Editing Ancient accounts of Homer

[[Image:Auguste Leloir - Homère.jpg|thumb|300px|Homer, 1841, by Auguste Leloir]]

The '''ancient accounts of Homer''' include many passages in archaic and classical Greek poets and prose authors that mention or allude to [[Homer]], and ten biographies of Homer, often referred to as ''Lives''.

==Date of Homer==

Establishing an accurate date for Homer's life presents significant difficulties. No documentary record of his life is known to have existed other than his writings of the ''Odyssey,'' as well as the ''Iliad.'' All accounts are based on tradition. Only one explicit date exists. [[Herodotus]] maintains that [[Hesiod]] and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 BC.<ref>Herodotus, ''Histories'' 2.53.</ref> Herodotus admits that this is his own opinion. He was not sure of the dates of some of the poets believed in his time to have been earlier, but he relies on the priestess of [[Dodona]] in asserting that they were actually later. Modern opinion is that the priestess was right; the poets were later.

A less opinionated indirect date does exist. Artemon of [[Clazomenae]], an [[annalist]], gives [[Arctinus of Miletus]], a pupil of Homer, a birth date of 744 BC. Received opinion generally dates him approximately between 750 and 700 BC.<ref>Homer; Rieu, EV (translator); Rieu, DCH (editor); Jones, Peter (editor): ''The Odyssey'' (Penguin, 2003), p. ''i''.</ref> But West (2010) dates the composition of the ''Iliad'' to the period 680-650 BC, with the composition of the ''Odyssey'' being later still.

==The lives and the epigrams==

[[Image:Lafond Sappho and Homer.jpg|thumb|250px|left|[[Sappho]] sings for Homer, Charles Nicolas Rafael Lafond, 1824]]

The extant lives of Homer are ten in number. Eight of these are edited in [[Georg Westermann]]'s ''Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores'',<ref>{{Cite book|first=Antonius|last=Westermann|title=ΒΙΟΓΡΑΦΟΙ: Vitarum Scriptores Graeci Minores|location=Brunsvigae|publisher=Georgius Westermann|year=1845}} Downloadable Google Books.</ref> including a piece called the ''[[Contest of Homer and Hesiod]]''.<ref>Westermann, pages 33-45. Greek language text.</ref> The longest ''[[Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)|Life of Homer]]'' is written in the [[Ionic dialect]], and claims to be the work of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious ([[Pseudo-Herodotus]]).<ref>Westermann, pages 1-20. Greek language text. An English translation can be found at {{Cite book|first=Theodore Alois|last=Buckley|title=The Odyssey of Homer: with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice: Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes|publisher=George Bell and Sons|location=London|year=1891|pages=vi-xxxii}} Downloadable Google Books</ref> In all probability it belongs to the 2nd century AD, which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries. The other lives are certainly not more ancient.

The lives preserve some curious short poems or fragments of verse attributed to Homer, the so-called ''Epigrams'', which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. They are numbered as they appear in Pseudo-Herodotus. These are easily recognized as popular rhymes, a form of folklore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of [[proverb]]s.

In the Homeric epigrams the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities, for example, [[Smyrna]] and [[Cyme (Aeolis)|Cyme]],<ref>Epigrams 1, 2, 4, Buckley pages 427-428.</ref> [[Erythrae]],<ref>Epigram 8, Buckley page 429.</ref> and [[Mt Ida]];<ref>Epigram 10, Buckley page 429.</ref> others relate to certain trades or occupations: potters,<ref>Epigram 14, Buckley page 431.</ref> sailors, fishermen, goat herds, etc. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when Homer was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse.

Again, comparing the epigrams with the legends and anecdotes told in the ''Lives of Homer,'' one can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these ''Lives'' were derived. Thus Epigram 4 mentions a blind poet, a native of Aeolian [[Smyrna]], through which flows the water of the sacred [[River Meles|Meles]]. Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean ''Life,'' the birth of Homer, named Son of the Meles to conceal a scandalous affair between his mother and an older man who had been appointed her guardian. The epithet ''Aeolian'' implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus, Smyrna became Ionian about 688 BC. Naturally the Ionians had their own version of the story, a version which made Homer come out with the first Athenian colonists.

==The minor poems==

The same line of argument may be extended to the [[Homeric Hymns|Hymns]], and even to the works of the so-called [[Cyclic poets]], the lost early epics some of which formed the [[Epic Cycle]] and [[Theban Cycle]]. Thus:

#The hymn to the Delian [[Apollo]] ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks whois the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, "the blind man that dwells in rocky [[Chios]]; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come." [[Thucydides]], who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian.

#The ''[[Margites]]'', a humorous poem which kept its groundasthe reputed work of Homer down to the time of [[Aristotle]], began with the words, "There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo." Hence doubtless the claim of [[Colophon (city)|Colophon]] to be the native city of Homer, a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian [[Antimachus]].

#Finally, the ''[[Thebaid (Greek poem)|Thebaid]]'' was confidently counted as the work of Homer. As to the ''[[Epigoni (epic)|Epigoni]]'', which carried on the Theban story, there was less certainty.

These indications render it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands grew up after his poems had become known and famous, especially in the new and flourishing colonies of Aeolis and Ionia. The contention for Homer, in short, began at a time when his real history was lost, and he had become a sort of mythical figure, an anonymous hero, or personification of a great school of poetry.

An interesting confirmation of this view from the negative side is furnished by the city which ranked as chief among the Asiatic colonies of Greece, namely, [[Miletus]]. No legend claims for Miletus even a visit from Homer, orashare in the authorship of any Homeric poem. Yet [[Arctinus of Miletus]] was said to have been a disciple of Homer, and was certainly one of the earliest and most considerable of the Cyclic poets. His ''Aethiopis'' was composed as a sequel to the ''Iliad''; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the ''Iliad'' as his model. Yet in his case we findnotraceof the disputed authorship which is so common with other Cyclic poems. How has this come about? Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the nameofHomer such epics as the ''Cypria,'' the ''Little Iliad,'' the ''Thebaid,'' the ''Epigoni,'' the ''Taking of Oechalia'' and the ''Phocais''? The most obvious account of the matter is that Arctinus was never so far forgotten that his poems became the subject of dispute. We seem through him to obtain a glimpse of an early post-Homeric age in Ionia, when the immediate disciples and successors of Homer were distinct figures in a trustworthy tradition when they had not yet merged their individuality in the legendary Homer of the [[Epic Cycle]].

==See also==

* [[Homer]]

* [[Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)]]

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