Homer: brief biography and interesting facts. History and ethnology

Odysseus in Homer's poem talks about the island of Crete. Today, the island of Crete, part of Greece, is inhabited by about half a million people. Residents are mainly engaged in agriculture. Industry is poorly developed, there are no railways. In a word, the abundance that Homer reports is not now on the island of Crete and in
at all. Until the 70s of the 19th century, the inhabitants of Crete had no idea that under their feet in the ground lay in ruins an ancient civilization that was once the pearl of the Mediterranean.

A certain Cretan merchant named Minos Halokerinos, who lived in the second half of the 19th century, namesake of the famous King Minos, came across the ruins of an ancient building and found ancient utensils. Reports of this discovery spread around the world and interested the famous G. Schliemann, but the Englishman Arthur Evans began excavations in 1900, who became the discoverer of Cretan culture. Evans saw the magnificent palace of Minos (as Evans called it), multi-story, with a huge number of rooms, corridors, baths, storerooms, with water supply and sewerage. In the palace halls the walls were painted with frescoes. Along with huge vessels (pithos), weapons, and jewelry, tablets with writing were found. Homer did not lie, Crete was truly the center of the wealth and arts of antiquity.

The apparently lost Cretan-Mycenaean culture undoubtedly had its own literature. However, nothing remains of it except writings on clay tablets, which were deciphered only in 1953 by the Englishmen Ventris and Chadwig. However, the Cretan-Mycenaean culture cannot be ignored in the history of literature. This is the link between the culture of Ancient Egypt and Hellenic culture.

Until the 20th century, science, in essence, knew nothing about the antiquities of Crete, except for the testimonies of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Diodorus, which were perceived as legendary, fairy-tale material.

The heyday of Cretan culture apparently dates back to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Legends connect it with the name of King Minos. “Minos, as we know from legend, was the first to acquire a fleet, taking possession of a large part of the sea, which is now called Hellenic,” wrote the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Herodotus called Minos "lord of the sea." Cretan cities did not have fortifications. Apparently, Crete had an excellent fleet, which completely ensured the security of its cities. Thucydides and Diodorus considered Minos a Greek. Homer called him "Kronion's interlocutor."

...The Homeric epic and all mythology are the main legacy that the Greeks transferred from barbarism to civilization.
F. Engels

Homer is so great, so significant both for the spiritual history of the ancient world and for subsequent eras in the history of all mankind, that an entire culture should rightfully be named after him.

Homer was a Greek, apparently from the Ionians from the shores of Asia Minor.

Nowadays, in the five billion family of humanity, there are relatively few Greeks: something like 12 million, and one third of them live outside Greece. They were once a huge cultural force in the world, spreading their influence far beyond the borders of the metropolis.

The ancient Greek tribes, of course, were not a single people, and they did not call themselves Greeks. This is what the Romans later called them after one of the small tribes in Southern Italy. They themselves called themselves Hellenes. The Hellenic ancestry is lost in the 12th century BC. e. The indigenous population at that time, apparently, were the Pelasgians; tribes that came from Asia Minor and from the north of the Balkan Peninsula merged with them.

What were the Greeks like in those distant times? These days they are relatively short (165-170 cm), with dark wavy hair, dark skin and dark eyes. In those days, the height of men, judging by archaeological excavations, reached 180 cm.

Homer calls the Achaeans “curly-headed”, Menelaus “fair-haired” or “golden-haired”. Agameda, an ancient healer who “knew all the medicinal herbs as long as the earth bore them,” was also light-haired. Odysseus and, presumably, most of the Greeks were fair-haired. Homer paints picturesquely the appearance of his heroes. Agamemnon is tall and thin, Odysseus is shorter and stocky. Standing next to Menelaus, he was somewhat inferior to him, but sitting down he looked “more attractive.” Menelaus spoke little, fluently, but weightily, “strikingly,” expressing himself directly, “incongruously.” The portrait of Odysseus in the Iliad is magnificent. So he stood up, lowered his eyes, fixed them on the ground, stood quietly, motionless, as if he was searching and could not find words and did not know what to say, “like a simple man.” What is it, or is he speechless from anger, or is he completely stupid, inarticulate, “poor-witted”? But then a voice burst from his mighty chest, and a speech, “like a strong blizzard, rushed from his lips” - “No, no one would dare to compete with Odysseus in words.”

Homer captured details of the lives of his contemporaries. Sometimes they are no different from what we observed in our days. Here he tells how a playing boy builds something on the seashore from wet sand and then “scatters it with his hand and foot, frolicking,” or how “jugular mesks” (hinnies) “drag a ship’s beam or a huge mast from a high mountain along a cruelly lumpy road ...”, or how a working person rests:

...the woodcutter's husband begins to prepare his dinner,
Sitting under a shady mountain, when my hands had already had enough,
The forest overthrows the tall forest, and languor finds its way into the soul,
His senses are overwhelmed by the hunger for sweet food.

Homer is very detailed - from his descriptions one can vividly imagine the labor process of a man of his day. The poet, apparently, was close to the common people; perhaps in his youth he himself built rafts and ships and sailed on them on the “boundless sea.” This can be felt in how detailed and, perhaps, lovingly, he describes the work of Odysseus building his raft:

He began to cut down trees and soon finished the work,
He cut down twenty logs, cleaned them with sharp copper
He scraped it out smoothly, then leveled it, trimming it along the cord.
That's when Calypso returned to him with a drill.
He began to drill the beams and, having drilled everything, brought them together,
I sewed them together with long bolts and pushed them through with large spikes.

Etc. (V). Using Homer's detailed and loving description, the carpenter of our day will freely build the structure made by Odysseus.

Homer accurately and in detail described the cities in which his contemporaries and compatriots lived. The city of his days appears to our imagination quite realistically and visibly with streets and squares, churches and houses of citizens and even outbuildings:

...Walls surround it with loopholes;
The pier is surrounded by a deep pier on both sides: the entrance
The pier is crowded with ships to the right and left
The shore is lined, and each of them is under a protective roof;
There is also a shopping area around the Poseidon Temple,
Standing firmly on the hewn stones of the huge ones; tackle
All the ships there, a supply of sails and ropes in vast
The buildings are stored, where smooth oars are also prepared.

The city walls are “wonderfully beautiful,” Homer does not forget to insert, for the townspeople of his time thought not only about the inaccessibility and strength of the walls, but also about their beauty.

We learn, though in general terms, about the existence of medicine in the days of Homer. The Achaean army had its own doctor, a certain Machaon, the son of Asclepius, the god of healing. He examined Menelaus's wound, squeezed out the blood and sprinkled "medicines" on it. Homer does not say exactly what these means were. It's a secret. It was revealed to Asclepius by the centaur Chiron, the kindest creature with the face of a man and the body of a horse, the educator of many heroes - Hercules, Achilles, Jason.

Healing is carried out not only by specially trained people, the “sons of Asclepius,” or healers like the fair-haired Agameda, but also by individual warriors who have learned certain recipes. Both the hero Achilles knew them from the centaur Chiron, and Patroclus, who learned them from Achilles.

Homer even described the surgical operation:

Having stretched out the hero, he used a knife from the sting of the cannon
I cut it out with a bitter feather and washed it with warm water.
Black blood and hands sprinkled with the worn-out root
Bitter, healing pain, which is completely for him
The pain quenches: the blood has subsided, and the ulcer has dried up.

The Greeks considered Homer their first and greatest poet. However, his poetry crowned a large culture created by more than one generation. It would be naive to think that it, like a miracle, arose on uncultivated soil. We know little about what preceded it, but the very system of poetic thinking of the great elder, the world of his moral and aesthetic ideas, suggests that this is the pinnacle of a centuries-old cultural process, a brilliant generalization of the spiritual interests and ideals of a society that has already come a long way in its historical formation. Historians believe that Greece during the time of Homer was no longer as rich and highly developed as in the previous Cretan-Mycenaean era. Apparently, inter-tribal wars and the invasion of new, less developed tribes had an impact, which delayed and even pushed Greece back somewhat. But we will use Homer’s poems, and in them the picture is different. (Perhaps these are just poetic memories of times long past?) Judging by Homer’s descriptions, the peoples who inhabited the shores of Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea and all of the East
Mediterranean, lived richly, Troy was already a well-built city with wide areas.

The height of culture is evidenced by the household items described by Homer.

The lyre on which Achilles played was “magnificent, elegantly decorated”, with a “silver pendant on top.”

His tent has chairs and luxurious purple carpets. On the table are “beautiful baskets” for bread.

Speaking about Helen sitting at the loom, Homer does not fail to glance at the canvas: it turns out to be a “light, double-folded cover”, something like an ancient tapestry, which depicted scenes from the Trojan War (“battles, exploits of horse-drawn Trojans and Danaev"). It must be assumed that in the time of Homer, episodes of the Trojan War were the subject of not only oral traditions and songs, but also pictorial and plastic creations.

The height of the general material culture of the world in the era of Homer is also evidenced by the cosmetic tricks of the goddess Hera, colorfully described by the poet. The poet describes in detail, with delight, the decoration of the goddess, all the intricacies of the women's toilet, her beauty:

I put beautiful earrings with triple pendants in my ears,
Those who played brightly: the goddess shone with charm all around.
The sovereign Hera overshadowed the head with a light cover.
Lush, new, which, like the sun, shone with whiteness.
She tied the beauty of a magnificent mold to her fair legs,
Thus adorning the body with delightful decorations for the eyes,
Hera came out of the lie...

The poet loves to fix his gaze on military armor, clothing, chariots, drawing in detail every detail of them. Using his descriptions, it is possible to accurately recreate the household items used by his contemporaries. Hera's chariot had two copper wheels with eight spokes on an iron axle. The wheels had gold rims, with copper spikes tightly placed, and the hubs were rounded with silver. The body was secured with straps, richly trimmed with silver and gold. Two brackets rose above it, the drawbar was trimmed with silver, and the harness with gold. “A marvel to behold!”

And here is a description of the warrior’s attire: Paris, going to battle with Menelaus, puts “lush” leggings on his “white legs”, fastening them with silver buckles, put copper armor on his chest, threw a belt and a silver-nailed sword with a copper blade on his shoulder, and put it on his head a shiny helmet with a crest and a horse's mane, he took a heavy spear in his hands.

Such weapons, of course, were bulky and heavy, and Homer, reporting the death of one or another warrior, usually concludes the scene with the phrase: “With a noise he fell to the ground, and the armor thundered on the fallen.” Armor was the warrior’s pride, his property, and quite expensive, so the winner was in a hurry to take it off the vanquished; it was an honorable and rich trophy.

There was no state apparatus yet in the days of Homer, peoples lived in patriarchal simplicity, producing everything on their kleros (allotment). But the beginnings of taxation are already emerging. “He rewarded himself for the loss with a rich collection from the people,” says Alkina in the poem. Class stratification was already quite pronounced in Greek society in the days of Homer. The poet colorfully depicts the life of the elite of the people, the luxury of their homes, clothes, and comfortable life. It is unlikely that Odysseus’s house was very luxurious, but even here there are “rich armchairs of skillful workmanship”, they are covered with “patterned fabric”, a bench is placed under the feet, a “silver basin” for washing hands, a “golden washstand”. The “smooth table” was apparently light; it was pushed forward by a slave. Slaves and youths serve food, the housekeeper manages the supplies and issues them. Here the herald makes sure that the cups are not empty.

Nestor’s house was also rich, where Odysseus’s son Telemachus arrived, received by the elder as an honored guest. He lays Telemachus “in ringing, spacious peace” on a “slotted” bed.

The youngest daughter of Nestor took Telemachus to a cool bath, washed him and rubbed him with “pure oil.” In a tunic and a rich mantle, the young son of Odysseus came out of the bathhouse, “like a god with a radiant face.”

Homer also described the rich feasts of the Greeks, to which, presumably, all the free citizens of the city were invited, as, for example, in Pylos during the festival of Poseidon (“the azure-haired god”):

There were nine benches there: on benches, five hundred on each,
People were sitting, and there were nine bulls in front of each one.
Having tasted the sweet womb, they already burned the Thigh before God...

Homer described in detail how, during a feast, the youths spread the “light drink” around the circle of guests, “starting from the right, according to custom,” how they throw the tongues of sacrificial animals into the fire, etc.

At feasts they ate meat (fish was not included in the range of delicacies), sprinkled generously with barley grains. After the feast, the young men sang a hymn to God (“loud paean”).

The fate of the poor is sad. One can judge this by the way Penelope’s suitors and even the slaves treated the unrecognized Odysseus, who came to his house in the rags of a beggar, what fun they made for themselves from the argument and fight of two beggars, one of whom was Odysseus in disguise (“the suitors, clasping their hands, everyone was dying of laughter"):

Just wait, I'll deal with you, you dirty tramp:
You are bold in the presence of noble gentlemen and not timid in soul.

One of the suitors threatens Odysseus. The threat to the old beggar is even more terrible:

I'll throw you into the black-sided ship and send you instantly
To the mainland to King Ekhet, the destroyer of mortals.
He will cut off your ears and nose with merciless copper,
He will rip out your shame and give it raw to be eaten by dogs.

Homer's poetry, of course, was already the pinnacle of some very large artistic culture that has not reached us. She raised him, shaped his artistic taste, and taught him to understand physical and moral beauty. He embodied the highest achievements of this culture in poetry as a brilliant son of his people. In Ancient Greece there was a cult of beauty, and above all the physical beauty of a person. Homer captured this cult in poetry, and the great sculptors of Greece, somewhat later, in marble.

All the gods, except, perhaps, the lame Hephaestus, were beautiful. Homer constantly talks about the beauty of his heroes.
Helen, the daughter of Leda, was so beautiful that all her suitors, and these were the rulers of the city-states, in order to avoid mutual insults and civil strife, agreed among themselves to recognize and protect her chosen one, and when Helen, already the wife of Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris and taken from Mycenae to Troy, the treaty came into force. All of Greece went to Troy. Thus began the great war described by Homer in the Iliad. Paris, according to Homer's descriptions, is “bright in beauty and clothing”, he has “lush curls and charm.” He received “the kind gift of golden Aphrodite” - beauty.

Everything in Homer is beautiful: gods, people, and all of Hellas, “glorious for its women’s beauty.”

Homer describes Elena's appearance with soulful tenderness. So she stood up, covered with silver fabrics. She went, “tender tears streaming down her face.” The elders saw her. It would seem that they should all be inflamed with hatred and indignation, because it excited so many peoples and brought so many troubles to the inhabitants of Troy. But the elders cannot contain their admiration: she is so good, so beautiful - this “lily-ramen” Elena:

The elders, as soon as they saw Elena walking towards the tower,
The quiet ones spoke winged speeches among themselves;
No, it is impossible to condemn that the sons of Troy and the Achaeans
Such a wife suffers abuse and troubles for such a long time:
Truly, she is like the eternal goddesses in beauty!

For Homer, there are no guilty people in the world, everything is done according to the will of the gods, however, they are also subject to the great moirai - fate. Helen is also innocent, her escape from Mycenae is the will of Aphrodite. Elder Priam, the ruler of besieged Troy, treats a young woman with fatherly care. Seeing Elena, he called to her in a friendly manner: “Come on, my dear child!.. You are innocent before me: only the gods are guilty.”

Drawing the scene of the wounding of Menelaus, Homer pays tribute to beauty here too: “the thighs were stained with purple blood, the steep, beautiful legs” - and compares them with ivory “stained purple.” He likens the “young” Simonisius, a Trojan killed in battle, to a felled poplar, a “wet meadow pet” that is “smooth and clean.” The god Hermes appeared before Priam, “like a noble youth in appearance, with the first brad, whose youth is charming.”

Priam, complaining about fate and foreseeing his violent death, fears most of all that he will appear to the eyes of people in an indecent form, with a body distorted by old age:

...Oh, it’s nice for the young man,
No matter how he lies, fallen in battle and torn to pieces by copper, -
Everything about him and the dead, no matter what is revealed, is beautiful!
If the gray hair and the gray head of a man,
If dogs defile the shame of a murdered old man, -
There is no more woeful fate for unhappy people.

Talking about Ajax, Homer will not fail to note the “beauty of the face,” he will talk about the “beautiful Achaean wives.” About Ermia: “he had a captivating image of a young man with virgin fluff on fresh cheeks, in a beautiful color of youth.” Megapeid “captivated with its youthful beauty.” Etc.

Homer also glorifies the beauty of things. They are created by artists. He glorifies both his brothers, “singers who console the soul with the divine word,” and skilled jewelers. Thus, at the most pathetic point in the story, Homer fixes his gaze on a skillfully crafted plaque; he cannot help but stop and describe it in detail:

Golden, beautiful, with double hooks
The mantle was held on with a plaque: the master skillfully used the plaque
A formidable dog and in his mighty claws a young
The doe was sculptured: as if alive, it trembled; and scary
The dog looked at her furiously, and tried to escape from his paws.
To fight, she kicked with her legs: in amazement that plaque
She brought everyone.

Myths of Homeric Greece

Myths are the first form of poetic consciousness of the people. They contain his philosophy, his history, his morals, customs, his anxieties, worries, dreams, ideals and, in the end, the whole complex of his spiritual life.

The daily life of the ancient Greeks took place in constant communication with the gods. This communication, of course, was not in reality, but in the imagination, but this did not lose the force of reality for him. The entire world around him was inhabited by gods. In the sky and stars, in seas and rivers, in forests and mountains - everywhere he saw gods. Reading Homer these days, we cannot perceive his narrative as a realistic depiction of true events. For us, this is a wonderful poetic fantasy. For the ancient Greek, a contemporary of the poet, it was an undeniable truth.

When we read in Homer: “The young Eos with purple fingers rose from the darkness,” we understand that morning has come, and not just morning, but a bright, southern, sunny morning, a beautiful morning, fanned by the fresh breath of the sea, a morning like a young goddess , because Eos, named here, is “young” and has “purple fingers.” The ancient Greek perceived this phrase in the same emotional connotation, but if for us Eos is a poetic image, then for the ancient Greek it was a real being - a goddess. The name Eos spoke a lot to his heart. He knew both beautiful and tragic stories about her. This is the goddess of the morning, sister of Helios, the god of the Sun, and Selene, the goddess of the Moon. She gave birth to stars and winds - cold, harsh Boreas and soft, gentle Zephyr. The ancient Greek imagined her as the most beautiful young woman. Like real, ordinary women, she lived the life of the heart, she fell in love and suffered, enjoyed and grieved. She could not resist the courageous beauty of the god of war Ares and thus aroused the wrath of Aphrodite, who was in love with him. The goddess of love instilled in her a constant and insatiable desire as punishment. Eos fell in love with the handsome Orion and kidnapped him. The name of Orion entailed a string of new legends. He was the son of the sea god Poseidon. His father gave him the ability to walk on the surface of the sea. He was a strong and brave hunter, but also daring and arrogant. He dishonored young Merope, and the girl's father blinded him. Then, in order to regain his sight, he went to Helios himself, and he, with his life-giving rays, restored his sight. Orion died from the arrow of Artemis and was carried to heaven. There he became one of the constellations.

The Greek also knew another sad story about the morning goddess. She once saw the young Trojan Titon, brother of Priam, and, conquered by his beauty, carried him away and became his lover, giving birth to his son Memnon. Her love was so strong that she begged Zeus to give him immortality, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. The handsome Titon became immortal, but every day something was lost in him. Life faded away, but did not disappear completely. In the end, he became decrepit: he could no longer move. The unfortunate goddess could only bitterly mourn her fatal mistake.

They say that Tithon personified for the ancient Greeks the passing day, the fading, but not yet extinguished light. Maybe! But what a wonderful and exciting legend about this natural phenomenon was created by the poetic imagination of a brilliant people!
So, pink-fingered Eos! Morning! Morning and youth! Morning and beauty! Morning and love! All this merged in the minds of the ancient Greek, intertwined into legends of amazing beauty.

We read in Homer the following phrase: “Heavy night fell from the menacing sky.”

Night (Nyx in Greek) is also a goddess, but her name is associated with other images - gloomy ones. She is the daughter of Chaos and the sister of Erebus (darkness) and, as Homer writes, “the queen of immortals and mortals.” She lives somewhere in the depths of Tartarus, where she meets her antipode and brother Day to replace him in the eternal cycle of days.

Night has children and grandchildren. Her daughter Eris (strife) gave birth to Strife, Sorrow, Battle, Famine, Murder. This evil, insidious goddess planted an apple of discord at the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis and led entire nations - the Greeks and the Trojans - to war.

From the Night, the formidable goddess of retribution Nemesis was born. Her judgment is fair and speedy. She punishes the evil done by man. Sculptors depicted her as the most beautiful (the Greeks could not do otherwise) woman with a sword, wings and scales (sword - retribution, punishment, punishment; wings - speed of retribution; scales - balancing guilt and punishment).

The night gave birth to the nymphs of the Hesperides. They live in the far west, near the Ocean River, in a beautiful garden, and there they guard apples that give eternal youth. The Son of Night was the mocking god Mom, the great mockingbird and bully. He is a slanderer, he laughs even at the gods themselves, and the angry Zeus expelled him from the kingdom of the gods of Olympus.

Thanatos, the merciless god of death, was also the Son of Night. One day Sisyphus managed to chain Thanatos, and people stopped dying, but this did not last long, and Thanatos, freed, again began to destroy the human race.

The Night had three terrible daughters: the Moiras, goddesses of fate. One of them was called Lachetis (draws lots). Even before a person was born, it determined his fate in life. The second is Clotho (the spinner). She spun a man the thread of his life. And the third is Atropos (inevitable). She broke this thread. Russian translators of Homer Gnedich and Zhukovsky called moira parks in their translations. The Greeks did not know such a word, “parks” is a Latin word, as the ancient Romans called moira, transferring them to their pantheon.

Perhaps the most beautiful son of Night was Gymnos, the god of sleep. He is always beneficent, he heals people's sorrows, gives respite from heavy worries and thoughts. Homer paints a sweet scene: Penelope grieves in her chambers for her missing husband, for her son Telemachus, who is threatened by both the “evil sea” and “treacherous murderers,” but then ... “A peaceful sleep came and comforted her, and everything in her calmed down.” .

Homer calls him "the sweetener." He is also a living being, a beautiful young man living on the island of Lemnos, near the spring of oblivion. He also has completely human feelings. He is in love with one of the Charites, Pasiphae, in love for a long time and hopelessly. But Hera needed his service; Zeus had to be put to sleep. Gymnos hesitates, afraid of the wrath of the strongest of the gods. But Hera promises him the love of Pasiphae:

You will finally embrace her, you will call her your wife
That Pasiphae, for which you have been sighing all day long.

And Gymnos is delighted, only asks Hera to swear “by the Styx by water” that she will fulfill her promise.

The Greek saw gods everywhere, and they were beautiful in their not divine, but human feelings, he elevated people to the ideal of deity, he reduced the gods to people, and this was the attractive power of his mythology.

However, Greek mythology has undergone a certain evolution.

The first, most ancient gods were terrible. They, by their appearance and their actions, could only inspire fear. Man was still very weak and timid before the incomprehensible and formidable forces of nature. The raging sea, storms, huge waves, the whole immensity of the sea space were frightening. A sudden, inexplicable movement of the earth's surface, which until then seemed unshakable, is an earthquake; explosions of a fire-breathing mountain, hot stones flying to the sky, a column of smoke and fire and a river of fire flowing down the slopes of the mountain; terrible storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, turning everything into chaos - all this shocked souls and required explanations. Nature seemed hostile, ready to bring death or suffering to man at any moment. The forces of nature seemed like living beings, and they were scary. The gods of the first generation are fierce. Uranus (sky) threw his children into Tartarus. One of the Titans (sons of Uranus and Gaia) (earth) castrated his father. From the blood that spilled from the wound, monstrous giants with thick hair and beards and snake legs grew. They were destroyed by the Olympian gods. A fragment of the frieze of the altar in Pergamon (2nd century BC) has been preserved, where the sculpture depicts Gigantomachy - the battle of the Olympian gods with giants. But the sculptor, obeying the reigning cult of beauty, depicted a giant with huge snake rings instead of legs, but also with a beautiful torso and a face similar to the face of Apollo.

Cronus, who overthrew his father, devoured his children. To save Zeus, his mother Rhea threw a huge cobblestone into the father god's mouth instead of a child, which he calmly swallowed. The world was populated by terrible monsters, and man bravely entered into a fight with these monsters.

The third generation of gods - Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades - Homeric gods. They carried bright humanistic ideals.

The Olympian gods invite people to participate in their battles with the terrible giants, with all the monsters that Gaia gave birth to. This is how people-heroes appeared. The Russian word “hero” is of Greek origin (heros). The first generation of Greeks fought monsters. Hercules killed, while still a youth, the lion of Kiferon, then the Nemean lion, taking possession of its skin, invulnerable to arrows, killed the Lernaean hydra with nine heads, cleaned the stables of Augeas, and killed a monster bull in Crete. So he performed twelve labors, cleansing the world of filth and monsters. The hero Cadmus, the son of the Phoenician king, killed the dragon monster and founded the city of Thebes. The hero Theseus killed the minotaur monster on Crete. The daughter of Minos, in love with Theseus, helped him get out of the labyrinth, holding on to a thread (Ariadne's thread). Heroes make long journeys. The Argonauts, led by Jason, go to distant Colchis and mine the Golden Fleece.

The next generation of heroes fights at the Scamander River - these are already characters from Homer's poems.

The history of the Greek gods went from chaos to order, from ugliness to beauty, from gods to man. The world of the gods is patriarchal. They live on Olympus. Each of them has his own house, built “according to creative plans” by the lame blacksmith, artist and architect Hephaestus. They argue and quarrel, feast and enjoy the singing of the Muses and “the sounds of the beautiful lyre rattling in the hands of Apollo,” and, like people, they taste “a sweet dream.” "Blessed inhabitants of heaven!"

Olympus, where they say they founded their monastery
Gods, where the winds do not blow, where the cold rain does not make noise,
Where there are no snowstorms in winter, where the air is cloudless
It is poured with light azure and permeated with the sweetest radiance;
There, for the gods, all the days pass in unspeakable joys.

Although the gods live on high Olympus, they are in constant communication with people, almost like friends, almost like neighbors. Achilles' mother Thetis informs her son that yesterday Zeus with all the gods, “with a host of immortals,” went to visit the distant waters of the Ocean, to a feast with the “immaculate Ethiopians.” Apparently, the feast must have lasted many days, for Zeus returned to Olympus only on the twelfth day. The idea of ​​the country of the Ethiopians is still quite vague; they live somewhere on the edge of the inhabited earth, near the distant waters of the Ocean.

The gods flew, they wore golden sandals with wings, as Hermes did, or ascended in the form of a cloud. Thetis rose "from the foamy sea" with the "early fog." She appeared before her crying son “like a light cloud.”
For the ancient Greek, the gods were always close to him, they helped or hindered him, they appeared to him in the form of people close to him or people known to him. Most often they came to him in a dream. So, Athena entered Penelope’s bedroom through the keyhole, “blowing through the air,” appeared before her in the guise of her sister Iftima, “the beautiful daughter of the elder Icarius,” the wife of “mighty Ephmel,” and began to admonish her, who was in “sweet slumber.” in the silent gates of dreams,” do not be sad. “The gods, who live an easy life, forbid you to cry and complain: your Telemachus will return unharmed.”

The gods send their signs to people. This was usually the flight of birds, most often an eagle (on the right - good luck, on the left - bad luck).
Whatever serious action the Greek was planning, his first concern was to appease the gods so that they would help him. For this he sacrificed to them.

Homer described in great detail the act of sacrifice in honor of the goddess Athena. They brought the best heifer from the herd, shod her horns with gold, Nestor’s sons washed their hands in a tub lined with flowers, and brought a box of barley. Nestor, having washed his hands, took a handful of barley and sprinkled it on the heifer’s head, his sons did the same, then they threw the wool from the heifer’s head into the fire, praying to Athena, and then Thrazimedes plunged an ax into her body. The heifer fell down. The women cried out - Nestor’s daughters, daughters-in-law and his “meek-hearted” wife. This detail is wonderful: how humane the women of Homer’s time were!

The Greeks asked and begged the gods, but they also scolded them in their hearts. Thus, in the duel between Menelaus and Paris, the first, when his sword broke into pieces from a blow on Paris’s helmet, “shouted out, looking at the vast sky: “Zeus, not one of the immortals, like you, is evil!”

Elena speaks just as sharply and abusively to Aphrodite when she calls her to the bedchamber, where Paris is waiting for her “on a bed of chiseled beauty and clothing.” “Oh, cruel! Are you burning to seduce me again? Do you appear to me with malicious deceit in your heart? Go to your favorite yourself... always languishing with him as a wife or slave.”
Even the chief of the gods is sometimes not spared. One of Homer’s characters addresses the sky in his hearts: “Zeus the Olympian, and you have already become an obvious false lover.” The gods, of course, respect their supreme leader. When he enters the palace (on Olympus), everyone stands up, no one dares to sit in his presence, but his wife Hera greets him completely unkindly (she does not forgive him for his sympathies for the Trojans): “Which of the immortals is with you, treacherous, built councils ?

Zeus has black eyebrows. When he “washes them” as a sign of agreement, his “fragrant” hair rises and the many-hilled Olympus shakes.

No matter how formidable Zeus is, he is clearly afraid of his wife. She argues with him, and “yells,” and can “embarrass him with insulting speech.” When the nymph Thetis, the mother of Achilles, turned to him for help, he “sighed deeply,” replies: “It’s a sad matter, you arouse the hatred of the arrogant Hera against me,” promises to help, but so that his wife does not know about it: “Get away now , but Hera won’t see you on Olympus.”

The gods, of course, guard justice. (This is how it should be.) And Zeus, “looking at our deeds and punishing our atrocities,” and all the other inhabitants of Olympus.

The blessed gods do not like dishonest deeds,
They value good actions in people and justice.

But this, as they say, is ideal. In fact, they suffer from all the vices of people. They are deceitful, and insidious, and evil. Hera and Athena hate and persecute all the Trojans only because one of them, the shepherd Paris, called Aphrodite, not them, the most beautiful. This latter patronizes both Paris and all the Trojans, not at all caring about justice.

The Greeks feared the wrath of the gods and tried in every possible way to appease them. However, sometimes they dared to raise a hand against them. Thus, in the Iliad, Homer tells how on the battlefield the frantic Diomedes, in the heat of anger, throws his spear towards Aphrodite, who was here trying to save her son Aeneas, and wounded her “tender hand.” “The immortal blood flowed” of the goddess. It was not blood (after all, the gods are “bloodless, and they are called immortal”), but a special moisture, “which flows from the happy inhabitants of the sky.” But the goddess was in pain (“In the darkness of feelings, the beautiful body faded from suffering”) - “she moves away, vague, with deep sorrow.” Zeus, having learned about her trouble, said to her with a fatherly smile:

Dear daughter! Noisy warfare is not commanded for you.
Do the pleasant things of sweet marriages.

It seems that Homer’s heroes do not do a single more or less serious act without the advice or direct order of the gods: Agamemnon gravely insulted Achilles, the ardent warrior was inflamed with anger, his hand reached out to the sword, but then Athena, sent by Hera, appeared to his gaze, appeared, visible only him and no one else, and stopped him, saying: “Use evil words, but do not touch the sword with your hand.” And he obeyed, “clenching his mighty hand,” remembering the truth that was instilled in the Greeks from childhood: everything comes to man from the gods: both love and death, which crowns life. It is predetermined by the Moirai. Some die from a “slow illness”, which, “tearing apart the body”, takes away from it the “exhausted soul”, others suddenly from the “silent arrow” of Artemis (women) or Apollo (men).

The Greeks believed in an afterlife, but it was the existence of shadows that preserved all the feelings of a person: as soon as “the hot life leaves the cold bones, having flown away like a dream, their soul disappears.”

Homer also described Hades, the region of the dead. It must be assumed that someone still visited the northern latitudes in those distant times, because the description of Hades is very similar to the description of the north during the polar night: Helios (the sun) there “never shows a radiant face to the eyes of people,” “Night from time immemorial, the bleak surroundings surround those who live there”:

...Everything here terrifies the living; they are running noisily here
Terrible rivers, great streams; here of the Ocean
The waters are deep and no one can swim across them.
And Odysseus, who got there, was seized with “pale horror.”

All the dead, both the righteous and the villains, go to Hades. This is the lot of all mortals. Odysseus saw there the mother of the “joyless sufferer” Oedipus, Jocasta, who “opened the doors of Hades herself” (committed suicide), and his own mother Anticlea, who “ruined the sweet life”, yearning for him, Odysseus. He saw his friend and comrade Achilles there. The conversation that took place between them has a deep meaning; it glorifies life, the one and only (“joyful light”, “sweet life”!). In Hades, Achilles reigns over the dead, and Odysseus reproaches his friend for his grumbling:

And so he answered, sighing heavily:
- Oh, Odysseus, don’t hope to give me any consolation in death;
I would rather be alive, like a day laborer working in the field,
To earn my daily bread by serving a poor plowman,
Rather than reign over the soulless dead here, the dead.

This is Hades, the abode of the dead. But there is an even more terrible place - “Deep Tartarus,” the very “last limit of land and sea.” It is darker than Hades, where Odysseus visited, there is eternal darkness:

A distant abyss, where the deepest abyss is underground:
Where there is a copper platform and iron gates, Tartarus.
As far from hell as the bright sky from home.

The defeated gods languish there - the father of Zeus Kron, once the supreme god, there the father of Prometheus, the Titan Iapetus, they “can never enjoy the wind or the light of the high rising sun.”

The ancient Greek believed in the existence somewhere on Earth of the beautiful Champs Elysees, where “man’s lightly carefree days pass by.” The lucky ones live there. Homer does not say who exactly, he only draws this eternal, alluring dream of humanity. There:

“There are no snowstorms, no downpours, no colds of winter,” and “zephyr blows sweetly noisily, sent there by the ocean with a slight coolness to the blessed people.”

Homer's personality

Don't try to find out where Homer was born and who he was.
All cities proudly consider themselves his homeland;
It is the spirit, not the place, that is important. The poet's homeland -
The brilliance of the Iliad itself, the Odyssey itself is a story.
Unknown Greek poet. II century BC e.

This is how the ancient Greeks finally resolved the dispute about where the great poet was born, although seven cities claimed to be the homeland of the author of the famous poems. Modern times have already ceased to be interested in this issue, but debates in science have flared up on a different issue, whether there was a Homer at all, whether this is a collective image of a poet, and whether poems existed in the form in which we know them now. It was suggested that each of their songs was composed separately by different aeds and then only they were combined and made up a single narrative. However, the internal unity of the poem, which we feel as we read it now, the unity and harmony of the narrative, the whole unified logic of its general concept, figurative system, convince us that we have before us one creator, a brilliant author, who, perhaps, using individual already existing with small songs about various episodes of the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus, he composed the poem as a whole, permeating its entire fabric with a single poetic breath.

Homer educated the ancient world. The ancient Greek studied it from childhood and throughout his life he carried within himself ideas, images, feelings generated in his imagination by the poems of the great old man. Homer shaped the views, tastes, and morality of the ancient Greeks. The most educated, most refined minds of the ancient world bowed to the authority of the patriarch of Hellenic culture.

He is, of course, the son of his century, his people. From childhood he absorbed the morals and ideals of his compatriots, therefore his moral world is the moral world of the Greeks of his time. But this in no way detracts from his personal individual qualities. His inner spiritual world, which he revealed with such moving poetic power in his poems, became the world of all his readers for thousands of years, and even we, removed from him by centuries and space, experience the beneficial influence of his personality, perceive his ideas, concepts of good and evil, beautiful and ugly. Which of us is not excited by the picture of Agamemnon returning to his homeland and then his vile, treacherous murder?

He began to kiss his dear fatherland; seeing again

What troubles could Agamemnon expect at that moment?
What suspicions should you have towards anyone?

Meanwhile, it was at this hour that his death awaited him, and from the people closest to him - his wife Clytemnestra and a relative
Aegistha. The latter, with a “gentle call,” brought him, “to the suspicion of a stranger,” into the house and killed him “at a merry feast.” Together with Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, we are shocked by the betrayal and such a tragic ending to the hero’s joyful return to his homeland:

...my sweet heart was torn to pieces:
Having cried bitterly, I fell to the ground, I felt disgusted
Life, I didn’t even want to look at the sunlight, and for a long time
He cried and lay on the ground for a long time, sobbing inconsolably.

Homer made one feel the abomination of betrayal, because he himself felt hatred and disgust for all cruel and treacherous acts, that he was humane and noble, and this personal quality of his is felt in every verse, in every epithet.

An ancient poet unknown to us is right when he said that what is important is not where the poet was born, but what he put into his poems - his thought, his soul.

Reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, we constantly feel the presence of the poet, his moral, political and aesthetic ideals, we look at the world through his eyes, and this world is beautiful, because that’s how it seemed to the poet.

Homer's story is far from biased, but he is not dispassionate, he is excited. His heroes rage, passions play with their souls, often pushing them to madness, the poet does not judge them. His narrative is imbued with humane tolerance. His position in relation to the events taking place in his poems and to the characters is similar to the position of the chorus in the ancient theater. The choir rejoices, saddens, but never gets angry, does not condemn or interfere in events.

Homer cannot hide his constant admiration for both the world and man. The world is grandiose, great, it is beautiful, it can be formidable, it can bring death to a person, but it does not suppress a person. Man submits to inevitability, for the gods also obey it, but he never shows slavish self-abasement towards the gods. He argues, protests and even takes aim at the gods. The world is beautiful in all its manifestations: in good and in evil, in joy and in tragedy.

And this is the position of the poet himself, these are the signs of his personality.

In his poems, Homer also expresses his own political opinions. He is for a single ruler (“there is no good in multiple powers”). The ruler holds power from God (he is given the “Scepter and Laws” by Zeus). He is “obliged to both say the word and listen.” The great quality of a ruler is the ability to listen. The ability to listen to opinions, advice, to take into account the situation, events, circumstances, to be flexible, as we would say in our time, is the most valuable thing a ruler can have, and the wisest Homer understood this well. Through the lips of Elder Nestor, he instructs the ruler: “Carry out the thought of another, if someone inspired by your heart says something good.” And at the same time, Homer reminds us that “all in all, one person cannot know everything.” The gods endow one with the “ability to fight”, the other with a “bright mind”, the fruits of which “cities stand” and “tribes prosper mortals.”

Homer praises the good ruler. Odysseus was a kind, wise king and loved his people, “like a good-natured father.” The poet repeats this more than once. Homer admires nature:

Night…
In the sky there is about a month of clear host
The stars seem beautiful if the air is calm;
Everything opens up all around - hills, high mountains,
Doly; the heavenly ether opens up all boundless;
All the stars are visible; and the shepherd, marveling, rejoices in his soul.

And here is a winter picture:

The snow rushes in and falls in frequent flakes
In winter... the snow is continuous;
The heads of the highest mountains and the tops of the cliffs,
And flowering steppes, and fat plowmen of the fields;
Snow is falling on the shores and piers of the gray sea;
Its waves, rushing in, absorb it; but everything else
He covers.

Talking, for example, about the journey of Telemachus looking for his father, he talks about the coming morning.

It would seem a simple, unpretentious and local picture. The sun rose, its rays began to play... but Homer gave it a cosmic and universal character:

Helios rose from the beautiful sea and appeared on a copper
The vault of heaven, to shine for immortal gods and mortals,
The fate of people who live on fertile land is subject to fate.

Homer's attitude to events, to the world, to man is expressed in epithets and comparisons, and for him they are visual, picturesque and emotionally charged. He is kind, infinitely and wisely kind. So, he says that Athena removes the arrow shot into the chest of Menelaus, “like a tender mother drives a fly away from her son, who has fallen asleep in a sweet sleep.”

Together with Odysseus and his comrades, we find ourselves on the shore of the warm southern sea. We are captivated by the charm of the world and life, depicted with such wonderful power by the brilliant poet: “The divinely languid night has come. We all fell asleep to the sound of the waves hitting the shore”; We admire, together with Homer, the beautiful Penelope, the personification of eternal femininity, when she resides “in the silent gates of dreams,” “full of sweet slumber.”

Every word of Homer contains his soul, his thoughts, his joy or sadness, it is colored by his feeling, and this feeling is always moral and sublime.
ill
Here he shows us Odysseus, who is in deep grief, far from his native Ithaca:

He sat alone on a rocky shore, and his eyes
Were in tears; flowed away slowly, drop by drop,
Life for him is in constant longing for his distant homeland.

And we believe that for the sake of his homeland, he could, like his singer Homer, refuse both immortality and the “eternal blooming youth” that the nymph Calypso offered him.

Homer loves broad picture comparisons. They become like inserted short stories, full of drama and dynamics. Talking about how Odysseus cried while listening to the aed Demodocus, Homer suddenly stops and diverts us to another human misfortune: after a stubborn battle, a warrior fell in front of the besieged city. He fought to the last, “striving to save his fellow citizens and family from the fatal day.” Seeing how he shuddered “in the mortal struggle,” his wife leans towards him. She is nearby, she is with him. Now, clinging to his chest, she stands, crying sadly, already a widow, and her enemies beat her with spear shafts, tear her away from her dear body and “the poor thing (Homer is beautiful in his all-pervading compassion) is carried away to slavery and long grief.” Slavery and long sorrow! Homer will not forget to add that there, in captivity, slavery, her cheeks will wither from sadness and crying.

Homer's poems glorify life, youth and beauty of man. He applies the most tender epithets to the words “life” and “youth.” We see in this the features of wise old age. Homer was undoubtedly old, knew a lot, saw a lot, thought about a lot. He can already talk about “beautiful youth” and that youth is careless, arrogant, that “youth is rarely sensible.” Based on his extensive life experience and deep reflections, he can draw sad conclusions about man and his universal fate:

The omnipotent gods judged us, unfortunate people,
To live on earth in sorrow: the gods alone are carefree.

And this is where his wise tolerance comes from. He looked into human souls and described the boiling of passions, either raising a person to the skies of the most lofty ideals, or casting him down into the abyss of monstrous atrocities. Homer did not idealize either his gods, who were similar to people in everything, or his heroes, who were similar to their gods in both vices and virtues. The wise old man did not allow himself to judge either one or the other. They were taller than him. For him, in essence, there was no one to blame in the world. Everything - both evil and good - all comes from the gods, and for the gods (they are also not omnipotent) - from the great and omnipotent Fate.

We know nothing about Homer the man. Who is this genius creator? Where was he born, in what family, where did he die and was buried? Only a sculptural portrait of a blind old man has reached us. Is this Homer? - Hardly. But he is alive, he is with us, we feel his closeness. He is in his poems. Here is his world, his soul. Even in those distant times, he could have said about himself, like the Russian poet: “No, all of me will not die, the soul in the treasured lyre will survive my ashes and escape decay...”

Iliad

Wrath, oh goddess, sing...
Homer

This is how the Iliad begins. We understand the word “sing” as a call to glorification. But the poet does not turn to the muse in order to glorify anger. He asks her to help him truthfully (certainly truthfully, because only in the truth did he see the dignity of the story) to tell about the affairs of distant antiquity, about battles and massacres, and about what troubles an uncontrollable angry outburst of a person can cause, if this person holds power in his hands and strength.

Anger, anger and anger! The theme of anger permeates the entire poem. One can only marvel at the unity of concept and execution.
Let us trace the history of anger, how it began, how it manifested itself and how it ended.

The main character of the Iliad and the main bearer of anger is Achilles, the son of the Myrmidon king Peleus, the grandson of Aeacus and the daughter of the river god Asopa. So, Achilles descends from the gods, he is the great-grandson of Zeus. His mother is also not a mere mortal. She is the nymph Thetis. According to Greek mythology, forests, mountains and rivers are inhabited by beautiful and young creatures - nymphs, “living in beautiful groves and in bright springs, and in flowering valleys.” In the mountains these are oreads, in the seas - nereids, in forests - dryads, in rivers - naiads. One of these Nereids was Achilles’ mother Thetis. She, of course, cannot claim equality with the Olympian goddesses, but she always enters Zeus, and he receives her friendly and affectionately.

Achilles's domain is somewhere in the east of northern Greece, in Thessaly. Subject to his father Peleus, and therefore to him, the Myrmidons trace their origins to ants, as their very name indicates. The Greek word for ant is myrmex. The myth tells that during the reign of Achilles' grandfather Aeacus, the goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus, sent a disease to his people, and they all died out. Then Eak offered his prayers to the main god, his father, and he gave him new subjects - ants, turning them into people.

A chain of events connects Achilles with Troy. The tragedy that would ultimately lead to the destruction of Troy and all its inhabitants began at the wedding of his parents, Thetis and Peleus. All the gods and goddesses were invited to the wedding, except one - the Goddess of Discord. The offended goddess insidiously planted the so-called “apple of discord,” on which was written “for the most beautiful.” Three goddesses immediately declared their claims to him - Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Each of them considered herself the most beautiful. Zeus, although he was the most formidable of the gods, knowing the character of the goddesses,
prudently avoided the decision and sent them to the Trojan shepherd Paris, let him judge as an outsider and impartially. Paris was, of course, not a simple shepherd, but a young prince, the son of Priam and Hecuba. At his birth, Hecuba had a terrible dream, as if she gave birth not to a boy, but to a burning brand that burned Troy. The frightened queen removed the born son from the palace, and he grew up and matured on the wooded slopes of Ida, grazing
livestock It was to him that the beautiful inhabitants of Olympus turned. Each promised her gifts: Hera - power, Athena - wisdom, Aphrodite - the love of the most beautiful of the women of Hellas. The last gift seemed the most attractive to young Paris, and he gave the apple to Aphrodite, winning her constant favor and the equally constant hatred of the other two. This was followed by his journey, a stay with the hospitable and simple-minded Menelaus, from whom he kidnapped his beautiful wife and countless treasures with the connivance of Aphrodite. It was because of them that the warlike Achaeans and their allies, judging by Homer’s description, ended up at the walls of Troy, numbering about one hundred thousand, on multi-oared ships from 50 to 120 warriors each. Fifty ships of them were commanded by the leader
The Myrmidons are the mighty Achilles, whom we see in the Iliad young, full of strength, courage and anger.

From the background it is necessary to point out two more circumstances. At his birth, Thetis was predicted that her son would not live long if he wanted to fight and achieve military glory. If he agrees to obscurity, he will live to a ripe old age in peace and prosperity. Thetis, like any mother, chose the latter for her son. When they began to gather an army for the campaign against Troy, she hid him in women's clothing on the island of Skyros, believing that among the daughters of King Lycomedes he would remain unrecognized. But she did not know Odysseus’s tricks. This latter, wanting to entice the hero on a campaign, came to Skyros with gifts. Of course, it was difficult to distinguish young Achilles, whose fluff had not yet appeared on his upper lip, from the girls surrounding him. And Odysseus offered a choice of women’s jewelry, and among them were swords and spears. The girls chose jewelry, Achilles grabbed the sword and was recognized.

So, Thetis failed to provide her son with a long and calm life; he preferred a short life, but full of storms, anxieties, and glory. Achilles knew about his early death, others knew about it, and above all his mother, whom we see constantly sad, trembling for his fate.

An aura of tragedy surrounds the young head of Achilles. “Your life is short, and its limit is near!..” - Thetis tells him. “In an evil time, O my son, I gave birth to you in the house.” Homer reminds us of this more than once in the poem, and this shadow of imminent death, which constantly follows Achilles, softens our attitude towards the young hero. It also softens the kind heart of Homer, who, not considering himself the right to judge the acts of the gods and heroes of antiquity, cannot describe the acts of Achilles’ cruel ferocity without an internal shudder. And they are truly ferocious.

Achilles is quick-tempered (“fussy”) and indomitable in anger, wild, angry, and long-memory.

His friend Patroclus reprimands him in his hearts:

Unmerciful! Your parent was not the good-natured Peleus,
Mother is not Thetis; but the blue sea, gloomy rocks
you were born, stern in heart, like yourself!

The entire poem, as if through a single core, is permeated with the theme of this anger. And Homer does not sympathize with this essentially selfish, reproachless, ambitious feeling of his hero. What caused this anger? Agamemnon, the supreme military leader of the troops of all the Achaeans, took the captive Briseis from Achilles after dividing the spoils of war. He did this because he himself had to part with his prey Chryseis, who was returned to his father at the behest of Apollo. Agamemnon, as the poet described him, is brave and powerful, like all warriors, and fierce in battle, but not stable in decisions, susceptible to panic and, perhaps, not smart. He took the spoils of war from Achilles without thinking about the consequences. Then he will deeply regret it and will offer the warrior both rich gifts and the taken maiden. But Achilles will proudly reject them. His fighters, more than two thousand of them, and he himself remain aloof from the battles, and the Achaeans suffer one defeat after another. Now the Trojans, led by Hector, came close to the besiegers’ camp, approaching the ships to burn them and doom all the newcomers to death. Many of them, Achilles’ recent comrades, died, but he only gloats at their failures and thanks Zeus for this.

And only at the last minute, when the danger of general destruction loomed over everyone, he allowed his soldiers, led by Patroclus, to go to the aid of the Achaeans. Patroclus died in this battle. Hector killed him. Homer described in detail and colorfully the dispute and battle around the body of Patroclus, because he was wearing the weapons of Achilles; "immortal armor of a strong man." Patroclus! Homer calls him meek (“meek-hearted”). As a child, he experienced a terrible tragedy that left an indelible mark on his soul. In a child's game and argument, he accidentally killed his peer, the son of Amphidamas. And I could no longer stay at home. Menoetius, his father, brought the boy to Pelias. He, “receiving him favorably,” tenderly raised him with his son Achilles. Since then, an inextricable friendship has bound the two heroes.

In the social hierarchy, and it already existed in Greece during the time of Homer, Patroclus was placed below Achilles both by birth and status, and Menoetius instructed his son to obey his friend, although he was younger than him in years.

For Patroclus, who had a gentle and flexible character, this was not difficult, and Achilles loved him dearly. What Patroclus meant to him, he understood with all his might after his death. Grief, like all feelings of the passionate, temperamental leader of the Myrmidons, was frantic. He tore out his hair, rolled on the ground, screamed, screamed. And now a new wave of anger gripped him - anger against the Trojans and especially Hector, who killed his friend.
There was a reconciliation with Agamemnon.

Achilles became convinced that his resentment, his proud removal from his brothers, brought many troubles not only to them, his comrades, but also to himself. Now he rushed into battle against the Trojans with bitterness, with a frantic passion to take revenge, to torment, to kill (“a black bloody field flowed... under the divine Pelid, hard-hoofed horses crushed corpses, shields and helmets, the entire copper axle and the high semicircle of the chariot were splashed with blood from below... Brave Pelid ...stained his undefended hands in blood").

Homer talks about all this with trepidation. He cannot allow himself to blame the hero, because he is a demigod, the grandson of Zeus, and it is not for him, the poor singer, to judge who is right and who is wrong in this terrible battle of nations. But, reading the poem, we feel how the old man shudders internally, depicting the cruel fury of Achilles.

The Trojans flee in panic, looking for salvation. Here in front of them is the terrible stream of Scamander. They try to take refuge along its rocky shores. In vain, Achilles overtakes them. “Having tired his hands with murder,” he selects twelve young men from among them, maddened with fear “like young trees,” binds their hands and sends them to the Myrmidon camp, so that they can then throw Patroclus into the fire as a sacrifice. Here he sees young Lycaon, the youngest of the sons of Priam, and does not believe his eyes, because quite recently he captured him, attacking him at night, and sold him into slavery on the island of Lemnos, receiving “a hundred hundred dollars in price.” By what miracle did this young man escape? Lycaon fled from Lemnos and, happy, rejoiced at his newfound freedom and homeland, but not for long. “At home for eleven days I had fun with my friends” and on the twelfth... he is again at the feet of Achilles, unarmed, without a shield, without a helmet and even without a javelin:

Lycaon approached half dead,
Ready to hug Pelidu's legs, he indescribably wished
Avoid terrible death and near black doom.
Meanwhile, the long-bodied dart was carried by fleet-footed Achilles,
Ready to burst out, he ran up and hugged his legs,
Having crouched down to the valley; and the spear whistling over his back,
A trembling, greedy human blood was stuck into the ground.
The young man hugged his knees with his left hand, begging,
The right one grabbed the spear and, without letting it go from his hand,
So he prayed to Achilles, sending out winged speeches:
- I will hug your legs, have mercy, Achilles, and have mercy!
I stand before you as a supplicant worthy of mercy!

But Achilles did not spare. He told him that in the old days, before the death of Patroclus, it was sometimes pleasant for him to pardon the Trojans and set them free, taking a ransom, but now - to all “the Trojans, death, and especially the children of Priam!” He also told him that there was no need to weep, that death befalls even those better than him, Lycaon, that Patroclus died, and he himself, Achilles, will die, and meanwhile:

Do you see what I am like, both beautiful and majestic in appearance,
The son of a famous father, I have a goddess for a mother!
But even on earth I cannot escape this powerful fate.

“Consolation” did not reassure Lycaon, he only realized that there would be no mercy, and submitted. Homer paints a brutal murder scene with startling truth:

“...the young man’s legs and heart trembled.
He dropped the terrible dart and, trembling, with his arms outstretched,
Achilles sat down, quickly tearing away the sword from each other,
Stuck in the neck at the shoulder, and right up to the hilt
The sword plunged into the entrails, prostrate in the black dust
He lay down, prostrate, blood gushing out and flooding the ground.
Taking the dead man by the leg, Achilles threw him into the river,
And, mocking him, he spoke feathered speeches:
“Lie there, between the fishes! Greedy fish around the ulcer
They will carelessly lick your blood! Not the mother on the bed
Your body will be laid down to mourn, but Xanth is fleeting
A stormy wave will carry you into the boundless bosom of the sea...
So perish, Trojans, until we destroy Troy.”

The kind and wise Homer, of course, pities the young Lycaon, but he does not dare to judge the actions of Achilles himself and hands him over to the judgment of the river god Xanthus. And “Xanthus was cruelly irritated with him,” “in the form of a mortal, God cried out from the deep abyss: “... My light-streaming waters are full of the corpses of the dead... Oh, refrain.” And after that:

A terrible storm of excitement arose around Achilles,
The hero's shafts sway, falling on his shield; he's on his feet
Bole could not resist; grabbed the elm,
Thick, spreading, and the elm, toppling over with its roots,
The shore collapsed with itself, blocked the fast-flowing waters
Its branches are thick and stretch across the river like a bridge,
Leaning over onto her. The hero, having disappeared from the abyss,
In fear he rushed through the valley to fly on his swift feet,
The furious god did not lag behind; but, rising up behind him, he struck
The black-headed shaft, burning to curb Achilles
In the feats of war and Troy, protect the sons from murder.

And if not for Poseidon and Athena, who came to the call for help and, “taking on the form of people,” gave him their hands and saved him, the mighty Achilles would have died “an inglorious death... like a young swineherd.”

The culmination of the story of Achilles' wrath was his duel with Hector. A great human tragedy is unfolding before us. Homer prepared us for it, often prophesying the death of the main character of the Trojans. We already know in advance that Achilles will win, that Hector will fall under his hand, but we are still waiting for a miracle until the last minute - our hearts cannot come to terms with the fact that this glorious man, the only true defender of Troy, will fall, struck down by the alien’s spear.

Homer treats Achilles with trepidation and, perhaps, fear; he endows him with the highest military virtues, but he loves Hector. The Trojan hero is human. He never cast a sidelong glance at Helen, and she was the culprit of all the Trojans’ misfortunes, and he did not reproach her with a bitter word. And he had no ill feelings towards his brother Paris, and from him all the troubles came. It happened to him, in annoyance at his brother’s effeminacy, carelessness and laziness, to hurl angry reproaches, because he should have understood that the city was under siege, that the enemy was about to destroy the walls and destroy everyone. But as soon as Paris admits that he, Hector, is right and obeys, Hector’s anger cools down, and he is ready to forgive him everything:

"Friend! “You are a brave warrior, often only slow, reluctant to work,” he tells him, and his soul is tormented for him, and would like to protect his careless brother from blasphemy and reproach. The most sublime poetry of marital and paternal feelings sounds in the verses of Homer, depicting the scene of Hector’s meeting with Andromache and his son, still a child, Astyanax. This scene is famous. For two thousand years it has stirred the hearts of readers, and none of those who write about Homer and his poems have passed it over in silence. It has entered all the anthologies of the world.

Andromache is worried about her husband. For her, he is everything (“You are everything to me now - both father and dear mother, you and my only brother, you and my beloved husband”), for all her relatives were killed by Achilles, attacking her hometown, and her father, the elder Etiope, and her seven brothers. He released his mother for a large ransom, but she too soon died. And now all the hopes, all the joys and worries of Andromache are directed towards two beings dear to her - her husband and son. The son is still a “wordless baby” - “lovely, like a radiant star.”

Homer expresses his feelings with vivid epithets, metaphors, and comparisons. Hector named his son Scamandreus in honor of the Scamander River (Xanthus), while the Trojans named him Astyanax, which meant “lord of the city.” Hector wanted to take the boy in his arms and hug him, but he, frightened by his sparkling helmet and “shaggy-haired comb,” screamed and pressed the “magnificent robe of the nurse” to his chest, and the happy father smiled, took off the “magnificently shiny” helmet (Homer cannot live without a picture epithet imagine describing neither a person nor an object), puts him on the ground, taking his son, “kisses him, rocks him.” Andromache smiles at them through her tears, and Hector is “soulfully touched”: “Good one! Don’t ruin your heart with immoderate grief.”

The scene is full of tragedy, because Hector knows about the imminent destruction of Troy (“I firmly know myself, convinced both in thought and in heart”), and Andromache knows this.

Hector is not just a strong and brave warrior, he is a citizen, and Homer emphasizes this all the time. When Elena asks him to enter the house, sit with them, soothe “his aching soul,” he replies that he cannot accept the welcoming invitation, that they are waiting for him there, on the battlefield, that his “soul is drawn to the defense of his fellow citizens.” When one of the fighters pointed to an eagle flying from the left as a bad omen (flying from the left was considered a bad sign), Hector menacingly told him that he despises signs and does not care whether the birds are flying from the left or the right. “The best sign of all is to fight bravely for the fatherland!”

This is Hector. And this is his last hour. The Trojans fled to the city in panic and hastily closed the gates, forgetting about Hector. He was left alone outside the city walls, alone in front of a host of enemies. Hector's heart trembled, and he was afraid of Achilles. They ran around Troy three times. All the gods looked at them, and the Trojans from the city walls, and the crying Priam, his father. Good-natured Zeus took pity on the hero and was ready to help him, to rescue him from trouble, but Athena intervened, reminding her “black cloud” father that since ancient times fate had destined for people a “sad death.” And Zeus allowed her to speed up the bloody outcome. The goddess's actions were cruel and treacherous. She appeared before Hector, taking on the image of Deiphobus. Hector was delighted, he was touched by his brother’s self-sacrifice, because Deiphobus dared to come to his aid, while others remained in the city and looked indifferently at his suffering. “Oh Deiphobe! And you have always been kind to me, from infancy.” Athena, in the image of Deiphobus, resorts to great deceit, says that both his mother and father begged him (Deiphobus) to stay, and his friends begged him not to leave the city, but that he, “lamented by longing” for him, came to him for help. Now there is no need to hesitate, there is no need to spare spears and forward into battle, together.
“Thus prophesying, Pallas stepped forward insidiously,” writes Homer. And Hector went into battle. Achilles threw a spear at him and missed. Athena, unseen by Hector, raised the spear and handed it to her favorite. Then Hector threw his spear towards Achilles, the spear hit the shield and bounced off, because Hephaestus himself forged the shield. Hector calls Deiphobus, asks for a second spear, looks around - no one! He understood the evil betrayal of the goddess. He, unarmed, remained in front of his mortal enemy:

Woe!.. I thought that my brother was with me...
He is within the walls of Ilium: Pallas deceived me,
Near me there is only death!

Thus the fate of the glorious defender of the city was fulfilled. Already dying, he asks Achilles not to mock his body, but to return it to his home for a decent burial. But Achilles, burning with anger and hatred, says to him:

“It’s in vain, dog, you hug my legs and pray for your family!
I myself, if I listened to anger, would tear you to pieces,
I would devour your raw body.”

With this Hector dies - “quietly the soul, leaving his lips, descends to Hades.” Achilles, “drenched in blood,” began to tear off his armor. The Achaeans who ran up again and again pierced the already lifeless body of the hero with their pikes, but even defeated and dead, he was beautiful, “everyone was amazed, looking at the growth and the wonderful image.”

Achilles, however, had not yet quenched his anger and “conceived an unworthy deed,” he pierced the tendons of his legs, threaded belts and tied Hector’s body to a chariot, drove the horses, dragging the body along the dusty road. The hero’s beautiful head was beating along the road, his black curls were scattered widely and covered with dust. The inhabitants of Troy looked at everything from the city walls, old Priam wept, tore out his gray hair, Hecuba sobbed, Andromache’s grief was immeasurable. But this did not quench Achilles’ thirst for revenge; having brought Hector’s body to his camp, he continued the “unworthy deed” there, dragging his body around the grave of Patroclus, “so he swore at the divine Hector in his anger.” Looking at this from Olympus, Apollo “silver-bowed” could not stand it. He charged the gods with a grave accusation of malice, ingratitude towards Hector and unfair favor towards his murderer:

You decided to be favorable to Achilles the robber,
To the husband who has banished justice from his thoughts, from his heart
He rejected all pity and, like a lion, only thinks about ferocity...
So this Pelid destroyed all pity, and he lost shame...
The frantic husband insults the earth, the dumb earth.

Homer nowhere mentions the famous heel of Achilles, the only weak spot in the hero's body. And, apparently, it is no coincidence that then his duel with Hector would look like a monstrous murder, because before him the Trojan would appear unarmed (vulnerable).

What is Achilles' fault? And he undoubtedly carries within himself a tragic guilt. Why does Homer silently condemn him? And the condemnation is almost obvious. In the loss of sense of proportion. Here we have before us one of the greatest commandments of the ancient Greeks both in life and in art - a sense of proportion. Any exaggeration, any departure from the norm is fraught with disaster.

Achilles constantly violates boundaries. He loves excessively, hates excessively, is excessively angry, vengeful, touchy. And this is his tragic fault. He is intolerant, quick-tempered, and intemperate. Even his beloved Patroclus is afraid of him: “He is flighty” (hot-tempered) and in anger he can accuse the innocent, he says about his friend. How much more human Patroclus himself looks. When Briseis, because of whom Achilles’ fatal anger arose, returned to him, she saw the dead Patroclus. He was not her lover, and she did not love him. But he was kind to her, attentive, he consoled her in grief, was responsive to her, a captive woman whom Achilles barely noticed. And, perhaps, she felt the greatest pity for the deceased. Her grief was genuine and so unexpected in the poem. Homer did nothing to prepare us for this:

Oh my Patroclus! O friend, ill-fated, priceless for me...
You've fallen! I will mourn you forever, dear young man.

The poem ends with the scene of the ransom of Hector's body. This is also the famous scene where Homer showed his greatest psychological insight. Old Priam, accompanied by one driver, entered the guarded camp of Achilles, bringing him a rich ransom for the body of his son. Zeus decided to help him in this and sent Hermes to him, who appeared before the old man, “like a youth in appearance, whose youth is charming with the first braid,” and escorted him unharmed to Achilles.

The meeting and conversation between Achilles and Priam, in essence, is the denouement of the entire knot of events and feelings that began at the very beginning of the poem in the word “anger.” This is the moral defeat of Achilles! Priam defeated him with the power of human love:

The old man, unnoticed by anyone, enters peace and, Pelidu,
Falling at your feet, he hugs your knees and kisses your hands, -
Terrible hands that killed many of his children!
Scary hands!

Homer has truly outdone himself. How much intelligence, heart, talent is needed to understand this! What an abyss of the human soul had to be explored to find this stunning psychological argument!

Brave! Almost you are gods! Have pity on my misfortune,
Remember Peleus’s father: I am incomparably more pitiful than Peleus!
I experience what no mortal has ever experienced on earth:
I press my hands to my lips to my husband, the murderer of my children.

And Achilles is defeated. For the first time, pity for a person penetrated his heart, he saw clearly, he understood the pain of another person and cried along with Priam. Miracle! These tears turned out to be sweet, “and noble Pelid enjoyed the tears.” How wonderful it turns out to be the feeling of mercy, how joyful it is to forgive, forget about evil and cruel revenge and love a person! Priam and Achilles, as if renewed; cannot find in themselves a recent feeling of bitterness and hostility towards each other:

For a long time Priam Dardanides marveled at King Achilles,
His appearance and majesty: he seemed to see God.
King Achilles was equally amazed at Dardanides Priam,
Looking at the venerable image and listening to the elders’ speeches.
They both enjoyed themselves, looking at each other.

This is the finale of the great pan-human drama of all times and peoples.

There was a legend that a competition took place between Homer and Hesiod and preference was allegedly given to Hesiod as the singer of peaceful labor (the poem “Works and Days”). But Homer did not glorify war. He, of course, admired the courage, strength, bravery and beauty of his heroes, but he was also bitterly sad for them. The gods were to blame for everything, and among them the god of war, the “husband-killer”, “destroyer of nations, destroyer of walls, covered in blood” Ares and his sister - “unsatiated with the fury of Strife.” This person, judging by Homer’s descriptions, at the very beginning is quite small in stature and crawls and grovels, but then she grows, expands and becomes so huge that her head rests on the sky and her feet on the ground. She sows rage among people, “to mutual destruction, prowling around along the paths, multiplying the groans of the dying.”

The god of war, Ares, is wounded by Diomedes, a mortal warrior from the Achaean camp. Ares complains to his father, “showing immortal blood streaming from the wound.” And what about Zeus?

Looking at him menacingly, the thunderer Kronion proclaimed:
“Be silent, oh you changeling! Don't howl, sitting near me!
You are the most hated to me of the gods who inhabit the sky!
Only you enjoy enmity, discord, and battles!
You have a motherly spirit, unbridled, always obstinate,
Hera, which I myself can hardly tame with words!

Homer describes the battle with perhaps some degree of surprise and horror. What bitterness does to people! “Like wolves, the warriors rushed one at another; man to man grappled." And the death of the warriors, “young, blossoming with life,” is mourned with paternal sadness. He compares Simois, struck down by a spear, to a young poplar. Here it is, the poplar is “smooth and clean,” “a pet of a wet meadow,” it was cut down to make a wheel for a chariot, now it is drying, lying “on the bank of its native stream.” This is how Simoes lay, young and naked (without armor), killed by the hand of the “powerful Ajax.”

Homer filled his poem with many names and historical information, brought together hundreds of destinies, provided it with the most vivid realistic pictures of the life and life of his fellow tribesmen, colored it with poetic comparisons and epithets - but placed Achilles in the center. He did not add to the portrait of his hero a single implausible feature that elevates him. His hero is monumental, but he is alive, we hear how his heart beats, how his handsome face is distorted with anger, we hear his hot breath. He laughs and cries, he screams and curses, at times he is monstrously cruel, at times soft and kind - and he is always alive. His portrait is true, we will not see a single false, invented, or added feature in him. Homer's realism here is at the highest level, satisfying the highest demands of modern realistic poetics.

Homer's heart is filled with horror and pity, but he does not judge his hero. The gods are to blame. Zeus allowed this.
Life is happening before us in its tragic apotheosis. A stunning picture with its drama! But there is no humiliation of man before the forces of the world beyond his control that depresses us. Man, both in death and in tragedy, is great and beautiful.

This is precisely what determined the aesthetic charm of the tragedy itself, when “sadness” becomes “delight.”

One day there will be a day when sacred Troy will perish,
Priam and Priam's spear-bearing people will perish with her.
Homer

This prophecy is repeated several times in the Iliad. It came true. Sacred Troy perished. Priam the spear-bearer and all those who lived, loved, suffered and rejoiced with him also died. The helm-shined Hector, the fleet-footed Achilles, and the curly-headed Danaans perished. Only the “roaring, deeply abyssed Scamander” still poured out its stormy waters into the sea waves and the wooded Ida, from which the cloud-catcher Kronion once looked at the magnificent city, towered above the surroundings as of old. But neither human voices nor the melodic sounds of the ringing lyre were heard here anymore.

Only birds and dust storms and snowstorms rushed over the hill on which palaces and temples once stood proudly. Time has covered the remains of the fortress walls and burned-out dwellings with a dense, multi-meter layer of earth. It became difficult to recognize the place where Homer’s heroes acted.

But Homer's poem remains. They read and re-read it, admired the beauty of the verse, the intelligence and talent of their creator, although they hardly believed in the truth of the story, in the reality of the events described in it, and even in the fact that “sacred Troy” ever existed. Only one enthusiastic person in the 19th century believed Homer (it cannot be that everything told with such convincing truth was not true!) and began the search for the legendary Troy. It was Heinrich Schliemann. His biographer describes the moment of Schliemann’s first meeting with those places where he was supposed to excavate Troy and reveal it to the world of civilized humanity: “... his attention was again and again attracted by a hill rising fifty meters above the Scamander Valley.

This is Gissarlik, effendi,” says the guide. This word in Turkish means “palace”... (more precisely, a fortress, fortification - “khysar.” - S.A.). Behind the Hissarlik Hill rises the forested Mount Ida, the throne of the father of the gods. And between Ida and the sea, bathed in the evening sun, stretches the Trojan plain, where for ten years two heroic peoples confronted each other. It seems to Schliemann that, through a light haze of fog that has fallen to the ground, he sees the bows of ships, the camp of the Greeks, the fluttering plumes of helmets and the shine of weapons, troops scurrying here and there, hears war cries and the cry of the gods. And behind rise the walls and towers of the glorious city.”

This was in the summer of 1868. Schliemann began excavations with a volume of the poet Homer in his hands. This is how Homeric Greece was discovered.

Precise and rigorous science made its own adjustments to Schliemann’s romantic conclusions, established the boundaries and level of occurrence of urban strata, and determined the time of the emergence and death of cities that were built one on top of the other over centuries and millennia. The dream of Troy faded somewhat in the light of the dry facts of historical realities, but Homer's world was open.

Homer “helped” Schliemann continue his excavations and find new sensational finds. Homer's epithet “gold-abundant” (“gold-abundant Mycenae”) prompted him to search for and ultimately acquire the richest gold objects of Ancient Greece, which he called “the gold of Agamemnon.”

You talked to Homer alone for a long time,
We've been waiting for you for a long time,
And bright you came down from the mysterious heights,
And they brought us their tablets.
A. S. Pushkin

This is how Pushkin greeted Gnedich’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. This was an event in Russian culture. The greatest poet of Greece spoke Russian.

The translation language is somewhat archaic. We no longer say “dondezhe” (“until when”), “paki” (“again”) or “vyya” (“neck”). Neither Gnedich himself nor his contemporaries in Rus' spoke like that anymore. These words, having left the spoken everyday language, remained for special occasions, woven into the prayer hymn, creating a feeling of the unusualness of what was happening, of something important, not everyday, sublime. This was precisely the language of Homer’s poems for his listeners in Ancient Greece. The ancient Greek listened to the measured speech of the aed and was in awe and filled with awe: it was as if the gods themselves were speaking to him. Gnedich, with great tact, resorted to Old Russian words in order to convey similar sensations to the Russian reader. The archaic nature of the language, of course, complicates the understanding of the text, but at the same time gives it a high artistic coloring. In addition, there are not so many obsolete words - within a hundred.

Russian people have transferred a lot into their language from the Greek language. Gnedich, translating the Iliad, created verbose epithets based on the Greek model, unusual for our eyes and ears, but they also create the effect of elation of speech. The poet (and scientist at the same time) worked on the translation for more than 20 years, publishing it in 1829. Pushkin spoke enthusiastically about him (“I hear the silent voice of the divine Hellenic speech, I feel the shadow of the great elder with a confused soul”).

Gnedich's life's work. Nowadays in St. Petersburg, at the memorial cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, you can find a burial mound with a marble tombstone. Inscribed on it:

“To Gnedich, who enriched Russian literature with the translation of Omir - from friends and admirers.” And then - a quote from the Iliad:

“The sweetest honey flowed from his prophetic lips.”

By the way, Pushkin also resorted to “high style”, to pathetic archaisms when the content of the work required it:

But what am I seeing? A hero with a smile of reconciliation
Coming with a golden olive.

Or from the same poem (“Memories in Tsarskoe Selo”):

Be comforted, mother of Russian cities,
Behold the death of the stranger.
Today they are weighed down by their arrogant necks
Hand of the avenging creator.

Odyssey

For six hours the boat maneuvered against the wind until it reached
Ithaca. It was already night, velvety black, a July night,
filled with aromas of the Ionian Islands... Schliemann thanks
gods that they allowed him to finally land in the kingdom of Odysseus.
G. Shtol

The island, sung by Homer, is still called Ithaca. It is one of the seven islands of the Ionian Sea off the southwestern coast of Greece. Heinrich Schliemann undertook archaeological excavations on the island, hoping to find material evidence of the advanced culture that Homer described. But nothing could be found. Science has so far only established that around the 5th century. BC e. there was a small settlement there. In a word, neither Odysseus, nor Penelope, nor their son Telemachus, nor their rich house, nor the city on the seashore - none of what Homer so colorfully and vividly described ever existed in Ithaca. Is it possible?

Is all this really the fruit of the artistic imagination of the ancient Greeks? It’s hard to believe this: the appearance of the island and everything that was on it are described in great detail, truly documented in the poem:

This is Eumaeus, no less than the beautiful house of Odysseus!
Even among many others, it is not at all difficult to recognize him.
Everything here is one to one. skillfully jagged wall
The yard is surrounded, the double-leaf gates are amazingly strong...

Everything is alive, everything is visible, we are introduced into everyday life, we are there together with the heroes of Homer. Here is “the black night... has come”, “everyone went home” and “Telemachus himself retired to his high palace.” In front of him, Eurycleia, the “faithful housekeeper,” carried a torch. Homer, of course, also reported that Telemachus’s palace faced the courtyard, “that an extensive view opened before the windows.” Here Telemachus enters the “rich bedroom,” sits down on the bed, and takes off his thin shirt. The caring old woman “carefully” takes the master’s robe, folds it into folds, and smoothes it with her hands. Homer talks about the bed - it is “skillfully turned”, and about the door handles - they are “silver”, there are also latches - they are tightened with a belt.

Homer doesn't miss anything. He also describes the storeroom in Odysseus’s house:
The building is spacious; there were heaps of gold and copper there;
A lot of clothes were stored there in chests and fragrant oil;
Kufas made of clay with perennial and sweet wine stood
Near the walls, containing a divinely pure drink.

Of course, the doors to the pantry are special, “double doors, double locked.” The order in the pantry was maintained with “experienced vigilant diligence” by Euryclea, the “reasonable” housekeeper.

In modern science there is no consensus on the origin of Homer's poems. Many assumptions have been made; in particular, that the Odyssey was created a hundred years later than the Iliad. Very possible. However, the author of the Iliad more than once calls Odysseus “cunning”, “many-minded”, “a famous sufferer”. The poems in the Iliad dedicated to Odysseus seem to anticipate everything that will be told about him in the Odyssey. “Brave, his heart always dared in the face of danger”, “enterprising”, “steadfast in labor and in troubles”, “loved by Pallas Athena”, capable of emerging from a “burning fire” unharmed, “his mind is so rich in inventions” . All these qualities of Odysseus will be revealed vividly and picturesquely in the second poem of the great Homer.

Marx called ancient Greek society the childhood of humanity. Homer's Odyssey, perhaps more than any other work of poetry, illustrates this famous saying. The poem is dedicated, if you think about its main philosophical plan, to the discovery of the world by man. In fact, what do the wanderings of Odysseus, Menelaus and other warriors returning home after the destruction of Troy mean? Knowledge of the Oikumene - the inhabited part of the Earth, then known to Greece. The boundaries of this area were very small. The Greek imagined that the entire Earth was surrounded by the Ocean, a river that fed all the lakes, seas, streams and rivulets that were inside. No one dared to go beyond the Ocean. Homer knew the countries close to the Mediterranean coast in the west, no further than Gibraltar. The island of Euboea seemed to him a border, “beyond which there is nothing,” and yet this island was located in the Aegean Sea. Sailing to the island of Euboea seemed to be the work of especially brave sailors.

In the days of Homer, the Greeks explored new lands in the western and eastern borders of the then Oikumene. Homer calls those living from the eastern and western sides of the Oikumene “extreme people”, “settled in two ways”: “one where the luminous God descends,” the others where he ascends.

Menelaus saw a lot in his wanderings, who, like Odysseus, did not immediately reach his native shores. For seven years he wandered after the capture of Troy around the then world before returning to his native Argos:

I saw Cyprus, visited the Phoenicians, reached Egypt,
Infiltrated the Black Ethiopians, stayed with the Sidonians, Erembi,
In Libya was, finally, where horned lambs are born.
On the other side of the fields there is a lord and a shepherd of lack
In cheese and meat, and thick milk they do not have,
Cows are milked there in abundance all year round.

The journey of Odysseus was even longer (10 years). His wanderings have already been described in detail. His foe and friend - the sea - are described in equal detail.

It became one of the main characters of the poem. It is beautiful, like its ruler Poseidon, the “azure-curly” god, but it is also terrible and destructive. Before this formidable element, man is insignificant and pitiful, like Odysseus in the raging waves during a storm. Of course, Poseidon is to blame for everything; he “raised a wave from the abyss... terrible, heavy, mountain-huge.” “The waves boiled and howled, rushing fiercely onto the high shore from the sea... Cliffs and reefs stuck out. Odysseus was horrified." But then “the azure-curly Eos” appeared, and everything was transformed, the storm calmed down, “the sea all brightened in a quiet calm.”

Most of all epithets, the most varied and sometimes contradictory, are accompanied in the poem by the word “sea”. When it threatens with an unknown danger, then it is “foggy” or even “dark foggy”, sometimes it is “evil”, “poor-bearing”, “terrible” and always “abundant”, “great”, “sacred” - then “abundant with fish” and “ many fish”, sometimes “barren-salty”, sometimes “noisy” or even “broadly noisy”, sometimes “desert” or “infinitely deserted”.

For the inhabitants of Greece, with its rugged coastline and its numerous islands, the sea was an important element of economic and cultural activity. As a result of things, the Greeks became brave and skillful navigators, so in Homer the word “sea” takes on the epithet “much-tested.”

A typical representative of the Greeks, or better yet, of all humanity, with his thirst for knowledge, with his indomitable strength to fight, with great courage in troubles and misfortunes, is truly Odysseus. In the Iliad, he is only a warrior - brave, strong and also cunning, intelligent, eloquent, “wise in advice.” Here, in the poem “Odyssey”, he appeared in all his human greatness.

His patroness is Athena, the wisest and most active goddess. Here she is harsh, but not cruel. When one of her favorites, Tydeus, whom she wanted to make immortal, showed ferocity, she turned away from him in disgust. (He, according to myth, having killed one of his opponents, split his skull and in a wild frenzy sucked out his brain.) She kills the gorgon Medusa, helps Hercules, Perseus, Prometheus, personifies the art of crafts, so valued in Greece, and patronizes Odysseus, admires him: “You kindly accept every piece of advice, you are understanding, you are bold in execution,” but sometimes he blames him for his cunning - “a schemer, daring to make insidious inventions.”

In carrying out his plans, Odysseus is stubborn and persistent, which is not always liked by his companions. But their censure sounds like great praise to him:

“You, Odysseus, are unyieldingly cruel, you are gifted with great Strength; there is no fatigue for you, you are forged from iron.”

Odysseus is a faithful husband, a loving father, a wise ruler, for which the people of Ithaca value and extol him, but he is not created for home peace and quiet family joys. His element is struggle, overcoming obstacles, learning the unknown. He, as Homer reports about him, did not like either “field work” or “quiet home life.” He was attracted by “battle and winged arrows”, “copper-shining spears” (“formidable, causing great awe and bringing fear to many”).

When the sorceress Circe warns him against the terrible Scylla, he is not going to retreat, but wants to “fight back with force”:

"ABOUT! Unbridled, he again conceived of the exploits of war,
You dream about fighting again; you are glad to fight with the gods.”

Odysseus is brave, courageous, shrewd (“cunning”). But perhaps his most characteristic feature is curiosity. He wants to see everything, hear everything, learn everything, experience everything. Often this involves him in the most serious troubles, from which he always finds a way out.

He is assured that the maiden siren birds are dangerous, that they have already destroyed many with “sweet” and “enchanting” singing. He strives to hear them and orders each of the crew to cover their ears tightly with wax, while he himself left them open and, tied with strong ropes to the mast post, experienced the power of the singing of wonderful and terrible maidens-birds.

Why is he doing this? To know.

Homer reports that even after Odysseus returns to his native Ithaca, he will not calm down and will again go in search of adventure. Nothing stops him. “The thought of death has never troubled my heart,” he says about himself. He visited a place from which no mortal has ever returned - in the kingdom of shadows, in Hades, and in the fairy-tale land of happiness and peace, where the complacent Alcinous rules...

This is Odysseus and his main features. But, besides them, he also has a great, cherished feeling - this is an unquenchable love for his homeland. He yearns for her, sheds tears for her, refuses eternal youth and immortality, which the nymph Calypso offers him, just to be back where he was born and raised. And the eternal feelings, close to everyone at all times, are expressed by the ancient poet with stunning, sometimes tragic truth.

“Our dear fatherland, where we were born and blossomed.”

“There is nothing sweeter to us than our homeland and our relatives,”

Homer sings, and his “Odyssey” becomes a hymn in honor of his homeland.

Not only Odysseus, but also other heroes love their homeland to the point of oblivion:

Joyfully, the leader Agamemnon set foot on his parent’s shore.
He began to kiss his dear fatherland, seeing again
The desired land, he shed warm tears abundantly.

Homer showed both insidious human cruelty, with indignation, contempt (the murder of Agamemnon), and tenderly and reverently - family feelings: marital, filial and parental love (Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus). He seemed to contrast two destinies, two moral categories - Penelope’s loyalty and betrayal, the crime of Clytemnestra and “Aegisthus the despicable.”

Homer tenderly and tenderly draws the image of Penelope. She is a faithful wife, constantly thinking about her absent husband, she is a mother, and her worries for her son are described with heartfelt warmth. For her, he is “a youth who has never seen need and is not used to talking to people.” Telemachus is twenty years old, he is quite independent and sometimes declares himself the eldest in the house and can even order his mother to retire to her chambers:

But succeed: take care of the housekeeping as you should,
Yarn, weaving; see that the slaves are diligent in their work
Were ours; It’s not a woman’s job to talk, it’s a matter of
My husband, and now mine: I am my only ruler.

The subordinate position of women in Ancient Greece here, as we see, is presented very clearly. Penelope heard her son speak like this for the first time and was amazed and, perhaps, filled with pride for him, but, like any mother, he will forever remain a child for her. Having learned that, furtively from her, he went in search of his father, and furtively because he did not want to disturb her, so that “the freshness of her face would not fade from sadness,” as Homer, who always glorifies beauty, explains, she becomes alarmed. “The heart trembles for him, so that no misfortune happens to him on the evil sea or in a foreign land among a foreign people.”

Homer everywhere emphasizes the youthful modesty and shyness of Telemachus. When Mentor sends him to ask Nestor’s “bridle horses” about his father, Telemachus hesitates: is it proper for younger people to question their elders?

The Greeks believed that every person has his own demon, a special patron, a peculiar spirit, which in time will tell him the right thought, the right word, and the right deed (hence the expression “his genius” in our everyday life):

You can guess a lot yourself, Telemachus, with your intellect,
The demon will reveal many things to you...

To some extent, Homer's Odyssey is also a utopia, man's great dream of happiness. Odysseus visited the country of the Phaeacians. The Phaeacians are a fabulous, happy people. Their country is truly an ancient Eldorado. Their king Alcinous admits:

The ships of the Phaeacians do not know either pilots or rudder, “clothed in darkness and fog,” they fly along the waves, obeying only the thoughts of their shipmen. They are not afraid of either storms or fogs. They are invulnerable. The amazing dream of the ancient Greek: to control mechanisms directly with just one thought! They call it autokinesis these days.

But the wonderful, fabulous city of the Phaeacians will become inaccessible. An angry Poseidon will close it with a mountain, and access to it will be forever blocked for everyone, and the Phaeacians, protected from the world of troubles, worries and sorrows, will remain alone in an eternal blissful existence. This is how fairy tales about dazzlingly alluring and unrealizable happiness always end.

Homer sang a song about heroic natures; he glorified their strength and courage. The heroes left, died, but their life became a song, and therefore their fate is wonderful:

In the Iliad, Homer does not talk about the aedas. He reports the songs and dances of young men at feasts and during the grape harvest, but there is no mention yet of specialist singers. True, in the second song he mentions a certain Thamir from Thrace, who decided to compete in singing with the muses themselves and, as punishment for such insolence, was blinded and deprived of “the divine gift sweet for songs and the art of rattling the harp.”

Songs and epic tales about heroes to the accompaniment of the lyre were performed in the Iliad not by professional specialists, but by ordinary amateurs.

We, I will say, are not excellent either in fist fighting or in wrestling;
Fast on their feet, but incredibly first at sea;
We love luxurious dinners, singing, music, dancing,
Fresh clothes, voluptuous baths and a soft bed.
For this purpose, death and a disastrous lot were sent down to them.
Gods, may they be a glorious song for posterity.

Homer's art

Singers are highly honored by all, she taught them herself
Singing Muse; She loves the singers of the noble tribe.
Homer

Achilles, in his luxurious tent, during the calm hours from the battle, played the lyre and sang (“with the lyre he delighted the spirit, singing the glory of the heroes”).

The Iliad was apparently created much earlier than the Odyssey. During this time, some changes took place in the life of society. Special performers of epic tales appeared. The Odyssey talks a lot about them.

Moreover, there is already talk about charlatan storytellers, “boastful deceivers,” “many vagabonds who go around the earth, scattering lies everywhere in absurd stories about what they have seen.” The personality of Homer himself, his affiliation with professional singers in the Odyssey are manifested quite tangibly, and his professional interests, and professional pride, and his aesthetic program.

The ancient Greeks, contemporaries of Homer, saw divine inspiration in poetry (the poet is “like the high inspired gods”). From here stemmed the deepest respect for poetry and recognition of creative freedom.

If all the thoughts and actions of people, according to the ancient Greek, depended on the will and instigations of the gods, then this was even more true for the Aeds. Therefore, young Telemachus objected when his mother Penelope wanted to interrupt the singer Phemius, who was singing about the “sad return from Troy”:

Dear mother, objected the sensible son of Odysseus,
How do you want to ban the singer from our pleasure?
Then chant what awakens in his heart? Guilty
It is not the singer who is to blame, but Zeus, who sends from above, is to blame.
People of high spirit are inspired by their own will.
No, do not interfere with the singer about the sad return of the Danae
Sing - with great praise people listen to that song,
Every time she delights her soul as if she were new;
You yourself will find in it not sadness, but joy from sadness.

Freedom of creativity was already becoming the aesthetic principle of the ancient poet. Let us remember Pushkin’s sorcerer from “The Song of the Prophetic Oleg”: “Their prophetic language is truthful and free and friendly with the will of heaven.”

Ancient man, whose spiritual life took place in the realm of myth and legend, did not accept fiction. He was childishly gullible, ready to believe everything, but any invention must be presented to him as truth, as undeniable reality. Therefore, the truthfulness of the story also became an aesthetic principle.

Odysseus praised the singer Demodocus at a feast with King Alcinous, primarily for the authenticity of his story. “One might think that you yourself were a participant in everything, or that you learned everything from faithful eyewitnesses,” he told him, but Odysseus was an eyewitness and participant in exactly those events that Demodocus sang about.

And finally, the third principle - the art of singing should bring people joy, or, as we would now say, aesthetic pleasure. He speaks about this more than once in the poem (“captivating our hearing,” “delighting us,” “delighting our soul,” etc.). Homer's observation is amazing that a work of art does not lose its charm when read again - each time we perceive it as new. And then (this already refers to the most complex mystery of art), drawing the most tragic collisions, it brings an incomprehensible peace to the soul and, if it causes tears, then the tears are “sweet”, “pacifying”. Therefore, Telemachus tells his mother that Demodocus will bring her “delight from sorrow” with his song.

The ancient Greek, and Homer was his most glorious representative, treated the masters of art with the greatest respect, no matter who this master was - a potter, foundry, engraver, sculptor, builder, gunsmith. In Homer's poem we will constantly find words of praise for such a master artist. The singer is given a special place. After all, he calls Femius a “famous singer,” a “divine man,” a man of “high spirit,” who, “captivating our ears, is like the inspired high gods.” The singer Demodocus is also glorified by Homer. “I place you, Demodocus, above all mortal people,” says Odysseus.

Who were they, these singers, or aeds, as the Greeks called them? As we see, both Phemius and Demodocus are deeply revered, but, in essence, they are beggars. They are treated like Odysseus Demodocus, who sent him from his plate “the backbone of a sharp-toothed boar full of fat,” and “the singer gratefully accepted the donation,” they are invited to a feast, so that after the meal and libations they can listen to their inspired singing. But, in essence, their fate was sad, just as sad was the fate of Demodocus: “The muse at birth rewarded him with evil and good,” gave him “sweet singing,” but also “darkened his eyes,” that is, he was blind. Tradition has brought to us the image of the blind Homer himself. This is how he remained in the imagination of peoples for three thousand years.

Homer amazes with the versatility of his talent. He truly embodied in his poems the entire spiritual arsenal of antiquity. His poems caressed the subtle musical ear of the ancient Greek and the charm of the rhythmic structure of speech; he filled them with picturesque picturesque, poetic expressiveness, pictures of the ancient life of the population of Greece. His story is accurate. The information he provided is invaluable documentation for historians. Suffice it to say that Heinrich Schliemann, when undertaking excavations at Troy and Mycenae, used Homer’s poems as a geographical and topographic map. This precision, sometimes downright documentary, is amazing. The enumeration of the military units that besieged Troy, which we find in the Iliad, even seems tedious, but when the poet concludes this enumeration with the verse: “like leaves on trees, like sands on the seas, countless are the armies,” we involuntarily believe this hyperbolic comparison.

Engels, turning to military history, uses Homer's poem. In his essay “Camp,” describing the system of construction of military fortifications and defense among the ancients, he uses information from Homer.

Homer does not forget to name all the characters in his poem by name, even the most distant ones in relation to the main plot: the sleeping bag of King Menelaus “agile Asphaleon”, his second sleeping bag “Eteon the venerable”, not forgetting to mention his father “Eteon, son of the Voets”.

The impression of complete authenticity of the story is achieved by the extreme, sometimes even pedantic, precision of details. In the second song of the Iliad, Homer lists the names of the leaders of the ships and squads that arrived at the walls of Troy. He does not forget to remember the most insignificant details. By naming Protesilaus, he reports not only that this warrior died, the first to jump off the ship, but also that he was replaced by a “same-blooded” brother, “youngest in years,” that in his homeland the hero was left with a wife “with a torn soul,” a house “half-finished” " And this last detail (the unfinished house), which might not have been mentioned at all, turns out to be very important for the overall credibility of the entire narrative.

It gives individual characteristics of the warriors listed and the places from which they came. In one case, “the harsh fields of Olizona”, there is the “bright lake” of Bebendskoye, the “lush city of Izolk” or “rocky Pithos”, “high-cliffed Ifoma”, “lumpy Larissa”, etc. Warriors are almost always “famous”, “armoured” “, but in one case they are excellent spear throwers, in the other they are excellent shooters.

Homer's contemporaries perceived his tales about the adventures of Odysseus with all the seriousness of their naive worldview. We know that there was not and there is neither Scylla nor Charybdis, there was not and could not be the cruel Circe, turning people into animals, there was not and could not be the beautiful nymph Calypso, who offered Odysseus “both immortality and eternal youth.” And yet, reading Homer, we constantly catch ourselves in the fact that, despite the skeptical consciousness of a person of the 20th century, we are irresistibly drawn into the world of naive faith of the Greek poet. By what force, by what means does he achieve such influence on us? What is the effect of the authenticity of his narrative? Perhaps, mainly in the scrupulous details of the story. By their randomness they eliminate the feeling of fantasy bias. It would seem that these some random details might not have existed, and the story in terms of plot would not have suffered at all, but, it turns out, the general mood of authenticity would have suffered.

For example, why did Homer need the figure of Elpenor, who appeared quite unexpectedly during the story of the misadventures of Odysseus? This companion of Odysseus, “not distinguished by courage in battles, not generously gifted with intelligence from the gods,” in other words, cowardly and stupid, went to sleep at night “for coolness” on the roof of Circe’s house and fell from there, “broke a vertebral bone, and his soul flew into area of ​​Hades." This sad event did not have any impact on the fate of Odysseus and his comrades, and if we adhere to the strict logic of the narrative, then it could not be reported, but Homer spoke about it in detail, and how Odysseus later met the shadow of Elpenor in Hades and how they buried him, erecting a hill over his grave, and placing his oar on it. And the poet’s entire narrative acquired the authenticity of a diary entry. And we involuntarily believe everything (it happened! Everything was accurately described down to the smallest detail!).

Homer's detailed and thorough story is vivid and dramatic. It’s as if we, together with Odysseus, are fighting against the raging elements of the sea, we see the rising waves, we hear a frantic roar and desperately fight with him to save our lives:

At that moment a large wave rose and crashed
All over his head; the raft spun rapidly,
Snatched from the deck into the sea, he fell headlong, missing
Steering wheel from hand; the mast fell down, breaking under the heavy
Opposite winds, blowing against each other.
...A fast wave rushed him to the rocky shore;
If only he had been instructed in time by the bright goddess Athena
He wasn’t, he grabbed the nearby cliff with his hands; and clinging to him,
He waited with a groan, hanging on a stone, for the wave to pass
Past; she ran, but suddenly, reflected in the return
She knocked him off the cliff and threw him into the dark sea.

The ancient poet also picturesquely and dramatically depicts the state of Odysseus, his constant conversation with his “great heart” and his prayer addressed to the gods, until the “azure-curled” Poseidon, having quenched his anger, finally took pity on him, taming the sea and calming the waves . Pitiful and exhausted, Odysseus was carried ashore:

...under him his knees gave way, his mighty arms hung; at sea his heart grew weary;
His whole body was swollen; spewing out both mouth and nostrils
Ode of the sea, he finally fell, lifeless, voiceless.

Paintings are portraits of heroes. In the poem they are given in action. Their feelings and passions are reflected in their appearance. Here is a warrior on the battlefield:

Hector raged terribly, under his gloomy eyebrows
They glowed menacingly with fire; above the head, rising with a crest,
The helmet of Hector, who was flying through the battle like a storm, swayed terribly!

A portrait of another person, one of Penelope’s suitors, was painted with the same expression:

Antinous - seething with anger - his chest rose,
Pressed by black anger, his eyes glowed like flaming fire.

The woman’s feelings manifested themselves differently, here there was restraint in movements, a deep hiddenness of suffering. Penelope, having learned that the suitors were going to destroy her son, “was speechless for a long time,” “her eyes were darkened with tears, and her voice did not obey her.”

It has become commonplace to talk about constant epithets in Homer’s poems. But is it only in Homer's poems?

We will find constant epithets and special, tightly welded speech patterns among the poets of all peoples of antiquity. “Pretty maiden”, “good fellow”, “white light”, “damp earth”. These and similar epithets are found in every Russian fairy tale, epic, and song. And what is remarkable is that they do not age and do not lose their pristine freshness. An amazing aesthetic mystery! It’s as if the people have honed them forever, and they, like diamonds, sparkle and shimmer with an eternal, enchanting brilliance.

Apparently, the point is not in the novelty of the epithet, but in its truth. “I remember a wonderful moment...” “Wonderful!” - a common, ordinary epithet. We often repeat it in our everyday speech.

Why is it so fresh and seemingly primordial in Pushkin’s line? Because it is infinitely faithful, because it conveys the truth of feelings, because the moment was truly wonderful.

Homer's epithets are constant, but at the same time varied and surprisingly picturesque, that is, in a word, they recreate the situation. They are always appropriate, extremely expressive and emotional.

When sad Telemachus, full of thoughts about his missing father, goes to the sea in order to “wet his hands with salt water,” the sea is “sandy.” The epithet paints us a picture of the sea coast. When it came to Telemachus setting out on a journey in search of his father, the epithet was already different - the “foggy sea”. This is no longer a visual image, but a psychological one, talking about the difficulties ahead, about a path full of surprises... In the third case, the sea is already “terrible” when Eurycleia, worried about the fate of Telemachus, dissuades him from going to Pylos. When Telemachus sails from Ithaca at dawn, the sea again acquired the picturesque epithet “dark” (“a fresh whiff of zephyr, making the dark sea noisy”). But when dawn broke, Homer used one epithet to describe the picture of the morning - “purple waves.”

Sometimes the sea is “dark and foggy,” that is, full of threats and troubles, “much water,” “great.”

The waves in a storm are “mighty, heavy, mountain-like.” The sea is “abundant with fish,” “broadly noisy,” “sacred.” When Penelope imagines what troubles her son might encounter at sea, it already becomes an “evil” sea, full of worries and dangers, “anxiety of the foggy sea.”

To give his listener a visible idea of ​​winter, Homer reports that the warriors’ shields “were covered with thin crystal from the frost.” The poet paints scenes of battles picturesquely and even, perhaps, somewhat naturalistically. So, the spear of Diomedes hit
Pandarus in the nose near the eyes: flew through white teeth,
The flexible tongue was cut off at the root by crushing copper
And, the tip shining right through, it froze in the chin.

Another warrior was pierced by a spear in the right side, “straight into the bladder, under the pubic bone,” “with a cry, he fell to his knees, and death overshadowed the fallen one.” Etc.

Homer is not always emotionless. Sometimes his attitude towards people and events is expressed quite clearly. Listing the allies of the Trojan king Priam, he names a certain Amphimachus, apparently a fair fanfare and lover of showing off, so that “he even went into battle, dressing up in gold, like a maiden. Pathetic! - Homer exclaims contemptuously.

Homer is a poet, and, as a poet, he appreciates that main element of poetic creativity, that brick from which a separate verse, song, poem is composed - the word. And he feels the vast expanse of words, he literally bathes in the expanse of speech, where everything is under his control:

Man's language is flexible; there are plenty of speeches for him
All sorts of things, the field for words here and there is limitless.

To summarize, we should outline the main, in my opinion, features of Homer’s poems. They are different in their topics. The Iliad is a work of historical nature. She talks about events not only of national, but also international significance at that time. The tribes and nationalities of a huge region collided in a great confrontation, and this confrontation, long remembered by subsequent generations (it is believed to have taken place in the 12th century BC), is described with the accuracy required for historical science.

This work reflected with encyclopedic breadth the entire spiritual world of Ancient Greece - its beliefs (myths), its social, political and moral norms. It captured its material culture with plastic clarity. Conceived as a historical narrative, it recreated with great artistic expressiveness the physical and spiritual appearance of the participants in the event - it showed specific people, their individual traits, their psychology.

The poet isolated the main moral problem of his narrative, subordinating to it, in essence, the entire course of the story - the influence of human passions on the life of society (the wrath of Achilles). This reflected his own moral position. He contrasted anger and bitterness with the idea of ​​humanity and goodness, ambition and the pursuit of glory (Achilles) with high civic valor (Hector).

“The Odyssey” absorbed the civil and family ideals of ancient Greek society - love of the homeland, family hearth, feelings of marital fidelity, filial and paternal affection. However, this is mainly a story of “discovery of the world.” A man, in this case Odysseus, looks with curiosity at the mysterious, unknown, fraught with many secrets, surrounding world. His inquisitive gaze seeks to penetrate its secrets, to know, to experience everything. An uncontrollable desire to comprehend the unknown is the main ideological core of Odysseus’s wanderings and adventures. To some extent, this is an ancient utopian novel. Odysseus visited the “underworld”, Hades, and the country of social justice and general welfare - the island of the Phaeacians. He looked into the future of human technological progress - he sailed on a ship controlled by thought.

Nothing stopped his curiosity. He wanted to endure everything, experience everything, no matter what troubles threatened him, in order to learn, to comprehend the as yet untested, unknown.

The Iliad shows the cunning and cunning of Odysseus as his main and, perhaps, not always attractive traits, while the Odyssey shows curiosity and an inquisitive mind. True, even here the spirit of guile does not leave him, helping him in the most difficult situations.

So, two poems that covered the life of the ancient Greek people. The first illuminated the entire society in all the diversity of its historical existence, the second illuminated the individual in his relationships with people and mainly with nature. Odysseus acts as a representative of all humanity, discovering and understanding the world.

Greek lyrics

Homer is the shining pinnacle of Greek culture. Below, if we stick to the metaphorical form of speech, stretched the vast fragrant plains of classical Greece with its lyric, drama, historical, rhetorical and philosophical prose. Athens was its geographical center, the 5th century was its most flourishing period.

Homer ends an era in ancient world culture - its initial national stage, when it was created by the whole people. Some of its brilliant representatives only generalized and synthesized the achievements of their fellow tribesmen. The memory of the people did not always retain their names. Sometimes she, preserving for us the name of one of them, especially distinguished and especially honored, attributed to him the best creations of other authors. This is what happened to Homer. And since the ancient peoples saw divine inspiration in creativity, individual authorial originality was not valued. The authors continued established traditions, their own personality seemed to be obscured. This was an epic stage in the history of culture. Everything I have told about the ancient literatures of China, India, the countries of the Middle and Near East and Homeric Greece refers to this epic period of world culture, when
the author's personality has not yet claimed an individual creative style. (“...In my songs nothing belongs to me, but everything belongs to my muses,” wrote the Greek poet Hesiod in the 7th century BC.)

Literature is usually divided into three main types: epic, lyric and drama. This division, of course, is arbitrary, because in the epic one can find elements of lyricism and in lyricism - elements of the epic, but it is convenient, since it points to the main distinctive features of each of these types of literature.

In the most distant times, an epic poem could not yet arise; it was still too complex for a person of the prehistoric era, while a simple song with a clear rhythm was quite accessible to him. Initially these were labor songs and prayers. The prayer expressed human emotions - fear, admiration, delight. The lyrics were still nameless and expressed the emotions not of an individual, but of a collective (clan, tribe); it retained established, as if frozen, forms and was passed on from generation to generation. Songs of this type were already described by Homer:

In their circle there is a beautiful youth with a ringing lyre
Sweetly rattled, singing beautifully to the flaxen strings
In a thin voice...

Then legends appeared, epic narratives about events in the world of deities, about heroes. They were composed and performed by the Aeds, orally passing them on from generation to generation, “polishing” and improving them. Poems began to be composed from these songs (in Greece they were called Homeric hymns). Such compilers in Greece were called rhapsodes (collectors, “stitchers” of songs). One of these rhapsodes was, obviously, Homer. The lyrics remain at the level of traditional ritual forms (festivals, sacrifices, funeral rites, crying). But later it pushed aside the epic and came out on top, and has already acquired a new quality. In the field of art it was a real revolution, conditioned, of course, by social factors. The individual began to isolate himself, stand out from society, and sometimes even came into conflict with society. Now the lyrics began to express the individual world of an individual.

The lyric poet was significantly different from the epic poet, who recreated the outside world - people, nature, but the lyricist turned his attention to himself. The epic poet strived for the truth of the picture, the lyric poet - for the truth of feeling. He looked “inward”, he was busy with himself, analyzing his inner world, his feelings, his thoughts:

I love and as if I don’t love,
Both crazy and sane... -

wrote the lyric poet Anacreon. Passions are boiling in the soul - a kind of madness, but somewhere in the corners of the consciousness a cold, skeptical thought nestles: is it really so? Am I fooling myself? The poet is trying to understand his own feelings. The epic poet did not allow himself to do this, not attaching importance to his personality.

Homer turned to the muses to help him tell the world about the anger of Achilles and all the tragic consequences of this anger, the lyric poet would ask the muses for something else: may they help him (the poet) talk about his (the poet’s) feelings - suffering and joys, doubts and hopes. In the epic the pronouns are “he”, “she”, “they”, in the lyrics - “I”, “we”.

“My lot is to be in the sunshine and in the beauty of a lover,” sang the poetess Sappho. Here, what is in the foreground is not beauty and the sun, but the poetess’s attitude towards them.

So, the majestic and luxurious epic poetry of Homer was replaced by excited, passionate and languid, caustic and harsh poetry, lyrical in its personal quality. Alas, it has reached us truly in fragments. We can only guess what kind of wealth it was. We know the names of Tyrtaeus, Archilochus, Solon, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon and others, but little of their poetry has survived.

The lyric poet showed his bleeding heart, sometimes, driving away despair, he called himself to patience and courage. Archilochus:

Heart, heart! Troubles stood before you in a menacing formation:
Take heart and meet them with your breasts...

The personality became her own biographer, she talked about the dramas of her life, she was her own portraitist and saddener. The poet Hipponactus, turning to the gods with a bitter smile, spoke about the pitiful state of his wardrobe:

Hermes of Cyllene, son of Maya, dear Hermes!
Hear the poet. My cloak is full of holes, I’ll tremble.
Give clothes to Hipponactus, give shoes...

Lyrical poets also glorify civic feelings, sing of military glory and patriotism:

It’s sweet to lose life, among the valiant warriors fallen,
To a brave husband in battle for the sake of his fatherland, -

Tyrtaeus sings. “And it is praiseworthy and glorious for a husband to fight for his homeland,” Kallin echoes him. However, moral principles have noticeably wavered: the poet Archilochus does not hesitate to admit that he threw his shield on the battlefield (a serious crime in the eyes of the ancient Greek).

The Saiyan now wears my flawless shield,
Willy-nilly I had to throw it to me in the bushes.
I myself, however, avoided death. And let it disappear
My shield! I can get no worse than a new one.

His only excuse was that he was in a mercenary army. But the Spartans did not forgive him for his poetic confession and, when he once found himself on the territory of their country, he was asked to leave.

The poets cared about the beauty of their verse, but the main thing they asked from the muses was excitement, emotions, passion, the ability to ignite hearts:

O Kaliope! Conceive us a lovely one
Light a song and conquering passion
Our anthem and make the choir pleasant.
Alkman

Perhaps the main theme of lyric poetry was, and is, and, apparently, will always be - love. Even in ancient times, a legend arose about Sappho’s unrequited love for the beautiful young man Phaon. Rejected by him, she allegedly threw herself off a cliff and died. The poetic legend was dispelled by modern scientists, but it was sweet to the Greeks, giving a tragic charm to the entire appearance of their beloved poetess.

Sappho maintained a school of girls on the island of Lesbos, teaching them singing, dancing, music, and sciences. The theme of her songs is love, beauty, beautiful nature. She sang of female beauty, the charm of female modesty, tenderness, and the youthful charm of a girl’s appearance. Of the celestial beings, the goddess of love Aphrodite was closest to her. Her hymn to Aphrodite, which has survived and reached us, reveals all the charm of her poetry. We present it in full, translated by Vyacheslav Ivanov:

Rainbow Throne Aphrodite! Zeus' daughter is immortal, she's a trickster!
Don’t break my heart with sadness!
Have pity, goddess!
Rush from the heights above, as it was before:
You heard my voice from afar:
I called - you came to me, leaving your Father’s heaven!
She stood on the red chariot;
Like a whirlwind, she carried her in fast flight
Strong-winged above the dark earth
A flock of doves.
You rushed, you stood before our eyes,
She smiled at me with an indescribable face...
"Sappho!" - I hear: - Here I am! What are you praying for?
What are you sick with?
What makes you sad and what makes you mad?
Tell me everything! Is the heart yearning for love?
Who is he, your offender? Whom will I persuade?
Sweetheart under the yoke?
The recent fugitive will not be excommunicated;
He who did not accept the gift will come with gifts,
Who doesn't love will love soon
And unrequitedly..."
Oh, appear again - through secret prayer,
Rescue your heart from a new misfortune!
Stand up, armed, in gentle warfare
Help me.
Eros never lets me breathe.
He flies from Cyprus,
Plunging everything around into darkness,
Like northern lightning flashing
Thracian wind and soul
Shakes powerfully to the very bottom
Burning madness.

The name of Sappho's contemporary and compatriot Alcaeus is associated with political events on the island of Lesbos. He was an aristocrat. Usually in those days in the Greek city-states, in these small city-states, there were several eminent families who considered themselves “the best” from the word “aristos” (“best”), which is how the word “aristocracy” (“power of the best”) appeared.

Usually they traced their ancestry back to some god or hero, were proud of this relationship and were brought up in the spirit of ancestral pride. This gave a certain charm to the myths and allowed them to be retained in memory, and sometimes enriched with new poetic details, flattering to the representatives of the clan. Myths morally nourished aristocratic youth. Imitating heroic ancestors, not degrading their honor with any unworthy act was a moral principle for every young man. This inspired respect for the aristocratic family.

But times have changed. Aristocratic families became poorer, richer townspeople entered the political arena, class conflicts arose, and in some cases significant social movements occurred. People who previously stood at the top of society found themselves left behind. Such was the fate of the poet Alcaeus, an aristocrat thrown out of the usual rut of life, who became an exile after the reign of the tyrant Pittacus in Mytilene.

Alcaeus created in poetry the image of a ship-state, tossed from side to side by the raging sea and stormy wind.

Understand, who can, the furious revolt of the winds.
The shafts are rolling - this one from here, that one
From there... In their rebellious dump
We are rushing around with a tarred ship,
Barely resisting the onslaught of evil waves.
The deck was completely covered in water;
The sail is already shining through,
All full of holes. The clamps have loosened.

This poetic image of a state shaken by political storms later appeared more than once in world poetry.

In political and philosophical lyrics, the poet and politician Solon is interesting. His reforms carried out in the 6th century went down in history. BC e. Aristotle called him the first defender of the people. His reforms took into account the interests of the poorest sections of Athens. Solon did not share his feelings with the reader; rather, he was a moral and political mentor (“Instructions to the Athenians”, “Instructions to Oneself”), instilling feelings of patriotism and citizenship. His poem “Weeks of Human Life” is known, which generally characterizes the ancient Greek’s view of human life, its time boundaries, and age-related characteristics of a person. We present it in full:

A little boy, still foolish and weak, loses
He has a row of his first teeth, he is almost seven years old;
If God brings the second seven years to an end, -
The youth is already showing us signs of maturity.
Thirdly, the young man has a fast growth in all his limbs.
The beard is a gentle fluff, the color of the skin changes.
Everyone in the fourth week is already in full bloom
Everyone sees a sign of bodily strength, and in it there is a sign of valor.
Fifth, it’s time to think about marriage to the desired man.
To continue your lineage in a number of blooming children.
The human mind fully matures in the sixth week
And he no longer strives for impossible tasks.
In seven weeks reason and speech are already in full bloom,
Also at eight - a total of fourteen years.
People are still powerful in the ninth, but they are weakening
For all-valiant deeds, his word and mind.
If God brings the tenth to the end of the seven years, -
Then there will be no early death for people.

In modern times, the name of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, a cheerful old man who glorified life, youth and the joys of love, was especially loved. In 1815, sixteen-year-old lyceum student Pushkin called him his teacher in humorous verses:

Let the fun come running
Waving a frisky toy,
And it will make us laugh from the heart
Over a full, foamy mug...
When will the east get rich?
In the darkness, a young angel
And the white poplar will light up,
Covered with morning dew
Serve the grapes of Anacreon:
He was my teacher...
"My Testament"

Youth is beautiful with its bright perception of the world. Such was Pushkin’s youth, and it is not surprising that the distant, long-ago poet who lived twenty-five centuries before him so delighted him with his cheerful, cheerful, mischievous poetry. Pushkin made several translations from Anacreon, amazing in beauty and fidelity to the spirit of the original.

Unfortunately, little of Anacreon’s poetry has reached us, and his fame is, perhaps, more based in modern times on numerous imitations of him and the charm of the legend that developed about him in ancient times. In the 16th century, the famous French publisher Etienne published a collection of poems by Anacreon based on a manuscript of the 10th - 11th centuries, but most of them did not belong to the poet, but were talented pastiches (imitations). There is a rich anacreontic poetry. In Russia, Anacreon was especially popular in the 18th century. M. V. Lomonosov’s ode “The skies were covered with darkness at night” even became a popular romance.

The name of the poet Pindar is associated with a phenomenon in the public life of Ancient Greece, amazing in scale, beauty, and moral nobility - the Olympic Games. Pindar was truly their singer. The poet lived an ordinary human age, something within seventy years (518-442), the Olympic Games lasted for more than a millennium, but his poetry painted this millennium with the rainbow colors of youth, health, and beauty.

The first sports competitions took place in Olympia in 776 BC. e. in a quiet valley near Mount Kronos and two rivers - Alpheus and its tributary Kladea - and were repeated every four years until 426 AD, when Christian fanatics, destroying the old pagan culture of antiquity, destroyed the Olympic Altis (temples, altars, porticos, statues of gods and athletes).

For one thousand two hundred years, Altis was the center of everything beautiful that the ancient world contained. The “father of history” Herodotus read his books here, the philosopher Socrates came here on foot, Plato visited here, the great orator Demosthenes gave his speeches, here was the workshop of the famous sculptor Phidias, who sculpted the statue of Olympian Zeus.

The Olympic Games became the moral center of Ancient Greece, they united all Greeks as an ethnic whole, they reconciled warring tribes. During the games, the roads became safe for travelers, and a truce was established between the warring parties. Throughout the world of that time, known to the Greeks, special messengers (theors - “sacred messengers”) went with the news of the upcoming games; they were received by “proxenes” - local representatives of the Olympic Games, persons who enjoyed special honor. Crowds of pilgrims then rushed to Olympia. They came from Syria and Egypt, from the Italian lands, from the south of Gaul, from Tauris and Colchis. Only morally impeccable persons who had never been convicted or convicted of any unworthy acts were allowed to participate in the games. The spirit of the times, of course, manifested itself here: women were not admitted (under pain of death), as well as slaves and non-Greeks.

Pindar composed solemn choral chants in honor of the winners of competitions (epinikia). The hero himself, his ancestors and the city in which the hero lived were glorified in the mighty sound of the choir. Unfortunately, the musical part of the chants has not been preserved. The poet, of course, did not limit himself only to the pathos of the dithyramb; he wove into his song philosophical reflections on the role of fate in human life, on the will, sometimes unfair, of the gods, on the need to remember the limits of human capabilities, on the sense of proportion sacred to the ancient Greek.

In ancient times, poems were chanted to the accompaniment of a lyre or flute. There were poems and songs. The poet not only composed the text of the poem, but also came up with a melody and even composed a dance. It was melodic poetry, consisting of three elements: “words, harmony and rhythm” (Plato).

Music occupied a significant place in the daily life of the ancient Greeks, it is a pity that crumbs of it have reached us.
The term "lyric" - from the word lyre, a musical instrument used as accompaniment - appeared relatively late, around the 3rd century. BC e., when the center of Greek culture moved to Alexandria. Alexandrian philologists, who were engaged in the classification and commentary of the literary heritage of classical Greece, united under this name all poetic genres that differed from the epic with its hexameter (hexameter) and other rhythmic forms.

Homer is an ancient Greek poet - storyteller, collector of legends, author of the ancient literary works "Iliad" and "Odyssey".

Historians do not have exact data on the narrator’s date of birth. The poet's birthplace also remains a mystery. Historians believe that the most likely period of Homer’s life is the X-VIII centuries BC. One of six cities is considered the place of the poet’s possible homeland: Athens, Rhodes, Chios, Salamis, Smyrna, Argos.

More than a dozen other settlements of Ancient Greece were mentioned by different authors at different times in connection with the birth of Homer. Most often, the narrator is considered a native of Smyrna. Homer's works refer to the ancient history of the world; there are no references to his contemporaries, which complicates dating the period of the author's life. There is a legend that Homer himself did not know the place of his birth. From the Oracle, the storyteller learned that the island of Ios was the birthplace of his mother.

Biographical data about the life of the narrator, presented in medieval works, raise doubts among historians. In works about the poet's life it is mentioned that Homer is the name that the poet received due to his acquired blindness. Translated, it can mean “blind” or “slave.” At birth, his mother named him Melesigenes, which means “born by the Meles River.” According to one legend, Homer went blind when he saw the sword of Achilles. As a consolation, the goddess Thetis endowed him with the gift of singing.

There is a version that the poet was not a “follower”, but a “leader”. They named him Homer not after the storyteller became blind, but on the contrary, he regained his sight and began to speak wisely. According to most ancient biographers, Melesigenes was born of a woman named Crifeis.

The storyteller performed at the feasts of noble people, at city meetings, and in markets. According to historians, Ancient Greece experienced its heyday during the life of Homer. The poet recited parts of his works while traveling from city to city. He was respected, had lodging and food, and was not the dirty wanderer that biographers sometimes portray him to be.

There is a version that the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns are the works of different authors, and Homer was only a performer. Historians consider the version that the poet belonged to a family of singers. In ancient Greece, crafts and other professions were often passed down from generation to generation. In this case, any family member could act under the name of Homer. From generation to generation, the stories and manner of performance were passed on from relative to relative. This fact would explain the different periods of creation of the poems, and would clarify the issue of the dates of the narrator’s life.

The making of a poet

One of the most detailed stories about Homer's development as a poet comes from the pen of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, whom Cicero called “the father of history.” According to the ancient historian, the poet was named Melesigenes at birth. He lived with his mother in Smyrna, where he became a student of the owner of the school, Femius. Melesigenes was very smart and well versed in science.

The teacher died, leaving his best pupil to go to school. After working as a mentor for some time, Melesigenes decided to deepen his knowledge of the world. A man named Mentes, who was from the island of Lefkada, volunteered to help him. Melesigenes closed the school and went on a sea voyage on a friend’s ship to see new cities and countries.

Poet Homer

During his travels, the former teacher collected stories, legends, and asked about the customs of local peoples. Arriving in Ithaca, Melesigenes felt unwell. Mentes left his companion under the supervision of a reliable person and sailed to his homeland. Melesigenes set off on his further journey on foot. Along the way, he recited stories he had collected during his travels.

According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the storyteller in the city of Colophon finally went blind. There he took a new name for himself. Modern researchers tend to question the story told by Herodotus, as well as the writings of other ancient authors about the life of Homer.

Homeric question

In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf, in the preface to the publication of the text of the ancient Greek storyteller’s poems, put forward a theory called the “Homeric Question.” The main point of the scientist's opinion was that poetry in the time of Homer was an oral art. A blind wandering storyteller could not be the author of a complex work of art.

Busts of Homer

Homer composed songs, hymns, and musical epics that formed the basis of the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Wolf, the finished form of the poem was achieved thanks to other authors. Since then, scholars of Homer have been divided into two camps: “analysts” support Wolff’s theory, and “unitarians” adhere to the strict unity of the epic.

Blindness

Some researchers of Homer's work say that the poet was sighted. The fact that philosophers and thinkers in Ancient Greece were considered people deprived of ordinary vision, but having the gift of looking into the essence of things, speaks in favor of the narrator’s absence of illness. Blindness could be synonymous with wisdom. Homer was considered one of the creators of a comprehensive picture of the world, the author of the genealogy of the gods. His wisdom was obvious to everyone.

Blind Homer with a guide. Artist William Bouguereau

Ancient biographers drew an accurate portrait of the blind Homer in their works, but they composed their works many centuries after the poet’s death. Since no reliable data about the poet’s life has been preserved, the interpretation of ancient biographers may not have been entirely correct. This version is supported by the fact that all biographies contain fictitious events involving mythical characters.

Works

Surviving ancient evidence suggests that in antiquity, Homer's writings were considered a source of wisdom. The poems provided knowledge regarding all spheres of life - from universal morality to the basics of military art.

Plutarch wrote that the great commander always kept a copy of the Iliad with him. Greek children were taught to read from the Odyssey, and some passages from the works of Homer were prescribed by Pythagorean philosophers as a means to correct the soul.

Illustration for the Iliad

Homer is considered the author of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey. The storyteller could be the creator of the comic poem "Margate" and the "Homeric Hymns". Among other works attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, there is a cycle of texts about the return of the heroes of the Trojan War to Greece: “Cypria”, “The Capture of Ilion”, “Ethiopida”, “The Lesser Iliad”, “Returns”. Homer's poems are distinguished by a special language that had no analogue in colloquial speech. The manner of narration made the tales memorable and interesting.

Death

There is a legend that describes the death of Homer. In his old age, the blind storyteller went to the island of Ios. While traveling, Homer met two young fishermen who asked him a riddle: “We have what we didn’t catch, and what we caught, we threw away.” The poet thought about solving the puzzle for a long time, but could not find the right answer. The boys were catching lice, not fish. Homer was so frustrated that he couldn't solve the riddle that he slipped and hit his head.

According to another version, the narrator committed suicide, since death was not as terrible for him as the loss of mental acuity.

• There are about a dozen biographies of the storyteller that have come down to our time from antiquity, but they all contain fairy-tale elements and references to the participation of the ancient Greek gods in the events of Homer’s life.
• The poet spread his works outside of Ancient Greece with the help of his students. They were called Homerids. They traveled to different cities, performing the works of their teacher in the squares.

• Homer's work was very popular in Ancient Greece. About half of all ancient Greek papyrus scrolls found are excerpts from various works of the poet.
• The narrator's works were transmitted orally. The poems we know today were collected and structured into coherent works from disparate songs by the army of poets of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus. Some parts of the texts were edited taking into account the wishes of the customer.

• In 1915, the Soviet prose writer wrote the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails”, in which he appealed to the narrator and heroes of the poem “Iliad”.
• Until the mid-seventies of the twentieth century, the events described in Homer's poems were considered pure fiction. But the archaeological expedition of Heinrich Schliemann, who found Troy, proved that the work of the ancient Greek poet is based on real events. After such a discovery, admirers of Plato were strengthened in the hope that one day archaeologists would find Atlantis.

“Homer lived nine centuries BC. e., and we do not know what the world and the place that today is called Ancient, or ancient, Greece looked like then. All smells and colors were thicker, sharper. By raising his finger, a person went straight into the sky, because for him it was both material and animate. Greece smelled of the sea, stone, sheep's wool, olives, and the blood of endless wars.

But we don’t know, we can’t imagine pictures of life at that time, which is usually called the “Homeric period,” i.e., IX-VIII centuries BC. e. Isn't it strange? An entire historical period is named after the poet after three millennia? Much water has passed under the bridge, and the events are blurred, but his name remains the definition of an entire period, sealed by two poems - the Iliad (about the war of the Achaeans with Ilion) and the Odyssey (about the return of the warrior Odysseus to Ithaca after the Trojan War).

All the events described in the poems took place around 1200 BC. e., i.e. three hundred years before the life of the poet, and recorded in the 6th century BC. e., i.e. three hundred years after his death.

By the 6th century BC. e. the world has changed incredibly, unrecognizably. Already the main pan-Hellenic event - the Olympics - established a “sacred truce” every four years and was a “point of truth” and unity for a brief moment of pan-Hellenic unity.

But in the 9th century BC. e. there was none of this. Homer, according to modern researchers (Gasparova, Greece. M., 2004, p. 17, and many others), belonged to the number of wandering storytellers - Aeds. They wandered from city to city, from leader to leader, and to the accompaniment of a stringed cithara they talked about “the affairs of bygone days, the legends of deep antiquity.”

So, one of the Aeds, named Homer, with whose name an entire cultural period is associated, remains to this day what is called a “model” for European poetry and poets. Any poet dreams of being quoted, remembered for a long time, studied by historians and philologists, and that hundred-year-old rumors make his name synonymous with truth, faith - no matter what miracles happen to his heroes. Any poet wants to create his own universe, his own heroes, that is, to become like the Demiurge. That is why Anna Akhmatova said: “The poet is always right.”

The whole era is called Homeric. Just as the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy is called the era Dante And Giotto or the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries in England - Shakespearean. These names are a milestone, a starting point, always the beginning of a new era in culture, the creation of a new language, previously unknown forms of artistic consciousness, the opening of a new world to contemporaries and descendants. In Homer's texts, the mythological cosmos is revealed to us in the fullness of the lives of gods and heroes, their behavior, connections with historical events and everyday details of everyday life. The hexameter - hexameter - makes the space of the poem solemn and spacious. […]

What do we know about Homer? Almost nothing and a lot. He was, according to the statement, a blind, impoverished wandering singer - aed. “If you give me money, I’ll sing, potters, I’ll give you a song.” It is unknown where he was born. But already in those distant times, Homer was so famous that “seven cities compete for the wise root of Homer: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Pylos, Argos, Athens.” His very personality in our perception is a combination of the mysteries of mythological, documentary and even everyday history.

More recently, the first olive tree was shown on the Acropolis in Athens, which grew from the blow of Athena’s spear during her dispute with Poseidon. And also a well - a source that arose from the blow of Poseidon’s trident during the same dispute. The ship on which Theseus sailed to Crete was kept on the Acropolis. Pedigree Lycurgus went back to Hercules, etc. The prototype has always been mythology - the undoubted starting point. About the prototype of Homer himself below.

The world described in the hymns and both poems became undoubtedly historical for contemporaries and descendants only thanks to the “singer equal to God.” If we choose from documentary and poetic facts, then it is not our choice that always wins, but the choice of time. Time is imprinted in memory with images of a document that has become poetry.

Already during the time of the emperor Augusta(1st century AD) someone Greek Dion Chrysostom, a wandering philosopher and speaker, traveling around cities, refuted the authenticity of the facts of the poems.“My friends, the Trojans,” Dion spoke to the residents of Troy, “it’s easy to deceive a person... Homer deceived humanity with his stories about the Trojan War for almost a thousand years.” And then followed quite reasonable arguments not in favor of Homer’s story.

He proves with facts that there was no victory of the Achaeans over the inhabitants of Ilion, that it was the Trojans who won the victory and became the future of the ancient world. “Very little time passes,” says Dion, “and we see that the Trojan Aeneas and his friends conquer Italy, the Trojan Helen - Epirus, and the Trojan Antenor - Venice. ...And this is not fiction: in all these places there are cities founded, according to legend, by Trojan heroes, and among these cities, Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas.”

And more than two thousand years later, in one of the poet’s poems of the late 20th century Joseph Brodsky his Odysseus says:

“I don’t remember how the war ended,
and I don’t remember how old you are now,
Grow big, my Telemak, grow,
Only the gods know whether we will meet again."

The reason that gave birth to Brodsky's verse is deeply personal, but the poet, who claimed that ninety percent of him consists of antiquity, views his life through myth, as an eyewitness.

Who remembers Dion Chrysostom with his crushing arguments? Nobody... The anonymous blind man wins. "The poet is always right." Let us add - a special poet, the secret of whose immortality cannot be deciphered, as well as the indispensable secret of his anonymity.

Homer's contemporary and rival was the poet Hesiod, a peasant from the town of Askry. He was also an aed singer. His poetic instructions were practical in nature: how to farm, how to sow, etc. His most famous poem is called “Works and Days.” In the city of Chalkis, Hesiod challenged Homer to a poetry competition. […]

Let us return, however, to the competition between Homer and Hesiod. The judges declared Hesiod the winner, "because Homer sings of war, and Hesiod of peaceful labor." But for world culture, which has not yet lived a day without Homer, Hesiod is only his contemporary.

They say that Homer was very sad, died of grief and was buried on the island of Ios. They showed his grave there.”

Volkova P.D., Bridge over the Abyss, M., “Zebra E”, 2014, p. 61-62, 63-64 and 65-67.

Quote from Barucaba

Homer by Antoine-Denis Chaudet, 1806.

Homer (ancient Greek Ὅμηρος, 8th century BC) is a legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems “Iliad” (the oldest monument of European literature and “Odyssey”).
About half of the ancient Greek literary papyri found are passages from Homer.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer.

Homer - legendary ancient Greek poet-storyteller

It is clear, however, that the Iliad and Odyssey were created much later than the events described in them, but earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. The chronological period in which modern science localizes the life of Homer is approximately the 8th century BC. e. According to Herodotus, Homer lived 400 years before him; other ancient sources say that he lived during the Trojan War.

Bust of Homer in the Louvre

Homer's birthplace is unknown. In the ancient tradition, seven cities argued for the right to be called his homeland: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens. As Herodotus and Pausanias report, Homer died on the island of Ios in the Cyclades archipelago. Probably, the Iliad and Odyssey were composed on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, inhabited by Ionian tribes, or on one of the adjacent islands. However, the Homeric dialect does not provide accurate information about the tribal affiliation of Homer, since it is a combination of the Ionian and Aeolian dialects of the ancient Greek language. There is an assumption that his dialect represents one of the forms of poetic Koine, formed long before the estimated time of Homer's life.

Paul Jourdy, Homère chantant ses vers, 1834, Paris

Traditionally, Homer is portrayed as blind. It is most likely that this idea does not come from the real facts of his life, but is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography. Since many outstanding legendary soothsayers and singers were blind (for example, Tiresias), according to ancient logic that connected the prophetic and poetic gifts, the assumption of Homer’s blindness looked very plausible. In addition, the singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is blind from birth, which could also be perceived as autobiographical.

Homer. Naples, National Archaeological Museum

There is a legend about the poetic duel between Homer and Hesiod, described in the work “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” created no later than the 3rd century. BC e., and according to many researchers, much earlier. The poets allegedly met on the island of Euboea at games in honor of the deceased Amphidemus and each read their best poems. King Paned, who acted as a judge at the competition, awarded victory to Hesiod, since he calls for agriculture and peace, and not for war and massacres. At the same time, the audience's sympathies were on Homer's side.

In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, a number of works are attributed to Homer, undoubtedly created later: the “Homeric hymns” (VII-V centuries BC, considered, along with Homer, the oldest examples of Greek poetry), the comic poem “Margit”, etc. .

The meaning of the name “Homer” (it was first found in the 7th century BC, when Callinus of Ephesus called him the author of “Thebaid”) was tried to be explained back in antiquity; the variants “hostage” (Hesychius), “following” (Aristotle) ​​were proposed. or “blind” (Ephorus of Kim), “but all these options are as unconvincing as modern proposals to attribute to him the meaning of “compiler” or “accompanist”.<…>This word in its Ionian form Ομηρος is almost certainly a real personal name" (Boura S.M. Heroic poetry.)

Homer (circa 460 BC)

A.F. Losev: The traditional image of Homer among the Greeks. This traditional image of Homer, which has existed for about 3000 years, if we discard all the pseudo-scientific inventions of the later Greeks, comes down to the image of a blind and wise (and, according to Ovid, also poor), necessarily an old singer, creating wonderful tales under the constant guidance of the muse that inspires him and leading the life of some wandering rhapsodist. We find similar features of folk singers among many other nations, and therefore there is nothing specific or original about them. This is the most common and most widespread type of folk singer, the most beloved and most popular among different peoples.

Most researchers believe that Homer's poems were created in Asia Minor, in Ionia in the 8th century. BC e. based on mythological tales of the Trojan War. There is late ancient evidence of the final edition of their texts under the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus in the mid-6th century. BC e., when their performance was included in the festivities of the Great Panathenaia.

In ancient times, Homer was credited with the comic poems “Margit” and “The War of Mice and Frogs”, a cycle of works about the Trojan War and the return of heroes to Greece: “Cypria”, “Aethiopida”, “The Little Iliad”, “The Capture of Ilion”, “Returns” ( so-called “cyclical poems”, only small fragments have survived). Under the name "Homeric Hymns" there was a collection of 33 hymns to the gods. During the Hellenistic era, philologists of the Library of Alexandria Aristarchus of Samothrace, Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium did a great deal of work collecting and clarifying the manuscripts of Homer’s poems (they also divided each poem into 24 cantos according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet). The sophist Zoilus (4th century BC), nicknamed “the scourge of Homer” for his critical statements, became a household name. Xenon and Hellanicus, so-called. “dividing”, expressed the idea that Homer may have owned only one “Iliad”

Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir (1809-1892). Home.

In the 19th century, the Iliad and Odyssey were compared with the epics of the Slavs, skaldic poetry, Finnish and German epics. In the 1930s The American classical philologist Milman Parry, comparing Homer's poems with the living epic tradition that still existed at that time among the peoples of Yugoslavia, discovered in Homer's poems a reflection of the poetic technique of folk singers. The poetic formulas they created from stable combinations and epithets (“swift-footed” Achilles, “shepherd of nations” Agamemnon, “much-witted” Odysseus, “sweet-tongued” Nestor) made it possible for the narrator to “improvise” perform epic songs consisting of many thousands of verses.

The Iliad and Odyssey belong entirely to the centuries-old epic tradition, but this does not mean that oral creativity is anonymous. “Before Homer, we cannot name anyone’s poem of this kind, although, of course, there were many poets” (Aristotle). Aristotle saw the main difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey from all other epic works in the fact that Homer does not unfold his narrative gradually, but builds it around one event - the basis of the poems is the dramatic unity of action. Another feature that Aristotle also drew attention to: the character of the hero is revealed not by the author’s descriptions, but by the speeches uttered by the hero himself.

Medieval illustration for the Iliad

The language of Homer's poems - exclusively poetic, “supra-dialectal” - was never identical to living spoken language. It consisted of a combination of Aeolian (Boeotia, Thessaly, the island of Lesbos) and Ionian (Attica, island Greece, the coast of Asia Minor) dialect features with the preservation of the archaic system of earlier eras. The songs of the Iliad and Odyssey were metrically shaped by the hexameter, a poetic meter rooted in Indo-European epic, in which each verse consists of six feet with a regular alternation of long and short syllables. The unusual poetic language of the epic was emphasized by the timeless nature of events and the greatness of the images of the heroic past.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874)

Sensational discoveries of G. Schliemann in the 1870s and 80s. proved that Troy, Mycenae and the Achaean citadels are not a myth, but a reality. Schliemann's contemporaries were struck by the literal correspondence of a number of his findings in the fourth shaft tomb in Mycenae with the descriptions of Homer. The impression was so strong that the era of Homer became associated for a long time with the heyday of Achaean Greece in the 14th-13th centuries. BC e. The poems, however, also contain numerous archaeologically attested features of the “heroic age” culture, such as mention of iron tools and weapons or the custom of cremation of the dead. In terms of content, Homer's epics contain many motifs, storylines, and myths gleaned from early poetry. In Homer you can hear echoes of Minoan culture, and even trace connections with Hittite mythology. However, his main source of epic material was the Mycenaean period. It is during this era that his epic takes place. Living in the fourth century after the end of this period, which he highly idealizes, Homer cannot be a source of historical information about the political, social life, material culture or religion of the Mycenaean world. But in the political center of this society, Mycenae, objects identical to those described in the epic (mainly weapons and tools) were found, while some Mycenaean monuments present images, things and even scenes typical of the poetic reality of the epic. The events of the Trojan War, around which Homer unfolded the actions of both poems, were attributed to the Mycenaean era. He showed this war as an armed campaign of the Greeks (called Achaeans, Danaans, Argives) under the leadership of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon against Troy and its allies. For the Greeks, the Trojan War was a historical fact dating back to the 14th-12th centuries. BC e. (according to Eratosthenes' calculations, Troy fell in 1184)

Karl Becker. Homer sings

A comparison of the evidence of the Homeric epic with archaeological data confirms the conclusions of many researchers that in its final edition it took shape in the 8th century. BC e., and many researchers consider the “Catalog of Ships” (Iliad, 2nd Canto) to be the oldest part of the epic. Obviously, the poems were not created at the same time: “The Iliad” reflects ideas about the person of the “heroic period”; “The Odyssey” stands, as it were, at the turn of another era - the time of the Great Greek colonization, when the boundaries of the world mastered by Greek culture expanded.

For people of antiquity, Homer's poems were a symbol of Hellenic unity and heroism, a source of wisdom and knowledge of all aspects of life - from military art to practical morality. Homer, along with Hesiod, was considered the creator of a comprehensive and orderly mythological picture of the universe: the poets “compiled genealogies of the gods for the Hellenes, provided the names of the gods with epithets, divided virtues and occupations among them, and drew their images” (Herodotus). According to Strabo, Homer was the only poet of antiquity who knew almost everything about the ecumene, the peoples inhabiting it, their origin, way of life and culture. Thucydides, Pausanias (writer), and Plutarch used Homer’s data as authentic and trustworthy. The father of tragedy, Aeschylus, called his dramas “crumbs from the great feasts of Homer.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Homer and the Shepherds

Greek children learned to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer was quoted, commented on, and explained allegorically. The Pythagorean philosophers called on the Pythagorean philosophers to correct souls by reading selected passages from Homer’s poems. Plutarch reports that Alexander the Great always carried a copy of the Iliad with him, which he kept under his pillow along with a dagger.

M. Tsvetaeva

Portrait of Homer

Homer lived nine centuries BC. e., and we do not know what the world and the place that today is called Ancient, or ancient, Greece looked like then. All smells and colors were thicker, sharper. By raising his finger, a person went straight into the sky, because for him it was both material and animate. Greece smelled of the sea, stone, sheep's wool, olives, and the blood of endless wars. But we don’t know, we can’t imagine pictures of life at that time, which is usually called the “Homeric period,” i.e., IX–VIII centuries BC. e. Isn't it strange? An entire historical period is named after the poet after three millennia? Much water has passed under the bridge, and the events are blurred, but his name remains the definition of an entire period, sealed by two poems - the Iliad (about the war of the Achaeans with Ilion) and the Odyssey (about the return of the warrior Odysseus to Ithaca after the Trojan War).

All the events described in the poems took place around 1200 BC. e., i.e. three hundred years before the life of the poet, and recorded in the 6th century BC. e., i.e. three hundred years after his death. By the 6th century BC. e. the world has changed incredibly, unrecognizably. Already the main pan-Hellenic event - the Olympics - established a “sacred truce” every four years and was a “point of truth” and unity for a brief moment of pan-Hellenic unity.

But in the 9th century BC. e. there was none of this. Homer, according to the testimony of modern researchers (Gasparova, Greece, p. 17, M: 2004 and many others), belonged to the number of wandering storytellers - Aeds. They wandered from city to city, from leader to leader, and to the accompaniment of a stringed cithara they talked about “the affairs of bygone days, the legends of deep antiquity.”

So, one of the Aeds, named Homer, with whose name a whole cultural period is associated, remains to this day what is called a “model” for European poetry and poets. Any poet dreams of being quoted, remembered for a long time, studied by historians and philologists, and so that a hundred-year-old rumor makes his name synonymous with truth, faith - no matter what miracles happen to his heroes. Any poet wants to create his own universe, his own heroes, that is, to become like the Demiurge. That is why Anna Akhmatova said: “The poet is always right.”

The whole era is called Homeric. Just as the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy is called the era of Dante and Giotto, or the turn of the 16th-17th centuries in England is called Shakespearean. These names are a milestone, a starting point, always the beginning of a new era in culture, the creation of a new language, previously unknown forms of artistic consciousness, the opening of a new world to contemporaries and descendants.

In Homer's texts, the mythological cosmos is revealed to us in the fullness of the lives of gods and heroes, their behavior, connections with historical events and everyday details of everyday life.

The hexameter - hexameter - makes the space of the poem solemn and spacious. Listen to what the Trojan hero Hector says to his wife Andromache before the battle with Achilles. He knows everything that will happen. Cassandra is his sister:

... but it's a shame

To me before the Trojans and Trojan women in long robes,

If I, like a wretched coward, shirk the battle,

I myself know perfectly well, believe me, both in my heart and in my spirit:

There will be one day - and sacred Troy will perish,

Priam and the people of the spearman Priam will perish with her!

But it’s not the death of so many Trojans that I now lament,

Not about my brave brothers who will soon

They will fall into dust, killed by the hand of enraged enemies, -

I only grieve for you! Achaean in a copper shell

All in tears he will take you far into captivity:

In Argos you will weave cloth for someone else’s mistress...

Hector goes to duel with Achilles the “godlike”, knowing both about his defeat and about the death of Troy, grieving over the death of his family, people, and the slavery of his beloved wife. It is clear - the vision was given to the great hero of Troy and his sister Cassandra. The heroic-pathetic rhetoric of farewell and lament was conveyed in painting not by a contemporary of Homer, but by an artist of high style: the classicism of the early 19th century by Louis David.

The gods do not spare mortals with the gift of immortals, their knowledge of “beginnings and endings.” But Homer himself was endowed with the divine gift of light through darkness, of higher knowledge - vision, with which only prophets and poets are endowed. Perhaps that is why the legend endows him with blindness to the near frontiers, to what is in front of his nose, but with a vision of the mountain worlds and those that were. He sees events three hundred years ago in order to open horizons for millennia to come. And there is a lot of evidence of this, ending with the archeology of the 20th century.

What do we know about Homer? Almost nothing and a lot. He was, according to the statement, a blind, poor, wandering singer - aed. “If you give me money, I’ll sing, potters, I’ll give you a song.” It is unknown where he was born. But already in those distant times, Homer was so famous that “seven cities compete for the wise root of Homer: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Pylos, Argos, Athens.” His very personality in our perception is a combination of the mysteries of mythological, documentary and even everyday history.

Not long ago, the first olive tree was shown on the Acropolis in Athens, which grew from the blow of Athena’s spear during her dispute with Poseidon. And also a well - a source that arose from the blow of Poseidon’s trident during the same dispute. The ship on which Theseus sailed to Crete was kept on the Acropolis. The pedigree of Lycurgus went back to Hercules, etc. The prototype has always been mythology - the undoubted starting point. About the prototype of Homer himself below. The world described in the hymns and both poems became undoubtedly historical for contemporaries and descendants only thanks to the “singer equal to God.” If we choose from documentary and poetic facts, then it is not our choice that always wins, but the choice of time. Time is imprinted in memory with images of a document that has become poetry.

Already during the time of Emperor Augustus (1st century AD), a certain Greek Dion Chrysostom, a wandering philosopher and orator, traveling through cities, refuted the authenticity of the facts of the poems. “My friends, the Trojans,” Dion spoke to the residents of Troy, “it’s easy to deceive a person... Homer deceived humanity with his stories about the Trojan War for almost a thousand years.” And then followed quite reasonable arguments not in favor of Homeric history. He proves with facts that there was no victory of the Achaeans over the inhabitants of Ilion, that it was the Trojans who won the victory and became the future of the ancient world. “Very little time passes,” says Dion, “and we see that the Trojan Aeneas and his friends conquer Italy, the Trojan Helen - Epirus, and the Trojan Antenor - Venice. ...And this is not fiction: in all these places there are cities founded, according to legend, by Trojan heroes, and among these cities, Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas.”

And more than two thousand years later, in one of the poems of the late 20th century poet Joseph Brodsky, his Odysseus says: “I don’t remember how the war ended, / and how old you are now, I don’t remember. / Grow big, my Telemachus, grow. / Only the gods know if we will meet again.

The reason that gave birth to Brodsky's verse is deeply personal, but the poet, who claimed that ninety percent of him consists of antiquity, views his life through myth, as an eyewitness.

Who remembers Dion Chrysostom with his crushing arguments? Nobody... The anonymous blind man wins. "The poet is always right." Let us add - a special poet, the secret of whose immortality cannot be deciphered, as well as the indispensable secret of his anonymity.

A contemporary and rival of Homer was the poet Hesiod, a peasant from the town of Askry. He was also an aed singer. His poetic instructions were of a practical nature: how to farm, how to sow, etc. His most famous poem is called “Works and Days.”

In the city of Chalkis, Hesiod challenged Homer to a poetry competition. Hesiod began:

Sing us a song, O Muse, but sing no ordinary song. Do not talk in it about what happened, what is and what will happen.

Hesiod asked a theme of practical significance. No need for fantasies. Homer responded in his own style and answered what would not happen:

It is true: Mortal people will never rush in a chariot race, celebrating the memory of the immortal Zeus.

So, gentlemen, we must sing about what is not passing and eternal. How to sow the land is also important, but as a guide to agriculture.

This is the 9th century BC. A dispute between two poets about the essence and tasks of poetry. (Let us add in parentheses that this dispute will never end.)

Hesiod asks again:

Tell me, I ask, about one more thing, God-equal Homer: Is there any delight in the world for us mortals?

Homer answers life-affirmingly and instructively:

The best things in life are at a full table, in bliss and peace

Raise the ringing bowls and listen to cheerful songs.

Life without adversity, pleasure without pain and death without suffering.

Here it is - a wish for all times, one might say, a feasting toast, an aphorism forever.

From Hesiod's address to Homer, there is no doubt about how famous Homer was. Hesiod, his elder brother, calls him “god-like,” that is, practically a hero, immortal. Time always knows about its immortals, the only question is how it treats them. No matter how it is treated, it is always inadequate.

It will forever remain a mystery why Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church by John of Kronstadt himself, and not by some ignoramus. Why Mozart was buried in a mass grave, having patrons and rich patrons of the arts. Why Andrei Platonov, the best, only brilliant Soviet writer (this was well known to his contemporaries) swept, as a janitor, exactly the yard where the Literary Institute was located. And Shakespeare? It is unknown who he was, where he was born, and where he was buried. Try writing a biography of Diego Velazquez or Cervantes. You won't succeed. They will all escape us.

Let us return, however, to the competition between Homer and Hesiod. The judges declared Hesiod the winner, “because Homer glorifies war, and Hesiod praises peaceful labor.” But for world culture, which has not yet lived a day without Homer, Hesiod is only his contemporary.

They say that Homer was very sad, died of grief and was buried on the island of Ios. They showed his grave there.

Orpheus performing his songs. Fragment of ceramics. Mid-5th century BC e.

And Homer had his own prototype. His name was Orpheus - a Thracian singer, creator of music and poetry. His name is associated with the idea of ​​combining words with musical string accompaniment. We can call Orpheus the founder of bard lyricism. He was a bard whose universal genius attuned the world to absolute harmony. Plants, stones, water listened to him, he could pacify Cerberus, who guarded the entrances to Hades, with his song, he drew tears of delight from the Erinyes and from the goddess of the underworld Persephone. Whether he was the son of Apollo or Dionysus is a big debate. Rather, it was Apollo, whose sensitive cithara tuned the music of the spheres into a harmonic manner, that is, it was the basis of cosmic, and not just earthly, harmony. Apollo and Orpheus are related by another charming significant character, the creator of a musical instrument common to both - the cithara. This is Hermes. When he was a baby, he caught a turtle, and its shell, mysterious with the mysterious signs of the original creation, became the basis of a musical resonator. He pulled cow sinews onto the shell, and the seven-stringed cithara turned out to be glorious. Hermes, naturally, is the patron of brilliant kifareds. It was he who became Orpheus’s guide to Hades, from where the poet, inconsolable with his lost love, wanted to return his bride, the nymph Eurydice. Alas, the brides do not return from there, the poets, faithful to their shadows, mourn their Eurydice.

For those who have lost their last shreds

Cover (no lips, no cheeks!..)

Oh, isn't this an abuse of authority?

Orpheus descending into Hades?

Marina Tsvetaeva

Orpheus is one of the heroes of the Argonauts' campaign to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. With his singing, he saved the lives of his friends, bewitching them with the singing of the sirens themselves.

The end of Orpheus, like any brilliant poet, was tragic. He was torn apart by the wild companions of Dionysus - the maenads. The reasons for their action are unclear. Although these reasons may be the same as today, when fanatics of singers and film actors are also ready to tear them apart out of wild love and delight. It has long been noted that human passions change little - both in essence and in manifestations. A poet could be torn to shreds, he could become a victim of someone else's fury, but it was impossible to silence his voice. Orpheus's head floated next to the cithara. He (already eternal) prophesied. “No, all of me will not die. / The soul in the treasured lyre will outlive my ashes and escape decay,” - Pushkin’s words about the immortality of the Orpheus, about the soul in the treasured lyre. Isn't Homer's image an echo of Orpheus? This is the primary and most important thing in the legacy of antiquity to culture. Original from Homer: audibility, echo sounder. Audibility is the law, the idea, the measure of the Greek world. Audibility includes us in the circle of acoustics as understanding. Audibility is mutual understanding. Audibility as understanding, unity through understanding. Is this not the hidden super task of all Greek art? And theater, and sculpture, and, of course, dialogues of the feast, the themes of which were suggested by images of feast vessels (vases, drawings on vases). And isn’t this the basis of polis democracy? For to understand means to become equal, to speak the same language. The opposite example is the Tower of Babel - the effect of inaudibility of each other, chaos and inequality, which we will talk about in more detail in another part of our book. Orpheus's echoing orbit is enormous. Every creature listens to him, and Kerbers, and wild animals, and flowers, and birds... “Every sound has its own echo in the empty air...” The echoholicity of poetry is in mutual audibility. And this law was born, as was said, in the deep depths of ancient mythological history by Orpheus-Homer.

Orpheus was not happy. Personal happiness is not for poets. And his death was tragic. Like Orpheus, the poet Dante, led by his Hermes - Virgil, did not descend into Hell? And was not the shadow of Donna Beatrice a later echo, a refrain of Eurydice?

In ancient mythology, Orpheus has an antipodal double. This is Famira the Kifared. He was some kind of relative of Orpheus and lived when music-poetry and the muses of poets were born. There were legends about Famir as a musician, and also a handsome man. But Famira was arrogant and vain and challenged the muses themselves to a competition. In his thirst for victory and possession of them, Famira lost. He lost his voice, the gift of harp and sight. Orpheus prophesied even in death. Famira was deprived of his gift during his lifetime. The Greeks had a keen sense of the boundaries of ethical standards. They knew that talent alone is not enough. What can we add to this today? Sophocles wrote a tragedy about Thamir and himself played the main role in it. Unfortunately, this play by Sophocles has not reached us.

Excavations carried out by Heinrich Schliemann in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century on a hill considered to be ancient Troy and in Mycenae were a scientific discovery and documentary evidence of the authenticity of Homer's poems. Schliemann's house in Athens is decorated with quotes from poems. Quotes in golden mosaics decorate the ceiling, walls of the office, nursery, etc. From a psychological point of view, such persistence is less often absorbed, more often rejected, which, perhaps, happened with Schliemann’s children. All doubts (and there are many of them, including excavations) recede before the certainty of the inexhaustibility of the encyclopedia of antiquity in world culture.

The image of the singer and poet of the entire European and Russian tradition is obviously formed under the influence of the complex code of the image of the storyteller-aed of early ancient culture. Even more than that: anonymity and the absence of a biography of facts is already an example of a poet’s biography. Only two features are emphasized: the theme of wandering (being away from home) and the attitude towards vocation.

The Matrix of Orpheus and Homer, through all the centuries and millennia until today, has remained committed only to its gift. In this sense, all poets are children of myth more than of their family.

From the biography of someone who actually lived in the 7th century BC. e. The poet Arion the Cyfared left a story about how he was captured by sea robbers. He asked them for mercy: to sing before dying. Having finished the song, Arion rushed into the sea, but was saved and carried ashore by the sacred Apollon Dolphin. The echo of the 19th century - Pushkin - responds with the poem "Arion" ("There were many of us on the canoe..."): "I sing the old songs and dress my poor land in the sun under the rock." Emerging from the abyss and a sign that you are living again is a song. Does a poet, wanderer and wanderer need a biography? What could account for Shakespeare's genius whether he was the son of a Stanford butcher or Lord Redcliffe? Shakespeare repeated the ideal Orphic-Homeric biography, or rather the lack thereof. He completely and completely embodied and dissolved in his poetry. An Englishman of the Elizabethan era, translations of whose works into all languages ​​of the world are in all bookstores and whose plays are performed without interruption in all theaters of the world. He is a mysterious anonymous person.

Sappho and Alcaeus. Poets of the 7th century BC e. Calaf painting. V century BC e. Museum of Ancient Art. Munich.

In the poetic wandering of the Homeric tradition, there is not only out-of-homeness during life, but also “out-of-homeness”, “out-of-spatiality” posthumously. Intelligibility of every existing language and time. The amazement of the modern reader: on the counter of a bookstall in the State Duma, among economic and political fiction, is a gift, illustrated, 2006 edition of Homer’s Odyssey.

Bards never disappeared from culture, with the exception of episodes of total unfreedom of society, i.e. totalitarianism. For the wanderer is free. He easily crosses borders and finds listeners everywhere. The wanderer, poet and philosopher of the 12th century Francis of Assisi, who sang strange prayers under the snow, found a response and understanding in the souls of birds, like Orpheus. The mad tramp is canonized, wrote the book “Little Flowers”, and his followers are called Franciscans.

In his Notes on the Gallic War (1st century BC), Caesar described the Celts-bards who belonged to the spiritual priestly caste of the Druids. They conveyed tales about history and military exploits, about the courage of their ancestors. Historical memory lives in their song; contemporaries consider them bearers of truth. Just like the ancient Scandinavian skald poets. The origin of skaldic poetry has no clear answer, but Celtic connections have long been beyond doubt. “Burning in the wounds / the glow of battle / Iron stings / encroaching on life / drops of the slaughter hissed / on the field of spears, / streams of arrows / streamed across Strod...” - this is how the bard Eivin the Destroyer wrote. Eivin's poems echoed distantly in the poetry of the 20th century Russian skald Velimir Khlebnikov.

In northern legend there is one hero who, like Prometheus or Hercules of Greek antiquity, can be called both a hero and a god. His name is ?din. The beginning of the culture of northern civilization, the gift of magical written signs - runes and honey poetry - are associated with it.

Around his name - the founder of the Welsung family - the plots of Scandinavian cosmogony, the genealogy of heroes, the swarming of Scandinavian mythology densely populated by fairies, gnomes, giants, mermaids, and dragons develop. The heroic epic “Younger Edda”, “Elder Edda”, “Velsung Saga” is for Northern Europe the same as the epic poetry of Homer for the ancient Mediterranean. And skalds are the same aeds. Druids are a great sacred tribe of carriers of world memory and the complex experience of people's relationships with the natural world, with each other and with God. In a word, they are wanderers - poets with a light load of a lyre (cithara, harp, guitar, harp) slung on their backs and a great burden of responsibility for the word before their calling. But the time of immortality drives them along the roads of boundless, that is, devoid of boundaries, space.

Both the “Younger” and “Elder Eddas” tell the story of the world ash tree Ygdrasil. The Younger Edda writes: “Its branches are stretched over the whole world and rise above the sky. Three roots support the tree and these roots spread far. One root - among the aces. The other is among the giants, where the world Abyss used to be. The third reaches out to Niflheim. The Elder Edda repeats the description of Ygdrasil: “With three roots / that ash tree / sprouted on three sides: / Hel - under the first, Khrimtursam - the second / third - the race of men.”

Dean - the father of the gods, the son of heaven - sacrificed himself and crucified himself on the “Ygdrasil tree”, pierced by his own spear. But he received the right to drink the sacred honey and pass that honey on to the aesirs and “those people who know how to write poetry.” This is how the “Younger Edda” narrates: “I know, I hung / in the branches in the wind / for nine long nights / pierced by a spear /... No one fed me, / no one gave me water, / I looked at the ground, / I raised the runes, / moaning them picked it up - / and fell from the tree.” The roots of the tree go into the unknown, to the beginning of beginnings, to countless days. By the way, the calendar, that is, the counting of days, is also associated with the wisdom of the Eddas. So, counting days and years is a number; runic signs - the magic of writing and the honey of poetry have the same time and a single source on the border of sleep and wakefulness of the crucified din.

Din and his priests were called “masters of song” and this art originated from them in the northern countries. And when they sang, their enemies in battle became helpless, filled with horror, and their weapons wounded them no more than a twig. And nothing brought harm to the warriors of Din - the singers. Such warrior-singers were called “bercherks” (skalds, aeds).

Din's companions and his retinue, in addition to poet-warriors, were warrior-maidens. Their names were Valkyries - maidens of fate - those who carry warriors from the battlefield to the paradise of immortality, Valhalla. Valkyries are wonderful. Their blond hair curls around their helmets, and their eyes are such a bright blue that it’s hard to describe. One of these Valkyries was called Brunhild, and the death of the great warrior Sigurd or Siegfried, the conqueror of the Dragon, is associated with her.

Like Achilles, Siegfried was invulnerable, with the exception of one single place - his right shoulder blade, to which a maple leaf stuck while Siegfried took a bath from the blood of the Dragon he killed. The shoulder blade was his “Achilles heel”. O women! Only his wife Gudrun knew Siegfried's secret. Further in the heroic saga of the “Rheingold”, a story begins to match the quarrels on Olympus or in the Iliad. Stories of jealousy, vanity, deceit, betrayal, love. “The best of all was Sigurd the horse, / my brothers / killed him!” - Gudrun laments, not remembering that she betrayed his secret to the jealous Brunhild and envious brothers. I would keep my mouth shut.

In the middle of the 17th century, a parchment copy with songs from the Elder Edda was found, as if written in the 13th century. Or rather, “recorded” in the 13th century according to the songs of the skalds that existed in the oral tradition. The adoption of Christianity and Christian traditions are intertwined with ancient Nordic mythology. Thus, rune stones installed in the 11th century are crowned with an image of Christ. And recorded in the XII – XIII centuries. the full version of the “Song of the Nibelungs”, built into a kind of poetic unity, is a heroic epic with a flair of Christian ideas. (Beowulf. Elder Edda. Song of the Nibelungs. M. 1975. Introductory articles by L. Ya. Gurevich. Translation by A. I. Korsun)

The saga of the “Ring of the Nibelung” resurfaces, arousing interest in medieval culture, in research, in poetry no less than the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century. The event was the publication in 1835 of Jacob Grimm's fundamental study, German Mythology. And the subsequent productions from 1854 to 1874, that is, for 20 years, of Richard Wagner’s four operas “The Ring of the Nibelung”: “Das Rheingold”, “Die Walküre”, “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods”.

The entire 19th century was fascinated by antiquity, its ideas, art, and poetry. Archeology literally explodes culture with its certainty. Museums and collections of ancient art are being created.

At the same time, with no less enthusiasm, the 19th century perceived the mysterious world of European medieval mythology and poetry on the wave of romanticism. Classicism and romanticism live side by side in the complex interweaving of antiquity with the Roman-Gothic heroic epic of “The Nibelungen”, “The Song of Roland” and “King Arthur”, etc. I would also like to recall the Russian heroic-lyrical poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” in retelling of the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, published in 1824. The authenticity of the texts of the poem has caused a lot of controversy. But we leave this question out of the question. The poem is genuine. According to evidence, it was written around 1185 and told about the tragic story of Prince Igor Svyatoslavovich’s campaign against the Polovtsians literally 50 years before the start of the Mongol invasion of Rus'. And what a wonder! How its external design resembles the Iliad. The poem seems to have two authors: an objective historian and an old poet. The historian argues with a storyteller named Boyan. Boyan “the prophetic” is the son of Veles (? Din). “O Boyan,” our objective historian addresses him, “the nightingale of old times, if only you had sung these regiments, flew with your mind under the clouds, twisting words around our time, ascending along the Trojan path from the fields to the mountains...” But our objective witness is The documentarian cannot defeat Boyan and still turns onto the “Troyan path.” The role of Andromache is played by Prince Igor’s wife, Yaroslavna. "Insomnia... Homer." In what mysterious ways does 12th-century Rus' “get wet” with Homer’s universal matrix. A person comes into the world and forever turns the arrows of culture, image, style, becoming a milestone in the history of cultural consciousness. The author of the Lay is as anonymous as previous authors.

We will conditionally consider him one of the skald-bard-storytellers on whose behalf the story is told. The 12th century is significant for Europe, for the whole world. This is an explosion, a breakdown, new ideas, Crusades. The change of milestones is no less global than the Renaissance. But we will talk in detail about the 12th century and the heroes of that time in due time and in another section. Now we are only mentioning those new spiritual values ​​that were destined for a long journey into the future and the roots of the tree of which had already sprouted one and a half thousand years before the “Word”. We call this time (from the 12th century BC to the 12th century AD) the formation of a new consciousness, for which the alphabet, word, theater, image and music represent a new continuous text of culture.

Returning to “The Lay,” I would also like to remember that, like Wagner’s operatic quatrology of “The Nibelungen,” almost at the same time, the great Russian composer Borodin wrote the opera “Prince Igor.”

Opera is a “grand style”, a large form, where the words and dialogues of brilliant primary sources are, as a rule, simplified by very weak librettists and the music of Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin takes upon itself all the responsibility of dramaturgy.

In the 11th century, in the south of France, in Provence, in Aquitaine, a new cultural tradition arises (no other word has been coined) - a new cultural tradition - at the same time as old as creation - arises - lyrical and heroic poetry, accompanied by musical accompaniment.

The poets themselves wrote the texts and music, and performed them themselves, wandering between castles or going to the East under the banners of the Templar Crusaders. And those poets were called troubadours, and their poetry was called courtly. By the way, how significant is it that the literal meaning of the word “troubadour” is “one who finds new things.” They accompanied their narratives or outpourings of soul by playing something like a harp, violin or lute.

The jester is an improviser. Performer of folk parables and anecdotes to the accompaniment of bells. End of the 15th century Miniature. Marmottan-Monet Museum. Paris.

The troubadours told different stories - heroic, military - about heroes like Roland, Cid, Saint-Cyr, Count of Toulouse, or Raimbaut of Orange, or Count Hugo, about the conquerors of dragons, Saracens and other infidels and saints. They also told gossip in the guise of ballads: who was sleeping with whom, and who was sick with what, and how much property someone had. They spied little by little. But the main thing, the new thing that they were the creators of, is love lyrics, this is a new cult. Cult of the Beautiful Lady. It arose under the influence of the Benedictine St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Mary the Mother of God in the spiritual theology of Catholicism was united with the Platonic cult of the Beautiful Lady. Having appeared to us in the 11th-12th centuries, the new Maria-logy never left the stage of cultural European history, until the 20th century. In Russia, its singer was the poet Alexander Blok. Everything reminded me of Princess Uta, wrapped in a cloak on the portal of Braunburg Cathedral. She looks into the distance to see if her husband, Knight Egart, is coming. For now, let's just talk in general terms about troubadour poets, historians, wanderers, desperate adventurers without a future or past, people of the most varied origins, from aristocrats to commoners.

Many studies have been devoted to the history of the Albigensian troubadours and Minnesingers. The author of one of them, “History of the Albigensians,” Napoleon Peyrat writes: “Like Greece, Aquitaine began with poetry. In Aquitaine, as in Hellas, the source of poetic inspiration was on the cloud-covered mountain peaks” (History of the Albigenses, M. 1992, pp. 47 and 51).

So the circle of continuity of the Homeric tradition of the Aeds-troubadours closes, returning in a spiral to its original circle, for in the lyric poetry of medieval Europe we see the shadows of the heroic epic and hear the stringed sounds of the citharas.

Knight Bertrand de Born was a warrior and participant in the 2nd Crusade.

My love is the source of poetry,

To sing songs, love is more important than knowledge, -

Through love I could comprehend everything,

But at a high price - the price of suffering.

Our age is full of grief and melancholy.

But they are all insignificant and light

In the face of a misfortune that is worse -

This is the death of the young king.

Let's sing about fire and discord,

After all, Yes - and - No stained his dagger:

With the war, the lord becomes more generous.

Having forgotten about luxury, the king is homeless

He will not prefer a magnificent throne to the road.

Homelessness even of a king in that age of poetry and blood, the Beautiful Lady, campaigns for the Holy Sepulcher and new knowledge.

Expensive! The heart is alive -

In the throes of a passionate impulse -

Because the light of imperishable love

I see it in your eyes.

And without you I am miserable dust!

Aymeric de Pegillan

Somehow it happened that in 1894, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a philosophical essay-research, which he called “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. Preface to Wagner."

Nietzsche is the completion of the classical tradition of European philosophy. He died symbolically in 1900, at the border of the exodus of the classical tradition of thought. The name of Wagner was mysteriously associated in his work with antiquity. The beginning - with the final chords.

“... in the immediate sense, a folk song has for us the meaning of a musical mirror of the world, an original melody, now looking for a parallel phenomenon in a dream and expressing this latter in poetry.”

According to Nietzsche, the musical mirror of the world, expressed through poetry, is something important, as the fundamental basis of cultural existence. And it is expressed by two names-concepts of Greek-ancient mythology, the music of the spheres and the passion of the earth - Apollo and Dionysus.

We remember how the bacchante maenads tore Orpheus to pieces for his pure service to Apollo, and the muses of Apollo punished Famira.

The struggle between Apollo and Dionysus in the nature of culture, not only ancient, but also modern - “Who wins: Apollo of Dionysus or Dionysus of Apollo?” - Vyacheslav Ivanov shouted in his poetry salon - “The Tower” in 1913, pitting Nikolai Gumilyov against Maximilian Voloshin, where Voloshin, of course, was given the place of Dionysus.

Between Apollo and Dionysus, between the bright mind, discipline, word and intuition, emotions, between the victorious luminosity and the tragedy of the torn Dionysus, between the nectar of the Olympians and the sap of the vine. Continuous throughout European culture, the Homeric tradition combines the poetics of words with the exciting sounds of citharas and Aeolian harps, Dionysus and Apollo.

From one of the portals of the Dmitrovsky Cathedral in Vladimir, decorated with white stone carvings in the 12th century, a singer looks at us. He sits on a throne, his head is decorated with a crown, he is dressed in a toga. He sings, accompanying himself on the harp. It is customary to call it after the biblical king David, the author of the Psalter. They say he fell into ecstasy while singing the psalms he wrote. From his song, grasses, trees, flowers bow their heads, birds listen to him. The entire created world listens to the singer. But if we didn’t know his name, we could say: this is the image of the singer-poet, his collective, universal image of timelessness. The location of the bas-relief on the wall of the temple is such that we seem to be repeating the ritual of communication between Orpheus - or David, or Homer - and the whole world around him. We also listen, looking at him. And he sings about the Main thing, looking at us and into the distance that is behind us. And there is noise all around, life is changing, and only he is in the middle of the world under the starry sky forever. "Insomnia... Homer."

Homer “Iliad” Tribes of the Greek-Achaeans appeared on the Balkan Peninsula in the 2nd millennium BC. With the conquest of the island of Crete, where an advanced civilization with a refined culture flourished, the Achaeans acquired what the Greeks would always be distinguished by - curiosity and authorship.

Homer Homer is the legendary epic poet of Ancient Greece. There is time for everything: your time for conversation, your time for peace. One should be talked about, and another should be kept silent. Completed work is gratifying. I - for you, you -