Every nation of ancient and original education has an ancient, from the depths of centuries, but not hardened and stable for a long time, modified and multiplied poetic tradition, which little by little it learns to protect from further changes, as an inviolable legacy of the original revelations oh, sent to people gods. This is how the people acquire sacred texts, the study of which educates generations and gives the first reasons for the development of the science of words and the art of words, history, religious doctrine and philosophical speculation.
Such was the significance of Homer’s poems in Greece. They signified, for the entire Hellenic world, fragmented into many political bodies, a nationwide connection, the consciousness and materialization of which was the urgent need of a nation not united by a state union; why, for a long time, individual cities, by legislative means, have introduced the public proclamation of passages from Homer by rhapsodists into the obligatory circle of festive rites, and since the 6th century they have been stocking up, for storage in state archives, with certified copies of the Iliad and Odyssey. On Homer, from generation to generation, the Hellenes learned from childhood - both at home and at school, and in the square - what Hellenism is, as the high system of ancient speech and its “sacred” manner, primordial character and cherished custom, knowledge of paternal gods and the memory of dear heroes. From Homer, whose verses were memorized for many centuries, were carefully studied,
were interpreted in many ways - the Hellenes developed their poetry (the later epic, choral lyric poetry, and finally tragedy), and the grammar of their native language, and the first principles of ethics, poetics, dialectics, rhetoric, and their sacred history, and the plastic ideals of fine art (so, in the 5th century, the famous lines of the first song of the Iliad, v. 528-530, determined the artistic concept of Phidias when creating the Olympian statue of Zeus and forever established the iconographic type of the omnipotent father of gods and people) - until the time finally came for critical thought and on the same In old Homer, learned wit and aesthetic rigor first tested their strength and refined themselves to the point of complete independence from time-honored tradition. Then the blind old man, inspired by the divine Muses, turned into one of the exemplary, “canonical” or “classical” poets, into the simple-minded, “good” Homer, into an artist to match other authors of book literature, extraordinarily skillful, although in many ways not yet perfect, gifted with the incomparable power of genius, but not at all infallible and sometimes offending refined taste.
Homer and humanism.
Already ancient philology outlined this path of comparisons between Homer and the creators of the artificial epic - the path that new European thought followed from the 14th century, from the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, when Homer, known to the Middle Ages only by hearsay, as the elder, great brother of the prophet and the wizard Virgil on the poetic Parnassus, appeared in more tangible outlines, as a result of the first acquaintance with his poems, partly already in the original, according to ancient copies, analyzed with the help of visiting learned Greeks, and then - from early printed books; for in 1488, in Florence, the educational activities of Byzantine emigrants-humanists, already of the second generation, culminated, among other things, with the first edition of Homer’s poems, edited by the Greek Demetrius Chalkondyla.
Only the presentation of the organic character of the cultural-historical process, which first dawn the yyovanni-battist Viko at the end of the 17th pillar, and, in particular, the excessive growth of folk poet, developed in the XVIII in Herder, forced to put the line between the epos of artificial ., poems by Virgil, Dante, Ariost, Tasso, Camões) and the folk epic, among the Greeks - the epic of Homer.
II.
Homeric question.
Friedrich August Wolf (Prolegomena ad Homerum, 1795), following in the footsteps of several predecessors (of which special merit belongs, together with Vico, to the 17th century writer, Abbot d'Aubigny), energetically proclaimed the opinion that it is impossible to assume a plan new epic creativity in such an early era , as the era of the creation of Homeric poems, which did not yet know writing, and the need to consider them as a collection of diverse epic tales, collected and presented in more or less
less orderly order only in the 6th century. BC, by a learned commission of rulers, by order of the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus.
This doctrine created an extraordinary stir throughout the entire educated world and found both enthusiastic adherents and ardent opponents. Schiller wondered with annoyance how such a great poet as Goethe could treat favorably this teaching, which overlooked the living face of Homer the poet; however, Goethe little by little returned to belief in the historical reality of Homer. The famous “Homeric question” began; and the closest (1837) stage in the development of Wolf’s outlined view of Homer as a legendary image, under whose guise many different singers are hidden, was Lachmann’s theory about the disintegration of the Iliad, upon careful study, into a number of small-scale pieces Saint-epic, or ballads, which this scientist more or less arbitrarily tried to isolate and differentiate from the whole connection.
Since the end of the 18th century, the prevailing idea has been of Homer as a simple symbol of a folk singer-storyteller, and of the ancient epic in general as a nameless, impersonal, unartificial, organically popular work. This view rested on two premises, which were two exaggerations: the antiquity of the Homeric world was recognized as a primitive antiquity, and its culture was more integral and single-elemental, less dismembered and heterogeneous than what it turned out to be during later historical study. It was an abstract ideology that cherished the ideal of the “organic era,” the golden, infantile time of a naive and almost unconscious epic, which, as the philosopher Schelling wrote, corresponds to “such a general state where there is no contradiction between personal freedom and the natural course of things, where everything is human.” My relationship enter into one track of the historical process.” The impression from the first acquaintance with the folk epic of other countries, especially with Serbian epic songs, performed by blind singers with a gusli or bandura, so vividly reminiscent of the traditional blind Homer with his “kifhara” or “forminga” (small, primitive lyre), seduced to see in Homeric creativity an unalloyed expression of the patriarchal-Hellenic, ingenuously clear view of the world, a direct manifestation of tribal poetic genius, the creation of a folk element that has not yet distinguished itself as either a uniquely creative individual or even a culturally isolated group .
But still, it was clear to philologists-scribes, free from such general premises, and occupied primarily not with establishing broad perspectives, but with an accurate investigation of the verbal monument to be studied, that before them was not a formless heap of tales and stories, but a strictly thought-out epic unity, revealing undoubted traces of conscious and skillful processing. The conviction that Homer's poems represent an artistic whole, that they are a complete creation, forms the basis of the conservative trend in the debate about Homer. Its defenders, like the ancient scientists of the Alexandrian period, would like to confine themselves to the discovery and elimination of individual late insertions that in some places distorted the Homeric original. So, Nitch (G. W. Nitzsch, who spoke for the first time with his defense of tradition
in the thirties of the last century) considers Homer to be the true author of both great poems attributed to him, from which suspected particulars are subject to exclusion only for reasons specific to each individual case; Homer's work consisted in the artistic fusion and replenishment of all the epic material that had reached him from an earlier time; Using the epic legend widely and freely, he partly compiled it, partly independently modified and enriched it.
Already G. Herman, the founder of modern philology, outlined (in 1831) a third point of view: a complex and comprehensive epic could grow from the original simple epic grain. Therefore, the task of the study was to reveal the first Iliad in the Iliad, and the original Odyssey in the Odyssey. At the same time, it was necessary to find out how this core developed, what successive deposits were left on it, as if in layers, by new eras, how other narratives, previously alien to it, were brought into connection with the indigenous composition.
On this fundamental basis rests the interpretation of the growth of the Iliad from the relatively short poem “On the Wrath of Achilles,” or “Achilleides,” given by the Englishman Grote in his classic “History of Greece” (1846). Grote's attempt turned out to be extremely fruitful; the compromise he proposed—to agree to the assumption that Homer, the author of the Achilleid, himself expanded it to the size of the Iliad—could, of course, satisfy no one; but it was not so much about the creator as about the creation of the Homeric epic, about its origins and its transformations, about the clean lines of the original architectural plan in a colossal building cluttered with extensions and reconstructions. Researchers began searching for the “proto-Iliad”; all sorts of criteria were applied to distinguish the more ancient from the later elements in the present composition of the epic. B. Niese (in the book “On the Development of Homeric Poetry,” 1882) reduced the Homeric question to the problem of the successive guild creativity of singers, which he showed to be significantly different from the folk creativity. A. Fick (1881 and later) dared to remove his Ionian outfit from Homer and declare the poems written in the Ionian dialect to be common retellings of the original Iliad and Odyssey, composed by the Aeolians in Aeolian. K. Robert (“Studien zur Ilias”, 1901) uniquely used the latest archaeological data to determine the relative antiquity of the components of the Iliad by the type of weapon mentioned in them, based on the contrast between the Old Mycenaean monuments of military life and the remains of a later culture; not without some self-delusion by the harmony of the results obtained by this method, Robert tried to prove that the archaeological signs of antiquity are confirmed by the predominance of Aeolian elements in the language, which gives him the opportunity to restore the main “song of Achilles”; and it cannot be denied that this hypothetical restoration of his, being a condensed extract from the Iliad, transposed into the Aeolian dialect, produces an unexpected, complete and vivid impression with its naked simplicity, the lyrical tone of the epic and concentrated tragic energy. Many scientists, however, not convinced by any of the number of attempts of critical wit to resolve the “Homeric question”, remained with
the opinion that the latter is generally insoluble and that, apart from particular results, all the work on it did not lead to any general conclusion worthy of taking the place of the ancient legend about Homer, the creator of the Iliad and Odyssey.
As for the Odyssey, which presented less reason to suspect its integral composition and artistic unity than the Iliad, it became the subject of in-depth critical study only half a century ago, when A. Kirchhoff (“Homer’s Odyssey”, 1859, translated ed. in 1879), taking up by exposing the “proto-Odyssey” in it, he came to the conclusion that it arose from the ancient fusion of two essentially different primordial tales, which underwent further consistent expansion, with the introduction of new, initially alien to its circle, epic elements. On the basis of Kirchhoff's research, Wilamowitz-Mellendorff's Odyssey-related “Homeric Studies” arose (1884). The reader will find an overview of the Homeric question as it appears today, and a comprehensive critique of all opinions expressed on this issue in the 2nd edition of P. Cowher’s book “Basic Issues of Homeric Criticism” *.
In general, we can say that the theory of extensions coming from Herman has taken a strong place in the history of the Homeric question, which is still open today, although it cannot be argued that the efforts of scientists were able to establish with complete certainty and precise certainty the relative age of all the components of the Homeric epic separately and present an undoubted picture of the formation of existing poems from their ancient and simple prototypes.
III.
Aeolian beginning in
Ionian epic.
Thus, the newest study inevitably limits the already outdated doctrine of the entirely folk character of Homeric poetry. Between two extremes - equating Homer with the creators of artificial epics and the idea of the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey as simple retellers of what, little by little, due to some natural process, spontaneously arose in impersonal, popular creativity - between These two extremes establish a third possibility, which has all the signs of historical and philological probability - the possibility of seeing in Homer’s poems creativity in many ways still close to folk, but already different from it,
* R. Gauer, “die Grundfragen der Homerkritik”, 2. Aufl., Leipz. 1909.—In Russian, the study of Homer is devoted to the question. Sokolov, 1868, “The Homeric Question” (Works of F. F. Sokolov, St. Petersburg 1910, pp. 1-148) and Shestakov’s two-volume work “On the Origin of Homer’s Poems” (Kazan, 1892-1899). From the literature about Homer in Russian, let us also mention Jebb’s translated work (“Homer. Introduction to the Iliad and Odyssey,” 1892) and the original historian D. M. Petrushevsky “Society and State in Homer.”—Among the presentations of the Homeric issue in general guides to of the history of Greek literature, the most informative and relevant to the modern state of scientific research is the chapter on Homer’s epic in the book by W. Christ (W. Christ, “Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur”, 5. Auflage, bearb. von W. Schmid, München 1908, Ss. 24— 85,—in volume 7 of “Handbuch der klass. Alterthums-Wissenschaft” by Ivan Müller).
not similar either in its techniques, or in its reasons and objectives to the fruits of artificial writing and poetic individualism, but still designed for the aesthetic appreciation of listeners and consciously pursuing specific goals of cultural and moral influence on society. It is no longer possible to say: the poet Homer is unthinkable; He just hasn’t been proven as a historical person, because there is not a single reliable evidence of his personality in a number of later stories and fables about the wandering blind rhapsodist. But since the creation itself testifies to the creator, the name of Homer rightly opens for us the lists of Hellenic poets; only his face seems to double and multiply for us, and we do not know - and, apparently, we will never know - whether the compiler of the original Achilleid bore the name of Homer, or also the brilliant and already showing more of an individual talent, the creator of some parts of the Iliad belonging to undoubtedly from a later era, or, finally, the last collector and organizer of the code that has come down to us? There were several fathers of the Homeric epic over several generations, and the name “Homer” itself remains mysterious and almost only symbolic.
That Homer’s poems are not pure folk creativity, although, on the other hand, they are not individual creativity, but, on the contrary, cumulative and gradual, will become clear from the conditions of the emergence and successive transmission of the ancient Hellenic epic. There is no doubt that the birthplace of the great poems was the Ionian colonies in Asia Minor; these poems are the creations of the Ionian genius, artistically perceptive, universally versatile, mentally flexible and agile, full of harmony, grace and a sense of proportion; and their dialect is the ancient Ionian dialect. But the language of the poems surprises the researcher with the abundance of aeolisms interspersed in it, i.e. features of the Aeolian dialect. Let us add to this that the hero to whose glorification the Iliad is dedicated, Achilles, is an Aeolian hero, originally alien to the Ionian tribe. Hence the opinion that the original Iliad - the song of the wrath of Achilles - was a tribal epic of the ardent and warlike, courageously straightforward, lyrically soulful Aeolians and that it was composed in the Aeolian dialect; hence the attempts to get closer to the impression that this primordial epic was supposed to produce by translating the Ionian hexameters that have come down to us into Aeolian ones. This opinion and these attempts are contradicted, by the way, by the fact that aeolisms are scattered in the Iliad more or less evenly, whereas they should have been absent in parts of later origin, and that the verses of the present text do not form by themselves the Aeolian verses, so translation into the Aeolian dialect is associated with some modifications in the text, with its deliberate adaptation to the Aeolian warehouse.
So, more likely there is another view, according to which the Iliad arose in the area where the Aeolians formerly sat, and then the Ionians sat, so that the language of the local singers was more or less mixed. In its further development, the epic retained the original features of the dialect of the ancient Aeds: for many centuries, the language of epic poetry remained a unique dialectical variety, a conventional poetic speech, different from the living speech of the Ionian tribe. This
The historical conclusion from the observation of language is completely consistent with the most reliable of the legends about the homeland of Homer, who, competing and arguing among themselves, was considered their countryman and citizen by seven Greek urban communities. Precisely, in Smyrna we find exactly those historical conditions that we were talking about: before the Ionians finally ousted the Aeolians from it, both tribes killed one another from the other a beautiful seaside city in that distant era when the colonization of the Asia Minor coast, dating back to its beginnings, took place ъ to the 11th century BC.
IV.
Thessalian epics.
But it clearly follows from what has been said above that those songs about the glories of heroes that formed the first basis in the building of the slowly created Iliad were Aeolian songs. They were brought with them to Asia Minor by tribes that originally lived in Thessaly, south of Mount Olympus, which remained for the settlers the mountain of the gods. All the gods have their homes on it; on it and at its foot, in Pieria, the Muses also live, delighting with the singing of the gods and reminding the singers of old. The Thessalian Aeolians also knew the silver-footed sea goddess, Thetis, the wife of Peleus (originally the god of Mount Pelion), and have long been accustomed to mourn the sad fate of Thetidin’s son, the beautiful Achilles (aka, by patronymic - Pelid), who was destined for a short life, full of exploits of incomparable glory, but poisoned by bitter losses and doomed to stop after Achilles defeats another hero - Hector.
The latest research has revealed the presence, in local Thessalian cults and heroic legends, of a whole series of heroes collected by Homer under the walls or within the walls of besieged Troy. The material presence, in the historical era, of anciently famous tombs serves as a reliable sign by which we can judge the place of primordial veneration of the hero and the homeland of the myth associated with him. The tomb of Hector, the main hero of Troy and the most dangerous enemy of the Greeks according to Homer, was one of the revered city shrines of the seven-gate Thebes in Boeotia even in the time of Pausanias, who left us a description of his journey through Greece (2nd century AD). It seems that Hector in the ancient epic tales, which captured the memory of the Aeolians in their homeland about their warlike movements from the north, from Thessaly, to central Greece, to the valley of the Spercheus River, played the role of the defender of Thebes against the Thessalians He was killed by aliens and in these wars. According to one piece of information, preserved by Plutarch, from the Attic genealogies of Istrus, generally an unreliable historian, but in this case, apparently, recording an old local legend, Alexander, whose name in Thessaly was Paris, was defeated in battle, near the Spercheus River, by Achilles and Patrok crowbar . And from this example we see that the stories of the Homeric epic about the battles under the walls of Troy turn out to be a mirage reflection of the inter-tribal battles that took place in European Greece even before the deportation of the colonists to Asia Minor. And if in Homer Alexander-Paris fights only
with the Thessalians, and if, according to legend, he fell at the hands of the Thessalian, Philoctetes, then here the loyalty of the late epic to its original sources, the Aeolian heroic songs, is clearly reflected, long after the persons and events were torn from their origin new soil and transferred to alien to them, a semi-ideal world. Likewise, the seaside city of Thebes in Asia Minor, the city of Andromache destroyed by Achilles (Il. VI, 397), is nothing more than a projection of the city of Thebes in the region of Phthiotis; Andromache also belongs to the ancient Aeolian circle of epic legends, and Helen, as a goddess, was the subject of religious cult in Thessaly.
With such a store of local legends about the gods and native heroes, at the head of which stood, next to his friend Patroclus, Achilles, doomed to premature death, the Aeolian settlers came to Asia Minor, where new living conditions and new cultural influences awaited the newcomers Iya.
V.
Pre-Homeric polytheism.
The main change in the sphere of religious ideas, which determined the general shift in worldview and created new foundations for epic creativity, naturally flowed from the very fact of resettlement: it was the loss of local cults - beliefs and rituals directly determined by the meaning of ancient sacred places and their material shrines.
The religion of the era preceding the migration consisted of the veneration of gods varying in glory and power, a host of which were lost at the lower levels in the chaotic multitude of elemental, but almost always precisely localized, demons that overflowed the world, and of the veneration of heroes. This polytheism was primarily heterotheism; There were more centrifugal forces in it than centripetal forces. Even such primordially common religious ideas that grew out of pre-Hellenic roots, such as the idea of the supreme Zeus, or Dius, were so non-identical among different tribes and clans that they were united only by the name of the deity, coming from the very cradle of the Aryan race. But since the difference in rituals also led to the creation of new, ritually established names, to which the gods responded differently and which were needed in significant quantities in order to persistently attract divine help, ward off threats and in every possible way influence supernatural powers with the conspiratorial power lying in the word and in the name, the plurality of deities and the variety of designations attached to the same religious concept served as a new impetus for the dismemberment and fragmentation of the fundamental unity of religious principles. This resulted in a darkening of the original meaning of many objects of private tribal belief; little by little it was forgotten, for example, that the name “Amphitryon” was once only a local name for Zeus, his cult nickname, and the admirers of Amphitryon, subsequently becoming
fans of the pan-Hellenic Zeus, preserved the memory of Amphitryon only as a demigod, a hero, and finally - simply as the anciently revered earthly father of the hero Hercules (for the Romans - Hercules), whose heavenly parent Zeus was declared, and the dispute between mutual claims to the real patronymic is so and remained undecided.
But, in addition, numerous deities, which later became common Hellenic, were initially the exclusive property of individual tribes. Thus, the cult of Zeus’s prophetic oak and Mother Earth in Dodona (Il. XVI, 234; Od. XIV, 327 and XIX, 296), which existed since time immemorial, “coming from the Pelasgians,” retained its local, Epirotic character even after how he won, already in the era of Homer, the general recognition of the Hellenic world as the cradle of the most ancient and holiest of oracles; The veneration of Mother Earth also has a local character in the Boeotian Thespians; the mistress Hera is originally and primarily the goddess of the Argive Achaeans, etc. This motley material of local worship had to undergo a slow process of collection, gradual unification into a grandiose system of national religion, which, however, never reached in Greece complete dogmatic and ritual uniformity and even during the period of completion of the unification work, it retained in its harmonious and organized whole sufficient independence and, as it were, self-government of individual local religions.
In this unifying work the first stage was passed hand in hand with the development of epic poetry in the Asia Minor colonies and under its direct influence: the Ionian singers were the first collectors of the Hellenic faith. After them, powerful centers of priesthood, especially the Delphic oracle and some other local temple communities, for example, the community in Thespiae, acquired enormous importance; this latter had an immediate impact on the second great epic school of Greece - the Boeotian school of Hesiod, which significantly supplemented the doctrine of the Ionian, Homeric school by introducing into it many primordial beliefs and ideas of the religious-metaphysical order, left without attention I am the Homeric school or those alien and unknown to it. “The Father of History,” Herodotus (5th century), is without a doubt right, expressing the general opinion of the nation about the role of the epic in the creation of a national religion in the following words: “Homer and Hesiod taught the Hellenes the gods; they distributed the sacred names belonging to each of the gods, and the part of dominion peculiar to each, and the type of worship due to each; they clearly described the image of each deity.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that the first quest for a new religious consciousness, the first quest for religious truths that are more spiritual and morally sublime, begin with polemics with the teachings of Homer and, to a lesser extent, Hesiod. Thus, the rhapsodist-philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon (5th century) reproaches Homer and Hesiod that “they have attributed many false things to the gods, they have accused them of many things that are rightly considered shameful and worthy of reproach among people.” On the other hand, one cannot deny the validity of Aristotle’s view, which he calls the first Hellenic “theologian” of Hesiod:
In Homer we do not find a systematic teaching about the gods. He knows nothing about divine cosmogony (compare, however, Il. XIV, 201, where the Ocean is called theon génesis, “parent of the gods,” an idea in which the ancients saw confirmation of Thales’s doctrine of the moist fundamental principle of the universe); the world exists for him once given, statically determined; how it arose, how it was created, is indifferent to the singer. And it is not the being of the gods that occupies him, but their intervention in human affairs, their historical interaction with people: everything that he reports about them is prompted by the pragmatism of the narration about the fate of the heroes; in passing he reveals about them what is necessary for the listener of the heroic “glories”. But what he reveals is important and decisive for the destinies of the entire religion, it is imprinted on its unfrozen surface with indelible lines - and the singer knows that he is imprinting, because his consciously set goal and consistently resolved task is to separately confirm and confirm many things. enter into the national consciousness for all ages.
Worship of heroes.
Along with the polytheism described above and the unusually developed demonology, which determined the entire life and demanded from a person, with each of his actions, special foresight in relation to the invisible forces affected by these actions, and the special, magical significance of each act— the content of the original religion of the tribes crowded together in European Greece before colonization, there were heroic cults. We have already seen how the concept of a hero was developed through the darkening of the face of the original deity. According to some scientists, all heroic cults grew from this root: all heroes are forgotten, debunked gods. According to others, on the contrary, heroes are deified ancestors. In any case, the very relegation of the gods to the category of heroes is conceivable only on the basis of the already existing cult of ancestors, to which many phenomena of primitive religious life and culture generally come down. It is most likely that both disputing sides have morals - that some heroes are former gods, relegated in the struggle with their own doubles, established in popular belief under a different name, to the level of underground strongmen, while other heroes are ancient relatives of clan and tribal tradition , famous ancestors of immemorial times, underground strong, capable of harming the living from underground and sending them from the underground fertility and an abundance of earthly fruits. Both gods and heroes demand sacrifices; but the ritual significantly distinguishes between these two types of sacrifices, giving the sacrifices in honor of heroes the character of offerings at a funeral feast, sent down to the underworld, performed not on altars, but on “hearths” and on tombs. What is distinctive for heroic cults is their direct and indispensable connection with the burial place of the legendary heroic relatives; That’s why we can say, as we said above, that the hero is at home where legends are preserved in memory, as a material attachment to the cult, his coffin, mound or cave.
VI.
Loss of local cults.
I understand that the settlers, leaving their homeland, also broke away religiously from its soil, for they left their native graves associated with the veneration of relatives. The old cult of heroes was supposed to die for these immigrants, as a concrete part of religious life, and the host of heroes, torn from their native ashes, became only an ideal property of tribal memory, unstable and vague. This memory has preserved only their names, a few basic features of their family characteristics, and even everything that managed to take the form of songs (ôimai) about the glories (klea) of the valiant men of old.
If the Iliad is replete with aeolisms, this indicates, first of all, that it was based on Aeolian songs of glory. Assimilated soon by the neighboring Ionians, who fought with the Aeolians over new places, supplanted them and were supplanted by them, mixed with them to the point of partial confusion of dialects, these songs contributed their legendary-historical content to the new epic creativity that had begun. Is extremely distorted, changed beyond recognition. The images of Achilles, Patrocluses, Hectors, Alexanders were given in the song legend as if hanging in the air, characteristically outlined, but ghostly, homeless shadows; they could be attached to other places of action, introduced into another connection of events, closer to the life being experienced. And this life was full of events: the so-called Tevran war had just ended, in which new newcomers had to conquer places for their settlements from the indigenous inhabitants of the country, step by step; its vicissitudes immediately merged with the legendary heritage of ancient tales, memories of it were adorned with the name of Achilles and multiplied the number of exploits of the ancient hero. This entire composition of tales, with the addition of other Thessalian ones, such as the epics about Pirithous, Driant and Theseus, who entered into battle with the fierce children of the mountains, Lapiths and Centaurs (Il. I, 263; cf. XII, 127-194), as well as Theban skikh, like the legend about the campaign of the seven heroes against Thebes (Il. IV, 376 f., 405 f.), the Aetolian, like the myth of Meleager and the Calydonian hunt (Il. IX, 529 f.) and many others, was accepted by the Ionian genius, to which it was given, as it were, to melt it in its crucible and pour it into a new, harmonious unity - whereby, of course, the legends of a foreign tribe, already unsteady and having changed their original outlines, with even greater freedom and less memory of prototypes, were used for the purpose of establishing a pan-Hellenic code of heroic glory and a pan-Hellenic picture of the divine world order.
New beliefs.
But not only, with the departure from ancient shrines, the tangibility of the heroic legend was lost, ritual life in the area of heroic cults was interrupted, certain sketches of heroes were erased, but also a whole series of foreign influences radically changed the ancient faith. So, and this was the main event of the new era of religious consciousness, a new powerful newcomer, an Asia Minor god, from the “country of light” - Lycia, - Apollo, a formidable, angry god with a youthful appearance, entered the former council of gods ъ, golden curls up to shoulder and silver bow
behind his shoulders, sounding terrible, is the arrow god, accurately hitting people and animals from afar with his deadly arrows, cruelly taking revenge on those who do not respect the lands and shrines that belong to him, sending a pestilence, appeased by sacrifices and special ritual chants Iyami, conjuring the sea and calling for health - “paeans” - such a formidable god that according to a very ancient hymn created by the singers of the Homeric school, all the gods rise from their places and tremble at the appearance of a stranger, except for one father of the gods, Zeus, and also Anollon’s mother, Leto (Lato, Rom. Lat
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Osip Mandelstam
Homer's heroic epic absorbed the most ancient myths and legends, and also reflected the life of Greece on the eve of the emergence of class society.
It is now considered established that around the 12th century BC, the Achaean tribes went to Troy in search of new lands and wealth. The Achaeans conquered Troy and returned to their homeland. The memory of the great last feat of the Achaean tribe lived among the people, and songs about the heroes of the Trojan War gradually began to take shape.
When Attica and Athens gained primacy in Greece, the Athenians also associated the exploits of the sons of Theseus with this war. Thus, it turned out that all the Greek tribes had a work in the Homeric epic that glorified their common great past, equally dear and eternal to all.
It is also interesting to note that the Homeric epic reflected an even more ancient culture, namely the culture of the island of Crete. In Homer one can find many elements of everyday life and social life that are reminiscent of this ancient culture. Cretan inscriptions mention the names of heroes known from Homer's epic, as well as the names of gods always considered purely Greek.
Homer's poems have a majestic, monumental character inherent in the heroic epic. However, in "Odyssey" there are many everyday, fairy-tale, and fantastic features. This is understandable, because the Iliad is dedicated to war, and the Odyssey to the vicissitudes of human life.
The plot of the Iliad is connected with the myth of the abduction of Helen, the wife of the Greek king Menelaus, ruler of Sparta, by the Trojan prince Paris. The Iliad begins from the moment when the plague began in the Greek camp in the tenth year of the siege. She was sent by the god Apollo, the patron saint of the Trojans, at the request of his priest, from whom the Greek leader Agamemnon took his daughter. The priest’s long speech is figurative and vivid. He asks for revenge.
Thus he cried; and silver-bowed Apollo listened!
He rushed quickly from the heights of Olympus, bursting with anger,
Carrying a bow over his shoulders and a quiver of arrows, covered from everywhere;
Loudly winged arrows, beating behind the shoulders, sounded
In the procession of the angry god: he walked, like the night.
To stop the plague, Agamemnon is forced to return his daughter to her father, but in return he takes the captive from Achilles. The angry Achilles, possessed by a feeling of bitter resentment, goes to his camp. Achilles refuses to participate in the siege of Troy.
Fierce battles begin, in which the Greeks are defeated by the Trojans. Then they send ambassadors to Achilles (IX canto), but to no avail; he refuses to take part in the battles. Finally, in Canto XVI, Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, enters the battle because he can no longer see his comrades die. In this battle, Patroclus dies at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector, the son of King Priam.
Only then Achilles, avenging his friend, enters the battle. He kills Hector, brutally mocking his corpse. However, old Priam, Hector’s father, appeared in Achilles’ tent at night and begs him to return his son’s body. Achilles, touched by the old man's grief and remembering his own father, whom he will never see, returns Hector's body and even establishes a truce to give the Trojans time to mourn their dead. The Iliad ends with the burial of the heroes of two warring camps - Patroclus and Hector.
The heroes of the poems are courageous and majestic. They know no fear of the enemy. Both the Greeks and the Trojans are depicted with great respect and love. It is no coincidence that the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Hector are examples of heroism. Achilles is a thunderstorm for the Trojans, a stern, unshakable warrior. He loves his homeland. But in his soul there also lives pity for the Trojan - the old man Priam, who lost his own son. He feels the bitterness of his own fate (he is destined to die in his prime). He takes revenge for insults, remembers evil, and sometimes cries like a child. But the main line of his character is heroism that knows no limits and devotion to the common cause. A remarkable example of the generosity of Achilles and the humanism of the ancient epic in general is the scene of the XXIV song of the Iliad, when Achilles gives the body of Hector to King Priam.
Swift-footed Achilles says:
“Elder, do not anger me! I myself understand that it must
To return your son to you: she brought me news from Zeus
My silver-footed mother, the sea nymph Thetis.
I feel that you too (you, Priam, cannot hide from me)
The strong hand of God led to the Myrmidon ships...
Together with Priam, Achilles laments the plight of man, and with him mourns the dead; he allows Priam to celebrate a funeral feast for Hector for twelve days and releases him to Troy with rich gifts.
Hector is a Trojan leader, the main defender of the city. He leaves his father, mother, wife and child, leaving for the last battle. The scene of Hector’s farewell to Andromache and his son is filled with tenderness and boundless love. The boy cries, frightened by his father's helmet. Hector takes the shining helmet off his head, and the child laughs and reaches for it. The mother is thoughtful and sad. She anticipates the death of Hector and the sad fate of his orphan son. Andromache watches the last duel from the city wall. Hector, deprived of the help of the gods, fights Achilles until his last breath. His life was given for his homeland.
The Odyssey depicts the events after the destruction of Troy. All the heroes returned home, except for Odysseus, king of the island of Ithaca. He wanders for ten years because of the hatred of the sea god Poseidon.
Muse, tell me about that experienced husband who
Wandering for a long time since the day when Saint Ilion was destroyed by him,
I visited many people of the city and saw their customs,
I grieved a lot in my heart on the seas, worrying about salvation
Your life and the return of your companions to their homeland...
The beginning of the Odyssey tells about the last events of the seven years of Odysseus's wanderings, when he lived on the island of the nymph Calypso. From there, at the behest of the gods, he goes to his homeland. Odysseus arrives in Ithaca in Canto XIII. Waiting for him at home is his wife Penelope, besieged by suitors, and his son Telemachus, who has become a young man. Odysseus stops with a swineherd, then, disguised as a beggar, makes his way into the palace and, finally, in alliance with his faithful servants, exterminates all contenders for Penelope’s hand, suppresses the uprising of the relatives of the murdered, and begins a happy life in the circle of his family. The image of Odysseus’s wife Penelope, a faithful, devoted and intelligent woman, is beautiful. For twenty years, Penelope raised her son and protected the house in the absence of her husband.
Homer describes Penelope’s joy when she was convinced that it was really Odysseus in front of her:
She was so happy, admiring her returned husband,
To tear his snow-white hands from his neck without having
Strength. The golden-troned Eos could have found them in tears...
The society represented by Homer is a patriarchal race that does not yet know class stratification. Kings work on an equal basis with shepherds and artisans, and slaves, if they exist, are captives taken in war and do not yet occupy a humiliated position in the family. Odysseus builds a raft for himself, Princess Nausicaa washes her clothes. Penelope weaves skillfully.
At the same time, property inequality appears, the leaders receive the best booty, the fate of the slaves depends on the will of the master. Penelope, for example, mercilessly threatens the old nanny, loyal to her masters; Odysseus betrays the guilty servants to cruel execution; The warrior Thersites, not without reason, reproaches the leaders for self-interest and ambition and accuses them of all the hardships of war. However, his words do not find sympathy among the warriors, since they are obsessed with one idea - to defeat the enemy. For this, they are ready to forget the insults from the leaders.
Odysseus is a brave warrior, but at the same time a man experienced in life’s adversities. Odysseus knows how to fight not only with weapons, but also with smart words. If necessary, he can deceive and use cunning. The main thing in him is love for his native land, for his wife and son, whom he has not seen for many years. For their sake, he even rejected the immortality that the nymph Calypso wanted to give him.
In the XIV song of the Odyssey it is said that “people are different, some love one thing, others another.” In Homer's poems, the gods are as diverse and interesting as people. Here is the faithful assistant of the Greeks, especially Odysseus, the wise Athena, here is the treacherous, gloomy Apollo, protector of the Trojans, and the wild, blood-covered god of war Ares.
What about the things around people? They are beautiful and "sacred". Every thing made by human hands is good and is a work of art. Hundreds of lines are devoted to the description of the shield of Achilles; even the latch on the door of Odysseus’s house is carefully described. A person is delighted with his skill, his art, his active work. He not only fights and destroys, but strives to create something necessary and at the same time beautiful.
The language of the poems is especially worth noting. They were written in hexameter (hexameter dactyl), which was pronounced somewhat into a sing-song manner. Constant epithets, extended comparisons and speeches of the heroes are also of great importance.
Constant epithets, for example, “cloud-catcher” Zeus, “white-armed” Hera, “silver-footed” Thetis, are mostly complex and somewhat cumbersome. Extensive comparisons (the battle, for example, is depicted as a raging fire, a storm in the forest, a fight of wild animals, a river flood that breaks all the dams) slow down the narrative, as do the speeches that the heroes often exchange during a fierce battle. The slow pace of the narrative and its majestic character are colored with unusual colors in the description of nature.
In the poems, every thing is visible, tangible and colorful. The sea, for example, is “gray” in the foam of the surf, “violet” under the blue sky, “purple” in the rays of the sunset. Even the earth in the Iliad “laughs” in the shine of shields and armor under the spring sun.
Thus, the Homeric epic embodies not only the harsh heroism of war, but also the joy of creativity, creative work and peaceful life, based on respect for man, on the awakening in him of the best, humane feelings.
That is why the Homeric epic is rightfully considered an encyclopedia of ancient life.
Greek Homeros,lat. Homerus, a poet who stands at the origins of Greek and, therefore, European literature, whose name is associated with the oldest literary genre of the Greeks, the heroic epic, especially the Iliad and Odyssey. Already in ancient times, nothing reliable was known about the personality and time of Homer’s life. He was depicted as a blind old man. Of the cities that claimed the right to be considered his homeland, the claims of Smyrna in Ionian Asia Minor and the island of Chios seem to be the most justified. It is generally accepted that Homer lived around the 8th century BC. Homer is a poet of classical antiquity, but at the same time he is a great teacher-mentor and a model for all of antiquity. “The Homeric Question” (the question about the author and the circumstances of the emergence of the Homeric epic) existed already in antiquity. Back in the 6th century. BC. By order of Pisistratus, the texts of Homer were examined. Up to 5th century BC. In addition to the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer was also credited with numerous epic poems (the so-called epic cycle Cypria, Margaret, Homeric hymns). Homer was considered the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey until the “chorizonten” (dividers) challenged his authorship of the Odyssey in the Hellenistic era. In modern times, F. A. Wolf in his “Prolegomena ad Homerum” (1795) again raised this question. Between scholars who divided the epic into separate songs (Lachmann's song theory) and Unitarians who defended the strict unity of the epic stood scholars who accepted later interpolations, expansions, and compilations of several minor epics, or considered Homer only as the editor of the epic. The state of modern research allows us to consider Homer the author of the Iliad. He used more ancient songs, drawing on epic traditions and acting according to a single plan. These songs, heroic tales and small epics are an oral preliminary stage that leads into the world of the 2nd millennium to the early Greek tribes that penetrated the Mediterranean. The question of the extent to which the Cretan-Mycenaean culture is reflected in the Iliad again became controversial after an attempt was made to decipher Linear B. The songs were performed by wandering rhapsodists at meals of the noble society (nobility). Whether these rhapsodes had at least partially written texts is controversial, as is the question of the written text of Homer's epic. The use of the B. letter is considered very probable today, given the artistic composition of the poems. The Iliad, named after the Greek city of Ilion (Troy), depicts a 49-day period of time in 24 books, the end of the 10-year Greek struggle for Troy. Its theme is the anger of Achilles, from whom Agamemnon stole his slave Briseis, because of which Achilles refused to participate in battles. After his friend Patroclus is killed, Achilles re-enters the battle to avenge him. From his mother Thetis, Achilles receives the armor forged for him by Hephaestus (description of the shield in the 18th book) and kills Hector in battle. The epic ends with funeral games in honor of Patroclus. The Iliad reflects different eras. Numerous episodic events along with the main action show heroes, often descended from the gods, in difficult battles. The gods take part in the struggle on both sides, and multiple scenes with the gods take on the character of a burlesque. What follows are small poetic additions to the Odyssey, apparently a later work and not Homer's. The poem probably belongs to a student of Homer (?) and was revised later. The 24 books chronicle Odysseus's 10-year journey and return to his homeland to his wife Penelope. Before returning home, Odysseus stops with the nymph Calypso. After the shipwreck, appearing before the Phaeacians, the hero talks about the events he experienced. The poem tells how Penelope, waiting for her husband to return home, cunningly delays her marriage with the suitors; her son Telemachus assists Odysseus, who has returned home unrecognized, in beating the suitors. In the epic, many stories about sea voyages are intertwined with fairy-tale motifs. Vase painting, as well as wall painting, in various variations represents numerous scenes from the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, plastic created an idealized portrait of the blind poet “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are written in hexameter, their language is built on the long traditions of artistic speech from the Ionian -Aeolian elements. Distinct phrases repeated in the form of formulas probably refer to the oral initial stages preserved in the epic. Among the unattainable peaks of Homer's epic are flights of fantasy, the power of eloquence, slowing down the pace of action to create dramatic tension, in particular, art, naturalness in the depiction of life, the beauty of comparisons, testifying to the amazing observation, human participation and psychological sensitivity of the author. In the field of epic, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the highest examples of poetic works. The most widely read author for 3000 years, Homer was studied in school very early and right up to Byzantine times. Having become the standard for evaluating any poem of antiquity, Homer's epic gave impetus to all subsequent artistic creativity. Livy Andronicus translated the Odyssey into Latin, Virgil, with his Aeneid, wanted to reach the level of the Homeric epic. In the areas of the Latin language, in the Middle Ages, and in Romanesque countries until modern times, the epic of Virgil had a greater influence than the epic of Homer. In the 18th century, under the influence of R. Wood (England), Homer was again recognized as an unsurpassed genius. From that time on, his poetry began to have a strong influence on the classics of world literature (Lessing, Herder, Goethe).
Ticket No. 4
1. Heroic epic. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The ideological and artistic originality of one of the poems.
"Odyssey"- the second (after the Iliad) classical poem attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. Created in the 8th century. BC. Tells about the adventures of the mythical hero named Odysseus (Ulysses) during his return to his homeland at the end of the Trojan War, as well as the adventures of his wife Penelope, who was waiting for Odysseus in Ithaca.
Like Homer's other famous work, the Iliad, the Odyssey is replete with fairy-tale elements, of which there are even more (meetings with the Cyclops Polyphemus, the sorceress Circe, the god Aeolus, etc.). Most of the adventures in the poem are described by Odysseus himself during a feast with King Alcinous.
Main character
Although the poem is heroic, heroic traits are not the main thing in the image of the main character. They take a back seat to such qualities as intelligence, cunning, ingenuity and prudence. The main feature of Odysseus is the irresistible desire to return home to his family.
Judging by both Homeric poems, Odysseus is a truly epic hero and at the same time what is called a “comprehensively developed personality”: a brave warrior and an intelligent military leader, an experienced scout, an athlete, the first in fist fighting and running, a brave sailor, a skilled carpenter, and a hunter. , a merchant, a zealous owner, and if necessary, a storyteller. He is a loving son, husband and father, but he is also the lover of the insidiously beautiful nymphs Circe and Calypso. The image of Odysseus is woven from contradictions, hyperbole and grotesque. It highlights the fluidity of human nature, its ability to metamorphose in the eternal search for new aspects of existence.
Odysseus is patronized by the wise and warlike Athena, and he himself sometimes resembles the sea god Proteus with his ability to easily change his appearance. Over the course of ten years of returning home, he appears as a sailor, a robber, a shaman who summons the souls of the dead (scenes in Hades), a victim of a shipwreck, an old beggar, etc. One feels that the hero “splits in two”: he sincerely worries about the death of his friends , suffering, longs to return home, but he also enjoys the game of life, easily and skillfully plays the roles offered to him by circumstances (a man named “Nobody” - “outin” in the cave of Polyphemus, a resident of Crete, an inhabitant of the island of Sira, etc.). In his personality and fate, the tragic and comic, high feelings (patriotism, respect for the gods) and everyday prosaic are inextricably intertwined.
In accordance with this axiom, the hero sometimes does not behave in the best way: he is greedy, saves himself the best piece at the feast, expects gifts even from Polyphemus, shows cruelty to slaves, lies and dodges for the sake of some benefit. And yet the overall balance and sympathy are in favor of Odysseus - a sufferer, a patriot and a tireless traveler, a warrior, a sage, a discoverer of new spaces and new human possibilities.
1st canto. The beginning of the narrative in the Odyssey dates back to the 10th year after the fall of Troy. Odysseus languishes on the island of Ogygia, forcibly held by the nymph Calypso; At this time, in Ithaca, numerous suitors are wooing his wife Penelope, feasting in his house and squandering his wealth. By decision of the council of gods, Athena, who patronizes Odysseus, goes to Ithaca and encourages the young Odysseus’ son Telemachus to go to Pylos and Sparta to ask about the fate of his father.
2nd canto. With the help of Athena, Telemachus (who tried in vain to remove suitors from his house) secretly leaves Ithaca for Pylos.
3rd canto. The elderly king of Pylos, Nestor, informs Telemachus of information about some Achaean leaders, but for further information he sends him to Sparta to Menelaus.
4th Canto. Welcomed by Menelaus and Helen, Telemachus learns that Odysseus is being held captive by Calypso. Meanwhile, the suitors, frightened by Telemachus’s departure, set up an ambush to kill him on his return journey.
5th Canto. From Book V, a new line of storytelling begins: the gods send Hermes to Calypso with the order to release Odysseus, who sets off on a raft across the sea. Having miraculously escaped from a storm raised by his hostile Poseidon, Odysseus swims to the shore of the island of Sharia, where happy people live - the Phaeacians, sailors with fabulously fast ships.
6th canto. Meeting of Odysseus on the shore with Nausicaa, daughter of the Phaeacian king Alcinous.
7th canto. Alcinous receives the wanderer in his luxurious palace.
8th Canto. Alkina and arranges a feast and games in honor of the wanderer. At the games, the blind singer Demodocus sings about the exploits of Odysseus.
9th Canto. Odysseus finally reveals his name and tells of his adventures. Stories (“apologists”) of Odysseus: Odysseus visited the country of lotus eaters who eat lotuses, where everyone who tastes the lotus forgets about their homeland; the cannibal giant, the Cyclops Polyphemus, devoured several of Odysseus’s comrades in his cave, but Odysseus drugged and blinded the Cyclops and escaped with his other comrades from the cave under the wool of rams; For this, Polyphemus called upon Odysseus the wrath of his father Poseidon.
10th Canto. Odysseus continues to tell his adventures. Arrival on the island of Aeolia. The god of the winds, Aeolus, favorably handed Odysseus a fur with the winds tied in it, but not far from his homeland, Odysseus’s companions untied the fur, and the storm again threw them back to the Aeolus island. But the irritated Aeolus orders Odysseus to leave. The cannibal Laestrygonians destroyed all of Odysseus's ships, except one, which landed on the island of the sorceress Kirke (Circe), who turned Odysseus's companions into pigs; Overcoming the spell with the help of Hermes, Odysseus became Kirke's husband for a year.
11th canto. Odysseus descends into the underworld to question the soothsayer Tiresias and talks with the shadows of his mother and dead friends.
12th canto. Then Odysseus sails past the Sirens, who lure sailors with magical singing and destroy them; drove between the cliffs where the monsters Scylla and Charybdis live. On the island of the sun god Helios, Odysseus's companions killed the god's bulls, and Zeus sent a storm that destroyed Odysseus's ship with all his companions; Odysseus sailed to the island of Calypso.
13th Canto. The Phaeacians, having given Odysseus a gift, take him to his homeland, and the angry Poseidon turns their ship into a cliff for this. Turned by Athena into an old beggar, Odysseus goes to the faithful swineherd Eumaeus.
14th Canto. Staying with Eumaeus is an idyllic genre picture.
15th Canto. Returning from Sparta, Telemachus safely avoids the suitors' ambush.
16th Canto. Telemachus meets Eumaeus with Odysseus, who reveals himself to his son.
17th Canto. Odysseus returns to his home as a beggar, being insulted by suitors and servants.
18th Canto. The old man Odysseus fights with the local beggar Ir and is subjected to further bullying.
19th Canto. Odysseus makes preparations for revenge. Only the old nanny Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus by the scar on his leg.
20th Canto. Evil omens deter the suitors who intend to destroy the stranger.
21st Canto. Penelope promises her hand to the one who, bending Odysseus's bow, shoots an arrow through 12 rings. The beggar alien is the only one who completes Penelope's task.
22nd Canto. Odysseus kills the suitors, revealing himself to them, and executes the servants who betrayed him.
23rd Canto. Penelope finally recognizes Odysseus, who tells her an alcove secret known only to the two of them.
24th Canto. The poem ends with scenes of the arrival of the souls of the suitors in the underworld, the meeting of Odysseus with his father Laertes, and the conclusion of peace between Odysseus and the relatives of the murdered.
Heroic Homeric epic
Homer's heroic epic absorbed the most ancient myths and legends, and also reflected the life of Greece on the eve of the emergence of class society.
It is now considered established that around the 12th century BC, the Achaean tribes went to Troy in search of new lands and wealth. The Achaeans conquered Troy and returned to their homeland. The memory of the great last feat of the Achaean tribe lived among the people, and songs about the heroes of the Trojan War gradually began to take shape.
When Attica and Athens gained primacy in Greece, the Athenians also associated the exploits of the sons of Theseus with this war. Thus, it turned out that all the Greek tribes had a work in the Homeric epic that glorified their common great past, equally dear and eternal to all.
It is also interesting to note that the Homeric epic reflected an even more ancient culture, namely the culture of the island of Crete. In Homer one can find many elements of everyday life and social life that are reminiscent of this ancient culture. Cretan inscriptions mention the names of heroes known from Homer's epic, as well as the names of gods always considered purely Greek.
Homer's poems have a majestic, monumental character inherent in the heroic epic. However, in "Odyssey" there are many everyday, fairy-tale, and fantastic features. This is understandable, because the Iliad is dedicated to war, and the Odyssey to the vicissitudes of human life.
The plot of the Iliad is connected with the myth of the abduction of Helen, the wife of the Greek king Menelaus, ruler of Sparta, by the Trojan prince Paris. The Iliad begins from the moment when the plague began in the Greek camp in the tenth year of the siege. She was sent by the god Apollo, the patron saint of the Trojans, at the request of his priest, from whom the Greek leader Agamemnon took his daughter. The priest’s long speech is figurative and vivid. He asks for revenge.
Thus he cried; and silver-bowed Apollo listened!
He rushed quickly from the heights of Olympus, bursting with anger,
Carrying a bow over his shoulders and a quiver of arrows, covered from everywhere;
Loudly winged arrows, beating behind the shoulders, sounded
In the procession of the angry god: he walked, like the night.
To stop the plague, Agamemnon is forced to return his daughter to her father, but in return he takes the captive from Achilles. The angry Achilles, possessed by a feeling of bitter resentment, goes to his camp. Achilles refuses to participate in the siege of Troy.
Fierce battles begin, in which the Greeks are defeated by the Trojans. Then they send ambassadors to Achilles (IX canto), but to no avail; he refuses to take part in the battles. Finally, in Canto XVI, Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, enters the battle because he can no longer see his comrades die. In this battle, Patroclus dies at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector, the son of King Priam.
Only then Achilles, avenging his friend, enters the battle. He kills Hector, brutally mocking his corpse. However, old Priam, Hector’s father, appeared in Achilles’ tent at night and begs him to return his son’s body. Achilles, touched by the old man's grief and remembering his own father, whom he will never see, returns Hector's body and even establishes a truce to give the Trojans time to mourn their dead. The Iliad ends with the burial of the heroes of two warring camps - Patroclus and Hector.
The heroes of the poems are courageous and majestic. They know no fear of the enemy. Both the Greeks and the Trojans are depicted with great respect and love. It is no coincidence that the Greek Achilles and the Trojan Hector are examples of heroism. Achilles is a thunderstorm for the Trojans, a stern, unshakable warrior. He loves his homeland. But in his soul there also lives pity for the Trojan - the old man Priam, who lost his own son. He feels the bitterness of his own fate (he is destined to die in his prime). He takes revenge for insults, remembers evil, and sometimes cries like a child. But the main line of his character is heroism that knows no limits and devotion to the common cause. A remarkable example of the generosity of Achilles and the humanism of the ancient epic in general is the scene of the XXIV song of the Iliad, when Achilles gives the body of Hector to King Priam.
Swift-footed Achilles says:
“Elder, do not anger me! I myself understand that it must
To return your son to you: she brought me news from Zeus
My silver-footed mother, the sea nymph Thetis.
I feel that you too (you, Priam, cannot hide from me)
The strong hand of God led to the Myrmidon ships...
Together with Priam, Achilles laments the plight of man, and with him mourns the dead; he allows Priam to celebrate a funeral feast for Hector for twelve days and releases him to Troy with rich gifts.
Hector is a Trojan leader, the main defender of the city. He leaves his father, mother, wife and child, leaving for the last battle. The scene of Hector’s farewell to Andromache and his son is filled with tenderness and boundless love. The boy cries, frightened by his father's helmet. Hector takes the shining helmet off his head, and the child laughs and reaches for it. The mother is thoughtful and sad. She anticipates the death of Hector and the sad fate of his orphan son. Andromache watches the last duel from the city wall. Hector, deprived of the help of the gods, fights Achilles until his last breath. His life was given for his homeland.
The Odyssey depicts the events after the destruction of Troy. All the heroes returned home, except for Odysseus, king of the island of Ithaca. He wanders for ten years because of the hatred of the sea god Poseidon.
Muse, tell me about that experienced husband who
Wandering for a long time since the day when Saint Ilion was destroyed by him,
I visited many people of the city and saw their customs,
I grieved a lot in my heart on the seas, worrying about salvation
Your life and the return of your companions to their homeland...
The beginning of the Odyssey tells about the last events of the seven years of Odysseus's wanderings, when he lived on the island of the nymph Calypso. From there, at the behest of the gods, he goes to his homeland. Odysseus arrives in Ithaca in Canto XIII. Waiting for him at home is his wife Penelope, besieged by suitors, and his son Telemachus, who has become a young man. Odysseus stops with a swineherd, then, disguised as a beggar, makes his way into the palace and, finally, in alliance with his faithful servants, exterminates all contenders for Penelope’s hand, suppresses the uprising of the relatives of the murdered, and begins a happy life in the circle of his family. The image of Odysseus’s wife Penelope, a faithful, devoted and intelligent woman, is beautiful. For twenty years, Penelope raised her son and protected the house in the absence of her husband.
Homer describes Penelope’s joy when she was convinced that it was really Odysseus in front of her:
She was so happy, admiring her returned husband,
To tear his snow-white hands from his neck without having
Strength. The golden-troned Eos could have found them in tears...
The society represented by Homer is a patriarchal race that does not yet know class stratification. Kings work on an equal basis with shepherds and artisans, and slaves, if they exist, are captives taken in war and do not yet occupy a humiliated position in the family. Odysseus builds a raft for himself, Princess Nausicaa washes her clothes. Penelope weaves skillfully.
At the same time, property inequality appears, the leaders receive the best booty, the fate of the slaves depends on the will of the master. Penelope, for example, mercilessly threatens the old nanny, loyal to her masters; Odysseus betrays the guilty servants to cruel execution; The warrior Thersites, not without reason, reproaches the leaders for self-interest and ambition and accuses them of all the hardships of war. However, his words do not find sympathy among the warriors, since they are obsessed with one idea - to defeat the enemy. For this, they are ready to forget the insults from the leaders.
Odysseus is a brave warrior, but at the same time a man experienced in life’s adversities. Odysseus knows how to fight not only with weapons, but also with smart words. If necessary, he can deceive and use cunning. The main thing in him is love for his native land, for his wife and son, whom he has not seen for many years. For their sake, he even rejected the immortality that the nymph Calypso wanted to give him.
In the XIV song of the Odyssey it is said that “people are different, some love one thing, others another.” In Homer's poems, the gods are as diverse and interesting as people. Here is the faithful assistant of the Greeks, especially Odysseus, the wise Athena, here is the treacherous, gloomy Apollo, protector of the Trojans, and the wild, blood-covered god of war Ares.
What about the things around people? They are beautiful and "sacred". Every thing made by human hands is good and is a work of art. Hundreds of lines are devoted to the description of the shield of Achilles; even the latch on the door of Odysseus’s house is carefully described. A person is delighted with his skill, his art, his active work. He not only fights and destroys, but strives to create something necessary and at the same time beautiful.
The language of the poems is especially worth noting. They were written in hexameter (hexameter dactyl), which was pronounced somewhat into a sing-song manner. Constant epithets, extended comparisons and speeches of the heroes are also of great importance.
Constant epithets, for example, “cloud-catcher” Zeus, “white-armed” Hera, “silver-footed” Thetis, are mostly complex and somewhat cumbersome. Extensive comparisons (the battle, for example, is depicted as a raging fire, a storm in the forest, a fight of wild animals, a river flood that breaks all the dams) slow down the narrative, as do the speeches that the heroes often exchange during a fierce battle. The slow pace of the narrative and its majestic character are colored with unusual colors in the description of nature.
In the poems, every thing is visible, tangible and colorful. The sea, for example, is “gray” in the foam of the surf, “violet” under the blue sky, “purple” in the rays of the sunset. Even the earth in the Iliad “laughs” in the shine of shields and armor under the spring sun.
Thus, the Homeric epic embodies not only the harsh heroism of war, but also the joy of creativity, creative work and peaceful life, based on respect for man, on the awakening in him of the best, humane feelings.
That is why the Homeric epic is rightfully considered an encyclopedia of ancient life.
The great epic of ancient Greece has come down to us in the form of two works by Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both poems are devoted to events of approximately the same time: and its consequences. The war has just ended. Odysseus proved himself to be an excellent warrior and an intelligent strategist. Thanks to his cunning decisions, more than one battle was won. This is evidenced by his own story in the poem, or rather, its summary. Homer's Odyssey (and his second poem, the Iliad) not only beautifully depict historical events, but also have excellent artistic presentation. The facts are decorated with the rich imagination of the author. It is thanks to this that history went beyond the usual chronicle or chronicle and became the property of world literature.
Homer's poem "Odyssey". Summary
After the war, Odysseus went home to his native Ithaca, where he was ruler. There his old father Laertes, wife Penelope and son Telemachus are waiting for him. Along the way, Odysseus is captured by the nymph Calypso. He spends several years there. Meanwhile, in his kingdom there is a struggle for the throne. There are many contenders for Odysseus's place. They live in his palace and convince Penelope that her husband is dead and will not return, and she must decide who she will marry again. But Penelope is faithful to Odysseus and is ready to wait for him for many years. To cool off the contenders for the throne and her hand, she comes up with various tricks. For example, she knits a shroud for old Laertes, promising to make a decision as soon as the work is finished. And at night she unties the already tied one. Meanwhile, Telemachus matured. One day a stranger came to him and advised him to equip a ship and go in search of his father. She herself was hiding in the image of a wanderer. She patronized Odysseus. Telemachus followed her advice. He ends up in Pylos to Nestor. The elder says that Odysseus is alive and is with Calypso. Telemachus decides to return home, please his mother with good news and ward off annoying contenders for the royal place. The events of the poem are conveyed by a summary. Homer portrays the Odyssey as a fairy-tale hero who went through terrible trials. Zeus, at the request of Athena, sends Hermes to Calypso and orders him to release Odysseus. He builds himself a raft and sets sail. But Poseidon again interferes with him: in a storm, the logs of the raft break. But Athena saves him again and brings him to the kingdom of Alcinous. He is received as a guest, and at the feast Odysseus talks about his adventures. Homer creates nine fantastic stories. “The Odyssey” (the summary conveys these stories) is a fairy-tale framing of real historical events.
The Adventures of Odysseus
First, Odysseus and his companions found themselves on an island with a magical lotus that deprives them of memory. Local residents, lotophages, treated the guests to lotus, and they forgot about their Ithaca. Odysseus with difficulty took them to the ship and went on. The second adventure is a meeting with the Cyclopes. With difficulty, the sailors manage to blind the main cyclops Polyphemus and, hiding under the skins of sheep, leave the cave and escape from the island. You can find out about further events by reading the summary. Homer's "Odyssey" leads the reader along with its hero and covers a large period of time - about twenty years. After the island of the Cyclops, Odysseus ended up on the island with Aeolus, who gave the guest one fair wind and hid three more winds in a bag, tied it and warned that the bag could only be untied in Ithaca. But Odysseus's friends untied the sack while he was sleeping, and the winds brought their ship back to Aeolus. Then there was a clash with cannibal giants, and Odysseus miraculously managed to escape. Then the travelers visited Queen Kirka, who turned everyone into animals, in the kingdom of the dead; by cunning they managed to pass by the seductive Sirens, and sail in the strait between the monsters on the Island of the Sun. This is the poem, its summary. Homer returns Odysseus to his homeland, and he, together with Telemachus, expels all Penelope’s “suitors.” Peace reigns in Ithaca. The ancient poem is of interest to the modern reader both as a historical work and as classical fiction.
