Only the sun will appear in the sky in radiant beauty,
The stars will grow dim before him, and the moon will turn pale;
So before you, Homer, generations of singers turn pale,
Only the fire of your heavenly Muse shines.

Leonid Tarentsky.

Homer's main works are the Iliad and the Odyssey.

On the threshold of the history of Greek literature stands the great name of Homer. Like the rising sun, Homer appears in all its splendor from the darkness of time on the eastern outskirts of the Hellenic world, on the coast of Asia Minor, and illuminates all Hellas and all peoples with its rays. His two great epic poems - the Iliad and the Odyssey - are not only the most ancient, but also the most magnificent works of Greek literature; they serve for all time as the most excellent example of the epic, - a model with which no other literary work in the world has ever equaled. Of course, even before Homer there were poets whose songs circulated among the people and paved the way for the creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the glory of his name and the perfection of Homer's works made him forget all the literary development that preceded him, just as the sun makes the stars go out.

From the time of their migration to the Asiatic coast, the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks, for more than a century, developed their heroic tales and exchanged them with each other; singers, using rich material, created the ancient Greek epic, until, finally, the poetic genius of Homer brought it to the highest and most beautiful degree of perfection. He replaced separate, disparate epics with an integral and great epic. His predecessors composed only small songs with a simple content, which could be combined with one another only externally; Homer combined these songs and from all the vast epic material he organically created a whole work according to a peculiarly conceived plan. From folk tales that were of national interest, from the cycle of epics about the Trojan War, known to the people in every detail, he chose a complete action, imbued with one moral idea, with one main character, and managed to convey it in such a way that it was possible to present a multitude of the most diverse persons and events, without obscuring the center of the epic - the protagonist and the main action. The main characters in both works of Homer, the bearers of his ideas - Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey - are truly national, poetically exalted types, real representatives of ancient Greek folk life: Achilles is a young, generous and ardent hero; Odysseus is a mature husband, cunning, sensible and sustained in everyday struggle. Homer's predecessors greatly facilitated his work: from them his works inherited a rich language, a certain epic style and a developed poetic meter; many songs served as material for him, from which he could borrow a lot. But one cannot still think that Homer's work consisted only in the fact that he united individual epics into something whole, without subjecting them to significant processing. In all likelihood, the creative genius of the poet improved both the language, the syllable, and the meter, and, using the old songs, recreated them in accordance with his idea.

The subject of the first of the two main works of Homer - the Iliad - is the most interesting time in the history of the Trojan War - the time immediately preceding the final decision of the struggle between the two peoples and the death of Hector, whose courage still saved his native city from the death appointed by fate. Hector falls under the blows of the protagonist of the Iliad, Achilles, who is avenging the death of his friend Patroclus. The latter died in the battle with the Trojans only because Achilles himself did not take part in this battle, angry at the insult inflicted on him by Agamemnon. This wrath of Achilles, directed first against Agamemnon and the Greeks, and then turned against Hector and ruined the Trojan fighter, is the main content of Homer's Iliad. Many events, artistically related to each other, starting from a quarrel with Agamemnon, which aroused the wrath of Achilles, and ending with the death of Hector, develop in a short period - during 51 days of the tenth year of the Trojan siege. These events are described in the great work of Homer in such a way that, on the one hand, the incomparable heroic personality of Achilles comes to the fore, and on the other hand, they also appear in vivid images of the personality of other heroes of the great national war. While the angry Achilles refuses to take part in the battles, other heroes have the opportunity to show their strength and courage in a whole series of brilliant feats. But all these feats do not lead to anything: the Trojans are winning victory after victory, so that all the Greeks every day more and more desire to see Achilles on the battlefield. Finally, when the latter's beloved friend, Patroclus, falls at the hands of Hector, Achilles forgets his anger at the Greeks, rushes into battle, crushing everything in his path, and kills Hector. All other Greek heroes in the aggregate are weaker than Achilles alone - and this is his apotheosis.

Achilles drags the body of the murdered Hector on the ground. Episode of the Iliad by Homer

But not only these external exploits and events attract our attention - much more interesting are the internal events that take place in the soul of the main characters of the brilliant work of Homer. Achilles is, of course, the most great and exalted person in the Iliad; but his greatness is somewhat overshadowed by the excessive excitement of passion. His hatred of the Greeks is as excessive as his desperate outbursts of grief over the loss of a beloved friend, as his fierce anger at Hector. This wild, unrestrained feeling, this passion, which knows no limits, turns into quiet sadness at the end of Homer's poem, in that scene when, after the death of Hector, the heartbroken king Priam, a gray-haired old man, throws himself at the feet of the young man Achilles, begging him to return the corpse of Hector, and reminds him of the helpless old man - his father, of the frailty and fragility of everything earthly. Thus, in the calmed soul of Achilles, a softer, more human feeling is resurrected, and he does justice to his brave enemy, the hated Hector, returning his body to Priam for a solemn burial. Thus, after describing the impulses of strongly excited affect, the poem ends with a calm description of Hector's funeral. This whole epic, widely conceived by Homer, which, thanks to the abundance of material that served to create it, turned from Achilles into the Iliad, that is, into a living picture of the entire Trojan War, is distinguished in all its main parts by such coherence and integrity that not one of the main episodes cannot be singled out from this poetic work without violating its unity.

The Greek people never doubted that the whole Iliad and the whole Odyssey were created by the divine singer Homer; on the contrary, the skeptical criticism of modern times tried to deprive the great poet of his glory. Many claimed that Homer created only a part of the works attributed to him, while others even said that he never existed. These hypotheses and conjectures gave rise to the so-called "Homeric question".

In 1795 the famous German philologist Fr. Aug. Wolf published the famous book Introduction to the Study of Homer, which made a complete revolution in the Homeric question. In this book, Wolf tries to prove that at the time when, according to legend, Homer lived, writing was not yet known to the Greeks, or, if it was known, it was not yet used for literary purposes. The beginnings of book writing are noticed only later, in the time of Solon. Until then, all works of Greek poetry were created by singers without the help of writing, were stored only in memory and reproduced by oral transmission. But if memory was not supported by writing, then, says Wolff, it was absolutely impossible for one Homer singer to create and transmit to others works as vast in size and distinguished by such artistic unity as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Yes, the singer could not even think of doing this at a time when there was still neither literacy, nor readers, and therefore, it was not possible to distribute extensive works. Therefore, all the Homeric poems, in the form in which we now have them, as created undoubtedly one by one artistic plan, should be considered works of later times. During the time of Homer and after him, partly by himself, partly by other singers - the Homerids - many small, independent poems were composed, which for a long time were recited from memory, as independent rhapsodies, until, finally, the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus decided to collect all these separate songs, devoid of internal unity, and with the help of many poets, put them in order, that is, subjecting them to minor processing, compose two large consolidated poems from them, which were then written down. Consequently, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the form in which they have come down to us, were created in the time of Peisistratus.

Friedrich August Wolf, one of the greatest researchers of the Homeric question

In Wolff's original view of the Homeric question, Homer was the author of most of the songs that made up the Iliad and the Odyssey, but these songs were written without any predetermined plan. Later, in the preface to the Iliad, he expressed a slightly different view of the Homeric question - namely, that Homer, in most of the individual songs he created, had already outlined the main features of the Iliad and the Odyssey, that he was, therefore, the creator of the original edition of both poems, which were subsequently developed by the Homerids. Wolf constantly wavered between these two opinions. Everyone understands how easy it was to make the transition from Wolf's opinion to the assumption that Homer never existed, that the name of Homer is only a collective nickname for the Homerids and all the singers who composed the songs that later entered the Iliad and Odyssey; this move to reject Homer after Wolf has been made by many scholars.

Wolf argues that external historical arguments in favor of the origin of the Homeric poems from many individual songs belonging to different authors and appearing at different times can be added to internal arguments based on criticism of the text of the Iliad and the Odyssey, since many factual contradictions can be pointed out in them. , irregularities in language and meter, confirming the opinion about the different origin of individual parts. But Wolf himself did not fulfill this task. Only later (1837 and 1841) another researcher of the Homeric question, Lachmann, bearing in mind the conclusions of Wolff, decided to decompose the Iliad into its (supposed) original components - into small songs; this idea found many followers, so that the Odyssey was subjected to the same analysis and fragmentation.

Wolf's "Prolegomena" at its very appearance attracted extraordinary attention not only among specialists, but in everything educated world who was interested in literature. The ingenious boldness of ideas, together with the profound and witty methods of studying the Homeric question and the brilliant exposition, made an enormous impression and delighted many; many, it is true, did not agree with Wolff, but attempts at a scientific refutation of his ideas were not successful at first. Wolf turned to contemporary poets with a request to express their opinion on his views. Klopstock, Wieland and Foss (translator of the Iliad) spoke out against his interpretation of the Homeric question; Schiller called his ideas barbaric; Goethe was at first greatly carried away by Wolff's opinions, but subsequently abandoned them. Of the specialists in philology, the majority took the side of Wolf, so that after his death (1824) his views became dominant in Germany. For a long time he did not find an equivalent opponent.

After Wolf's death, the Homeric question became the subject of new research and was generally considered from two opposing points of view: one, based on Wolf's conclusions, tried to determine the individual components of the Homeric poems; others tried to refute these conclusions and defended the old view of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These studies shed a bright light on the development of epic poetry and significantly advanced the study of Homer's poems; but the Homeric question still remains unresolved. In general, it can be said that attempts to decompose the Iliad and the Odyssey into separate small songs should be considered unsuccessful, and that scientists who have taken it upon themselves to defend the unity of the Homeric poems, without insisting, however, on their complete inviolability, find themselves more and more supporters. These are the so-called Unitarians, among whom GV Nich occupies an outstanding place.

A careful study of the Homeric poems shows that they were created according to a predetermined plan; therefore we must assume that at least each of these poems taken separately in their main parts is the work of one poet. It was possible for a great genius to create and retain in memory such extensive works without the help of writing, especially at a time when, in the absence of writing, the power of memory was much more significant than in our days; there were people in the time of Socrates who could recite the entire Iliad and the entire Odyssey by heart. What was created by a great poet could be remembered by people devoted to poetry, and thus spread around the world. Contrary to Wolf's view of the Homeric question, in modern times it was proved that at least at the beginning of the Olympic chronology (776 BC), writing was already in general use among the Greeks, and it was also used for literary purposes; many researchers, not without reason, even believe that Homer himself could write his works. Therefore, it is possible to assume that written copies of the Iliad have existed since its very birth; but we can say for sure that they existed during the first Olympiad. Of course, they were not ubiquitous, but they were found among singers and rhapsodists, who, using them, memorized Homer's poems by heart, in order to later recite them to the people.

Homeric poems in antiquity were sometimes recited in parts, sometimes completely, in their original composition; but in the course of time, when at the solemn meetings other works appeared next to the songs of the rhapsodes, and, consequently, there was less time left for the rhapsodes. The Iliad and the Odyssey were fragmented and began to be recited and distributed in parts, in separate small songs. Therefore, it could easily happen that, despite the existence of written copies, the rhapsodes added various insertions and additions to the original text, as a result of which certain parts of the Homeric poems underwent some changes in language and tone and often joined one another quite arbitrarily. Thus, irregularities in syllable and language and the actual contradictions that we now encounter in Homer's poems could appear. In order to eliminate the confusion introduced into them by the rhapsodes, Solon of Athens ordered that the Homeric songs at public meetings be recited from written copies (έξ υποβολής). These copies contained, in all likelihood, only separate parts of the poems. Peisistratus, with the assistance of the Orphic Onomacritus and several other poets, again combined these disparate passages of the Iliad and the Odyssey into an organic whole and ordered (himself or his son Hipparchus) that during the Panathenaic period both poems should be read in full, and the rhapsodes should replace each other (έξ ΰπολήψεως). This was a specially Athenian order, which does not exclude the possibility of the existence in other cities or individuals of lists of Homeric poems, either in full or in parts. But the Athenian copy, which belonged to Peisistratus, apparently enjoyed special fame and later served as the basis for the grammarians of the Alexandria Museum, who criticized and interpreted the text of the Homeric poems.

Other works by Homer

Message about Homer

Homer is a legendary ancient Greek poet, the founder of ancient literature. European literature as a whole also considers Homer to be its ancestor. Homer is considered the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems.

According to legend, Homer lived around the 8th century BC, was a blind Aed, i.e. wandering singer. Also, according to legend, Homer was illiterate, and therefore his poems were performed orally by singers for a long time, and only then were they written down.

The plot of the Iliad is heroic and mythological. It is dedicated to the events of the Trojan War, which, according to legend, began because of the abduction by the Trojan Paris of Helen the Beautiful, the wife of the Achaean king Menelaus. The Greeks and the Trojans destroyed each other at the behest of Zeus, who decided to reduce the number of people on earth. The Olympian gods themselves also took part in the battles.

The plot of the Odyssey, also a mythological epic, is dedicated to the many years of wanderings of the sailor Odysseus after the capture of Troy through marvelous, previously unknown and dangerous lands.

The influence of Homer on the ancient, and hence world culture huge. His poems became models for the ancient epic. Homer remains a source for studying the worldview of the ancient Greeks, their society, way of life, customs, morality, and material culture. The size in which Homer wrote - the hexameter, became the canonical size for all subsequent ancient epic. According to legend, the blind Homer invented his hexameter while sitting on the seashore and listening to the rhythm of the waves crashing on the shore.

The "Homeric question" is a question about the authorship of the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey". The authorship of one person regarding these poems and the existence of this person in general has not been proven. Some scholars consider it impossible that Homer, there is one person, was the author of such a large epic in the pre-literate period. They believe that the epic was created one by one by many poets, i.e. wandering bards, and much later combined into two whole major poems and recorded. Homer, in their opinion, is either a fictitious name, or the name of a group of singers, or the name of the compiler.

There is no reliable evidence about the life of Homer, the years of his life are unknown. Several biographies of Homer are highly controversial and most likely written much later than his supposed life. For what purpose is also a question. After all, seven city-states in Hellas considered Homer their countryman and fought for the right to be called the homeland of Homer.

The legendary ancient poet Homer wrote two poems - the Iliad and the Odyssey. These works are not only examples of the heroic mythological epic, they also present a picture of the wide life of the ancient Greeks. Homer's epic has long been one of the sources for studying the history, life and traditions of Ancient Greece.

The Iliad and the Odyssey mention the daily activities of the Greeks: the work of shepherds, reapers in the fields, winegrowers, harvesting a generous harvest on the fertile southern land. Artisans are also mentioned: tanners, blacksmiths and others. Homer describes the shield of the hero Achilles in great detail, depicts the process of its manufacture, as well as decoration with decorations.

From the poems of Homer one can draw knowledge of the military and naval affairs of the ancient Greeks, their tactics of siege and defense. There are also few poems, but they specifically tell about life in cities and villages, public relations of the Greeks, in particular, citizens of policies.

The poet also spoke about the folk customs of the Greeks, rituals, entertainment: dances, weddings. Much attention in the Iliad, for example, is given to the burial rite and the beliefs that are associated with it. When Achilles kills Hector, Hector's father, the Trojan king Priam, asks for a body for burial. Not to bury a person for the ancient Greeks was blasphemy, because they believed that such a dead person would not find a place for himself. Leaving a person unburied was considered the worst punishment, even more than death. The rites of the burial itself, the funeral pyre, and so on are described in great detail.

The moral principles and worldview of the ancient Greeks are also reflected in the poems of Homer. These people believed in the intervention of the gods in their lives, adhered to fidelity to their policy and most of all valued valor and courage.

The famous ancient Greek philosopher and poet-storyteller Homer is legendary figure ancient history. It is he who is considered the creator of the epic poems called the Iliad and the Odyssey, but nothing is known for certain about this person.

In ancient times, nine biographies of Homer were written, but all of them were based only on ancient legends. According to one of these legends, as many as seven cities competed for the right to be called the birthplace of the poet: Argos, Athens, Colophon, Rhodes, Salamis, Smyrna and Chios.

Modern scholars tend to believe that the poet lived in the 8th century BC. e. But the ancient Greek historian Herodotus believed that Homer worked already in the 9th century BC. e. Since the 18th century, there has been a “Homeric question” in science. It is based on the controversy surrounding the authorship, time and history of the creation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.

It is assumed that these works were written much later than the events reflected in them, but before the 6th century BC. e. They formed, most likely, on the Asia Minor coast of Greece or in its environs.

The tradition of portraying Homer as a blind man is also unlikely to have a real basis. The image of a blind, prudent old man was characteristic of the ancient perception of reality, since the ancient Greeks saw an inextricable link between the gift of poetry and the gift of prophecy.

There is also an ancient work called "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod." It tells of a creative duel of poets, in which Hesiod won the official victory, but at the same time the audience was clearly on the side of Homer.

In addition to the famous epic poems, other works are sometimes attributed to Homer, for example, "Homeric hymns" or the poem "Margit". But it is reliably established that they were created much later than the Iliad and the Odyssey. The poet died, according to Pausanias and Herodotus, on the island of Ios (the Cyclades archipelago).

Homer is the first Greek poet whose works have survived to this day.

Homer is still considered one of the best European poets today. He was the author of two heroic poems of antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are among the first monuments of world literature. Homer is considered a legendary poet, because we do not know anything about him for certain.

From Homer's biography:

There is no reliable information about Homer himself. The name "Homer" first occurs in the 7th century. BC e. It was then that Callinus of Ephesus called the creator of Thebaid so. The meaning of this name was tried to be explained in antiquity. The following options were proposed: "blind man" (Efor Kimsky), "following" (Aristotle), "hostage" (Hesychius). However, modern researchers believe that all of them are as unconvincing as the proposals of some scientists to attribute to it the meaning "accompanist" or "component". Surely in its Ionic form this word is a real personal name.

The biography of this poet can only be recreated tentatively. This even applies to the birthplace of Homer, which is still unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be considered his homeland: Chios, Smyrna, Salamis, Colophon, Argos, Rhodes, Athens. It is likely that the Odyssey and the Iliad were created on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, which was inhabited at that time by Ionian tribes. Or perhaps these poems were composed on some of the adjacent islands.

The Homeric dialect, however, does not give any exact information about which tribe Homer belonged to, this remains a mystery. It is a combination of the Aeolian and Ionian dialects of ancient Greek. Some researchers suggest that it is one of the forms of poetic koine, which was formed long before Homer.

Was Homer blind? Homer is an ancient Greek poet whose biography has been reconstructed by many, from ancient times to the present day. It is known that he is traditionally depicted as blind. However, it is most likely that this idea of ​​him is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography, and does not come from real facts about Homer. Since many legendary singers and soothsayers were blind (in particular, Tiresias), according to the logic of antiquity, which linked poetic and prophetic gifts, the assumption that Homer was blind looked plausible.

Ancient chronographs also differ in determining the time when Homer lived. He could create his works in different years. Some believe that he was a contemporary of the Trojan War, that is, he lived at the beginning of the 12th century. BC e. However, Herodotus claimed that Homer lived around the middle of the ninth century. BC e. Modern scholars tend to date his activity to the 8th or even 7th century BC. e. At the same time, Chios or another region of Ionia, located on the coast of Asia Minor, is indicated as the main place of life.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer. There are nine biographies of Homer in ancient literature, but they all contain fabulous and fantastic elements.

There is evidence that in the first half of the VI century. BC. the Athenian legislator Solon ordered the performance of Homer's poems at the Panathenaic festival, and that in the second half of the same century the tyrant Peisistratus convened a commission of four people to record Homer's poems. From this we can conclude that already in the VI century. BC. Homer's text was quite well known, although it has not been precisely established what kind of works these were.

Serious study of Homer's poems began in the Hellenistic era in the 4th - 2nd centuries. BC. A number of scholars from the Library of Alexandria studied his poems, among whom are especially famous: Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Didyma. But they do not give any exact biographical information about Homer. The general and popular opinion of all antiquity about Homer was that he was an old and blind singer who, inspired by the muse, led a wandering life and himself composed both the two poems known to us, and many other poems.

If we talk about the exact date of Homer's birth, then it is not known for certain until today. But there are several versions of his birth. So, version one. According to her, Homer was born very little time after the end of the war with Troy. According to the second version, Homer was born during the Trojan War and saw all the sad events. If you follow the third version, then the lifetime of Homer varies from 100 to 250 years after the end of the Trojan War. But all versions are similar in that the period of Homer's work, or rather, his heyday, falls at the end of the 10th - beginning of the 9th century BC.

The legendary storyteller died on the island of Chios.

Due to the insufficiency of many biographical data in connection with the personality of Homer began to appear a large number of legends.

One of them says that shortly before his death, Homer turned to the seer to reveal the secret of his origin into the world. Then the seer named Chios as the place where Homer would die. Homer went there. He remembered the sage's admonition to beware of riddles from youth. But remembering is one thing, but in reality it always turns out differently. The boys who were fishing saw a stranger, talked to him and asked him a riddle. He could not find an answer to her, went in his thoughts, stumbled and fell. Homer died three days later. There he was buried.

About Homer's work:

Homer is known to the world as an ancient Greek poet. Modern science recognizes Homer as the author of such poems as the Iliad and the Odyssey, but in antiquity he was recognized as the author of other works. Fragments of several of them have survived to this day. However, today it is believed that they were written by an author who lived later than Homer. This is a comic poem "Margit", "Homeric hymns" and others.

Peru Homer owns two brilliant poems: "Odyssey" and "Iliad". The Greeks at all times thought so and still believe. Some critics began to question this fact and began to express the point of view that these works appeared only in the 18th century and that they do not belong to Homer at all.

As the existence of the identity of Homer is in principle questioned, there is also an opinion that the authorship of both the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to different people who lived at different times.

It is clear that the Odyssey and the Iliad were written much later than the events described in these works. However, their creation can be dated no earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. Thus, the life of Homer can be attributed to the period from the 12th to the 7th century BC. e. However, the latest date is the most likely.

There is a legend about a poetic duel that took place between Hesiod and Homer. It was described in a work written no later than the 3rd century BC. BC e. (and some researchers believe that much earlier). It is called "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod." It tells that the poets allegedly met at the games in honor of Amphidemus, held on about. Euboea. Here they read their best poems. The judge of the competition was King Paned. The victory was awarded to Hesiod, because he called for peace and agriculture, and not for slaughter and war. However, it was on the side of Homer that the sympathy of the audience was.

In the 18th century, German linguists published a work that states that there was no written language during the life of Homer, texts were stored in memory and passed from mouth to mouth. Therefore, such significant texts could not be preserved in this way. But such famous masters of the pen as Goethe and Schiller still gave the authorship of the poems to Homer.

Since the 17th century, scientists have faced the so-called Homeric question - a dispute about the authorship of legendary poems. But, no matter what scientists argue about, Homer entered the history of world literature, and in his homeland he had special respect for a long time after his death. His epics were considered sacred, and Plato himself said that spiritual development Greece is the merit of Homer.

Be that as it may, Homer is the first ancient poet whose works have survived to this day.

25 interesting facts about the life and work of Homer:

1. The name Homer in ancient Greek means "blind". Perhaps it was for this reason that the assumption arose that the ancient Greek poet was blind.

2. 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.

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

4. Selective translation of Homer's texts was performed by Mikhail Lomonosov.

5. In 1829, Gnedich Nikolai for the first time translated the Iliad completely into Russian.

6. To date, there are nine versions of Homer's biography, but none can be considered completely documentary. In every description, fiction occupies a large place.

7. Traditionally, it is customary to portray Homer as blind, but scientists explain this not so much by the real state of his vision, but by the influence of the culture of the ancient Greeks, where poets were identified with prophets.

8. 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.

9. A crater on Mercury is named after Homer.

10. In the 1960s, American researchers passed all the songs of the Iliad through a computer, which showed that there was only one author of this poem.

11. The system of ancient Greek education, formed by the end of the classical era, was based on the study of Homer's work.

12. His poems were memorized in whole or in part, recitations were arranged on their topics, etc. Later, Rome borrowed this system. Here since the 1st century AD. e. Homer was replaced by Virgil.

13. Large hexametric poems were created in the postclassic era in the dialect of the ancient Greek author, as well as as a competition or in imitation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.

14. In ancient Roman literature, the first surviving work (albeit fragmentary) was a translation of the Odyssey. It was made by the Greek Livy Andronicus. Note that the main work of literature of Ancient Rome - Virgil's Aeneid - in the first six books is an imitation of the Odyssey, and in the last six - the Iliad.

15. Greek manuscripts in last years existence Byzantine Empire, and then and after its crash came to the West. This is how Homer was rediscovered by the Renaissance.

16. The epic poems of this ancient Greek author are brilliant, priceless works of art. Over the centuries, they do not lose their deep meaning and relevance. The plots of both poems are taken from a multifaceted and extensive cycle of legends dedicated to the Trojan War. "Odyssey" and "Iliad" display only small episodes from this cycle.

17. The habits, traditions, moral aspects of life, morality and life of the ancient Greeks are very clearly depicted in the Iliad.

18. The Odyssey is a more complex work than the Iliad. In it we find many features that are still being studied from the point of view of literature. This epic poem mainly deals with the return of Odysseus to Ithaca after the conclusion of the Trojan War.

19. The Odyssey and the Iliad have characteristic features, one of which is the epic style. The sustained tone of the narration, the unhurried thoroughness, the complete objectivity of the image, the unhurried development of the plot - these are character traits works created by Homer.

20. Homer was an oral storyteller, that is, he did not speak a letter. However, despite this, his poems are distinguished by high skill and poetic technique, they reveal unity.

21. Almost all the works of antiquity can be seen as the influence of the poems that Homer created. The Byzantines were also interested in his biography and work. In this country, Homer was carefully studied. To date, dozens of Byzantine manuscripts of his poems have been discovered. For the works of antiquity, this is unprecedented. Moreover, Byzantine scholars created commentaries and scholia on Homer, compiled and rewrote his poems. Seven volumes are occupied by the commentary of Archbishop Eustathius to them.

22. In science in the middle of the 19th century, the opinion prevailed that the Odyssey and the Iliad were unhistorical works. However, he was refuted by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann, which he carried out in Mycenae and on the Hissarlik hill in the 1870-80s. The sensational discoveries of this archaeologist proved that Mycenae, Troy and the Achaean citadels existed in reality. The contemporaries of the German scientist were struck by the correspondence of his findings in the 4th tented tomb, located in Mycenae, to the descriptions made by Homer.

23. One of the main arguments in favor of the fact that the historical Homer did not exist was that not a single person is able to remember and perform poetic works of such volume. However, in the middle of the 20th century, folklorists in the Balkans discovered a storyteller who performed an epic work the size of the Odyssey: this is the story of the American Albert Lord's book The Storyteller.

24. A summary of the works of Homer formed the basis of many works of authors who lived in Ancient Rome. Among them, one can note the “Argonautics” written by Apollonius of Rhodes, the work of Nonn Panopolitansky “The Adventures of Dionysus” and Quintus Smyrna “Post-Homerian events”.

25. Recognizing the merits of Homer, other poets of ancient Greece refrained from creating a major epic form. They believed that the works of Homer are a treasury of the wisdom of the people of ancient Greece.

other Greek Ὅμηρος

legendary ancient Greek poet

8th century BC e.

short biography

The famous ancient Greek poet, whose work was not just a model for all ancient creators - he is considered the progenitor of European literature. Many representatives modern generations it is with his name that ancient culture is associated, and acquaintance with world literature usually begins with the poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", belonging (or attributed) to this legendary author. Homer is the first ancient Greek poet whose creative legacy has survived to this day, and about half of the ancient Greek papyri of literary content found to date are fragments of his works.

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

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

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

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

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

There are so-called Homeric hymns, which in ancient times were attributed to the great blind man, but neither they nor other works, the author of which was called Homer, do not belong to his creative heritage.

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

Biography from Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

Homer's birthplace is unknown. According to the epigram of Gallius, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland in the ancient tradition: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, and variations of this epigram are also called Kimu, Chios, Pylos and Ithaca. According to Herodotus and Pausanias, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, as it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is speculation that his dialect is a form of poetic Koine that developed long before Homer's supposed lifetime.

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

There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the 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, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (7th-5th 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 first occurs in the 7th century BC, when Kallin of Ephesus called him the author of "Thebaid") was tried to be explained back in antiquity, the options "hostage" (Hesychius), "following" (Aristotle) ​​were proposed or “the blind man” (Efor Kimsky), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to ascribe to it the meaning of “compounder” or “accompanist”.<…>This word, in its Ionian form Ομηρος, is almost certainly a real personal name."

Homeric question

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

"Analysts" and "Unitarians"

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

The formation of the text of the Iliad (in its more or less modern form) Wolf refers to the VI century BC. e. Indeed, according to a number of ancient authors (including Cicero), Homer's poems were first collected together and written down at the direction of the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus or his son Hipparchus. This so-called "peisistratian redaction" was needed to streamline the execution of the Iliad and the Odyssey in Panathenaia. Contradictions in the texts of the poems, the presence of layers of different times in them, and extensive deviations from the main plot testified in favor of the analytical approach.

About how exactly Homer's poems were formed, analysts expressed various assumptions. Karl Lachmann believed that the Iliad was composed of several small songs (the so-called "small song theory"). Gottfried Hermann, on the contrary, believed that each poem arose by the gradual expansion of a small song, to which everything was added. new material(the so-called "original core theory").

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

"Oral Theory" and "Neo-Analysts"

The assumption that Homer's poems were transmitted orally, since the author lived in an unwritten time, was expressed in antiquity; since there was evidence that in the VI century BC. e. The Athenian tyrant Peisistratus gave the task of working out the official text of the Homeric poems.

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

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

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

Neo-analysts are not modern representatives of analyticism. Neoanalysis is a direction in Homeric studies that deals with the identification of earlier poetic layers that the author of (each of) the poems used. "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are compared with the cycle poems that have come down to our time in retellings and fragments. Thus, the neoanalytic approach does not contradict the prevailing oral theory. The most prominent modern neo-analyst is the German researcher Wolfgang Kuhlmann, author of the monograph The Sources of the Iliad.

Homer (about 460 BC)

Artistic Features

One of the most important compositional features 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, the linear, 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 connection of works, consistent development actions and 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, on the unity of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey, opposing opinions are also expressed in the spirit of analyticism.

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 "buff-legged" 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 syllabary script (Linear B) has provided much information about life in the era when the Iliad and Odyssey took place, although no literary fragments of this script have been 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 very large distortions that must arise with historical data in traditions of this kind.

Now the point of view has been established that 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.

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

Lawrence Alma-Tadema "Reading Homer", 1885

In the 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 are Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, Post-Homer events by Quintus Smyrna and Adventures of Dionysus by Nonnos of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, abstained from the large epic form, believing that "there is muddy water in large rivers" (Callimachus) - that only in a small work can one achieve impeccable perfection.