For many generations, the entry into antiquity began and, it seems, will invariably begin with Homer’s poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. These are the first artistic monuments of antiquity that we know of. The heroes of the poems have long become textbooks, people close to us, our spiritual companions. For the Hellenes, their creator was an almost mythical figure, a source of pride, the personification of wisdom and artistic perfection.

When the Greeks said "poet", it was obvious that they meant Homer. He was worshiped as a god. The Iliad and Odyssey were something like the Bible for the Greeks. Education in antiquity began with Homer, and it ended with him. The philosopher Dion Chrysostom (“Chrysostom”) responded this way, referring to the truly inexhaustible nature of the great poems: “Homer gives to everyone: husband, youth, and old man exactly as much as each of them is able to take.”

The great philosopher Plato put it succinctly: “...Greece owes its spiritual development to this poet.” After the defeat of the Persian kingdom, Alexander the Great took possession of huge treasures, among which was a rich casket. In it, the great commander kept the manuscript of the Iliad, which he never parted with. Every day he communed with her before going to bed; it was his favorite work, a coffee table book. Of the 470 literary papyri discovered in Egypt in 1919, 270 included passages from Homer's poems.

The plots of Homer’s famous poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, which have been fully preserved to this day, are taken from an extensive cycle of tales about the Trojan War.

The Iliad tells about the events of the tenth year of the Trojan War, and the presentation does not cover the last events of the war and ends with the death and burial of the main Trojan warrior Hector. The same can be said about the Odyssey, which tells about the last days of the hero’s wanderings on the way back from Troy.

To imagine the connection between all the events mentioned in the poem, it is necessary to start from the initial fact that caused the war - a motive that is often found in fairy tales.

The son of the Trojan king Priam, Paris-Alexander, kidnapped the beautiful Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menepal. The insulted Menelaus called on many kings and warriors for help. Among all, the young son of Peleus stood out for his strength and valor. The expedition was led by Menelaus's elder brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and Argos. After lengthy preparations, the Trojan War, glorified in legends, began.

Homer's poems present a whole gallery of individually depicted typical images.

The central figure of the Iliad is Achilles, a young Thessalian hero, the son of Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis. Achilles is an integral and noble nature, personifying that military valor in the understanding of ancient heroes, which serves as the ideological basis of the entire poem. He is alien to cunning and double-mindedness. Because of the consciousness of his strength and greatness, he was accustomed to command. His anger manifests itself in the most violent forms. Taking revenge on the Trojans for Patroclus, he becomes like some kind of demon-exterminator.

The same madness is visible in the desecration of Hector’s corpse - (3, pp. 395-401), and in the fact that he kills twelve Trojan captives at the grave of Patroclus. He is also given the traits of a singer-poet - (3, p. 186). Finally, he softens, seeing in front of him the tears and terrible plea of ​​the father who came to him for the body of the son he killed.

The image of the main character of the Achaean army corresponds to the figure of the Trojan warrior Hector. Although the poet never forgets that this is a representative of a hostile people who cannot be treated as a fellow tribesman. Hector is the leader of the Trojan army, and the entire brunt of the war falls on him. In difficult moments, he is always ahead of everyone and is in the greatest danger.

He has a high sense of honor and is generally respected and loved.

He is left alone on the battlefield while the others hide in the city.

Neither his father's pleas nor his mother's tears can shake him: the duty of honor is above all else in him. Hector is shown most clearly in the scene of his date with Andromache (VI, 392-502), where we see him as a husband and father.

If the ideal of military valor is given in the person of Achilles, then Odysseus, the “cunning” and “long-suffering” hero, appears to be the bearer of worldly wisdom.

In the Iliad he appears both as a warrior and as a wise adviser, but also as a man ready for all kinds of deception - (3, p. 383; 2, p. 202). The very capture of Troy with the help of a wooden horse was a matter of his cunning. Always alert, he has a whole stock of fictitious stories at the ready.

“In cunning, often crude and flat, in what in prosaic language is called “deception.” And yet, in the eyes of the infant people, this cunning could not help but seem like the extreme degree of possible wisdom.”

In both poems, in addition to the main characters, there are many more minor ones.

Some of them are also depicted in very bright colors. There are more such persons in the Iliad than in the Odyssey.

The Mycenaean king Agamemnon, the eldest of the Atrides, is the leader of the entire campaign and is called the “lord of men” or “shepherd of nations.” Menelaus, the Spartan king, the husband of Helen, who was kidnapped by Paris, is the main person interested in the war. However, the poet portrays both of them with far from attractive features.

The image of Nestor is endowed with charming features - an eternal type of old man who loves to remember the years of his youth and give his instructions. Performing heroic deeds, he becomes captivated by the dream of conquering Troy and perishes at the hands of Hector.

The aged Trojan king Priam is depicted with exceptionally attractive features. This is the type of a real patriarch, surrounded by a large family.

Due to his old age, he ceded the right of military leader to his eldest son Hector. He is distinguished by his gentleness and courtesy. He even treats Elena, despised and hated by everyone, very cordially.

In the Odyssey, the personality of Telemachus is vividly depicted. The poem depicts the gradual growth of this young man. At the beginning of the poem, he is presented as still very young and dependent, which he himself admits to his mother. At the end of the poem, he actively helps his father in dealing with his suitors. In this image the Greeks could see the type of ideal young man - an “ephebe”.

There are also female images in the poems. The images of Andromache and Penelope are especially expressive.

Andromache is Hector's faithful and loving wife. She lives in constant anxiety for her husband, who, as she sees, does not spare himself, constantly participating in battles, “kills himself with his valor.” The fate of Andromache is deeply tragic. When Achilles sacked her hometown of Thebes in Placia, her father and brothers were killed, and her mother died soon after. For Andromache, all life is now in her beloved husband. At the end of the poem, she mourns her husband at his burial.

This touching image has repeatedly attracted the attention of poets in later times.

Penelope is depicted as an example of family virtue and fidelity in the Odyssey.

During the twenty years that Odysseus is absent, she has not changed her feelings for him and stubbornly believes in his return. Her situation is extremely difficult, since she is surrounded by unfriendly people who consider her a widow and are seeking her hand, hoping in this way to gain royal power.

The opposite of Penelope is Helen in the Iliad. However, her crime is already in the past; the intoxication of passion, which once forced her to leave the house of Menelaus, gave way to bitter regret, and she, realizing her mistake, repents of this before Priam - (2, pp. 173-176). Helen is filled with contempt for Paris, but the goddess Aphrodite again imperiously throws her into the arms of this man.

These are the main images of Homer's poems. All of them are distinguished by their integrity, simplicity, and in many cases even naivety, which is characteristic of the era of “childhood of human society.” They are depicted with remarkable strength and vitality and are marked by the deepest human truth.

For most peoples, myths are composed primarily of gods. But Ancient Greece is an exception: the main, best part of them is about heroes. These are the grandchildren, sons, and great-grandsons of the gods, born from mortal women. It was they who performed various feats, punished villains, destroyed monsters, and also participated in internecine wars. The gods, when the Earth became heavy from them, made sure that in the Trojan War the participants themselves destroyed each other. Thus the will of Zeus was accomplished. Many heroes died at the walls of Ilion.

In this article we will tell you about the work that Homer created - the Iliad. We will briefly outline its content, and we will also analyze this and another poem about the Trojan War - “The Odyssey”.

What is the Iliad about?

"Troy" and "Ilion" are two names of a great city located in Asia Minor, near the shores of the Dardanelles. The poem telling about the Trojan War is called "Iliad" (Homer) by its second name. Among the people before her, there were only small oral songs like ballads or epics, telling about the exploits of these heroes. Homer, the blind legendary singer, composed a large poem from them and did it very skillfully: he selected only one episode and developed it in such a way that he made it a reflection of an entire heroic age. This episode is called "The Wrath of Achilles", who was the greatest Greek hero of the last generation. Homer's Iliad is mainly dedicated to him.

Who took part in the war

The Trojan War lasted 10 years. Homer's Iliad begins like this. Many Greek leaders and kings gathered on a campaign against Troy, with thousands of warriors, on hundreds of ships: in the poem their list takes up several pages. Agamemnon, ruler of Argos, that strongest of kings, was the chief of them. Menelaus, his brother (the war began for his sake), the ardent Diomedes, the mighty Ajax, the wise Nestor, the cunning Odysseus and others went with him. But the most agile, strong and brave was Achilles, the young son of Thetis, the sea goddess, who was accompanied by Patroclus, his friend. Priam, the gray-haired king, ruled the Trojans. His army was led by Hector, the king’s son, a valiant warrior. With him were Paris, his brother (the war began because of him), as well as many allies gathered from all over Asia. These were the heroes of Homer's poem "Iliad". The gods themselves also took part in the battle: Silver-bowed Apollo helped the Trojans, and Hera, the queen of heaven, and Athena, the wise warrior, helped the Greeks. The Thunderer Zeus, the supreme god, watched the battles from high Olympus and carried out his will.

Beginning of the war

The war started like this. The wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the sea goddess, took place - the last marriage concluded between mortals and gods (the same one from which the hero Achilles was born). At the feast, the goddess of discord threw a golden apple, which was intended for the “most beautiful.” Three people argued over him: Athena, Hera and Aphrodite. Paris, the Trojan prince, was ordered by Zeus to judge this dispute. Each of the goddesses promised him their gifts: Hera - to make him the king of the whole world, Athena - a sage and a hero, Aphrodite - the husband of the most beautiful of women. The hero decided to give the apple to the latter.

After this, Athena and Hera became sworn enemies of Troy. Aphrodite helped Paris to seduce Helen, the daughter of Zeus himself, who was the wife of King Menelaus, and take her to Troy. Once upon a time, the best heroes of Greece wooed her and agreed so as not to quarrel: let the girl herself choose the one she likes, and if someone else tries to fight her off, everyone else will declare war on him. Every young man hoped that he would be the chosen one. Helen's choice fell on Menelaus. Now Paris took her away from this king, and therefore all her former suitors went to war against this young man. Only the youngest of them did not woo the girl and went to war only to show his strength, valor, and win glory. This young man was Achilles.

First attack of the Trojans

Homer's Iliad continues. The Trojans attack. They are led by Sarpedon, the son of the god Zeus, the last of his sons on earth, as well as Hector. Achilles coldly watches from his tent as the Greeks flee and the Trojans approach their camp: they are about to set fire to the ships of their enemies. From above, Hera also sees how the Greeks are losing, and in desperation decides to deceive, thereby diverting the attention of Zeus. She appears before him in the girdle of Aphrodite, which arouses passion, and the god unites with Hera on the top of Ida. They are enveloped in a golden cloud, and the earth blooms with hyacinths and saffron. After this they fall asleep, and while Zeus sleeps, the Greeks stop the Trojans. But the dream of the supreme god is short-lived. Zeus awakens, and Hera trembles before his anger, and he calls on her to endure: the Greeks will be able to defeat the Trojans, but after Achilles pacifies his anger and goes into battle. Zeus promised this to the goddess Thetis.

Patroclus goes to battle

However, Achilles is not yet ready to do this, and Patroclus is sent to help the Greeks instead. It pains him to watch his comrades in trouble. Homer's poem "The Iliad" continues. Achilles gives the young man his armor, which the Trojans fear, as well as the warriors, a chariot drawn by horses that can prophesy and speak prophetic things. He calls on his comrade to repel the Trojans from the camp and save the ships. But at the same time he advises not to expose yourself to danger, not to get carried away by persecution. The Trojans, seeing the armor, were frightened and turned back. Then Patroclus could not stand it and began to pursue them.

The son of Zeus, Sarpedon, comes out to meet him, and the god, watching from above, hesitates: to save his son or not. But Hera says, let fate take its course. Like a mountain pine, Sarpedon collapses, battle begins to boil around his body. Meanwhile, Patroclus is rushing further and further, to the very gates of Troy. Apollo shouts to him that the young man is not destined to take the city. He doesn't hear. Apollo then hits him on the shoulders, shrouded in a cloud. Patroclus loses his strength, drops his spear, helmet and shield, and Hector deals him a crushing blow. Dying, the warrior predicts that he will fall at the hands of Achilles.

The latter learns the sad news: Patroclus has died, and now Hector flaunts himself in his armor. Friends have difficulty carrying the dead body from the battlefield. The Trojans, triumphant, pursue them. Achilles longs to rush into battle, but cannot do so: he is unarmed. Then the hero screams, and this scream is so terrible that, shuddering, the Trojans retreat. Night begins, and Achilles mourns his friend, threatening his enemies with vengeance.

New Achilles armor

At the request of his mother, Thetis, meanwhile Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, forges new armor for Achilles in a copper forge. These are greaves, a helmet, a shell and a shield, on which the whole world is depicted: the stars and the sun, the sea and the earth, a warring and a peaceful city. In a peaceful situation there is a wedding and a trial, in a warring situation there is a battle and an ambush. Around there is a vineyard, pasture, harvest, plowing, a village festival and a round dance, in the middle of which is a singer with a lyre.

Then morning comes, and our hero puts on his new armor and calls the Greek army to a meeting. His anger has not faded away, but now it is directed at those who killed his friend, and not at Agamemnon. Achilles is angry with Hector and the Trojans. The hero now offers reconciliation to Agamemnon, and he accepts it. Briseis was returned to Achilles. Rich gifts were brought into his tent. But our hero hardly looks at them: he longs for a fight, for revenge.

New battle

Now the fourth battle is coming. Zeus lifts the bans: let the gods themselves fight for whom these mythical heroes of Homer’s “Iliad” want. Athena clashes with Ares in battle, Hera with Artemis.

Achilles is terrible, as noted in Homer's Iliad. The story about this hero continues. He grappled with Aeneas, but the gods tore the latter out of his hands. It is not the fate of this warrior to fall from Achilles. He must survive both him and Troy. Achilles, enraged by the failure, kills countless Trojans, their corpses clutter the river. But Scamander, the river god, attacks, engulfing him in waves. Hephaestus, the fire god, pacifies him.

Achilles pursues Hector

Our summary continues. Homer (The Iliad) describes the following further events. The Trojans who managed to survive flee to the city. Hector alone covers the retreat. Achilles runs into him, and he runs: he fears for his life, but at the same time wants to distract Achilles from the others. They run around the city three times, and the gods look at them from the heights. Zeus hesitates whether to save this hero, but Athena asks to leave everything to the will of fate.

Death of Hector

Zeus then raises the scales, on which are two lots - Achilles and Hectors. Achilles' cup flies up, and Hector's goes towards the underworld. The supreme god gives a sign: to leave Hector to Apollo, and to Athena to intercede for Achilles. The latter holds the hero’s opponent, and he comes face to face with Achilles. Hector's spear hits Hephaestus's shield, but in vain. Achilles wounds the hero in the throat, and he falls. The winner ties his body to his chariot and, mocking the murdered man, drives the horses around Troy. Old Priam cries for him on the city wall. The widow Andromache, as well as all the inhabitants of Troy, also lament.

Burial of Patroclus

The summary we compiled continues. Homer (The Iliad) describes the following events. Patroclus is avenged. Achilles arranges a magnificent burial for his friend. 12 Trojan prisoners are killed over the body of Patroclus. His friend's anger, however, does not subside. Achilles drives his chariot with Hector's body three times a day around the mound where Patroclus is buried. The corpse would have crashed on the rocks long ago, but Apollo invisibly protects it. Zeus intervenes. He announces to Achilles through Thetis that he does not have long to live in the world, asks him to give the body of his enemy for burial. And Achilles obeys.

The act of King Priam

Homer continues to talk about further events (The Iliad). Their summary is as follows. King Priam comes to the winner's tent at night. And with him - a cart full of gifts. The gods themselves allowed him to pass through the Greek camp unnoticed. Priam falls to the warrior’s knees and asks him to remember his father Peleus, who is also old. Grief brings these enemies closer together: only now does the long anger in Achilles’ heart subside. He accepts Priam's gifts, gives him Hector's body and promises that he will not disturb the Trojans until they bury the body of their warrior. Priam returns to Troy with the body, and relatives cry over the murdered man. A fire is lit, the hero's remains are collected in an urn, which is lowered into the grave. A mound is built over it. Homer's poem "The Iliad" ends with a funeral feast.

Further events

There were still many events left before the end of this war. Having lost Hector, the Trojans no longer dared to leave the city walls. But other peoples came to their aid: from the land of the Amazons, from Asia Minor, from Ethiopia. The most terrible was the Ethiopian leader Memnon. He fought with Achilles, who overthrew him and rushed to attack Troy. It was then that the hero died from the arrow of Paris directed by Apollo. Having lost Achilles, the Greeks no longer hoped to take Troy by force - they did it by cunning, forcing the city residents to bring in a wooden horse with knights sitting inside. In the Aeneid Virgil will later talk about this.

Troy was destroyed, and the Greek heroes who managed to survive set off on their way back.

Homer, "Iliad" and "Odyssey": compositions of works

Let us consider the composition of works dedicated to these events. Homer wrote two poems telling about the Trojan War - the Iliad and the Odyssey. They were based on legends about it, which actually took place approximately in the 13-12 centuries BC. “The Iliad” tells about the events of the war in its 10th year, and the fabulous everyday poem “Odyssey” tells about the return of the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, one of the Greek military leaders, to his homeland after its end, and about his misadventures.

In the Iliad, stories about human actions alternate with the depiction of gods who decide the fate of battles, divided into two parties. Events that occurred simultaneously are presented as occurring sequentially. The composition of the poem is symmetrical.

In the structure of the Odyssey, we note the most significant one - the technique of transposition - the depiction of past events in the form of Odysseus's story about them.

This is the compositional structure of Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey".

Humanism of poems

One of the main reasons for the immortality of these works is their humanism. Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" touch on important issues that are relevant at any time. The author glorified courage, loyalty in friendship, love of homeland, wisdom, respect for old age, etc. Considering Homer's epic "Iliad", it can be noted that the main character is terrible in anger and proud. Personal resentment forced him to refuse to participate in the battle and neglect his duty. Nevertheless, it contains moral qualities: the hero’s anger is resolved by generosity.

Odysseus is shown as a courageous, cunning man who can find a way out of any situation. He is fair. Returning to his homeland, the hero carefully observes the behavior of people in order to give everyone what they deserve. He is trying to remove from the crowd of those doomed to death the only suitor of all, Penelope, who greets the owner when he appears in the guise of a beggar tramp. But, unfortunately, he fails to do this: Amphinoma is destroyed by chance. Homer uses this example to show how a hero worthy of respect should act.

The general life-affirming mood of the works is sometimes overshadowed by thoughts about the brevity of life. Homer's heroes, thinking that death is inevitable, strive to leave a glorious memory of themselves.

“Homer gives to every person, regardless of his age, exactly as much as he is able to accept. Dion Chrysostom” (Chrysostom).
“Greece owes its spiritual development to this poet” (Plato).
The oldest written sources of ancient Greek literature are considered to be the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, created by the legendary author Homer and written down by order of the Athenian ruler Pisistratus in the 6th century. BC e. Both poems belong to the genre of heroic epic, where, along with famous historical figures, legendary and mythological heroes are depicted. Respect for the gods, love and respect for parents, defense of the fatherland - these are the main commandments of the Greeks, reproduced in the poems of Homer.
The poem “Iliad” is an unsurpassed encyclopedia of military operations, social life of Ancient Greece, moral principles, customs, and culture of the ancient world. The main driving force of the plot of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles as a result of his quarrel with the Greek military leader Agamemnon. Agamemnon rudely insulted the priest Apollo Chryses when he came to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter Chryseis from captivity. By that time, ten years had already passed since the siege of Troy, tension from both hostile camps had reached its climax. Offended by Agamemnon’s refusal and rudeness, Chris turns to Apollo for help, and he sends a “sickness of misfortune” to the Greeks. To distract him, Achilles, at a general meeting of the Greeks, invites Agamemnon to return Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon agrees, but demands that Achilles in return give him the captive Briseis, who is a trophy of the famous hero. With sadness in his soul, Achilles obeys the military leader. But the hero’s heart burns with anger, so he refuses to take part in the battles.
The gods themselves were divided into two opposing camps: some support Aphrodite, who is on the side of the Trojans, others support Athena, who helps the Achaeans (Greeks). The pleas of Agamemnon's messengers to return Achilles to the battlefield were in vain. At the decisive moment, saving the Greek army from defeat, Achilles's closest friend, Patroclus, puts on Achilles' armor and repels the attack of the Trojans, but he himself dies at the hands of Hector, the Trojan king. The pain of losing a friend outweighed Achilles's resentment and pride. Achilles' anger turns against the Trojans. Wearing the best armor forged by the god Hephaestus himself, Achilles terrifies the Trojans and enters into a duel with Hector. Homer's skill lies not only in depicting battle scenes of the battle between the Trojans and the Greeks, describing the heroic exploits of characters from both one and the other enemy camp. The lines telling about Hector’s farewell to his beloved wife Andromache are imbued with lyricism and tenderness. The woman asks her husband to stay away from the fight.
The king of the Trojans feels sorry for his wife, but remains inexorable, because he cannot drop his honor, disgrace his father: Hector is ready to give his life for his family - Andromache and his son: It is better that I die, let the hill of the earth cover me, Than I hear your cry, as they lead you are captured!
Guided by the moral principles of antiquity, where the hero, first of all, shows courage, strength, courage, defending his land, Homer portrays Hector both as a gentle husband and father, and as a strong man who dreams of seeing his son as strong and courageous. Homer's genius lies in the fact that he went beyond the conventional boundaries of depicting only the heroic pages of ancient history; the poet also conveyed all the diversity of feelings of his heroes.
Homer does not side with any camp or hero. The lines dedicated to courage, patriotism, and devotion of both the Greeks and the Trojans are heard with equal passion. The Iliad ends with the death of Hector in a duel with Achilles. A touching and insightful scene of the ransoming of Hector's body by his father, old Priam. Achilles's anger has subsided, and he gradually becomes imbued with sympathy for his father's grief, promising twelve days of reconciliation for a worthy burial of the Trojan hero.
Like the main characters of the Iliad - Achilles and Hector - so Odysseus in the poem The Odyssey is devoid of purely selfish traits and pettiness. The events of the poem are completely connected with the fate of the long-suffering Odysseus, who was an active participant in the siege of Troy. For ten years after her fall, the hero cannot reach his native island of Ithaca due to the wrath of Poseidon, the god of the seas. For seven years he has been pining away from his homeland on the enchanted island of Ogygia, the nymph Calypso in love with him. Odysseus refuses immortality, with which Calypso seduces him, for the sake of an irresistible desire to return to his homeland, to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. And in Ithaca the hero is considered dead, and therefore noble persons woo Penelope. , they offend Odysseus’ son Telemachus in every possible way. On Olympus, the fate of Odysseus is decided: the gods allowed the hero to return to Ithaca, but until this happy moment, Odysseus needs to go a long way, overcoming obstacles. On the way home, Odysseus encounters various obstacles: on the island of lot eaters, where a storm washed up the ships, the inhabitants treated the Achaeans to a fragrant lotus, which had miraculous powers. Those who tried it forgot their homeland and did not want to sail further. On another island, Odysseus meets the giant Cyclops Polyphemus. Only thanks to cunning and courage, Odysseus is saved together with his friends: he calls himself Nobody, and when the one-eyed Polyphemus falls asleep in a cave littered with stones, Odysseus knocks out the giant’s eye with a sharpened stick. In response to a call for help, other giants, the Cyclops, came to the cave. When asked who deceived Polyphemus, they heard the answer: “Nobody,” and therefore they left the domain of the wounded Polyphemus. Holding onto the long wool of the giant's sheep, Odysseus and his friends got out of the cave when Polyphemus cleared the passage from the stones. The formidable god of earthquakes and sea storms, Poseidon, vowed to avenge his son Polyphemus.
The god of the winds, Aeolus, is imbued with sympathy for Odysseus, on whose island the hero’s team landed. Aeolus collected all the violent and dangerous winds into a bag, tied it tightly and ordered Odysseus not to release them until he reached his homeland. Odysseus's distrustful companions untied the bag while the tired hero was sleeping. Violent winds broke free and drove the ship far back from the Motherland. Strange events took place on the island of the sorceress Circe: the beautiful but insidious sorceress turned Odysseus’s companions into animals, but she could not turn the hero because Hermes helped him in time. Circe had to free all people from the animal likeness. Odysseus resorts to the help of deceased relatives and friends: he descends into the underground kingdom of Hades - the dead. The soothsayer Teresa warns Odysseus about the revenge of the god Poseidon. The hero sees the shadow of a mother who died of sadness for her son. The shadow of Agamemnon, the commander of all Greeks during the siege of Troy, warns of the treachery of women, because after his victorious return home, Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra. Sirens lure the Greeks to their island with magical sweet songs. To avoid danger, Odysseus again resorts to cunning: “I then covered the ears of my comrades one by one. Then they tied me by the arms and legs of Stijma to a strong mast, and also twisted the string tightly.” Fantastic bloodthirsty monsters Scylla (skillom) and Charybdis - another test of Odysseus on the way to Ithaca: Scylla - there on one side, on the other - the divine Charybdis menacingly swallowed salty water from the deep sea. And as I threw it back, there was a noisy bubbling around, like in a cauldron on a high fire. And the foam flew high up in sprays, irrigating both rocks.
Odysseus managed to escape and not die in the mouth of one of the monsters. And again, trials befell Odysseus: on the island of the sun god Helios, cows were grazing, which Odysseus’s companions secretly slaughtered and ate from the hero. When the Achaeans left the island, Helios sent a strong storm on them, everyone died except Odysseus. Some time after the wanderings of the Greeks, the Phaeacians took Odysseus to Ithaca on their ship. Unrecognized, in the guise of an old beggar, Odysseus arrives home. The goddess Athena, who deals with Odysseus, helps him in everything. Penelope, taught by Athena in a dream, assigns a test to the suitors: shoot through 20 rings without hitting a single one. None of the suitors can string the bow of Odysseus, which Penelope brought to the competition. When the elder takes the bow, all the suitors present mock him.
But, surprisingly, the old man calmly pulled the bowstring, and then pierced all 20 rings with an arrow. Without allowing the suitors to come to their senses, Odysseus strikes the offenders with well-aimed archery shots: “Ah, dogs! Didn't you think that I would return home from the Trojan land? You destroyed my house here, you forced your servants onto my bed. Even during my lifetime they tried to marry my wife. And they were not afraid of the gods who control the vastness of the heavens, nor that human vengeance would ever befall them.” From the very beginning, they knew that Odysseus was hiding behind the beggar’s face, only his son Telemachus, the faithful dog Argus and the nanny Eurycleia, who recognized the hero by an old scar on his leg. When Penelope was convinced that this was her husband, the goddess Athena returned Odysseus to his true identity, and then rejuvenated the couple, restoring their youth and beauty.

Essay on literature on the topic: Homer’s poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”

Other writings:

1. In Greek mythology, he is the king of the island of Ithaca. Son of Laertes, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus. Talking about Odysseus, Homer uses the epithets “many-minded,” “godlike,” “persevere,” “steadfast in trials.” The recently married Odysseus did not want to leave the beautiful Penelope, who had just given birth to her first son. Having learned that Read More......
2. Plan 1. “The Iliad” is one of the poems of the Trojan mythological cycle, created by Homer. 2. The heroes of the poem are courageous, fearless warriors: a) fierce battles; b) the death of Patroclus; c) Hector – Trojan leader; d) Achilles – a thunderstorm for the Trojans; e) the harsh heroics of war. Read More......
3. It would be appropriate to think that Odysseus, having created a family, personally makes a marriage bed from the root of an olive tree, thus securing the foundations of his own family in his native land. The description of the bed is presented in Homer's poem with numerous details and is included by the author in Read More......
4. Ancient literature can be divided into 2 periods (literature of ancient Greece and literature of ancient Rome). Greek literature arose approximately from the 1st millennium BC, it had a huge influence on all European literature; its elements entered our concepts, thinking, and language. Read More......
5. “Philoctetes.” The question of the relationship between individual interests and state interests. Odysseus and Neptolemus, son of Allillas, appear on the island. Lemnos, in order to force Philoctetes, who wields the wonderful bow and arrows of Hercules, to go to Troy. Philoctetes was bitten by a poisonous snake and abandoned by his allies on the island, Read More......
6. The history of a people, as a rule, begins with fantastic retellings of myths and beautiful legends. These creations always contain a grain of history, edged and embellished with fantasy. Already in the first millennium BC, the ancient Greeks listened to rhyming stories about the Trojan War and adventures Read More ......
7. Some of the most striking early works of ancient Greek literature are the heroic poems “The Iliad,” which tells about the events of the legendary Trojan War, and “The Odyssey,” which tells about the difficult return to the homeland of one of its heroes. Their author is considered to be the ancient Greek poet Homer, who composed these epics based on Read More......
8. The Iliad is a poem that tells about the events of the last, tenth year of the Trojan War. The main character of the Iliad, that is, the poem about Ilion, is Achilles (Achilles), the son of a mortal and a goddess, the bravest of the Greek heroes; he was insulted by the leader of the Greek army Agamemnon and refused to fight Read More ......

In the second act of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a traveling troupe appears, and one of the actors, at the request of the prince, reads a monologue in which the Trojan hero Aeneas talks about the capture of Troy and the cruelties of the victors. When the story comes to the suffering of the old queen Hecuba - before her eyes, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, mad with anger, killed her husband Priam and violated his body - the actor turns pale and bursts into tears. And Hamlet utters the famous, proverbial words:

What is he to Hecuba? What does Hecuba mean to him?

And he's crying...

Translation by B. Pasternak

What is Hecuba to modern man, what is Achilles, Priam, Hector and other heroes of Homer to him; What does he care about their torments, joys, love and hatred, adventures and battles that died down and burned out more than thirty centuries ago? What takes him back to antiquity, why does the Trojan War and the return to the homeland of the long-suffering and cunning Odysseus touch us, if not to tears, like a Shakespearean actor, then still quite vividly and strongly?

Any literary work of the distant past is capable of attracting and captivating a person of modern times with the image of a disappeared life, which in many ways is strikingly different from our life today. Historical interest, characteristic of any person, a natural desire to find out “what happened before” is the beginning of our path to Homer, or rather, one of the paths. We ask: who was he, this Homer? And when did you live? And did he “invent” his heroes or do their images and exploits reflect true events? And how accurately (or how freely) are they reflected and to what time do they relate? We ask question after question and look for answers in articles and books about Homer; and at our service are not hundreds or thousands, but tens of thousands of books and articles, an entire library, an entire literature that continues to grow even now. Scientists are not only discovering new facts related to Homer’s poems, but also discovering new points of view on Homer’s poetry as a whole, new ways of assessing it. There was a time when every word of the Iliad and Odyssey was considered an indisputable truth - the ancient Greeks (in any case, the vast majority of them) saw in Homer not only a great poet, but also a philosopher, teacher, natural scientist, in a word - the supreme judge of the world. all occasions. There was another time when everything in the Iliad and Odyssey was considered fiction, a beautiful fairy tale, or a crude fable, or an immoral anecdote that offended “good taste.” Then the time came when Homer’s “fables,” one after another, began to be supported by archaeological finds: in 1870, the German Heinrich Schliemann found Troy, near whose walls the heroes of the Iliad fought and died; four years later, the same Schliemann excavated “rich in gold” Mycenae - the city of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army near Troy; in 1900, the Englishman Arthur Evans began excavations unique in terms of the wealth of finds on Crete, a “hundred-degree” island repeatedly mentioned by Homer; in 1939, the American Bligen and the Greek Kuroniotis found ancient Pylos - the capital of Nestor, the “sweet-voiced Vitius of Pylos”, the tireless giver of wise advice in both poems... The list of “Homeric discoveries” is extremely extensive and has not been closed to this day - and is unlikely to be closed in the near future . And yet it is necessary to name one more of them - the most important and most sensational in our century. During excavations on the island of Crete, as well as in Mycenae, Pylos and some other places in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, archaeologists found several thousand clay tablets covered with unknown writings. It took almost half a century to read them, because even the language of these inscriptions was not known. Only in 1953, thirty-year-old Englishman Michael Ventris solved the problem of deciphering the so-called Linear B script. This man, who died in a car accident three and a half years later, was neither an ancient historian nor an expert in ancient languages ​​- he was an architect. And yet, as the remarkable Soviet scientist S. Lurie wrote about Ventris, “he managed to make the largest and most striking discovery in the science of antiquity since the Renaissance.” His name should stand next to the names of Schliemann and Champollion, who unraveled the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Its discovery put into the hands of researchers authentic Greek documents from approximately the same time as the events of the Iliad and Odyssey, documents that expanded, clarified, and in some ways overturned previous ideas about the prototype of the society and state depicted in Homer.

At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Tribes of Greek-Achaeans appeared on the Balkan Peninsula. By the middle of this millennium, slave states had formed in the southern part of the peninsula. Each of them was a small fortress with lands adjacent to it. Each was headed, apparently, by two rulers. The rulers-kings and their entourage lived in a fortress, behind mighty, cyclopean masonry walls, and at the foot of the wall a village populated by royal servants, artisans, and merchants arose. At first, the cities fought with each other for supremacy, then, around the 15th century BC. e., the penetration of the Achaeans into neighboring countries, overseas, begins. Among their other conquests was the island of Crete - the main center of the ancient, pre-Greek culture of the southeastern region of the Mediterranean. Long before the start of the Achaean conquest, states with monarchical power and a society clearly divided into classes of free and slave existed in Crete. The Cretans were skilled sailors and merchants, excellent builders, potters, jewelers, artists, knew a lot about art, and were fluent in writing. The Achaeans had previously been strongly influenced by the high and refined Cretan culture; now, after the conquest of Crete, it finally became the common property of the Greeks and Cretans. Scientists call it Creto-Mycenaean.

The land that constantly attracted the attention of the Achaeans was Troas in the north-west of Asia Minor, famous for its favorable location and fertile soil. Campaigns were launched more than once to the main city of this land - Ilion, or Troy. One of them, a particularly long one, which brought together a particularly large number of ships and soldiers, remained in the memory of the Greeks under the name of the Trojan War. The ancients dated it to 1200 BC. e. - in terms of our chronology - and the work of archaeologists who dug the Hissarlik Hill following Schliemann confirms the ancient tradition.

The Trojan War turned out to be the eve of the collapse of the Achaean power. Soon, new Greek tribes appeared in the Balkans - the Dorians - as wild as their predecessors, the Achaeans, were a thousand years ago. They marched across the entire peninsula, displacing and subjugating the Achaeans, and completely destroyed their society and culture. History reversed: in the place of the slaveholding state, a clan community reappeared, maritime trade died out, the royal palaces that had survived destruction were overgrown with grass, arts, crafts, and writing were forgotten. The past was also forgotten; the chain of events was broken, and individual links turned into legends - into myths, as the Greeks said. Myths about heroes were for the ancients the same indisputable truth as myths about gods, and the heroes themselves became the subject of worship. Heroic legends were intertwined with each other and with myths about the gods. Circles (cycles) of myths arose, united both by the sequence of facts underlying them and by the laws of religious thinking and poetic fantasy. Myths were the soil on which the Greek heroic epic grew.

Every nation has a heroic epic. This is a story about the glorious past, about events of paramount importance that were a turning point in the history of the people. Such an event (or at least one of such events) turned out to be the great campaign against Troy; tales about him became the most important plot basis of the Greek epic. But from the time when the epic was created, these events were separated by three or even four centuries, and therefore, to the pictures of a bygone life, remembered with extraordinary accuracy, were added details and details borrowed from the life that surrounded the creators of the epic unknown to us. In the very basis of the myth, much remained untouched, but much was reinterpreted in a new way, in accordance with new ideals and views. Multi-layeredness (and therefore inevitable inconsistency) was initially a characteristic feature of the Greek epic, and since it was in constant movement, the number of layers increased. This mobility is inseparable from the very form of its existence: like all peoples, the heroic epic of the Greeks was an oral creation, and its written consolidation marked the last stage in the history of the genre.

M. Kulikov, M. Tuzhilin www.lib.ru

"The Iliad." Odyssey": Fiction; Moscow; 1967

Path to Homer

In the second act of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a traveling troupe appears, and one of the actors, at the request of the prince, reads a monologue in which the Trojan hero Aeneas talks about the capture of Troy and the cruelties of the victors. When the story comes to the suffering of the old queen Hecuba - in front of her eyes, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, mad with anger, killed her husband Priam and violated his body - the actor turns pale and bursts into tears. And Hamlet utters the famous, proverbial words:

What is he to Hecuba? What does Hecuba mean to him?

And he's crying...[Translation by B. Pasternak]

What is Hecuba to modern man, what is Achilles, Priam, Hector and other heroes of Homer to him; What does he care about their torments, joys, love and hatred, adventures and battles that died down and burned out more than thirty centuries ago? What takes him back to antiquity, why does the Trojan War and the return to the homeland of the long-suffering and cunning Odysseus touch us, if not to tears, like a Shakespearean actor, then still quite vividly and strongly?

Any literary work of the distant past is capable of attracting and captivating a person of modern times with the image of a disappeared life, which in many ways is strikingly different from our life today. Historical interest, characteristic of any person, a natural desire to find out “what happened before” is the beginning of our path to Homer, or rather, one of the paths. We ask: who was he, this Homer? And when did you live? And did he “invent” his heroes or do their images and exploits reflect true events? And how accurately (or how freely) are they reflected and to what time do they relate? We ask question after question and look for answers in articles and books about Homer; and at our service are not hundreds or thousands, but tens of thousands of books and articles, an entire library, an entire literature that continues to grow even now. Scientists are not only discovering new facts related to Homer’s poems, but also discovering new points of view on Homer’s poetry as a whole, new ways of assessing it. There was a time when every word of the Iliad and Odyssey was considered an indisputable truth - the ancient Greeks (in any case, the vast majority of them) saw in Homer not only a great poet, but also a philosopher, teacher, natural scientist, in a word - the supreme judge of the world. all occasions. There was another time when everything in the Iliad and Odyssey was considered fiction, a beautiful fairy tale, or a crude fable, or an immoral anecdote that offended “good taste.” Then the time came when Homer’s “fables,” one after another, began to be supported by archaeological finds: in 1870, the German Heinrich Schliemann found Troy, near whose walls the heroes of the Iliad fought and died; four years later, the same Schliemann excavated “rich in gold” Mycenae - the city of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army near Troy; in 1900, the Englishman Arthur Evans began excavations unique in terms of the wealth of finds on Crete, the “hundred-degree” island repeatedly mentioned by Homer; in 1939, the American Bligen and the Greek Kuroniotis found ancient Pylos - the capital of Nestor, the “sweet-voiced Vitius of Pylos”, the tireless giver of wise advice in both poems... The list of “Homeric discoveries” is extremely extensive and has not been closed to this day - and is unlikely to be closed in the near future . And yet it is necessary to name one more of them - the most important and most sensational in our century. During excavations on the island of Crete, as well as in Mycenae, Pylos and some other places in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, archaeologists found several thousand clay tablets covered with unknown writings. It took almost half a century to read them, because even the language of these inscriptions was not known. Only in 1953, thirty-year-old Englishman Michael Ventris solved the problem of deciphering the so-called Linear B script. This man, who died in a car accident three and a half years later, was neither an ancient historian nor an expert in ancient languages ​​- he was an architect. And yet, as the remarkable Soviet scientist S. Lurie wrote about Ventris, “he managed to make the largest and most striking discovery in the science of antiquity since the Renaissance.” His name should stand next to the names of Schliemann and Champollion, who unraveled the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Its discovery put into the hands of researchers authentic Greek documents from approximately the same time as the events of the Iliad and Odyssey, documents that expanded, clarified, and in some ways overturned previous ideas about the prototype of the society and state depicted in Homer.

At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Tribes of Greek-Achaeans appeared on the Balkan Peninsula. By the middle of this millennium, slave states had formed in the southern part of the peninsula. Each of them was a small fortress with lands adjacent to it. Each was headed, apparently, by two rulers. The rulers-kings and their entourage lived in a fortress, behind mighty, cyclopean masonry walls, and at the foot of the wall a village populated by royal servants, artisans, and merchants arose. At first, the cities fought with each other for supremacy, then, around the 15th century BC. e., the penetration of the Achaeans into neighboring countries, overseas, begins. Among their other conquests was the island of Crete, the main center of the ancient, pre-Greek culture of the southeastern region of the Mediterranean. Long before the start of the Achaean conquest, states with monarchical power and a society clearly divided into classes of free and slave existed in Crete. The Cretans were skilled sailors and merchants, excellent builders, potters, jewelers, artists, knew a lot about art, and were fluent in writing. The Achaeans had previously been strongly influenced by the high and refined Cretan culture; now, after the conquest of Crete, it finally became the common property of the Greeks and Cretans. Scientists call it Creto-Mycenaean.

The land that constantly attracted the attention of the Achaeans was Troas in the north-west of Asia Minor, famous for its advantageous location and fertile soil. Campaigns were launched more than once to the main city of this land - Ilion, or Troy. One of them, a particularly long one, which brought together a particularly large number of ships and soldiers, remained in the memory of the Greeks under the name of the Trojan War. The ancients dated it to 1200 BC. e. - in terms of our chronology - and the work of archaeologists who dug the Hissarlik Hill following Schliemann confirms the ancient tradition.

The Trojan War turned out to be the eve of the collapse of the Achaean power. Soon, new Greek tribes appeared in the Balkans - the Dorians - as wild as their predecessors, the Achaeans, were a thousand years ago. They marched across the entire peninsula, displacing and subjugating the Achaeans, and completely destroyed their society and culture. History reversed: in the place of the slaveholding state, a clan community reappeared, maritime trade died out, the royal palaces that had survived destruction were overgrown with grass, arts, crafts, and writing were forgotten. The past was also forgotten; the chain of events was broken, and individual links turned into legends - into myths, as the Greeks said. Myths about heroes were for the ancients the same indisputable truth as myths about gods, and the heroes themselves became the subject of worship. Heroic legends were intertwined with each other and with myths about the gods. Circles (cycles) of myths arose, united both by the sequence of facts underlying them and by the laws of religious thinking and poetic fantasy. Myths were the soil on which the Greek heroic epic grew.

Every nation has a heroic epic. This is a story about the glorious past, about events of paramount importance that were a turning point in the history of the people. Such an event (or at least one of such events) turned out to be the great campaign against Troy; tales about him became the most important plot basis of the Greek epic. But from the time when the epic was created, these events were separated by three or even four centuries, and therefore, to the pictures of a bygone life, remembered with extraordinary accuracy, were added details and details borrowed from the life that surrounded the creators of the epic unknown to us. In the very basis of the myth, much remained untouched, but much was reinterpreted in a new way, in accordance with new ideals and views. Multi-layeredness (and therefore inevitable inconsistency) was initially a characteristic feature of the Greek epic, and since it was in constant movement, the number of layers increased. This mobility is inseparable from the very form of its existence: like all peoples, the heroic epic of the Greeks was an oral creation, and its written consolidation marked the last stage in the history of the genre.

The performers of epic works and at the same time their co-creators and co-authors were singers (in Greek “aeds”). They knew by heart tens of thousands of poetic lines that had been inherited and written by God knows who and when, they owned a set of traditional means and techniques that also passed from one generation of poets to the next (this also includes various repetition formulas for describing similar or accuracy of repeating situations, and constant epithets, and a special poetic meter, and a special language of the epic, and even the very range of subjects, quite wide, but still limited). The abundance of stable, unchanging elements was a necessary condition for independent creativity: freely combining them, intertwining them with his own poems and hemistiches, he always improvised, always created anew.

Most modern scientists believe that Homer lived in the 8th century BC. e. in Ionia - on the western coast of Asia Minor or on one of the nearby islands. By that time, the Aeds had disappeared, and their place was taken by reciters-rhapsodists; they no longer sang, accompanying themselves on the lyre, but recited in a chant, and not only their own works, but also those of others. Homer was one of them. But Homer is not only an heir, he is also an innovator, not only the result, but also the beginning: in his poems lie the origins of the spiritual life of all antiquity as a whole. The Byzantine Michael Choniates (XII-XIII centuries) wrote: “Just as, according to Homer, all rivers and streams originate from the Ocean, so all verbal art has its source in Homer.”

There is an assumption that the Iliad and the Odyssey actually embody a centuries-old tradition of improvisational creativity - that they were the first examples of a written “great epic”, and from the very beginning were literature in the literal sense of the word. This does not mean, of course, that the text of the poems known to us is no different from the original one, as it was written down or “spoken” at the end of the 8th or beginning of the 7th century BC. e. It contains many later insertions (interpolations), in other cases very lengthy, up to an entire song; There are probably quite a few abbreviations and stylistic amendments that should be called distortions. But in this “distorted” form it dates back almost two and a half thousand years, in this form it was known to the ancients and accepted by them, and trying to return it to its original state is not only essentially impossible, but also pointless from a historical and cultural point of view.

The Iliad tells about one episode of the last, tenth year of the Trojan War - the wrath of Achilles, the most powerful and brave among the Greek heroes, insulted by the supreme leader of the Achaeans, the Mycenaean king Agamemnon. Achilles refuses to participate in the battles, the Trojans begin to gain the upper hand, drive the Achaeans all the way to the camp and almost set their ships on fire. Then Achilles allows his beloved friend Patroclus to enter the battle. Patroclus dies, and Achilles, having finally renounced his anger, avenges the death of his friend by defeating Hector, the main character and defender of the Trojans, the son of their king Priam. Everything important in the plot of the poem comes from myths, from the Trojan cycle. The Odyssey, which tells about the return of another Greek hero, the king of the island of Ithaca Odysseus, to his homeland after the fall of Troy is also connected with the same cycle. But the main thing here is not a myth: both main plot components of the Odyssey - the return of a husband to his wife after a long absence and amazing adventures in distant, overseas lands - go back to a fairy tale and a folk story. The difference between both poems is not limited to this; it is noticeable in the composition, and in the details of the narrative, and in the details of the worldview. The ancients themselves were not sure whether both poems belonged to the same author, and there are many supporters of this view in modern times. And yet, the opposite opinion seems more probable - although, strictly speaking, exactly the same provable - the opposite opinion seems: there are still more similarities between the Iliad and the Odyssey than the different.

Dissimilarities and direct contradictions are found not only between the poems, but also within each of them. They are explained primarily by the above-mentioned multi-layered nature of the Greek epic: after all, in the world that Homer draws, the features and signs of several eras are combined and juxtaposed - Mycenaean, pre-Homeric (Dorian), Homeric in the proper sense of the word. And next to the Dorian rite of burning corpses there is a Mycenaean burial in the ground, next to Mycenaean bronze weapons - Dorian iron, unknown to the Achaeans, next to the Mycenaean autocrats - powerless Dorian kings, kings only in name, but in fact tribal elders... In the last century, these contradictions led science to question the very existence of Homer. The idea was expressed that Homer's poems arose spontaneously, that is, by themselves, that they were the result of collective creativity - like a folk song. Less decisive critics admitted that Homer did exist, but assigned him the relatively modest role of an editor, or, more precisely, a compiler who skillfully brought together small poems that belonged to different authors, or perhaps folk ones. Still others, on the contrary, recognized Homer's copyright for most of the text, but attributed the artistic integrity and perfection of the Iliad and Odyssey to some editor of a later era.

Scientists tirelessly uncovered new contradictions (often they were the fruit of a scientist’s imagination or a scientist’s pickiness) and were ready to pay any price just to get rid of them. The price, however, turned out to be too high: not only Homer, but also the merits of his “imaginary” creations, torn to shreds by the merciless pens of analysts (this is what the subverters of the “single Homer” are called), turned into an invention, a fiction. This was patently absurd, and during the last fifty years the opposite view, the Unitarian one, has prevailed. For Unitarians, the artistic unity of the Homeric heritage is undeniable, felt directly by any unbiased reader. Their goal is to reinforce this feeling with the help of a special “analysis from the inside,” an analysis of the rules and laws that, as far as one can judge, the poet himself set for himself, the techniques that make up Homer’s poetry, the worldview that underlies it. So, let's look at Homer through the eyes of an unbiased reader.

First of all, we will be puzzled and attracted by the similarity, the proximity of the ancient to the modern. Homer immediately captivates and immediately from the subject of study becomes a part of our “I”, as any beloved poet becomes, dead or alive - it makes no difference, because the main thing for us will be an emotional response, an aesthetic experience.

Reading Homer, you become convinced that much in his view of the world is not only an eternal and enduring truth, but also a direct challenge to all subsequent centuries. The most important thing that distinguishes this view is its breadth, the desire to understand different points of view, tolerance, as they would say today. The author of the heroic epic of the Greeks does not hate the Trojans, the undisputed culprits of the unjust war (after all, it was their prince Paris who offended people and insulted the divine law by kidnapping Helen, the wife of his host, the Spartan king Menelaus); let's say more - he respects them, he sympathizes with them, because they have no choice but to fight, defending their city, wives, children and their own lives, and because they fight courageously, although the Achaeans are stronger and more numerous. They are doomed; True, they themselves do not yet know this, but Homer knows the outcome of the war and, a magnanimous winner, has compassion for the future vanquished. And if, in the words of the poet himself, “Holy Troy” is hated by the gods “for the guilt of Priamid Paris,” then Homer is higher and nobler than the Olympian gods.

The breadth of vision is inspired by kindness and humanity. It is hardly accidental that European literature opens with a call for kindness and a condemnation of cruelty. Justice, which people are obliged to observe and gods to protect, is in mutual love, meekness, friendliness, complacency; lawlessness is in ferocity, in heartlessness. Even Achilles, his exemplary hero, is not forgiven by Homer for the “lion’s ferocity,” and to this day this is not a common curse on a common vice, but a living experience for which people throughout their history have paid so much and every time again. Homer’s humanity is so great that it prevails even over the inherent signs of the genre: usually a heroic epic is a song of war, as a test that reveals the best powers of the soul, and Homer actually glorifies war, but he also curses its disasters, its ugliness, shameless an outrage against human dignity. The first, apparently, comes from the primitive morality of the barbarian Dorians, the second - from the new morality of law and peace. She had to subjugate the universe, and to this day it cannot yet be said that this task has been solved. This is where Homer meets Shakespeare, and we meet both, this is what Hecuba is to us! We perfectly understand the horror of old Priam, who mourns in advance his ugly and inglorious death:

Oh, nice young man.

No matter how he lies, fallen in battle and torn to pieces by copper,

Everything about him and the dead man, no matter what is revealed, is beautiful!

If the gray hair and the gray head of a man,

If dogs defile the shame of a murdered old man,

There is no more woeful fate for unhappy people!

And no less, no less understandable to us is Shakespeare’s furious protest against the fate that allowed this to happen:

Shame on you, Fortune! Give her a resignation

Oh gods, take off the wheel.

Break the rim, break the spokes

And roll its axle down from the clouds

To absolute hell![Translation by B. Pasternak]

The humiliation of a person by injustice and violence is shame and torment for each person; Villainy poses its brazen challenge to the entire world order, and, therefore, to each of us, and, therefore, everyone is responsible for villainy. Homer had a presentiment of this, Shakespeare clearly understood it.

But tolerance never once turns into tolerance for evil, timidity before it, or an attempt to justify it. The firmness of the ethical position, the serious and strict unambiguous attitude towards life, so characteristic of Homer (and of the ancient tradition as a whole), has a special attractive force in our eyes. “The inviolability of the rock of values”, from Homer to the present day - the ineradicability of goodness and honesty in the face of malice and betrayal, the eternity of craving for the beautiful despite the temptations of the ugly, the "eternity" of maxims and commandments that to other simpletons seem to have been born only yesterday or even today - carries joy and encouragement within. And there is no need to suspect that such unambiguous assessments are a consequence of primitive, primitive complacency, which does not understand what doubt is; no, hidden beneath it is the organic self-confidence of a healthy intellect, a healthy feeling, confidence in one’s right (and in one’s responsibility!) to decide and judge.

For a healthy feeling and a healthy intellect, life is a great gift and the most precious asset, despite all its disasters, torments and grave vicissitudes, despite the fact that Zeus pronounces from the heights of heaven:

…Of the creatures that breathe and crawl in the dust,

Truly in the whole universe there is no more unhappy person!

But an immortal cannot understand mortals, and the poet is not only nobler, but also wiser than his gods. He accepts reality calmly and sensibly, he catches in it the rhythm of alternating joys and sorrows and sees in such alternation the immutable law of existence, and decisively says “yes” to being and “no” to non-existence.

Decisively, but not unconditionally, because he looks into the face of death with the same fearlessness and calmness as in the face of life. The inevitability of death cannot and should not poison the joy of earthly existence, and its threat can push one to dishonor. One of the best and most famous passages in the Iliad are the words of the Trojan hero Sarpedon addressed to a friend before the battle:

Noble friend! when now, having given up the abuse,

We were with you forever ageless and immortal,

I myself would not fly in front of the army to fight,

I wouldn’t drag you into the dangers of a glorious battle.

But now, as always, countless deaths

We are surrounded, and a mortal cannot escape them, cannot escape them.

Forward together! either for the glory of someone, or for the glory themselves!

Homer's worldview is the highest calm and enlightenment of the spirit, which experienced both frantic delight and frantic despair and rose above both - above the naivety of optimism and the embitterment of pessimism.

The words of Sarpedon, calling a friend into battle, encourage the reader to think about how free a person is in Homer - whether he has freedom of choice, free will, or is bound hand and foot by “higher powers.” The question is extremely complex, and the answers are contradictory, because the ideas about the gods and Fate, combined in the Greek epic, are contradictory. Quite often, people really complain that they are nothing more than toys in the hands of the gods, and blame the evil celestials for all their troubles and mistakes, but if this is so, why are the gods indignant at the lies perpetrated by people? Then this is their divine untruth, and Homeric morality loses its foundation. No matter how you interpret these complaints (and they can also be explained psychologically, for example, by an attempt to justify oneself, to shift one’s own guilt onto the shoulders of others), it is very difficult to smooth out the contradiction. Yes, this is of no use. Moreover, we will come across enough places where a person makes a decision consciously, sensibly weighing all the pros and cons, without any help (or insidious hint) from above, and therefore must bear responsibility for his action. Similar to man in everything, the gods of Homer here also act in purely human roles: they give advice - just like the wise old man Nestor, they participate in battles - just like mortal heroes, sometimes even with less luck than mortals, they do not disdain intervention and in the little things of earthly life. They are able to help or harm a person, but they cannot decide his fate - not one of them, not even Zeus.

The fate of man is predetermined by Fate, the highest power in the world, to which the gods themselves are subject. They are the servants of Fate, the executors of its decisions; to bring closer or further what Fate has appointed - that’s all they are capable of. Their main advantage over people is knowledge, wisdom, foresight of the future (just as the main reason for human unrighteousness and sin is ignorance, spiritual blindness, stupidity), and they willingly take advantage of this advantage in order to inform a mortal in advance what is “predestined for him by fate” . And this is very important, because within the framework of what is destined, within the framework of necessity, there is almost always a place for freedom. Fate offers a dilemma: if you do this, you will survive; if you act differently, you will die (which means “despite fate, descend into the abode of Hades”). A choice is an act of free will, but once it is made, nothing can be changed about its consequences. Hermes inspired Aegisthus not to attempt the life of Agamemnon when the king returned from his campaign against Troy, and not to marry his wife. Aegisthus remained deaf to the instructions of the god and, as Hermes warned him, suffered punishment at the hands of the son of the murdered man.

Reading Homer, you are convinced that there are cases when banal, captured cliches, which have long lost their meaning and expressiveness, suddenly come to life. He is truly a “genius of poetry” and truly an “artist of words.” He draws and sculpts with words; what he creates is visible and tangible. He has a sharpness of eye that is unique even among his fellow geniuses, and therefore the world of his vision - the most ordinary objects in this world - is sharper, more distinct, more meaningful than what is revealed to any other gaze. I would like, following Marx, to call this quality childlikeness, because only in the early years, only a child is capable of such vigilance. But Homer’s childishness is also the bright sunshine that permeates the poems, and admiration for life, in all its guise (hence the general elation of tone, epic grandeur), and an inexhaustible curiosity for details (hence the countless, but never tiring details). Childhood is manifested, finally, in the way the artist treats his material.

The writer of modern times, as a rule, struggles with the material, he organizes the word and the reality behind it are precisely the process of organization, the transformation of chaos into space, disorder into order. The closer to the present day, the more noticeable the struggle, the less the artist tries to hide it from prying eyes, and often demonstratively exposes the resistance of the material to public view. The ancient writer did not know this resistance; in Homer, the subject is not yet opposed to the object (society or even nature): so a child does not realize the opposition of “I” and “not-I” for a long time. The organic feeling of unity weakened over the centuries, but until the very end of the ancient tradition it did not completely disappear, and this gives every ancient book, and above all Homeric poems, a special integrity that cannot be confused with anything and which attracts us and pleases us - in contrast. The same feeling is perhaps captured in the plastic and vase paintings contemporary to Homer, usually called archaic. Looking at the “kouros” (full-length statues of young men), at their restrained, constrained power and blissful smile, looking at the vases and clay figurines, each of which can rightfully be called a masterpiece, you think about with what freedom and carefreeness, with what wise oblivion everyday hardships and anxieties, with what childlike trust in the future and confidence in it the ancient artist perceived the world. That’s why the lips smile, that’s why the eyes are so wide open - with curiosity about everything in the world, with dignity and calmness, which are miraculously combined with expression, the bold expressiveness of movements in lines of people and animals.

It's the same with Homer. “Static” sketches alternate with “dynamic” ones, and it is difficult to say which the poet does better. Let's compare:

The robe was woolen, purple, double

He is clothed; golden beautiful with double hooks

The mantle was held on by a plaque; master on the plaque skillfully

A formidable dog and in his mighty claws a young

The doe sculptured...

…in amazement that plaque

She brought everyone. I noticed he wore a chiton from a wonderful

Tissues, like film, taken from a dried onion head,

Thin and light, like the bright sun; all the women seeing

They were incredibly amazed at this wonderful fabric.

This huge Telamonides came out, the stronghold of the Danaev,

Grinning with a menacing face and sonorous strong feet

He walked, speaking widely, shaking his long spear.

What to give preference to, let everyone decide for themselves, but in any case, let us remember that reproaching the Homeric epic for primitive rigidity, for the inability to depict movement is unfair and absurd.

Visibility, clarity, as the main quality of Homer’s poetry, allows us to explain much in the Iliad and Odyssey. The consistent personification of everything abstract (Resentment, Hostility, Prayers) becomes clear: what cannot be grasped with the gaze simply does not exist for Homer. The complete concreteness – but simply human-likeness, but precisely the concreteness, the thingness – of the images of the celestial beings is understandable. Concreteness inevitably reduces the image, and only here, in a heightened sense of reality, and not in primitive free-thinking, must we look for the reason for what seems to our perception a mockery of the gods: the gods of Homer are hot-tempered, vain, vindictive, arrogant, simple-minded, not alien to them and physical defects. Homeric mythology is the first that we know of from the Greeks; what is in it from generally accepted religious beliefs, what was added by the poet’s fiction, no one knows, and one can with high probability assume that later, classical ideas about Olympus and its inhabitants were in many ways directly borrowed from the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and their origin owe to the artistic gift of the author of the poems.

Specificity in general somewhat reduces the elation of tone and epic grandeur. One of the means that created this elation was the special language of the epic - initially non-spoken, composed of elements of various Greek dialects. At all times, it sounded distant and lofty to the Greeks themselves, and already in the classical era (5th century BC) it seemed archaic. The Russian translation of the Iliad, completed by N. I. Gnedich about one and a half hundred years ago, reproduces as accurately as possible the alienation of the epic language, its elevation above everything ordinary, its antiquity.

Reading Homer, you are convinced: not only the appearance of the world, its face - when smiling, when gloomy, when menacing - he knew how to depict, but also the human soul, all its movements, from the simplest to the most complex, were known to the poet. There are real psychological discoveries in the poems, which even now, at the first meeting - the first reading - amaze and are remembered for a lifetime. Here is the decrepit Priam, secretly appearing to Achilles in the hope of receiving the body of his murdered son for burial,

unnoticed by anyone, enters peace and, Pelidu

Falling at your feet, he hugs your knees and kisses your hands, -

Terrible hands that killed many of his children!

The poet himself undoubtedly knew the value of these lines: it is not for nothing that he repeats them a little lower, putting them in the mouth of Priam himself and adding a direct “psychological commentary”:

Brave! you're almost gods! take pity on my misfortune,

Remembering Peleus’s father: I am incomparably more pitiful than Peleus!

I experience what no mortal has experienced on earth:

I press my hands to my mouth, my husband, the murderer of my children!

Or another example - another discovery: grief both unites and at the same time separates people. The slaves weep together, mourning the murdered Patroclus, but in their souls each lament over their own grief, and the enemies, Achilles and Priam, also cry, sitting next to each other:

He took the elder’s hand and quietly moved him away from him.

Both of them remembering: Priam - the famous son,

Wept sorrowfully, prostrate in the dust at Achilles' feet,

King Achilles, now remembering his father, now his friend Patroclus,

They cried, and their sorrowful groans were heard throughout the house.

Or again - every very strong feeling is two-faced, sorrowful enlightenment is hidden at the bottom of inconsolable crying, sweetness lurks behind frantic anger:

Hateful anger, which drives even the wise into fury,

In its inception it is sweeter than quietly flowing honey.

Psychologism, combined with the artist’s gift - the constant desire not to tell, but to show - gives the epic the qualities of drama: characters are revealed not from the outside, but directly, in the speeches of the heroes. Speeches and remarks take up approximately three-fifths of the text. In each of the poems there are about seventy-five speaking characters, and all of these are living persons, they cannot be confused with each other. The ancients called Homer the first tragic poet, and Aeschylus argued that his, Aeschylus’s, tragedies were just crumbs from Homer’s sumptuous table. Indeed, many famous, psychologically perfect episodes of the Iliad and Odyssey are scenes that seem to have been specially written for the theater. These include Hector’s meeting with Andromache in the VI canto of the Iliad, the appearance of Odysseus before the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa and the “recognition” of him by his old nanny Eurycleia in the VI and XIX cantos of the Odyssey.

Reading Homer, you are convinced that both poems (especially the Iliad) are a miracle of composition, and you marvel at the insane courage of the analysts who claimed that these masterly constructions took shape by themselves, spontaneously. It is difficult to doubt that the arrangement of the material was strictly and carefully thought out - that is why all the themes once begun are so completely exhausted, and the action is so tightly concentrated. It took only eleven verses for the author of the Iliad to introduce the listener (or reader) to the essence of the matter, to the very thick of events; in eleven lines of the exposition, the main theme of the entire work is revealed - the anger of Achilles, and the reason for anger, and the circumstances preceding the quarrel between the leaders, and even the divine background of the events (“Zeus’s will was accomplished”). Immediately after that, the action begins, which lasts until the main theme completely dries up. Neither the murder of Hector, nor the desecration of his body, nor the magnificent funeral of Patroclus, nor the funeral games in honor of a friend bring peace to Achilles. Only after the meeting with Priam does a turning point occur: the soul, darkened by rage and despair, seems to brighten, washed by the tears that the murderer and the father of the murdered woman shed together. And then the same enlightened completion of the second theme - Hector’s theme, which is inseparable from the main one, was born by it and complements it. There is no epilogue in the Iliad, and right up to the last, concluding line: “So they buried the body of the horse-bred Hector,” the denouement lasts, in all its spirit reminiscent of the denouement of the tragedy. The pace of the story is also reminiscent of tragedy, uneven, impetuous, replete with sharp, unexpected turns - in tragedy they are called vicissitudes. The main peripeteia decides the fate of the hero and decisively directs the action towards the climax and denouement. In the Iliad, the main twist is the death of Patroclus, and the climax is the death of Hector.

Both the episodes and images of the Iliad are united around the main theme and the main character, forming a closely connected system. All the events of the poem fit into nine days (however, if you count the “empty intervals” between clusters of action, the total number of days is fifty-one). “Odyssey” is built somewhat differently, more loosely. Here there is no such concentration of action, such a close interweaving of its various lines (although there are also nine “effective” days). The images are also more independent of each other: there are no such psychologically complementary or opposing pairs as Achilles - Hector, or Achilles - Diomedes, or Achilles - Patroclus; the connections between the characters are mainly external, plot-based. But we must remember that the poet was faced with the most difficult task - to set out the ten-year prehistory of the return to Ithaca, to talk about the ten-year wanderings of the hero. It turns out that the great dispersion of the action was determined by the plot itself.

Studying the construction of poems, scientists discovered a special compositional style in Homer, which they called “geometric”. Its basis is a keen sense of proportion and symmetry, and the result is a consistent division of the text into triptychs (triple division). Thus, the first five songs of the Odyssey form a structure of two triptychs. First: the council of the gods and their intention to return Odysseus to his homeland (I, 1 –I, 100 ) – Telemachus and the suitors in Ithaca (I, 101 – II) – Telemachus visits Nestor in Pylos (III). Second: Telemachus visits Menelaus in Sparta (IV, 1 – IV, 624 ) – suitors in Ithaca (IV, 625 – IV, 847 ) – the council of the gods and the beginning of Odysseus’s journey to his homeland (V). The second triptych seems to mirror the first, resulting in a symmetrical arrangement of elements on both sides of the central axis. Of course, this is not the result of calculation, but of an innate gift: the author, most likely, did not even suspect his own geometricism. Geometricism is revealed directly to us, the readers. We talk about it vaguely and vaguely, calling it general harmony, grace, proportionality. But be that as it may, we enjoy this uncontrived, undeliberate proportionality, perhaps as opposed to the deliberate asymmetry that has become the aesthetic norm in modern times.

With all this, one cannot insist that the composition of the poems - and not only the composition - is completely free from flaws, from the point of view of the modern reader. Remnants of the primitive creative method of ancient singers are found both in tedious lengths and in plot repetitions that sharply reduce the entertainment value (for example, at the beginning of the XII song of the Odyssey, the sorceress Circe talks in advance and in some detail about the adventures that will be the content of this same song), and in the so-called law of chronological incompatibility: Homer cannot depict simultaneous and parallel actions, and therefore depicts them as multi-temporal, following one after another. By the grace of this law, Homeric battles look like chains of fights - each pair of fighters patiently waits for their turn, and within the pair the order is strictly observed - opponents never strike at once.

The notorious “epic (or even Homeric) calmness” could also be added to the list of flaws, because pure, unalloyed objectivity, complete disinterest are dead and do not belong to art. But although "Homeric calm" is often considered a necessary characteristic of the epic style, it is a fictitious characteristic. Homer by no means avoids judging what is happening. Having arranged the scenery and released the actors onto the stage, he no longer interferes with the play, but also does not hide behind the scenes all the time, but every now and then comes out to the audience and talks to them, commenting on what is happening; sometimes he turns to the Muse and to the characters. Scientists have calculated that such “direct statements” make up about 1/5 of the entire text. The most remarkable part of them is, undoubtedly, the author's (or epic) comparisons. In an ordinary comparison, no matter how figurative it may be, each word is directed towards the most complete possible image of what is being compared. If Odysseus pretends to complain:

…But everything was over;

I'm just straw now, straw by straw, however, and the former

You can easily recognize the ear, -

here everything “goes into action”: now I’m like threshed straw, but just as it’s easy to guess from the straw what kind of ear it was carrying, so you, looking at me, will guess what kind of person I was before. But when it is said about junior commanders building an army for battle:

…Just like wolves

Beasts of prey, with boundless audacity in their hearts,

Koi horned eel, plunging into the wilds of the mountain,

They are brutally tormented; all their mouths are stained with blood;

Afterwards, the whole flock prowls towards the black spring;

There, with their flexible tongues, the muddy water of the stream

They lock, belching the blood they have absorbed; in their breasts it beats

Indomitable heart, and all their wombs are swollen, -

In battle these are the Myrmidonian leaders and army builders

They flew around Patroclus, -

then the comparison itself is given three lines out of ten: the leaders of the Myrmidons surrounding Patroclus looked like wolves. The remaining seven are a special picture, not actually connected in any way with the surrounding text. It was once believed that the author's comparisons only decorate the epic, but do not carry any functional load. Now they think differently: author’s comparisons are a way out of conventional, poetic reality into the world that truly surrounded the singer and his listeners; the feelings of the listeners, changing their direction, seemed to receive rest, so that they could then turn with new tension to the destinies of the heroes. If the author's comparisons were meant to serve as an emotional contrast to the main narrative, it is clear that the themes for comparisons were borrowed mainly from peaceful life. In the Iliad, more spiritual, monumental and gloomy, comparisons are also monumental; in the Odyssey they are shorter and simpler, and everyday motifs predominate, probably in contrast to the wonders of the fairy tale. We have seen how Homeric epic comes into contact with drama. In the author's comparisons, it becomes real lyricism. Reading Homer, you rejoice at meeting each new comparison, stop and slowly say it out loud - once, twice, three times, enjoying its charm, freshness, courage and at the same time complete naturalness, unpretentiousness.

As if in the sky about a month of clear host

The stars seem beautiful if the air is calm;

Everything opens up all around - hills, high mountains,

Down, the heavenly ether opens up, all boundless;

All the stars are visible; and the shepherd, marveling, rejoices in his soul, -

So many between the black ships and the deep abyss of Xanth

I could see the lights of the Trojans.

This is how the plowman thinks about the sweet evening all day long.

A fresh field with a couple of oxen furrowed by the mighty

With a plow, and he cheerfully sees off the day with his gaze to the west -

He trudges home with heavy feet to prepare his dinner.

So Odysseus rejoiced when he saw the day descending to the west.

SIMON MARKISH