Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds.
He spoke, the son of Kronos, and nodded his head with the dark brows, and the immortally anointed hair of the great god swept from his divine head, and all Olympos was shaken.
Yet do not bring up against me the sweet favours of golden Aphrodite. Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods, magnificent, which they give of their own will, no man could have them for wanting them.
Always it is, that the hearts in the younger men are frivolous, but when an elder man is among them, he looks behind him and in front, so that all comes out far better for both sides.
Who on earth could blame them? Ah, no wonder the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered years of agony all for her, for such a woman. Beauty, terrible beauty! A deathless goddess—so she strikes our eyes!
III. 156–158 (tr. Robert Fagles); of Helen.
Richmond Lattimore's translation:
Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one. Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
Ἀλλ' ὅτε δὴ ὄπα τε μεγάλην ἐκ στήθεος εἵη καὶ ἔπεα νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν, ἂν ἔπειτ' Ὀδυσῆΐ γ' ἐρίσσειε βροτὸς ἄλλος· οὐ τότε γ' ὧδ' Ὀδυσῆος ἀγασσάμεθ' εἶδος ἰδόντες.
But when he let loose that great voice from his chest and the words came piling on like a driving winter blizzard — then no man alive could rival Odysseus! Odysseus... we no longer gazed in wonder at his looks.
III. 221–224 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Ἠέλιός θ', ὃς πάντ' ἐφορᾷς καὶ πάντ' ἐπακούεις.
Helios, Sun above us, you who see all, hear all things!
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.
Alexander Pope's translation:
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: Another race the following spring supplies, They fall successive, and successive rise: So generations in their course decay; So flourish these, when those are past away.
Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head up high above the others.
Αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων.
Now always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head up high above the others.
So they spoke, and both springing down from behind their horses gripped each other's hands and exchanged the promise of friendship; but Zeus the son of Kronos stole away the wits of Glaukos who exchanged with Diomedes the son of Tydeus armour of gold for bronze, for nine oxen's worth the worth of a hundred.
VI. 232–236 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Ἀνδρὶ δὲ κεκμηῶτι μένος μέγα οἶνος ἀέξει.
When a Man's exhausted, wine will build his strength.
VI. 261 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Νίκη δ᾽ ἐπαμείβεται ἄνδρας.
Victory passes back and forth between men.
VI. 339 (tr. R. Lattimore); Paris contemplates the fickleness of victory as he prepares to go into battle.
Καί ποτέ τις εἴποι πατρός γ' ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων.
And some day let them say of him: 'He is better by far than his father.'
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime; so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
VIII. 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore); the death of Gorgythion.
Alexander Pope's translation:
As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain, Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain, — So sinks the youth; his beauteous head, depressed Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.
As stars in the night sky glittering round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm... all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts the boundless, bright air and all the stars shine clear and the shepherd's heart exults.
VIII. 551–555 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
Book IX
Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
Ἀφρήτωρ ἀθέμιστος ἀνέστιός ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος ὃς πολέμου ἔραται ἐπιδημίου ὀκρυόεντος.
Cursed is the man, and void of law and right, Unworthy property, unworthy light, Unfit for public rule, or private care, That wretch, that monster, that delights in war: Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy To tear his country, and his kind destroy!
Prayers are Jove's daughters, of celestial race, Lame are their feet, and wrinkled is their face; With humble mien, and with dejected eyes, Constant they follow where Injustice flies.
A physician is worth more than several other men put together, for he can cut out arrows and spread healing herbs.
XI. 514–515 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Book XII
Εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης.
Bird-signs! Fight for your country—that is the best, the only omen!
XII. 243 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost, nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost, nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.
XII. 322–328 (tr. R. Lattimore); Sarpedon to Glaukos.
Both gods knotted the rope of strife and leveling war, strangling both sides at once by stretching the mighty cable, never broken, never slipped, that snapped the knees of thousands.
To some the powers of bloody war belong, To some, sweet music, and the charm of song; To few, and wondrous few, has Jove assigned A wise, extensive, all-considering mind.
There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.
XIV. 216–217 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
In this was every art, and every charm, To win the wisest, and the coldest warm: Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire, The kind deceit, the still reviving fire, Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs, Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.
Ἔνθ' Ὕπνῳ ξύμβλητο κασιγνήτῳ Θανάτοιο.
There she encountered Sleep, the brother of Death.
XIV. 231 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Ὕπνε ἄναξ πάντων τε θεῶν πάντων τ' ἀνθρώπων.
Sleep, universal king of gods and men.
XIV. 233 (tr. Lord Derby).
Book XV
A glorious death is his Who for his country falls.
Ῥεῖα δ' ἀρίγνωτος Διὸς ἀνδράσι γίγνεται ἀλκή.
Easily seen is the strength that is given from Zeus to mortals.
XV. 490 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Οὔ οἱ ἀεικὲς ἀμυνομένῳ περὶ πάτρης τεθνάμεν.
A glorious death is his Who for his country falls.
On valour's side the odds of combat lie, The brave live glorious, or lamented die; The wretch who trembles in the field of fame, Meets death, and worse than death, eternal shame.
Then give him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him, of Sleep and Death, who are twin brothers, and these two shall lay him down presently within the rich countryside of broad Lykia.
XVI. 671–673 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Ἀλλ' αἰεί τε Διὸς κρείσσων νόος ἠέ περ ἀνδρῶν.
But the will of Zeus will always overpower the will of men.
He in the turning dust lay mightily in his might, his horsemanship all forgotten.
XVI. 775–776 (tr. R. Lattimore).
I am foremost of all the Trojan warriors to stave the day of bondage from off them; as for you, vultures shall devour you here.
XVI (tr. Samuel Butler); Hector to Patroclus.
I say further, and lay my saying to your heart, you too shall live but for a little season; death and the day of your doom are close upon you, and they will lay you low by the hand of Achilles son of Aiakos.
XVI (tr. S. Butler); Patroclus to Hector.
Book XVII
Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.
If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage— bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey, that swarms in people's chests and blinds like smoke.
XVIII. 107–110 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Achilles.
Ἀλλ' οὐ Ζεὺς ἄνδρεσσι νοήματα πάντα τελευτᾷ.
But Zeus does not bring to accomplishment all thoughts in men's minds.
There shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the bowstring.
Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one without prudence if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again fade away and are dead.
XXI. 462–466 (tr. R. Lattimore); Apollo to Poseidon.
Book XXII
There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind.
So now I meet my doom. Well let me die— but not without struggle, not without glory, no, in some great clash of arms that even men to come will hear of down the years!
XXII. 303 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Hector.
Richmond Lattimore's translation:
But now my death is upon me. Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it.
Μή με κύον γούνων γουνάζεο μὴ δὲ τοκήων.
No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.
The woodcutter is far better for skill than he is for brute strength. It is by skill that the sea captain holds his rapid ship on its course, though torn by winds, over the wine-blue water. By skill charioteer outpasses charioteer.
XXIII. 315–318 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Book XXIV
Τλητὸν γὰρ Μοῖραι θυμὸν θέσαν ἀνθρώποισιν.
The Fates have given mortals hearts that can endure.
XXIV. 49 (tr. Robert Fagles).
I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before— I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.
The majestic king of Troy slipped past the rest and kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees and kissed his hands, those terrible, man-killing hands that had slaughtered Priam's many sons in battle.
Let us put our griefs to rest in our own hearts... What good's to be won from tears that chill the spirit? So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men live on to bear such torments—the gods live free of sorrows.
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
I. 1–5 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο.
The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all.
Not that I'd grudge a tear for any man gone down to meet his fate. What other tribute can we pay to wretched men than to cut a lock, let tears roll down our cheeks?
IV. 195–198 (tr. Robert Fagles).
θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα ἴσασιν.
The gods know all things.
IV. 468.
Book V
I long—I pine, all my days— to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And may the gods accomplish your desire: a home, a husband, and harmonious converse with him – the best thing in the world being a strong house held in serenity where man and wife agree. Woe to their enemies, joy to their friends! But all this they know best.
Behold on wrong Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong! Dwells there a god on all the Olympian brow More swift than Mars, and more than Vulcan slow? Yet Vulcan conquers, and the god of arms Must pay the penalty for lawless charms.
So nothing is as sweet as a man's own country, his own parents, even though he's settled down in some luxurious house, off in a foreign land and far from those who bore him.
‘Nobody, friends’—Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave— ‘Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force!’
IX. 407–408 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Book X
Νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα.
The fleeting shadows of the dead.
X. 521 (tr. G. A. Schomberg).
Book XI
Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her, three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow, dissolving like a dream.
Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her, three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow, dissolving like a dream.
XI. 206–208 (tr. Robert Fagles); Odysseus attempting to embrace his mother's spirit in the Underworld.
Compare Virgil, Aeneid, II. 792–793 (tr. C. Pitt):
Thrice round her neck my eager arms I threw; Thrice from my empty arms the phantom flew.
Ὥρη μὲν πολέων μύθων, ὥρη δὲ καὶ ὕπνου.
There is a time for many words and there is a time also for sleep.
XI. 379 (tr. A. T. Murray).
Ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι πιστὰ γυναιξίν.
The time for trusting women's gone forever!
XI. 456 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
For since of womankind so few are just, Think all are false, nor even the faithful trust.
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man— some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive— than rule down here over all the breathless dead.
XI. 489–492 (tr. Robert Fagles); Achilles' ghost to Odysseus.
Alexander Pope's translation:
Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.
With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. P. S. Worsley's translation:
Rather would I, in the sun's warmth divine, Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief, Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine.
With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
It's wrong, my friend, to send any stranger packing— even one who arrives in worse shape than you. Every stranger and beggar comes from Zeus and whatever scrap they get from the likes of us, they'll find it welcome.
I want to brag a little. I am dizzy, under the influence of wine, which makes even the wisest people sing and giggle, and dance, and say things best not spoken.
I hope nothing valuable may have been taken from the house in spite of you, but you know what women are—they always want to do the best they can for the man who marries them, and never give another thought to the children of their first husband, nor to their father either when he is dead and done with.
Alike he thwarts the hospitable end, Who drives the free, or stays the hasty friend: True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
Long nights the now declining year bestows; A part we consecrate to soft repose, A part in pleasing talk we entertain; For too much rest itself becomes a pain.
XV. 392–394 (tr. Alexander Pope).
A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far can enjoy even his sufferings after a time.
But let us, you and I, sit in my cottage over food and wine, and take some joy in hearing how much pain we each have suffered. After many years of agony and absence from one's home, a person can begin enjoying grief.
XV. 398–401 (tr. Emily Wilson).
Alexander Pope's translation:
Here let us feast, and to the feast be joined Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind; Review the series of our lives, and taste The melancholy joy of evils passed: For he who much has suffered, much will know, And pleased remembrance builds delight on woe.
Meanwhile let us two, here in the hut, over our food and wine, regale ourselves with the unhappy memories that each can recall. For a man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far can enjoy even his sufferings after a time.
Servants, when their lords no longer sway, Their minds no more to righteous courses bend. Half that man's virtue doth Zeus take away, Whom he surrenders to the servile day.
XVII. 320–323 (tr. Worsley).
Αἰδὼς δ' οὐκ ἀγαθὴ κεχρημένῳ ἀνδρὶ παρεῖναι.
How ill, alas! do want and shame agree!
XVII. 347 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Ἐπεὶ οὔ τις ἐπίσχεσις οὐδ' ἐλεητὺς ἀλλοτρίων χαρίσασθαι.
Shameless they give, who give what's not their own.
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams, one is made of ivory, the other made of horn. Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit. The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.
XIX. 563–568 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Penelope.
Men get Their fill of all things, of sleep and love, sweet song And flawless dancing, and most men like these things Much better than war. Only Trojans are always Thirsty for blood!
Iliad, XIII, 636–639 (tr. Ennis Rees)
The misquotation implies that an overweening love of war was the norm, whereas the real quote decries the Trojans as inhumane for keeping the war going.
Homer, the sovereign poet. —Dante AlighieriSeven cities warred for Homer, being dead, Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head. —Thomas HeywoodSometimes even excellent Homer nods. —HoraceWe acknowledge him the father of poetical diction, the first who taught that language of the gods to men. —Alexander PopeAs learned commentators view In Homer more than Homer knew. —Jonathan Swift
O fortunate adolescens, qui tuae virtutis Homerum praeconem inveneris!
O happy youth! in having found a Homer to celebrate thy virtues!
As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy.
Aristotle, Poetics (tr. S. H. Butcher), section 1448b.
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
Aristotle, Poetics (tr. S. H. Butcher), section 1460a.
The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author:—that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble.
Homer is the most simple in his style of all the great poets, and resembles most the style of the poetical parts of the Old Testament. They can have no conception of his manner, who are acquainted with him in Mr. Pope's translation only. An excellent poetical performance that translation is, and faithful in the main to the original. In some places, it may be thought to have even improved Homer. It has certainly softened some of his rudenesses, and added delicacy and grace to some of his sentiments. But withal, it is no other than Homer modernised. In the midst of the elegance and luxuriancy of Mr. Pope's language, we lose sight of the old bard's simplicity. I know indeed no author, to whom it is more difficult to do justice in a translation, than Homer.
Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1784), Lecture XLIII: 'Homer's Iliad and Odyssey—Virgil's Aeneid', p. 407.
They say no woman could possibly have written the Odyssey. To me, on the other hand, it seems even less possible that a man could have done so. As for its being by a practised and elderly writer, nothing but youth and inexperience could produce anything so naïve and so lovely.
Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit: not a simile he hath but is Homer's; not an invention, person, or disposition but is wholly or originally built upon Homerical foundations, and in many places hath the very words Homer useth; ... all Homer's books are such as have been precedents ever since of all sorts of poems; imitating none, nor ever worthily imitated of any.
Of all books extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best.
George Chapman, The Iliads of Homer (1611), Preface to the Reader.
Somewhere along the Ionian coast opposite Crete and the islands was a town of some sort, probably of the sort that we should call a village or hamlet with a wall. It was called Ilion but it came to be called Troy, and the name will never perish from the earth. A poet who may have been a beggar and a ballad-monger, who may have been unable to read and write, and was described by tradition as a blind, composed a poem about the Greeks going to war with this town to recover the most beautiful woman in the world. That the most beautiful woman in the world lived in that one little town sounds like a legend; that the most beautiful poem in the world was written by somebody who knew of nothing larger than such little towns is a historical fact.
Being such an observer he was always making the most unexpected observations, and painting things that were not only unpainted till then but, apparently, unseen by anyone else.
Mark Van Doren, as quoted in Allen Mandelbaum, trans., The Aeneid of Virgil (1971), p. vi.
I have found by trial Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil... For the Grecian is more according to my genius than the Latin poet. [...] Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language and the age in which he lived allowed him.
It is hardly possible to overestimate the importance for Western Literature of the Iliad's demonstration that the fall of an enemy, no less than of a friend or leader, is tragic and not comic. With the Iliad, once for all, an objective and disinterested element enters into the poet's vision of human life. Without this element, poetry is merely instrumental to various social aims, to propaganda, to amusement, to devotion, to instruction: with it, it acquires the authority that since the Iliad it has never lost, an authority based, like the authority of science, on the vision of nature as an impersonal order.
The Homeric epics are the oldest poems in Greek that survive, but certainly not the oldest there were. It is not merely that their structure is too complicated and that we can point to contradictions in their contents; the legend of Homer himself contains many features incompatible with the portrait of the poet which we should construct from the sophisticated, sceptical and even frivolous spirit of the poems. The traditional picture of the blind old singer of Chios is largely made up of memories that go back to the time when a poet was a vates— a priestly and God-inspired seer. His blindness is merely the outward sign of the inward light that fills his being and enables him to see things others cannot see. This bodily infirmity expresses— as does the lameness of the divine smith Hephaestus—a second idea that was current in primitive times, that a maker of poems, ornaments and other products of handicraft can only come from the ranks of those who are unfit for war and foray. But apart from this feature, the legendary ‘Homer’ is an almost perfect example of the mythical poet who was still half-divine, a wonder-worker and a prophet. We find the clearest embodiment of this idea in Orpheus, the primeval singer who had his harp from Apollo and instruction in the art of song from the Muse herself; with his music he could move not merely men and beasts but even rocks and could reclaim Eurydice from the bonds of death. ‘Homer’ no longer boasts such magical power, but still retains the features of an inspired seer and remains conscious of a mysterious and sacred intimacy with the Muse whom he so confidently invokes.
Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Volume I: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages (1951)
Seven cities warred for Homer, being dead, Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.
Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1635).
The poems of Homer purported to describe events of the early heroic golden age of Mycenaean Greece, but many of the economic customs Homer described were more characteristic of the late barbaric period, just before 800 B.C.(?), when the epics were supposed to have been written. The forms of government and the economy they describe were feudal, and in some respects resembled Europe's Dark Ages. ..."Gifts" often took the place of royal revenues, taxes, and payments. ...Even craftsmen were often paid for their services in "gifts". Royal revenues also were derived from the king's personal estate, the duty of personal service, tribute, the spoils of war, piracy, and cattle raids. Armies lived off plunder; conquerors were free from taxation.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken.
Once the diction has been established it works of itself. Almost anything the poet wants to say, has only to be turned into this orthodox and ready-made diction and it becomes poetry. 'Whatever Miss T. eats turns into Miss T.'
I finished the Iliad to-day... I never admired the old fellow so much, or was so strongly moved by him. What a privilege genius like his enjoys! I could not tear myself away. I read the last five books at a stretch during my walk to-day, and was at last forced to turn into a by-path, lest the parties of walkers should see me blubbering for imaginary beings, the creations of a ballad-maker who has been dead two thousand seven hundred years. What is the power and glory of Caesar and Alexander to that?
Thomas Babington Macaulay to his niece Margaret (August 1851), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), pp. 186-187
Poetry changes with every generation, but it does not improve or progress. It just changes its styles, trappings and some of its obsessions, but we can still enjoy Sappho and Homer; they are today's news as much as when they were written or recited.
Marge Piercy "WHY SPECULATE ON THE FUTURE?" in My Life, My Body (2015)
The first teacher and beginner of all these beauties of tragedy.
Our author's work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.
One of the earliest- and perhaps the first-rivals of the hymnology of war, hatred, and revenge made immortal by Homer was the poetry of an Aeolian woman called Sappha by her people but uniformly known to later times as Sappho...Much of Sappho's poetry was of a plaintive tenderness but she had a fervid feeling for love as a saving grace. Several of her feminine disciples also sang of the beauty and healing force of love. Solon the law-giver and Plato the philosopher were deeply affected by her hymns to the great idea of a social power unrecognized by "the Bible of the Greeks": Homer.
Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all things else will seem so dull and poor, You'l wish 't unread; but oft upon him look, And you will hardly need another book.
The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations.
But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings?
Notwithstanding the veneration due and paid to Homer, it is very strange, yet true, that among the most learned, and the greatest admirers of antiquity, there is scarce one to be found who ever read the Iliad with that eagerness and rapture which a woman feels when she reads the Novel of Zaïda... The common part of mankind is awed with the fame of Homer, rather than struck with his beauties.
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