Read the myths of the legends of Homer's poem. Homer is the most famous poet of antiquity. The Destruction of Troy and the Adventures of Odysseus. cartoons

"The rampant fashion for black glasses that everyonewants to be at least a little Homer.

Andrei Voznesensky

It is well known that myths are ancient tales about gods and legendary heroes, about the origin of the world and life on earth. But, most often, a myth is understood as something fantastic, improbable, unreal and invented. In fact, this is not so, because a person, as a product of Nature, is not able to come up with something that has never been, or will not be.

For a long time it was believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey were Homer's fiction, which had no basis in historical truth, and Homer himself was not considered the author, because he did not sign any of his works with his own name, and there was not a single real biography of him. Do not be surprised, but the fact that we today attribute these epics to Homer is justified only by the fact that they were read every time at Panathenaia at the beginning of the 6th century. BC, as his works. This was the state of affairs until the publication in 1795 of the study of the famous German philologist F. A. Wolf "Prolegomena ad Homerum". Based on the principle of contradictions and noting, in his opinion, numerous compositionally weak places in epics, Wolf tried to prove that: The Iliad and the Odyssey could not belong to one poet, but were the fruit of the work of many singers and poets; the unification of individual songs into two great epics took place many centuries after the time of songwriting; Little work was done on summarizing and editing songs prominent figures; the final edition belonged to 602,602 editors at the court of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus at the beginning of the 6th century. BC. Thus, the foundations of the “Homeric question” were laid: did Homer really exist?

But, as it is said in the Gospel: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb.11.1). As soon as Heinrich Schliemann believed in the veracity of Homer's description of the location of Troy in the Iliad, as an archeology lover, he found the city where no one was looking for it. And along with this, as a reward for perseverance, he also found the treasure of Priam. Then G. Schliemann found the treasure of Agamemnon in Mycenae. The only pity is that we are not able to date all archaeological finds. Nevertheless, the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann put on the agenda the question of Homer as a real historical figure who described quite real historical events. Our wonderful philosopher and encyclopedist A.F. Losev, summarizing the results of two centuries of studies of world Homeric studies, came to the conclusion that Homer lived at the turn of the 7th-6th centuries. BC. and, like most writers of the world, is an immanent author. This means that he wrote about most of the real events that are directly related to his own life. This, it turns out, is why G. Schliemann was not mistaken in his trust in Homer! But, the specific dates of events, as well as the time of Homer's life, still remain unclear. Therefore, today in all encyclopedias it is presumably considered that Homer lived in the 9th century. BC, and the events of the Trojan War date back to the 12th century. BC. In this regard, the question arises: do not Homer's texts contain indications of specific dates of events and details of his biography? And if they do, then how to carry out "archaeological excavations" of the text in order to undeniably get to the truth hidden by the author millennia ago?

Let us ask ourselves: what is the minimum structure of the text of such epics as the Iliad and the Odyssey, apart from letters and words? Probably, this is, following them, a poetic line called a hexameter. We will not go into historical details, recorded by the ancient Greeks themselves, that they were taught to compose hexameters by the Hyperboreans, i.e. Cimmerians and Scythians. Note that the hexameter is the key structure of the text, which allows you to split the text written continuously, and also makes it possible to check the safety and even the quality of the Homeric text. The loss of one hexameter can also be noticed when analyzing the content of the epic.

Another, larger structure is the breakdown of each of the epics into songs. It is believed that this work, allegedly for Homer, was carried out by Alexandrian scholars. In fact, it turned out that the original texts with the author's breakdown came to us. Another structural division of the narrative text by day was proposed by V.A. Zhukovsky, using Homer's formulaic phrases denoting the beginning of the day, for example, such as "A young woman with purple fingers, Eos, got up from the darkness." Guided by this, he broke the entire narrative of the Odyssey into 40 days, although there were other points of view on this matter. Upon detailed analysis, it turned out that the whole story about the 10-year voyage of Odysseus (the allegorical meaning of the name "Odysseus" - "It's me"), Homer put in 58 days, which ended with his 58th birthday and the words "I was born in Alibant", placed in the last, 24th, song, in 304 hexameter, with the serial number of the name Alibant in this song - 119. The question arises: how, in this case, could Homer encrypt these key years and dates for the future?

Before answering this question, it is necessary to turn to the chronology that could then exist. Of course, Homer still did not know anything about the Nativity of Christ and the new era. It is believed that in the IV century. BC. it was customary to count the years from the 1st Olympiad, when the names of its winners were first recorded, this happened in 776 BC. So, all subsequent years were counted by the number of the Olympics and the number of years before or after it. It is possible that it was Homer who proposed to keep the chronology precisely from 776 BC. This is evidenced by the attention he paid to the description in the Iliad and the Odyssey of sports games. Probably, it was the Olympics that prompted Homer to break each epic into 24 songs, and together into 48 songs, which symbolize 48 months or 4 years, which corresponds to the period of the Olympics. But, apparently, Homer himself kept a simple account of years, starting from the year of the first Olympiad. So, after all, the account from the dates of the Olympics did not appear in the 4th century. BC, and after the Panathenaic games, i.e. at the beginning of the VI century. BC.

We will not go into the complex calculation of the months of ancient Greek chronology, there were 12 of them since ancient times, and talk about how it was possible to close the year if the months were alternately divided into 30 and 29 days. There were no weeks then, and the month was divided into three decades. I will only note that, probably, after a seven-year stay in Egypt, Homer developed his own calendar for internal use, very close to ours. His year was divided into 12 months with alternation in each of the months called Ids and dedicated to certain gods and events, while 31 days were contained in odd-numbered months, and 30 in even-numbered ones. our February 15-March 15 (16), in ordinary years had 28 days, and in leap years - 29, i.e. one more day was added as a "treat". Moreover, Homer's leap years fell not on the years of the Olympics (as is customary with us today), but on the even years between them. As for the beginning of the year, it was different in different policies Ancient Greece. Homer was guided by Athens, where the year began after the summer solstice (around the beginning of August), which, according to our calendar, happens on June 22. Therefore, the first day of the month of their new year corresponded approximately to the 2nd half of our July and the 1st half of August, i.e. Conventionally, according to our calendar, July 16 is considered the first day of the ancient Greek year.

If we now put ourselves in the place of Homer and take into account all the complexity of calculating years and days, then the question is: what is the simplest and most reliable way and in what way it was possible to encrypt the number of years and days from the first Olympiad? Probably, the first thing that suggested itself was to take into account the number of hexameters from the beginning of the poem to the key words, as the consecutive number of years and the number of days after the new year, without specifying the month. In this case, even a partial loss of the text threatened at most the loss of a number of days, not years. But for this, they had to be written as a single digit, i.e. 10 years and 250 days should be 10250 hexameters. Or it should be 102 years and 50 days. When this idea came to my mind, I began to look for keywords at the end of the Odyssey, which would indicate the birthday of Odysseus, i.e. Homer, taking into account immanence. It is clear that this is probably what caused the creation of epics in such a large volume. That's what came out of it.

In total, the ancient Greek text of the Odyssey, which I had, contained 12106 hexameters. In the last XXIV canto there is a phrase in verse 304: "I was born in Alibant". The calculation of the number of hexameters showed that this key phrase falls on the 11862nd hexameter. Since the figure 862 is too large for 365 days in a year, then you need to count the number of years that have passed since the 1st Olympiad equal to 118, and the number of days equal to 62 after the new year (from July 16 according to our calendar) and as a result you can get Homer's birthday - September 15, 657 BC. But that is not all. Homer was well aware that the date needed to be fixed in a more reliable way than counting the total number of hexameters, the loss of which was more likely than, for example, the names mentioned inside the text of one song. It was then that I had to pay attention to the above-mentioned numbers with the name Alibant: the 304th hexameter and the 119th serial number of the name. As a result, the date was refined by subtracting 304 from 365 days of the 119th year, and we will get the exact birthday after the end of the 118th year: i.e. 365-304=61st day, or according to our reckoning, it will be September 14, 657 BC. Since this calculation is a priori more accurate, it can be argued that in one of the extant copies of the ancient Greek text of the Odyssey, an extra hexameter appeared, but obviously not in the 24th canto. These calculations serve as clear evidence of the reverent care with which Homer's texts were rewritten. I may rightly be told that my pathos is not justified here, since these are just two cases. I hasten to reassure, today there are already several dozen confirmations of this date, and not only from texts on papyrus and parchment, but also in epigraphic records on the so-called Mastor stone. This stone was found on the island of Berezan in 1900 by Skadovsky and the text on it was mostly deciphered by the famous epigrapher V.P. Yaylenko. The deciphering was continued by me only for 3 letters out of 45, and only for those that were not readable. As a result, it turned out that it was an epitaph dedicated to Homer. It is clear that the epitaph was not read in plain text. The details of identifying the acrotelestic on the Mastor stone, as well as identifying all the places of Odysseus' journey with real objects, can be found in my book “Homer. An immanent biography” (Nikolaev, 2001). From reading the acrotelestic of the epitaph, the date of Homer's birth was confirmed, obtained from a completely different material - the text of the Odyssey, and the exact date of Homer's death was found out - August 14, 581. BC. The most striking thing is that, according to the myth about the death of Odysseus, he was buried on the island of Ey (Berezani), where Circe lived, and this was confirmed! The question is, what after that can be more real than a myth?!

Similarly, one can determine the time of the arrival of Homer's sister, Helen, in Ilion and the beginning of the Trojan War. In the Iliad, the key is the segment of Elena's lamentation for Hector, starting from verse 765 of the XXIVth song: “Now the twentieth year of circular times is running / From the time I came to Ilion, ..” and to the words at the end of the monologue: “ ... I am equally hated by everyone" in verse 775. Here the beginning of this segment of the text differs from the end by 10 hexameters, which simultaneously indicate the difference in the number of days and years between the arrival of Helen in Ilion and the beginning of the Trojan War. The total number of verses up to the last verse of this monologue of Helen, which falls on the 775th line, ranges from 15659 to 15664 hexameters for 4 versions of the text of the Iliad. This means that Helen arrived in Ilion on September 2-7, 629 BC, and the Trojan War began on September 12-17, 619 BC. From here it immediately became clear that the war of Miletus with Lydia, known to historians, which he waged for passage to the Black Sea, served as the prototype of the Trojan War for Homer. Historians believe that the successor of Ardis, Sadiates (late 7th century BC) started the last 12-year war with Miletus, which ended in peace around 600 BC. In fact, the war was started by Ardis (according to Homer - by Paris), lasted about 10 years and ended in 609 under Sadiatta. And this means that Schliemann (the scientific world reproached him for finding the later Troy) found exactly the Troy that Homer described. I note that the later date of Homer's life solves many problems of the "Homeric question", starting with the answer to the most important question of how it was possible to preserve the most ancient texts.

From the myths about the Trojan War (see, for example, Robert Graves, Myths of Ancient Greece. Transl. from English. Ed. twice collected the Greek fleet in Aulis for a campaign in Ilion. For the first time, immediately after the abduction of Elena, but this campaign ended with the fact that the storm scattered the ships and they returned home. The second time Agamemnon assembled a fleet after 10 years, but according to the prediction of Kalhant, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that the Greek fleet could freely reach Troy. An immanent reading of the Iliad made it possible to find out that the land siege of Troy was preceded by a 10-year naval war unknown to historians, during which the Greek squadron of 415 ships led by Achilles and Agamemnon destroyed 800 Trojan ships. In this naval war, Achilles rammed the Trojan ships, destroyed them from a distance with stones fired from a sling, and set them on fire with sulfur bombs. Moreover, he fought not only in the Aegean and Marmara, but also in the Black Sea, i.e. at home. For all this, he gained immense fame in Greece as an invincible admiral. Only after that, the Greeks, without fear of attacks from the sea, were able to pull their ships ashore near Troy. Homer did not take part in this war, since he spent 7 years in Egypt in the service of Psammetichus I and 1 year in Phoenicia with his relatives.

If Homer described 10 years of his life in the Odyssey, then the last 10 years are described in the Iliad, or rather, the text is structurally laid out in the description of the last 49 days from the life of his twin brother Achilles, who died on October 8, 609 BC .e. at the age of 49. Thus, the text by day covers the time from August 21st to October 8th. In the 19th song of the Iliad, the birthday of Achilles is described, which falls on September 15, 657 BC. Pay attention to hexameters 243-247 in this song, where the gifts presented to Achilles on this day are listed: 7 tripods + 20 tubs + 12 horses + 8 wives with Briseis + 1 gold of Odysseus = 48 years! In the same place, Homer humorously noted his seniority over Achilles (on the same day!) In hexameter 219. Homer described the composition of the family and friendship with his twin brother in the myths about Leda, the Dioscuri brothers, and in the exploits of Hercules about his life from 15 to 27 years .

Thus, as it follows from what has been said above, the determination of only a few dates makes it possible to restore, from epics, myths and hymns, a more or less real biography of Homer, as well as his Cimmerian-Greek origin, which we will talk about another time. I, following Jean Jacques Rousseau, will repeat: "My job is to tell the truth, and not to force you to believe in it."

From the very beginning of world literature to the present day, genuine literature has relied on both internal (hidden - insider) and external - symbolism and symbolism (meta-metaphor). So, metametaphor and insideout, discovered by the poet and philosopher K. Kedrov, constitute the essence of all world literature, in which the choice between Myths or Reality is left to K. Kedrov's "OR".

Anatoly Zolotukhin,

Flood, Deucalion, Hellenic. People who lived in ancient times passed on a tragic tradition from fathers to children. As if many thousands of years ago on Earth happened global flood: for several days there was a terrible downpour, raging streams flooded fields, forests, roads, villages, cities. Everything was hidden under water. People died. The only person who managed to escape was Deucalion. He had a son, who received the beautiful and sonorous name of Ellin. It was he who chose the rocky land for settlement in those parts where the country of Greece is now located. By the name of its first inhabitant, it was called Hellas, and its population - Hellenes.

Hellas. It was an amazing country. A lot of work had to be spent on growing bread in its fields, olives in its gardens, and grapes on the slopes of the mountains. Each patch of land was watered with the sweat of grandfathers and great-grandfathers. A clear blue sky stretched over Hellas, mountain ranges crossed the whole country from end to end. The tops of the mountains were lost in the clouds, and how could one not believe that in the heights, hidden from human eyes, eternal spring reigns and immortal gods live!

On all sides, the beautiful country was surrounded by the sea, and there was no place in Hellas from which it would not be possible to reach its shores in one day's journey. The sea was visible from everywhere, it was only necessary to climb some hill. The sea attracted the Hellenes, and even more attracted their unknown overseas countries. From the stories of the brave sailors who visited there, wonderful stories were born. The ancient Hellenes were very fond of listening to them, having gathered around a hot fire after a day's work.

Homer, Hesiod and Myths. This is how myths and legends were born in ancient times, in fascinating world which we entered. The Greeks were cheerful, courageous, knew how to find the good in every day, knew how to cry and laugh, get angry and admire. All this was reflected in their myths, which, fortunately, have not been lost for centuries. Ancient writers beautifully presented ancient legends in their works - some in verse, some in prose. The wise blind poet Homer, who lived almost three thousand years ago, was the first to take up the retelling of myths. His famous poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" tell about the Greek heroes, their battles and victories, as well as about the Greek gods, their lives on the top of the impregnable Mount Olympus, feasts and adventures, quarrels and reconciliations.

And about where the world itself and all the gods came from, the poet Hesiod, who lived a little later than Homer, wrote beautifully. His poem is called "Theogony", which means "The Origin of the Gods". The ancient Greeks were very fond of watching plays about the lives of gods and heroes. They were written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Until now, these plays (the Greeks called them "tragedies") are in many theaters around the world. Of course, they have long been translated from ancient Greek into modern languages, including Russian. From them you can also learn a lot of interesting things about the heroes of Greek myths.

The myths of ancient Hellas are beautiful, as the country itself is beautiful; the gods of Greek myths are in many ways similar to humans, only more powerful. They are beautiful and eternally young, for them there is no hard work and illness ...

On the land of ancient Hellas, many ancient sculptures depicting gods and heroes are found. Look at them in the illustrations of the book - they are as if alive. True, not all statues are intact, because they have lain for many centuries in the ground, and therefore their arm or leg may be broken off, sometimes even their heads are beaten off, sometimes only the torso remains, but still they are beautiful, like the immortal gods of Hellenic myths themselves.

Ancient Hellas lives in works of art. And it is connected with many threads with mythology. Gods of the ancient Greeks:

Ancient Hellas. Homer, Hesiod and myths

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1. The myth of Homer.
2. The sinister grandeur of the Iliad.
3. Images of the Odyssey.
4. Glory to Achilles, Odysseus and Homer.

The myth of Homer himself is probably no less a myth than the myths of his poems. Already in the ancient period, Homer was a semi-legendary figure, akin to demigod heroes. Seven Greek cities argued for the right to be called the birthplace of the great aed, but this dispute was not finally resolved, as the lines of an unknown ancient poet say:

Seven cities, arguing, are called the homeland of Homer:
Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Pylos, Argos, Ithaca, Athens.

The traditional image of Homer is a blind old man, whose singing is echoed by the melodious ringing of strings, but no one knows what the living Homer was like. Probably, if he was physically blind, his spiritual eye saw much more than is possible for a mortal. As the blind soothsayer Tiresias, mentioned in the Odyssey, he could see the fate of people.

Some scholars doubt whether Homer existed? Maybe the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey were different people? Perhaps these poems are a product of oral folk art? Finally, there is another version that appeared relatively recently: Homer existed, but he was a woman, not a man, as was commonly believed. However, does it really matter what Homer was like during his lifetime? He himself has long become a part of the great myth, therefore his image cannot and should not be ordinary, banal, unambiguous. And what do faint-hearted doubts about the very fact of Homer's existence mean when the Iliad and the Odyssey are real, and, oddly enough, are still modern? Didn't people doubt the existence of Christ, although he lived much later than Homer? But this is probably the peculiarity of a truly great personality - when it passes into eternity, the light that comes into the world through this person does not disappear, but in its dazzling radiance it is sometimes difficult to discern the earthly features of the divine chosen one ...

The myths preserved by Homer for posterity, after many centuries, still continue to excite the minds of people:

I closed the Iliad and sat by the window,
On the lips fluttered the last word,
Something shone brightly - a lantern or the moon,
And the sentinel's shadow moved slowly.

These are lines from N. S. Gumilyov's poem "Modernity", in which the images of the Homeric poem unexpectedly find embodiment in reality at the beginning of the 20th century. Heroes like Homer's are the ones who pave new paths, they strive forward. But it often happens that the essence of these people is hidden in the depths of their souls, and they themselves are forced to be content with a very modest position in life, doing useful but boring work.

Our contemporaries continue to be interested in the mythological plot of the Iliad. The film "Troy" is an attempt to bring the heroes of the Trojan War closer to us, to make them more understandable and real. The sudden love of the wife of a formidable warrior for a charming guest, the hostility of two allies, ready to turn into an open clash, the sadness of a mother about the unfortunate fate of her son, the grief of a father who lost the noblest and most courageous of his heirs... These are the eternal motives of human existence. And even the theme of fate, which dominates everything and everything - is it not close to many people who proudly call themselves "civilized"?

No less tenacious is the myth of the Odyssey. The title of this poem has long been a household name for a long journey full of trials. The image of Odysseus, Ulysses, along with the images of Achilles, Hector, Ajax and other Homeric heroes attracted the attention of both ancient authors and authors of subsequent eras. Odysseus is, of course, more versatile than his Trojan War comrades-in-arms. He fights not only with conventional weapons, but also with cunning. “You are only useful with bodily strength, but I am useful with the mind,” Ulysses says to Ajax in the poem “Metamorphoses” by the Roman poet Ovid, defending his right to the armor of the deceased Achilles. But the same ambiguity in the image of Odysseus becomes the reason that Dante in the Divine Comedy places this hero and his friend Diomedes in hell, because they captured Troy by deceit, inventing Trojan horse. However, no matter how one regards the personality of Odysseus, the theme of his return to Ithaca, his love for his homeland and his family, of course, significantly elevates this hero above his human weaknesses and sins. But the image of Odysseus captures the imagination and the fact that it is the image of a wanderer, bravely fighting the elements. O. E. Mandelstam in the poem “A stream of golden honey ...” brings the image of King Ithaca closer to the images of the Argonauts, who set off on a journey in order to gain a great treasure:

Golden Fleece, where are you, Golden Fleece?
The heavy waves of the sea roared all the way,
And, having left the ship, which worked the canvas in the seas,
Odysseus returned, full of space and time.

Mandelstam did not ignore Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, whose image is no less majestic than her wife. As Odysseus differs from other heroes in his ingenuity, so Penelope surpasses the wives of other heroes in her fidelity and wisdom. So, Odysseus invented the Trojan horse to capture Troy, while Penelope began to weave a wedding veil that will never be finished, if only not to get married and remain faithful to her missing husband:

Do you remember, in a Greek house: beloved by all the wife, -
Not Elena - different - how long did she embroider?

The English writer G. Haggard in his novel The Dream of the World made an attempt to show the further fate of the king of Ithaca. Some details of the plot coincide with myths that were not included in Homer's epic. For example, the death of Odysseus at the hands of Telegon, his own son from the goddess Circe. However, in general, the plot of "Dreams of the World" looks too fantastic, it is alien to the strict regularity of the Homeric narrative. But the fact remains that the image of one of the heroes of Homer inspires the imagination of writers many centuries later. And one more thing - although in Haggard's novel Odysseus seems to die, the motive of his future return immediately sounds ...

The glory of Odysseus lies not so much in his exploits and not even in cunning, but in his return. After all, the whole Odyssey is a story about the return of the hero to Ithaca. In the Iliad, Homer glorifies Achilles, and the glory of this hero is different:

If I stay here, in front of the Trojan city to fight, -
There is no return to me, but my glory will not perish.
If I return to the house, to my dear native land,
My glory will perish, but my life will be long-lived...

The glory of Achilles is strongly associated with Troy, the glory of Odysseus with the road from Troy to Ithaca, and the glory of Homer is not associated with any specific place on earth:

... Let's say: the great sky is your fatherland, and not mortal
You were born a mother, but Calliope herself.
(A. Sidonsky "The Motherland of Homer")

"The rampant fashion for black glasses that everyonewants to be at least a little Homer.

Andrei Voznesensky

For a long time it was believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey were Homer's fiction, which had no historical truth, and Homer himself was not considered the author, because he did not sign any of his works with his name, and there was not a single real biography of him. there was. Do not be surprised, but the fact that we today attribute these epics to Homer is justified only by the fact that they were read every time at Panathenaia at the beginning of the 6th century. BC, as his works. This was the state of affairs until the publication in 1795 of the study of the famous German philologist F. A. Wolf "Prolegomena ad Homerum". Based on the principle of contradictions and noting, in his opinion, numerous compositionally weak places in epics, Wolf tried to prove that: The Iliad and the Odyssey could not belong to one poet, but were the fruit of the work of many singers and poets; the unification of individual songs into two great epics took place many centuries after the time of songwriting; little outstanding personalities were engaged in compilation and editing of songs; the final edition belonged to 602,602 editors at the court of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus at the beginning of the 6th century. BC. Thus, the foundations of the “Homeric question” were laid: did Homer really exist?

But, as it is said in the Gospel: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb.11.1). As soon as Heinrich Schliemann believed in the veracity of Homer's description of the location of Troy in the Iliad, as an archeology lover, he found the city where no one was looking for it. And along with this, as a reward for perseverance, he also found the treasure of Priam. Then G. Schliemann found the treasure of Agamemnon in Mycenae. The only pity is that we are not able to date all archaeological finds. Nevertheless, the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann put on the agenda the question of Homer as a real historical figure who described very real historical events. Our wonderful philosopher and encyclopedist A.F. Losev, summarizing the results of two centuries of studies of world Homeric studies, came to the conclusion that Homer lived at the turn of the 7th-6th centuries. BC. and, like most writers of the world, is an immanent author. This means that he wrote about most of the real events that are directly related to his own life. This, it turns out, is why G. Schliemann was not mistaken in his trust in Homer! But, the specific dates of events, as well as the time of Homer's life, still remain unclear. Therefore, today in all encyclopedias it is presumably considered that Homer lived in the 9th century. BC, and the events of the Trojan War date back to the 12th century. BC. In this regard, the question arises: do not Homer's texts contain indications of specific dates of events and details of his biography? And if they do, then how to carry out "archaeological excavations" of the text in order to undeniably get to the truth hidden by the author millennia ago?

Before answering this question, it is necessary to turn to the chronology that could then exist. Of course, Homer still did not know anything about the Nativity of Christ and the new era associated with it. It is believed that in the IV century. BC. it was customary to count the years from the 1st Olympiad, when the names of its winners were first recorded, this happened in 776 BC. So, all subsequent years were counted by the number of the Olympics and the number of years before or after it. It is possible that it was Homer who proposed to keep the chronology precisely from 776 BC. This is evidenced by the attention he paid to the description in the Iliad and the Odyssey of sports games. Probably, it was the Olympics that prompted Homer to break each epic into 24 songs, and together into 48 songs, which symbolize 48 months or 4 years, which corresponds to the period of the Olympics. But, apparently, Homer himself kept a simple account of years, starting from the year of the first Olympiad. So, after all, the account from the dates of the Olympics did not appear in the 4th century. BC, and after the Panathenaic games, i.e. at the beginning of the VI century. BC.

We will not go into the complex calculation of the months of ancient Greek chronology, there were 12 of them since ancient times, and talk about how it was possible to close the year if the months were alternately divided into 30 and 29 days. There were no weeks then, and the month was divided into three decades. I will only note that, probably, after a seven-year stay in Egypt, Homer developed his own calendar for internal use, very close to ours. His year was divided into 12 months with alternation in each of the months called Ids and dedicated to certain gods and events, while 31 days were contained in odd-numbered months, and 30 in even-numbered ones. our February 15-March 15 (16), in ordinary years had 28 days, and in leap years - 29, i.e. one more day was added as a "treat". Moreover, Homer's leap years fell not on the years of the Olympics (as is customary with us today), but on the even years between them. As for the beginning of the year, it was different in different policies of ancient Greece. Homer was guided by Athens, where the year began after the summer solstice (around the beginning of August), which, according to our calendar, happens on June 22. Therefore, the first day of the month of their new year corresponded approximately to the 2nd half of our July and the 1st half of August, i.e. Conventionally, according to our calendar, July 16 is considered the first day of the ancient Greek year.

If we now put ourselves in the place of Homer and take into account all the complexity of calculating years and days, then the question is: what is the simplest and most reliable way and in what way it was possible to encrypt the number of years and days from the first Olympiad? Probably, the first thing that suggested itself was to take into account the number of hexameters from the beginning of the poem to the key words, as the consecutive number of years and the number of days after the new year, without specifying the month. In this case, even a partial loss of the text threatened at most the loss of a number of days, not years. But for this, they had to be written as a single digit, i.e. 10 years and 250 days should be 10250 hexameters. Or it should be 102 years and 50 days. When this idea occurred to me, I began to look for keywords at the end of the Odyssey that would indicate Odysseus' birthday, i.e. Homer, taking into account immanence. It is clear that this is probably what caused the creation of epics in such a large volume. That's what came out of it.

Anatoly Zolotukhin,

Homer is the first Greek poet whose works have survived to this day.

Homer is still considered one of the best European poets today. He was the author of two heroic poems of antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are among the first monuments of world literature. Homer is considered a legendary poet, because we do not know anything about him for certain.

From Homer's biography:

There is no reliable information about Homer himself. The name "Homer" first occurs in the 7th century. BC e. It was then that Callinus of Ephesus called the creator of Thebaid so. The meaning of this name was tried to be explained in antiquity. The following options were proposed: "blind man" (Efor Kimsky), "following" (Aristotle), "hostage" (Hesychius). However, modern researchers believe that all of them are as unconvincing as the proposals of some scientists to attribute to it the meaning "accompanist" or "compounder". Surely in its Ionic form this word is a real personal name.

The biography of this poet can only be recreated tentatively. This even applies to the birthplace of Homer, which is still unknown. Seven cities fought for the right to be considered his homeland: Chios, Smyrna, Salamis, Colophon, Argos, Rhodes, Athens. It is likely that the Odyssey and the Iliad were created on the Asia Minor coast of Greece, which was inhabited at that time by Ionian tribes. Or perhaps these poems were composed on some of the adjacent islands.

The Homeric dialect, however, does not give any exact information about which tribe Homer belonged to, this remains a mystery. It is a combination of the Aeolian and Ionian dialects of ancient Greek. Some researchers suggest that it is one of the forms of poetic koine, which was formed long before Homer.

Was Homer blind? Homer is an ancient Greek poet whose biography has been reconstructed by many, from ancient times to the present day. It is known that he is traditionally depicted as blind. However, it is most likely that this representation of him is a reconstruction typical of the genre of ancient biography, and does not come from real facts about Homer. Since many legendary singers and soothsayers were blind (in particular, Tiresias), according to the logic of antiquity, which linked poetic and prophetic gifts, the assumption that Homer was blind looked plausible.

Ancient chronographs also differ in determining the time when Homer lived. He could create his works in different years. Some believe that he was a contemporary of the Trojan War, that is, he lived at the beginning of the 12th century. BC e. However, Herodotus claimed that Homer lived around the middle of the ninth century. BC e. Modern scholars tend to date his activity to the 8th or even 7th century BC. e. At the same time, Chios or another region of Ionia, located on the coast of Asia Minor, is indicated as the main place of life.

Nothing is known for certain about the life and personality of Homer. There are nine biographies of Homer in ancient literature, but they all contain fabulous and fantastic elements.

There is evidence that in the first half of the VI century. BC. the Athenian legislator Solon ordered the performance of Homer's poems at the Panathenaic festival, and that in the second half of the same century the tyrant Peisistratus convened a commission of four people to record Homer's poems. From this we can conclude that already in the VI century. BC. Homer's text was quite well known, although it has not been precisely established what kind of works these were.

Serious study of Homer's poems began in the Hellenistic era in the 4th - 2nd centuries. BC. A number of scholars from the Library of Alexandria studied his poems, among whom are especially famous: Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Didyma. But they do not give any accurate biographical information about Homer. The general and popular opinion of all antiquity about Homer was that he was an old and blind singer who, inspired by the muse, led a wandering life and himself composed both the two poems known to us, and many other poems.

If we talk about the exact date of Homer's birth, then it is not known for certain until today. But there are several versions of his birth. So, version one. According to her, Homer was born very little time after the end of the war with Troy. According to the second version, Homer was born during the Trojan War and saw all the sad events. If you follow the third version, then the lifetime of Homer varies from 100 to 250 years after the end of the Trojan War. But all versions are similar in that the period of Homer's work, more precisely, his heyday, falls at the end of the 10th - beginning of the 9th century BC.

The legendary storyteller died on the island of Chios.

Due to the insufficiency of many biographical data in connection with the personality of Homer began to appear a large number of legends.

One of them says that shortly before his death, Homer turned to the seer to reveal the secret of his origin into the world. Then the seer named Chios as the place where Homer would die. Homer went there. He remembered the sage's admonition to beware of riddles from youth. But remembering is one thing, but in reality it always turns out differently. The boys who were fishing saw a stranger, talked to him and asked him a riddle. He could not find an answer to her, went in his thoughts, stumbled and fell. Homer died three days later. There he was buried.

About Homer's work:

Homer is known to the world as an ancient Greek poet. modern science recognizes Homer as the author of such poems as the Iliad and the Odyssey, but in antiquity he was recognized as the author of other works. Fragments of several of them have survived to this day. However, today it is believed that they were written by an author who lived later than Homer. This is a comic poem "Margit", "Homeric hymns" and others.

Peru Homer owns two brilliant poems: "Odyssey" and "Iliad". The Greeks at all times thought so and still believe. Some critics began to question this fact and began to express the point of view that these works appeared only in the 18th century and that they do not belong to Homer at all.

As the existence of the identity of Homer is in principle questioned, there is also an opinion that the authorship of both the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to different people who lived at different times.

It is clear that the Odyssey and the Iliad were written much later than the events described in these works. However, their creation can be dated no earlier than the 6th century BC. e., when their existence was reliably recorded. Thus, the life of Homer can be attributed to the period from the 12th to the 7th century BC. e. However, the latest date is the most likely.

There is a legend about a poetic duel that took place between Hesiod and Homer. It was described in a work written no later than the 3rd century BC. BC e. (and some researchers believe that much earlier). It is called "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod." It tells that the poets allegedly met at the games in honor of Amphidemus, held on about. Euboea. Here they read their best poems. The judge of the competition was King Paned. The victory was awarded to Hesiod, because he called for peace and agriculture, and not for slaughter and war. However, it was on the side of Homer that the sympathy of the audience was.

In the 18th century, German linguists published a work that states that there was no written language during the life of Homer, texts were stored in memory and passed from mouth to mouth. Therefore, such significant texts could not be preserved in this way. But such famous masters of the pen as Goethe and Schiller still gave the authorship of the poems to Homer.

Since the 17th century, scientists have faced the so-called Homeric question - a dispute about the authorship of legendary poems. But, no matter what scientists argue, Homer entered the history of world literature, and in his homeland he had special respect for a long time after his death. His epics were considered sacred, and Plato himself said that spiritual development Greece is the merit of Homer.

Be that as it may, Homer is the first ancient poet whose works have survived to this day.

25 interesting facts about the life and work of Homer:

1. The name Homer in ancient Greek means "blind". Perhaps it was for this reason that the assumption arose that the ancient Greek poet was blind.

2. In antiquity, Homer was considered a sage: "Wiser than all the Hellenes taken together." He was considered the founder of philosophy, geography, physics, mathematics, medicine and aesthetics.

3. About half of the found ancient Greek literary papyri were written by Homer.

4. Selective translation of Homer's texts was performed by Mikhail Lomonosov.

5. In 1829, Gnedich Nikolai for the first time translated the Iliad completely into Russian.

6. To date, there are nine versions of Homer's biography, but none can be considered completely documentary. In every description, fiction occupies a large place.

7. Traditionally, it is customary to depict Homer as blind, but scientists explain this not so much by the real state of his vision, but by the influence of the culture of the ancient Greeks, where poets were identified with prophets.

8. Homer distributed his works with the help of Aeds (singers). He learned his works by heart and sang them to his Aeds. Those, in turn, also memorized the works and hummed them to other people. In another way, such people were called homerids.

9. A crater on Mercury is named after Homer.

10. In the 1960s, American researchers passed all the songs of the Iliad through a computer, which showed that there was only one author of this poem.

11. The system of ancient Greek education, formed by the end of the classical era, was based on the study of Homer's work.

12. His poems were memorized in whole or in part, recitations were organized on their topics, etc. Later, Rome borrowed this system. Here since the 1st century AD. e. Homer was replaced by Virgil.

13. Large hexametric poems were created in the postclassic era in the dialect of the ancient Greek author, as well as as a competition or in imitation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.

14. In ancient Roman literature, the first surviving work (albeit fragmentary) was a translation of the Odyssey. It was made by the Greek Livy Andronicus. Note that the main work of literature of Ancient Rome - Virgil's Aeneid - in the first six books is an imitation of the Odyssey, and in the last six - the Iliad.

15. Greek manuscripts in last years existence of the Byzantine Empire, and then after its collapse came to the West. This is how Homer was rediscovered by the Renaissance.

16. The epic poems of this ancient Greek author are brilliant, priceless works of art. Over the centuries, they do not lose their deep meaning and relevance. The plots of both poems are taken from a multifaceted and extensive cycle of legends dedicated to the Trojan War. "Odyssey" and "Iliad" display only small episodes from this cycle.

17. The habits, traditions, moral aspects of life, morality and life of the ancient Greeks are very clearly depicted in the Iliad.

18. The Odyssey is a more complex work than the Iliad. In it we find many features that are still being studied from the point of view of literature. This epic poem mainly deals with the return of Odysseus to Ithaca after the conclusion of the Trojan War.

19. The Odyssey and the Iliad have characteristic features, one of which is the epic style. The sustained tone of the narration, the unhurried thoroughness, the complete objectivity of the image, the unhurried development of the plot - these are character traits works created by Homer.

20. Homer was an oral storyteller, that is, he did not speak a letter. However, despite this, his poems are distinguished by high skill and poetic technique, they reveal unity.

21. Almost all the works of antiquity can be seen as the influence of the poems that Homer created. The Byzantines were also interested in his biography and work. In this country, Homer was carefully studied. To date, dozens of Byzantine manuscripts of his poems have been discovered. For the works of antiquity, this is unprecedented. Moreover, Byzantine scholars created commentaries and scholia on Homer, compiled and rewrote his poems. Seven volumes are occupied by the commentary of Archbishop Eustathius to them.

22. In science in the middle of the 19th century, the opinion prevailed that the Odyssey and the Iliad were unhistorical works. However, he was refuted by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann, which he carried out in Mycenae and on the Hissarlik hill in the 1870-80s. The sensational discoveries of this archaeologist proved that Mycenae, Troy and the Achaean citadels existed in reality. The contemporaries of the German scientist were struck by the correspondence of his findings in the 4th tented tomb, located in Mycenae, to the descriptions made by Homer.

23. One of the main arguments in favor of the fact that the historical Homer did not exist was that not a single person is able to remember and perform poetic works of such volume. However, in the middle of the 20th century, in the Balkans, folklorists discovered a storyteller who performed an epic work the size of the Odyssey: this is the story of the American Albert Lord's book The Storyteller.

24. A summary of the works of Homer formed the basis of many works of authors who lived in Ancient Rome. Among them, one can note the “Argonautics” written by Apollonius of Rhodes, the work of Nonn of Panopolitansky “The Adventures of Dionysus” and Quintus Smyrna “Post-Homerian events”.

25. Recognizing the merits of Homer, other poets of ancient Greece refrained from creating a major epic form. They believed that the works of Homer are a treasury of the wisdom of the people of ancient Greece.