Homer's 'The Iliad'
Trojan War is the main event in the epic written by Homer known as Iliad. It contains heroes, villains, damsels, gods, goddesses and various kingdoms. The style of writing and some acts of divine intervention have led the scholars to believe that this is a work of fiction with effective storytelling. Indeed most of the story of this great epic seems to be fiction. But there are some semblances of truth in the moulds of fiction. It is quite a tough ask to separate fiction from truth.
The story about Trojan War came from Homer’s epic poem Iliad. As the story goes Gods instigated war between the Greeks and Trojans who in turn were greedy and bloodthirsty. Entire war is portrayed heroically by the grand poet. There are many characters involved in the war whose existence has been subject for intense studies. Let us start off by dismissing all the supernatural interventions as myth and take a look at some human characters. The main characters in the Trojan War were Helen, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector, Paris and Odysseus. Odysseus who is a Greek soldier is one of the creations of Homer. You will get an idea why Odysseus is a myth after reading Iliad and Odyssey. Helen is the wife of Spartan King Menelaus and she is taken away by Prince Paris to make her his wife. Historical records from earliest times show nothing related to Troy so the kingdom might as well be deemed as a myth. So Hector and Paris are creations of Homer. But Sparta was definitely true and there are plenty of records to support such a claim. There is no reference of Helen, Menelaus or Agememnon is any other text than Iliad. There is no king in Spartan history by the name Menelaus. If we take a look at Achilles, he is a Greek hero and there are plenty of tales about his skills and bravery. So he did exist and was a true character. So as per the study all the characters except Achilles were creations of Homer. The Trojan War is believed to have been fought sometime between 1194 BC and 1184 BC and it lasted for ten years. There is a possibility that Homer learned about these events from someone else and he filled in the blanks with his imagination. May be the history of those times was lost with time. It is learned from Iliad that Greeks set siege on Troy and tried to take the city in every possible manner, but they failed. At last Odysseus came up with a brilliant plan. He created a wooden horse and hid himself and other soldiers within this horse. The horse was discovered by the Trojans who took it into the city as a souvenir. At night the soldiers came out of the wooden horse and opened the gates leading the Greek army to capture Troy. Thus, the wooden horse was a major breakthrough in the war. But such an artefact has never been found till date. This may be due to the erosion with time. It is learned that Greek soldiers destroyed Troy by setting it on fire. Though there might be a city of troy that was destroyed due to fire but destruction due to fire seems to be a creation of Homer. |
In the recent times archaeologists have found a site which they believe to be Troy. Such a city has been excavated modern day Turkey. There are no less than nine cities that have come out of the rubble. Archaeologists believe that the location and other descriptions of the city match with Homer’s description in Iliad. But the trouble is to decide which of these nine cities is Troy. Once detailed research of the site is carried out we hope fresh evidence would be found regarding the Trojan War.
Little is known about the historical Homer. Historians date the completion of the “Iliad” to about 750 B.C., and the “Odyssey” to about 725. Both began within the oral tradition, and were first transcribed decades or centuries after their composition. Many of the most familiar episodes of the war, from the abduction of Helen to the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy, come from the so-called “Epic Cycle” of narratives assembled in the sixth century B.C. from older oral traditions.
In the first century B.C. the Roman poet Virgil composed the “Aeneid,” the third great classical epic inspired by the Trojan War. It follows a group of Trojans led by the hero Aeneas who leave their destroyed city to travel to Carthage before founding the city of Rome. Virgil’s aim was in part to give Rome’s first imperial dynasty an origin story as impressive as that of the Greeks. |
What do we know of Homer?
It is known to all that Homer was blind and uneducated. The Greeks and Romans are quite unsure how Homer went on to compose his poems. It is said that Homer did not leave behind his poems in any form of writing. The poems were told to others by memorisation and these were collected together to form songs. As Homer never wrote down any of his poems thus there are many inconsistencies in his works. Even the dates of Homer’s existence are controversial. Heredotus estimated that he lived 400 years before his own time, this would mean that he lived around 850 BC. While other historical sources suggest that lived much closer to the Trojan War between 1194-1184 BC. There were many inconsistencies in his writings, for example a warrior is described to be groaning after he has already died. Indeed there are justifiable reasons why Homer had problems in keeping a track of his poems, while the Illiad is 16,000 lines Odyssey is also 12,000 lines. All these lines were composed by Homer without the aid of any pen and paper.
<------- Homer - the Blind Poet
German scholar Friedrich Wolf added that without a passing comment about a tablet in the Illiad there are no other instances in the poem that suggest Homer knew what writing was. Homer composed all his poems orally and then transmitted them to his ardent listeners. These listeners passed it on to their predecessors. But in this process the original poems got revised. Finally someone wrote all the poems down. Thus the lapses in the poems are not a fault of the author rather those of the compilers. Many scholars even claim that the original version of Illiad or Odyssey might not have been so astounding it was the additions made by generations of bards that changed the entire context. It is difficult for any poet to create two epics all of a sudden and that too of the brilliance of these two texts.
Homer composed his poems in an age when writing did not exist in Greece. It is quite difficult to think that a poet could create such a masterpiece without writing, it is not possible for anyone to remember thousands of lines! It is difficult under all circumstances to create such a lengthy poetry without any written records. Thus the scholars feel that someone by the name of Homer might have initiated the process of creating these two epics and added few hundred lines, but the rest of the epic was created in an evolutionary chain from generation to generation.
<------- Homer - the Blind Poet
German scholar Friedrich Wolf added that without a passing comment about a tablet in the Illiad there are no other instances in the poem that suggest Homer knew what writing was. Homer composed all his poems orally and then transmitted them to his ardent listeners. These listeners passed it on to their predecessors. But in this process the original poems got revised. Finally someone wrote all the poems down. Thus the lapses in the poems are not a fault of the author rather those of the compilers. Many scholars even claim that the original version of Illiad or Odyssey might not have been so astounding it was the additions made by generations of bards that changed the entire context. It is difficult for any poet to create two epics all of a sudden and that too of the brilliance of these two texts.
Homer composed his poems in an age when writing did not exist in Greece. It is quite difficult to think that a poet could create such a masterpiece without writing, it is not possible for anyone to remember thousands of lines! It is difficult under all circumstances to create such a lengthy poetry without any written records. Thus the scholars feel that someone by the name of Homer might have initiated the process of creating these two epics and added few hundred lines, but the rest of the epic was created in an evolutionary chain from generation to generation.
Excavations
In the nineteenth century excavations confirmed that Troy and the Trojan war were at least in some part based on real events. But the excavations also suggested that the world of Trojans and Mycenaeans was radically different from the descriptions provided by Homer. In the poems there was no mention of huge Mycenaean places or tombs or the written tablets with a special script of writing known as Linear B. Some of the tablets dug out from the sites revealed that that there was a centralised, hierarchical society in vogue in Mycenaea. The archaeological finds also did not find any evidence of independent chieftains such as Achilles who lived in small houses and served the king independently. Gregory Nagy, another renowned scholar feels that the Homeric writings became fixed text as late as the 6th century. Even the whereabouts of Homer remain a mystery and there are no evidences to justify his biographical information. So it may be held that the Illiad and Odyssey were more works of the generations who made changes in the text to fit their ages. There is little ancient historicity in these texts. They represent the times of the bards.