Humanities 101
23 October 2013
The Odyssey, “by” “Homer”
Matthew Gumpert
Lewis and Short: An Elementary Latin Dictionary
Author: from the Latin, auctor: father,
founder; producer, progenitor; authority;
guarantor.
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?”
If . . . Pierre Dupont does not have blue eyes, or was not born in
Paris, or is not a doctor, the name Pierre Dupont will still always
refer to the same person, such things do not modify the link of
designation. The problems raised by the author's name are much
more complex, however. If . . . we proved that Shakespeare did
not write those sonnets which pass for his, that would constitute
a significant change and affect the manner in which the author's
name functions . . . To say that Pierre Dupont does not exist is
not at all the same as saying that Homer . . . did not exist. In the
first case, it means that no one has the name Pierre Dupont; in
the second, it means that several people were mixed together
under one name, or that the true author had none of the traits
traditionally ascribed to the persona . . . of Homer . . .
The Odyssey, by Homer
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 1
Homer. Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New
York, Penguin, 1996.
Homer. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by
Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1951.
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 2
Homer. Odyssey. Edited by David Monro and
Thomas Allen. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1908.
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 3
The editio princeps of the Odyssey = first printed
edition: Demetrius Chalcondyles, Florence, 1488
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 4
Iliad: Venetus A, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice
(10th century)
Odyssey: Laurentianus, Laurentian Library,
Florence (10th century)
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 5
Alphabet
After 9th century: miniscule cursive = divisions between words; diacritical
marks)
Before 9th century: capital block letters = uncials: no division between words,
Physical Form
After 5th century: codex = book form
Betwteen 2nd and 5th centuries AD: shift from codex to papyrus. Earliest
extant Homeric papyri fragments: 3rd century BC.
Division of Homeric epics into 24 books: 3rd-2nd centuries B.C., Alexandria
(Hellenistic period)
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 6
Earliest evidence of Homer: “some ancient
quotations” (The Homer Multitext Project,
www.homermultitext.org); citations in lyric
poetry as early as 7th BC.
Earliest probable reference to Homeric epic:
vase inscription, Ischia, ca. 740 BC.
Homer: Genealogy of a Text 7
The Peisistratid Recension: written version of
Iliad and Odyssey commissioned in Athens, 6th
century BC, under rule of Peisastratos
The Homeric Question
The Homeric Question: the 19th20th century debate over the
historicity of Homer.
The Homeridae
The Homeridae: a guild of poets
claiming Homer as their genealogical
ancestor (see Plato, Ion)
The Blind Homer
“It is a blind man, and he dwells in
Chios, a rugged land.”
Homeric Hymn to Apollo 166-176.
Translated by Gregory Nagy
German archaeologist Heinrich
Schliemann, Mycenae, 1876: “I have
gazed upon the face of Agamemnon”
An Illiterate Homer
Giambattista Vico
Robert Wood, Essay on the Original Genius of
Homer (1769)
F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795)
The Homer Question: Two Schools of
Thought
• The Analysts: Homeric epics as product of
multiple poets
• The Unitarians: Homeric epics as product of a
a single, individual poet
Odyssey 1.174-80: Phemius
They reached out for the good things that lay at
hand,
and when they’d put aside desire for food and drink
the suitors set their minds on other pleasures,
song and dancing, all that crowns a feast.
A herald placed an ornate lyre in Phemius’ hands,
the bard who always performed among them
there;
they forced the man to sing.
Odyssey 1.373-75: Phemius
. . . Amidst them still
the famous bard sang on, and they sat in silence,
listening,
as he performed The Achaeans’ Journey Home
from Troy . . .
Iliad 9.186-89: Achilles the Poet
. . . delighting his heart in a lyre, clearsounding . . .
With this he was pleasuring his heart, and
singing of men’s fame . . .
Odyssey 8.72-89: Demodocus
. . . the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others . . .
the Muse inspired the bard
to sing the famous deeds of fighting heroesthe song whose fame had reached the skies
those days:
The Strife Between Odysseus and Achilles . . .
Odyssey 8.552-86: Odysseus
“Sing of the wooden horse . . .
. . . the cunning trap that
good Odysseus brought one day to the heights
of Troy” . . .
That was the song the famous harper sang
but great Odysseus melted into tears . . .
Dactylic Hexameter
dactylic hexameter: six feet of dactyls (— u u) or
spondees (— —):
— u u (or — — )| — u u | — u u | — u u | — u u | — — |
(See Greek Hexameter Analysis at
http://www.thesaurus.flf.vu.lt/eiledara/index.php)
Greek Hexameter Analysis
To parse any line of Homer into dactylic
hexameter:
http://www.thesaurus.flf.vu.lt/eiledara/index.ph
p
Odyssey 1.1
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
āndră moĭ | ēnněpě, | moūsă, pŏ|lūtrŏpŏn, | hōs mălă |pōllā
Iliad 3.67-75
Now though, if you wish me to fight it out and do battle,
make the rest of the Trojans sit down, and all the Achaians,
and set me in the middle with Menelaos the warlike
to fight together for the sake of Helen and all her possessions.
That one of us who wins and is proved stronger, let him
take the possessions fairly and the woman, and lead her
homeward.
But the rest of you, having cut your oaths of faith and friendship
dwell, you in Troy where the soil is rich, while those others return home
to horse-pasturing Argos, and Achaia the land of fair women.
The constitutive condition of oral poetry
In oral poetry, composition and
performance take place
simultaneously.
Epithets
Epithets: the same adjectives repeatedly employed to
modify the same names or nouns
grey-eyed Athene
much-enduring, brilliant Odysseus
horse-pasturing Argos
Menelaos the warlike)
Epithets and Metrical Constraints
much-enduring, brilliant Odysseus = polutlas dios Odusseus =
half a line of dactylic hexameter:
So she spoke and he shuddered, much enduring, brilliant
Odysseus
hōs phătŏ |rīgē|sēn dĕ pŏ|lūtlās |dīŏs Ŏ|dūssēus
Odysseus, a man of many schemes:
and in answer he addressed her, a man of many schemes
tēn d’ăpŏ|mēibŏmě|nōs prŏsĕ|phē pŏlŭ|mētĭs Ŏ|dūssēus
Repetition and Formulae
Formulae: any repeating element of text
1.Epithets
2.Entire lines
Son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus
He fell, thunderously, and his arrow clattered upon him
3.Whole passages
Agamemnon’s speech, Iliad 9.17-28 and 2.110-41 Agamemnon weeps,
Iliad 9. 14-15; Patroclus weeps, Iliad 16.3-4
4.Type scenes
The banquet, the sacrifice, the debate, the preparation for battle
Repetition in Oral Poetry
“All repeats are founded on the
principle that a thing once said in the
right way should be said again in the
same way when occasion demands”
Lattimore, introduction to his translation of the Iliad (38)
Early Forms of Greek Writing
Linear B: 87 distinct signs for different
combinations of consonants and vowels;
Mycenae, before 12th century
The earliest examples of writing in the Greek
alphabet: 8th century BC; based on a Phoenician
syllabary
Homer, and Writing: 3 Hypotheses
• The transcription hypothesis: Homer = an
illiterate bard who dictated the Odyssey to a
literate scribe
• The ballad hypothesis: Homer = a folk-poet of
short ballads; ballads were later combined
• The oral + written hypothesis: Homer = a poet
trained in oral tradition & versed in new art of
writing