The story offers two conclusions. The second concerns a commentary on the published manuscript (by a certain Dr Cordovero) attempting to prove that the text is apocryphal, and attributing it to the pen of the antiquarian Joseph Cartaphilus; a postscript, dated 1950, finds such allegations inadmissible. The first conclusion, by the tribune himself, addresses the uncanny tone of the narrative. The events he has described, he says, seem fantastic because they belong, in fact, to two different men. A Roman tribune would not refer, as he does in the beginning, to the Theban river as Egypt. Homer, however, would: in the Odyssey, he invariably says Egypt instead of Nile. The words the tribune utters after drinking the immortal waters belong to the Iliad, Book II, lines 935–6. The particular mention of the transcription of Sindbad’s adventures and of the reading of Pope’s Iliad are moving details, but not if said by a Roman tribune; spoken by Homer, however, how extraordinary to discover that he has copied out the story of another Ulysses and that he has read, in a barbarian tongue, his own Iliad! When the end approaches, the narrator says, no images remain in the mind, only words, and it isn’t surprising that time should have mingled the words which represented one man with those uttered by another. The manuscript concludes with this confession: ‘I have been Homer; soon, I shall be Nobody, like Ulysses; soon, I shall be every man, I shall be dead.’
Homer is a cipher. Since he has no proven identity and his books reveal no obvious clues to their composition, he can bear, like his Iliad and his Odyssey, an infinity of readings. Homer may be what we mean by the vast word ‘antiquity’ – a vicious circle that assumes the definition of what it seeks to define – or what we mean by the word ‘poetry’, or by ‘humanity’. Homer may stand for that obscure early time of our common histories of which we have a few magnificent artefacts, but no true knowledge of how those artefacts were understood or felt. It is impossible to guess what sense Homer and his contemporaries might have had of the notion of a shared immortality, of every human being living out a segment of an endless human life in which, given enough time, each one will do and feel what everyone else has done or felt.
The chronology we have invented for ourselves prompts us to imagine that our sense of the world and of ourselves evolves, and that there is progress of feeling and imagination as there is development of technology and invention. We see ourselves as better than our ancestors, those savages of the Bronze Age who, though they wrought fine cups and bangles and sang beautiful songs, massacred each other in horrible wars, possessed slaves and raped women, ate without forks and conceived gods who threw thunderbolts. It is difficult for us to imagine that, such a long time ago, we already had words to name our most bewildering experiences and our deepest and most obscure emotions. The phantom figure we call Homer exists somewhere in the dark distance, like the ruins of a building whose shape and purpose we ignore. And yet, here and there, in his books, lie perhaps the inklings of a answer.
Hector, attempting to explain to Andromache why he must fight, acknowledges however that,
… in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear…3
To which Achilles has unwittingly responded earlier:
One and the same lot for the man who hangs back
and the man who battles hard. The same honour waits
for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death,
the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion.4
The communality of death, the arbitrary dealings of fate, are notions general enough for us to indulge in the commonplace that they are shared by all humankind, and belong to all places and all times. For the reader of Homer, however, at a distance of two and a half millennia, certain details in the poems render them magically singular, distil them into something intimately familiar, make them ours: Athena, knowing that Ulysses has suffered endlessly for ten long years, heartlessly saying to his son that ‘It’s light work for a willing god to save a mortal/even half the world away’;5 Achilles the warrior cursing war after the death of Patroclus;6 the monstrous Cyclops tenderly placing each suckling lamb under its dam;7 the dog Argos dying of heartbreak on seeing his master return after such a long absence;8 Ulysses and Penelope in bed, telling each other their stories, husband and wife unable to fall asleep till all is told;9 Andromache glancing back, again and again, at Hector departing for battle;10 Priam and Achilles eating together and admiring, one the young man’s beauty, the other, the old man’s nobility.11 How astonishing that, in a language we no longer know precisely how to pronounce, a poet or various poets whose faces and characters we cannot conceive, who lived in a society of whose customs and beliefs we have but a very vague idea, described for us our own lives today, with every secret happiness and every hidden sin.
A Greek author who called himself, after the philosopher, ‘Heraclitus’, composed in the first century AD a series of commentaries on Homer under the title Homeric Allegories. The first of these reads: ‘From the very earliest infancy young children are nursed in their learning by Homer, and swaddled in his verses. We water our souls with them as though they were nourishing milk. He stands beside each of us as we start out and gradually grow into men, he blossoms as we do, and until old age we never grow tired of him, for as soon as we set him aside we thirst for him again; it may be said that the same limit is set to both Homer and life.’12
NOTES
A Note on Translations and Editions
1 Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey: Who and What She Was, When and Where She Wrote [1897], Second Edition With a New Preface by Henry Festing Jones, London, Jonathan Cape, 1922.
Introduction
1 Gustave Flaubert, ‘Dictionnaire des idées reçues’ in Bouvard et Pécuchet, introduction par Rayond Queneau, Paris, Editions du Point du Jour, 1947.
2 Cf. André Gide, Oscar Wilde: In Memoriam, Paris, Mercure de France, 1910.
3 Quoted in Henry Solly, These Eighty Years, or The Story of an Unfinished Life, vol. II, chapter 2, page 81, London, Simpkin Marshall & Co., 1893.
4 Virginia Woolf, ‘On Not Knowing Greek’ in The Common Reader: First Series, London, The Hogarth Press, 1925.
5 Emanuel Geibel, ‘Kriegslied’ in Heroldsrufe: Zeitgedichte, Gesammelte Werke, Band 4, Stuttgart, Cotta, 1893.
6 Simone de Beauvoir, La femme rompue, Paris, Gallimard, 1963.
7 The Iliad of Homer, translated by T. S. Brandreth, 2 vols, London, W. Pickering, 1846.
8 ‘Mucho más que libros’, Semana, 4 June 2001, Bogotá.
9 Iliad, Book XXIV, lines 594–9.
10 Iliad, XXIV: 613–20.
Chapter 2
1 Mustafá El-Abbadi, Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Paris, Unesco, 1990.
2 Herodotus, The Histories, edited by A. R. Burn, London, Penguin Books, 1954, Book II, section 117.
3 Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, translated and edited by Charles B. Gulick, London, William Heinemann, 1950, Book VIII, section 347e.
4 F. Zeitlin, ‘Visions and Revisions of Homer’ in S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
5 Herodotus, The Histories, V: 58.
6 Iliad, VI: 198–9.
7 Cf. Bruce Heiden, ‘The Placement of Book Divisions in the Iliad’ in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1998. Also Minna Skafte Jensen, ‘Dividing Homer: When and How were the Iliad and the Odyssey Divided into Songs?’ in Symbolae Osloenses, 1999, both quoted in J. Haubold, Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation, Cambridge and London, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
8 Jean Irigoin, ‘Homère, l’écriture et le livre’ in Europe, 79e année, No. 865, May 2001, Paris. A contrary argument is given by Bruce Heiden in the article mentioned above.
9 Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angells. Their names, orders and offices; the fall of Lucifer with his angells [1635]
, New York, Da Capo Press, 1973.
10 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, Buenos Aires, Edición y notas, Celina S. de Cortázar e Isaías Lerner, Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1969, II: 74.
11 ‘Hymn to Delian Apollo’ in The Homeric Hymns, translated by Jules Cashford with an Introduction and Notes by Nicholas Richardson, London and New York, Penguin Books, 2003, v. 175.
12 [Thomas Blackwell], An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, second edition, London, J. Oswald, 1736.
13 Herodotus, Vie d’Homère, mise en français d’Amyot par J.-J. van Dooren, Paris, Librairie Ancienne Edouard Champion, 1926.
14 John Milton, Paradise Regained, in Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Marritt Y. Hughes, Indianapolis and New York, The Odyssey Press, 1957, Book IV, line 259.
15 Héraclite, Fragments: Citations et témoignages, traduction et présentation par Jean-François Pradeau, 2e édition corrigée, Paris, Flammarion, 2004.
16 Herodotus, Vie d’Homère, op. cit.
17 Héraclite, Fragments: Citations et témoignages, op. cit.
18 Odyssey, Book VIII, lines 51–99.
19 Odyssey, VIII: 302–410.
20 Odyssey, VIII: 552–84.
21 Odyssey I: 178.
22 Odyssey, VIII: 87.
23 T. E. Lawrence, ‘Translator’s Note’ in The Odyssey of Homer, translated into English prose by T. E. Shaw (Colonel T. E. Lawrence), New York, Oxford University Press, Galaxy Books, 1956.
24 Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960. A novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadaré, The File on H gives a fictional account of their adventure.
25 Plato, Ion, translated by Lane Cooper, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1963.
26 Plato, Ion, op. cit.
27 Claude Mossé, La Grèce archaïque d’Homère à Eschyle, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1984.
28 Thomas De Quincey, ‘Homer and the Homeridae’ in The Works of Thomas De Quincey, vol. 13, edited by G. Lindop et al., London, Pickering and Chatto, 2001–3.
29 J. M. Foley, Homer’s Traditional Art, University Park, Penn., Penn State University Press, 1999.
30 Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion, third edition with a new Introduction by the author, New York, Doubleday, 1951.
31 Strabo, Geography, translated by H. L. Jones, London, William Heinemann, 1960, Book I, section 73.
32 Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by Hugh Tredennik and edited by G. C. Armstrong, London, William Heinemann, 1930.
33 Paul Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes?, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1983.
34 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Edinburgh, Adam and Charles Black, 1892.
35 Cf. Jacqueline de Romilly, La Grèce antique contre la violence, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 2000.
36 Plutarch, ‘Alcibiades’ in Lives, vol. I, the Dryden translation, edited and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, New York, Random House, 1992.
Chapter 3
1 Plato, Republic, translated by Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, op. cit., Book X.
2 Ibid.
3 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, London, Chatto & Windus, 1933.
4 Plato, The Lesser Hippias, translated by Benjamin Jowett, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, op. cit.
5 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha, op. cit.
6 Aristotle, Poetics, IV, translated by Samuel Henry Butcher, New York, Walter J. Black, 1943.
7 Cicéron, L’Orateur: Du meilleur genre d’orateurs, texte établi et traduit par Albert Yon, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2002, III.
8 John Milton, Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton, first published 1644, New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928.
9 Strabo, Geography, Book 13, chapter 1, section 45.
10 Irad Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity, Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1998.
11 Iliad, XI: 747–53.
Chapter 4
1 J. Irgoin, ‘Les éditions des poètes à Alexandrie’ in Sciences exactes et sciences appliqués à Alexandrie, Actes du coloque international de St-Etienne, St-Etienne, Université de St-Etienne, 1996.
2 Gregory Nagy, ‘Aristarchean Questions’ in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, VII, 14, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1998.
3 Tomas Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1983.
4 Horace, Epîtres, II: 1, ‘À Auguste’ in Oeuvres, Paris, Garnier Frères, 1967.
5 Pliny attributes this remark to his friend Atilius. ‘A Novius Maximus’, Lettres I–IX [II: 14] edited by A. M. Guillemin, 3 vols, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1927–8.
6 Peter Levi, Horace: A Life, London, Duckworth, 1997.
7 Horace, Epîtres II: 1, ‘À Auguste’ in Oeuvres, op. cit.
8 Horace, Epîtres I: 2, ‘À Lollius’ in Oeuvres, op. cit.
9 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, edited and translated by Donald A. Russell, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1970, Book 10, in vol. IV.
10 Iliad, II: 931–2.
11 Cf. Claudia Moatti, La Raison de Rome: Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1997.
12 Peter Levi, Virgil: His Life and Times, London, Duckworth, 1998.
13 Manuel Sanz Morales, Mitógrafos griegos, Madrid, Akal, 2002.
14 Tim Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge, Polity, 2004.
15 Virgil, Aeneid, A New Verse Translation by C. Day Lewis, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952, Book VI, lines 847–53.
16 Hermann Broch, Der Tod des Vergil [1945], Zurich, Rhein Verlag, 1958.
17 Virgil, Aeneid, 1: 283–4.
18 Iliad, XX: 210–11.
19 Stesichorus of Sicily in the sixth century BC and Hellanicus of Lesbos in the fifth century BC, among others.
20 Cf. Niall Rudd, Introduction to Horace: Satires and Epistles and Persius: Satires London, Penguin Books, 1973.
21 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Introduction by Wendell Clausen, translated by H. A. J. Munro, New York, Washington Square Press, 1965.
22 Lewis Carroll, ‘What the Tortoise said to Achilles’ in Mind, April 1895, in The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, London, The Nonesuch Press, 1922.
23 The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, Never Before in Any Language Truly Translated, Done According to the Greek by George Chapman, London, George Newnes and New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904.
24 Quoted in Homer in English, edited with an Introduction and Notes by George Steiner, London, Penguin Books, 1996.
25 Alexander Pope, The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, edited by the Revd H. F. Cary, New York, George Routledge and Sons, 1872.
26 Quoted in Homer in English, op. cit.
27 Iliad, in two volumes, with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1924; reprinted 2001.
28 The Iliad: the Story of Achilles, translated by W. H. D. Rowse, London, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1938.
29 H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks, London, Penguin Books, 1951.
30 The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richard Lattimore, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1951.
31 Robert Lowell, Imitations, London, Faber and Faber, 1962.
32 Juan de Mena, La Ilíada de Homero, Edición crítica de las Sumas de la Yliada de Omero y del orìgìnal latìno reconstruìdo, acompañada de un glosarìo latino-romance, por T. González Rolán, María F. del Barrio Vega y A. López Fonseca, Madrid, Ediciones Clásicas, 1996.
33 Homer, Ilias, in der Übertragung von Johann Heinrich Voss, mit einem Nachwort von Ute Schmidt-Berger, Munich, Artemis & Winkler, 1957.
34 Homère, Iliade, traduction de Leconte de Lisle, Paris, Profrance, 1998.
35 Haroldo do Campos, Homero, Ilíada, Introduçao e org
anizaçao Trajano Vieira, São Paulo, Editora Arx, 2001.
36 Juan Valera y Alcalá Galiano, Cartas dirigidas al Sr. D. Francisco de Paula Canalejas, Madrid, Revista Ibérica, 1864.
37 Odyssey, XI: 555–8.
38 Nancy Sherman, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.
39 Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme, Paris, Le Divan, 1927, Book II, chapter 18.
40 Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri, vol. I, Milan, Mondadori, 1997, §289.
41 Virgil, Aeneid, VXII: 837–9.
Chapter 5
1 J. Steinmann, Saint Jerôme, Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1958.
2 Matthew 6: 21.
3 St Jerome, ‘Letter to Eustochium on Guarding Virginity’ in The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61, Patristic Scholarship: The Edition of St Jerome, edited, translated and annotated by James F. Brady and John C. Olin, Toronto, Buffalo, London, University of Toronto Press, 1992.
4 St Jerome, ‘Letter to Magnus, Roman Orator’ in The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61, op. cit.
5 Erasmus, ‘Life of Jerome’ in The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61.
6 St Augustine, Confessions, translated with an Introduction by R. S. Pine-Coffin, London, Penguin Books, 1961, Chapter 1, section 13.
7 Ibid., I: 14.
8 Horace, Epîtres, I: 2, ‘À Lollius’ in Oeuvres, Paris, Garnier Frères, 1967.
9 St Augustine, The City of God, translated by Henry Bettenson, London, Penguin Books, 1972, Book I, chapter 1, section 3.
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