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Dactylic Hexameter

Dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with classical epic poetry, both Greek and Latin, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. A dactyl is a collection of three syllables, the first long, the other two short; thus, the ideal line of dactylic hexameter consists of six (hexa) metrons or feet, each of which is dactyllic. Typically, however, the last foot of the line is not a real dactyl, but rather a two-syllable spondee or trochee, i.e. the penultimate syllable is always long, the final syllable either long or short (such a syllable with optional stress is known as an anceps syllable). In reality, it is difficult to arrange words in this meter, so poets may replace dactyls by spondees, which are feet with two long syllables. Traditionally, the fifth foot in a line is very often a real dactyl. About one line in 20 of Homer has a spondee in the fifth foot, and such a line is called "spondaic." Accordingly, a line of dactylic hexameter can be diagrammed as follows. Note that - is a long syllable, u a short syllable, and U either one long or two shorts: :- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - - For example: : Down in a | deep dark | hole sat an | old pig | munching a | bean stalk The "foot" is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to half notes (minims) and quarter notes (crotchets), respectively. Excessive use of spondees can make the sound oppressive. Cicero's line :O for|tuna|tam na|tam me| consule | Romam :("o fortunate Rome born while I was consul") has five spondees – only consule is a dactyl – and damned him as a poet.

External links

- [http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/courses/metrica/ Introduction to the dactylic hexameter] for Latin verse.
- [http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/meter/reading_dact_hex.php Reading dactylic hexameter], specifically Homer. Category:Poetic form

Hexameter

Hexameter is a literary and poetic form, consisting of six metrical feet per line as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre of both the Greeks and the Romans, and was used in other types of composition too -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by Phemonoe. The hexameter has never enjoyed a similar popularity in English, where the standard metre is iambic pentameter; however, various English poems have been written in hexameter over the centuries. There are numerous examples of iambic hexameter from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1612) in hexameter couplets. An example from Drayton: :Nor any other wold like Cotswold ever sped, :So rich and fair a vale in fortuning to wed. In the 17th century the iambic hexameter, or alexandrine, was used as a substitution in the heroic couplet, and as one of the types of permissible lines in lyrical stanzas and the Pindaric odes of Cowley and Dryden. Several attempts were made in the 19th century to naturalise the dactylic hexameter to English, by Longfellow, Arthur Hugh Clough and others, none of them particularly successful. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote many of his poems in six foot iambic and sprung rhythm lines. In the 20th century a loose ballad-like six-foot line with a strong medial pause was used by Yeats. The iambic six-foot line has also been used occasionally, and an accentual six-foot line has been used by translators from the Latin and many poets. See also: Dactylic hexameter

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Hexameters.html Example in English] by Coleridge
- [http://www.skidmore.edu/classics/courses/metrica Hexametrica], a tutorial on Latin dactylic hexameter at Skidmore College. Category:Poetic form

Meter (poetry)

Meter (non-American spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of verse. Scansion is the analysis of poetry's metrical and rhythmic patterns. Prosody is sometimes used to describe poetic meter, and indicates the analysis of similar aspects of language in linguistics. Meter is part of many formal verse forms.

Fundamentals

The precise units of poetic meter, like rhyme, vary from language to language and between poetic traditions. Often it involves precise arrangements of syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In English verse the pattern of syllable stress differentiates feet, so English meter is founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. In Latin verse, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, not syllable stresses but vowel lengths are the component parts of meter. Old English poetry used alliterative verse, a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. Meters in English verse, and in the classical Western poetic tradition on which it is founded, are named by the characteristic foot and the number of feet per line. Thus, for example, blank verse is unrhymed "iambic pentameter," a meter composed of five feet per line in which the kind of feet called iambs predominate. The origin of this tradition of metrics is ancient Greek poetry from Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, Sappho, and the great tragedians of Athens.

Technical Terms

- caesura: (literally, a cut or cutting) refers to a particular kind of break within a poetic line. In Latin and Greek meter, caesura refers to a break within a foot caused by the end of a word. In English poetry, a caesura refers to a sense of a break within a line. Caesurae play a particularly important role in Old English poetry.
- Inversion: when a foot of poetry is reversed with respect to the general meter of a poem. This term is usually only used for the first foot in a line.
- Headless: a meter where the first foot is missing its first syllable.
- Quantitative: see Quantitative#Use in prosody and poetry

Common Feet

The most common characteristic feet of English verse are the iamb in two syllables and the anapest in three. (See Foot (prosody) for a complete list of the metrical feet and their names.) Greek and Latin The metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables. The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical meter. The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two moras. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable. The most important Classical meter is the dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The first four feet are dactyls, but can be spondees. The fifth foot is always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee. The initial syllable of either foot is called the ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot. The opening line of the Æneid is a typical line of dactylic hexameter: : ::("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . . ") The first and second feet are dactyls; their vowels are grammatically short, but long in poetry because both are followed by two consonants. The third and fourth feet are spondees, with two long vowels, one on either side of the caesura. The fifth foot is a dactyl, as it must be, with the ictus this time falling on a grammatically long vowel. The final foot is a spondee with two grammatically long vowels. The dactylic hexameter was imitated in English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline: :This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, :Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, :Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic, :Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Also important in Greek and Latin poetry is the dactylic pentameter. This was a line of verse, made up of two equal parts, each of which contains two dactyls followed by a long syllable. Spondees can take the place of the dactyls in the first half, but never in the second. The long syllable at the close of the first half of the verse always ends a word, giving rise to a caesura. Dactylic pentameter is never used in isolation. Rather, a line of dactylic pentameter follows a line of dactylic hexameter in the elegiac distich or elegiac couplet, a form of verse that was used for the composition of elegies and other tragic and solemn verse in the Greek and Latin world. An example from Ovid's Tristia: : : ::("I only saw Vergil, greedy Fate gave Tibullus no time for me.") The Greeks and Romans also used a number of lyric meters, which were typically used for shorter poems than elegiacs or hexameter. One important line was called the hendecasyllabic, a line of eleven syllables. This meter was used most often in the Sapphic stanza, named after the Greek poet Sappho, who wrote many of her poems in the form. A hendecasyllabic is a line with a never-varying structure: two trochees, followed by a dactyl, then two more trochees. In the Sapphic stanza, three hendecasyllabics are followed by an "Adonic" line, made up of a dactyl and a trochee. This is the form of Catullus 51 (itself a translation of Sappho 31): :/ x / x / x x/ x / x :Ille mi par esse deo videtur; :/ x / x / x x / x / x :ille, si fas est, superare divos, ::/ x / x / x x / x / x :qui sedens adversus identidem te ::::/ x x / x ::::spectat et audit. . . ::("He seems to me to be like a god; if it is permitted, he seems above the gods, he who sitting across from you gazes at you and listens to you.") The Sapphic stanza was imitated in English by Algernon Charles Swinburne in a poem he simply called Sapphics: :Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, :Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled :Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; ::Saw the reluctant. . . English Most English meter is classified according to the same system as Classical meter with an important difference: beats and offbeats take the place of long and short syllables. In most English verse, the meter can be considered as a sort of back beat, against which natural speech rhythms vary expressively. The most frequently encountered line of English verse is the iambic pentameter, in which the metrical norm is five iambic feet per line, though metrical substitution is common and rhythmic variations practically inexhaustible. John Milton's Paradise Lost, most sonnets, and much else besides in English are written in iambic pentameter. Stanzas of unrhymed iambic pentameter are commonly known as blank verse. Blank verse in the English language is most famously represented in the plays of William Shakespeare, although it is also notable in the work of Tennyson (e.g. Ulysses, The Princess). A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet, a verse form which was used so often in the eighteenth century that it is now used mostly for humorous effect (although see Pale Fire for a non-trivial case). Another important meter in English is the ballad meter, also called the "common meter", which is a four line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many instances the tetrameter also rhymes. This is the meter of most of the Border and Scots or English ballads. It is called the "common meter" in hymnody (as it is the most common of the named hymn meters used to pair lyrics with melodies) and provides the meter for a great many hymns, such as Amazing Grace: :Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound ::That saved a wretch like me; :I once was lost, but now am found; ::Was blind, but now I see. Another poet who put this form to use was Emily Dickinson: :Great streets of silence led away :To neighborhoods of pause; :Here was no notice — no dissent — :No universe — no laws. Old English poetry has a different metrical system. In Old English poetry, each line must contain four fully stressed syllables, which often alliterate. The unstressed syllables are less important. Old English poetry is an example of the alliterative verse found in most of the older Germanic languages. French In French poetry, meter is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. A silent 'e' counts as a syllable, except before a sounded vowel or at the end of a line. The most frequently encountered meter in French is a line of two times six feet separated by a caesura called the alexandrine. Classical French poetry also had a complex set of rules for rhymes that goes beyond how words merely sound. These are usually taken into account when describing the meter of a poem. Spanish In Spanish poetry, meter is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. Syllables in Spanish metrics are determined by consonant breaks, not word boundaries, so a single syllable may include multiple words. For example, the line De armas y hombres canto consists of 6 syllables: "De ar" "mas" "y hom" "bres" "can" "to." Some common meters in Spanish verse are:
- Septenary: A line consisting of seven syllables, the sixth being always stressed.
- Octosyllable: A line consisting of eight syllables, the seventh always being stressed. This meter is commonly used in romances, narrative poems similar to English ballads.
- Hendecasyllable: A line consisting of eleven syllables; the sixth and the tenth or the fourth, the eighth and the tenth always being stressed. This meter plays a similar role to pentameter in English verse. It is commonly used in sonnets, among other things.
- Alexandrines: A line consisting of two heptasyllables. Italian In Italian poetry, meter is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. When a word ends with a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, they are considered to be in the same syllable: so Gli anni e i giorni consists of only four syllables ("Gli an" "ni e i" "gior" "ni"). Moreover, syllables are enumerated with respect to a verse which ends with a paroxytone: an heptasyllable may so contain eight syllables (Ei fu. Siccome immobile) or just six (la terra al nunzio sta). Some common meters in Italian verse are:
- Septenary: A line consisting of seven syllables, the sixth being always stressed.
- Octosyllable: A line consisting of eight syllables, with the main stress on the seventh and secondary accents on the first, third and fifth syllable. This meters is commonly used in nursery rhymes.
- Hendecasyllable: A line consisting of eleven syllables; there are various kinds of possible accentations, but the tenth syllable has always the main stress. It is used in sonnets, in ottava rima, and in many other works.

Dissent

Not all poets accept the idea that meter is a fundamental part of poetry. Twentieth Century American poets Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Robinson Jeffers, were poets who believed that meter was imposed into poetry by man, not a fundamental part of its nature. In an essay titled "Robinson Jeffers, & The Metric Fallacy"^{[http://cosmoetica.com/S2-DES2.htm]}, poet/critic Dan Schneider echoes Jeffers' sentiments: "What if someone actually said to you that all music was composed of just 2 notes? Or if someone claimed that there were just 2 colors in creation? Now, ponder if such a thing were true. Imagine the clunkiness & mechanicality of such music. Think of the visual arts devoid of not just color, but sepia tones, & even shades of gray." Jeffers called his technique "rolling stresses". Moore went even further than Jeffers, openly declaring her poetry was written in syllabic form, and wholly denying meter. These syllabic lines from her famous poem "Poetry" illustrate her contempt for meter, and other poetic tools: ::::nor is it valid ::::::to discriminate against "business documents and ::school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction :::::however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry Williams tried to form poetry whose subject matter was centered on the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the variable foot. Williams spurned traditional meter in most of his poems, preferring what he called "colloquial idioms." Another poet that turned his back on traditional concepts of meter was Britain's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins' major innovation was what he called "sprung rhythm". Hopkins claimed most poetry was written in a rhythmic structure inherited from the Norman side of the English literary heritage, based on repeating groups of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Hopkins called this structure running rhythm. He became fascinated with older rhythmic structures in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which he called sprung rhythm. Sprung rhythm is structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally between one and four syllables per foot, with the stress always falling on the first syllable in a foot. All these poets made good arguments against the naturalness of traditional meter. Category:Poetic form ja:韻律

Greek language

Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA – "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. Today, it is spoken by 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, particularly The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world, such as those in Melbourne, Australia which is the third-largest Greek-populated city in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki. Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet, the first true alphabet, since the 9th century B.C. and before that, in Linear B and the Cypriot syllabaries. Greek literature has a long and rich tradition.

History

This article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. The later Greek alphabet (q.v.) is unrelated to Linear B, and was derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:
- Mycenean Greek: the language of the Mycenean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 16th century BC onwards.
- Classical Greek (also known as Ancient Greek): In its various dialects was the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman empire. Classical Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained known in the Byzantine world, and was reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to Italy.
- Hellenistic Greek (also known as Koine Greek): The fusion of various ancient Greek dialects with Attic (the dialect of Athens) resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which gradually turned into one of the world's first international languages. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonisation of the known world, it was spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial diglossy of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. Through Koine Greek it is also traced the origin of Christianity, as the Apostles used it to preach in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is also known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek (after its most famous work of literature).
- Medieval Greek: The continuation of Hellenistic Greek during medieval Greek history as the official and vernacular (if not the literary nor the ecclesiastic) language of the Byzantine Empire, and continued to be used until, and after the fall of that Empire in the 15th century. Also known as Byzantine Greek.
- Modern Greek: Stemming independently from Koine Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the late Byzantine period (as early as 11th century). Two main forms of the language have been in use since the end of the medieval Greek period: Dhimotikí (Δημοτική), the Demotic (vernacular) language, and Katharévousa (Καθαρεύουσα), an imitation of classical Greek, which was used for literary, juridic, and scientific purposes during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Demotic Greek is now the official language of the modern Greek state, and the most widely spoken by Greeks today. It has been claimed that an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text, but this is surely as much a function of education as of the similarity of the languages. Still, Koinē , the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers. Greek words have been widely borrowed into the European languages: astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary. See English words of Greek origin, and List of Greek words with English derivatives.

Classification

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, Ancient Macedonian language (which may be regarded as a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages, Armenian seems to be the most closely related to it.

Geographic distribution

Modern Greek is spoken by about 15 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Official status

Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Due to the membership of Greece and Cyprus, Greek is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union.

Phonology

This section generally describes the post-Classic phonology of the Greek language. :All phonetic transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sounds

Greek has 5 vowel sounds, all phonemic:

Homer

] :For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). Homer (Greek μηρος Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and rhapsode traditionally credited with authorship of the major Greek epics Ιλιάς Iliad and Οδύσσεια Odyssey. The comic mini-epic Βατραχομυομαχία Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), the corpus of Homeric Hymns, and various other lost or fragmentary works such as Margites have been attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely. A few ancient authors credited him with the entire Epic Cycle, which included further poems on the Trojan War as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Tradition held that Homer was blind, and various Ionian cities are claimed to be his birthplace, but otherwise his biography is a blank slate. There is considerable scholarly debate about whether Homer was actually a real person, or the name given to one or more oral poets who sang traditional epic material. It has repeatedly been questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both the Iliad and the Odyssey; the Batrachomyomachia, Homeric hymns and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than these two epic poems.

Ancient Accounts of Homer

Of the date of Homer probably no record, real or pretended, ever existed. Herodotus (2.53) maintains that Hesiod and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 BC. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries BC, but none of these statements has any claim to the character of external evidence. The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermanns Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores) are eight in number, including the piece called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. In all probability it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz, the 2nd century of our era. The other lives are certainly not more ancient. Their chief value consists in the curious short poems or fragments of verse which they have preserved, the so-called Epigrams, which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. These are easily recognized as Popular Rhymes, a form of folklore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of proverbs. In the Homeric epigrams the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities Smyrna and Cyme (Epigr. 4), Erythrae (Epigr. 6, 7), Mt Ida (Epigr. 10), Neon Teichos (Epigr. 1); others relate to certain trades or occupations: potters (Epigr. 14), sailors, fishermen, goat herds, etc. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when Homer was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse. Again, comparing the epigrams with the legends and anecdotes told in the Lives of Homer, we can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these Lives were derived. Thus in Epigr. 4 we find a blind poet, a native of Aeolian Smyrna, through which flows the water of the sacred Meles. Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean Life, the birth of Homer Son of the Meles. The epithet Aeolian implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus Smyrna became Ionian about 688 BC. Naturally the Ionians had their own version of the story, a version which made Homer come out with the first Athenian colonists. The same line of argument may be extended to the Hymns, and even to some of the lost works of the post-Homeric or so-called Cyclic poets. Thus: 1. The hymn to the Delian Apollo ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks who is the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, "the blind man that dwells in rocky Chios; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come." Thucydides, who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian. 2. The Siargitesa humorous poem which kept its ground as the reputed work of Homer down to the time of Aristotle began with the words, "There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo." Hence doubtless the claim of Colophon to be the native city of Homer a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian Antimachus. 3. The poem called the Cypria was said to have been given by Homer to Stasinus of Cyprus as a daughter's dowry. The connexion with Cyprus appears further in the predominance given in the poem to Aphrodite. 4. The Little Iliad and the Phocais, according to the Herodotean life, were composed by Homer when he lived at Phocaea with a certain Thestorides, who carried them off to Chios and thert gained fame by reciting them as his own. The name Thestorides occurs in Epigr. 5. 5. A similar story was told about the poem called the Taking of Oechalia, the subject of which was one of the exploits of Heracles. It passed under the name of Creophylus, a friend or (as some said) a son-in-law of Homer; but it was generally believed to have been in fact the work of the poet himself. 6. Finally the Thebaid always counted as the work of Homer. As to the Epigoni, which carried on the Theban story, some doubt seems to have been felt. These indications render it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands grew up after his poems had become known and famous, especially in the new and flourishing colonies of Aeolis and Ionia. The contention for Homer, in short, began at a time when his real history was lost, and he had become a sort of mythical figure, an eponymous hero, or personification of a great school of poetry. An interesting confirmation of this view from the negative side is furnished by the city which ranked as chief among the Asiatic colonies of Greece, viz. Miletus. No legend claims for Miletus even a visit from Homer, or a share in the authorship of any Homeric poem. Yet Arctinus of Miletus was said to have been a disciple of Homer, and was certainly one of the earliest and most considerable of the Cyclic poets. His Aethiopis was composed as a sequel to the Iliad; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the Iliad as his model. Yet in his case we find no trace of the disputed authorship which is so common with other Cyclic poems. How has this come about? Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the name of Homer such epics as the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Taking of Oechalia and the Phocais. The most obvious account of the matter is that Arctinus was never so far forgotten that his poems became the subject of dispute. We seem through him to obtain a glimpse of an early post-Homeric age in Ionia, when the immediate disciples and successors of Homer were distinct figures in a trustworthy tradition when they had not yet merged their individuality in the legendary Homer of the Epic Cycle.

The Homeric Question

Arctinus of Miletus Scholars generally agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical written text. Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the classical scholar Richmond Lattimore, author of well regarded poetic translations to English of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?" Samuel Butler was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further speculated on by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter. In Greek his name is Homēros, which is Greek for "hostage". There is a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they would not get killed in battles. Thus they were entrusted with remembering the area's stock of epic poetry, to remember past events, in the times before literacy came to the area. Most Classicists would agree that, whether there was ever such a composer as "Homer" or not, the Homeric poems are the product of an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets, aoidoi. An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat. Could the Iliad and Odyssey have been oral-formulaic poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases? Milman Parry and Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in an exclusively oral culture. The crucial words are "oral" and "traditional." Parry started with "traditional." The repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and they were useful to the poet in composition. He called these chunks of repetitive language "formulas." Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis", wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe in the 6th century BC or earlier. More radical Homerists, such as Gregory Nagy, contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC).

Historical Aspects of the Poems

1st century BC, Italy.]] See main article Troy. Another significant question regards the tales' possible historical basis. The commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written in the Hellenistic period began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists continue the tradition. The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the late 19th century began to convince scholars there was a historical basis for the Trojan War. Research (pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord) into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages began to convince scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until someone bothered to write them down. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and others, convinced scholars of a linguistic continuity between 13th century BC Mycenaean writings and the poems attributed to Homer.

References

Literature

Commentaries

- Scholia Veneta on the Iliad , ed. Villoison (Venice, 1788);
- 'Scholia in Homeri Iliades ed. Bekker Berlin, 1825-1826).
- The Scholia on the Odyssey, ed. Buttmann (Berlin, 1821), Dindorf (Oxford, 1855)
- Commentary of Eustathius, first printed at Rome in 1542;
- Heynes. Iliad (Leipzig, 1802)
- Nitzsch, Odyssey (books i.-xii., Hanover)
- Negelbach Anmerkungen zur Ilias (Autenrieth, Nuremberg, 1864).
Homeric Question

- Wolf, Prolegomena (Halle, 1795)
- W. Muller, Homerische Vorschule (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1836)
- G. Hermann, De interpolationibus Homeri (1832), De iteratis apud Homerum (1840)
- Lachmann, Betrachtungen über Homers Ilias (2nd ed. Berlin, 1865).
Homeric dialect

- H. L. Ahrens, Griechische Formenlehre (Gottingen, 1852)
- A. Fick, Die homerische Odyssee in der ursprünglichen Sprachform wiederhergestelt (Gottingen, 1883), Die homerische Ilias (ibid., 1886)
- W. Schulze, Quaestiones epicae (Goterslohe, 1892).
- B. Delbrück, Syntactische Forschungen (Halle, 1871-1879)
- Hartel, Homerische Studien (i-vi., Vienna)
- Thumb, Zur Geschichte des griech. Digamma, Indogermanische Forschungen (1898)
Editions

- The editio princeps of Homer, published at Florence in 1488, by Demetrius Chaicondylas
- Aldine editions of 1504 and 1517
- Wolf (Halle, 1794-1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)
- Spitzner (Gotha, 1832-1836)
- Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, I858)
- La Roche (Odyssey, 1867-1868; Iliad, 1873-1876, both at Leipzig)
- Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889-1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 907)
- W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886-1888; 2nd ed. 1900 1902);
- Merry and Ridciell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886);
- Monro (Odyssey xiii-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901);
- Monro and Allen (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).
English Translations

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External links

- [http://www.gpc.edu/~shale/humanities/literature/world_literature/homer.html Collection of Homer-related links]
- [http://www.geocities.com/protoillyrian/homer Homer of Cumaean origin] Category:Ancient Greek poets Category:Blind people
- ko:호메로스 ms:Homer ja:ホメロス simple:Homer th:โฮเมอร์

Odyssey

- by Charles Gleyre]] The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first of which is the Iliad. The 11,300 line poem follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his voyage home after a heroic turn in the Trojan War. It also tells the story of Odysseus' wife Penelope who struggles to remain faithful, and his son Telemachus who sets out to find his father. In contrast to the Iliad, with its extended sequences of battle and violence, all three are ultimately successful through use of cleverness, and the support of the goddess Athena. This cleverness is most often manifested by Odysseus' use of disguise and, later, recognition. His disguises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal (telling the Cyclops Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody" then escaping after blinding the Cyclops because Polyphemus cries foul at the hands of "nobody"). The poem is considered one of the foundational texts of the Western canon and continues to be read in both Homeric Greek and translations around the world. While today's Odyssey is usually a printed text, the original poem was an oral composition sung by a trained bard, in an amalgamated Ancient Greek dialect, using a regular metrical pattern called dactylic hexameter. Each line of the original Greek was composed of six feet; each foot a dactyl or a spondee. Among the most impressive elements of the text are its strikingly modern non-linear plot, and its elevation of the status of women and the lower classes. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage. Today's Odyssey consists of twenty-four books, or chapters. The first four books, known as the Telemachy, trace Telemachus' efforts to maintain control of the palace in the face of suitors who would have his inheritance, and his mother Penelope's hand in marriage. Failing that, he sets off to find his father. In book 5, we find Odysseus near the end of his journey, a not entirely unwilling captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso, with whom he's spent 7 of his 10 lost years. Released from her wiles by the intercession of his patroness Athena and her father Zeus, he departs. His raft is destroyed by his nemesis Poseidon, who is angry because Odysseus blinded his son, Polyphemos. When Odysseus washes up on Scheria, home to the Phaeacians, the naked stranger is treated with traditional Greek hospitality even before he reveals his name. Odysseus satisfies the Phaeacians' curiosity, telling them - and us - of all his adventures since departing from Troy. This renowned, extended "flashback" leads him back to where he stands, his tale told. The shipbuilding Phaeacians finally loan him a ship to return to Ithaca, where, home at last, he regains his throne, reunites with his son, metes out justice to the suitors, and reunites with his faithful wife Penelope.

Plot summary

Book 1

"Tell me, o muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy." With the invocation of the muse Homer begins his epic, though the hero himself is still offstage. We are treated to a glimpse of life among the supreme gods on Mount Olympus. Urged on by Athena, the goddess of wisdom and battle-tactics, they decide that Odysseus has been marooned too long on the island of the nymph Calypso. Athena also decides to pay a visit to Telemachus who is Odysseus's son.

Book 2

Meanwhile, the mansion of Odysseus is infested with suitors for the hand of his wife Penelope. Everyone assumes Odysseus is dead. Encouraged by Athena who arrives in the form of Mentes, Telemachus calls an assembly to ask for help. He breaks down and cries and is pushed off the platform by Athena. Antinous mocks Telemachus. He issues an ultimatum to Telemachus: "Either you force your mother to marry a suitor, or we ruin your house." Telemachus refuses to comply. Zeus sends an omen of the suitors' doom. Two eagles swoop down, tearing each other's throats and necks with their talons. The suitors mock Halitherses, who makes the prophecy. Afterwards, Telemachus, accompanied by Athena, sets sail for Pylos to seek news of his father.

Book 3

Telemachus travels to Pylos to consult Nestor, accompanied by Athena, who is disguised as Mentor, a man from Ithaca. When they arrive at the shore of Pylos, they find Nestor and the men of Pylos performing sacrifices to Poseidon. Nestor tells what he knows of the Greeks' return from Troy: "It started out badly because of Athena's anger. Half the army, your father included, stayed behind at Troy to try to appease her. The rest of us made it home safely--all except Menelaus, who was blown off course to Egypt, where he remained for seven years. Seek advice from Menelaus. I'll lend you a chariot to travel to his kingdom." Athena flies away in the form of an eagle. The very next morning, Nestor performs a sacrifice to Athena and Telemachus is borne away, accompanied by Nestor's son.

Book 4

Menelaus tells what he learned of Odysseus while stranded in Egypt after the war. He was advised by a goddess to disguise himself and three members of his crew in seal pelts and then pounce on the Old Man of the Sea. If they could hold him down while he transformed himself into various animals and shapes, he would send them on their homeward way and give news of their companions. Menelaus did as instructed and was informed that Odysseus was presently being held against his will by the nymph Calypso.

Book 5

Zeus, the King of the Gods, sends his messenger Hermes skimming over the waves on magic sandals to Calypso's island. Calypso promises Odysseus immortality, but he refuses. At last all fails. Though the nymph isn't happy about it, she agrees to let Odysseus go. But the raft on which he sets sail is destroyed by his enemy, the god Poseidon, who lashes the sea into a storm with his trident. Odysseus barely escapes with his life and washes ashore days later, half-drowned. He staggers into an olive thicket and falls asleep.

Book 6

Odysseus wakes up to the sound of maidens laughing. Princess Nausicaa of the Phaeacians has come down to the riverside to wash some clothes because Athena came to her in a dream and instructed her to do so. Now she and her handmaids are frolicking after the chore. Odysseus approaches as a supplicant, and Nausicaa is kind enough to instruct him how to get the king's help in returning to his home.

Book 7

Odysseus stops on the palace threshold, utterly dazzled. The very walls are covered in shining bronze and trimmed with lapis lazuli. The blacksmith god Hephaestus has even provided two brazen hounds to guard the queen. Odysseus puts his case to her as a supplicant. The king knows better than to refuse hospitality to a decent petitioner. He invites Odysseus to the banquet which is in progress and promises him safe passage home after the king and his guests have been suitably entertained.

Book 8

The next day is declared a holiday in honor of the guest, whose name the king still does not know. An athletic competition is held, with foot races, wrestling and the discus. Odysseus is invited to join in but he declines the invitation, prompting someone to suggest that he lacks the skills. Angered, he takes up a discus and throws it with such violence that everyone drops to the ground. That night at a banquet, as the court bard entertains with songs of the Trojan War, Odysseus is heard sobbing. "Enough!" shouts the king. "Our friend finds this song displeasing. Won't you tell us your name, stranger, and where you hail from?"

Book 9

"My name is Odysseus of Ithaca, and here is my tale since setting out from Troy. We sacked a city called Ísmaros first off, but then reinforcements arrived and we lost many comrades. Next we visited the Lotus Eaters, and three of my crew tasted this strange plant. They lost all desire to return home and had to be carried off by force. On another island we investigated a cave full of goat pens. The herdsman turned out to be as big as a barn, with a single glaring eye in his forehead. This Cyclops promptly ate two of my men for dinner. We were trapped in the cave by a boulder in the doorway that only the Cyclops could budge, so we couldn't kill him while he slept. Instead we sharpened a pole and used it to gouge out his eye. We escaped his groping by clinging to the undersides of his goats."

Book 10

"Next we met the Keeper of the Winds, who sent us on our way with a steady breeze. He'd given me a leather bag, which my crew mistook for booty. They opened it and released a hurricane that blew us back to where we'd started. We ended up among the Laestrygonians, giants who bombarded our fleet with boulders and gobbled down our shipmates. The few survivors put in at the island of the enchantress Circe. My men were entertained by her and then, with a wave of her wand, turned into swine. Hermes the god gave me an herb, called moly, that protected me. Circe told me that to get home I must travel to the land of Death."

Book 12

"At sea once more we had to pass the Sirens, whose sweet singing lures sailors to their doom. I had stopped up the ears of my crew with wax, and I alone listened while lashed to the mast, powerless to steer toward shipwreck. Next came Charybdis, who swallows the sea in a whirlpool, then spits it up again. Avoiding this we skirted the cliff where Scylla exacts her toll. Each of her six slavering maws grabbed a sailor and wolfed him down. Finally we were becalmed on the island of the Sun. My men disregarded all warnings and sacrificed his cattle, so back at sea Zeus sent a thunderbolt that smashed the ship. I alone survived, washing up on the island of Calypso."

Book 13

When Odysseus had finished his tale, the king ordered him sped to Ithaca. The sailors put him down on the beach asleep. Athena cast a protective mist about him that kept him from recognizing his homeland. Finally the goddess revealed herself and dispelled the mist. In joy Odysseus kissed the ground. Athena transformed him into an old man as a disguise. Clad in a filthy tunic, he went off to find his faithful swineherd, as instructed by the goddess.

Book 14

Eumaeus the swineherd welcomed the bedraggled stranger. He threw his own bedcover over a pile of boughs as a seat for Odysseus, who does not reveal his identity. Observing Zeus's commandment to be kind to guests, Eumaeus slaughters a prime boar and serves it with bread and wine. Odysseus, true to his fame as a smooth-talking schemer, makes up an elaborate story of his origins. That night the hero sleeps by the fire under the swineherd's spare cloak, while Eumaeus himself sleeps outside in the rain with his herd.

Book 15

Athena summons Telemachus home and tells him how to avoid an ambush by Penelope's suitors. Meanwhile back on Ithaca, Odysseus listens while Eumaeus recounts the story of his life. He was the child of a prosperous mainland king, whose realm was visited by Phoenician traders. His nursemaid, a Phoenician herself, had been carried off by pirates as a girl and sold into slavery. In return for homeward passage with her countrymen, she kidnapped Eumaeus. He was bought by Odysseus' father, whose queen raised him as a member of the family.

Book 16

Telemachus evades the suitors' ambush. Following Athena's instructions, he proceeds to the farmstead of Eumaeus. There he makes the acquaintance of the tattered guest and sends Eumaeus to his mother to announce his safe return. Athena restores Odysseus' normal appearance, enchanting it so that Telemachus takes him for a god. "No god am I," Odysseus assures him, "but your own father, returned after these twenty years." They fall into each other's arms. Later they plot the suitors' doom. Concerned that the odds are fifty-to-one, Telemachus suggests that they might need reinforcements. "Aren't Zeus and Athena reinforcement enough?" asks Odysseus.

Book 17

Disguised once more as an old beggar, Odysseus journeys to town. On the trail he encounters an insolent goatherd named Melantheus, who curses and tries to kick him. At his castle gate, the hero is recognized by a decrepit dog that he raised as a pup. Having seen his master again, the old hound dies. At Athena's urging Odysseus begs food from the suitors. One man, Antinous, berates him and refuses so much as a crust. He even hurls his footstool at Odysseus, hitting him in the back. This makes even the other suitors nervous, for sometimes the gods masquerade as mortals to test their righteousness.

Book 18

Now a real beggar shows up at the palace and warns Odysseus off his turf. This man, Irus, is always running errands for the suitors. Odysseus says that there are pickings enough for the two of them, but Irus threatens fisticuffs and the suitors egg him on. Odysseus rises to the challenge and rolls up his tunic into a boxer's belt. The suitors goggle at the muscles revealed. Not wishing to kill Irus with a single blow, Odysseus breaks his jaw instead. Another suitor, Eurymachus, marks himself for revenge by trying to hit Odysseus with a footstool as Antinous had done.

Book 19

Odysseus has a long talk with his queen Penelope but does not reveal his identity. Penelope takes kindly to the stranger and orders her maid Eurycleia to bathe his feet and anoint them with oil. Eurycleia, who was Odysseus' nurse when he was a child, notices a scar above the hero's knee. Odysseus had been gored by a wild boar when hunting on Mount Parnassus as a young man. The maid recognizes her master at once, and her hand goes out to his chin. But Odysseus silences her lest she give away his plot prematurely.

Book 20

The next morning Odysseus asks for a sign, and Zeus sends a clap of thunder out of the clear blue sky. A servant recognizes it as a portent and prays that this day be the last of the suitors' abuse. Odysseus encounters another herdsman. Like the swineherd Eumaeus, this man, who tends the realm's cattle, swears his loyalty to the absent king. A prophet, an exiled murderer whom Telemachus has befriended, shares a vision with the suitors: "I see the walls of this mansion dripping with your blood." The suitors respond with gales of laughter.

Book 21

Penelope now appears before the suitors in her glittering veil. In her hand is a stout bow left behind by Odysseus when he sailed for Troy. "Whoever strings this bow," she says, "and sends an arrow straight through the sockets of twelve axe heads lined in a row--that man will I marry." The suitors take turns trying to bend the bow to string it, but all of them lack the strength. Odysseus asks if he might try. The suitors refuse, fearing that they'll be shamed if the beggar succeeds. But Telemachus insists and his anger distracts them into laughter. As easily as a bard fitting a new string to his lyre, Odysseus strings the bow and sends an arrow through the axe heads. At a sign from his father, Telemachus arms himself and takes up a station by his side.

Book 22

Antinous, ringleader of the suitors, is just lifting a drinking cup when Odysseus puts an arrow through his throat. The goatherd sneaks out and comes back with shields and spears for the suitors, but now Athena appears. She sends the suitors' spearthrusts wide, as Odysseus, Telemachus and the two faithful herdsmen strike with volley after volley of lances. They finish off the work with swords. Those of the housemaids who consorted with the suitors are hung by the neck in the courtyard, while the treacherous goatherd is chopped to bits.

Book 23

The mansion is purged with fire and brimstone. Odysseus tells everyone to dress in their finest and dance, so that passers-by won't suspect what's happened. Even Odysseus could not hold vengeful kinfolk at bay. Penelope still won't accept that it's truly her husband without some secret sign. She tells a servant to make up his bed in the hall. "Who had the craft to move my bed?" storms Odysseus. "I carved the bedpost myself from the living trunk of an olive tree and built the bedroom around it." Penelope rushes into his arms.And they make love by the fireplace.

Book 24

The next morning Odysseus goes upcountry to the vineyard where his father, old King Laertes, labors like a peasant. Meanwhile, the kin of the suitors have gathered at the assembly ground, where the father of the suitor Antinous fires them up for revenge. Odysseus, his father, and Telemachus meet the challenge. Laertes casts a lance through the helmet of Antinous' father, who falls to the ground in a clatter of armor. But the fighting stops right there. Athena tells the contending parties to live together in peace down through the years to come.

Alternative Word Spellings

Alternative Spelling - Spelling used in this article: Ithaka - Ithaca, Kalypso - Calypso, Telemakhos - Telemachus, Kyklops - Cyclops, Akhilleus - Achilles, Nausikaa - Nausicaä, Meneláos - Menelaus, Hephaistos - Hephaestus, Phaiákians - Phaeacians, Aiolos - Aeolus, Laistrygonians - Laestrygonians, Lotos - Lotus, Teiresias - Tiresias, Eumaios - Eumaeus,

Geography in the Odyssey

The text of the Odyssey does not contain many modern place names that can immediately be located on a map. Scholars both ancient and modern are divided as to whether or not the locations were in any way real places or mere inventions. Eratosthenes, the third century BC Alexandrian geographer, ridiculed attempts to identify places mentioned in the Odyssey, saying "you will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds." Those who tend towards real locations point to the high degree of realism present throughout the poem, especially in Homer's description of sailing. It seems most likely that Homer strung together tales of one or more sea voyages and that some locations at least should follow a logical sequence. Even amongst those scholars who believe the locations to have some basis in reality there is much dispute. The traditional orthodox theory, which has been taken as accurate by many including some encyclopedias and other reference works, sees Odysseus driven into the western Mediterranean with most of his adventures taking place between Tunisia, Sardinia, Italy and Sicily. However this theory has a number of flaws which make little sense either from a sailing or identification point of view. Ancient Greek ships were small, rarely ventured out onto the open sea and their captains did not explore unknown territories but instead sought to regain their course if blown off it. The orthodox route includes the following locations:
- The island of Calypso is associated with Gozo, which is part of the Maltese archipelago. Odysseus is said to have landed on the northern shore of the island, on the beach of Ir-Ramla.
- The Lotus Eaters are located in Tunisia on the basis that this is where a sailing vessel blown off course at Cape Malea could reach at full speed. However, a vessel blown off course would have been more cautious and would not have ventured so far away, especially if trying to reach home.
- Aeolus is traditionally located in the Aeolian Islands to the north of Sicily. However, for Odysseus' vessels to have caught a favourable wind all the way to Ithaca and then have an unfavourable wind blow them all the way back so that they would have had to sail through the Straits of Messina is extremely implausible.
- There is a real river Acheron in north west Greece. However, its location has been ignored by many, since the orthodox theory makes no allowances for Odysseus being in that region.
- Scylla and Charybdis are traditionally located in the Straits of Messina. However, the channel they inhabit is said to be narrow. The Straits are over two miles wide at their narrowest point, and even wider at the rock traditionally identified as Scylla's. The whirlpools around the straits are not even in the "narrows" and are nothing more than gyrating patches of water caused by the cross-section of two currents. It is impossible to conceive of them producing the legend of Charybdis.
- Thrinicia, the island home of Helios' cattle, is said to have been Sicily since the name Thrinicia implies an island connected to the number 3 and Sicily has three corners. However, Sicily is huge by ancient Greek standards and so its three corners are only noticeable on a modern map, not at sea, and it is more likely that the name Thrinicia would have come about because sailors could use it to easily identify an island as they could see it. More generally the orthodox theory assumes that the ancient Greeks knew about Italy, but there are very few references at all in the Odyssey to any part of the world to the west of Greece, though lands in the east and south such as Egypt and Sudan are mentioned in several places. The historian of science and specialist in the cartography of antiquity Tullio Catullo Stecchini makes interesting speculations in an essay [http://www.metrum.org/mapping/navigations.htm "The Navigations of Odysseus"], among several alternative theories that have been proposed in recent times. Not all are based purely on readings in the classics: Tim Severin sailed a replica Greek sailing vessel (originally built for his attempt to follow Jason's argosy) along the 'natural' route from Troy to Ithaca, following the sailing directions that could be teased out of Homer. Along the way he found locations at the natural turning and dislocation points which fit the pattern much more closely than the orthodox theory. However, he also came to the conclusion that the sequence of adventures from Circe onwards derived from a separate voyage to those that ended with the Laestrygonians, possibly coming via the stories of the Argonauts. He placed many of the later adventures on the northwest Greek coast, near to the river Acheron. Along the way he found on the map Cape Skilla and other names that implied strong mythological links to the Odyssey. His adventure is recounted in The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey.

Derivative works

- The contemporary play [http://www.amrep.org/articles/1_3/homer.html Highway Ulysses by Rinde Eckert] tells the story of the journey of a Vietnam veteran travelling to his son, meeting modern day characters akin to characters or monsters in the Odyssey (including the Sirens and Cyclops).
- Some of the tales of Sindbad the Sailor from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) were taken from Homer's Odyssey.
- A modern book inspired by the Odyssey is James Joyce's Ulysses (1922).
- Nikos Kazantzakis wrote The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, a 33,333 line epic poem which continues Odysseus' journeys past the point of his arrival in Ithaca.
- Andrew Lang and H. Rider Haggard collaborated on The World's Desire in which Odysseus and Helen meet in Egypt at the time of the Exodus.
- The movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? has the basic plot of The Odyssey; Joel and Ethan Coen admit to basing the movie loosely on The Odyssey but insist that they haven't read it.
- R.A. Lafferty retold the story in a science fiction setting in his novel Space Chantey.
- Progressive metal group Symphony X based a 24-minute epic track The Odyssey on the story in their 2002 album, The Odyssey.
- The animated cartoon Ulysses 31 featured a science-fiction tale of a hero trying to get back to his wife Penelope.
- The first half of Virgil's Aeneid parallels the Odyssey in structure.
- Ulysses, a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
- Tank Girl: Odyssey borrows freely and irrevently from Homer and James Joyce's Ulysses, casting targets in the contemporary media as the trials the heroine must overcome to get back to her mutant kangaroo boyfriend.
- Odyssey: A Stage Version, 1993 play, divided into two acts (respectively broken up into 14 and 6 scenes) written by Derek Walcott and originally performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

External links

[http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/index.html Greek Myth: the Odyssey]
- [http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/homer/odyssey.html Homer's Odyssey resources on the Web] by Jorn Barger. Provides links to the original and various public domain translations.
- English translations:
- George Chapman, 1616 (couplets)
- Alexander Pope, 1713 (couplets); Project Gutenberg edition; [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/3160]
- William Cowper, 1791 (blank verse)
- Samuel Henry Butcher and Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg edition; [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/1728]
- William Cullen Bryant, 1871 (blank verse)
- Samuel Butler, 1898 (prose), Project Gutenberg edition; [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/1727]
- [http://www.orplex.com/gkcp/readbook.aspx?style=basic.xslt&book=The%20Odyssey.xml English Text] Samuel Butler, 1898 (prose)
- A. T. Murray (revised by George E. Dimock), 1919; Loeb Classical Library (ISBN 0674995619)
- Richmond Lattimore, 1965 (ISBN 0060931957)
- Robert Fitzgerald, 1963 (ISBN 0679728139)
- Walter Shewring, 1980 (ISBN 0192833758), Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics)
- Robert Fagles, 1999 (ISBN 0140268863); an unabridged audio recording by Ian McKellen is also available (ISBN 014086430X).
- Stanley Lombardo, 2000 (ISBN 0872204847) has what is considered by many to be the best combination of faithfulness to the original Greek and a more vernacular style. An audio CD recording read by the translator is also available (ISBN 1930972067).
- Category:Epics Category:Trojan War Category:Ancient Greek poems ko:오디세이아 ms:Odyssey ja:オデュッセイア

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BCE (between 29 and 19 BCE) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter.

Form and tradition

The Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: ; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced — the title is Greek in form: genitive case Aeneidos): is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The hero Aeneas was already a subject of Roman legend and myth; Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous piety, and fashioned this into a compelling nationalist epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimated the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.

Influence

The Aeneid is one of a small group of writings from Latin literature that has traditionally been required for students of Latin. Traditionally, after reading the works of Julius Caesar, Cicero, Ovid and Catullus, students would then read the Aeneid. As a result, many phrases from this poem entered the Latin language, much as passages from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope have entered the English language. One example is from Aeneas' reaction to a painting of the sack of Troy: Sunt lacrimae rērum et mentem mortālia tangunt—"There tears for the mortal way of the world brush our minds." (Aeneid I, 462) ().

Story

sack of Troy Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano…, "Arms and the man I sing…") and an invocation to his Muse (Musa, mihi causas memora…, "O Muse, relate to me the reasons…"). He then explains the cause of the principal conflict of the plot; in this case, the resentment held by Juno against the Trojan people. This is in keeping with the style of the Homeric epics, except in that Virgil states the theme and then invokes his Muse, whereas Homer invokes the Muse and then states the theme. Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. Juno stirs up a storm which is on the verge of sinking the fleet. Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas gains the favor of Dido, queen of Carthage, a city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and which will later become Rome's greatest enemy. At a banquet given in the honor of the Trojans, Aeneas recounts the events which occasioned the Trojans' fortuitous arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad, and tells of the end of the Trojan War, the ruse of the Trojan Horse, the sack of Troy by the Greek armies, and his escape with his son Ascanius and father Anchises, his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed in the general catastrophe. He tells of how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean (including Thrace, Crete and Epirus) before being divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. The fleet reached as far as Sicily and was making for the mainland, until Juno raised up the storm which drove it back across the sea to Carthage. During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus, who was murdered by her cupidinous brother Pygmalion. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas' mother, with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and is only too happy when Juno, disguised as a bridesmaid, marries him to his beloved in a cave during a storm, but when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind him of his duty, he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself on a pyre. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas's people and hers; "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" is an obvious invocation to Hannibal. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees Dido's funeral pyre's smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy. Aeneas's father Anchises having been hastily interred on Sicily during the fleet's previous landfall there, the Trojans returned to the island to hold funeral games in his honor. Eventually, the fleet lands on the mainland of Italy and further adventures ensue. Aeneas descends to the underworld through an opening at Cumae, where he speaks with the spirit of his father and has a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Returning to the land of the living, he leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium, where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus. A war ensues between the Trojans and some of the indigenous peoples of Italy, which is brought to a close when Lavinia's rejected suitor Turnus, king of the Rutuli, challenges Aeneas to a duel in which Turnus is slain. This is where Virgil chooses to end the Aeneid. However, many people have felt that the poem is not complete without an account of Aeneas' marriage to Lavinia and his founding of the Roman race. To fill this perceived deficiency, the fifteenth-century Italian poet Maffeo Vegio (also known as Mapheus Vegius) composed a "supplement to the Aeneid", which was widely printed in Renaissance editions of the work. Renaissance

Context

The work was written at a time of major change in Rome, both political and social. The Republic had fallen, civil war had ripped apart society, and the sudden return of prosperity and peace after a generation of chaos had badly eroded traditional social roles and cultural norms. In reaction, the emperor Augustus was trying to re-introduce traditional Roman moral values, and the Aeneid is thought to reflect that aim. Aeneas was depicted as a man devoted and loyal to his country and its prominence, rather than personal gains. He went off on a journey for the better of the Rome. In addition, the Aeneid attempts to legitimize the rule of Julius Caesar (and by extension, of his adopted son Augustus and his heirs). Aeneas' son Ascanius is called Ilus (from Ilium, meaning Troy), is renamed Iulus and offered by Virgil as an ancestor of the gens Julia, the family of Julius Caesar. When making his way through the underworld, Aeneas is given a prophecy of the greatness of his imperial descendants.

The history of the Aeneid

The poetry of the Aeneid is polished and complex; legend has it that Virgil wrote only three lines of the poem each day. Although the work is complete, with the same length and scope as Homer's epics which it imitates, it is unfinished: a number of lines are only half-complete. It is common, however, for epic poems to have incomplete, disputed, or badly adulterated text, and because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally, the Aeneid is more complete than most epics. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether Vergil intended to complete such lines. Some of them would be difficult to complete, and in some instances the shortness of the lines adds to the dramatic finality of the sentence. On his death, Virgil left instructions for the Aeneid to be destroyed since the work was unfinished. Virgil had also come to disfavor one of the sequences in Book VIII wherein Venus and Vulcan have marital relations, and had intentions of altering this sequence to conform better with Roman virtues. For this reason as well he wished the epic to be destroyed after his death. Augustus, however, ordered that the poet's wishes be disregarded, and after minor modifications, the Aeneid was published. In the 15th century, there were two attempts to produce an addition to the Aeneid. One was made by Pier Candido Decembrio (which was never completed) and one was made by Maffeo Vegio, which was often included in 15th and 16th century printings of the Aeneid as the Supplementum. The most famous translation of the Aeneid is that by the 17th-century poet John Dryden. Although it takes numerous small liberties with the text, it is one of the very few examples of a poetic translation that retains the power and flow of the original in a new language, and it is often regarded as a classic in its own right.

External links

- - Perseus Project Translation
- Gutenberg Project: [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/228 The Aeneid (English)] (plain text)
- [http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.html translation of the Aeneid] by John Dryden
- English translation by Th. C. Williams: [http://www.romansonline.com/sources/vrg/indx_vrg.asp?Kl=FFFFBA The Aeneid]
- Italian translation: [http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/aeneid_ital.html Virgilio Eneide, Trad. di Annibal Caro]
- Greatest-philosophers.com [http://www.greatest-philosophers.com/readbookcss.php?book=Aeneid&chapter=1&authorFile=virgil_books.php Aeneid]
- [http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-3.html CliffsNotes]
- Sequels
- [http://virgil.org/supplementa/decembrio.htm The Thirteenth Book of the Aeneid: a fragment by Pier Candido Decembrio, translated by David Wilson-Okamura]
- Supplement to the twelfth book of the Aeneid by Maffeo Vegio at [http://virgil.org/supplementa/vegio-latin.htm Latin text] and [http://virgil.org/supplementa/vegio-twyne.htm English translation]
- Commentary
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Serv.+A.+toc Perseus/Tufts: Maurus Servius Honoratus. Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil. (Latin)] Category:Roman era books Category:Trojan War Category:Latin poems Category:Epics Category:Julio-Claudian Dynasty ko:아이네이스 ja:アエネイス

Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl (Gr. δάκτυλος dáktulos, “finger”) is an element of meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables. In accentual verse, such as English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter: :This is the / forest prim- / eval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks, The first five feet of the line are dactyls, and the sixth is a trochee. A more modern example is the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds": :Picture your self in a boat on a river with :tangerine tree-ees and marmalade skii-ii-es. The song is in written in dactylic tetrameter, and has the rhythm of a waltz. The word "skies" takes up a full three beats. Category:Poetic form

Spondee

In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables. This makes it a unique type of metre in English verse as all the other metric forms contain no more than one long syllable. It is impossible to construct a whole, serious poem with spondees. Consequently, spondees mainly occur as variants within, say, an anapaestic structure. For example (from G. K. Chesterton, Lepanto): :White founts falling in the courts of the sun :And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; This whole verse is rather unusual in structure, making it difficult as an example, unfortunately. The following is a possible analysis, and shows the role of the spondee. #The basic template for both lines is anapaestic tetrameter: four feet, each consisting of two short syllables then a long syllable (duh-duh-DAH, duh-duh-DAH, duh-duh-DAH, duh-duh-DAH). It is then heavily modified: #The second, third and fourth feet in the second line each have three instead of two short syllables (duh-duh-duh-DAH). #The first anapaest in the first line is replaced with a spondee ("White founts," DAH-DAH) #The second anapaest in the first line is replaced with a trochee (DAH-duh). A simpler version of the first line might be: :There are white fountains falling in the courts of the sun . Two short syllables are added at the beginning, and "founts" is lengthened to "fountains." These extra syllables add "filler," so that when the poem is read stress no longer naturally falls on the syllable "fount" (or, does so to a lesser degree). As a result there are unstressed syllables just before the "fall," so that naturally becomes an anapaest ("fountains fall-," duh-duh-DAH), and the "ing" slips into the following anapaest. Chesterton's original version changes all this; it is less intuitive to write and has a more unusual sound. The spondee effects this. Category:Poetic form ---- In grammar, a spondee is a two-syllable word in which there is equal emphasis placed on both syllables. Examples (in some accents; not standard British English) include "pancake", "railroad" and "robot". ---- "Spondee" is also the title of a piece composed by IDM duo Matmos. It is the third track on their 2001 album "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure." The piece revolves around audio samples from a hearing test: a woman's voice reciting two-syllable words, stressing both syllables.

Anceps

In Greek and Latin meter, an anceps syllable is a syllable in a metrical line which can be either short or long. An anceps syllable may be called "free" or "irrational" depending on the type of meter being discussed. Anceps syllables occur in two situations. First, the final syllables of most metrical lines are anceps, with the idea that a short final syllable can be effectively lengthened by the pause that naturally falls at the end of the line. This is sometimes referred to as "brevis in longa" (short in long). Second, anceps syllables in the middle or beginning of a line are characteristic of Aeolic meters, such as the Sapphic meter. These initial anceps syllables reflect earlier Indo-European meters where only the last few syllables of a line were regulated. Category:Poetic form

Cicero

: For other uses see Cicero (disambiguation) Marcus Tullius Cicero (standard English pronunciation ; Classical Latin pronunciation ) (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was an orator and statesman of Ancient Rome, and is generally considered the greatest Latin orator and prose stylist. prose

Biography

Cicero was born in Arpinum and killed at Formia, fleeing from political enemies. "It is no exaggeration", wrote Taylor (as cited in "References"), "to say that the most brilliant era of Roman public life was ushered in by Cicero and closed by his death—he stood at its cradle and he followed its hearse." His family, the Tullii, were one of the landed gentry in Arpinum and resented the fame and fortunes of the other great Arpinate families, the Marii. Throughout his life, the conservative Cicero loathed being compared to the then more famous Marius. The name "Cicero" is derived from cicer, the Latin word for "chickpea." Plutarch explains that the name was originally applied to one of Cicero's ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose, which resembled that of a chickpea. In fact (Plutarch continues), Cicero was urged to change the theretofore-ignoble name when he entered politics, but he refused.

Early life

According to Plutarch, he was an extremely adept student, learning so well and rapidly that he attracted attention from all over Rome. He was especially fond of poetry, although he shied away from no scholarly field. In 89 BC-88 BC, Cicero served on the staffs of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as they campaigned in the Social War, though he had no taste for war. Cicero also had a love for almost everything Greek, and even stated in his will that he wanted to be buried in Greece. He found the ancient philosophers such as Plato very thought provoking. Cicero served as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BC. He wrote that in Sicily he saw the gravestone of Archimedes of Syracuse, on which was carved Archimedes' favorite discovery in geometry, that the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of the smallest right circular cylinder in which it fits is 2:3. He built an extremely successful career as an advocate, and first attained prominence for his successful prosecution in August 70 BC of Gaius Verres, the former governor of Sicily. Despite his great successes as an advocate, Cicero suffered from his lack of reputable ancestry; as no Tullius had been consul before him, he was neither noble nor patrician, and his family was considered unimportant. He was further hindered by the fact that the last man to have been elected to the consulate without consular ancestors (i.e., the last "New Man", or Novus Homo) had been the political radical and militarily innovative Marius.

Consul

In 63 BC, Cicero became the first novus homo in more than thirty years by being elected consul. His only significant historical accomplishment during his year in office was the suppression of the Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic led by Lucius Sergius Catilina, a disaffected patrician. Cicero procured a senatus consultum de re publica defendenda (a declaration of martial law, also called the senatus consultum ultimum) and drove Catiline out of the city by a philippic in which he described the debauchery of Rome and especially Catiline. Catiline fled but left behind his 'deputies' who would start the revolution from within whilst Catiline assaulted it from without with an army recruited among Sulla's veterans in Etruria. Cicero managed to have these 'deputies' of Catiline confess their crime in front of the entire Senate, after ambushing an embassy they had sent to a Gaulish tribe. The Senate then deliberated upon the punishment to be given to the conspirators. As it was a legislative rather than a judicial body, there were limits on its power to do so; however, martial law was in effect, and it was feared that simple house arrest or exile - the standard options - would not remove the threat to the State. At first most in the Senate spoke for the 'extreme penalty'; many were then swayed by Julius Caesar who spoke decrying the precedent it would set and argued in favor of the punishment being confined to a mode of banishment. Cato then rose in defense of the death penalty and all the Senate finally agreed on the matter. Cicero had the conspirators taken to the Tullianum, the notorious Roman prison, where they were hanged. He received the honorific "Pater Patriae" for his actions in suppressing the conspiracy, but thereafter lived in fear of trial or exile for having put Roman citizens to death without trial. He also received the first public thanksgiving for a civic accomplishment; heretofore it had been a purely military honor. Cicero's Pro Flacco oration provides a uniquely early and clear example of anti-Semitism; in this speech, Cicero plays upon several stereotypical themes which have been echoed throughout the last two millennia. The case involved the defense of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, a Roman aristocrat, who was accused of (among other things) unlawfully confiscating Jewish funds which had been collected for the maintenance of the Temple at Jerusalem. In defense of Flaccus, Cicero made arguments regarding the public site which had been selected for the open-air tribunal: "Now let us take a look at the Jews and their mania for gold. You chose this site, [chief prosecutor] Laelius, and the crowd which frequents it, with an eye to this particular accusation, knowing very well that Jews with their large numbers and tendency to act as a clique are valuable supporters to have at any kind of public meeting."

Exile and return

In 58 BC, the populist Publius Clodius Pulcher introduced a law exiling any man who had put Roman citizens to death without trial. Although Cicero maintained that the sweeping senatus consultum ultimum granted him in 63 BC had indemnified him against legal penalty, he nevertheless appeared ragged in public and began to beg for support from the people. Seeing that he could not go out in public without being lambasted by Clodius's heavies, he dedicated a statue to Minerva in the Forum and left Italy for a year and spent his quasi-exile setting his speeches to paper. In letters to his friend Atticus, Cicero maintained that the Senate was jealous of his accomplishments which was why they did not save him from exile. Cicero returned after over a dozen months from his exile to a cheering crowd, much in the manner of Demosthenes, which the historian Appian pointed out. During the 50s, Cicero supported the populist Milo to use as a spear head against Clodius, who continued to use his popular support to establish terror in the streets. During the mid-50s, Clodius was killed by Milo's gladiators on the Via Appia. Cicero defended Milo on counts of murder from the relatives of Clodius, yet failed. Despite this failure, Cicero's Pro Milone was considered by some as his ultimate masterpiece. Cicero argued that Milo had no reason to kill Clodius and had all to gain from his living, pointing out that Milo had no idea that he would encounter Clodius on the Via Appia. The prosecution, however, pointed out that Milo had freed his slaves who were with him during the bout with Clodius so that they could not testify against him in court on charges that he had ordered the killing of Clodius. Cicero rejected this, saying that Milo's slaves had defended him honorably and deserved to be free, seeing as how they had saved their master from an attack by Clodius. Milo fled into exile and continued to live in Massilia until he returned to stir up further trouble during the Civil War. As the struggle between Pompey and Julius Caesar grew more intense in 50 BC, Cicero favored Pompey but tried to avoid turning Caesar into a permanent enemy. When Caesar invaded Italy in 49 BC, Cicero fled Rome. Caesar attempted vainly to convince him to return, and in June of that year Cicero slipped out of Italy and traveled to Dyrrachium (Epidamnos) .In

Dactylic hexameter

External links

Hexameter

External links

Meter (poetry)

Fundamentals

Technical Terms

Common Feet

Dissent

Greek language

History

Classification

Geographic distribution

Official status

Phonology

Vowel sounds

Homer

Ancient Accounts of Homer

The Homeric Question

Historical Aspects of the Poems

References

Literature

Commentaries

Homeric Question

Homeric dialect

Editions

English Translations

External links

Odyssey

Plot summary

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

Book 4

Book 5

Book 6

Book 7

Book 8

Book 9

Book 10

Book 12

Book 13

Book 14

Book 15

Book 16

Book 17

Book 18

Book 19

Book 20

Book 21

Book 22

Book 23

Book 24

Alternative Word Spellings

Geography in the Odyssey

Derivative works

External links

Aeneid

Form and tradition

Influence

Story

Context

The history of the Aeneid

See also

Further reading

External links

Dactyl (poetry)

Spondee

Anceps

Cicero

Biography

Early life

Consul

Exile and return