Homer is an ancient Greek (Essay Sample)

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Homer
Homer is an ancient Greek author whose best works include the Iliad and Odyssey. Greek ancients believe that he is one of the earliest and greatest epic poets. Homer authored the earliest work of literature in Europe of which ancient people had to know before they could be considered educated (Elmer 144). His masterpieces were educative in nature given that they helped to instill good morals into the society while improving peoples’ ethics. Scholars have always argued about Homer’s existence but they have always assumed that Homer is a man. All attempts to find Homer’s identity have thrown in more questions than answers (Cannatella 5).
The Author is valuable among the earliest Greek people as demonstrated by the way the people refer to him as the teacher who introduced tragedians to the writing work and the leader of Greek culture. Homer’s works, which were almost fifty percent speeches, were used as a teaching guide in speaking and writing. The works of Homer, especially the Iliad, are fundamental when defining western culture. The work narrates about a Trojan war that took place around a city called Troy completely destroying it (Elmer 150). The war was fought by the Mycenaeans prompting the Greeks to be unified with a common purpose of finding the Greek character. The Greeks viewed this Trojan War as a defining moment of their culture with the aid of Homer’s poetry that taught people important values and ethics. The Greeks could be seen in Homeric epics in times of cultural crises as a way of weighing options they should take with an aim of making the situation calm.
Homeric Epics
The Homeric epics talk about the anger of Achilleus and the homecoming of Odysseus, both of whom are great men and warriors. The term great is used to refer to something that is worth of being commemorated (Cannatella 7). During those times, Achilleus’ anger demonstrated moodiness when handling other warriors, a factor that resulted in a large number of Achaian deaths.
The epics showed an existence of an immortal god that interacted with the mortal beings. At this time, there was a Trojan War, and man and gods created a rewarding relationship. Men requested for signs and directions from the gods who in turn demanded ritual offerings before they could offer any assistance (Powel 1).
Homer demonstrates the gods as living strangely empty lives where they do not have anything important to do other than to influence activities of people. While the Trojan War was in progress, the gods quarreled and opposed one another on either side of the war when taking sides on who should win, and in some cases, they arrived on the battlefield itself to influence events (Cannatella 8). Homer presents the gods as if they are men who row and take sides at almost every event.
Homer said that the heroes had a divine heritage; a god for a father or a goddess for a mother. Each god sponsored its heroes leading to the numerous confrontations among the gods. There were rare cases when a god sponsored a hero not related to him. An example is Odysseus, who had mortal parents but the goddess Athene had a special regard for him and his family. The goddess also favors the full-blood mortal Diomedes (Powel 39).
Oral poetry creates Homer’s work anew using a fixed plot and repetition (Powel 16). The major plot, which Homer has no control over, is the outcome of the Trojan War. Homer adds other elements to this plot to make his message clear. By that, he employed the use of repetition, prayer, supplication, journey by ship, and divine visitation to communicate effectively with the people.
Homer’s Influence on Greek Civilization
Homer depicts those ideals Greek citizens embraced for them to live as heroes. In addition, those ideals enabled people to speak and act as one, leading to the emergence of the one Greek empire, from the many states that were always at war with one another (Powel 60). Homer’s work passed across ethics and ideals that encouraged unity and inflicted good morals among the people leading to peace and unconditional relations among the communities.
This topic demonstrates that it is easy to unite people with written literature given that it has options for reference. In the case of the ancient Greek, communities were a...