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Homer
It is now generally agreed that the Iliad and Odyssey evolved over many centuries,
originally as songs. Wandering around the homesteads and halls of the Greek world
were the singers, men of prodigious memories who had mastered the art of communication through verse. Research in the Balkans, notably in the early part of the
last century by the American scholar Milman Parry, has shown how formidable the
skills of such singers could be and how sophisticated their techniques. One Bosnian
Muslim was found to have held in his mind twice as many lines as the Odyssey and
Iliad combined. In fact, researchers exploring Asian and African epic verse have
found that the Homeric epics are comparatively short in comparison. The singers
did not simply rely on memory. Serial recordings of the survivors of this tradition
show they have an extraordinary ability to improvise, never repeating the stories in
the same way, and continually refashioning their themes.
The singer may draw on folk memories but his song will also be shaped by his audiences. His living depends on his ability to maintain their interest hour after hour by
the firelight, possibly night after night. His instinct will be to sense their needs and
improvise accordingly. In a number of different cultures the predominant need has
been to hear of the founding heroes of the nation. The Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumeria, the Song of Roland and other epics set at the time of Charlemagne, the legends of
Arthur and his knights belong to the same tradition as the Iliad and Odyssey. The first
written version often emerges hundreds of years after the events it claims to describe,
by which time its links with actual historical events have become tenuous. (Research
on the Song of Roland, first written down about ad 1150, has shown it to be a massive
distortion of the eighth-century events it claims to record.) So one must imagine the
singer, Homer, as presenting just part of his repertoire in what survives and in a version that is one of many possibilities. This helps explain the immediacy of the epics.
What Parry demonstrated was how the internal consistency and structure of
each song solidified with time. The singer relied heavily on a number of formulas,
such as swift-footed Achilles, or full linesWhen early-born rosy-fingered dawn
appearedwhich fit the metre and can be used again and again, particularly when
the singer needs a pause to reflect on the next development in his plot. What controlled the composition was the need to maintain the rhythm and power of the
verse, and the words chosen by the poet to fill gaps between the formulas were
those that fitted the metre rather than those that necessarily made good sense. The
poet was concerned above all to maintain an emotional impact through the steady,
almost ceremonial, intonation of the verse, rather than to tell a coherent story.
As a result, the recitations of the epics must have been events full of emotional
charge that it is difficult for a modern audience to re-create. Peter Brook, the British
theatre director who has specialized in taking his productions into traditional cultures worldwide, describes a visit of his troupe to remote villages in Iran in 1970.
Here the tradition of Taazieh still survived. The Taazieh are mystery plays that deal
with the martyrdom of the early Islamic prophets. The play watched by Brook was

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led by a musician, and as he began his chant Brook records, His emotion was in no
way his own. It was as though we heard his fathers voice, and his fathers fathers
and so back. He stood there, legs apart, powerfully, totally convinced of his function
and he as the incarnation of that figure who for our theatre is always the most elusive one of all, the hero. As the action developed and the leading character walked
off to what the audience already knew would be his death, the watching villagers
became drawn in. I saw lips trembling, hands and handkerchief stuck in mouths,
faces wrought with paroxysms of grief. First the very old men and women, then the
children and the young men on bicycles all sobbed freely. What Brook goes on to
call the inner echo has been found when a community identifies totally with its
traditions. The same thing may have happened to the listeners of Dark Age
Greece.
As an epic reaches coherence, possibly after centuries of fluid development, there
may be a moment when it becomes part of the cultural heritage of the community,
and then there is a strong impulse to preserve it in a more stable form for future
generations. At some point a final author or authors, Homer, put the Iliad and
Odyssey into a coherent form, adding connecting passages and improving overall
consistency. The identity of Homer is still unknown and probably will remain so.
The leading scholar of the literature of this period, M. L. West, argues that the name
itself is a later construction but that a single poet worked on the Iliad over a lifetime
and a different author was responsible for the Odyssey. In the original tradition,
Homer is a native of the island of Chios or the nearby coastal town of Smyrna, but
more recently it has been suggested that the Ionic dialect that predominates in the
final version of the poems is the native one of western Ionia, possibly the island of
Euboea, rather than of the settlements of the eastern Aegean. Embedded in the
verse are words and formulas some scholars date back to Mycenaean times and
there are possibly even links to the epics of the Near East, another theme explored
in detail by M. L. West (see his The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in
Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford and New York, 1999). It remains the convention to
use the name Homer to describe the author of the two epics. (For further studies
of Homer see Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, Oxford, 1980, and more recently R. Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer, Cambridge, 2004.)
Why was there a desire to record the Iliad and Odyssey in writing? The singers
moved in the world of the aristocratic chieftain and his retinue, a world described
in the Odyssey itself where Odysseus seeks hospitality in the hall of the king of the
Phaeacians. It is possible that aristocrats, feeling their own traditions under threat
in the fast-changing world of the eighth century, were the prime movers in guarding their heritage through writing it down. The development of vowels made the
whole process much easier.
The Iliad and Odyssey have very different themes but they are episodes of a common story, an expedition by Greeks (Achaeans Homer calls them) overseas to the
city of Troy in pursuit of the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, who
has been carried off by Paris, a son of king Priam of Troy. It takes ten years of battle,
siege, and cunning before Troy falls, leaving the surviving Greek heroes free at last

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to make their way homewards to their long-missed wives and families. (Moses
Finleys The World of Odysseus, new edition, 2002, New York, first published in
1954, remains a classic introduction to this world.)
Tradition sets the Trojan War in Mycenaean times, long before the eighth or seventh centuries when the poems were first written down. Such an expedition by a
group of Mycenaean chieftains and their men to the coast of Asia Minor ties in well
with the aggressive nature of Mycenaean expansion. Troy was a prosperous settlement on the coast just south of the entrance to the Black Sea, access to which it may
have controlled, and it was certainly a potential target for greedy Greek warriors.
There is even evidence of destructions of the city at the time of greatest Mycenaean
expansion in the fifteenth century and later in the twelfth. (See Barry Strauss, The
Trojan War, New York and London, 2007, for a recent account of the background
evidence.)
However, there is no evidence to link the Mycenaeans with these destructions
(one of which was almost certainly due to an earthquake). It is more likely that the
core of the epics preserves more general memories of the Mycenaean age when men
fought far from home and raids and sieges were part of everyday life. A great deal
of material was added very much later than Mycenaean times. The Lelantine war
between rival Greek cities of Euboea split the Greek world in the later part of the
eighth century (see p. 156) and the experience, possibly fresh in the mind of Homer
and his audiences, could well have been woven in with the earlier folk memories. If
the need to create emotional impact is what defines the form of the epics, then the
background of Homeric society does not have to be an accurate portrayal of any
period but a pastiche which is continually developed with Bronze Age memories
existing alongside contemporary experience.
The world Homer portrays in the Iliad is one of violence, often presented in a
horrifying form. The bulk of the poem is taken up with the continuous ebb and flow
of battle between Greeks and Trojans before the walls of Troy. The epic begins with
the anger of Achilles, one of the Greek hero warriors. He has been forced by the
leader of the Greeks, Agamemnon, to surrender a girl won as a prize. The real question is honour and tim, prestige. The proud Achilles feels humiliated by the way
hehas been ordered about by a man whose authority he regards as less than supreme. Homer immediately confronts the reader, or listener, with the validity of
anger and stubbornness displayed against authority in a context when lives can all
too easily be lost. And lost they are as Homer describes how warrior after warrior is
annihilated in the ensuing skirmishes. Each of the dead is given just enough background to place them as individuals (an approach brilliantly developed in the elegiac poem Memorial by Alice Oswald). Honour and dignity deserve to be defended
but what are the effective means of doing so? Homer himself does not offer his own
view but allows his characters to reflect on the dilemmas that the unfolding of
events imposes on them. This is the mark of any great work of literature and many
see the Iliad as the greatest. (My favourite translation of both the Iliad and the
Odyssey is by the late Robert Fagles in the Penguin Classics Edition (1991 and 1996).
The Forewords by Bernard Knox are also excellent.)

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So this is an age, and here a specific situation, where authority is fluid. Wealth
and high birth will give an individual a platform, and status can be won by appropriate valour on the battlefield. Off the battlefield leaders must win or maintain
status through the skill they show in enthusing and persuading others. There is no
democracy here but the people expect to be given reasons for action and can be
guided towards it either in preparation for war or in the more peaceful setting of
Ithaca where elders address a peoples assembly. So speeches play a prominent part
in both epics with dialogues that follow in debate providing a precedent for Greek
tragedy and, through that, western theatre. They can be formal speeches with a
crowd to be persuaded, as in the confrontation between Achilles and Agamemnon
in Book I of the Iliad, or conversational as between Odysseus and his wife Penelope
where a more intimate relationship has to be negotiated.
In his pique, Achilles refuses to fight, even wishing destruction on his own side.
Eventually, as the Trojans, under their great war leader Hector, son of Priam, drive
back the Greeks to their ships, Achilles relents so far as to lend his war armour to
his companion Patroclus. Patroclus is killed and this, rather than the fate of his
countrymen, finally impels Achilles to revenge. His thoughts are wild, like a lion
who gives in to his great force and overmanly heart and goes against the flocks of
mortals to seize his feast, as Homer puts it. In war Achilles is a machine who moves
forward slashing and stabbing without mercy. He kills Hector, who has himself
been described as if he were a fire raging across the mountainside, and mutilates his
body so that he can drag him off behind his chariot. This is the symbolic moment
when Troy is doomed, the eventual fate known to every Greek but not the focus of
the few days of combat described in the Iliad. As Achilles broods on his victory he
is disturbed in the night by old king Priam, coming alone to ransom his dead son.
For Achilles the myth that violence and killing leads to glory is broken as he sits
with the old man and at last understands the pity of war. He has already been told
that he himself will soon die, and Priams presence makes him realize the effect his
death will have on his own ageing father.
In the Odyssey, the war has been won and Odysseus, one of the Greek war leaders, makes for his homeland, Ithaca. The poem opens with his faithful wife Penelope in their palace at Ithaca besieged by boorish suitors who hope to make her
their wife. She is still hoping against hope that Odysseus has survived Troy. Unknown to her, Odysseus is alive but has been entrapped by the goddess Calypso.
Zeus finally persuades the goddess to let him go but he is shipwrecked by the sea
god Poseidon, who bears him a grudge. Odysseus is washed up in the kingdom of
the Phaeacians, where he is rescued by Nausicaa, the daughter of the local king,
Alcinous. Offered hospitality and entertained with games and poetry, Odysseus relates a whole series of fantastic adventures he has undergone since leaving Troy.
They include the capture of himself and his men by the Cyclops, one-eyed giants,
his temptation by the Sirens, and sailing between the twin horrors of the monster
Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Restored to good health by the welcome of the
Phaeacians, Odysseus eventually leaves for Ithaca. He lands there disguised as a
beggar, but is gradually recognized by those who know him from many years

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before,among them his faithful dog, Argus, and his old nurse. After destroying the
suitors in a scene as violent as any in the Iliad, he is finally reunited with Penelope
in a moving scene of middle-aged love.
The world of the epic is one of superhuman heroes, many of whom are directly
descended from the gods. When one of them arrives at the scene of battle he can
transform the whole course of events by his exploits. (Appropriately the great
heroes of Homer, Achilles and Hector, arrive for battle in four-horse chariotsthe
horses are even given names and lower their heads in mourning when their owner
dies.) Achilles seems able to kill men in their hundreds without pausing for rest.
However, even heroes diethis is the distinction between them and the immortal
gods. Hector and Patroclus fall in the course of the Iliad and the imminent death of
Achilles is predicted. Homer does not even offer his heroes the possibility of an
afterlife, other than in the most shadowy form.
What matters above all in the Iliad is honour, preserving dignity in the face of the
horror of war, a point developed three centuries later by the tragedian Sophocles.
A good man is one who shows strength, skill, and courage in battle. He must
negotiate his hero status in that period, all too short for many, between reaching
manhood and meeting death. The fragility of human existence is at the core of
both Homers epics. However, the heroes are no stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen.
Their plight intensifies their emotions. They sob openly when companions die and
are torn with grief at what might happen to their wives and children after they
themselves have died. (This is what later disturbed the philosopher Plato who felt
that the display of emotion degraded the rational soul.)
It is part of Homers appeal that he is able to present another world in contrast to
that of war, one of peace in which everyday life is carried on in well-ordered domesticity. Even in the midst of war Troy preserves an atmosphere of civilized living.
Priams palace is built wide with porches and colonnades of polished stone, and
deep in its cellars are great treasures. There is courtesy and kindness among the
citys inhabitants. In the Odyssey there is more scope for the rituals of hospitality in
the aristocratic halls where local lords sustain their relationships by feasting and the
giving of luxury giftsbronze cauldrons, fine fabrics, gold and silver. The guest is
welcomed. He is washed by the servant girls, fitted out in fresh clothes, and fed.
Later his story is listened to with respect and then he is bedded down on the porch,
while the lord and his family retire to their own bedrooms.
In these homes the influence of wives is strong. They have a major role in running
the household, supervising weaving and the grinding of corn by servant slave girls,
watching over the stores, and bringing up their children. While the heroes expect
to have women around them available simply for sex, they treat their aristocratic
wives with respect. Penelope, for instance, has some sort of emotional equality with
her husband. They talk together before making love and share a cosy intimacy as
fellow high-status members of their society (although Penelopes son Telemachus
treats his mother with less respect). Arete, wife of king Alcinous of Phaeacia, is described as honoured by her husband as no other wife in the world is honoured.
Such has always been the honour paid to Arete by Alcinous and her children and

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by the people here, who gaze at her as at a divinity and greet her with loyal words
whenever she walks about the town, because she is full of unprompted wisdom.
(Translation: Walter Shewring.)
In a violent and unsettled age, however, there was no doubt that women were
desperately dependent on the protection of their husbands. Hectors wife
Andromache is all too well aware of the impulses that drive men to fight. Your own
vital energy will destroy you, she tells her husband. Some of the most heart-rending
scenes in the Iliad come when Andromache realizes what her fate will be if Hector
dies. She will probably be dragged off as a captive and become a slave and unwilling
sexual partner to a Greek warlord. Penelope, too, is alone. Her son, Telemachus, is
at the threshold of manhood but still not assured enough to be able to offer protection to his mother against her persistent suitors. She has to rely on her own guile to
delay accepting any of them as a husband, and the situation is only resolved when
Odysseus, aided now by Telemachus, slaughters them. Yet she has retained her integrity and status throughout and the appreciation of a woman who sustains her
chosen role under enormous provocation and temptation is one of Homers
achievements.
Set against scenes of both peace and war and often woven into them is the natural
world. Homer never forgets the rhythms of everyday life and the backdrop of sea,
sunlight, and stars. Outside Troy the Greek armies bed down for the night by their
watchfires:
As stars in the night sky glittering round the moons brilliance blaze in all their glory when the
air falls to a sudden windless calm . . . all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs and
the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts the boundless bright air and all the
stars shine clear and the shepherds heart exultsso many fires burned between the ships and
the [river] Xanthus whirling rapids. (Translation: Robert Fagles)

In the Odyssey, a poem of longing par excellence, Odysseus is impatient to set out
on the final journey to Ithaca:
Odysseus all the while kept turning his head towards the glowing sun, impatient for it to set,
because he yearned to be on his way home again. He was like a man who longs for his evening
meal when all day long his two dark red oxen have drawn his jointed plough over the fallow;
thankful he is when sunlight goes; he can limp home to his meal at last. (Translation: Walter
Shewring)

The gods play an essential but ambivalent role in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer
presents them as a closely connected family with their home on Mount Olympus:
Zeus and his wife Hera, their children, Ares, the god of war, and Hephaestus and,
by Zeus other liaisons, Apollo and Athena. However, they seldom work in unity. In
the Odyssey Athena acts as a protecting goddess for Odysseus while Poseidon, Zeus
brother, is out to upset him. In the Iliad the gods are even more partisan. Hera and
Athena are violently against the Trojans while Apollo takes their side. The gods can
also act unscrupulously with each other to get their way. Hera tires Zeus with lovemaking so that she can put her own stratagems in hand while he is recovering in
sleep. While this adds to a sense of tragedy, the helplessness of humanity if the gods

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are aroused, it also enlarges the possibility of individual humans forging their own
ethical positions independently of the gods. There are instances in both epics when
the heroes ponder on the best course to take. They are even free to attack the gods,
as Agamemnon does on one occasion, berating Zeus for his cruelty to men.
Perhaps the greatest contribution that Homer has made to European literature
is to provide a model of human beings who place their own dignity before submission to the whims of the gods, something later lost in the Christian tradition where
challenging God becomes unacceptable in conventional literature. Here the comparative lack of distance between humanity and the gods allows a psychological
complexity that adds to the sophistication of the work. Yet there are always limits,
set by the gods, beyond which behaviour is unacceptable. The dreaded crime of
hubris, overweening pride, will always be punished. In the brutal scene towards
the end of the Odyssey where Odysseus slays the suitors he tells how he is justified
because of their refusal to show the appropriate respect to those around them.
They have flouted the limits of divine law by their shameless bullying of the isolated Penelope and their exploitation of her hospitality. It is the gods will that they
should die.
For later generations Homer remained a great moral teacher. In a vast cache of
papyrus texts found in the rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Homer leads
the classical authors with some thousand fragments of his work. In fifth-century
Athens boys would learn the epics by heart and not only absorb a heritage but
understand appropriate behaviour in different contexts from the many different
types of relationship portrayed. The tragedies of the Trojan War become inextricably linked to Greek mythology and drama. The emotional power of Homer persisted into the Roman period. Part of his enduring genius lies in his portrayal of
heroes as fully human beings whose dilemmas remain real to his readers nearly
three thousand years later. Through Homer the Trojan War continues to haunt the
European consciousness as the archetype of all wars and the dilemmas and dangers
for all that violence brings.

Hesiod
The consciousness that in religious matters the Greeks had moved on from more
primitive traditions of abject dependence on the gods and could move on even further is found in the poems of a contemporary of Homer, the poet Hesiod (normally
dated to about 700 bc). Unlike Homer, Hesiod provides some biographical details
about himself. His father had migrated back from overseas to Boeotia on the Greek
mainland, where Hesiod had been born. The family estates were small, and when
Hesiod and his brother inherited them they soon quarrelled over their shares.
Hesiod comes over as a cynical and pessimistic figure, hardened by the experience
of peasant life and with deep-rooted prejudices against women.
The earliest work of Hesiod to survive is the Theogony. Its aim, in Hesiods words,
is to tell how in the first place the gods and the earth came to be, and the rivers and