The Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, and the Homeric Hymns formed the foundation for all of ancient Greek literature and they were the basis for a large swathe of ancient Greek culture. Of these poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey were the most important and influential. It can sometimes be difficult for modern audiences to understand the sheer importance of the Homeric Poems in ancient Greek culture. These poems held a revered status that is paralleled in our own culture only by the revered status of the Bible itself, but yet it would be a mistake to call the Iliad and the Odyssey “the ancient Greek Bible.”
Homer, “the greatest and most divine of poets”
As I have noted in several previous articles on this website, it is highly unlikely that Homer was ever a real, historical individual. The consensus of professional classical scholars for the past century has been that the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally oral epics that were composed over the course of many years. Many bards had a role in composing the epics and they have no single author. The figure whom we call “Homer” was not a historical figure, but a legendary one. (For a bit more information about the historicity of Homer, you can read this article I published in July 2019.)
Nonetheless, for most of ancient Greek history, Homer was widely regarded not only as a real person, but as the greatest poet who ever lived. Towards the beginning of the philosophical dialogue Ion, written by the Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 427 – c. 347 BC), Socrates, a speaker in the dialogue, calls Homer “ὁ ἀρίστος καὶ θειοτάτος τῶν ποιητῶν,” which means “the best and most divine of poets.” In the dialogue that follows, Socrates and his interlocutor, the rhapsode Ion, discuss the correct interpretation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, ascribing a great deal of moral and philosophical significance to them.
The later Greek bucolic poet Theokritos of Syracuse (lived c. 340 – after c. 260 BC) gives a list of excuses that are made by people who do not want to pay him to listen to one of his songs in his sixteenth idyll. One of them is, “‘τίς δέ κεν ἄλλου ἀκούσαι; ἅλις πάντεσσιν Ὅμηρος,'” which means “‘But who would want to listen to anyone else? Homer is enough for everyone.'” Even if no one actually used this excuse, the fact that Theokritos could list it in his poem as a plausible excuse tells us a lot about the high esteem in which the ancient Greeks held the Homeric poems.
ABOVE: Engraving from 1606 depicting how the artist imagined the Greek bucolic poet Theokritos of Syracuse might have looked. (No one knows what he really looked like.)
The Homeric poems as the basis of an ancient Greek education
The high esteem in which the ancient Greeks held the Homeric poems is also demonstrated by the fact that these poems formed such a massive swathe of the basis of ancient Greek education during the Classical (c. 510 – c. 323 BC), Hellenistic (c. 323 – c. 31 BC), and Roman (c. 31 BC – c. 330 AD) periods. If you could read and write in Ancient Greek during any of these periods, you almost certainly learned to read and write from studying Homer.
Students in ancient Greece were often required to memorize lengthy passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey by rote and be able to recite them from memory, because it was widely believed that these poems taught a man how to live a good and noble life.
In the dialogue Symposion, written by the Athenian writer Xenophon (lived c. 431 – c. 354 BC), Nikeratos, one of the speakers in the dialogue, relates that his father had made him memorize both the Iliad and the Odyssey in their entirety because he wanted him to be a good man. He proudly declares that he can still recite them fully from memory, even to this day. Nikeratos says in Xenophon’s Symposion 3.5:
“ἀλλὰ σὺ αὖ, ἔφη, λέγε, ὦ Νικήρατε, ἐπὶ ποίᾳ ἐπιστήμῃ μέγα φρονεῖς. καὶ ὃς εἶπεν· ῾Ο πατὴρ ὁ ἐπιμελούμενος ὅπως ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς γενοίμην ἠνάγκασέ με πάντα τὰ ῾Ομήρου ἔπη μαθεῖν· καὶ νῦν δυναίμην ἂν ᾿Ιλιάδα ὅλην καὶ ᾿Οδύσσειαν ἀπὸ στόματος εἰπεῖν. ᾿Εκεῖνο δ’, ἔφη ὁ ᾿Αντισθένης, λέληθέ σε, ὅτι καὶ οἱ ῥαψῳδοὶ πάντες ἐπίστανται ταῦτα τὰ ἔπη;”
As translated by William Heineman, this reads:
“‘My father was anxious to see me develop into a good man,’ said Nikeratos, ‘and as a means to this end he compelled me to memorize all of Homer; and so even now I can repeat the whole Iliad and the Odyssey by heart.'”
While Nikeratos is probably an extreme case, there is no doubt that memorization of Homer was a major aspect of ancient Greek education.
ABOVE: Ancient Greek red-figure pottery painting by the Douris painter depicting a young man writing using a stylus and wax tablet. From the Classical Period until after the rise of Christianity, most students learned to read and write by studying the Homeric poems.
Further evidence of the importance of memorizing Homer comes from a popular game played at symposia, which involved going around the room, with one person reciting one line of (usually Homeric) poetry and the next person reciting the next. If he could not remember the line or messed up, he was kicked out of the game. The winner was the person who could keep going the longest. In this way, the Iliad and the Odyssey held a level of cultural importance that is only paralleled in our own modern culture by the Bible.
Ancient critics of Homer
It is important to emphasize, however, that the ancient Greeks never quite saw the Iliad and the Odyssey in the same way that Christians today see the Bible. The ancient Greeks did not generally believe that the Homeric poems were the infallible word of God. In fact, many people openly criticized them. The poet and pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes of Kolophon (lived c. 570 – c. 475 BC) ridiculed both Homer and Hesiod for having portrayed the gods as morally fallible. In fragment eleven of his writings, he scoffs, as translated by Kathleen Freeman:
“Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”
The poet Herakleitos of Ephesos (lived c. 535 – c. 475 BC) was even more direct in his criticism of Homer. He writes in fragment forty-two, as translated by Kathleen Freeman:
“Homer deserves to be flung out of the contests and given a beating; and also Archilochos.”
ABOVE: Heraclitus, painted in around 1630 by the Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Moreelse, showing the author’s imagining of what Herakleitos might have looked like, based on traditional iconography
While Herakleitos never literally tried to give Homer “a beating” (or at least as far as we are aware), others took their hatred of Homer to a much more literal extreme. One Greek grammarian named Zoilos (lived c. 400 – 320 BC) was known as Ὁμηρομάστιξ (Homēromástix; “the Homer-whipper”) because he would reportedly publicly lash statues of Homer to show his intense hatred of the poet. People thought Zoilos was crazy, but no one ever tried to burn him at the stake or anything because, quite simply, Homer was not seen as the ultimate authority in matters of religion.
You see, the ancient Greeks had no ultimate religious authority. They had no church hierarchy. They had no “pope.” They had no texts that were universally regarded as sacred. They had no concept of religious “orthodoxy.” Ancient Greek religion was not text-centered nor even belief-centered, but rather community-centered. As long as you worshipped the gods of the state and took part in civic religion, no one really cared much about what you personally believed.
The Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days all begin with invocations to the Muses, asking for inspiration, but these are asking for poetic inspiration. As the Muses themselves tell Hesiod in the introduction to his Theogony, they could inspire both truth and lies. The fact that they inspired the poems only meant that the poems were beautiful, not necessarily that everything in them was unquestionably true.
ABOVE: Hesiod and the Muse, painted in 1891 by the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau
Conclusion
In ancient Greece, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Theogony, Works and Days, and the Homeric Hymns were all widely revered and seen as extremely culturally important texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey in particular were widely regarded as supreme literary works, superior to all others. The study and memorization of these poems formed the primary basis of an ancient Greek education.
Nonetheless, these works were not regarded as infallible; they were open to criticism and, although they were often seen as important sources of information about the gods and about the mythic past, the ancient Greeks never saw them as the ultimate, unquestionable authority on all matters of religion in the same way that most Christians today see the Bible.
