Homer (750 – 700 BCE)
Associated with the two earliest surviving Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, along with
a number of shorter hymns and several lost epics of later date. The ancients believed
Homer (Home ̄ros) to be a blind poet from Khios or another eastern Greek city. Modern
scholarship largely accepts the view of Parry and his school that the poems were recorded in
the second half of the 8th c., following a long oral tradition. Still disputed is whether the
poems preserve traditions of their Late Bronze age setting or reflect the cultural background
of the 9th or 8th c.
The later Stoic view, followed by S (throughout), saw Homer as an entirely
accurate guide to the world, particularly in geography; indeed, Strabo ̄n put Homer first
among reliable geographers. Geographic and toponymic references in the Iliad, concen-
trated in the Catalogue of Ships and Trojan Allies (2.493–877), reflect knowledge of main-
land Greece and western Anatolia. Beyond these regions, geographic data in the poem are
scarcer; it is uncertain, for example, whether the poetic tradition knew of the Black Sea.
Simpson and Lazenby attribute the geography of the Catalogue to the Aegean Bronze Age,
arguing from the prominence of Bronze Age sites later abandoned; this view has been
challenged. The old debate about Troy’s location has been resolved in favor of Hisarlık in
the Troad, first identified as Troy by Calvert and excavated by Schliemann. Excavations
have revealed a substantial Bronze Age settlement reoccupied in the Archaic, Classical,
Hellenistic and Roman periods after a hiatus. Topographical references in the Iliad suggest
a familiarity with the Troad and the environs of the settlement.
The Odyssey’s geography proves even more contentious. The poem’s references to Egypt,
Cyprus and Phoenicia suggest an 8th c. worldview. Descriptions of Ithaca and surrounding
Ionian islands have proven difficult to reconcile with geographical facts. But the most hotly
disputed issue has been the geography of Odysseus’ journey to fantastic lands. E-
rejected all attempts to locate the journey, but the view that placed the fantastic
lands in the central and western Mediterranean prevailed.
R.H. Simpson and J.F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of Ships in Homer’s Iliad (1970); J.K. Anderson, “The
Geometric Catalogue of Ships,” in The Ages of Homer (1995) 181–191; M. Dickie in Homer’s World:
Fiction, Tradition, Reality (1995) 29–56; J.V. Luce, Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited
(1998); C. Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (1999);
J. Latacz, Troy and Homer. Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004).
Philip Kaplan
H ⇒ I
Hostilius Saserna and son (125 – 60 BCE)
The father and son pair wrote about agriculture based in part on their experience with a
farm in Cisalpine Gaul (V, RR 1.18.6). Theirs was the second oldest Latin treatise on
agriculture, after C’s. T S and Varro frequently criticized its recom-
mendations, while C praised it for its detail and expertise. It offered formulae
for staffing a farm (Columella 1.7.4, 2.12.7; Varro 1.16.5, 18.2, 6, 19.1), folk remedies
(1.2.25–28, 2.9.6), advice on growing vines (Columella 3.3.2, 3.12.5, 3.17.4, 4.11.1; P
17.199), fertilizing crops (Columella 2.13.1), and operating clay, stone, and sand pits (Varro
1.2.22–23). Their land-holdings appear to have been extensive (ca 100 ha); thus, like other
known Sasernae, they may have been senatorial.
HOMER