The iliad and the Odyssey are the two most famous Greek stories ever told. But we do not know a lot about the person, or people, who wrote the story. One author believes that the credited author of the books, Homer, is not a person. He thinks Homer is a tradition. He thinks that the entire culture is coming up with the books, not one person. This author thinks that these stories are from 2000 BC. Homer could not have written them if they are actually from this time period because this is 1000 years older than people say Homer is. Another thing that this author believes about Homer is that he does not love violence in the end. In the end of the Iliad when Achilles kills Hector, they parade Hector’s body around for the whole city to see. The author thinks that this is a brutal moment, not an elegant funeral process. Homer’s stories were told orally. None of the were written down. There was a complete transcript of the Iliad found in Venice. It was discovered at the end of the 18th century. This was thousands of years after the poems had first been told. This means that storytellers over time modified the stories. These stories were not the original ones, just the interpreted ones. We do not have the original story of Homer’s. Before someone wrote down his stories they were passed from generation to generation. This changes the story. For example think of the telephone game we did in class. Mrs Anders told us one thing at the beginning and it was interpreted from person to person. At the end it was not what she told us in the beginning. This is just proof of how interpreting things and not writing them down, the story will get changed. The storyteller will modify it to fit his or her needs. They also might make it more interesting to grab the audience’s attention. So we do not know the real stories of Ancient Greece, just the ones that we have today.
Connections to today.
Homer shaped the life we live today. He is considered the Shakespeare of the ancient world. Homer was writing (saying orally) the ways that the first “scientific” civilization was developing. Homer also taught us moral lessons. For example he taught us the obligation of men to their leaders, of women to their men, and of children to their parents. These are things that we know today. We have to know how to treat our bosses. If we do not treat our bosses with respect that could result in us getting fired. Women have to know how to treat men and men have to know how to treat women. For a relationship to work you both have to treat each other right. For example the women should not always have to cook, clean, do laundry, and stay home with the kids. The men should take some of the work also. Parents and their children have to have a good relationship. For some people, I know not all children live with their parents, but the ones that do need to have good relationships. Children- you have to obey your parents and do not disrespect them. Parents- listen to your children, hear them out. Also during the greek time period, they had many gods, the god of water, the god of the underworld, the god of sky, and many more. Now today we have many religions, but they are believing in a god. This god may not be the same ones as the Greek, but we worshiping him just like they worshiped their gods. Homer also has moral tales on how we should act in our world. Another way that the Homer shaped our lives is war. In one of Homer’s tales, there is the Trojan war. This war is between the Greek and the Spartans. People do a lot of fighting in this war. Finally Achilles kills Hector and that ends the war. After that they paraded his body around for the town to see. Today in our world, we have wars. Many people die. We fight until someone surrenders or until the job gets done. For example in the Civil War, people surrendered and that ended the war. In World War II, that was ended by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. One tradition that we got from Homer I think is the tradition of funerals. They have a wake, which is for whoever wants to come and look at the body can. They say goodbye to the person. This is just like what they did to Hector after the Trojan War. After the wake, they go and bury the body.