Homer, the Epic, and Oral Poetry

Amanda Hopkins

[Citation details: Amanda Hopkins, ‘Homer, the Epic, and Oral Poetry.’ Transcript of lecture for The

Epic Tradition course, University of Warwick, Autumn 2005/2006.]

Introduction [SLIDE 1]

Various questions may already have occurred to you as you begin this course in The Epic

Tradition. What does ‘the epic tradition’ mean? Why are you asked to read – in translation

– texts that are thousands of years old, from ancient Greece and Rome? What have Homer

and Virgil to do with English literature?

There are texts older than Homer: The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, is a Sumerian text which

predates Homer by some 1,500 years (and is well worth reading: there are translations). But, from the

viewpoint of the western world, Homer’s poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, comprise the earliest epic

literature. We are talking ‘tradition’ here; and epic literature, one of the earliest of literary traditions,

influences everything that comes after it. The Homeric texts were studied in ancient Greece and Rome;

Homer influenced the Roman poet Virgil; and both Homer and Virgil influenced western literature and

culture, reemerging (sooner in the case of Virgil, later for Homer) after the European Dark Ages to be

taught again in schools and universities, and to exert an enormous influence on medieval, renaissance

and early modern literature. This influence still pervades literature in the modern period, as we shall see

when we examine Derek Walcott’s Omeros. To return the focus to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey are

the most frequently translated works in the world after the Bible (Steiner, 2004: 364): to take the

nineteenth century as example, more than 25 new translations appeared between 1800 and 1860, and 64

more were published between 1860 and 1900 (Porter, 2004: 338, n. 71). Many of these attempt the

hexameter form, the original metrical form of Homer’s epics. It’s worth noting at this point that many

of the terms we use in analysing modern English poetry have been inherited from the Ancient Greek.

The Identity of Homer

It is generally agreed that the Iliad and the Odyssey date from sometime in the eighth century BC. The

epics attracted commentary early on, but the earliest commentators were more interested in the text than

in the identity of the poet. Then, around the last third of the sixth century BC, Homer began to be named

and discussed frequently (West, 1999: 377). When I say ‘named’, however, I’m identifying part of our

first Homeric problem, one of a series of issues concerning the poems, the method of their composition

and their authorship that together are known as the ‘Homeric Question’.

Who was Homer? There’s no ‘signature’ in the texts, there’s nothing to say ‘Homer composed this’.

Slide 1

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He was depicted in busts in both the ancient Greek and Roman eras [SLIDES 2 & 3],

but these are just artists’ impressions. Scholars assume, and by and large have always

assumed, that Homer was a man – though Samuel Butler and Robert Graves both

suggested that the Odyssey might have been composed by a woman. We cannot

determine whether there was, in fact, a single composer of the two epics, or a different composer of each

poem, or whether many poets were involved. Nineteenth-century scholars were divided into two camps

about the creation of the Homeric epics, the so-called ‘Unitarians’, who were convinced that had been

a single poetic genius behind the two poems, and the ‘Analysts’, who theorised that the epics had been

amassed from many shorter tales by something like an editorial committee (Jones 2003: 15). The

Homeric Question has kept classicists in work for many years now, and one recently declared that ‘Most

scholars nowadays consider that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of different authors’ (West, 1999:

364), although, for most readers, the construct ‘Homer’ remains a convenient identifier.

Any attempt to determine Homer’s identity throws up more questions than answers, beginning with

the origins of the name itself [SLIDE 4]: (Omhroq [Homeros] is not a traditional Greek name

(West, 1999: 366). M. L. West notes that, for ancient scholars, the closest word to homeros

was Ímhra [homera], which suggests the meaning ‘hostage’. The ancient historian Ephorus,

however, who came from Cyme and who wanted Homer to be his compatriot, insisted that Ímhroq

[homeros] was a Cymean word meaning ‘blind’ (West 1999: 367). In tradition, Homer certainly became

the archetype of the figure of the blind poet, communing with his muse; although Andrew Dalby suggests

that this is because, in the Odyssey, the singer Demodokos is depicted as blind: ‘This is probably why

Homer was traditionally said to be blind, a legend earliest expressed in a Hymn to Apollo, composed in

the sixth century (if not before) in the hexameter of epic’ (1995: 270). As the slides show, Homer was

depicted as blind in classical sculpture.

So, in relation to the identity of Homer, the only thing that can definitely be said about

him is that this [SLIDE 5] isn’t he!

Epic Poetry

Leaving aside the problem of Homer’s identity, we can move to examining what we have in front of us:

the texts. What is epic poetry? The Homeric epics are set against the backdrop of the Trojan War, but

are not primarily about the Trojan War [SLIDE 6]. As Ruth Scodel points out, Homer

demands only basic knowledge of the Trojan War: there is no need for much external

information (Scodel 2004: 48). The Iliad, which covers some fifty days in the final year of

the war, declares its subject clearly in its first line: ‘Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son

Achilleus’ and goes on to an overview of its repercussions. The Odyssey’s subject takes

Slide 2 Slide 3

Slide 5

Slide 4

Slide 6: Map(Mount

Olympos, Troy,Mykenai, Pylos,

Ithaka)

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longer to summarise:

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was drivenfar journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions (Odyssey 1.1-5)

In fact, the audience has to wait another fifteen lines before the ‘man of many ways’, Odysseus, is named.

So the epics are about the anger of Achilleus and the homecoming of Odysseus, not about the Trojan

War. So who are Achilleus and Odysseus? They are heroes: great men, warriors, who perform great

deeds. Perhaps at this point ‘great’ should be qualified, since Achilleus’ anger seems like petulance at

times and results in a good many Achaian deaths, including that of his closest friend, Patroklos; what

‘great’ means in this context is ‘worthy of being commemorated’. As Peter Jones puts it: ‘The anger of

Achilles has widespread implications among humans on earth and gods on Olympus, fit subject for a

great epic’ (2003: 12). But the central character, the main protagonist, of an epic, a Homeric epic in

particular, is not necessarily the only ‘hero’, as we think of the term now; any warrior, from either side,

who is brave and who carries out great deeds is a hero, so the Iliad and the Odyssey in fact feature many

heroes.

The other chief characters in epic are the immortal gods. Although the audience of the recent film

Troy might not realise it, the existence of the gods, and the interaction between mortal and immortal, are

crucial to epic. On both sides of the Trojan War, the relationship between men and gods is shown to be

vital. The action of the Iliad begins with Agamemnon’s refusal to return the captured daughter of a

priest, who prays to Apollo for help. Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks until Agamemnon is

forced to reconsider and free the girl. Homer refers to the Trojan temples to Apollo and Athene, and

describes ‘a procession to present a new garment to a cult statue (6.269-73, 293-311)’ (Osborne 2004:

214); the Achaians are presented preparing ritual feasts, with offerings to the gods, and there are altars

at the centre of the Greek camp (11.807-8) (Osborne 2004: 215). The gods are very much a part of

everyday life.

The gods lead strangely empty lives, having little to do apparently but to influence and interfere in

human matters; they oppose each other on either side of the Trojan War, sometimes watching, at other

times arriving on the battlefield itself in order to influence events. The presentation of the immortal

world is not without its difficulties. The gods are presented as ‘like men’, in a family (Jones 2003: 27),

and they are shown rowing and taking sides. As Emily Kearns observes, ‘the Homeric poems are

chronologically the first testimony we have to Greek perceptions of the Gods [sic]’; but the presentation

of the interaction between the gods, mainly in the form of quarrels and partisanship, was considered

problematic as long ago as the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC (Kearns 2004: 70).

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Heroes often have a divine heritage, a god for a father or a goddess for a mother: Achilleus, for

example, is the son of the goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus; Aineias, who will later become the hero

of Virgil’s Aeneid, is the son of Aphrodite and thus the grandson of Zeus himself. A hero may be

sponsored by a god unrelated to him: Odysseus, for example, has mortal parents, but the goddess Athene

has a special regard for him and his family; she also favours the full-blood mortal Diomedes.

Divine parentage, however, does not bring immortality to the hero; but it drives heroes to be heroes,

to become worthy of the only kind of immortality possible for a hero: commemoration down the years

in the mouths of poets. Heroes are certainly presented as superhuman – in strength, courage, sometimes

in intelligence – and, for the audience, they stand between the gods and ‘the weaker race that has come

after them’ (Clarke, 2004: 80). In a speech in book 12 of the Iliad (12.315-28), the doomed hero

Sarpedon, son of Zeus, defines the hero’s role: there is no need, he says, to be heroic if you are immortal;

but since men are mortal, the call to fame is imperative. Fame or reputation, cl2oq [kleos] in Greek, is

‘the perpetuation of one’s name’ (Hunter 2004: 239), what Michael Clarke describes as ‘a kind of

surrogate immortality’ (Clarke 2004: 78). Many heroes win fame through an aristeia, a time in battle

when, usually supported by an immortal, they are unstoppably great. Status, tim3 [time)] is also important:

a hero like Achilleus wins fame in battle, but he must also defend his social status in the public eye,

hence his anger at Agamemnon’s treatment of him in Iliad 1.

Oral Poetry

Later epics, Virgil’s Aeneid, for example, were composed in writing; but the nature of Homeric poetry

is not so simply defined. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, obviously, have survived to the modern world in

writing; but they both derive from oral transmission; because of this it is not easy to piece together the

precise nature of their composition. Homer is thought to have composed the epics around c.700BC, and

writing, having been lost and then rediscovered, became common only later, around 650BC (Jones 2003:

19). Written documents of the Bronze Age, perhaps dating from around the time of the Trojan War, have

been found at Mykenai and Pylos. These are concerned with palace administration, rather than literature.

This script, known as Linear B [SLIDE 7] gradually developed from ideograms [SLIDES 8 & 9] to a more

stylised representation of sounds [SLIDES 10 & 11].

Classicists still debate vehemently as to how early the poems were ‘fixed’ in their final form: ‘fixed’

refers to an unchangeable, final version, as in a printed book. Did the poet recompose the poem at each

Slide 7 Slide 11Slide 9Slide 8 Slide 10

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telling? Did the poet recite from memory, like an actor? Did Homer learn to write and then record the

epics himself, or dictate them to an amanuensis (see e.g. Fowler 2004; Janko 1998)? The argument,

being impossible to conclude satisfactorily, is moot: as J. B. Hainsworth notes with some asperity, ‘the

conception of Achilleus or Odysseus has very little to do with the question whether their creator

composed by word of mouth or pen in hand’ (1970: 94). And the whole issue, as David Bouvier points

out, is a modern phenomenon: the ancient Greeks ‘never recognised the Iliad or the Odyssey as going

back to a distant past and transforming previous mythological stories. Homer was for them a composer

of fixed poems… In effect, there was no Homeric Question in ancient Greece’ (2003: 59).

While the epics are undoubtedly entertaining, this was not their original sole purpose. Oral poetry

has an important function in preliterate societies, like that of Homer and before Homer: before writing

is discovered, or used widely, oral poems carry the traditions, beliefs, laws and values of a society from

one generation to the next. Franz H. Bäuml describes the purpose of epic in preliterate, tribal societies,

as ‘encyclopaedic’: ‘It was the repository of the knowledge necessary for the function and cohesion of

preliterate society. The heroes and their deeds were the vehicles for the illustration of the tribal mores.

This essential didactic content, moreover, had no existence independent from the performance, the

recitation of the epic. This is one of the most important distinctions between the function of literature

in an illiterate, or preliterate, society and its function in the context of literacy: a piece of writing has an

independent existence; it can be put aside, gone back to, checked and rechecked, and it will not change

if it is forgotten; the content of an oral epic lives only in the performance and the memory. The energies

of preliterate societies were therefore spent in the effort to preserve the continuity of their cultures’

(Bäuml, 1975: 27-8).

Performance is a key issue here: as Homer’s epics show, story-telling, both by professional bards and

as a non-professional pastime, has an important role in Achaian society. On one level, the stories

entertain; on another they can provide models, paradigms, of ways to behave or not to behave. In the

Odyssey, the story of Orestes’ revenge of his father, Agamemnon, is told again and again, and each time

its intended message and focus are different (Olson 1990). Performance also relates to the hexameter line

and the heightened language of the poetry: this is not the language of the everyday, but the formal poetics

of ritual.

But performance brings us to another question about the Homeric epics: it has been calculated that

either of the poems would take at least thirty hours to perform in full (Jones 2003: 19), so how were they

performed? Again, the poems provide the necessary clues: in book 8 of the Odyssey, the bard

Demodokos sings for the assembled company, first about a quarrel between Achilleus and Odysseus

(70ff.), and later the story of Aphrodite’s adultery with Ares (266ff.). Later still, at Odysseus’ request,

Demodokos sings the story of the wooden horse (485ff.). The bard, Homer tells us, ‘began, and showed

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them/his song, beginning from when the Argives boarded their well-benched/ships, and sailed away’

(499-501). Here, then, Homer shows the art of the singer, singing episodes from a larger story well-

known to his audience.

The Components of Oral Epic

Classicists, then, still argue about whether oral poems were memorised in their entirety; but the general

concensus is that the oral poet creates his work anew each time using certain components. The most

fundamental of these is the plot, which is fixed: Homer cannot change the outcome of the Trojan War,

cannot make the Trojans win. Added to plot, however, are various other elements, the tools of the oral

poet, which involve much repetition and act as mnemonic devices. These include themes – prayer,

supplication, journey by ship, divine visitation, assembly, sacrifice &c (Jones 2003: 21) – as well as what

are known as ‘type scenes’, ‘recurring situations which are narrated according to a more or less fixed

pattern’, including battle-scenes, social intercourse, travel, ritual, speeches and deliberation (Clark, 2004:

134). There are similarities between the type-scenes as they recur, but they are never identical (e.g.

warrior arming self, Iliad 3.328-38, 11.15-44, 16.130-54, 19.364-424).

Another feature of the epic is the formulaic phrases which occur everywhere. We notice these quickly

enough now, but it is interesting that the Homeric formulae were not recognised until Milman Parry

discovered them in the 1930s; and he defined the formula as ‘an expression regularly used, under the

same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea’ (qtd. in Clark 2004: 119). The hexameter line

breaks down into smaller units, which are often completed with formulae, identical or similar in

construction to each other. The formulae used as metrical fillers in single lines are frequently adjectives

or adjectival phrases known as epic epithets. These can be selected and adapted to the length required:

dios Odysseus (‘godlike Odysseus’) consists of a dactyl and a spondee and will supply two complete

metrical feet in the hexameter line. The epithet can be adapted to fill the metrical gap, for example by

substituting the adjective, or adding further adjectives (cf. Lattimore 1951: 37-40; Clark 2004. For the

basics of Ancient Greek and Latin scansion, see Curley 1999-2000; for the basic principles of English

scansion see Hopkins 2003-6).

Some of these epithets are specific to a particular character, for example, ‘Agamemnon king of men’

and ‘swift-footed Achilleus’, but rather than supplying an occasional reminder of a relevant character

trait, the inclusion of epithets is dictated by the necessity of metre, to fill the hexameter line, rather than

a need for interpretation; it is hardly necessary to the epics’ meaning to repeat the epithet ‘Agamemnon

king of men’ thirty-seven times across the Homeric poems, and ‘swift-footed Achilleus’ thirty-one times

(figures from Clark, 2004: 117-18); and, in fact, repetition itself tends to reduce any meaningful aspect

the epithet might have had. After all, the audience knows from myths outside the Iliad that Achilleus is

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‘swift of foot’, without being told it repeatedly; and sometimes an epithet seems to work against itself:

as Peter Jones asks, ‘what use is “swift-footed” Achilles if he spends most of the time sitting in his hut?’

(2003: 14). Other epithets indeed are applied to so many characters as to lose any meaning, for example

dios, ‘godlike’, which is applied to thirty-two different heroes (Clark, 2004: 128).

Occasionally an epithet will seem completely inappropriate to the context: for example, when

Aphrodite, wounded in battle by Diomedes, runs weeping to her mother Dione for comfort, she is called

Aphrodite ‘the sweetly laughing’ (Iliad 5.375), which is plainly nonsense in the context. These

inappropriate epithets have been considered problematic since antiquity, although, as Frederick M.

Combellack observes, the ancients devised a solution: ‘not at that time, but by nature’, a reference to the

character’s usual personality (Combellack 1982: 361).

Formulae can also be much longer: sometimes whole passages are repeated verbatim, or almost

verbatim, as when Zeus orders Iris to take a message to Hera and Athene to remove themselves from the

battlefield in Iliad 8 [SLIDE 12]. Zeus tells Iris to tell the goddesses that, if they do not obey him,

‘I will lame beneath the harness their fast-running horses,and hurl the gods from the driver’s place, and smash their chariot;and not in the circle of ten returning years shall they be wholeof the wounds where the stroke of the lightning hits them; so thatthe grey-eyed goddess may know when it is her father she fights with.Yet with Hera I am not so angry, neither indignant,since it is ever her way to cross the commands that I give her.’ (8.402-6)

Compare this to the message Iris gives the goddesses, when she says that Zeus

‘… will lame beneath the harness your fast-running horses,and hurl yourselves from the driver’s place, and smash your chariot;and not in the circle of ten returning years shall you be wholeof the wounds where the stroke of the lightning hits you; so thatyou may know, grey-eyed goddess, when it is your father you fight with.…Yet with Hera he is not so angry, neither indignant,since it is ever her way to cross the commands that he gives her.’ (8.415-20, 422-3)

These repetitions are also ‘building blocks’, helping the poet to move from one section of his story to

another.

Another feature of oral epic is digression. Digressions can be used to heighten tension by putting off

the moment of action. One example comes from Iliad 4 (86ff), when Athene causes the Trojan Pandaros

to break the truce agreed between the enemies by firing an arrow at Menelaos. ‘Straightway he

unwrapped his bow,’ says the poet, whetting our expectation for immediate action, but instead Homer

describes the history of the bow:

Straightway he unwrapped his bow, of the polished horn froma running wild goat he himself had shot in the chest once,lying in wait for the goat in a covert as it stepped down

Slide 12

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from the rock, and hit it in the chest so it sprawled on the boulders.The horns that grew from the goat’s head were sixteen palms’ length.A bowyer working on the horn then bound them together,smoothing them to a fair surface, and put on a golden string hook.Pandaros strung his bow and put it in position… (4.105-112)

It takes eight lines for the narrative to move from ‘Straightway he unwrapped the bow’ to Pandaros

actually stringing it, eight lines of suspense, which also, with their detail, evoke the peacetime world of

weapons created and used for hunting, as well as for battle.

Digressions can be more than simply ways of making the story longer or heightening the tension.

Ruth Scodel observes: ‘Everyone knew that a digression marks the significance of the action’ (Scodel,

2004: 50); it underlines the moment. Digressions often take the form of what Maureen Alden calls ‘para-

narratives’, ‘secondary narratives related by the poet’s characters, and also interludes related in the voice

of the poet himself, which do not advance the progression of the main narrative’. These additions may

not progress the plot, but they are relevant to the interpretation of their immediate context or of the main

narrative or both (Alden, 2000: 1). A famous example is that of Achilleus who, in Book 24 of the Iliad,

recounts to Priam the story of Niobe, who, despite her grief at the death of her children, still eats to

survive; the story is intended to persuade Priam, grief-stricken over the death of his son, Hektor, to eat.

Similarly, Athene’s support of Diomedes in battle in Iliad 4 and 6 will be echoed in her support of him

in the Funeral Games in Iliad 23.

The simile is another feature of the Homeric poems, particularly of the Iliad. Similes can be brief,

but frequently extend into lengthy, leisurely passages. Like the digression of Pandaros’ bow, similes

often evoke the natural world or the agricultural/domestic world the heroes have left behind, thus

providing a contrast to the setting of war. Similes can be simple, like the image of Thetis emerging ‘like

a mist from the grey water’ (1.359); but more complex images are frequently evoked: in Iliad 4, Athene

protects Menelaos from the full force of Pandaros’ arrow, brushing it aside ‘as lightly as when a

mother/brushes a fly away from her child who is lying in sweet sleep’ (4.130-1). But there is a wound,

and Homer creates an elaborate, digressive simile:

As when some Maionian woman or Karian with purplecolours ivory, to make it a cheek piece for horses;it lies away in an inner room, and many a riderlongs to have it, but it is laid up to be a king’s treasure,two things, to be the beauty of the horse, the pride of the horseman:so, Menelaos, your shapely thighs were stained with the colour of blood… (4.141-7)

In Book 12, the Trojan warriors hold their line ‘evenly as the scales which a careful widow/holds, taking

it by the balance beam, and weighs her wool evenly/at either end, working to win a pitiful wage for her

children’ (12.433-5). Iliad 2 contains one of many descriptions of men in terms of the natural world,

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depicting the Greek army coming to the assembly:

Like the swarms of clustering bees that issue foreverin fresh bursts from the hollow in the stone, and hang likebunched grapes as they hover beneath the flowers in springtimefluttering in swarms together this way and that way,so the many nations of men from the ships and the sheltersalong the front of the deep sea beach marched in orderby companies to the assembly… (2.87-93)

Unlike other passages in the poems, the similes display very little repetition: even similar similes contain

minor variations, like the lion similes in Iliad 11.113-21 and 172-8 (Buxton, 2004: 146). Like para-

narratives, similes can evoke a meaning beyond themselves, as in the death of Simoeisios expressed as

a tree felled to make a chariot:

He dropped to the ground in the dust, like some black poplar,which in the land low-lying about a great marsh growssmooth trimmed yet with branches growing at the uttermost tree-top:one whom a man, a maker of chariots, fells with the shiningiron, to bend it into a wheel for a fine-wrought chariot,and the tree lies hardening by the banks of a river.Such was Anthemion’s son Simoeisios, whom illustriousAias killed… (4.482-9)

This echoes the digression of Pandaros’ bow, in the image of the skilled artisan making weapons of war.

But more than this, as Richard Buxton observes, ‘The magic of the comparison is to make it seem as if

this young man’s death achieves something absolutely worthwhile – the construction of a fine and useful

object. Even here, though, there is irony: the chariot-maker’s skill has enabled many a warrior to reach

this very battlefield with speed and efficiency, never to return home again’ (Buxton, 2004: 152).

The Iliad and the Odyssey are also filled with dialogue: more than half of Homeric epic is made up

of speeches by characters, and, as Jasper Griffin observes, this is in contrast to Virgil’s – literary – epic,

in which there are no extended conversations (Griffin, 2004: 156). Griffin also points out that some early

commentators expressed disapproval of such speeches: Plato declared it immoral to put words into

characters’ mouths because it engenders too much emotional reaction in the audience (Griffin, 2004:

156-7); and Homer had even given speeches to women and servants! The speeches, of course, affect the

delivery of the performance and serve to provide some characterisation (Griffin, 2004: 158-9). The first

book of the Iliad displays a wide range of Homeric speeches: short, long, threats, prayers, attempts to

restore peace, in soliloquy and in conversation with others. Iliad 1 also describes the effects of speeches

on other characters, and their reactions: fear, anger, sorrow and so on (Griffin, 2004: 166).

The majority of scholars do not support the theory that the original Iliad and Odyssey were ‘fixed’

or ‘memorised’. Rather, the repeating elements of type-scenes, and formulae, repetitions and similes

make up what many scholars view as ‘building blocks’ available to the trained oral poet. The bard begins

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with the outline of the story he plans to tell, and he extemporises using the ‘building blocks’ at his

disposal. Thus, according to Richard Janko, oral poetry is ‘improvised in the sense that jazz is

improvised – by using pre-existing blocks of material and skilfully putting them together or modifying

them in new ways’ (Janko, 1998: 4).

Archaeology and the Setting of Homeric Epic

Homer is thought to have lived in the eighth century, and recent scholarship suggests a date of c.720BC

for the Iliad, and c.680BC for the Odyssey. But Homer sets his poems in a time long ago, when heroes

were greater than men of his own time. So far, so good: but given that no written records would have

come down to Homer, and few have come down to us, is the world he depicts in the poems that of his

own time, or does it represent the long-ago world of the Trojan War, around 1100BC, perhaps as early

as 1250-1200BC? One problem is that the Mykenaian Age and Homer’s own time are divided by what

is known as the Greek Dark Age; so that it is difficult to tell what, if any, continuity of myth or history

the Homeric poems demonstrate.

Archaeological evidence tells us that by Homer’s time, Mykenai had become insignificant and

Bronze Age Pylos, the home of Nestor, was no longer known (Taylour, 1983: 41). Little is known about

the society of Mykenai, and the Homeric texts have often been used by archaeologists in an attempt to

piece together the facts. Some written records, in Linear B, have been recovered from Mykenai, but these

are largely concerned with the day-to-day running of a palace, administration rather than history or

heroics. Added to the evidence in Homer, these records suggest that the Aegean was made up of a

number of kingdoms, under a single high king, possibly based at Mykenai (Taylour, 1983: 131).

There has been a good deal of interaction between archaeology and the Homeric texts. The

archaeological discoveries began with the ancient Greek myth driving an amateur archaeologist to

attempt to find evidence for the war depicted in the Homeric texts. In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann [SLIDE

13] discovered Mykenai, the legendary city of Agamemnon [SLIDES 14-16]. Schliemann had wanted to

prove that the Iliad was based on fact, although it later transpired that the city he excavated was some

three hundred years older than Troy (Taylour, 1983: 9). Schliemann also found the site of Troy [SLIDE

17], while Arthur Evans’ excavations revealed what was thought to be Nestor’s kingdom of Pylos

[SLIDES 18-21], although the identification was problematic: tradition that says Nestor arrived home

successfully and was succeeded by his son and his grandson, but the archaeological dating for the

Slide 15Slide 14Slide 13 Slide 17

Slide 16

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destruction of this palace is earlier than the fall of Troy (Taylour 1983: 160-1).

Certain features of the poems are known to be anachronistic: for example, there were no

Phoenicians before c.1000BC (Osborne, 2004: 217) and Homer is not always clear about what

he is describing, for example he seems uncertain how the Mykenaians used their battle-chariots.

A relief from Mykenai shows the warrior fighting from the chariot [SLIDE 22]; but, as M. I.

Finley has observed, Homer seems to view chariots as a kind of taxi service, a means of getting to the

battlefield easily. In Book 5 of the Iliad, for example, Phegeus and Idaios charge against Diomedes in

their chariot, but dismount from it to fight him (5.12-13). However, the burial rites depicted in the texts

would have been familiar to Homer’s audience (Osborne, 2004: 216), and some of

the material goods described. Many elements would have been unfamiliar in

Homer’s time: the palaces, silver bath tubs, war-chariots, exotic armour [SLIDES 23

& 24], the treatment of iron as a precious metal, the combination of bride-price and

dowry, the extent of slave labour. Most of these, however, have been corroborated by

archaeology (Osborne, 2004: 217). And some of the features Homer describes, in fact, predate

the Mykenaian period, as Lord William Taylour observes: ‘when we find Ajax exclusively

associated with the shield “like a tower” [SLIDE 25], a shield that had gone out of

use by the time of the Trojan War, we recognise in him the hero of a saga that is

extraneous to, and antedates, the story of the Iliad’ (Taylour, 1983: 41).

The gold found at Mykenai by archaeologists echoes Homer’s description

(Green, 1973: 40) [SLIDES 26 & 27]: twice he refers to Agamemnon as ‘the king of golden

Mykenai’ (Iliad 7.180, 11.46). Other archaeological finds are echoed in the Homeric texts,

including descriptions of lion-hunting found in similes, such as that in Iliad 17.133-5 and

particularly 20.163-73, where lion-hunting with spears is described [SLIDE 28]. There is also

the boar’s tusk helmet described by Homer, when Odysseus

put over his head a helmetfashioned of leather; on the inside the cap was cross-strung firmlywith thongs of leather, and on the outer side the white teethof a tusk-shining boar were close sewn one after anotherwith craftsmanship and skill; and a felt was set in the centre. (Iliad 10: 261-5)

These helmets were not used after Mykenaian period (Taylour, 1983: 138), but were frequently depicted

Slide 19Slide 18

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in art [SLIDE 29], and it is clear that they were a luxury item: it took thirty to forty pairs of tusks

to make, cut into oblong plates and sewn on to a conical frame, probably of leather [SLIDE 30].

The helmet was topped with a plume or knob, and had a neckguard and chinstrap (Taylour,

1983: 139).

Schliemann’s ‘Troy’ is now known as Hisarlik; and archaeological evidence for the means and dating

of its destruction still suggests that it may have been Troy, but it cannot be concluded definitely. From

archaeology, there is negative evidence: nothing definitely Greek from the right period has been found

there (Jones 2003: 20), although, as Peter Jones observes, ‘the later Greeks and Romans certainly thought

Hisarlik was Homer’s Ilium … from the monuments they left there’ (2003: 20) and it became a ‘Homeric

tourist site in Roman times’ (Jones 2003: 22). The negative evidence from literature is that Homer never

makes any reference to a Trojan fleet; but Hisarlik is a coastal town (Jones 2003: 22); so ultimately it

is impossible to make any firm comparisons between what Homer depicts and what archaeology has

discovered.

So, more recently, the scholarship has begun to separate Homer from history. Margalit Finkelberg

points out that ‘the issue of “Homer and Mycenae” is no longer considered substantial by the majority

of scholars. … The picture of Mycenaean society that emerged after the decipherment of Linear B has

led to an increasing understanding that the Homeric poems cannot be interpreted as a direct reflection

of that society’ (Finkelberg 1998: 24). Instead ‘the picture of the society arising from the Homeric poems

belongs to a later period than the Bronze Age’, although the frequent references to bronze weapons in

the Iliad evoke that long-ago time. For A. M. Snodgrass, ‘contradictions in Homer’s depiction of social

institutions show that, rather than reflecting a concrete historical society, the Homeric poems offer an

amalgam which was created as a result of their centuries-long circulation in oral tradition’ (cited in

Finkelberg 1998: 25) – and what came down to Homer through the centuries is the starting point for our

exploration of the epic tradition.

Bibliography

Primary Texts

ANON, The Epic of Gilgamesh. trans. Andrew George. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003).

— ONLINE, trans. Anon. The Academy for Ancient Texts (www.ancienttexts.org, 2001),http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/

HOMER, Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1951).

HOMER, Odyssey, trans. Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,1951).

Secondary Texts

ALDEN, Maureen, Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). [Worthreading the introductory chapter on the use of para-narrative.]

BÄUML, Franz H.: ‘Transformations of the Heroine: From Epic Heard to Epic Read’ in The Role of Woman in the Middle

Slide 30

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Ages: Papers of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, StateUniversity of New York at Binghampton, 6-7 May 1972, ed. Rosemarie Thee Morewedge (N.Y.: State of New YorkPress, 1975), pp. 23-40. [Actually about two medieval German epics, but the material on oral poetry is excellent.]

BOUVIER, David, ‘The Homeric Question: An Issue for the Ancients?’ Oral Tradition 18:1 (2003), 59-61.

BOYLE, J. C., ‘Astyanax’, Pantheon (ONLINE: http://www.pantheon.org, 1997-1999,http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/astyanax.html. Accessed 01/08/2005). [This website is a useful resource fordiscovering what happens to characters outside the Iliad.]

BUXTON, Richard, ‘Similes and other likenesses’ in Fowler, pp. 139-155.

CLARK, Matthew, ‘Formulas, metre and type-scenes’ in Fowler, pp. 117-138. [Especially useful on metre.]

CLARKE, Michael, ‘Manhood and Heroism’ in Fowler, pp. 74-90.

COMBELLACK, Frederick M., ‘Two Blameless Homeric Characters.’ The American Journal of Philology 103:4 (Winter1982), 361-72. [A very interesting article focussing on the two instances of epithets which appear ‘wrong’ in thecontext used.]

CURLEY, Dan, Hexametrica (http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/courses/metrica/preface.html, 1999-2000).[Basics of Ancient Greek and Latin poetics.]

DALBY, Andrew: ‘The Iliad, the Odyssey and Their Audiences.’ The Classical Quarterly n.s. 40:2 (1995), 269-279.

DOWDEN, Ken, ‘Homer’s Sense of Text.’ The Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996), 46-61.

EDWARDS, M. W., ‘Homer and the Oral Tradition: the type-scene’, Oral Tradition 7 (1992), 283-330.

FINKELBERG, Margalit, ‘Time) and Arete) in Homer.’ The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 48:1 (1998), 14-38. [Very good onanalysing these values in ancient and modern terms.]

FINLEY, M. I.. The World of Odysseus, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Viking, 1978).

FOLEY, John Miles, ‘Epic as genre’ in Fowler, pp. 171-87.

FOWLER, Robert, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). [A goodintroduction to a wide range of Homeric topics. Only one copy in the library though: perhaps worth a group clubbingtogether and buying a communal copy – try www.abebooks.com for secondhand copies. See the Secondhand Bookspage of my website for guidance on buying on the internet and from abroad.]

GREEN, Peter, A Concise History of Ancient Greece to the Close of the Classical Era (London: Thames and Hudson,1973).

GRIFFIN, Jasper, ‘The Speeches’ in Fowler, pp. 156-167.

— ‘Words and Speakers in Homer.’ The Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986), 36-57.

HAINSWORTH, J. B., ‘The Criticism of an Oral Homer.’ The Journal of Hellenic Studies 90 (1970), 90-98.

HOPKINS, Amanda, ‘Basics of English Scansion.’ ONLINE (www.amandahopkins.co.uk, 2003-5),http://www.amandahopkins.co.uk/downloads.htm: Medieval to Renaissance – English Scansion

HUNTER, Richard, ‘Homer and Greek literature’ in Fowler, pp. 235-253.

JANKO, Richard, ‘The Homeric Poems as Oral Dictated Texts.’ The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 48:1 (1998), 1-13.

JONES, Peter, Homer’s Iliad: A Commentary on Three Translations (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2003).

KEARNS, Emily, ‘The Gods in the Homeric Epics’ in Fowler, pp. 59-73.

OLSON, S. Douglas, ‘The Stories of Agamemnon in Homer’s Odyssey.’ Transactions of the American PhilologicalAssociation (1974-) 120 (1990), 57-71. [Essential! An excellent close reading of the treatment of a particular ‘para-narrative’.]

OSBORNE, Robin, ‘Homer’s society’ in Fowler, pp. 206-219.

PORTER, James I., ‘Homer: the history of an idea’, in Fowler, 324-343.

SCODEL, Ruth ,‘The story-teller and his audience’ in Fowler, pp. 45-55.

SNODGRASS, A. M., ‘An Historical Homeric Society?’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 94 (1974), 114-25.

STEINER, George, ‘Homer in English translation’ in Fowler, pp. 363-375.

TAYLOUR, Lord William, The Mycenaeans (1964; London: Thames and Hudson, rev. ed. 1983). [Interesting overview ofthe period with lots of illustrations.]

WEST, M. L., ‘The Invention of Homer.’ The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 49:2 (1999), 364-382.

Slide Sources

2. Bust of Homer, http://www.archaeonia.com/images/homer.gif

3. Bust of Homer, http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/Trojan%2520War%2520

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Site/Miscellaneous/Bust_of_Homer(Hellenistic_Roman_Copy).jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/Trojan%2520War%2520Site/Web%2520Site/Miscellaneous%2520Pages/Bus [main link broken]

5. Homer Simpson, http://www.aoqz76.dsl.pipex.com/TV.htm

6. Map of the Greek world, http://www.answers.com/topic/mycenaean-language

7. Linear B tablet, http://titan.iwu.edu/~classics/images/linearb.gif

8. Linear B ideograms: chariots and wheels, http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classmyth/images/0008020008.gif

9. Linear B ideograms, Lord William Taylour: The Mycenaeans (1964; London: Thames & Hudson (rev. ed. 1983)), p.34, Figure 14.

10. Linear B text, http://www.uh.edu/engines/linearb.jpg

11. Linear B sounds, http://www.crystalinks.com/linearb.gif

13. Heinrich Schliemann, http://forum.grenzwissen.de/research/images/schliemann.jpg

14. Mycenae, http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/CGPrograms/Site/Script/MycenaeSite.html

15. Mycenae, artist’s impression, http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH209images/Mycenaean/Mycenae_recon.jpg

16. Mycenae, Lion Gate, http://www.islandstrolling.com/mainland/peloponnes/photo/mycenae_leon_gate.jpg

17. Strata of habitation on site of ‘Troy’, artist’s impression, http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images2/TroylayersredVI.jpg

18. Pylos, ‘Palace of Nestor’, http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~perlman/history/nestorpalace.jpg

19. Pylos, Nestor’s Palace, artist’s impression, http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~perlman/history/nestor.jpg

20. Pylos, ‘Palace of Nestor’, reconstruction of megaron (hall), http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~perlman/history/nestpalreconst.jpg

21. Pylos, ‘Palace of Nestor’, hearth, http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~perlman/history/nestor_hearth.jpg

22. Mycenae, warrior in chariot, http://home.att.net/~a.a.major/darkage.htm

23. Bronze Age armour, http://home.att.net/~a.a.major/mycarmor.jpg

24. Mycenae, the Warrior Vase, http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/Trojan%20War%20Site/Web%20Site/Archaeology%20Pages/Warrior_Vase.htm

25. Mycenae, tower shield, artist’s impression, http://www.greeceathensaegeaninfo.com/greece-travel/Destinations/mykines/tower-shield-mycenae.jpg

26. Mycenae, gold cup, http://www.acepilots.com/iliad/wp-images/mycenae_gold_cup.jpg

27. Mycenae, ‘Mask of Agamemnon’, http://academic.bowdoin.edu/courses/f01/arch101/resources/citadels/images.citadels/mycenae.mask.agamemnon.jpg

28. Mycenae, lion hunt dagger, http://www.netschoolbook.gr/digital/mycenae/14dagger.jpg

29. Mycenae, boar’s tusk helmet, http://classics.unc.edu/courses/clar049/MycIvWar.jpg

30. Mycenae, boar’s tusk helmet, http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/02/34/70/boar-tusk-helmet.jpg

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