Ancient World Review

The Cyclopes

Clip from the 1958 classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with widescreen stop-motion animation by the legendary Ray Harryhausen.

Notes: The giant one-eyed Cyclopes are well-known from The Odyssey. "In Homer they are savage and pastoral, and live in a distant country without government or laws," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "... But in Hesiod, the Cyclopes ... are divine craftsmen who make Zeus his thunderbolt in gratitude for their release from imprisonment by their father Uranus (Heaven; their mother is Earth). They often appear ...  as Hephaestus' workmen, and often again are credited with making ancient fortifications ..."

The Cyclopes were worshiped in parts of the ancient Greek world, but this was apparently limited. According to the OCD, "their only known cult is on the Isthmus of Corinth, where they received sacrifices at their altar."

The clip above is from the best dramatization of the Odyssey I've seen so far -- the 1997 British-American miniseries starring Armand Asante. If you haven't seen this, you should check it out.

The cyclopes in Hesiod who forged Zeus's thunderbolt are apparently known as the Elder Cyclops or Kyklopes, according to Theoi Greek Mythology.  "The tribe of younger Kyklopes which Odysseus encountered on his travels were a different breed altogether, probably born from the blood of the castrated sky-god Ouranos [Uranus]."

In one version of the myth I've read, the Elder Cyclopes were so frightening that their father locked them away in Tartarus, "the deepest region of the underworld, lower even than Hades," according to the OCD. In another version, they were imprisoned by Cronus, "the youngest of the Titans, sons of Uranus and Gaia ..." (OCD).

According to Wikipedia, "when Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard. Zeus killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans."

I've always felt kind of sorry for Polyphemus, the cyclops in The Odyssey. The description of his blinding is absolutely incredible, though. The following excerpt is from the Fagles translation, Book 9: In The One-Eyed Giant's Cave. Click on the embedded player below. It's a lousy reading, but what do you expect? I'm no Wayne June.

Cyclops Blinding The Odyssey

The Palace Of Nestor

Note: "[The mythological] Nestor ... was king of Pylos and went with Menelaus around Greece to assemble the heroes ready for the expedition against Troy, then himself accompanied them with 90 ships," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed revised). "Homer portrays him as a highly respected elder statesman, the archetypal wise old man, but one still strong and valiant in battle."

According to Ancient Greek Journey, "there was for a long time debate as to whether [Nestor's] palace was in Elis, near Olympia, as  Homer describes in the Iliad  or by the shore, as described in the Odyssey, but in 1939 Carl Blegen found the remains of a Mycenaean palace 10 miles north of modern Pylos at Epano Englianos, and this is now believed to be Nestor's.  Excavations were stopped during the war and restarted in 1952 continuing until 1966. About one thousand Linear B tablets found here were an important factor in the deciphering of the script by Michael Ventris in 1952, and thus making the connection between the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations."

The Mystery Of Homer

Note: "The Greeks and Romans always thought that the legendary poet Homer was the greatest author ever. However, we know hardly anything about the man or men who composed the Iliad ... or the Odyssey. At the moment, most scholars agree that these texts were dictated to a writer by a very capable bard, who used older, oral traditions, at the beginning of the eighth century BCE. We do not know to what extent later poets have made additions or changes to the two epics." Source: Livius.

Comment: Homer's a mystery. No one knows who he was, where he came from, when he lived, where he lived, or whether he actually composed the Iliad and Odyssey, the foundation works of western literature. At one point, scholars doubted that he even existed, but the consensus today is that he was a real historical figure who lived in the 8th century BC. As far as I can tell, this consensus is based on just one source--the histories of Herodotus, who wrote that Homer lived around 400 years before his time.

There are other sources which place Homer as far back as the 12th century BC, closer to the time the Trojan War is thought to have taken place. It's all very murky, though.  The vague image we have of Homer is based on ancient writers who may or may not be reliable and who contradict each other in various ways. The only point of agreement is that Homer was a blind bard who lived on an island in the Mediterranean:

"According to a hymn written in honour of the god Apollo, [Homer] was a blind man from the island of Chios, in the eastern Mediterranean. Chios was home to a guild of poets, or rhapsodists, called the Homeridai, and seems to be one of the most likely candidates. However, many other Greek cities have also claimed to have been his home..." Source: PBS.

The image of Homer as a stern, bearded man with longish hair (as shown in the video) could be accurate, I suppose, but I have no idea how old these various busts are and his appearance could just be a convention, much like the popular images we have of Jesus and Socrates. Responding to the lack of information available in the ancient sources, scholars have tried to analyze the Iliad and Odyssey for clues about Homer's life, but this had led to more complications and controversy.

Some modern scholars have questioned the idea that the poems were written by the same author. Most argue that they weren't originally written down at all -- something Homer couldn't have done himself if he was blind -- but were the result of a long tradition of oral poets reciting by memory and improvising scenes as they went along. In other words, the poems were a group effort until Homer (or someone) finally put them into writing. As the Livius article quoted above points out, if Homer was responsible, he would have had to dictate the poems from memory to someone who knew how to write. This scenario seems to be the standard view among scholars right now.

Another view is that the Iliad was written by one man, the Odyssey by another. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "most scholars [now] see each [of the poems] as the work of one author. Whether he was the same for both remains uncertain. They have a great deal of common phraseology, but the Odyssey is less archaic in language and more repetitive in content; it views the gods rather differently, and for a few common things it uses different words. Such changes might occur in the lifetime of one person. As nothing reliable is known about Homer, perhaps the question is not important." [Emphasis added]

I wish we knew more about Homer, but at the same time I like the fact that he's still a mystery. Now that the physical wilderness has almost disappeared except for a few unexplored regions at the bottom of the sea, the distant past is one of the few things left that remains unknown and mysterious. The ancient world, in many respects, is still terra incognita and I hope it remains that way. If we knew everything there is to know, we'd find ourselves living in a cognitive prison and life would lose a lot of its fascination.

Personally, I like to think that Homer lived in the 12th century BC, that he wrote both poems himself and that he composed the Iliad when he was younger and the Odyssey when he was older and more experienced. I don't have any evidence to support that, but it doesn't matter. When it comes to Homer, I'm a hopeless Romantic. Even if he was blind and illiterate in real life, I like to picture him back in the 12th century, hunched over a table in a small house on a Greek island somewhere, writing his epics on papyrus scrolls with a reed pen by the light of a torch or a brazier in the middle of the night.

Archaeologist Claims To Have Found 'Agamemnon's Throne'

"A Greek archaeologist believes he has found a fragment of the lost throne of the rulers of Mycenae, famous from ancient myth and the story of the Trojan War." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Imaging The Iliad: A Digital Renaissance

Notes: "The manuscript Marcianus Graecus Z. 454 [= 822], known to Homeric scholars as the Venetus A, is the oldest complete text of the Iliad in existence. It was acquired by the Greek Cardinal Basileus Bessarion in the 15th century CE and donated together with his entire collection of Greek manuscripts to the Republic of Venice, thereby forming the Marciana library’s initial collection. It is vellum, and was constructed at the end of the 10th century CE." Source: The Homer Multitext.

According to History of Information, the Venetus A manuscript "is regarded by some as the best text of the epic poem. It also contains several layers of annotations, glosses, and commentaries known as the 'A scholia.'  These are thought to preserve editorial comments made by scholars at the Royal Library of Alexandria, as well as scholia accumulated by late antique annotators and philologists until the manuscript was written at Constantinople during the Macedonian Renaissance. The manuscript, also includes a summary of the early Greek Epic Cycle which is considered the most important source of information on those lost poems."

Image of Folio 12r of Ventus A from History of Information.

Related: Images of Homeric Manuscripts from the Biblioteca Marciana (PDF)

Grading 4 Rival Translations Of The Iliad

"A good way of getting a sense of the values and priorities of the Iliad’s many translators is to compare how they translate a given passage." Source: The New Yorker (2011)

Comment: I read the Fagles translations of Homer and thought they were fantastic. The first sighting of the cyclop's island in the Odyssey is particularly vivid and the final scene where Odysseus takes revenge on the suitors who have been hounding his wife and plundering his kingdom is more than a little vicious and chilling. I haven't read Lattimore or Mitchell and the one time I looked at Pope's classic translation, it was way too dated to get into, but that's just me. At the moment, I'm reading Lombardo's translation of the Iliad and I really like his straightforward, colloquial style. The introduction by Sheila Murnaghan is a nice piece of work as well.

The clip below is from the 1997 TV adaptation of The Odyssey staring Armand Assante, the best film version of the story I've seen so far. Highly recommended.

New Date For Eclipse In Homer's Odyssey

"Scientists from the University of Athens have attempted once more to date Homer's Odyssey based on the study of astronomical phenomena described in the ancient Greek literary masterpiece." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Note: According to this study, "Odysseus arrived in Ithaca on October 25, 1207 BC. Five days later a 75% solar eclipse was recorded over the Ionian Sea. This is when Odysseus killed the suitors (1)," according to a professor of astrophysics involved in the research. This conclusion was based on a process of elimination using NASA data regarding eclipses that would have been visible from the Ionian area around the time the Odyssey is thought to have been written (1300-1130 BC). 

A 2008 study, reported here when it first came out, found that the eclipse occurred on April 16, 1178 BC. This is the date used in the video above, which raises the interesting question of whether the mention of the eclipse and other astronomical events used in the Odyssey proves that at least some of the events described in the book actually occurred. 

(1) The slaughter of the suitors is probably the bloodiest scene I've ever read in ancient literature, or anywhere for that matter. Highly recommended. The clip below from the great 1997 miniseries The Odyssey doesn't even begin to do it justice.

Why Homer Matters

"The Iliad and The Odyssey are two of the key works of Western civilization. But almost nothing is known about their author and the date and manner of their creation. In Why Homer Matters, historian and award-winning author Adam Nicolson suggests that Homer be thought of not as a person but as a tradition and that the works attributed to him go back a thousand years earlier than generally believed." Source: National Geographic.

Comment: This looks like a great book. As for Nicholson's argument that the works of Homer are the result of a long cultural tradition rather than the work of one writer, he could very well be right, but I'm a hopeless Romantic and I still like to think that the Iliad and Odyssey were written by one man; never mind that Homer was supposed to have been blind.

Related:

The Mystery Of Homer
Solar Eclipse Used To Date Fall Of Troy

A Brief Homer Biography

"Homer is a mystery. The Greek epic poet credited with the enduring epic tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey is an enigma insofar as actual facts of his life go. Some scholars believe him to be one man; others think these iconic stories were created by a group. A variation on the group idea stems from the fact that storytelling was an oral tradition and Homer compiled the stories, then recited them to memory." Source: Biography.com.

Engineering An Empire - Mycenae