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In their greatest moments of epic action, the heroes of Homeric poetry show their true nature. They are larger than life, superhuman, especially in their interactions with gods._Not only in Greek epics but also in cognate epics like the Indic Mahābhārata, the superhuman status of heroes depends on their special relationship with divinity and with the sacred (EH §§70-73). Even the Ithaca of Odysseus is real only to the extent that it was recognized as real by those who heard epics about Odysseus over time.
The archaic lyric poetry is narrative storytelling of heroes and myths and was always created with the purpose of teaching morals and beliefs to society. Undeniably, the most famous and well-preserved poetry from the era was Homer’s, in particular, his Iliad. Plato’s expression illustrates the impact Homer had not only during his time but the long-standing impact his work would garner centuries after his death. This demonstrates how the Iliad was impactful for so long as a formative text for the Ancient Greeks to be taught socio-cultural customs and beliefs.
Is Odysseus An Epic Hero?
Homer is the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two hugely influential epic poems of ancient Greece. If Homer did in fact compose the works, he is one of the greatest literary artists in the world, and, through these poems, he affected Western standards and ideas. In Ancient Greece, many wonderfully talented and intelligent people have been created and shaped to become what they are known as now but, of all the people to come out of Greece, the most famous of all was Homer. Homer has an unknown history and little known early life which has had many historians scrambling to know.
Virtually every biographical aspect ascribed to Homer is derived entirely from his poems. Homer is thought to have been blind, based solely on a character in The Odyssey, a blind poet/minstrel called Demodokos. A long disquisition on how Demodokos was welcomed into a gathering and regaled the audience with music and epic tales of conflict and heroes to much praise has been interpreted as Homer’s hint as to what his own life was like. As a result, many busts and statues have been carved of Homer with thick curly hair and beard and sightless eyes. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Peisistratos (died 528/7 BC), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".
The Life of the Blind Bard
It does not follow, however, that the myths conveyed by the poetry of Homer and Hesiod are consistently older than the myths conveyed by the poetry of lyric. In fact, the traditions of Greek lyric are in many ways older than the traditions of Greek epic, and the myths conveyed by epic are in many ways newer than the myths conveyed by lyric. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures.
The archaeological evidence is supplemented by the important testimony of the so-called Mycenaean Linear B tablets, the earliest attestation of the Greek language in writing . Homer's name will always be linked with the Trojan War because Homer wrote about the conflict between Greeks and Trojans, known as the Trojan War, and the return voyages of the Greek leaders. He is credited with telling the whole story of the Trojan War, but that is false. There were plenty of other writers of what is called the "epic cycle" who contributed details not found in Homer. The name "Homer," which is an unusual one for the time, is thought to mean either "blind" or "captive".
Dramatic Irony In The Odyssey Analysis
This group is composed of Odysseus and Ajax, who are the other two delegates besides Phoenix; the two heralds who accompany the three delegates; Achilles himself; and Patroklos. Inside the story told by Phoenix, the comrades who approach Meleager as delegates are the philtatoi, that is, those persons who are ‘nearest and dearest’ to the hero (IX 585–587). So, from the short-range perspective of Phoenix as the narrator of the ainos about Meleager, the three comrades who approach Achilles as delegates must be the persons who are nearest and dearest to him. From the long-range perspective of the master Narrator, however, it is not Phoenix and the two other delegates but Patroklos who must be nearest and dearest to Achilles. Later on in the Iliad, after Patroklos is killed in battle, Achilles recognizes this hero as the one who was all along the philtatos, the ‘nearest and dearest’ of them all (XVII 411, 655; BA 6§15). A multiplicity of ‘false’ myths is being contrasted here with a singular master myth described as logos ‘wording’ that is alēthēs ‘true’.
Even if The Iliad itself seems unfamiliar, the story of the siege of Troy, the Trojan War and Paris’ kidnapping of Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, are all familiar characters or scenarios. Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. The relationship of Odysseus and Calypso shows that the nostos of the hero is not only a ‘homecoming’ but also, more basically, a ‘return’. That is, the nostos of the hero is not only a return to Ithaca but also, in a mystical sense, a return to light and life .
The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance. Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.
Although Odysseus is credited with the epic feat of destroying the city of Troy, as the Odyssey proclaims at the very beginning , his kleos in that epic does not and cannot depend on the story of Troy. By contrast, although Achilles is never credited with the destruction of Troy, since he is killed well before that event takes place, his kleos nonetheless depends on the story of Troy. The name of the Iliad, which equates itself with the kleos of Achilles, means literally ‘the song of Ilion’, that is, the song of Troy (EH §49).
hērōōn ‘the glories of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524–525). It is a story about the hero Meleager and his anger against his people, parallel to the framing story about the hero Achilles and his anger against his own people, the Achaeans . So the omniscient Muses are goddesses of total recall, and their absolute power of recall is expressed by an active form of the verb mnē‑ in the sense of ‘remind’ . The master Narrator of the Iliad receives the same absolute power of total recall when he prays to the goddesses to tell him everything about the Achaean forces that sailed to Troy (II 484, 491–492). The expression klea andrōn, which I have translated here as ‘glories of men ’, applies not only to the epic story about Meleager . On the basis of his comparative analysis, Parry found that oral poetry was not restricted to epic, which had seemed, at first, to be the prototypical poetic genre in the prehistory of Greek literature.
That is the short-range intention of Phoenix as a narrator narrating within the master Narration that is the Iliad. But the long-range intention of the master Narrator is quite different from the short-range intention of Phoenix. The master Narrative shows that the embedded narrative of Phoenix was misguided – that is, misguided by hindsight. If Achilles had accepted the offer of Agamemnon, as Phoenix had intended, this acceptance would have undermined the epic reputation of Achilles (HQ 142–143). While some scholars believe Homer is solely responsible, others claim that the poems were retold and revised by numerous people. This theory has led to various explanations for the use of the word Homer.
Just as the framing epic about the anger of Achilles is technically a speech-act, a muthos, so too is the framed epic about the anger of Meleager. Conversely, just as the framed epic about Meleager is a poetic recollection of the klea ‘glories’ of heroes of the past, so too is the framing epic about Achilles. That framing epic, which is the Iliad, is a poetic recollection by the Muse whom the master Narrator invokes to sing the story of the anger of Achilles . As the narrator of a framed epic, Phoenix does not have to invoke the goddesses of memory, the Muses, since the Narrator of the framing epic has already invoked them for him. Homer’s Iliad tells a modern audience much about the lives of the Ancient Greeks and the text’s survival for a prolonged period of time after its original conception demonstrates the extent to which memory was a vital belief and social custom of the Ancient Greeks. Audiences are also introduced to the archetype of the hero and how that manifests in a patriotic but collective group when mythologizing is used during times of strife to raise morale in people.
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