Homeric Question facts for kids
The Homeric Question is a big debate about the ancient Greek poet Homer. People wonder: Who was Homer? Did he really write the famous epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey? And how were these poems created? This discussion started a long time ago in ancient Greece. It became a very popular topic among scholars in the 1800s and continues today.
The main questions in the Homeric Question are:
- Who was Homer?
- Were the Iliad and the Odyssey written by one person or many?
- When, where, and how were these amazing poems put together?
- How true are the stories told in the Homeric poems?
- How old are the oldest parts of Homer's poetry that we can be sure about?
Contents
How the Stories Were Told
Many experts, like Isaac Casaubon and Richard Bentley, thought that the Homeric poems were first told out loud. They believed the stories were not written down right away. This idea became very popular after Milman Parry did important research.
Today, most experts agree that the poems we have, whether Homer wrote them or not, came from an oral tradition. This means the stories were passed down by word of mouth for many generations. Singers, called aoidoi (ah-OY-doy), would perform these long poems.
If you look closely at the Iliad and Odyssey, you'll see many repeated phrases and even whole lines. This suggests the poems were created using a method called oral-formulaic composition. The poet would use memorized phrases and lines to compose the story on the spot. Milman Parry and Albert Lord explained that this way of telling stories is common in cultures that don't use writing much. The key words here are "oral" (spoken) and "traditional" (passed down).
Many scholars think that the Iliad and Odyssey were polished and made into their final form starting around 800 BC. This process respected the oral tradition. Albert Lord said that oral poets, like Homer, often changed their stories a little each time they performed them. So, Homer might have used parts from other bards, but he made the poems his own when he performed them.
In 1960, Albert Lord's book The Singer of Tales showed how oral-formulaic theory could be used to study texts like the Iliad and Odyssey. This book greatly influenced how scholars looked at Homer.
Some scholars, like Geoffrey Kirk, wondered if the way Serbian epic poetry was created (which Lord studied) was exactly like how Homeric epics were made. Kirk thought Homeric poems gave the singer more freedom to choose words.
Later, Eric A. Havelock suggested that these oral stories helped ancient Greeks remember important cultural knowledge. Adam Parry believed there was a very skilled oral poet who could create detailed characters within the traditional stories.
The name "Homer" itself is interesting. It's the same as the Greek word for "hostage." Some think his name came from a group of poets called the Homeridae, meaning "sons of hostages." These people might have been trusted to remember epic poetry because they weren't sent to war.
When Were the Poems Written?
It's a big debate exactly when these poems were written down. The traditional idea is that a singer told the poem to a writer around the 6th century BC or even earlier. Ancient sources all agree that Peisistratus, a ruler of Athens, was the first to write down Homer's poems and arrange them as we read them today.
However, some modern scholars, like Gregory Nagy, believe that the final, fixed versions of the Homeric poems didn't exist until much later. They think editors in Alexandria (a city in ancient Egypt) put them together between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC.
The modern debate really started with Friedrich August Wolf in 1795. He argued that writing was not common when Homer lived. Wolf believed the poems were passed down by singers called Rhapsodists. He concluded that the Iliad and Odyssey could not have been composed in their current long form without writing. He thought they were a collection of shorter songs that were only put together into epic poems about 500 years after they were first created.
This idea is made more complicated by a period called the "Greek Dark Ages" (about 1100 to 750 BC). This time came after the Bronze Age when Homer's Trojan War is set. The Iliad was likely composed right after this Dark Age.
There's also a debate about whether the Iliad and Odyssey were written at different times. Some think the Odyssey was composed later than the Iliad. This is partly because the poems describe the Phoenicians differently. In the Iliad, Phoenicians are known for detailed metalwork. But in the Odyssey, they are called "tricksters." This change in how Greeks viewed Phoenicians happened between the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Who Was Homer?
Wolf's ideas were very powerful and changed how people thought about Homer. The real debate about Homer didn't fully begin until after Wolf died in 1824.
One of the first to challenge Wolf was Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch. He argued that writing must have existed before Peisistratus. He also studied how the Homeric poems were put together.
Another scholar, Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, studied other epic poems about the Trojan War. Wolf had argued that if these other poets knew the Iliad and Odyssey, they would have copied their unified structure. Welcker showed that the Homeric poems did influence the form and content of later epic poetry.
So, a group of scholars formed who believed that the Iliad and Odyssey were made from older songs. They also thought some parts were added later. But they believed a great poet in ancient times was responsible for the main structure. They weren't sure if the two epics were by the same author.
Karl Lachmann, in the 1830s and 1840s, suggested that the Iliad was made up of sixteen separate songs. He thought these were later expanded and put in order by Peisistratus. For example, he believed the first book of the Iliad was originally a short song about Achilles' anger, with other parts added later.
New methods, like stylometry, are now used to study the poems. Stylometry uses computers and statistics to look at how often words, parts of speech, and even letters are used. One study by Dietmar Najock showed that the Iliad and Odyssey are very consistent inside themselves. Another study by Stephan Vonfelt highlighted how unified Homer's works are compared to those of another ancient poet, Hesiod. These studies suggest the poems might have a single author, keeping the debate open.
What Scholars Think Today
Most scholars today agree on a few things about the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even if they disagree on other points, they generally believe that the two poems were not written by the same author. This is because of differences in how the stories are told, the ideas about gods, the language used, and the way places are described. Also, some parts of the Odyssey seem to copy parts of the Iliad.
Nearly all scholars agree that both the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems. This means each poem has a clear overall plan and isn't just a collection of unrelated songs. It's also generally accepted that each poem was mostly written by one author. This author probably used a lot of older oral traditions. Most scholars also agree that the "Doloneia" (a specific part) in Book X of the Iliad was added later by a different poet.
Some ancient scholars thought Homer saw the Trojan War himself. Others thought he lived up to 500 years later. Today, scholars still debate when the poems were written down. Because the stories were told orally for a long time, it's hard to find an exact date. However, "Homer's date" usually refers to when the oral stories became written texts.
Richard Janko, using language analysis, suggests both poems were written in the 8th century BC. Barry B. Powell dates them between 800 and 750 BC. He bases this on what Herodotus (who lived in the 5th century BC) said about Homer living 400 years before him. Powell also notes that the poems don't mention certain battle tactics or burial customs that came later.
On the other hand, scholars like Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a tradition that kept changing and growing. He thinks it didn't fully stop changing until the middle of the 2nd century BC. Martin Litchfield West believes the Iliad was written around 660-650 BC, and the Odyssey a generation later. He also thinks parts of the Iliad show knowledge of historical events from the 7th century BC, like the destruction of Babylon in 689 BC.
See also
