Homer

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Homer

c. 8th century b.c.e.–c. early 7th century b.c.e.

Poet

Iliad and Odyssey.

The long epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey stand at the beginning of Greek literature, and the Greeks generally attributed them to a poet named Homer. Nothing can be said for certain about his identity. The years of his life are much disputed; guesses range from the time of the Trojan War, which was generally placed around 1200 b.c.e., up to 500 years after the Trojan War or about 700 b.c.e., which is a date most modern scholars can accept as the approximate period when he lived. It is generally agreed that he lived near the end of a bardic tradition, when oral poets who were generally illiterate performed at festivals or banquets. Yet at some point, the Iliad and the Odyssey took their present form and were written down, and it is at least possible that Homer was the poet responsible for producing the written text.

Development of Religion.

Whoever Homer was, his importance to the development of Greek religion was enormous. The Iliad and Odyssey defined the gods and goddesses and gave them their attributes. The Iliad placed them on Mt. Olympus; the Odyssey was a little more vague about the exact location of their dwelling, but in both epics, the gods and goddesses lived high above the earth and looked down on mortals with detached interest. They represented no ethical ideal, but they were powerful and easily offended.

Performance of Epics.

The text of Homer was preserved by a company of bards called the Homeridai or "Sons of Homer," which did not necessarily imply that they were Homer's descendants, but rather professionals who continued to work in the Homeric tradition. Their responsibility was to recite the portions of the Iliad and Odyssey at festivals or public gatherings, accompanied by the lyre. Sometimes, before starting his performance, the bard would recite a prelude of his own composition, and some of these have survived as the so-called Homeric Hymns. These hymns are literary creations and not to be confused with the hymns that might be sung to a god as part of the sacrificial ritual, which invoked the god under his various names, recited his deeds, and ended with a prayer. The headquarters of the Homeridai was on the island of Chios, off the west coast of Asia Minor, and the author of one Homeric Hymn refers to himself as a blind poet from Chios. It was probably this little autobiographical detail that gave rise to the tradition that Homer himself was a blind poet from Chios.

Homer as Educator.

The Greeks recognized Homer as the educator of all Greece. His poems were accepted everywhere as classics, and the education of a young Greek would include the memorization of long sections of the epics. We hear of Greeks who could recite all the Iliad and Odyssey by heart, for they had committed them to memory at school and could still recall them when they became adults. The Olympian gods as Homer represented them became accepted all over Greece, and gave Greek religion whatever unity it had. Moreover, Homer gave Greece a heroic ideal. The Achilles of Homer's Iliad became the splendid model of the heroic warrior who chose honor and valor over a long but uneventful life. If Homer provided the Greeks with an ethical paradigm, it was not the gods but the brave Achilles who died young but left behind him renown and glory.