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The Iliad and Odyssey: Historical Background. See our timeline. These "Greeks" are relative late-comers to the area we now call "Greece" and likely originated to the East of Black Sea, around the area now called the Caucasus between the Black and Caspian seas, where Russia, Turkey and N. Iran meet. The story of Prometheus -- shackled to mount Caucus -- shows strong connections between their original culture and that of the Sumerians etc. So these Mycenaean people were both influenced by and influenced other great civilizations even before there was written The Iliad and the Odyssey or, for that matter, writing. Before the Mycenaeans arrived in the region, earlier "Greek" cultures worshipped ancient fertility goddesses probably related to Ishtar, Aphrodite, even Athena and Hera, and appear to have lived a rather peaceable, agricultural lifestyle we assume this because archeological digs show these pre-Mycenaean people lived without military weapons or fortifications From this perspective, The Iliad is a work of military propaganda that justifies Mycenaen control of the most valuable sea passage of age the Bosporusand The Odyssey justifies colonizing Italy and Sicily to the West. These Ancient and even Classical Greeks are best viewed as a culture rather than as a unified people or "nation". Achilles is a king in his own right, as is Odysseus, Menaleaus, Agamemnon etc. This distinction is important to understanding the Iliad : Achilles rightfully sees himself as Agamemnon's equal. Troy is believed to have fallen around BC and The Iliad and Odyssey were not written down until c. We can assume that this is a compilation of various oral tales and that much The Iliad and the Odyssey the narration describes what Greek life and warfare was like in BCE, not BCE. It's a long, meandering epic, but it primarily revolves around the "godlike Achilles'" struggle to confront his hubris and become humanized. Both in scope and type, consider the Trojan war as similar to that between different European factions in WWI The Iliad and the Odyssey WWII, or between the North and South in the American Civil War: this was a seminal, history-shaping event, and an intra -cultural war: a war fought among people of the same basic culture; although the two sides are protected by different gods, all the gods belong to the same basic pantheon or family of what we now call "Greek gods". The Odysseyin contrast, mainly takes place outside of that common culture and describes contact with pre-Mycenaean Mediterranean cultures. The story focuses on Odysseus and his family's struggle to recover from the Trojan war's after effects and, primarily, with Odysseus struggle to make it back home. While the Jews gave Western culture its religious foundation, the Greeks gave us our culture, the parts of our lives we don't even notice because it is the very air we The Iliad and the Odyssey — The Iliad and the Odyssey sense of heroism, of the individual, of the individuals relationship to others, or our very means of expressing our emotions and the way we tell stories. Jewish stories opened our way of conceptualizing God, but the Greeks gave us our way of thinking about ourselves as human beings. The word for this is "humanism" or Greek Humanism. National Geographic Maps. Map including West Asia and Black Sea:. General map of region:. An outline of his travels is located here. NOTE however, that scholars really don't know Odysseus' actual route, if The Iliad and the Odyssey ever was an "actual" Odysseus etc. The Iliad and Odyssey

The The Iliad and the Odyssey is set during the Trojan Warthe ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten- year journey The Iliad and the Odyssey of Odysseusking of Ithacaafter the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquitythe most widespread being The Iliad and the Odyssey he was a blind bard from Ioniaa region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary. The Homeric Question — concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed — continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and according to some the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that "Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition. The poems are in Homeric Greekalso known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Today only the Iliad and Odyssey are associated with the name 'Homer'. These claims are not considered authentic today and were The Iliad and the Odyssey no means universally accepted in the ancient world. As with The Iliad and the Odyssey multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more The Iliad and the Odyssey the centrality of Homer to The Iliad and the Odyssey Greek culture. Many traditions circulated in the ancient world concerning Homer, most of which are lost. Modern scholarly consensus is that they have no value as history. In the early 4th century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, The Iliad and the Odyssey from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised The Iliad and the Odysseyhe said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts of the poems that were culturally or linguistically The Iliad and the Odyssey. Inthe Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about Years after. Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerumpublished inargued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, [26] [27] [21] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory," which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, [21] and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odysseywhich later poets expanded and revised. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Iliad and the Odyssey anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to years afterwards. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiodand that it must have been composed around — BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits the song together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether The Iliad and the Odyssey Trojan War actually took place — and if so when and where — and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterraneanwith some scattered references to EgyptEthiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in Heinrich Schliemann announced to the The Iliad and the Odyssey that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hissarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa circa BC was the origin of the myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. In the Iliad Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between and BC. The Homeric The Iliad and the Odyssey are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only The Iliad and the Odyssey in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greekin keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odysseyand that Homeric formulae preserve older features The Iliad and the Odyssey other parts of the poems. The Homeric poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. The Iliad and the Odyssey habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called parataxis. The so-called ' type scenes ' typische Scenenwere named by Walter Arend in He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, prayingfighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un- Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. C, B, A has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse. The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the The Iliad and the Odyssey and sixth centuries The Iliad and the Odyssey. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally- dictated texts. Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt. After the establishment of the Library of AlexandriaHomeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in in Milan, Italy. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel'sfollows the medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West — or T. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is the latest accepted revisionreviewed on 20 October For other uses, see Homer disambiguation. For other uses, see Homeric disambiguation and Homerus disambiguation. It is not to be confused with Homerian. Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer. Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question. Main article: Historicity of the Homeric epics. Main article: Homeric Greek. Ancient Greece portal Poetry portal Literature portal. The British Museum. Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. The Iliad and the Odyssey 22 November A Short History of Greek Literature. University of Chicago Press. Cambridge University Press. Classical Literature: An Introduction. Retrieved 23 November A Companion to Greek Literature. Gary Walter de Gruyter. The Odyssey Re-formed. Cornell University Press. Homer, His Art and His World. University of Michigan Press. The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World. OUP Oxford. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 30 June The Homer Encyclopedia. Homer: The Resonance of Epic. The Lives of the Greek Poets. Iliad - Wikipedia

Set during the Trojan Warthe ten-year siege of the city of Troy Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the warand related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' imminent death and the fall of The Iliad and the Odyssey, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. The Iliad is paired with something of a sequelthe Odysseyalso attributed to Homer. Along with the Odysseythe Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literatureand its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. Chrysesa Trojan priest of Apollooffers the Greeks wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseisheld captive by Agamemnonthe Greek leader. Although most of the Greek army is in favour of the offer, Agamemnon refuses. Chryses prays for Apollo's The Iliad and the Odyssey, and Apollo causes a plague to afflict the Greek army. After nine days of plague, Achillesthe leader of the Myrmidon contingent, calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, but decides to take Achilles' captive, Briseisas compensation. Achilles furiously declares that he and his men will no longer fight for Agamemnon and will go home. Odysseus takes a ship and returns Chryseis to her father, whereupon Apollo ends the plague. In the meantime, Agamemnon's messengers take Briseis away. Achilles becomes very upset, sits by the seashore, and prays to his mother, Thetis. Thetis does so, and Zeus agrees. Agamemnon heeds the dream but first decides to test the Greek army's morale, by telling them to go home. The plan backfires, and only the intervention of Odysseus, inspired by Athenastops a rout. Odysseus confronts and beats Thersitesa common soldier who voices discontent about fighting Agamemnon's war. After a meal, the Greeks deploy in companies upon the Trojan plain. The poet takes the opportunity to describe the provenance of each Greek contingent. When news of the Greek deployment reaches King Priamthe Trojans respond in a sortie upon the plain. In a list similar to that for the Greeks, the poet describes the Trojans and their allies. The initial cause of the entire war is alluded to here, when Helen is said to be The Iliad and the Odyssey the struggles between Trojans and Greeks, that Ares had made them fight The Iliad and the Odyssey her sake. Paris is beaten, but Aphrodite rescues him and leads him to bed with Helen before Menelaus can kill him. Agamemnon rouses the Greeks, and battle is joined. Apollo faces Diomedes and warns him against warring with gods. Many heroes and commanders join in, including Hectorand the gods supporting each side try to influence the battle. Emboldened by Athena, Diomedes wounds Ares and puts him out of action. Hector enters the city, urges prayers and sacrifices, incites Paris to battle, bids his wife Andromache and son Astyanax farewell The Iliad and the Odyssey the city walls, and rejoins the battle. The Greeks agree to burn their dead, and build a wall to protect their ships and camp, while the Trojans quarrel about returning Helen. Paris offers to return the treasure he The Iliad and the Odyssey and give further wealth as compensation, but not Helen, and the offer is refused. A day's truce is agreed for burning the dead, during which the Greeks also build their wall and a trench. The Trojans prevail and force the Greeks back to their wall, while Hera and Athena are forbidden to help. Night falls before the Trojans can assail the Greek wall. They camp in the field to attack at first light, The Iliad and the Odyssey their watchfires light the plain like stars. Agamemnon admits his error, and sends an embassy composed of Odysseus, Ajax, Phoenixand two heralds to offer Briseis and extensive gifts to Achilles, who has been camped next to his ships throughout, The Iliad and the Odyssey only he will return to the fighting. Achilles and his companion The Iliad and the Odyssey receive the embassy well, but Achilles angrily refuses Agamemnon's offer and declares that he would only return to battle if the Trojans reached his ships and threatened them with fire. The embassy returns empty-handed. Achilles sends Patroclus from his camp to inquire about the Greek casualties, and while there Patroclus is moved to pity by a speech of Nestor 's. Hector, ignoring an omen, leads the terrible fighting. The Greeks are overwhelmed and routed, the wall's gate is broken, and Hector charges in. The Trojan seer Polydamas urges Hector to fall back and warns him about Achilles, but is ignored. Against the mounting discontent of the Greek-supporting gods, Zeus sends Apollo to aid the Trojans, who once again breach the wall, and the battle reaches the ships. Achilles relents and lends Patroclus his armor, but sends him off with a stern admonition The Iliad and the Odyssey to pursue the Trojans, lest he take Achilles' glory. Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle and arrives as the Trojans set fire to the first ships. The Trojans are routed by the sudden onslaught, and Patroclus begins his assault by killing Zeus's son Sarpedona leading ally of the Trojans. Patroclus, ignoring Achilles' command, pursues and reaches the gates of Troy, where Apollo himself stops him. Patroclus is set upon by Apollo and Euphorbosand is finally killed by Hector. Achilles is urged The Iliad and the Odyssey help retrieve Patroclus' body but has no armour. Bathed in a brilliant radiance by Athena, Achilles stands next to the Greek wall and roars in rage. The Trojans are dismayed by his appearance, and the Greeks manage to bear Patroclus' body away. Polydamas urges Hector again to withdraw into the city; again Hector refuses, and the Trojans camp on the plain The Iliad and the Odyssey nightfall. Patroclus The Iliad and the Odyssey mourned. Meanwhile, at Thetis' request, Hephaestus fashions a new set of armor for Achilles, including a magnificently wrought shield. Achilles fasts while the Greeks take their meal, straps on his new armor, and takes up his great spear. His horse Xanthos prophesies to Achilles his death. Achilles drives his chariot into battle. Achilles, burning with rage and grief, slays many. The river, angry at the killing, confronts Achilles but is beaten back by Hephaestus' firestorm. The gods fight among themselves. The great gates of the city are opened to receive the fleeing Trojans, and Apollo leads Achilles away from the city by pretending to be a Trojan. When Achilles approaches, Hector's will fails him, and he is chased around the city by Achilles. Finally, Athena tricks him into stopping, and he turns to face his opponent. After a brief duel, Achilles stabs Hector through the neck. Before dying, Hector reminds Achilles that he, too, is fated to die in the war. Achilles takes Hector's body and dishonours it by dragging it behind his chariot. The Greeks hold a day of funeral games, and Achilles gives out the prizes. Led by HermesPriam takes a wagon out of Troy, across the plains, and into the The Iliad and the Odyssey camp unnoticed. He clasps Achilles by the knees and begs for his son's body. Achilles is moved to tears, and the two lament their losses in the war. After a meal, Priam carries Hector's body back into Troy. Hector is buried, and the city mourns. The many characters of the Iliad are catalogued; the latter The Iliad and the Odyssey of Book II, the " Catalogue of Ships ", lists commanders and cohorts; battle scenes feature quickly slain minor characters. Much debate has surrounded the nature of the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus, as to whether it can be described as a homoerotic one or not. Some Classical and Hellenistic Athenian scholars perceived it as pederastic[i] while others perceived it as a platonic warrior-bond. In the literary Trojan War of the Iliadthe Olympian gods, goddesses, and minor deities fight among themselves and participate in human warfare, often by interfering with humans to counter other gods. Unlike their portrayals in Greek religion, Homer's portrayal of gods suited his narrative purpose. The gods in The Iliad and the Odyssey thought of fourth-century Athenians were not spoken of in terms familiar to us from Homer. Mary Lefkowitz [9] discusses the relevance of divine action in the Iliadattempting to answer the question of whether or not divine intervention is a discrete occurrence for its own sakeor if such godly behaviors are mere human character metaphors. The intellectual interest of Classic-era authors, such as Thucydides and Platowas limited to their utility as The Iliad and the Odyssey way of talking about human life rather than a description or a truth", because, if the gods remain religious figures, rather than human metaphors, their "existence"— without the foundation of either dogma or a bible of faiths—then allowed Greek culture the intellectual breadth and freedom to conjure gods fitting any religious function they required as a people. These beliefs coincide to the thoughts about the gods in polytheistic Greek religion. For example, Poseidon is the god of the sea, Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty, Ares is the god of war, and so on and so forth for many other gods. This is how Greek culture was defined as many Athenians felt the presence of their gods through divine intervention in significant events in their lives. Oftentimes they found these events to be mysterious and inexplicable. Psychologist Julian Jaynes [13] uses the Iliad as a major piece of evidence for his theory of the Bicameral Mindwhich posits that until about the time described in the Iliadhumans had a far different mentality from present day humans. He says that humans during that time were lacking what we today call consciousness. He suggests that humans heard and obeyed commands from what they identified as gods, until the change The Iliad and the Odyssey human mentality that incorporated the motivating force into the conscious self. He points out that almost every action in the Iliad is directed, caused, or influenced by a god, and that earlier translations show an astonishing lack of words suggesting thought, planning, or introspection. Those that do appear, he argues, are misinterpretations made by translators imposing a modern mentality on the characters. Some scholars believe that the gods may have intervened in the mortal world because of quarrels they may have had among each other. Homer interprets the world at this time by using the passion and emotion of the gods to be determining factors of what happens on the human level. The emotions between the goddesses often translate to actions they take in the mortal world. For example, in Book 3 of The Iliad, Paris challenges any of the Achaeans to a single combat and Menelaus steps forward. Menelaus was dominating the battle and was on the verge of killing Paris. The partisanship of Aphrodite towards Paris induces constant intervention by all of the gods, especially to give motivational speeches to their respective proteges, The Iliad and the Odyssey often appearing in the shape of a human being they are familiar with. Once set, gods and men abide it, neither truly able nor willing to contest it. How fate is set The Iliad and the Odyssey unknown, but it is told by the Fates and by Zeus through sending omens to seers such as Calchas. Men and their gods continually speak of heroic acceptance and The Iliad and the Odyssey avoidance of one's slated fate.