Talk:Homer/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Historicity of the Iliad

This should obviously be removed, shouldn't it? Even if there is a paper of this name, which I highly doubt, it's obviously not very relevant to the material. DeadCow 17:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

It's vandalism. I've removed it twice. The contributors who added it User:131.111.8.99 and User:131.111.8.101 are probably the same person; we'll see if it creeps back in... Akhilleus 18:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the Info. I should have removed it right away, but I haven't been active on wikipedia for too long. DeadCow 23:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Removed again. Wouldn't it be best to remove this entire section? It isn't contributing anything and the title will invite a return of the vandal Ioan_Dyfrig (talk) 23:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Polytonic Greek

For the most part, I don't see the value in putting all the polytonic Greek in this article. It increases visual clutter, especially when the Greek words are followed by a transliteration into Latin characters, and the Greek words are probably helpful only to those readers who already know some classical Greek. Anyone who's looking specifically for the Greek titles of the epics will probably turn to more specialized references. I'd keep the Greek version of Homer's name, but do we really need to spell out the polytonic Greek titles of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the War of Frogs and Mice (Batrachomyomachia)? Better to just give the transliterations, I say. --Chris Lovell 00:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree for the most part, except that I do think it's worth giving the names of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey in Greek. Petrouchka 04:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Hipparchus and the Panathenaia

Quoth the article:

The poems appear to go back to at least the eighth century B.C.E., and were first written down at

the command of the Athenian ruler Pisistratos, who feared that they were being forgotten. He made a law that any bard or singer who came to Athens must recite as much as he knew of Homer for the Athenian scribes, who recorded each version and collated them into what we now know as the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer is also rumored to have written a third, comic, epic,

but if it ever existed, no fragments of it have been found.

I'm suspicious of these statements. Do you have any sources to cite? There is nothing wrong with putting speculative theories and even rumors in here, but we should cite sources in that case to maintain good scholarship. -- hajhouse

No, I don't have sources to cite: this is what I learned when I studied classical Greek, 20-odd years ago. Only the last sentence counts as rumor, I think. I'll see if I can find something, but it may take a while before I get to this. --Vicki Rosenzweig

Apparently the tradition that Pisistratus commissioned the writing down of the Homeric epics has been deleted from the article, but has crept back in with attribution to Pisistratus's son Hipparchus instead, which seems to me even more questionable. Since it's back in, anyway, I was thinking of changing the attribution back to Pisistratus, since as far as I know, the entire story is only supported by an ancient tradition, and the tradition specifies Pisistratus, not Hipparchus. --Arkuat 06:26, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

IMO mentioning tradition is fine, so long as it is clearly identified as a tradition. These are the sorts of things you learn when you study Homer. — B.Bryant 09:10, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Speaking as a teacher of Greek literature, the Peistratos/Hipparchos theories are conjectural and controversial. Citing them is far from NPOV. Some sources (e.g. anything written by Gregory Nagy) will claim the Peisistratean recension as fact; most will regard it as hypothetical at best. --Petrouchka 20:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

A short comic epic attributed to Homer in antiquity, Batrachomyomachia, still survives, but modern scholars think it is a later work in the Homeric style. — B.Bryant 09:10, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um...Nagy argues against a Pisistratean standardized text more stridently than anyone... Bacchiad

Most of what has been said here about the Pisitratean tradition sounds sensible to me, but given the long history of the tradition, and the fact that many "well-informed" people who come to this article for the first time may be familiar with that tradition, it ought at least to be mentioned and briefly debunked. In the current version of the article, a search for the syllable "strat" turns up nothing. --arkuat (talk) 09:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

First of all, it is unwise to put too much faith in Nagy, who is seen as a radical. Furthermore, his views on Peisistratus are soon to be published, but before that any comment on them is speculation. The most important point of issue, however, is that, since the use of writing grew hugely after (and perhaps during) the time of Homer (8th B.C.E.), it would be unwise to say that Peisistratus was the first to write down the epics, given the amount of time that had passed and therefore the huge amount of opportunity to 'beat him to it'. Ste175 12:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe the so-called "Pisistratean recension"--the notion that the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus (who lived in the 6th century BCE) was somehow responsible for having the Homeric poems written down or at least edited in some fashion--stems from a remark by Cicero, but Cicero would have been writing 500 or so years after Pisistratus, and obviously had no first-hand knowledge.

Quote

Hi im new to wiki i just made a qote on the leader ship part am i going to get in trouble?--Pilot Of The Skys 22:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Acepilot23 (talk • contribs)

No, but we may change what you put there. I'll visit your talk page and explain further. (John User:Jwy talk) 22:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Odysseus

According to history, a Roman Emperor visited the Oracle at Delphi and asked "who was Homer?" The Oracle told him that Homer was the Great-Great-Grandson of Odysseus.

Anon contribution moved here for discussion. According to what history? Which Roman Emperor? Source and date of the story? Sounds good, but needs backup before inclusion in the article. Anyone? WBardwin 21:17, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

• This site says it was Hadrian, and the response was that Homer was Odysseus's grandson. --JW1805 03:28, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Homer Simpson

Anon contribution removed here for discussion. WBardwin 00:54, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

The ideal of Homer was the inspiration for the Simpsons character of the same name. Although the animated character has evolved over the years to the character we know today, some earlier versions were a good likeness of the traditional image of Homer, in fact an episode was written (but never animated or released) in which Homer the animated character was blind. Many are skeptical of this, mostly because of the TV character's lazy nature, but if considered in a deeper sense the elements of a storyteller make sense in keeping with the show's anti-moral additude. (posted by 152.163.100.69 (talk · contribs))

• Sounds like utter nonsense to me. --JW1805 ^(Talk) 02:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you mean "Sounds like a troll to me." Chris Lovell 05:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

This is tosh. Matt Groening's father is called Homer. Thats why the father is called Homer. Homer - homer. See? 194.70.193.179 14:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

   Groenings mom was named marge, his sisters; lisa and maggie.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.173.0.16 (talk) 03:23, 15 September 2007 (UTC) 

:is there a source? It makes sense considering the angry dad episode, but a source would slam dunk it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.156.208.3 (talk) 06:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC) 

Someone adopt this article!

The Homer article needs to be about 6x longer. Calling all Lit. people... JDG 01:03, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

it is indeed a disgrace. I have dumped the (hopelessly outdated and OCR-garbled) {{1911}} version at Homer/1911, so we can at least work from that. It weighs 104k! From the state of the present article, we should be glad to reach at least the 1911 standard; we may then catch up on the last century once we get there... dab (ᛏ) 22:28, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

not really a good idea, since ideas about Homer have changed so much over the last century that a 1911 article would be considered misinformation by a healthy majority of current classicists. If you think we need to start over, just start over--using an old encyclopedia article as the core ensures that the new article will be guided by the concerns, mistakes, etc. of 1911. Akhilleus 03:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

My idea isn't to replace the present article. The point is that the present article so far doesn't even have most of what was scholars believed in 1911, let alone in 2005. My suggestion is that you go through the 1911 article and pick cherries with informed judgement. And frankly, passages like

The crucial words are "oral" and "traditional." Parry started with "traditional." The repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and they were useful to the poet in composition. He called these chunks of repetitive language "formulas."

would be more at home on simple:, so I don't think the present article has much to lose. And another thing, it is very easy to underestimate 19th century scholarship. Sure, they didn't know Mycenaean, and Troy was hardly excavated, but that's it; they had all the testimonies about Homer we have today. And these guys were giants; there are no philologists like the 19th and early 20th century elite now, we really just depend on their results. dab (ᛏ) 09:43, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

We don't "just depend on their results." There's been a lot of progress made since 1911 in understanding Homer; in particular, Lord and Parry's research on oral poetry has transformed the study of Greek epic so much that the major concerns of late 19th/early 20th century Homeric scholarship have either dropped off the radar or been substantially reframed. Few Homeric scholars now try to sort out which parts of the poem were interpolated by later authors into Homer's "original text"; criticism of the poems' "inconsistencies" have been replaced by efforts to understand the aesthetics of oral poetry. I don't underestimate the great achievements of earlier generations of scholars, but at the same time let's recognize that we have, in fact, built on those accomplishments, and we've replaced old controversies with new questions.

So, despite the poor quality of the current article, *something* about oral poetry needs to be at the beginning of the article, as it's impossible to understand what's going on in modern Homeric scholarship without knowing about oral poetry.

As for what's been added so far from the 1911 Britannica, I don't think it's very helpful in its current form--it's too long, and it includes a lot of information that is only relevant to people doing research on ancient biographical traditions of Homer (which, as the Britannica text itself says, don't give us good historical evidence). What's more, it's not very clearly written--for instance, it's hard to understand what the argument of those six numbered paragraphs is. I think a section on ancient testimonia is a good idea, but it should be shorter and clearer. I also think it should come after a clear statement of modern scholars' takes on the Homeric question, so I've moved the "Ancient Accounts of Homer" down in the article. Akhilleus 03:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

clearer, yes (so fix it); shorter, no: this article was ridiculously short, and we should be aiming at som 50k, if not 100k as in Britannica. The text I added was written in 1905, but it was written by expert scholars. If it stands out from the rest of the article, this is because it's quality is several orders of magnitude above the rather childish writeup we had so far. It should be our aim to elevate the entire article to a similar standard, rather than pulling the 1905 piece down. Expanding the 1905 piece with 20th c. scholarship is a different matter entirely. I agree with your points about oral poetry and the "interpolations", this is certainly on our todo list here. You have to understand that I'm not proposing dumping the 1911 article here and be done. My proposal is to take excerpts of the 1911 article, and then begin working on them. Since the article has been languishing in stubby shape for ages, that at least seems a way to proceed. Maybe you will be so annoyed with the outdated scholarship that you'll sit down and contribute a comprehensive overview of recent research? That would be brilliant. (see m:Darwikiansm). dab (ᛏ) 10:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I understand that you want to use the 1911/1905 material as the starting point for a better article; I just don't think it's a very good starting point. To concentrate just on the "Ancient Accounts of Homer" section, I don't think it's very helpful for this article. What, after all, is the purpose of this article? It's not for classical philologists, since there are plenty of specialized sources available for them to turn to; it's for the general reader (perhaps I should say general web surfer). For this person, this section on ancient biographical accounts is not very helpful--it mentions a bewildering array of ancient place-names and texts for someone who isn't familiar with ancient Greece (I find it a bit confusing, and I actually study this stuff).

What's more, it has been agreed for a long time that the ancient biographical sources don't give us useful information about "Homer"--they rather tell us what later Greeks thought about Homer. So a comprehensive overview of the biographical tradition is out of place in this article, just as a comprehensive survey of 17th century biographies of Shakespeare would be out of place in a Shakespeare article. What I'd rather see is a short paragraph in the main Homer article about the unreliability of the ancient biographies with a link to a separate page like Homer (ancient biographies) vel sim.

Anyway, I don't see the point of making the article even 50k long. Right now, it's only 34k, and there's too much yawn-inducing stuff about 19th century German dissertations in it already. This is an encyclopedia article; it should be short and succinct. Akhilleus 07:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I see your point. I strongly believe that WP should aim at being at least as detailed as Britannica, if possible, much more detailed; however, we can always branch stuff out to sub-articles, which is what I am proposing below; so yes, this article can be a very readable 20k piece, with lots of detailed sub-articles. dab (ᛏ) 01:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Having recently noted a number of problems with the article as it stand, I have now posted on my user page a suggested structure for a revised version of the article. Comments please! My own main comment at the moment is that I think a detailed account of Homeric scholarship should be put in a separate article, because it's a very weighty subject. Cheers, --Petrouchka 02:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Batrachomyomachia

I don't know much Greek but I'm pretty sure the article currently spells "Batrachomachia" in the Greek text before the link to batrachomyomachia. Bueller? Anyone? Matt Gies 22:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

yes, the mice were missing; I've added them back in. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

ToC

we can begin thinking of branching out this article. We could have

• Homeric Question
• Homeric studies
• Iliad
• Odyssey
• Homeric Greek
• Historicity

thoughts? dab (ᛏ) 12:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan. The Table of Contents below seems like a good set of subtopics, although some of them are main articles in their own right (the Iliad and Odyssey). "Historicity" is partially covered by the article "Troy," although I think the Odyssey ought to be considered in this topic as well. Akhilleus 05:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

yes, Odyssey and Iliad can be sections here (as in the Britannica article), and still be full-fledged articles of their own. We began to discuss the historicity stuff on Troy, but there should maybe be a Historicity of the Iliad article soon. I don't know what we can say about the "historicity of the Odyssey". This will surely be minor in comparison to the Iliad, and should at first maybe be kept as a section at Historicity of the Iliad. dab (ᛏ) 10:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

English Translations

(The following would apply to any work not originally written in English.) As many casual readers will only read Homer once, is there a place in this article to compare the effectiveness (affectedness?) of the various English translations? I would hope that after 400 years Chapman's Homer is public domain, but have there been better free or non-free translations since then? Are there translations that should be avoided?

If you're interesting in *what* Homer said, rather than "how" he might have said it, then avoid translations that are forced into a poetic style that supposedly reflects Homer's dactylic hexameter; choose instead a "literal" translation (like A.T. Murray's) which doesn't even attempt to reflect the meter of Homer's poetry. In fact, representing Homer's "poetic style" in English is hopeless given that the nature of English poetry and ancient Greek poetry are so different; for example, in the former meter is determined by the patterns of syllabic "stress", whereas in the latter meter is determined by patterns of pitch and vowel lengths. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Isokrates (talk • contribs) .

Many poets and translators would disagree that it's "hopeless" to try to reflect Homer's style; there's been a good deal written on this over the years. To me, this is a good indication that Wikipedia shouldn't try to recommend any particular translation--there's too much subjective judgment involved. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Link to Merry

I'm unsure from context whether the link to Merry was intended to point to a publisher or an author, but in either case, it is innacurate, as the Merry page is currently a redirection to Meriadoc Brandybuck. I will be modifying it to be a disambig - does anyone know what the link on this page was supposed to be to? Lokicarbis 22:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

ah, it appears somebody blindly wikified all authors' names, without bothering to google their full names. That was not very smart, and I would revert it if I could be bothered. dab (ᛏ) 23:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The only mention of Merry is currently under Editions. I added first names (his full name was William Walter Merry, 1835-1918. I also fixed an apparent OCR error in the name of his co-author (Riddell, not Ridciell). Wareh 03:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

List of problems with this article

I have looked this article over this morning and feel there are numerous problems with it. I outline these below for discussion and/or emendation. Most of the problems stem from the fact that most of it is about a century out of date. It's a long list of suggestions/errors -- but most of the bulk comes from the suggested bibliography. (Finding the ISBNs was the most time-consuming bit of this, so I hope that will be adopted!) --Petrouchka 01:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Having looked further up the discussion I now see that the 1911 Britannica version has been put here only recently. Give me some time (I've got a lot on my plate right now) and I'll see if I can whip up something that'll address some of my suggestions below, even if only in a piecemeal fashion. --Petrouchka 01:10, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

As noted above in the section "Someone adopt this article", I've now posted on my user page a fairly detailed outline for a suggested restructuring of the article. Comments please -- I'll wait at least a week before proceeding. My main comment is that I think a detailed account of Homeric scholarship should have its own article, given that it's a sub-discipline on the same scale as, say, Shakespearean studies. --Petrouchka 02:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick comment here, hopefully I'll be able to be more detailed later. But it seems to me that your outline is superior to what's on the page now. The only caveat is that if you follow your outline in detail, the article may end up with too much detail about fairly arcane scholarly debates--e.g., does Wikipedia really need info on theories of the development of dactylic hexameter? (And if it does, should that be on the Homer page, or the Dactylic Hexameter page?) Like I say in another comment on this page, I think the article should be short and succinct. But your outline will vastly improve the page. Hopefully I will be able to make some contributions, but other scholarly duties are taking up my time...Akhilleus 08:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I've now written most of a new article on Homeric scholarship. This should cut down the size of the Homer article once I've revised it, checked dates, and added bibliographical references, which should be tomorrow or early next week. Thanks for the comment, initial thoughts don't always turn out right ... Petrouchka 22:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

OK I've been delayed by having to put together new course schedules; so I guess I can't guarantee a watchful eye on this article all the time. But I'll still have a go at composing something to work from. The Homeric scholarship article should be up in the next 24 hours or so. Apologies for the delay. Petrouchka 04:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Homeric scholarship article is up now; it reused the relevant material from this article. I've therefore greatly abbreviated the relevant section in this article. I've also excised stuff in the discussion page (below) which has now been taken care of. Petrouchka 03:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Opening section

• Only the Iliad, Odyssey, and Margites were consistently ascribed to Homer in antiquity. In other cases other authors were *more usually* cited; often a work has no other name associated with it but ancient writers will still refer to "the author of the Thebaid" rather than to "Homer", indicating their own lack of knowledge. I suggest that "spurious" works be kept separate.
• "Tradition held that Homer was blind" on the basis of a passage in one of the Homeric hymns, known since antiquity not to be contemporary with the Homeric epics.
• More than just Ionian cities laid claim to Homer
• Nowadays the question isn't about whether "the same poet" is responsible for the two epics, though some few do persist with questions like that. In the Anglo-Saxon world the poems are most frequently seen as traditional, which makes the question of authorship kind of silly (it's kind of like asking who "wrote" a myth). These days the question is more about identifying the ways in which different strands of tradition play off against one another -- this is the case in both the Anglo-Saxon "oralist" school and the Germanic "neoanalyst" school.

2. Ancient accounts of Homer

• Basically sound, at a first glance, but enormously too long considering the almost complete lack of interest in the topic these days.

5. Homeric style

• Matthew Arnold's view has been influential -- among translators -- but stating it as fact is hardly NPOV.
• 4th paragraph is speculative, and should be treated in a separate section on "Homer and oral tradition" or similar. It is not verifiable, but should be preserved -- it is a corollary of much modern theorising about Homeric tradition(s).

6. Historicity of the Iliad

• The tradition of exploring textual inconsistencies in the poem is relevant to the Homeric Question, not to the historicity of the Iliad.
• Should outline the main questions involved in discussing the historicity of the Iliad:

1. was there a city of Troy?
2. was the city of Troy sacked?
3. was Troy sacked by Greeks?
4. was Troy sacked by a pan-Hellenic army under Mycenaean leadership?
5. were there historical individuals named Agamemnon, Achilleus, Odysseus, Aias, Nestor, Priamos, Hektor, Aineias?
6. were these historical individuals at Troy?
7. did they sack Troy?

Omissions

• Section on Homeric scholarship (e.g. a new section 3.4) should have sections on the major trends in present-day scholarship, viz. oral tradition, Neoanalysis, and perhaps narratological schools of thought -- appropriately NPOV of course.

Editions (texts in Homeric Greek)

For many Wikipedia users, it's not going to be immediately clear that "editions" means "text in the original language." From being a TA in mythology and civ classes I sometimes wonder how many students who read the Iliad and Odyssey ever understand that it's possible to read the poems in Greek (indeed, sometimes I wonder how many of them truly understand that the poems were composed in a different language than English). Even the fact that the title Homeri Opera is in Latin is potentially confusing. So it's important, I think, to make it clear that "editions" refers to texts in Greek. That's why I put in the explanatory parenthesis.

We should try to remember that most of the audience aren't classicists, and so don't know the tools of the trade. "Commentaries" is another term that's going to be opaque to some readers. If you have ever taken--or especially, taught--intermediate Latin or Greek, you know through hard experience that using a commentary is an acquired skill. People who don't read classical or biblical texts have very little knowledge or experience of the commentary!

Furthermore, it might be a good idea to reorganize the bibliography a bit. Again, I think the target audience of this article should be the general reader--someone who knows a little bit about ancient Greece and Greek poetry, but not someone who's taken a bunch of Greek classes, let alone graduate seminars. So if this person consults the bibliography, the two categories of books that they're looking for are probably 1) good translations and 2) good general introductions to the individual epics, and maybe Homeric poetry in general. In other words, they're probably not going to be so interested in West's new edition, in Wolf's Prolegomena, or even in A New Companion to Homer. Something more along the line of Stephen Tracy's Story of the Odyssey, maybe. I'm not sure what a comparable work on the Iliad would be. Perhaps general works should go first in the bibliography, then more specialized studies, then editions and commentaries; translations can be a separate section at the end, as it is now. Akhilleus 23:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

You're quite right, and I agree with your suggestions -- except that I think it is necessary to keep in details of commentaries and Greek texts (where else would a reader find this info?) -- but moving it further down the bibliography is certainly a good idea. Petrouchka 03:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I see your point; how about moving the paranthesis out of the header, then? It makes the ToC look awkward. I would welcome a section "general introductions" or similar in the literature list. dab (ᛏ) 07:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Quoting the opening of the Iliad

Is it really a good idea to include the opening of the Iliad in Greek and a few English translations? It's interesting, all right; but since Homer has been translated by so outrageously many people, I think a separate article on Translations of Homer would be a better idea than adding to an already overlong article.

(BTW Chapman's translations should be added to the bibliography - I don't have a reference just now though. A public domain copy of Chapman is available online somewhere or other.) Petrouchka 04:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

we can always branch stuff out; it began with a list of only the oldest/best known translations (Pope, Butler, Lang), and has grown from there. There cannot be that many translations, I figure the list is almost complete now. But the question is, why not list the translations at Iliad and Odyssey, respectively, instead of here. dab (ᛏ) 07:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll move the opening lines of the Iliad to Homeric Greek which is sadly neglected anyhow. dab (ᛏ) 08:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Ummmm ... I think there's on the order of fifty translations, just into English. 130.195.86.38 20:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Just to be nitpicking: in the image of the opening lines, shouldn't proíapsen and theá (followed by a comma) have an acute instead of a grave accent? Iblardi 20:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Sources used by Homer

The Epics of Homer are no doubt the second "most popular texts" of all times (second only to the Bible).

It is strange that no sources used by Homer are mentioned in this article, who in turn has inspired hundreds of writers, such as Virgil.

After the burning of Bibliotheca of Alexandria most of these sources have been lost, but fragments did survive.

In Orphicorum Fragmenta for example, compiled by Otto Kern [1] there is mention of pre-Homeric works in several fragments. Here are two examples:

1. There was a poet called Oeagrus after Orpheus and Mousaeus who first composed (a poem) based on the Trojan War (vol.2, 23).
2. ...while Orpheus wrote:

Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Δημήτερος ἀγλαοκάρπου
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Demeter who is bearing goodly fruit

he (Homer) rephrased

Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Πηληιάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus (vol.3, 48)

I was just wondering if these sources are insignificant or unreliable, or otherwise not worth mentioning.--Odysses 12:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Orpheus is a legendary figure. The Orphic poems are usually thought to postdate Homer, at least in written form. The idea that Homer used written sources is not widely accepted anymore; the passages you quote here are good examples of formulaic oral poetry. Akhilleus 20:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Orpheus was an Argonaut. He lived one generation before the Trojan War, therefore prior to Homer.

The Orphicorum Fragmenta, do not exclusively include the Orphic Hymns. They also include a selection of passages by various ancient writers relevant to Orpheus, two of which I quoted above, hence, they are not oral poetry. Passage 1. for example is by Claudius Aelianus in Varia Historia, 14.21, while passage 2 is indicated as Just. To Greeks 17b. which I think refers to Junianus Justinus.

It would be reasonable to assume that no matter how genius Homer was, he too must have had some reference material. Everyone after him did.--Odysses 17:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find too many scholars who think there was a "real" Orpheus. Orphic poetry is universally thought to be pseudepigraphic--i.e., it's falsely attributed to Orpheus. If I'm not mistaken, not even Kern, whose edition you cite, thought that Orpheus wrote this stuff. Homer is usually dated somewhere in the 8th to 6th century BCE. Even the Greeks thought that he lived long after the Trojan War--see Herodotus 2.53.2-3, where he says that Homer lived 400 years before his time, and 2.145.4, where he says that the Trojan War happened 800 years before his time. The dating of Orphic poetry is pretty chaotic, but the earliest seems to be from the 6th century BCE, and most of it is later than that. The best work on Orphic poetry in English is probably Martin West's The Orphic Poems (Oxford 1983). Walter Burkert also has some interesting stuff, but that's more about Orphic cult than Orphic poetry.

So, Justin is wrong--Homer cannot be rephrasing Orpheus, since the Orphic poem is later than Homer. It's worth noting that this is Justin Martyr, the 1st century CE Christian apologist, from a work called the Hortatory Address to the Greeks, in a passage where he's trying to show that Homer was a monotheist. This is not exactly a discerning work of literary history--Justin has an argument to make, and it's not one that is faithful to Homer's actual words.

Your larger question is what sources Homer is using. The Homeric epics are oral poetry, or perhaps oral-derived poetry, composed either without writing or with little use of writing. Homer doesn't have a library at his disposal; instead, he's working within an oral tradition, made of of myths of the Trojan War, the birth of the gods, the deeds of Herakles, etc. That's his "source", if you like--myths transmitted orally. Some scholars see allusions between the Iliad and the Odyssey, but usually argue that the epics have a long period of development alongside each other as orally transmitted poems that get committed to writing later.

One of the features of oral poetry, at least as seen in the archaic Greek and south Slavic traditions, is formulaic composition--that is, certain phrases and story patterns are repeated throughout the poetry--phrases like "swift-footed Achilles" or "Demeter who bears goodly fruit" and story patterns such as the return of the hero, or the withdrawal-devastation-return pattern seen in the Iliad and the Hymn to Demeter. Mēnis is a key term for both the Iliad and the Hymn, and it looks like Justin is quoting an orphic version of the Demeter/Persephone story which highlights this by using what was probably a formulaic opening. You can imagine an archaic bard singing a story about the wrath of, say, Hera, and beginning, "Sing, goddess, the wrath of ox-eyed Hera..." The idea of the boulē Dios, the "will of Zeus," which is found at the fifth line of the Iliad, is another conventional phrase found in epic proems--it's also in the beginning of the Kypria. ¨

So it's Justin Martyr, not J. Justinus as I thought it was. From your above comprehensive and solid documentation, it is clear that these are not quotes of older scripts either. No doubt that Orphism was influenced by Homer and not the other way round.

Good work! Thanks Akhilleus. --Odysses 14:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

the bust

the bust that was at the top of the article is sometimes identified as Homer on the internet, but the British Museum plaque says it was formerly identified as Seneca, and then as Hesiod. [2]. There is actually a "Homer" bust at the BM, [3], maybe we can get an image of that. dab (ᛏ) 06:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• I think this site has gotten the plaques mixed up. I took this photo, and I'm pretty sure it was Homer. The two busts are next to each other, and I think the author of this site made a mistake. See this site which has them properly identified. --JW1805 (Talk) 17:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

untitled comment

Hi, I would like to add an external link to the World of Biography entry

• probably the most famous portal of biography to this article. Does anybody have any objections? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jameswatt (talk • contribs) .

I object. That link isn't informative. What's more, you've posted the exact same request on the talk page of tons of authors. You appear to be a spambot of some sort. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

please do not add this to the article, and please read the incident report before giving the go-ahead. This is spam and not link-worthy under WP:EL; the articles contain many distortions, lack citations, and contain nothing that wouldn't fit directly in the wiki article. a link to worldofbiography has been placed on over 70 talk pages by User:Jameswatt. thanks. --He:ah? 20:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Homeric Style

The Homeric Style section needs cleaning up. It is copied directly from the Britannica article, which claims that Matthew Arnold's formulation of Homer's style is uncontroversial. Prof. Newman certainly didn't think so, and H. A. Mason has disputed his idea that Homer is eminently noble. Petrouchka rightly points out that Arnold was talking, not directly about the Iliad and Odyssey, but what an English translation could hope to salvage from it: his four adjectives (rapid, plain, direct, noble) will not do as a summary by themselves, as I think he would have conceded. It is a notoriously difficult thing to do, as perhaps the section should say.

Surely this is the place to talk about similes, epithets, ring-composition? A few illustrative extracts and their more or less literal translation - Odysseus and Eurycleia, Achilleus at the beginning of Il. XVIII, and so on, along with some battlefield passages and scenes in Olympus - and some discussion will give people a much clearer sense of Homer. Oliverkroll 13:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Image at top

Hey. I just noticed the image says "marilyn manson.jpg" at the top. I doubt Marilyn Manson has anything to do with Homer so should someone remove this or not? It must have happened recently, because around yesterday I took a look at this article and it was fine. Hm.

--Ayame The Wolf 18:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Just the odd bit of vandalism. I've fixed it now. Paul August ☎ 18:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Editions, Translations, Commentaries

These are actually not of Homer but of the Iliad or the Odyssey. (Admittedly, a few editions cover both poems or the 'whole works'.) Wouldn't it be more logical for these sections of the bibliography to be moved to Iliad and Odyssey as appropriate? Andrew Dalby 10:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Most of the entries for the "editions" section are for both poems, and this is the logical article to list them in. Editions of the Iliad or the Odyssey belong in this list; it doesn't make any sense for someone who's trying to see what editions have been published over the centuries to come to this article for Wolf's edition of both poems, then to go to the Iliad article to find West's 1998 edition of the Iliad. It might be appropriate to duplicate all or part of the "editions" list at the Iliad and Odyssey articles, or to have a cross-reference from the "Sources" section of those articles to the "Selected Bibliography" section of this one.

Most translators have also done both poems. The commentaries, on the other hand, are for one poem or the other, but not both. For all of this I think it's valuable to have an exhaustive bibliography at the Homer article, with more selective bibliographies at the Iliad and Odyssey articles. For instance, since every major English translation has been given here, the Odyssey article only needs to list the mostly commonly encountered now--which I think are Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, Lombardo, Murray, and perhaps Rieu. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

With regard to the translations at least, which is the longest section of the biblio, there is now a separate article on English translations of Homer. I do not see any point whatever in duplicating this list in both places. More formally one would put a merger template on the section but I see that others are of the same mind about the relevance and utility of this huge bibiography in this one article! The translations article has the disadvantage of having one small table line item for each translation but here modern books and online entries are given for the translation. What I propose to do to solve this problem is create a notes section of the translations article in which any info given here that does not fit there can reside. Since I believe I am detailing the prevalent opinion I am going ahead with this item by item but it will take a while. If anyone really, really thinks the list of translations ought to be here too then we can revert to its current state. In that case I will not work on the article as its huge, rambling essentially unreferenced text and lists with heaps of weasel words significantly diminish its quality, whereas if I cannot improve the quality of the article I prefer to spend the time on other articles. I will not currently bother with templates as the whole thing would have to be plastered with templates, starting with the one on weasel words and going on the ones about English clean-up and in-line references and nearly all the rest of the templates. I see someone has a template on one section. Solo una spina? Anyway I will look into it when I get there. If we can cut down on size we can know better what to fix.Dave (talk) 14:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dave, if there's a separate article, there's no need to have the complete list of translations here, but it would be nice to have some listed--maybe the ones that are currently in print (Lomardo, Fagles, Lattimore...) I'm sure that some readers are going to be looking for translations, and we can have a concise list here so that the casual reader doesn't have to go to another article, wade through Alexander Pope et al. to find that s/he can get a copy of Lattimore.

In general I like the bibliography, but it is probably too large for convenient use. It should be trimmed down, I suppose. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Homer: Who was she?

Can anyone confirm that Lattimore wrote an essay/paper of this title? I've never heard of it, and a few google searches turn up nothing. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I never encountered it ... and I ought to have done, you may think, since I've just written a book which argues (among other things!) that the poet who saw the Iliad and Odyssey written down was more likely a woman than a man. The Robert Graves book certainly exists, also the Samuel Butler one, but I'm sure you know that already. Incidentally, Richard Bentley long ago argued that the Odyssey was composed for an audience of women. Andrew Dalby 09:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the alleged Lattimore essay. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

"Homeric worship"

I removed the following text:

During the Hellenistic period of antiquity, Homer was worshipped as a god in much of the Greek world.

Probably not. This is the first time I've heard of a "temple" of Homer, and if he did receive cult over a wide geographic area, it would likely be as a hero, not a god. The "apotheosis" relief was actually found in Italy, near Rome. Its iconography indicates that it was created in Egypt, but any association with a shrine of Homer is a matter of conjecture.

I question whether any of this section, aside from the image itself, is important enough to be included in the article. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The information I added comes from the British Museum, which I hope you'll agree is a reliable source. Thanks for catching the mistake about where the relief was found. I've added below an image of the BM's text on the relief. (As it's technically a copyvio, I'll delete it when you've read it - please let me know.) -- ChrisO 01:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Even this little museum label shows the need to handle sources carefully, doesn't it? Alexandria is not "much of the Greek world", it's Alexandria. Andrew Dalby 09:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, shrines or temples to Homer (known as Homereia, or Homereion in the singular) are known to have stood in multiple localities in the Greek world. There were Homereia at Chios, Ephesus and Smyrna in addition to Alexandria - the various cities which laid claim to him evidently sought to legitimise their claims by erecting shrines to him. Strabo records a Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet, and also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another shrine. It's part of a wide tradition of the deification of heroes (cf. Heroon). See The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity by Paul Zanker for more on Homer-worship and heroic reverence in general. My original wording is entirely consistent with the sources. -- ChrisO 22:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I should add also that all the sources I've checked on the Apotheosis of Homer describe it as a relief, not a stele. -- ChrisO 22:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Heroes aren't gods. So the statement "Homer was worshipped as a god" seems inaccurate. Furthermore, the sites you've mentioned still don't add up to "much of the Greek world"--these are discrete cities. As every Greek city had its own idiosyncratic religious traditions, I don't see this as evidence that every or most Greek cities had a cult of Homer. Could you provide a citation for the specific passages where Strabo discusses these shrines. Also, could you supply specific page numbers for the Zanker citation?

The "apotheosis" is a stele, carved in relief. Either "stele" or "relief" or both is an accurate description. So far, I have not seen anyone connect this with the Homereion built by Ptolemy, so it might be good to see a citation for this also.

"Homeric worship" isn't a great title for this section--the first thing the title makes me think of is how the gods and religion are portrayed in the Homeric poems. A better title might be "The hero-cult of Homer". I'm still not sure why this is important enough to be included in this article, however. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The Strabo reference for Smyrna is 14.1.37. Strabo describes Chios, but doesn't mention a Homereion there. Note that the Brit Museum caption says that "Homer was worshipped as a god" in the Hellenistic period--if we're going to keep this section, the timeframe should be mentioned. Further, even though the caption says "worshipped as a god" the scholarly consensus is that this was hero-cult (see the work of Zanker, cited in the article). So I'll change the article to reflect this. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Since the question of the importance of this section is raised, my comment is that this is a general issue for any encyclopedia, and we see it in Wikipedia quite a lot in sections headed (e.g.) "Fictional references". It's not important to the historical identity of the person under discussion, but it is important to some users of the encyclopedia, and where else would they look? Therefore, the alternatives are (a) to have sections headed "Fictional references to ..." "Later worship of ..." or whatever, or (b) to have see-also links to separate articles on those topics. I don't think (c) omit all mention, would be satisfactory. Andrew Dalby 08:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The question is not where people will look for this information, but whether anyone's going to be looking for this information at all. I've read a fair amount of Homeric scholarship, and a fair amount of material on hero-cult, and the cult of Homer is rarely mentioned. In fact, I hadn't heard of most of the Homereia. Perhaps that's the argument for including this material--it's interesting and surprising--but on the other hand, since it's not often mentioned in scholarship, I wonder if it is significant. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I think its principal significance lies in illustrating ancient attitudes towards Homer; i.e. as Llewellyn Morgan puts it, not just a great poet, but the divinely inspired source of all literature. It's a point worth making, I think. -- ChrisO 06:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Morgan's point is based on an analysis of the "apotheosis" relief. So that doesn't really tell us why it's important to mention the Homereia in Chios, etc. Archilochus and Hesiod get hero-cult, and some other poets possibly do, so cult doesn't necessarily set Homer apart from other poets. If we want to illustrate ancient attitudes towards Homer, we don't have to go to an analysis of the Archelaos relief; there are plenty of ancient literary critics who praise Homer, and they ought to be mentioned in this article. Like, say, Aristotle? Longinus? Or, on the other hand, Xenophanes' and Heraclitus' less-than-complimentary comments? The Archelaos relief is far less significant than these guys.

Anyway, I don't have any strong objections to including this material in the article; it doesn't seem significant compared to a lot of other stuff that should be here, but I suppose it belongs somewhere. However, I would put the "hero cult" section at the end of the article. The Hellenistic era is long after the poems were composed, and the general structure of a biography, which this article bascially follows, is life, works, later influence. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense to me. Andrew Dalby 09:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me too - good idea, Akhilleus. -- ChrisO 08:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Deleted/reinstated sentence

There is considerable scholarly debate about whether Homer was a real person, or the name given to one or more oral poets who sang traditional epic material.

User:Kdbuffalo deleted this sentence because there was no citation. Not a good reason, but perhaps a wise move. It needs rewriting, at least ... It seems to imply that an oral poet isn't a real person. Andrew Dalby 18:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I restored the sentence, because it's a quasi-summary of the rest of the section, but I agree that the sentence needs rewriting. In fact, I think the entire section needs rewriting. Among other problems, the idea that Homer's name is derived from the word for "hostage" is presented as fact, rather than being one of the possible origins of the name. Perhaps we can recast the dichotomy "real person/oral poet" as one between the individual creative genius of a historical individual (who was perhaps named "Homer") and the various models of crystallization/fixation from oral tradition, where recomposition by many bards is emphasized over individual creation. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Ancient accounts of Homer

I removed the 1911 text to a separate article, Ancient accounts of Homer, and am starting on a new section on the biographical tradition here. This may seem drastic, but the old text was confusing, and needed replacing. Anyone with knowledge in this area (Andrew?) is urged to jump right in. --Akhilleus (talk) 05:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Cultural depictions of Homer

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 16:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I like this approach, but the title "Cultural depictions of Homer" seems a bit clunky to me. Does "Homer in art, literature and popular culture" sound like a possible alternative? Also, it seems like whatever the title ends up being, the article should be for representations of Homer; adaptations of the Iliad and Odyssey and their characters should be covered in those articles. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I've created a worksheet at User:Durova/Cultural depictions of core biography figures. So far Cultural depictions of... has been the best title anyone has brainstormed for this type of article. Originally Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc was Joan of Arc in art. Some other related lists are ...in popular culture, with the (possibly unintended) effect of screening away high culture additions. Regarding whether to include direct adaptations, there's a little bit of discussion regarding Jane Austen and Shakespeare on that topic. Right now Shakespeare on screen includes mostly film adaptations of his work with a little bit about Shakespeare as a character. I don't want to step on any toes here, merely start a dialogue about a neglected area and act where I see a consensus. Durova 19:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I have posted a response at User talk:Durova/Cultural depictions of core biography figures. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica subpage

I found an orphaned subpage for this talk page a while ago at this link, and post a link to it now. It contains the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article (slightly modified/updated). I pose a question to experienced editors of this article: is it of any use? Why even have the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article stored in a subpage? Information could be incorporated directly from www.1911encyclopedia.org. At any rate, please post back here with your comments concerning its utility. --Iamunknown 19:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I proposed the subpage for deletion. Thanks for mentioning it, and providing the links. This article actually incorporates a bunch of 1911 text, and we're trying to update it, slowly. 20:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Akhilleus (talk • contribs) 13:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I created this page last December, see above. At that time, the article looked like this. I think we've incorporated the bits we need now, it should be transwikied to wikisource. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dbachmann (talk • contribs) 14:02, 26 October 2006) (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of it, guys. Sorry I overlooked the original post. --Iamunknown 22:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Is Homer legendary or is that POV?

I agree with Paul August's last edit: calling Homer legendary isn't POV, since the word isn't used in this context to exalt Homer, but rather it is used quite literally. After all, Homer is literally a legendary figure. We don't even know for sure whether he existed. --D. Webb 04:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes. On the other hand, it's easy to see how someone could read the disambig line as meaning "This article is about the totally awesome Greek poet," especially if they don't bother to read the article. Given the context (a disambig line) I don't think it matters much whether it says "the legendary poet" or "the poet"; the body of the article is the important thing. --Akhilleus (talk) 05:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Publication history

I took these sentences out:

The first printed Greek edition of Homer was issued in Florence in 1448, and the Iliad was not fully translated until as late as 1723 by Antonio Maria Salvini.

because they are certainly inaccurate. I'm sorry I haven't had time yet to put something positive in their place. First, text printing was not practiced in Europe as early as 1448 (see Johannes Gutenberg for the earliest examples, which don't include the Iliad); second, the complete Iliad in the well known translation by George Chapman appeared in 1616 (i.e. more than 100 years before 1723), and I don't immediately know whether there was an even earlier one into another European language. Andrew Dalby 13:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

1448 is clearly wrong, but the proper date might be 1488, if Aldus Manutius is right in saying that Alopa's Homer was printed then. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles Requires Serious Editing

I don't have much time to do it myself, but if there are any other actual Homeric scholars who have viewed this article, hopefully they can contribute to extensive editing that is required.

The most horrendous problem is the "Homeric Style" section, which treats Arnold's century-old blatherings about "noble style" as fact. Surely Arnold was a great scholar, but his opinions on this matter have LONG since been thoroughly debunked. The section also treats as fact the idea that Homeric Epic is somehow not a product of the oral poetic tradition. This is absolute lunacy, and no Homeric scholar with a shred of credibility would claim such a thing.

If I have a spare moment sometime in the near future I will try my best to correct this and the many other glaring misconceptions and innacuracies which plague this article. I can only surmise that it was written by a romantic-minded Homeric unitarian, or a grossly misinformed armchair Classicist.

74.109.107.248 03:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Homer in Mysterious People Category

I re-added Homer to the category of Mysterious people since there’s very little contemporary background info on Homer. Such as when he had lived, if he was a blind poet or a family of storytellers that called themselves Homer, and if he wrote more epics. I have a book on this which about mysteries which I will try to find for citation. Some real scholars/college professors can agree to this.--Pilot expert 07:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not that thrilled with putting Homer in a category with Subcomandante Marcos, Jean Lafitte, and the Italian Unabomber. If Homer's "mysterious" nature justifies a cat, surely it should be something like Category:Legendary poets, which could include Orpheus, Musaeus, and so on. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I also don't like some of the other people on that list but it's a fact that Homer is mysterious because there's little contemporary information on this person/people. Because there are other shady people in that list (which also include a serial killer, a crazy hairy circus freak, and an internat troll) should not be a real reason why he should be removed from the category. However I would opt to put him into the category of Legendary Poets or Mysterious Writers if it's a subcategory to Mysterious people like the ancient Old Testament writers (A,B,C,D writers), Captain Charles Johnson, Kyot, Laozi, and Anonymous IV but there appears to be no category for that list.--Pilot expert 23:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The category "Mysterious people" seems intolerably vague to me. It mixes up pseudonyms (Subcommandante Marcos, D.B. Cooper), real people about whom little is known, real people about whom a great deal is known but have something "mysterious" in their history (Rasputin), and legendary characters (Pope Joan). The category page specifically states that "Finally, the category should not include pseudonymns, nonexistent people, characters from folklore,..." Since quite a few scholars argue that there was no historical individual named "Homer", I'd say the "nonexistent people" criterion applies here. I don't support putting Homer in this category, and I wouldn't support making Category:Legendary poets a subcategory of "Mysterious people"--the existing subcategories are "Disappeared people", "feral children", "Impostor pretenders" (whatever that means), and "unidentified serial killers"! It would be more appropriate to make it a subcategory of Category:poets. --Akhilleus (talk) 23:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Ignorant

I don't know too much about Homer, so I can't really give my opinion. But even if I did, I wouldn't write anything bad about what wikipedia has to offer to readers. You have to be positive about things!

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This article needs to be reviewed again. Whether "Homer" is one person or many is a matter of debate. Initially the article indicated that fact; however someone has changed it to imply that it is "probably true" that it was one person. Many qualified scholars disagree with that theory and there is not currently any indication of that fact. It therefore is biased. It also has been changed to state that Homer lived and wrote in the 8th Century B.C. However, there is also debate about this; it may have been in the 7th Century, or perhaps before the 8th. It is misleading to state "8th Century" as if it were considered an established fact. Again, this is biased because these are theories which have not been established as fact. There is no indication of this.

I dislike reverting, but the several changes by Powell are, to me at least, badly phrased and incomprehensible. I.e.

because they are the oldest extant documents in the revolutionary Greek alphabet, the first writing that allowed a reader to roughly reconstruct the sound of human speech

This is nonsense because epigraphic evidence exists from 730 BCE onwards, at least a century, perhaps two, at least, before the whole text of the poems as we know them were finally written down, while in the meantime shorter poets from Hesiod and Archilochus onwards were no doubt written down. They may be the oldest compositions, but were retained by an oral, illiterate bardic tradition until written down much later (2) It is inept because the Greek alphabet represents Greek speech, not 'human speech'. I know what the author meant to say, but he/she says something other than what was evidently intended. (3) The plural aoidoi refers to more than one 'unitary' bard. It was meant to cover the fact that we are deally with two long epics that are generally regarded as being composed in distinct periods on stylistic grounds. To assert that one person composed them as we have them both poems is fine. To say this is the generally accepted view' is not. A considerable number of citations are required to substantiate such a position. (3) to spell 'illiterate' as 'iliterate' is illiterate. (4)They weren't admired for the 'quality ' of the poetry, an empty expression, but for the genius of the overall poetic narrative etc.etc.Nishidani 22:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's begin from the beginning

Powell. You insisted on asserrting, without sources, that modern informed opinion considers both the Iliad and the Odyssey as haviong been composed by one author. Document it. G.S.Kirk, to cite but one of many sources, an editor of the Iliad and outstanding 'modern' authority on Homer, writes:-

It will be plain from assumptions made earlier that I mywself believe, though with certain reservations, that the main processes of composition of the two great poems were carried out by two separate singers (The Songs of Homer Cambridge 1962 p.288). Contest that by all means, but from now on, only with verifiable sources, otherwise your interventions here are just noise. They violate wiki procedures. Your opinion, like mine, is meaninglessNishidani 13:07, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well. Powell's opinion is somewhat more important than ours, because he is a published expert on this subject. But it needs to be clear that his opinion is that of one expert on Homer, rather than irrefutable fact; and indeed, his arguments about the origin of the Greek alphabet are far from universally accepted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilleus (talk • contribs)

If BBPowell is Barry B.Powell (no proof either way) he cannot flog his personal thesis on these pages. I suspect he isn't because his contributions are, well, not up to snuff, in the sense that he editorializes, writes poorly and does not, in a variety of judgements, appear to recognize the work of colleagues who disagree with him. If it is Barry B.Powell, then he can instruct us all with the erudition of Homeric scholarship, by footnoting every point he makes. When BBPowell says 'general consensus' for what is, consulting his work, his own opinion, and not that of the generality of his colleagues, he cannot stand on the strength of his career. He must, like everyone else in here, document his assertions, preferably by referring to a variety of sources to back up each claim. Nishidani 19:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, this edit makes me doubt that Bbpowell is Prof. Powell; how could one of the contributors to A New Companion to Homer regard Gregory Nagy as a "scholar of small stature"? --Akhilleus (talk) 14:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

--Akhilleus Surely it is immaterial who the editor calling himself BBPowell really is? (Personally I don't believe it: the first edits were not even of sophomoric quality). I only know Nagy through his brilliant works on Homer and Pindar, but perhaps this was a wry quip at physically small stature? How tall is Nagy!! I wondered. An abusive edit, on the face of it, but perhaps a joke. In any case, once I noted it, I restored Nagy's name. Perhaps someone could email Prof.Emeritus BBPowell to ask. If it is not true, then Powell, whose work is distinguished, and thesis a valuable one, should be notified of the misuse of his name, by a poster who feigns to be him and, in the inept mimesis, makes him look like a laughingstock. Were that the case, then 'BBPowell' should be banned Nishidani 15:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly it: you can't have a username that's the same as a well-known living person, unless you are that person. There's two reasons: first, because your edits might affect the reputation of the real person, and second, if you impersonate someone famous, especially an expert on a particular topic, it gives your edits more authority than they would have otherwise. We need to find out who Bbpowell is, and ask him to change his username if he's not Prof. Powell. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Garzo. You eliminated *B. B. Powell, 1991, "Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet," ISBN 0-521-58907-X, on the grounds that BBPOwell is - 'rm book advertising by author'. I think I was the first to revert edit BBPowell's original contributions, for shoddiness. However it is not proven that the person (who certainly does not sound like BBPowell, to judge from those edits, which are shockingly uninformed, whereas Powell is erudite) is BBPowell yet. Secondly, that book is still an important contribution to the subject, surely. I think it should be restored, and even were it proved that the person who signs himself BBPowell were Powell, I don't think the sleight-of-hand this shows would disqualify what is a piece of important Homeric scholarship for mention here.

I won't alter your edit, but would appreciate a discussion on this.Remember secondly that 'BBPowell's' behaviour is that of an attention-getter, and one should not fall into the trap. If any of you has faculty contacts with Greek professors, I would suggest this curious little game be discussed with a Greek scholar of standing, who might perhaps know BBPowell and inquire informally as to the identity. As the behaviour stands it is certainly an affront to a man of scholarly repute, and discretion is required. Certainly the real BBPowell should be alerted to what is going on. Come to think of it, I don't know the rules of Wiki well, and this must touch on administrators' responsibilities. An email, not requiring a reply, might be sent to his faculty email, simply alerting him to the fact, and saying he need not reply. That covers both cases. If it is the same person, BBPowell need not reply. If it is not, then he can drop a note in disclaiming the identity Nishidani 16:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet is not important enough to be on this extremely selective bibliography; we're trying to select some essential reading in English here, and I don't think Powell's book has attained that stature.

BTW, I have left a note on Bbpowell's talk page asking him his real identity. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I have made a stylistic analysis of Powell's posts, from his first entry. They do not correspond to the judgement I made earlier, and, on examining my intervention, I surmise that in clicking on what I thought was a post by Powell, I must have clicked on a shoddy earlier version done by someone prior to his entry. I apologize to the forum, and of course to BBPowell (whoever that, he or she, may be. I have made no attempt to contact the person. I am not interested in identities but in quality of work, and the harsh remarks I made about shoddiness did not, in retrospect refer to his initial interventions but to the slapdash character of an earlier page.) I have looked at each successive intervention and, with two exceptions, (Nagy and the one bard theory) found them concise, highly informed, and far superior to the texts emended. This is not brownnosing: it is simply the result of a scruple coming from a cautious check on what I myself did, in the offchance that the other person may indeed be the person he claims to be.

I have also reverted Garzo's editing out of Powell's book. That book, though one may well disagree with it, is a stimulating and original piece of quality scholarship, very well-reviewed, to my knowledge. Most works on Homer run in grooves, turning up rich clods from the deeper ploughing yes, but also through ground already trodden. Powell's book, like Nagy's before him, jolted anyone reading volume after volume for minor details. That jolting effect is salutary, and therefore, whether Powell posted a note to his own book or not, or whether Wiki allows it or not, does not bother me. It is worth drawing the wider readership to a strong recent reading. Nishidani 19:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

If Powell's book is going to remain in the bibliography, Graziosi and Haubold's Homer: the Resonance of Epic ought to be added, and probably something by Jasper Griffin. --Akhilleus (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps one could divide the section, into classics that have had great influence, and recent works of noticeable originality. I personally wound put Nagy's book in the former, and Powell's in the latter. With this distinction, one could provide in the second section an updated and expansive list of important works in the field over,say, the past 2 decades, as a browser's guide.Nishidani 15:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Are we talking about Homer and the origin of the greek alphabet or are we talking about Powell's more recent book Homer, which is a introduction to the poems for a general audience? If we're talking about the alphabet book, I don't think it belongs, because this bibliography is for the general reader; but the more recent book is exactly the kind of thing that should be listed here. I doubt that it's a work of tremendous originality, though; general introductions to a subject should not be. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm really not, at this stage, prepossessed by the problem of bibliography, which should be addressed according to what sources contributors use in referencing the main text. I think the sensible thing to do would be to call in all contributors to work over the text in sequence, make its language respectable, concise, precise and less waffly, and, at the end, one can then review the minor issues such as this. The article on Homer deserves premier attention (look by comparison at the Shakespeare page) and it is a pity that it languishes in the state one finds it in Nishidani 17:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we might have been talking past each other then. I've been talking about what books to include in the section entitled "Selected bilbiography", which is basically a list of editions and translations, plus a short list of some books that readers of this article might want to look at for further information. The sources that we use to write the article need not be identical with the sources in the "selected bibliography", and I would have no problem with giving a short summary of Powell's argument about the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey in this article--as long as it's made clear that it's one opinion among many held by contemporary Homerists. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I see no evidence that anything beyond "8th or 7th century" is at all "generally accepted", and I see no reason to pretend that there is more of a consensus than there really is, expecially in the lead. I don't mean to support Powell at all, but neither is there a reason to get all anti-Powell just because he dared to edit the article. --dab (𒁳) 17:46, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

A bad article

This is an example of the worst kind of pompous Wikipedia article. It launches into ill-informed discussion of various academic "issues" of Homeric studies, but never tells us what the Iliad and the Odyssey are about, or why it might be worth our while to read them. Geoffw1948 20:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Homer/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

needs sources plange 01:38, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:38, 30 July 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 14:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)