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✪ Cultural History: Ancient Greece, Odyssey, Homer – Pustovit

✪ Homer and the Homeric question (says philologist Nikolai Grintser)

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✪ Homer's poem "Iliad". Video tutorial 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 the poetic duel of Homer with Hesiod, described in the essay "The Competition of Homer and Hesiod", created no later than the 3rd century BC. BC e. , and according to many researchers, and 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 in the competition, awarded the victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and battles. At the same time, the sympathy of the audience was on the side of Homer.

In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer is credited with a number of works undoubtedly created later: “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, are 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 Kallin of Ephesus called him the author of The Thebaid) was tried to be explained back in antiquity, the options "hostage" (Hesychius), "following" (Aristotle) ​​were proposed or “blind man” (Efor Kimsky), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to it the meaning of “compounder” or “accompanist”.<…> given word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name.

Homeric question

The totality of problems associated with the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, their emergence and fate until the moment of recording, was called the "Homeric question". It arose back in antiquity, so, for example, then there were statements that Homer created his epic based on the poems of the poetess Fantasy of the Times 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 from this that Homer's parallel actions 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 hushed up. This explains some imaginary contradictions in the text of the poem.

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

The style of both poems can be characterized as formulaic. In this case, the formula is understood not as a set of stamps, but as a system of flexible (changeable) expressions that are associated with a certain metric place of the line. Thus, one can speak of a formula even when a certain phrase occurs only once in the text, 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 hero retells the speeches of another, the text can be reproduced again in full or almost verbatim.

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

The historical basis of Homer's poems

In the middle of the 19th century, the opinion prevailed in science that the Iliad and the Odyssey were unhistorical. However, the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann on the Hissarlik hill and in Mycenae showed that this is not true. Later, Hittite and Egyptian documents were discovered, in which certain parallels are found with the events of the legendary Trojan War. The decipherment of the Mycenaean syllabic script (Linear B) gave a lot of information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments of this script were found. Nevertheless, the data of Homer's poems correlate in a complex way with the available archaeological and documentary sources and cannot be used uncritically: the data of the "oral theory" testify to 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 the life of the last time of the period of the ancient Greek "Dark Ages".

Homer in world culture

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

In the postclassical era, large hexametric poems were written in the Homeric dialect in imitation or as a competition with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Among them we can name "Argonautics" by Apollonius Rhodes, "Post-Homer events" by Quintus Smyrna and "Adventures of Dionysus" by Nonnos Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that "there is muddy water in the big rivers" (Callimachus) - that only in a small work can one achieve impeccable perfection.

In literature ancient rome the first surviving (fragmentary) work is a 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 Homeric 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, however, the hexametric heroic epic retains in culture great importance thanks to Virgil.

In Byzantium, Homer was well known and carefully studied. Dozens of complete Byzantine manuscripts of Homeric poems have survived to this day, which is unprecedented for works of ancient literature. In addition, Byzantine scholars transcribed, compiled, and created scholia and commentaries on Homer. Archbishop Eustace's commentary on the Iliad and the Odyssey in a modern critical edition occupies seven volumes. During the last period of existence Byzantine Empire and after its collapse, Greek manuscripts and scholars find their way to the West, and the Renaissance rediscovers 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 the Iliad by Nikolai Gnedich (finished in), which was made from the original with special care and very talented (according to Belinsky). Pushkin, in turn, spoke about the translation of Homer twice in the press: with the note “The Iliad of Homer, translated by Gnedich ...” (“Literaturnaya gazeta”, 1830, No. 2; see vol. 6) and the couplet “On the translation of the Iliad”:

Kryv was a Gnedich poet, the deceiver of the blind Homer, side by side is similar to the model and his translation.

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 Press, circulation 900 copies).

Already in our century, Homer was translated by: M. Amelin (The 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, in 1488 in Florence Demetrius Chalcocondylus published the Iliad and the Odyssey for the first time.
• Russian prose translation: The Complete Works of Homer. / Per. G. Yanchevetsky. Revel, 1895. 482 pages (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: The Iliad (introduction and 4 volumes), Odyssey (3 volumes) and hymns.
• Krause V. M. Homeric dictionary (to the Iliad and the Odyssey). From 130 fig. in text and a map of Troy. SPb., A. S. Suvorin. 1880. 532 stb. ( an example of a pre-revolutionary school publication)
• Part I. Greece // Antique 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 the 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 at Homer. (Izvestiya GAIMK. Issue 124). M.-L.: OGIZ, 1936. 164 pages. 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 pages.
• Losev A. F. Homer. M.: GUPI, 1960. 352 p. 9 t.e.
  • 2nd ed. (Series "Life of Remarkable People"). M.: Mol. Guards, 1996=2006. 400 pages
• Yarkho V. N. Guilt and responsibility in the Homeric epic. Herald ancient history , 1962, No. 2, p. 4-26.
• Sakharny N. L. Homeric epic. M.: KhL, 1976. 397 pages. 10,000 copies.
• Gordeziani R.V. Problems of the Homeric epic. Tb.: Tbil Publishing House. un-ta, 1978. 394 pages. 2000 copies.
• Shtal I.V. Artistic world of the Homeric epic. Moscow: Nauka, 1983. 296 pages, 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. Antique 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 Hellène, 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.

Homer biography. Place of Birth.

Traditionally, Homer is believed to have been blind, and a number of Ionian cities claim to be the poet's birthplace. In general, however, the biography of Homer is a blank spot. There is no certainty in Homer's life. The eight biographies that have been preserved are of a later date and are filled with mythical sayings and implausible claims.

Even his hometown is not exactly known. Already in ancient times, many towns and villages disputed the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. Seven villages fight for the birthplace of Homer: Yoss, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Smyrna, Athens and Sparta.

Options offer four more cities and late announcements even talk about twenty applicants. Most likely, the poet was born in Chios (the island of the same name) or in the city of Smyrna, Malaysia. However, ancient sources unanimously point to the island of Yos as the place where he died and was buried.

The time when Homer lived is also contradictory. Herodotus (484-406 BC) states that it is the 4th century BC, while Thucydides (471-395 BC) mentions the 8th century BC. The description of some writers about the late Homer that he lived during the Trojan War, that is, in XII or XIII centuries BC is not true. It is now believed that it is likely that the poet lived in the second half of the 8th and early 7th centuries BC.

In ancient times, no one doubted the existence of Homer. Plato (429-317 BC) says that this poet "educated all Hellas" and Aristotle (384-322 BC). In many places in his books he refers to Homer. By the 3rd century BC. some Alexandrian scholars have questioned Homer's authorship of the Odyssey, but the existence of the poet has not been questioned.

Related article: Blaise Pascal

Homer Iliad Odyssey

It has been repeatedly discussed how the same poet could have written the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as such works as the Batrachomyomachia (war between frogs and mice), hymns and poems of the epic cycle, as a rule, which are considered later than epic verses.

It is generally accepted among scientists that old material Iliad and Odessa, dating back to the 8th century BC, went through a process of standardization and editing. An important role in this standardization was played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the reading of Homeric poetry at the Panatene Festival.

Many scientists in the field classical literature believe that this reform should have led to the creation of canonical writing.

oral culture

An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the verses contain regular repetitive phrases; even the verses are repeated. Is it possible that the Iliad and the Odyssey were oral poems written at the time by a poet who used a collection of memorized traditional poems and phrases?

Milman Perry and Lord Albert point out that such an oral tradition, foreign to today's written culture, typical of epic poetry, is an extremely oral culture.

The traditional answer is the "enrollment hypothesis", according to which the illiterate Homer dictated his poem as a literate scribe in the 6th century BC. or earlier. More radical Homerists such as Gregory Nudge argue that canonical text Homeric poems in handwritten form did not exist before Hellenistic period.

Homer or a group of poets?

So little is known that there is such an anecdote that says that "the poems were not written by Homer, but by another person of the same name." In Greek, the poet's name means hostage. There is a theory that this name comes from the name of a group of poets called Homeray, which literally means "sons of the hostages", that is, the heirs of prisoners of war.

It is not known for certain where and when the great ancient Greek writer was born. There are several versions of Homer's biography. Some believe that he was born and lived a short time after the Trojan War, or even during it, and could well have been an eyewitness to those tragic events. Others are sure that he was "healthy" 100, 140 or 240 years after the fall of Troy. The ancient Romans - Pliny, Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, express one common belief: Homer worked at the end of the tenth or at the dawn of the ninth centuries BC.

Both regarding the date of birth, and regarding the place where he was born, there are endless disputes. Seven cities claim to be the birthplace of the great ancient Greek storyteller: Athens, Ios, Colophon, Smyrna, Chios, Argos, Salamis. But this is not the whole list. There are other "policies" and even countries that claim the right to bear such a proud name "homer's homeland".

legends

Nature does not tolerate emptiness. So the gaps in the brief biography of Homer were filled with various legends, parables and myths. Which of them is true and which is fiction is unknown. For example, the ancients believed that last years life Homer was interested in the question of his origin and with this unsolved mystery went to the oracle. The latter answered simply: Your mother's homeland is Ios. On this earth your earthly path will end. The only thing: beware of any riddles from young people. Shortly after the prediction, Homer went to this island. When I sat in thought on the shore, I saw the fishermen boys. There was talk of a catch. The boys answered the questions of the old man with a riddle, they say, they threw into the sea what they caught, but what they could not catch, we carry with us. Homer could not understand what the fishermen meant. Saddened and in deep thought, he went home, and did not notice how he stumbled and fell. Three days passed and he died. The author of the Iliad was buried on the Greek island of Chios.

Homeric question

The people of Greece never questioned the fact that the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were created by the poetic gift of Homer. Skeptics appeared relatively recently - in the 18th century. Some critics tried to completely deprive Homer of the "copyright" to the great poems, and thereby take away his fame and honorable first place in the history of literature. Others believed that only part of his works were created by himself, and his merit was that he collected and combined the disparate "pieces" into a single whole. For example, in 1795 Friedrich August Wolf, a German linguist, published a book devoted to the study of the works of the ancient Greek poet. He argued that at the time of Homer, the ancient Greeks did not yet have a written language. Therefore, all songs and poems were memorized and transmitted orally. The conclusion, according to the author, is only one: it is impossible to create and store in memory such voluminous in size and differing in artistic unity works as the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Thus, the “Homeric question”, which still disturbs the world, arose. It is interesting to note that Goethe, Schiller, Foss and many other famous writers and philologists were against this version.

Other biography options

• The first translations of fragments from Homer belong to M. Lomonosov. The Iliad was translated with particular care and talent by Nikolai Gnedich in 1829.
• Antique literature offers nine biographies of the great ancient Greek poet. None of them correspond to reality, and for the most part contain myths and traditions.

Biography score

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Homer one of the most famous poets ancient greece. He owns such famous works like the Iliad and the Odyssey. The exact date of birth is not known to anyone, but it is believed that he was born in the 9th century BC in Smyrna, which is located in the Aegean region of Turkey.
An interesting fact is that almost half of all papyri found at the present time from the time of ancient Greece are excerpts from Homer.
Nothing is reliably known about the biography, there are only assumptions. Different sources indicate a different date of birth with their own confirmations. According to Herodotus, Homer lived four hundred years before him, which falls on 850 BC.
There is also a theory that Homer lived 622 before the birth of the Persian king Xerxes, which falls on 1102 BC. The third theory speaks of Homer's life during the Trojan War.
There is a legend that once on the island of Euboea there was a poetic confrontation between Homer and Hesiod, where King Paned awarded the victory to Hesiod. The public did not agree with this and fully supported the side of the loser, but the judge was inexorable.
Homer wrote many works, some of which have survived to this day. Such are considered "Homeric hymns", "Margrit" and others.
Not the original form of the world-famous epic poems has survived to our times. They were corrected and brought together by order of the tyrant Peisistratus or his son Hipparchus in the 6th century BC. Proof of this are some contradictions in the texts, unnatural deviations from the main plot.
There is an opinion that both written poems were passed down orally from generation to generation, because of the life of the poet in non-written time. Such assumptions were made in antiquity.
One of the most important features of the Iliad is the "law of chronological incompatibility". Sometimes it happened that parallel events were shown as serial.
The Iliad and the Odyssey are written in a formulaic style. Homer often used such compound epithets as "swift-footed", "thunderer", "magnificent".
Up until the 19th century, the prevailing view was that both poems were unhistorical and mere fantasy. Thanks to the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann, the opinion on this has changed dramatically. After that, they began to believe that everything described happened in reality during the period of the ancient Greek "dark ages", which cover the 11th - 9th centuries BC.
At the end of the 5th - 4th centuries BC. the entire education system of Greece was based on the study of the Homeric poems. Then Rome borrowed it.
Late 4th century BC many poets appeared who tried to imitate Homer, write in his style and try to write their works better than the Ilis and the Odyssey. Thus came the poems "Argonautica" from A. Rodossky, "Post-Slegomer events" from K. Smyrnsky and "The Adventure of Dionysus" from N. Panopolitansky. Other poets were of the opinion that only small works can be perfect.
Thanks to Virgil, the heroic epic "Aeneid" is published. In the first six books one can see the full influence from the Odyssey, in the last six from the Iliad.
There is no doubt that Herodotus and Pausanias told the truth, and Homer actually died on the island of Ios, located in the southern Aegean.
Homer made a huge contribution to the development and education of ancient Greece and Rome. The influence of his famous poems can be seen in almost every work of ancient literature.

Interesting facts about the life of Homer You will find out in this article.

Homer: interesting facts

Homer is the most famous poet antiquity. Nothing is known for certain about Homer's life and personality.

Possible meanings of the name "Homer": "hostage" (Hesychius), "following" (Aristotle), "blind man" (Efor Kimsky), "shepherd" (from Skt. th- cow).

According to ancient tradition, “seven cities” (Chios, Smyrna, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens) argued for the honor of being called the birthplace of Homer.

There are nine biographies of Homer in ancient literature, but they all contain fabulous and fantastic elements.

Traditionally Homer portrayed as blind.

In antiquity, Homer was considered a sage: "Wiser than all the Hellenes taken together." He was considered the founder of philosophy, geography, physics, mathematics, medicine and aesthetics.

About half of the found ancient Greek literary papyri were written by Homer.

Homer distributed his works with the help of aeds (singers). He learned his works by heart and sang them to his Aeds. Those, in turn, also memorized the works and hummed them to other people. In another way, such people were called homerids.