Greek poet Homer

Homer’s bust

Tradition here comes to tell about an author whose poems have changed the worldwide literature;

Poet and orator, Homer from Greece, lived in 8-9 century BCE.

About him very little is known. He is considered to be the Iliad and Odyssey’s creator: two epic poems that have had an enormous effect on Western civilization, originated in remotely times since then orally transmitted.

Among all legends and innuendos, Homer is thought to have been a blind poet. In fact, his name in Greek means ” the blind man” and also “the hostage” as well as ” the catcher” (of songs).

For the ancient Greeks, he was an inspired poet, very close to the Gods but also very humble and helpless in his own life.

Homer’s writing style has a great narrative ability that introduces immediately in the action for just explaining the backgrounds, to reach the conclusion in times perfectly dosed.

The Homeric question

The two poems are enshrined of all great art and knowledge-based of Greek civilization, specifically, the Mycenean culture. Since antiquity, due to their complexity and richness of events, they were doubted as being the result of only one man’s wit. It caused the onset of the “Homeric question“, debating the paternity of these works.

On one side, the separatists who claimed different authors and on the other side,  the unitary, leaded by Aristarchus, who claimed Homer as the only author.

In addition, Homer has not let his signature in no one of the two his operas.

In an episode of Odyssey, where an old blind prophet received some eating is suggested to be his own self-signature representation.

“Odysseus cut off a sizable piece of pork from his own 

portion and told the herald to bring it to Demodocus”

Actually, on one point there is agreement: the fact that Iliad had been composed decades earlier than the more aged Odyssey.

The poems, once known, had been oral delivered through storytellers who vividly personified every account along lyre, in palaces and piazzas by publicly performances; often improvised just knowing the plot, sometimes not singing for special occasions.

From father to son, from teacher to disciple, and publicly from narrators to audience their facts had survived until the days in which their words have been handwritten in manuscripts.

Above all, it has no caused nothing but more legends and assumptions on the mythology and the history of these narratives where the characters by his deeds had been carved out in stone forever.

Hissarlik, Turkey : the supposed ruins of Troy

ILIAD

Iliad is divided into 24 books, each book for the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, and contains 15,696 lines written in a mixture of three Greek dialects, namely ,the Aeolic, the Ionic and the more recent Attic Greek.

It narrates the last 51 days of the Trojan war, a mythological legendary conflict, lasted 10 years where historic and archeologic facts are in part held true or deriving from real happenings according to Ancient Greeks.

In contemporary era, on the basis of excavations handled by archeologist Heinrich Schlielmann, between 1870 and 1890, there had been evidences that Hissarlik, in Turkey is where Troy stayed;

According to Iliad’s text, the places described in it, once geographically detected, readily old cities ruins were discovered;

Overlapped layers of cities testifying the real existence of a culture that have witnessed to peaceful and wartime periods.

The central character of Homer’s Iliad is the greatest of all the Greek warriors, Achilles, an handsome blonde warrior fighting in Trojan War as well as the best among all others.

The beauty, braveness and the elevated morality entails the ideally Homeric warrior.

From the need to be closer to Gods is deriving the creations of the heroes; people who have for father or mother a divinity together a mortal. Achilles is son of Peleus, Murmur’s king, and of the deity Tethys.

Hero’s faith is that one to face and to confront the death in searching for life and eternal glory. An absolute despise for danger and death is another characteristic of this and most of heroes.

The legend of Achilles

An oracle’s announcement, declaring that Tethys’ son would become greater than his father, had the effect of no having Gods’ claimants for her hand. Though the God of Gods in person, Zeus, kept loving feelings for the nymph goddess. Tethys joined a mortal king, Peleus.

The new born Achilles was submerged in the Styx waters, the Hades’ rivers, by his mother in order to obtain the invulnerability. During the function, only a part of the baby’s body is forgotten and remained sensitive: the heel.

That part, namely, the heel of Achilles will mark his fate significantly.

His instructor was the Chiron centaur, with which he learned medical arts, the arts of the war and the ability to play the lyre.

Centaur Chiron teaches to Achilles: painting of Italian painter Pompeo Batoni

Phoenix, son of Amyntor, is the other figure which will accompany Achilles as tutor throughout all his life.

Achilles grew strong and with important values. The pride is what characterizes him all along his life united with an incredible ferocity close that of the gods themselves.

In his childhood, he had as companion the loyal Patroclus, amid them a powerful relationship of fond friendship existed, even love for some researchers’ opinion.

Only at the age of  nine, Achilles figured out his own destiny. Upon him two possibilities: the first was to live a long and serene existence surrounded by his loved ones but to be forgotten early in time; the second was to die young in the battle but fated to have his name remembered in glory forever.

Tethys did the impossible to make his son avoiding the war.

She received the prophecy by an oracle that advised about the Achille’s death if he had undertaken the war; so she made the hero left to shelter for nine years in the king of Scyros’ court among the daughters of the king Licomede.

Towards the Trojan war

At the Trojan war outbreak, the Greeks were told by the seer Calchas that Troy would have been conquered only by having Achilles in their alliances, as soon as possible Ulysses had in charge the difficult task to find him…

Ulysses came to know where Achilles was hiding; by a ruse, bringing along female’s gifts and just one gift suitable for  men, he brought out the real identity of the Peleus’ son; once rejoined they left the island; Achilles had taken his decision…

The time of quite was close to end.

Behind his shoulders, Achilles was leaving a calm and serene life enriched with an espouse, the gorgeous princess Deidamia, a son Neoptolemus and a passionate loving mother.

What laid ahead was a bloody violent war where even the gods of the Olympus were involved..

The Gods of Olympus