Chapter 5. Homer: The Trial of the Rhapsode

Not surprisingly, considering the overwhelming prestige of the Iliad and the Odyssey, a heroizing body of legend attached itself to a person regarded as the author of those poems. The legend of Homer follows the pattern under consideration in important ways: the poet is a wanderer, like Aesop; he is exiled from inhospitable cities; and there is a dramatic treatment of the trial theme we found in Aesop and Archilochus. This legend, preserved in the Hellenistic biography by “Herodotus,” is based on earlier Ionic traditions, and contains epigrams that probably date from the seventh or sixth centuries BC. [1] The legend of Homer’s death is referred to as early as Heraclitus, which dates it to the end of the 6th century at the latest. [2] A treatment of Homer’s death is also found in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. [3] Homer is the best poet: “the wisest of all the Greeks” and “the sweetest singer.” [4] He is holy, [5] the son of a Muse and Apollo. [6] His epitaph refers to “the sacred head of divine Homer.” [7]

Like Aesop, Hesiod, and Archilochus, Homer receives a supernatural vision as inspiration for his poetry: Helen appears to him in a dream and demands that he write the Iliad. [8] Another story of supernatural inspiration links Homer with the Muses. Praying at the tomb of Achilles, he becomes blinded by a vision of the warrior in full armor, and receives poetic skill from Thetis and the Muses as compensation. This compensation/inspiration theme shows how close the poet is to the seer in archaic Greece. [9] The idea of a blind singer is actually traditional; in his discussion of Eastern European oral singers, Milman Parry notes that, while the blind are not always the best singers, a number of prestigious oral singers were blind. [10]

After Homer has learned his poetic craft, he becomes a wanderer; in the pseudo-Herodotean biography, he is forced to leave three cities (Smyrna, Neon Teichos, and Cyme) in succession before he finally finds a home in Chios. He leaves Smyrna because “he had no means of support [ἄπορος ἐὼν τοῦ βίου, §9],” then departs from Neon Teichos because he was “hard up [aporōs] and finding it difficult to feed himself.” [11] The emphasis on the word aporos recalls Archilochus, who left Paros “because of poverty and lack of resources [dia penian kai aporian].”

This portrait of wandering insecurity would seem to be a realistic, historical touch. The traveling aoidos or rhapsode must have led an uncertain, dependent life, continually visiting more or less hospitable cities. In Plato (Republic 600d, cf. Ion), Homer and Hesiod are said to have been so little valued that no city wanted to have them stay. Herodotus (5.67) describes a tyrant repressing rhapsodes. [12] Thus I agree that legends of Homer and similar poets encapsulate rhapsodic experiences over generations. [13] We can accordingly posit an oral tradition for stories of Homer—legends, folk tales, developed from preexisting legends of mythical seers and heroes—long before these stories began to be written down.

In the case of Cyme, we have a fleshed-out episode with Aesopic resonances. The poet approaches Cyme with high hopes for righteousness and hospitality; he composes the following epigram: “May my feet bring me straight to a city of righteous men; their hearts are generous and their intentions best.” [14] In the same way, Aesop had looked to Delphi for righteous and hospitable men. [15] As in the case of Aesop, Homer is well received at first, but then receives no hospitality. [16] He proposes that the city give him support in return for his poetic performances and is told to present his case to the town senate. The senate is initially sympathetic to his proposal, but a powerful senator opposes him, arguing that if all blind men (called homēroi, ‘hostages’, by the Cymeans) were supported by the state, they would have to shelter a huge crowd of useless individuals (and so Homer, previously called Melesigenes, received his second, more famous name). [17] The unsympathetic senator sways the senate, and they vote against supporting Homer, which in effect exiles him. The inimical senator goes outside and announces the decision to Homer; Homer pronounces a curse on the town to the effect that no famous poets will bring it glory. He recites the fourth epigram, surprisingly beginning with theological meditations: Here Homer associates himself with the Muses (who will later arrange his death); like Aesop, before his departure he pronounces a curse on the city that exiles him, and thus he enters the sphere of the poet who harms through words. [20] Twice he mentions the fate he has received from Zeus; a god has engineered his misery, his poetic vocation. [21]

So we have the theme of rejection of the poet by an inhospitable city; a public vote against the poet; in addition, there is the theme of the conflict of the poet and a powerful individual political figure, who has taunted or mocked Homer somehow (oneidessin). [22] There is a hint of a similar story set in Athens. Heraclides Ponticus tells us that Homer was fined fifty drachmas by the Athenians for insanity! [23]

Homer is also seen as a “harmful” poet in the fourteenth epigram, the “Kiln Poem,” a kind of begging song, in which the poet curses potters who may be dishonest and ungenerous to him. “Come also you daughter of the Sun, witch Circe: mix your wild drugs, and harm [kakou] them and their work … may … the kiln collapse, and the men groaning watch the work of destruction.” In Lindsay Watson’s interpretation, Homer, in an inhospitable world, suspects that the potters intend to cheat him of payment. [24] In Epigram 6, the poet also asks for divine vengeance against an inhospitable, dishonest patron. Once again, one senses that a wandering rhapsode was often at the mercy of ungracious hosts. [25]

Homer’s death, like Hesiod’s, is linked to an oracle and his failure to understand the answer to a riddle. Though he does not die because he could not answer the riddle, he can only die after he fails to answer it—perhaps an attenuation of the original theme of riddle contest and death of loser. [26] The Delphic oracle tells the poet he will die in his mother’s country, and that he should beware of the riddle of young children. [27] Much later, in Ios, children who have been fishing tell him: “All that we caught we left behind, and carry away all that we did not catch.” Homer does not understand that they are talking of lice, not fish, and when he learns the answer, he remembers the oracle, then soon after slips on his side and dies. [28] A Hellenistic epigram adds the detail that the children were inspired by the Muses to ask the riddle, “In Ios the boys, weaving a riddle at the bidding of the Muses, vexed to death Homer the singer of the heroes,” [29] which leads us to the theme of Muses engineering the death of someone they have particularly inspired. [30] Without this theological dimension, the death of Homer makes little sense; it would hardly be a heroizing tale such as rhapsodes would repeat continually.

Homer receives hero cult. In the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, after the poet visiting Argos praises the ancestors of the Argives, they “set up a brazen statue to him, decreeing that sacrifice [thusian] should be offered to Homer daily, monthly, and yearly; and that another sacrifice should be sent to Chios every five years.” [31] Οn the statue, they inscribe that they serve him (“divine [theios] Homer”) “with the honors of the deathless gods [timais amphepei athanatōn].” [32] Outside of legend, rite and honor awarded Homer is widely attested in many places, including the full gamut of poetic cult: dedication of temples to the poet, sacrifice, statues, coins, and even ascription of a month to Homer on Ios, where he died. [33] His poetic immortalization continues.

Thus Homer is the best of poets, a sacred figure, who is reduced to wandering and beggary. He is marginal, blind. He suffers inhospitality where he had expected support; offending a powerful political figure, he is exiled by a political meeting; he curses the town prophetically, so that they are afflicted with poetic sterility from that time on. He looks on the god who inspired him as his persecutor. The Muses set up his death after he fails to understand a riddle. He then receives hero cult. Once again, we see familiar shadows, Aesop and Archilochus, behind a poetic vita: the wandering performer, the inhospitality, the trial, the curse, the disaster, and the poet’s hero cult.34