The special status of Homer in the Greek world is something attested to in early
Greek literary sources, which record the existence of a guild called the Homeridae
claiming to be the descendants of Homer who flourished in Chios and were devoted
tothe recitation of his poems. The more widespread existence of other professional
reciters of Homer’s poems called rhapsodes is also well attested. One such rhapsode
called Ion features in the philosophical dialogue of Plato that bears his name.
The view that Homer ‘had educated the Greeks’ (Republic, 10, 606) is a common-
place reported by Plato in the fourth century. His poetry was a central part of every
Athenian schoolboy’s education. Indeed the historian Xenophon, writing in the early
fourth century, records the experience of a contemporary figure called Niceratus: ‘My
father in his anxiety to make me a good man made me learn the whole works of
Homer; and I could now repeat by heart the entire Iliadand Odyssey’(Symposium, 3,
5).As the classic expression of the Hellenic spirit, the Homeric poems had a formative
influence upon the culture of later times.
TheIliad
In the Iliadthe heroic aristocratic virtues are proven on the battlefield. Old Nestor
reports that when he recruited Achilles for the Trojan expedition, the latter’s father
Peleus had told his son ‘always to excel and do better than the rest’ (11, 784). Speaking
in battle to the Greek Diomedes, the Lycian Glaucus tells him that his father had given
him the same instruction, telling him not to shame his forebears who were the best
in Lycia (6, 208–210). Hector’s hope for his son Astyanax is that in future time
men will say ‘He is better than his father’ as he returns from the battlefield bearing
the bloodstained armour of his foe (6, 479–481). The Homeric hero consciously
endeavours to excel. No distinction in this respect is made between Greek and Trojan
for the Trojans are not seen as some inferior race of barbarians, but are equally
responsive to the heroic impulse. In fact Homer puts his fullest and most famous
expression of it into the mouth of the Trojan ally Sarpedon (12, 310–328). Here is the
speech in the version of the eighteenth-century translator of Homer, Alexander Pope,
who manages in his heroic couplets to capture something of its grand effect.
‘Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,
Where Xanthus’ streams enrich the Lycian plain,
Our num’rous herds that range the fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield,
Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music’s sprightly sound?
Why on these shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed?EARLY GREECE: HOMER AND HESIOD 15