Homeric period of Greece They call the time from about the 12th to the 8th centuries. BC. In one of these eras the famous poet Homer. His work has survived to this day. In his poems, Homer talked about the cultural, economic, and social life of Greece. The most striking works of the artist are the poems “Odyssey”, “Iliad”.
If it were not for Homer, the world, hundreds of years later, would not have known how the ancient Greeks lived. Their life, traditions and especially everyday life were touched upon in the works of Homer from all sides. Information about how the poems were created did not reach contemporaries. Many scientists argue about whether such a person existed in Ancient Greece, or whether the name is fictitious. In addition, the authorship of many of his works is questioned. IN " Odyssey" tells about the adventures of "one king", A " Iliad"tells about the events of the Trojan War. There is evidence of these events in history, but they happened much earlier than the period when Homer's works were created. Researchers have analyzed the available materials, but scientists continue to hypothesize about what Ancient Greece was like. They mostly base their ideas on Homeric works.
Homer's works became almost the only written historical monument that was created in those centuries. However, researchers give such a conclusion solely based on information about the absence of other surviving written evidence of that era. It was called the “Dark Time” because no special archaeological or other finds dating back to this period were discovered.
It is believed that in the 10th-8th centuries. BC. Trade, writing, and even the social life of the Greeks came into complete decline. They fought many wars and developed only those crafts that were useful in fighting battles. Thus, the business of potters, metalworking, shipbuilding, and agricultural activities flourished. But sculpture and painting faded into the background, or even did not develop at all.
Archaeologists and other researchers of Ancient Greece have found the reasons for this turn of events. The Dorians, who inhabited the Greek lands at that time, were engaged in robberies of neighboring states. Piracy flourished. It was this way of life that these ancient people considered correct, attributing it to the foundations of valor and courage. Neither the Phoenicians nor the Egyptians visited the Greeks for trade purposes anymore. By the end of the Dorian period, trade relations gradually began to improve. But internal trade progressed at a faster pace.
For the Dorians, it all started with tribal ties. No estates or classes have yet emerged. However, the Greeks of that time could not be called a primitive society. Gradually, policies began to form. A unique socio-economic and political system was formed in the city-states. Representatives of the people or community could not own land. The plots were shared. Power was based on the foundations of military democracy.
The Dorians honored their parents and treated all old people with respect. The family occupied a huge place in the life of each of the people. In Homer's works, all bad sons were punished by fair goddesses, who cursed them for several generations. The wife was respected. She occupied the most honorable place in the house. The groom “bought” his bride from her father in order to create his own hearth in the future. The Greeks never had polygamy. In any situation, the wife had to be strictly faithful to her husband. In Homer's poems women - Helen, Penelope Nausicaa - personified virtue. They are presented as the most beautiful creatures in the world.
The woman was called "the lady of the house." She not only managed household chores, but also received guests and became a participant in meetings and important meetings. The wife's voice in the house carried great weight, and often her word became decisive.
Most Greek husbands had connections on the side. This was not considered shameful, especially if they were traveling. But marriage a second time was not encouraged.
The houses in which the Dorians lived were not small. They consisted of a large number of rooms, bedrooms, and storage for weapons. There was even a hall with columns. This was the main room of the house. The family gathered there to discuss problems and resolve matters.
Homer portrayed married people as very happy and sincerely loving each other. Women who were caught cheating were punished quite severely. Female infidelity was condemned by everyone without exception.
Children were born to men not only from their wives, but also from concubines - slaves. All children were raised as equals, lived together and had part of their father’s capital after his death. Children of slaves who were born to free men received freedom, but they were given less inheritance than other legitimate descendants.
Social life of the Ancient Greeks who lived in the 10th-8th centuries. BC, was full of all kinds of skirmishes, robberies and even murders. This is due to an imperfect social system. People sincerely hated each other even for the most harmless acts. They vented their anger as best they could. Often it came to bloodshed. There were practically no concepts of law, honor, mercy, moral principles, or forgiveness.
In the foreground are military affairs, conquests, captivity, robberies of foreigners. The bravest warrior who brought rich booty to his homeland enjoyed the greatest respect. None of the men had to shy away from the opportunity to fight and take part in military campaigns.
Homer's poems are full of evidence of friendly relations between the ruler and the soldiers who defend the honor of the state. They were guests of honor at all feasts. At such celebrations there was a lot of singing, dancing and glorification of the commanders. This significantly raised the spirit and gave moral strength for new campaigns.
Scientists have analyzed the archeology of that period
Cultural monuments of that time have not survived. The death of the Mycenaean civilization greatly shook the canons of Greek culture. She stopped developing. The Dorian tribes that invaded from the north wiped out all important and large architectural monuments from the face of the earth. Palaces, buildings, statues were destroyed. Only cemeteries remain. Scientists were able to conduct excavations and found that during that period the population was greatly reduced. Some died at the hands of strangers, others fled and moved to other territories.
The tombs are poor. They are built from wood. Less often - made of brick. It was then fashionable to create household items in a geometric style. The shapes and ornaments on pots, vases, and amphorae were subordinate to him. But by the end Homeric era the drawings have become much more complex. Which indicates the gradual revival and development of ancient Greek culture.
Delos Island
A narrow strait about three km wide. this island is separate from Mykonos. In ancient times it was called Delos, and this phonetic variant has been preserved in modern Western European languages. Delos began to be considered the place of the miraculous birth of the Hellenic gods Apollo and Artemis.
Top 10 Islands in Greece
Guide to Greece. olive oil.
For centuries, olive oil has not ceased to be considered the basis of health, vitality, proper development of the human body and beauty. The recipes were immortalized in writing in various medical descriptions, and were also passed down from mouth to mouth, giving a pleasant and healthy life to generations who still reverently maintain the traditions, passing them on to their descendants.
Ancient Greek sculptures. The most famous sculptures – TOP10
Greek snacks
If you come to Greece and don't know where to go first, then go to a classic Greek tavern. It is here that you will get acquainted with a variety of Greek cuisine, take a break from your trip and simply be able to observe the behavior of the Greeks in a relaxed atmosphere.
Quote from Barucaba
Homer by Antoine-Denis Chaudet, 1806.
Homer (ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, 8th century BC) is a legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems “Iliad” (the oldest monument of European literature and “Odyssey”).
About half of the ancient Greek literary papyri found are passages from Homer.
Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.
Homer - legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller
It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e. According to Herodotus, Homer lived 400 years before him; other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War.
Bust of Homer in the Louvre
Homer's birthplace is unknown. In the ancient tradition, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and 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, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that his dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, formed long before the estimated time of Homer's life.
Paul Jourdy, Homère chantant ses vers, 1834, Paris
Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this idea does not come from the real facts of his life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. Since many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind (for example, Tiresias), according to ancient logic that connected the prophetic and poetic gifts, the assumption of Homer’s blindness looked very plausible. In addition, the singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is blind from birth, which could also be perceived as autobiographical.
Homer. Naples, National Archaeological Museum
There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, 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 at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. At the same time, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.
In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, 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 Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”.<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name" (Boura S.M. Heroic poetry.)
Homer (circa 460 BC)
A.F. Losev: The traditional image of Homer among the Greeks. This traditional image of Homer, which has existed for about 3000 years, if we discard all the pseudo-scientific inventions of the later Greeks, comes down to the image of a blind and wise (and, according to Ovid, also poor), necessarily an old singer, creating wonderful tales under the constant guidance of the muse that inspires him and leading the life of some wandering rhapsodist. We find similar features of folk singers among many other nations, and therefore there is nothing specific or original about them. This is the most common and most widespread type of folk singer, the most beloved and most popular among different peoples.
Most researchers believe that Homer's poems were created in Asia Minor, in Ionia in the 8th century. BC e. based on mythological tales of the Trojan War. There is late ancient evidence of the final edition of their texts under the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in the mid-6th century. BC e., when their performance was included in the festivities of the Great Panathenaia.
In ancient times, Homer was credited with the comic poems “Margit” and “The War of Mice and Frogs”, a cycle of works about the Trojan War and the return of heroes to Greece: “Cypria”, “Aethiopida”, “The Little Iliad”, “The Capture of Ilion”, “Returns” ( so-called “cyclical poems”, only small fragments have survived). Under the name "Homeric Hymns" there was a collection of 33 hymns to the gods. During the Hellenistic era, philologists of the Library of Alexandria Aristarchus of Samothrace, Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium did a great deal of work collecting and clarifying the manuscripts of Homer’s poems (they also divided each poem into 24 cantos according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet). The sophist Zoilus (4th century BC), nicknamed “the scourge of Homer” for his critical statements, became a household name. Xenon and Hellanicus, so-called. “dividing”, expressed the idea that Homer may have owned only one “Iliad”
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir (1809-1892). Home.
In the 19th century, the Iliad and Odyssey were compared with the epics of the Slavs, skaldic poetry, Finnish and German epics. In the 1930s The American classical philologist Milman Parry, comparing Homer's poems with the living epic tradition that still existed at that time among the peoples of Yugoslavia, discovered in Homer's poems a reflection of the poetic technique of folk singers. The poetic formulas they created from stable combinations and epithets (“swift-footed” Achilles, “shepherd of nations” Agamemnon, “much-witted” Odysseus, “sweet-tongued” Nestor) made it possible for the narrator to “improvise” perform epic songs consisting of many thousands of verses.
The Iliad and Odyssey belong entirely to the centuries-old epic tradition, but this does not mean that oral creativity is anonymous. “Before Homer, we cannot name anyone’s poem of this kind, although, of course, there were many poets” (Aristotle). Aristotle saw the main difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey from all other epic works in the fact that Homer does not unfold his narrative gradually, but builds it around one event - the basis of the poems is the dramatic unity of action. Another feature that Aristotle also drew attention to: the character of the hero is revealed not by the author’s descriptions, but by the speeches uttered by the hero himself.
Medieval illustration for the Iliad
The language of Homer's poems - exclusively poetic, “supra-dialectal” - was never identical to living spoken language. It consisted of a combination of Aeolian (Boeotia, Thessaly, the island of Lesbos) and Ionian (Attica, island Greece, the coast of Asia Minor) dialect features with the preservation of the archaic system of earlier eras. The songs of the Iliad and Odyssey were metrically shaped by the hexameter, a poetic meter rooted in Indo-European epic, in which each verse consists of six feet with a regular alternation of long and short syllables. The unusual poetic language of the epic was emphasized by the timeless nature of events and the greatness of the images of the heroic past.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874)
Sensational discoveries of G. Schliemann in the 1870s and 80s. proved that Troy, Mycenae and the Achaean citadels are not a myth, but a reality. Schliemann's contemporaries were struck by the literal correspondence of a number of his findings in the fourth shaft tomb in Mycenae with the descriptions of Homer. The impression was so strong that the era of Homer became associated for a long time with the heyday of Achaean Greece in the 14th-13th centuries. BC e. The poems, however, also contain numerous archaeologically attested features of the “heroic age” culture, such as mention of iron tools and weapons or the custom of cremation of the dead. In terms of content, Homer's epics contain many motifs, storylines, and myths gleaned from early poetry. In Homer you can hear echoes of Minoan culture, and even trace connections with Hittite mythology. However, the main source of epic material for him was the Mycenaean period. It is during this era that his epic takes place. Living in the fourth century after the end of this period, which he highly idealizes, Homer cannot be a source of historical information about the political, social life, material culture or religion of the Mycenaean world. But in the political center of this society, Mycenae, objects identical to those described in the epic (mainly weapons and tools) were found, while some Mycenaean monuments present images, things and even scenes typical of the poetic reality of the epic. The events of the Trojan War, around which Homer unfolded the actions of both poems, were attributed to the Mycenaean era. He showed this war as an armed campaign of the Greeks (called Achaeans, Danaans, Argives) under the leadership of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon against Troy and its allies. For the Greeks, the Trojan War was a historical fact dating back to the 14th-12th centuries. BC e. (according to Eratosthenes' calculations, Troy fell in 1184)
Karl Becker. Homer sings
A comparison of the evidence of the Homeric epic with archaeological data confirms the conclusions of many researchers that in its final edition it was formed in the 8th century. BC e., and many researchers consider the “Catalogue of Ships” (Iliad, 2nd Canto) to be the oldest part of the epic. Obviously, the poems were not created at the same time: “The Iliad” reflects ideas about the person of the “heroic period”; “The Odyssey” stands, as it were, at the turn of another era - the time of the Great Greek colonization, when the boundaries of the world mastered by Greek culture expanded.
For people of antiquity, Homer's poems were a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism, a source of wisdom and knowledge of all aspects of life - from military art to practical morality. Homer, along with Hesiod, was considered the creator of a comprehensive and orderly mythological picture of the universe: the poets “compiled genealogies of the gods for the Hellenes, provided the names of the gods with epithets, divided virtues and occupations among them, and drew their images” (Herodotus). According to Strabo, Homer was the only poet of antiquity who knew almost everything about the ecumene, the peoples inhabiting it, their origin, way of life and culture. Thucydides, Pausanias (writer), and Plutarch used Homer’s data as authentic and trustworthy. The father of tragedy, Aeschylus, called his dramas “crumbs from the great feasts of Homer.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Homer and the Shepherds
Greek children learned to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer was quoted, commented on, and explained allegorically. The Pythagorean philosophers called on the Pythagorean philosophers to correct souls by reading selected passages from Homer’s poems. Plutarch reports that Alexander the Great always carried a copy of the Iliad with him, which he kept under his pillow along with a dagger.
M. Tsvetaeva
Portrait of Homer
Homer lived nine centuries BC. e., and we do not know what the world and the place that today is called Ancient, or ancient, Greece looked like then. All smells and colors were thicker, sharper. By raising his finger, a person went straight into the sky, because for him it was both material and animate. Greece smelled of the sea, stone, sheep's wool, olives, and the blood of endless wars. But we don’t know, we can’t imagine pictures of life at that time, which is usually called the “Homeric period,” i.e., IX–VIII centuries BC. e. Isn't it strange? An entire historical period is named after the poet after three millennia? Much water has passed under the bridge, and the events are blurred, but his name remains the definition of an entire period, sealed by two poems - the Iliad (about the war of the Achaeans with Ilion) and the Odyssey (about the return of the warrior Odysseus to Ithaca after the Trojan War).
All the events described in the poems took place around 1200 BC. e., i.e. three hundred years before the life of the poet, and recorded in the 6th century BC. e., i.e. three hundred years after his death. By the 6th century BC. e. the world has changed incredibly, unrecognizably. Already the main pan-Hellenic event - the Olympics - established a “sacred truce” every four years and was a “point of truth” and unity for a brief moment of pan-Hellenic unity.
But in the 9th century BC. e. there was none of this. Homer, according to the testimony of modern researchers (Gasparova, Greece, p. 17, M: 2004 and many others), belonged to the number of wandering storytellers - Aeds. They wandered from city to city, from leader to leader, and to the accompaniment of a stringed cithara they talked about “the affairs of bygone days, the legends of deep antiquity.”
So, one of the Aeds, named Homer, with whose name a whole cultural period is associated, remains to this day what is called a “model” for European poetry and poets. Any poet dreams of being quoted, remembered for a long time, studied by historians and philologists, and so that a hundred-year-old rumor makes his name synonymous with truth, faith - no matter what miracles happen to his heroes. Any poet wants to create his own universe, his own heroes, that is, to become like the Demiurge. That is why Anna Akhmatova said: “The poet is always right.”
The whole era is called Homeric. Just as the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy is called the era of Dante and Giotto, or the turn of the 16th-17th centuries in England is called Shakespearean. These names are a milestone, a starting point, always the beginning of a new era in culture, the creation of a new language, previously unknown forms of artistic consciousness, the opening of a new world to contemporaries and descendants.
In Homer's texts, the mythological cosmos is revealed to us in the fullness of the lives of gods and heroes, their behavior, connections with historical events and everyday details of everyday life.
The hexameter - hexameter - makes the space of the poem solemn and spacious. Listen to what the Trojan hero Hector says to his wife Andromache before the battle with Achilles. He knows everything that will happen. Cassandra is his sister:
... but it's a shame
To me before the Trojans and Trojan women in long robes,
If I, like a crappy coward, shirk the battle,
I myself know perfectly well, believe me, both in my heart and in my spirit:
There will be one day - and sacred Troy will perish,
Priam and the people of the spearman Priam will perish with her!
But it’s not the death of so many Trojans that I now lament,
Not about my brave brothers who will soon
They will fall into dust, killed by the hand of enraged enemies, -
I only grieve for you! Achaean in a copper shell
All in tears he will take you far into captivity:
In Argos you will weave cloth for someone else’s mistress...
Hector goes to duel with Achilles the “godlike”, knowing both about his defeat and about the death of Troy, grieving over the death of his family, people, and the slavery of his beloved wife. It is clear - the vision was given to the great hero of Troy and his sister Cassandra. The heroic-pathetic rhetoric of farewell and lament was conveyed in painting not by a contemporary of Homer, but by an artist of high style: the classicism of the early 19th century by Louis David.
The gods do not spare mortals with the gift of immortals, their knowledge of “beginnings and endings.” But Homer himself was endowed with the divine gift of light through darkness, of higher knowledge - vision, with which only prophets and poets are endowed. Perhaps that is why the legend endows him with blindness to the near frontiers, to what is in front of his nose, but with a vision of the mountain worlds and those that were. He sees events three hundred years ago in order to open horizons for millennia to come. And there is a lot of evidence of this, ending with the archeology of the 20th century.
What do we know about Homer? Almost nothing and a lot. He was, according to the statement, a blind, poor, wandering singer - aed. “If you give me money, I’ll sing, potters, I’ll give you a song.” It is unknown where he was born. But already in those distant times, Homer was so famous that “seven cities compete for the wise root of Homer: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Pylos, Argos, Athens.” His very personality in our perception is a combination of the mysteries of mythological, documentary and even everyday history.
Not long ago, the first olive tree was shown on the Acropolis in Athens, which grew from the blow of Athena’s spear during her dispute with Poseidon. And also a well - a source that arose from the blow of Poseidon’s trident during the same dispute. The ship on which Theseus sailed to Crete was kept on the Acropolis. The pedigree of Lycurgus went back to Hercules, etc. The prototype has always been mythology - the undoubted starting point. About the prototype of Homer himself below. The world described in the hymns and both poems became undoubtedly historical for contemporaries and descendants only thanks to the “singer equal to God.” If we choose from documentary and poetic facts, then it is not our choice that always wins, but the choice of time. Time is imprinted in memory with images of a document that has become poetry.
Already during the time of Emperor Augustus (1st century AD), a certain Greek Dion Chrysostom, a wandering philosopher and orator, traveling through cities, refuted the authenticity of the facts of the poems. “My friends, the Trojans,” Dion spoke to the residents of Troy, “it’s easy to deceive a person... Homer deceived humanity with his stories about the Trojan War for almost a thousand years.” And then followed quite reasonable arguments not in favor of Homeric history. He proves with facts that there was no victory of the Achaeans over the inhabitants of Ilion, that it was the Trojans who won the victory and became the future of the ancient world. “Very little time passes,” says Dion, “and we see that the Trojan Aeneas and his friends conquer Italy, the Trojan Helen - Epirus, and the Trojan Antenor - Venice. ...And this is not fiction: in all these places there are cities founded, according to legend, by Trojan heroes, and among these cities, Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas.”
And more than two thousand years later, in one of the poems of the late 20th century poet Joseph Brodsky, his Odysseus says: “I don’t remember how the war ended, / and how old you are now, I don’t remember. / Grow big, my Telemachus, grow. / Only the gods know if we will meet again.
The reason that gave birth to Brodsky's verse is deeply personal, but the poet, who claimed that ninety percent of him consists of antiquity, views his life through myth, as an eyewitness.
Who remembers Dion Chrysostom with his crushing arguments? Nobody... The anonymous blind man wins. "The poet is always right." Let us add - a special poet, the secret of whose immortality cannot be deciphered, as well as the indispensable secret of his anonymity.
A contemporary and rival of Homer was the poet Hesiod, a peasant from the town of Askry. He was also an aed singer. His poetic instructions were of a practical nature: how to farm, how to sow, etc. His most famous poem is called “Works and Days.”
In the city of Chalkis, Hesiod challenged Homer to a poetry competition. Hesiod began:
Sing us a song, O Muse, but sing no ordinary song. Do not talk in it about what happened, what is and what will happen.
Hesiod asked a theme of practical significance. No need for fantasies. Homer responded in his own style and answered what would not happen:
It is true: Mortal people will never rush in a chariot race, celebrating the memory of the immortal Zeus.
So, gentlemen, we must sing about what is not passing and eternal. How to sow the land is also important, but as a guide to agriculture.
This is the 9th century BC. A dispute between two poets about the essence and tasks of poetry. (Let us add in parentheses that this dispute will never end.)
Hesiod asks again:
Tell me, I ask, about one more thing, God-equal Homer: Is there any delight in the world for us mortals?
Homer answers life-affirmingly and instructively:
The best things in life are at a full table, in bliss and peace
Raise the ringing bowls and listen to cheerful songs.
Life without adversity, pleasure without pain and death without suffering.
Here it is - a wish for all times, one might say, a feasting toast, an aphorism forever.
From Hesiod's address to Homer, it is also certain how famous Homer was. Hesiod, his elder brother, calls him “god-like,” that is, practically a hero, immortal. Time always knows about its immortals, the only question is how it treats them. No matter how it is treated, it is always inadequate.
It will forever remain a mystery why Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church by John of Kronstadt himself, and not by some ignoramus. Why Mozart was buried in a mass grave, having patrons and rich patrons of the arts. Why Andrei Platonov, the best, only brilliant Soviet writer (this was well known to his contemporaries) swept, as a janitor, exactly the yard where the Literary Institute was located. And Shakespeare? It is unknown who he was, where he was born, and where he was buried. Try writing a biography of Diego Velazquez or Cervantes. You won't succeed. They will all escape us.
Let us return, however, to the competition between Homer and Hesiod. The judges declared Hesiod the winner, “because Homer glorifies war, and Hesiod praises peaceful labor.” But for world culture, which has not yet lived a day without Homer, Hesiod is only his contemporary.
They say that Homer was very sad, died of grief and was buried on the island of Ios. They showed his grave there.
Orpheus performing his songs. Fragment of ceramics. Mid-5th century BC e.
And Homer had his own prototype. His name was Orpheus - a Thracian singer, creator of music and poetry. His name is associated with the idea of combining words with musical string accompaniment. We can call Orpheus the founder of bard lyricism. He was a bard whose universal genius attuned the world to absolute harmony. Plants, stones, water listened to him, he could pacify Cerberus, who guarded the entrances to Hades, with his song, he drew tears of delight from the Erinyes and from the goddess of the underworld Persephone. Whether he was the son of Apollo or Dionysus is a big debate. Rather, it was Apollo, whose sensitive cithara tuned the music of the spheres into a harmonic manner, that is, it was the basis of cosmic, and not just earthly, harmony. Apollo and Orpheus are related by another charming significant character, the creator of a musical instrument common to both - the cithara. This is Hermes. When he was a baby, he caught a turtle, and its shell, mysterious with the mysterious signs of the original creation, became the basis of a musical resonator. He pulled cow sinews onto the shell, and the seven-stringed cithara turned out to be glorious. Hermes, naturally, is the patron of brilliant kifareds. It was he who became Orpheus’s guide to Hades, from where the poet, inconsolable with his lost love, wanted to return his bride, the nymph Eurydice. Alas, the brides do not return from there, the poets, faithful to their shadows, mourn their Eurydice.
For those who have lost their last shreds
Cover (no lips, no cheeks!..)
Oh, isn't this an abuse of authority?
Orpheus descending into Hades?
Marina Tsvetaeva
Orpheus is one of the heroes of the Argonauts' campaign to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. With his singing, he saved the lives of his friends, bewitching them with the singing of the sirens themselves.
The end of Orpheus, like any brilliant poet, was tragic. He was torn apart by the wild companions of Dionysus - the maenads. The reasons for their action are unclear. Although these reasons may be the same as today, when fanatics of singers and film actors are also ready to tear them apart out of wild love and delight. It has long been noted that human passions change little - both in essence and in manifestations. A poet could be torn to shreds, he could become a victim of someone else's fury, but it was impossible to silence his voice. Orpheus's head floated next to the cithara. He (already eternal) prophesied. “No, all of me will not die. / The soul in the treasured lyre will outlive my ashes and escape decay,” - Pushkin’s words about the immortality of the Orpheus, about the soul in the treasured lyre. Isn't Homer's image an echo of Orpheus? This is the primary and most important thing in the legacy of antiquity to culture. Original from Homer: audibility, echo sounder. Audibility is the law, the idea, the measure of the Greek world. Audibility includes us in the circle of acoustics as understanding. Audibility is mutual understanding. Audibility as understanding, unity through understanding. Is this not the hidden super task of all Greek art? And theater, and sculpture, and, of course, dialogues of the feast, the themes of which were suggested by images of feast vessels (vases, drawings on vases). And isn’t this the basis of polis democracy? For to understand means to become equal, to speak the same language. The opposite example is the Tower of Babel - the effect of inaudibility of each other, chaos and inequality, which we will talk about in more detail in another part of our book. Orpheus's echoing orbit is enormous. Every creature listens to him, and Kerbers, and wild animals, and flowers, and birds... “Every sound has its own echo in the empty air...” The echoholicity of poetry is in mutual audibility. And this law was born, as was said, in the deep depths of ancient mythological history by Orpheus-Homer.
Orpheus was not happy. Personal happiness is not for poets. And his death was tragic. Like Orpheus, the poet Dante, led by his Hermes - Virgil, did not descend into Hell? And was not the shadow of Donna Beatrice a later echo, a refrain of Eurydice?
In ancient mythology, Orpheus has an antipodal double. This is Famira the Kifared. He was some kind of relative of Orpheus and lived when music-poetry and the muses of poets were born. There were legends about Famir as a musician, and also a handsome man. But Famira was arrogant and vain and challenged the muses themselves to a competition. In his thirst for victory and possession of them, Famira lost. He lost his voice, the gift of harp and sight. Orpheus prophesied even in death. Famira was deprived of his gift during his lifetime. The Greeks had a keen sense of the boundaries of ethical standards. They knew that talent alone is not enough. What can we add to this today? Sophocles wrote a tragedy about Thamir and himself played the main role in it. Unfortunately, this play by Sophocles has not reached us.
Excavations carried out by Heinrich Schliemann in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century on a hill considered to be ancient Troy and in Mycenae were a scientific discovery and documentary evidence of the authenticity of Homer's poems. Schliemann's house in Athens is decorated with quotes from poems. Quotes in golden mosaics decorate the ceiling, walls of the office, nursery, etc. From a psychological point of view, such persistence is less often absorbed, more often rejected, which, perhaps, happened with Schliemann’s children. All doubts (and there are many of them, including excavations) recede before the certainty of the inexhaustibility of the encyclopedia of antiquity in world culture.
The image of the singer and poet of the entire European and Russian tradition is obviously formed under the influence of the complex code of the image of the storyteller-aed of early ancient culture. Even more than that: anonymity and the absence of a biography of facts is already an example of a poet’s biography. Only two features are emphasized: the theme of wandering (being away from home) and the attitude towards vocation.
The Matrix of Orpheus and Homer, through all the centuries and millennia until today, has remained committed only to its gift. In this sense, all poets are children of myth more than of their family.
From the biography of someone who actually lived in the 7th century BC. e. The poet Arion the Cyfared left a story about how he was captured by sea robbers. He asked them for mercy: to sing before dying. Having finished the song, Arion rushed into the sea, but was saved and carried ashore by the sacred Apollon Dolphin. The echo of the 19th century - Pushkin - responds with the poem "Arion" ("There were many of us on the canoe..."): "I sing the old songs and dress my poor land in the sun under the rock." Emerging from the abyss and a sign that you are living again is a song. Does a poet, wanderer and wanderer need a biography? What could account for Shakespeare's genius whether he was the son of a Stanford butcher or Lord Redcliffe? Shakespeare repeated the ideal Orphic-Homeric biography, or rather the lack thereof. He completely and completely embodied and dissolved in his poetry. An Englishman of the Elizabethan era, translations of whose works into all languages of the world are in all bookstores and whose plays are performed without interruption in all theaters of the world. He is a mysterious anonymous person.
Sappho and Alcaeus. Poets of the 7th century BC e. Calaf painting. V century BC e. Museum of Ancient Art. Munich.
In the poetic wandering of the Homeric tradition, there is not only out-of-homeness during life, but also “out-of-homeness”, “out-of-spatiality” posthumously. Intelligibility of every existing language and time. The amazement of the modern reader: on the counter of a bookstall in the State Duma, among economic and political fiction, is a gift, illustrated, 2006 edition of Homer’s Odyssey.
Bards never disappeared from culture, with the exception of episodes of total unfreedom of society, i.e. totalitarianism. For the wanderer is free. He easily crosses borders and finds listeners everywhere. The wanderer, poet and philosopher of the 12th century Francis of Assisi, who sang strange prayers under the snow, found a response and understanding in the souls of birds, like Orpheus. The mad tramp is canonized, wrote the book “Little Flowers”, and his followers are called Franciscans.
In his Notes on the Gallic War (1st century BC), Caesar described the Celts-bards who belonged to the spiritual priestly caste of the Druids. They conveyed tales about history and military exploits, about the courage of their ancestors. Historical memory lives in their song; contemporaries consider them bearers of truth. Just like the ancient Scandinavian skald poets. The origin of skaldic poetry has no clear answer, but Celtic connections have long been beyond doubt. “Burning in the wounds / the glow of battle / Iron stings / encroaching on life / drops of the slaughter hissed / on the field of spears, / streams of arrows / streamed across Strod...” - this is how the bard Eivin the Destroyer wrote. Eivin's poems echoed distantly in the poetry of the 20th century Russian skald Velimir Khlebnikov.
In northern legend there is one hero who, like Prometheus or Hercules of Greek antiquity, can be called both a hero and a god. His name is ?din. The beginning of the culture of northern civilization, the gift of magical written signs - runes and honey poetry - are associated with it.
Around his name - the ancestor of the Welsung family - the plots of Scandinavian cosmogony, the genealogy of heroes, the swarming of Scandinavian mythology densely populated by fairies, gnomes, giants, mermaids, and dragons develop. The heroic epic “Younger Edda”, “Elder Edda”, “Velsung Saga” is for Northern Europe the same as the epic poetry of Homer for the ancient Mediterranean. And skalds are the same aeds. Druids are a great sacred tribe of carriers of world memory and the complex experience of people's relationships with the natural world, with each other and with God. In a word, they are wanderers - poets with a light load of a lyre (cithara, harp, guitar, harp) slung on their backs and a great burden of responsibility for the word before their calling. But the time of immortality drives them along the roads of boundless, that is, devoid of boundaries, space.
Both the “Younger” and “Elder Eddas” tell the story of the world ash tree Ygdrasil. The Younger Edda writes: “Its branches are stretched over the whole world and rise above the sky. Three roots support the tree and these roots spread far. One root - among the aces. The other is among the giants, where the world Abyss used to be. The third reaches out to Niflheim. The Elder Edda repeats the description of Ygdrasil: “With three roots / that ash tree / sprouted on three sides: / Hel - under the first, Khrimtursam - the second / third - the race of men.”
Dean - the father of the gods, the son of heaven - sacrificed himself and crucified himself on the “Ygdrasil tree”, pierced by his own spear. But he received the right to drink the sacred honey and pass that honey on to the aesirs and “those people who know how to write poetry.” This is how the “Younger Edda” narrates: “I know, I hung / in the branches in the wind / for nine long nights / pierced by a spear /... No one fed me, / no one gave me water, / I looked at the ground, / I raised the runes, / moaning them picked it up - / and fell from the tree.” The roots of the tree go into the unknown, to the beginning of beginnings, to countless days. By the way, the calendar, that is, the counting of days, is also associated with the wisdom of the Eddas. So, counting days and years is a number; runic signs - the magic of writing and the honey of poetry have the same time and a single source on the border of sleep and wakefulness of the crucified din.
Din and his priests were called “masters of song” and this art originated from them in the northern countries. And when they sang, their enemies in battle became helpless, filled with horror, and their weapons wounded them no more than a twig. And nothing brought harm to the warriors of Din - the singers. Such warrior-singers were called “bercherks” (skalds, aeds).
Din's companions, his retinue, in addition to the poet-warriors, were warrior-maidens. Their names were Valkyries - maidens of fate - those who carry warriors from the battlefield to the paradise of immortality, Valhalla. Valkyries are wonderful. Their blond hair curls around their helmets, and their eyes are such a bright blue that it’s hard to describe. One of these Valkyries was called Brunhild, and the death of the great warrior Sigurd or Siegfried, the conqueror of the Dragon, is associated with her.
Like Achilles, Siegfried was invulnerable, with the exception of one single place - his right shoulder blade, to which a maple leaf stuck while Siegfried took a bath from the blood of the Dragon he killed. The shoulder blade was his Achilles heel. O women! Only his wife Gudrun knew Siegfried's secret. Further in the heroic saga of the “Rheingold”, a story begins to match the quarrels on Olympus or in the Iliad. Stories of jealousy, vanity, deceit, betrayal, love. “The best of all was Sigurd the horse, / my brothers / killed him!” - Gudrun laments, not remembering that she betrayed his secret to the jealous Brunhild and envious brothers. I would keep my mouth shut.
In the middle of the 17th century, a parchment copy with songs from the Elder Edda was found, as if written in the 13th century. Or rather, “recorded” in the 13th century according to the songs of the skalds that existed in the oral tradition. The adoption of Christianity and Christian traditions are intertwined with ancient Nordic mythology. Thus, rune stones installed in the 11th century are crowned with an image of Christ. And recorded in the XII – XIII centuries. the full version of the “Song of the Nibelungs”, built into a kind of poetic unity, is a heroic epic with a flair of Christian ideas. (Beowulf. Elder Edda. Song of the Nibelungs. M. 1975. Introductory articles by L. Ya. Gurevich. Translation by A. I. Korsun)
The saga of the “Ring of the Nibelung” resurfaces, arousing interest in medieval culture, in research, in poetry no less than the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century. The event was the publication in 1835 of Jacob Grimm's fundamental study, German Mythology. And the subsequent productions from 1854 to 1874, that is, for 20 years, of Richard Wagner’s four operas “The Ring of the Nibelung”: “Das Rheingold”, “Die Walküre”, “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods”.
The entire 19th century was fascinated by antiquity, its ideas, art, and poetry. Archeology literally explodes culture with its certainty. Museums and collections of ancient art are being created.
At the same time, with no less enthusiasm, the 19th century perceived the mysterious world of European medieval mythology and poetry on the wave of romanticism. Classicism and romanticism live side by side in the complex interweaving of antiquity with the Roman-Gothic heroic epic of “The Nibelungen”, “The Song of Roland” and “King Arthur”, etc. I would also like to recall the Russian heroic-lyrical poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” in retelling of the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, published in 1824. The authenticity of the texts of the poem has caused a lot of controversy. But we leave this question out of the question. The poem is genuine. According to evidence, it was written around 1185 and told about the tragic story of Prince Igor Svyatoslavovich’s campaign against the Polovtsians literally 50 years before the start of the Mongol invasion of Rus'. And what a wonder! How its external design resembles the Iliad. The poem seems to have two authors: an objective historian and an old poet. The historian argues with a storyteller named Boyan. Boyan “the prophetic” is the son of Veles (? Din). “O Boyan,” our objective historian addresses him, “the nightingale of old times, if only you had sung these regiments, flew with your mind under the clouds, twisting words around our time, ascending along the Trojan path from the fields to the mountains...” But our objective witness is The documentarian cannot defeat Boyan and still turns onto the “Troyan path.” The role of Andromache is played by Prince Igor’s wife, Yaroslavna. "Insomnia... Homer." In what mysterious ways does 12th-century Rus' “get wet” with Homer’s universal matrix. A person comes into the world and forever turns the arrows of culture, image, style, becoming a milestone in the history of cultural consciousness. The author of the Lay is as anonymous as previous authors.
We will conditionally consider him one of the skald-bard-storytellers on whose behalf the story is told. The 12th century is significant for Europe, for the whole world. This is an explosion, a breakdown, new ideas, Crusades. The change of milestones is no less global than the Renaissance. But we will talk in detail about the 12th century and the heroes of that time in due time and in another section. Now we are only mentioning those new spiritual values that were destined for a long journey into the future and the roots of the tree of which had already sprouted one and a half thousand years before the “Word”. We call this time (from the 12th century BC to the 12th century AD) the formation of a new consciousness, for which the alphabet, word, theater, image and music represent a new continuous text of culture.
Returning to “The Lay,” I would also like to remember that, like Wagner’s operatic quatrology of “The Nibelungen,” almost at the same time, the great Russian composer Borodin wrote the opera “Prince Igor.”
Opera is a “grand style”, a large form, where the words and dialogues of brilliant primary sources are, as a rule, simplified by very weak librettists and the music of Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin takes upon itself all the responsibility of dramaturgy.
In the 11th century, in the south of France, in Provence, in Aquitaine, a new cultural tradition arises (no other word has been coined) - a new cultural tradition - at the same time as old as creation - arises - lyrical and heroic poetry, accompanied by musical accompaniment.
The poets themselves wrote the texts and music, and performed them themselves, wandering between castles or going to the East under the banners of the Templar Crusaders. And those poets were called troubadours, and their poetry was called courtly. By the way, how significant is it that the literal meaning of the word “troubadour” is “one who finds new things.” They accompanied their narratives or outpourings of soul by playing something like a harp, violin or lute.
The jester is an improviser. Performer of folk parables and anecdotes to the accompaniment of bells. End of the 15th century Miniature. Marmottan-Monet Museum. Paris.
The troubadours told different stories - heroic, military - about heroes like Roland, Cid, Saint-Cyr, Count of Toulouse, or Raimbaut of Orange, or Count Hugo, about the conquerors of dragons, Saracens and other infidels and saints. They also told gossip in the guise of ballads: who was sleeping with whom, and who was sick with what, and how much property someone had. They spied little by little. But the main thing, the new thing that they were the creators of, is love lyrics, this is a new cult. Cult of the Beautiful Lady. It arose under the influence of the Benedictine St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Mary the Mother of God in the spiritual theology of Catholicism was united with the Platonic cult of the Beautiful Lady. Having appeared to us in the 11th-12th centuries, the new Maria-logy never left the stage of cultural European history, until the 20th century. In Russia, its singer was the poet Alexander Blok. Everything reminded me of Princess Uta, wrapped in a cloak on the portal of Braunburg Cathedral. She looks into the distance to see if her husband, Knight Egart, is coming. For now, let's just talk in general terms about troubadour poets, historians, wanderers, desperate adventurers without a future or past, people of the most varied origins, from aristocrats to commoners.
Many studies have been devoted to the history of the Albigensian troubadours and Minnesingers. The author of one of them, “History of the Albigensians,” Napoleon Peyrat writes: “Like Greece, Aquitaine began with poetry. In Aquitaine, as in Hellas, the source of poetic inspiration was on the cloud-covered mountain peaks” (History of the Albigenses, M. 1992, pp. 47 and 51).
So the circle of continuity of the Homeric tradition of the Aeds-troubadours closes, returning in a spiral to its original circle, for in the lyric poetry of medieval Europe we see the shadows of the heroic epic and hear the stringed sounds of the citharas.
Knight Bertrand de Born was a warrior and participant in the 2nd Crusade.
My love is the source of poetry,
To sing songs, love is more important than knowledge, -
Through love I could comprehend everything,
But at a high price - the price of suffering.
Our age is full of grief and melancholy.
But they are all insignificant and light
In the face of a misfortune that is worse -
This is the death of the young king.
Let's sing about fire and discord,
After all, Yes - and - No stained his dagger:
With the war, the lord becomes more generous.
Having forgotten about luxury, the king is homeless
He will not prefer a magnificent throne to the road.
The homelessness of even a king in that age of poetry and blood, the Beautiful Lady, campaigns for the Holy Sepulcher and new knowledge.
Expensive! The heart is alive -
In the throes of a passionate impulse -
Because the light of imperishable love
I see it in your eyes.
And without you I am miserable dust!
Aymeric de Pegillan
Somehow it happened that in 1894, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a philosophical essay-research, which he called “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. Preface to Wagner.
Nietzsche is the completion of the classical tradition of European philosophy. He died symbolically in 1900, at the border of the exodus of the classical tradition of thought. The name of Wagner was mysteriously associated in his work with antiquity. The beginning - with the final chords.
“... in the closest sense, a folk song has for us the meaning of a musical mirror of the world, an original melody, now looking for a parallel phenomenon in a dream and expressing this latter in poetry.”
According to Nietzsche, the musical mirror of the world, expressed through poetry, is something important, as the fundamental basis of cultural existence. And it is expressed by two names-concepts of Greek-ancient mythology, the music of the spheres and the passion of the earth - Apollo and Dionysus.
We remember how the bacchante maenads tore Orpheus to pieces for his pure service to Apollo, and the muses of Apollo punished Famira.
The struggle between Apollo and Dionysus in the nature of culture, not only ancient, but also modern - “Who wins: Apollo of Dionysus or Dionysus of Apollo?” - Vyacheslav Ivanov shouted in his poetry salon - “The Tower” in 1913, pitting Nikolai Gumilyov against Maximilian Voloshin, where Voloshin, of course, was given the place of Dionysus.
Between Apollo and Dionysus, between the bright mind, discipline, word and intuition, emotions, between the victorious luminosity and the tragedy of the torn Dionysus, between the nectar of the Olympians and the sap of the vine. Continuous throughout European culture, the Homeric tradition combines the poetics of words with the exciting sounds of citharas and Aeolian harps, Dionysus and Apollo.
From one of the portals of the Dmitrovsky Cathedral in Vladimir, decorated with white stone carvings in the 12th century, a singer looks at us. He sits on a throne, his head is decorated with a crown, he is dressed in a toga. He sings, accompanying himself on the harp. It is customary to call it after the biblical king David, the author of the Psalter. They say he fell into ecstasy while singing the psalms he wrote. From his song, grasses, trees, flowers bow their heads, birds listen to him. The entire created world listens to the singer. But if we didn’t know his name, we could say: this is the image of the singer-poet, his collective, universal image of timelessness. The location of the bas-relief on the wall of the temple is such that we seem to be repeating the ritual of communication between Orpheus - or David, or Homer - and the whole world around him. We also listen, looking at him. And he sings about the Main thing, looking at us and into the distance that is behind us. And there is noise all around, life is changing, and only he is in the middle of the world under the starry sky forever. "Insomnia... Homer."
Homer “Iliad” Tribes of the Greek-Achaeans appeared on the Balkan Peninsula in the 2nd millennium BC. With the conquest of the island of Crete, where an advanced civilization with a refined culture flourished, the Achaeans acquired what the Greeks would always be distinguished by - curiosity and authorship.
Homer Homer is the legendary epic poet of Ancient Greece.
There is time for everything: your time for conversation, your time for peace.
Historians do not have exact data on the narrator’s date of birth. The poet's birthplace remains a mystery. Historians believe that the most likely period of Homer’s life is the X-VIII centuries BC. One of six cities is considered the place of the poet’s possible homeland: 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 refer to the ancient history of the world; they make no mention of his contemporaries, which complicates dating 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 poet's life it is mentioned that Homer is the name that the poet received due to his acquired blindness. Translated, it can mean “blind” or “slave.” At birth, his mother named him Melesigenes, 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 “follower”, but a “leader”. They named him Homer not after the storyteller became blind, but on the contrary, he regained his sight and began to speak wisely. According to most ancient biographers, Melesigenes was born of a woman named Crifeis.
The storyteller performed at the feasts of noble people, at city meetings, and in markets. According to historians, Ancient Greece experienced its heyday during the life of Homer. The poet recited parts of his works while traveling from city to city. He was respected, had lodging and food, and was not the dirty wanderer that biographers sometimes portray him to be.
There is a version that the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns are the works 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, crafts and other professions were often passed down from generation to generation. In this case, any family member could act under the name of Homer. From generation to generation, the stories and manner of performance were passed on from relative to relative. This fact would explain the different periods of creation of the poems, and would clarify the issue of the dates of the narrator’s life.
One of the most detailed stories about Homer's development as a poet comes from the pen of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, whom Cicero called “the father of history.” According to the ancient historian, the poet was named Melesigenes at birth. He lived with his mother in Smyrna, where he became a student of the owner of the school, Femius. Melesigenes was very smart and well versed in science.
The teacher died, leaving his best pupil to go to school. After working as a mentor for some time, Melesigenes decided to deepen his knowledge of the world. A man named Mentes, who was from the island of Lefkada, volunteered to help him. Melesigenes closed the school and went on a sea voyage on a friend’s ship to see new cities and countries.
Poet Homer During his travels, the former teacher collected stories, legends, and asked about the customs of local peoples. Arriving in Ithaca, Melesigenes felt unwell. Mentes left his companion under the supervision of a reliable person and sailed to his homeland. Melesigenes set off on his further journey on foot. Along the way, he recited stories he had collected during his travels.
According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the storyteller in the city of Colophon finally went blind. There he took a new name for himself. Modern researchers tend to question the story told by Herodotus, as well as the writings of other ancient authors about the life of Homer.
In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf, in the preface to the publication of the text of the ancient Greek storyteller’s poems, put forward a theory 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.
Busts of Homer Homer composed songs, hymns, and musical epics that formed the basis of the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Wolf, the finished form of the poem was achieved thanks to other authors. Since then, scholars of Homer have been divided into two camps: “analysts” support Wolff’s theory, and “unitarians” adhere to the strict unity of the epic.
Some researchers of Homer's work say that the poet was sighted. 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, speaks in favor of the narrator’s absence of illness. 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.
Blind Homer with a guide. Artist William Bouguereau Ancient biographers drew an accurate portrait of the blind Homer in their works, but they composed their works many centuries after the poet’s death. Since no reliable data about the poet’s life has been preserved, the interpretation of ancient biographers may not have been entirely correct. This version is supported by the fact that all biographies contain fictitious events involving mythical characters.
Surviving ancient evidence suggests that in antiquity, Homer's writings were considered a source of wisdom. The poems provided knowledge regarding all spheres of life - from universal morality to the basics of military art.
Plutarch wrote that the great commander always kept a copy of the Iliad with him. Greek children were taught to read from the Odyssey, and some passages from the works of Homer were prescribed by Pythagorean philosophers as a means to correct the soul.
Illustration for the Iliad Homer is considered the author of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey. The storyteller could be the creator of the comic poem "Margate" and the "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”, “Ethiopida”, “The Lesser 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.
There is a legend that describes the death of Homer. In his 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 didn’t 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 were catching lice, not fish. Homer was so frustrated 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 acuity.
