“Rage- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was done.”
Opening lines of Homer’s Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles 1990
Tradition says that a great blind poet named Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, the epic poems about the Trojan War and its aftermath. Inside St. Mark’s church in Venice lies the oldest complete version of the Iliad, a hand written manuscript created about AD 900. Before that, we have partial manuscripts and written references to poetry by Homer. The earliest of those date from the 6th Century B.C. But Homer’s poetry was created even further back in time. Repetitions and formulas in the poems suggest that they were orally composed in the beginning. Before writing was generally known among Greeks, poets recited and sang stories for audiences at the courts of city leaders and at festivals. A poet could actually improvise a tale in the six-beat rhythm of Greek verse if he knew the plot of his story, the themes and characters, and had descriptive formulas in mind such as “the wine dark sea” or “Hector, breaker of horses.”
Could “Homer” really be a group of poets whose works on the theme of Troy were collected? Perhaps; but no one can agree on where the boundaries of each original poem might be. The Iliad especially is knit together in many ways. Although there are many inconsistencies in the work, its main dramatic action is clear and unified, suggesting a guiding hand. It seems likely then that Homer was one magnificent oral poet, who gathered the best of the Troy stories, reworked them, and pulled them together. Yet if Homer was strictly an oral poet, how could he keep such long works as the Iliad in his head? It would take days to recite all of the Iliad or the Odyssey! It is now thought that Homer worked some time between 725 and 675 B.C., when the alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians was just coming into use among the Greeks. It seems likely that writing helped Homer in collecting and composing. Writing out the long epics of Troy could well have been the work of a lifetime. |
We search for Troy because of Homer. Homer’s Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy by an army of Greeks … under the great king Agamemnon, is the wellspring of Western literature. The characters resonate still, instantly recognizable in our imaginations — Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector, Helen, Paris, Priam, and Hecuba. It is the very first poem that is distinctly European. Outside of religion, it is one of our oldest stories." |
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'In the small hours of the night, the flocks move quietly over the hills from Troy until they reach Besik. Unobserved, the shepherd counts the campfires on the beach below, looking for new arrivals. Long before dawn, the princes in the citadel at Troy have word: another ship of foreigners bound for the Dardanelles has been driven into Besik Bay. Bronze Age ships carried no more than 50 rowers. Appearing without warning, a war party from the citadel could overpower them easily. Perhaps their leader took the ship’s master aside. Favorable winds might not come for some time, the armed prince might have said. ‘You could be our guest for months. Your ship has many rich things on board. Perhaps you’d like to give us something.’ Extortion or ‘dockage’ fee, the message was clear to the sailors'
-John Fleischman, Smithsonian
impossibilities |
possibilities |
The logistics of a 10 year long war in ancient times seems highly improbable. The reality may mean the Trojan War was no single siege of 10 years because the whole concept is a….
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Some possibilities though for the tradition of the Trojan War to have been formed could be:
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'As soon as I had learnt to speak, my father related to me the great deeds of the Homeric heroes. I loved these stories; they enchanted me and transported me with the highest enthusiasm.'
- Heinrich Schliemann
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
Marlow, The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus, scene xiv.
Read the two articles to the right and summarise their ideas concerning women in Homer.
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'Considering the ravages of time which all but obliterated the rest of Greek epics, we should remember how great a miracle it is that we have any Homer at all.' - Mark Damen, 2004