Making Time for Homer

I am currently re-rearding The Iliad in the Lattimore verse translation (I previously read the Butler prose version) along with A Companion to The Iliad by Malcolm M. Willcock as my nightstand book(s). Taking my time. Relishing it!

Anyone else playing around with Homer these days?

For shame - I must admit I haven't touched Homer since I left high school (30+ years ago). Don't think my current Greek is up to reading the original anymore, though I did hold on to my copy for all those years. Maybe I should try him again without the exam pressure ;-)

I don't have Greek yet so i have to do with translation

Read The Odyssey not too long ago, but it's been decades since I read The Iliad. Not in Greek.

How's that companion to the book, Garp? I've read Homer multiple times but each time I worry that I'm missing little things here and there that could be really significant. For instance, I'm currently reading Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and he keeps referring to things in Homer that I only vaguely remember, but actually provide crucial insight into the people of Homer's time.

> 3: Even if you do have some Greek, Homer is tough because he's so archaic. It's a bit like trying to read Shakespeare while you only have a working knowledge of modern American English.

In 2008 we went to a 9 hour theatre production, Odysseus, by a Hagean theatre group, De Appel.
A feast!

Here you see the promotion of it (in front of the Houses of Parliament):
http://www.toneelgroepdeappel.nl/voorstelling/161/page/2226/video_Odysseus_Haags...

Unfortunately I missed that one (I'm from The Hague too).

(p.s. to #6 : so I guess I'll be looking for a translation too, when I decide to tackle Homer again)

We also read him aloud, after dinner, as protestant families do with the Bible, in the Dutch translation of Imme Dros. It took us some months, and it was a joy.

Matt, good point! I can't really read it myself; your description is spot on :-) I recognize most of the words, but the forms and stuff are really weird...

I had two years of Greek in college. there were only three of us in the class, and the professor was interested to know why we had signed up. For me it was to read Homer in Greek, so he worked in as much Homer as he could, although it was really too difficult for first year Greek students. I was humbled by my classmate who could not only translate it but do it with flair and wit. It was a struggle for me but very rewarding. It is awesome to read Homer in Greek. it is as if the language had elemental power, since it is very much at the root of English. It is elemental. this was all 33 years ago and I still remember rosy fingered dawn. I often think if I had time enough I'd revert to studying Greek.

Well you're lucky; most of the people in my Greek 101 class "wanted to read the New Testament." Of course, these ones all dropped like flies. Some people would rather just be told what to think, I guess ;-)

There's only two of us now, which is kind of cool in a way. It's almost like we get automatic A's because our prof is totally concerned with our comprehension, not giving us a number to judge how "well" we know the language. We get to retake quizzes as many times as we want, stuff like that. It's cool how professors tend to revert into hippies when the class only has people who are actually engaged and interested in the subject matter :-) My mythology class with 40 people in it, on the other hand....

#11 Don't forget the wine dark sea.

Or, as we school kids used to say back in the 70s: "Arma virunque canoe" - yeah, I know, it's neither Homer nor Greek...

>12 Feicht: I'm just saying, Feicht..... I did the "baby" Koine Greek course with 3 friends the summer after I graduated from high school with the preacher father of 2 of them. He went on to write a hefty commentary on 1st and 2nd Peter; I went on to forget everything except the alphabet and "pater 'emon 'o in tois uranois....." Uh oh. But I always did want classical Greek, and I might someday. (But then I want to get back to "Arma virumque cano" {canoe? Well, they were in a little boat.} too.)

Guess it just depends on the crowd :-)

I still want to learn to read it in Greek. The question is only how and when and how much?

You pretty much have to learn Attic Greek first, then kind of unlearn some of that to read Archaic (some would say, Homeric) Greek. Greek is actually fairly easy in some respects (even more than Latin, I found), but some bits are really hard to get your head around at first, especially if you're used to doing word-for-word translations in Latin...or German...or whatever.

But the nuts and bolts of the language can pretty much be learned entirely through rote memorization via chanting everything aloud (note: this makes for interesting hallway or bus ride conversations).

I've never read Homer, but I sure feel like I have. As a fantasy/sci-fi reader it's surprising how many times I come across references to his work. A couple of the most recent include Tad Williams' Mountain of Black Glass, and Dan Simmons' Ilium (which especially delves into it, beginning true to events of the Iliad before veering off into a wildly alternate history where the Greeks and Trojans unite to challenge the gods themselves.)

I strongly recommend The Iliad. It's often considered the oldest book of Western Civilization (if you believe there is such a thing)

So Garp which theory do you adhere to as far as the provenance of the Homeric Epics, and even Homer himself for that matter? I've been reading a lot of different takes on the issue lately, so I'm just curious :-)

Well I don't buy that guys thesis that Homer was a woman. At the risk of sounding sexist, I don't believe a woman -- especially in the ancient world -- could have written The Iliad. None of the various theories are very convincing, but reading the ywo epics I do believe they were authored by the same person, whomever they might be.

I'm not sure what I believe anymore, to tell you the truth :-D I'd always learned that the epics were dreamed up and written down by Homer in the 8th century or thereabouts, shortly after the Greeks yoinked the Phoenician alphabet. The more I read, however, the more I come to think of Homer more as a figurehead than anything else. One of my profs is absolutely convinced that Homer was a real (and, completely literate) Greek who thought up the epics all by himself; maybe it's because of his soapboxing that I have come to doubt this theory. It seems obvious to me from reading the epics (especially in the original) just how many of the lines are word for word repeats of each other. The best explanation for this is that they were indeed epics from an oral tradition, whereby a bard could think about what he was going to say next by chanting one of these "stock lines" that he didn't have to think about. In my mind at least, this points to a much older tradition where these stories were told and retold many times in many different ways. Even if Homer was a historical man who took it upon himself to compile these stories into a sort of "canon" (something of a Bronze Age Elias Lönnrot), I don't think he could be credited as the author of the epics, anymore than Lönnrot can be credited with inventing the Kalevala. In this way I guess I mostly adhere to the M.L. West theory that Homer was almost as much a mythological figure himself as those he supposedly wrote about. There may indeed have been a historical Homer, but just like some other figures of the ancient world who will remain nameless, doubtless he was attributed some things after death that he may have had no part in in life.

But it's just a theory like any other. I recently read one where an author was convinced that the Greek alphabet was actually concocted from the Phoenician for the expressed purpose of writing down the Iliad and Odyssey. I think it is patently false, but interesting nonetheless. Tradition held that he was blind too (but, who knows...) so if that were true, it doesn't seem likely he'd be writing down thousands of lines in nice metrical form. But then, I'm a pessimist.

I've also read that there was no real "canon" as such in regards to the two epics until the time of the Diadochi, which would seem to throw the whole thing out the window. I forget the exact line of reasoning, but it had something to do with a few facets sprinkled here and there that seem to be anachronistic verbal constructions more similar to the Koine Greek of the 1st century BCE than the, well, "Homeric" of the 8th and 9th centuries. Kind of like watching a modern movie about WWII and in the background you see Himmler wearing an Indiglo watch or something :-D

I think the oral tradition theory is the most plausible based upon the most recent recent scholarship. Certainly the structure of the dactylic hexameter seems to reflect an echo of phrases repeated by bards. What's interesting is that there are parts of Iliad that certainly reflect Bronze Age life that "Homer" couldn't have possibly been aware of, yet others -- the use of chariots as taxis --seem to be indicative of the storyteller having little clue of the objects he discusses. I do agree that the "catalog of the Ships" is more ancient than the tale itself. There are other indications in the Iliad that it was part of an older tradition, some of which was obviously lost or forgotten. It is such an amazing work. I can see myself re-reading it again and again throughout my life.

The interesting thing is I'm reading Travelling Heroes right now, and Fox makes a ton of connections between "Homer" and the world of "his" time, assuming of course that Homer was one real person, and he existed in the 8th century BCE. I have to admit that many of his arguments are very convincing, namely that Homer actually SAW a lot of the places/things he writes about in the Iliad/Odyssey. Not the Trojan War obviously, but enough of the geography seems spot on in such a way that leads one to believe that, WHOEVER it was that wrote the epics down in their final form had intimate familiarity.

But even so, I don't think that's any reason to assume that it was all the work of one man. In the end, I'm not sure I'll ever be 100% on any "side" of an argument regarding the epics. There is just too much that we'll never know.

“Fresh-flowering basil!
It's a stormy sea I'm sailing on,
life and death always hang in balance.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-xClxtSy0&feature=related
Marco Beasley, Una Odissea , NBECD024

Excuse me for intruding the discussion, but this is about making time for Homer. His expressiveness and inspiration through the ages. Since I bought the CD “Una Iliade” this week, I am completely taken by the voice of Marco Beasley.
The finale of “Una Odissea”:

“Through my fingers
glide the mists
of so long a life,
no longer wrathful.

Black the ship,
black the death,
black the wreck,
aimless.
NOMAN has come home,
NOMAN will die...”

Here he sings together with Alfio Antico.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYFfAzEepDA

(If you like Beasley too, you should hear his Passacaglio della Vita (Landi, 16/17th century)!)

The black ship of the finale of “Una Odissea” echoes the prologue of “Una Iliade”:

“Are those seagulls, Father, that I
see on the horizon?
Is this their flight toward the
earth, in search of food?
Father, I do not see their slow
turning, I see no gaiety in
their wings.
They are the black birds which
accompany the shadow.
Their colour is the black of Greek
ships.
What will happen, Father if the
crows arrive?
We will be history, my Son,
because the crows will arrive”

Poignant.

And so beautiful.
That’s Homer: beauty and destruction.
The terrible end of the Odysseia, in which my hero, that clever and resourceful man, becomes a ruthless murdering machine and drags his son along in it…

I am not a scholar and I will probably never read Homer in the original Greek. The story of the Iliad and the Odyssey have fascinated me since I listened to them on records called Classics for Children. Now I have six translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey and usually read one of them every year. I am always moved by the stories and usually find something new each time I read one of the books.
My theory is that they were the production of many authors developed over a long period of years and then assembled in a final form by Homer. That is not something that I know. What is important to me are the poems and how reading them enriches my life.

Well said Bill!