Was Homer a Real Person?

The Greek poet Homer's name is famous, but did a man named Homer really compose the Iliad and the Odyssey? Did this renowned bard ever exist? This video will fill you in on the problems associated with these questions.

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[WorldofAntiquity]

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[chaunceyfeatherstone]

Jeez, a guy dips out for a couple thousand years for some well-earned self-care and people begin to question your very existence. Showbiz is brutal.

[florisvansandwijk]

as we discussed in school a long time ago: The Iliad and Odyssee were not created by Homer, but by someone else with the same name.

[Khydul]

His middle name was Jay, last name Simpson, as forseen and told ages ago.
Great video though, I enjoy every take on the topic including the ones leaving out city of Springfield, and this particular one is stuffed with useful info! Thank you Mr Miano!

[edgarsnake]

I've never been able to fathom the origins of Homer and now I understand why. Thanks for clarifying my lack of clarity on the subject.

[SobekLOTFC]

Keep up the excellent work, Dr Miano 👏

[laurachapple]

If my nerd friends and I can spend all day watching the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings movies, I think ancient Greeks could sit through a few chapters of the Iliad.

[cyberpotato]

It's fairly well attested that Homer was the creation of a single author and existed no earlier than April 19, 1987.

[LyleFrancisDelp]

Michael Wood covered much of this topic in his series “In Search of the Trojan War”. Though that series was romanticized a bit, it still bore the seeds of excellent scholarly research. He showed that, even today in Ireland and Turkey, there are professional bards, raised very young, to memorize perfectly and performed epic poems.

In Turkey, he showed how professional bards are hired to perform at special events and the men will sit for hours on end, listening to the song.

[thomaswhitelake]

An excellent presentation! Will help resolve some of the arguments we have in this household. Thank you

[joelabraham]

Love the video professor. It seems the quality of your videos has also greatly improved. I look forward to more

[leopolddevandersnatch]

Yes he was and he lives in a town called Springfield

[mithilbhoras]

Thank you so much for this! Please make a similar video on the historicity of Socrates!

[faithlesshound]

Closer to our own time, we have Shakespeare's plays, which were written for performance and must have had a somewhat fluid text since they contain topical references to politics and religion, and some low humour, which may not all have been appropriate for a public theatre or a private performance in a nobleman's house. Like modern comedians, authors, directors and performers must have adjusted their performance to suit the audience. The plays were published unofficially by members of the audience before official editions were sold. In the ensuing four centuries, directors have continued to update, censor, or otherwise "improve" what is performed, even though the published texts stay much the same.

[docandreferreira]

Thank you, Professor! Great video, very comprehensive! Best regards from Brazil!

[stewartlindsay]

Been a long time since I read about swift footed Achilles and Bright Eyed Athene

[JulieTheReader]

Homeric historiography is a fascinating topic! My introduction to the idea the Odyssey came later was a teacher bringing up the psychologist Julian Jaynes’ hypothesis of the development of consciousness and agency that could have taken place between it and the Iliad. The differences in language, geography, and mythological references are so cool to have learned about. Thanks!

[GarGhuul]

Little Iliad … and we’re still waiting for Iliad 2: Dead by Dawn.

[annepoitrineau]

I am originally a medievalist and I studied most closely an occitan poet called Guillem de Cabestanh. He was a real person (although mysterious etc). He wrote down his poems, it seems, but none of his versions have survived. Instead, we have dozens of derived versions, and they are even all in the same dialect! I had to apply the methods you describe to try and find out about the provenance etc of the different manuscripts beyond geography. One might be tempted to ask how come so many versions. We modern people tend to forget the capacity people had to remember huge texts. The formulaic verses etc help structure the recitation, and some of the versions had formulae which had been borrowed from similar occitan poets. Also, a poem which is recitated must be, recitable=optimised in terms of flow, rhythm etc. ith time, the poem finds its point of equilibrium...in a given dialect at a given time. Author or not, in mainly oral societies, the recitant will take liberties, and then somebody will write down what they have heard, and the recitant has a few books in case memory fails. And these recitants travelled and adapted to the local dialects (a lot of people in the world can change dialect: I am Swiss German and speak 3 German dialects), which results in rhythm/rime etc that do not carry from one dialect to the next: what rimes in my main dialect "Zurituutsch" might not in Alsatian, Hochtuutsch, or Wallisertuutsch. Or the poem remains popular over decades, while the language changes and the recitant will modernise the language, even changing some "objects" as they do not make sense in the new context....or keeping the items and thus giving the poem an antiquated feel. "Homer's" work was subjected to all that, and that was even longer ago than Guillem de Cabestanh 1162-1212 (modern spelling Cabestany). This is why every Muslim's duty to learn the Coran by heart, without changing one iota is a complete outlier.

[Zal]

So good as usual. A luxury here in youtube. You have such a clear way of narrating an otherwise complex and unreachabe subject, that keeps us engaged till the end.