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Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin. Updated August 11, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Gill, N. The Life and Work of Homer. List of Characters in 'The Iliad'. Table of Roman Equivalents of Greek Gods. Most Important Figures in Ancient History. The 10 Greatest Heroes of Greek Mythology. Non-Canonical Retelling of the Tale of Troy. Due to the lack of information about Homer the person, many scholars hold the poems themselves as the best windows into his life.
For instance, it is from the description of the blind bard in The Odyssey that many historians have guessed that Homer was blind. The Odyssey 's depiction of the bard as a minstrel in the service of local kings also gives some insight into the life of the poet practicing his craft.
What is undeniable is that the works of Homer proved to be the most influential not merely for the poets of ancient times but also for the later epic poets of Western literature. There is much evidence to support the theory that The Iliad and The Odyssey were written by different authors, perhaps as much as a century apart. The diction of the two works is markedly different, with The Iliad being reminiscent of a much more formal, theatric style while The Odyssey takes a more novelistic approach and uses language more illustrative of day-to-day speech.
Differing historical details concerning trade also lend credence to the idea of separate authors. It is certain that neither text was written down upon creation. By the eighth century BC written text had been almost entirely forgotten in Greece.
Both The Iliad and The Odyssey conform to the diction of a purely oral and unwritten poetic speech that was used before the end of that century. Indeed, some scholars believe the name "Homer" was actually a commonly used term for blind men who wandered the countryside reciting epic poetry. Although Homer has been credited with writing a number of other works, most notably the Homeric Hymns , the same uncertainty about authorship exists.
It is assumed that much of the poet's work has been lost to time. Tradition has it that Homer was blind, but the evidence for this idea is unreliable. This evidence is based on the portrayal in the Odyssey of a blind minstrel who sings a poem about the fall of Troy. But there is no reason to believe that the poet was describing himself in this scene. Throughout the two epics, no consistent autobiographical information exists, and no other literature of the period survives that describes the poet.
The early Greeks insisted that there was a single individual named Homer, to whom they ascribed the Iliad , the Odyssey , and several minor works called the Homeric Hymns. However, around the third century B. Several of the grammarians of the time asserted that the Iliad and the Odyssey were actually composed by two different writers.
At various times, later European critics supported this view. Another school of thought, especially popular in the nineteenth century, claims that Homer never lived, and that the two epics are the collective works of groups of anonymous bards to whom the name Homer was later applied. These scholars suggest that the two poems were constantly revised and added to whenever they were recited and did not reach their present form until the 6th century B. Whatever one thinks of the existence of Homer, certain facts concerning the composition of the Iliad are firmly established.
Originally, it was an oral composition meant to be sung or chanted for an audience. Research, particularly on living bards in the former Yugoslavia, has shown that epic length poems are composed and presented through a combination of stock phrases and scenes coupled with extemporaneous composition. The Iliad shows evidence of similar elements.
Stock phrases and scenes exist in the epithets for character "old Gerenian Nestor" , descriptions of natural settings such as dawn, battle preparation scenes, and the battle scenes themselves.
Set speeches may also be used. Agamemnon's speech is echoed in a speech by Odysseus in the Odyssey. The catalogue of ships in Book II is also such a set piece, although it was probably added when the poem was written.
Generally, contemporary scholarship believes that the Iliad and the Odyssey have a consistency of style and outlook indicating that they are the work of one writer. That a man named Homer actually composed the Iliad and the Odyssey as an original and entirely individual composition as Virgil composed the Aeneid seems highly doubtful. Various time references and other irregularities in the poems suggest that parts of the poems were written in entirely different periods of Greek history.
However, the obvious structural complexity and thematic unity of the poems as well as their set metrical pattern of dactylic hexameter indicate a single author of great sophistication. As with the great English epic, Beowulf , the Iliad and the Odyssey may have existed as oral tradition for some time and eventually were put into final, written form by a single poetic genius.
The poet may have composed the epics himself, or he may have borrowed from the works of earlier bards. Because the people living nearest to the era of the composition of the poems believed them to be the product of one hand, the modern critic accepts this view and attributes the stylistic differences between the two epic poems to their having been composed at different stages in the poet's life and to the different themes of the works.
Rather than take a defensive or apologetic position, the contemporary scholar insists that the burden of proof be on those who deny the existence of Homer.
To date, this position has not been successfully challenged. While little if anything is known of Homer's life, his works are an everlasting tribute to him.
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