Homer and History

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Homer and History

• The Odyssey and Ancient Greek Culture

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The Homer Question!
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Who Was Homer?

• The Greeks and Romans have always thought that
  the legendary poet Homer was the greatest author
  ever.
• Yet, we know so very little about the man (or
  men?) who composed the Iliad or the Odyssey.

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From the Iliad
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What We Do Know!

• On an average night in the late Greek Dark Ages,
  a community, probably the wealthiest people,
  would settle in for an evening's entertainment.
  The professional story-teller, or Bard would
  sing the stories of the Trojan War and its
  heroes.
• These songs would be the Greek equivalent of a
  mini-series, for the stories were so long that
  they would take days to complete.

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Conquest of Troy
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The Importance of the Bard

• These stories probably began as short tales of
  isolated events and heroes eventually a
  profession of story-telling was
  establishedclassical scholars call this new
  professional a "bard." This new professional
  began combining the stories into larger
  narratives.
• By the end of the Greek Dark Ages, these bards or
  story-tellers were probably the cultural center
  of Greek society.

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The Bard Priest of Culture
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The Greatest Bard?

• The Greeks believed that the greatest of these
  story-tellers was a blind man named Homer, and
  that he sung ten epic poems about the Trojan War
  of which only two have survived.
• These two are called the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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Homer
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The Greatest Bard?

• Many classicists believe that the two surviving
  Homeric epics were in fact composed by several
  individuals in the absence of any evidence to
  the contrary however, most classicists accept the
  overall Greek idea of a single author.

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The Importance of the Homeric Poems

• The Greeks in general regard Homer's two epics as
  the highest cultural achievement of their people,
  the defining moment in Greek culture which set
  the basic Greek character in stone.
• Throughout antiquity, both in Greece and Rome,
  everything tended to be compared to these two
  works events in history made sense when put in
  the light of the events narrated in these two
  works.

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The Acropolis
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The Importance of the Homeric Poems (Cont)

• As a result, then, these two epics are the focal
  point of Greek values and the Greek world view
  despite all its evolution and permutations
  through the centuries following their
  composition.
• It would not be hasty to regard the Homeric poems
  as the single most important texts in Greek
  culture, or indeed (along with a very few texts)
  that of Western civilization, which stands upon
  the achievements and ideas of ancient Greece.

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Parthenon
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Why study the Odyssey?

• Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are a major part of
  ancient history, especially that of Ancient
  Greece.
• Ancient Greek history provides a cornerstone for
  all Western political, cultural, artistic, and
  social reality.
• Further, the Iliad and the Odyssey are believed
  to have been a major part of a young Greek's
  education. They remain a part the education of
  tens of millions of adolescents every year.

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Homers Odysseys Influences are many
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Stories, Poetry, and Writing are the biggest
beneficiaries and descendants of Homer (monomyth
anyone?)

• Get out your Glossary of Literary Terms and
  write in these poetic elements that are traceable
  back to Homer
• Epic Similes
• Homeric Epithet
• Poetic meter
• Poetic rhythm

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Art Most of what the greatest renaissance
artists did to revive and save our civilization
was simply to re-create and re-imagine the
ancient Greeks. Were still doing that
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Ethics ( these stories teach the greeks, and, as
a consequence, us how to live).
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Gender even gets rolled up in this. The story
asks What makes a man a man? A woman a woman?
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Minivans!
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Television Movies