The Homeric Epic

HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2013

Dr. PerdigaoAugust 28, 2013

Timeline• 1700-1450 BCE Height of Minoan civilization

• 1400-1230 BCE Height of Mycenaean civilization

• c. 1240 BCE Fall of Troy

• 1100-800 BCE Dark Age, from Mycenaean to Hellenic civilization

• 8th c. BCE Homer, Iliad c. 750-725 BCE

Transitions• Linear A: Minoan :: Linear B: Mycenaean

• Greek and Greek civilizations at origin

• Minoans displaced by Mycenaeans

• Period of Calamities: 1200-1000 B.C.E.

• Account of Troy around 1200 BCE not 800 BCE when Homer writes it

• German businessman Heinrich Schliemann in 1871 excavates Mycenae, believes he finds Agamemnon’s grave though archaeologists now believe that the graves predate the Trojan War (1700-1600 BCE)

• British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1900 discovers Minoan civilization on Crete (Perry 51-52)

Transitions• From spoken: written language

• Religion—festivals, rituals, games, sacrifices, not shared beliefs but actions and practices

• Sense gods intervened in their world

• Gods, demi-gods, heroes (humans with god-like status), spirits with overlapping roles so communities chose groups, specific deities to worship

• Gods capable of jealousy, love, rage—like humans; are immortal, can’t suffer and can’t learn—unlike humans; huge contrast between gods and humans

Origins • Half-mythical blind bard Homer—single creator but

combination from oral tradition of bards

• Homer—writing within Dark Age but will be replaced by new one

• Looking back at lost golden age with sense of what has been lost

• Myth: Hecuba/Priam/Paris : Thetis/Peleus/Achilles

Frame Story • Myth underlying The Iliad: poet does not lay out, assumed we

know

• Hecuba (wife of Priam), while pregnant, has dream she gives birth to a firebrand that will destroy Troy, tells husband—Paris’ birth

• Thetis and Peleus (Achilles’ parents) to marry; invite all except Eris=strife, struggle—because forgot—so doomed to succumb to it

• Apple of discord—Eris inscribes with “for the fairest”: Hera (wife of Zeus, marriage); Athena (wisdom); Aphrodite (beauty)

• Paris goes against Greek values—power, fame—chooses short-term with beauty, sensual pleasures, loses Hera, Athena in war

Structure and design of The Iliad• Oral epic: repetition (memory/improvisation):

as “oral epic”—what is not necessary in writingKeys to memory, falls into patterns

• Dactylic hexameter (- u u):one long, two short beatssix units in each line but can have variationmeter of poem like fate—wander but then always ends the same way in each line

• Homeric epithets (rosy-fingered dawn, fleet-footed Achilles)

Conventions of the Epic• Invocation to the muse

• Beginning in medias res

• Use of Homeric epithets

• Use of Homeric or epic similes

• Use of catalogues

• Long set speeches by major characters

Structural Design • Two parallel stories of two families

• Poem about anger

• Role of strife

• Begins in rage, mania, anger, violence, differs from Christian worldview of perfection, then fall; here, strife is always present

• Timé: esteem, reputation with others

• Kudos: praise, glory

• Arêté: excellence, potential

• Goal of timé, arêté=immortality through memory