WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.839 Okay, let's unpack this. Homer, we're not just 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:04.960 talking about the author of some old books. No. 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:06.799 I mean, we're talking about the foundational 00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:10.039 author of Western literature, the supposed genius 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:13.480 whose works have shaped, well, everything, philosophy, 00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:18.039 education, art, for nearly 3 ,000 years. Welcome 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:21.140 to the Deep Dive. Today, we are wrestling with 00:00:21.140 --> 00:00:24.300 what is probably the most enduring literary identity 00:00:24.300 --> 00:00:26.760 crisis in history. That's a good way to put it. 00:00:27.070 --> 00:00:29.370 We're moving well beyond a simple summary of 00:00:29.370 --> 00:00:32.210 the Iliad and the Odyssey to really tackle what 00:00:32.210 --> 00:00:34.630 scholars call the Homeric question. Which is 00:00:34.630 --> 00:00:37.850 this complex, centuries -long debate. Exactly. 00:00:37.850 --> 00:00:40.009 A debate about who this man was, if he was a 00:00:40.009 --> 00:00:42.450 man at all, and crucially how his poems actually 00:00:42.450 --> 00:00:44.530 came to be written down and preserved. Right. 00:00:44.710 --> 00:00:48.350 So our mission today is to take this huge, fragmented 00:00:48.350 --> 00:00:51.369 academic puzzle. and really distill the consensus 00:00:51.369 --> 00:00:53.590 and the controversy for you. Homer is one of 00:00:53.590 --> 00:00:55.649 the most influential figures we can name. Oh, 00:00:55.710 --> 00:00:57.869 easily. Plato himself called him the one who 00:00:57.869 --> 00:01:01.729 has taught Greece. And centuries later, you have 00:01:01.729 --> 00:01:05.709 the great Roman poet Virgil, who, I mean, he 00:01:05.709 --> 00:01:07.510 built his entire career on Homer's foundation. 00:01:07.870 --> 00:01:10.989 You refer to him simply as poet sovereign. Yet. 00:01:11.370 --> 00:01:13.709 And here is the central paradox. And this is 00:01:13.709 --> 00:01:16.230 why we're deep diving today. Yes. This author 00:01:16.230 --> 00:01:19.750 prays so universally whose work is absolutely 00:01:19.750 --> 00:01:22.689 foundational to our cultural identity is, in 00:01:22.689 --> 00:01:26.069 the view of modern scholarship, largely a fictionalized 00:01:26.069 --> 00:01:28.709 figure. It's incredible. His identity is contested. 00:01:28.709 --> 00:01:31.069 His birthplace is debated across, what, half 00:01:31.069 --> 00:01:33.489 a dozen cities? At least. And the very method 00:01:33.489 --> 00:01:36.049 of composition, that moment he went from song 00:01:36.049 --> 00:01:39.129 to text, was completely revolutionized by 20th 00:01:39.129 --> 00:01:42.260 century research. today from some dense sources. 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:44.920 We've got scholarly analyses covering biographical 00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:48.500 traditions, the evolution of academic criticism 00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:50.760 from antiquity right up to the latest contemporary 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:53.400 debates on linguistic dating, and the stunning 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:55.819 findings of oral formulaic research. So we're 00:01:55.819 --> 00:01:57.180 going to try and figure out not just what Homer 00:01:57.180 --> 00:01:59.519 wrote, but how this incredible piece of literary 00:01:59.519 --> 00:02:01.819 engineering came to exist. And why the question 00:02:01.819 --> 00:02:05.000 of who he was still sparks such furious arguments 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:07.900 today. Let's start, as any good tradition must, 00:02:08.120 --> 00:02:11.349 with the monuments themselves. The poems. Because 00:02:11.349 --> 00:02:13.710 their scale and their influence are the primary 00:02:13.710 --> 00:02:16.550 reasons why this whole mystery matters so profoundly. 00:02:16.849 --> 00:02:19.909 So we begin with the two works universally attributed 00:02:19.909 --> 00:02:22.949 to the man known as Homer, the Iliad and the 00:02:22.949 --> 00:02:24.990 Odyssey. Most people know the general outline, 00:02:25.129 --> 00:02:28.009 but let's really nail down the core emotional 00:02:28.009 --> 00:02:30.430 and thematic focus of each narrative. Because 00:02:30.430 --> 00:02:33.129 they are, as you said, vastly different experiences. 00:02:33.370 --> 00:02:36.750 They really are. The Iliad is. It's intensely 00:02:36.750 --> 00:02:39.469 focused. It takes place over only a few weeks 00:02:39.469 --> 00:02:41.949 during the final year of the decade -long Trojan 00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:44.370 War. And geographically, we're pretty much stuck 00:02:44.370 --> 00:02:46.810 in one place. Right. We are fixed mostly around 00:02:46.810 --> 00:02:49.389 the walls of Troy in the Achaean camp. Its central 00:02:49.389 --> 00:02:52.590 theme is menace or rage. Specifically, the rage 00:02:52.590 --> 00:02:55.250 of Achilles. The fatal quarrel between the supreme 00:02:55.250 --> 00:02:57.849 commander, King Agamemnon, and the greatest warrior, 00:02:58.050 --> 00:03:01.689 Achilles. It is a profound, bloody study in the 00:03:01.689 --> 00:03:04.590 destructive nature of pride, honor, and of course, 00:03:04.650 --> 00:03:07.900 grief. It is so monumental in its seriousness 00:03:07.900 --> 00:03:10.800 and that you turn to the Odyssey and the entire 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:14.379 narrative structure just, it flips completely. 00:03:14.639 --> 00:03:18.680 It's an epic of travel, of persistence and cleverness. 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:21.860 Precisely. The Odyssey picks up after Troy has 00:03:21.860 --> 00:03:24.319 fallen and chronicles the 10 -year journey of 00:03:24.319 --> 00:03:27.120 Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he struggles desperately 00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:29.340 to return home. And everything is thrown at him. 00:03:29.479 --> 00:03:32.259 Everything. He's punished by the gods, detained 00:03:32.259 --> 00:03:34.919 by sorceresses and nymphs. He faces monsters. 00:03:35.199 --> 00:03:37.860 It depicts man's struggle and perseverance using 00:03:37.860 --> 00:03:40.280 wit and cunning metis instead of the pure force 00:03:40.280 --> 00:03:42.599 we see in the Iliad. So the theme is completely 00:03:42.599 --> 00:03:45.800 different. It's about return, restoration, overcoming 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:49.819 all this divine interference. Yes. immediately 00:03:49.819 --> 00:03:52.199 alerts scholars to the complexity of their origin 00:03:52.199 --> 00:03:55.360 is the language itself. Homeric Greek or Epic 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:57.360 Greek. You mentioned earlier, this is not a language 00:03:57.360 --> 00:03:59.500 people just spoke on the street. No, not at all. 00:03:59.599 --> 00:04:02.139 It's a literary kunspra. An artificial language. 00:04:02.300 --> 00:04:04.080 That's right. An artificial language. It's a 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:06.520 purposeful blend of linguistic features taken 00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:08.900 from different centuries and different geographic 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:11.460 regions, primarily the Eastern Ionic dialect, 00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:14.400 but you also see features of the Aeolic dialect 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:17.100 mixed in. And why is that blend so significant? 00:04:17.610 --> 00:04:20.250 Because it essentially proves the poems were 00:04:20.250 --> 00:04:23.490 inherited over generations. No single person 00:04:23.490 --> 00:04:25.889 speaking in a single place at a single time could 00:04:25.889 --> 00:04:28.310 have naturally invented this linguistic cocktail. 00:04:28.649 --> 00:04:31.129 I see. So it's the product of an evolving poetic 00:04:31.129 --> 00:04:33.589 tradition. Which makes the idea of a singular 00:04:33.589 --> 00:04:36.529 one -time author almost impossible. So the language 00:04:36.529 --> 00:04:38.889 itself is a composite artifact that tells us 00:04:38.889 --> 00:04:41.550 we're dealing with a deep historical process, 00:04:41.629 --> 00:04:44.310 not just a sudden flash of genius from one person. 00:04:44.490 --> 00:04:47.170 Exactly. And, you know, despite the... deeply 00:04:47.170 --> 00:04:50.930 tragic, serious, and monumental themes, our sources 00:04:50.930 --> 00:04:53.430 remind us that the poems contain the full spectrum 00:04:53.430 --> 00:04:55.290 of human experience. There's humor in there. 00:04:55.389 --> 00:04:57.970 Yes. There are moments of high comedy and laughter, 00:04:58.009 --> 00:05:00.509 often involving the gods, which gives the audience 00:05:00.509 --> 00:05:02.709 a moment of relief from the constant threat of 00:05:02.709 --> 00:05:05.430 death and divine wrath. It's this emotional and 00:05:05.430 --> 00:05:08.810 structural depth that really cemented their immense 00:05:08.810 --> 00:05:12.209 legacy. Well, it's almost impossible to overstate 00:05:12.209 --> 00:05:14.800 the cultural impact these two works had. They 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:17.079 weren't just popular entertainment, not by a 00:05:17.079 --> 00:05:20.740 long shot. They were the absolute core of ancient 00:05:20.740 --> 00:05:23.259 Greek culture and education. They were the curriculum. 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:26.759 They were famously the first literary works taught 00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:28.939 to every single student. If you wanted to teach 00:05:28.939 --> 00:05:30.740 a child what it meant to be Greek, you taught 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:33.160 them Homer. They fostered the foundational ideals, 00:05:33.500 --> 00:05:37.120 concepts like Cleos. Undying glory gained through 00:05:37.120 --> 00:05:41.379 heroic action. Antima. The honor or value accorded 00:05:41.379 --> 00:05:44.089 to a man in society. All of these were defined 00:05:44.089 --> 00:05:47.129 by the behavior of Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus. 00:05:47.189 --> 00:05:49.829 They were the moral compass, the historical memory, 00:05:49.990 --> 00:05:52.629 and the literary textbook all rolled into one 00:05:52.629 --> 00:05:55.139 scroll. And that influence is literally unbroken. 00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:57.560 You mentioned Virgil. Yes. Dante referred to 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.100 Homer as the master of all masters. Virgil built 00:06:01.100 --> 00:06:03.579 the Aeneid as a conscious Roman response and 00:06:03.579 --> 00:06:06.180 successor to the Greek epics. And today. If you 00:06:06.180 --> 00:06:08.560 look at literature, music, or film today, the 00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:10.680 patterns of the quest, the journey home, the 00:06:10.680 --> 00:06:13.459 internal struggle with rage, they are all traceable 00:06:13.459 --> 00:06:16.139 directly back to these two poems. Even in modern 00:06:16.139 --> 00:06:18.480 translations, right? critically acclaimed work 00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:21.399 by Emily Wilson, we are still wrestling with 00:06:21.399 --> 00:06:23.860 the absolute weight and relevance of these stories. 00:06:23.939 --> 00:06:26.879 We are. So this magnitude of influence means 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:28.920 that the question of who actually composed them 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:31.980 isn't some obscure academic inquiry. No, it's 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:33.639 fundamental. It's fundamental to understanding 00:06:33.639 --> 00:06:36.740 the origins of Western identity. And, you know, 00:06:36.759 --> 00:06:39.579 given that profound significance, you would expect 00:06:39.579 --> 00:06:43.379 a library full of reliable biographies. Instead. 00:06:43.930 --> 00:06:46.490 Instead, we have the opposite. The complete opposite. 00:06:46.689 --> 00:06:48.850 That's the irony, isn't it? For the world's most 00:06:48.850 --> 00:06:51.069 influential poet, we know essentially nothing 00:06:51.069 --> 00:06:53.670 certain about him. Which brings us to the central 00:06:53.670 --> 00:06:56.790 insight of modern scholarship. The ancient conception 00:06:56.790 --> 00:06:59.730 of a single historical biographical author named 00:06:59.730 --> 00:07:03.769 Homer is likely a sophisticated fictional narrative. 00:07:03.990 --> 00:07:07.689 Yes. His anonymity, coupled with the desire to 00:07:07.689 --> 00:07:10.930 celebrate the works, led to the increasing mythologization 00:07:10.930 --> 00:07:13.360 of his life. We can actually track this myth 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:15.980 -making through the various biographical traditions 00:07:15.980 --> 00:07:18.339 that just proliferated across the Greek world. 00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:20.519 The most widespread one, the one that everyone 00:07:20.519 --> 00:07:24.019 pictures, portrays Homer as a blind bard. Right, 00:07:24.139 --> 00:07:26.319 a figure of reverence whose physical impairment 00:07:26.319 --> 00:07:29.259 suggests an internal, deeper vision. And he's 00:07:29.259 --> 00:07:31.920 typically placed in Ionia, which is the central 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:34.959 coastal region of Anatolia. But the moment you 00:07:34.959 --> 00:07:38.129 try to pin down any specific fact... The whole 00:07:38.129 --> 00:07:39.889 narrative just dissolves into contradiction. 00:07:40.189 --> 00:07:42.430 It does. The debate over his birthplace is probably 00:07:42.430 --> 00:07:44.930 the most famous example. It became a point of 00:07:44.930 --> 00:07:47.709 civic pride for cities all across the Greek world. 00:07:47.910 --> 00:07:50.470 Seven different cities claimed him. Pindar, a 00:07:50.470 --> 00:07:54.490 5th century BC poet, credits Chios and Smyrna. 00:07:54.670 --> 00:07:57.529 But then you also have claims from Argos, Pylos, 00:07:57.569 --> 00:08:00.829 Colophon, or Athens. Right, and our sources emphasize 00:08:00.829 --> 00:08:04.079 that No single account ever achieved mainstream 00:08:04.079 --> 00:08:07.379 acceptance. This lack of agreement isn't a sign 00:08:07.379 --> 00:08:09.600 that historians just lost the record. No, it's 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:11.459 a sign that the records were never reliable in 00:08:11.459 --> 00:08:13.399 the first place. It's proof that people were 00:08:13.399 --> 00:08:16.439 retroactively applying a biography to an anonymous 00:08:16.439 --> 00:08:18.759 masterpiece. And the more you look at the details, 00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:21.300 the more purely fictional they seem. The accounts 00:08:21.300 --> 00:08:23.860 of his parentage, for example. They're just wildly 00:08:23.860 --> 00:08:27.459 varied. Oh, they strain credulity entirely. The 00:08:27.459 --> 00:08:29.579 biographical accounts, which were compiled much 00:08:29.579 --> 00:08:32.539 later, needed to ensure Homer had a suitably 00:08:32.539 --> 00:08:36.220 divine or heroic pedigree. Of course. So he's 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:38.100 sometimes claimed to be descended from one of 00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:41.259 the muses or from the god Apollo or from mythological 00:08:41.259 --> 00:08:43.580 figures like Orpheus. But there's one that's 00:08:43.580 --> 00:08:46.120 even more spectacular than that. Yes, the one 00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:48.559 found in some traditions dating back to Roman 00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:52.039 imperial times. It claimed his parents were Epicast, 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:54.840 the daughter of Nestor, and Telemachus, the son 00:08:54.840 --> 00:08:57.240 of Odysseus. Wait, wait. So the man who sings 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:00.039 the story of Odysseus' journey home is, in this 00:09:00.039 --> 00:09:03.019 version, the grandson of the hero. Yes. Uniting 00:09:03.019 --> 00:09:06.220 the poet and the heroic subject lineally. Precisely. 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:09.240 It's the ultimate act of myth -making. It elevates 00:09:09.240 --> 00:09:11.360 the poet to the same status as the figures he 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:13.740 chronicles, making him a character in his own 00:09:13.740 --> 00:09:16.379 epic history. It's the Greeks essentially deciding 00:09:16.379 --> 00:09:18.240 that the poet must be as great as his poetry. 00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:20.700 That's a perfect way to put it. And then we get 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.320 the strange, almost low -stakes anecdotes that 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:26.000 contrast so sharply with the monumental subject 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.960 matter. Yes, alongside the high -flown genealogy, 00:09:29.059 --> 00:09:32.360 we have these small, grounded legends. The tradition 00:09:32.360 --> 00:09:34.679 that he died on the island of Eos is perhaps 00:09:34.679 --> 00:09:37.440 the most common location for his death. But the 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:39.600 most bizarre story is the riddle he supposedly 00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:41.960 failed to solve. Ah, the fisherman's riddle. 00:09:42.299 --> 00:09:45.200 Remind us of the details. The legend says Homer 00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:47.799 encountered some fishermen and failed to answer 00:09:47.799 --> 00:09:50.480 their riddle, which led to his death from shame 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:54.100 or despair. And the riddle was? The riddle was, 00:09:54.220 --> 00:09:56.679 we left whatever we caught and carry whatever 00:09:56.679 --> 00:10:00.190 we didn't. The answer, which the blind bard supposedly 00:10:00.190 --> 00:10:04.029 couldn't figure out, was lice. Lice. The man 00:10:04.029 --> 00:10:05.950 who crafted the Rage of Achilles is defeated 00:10:05.950 --> 00:10:09.750 by the common, messy reality of tiny human parasites. 00:10:10.149 --> 00:10:12.690 The contrast is extraordinary, isn't it? It grounds 00:10:12.690 --> 00:10:14.850 him in the world of rhapsodes, these traveling 00:10:14.850 --> 00:10:17.070 performers, who would have faced all kinds of 00:10:17.070 --> 00:10:19.649 petty humiliation and common concerns. And that 00:10:19.649 --> 00:10:22.370 contrasts so sharply with the divine parentage 00:10:22.370 --> 00:10:24.870 claims. Right, this huge yawning gap between 00:10:24.870 --> 00:10:27.289 the mythical, demigod -like figure and the obscure... 00:10:27.309 --> 00:10:30.169 obscure, possibly impoverished traveling rhapsode 00:10:30.169 --> 00:10:32.649 is what modern scholarship has spent two centuries 00:10:32.649 --> 00:10:35.309 dissecting. And this centrality of the figure 00:10:35.309 --> 00:10:38.029 meant that Homer's name became a magnet for every 00:10:38.029 --> 00:10:41.289 work of perceived literary excellence. Which 00:10:41.289 --> 00:10:43.769 brings us to the catalog of works we call the 00:10:43.769 --> 00:10:46.730 Homerica. Works attributed to Homer in antiquity, 00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:49.429 but definitively rejected today. And they demonstrate 00:10:49.429 --> 00:10:51.610 that Homer was more than a man. He was a literary 00:10:51.610 --> 00:10:54.850 brand name. The list is extensive. It shows how 00:10:54.850 --> 00:10:57.590 much the Greeks wanted to credit him with. Besides 00:10:57.590 --> 00:11:00.389 the two main epics, many people in antiquity 00:11:00.389 --> 00:11:02.669 attributed the Homeric hymns to him. Which are 00:11:02.669 --> 00:11:05.409 beautiful, sophisticated invocations to the gods. 00:11:05.529 --> 00:11:07.929 Absolutely. And then there's the contest of Homer 00:11:07.929 --> 00:11:10.450 and Hesiod, which details a fictional poetic 00:11:10.450 --> 00:11:13.370 competition. And the more popular epics, known 00:11:13.370 --> 00:11:15.950 collectively as the epic cycle. which filled 00:11:15.950 --> 00:11:18.570 in the gaps around the Iliad, like the Cypria 00:11:18.570 --> 00:11:20.549 and the Little Iliad. Exactly. And my favorite 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:22.990 example of the brand name is that comic mini 00:11:22.990 --> 00:11:25.830 -epic, the Trachomaiomachia. The Frog -Mouse 00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:28.950 War. The Frog -Mouse War. It's a parody, a miniature 00:11:28.950 --> 00:11:31.789 epic that describes a mock -heroic battle between 00:11:31.789 --> 00:11:35.250 frogs and mice, all cast in the monumental language 00:11:35.250 --> 00:11:37.370 of the Iliad. The fact that the Greeks decided, 00:11:37.610 --> 00:11:40.769 the poet who wrote the definition of glory, also 00:11:40.769 --> 00:11:43.620 wrote a high -style parody about vermin. Tells 00:11:43.620 --> 00:11:45.899 you everything. It tells you that Homer was simply 00:11:45.899 --> 00:11:48.620 the designation for best -in -class epic poetry. 00:11:48.899 --> 00:11:51.840 And this whole historical process, the total 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.080 collapse of the biography coupled with the massive 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:57.159 scale and influence of the poems, it forced scholars 00:11:57.159 --> 00:12:00.059 to shift focus entirely. Right. They realized 00:12:00.059 --> 00:12:02.080 they would never find the man, so they had to 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:04.519 look for the author in the text. And that crucial 00:12:04.519 --> 00:12:07.850 shift ushers in the Homeric question. The Homeric 00:12:07.850 --> 00:12:10.250 question isn't just one debate. It's a centuries 00:12:10.250 --> 00:12:13.450 -long academic war over composition, transmission, 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:16.970 and unity. It's the quest to understand how these 00:12:16.970 --> 00:12:19.389 poems came into our possession. And when criticism 00:12:19.389 --> 00:12:21.370 first started, the question wasn't who wrote 00:12:21.370 --> 00:12:24.230 Homer, but what Homer wrote. Right. The earliest 00:12:24.230 --> 00:12:26.649 preserved critiques, dating back to the 7th century 00:12:26.649 --> 00:12:30.549 BC, were deeply moral. They focused on Homer's 00:12:30.549 --> 00:12:33.190 controversial treatment of the gods. Who in the 00:12:33.190 --> 00:12:36.649 Iliad are often petty, adulterous, deceptive, 00:12:36.649 --> 00:12:40.649 and violent. Critics like the poet Xenophanes 00:12:40.649 --> 00:12:43.690 of Colophon famously denounced this portrayal 00:12:43.690 --> 00:12:46.590 as immoral. He argued that the gods should be 00:12:46.590 --> 00:12:49.750 depicted as paragons of virtue, not flawed humans. 00:12:50.509 --> 00:12:52.789 And this created an immediate theological crisis 00:12:52.789 --> 00:12:55.570 for a society that revered the poems as foundational 00:12:55.570 --> 00:12:58.490 texts. Which led almost immediately to the defense 00:12:58.490 --> 00:13:01.470 of Homer. And this set the stage for over a thousand 00:13:01.470 --> 00:13:03.649 years of interpretation. Right. This defense 00:13:03.649 --> 00:13:05.970 came from the allegorists, like the Agenes of 00:13:05.970 --> 00:13:08.429 Regium. They argued the poems weren't meant to 00:13:08.429 --> 00:13:10.730 be taken literally. So the Battles of the Gods 00:13:10.730 --> 00:13:13.250 were really allegories for battles between cosmic 00:13:13.250 --> 00:13:16.549 forces or moral concepts. Exactly. The Agenese 00:13:16.549 --> 00:13:18.990 famously proposed that the war between Achilles 00:13:18.990 --> 00:13:21.370 and Hector was an allegory for the battle between 00:13:21.370 --> 00:13:24.169 the dry and the wet elements. Wow. And that allowed 00:13:24.169 --> 00:13:27.009 the poems to survive religious critique, positioning 00:13:27.009 --> 00:13:29.690 them as complex repositories of hidden wisdom, 00:13:29.809 --> 00:13:32.169 not just narrative history. This allegorical 00:13:32.169 --> 00:13:34.129 reading then cemented their place in education. 00:13:34.679 --> 00:13:37.460 Absolutely. The Iliad and Odyssey became staple 00:13:37.460 --> 00:13:40.039 school texts throughout the Hellenistic and Roman 00:13:40.039 --> 00:13:42.659 periods, which led to the necessary creation 00:13:42.659 --> 00:13:45.860 of these massive scholarly commentaries to explain 00:13:45.860 --> 00:13:48.700 the historical, cultural, and linguistic difficulties 00:13:48.700 --> 00:13:51.940 to students who lived centuries later. The Stoic 00:13:51.940 --> 00:13:54.080 philosophers really ran with this, didn't they? 00:13:54.179 --> 00:13:57.139 They widely regarded the poems as allegories 00:13:57.139 --> 00:13:59.139 conveying their own ethical and philosophical 00:13:59.139 --> 00:14:02.259 doctrines. They did, and this completely transformed 00:14:02.259 --> 00:14:05.990 Homer's image from a simple bard into a prototypical, 00:14:06.009 --> 00:14:08.690 almost divine philosopher. And this monumental 00:14:08.690 --> 00:14:11.090 approach to interpreting and preserving Homer, 00:14:11.230 --> 00:14:14.120 it peaked during the Byzantine era. Particularly 00:14:14.120 --> 00:14:16.340 with the scholars of the 12th century. And you 00:14:16.340 --> 00:14:18.360 have to understand, this wasn't just casual book 00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:20.500 collecting. This was a profound act of intellectual 00:14:20.500 --> 00:14:22.940 preservation that saved the works for the West. 00:14:23.179 --> 00:14:25.620 Give us a sense of the scale of this work, especially 00:14:25.620 --> 00:14:27.960 with Eustathius of Thessalonica. Eustathius' 00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:30.419 commentary is just breathtaking in its physical 00:14:30.419 --> 00:14:33.120 magnitude. Our sources detail that his commentary 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:35.980 on the Iliad alone sprawls over nearly 4 ,000 00:14:35.980 --> 00:14:38.600 oversized pages in modern printed editions. 4 00:14:38.600 --> 00:14:41.759 ,000 pages? On just the Iliad? Just the Iliad. 00:14:42.120 --> 00:14:44.879 His Odyssey commentary adds almost 2 ,000 more. 00:14:45.379 --> 00:14:48.139 This scale demonstrates the monumental effort 00:14:48.139 --> 00:14:51.019 required to stabilize, explain, and defend the 00:14:51.019 --> 00:14:53.519 text against medieval critics and the shifting 00:14:53.519 --> 00:14:56.639 cultural landscape. So that work ensured that 00:14:56.639 --> 00:14:59.019 the tradition survived intact until the Renaissance. 00:14:59.379 --> 00:15:02.720 So Homer survives for 2 ,000 years as the revered, 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:06.450 wise, and singular poet. Then in the modern era, 00:15:06.570 --> 00:15:08.990 that reverence collapses into radical skepticism 00:15:08.990 --> 00:15:11.429 and the questions start getting harsh. Starting 00:15:11.429 --> 00:15:14.029 with a scathing attack in the 17th century. Right. 00:15:14.110 --> 00:15:17.049 The attack came in 1664 from Francois Hedelin, 00:15:17.210 --> 00:15:20.230 the Abbe d 'Aubignac. He was an extreme outlier 00:15:20.230 --> 00:15:22.309 at the time, but he launched a critique that 00:15:22.309 --> 00:15:25.149 would prove to be. Well, very prescient. He argued 00:15:25.149 --> 00:15:27.990 the poems were incoherent, immoral, and entirely 00:15:27.990 --> 00:15:30.490 without the structural genius later critics claimed. 00:15:30.750 --> 00:15:33.429 Eh, his conclusion was radical. Homer never existed. 00:15:33.649 --> 00:15:35.769 Just flat out didn't exist. And the epics were 00:15:35.769 --> 00:15:37.970 merely a disorganized pile of shorter songs, 00:15:38.169 --> 00:15:40.529 hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors 00:15:40.529 --> 00:15:43.190 who lacked artistic vision. So that was the first 00:15:43.190 --> 00:15:45.389 major shot fired in the Homeric question. And 00:15:45.389 --> 00:15:47.789 the attack was refined about 50 years later by 00:15:47.789 --> 00:15:50.519 the English scholar Richard Bentley. Bentley 00:15:50.519 --> 00:15:53.299 was slightly more forgiving. He agreed a poet 00:15:53.299 --> 00:15:56.320 named Homer probably existed, but he was an obscure 00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:58.820 oral poet. He said he wrote a sequel of songs 00:15:58.820 --> 00:16:01.379 and rhapsodies to be sung by himself for small 00:16:01.379 --> 00:16:03.779 earnings and good cheer at festivals. That's 00:16:03.779 --> 00:16:06.379 a key distinction there. Bentley saw them as 00:16:06.379 --> 00:16:09.100 a sequel of songs, suggesting they were intended 00:16:09.100 --> 00:16:12.070 to be performed sequentially. but not necessarily 00:16:12.070 --> 00:16:15.909 edited into a cohesive, massive epic until much, 00:16:16.049 --> 00:16:18.090 much later. So he's separating the singer from 00:16:18.090 --> 00:16:20.649 the editor. Exactly. Bentley suggested they weren't 00:16:20.649 --> 00:16:23.230 collected and unified into the epic form we recognize 00:16:23.230 --> 00:16:26.049 until the time of Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, 00:16:26.230 --> 00:16:28.889 some 500 years after they were first sung. So 00:16:28.889 --> 00:16:30.730 the idea that the text we read is the result 00:16:30.730 --> 00:16:33.009 of later assembly, not original composition, 00:16:33.389 --> 00:16:35.970 was now firmly established. And this leads us 00:16:35.970 --> 00:16:38.370 to the formalization of the entire debate, driven 00:16:38.370 --> 00:16:42.009 by Friedrich August Wolf in 17... This is the 00:16:42.009 --> 00:16:46.629 moment the analyst school was born. It formalized 00:16:46.629 --> 00:16:49.309 the debate with a powerful, comprehensive argument. 00:16:49.750 --> 00:16:52.409 His core claim was that the material began as 00:16:52.409 --> 00:16:55.370 short, separate oral songs, possibly composed 00:16:55.370 --> 00:16:58.870 as early as the 10th century BC. And what was 00:16:58.870 --> 00:17:01.960 his proof? He pointed to the structural anomalies, 00:17:02.139 --> 00:17:04.599 the mixed dialects, and the repetitive elements 00:17:04.599 --> 00:17:07.759 as proof of their composite origin. We talked 00:17:07.759 --> 00:17:10.200 about the mixed dialect, the Kunstsprache. Why 00:17:10.200 --> 00:17:12.890 did that lead him to this conclusion? Because 00:17:12.890 --> 00:17:16.390 for Wolfe, the mixture of ionic and aeolic and 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:18.670 the presence of archaic forms alongside later 00:17:18.670 --> 00:17:21.470 language proved that the material had been inherited 00:17:21.470 --> 00:17:24.170 and modified over hundreds of years by successive 00:17:24.170 --> 00:17:26.509 bards in different regions. So it's like linguistic 00:17:26.509 --> 00:17:29.269 archaeology. It is. He concluded that the material 00:17:29.269 --> 00:17:31.430 passed through oral tradition for four centuries 00:17:31.430 --> 00:17:34.150 before being assembled into prototypical written 00:17:34.150 --> 00:17:37.250 versions in the 6th century BC by literate authors. 00:17:37.589 --> 00:17:40.349 And, crucially, he argued these texts were then 00:17:40.349 --> 00:17:44.829 extensively edited and sh**. So, Wolf's theory 00:17:44.829 --> 00:17:47.410 created the entire academic struggle of the 19th 00:17:47.410 --> 00:17:50.369 century. Everyone trying to recover the original, 00:17:50.450 --> 00:17:53.269 authentic, shorter poems that were hidden beneath 00:17:53.269 --> 00:17:57.450 the excrescences or later editions made by editors. 00:17:57.670 --> 00:18:00.509 And the analysts split into two dominant sub 00:18:00.509 --> 00:18:03.470 -theories over how the assembly occurred. First, 00:18:03.589 --> 00:18:06.240 we had the lay theory. which treated the epics 00:18:06.240 --> 00:18:08.900 like a patchwork quilt right the lay theorists 00:18:08.900 --> 00:18:10.900 argued the poems were simply built from a huge 00:18:10.900 --> 00:18:13.380 number of short independent and often unrelated 00:18:13.380 --> 00:18:17.299 songs or lays they focused on identifying the 00:18:17.299 --> 00:18:19.460 seams and inconsistencies in the narrative where 00:18:19.460 --> 00:18:21.660 these separate songs were crudely joined together 00:18:21.660 --> 00:18:23.799 okay and the other thing then you had the more 00:18:23.799 --> 00:18:26.279 moderate position the nucleus theory which suggested 00:18:26.279 --> 00:18:29.339 that homer did compose a shorter primary version 00:18:29.339 --> 00:18:32.220 of the iliad and odyssey a core nucleus yes which 00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:40.420 subsequent poets then expanded in terms Right. 00:18:40.700 --> 00:18:43.859 But both camps, the lay theorists and the nucleus 00:18:43.859 --> 00:18:46.819 theorists, fundamentally rejected the Unitarian 00:18:46.819 --> 00:18:49.559 view. The idea that these were the works of a 00:18:49.559 --> 00:18:53.079 single inspired genius composing one cohesive 00:18:53.079 --> 00:18:56.819 narrative. Exactly. So for over a century. The 00:18:56.819 --> 00:19:00.000 debate raged. Was it one genius or a series of 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.480 clumsy editors stitching fragments together? 00:19:02.799 --> 00:19:06.220 But the Unitarians, those who argued for superior 00:19:06.220 --> 00:19:09.539 artistic unity, they never fully gave up. And 00:19:09.539 --> 00:19:11.740 they were finally vindicated, in a way, by a 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:14.160 paradigm shift in the 20th century. The true 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:16.559 breakthrough came after World War I, when scholarship 00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:18.680 moved out of the library and into the field. 00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:21.140 Right. This was the pivotal work of Millman Perry 00:19:21.140 --> 00:19:23.859 and later his student Albert Lord. And this is 00:19:23.859 --> 00:19:26.019 the foundation of the oral formulaic theory. 00:19:26.589 --> 00:19:28.829 They went to study living traditions, specifically 00:19:28.829 --> 00:19:32.109 folk bards in the Balkans, in what was then Yugoslavia. 00:19:32.289 --> 00:19:34.730 Why was that fieldwork so crucial? It was crucial 00:19:34.730 --> 00:19:36.450 because they needed to understand composition 00:19:36.450 --> 00:19:39.349 without literacy. They observed bards composing 00:19:39.349 --> 00:19:42.470 massive, thousands of line epics entirely from 00:19:42.470 --> 00:19:45.130 memory, improvising them anew at every single 00:19:45.130 --> 00:19:47.329 performance. Which provided the crucial parallel 00:19:47.329 --> 00:19:49.799 for Homer. It did. Perry and Lorde concluded 00:19:49.799 --> 00:19:51.740 that the Homeric poems were composed through 00:19:51.740 --> 00:19:54.259 the same process, improvised oral performance. 00:19:54.519 --> 00:19:57.880 And this theory was so widely accepted because 00:19:57.880 --> 00:20:00.059 it immediately explained those puzzling features 00:20:00.059 --> 00:20:03.180 that the analysts had used to argue for fragmentation. 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:06.779 The massive redundancy, the stock epithets, the 00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:09.500 repetitive phrases. Right. The analysts saw those 00:20:09.500 --> 00:20:12.799 as signs of bad, lazy composition. But the oral 00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:15.529 formulaic theory proved they weren't lazy. They 00:20:15.529 --> 00:20:18.289 were essential tools for an extemporizing bard. 00:20:18.490 --> 00:20:21.490 Of course. If you are composing 15 ,000 lines 00:20:21.490 --> 00:20:24.009 on the fly, you don't have time to invent a new 00:20:24.009 --> 00:20:26.170 phrase every time the sun rises or a warrior 00:20:26.170 --> 00:20:29.450 speaks. You need a set phrase that fits the dactylotexameter 00:20:29.450 --> 00:20:32.589 meter instantly. Swift -footed tillies, rosy 00:20:32.589 --> 00:20:35.750 -fingered dawn, gray -eyed Athena. Those formulas 00:20:35.750 --> 00:20:38.069 are the building blocks of rapid, high -quality 00:20:38.069 --> 00:20:41.250 improvisation. So Perry and Lorde explain the 00:20:41.250 --> 00:20:44.150 how the mechanics of composition. But the who 00:20:44.150 --> 00:20:46.730 and when remained fuzzy. And that led to the 00:20:46.730 --> 00:20:50.049 most recent school of thought, neoanalysis. Neoanalysis 00:20:50.049 --> 00:20:52.190 attempts to reconcile the Unitarian emphasis 00:20:52.190 --> 00:20:54.750 on artistic unity with the analyst's recognition 00:20:54.750 --> 00:20:57.150 of traditional inherited elements. So they're 00:20:57.150 --> 00:20:59.289 trying to Briggs the gap. They are. They accept 00:20:59.289 --> 00:21:01.970 that the final poems are unified, but they seek 00:21:01.970 --> 00:21:03.990 to trace the relationship between the surviving 00:21:03.990 --> 00:21:06.970 works and the lost poems of the wider epic cycle. 00:21:07.519 --> 00:21:09.380 And their method is fascinating because they 00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:12.279 use structural flaws and anomalies in the text 00:21:12.279 --> 00:21:15.359 as historical evidence. That's the critical insight. 00:21:15.579 --> 00:21:17.859 Instead of discarding the anomalies as later 00:21:17.859 --> 00:21:20.380 editorial mistakes, the neo -analysts use them 00:21:20.380 --> 00:21:22.720 to reconstruct knowledge of earlier versions 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:25.140 of the myths that the bards were working with. 00:21:25.299 --> 00:21:28.140 So the mistakes are clues. They argue that these 00:21:28.140 --> 00:21:31.359 strange gaps or contradictions are residual signs 00:21:31.359 --> 00:21:34.599 of the older, inherited tradition fighting against 00:21:34.599 --> 00:21:37.200 the final poet's desire for a unified narrative. 00:21:37.619 --> 00:21:39.900 Give us a specific example of an anomaly they 00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:42.440 point to in the text. Okay. In the Iliad, they 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:44.799 look at Ajax, the second greatest Achaean warrior. 00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:47.519 His role in the main poem is oddly diminished 00:21:47.519 --> 00:21:49.660 compared to his prominence in earlier myths. 00:21:49.900 --> 00:21:52.380 Or consider the scene of the embassy sent to 00:21:52.380 --> 00:21:55.299 Achilles to beg him to rejoin the fight. Neo 00:21:55.299 --> 00:21:57.599 -analysts find evidence suggesting that in earlier 00:21:57.599 --> 00:22:00.059 versions, different characters composed that 00:22:00.059 --> 00:22:02.440 embassy. And in the Odyssey, what are the anomalies 00:22:02.440 --> 00:22:05.720 there? We see indications that Penelope, Odysseus' 00:22:05.859 --> 00:22:08.559 wife, may have recognized him much earlier in 00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:11.380 the narrative and even conspired with him against 00:22:11.380 --> 00:22:13.500 the suitors. Which would contradict the famous 00:22:13.500 --> 00:22:15.519 scene where she tests him at the very end. It 00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:18.420 would. These are moments where the massive shifting 00:22:18.420 --> 00:22:21.180 tradition poked through the carefully constructed 00:22:21.180 --> 00:22:24.799 final version. So after all this analysis, centuries 00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:27.700 of argument and fieldwork, what is the modern 00:22:27.700 --> 00:22:30.299 consensus regarding the identity and origin of 00:22:30.299 --> 00:22:33.109 the poems? What can we say for sure? Well, we 00:22:33.109 --> 00:22:36.230 have several key contemporary agreements. First 00:22:36.230 --> 00:22:38.970 and foremost, based on detailed linguistic analysis, 00:22:39.210 --> 00:22:42.309 differences in narrative manner, theology, ethics, 00:22:42.430 --> 00:22:46.390 vocabulary, and geographical perspective. Most 00:22:46.390 --> 00:22:48.650 scholars agree that while the poems are internally 00:22:48.650 --> 00:22:51.170 unified, the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced 00:22:51.170 --> 00:22:54.210 by the same primary author. So we have two geniuses 00:22:54.210 --> 00:22:56.369 composing in the same tradition, perhaps separated 00:22:56.369 --> 00:22:59.430 by a generation or two. Not one blind bard. Not 00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:02.089 Homer, but Homers. A collective genius, maybe. 00:23:02.150 --> 00:23:04.309 A collective genius, if you like. The second 00:23:04.309 --> 00:23:07.289 agreement is almost universal. The Delonia. Book 00:23:07.289 --> 00:23:09.349 10 of the Iliad. Book 10 of the Iliad, which 00:23:09.349 --> 00:23:11.650 details a night raid, is almost certainly a later 00:23:11.650 --> 00:23:14.190 insertion by a different poet, added to the main 00:23:14.190 --> 00:23:16.750 text well after its initial composition. It just 00:23:16.750 --> 00:23:19.329 breaks the narrative flow and is stylistically 00:23:19.329 --> 00:23:22.069 distinct. That's fascinating. A 4 ,000 -year 00:23:22.069 --> 00:23:24.589 -old game of spot the forgery. Yeah. Now, since 00:23:24.589 --> 00:23:27.069 we can't rely on biography, we have to rely entirely 00:23:27.069 --> 00:23:29.730 on linguistic and historical clues for dating. 00:23:29.829 --> 00:23:32.769 And the scholarly estimates here vary wildly. 00:23:32.950 --> 00:23:34.710 They really do. They range from the late 9th 00:23:34.710 --> 00:23:38.450 century BC deep into the 7th century BC. On the 00:23:38.450 --> 00:23:40.609 early end, you have scholars like Richard Jenko 00:23:40.609 --> 00:23:44.029 who propose an 8th century BC date based on linguistic 00:23:44.029 --> 00:23:46.230 statistics. And this aligns with the ancient 00:23:46.230 --> 00:23:49.130 historian Herodotus' claim that Homer lived 400 00:23:49.130 --> 00:23:52.420 years. years before his time. What material clues 00:23:52.420 --> 00:23:55.519 support this early dating? Barry B. Powell, who 00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:58.420 supports an early 8th century date, say 800 -750 00:23:58.420 --> 00:24:02.099 BC, argues based on absence. What's missing? 00:24:02.279 --> 00:24:04.740 The poems conspicuously lack mention of certain 00:24:04.740 --> 00:24:07.720 Iron Age military and social practices. For example, 00:24:07.720 --> 00:24:10.019 there is no mention of hoplite tactics. And for 00:24:10.019 --> 00:24:13.200 context, hoplite tactics were the signature military 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:16.440 development of the later Iron Age. Massed infantry 00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:19.599 formations, shield lock to shield, where the 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:22.500 individual heroics of the Mycenaean Age gave 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:25.559 way to collective discipline. Exactly. The fact 00:24:25.559 --> 00:24:28.099 that the Homeric heroes fight individually, using 00:24:28.099 --> 00:24:30.200 chariot transport rather than massed infantry, 00:24:30.539 --> 00:24:33.460 suggests the core tradition predates the development 00:24:33.460 --> 00:24:36.720 of these revolutionary tactics. Powell also notes 00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:39.000 the absence of mentions of widespread literacy. 00:24:39.380 --> 00:24:41.359 But others argue for a much later composition 00:24:41.359 --> 00:24:43.940 date, suggesting the text was finalized much 00:24:43.940 --> 00:24:46.480 deeper into the Iron Age. Martin Litchfield West 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:49.539 is a key figure here. He suggests a later dating 00:24:49.539 --> 00:24:53.720 for the Iliad, perhaps 660 -650 BC. with the 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:55.859 Odyssey composed a generation later. And his 00:24:55.859 --> 00:24:58.099 reasoning. West points to sophisticated structural 00:24:58.099 --> 00:25:00.980 elements and potential echoes of Hesiod's slightly 00:25:00.980 --> 00:25:04.000 later poetry. More controversially, he suggests 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:06.140 the poet demonstrates knowledge of major historical 00:25:06.140 --> 00:25:08.200 events that occurred in the mid -7th century 00:25:08.200 --> 00:25:11.019 BC. Such as what? West argues the poet may have 00:25:11.019 --> 00:25:13.500 known about the destruction of Babylon in 689 00:25:13.500 --> 00:25:16.839 BC by the Assyrian king Sennacherib and possibly 00:25:16.839 --> 00:25:21.880 the sack of Thebes in 664 -663 BC. If that's 00:25:21.880 --> 00:25:28.960 true, it puts... And then there's the view that 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:32.059 Homer wasn't a static point in time at all. Right, 00:25:32.119 --> 00:25:34.359 that the tradition was continually dynamic. Who 00:25:34.359 --> 00:25:36.400 advocates for that. That's the view advocated 00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:39.920 by Gregory Nagy. He proposes that Homer was not 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:42.920 a fixed author, but a continually evolving tradition. 00:25:43.339 --> 00:25:45.819 It certainly began stabilizing when it was first 00:25:45.819 --> 00:25:48.119 written down, but Nagy suggests the tradition 00:25:48.119 --> 00:25:50.740 of performance and modification continued, though 00:25:50.740 --> 00:25:52.890 gradually diminishing. until as late as the middle 00:25:52.890 --> 00:25:55.509 of the 2nd century BC. Right when the Alexandrian 00:25:55.509 --> 00:25:58.549 scholars formalized the text. Exactly. This perspective 00:25:58.549 --> 00:26:01.410 transforms Homer from a single man into a vast 00:26:01.410 --> 00:26:03.349 cultural performance that took hundreds of years 00:26:03.349 --> 00:26:06.329 to complete. So, whether the poems were finalized 00:26:06.329 --> 00:26:09.309 in the 8th or 7th century BC, the fact remains 00:26:09.309 --> 00:26:11.549 that they were the product of a living, evolving 00:26:11.549 --> 00:26:14.990 oral tradition. This means the poet or poets 00:26:14.990 --> 00:26:18.250 had an incredibly specific, technical, and sophisticated 00:26:18.250 --> 00:26:21.529 toolkit built purely for live performance. This 00:26:21.529 --> 00:26:23.849 is literary engineering at its finest. Let's 00:26:23.849 --> 00:26:25.970 get into that toolkit. The language itself is 00:26:25.970 --> 00:26:28.390 the first tool, the kunsprash. We've touched 00:26:28.390 --> 00:26:31.089 on it, but it's a purposeful amalgam of dialects, 00:26:31.089 --> 00:26:33.730 ionic being the base, but it's tailored specifically 00:26:33.730 --> 00:26:38.210 for one purpose. Epic hexameter poetry. It's 00:26:38.210 --> 00:26:40.009 an artificial language that serves the meter 00:26:40.009 --> 00:26:42.950 perfectly. It does. And the meter, dactylic hexameter, 00:26:43.029 --> 00:26:45.970 is the rhythmic backbone. For the listener, what 00:26:45.970 --> 00:26:48.700 exactly does that mean? How does it sound? Dactylic 00:26:48.700 --> 00:26:51.660 hexameter is a quantity -based meter, not a stress 00:26:51.660 --> 00:26:54.440 -based meter like most English poetry. A dactyl 00:26:54.440 --> 00:26:57.259 is a metrical foot of one long syllable followed 00:26:57.259 --> 00:26:59.480 by two short syllables. Think of a drumbeat. 00:26:59.579 --> 00:27:02.779 Long, short, short. Exactly. The poet uses six 00:27:02.779 --> 00:27:05.339 of these feet per line. The structure is unvarying, 00:27:05.339 --> 00:27:08.019 which is incredibly demanding. And this demanding 00:27:08.019 --> 00:27:11.660 structure necessitates the specific oral devices 00:27:11.660 --> 00:27:14.460 that Perry and Lorde identified. Right, the things 00:27:14.460 --> 00:27:16.859 that allow the bard to fill the line instantly. 00:27:17.579 --> 00:27:20.119 where we get the famous epithets. The set phrases. 00:27:20.500 --> 00:27:24.440 Exactly. These phrases like crafty Odysseus, 00:27:24.500 --> 00:27:27.099 rosy -fingered Dawn, or cloud -gatherer Zeus 00:27:27.099 --> 00:27:30.539 are pre -packaged linguistic units of specific 00:27:30.539 --> 00:27:33.599 lengths. They aren't ornamental filler. No, they're 00:27:33.599 --> 00:27:36.200 metric building blocks. Right. They allow the 00:27:36.200 --> 00:27:39.099 poet to summon a character or object while ensuring 00:27:39.099 --> 00:27:41.740 the line retains its perfect rhythm. Beyond just 00:27:41.740 --> 00:27:44.339 the epithets, you have the Homeric formulae, 00:27:44.339 --> 00:27:48.160 entire repeated lines or half -lines that signal 00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:51.049 transition. or recurring actions. These formulae 00:27:51.049 --> 00:27:53.750 are critical time savers during improvisation. 00:27:53.990 --> 00:27:56.630 Think of lines like, and then answered him, Agamemnon, 00:27:56.730 --> 00:27:59.069 king of men, or when the early born rose finger 00:27:59.069 --> 00:28:01.470 dawn came to light. They're instantly deployable. 00:28:01.549 --> 00:28:03.509 And they're essential for keeping the performance 00:28:03.509 --> 00:28:06.190 flowing rapidly without taxing the memory or 00:28:06.190 --> 00:28:08.609 compromising the meter. And syntactically, the 00:28:08.609 --> 00:28:11.289 poet uses parataxis, which is actually a simpler 00:28:11.289 --> 00:28:13.430 structure than we might expect from later literate 00:28:13.430 --> 00:28:16.440 poets. That's right. Unlike Virgil or Milton, 00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:19.480 who use these massive complex sentences with 00:28:19.480 --> 00:28:22.740 multiple subordinate clauses, hypotaxis Homer 00:28:22.740 --> 00:28:25.779 employs parataxis. An additive cumulative style. 00:28:26.059 --> 00:28:28.599 Yes. Main words are generally placed toward the 00:28:28.599 --> 00:28:30.740 beginning of the sentence, followed by subsequent 00:28:30.740 --> 00:28:34.029 simpler clauses that expand on the idea. This 00:28:34.029 --> 00:28:36.690 is far easier for a performing poet to manage. 00:28:36.930 --> 00:28:39.369 Why is that? Because they don't have to hold 00:28:39.369 --> 00:28:41.730 a complicated interlocking grammatical structure 00:28:41.730 --> 00:28:44.130 in their memory while they improvise the main 00:28:44.130 --> 00:28:46.470 narrative thread. It speeds up the live composition 00:28:46.470 --> 00:28:48.490 dramatically. It's a structure that supports 00:28:48.490 --> 00:28:51.789 memory. Speaking of memory, the tyxene is another 00:28:51.789 --> 00:28:54.710 powerful mnemonic device. Type scenes, identified 00:28:54.710 --> 00:28:58.309 by Walter Ehrend in 1933, are essentially blocks 00:28:58.309 --> 00:29:01.049 of set phrases or conventional descriptions used 00:29:01.049 --> 00:29:03.430 for frequently recurring activities. So every 00:29:03.430 --> 00:29:06.009 time a hero eats a meal or puts on his armor. 00:29:06.170 --> 00:29:09.829 Or prays or sacrifices an animal, the bard deploys 00:29:09.829 --> 00:29:11.990 a pre -established sequence of events and phrases. 00:29:12.369 --> 00:29:15.069 So the bard isn't inventing the menu every time 00:29:15.069 --> 00:29:18.210 Odysseus sits down to eat. No. They are deploying 00:29:18.210 --> 00:29:20.410 the established eating sequence, which they can 00:29:20.410 --> 00:29:23.089 then elaborate upon or shorten as the meter requires. 00:29:23.430 --> 00:29:25.470 It creates a sense of stability and familiarity 00:29:25.470 --> 00:29:28.650 for the audience. And critically, it saves the 00:29:28.650 --> 00:29:30.930 poet's cognitive load for the unique dramatic 00:29:30.930 --> 00:29:34.269 elements of the story, like the dialogue or the 00:29:34.269 --> 00:29:37.390 specific combat action. And finally, there is 00:29:37.390 --> 00:29:39.269 the subtle architecture of ring composition. 00:29:39.670 --> 00:29:42.450 This is a beautiful structural device, also known 00:29:42.450 --> 00:29:45.410 as chiastic structure. The poet begins a section 00:29:45.410 --> 00:29:48.970 with an idea or theme, eh? develops through points 00:29:48.970 --> 00:29:51.730 B and C, and then concludes the section by returning 00:29:51.730 --> 00:29:55.329 to C, B, and A, framing the entire episode. Like 00:29:55.329 --> 00:29:58.329 bookends. Exactly. For instance, a speech might 00:29:58.329 --> 00:30:00.410 begin and end with the same address to the gods. 00:30:00.630 --> 00:30:02.990 There is a scholarly debate over whether this 00:30:02.990 --> 00:30:06.009 is a conscious, high artistic device, or primarily 00:30:06.009 --> 00:30:09.210 a powerful mnemonic loop. A loop that signals 00:30:09.210 --> 00:30:11.269 to the performing poet when an episode is complete. 00:30:11.710 --> 00:30:14.150 and also aids the audience's memory. Regardless, 00:30:14.349 --> 00:30:17.210 the fact that these poems, built on improvisation, 00:30:17.349 --> 00:30:20.349 exhibit such sophisticated architecture proves 00:30:20.349 --> 00:30:23.390 they were not clumsy compilations. No, they were 00:30:23.390 --> 00:30:26.690 works of immense artistic skill, honed over generations. 00:30:27.190 --> 00:30:29.069 And they adhere to tradition right from the very 00:30:29.069 --> 00:30:32.609 start, with the invocation. Yes, both epics begin 00:30:32.609 --> 00:30:35.210 with a prayer to the muse, asking for the inspiration 00:30:35.210 --> 00:30:37.829 and the memory needed to tell the story. The 00:30:37.829 --> 00:30:40.509 Iliad asks her to sing of the anger of Achilles. 00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:43.740 And the Odyssey asks her to tell of the man of 00:30:43.740 --> 00:30:46.779 many ways. It's an instant declaration of the 00:30:46.779 --> 00:30:49.140 poem's high purpose and its reliance on divine 00:30:49.140 --> 00:30:52.240 guidance. So when we move from the poet's toolkit 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:55.240 to the world they describe, we enter a kind of 00:30:55.240 --> 00:30:58.400 blended historical reality. The historicity debate 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:01.859 remains fierce. Did the Trojan War actually happen? 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:04.440 Well, the 19th century discovery by Heinrich 00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:06.460 Schleiman of the ruins at Hisarlik in modern 00:31:06.460 --> 00:31:08.859 Turkey, identified as the likely site of Troy, 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.900 certainly lent huge credence to the myth. And 00:31:11.900 --> 00:31:14.480 scholars today often link the myth to a real 00:31:14.480 --> 00:31:17.099 historical event. Yes, to the historical destruction 00:31:17.099 --> 00:31:20.519 of Troydavia around 1220 BC, an event that would 00:31:20.519 --> 00:31:22.200 have remained in the collective memory of the 00:31:22.200 --> 00:31:24.720 succeeding Greek generations. But regardless 00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:27.140 of whether a single historical event inspired 00:31:27.140 --> 00:31:30.710 the core, Scholars agree that the Homeric poems 00:31:30.710 --> 00:31:33.789 depict an anachronistic society. It's a blending 00:31:33.789 --> 00:31:36.390 of customs and material elements derived from 00:31:36.390 --> 00:31:38.210 radically different periods of Greek history. 00:31:38.349 --> 00:31:41.250 Specifically, the Mycenaean Bronze Age and the 00:31:41.250 --> 00:31:43.269 later Iron Age when the poems are being sung. 00:31:43.410 --> 00:31:46.309 It's a historical collage, yes. For Bronze Age 00:31:46.309 --> 00:31:48.890 elements, the hearers consistently use bronze 00:31:48.890 --> 00:31:51.509 weapons, fitting the Mycenaean period in which 00:31:51.509 --> 00:31:54.279 the poem is set. And there are other more specific 00:31:54.279 --> 00:31:56.839 details. Extremely specific details that confirm 00:31:56.839 --> 00:31:59.079 ancient memory, like the description of the helmet 00:31:59.079 --> 00:32:01.759 Odysseus wears, which is made of boar's tusks. 00:32:02.019 --> 00:32:04.619 Such helmets were characteristic aristocratic 00:32:04.619 --> 00:32:07.920 Mycenaean pieces, commonly worn between 1600 00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:10.920 and 1150 BC. Long before the poems were committed 00:32:10.920 --> 00:32:13.430 to writing. And the heroes also use the huge 00:32:13.430 --> 00:32:16.130 body -sized shields typical of Mycenaean warriors. 00:32:16.430 --> 00:32:18.549 But the Iron Age, the age of the bard, creeps 00:32:18.549 --> 00:32:21.230 in and updates those details. It does. The same 00:32:21.230 --> 00:32:23.349 heroes who fight with bronze swords are often 00:32:23.349 --> 00:32:25.650 cremated, their bodies burned, which was the 00:32:25.650 --> 00:32:27.950 standard funerary practice of the Iron Age Greeks. 00:32:28.230 --> 00:32:31.309 Whereas burial, or inhumation, was the Bronze 00:32:31.309 --> 00:32:33.990 Age custom. Correct. The poet also occasionally 00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:36.970 references heroes using smaller, round shields, 00:32:37.109 --> 00:32:39.490 which became common in the early Iron Age when 00:32:39.490 --> 00:32:42.029 the oral tradition was reaching its peak. This 00:32:42.029 --> 00:32:44.369 confirms that the bards were inheriting material 00:32:44.369 --> 00:32:47.890 from a much older, more glamorous era, but they 00:32:47.890 --> 00:32:50.430 were unconsciously updating some practices to 00:32:50.430 --> 00:32:52.750 suit the contemporary understanding of their 00:32:52.750 --> 00:32:54.829 audience. It's a living tradition that reflects 00:32:54.829 --> 00:32:57.210 both the past and the present. And we have to 00:32:57.210 --> 00:32:59.839 remember that these are works of art. not historical 00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:16.880 documentation. Absolutely. And archaeologists 00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:27.140 have looked for this. So that detail was inserted 00:33:27.140 --> 00:33:31.940 purely for dramatic, poetic effect. climax of 00:33:31.940 --> 00:33:34.119 the duel in a memorable, almost supernatural 00:33:34.119 --> 00:33:38.000 landscape. Okay, so we have these vast, sophisticated, 00:33:38.259 --> 00:33:42.539 evolving oral poems. The final step is understanding 00:33:42.539 --> 00:33:45.279 the massive logistical feat of getting them out 00:33:45.279 --> 00:33:47.720 of the memory of a bard and onto a scroll. We 00:33:47.720 --> 00:33:50.400 know the core process. The orally transmitted 00:33:50.400 --> 00:33:53.319 poems were put into a stable written form at 00:33:53.319 --> 00:33:55.859 some point between the 8th and 6th centuries 00:33:55.859 --> 00:33:58.599 BC. And the shift from oral to written is often 00:33:58.599 --> 00:34:01.200 argued to have occurred via dictation. Dictation 00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:03.660 theory suggests the current massive versions 00:34:03.660 --> 00:34:07.079 originated as texts dictated by the primary bard 00:34:07.079 --> 00:34:10.079 who held the entire tradition in his memory to 00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:13.340 a scribe. And critically, Albert Lord's studies 00:34:13.340 --> 00:34:15.280 of Balkan bards showed something interesting 00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:17.699 about that process. They did. He showed that 00:34:17.699 --> 00:34:20.139 these poets often revised and expanded their 00:34:20.139 --> 00:34:22.659 songs during the process of dictation, knowing 00:34:22.659 --> 00:34:24.860 they were creating a permanent, fixed version. 00:34:25.119 --> 00:34:27.579 So the act of writing them down may have been 00:34:27.579 --> 00:34:30.719 the moment of their final grand monumental expansion. 00:34:30.980 --> 00:34:34.260 Indeed, it was a stabilization process. This 00:34:34.260 --> 00:34:36.340 brings us to the famous ancient belief regarding 00:34:36.340 --> 00:34:39.579 the final collection and organization, the Pisistratian 00:34:39.579 --> 00:34:42.139 recension. Explain the significance of Pisistratus 00:34:42.139 --> 00:34:45.630 here. Pisistratus was a tyrant. a ruler of Athens 00:34:45.630 --> 00:34:48.989 in the late 6th century BC, known for being a 00:34:48.989 --> 00:34:52.210 great patron of the arts. The widely held ancient 00:34:52.210 --> 00:34:55.250 belief, referenced by figures like Cicero, was 00:34:55.250 --> 00:34:57.670 that Piscistratus was responsible for collecting 00:34:57.670 --> 00:35:01.050 the long, sprawling oral tradition and having 00:35:01.050 --> 00:35:03.710 it organized into a single, cohesive, written 00:35:03.710 --> 00:35:06.429 format. An essential step to transitioning the 00:35:06.429 --> 00:35:09.170 poem from a flexible oral script into a fixed 00:35:09.170 --> 00:35:12.230 literary text. And once it was textualized and 00:35:12.230 --> 00:35:14.670 organized in Athens, the text needed to be standardized. 00:35:15.130 --> 00:35:17.730 That task fell to the scholars of the Hellenistic 00:35:17.730 --> 00:35:20.570 world. Primarily in Alexandria, centuries later. 00:35:20.789 --> 00:35:23.010 Yes. This is where the poems were given the formal 00:35:23.010 --> 00:35:25.110 structure we recognize today. They were each 00:35:25.110 --> 00:35:27.769 divided into 24 sections, or rhapsodes, which 00:35:27.769 --> 00:35:29.989 we now call books, and labeled with the letters 00:35:29.989 --> 00:35:32.110 of the Greek alphabet. And this division and 00:35:32.110 --> 00:35:34.489 standardization is mostly attributed to the Hellenistic 00:35:34.489 --> 00:35:36.849 scholars in Alexandria. People like Xenodetus 00:35:36.849 --> 00:35:39.670 of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and the 00:35:39.670 --> 00:35:41.769 most influential of them all, Aristarchus of 00:35:41.769 --> 00:35:44.409 Samothrace. It was these scholars, working around 00:35:44.409 --> 00:35:48.949 150 BC, who helped establish the canonical, relatively 00:35:48.949 --> 00:35:52.110 stable text based on existing papyrus fragments. 00:35:52.550 --> 00:35:55.590 They established a textual baseline that modern 00:35:55.590 --> 00:35:58.130 scholarship still refers to. And it's fascinating 00:35:58.130 --> 00:36:00.909 that today, modern textual scholarship often 00:36:00.909 --> 00:36:03.010 works with medieval manuscripts and existing 00:36:03.010 --> 00:36:06.090 papyri, often arguing for... or a multi -text 00:36:06.090 --> 00:36:08.230 view. What does that mean, a multi -text view? 00:36:08.530 --> 00:36:10.889 It means scholars acknowledge that we may never 00:36:10.889 --> 00:36:14.469 find a single definitive original text. Instead, 00:36:14.670 --> 00:36:16.750 they study how the text changed across different 00:36:16.750 --> 00:36:19.329 traditions, looking at major editions like those 00:36:19.329 --> 00:36:21.809 of Lydwitch, who closely followed Aristarchus, 00:36:21.929 --> 00:36:24.769 or Van Thiel, who followed the medieval Vulgate. 00:36:24.949 --> 00:36:27.090 So it underscores that even in its fixed state, 00:36:27.309 --> 00:36:29.809 the text carries a history of its layered, evolving 00:36:29.809 --> 00:36:32.469 origins. The text itself is a record of its own 00:36:32.469 --> 00:36:34.670 composition. It's an incredible journey. from 00:36:34.670 --> 00:36:38.150 an improvised song in the 8th century BC to Eustathius' 00:36:38.349 --> 00:36:40.889 6 ,000 pages of commentary in the 12th century 00:36:40.889 --> 00:36:43.050 AD. We've journeyed from the bloody ground of 00:36:43.050 --> 00:36:45.989 Troy through the fictional biographies, the analytical 00:36:45.989 --> 00:36:47.989 dissection of the poems, and the revolutionary 00:36:47.989 --> 00:36:50.630 findings of the oral bards in the Balkans. The 00:36:50.630 --> 00:36:53.389 central learning for you, our listener, is that 00:36:53.389 --> 00:36:56.960 Homer is less a singular man. and more a vast 00:36:56.960 --> 00:36:59.599 shifting cultural tradition. It is, yes. A tradition 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:02.300 that encompasses the history of warfare, layers 00:37:02.300 --> 00:37:05.659 of myth, sophisticated poetic engineering, the 00:37:05.659 --> 00:37:08.280 formulas, type scenes, and ring composition, 00:37:08.539 --> 00:37:11.719 and critically, centuries of rigorous academic 00:37:11.719 --> 00:37:14.599 questioning that constantly redefined the identity 00:37:14.599 --> 00:37:17.719 of the author. Indeed. We know the figure of 00:37:17.719 --> 00:37:20.139 Homer survived the intense scrutiny of the analysts, 00:37:20.420 --> 00:37:22.679 and even when scholars agreed that the poems 00:37:22.679 --> 00:37:25.539 weren't composed in one sitting by one man, they 00:37:25.539 --> 00:37:28.519 still recognize the power, the unity, and the 00:37:28.519 --> 00:37:30.480 brilliant artistic design of the works that were 00:37:30.480 --> 00:37:33.039 eventually assembled. We established that the 00:37:33.039 --> 00:37:35.119 Iliad and Odyssey likely had different primary 00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:37.639 authors, that the text evolved over hundreds 00:37:37.639 --> 00:37:40.539 of years, was edited, and wasn't truly finalized 00:37:40.539 --> 00:37:42.619 until centuries after it was initially sung. 00:37:42.989 --> 00:37:45.650 And yet the name Homer persists. It does. So 00:37:45.650 --> 00:37:47.630 here's the final provocative thought for you 00:37:47.630 --> 00:37:50.650 to chew on. If the figure known as Homer, whose 00:37:50.650 --> 00:37:53.150 individual identity remains a mystery, taught 00:37:53.150 --> 00:37:56.010 Greece and inspired every great poet who followed. 00:37:56.230 --> 00:37:59.610 And yet we accept that his masterpiece was likely 00:37:59.610 --> 00:38:02.510 composed by different primary authors and shaped 00:38:02.510 --> 00:38:05.989 by successive generations of bards, scribes, 00:38:05.989 --> 00:38:08.429 and even political patrons like Pisistratus. 00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:11.889 Should we view Homer... Not as a single genius 00:38:11.889 --> 00:38:14.849 poet, but as a collective, powerful literary 00:38:14.849 --> 00:38:17.550 process. What does it mean for the foundation 00:38:17.550 --> 00:38:20.449 of Western literature to be simultaneously attributed 00:38:20.449 --> 00:38:23.489 to one solitary genius and assembled by a succession 00:38:23.489 --> 00:38:26.210 of thousands of voices across centuries? It means 00:38:26.210 --> 00:38:28.929 the poem is bigger than any single poet. And 00:38:28.929 --> 00:38:30.869 that the deep dive continues. Thanks for joining 00:38:30.869 --> 00:38:32.630 us on the deep dive. We'll see you next time.