Homère (in Greek old Ὅμηρος / Hómêros ) is famous to have been a Aède (poet) of the end of eighth century BC It is the first Greek poet whose works reached us. It was simply called “the Poet” ( ὁ Ποιητής / Ho Poiêtếs ) by the Old ones. Victor Hugo wrote in this connection in William Shakespeare : “The world is born, Homère sings. It is the bird of this dawn”.

The fact that it had a real existence or simply which it represents a late personification of a possible author or collective seems today impossible to establish with certainty. This question is tackled more in details in this article.

Biography

The tradition wants that Homère was blind. Two elements in the Homeric texts support this thesis. First of all, the Aède Démodocos, which appears in the Odyssey to sing episodes of the Trojan War, is blind. Then the author of the Homeric Hymne with Apollon Délien (at the time allotted to Homère) declares on his own subject: τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ (“it is a blind man, which resides at Chios the rocky one”).

Martin P.  Nilsson however notices, in Homer and Mycenæ (1933), that in certain areas Slaves, the bards are ritually qualified “blind men”. The loss of the sight is supposed to stimulate the memory. Moreover, symbolically, the blind man is, in ancient civilizations, that which sees the invisible one transcending and cannot see the visible one immanent. It is an incarnation of the idea of divine inspiration. Tirésias or Oedipus of it is representative: the first receives blindness in curse and the gift divinatoire in compensation. The second loses the sight when it starts to see the truth and reaches a form of holiness. It is probable that the blindness of Homère is of this type.

Several cities Ionie (Tap-holes, Smyrna, Cymé or Colophon) dispute its origin. Lucien de Samosate (v.  120 - ap.  180), in its True story (II, 20), makes of Homère a Babylonian sent as an hostage (in Greek ὅμηρος / homêros ) among Greeks, from where its name. The philosopher and scholar Proclos (412 - 485) conclude the polemic in his Vie from Homère , by saying that this one was before all a “citizen of the world”.

In fact, we do not know almost anything about the life Homère. Eight old biographies reached us, wrongfully allotted to Plutarque and Hérodote: they are explained by the “horror of the vacuum” of the Greek biographers. They date for oldest from the hellenistic time and abound in details as precise as whimsical, of which some go up at the time traditional: this reveals that Homère was born in Smyrna, lived in Chios and found death with Ios, an island of the Cyclades. Its true name is Mélesigénès; his/her father is the god Mélès river and his mother, the Créthéis nymph. In same time, Homère is also downward of Orphée, or a cousin, even a simple contemporary of the musician, whom he faces in a musical tournament.

To announce that a recent thesis, formulated by Anglo-Saxon authors, postulates that the Odyssey would have been written by a sicilian woman of the {{VIIe}} century (and of which the character of Nausicaa would be a kind of self-portrait): the first to have launched the idea is the English writer Samuel Butler in The Authoress off the Odyssey , in 1897. This design was taken again by the poet Robert Graves in his novel Homer' S Daughter and very recently, in September 2006, by the academic Andrew Dalby in his test Rediscovering Homer (which suggests that the two epopees would have been written by a woman).

Works

One allots to him the paternity of Iliade and of the Odyssey . Comic epic work Batrachomyomachia (literally “the battle of frogs and the rats”, parodies Iliade ) and the Homeric Hymnes are also allotted to him, though it is commonly allowed that they are later derived works.

In a general way, in Antiquity, the name of Homère was practically equivalent to epic poetry as a whole, just as that of Hésiode indicated any form of didactic poetry. In this manner, one frequently finds his name joined with the titles of the epopees of the Trojan Cycle. Archiloque de Paros considered that Homère had written the Margitès , a comic work. Hérodote (V, 37) reports that “Homeric poetry” was banished by Clisthène, Tyran of Sicyone, because of its references to Argos - this lets suppose that the Cycle thébain was also regarded as Homeric. Hérodote itself wonders about the Homeric paternity of the Épigones (IV, 32) and of the Chants cypriens (IV, 32). Lastly, many ancient authors quote worms which they allot to Homère, but which appear neither in Iliade , nor in the Odyssey : Simonide de Céos (france 564 PMG), Pindare ( Pythiennes , IV, 277-278), etc

It is only starting from Plato and Aristote that attribution is limited to the two epopees.

Composition of works

Because of thin information which we have on Homère, some questioned its existence even. This question goes back to the Antiquité:

“It was the disease of the Greeks to seek which was the number of the oarsmen of Ulysses; if Iliade were written before the Odyssey , if these two poems were same author. ”
(Sénèque, Of the brevity of the life )

Several assumptions were considered: they would be there only one author, several authors or of an author having joined together and supplemented the work of several authors.

At the 18th century, the abbot of Aubignac ( academic Conjectures , 1715), then Friedrich August Wolf ( Prolegomena AD Homerum , 1795) raises the question of the artistic unit of the poems and affirms that the texts that we have are the work of a late editor. From them are distinguished two schools: the unitarists and the analysts .

The analysts , such Karl Lachmann, seek to isolate an original poem, works of Homère itself, posterior additions or interpolation S, and underline the inconsistencies of the text, the errors of composition: for example, Pylémène, Trojan hero, are killed with the song V before reappearing some songs further or Achille hopes for with song XI an embassy that it has just returned. It is true also that the Homeric language (see will infra ), to speak only about it, is a composite unit mixing with the various dialects (Ionien and wind mainly) and with turnings of various times. This step was already that of the Alexandrines which established the text (see will infra ).

The unitarists (Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in particular), on the contrary, underline the unit of composition and style of the poems, however very long (15  337 towards for Iliade and 12  109 for the Odyssey ) and defend the thesis of an author, Homère, which composed the poems that we have existing starting from various sources at his time. The differences between the two poems can be explained by the change between the very author young and, older, or between Homère itself and a continuator of its school.

Today, the majority of criticisms think that the Homeric poems were composed during one transitional period, at the time of the passage of a culture of composition and oral transmission to a culture of the writing. Iliade would have been made up in first, towards first half of eighth century BC, and the Odyssey would be posterior, of the end of seventh century BC

Forwarding of Homeric texts

Oral transmission

The Homeric texts were transmitted a long time by oral way. In its famous thesis, the traditional Epithet at Homère , Milman Parry watch that the many formulas “proper name + epithet”, such as “Achilles in the light feet” or “Héra, the goddess with the white arms” obey precise rhythmic diagrams which facilitate the work of the aède: a Hémistiche can be easily supplemented by a hémistiche done everything. This system, which one finds only in Homeric poetry, is characteristic of oral poetry (Homeric cf epithet).

Parry and its disciple, Albert Lord, give thus the example of bards Serb of the area of Novi Pazar, illiterates, able to recite long perfectly versified poems, by using this type of rhythmic formulas. After having recorded several of these epopees, Lord realizes while returning a few years later that the modifications made by these bards are tiny.

De Pisistrate with the Alexandrines

Pisistrate, at sixth century BC, inaugurates the first public library. Cicéron ( Of oratore , III, 40) reports that the two accounts epic then for the first time are retranscribed, on the order of the Athenian Tyran . He promulgates a law enjoignant with any singer or bards passing by Athens to recite all that he knows of Homère for the Athenian scribes, which record each version and join together them in what is now called Iliade and the Odyssey . Scientists such as Solon (which had however been opposed to Pisistrate during its electoral campaign) take part in this work. The son of the tyrant, Hipparque, orders that the manuscript is recited every year at the time of the festival of the Panathénées, according to the dialog Hipparque allotted to Plato.

The Homeric texts then are written and read on rollers of Parchemin or papyrus, the volumina (from which comes French “volume”). No integral roller was safeguarded. Only remain of the fragments, found in Egypt, of which some go up at third century BC One of them, Sorbonne inv. 255 , containing songs IX and X, watch that, as opposed to what one thought hitherto:

• the cutting of works of 24 songs each one, numbered by the 24 letters of the alphabet Ionian, is former to the work of the grammairiens alexandrines of the hellenistic time.
• cutting in songs does not correspond to a practical need (a song by roller).

Then, the first to be worked with a critical edition of the Homeric texts are the grammairiens alexandrines. Zénodote, first librarian of the Library of Alexandria, begins the work of grubbing, while its successor Aristophane de Byzance establishes the punctuation of the text. Aristarque de Samothrace, successor of Aristophane, writing of the comments of Iliade and the Odyssey , and tries to differentiate the text attic, established on the orders of Pisistrate, and the hellenistic additions.

Byzantines with printing works

At the 3rd century, the Romains spread in the Mediterranean basin the use of the codex , i.e. the widespread stitched book today. The oldest manuscripts known in this form go back to the 10th century. They are the work of Byzantine workshops. It is the case for example of Venetus 454A, one of the best manuscripts existing, which allowed in 1788 to the French Jean-Baptist-Gaspard of Handle of Villoison to establish one of the best editions of Iliade . At the 12th century, the scholar Eustathe de Thessalonique compiles the comments alexandrines. He retains only 80 corrections out of the 874 established by Aristarque de Samothrace. In 1488 is printed the version princeps works with Florence.

The Homeric language

The Homeric language is initially a language of the epopee, already antiquated at eighth century BC, and still more at the time of the fixing of the text, at sixth century BC. Before this moment, moreover, some of these archaisms were replaced, thus introducing into the text of the Atticisme S.

Sometimes, the Métrique of the dactylic Hexamètre makes it possible to find the initial form, like explaining certain turnings. It is for example the case for the Digamma ( Ϝ ), disappeared as of, still used at Homère for questions of Scansion, even if he neither is written nor marked. Thus worms 108 of song I of Iliade :

ἐσθλὸν δ' οὔτέ τί πω εἶπες έπος οὔτ' ἐτέλεσσας

The competitor use of two Genitive S, the antiquated one in - οιο and the modern one in - ου, or two Datif S plural (- οισι and - οις) show that the aède could alternate with its liking antiquated and modern forms: “the Homeric language is a mixture of forms of various times, which were never employed together and which the combination concerns a purely literary freedom” (Jacqueline de Romilly).

Better still, the Homeric language combines various dialects. One can draw aside the atticisms, transformations met during the fixing of the text. There remain two great dialects, the Ionian one and the wind one, whose certain characteristics are manifest for the reader: for example, the Ionian one uses an eta (η) where the Ionian-attic uses long alpha ( ᾱ ), from where the names “Athéné” or “Young stag” instead of traditional “the Athéna” and “Héra”. This “irreducible coexistence” of the two dialects, according to the expression of Pierre Chantraine, can be explained various ways:

• composition into wind, then passage into Ionian;
• composition in an area where the two dialects are also used;
• free choice of the aède, as for the mixture of the forms of different times, often because of the metric one.

In fact, the Homeric dialect is a composite language which existed forever only for the poets, who really spoken forever, which accentuates the rupture created by the epopee with the reality of the daily newspaper. Later, well after Homère, the Greek authors will imitate these homerisms precisely “to make literary”.

See Homeric Dialect.

Homère historian?

The authors of the Antiquité thought that Homère sang events having really existed, and that the Trojan War had really taken place. They made the their remark of Ulysses to the Aède Démodocos ( Od. , VII, 489-491):

“You sing with a great art the fate of the Greeks,
All that made, underwent and suffered Argiens,
how one which had lived it, or at least learned from another! ”
(transl. Philippe Jaccottet)

At the 19th century still, it is to find the sites described by the epopee that Heinrich Schliemann lance its excavations in Asia Mineure. When it puts at the day the ruins of a city called Troy, then those of Mycènes, it is thought that what Homère tells is proven: one would have found the gold mask of Agamemnon, the shield of Ajax, the cut of Nestor, etc One identifies the company described by the aède with the Civilization mycénienne.

Quickly, the discoveries on this civilization (in the highest degree, deciphering of the Linear B) call into question this thesis: the Achaean company resembled more civilizations Mésopotamie, administrative and bureaucratic, that with an aristocracy of warriors, without State. Jacqueline de Romilly explains as follows: “between the suddenly revealed documents and the contents of the poems, there is not a link much closer than between the Chanson of Roland and the notarial acts of the time of Roland” ( Homère , 1999).

Moses Finley, in the world of Ulysses (1969), affirms that the described company, out some anachronisms, really existed: they are the “obscure Siècles”, those of the {{Xe}} and of, located between the civilization of Mycènes and the beginning of the age of the cities (eighth century BC). Thus, he writes in “the obscure Centuries and the Homeric poems” ( the Former Greeks , 1971):

“All thus occurs as if the will archaïsante of the bards had been partly crowned success: although they lost all almost to remember the company mycénienne, they remained late enough over their time to paint with some exactitude the obscure centuries, in their beginnings more than in their end -   while always letting remain of the anachronistic fragments, contemporary survivals mycéniennes on the one hand, notations of the other. ”

The position of Finley today is also called in question, mainly because of the famous Anachronisme S, showing features dating from the 8th century:

• outline of the phalange ( It . XVI, 215-217):

“Thus they adjusted helmets and shields bombés.
Ecus, helmets and men pressed one against the other,
And when they leant, hairy helmets heurtaient
Their splendid cimiers, so much they were held tight. ”
(transl. Frederic Mugler)

• incoherent use of the tanks: the heroes leave on their tank, jump and fight from there with foot. The poet knows that the Mycéniens used tanks, but does not know their use at the time (combat tank against tank, use of the javelins), and copies the use of the tanks on that of the horses at its time (transport with horse until the place of the battle, fights with foot);

• use of the Bronze and the Iron: the subject occurs into full Bronze Age, and them weapons of the heroes are actually made of this metal. But Homère gives to its heroes a “iron heart”, and speaks in the Odyssey (IX, 390-395) about the made noise, in the forging mill, by an iron axe which one soaks.

Other uses resulting from different times just like show that following the example language of Homère, the Homeric world forever existed as tel. It is a composite and poetic world, the geography of the tour of Ulysses.

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