'The Iliad' by Homer (Pt. 4)

The way in which the ancient Greeks of classical Greece thought about the Iliad was not how we do today. In the 21st century, we understand that there are things far too impossible about the Iliad to believe and can distinguish between what seems to be realistic and what is a fabrication for entertainment purposes. But, in classical Greece, they tended to think of this text entirely as a history. This book was a form of historical documentation and, in this day and age that we live in, we must agree with them to some percentage. Believe it or not, there's evidence that this war happened. What we're going to look at now is the evidence for the Trojan War taking place in the time and place it did—uncovering the reality of it and debunking the myths. As we have seen in the various texts we have looked at that are based in The Iliad's story, we can see that there was treatment of the Iliad as some sort of fact. Especially in The Aeneid in which the fall of Troy is part of the imagined genealogy of the Romans from Aeneas to Augustus. The fact that the Aeneid is meant to act as a genealogy and a history of the discovery and first generations of Rome means that this culture must have treated The Iliad as its own history as well as the rest of the epic cycle as The Aeneid includes the book that to our day, is now missing; it is called Iliou Persis.

What we will have a look at in this section is the way in which two different experts in classical Greece thought about The Iliad and Homer's poetry. You will see a pattern in one that regards it as a history and a poetry and, in the other you will see a theory regarding people blinded by Homer's powerful writing and therefore duped into believing that this actually took place. In reality, Homer's Trojan War probably did take place but not in the way we think it did and not at all as Homer states it did.

It is interesting to see how Plato, the great ancient Greek philosopher, thought about Homer's writings because in the age of classical Greece they are pretty unique. Plato's theorem states that art is not representative of life and can never have a direct link. This means that no matter how realistic the artwork may be; it can never be a true representation of life. For instance, there could be minor detail that is overlooked, or it could be down to the stroke of a paintbrush or a pen. In Plato's case, autobiographies and non-fiction books cannot exist as they cannot truly reenact the detail that comes with true experience of the topic. For example: A book written about World War II cannot be truly reflective of what happened in World War II because the experience of being there cannot be put into language. It is such an intense experience that there is no way that it could be translated into writing or art. Plato didn't just apply this to intense or sublime situations, he applied this for any case of literature or art that based itself in something that actually took place. In Plato's Republic having this kind of art and literature could damage the state of the republic. It could dupe people into believing in words and pictures over true experiences. This is a theory that Plato got from Socrates. Plato took Socrates' theory of not writing things down in order to remember or study them and stepped it further by stating that experiences and historical truths could not possibly be put into words—they are not a true representation of life.

Plato took particular digs at Homer for doing this. Plato actually writes specifically about Homer in the book The Republic and says:

"We mustn't accept Homer—or any other poets—foolishly making this mistake about the Gods..."

In this, Plato is talking about Gods fighting Gods, which he found abhorrent to include in a piece of poetry that represents a historical event. Nowadays, we've accepted that Homer had included some, maybe many, fictitious additions to The Iliad in order to make it more compelling. We have accepted that this is how it works when it comes to narrative poetry. But, in Plato's theory, if this piece of art were to represent a historical event or time, then it should do so completely. Even if it did so completely though, it could not be representative of reality in any way whatsoever. It is just, as Plato puts it, a "form."

Plato takes another dig at Homer in The Republic and references the idea of being duped by poetry to being tantamount to slavery:

"We'll beg Homer and the other poets not to be harsh if we strike out these and all similar things. It's not that they are not poetic and sweet for the many to hear, but the more poetic they are, the less should they be heard by boys and men who must be free and accustomed to fearing slavery more than death."

In this, Plato is stating what the idea of poetry is for a perfect republic. It simply doesn't exist. The flowery and flamboyant language techniques that are very much ideal in poetry are not just not wanted by the republic for the sake of representation but, they are actually harmful to the republic. The reason for this is that they are particularly "poetic and sweet for the many to hear." Plato's republic relies on the concentration of the citizens on their fear of being enslaved. Not only this, but the suggestion here is that slavery and listening to poetry are basically the same because both of them put the citizen under the power of something else. In this case, it is poetic language.

The next philosopher we are going to look briefly at is Plato's student, Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics is possibly the seminal text for study drama, literature and poetry as it was the first to address structure, style and form as parts of not only art, but also as a part of philosophy. The philosophy of literature includes these forms and therefore, Aristotle essentially invented literary criticism. Here's what he had to say about Homer:

“As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of Comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire.”

Aristotle pays Homer some kinder words than Plato does, stating that his work was not only a dramatic art, but also an "excellent imitation" of reality. Thus, he not only cuts into Plato's criticism of Homer's representation of the war, but he also suggests that literature and art must be only imitations as there is no possibility of them being able to reflect reality. Aristotle seeks to prove that literature and art can only be imitations and, the producers know this. Therefore, the producers must seek to make this representation entertaining to the audience rather than truthful as, in making it truthful, they will not succeed. In making it entertaining, they can. Aristotle also states that Homer, "dramatizes the ludicrous" and suggests that Homer is not even trying to make his work truthful—instead he is dramatizing the parts of the war that would not be believable at all for the impact of entertainment. Aristotle's suggestion is basically stating that real life and reality are not, in part, as interesting as Homer makes them out to be; therefore, he must've added things that are essentially "ludicrous" to make it so.

These are ideally the two different schools of thought regarding Homer's Iliad in the time of classical Greece, when it was flourishing. There are many other examples from classical Greece that take Homer's writings and comment on the way in which they produce a history and a poetry of a certain people, some even taking every part of The Iliad fairly literally.

An important example of a contemporary of Homer is Hesiod, who penned the famous Theogony and Works and Days. Hesiod uses some of Homer's own ideas in his works and therefore, this could have been a reason for the people of Classical Greece believing that Homer's work was, in fact, a history.

Let's take a look at a couple of similarities between Homer and Hesiod to explore this idea a little but further.

According to the research by Ralph M. Rosen in the paper entitled Homer and Hesiod, there are many similarities in language techniques, form and structure between the two poets. Both of the poets write in dactylic hexameter, a reflection of actual speech and close to how Ancient Greek speech is actually spoken. This grounds them in performative reality, they are both attempting to dictate a real event by providing a realistic, or form of a realistic, poetic structure.

Both of the poets also use similarities in language and poetics in order to convey their ideas. By looking at the way in which Hesiod describes the king and Homer describes Odysseus, scholars have drawn stark similarities such as: gifts from gods, the non-athletic appearance and the want to amend the past. Both of these kings "owe their talents to the gods" as Rosen theorises.

Rosen also theorises that the two poets lived in such similar social circumstances that it is possible that their lifetimes overlapped and they lived in the same time. If this is true, we can definitely see a tradition of required contest here to induct a certain style of epic poetry into our own major western canon. This is a contest which, most obviously, Homer has won. We can see this from the fact that Hesiod particularly references Homer directly, as if speaking to him:

"Homer, son of Meles, whose thoughts come from the gods, tell me first of all what is best for mankind?"

This not only references the poetic ideals of both poets but also their philosophical contributions, as Rosen puts it. Hesiod is known for being more literal than Homer was, and with the Homeric simile, there is no reason for Homer to be literal in any sense. The Homeric simile has, in fact, thrilled and impressed audiences for centuries. Thus, pushing Hesiod into the background. Hesiod still asks this question as a want to know the "best philosophy" for mankind—the more literal, or the more poetic. This is a similar argument that is made centuries later by Plato and Aristotle about what could harm and progress the "republic" (as Plato refers to it). Aristotle though, believes in artistic representation as a form of entertainment on an intelligent level.

In conclusion, the work of Homer has become not only an influence culturally and historically on to literature and art, but also holds its own when it comes to historical fact. The famous excavations of Schliemann and the theories of Milman Parry have not only found their way into our own researches, but have held up against the people who once stated that everything Homer wrote was fictitious. We are slowly discovering more and more about Homer's works through others. In this study we have had the opinions everyone from Plato the Ancient Greek Philosopher, to Alexander Pope who wrote a famous translation of the poem, to Bob Dylan who has been described by some as a modern Odysseus for his inclusion of the work in his own writings. For centuries and centuries, we have pined over the Iliad and the Odyssey, losing the other epic cycle texts in their original forms along the way and discovering that Homer may not have been a single person after all. We have gone through many translations and historical discoveries that have changed the way we understand the poem and we continue to do this to the present day. If we take all of these discoveries and gather them together, we are still left with one key question:

"Who really was the Homer who wrote the Iliad?"