Odyssey-Part 5

INVITE LINK
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81085586371?pwd=1gR9Fao4gWGCSTNCdzfbjxnrHA1xCc.1

In Search of the Trojan War - 4. The Women of Troy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHRKoCwDdpQ&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wlPw0jV6aJaooskI-O4UFBKEE&index=4

In Search of the Trojan War - 5. Empire of the Hittites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0PQ_vjWN-o&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wlPw0jV6aJaooskI-O4UFBKEE&index=5

In Search of the Trojan War - 6. The Fall of Troy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPtod7Ua-U&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wlPw0jV6aJaooskI-O4UFBKEE&index=6

# Akala's Odyssey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8bwsIA-fQY&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wlPw0jV6aJaooskI-O4UFBKEE&index=8

In Search of the Trojan War - Michael Wood Interview (BBC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEEIw47xM8&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wlPw0jV6aJaooskI-O4UFBKEE&index=7

The lost Homerics by Edward N. Luttwak
January 2024

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Jean or Pasquier Grenier of Tournai, The Battle with the Sagittary and the Conference at Achilles’s Tent*,* ca. 1470–90, Wool warp and silk, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

## The lost Homerics

by Edward N. Luttwak
On bygone Trojan epics.

The Iliad famously starts in medias res, as Horace said, and it ends inconclusively with nothing settled: Achilles is still alive, Troy still untaken, and no Trojan horse in sight. Yet Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all wrote tragedies that presumed an audience familiar, as we are today, with the entire story of the Trojan War, from Zeus’s decision to reduce the world’s overpopulation and the judgment of Paris that started the strife, to the mustering of the expedition and the battles and the duels that lasted ten bloody years, and finally the vicissitudes of the heroes’ homecomings, most notably swaggering Agamemnon’s death at the hand of his envenomed wife Clytemnestra and Odysseus’s fittingly cautious return to his own long-neglected wife Penelope. Episodes from the full story are depicted on countless Greek ceramics and sculptures, either surviving as such or as Roman copies. In fact a fairly detailed rendition of the entire story could be derived from them alone.
So even if Aeschylus called his plays “slices from the banquet of Homer,” the fact remains that the stories he and other tragedians relied upon are not found in the Iliad or Odyssey. But the narrative consistency between all the tragedians certainly implies common textual sources. This was indeed the case: traceable to the end of the sixth century B.C., and in some cases earlier, are six epics that complemented the Iliad and Odyssey to tell the whole story of the Trojan War as we know it. These are the Cypria, whose text started the tale that leads to the Iliad; the Aethiopis, which began with the funeral of Hector that ends the Iliad; the Ilias Mikra (Little Iliad) that recounted the preparations needed to defeat Troy; the Iliou Persis (Fall of Troy), which told of the destruction of Ilion (another name for the city); the Nostoi (Returns), detailing the homecomings of the victorious, save Odysseus, who already had his own eponymous tale; and the Telegonytacked on last, in which Odysseus, bored in stony Ithaka, sets off again for adventure, acquiring a new wife and a child before he returns home and is finally killed by Telegonus, his own son birthed by Circe, who knows not his father.
By the fourth century B.C., all eight epics were jointly known as the Trojanepikos kyklos, or epic cycle. (There was also a smaller Theban cycle, comprising the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Oedipodea, and the Alcmeonis.)
Of the eight Trojan epics, only the Iliad and Odyssey have survived down to our own days as full texts, each divided into twenty-four books by Alexandrian editors, exemplars of Hellenistic scholarship at its glorious best. Of the other Trojan epics we have brief plot summaries in what is left of the Chrestomathia (Useful knowledge), generally attributed to the Neoplatonist author Proclus (fifth century A.D.), and in the Bibliothēkē(Library), which was passed down under the name of Apollodorus of Athens (second century B.C.) but was likely written by an imitator. There are also brief extracts from the lost epics, mostly just short phrases, that survive as citations in the extant writings of other ancient authors. The curious reader can consult the great Homer scholar Martin L. West’s Greek Epic Fragments (2003) for a compilation of what remains of the Trojan epics, presented alongside relevant summaries or extracts from Proclus, Apollodorus, and other sources. But the reader may be disappointed to find that these meager remainders amount to little more than verbal cartoon strips.
The lost Trojan epics are but a tiny fraction of the lost works of Greek antiquity. To take Greek historians as an example, only the writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius have survived, along with a few Greek-language histories of Rome by Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, Appianus, Dio Cassius, and Zosimus—ten historians in all. But an authoritative survey counts 856 other Greek historians and chroniclers of which nothing survives save fragments embedded in other works.
Ancient texts disappeared when they lacked enough readers to keep them alive by procuring new copies to replace the manuscripts lost to the inherent fragility of papyrus, to the destructive over-writing of parchment, and to fires, floods, and simple oblivion. To reach us across the span of centuries, these texts therefore had to survive the vagaries of taste before they could reach the safe harbor of the printing press. When Aldus Manutius printed Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis in 1507, for example, with his marvelously legible typeface in a small octavo format that scholars and even students could afford, he produced more copies than had previously existed in the world. It was the Romans of the Eastern Empire which the popes enjoyed calling Byzantine who read and copied Euripides often enough over a millennium to preserve the text till it reached Venice as Constantinople was declining. The teaching of Greek had started in Florence by 1400, but texts were very scarce until the printing press of Manutius revived Greek literacy in Europe, and hence the study of Greek science that was to launch the Scientific Revolution. (Manutius should be ten times more famous than he is today.) But while printing ensured the survival of ancient texts in danger till then, it also destroyed manuscripts: early printers burned them to preclude competing editions.
In any case, we owe it to the non-readers of the intervening centuries that we have only the summaries of the Cypria, Aethiopis, Ilias Mikra, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony, which might perhaps have offered us delightful poetry had they been preserved.
The Cypria, the lost Trojan epic whose plot we know in greatest detail, was originally in eleven books attributed to one Stasinus. It contains the main action that will start the Trojan war: conferring with Themis, the she-Titan who upholds the just balance of things, Zeus plans a war because the earth is groaning under the weight of overpopulation. This is not so absurd as it sounds, because many parts of Greece were already well inhabited while the Greeks knew little of the world beyond the Mediterranean.
The needed provocation was supplied by the goddess of strife, Eris: she arrives at the wedding of the mortal Peleus to the nymph Thetis that will produce Achilles and starts a dispute between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite as to which of them is fairest. At the command of Zeus, the three goddesses are led by Hermes to Paris (a.k.a. Alexander), the son of King Priam of Troy, on Mount Ida for his decision. Paris, won over by the promise of receiving Helen in adulterous marriage, decides in favor of Aphrodite.
Odysseus, who would never have chosen the least powerful of the three goddesses, also proves his worldly wisdom in the Cypria: when Agamemnon and Menelaus send heralds around Greece to summon kings and heroes to the fight, Odysseus feigns insanity to avoid joining the expedition and drawn-out war (it was widely known that Troy’s walls had been built by gods). What catches him out is a hostage-taking: the herald Palamedes snatches the baby Telemachus from Penelope’s bosom, whereupon Odysseus has to shed his pretense and intervene. (He takes elaborate revenge for this indecency in the Palamedes of Euripides.) The Cypria also details a more successful ruse for avoidance: one Cypriot ruler promises on oath to send fifty ships but then, as Proclus tells us, “he sent one . . . but the rest he shaped out of clay and launched them to sea.”
Odysseus makes another inglorious appearance in the Cypria’s most consummately tragic episode: Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia must be sacrificed at Aulis to appease the divine hunter Artemis, who was offended by Agamemnon’s boast that he exceeded her in skill when he killed a deer. Iphigenia is fetched from Mycenae by Odysseus with the cover story that she is to marry Achilles. In his own version, Euripides has us watch in fascinated horror as the innocent girl discovers too late that she is not to be wedded on arrival, but butchered.
The Cypria does dutiful service for the Iliad by providing the needed introductions of the protagonists, and of the casus belli: Helen, or rather the possession thereof. When Telemachus sets out to find news of his missing father in the Odyssey, he finds Helen seamlessly restored to her husband Menelaus after her interlude as the adulterous lover of not one but two Trojan princes (as we will see).
In the first post-Iliadic epic, the Aethiopis in five books, Odysseus fights off the Trojans while Ajax rescues the body of Achilles after he is killed at the Scaean gates of Ilion by the arrows of Paris and Apollo. (In Homer, the bow is the coward’s weapon; hence Paris is doubly dishonorable in relying on a god’s intervention and the bow.) In the ensuing funeral games, Ajax and Odysseus quarrel over the god-made arms and armor of Achilles that they had jointly saved from the Trojans.
It is in the next epic, the partly overlapping Ilias Mikra, that Athena intervenes to award the armor of Achilles to her favorite Odysseus. Ajax, maddened by impotent fury, slaughters the looted cattle and countless Greeks, and then kills himself. Odysseus next ambushes and captures the Trojan seer Helenus, the son of Priam and brother of Cassandra, who discloses the preconditions for the conquest of Troy.
The first condition is that the famed archer Philoctetes must be brought back to take part in the siege, along with the bow he inherited from Hercules; in book II of the Iliad, he was abandoned on Lemnos, snake-bitten and gangrenous. Odysseus, joined by his steadfast partner in adventure Diomedes, fetches him and the bow. Philoctetes is healed by Machaon, the son of Asclepius the god of medicine, and it is he who kills Paris, leaving Helen a widow—but only briefly, because Deiphobus, Priam’s most valiant son after Hector, quickly marries her.
The next requirements are the capture of the Palladium, the wooden Pallas Athena that was Ilion’s protective deity; the recovery of the bones of Pelops from Peloponnesian Pisa; and the recruitment of Neoptolemus, the son of the dead Achilles, to join in the war. Other sources tell us that Achilles came by his only son in a manner that anticipates the gender fluidity that is all the rage these days: while living on Scyros disguised as a girl under mother’s orders—Thetis was trying to save him from certain death in the Trojan War—he impregnated the local princess he roomed with.
Others fetch the bones of Pelops, but Odysseus does the heavy lifting of conveying Neoptolemus to besieged Ilion and presenting him with the arms and armor of Achilles. With his sidekick Diomedes, he also brings back a bitterly resentful Philoctetes, and with Diomedes again he enters Ilion disguised as a beggar to steal the Palladium. Helen recognizes him but, as if already the Helen encountered in the Odyssey living in matronly domesticity with Menelaus, does not raise the alarm.
It is in the Ilias Mikra that the story of the wooden horse is recounted, from its construction by Epeus and the ensconcing of the thirteen leading heroes, to the feigned departure for home of the Achaean fleet, which stops in nearby Tenedos once out of sight. The triumphant Trojans themselves breach the insurmountable walls to bring in the wooden horse, their trophy.
In the next epic, the Iliou Persis (originally in two books), the Trojans have their doubts but finally disregard the warnings of Cassandra and Laocoön, and they turn to revelry in celebration of their deliverance. The Achaeans sail back from Tenedos to link up with the heroes that emerged from the wooden horse to open the great gates, and the slaughter of the Trojans ensues. When the citadel falls, Neoptolemus kills Priam and takes Hector’s widow Andromache as his own prize, while Menelaus collects Helen, unperturbed by her very fresh remarriage to Deiphobus after the death of Paris. “When Menelaus glimpsed Helen’s bare apples,” one scholiast drily noted, “he dropped his sword, I believe.”
In the Iliou Persis the killer of Hector’s infant son Astyanax is Odysseus, whereas in the Ilias Mikra it was Neoptolemus: “after seizing him from the bosom of his nurse . . . holding him by the foot, [he] flung him from the battlement.” That was foul child-murder certainly, but for singer and audience it would not condemn either man: one could hardly be expected to live out his later years in perpetual fear of the obligatory revenge of Astyanax, still today a son’s highest duty in the Albanian mountains if not in downtown Athens.
Finally, in the Nostoi (in five books), Agamemnon sails to his fate at the hands of Clytemnestra and her lover, and many Achaean ships sailing straight across the Aegean are lost to storms; Menelaus with Helen is wind-driven all the way to Egypt. The Nostoi avoids retreading the events of the Odyssey, but Odysseus does appear briefly when Neoptolemus meets him in Thrace, at Maronea, which Odyssues has already looted, of course, having sailed up coastwise on ships that must have already been heavy from Ilion’s loot. One could never have too much kleos, heroic renown, the ultimate index of true worth, and very sensibly Homeric heroes measured it in tangibles: desirable captives and valuable metals, silver, gold, and worked iron most of all. The Iron Age was still fresh; novelty outdid scarcity.
Of the literary qualities of the lost epics we can know little from their abbreviated summaries, and hardly anything from the very brief extracts that survive in other works. Scholars have long wondered how they stacked up against the Iliad and Odyssey. Aristotle remarks that it would be hard to extract even one tragedy from the Iliad or Odyssey, while several tragedies have been made from the Cypria and more than eight from the Ilias Mikra, among which he then cites the Hoplon Crisis (Award of arms) of Aeschylus (of which little remains), the Philoctetes of Sophocles, the Eurypylus of Sophocles (also cited by Plutarch but lost), and the Trojan Women of Euripides. Aristotle takes this as evidence of the superior poetic unity of Homer’s work. Yet if the other, divisible Trojan epics had not proven so fertile to tragedians, we would know a good deal less about the stories they told.
In the West, the extinction of all the Trojan epics, the Iliad and Odysseyincluded, became inevitable once the easy bilingualism that defined educated Romans was lost in the decline and disintegration of the empire along with most other attributes of civilization. Small Greek-speaking minorities persisted in isolated villages in Calabria (in southern Italy) and Catania (in eastern Sicily), even into modern times, but in the formerly “classical” world of Europe, the Iliad and Odyssey were gone from the scene by the time of the humanist revival. In his day, Petrarch (1304–74) was deemed the most cultured of Europeans and his library was much admired, but he had no copy of the Iliad until a Byzantine envoy gave him one (it survives in Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana). He tried to learn Greek in order to read his treasure but did not succeed. It would have been reasonable to expect that the relentless shrinking of the Eastern Empire where Greek texts were still read and still recopied would soon extinguish Greek literature altogether, reducing it to fragmentary survivals in the manner of Akkadian or Ugaritic.
But soon after Manutius started publishing Greek texts in the late fifteenth century, an ever-increasing number of Europeans achieved the Greek literacy that eluded Petrarch and which would soon become the prerequisite for higher education. For many scholars of ancient Greek today, it can be hard to imagine a time when even those relatively few texts we have were not available en masse in print editions; if anything, we are too busy bemoaning what has been lost. But the fate of the Trojan epic cycle should also remind us that, if we are not careful, someday our own great books could likewise be lost to the vagaries of taste.

## Homer, the Homeric epics, and their influence on ancient Greek literature

Edited by: Paraskevi Katsipanou
Homer, the greatest epic poet of ancient Greece, lived in the 8th century BC and is considered to have been Ionian, a conclusion based on the Ionic dialect used by the great poet. As a rhapsode, he continued a long tradition of heroic narratives, giving us the Iliad, around 750 BC, and the Odyssey in 710 BC.
Homer is considered one of the greatest poets of all time, marking the beginning of refined Greek and European literature as a whole. Few works combine the brutality of war with human emotion in such a unique way, portraying the fears, hopes, and passions of its protagonists. Homer offers scenes with great emotional intensity—such as the final dialogue between Hector and Andromache, during which Hector plays with his son, the discussion between the angry Achilles and his mother Thetis trying to console him, or the last moments of Odysseus’s faithful dog as he recognizes his master.
That’s why, although we are taught the Homeric epics at a young age, reading them again in later years offers intense emotion to the reader.

## The antagonism about his place of birth

There is uncertainty about the birthplace and time of Homer. In fact, many modern philologists even question his existence. Krates of Mallos estimates that Homer lived sixty years after the Trojan War, while Eratosthenes places Homer’s peak a hundred years after the Trojan War and twenty after the descent of the Heracleidae. Thucydides, on the other hand, believes that Homer lived “much later than the Trojan War.”
According to tradition, Homer hailed from Ionia. However, according to legend, it is estimated that cities from all over Greece claimed his origin, specifically: Pylos, Argos, Athens, and the predominant Smyrna and Chios.

## The etymologies surrounding the name of Homer

The real name of Homer was Milesigenes. Homer’s father is said to have had the name Melis, which is identified with the river Meles near Smyrna. From this fact arose Smyrna’s claims to be the poet’s homeland, more than the other cities.
The name “Homer,” by which the poet is known worldwide, has been etymologized in many ways since antiquity, with each etymology accompanied by a myth. Thus, Ephorus of Cyme argues that the designation “Homer” comes from the ancient Greek “mē orōn,” following the myth that the poet was blind. Another etymology suggests that the poet or his father had been given as a hostage, a theory mentioned by Pseudo-Plutarc

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## The Homeric dialect

Homeric poetry is usually placed in the post-Mycenaean years, in the first millennium BCE. Chronologically, within Homeric poetry, three major dialect groups had formed: the Aeolic, the Attic-Ionic, and the Western Greek, with a fourth smaller one, limited to central Peloponnese and Cyprus, known as Arcado-Cypriot.
As seen in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dialect used by Homer consists of mixed, primarily Ionic and Aeolic, dialectical forms. It is an artificial language that does not represent any specific dialect of a particular region or a specific time period, while the linguistic standards in the texts of the ancient epic poet retain older characteristics.
This mixed dialect, known as the Homeric dialect, served as a literary model for epic and didactic poets who followed, such as Hesiod, and later for lyric poetry. Various literary languages and genres were thus influenced by Homer, regardless of the origin of the poets who represented them.

## The Homeric epics and their timeless value

The Homeric epics are the oldest texts of ancient Greek literature that have managed to survive to this day. Since ancient times, their educational value has been recognized, and they were used for the education of the youth of antiquity, as Homer’s work is full of lessons about life, society, and personal ethics. It is characteristic that Plato argued that Homer educated Greece, while Aristotle taught the Iliad to his most prominent student, Alexander the Great, who is said to have carried the Iliad on his expeditions.
Even today, the Homeric epics are taught in schools worldwide and have been translated into all languages.
The Homeric epics have had and continue to have a long and continuous influence on Western civilization, affecting literature, art, music, and cinema. The Homeric epics “speak” a timeless language when referring to the role of fate in life, the harshness of life, humanity and its weaknesses, the sufferings they bring, but also to love, old age, and death.

## The Homeric Question

The Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, belong to the earliest texts of ancient Greece that have managed to survive to this day. However, the relationship between the two Homeric epics and the historical period they refer to, as well as the period of their creation, is complex and simultaneously very interesting.
Precisely because the information we have about Homer is scant and confused, many questions have been formulated in the history of classical philology, all together constituting the Homeric Question.
The Homeric Question thus includes all the philological issues raised regarding the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, such as:

• Who, where, when, and under what circumstances were these two epics created?
• Who is Homer? Did he really exist?
• Do the Iliad and the Odyssey have the same author?
• How representative of historical truth are the events and traditions mentioned in the Homeric poems? Did the Trojan War ever happen?
• How old are the oldest elements found in the Homeric epics?

These questions arise from various conflicting elements and characteristics of the two epics. For example, the narrative flow shows strong elements of oral tradition and fewer characteristics of written poetry, placing the texts at the beginnings of literary production. However, within the texts, as recorded in the Peisistratean recension, there are chronological paradoxes and references to traditions and practices from later years than the period described in the two great epics, placing the texts in a later period.
Even today, philologists, historians, and archaeologists have not resolved the Homeric Question. Generally, it is considered that each poem shows homogeneity in its structure and writing style, but as the two epics differ in their writing style, it is considered that they were written with a considerable chronological difference between them. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was written before the Odyssey. This assumption leads some scholars to consider that the two epics are the work of two different poets.
Regardless of whatever answers may be provided in the future for the Homeric Question, it does not affect the fact that the Homeric epics are two works of unparalleled beauty and literary value, which today constitute not only Greek but pan-human heritage.

## Iliad: a tale of wrath, gods, and heroes

The Iliad, though closely linked to Achilles and his story, is not named “Achilleis” but draws its title from the city of Ilium (Troy), around which the Trojan War unfolds.
The Iliad consists of 15,693 verses written in dactylic hexameter in an artistic poetic language, and its composition is placed around the 8th century BCE. It is divided into 24 rhapsodies, each corresponding to a capital letter of the Greek alphabet (Α-Ω). This system existed already in the time of Herodotus.
The epic refers to a glorified past full of heroic deeds, at the end of the Mycenaean period.

### Iliad – summary

The main theme, as we perceive from the first verses, is the wrath (μήνις) of Achilles. The work begins as Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel over Briseis. Feeling aggrieved, Achilles withdraws his army from the battle, resulting in the Trojans gaining courage and causing great calamity to the Greeks, whom they defeat. However, Achilles refuses to return to battle and assist the Achaeans, preparing to leave Troy.
But when his beloved friend Patroclus is killed in battle, the need to avenge his friend’s death leads him back to the battlefield. He forces the Trojans to retreat within their walls after killing their greatest hero, Hector.
Although the events of the Iliad unfold in approximately 51 days, Homer employs various narrative techniques that allow him to recount the events of the Trojan War, which lasted for 10 years.
It is worth noting, as a main characteristic of the Iliad, that gods and heroes often play equally significant roles, as the gods have a particularly active role in the battle, while they themselves are divided into two camps.

## The Odyssey: a tale of nostos and adventure

The main theme of the Odyssey is the deep desire of the hero Odysseus to return to his homeland, Ithaca. Comprising 12,110 lines, the Odyssey is thus shorter by 3,500 lines compared to the Iliad, and its plot unfolds over 40 days. It is divided into 24 rhapsodies, like the Iliad, each corresponding to a small letter of the Greek alphabet (α-ω). It presents great narrative variety, with some parts resembling simple narratives, others pastoral dramas, and others featuring domestic scenes and tragedies.

### Odyssey – summary

The ten-year wanderings of the resourceful Odysseus after the Trojan War, the faithful Penelope who awaited him, and his son Telemachus, who searched for him, have been deeply ingrained in our cultural consciousness.
The challenges Odysseus faces upon his return from Troy are immense, due to divine intervention in his journey. Indeed, when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, he incurs the wrath of his father, the Cyclops Poseidon, who does everything possible to prevent Odysseus from reaching Ithaca. In contrast, the cunning hero has Athena on his side, who ultimately succeeds in reuniting Odysseus with his family.
It is particularly noteworthy that the Odyssey as a whole is characterized by the rich imagination of the poet. It reflects the restless spirit of the Greeks and their tendency to explore the unknown, despite the dangers symbolized by a multitude of mythical creatures with magical abilities. The Odyssey and its maritime voyages foreshadow the great colonial movements of the Greeks in the 7th century BC.

## Epic Cycle or Epic Poems

The name indicates the epics, written almost all between 800 and 500 BCE, which have as their subject the events related to the Trojan War. They are ‘supplementary’ to the Homeric epics, as they narrate events that either precede or follow, or relate to specific episodes of the Trojan War.
The works included in the epic cycle unfortunately survive in fragments. Indeed, for some of them, we only know the titles. Thanks to these, we know the ‘complete’ story of the Trojan War. Indeed, the fall of Troy through the Trojan Horse is known to us through these works, as it is not included in the Iliad (as many wrongly believe).
The epic or Trojan cycle constitutes the literary expression of the Heroic Age of ancient times, and closes together with it. The Epic Cycle includes:

• Cypria: Narrates the events preceding the Iliad, in eleven books. It starts with Zeus’ desire to provoke a great war to limit overpopulation on earth. It follows the story of the marriage of Achilles’ parents, the judgment of Paris, the abduction of beautiful Helen, the gathering of the Greeks in Aulis, and the first ten years of the campaign.
• Aethiopis: Narrates the last exploits of Achilles, including his duel with the Amazon Penthesilea, his death, and burial.
• Little Iliad: From the death of Achilles to the construction of the Trojan Horse.
• Sack of Troy: The fall of Troy and the savagery of the Achaeans, which led to their punishment by the gods.
• Returns: The story of the Achaeans’ return to their homelands.
• Telegony: The last years of Odysseus after his return to Ithaca, up to his death at the hands of his son Telegonus.”

## Homeric Hymns

Tradition has handed down, along with the Iliad and the Odyssey, 34 hymns under the name of the great epic poet. However, their origin is difficult to ascertain.Η χειρόγραφη παράδοση έδωσε, μαζί με την Ιλιάδα και την Οδύσσεια, 34 ύμνους με το όνομα του μεγάλου επικού ποιητή. Ωστόσο η προέλευσή τους είναι δύσκολο να εξακριβωθεί.

The Homeric Hymns are written in dactylic hexameter, imitating the style of the epic verses, and often borrow typical Homeric expressions verbatim. The first reference to them in written texts was made by Thucydides. They vary in length, as some are brief and complete in three to four lines, while others have up to five hundred.
Today’s researchers consider them to be works later than Homer, composed probably in the 7th or 6th century BCE. Some of the hymns are even considered works of the Hellenistic Period.
In any case, the Homeric Hymns are a distinct sample of a rich literary tradition and, together, a source for the customs of a very distant era. They follow a standardized format, beginning with an invocation to the deity being hymned, mentioning their genealogy and attributes, and ending with a salutation or prayer, often announcing another related hymn to be recited next.
It is important to note that the Homeric hymns are not religious hymns. They maintain the heroic character of the epics, drawing their subject matter from the stories of the gods or, in some cases, other heroes

## Homer and Hesiod

If Homer is the oldest source for the lives of great mythological heroes, Hesiod is the oldest and most complete source for the myths concerning the ancient pantheon. With the Theogony, Hesiod depicted the birth of the gods from the era of Chaos to the triumph of the Olympian gods through the Titanomachy. With the poem Works and Days, Hesiod gave us a detailed picture of rural life in his time.
Were Homer and Hesiod contemporaries? And if so, did they ever meet?
Αν ο Όμηρος είναι η αρχαιότερη πηγή μας για τη ζωή σπουδαίων μυθολογικών ηρώων, ο Ησίοδος είναι η αρχαιότερη και πληρέστερη πηγή μας για τους μύθους που αφορούν το αρχαίο πάνθεον. Με την Θεογονία, ο Ησίοδος αποτύπωσε την γένεση των θεών από την εποχή του Χάους ως την επικράτηση των θεών του Ολύμπου μέσα από την Τιτανομαχία. Με το ποίημα Έργα και Ημέραι, ο Ησίοδος μας χάρισε μια λεπτομερή εικόνα της αγροτικής ζωής της εποχής του.
Ήταν άραγε σύγχρονοι ο Όμηρος και ο Ησίοδος; Και αν ναι, είχαν συναντηθεί ποτέ;
This is a question that still doesn’t have a convincing answer today. However, there is an (anonymous) ancient work that recounts a legendary poetry contest between them.
According to this, Homer and Hesiod meet in Chalkis, at the funeral games for King Amphidamas, which include a poetic competition. In this competition, each poet is called upon to complete the verses of the other. Homer leads the entire competition, and the crowd believes he will be the winner. However, in the end, Panedes, the brother of the deceased king, awards the prize to Hesiod because his verses are about rural life and peace, rather than war and slaughter.
It is likely that we will never know if such a contest actually took place between the two great poets. The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, however, is an ode to Homer: The great poet may not be crowned the winner of the contest, but his poetry is described as superior to that of Hesiod, proving that Homer’s greatness was recognized very early on.

## The Trojan War in the Tragic Poets of Classical Antiquity

The Trojan Cycle, whether we are talking about the Iliad and the Odyssey or the other epic cycles, was a source of inspiration for the Attic drama of classical Athens. Both the three major tragedians and lesser-known playwrights, whose works have not survived, wrote about the Trojan War.
Beyond the themes, the Homeric works also influenced the language of the great tragedians, and in some plays, such as Euripides’ Phoenician Women, there are scenes that strongly resemble scenes from the Homeric epics.

### Aeschylus and the Homeric language

Perhaps the most striking drama inspired by the epic cycles is Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. Aeschylus is considered to have been influenced by Homer to such an extent that Aristophanes made him confess in “The Frogs” that he was inspired by Homer for his most heroic characters.
“Agamemnon,” the first part of a trilogy completed by The Choephori and The Eumenides, remains one of the most frequently performed tragedies to this day. It narrates the return of Agamemnon to Argos, along with Cassandra, who recounts the sufferings of the Atreides and predicts the death of the warlord himself, as well as her own, at the hands of Clytemnestra, who has not forgotten that Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, to launch the Achaean fleet.

### Euripides: the tragedian of the Atreides

Events before and after the Trojan War inspired some of Euripides’ most significant works:

• Iphigenia in Aulis: The fleet of the Achaeans is stranded in Aulis, waiting for a favorable wind to sail to Troy. Agamemnon summons his daughter Iphigenia from Mycenae to sacrifice her, pretending that she will be married to Achilles. The young girl offers herself for sacrifice for the sake of her homeland. Euripides also wrote Iphigenia in Tauris, which narrates the fate of Iphigenia when Artemis saves her from the sacrifice and transports her to her sanctuary in Tauris.
• Rhesus: The plot unfolds in Troy, during the Trojan War. It is a dramatization of Book K of the Iliad.
• Troades: The play follows the fate of the women of Troy after the city’s fall and the brutal plunder by the Achaeans. Similar themes are explored in The Phoenician Women, the tragedy of the aged queen of Troy who seeks revenge for the death of her sons Polyxena and Polydorus. Also relevant is Andromache, a work that narrates the life of Hector’s wife after the fall of Troy, when she is given as booty to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus.
• Helen: In this particular tragedy, Euripides argues that Helen never actually went to Troy, but Paris took an image of her to the city.
• Cyclops: Euripides’ only surviving satirical drama. The Satyrs, led by Silenus, serve the Cyclops. Odysseus blinds the Cyclops, saving his companions and the Satyrs.

### Sophocles, the “Homer of Tragedy”

Sophocles is often referred to as “the tragic Homer,” mainly because his characters are deeply human and possess the same “calm strength” as Homer’s characters, even when the scenes are extremely violent. Sophocles’ language also adopts Homeric elements, although to a lesser extent than Aeschylus. He drew inspiration from two exceptionally moving works from the epic cycles:

• Philoctetes: The unfortunate hero, who possesses the weapons of Heracles, is abandoned sick on Lemnos before reaching Troy. However, in the tenth year of the war, the Achaeans send Odysseus and Neoptolemus to request his weapons in order to win the war.
• Ajax: After the death of Achilles, Ajax and Odysseus vie for his armor. When the armor of the great hero is awarded to Odysseus, Ajax, blinded by anger, decides to seek revenge against the Achaeans. After a bout of madness caused by Athena, Ajax cannot bear the blow to his dignity and commits suicide.

## The post-Homeric discourses: “The Continuation of Homer” in the Hellenistic era

The Posthomerica is the sole work of the epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus, and it is an epic poem divided into 12 books. It represents an attempt to bridge the gap between the end of the Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey. Therefore, it narrates the events of the Trojan War, from the burial of Hector to the return of the Achaeans to Greece, imitating the Homeric style, albeit without great success, as a work of late antiquity showing influences from the trends of the time.
Quintus Smyrnaeus lived in the 3rd-4th centuries AD, so his text is by no means contemporary with the epics of the Homeric Cycle. However, he preserved the content of these epics, which today survive only fragmentarily, and this is its greatest value. His sources seem to have been the Aethiopis, the Little Iliad, and the Iliou Persis, as well as the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. However, he did not faithfully follow them but added his own mythopoeic elements and managed to create his own poetic work. Although the work lacks the liveliness of the Homeric epics, it succeeds in attracting the reader, mainly through original similes.
Quintus connects the various episodes of the Epic Cycle through the insertion of verses that foreshadow the next episodes or verses that constitute reflections on previous episodes, and primarily through the close connection and similarity between Achilles and his son Neoptolemus.

## The Homeric Problems by Heraclitus

Heraclitus (1st century CE, not the philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus) in a collection of allegories with 79 chapters, followed the sequence of the rhapsodies of the Homeric epics, seeking their allegorical content. This work is known as the Homeric Problems.
Heraclitus interpreted the Homeric epics as allegories that provide answers to issues of physics, ethics, astronomy, history, etc. Similar attempts were made by the Pythagoreans and Neoplatonists, who attempted a mystical interpretation of the Homeric work. However, there is no reference in Heraclitus’ work to the interpretation of the Neoplatonists, so it seems he was not familiar with their work, perhaps because he predates them.
Heraclitus’ aim was to highlight the infallibility of Homer. He considered him the proponent of all fundamental philosophical doctrines on matters of ethics, history, and even science. For example, interpreting the myth of the construction of Achilles’ shield, he argued that Homer had conceived the universe as a large sphere with the Earth as a smaller sphere located at the center of the world. He also believed that Homer knew about the harmony of the spheres and the exact dates of eclipses.
Thus, Heraclitus regarded Homer as more than just a great poet. In his work, he praised him and countered his critics, especially Plato and Epicurus.