Homer : People's Poet

I have recently read ‘Homer’s People : Epic Poetry and Social Formation’ by Johannes Haubold, who is currently a Honorary Professor at Durham University. The book is the revised version of a dissertation he wrote when he was having a tenure at the Faculty of Classics at University of Cambridge. The prestigious environment led to a work of high academic standard, yet the book was not merely about serious inquiries into Classical Antiquity. Through the philological approach and close-reading of various sources, Professor Haubold has provided an insightful perspective about the Homeric age, as glimpsed from the two surviving masterpieces of ancient literature - The Iliad and The Odyssey. The book has certainly provided me a few interesting viewpoints that has clarified my understanding of this distanced past, and that is an enjoyable reading experience due to its eloquence in words.

The key concern of the book is the Greek word ‘λᾱός’ (lāós), which has a few related meanings if one looks it up on the dictionary. Loosely translated as ‘people’ (of a country), it can also mean ‘soldiers’ and ‘common people’ (as opposed to the leaders). The latter definition is in particular interesting, because it points to the meaning of the word in Homer’s context. Haubold has pointed out that in the Homeric age, which has a starkly different ethical code than our era, can be divided into the groups of heroes and common people. For the heroes, they were seen as ‘shepherd of the people’, and that suggested that heroes needed to possess a leadership skill to lead the people to complete the mission. Using the words of today, one can say the Homeric hero had an accountability to lead and protect the people under his leadership, to avoid casualties in wars (which, as we will soon see, is a rather absurd position). The motivation of this may not be out of compassion or kindness towards others : bear in mind the goals of the Homeric heroes were to achieve honor and recognition from their peers. Thus, being a good leader, by winning in battles and protecting your fellow men from death, the hero would be admired and recognized by others, and they would be remembered in a positive light by future generations.

Yet one may start to see a tension in the communal interest and personal aspiration when considering this moral outlook. The concern for the soldiers’ well-being served merely an instrumental purpose for accumulating one’s achievement. That was placed in strategies and cold calculations. Homeric heroes would only show genuine compassion for limited number of people – the members of their ‘oikos’ (household). They have yet to develop the concept of ‘universal love’ or altruism, important for a ‘polis’ setting and the later ages. The primitive social structure in the Homeric world also worsened the condition somehow. Professor Haubold stated that Homer already had the keen foresight to discover this dilemma. In ‘The Iliad’, all the key characters would eventually lose something significantly, because they could not reconcile between the desire for self-interest and the demands from communal interest. The tragic dimension from The Iliad is that when the heroes – Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector - were blindly focusing on fulfilling their self-interests to achieve honor, not only that led to the death of their people, all the consequences would bite back and they had to bear the moral responsibilities for their choices. I will further elaborate my views in later articles.

I have also been reading ‘A History of Greek Philosophy’ by Professor W. K. C. Guthrie (1906-1981), a Classics scholar from Cambridge. I have read ‘The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle’ (1975), which I think is the shortened version of the 6-volume magnum opus. Hope you will be inspired by such a great mind! 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

Homer : The First Man of Literature

The various forms of art of Classical Greece, which laid the foundation of the aesthetic considerations for the Western culture, placed emphasis on two criteria – the expression of eternal ideals and and the expression of unity. The former concern found its elaboration in Plato's philosophy and the latter was stressed in particular by Aristotle in his theories of drama. The great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides effectively demonstrated the above values, which in fact was already evident from the epic poems of Homer.

Homer was an epic poet from ancient Greece, who was considered one of the first practitioners of Western Literature. Though there are theories suggesting that 'Homer' was a name that designated a collective effort of various poets, most people agree with the consensus that Homer was a single person who was responsible for the authorship of two ancient epic poems, 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'. The First Man of literature has proved to have a long-lasting influence in the world of art. Not only Homer has influenced the great tragedians of Classical Greece, the power of Homeric style could be felt in Virgil, John Milton, James Joyce and many others. The name '2001: A Space Odyssey' points to Homer's 'The Odyssey', so is Homer Simpson – we are going a bit too far here!

In this article I will describe the general style of the epic poems by Homer. With the exception of one specific example, I will leave the discussion of the worldview and moral outlook of Homer in the next article. The rationale is that I want to compare the idea of honor – the key value of the Homeric era - with the diverse values of Classical Greece.

It is important to stress a few aspects where modern audience will find alien regarding Homer's work. The first aspect is the nature of Homer's epic poems itself. While the poems are just as poetic as any poems from subsequent eras itself, these epic poems were intended as oral poetry - meaning that they were performed through some ancient form of singing to the audience. While there were controversies as to whether Homer or the other authors have written out any part of these poems - given the tremendous length of the poems, the whole experience is very different from reading, say, a collection of William Blake's work. Because for later poems, the reader can have the liberty to read it in his minds, so that is a different way of perception. The oral poetry of ancient Greece had a performative aspect, and that was why I maintained that these poems from the Homeric era were more similar to drama and films than modern poetry itself. One can easily feel the influence of Homer on subsequent Greek dramatists, who in turn inspired later theater and eventually film art itself.

Because the epic poems were delivered in an oral way, it resembled a music performance. Thus, Homer would have to adopt aesthetic considerations that not only made his stories a grand scale, but also fit to the rhythms and meters required for oral delivery. The epic poets in Homer's era adopted the dactylic hexameter style, and in order to be flexible to this requirement, Homer used a lot of repetition in words and even phrases, to the point that it might appear ritualistic to some audience. The effect of this repetitive style is profound, because it served as an imprinting effect to the audience in a psychological way. You start to associate certain personality traits to a character, much like President Trump did when he labeled his political opponents in his Tweets (just kidding!)

Homer has established the appropriate tone for his epic poems, by not immersing himself into the story itself. Homer's epic poems took an impersonal and objective stance, and it was even more distanced for modern audience, not only because of span of time, but also the alienating content for the audience to encounter. Yet his poems were able to pull the audience back, through their exploration of the eternal qualities of Man.

Homer, like other known epic poets, were interested in the epic cycle of the characters in Greek mythologies. Yet, Homer's caliber came from his intense dramatic focus. He would choose the important parts of the hero's story to enhance the narrative impact he wished to exert. Thus work like 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' were focused only on a defined period of time of the hero's life, which proved to be juiciest moments of their life stories. Though Homer was a poet from antiquity, one will be impressed by the power of his words, and depth of his characterization and plot development.

While Homer lived in a primitive era, he already possessed a gift to hype up the dramatic impact of his words. Not only his words were poetic, he played with the temporal aspects of his epic long poems by the juxtaposition of past and present. Homer's poems possessed an elegant formalism, and the way he fit all the mythological and humanistic aspects in the same story has reached a pleasant harmony. Homer's poems were long because the plot tended to branch out into side-stories, and as a testament to his clarity, these subplots served nicely as self-containing episodes and they did not divert the dramatic focus Homer has carefully planned.

Homer played with contrasting themes in his poems, and this style has certainly influenced numerous dramatists, artists and filmmakers. Not only Homer mingled with reality and fantasy or identity, his most fascinating characters were also very multi-faceted. Odysseus, the man who just wanted to go back home, is the prime example. Though any audience will easily side with Odysseus due to the sympathy to his plight, he is more of an antihero in most cases, and indeed one may conclude he is an amoral character by today's standard. Odysseus could easily use deceptions, tricks and fake identities as means to his own end throughout his ordeal, if he felt that would contribute to his ultimate aim of returning home. True, one can argue Odysseus was not observing a strict Homeric moral code (which is the focus of the next article), yet that is the reason why Odysseus has left such a lasting impression for literature. Odysseus is a realistic character that many readers can be easily identified with. Though Homer was no psychologist, he certainly understood how to capture the audience's heart through strong characterization. One can still learn from the old master Homer when creating his own masterpiece! 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics