Homer’s Biography

Homer is an ancient Greek poet – storyteller, collector of legends, author of the ancient literary works “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

Historians do not have exact data on the narrator’s date of birth. The poet’s birthplace also remains a mystery. Historians believe that the most likely period of Homer’s life is the X-VIII centuries BC. One of six cities is considered the place of the poet’s possible homeland: Athens, Rhodes, Chios, Salamis, Smyrna, Argos.

More than a dozen other settlements of Ancient Greece were mentioned by different authors at different times in connection with the birth of Homer. Most often, the narrator is considered a native of Smyrna. Homer’s works refer to the ancient history of the world; they make no mention of his contemporaries, which complicates dating the period of the author’s life. There is a legend that Homer himself did not know the place of his birth. From the Oracle, the storyteller learned that the island of Ios was the birthplace of his mother.

Biographical data about the life of the narrator, presented in medieval works, raise doubts among historians. In works about the poet’s life it is mentioned that Homer is the name that the poet received due to his acquired blindness. Translated, it can mean “blind” or “slave.” At birth, his mother named him Melesigenes, which means “born by the Meles River.” According to one legend, Homer went blind when he saw the sword of Achilles. As a consolation, the goddess Thetis endowed him with the gift of singing.

There is a version that the poet was not a “follower”, but a “leader”. They named him Homer not after the storyteller became blind, but on the contrary, he regained his sight and began to speak wisely. According to most ancient biographers, Melesigenes was born of a woman named Crifeis.

The storyteller performed at the feasts of noble people, at city meetings, and in markets. According to historians, Ancient Greece experienced its heyday during the life of Homer. The poet recited parts of his works while traveling from city to city. He was respected, had lodging and food, and was not the dirty wanderer that biographers sometimes portray him to be.

There is a version that the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns are the works of different authors, and Homer was only a performer. Historians consider the version that the poet belonged to a family of singers. In ancient Greece, crafts and other professions were often passed down from generation to generation. In this case, any family member could act under the name of Homer. From generation to generation, the stories and manner of performance were passed on from relative to relative. This fact would explain the different periods of creation of the poems, and would clarify the issue of the dates of the narrator’s life.

Homer-among-the-greeks-gustav-jaeger…

The making of a poet:

One of the most detailed stories about Homer’s development as a poet comes from the pen of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, whom Cicero called “the father of history.” According to the ancient historian, the poet was named Melesigenes at birth. He lived with his mother in Smyrna, where he became a student of the owner of the school, Femius. Melesigenes was very smart and well versed in science.

The teacher died, leaving his best pupil to go to school. After working as a mentor for some time, Melesigenes decided to deepen his knowledge of the world. A man named Mentes, who was from the island of Lefkada, volunteered to help him. Melesigenes closed the school and went on a sea voyage on a friend’s ship to see new cities and countries.

During his travels, the former teacher collected stories, legends, and asked about the customs of local peoples. Arriving in Ithaca, Melesigenes felt unwell. Mentes left his companion under the supervision of a reliable person and sailed to his homeland. Melesigenes set off on his further journey on foot. Along the way, he recited stories he had collected during his travels.

According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the storyteller in the city of Colophon finally went blind. There he took a new name for himself. Modern researchers tend to question the story told by Herodotus, as well as the writings of other ancient authors about the life of Homer.

Homeric question:

In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf, in the preface to the publication of the text of the ancient Greek storyteller’s poems, put forward a theory called the “Homeric Question.” The main point of the scientist’s opinion was that poetry in the time of Homer was an oral art. A blind wandering storyteller could not be the author of a complex work of art.

Homer composed songs, hymns, and musical epics that formed the basis of the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Wolf, the finished form of the poem was achieved thanks to other authors. Since then, scholars of Homer have been divided into two camps: “analysts” support Wolff’s theory, and “unitarians” adhere to the strict unity of the epic.

Blindness:

Some researchers of Homer’s work say that the poet was sighted. The fact that philosophers and thinkers in Ancient Greece were considered people deprived of ordinary vision, but having the gift of looking into the essence of things, speaks in favor of the narrator’s absence of illness. Blindness could be synonymous with wisdom. Homer was considered one of the creators of a comprehensive picture of the world, the author of the genealogy of the gods. His wisdom was obvious to everyone.

                 Homer’s Statue

Ancient biographers drew an accurate portrait of the blind Homer in their works, but they composed their works many centuries after the poet’s death. Since no reliable data about the poet’s life has been preserved, the interpretation of ancient biographers may not have been entirely correct. This version is supported by the fact that all biographies contain fictitious events involving mythical characters.

Works:

Surviving ancient evidence suggests that in antiquity, Homer’s writings were considered a source of wisdom. The poems provided knowledge regarding all spheres of life – from universal morality to the basics of military art.

Plutarch wrote that the great commander Alexander the Great always kept a copy of the Iliad with him. Greek children were taught to read from the Odyssey, and some passages from the works of Homer were prescribed by Pythagorean philosophers as a means to correct the soul.

   Mysterious 150-year-old writing in rare copy of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’

Homer is considered the author of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey. The storyteller could be the creator of the comic poem “Margate” and the “Homeric Hymns”. Among other works attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, there is a cycle of texts about the return of the heroes of the Trojan War to Greece: “Cypria”, “The Capture of Ilion”, “Ethiopida”, “The Lesser Iliad”, “Returns”. Homer’s poems are distinguished by a special language that had no analogue in colloquial speech. The manner of narration made the tales memorable and interesting.

Homer’s personal life:

It is hard to believe that the facts of Homer’s personal life will be much more clearly illuminated than his birth and the authorship of the works he wrote. Homer could not have a real strong family, since he spent a lot of time traveling. In his works he describes women more than once. In many cases, they appear to readers and listeners as grumpy, capricious creatures. The poet does not deny their beauty and enjoys it, describing it in his “Iliad”. We should not forget that all the works of the great Homer are most likely autobiographical.

According to some reports, it is known that the great singer has a daughter. Her father married her to his student and friend, the poet Creophilus. The storyteller loved his only child very much; he drew another of his poetic images from his daughter. He gave his Nausicaa all the charm and a lot of virtues. It is to this girl that he sincerely wishes success and happiness in his personal life. There are many legends about Homer, but few that relate to his family life. Death is best described by the version of settling scores with life by himself, since he was afraid that before death he would lose his mind, and the fact of killing himself was not scary to him. Therefore, according to legend, he committed suicide.

Homer’s activities:

Not only the two most famous ancient works, which were mentioned earlier, belong to the pen of Homer. His hymns and the poem “Margit” are considered an example of Greek poetry. In the ancient world and in the science of later times, there are different opinions about the authorship of the Illiad and Odyssey.
Since some researchers saw similar plots and descriptions from other poets of antiquity (they named the poetess Fantasia, Lycurgus from Sparta, they included Aristophanes and Aristarchus).

Homer performed his own and other people’s songs at meetings, in city market squares, and in the houses of rich and noble people. The poet was greeted with joy in every city through which he used to travel. He was well-fed and warm, since every city resident considered it his duty to greet the singer. The poet was always attributed to the city of Smyrna, in which he lived with his mother and mastered various sciences. It was a pleasure for him to comprehend all subjects. When his teacher passed away, the school that belonged to him passed on to Homer, that is, Melesigenes from birth.
But he was attracted to different countries and cities, and he went on a journey. From this moment his biography of a wanderer begins. This is how many legends and stories he collected were born. When the traveler reached Ithaca, he felt unwell and remained in it until his full recovery. The ship departed for their homeland, and Melesigenes began to wander on foot, singing and reading his works. Over time, the poet became blind, and then he took the name by which he is known to everyone to this day.

Many researchers of Homer’s work claim that the singer was blind, and during his life all poetry was considered to be oral folk art. Based on this conclusion, the wanderer narrator could not write down his works. The conclusion suggests itself that the author of the famous works, around which there is still controversy, is not Homer at all. Scientists believe that the poems are too complex for this historical period. But we should not forget the fact that any work of a foreign author can be translated into any language. And the one who undertakes this will not be able to literally convey every word said by the author without changing it and adapting it to his language. Therefore, if other authors took on Homeric poems and gave them completeness with their mastery of words, this gives these works local flavor and artistic characteristics.

Death:

There is a legend that describes the death of Homer. In his old age, the blind storyteller went to the island of Ios. While traveling, Homer met two young fishermen who asked him a riddle: “We have what we didn’t catch, and what we caught, we threw away.” The poet thought about solving the puzzle for a long time, but could not find the right answer. The boys were catching lice, not fish. Homer was so frustrated that he couldn’t solve the riddle that he slipped and hit his head.

According to another version, the narrator committed suicide, since death was not as terrible for him as the loss of mental acuity.

Interesting Facts:

There are about a dozen biographies of the storyteller that have come down to our time from antiquity, but they all contain fairy-tale elements and references to the participation of the ancient Greek gods in the events of Homer’s life.
The poet spread his works outside of Ancient Greece with the help of his students. They were called Homerids. They traveled to different cities, performing the works of their teacher in the squares.

Homer’s work was very popular in Ancient Greece. About half of all ancient Greek papyrus scrolls found are excerpts from various works of the poet.
The narrator’s works were transmitted orally. The poems we know today were collected and structured into coherent works from disparate songs by the army of poets of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus. Some parts of the texts were edited taking into account the wishes of the customer.
Soviet prose writer Osip Mandelstam in 1915 wrote the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails”, in which he appealed to the narrator and heroes of the poem “Iliad”.
Until the mid-seventies of the twentieth century, the events described in Homer’s poems were considered pure fiction. But the archaeological expedition of Heinrich Schliemann, who found Troy, proved that the work of the ancient Greek poet is based on real events. After such a discovery, admirers of Plato were strengthened in the hope that one day archaeologists would find Atlantis.