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112-398: "Circe would fain have held me back in her halls, the guileful lady of Aeaea, yearning that I should be her husband". (Homer, Odyssey, Book IX.32 ; trans. A.T. Murray; Loeb Classical Library 1919). In Homer 's Odyssey , Odysseus tells Alcinous that he stayed here for one year on his way home to Ithaca . Before leaving Aeaea, Odysseus was given instructions by Circe about how to cross

224-457: A boar; Aphrodite descended into the Underworld to take him back. But Persephone, smitten with him, would not let him go until they came to an agreement that Adonis would alternate between the land of the living and the land of the dead each year. After a plague hit Aonia , its people asked the oracle of Apollo Gortynius, and they were told they needed to appease the anger of the king and queen of

336-449: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows

448-597: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to

560-521: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of

672-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to

784-419: A serpent. Demeter then hides Persephone in a cave; but Zeus, in the form of a serpent, enters the cave and rapes Persephone. Persephone becomes pregnant and gives birth to Zagreus . It was said that while Persephone was playing with the nymph Hercyna, Hercyna held a goose against her that she let loose. The goose flew to a hollow cave and hid under a stone; when Persephone took up the stone in order to retrieve

896-409: Is reborn with the exhumation and spreading of the grain. Bruce Lincoln argues that the myth is a description of the loss of Persephone's virginity, where her epithet koure signifies "a girl of initiatory age", and where Hades is the male oppressor forcing himself onto a young girl for the first time. Adonis was an exceedingly beautiful mortal man with whom Persephone fell in love. After he

1008-575: Is taboo – Nestis is a euphemistic cult title – for she was also the terrible Queen of the Dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was euphemistically named simply as Kore or "the Maiden", a vestige of her archaic role as the deity ruling the underworld. Nestis means "the Fasting One" in ancient Greek. As a goddess of the underworld, Persephone was given euphemistically friendly names. However, it

1120-592: Is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in

1232-455: Is Kore, and in Arcadia she was worshipped under the title Despoina , "the mistress", a very old chthonic divinity. Günther Zuntz considers "Persephone" and "Kore" as distinct deities and writes that "no farmer prayed for corn to Persephone; no mourner thought of the dead as being with Kore." Ancient Greek writers were however not as consistent as Zuntz claims. Plutarch writes that Persephone

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1344-496: Is a goddess of marriage and childbirth in this region. Her name has numerous historical variants. These include Persephassa ( Περσεφάσσα ) and Persephatta ( Περσεφάττα ). In Latin, her name is rendered Proserpina . She was identified by the Romans as the Italic goddess Libera , who was conflated with Proserpina. Myths similar to Persephone's descent and return to earth also appear in

1456-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when

1568-653: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when

1680-503: Is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. The Homeric form of her name is Persephoneia ( Περσεφονεία , Persephoneia ). In other dialects, she was known under variant names: Persephassa ( Περσεφάσσα ), Persephatta ( Περσεφάττα ), or simply Korē ( Κόρη , "girl, maiden"). On 5th century Attic vases one often encounters the form ( Φερρϖφάττα ). Plato calls her Pherepapha ( Φερέπαφα ) in his Cratylus , "because she

1792-552: Is possible that some of them were the names of original goddesses: As a vegetation goddess, she was called: Demeter and her daughter Persephone were usually called: Persephone's abduction by Hades is mentioned briefly in Hesiod 's Theogony , and is told in considerable detail in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter . Zeus, it is said, permitted Hades, who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to abduct her as her mother Demeter

1904-435: Is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter . She became the queen of the underworld after her abduction by her uncle Hades , the king of the underworld, who would later also take her into marriage. The myth of her abduction, her sojourn in the underworld, and her cyclical return to the surface represents her functions as the embodiment of spring and the personification of vegetation, especially grain crops, which disappear into

2016-466: Is the island, "twelve hours from Naples " (obviously mythical), where his heroes meet, and love between them flourishes. John Banville 's 1993 novel Ghosts has a boating party shipwrecked on an unnamed island; one character, Sophie, speculates that it is Aeaea; another says, "Yes...yes, Aeaea: you will feel at home, no doubt", a reference to Sophie's Circean nature. "Aeaean" was an epithet of Circe and her paternal niece Medea ( Αἰαίη ), who were

2128-401: Is therefore mentioned along with or identified as other such divinities including Isis , Rhea , Ge , Hestia , Pandora , Artemis , and Hecate . In Orphic tradition, Persephone is said to be the daughter of Zeus and his mother Rhea, who became Demeter after her seduction by her son. The Orphic Persephone is said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus / Iacchus / Zagreus , and

2240-426: Is trapped underground within the realm of Hades. In the beginning of the autumn, when the grain of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter. This interpretation of Persephone's abduction myth symbolizes the cycle of life and death as Persephone both dies as she (the grain) is buried in the pithoi (as similar pithoi were used in ancient times for funerary practices) and

2352-483: Is wise and touches that which is in motion". There are also the forms Periphona ( Πηριφόνα ) and Phersephassa ( Φερσέφασσα ). The existence of so many different forms shows how difficult it was for the Greeks to pronounce the word in their own language and suggests that the name may have a Pre-Greek origin . The etymology of the word 'Persephone' is obscure. According to a recent hypothesis advanced by Rudolf Wachter ,

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2464-495: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer

2576-564: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of

2688-851: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,

2800-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within

2912-496: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Persephone is rising as if up stairs from a cleft in the earth, while Hermes stands aside; Hecate, holding two torches, looks back as she leads her to the enthroned Demeter. Before Persephone was abducted by Hades, the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd Eubuleus saw a girl in a black chariot driven by an invisible driver being carried off into the earth which had violently opened up. Eubuleus

3024-458: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by

3136-623: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of

3248-566: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about

3360-479: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates

3472-560: The Tyrrhenian mainland , where she dwells to this day, very far from the Colchian land Aeaea was later identified by classical Roman writers with Mount Circeo on Cape Circeo (Cape Circaeum) on the western coast of Italy – about 100 kilometers south of Rome – which at that time may have looked like an island owing to the marshes and sea surrounding its base, but which now is a small peninsula . Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote that it

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3584-535: The river Cocytus who became mistress to Persephone's husband Hades . Persephone was not slow to notice and, in jealousy, she trampled the nymph, killing her and turning her into a mint plant . Alternatively, Persephone tore Minthe to pieces for sleeping with Hades, and it was he who turned his former lover into the sweet-smelling plant. In another version, Minthe had been Hades's lover before he met Persephone. When Minthe claims Hades will return to her due to her beauty, Persephone's mother Demeter kills Minthe over

3696-535: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw

3808-541: The Arcadian mysteries. In the Orphic "Rhapsodic Theogony" (first century BC/AD), Persephone is described as the daughter of Zeus and Rhea . Zeus was filled with desire for his mother, Rhea, intending to marry her. He pursued the unwilling Rhea, only for her to change into a serpent. Zeus also turned himself into a serpent and raped Rhea, which resulted in the birth of Persephone. Afterwards, Rhea became Demeter . Persephone

3920-400: The Arcadian mysteries. In the Arcadian mythos, while Demeter was looking for the kidnapped Persephone, she caught the eye of her younger brother Poseidon. Demeter turned into a mare to escape him, but then Poseidon turned into a stallion to pursue her. He caught her and raped her. Afterwards, Demeter gave birth to the talking horse Arion and the goddess Despoina ("the mistress"), a goddess of

4032-792: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but

4144-496: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of

4256-459: The Greek tradition a hunt-goddess preceded the harvest goddess. In Arcadia , Demeter and Persephone were often called Despoinai ( Δέσποιναι , "the mistresses"). They are the two Great Goddesses of the Arcadian cults, and evidently they come from a more primitive religion. The Greek god Poseidon probably substituted for the companion ( Paredros , Πάρεδρος ) of the Minoan Great goddess in

4368-470: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting

4480-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on

4592-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of

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4704-510: The Works of Virgil, comments on Aeneis : "She [Circe] is here called Aeaean , from Aea, an island and city of Colchis, not far from the river Phasis. She married a king of Sarmatia, whom she poisoned, after which she fled into Italy ..." Robert Graves ( The Greek Myths ) points out Aeaea as the island of Lošinj , near the Istrian peninsula in the north Adriatic Sea . Fernando Jaume identifies

4816-482: The ancient Greeks told the myth of Persephone to explain the origin of the four seasons . The ancient Greeks believed that spring and summer occurred during the months Persephone stayed with Demeter, who would make flowers bloom and crops grow bountiful. During the other months when Persephone must live in the underworld with Hades, Demeter expressed her sadness by letting the earth go barren and covering it with snow, resulting in autumn and winter . According to

4928-434: The bird, water flowed from that spot, and hence the river received the name Hercyna. This was when she was abducted by Hades according to Boeotian legend; a vase shows water birds accompany the goddesses Demeter and Hecate who are in search of the missing Persephone. The abduction of Persephone is an etiological myth providing an explanation for the changing of the seasons. Since Persephone had consumed pomegranate seeds in

5040-486: The central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries , which promised the initiated a happy afterlife . The origins of her cult are uncertain, but it was based on ancient agrarian cults of agricultural communities. In Athens, the mysteries celebrated in the month of Anthesterion were dedicated to her. The city of Locri Epizephyrii , in modern Calabria (southern Italy ), was famous for its cult of Persephone, where she

5152-475: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes

5264-417: The context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis, which promised immortality to initiates. In a Classical period text ascribed to Empedocles , c.  490–430 BC, describing a correspondence among four deities and the classical elements , the name Nestis for water apparently refers to Persephone: Of the four deities of Empedocles' elements, it is the name of Persephone alone that

5376-495: The cults of male gods, including Attis , Adonis , and Osiris , and in Minoan Crete . In a Linear B Mycenaean Greek inscription on a tablet found at Pylos dated 1400–1200 BC, John Chadwick reconstructed the name of a goddess, *Preswa , who could be identified with Perse , daughter of Oceanus , and found speculative the further identification with the first element of Persephone. Persephonē ( Greek : Περσεφόνη )

5488-580: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer

5600-536: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during

5712-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique

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5824-563: The ears of corn", i.e., a "thresher of grain". The name of the Albanian dawn-goddess, goddess of love and protector of women, Premtë or P(ë)rende , is thought to correspond regularly to the Ancient Greek counterpart Περσεφάττα ( Persephatta ), a variant of Περσεφόνη ( Persephone ). The theonyms have been traced back to the Indo-European *pers-é-bʰ(h₂)n̥t-ih₂ ("she who brings

5936-409: The earth when sown, sprout from the earth in spring, and are harvested when fully grown. In Classical Greek art , Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a sheaf of grain. She may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades. Persephone, as a vegetation goddess , and her mother Demeter were

6048-518: The earth with Hecate 's torches. In most versions, she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and, in the depth of her despair, she causes nothing to grow. Helios , the Sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered where her daughter had been taken. Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone. When Hades

6160-501: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of

6272-554: The first element in the name ( Perso - ( Περσο- ) may well reflect a very rare term, attested in the Rig Veda (Sanskrit parṣa- ), and the Avesta , meaning 'sheaf of corn' / 'ear [of grain]'. The second constituent, phatta , preserved in the form Persephatta ( Περσεφάττα ), would in this view reflect Proto-Indo-European *-gʷn-t-ih , from the root *gʷʰen- "to strike / beat / kill". The combined sense would therefore be "she who beats

6384-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows

6496-453: The ghosts of the dead, who drink the blood of the sacrificed animal. In the reformulation of Greek mythology expressed in the Orphic Hymns , Dionysus and Melinoë are separately called children of Zeus and Persephone. Groves sacred to her stood at the western extremity of the earth on the frontiers of the lower world, which itself was called "house of Persephone". Her central myth served as

6608-421: The insult done to her daughter. Theophile was a girl who claimed that Hades loved her and that she was better than Persephone. Once, Hermes chased Persephone (or Hecate ) with the aim to rape her; but the goddess snored or roared in anger, frightening him off so that he desisted, hence her earning the name " Brimo " ("angry"). The hero Orpheus once descended into the underworld seeking to take back to

6720-512: The island of Paxos near the Greek coast of the Ionian Sea . He describes it as the furthest west on a boundary of the sea and the river of Okeanos, the mythological freshwater river that encircles the Earth. Drawing upon this interpretation, Assassin's Creed Odyssey uses a fictional atoll point off the coast of Paxos as the location. In Richard Aldington 's novel All Men are Enemies (1933), Aeaea

6832-513: The island somewhere south of Aethalia ( Elba ), within view of the Tyrrhenian shore (western coast of Italy ). In the same poem, Aeëtes remarks on the great distance between Colchis (on the Black Sea , in modern Georgia ) and Aeaea in these terms: I noted it once after taking a ride in my father Helius ' chariot when he was taking my sister Circe to the western land and we came to the coast of

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6944-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as

7056-494: The land of the living his late wife Eurydice , who died when a snake bit her. So lovely was the music he played that it charmed Persephone and even stern Hades. So entranced was Persephone by Orpheus' sweet melody that she persuaded her husband to let the unfortunate hero take his wife back. Sisyphus , the wily king of Corinth managed to avoid staying dead, after Death had gone to collect him, by appealing to and tricking Persephone into letting him go; thus Sisyphus returned to

7168-430: The land of the living, he is said to have offered a myrtle plant to Persephone in exchange for Semele. On a neck amphora from Athens Dionysus is depicted riding on a chariot with his mother, next to a myrtle-holding Persephone who stands with her own mother Demeter; many vases from Athens depict Dionysus in the company of Persephone and Demeter. Persephone also convinced Hades to allow the hero Protesilaus to return to

7280-524: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during

7392-595: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as

7504-400: The light of the sun in the surface above. When Echemeia , a queen of Kos , ceased to offer worship to Artemis , the goddess shot her with an arrow. Persephone, witnessing that, snatched the still living Euthemia and brought her to the Underworld. When Dionysus, the god of wine, descended into the Underworld accompanied by Demeter to retrieve his dead mother Semele and bring her back to

7616-418: The light through"). A popular folk etymology is from φέρειν φόνον , pherein phonon , "to bring (or cause) death". The epithets of Persephone reveal her double function as chthonic and vegetation goddess. The surnames given to her by the poets refer to her role as queen of the lower world and the dead and to the power that shoots forth and withdraws into the earth. Her common name as a vegetation goddess

7728-414: The little-attested Melinoë . In mythology and literature she is often called dread(ed) Persephone, and queen of the underworld, within which tradition it was forbidden to speak her name. This tradition comes from her conflation with the very old chthonic divinity Despoina ("[the] mistress"), whose real name could not be revealed to anyone except those initiated into her mysteries. As goddess of death, she

7840-544: The lower world at the entrance of the western Oceanus. Later accounts place the abduction in Attica , near Athens , or near Eleusis. The Homeric hymn mentions the Nysion (or Mysion) which was probably a mythical place. The location of this mythical place may simply be a convention to show that a magically distant chthonic land of myth was intended in the remote past. After Persephone had disappeared, Demeter searched for her all over

7952-815: The medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen , fall somewhere between these two extremes. Him with that falchion in his hand behold, ⁠Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . Persephone In ancient Greek mythology and religion , Persephone ( / p ər ˈ s ɛ f ə n iː / pər- SEF -ə-nee ; Greek : Περσεφόνη , romanized :  Persephónē , classical pronunciation: [per.se.pʰó.nɛː] ), also called Kore ( / ˈ k ɔːr iː / KOR -ee ; Greek : Κόρη , romanized :  Kórē , lit.   'the maiden') or Cora ,

8064-472: The mother of the Erinyes by Hades. In Nonnus 's Dionysiaca , the gods of Olympus were bewitched by Persephone's beauty and desired her. Hermes , Apollo , Ares , and Hephaestus each presented Persephone with a gift to woo her. Demeter, worried that Persephone might end up marrying Hephaestus, consults the astrological god Astraeus . Astraeus warns her that Persephone will be ravished and impregnated by

8176-523: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than

8288-545: The ocean and assisted by the North Wind to reach the underworld : When your ship has traversed the stream of Oceanus , you will reach the fertile shore of Persephone's country with its groves of tall poplars and willows that shed their fruit untimely; here beach your ship upon the shore of Oceanus, and go straight on to the dark abode of Hades. Homer describes Aeaea as covered with a mixture of pasture and dense woodland of oak and beech. There were high hills or bluffs from which

8400-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage

8512-519: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace

8624-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than

8736-453: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after

8848-482: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At

8960-420: The preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard

9072-510: The regeneration of life. In another interpretation of the myth, the abduction of Persephone by Hades, in the form of Ploutus ( πλούτος , wealth), represents the wealth of the grain contained and stored in underground silos or ceramic jars ( pithoi ) during the Summer seasons (as that was drought season in Greece). In this telling, Persephone as grain-maiden symbolizes the grain within the pithoi that

9184-595: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish

9296-412: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of

9408-461: The sea could be seen encircling the island in all directions. Circe's stone house was located in a "dense forest of trees" "in a place that could be seen from far." The somewhat inconsistent geography of Homer's Odyssey is often considered more mythic than literal, but the geography of the Alexandrian scholar and poet Apollonius of Rhodes is more specific. In his epic Argonautica , he locates

9520-530: The sister and daughter of Aeëtes , the ruler of Aea ( Αἶα ) in Colchis . Circe's son Telegonus is likewise given this epithet. It was also a name of Calypso , who was believed to have inhabited a small island of the name of Aeaea in the straits between Italy and Sicily. Homer This is an accepted version of this page Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c.  8th century BCE )

9632-509: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,

9744-518: The ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence

9856-480: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of

9968-419: The two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only

10080-630: The underworld becomes half the year. It was explained to Demeter, her mother, that she would be released, so long as she did not taste the food of the underworld, as that was an Ancient Greek example of a taboo . In some versions, Ascalaphus informed the other deities that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds. As punishment for informing Hades, he was pinned under a heavy rock in the underworld by either Persephone or Demeter until Heracles freed him, causing Demeter to turn him into an eagle owl . In an earlier version, Hecate rescued Persephone. On an Attic red-figured bell krater of c. 440 BC in

10192-406: The underworld by means of sacrifice of two willing maidens. Two maidens, Menippe and Metioche (who were the daughters of Orion ), were chosen and they agreed to be offered to the two gods in order to save their country. After the two girls sacrificed themselves with their shuttles, Persephone and Hades took pity on them and turned their dead bodies into comets . Minthe was a Naiad nymph of

10304-463: The underworld, she was forced to spend four months, or in other versions six months for six seeds, with Hades. When Persephone would return to the underworld , Demeter's despair at losing her daughter would cause the vegetation and flora of the world to wither, signifying the Autumn and Winter seasons. When Persephone's time is over and she would be reunited with her mother, Demeter's joyousness would cause

10416-456: The vegetation of the earth to bloom and blossom which signifies the Spring and Summer seasons. This also explains why Persephone is associated with Spring: her re-emergence from the underworld signifies the onset of Spring. Therefore, not only does Persephone and Demeter's annual reunion symbolize the changing seasons and the beginning of a new cycle of growth for the crops, it also symbolizes death and

10528-490: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he

10640-481: The world of the living for a limited period of time to see his wife. Socrates in Plato 's Cratylus previously mentions that Hades consorts with Persephone due to her wisdom. Persephone was worshipped along with her mother Demeter and in the same mysteries. Her cults included agrarian magic, dancing, and rituals. The priests used special vessels and holy symbols, and the people participated with rhymes. In Eleusis there

10752-613: The year with Aphrodite. Alternatively, Adonis had to spend one half of the year with each goddess at the suggestion of the Muse Calliope . Of them, Aelian wrote that Adonis' life was divided between two goddesses: one who loved him beneath the earth,and one above, while the satirical author Lucian of Samosata has Aphrodite complain to the moon goddess Selene that Eros made Persephone fall in love with her own beloved, and now she has to share Adonis with her. In another variation, Persephone met Adonis only after he had been slain by

10864-661: The “Island of Circe” with Didyme aka Salina , the “erratic rocks” being the “Faraglioni di Lipari”, next to the “Island of the Sirens” and the “Hades in Sicily”, perhaps as many evocations of the volcanism of this archipelago. The narrow beach and the forests dedicated to Persephone would be there, in Acquedolci , and Sicily is the home of Circe's father Helios 's sacred herds of oxen and sheep. Tim Severin names in The Ulysses Voyage

10976-494: Was already a peninsula in his time. However, it may have been still an island in the days of Homer , with a long " lido " or sandy peninsula that gradually became attached to the mainland – a common geological process. Archeologists have identified one cave or grotto on the cape as Grotta della Maga Circe ("cave of Circe"). A second cave was found on the nearby Island of Ponza . It is believed that Circe had her summer home on Mount Circe and her winter home on Ponza , which possibly

11088-479: Was also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx , the river that formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld. In Homer 's epics, she appears always together with Hades in the underworld, apparently sharing with Hades control over the dead. In Homer's Odyssey , Odysseus encounters the "dread Persephone" in Tartarus when he visits his dead mother. Odysseus sacrifices a ram to the chthonic goddess Persephone and

11200-458: Was an Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles

11312-523: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in

11424-506: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from

11536-469: Was born so deformed that Rhea ran away from her frightened, and did not breastfeed Persephone. Zeus then mates with Persephone, who gives birth to Dionysus . She later stays in her mother's house, guarded by the Curetes . Rhea-Demeter prophecies that Persephone will marry Apollo . This prophecy does not come true, however, as while weaving a dress, Persephone is abducted by Hades to be his bride. She becomes

11648-405: Was born, Aphrodite entrusted him to Persephone to raise. But when Persephone got a glimpse of the beautiful Adonis—finding him as attractive as Aphrodite did—she refused to give him back to her. The matter was brought before Zeus , and he decreed that Adonis would spend one third of the year with each goddess, and have the last third for himself. Adonis chose to spend his own portion of

11760-472: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas  ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,

11872-627: Was feeding his pigs at the opening to the underworld, and his swine were swallowed by the earth along with her. This aspect of the myth is an etiology for the relation of pigs with the ancient rites in Thesmophoria , and in Eleusis. In the hymn, Persephone eventually returns from the underworld and is reunited with her mother near Eleusis. The Eleusinians built a temple near the spring of Callichorus, and Demeter establishes her mysteries there. Regardless of how she had eaten pomegranate seeds and how many,

11984-522: Was identified with the spring season, and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields. In the Eleusinian Mysteries , her return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of immortality, and she was frequently represented on sarcophagi . In the religions of the Orphics and the Platonists , Kore is described as the all-pervading goddess of nature who both produces and destroys everything, and she

12096-429: Was informed of Zeus' command to return Persephone, he complied with the request, but he first tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds. Hermes was sent to retrieve Persephone but, because she had tasted the food of the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year (the winter months) there, and the remaining part of the year with the gods above. With the later writers Ovid and Hyginus, Persephone's time in

12208-690: Was not likely to allow her daughter to go down to Hades. Persephone was gathering flowers, along with the Oceanids , and the goddesses Pallas Athena and Artemis , as the Homeric Hymn says, in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. In another version of the myth, Persephone had her own personal companions whom Demeter turned into the half bird sirens as punishment for failing to prevent her daughter's abduction. Various local traditions place Persephone's abduction in different locations. The Sicilians , among whom her worship

12320-609: Was probably introduced by the Corinthian and Megarian colonists, believed that Hades found her in the meadows near Enna , and that a well arose on the spot where he descended with her into the lower world. The Cretans thought that their own island had been the scene of the abduction, and the Eleusinians mentioned the Nysian plain in Boeotia, and said that Persephone had descended with Hades into

12432-431: Was the island Homer called Aeaea . The modern Greek scholar Ioannis Kakridis insists that any attempt at realistic identification is in vain, arguing that Homer vaguely located Aeaea somewhere in the eastern part of his world, perhaps near Colchis , since Circe was the sister of Aeëtes , king of Colchis, and because their paternal aunt the goddess Eos had her palace there. Cooper (1854, p. 266), in his edition of

12544-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent

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