Just how influential is Homer? Does Veeky Forums believe Homer was actually a group of authors?

I wish the Iliad had also included the fall of Troy. Instead we got some fanfic finish in the Aeneid, which incidentally was the best part of the latin book.

On a scale of no to maybe to I don't know to yes influential, I'd say he was a solid yes. Good luck with your studies OP.

I just read the Iliad in between organic chemistry and cell biology class. I wish I had the balls to go for a history major though.

He invented literature
My guess is that they lost the text

Are you dumb my goy?

The Iliad states its subject with its very first word (just like the Odyssey, whose author tried to mimick a great deal of Homer's devices) and strictly sticks to that subject, which twelve days encompass.

Quite the opposite you beast.

So the Odyssey has a different author?

Obviously. Many intertextual references to the Iliad, yet none to the Odyssey found in the Iliad.

I don't think one should expect intertextual references to travel back in time to show themselves in a work composed before where the references came from. You say obviously but I have never seen anyone ever claim that if Homer were a person he did not write the Odyssey. I'm going to need some pretty damn good citations on this one.

believing Homer was a single person is just as believable as thinking Troy happened as he told it but its at the point of history where fiction and reality get mixed together and some times its just funner to go along with the myths

the ways storys are told and also he created a lot of archetype characterss

You want the iliad to reference a story that hadnt happened yet?

Compare the Iliad with any of mankind's oral productions, you'll find that it is leagues beyond what orality can produce. The internal complexity of the Iliad does not allow for its composition taking place without writing. It was written down by a single man. No oral epic takes place over 12 days and condenses its matter as a single tragedy. There's a breath, throughout the Iliad, the breath of a personality, the likes of how which you feel when you read your favorite author and instantly recognize his style and thought pattern. The Iliad isn't just a neat story with good characters. There's a worldview, a particular stance on religion, ethics, philosophy and life in general, a stance which is someone's personality, experiences, dreams and thoughts, --- and that person is Homer. Only some degenerate leftist intellectual desperate to prove the superiority of "doing things in common" and similar bullshit, with absolutely no knowledge of Homer whatsoever, would believe that the Iliad isn't the work of a single person.

the likes of which*

I would like to add that the Iliad is a tightly-knit work of extreme coherence and internal consequence, and, considering its length, it would be impossible for such qualities to happen, had it been produced without the help of writing.

Writing it down implies a single author.

The Odyssey was probably the work of another poet, who frequented Homer or an homeric school.

>not believing Homer, the individual, authored a faithful account of the real events described in his work.

shaking my head

All I see in your entire post are amazing leaps of reasoning that are unsubstantiated by any evidence. You claim that it must have been written down, but it does not follow that therefore it was written by a single man, which is what you assume as some logical imperative.

>There's a worldview, a particular stance on religion, ethics, philosophy and life in general, a stance which is someone's personality, experiences, dreams and thoughts, --- and that person is Homer.
There wasn't even an argument in there. This is just an assertion. You could just as easily say that the oral tradition, owing to the shared cultural heritage of its creators accounts for exactly what you are describing.

I can't help but notice you dropped all mention

I can't help but notice that you completely avoided the one thing I asked for, which was some really good citations. If it really is that obvious to you and as you claim only some degenerate would disagree please show me the enormous support your idea has in academia. Considering you were unaware that the Iliad is an earlier work than the Odyssey (as evidenced by your accusation of missing intertexual references) I doubt you know as much about the matter as you think you do.

>be homer
>sitting in some inn in Greece, blind as a fuckin bat, drinking some dank wine and eating some fine goat cheese
>already wrote a bitching story about two homos in the Trojan Wars, people loved it, said it blew their minds
>bitchiknow.claypotdrawing
>suddenly, it hits me like a peltast's javelin right through my hoplon
>that one character that I had raid the camp in the Iliad, he's really different than the rest
>nigga has metis coming out his ass
>I know! I'll write a story about his adventures on his way home!
>feverishly compose the most original and influential work of literature in the western world
>years later some jackass tripfaggot on a Azerbaijani truffle hunting says I didn't compose it because I didn't reference a story I hadn't thought of yet

>Considering you were unaware that the Iliad is an earlier work than the Odyssey
It's quite the opposite. If the Iliad was from an oral tradition, it wouldn't be EARLIER than the Odyssey, having always excited, throughout the night of the worlds, next to it, as you argue.

The fact that it has no intertextual references proves that it indeed was EARLIER than the Odyssey, and that thus, it was created at some point in time, not some long oral tradition compiled by Pisistratus in 6th century Athens.

homer was a single person but he was repeating stories passed down through the years by other bards, thus the inconsistencies

he was probably THE bard at the time, so when someone was like "hey lets put those two big old epics onto a piece of paper so we can read em" they were also like "well obvioualy we have to get homer's rendition of them because he's the best at this"

existed* kek

This seems plausible. I'm sure there were versions of the story floating around and Homer's was the best.

Again you are making enormous leaps your making in your reasoning. It lacks all rigor.

>If the Iliad was from an oral tradition, it wouldn't be EARLIER than the Odyssey, having always excited, throughout the night of the worlds, next to it, as you argue.
The idea is bizarre that if the Iliad is from an oral tradition it somehow has no beginning. There is no reason to believe that it was not created or reached maturity at some point in time and is merely being preserved after that point. There is also no argument as to why this point cannot be before the maturation of The Odyssey.

And again you refuse to give any citations. Why is that? If it really is so obvious then surely it would be easy to point out some respected academics who agree with your position. Name them or I won't continue this conversation.

Which book explains achilles death?

Different guy, but this is very widespread in academia. I'd be surprised if you've never come across it. The idea that the epics began as oral traditions is mainly supported by the repetitions within the verse, and other tools that seem to be there only to help with memory. The epic of Gilgamesh has the same qualities. I personally thought it was implied when the muses are called out at the beginning. Later epics that did this, which were not oral traditions, did it to pay homage to Homer. Anyway, this is Veeky Forums, and I'm not going to hold your hand. If you want to look into something that is a general consensus, sources won't be hard to find. Or god forbid you read Homer and think about it yourself. You should probably leave your thinking to the professionals.

bitch i wasnt the same person Veeky Forums isn't one person

was probably*, that make you happy? take some midol

also you're autistic if you don't think it's PLAUSIBLE the Iliad is from oral composition since that's the #1 theory in academia. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milman_Parry)

>Just how iinfluential is Homer?
Not enough.
>Does Veeky Forums believe Homer was actually a group of authors?
Perhaps. It's irrelevant whether Homer was one man or a succession. What matters is that he was directly guided by the Daughter of Zeus, and what he says is Divine Truth.

dude u write like a total fag

You have no fkn clue what you're talking about

>extreme coherence

jesus christ the IQ of this board is dropping by the day.

In terms of influence he falls between The Holy Bible and Don Quixote.

*tips fedora*

What are you talking about? I'm the one arguing in favor of that very thing. I don't even know how you could have possibly drawn the complete opposite conclusion to what I was saying.

I am the one that holds the standard position as represented by academia. This is why I for citations because the burden of proof is on you to show why your unorthodox reading should be taken seriously.

I have to go to the library so Ill make this short

>begins with an incantation to the muses or divine inspiration
this is done as a means to explain the unexplainable. Just like in Hesiod, it is done to try and rationally explain why the things have happened as they happened, but because human reasoning is not optimal, there needs some divine aspiration to assist them to explain that which they cannot explain. This is where the line in mythos and philosophy becomes visible and it is with the Milesian philosophers where we can see this ending. Thales Anaximander and Anaximenes didn't do this because they TRULY tried to find the principle or arche of all things (the beginning) while Hesiod claims it was chaos but this was based on ideas or divine inspiration.

>coherence through the Iliad
Many examples where this is not, for example when Andromache, in the tenth year of the war, suddenly asks who the fuck these major heroes of the Greeks are, one would assume she would know after 10 years.

>One or many authors?
Still highly debated, it is assumed that it comes from oral tradition, was a large empirical work done with Slavic bards, here it was shown quite conclusively that it does come from oral tradition. This due to the rhytm and due to dactylic hexameter, this is why some lines end with, silver-helmed Hector, or whatever, etc.

>How influential is Homer
Probably the most influential of all time

Where some fragments found where the fall of Troy was described as well as Achilles' death but they seem not near as great as the Iliad and odyssey

Ill leave it here gtg

Quintus Smyrnæus - Posthomerica, or, The Fall of Troy
4th century AD epic in XIV books continuing right from the end of the Iliad through the end of the war.
gutenberg.org/cache/epub/658/pg658-images.html

>he's influential how

He's the prototype for the idea of a national epic which became increasingly important with the rise of nation states.

i like this thread

Pretty much all of the Greeks you've ever read grew up on Homer.

He was influential because he was a good poet that told good stories that many people could relate to or influenced by.
>was he one or more people
I believe the Iliad and Odyssey were his, while the other epics attributed to him in Antiquity likely aren't, or contain mixtures of other poets with his poetry. In all likelyhood, I believe it's most plausible that he had more written episodes within the Iliad and Odyssey, and alternations of them to play at shows, but it was edited out from the final version we have near or at the end of the archaic age (at-least the copies and performances for most Athenian readers) to remove any unnecessary diversions used in independent episodes that Homer would've have only played for a short-show, and instead, present a modified 'complete' version of the stories by adding only what was needed to draw a consistent plot. Note that the book number diversions in his work were only documented far after his death (I think the earliest usage was in 300 BC) and didn't likely exist in prior antiquity. We have writers back then who quoted him all the time which gives off an impression that they read the same complete versions, but we don't know that to be exactly so as they could've of read slightly differing ones and just happened to find interest in popular and attractive lines and sayings that were presented in all versions.

Best comparison I would have to make with him and how his works were likely handled down with getting edited, would be with that of Aristotle and his works. Scholars can mostly agree that there were two versions of Aristotle's work that likely circulated in antiquity: writings meant to be read by the public, which were not as philosophical or dense in nature as the works of him we have now, and were the ones which you hear people like Cicero praise in style (and which are now almost entirely lost sans a few fragments); and the 'esoteric' writings that were likely only taught in his classroom to his students, that consist of almost all the work we now have of him, which were likely summarized accounts of his teachings composed by Theophrastus by memory or lecture notes by him on subjects he discussed at his school, while not bothering to make them 'refine' in aesthetics but only covering the essentials to be concise in what he meant. I'm not saying Homer had different works intended for the public and those in some other more private circle, but that there was likely someone (or a few people) that acted like Theophrastus to him in creating a version of his work from the various episodic presentations he did, and making a singular canonical work out of them.

>Trojan war happens
>A LOT of different Greeks there
>Survivors tell how a lot of different Greeks were there
>One survivor talks about how he got lost but it was all Zeus and shit
>Bard's spread the war story's/tale of the guy who got lost and had to eat seagulls
>Homer was elbow deep in boi pus because he figures that adding Gods fucking and motherfucking Achilles vs Hector would sell like Jew Gold
>Then remembers the story about that one guy who got lost and adds figures it would make a cool story if he made the guy loved by Athena and gets to go around banging 10/10 half Gods and killing giants

A real shame that the Iliad doesn't go into stuff like Laocoön.

>I'm the one arguing in favor of that very thing. I don't even know how you could have possibly drawn the complete opposite conclusion to what I was saying.

then what was your point? to be an autist?

you go off on some tangent about

>There is no reason to believe that it was not created or reached maturity at some point in time and is merely being preserved after that point. There is also no argument as to why this point cannot be before the maturation of The Odyssey.

and i dunno what you're talking about because you thought i was someone else and you picked up some other conversation thread. it certainly doesn't seem to address what i said, or if it does, you failed to state your thesis. it can't be "it somehow has no beginning" because i never argued that. it can't be "not created or reached maturity at some point in time and is merely being preserved after that point" because i never argued that.

hell, i can't even tell if it's agreeing with me. it's seriously opaque.

i like you

Very influential. For various reasons, people have repeatedly gone back to sucking Homer's pitiless cock. At first it was just because he was good, and then it was because the first buggers had sucked his cock (and we, as enlightened [whatever]s, must emulate their much better sucking).

I believe the whole epics were part of a long tradition, but it seems pretty obvious that the actual Iliad and Odyssey were the works of one guy (with perhaps some other people making their own additions). Style and such remain largely consistent. You know how Shakespeare "just" retold old stories? Imagine that, with the epics. Or, imagine a far less drastic Ulysses.
Do not listen to this tripfag, he is a tripfag.

I despise you both.

>then what was your point? to be an autist?
He meant to quote someone else. You, as a retard, somehow thought he was directing it at you despite his quoting something someone else said.

>Many examples where this is not, for example when Andromache, in the tenth year of the war, suddenly asks who the fuck these major heroes of the Greeks are, one would assume she would know after 10 years.
That's incoherence through the Trojan war. By contrast, that is *coherence* through the Iliad, as it is providing the listeners with information they need.

Your reading comprehension is very poor.

no he didnt, he's that's dumb:

meant to quote , hence the
>If the Iliad was from an oral tradition, it wouldn't be EARLIER than the Odyssey, having always excited, throughout the night of the worlds, next to it, as you argue.

However, he accidentally quoted . Despite the complete lack of sense user's post would make if it was truly quoting , our other user managed to assume he really was being quoted. This meant he read as if it was contradicting him -- I don't blame him for THAT, because it was a pretty obtusely written post.

And I meant to quote ...

So much quoting..

He fucked your mother and filled her with his literary seed

Homer's like a JJ abrams rebooting worn out stories that everyone was already familiar with - both books focus on comparatively unique sections of the stories.

jesus christ

>Homer is like a JJ abrams

Dude, Homer didn't influence shit. He literally is just a name that people have been circlejerking since antiquity. As far as literary merit goes, he contributed absolutely nothing fresh to the lit game and his work is of no value what so ever.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are only 2 of 8 books about the Trojan War. The other 6 are lost, and it's the "Iliupersis" that was completely about the fall of Troy.

It's called dramatic unity.
>fanfic
No literature is à priori.

Agree entirely.

>Agree entirely :^)

Dumb pseuds.

He's saying they're alike in method, not in quality.

And 400 prestige

>but I hope so
Why? I like the idea of Homer being one guy. Are you just envious that a blind poet was better then you will ever be?

Retard

Catamite

He hopes Veeky Forums follows the mass of evidence -- I think.

Quite funny desu

I enjoyed this user.

Kek. Not that user, but this was pretty fucking obvious. He wasn't putting lens flares on everything, but singing about the rage of achillies would have been a new angle on familliar stories.

>mass of evidence
>unsubstantiated opinions about muh hexameters and repeating epithetic formulae

Muh hexameters and repeating epithetic formulae ARE the substance. This is opposed by actually unsubstantiated opinions.

>wow hahaha Homer repeats the same epithet for this god instead of randomly giving him epithets from any other god hahaha sure is the work of the plebs, am I right guys haha

Wow obviously I was wrong, thank you for showing me the light.

You are very embarrassing.

>He's the prototype for the idea of a national epic which became increasingly important with the rise of nation states

that would be the aeneid

The Aeneid wasn't a prototype.

I got dip spit everywhere after reading this. Nice.

so, did we ever settle on a figure?

The Aeneid is dogshit in comparison.

good work, please continue to make contributions like this one

brekekekek

But have you read it in Latin? There are no good translations in English.

Does the Latin version suddenly turn Aeneas into an interesting character?

On what?

just how influential is homer?

homer was to antiquity as shakespeare is to modernity. he was 'the poet' in the same way we see shakespeare as 'the bard'. homer is constantly praised, quoted, used as a moral example, and drawn from in future works.

>herodotus praises him
>plato quotes him EXTENSIVELY, and through him demonstrates the power of poetry in the republic
>aristotle wrote on homeric inconsistency and tragedy along with the rest of the epic cycle
>sculpture, red and black-figure vases
>the plethora of visual art drawing from scenes from homer
>aeneid, divine comedy, dunciad, etc.
>joyce's ulysses
>troy starring brad pitt

he's really, really great in his own objective right--and i think should be a mandatory read in schools if only to demonstrate the both horror and glory of warfare. "the things they carried" by tim o'brien perhaps is the only thing resembling it in showing the vague terror and joy in war. it's goddamn beautiful: read the fagles, lattimore, pope, and original greek if you can.

as for authorship? most smart guys recognize that homer was drawing from a pool of oral tradition, thereby making the iliad/odyssey to some extent the work of a group. yet, this gets tricky as "Homer", whoever the blind bastard was, wrote it down and thus consolidated this vast collection of texts, epithets, phrases, and scenes that were created through almost jazz-like oral composition.

homer is a lot like shakespeare in a way; nobody seems to believe that one man (or, black lesbian woman if you prefer) could possibly create such an extraordinary work of sublime beauty and intricacy on their own. to answer the question: sort of.

homer wrote himself and his brand of composition into book ix of the iliad:

>They found him there, delighting in his heart now,
>Plucking strong and clear on the lyre
>Beautifully carved, its silver bridge set firm
>He won from the spoils when he razed Eetoins city.
>Achilles was lifting his spirits with it now,
>Singing the famous deeds of fighting heroes
>Across from him Patroclus sat alone, in silence,
>Waiting for Aeacus son to finish with his song.

homer was as old as he was modern, i think. we can learn something from the old meta bastard.

Since I loved the movie Troy, I thought I would love The Iliad, which provides the basis of the plot in the movie. However, I was sorely disappointed when I discovered that although The Iliad is very similar to Troy, it is very dull. Basically, the movie is all action and drama while the book is just literally boring description after boring description of battle. It is very repetitive, and there are literally hundreds of characters in this poem. In fact, many characters have multiple names, as do the armies. In short, although the movie changes/leaves out some things in the book, it is actually a lot better than the poem itself. Therefore, while I give the movie a 5 star rating, I only give the book a 2 star rating.

>Not imagining yourself as Aeneas getting HUGE hard-ons for the shadowy Lavinia

pleb

These morons don't know. They will need to google before giving you an answer. Homer stole from people before him, just like people today steal from those before them.

>nothing is new or original

Complaints about the Æneid- at least the ones I've had- are mostly based on misunderstandings of what it's trying to do- namely, that Virgil is trying to imitate Homer. He's not. Homer was a noble archaic storyteller, but Virgil was a shy urban poet. He's telling a very different kind of story, in a very different, artificial and Hellenistic, style- he doesn't use formulaic lines like Homer does, everything is carefully picked and packed with tricks. The Æneid isn't a Latin translation of Homer. It isn't a replacement for Homer. It's its own beast, and it makes continuous -reference- to Homer.
Read Adam Perry's "The Two Voices of Virgil's Aeneid".
Good post.
If I can comment, I note that we learn two things about Achilleus from those lines: a) that he's Veeky Forums; and more importantly b) that he's been thinking over history and the fates of past heroes.
Also the lyre is spoils from when he sacked Andromache's home. I'm not sure what the significance is, but it's there.

Shakespeare didn't write all those works alone. He had help from people like Thomas Middleton.