Searching for the Historical Homer

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Did a man named Homer really live? And are the poems attributed to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey, rooted in actual history? Generations of scholars have wrestled with these problems and provided widely different solutions. But does it really matter? Perhaps the scholarly disputes over the historicity of Homer and his tales are just a game, a fruitless academic debate with no bearing on our appreciation of the epics or our understanding of ancient Greece.

It does matter, and it involves more than mere gamesmanship or scholarly contest.¹ The poet and his poems can reveal a great deal about early Greece, once we determine the rough age of their composition and the period they describe. I believe that Homer’s tales assumed something like their final form, and shortly afterwards were written down, toward the end of the eighth century B.C.—when Greek culture was beginning to emerge from a centuries-long Dark Age (c. 1150–750 B.C.). The Iliad and the Odyssey may cast much-needed light on this shadowy period in history.

As Troy excavator Manfred Korfmann has said, “When Homer created the first epic from the myths handed down to him, he changed the world.”² Even in antiquity, his poems cast a spell. In describing a glorious, heroic past nearly as grand as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Homer influenced every aspect of subsequent Greek culture. And not only the Greeks were moved: When the Persian king Xerxes invaded Europe in 480 B.C., he is said to have paused at Troy to offer a sacrifice. Stirring accounts of the Trojan War helped rally the Greeks under Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), who also made an offering to the gods at Troy. And the Roman emperor Caracalla (211–217 A.D.), who claimed to be a descendant of Achilles, “prepared to conquer the Parthians as the material successors to the Persians and even the Trojans.”³

So highly was Homer esteemed in antiquity that the Greeks of the Classical Age considered him the poet, according to Plato.⁴ Plato wrote in the fourth century B.C., in the wake of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to mention only the three great Athenian tragedians of the fifth century B.C. Nor was Plato going out on a limb; Aeschylus reportedly observed that Greek playwrights regarded their works less as competition for the great epics than as “slices from the banquet of Homer.”⁵

This fascination with the challenging, powerful epic poems naturally provoked interest in the biographical details of Homer himself (or herself, as some have argued). One ancient author, incorrectly identified as the Greek historian Herodotus, produced a “life” of Homer. The biography’s author concludes, “It is proved 028that Homer was born 168 years after the taking of Troy” and 622 years before Xerxes (485–465 B.C.) attacked Greece—namely, around 1100 B.C. The actual Herodotus (484–425 B.C.), in his account of the Persian Wars, places Homer no more than 400 years before his own time, around 850 B.C.

Various writers have located the poet’s home in Greek Asia Minor, on the mainland of Greece, in Sicily and even, as Lucian proposed in the second century A.D., in Babylonia. Surely Lucian’s suggestion was made with tongue in cheek, but it reflects the dilemma faced by those ancients who attacked the mystery known as the “Homeric Question.”

For a time these questions were largely ignored. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in both the European West and the Byzantine East—an empire which, according to tradition, was built by Trojans who fled to Rome after the war—the greatness of Homer’s poetry itself eclipsed concerns regarding the details of his life.

Still later, in medieval Europe, overall interest in classical Greek declined. Homer’s poems were remembered mainly as part of a “curious perverted tradition.”⁶

When Homer’s masterpieces were “rediscovered” during the Renaissance, questions about the poet also revived. In the 18th century, literary critics found in the Iliad and Odyssey simple, even primitive, poetry and hence a poet from a time well before Greece’s sophisticated Golden Age in the late sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Some later scholars (Germans, in particular) argued that no single poet deserved credit for the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to these critics, “Homer’s” epics began as short poems sung by nonliterate bards; later, when Greece became literate, these independent poetic bits were cobbled together into a “wretched patchwork,” as Ulrich von Wilamowitz described the Iliad.⁷ Taking this view to its logical conclusion, some asserted that “Homer is no more than a type, the representative of all the minstrels who preserved the poetry passing under his name.”⁸

If there was no Homer, what about the world he described? Did it have historical roots? To this question the critics gave essentially the same answer. Yes, the ten-year-long war at Troy inspired Persian kings and Greek emperors, but even fictitious figures and imagined triumphs can serve in this way. Homer “created a life that never was on land or sea…[a] fabulous age of Greece which must have no place in history”⁹—an opinion that still has adherents.

This verdict, however, has not sat well with many of the poet’s admirers. As E. R. Dodds wrote, “The exhilarating conviction that for several generations the best scholars in Europe had been playing the wrong game dawned on the public mind with surprising suddenness shortly after the First World War.”¹⁰ Scholars began to reconsider Homeric poetry and found that the epics were not as disjointed or “wretched” as critics had claimed: Both poems had a basic structural plan, suggesting not a haphazard mosaic of stories but a purposive artistic creation. Thus the traditional belief that the epics were composed by a single creative intelligence—or at least that a single poet created each epic—regained a measure of credibility.

Perhaps the most important step was taken by the classicist Milman Parry, who demonstrated that the patterned language, repetitions and metrical form of Homeric verse revealed that the poems were the product of an oral, rather than a literary, tradition.¹¹ They were sung or recited before—perhaps long before—they were written down. The process of creation, therefore, could be dated to the time before Greek culture was literate—that is, to its pre-classical period. The “Homeric Question,” then, is important for historical as well as literary reasons; the Iliad and Odyssey may preserve accurate 029memories of prehistoric Greece.

But where should they be placed within what we now know was a very long stretch of time? Another avenue of exploring the ancient world offered an answer: The physical remains of the heroic age of Greece had been discovered and announced through the efforts of Heinrich Schliemann in the last three decades of the 19th century. His excavations were inspired by Homer: Schliemann sought the Troy of King Priam and the Troy and Mycenae of Agamemnon—and found them. Homer’s poetic guidance provided such clear clues, Schliemann believed, that the poet must have witnessed these very sites, perhaps even the Trojan War itself. Objects described in the poems were identified with remains taken from the ground at Troy and Mycenae. While these objects carried no marks of ownership, identifications were nonetheless readily at hand: This was Nestor’s cup, Agamemnon’s tomb, Priam’s treasure.

Yet the initial enthusiasm waned as differences between the archaeological record and the epic tradition were detected.¹² The historian Rhys Carpenter was moved to conclude that whereas the poems refer to the heroic Mycenaean Age (c. 1600–1200 B.C.), “the epic poets knew next to nothing about the civilization amid which they set their scenes.”¹³

So began the hunt for the poem’s cultural setting, the discovery of which might provide a date for the poet. One view settled poet and poetry in the tenth to ninth centuries B.C., after the collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms.¹⁴ Many, however, looked to the late eighth century—a time of rapid, remarkable advances in the Greek world. In this period, a rise in population, a growing specialization and proficiency in crafts, and the reestablishment of contact with the larger Mediterranean world heralded what scholars call the archaic phase (c. 750–500 B.C.) of classical Greek civilization. A gifted bard—or two—working with inherited oral tales, may well have crafted extraordinary epics of the past at the very moment when they could be captured in the art of writing. An image of such a bard could be found in the “Hymn to Delian Apollo,” dated to this same general period; its singer bids farewell, begging those present to

Bear me in mind if ever some one of men upon earth,

A weary, travel-worn stranger, should come here and ask:

“O maidens, what man to you is the sweetest of singers

Who frequent this place, and whose songs give you greatest delight?”

In theory the historicity of the epics may be tested against archaeological and written evidence from Greece or other contemporaneous civilizations. However, there are no straightforward hints of a Trojan War in the records of others, and the Mycenaean Greek form of writing appears to have been used only for administrative records: inventories of goods, personnel, land holdings, raw materials and the like. None of the texts documents anything like a war with people across the Aegean Sea. So we are thrown back to the question of the date of the poetry and its creator.

If Homer’s epics belong to the latter part of the Bronze Age (c. 1400–1200 B.C.), when Mycenae flourished and Troy was destroyed, they are more likely to describe an actual world. We have seen, however, that many scholars do not find a close match between Bronze Age artifacts and references in the Iliad and Odyssey. But they do see connections between the Homeric poems and the Dark Age (1150–750 B.C.) that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization. Positive dating would be especially valuable to historians, since Dark Age Greece was completely nonliterate.¹⁵ If archaeological and textual evidence from the Bronze Age is limited, such evidence from the Dark Age is almost nonexistent. So if the poems do indeed describe actual institutions and 030values of these centuries, historians will now be able to peer into the nature of life in the four centuries between the Bronze and Classical Ages. The Dark Age was a kind of bridge connecting the Bronze Age world of palaces and kings to the world of the archaic city-state. In this period, every aspect of life was transformed. How we would delight in knowing something of those who survived the Mycenaean collapse, struggling to stay alive under extremely difficult conditions in tiny communities of 20 or 30 souls. Perhaps garrulous old Nestor is describing these circumstances when he recalls driving his plunder back to town after a nighttime cattle raid (Iliad XI.669–682).

An answer is, therefore, important, but how does one reach an answer? The poems themselves offer a rather unexpected solution. Again, Milman Parry’s studies of the epics are crucial; as we have seen, Parry demonstrated that their earliest development lay in oral tradition rather than as written compositions. One consequence of the Dark Age was that Greece became nonliterate—and with the loss of knowledge of the Mycenaean script called Linear B,^a Greek culture thus became reliant on word of mouth for memory and the transmission of information. Since even the simplest of societies needs a means of passing knowledge on to its young, techniques were developed to aid remembrance.

The Greek oral tradition—as we know it in its final form, preserved in the epics—is extremely sophisticated. The language fit into a poetic meter dependent upon the variation of long and short syllables. Poets chose words both to convey a specific meaning and to merge with one another in songlike fashion. In fact, as we know from other oral cultures, such poets regularly accompany their words with musical instruments. Once an idea is suitably shaped to the poetic form, it can be inserted into longer accounts. Any information—or story—not imbedded in a larger context is likely to be lost. Generally, scholars have found, the creation of a tradition occurs within the first and second generations of transmission.

Since long accounts are more difficult to recall than short ones, their usual form draws heavily on mnemonic devices to ensure no information is lost to either the narrator or the audience. Successful oral traditions are marked by larger-than-life events and figures that have immediate significance for the audience.

The product must be pleasurable, but its function is not simply to entertain. Since there is no other way to preserve the rules, customs and beliefs of a community, oral tradition preserves practical instruction, norms of social and religious behavior, acceptable forms of land use, and definitions of status. Such information may not be the stuff of great literature. Yet, embedded in a narrative of exciting events and heroic figures, it provides a cultural context for those events and people.

Thus the Homeric epics are a kind of encyclopedia, both for those who remembered them and for those who ask questions of them today.¹⁶ Inasmuch as words are fleeting, they must be immediately intelligible to those hearing them. Over time, oral traditions change through both conscious and unconscious acts on the part of the singers. Conscious change occurs when information is not understandable and, consequently, impedes the flow of the tale. While striking heirlooms such as golden drinking cups can be visualized in the mind’s eye, defunct institutions—official positions in a lost kingdom, for instance—may be problematic. The lawagetas (perhaps leader of the host) of the Bronze Age kingdom of Pylos is more easily remembered as “shepherd of the people.”

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Two essential features of an oral culture, then, are (1) a corpus of available traditions and (2) a means by which those traditions are modernized and thus made intelligible to each generation. Those who update the tradition are creative artists, the singers, who are aided in their efforts by the Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne (or Memory) and Zeus. Singers are also controlled by the interests of their communities; their efforts would go for naught without communal acceptance. It is telling that individual shapers of the tradition are, for the most part, anonymous: They blend in with the larger community. Even so, oral poetry does provide great potential freedom to singers: While owing form and substance to earlier songs, each new song’s power comes from the skills of its present singer. In other words, knowledge of oral composition and performance allows us to restore “Homer”—that is, a brilliant bard—to the creative process. It may be necessary to acknowledge more than one inspired singer, especially if we believe that the historical core of the epics lies in the Mycenaean era. Perhaps an early singer began a poetic account that was powerful enough to be remembered. But even this likelihood need not do away with a final monumental bard who eternalized traditional stories through the recently restored skill of writing. Following the Greeks, we might as well call this final singer Homer.

If Homer, as the final poet of the Iliad and Odyssey, can be dated to the eighth century B.C., does the backdrop of the poetry reflect the same period? Or do the epics contain flotsam and jetsam of stories accumulated from every century from the Late Bronze Age through the eighth century? And, if this is the case, how much is late and how much early?

Several chronological levels can easily coexist in the poems, showing that they had evolved for centuries through oral transmission. It is essential, however, to remember the gradual process of modernization that occurs in oral traditions. Since the epics were set down in the recently adapted alphabetic form of writing dating to the eighth century B.C., it is reasonable to conclude that their content was not problematic to an eighth-century audience. Thus the modern historian can use the poems to provide glimpses of that world too.

Some scholars find precise correspondences: The name Agamemnon, for example, may represent both a remembered Bronze Age hero and a king who ruled over the Ionian city of Kyme at the close of the eighth century B.C. Others find less specificity, believing that only the general contours of life are embedded in the poems.

Let us consider the most prominent figures in the poems. Homeric heroes are called by the Greek word for king, basileus; a great many of them fighting at Troy, in the Iliad, and attempting to reestablish a normal life in Greece, in the Odyssey. These leaders of society are marked by two primary qualities: They are redoubtable fighters who stand in the forefront of battle and, because of their own wisdom, provide useful counsel to others. Specific adjectives identify a basileus as one who gives the sign, sets to order, regulates and shows his strength in his very physical appearance. Mental powers are demonstrated by fluency of speech, useful advice, control over assemblies, and exchange of opinions with other wise people. The outstanding heroes of the epics gain renown in their communities through these traits and show their status by acquiring greater possessions, especially land and its products, as well as herds of animals.

Though such a hero has a role that transcends immediate family concerns, the basis of his strength is his own household, or oikos. At least in the epic world, these households are the largest kinship groups. When Odysseus seeks to reassert his power in Ithaca, for instance, he enlists the aid of his son and two household slaves. By preserving and enriching his own oikos, a man draws 032other families—through their own leaders—into his following. He retains the allegiance of other heads of families as long as he is successful in battle and counsel, demonstrating his skills by means of material acquisitions. When he fails, leadership passes to another who gives better advice or proves himself stronger in combat.

In the epics, there is some, but not much, specialization of labor. Athena assumes the disguise of a trader in search of iron (which may suggest, in accord with the modernizing tendency of oral culture, a date later than the Bronze Age); bards and physicians have specialized functions; a goldsmith can be found to gild the horns of sacrificial cattle. But such occupations are rare; most people—even the kings—are concerned with gaining a livelihood from tilling the soil and raising flocks of animals. The Homeric world is circumscribed in other ways as well. Non-Greek lands are foreign and strange, fearsome when inhabited by cannibalistic Cyclopes or magical when home to peace-loving Phaeacians. Life is neither easy nor predictable; the gods can strike a person down without warning. Divinities are a constant element in human life, but it is never clear when gods are present since they quickly don disguises. But divinities are powerfully important and must be treated properly.

This picture has a kind of coherence that accords with the archaeological record of the late Dark Age, when communities were small and compact 033although increasing in numbers and size. No strict social classifications divided the population: The archaeological record for this period indicates that a pronounced degree of homogeneity characterized the majority of homes and burial sites—unlike the palaces and tombs of the Bronze Age. Signs of specialization become somewhat more abundant in the material record and, at the same time, incipient contact with the larger Mediterranean world is evident in both foreign objects found in Greece and Greek objects discovered elsewhere.

Beyond the coherence of the picture and the apparent match with archaeological evidence from the Dark Age, there is another means of searching out the historical references of the poems. The Dark Age stands between the better-known Mycenaean civilization and the archaic phase of the Greek Classical Age. The nature of each period is preserved in the archaeological record, and we know that they were very different from one another. In the century prior to the beginning of the Dark Age, the Mycenaean world was still largely intact. By the eighth century B.C., however, all of the palaces and citadels had been swept away, and Greece was well on its way toward a new political, social and economic structure that is reflected in the rise of the polis (city-state). The differences between the two types of political structure could hardly be more pronounced: The Dark Age was a time of transformation, essentially of leveling. For many historians of ancient Greece, Homer’s epics mark the end of this process of disintegration and the dawn of the classical era.

While it would be overbold to suggest that the problem of dating either the poet or his poems has been solved, an eighth-century B.C. date is favored by many. One of the best scholars at work on these issues today, Kurt Raaflaub, has written an account under the title—translated from the German—“Homer and the History of the Eighth Century B.C.”¹⁷

Is it possible that a small bronze statuette of a lyre-player accompanied by a boy gives us a glimpse of an eighth-century “Homer”? The sculpture, (see photo of bronze statuette) dates to about 700 B.C., and the boy’s left arm touches the hip of the lyre-player, as if to steady him. Remembering that Homer was frequently described in antiquity as blind, classicist J. Michael Padgett admits that “without Homer, one might not think of interpreting the boy’s gesture this way, but it is during this very period, when the poet’s fame was spread across the seas, that he would have come to mind.”¹⁸ It is not unrealistic to imagine such a musician traveling from town to town, singing for his supper in a number of places.¹⁹ Although his song was embedded in the past and contained names of people and places from that distant era, he may well have been moved by the warmth of his reception to add names, thereby immortalizing people and places he knew.

In seeking to define the essential historical basis of the epics, scholars have trained their eyes on distinct features, looking at them as if they were layers—similar to archaeological strata—piled atop one another. A more apt metaphor, I think, is the image of a rainbow.²⁰ This image acknowledges distinctions between the hues that make up the full spectrum, a necessity in the study of the poems since there are chronological differences embedded in the final form that they assumed. But this metaphor also suggests that the poems, like rainbows, are integrated entities in their own right. Earlier features were blended with newer elements, traditional poetic phrases were melded with newly created phrases, and themes sung for decades were joined with new themes. We have an eighth-century B.C. blend of colors, and we are not to be faulted if we assign its creation to a gifted singer named Homer.

Did a man named Homer really live? And are the poems attributed to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey, rooted in actual history? Generations of scholars have wrestled with these problems and provided widely different solutions. But does it really matter? Perhaps the scholarly disputes over the historicity of Homer and his tales are just a game, a fruitless academic debate with no bearing on our appreciation of the epics or our understanding of ancient Greece. It does matter, and it involves more than mere gamesmanship or scholarly contest.1 The poet and his poems can reveal a great deal […]