzanne 2011 Homer and the Odyssey OUP Oxford pp 14 17 ISBN 978 0199542840 a b c Graziosi 2002 pp 90 92 a b c Fowler 2004 pp 220 232 Burgess Jonathan S 2003 The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle JHU Press pp 49 53 ISBN 978 0801874819 Powell Barry B 1996 Homer and the Origins of the Greek Alphabet Cambridge England Cambridge University Press pp 217 222 ISBN 978 0 521 58907 9 Hall Jonathan M 2002 Hellenicity Between Ethnicity and Culture University of Chicago Press pp 235 236 ISBN 978 0226313290 West Martin L Date of Homer In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0330 Graziosi 2002 pp 51 89 West M L 1997 The East Face of Helicon West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth Oxford Clarendon Press p 622 Raaflaub Kurt A Historicity of Homer In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0601 Finley Moses I 1991 The World of Odysseus Penguin ISBN 978 0140136869 Wees Hans van 2009 War and Violence in Ancient Greece ISD LLC ISBN 978 1910589298 Morris Ian 1986 The Use and Abuse of Homer Classical Antiquity 5 1 81 138 doi 10 2307 25010840 JSTOR 25010840 Dowden Ken Livingstone Niall 2011 A Companion to Greek Mythology John Wiley amp Sons p 440 ISBN 978 1444396935 a b c Sacks David Murray Oswyn Brody Lisa R 2014 Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World Infobase Publishing p 356 ISBN 978 1438110202 a b c Morris amp Powell 1997 pp 434 435 Wood Michael 1996 In Search of the Trojan War Berkeley California University of California Press p 130 ISBN 978 0 520 21599 3 Retrieved 1 September 2017 Schofield Louise 2007 The Mycenaeans Los Angeles California The J Paul Getty Museum p 119 ISBN 978 0 89236 867 9 Retrieved 1 September 2017 Everson Tim 2004 Warfare in Ancient Greece Arms and Armour from the Heroes of Homer to Alexander the Great Brimscombe Port The History Press pp 9 10 ISBN 978 0 7524 9506 4 Retrieved 1 September 2017 Morris amp Powell 1997 p 625 Willi Andreas Language Homeric In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0792 Bakker Egbert J 2010 A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language John Wiley amp Sons p 401 ISBN 978 1444317404 Edwards Mark W Meter In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0913 Nussbaum Gerry B 1986 Homer s Metre A Practical Guide for Reading Greek Hexameter Poetry Bristol Classical Press ISBN 978 0862921729 Edwards Mark W Style In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1377 Reece Steve T Type Scenes In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1488 Edwards Mark W 1992 Homer and Oral Tradition The Type Scene Oral Tradition 7 284 330 Stanley Keith 2014 The Shield of Homer Narrative Structure in the Illiad Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1400863372 Minchin Elizabeth Ring Composition In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1287 a b c d Adler Eve 2003 Vergil s Empire Political Thought in the Aeneid Lanham Maryland Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers Inc p 4 ISBN 978 0 7425 2167 4 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 Albert B Lord The Singer of Tales Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press 1960 Kirk G S 1976 Homer and the Oral Tradition Cambridge University Press p 117 ISBN 978 0521213097 Foley John Miles Oral Dictated Texts In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1029 Nagy Gregory 1996 Poetry as Performance Homer and Beyond Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521558488 U von Wilamowitz Moellendorff Homerische Untersuchungen Berlin 1884 369 R Pfeiffer History of Classical Scholarship Oxford 1968 116 117 West Martin L Book Division In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe0253 S West The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer Cologne 1967 18 25 P Mazon Introduction a l Iliade Paris 1912 137 140 C H Whitman Homer and the Heroic Tradition Cambridge Massachusetts 1958 282 283G P Goold 1960 Homer and the Alphabet Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 272 291 doi 10 2307 283857 JSTOR 283857 K Stanley The Shield of Homer Princeton 1993 37 249ff Jensen Minna Skafte 1980 The Homeric Question and the Oral formulaic Theory Museum Tusculanum Press p 128 ISBN 978 8772890968 a b Haslam Michael Text and Transmission In Finkelberg 2012 doi 10 1002 9781444350302 wbhe1413 Sources edit Finkelberg Margalit ed 2012 The Homer Encyclopedia Wiley doi 10 1002 9781444350302 ISBN 9781405177689 Fowler Robert ed 2004 The Cambridge Companion to Homer Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 01246 1 via Internet Archive Graziosi Barbara 2002 Inventing Homer The Early Perception of Epic Cambridge Classical Studies Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521809665 Morris Ian Powell Barry B eds 1997 A New Companion to Homer Leiden Brill ISBN 978 90 04 09989 0 Selected bibliography editEditions edit 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 ISBN 0 19 814528 4 0 19 814529 2 0 19 814531 4 0 19 814532 2 0 19 814534 9 H van Thiel 1991 Homeri Odyssea Hildesheim ISBN 3 487 09458 4 1996 Homeri Ilias Hildesheim ISBN 3 487 09459 2 P von der Muhll 1993 Homeri Odyssea Munich Leipzig ISBN 3 598 71432 7 M L West 1998 2000 Homeri Ilias 2 volumes Munich Leipzig ISBN 3 598 71431 9 3 598 71435 1 M L West 2017 Homerus Odyssea Berlin Boston ISBN 3 11 042539 4 Interlinear translations edit The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear Handheldclassics com 2008 Text ISBN 978 1 60725 298 6 English translations edit Main article English translations of Homer 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 ISBN 0 374 52905 1 The Odyssey Farrar Straus and Giroux 1998 ISBN 0 374 52574 9 Robert Fagles 1933 2008 The Iliad Penguin Classics 1998 ISBN 0 14 027536 3 The Odyssey Penguin Classics 1999 ISBN 0 14 026886 3 Stanley Lombardo b 1943 Iliad Hackett Publishing Company 1997 ISBN 0 87220 352 2 Odyssey Hackett Publishing Company 2000 ISBN 0 87220 484 7 Iliad Audiobook Parmenides 2006 ISBN 1 930972 08 3 Odyssey Audiobook Parmenides 2006 ISBN 1 930972 06 7 The Essential Homer Audiobook Parmenides 2006 ISBN 1 930972 12 1 The Essential Iliad Audiobook Parmenides 2006 ISBN 1 930972 10 5 Barry B Powell b 1942 Iliad Oxford University Press 2013 ISBN 978 0 19 932610 5 Odyssey Oxford University PressI 2014 ISBN 978 0 19 936031 4 Homer s Iliad and Odyssey The Essential Books Oxford University Press 2014 ISBN 978 0 19 939407 4 Samuel Butler 1835 1902 The Iliad Red and Black Publishers 2008 ISBN 978 1 934941 04 1 The Odyssey Red and Black Publishers 2008 ISBN 978 1 934941 05 8 Emily Wilson b 1971 The Odyssey W W Norton 2017 ISBN 978 0 393 08905 9 The Iliad W W Norton 2023 ISBN 9781324001805 General works on Homer edit Carlier Pierre 1999 Homere in French Paris Les editions Fayard ISBN 978 2 213 60381 0 de Romilly Jacqueline 2005 Homere 5th ed Paris Presses Universitaires de France ISBN 978 2 13 054830 0 Latacz J 2004 Troy and Homer Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery Translated by Windle Kevin Ireland Rosh Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 926308 0 In German 5th updated and expanded edition Leipzig 2005 In Spanish 2003 ISBN 84 233 3487 2 In modern Greek 2005 ISBN 960 16 1557 1 Monro David Binning 1911 Homer Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 12 11th ed pp 626 39 Powell Barry B 2007 Homer 2nd ed Malden Massachusetts Oxford UK Carlton Victoria Wiley Blackwell ISBN 978 1 4051 5325 6 Vidal Naquet Pierre 2000 Le monde d Homere in French Paris Perrin ISBN 978 2 262 01181 9 Wace A J B F H Stubbings 1962 A Companion to Homer London Macmillan ISBN 978 0 333 07113 7 Influential readings and interpretations edit Auerbach Erich 1953 Chapter 1 Mimesis The Representation of Reality in Western Literature Princeton Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 11336 4 orig publ in German 1946 Bern de Jong Irene J F 2004 Narrators and Focalizers the Presentation of the Story in the Iliad 2nd ed London Bristol Classical Press ISBN 978 1 85399 658 0 Edwards Mark W 1987 Homer Poet of the Iliad Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 3329 8 Fenik Bernard 1974 Studies in the Odyssey Hermes Einzelschriften 30 Wiesbaden Steiner Finley Moses 2002 The World of Odysseus New York The New York Review of Books ISBN 978 1 59017 017 5 Nagy Gregory 1979 The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry Baltimore London Johns Hopkins University Press Nagy Gregory 2010 Homer the Preclassic Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 95024 5 Reece Steve The Stranger s Welcome Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1993 Commentaries edit Iliad P V Jones ed 2003 Homer s Iliad A Commentary on Three Translations London ISBN 1 85399 657 2 G S Kirk gen ed 1985 1993 The Iliad A Commentary 6 volumes Cambridge ISBN 0 521 28171 7 0 521 28172 5 0 521 28173 3 0 521 28174 1 0 521 31208 6 0 521 31209 4 J 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 ISBN 3 598 74307 6 ISBN 3 598 74304 1 N Postlethwaite ed 2000 Homer s Iliad A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore Exeter ISBN 0 85989 684 6 M W Willcock ed 1976 A Companion to the Iliad Chicago ISBN 0 226 89855 5 Odyssey A Heubeck gen ed 1990 1993 A Commentary on Homer s Odyssey 3 volumes orig publ 1981 1987 in Italian Oxford ISBN 0 19 814747 3 ISBN 0 19 872144 7 ISBN 0 19 814953 0 P Jones ed 1988 Homer s Odyssey A Commentary based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore Bristol ISBN 1 85399 038 8 I J F de Jong ed 2001 A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey Cambridge ISBN 0 521 46844 2 Dating the Homeric poems edit Janko Richard 1982 Homer Hesiod and the Hymns Diachronic Development in Epic Diction Cambridge Classical Studies Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 23869 4 Further reading editBuck Carl Darling 1928 The Greek Dialects Chicago University of Chicago Press Hesiod the Homeric hymns and Homerica The Loeb Classical Library Translated by Evelyn White Hugh Gerard London New York Heinemann MacMillen 1914 Ford Andrew 1992 Homer the poetry of the past Ithaca New York Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 2700 8 Kirk G S 1962 The Songs of Homer Cambridge Cambridge University Press Liddell Henry George Scott Robert 1940 A Greek English Lexicon revised ed Oxford Clarendon Press Perseus Digital Library Murray Gilbert 1960 The Rise of the Greek Epic Galaxy Books ed New York Oxford University Press Schein Seth L 1984 The Mortal Hero An Introduction to Homer s Iliad Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 05128 7 Silk Michael 1987 Homer The Iliad Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 83233 5 Smith William ed 1876 A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology Vol I II amp III London John Murray Thurman Judith 18 September 2023 Mother Tongue How Emily Wilson makes Homer modern The New Yorker Long form article on Emily Wilson s Homer translations pp 46 53 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Homer nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Homer nbsp Wikisource has original works by or about Homer Library resources about Homer Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Homer Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Works by Homer at Perseus Digital Library Works by Homer in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Homer at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Homer at Internet Archive Works by Homer at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp Homer Murray Augustus Taber 1925 The Iliad with an English Translation in Ancient Greek and English Vol I Books I XII London New York William Heinemann G P Putnam s Sons via Internet Archive The Chicago Homer Archived 4 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine Homer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database nbsp Heath Malcolm 4 May 2001 CLAS3152 Further Greek Literature II Aristotle s Poetics Notes on Homer s Iliad and Odyssey Department of Classics University of Leeds Archived from the original on 8 September 2008 Retrieved 7 November 2014 Bassino Paola 2014 Homer A Guide to Selected Sources Living Poets a new approach to ancient history Durham University Retrieved 18 November 2014 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Homer amp oldid 1221593137 Works attributed to Homer, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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