It is perhaps not true that Homer was so poor as to be obliged to beg
for his bread; but it is probable that he earned his living by traveling
from city to city through many parts of Greece and Asia Minor, reciting
his poems in the palaces of princes, and at public assemblies. This was
one of the customs of ancient times, when the art of writing was either
not known, or very little practiced. The poets, or bards, of those days
committed their compositions to memory, and repeated them aloud at
gatherings of the people, particularly at festivals and athletic games,
of which the ancient Greeks were very fond. At those games prizes and
rewards were given to the bards as well as to the athletes.
It is said that in the latter part of his life the great poet became
blind, and that this was why he received the name of Homer, which
signified a blind person. The name first given to him, we are told, was
Mel-e-sigʹe-nes, from the river Meʹles, a small stream on the banks of
which his native city of Smyrna was situated.
So little being known of Homer's life, there has been much difference of
opinion about him among learned men. Many have believed that Homer never
existed. Others have thought that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed
not by one author, but by several. "Some," says the English poet, Walter
Savage Landor, "tell us that there were twenty Homers, some deny that
there was ever one." Those who believe that there were "twenty Homers"
think that different parts of the two great poems--the Iliad and
Odyssey--were composed by different persons, and that all the parts were
afterwards put together in the form in which they now appear. The
opinion of most scholars at present, however, is that Homer did really
exist, that he was a wandering bard, or minstrel, who sang or recited
verses or ballads composed by himself, about the great deeds of heroes
and warriors, and that those ballads, collected and arranged in after
years in two separate books, form the poems known as the Iliad and
Odyssey.
Homer's poetry is what is called epic poetry, that is, it tells about
heroes and heroic actions. The Iliad and Odyssey are the first and
greatest of epic poems. In all ages since Homer's time, scholars have
agreed in declaring them to be the finest poetic productions of human
genius. No nation in the world has ever produced poems so beautiful or
so perfect. They have been read and admired by learned men for more than
2000 years. They have been translated into the languages of all
civilized countries. In this book we make many quotations from the fine
translation of the Iliad by our American poet, William Cullen Bryant. We
quote also from the well-known translation by the English poet,
Alexander Pope.
The ancients had a very great admiration for the poetry of Homer. We are
told that every educated Greek could repeat from memory any passage in
the Iliad or Odyssey. Alexander the Great was so fond of Homer's poems
that he always had them under his pillow while he slept. He kept the
Iliad in a richly ornamented casket, saying that "the most perfect work
of human genius ought to be preserved in a box the most valuable and
precious in the world."
So great was the veneration the Greeks had for Homer, that they erected
temples and altars to him, and worshiped him as a god. They held
festivals in his honor, and made medals bearing the figure of the poet
sitting on a throne and holding in his hands the Iliad and Odyssey. One
of the kings of Eʹgypt built in that country a magnificent temple, in
which was set up a statue of Homer, surrounded with a beautiful
representation of the seven cities that contended for the honor of being
the place of his birth.
Great bard of Greece, whose ever-during verse
All ages venerate, all tongues rehearse;
Could blind idolatry be justly paid
To aught of mental power by man display'd,
To thee, thou sire of soul-exalting song,
That boundless worship might to thee belong.