HOMER 



2821 



HOMER 



made them the center of a literary education, 

 did not question his real existence. To them 

 he stood as a gigantic figure, blind but power- 

 ful, shrouded in the mists of the past, and they 

 produced many biographies of him. With 

 nothing but legend to draw upon, these dif- 

 fered even in their statements of his birthplace, 

 and later writers made an epigram on the sub- 

 ject of their disputes: 



Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead 

 Through which the living Homer begged his 

 bread. 



All of these old "lives" agree on a few points 

 that Homer was blind, that he was very poor, 

 and that he wandered about from town to 



Modern Views. When modern critics began 

 to study this most famous poet of the past 

 they differed not at all from the ancient Greeks 

 in the honor which they were willing to pay 

 to his name, but they found themselves con- 

 fronted with many questions. First, they 

 denied his authorship of all the minor poems 

 accredited to him, and then began actually to 

 doubt his identity. They saw in his name 

 merely the word "compiler," through the cen- 

 turies invested with the force of a proper 

 name, and they thought they found indication 

 that more than one man and more than one 

 age had contributed to the wonderful poems. 

 It is a question which, in the nature of things, 



"A READING FROM HOMER," BY ALMA-TADEMA 



town chanting to the music of his lyre those 

 rhythmic sagas at which the world has not yet 

 ceased to wonder. As to the time he lived, 

 there was wide difference of opinion, some 

 placing him as far back as the early twelfth 

 century B. c., some though these are fewer as 

 late as the seventh. 



It is known that the poems were recited in 

 Sparta as early as 600 B. c., and from that time 

 on their reputation grew. Powerful rulers took 

 time from their war-making -to see that his 

 works were properly edited and arranged; each 

 city had its own valuable copy; and Alexander 

 the Great, it is said, slept with these "divine 

 poems" at his head. Later, when knowledge of 

 the classics was lost to Western Europe, it was 

 kept alive in the Byzantine Empire, and a 

 renewed interest in the writings of Homer 

 made up a large part of that wonderful awak- 

 ening known as the Renaissance. 



can never be settled, but fortunately it is not 

 vital. 



What is vital is the charm of the poems 

 the rapid movement, the simple, noble style, 

 the stately music of the long lines, the charac- 

 ters who even to-day stand out as living per- 

 sons. Vital, too, is the great debt modern 

 scholarship owes to the Iliad and the Odyssey 

 for knowledge of the very ancient Greeks. 

 Save for them, little would be known about 

 the Greek ideas of the gods and their attitude 

 toward human affairs, or about the great heroes 

 and their marvelous doings, nor would informa- 

 tion as to Greek modes of life be nearly as 

 full as it is. 



To later poets, Homer's works have been a 

 never-failing source of inspiration. More than 

 one distinguished writer has translated them in 

 whole or in part, Pope's rendering being per- 

 haps the best known. Smooth and pleasant as 



