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 the XII or XIII centuries BC, does not correspond to reality. 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 poet's existence 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.

Among scholars, it is generally accepted that the old material of the 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 scholars in the field of 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 this oral tradition, foreign to today's written culture, is 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 Homericists such as Gregory Nudge argue that the canonical text of the Homeric verses in handwritten form did not exist before the 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.

Biography

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

Homer's birthplace is unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. 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 an assumption that the Homeric dialect is a form of poetic koine, formed long before the supposed time of Homer's life.

Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this representation does not come from the real facts of Homer's life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. 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 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. However, 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 “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”.<…> given word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name.

Homeric question

antique period

The legends of this time claimed that Homer created his epic based on the poems of the poet Fantasia during the Trojan War.

"Analysts" and "Unitarians"

Homer (about 460 BC)

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 “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.

Homer in world culture

Medieval illustration for the Iliad

In Europe

The system of education established by the end of the classical era in Ancient Greece 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. 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 "Argonautics" by Apollonius of Rhodes, "Post-Homer events" by Quintus of Smyrna and "The Adventures of Dionysus" by Nonnus of Panopolitan. Other Hellenistic poets, recognizing the merits of Homer, refrained from a large epic form, believing that "there is muddy water in large rivers" ( Callimachus), that is, 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 Livius 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 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 Pushkin and Belinsky).

Homer was also translated by V. A. Zhukovsky, V. V. Veresaev and P. A. Shuisky ("Odyssey", 1948, publishing house Ural University, edition 900 copies)

Literature

Texts and translations

• 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: "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. Survivals of the tribal system in Homer's proper names. (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.
• Cunliffe R.J. A lexicon of the homeric dialect. L., 1924.
• Leumann M. Homerische Würter. Basel, 1950.
• Treu M. Von Homer zur Lyrik. Munich, 1955.
• Whitman C.H. Homer and the heroic tradition. Oxford, 1958.
• Lord A. Narrator. M., 1994.

Homer's Reception:

• Egunov A. N. Homer in Russian translations of the 18th-19th centuries. M.-L., 1964. (2nd ed.) M.: Indrik, 2001.

Bibliography of Homeric Hymns

• Translation of the Evelyn White Hymns (English)
• In the "Collection Budé" series: homere. Hymnes. Texte établi et traduit par J. Humbert. 8th edition 2003. 354 p.

Russian translations:

• individual hymns were translated by S. P. Shestakov.
• Homeric hymns. / Per. V. Veresaeva. M.: Nedra, 1926. 96 p.
  • reprint: Antique hymns. M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University. 1988, pp. 57-140 and comm.
• Homeric hymns. / Per. and comm. E. G. Rabinovich. M.: Carte blanche, .

Research:

• Derevitsky A. N. Homeric hymns. Analysis of the monument in connection with the history of its study. Kharkov, 1889. 176 pages.

Notes

Links

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. Here are the gaps in short biography 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.

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This page contains a biography of Homer.

Name: Homer (Homer)
Date of birth: 850 BC e.
Age: 90 years old
Date of death: 760 BC e.
Birthplace: Smyrna, Turkey

Homer is an ancient Greek poet, storyteller, collector of legends, author of the ancient literary works The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Historians do not have exact data on the date of birth of the narrator. The place of birth of the poet remains a mystery. Historians believe that the most likely period of Homer's life is the 10th-8th centuries BC. One of six cities is considered the place of the possible homeland of the poet: Athens, Rhodes, Chios, Salamis, Smyrna, Argos.

More than a dozen other settlements of Ancient Greece were mentioned by different authors at different times, in connection with the birth of Homer. Most often, the narrator is considered a native of Smyrna. Homer's works are addressed to the ancient history of the world, they do not mention contemporaries, which complicates the dating of the period of the author's life. There is a legend that Homer himself did not know the place of his birth. From the Oracle, the storyteller learned that the island of Ios was the birthplace of his mother.

Biographical data about the life of the narrator, presented in medieval works, raise doubts among historians. In works about the life of the poet, it is mentioned that Homer is the name that the poet received because of his acquired blindness. In translation, it can mean "blind" or "guided". At birth, his mother named him Melesigen, which means "born by the Meles River." According to one legend, Homer went blind when he saw the sword of Achilles. As a consolation, the goddess Thetis endowed him with the gift of singing.

There is a version that the poet was not a "slave", but a "leader". They called him Homer not after the narrator went blind, but on the contrary, he regained his sight and began to speak wisely. According to most ancient biographers, Melesigen was born to a woman named Cripheis.

The narrator spoke at the feasts of noble people, at city meetings, and at markets. According to historians, Ancient Greece experienced its heyday during the life of Homer. The poet recited separate parts from his works, traveling from city to city. He enjoyed respect, had lodging, food, and was not a dirty wanderer, which biographers sometimes portray him as.

There is a version that the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns are the work of different authors, and Homer was only a performer. Historians consider the version that the poet belonged to a family of singers. In ancient Greece, handicraft and other professions were often passed down from generation to generation. In this case, any member of the family could perform under the name of Homer. From generation to generation, history and manner of performance were passed down from relative to relative. This fact would also explain the different period of the creation of the poems, and would clarify the issue with the dates of the life of the narrator.

The formation of the poet

One of the most detailed stories about the rise of Homer as a poet comes from Herodotus of Halicarnassus, whom Cicero called "the father of history." According to the ancient historian, the poet was named Melesigen at birth. He lived with his mother in Smyrna, where he became a student of the owner of the school, Phemius. Melesigen was very intelligent and well comprehended the sciences.

The teacher died, leaving the school to his best pupil. After working as a mentor for some time, Melesigen decided to deepen his knowledge of the world. A man named Mentes, who was originally from the island of Lefkada, volunteered to help him. Melesigen closed the school and went on a sea voyage on a friend's ship to see new cities and countries.

During the journey former teacher collected stories, legends, asked about the customs of local peoples. Arriving in Ithaca, Melesigen felt unwell. Mentes left the satellite under the supervision of a reliable person and sailed home. Melesigenes went on his further journey on foot. On the way, he recited the stories he had collected during his travels.

According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the narrator finally went blind in the city of Colophon. There he took a new name. Modern researchers tend to question the story told by Herodotus, as well as the writings of other ancient authors about the life of Homer.

Homeric question

In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf, in the preface to the publication of the text of the poems of the ancient Greek storyteller, put forward a theory that was called the "Homeric Question". The main point of the scientist's opinion was that poetry in the time of Homer was an oral art. A blind wandering storyteller could not be the author of a complex work of art.

Homer composed songs, hymns, musical epics, which formed the basis of the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to Wolf, the finished look of the poem was obtained thanks to other authors. Since then, scientists involved in the work of Homer have divided into two camps: "analysts" support Wolff's theory, and "Unitarians" are of the opinion that the epic is strictly united.

Blindness

Some researchers of Homer's work say that the poet was sighted. In favor of the narrator's lack of illness is the fact that philosophers and thinkers in Ancient Greece were considered people deprived of ordinary vision, but having the gift of looking into the essence of things. Blindness could be synonymous with wisdom. Homer was considered one of the creators of a comprehensive picture of the world, the author of the genealogy of the gods. His wisdom was obvious to everyone.

Antique biographers brought out in their works an accurate portrait of Homer the blind, but they composed their works many centuries after the death of the poet. Since no reliable data on the life of the poet has been preserved, the interpretation of ancient biographers could not be entirely correct. This version is supported by the fact that all biographies contain fictitious events involving mythical characters.

Artworks

The surviving ancient evidence gives an idea that in the era of antiquity the writings of Homer were considered a source of wisdom. The poems gave knowledge about all spheres of life - from universal morality to the basics of military art.

Plutarch wrote that great commander Alexander the Great always kept a copy of the Iliad with him. Greek children were taught to read according to the Odyssey, and Pythagorean philosophers prescribed some passages from the works of Homer as a means to correct the soul.

Homer is considered the author of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey. The narrator could be the creator of the comic poem "Margit" and "Homeric Hymns". Among other works attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, there is a cycle of texts about the return of the heroes of the Trojan War to Greece: Cypria, The Capture of Ilion, Ethiopian, The Little Iliad, Returns. Homer's poems are distinguished by a special language that had no analogue in colloquial speech. The manner of narration made the tales memorable and interesting.

Death

There is a legend that describes the death of Homer. In old age, the blind storyteller went to the island of Ios. While traveling, Homer met two young fishermen who asked him a riddle: "We have what we did not catch, and what we caught, we threw away." The poet thought about solving the puzzle for a long time, but could not find the right answer. The boys caught lice, not fish. Homer was so annoyed that he couldn't solve the riddle that he slipped and hit his head.

According to another version, the narrator committed suicide, since death was not as terrible for him as the loss of mental sharpness.

There are about a dozen biographies of the narrator that have come down to our time from antiquity, but they all contain fairy-tale elements and references to the participation of the ancient Greek gods in the events of Homer's life.
The poet distributed his works outside Ancient Greece with the help of his students. They were called Homerids. They wandered around different cities, performing the works of their teacher in the squares.

Homer's work was very popular in Ancient Greece. About half of all ancient Greek papyrus scrolls found are excerpts from various works of the poet.
The storyteller's writings were transmitted orally. The poems that we know today were collected and structured into complete works from disparate songs by the army of poets of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus. Some parts of the texts were edited taking into account the wishes of the customer.
Soviet prose writer Osip Mandelstam in 1915 wrote the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails", in which he appealed to the narrator and the heroes of the poem "Iliad".
Until the mid-seventies of the twentieth century, the events described in Homer's poems were considered pure fiction. But the archaeological expedition of Heinrich Schliemann, who found Troy, proved that the work of the ancient Greek poet is based on real events. After such a discovery, the admirers of Plato strengthened in the hope that one day archaeologists would find Atlantis as well.

The famous ancient Greek philosopher and poet-storyteller Homer is a legendary figure of 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).