Ancient accounts of Homer
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Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, and ten biographies of Homer, often referred to as Lives.
Date of Homer
Establishing an accurate date for Homer's life presents significant difficulties. No documentary record of the man's life is known to have existed other than his writings of the Odyssey, as well as the Iliad. All accounts are based on tradition. Only one explicit date exists. HerodotusHerodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
maintains that Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 BC. Herodotus admits that this is his own opinion. He was not sure of the dates of some of the poets believed in his time to have been earlier, but he relies on the priestess of Dodona
Dodona
Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle,...
in asserting that they were actually later. Modern opinion is that the priestess was right; the poets were later.
A less opinionated indirect date does exist. Artemon of Clazomenae
Clazomenae
Klazomenai was an ancient Greek city of Ionia and a member of the Ionian Dodecapolis , it was one of the first cities to issue silver coinage.-Location:Klazomenai is located in modern Urla on the western coast of...
, an annalist, gives Arctinus of Miletus
Arctinus of Miletus
Arctinus of Miletus or Arctinus Milesius was a Greek epic poet whose reputation is purely legendary, as none of his works survive. Traditionally dated between 775 BC and 741 BC, he was said to have been a pupil of Homer. Phaenias of Eresus placed him in the 7th century BC and claimed that he was...
, a pupil of Homer, a birth date of 744 BC. Received opinion generally dates him approximately between 750 and 700 BC.
The lives and the epigrams
Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)
The Life of Homer — its unknown author is referred to as Pseudo-Herodotus — is one among several ancient biographies of the Greek epic poet, Homer...
is written in the Ionic dialect, and claims to be the work of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious (Pseudo-Herodotus). In all probability it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries; namely, the 2nd century AD. The other lives are certainly not more ancient.
The lives preserve some curious short poems or fragments of verse attributed to Homer, the so-called Epigrams, which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. They are numbered as they appear in Pseudo-Herodotus. These are easily recognized as popular rhymes, a form of folklore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s.
In the Homeric epigrams the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities, for example, Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
and Cyme
Cyme (Aeolis)
Cyme was an Aeol city in Aeolis close to the kingdom of Lydia. The Aeolians regarded Cyme as the largest and most important of their twelve cities, which were located on the coastline of Asia Minor...
, Erythrae
Erythrae
Erythrae or Erythrai later Litri, was one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor, situated 22 km north-east of the port of Cyssus , on a small peninsula stretching into the Bay of Erythrae, at an equal distance from the mountains Mimas and Corycus, and directly opposite the island of Chios...
, and Mt Ida; others relate to certain trades or occupations: potters, sailors, fishermen, goat herds, etc. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when Homer was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse.
Again, comparing the epigrams with the legends and anecdotes told in the Lives of Homer, one can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these Lives were derived. Thus Epigram 4 mentions a blind poet, a native of Aeolian Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
, through which flows the water of the sacred Meles
River Meles
The river Meles is a stream charged with history and famous in literature, especially by virtue of being associated in a common and consistent tradition with Homer's birth and works, and which flowed by the ancient city of Smyrna, and a namesake of which flows through the present-day metropolitan...
. Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean Life, the birth of Homer, named Son of the Meles to conceal a scandalous affair between his mother and an older man who had been appointed her guardian. The epithet Aeolian implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus, Smyrna became Ionian about 688 BC. Naturally the Ionians had their own version of the story, a version which made Homer come out with the first Athenian colonists.
The minor poems
The same line of argument may be extended to the HymnsHomeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three anonymous Ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter—dactylic hexameter—as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect...
, and even to the works of the so-called Cyclic poets
Cyclic Poets
Cyclic Poets is a shorthand term for the early Greek epic poets, approximate contemporaries of Homer. We know no more about these poets than we know about Homer, but modern scholars regard them as having composed orally, as did Homer. In the classical period, surviving early epic poems were...
, the lost early epics some of which formed the Epic Cycle and Theban Cycle
Theban Cycle
The Theban Cycle is a collection of four lost epics of ancient Greek literature which related the mythical history of the Boeotian city of Thebes...
. Thus:
- The hymn to the Delian ApolloApolloApollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks who is the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, "the blind man that dwells in rocky ChiosChiosChios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come." ThucydidesThucydidesThucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
, who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian. - The MargitesMargitesThe Margites, a comic mock-epic of Ancient Greece,is about an idiot named "Margites" who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him...
, a humorous poem which kept its ground as the reputed work of Homer down to the time of AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, began with the words, "There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo." Hence doubtless the claim of Colophon to be the native city of Homer, a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian AntimachusAntimachusAntimachus, of Colophon or Claros, Greek poet and grammarian, flourished about 400 BC.Scarcely anything is known of his life. His poetical efforts were not generally appreciated, although he received encouragement from his younger contemporary Plato .His chief works were: an epic Thebais, an...
. - The poem called the Cypria was said to have been given by Homer to his son-in-law Stasinus of Cyprus as dowry. The connection with CyprusCyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
appears further in the predominance given in the poem to AphroditeAphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
. - The Little IliadLittle IliadThe Little Iliad is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the Little Iliad comes chronologically after that of the Aethiopis, and is followed by that of the...
and the PhocaisPhocaisThe Phocais was an ancient Greek epic widely attributed to Homer. In the Life of Homer, a biography of Homer falsely attributed to Herodotus, it was said to have been written while Homer lived at Phocaea with a man named Thestorides; however, whether Thestorides actually existed and where he lived...
, according to the pseudo-Herodotean lifeLife of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)The Life of Homer — its unknown author is referred to as Pseudo-Herodotus — is one among several ancient biographies of the Greek epic poet, Homer...
, were composed by Homer when he lived at PhocaeaPhocaeaPhocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...
with a certain ThestoridesThestorides of PhocaeaThestorides of Phocaea was a legendary or semi-legendary early Greek poet, one of those to whom the epic Little Iliad was ascribed.Thestorides figures as a major character in the fictional Life of Homer fraudulently ascribed to Herodotus...
, who carried them off to Chios and there gained fame by reciting them as his own. The name Thestorides occurs in Epigram 5. - A similar story was told about the poem called the Capture of Oechalia, the subject of which was one of the exploits of HeraclesHeraclesHeracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
. It passed under the name of Creophylus of Samos, a friend or (as some said) a son-in-law of Homer, and was sometimes said to have been given to Creophylus by Homer in return for hospitality. - Finally, the ThebaidThebaid (Greek poem)The Thebaid or Thebais is an Ancient Greek epic poem of uncertain authorship sometimes attributed by early writers to Homer. It told the story of the war between the brothers Eteocles and Polynices, and was regarded as forming part of a Theban Cycle. Only fragments of the text...
was confidently counted as the work of Homer. As to the EpigoniEpigoni (epic)Epigoni was an early Greek epic, a sequel to the Thebaid and therefore grouped in the Theban cycle. Some ancient authors seem to have considered it a part of the Thebaid and not a separate poem....
, which carried on the Theban story, there was less certainty.
These indications render it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands grew up after his poems had become known and famous, especially in the new and flourishing colonies of Aeolis and Ionia. The contention for Homer, in short, began at a time when his real history was lost, and he had become a sort of mythical figure, an anonymous hero, or personification of a great school of poetry.
Arctinus of Miletus
An interesting confirmation of this view from the negative side is furnished by the city which ranked as chief among the Asiatic colonies of Greece, namely, MiletusMiletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
. No legend claims for Miletus even a visit from Homer, or a share in the authorship of any Homeric poem. Yet Arctinus of Miletus
Arctinus of Miletus
Arctinus of Miletus or Arctinus Milesius was a Greek epic poet whose reputation is purely legendary, as none of his works survive. Traditionally dated between 775 BC and 741 BC, he was said to have been a pupil of Homer. Phaenias of Eresus placed him in the 7th century BC and claimed that he was...
was said to have been a disciple of Homer, and was certainly one of the earliest and most considerable of the Cyclic poets. His Aethiopis was composed as a sequel to the Iliad; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the Iliad as his model. Yet in his case we find no trace of the disputed authorship which is so common with other Cyclic poems. How has this come about? Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the name of Homer such epics as the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Taking of Oechalia and the Phocais? The most obvious account of the matter is that Arctinus was never so far forgotten that his poems became the subject of dispute. We seem through him to obtain a glimpse of an early post-Homeric age in Ionia, when the immediate disciples and successors of Homer were distinct figures in a trustworthy tradition when they had not yet merged their individuality in the legendary Homer of the Epic Cycle.
See also
- HomerHomerIn the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
- Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)The Life of Homer — its unknown author is referred to as Pseudo-Herodotus — is one among several ancient biographies of the Greek epic poet, Homer...