Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.Īnd which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. What has never been controversial is Homer’s popularity, from his own time to the present day. That criticism should remind us that Homer composed a literary version of events, rather than a strictly accurate view of his culture. Homer’s version was also controversial Greek writers such as Xenophanes criticized Homer for his impious depiction of the gods, who appear at times brutal, at times humorous. When Dante tries to describe the interior of Hell, he is imitating Virgil imitating Homer: familiar ways of seeing unfamiliar things. Homer was not the first or the last to write about the Trojan War and its aftermath, but his version was the most famous, in part for his vivid descriptions (which would be imitated by other authors, including Virgil in his Aeneid, for centuries to come) For an audience that might not have witnessed a battle, Homer appeals to their senses through familiar sights and sounds men hacking at each other with bronze weapons sound like a forest full of woodcutters hacking at trees. Homer’s grasp of Mediterranean geography is strong, as is evident when he traces the wandering route that Odysseus takes to return home to Ithaca after the war. The Iliad encompasses a few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, focusing on one episode in the life of the Greek warrior Achilles, while the Odyssey explains why Odysseus spends twelve long years trying to go home. If so, his balanced depiction of the Greeks and the Trojans in the Iliad is noteworthy, since he would be a descendant of those Greeks who invaded the area approximately 400 years earlier, when the historical Troy was attacked and burned in around 1200 B.C.E. It is possible that he was a Greek who lived on the coast of what is now Turkey, not far from the location of Troy. We know almost nothing about Homer scholars debate whether one or more authors composed the epic poems attributed to him.
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