|
:''"Homer", "Homeric", and "Homerus" redirect here. For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation), Homeric (disambiguation), Homerus (disambiguation) Homer ( (:hómɛːros), ''Hómēros'') is best known as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''. He was believed by the ancient Greeks to have been the first and greatest of the epic poets. Author of the first known literature of Europe, he is central to the Western canon. When he lived, as well as whether he lived at all, is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived no more than 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BCE or later.〔Herodotus 2.53.〕 Pseudo-Herodotus estimates that he was born 622 years before Xerxes I placed a pontoon bridge over the Hellespont in 480 BCE, which would place him at 1102 BCE, 168 years after the fall of Troy in 1270 BCE. These two end points are 252 years apart, representative of the differences in dates given by the other sources.〔"Vita Herodotea", Chapter 38. An analysis can be found in A summary of the main traditional dates and sources can be found in 〕 The importance of Homer to the ancient Greeks is described in Plato's ''Republic'', which portrays him as the ''protos didaskalos'', "first teacher", of the tragedians, the hegemon paideias, "leader of Greek culture", and the ten Hellada pepaideukon, "teacher of () Greece".〔Paragraph 595c lines 1-2, paragraph 600a line 9, paragraph 606e lines 1-2, respectively. The references are collected and interpreted in 〕 Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. Fragments of Homer account for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds in Egypt.〔 Finley's figures are based upon the corpus of literary papyri published before 1963.〕 == Period == The chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word “Homer.” If the works attributed either wholly or partially to a blind poet named Homer, were really authored by such a person, then he must have had biographical dates, or a century or other historical period, which can be described as the life and times of Homer. If on the other hand Homer is to be considered a mythical character, the legendary founder of a guild of rhapsodes called the Homeridae, then “Homer” means the works attributed to the rhapsodes of the guild, who might have composed primarily in a single century or over a period of centuries. And finally, much of the geographic and material content of the Iliad and Odyssey appear to be consistent with the Aegean Late Bronze Age, the time of the floruit of Troy, but not the time of the Greek alphabet. The term “Homer” can be used to mean traditional elements of verse known to the rhapsodes from which they composed oral poetry, which transmitted information concerning the culture of Mycenaean Greece. This information is often called “the world of Homer” (or of Odysseus, or the Iliad). The Homeric period would in that case cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age, prior to the first delivery of a work called the Iliad. Concurrent with the questions of whether there was a biographical person named Homer, and what role he may have played in the development of the currently known texts, is the question of whether there ever was a uniform text of the Iliad or Odyssey. Considered word-for-word, the printed texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a little different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments, and make different choices as to the most accurate text to use. The term “accuracy” reveals a fundamental belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the whole work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed. These numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated.〔A summary of the sources and an analysis of textual uniformity can be found in .〕 The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, which indicate that the original had been published by Aristarchus of Samothrace in the 2nd century BCE. Librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named: the Sinopic, the Massiliotic, etc. The one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as “the Vulgate”. Aristarchus was known for his conservative selection of material. He marked lines that he thought were spurious, not of Homer. The entire last book of the Odyssey was marked. The koine in turn had come from the first librarian at Alexandria, Zenodotus, who flourished at the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. He also was attempting to restore authenticity to manuscripts he found in a state of chaos. He set the precedent by marking passages he considered spurious, and by filling in material that seemed to be missing himself. Neither Zenodotus nor Aristarchus mentioned any authentic master copy from which to make corrections. Their method was intuitive. The current division into 24 books each for the Iliad and Odyssey came from Zenodotus. Murray rejects the concept that an authoritative text for the Vulgate existed at the time of Zenodotus. He resorts to the fragments, the quotations of Homer in other works. About 200 existed at the time Murray wrote. Some of these match the current texts, some seem to paraphrase them, and some are not represented at all. Murray cites the Shield of Achilles, which also appears as the Shield of Heracles in Hesiod. Murray concludes that the epic poems were still in "a fluid state". He presents 150 BCE as the date after which the text solidifies around the Vulgate. Of the 5th century BCE, Murray said Homer' meant to them … 'the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey', but we cannot be sure that either … was exactly what we mean by those words." The earliest mention of a work of Homer was by Callinus, a poet who flourished about 650 BCE. He attributed the ''Thebais'', an epic about the attack on Boeotian Thebes by the epigonoi, to Homer. The Thebais was written about the time of the appearance of the Greek alphabet, but it could have been originally oral. The Iliad is mentioned by name in Herodotus with regard to the early 6th century, but there is no telling what Iliad that is. Almost all the ancient sources from the very earliest appear determined that a Homer, author of the Iliad and Odyssey, existed. The author of the Hymn to Apollo identifies himself in the last verse of the poem as a blind man from Chios. Nevertheless it is possible to make a case that Homer was only a mythological character, the supposed founder of the Homeridae. Martin West has asserted that "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name." Oliver Taplin, in the Oxford History of the Classical World’s article on Homer, announces that the elements of his life “are largely … demonstrable fictions.” Another attack on the biographical details comes from G.S. Kirk, who said: "Antiquity knew nothing definite about the life and personality of Homer." Taplin prefers instead to speak of Homer as “a historical context for the poems.” His dates for this context are 750-650 BCE, without considering Murray’s “fluid state.” With or without Homer, according to Murray, there is little likelihood that the Iliad and Odyssey of the early sources are the ones we know. Based on the fact that the Iliad was recited at the Panathenaic Games, which started in 566 BCE, Gregory Nagy selects a date of the 6th century for the fixation of the epics, as opposed to Murray’s 150 BCE. All of these views are only philologic. Regardless of whether there was or was not a Homer, or whether the texts of the Homerica were or were not close to the ones that exist today, philology alone does not shed any light on the similarities between Mycenaean culture and the geographical and material props of the world of Homer. Archaeology, however, continues to support the theory that much detailed information survived in the form of formulae and stock pieces to be combined creatively by the rhapsodes of later centuries. A number of combined archaeological and philological works have been written on the topic, such as Denys Page’s “History and the Homeric Iliad” and Martin P. Nilsson’s “The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology.” The linguist, Calvert Watkins, went so far as to seek an inherited Proto-Indo-European language origin for some epithets and the epic verse form. If he is correct, the stock themes and verses of rhapsodes may be far older than the Trojan War, which would, in that case, be only the latest opportunity for an epic. Homer cannot be presented as a single author of a set of works as they are today describing events of history that are more or less real, apart from the obvious mythology. Homeric studies are like the proverbial apple of philosophy. There is no beginning and no end. No matter what starting problem is selected, it leads immediately to another. The total sum of all the problems is known as the Homeric question, which is, of course, generic and not singular. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Homer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|