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Was Homer Blind?
Why is Homer called Homer?
Was Homer a blind bard?
Was Homer based on a poem?
Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. [14] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary .
- Overview
- Early references
Homer is the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two hugely influential epic poems of ancient Greece. If Homer did in fact compose the works, he is one of the greatest literary artists in the world, and, through these poems, he affected Western standards and ideas.
Was Homer a real person?
Scholars are uncertain whether he existed. If real, he is believed to have lived about the 9th or 8th century BCE and was a native of Ionia. A poet in the oral tradition, his works were likely transcribed by others. He is traditionally portrayed as blind, and some claim he was illiterate.
Did Homer write the Odyssey?
The authorship of the Odyssey and the Iliad is disputed. While some scholars believe Homer is solely responsible, others claim that the poems were retold and revised by numerous people. This theory has led to various explanations for the use of the word Homer. Some speculate that it was a term meaning wandering blind poet.
Homer (flourished 9th or 8th century bce?, Ionia? [now in Turkey]) presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Implicit references to Homer and quotations from the poems date to the middle of the 7th century bce. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus in the 7th century and Sappho and others in the early 6th adapted Homeric phraseology and metre to their own purposes and rhythms. At the same time scenes from the epics became popular in works of art. The pseudo-Homeric “Hymn to Apollo of Delos,” probably of late 7th-century composition, claimed to be the work of “a blind man who dwells in rugged Chios,” a reference to a tradition about Homer himself. The idea that Homer had descendants known as “Homeridae,” and that they had taken over the preservation and propagation of his poetry, goes back at least to the early 6th century bce. Indeed, it was not long before a kind of Homeric scholarship began: Theagenes of Rhegium in southern Italy toward the end of the same century wrote the first of many allegorizing interpretations. By the 5th century biographical fictions were well under way; the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heracleitus of Ephesus made use of a trivial legend of Homer’s death—that it was caused by chagrin at not being able to solve some boys’ riddle about catching lice—and the concept of a contest of quotations between Homer and Hesiod (after Homer the most ancient of Greek poets) may have been initiated in the Sophistic tradition. The historian Herodotus assigned the formulation of Greek theology to Homer and Hesiod and claimed that they could have lived no more than 400 years before his own time, the 5th century bce. This should be contrasted with the superficial assumption, popular in many circles throughout antiquity, that Homer must have lived not much later than the Trojan War about which he sang.
The general belief that Homer was a native of Ionia (the central part of the western seaboard of Asia Minor) seems a reasonable conjecture for the poems themselves are in predominantly Ionic dialect. Although Smyrna and Chios early began competing for the honour (the poet Pindar, early in the 5th century bce, associated Homer with both), and others joined in, no authenticated local memory survived anywhere of someone who, oral poet or not, must have been remarkable in his time. The absence of hard facts puzzled but did not deter the Greeks; the fictions that had begun even before the 5th century bce were developed in the Alexandrian era in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce (when false scholarship as well as true abounded) into fantastic pseudobiographies, and these were further refined by derivative scholars under the Roman Empire. The longest to have survived purports to be by Herodotus himself; but it is quite devoid of objective truth.
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Oct 1, 2016 · From birth Homer was called Melesigenes or Melesagoras. Later he was called Homer in the Lesbian dialect because of the harm that came to his eyes–the Lesbians call the blind Homeroi. Another account is that the name came because he entrusted to the king as a hostage (Homeros can mean a guarantee). They say that he was blinded in the ...
Sep 6, 2023 · Homer is thought to have been blind, based solely on a character in The Odyssey, a blind poet/minstrel called Demodokos. A long disquisition on how Demodokos was welcomed into a gathering and...
- The Life of the Blind Bard. Because Homer performed and sang he is called a bard. He is thought to have been blind, and so is known as the blind bard, just as Shakespeare, calling on the same tradition, is known as the bard of Avon.
- Homer's Birthplaces and Date. There are multiple cities in the ancient Greek world that lay the prestigious claim of being the birthplace of Homer. Smyrna is one of the most popular, but Chios, Cyme, Ios, Argos, and Athens are all in the running.
- The Trojan War. Homer's name will always be linked with the Trojan War because Homer wrote about the conflict between Greeks and Trojans, known as the Trojan War, and the return voyages of the Greek leaders.
- Homer and the Epic. Homer is the first and greatest writer of the Greek literary form known as epic and so it's in his work that people look for information about the poetic form.
Jan 22, 2020 · But 'Homeros' could also mean 'blind', and the image of a blind bard proved particularly compelling. One reason for this was that the Odyssey features a blind but immensely talented poet named Demodocus who recites his work before a royal court.
Jan 11, 2022 · The characterization of Homer as a blind bard by some historians is partly due to translations of the Greek “ homêros “, meaning “ hostage ” or “he who is forced to follow”, or, in some dialects, “blind”.
